Cry for Passion (6 page)

Fuck stabbed up between her thighs.

But words, like dreams, did not fill empty flesh.

“You, of all men,” Rose reasoned, holding on to the truth that burned like bile, “should know a woman need not divorce one man in order to take another to her bed.”

But Jack Lodoun was not interested in reason.

“I think, Mrs. Clarring,” he purposefully continued, “you want a man to shove his prick up your cunt and spew his ejaculate inside you until you swim in it.”

Thrumming blood and hissing gas filled her ears.

Coldly he waited for her reaction to words that no gentleman uttered in front of a lady. Words that continued to vibrate the air between them: Prick. Cunt.

. . . Spew his ejaculate . . . until you swim in it.

The ache inside Rose’s pelvis spread to her chest. “If I took a lover, I would insist he wear a machine.”

But again he did not acknowledge her response.

“I think you need a man to give you the children your husband can’t,” he deliberately charged, “so you can feel like a woman. And that, Mrs. Clarring, is why I think you want a divorce.”

“Then you would be wrong.” Rose hung on to her composure, all that was left after her day in court. “And I will thank you to have the courtesy to leave my house at once.”

“Not until you admit the truth.”

“I am not a whore, Mr. Lodoun, and you will be waiting here until purgatory freezes over before I say I am.”

“Don’t you want to feel your belly swell with a man’s seed, Mrs. Clarring?”

A tiny flutter feathered her lower abdomen.

“No,” Rose said, tears burning her eyes.

“Don’t you need to feel that spark of life quickening inside your womb,” he relentlessly parried, “so you can justify your desire for sexual satisfaction?”

“No,” she said more strongly.

“Don’t you get wet between your thighs, imagining a man filling you with his child?”

The wetness between Rose’s thighs did not arise from a desire for children.

“No.”

Her voice rang out over his.

“Are your nipples hard now, Mrs. Clarring, because you imagine a man tasting the milk you feed his suckling child?”

“No.”

Rose’s strident denial echoed over the hissing gas and crackling embers.

“Isn’t it true, Mrs. Clarring,” Jack Lodoun gently pressed; there was no gentleness inside his gaze, “that the only way you will ever have worth in a man’s eyes, is if you bear him a child?”

Chapter 5

“I don’t want Jonathon’s child,” silenced the hiss of gas and the pop of embers.

For one long second the cold, purple-blue eyes that judged Rose were wiped clean of expression.

Fleeting satisfaction surged inside her, admitting the truth she had in the past refused to acknowledge. “My breasts ache for a man, not a baby’s suckling mouth.”

Red and gold alternately appeared and disappeared inside Jack Lodoun’s hair, the only movement inside the barren drawing room.

“Is that what you want to hear?” Rose asked, throat taut, nipples hard, sex wet with the desire she had for too long denied. Deliberately, she repeated, “I don’t want Jonathon’s children. I don’t want any man’s child. And that, Mr. Lodoun, is why I wish for a divorce.”

She had loved Jonathon, but she had never shared his dreams.

“You said you wanted to give him children.” Jack Lodoun impersonally watched her every inhalation . . . her every exhalation . . . breasts hidden underneath the mantle of his coat while she exposed emotions she had never before revealed. “‘Little boys with whom he could play,’ ” he purposefully quoted. “‘Little girls he could pamper. ’ ”

Each barbed word dug into her skin.

“When we wed, I did want to give him children.” Jonathon’s gentle blue eyes superimposed the hard, purple-blue eyes of Jack Lodoun. “I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to be a mother to his sons and his daughters. But even more, Mr. Lodoun, I wanted him to love me . . . for me.”

The hurt Rose had hidden for twelve years tore through her.

“But he didn’t.”

The dark, purple-blue eyes were free of the emotion that serrated Rose.

“Before the mumps, Jonathon teased and courted and wooed me.” Rose spoke past the pain that squeezed her throat. “After the mumps, he did not once look into my eyes. But he stared at my abdomen that did not increase with his child.”

An ember exploded, freed from the shock of her confession.

“I am a woman,” Rose said, back stiff, chin high, breath ripping in and out of her lungs, “but I have a right to be wanted for myself. Because of who I am, and not because I have a womb.”

Jack Lodoun’s nostrils flared, as if scenting the veracity of her words.

Rose no longer cared if he thought she spoke the truth or not. She needed the liberation that came fully from disclosure.

“Yes, I want to be”—deliberately, she spoke with crude vulgarity—“fucked by a man. I want to feel a man’s sex buried inside my sex, thrusting deeper . . . and harder . . . and deeper until he is a part of me, and all that matters to him is the pleasure we share together.”

The man before her still showed no emotion, as if he were carved in stone. But stone did not glint with red-and-gold hair.

Stone did not smell of brandy and spice and rain-dampened wool.

“I’m not a whore, Mr. Lodoun, and neither you, nor a jury, nor every man in Parliament can make me feel otherwise. I deserve to be loved.” Rose took a deep breath, painfully sensitive nipples stabbing her cotton nightgown; she exhaled, inflated lungs slowly collapsing. Calmly, resolutely, she concluded, “And I will not live for one more minute with a man who sees me as nothing more than an incubator for his seed. No matter how much I may love him, or him me. If you think that a woman’s desire is shameful, then I will find another MP to represent me. But I don’t think you believe that, Mr. Lodoun. No matter how much you may wish to do so.”

His voice, when he spoke, was strangely removed. “Why would I wish to believe otherwise?”

Rose remembered the darkness that had shuttered his face, admitting the name of the woman he loved.

“Because,” she said, “as long as you believe that career and reputation are more important than passion, you need not feel responsible for the death of Mrs. Whitcox.”

The pain that blazed inside his eyes snatched away her breath.

Immediately the pain inside his gaze disappeared.

Labored breathing sounded over the hiss of gas and the pop of embers and the pounding of Rose’s heart.

Jack Lodoun’s pain. Jack Lodoun’s breathing.

Jack Lodoun fought to control both.

“Not all men desire children, Mrs. Clarring,” he bitingly offered.

Anger abruptly pumped through her breasts and her womb.

“Don’t they?” Rose challenged.

“Some men want nothing more than to share the pleasure of a woman’s body.”

But there was no pleasure in his eyes, discussing the wants of a man.

The heat of his coat was burning her up. “Are you one of those men?”

“Yes.” His pupils dilated until there was no color, just a yawning abyss of blackness. “I enjoy sex.”

But Rose could not believe him. Not when for twelve years she had each night slept alone. Because a man could not impregnate her.

Impulsively she turned—the oppressive silk-lined wool that smelled of cold spring night and hot sexual man slithered off her shoulders—and flung open the lid of the trunk that carried everything she had taken from Jonathon’s home. Feverishly she located the book of love sonnets with which her mother had gifted her upon completing finishing school, and the picture tucked inside it.

Turning—cotton gown swirling, swollen breasts bouncing—she thrust forward a French postcard. “Look at it, Mr. Lodoun.”

Long, thick lashes shielded his gaze; dark shadow carved out his cheeks.

Rose studied Jack Lodoun while he studied the postcard.

A lone clip-clop of hooves rang out in the darkest hour before midnight.

“What do you see?” she demanded harshly, tensely waiting for his condemnation, he a man who had accused her of wanting a divorce for no other reason than to commit the adultery of which he himself was guilty.

Slowly his lashes—reddish-gold tips glinting in the flickering lamplight—lifted. “I see a man stroking his cock.”

“Does not the sight disgust you?”

“Why should it?”

Why should it not?

Rose’s heartbeat quickened, too fast, too hard, too dangerous. “Do you touch yourself, Mr. Lodoun?”

“Yes.”

The admission was reluctant.

“But only when you do not have a woman in which to spend yourself,” she challenged.

Shadow tautly delineated sharp cheekbones. “Not always.”

“When?” Rose’s voice rang out over the hiss of gas and the popping crackle of burning coals. “When do you touch yourself? When you imagine a woman’s sex overflowing with your ejaculate?”

“No.”

Deliberately she reversed Jack Lodoun’s earlier accusations.

“You don’t get hard when you imagine a woman’s belly swelling with your seed?”

“No.”

“You don’t get stiff and erect with desire when you imagine”—coldly, purposefully, Rose emphasized—“fucking a woman who is big with your child?”

“No.”

“Are you hard now, imagining a woman suckling your son, warm milk dribbling down her swollen breasts?”

“No.”

But the dark imagery she conjured lingered inside the purple-blue eyes.

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Lodoun,” Rose tautly charged, “that the only way you feel you will ever have worth as a man, is if you impregnate a woman?”

“No.”

The harsh masculine denial was unequivocal.

Gaslight flared, light battling darkness.

“Touch yourself, Mr. Lodoun.”

Touch yourself echoed in the shrinking confines of the naked, unadorned drawing room.

“Show me,” Rose said, and wondered what would happen if he did not comply. Jack Lodoun had turned away from her outside the courthouse; she could not bear for him to turn away from her now, when she had alienated her family and her husband embraced his dreams rather than her. “Show me that a man can take pleasure in his flesh and not in his seed.”

"+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0.1 Document//EN" "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0.1/oebdoc101.dtd">

Chapter 6

The faint chime of a Westminster bell rang out, announcing the half hour . . . or the three-quarter hour. The world outside the four walls of the drawing room had ceased to exist.

Slowly—the black of his pupils eating up the purple-blue of his irises—Jack Lodoun reached for the front placket of his trousers.

“Everything,” Rose said jerkily. “I want to see you naked.”

Like the man in the postcard who unashamedly loved himself.

Dark color edging his cheeks, he shrugged off his black wool jacket.

A silk, gray-striped waistcoat hugged a starched white shirt and rode a band of black wool trousers.

The shape underneath the tailored clothing was undeniably masculine.

Rose had never before watched a man undress; she catalogued Jack Lodoun’s each and every motion.

Long, tapered fingers freed the four pearl buttons fastening the gray-striped waistcoat. Wide shoulders bunched; at the same time, white-cotton-sleeved arms—there a shadow of flexing muscle—slid through silk. A dark gray silk tie—knotted like a noose—climbed a corded throat . . . blocked the flaring protrusion of a nostril . . . rifled red-and-gold glinting hair. Three gold studs winked in the gaslight; tapered fingers twisted and turned until stiff white cotton gaped in an ever-widening V and exposed flesh-colored wool. Black silk suspenders snaked over blindingly white sleeves.

There was no hesitation in Jack Lodoun’s motions, no self-consciousness in his movements.

The white shirt escaped banding black trousers and inched up flesh-colored wool that molded jutting ribs . . . two button-hard nipples. . . .

White cotton fluttered to the floor.

Between one blink and another, the flesh-colored vest was jerked upward.

Red-gold hair winked in the flickering light: on his chest . . . underneath his arms. . . .

The vest cleared his head and fluttered to the floor.

Rose’s breath hitched inside her throat.

Light and shadow danced on sharp collarbones, tautly defined muscular shoulders. Beaded brown nipples pierced the glinting bed of red-and-gold hair that arrowed down a tautly ridged stomach.

Jack Lodoun, Rose realized with a sharp pang, was a beautiful man.

A cinder exploded.

Rose abruptly became aware of the utter stillness inside the drawing room.

Her gaze shot upward.

His gaze waited for hers.

“Do you mind if I sit down to take off my shoes and socks?”

Jack Lodoun’s voice was impersonal. Heat glowed inside his purple-blue eyes.

“No.” Rose swallowed. “Please.”

A sharp squeak of springs grated her skin, the blue damask settee protesting his weight.

Eyelashes shielding his gaze, he leaned over.

Thick curls shaped the nape of his neck, darker than the fine hair that covered his body. The muscles in his arms and shoulders alternately flexed and stretched, a living composition of light and darkness.

Velvet-covered wood impacted the backs of Rose’s calves: She collapsed on the facing armchair.

Long, tapered fingers reached up underneath black wool trousers, exposed taut black silk. Unhurriedly, they peeled down socks and clinging braces.

A burning ache spread through Rose’s chest, that she enjoyed this intimacy with a stranger she had known for less than twenty-four hours instead of her husband of over twelve years.

Squeaking springs overrode the pain of regret.

Jack Lodoun stood. Long, tapered fingers reached for the front of his trousers . . . liberated one button . . . two buttons . . . three buttons—pink shone in the widening gap of black wool—four buttons . . . five buttons . . .

Rose’s breath rasped her throat.

In one smooth jerk, the black trousers and pink woolen smallclothes slid down over hips that were narrower than hers. Over thighs that were harder than hers. Over legs that were longer than hers.