Authors: Chanse Lowell
“Handsome? Oh no, not near you. I’m a half-drowned dog compared to you,” he said, his voice shaking.
Clarissa grinned.
Well, at least Elizabeth was better than the other tramp he’d been pining after for longer than she’d like to admit.
“So, am I able to stay?” Clarissa asked her.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said, keeping her eyes on Leo. “There are three of us sharing a room, but we stays in bunks—so you’s can have the one above mine.”
“Thank you.” Clarissa grabbed her box back from Leo, and the second his hands were free, he had one of Elizabeth’s cupped in his and he was kissing it.
“Thank you for helping out my cousin like this. I have no money to pay you for this kindness, but perhaps . . .” he trailed off.
“We can figure somethin’ out.” Elizabeth twirled one of her locks around her index finger, biting her lip at him.
“Oh, I . . . Yes, I would like that.” Leo fumbled with his words, and Clarissa fumbled her way inside the door, finding the room all on her own.
Terrific. This room was even smaller than the one she had been sharing with Leo.
Less privacy would be grand. She rolled her eyes at her poor inner joke.
When Clarissa went back into the front room, Leo had set himself up with Elizabeth sitting next to him.
“He’s a wretched man. He throws fruits at us,” Elizabeth said.
“Who does that?” Clarissa asked.
“Oh, the Italian grocer outside your new home. He’s right outside the window, and he’s a very angry sort. Keep away from him,” Leo told Clarissa.
“Don’t worry. I will.” Clarissa listened to them prattle on and gossip about the neighborhood.
When Leo finally left, Clarissa took a peek at the imposing beefy dark man, selling his fruit.
He failed to throw anything at her, so she was hopeful she could keep it that way.
* * *
Clarissa had managed to come by a job as the new prop girl, mending hand for costumes, and of course—the new wash lady.
She had hoped this playhouse would be free of Lenora and Ferrismore, but she had been wrong. He was always around.
It was no use to walk away and find another job. There were few to be had, and it was likely he had a controlling interest in all of them.
Well, Clarissa had just kept to herself over the last week and had avoided them both.
Only she was never too far away from him—close enough she could still inhale his intoxicating scent.
And close enough she could steal a few peeks here and there of his handsome face.
When the practice was over, she scurried around, trying to finish the rest of her chores as quickly as possible.
He approached her from behind, and immediately her chest tightened, but it was also warm.
Why was he coming toward her?
She had been mastering the art of keeping out of his way very successfully up until now.
“Where have you been?” he said, his steely, mossy green eyes forcing themselves upon her.
She was already exposed based on the intense gaze he put upon her.
“I have found new employment.” She shirked away from his look and pushed the last of the laundry into a basket.
“This is beneath you.” He gripped her arm, forcing her to set it down.
“Is there something I can help you with?” She dropped her head, and when it raised, she glared at him.
“Yes—you can tell me why you are running from me when I only mean to help you.”
“Help me? Is that what you call setting me on stage with no warning, no vocal wam-up and then being forced to sing an inappropriate song before your peers?”
“Th-that was not my intention,” he spluttered.
“Then what was? To use me to humiliate Lenora?” Her fists gripped into her skirt.
“No, ma chérie, that is not the way of it. What do you want?”
“Not this. Not with you.” She motioned with her chin toward the stage.
“You
do
want this.”
“Yes,” she admitted, puffing out her cheeks. “I want to go out there and sing. I want to act—be someone else.”
“Why do you want to be someone else?”
“Because who I am is nonsensical. I have no place in this world.” Her shoulders sagged.
He gripped her arms and was in her face, his warm breath spreading over her lips. A chill raced down her back, and a heat blossomed in her belly in direct contrast. “You want excitement?”
“Yes.”
“Damn you. You want
me
.” His eyes darkened.
Her eyebrows charged straight up to her forehead. “I beg your pardon.”
“You do not know what you need or want, but you crave excitement. A little bit of danger. That is who this man is, standing before you now.”
He grabbed the melon-colored silk scarf on top of the laundry and dragged her behind him to Lenora’s old dressing room.
“Stand right here. I will not harm you, but I will show you what you seek.”
For some asinine reason, her feet obeyed him, even if her heart was thundering in her chest.
Was she afraid? Terrified, but not of him exacting pain or retribution.
She was frightened of his intense fire and how he could consume her.
Her eyes drifted closed.
He locked the door behind her, and she could hear his faint footsteps as he approached her. “Arms up, Cherry girl. You will feel my slight touch. Let it shock you. Let it warm you to your toes.”
Her breath hitched as she raised her arms, and his touch was on her immediately.
His warm hands wrapped around her ribs, slid all the way up her arms, and then he was tying that soft silk around her wrists. “You will want this, because it will free you.”
She could barely breathe, and when she did manage it, her nostrils were filled with his expensive, masculine scent of cedar, a hint of mint and a light musk.
God in Heaven, but that was a divine aroma.
She pulled her lips in since her mouth was watering. It was better to trap the evidence of what he was doing to her.
His fingers tugged at the bindings, then he let go, and she was secured to something above her head.
She dropped her head back and opened her eyes.
The scarf was wound around her wrists and the plumbing jutting out the ceiling.
“Is that pipe secure?” she squeaked.
“I don’t know—so it’s best you keep still as I do this.” He chuckled low and deep.
Her belly reacted to that dark, lascivious sound.
“I have things for you.”
“What kinds of things?” She shuddered from his simple breath at the back of her neck and his hands gripping her hips.
“Things you cannot possibly imagine. I have a very sad, pristine whipping table that I have shined to perfection. It gleams in the moonlight, back at my home. I could thrust your arms through the holes, secure them beneath and you would be at my mercy as I whip you.”
His right hand flew, smacking her right ass cheek.
Instead of screaming out, she went onto her tiptoes and bit her bottom lip, a pulsing wave racing through her body and landing between her thighs.
“What are you doing to me?” she whispered, her eyelids going heavy.
“What you want.” He sucked in her earlobe and fondled her cheek he’d just swatted. “You would love this table. Would love to have me salivating over you and dying to have you.”
“N-no, I . . .” she trailed off.
Her body agreed with him, for her nipples were excruciatingly tight and poking through her dress.
“Yes, you do. You want to know how depraved I am for you. How I imagine that all your body is as creamy white as your sinful throat.”
He moved around her and sucked at her pounding pulse-line, then he dragged the tip of his tongue to the hollow of her throat and lapped at it, swirling his tongue around.
“You taste like my cherry girl.”
“I am Clarissa,” she corrected him.
“No—not right now you are not. You are all I want. You are my cherry”—he licked down to the top of her breasts—“and you taste divine. I shall place pearls upon your naked breasts, roll them over your ripe nipples and suck at them both until they’re both as hard as the other. I think you would enjoy that.”
He cupped her breasts, rolling his thumbs over her erect, straining nipples.
“William. I . . . I am not a prostitute,” she whimpered.
“You are more than my cherry girl. You are what I must have. What I must devour, because you feed the beast in me like no one else can. Come home with me now—let me pleasure you all night.”
“I cannot,” she said, her voice breaking, but her eyes were still on him.
“Why? Do I frighten you?”
“Your intensity frightens me. What I shall become if I do these wicked things with you frightens me.”
“You think me an animal that would leave you bereft?” He stroked her cheeks with the pad of his thumbs as he cupped her ears. “Listen to me now—and hear what I tell you—you are all I desire anymore. Why would I leave you destitute?”
“Because I am in reality nothing to you. I am the cleaning lady who stores the props, sews the costumes and hides in the shadows like an ogre. You cannot possibly want anything from me other than my flesh, and there are other starlets far prettier and experienced than I at the art of pleasing a man such as yourself.”
“Sing for me right now, and I shall release you. After you are done, I will kiss you, and if you want to leave, then by all means. I shall even drive you home without so much as touching you.”
“What shall I sing?” She swallowed and dipped her head, searching his eyes.
Why did he ask this of her? Was he mocking her? Trying to trick her into something awful?
“You may choose for yourself, but I will be allowed to touch you how I see fit while you sing, so pick something to fit the occasion,” he said in his deep, sensual timbre.
She sighed for a moment. Did he know how wet he was making her all over? She was sweating, she was trembling, adrenaline leaking out of her pores and moisture dripping from her secret folds—all for him.
“In the lazy moonlight, there is a girl. A man above, and what he does. Oh, he does it all. He has it all. He will ruin her if she does not return the call,” she began her new song she had been creating over the last few days.
He hummed in approval, gave a close-lipped smile and held her loosely, his hands roaming up her back.
She pulled at her bindings for a moment, and when he grinned with wicked delight at her being stuck there, a flood of heat jolted through her cunny.
“If she falls will there be a way, for she is lost to him this very day. He cannot see, for blindness is his. But she should run, how can she if she is lost? Will she succumb? Will she die? He will take her in the night, and she will catch fire.” The song shifted into a darker tone. “She cries as he plunges with desire, but it is not for pain she will expire? How can she tell her heart to stop stretching? Can she tell the moon to stop bleeding into her soul? Can she tell him to stop waking her mind? No, she is lost. She is lost. He is in her rushing blood, he is in her very heart. She is his, and there is no fight.”
The song ended with a fading, low note. Her eyes were heavy, her breathing ragged.
She wasn’t sure what to do now. His hands were in her hair, then he fisted at the roots, tipping her head back. “Did you make that song for me just now?”
“No, I’ve been nurturing it for days,” she said, breathless at this angle.
He inhaled deeply at her neck, and her knees weakened beneath her.
“Cherry girl, you wreck me with such words. They speak to me in a way that softens my very bones, melts my core. Do you have to make me want you more?” he growled, then released her hands.
They fell like a pile of rags at her side, and then he had her hands pinned behind her as his mouth enveloped hers.
She was backed up to the dressing room counter, and items spilled off the sides as he maneuvered her bottom up onto it.
“Please, I won’t hurt you the way you think.” His fingers delved under her skirt, and she gasped, but did not tell him to stop. “I am mad for you. I have never been this way for any woman.”
“I have no . . . I cannot pleeease you. I do not know how,” she said.
“Sing again. Sing it for me. Make me believe those words are about us,” he pleaded, his voice high pitched and desperate.
He stroked across her sopping knickers.
“Sir, but I . . .”
“Once more. Then I vow to release you.”
He dropped to his knees, and he ripped at the fabric.
She sucked in a tight gust of air, screwed her eyes closed and she sang with warbling breaths.
Fabric tore, and something wet and hot was on her most private folds.
She gripped his hair and cried out.
“Sing,” he demanded, then dropped his tongue back on her.