Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

Raisins and Almonds 4
She knew that she could not keep him. He had to go back to
his father and his family duty. But while she had him, Phryne
meant to enjoy him.
But she was hungry, and it was lunch time. Also, whatever
message he had come to deliver had been lost in the translation,
so to speak, and it might have been important. She slipped a
considering hand down his face, from brow to nose to lip, and
he woke enough to kiss her palm.
‘That’s how this all started,’ she observed. ‘Wake up, my dear
Simon, it’s lunch time and I’m starving.’
His bright eyes snapped open and he sat up, startled.
‘Oh, Phryne,’ he said. ‘Oh, Phryne,’ he began again. ‘I never
asked, you know, I never asked all those things one is supposed to ask.
You just ravished me out of all my senses,’ he said complacently.
‘And very nice too,’ said Phryne, throwing back the sheets and
rising. ‘Come and have a bath. You didn’t need to ask me,’ she
added, taking his hand and leading him to her bathroom where
the tub was quite big enough for two. Over the roar of the taps,
she commented, ‘You would have touched my diaphragm, that
meant I would not conceive. And anything else can be settled
now.’ She put both hands on his shoulders and looked into his
eyes. ‘Thank you for your love and your body,’ she said very
deliberately. ‘But I can’t keep you, you belong to your family;
and you can’t have me, I belong to myself. Is that clear?’
‘Yes,’ stammered Simon. ‘But…does this mean that you have
had your will of me, that you….’
‘Curb this tendency to melodrama. I do not intend to cast
you aside like a soiled glove, either. Dear Simon,’ she said, kissing
him and helping him into the bath, scattering orchid bath salts
with a liberal hand, ‘you shall come and lie with me again, if you
please, and we shall have a love affair of which your mother will
never approve. Now, what did you come here to tell me?’
Simon Abrahams sat in warm water and sponged Phryne’s
white back while he racked his brains to recall what had brought
him to her house so early on a Sunday morning.
For the life of him, he could not remember.