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Authors: Robin Schone

Tags: #Fiction, #Erotica, #Romance

Cry for Passion (10 page)

BOOK: Cry for Passion
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Jack knew fear; it was not fear that stared at him.

He took the leather phallus. “Wait for me in the main area.”

She stood firm. “I will pay for my own purchase, Mr. Lodoun.”

“You will give the clerk an apoplectic fit, Mrs. Clarring.”

Bright laughter momentarily pushed away the darkness inside her eyes.

Jack saw Rose Clarring as she must have looked twelve years earlier, married to a man who made her laugh with happiness.

Immediately the laughter inside her eyes died.

Head tilting downward—black and white obscuring his vision—she reached into her reticule and produced three florins.

A curious sensation curled in the pit of his stomach.

Jack had never before accepted money from a woman. But Jack had never before met a woman like Rose Clarring.

He palmed the three florins. The silver was warm from her fingers.

“You will let me know if it costs more,” she said firmly, tilting back her head to meet his gaze.

“Yes,” Jack lied.

Every man in the back room watched her retreat: the waving of the white feathers that crowned her bonnet; the proud carriage of her back, swathed in black wool; the gentle sway of her hips, natural curves enhanced by a bustle.

The curling sensation inside Jack’s stomach coiled into a knot.

For two years he had privately met with a woman behind closed doors, yet this woman publicly discoursed with him in a pornographic shop.

“Will that be all, sir?” the clerk asked, bolder now that he did not have to face a woman.

“A bottle of Rose’s Lubrifiant,” Jack added, following the disappearance of black-bustled buttocks and the closing of the back door.

“I say, old man,” scraped Jack’s nerves. “Wasn’t that the cow in the paper? The one from that sex club you exposed?”

Jack glanced at the junior MP, an inch taller than he. The man’s face was flushed with lust.

He, too, gazed at the door through which Rose Clarring had exited.

“I have no idea to whom you are referring,” Jack said coldly.

Puzzlement clouded the MP’s eyes; he glanced at Jack instead of after Rose Clarring. “That woman—”

“There was no woman.” Jack held the younger man’s gaze. “This room, sir, does not exist. If it should do so, then certain facts would of necessity come to light.”

The MP’s flush darkened.

He remembered the wife who bore his children. He remembered the young girls who satisfied his lust.

He heeded Jack’s warning.

For the moment, Jack grimly thought.

Jack took the brown-paper-wrapped package from the clerk.

His pupils shrank, stepping through the door Rose Clarring had exited.

A sharp jangle serrated his skin.

Someone entered the bookstore. Or someone exited.

Slowly the blinding light dimmed to round gas globes.

Respectable men in bowler hats and women in conservative black cloaks with feathered bonnets complacently wandered short aisles in between tables piled high with books.

There was no evidence of the dark sexuality that lay behind closed doors.

Rose Clarring stood amid the respectable facade, back facing him, head tilted downward. Baby-fine wisps of gold hair clung to the nape of her neck.

Jack stepped closer to see what it was that had captured her interest.

She flipped back and forth a half page inside Beauty and the Beast, a Home Pantomime Toy Book, giving Beauty her beast, then taking away the beast. Giving. Taking. Giving. Taking . . .

Her fingers abruptly stilled. Turning—extending her naked hand—she smiled up at Jack. There was no smile inside her eyes. “Thank you.”

Jack did not relinquish the package. “I’ll hail you a cab.”

The darkness inside her eyes flickered. Dropping her hand, she merely said, again, “Thank you.”

Jack’s hand curled around her elbow, fingers shaping soft wool and even softer skin.

A bell jangled, door opening before them . . . door closing behind them.

The night squeezed Jack’s chest.

The third-quarter bell battered the streetlight: It was eight forty-five.

Night had fallen.

He glanced down at the woman beside him.

Waving white feathers and a black brim blocked his vision.

Jack needed to see Rose Clarring, but she did not glance up at him.

Tension hummed through her fragile bones that would snap so easily.

By him. By Parliament.

Reluctantly he focused on the street before them and the zigzagging line of bouncing carriage lanterns.

Jack raised his hand. A hansom passed him by.

The third hansom stopped, metal-secured reins jingling.

Rose Clarring stepped up onto the iron stair and turned—wooden platfrom creaking, harnessed horse snorting—to take her purchase.

Lamplight glanced off a pearl earring and revealed a sliver of cornflower blue.

Jack thought of Lord Falkland, one of the men whose statues he had passed in St. Stephen’s Hall. He had died at the age of thirty-three, a bitter, defeated man, for all that he was honored by Parliament.

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision, the former statesman was often quoted as saying.

It was now time for Jack to make a decision.

He must let Rose Clarring go. Or he must follow where their need took them.

Dildo burning his hand through the brown paper wrapper, Jack stepped up onto the cab.

Chapter 10

The cab rocked. The iron bridge vibrated.

Rose Clarring did not speak. Neither did Jack.

She shifted, trying to avoid the press and grind of his hip. With every turn of the wheels, their bodies were thrown together while the dildo wrapped inside the plain brown paper frigged his fingers.

Vibrating iron became unyielding pavement.

“Do I owe you money?” sliced through the palpitating tension.

“No.”

The truth.

“Won’t you be late, when the House sits?”

“Perhaps,” Jack evaded.

“I interviewed butlers today.”

Jack turned his head and perused Rose Clarring in the darkness.

Shadowy light briefly illuminated the white feathers crowning her hat, turned a blur of flesh into a cheek and nose.

“Did you hire one?” he asked.

Would it matter? he wondered.

Would the presence of servants alter the events of this night?

His own servants had not interfered with his actions. But he had only ever brought one woman to his home.

“I did not meet their standards,” broke through Jack’s thoughts.

There was no accusation in her voice.

Jack wondered if on the morrow she would read The Pall Mall Gazette.

It was a paper with which she was familiar: John Nickols wrote for the daily journal.

“My sister-in-law visited today,” vibrated over the whine of carriage wheels.

Rose Clarring had five brothers and five sisters-in-law, each one of them younger than she.

Fleetingly he wondered which sister-in-law had visited.

Jack searched the darkness, but he could not see in her face the emotion that resonated inside the cab.

“When?” he probed.

“Just after four in the evening.”

When Jack had sat in the House of Commons, mind already decided on a reading he had yet to hear.

He braced his foot against the shuddering cab door. “Is that why you waited for me tonight?”

But Rose Clarring did not answer his question. Instead she said, “I felt the child inside her kick.”

Jack’s cock cried sudden tears.

There was no emotion inside his voice. “Does she know your husband is sterile?”

“No.”

“So she believes you’re responsible for your childless marriage.”

“Yes.”

For twelve years Rose Clarring had kept her husband’s secret.

Out of love. Not out of political aspirations.

The cab tilted, right wheel dropping into a pothole.

Rose Clarring grabbed a pull; it did not stop her hip from crowding his.

Instantly the cab righted, taking away the hard press of her hip. The imprint of her softness continued to burn and throb.

She stared out the window, pale feathers waving back and forth. He stared at her, body rocking with the motion of the cab.

Light and darkness played across her skin, each passing streetlamp revealing another facet of Rose Clarring: a chin . . . an eyebrow . . . a pearl-studded ear . . . the taut line of a throat . . .

The dark silhouette of her bonnet abruptly turned; the shadowed whites of her eyes pierced the darkness.

“Have you ever before petitioned Parliament for a divorce?” grated his skin.

Suddenly unable to look at the woman who touched him with every turn of the wheels, Jack faced the large rectangular window.

“No,” he said shortly.

“Did you ask Mr. Whitcox for a divorce?”

The cab sharply tilted to the left, turning onto a side street.

Jack’s thigh muscles corded, heel and sole pressing and grinding into the door. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” penetrated his chest.

“For what?” he asked curtly.

“I’m sorry that when you ejaculated, I wasn’t Mrs. Whitcox.”

The emotion squeezing Jack’s cock fisted inside his chest.

But he couldn’t speak of his grief for another woman, not when desire for this woman knotted his groin. So he said nothing.

“My sister-in-law delivered a message from Jonathon.”

Jack’s head snapped toward Rose Clarring. She gazed outside the small side window instead of at Jack.

“What was it?” Jack asked, and did not know if he asked as a barrister, a member of Parliament or a man.

“He forgives me.”

The emotion gripping his chest and his cock clenched his stomach.

“When you orgasm tonight, Mrs. Clarring,” Jack’s voice was harsh even to his own ears, “who will be with you?”

“You, Mr. Lodoun.”

The cab slowed . . . halted . . . wheels rolling backward . . . forward . . . stopping altogether.

“You will be with me,” she reiterated.

Rose Clarring did not wait for him to open the door.

“How much?” drifted down into the darkness.

The cabby answered, a Cockney rumble.

Rose Clarring reached over the roof to pay.

Flickering lamplight cupped her breasts.

The memory of a rock-hard nipple stabbed Jack’s tongue.

He exited the cab at the same time Rose Clarring stepped down from the wooden platform, his weight stabilizing the loss of hers.

She did not acknowledge his presence, neither when she unlocked the night-darkened door, nor when he stepped over the threshold behind her.

Purposefully Jack closed the door and locked it, sliding the bolt hard and deep, like a cock fitting a woman’s vagina.

Pulsating darkness cocooned them; it echoed the force of the penetration.

A small clink—a metal key hitting a metal coin—danced across his skin.

Jack searched the small table inside the foyer, purchase secure underneath his right arm. Straightening, he struck the tip of a safety match against a strip of powdered glass and red phosphorus.

White flame sparked.

Silently he lit the crystal sconce above the small table reserved for mail, but which was now empty of both mail and mail tray.

He wondered if she had yet changed her address at the post office.

Would she on the morrow return to her husband who claimed to forgive her, and thank God for His interference?

Methodically Jack removed his hat and coat, and hooked them onto the narrow brass coat tree beside the door. Rose Clarring’s face, when he turned, was pale but composed. She solemnly handed him her bonnet . . . her cloak. Jack hung them beside his own hat . . . his own coat . . . hers black, his gray.

The lack of color in their lives corded muscles that were already stretched too tightly.

“Is there coal in the fireplace?” he asked shortly.

It was spring, but spring nights were even cooler than spring days. He didn’t want her to suffer any more discomfort than what he could prevent.

“Yes.” She stepped around him, topknot glinting gold in the light pouring through the gaslit sconce. Fine, fly away hair shadowed the nape of her neck. Inside the bronze-framed mirror above the small foyer table, lashes shadowed her cheeks. She pulled out the drawer to the cherry table—wood scraping wood—and stuffed inside it a black-beaded reticule. “I cleaned out the ashes this morning and filled it with fresh coal.”

The duties of a butler. But now no respectable butler would work for her.

Jack remembered the spurt of his ejaculate. Immediately the memory was replaced by Rose Clarring’s tears.

He strode down the hallway into darkness, ground glass and red phosphorus burning his fingers. Rose Clarring followed, heel taps piercing his vertebrae.

Inside the small drawing room Jack lit a heavy bronze lamp. The hiss of gas filled the pulsing silence.

Rose Clarring’s gaze followed his motions . . . the taut splay of his thighs . . . the tensing of his shoulders . . . the reach of his fingers.

The damp coals in the fireplace slowly caught fire. Jack opened the flue—a sharp clang shot up the chimney—and hunkered in front of the small iron fireplace until a sheet of white flame coated the black coals and the fire crackled with heat.

Standing, dusting off his fingers, he placed the tin of safety matches on the mantel.

Jack turned.

He had known what was coming; he just had not known how it would come.

The sight of Rose Clarring unfastening her bodice—dark lashes shielding her eyes—ripped the breath out of his lungs.

“I know I’m not Mrs. Whitcox.” A sliver of white chemise shone above working fingers; she released a second satin-covered button . . . a third . . . a fourth. . . . “I know how difficult this must be for you.” Gaping black wool revealed the ever widening V of a pink satin corset until there were no more buttons to free. She peeled off the bodice, pale arms shedding black wool. “But I need you tonight.” Dark lashes lifting—bodice falling to the floor—she captured Jack’s gaze. Knowledge of how fully she was about to expose herself dilated her pupils until black devoured the light of blue. “I need you to see me, and not Mrs. Whitcox.”

BOOK: Cry for Passion
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