It Stings So Sweet (7 page)

“Will you wear my ring again?”

“Yes,” I say, this
time from somewhere deeper than where I’ve found the answer before.

He takes it and slides
the glowing circle of gold back onto my finger, brushing his cheek against mine, the stubble of his
beard prickly against my skin. “I love you,” he murmurs.

I die a little watching him roll up
his shirtsleeves before he picks the belt back up.

“And I love you, Jonathan. I love you, I
love you, I love you.”

I don’t know how many times I say it, even when the belt slams down
on my tender flesh. The words dissolve into cries of pain as he swings his arm back and lashes me again
and again. I don’t know how long he can do it. Each stroke becomes harder than the last. He’s testing
me. Testing himself.

It isn’t until I’m howling, gripping the table in pain, shifting on legs
that no longer seem strong enough to hold me, that he stops to wipe sweat from his brow. “I think
you’ve had enough.”

Inconceivably, I moan in protest. “No . . . no . . . you’re not hitting
me with your full strength.”

He stills behind me. “I don’t need to.”

“I want you to. Please
 . . . please . . . hit me harder.” What drives this fit of masochism I cannot say, except that
I am desperate now to prove to him that he cannot break me. Frantic. So frantic that if he doesn’t
do it, I think I’ll scream.

The next moment, all my panic is obliterated in a flash of red-hot
pain. My husband is stronger than I knew, and the next stroke of his belt hisses through the air.
I hear him grunt with the effort, but the impact no longer registers as pain at all. A rush of euphoria
runs through my blood, like a splash of cherry syrup. It stings so sweet that I’m in a place now
beyond pain.

Finally, Jonathan drops the belt. “My arm is starting to tire.”

I scarcely
hear him anymore as he strips the clothes from my oversexed body.

I do nothing to stop him
or help him. I do nothing but stand there, letting him peel back every layer of clothing until I’m standing
naked in my own dining room, palms flat on the table. When he nudges my knees apart to enter
me, I close my eyes and lose all sense of time and place.

His hands clamp down on either side
of my hips, pumping my body in an exquisite rhythm. Then his thick, muscled arm slips over mine,
his fingers twining with mine in a fierce grip. Something warm, something wet is trailing down my back
and I realize it’s his tongue. Licking me. Tasting me. Kissing my shoulders and the slope of my spine.
The hair of his abdomen scratches the tender inflamed skin of my bottom as he grinds into my body.

“I want you,” Jonathan murmurs behind my ear.

“You have me.”

“Not yet, I don’t.”

He shoves aside plates and bowls, which clatter to the floor.

“Jonathan!” I cry, shaken
from my reverie.

He withdraws, turning me to face him and he’s smiling. “You don’t care about
society, but you care about the place settings?”

I glance down at the broken shards of dishes
and crystal, then back up at the sharp blue eyes of a man who loves me, and I say, “No. No, I don’t
care.”

I knock a saucer to the floor, utterly indifferent to its fate.

He grins. Then
Jonathan sweeps the rest of the table clean, tablecloth and all.

The noise is cacophonous,
an irrevocable crash that shatters everything we’ve known.

Two hands on my waist, he gingerly
lifts me up onto the table. “It seems sturdy enough,” Jonathan says, crawling atop me. “And I suspect
it’s about to become a very treasured family heirloom with a great deal of sentimental value, given
that this is where I intend to conceive our child.”

Joy forces me to gasp and my eyes frantically
search his for any wavering, any sign of doubt. “Do you mean it?”

By way of answer he presses
me down to the table with his weight, he kisses my mouth, my nose, my cheeks, my chin. I kiss him
back, like a woman dying of thirst, drinking him in. My hand on his cheek, his fingers tangled in my
hair, our noses pressed together, not a hairsbreadth between us. I cannot get enough of the way his
mouth tastes. We kiss and kiss.

It’s some kind of rapturous insanity we’re caught in now, and
I splutter with laughter every time he lets me take a breath. Then he is laughing, too. We are filled
with a mad joy.

I throw my head back, my hair in a wild tangle on the table behind me, my throat
quivering and bare, and he buries his head there, nuzzling against me with a gentleness that is
completely at odds with the desperate clutch of his hands.

“I love you,” I say, gripping his
hair. “I need you to know it.”

He smiles and takes deep breaths, like he has been delivered
from some manner of drowning. I reach for his shirt, yanking it free, deftly opening the buttons and
popping them when they won’t come free. I use my feet to help him ease his pants down, and then he
positions himself over me.

It takes only the nudge of his swollen erection at the entrance
to my defenseless sex to start me careening wildly towards the edge. And when he pushes inside me, this
time inch by slow inch, I exhale with a long shuddering sound of pent-up desire. “Jonathan . . .”
I murmur, a warning.

It doesn’t deter him. Pulling my leg up over his hip, he hits bottom and
draws out again, the slide of his engorged cock through the velvet of my insides making the edges
of the whole world blur. “Jonathan . . . Jonathan,” I cry again, pushing against his chest, trying
to stop it, even though it is the thing I want most.

There is nothing either of us can do or
say to keep me from pleasure. “Do it, Nora.”

With his permission, the flutter in my abdomen
opens into a soaring expanse of ecstasy. I come. I scream. I lock my knees around his waist, pulling
him into me, battering myself against his body as if swept up in a storm. The chandelier overhead
blinds me with its brilliance, and I have a pure, white climax in which the world goes silent.

I’m the earth to his plow, unbreakable, depthless, enduring anything. I writhe, my insides tumbling
over one another as I squeeze him inside. He finds a rocking pace that I think he cannot possibly
maintain. His arms strain, muscles bulging. The cords of his neck are visible as sweat trickles
down between us. He’s a man possessed, his thighs flexing, his body thrusting into me. Though my whole
body vibrates with the impact, I settle into it, a honeyed sweetness making me languid beneath
him.

The doorbell rings.

I don’t care. It jars Jonathan, but only for a moment, because
I kiss him, biting down softly, inhaling his breath, tasting his sweat. There is no one and nothing
else in the world. He continues to piston down into me and a smooth answering heat coils inside. I
tingle from the tips of my ears, to my curled toes. It doesn’t seem possible that I could be so aroused
again, so swiftly, but we’re both close now.

It’s going to happen again. I know it. When I’m
under him, when his hands are on my body, I am insatiable. I will never stop coming. Our hands clasp
together, fingers straining as Jonathan’s excitement makes him swell and throb inside my pussy. I
whimper as the pleasure sweeps over me, as I’m utterly at its mercy, whispering, “Jonathan, give me
a baby.”

That’s what he needs. A sound catches at the back of his throat. He convulses, eyes
half-closed, and makes a guttural cry as his seed pulses up into me. It’s the feel of it, the rush
of warm fluid from his body into mine that opens my womb for him and sends me into oblivion.

He pumps his hips more slowly now, a new spurt of seed with each thrust. The cream pools deep inside
me, so warm and filling. And I flush with the pleasure of knowing that in a few months, it will make
my belly swell.

I’m not sure which of us starts laughing first, but he laughs louder and I
love the sound of it. His forehead touches mine, and we are tangled together in a heap. The doorbell
rings again, and I wipe the sweat from his face with my fingertips, kissing him. “You know who that
is.”

“Your father, I expect,” Jonathan says, glancing at the empty foyer. The whole house is
silent, as if it had been listening. “I think the doorman’s too afraid to answer it.”

“I can’t
blame him,” I say.

Jonathan strokes my hair, lips at my temple, rolling me over so that I’m
cushioned against him. “I didn’t realize this table is so very hard on your back,” he says, absurdly
rubbing my spine, as if
that
were the sorest part of me.

“I don’t mind,” I say, burrowing beneath
his arm. “I have a special fondness for this table now. You’re teaching me to appreciate things
I’ve taken for granted.”

A clang sounds out. It’s the door knocker. Three angry taps.

My father is not a man used to being kept waiting.

“Do you want me to answer it?” Jonathan asks,
one eyebrow raised.

“No. I don’t want to see him. I don’t have anything to say to him.”

“Oh, but I have a thing or two to say to your father,” Jonathan says, inhaling the scent of my hair.
“Maybe it can wait, though. I’ll send him a telegram from our summer house.”

I imagine my father
twisting his mustache in fury, red-faced and enraged. Receiving a telegram from Jonathan might
well cause him to spontaneously combust. I am painfully curious. “What would you say?”

Jonathan’s
hand runs sinuously over the curve of my hip. “Most of what I’d like to say to him isn’t suitable
for a telegram, but I can think of at least two words:
I quit.
”

When I laugh, he nips at my
earlobe, stroking me tenderly, kissing the supple peak of each breast in homage. Then he sits up and
fastens his pants, threading the belt around his waist. I know I’ll never be able to watch him fasten
a belt again without remembering this day.

“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” Jonathan asks.

“I don’t think I can. I’m sore to the bone.”

He looks vexed until he sees me smile, then
admits, “I worked hard to make you that way. And I’d like to look at you naked all day. But, I don’t
think they’ll let you on the train unless you’re wearing at least a frock. You are looking forward
to our summer together, aren’t you?”

“But what if I can’t move?”

“We’ll do it together.”
His arm slips beneath the small of my back, and he scoops me up. He helps me dress, taking special
care fastening my gown, his mouth pressed to the sweat-damp nape of my neck.

“Careful of the
glass,” he says, stooping to find my shoes.

More knocking comes at the front door. I think
I also hear my father’s muffled shout.

Slipping his jacket on, and leaving his tie askew at
the open collar of his shirt, Jonathan retrieves his hat and suitcase. I put on my shoes, preparing
for the confrontation with my father. But Jonathan twirls me to him and says, “We have a back door,
you know, as long as Dolly and the servants aren’t cowering in it.”

Sputtering with something
akin to delight, I say, “We can’t just slip out the back door and leave this mess behind!”

“Why not?” Jonathan asks, in an echo of my earlier question.

“And just drive off in the Bentley
in a cloud of dust like a gangster and his gun moll?”

“Why not?” he asks again, holding his
hand out to me. “Will you come with me, Mrs. Richardson?”

“Yes,” I say, breathlessly, lacing
my fingers through his. “Yes, I will.”

when i’m bad i’m better

CHAPTER

One

Clara

“Are you having an affair with him?” asks the
stranger as he stoops to light my cigarette.

In the chaos of the party it would be easy to
ignore him. After all, there has already been a drunken fistfight and a couple caught having sex on
the desktop in the parlor. Now the ragtime piano player is hammering at the keys with feigned gaiety
while the guests talk too loudly, clinking their glasses of
illegal liquor as if to banish the unpleasantness.

If I want to turn my back on the handsome and impertinent stranger, no one would blame me, but
I’m intrigued. “Am I having an affair? That’s not the kind of question someone normally asks before
a formal introduction.”

The stranger smirks and snaps his lighter shut. “You don’t need an
introduction. Everybody who reads the scandal sheets knows who you are. Clara Cartwright. Box Office
Gold.”

“Then you have me at a disadvantage. I didn’t catch your name, Mr.—”

“Vanderberg,”
he says. “Leo Vanderberg.”

It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. “German?”

“Dutch,”
he says quickly, exhaling a long ribbon of smoke from the corner of his mouth.

I like his mouth.
Firm lips beneath a shadow of stubble he ought to have shaved for this party. Lips that part in
a narrow expression of vague amusement at our obvious instant attraction. I feel it, too. The inexplicable
tug between us. “Well, Mr. Vanderberg, exactly who do you think I’m having an affair with?”

He grins, leaning against the wood-paneled wall, priceless artwork framing his square shoulders. He
holds an icy glass of bourbon at a precarious angle, and yet his hand is steady. Then his eyes motion
to the host of the party. “I want to know if you’re sleeping with Big Teddy Morgan. He’s the fat
cat throwing this bash in your honor, isn’t he?”

“This party is for the
studio . . .
or didn’t
you read the invitation?”

His heated gaze slips over my silver sequined gown in apparent appreciation
of the way it hugs my hips. “Maybe I don’t need an invitation.”

He’s bold but I’ve managed
bold men since I was fourteen. I let the smoke at the long end of my cigarette holder encircle my head
like a wreath, then turn to my best angle to give him a better view. “Do you always go where you’re
not wanted?”

He smiles with those dark, dangerous eyes. “Oh, I’m wanted wherever I go . . .”

This makes me laugh. “That’s a good line. I should steal it for my movies . . .”

“Do they
let you write your own lines now?”

“Nobody
lets
me do anything, Mr. Vanderberg. I’ve scraped
and clawed for everything I’ve got.”

He nods, sipping from his crystal glass and I see that
he’s not wearing a wedding ring. There’s a lean hungry look about him from the shine of his neatly
barbered Valentino-style hair to his polished wing-tip shoes.

“So are you?” he asks. “Having
an affair with Teddy Morgan, I mean?”

I don’t see the point in denying it. “What’s it to you
if I am?”

He leans in, close and predatory. I catch a whiff of the spicy scent of his aftershave.
“I like to know the field before I make a battle plan. I like to know who I’m up against.”

He’s so sure of himself that I have to knock him down a peg or two. “I’m a fight you can’t win, I’m
afraid.”

He glances over at my sugar daddy. “Why? Are you in love with him?”

“I don’t
fall in love, Mr. Vanderberg. When I take a man to bed, it’s got everything to do with the size of his
bank account and what he’s got between his legs.”

I say it to shock him. Possibly to offend
him. But he just kicks up a brow in wry amusement, the sparkle of the chandeliers overhead reflected
in his eyes. The ritzy glitter and glam of this party is getting to me and if he asks me to dance,
I decide that I’ll say yes.

But before he can, our host ambles over and throws one meaty arm
around my waist. I don’t mind terribly; Big Teddy is just one more man in a long string of them who
thought they were using me, and he’s not the worst of them by far. “Clara, I see you’ve run into our
resident war hero! This is Leo Vanderberg. Flying ace.”

I’ve met plenty of soldiers before
but never a genuine flying ace. That explains the boldness. It takes a special kind of man to brave
impossible heights in nothing but a little box. And that’s to say nothing of the kind of man who can
shoot another person out of the sky. I look at Mr. Vanderberg with a trifle more wariness than before,
then extend my hand as if we hadn’t already been introduced. “How nice to meet you, Mr. Vanderberg.”

The aviator takes my hand. He kisses it. His lips linger too long. “Call me Leo.”

Big Teddy
doesn’t seem to notice the spark that crackles between us. “So, how many German aircraft did you
shoot down in the Great War, Leo? Seven?”

“Seventeen,” Leo murmurs.

I blow a perfect ring
of smoke. “Goodness! And what does a flying ace like you do with himself now that the war is over?”

“I’m a test pilot,” Leo replies, his gaze steady on me. “I take the finest pieces of equipment
available and push them as far as they’ll go.”

Oh, my. Now I know where I’ve heard his name
before. He’s not the
most
famous American aviator . . . but just about.

Big Teddy snorts. “Sometimes
you push too far, Leo. You wrecked the last plane my engineers designed. You may have walked
away with your life, but you lost your chance to make that first transatlantic flight. You let Lucky
Lindy beat you to it and it serves you right.”

The mood abruptly changes and Leo sets his jaw.
“Lucky Fucking Lindy.”

His bitterness amuses me, and I can’t resist getting in a dig. “It usually
is
the rich or lucky who get to do the fucking.”

Teddy Morgan roars with laughter, yanking
me tight against his fleshy side. The big man pawing at me is a collector. He collects priceless items
and unusual people. A silent screen starlet. A war hero. It makes his parties interesting. But he
also expects us all to be at his beck and call. “I’ve got a new plane for you, Leo. She’s state of
the art. A masterpiece.”

“I heard you haven’t been able to get her off the ground,” Leo replies
coolly.

“That’s where you come in. This plane is an advance . . . we’ll make aviation history
if you can get her into the air.”

Leo’s eyes lock with mine. “Can’t wait to get my hands on
her.”

“Can you be ready next week?” Teddy asks, oblivious to our flirtation.

“I’m always
ready,” Leo replies with a smirk.

Across the room, a well-heeled guest waves to our host. “I’d
better mingle,” Big Teddy says. “But you’ll stay for a nightcap, Clara, won’t you?”

I smile.
“Of course.”

Then the tycoon releases me and wanders off.

Leo finishes his drink in silence.
He’s all angles and shadows. The camera would love him, and I don’t mind the looks of him, either.

“Come home with me,” Leo finally says.

My sigh is one of regret. “I’m afraid Big Teddy
and I have an understanding. He’s bankrolled my last three films . . .”

“Because he makes money
off them. When Clara Cartwright stars in a motion picture, odds of a safe return are almost two-to-one.
You don’t owe him more than your name in lights on the marquee.”

I’ve never let myself think
about it that way before and I might be grateful to Mr. Vanderberg for pointing it out were it not
for his self-serving motive. “Even so, you’re not likely to offer me a better deal, are you?”

Leo laughs. “Why are you so determined to convince me you’re
that
kind of girl?”

I feel
a spark of mischief heat my blood. “Maybe because I
am
that kind of girl.”

“So, you’re jaded,”
he says, stubbing out his cigarette into a crystal ashtray.

“A true cynic.”

“You’ve done
it all . . .”

I grin. “At least twice.”

“Then level with me,” he begins, leaning in close.
“How do you fuck him?”

My smile dies away. “I beg your pardon—”

“Did I shock you already?
What happened to the jaded girl, the true cynic who has done it all twice? You’re not getting a
case of the vapors just because of a lurid question, are you?”

My pulse quickens, my blood
rising to his bait. “You surprised me, that’s all. Ask again.”

He circles behind me, coming
close enough that I feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. “So, how do you take him? On your back?
On your hands and knees?”

“I straddle him,” I say, bold and sultry. “It’s easier that way.
There’s a reason they call him Big Teddy, you know.”

I wonder what kind of suitor Leo Vanderberg
really is that this kind of talk doesn’t run him off. Instead, he trails his warm lips over the
back of my neck. I shiver and give a little toss of my head, but I can’t shake him. “Why, Miss Cartwright,
that’s a nice picture you paint. I can see it in my mind. You straddling his lap, riding him,
sweat dripping down your spine. It excites me.”

Flushing with heat, I stare off at the dance
floor where flappers dance the Charleston and a few couples pair off into quiet corners. “You’re a
strange man to get excited by the idea of a woman having sex with someone else.”

“Is it strange?
I don’t have to be the only man to lift a plane off the ground to appreciate its capabilities.
Anyone with eyes can see you’re a perfectly built vessel. You weren’t made to sit idle in the hangar,
were you?”

I want to get a little sore at him for comparing me to a cold hunk of machine, but
he’s got me running so hot I don’t care. “You’re right about that. I do believe I was made to fly.”

“That makes two of us then, doesn’t it? Now, about that deal . . .”

“What deal?”

His voice is a purr. “You said I wasn’t about to offer you a better deal, but I am. I’m about to give
you something for nothing.”

“There’s no such thing.”

He laughs. “This is a gift. No strings
attached. I’m going to make you come tonight without laying a hand on you.”

My eyes go slanted
and sleepy to make it seem as if I’m bored, but we both know I’m wide awake. “Is that so?”

“Tonight, when you’re in bed with him, working those hips of yours, close your eyes. Imagine my breath
on the back of your neck, like it is now. Imagine my hands cupping your breasts . . .”

I feign
a yawn. “Oh, how droll. You want me to pretend that I’m with you instead of him.”

“No, I want
you to pretend that my cock is buried in you from behind and that I’m grinding you against him. Pretend
that I’m making you take him deeper. Trapping you between us so you’ve got nowhere to go but
where I tell you to. Pretend that I’m pushing you to see how much you can take. It’s going to drive
you right over the edge.”

Another woman would probably slap him, but my knees turn to jelly.
And when he withdraws, I’m left to grasp the ornately carved wooden back of an upholstered wing chair
for balance.

Satisfaction spreads across his face. “And now I’ll be going, unless you’d like
to give me a kiss good-bye?”

I finally find my voice. “Sorry, Ace, the bank is closed.”

“Then have a pleasurable evening, Miss Cartwright.”

When the party is finally over and the mansion is quiet, I sit at the abandoned piano in the alcove.
My mother used to play organ at church but I never picked up more than a few notes. Still, I can’t resist
plunking at the keys. The
maidservant finishes sweeping up some confetti and broken glass, then
quietly withdraws when the master of the house returns.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Teddy
stumbles in, having abandoned his waistcoat somewhere along the way. “I just needed to make sure my
wife is asleep.”

His wife is barking mad, as everyone well knows. Mrs. Morgan hasn’t left her
room for more than a decade. Sometimes she awakens the household late at night with incoherent rages,
and when she does, he always goes to her. Other men of his social standing would have institutionalized
or divorced her, but I think Teddy Morgan would give up all his fortune—and any mistress—just
to have his wife back the way she was before.

Which is why I chose him.

You see, these
days, every mogul keeps a starlet for a mistress. Joe Kennedy has Gloria Swanson. William Randolph
Hearst has Marion Davies. William S. Paley has Louise Brooks. I figured I’d better pick a big shot before
one picked me. And as far as fat cats go, Theodore “Big Teddy” Morgan isn’t a bad egg. He’s lonely
but he won’t fall in love or demand more from me than I’m willing to give.

Dropping heavily
onto the high-backed leather sofa, he pats the seat beside him. “Take a load off, you’ve been on your
feet all night. But you charmed them all, doll. They’ll be lining up on the street to see the film.”

“At least until the reviews come in,” I say, slipping out of my shoes and joining him. “The
producer was a fool. I can make a better picture. I know I can.”