Passionate Pleasures (2 page)

“I but live to serve you, milady,” and he smiled into her face. Then, delving deep, he found that certain spot that he knew would drive her wild with passion. He worked it skillfully, slowly at first, then more deliberately.

Milady screamed with pleasure.
“Tu es un diable!”
she cried, as her muscles tightened themselves about his throbbing penis, squeezing, squeezing.

He felt her spasming around him, her creamy juices bathing his raging member.
“Sacré bleu! Tu es magnifique, ma belle!”
he shouted as he came.

Ping! Ping! Ping!
“The Channel is now closed,” the syrupy voice said.

“Oh merde!”
Kathryn St. John said as her climax slowly faded away. She had just begun to really enjoy herself. With a rueful laugh she turned over, slipping into an easy, restful sleep. She had a busy day ahead of her.

When she awoke, it was a beautiful late-summer’s morning. Kathryn St. John wasn’t surprised to find several young people waiting for her to open the doors to the library when she arrived. There were those who did their summer reading early, and those who did it late. “Good morning,” she said to them as she swung the doors open.

“Morning, Miss Kathy!” each of them greeted her, hurrying through the screen doors and heading back into the stacks. She grinned, hearing them already arguing about who was going to get to read what first. She had known most of them since nursery school. Then turning, she went back into her little private office. There was already a cup of light sweet coffee on her desk. “Thanks, Mavis,” Kathryn called out.

Mavis Peabody, her assistant, immediately came into the room with her own coffee and sat down. “Let Caroline handle the checkouts,” she said. “It seems more and more of them are waiting till just before school starts to do their summer reading. I always read my stuff first to get it over and done with so I could spend my time at the beach. But not these kids. Everything else comes first for them. Beach. Mall. Movies, and those damned cell phones that do everything except be phones.”

Kathryn laughed. “Now, Mavis,” she said, “you just have to keep up with it all. Have you seen the new Kindle Two?”

Mavis sniffed. “Not interested. I like the feel of a book in my hands.”

“One day libraries could be obsolete,” Kathryn said seriously.

“I’ll be long dead, and glad of it!” Mavis snapped. “It has to be bad for your eyes, reading a book that way. And how are authors supposed to earn a living?”

“Oh, the agents will keep up,” Kathryn laughed. “They have kids to put through college too, you know.”

“Speaking of kids, the school board has found a replacement for Mrs. Riley,” Mavis said. “She went to the hospital last night.”

“So soon?”

“Riley or the new Middle School principal?” Mavis said.

“Both,” Kathryn laughed. “Tell me about Mrs. R. first. I thought she wasn’t due until late October.”

“With multiples you end up delivering earlier, and once that sonogram showed five, it was a sure thing it would be sooner rather than later. They managed to stop her labor, but they’re keeping her in bed and in the hospital for as long as they can to give those babies a better chance,” Mavis replied.

Kathryn St. John shook her head. “Poor woman. Married ten years without a hint of a baby, and then quintuplets without any infertility help. ‘Wow’ is all I can say. So who’s the new Middle School principal? I’m assuming someone local. They’ve hardly had time to look around since Mrs. Riley didn’t say anything until just before Memorial Day. Please, not Bob Wright. He’s such a stuffy jerk. The parents don’t like him at all.”

“Someone new.” Mavis chuckled. “Marion Allison told me that the board decided before that looking in-house was going to cause problems no matter who they chose, so they would check around for someone else.”

“And they found her?”

“
Him!
Timothy Blair is his name. He was assistant principal at a small private school in the city, but there was little chance for advancement since his boss was only five years his senior. Marion says he liked the idea of a small town, and he’s got all the qualifications the board wanted, plus a few they hadn’t even thought of, she says.”

“Sounds perfect,” Kathryn replied.

“Marion says he’s cute, and he’s single.”

“Probably gay,” Kathryn said. “If they get to be a certain age and aren’t married, or haven’t been married, they’re usually gay.”

“Hallock wasn’t,” Mavis pointed out, “and he was over forty when he married Debora. Marion says he’s really nice.”

“Hallock was my brother. St. Johns are never gay. No, I take that back. Great-uncle Arthur was, although in his day no one bothered to say anything about it, and neither did Arthur or his longtime companion, Harry.”

“People wonder about you,” Mavis noted. “I mean you’re not a kid at this point, and you never date anymore.”

“Don’t have to.” Kathryn chuckled.

“The Channel is fine for a while, Kathy,” Mavis said, “but you can’t substitute it for reality, and real men.”

“Why not? The men are hot and sexually insatiable. They do what I want. They don’t pitch hissy fits if I make suggestions, and I don’t have to pretend to come, because I do, every damned time. What real man fits that description?” Kathryn asked. “And I don’t have to sneak them out of the house before dawn so there will be no gossip.”

“There’s gossip anyway,” Mavis said dryly.

“Small-town America,” Kathryn answered with a shrug.

“Emily Devlin is pregnant again, and so is Ashley Mulcahy,” Mavis volunteered.

“Where do you get all this information?” Kathryn asked.

“I don’t live my life in the library and The Channel,” Mavis replied sharply.

“I go out,” Kathryn protested.

“To church, to board meetings for Mothers Alone, to the market when Mrs. Bills can’t get there for you. That is your life, Kathryn. Duty, duty, and more duty,” Mavis said.

“And The Channel,” Kathryn said. “Don’t forget The Channel.”

Mavis shook her head wearily.

Kathryn reached across her desk and patted her friend’s hand. “You don’t have to worry about me, Mavis. Honestly you don’t. I am outrageously content with my life.”

“You’re still attractive enough to catch a man, Kathy.”

“What do you want me to do when I catch one? Broil him? Stew him?” Kathryn teased mischievously.

“You are closer to fifty than you are to forty, Kathy,” Mavis said candidly.

“Don’t remind me,” Kathryn St. John said with a grimace. “Thank God for The Channel, where I can be twenty-five forever.”

“I give up!” Mavis said rising from her chair.

“I’m hopeless, I know,” Kathryn said, “but don’t give up on me, Mavis.”

“You’re going to live as long as your great-aunt, and you’ll be all alone,” Mavis wailed. “You have no one, Kathy!”

“I have you, and my brother, and Debora, and all her little munchkins,” Kathryn said. “And poor Great-aunt Lucretia had no one either, but she was perfectly happy.”

“I despair!” Mavis said with a gusty sigh.

“Go and set up the schedule for the autumn children’s events,” Kathryn suggested. “That always makes you feel better, and I do want it out the first week of school. You’ve got two and a half weeks, Mavis.”

“Good Lord! I barely have time!” Mavis Peabody exclaimed, and hurried from Kathryn St. John’s office.

Watching her go, Kathryn smiled. She and Mavis had been best friends since nursery school. They had never lost touch, even when they had gone to different colleges.

Mavis meant well. She had been happily married for twenty-six years to Jeremy Peabody. They had two children: a boy, and a girl who was now engaged to be married. Mavis loved her job and her family.
She’s duller than I am,
Kathryn thought, but she knew that wasn’t really so.

Mavis didn’t understand what it was like being raised in the St. John household. Kathryn’s mother, Jessie, had been a sweet woman who was devoted to her husband and children. She had given up a promising career as a concert pianist when she married Hallock Kimborough St. John IV. She had fitted herself quietly into the male-dominated St. John household, delivering the requisite male heir within twelve months of her marriage. She had miscarried a second son two years later, and when Kathryn had been born two years after that, she was visibly disappointed, especially after the doctor told her that having another child would kill her. And it had, when Kathryn St. John had been six.

After that, there was no strong female influence in Kathryn’s life. The household consisted of her grandfather, Hallock III, her father, and her older brother. The house was managed by a houseman, Mr. Todd, who saw that everything in the St. John household was in perfect order, and cooked the meals. A series of cleaning ladies came in once a week over the years. Twice a year they came for five days in a row, to spring clean, and several months later to prepare the house for the winter months.

And no one paid a great deal of attention to little Kathryn St. John. Her brother was the scion of the family. He followed his grandfather and father down the broad center aisle and into the family pew at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church each Sunday, never once remembering to hold the door and step aside to allow his sister entry once she came up from the Sunday school. After a month of Sundays Kathryn St. John took to entering her family’s pew via the side aisle. The first time she did it, she surprised her grandfather, but then a small smile touched his thin lips, and he nodded his approval to her.

He believed that she had accepted her place in the scheme of all things St. John. Actually that Sunday had marked Kathryn St. John’s declaration of independence. She was eight years old, and from that moment on Kathryn ran her own life. She was careful never to clash directly with her male kin. As long as her grandfather lived, he was deferred to as head of the household. Kathryn did not bother with her father, and she ignored Hallock V as much as she could. When she wanted something, she worded her request in such a way that it was unlikely her grandfather would refuse. And the things she could not learn from the male-oriented household in which she lived, she learned from Mavis’s mother, grandmothers, and older sisters.

She was a quick study, and Kathryn St. John knew she had learned to be a proper lady the day she overheard Mavis’s maternal grandmother say to Mavis’s mother, “I just don’t know how poor little Kathy St. John survives in that household of men. You would think old Hallock would have brought a nanny in for the child when Jessie died. Not that Jessie paid a great deal of attention to her daughter. It’s amazing she’s as well-mannered and ladylike as she is. Well, breeding will tell, won’t it?”

“I wish Mavis were half as ladylike,” Mavis’s mother had replied. “I’m glad they’ve remained friends. I think Kathy is an excellent influence on my daughter.”

Hearing those words, young Kathryn St. John smiled to herself. She didn’t need anyone but herself to survive in this world. She could do whatever she wanted to do, herself. Let her male relations believe that they were superior just because they had an appendage dangling between their legs. They weren’t. She knew she was beautiful, and she knew she was smart. She could do anything, and she could do it without a man.

Kathryn St. John wasn’t against men. Indeed, she liked them very much. While her father and grandfather were didactic, they were extremely clever and charming. So were many of the male friends who surrounded them. At sixteen Kathy found she had a serious crush on one of those men. He was fascinating in a mysterious way that appealed to her intellect. No one really knew a great deal about him except that he was quite wealthy and seemed to make a success out of everything he did.

“You may call me Nicholas, my dear Kathy,” he told her one summer’s afternoon when the garden was full of men and women laughing and drinking.

“You intrigue me, Nicholas,” she had told him, surprised by her own daring.

He laughed. “And you enchant me,” he replied with a small amused smile. “However, you are much too young for me to seduce, Kathy.”

“When will I be old enough?” she asked him seriously.

He laughed again. “We shall see, my dear,” he responded. “You will know when the time is right. In the meantime, we shall become friends.” And they had. She looked forward to his visits to Egret Pointe.

There was nothing she couldn’t ask him, be it serious or silly. He always answered her, and he didn’t scold or criticize as her male relations were wont to do when she asked a question they thought foolish. Kathryn St. John’s curiosity was endless. In time she began to query him about sex, because Mavis’s mother had only given her daughter and her daughter’s best friend the barest knowledge. There had to be more, Kathryn thought. While the girls at school had giggled and gossiped about their adventures with boys, Kathryn could hardly believe some of the things they said. So she asked Nicholas.

Sometimes he had laughed, then explained the misconceptions. Other times he had been most serious and thoughtful in his answers. Kathryn St. John had become more and more curious about what it was like to experience the mysteries of sex.

“You must not allow some careless boy to have your virtue,” he had said to her one day. “I want that first time to be special and memorable for you.”

“What would my father and grandfather think if they heard you speaking with me like this?” she queried teasingly. Dear heaven, this man excited her passions!

He laughed. “Your grandfather and father trust me to do the right thing,” he said.

“Do they mean for you to marry me?” Kathryn asked, curious.

“I’m not a man for marriage, my dear,” he admitted. “I enjoy women. I enjoy conversing with them. I enjoy possessing them sexually. Your male relations know that. They know whatever I do I will cause you no harm, nor will I cause a scandal.”

“What will you give me for graduation next week?” she asked, turning the subject.