Dark Lies the Island

Начало книги

EARLY ONE SUMMER morning, I sat with her among the rooftops of the city and the fat white clouds moved slowly above us — it was so early as to be a city lost in sleep, and she was really very near to me. My want for her was intense and long-standing — three months, at least; an eternity — and I was close enough to see the opaque down of her bare arms, each strand curling like a comma at its tip, and the tiny scratched flecks of dark against the hazel of her eyes. She was just a stretch and a clasp away. The city beneath was lost to the peaceful empty moments of 5 a.m. — it might be a perfect Saturday of July. All I had to do was make the move.

Nor was it my imagination that her shoulder inclined just slightly towards me, that there was a dip in the way she held it, the shoulder bare also beneath the strap of her vest top. The shoulder’s dip must signal an opening.

‘Now I don’t want to sound painfully cool here?’ I said.

Читать дальше →