Pamela Morsi (23 page)

He didn’t know how that could be. Small, vulnerable, yet threatening. It didn’t make sense. Amos stood head and shoulders taller. And she was a slightly built, delicate woman; even holding a knife or a gun, she would be no match for him. Yet he was wary of her. Some deeply buried native instinct warned him that Pansy Richardson was very, very dangerous.

“If you’re ready, then get in the chair,” he said.

“Oh, I’m ready, Amos,” she replied. “I’m ready and.

I’ve been ready. The question is, are you ready?”

Her answer didn’t alleviate his wariness.

He indicated the barber’s chair. It was a beautiful piece of modern equipment and he was very proud to own it. It had come by train all the way from the East Coast, Koch & Son, New York, and it was as fine and fancy a barber’s chair as any in this part of Texas. It was carved mahogany and finished in solid brass. It had an amazing hydraulic mechanism that allowed the barber to raise or lower it to the height most advantageous to
him. It also revolved and reclined, which allowed for the best possible position for any job to be done.

Mrs. Richardson held out a hand to him.

Amos stared at it as if he didn’t know what it was.

“Aren’t you going to help me up?” she asked. “This chair looks very difficult for a woman to mount.”

It didn’t seem that difficult to Amos, but he offered his hand.

Pansy stepped upon the footrest and then pivoted, carefully seating herself on the slick red leather. She held his hand for what seemed like just an instant longer than necessary.

When she freed him, she ran that same hand along the upholstery, making sounds of obvious approval.

“This feels so nice,” she said, stroking the smooth cowhide.

Amos swallowed uncomfortably. There was something so sensual about her. She was so difficult for a man to resist. But he had to resist her. He had to get this over with. He had to get her out of here.

Amos pumped the hydraulic-lift peddle three times in rapid succession. She jolted upward in inch-high increases. The jerking motions of her body were somehow erotic, filling his mind with images of pounding sexual climax.

“Is it on the back of your neck?” he asked.

“What? Oh, yes, it’s on the back,” she said.

Amos pulled the long brass lever on the side of the chair, reclining it as far as it would go.

“Is it on the left side or the right?” he asked her.

She hesitated. “It’s … it’s rather in the middle,” she answered.

“Turn on your right side, then,” he said.

He adjusted the mirror to catch the sunlight from the upper windows and focus it upon the occupant in the
chair. His heart was beating faster than it should. Deliberately he calmed himself. A steady hand would be necessary and he must maintain one.

A couple of stray tendrils had escaped her elegant upsweep and curled around her neckline. Carefully he smoothed them out of the way. At his touch, she gasped audibly.

“I’ll not hurt you,” he promised. He considered himself very skilled and his scalpel was very sharp. “I’m going to relieve your pain, not add to it.”

As he turned back her collar, he tried to avoid any direct contact between her flesh and his own.

He didn’t see the carbuncle. The skin he encountered was perfect, unblemished and glowing with good health. He assumed the boil must be lower, but her clothing made it impossible to proceed.

“Could your loosen your shirtwaist a bit, Mrs. Richardson?” he said.

“Of course.” She began fumbling with the buttons.

A moment later, Amos peeled the shirtwaist down her back. Even with it lowered, he did not see the carbuncle.

“I thought you said that it was on your neck,” he told her.

“Oh, no, you misunderstood me,” Pansy countered. “It’s on my back.”

Amos shook his head. He was certain she had said it was on her neck.

She wore a surprisingly high-necked corset cover and when he tried to pull it down, he discovered that it fit snugly. He couldn’t examine the flesh beneath it. Perhaps he could locate the boil through the thin silk covering. He moved his hands tentatively across her back, feeling the smoothness of the material warmed by the flesh beneath it.

Pansy sighed and his heart caught in his throat. It had been so long since a woman had sighed at his touch. So long since he had touched.

He tried to pull his thoughts away. He didn’t want a woman, he reminded himself. He especially didn’t want this woman.

Amos stepped back from her. “I think you’ll have to remove the corset cover,” he said.

“All right,” she answered, not seeming nearly enough concerned with her own modesty. She rolled over onto her back and sat up, pulling the shirtwaist out of her skirt. She handed it to him. He hung it on a peg at the edge of the washstand.

Amos stood dumbfounded as she crossed her arms over her chest and grabbed the hem of the corset cover with both hands. Despite some difficulty, she managed to pull it up and over her head.

Her corset was black and very tightly laced, showing ample décolletage. Amos looked away. He told himself it was gentlemanly reserve. But the unwanted stirring in the front of his trousers was equally causal. Even after looking away, however, he saw the image indelibly ingrained in his mind.

What was he doing here? Why didn’t he make her go? They should not be alone together with her half dressed.

“Perhaps I should take this off as well,” she said.

His back to her, he glanced up into the mirror. She was looking right at him. Looking right at him as she slowly unclasped the front hooks. The bottom one first. And then the next.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He was watching her. She was watching him. He was not supposed to be watching her. He was not supposed to be thinking about her. He should be
thinking about Bess. His Bess. Bess whom he loved so dearly.

Bess seemed suddenly very far away and very long ago.

There was one hook left. One small impediment to his seeing her bosom naked, exposed. Amos’s mouth was dry, his brow sweating. He was looking at her.

“Turn around, Amos,” she said to him, so low, so seductive, it was almost like the words of a spell.

He turned and looked at her. There was no guile or trickery in her gaze. She spoke to him with honesty, forthrightly.

“I want you to make love to me, Amos,” she said.

“What? Why?”

“Why not?”

“Bess …”

“Bess is dead, Amos,” she said. “But you and I are not.”

Bess was dead. His wife was dead. He hadn’t been able to stop it. And he hadn’t been able to change it. All the waiting for her had not brought her back to him.

“You don’t have anything wrong, do you?” he asked. “There is not so much as a blemish on your skin.”

Those blue eyes teased and taunted him now.

“You’ll have to see for yourself, won’t you, Amos.” She lay her forefinger atop the lone hook that protected her modesty. “Won’t you just have to see for yourself.”

His hand trembled. His whole body trembled. He reached out and unfastened her corset. It fell away from her body, leaving her naked from the waist up.

His heart, his breath, his life caught in his throat.

“Perfect,” was the word that came out of his mouth.
And perfect was an apt description of the two graceful, upward-tipped breasts before his gaze. He looked at her; feasting his eyes upon such beauty was like sustenance to his being. For the first time in a very long time, Amos Dewey felt alive.

“Shouldn’t you touch me?” she suggested. “Just to make sure you’re not dreaming.”

Amos did touch her. He reached out to caress the pale, rosy-tipped mound. He tested the slope with two fingers. The flesh was so exquisitely soft. The nipple so incredibly hard. He cupped the breast in his hand; the weight and firmness were exactly what he thought they should be. She was absolutely and totally, in every way, exactly what she should be.

“Shall I lay back down now?” she asked him. “I should lay down so you can examine me.”

Amos was too befuddled by desire to even answer.

Slowly, languidly, she lay back in the reclined barber’s chair, drawing up her right knee and her skirt at the same time. She pulled the hem of her skirt nearly to the waist, revealing a flat belly and long legs covered by black stockings and red silk bloomers.

“Take your time, Amos,” she whispered. “Examine me.”

The blood was pounding through his brain, making it very difficult for him to think clearly, but it was also pooling in the front of his trousers. He was fully erect, almost painfully hard and aching. He shouldn’t touch her. He knew that he shouldn’t touch her. He no longer had feelings like this, he reminded himself. He no longer wanted this. He trembled all over, trying not to want it so wholly, so desperately. At that moment he couldn’t remember why he shouldn’t.

Pansy Richardson was reaching out to him.

“What’s this?” she asked, her sultry voice teasing.
“Do you think you’re going to be able to hide behind a big thing like this?”

She touched him. She merely touched him. Her hand rubbed him over his clothes. It was too much. He grabbed her hand and pushed it away.

He planted one knee beside her on the chair and bent down to kiss her. The taste of her was sweet and he wanted to savor it, but he was far too greedy. He buried his hands in her hair, holding her firmly and securely in his control as his mouth pursued the secrets of her own. With much eagerness he trailed his lips down her jaw and her throat to take her breast in his mouth.

Amos knew he was moving too fast. He knew he was rushing too much. But he was like a starving man offered a feast. He could not hold himself back. Pansy’s hurried passion seemed to match his own.

He felt so jelly-legged he didn’t know if he could stand. Somehow she got him seated beside her in the chair. She was holding him, caressing him. Meeting him touch for touch. Kiss for kiss.

She wiggled up into a sitting position upon his lap.

Amos jerked off the red silk bloomers, finding the flesh beneath them smoother and softer than the fine fabric.

In a near frenzy, four hands clawed and pulled at the buttons on his trousers. When they were finally loosed, she drew him out and caressed him. It was so wonderful, he simply could not stand it.

He drew her up to her knees and she straddled him. He touched her intimately and groaned aloud at the hot, welcoming wetness of her, opened wide as a blossom in summer rain.

As she lowered herself down upon him, he tried to take his time, to go slowly. He knew how big he was and how painful that could be to a woman.

Pansy would have none of his hesitance or trepidation. She did not cringe from his raw physicality but gloried in it. She buried him deep inside her. It was a tight fit that stretched and filled her. Yet she was so wet and slick that his entry was made easily and her only words of complaint were “More” and “Faster.”

He grasped her buttocks, directing her, guiding her as they moved in lusty, hurried, desperate concord. Her whines of pleading and moans of pleasure were sounds more welcome to his ears than the finest music or most glorious oratory.

“Love me! Love me!”

She wrenched out the words through clenched teeth. He was certain he understood exactly what she meant.

He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down tightly against him. Holding her rigid against him, he gripped her buttocks and pounded inside her again and again and again until they were all and everything. Nothing and no one existed beyond the mahogany-and-leather barber’s chair and the two people straining toward bliss upon it.

“I can’t wait,” he groaned through his teeth. “I want and I can’t wait.”

“Amos!” she cried out as the inside of her body jerked and clenched him, racheting down upon his most heightened spots of sensation.

He came inside her, screaming against her breast. He came and came until he thought it might never stop. Years of pain and shame and aloneness poured out of him.

“I’m sorry,” he began repeating over and over as soon as he could talk. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she whispered to him. “It’s all right.” He continued his apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean … I was so rough. It was so fast. It has been so long. I …”

Inexplicably, he felt himself tearing up. He was going to cry. He didn’t want to. He tried not to. But when his eyes welled up, he closed them tightly to keep the tears at bay and they spilled out the sides of his eyes and down his face.

“That’s all right,” she said beside him. She was kissing his neck, caressing his shoulders. There was no passion in her actions, only comfort. “It is not all that strange to be a little out of practice and lose control. And the crying …”

Her words drifted off as if she were loath to continue.

“What about the crying?” he asked her.

“It just means you still miss her,” she said. “I’ve … I’ve cried every time. Every time.”

Every time, she’d said. But he looked in her eyes now and saw no tears.

T
HE PARK WAS AS CROWDED AS
R
OME HAD EVER SEEN IT
. He and Gussie had arrived early, but so had nearly everyone else in town. He supposed that the excitement and anticipation that plagued him were the same for everyone. Promenades were a good deal less adventurous. Everybody was walking, but most were unwilling to leave the immediate area of the kissing booth for fear they might miss something.

Rome glanced over at Miss Gussie and she smiled broadly at him. They didn’t have to even share the words, for they knew that their idea was going to be a big success. Like a positive completion of a commercial venture or a business opportunity well utilized, there was the tingle of euphoric fulfillment.

It was a wonderful, almost intimate moment between them and Rome was grateful for it. They had both felt ill at ease together this morning. And it was all his fault. Yesterday he had kissed her in a manner that was totally uncalled-for. He had kissed her like a lover. Now, with a day of kissing ahead, they were
both naturally concerned that he might do the same again.

Rome was determined not to. He couldn’t imagine what had come over him to behave like that. He was, and always had been, a man of strong passions, but he was never a man lacking in control. And he was certainly not the kind of fellow to take advantage of a woman’s vulnerability. Vulnerability was the only explanation for the response he’d elicited from Miss Gussie. She had a purpose she was striving for and a plan to be carried out. The unfortunate necessity of his nearness was merely part of the plan. She certainly had no intention of luring him with feminine charms or responding to his unwelcome advances.