It Stings So Sweet (10 page)

“Did he make you
come?” Leo asks.

We can’t see my face on the screen, of course, because the picture is so tightly
focused on my widespread legs. We’re just a tangle of aroused bodies and the memory of it is
flooding back. “I came when he did . . .”

Leo’s clever fingers force me to stroke myself in
just the right way. “Let’s see if you can do it again. I’m guessing a lotta guys jerked off watching
you in this film. Seems only fair you should enjoy it, too.”

The thought of men watching me
like this is too much. The fires of arousal lick up my insides until all my skin prickles with heat.
“And what about you, Ace? Did you jerk off watching this film?”

He chuckles. “Till my hand
blistered.”

The idea of him masturbating to these flickering images of me is such an overwhelming
rush that I clamp my thighs. It doesn’t stop him. Leo Vanderberg pushes on, pushes past the cries
of protest that die in my mouth. He’s still a veritable stranger; it can’t be possible that he
should know my body so well, but he’s such a quick study that I’m already on the edge.

“You
like that, do you, Clara? Knowing that I saw you naked before we met and that I’ve already fucked you
a hundred times in my mind.”

It makes me so excited that I can only whimper in helpless reply.

“Let me taste you,” he says, encouraging me to lift my sticky fingers to his mouth.

I do
it only because I’m utterly under his spell. He catches my fingers with his lips, then sucks them
between his teeth, groaning as he continues to stroke me, giving me no room for reprieve.

On the screen the bartender stiffens in orgasm, and Leo rubs me, faster and faster, biting down softly
on my fingertips. I’m coming. I’m coming on the screen. I’m coming with the bartender. With the flapper.
With Leo Vanderberg. I cry out, immersed in pleasure, my body arcing back against him, thighs
shaking, eyes tightly squeezed shut. The waves of ecstasy wash over me again and again until I collapse
against him. I would fall to the floor were it not for the tight hold he keeps on me. He cradles
me until the sweat cools and makes me shiver. Then he takes off his jacket and wraps it around my
shoulders, saying, “Easy, Clara. That was just a test run.”

On the screen, the bartender wipes
me clean with a napkin, as if he were a gentleman, then kisses me with a great deal of affection.
For some reason, I hadn’t expected to see that in a dirty stag film. This film has always been something
shameful in my past, something I feared. Somehow, I didn’t expect the affectionate kissing and
stroking and holding of hands afterwards. There’s an adorable mischief to it all as the bartender,
the girl, and I peek our heads up over the bar with naughty twinkles in our eyes.

At this cheeky
end to the film, I find myself smothering a giggle.

Leo laughs, too. “That’s what charmed me.
You enjoyed every minute of that, Clara. And when it was over you wanted to do it again. You brought
a joy to it that made it almost wholesome.”

“I feel anything but
wholesome
,” I say with a come-hither
look.

My climax hasn’t satisfied me and I want him, badly. When he lifts me out of his lap,
I expect him to unbuckle his belt and bend me over. Instead, he deposits me back into the chair and
goes to turn off the projector. I see him in silhouette, standing there next to the expensive machine.

“Aren’t you coming back? I have more buttons you can push,” I purr.

He folds his arms over
his chest. “Why don’t you come to me . . . on your knees?”

Surely, I’ve misheard. “You want
me to crawl to you?”

“I wanna learn you, Clara. I
do
wanna push your buttons. I want to push
them in ways they’ve never been pushed before. I wanna test your limits. So do it. Get down on your
knees and crawl.”

Annoyance flashes through me. “I don’t crawl for any man.”

“Don’t do
it for me, then. Do it for the jaded girl, the cynic who thinks she’s done it all twice and that life’s
got no more surprises left for her.”

This argument is strangely compelling, so I shrug out
of his jacket and drop down to my knees, inching my way towards him, the carpet rough on my bare hands.
I feel his hungry eyes on me, his breath heavier with each move I make. “You want to throw me down
and fuck me, don’t you, Ace?”

“More than words can say, but I’m slow to pull the trigger, Clara.
I know how to wait for my moment . . .”

“Your moment may have passed, because I’m feeling awfully
sore at you.”

“What else are you feeling?”

I keep crawling and once I settle into it,
I feel the seductive sway in my own hips. “I feel like a cat in heat.”

He beckons me closer
with one finger. I nuzzle my forehead against his knees, then slide my cheek up his leg until it’s
resting on his throbbing erection. His hand goes into my hair, taking a fistful of it, and then he bends
my neck back.

That’s when he makes the mistake of looking into my eyes. I know how to make
my big brown eyes smolder, how to pull a man into their dark depths and make him weak in the knees.
Leo’s not immune. His breath catches, and I take advantage of the moment, skimming my hands up his long,
lean thighs. Mesmerized by the flash of my red painted nails as I unfasten his belt, Leo says,
“Oh, you really are a dangerous woman . . .”

That makes me grin with lascivious intent, a grin
that only widens when I open his trousers and his steely erection springs free. I love the look
of him. He’s ramrod straight and thick, though not so much that I shouldn’t be able to take him all
the way. And that’s just what I do, sliding the red circle of my lips down his shaft in one smooth stroke
that makes him unsteady.

Pulling back with a profound sense of satisfaction, I say, “You might
want to take a seat . . .” Before he can argue, I trail my tongue over the swollen knob of his cock
and little drops of salty fluid coat my tongue. Given the way his hand flexes in my hair, I know
he wants to stop me, but when I bat my eyelashes at him as I work his member, the fight goes out of
him.

He sinks down into the chair like a man without free will.

Every man likes it a little
different, and I quickly learn that a swirl of my tongue over his shaft drives him wild. A lustful
growl rumbles up from his chest as his legs tense. Using my hand as a guide, I thrust him between
my lips, taking him hot and hard as he mutters a dark oath. He likes it. And I like it, too. Especially
the way he’s already throbbing against my tongue, ready to explode.

He fights for control,
saying, “That’s a pretty lipstick stain you’re leaving on the base of my cock.”

I don’t let
him rally. I rub my whole body against him, drawing his leg between my thighs, letting my swollen sex
rub against him for relief even as I suck him like I do when I want a man to lose himself in me.

Leo curses again and twitches in my mouth. He’s going to come. All I have to do is close my
eyes and let it happen. That’s just what I do.

His grip in my hair tightens and he holds me
still as his body tenses, then releases into my mouth. “Good god!” he cries, as if his orgasm takes
him by surprise. The sounds of pleasure he makes seems to set my skin on fire. He tastes clean, masculine,
salty.

I let him watch me swallow, then lick at the corners of my mouth like a cat who has
discovered a bowl of milk. “And here I thought you said you were slow to pull the trigger, Ace.”

He gulps at the air, as if he’s run a marathon. “Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

I’m too smug to let him get away with it. “Says who?”

He taps me on the nose. “You just taught
me an important lesson about underestimating my opponent. Now I know what kind of woman I’m up against.
Next time, I’ll know better than to let you have your way with me.”

“I hope next time comes
soon, because I need you inside me.”

“Oh, looking at you on your knees like that, I could go
again right now,” he says, fastening his pants with a rueful sigh. “But we’ve both had enough for
tonight.”

I’m so worked up that I grab at his belt. “I haven’t had enough!”

With a look
of delight, Leo jerks me up into his lap, bringing his face so close to mine that our noses nearly
touch. He speaks softly, with devastating confidence. “Listen, Clara, the day I fuck you—and trust
me, I
am
going to fuck you—it’s not going to feel like this. It’s going to feel like the first time.
You’re going to be scared. Embarrassed. Needy. And you’re not going to be in control.”

I’ve
got no snappy comeback. I can’t even find the words to reply. Everything inside me goes soft and I’m
afraid
to speak. I don’t know why I want that so badly—or how he could know something about me that
I don’t even know about myself. And it makes me so angry that I break free of his grasp. “Don’t
say it like it’s a promise.”

His voice lowers dangerously. “But it is.”

I thump his arm.
“What if it’s a promise you can’t keep? What if it’s something you can’t make come true? You can’t
say a thing like that to a girl and then let her down.” I barely know what I’m saying. It’s all half-drunken
gibberish to me. Maybe I had a little too much of that Dutch courage.

Still, he doesn’t dismiss
what I’ve said. “You and me, I think we’re a lot alike, Clara. We live by our own code, but we
do
have a code, don’t we? I’m not gonna let you down.” He disentangles from me, takes the reel off
the projector and puts it back into its canister. “Here you go. Here’s your film. See? I keep my
word.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want it.”

“Yes, you do. I love this film and I’ll be
sad to see it go, but it can hurt you. Destroy it before someone uses it against you.”

“I wouldn’t
be here tonight if you didn’t have that film,” I argue. “You may think otherwise, but you’re
wrong. I wouldn’t have come if you didn’t have something to hold over me. It was the excuse I needed
to see you. And it’s the excuse I’ll need to keep seeing you.”

His eyes narrow. “What a very
bad first impression I’ve made if you think I’d ever use this film to do you any real harm.”

I give a shake of my head. “I don’t think you would.”

“Then what the devil do you expect me
to do with it?”

“It’ll be enough to know that you have it. That you could do something dastardly
with it. That you could show it to someone else, anyone else you like, whenever you like.”

Leo tilts his head, eying me as if for the first time. “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises . .
 . Would you like me to show it to someone else, Clara?”

“No, but the fantasy arouses me so
much I don’t think I can stand.”

He tucks the reel under one arm and steadies me with the other.
“Well, then. By all means, let’s find you someplace comfortable to sit.”

CHAPTER

Four

Miraculously, he finds a diner car open at this hour.
It’s all shiny stainless steel, too bright and glib, but glitter has always cheered me. A few people
in the car recognize me and the waitress has to shoo them away so we can have our coffee an
d dessert.
St
ill, they’re staring at us, so I cross my legs under the table to affect a pose of elegance. “Tell
me, Mr. Vanderberg—”

“Back to Mr. Vanderberg again?” Leo asks, taking a healthy bite of blueberry
pie. “I’d rather hoped we were on a first-name basis now . . .”

Given that I can still taste
him on my lips, I concede the point. “Tell me, Leo. What is it that you really want?”

He swallows,
wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin, then leans close. “I thought I’d made that abundantly
clear, but in case I’ve been too subtle . . . I want to fuck you.”

“You could have done that
half an hour ago in the studio,” I say, trying to ignore the way his words reignite the fire in my
loins. “Which tells me there’s something else to it. You’re a good-looking man. You could have it from
a hundred girls. You could have that waitress taking orders at the counter. She practically swooned
when she saw you.”

He grins. “So did you.”

I don’t deny it. “Maybe it’s ego. Maybe a flying
ace like you needs a movie star on his arm to feel the rush he’s used to. You don’t want to settle
for an average girl—”

“I’ve never settled for anything in my life.”

“Or maybe you’ve got
a score to settle against Big Teddy Morgan, so you decided to take me from him.”

Triumph gleams
in his eyes. “So you admit that I’ve taken you from him.”

I shouldn’t admit it, so I sip my
coffee.

Leo tilts his head, staring. “Well? Are you going to break it off with him?”

“Why would I?” Even though I’d been thinking about moving on, it just isn’t sensible to break things
off with Teddy Morgan. This is nothing more than a torrid affair that will burn itself out in a day
or two. There’s no good reason not to cling to the security that comes with being the mistress of a
very rich man. No reason except that I just wouldn’t feel right about it. “Alright, I will. I may be
a hard-drinking gold digger with loose morals, but I do have some small sense of decency.”

“As do I,” Leo replies, stabbing another bite of pie. “Which is why you ought to know better than to
think this is some scheme to get back at your Daddy Warbucks. I’ve got nothing against Teddy Morgan,
unless you count the business about the war memorial.”

Now here’s a new wrinkle. “A war memorial?”

He looks abashed. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I don’t wanna spoil the mood.”

“A little
late for that. Tell me.”

Leo shrugs in the way people do when they don’t want you to know just
how important something really is to them. “I mean to build a war memorial for aviators in Elysian
Park.”

“And what’s Big Teddy got to do with it? Won’t he lend you the money?”

Leo bristles
like I’ve questioned his manhood. “I’ve got a nickel or two of my own to rub together, you know.”

“And you want to spend it on a memorial?”

“That’s right. But the city council won’t approve
it—and Teddy Morgan isn’t keen to persuade them in my favor.”

Without a fat cat to back you,
you can’t do anything in this town, so I say, “That’s the end of it then.”

“The devil it is,”
Leo says with a look of fierce determination. It relieves me to see that he’s as passionate about
his other ambitions as he is about seducing me. “I’ll get it done if it takes me the rest of my life
 . . . which admittedly, might not be that long, given what I do.”

“You say that so lightly.
Aren’t you scared? To die, I mean?”

“When Germans aren’t shooting at me, I feel a lot better
about my chances.”

I find that I can’t eat even a bite of my dessert. I just stare at it. “Terrible
thing . . . the war . . . you must have stories.”

Seeing that I haven’t touched my plate, Leo
snags a bite off it. “None of my stories are easy to tell.”

“I’d like to hear one anyway.”

“Ask me just before I’m about to go up into the air. I’ll brag about all the Germans I shot
down, ready to tell anyone who will listen that I’m the best goddamned pilot in the country. And I’ll
mean it. I’ll believe it. It’s the only way I’ll be able to take to the skies. But tonight? I’m prouder
of the fact I got your clothes off than I am of anything I did at war.”

I’ve lived my whole
life doing and saying outrageous things to distract anybody from ever asking me anything serious about
my life; I recognize evasion when I see it. Leo Vanderberg may have come home from the war without
any visible scars, but I’m willing to bet he’s got them on the inside. As if to confirm it, Leo keeps
talking. “Besides, my stories aren’t all that important. It’s the story of American aviation that’s
worth telling. The story of all the other pilots who weren’t lucky enough to come home. Who gave
their lives not just for the war, but for progress. Airplanes are going to change the whole world,
Clara. I’m a part of that.”

“I salute you on behalf of a grateful world,” I say, like a smart-mouthed
kid. “It’s awfully dangerous.”

He shrugs. “I’ve had a few crashes. Only planes, though. I’ve
been fixing cars, building cars, designing cars, and driving cars all my life. The faster the better.
Never crashed a car. But I’ve gone down in a plane more than once and had the broken bones to prove
it.”

“Good god. All I’ve gotta do for money is vamp around on a set. Your parents must be nervous
as cats.”

“They both died when I was still a kid.”

My hand goes to my cheek. “Oh . . .
oh, I’m so sorry . . .”

“It’s alright. It was a long time ago. My mother died of a fever before
I was old enough to remember her, and my father dropped dead plowing the field on our family farm.
It taught me not to worry about dying. You never know when your time’s up. You can go just like
that.” He snaps to emphasize his point. “Never had any family needing me to come back home, so if there’s
a man alive who ought to risk his life for his country, you’re looking at him.”

It’s a curious
thing to hear from an even more curious man. “So how does the orphaned son of a Dutch farmer become
a pilot?”

He shrugs. “Even as a kid, I was always taking things apart and putting them back
together again just to see how they worked. Loved machines. Wires. Electricity. Had my own set of tools
even before my father died. When he passed, I sold the family farm so I could become an engineer.
Self-taught. Took a correspondence course then went to work for a motor company before the war. When
I was called up for service, I knew how to fix the planes so I got to fly.”

He says it all
matter-of-factly, but there are layers of emotion in his story that his flat delivery can’t hide. I’m
not like him; I’ve never had a hankering to figure out how something worked—at least not until now.
I find that I want to know all the hidden gears that are turning in his head. All the things he isn’t
saying. But before I can think of the right question, he leads the conversation in another direction.
“What about you, Clara? Who waits for you to come back home at night?”

I stir more sugar into
my coffee, because it’s never sweet enough for me until it makes my teeth hurt. “Just my Pops. He
ran out when I was growing up. Hadn’t seen him until about three years ago when he heard I had money
and showed up on my doorstep. I had a speech all prepared; I was ready to blister his ears but good.
Yet, somehow, when I saw him again, we fell into each other’s arms and cried like a couple of fool
kids.”

Leo looks astonished.

“I bet you think I’m a sap, don’t you?” I ask.

“Actually,
I think you’re the cat’s meow . . .”

“You think I’m a pushover.”

He grins as if I’m just
too adorable for words.

I know that look and decide to warn him. “Don’t get attached, Ace.
Remember, I have a roving eye.”

“I’m not afraid of competition.” He reaches for a silver cigarette
box in his pocket, flips it open, and offers one to me. When I decline, he takes one for himself.

“You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

He lights up, then leans back and stretches his arm
along the top of the booth. “Clara, I want to see you again tomorrow night.”

“Why wait? There’s
still a few hours left before daylight. You can take me home to bed and finish what you started,
Ace.”

He looks as if he’s considering the idea. “I’d love to, but first I need to know how
to get your engine going.”

“Oh, you’ve already got me hitting on all six cylinders.”

Smiling, he taps the barest hint of ash off the end of his cigarette. “Let me take you to dinner somewhere
swanky. This is a courtship after all.”

“It’s a little late to pretend your intentions are
honorable.”

“What makes you so sure they aren’t? You’re a grown woman. I’m a grown man. We’ve
both got each other straight—there’s no pretense to it. You don’t get more honorable than that.”