on. One said:--
Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to
begin. The other added:--
He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all. I lay quiet,
looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation.
The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement
of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent
the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter
underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.
I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under
the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply
gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling
and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips
like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining
on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp
teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of
my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she
paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked
her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the
skin of my throat began to tingle as one s flesh does when the hand that
is to tickle it approaches nearer--nearer. I could feel the soft,
shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat,
and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there.
I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited--waited with beating
heart.
But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as
lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his
being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I
saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with
giant s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the
white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with
passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to
the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light
in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. His
face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires;
the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar
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