Wanton Angel (11 page)

Eli stood behind her, arms folded in innocence, lip twitching. “The temptation,” he confessed, “was my undoing.”

It had been a difficult day and if there was one thing Bonnie would not endure from anyone, including Eli McKutchen, it was the indignity of being pinched. She raised her hand, intending to slap him soundly across the face, but he stepped back quickly, probably guessing that next she’d resort to a painful meeting of her shoe and his shin.

“Go away, Eli!” Bonnie hissed, completely forgetting the kiss and her earlier feelings of sympathy. “I’ve got work to do.”

“There won’t be any dancing tonight,” Eli responded.
“Forbes is recuperating from the emotional strain of today’s tragedy.”

Bonnie’s eyes widened as she remembered the boy who’d come to her store with news of the Farley accident. He’d said something about Mr. McKutchen “whomping” Mr. Durrant. “Eli, you didn’t—”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“You beast! When did violence ever solve anything?!” Bonnie stomped back to the door and pounded on it with both fists.

Eli was grimly amused. “Ask the woman who has kicked me, struck me with a toilet brush and tried to slap me, all in the space of forty-eight hours.”

“Dottie!” Bonnie yelled, pounding harder. “Open this door!”

It was Laura, one of the new girls, who unlocked the door at last and peered cautiously out. Her eyes widened at the sight of Eli, and she moved to close the crack of space but not quickly enough. Bonnie pushed from the opposite side and prevailed.

“Where is Forbes?” she demanded of poor Laura, who was gulping anxiously, smoothing her brown hair and watching Eli all at the same time.

Laura managed to answer that Forbes was feeling “poorly.”

Flinging a scathing look at Eli, Bonnie hurried up the stairs and down the hallway to the rooms she had been carried into so unceremoniously two days before. She knocked once and then entered without waiting for a call to come in.

Forbes was lying on a settee near the windows of an elegantly decorated parlor, his right eye swollen completely shut. He was wearing trousers and a satin smoking jacket, and he grinned at Bonnie as a fluttering Dottie fluffed the pillows that had been propped behind his back.

“Sweet Angel,” he said ruefully, looking Bonnie up and down with his one eye. “How I’m going to miss you.”

Bonnie frowned. “What do you mean, you’re going to miss me?”

“You’re fired,” he replied.

In a curious mixture of relief and high dudgeon, Bonnie whirled on one heel and marched out, racing down the hallway and the stairs, in search of the man who had ended her career as a hurdy-gurdy dancer. Kicks, slaps and toilet-brush blows were nothing compared to what she was going to do to Eli McKutchen now.

T
HOUGH THE ROOMS
above Bonnie’s store were empty, a lamp flickered in the center of the kitchen table, and a neatly penned note had been tucked beneath its base. Katie had gone to Genoa’s house for the evening and, of course, taken Rose Marie with her. No explanation was given, but then none was needed, since Bonnie knew well enough how Katie enjoyed Genoa’s vast collection of books. Added to that attraction were seemingly infinite supplies of cookies and cakes and, best of all, a concert roller organ; Katie loved that tabletop mechanism and would stand turning the handle for hours, if allowed, while interchangeable cylinders scratched out such favorites as “Lead, Kindly Light” and “You Look Awfully Good to Father.”

Despite annoyance that Katie had left a lamp burning unattended, despite all the tragedy of that day and the losing of her job—she was sure the responsibility for that lay at Eli’s feet—Bonnie was glad of an opportunity for silent reflection.

She ate a light supper of warmed-over stew and biscuits, then heated water for a bath. Her own quarters lacking the luxuries of a stationary tub and indoor plumbing, such as both Genoa and Forbes Durrant enjoyed, Bonnie dragged the oversized washtub reserved for purposes of personal
hygiene from the pantry to the kitchen and sprinkled pink carnation bath crystals into it. While the water heated on the wood-burning stove, she went into her bedroom and took off her dress and underthings, donning a blue flannel wrapper in their stead, taking her hair down and brushing it. Once the sable-ebony tresses shone and crackled with electricity, Bonnie braided a single plait and returned to the kitchen.

Three large kettles of water, laboriously pumped at the sink, were now steaming on the stove top. Bonnie carried them one by one to the tub, pouring their contents onto the rippled bottom of the tub. The pink crystals melted and released the luscious scent of carnations into the room.

Bonnie added cool water to the bath, tested it with one expert toe and found it perfect. She shed her wrapper, laying it over the back of a chair, and sank blissfully into the tub, closing her eyes and sighing as she settled back to enjoy the warmth and the fragrance.

She did not think of the trials and tribulations of the day just past, or of the very real possibility that Katie and Rose Marie might be a bother to Genoa, who was no doubt busy with Susan Farley and her baby. She did not think of losing the job she badly needed and she did not think of Eli McKutchen.

Not, that is, until he boldly walked into her kitchen, his golden eyes sweeping over Bonnie’s naked and heat-pinked flesh in one insolent foray. “You should lock your doors at night,” he observed.

For a moment Bonnie just stared at him, unable to believe his audacity, but when good sense returned, she made a dive for her wrapper.

Eli had anticipated this most natural move and pulled the chair that held the robe out of reach. In fact, he turned that chair backside-front and sat in it, his arms resting across its back and effectively pinning Bonnie’s wrapper beneath them.

Bonnie sank back into the tub, her arms folded across her bare breasts and her thigh drawn up in such a way as to cover the nest of her femininity, which was beginning to ache in a most disturbing way. “Get out,” she managed to say, closing her eyes tightly in the ostrich hope
that if she could not see Eli he would not be able to see her.

“You beautiful dreamer,” Eli responded smoothly. “You can’t actually think that I’m going to leave?”

“I do indeed think you are going to leave,” Bonnie said, eyes still closed, arms still clasped across her bosom. “This is highly improper. In fact, you are intruding!”

“Ummm-hmmm.”

Bonnie’s eyes flew open at his lazy drawl. The water was growing chill and so was her heart, although her blood raced hot beneath her skin. “Have you no decency, Mr. McKutchen? What kind of influence will this have on Katie and Rose Marie?”

Eli smiled. “You know from experience that I have no decency, and influencing Rose Marie and Katie will be quite impossible, since they aren’t here. I just saw them at Genoa’s.”

Bonnie sighed, determined to keep her head. Eli was clearly trying to annoy her, but he needn’t have the satisfaction of knowing just how thoroughly he had succeeded. “If you won’t behave as a gentleman, then kindly give me my wrapper. I’m cold.”

“You’re cold?” The words were crooned in a tone of mock sympathy and Eli’s chair made a scraping sound as he rose from it and slid it farther out of reach in almost the same motion. He took the kettles from the stove and carried them to the iron sink, the muscles in his arms and shoulders moving beneath his shirt, stretching it taut, as he pumped water into each one. The pots made a clink-sizzle sound as they were placed on the stove again. While Bonnie watched with wide, disbelieving eyes, her former husband returned to his chair and again sat astraddle of its seat, his arms propped along its sturdy back. “There will be more hot water soon—darling.”

Bonnie wished that the water she already had, now very tepid and inadequate stuff, were deep enough for her to drown in. Beyond leaping from the tub and dashing, naked as the day she was born, for the bedroom, Bonnie was at a loss for a strategy.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked in a small voice.

Eli ignored her question entirely, giving a sigh and gazing off into the distance with a dreamy expression on his face. For a moment, the only sounds were the surging of heat moving through the water on the stove and the traffic in the street below—more that night than usual, because the Pompeii Playhouse was offering an evening’s entertainment.

“Remember that night when all the servants were out—it was raining and we—”

Bonnie remembered all right, and she gave a little cry, shifting in a whoosh of water and outrage so that she sat cross-legged like an Indian in her bathwater, her arms still shielding her breasts. Their tips were pulsing now, at the memory of the delightful attentions they’d gotten that night “when all the servants were out and the rain was falling.” “Eli McKutchen, you wretch, I know what you’re doing and I demand that you stop this instant!”

Eli gave a throaty chuckle, his eyes still fixed on the long ago and faraway, his chin propped on one steel-corded forearm. “Ah, yes. They can have their central heating—every parlor should have a fireplace with a bearskin rug on the hearth—”

Heat was surging through Bonnie now, just as it was surging through the water warming on the stove. She found her sponge, after a moment of frantic one-handed groping, and hurled it at Eli in fury and desperation. It missed its mark, splattering against the railed back of the chair and bringing nothing more than a chuckle from her tormentor.

Inwardly Bonnie cursed herself for every kind of fool. Why hadn’t she locked the door when she’d come in? Why had she allowed herself to forget how skillful Eli was at arousing her? From the very first day of their marriage he had been able to stir her deepest passions with a word or even a look. What if he reminded her of that time in the carriage, on the way home from dinner at the Astors’?

Too late, Bonnie realized that she had reminded herself. Her body trembled in delicious memory of that scandalous encounter, her breasts growing heavy and her secret place expanding painfully in need of its natural counterpart. “Oh, Lord,” she wailed softly, letting her chin rest on her knees.

Eli was back at the stove, testing the water in the kettles with an index finger. “It’s ready,” he announced blithely, taking one pot by its handle and carrying it to the side of the tub. “Look lively there,” he said, “I don’t want to burn you.”

Bonnie instinctively shifted to one side, and the water Eli poured into the tub swirled around her bottom like a warm cloud. As if that part of her
needed
warming! “Eli, please—if you’ll just—”

“More water. Heads—er—bottoms up.”

Another stream of liquid heat moved around Bonnie in a sweet current, lulling her, permeating her. The aching need spread into the deepest parts of her, demanding fulfillment.

As though he had every right to be there, causing her such sinful anguish, Eli returned the kettles to the stove and recovered the sponge. He squeezed it out right where he stood, with no regard whatsoever for the carefully polished linoleum, and then approached.

Bonnie knew that she was lost when he paused to roll up one shirtsleeve and then the other, his movements methodical and unhurried. Though a lot of people would have said otherwise, there was but one man in all the world who knew how to turn Bonnie McKutchen into a wanton, one man who had ever gotten the chance to try, and that man was standing next to her bathtub with a sponge in his hand.

Bonnie closed her eyes and allowed the back of her head to rest against the edge of the tub and her strong arms to sink, powerless, into the freshly warmed water that smelled of carnations. She felt his hand brush past her hip, heard the soft scratching sound of soap being lathered against the sponge.

Deftly the sponge circled the outer part of Bonnie’s left breast, moving ever so slowly inward toward the center. She gasped involuntarily when the nipple was reached and gently lathered.

“I’ve never bathed a mayor before,” Eli remarked in a low voice, now washing her right breast. “How did you come to hold that office, may I ask?”

Bonnie opened her eyes and was about to make a stand when Eli’s free hand slipped beneath the water and parted
her legs, seeking the bud that would bloom to passion, finding it. As he dallied, Bonnie’s protest lodged in her throat, then slipped out as a moan.

Eli chuckled and continued to stroke Bonnie even as he filled the sponge with water and then squeezed, letting the scented liquid wash the soap from her breasts. “You were saying?” he teased.

Bonnie’s knees drew upward and then fell wide of each other, even though she had ordered them to close tight together. “Ooooo,” she whimpered.

“You can tell me how you got elected later,” Eli conceded charitably. “Right now, you’re a lady much in need of pleasing.”

Bonnie was a lady in need of pleasing, a healthy woman who had not been made love to in two years, and her need was a searing thing, immune to reason and propriety, flowing through her entire being with all the elemental force of the river surging past Northridge in the darkness. She felt Eli’s breath on her breast and arched her back, muttering, “Yes, oh, yes.” Her wet hands clasped at his broad shoulders and then the back of his head, and when his lips closed around her nipple in a teasing nibble, a great trembling went through her.

And all the while his fingers worked, driving Bonnie on and on toward what she knew would be only the first of many savage crescendos, for Eli had never been one to give quarter in that respect. No, he would love Bonnie again and again, satisfy her again and again, until they both fell into exhausted sleep.

Bonnie’s hips rose and fell in shameless response as Eli attended her, now trailing kisses along her collarbone, now nibbling at her earlobe, now taking greedy suckle at her breast. Water splashed over the sides of the tub as though set to boiling and with a keening cry of abandon and release, Bonnie rose high above its surface, trembling as the tumult within her had its primal way and then, long moments later, allowed her to sink back into the tub. She was shivering when Eli lifted her from the water into his arms, and it seemed perfectly natural to rest her head against his shoulder as she had done on so many other occasions.