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Authors: Gwynne Forster

When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance) (10 page)

BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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“Ooh. Oh, Lord,” she screamed, as he sucked her right nipple into his mouth and massaged her other breast. Suddenly, he stopped. “Wh . . . What is it?” She asked.
“Let’s go in here.” Within a minute, he rid her of her clothing. “Hmm. Nice,” he said, then picked her up and put her on the bed.
She didn’t look at him while he undressed. She couldn’t. She had never seen a man naked. He got in bed and began to fondle and kiss her. She waited to feel something, but didn’t until he began suckling her and his fingers found their way past her belly to the lips of her vagina.
“Open your legs,” he said, and she did, eager now for what would come.
He was on top of her now with one hand beneath her hip. “Take me in.”
She didn’t know what he meant, and when she didn’t respond, she suddenly felt the pressure of his penis, big and thick against her, and stiffened. “Relax. You’ll adjust to me in a minute.”
“Ow!” She screamed, as he tore into her. She had never felt such pain. Tears streamed down her face.
“
What the hell!”
He stopped and looked down at her. “Are you telling me this is your first time? My Lord, woman! Are you out of your mind?”
“Please,” she said.
“Please what?”
“I needed to do this.”
“I wish you’d told me.” He wiped her face with a corner of the sheet, bent to her breast and suckled her first gently and then vigorously.
“It’s all right,” she said, but he didn’t answer. After a while he began to move in a frenzied rhythm the way she imagined the men in her books did, but all she felt was the pressure of that large organ pushing into her. At last he stopped and pulled out of her.
“I’ve never been so shocked in my life,” he said later, lying beside her. “Let’s dress. It’s getting late, and I have to take you home.”
As they drove back to Pike Hill, he said very little, and she wondered if he was mad at her for some reason. Shouldn’t she be mad at him? He was supposed to make the earth move and volcanoes erupt, wasn’t he? But, except when he was sucking her breasts, all she’d felt was a deathly pain.
He parked in front of Thank the Lord Boarding House and cut the motor. “Why did you do this, Jolene? I want to know why a good-looking woman your age would throw away her virginity on a stranger, a man she doesn’t know a damned thing about. You haven’t asked me one question about myself. You don’t know whether I impregnated you. I can’t believe you did this.”
Fear streaked through her. She’d die if her next period didn’t come. “Did you?”
He turned and looked straight at her. “Hell no, I didn’t. I’m not crazy if you are. I pulled out. Look, I gotta be going. I know you feel badly, and I’m sorry, but I sure wish this hadn’t happened. I wasn’t even serious when I asked you to go home with me.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
“The answer to that question tells me a lot about a woman.”
“Are we going to see each other again?”
He shook his head. “Only when I deliver something to the shop. This was too much for me.”
He got out, went around to the passenger’s door and opened it. “I’ll walk you to your front door.”
She raised her head and laid back her shoulders. “Don’t bother. You were just as big a mistake for me as I was for you. Good-bye.”
“I didn’t say—”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Whatever!”
Upstairs in her room later, she showered, crawled into bed and sought solace in her copy of
Scarlet Woman.
Maybe if she read a couple of chapters before she went to sleep, she would forget that Jim what’s-his-name existed. She reread once more the sizzling scene in which Blake introduced Melinda to the mysteries of lovemaking, adoring and cherishing her. Tears blurred her vision, and she closed the book. Dejected. Jim hadn’t cherished her, and he’d made it clear that he didn’t care to see her again.
A sadness seeped into her, draining her of hope and of the expectation that she would ever know the joy with a man that other women knew. Suddenly, she brushed away a tear and sat up straight. Surely, the author of her books wouldn’t write those wonderful things if they weren’t true. Jim hadn’t done right by her. She wouldn’t give up.
In her loneliness and desperation to have what other women experienced with their men, Jolene did not see her own role in the fiasco attending her abortive liaison with Jim, for she didn’t know the role that love, affection, and tenderness played in the enjoyment of sex. She fell asleep plotting another sexual romp. According to her books, men loved sex and needed it frequently, so getting one should be a cinch.
Chapter Four
 
Richard met Gregory Hicks in the librarian’s office and shook hands with him, glad to see a young professional man. “Fannie told me you’d teach the computer classes, and I’m grateful for your help. I’m beginning to see how much our people need a leg up.”
“Glad to do it. These teenagers should be able to do something with a computer other than surf and play games. What do you have in mind?”
Richard outlined his suggestions for classes with use of the six computers installed at one end of the library’s reading room. “I’d be happy if the kids learned more than surfing. This is their opportunity to get experience building web sites, writing simple programs, word processing, and other useful things. I’ve blocked all so-called adult sites.”
“I can teach site building and basic programming,” Gregory said, “but this is a public library, so I don’t think we can restrict the program to youths. Adults also need the service.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Yes,” Tyler Griffon, the librarian said. “I had no idea so many people would want these services. Adults are registering in droves.”
“Great,” Richard said, pleased with the results of the first truly unselfish thing he’d ever done. “I couldn’t be happier.”
“I expected more men to sign up,” Gregory said to Richard the first Tuesday evening on which they held the adult classes.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Would you please come over here and check my margins?” a woman asked Richard, allowing her breast to press firmly against his arm.
Stunned by her blatancy, he uttered the first word that came to him. “Excuse me, uh . . . Miss.”
“No problem whatever,” she replied. “No problem at all. It was my pleasure.”
He spun around and headed for the front door where he leaned against the wall and prayed for equanimity. He hadn’t felt the enticing pressure of a warm, sweet nipple in months, and he stood there taking deep breaths and trying to reclaim his poise while his mouth watered.
“Thank you so much for all you’re doing for our community, Mr. Peterson,” a high pitched female voice said. Slowly and reluctantly, he looked around, and his gaze landed on a tall, willowy and well-dressed woman of about forty-five. “I was wondering if you’d come to dinner Saturday evening. My reputation as a cook is considerable.”
He couldn’t ask her how many guests she would have, and he didn’t care to be the only invitee. He decided to be on the safe side. “I hate to forego a big party at the home of a gracious hostess and miss an opportunity to meet the town’s important people, but it looks—”
She interrupted him. “My dear, you don’t think I’d share you with a houseful of half-sober people, do you?”
Whoever said Southern women were sweet, shrinking violets didn’t know which side was up. Sweet, maybe, but if the ones he’d met were a good sample, steely was more like it.
“I’ll be away.”
She smiled the smile of a lottery winner. “Next Saturday, then. I love dinners for two on a Saturday evening. They’re so romantic.”
The tightness in his chest slipped down to his belly. He’d never seen the woman before in his entire life, and he was damned if he’d let her crowd him. “I can’t say I agree with you, ma’am. I . . . uh promised the good Lord never to participate in another one, and that’s one promise I wouldn’t dare break. If you’ll excuse me . . .” He headed back inside.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought she bared her teeth after she locked her knuckles to her hips.
Women!
He’d always delighted in their predatory antics. But where the hell had he been and what had he been thinking? Wasting his life on games.
“Oh, there you are,” a petite blonde exclaimed. “I’ve been looking every place for you. Do you give private lessons? I can’t make the evening classes.”
He looked steadily at her, his patience rapidly expiring. “Classes in what?”
Her smile exposed not one dimple but two. “Uh . . . computer.”
“Sorry. That’s not what I teach.”
All of a sudden, his annoyance gave way to laughter. The lion had finally gotten his fill. He went into the men’s room where he encountered Gregory. “Man, how do you handle these women?”
A knowing grin spread over Gregory’s face. “I don’t have to. They leave me alone.”
“But they tried, didn’t they?”
“Oh, yes. All you have to do is invite them to Wednesday night prayer meeting. Unless it’s one who doesn’t know what that is, you’re safe.”
He shook his head from side to side. “Thanks. Give me a big city any day.”
Prayer meeting. He couldn’t even say the words.
Richard didn’t know when he had been as exhausted from anything that could be described as work. The responsibilities of an ambassador and, later, as an executive-director hadn’t once pushed him to a mental sweat, not to speak of a physical one. He got back to the boarding-house at about ten-fifteen, saw Judd in the lounge and joined him. A few minutes later, Jolene came into the lounge and got a soft drink from the machine, waved at them and left.
“I wonder if she realizes that she resembles Fannie,” Judd said.
“Does she? I hadn’t noticed.”
“What have you noticed about
anybody
who lives in this house?”
Richard stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “I’ve noticed your sharp tongue but I ignore it, because your age gives you license to be overbearing.”
A half-smile played around Judd’s lips, lips slightly shriveled from age. “You and Miss Tilman have something in common, and from where I sit, it isn’t laudable. She walks around here with her face in a book so she doesn’t have to look at the rest of us, and you strut around here with your nose in the air for the same reason.”
Richard couldn’t help being amused. When Judd got on a roll, his thoughts became words, and if you didn’t want to hear them, you’d best leave. “Aw, come on Judd,” he said. “I don’t try to ignore you.”
“Course you don’t, but I’m the only one, ’less it’s Fannie.”
“I’m too tired to argue with you. You know, it’s been years since the last time I was tired. I could use a good long swim.”
“Doesn’t pay to swim out there at night, but I’ll join you for one in the morning.”
Richard stood. “Works for me. I’ll be down here at seven ready to go.”
He told Judd good night, and as he walked through the foyer, he saw Jolene’s back and stopped. She leaned against the wall beside the dining room door talking with Percy Lucas, the truck driver. He let them have the privacy they seemed to want—since they elected to talk there rather than in the lounge—and headed up the stairs.
 
 
“I can’t give you a ride in my rig,” Percy Lucas was telling Jolene. “It’s against company rules.” Percy must surely be between fifty and sixty, she figured, not too good looking, and old enough to appreciate a woman as young as she.
Thinking that if she smiled, he’d give in, she forced a smile and pressed her right hand to his chest. “But just for a short ride. I’ve never been in a big eighteen-wheel truck.” She put a pout in her voice and on her face.
“Look, babe. You’re cute and all that, but not enough to make me put my head through a noose. If a man my age loses his job, he ain’t gonna get another one. Pussy just ain’t that good, babe.”
“Who said anything about—”
He interrupted her. “I tell it like it is, and that’s what you’re leading up to. I was here when you came here months ago, and you just noticed me. You been acting strange ever since you started walking around here with your eyes in some book.”
“Now, Percy, that’s not fair. You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have anybody to talk to, so I read. And I always noticed you, but you didn’t expect me to walk up to you and tell you I thought you were nice, you know, start up a conversation, did you?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, I guess not. When can we go out? I’m off Sunday through Tuesday.”
Maybe she was making a mistake, but he looked like a man of experience, and since he was older, she surmised, he’d be grateful for a younger woman’s attention.
Somehow, she didn’t anticipate the Sunday afternoon date with Percy with the same enthusiasm she had invested in Bob and Jim. Nevertheless, she put on her little gray and white seersucker suit and headed for the parking lot beside General Hospital three blocks south of the boardinghouse, where she had agreed to wait for him. When she passed Rhone Street, she could see the Assawoman Bay and the powerful turbulence of the Atlantic Ocean, and her thoughts drifted to Gregory Hicks and the one time he gave her swimming lessons. Maybe she shouldn’t have stood him up for Bob Tucker, but Bob had excited her in a way that she didn’t understand. A crazy, itchy kind of way.
When she turned into Bay Avenue, she saw the red Hyundai at the entrance to the parking lot. Percy reached over, opened the door, and she got in and fastened her seat belt. She couldn’t help comparing him unfavorably with Gregory, who had always fastened her seat belt. And he’d never failed to get out of his car, walk around to the passenger’s door and open it for her, too.
Percy handed her a pair of dark glasses. “Hi, babe. Put these on so people won’t recognize you. All anybody around here ever does is gossip.”
“Thanks for being on time, Percy. I didn’t want to stand out here in the hot sun and get a sun stroke.”
“I always look out for my women, babe.”
He drove to the outskirts of Ocean Pines, turned off the highway and parked in front of a modest, two-story private house.
“Don’t say nothing to nobody, babe. Just walk straight up the stairs.”
A queasiness settled in her belly as she walked into the house. With the center stairs facing the door, she had no difficulty following Percy’s instruction. At the top of the stairs, her guess as to what he intended became a certainty. She didn’t like it, but consoled herself with the thought that he probably had plans to make their tryst memorable. After all, he’d said she was attractive. With that and her youth, you’d think he’d do everything he could to please her.
He followed her up the stairs, opened a door, took her by the hand and walked into a very small bedroom.
“This is a nice clean place, so you don’t have nothing to worry about,” he said, kicked off his shoes and began pulling off his clothes. She dropped herself into a chair and stared at him. Even with her limited experience, she knew this wasn’t right.
He pulled off his boxer shorts, walked around to the other side of the bed, got in it and pulled the covers up to his neck. “Come on, babe. What you waiting for? I’m paying by the hour.”
She dropped her pocketbook on the floor beside her chair and braced her hands on her knees. “I don’t feel right about this, Percy. In fact, I don’t feel a thing. This isn’t how I expected the afternoon would go.”
He sat up in bed, dropping the covers and exposing his paunch. “What are you talking about? You wanna go spending a lot of money in bars and restaurants pretending what ain’t real, when all the while this is where you plan to end up? Come on, woman and get in this bed.”
“I’m sorry. I guess prostitutes can do that, but I can’t.”
“Well, if it’s a kiss you want, come over here and I’ll give it to you.”
She shivered as if a cold draft had blown over her. Wouldn’t anybody ever understand how she felt? “What I want now is to go home. I’ll pay for the room, but I’m not getting into that bed with you. I need somebody to care about me, cherish me and make me feel loved, and you don’t know what that is.” She tried to hold back the tears that streaked down her cheeks, but the sounds of her sobbing soon filled the little room.
“What are you crying about? Hell, woman, I should have known better than to get mixed up with you. The room’s thirty-five dollars.”
She heard his feet hit the floor, and when she looked up a few minutes later, he stood before her. Dressed. “What did you think I was? You were the one making up to me and giving me the come on. Don’t tell me you just wanted to hold hands; a man don’t get no charge out of
that
.” She only glared at him, too humiliated and too angry to respond.
“Don’t you breathe this to a soul. You hear?” he went on, and held out his hand. “It’s thirty-five dollars. Let’s go.” She opened her pocketbook, counted out the money, and handed it to him.
He counted it, folded the bills and put them in his pocket. “And I mean don’t you tell nobody. I’d be the laughingstock of the boardinghouse.”
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want anybody to know, either.”
Twenty minutes later in the hospital’s parking lot, he parked and let her get out of the car. “I’ll see you at supper,” he said in a voice approximating a growl.
She didn’t answer, merely turned away and headed with leaden steps up Ocean Road to the boardinghouse. Her shoes made prints in the softened asphalt when she crossed to the other side of the street where trees would shade her from the searing sunshine. She wiped perspiration from her hairline and stained her once-white handkerchief with the bronze face powder that caked on her skin. At the corner of Rhone and Ocean Road, she leaned against the lamppost, exhausted from the heat and from her travail with Percy, and waited for the light to change. If only she could tell somebody how she felt. So alone, and with no one to care whether she lived or died.
BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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