Cry for Passion (22 page)

Every direction in which Rose stared she saw her ignorance reflected inside a mirror.

Rose had never asked Jonathon the simple question of what floor he worked upon. Nor had Jonathon volunteered the information.

Now it was too late.

“I’m here to see Jonathon Clarring,” she said, gloved fingers fisting, unable to stop the cycle of pain she had instigated.

“Popular man today, is our Jonny,” the man said. “Fifth floor is what you want.”

Tears pricked Rose’s eyes: She had never known anyone to call her husband anything other than Jonathon.

The cab seamlessly halted, directed by an experienced man instead of a boy. Slamming metal drove home the urgency spiraling inside her.

Jonathon was slipping away. But she could not yet let him go.

Rose stepped onto plush, burgundy carpeting.

“Third door to the right, ma’am,” trailed after her.

She did not recognize Jonathon—an unassuming man in both dress and manners—in the opulent decor.

Crystal sconces flickered in the windowless corridor. White porcelain doorknobs gleamed.

Brass bore Jonathon’s name, at last a sign of familiarity.

A soft tat-tat-tat permeated the mahogany door.

Heart pounding—hands swimming inside the leather gloves—Rose turned the porcelain doorknob.

A woman busily typed on a large nickle-plated typewriter; she did not notice the opening door.

The tears burning Rose’s eyes swelled her chest.

She was young, the woman who typed Jonathon’s letters. And she was quite, quite pregnant.

Her skin glowed with youth and happiness.

Rose estimated her age to be twenty-two.

Had Rose’s womb accepted Jonathon’s seed on their honeymoon, Rose distantly thought, she would have been in the advanced stages of pregnancy at the age of twenty-two.

Without warning, the rhythmical tat-tat-tat died.

Hazel eyes—neither brown nor green—caught Rose’s gaze. The young woman smiled, a pretty smile. “Hello. May I help you?”

There was no recognition inside the shining face.

Her father’s office, Rose remembered, was papered with photographs of his wife and children.

There was nothing inside the waiting room to remind a client—or Jonathon—of his wife.

Rose gripped her reticule. “I’d like to see Mr. Clarring, please.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Clarring is not available right now.” No guile marred the young woman’s innocence. “Would you like to make an appointment?”

I would like to see my husband.

The desperate demand lodged inside her throat.

Rose could not let this pregnant young woman announce her. Impulsively she crossed the room and opened the door that could only lead to Jonathon’s office.

A slender, navy blue shoulder slipped through a matching door behind a large mahogany desk.

“Miss . . . Missus,” called behind her, pregnancy slowing down the secretary. “You can’t go in there. . . .”

Rose ignored the young woman, her entire being focused on the man who would not face her, not in his home, nor here in his office.

“Jonathon,” tore out of her chest.

His name slid through the crack.

Jonathon closed the door on Rose with a quiet, definitive click.

She could not let it end this way.

Rose crossed thick carpeting that sucked at her feet and wrenched open the door through which he had disappeared.

For one fleeting second she fully saw his back, light brown hair and navy frock coat black with shadow.

“Jonathon, please don’t walk away from me,” chased down the dimly lit corridor. “Talk to me. Please.”

A door opened—light cut through the shadows. The door closed, taking with it the light.

Please bounced off wood leeched of color; it was swallowed by flickering darkness.

“Ma’am.” The secretary had decided upon a safe form of address. Feet heavily navigated the quagmire of carpeting behind Rose. “Ma’am. You can’t go there.” The heat of two bodies suddenly crowded Rose’s spine, mother and child. “That way goes to the trading pit. Ma’am, please come back.”

Rose abruptly became aware of her right hand that reached out for a man who in every way possible had rejected her. Clenching her fingers into a fist, she dropped her arm and turned around.

The young woman was taller than Rose by several inches. Swollen breasts that would suckle a baby heaved up and down in distress.

Rose dragged her gaze upward.

The secretary’s face was so pale she could see tiny blue veins pulsing underneath her eyes. Clearly she did not understand what she had just witnessed.

“It’s all right,” Rose said numbly. “I merely wanted Mr. Clarring to”—what exactly would a client want from Jonathon?—“to reconsider my stock options. It’s all right, really. Please don’t get excited. I’m leaving.”

Uncertainty flared inside the young woman’s eyes. “Should I ring someone to help you?”

The secretary was concerned for her health.

Laughter worked up inside Rose’s throat. Distantly she realized it was hysteria. Tightly she clamped down on the laughter.

“I should be asking you that question,” Rose said gently, the eldest child. A “little mother,” her mother had always called her. “Shall you be all right? I didn’t mean to alarm you. Shall I ring for assistance?”

A healthy flush colored the woman’s too-pale cheeks. “Oh, no, ma’am. I’m fine, really.”

Rose allowed the pregnant secretary to escort her back to the waiting area.

Settling behind her desk—typewriter monopolizing the wall to her right—she reached for a black leather diary. “Shall I make an appointment?”

“No.” Hazel eyes shot upward; uncertainty resurfaced within them. “I’ll ring,” Rose assured the pregnant woman; she was curiously devoid of emotion. And then, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her sudden smile blinded Rose with its youthful sweetness. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Rose took one step at a time. Exiting the office. Closing the door. Walking down the corridor.

A lift waited, cab open.

Rose simultaneously saw the different facets of Jack Lodoun: Face dominated by darkness. Left profile streaked with a fan of red-gold hair. Right profiled nose wearing his past. Thick brown-red hair shone below dark gray felt and hugged the base of his skull.

“Can you operate this?” she asked evenly.

There was no purple inside Jack’s eyes. “Yes.”

“How did you gain control of it?”

“I bribed a lift man.”

Rose stepped inside.

Gray coat flapping, Jack expertly notched the metal gate. Gently the cab lurched . . . descended.

“Have you ever fucked inside a lift?” she asked incuriously.

It should not be possible for his eyes to grow any darker. “No.”

Rose reached out and pressed a bronze button. The cab halted in between floors.

“Fuck me, Jack.”

Chapter 23

“I don’t have any condoms.”

Jack’s voice mirrored Rose’s lack of desire.

“Perhaps, Jack, I was wrong when I insisted I would fuck no man without a machine.” Bronze metal and mirrored glass closed around her; the open shaft below the cab yawned beneath her feet. “Perhaps I’m not in need of protection.”

“Or perhaps, Rose”—his eyes underneath the gray hat were devoid of light—“you’d like a child to give to your husband.”

“No.” Pain nipped at her womb. “I told you I’d never go back to Jonathon.”

“But you did, Rose.” There was no accusation inside his voice; the stark knowledge of the choice she had made hollowed his cheeks. “You did.”

“So now you won’t fuck me?” she asked, attempting whimsy, falling short.

“Is that all you want from me?” Uncoiling cable snaked through bronze and glass: People going up, people going down, impervious of the man and woman who were stalled between floors. “A splendid fuck?”

The danger of their position—suspended over an elevator shaft—danced on her skin.

“Isn’t that what you want, Jack?” Her dangling reticule weighted her right arm; the cutting cord was curiously painless. “For me to fuck you? Like I fucked the dildo?”

“I don’t have any condoms,” he repeated.

She had not seen the silver condom holder when she had vacated the bedroom that smelled of Rose and Jack and the sex they had shared.

Would the maid find it?

Or had it disappeared, like her brief laughter thirty minutes earlier?

“I visited a gynecologist,” she reluctantly confided.

His nostrils flared. “You’re wearing a diaphragm?”

Had the woman he loved worn a diaphragm?

“A Dutch cap,” she corrected.

Obviously he knew what it was that guarded her womb. Like a Chinese trap, deterrents of contraception said of feminine protective devices.

Jack reached for his trousers, gaze holding hers. “Lift up your skirts.”

Rose lifted her cloak, skirt, and two petticoats over her knees . . . up to her waist. She leaned against the mirrored wall like the prostitutes she had seen portrayed in lurid newspapers. “Like this?”

But Jack did not answer.

One second he was across the cab—red, swollen sex jutting out from a black vent—the next instant hard fingers tunneled underneath the four layers of wool and lifted her off the floor.

The breath was momentarily knocked out of her lungs.

Rose looked down into his eyes, as she had looked down at him inside the courtroom.

But he had not then been her lover.

A renting wave of emotion slammed through her. “Jack.”

She was sandwiched between hard glass and equally hard man.

It hurt.

Her wire bustle that dug into her buttocks. His fingers that dug into her waist.

The pain Jonathon had caused her. The pain she had caused Jack.

The fingers pinching her right waist disappeared.

Rose dropped, body listing.

For one terrifying second she thought the lift had snapped a cable.

Instantly she released her skirts and grabbed Jack’s shoulders, reticule a swinging pendulum, fingers digging into three layers of wool. Simultaneously Jack found her, sharp knuckles jabbing into her tender vulva, the head of his penis as big as a fist.

Reason assured her the lift was not dropping. Reason did not stop the slide of crunching wire and bunching wool.

Inch by inch Rose slid down the cold, impersonal mirror that reflected their union.

She was not wet with desire, but she was slick from the lubricant the gynecologist had used when examining her.

Jack gorged her vagina—inch by inch—until he could go no deeper and her eyes were even with his nostrils that flared with each gusting breath.

The painful stretch of her body dilated his pupils.

“What do you want, Rose?” he rasped.

“I told you what I want,” Rose insisted. She was fully clothed: She had never felt so naked, with only their sexes touching. “I want you to fuck me.”

It was the only form of love they would ever be able to share.

Body shifting—Rose’s breath snagged inside her chest; she could not breathe for the twin pressure of glass and groin—Jack crowded his hands between her thighs and lifted up her buttocks.

Rose sucked in hot, moist air. “Jack.”

Her pain flared inside his eyes.

“That’s all you want from me?” he breathed into her mouth, chasing the words with his tongue. “A fuck?”

The triple penetration of his penis and his tongue and his breath pierced the very core of Rose.

“Yes,” she gasped, jerking back her head. Hard glass blocked her escape. “That’s all I want.”

Splendid fucks.

“What about what I want, Rose?” He held open her buttocks and her thighs and thrust so deeply the wire bustle fused her lower spine and he stabbed her heart. “Don’t you want to know what I want?”

“What difference—” He thrust again, hard, wire gouging, wool scratching the insides of her thighs. She gasped, throwing back her head. “Oh, my dear God!”

The ceiling was mirrored.

Rose stared up at a man who wore gray, and a woman who wore black.

Beaded jet winked in the dim light. Black gloves clutched gray-shrouded shoulders.

“I want you to want me”—the black-bonneted woman with the beaded reticule and gloved hands surged upward; at the same time Rose was split apart—“for more than a splendid fuck.”

Rose could feel a wetness pooling inside her vagina that had nothing to do with the lubrication from the gynecologist and everything to do with the man who was her lover.

“I want you to take my cock,” Jack said, voice gritting. A hard thrust cleaved Rose in half. “And love the jizzum I give you.”

The next rending thrust snapped down her head.

Jack’s face was rock hard with purpose.

He would not stop thrusting. The pain would not stop hurting. The pleasure would not stop building.

“I want you to want me more than you want your husband,” convulsed her womb.

Rose’s arms locked around Jack’s neck. His penis—fist-sized crown pulsing like a heartbeat—lodged inside her chest.

A grating cry ripped her throat. At the same time ejaculating sperm scalded her pelvis.

“God,” licked her temple. Five fingers dug into her left buttock; Jack ground his sex so deeply inside her she could not tell if it was her pubic hair that pricked her pubes or his. At the same time a hard hand wormed out from between her thighs and tunneled up the back of her bodice, fingers spanning her corseted spine. “Rose. Rose.”

Jonathon had never called out her name. Now he never would.

And now Jack was leaving her, each hot spurt shrinking the connection of their flesh.

“I’m sorry.” Throat tightening to fight back tears, Rose turned her face into prickly soft whiskers. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” scraped her cheek.

But it wasn’t.

“I wanted the pain to go away.” A stubble that had escaped his razor pricked her top lip. “Just for a moment.”

“I know.” The timbre of his voice vibrated her skin. “I know.”

Because of his love for another woman.

“Your cock is a part of me, Jack.”

Wet heat licked her jaw.

“And I value your pleasure.” Her vagina fluttered in the after-math of orgasm. “More than I can say.”

“Rose,” laved her cheekbone.