White Moon Black Sea by Roberta Latow Page A

Standing squarely behind her, he enfolded her in his arms, and with his hands gently pulled her dress down, exposing her breasts and already erect nipples.
    He fondled them and watched himself doing it, saw Mirella’s eyes close in ecstasy and delight at his touch. Then slowly he picked up the heavy silver brush from her dressing table and began brushing her hair.
    Mirella trembled, thrilling to Adam’s sensuous sweeping of her tresses. She could feel the rampant hardness inside his trousers against her back. He bent down again and kissed her on the shoulder, whispering, “Do change, quickly. I’m famished, and I am sure you are too. It’d be a shame to let what’s waiting in the dining room get cold.”
    She squeezed his hand and rose from the table. Adamunzipped her Saint Laurent gown, bent down to kiss the small of her back, then turned away. She put on a black lace nightgown, over which she wore a champagne-colored, silky satin dressing gown. It closed high at the neck with a ruff of black ostrich feathers which extended to one side past the opening and right down to encircle the hem. She worked quickly at closing the dressing gown while she watched him standing in front of the mirror combing his hair and tying his robe. Then Mirella accompanied Adam to breakfast.
    They spoke few words in those last minutes in the bedroom, but their thoughts were busy — his fancifully upon the naughtiness of the sexy, black lace nightdress she was wearing, and how later, after breakfast, she would be made to feel the joy and the passion it evoked in him; hers sweetly upon how much she loved him and was overwhelmed by the love, not unmingled with lust, he felt for her, her yearning to lie in his arms and have him share that love in sexual intimacy. How remote what they had together was from the erotic hours she had spent all day with Rashid.
    Rashid. Sometime before they landed she would have to talk to Adam about Rashid and her behavior toward him earlier that morning at breakfast in their house on the Bosporus. What an unwelcome task it would be to tell him that Rashid had duped her. Stolen her property from under her very nose. She had not picked up the warning signs and the bad news had been confirmed only minutes before she had joined Adam at breakfast. Rashid’s arrival had caught her off guard, depriving her of the chance to plan her reaction, though she had camouflaged her true emotions with the scene she had created. Since then she had made up her mind how she wanted to handle it. For that she would need the cooperation of Adam and Joshua. Adam was going to be very angry. Yes, before they landed in New York, she had to tell him all.
    The dining room was small and circular and, for an airplane, utterly charming. Two stewards were in attendance, Mirella and Adam sat opposite each other at the round table. The room was paneled in French sixteenth-centuryboiserie the color of the palest honey. The light from the early-morning sun reflected off the clouds filtered into the cabin through the portholes. Heavenly bright light, with huge white clouds below them and nothing but bright blue skies above.
    Mirella looked at her husband across the low silver bowl filled with fresh white freesias. “You do think of everything. What, of course, does one crave after a night like that?” They smiled as each said, “A bowl of French onion soup.”
    They laughed as they shook out their napkins and laid them across their laps. “I can smell it. Mouth-watering. No other smell like it in the world. Delicious onion soup, so hot it burns the tongue. But the melted cheese soothes that. Then you bite into the fried bread on top of the golden liquid. Transporting delight for the average peasant in France! How I miss the old Les Halles — all that market bustle getting ready to feed Paris. I used to go there with friends at two, three, in the morning to share a bowl of it with the fruit and vegetable marketeers hawking their produce. To kill the