Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

4 Kerry Greenwood
‘Well, gentle lady, you wanted me,’ he said, hurt. ‘Was that
all you desired, Phryne?’
‘No, I desire a great deal more than that,’ she returned. ‘I
am not intending to cast you from my door now that you have
given me your all, Simon dear—don’t be melodramatic. You’re
very beautiful,’ she kissed him once. ‘And you’re very skilled,’
she kissed him twice. ‘And as you see,’ she kissed him a third
time, ‘you have more to offer me.’
Simon Abrahams found that, as usual, Miss Fisher was correct.
999
Phryne woke at noon and surveyed the room lazily. Dot had
been in and removed the tray, contriving as she always did to
ignore any extra tenants in Phryne’s bed. The sun was shining
in that half-hearted watery unreliable way which marked the
season as spring and the city as Melbourne. The wind appeared
to have died down. The noises of the house came to her as she
turned her head and picked rose petals from her surroundings.
Something with a very high-pitched howl was making its wants
felt: the telephone bell announcing that the outside world was
still there and desirous of establishing contact with Miss Phryne
Fisher. She heard Mr. Butler’s even tread as he went to answer
it and Dot yelling something to the girls, who appeared to be
in the kitchen. All normal, even comfortable sounds, after the
strange night and the delightful, if fraught, morning.
Sprawled asleep across half the bed was a long-limbed young
man of surpassing beauty. His eyes were closed, his expression
beatific, his arms outspread, his hands out and half-open, halfcurled.
He could have been a renaissance painting, except for the
love bites which marked his olive throat with round red patches,
darkening into black. Phryne wondered what had prompted her
to bite him so hard, and shivered at the remembrance. If she
had been his first lover—and she suspected so—then this was
a youth of truly remarkable amatory skill, who needed only a
little cultivation to be superb.