Blooming: Veronica (10 page)

His arrogance spurring her on, she raced through the remainder of her clothing, tossing each white unmentionable to the floor and stomping on them. Stomping on them all and kicking free of them too, as if each article of clothing she rid herself of represented a link in the chain to her past. As if each item made up the faces of those fair-weather friends who had backed away from her at the first whiff of scandal. How she hated their treachery, their two-facedness, their lack of compassion. And her hurt was not over their contribution to the destruction of her reputation. What did she care for the sullying of her name? She had lost a baby, her baby, and her circle of so-called friends had shunned her and saved themselves, guilt by association and all that. They had to a one avoided her. Their cowardly desertion had left her to grieve her loss alone.

My baby. My child. I shall never have another little boy or girl to love.

The melancholy litany circled inside her head, but no wetness came. Her tears dried up before she ever shed them. She mourned in private and silently, and would do so for the rest of her life.

Apart from her gold-buckled shoes, silk hose, and frilly white garters, she was naked. Contemptuous of him, her unwanted husband, she backed up to a wall and flung her arms out to the sides in a position of surrender.

He could not manipulate her if she gave herself over to him. A passive victory at best, but all she could manage.

At the moment.

Seething, she spread her legs wide.

Chapter Twelve

His bride quaked against the brocade-covered wall, the lush naturalness of her unadorned beauty a direct counterpoint to the dining room’s stuffy gilded formality. Never had he thought to have a wife, never mind a wife who would throw herself so fully into posing nude for him among the etched crystal glassware and gold-edged platters.

A step took him nearer to her, so near the warmth and scent of her body made themselves known to him. When had he last been this close to a woman?

Years, he reckoned.

He took his voyeurism at a clinical distance, where he would encounter no earthy fragrances and emanating heat. In response to hers, he…well…responded. His erect cock just about rammed a hole through the black cashmere wool of his trousers.

The method to his madness had worked. He had certainly gotten her all fired up.

At him.

Christ, steam was coming out of her ears, and he who could not dance a lick could have leaped through the air with joy like the star of a ballet.

How she must despise him. In her fury, she had dropped her composure and allowed her antagonism to show.

Writing would come next.

Now, to push her further.

And not only because she was lovely in her indignation, though she was very lovely. She would need to release all her pent-up emotions on paper, or else she would explode. As it was, she had attacked her clothing like a virago.

She hummed with vengeance. Her shapely figure glowed rosy as the vehemence of her outrage pumped blood into her pale flesh. And what delectable flesh it was too, he mused, lowering his heavy lids to the rosy cleft between her splayed thighs. The folds were not wet, not yet, but they looked a little swollen.

An encouraging sign.

Despite herself, her body was thawing out, her sexuality springing to life.

Her juices would flow next.

He would not take her moistening personally. She had gone through an ordeal, but she was young and healthy, and her appetites would return. Her body would have had the same reaction to any man.

Any man, that is, who knew which levers to pull, which he did.

Talbot jerked his gaze upward.

To her titties. Generously plump, the ends jutting in pointed disapproval of him. Her breasts were everything a man could want. Unfortunately, they were not for him.

Neither was her waist, which a man could easily span with his hands. Not his hands, naturally, some other lucky sod’s hands. But if he got lucky, he would be there watching. Looking was the most he could expect to receive in terms of pleasure from his lovely bride. This was through no fault of hers. Indeed, this was not about
her
. This was about
him
. Touching anyone, including his wife, was a feat far beyond him. Without voyeurism…and his own sticky fingers…he would get few jollies at all.

Apropos to that…

“Turn around,” he said.

“Why?”

“You have been with a man. You already know why.”

“I fear not. And if I did, I would not lower myself to ask. Why would my posterior interest you? My vaginal entrance, yes.” Her face went to scarlet. “And my mouth, perhaps, if oral gratification is your objective.”

Robert McDougal had not only been a blackmailer; he had been a fool.

“In regards to intercourse, a man may also enter a woman’s buttocks. Sodomy, buggery, anal penetration, call it whatever you will, the activity pleases me.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows spiked. “I was unaware of that method. I mean…I had familiarity with the word, of course, but I never put two plus two together and arrived at that particular hole.” She gasped. “I mean…of course I mean…
sum
. Silly of me.”

She spun in place, then gazed over her shoulder. “Will this do, or shall I turn round?”

His collar tightened around his throat. Absurd this urgency he had to sheathe himself within her body. He saw himself as a carnal fan, not a carnal participant. He was a spectator from afar, not someone who became involved. Relationships only led to disappointment. Another failed attempt to find meaning with someone would crush him, especially if that new failure were with her.

He pulled himself together, got himself back on task. His goal was to convince her to write again—for his publishing house, not the competitor’s, and for her sake as well as his. At his company, he could nurture her gift and guide her career. Her talent was too great to allow it to stagnate, her happiness too important to leave it to chance. And if his company also prospered financially as a result of her happy writing, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?

His admiration for her writing ability had prompted him to exchange his made-up reputable name for her ruined real one, a small sacrifice, as he had never intended to wed. He was married to publishing, and that was the way he liked it. Then he fell in love with her as he had once fallen in love with the written word. Both his passions encapsulated in one adorable place. How could he resist?

“Yes,” he rasped, liking it this way too. No,
loving
it this way too. “Round.”

She bent to touch her fingers to the floor.

“Now open yourself,” he said hoarsely. “Open yourself in back.”

“Do that, and I am likely to topple over onto my face.”

“Tut-tut, madam. We cannot allow that to happen,” he said drily. “Feel free to rise to a more comfortable position before you begin.”

While she realigned herself, he said, “As you have gotten naked for me, I will return the favor.”

“Do not feel you must. I like you little enough fully garbed.”

He would
not
sulk. “You asked me what I would like to know about you, and I was not completely forthcoming in my answer. I shall rectify the shortfall now. I wish to know how you felt when sucking off Robert McDougal in a public place.”

“You mean at the port?”

“Have there been other public places?” he asked, his testicles tightening.

“No. Just the one. And actually, that encounter quite inspired me. The element of danger added to my sexual arousal.”

She was an exhibitionist, he a voyeur. Theirs was a marriage based on the compatibility of their respective perversions.

And their mutual love of the written word. The one thing about which he had always felt deeply.

He stared between the cheeks of her buttocks. “Why did the act inspire you?”

“Does one really know the whys about oneself?”

“One can speculate.”

“Then…in speculation…I would say that in possibly exposing myself to public scrutiny down on the pier, I broke through male oppression and found my female liberation.”

“Drop the political platform. I dislike rallies. Also, give me something a little more personal than a stump speech, if you please.”

She shivered. “Brr. My, but you are the aloof one. Your chilly distancing gives me the chilblains. I fear divulging anything personal would break you in two like an icicle. So…very well.” She twittered inelegantly. “Have it your way. I found the inherent danger of the situation rewarding in and of itself. There was no genuine threat of exposure. At least, I
thought
there would be no genuine threat at the time, as I
thought
I had authored the situation. Now, of course, I’ve come to realize, that authorship anywhere but in books is a complete sham. One cannot author one’s real life. It—the scenario—had very little to do with Robert. Though I utterly adored him, of course.”

He smiled complacently.

Adored
. Past tense. And only an addendum.

If the adoring addendum ever applied at all, and he highly doubted it had.

In his opinion, his wife had never adored her lover. Nor had she responded sexually to his apathetic lovemaking. Rather, she had responded to her own vivid imagination, that great sexual organ between her two lovely ears. She had yet to catch on to that fact, as she had yet to realize what she had been missing. But she would. Soon, she would find out what had been absent in her lover’s technique.

Skill.

Foreplay.

Her physical release.

“Shall I spread my legs too, Mr. Bowdoin?”

So eager was his bride. “If it pleases you.”

“And here I thought this exercise was all about pleasing you, husband.”

“Why not do what would please us both?”

She nodded. “I approve. An equalitarian start to our marriage. Then, for my part, I should like to face you again.”

“By all means do so.”

Turning back around, she spread her thighs, her arms outstretched to the wall behind her, the whorls of her pubic hair a little damp.

His gaze leveled there. “You said you had been with one man only?”

“Yes. Robert. A few episodes of intercourse, and one of a somewhat different nature.”

“Fellatio.”

Her brow puckered. “I do beg your pardon? I orally gratified him.”

“You sucked him off on the docks.”

“Exactly.”

“That is fellatio. Or sodomy, if you will.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Obviously, I do will. Though sucking him off on the docks sounds more illicit,” she replied, meeting him tick for tack and grinning at the coarse expression too.

He was very excited, and she was getting there. Her springy bush had begun to glisten with her body’s moisture in preparation for penetration. Touching her there would be sheer bliss. Or the worst disappointment of his life. He might very well try and fail.

And so he would not touch her.

“Touch yourself,” he told her instead.

“Oh dear. Wherever shall I begin?” Her finger went to the dimple beside her mouth, drawing his attention to the eminently kissable contours of her lips, pouting now, pursing then, a taunting he envisioned lasting years past their platonic honeymoon.

He swallowed. “Grow accustomed to your body in totality first. Smooth a hand all over. Start with your hair. Remove the pins from your chignon. And please to restrain yourself from flinging them at me.”

She sighed theatrically. “You know, I thought as much! You can read minds.”

“I am given to erotic play, not to parlor games.”

“Oh, but I think you are, sir, for all that we play this game in the dining room.”

Touché
again. And now he did sulk.

Luckily for him, the fall of her cascading hair hid his sullen expression. How terrible for her to know how much he lusted after her. He was certain she would gloat.

When the hair wires lay scattered on the floor, she shook her head, a move that sent the loosened strands to bouncing. Next, she lifted the heavy mass off her neck, a move that sent the crowns of her titties to the ceiling.

He almost ejaculated at the sight.

Some men liked shapely legs, others round arses; some went right for the central issue—the cunt. Him? He worshipped a woman’s breasts. All kinds, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.

Hers.

Tittiestittiestitties.

Christ, he was in titty heaven. He could easily make a fetish of her titties.

“Stroke your bosom,” he croaked, masking the grating sound in a cough that hopefully minimized the evidence of his discomfort, and all the time trying to evade her stare. This voyeurism was not all one-sided.

“Like so?” she asked, cupping the twin mounds.

And making an astonishingly poor mess of it too.

He was used to professionalism, and she gave him an amateurish farce.

Nevertheless, her clumsy handling had him in agony.

“Fondle the tips,” he directed.

“Why ever did I not think of that, sir?”

She twisted the ends and cooed “Oh, for joy” while his cock extended outward an inch at a time, the massive knob at the top copiously leaking precum.

He had spent years viewing so-called experts at seduction, whores he paid for the privilege of watching their counterfeit orgasms. But not one had gotten to him as his new bride got to him.

“Now, on to your clitoris.”

“I do beg your pardon, sir?”

“I thought you were a follower of free love?”

“I am!”

“Did you not discuss human sexuality at all? Or did you only study plants?”

“At our monthly meetings, we discussed marriage as a form of political repression, of social bondage, of physical oppression, that a woman has the unalienable right to authority over her own body. We focused on important issues such as the elimination of strictly defined gender roles.”

“What about pleasure?”

“We were a serious-minded group, sir, not a club of hedonists!”

He expelled a disgusted sigh. “The clitoris is a nubbin of flesh located at the top of your sex.” He had more experience in its visual examination than did a physician. Doctors rarely had the opportunity to see between a woman’s legs—even during childbirth, the area remained modestly covered—whereas his viewing was limited only to the size of his purse.