Harlot (11 page)

“Do you like it like this? In your ass?”

Oh, God. She circled her hand faster, the pleasure twisting harder inside her while her mind spun with it. How good it felt. How wrong it was. How filthy and sinful and dirty. “With you,” she finally moaned.

“What?”

“With you. I like it with you.” She forced the words past her dry throat. “I like it. I need it. With you.”

“Jesus, yes,” he hissed. His thrusts got a little rougher, and she didn’t care. She pushed her fingers into her pussy and cried out. There was nothing in the world now but the pleasure building, building. Nothing but his cock shoving everything out of her until she was pure again. Pure and filthy and swelling up with it.

“I need it. Please. Please.
Please
.” The pressure squeezed too tight, and she broke with a scream of joy and shock and desperation. A feral cry tore from her as that pressure broke open and rolled through her in wave after wave.

She heard Caleb’s grunt as if he were very far away. She felt his cock jerk and pulse inside the tight ring of her flesh. She pressed back to take him deeper as her own climax continued on, the waves gentling little by little.

She loved it. This was what she was. “Please,” she panted into the pillow. “Please. With you.”

Caleb’s breath broke like a sob. He shuddered behind her, his grip firm enough to leave bruises. Jessica slipped her fingers out of her body and dragged them along her slit for a last taste of shivering pleasure. Her muscles spasmed one more time.

“Jess,” he sighed, a final gasp of intimacy to fuel her sad imagination. For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then his hands relaxed their grip. He slid slowly free of her body, the sensation making her hold her breath.

She let herself fall to the mattress. She was empty now. And cold. Caleb settled the covers over her, but she didn’t feel warmer. Her body was done. Limp with exhaustion.

She heard him wash again. Heard the rustle of his clothing as he dressed. The rain had stopped. He could leave.

She tried not to feel devastated when he did.

‡

Caleb was having trouble concentrating
on the conversations that danced around him. The voices blended into the birdsong and fiddle music and rustling leaves. None of it felt real. His real self was still in that bedroom during the storm with Jessica.

“Caleb,” his mother scolded, drawing his unwilling attention.

He squinted to see her shaded face against the sunlight. Her bonnet created a foot-wide circle of darkness.

She tut-tutted at him. “You shouldn’t have stayed out so late last night. You look ready to fall asleep, and it’s my birthday picnic.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. Can I get you another glass of lemonade?”

“No, sit with me a while,” she said, patting the delicate chair beside her.

Caleb could remember a time when their picnics had been nothing but blankets on dirt, but that life was not for her anymore. She was happy. He wouldn’t begrudge that what made her happy caused him to squirm like a pinned bug. His mother loved him, and she always had. He couldn’t say the same about another living soul.

“What a lovely day,” his mother sighed.

“Indeed.” The storms had washed every bit of dust and cloud from the sky. The clear, bright blue hurt his eyes.

“Did you see Mildred with her new grandbaby? I can’t believe her son is a father now. Weren’t you two friends?”

Caleb frowned, trying to concentrate on these people who meant nothing to him. “Tommy?” he asked. “Tommy Shrop?”

“Yes, Tommy! He goes by Tom now, of course. He’s an attorney. They’re off to Kansas next month.”

That seemed right. Tommy had been one of the boys who’d courted Jessica. One of the boys who’d sneered at Caleb. Eyes narrowed, Caleb looked around for Tommy Shrop but didn’t see him.

“You’ll have to settle down soon too, don’t you think, Caleb? You could come back here. Stay close for a while. Find a wife. California is so awfully far away.”

Find a wife. He couldn’t imagine a woman he’d like well enough to spend the rest of his life with. Work with. Talk with. Lie with at night. Jessica had been the only one to touch his interest that way. The only one he could imagine having a lifelong conversation with. It hadn’t been just her beauty. It had been her laughter, her words, the way her mind worked. The only girl smart enough to make him feel smart too.

“Can you imagine the stars, Caleb?” Jess had asked into the night sky once. “Can you imagine that each one is a sun just like our own?”

“Shining on other worlds?” he’d asked, craning his neck to see what she saw.

“Yes. A million other worlds.” And he could see it, then. Just as she’d described.

Caleb looked at his mother. “I meant to marry Jessica,” he said.

“Oh.” Her mouth formed a circle of disapproving shock, as if a fat raindrop had just fallen on her day. “You must forget about her.”

“Must I? You liked her once. Loved her as a daughter, even. You wrote to me that she came to dinner once a week to keep you and Theodore company.”

Her face crumpling into a frown, his mother stared down at her gloved hands. “She did. What happened was so unfortunate.”

“Did you try to help her?”

“How could I help a woman like that? How could you even ask me to speak of such things? You must forget her, Caleb. Find a good, decent woman.”

A good, decent woman. Not a woman who’d get on her knees. Not a woman who’d love it like that.

“Caleb,” his stepfather said beside him, and Caleb jumped. He’d fallen so quickly into his memory of Jessica that he hadn’t heard Theodore approach.

“Sir.” Caleb stood to offer the chair next to his mother, but his stepfather waved it off.

“You’ve been coming in late,” he said gruffly.

“Yes, sir.” Caleb tamped down the urge to snap at the man that it was none of his business.

“I hope you’re not getting into trouble?”

His mother cleared her throat. “He’s been out visiting at the Smith ranch.”

“That right?” Theodore asked. “Are you looking to take up your old job there?”

Caleb met the man’s eyes. “Just catching up with old friends.”

“Some of those cowhands are pretty rowdy. See to it that you keep your visits respectable. Your associations have already embarrassed this family once.”

Caleb’s mother rose in a rustle of skirts. “Let’s just leave that behind, Mr. Durst. I’d love a stroll, Caleb. It’ll be cool over by the stream.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, offering his arm and fighting the urge to growl at his stepfather. He turned his back on Theodore and walked his mother toward the creek.

He could play at polite patience. He could wait through this day. Tonight he’d see Jessica again, and his heart clenched at the thought.

She’d loved it last night. She’d loved
him
. Maybe she’d said she loved him as part of the paid service, but when she’d whispered that into the pillow, it had seemed pure and true as he’d done wicked, wonderful things to her body.

He’d thought this bargain would leave him with some satisfaction. Instead he wanted more. More of her in more ways. He’d spent the morning racking his brain, trying to remember every filthy thing he’d heard other men speak of. He barely had any experience of his own. He’d spent a few coins for a woman’s mouth here and there, but only once for a fuck, and he’d never done what he’d done with Jessica last night. Next he wanted her hand on his cock. And he wanted to watch her ride him. Then he wanted to kneel over her and—

Caleb rolled his shoulders back and made himself stop thinking. He was escorting his mother through her own party and even that couldn’t keep thoughts of Jessica at bay.

“Oh, Caleb, look!” his mother cooed, her arm tightening on his. “It’s that lovely Miss Annabelle. She was still a girl when you left, but look at her now. Ready to marry, I’d say.”

He glanced obediently at the sweet, curvy blonde and imagined courting her. The idea felt more profane than the things he’d done with Jessica.

His gaze slid past the girl to the group she picnicked with, then to the people beyond. The highest social class in this town. Folks who had time to picnic on a Tuesday. Had any of these men fucked Jess? Had any of them hurt her?

He hated all of them, regardless. He couldn’t stay here in this town. He couldn’t live here and wonder. But when this week was over, how was he ever going to leave?

‡

She’d felt strange all day.
Dark. Skittish. As if she were anticipating something, but what?

Caleb would visit again tonight, and she felt nervous and excited about that, but the strange anticipation was something else. Something heavier.

The sin of it all, maybe. The knowledge that she was well and truly damned. But hadn’t she already known that? She’d stopped praying months ago.

After her father’s death, she’d been too caught up in grief to think logically. At first it had seemed simple. She’d reach out to Caleb. He’d come home and help. But he hadn’t responded and the news had gotten darker and darker. Her father’s debts were tremendous, the house belonged to the sanatorium, and even her own belongings were no longer hers. And Caleb…Caleb wasn’t coming home.

Theodore Durst had come personally to deliver that sad news.
Caleb has found a new sweetheart. He’ll likely marry soon.
Whatever future she’d imagined was gone.

Her heart beat harder as she tied her dressing gown and tugged the low tub toward the back door. What was it, this feeling? Guilt? Guilt over what she’d done and whom she’d hurt?

No, this cloud didn’t feel like guilt. It felt like anger, but surely she had nothing to be angry about tonight. She was being paid for her own pleasure. Twenty-five dollars and Caleb’s hands offering far more than the girlish shivers she’d once felt. How could she possibly be angry about that?

But it
was
anger. She could feel it now, as dark and liquid as the water that pooled in the dirt outside when she heaved the tub sideways. The anger slipped and slid inside her just like that, gathering in deep places, then stretching out to find new ones.

Why?

She forgot the question when Caleb appeared, stepping over the mud to take the tub from her. “Let me,” he said, lifting it easily to toss the last of the water toward the lilac bushes.

“Thank you.” Her face went warm with awareness of him. She had no room for anger now. She was too busy vibrating with nervousness. Those big hands holding the tub had gripped her just that way the night before, and she’d loved it, and now he would touch her again. A little bit of pleasure to go with all her pain and the loneliness to come.

He stored the tub in the kitchen corner where she pointed, then wiped his damp hands on the towel she offered. When the busy work was done, she realized how dim it had grown, how close he was, how naked her body beneath the flimsy green gown.

“Jess,” he murmured, and then he was kissing her. Just kissing her, his hands framing her face in a tender imitation of love. He sighed against her, as if he’d been waiting all day for this too. Was that possible? That he’d missed her as if she were a real person to him again?

Jessica let her hands reach for him. She touched his jaw, his hair, the back of his neck, then the strong line of muscles that curved down to his shoulders. She’d always loved his muscles, the beautiful vulgarity of them compared with the slight young men who’d made up the rest of her circle. Caleb had only gotten bigger in California. Harder. His muscles had bunched and stretched when he’d moved naked through her room. And when he’d moved naked through her.

His fingers found the pins in her hair and eased them free so that her locks tumbled around her shoulders and draped over his wrists. She slid her hands inside his coat, and it felt like they were all one, both of them tangled up, neither of them free anymore.

That was another lie, though. She was free. Free to starve or freeze or die, and no one would mourn her. And he was free to leave forever. But not tonight. Tonight he would stay.

“Upstairs,” he said against her mouth. “I need you.”

Vulgar as they were, the words tasted sweet, and his arms felt even sweeter when he picked her up and carried her. She was his for tonight. She belonged to him for hours.