It Stings So Sweet

by Stephanie Draven

I press my lips together. “Does the sacrament count or is that the blood of Christ?”

  That earns me a belly laugh. “So you’ve never gone into a speakeasy and asked for a cocktail?”

  “I’ve been to a speakeasy, but … no, I haven’t had a cocktail.”

  He narrows his eyes. “What an earnest little do-gooder … you’re quite charming, really.”

  “Only accidentally, whereas you seem practiced at it. So much so that you avoided my question completely.”

  He takes a swallow of lemonade and makes a face. “Which question?”

  “Why do you drink so much liquor?”

  “I don’t have a good answer. Didn’t take a drop during the war, but when I came back, I acquired a taste for it.”

  This takes me unawares. “You served in the war? But you look too young …”

  A white-gloved waiter takes our salad plates and replaces them with a steaming entree of lamb and asparagus. It seems rich fare for lunch, but my mouth waters at the scent of rosemary, garlic, and roasted meat. Mr. Aster waits for me to begin eating. “I joined up the day I turned eighteen. It was near the end of the fighting, though most people didn’t know that at the time. The ambassador had a pretty good idea that the action was nearly over and he didn’t want his youngest to miss out on an opportunity to bring glory to the family name. He saw to it that I was made an officer and military aviator.”

  “You can fly planes?” I ask, decidedly impressed.

  “Fly them? Yes. It’s shooting them down that proved the difficulty. I’m fairly certain I was the worst aerial gunner in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.”

  It’s strange to imagine him as a soldier and even stranger to hear the tone of self-deprecation in his usually confident voice. “What is the U.S. Army Signal Corps?”

  “They call it the U.S. Army Air Corps now.”

  “So you were a fighter pilot, like the Red Baron.”

  “No one was like the Red Baron. I wasn’t entirely useless, though. I was always good in a brawl and had a talent at getting the supplies our pilots needed that the Army couldn’t provide. Guns, mounts, mechanical parts, gas masks, and food …”

  It’s the sort of organizing one expects from a workingman, not from an officer. “How did you manage that?”

  “I knew whom to ask. Whom to bribe, to trade with, and to steal from. It became a fun challenge, really. But they don’t give out medals for that sort of thing, do they?”

  “Maybe they should.”

  He takes a moment to cut his lamb into neat pieces. “In any case, I came home from the war with shell shock but none of the glory my father hoped for. Those first few months I spent stateside, liquor was the only thing that helped with the insomnia and occasional bout of shaking hands.”

  He seems so cool, pale, and aloof. A remote Nordic god. It’s difficult for me to imagine such a flaw … “Your hands shake?”

  “Not for years now,” he says, holding one out steady. “I’ve got liquor to thank for that.”

  “And the insomnia?”

  He looks down at his plate. “You shouldn’t let your lunch get cold, Miss O’Brien. It’s splendid.”

  I take a bite of the lamb and the way it nearly melts in my mouth is so distracting that I almost let him get away with the evasion. “Do you still have trouble sleeping, Mr. Aster?”

  “You can call me Robert when we’re alone,” he says.

  “Do you still have trouble sleeping, Robert?”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a girl of remarkable persistence?”

  “Not usually in such a flattering or approving way.”

  He laughs. “Yes, I still have trouble sleeping. Especially last night. I’ve never spanked a woman before and I was fretting about it into the wee hours. I couldn’t decide if I should worry more that you’d go through with it or that you wouldn’t.”

  I’m glad he waited to confess these doubts. If he’d let his anxiety show when he had me over his knee, I’d have fled. However, his confession now is so unexpected and endearing that I can’t stop staring at him. “You said your experience in such matters is considerable, so out of all the fantasies in my journal, why didn’t you choose something you’d done before?”

  “I wanted to learn something about women … this was the fantasy that I wanted most to understand.”

  His thirst for knowledge is admirable but I don’t know whether or not to believe him. “And here you made it seem as if you already knew everything there was to know about women.”

  “You’ve certainly caused me to reevaluate.” This cheers me quite a bit—to think that I’ve surprised a man like him, or confounded him in any way. “Besides, I never said I was an expert on women. Merely that I have considerable experience bedding them.”

  I let that idea settle for a while. “Only bedding them? Haven’t you ever been in love?”

  The question seems to amuse him. “I’ve been in love precisely one and a half times.”

  And his answer definitely amuses me. “One and a half? You can’t be half in love with someone.”

  “Trust me, you can. And sometimes it’s a lot more pleasant than being all the way in love, as I was with Nora, my former fiancée. Though, I must admit, you’re helping me to feel quite a bit more charitable towards her.”

  “Am I?” I ask, not entirely pleased. I chase my asparagus round my plate with my fork until I see him lift a spear with his fingers. “So is there a reunion with Nora on the horizon?”

  He coughs. “No. Certainly not. I said you’ve helped me feel more charitable towards her, not that I’ve turned into a sap.”

  It makes me want to taunt him. “So you’re a cynic, through with love for good?”

  “Oh, no. I’m a romantic at heart.”

  “And what does the happy future look like for a romantic like you?”

  “I imagine I’ll eventually fool a woman into thinking I’m worth a damn. She’ll reform me of my playboy ways and I’ll become a respectable businessman in my father’s mold. Then I’ll move back into the family mansion and make some little Asters to inherit the family fortune.”

  “How bourgeois,” I say, taking another bite of lamb. “How will you know she’s the one?”

  “I’ll know when I can say I’ve been in love two and a half times in my life.”

  “You and your half!”

  “I’ve always been good with numbers,” he grins. “How many times have you been in love?”

  My smile fades, never having expected he’d turn the question back at me. “Just once. I was very young.”

  “You’re still very young. Tell me about this lad who stole your heart.”

  I won’t say his name, I promise myself that much. “He was a coal miner, like my father and most of my brothers. He didn’t have anything to offer as a groom, but he was sweet and proposed marriage to me on my seventeenth birthday.”

  Robert leans forward, his interest piqued. “I didn’t know you came from a mining town. So didn’t you marry him, then?”

  “He died before I could.”

  Robert frowns. “I’m so sorry. Was it an accident in the mine?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Rough conditions, long hours, dangerous work. But that’s not how it happened at all. He went on strike with the other miners and was murdered by a Pinkerton goon squad.”

  He winces, setting his fork down.

  This is a genteel dining room and I’m having lunch with a genteel man. But even if he isn’t the sort to hire goons to bust a union, he comes from the kind of people who do. So I won’t spare him. I can’t spare him or myself now. “It was a hot summer, like this one. They came in with rifles and herded the strikers into cattle cars. Locked ’em in and rolled ’em into the heat to bake. Our union boys went more than sixteen hours without water before they broke their way out, but it was too late for the one I meant to marry.”

  Robert silently digests what I’ve told him, then asks, “You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you?”


  “I’m not the one who died in a cattle car.”

  I don’t look at him when I say this because I feel myself hardening. He’s a beautiful man and this is a beautiful lunch in a beautiful hotel with a beautiful view. But I know what’s behind the veneer, all the ugly parts of this hotel that visitors never see. The way supervisors cheat workers out of their pay, the backbreaking workload of the maids and the poor treatment of the Negro workers … I must assume there’s an ugly underside to the man who oversees it all, too. Taking my list from my pocketbook, I say, “I’d rather not wait for dessert to discuss the grievances.”

  “And here I meant for us to have such a relaxing afternoon …” He smoothes his napkin over his legs. “But I am a man of my word, so I’m willing to listen to a complaint.”

  “I’ve an entire list of them,” I protest.

  “Traditionally, I have a very short attention span, so why don’t we start with one complaint.”

  “Very well. We’d like you to change hotel policy so that pregnant women aren’t summarily fired. So long as a woman can continue doing her job—”

  “Any good husband should provide—”

  “Not all of them have husbands,” I insist.

  I tell him about Gertrude’s plight without exposing Mr. Underwood, much as I’d like to blacken his name. Robert listens patiently as the waiter clears our plates, then takes up his spoon when the Venetian ice cream arrives in delicate crystal cups. He finally asks, “And who is the villain in this story?”

  “Robert Aster,” I insist.

  He snorts. “I meant the name of the man who took advantage of the girl.”

  “I can’t tell you that. You might take action against him.”

  “Wouldn’t he deserve it?”

  I straighten my spine. “He deserves whatever the good Lord has to dole out to him, but what he does with women is his own business and I’d be a hypocrite to say otherwise.”

  Robert sighs. “If you don’t tell me his name, I might doubt the veracity of your story.”

  “Give your word that there won’t be retaliation.”

  “Done.”

  I tell him. He listens. When I’m finished, he says, “Please tell the hapless girl to report to the front desk tomorrow morning. I’ll have a bank note waiting for her.”

  I think I’ve misheard him. “A bank note?”

  Nodding as he shovels a bit of ice cream onto his spoon, he makes a gesture of dismissal. “I’m prepared to be quite generous. It was a man in my employ who gave her false hopes of marriage and that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m happy to pay her rent for the next year or two.”

  His Victorian attitude and casual assumption of such a large debt staggers me, but also misses the point entirely. “She wants her job back so she can earn her own living.”

  “Sophie, I can’t very well go around rehiring people that my supervisors let go, can I?”

  “But you can afford to leave obscenely large bank notes for every girl who gets in trouble in your hotel?”

  “This is just one girl.”

  “I didn’t tell you the story so that you’d help Gertie—well, not only her. This is only one story in twenty. I can tell you about a bellboy—”

  “One grievance at a time.” He looks at me pointedly. “Your ice cream is melting.”

  Prompted by him, I take a bite. It melts on my tongue, thick and silky—the way I imagine he might taste. And when I think thoughts like that one, it’s more difficult to argue with him. “So you’d rather give Gertrude money than deal with the systemic problem.”

  “Systemic problem,” he says, mimicking me, his eyes dancing with merriment. “That doesn’t sound like anything a mere mortal can remedy. But a girl with a baby I can manage.”

  “You don’t even know Gertrude.”

  “No, but you obviously care about her. There are certain advantages to being my mistress and I’m certain that you’ll find a way of repaying me for my generosity.”

  “I haven’t agreed to be your kept woman,” I reply, offended.

  “You agreed the moment you let me take your clothes off.”

  This rattles me. And I can’t help but think this is not how labor negotiations are conducted; I’m used to men dismissing me because I’m a young woman, but I fear he knows I’m so drawn to him that the idea of exchanging sex for favors seems like I’m getting the better part of the deal. “How many mistresses do you have, anyway?”

  He smirks. “You said before that the idea of sexual recreation doesn’t offend you … and yet, I detect a note of disapproval, Sophie.”

  “It’s a bit intimidating, that’s all. The way the tabloids talk about you and all those beauties.”

  “Yet, I’ve never spanked any of them. But I have spanked you. What’s more, I’d like to do it again.”

  The chill of the ice cream is no help against the heat of my cheeks. “You would?”

  “Yes, I would. Tomorrow evening, after the end of your workday, come up to my office. You can tell Mrs. Mortimer that as part of that private disciplinary action, you must stay late and help my secretary file papers.”

  CHAPTER

  Five

  At the front desk the next day, there’s a bank note with more zeroes than I expected, all strung together like pearls. “Oh, Sophie!” Gertie cries, throwing her arms around my neck, her belly bulging against mine. “Well, ain’t this the berries? Ethel told me you were the one to go to for help, but how did you do it?”

  “Never mind that,” I say. “But you don’t have to take it. Wouldn’t you rather have your job back?”

  Gertie bites her lower lip. “How can I turn down this kind of dough? I can’t very well bring the baby to work with me can I?”

  She makes a good point, but she wouldn’t have the money if Robert Aster weren’t trying to impress me, and that vexes me. “We’re still organizing, Gertie. And if Mr. Aster won’t take our complaints seriously, we’ll take steps to see that he does.”

  “Go easy on him, Sophie,” she says, clutching the bank note. “The ambassador wouldn’t have given me a red cent, but his son seems like a swell fella.”

  “He just might be,” I say, unable to deny the little glow of warmth I feel when I think about Robert Aster. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t deal with him on an even footing.”

  Seeing how he’s made Gertie’s life easier softens me, even though I suspect half the good things he does are nothing more than spite against his father. Robert Aster is not a saint and I’m not a sucker, but given how eager I am to be stretched over his knees, I worry I’m going jingle-brained for the man.

  Gertie hugs me again, this time so hard my hatpin comes loose. “You know best, Sophie. You always do. And I know you can’t stand here bumping gums all day, so I’d better scram.”

  As I watch her disappear into the crowd near the hotel florist shop, Hamilton looks up from the bellhop stand to give me a little wave. He’s wearing a posy, just like the one I tucked into his lapel the other day. That’s when I notice all the bellboys are wearing them—a sign of solidarity.

  I get a spanking every night for the rest of the week. Each night, Robert is bolder. Sometimes yanking me over his knee before I’m ready. Sometimes spanking me harder, longer, faster. Sometimes he makes me thank him for each one.

  I reach climax every time.

  The first time took us by surprise, but now he expects it. And when it doesn’t happen on its own, he makes it happen, grinding himself against me or rubbing between my legs.

  He also teaches me to take him in my mouth, to slip my tongue over the thick, turgid flesh, satisfying him as he’s satisfied me.

  When he’s done, I rush out to catch the trolley home, then run up the stairs to the lavatory, lift my dress, and look at the redness before it fades away. Sometimes I can see the outlines of his hand on my cheeks, and the sight of it is so exciting that I lean back against the door and touch myself.

  It’s shameful and I wish I hated it, but it feel
s like freedom.

  I don’t know what’s happening to me. Every day in the boutique, all I want is to step into the elevator and take it upstairs. All I can think about is the depthless sexual hunger that this man has brought out in me. It’s a craving. A madness. An addiction.

  I’m shaking with it by Friday evening, when I slip into his office.

  One look at me and his smile fades to concern. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  Everything is wrong. I can’t imagine that a person ought to feel like this. Like she’s under some kind of spell. I think I should tell him that this has to stop. That I’m not sure I know myself anymore. These are all the things I ought to say so I’m stunned by what comes out instead. “Why haven’t you given me another card?”

  His eyebrows raise. “Because I didn’t know that you were a virgin when I wrote them.”

  “Don’t you still want me?” I ask plaintively.

  He gives an incredulous snort. “Don’t I want you? Can’t you tell?”

  “I can’t tell anything about you. I don’t know anything about you. You know everything I want because you read it in my journal, but how am I to guess—”

  My words are cut off abruptly by the warmth of his mouth, closing over mine. I moan, first in protest, then in surrender as he sucks my bottom lip between his teeth and teases it with his tongue. A puff of breath stirs between us, warm and sensual. His hands lace into my hair, drawing me deeper into the kiss and my hand cups his smoothly shaved cheek. Though his lips are soft and velvety, there’s a firmness beneath them. He uses them to tease, to tempt, and to plunder. Nudging my lips apart, his tongue touches mine and tangles with it. It feels as if we’re alone, at the top of the city, locked together far apart from the rest of the world. This kiss is the only thing that matters. And it does matter. It really does.

  When we finally break apart, he traces the residual moistness on my lips with his thumb. “Does that tell you anything you need to know, Sophie?”

  Dazed, I blink up at him. “I’m afraid it raises a host of new questions.”

  He puts my hand over his heart where I can feel it beating hard beneath his shirt. “Do you feel that? That’s how much I want you. And if you put your hand lower, you’d find even better proof.”