Read [Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) for Free Online Page A

mouth.
    He stepped away and pretended to be looking in the trunk, but a ghost of himself stood yet with her, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder, a finger into an escaped lock of hair. His ghost did what he dared not.
    Cassandra began to read aloud in Italian, her throaty voice cascading over the syllables expertly, the sound soft and unimaginably sensual. He closed his eyes and listened, letting just that part of her come into his mind—the sound of her reading a passage about a wife kissing her lover, Anichino. When the story progressed, to Anichino creeping into the wife's room, he thought she would halt in feminine reserve, for the lover awakened his woman by putting his hands on her breasts.
    But she did not stop. She read it all, with no shift in her tone to speak of either coquetry or embarrassment, and he was surprised by her again. He turned.
    She raised her eyes. "It is so much more beautiful in Italian. The translations are often dry. I would like to convey the spirit of this, the…" She narrowed her eyes, not seeing him. "… the lushness. I love the bawdiness so much," she said. A smile, thoughtful and distant, touched her lips.
    More than the world, he wanted to fling himself across the small distance between them and bring to fruit another kiss, like that of the wife and her lover. His flaw had ever been his own delight in his senses, and they roared now with a clamoring unlike any he had known, for she offered a feast for eyes and mouth and hand and ear.
    But if he allowed indulgence in this moment, he would mortally offend her, offend the freedom she felt in speaking to him thus. So he considered his reply, taking something blindly from the trunk, then dropping casually into the other chair.
    "Yes," he said, "I like his passion—the passion to affirm life, after so much death from the plague. It is the most natural thing—to celebrate that which brings new life."
    Her smile of connection and happiness was gratification enough, that she was truly free with him, to discuss even that forbidden topic. "Exactly! It must have seemed the world had nearly ended. I cannot even imagine." She picked up the next page and grinned, for it was part of the Third Day's stories—the subject of her essay that had made him laugh. She read it aloud, and again shook her head. "It cries for better translation! Don't you agree?"
    "I have not read English translations," he admitted.
    "Oh, of course not. Well, I can give you an example." She took the page and began to read in very stilted English that captured little of the flow of the Italian. " 'And then, and then, and then…'" She sighed.
    "Terrible. You would be far better."
    He gave a mock shudder. "I intensely dislike translation work."
    "Ah, but you'd bring poetry to it."
    "So will you."
    She shook her head, smiling as she touched the words on the page again, her eyes following the path of her finger. "I am only clever, Basilio I have not the fire of a poet, that gift of song."
    "There is more poetry in you than you recognize."
    She rose impatiently, restlessly. "No. I am gifted enough to earn my way in the world with my pen, but my passion has ever been for study." She shook her head, a quizzical expression in her eyes. "There is a moment, when one has been steadfast in piecing together some subject, that a single detail falls into place, and there is suddenly a whole picture, an understanding. Enlightenment. Do you know what I mean?"
    His heart swelled—God! Such an intelligent woman—what a rarity! He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. "I wanted to be a great scholar," he said. "But I can never stand far enough from the work, from my own thoughts on it, to make that picture you speak of. But sometimes, when I am writing, I feel something similar."
    "Yes? What brings it?"
    He narrowed his eyes, thinking. "I am not certain. It is in part what you say—one must be persistent, dedicated, through all the frustrating moments when it all seems a hopeless