Rendezvous with Hymera Read Online Free Page B

friendship.
    Combed, wearing light makeup, a spicy perfume and a white dress that showed off her long, tanned legs, Clara looked magnificent.
    “I’ve always thought you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said, watching her with the fixed and lustful concentration of a cat courting the cream pot.
    She remained captive for a heartbeat in the penetrant intensity of his gaze, not finding any adequate response to this remark.
    Fortunately, Colin didn’t seem to wait for any reply. He went on, smiling:
    “You know, actually I came to take you on a picnic.”
    “Picnic? Where?”
    “Right here. There’s a really beautiful place on the lakeside; I discovered it accidentally in the weeks I spent here.”
    Without waiting for a confirmation, he took her hand and led her to his car, an anthropic version of a feline – low, long, shiny black – producing from its trunk an enormous blanket and a basket of impressive proportions, loaded with culinary delicacies.
    They walked hand in hand along the shore until they reached a small clearing, on the opposite side of the cottages. Colin laid the blanket on the grass of a green so clean and uniform that it made the dew drops glittering here and there seem to be stray crystal shards.
    He began revealing the supplies in the basket: champagne, expensive cheese, chocolate truffles and other such sweet nothings, along with two glasses. He opened the bottle with an artistic skill and filled both glasses with the frothy flavored liquid.
    “I’m not used to drinking champagne for breakfast,” she remarked laughing.
    “It’s almost lunch. And, anyway, today is a special occasion. We must celebrate our reunion, right?”
    They clinked glasses, then delighted with samples of gastronomic indulgence and conversation.
    After they finished eating, relaxed by the balmy air, they stretched out face to face on the blanket. Somewhere, in the more shallow places of the abyss above, a few diaphanous, unstable clouds arched lazily over the calm scenery.
    “I’ve always adored nature, especially the woods,” she said dreamily, following the small entities that appeared to pulsate with their own ephemeral life.
    “I know,” he replied smiling. “I still remember when you used to skip classes with your friends and bullied them to go to the forest.”
    Clara laughed, remembering those days of unaware adolescence, when her greatest concern was to maintain her school absence level to the limit imposed by her father, and permanently find inventive ways to avoid meetings with parents.
    “You never skipped classes, you were a good boy!” she teased him.
    “I’m not that good now,” said Colin and, unexpectedly turning her face to him, bent to kiss her.
    His lips were sensual and expert, matching hers in an evocative rhythm that sent its echo in her entire being, awakening and unleashing feelings repressed so deep that now, under his touch, she seemed to reborn in her own newly created world.
    Invaded by the twin power of those inexpressible feelings, he pulled her closer, in an embrace in which passion, desire and all the nameless experiences, remained undefined even by the most skilled poets, merged in a primitive state – an acute need to possess and be possessed. Sometime later, with a restless heart and inconstant breathing, Colin gazed straight into her eyes, whispering roughly:
    “You have no idea what indecent fantasies I’ve had with your lips in mind...”
    But Clara knew. She knew, because in the cold, long nights, curled in darkness on an empty bed, in the tense, edgy presence of loneliness – her habitual companion over the years – dreams often brought his face into her mind, along with regret for everything that could have been, but was not.
    Now, like in a material projection of her dreams, she embraced him tightly, overwhelmed by a fulfillment unknown to her until then, and that she unequivocally recognized as being that abstract legend called happiness by all