Holy shit, what just happened? I hadn’t been like this since I was--what--fourteen? Breathing hard, I sat up without letting go of my cock. Who knew what it would do next?
My gaze drifted toward the ceiling and I scowled. She was lying up there right now, no doubt smugly asleep, dreaming about whatever women dream of--shoes, no-cal ice cream, whatever. Damn her!
I got out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. As I turned the shower on, I made myself a promise. The brakes were off. I had to find some way to get control of Miss Emma Whittaker and the effect she had on me. No matter how far I had to go to do it.
Chapter Thirteen
Emma
I was standing in the elevator, the private one that connected the lobby and the tower penthouse. For some strange reason, I wasn’t wearing any clothes--apart from a really great pair of strappy black Laboutins.
I could see myself in the bronzed mirrors that lined the walls--breasts, ass, legs--all bare. Vaguely, I was aware that I was dreaming which probably explained why I wasn’t alarmed.
The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. Instead of being in the apartment foyer, I was on another floor. With a start, I realized that it was where I’d lived until just a few years ago. My throat began to tighten. I was paralyzed, unable to move.
The doors slid shut again and I felt myself moving upward, away from where I had been. An intense feeling of relief washed over me and more--excitement, anticipation. Right about then, I realized that I wasn’t alone.
Lucas was leaning against the far wall of the elevator. The jacket of his crisply tailored suit was unbuttoned, exposing the expanse of his chest under a white linen shirt and dark blue tie. His hands were tucked into his trouser pockets and an amused smile played over his chiseled mouth.
“Why, Miss Whittaker,” he said, surveying me, “what’s gotten into you?”
Instinctively, I tried to cover my breasts and sex. His smirk deepened. At the sight of it, my back stiffened. So what if he was dressed and I wasn’t? The dark, hot fire in his eyes made me feel more powerful than I ever had in my life.
Dropping my arms to my sides, I straightened my shoulders and smiled at him in turn.
“I think you’re to blame, Mister Phelps.”
He frowned. “I am?”
“For this dream I’m having.” I shrugged lightly. “You’ve gotten me all hot and bothered.”
My daring surprised me but I was also exhilarated by it. I took a step toward him, then another until we were so close that my bare breasts brushed his chest. The feel of cotton and silk against my nipples made them harden almost painfully.
A steely arm wrapped around my waist. I was suddenly, vividly aware of his erection.
“What do you want?” Lucas growled.
Oh, why the heck not? It was just a dream, wasn’t it?
I threw my head back and met his smoldering gaze. “Everything but we can start with your cock.”
Sculpted lips parted in surprise. I resisted the urge to press my own to them and instead slid my hands down the long line of his chest until they reached his belt buckle. Keeping my eyes on his, I undid it and eased down his zipper.
Slowly, still looking up at him, I sank to my knees. My teeth nibbled my lower lip as I slipped a hand into his boxers and freed him.
What I’d felt of him on the couch really hadn’t prepared me. I gasped softly. Long, thick, and hot, his cock hardened even further at my touch. He was more than a little daunting.
I had a basic knowledge of male physiology, again mostly gleaned from those books, but practical experience was another matter. Still, my dream self was blissfully free of self-consciousness or hesitation.
I just wanted exactly what I’d told him. Everything. To touch him, taste him, take him…
My tongue swirled around his crest. The flavor of musk, salt, and something essentially Lucas seeped through me.
But I needed more…much, much more.
Lucas groaned and cupped my head between his hands. As I sucked harder, his hips moved, pistoning forward, urging me to take all of him. A heady sense of freedom swept over me. Even as I continued pleasuring him, I slipped a hand between my thighs and stroked myself, working my clit with the same rhythm that I flicked my tongue over his crest and shaft.
The response of my body was immediate and almost unbearably intense. I cried out as a powerful orgasm seized me, shattering the dream. Jolted back into reality, I found myself writhing on the bed, my hand between my thighs, and my back arched in ecstasy.
Long moments passed before I recovered enough to grapple with the stunning fact that I had come in my sleep, courtesy of a dream starring the man who I was quite sure had to be snoring peacefully right below me.
Damn him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was awake when dawn finally crept over the skyscrapers to the east, across the greensward of Central Park and touched the windows of the tower apartment. But then I’d been awake on and off all night Every time I managed to drift off, I dreamed of Lucas.
When I wasn’t asleep, I was thinking about him. About us. But there was no us. I worked for him. Full stop. I had to be out of mind to entertain the notion of anything more for even an instant.
There was him and there was me, two separate people with very different experiences in life and entirely separate agendas. Him, me, and that damn couch.
How could I have let him touch me like that? I’d all but melted in his arms! Just thinking about what had happened filled me with embarrassment. At the same time, it made me wet all over again. And left me with a question that I couldn’t even begin to answer.
Who was the strange woman that I became under his hands and mouth? So passionate and needy, languid and mindless, unlike any part of myself that I had ever known. Or at least that I had allowed myself to admit existed.
In the quiet of the dark room, in the hush of the night, that woman refused to be stilled. Deep in my mind, I heard her voice--eager, assertive, challenging--daring me to surrender to her as much as to Lucas himself.
I squirmed, trying to deny the heat between my thighs but the sensation of him stroking me there resonated too powerfully to be ignored. One finger, no more, and he’d brought me right to the edge of orgasm.
What would his cock really feel like? I had some idea of his size and girth, just enough to want to know far more. I wanted to see and touch him, to stroke his length and even take him into my mouth, taste him, run my tongue over him and--
By dawn, I was pretty much a wreck but I was determined not to show it. After a brisk shower and a stern mental talk with myself, I emerged from the bedroom cautiously.
It was Sunday but that didn’t necessarily mean that Lucas was still in the apartment. He could just as easily be at work or at the gym. Or out with someone.
Rather than go there, I marched myself down to the kitchen. Ignoring the pang of disappointment that I felt at finding it empty, I tackled the coffee machine.
While it brewed, I rummaged in the refrigerator until I found a small container of cottage cheese. I ate it leaning against the sink and had just tossed the remains in the garbage when the doorbell rang.
Answering it, I found not one of the building employees or a delivery person, who so far had been the only visitors to the apartment, but a lovely young woman. She gave me a startled look that quickly turned into a sweeping head-to-toe assessment accompanied by a look of amused interest.
“Sorry if I’m interrupting anything,” she said, sounding not in the least repentant. “Is Lucas here?”
I shook my head while studying her in turn. She was about my age with dark hair bobbed just above her shoulders and large gray eyes. Her features were strong but undeniably beautiful. She wasn’t someone who would be easy to forget.
“I’m sorry, he isn’t, Miss--?”
“Caroline Phelps. I’m his sister and you’re--?”
The resemblance struck me at once. I almost sagged in relief even as I was suddenly consumed
by curiosity about her.
“Emma Whittaker. I work for your brother. I’m curating the contents of this apartment to ready it for sale.” I stepped back and held the door open invitingly.
She came inside but only got a few feet before she stopped and took a long look around. A low whistle escaped her. “Holy crap, this place is every bit as incredible as I’d heard.”
Her piercing slate gaze centered on me again. “And you’re getting to go through it bit by bit. That must be amazing.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. Her brother could be all too intimidating, bewildering, distracting, entrancing, tempting…I could go on and on but I stopped myself. In contrast, Caroline Phelps struck me as surprisingly approachable. I couldn’t help thinking that she might give me some insight into the man I was trying so hard not to think about at all.
“It is amazing,” I agreed, shaking off my inner confusion to focus on something I could deal with. “I’ve always felt drawn to the 1950s--the clothes, the music, the cars, it had a kind of elegance that we’ve lost.”
Caroline nodded but she looked skeptical. “Yeah, sure, but it had another side, too. How much do you know about what was actually going on back then?”
I thought of a world where school children were taught to “duck and cover” from nuclear bombs, where African-Americans in much of the country rode in the back of the bus, and where few women could aspire to anything other than a handful of “pink collar” jobs.
“I know it wasn’t all malt shops, drive-ins, and poodle skirts.”
“No, it sure wasn’t. What about Margo Stark? Have you had a chance to learn much about her?”
“Just the broad strokes,” I said. “She was a glamorous movie star involved in a love affair that ended tragically. The death of Senator John Prentice seems to have derailed her life and drove her to become a recluse.”
Caroline nodded. “That’s the general belief. But since Prentice’s murder remains a mystery, it’s impossible to say for sure.” She broke off suddenly and sniffed. “Is that coffee I smell?”
Her friendliness bemused me. I was so unused to it but she made it feel completely natural. “Yes, it should be ready by now. Would you like a cup?”
“I’d love it.” As we walked toward the kitchen, she asked, “So Lucas is staying here?”
“Yes, he has the master bedroom on this floor.” I could feel myself blushing as I added, “I’m using one of the guestrooms upstairs.”
Caroline’s eyebrows arched but mercifully, she changed the subject. As I poured the coffee, she asked, “What’s the most interesting thing you’ve found so far?”
Handing her a cup, I thought for a moment. Margo’s old movies fascinated me but they were the fantasy version of her. I was more curious about the reality.
“There’s a gallery of photographs upstairs,” I said. “Everything from Margo’s earliest days in Hollywood to a few months before she disappeared from public life.” On impulse, I asked, “Would you like to see them?”
Her eyes lit up. “I sure would! Lead the way.”
With our coffee in hand, we spent a half-an-hour or so studying the photographs. Lucas’ sister knew a surprising amount about the period. She could put names to the faces I’d only wondered about.
Most of them were Hollywood powerbrokers—producers, directors, and the like. But she was also able to tell me about the man who was with Margo in photo after photo, Senator John Prentice. Tall, handsome, with chiseled features, broad shoulders, and an air of easy confidence, he looked like the kind of man many people would instinctively defer to.
“He was supposed to become president,” Caroline said, studying the smiling heir to one of the country’s largest fortunes. “His father groomed him for it from childhood. When World War II broke out, Prentice Senior arranged what was supposed to be a cushy berth for his son with the naval office in Washington.”
“I thought John Prentice was a war hero,” I said. At least, that’s what I’d read in the Wikipedia entry. “How did he manage to achieve that from a desk in Washington?”
Caroline grinned. “There was a screw-up with his paperwork, accidentally or on purpose, no one knows. Before Daddy could intervene, the future Senator found himself ferrying Marines onto some hell hole island in the Pacific. In all the chaos, Prentice ended up behind a machine gun. He mowed down several dozen of the enemy, saved a whole bunch of Marines in addition to his own guys, and was hailed as a hero.”
“How do you know so much about him?” I asked.
Looking a bit sheepish, she said, “I’m something of a true crime buff. It’s a hobby, veering only occasionally toward obsession, no matter what my brother may tell you. The Prentice case has fascinated me for years. You can imagine how excited I was when I heard that Lucas had the listing to this apartment.”
The penny dropped. “You think there might be a clue here that could explain what happened to Prentice?”
“It’s a long shot,” Caroline admitted. “But after all this time, this is the only possibility that’s left. He and Margo were an incredibly romantic couple. There was talk that she was going to leave Hollywood just like Grace Kelly had and marry a prince only this time he was American royalty. The public ate it up.”
“And then?”
Caroline cocked her head to one side and looked at me speculatively. “You really want to know?”
To my surprise, I really did. I was living in Margo’s apartment, among her belongings. Perhaps inevitably, she was becoming real for me. I didn’t believe in ghosts, and I certainly had no sense of one in the tower apartment. But something of her essence still lingered and that fascinated me.
“Yes, I do.”
In the silence of the next few moments, I could hear the soft whoosh of traffic rising from the street far below and the distant rumple of a jet descending to land at one of the nearby airports.
For all that the tower apartment still encompassed the 1950s, the 21st century was out there, just beyond the walls of the Arcadia. But standing in front of the photographs of Margo and her Senator, time seemed to roll back to another era of glamour, romance, and ultimately of death.
How had such a tragic end to a love story come about? Why had it? A beautiful, vibrant woman had withdrawn into seclusion, seemingly burying herself alive in the tomb of her grief. Could love really be that powerful? Could it truly change the direction of a person’s life beyond all recognition?
“Come on,” Caroline said, “I’ll show you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Emma
Downstairs, we stopped just beyond the etched glass doors of the Arcadia. George didn’t work weekends but the doorman on duty gave us a friendly smile.
I returned it before focusing my attention on Caroline. She was studying the street with a distant look in her eyes, as though she could see beneath the present to the lingering layers of another time.
Softly, she said, “Imagine that it’s just after ten p.m. on an evening in late September, 1957. The air is cool, a little damp, there’s a hint of rain but that will blow over soon and the night will be clear. The doorman offers to get a cab for Senator John Prentice who is leaving, but the senator declines. Instead, he sets off on foot, heading south down Central Park West. His destination presumably is the Plaza Hotel, a short distance away where he keeps a suite of rooms and where, officially at least, he stays during his frequent visits to New York.”
As she spoke, we began walking in the same direction. Retracing the path taken by the handsome young war hero turned presidential aspirant more than sixty years before, I was struck by how little what he would have seen had changed. The cars were different and so were the clothes of the people we passed. But many of the buildings were the same, as was the inviting presence of Central Park to our left, little altered since its creation more than a hundred and fifty years ago.
We were a few blocks from the Arcadia when Caroline said, “Right about here, a passing cabbie sees a man who he will
later tell police matches the Senator’s description. Aside from the killer himself, that driver is believed to be the last person to have seen Prentice alive.”
We continued walking a little farther until she stopped again. “His body was found the next morning right there.”
I looked where she was pointing. A narrow alley ran between two residential buildings. To call it nondescript was only to hint at its ordinariness. All over the city, there were similar passages, convenient for removing garbage and other mundane tasks. Nothing about it hinted that a life had ended there.
“The body was lying about thirty feet in from the street,” Caroline said. “Prentice had been shot once, in the abdomen. A .35 caliber bullet was recovered but the murder weapon itself was never found.”
“What did the police think had happened?” I asked, unable to take my eyes from the scene of a profound human trauma that might have changed the course of history, preventing as it did the presidency of a man who seemed destined for that office. It had certainly altered Margo’s life beyond all recognition.
Sex and death. Whether we wanted to admit it or not, life revolved around both. I lived with the reality of death--my father’s and some of his victims. Mere hours before I’d finally had to accept the power of sexual desire.
As for where love came into all that… I jerked away from that thought as I would from a burning hot surface.
“Officially,” Caroline said, “after a very long and intensive investigation, the conclusion was that the senator died in the course of a mugging carried out by a person or persons unknown.”
“Officially? That doesn’t sound like you believe it.”
She shrugged. “If the senator was shot on the street, there should have been a blood trail left from the body being dragged into the alley. The police looked but they didn’t find one. That means that Prentice walked into the alley under his own power. Why? Even if he suddenly decided that he needed to take a leak, why go thirty feet into a dark alley? Especially when there were all those convenient bushes right across the street in the park.”
Caress Part One (Arcadia) Page 8