Page 51 of Sigma
“Why?”
“Because you looked ravishing in it, Corinna.” That brush against my buttock again. I flinch away, but yet as he pointed out, I cannot seem to move, to flee. “Surely you must know how incredible you are.”
“I don’t feel incredible. I feel like a prisoner.”
“The door is not locked.” He whispers it. “You can walk out of this room any time you wish.”
At this revelation, I spin in place, searching his face as if I have a hope of diving the truth from his ever-inscrutable face. It is a mistake—turning around, I mean, not looking at his face. Why a mistake, you ask? Because now the appendage which was brushing against my butt is now nudging my thigh. So close. Too close.
I gulp, look down.
Good god, it’s sobig.
It seems impossible. Also impossible is the totality of the man that is Apollo—the depth of his physical perfection. Even just awake, his hair is mesmerizing, tangled and messy, sticking to the stubble of his jaw and curling around his neck just above his shoulders, wild and untamed. His eyes are deep and dark and unknowable, neither cold nor distant just now, but curious and heated yet still and ever guarded. His body…there are no words.
What—the—fuck—is wrong—with me?
This mankidnappedme, and I’m ogling him as openly as he has me.
“I can leave?” I whisper, finally finding the fortitude to back away from him, out of range of physical contact.
He smiles, a wolfish grin of amusement. “Sure.”
“Your grin tells me there’s a catch.”
“The catch is, I own the land for miles in every direction. And as I am, as you may have noticed, a very private man, you could walk for hours and never see another person. Vines and orchards, and that’s it. Maybe a few farmworkers, but they won’t assist you. I doubt they’d even look at you.”
I deflate.
“But if my naked body frightens you, you may find another place in my home to bide the time.”
I turn around and go into his closet, searching his closet for something to wear on my bottom half. I find a pair of gym shorts with a drawstring and step into them. They hang to my shins, but with the drawstring pulled tight, they stay on fine. Thus attired in Apollo’s shirt and shorts, feeling I’m doing the walk of shame, I leave the tower. For the first time since the night I was taken, I’m doing something on my own, of my own volition. It feels…I’m not sure how to put it, even in my own mind…it feels strangely strange. As if I’ve always been here, in this castle, with this supremely unusual man.
When, in fact, it’s only been a day. A day and a half? I’m not sure.
Not so strangely, I find myself in his library. Good golly Miss Molly, what library. I’m shook. Three full stories, and not just floor to ceiling in a big box, either. He has proper stacks, like an actual, literal library.
We’ve taken quite a few vacations as a family, obviously; my father designs and builds hyper-luxury transportation, so of course we have the best of the best in private transport—we’ve taken jets and boats all over the world. Most memorably, we took one of the crown jewels of RTI’s fleet, the submarine from our island in the Caribbean to Rio de Janeiro. Which has one of the most beautiful libraries in the world: the Royal Portuguese Reading Room. Words don’t do it justice—you have to see it. In person, preferably, if not online.
This library of Apollo’s? Damn close, and similar in style, actually. Ornate, hand-carved shelf-ends, graceful arches spanning the posts supporting the balconies above—gothic arches, here, but delicate and almost insubstantial. The room is not an exact shape, the walls turning this way and that to create corners and nooks, each one featuring a small chair and end table lit by a floor lamp.
I peruse the first level for a while, scanning titles, wandering at random. The stairs are hidden in corners, and I ascend to the second level for a while, selecting a book and reading a few pages, or even a few chapters. Time doesn’t exist here; does time pass at all, in a good library? How long do I spend, there? Hours, certainly. Up to the third level, then, and now I find a corner where the books are dusty and smell old, with cracked leather covers. There’s a lectern and a pair of white gloves. First, I scan these ancient tomes. Descartes, Hume, Virgil, Homer; Greek tragedies, Roman myth, and Renaissance philosophy; a folio of Shakespeare, Donne, a handwritten translation of Dante’sInferno.
The chair here is a well-loved one, deep with a high back and armrests, the brass-riveted maroon leather worn and scuffed and aged, with a matching footstool. A cork coaster on the side table, on it, a forgotten tumbler with a dried scrim of old liquor staining the bottom.
I choose the collection of John Donne’s love poems; the gloves are too big, but a volume this old requires protection from the oils on my fingers, so I wear them. I turn the pages with extreme care, taking my time reading each poem. Just a month ago, I completed a survey course of English Poetry from the early Middle Ages through World War Two, and as I read, I can’t help falling into the ingrained habit of close reading, prying meaning from the dense language.
I’m so entranced, I don’t hear him arrive; that, or he’s simply very light of tread.
“Ah, John Donne,” he says, making me jump. “An old friend.”
I frown up at him. “Really?”
He eyes the tome, upside down to him, then fixes his gaze on me:
“‘I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?