Blooming: Veronica (18 page)

She set the globe down on something nearby, something by her right hip, something strewn with an assortment of unfamiliar-looking tools.

Complicated tools. Sophisticated tools with dials and calibrations. All manner of bolts, springs, nuts and screws, and other
things
she had never seen before, littered the surface and shone eerily in the red blinking lights, the fog magnifying their eerie glow.

In her frightened confusion, she bumped into a strangely vibrating metal door, out from under which a cloud of steam billowed. The steady hum of whirs and whines broken with intermittent pops and whistles came from behind the same metal door and gave her a moment of pause before proceeding.

To hell with it! Heedless of the consequences, she undid the heavy latch and charged within.

Like a moose hit by a train, she stopped dead in her tracks. This was no workroom, unless it belonged to a mad inventor. What was this place?

Above the pops, whistles, and whirs she heard telltale masculine grunts. Amid the cloud of billowing steam, she made out the shape of her husband. She sucked in her breath at the sight.

He was naked. Sweating. Hips driving. Buttocks clenched. Shoulders bunched. Arms extended around someone in a lusty embrace. Every tight muscle and sinew roping his taut body told her he was on the verge of climax.

The bastard! Not on
her
honeymoon!

Head down, Veronica charged. Blinded by rage, impeded by darkness and fog, she pushed past her husband—she would see to him later—and attacked her rival.

The slut.

Into the whore’s wildly gyrating nude body went her fist. Once, again, about a hundred additional times. Soft elastic flesh gave way; metallic clunking ensued.

Clunking?

Good grief, her husband’s mistress sounded like a rusty tin can.

Her long pent-up anguish exploded, and Veronica kicked the squeaking and squawking Sonya to the floor.

Chapter Twenty-two

“Stop,” Talbot shouted and jumped into the fray. “Stop, madam, before you harm yourself.”

“Unhand me, sir. This whore dies tonight.”

“No.” He pulled his bride up off the floor and wrapped her in his arms, her spine pressed to his chest, a loose hold to restrain her. Metal sparks were flying everywhere.

“Sonya is not a real woman, my darling.”

“What is she?”

“An automaton.”

“A what?” She looked down at poor Sonya, battered and bruised and pathetically pinging on the floor, her internal mechanization all but destroyed.

“A machine covered in vulcanized rubber.”

“Rubber as in Goodyear?”

He sighed in relief. His explanation had gotten through to her. “Well, yes. Though I did make a few relatively minor improvements to the original formula,” he said, trying not to preen, trying for humility while wanting to shout his accomplishment to the world, but preferring to impress only his bride. “The addition of several new compounds made her skin supple and lifelike. Not as silky as yours, naturally,” he rushed to add, lest his feisty flower take offense.

She ignored his stab at amends making. “When?”

“When what?”

“When did you make the adjustment?”

“A while back. When I built the prototype. Sonya is my first completed model.”

“She has breasts and…and”—she darted a look to him—“and a vagina.”

“What can I say? Men have needs, and when I built Sonya, I needed her rather badly.”

“You designed her as a receptacle for…for…semen,” she sputtered.

“Why, yes. What else? There is another egress between her buttocks and also between her lips.”

Stretching a leg forward, Veronica gingerly toed the automaton over. Sonya now lay on her back, springs and wires poking and hopefully disguising any distinguishable characteristics.

“Good heavens,” his wife cried. “My own face is staring back at me from the floor. She has my color eyes.”

“Glass orbs.”

“My hair too.”

“A wig,” he said glumly. “She was prettier before you beat her to a bloodless pulp. Over and above a superficial resemblance, she in no way compares to you. You are a passionate woman while Sonya is—”

“An abomination.”

“Some might agree, but without her, where would I be tonight?”

“With me, the genuine article, upstairs in your bed.”

“Really?” he said stupidly and maneuvered her and himself into a position whereby his erection could bat against her upper thigh.

Ahhhhhhhh…

A short-lived moment of tenderness.

She pushed him aside. Quickly, before she could emasculate him, he placed his jutting cock out of harm’s way.

“Wait a minute,” his astute bride reasoned aloud. “You said you built Sonya a while ago. When? When did you put her together?”

“Right after your book reading.”

“You mean to say you have been using her in this disgraceful manner all this time?”

“I will have you know she has offered not a single word of protest.”

“Goodness, the thought of you doing disgusting things to what amounts to a life-size doll, all because of me—”

She stopped, tilted her jaw. “It was because of me, was it not, Mr. Bowdoin?”

“Most definitely.”

“That thought arouses me ever so much.” Her hands grabbing for purchase at his neck, she hoisted herself up his torso and wrapped her shapely legs around his waist.

Talbot never used a walking stick with Sonya, as the sturdy automaton could hold him up.

The same could not be said of his charming but tiny bride.

Ordinarily, and as he had already proved, he could carry his wife. Her weight was slight, her stature petite. But when she jumped him, her surprising level of enthusiasm knocked him backward, and he fell against the wall. An altogether fortunate occurrence, as the support came in handy for what would come next.

Defying his physical limitations, a rush of hot blood numbing him to pain, he ripped Veronica’s satin dressing gown away from her sweating, humid, lushly beautiful, straining body and growled like a swashbuckler from a penny novel, “Time to make you my wife in truth.”

He was already conveniently naked; she was now naked and perspiration slippery. Within the cloud of steam, he shelved his arms under her ass and cupped her wiggling buttocks. The ring of one pierced nipple beckoned, and he took the gold hoop between his teeth and pulled, violently pulled, and when she screamed out, either in pain or in pleasure, he kissed her, kissed her hard and long and roughly, without any of his usual artful choreography. He kissed her as he had wanted to kiss her from the very first. His tongue thrusting to her throat, without concern for inconsequential issues like respiration and correct pelvic alignment, he thrust his hips.

And he was in. Inside her, his cock holding her in place, as her arms, wrapped tightly about his body, pinioned him the same, right where they both needed him to be, an eminently satisfying immobilization.

He felt nothing.

Except bliss. Except euphoria. Except the realization of having to fuck her senseless now! Right now!

He gave no thought to later. Did not consider his harsh treatment of her recently pierced cunt. Nor did he make any allowances for his paining hip. When she pulled free of the kiss and moaned against his ear, “Do it hard. Do
me
hard. Make everything else go away,” he complied.

He drove his hard flesh into her. Mindlessly. Endlessly. A fuck that made her writhe and him shake. She clawed at the back of his neck, pulled at his too-long unkempt hair, threatened to strangle him when he pulled out, all the way out before plunging back into her, full steam ahead, the head of his cock delivering blow upon blow to her narrow passage.

Loving the friction of her piercing against his cock, he kept forcing himself in, all the way in, nothing held back, not even insanity, and then pulling out, to capture that edgy sensation again. Both of them out of their minds, they urged one another into a maddened intercourse that left all concept of sweet wedding consummations behind.

“More,” she ranted and raved, raking her nails across his arse.

He might very well bleed to death before this deed was done, but he did give her more. Gave her deeper too. His wildness for her escalated. Only for her, forever only for her.

Climax approached, and he refused it. Would not concede to the urgency of release. He would not have this agony end between them. Putting off the inevitable, the time when he slipped free of her, he ground his loins to hers until they became one hurting entity, and then gave her one last powerful surge, his cock now battering her cunt.

Her passage convulsed, and she screamed, a raw cry torn from her throat like a death rattle. He cried out too, his shout a cry of victory over the weakness of an injured body.

He should never have been able to hold her up and fuck her at the same time. It should have been physically impossible for him to go at her in a standing position and pump his hips while she thrashed about mindlessly, a female animal during the mate, yet he had.

And why?

Always before when it came to sex, he had relied on style over substance. This time, style would have fallen far short, and so, substantially, he had gone into her full throttle.

Because fucking her hard was what she needed from him.

Now his initial surge of lust was dissipating, and only the same stoicism that had held him together for years prevented weakness from taking charge. Mind over matter, he relied on a fierce hold on control to rule the pain and hold her.

Because holding her was what she needed from him.

His cock still inside her, he staggered to the pool dug in the basement’s stone floor. He could not hold back all physical discomfort, but he could keep the agony from consuming him, from turning him into a hurting shell of a man. The restorative heat of the waters would soothe his aching muscles, which would prevent him from collapsing.

Because this was not over yet, and collapsing was
not
what she needed from him.

Nor was it what he expected of himself.

A decade was a long time to go without sex, but it was an eternity to go without feeling. He was feeling plenty now, not all of it good.

Had he hurt her?

And Christ help them both, how soon before he could hurt her the same way again?

Chapter Twenty-three

Her husband was carrying her away from the wall, his penis lodged inside her, still semirigid, his cum dribbling out of her, down her thigh, to her knee, the ejaculate cooling the heat of her body.

Clinging to him, his lopsided stride making the ride uneven and bumpy, she murmured, “Where are you taking me?” Not that she cared. It was only something to say.

“To the hot baths,” he told her and climbed down one or two stairs, his gait wobbly.

Where was his walking stick?

The thought came and went, her sadness taking precedence over his lame leg and everything else.

Make the bad memories go away. Fill the hollowness inside me with sex.

Even when steaming water lapped belly deep around them, he allowed his cock to remain inside her while he kneaded her bottom. One thumb roamed inside, into the crevice.

He wanted her that way.

Fine. Anything to make the sadness go away, anything to fill her up inside.

“Put me down,” she demanded. “If I turn, you can put it in me from the back.”

“Pardon? From the back? Put exactly
what
in from the back?”

She shook her head, a strand of hair tumbling from its pins, as she tried to better articulate her demand.

“Fuck my ass,” she said, settling for dock language, which conjured up an image of Robert, her first lover, the father of her miscarried child.

She could have wept in recollection then.

“Too soon for anal intercourse. I have yet to ready you,” he countered, setting limits, making conditions, restoring decorum to savagery by prettying it up with polite language.

She would have none of that. No limits, no conditions, no decorum, no politeness.

Twisting in his hold, she wrenched free of his encircling arms and fell, dropping feetfirst into the shallow water. Then, without even taking so much as a breath of steamy air, she heaved herself bodily onto the edge of the pool. There she crossed her arms over her chest to protect her bare breasts from the rocks, and rolled into a tight ball. Water sluicing down her back, seeping into the crack between her buttocks, she presented her bottom to him with a vulgar and unmistakable lift. “Do it!”

The fog made her anonymous, her position made her faceless, her bad memories made her fearless. “Put it in me now. Sodomize me.”

Her husband had different ideas. “I said no.”

“I say yes. I need it.”

“I know you do, and you will get it too, but not yet,” he grated from behind her.

“But I need, I need, I need…”

“I know what you need.”

His palm came down on her pool-wet backside.

“Yes,” she gritted out. “Yes. Oh, God, yes.” Just like before when he spanked her, the good sting displaced the bad memories. At least for a while.

As he slapped her bottom, she arched her throat and cried for the first time since her loss, scalding tears draining out of her in great unstoppable torrents. Cathartic. Purgative. How had he known?

She supposed there were many types of spankings, and the releasing of her dammed up emotions was the kind she required here.

And once again she asked herself how he had known.

When the tears finally lessened, he swiveled her about. Staring into what must have been her ugly bloodshot eyes, he proceeded to bathe her, holding her upright in a seated position as he would a baby. His large hands roamed all over her, no part of her left untended.

Finished washing her, he laid her down on her back on the hard floor, her toes curled over the pool’s rocky ledge, and then split her legs wide, her splayed knees bent.

He looked inside her. “Your cunt is swollen. The piercing has yet to heal. This should help soothe the hurt,” he said softly and reached for a porcelain tray. He poured oil on the tip of his finger from one of the many glass bottles and then inserted the glistening digit up inside her vaginal folds.