by Nan Ryan
“No, you won’t,” Blackie said, cocked his head a trifle to one side, and grinned. “You’re looking forward to spending the day with me.”
“Your conceit is colossal.”
As if she hadn’t spoken, Blackie told her in a low, soft voice, “Just as I’m looking forward to being with you.” He released her hands. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
Blackie kissed her cheek, turned, and was gone, whistling as he walked down the silent corridor.
Smiling, Lucy went into her darkened room and once inside, sighed dreamily. Then she spun dizzily about in circles, flinging her arms out and dancing gaily around, giddy, happy, on top of the world.
The room was cool and quiet. A stiff breeze off the ocean billowed the heavy curtains and drew the starry-eyed Lucy out to the small balcony. Yanking the pins from her curly, chestnut hair as she went, Lucy shook her head about and let the heavy locks spill down around her shoulders.
On the balcony she laughed into the sea scented wind. It blew her hair about her face and pressed her summer dress against her slender frame. The strong, moisture-laden breeze caressed her flushed cheeks and coolly stroked the heated hollow of her throat where Blackie had kissed her.
Lucy’s fingers lifted to touch the magical place where his lips had so thrilled her. In her entire life, no one had ever kissed her throat. It felt wonderful. Lucy’s eyes closed in vivid recollection. She tingled, just as she had during the actual kiss. Then she laughed in nervous anticipation, as she guiltily considered all the sensitive spots where she had never been kissed. She wondered. Before she left this oceanside paradise would Blackie leave no part of her unkissed?
The wicked thought swiftly flooded her body with intense heat and Lucy was thankful for the soothing balm of the strong cooling breezes blowing in off the ocean.
While welcome ocean breezes pleasantly cooled the Atlantic City seaside resort that hot August, there was no relief for those still in the city. The stifling heat in New York was intolerable. Manhattan was sweltering under a long siege of ninety-five-degree days.
Lilly Styvestant, the Park Avenue goddess, was miserable. She went about her plush penthouse apartment wearing nothing but a frown of displeasure.
A chilled glass of iced gin constantly in her hand, her heavy golden hair pinned atop her head, the long legged Lilly paced restlessly about in a pair of satin, high heeled bedroom slippers, as naked as the day she was born. Refusing to put on clothes, Lilly cursed the horrid heat, snapped at the servants, and complained about what a callous cad her lover was.
At sunset on yet another long, sticky day, a bored, unhappy Lilly stalked irritably about her spacious bedroom, muttering to herself, envisioning the deeply bronzed Blackie frolicking freely on the beach with a bevy of pretty female playmates.
The inconsiderate bastard!
Lilly downed the last of her gin, made a face at the empty glass, and dropped it angrily to the carpet. She walked determinedly to the living room and went directly to the heavy liquor cabinet. She poured straight gin into a tall, fresh, crystal glass, reached into the silver ice bucket, and scooped up a handful of ice, dropping it into the freshly poured drink.
She started to walk away, stopped, and turned back. She picked up the silver ice bucket by its curved handle and carried it into her bedroom. Lonely, miserable, hot, sorry for herself, Lilly kicked off her satin bed slippers and dropped down onto a cream-hued chaise lounge. The long satin couch rested directly before a pair of tall floor-to-ceiling windows, which afforded a breathtaking view of the park and the city.
Lilly set the bucket of ice on the floor by the chaise. She stretched out on the shimmering sofa before the sparkling plate glass windows and waited impatiently for the electric lights to start coming on across Manhattan. One by one the tall buildings and the street lamps far below blazed to life in the gathering August dusk.
The Park Avenue Goddess watched the spectacle from her sky-high bedroom as she thirstily sipped her gin. More than a trifle tipsy, and bored to tears, Lilly Styvestant dipped her hand into the silver bucket, picked up a small piece of ice, touched it to her chin, and trailed it wetly down the bare column of her slender throat.
She dabbed at the hollow of her throat with the ice and felt a faint stirring of familiar desire. Her breath caught in her chest when she allowed the melting ice to glide over the swell of her pale right breast. Lilly bit her bottom lip with growing excitement when she pressed the ice to her sleeping nipple. Then sighed deeply as she rubbed the frozen ice back and forth over the nipple until it budded into a rigid peak, so tight, so sensitive, so in need of a man’s skilled hands or heated lips.
Lilly laughed huskily and held the ice against the taut crest until it was stinging with sensation. She took a long slow, swallow of gin, purposely relaxed, reached for more ice, and began to play a prolonged, pleasurable game. While she gazed dazedly at the skyline of Manhattan, perfectly framed in the tall, uncurtained windows, Lilly stretched and arched and purred with feline satisfaction, trailing varying sized bits of ice over her bare, straining body.
Her slender arms and long silken legs soon shimmered wetly. Her flat belly glistened. Her full white breasts with their hard, wine-hued nipples were moist. The thick growth of golden curls between her pale thighs was beaded with diamond drops of water from a generous sprinkling with the melting ice.
Lilly smiled wickedly as she placed a sizable chunk of fresh ice at her left knee and began to slowly, seductively, slide it up the inside of her tingling thigh. She watched the progress with growing fascination and accelerating heartbeat.
She suddenly giggled naughtily, pretending that the entire city was observing her amorous acrobatics. Quickly warming to the naughty fantasy, she imagined that behind each one of those thousands of lighted windows were eager voyeurs. And who could blame them? She was, after all, quite beautiful. Her pale, bare body was an exquisite work of art, a priceless treasure that men longed to look at and touch.
So she would let them.
Let them imagine it was their unworthy hands touching her body, worshipping her, arousing her. She imagined it as well. She preened and panted and pretended that dozens of pairs of strong male hands were touching her, tempting her, toying with her.
It was a lovely, lascivious game and Lilly played it with a passion. Hers was an uninhibited and highly erotic performance. Framed there in the plate glass windows high above Central Park, the Park Avenue Goddess played her part with such expertise she soon had herself—and hopefully her vast audience—so hot and excited she could stand it no longer.
With an apologetic moan to her hard breathing voyeurs, she anxiously drew the melting ice up between her parted thighs until it reached its throbbing target. In seconds she was writhing in orgasmic ecstasy.
But the bliss didn’t last.
It never did.
No sooner did her breathing slow to normal than Lilly sighed wearily. She was unhappy. Miserable really. She wanted Blackie. She needed him. Nothing else would do her.
Lilly abruptly sat up on the water-dampened chaise, as an idea popped into her mind. She started to smile as she rose to her feet and rushed across the room to ring for Marie.
In neat black uniform with white cap, cuffs, collar, and apron, Lilly’s personal maid, Marie, momentarily appeared. Embarrassed, politely averting her eyes, the gray-haired servant stood before her tall, naked mistress.
“A towel! Get me a towel, Marie,” Lilly ordered. The little woman scurried into Lilly’s large bathroom and returned with a pair of fluffy, white towels. Without being told to do so, Marie began toweling dry her mistress’ curiously wet body.
Lilly grabbed the towel. “Never mind that. Go find William and tell him to contact Captain Weems. The captain is to be informed that he and the crew are to ready the Temptress for a midnight departure.”
“Midnight?” asked the surprised Marie. “You’re going out on the yacht tonight?”
“I most certainly am!” Lilly said, and laughed, gesturing t
oward her dressing room. “Start packing, Marie. I’ll need something suitable for the beach and evening gowns for hotel dances and…”
“Where exactly are you going, Miss Lilly?”
“To Atlantic City to surprise Blackie LaDuke!”
Chapter Twenty
END-OF-SUMMER DANCE
Monday, September 4th, 1899
Nine P.M.
The Blue Room
Don’t miss The Last Dance of the Season!
Lochlin MacDonald struggled for several long minutes before he was successful at placing the large, white poster up on the easel. The smile never left his face, but his forehead perspired from the tremendous effort, and he was so tired when the task was completed he could barely roll his wheelchair back to admire his handiwork.
The poster announcing the upcoming Labor Day Dance was but one of several that were going up around the Atlantic Grand. This particular one was positioned next to a grouping of wine-colored easy chairs in the lobby, directly across from the elevator. Any and all hotel guests exiting the elevator could not miss seeing the large, white billboard with its fancy gold lettering.
Lucy Hart didn’t miss it.
Lucy, rested, happy, and so eager to see Blackie she could hardly wait to get downstairs, stepped onto the elevator at ten minutes past nine on that sunny Saturday morning.
Davey, the young muscular operator with the perennial wide, teeth-showing smile, courteously greeted Lucy, then did a quick double take, and blurted out with unthinking honesty, “My gosh, Lucy. You look so pretty this morning, I almost didn’t recognize you.” Lucy laughed when he immediately turned red and, shaking his sandy head, stammered, “I…I…didn’t…mean that the way it sounded. What I meant was…”
“…that I look quite different then when I first arrived in Atlantic City a week ago,” Lucy finished for him.
“Well, yeah. That’s it,” Davey said and put the car in motion. “You look…ah…different. Is something different? Your clothes? Your hair?”
“Just my heart.”
“Huh?”
Lucy laughed, shook her head, bid the puzzled Davey a good, good morning, and stepped out into the marble floored, atriumed lobby. The first thing her sparkling, green eyes fell on was the huge, white poster with the gold script lettering announcing the End-of-Summer dance.
A sudden spasm of doubt gripped her. Would she, in her beautiful white tulle evening gown, be at the Last Dance with Blackie? Or, would he have tired of her long before then?
“Lucy, good morning!” Lochlin MacDonald’s cheerful voice shook her from her tortured reverie. “What do you think of my poster? Is it well placed here in front of the elevator? Did I forget anything I should have said on it?”
Lucy, glancing anxiously about for Blackie and not seeing him, walked directly toward the seated, smiling Lochlin. Greeting him warmly, she touched his shoulder lightly and then, thoughtfully studying the large placard, mused aloud, “Seems to me it says it all.”
“Good, good.” Lochlin was pleased. “It’s going to be a grand occasion. We’ve engaged not one, but two orchestras for the big dance. And, of course, there will be garlands of fresh cut flowers and plenty of good food and chilled champagne.”
Excitement flashing in his eyes, he eagerly related how everyone agreed that the Atlantic Grand’s End-of-Summer dance was unfailingly the best of the entire season. He reminisced about last year’s dance, laughingly admitting that he’d drunk so much champagne, he had merrily wheeled around attempting to kiss all the pretty girls.
“Sounds like it was a wonderful dance,” Lucy remarked.
“It was, it sure was,” said Lochlin, remembering. “But this one will be even better.”
Lucy smiled and said, “Lochlin MacDonald, I’ll bet you said that last year.”
“I did for a fact.”
“And,” she predicted, “you’ll say it again next year.” She laughed then.
Lochlin laughed too. “I’m sure I will,” he said and carefully kept to himself the inescapable knowledge that he wouldn’t be saying it again next year. He would never be saying it again. Not after this year.
Lochlin MacDonald knew that, this year for him, the Last Dance would really be the Last Dance. He would not live to see another summer. His only hope was that he would live to see the end of this one.
That he would be alive for this last, Last Dance.
His unchanged expression betraying nothing, he said again, “Yes, I’m sure I will.” Then; “Now, listen here, you’re coming to the dance, aren’t you, Lucy?”
Lucy hesitated, uncertain what to reply.
“Yes, she is,” came a deep, pleasing voice. Both Lucy and Lochlin looked up. Blackie joined them. He smiled down at the man in the chair, clamped a firm hand on his thin shoulder, slid a possessive arm around Lucy’s slender waist, and said to Lochlin, “She’s coming to the Last Dance with me.” Only then did his gaze shift and his brilliant black eyes meet hers as he asked, “Will you come to the dance with me, Lucy?”
“Yes. Yes, I will,” she managed, momentarily mesmerized by the firm line of muscle that went from his beautiful cleft chin up to his well shaped ear. She had such a compelling, inexplicable urge to reach up and touch that handsome, olive face, her fingertips tingled.
“Yes, she is,” Blackie told Lochlin. “And now that that’s settled, you ready to go to work?”
“Ready,” said Lochlin. “This was the last of the posters. They’re all up.”
Blackie again shifted his attention to Lucy. “What about you?” His smile was so disarming, she realized suddenly that a world without him in it was unthinkable. Unbearable. “You ready for the day and night with me?” he asked softly.
She couldn’t speak. Could only nod. Blackie never noticed. Lochlin MacDonald did. He saw what was happening. Before his eyes Lucy Hart was growing younger. Prettier. There was healthy color in her cheeks. Youthful vitality in her movements.
In just a week, she had come alive.
Blackie and Lucy wheeled Lochlin down to the Boardwalk, to his tall Toledo standing scales. They left him there with the promise they’d be back for him around two thirty p.m., at which time the three of them would retire upstairs to Lochlin’s apartment for a pleasant hour of rest and relaxation on his balcony.
Customers were already crowding around the seated Lochlin when Blackie took Lucy’s hand and gently pulled her away. They had gone but a few yards down the Boardwalk when Blackie said, “You were ten minutes late coming down this morning.”
“Was I?” She tilted her head to one side. “And what about you? You were nowhere in sight when I got off the elevator.”
He stopped short, drew her back. “I was hunting you.” A delicious chill of joy skipped up Lucy’s spine when he said, “I was about to come up there and haul you out of bed.” His lean fingers gripped hers warmly, and his black eyes danced with devilment when he leaned down and whispered suggestively, “Or else climb in with you.”
Pretending to be angry, Lucy freed her hand from his, shook her finger at him, and said, “I’m warning you, LaDuke.”
“About what?” He was all little boy innocence.
Under her breath, “I’ve told you before I will not tolerate vulgarity.”
“Who’s being vulgar?” He looked around for the guilty culprit.
“You are,” she said, but she was smiling at him. “Either you promise to behave yourself, or I’ll go right back to the hotel.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I will. So help me.”
Shaking his dark head, he arrogantly stated, “You couldn’t last a whole day without me.”
“I beg your pardon. I’ve lived twenty-nine years without you,” she informed him, “so I guess I can make…”
“Thirty,” he interrupted, correcting her. “Come Thursday, you’ll have lived thirty years without me. And you know what? That’s too damned long. Let’s go somewhere quiet and get to know each other better.” Lucy’s cheeks flushed with warmt
h. His black eyes twinkled and he added, “Relax. I don’t mean in the biblical sense. Unless, of course you’d like to…”
“Shhh!”
Lucy frowned, looked anxiously about. Sure enough, several pairs of eyes were on them. But instead of being embarrassed, Lucy experienced—as she always did—a heady rush of vanity at being seen with Blackie. She had told herself it was childish and silly that she was proud of being seen with a rogue and a rounder.
But every time she saw the look of undisguised envy in the eyes of women far more beautiful than she, she felt privileged to be the lucky woman with whom Blackie LaDuke chose to spend his time. There was little doubt in her mind that every eligible female in Atlantic City—and some who were not so eligible—would have given their eyeteeth to trade places with her.
The frown left Lucy’s face. Knowing they were being observed, she slipped a possessive hand up around Blackie’s hard biceps, smiled up at him, and said, “What are we waiting for? Aren’t we going out to the Turkish Pavilion this morning?”
Blackie’s heavy eyebrows shot up quizzically. “Did I miss something here?” He looked about as if hunting for an answer. “What happened all of a sudden to sweeten your mood?”
Lucy laughed girlishly. “Forgive me if I seemed a bit of a sour puss.” She squeezed his arm. “I guess I got up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“There you go, talking about beds again.” Blackie grinned wickedly. “Are you trying to shock me, Lucy Hart?”
“If only I could.”
Blackie threw back his dark head, laughed, and impulsively hugged Lucy close. Then, holding hands once more, they headed happily down the Boardwalk with Blackie promising today was going to be ‘a perfect day’.
They breakfasted on the Boardwalk and afterward rented a pair of bicycles. They road all the way down to the south end of Absecon Island. Once there, Blackie pointed out the huge, grotesque building in the shape of a giant elephant. Lucy refused to believe him when he told her the elephant’s name was Lucy.
But when they ventured inside the huge monstrosity and encountered other visitors, Blackie said loudly, “Can anyone tell us what this place is called? Does the elephant have a name?”