Blooming: Veronica Read online

In truth, he had done more than peruse her book. He had devoured her book, cover to cover, five times in total, committing some—all right, most—charged passages to memory. He found her voice more than mildly engaging. And being somewhat intrigued by the writer’s sexual yearnings was a colossal understatement. He had ejaculated all over chapter six. The pages had stuck together when he was done.

  Talbot let go a sigh. He might as well get on with it. The sooner he propositioned her…er…offered her his services…er…made her a business deal, the quicker he could go home, soak in some therapeutically steamy-hot water, and sob himself to sleep over her rejection. Or something equally manly.

  When the pianist struck up a sentimental parlor ballad, a cue for the author to graciously draw the reverential clapping to a close and get to work signing a few books, Miss Veronica Cooper totally ignored her audience and left the speaking podium.

  Talbot shook his head. Lord, did she need his help.

  Seemingly unaware of disappointing her readership, she headed his way, a beaded drawstring reticule clutched in her dainty hand.

  Though his smile muscles already twitched from all his socializing—he had kissed the buttocks of everyone, from wealthy philanthropists who generously supported the arts to snotty critics who gleefully pulled the rug out from under its creators—Talbot held steadfast, a warrior of publishing ready to conquer her writer’s heart.

  Though a quick roll in the hay would do him.

  Miss Cooper approached, her suffragist’s leanings evident in her militant stride, every inch the modern Gibson girl in a navy blue shirtwaist with mutton-leg sleeves. As a man of discriminating tastes, he knew a few things about a woman’s attire. Her costume highlighted a spectacular figure that included among its assets a tiny waist and uplifted derriere. In other words, she possessed the de rigueur “hourglass” silhouette, her classic S shape doubtlessly compliments of a swan-bill corset.

  Having undone more than a few hypothetically, he was something of an authority theoretically. In his wet dreams, he was a hands-on expert. While awake, he had undone plenty enough underpinnings to know Miss Cooper possessed astonishingly full, wonderfully round titties.

  May I have a peek, please?

  Apart from the aforementioned, though eminently worth repeating, titties, she was petite and dainty, and long-necked lovely. Her warm brown hair shot through with gold and piled high atop her head in a puffed chignon, she was a pretty baby out on the town, all dressed up in her mama’s clothes, her hair artfully arranged in a too-mature coiffure.

  The author had just turned an unpolished twenty-two. At nearly forty, he was nothing but shine.

  And dents and twists and bruises, and Lord, too many scars to count.

  He stepped directly into her path, a shuffle and a stumble, really, his bad leg cramping and dragging, which forced her into a pity stop for the cripple. How clever of him. The sympathy ploy worked every time.

  Confident of his salesmanship, less so his tact, Talbot stared into her face. “Miss Cooper, a moment of your time, if you please…”

  “Not now.” With a tricky evasive maneuver around his resolute stance, she marched herself away.

  Leaving Talbot to stare forlornly after her.

  Goddammit. He should have sent her a letter of formal introduction. A curriculum vitae so magnificent, she would have had no choice but to accept his business proposal. Why had he ever come here in person?

  Why? Why? Why?

  Why, to meet the young woman attached to a “flagrantly, fragrantly, wet cunt” was why.

  Her words, not his, and lifted straight from her semi-autobiographical book, page 35, paragraph 4, line 11.

  At his age, he should have known better. Even if he had managed to get her in bed, what ever would they have done afterward?

  A woman who could express sexual hunger, even a carnal desire as eloquently written as hers, did not necessarily make for a fascinating dinner companion. After multiple simultaneous orgasms—thinking optimistically here—they would have had but one point of discussion over the main course.

  The whys and wherefores of his twisted leg.

  Conversation always followed sex. Unless one paid for the sex—in his case, voyeuristically watching others have sex—to avoid the postcoital chitchat. He found that avoiding actual participation in the act greatly reduced socialization during the afterglow.

  Small loss. In the past, apart from ejaculation—difficult to fake that—he had only gone through the motions of intercourse, anyway, his every touch done to give a partner pleasure without any corresponding depth to the encounter on his side of the pillow. Superficiality was all he could offer, and sham profundity was disingenuous, which he despised. In comparison, paying to watch seemed downright honorable.

  What would a young beauty like her see in damaged goods like him?

  Certainly less than he saw in her. Still saw in her, despite the snub. If only she had not been so gifted! Genius was his weakness, second only to round titties.

  And a propensity for perverse sexual practices.

  In his arrogance, he had wanted to be the one to shape her, mold her, and not just her bosom. He was confident that in the right—ahem—hands, she would become a literary force.

  Someday.

  Proper guidance now, and she would grow into her potential. Her talent needed to be refined, not exploited. Her impulsivity, both of mind and manner, needed to be curbed, not encouraged. Those were his thoughts on the subject, at any rate. And everyone did have thoughts on the subject of her.

  Reviewers—underground periodicals, naturally, as the book was illegal—were having a heyday with Miss Cooper. Calling her the next Louisa May Alcott, only with obscenities, most critics predicted Veronica Cooper would bear the torch of enlightened womanhood for the Gilded Age, the flame that Miss Alcott’s death two years prior had snuffed. Already, Veronica had become the literary darling of the Old Corner Bookstore set and the veritable toast of Boston’s intellectual elite.

  A weighty burden for a slip of a girl to carry.

  His throbbing testicles aside—a weighty burden for him to carry—he had come here tonight to take her under his wing. To mentor her.

  And he would not give up now.

  After allowing Miss Cooper a few moments alone, he followed, ostensibly to join the gentlemen in the smoking room, where, over brandy and cigars, they would discuss the usual topic of cutthroat politics.

  Publishing, that is.

  After carefully cracking a few closed doors, he found Miss Cooper inside their host’s library. Seated at a gleaming mahogany desk, she poised the gold nib of a Waterman fountain pen to her strong chin. An idea must have blossomed, for she began to write furiously in her Moleskine notebook.

  Out in the hall, Talbot clutched Ruby. The writer’s every scratch and scribble sent a quiver through him. Christ, but her mind excited him.

  His levitating cock could only agree.

  Chapter Three

  Veronica contemplated her open journal. One entire page and nearly half of another contained the bare-bones outline of several steamy erotic scenes, all of which she had just now jotted down.

  Inspiration came to her in many different forms and from many different sources. Anything could and did strike a sexual chord within her. A gentleman’s gloved hand inadvertently touching a lady’s gloved hand as they passed along a crowded sidewalk often left her wondering what would happen when those gloves came off. The book signing had inspired her most recent ideas. After reading an excerpt from Diary, she had looked up into a sea of unfamiliar faces and discovered one, a gentleman’s, staring at her.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but actually, his was more a glower than a stare. He seared her with his eyes, burned her with his piercing gaze…drove her away from the podium with his unapologetic seduction.

  She could not possibly have stayed and chatted with readers while the tips of her breasts hardened, the throbbing nipples pleading to be touched. Stroked. Caressed. Pinch
ed! And while down below, between her thighs down below, that space between her legs down below, had quickened, gnawed, grown incredibly moist.

  Remaining at the podium to sign books would have given her overactive imagination away. For, of course, the gentleman had not really attempted to seduce her with his eyes. A need for spectacles most likely explained his insistent gaze.

  Unruly fantasies like that one were both her gift and curse. On the one hand, they provided her with creative fodder. On the other hand, like this evening, her lustful thoughts often proved embarrassing.

  But not usually for long. In another minute or so, this latest sexual fantasy would fade from her memory. They always did. Which was why she always hurried to write them down before they escaped forever. One more detail to fill in, just one, a question of motivation, and she would forget all about the distinguished gentleman in the audience, the staring one, the one with the ungroomed longish hair and beardless chin.

  His lack of facial hair and hair pomade bothered her. That was why this fantasy hung on longer than customarily. Unless she somehow explained away his departure from the de rigueur short oiled hair and clipped goatee that every other gentleman at the book reading wore, a nonconformity that went counter to his otherwise conservative appearance, the inconsistent character traits would invite criticism.

  Though expensively clad, he was not flamboyantly outlandish in his clothing. So—how to justify nonconformity in an otherwise staid gentleman?

  She had no idea.

  His red-handled cane offered the only clue. It dangled from the crook of his arm and gave him an incredibly jaunty air, the aura of a renegade. A man could do unspeakable things to a woman with that cane…if his nonconformist tendencies carried over into the boudoir. The endless possibilities gave her tingles.

  And a new premise for another book, her third, featuring a cane-carrying, clean-shaven, long-hair-wearing Marquis de Sade sort of character.

  Veronica gasped. For goodness’ sake! She really must stop all this mental lusting over some nameless man from a book reading who probably worked as a banker or an accountant or some other respectably dull occupation. If not for that night’s event being by invitation only, she would have assumed he had stumbled into her audience only accidentally, because, upon second reflection, she realized his stare had not been seductive at all and not likely a result of poor vision. Now that she thought back to the episode, she recalled that he stood at the rear of the assemblage, his red-handled cane on his arm, examining her as if she were some unknown species. Had he never seen a woman writer before?

  Clearly not. His staring disapproval had been palpable.

  She knew the type. Businessmen like him had surrounded her all her adult life. Acting as hostess for her widowed father and meeting his associates had taught her to be wary of gentlemen who put making the almighty dollar above all else, especially creative pursuits. To those sorts, it was all about closing the next financial deal and keeping their wives and daughters under their thumbs.

  What had she been thinking?

  He could not possibly be a hero in a work of erotica. The man from the audience was mature, far too old for what she had in mind. Lines scored his face; silver threaded his hair. Implausible to have a cane-carrying character of that advanced age perform sexually in multiple places, including on horseback.

  With a harrumph, Veronica placed the illogical plotting aside and returned to chapter ten of her work in progress.

  The dark moment.

  The wrinkle in her manuscript. The section had been causing her a great deal of difficulty. If not for a certain someone who had insisted upon meeting her here in the library after the book reading, she would have gone home and ironed out the problem.

  Veronica bit her lip. Perhaps that was shortsighted of her. Perhaps her rendezvous with the certain someone would actually help resolve the issue. She had modeled her second book’s hero—Paddy or Seamus or some other authentic-sounding Irish name; she had yet to decide which—after that certain someone, and seeing him tonight might actually help nudge her brain in the right direction.

  Research was everything to her. In defiance of her dear father’s expressed wishes and done solely to drink in the area’s gritty ambience, she had walked all by herself around South Boston, a neighborhood swelling with old tenements and new immigrants, all church-mouse poor, as well as being…

  Pausing, she tilted her head in thought. What was that colorful turn of phrase again?

  The salt of the earth. That was it. The expression exactly described Robert McDougal, the Irish immigrant longshoreman on whom she based her second book’s hero.

  She harbored no regrets about disobeying her beloved papa. Research required she see how the common man lived. And goodness only knew, there was no one as common as Robert McDougal. For the sake of research, she had allowed him to toss her skirts over her head behind a cargo box on a South Boston pier, for she could hardly author a book of erotica without first acquiring sexual experience. And too…

  Wait. By Jove, the resolution to the dark moment had just leaped into her head. Now to get the idea down on paper before something…or a certain someone…distracted her.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch. Her pen flew across the page. Blissful minutes raced by. Even when the side pocket door squeaked, she kept her head down and wrote.

  Just a few more sentences. Pleeeeeease!

  She continued to plot. Furiously. Until an all too familiar bouquet made itself known to her and addled her senses.

  Robert McDougal stood directly beside her, his pose wobbly, breathing alcoholic fumes down her neck.

  One last look of longing at the unfinished resolution to the dark moment, and Veronica placed her fountain pen on the desk’s leather insert, carefully closed her handsome notebook, and held out her hands to her lover.

  Fancy that, she, bookish Veronica Cooper, had a real, live, albeit slightly tipsy, lover who was not just another figment of her wildly overactive imagination.

  “I thought you would never arrive,” she said. “I have done nothing but count the tic-tic-ticking of the clock until I saw you again.”

  “You looked busy enough to me.”

  Robert could be a tad petulant at times, even belligerently bellicose. He was especially truculent when he had been drinking.

  She had never known anyone like him. His coarse brand of pugnacity excited her to no end. It had done so from the moment she first saw him, bare chested and involved in fisticuffs with another swarthy longshoreman down at the pier.

  Lest he leave in a snit, she immediately strove to placate him. “Robert, indeed, I awaited your arrival with bated breath.”

  “You can let it out now. Blue ain’t my favorite color.”

  Oh dear. She wore a navy outfit tonight. Was his snide tone a way of telling her she did not look her best?

  All her own fault. For the book event, she had deliberately downplayed her gender in favor of promoting a professional and modern image. A bad decision, she saw now, opting for career over frilly feminine appeal.

  Her lover kept company with loose women, shantytown sluts who played up their sexuality. In the interests of competing, she should have worn spangles and fringe. In the interests of holding on to him, she let her lover’s less than favorable remark go without comment. Any residual hurt she forced out of her head. Pfff. Gone. Entirely forgotten.

  With lovers, one must accept the good along with the bad. In this instance, Robert’s bad, more than a peck but less than a ton, contributed to his rustic allure.

  She whispered, a hitch in her voice, “I quite tremble for you. See how I do?”

  “Yeah, I see. What of it?”

  Why must she say it?

  “All I think about is you, Robert.”

  “And your damn books.”

  “My writing is nothing in comparison to you,” she replied, seeking to placate him. “I would give it all up on the morrow if you but asked.” She hastily crossed her fingers to nullify the fib.


  “You make good money at it, right? Your writing brings home the bacon?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it does do that. Brings home the bacon, that is.” How authentic! I must use that colloquialism in my book. “At least, I assume I make some money, but I am really not at all sure how the royalty system works. Papa handles my income, so I would guess that means there is something to handle…”

  Her voice drifting off, she squirmed in discomfort. A lady never discusses anything as vulgar as money.

  “Then, no harm done, I reckon, how you amuse yourself,” Robert drawled with a slight drunken slur. “Keeps you out of taverns, eh?” He elbowed her side.

  Robert did so enjoy ribbing her. Now if only she could get him to converse on more than one topic.

  Namely himself.

  Veronica dropped her gaze to her lap. My, what a petty thought. Grossly unfair to expect poetry or lively political debates or anything that would pass as culture to fall from Robert’s rugged lips. Apart from talking about himself, her lover just happened to be the strong and silent type, a man who worked well with his hands.

  At the thought of his calloused palms doing outrageously provocative things to her, a whole host of illicit sensations sparked inside her.

  Which she would record later in her journal. After he left.

  Everything went into her work, including intimate experiences, less than a handful in total thus far, the juicy tidbits from which she wrote about at great length in her journal. Unfortunately, most of the encounters needed significant embellishment. Now if Robert would only actually do all those outrageously provocative things she dreamed up…

  Veronica smiled at her lover. Snobbish to care how Robert made a living, that he unloaded boxes from ship holes rather than pursue an intellectual career. Narrow minded to resent his lack of stimulating conversation. He stimulated her in other ways.

  Robert was just so incredibly handsome and muscular in his stevedore’s clothing—nubby coat, cotton shirt, and denim trousers held up with soup-stained braces. She only wished he would remove his filthy tweed cloth cap every so often so she could make out the color of his shifty eyes.