Read Online Stiletto by Harold Robbins - Free Book Online

still thirsty,” she said in a small girl’s voice.
    Cesare laughed almost inaudibly. “You are an insatiable woman.”
    He heard the rustle of the sheets as she sat up. “I can’t help it if I’m still thirsty, can I?”
    He laughed again. “I guess you can’t,” he answered and went out onto the terrace.
    The night was still and in the distance he could hear the sound of the crickets and the faint dry whisper of the desert wind. The dark blue of the sky was lightening with the thrust of morning. He leaned against the railing looking out into the desert.
    She came out onto the terrace behind him. He didn’t turn around. She came up close behind him and slipped her arms around his chest and leaned her head against his naked back.
    “It will soon be morning,” she said.
    “I know,” he answered.
    She pressed her lips to his shoulder. “Your skin is smooth and clean and soft. Sometimes I wonder where all the fierce driving strength comes from. I didn’t know a man could be like you.”
    He laughed, turning around. “It must be the wines I drank when I was a boy. The wines of Sicily are supposed to be good for your blood and your skin.”
    She looked up into his face. There were some things about him she would never understand. “When you make love to me, why do you always say you are dying?” she asked in a wondering tone. “What a strange thing to say at a time like that.”
    He smiled down at her. “That is what we Italians call it. The little death.”
    “Why?” she asked. “When everything inside you is bursting open and being born why should you say it is like dying?”
    The smile faded from his lips. “Is it not? Is not each birth the beginning of death? Do you not feel the pain of it?”
    She shook her head. “No. Only the lifting joy of it.” She looked up into his eyes. “Maybe that’s the difference between us. Maybe that’s why I feel even when you’re closest to me that there’s a part of you that’s far away in a world I know nothing about.”
    “That’s silly,” he said.
    “No, it’s not,” she said quickly. “Like the way you looked when they carried that man past us. One moment it was like I could feel you inside me, right in that room with all those people. The next moment they came by and you were gone. He was dead, wasn’t he?”
    He stared down at her. “What makes you say that?”
    “He was dead,” she whispered. “I could tell from the expression on your face. You knew. Nobody else knew. But you knew.”
    “That’s a foolish thing to say,” he said lightly. “How would I know?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it was the same expression you had on your face when you came out of the building the day we started on our trip. Then when we opened the newspapers on the plane we read about that man being killed in the court around the corner from where we were.”
    She placed her head against his chest and did not see the slowly tightening expression of his face. “I don’t have to read tomorrow’s papers to know that the man downstairs was killed. I can feel it. I wonder what it will be like in Miami.”
    He wondered if she could feel his heart beginning to thump through his naked flesh. He forced his voice to be light. “Like it always is. Sunny and warm.”
    She looked up into his eyes. “That’s not what I meant, darling. I mean will someone die there too?”
    The veil was gone from his eyes and she was looking deep into them. “People die everywhere, every day,” he said.
    She felt almost hypnotized. “You’re not the Angel of Death, are you, darling?”
    He laughed suddenly and the veil was back. “Now that is a crazy thing to say.”
    “It’s not really,” she spoke slowly. “I read in a story once about a girl who fell in love with the Angel of Death.”
    His hand caught the back of her head and held her close to his chest. “What happened to her?” he asked.
    He could feel her lips move against his breast. “She died. When he