It Stings So Sweet (21 page)

The whole world freezes. Then the plane literally falls from the sky.

I don’t know how
he does it; I don’t know how he gets control of it again. But the engine fires again, and we see him
hurtle off in a new and unexpected direction. We cheer for him. Grown men jump up and down, while the
women throw their hats. I clutch my hand against my heart as Leo changes aviation history.

And then he comes back to me.

CHAPTER

Thirteen

It isn’t always perfect.

We argue on set because
Leo is always fiddling with the machinery when we’re losing valuable light. Sometimes we argue about
foolish things like whether or not engineering plans are suitable artwork for the bedroom. But every
morning I wake up next to my husband loving him more than the day before and wondering how that
is even possible.

Every morning, the warmth of his smile lifts my spirits the whole day long.
At breakfast, I like the lazy lurid slide of his eyes over my body as I serve his eggs and pour his
coffee.
Some Sunday after
noons we spend the whole afternoon in bed with the paper. On Sunday evenings,
we have dinner with Pops—who has been surprisingly sober since the day he gave me away in marriage
at the chapel.

And though Leo refuses to speak my mother’s name, he saves the crossword puzzles
so I can take them on my visits.

The first time the scandal sheets call him Mr. Cartwright,
Leo
does
fuck me so hard that I
do
consider changing my stage name. But it feels so good I secretly
hope it will happen again.

He never lets me near the stag film. He never even tells me where
he keeps it. We watch it sometimes, together. Sometimes with Robert Aster. Somehow, it always disappears
before I can think to destroy it.

In this, and in everything, Leo keeps his promises to me.

We fuck, we make love, we play bedroom games the rules of which are known only to us. We’re
a couple of fools in love. And we’re happy. We’re madly,
deliriously
happy.

My husband, after
all, is a man who can change everything we think we know about the world.

let’s misbehave

P
ROLOGUE

Robert

M
y lover coaxes the last shudders of orgasm from me,
then rolls off my body into the waiting arms of her husband. Mewling with pleasure, she buries her face
in the dark hair of his naked chest while his fingers lovingly trail down the pretty line of her
spine. She kisses him with aching tenderness and he strokes her with lusty approval. Meanwhile, I pant
from our exertions, my pleasure ebbing, my arms empty.

It’s always like this afterwards.

I’m usually aroused by the sight of them together. The rough way he grabs her hips and shoves
her back to the mattress as if to reclaim her when I’m finished. It’s as reassuring as it is erotic
to watch. His steely arms locked tight around the curves of her voluptuous body. The sheen of perspiration
that glistens on the pale insides of her thighs when she spreads them for him in eager welcome.

These heated visuals often awaken me, stiffening me for an extended performance, but this evening
I’m strangely dispirited by the fact that she’s crawled to him and left me covered in cooling
sweat.

The jazz playing on the phonograph has begun to skip. I can just reach the cabinet from
my side of the bed, so I fix the needle while wondering what accounts for my lack of satisfaction.
Perhaps it’s that despite the many times and the many depraved ways in which I’ve enjoyed the famous
movie-star body of Clara Cartwright, we rarely touch.

By this, I don’t mean to say that I haven’t
explored every inch of her velvety skin. I don’t even mean to say that she hasn’t caressed me
or scraped her nails up my back, nor dragged her lips down my body to engulf my cock between her lips.
We’ve done all those things and she’s given me thrilling pleasure. What I
do
mean to say is that
when Clara touches me, I suspect that she’s really touching her husband.

I’m an extra arm,
leg, or other limb she caresses to heighten the experience.

For that matter, Leo and I touch
only incidentally when sharing her body. I’ve felt him moving inside her when we’ve trapped Clara
between us. Sometimes our legs brush or our hands tangle in her hair at the same instant. This is as
much contact as either of us would desire. The male form holds no allure for me, but the Great War
brought Leo and me together in ways that go beyond flesh. And sharing Clara has only deepened that bond.

There’s a camaraderie in what we do to her—how we taunt her, tease her, force whimpers from
her that are at once desperate and seductive. Given how we are made, sharing his wife is the only way
in which Leo and I can enjoy an intimate sexual act together.

She is the conduit between us
and yet, she remains slightly beyond my reach.

It has never bothered me before, but it does
tonight.

Maybe it’s the way they kiss. Full-mouthed, passionate kisses, laden with secret meanings
to which I am not privy. They are staring into each other’s eyes, breathing each other in, and
instead of sinking back down into the tangle of sheets to join them in their marital bed, I reach
for a deck of cigarettes thrown casually upon the nightstand.

Normally, I prefer the Gitane
brand, with its bite of dark tobacco, but tonight I content myself with Clara’s Lucky Strikes. When
Leo sees me light up, he taps Clara’s nose in admonishment. “You’ve tired him out already.”

She turns to face me, the flush on her neck drawing the eye down to the swell of her magnificent breasts.
They seem
especially
magnificent tonight, and I’m aroused by the way her nipples darken and peak
under my gaze. I want her . . . but then, every man does. She’s a Hollywood legend. It’s half the thrill
of bedding her. Unfortunately, my mysterious malaise triumphs over my ardor. “It’s only that I
rather feel as if I’m intruding.”

Clara bats her eyelashes at me. “But I enjoy when you intrude,
Mr. Aster.”

She and I play at formality with each other; it intensifies the arousal to pretend
we’re strangers, but the game has quite suddenly lost its charm. I suck in a deep lungful of smoke
and try not to scowl at the unfamiliar taste. An entire wall of their modest bedroom is dedicated
to framed photographs of Leo’s planes—those we flew together in the war and those he’s flown since.
I’m present in many of those photographs, but as Clara adds her feminine touches to this room, I assume
there will be less and less space for me.

Clara draws herself up. “Is something wrong?”

“No, of course not,” I say.

Unfortunately, Clara is rather an expert at reading emotions. “Liar.
Poor Robert. Have I left you feeling debauched and ill used?”

Leo barks with laughter, and
in spite of myself, I laugh, too. Pressing a relatively chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth, I say,
“I’m afraid I feel positively defiled.”

She strokes my cheek. “Come on then, out with it. What’s
the matter?”

“Is it your father again?” Leo asks.

The thought of my father makes my mood
even darker. “No. The ambassador is still harping on me to come home and either campaign for political
office or run the family hotel, so there’s nothing new in that regard.”

“Tell him to go straight
to hell,” Leo says, nuzzling his wife’s hair. “If you go back East, you’ll end up drinking yourself
into an early grave.”

“I’m sure my father would prefer that to the alternative of my living
a long and colorful life as a dissolute playboy.”

“If the trouble isn’t your father then it
must be a woman,” Clara announces with a note of triumph.

“It’s nothing,” I insist, unwilling
to put a damper on the occasion. It’s clear from the way Leo fondles his wife that his sexual interest
hasn’t cooled, and I shouldn’t like to spoil it for them. But Leo is patient. I’ve always been
prouder of the athleticism I bring to the bedroom than any careful seductive calculation, but given
Leo’s example, I’ve begun to reconsider. As it happens, Leo is older than either of us, and I like
to think it’s his age and experience that renders him capable of amazing feats of patience both in the
bedroom and out of it.

It gives me hope that in a few more years, I might be able to modestly
impress someone with something more than my physical talents. Maybe even myself.

Leo watches
the thin trail of smoke escape my lips. “You might as well tell us; Clara won’t be of any use to me
until you’ve satisfied her curiosity. What’s happened?”

I yank the bedsheet, covering myself
from waist down as heat prickles my face. I find the matter painfully embarrassing. “It’s only that
I saw Nora Richardson today.”

“That damned woman,” Leo grumbles. He’s a good friend; he’s never
met my former fiancée, but that doesn’t stop him from having the utmost antipathy for her on my
behalf.

Clara is more circumspect. She steals the cigarette from between my fingers and inhales.
“I thought the Richardsons moved away.”

“They only went on holiday.” I don’t take the cigarette
back from Clara; I’m rather certain that I need something quite a bit stronger for this conversation.
“Are you dry? I’m feeling a bit parched.”

“You’re a boozehound, as bad as Pops,” Clara accuses.
“We’ve got a stash. Will cognac do?”

“I’ll get it,” Leo says, heaving himself up, but Clara
lays her hand on his shoulder, as if to display her half-moon manicured fingernails, all lacquered
in black and white.

“Let me be a good little wife for a change, Ace. I’ll get you both a glass.
With ice.”

As she rises from the bed, both of us watch her go. There’s a reason she’s a movie
star; when she’s in a room, you can’t pull your eyes away—especially when she’s as gloriously flushed
and fleshy as she is now, swaying those ample hips of hers with every step.

Upon her departure,
I raise an eyebrow at Clara’s uncharacteristic burst of domesticity.

Leo grins. “She’ll make
any excuse to parade around naked.”

I’ve no doubt of that, but in this case, I suspect Clara
intended to leave us alone. Leo must suspect the same, because he eventually asks, “Where the devil
did you run into Nora Richardson?”

“On the street, if you can believe it,” I say, clenching
my teeth against the memory and violently shoving Clara’s lacy pillow under my arm. Given my former
fiancée’s gaiety, I may not have recognized her beneath that elegant hat today. The woman I intended
to marry might have passed by me on the street without my having recognized her at all, but she was
walking some horrible little dog on the end of a leash that got tangled round my leg. That’s when
I had the shock of looking up to see her swollen belly. “Nora is pregnant, you know.”

“Pregnant?”
Leo stares at me for a moment. Then he reaches for his drawers and pulls them on as if this revelation
has ruined all his plans for the evening. The expression on his face is disapproving. “I see.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or punch him in the mouth. “It’s not mine, if that’s what you’re
thinking.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m as certain as a man can be about that fact,” I reply, more
irritated by the moment.

“Her husband’s baby, then?”

“Yes.” I hate to admit it, but I
sense that every time I acknowledge reality it will help me put my past firmly behind me. “She tells
me that she’s very happy with him. That she’s happier than she’s ever been in her life. And if she
was lying, she’s a better actress than Clara.”

“No one is a better actress than Clara,” Leo
replies, a touch defensively.

As if summoned by her name, Clara returns with two crystal tumblers
full of ice and liquor. She hands me my drink, then sashays to Leo’s side so they can sip from
the same glass. He pulls her into his lap and though they’re a comfortable tangle of limbs, they both
turn to me, attentive.

In this moment, it strikes me that they’re both offering the kind of
intimacy I craved, so why am I so reluctant to share my woes? “It’s really of no consequence. Or at
least it
should
be of no consequence to me. I’m not even in love with Nora anymore . . .”

“Robert, I had no idea you were so sentimental,” Clara says, reaching to smooth my hair. “Whatever did
this woman do to you?”

“She broke our engagement,” I say, hoping to prevent Leo from offering
his less diplomatic assessment.

In that endeavor, I fail utterly.

“She skated around,”
Leo seethes. “She got knocked up by one of her father’s drivers and married the chap.”

Clara
is instantly and powerfully infuriated on my behalf, those expressive eyes of hers narrowing to dangerous
little slits. “She did that to you, Robert? Why, the next time I see her, I’ll blister her ears
good.”

“Just let me be there to see it,” Leo says, kissing the top of her head with an audible
smooch.

I cringe at the idea of my favorite brassy starlet accosting my pregnant ex-fiancée
on the street. “I’d really rather you didn’t cause a fuss, Clara. Not on my account.”

“I’ll
do it for my own reasons. She caused all that trouble the night I met Leo. The next morning all anyone
could talk about was the brawl and sex show on the desk—nobody was talking about my movie.”

“The brawl was my fault.” It’s easier to admit in the presence of friends who are willing to defend
my behavior, no matter how abominable. “I should’ve known better; the bastard took it out on her. I
think he struck her that night. In fact, I’m sure of it. It kills me to think I gave him an excuse—”

“There’s no excuse for that,” Leo insists.

“What a
beastly
man,” Clara adds, hugging closer
to her husband.

“Do you know she claims she wanted him to do it?” I blurt out, because I’m
still bedeviled by the remark.

When Leo grinds his teeth and Clara’s eyes bug out a little
bit, I’ve never been sorrier to have broached a subject in my life. Usually, one or the other of them
fills a silence with laughter or witty banter. This time, neither of them rescue me from myself. I
take a swallow of the cognac. It isn’t top-shelf, but it does the job. “We argued today. I think her
husband is a brute—I think that he knocks her around. But she says he never lays a hand on her without
her say-so. That it’s some kind of bedroom game between the two of them.”

Leo looks dubious.
He’s likely to dismiss anything Nora—Mrs. Richardson, I remind myself—has to say about anything. It’s
Clara who knits her brow in careful consideration, and perhaps a bit of sympathy for Nora’s point
of view. “And what sort of bedroom games did you two used to play?”

“None. She was a virgin—at
least, I thought she was—and as I intended to marry her . . .” Clara blinks in surprise, which rather
offends me. “All appearances to the contrary, Mrs. Vanderberg, I
am
a gentleman.”

Fortunately,
Clara never worries about offending me. “Well, there’s your problem. It doesn’t sound as if she
wanted a gentleman.”

“No, I don’t suppose she did.” I swirl the liquor around in my glass,
watching the ice melt. Clara hasn’t said anything that I haven’t said to myself before. I wonder if
I’ve had the wrong idea about women all along.

“Her loss is our gain, isn’t it?” she asks,
turning to glance at Leo.

Clara and Leo stare at each other, some manner of wordless discussion
transpiring between them, and when she turns back to me, she drags both their hands atop mine.
It’s a tender gesture and when I look into her eyes, then at Leo’s face, I see an opportunity present
that has not been there before.

A tentative invitation.

A subtle shift between them as
if to make room for me.

It is a humbling thing. A thing that a better, braver man would seize.
But I have no idea how to cross the space that separates us and find a way to fit into their lives.
I’m not like Clara or Leo, both of whom do whatever they like with complete disregard for public
opinion. They’re splendid immortals who break and bend rules to suit them at their whim.

But
as it happens, I am altogether too mortal.