After Innocence (8 page)

Suzanne closed her eyes, her anguish turned to an intense longing. How well she remembered what it was to be
fifteen and obsessed with Jake O’Neil. She smiled, and allowed herself to be swept back into the past.

New York City, 1880

Suzanne dashed from the house, her black riding skirts flaring around her, a jaunty hat with a half veil set at an angle on her head. Her magnificent bay hunter was waiting for her. Suzanne allowed the groom to help her mount. Excitement rippled in her, hardly containable. The groom mounted another horse and followed at a discreet distance behind her.

Suzanne spurred her hunter forward. She was not going riding in Central Park, nor was she meeting friends, as she had let her parents believe. Her heart beat wildly now; she was perspiring. She was acutely aware of the feel of the saddle leather between her thighs.

Would he be there? Would he be there today, as he had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that
—
ever since she had first laid her eyes on him?

The week before, Suzanne had gone riding with a group of friends. It had been a large, raucous group of young ladies and eligible bachelors. There had been much ado in the papers recently about all the building on the city’s west side, a direct response to the opening of the Ninth Avenue El the year before. Suzanne and her friends had never been farther west than Central Park, except for occasional shopping excursions to the boulevard farther downtown. The entire group had enthusiastically decided to visit the newly opened Riverside Park.

Crossing town, one and all scoffed at the idea that one day the West Side would be fit for habitation—much less a rival for the East Side’s residents. For they rode through open dirt streets, past small farms with cows and dogs, past shabby, lonely shacks. Gas and water lines were few, barren fields everywhere.

On Riverside Avenue they paused before one development. Some fifty laborers were hard at work, banging nails, lifting posts, laying bricks. Below the site of this dwelling’s foundation, everyone agreed that the view was spectacular.
There the Hudson River churned, framed by striking cliff palisades.

Suzanne did not hear. She sat her bay at the edge of the group—closest to the building activity. One of the laborers was shirtless, bronzed from the sun. His tawny hair was thick and wild and streaked heavily with gold. She watched him bending over. Watched the tight fit of his denims over high, hard buttocks, watched him straighten, saw the play of muscle in his broad back. When he turned, not yet aware of her, she continued to watch. He was superbly built, all lean, exquisitely defined muscle, and when she glimpsed his face, she gasped. He was as handsome as the gods of classical Greek mythology.

Suzanne was no stranger to lust. She had been flirting with the opposite sex since she was thirteen, had been mildly attracted to many young men, and even some older ones. But more important, at night she was restless and unable to sleep. At night she burned with forbidden heat, dreaming of a handsome, faceless stranger, and she yearned to explore herself, to discover the extent of her own passion.

That day, sitting on her hunter, she had begun to throb heavily, watching the stranger—who was no longer faceless.

He paused, stood, turned. Instantly his restless gaze found hers. He did not move, staring back at her as openly as she stared at him.

It sizzled between them, like a jagged, white-hot streak of lightning, the current of animal desire. He did not smile, but his lips curled slightly and something unspoken seemed to pass between them.

Suzanne could not stay away. Now she was stricken with burning restlessness at night, the fever of her body a conflagration that had gone out of control. She no longer rode with her friends. She look the old groom, instructing him to stay far behind her. Every day she ventured across town to Riverside Avenue. Every day he was mere, and she watched him. Every day he watched her.

Today Suzanne pressed some coins into the groom’s hand and told him that she did not feel well, to get her some lemonade from the fruit stand she had seen a few
blocks away. When he had left, she turned, meeting his tawny gaze.

Suzanne licked her lips.

He dropped the hammer and moved towards her. As always, he was shirtless. A faint sheen glimmered on his golden skin. He moved with predatory grace. When he paused before the hunter, Suzanne started when she realized he was hardly older than herself.

“I was wonderin’ when you’d get rid o’ him,” he said, his glance skewering her. It was bold and sexual. His tone was dry and rough.

“I—I don’t feel well,” Suzanne said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. Staring at him, she realized that he might be a year or two older than she, but he was hardly a boy. He exuded a dangerous male vitality, something ineffable, powerful.

“Can I help?” His eyes gleamed.

Suzanne slid off the hunter. He steadied her. Suzanne couldn’t help herself, she glanced down between them, at his thick, denim-constrained groin. “Only if you have some water.” She lifted her chin, regaining some of her composure. Some of her imperiousness. After all, he was only a laborer, an Irish one at that. There had been the faintest hint of a brogue in his tone.

“Water?” He released her, folded his arms. He was amused. “That’s all you want from me. Miss … er …?”

“Miss Vanderkemp,” she said softly.

“Of the Fifth Avenue Vanderkemps?”

She was proud. She nodded.

He laughed. “Jake O’Neil, Miss Vanderkemp. Of the Ballymena O’Neils.” His long, dark lashes lowered, and when he looked up from under them, his gaze was potently seductive. “Are you goin’ to meet me, Miss Vanderkemp?”

Suzanne did not have to think about it. It was all she had thought of for the past week. Soon she would marry some pale, boring Knickerbocker, or maybe some moneyed newcomer. She could imagine herself in bed with Peter Kerenson, or with Richard Astor. It wouldn’t be horrid, but it would hardly be exciting. She wanted Jake O’Neil
more than she had ever wanted anything, and she would have him, too, while she could. She nodded.

He sucked in his breath, the wry amusement gone now the bulge in his denims far more pronounced. “Let’s go.”

“Now?” She gasped.

“Now,” he said, low and rough. “Right now. Right goddamn now. You’ve been teasin’ me all week. Miss Vanderkemp—and now it’s my turn.”

Suzanne did not make him wait. She remounted with his help, acutely aware of his hands on her waist, careless of what the groom would think when he returned and found her gone. He slid the key to his flat into her palm, giving her directions. Alone, Suzanne galloped off.

She did not notice the squalor of the shack he rented two blocks north of Ninth Avenue. She paced the main room, kept staring at the rumpled bed. She prayed for him to hurry. Her heart was in her throat. Her blood churned hot and wild. She thought that if he did not appear in another moment, she would scream with agony, with rage, and claw her own clothes from her body.

“Sorry, ma’am, to keep you waitin’,” he said from the doorway.

Suzanne whirled. “I did not hear you come in!”

He gave her a mock bow. “Learned how to move rea silent, I did, when I was a boy pickin’ pockets in Dublin.”

Suzanne didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She couldn’t care. He stared at her, but he was unbuttoning his cotton shirt, slowly, leisurely, provocatively. Inch by inch he revealed more of his hard, tanned chest, his torso his flat, hard belly. He finally pulled it open. Suzanne was aware of how brazenly he was behaving, but she was mesmerized by his performance, and hurting now more than ever, the muscles in her inner thighs bunched into tight knots.

He shrugged off his shirt, tossing it to the floor. “Do get paid for this?”

“What?”

“I don’t come cheap.”

“I … I don’t understand …” Suzanne couldn’t continue

He had yanked off his shoes; now he was unbuttoning the fly of his Levi’s. He did not rush, seemed to enjoy the way his fingers brushed over the hard bulge there, seemed to enjoy her wide-eyed, speechless stare.

His grin came, wicked and wry. An instant later he had slid his faded trousers down his lean hips, freeing his erection.

Suzanne whimpered.

“Like what you see, darlin’?” he asked.

Suzanne had never dreamed that a man would look like he did. She wrenched her gaze away, to his beautiful amber eyes. He was stalking her.

“Like what you’re gonna get?” he whispered, pausing in front of her. The ripe tip of his phallus brushed her skirts. Suzanne whimpered again.

He laughed once more before pulling her into his arms and seizing her mouth with his.

Suzanne came alive. She opened for him hungrily, clinging. He made a harsh sound as her tongue rushed into his mouth, deep. They sparred, quickly becoming frantic. The kiss took on its own wild, desperate life, tongues entwining. Jake began to rock his hips against hers with insistence.

He clutched handfuls of her buttocks, coming up for air, gasping. “Jesus,” he whispered, his gaze wide and surprised.

“Don’t stop,” Suzanne begged, digging her gloved fingertips into his back. She undulated shamelessly against him.

“Words I love to hear,” Jake muttered, abruptly lifting her in his arms. He tipped her onto the bed, sinking down beside her, claiming her mouth again. While he kissed her, he flipped up her skirts, cupped her sex. Suzanne gasped, arching up hard beneath his hand as he stroked her through her soft, white pantalets.

“God!” Suzanne screamed. “God, God, God!” She shattered. She shattered into a million tiny, shardlike pieces in the most brilliant, fantastic, all-consuming explosion. Her abandoned cries filled the shack.

Jake came down on top of her, ripping apart her underwear. He tossed shreds of the flimsy fabric aside, his big,
naked body shaking. He thrust hard against her, did not penetrate, thrust again. He paused, panting.

“Relax, darlin’,” he crooned against her ear. “This is gonna be so good, like you’ve never had before—I guarantee it, darlin’.”

Suzanne was shaking with excitement, but also with some real fear. Her gloved hands gripped his shoulders, she wriggled her wet flesh against him, moaning with irrepressible need. But when he pressed forward, she stiffened in spite of herself. “I c-can’t re-relax,” she gasped.

“Shh, shh,” he hushed, nibbling her ear.

“J-Jake,” Suzanne said hoarsely, “please, be gentle, please.”

“You don’t want gentle, darlin’, believe me, I know what you want—what you need.” He licked her ear for emphasis, and Suzanne whimpered. But when he rocked against her again, she stiffened like a board.

“I don’t think you can fit,” Suzanne cried, tears of frustration filling her eyes.

Jake was frozen. “Darlin’, you’re not a virgin, I hope?”

Suzanne’s grip tightened. She moaned again, long and low, desperate. The feel of his huge penis against her sex was making her feel close to exploding again. “Of course I am,” she finally gasped.

He cursed. He cursed again, rolling off of her, flipping onto his back. He cursed her, he cursed himself, he cursed New York and Ireland, then her again. Finally he grew still, panting harshly. He threw one arm over his eyes.

“What is it?” she cried, leaning over him on one elbow.

He stared up at her. “Damn it. Miss Vanderkemp, but I do not fuck virgins!”

She whimpered. “But I want you to. Oh, God, Jake, I want you to!”

His jaw flexed. He looked at her closely. “How old are you?”

She hesitated. “Sixteen.” Seeing his grim expression, she amended, “Almost.”

Jake screwed his eyes shut, moaning. “Go away!”

Suzanne sat up. Her hat had come askew and she took it off. She looked down the length of his magnificent.
quivering body. She looked down at her own legs, pale and naked, her skirts twisted up around her waist, her underwear in tatters on the bed. She stared at him longingly. Abruptly she reached out. She had forgotten to take off her butter-soft gloves, could not care. When her palm lay low on his belly, his breath hissed, his huge phallus jerked.

Their gazes met. “Please,” Suzanne said very low.

Jake’s hand covered hers; he sat up. “No.” His tone was firm, final, absolute.

She whimpered. Holding his gaze, she slid her palm lower, then closed her fingers around him.

Jake gasped. Eyes wide, dark, dangerous, Jake threw his arm around her, pulling her close. “The answer’s still no,” he said, their mouths almost touching, their breaths mingling.

Suzanne began to cry with real dismay.

Jake kissed her, hot and openmouthed, tongue to tongue, wet and deep. And while he kissed her, his hand slid down her velvet-clad hip, over her soft, naked belly, through the nest of damp curls, between her glistening pink lips. “But you don’t have to leave, not just yet,” he said.

“Y
ou wish to speak to me?”

Suzanne started. She glanced up to see Edward Delanza lounging in the doorway, but for a moment she was still lost in the past, and despite the fact that he did not really look like Jake, it was Jake she saw standing there, tall, sexy, arrogant, golden-haired and golden-eyed. She stared as the past receded painfully, as she realized that she faced an entirely different man from her long-dead husband.

Slowly Suzanne got to her feet. It was very hard to smile at him. He emanated the same kind of negligent power that had so characterized Jake. Like Jake, he reeked of sexuality. But he was not Jake. He was a black-haired, blue-eyed rogue, and unlike everyone else of her acquaintance, Suzanne was not charmed senseless by his dark good looks and obvious virility. “Please, Mr. Delanza, come in.”

His smile as patently false as hers, Edward strolled into the room. Suzanne quickly shut the heavy mahogany door behind them and leaned against it. Facing him warily, she wondered what it was he found attractive about her plain, eccentric daughter—if he did really find Sofie attractive at all. And if he did, she was more determined than ever to keep them apart—to spare her daughter from the kind of suffering Suzanne still understood far too intimately. “Good morning. I trust you had a good night’s sleep?”