"Madeleine E Robins - Abelard's Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robins Madeleine E)

Susannah tried to make her murmured Yes seem casual. She stepped near, reached
out a finger and touched, tentatively, at the side of the lover. "Abelard?" she
murmured. The thing did not move toward her, but it did not move away, either.
Sue pushed her finger a little harder. The surface of the lover was warm, firmer
than she had expected. Like lip. It gave slightly, then closed around her
fingertip and nursed at it, tasted it. Susannah felt a string of electric pulses
ripple up her spine; the flesh surrounding hers was damp and warm an faintly
pulsing.

"I thought you'd like him," Beatrice said smugly. At the sound of her voice
Abelard released its grip on Susannah's finger, dropped away and shrank back,
its rolling weight carrying it toward Beatrice. "Hello, Pet," Beatrice crooned.
"Is devoted to Beatie, isn't its. Is got Beatie under its skin, hasn't it?" She
ran a caressing palm flat along one side of Abelard's top while Susannah,
shivering in the warm air, tried to regain her composure. Then, abruptly,
Beatrice pulled away from the lover and turned to the door. "Come on, Susah."

Susannah followed, trying to ignore the tremor that lingered in her arms and
breasts and knees, making walking a shaky, uncertain chore. From the doorway she
took one backward look and saw Abelard, shrunken and forlorn, abandoned in the
center of the room.

"Potter will move it back to the tank later." Beatrice waved a vague hand in the
direction of the room as they moved up the hall. "Tanks."

"It spends most of its time in a nutrient bath. Or something. I told the people
at Bioform I didn't want to know particulars, they're so unromantic. Potter
takes care of him. It. Now, I promised you real coffee, didn't I?"

Susannah had forgotten about the work she had waiting in Manhattan. She followed
Beatrice mutely back to the sitting room where a lavish meal, with the promised
coffee, had been laid out. Through the meal and the copter ride into the city,
where Beatrice landed on the roof of Susannah's building in violation of any
number of ordinances, through the rest of the evening and the next day, Susannah
was haunted by the memory, the teasing sensation of that warm flesh suckling at
her finger. Which was just what Beatrice wanted, she told herself scornfully. An
audience, someone to want what she has.

Which is just what Susannah wanted.

Sue saw Beatrice irregularly, now and then at Renata's house in Connecticut,
sometimes at a restaurant in the city for lunch. With her usual perversity
Beatrice did not mention Abelard, but sometimes in the midst of talking she
would break off in mid-sentence and smile deliciously into space for a moment,
then start theatrically, "What was I saying?" Sue believed these lapses were
contrived for her benefit, but that didn't diminish their power. She was grimly
certain that Beatrice understood that all too well, and was grimly determined to
show herself unmoved.

Other than lunches with Beatrice, parties or weekends at Renata's, or her