I Love It: 10 Intense Stories to Keep the Passion Alive (Shameless Book Bundles 6)

by Saffron Daughter

  “Are you a bank robber?” Katie blurted out.

  “No. The truth is I’m unemployed, haven’t been able to work since… Ben.” Harland replied.

  “What are you doing with all this money?”

  “Nothing anymore. It’s yours.” Harland said in a matter of fact tone.

  “I can’t take this… it must be the most cash outside of the banks in the entire country!”

  “Katie, in only a few minutes, I’m going to be walking through that door” Harland pointed “and there’s a real possibility that I might not be coming back. I realise that now, but I need you to remember your promise. Remember it, Katie! This money will make things easier. You don’t need to work in a bookstore, you can go anywhere in the country and start a new life.”

  “Harland that’s the bathroom door! How spicy were those chicken wings? None of this makes any sense! Don’t leave! Stay with me!”

  “I can’t, Katie! I want to, believe me, but it is out of my control. If I can come back, I should only be gone a minute or two.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about now? This is crazy!”

  Harland looked at his watch. “Goodbye, Katie West. Remember, you are loved. Remember your promise.”

  Harland kissed her forehead, then walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Katie sat with her mouth open and heard a popping sound. Was that in her head, or did it come from the bathroom? Katie remained seated for a few minutes, but heard nothing else.

  Katie glanced at the briefcase and shut it before standing up and walking to the bathroom door.

  “Harland?” Katie knocked. No answer. “Are you ok?” No answer.

  Katie returned to the table, touched the briefcase then walked to the bathroom door again.

  “Harland?” Nothing.

  “Harland, I’m coming in!” Katie turned the handle and pushed the door, which swung open with silent ease. Harland was not having further problems with the spicy chicken wings, he was not on or in front of the toilet. Katie drew back the curtain that partially obscured her view of the bathtub. He wasn’t standing in the bathtub like some kind of maniac. There was really nowhere else to look.

  The window was open.

  “No, Harland, NO!” Katie rushed over, terrified to think of what she might see. Was he on the ledge, or had he jumped already?

  “You promised ME!” she yelled, leaning out. Harland was not on the ledge. Looking down, there were no crowds of bystanders around a bloody mess. A couple people looked up when they heard her, but soon looked back to whatever they had been doing beforehand.

  Katie backed away from the window, all the way out of the bathroom and back into the room. Harland’s room. This just wasn’t possible. People don’t disappear into thin air, leaving enough money to live in luxury for the rest of one’s life.

  Think, Katie, what did he say?

  “He said… it didn’t make any sense! He said if he could come back he would only be gone a couple of minutes!”

  Katie sat down heavily at the table again, trying to make sense of it all. Sense could not be made. Every few minutes she opened the briefcase, looked at the money and then closed it again. It was still there, every time.

  The minutes stretched out to an hour before Katie broke down and wept. She just did not understand how something like this could happen. He said…

  A tentative knock rapped at the door and Katie snapped her head up from where it had been buried in her hands. Wiping her eyes she quickly deposited the briefcase back under the bed before straightening herself out in front of the mirror. She still looked like she had been crying.

  Opening the door she saw a tall man in an ill-fitting suit, topped off by a bowler hat. The man appeared to have been through hell within the past several weeks with cuts, bruises and swelling distorting his face. His face! Harland’s face!

  Katie stepped forward into his arms and buried her face into his chest.

  “I’ve got some explaining to do.” He said.

  ###

  About the Author

  Scarlett Skyes

  ALL MY TITLES NOW AVAILABLE VIA KINDLE UNLIMITED!

  Please visit my website and sign up for my newsletter for a free and instant download of subscriber-exclusive stories! Link below.

  http://www.scarlettskyes.com/?page_id=27

  Although trained as a nurse I am now able to pursue writing as a full-time career thanks to a supportive partner who is perfect aside from needing to realise I don't necessarily want to do *everything* that I write about.

  I live waaaay down under but I have also lived in the UK for a period of time and used the opportunity to travel into continental Europe as much as possible. I hope to return one day!

  Also from Scarlett Skyes

  EXCLUSIVE FREE STORY***Everything Can Be Bought: Meet Your New Daddy***EXCLUSIVE FREE STORY

  Here are a few facts about Olivia Hull. She is having dinner in an expensive restaurant for the first time with her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend, Eric Lockwood. She is wearing expensive clothes and jewelry for the first time. Her newly deflowered pussy is absolutely full of Eric’s semen. To find out how she got here, read this story, to find out what happened next read Everything Can Be Bought 1: Indecent

  Rush of Rebe

  llion – E. K. Sabins

  “What's more innocent than a lamb? Sing ninety-nine and ninety!” Gideon Stearns sang in a chesty baritone, encouraged more than a little bit by the ale he’d had at the public house on his way home. Without missing a beat, he went on, “What is meaner than woman kind? And who is the weaver's bonny!”

  A few of the men on the street seemed to be in a similar spirit, but it was a bit early for public displays of drunkenness, even in Boston. Gideon crossed paths with a particularly dour looking older woman, dressed head to toe in black. She flashed him a disapproving look and pointedly walked around him on the narrow walkway. It only prompted him to burst into another verse, more boisterous than before.

  “A babe's more innocent than a lamb, sing ninety-nine and ninety! And the devil is meaner than woman kind, and I am the weaver's bonny!" He half-sang and half-bellowed, his glee absolutely overflowing in his voice. The drink and seasonal cheer gave him excuses, but it was far from the origin of his exuberant mood.

  “Get in here, you clod!” Came a familiar female voice from the door Gideon had wandered to stand in front of, singing loudly. He wheeled and obliged her with a beaming smile upon his still darkly smudged face.

  “Oh, Nell, you always look after me!” He sighed contentedly as she ushered him inside and shut the door behind him. The house had only a few lamps lit inside, and the woman of the house, Cornelia Finche, was immaculately made-up.

  “Of course I do, you certainly don’t look after yourself, and you get in far too much trouble for that wife of yours.” She leaned in and kissed him softly on the cheek, proper but familiar. He returned her affections with a sloppily passionate kiss on her perfectly painted mouth. “How is Amity, by the by, is her constitution adapting to the colony yet?”

  “Nell, please, I don’t come see you so that I can talk about my wife.”

  “Sometimes you don’t come to see me at all!” Cornelia pouted, pulling herself from his arms which were moving to encircle her waist.

  “God’s teeth, woman, are you still angry that I was absent last Tuesday?”

  “Of course!” She fumed, fire flashing in her eyes.

  “I told you that I had good reason!”

  “And what is it that you tell Amity all the times that you’re with me?”

  “She never asks, she trusts me!”

  “Well, she shouldn’t, clearly!” The flickering lamplight glimmered off the carefully pinned locks of Cornelia’s hair, a fact he took in while she was fuming. She was dressed to the nines and he doubted she’d gone to all the trouble just to argue.

  Gideon reached out and planted his hands firmly on her waist and pulled her body close against his.

  “Sh
hh, leman, you know you have my heart. What is one night when you have that?”

  “Oh, Gideon, you have no idea what it is like! I wish you would just tell me who she is and do me the courtesy of being honest.”

  “Cornelia, I have been honest. ‘Pon my faith, there is no one but you.”

  “Then where were you?! Tuesday wasn’t the only time. And you’ve been late more than once!”

  “Now tis done, it won’t matter that you know.”

  “What is done? Some kind of business deal?”

  “Of a sort. Give me a kiss, and take that sullen look from your face and I will tell you everything.”

  “You promise?”

  “Upon my honor.” He says quietly in a reassuring tone, a soft smile rising to his lips. Cornelia sighs, then slowly leans in and kisses him lightly.

  “Make yourself comfortable, I’ll get us both some wine.”

  “Whatever you like, dear.” His hands find hers and squeeze them reassuringly. Gideon kissed her gently on the forehead and she disappeared into the kitchen. He removed his linen coat and draped it over his forearm as he turned to ascend the stairs to her bedroom.

  He’d tread upon that path so many times since his affair with Cornelia had begun three years ago. In all that time he never dreamt that he’d be telling her something that, arguably, made her part of a treasonous plot to betray the King. Thinking of it in those terms sent a cold pang through his guts, and prompted him to think twice about telling her the truth. He lay his coat down across the footboard of her bed and wracked his brain trying to come up with another explanation for why he’d been missing their trysts.

  Hastily, he discarded his beaver skin tri-corner hat on the top of her vanity and glanced around the room. He’d been here plenty of times before, but it seemed like Nell was always changing one little thing or another. This time he noticed that she’d gotten a bigger looking glass and he wondered briefly at what it likely cost him, and the expense of keeping two frivolously minded women well-baubled.

  Gideon wasn’t much for creativity, and in a few moments when his mistress’ tread fell lightly upon the narrow stairs he resigned himself to making the woman he loved a party to treason.

  He took a seat on the bed and waited for her to come and join him. She did, and handed him a glass of wine before she flustered slightly and turned to him.

  “I want you to know that I still love you, no matter what it is you’ve gone and gotten yourself wrapped up in,” she blurted out anxiously. He chuckled lightly and took the fine crystal cup she offered.

  “You worry too much, Nell.” He sipped at the deep red wine inside and nodded appreciatively.

  “And you don’t worry enough. Now. Out with it.” She commanded, her normal stoicism returning to her countenance.

  “I’ve been with some other business men and gentlemen, planning to make a decisive statement to the King about the Tea Act.”

  “God's mercy, what have you signed!?”

  “Nothing, Nell.”

  “What sort of cracked, drunken, scheme have you been cooking up down at the ale-house, Gideon? Do you and your friends even think about what might happen to you?”

  “Why, Nell, is that concern I hear?” He teased her in a good-natured tone.

  “Concern for my lodgings!” She sniped, her temper flaring again.

  “Well then cease your worries, woman. I’ve been out tonight seeing to it that the Tea Act won’t be forcing you to move to a less fashionable address.”

  “Is that all you think I care about? Gideon, if they figure you out they’ll lock you up, or worse!”

  “They’d have to lock up a lot of us, darling, I hardly acted alone. There were...possibly thousands of men at the meeting Mr. Adams had.”

  “And you didn’t sign anything?”

  “No, Nell. You worry too much.”

  “Once you’ve signed some declaration there’s no going back Gideon, you’ll be a traitor.”

  “I’m sure according to someone I am already. You know as well as I that I wouldn’t make half of what I do if I didn’t occasionally buy some bohea of questionable origin.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it so? The tea is smuggled in from the East Indies by the Dutch.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s just as illegal as any sort of petition. Probably worse, because it’s hitting the crown in the purse, which counts more than anything else.”

  “Why don’t you just pay the tax, Gideon? I could move, you could hold back on building your new house for a few years. You’d still have enough money back to wear lace and all the other trappings of wealth without violating the sumptuary laws.”

  “Because of the principle of the thing, Nell! If we’re not allowed representatives in Parliament, then according to the law Parliament can’t tax us. And telling us we must buy tea imported by the British East India Company might as well be a tax with how cheap the Dutch can sell it. I’m a businessman, I should be allowed to conduct business the way I want to!”

  “King be damned, crown be damned, country be damned?”

  “--Perhaps, yes!” Gideon sputtered, not used to having his reasoning so soundly questioned. He fumed silently and hid his anger by drinking deeply from his wine glass and polishing it off. He looked back up at Cornelia and was taken aback to see a sly smile dancing across her lips.

  “You’re so ruthless!” She purred, setting her half-full glass aside and pulling Gideon’s empty glass from his hand. “Is there anything that you’d let stand in the way of your pocketbook?”

  Gideon laughed deeply at his own folly, she’d had him going for a moment there.

  “I suppose not.”

  “Not even me?”

  “Ah, but you never do. You’ve almost as good a mind for business as I do.”

  “Better, probably.” Cornelia said in a sultry tone as she drew close, covering Gideon’s mouth with kisses.

  The two tumbled back onto the bed, limbs intertwining as hands roamed over clothing covered flesh. They lingered in their embrace, tasting and touching each other eagerly. For a moment they parted and Cornelia smiled.

  “What’s all this, then?” She asked of the strange dark smudges on Gideon’s face.

  “It’s leftover from my disguise.”

  “What in God’s creation were you disguised as?”

  “One of those Mohawk braves. Some of the men had truly elaborate costumes. They wanted to make sure that the Townshend government understands that we’re acting together as Americans.”

  “You and the other gentlemen you drink with?”

  “And others.” He put his hands up defensively. “You make it seem like some pisspot idea we dreamed up as a lark.”

  “I suppose I’ll just have to trust you that it wasn’t.”

  “Nell, you worry too much.”

  “Why don’t you let me decide how much I get to worry, leman?”

  “As you wish, love, but I assure you it shall be more than is necessary.” He teased, pulling at the hooks that held her stomacher in place in an effort to begin undressing her.

  Dutifully Cornelia set her fingers to work undoing the fastenings on her bodice and stays, eager to expose her bosom to his touch. Gideon’s own fingers were quickly undoing the buttons on his waistcoat. He kicked his shoes off onto the floor and moved to cover his lover’s body with his own.

  Soon her stomacher lay discarded on the floor, her bodice and stays lay open around her chest. She puts her arms up passively above her head and lets Gideon slowly untie the narrow ribbon tying the neck of her undergown.

  Cornelia closed her eyes, lost in the sensual sensations of a moment of pleasure shared with her lover. She moaned low and soft, and her hips rolled slightly underneath Gideon on the bed. As soon as the neck of her gown was undone he pulled it open to eagerly get his hands on the soft, supple, flesh of her lovely breasts.

  No matter how long he lived, Gideon thought, he would never understand how women like Cornelia m
anaged to conceal their swelling breasts beneath the stays they all wore. He wasn’t sure if it was more of a credit to the strength of the little garment, or to the silent endurance of the ladies. It always left him secretly longing for a time when fashion would cycle ‘round to a more revealing style.

  He fell upon the soft, sweet, flesh of Cornelia’s bosom with a particular relish. His rebellious activities this evening had filled him with a zeal that reminded him of the enthusiasm of the first few years of his youth. And much like in those lusty days, he didn’t think that drink alone was enough to sate his appetites. He’d need a bit of that venerable monosyllable before he would be calm enough to sleep.

  At the moment, however, his hands were on Cornelia’s breasts, massaging them eagerly and making her squirm and moan underneath him.

  Her breath was coming hot and fast as Gideon’s touch aroused her lust.

  As much as Cornelia tried her best to remain stoic and immune to any sort of childish fancies, she couldn’t help the passion that Gideon’s touch aroused in her. It made her head swim whenever he caressed her. She reached her arms down and pulled at his shoulders, guiding him back into her embrace and covering his mouth in kisses.

  They lay, locked in the pleasure of each other’s arms until Cornelia began to hunger for the touch of his flesh, and started to tug at the linen waistcoat and undershirt he still wore. He chuckled lightly and obliged her lustily wandering fingers by shedding the clothing from his upper body.

  As soon as his torso was exposed Cornelia was running her smooth hands across it’s muscled expanse. She relished the feeling of the chestnut brown hair dappled over the hot flesh of his chest.

  Quickly she sat up and covered his mouth with hers, pressing her tongue into his mouth and opening it up. She pressed the bare skin of her breasts against the warm flesh of his chest and pulled herself tight against his body.