“You tell him, honey,” Jarrett turned the question to Hannah, who stared at her kindly benefactor in petrified silence. Mamie could see the arousal in the woman’s eyes, the first inkling from her of the raw sensuality that she lived with day to day.
“Jarrett have some hold on you?” she asked her.
“No, Miss Mamie.”
“But you just let him kiss you?”
“We have…uh… he’s been…” Her mind was too confused to work at all and the words were just one mixed-up blur.
All the while, the presence of the man, so close, still touching her with his leg pressed against hers intimately and his body heat pouring through her veins, made the passion in her swell involuntarily, though it was not entirely unwelcome.
“What about your husband?”
“I told you, I have no husband now.” She held up her hand showing the empty ring finger. A painful stab of remorse almost turned her lust-filled eyes to tears, but she held on determinedly. “I know you’re trying to protect me, Mamie,” she said, “but this man knows me as well as any man.”
Mamie turned her head slightly and fixed her with one fierce eye, studying her carefully. “You sayin’ you want him to bed you?”
“I’m saying… well,” her chest was heaving with emotion, while her loins felt that natural beating growing strong, “being that you’re so busy tonight, Miss Mamie, if you need me to—well…yes, I will.”
“I don’t need you to do nuthin, girl,” Mamie said. “It can’t be obligation.”
“He’s not coercing me, ma’am, if that’s what you want to know.” The fire in her blood was just too strong to deny. “But he can have me for the night long as he pays well.”
Mamie’s lip curled into a smile. “Oh, Jarrett will pay me well,” she looked directly at the man, while holding out her hand. “I know she’s not, but let’s just pretend that she’s a virgin.” Cain scowled and fished through his pockets for a wad of cash, laying several bills on the woman’s outstretched palm. Mamie didn’t budge, so he gave her several more.
“She’s not worth more than that.”
“Oh, she’s worth a lot more than you’re paying. Treat her well, you hear, or you won’t be welcome here again.” Her tone was unusually crisp.
Jarrett bowed with mocking sociability—they’d obviously played this game before.
Miss Mamie turned back to Hannah. “Go ahead, girl, but that’s it. You got that? I’ve got room for these boys elsewhere.” She nodded to the other men.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Hannah’s room was at the back of the house off the kitchen, a large room for the extra ‘whore’—should there be one. It was now her room. The airy space was furnished simply with a demure lacy bedspread on the oversized bed, a small dresser, washstand and basin, an oval rug and curtains that draped the one window, which could be easily closed to make the room as warm and cozy as the boudoir of any lady of the evening.
When the door was closed behind them, Hannah abruptly turned to face the man. Her body pulsed with expectation, but the terms of their relationship were different now in Miss Mamie’s house. “Have me if you will, Mr. Cain, but don’t ask me to say a word. Is that clear?”
Jarrett’s mouth formed a surly grin. “I’m not here for conversation, girl. But I must admit you are a quite a pleasing find.”
“I thought you knew I was here.”
“There’ve been rumors.”
“It would be good if those rumors were not circulated too broadly, Mr. Cain. That is, if you want me to stay here. Yes, we can have sex, but don’t demean me with a single word or I’ll run out of here and you won’t have me again.”
He nodded, eyebrows raised. She had regained her spunk. “Well, I appreciate the advice,” he returned with a whimsical and patronizing grin.
Hannah started to undress, taking each tiny button of her dress with care, in an act that the hovering Jarrett watched with great interest. He sat down on the bed and let the sight of the sensuous woman disrobing play upon his mind and needy body. His hand grazed the crotch of his pants and he could think only of planting his erection where it would be gripped tight by clenching muscles that would satisfy his prurient need.
While Hannah undressed, she gazed back at the man feeling contempt and excitement play against each other. Her heart resumed its erratic beating, and her loins followed with a familiar shudder of erotic desire. The deep throbbing in her belly extended to her moistening cleft. It had been days now, too long since she let her sexual passions free. She needed the man, she wanted the man. She knew him, he knew her, they understood each another and their mutual need without a lot of exploration. He knew her darkness and she could count on him to use it for his satisfaction.
Jarrett, in his careful scrutiny of the whore, witnessed the resignation in Hannah’s face, while noting the potent arousal from her hungering body. Having her was more easily accomplished than he ever figured. This was a stroke of good fortune.
“Come here, girl,” he finally said as she was down to her undergarments.
Hannah hesitated briefly, then moved between his open thighs and let him untie the ribbons on her chemise. There was more tenderness in that gesture than she’d known from him before. Her body quaked with the renewed contact and the promise of something altogether new. Once naked before him, she felt his hand between her legs, and soon a finger delicately probing her inner cavities with tenacious lust and skill.
Jarrett felt her body quiver in reply to the gentle teasing.
“You missed me, huh?”
“I said, no conversation.”
“Ah yes, you’re right,” he noted.
With the sexual tension blossoming between them, Jarrett pulled her down to him. His arms embraced her, swallowing her in their hugeness, while his mouth fixed itself on hers again. Her lips opened as they had before. And everywhere Jarrett caressed her body, she felt her animal passions explode. A hand covered her breast and squeezed it until a shiver of climax escaped.
“You do like it rough,” he murmured, to which she answered back in a thoughtless stupor: “I do.”
He slapped the tit he mauled, and she leaned back, raising her chest to him as if asking for more, which he eagerly gave her until that breast was bright red with his heavy handprints. He turned to the other beast, smacking it as he had the other. They both knew how she missed this. She missed the heavy hand in her crotch and on her ass, the rough teasing, the stinging blows to her flesh, and the feeling of heat that swamped her loins in response to such brutality.
Mad with need, her hands flew at him as wild as his, burrowing beyond his clothes so she could feel his firm muscles with her fingers, eagerly freeing his penis from its confinement. Running her mouth along his moist skin, she came to his swollen, throbbing cock. She practically swallowed his erection, opening wide to grant him access within her warm throat for a deeper fucking. Understanding the blatant message, he pounded her face with his angry groin until she choked and pulled away.
Though there was not a lick of booze in her, she was drunk and reeling inside the man’s groping body, taking anything she could get, and everything she wanted. The coming was all irrelevant, wildly exhilarating, but unessential, extraneous to the feeling of pure pleasure that rolled through her hungry body. There were no sudden crashing jolts of climax, but instead a feeling as if she’d reached some high plain of physical bliss that would go on in endless rhythms. Wave upon wave of pleasure surfaced from deep inside her, coming on her again and again as he spanked her beasts, then spanked her bottom. He spanked her hard between her legs—no implements this time, just his brutal hand connecting with the soft desiring womanhood over and over until she nearly passed out.
She was wet and hot and exhausted afterwards. Once deciding that she could take no more, Hannah collapsed on the bed and fell immediately to sleep. She had no idea then or later if Jarrett Cain had climaxed. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care.
In the morning, Hannah woke first
. The heavy form snoring beside her surprised her, until she turned over and remembered what had happened the night before. She sat up and looked down at the slumbering body, wondering if she should feel something for the man. After all, he had this time been more like a lover to her than a brute. Even when he punished her with the repeated sharp smacks, there was an eroticism about the act that felt nothing akin to the abusive beatings she’d suffered at his ranch. He was a different man with her now, and a handsome one too. But he was a soulless and conniving one as well. In that regard, he hadn’t changed. He might give her body pleasure, yes, but she was far beyond feeling affection for the man who had so thoroughly ruined her life.
“What you doing, girl?” Jarrett stirred in bed, trying to sit up, while at the same time trying to grab her. Averting his grasp, she’d hastily pulled off the bed and covered her nakedness with her robe.
“You don’t get me again, not today,” she said curtly. “I’m too tired and it’s time for you to go. I have to make breakfast for Mamie and the girls.”
The man took in her impassive expression; then his face slowly broke into his typically surly grin. “So, let me get this straight, you’re not whoring for Mamie, you are her maid, the cook, eh?” He raised his eyebrows in amusement. “And I’m the first whoring you’ve done?”
“Yes. That’s right. But what happened here means nothing, Jarrett. And it doesn’t make what you did to me right. Nothing ever will.” She started to brush the tangles from her hair. “I probably shouldn’t have given myself to you—” she stopped brushing and thought again, “or maybe that’s just the old me talking. Actually, the truth is that I don’t figure I have any right to the prettiness of love when the ugliness of my degradation runs so deep. But I accept that I like hard, mean sex. The kind you’re so good at. I need it, if you will. Long as you don’t abuse me again, I’ll be your whore from time to time. But I make no promises. While I’m in this house, I’m Mamie’s girl, and I’m obliged to do what I’m told.”
With eyebrows raised in admiration, he quipped lightly, “No one ever said you didn’t have spirit.” He sat up and swung his feet around, hoping for one last grope—or more, but she was out the door before he could pull her back.
After Jarrett left, Hannah resumed the work that she’d been hired to do. She felt a little less tense than before; after all, the sex had been satisfying. This was good, she thought.
“You sure were banging the bedsprings, deary,” Helen, a tarty blond-haired prostitute said, as she was passing through the kitchen. “I heard you took Jarrett Cain. Now that’s somethin’.”
“He’s just a man,” Hannah returned, as if she were an old pro at turning tricks.
“You sure you never whored before?”
“Oh, this was the first…” she was almost ready to confess the whole truth, but stopped. No! She wouldn’t say a word. No way would Daniel ever know. She turned away from the woman and filled the sink with hot water from the kettle. The movement was so like home, in her own kitchen. She recalled with a painful wince that Daniel would be arriving there soon, if he hadn’t returned already. He’d find her gone and be in a frenzy of worry.
She wanted to be there, to fold up inside his arms and cry, to feel him kiss her head, and caress her back as his protective loving poured out over her to make things right again. It was just a wish, however, a dream, a hope, a useless fancy that could never be realized. There was no way that he could forgive her the betrayal—not in his heart. She’d worked this over in her mind a hundred times since she left. Of course, he would say the right words because he was an honorable man and would not forsake her. She was his duty. But she could imagine how the months would pass and he’d become more distant, eventually bitter, as the acts that maligned their marriage sifted through his mind again and again, rankling his conscience. He’d see her differently, loose-willed and unsavory. How could he not?
It was better this way, better that they both find new lives without the other and without that terrible pain. She imagined that eventually her longing for him would go away and he’d be just a memory, like one of those picture postcards you bought at the carnival. Daniel once bought her several when a traveling carnival passed through their valley. They now lay forgotten in an old steamer trunk, tattered, just faded images of another world. In time, her memory of Daniel would be as vague as those discarded postcards.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jarrett came to Mamie’s again a few days after his first visit and Hannah took him in her room again. Perhaps he was the penance she must pay, her sentence for the adulterous crimes of lust. By that logic, however, the crime just kept getting worse. The interest on her debt compounded. Something inside her couldn’t turn him down, although this second time was much less intense than the first. She felt deflated and uninspired. He probably noticed, but he seemed satisfied enough. As before, she refused any conversation or intimacy other than what was strictly physical. This time when he left her ‘boudoir’ he appeared much less the man that he’d been before, more like the other silly, hungering, horny fellows that frequented Miss Mamie’s because they couldn’t get a good woman without paying for the pleasure in hard cash.
A day later, Hannah heard the whoops and hollers of some kid in the parlor. Amy’s childish giggle followed. She was the youngest of Mamie’s girls, just eighteen, but the saucy blonde had been doing this long enough to handle any young man, including the crazy kids, the first-timers, the hard-bangers and the mean-spirited brutes. She was born a whore if any woman was. After a turn in her bed, every man came out smiling.
Hannah chuckled to herself hearing the laughter in the other room, and then thought nothing of walking through the parlor bearing a load of clean linens that needed to go to the second floor. But when she turned for a quick glance at the happy couple groping on the settee, the eyes of the young man turned in her direction and the two locked in a fierce, unmoving gaze that didn’t break until the curious Amy blurted out:
“You know each other or something?”
Beau was the first to respond in shocked surprise. Wiggling from the couch, he righted his trousers, flushing with embarrassment, and moved to his feet. “She’s my sister.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Amy giggled again, covering her blushing face.
The siblings didn’t talk, but just stared at each other speechless, and Amy, understanding the scene for what it was, slipped silently from the room and closed the parlor door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Beau finally gathered his wits enough to ask.
Hannah had no idea what to say. As if the weight of all her recent past had just fallen from the sky and drenched her all at once, she wanted to crumple to the floor, but she couldn’t even do that.
“Hannah, answer me!” he said, taking a parental tone with a wayward child. “We all know I’m no stranger to whorehouses, but you have no business here. Where the hell is Daniel, dammit?”
“I had to leave him.”
“Leave him? Why?”
“Beau, I can’t discuss this with you.”
“You damn well better. Does Daniel know you’re here?”
“No! Of course, he doesn’t. And he’s not going to know.”
“Then you better start talking, girl. What’s going on?”
“You can’t tell him I’m here, Beau Noble!”
“Oh, yes I can.” He thought a moment about what all this meant. “He took Jolie to Springfield, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And you left him then?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” His eyes flashed like her father’s had flashed when the man was angry. Beau was often mocking, sarcastic, even rude, but he was rarely angry and his fierce emotion rattled her resolve.
She sighed and said, “Sit down, Beau,” surprised that she managed to sound like the calm and reasoned woman he knew well. She sat on a chair across from him, resting her bottom on the velvet seat, looking prim and contained like a proper schoolteacher.
Beau sat too, leaning forward in an anxious pose, a look of concern and fear on his face that was so terribly unlike him.
“I did something very wrong, Beau. I mean very wrong. I betrayed my husband with another man and, well, I couldn’t live with myself and stay with him. I’m sure this is not a permanent place for me, but it’s what I have now. Mamie’s been very kind.”
“You turning tricks?” he inquired, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“No!” She immediately shot back. Then she thought of Jarrett. “Well, not exactly. That’s not what I do for Mamie.”
“What do you mean, not exactly? You a whore or not?”
“I’m not a virtuous woman anymore, Beau. Life has taken a strange turn and things are not as I had planned. I love Daniel, but I’m not fit to be with him. I’m not fit to be a wife at all.”
“You don’t think he could decide that?”
“I’m sparing him the grief.”
“But running away like a coward…”
“You’re one to talk.”
“You’re better than me, Hannah. You always have been.”
“Well, no more.”
He shook his head. “This ain’t right, girl. It ain’t and you know it.”
“It is right. It’s the decision I’ve made and you will have to accept it.”
“Nope, I ain’t going to. I’m sorry, but I’m bringing Daniel here. Talking to him is the least you can do. He must be sick with worry.”
“He’ll get over it. I swear, Beau, if you don’t do anything else honorable in your life, please do this and drop the matter. Things happen. Bad things happen.”
“And people forgive each other. You’ve forgiven me, what? A hundred times. You think the man won’t forgive you? You haven’t even given him the chance.”
“This is different. I just can’t tell you my reasons, but trust me; it’s different, Beau. You have to let this go.”
He ran his hand through his tousled locks, exasperation filled his face and it appeared as though he was about to cry.
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