Blooming: Veronica (24 page)

At first, she simply stood there, the letter in her hand, the ramifications not sinking in straightaway. At the realization that Talbot Bowdoin had wed her as a business acquisition, she gasped.

How could he treat her so shabbily? And how could her father have allowed it?

The three men in her life—her father, her first lover, and now her husband—had used her as a means to their own ends.

Papa, at least, had meant well. She had been in a misery of grief, near suicidal with sadness, and her father, who did love her, would have agreed to anything to see her restored to some semblance of happiness and respectability. She forgave his error in judgment because his heart had been in the right place.

She had no excuses or forgiveness for the other two men. Both had both blatantly connived to profit from their relationship with her. Robert McDougal had been poor and ambitious, which had led him to first use her and then blackmail her father over that usage.

What was Talbot Bowdoin’s reason for his use of her?

He might have been born poor, but he had wealth now. The amassing of money could not have factored into his opportunism.

And then she knew. His company. Summer Street Press. He had used her for the sake of his publishing business, to gain esteem, perhaps notoriety, through the release of a book of erotica authored by a scandalous woman caught in the performance of fellatio on a South Boston pier.

Since childhood, she had revered books. Love of ideas, curiosity about far-off lands, longing to make a connection through the physicality of sex, an attempt to make sense out of a disordered universe…had driven her to write. But to value books, mere printed text on a page, in importance before her, his wife, had been the act of an unfeeling machine, not a man.

Heartless automaton! How could he? she thought, trembling with rage.

Her back was to the door. Incensed, she never heard it open, never heard the fall of a limping footstep on the floor behind her. Not until the Judas said, “Oh there you are, my darling. I had wondered where you had gone off to. Is everything all right?”

“No, everything is not all right.” She spun and faced him, waved the incriminating letter before his face. “We are done, sir. Over. Finished. Through. I leave here this night. Hire an attorney and sunder our blighted marriage.”

Sick inside, she rushed to go past him. “You will find the finished manuscript on your desk where I just now placed it. It is yours. You have earned it by marrying me. Publish it or burn it—it makes no difference to me.”

He held her back, a loose restraint but still done against her will. “You read the letter.”

“I read the truth, sir. Now kindly unhand me.”

When he refused, she tried to shake off his hold, but he tightened his grip. He was so strong!

“I know how this looks, but the letter is not as it appears. Yes, I wanted to nurture your gift, but I fell in love with you at first sight at your book reading. No! Even before the book reading. I fell in love as I read your words on the page.”

“Love! Ha! You know nothing of love.” She tossed her head ruefully. “And neither do I, evidently. What a poor judge of character I am. How can I presume to write if I cannot fathom the complexities of people? How can I plumb the minds of my characters if my own mind leaves me perplexed? I freely gave myself to Robert McDougal, and look what happened there!”

“That lying gutter rat was undeserving of you and, knowing it to be so, you never gave yourself to him. You gave him your cunt, but your cunt is not the totality of you, my darling. You held back your mind, your thoughts, your intellect, the very essence of you, because you knew McDougal had fatal flaws to compete with any character found in Shakespeare’s plays.”

“Robert was not a character in a book. He was a man. And I loved him, sir.”

“You did not.”

“Return to your inventions in the basement. Stick with machinery, sir. You know nothing at all about love.”

Chapter Thirty

In order to make Veronica understand, to face the truth she still denied to herself, Talbot owned up to his own character flaws. “I saw you two together.”

“Saw us together? What does that mean?”

“I saw you in the library at the book reading, when he put it to you. Your so-called love for that dock rat left you bored, unmoved, and unfulfilled.”

“How dare you! That is a lie. And that you watched us makes you are a…a…”

“Makes me what I am…no, what I once was…a voyeur. No longer. While I still worship you with my gaze—”

“Oh, please!”

“Looking alone no longer satisfies me. Only being inside your body does that for me.” He shook her. “Tell me you came with your lover. That he gave you multiple climaxes. That you nearly swooned from physical rapture in his embrace. That you enjoyed the same meeting of the minds with him that you do with me.”

She maintained a grim silence.

He smiled. “You refuse to lie, showing you as an honest and forthright woman of integrity. I respect that in you. I also respect your fierce resolution to grab at sexual pleasure in all its myriad manifestations. Your mistake was in trying to grab it from the wrong man. Your lover was no more than a learning exercise. McDougal never touched you, both literally and figuratively. As to how I know that—your eyes gave your disinterest away. Your gaze strayed to your journal immediately following his leave-taking of you. His cock still dripped cum when you thought about writing everything down in your notebook. Had the scoundrel pleasured you, documenting that nonevent would have been the furthest thing from your mind.”

“I shall be more discerning with the next lover I take,” she said in a regal huff.

When he released her, she swept past him.

He called after her, “I kept my publishing company to myself rather than tell you my occupation because you were in a fragile state of mind.”

“Not any longer. I can handle anything life throws my way.”

“How very reassuring to hear,” he said and pounced. Before she reached the door, he had taken a leather disciplinary tether and leash from his desk—a recent wedding gift from the dissolute Alfred—and encircled her neck with the attached collar. “You are coming with me, wife.” He chuckled. “Then again, you always do.”

She grabbed at the binding around her throat. “Let me go.”

“Not until you see reason.” Looping the end of the tether around his corded wrist, he began dragging her away.

“Let me go, or I shall scream this house down. Your staff will come running.”

“Do you think I give a fig about what anyone thinks of me? Had I cared about controversy and gossip, I never would have married you.”

“Oh, but you are cruel. Why did I never see it till now?”

“Scream all you like. But first, allow me to give the servants something to look at when they come rushing down in their mop caps and nightgowns.”

He one-handed her loose at-home gown and stripped it from her, leaving her clad only in petticoats and drawers. A pull and a rip, and he made quick work of those too. With the exception of hose, garters, and shoes, she was naked. Beautifully naked.

He ran his free hand over her body.

She struggled. “Stop. No. This is rape.”

“A husband cannot rape his wife,” he said and squeezed a full breast. Then dropping his head to her bared bosom, he strenuously suckled the rapidly hardening nipple, actually grinding his teeth together on the tender flesh before he yanked firmly on the gold hoop.

She cried out another no and beat at him with her fists. “If you have any decency, you will stop this assault.”

But she was already panting in arousal. The beating fists were swiftly turning to clutching hands, then clawing hands, then demanding hands, and he could first see, then feel, her excited nipples stabbing into him, all signs of her body’s tacit acceptance, no,
insistence
, that he continue, and he had no intention of quitting.

He lifted his jaw, wiped at his bloodied nose and split lip, compliments of her swinging fists, but left the mark of his blood on her. But when a crimson droplet rolled from the end of her tit, he caught it before it fell. “Open your legs.”

“No!”

“I said o-p-e-n. Resist, and this will go harder on you.”

She splayed her thighs, and he forced his bloodied fingertip up inside her cunt.

Her slippery wet cunt welcomed him, despite her remarks to the contrary. He loved words, but sometimes words got in the way. Sometimes words served less of a bridge to another human being than a hindrance to touching another human being.

“There. You have my life inside you. Blood first, then cum. That must wait for later. The basement will afford us more privacy.” With a tug, he dragged her bloodied and naked along with him to his work area downstairs.

“The steam will keep you warm,” he told her, breaking a sweat like a racing stallion himself by the time he had brought her to the door of his invention area. “And there is always the hot pool. I shall tell the staff you have gone to the country for a visit with friends. No one will be any the wiser about my keeping you prisoner down here.”

“You are obsessed, sir.”

“Guilty as charged. Who else but someone obsessed would lust after a woman just from reading her words on a page?”

She gasped as he pushed her into his private work area and locked the door behind them, depositing the key inside his waistcoat. Reeling her toward him on the leather leash, he claimed her open lips and plunged his tongue inside, while his hand wedged between her thighs, opening her to his touch.

This time, the little wanton managed to bite his lip, drawing additional blood. The taste of copper circled his mouth as he continued the kiss, the hand formerly holding the leash now wrapped around her throat, his thumb stroking the studded dog collar she wore.

When her tits heaved, a sign her lungs were crying out for air, he ended the kiss.

“Right this way, madam,” he rasped and brought her along with him, pulling her struggling and fighting him to the rack he had just built. A much more comfortable apparatus than the one Alfred presently owned, with a cushioned top and padded fur cuffs for the placement of hands and feet, and adjustable chains for ease in positioning.

Steam swirled around them as he led her relentlessly there. His bride, though slender, was not without defenses. Before reaching their destination, the wily wench tripped him up with her foot. As he clutched his ever-present walking stick, the end of the leash fell from his grasp, and she was off and running, speeding toward the door.

Even with his leg hindering him, he reached her before she had chance to pound on the locked door.

“Naughty, naughty,” he said drily and swung her up into his arms. “You underestimated the strength of my obsession for you.”

“And you underestimate the fury of a woman scorned.”

Really, he had not. Had he misjudged the extent of her volatility, he would have tried a little harder to tell her of his occupation during their picnic that day. That he had not, proved his understanding of his wife’s rage.

While she kicked out with her shod feet and hammered at his chest with her rolled fists, he settled her atop the new rack. On her back.

“I have no wish to see your face,” she spat.

“But I have every wish to see yours,” he said grimly, cuffing and chaining her in place, spread and open, but leaving her hose, garters, and shoes in place. That accomplished, he placed his walking stick aside and tossed his clothing into a heap on the floor.

He approached her, naked, and following the lead of his erect cock.

Plop. Plop. Sizzle. Sizzle.

In the heat of the cellar, his drizzled precum left a trail, the droplets steaming as they fell to the floor. His arousal leaked like a sieve, but his passion was whole and impervious. As he was in full control, there would be nothing premature about his ejaculate. He planned to show his lady a hell of a fine time, a lengthy one too, well into a week of days and nights before returning her back upstairs to her room where he would key the door closed if he must. When using the term obsession, he had not done so lightly. His winsome bride occupied his every thought.

He undid her hair and combed his fingers through before setting the long strands over her shoulders so as not to obscure his view. Full tits. Narrow rib cage. Womanly hips. Slender arms and shapely legs drawn out to the limit and tightly immobilized on the rack.

“You drive me wild. You did right from the first,” he told her even though that only gave her more ammunition to fire against him. Another weakness, more vulnerabilities, to add to her vast weaponry. Though there was no need for heavy artillery. She could strike him dead with only a word.

“Liar!”

Thank God, that was not the one.

She turned her face away. “You lied to me.”

“Yes, I did, and I am a man who values truth above all else. That should tell you something.”

“You value truth so much you live under an assumed name.”

“Talbot Bowdoin is not an assumed name. I changed my name legally to reflect who I wanted to be.”

“What was wrong with the old one?”

He had manacled her body, but her curiosity roamed free. “The ‘John Smith’ attached to me came via an orphanage. Inside, I was never some anonymous ‘John Smith,’ so I decided whom to be, and I became that someone. I created my own destiny.”

“And took mine in the process.”

“You are mistaken. I returned your destiny to you. You are a writer. That is your destiny.”

“Why did you bother?”

“Because I wanted you desperately. Still do.”

“Calculating thief! You married me only for my second book.”

“In the beginning, yes. But all that changed. If you were never to write a third book, the neglect of your talent would sadden me, but I would still want you.”

“Ha! A fine way you have of showing it. Picnics in the fields, fragrant flower petals strewn in my bath water, candlelight evenings and gifts coming out my ears. And then complete avoidance where it counted.” Her blazing gaze torched him. “You wanted me so much, you have not come to my bed or brought me to yours.”