It Stings So Sweet

by Stephanie Draven

  “Given the way you’re panting in my ear, I’d say my methods are working.”

  He chuckles.

  He’s indulging me and I’m happy to take advantage of it. “Do you know that the women who work for you make half the wages of the men doing the same jobs?”

  He pulls me tighter against him. “We pay the going rate for female employees, don’t we?”

  He’s got me there.

  “Just because every other hotel in the city abuses the women who work for them doesn’t mean you should, too. You can change the policy.”

  “I’m flattered you think so, but my father—”

  “The boutique makes more money for the hotel than the florist shop or the cigar stand. Yet, as a salesgirl, I make half the salary of any salesman at any counter in the Aster Hotel. I’m paid less than the men who work fewer hours or are still in training. Does that seem fair?”

  “You’ve certainly earned a raise,” he says with a suggestive wag of his eyebrows. “At the very least, your paycheck should reflect the extra hours of service you’re putting in for me …” When he sees my shocked expression, he adds, “You didn’t think I forgot that fantasy, did you?”

  I’m stunned, remembering an errant scribbling in the margin of my journal about a girl willing to sell herself to men. The blood drains away from my face as I realize what he must think of me. And how aroused I am in spite of it. I have to shake myself to keep my wits about me. “I was only using myself as an example. I don’t want a raise unless you’re willing to give one to every woman who works for you.”

  “Are you aiming to be the most expensive mistress I’ve ever had?”

  I don’t want to laugh, but I do. “Don’t do it for me; do it because it’s the right thing.”

  He arches a brow. “Why should you care why I did it, so long as you got what you wanted in the end?”

  “Because I think you’re something special, Robert Aster, and I don’t want to be proved wrong.”

  He blinks. His devil-may-care smile falters. His mouth opens as if he’s going to say something of import. Then the car pulls up under the neon sign over the club and the moment is gone.

  The chauffeur comes round the side and helps us out. There’s been a light summer rain and it smells wonderful steaming up from the hot pavement into the night air. A few drivers honk their horns and swerve round Robert’s limousine as he escorts me to the club. The entrance to the speakeasy is in the back, where an iron door bars our way. Robert taps a secret knock, a peephole slit opens, and once the bouncer sees we’re the sort he wants to admit, the door swings open.

  Inside, we’re hit with a wall of jazz and glimpse scantily clad showgirls on stage, all tall and lithe. The dancers wear pasties on their nipples and their breasts glisten with perspiration under the hot stage lights. The flimsy feathered skirts on their hips hide nothing from the mirrored floor, and the men hoot and holler, “Get hot, get hot!”

  The place is filled with men in tuxedos puffing on cigars and women in sequins, pearls, and feather boas, just like the one I wear. In my glittering golden gown, I must look like I’m one of them, but this isn’t my world. It’s too shiny and gay.

  Robert’s hand closes over mine as he guides me to a table, his ease in this atmosphere of revelry helping to calm my nerves. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  A little thrill goes through me. I know that I wrote about parties, but not this kind, and I can’t think that he means to push me onto the top of the grand piano and make love to me here. The truth is, I don’t know and it’s exciting not knowing. “Am I going to like it?”

  He clears his throat as we approach the best table in the house. “It’s going to make you weak in the knees …”

  That’s when I see my surprise.

  Beyond a sea of white-jacketed waiters, the contours of a beautiful woman in red emerges from the haze of smoke. She puffs out the long end of her cigarette holder, then smiles like the movie star she is.

  It’s Clara Cartwright.

  Glamorous. Glorious. Gorgeous.

  Her red dress hugs every curve, black kohl lines her dramatic eyes, a crimped bob frames her face, and ruby earrings dangle from her ears.

  I’m dazzled.

  She enchants me such that I nearly overlook her bemused companion, a man of rugged good looks and a slightly world-weary air. This must be Clara’s husband, because the moment he spots us, he jumps to his feet and embraces Robert like a long-lost brother. They clap each other on the back, shake hands and then clap each other again.

  Eventually, Robert stoops to give Clara a peck on the cheek, which she receives as her due. With a champagne coupe dangling from one hand, she studies me curiously. “Who’s the smarty?”

  “This is Sophie O’Brien,” Robert says, holding a chair out for me. “You’re going to love her. She’s an anarchist.”

  What an introduction!

  But before I can deny it, Clara’s eyes light up. “Oh, Robert. You found me an anarchist to interview for my new film on Sacco and Vanzetti? You’re the bee’s knees.”

  I slide into my chair, laughing nervously. “I’d be quite interested in a film about that travesty, but I’m afraid I’m just a reformer, not an anarchist.”

  Clara snaps her fingers. “Rhatz!”

  Robert grabs a program from a passing usher and pays a nickel for it. “Don’t let Sophie fool you with that adorable laugh. She’s a dangerous radical.”

  He’s teasing me again and I glare at him, but Clara reaches out with lacquered nails to give my hand a squeeze. “Well, we love danger and radicals, don’t we, Leo?”

  Her husband lifts his glass in salute. “Especially danger.”

  Robert makes formal introductions all the way around, then we order dinner. Soon the table is piled high with shrimp cocktail, blue point oysters, lobster, and roast duckling. I’m the stranger here and feel out of place, but Clara puts me at ease by telling a funny story about nearly drowning on set in a fishpond while wearing a hula skirt and a coconut bra.

  Knowing she and Robert were lovers, I don’t want to like her. But I do. Everyone does. All the moviegoers, all the men, and especially her husband, whose gaze almost never leaves her face.

  Strangely, the only man not stealing glances at her is Robert, whose attention is so riveted upon me that I wonder if he’s trying to prove something to them. Or to himself. When a waiter asks him for his order he says, “I’ll have an old-fashioned. Actually, make it two. Let’s see what Sophie thinks of my usual jorum of skee.”

  I’m dubious at the arrival of a glass of amber liquid with orange slices placed before me. My nose scrunches at the smell and when I take a sip of it, I cough and sputter. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “It’s terrible! It’s like drinking a bottle of disinfectant cleaner.”

  Clara and her husband laugh, but Robert takes the glass from me, tasting it for himself. He rolls the liquid over his tongue experimentally, then relaxes. “You had me worried there, Sophie. But this is the real thing—the most expensive brand in the country. That’s so we don’t have to worry about poison.”

  “Stop scaring her, Robert!” Clara cries. “Just knock it back, Sophie. It’s eggs in the coffee.”

  I’ve never had a hankering to try liquor. Not because of the laws forbidding its sale, but because it never seemed as if any sensible person made good use of it. And now that I know what it tastes like, I know why. But with Robert and his friends, I want to drink it. So with their encouragement, I tip my head back and let it slide down.

  “Atta girl,” Mr. Vanderberg says and Robert beams with pride.

  The liquor burns my gullet but warms me down to my toes. It makes the piano tinkle louder in my ears and I sway in my seat, eyes on the dusky saxophone player whose notes make the dancers sway. Some drunk man in the crowd makes a toast to fallen soldiers and Mr. Vanderberg raises his glass.

  Robert does, too, though he never lifts his eyes.

  “They served together,” Clara leans over to tell me.
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  “So Robert says,” I reply, waiting for the heat inside me to dissipate. “Though I’m sure he underestimates his part in the war.”

  “He always does,” Mr. Vanderberg breaks in. “Robert can’t shoot straight but I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for those big mitts of his and his skill with a bayonet.”

  Robert’s gaze trails off to the stage, a slight grimace at the mention. Truthfully, Mr. Vanderberg doesn’t seem to want say more about the war, either, but Clara prompts him. “This sounds like a story you’ve never told me.”

  The two men lapse into silence. Clara reaches for her husband’s hand.

  He gives her fingers a squeeze and says, “Once we went down behind enemy lines and had to hoof it through some damned Belgian forest. A German patrol caught us and frog-marched us through the woods. My arm was broken and my ankle was twisted from the crash; I thought we were going to have to dig our graves. But Bobby waited for just the right moment. Cracked his fist into the jaw of one Hun and had him spitting out his own teeth by time he realized he was disarmed.”

  “And I nearly sliced my elbow off on an enemy bayonet in the process,” Robert adds.

  It must be how he got the jagged scar I noticed before. I never gave much thought to the life and death struggles he’s survived. I’ve dismissed him as a man whose led an easy life, but realize now how wrong I was to do so.

  “You did what had to be done,” Mr. Vanderberg said.

  Robert shrugs as if it were a matter of indifference to him, but I see the tightening at the corners of his mouth. “Why talk about this when we were having such a good time?”

  “You’re right,” Clara announces. “The night is young. Let’s buy a few bottles and go back to the hotel.”

  I lose count of how many little glasses I drink before we go, but I can’t feel the tip of my nose when Robert leans over to kiss me. The music and the laughter and the voices in the club all fade to a distant buzz when he whispers, “I’m going to make you fuck her tonight.”

  CHAPTER

  Eight

  It hits me hard by the time we all pile into the back of Robert’s car. I’m blinking too much, too rapidly, trying to pretend that liquor hasn’t turned the whole world a bit sooty around the edges, like the windows of every house in the mining town where I grew up.

  I try to tell myself that I’ve imagined it. That he never whispered those outrageous words in my ear, and that it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. I convince myself of it because the three of them behave as if this night were nothing out of the ordinary. They’re easy with one another. Funny and fun. I like being with them; and just for tonight, I pretend I belong in their magical world.

  When Robert’s driver brings us around front of the hotel, Clara peeks out the window. “Damn it. The vultures are waiting …” Pulling a mirror from her pocketbook, she straightens her hair and puts on a new coat of lipstick. Then her posture changes, shoulders squaring, her expression taking on a hard edge.

  “Time to go be Clara Cartwright,” she says, sliding out of the car into a mob of people who want to take her picture and get her autograph. Leo climbs out after her, elbowing aside some of the more aggressive admirers, and we trail after them into the hotel and up to Robert’s suite.

  Excusing myself, I duck into the lavatory and splash a little water on my face. By the time I join them Robert and Clara sit on opposite sides of the sofa and her husband sprawls in a wing chair.

  They’re talking aviation.

  Robert pats the cushion next to him, welcoming me into his arms, while he says, “It was nothing more than a stunt. Miss Earhart didn’t fly the plane across the Atlantic. She was just a passenger. And I’m not sure women have any business being up there anyway. It’s dangerous.”

  It always startles me when Robert lets his Victorian attitudes show and this shakes me out of my drunken torpor. “I think she’s very brave. Besides, didn’t you say you admired unconventional women?”

  Robert lowers his eyelashes and leers at me. “That I do.”

  Leo ignores our flirtation. “Amelia’s a fine pilot. She’ll make the crossing by herself one day.” He pauses here and bitterness creeps into his voice. “And then they’ll give Amelia Earhart a goddamned Medal of Honor like they gave Charles Lindbergh.”

  For some reason, this makes Clara laugh. “Oh, give it up, Ace. You’ve got more medals than you can fit on that big strong chest of yours. You don’t need any more.”

  “Lucky Fucking Lindy,” Leo mutters darkly into his drink.

  This makes Clara and Robert howl.

  I feel vaguely excluded until Robert says, “Speaking of unconventional women … did I mention that Sophie has a splendid fantasy about you, Clara?”

  Before panic rips through me, Leo quips, “Don’t we all?”

  Clara preens like a cat who loves to be admired, but I’m so mortified I want to flee.

  Robert’s hand closes tightly on mine. “She thinks about kissing you, Clara.”

  I hate him for saying this. And I love him for it, too. The sudden brutal exposure of my forbidden thoughts cuts me open with desire. I’m bleeding embarrassment and arousal in equal measure.

  Clara creeps closer to me. “Would you like to do more than just think about it, Sophie?” Her question slithers between us like a dangerous serpent. I’m not sure if it’s so forbidden because she’s a woman or because she’s a married woman. My eyes dart to her husband, and that makes her chuckle. “Oh, don’t worry. I’d never do anything my husband didn’t approve of.”

  “Fortunately,” her husband says, lighting his cigarette and snapping the lighter shut, “I’m a very approving sort of fellow.”

  Leo and Clara smile at each other and a spark ignites. Their fiery flirtation singes me, too, and a rush of heat flows through my veins. If they have the same effect on Robert, I can’t blame him for having been drawn in. Anyone would be.

  Clara turns back to me and tilts her head coquettishly. “What if I kiss you, Sophie?”

  Robert squeezes my hand in reassurance. He wants me to do it, and the intensity of his stare makes me feel like I’m the center of the whole world. He gives my hand another squeeze, almost turning me towards Clara.

  The scent of gardenia swirls under my nose as Clara scoots a little closer. She’s lovelier than on her movie posters and her skin looks so soft … there will never be another moment like this and I’m not even sure this one is real. I quickly wet my lips with nervous assent, my hands clasped in my lap.

  Clara’s fingernails trace a sensuous line along the curve of my cheek before she touches her lips to mine. They’re plump lips, petal soft and wet. She uses them to tease me, tickling at the corners of my mouth until I gasp. And when I do, she deepens the kiss, slipping her tongue against my palate.

  Robert groans and it’s at that moment I realize it’s really happening.

  I’m kissing a woman and the thrill of it makes me shiver.

  Clara smiles like a cat whose gotten into the cream. I gaze up with wonder and her smile goes from amused to downright wicked. “Aren’t you a naughty little thing …”

  I’m not sure how she manages to speak because I’m breathless.

  Leo takes a deep, thoroughly satisfied puff from his cigarette. Robert isn’t nearly so relaxed. His voice drops at least an octave when he says, “You’ve no idea the filthy ideas in Sophie’s pretty head.”

  I think it’s the notion that any girl might have filthier ideas than she has that gets her blood up. Clara bats her lashes at Robert and says, “Really? And yet, she seems so innocent …”

  I’m both jealous and excited by the way Robert knows how to incite Clara. She reacts to him by seducing me. She lets her hand drift over my shoulder in a caress, then down, down, tracing my breast, her thumb finding my nipple and giving it a tweak. The bolt of arousal she sends through me is so strong that I moan.

  Then Clara bats her eyelashes at me. “Haven’t you ever let a girl touch you before?”

&nb
sp; When Robert seduces me, I sometimes have the urge to sass him or test his patience. But the way he’s staring now makes me utterly pliant. And with Clara toying with me, I am easy prey. Between the two of them, they’ve got me mesmerized.

  Clara palms both my breasts, whispering, “It feels good, doesn’t it? You like it. Your nipples are so hard, you can’t hide it. The boys can see it, too. They like watching us. My husband looks like he could devour me.”

  “Because he’s going to,” Leo promises, blowing a puff of smoke.

  Robert moves to the table where he can get a better view, and his gaze burns a hole through me. “Do you want her to keep touching you, Sophie?”

  “Yes,” I whisper, because anything else would be an obvious lie.

  Clara and I kiss again. Her body is pressed tight to me, her breasts straining under her dress, her tightening nipples brushing mine. Robert caresses my right leg, but now Clara’s fingers slide up the other thigh.

  “You didn’t seem so shy before,” she says and I realize that my hands are squeezed tight between my knees. “Don’t you want me to touch your pussy, Sophie?”

  “Oh god.” I give a sharp exhale, tilting my head back for her as she kisses her way down my throat, leaving a tingling trail in her wake.

  “They want us to touch each other,” Clara purrs. “It’s getting them both pretty hot under the collar. Why, even Robert is sweating, and he never sweats.”

  Robert tugs at his tie. “That’s not true. I sweat.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Clara says. “At least not as much as everyone else. It’s something freakish about him.”

  It sets my teeth on edge the way she reminds me just how intimately she knows him, but just when I want to claw at her eyes, she says, “I’ve never seen Robert look at another girl the way he’s staring at you … he looks like he’s going to melt into a puddle.”

  “Touch each other,” Robert says, the tone in his voice leaving no room for argument.

  I let Clara draw my hands onto her body, and she squirms underneath them, letting me caress the outlines of her generous curves. One shrug and the satin strap of her gown slips over her shoulder; it’s a practiced move and I realize that she’s performing. I don’t think it’s all for me, but I don’t care.