Blooming: Veronica

by Louisa Trent

  A step took him nearer to her, so near the warmth and scent of her body made themselves known to him. When had he last been this close to a woman?

  Years, he reckoned.

  He took his voyeurism at a clinical distance, where he would encounter no earthy fragrances and emanating heat. In response to hers, he…well…responded. His erect cock just about rammed a hole through the black cashmere wool of his trousers.

  The method to his madness had worked. He had certainly gotten her all fired up.

  At him.

  Christ, steam was coming out of her ears, and he who could not dance a lick could have leaped through the air with joy like the star of a ballet.

  How she must despise him. In her fury, she had dropped her composure and allowed her antagonism to show.

  Writing would come next.

  Now, to push her further.

  And not only because she was lovely in her indignation, though she was very lovely. She would need to release all her pent-up emotions on paper, or else she would explode. As it was, she had attacked her clothing like a virago.

  She hummed with vengeance. Her shapely figure glowed rosy as the vehemence of her outrage pumped blood into her pale flesh. And what delectable flesh it was too, he mused, lowering his heavy lids to the rosy cleft between her splayed thighs. The folds were not wet, not yet, but they looked a little swollen.

  An encouraging sign.

  Despite herself, her body was thawing out, her sexuality springing to life.

  Her juices would flow next.

  He would not take her moistening personally. She had gone through an ordeal, but she was young and healthy, and her appetites would return. Her body would have had the same reaction to any man.

  Any man, that is, who knew which levers to pull, which he did.

  Talbot jerked his gaze upward.

  To her titties. Generously plump, the ends jutting in pointed disapproval of him. Her breasts were everything a man could want. Unfortunately, they were not for him.

  Neither was her waist, which a man could easily span with his hands. Not his hands, naturally, some other lucky sod’s hands. But if he got lucky, he would be there watching. Looking was the most he could expect to receive in terms of pleasure from his lovely bride. This was through no fault of hers. Indeed, this was not about her. This was about him. Touching anyone, including his wife, was a feat far beyond him. Without voyeurism…and his own sticky fingers…he would get few jollies at all.

  Apropos to that…

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You have been with a man. You already know why.”

  “I fear not. And if I did, I would not lower myself to ask. Why would my posterior interest you? My vaginal entrance, yes.” Her face went to scarlet. “And my mouth, perhaps, if oral gratification is your objective.”

  Robert McDougal had not only been a blackmailer; he had been a fool.

  “In regards to intercourse, a man may also enter a woman’s buttocks. Sodomy, buggery, anal penetration, call it whatever you will, the activity pleases me.”

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows spiked. “I was unaware of that method. I mean…I had familiarity with the word, of course, but I never put two plus two together and arrived at that particular hole.” She gasped. “I mean…of course I mean…sum. Silly of me.”

  She spun in place, then gazed over her shoulder. “Will this do, or shall I turn round?”

  His collar tightened around his throat. Absurd this urgency he had to sheathe himself within her body. He saw himself as a carnal fan, not a carnal participant. He was a spectator from afar, not someone who became involved. Relationships only led to disappointment. Another failed attempt to find meaning with someone would crush him, especially if that new failure were with her.

  He pulled himself together, got himself back on task. His goal was to convince her to write again—for his publishing house, not the competitor’s, and for her sake as well as his. At his company, he could nurture her gift and guide her career. Her talent was too great to allow it to stagnate, her happiness too important to leave it to chance. And if his company also prospered financially as a result of her happy writing, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?

  His admiration for her writing ability had prompted him to exchange his made-up reputable name for her ruined real one, a small sacrifice, as he had never intended to wed. He was married to publishing, and that was the way he liked it. Then he fell in love with her as he had once fallen in love with the written word. Both his passions encapsulated in one adorable place. How could he resist?

  “Yes,” he rasped, liking it this way too. No, loving it this way too. “Round.”

  She bent to touch her fingers to the floor.

  “Now open yourself,” he said hoarsely. “Open yourself in back.”

  “Do that, and I am likely to topple over onto my face.”

  “Tut-tut, madam. We cannot allow that to happen,” he said drily. “Feel free to rise to a more comfortable position before you begin.”

  While she realigned herself, he said, “As you have gotten naked for me, I will return the favor.”

  “Do not feel you must. I like you little enough fully garbed.”

  He would not sulk. “You asked me what I would like to know about you, and I was not completely forthcoming in my answer. I shall rectify the shortfall now. I wish to know how you felt when sucking off Robert McDougal in a public place.”

  “You mean at the port?”

  “Have there been other public places?” he asked, his testicles tightening.

  “No. Just the one. And actually, that encounter quite inspired me. The element of danger added to my sexual arousal.”

  She was an exhibitionist, he a voyeur. Theirs was a marriage based on the compatibility of their respective perversions.

  And their mutual love of the written word. The one thing about which he had always felt deeply.

  He stared between the cheeks of her buttocks. “Why did the act inspire you?”

  “Does one really know the whys about oneself?”

  “One can speculate.”

  “Then…in speculation…I would say that in possibly exposing myself to public scrutiny down on the pier, I broke through male oppression and found my female liberation.”

  “Drop the political platform. I dislike rallies. Also, give me something a little more personal than a stump speech, if you please.”

  She shivered. “Brr. My, but you are the aloof one. Your chilly distancing gives me the chilblains. I fear divulging anything personal would break you in two like an icicle. So…very well.” She twittered inelegantly. “Have it your way. I found the inherent danger of the situation rewarding in and of itself. There was no genuine threat of exposure. At least, I thought there would be no genuine threat at the time, as I thought I had authored the situation. Now, of course, I’ve come to realize, that authorship anywhere but in books is a complete sham. One cannot author one’s real life. It—the scenario—had very little to do with Robert. Though I utterly adored him, of course.”

  He smiled complacently.

  Adored. Past tense. And only an addendum.

  If the adoring addendum ever applied at all, and he highly doubted it had.

  In his opinion, his wife had never adored her lover. Nor had she responded sexually to his apathetic lovemaking. Rather, she had responded to her own vivid imagination, that great sexual organ between her two lovely ears. She had yet to catch on to that fact, as she had yet to realize what she had been missing. But she would. Soon, she would find out what had been absent in her lover’s technique.

  Skill.

  Foreplay.

  Her physical release.

  “Shall I spread my legs too, Mr. Bowdoin?”

  So eager was his bride. “If it pleases you.”

  “And here I thought this exercise was all about pleasing you, husband.”

  “Why not do what would please us both?”

  She nod
ded. “I approve. An equalitarian start to our marriage. Then, for my part, I should like to face you again.”

  “By all means do so.”

  Turning back around, she spread her thighs, her arms outstretched to the wall behind her, the whorls of her pubic hair a little damp.

  His gaze leveled there. “You said you had been with one man only?”

  “Yes. Robert. A few episodes of intercourse, and one of a somewhat different nature.”

  “Fellatio.”

  Her brow puckered. “I do beg your pardon? I orally gratified him.”

  “You sucked him off on the docks.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That is fellatio. Or sodomy, if you will.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Obviously, I do will. Though sucking him off on the docks sounds more illicit,” she replied, meeting him tick for tack and grinning at the coarse expression too.

  He was very excited, and she was getting there. Her springy bush had begun to glisten with her body’s moisture in preparation for penetration. Touching her there would be sheer bliss. Or the worst disappointment of his life. He might very well try and fail.

  And so he would not touch her.

  “Touch yourself,” he told her instead.

  “Oh dear. Wherever shall I begin?” Her finger went to the dimple beside her mouth, drawing his attention to the eminently kissable contours of her lips, pouting now, pursing then, a taunting he envisioned lasting years past their platonic honeymoon.

  He swallowed. “Grow accustomed to your body in totality first. Smooth a hand all over. Start with your hair. Remove the pins from your chignon. And please to restrain yourself from flinging them at me.”

  She sighed theatrically. “You know, I thought as much! You can read minds.”

  “I am given to erotic play, not to parlor games.”

  “Oh, but I think you are, sir, for all that we play this game in the dining room.”

  Touché again. And now he did sulk.

  Luckily for him, the fall of her cascading hair hid his sullen expression. How terrible for her to know how much he lusted after her. He was certain she would gloat.

  When the hair wires lay scattered on the floor, she shook her head, a move that sent the loosened strands to bouncing. Next, she lifted the heavy mass off her neck, a move that sent the crowns of her titties to the ceiling.

  He almost ejaculated at the sight.

  Some men liked shapely legs, others round arses; some went right for the central issue—the cunt. Him? He worshipped a woman’s breasts. All kinds, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.

  Hers.

  Tittiestittiestitties.

  Christ, he was in titty heaven. He could easily make a fetish of her titties.

  “Stroke your bosom,” he croaked, masking the grating sound in a cough that hopefully minimized the evidence of his discomfort, and all the time trying to evade her stare. This voyeurism was not all one-sided.

  “Like so?” she asked, cupping the twin mounds.

  And making an astonishingly poor mess of it too.

  He was used to professionalism, and she gave him an amateurish farce.

  Nevertheless, her clumsy handling had him in agony.

  “Fondle the tips,” he directed.

  “Why ever did I not think of that, sir?”

  She twisted the ends and cooed “Oh, for joy” while his cock extended outward an inch at a time, the massive knob at the top copiously leaking precum.

  He had spent years viewing so-called experts at seduction, whores he paid for the privilege of watching their counterfeit orgasms. But not one had gotten to him as his new bride got to him.

  “Now, on to your clitoris.”

  “I do beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I thought you were a follower of free love?”

  “I am!”

  “Did you not discuss human sexuality at all? Or did you only study plants?”

  “At our monthly meetings, we discussed marriage as a form of political repression, of social bondage, of physical oppression, that a woman has the unalienable right to authority over her own body. We focused on important issues such as the elimination of strictly defined gender roles.”

  “What about pleasure?”

  “We were a serious-minded group, sir, not a club of hedonists!”

  He expelled a disgusted sigh. “The clitoris is a nubbin of flesh located at the top of your sex.” He had more experience in its visual examination than did a physician. Doctors rarely had the opportunity to see between a woman’s legs—even during childbirth, the area remained modestly covered—whereas his viewing was limited only to the size of his purse.

  His purse was substantial.

  Consequently, he was a bit of clit connoisseur. Now that she had spread herself, the pussy folds drawn back, he could tell that hers was breathtaking: plump, engorged with blood, and ready for the plucking.

  If only she could locate it.

  She looked down, fumbled about some more between her thighs until he was gnashing his teeth and eventually calling out directions: “Right. No, more to the left. Up more.”

  “By Jove,” she exclaimed. “I think I have it now.”

  How much more could he endure?

  Desperate to climax, he suffered the agonies of hell and continued his instructions. “Touch it, fondle it, experiment. Treat it as your new pet. Only grow accustomed to its wants.”

  “Just so,” she slurred, her consumption of alcohol catching up with her. “You know, from time to time, purely by accident, I did bump into a sensitive spot here in this region, but I thought it was just me, that I was somehow abnormal to find the sensation oddly gratifying.” She gasped. “Oh, my, but this is more than merely oddly gratifying. This is…”

  She began to pant. “This is absolutely…uh…” Ah ah ah. “This is absolutely, positivel—”

  The writer, always so proficient with words, never completed the sentence. On a dull moan, she came, a first time experience for which she could thank him, her new husband, not her erstwhile lover, Robert the Dock Rat.

  Her mouth fell open. She said drunkenly, “None of my free-love associates mentioned this. Why ever do we need men if we women can do this entirely for ourselves?”

  His heart sank. Having his new bride think him obsolete had not been his intent. “Men come in handy for romantic gestures.”

  “Not in my experience,” she grumbled, though good-naturedly, now that she had gotten off.

  “Your experience is limited.”

  “The scandal sheets said differently.” As she began to laugh feverishly, an unhealthy pitch that would only wind her up tight all over again, he dug into his coat pocket, brought forth a disc, and placed it on the floor. Bending stiffly, he pulled the lever and then came just as stiffly back up again.

  “What is that gadget?” she asked, distracted from her worrisome mirth.

  “Wait and see,” he replied.

  The mechanical device he had engineered just for her began to rumble. Then the springs inside the automaton sprang into action, and a whirring commenced.

  “A clay pot,” she cried, her eyes bugged in amazement. “How ever did you make it do that?”

  “If I tell you, it would take all the magic away.”

  “First mind reading and now this. And you said parlor games were not for you.”

  “Stop pursing your lips in disapproval at me, madam, and attend to the pot again.”

  “Something green is growing from the soil. Are those flower stems? They are flower stems! Look at them popping up straight from the pot.”

  “See anything else?”

  Without any self-consciousness whatsoever, she squatted naked at his feet and looked up at him through the wild fall of her hair. “Buds. Blue buds.”

  In her curiosity, she widened her knees until he could see her all. “Goodness! The tiny petals are opening.” A hand went to her peaked breast and rubbed. “How very beautiful.”

  “Yes, very beautiful. Just like
you, Mrs. Bowdoin. Please consider this your wedding bouquet. You refused to carry one today, so here are veronicas, your namesake flower.”

  Her wide-eyed gaze narrowed up at his face, a priceless sign of her foul humor that he nearly missed as his own eyes were well occupied elsewhere.

  “What an incredibly romantic gesture, sir.”

  “Exactly,” he said smug as can be. “I believe you lose this round of our debate, madam.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Inside the rich blue velvet hangings that enclosed an enormous Queen Anne bed, Veronica yawned and stretched, and generally speaking, felt wonderful, better than she had in weeks.

  Relaxed and at ease, she picked up the satin quilt of the same intense shade of blue as the overhead drapery and looked downward, a languid glance to her chest.

  Someone had installed her in a cream-toned silk nightgown.

  Who, she wondered. Then she slowly pulled the covers back up to her chin again.

  Last evening she had been tipsy—all right, completely fuddled—and so she had no notion of how she had arrived at this veronica blue bedchamber. Had she somehow managed to make the journey under her own locomotion?

  Unlikely, given the quantity of spirits she must have consumed.

  Her spouse would not have swung her up into his elegant arms, à la manly bridegroom, and carried her the distance. Nor would he have disrobed her and then dressed her for bed. Not because he was incapable of doing so, but because her husband seemed disinclined to touch her.

  Except, of course, if she were hemorrhaging.

  This morning, she would not blame herself. Not about the miscarriage, not about what was it about her that put men off. Perhaps the blame did not reside with her. Perhaps, she had miscarried just because. And perhaps, Mr. Bowdoin refused to touch her because he was…was…

  Indifferent to her feminine sex.

  That was it! He very well might prefer members of his own gender. She could hardly fault him there, as she preferred members of his gender too.

  The outward markings were all there. Though he was not effeminate, he was terribly refined, fashionably clad, urbanely witty, worldly, and sophisticated—as were many males of a certain inclination. Plus, he had volunteered to take her to a dressmaker’s shop. What further indication did she need of his sexual orientation?