Blooming: Veronica
Page 20
Pulling himself together, he grunted, “This next time will have you screaming in ecstasy—”
She hushed his declaration of devotion with a finger. “Save your strength. I know you love me. The question is in the degree. I need you to love me enough to never doubt my love for you in return.”
“How?” he pleaded.
“By telling me. You can do it. I know that you can. You can do anything. Except, perhaps fuck me again.”
Using his much stronger upper body, he switched their positions so she could ride him. A compromise, just as living was often a compromise.
No, more than a compromise. As he had exchanged a straight walk for a limp in the name of the printed word, he now exchanged his show of strength for the reality of his love for her.
He looked up weakly into her eyes. If he lived to a hundred, an unlikely event given his present agony, he would never tire of looking at her. “Have no fear—I can fuck you. I want to fuck you. But my hip throbs like a snaggletoothed bitch. I use a cane,” he confessed.
“A walking stick,” she corrected.
“No, a cane,” he said definitely…defiantly…but no longer defensively. “A stylish accoutrement, a handy invention, but a cane nevertheless,” he said, admitting to—no, accepting—a war injury that often left him weak. “I cannot do another rape scenario.”
“But I can,” she said brightly and lowered herself on top of his cock.
He cupped her heavy breasts as she rode him into a shouted climax, his first noisy release.
“I love you, Veronica.”
Exhaustion prevented him from saying more.
Chapter Thirty-two
Veronica closed the book on her lap with a satisfying kerthump of its hard cover, a fancy bound first edition that must have cost her publisher a pretty bundle to produce. Her large audience had giggled throughout the reading and now applauded the conclusion of her story, not an excerpt this time but the entire fantastical tale, start to finish, without an utterance of profanity to be found anywhere between its pages.
She leaned forward until she sat at the edge her seat. “Well, children, now tell me, how did you like Sonya, the Automaton?”
She made no attempt to hide her eagerness. She genuinely wished to know what the orphans at Pond Boy’s Asylum thought.
Way in the back, a little dark-haired fellow, about nine years of age or so, spoke up first. “I like that the boy inventor had a cane, just like me.”
She nodded. “And so he did, proving boys with canes can do anything they set their minds to.” She smiled into his bad-tempered scowl.
No doubt the lad was thinking she was off her tree for believing such a thing, but she had proof.
She beckoned her proof forward.
Talbot stepped to the forefront of the group, jauntily twirling his red-handled cane, Ruby. “Tell me your name, son,” he called to the dark-haired boy way in the back.
“John Smith,” the lad piped up, his gaze screwed into a cranky glare, his voice rumbling like disagreeable thunder.
Talbot whispered into her ear. “That boy is trouble, madam.”
She sighed. “I like trouble, sir. He is the one. I want him.”
Straightening up, her husband crooked his finger at the boy. “Come here to us, John Smith.”
Plowing through the throng of children seated cross-legged on the orphanage floor, his swiping cane clearing him a wide swath of a path, the boy came to a belligerent stop before them. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, sir and ma’am. Not a blazin’ thing. Alls I did was answer your question. If you objected to an honest answer, you never shoulda asked.”
Veronica held out her hand. “What a lovely spring day it is, John. Will you come outside for a walk with us?”
The boy scowled some more. “I walk slow and crooked.”
“Good. So do I, John,” Talbot replied and led the way out the door.
In the gardens, they formed a little circle, and Veronica began the conversation. “Would you like to come home with Mr. Bowdoin and myself, John?”
“Why?” the lad asked suspiciously.
“Because I want a little boy just like you to love. I would like us to be a family. What do you say?”
“For how long?”
“A family is forever. I would like that forever with you, if that is what you would like too.”
John swatted a blade of grass with his cane. “Other orphans get taken away, sometimes for a day, other times for a week, once in a while they never return. They stay with their new mama and papa. But no one ever picked me before.”
“Son,” Talbot began, “the pick here is up to you. Why not give us a try? Mrs. Bowdoin and I would very much like to have a son just like you.”
“Let me think on it a spell. Wait right here. I need to go clear this with the folks inside.”
“You do that, John,” said Talbot, as patiently as she had ever seen him. “And if you come back, you will find us here waiting for you.”
Little John limped toward the orphanage, looking back over his shoulder at them from the door. “I like books. Do you have books in your house?”
“A library full,” Veronica told him. “Indeed, I write children’s stories. And if you like, you can help me. Give me ideas on how boys your age think.”
“Tarnation! In that case, hell yeah. I reckon I can try you out.” And with that firm commitment, off he went into the children’s home, with them looking after them.
“Are you sure you can love that little brat, my darling?”
Veronica beamed at her husband. “As sure as I am of loving you.”
“Well, all right, then. And why, with our crooked walks, anyone might mistake us for father and son.”
She patted the conceited man’s hand. “So long as we tell everyone our boy inherited his love of books from us both.”
Loose Id Titles by Louisa Trent
Bittersweet
Bring It
Captive
Courtesan
Icon
Islet Abandoned
On Moorstead
Sex Stings
Some Rough-Edge Smoothin'
Tempest
The Acquisition
The Pick Up Line
Touch Me
* * *
The BLOOMING Stories
Lilac
Rose
Thyme
Veronica
* * *
The TAINTED LOVE Stories
Tainted Love
Bleeding Love
Bad Love
* * *
EROTIC INTERLUDES
(featuring characters from the Tainted Love stories)
A Christmas Coming
Three on the Fourth
Louisa Trent
I am a writer raised in a family of storytellers. My earliest and fondest memory is of my Irish Nana relating a mystical story of a man looking in a window upon a beautiful lady whose long silvery hair swept the floor as she walked. With a simple telling, my grandmother drew me into her tale. A man. A woman. A forbidden love that wouldn't die. From opening word to shivery conclusion, I lived that story with her. Many years later, I'm still awed by the spell of the fantasy world she created with only the dip and swell of her voice.
There's power in words. Hope in love stories. Joy in a happy ending. I'm proud to carry on my family's storytelling tradition.
Visit Louisa on the Web at www.louisatrent.com.