Blooming: Veronica (14 page)

“Mr. Bowdoin?” she squeaked on a near-convulsion.

“Please be so good as to allow me my pastime, Mrs. Bowdoin.”

“But, sir…” In her agitation, she rubbed her trim thighs together.

Theirs could never be a normal marriage by anyone’s standards, and it was best she learn that lesson early on.

Seeing her preclimactic state, he stepped farther away. While Alfred titillated her nipples, Talbot pocketed his free hand.

Theirs could never be a normal marriage, true, but the urge to join in the play was almost irresistible.

Alas, touching her skin on skin would be his undoing, in that it would be an opportunity for more bitter disappointment, and so he would settle for looking on with Alfred acting as his ambassador, a sexual proxy as it were.

Eventually, which was to say when Veronica moaned rhapsodically, Alfred swung the measuring tape from around his neck, not as he would a Parisian scarf this time, but as if he were using a flogger.

The dungeon master had much experience in the area.

But not here and not with Veronica. The pleasure of disciplining his lovely bride would fall to Talbot.

To get the most exact measurement possible, Alfred took his time wrapping the tape around his wife’s large and still nicely erect nipples. While she squirmed for more, the tailor recorded the numbers on a slip of paper.

To his credit, Alfred understood that sometimes the wait makes the climax that much sweeter.

The tailor then moved to her waist and did the same there, a slow and exact accounting of her size as she squirmed some more.

Talbot called from across the room, “Please do her inseam too, Alfred. I intend to order her several sets of trousers.”

Veronica had remained passive but complicit throughout the process. At his instruction, though, her gumption reasserted itself.

“I shan’t wear men’s clothes.”

“Someone recently reminded me that George Sand often went about in male attire. Imagine the freedom you will enjoy in masculine disguise.”

Veronica’s next protest took a nonverbal form. Her knees glued themselves together, which prevented the tailor, who had already sunk to the floor, from measuring her inseam, a stretch of the tape from knee to groin.

This insubordination instigated a rebuke from him. “Enough of your foolishness, madam. You are interfering with the tailor’s business. Open at once.”

Shooting daggers at him, Veronica splayed herself.

After recording the appropriate numbers, Alfred grinned over at Talbot. “Mrs. Bowdoin seems highly animated. Her body is humming. And she is remarkably moist too. Was it anything I did?”

“Alfred, I believe your statement falls under the heading of accepting credit where credit is not due.”

“I disagree. Your lady’s feverish reaction clearly points to me.”

Talbot scoffed. “You have an inordinately high opinion of yourself. I will have you know, we were alone in here a long while before you graced us with your presence again. I daresay, I am the one to blame here.”

“The responsibility is too great. You take too much upon yourself.”

“I defy you to recreate the result,” Talbot sneered.

“I accept the challenge,” Alfred said with a nod. “A manly competition.”

Veronica sniffed. “Not the term I would have used. You two are behaving like boys, not men.” She tossed her head. “But if I receive the benefit of your childishness, who am I to complain?”

So, his bride was game, was she?

Talbot gave the tailor the go-ahead nod, and Alfred allowed his fingers to roam, combing Veronica’s dark brown fleece, the adorable springy curls dripping with the honey of her arousal.

He had set this up with the dungeon master in advance. But now that the scenario was playing out precisely according to plan, Talbot’s jutting cock seemed more than a little confused while his aching testicles could not be persuaded that this was the right way to go.

His mind was opposed to leaving himself vulnerable to another bitter disappointment. Obviously, his manhood, ever the optimist, was willing to try again.

Talbot backed way up this time. Since he was a house divided, a little distancing was in order.

Alfred was an excellent couturier and an even better voluptuary. With only a few well-placed strokes, he could stir both women and men to heights of delirium. Talbot had never succumbed himself to Alfred’s nimble fingers. Then again, he visited Sonya for that sort of tailoring.

“Oh, goodness, oh goodness,” Veronica cried and raised her arms sensuously above her head.

Her titties jiggled like raspberry-topped pudding cakes while her hips undulated like those of a belly dancer. Christ help him, Talbot nearly came at the sight, which caused him to bark sullenly, “Finish her, Alfred.”

Usually, Talbot enjoyed watching a woman in the throes of orgasm compliments of a partner other than himself.

Not this time.

This time, he found it all incredibly annoying, akin to being the only sober person in a tavern full of drunkards. The whole activity just rubbed him the wrong way. Especially so when Alfred rubbed Veronica the right way and
his
bride screamed out a hearty release.

Talbot tried not to take offense. In consolation, he told himself her shout was not nearly as loud as the one given to her by him. At most, he decided, the competition was a draw.

Still, it was irksome. The whole enterprise—her lusty orgasm, Alfred’s ease in getting her off—suddenly seemed in poor taste.

Talbot spoke to the tailor. “We will take that design you spoke of for next week’s soiree. Wrap it up if you would. Also, I would like to order my lovely bride an entire male wardrobe along with some fashionable female costumes. Skin out, and bright colors if you please. She needs everything.”

Except, perhaps, another immediate orgasm.

She could hardly stand up straight, poor, satiated child. Another climax would be her undoing.

Or, his.

In the interim, he would see she experienced other exciting sensations, just as he had planned.

Even if the follow-through killed him.

“Alfred, proceed with her shearing. Do not let me keep you.”

His bride awakened from her satiated stupor. “Shearing! Whatever are you referring to, Mr. Bowdoin? You had best mean shearing the cloth.”

“No. Not the cloth.”

Her hand flew to her head. “Is Alfred a barber as well as a tailor?”

“He does a little of this and a lot of that.”

“You cannot possibly mean to have him cut my hair, though?”

“Never. Or, at least, not
that
hair. But a trim elsewhere would be darling.” He wiggled his brows.

She bent an elbow above her head. “Here?” For demonstration purposes, she turned her face to profile, her adorable nose poking into the whorls in the hollow of her raised arm.

Talbot nearly laughed at her antics. His bride was such an innocent. “No. Not your underarm hair. This trim will expose your clitoris.”

Her gaze lowered. “Bald privates! How perfectly devilish.”

“If you think that devilish, wait until your piercings are done,” Talbot glumly replied. “The tailor is a demon with a needle.”

Chapter Seventeen

Veronica had schooled herself to maintain a stony silence on the carriage ride home, a feat which she accomplished admirably well if she did say so herself. But as soon as her devious husband escorted her upstairs to her bedchamber and closed the hallway door behind them, she confronted him. Away from the prying eyes and ears of household servants, she let him have it with both barrels.

“How dare you?” she screeched.

“How dare I what, Mrs. Bowdoin? I dare many things. You will need to be more specific in your accusation.”

“How dare you allow that man to touch me?”

“You enjoyed Alfred’s hands on you. And you have no cause for complaint. You climaxed. More than once. In fact, I lost count of your orgasms.”

“That is not the point.” As a deterrent to clawing out his eyes, she clamped her hands firmly on her hips.

“What is the point, then? Kindly elucidate it for me.”

“The point is, we are married. We spoke the usual vows.”

“Our vows were usual, but ours is not the usual marriage, and I am not the usual husband. I already explained as much. Besides which, sexual release is good for your health.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “Concern for my constitution motivated you. My physical well-being was the reason you allowed Alfred liberties with my person. I see. How very thoughtful. And why could
you
not have provided me with those medicinal releases?”

“Because I offer you companionship.”

“I have no want of a companion. What I have a want of is husbandry.”

He frowned. “You mean a husband. You have want of a husband.”

“Do not correct my syntax, sir, and my vocabulary is excellent.”

“For the most part, I agree.”

“What do you mean for the most part? What exactly are you inferring, Mr. Bowdoin?”

“Your sexual vocabulary is not as strong as it should be for a woman who declared herself an advocate of free love. This is especially remiss for a writer of erotica. Words like clitoris and fellatio should be a part of your writer’s toolbox.”

“And part of your toolbox, sir, should be an erect penis used for the purposes of screwing your wife. Furthermore, I do
not
write erotica anymore. As to my previous statement, I said what I meant. I ache for sex like an animal aches during heat. I cannot be bred, but I crave the act that leads to breeding. Granted, without love, the act will not be nearly as moving, but—”

“One is mutually exclusive of the other. Without any pretension of love, millions of couples still manage to get off.”

So saying, Mr. Bowdoin looked down and away. For the first time, he seemed unable to connect with her eyes. Had she touched a nerve?

“Madam,” he continued, staring at the floor, “with that said, I do understand your meaning.”

“Patronizing idiot. You do not! You do not understand at all! Inside the tailor’s shop, you alluded to knowing how it goes with newlyweds.”

His gaze snapped up to hers. “What of it?”

In her exasperation with her husband at the tailor’s shop, she had behaved badly. In her hurt, she had whipped the cane from his grasp. She still remembered how warm the ivory handle had been to the touch, and still felt its heat all the way from her nipples down to her loins.

Of course, that could have been her new erotic jewelry.

As it turned out, and just like her husband had indicated, Alfred had been indeed a demon with a needle. Her three new piercings were both a cause of delight and devastation.

A cause of delight due their very placement. Never again would she be able to deny her own sexuality, not with her new gold jewelry—the two hoops ringing her nipples and the barbell piercing the hood of her clitoris—triggering raw sensations within her each time she moved. Stinging now, they would pleasure her later.

A cause of devastation due to her response to another man’s intimate caresses while in her husband’s presence. Perhaps Alfred had done so intentionally, to minimize the sharp prick of the needle, but before each piercing, the wicked tailor had pushed her to the limit of her endurance with his probing touches—at her nipples, at her privates. Excited beyond belief at her husband’s watchful gaze, she never once felt the jab of Alfred’s needle.

Had she been a decent lady, all of this would have shamed her. But no. Knowing her staid husband watched another man move his fingers on her naked and spread body only increased her carnal frenzy. Oddly, though, long after those orgasms had faded, the heat emanating from the handle of her husband’s cane was what she recalled most dearly.

Unbelievable, pathetic too, that an inanimate object had left its imprint on her memory the most deeply, more than the masturbation, more than Alfred’s manipulation, more than her husband’s voyeurism.

And she knew why. The handle had come into direct contact with Talbot’s flesh. She longed for his touch, so much so, that even contact once removed stirred her.

Inconsolable in her recent loss, desolate in her loneliness, Veronica undid the ribbons under her chin and flung the hat on the bed. One of the feathers fell off in transit, and its departure left no impact on her. “Have you been married before, sir?”

“Certainly not. This is my first and last.”

“Then how would you possibly know how it goes with newlyweds?”

“Anecdotally I do know. Books. Friends. Gossip.”

“Second and thirdhand information.”

“So?” He dropped the box containing her new outfit for next week’s party on a nearby boudoir chair.

“So I am here to say you know nothing about newlywed behavior. Furthermore, your use of me as a cover for your illegal propensity is unconscionable.”

“To what are you alluding?”

“Do you deny sleeping with men?”

“Certainly not. I deny none of what makes me who I am. Though my sexual habits are not common knowledge. Nor should they be. It is my private business what I do behind closed doors.”

“Sodomy is illegal behind closed doors or in the middle of Boston Common, sir. I believe you married me as an aid to your subterfuge.”

“Not so. I married you for an entirely different nefarious purpose. You had just lost a baby, and I…”

“Say no more,” she whispered and clutched at her belly, empty now that she had expelled her child.

Despite what she told him then, the miscarriage had not been the optimal solution, not for her. Wretched circumstances or not, she had wanted that new life growing within her with her whole heart. Only a few weeks along, but she ached for that baby who never was.

“What good am I now?” she asked him, sadness pouring out of her. “What purpose do I serve in life? No children, an unconsummated marriage. I have no reason for being. You should have let me die that day.”

A hand came out of nowhere, striking her across the face.

His hand. Her husband’s hand. A cold man who had wed her but who had no real use for her.

“You are not to say that again, madam. All life is precious. Your life in particular is precious to me.”