Bleeding Love

BLEEDING LOVE

Louisa Trent

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Bleeding Love Louisa Trent This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Loose Id LLC 870 Market St, Suite 1201 San Francisco CA 94102-2907 www.loose-id.com

Copyright © October 2008 by Louisa Trent All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59632-824-2 Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: Crystal Esau Cover Artist: April Martinez

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Prologue

July 4, 1891. Bar Harbor, Maine

Molly Fitzgerald cried infrequently, but when she did, her sobs were the stuff of a Dublin stage melodrama. Unstoppable. Noisy. She wept now as she would have in the final scene of a Shakespearean tragedy. Until John Donovan took her in his strong arms and kissed her. Before he had second thoughts about the wisdom of the embrace, she pressed her luck and plied her mouth to his, a maneuver that took them to the nearby bed. No last minute disrobing slowed the momentum. Already naked, she flopped onto her back, split her thighs, and bellowed, “John, John.” While she clawed at the coverlet beneath her hips, he wiped the briny moisture from her cheek. “No one is less worthy of your tears than I.” Really. So true. But, perhaps, someday, he would deserve her. “Be that as it may, make love to me.” “I love another.” Did he think her the bloody village idiot? “I know.”

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“I can never love you. This can only be a fuck. No more than a fuck. You can never be anything more than a whore to me. Three holes in the dark. Understand?” “Aye.” But once he had her, he would never be able to let her go. Or, perhaps, that was the other way ’round. No matter. Commitment would happen on both sides of the blanket. Eventually. Once Molly got rid of Lily, John’s beautiful sister-in-law, the “another” he thought he loved. The bitch came between them, even now, in bed. Outside on the Green, Fourth of July fireworks exploded. Inside the dim room, John stared at her unremarkable face. Touched her unmemorable hair. Moved on top of her unequivocal curves. And though she would never be as beautiful as Lily, Molly arched her back in wanton invitation. She would have waved her arse up in the air like the Stars and Stripes to catch John’s attention. Unlike the perfect Lily, she was only a flesh-and-blood woman of somewhat easy virtue who just happened to love him deeply. “All the way in,” he said. “Ejaculate expelled outside.” At his words, she tightened. Her wellspring of lust leached dry. An honorable man like John Donovan would wed her if she conceived, so of course, he would take precautions. Forthrightly honest, he naturally told her so in advance. Mechanically minded, he drove into her and began cranking as if she were one of his electrical generators. Unfortunately, he could not turn her off and on at whim, like a switch. While he pumped away, she listed in her mind the purchases she would make at the market the next day. A nice plucked chicken for the stockpot sounded good. “Molly, Molly, Molly. Never leave me again, Molly.” A pull from between her thighs and a push into a linen handkerchief, and he was done. Finished. The long-awaited coupling was over.

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Oh, well. No dazzling Fourth of July finale tonight. At least, not here inside the bedroom. As John snored away, she ran her fingers through his thick black hair. Her new lover required a barber’s attentions. On the morrow, after forcing him to drink a hearty bowl of soup, she would take a pair of shears to the handsome but unruly strands.

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Chapter One

The year 1895. Bar Harbor, Maine

Warm summer breezes ruffled John Donovan’s unkempt hair, tossing the long uncombed strands into his rheumy eyes as he staggered down the drive. Temporarily blinded, he continued onward, singing a little tavern ditty under his breath. “Oh, absinthe, oh, absinthe, the world looks sunnier under the golden-green influence of absinthe…” His ode to the Green Fairy came to an abrupt end when his unsteady balance deserted him for parts unknown, and he stumbled. From some unnamed source -- a gray-eyed guardian angel, maybe -- he found the presence of mind to dig the heels of his unpolished boots into the dirt as his feet slipped out from under him. An inch or so shy short of falling flat on his face, he saved himself. “Whoa. What the hell is that crater doing here?” he slurred wetly aloud, his double vision focused on the yawning hole in the ground. “Did my assss just land itself on the moon or somethin’?” Teetering at disaster’s imminent brink, he slapped his knee and gave a sidesplitting guffaw.

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A man landing on the moon. That was a good one. A real hoot. Not in his lifetime would a man leave his footsteps on the lunar surface. But someday, some lucky dreamer, even an amateur astronomer like him, would explore -“The whole fucking universe,” John shouted while swinging his arm in a wild arc that encompassed the sky. Reeling, but still upright, he forced his stargazer’s sights back to planet Earth.

Someone had promised to fill that hole in the drive. Obviously, the irresponsible soand-so had neglected to do the repair. He swiped a hand over his loose lips. His palm came away with a bubbly slick. A quick swipe against the leg of his wrinkled trousers took care of the saliva. On occasion -- 365 of them -- he admitted to taking a drink. Today of all days, he had needed that last bracing one for the road. Without that final shot of bottled courage, he never would have made it this far. Spittle trickled from the corner of his lax mouth. This time, he wiped the drool on his coat -- despite the three buttons sewn on his sleeve to prevent undisciplined fellas from such objectionable doings. After tidying himself up, a wave of nausea hit John. His gut roiling, he lurched toward the same hole all over again. That was him, all right, forever repeating the same past mistakes. The toes of his dusty boots dug into the dirt for purchase; his arms flapping like an inebriated crow, he cawed, “Hear ye, hear ye. Should I expire in a pool of my own…a pool of my own…” What was that word again? Hmm. Damned if he could remember. He had studied Latin. Halfheartedly, but he did know how to conjugate verbs. Why, he had practiced noun declensions for seconds at a time! Now even common translations

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escaped him. Just to aggravate him, the unrecalled term hovered at the tip of his woolly tongue. Wait. He had it. The word came back to him now. Who said drunkards had no memory? Hmm. Damned, if he could remember. Weaving back and forth, he started all over again. “Hear ye, hear ye.” He pretended to ring a bell. “Should I expire in a pool of my own vomitus down there in that treacherous crater, the credit for my untimely demise must certainly go to the worthless someone who neglected to patch this road. No other is more deserving of the accolades than that shiftless lout. He alone rightly claims the distinction for my premature death.” There. A grandiose, if somewhat dyspeptic elucidation, if he did say so himself. Though -- to be strictly fair -- who cared if he lived or died? Hmm. Damned if he could remember. Maybe his barber would care. John shook his shaggy mane. Who cut his hair, anyway? Hmm. Damned if he could remember. He scratched his bristled jaw, ignoring the dried remnants of that morning’s breakfast. Or was the congealed stuff left over from a prior day? Hmm. Damned if he could remember. Not his fault. After a while, the days ran together, much like the undercooked eggs he had choked down his gullet -- either this morn or the one before last. Deuce take it! He had it. Not when he had last eaten, but the name of his barber. Molly. A pretty colleen with a thick Irish brogue and disappointed gray eyes had trimmed him last. Afterward, her generous breasts had cradled his head while he cried, then laughed, then cried again.

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Or had he laughed, then cried, then laughed again? Hmm. Damned if he could remember. He kicked a loose rock into the gaping hole. The echo repeated inside his head like a bullet to his brain. “Who gives a fuck ’bout the s’quence of damn events?” Or the woman barber, either, he conceded with a hearty belch. Gentle winds carried his gusty rudeness into the dense grove of oaks that buffeted both sides of the drive. Given the level of his intoxication and the proof of the spirit, he feared for the lives of every critter in the forest. Poor chattering squirrels. Poor chirpy birds. Christ, the bunnies… “Sorry,” he yelled and frantically tried to disperse the killer alcoholic stench. After waving his arms about for a good long time, he sniffed the air for any lingering traces of his noxious breath. Much better. The stink was entirely gone. Though his body odor came back to haunt him. Past rank into ripe, his gamy foulness singed his quivering nostrils and would most definitely offend the lady he was off to see. He should return home. Wash up. The thought of bathing exhausted him. All that water. All that soap. All that scrubbing. Even a slapdash sluice at the basin would make him late for his appointment. Unless… Unless, he saddled up Thunder and rode over to his brother’s place. Seemed a bother for such a short trip. As the crow flew, Doyle lived less than a mile away from his own house. And, too drunk to walk meant he was too drunk to hold the reins. Breaking his own fool neck -- that was one thing. Injuring prime horseflesh? That was something else again. Small loss, the former. A tragedy, the latter. From out of nowhere, an Irish voice scolded him for thinking such a bad thing. Hanging his head, he stuck his fingers in his ears.

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No use. He still heard that lilting brogue inside his head. This time, though, the voice accused him of something. Something indefinable. Something reprehensible. Something that had nothing to do with his overdue haircut or thinking bad things. He took a stab at recalling the transgression. There were so many; luck of the draw would land him on at least one of them. Like magic, an image of a gaping hole appeared right in front of his boots. Up went his trembling palm. “Hand to God. I meant to fix that crater in the drive, just as I promised you, Molly. But essential duties, important matters, kept getting in the way.” Though, at the moment, he could recall none of them. Too late now. But tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would repair the road. Or maybe the day after. Molly would understand. She always did. And forgave. She had a big heart, did his barber. He pushed onward. The exercise would sober him up, and the balmy breezes would air him out. And if he stumbled into another crater along the way, who would miss him? Molly. Molly would miss him. Leastwise, she would miss the money he paid her to sleep with him. Lily, his elder brother’s wife, the lady he was off to see -- now she would definitely not miss him. The beautiful, red-haired artist avoided him at all costs, especially in Doyle’s absence. Not today. Though Doyle was upstate on architectural business, his sister-in-law would have to speak to him. Today. Look at him. Today. Breathe the same air as him. Today. This was a professional call, not a social visit, and so she would have to be alone with him. Today. Despite that he had once come mighty damn close to raping her. A long time ago. And if the assault was not exactly water under the bridge between the three of them, his brother trusted him.

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John only wished he trusted himself half as much. Luckily, he did trust himself enough to fix their tetchy motor. Electrical generators were his line of work. He worked around live wires and never broke a sweat. But the thought of being alone with Lily? That had him twitching like a current had just passed through him. He would give his last banknote for a taste of wormwood. A double swig. Too bad, he had left his therapeutic flask of the Green Fairy at home. After emptying the contents of the silver container, he’d had no time to refill it before leaving. He needed his medicine now. The symptoms of his ailment had returned full force. Getting into Lily’s fancy, lace-trimmed drawers occupied his every thought, drunken or rarely otherwise. His obsession with a woman he could never have classified him as the world’s sickest cad. Lily was married to his brother. For six years. That should tell him something. She also happened to be the mother of his only nephew, five-year-old Willie. Apart from that, he loved Doyle. Where would he have been without him? After the deaths of their parents, his big brother had raised him and his younger brother Theo, for Christ’s sake. The fucker was the best, the very damn best. He would give up his life for Doyle. Giving up Lily proved more of a challenge. Which explained why, today, he had gotten himself all liquored before sunrise, his usual hour to begin libations. In honor of the impending visit, he started hitting the bottle halfway through the night. John combed none-too-steady fingers through his too-long hair, brushing a coarse hank back from his face. Now, at least, he could see all those good intentions that paved his road to hell. Like the one about him staying far, far away from Lily. Absinthe was just a substitute for his addiction to her. His habit had started at eighteen and had lasted nearly half John’s life. A long time for a hard-on. A long time for his balls to ache.

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An icy stream connected the two Donovan properties -- the old family homestead where he now lived and his brother’s recently built home. A swim in the cold waters might ease the pain in his testicles. He headed there. To the sounds of rushing water, he stripped, then evaluated his belly. Hairy, but flat. The Green Fairy dulled the appetite. He dropped his sights lower and grinned. No brag, Mother Nature had endowed all three Donovan brothers with enviable stamina. Well into his cups, he could balance a book on his head -- the nonthinking one, not the thoughtless one. While under the influence, he could still fornicate. His inebriated performances left many a gal holding her breath, then gagging for air, before collapsing in oxygen-deprived gasps. Some gents were not as fortunate. Some had to choose between liquor and the ladies, declaring too much of the first let the second one down. Not him. Getting loaded never interfered with his ability to get laid. He had dependable Molly, a woman easy to satisfy. He took himself in hand. After pissing against the rough bark of a stately oak, the hot stream directed left of center, he began a solitary pumping. As always, his sister-in-law provided the raw material for his fist. Funny, he forgot most everything else, but not the memory of an eighteen-year-old Lily dancing naked outside her grandmother’s antique cottage. Though he caught her accidentally, he stayed intentionally to investigate an age-old question: Were redheads red all over? Yep. The memory of her fiery pussy never failed to get him off. One last masturbatory stroke, just one, should do it. Head thrown back, he let go, descending into the conflagration.

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Afterward, he took his smoking testicles for a swim in the stream. His arms slicing the chilly water, he stayed for as long as he could and then crawled back up onto the bank. His fever burned as hot as ever, and his erection refused to go away. He had traveled near and far, bedded any woman who would have him, and nothing softened the horrible yearning, nothing extinguished the flames. Only ending it all would end his fiery hard-on for Lily.

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Chapter Two

John dressed with the speed of light. Easy to do when a man shunned formal attire. A sack coat and trousers for Sunday best was as gentrified as he ever got. He used his hands to make a living, and his rugged clothing reflected his manual labor, not his sizable bank account. Though -- he did appreciate a nicely cut vest. Unlike one-piece wool union suits, which he never appreciated, not even when Maine winters howled out winds chilblain cold. As a snot-nosed kid, he had decided he would sooner freeze his tail off than scratch it off. Over bare skin, he stepped into thigh-length knit drawers. Tough to damage, and the nubby fabric itched hardly at all. Next, he pulled on a white cotton shirt. The collar closed with a plain stud, no goddamn tie. A pair of dandified striped suspenders went over his muscle-bunched shoulders. A hitch and a snap, and the straps fell into place just where he liked, bringing the attached lightweight black wool trousers along for the ride. After buttoning himself into a plainly tailored waistcoat, he got into socks, then boots. A dark tweed coat went on last.

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And he was ready to go, not as sweet smelling as a flower, but no longer stinking to high heaven. He would call himself passable and let any further comparisons go at that. As a bonus, the swim had sobered him enough to walk a straight line. Which he did, directly to a sprawling clump of mint growing at the furthermost edge of his big brother’s yard -- Lily loved flowers of all descriptions. Clean out of the horehound candy drops he usually sucked on, he popped a leaf into his mouth and chewed -- to release the sprig’s aromatic oils -- then spat. He cupped a hand to his mouth, blew out gustily, breathed in warily. Not so repugnant anyone would notice at ten paces, and that was as close as he planned on getting to Lily. He caught his first glimpse of her as he climbed the grassy slope that led up to the main house. Out on the front lawn, painting her namesake flowers, the artist stood in profile, her stretched canvas propped up on a portable easel in front of her. Engrossed in her subject matter, her wide-rimmed straw hat flapping in the breeze, she never saw him approach. He coughed, to make his presence known. She inspected his messy wet hair. “You never could resist a dunk in the brook.” Her voice washed over him, as seductive as a geisha’s konnichiwa. In his early twenties, he’d traveled to Japan -- part business, part to escape Lily’s spell, a spell that lingered for all that she then lived and taught in Boston, and they had no contact. His electrical generator had impressed. He fared not nearly as well. The Japanese had viewed him as an uncivilized barbarian. Then again, drinking all that sake might have shaped their bad opinion of him. Memories of Lily had followed him to Nippon, and not even diving into the Tama River could sober him up. “I do like to swim,” he offered. “Especially during a hot spell, like today’s blast from the

Inferno.” Her brows quirked. “Since when do you read Dante?”

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Show-off. Show-off. Fucking show-off. Doyle was the intellectual, not him. “Just an expression,” he answered and dropped the subject. His personal ring was the “Second Circle,” where sinners suffered in hell for their earthly lust. And he could no more tell her that than he could tell her he really had read Dante. The object of his lust removed the voluminous smock covering her mourning gown -an unrelieved black silk -- and offered listlessly, “The barn should be cooler.” She sank the slanted tip of her used paintbrush in a glass canning jar filled with turpentine. A swish of horsehairs, and the liquid changed from transparent to violet. Following her lead, his gaze glued to her swaying bustle, they entered the, yes, muchcooler barn. Mercifully, the attendant squawk coming from generator, set off to one side in the interior, grabbed his attention away from the curve of Lily’s bosom. As a girl, she had been reed slender. Coltish, even. Long legs, lean hips, not much in the way of breasts. The same held true now -- except for the tits. Motherhood had filled them out. Not a lot. But some. That “some” had him glad she had folded her arms. Her nipples had noticed the change of clime. She hugged herself, a move that covered the hardened tips of her breasts, which he supposed was the whole point of the hug. “Tools to your right. Can I get you anything else?”

Your cunt would be nice. He swallowed. “How about rags to wipe the grease off my hands?” With a nod, she left. He got to work, his thoughts wandering. Once, after a horseback ride with Doyle, the exhibitionistic flirt had wiggled out of her buckskin trousers and shirt. A suspected murderess back then, she had simultaneously flaunted her body to both his brother and himself. Accepting her open invitation, Doyle put

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his hands all over her, including between her thighs. A few hard strokes later, she wailed a pained climax. Rough foreplay best described his older brother’s lovemaking style. A receptiveness to perversion best described hers. During their torrid courtship, Doyle had dragged a bare-assed Lily into the house at the end of a rope. Their carryings-on had awakened him from a sound sleep. Wearing nothing but a hard-on, he had gone to his bedroom door to find out what the hell went on out there in the hall. And had bumped into Lily. Or rather, she had bumped into him. Or more precisely, she had bumped into his erection. Her body filling the space between their two male bodies, she had bellied up to his aching cock. Accident or intentional? John never knew for sure. But something had almost happened back then. Even now, when he moved inside a woman’s body, the sensation of penetration came nowhere close to the eroticism of that brief skin-on-skin contact. Lily returned. “The generator?” Onto the hay-strewn floor, she dropped the requested pile of cloths. He absently wiped his hands on one. “Busted, all right. Only take me a few minutes or so to fix her. Go on about your business, if you like.” He crouched at her feet, the top of his skull leveled at her waist, his mouth within kissing range of her pussy. Stay. Please stay. Get

naked with me in the barn. “Well…I suppose…I can let the painting go till later…” He picked up a wrench and started tinkering. Slowpoke-style.

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His compulsion for Lily had once nearly driven him to rape. The continued urge had driven him out of the country, out of his mind…to the bottle. Only getting inside her cunt would ease the longing. Now was his chance. Doyle was away, and she stood within scant inches of him. He was good with his hands and better with his tongue. Only this woman was his brother’s wife. And his usually dexterous hands had turned heavy, and his glib tongue had only produced that clumsy Dante’s Inferno comment. And there was his nephew to consider. He might walk in on them. The runt liked helping his Uncle John. He looked around. “Where’s Will today?” “Left this morning for Meg’s. A stay of a few weeks. She’s teaching him to sculpt in clay.” “Got his mother’s talent, eh?” She shrugged, rearranged her spine to fit a stoical line. “What with Nana’s death in Italy, following so soon after Tony’s passing, I thought William would benefit from the company of someone less mopey. The house already seems empty without him. I miss him --” He had been actually getting some fixing done, but a choppy breath jerked his jaw back up to her face. “Aw, Lily -- Doyle should be here with you. No business trip should have taken him away.” As soon as the words departed his lips, he regretted speaking them. What was his motivation? Was he an opportunist, denigrating the man she loved? A disloyal swine, backstabbing his brother? Or, was he simply truthful, if undiplomatic? Like women the world over, she produced a hanky from the hollow of her sleeve and dabbed at her teary eyes. “I told Doyle to go. He never would have left me alone otherwise.” That put him in his place. “If you needed him here with you, why tell him to go?”

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“Because, just like William, he needed a break from the gloom hanging over the house. I took the funeral wreath down off the front door, but the pall lingers still, no matter how hard I try to pretend otherwise. Silly me. I thought forcing myself to stand on my own two feet, without a crutch, was the right thing to do. But everyone, you in particular, knows I always do the wrong thing.” Once, he would have taken great pleasure in agreeing. Once, he had considered her a whore and a murderess. Doyle had forced him to examine his heart for why he thought the worst of her. And he found out, he had ascribed all those wrongs to her to protect himself from hurt. Waste of damn time. Even liquor no longer dulled the pain. Forgetting all about the complaining motor, John came slowly to his feet. One foolish step later and he took her in his arms. “No need to pretend with me. I have some familiarity with lingering palls, myself.” Had she even heard him? Her knees collapsed. Holding her upright, he patted her narrow back and said, “Talk to me,” adding the quasi endearment “Lilybud” only in his mind. “Where to begin?” “How about with tea? We can talk over a pot of Earl Grey.” Before puberty rendered them speechless, they used to talk. All the time. Hell, they’d started off as friends. They’d discussed nothing world-shattering, only about what would shatter them. Then Doyle had moved in on Lily and shattered everything. Inside the kitchen, over two steamy cups, they started in. She went first. “I have allowed Doyle to believe I want another child. I have allowed him to think I am disappointed not to have conceived, when I am anything but.” An attack of the fidgets struck. He needed a drink, and not the black leaf kind.

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He held onto his shaky knees. “And why is that, Lilybud?” he asked, the endearment slipping out as his control failed him. “I guess I doubt my capacity to love another child as much as I love Will. How can I possibly split my maternal attachment that way? Will is such a joy, naughty and active, and everything Doyle most likely had been as a lad, himself.” “Fuck, yeah. Doyle was a little angel.” She hit him with one her aloof looks. “Stop doing that, John Donovan.” He furrowed his brow. “What?” “The sarcasm. Stop this very second. You have no way of knowing what Doyle was like as a child. Your brother is your elder by years.” “The same amount of years he is to you, matter of fact.” “He raised you like a father,” she accused. “Right,” he said grimly. “And he daddied you the same way.” A fat blueberry crumb pie sat on the table before him. He picked up the knife resting beside the tin plate and sawed himself a wedge. She protested. “I made that for Doyle.” With a spiteful smirk, he popped the slice into his mouth whole. The first swallow very nearly gagged him. He should have known better. Lily never did cook worth shit. Shuddering, he spat the rest of the blue pulp into his linen table napkin. “Christ, Doyle owes me for this one.” He pushed the pie tin far, far away. “Use the rest of this mess for rat poison.” Now, she glared at him. Her snobby nose went up in the air. “My talents lie elsewhere.”

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“Nice how we occasionally agree on something. Go on. I ain’t dead yet. Might as well tell me the rest before I expire.” She clutched her bosom. “My love for my son swells the boundaries of my heart.” He felt another gag coming on. “A greenback says you felt a little different when Little Lord Fauntleroy had a load in his nappies.” She gave a disgusted snort. “Really, John! So uncouth. Seriously -- what if I cannot love a second baby the way I love Will?” Must have been her high-strung artistic temperament or something, because Lily always went a little overboard during an emotional upset. And, as he had learned in the fifth grade -- after sticking the end of her red braid in the inkwell -- there was only one way to handle her then. He shot her dreamy head down from out of the clouds. “That half-assed attitude is what comes from being an only child.” She looked at him askance. “I never regretted having no brothers or sisters.” “Why the hell would you? Your grandmother doted on your every want, you spoiled brat. You never had to learn how to share. Or fight, when sharing failed. Everything was handed to you on a silver platter. You were the apple of Victoria Hill’s eye.” “My exact point! She showered me with unlimited attention. How can I possibly give equal portions of love to two children, so that neither suffers the splitting of my maternal devotion? How can I possibly provide the same sort of upbringing that I, myself, enjoyed with a second child in the house? There is only so much of me to go around and only so many hours in the day. And what of my painting?” Could be withdrawal from his “medicine,” but she had just lost him. “What of it?” “I am already stretched thin. I would have to give up my career to make room for another human being. Even the idea devastates me. Is that selfish of me?” “Hell, yeah.”

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She rolled up the tea caddy and tossed it at him. “And human,” he added, two hands up to protect his skull from possible dents. For a girl, she could pitch a vicious tea caddy. “Doyle thinks you walk on water. I know different.” “Some help you are,” she complained. “Hire a nursemaid. There. Problem solved,” he said complacently and checked his watch. When Lily had a bee in her bonnet, she could drone on and on. “Selfish me, putting mothering off on a nursemaid.” “Listen, I would never want to give up my work. I love my work. So why would I think you selfish not to want to give up something you love?” “But thinking such a dreadful thing only goes to prove my lack of maternal instinct.” He hooted in her face. “Thinking is not the same as doing. You are one hell of a fine mother.” “How can you say that when my inability to conceive again fills me with relief, not sadness?” she asked earnestly. “Tell my big brother your thoughts on the subject. He lives only to make you happy.” Right away, she clammed up, a long-standing habit of hers when she was hanging on to secrets. As her silence lengthened, John tapped his fingers on the oak table. Her gaze darted away, and then came to rest on his face, not quite meeting his eyes, but close. “This talk must remain confidential. Just between us.” “I would never betray you.” She lowered her voice. “My passion has all but died.” “Whoa there.” He jumped up from his chair. “Maybe you should stop now, Lilybud.” But just like in the barn, she gave no indication of having heard him. “Regardless of how protracted, foreplay never puts me in the mood. And during the act, my body shuts

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down, while my mind remains active. I cannot stay in the moment and simply relax and enjoy myself as once I did.” “I should go. Yep, gotta go. Right now. Right this very minute…” “No matter where Doyle touches me or how, he fails to engage my animal spirits. Without arousal, climaxing proves utterly impossible.” Would Lily notice if he stuck his thumbs in his ears? He was the last person on earth who should be listening to her confession. He had a vested interest here! At the same time, he had a vested interest here, so he needed to listen to her every word. With Doyle out of the way, he might get a clear shot at winning Lily’s affections. After dredging deep, he produced an ounce of nobility. “Tell your husband how you feel.” “I have resorted to lying to Doyle, to pretending to pleasure, to making myself scream at the end.” John leaped backward. “I best finish fixing that stalled generator now.” He raced for the door. Without a backward glance, without even asking if she would be all right on her own, he got himself the hell out of there before he did something he would regret. After repairing the electrical motor, he headed on home. Jerking off to Lily’s face in his mind, dreaming about her in his bed -- those were easy hooks to hang his difficult feelings on. The truth was, right or wrong, weak or strong, he lusted after Lily. Always had lusted after Lily. But having a perpetual hard-on for his brother’s wife in no way made him a low-down, opportunistic snake in the grass, a Judas who would betray his brother and take advantage of a grieving woman. But fuck, he had wanted to. Christ. The guilt would kill him yet.

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Back at the old Donovan family homestead, John headed straight for the liquor cabinet. Only one precious bottle of absinthe left. Who needed a glass? He raised the Green Fairy in the air. “To a speedy demise,” he toasted and got to work draining its golden-green contents.

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Chapter Three

“Molly, Molly, Molly. Never leave me again, Molly.” So John Donovan had commanded her on that defining Fourth of July moment five summers since. Actions spoke louder than words. While refraining from making him any promises -after all, he’d still had his cock lodged inside her at the time -- she did make a point of showing up at his doorstep whenever he placed the request. A request only placed when he had been drinking heavily, an escalation of his usually moderate imbibing a sighting of his sister-in-law always precipitated. Lily. After five years of trying, Molly had not managed to rid her from their lives. Or from the bed John and she occasionally shared, but rarely for the entire night. How she detested that red-haired bitch. As exquisite as a porcelain Staffordshire figurine and with a center as hollow as the same, the female artist never failed to provoke Molly’s ire. May God forgive her for thinking such a coarse thing, but in her estimation, Mrs. Doyle Donovan was a cunt of the first water. Not enough to have one good man at her beck and call -- Doyle -- she kept her talons in the other Donovan brother too.

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John. Two sound eyes in his handsome head and still he continued to trip over the truth, though that truth was larger than even his cock. And that was saying a mouthful, something she would know all about, having had her mouth wrapped around his largeness many a time -When he was intoxicated. Other times, he forgot she even existed. This negligence would have considerably miffed her, as she craved attention, especially the limelight, but the man also seemed determined to forget his own existence. Entrenched in self-contempt over the whole sorry mess of wanting to bed his brother’s stuck-up wife, he was trying to destroy himself. If he’d asked her opinion, and he never did, the arrogant arse, a gun held to his head would have been a far more charitable way to kill himself than the one he had elected. Drowning in the bottle made for a slow way to die. By all the angels and saints, by suffering Jesus on the cross, Himself, too, Molly vowed not to allow that eventuality to happen. Regardless of what she had to do, she would keep John Donovan alive. First step called for applying her foot to the seat of his pants. Her boot would strike this very eve. Someday, he would thank her for the bruise. Someday, he would wake up and see she had been the right one for him all along and not that cock-teasing bitch, Lily. May her rotten soul burn in hell for all eternity. As Molly climbed the stair to the front porch, she crossed herself. Then, with neither a knock nor a ring, she bustled into the old Donovan family home, a sprawling, three-story farmhouse where John lived alone now that his two brothers had wed. Her no-nonsense steps took her to the bedroom located midway down the hall. Sprawled atop the coverlet, John looked her way, sparing her a brief glance, but offering no greeting. Idiot.

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She tossed her reticule onto the floor, scattering dust bunnies in its wake. “You saw your sister-in-law today, I take it.” “Had to fix the broke generator,” he slurred drunkenly, his lids sealed closed, not even bothering to look at her a second time as he spoke. “Who told you?” “Think me a half-wit? No one need tell me.” She sniffed the stale air. “The foul smell of the devil’s own brew gave the visit away.” He cracked one bloodshot eye. “I take a little whiskey now and again. For medicinal purposes. Heartburn --” Heartbreak, more like. She kicked off her muddied boots. “Hand, mouth, or more?” “More,” he grunted. His visit with the red-haired bitch must have gone more poorly than usual. The man never requested “more” from her when he could request less. “Clothes on or off?” “Off, if you please. I can wait.” Cursing his lack of urgency, she stripped with unseemly haste. When it came to this, to fornication, she let him. No arguments made. No complaints offered. No thanks expected or received. No martyr was she, only a woman in love. True love. A deep and abiding love. To her dying day, she would love this man, if ever she lived so long -- his foot-dragging might very well kill her first. Her love gave her strength. Her love gave her fortitude. Hopefully, her love would give her an accurate aim when the time came to kick him in the arse. That time was tonight. After putting up with him for almost five years, she had slipped to the end of her rope. She had her stubborn Irish pride, she did, and she would not continue to have him treat her with disrespect. Practically speaking, his contempt for her love decreased her value in his eyes. What purpose did that serve in the larger scheme of things?

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None for her and less for him. She would not let him off the hook so lightly. Though in pain, still he must take responsibility for his actions and his inactions, as must they all. She gave him her body, but she was no prostitute. No whore. No line of men queued up outside her door seeking entry. Needing money as she did, neither could she afford to turn down the cash he left on the bedstead after wiping his cock clean. Modeling for artists hardly constituted a lucrative profession, so she did a little housekeeping and cooking on the side. And this. She did a little of this on the side too. With him. Only with him. Monogamy was a distinction she made, her claim to and tenacious hold on respectability. Nine brothers and sisters in the Old Country depended on what she sent home from her wages, and so she accepted what John Donovan offered her for what she would have freely given. But tonight, as he snored in noisy intoxication, she had reached the end of her rope and her patience. His drinking would end or they would end. His choice, not hers. Still and all, she loved him. Heart and soul, she loved him true, and so this last time, she would hold John close with her strong thighs as he moved up into her. She would not loosen her arms from around his neck until the very end, when he shook free of her, same as always. Then, she would give him the ultimatum. God willing, he would accept her conditions. And if he refused? She would harden her heart and no longer answer his summons to his bed, a bitter pill to swallow as the only time he ever held her in his arms was during coupling. And those missionary position occasions had been but a paltry few. At the end he would say, “My thanks, Mol’. I swear, I could never do without you” or some such foolishness. She took no

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stock in, no comfort from, the sentimental words he spoke after his climax. His gratitude was just the drink talking, a spirit-laden pledge that meant nothing. Oh, for him to just once say something similar while sober. He would turn her head for sure if ever he said something sweet then. He never did, though she had done everything he had ever asked of her, except change herself over into someone else. Indeed, that very morn, the hour at six and half, she had considered doing that, as well. She had thought to dye her common sable brown hair a vivid shade of unforgettable titian, to mimic Lily of the flaming red hair. Her sense returned in the nick of time, and she let the daft idea go. More fool she would have been for her troubles! Dyed red hair or not, she would not have measured up to the perfection of Lily. And why? Because the woman was a dream. An idealized phantom. Not flesh and blood. Not to John. How could she compete with a fantasy in his mind? She could not. And it vexed her sorely that tonight, when he glanced up and saw her standing there at the threshold, a flash of disappointment had darkened his bonnie brown eyes, as if he had half expected to see someone else there in her place. The red-haired bitch, of course. As if that spoiled cunt -- Molly blessed herself. May God forgive her the vulgarity -- would ever come over to see how John was faring. Unlike his older brother Doyle -- now there was a man given to darkly violent tendencies -- John Donovan had not a cruel bone in his body. Aye, he was a rascal, but never did he deliberately set out to pain her. Still, how his involuntary look of disappointment had stung. More distant than usual, he had greeted her as if she was no longer second best to Lily, but fifth or sixth best. This, after sending a message by her boarding house, a letter in which he had specifically requested she visit. How mannered. How polite. How wholly insulting.

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Requested, her rosy Irish arse! He wrote he would pay. She never required a promissory note before obliging him. No need now to put such a cold thing into words. Shame on him, anyway! And shame on her too. Not for accepting the money, but for accepting less than all of him. She deserved all of him. Nevertheless, understanding impossible attraction all too well, she refused to give up on him. Was she not living proof that if someone could love once, even foolishly, that same person could love again, and wisely too, the second time around? Regardless of the scars her former impossible attraction had left, she knew John was the one for her. That this time, she had chosen well for herself. With that said, his drinking must stop, and he must value her worth. And she knew just how to accomplish those goals. She must demand better treatment from him. Not that she expected a wedding band, or even an oath of undying devotion -- too soon for both -- but she did expect a banishment of his dismissive attitude toward her. About time he realized she was not an old stick of furniture he could either notice or ignore, as the mood suited him. No more dillydallying, no more delaying the inevitable confrontation, she kneed the bed. Always the gent, he moved over on the double mattress to give her the greater portion of room. Avoiding the hump in the middle, she flopped onto her back, a sign that he might begin, and quickly said a silent Act of Contrition, done to mitigate the likelihood of damnation for this latest unsanctioned fornication. Loving someone without the benefit of vows was a dreadful sin, and she certainly had no wish to meet Lily in the hereafter, a bitch sure to go to hell for her callous treatment of men, especially John. As her drunken lover gave her breast a tweak, she chortled to herself. Not at his fondling, which was pleasant enough, but at the idea of meeting up with that atrocious Mrs.

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Donovan in Hades, both of them -- cock tease and easy lay -- burning together for all eternity, only for far different offenses. After her prayer for forgiveness, she gave herself the same penance as always -- not kissing John on the lips, no matter how much she longed to -- and then opened her sturdy legs, confident of her ability to accommodate his make, for all that he was on the large side of huge. Faith and begorrah! Sure, she was woman enough to handle the likes of him. His length and girth and iron-hard mettle might have sorely tested those who came before, but not her. His previous lays might have wished for deeper cunnies for themselves or fewer inches from him, but she gloried in the pressure inside her. He mounted her. Half asleep, he slurped rather than bit the side of her neck. Disappointment filled her. Not even a hickey would she have to remember him by. He jabbed between her legs. And missed. The second time around, his aim improved. He pushed up and in, and then tried to go deeper. “Take more,” he demanded harshly. Humph. Well, he could demand all he liked, but she dealt in reality, not fiction, and her innards could only stretch so much. But wait. What was this? Where had these harsh demands of his come from tonight? Not only was he taking her face-to-face, when usually he only wanted her hand or her mouth, but he sought a deeper, more forceful penetration. His new dominance thrilled her. And defeated her. Frankly, she lacked experience in rough congress. Her first and only other lover had been skilled, a genuine sophisticate, but his strokes had been subtle and choreographed, almost artful, and they had not made love all that many times.

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Without any skill, sophistication, subtlety, choreography, or art, John ground his huge cock inside her. “I need it hard tonight.” A shiver shot through her. God, but his voice sounded incredibly raw. The rawness acted on her like an aphrodisiac. And just like that, easy lay that she was, second best that she was, she forgave him his trespasses against her, of which there were many, and tried to do as he demanded. With a sigh for men and their unrealistic expectations, she widened her legs. He needed it hard. And his need was genuine, not a lie he mouthed to get his own way. John Donovan was a strong man, an honorable man, and she would not have him beg. He was having a bad time of it, and knowing he did indeed need her, more than a babe at the teat, she had never once turned him down. His requests came from the depths of his unreturned love for another, something with which she had grave familiarity. And then, just as she accustomed herself to his rawness, the tone of his attentions changed yet again. This time, he slid sleepily inside her passage and stalled, as if taking the next stroke called for too much effort on his part. Or, damn him, as if she were not worth all the fuss of staying awake. Something was eating at him. That was what this latest drinking episode was all about. Aye, in his sorrow, he always binged after seeing Lily, but she sensed something more than his usual sadness had triggered this latest toot. Anger? At Lily? At his brother? At the whole world? At himself? What a horrible useless waste was self-reproach! But whatever was going on with him, she would have much preferred he drive up into her body, as if Satan himself chased him, and vent his spleen on her, rather than try to kill himself by small degrees. Besides, now that she had grown used to the extra pressure inside

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her, she rather liked it. Now that he had given her a small taste of his dominant side, exhilaration took the place of defeat. A dark part of herself recognized his need and wanted to fulfill his demands, even sought erotic depravity. Was dominance what she had been missing? Was that the lack she had always felt not only with John, but with her former lover too? Though expert at arousing her with foreplay, and a gent of undeniable finesse, her former lover had never truly satisfied her, either. He had never once moved her as John had moved her with the raw, achy words: “I need it hard tonight.” All the saints! Give me more of THAT! What she would have given to have John ride her brutally hard. To subject her to a sound battering. To fuck her but good. Just once, she would like to bed him when he had a fierce hunger on him, a hunger she had caused and only she could remedy. Oh, for him to appease his carnal appetites on her equally hungry flesh. She would come with a smile on her face, bruised twat and all, if he would only just one time desire her, want her, even if he hurt her as a consequence of his rough demands. But no. Not tonight. Tonight, he had given her a hint of his dominance, and then pulled back, as if afraid of exposing his true nature. In fact, now his strokes seemed more tepid than ever. Say what she would about his heedlessness -- and she had a lot to say in that regard -always before he had at least taken the appeasement her body offered, if not her, the woman attached to that body. Now, after only a few halfhearted pumps, he went limp inside her. Not only did his lack of tensility spell diminished arousal, his present softness contradicted his prior expression of need. Had his interest in her waned so much? Did she no longer serve as even a poor substitute for the one he really desired? Damn lamps! All their fault.

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Though he usually doused them, he had fallen into a drunken stupor with the electric globes still illuminating the room. In the dark, he could pretend she was someone else -Lily, the woman he thought he loved. But in a well-lit room, and in a face-to-face missionary position, her brown hair and plain features gave her identity away as the woman he cared nothing about. She hiked her legs up onto his back and crossed her ankles at the base of his backbone, a feeble attempt to keep him inside her. She was so weak where he was concerned. Hardheaded about everything else, melting candle wax with him. And practically speaking, what good was issuing him an ultimatum if he failed to achieve his release with her? What else did he want from her but this, a swift climax? She must spur him on. Give him reason to keep her. But how? Why, by letting him do what he would with her in bed. Carte blanche. The last resort of a woman desperate to keep her man -Safely in bed, sleeping it off, rather than stumbling through town, likely getting himself killed in some dark alley while seeking a prostitute. “Anything you wish,” she whispered. “Only stay here with me.” Despite her total capitulation, he began taking his leave of her. Nowhere close to homing in on orgasm, he pulled all the way out and moved away. “Not even a whore can raise this limp cock.” She slapped his face, a sharp strike across his slack jaw. “I am no whore, Mr. Donovan.”

Except to you. He rubbed the bristled spot. “Say something,” she screamed like a shrew. “Not real big on conversation, Mol’, especially in bed.” He flashed her a devil-may-care grin, a smile sure to win over a petulant girl.

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Only she was no petulant girl, but a mature woman whom life had tested, and his shenanigans left her unmoved. “Talk to me! Tell me exactly what you need. I shan’t ever judge you. We all have ghosts in our pasts.” “Not t’night,” he slurred. “Not much good for nothin’ t’night.” He held his man’s flesh in his hand. The head, wet from her body, but not wet with cum, wiggled in his fist like a shriveled apple that had hung too long on the tree. “See? No stiffening.” She rolled onto her belly. To her way of thinking, no position was indecent and no act off-limits. It was all lovemaking to her. And besides, she had already pleasured him with her hand, with her mouth -- why not this? He smoothed a hand over her plump Irish bottom. “Lookee there. What a lovely sight to b’hold. You are the bes’, Mol’. The very bes’.” Sure. Now that he could no longer see her face, he called her the best. She took her pride where she found it. When he reached a hand under her teats, and rubbed and squeezed the nipples, and his swiftly hardening erection brushed the back of her thigh, her pride came in knowing she had done that for him. His cock butted her, sought entrance into her body, not Lily’s body. “Mmm. You feel so good, Molly, honey,” he murmured, his man-part delving between her buttocks. Not once had she ever held all his concentration. His heavy breathing told her she held his full attention now. If only he could confide in her! If only he would let her into his thoughts, she would have given him more than her arse; she would have given him her whole world, nothing held back. He laid his jaw against her hungry skin. “She does this.” “Who?” “Lily.”

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That first night they met, he had gone on and on about Lily, the woman he loved. But since that night, he had clamped up. Now that she had opened herself up to him, he decided to return the favor. Or, perhaps, hard spirits had loosened his tongue. Whatever the case, she bit down on her own tongue. Swallowing her jealousy and misery, she remained quiet and let him speak. “She does it with Doyle,” he continued speaking, low and ashamed. “I heard them once. Heard her squeal. In his room. To punish myself, I made myself listen.” The pigheaded lout! She might yet strangle him before the night was through. Why could he not let go of the past and see her now in the present? “If punishment is what you have a mind for, I can use a strap on your hindquarters. Or for that matter, a strap-on.” His thick finger entered her delicate opening. “Ohhh, lush…” If there was a lush here, it was him! Oh, why did she even bother? Why not simply throw up her hands in defeat, give up on the dunce and walk away? She’d had plenty enough grief in her life without taking on his too. Let him wallow in his unrequited love for his brother’s wife. Her? She had a real, honest-to-goodness life to get on with. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I love you, John.” “I know,” he said sorrowfully. “And I greatly admire you, Mol’.” She refused to cry. Absolutely refused to shed one more tear for him. This was war, not romance, and hurt feelings would gain her nothing. Coming up all the way onto her knees, knees not as pretty as once they were from washing too many Yank floors, she reached around behind her and swatted his hand away from her buttocks. “I have changed my mind.” Despite considering himself a man beyond redemption, she knew better. He would never force her. More’s the pity! Alas, she was perfectly safe with him. And he was safe from her.

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He had insulated himself so much from any possibility of love, except with Lily, no one else could touch him. Her love bounced right off the wall he had built around himself. She had no impact on him, whatsoever. The money he paid her amounted to no more than attempts to push her further away. Tossing her head, her full breasts shifting, Molly rose from the bed and began dressing. While climbing into her patched drawers, she put the wheels of her plan into motion. “Mrs. Donovan requires a life model. She intends to paint me outside now that she sent her son off to a friend for minding.” Selfish bitch, Molly thought again, her temper flaring. Ridding herself of a child for the sake of a painting. The woman had a grandiose view of herself and her importance. “The fee is generous. Money I cannot afford to refuse.” Refusing to coddle him, she threw her raggedy shawl around her shoulders. “I have decided not to see you again.” His mouth flapped open. “Well, fuck me!” “Not until you stop drinking. You are overindulging in the Green Fairy. I know the symptoms.” Calling forth all her strength of purpose, she put her foot down on his arse. “For us to continue as we have done you must take the Temperance Pledge. Complete abstinence from the spirit.” “But absinthe,” he lisped comically, “only makes the heart grow fonder.” Oh, he was so witty. So droll. So well guarded against the possibility of happiness. He jumped naked to his feet, his heavy balls swinging. Tough men and their tender boy parts! Under their cock-strutting exteriors, she suspected most males were little more than insecure lads in bed. But there had to be exceptions.

Please, John, be my exception! Trust me enough to show me your true self, your dark and dominant self. And if you do, I promise to show you mine. “You said you could use the money. Stay,” he cajoled. “I can pay you more.”

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“And ye can just shut yer big, charming gob.” She drew herself up and walked away. “I shall try to forget ye ever said that to me. No need to see me to the door. I can find me own way out. I will be saying good evening to ye right here.”

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Chapter Four

The next day at the Donovan estate, oppressive humidity beat down on Molly, causing her jaunty, flat-crowned straw boater hat to sink, her forehead to bead, her hair to flatten, and her new gown to wilt. She had only purchased the secondhand gown -- new fashions were an extravagance she rarely if ever allowed herself -- hoping to buy herself some self-confidence during the coming interview. But cheap yard goods, shoddy workmanship, and too many launderings brought the price down, dragging Molly’s high hopes along with it. As the ill-fitting bodice stuck to her flushed skin, and the crooked seams tugged at her moist underarms, she tried not to gawk at her cool and serene future employer, but soon lost the battle with genteel decorum. How could she help but stare? Not in all her born days had Molly seen such a sight. The elegant and unruffled Mrs. Doyle Donovan glided toward her, her teeny-tiny feet shod in what looked to be the softest of black kid. The bitch actually appeared to float an inch or so above the meticulously manicured back lawn. Molly anchored her own scuffed boots resolutely in place and then gave a disdainful sniff.

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Wasteful colonials! How they loved squandering good money. Why hire her to pose? In fact, why hire any model a’tall to pose? If the artist wanted a compelling subject for a painting, she need only peer into her own looking glass. A self-portrait of Lily Donovan would put a Gainsborough to shame. No gilded frame necessary, the woman was as beautiful as any museum masterpiece. Also well propertied, Mrs. Donovan need not concern herself with anything as vulgar as economizing. Though, to be fair, for all of her wealth, the bitch had arrived at the agreed upon time for their appointment. Unlike some snobby, lady-of-leisure sorts Molly could name. Just to impress their lessers with their superiority, the upper crust deliberately kept lowly tradespeople cooling their heels. Born-to-the-manor types showed no regard whatsoever for those who had to work for an hourly wage. Molly tightened her lips in disapproval. So what? The artist was punctual. Sticking to a timetable made her no less pampered. More than likely, she employed a personal staff to attend her. A lady’s maid most likely bathed and dressed her, did her hair, and then shooed her out the door. And that was neither here nor there. An army of servants could wait on Mrs. Donovan hand and foot for all Molly cared. Getting the bitch to release John was what mattered. The man was committing suicide, one shot glass at a time. Cosseted and corseted and coveted, her face like a perfect and treasured cameo, her flawless complexion lovely to behold even at a distance, the well-to-do artist crossed the space that separated them. “How divine,” she enthused. “You came to pose!” Molly fisted her hands at her sides. Divine, her rosy Irish arse! Lily Donovan could shove her highfalutin talk. It made no impression on her. Had she a mind to, Molly could put on the same pretentious airs. On

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stage, she had played queens. She knew all about pomp and circumstance. Her fair complexion had once been every bit as unblemished as the bitch’s…until digging potatoes in Galway turned her skin into a mass of freckles that no amount of buttermilk applied to her face could fade.

An Gorta Mór had devastated her country fifty years past. Poor tenant farmers like her parents still suffered the famine’s lingering repercussions. And so -- though all the critics hailed her talent and had given her work glowing reviews -- Molly had given up her dreams of conquering the Dublin stage. Plays came and went. Some productions folded before opening night. Actors lived from hand to mouth, one week to the next, with no guarantee of regular work and pay. Her family needed the income her strong back could provide. Knowing they depended on her, she left her stage career behind and emigrated to America, the land of opportunity, where employment was steady. Unless one spoke with a brogue. NO IRISH NEED APPLY prefaced help-wanted ads, even for lowly domestic positions. Still and all, she was an actor, and so she stifled her accent and pretended to be something she was not -- born here, where the money was better. At least cleaning homes was dependable. There was always dirt to mop. “Very nice to make your acquaintance, Molly.” An elegant arm outstretched, a hand extended. Left without a choice -- the story of her life -- Molly unclenched her fist and stuck out her hand too. A firm clasping of palms ensued, the ridges of their respective calluses meeting and greeting. Well, well, well. The artist knew her way around hard work, did she? Lifting a paintbrush could never have toughened her hands like that.

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Remembering her manners, Molly found her tongue, gone missing since the night before when she had bitten it for John’s sake. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Donovan.” She minded her brogue, but often she slipped. Here on out, she would try to remember to speak like a Yank. Why give toffs like this bitch one more reason to look down their noses at her? “First names, please-oh-please!” Mrs. Donovan pleaded. “Otherwise, your formality makes my informality very forward. I have heard so much about you, you see, I feel as if I already know you. You come highly recommended in the Bar Harbor artist community.” Molly bit her lip. How had the damn woman done it? Keeping her anger high had proven a losing battle. Already her temper had lowered from roiling boil to a mild simmer. “Philip holds you in the highest esteem,” the bitc -- Lily -- continued. Philip. The figurative artist had painted her in at least a dozen nude poses. Galleries in town displayed the more conventional ones, which were then usually purchased to hang in male bastions…taverns and pubs and such. Connoisseurs commissioned her other paintings, the more risqué ones, and those went straight into private erotic collections. Their lifted arms fell back to their respective sides, and Molly took stock of Lily. At a distance, she had missed the fine details of her rival. In her fascination over a stately woman’s erect carriage and sweeping skirts…and the endless tawdry gossip about her past…Molly had not looked deeper. Just as all the stories said, Lily was magnificent. Molly had already agreed about that. But her beauty was hardly aloof. Hardly untouchable. Fatigue etched the facade Lily showed the world, resulting in an appearance of all-toohuman fragility. Her flawless complexion stretched tight over sharply prominent cheekbones, as if her oval face had yet to adjust to a recent loss of weight. Fine cracks marred

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the perfect and treasured cameo. Deep shadows hollowed out the eye sockets, dulling the iris’s exotic green hue. As to her stylish reputation -- Lily wore a simple crape mourning bonnet, devoid of all pleats and ruching, with the heavy black veil hitched up behind. A similarly toned, jacquard satin gown with a staid high collar was stark and unadorned, the type of female fashion commonly seen in the early months of grief. No touch of lace at the throat, no scallops, no braids, no trimmings of any sort softened the formfitting basque bodice. The leg-o’-mutton sleeves molded her arm, from elbow to wrist. The exaggerated silhouette ordinarily emphasized a wearer’s graceful slenderness. In this instance, the severe tailoring highlighted the wearer’s emaciation. Lily’s beauty had paid a toll for love. No one in town talked of anything else but the deaths of her beloved grandparents -Victoria Hill and her longtime lover, Tony Camaro. Bless their memories, they had died within a short week of one another. Their passing had dredged up the scandal of their adulterous love affair. The loathsome gossip circulated like smallpox among Bar Harbor’s close-knit community. Molly let go a sigh. She knew all about gossip, all about loss of loved ones, all about the disastrous consequences of an unwise love affair, and a reluctant swell of sympathy arose within her for Lily. She had expected to neither like nor understand this spoiled rich woman. Jealousy, aye -- that ugly emotion she had expected. Heaps of envy too. But compassion? Being able to walk in her hoity-toity shoes? Never! But grief and scandal made for a powerful bond. How to acknowledge the sadness etched on the artist’s face and yet condemn her as an unfeeling bitch? How to call her pampered after experiencing that callused handshake?

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Molly tossed her a smile. “You care for all these gardens yourself.” “Apart from the white lilies around the house’s foundation -- Doyle planted those as a wedding gift to me -- yes. How did you know?” “Your hands. As rough as a common laborer’s.” “I am fairly passionate about flowers.” A woman of no small passions herself, Molly might have befriended Lily Donovan on the spot, despite the difference in their stations, despite even her wicked treatment of John -except for one sticking point. William, the son Lily sent away so she could paint. Every child needs the consistent comfort of his mother. The rich and their cold “children should be seen and not heard” form of parenting made Molly positively livid. Her ma and da’s thatched roof cottage in Ireland could hardly contain all the noise. Enough hollering and laughing went on between their four walls to frighten the mice lodged in the straw roof. “Where would you like me to pose?” Molly asked the woman who could never be her friend. “See that bench?” Molly followed the direction of Lily’s pointing finger. “Aye. That is, yes.” “There. Assume a semireclining position. Velvet pillows will soften the tedium.” The artist had thought of everything. Except the well-being of her son. No ambition should come above family. “I set up a folding dressing screen by the rose bushes. For the sake of your privacy,” the artist explained. “My thanks,” Molly muttered.

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Artist and model walked toward the screen together. Beside Lily’s slender and elegant form, Molly felt downright plump and drab. Dumpy. In truth, Molly accepted she looked better naked than clothed. Many an artist who painted her agreed. Still, no woman wishes to feel squat. Being at a disadvantage put her out of sorts. “Did you have any difficulty finding the house?” Lily asked. “We are tucked rather far back here in the woods.” “The referral came with directions. And I have been here before.” “Oh?” Lily’s brows arched. “The house out front. The old Donovan place. I visit there often.” Lily’s brows lowered. “I see.” Molly wagered she did. Sexual controversy had dogged the artist most of her life. Both of them women of the world, they took the line of conversation no further. “Well, here we are, Molly. Do you require help with your buttons?” “No, ma’am,” she said reverentially, all friendly familiarity removed from her voice. She wanted no part of a woman who would forsake her wee son for splashes of pigment on a stretched canvas. Molly would gladly die for any child of hers. “Being a poor, common, workaday sort, I am used to fending for myself.” At her brittleness, Lily backed off -- smart woman -- and Molly proceeded behind the changing screen, a lovely example of decorative Oriental art that must have cost a pretty penny. And Molly would know, having dusted a few such pieces in a grand Newport mansion before her heartsick arrival in Maine. Behind a crackle-lacquered background of birds and flowers and such, she dropped her cheap clothing and donned the provided lightweight dressing gown. Immediately, the silk cooled her flushed flesh. Once, she had grown accustomed to the wearing of such expensive boudoir attire, perhaps too accustomed.

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Refusing to walk any further down memory lane, she left the screen behind. Familiar with artists and their odd ways, Molly said not a word about the hilarity of stretching herself naked outside on a stone bench. She merely untied the sash at her waist and wiggled her shoulders free of the garment. As instructed, she semireclined, buck naked, amidst the cushioning pillows on the Romanesque-style granite piece. The artist had covered her mourning gown with a voluminous gray smock; she gestured with a stick of charcoal. “Chin propped on your hand, right leg bent up, if you please.” “What emotion would you like me to convey? I am fairly good at striking a pose.” “May I tell you a secret?” What could Molly say? The woman paid too well to be disagreeable. “Cross my heart not to tell.” Lily’s expression became animated. “My secret desire, Molly, is to paint a woman’s face during orgasm. That may sound pretentious and cerebral. A shying away from fully involving myself, but as an artist, I do live in my own head a lot. Looking on and painting ecstasy on another woman’s face is my fantasy. That is what…well…excites me. Because of that intimacy, I would like us to get to know one another better. I know this is an imposition and highly inappropriate, as well as provocative. But I feel a woman painter is the best qualified to give a sympathetic as well as erotic rendering of the subject matter.” Molly tried not to show her surprise. “So, not just a pose, but the genuine act? How do we arrange that? Shall I masturbate while you sketch me?” “That would be one way to achieve the required result.” “Then why not do a self-portrait?” “Watching myself masturbate provides only minimal help. A mirror directed at my face makes for a poor substitute for what I really yearn for -- a nondistracted, noninvolved, audience of female rapture. The problem is, I cannot draw if I am also enjoying myself. In

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the rush to climax, one loses one’s artistic perspective. I need to distance myself from the act to gain the most from the experience.” “Have you considered a camera? More intimate…er…views may be captured through the use of photographic equipment.” “I might. But only if I must. I prefer no mechanical invention for the orgasmic tableau.” “So what is it you want me to do?” “Actually, I would like to sketch you in the throes of orgasm with a partner.”

Holy Mother. What would Ma back in the Old Country say? And to think the nuns had schooled her. “I shall need to think this over.” “Of course! Do that. As for now, simply hold your current position.” An explicitly erotic pose when viewed from the front, a more discreet one when seen from the side. Molly had done both conventional and wildly lewd positions, and she had no objections to either presentation. Not then. And not an hour or so later when a tall man with gray shot through his dark hair rounded the corner and strode into the gardens. Doyle Donovan, the painter’s much-maligned spouse, had arrived.

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Chapter Five

Before marriage, Doyle Donovan had reputedly bedded all the eligible…and some ineligible…women in town. Supposedly, he had a penchant for full-bosomed nude models -or so the stories went. Fingers crossed, the gossips had gotten the measure of him correct. Her plan relied heavily on the veracity of those outrageous tales. Doyle was the spitting image of his younger brother, John. The familiarity put Molly immediately at her ease. So much so, she gave no thought to cover her bare genitals when he approached his wife at the easel, a frontal view of Molly that left nothing to his imagination. As it turned out, he gave Molly’s nakedness not a second glance. A first glance, aye. She received a long and direct one of those, but in his haste to reach his wife’s side, he spared her not another. Telling Molly all she needed to know. Doyle adored his wife. Having been on her own for so long, a single and impoverished woman surrounded by rich and powerful men plagued with wandering eyes, Molly had good instincts about these things. Despite his obvious virility, the artist’s husband was committed to his marriage.

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Gossip said otherwise. Which to believe? Doyle’s enraptured look, a heated glance at his wife that supported Molly’s woman’s intuition about his fidelity? Or, the allegations that he was a profligate who practiced a wastrel’s excesses? The blush-worthy rumors about his dissolute ways be damned! She trusted her gut. This man was no careless libertine. Far from having an adulterous mind-set, he would never go behind his wife’s back and cheat. Ah, but other questions still remained unanswered. Such as: Would he share? Engage in a ménage? Bed another woman, with his wife’s consent and in her possible presence? Would he do all this and more if the dalliance benefited his younger brother? Molly meant to find out. Doyle rushed to his wife’s side. “There you are, darling!” At her husband’s hot greeting, his wife coolly proffered a cheek. “Did you forget my plans to work today, dear?” He kissed her, not with a husbandly peck, but with a lover’s lusty gusto. “No. I knew your intentions. But I had an uncontrollable urge to see you.” “Well, you certainly managed to see more than me,” she said acerbically, with a nod at Molly. Doyle laughed. “Why, so I did.” He cast Molly a slumberous look. Her employer performed the official introductions. “Dear, may I present my new model, Molly Fitzgerald?” She smiled across the grass. “Molly, this is my husband, Doyle Donovan.” From his position beside his wife, Doyle bowed at the waist. “Truly a pleasure, Miss Fitzgerald.” “Please call me Molly, sir. And the pleasure is all mine.”

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“Molly it is. We could shake hands on it, but…” His dark brows wiggled, his nearly black eyes twinkling at the vicinity of her bare shoulder. “Perhaps, we should wait for later, until -- er -- after you pose?” He meant wait until after she was all properly dressed, Molly thought in amusement, filling in the blanks. She had posed naked so many times in the last five years that nudity now came second nature to her. But -“That would be fine, Mr. Donovan,” she affably replied. Despite his Yank democratic air, Molly noted the world-renowned architect made no correction in her use of his last name.

When they fucked, will he still expect me to call him “sir” ? she wondered, twittering to herself, and making no move to break her pose. From Mr. Donovan’s present position, he could see very little. A side view of plump breast -- no nipple, as the placement of her arm covered that portion of her chest -- and a bent leg, a limb not nearly as long and willowy as his wife’s, but nothing Molly need be ashamed of, either. He could also see the round shape of her arse. Her buttock in profile, as it were. That was now. While striding past her into the garden, he had seen everything. He had looked only once, and that look had not been a leer, but his narrowed eyes told her he had missed nothing. As an experienced male, he knew exactly where to glance, in spite of his hurry. Very married, but no corpse, Doyle was a hot-blooded male to the inch. A good ten inches when erect, Molly would say by the looks of things. Nice progress he was making there. Was that growing bulge all for his wife? After years of marriage, did he still get hard so quickly for the mother of his child? Or, did he need release so badly that anyone -- for example, an artist’s model -- could bring on his fine show of wood? Perhaps her nudity had not left him unaffected, after all.

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Molly smirked to herself. Could be, he would find his release later when alone. Many patrons did, particularly those who commissioned a nude for their private collections. The connoisseurs often stayed…and paid extra for the privilege…to observe the sittings firsthand. Those modeling assignments generally lasted double the average length of time and involved much hands-on repositioning of her body, done under the pretext of getting her pose just right. Since the differential lined her pocket, not padded the artist’s fee, she never complained over a little pawing. The patron left happy and so did she. The groping and fondling never went further than poking and fingering, and meant nothing to her. She might have been a granite statue for all the heavy breathing mattered. Lily turned to her husband. “My goodness! My throat is parched. Would you care for some refreshments?” “A drink of something cool would be pleasant.” “I absolutely loathe imposing, dear, but could you possibly keep Molly company while I bring down a pitcher of lemonade from the house?” He smiled a devilish smile, much akin to his younger brother’s expression. They were both such naughty men. “Certainly.” A curious turn of events, this, Molly mused, as the artist left to get refreshments. Did Lily trust her husband so much, then, that she felt no compunction about leaving him alone with a naked woman? Or, due to Lily’s own incomparable beauty, did she not see Molly, or any other woman, for that matter, as a threat? Or, perhaps she was disinclined to care about competition? Perhaps, they had an “arrangement”? Many wealthy society couples did, especially after the wife had done her duty and birthed a son and heir. Telling, that six years of marriage had produced only the one child. Given Doyle’s lusty temperament -- that astonishing bulge in his trousers must serve a function other than the purely decorative -- Molly would have expected them to have a whole brood of children, Irish twins the lot of them, by now.

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Ordinarily, Molly covered up during artist breaks. Not this time. This time, she made no move to reach for the silk dressing gown. Her breasts and loins bare, she drew herself upright on the bench. Something was going on here, an undercurrent hinting of marital discord between Lily and Doyle, and Molly intended to take advantage of that something, not in a devious and underhanded manner, but with an honest and straightforward proposition. “Please pardon my wife’s preoccupation, Molly. Grief leaves her oblivious to the improprieties of leaving me alone with you. Since the deaths of her grandparents, she has not been quite herself.” “No apology necessary, sir.” “Make no mistake,” he said. “I would never apologize for any of my wife’s actions, as I fully support and approve of whatever she does. I thought only to offer an explanation.” Loyal to the bone and fiercely protective too. Grand attributes in any male. But was there a need for his championing? To show off her firm breasts, Molly shrugged. “If I may be so bold, I wished to speak to you alone anyway, sir. A matter of some delicacy that requires utmost privacy. These few unguarded moments will give us the opportunity.” “Feel free to speak.” With the audience granted, Molly rose from the bench and stretched her cramped back, a move that thrust out the bosom that many entranced males had termed “magnificent” and then, so as not to be too crudely obvious, donned the silk robe. Leaving the ties undone, she shook out her hair. Not red tresses, but pretty, nevertheless, and a nice complement to her jiggling curves. Doyle Donovan spoke. “I love my wife, Miss Fitzgerald.” Hmm. Not only passionate, but unabashedly forthright.

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“And I love your brother John.” She closed the dressing gown and tied the sash at her trim waist. “With all my heart, I love him, which is why I am laying myself bare before you, both figuratively and literally. I think you love him the same. I propose we try to save his life, before the attempt comes too late.” As the sun beat down on his bare head, he gave her his full attention. “As much as I would prefer to dismiss your concerns as nonsense, Molly, I find I cannot. Inside myself, I have known for too long that John has been hell-bent on destroying himself. You have merely put my own troubling thoughts into words. My despondent brother is killing himself over a long-standing tendre for my wife, an infatuation that I believe remains unrequited.” He coughed. “Despite the innuendos about her in this town, Lily was a virgin when I had her the first time, and so they could not have been lovers.” “His affection continues to be platonic.” “You would know such a thing?” He frowned. “How can you be certain?” “When we first met, John told me of his preoccupation with your wife. In fact, he poured his soul out to me. We were complete strangers -- what need had he to lie? He told me then they had never been lovers. He rarely talks to me from the soul anymore, but I would feel it inside me if he had since consummated his desire for your wife. He would not be drowning himself in spirits now had they done so. I believe coupling would have cured his infatuation.” “Well, thank you for telling me, Molly. The disclosure does much to relieve my mind. Honesty is imperative to me. Not that I ever thought for a moment that my wife would go behind my back.” “Certainly not, sir. I can tell you would never think such a thing.” “Hardly her fault, she is drawn to two men. Such a predisposition runs in her family. Victoria Hill, the grandmother my wife just recently lost, loved two men. Mrs. Hill even bore her lover a child.”

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“Desires are not chosen, sir. Suffered through, yes, but never picked.” “I hate even the thought of my darling suffering. When Lily gave birth to little William, I died a thousand deaths listening to her screams from what society deemed as my appropriate place.” “Pacing outside the closed bedchamber door?” “Just so. Only I refused to remain there. I crashed through that closed door, pushed the attending physician aside, and took charge of the delivery myself. Wrenching her up from her prone position on the bed and getting up on top with her, I whipped off her ridiculous night attire and forced her into a squatting position. Free of societal restraints, she gave birth naturally. Unashamedly naked, her milk-laden breasts proudly thrusting, her thighs splayed, her red hair a tangled mass of ringlets streaming down her back, she uninhibitedly pushed out the babe, her body supported by mine. I had never been so proud of anyone before.” “I applaud you, Mr. Donovan. Not easy taking full responsibility like that. Not easy breaking with societal restraints. Did you not care that people would talk?” “I have learned the hard way that people will talk, regardless. And so, I have learned to do what is best for those I love, regardless.” “I can see how important family is to you.” “Family is everything to me. A bear growls in the room, and all of us avoid drawing attention to the beast lest he bite. I mean to point that bear out and then usher him out. I mean to rid our gatherings of their current awkwardness. Holidays are a source of discomfort, not cheer, when Lily and I get together with my brothers. Now that Tony and Victoria are gone, my brothers are the only extended family we have left. I want us all to be close again. I would do anything to heal this rift between John and myself.” Doyle Donovan hung his head. “Without Lily in my life, I would go down the same path as John. Without her continued love, I would see no reason to go on living.” “And how is your marriage now, sir, if you would forgive my asking?”

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“Lily has been tense, almost unapproachable. We sleep in the same bed, and she never turns me away when I reach for her, but making love has become a chore, not the adventure it once was.” “You miss your dirty fucks,” she bawdily interjected. “I do. I miss my woman. With each new day, she slips further away from me, the same as my brother. Standing by and doing nothing is not my way, especially when I might have the means of rectifying the situation.” He walked toward her. “So tell me, Molly, what do you propose?”

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Chapter Six

In his room, readying himself for bed -- a preparation that consisted of taking another swig from his sterling silver flask -- John blinked, then rubbed his gritty eyes. A sharp blade of bright light, originating from Doyle’s second-floor window, sliced through the fuzziness of his pickled brain. An occasion to indulge his favorite pastime had just fallen into his lap. To be strictly correct, he stood on his feet, albeit reeling back and forth, so he had no lap per se, but that small divergence from the truth was only incidental. The fact remained that Lady Luck had just smiled on him. He had just found a diverting amusement until he passed out cold for the night. A gulp from his flask, to toast his good fortune, and he raced for the roof. Day in and day out, sunup to sundown, he worked at his business. After hours, what with his drinking and whoring and drinking some more, he had little time left over for hobbies. With one exception, a leisure activity not even the most narrow-minded busybody in town could fault as anything less than downright socially acceptable.

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Even so, he took care. Lest he leave himself open to misinterpretation, he couched his pastime in phrasing of utmost discretion. Never specifically describing his hobby in any great detail, he only admitted to an occasional observance of the sky. Truthfully, though, he was less a stargazer than a people watcher. On second thought, people constituted too broad a category. To simplify his avocation, he had whittled down his subject group to a small and select circle. Of one. Lily. In the hallway, John pulled on the rope that lowered the access ladder to the attic and then scrambled, hand over hand, up the rope rungs. From there he was just a trapdoor away from the roof. He had just turned eighteen when he began watching Lily. Initially, he had started off small. No huge expenditures of capital for him. Perched on the gnarled limb of the ancient oak that grew outside Victoria Hill’s cottage, he would peep at her through an old pair of opera glasses. From there, he graduated to a single-draw telescope made by London’s Spencer, Browning & Co., a sound investment that widened the scope of the experience while reducing his risk of discovery. The more powerful magnifying lens also greatly enhanced his viewing pleasure. He could stay at some distance from the Hill family cottage and still observe his subject. To better categorize her habits, he moved that location to the Widow’s Walk. A nifty pair of bronze binoculars -- lighter weight than a telescope and so more portable -- expanded his repertoire. Nowadays, for field trips, he always used the binoculars. For home use only, he relied on a refracting telescope, a model he built himself, set on a stationary mahogany tripod. The sturdy stand freed up his hands for supplemental tasks related to his hobby. Jerking off. When his subject moved into his sights, he was always ready to go.

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Women came and went, some, like Molly, lasting longer than most, but the one constant in his life was watching his brother’s wife. Call it a fixation. Better yet, call it an obsession. His voyeurism continued, even after his subject’s marriage. If one or the other newlywed forgot to draw the bedroom curtains, the negligence provided him with a unique observation of his subject’s mating habits. As an ornithologist might do with a rare species of bird, he noted each nuance of her coupling displays, her dewy complexion being only one. Her skin positively glowed after a night of heavy lovemaking. He could always tell when his lucky fuck of a brother had gotten into her deep by the blush she wore the next day. Nothing, regardless of how minute, how trivial, escaped his avid interest. Though his all-time favorite tableau vivant was watching Lily in the throes of orgasm. Ironically enough, the most erotic scene he had ever witnessed came to him compliments of Doyle, and he had gathered his information without any need for subterfuge. Before the two lovebirds wed, his ruthless big brother had masturbated a naked Lily in front of him. The indelicacy of his intrusion on a private moment had only whetted his voyeur’s appetite and made him greedy for more. Like now. Up on the roof, his trusty long-distance telescope waited for him, the sight already pointing at Doyle’s house in the woods. One long draw from his travel flask, the metal container never far from his coat pocket, and John squinted into the eyepiece. Same as he saw downstairs, a bright light haloed one fuzzy silhouette at the window. Lily. Same as always, her figure remained frustratingly blurred and indistinguishable, despite many lens adjustments. Another reinforcing gulp from his flask, and he grabbed up his fieldwork binoculars and raced back down the stairs and out of the house. He ran all the way, tripping once or twice on the drive in the dark. Damnable ruts in the road! Where woods met lawn, he hiked the binoculars to his face.

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His subject, seated on a small boudoir chair before the window, wore a high-necked lawn nightgown trimmed in Parisian lace. At this close range, John could almost, but not quite, make out the eyelets. As she gave her hip-length red hair the required one hundred strokes, her gaze on the moonlit gardens below, Doyle entered the room and crept up behind her. He bent low to sniff her neck. John smiled. Lily preferred a lavender scent, a light fragrance she applied to the points of her wrists and behind her earlobes each evening before retiring. At the tickle, Lily stirred, and Doyle removed the brush from her fingers, commandeering her nightly ritual. Both side windows were open, doubtlessly to collect night-cooled summer breezes, and John leaned forward to listen in on their conversation. Eavesdropping was tangential to his hobby and relatively easy to accomplish in the quiet of the wood. Sound carried. “Quite the provocative conversation I had with your artist’s model today,” Doyle offered. “Really?” Lily continued staring straight ahead. “With Molly Fitzgerald?” Like a hound at the hunt, John’s ears perked up. Why were they talking about his most probably former mistress? “And I imagine,” Lily continued, “since your hair brushing has grown suddenly tentative, that this conversation must somehow involve me?” “It does. And John.” Wait. Hold on. How had his name cropped up in their bedroom conversation? Lily’s brow furrowed. “Excuse me?” Yeah. “Excuse me” was right. What the hell was going on? “Molly believes my brother may have fallen victim to an absinthe addiction.”

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Outside in the yard, John dropped lower to the ground. Inside the bedroom, Lily’s wide shoulders lifted and fell. “Vincent Van Gogh is said to have been similarly inclined.” Nice to know he was in such illustrious company, John mused. “Some say the spirit was partially to blame for his self-mutilation,” Lily continued. “The ear thing, you know. Lautrec, Degas, and numerous other artists are supposedly afflicted with the same addiction.” Addicted. John snorted. Who was addicted? He could stop anytime. “Whether the Green Fairy has hold of John or not,” Doyle magnanimously conceded, thus giving his younger brother the benefit of innocence until proven otherwise, “he certainly is drinking far more than he should.” “Traitor,” John seethed under the fumes of his breath. Doyle had just sold him out. “Does Molly know why he drinks?” wife inquired of husband. “You.” While John refused to blink, Lily’s flickering gaze darted from one pane of glass to the next. “Me ? I beg your pardon?” “My brother is besotted with you.” “I assure you, I have done nothing to promote any enamored feelings he may harbor!” “I trust you, Lily. You have given me no reason to question your love. John’s interest in you is of long duration, since well before we wed. And please, no further disingenuousness. His long-standing attraction should come as no surprise.” “Your brother visited me here at the house during your trip to up-country. To fix the generator. But you already knew that. He may have been drinking, he may not have been. I have no recollection of spirits on his breath.” Mint sprigs. They do wonders. John hunched deeper into the surrounding foliage.

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Lily shook her head. “Could I possibly have been any more self-absorbed? I never once asked about him. How he was faring. Our conversation centered on me.” “You had no way of knowing.” Doyle’s voice had turned instantly placating. “I should have sensed his difficulties.” “No need to flog yourself over this.” She said dryly, “Not when you can do the flagellation for me?” “Exactly.” Doyle dropped an adoring kiss on the crown of his wife’s red head. Lily spoke again. “So what does my life model suggest we do to help get John back on the straight and narrow?” “Molly seems to feel John needs to flush you from his system.” “Flush -- how so?” “Cum. Ejaculate. Semen. The usual method a man uses to rid himself of a woman who has taken over his thoughts. According to Molly, John has used her as a substitution for you for years, but without any apparent success. Evidently, you still monopolize his every…uh…manly impulse.” “Good God. I like Molly, I do. But she is either prone to exaggerating or she misunderstands John’s motivation.” “I disagree on both points. Your model seems sincere in her concern. I believe she loves my brother dearly and would do anything to see he remains well, including expediting a tryst between him and you.” “Us! John and myself? A tryst between us ? You cannot possibly be serious!” Out in the bushes, John fell back on his heels. Why would Molly suggest such a thing? “I have never been more serious, darling.”

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“But what an extraordinarily peculiar turn of events. I am absolutely nonplussed, at a complete loss as to what to think or say.” Swiveling her hips, Lily twisted on the seat to peer up at Doyle. “And how do you feel about all of this?” John had to hand it to his brother: Doyle made no abrupt moves. Pressure her, corner her, and Lily would only build her defensive walls all that much higher -- her modus operandi in times of stress. “I love my brother, Lily. And I love you.” John was impressed. Doyle was usually a hothead. But in an inflammatory situation that most men would have exploded over, he kept himself on a remarkably short rein. His voice stayed calm and matter-of-fact. “I am also secure enough in your love, darling, to know a little naughtiness would have no adverse affect on the intimacy of our relationship.” “This is more than a little naughtiness. This is an invitation to scandal.” “Be that as it may, I can tell you are not averse to the idea, my sweet. There was always something between the two of you. Contemporaries, you and John always had much in common. Not as though he makes your flesh crawl, eh?” “Doyle! John is your brother. How could I feel revulsion toward him? I have known him for years! But this is so unexpected.” “I only suggest we listen to Molly’s solution.” “Well, now I have. No, thank you.” “Lily,” Doyle said softly, but insistently. “I know you still have feelings for my brother.” Outside, John cocked his head to hear her answer. “How could I not, when he reminds me so much of you in appearance.” “Do not patronize me, darling. Do not condescend. Do not try to simplify a complex situation with trite explanations in the hopes that this mess will all go away. Stop sweeping

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your affinity for my brother under the rug. You are dealing with this by trying to escape, the same way you dealt with another complex situation in your life.” She turned away. “Unfair and untrue! Our affinity is one of kinship. John is my brother by marriage. Or have you forgotten that small detail?” “This has been going on since you were both eighteen years old. Hardly incestuous, then, darling, as we had yet to wed. You two share no blood. Your relationship is a legality, nothing more. And there is more to your feelings for my brother than our physical similarities. More to why you chose him to make me jealous all those years ago.” “He was simply available.” Doyle denied that reason with a shake of his head. “Time to face the truth. I am tired of pretending this situation will go away if we all ignore it.” “No,” she protested. “There is nothing between us. My feelings for John hinge entirely on the superficial.”

Ha ! John scoffed. “I came home early from my trip up-country,” Doyle advised Lily. She shook her head, as if to clear it. “P-pardon?” “I came upon you two together in the barn. Embracing! I backed off. Left to take a walk. I needed time alone to think.” “Think about what? We shared an innocent hug! John held me during a moment of weakness, only to offer me solace from my grief. We never overstepped the boundaries --” “Artificial boundaries, darling.” “No-no-no. I tell you, I was upset!” “You clung to him, your bodies molded together. I am not implying you were unfaithful with my brother. But I am saying an erotic undercurrent charged the air. The pulse of attraction was palpable. Your breasts and belly were glued to his body, no air space between.”

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“You misunderstood what you saw. John offered me comfort in a time of emotional distress. A shoulder to cry on.” “He offered you more. Listen -- you two started with a companionable friendship, a blossoming affection that, due to events beyond all our controls, ended before it began. Frustration then flared that innocent awareness into a love-hate entanglement. The time has come to act on the complexity of your feelings and hopefully resolve them once and for all.” “I told my grandmother long ago, that unlike her, I could only love one man at the same time. That man is you.” “Lily, I am certainly not suggesting you love me less.” “Then what are you suggesting?” “That we widen the restrictions of our marriage vows, narrow regulations society imposes.” “I care nothing for society.” “And neither do I. So let us expand our horizons, make our own rules.” “But this is not something I would choose.” “Darling, forgive me for having to bring this all up again, but you did choose this course when you led my brother on all those years ago. You made him love you, as I love you, and then closed him off from that love. You used your body in a despicable fashion, to promote jealousy between John and myself. You purposely sabotaged our brotherly bond.” Doyle had done some brooding on this subject, John could tell. “Lily,” he continued in the same stern vein. “You have much for which to atone, and you will make amends. You teased John unmercifully as a young girl, as you did me. All things considered, I daresay, you owe him.” Flabbergasted at Doyle’s acceptance of all this, John strained to hear every word. Lily’s regal jaw jutted. “You are suggesting I cheat.”

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“Nothing of the kind. Cheating is all about sneaking around behind the back of a spouse. Hiding in bushes.” Out in the bushes, John squirmed. “Darling, I not only sanction and encourage this intercourse, I am ordering it. Accept John into your bed.” “You would actually force me into a sexual relationship with another man?” “Not just any man. John. And I am afraid I must insist.” Her lips lifted at the corners. “Dear, Lord! A ménage à trois. How very shocking.” “Darling, three was not quite the number under discussion.” Lily visibly braced herself. “No? Not three?” “We can hardly leave Molly out. She loves John. And she has shown herself to be -um, how shall I delicately put this -- amenable to me.” “So -- I fuck your brother,” she said with an uncharacteristic lack of sophistication, “and you do his mistress. Is that it? Are you attracted to my buxom model?” “I find her candor refreshing.” “Her body --” “Is a woman’s body. To bring this all out in the open between us, I will make do if I must. And the arrangement will not last forever. I see this as a temporary solution to propel us forward, not a lifelong polygamous relationship.” “Propel us forward under the heading of what? Not that familiarity leads to further intimacy, but that further intimacy, I suppose, leads to contempt?” “Too strong a term.” “Boredom, then?” “Not in every case. Not in my case, Lily. I only love you more with each passing day. Furthermore, you have never once bored me, particularly not now. But John’s view of you is

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stunted. He sees you with a pubescent lad’s sexual fascination. If some of the fantasy is shattered, a man’s mature passion will have the opportunity to grow. I hope then he will turn to Molly. This constitutes a wake-up call, if you will.” “Though this feels like a nightmare. I am already wide awake, thank you so, so very much.” Doyle’s tremendous sigh practically blew John’s hair. “I blame myself for this. I should have let my brother have you that night I brought you into the house at the end of a rope. He wanted you. You wanted him --” “I certainly did not want him.” Behind the lenses of the binoculars, John squinted. She certainly had wanted him. “Darling, I was there. You cannot rewrite history.” “Then, since you were there, you must remember how you took it upon yourself to sodomize me in the plant shed, atop a filthy table, when I attempted to break off the affair between the two of us.” John blinked in surprise, as Doyle related, “Lily, you wanted the sodomy. You begged me for it. And I had prepared you for it. The denouement was expected. As to the less than romantic surroundings, you loved the debasement, darling. You loved the dirt coating your bare breasts and belly. You loved the feel of sticky ejaculate streaming out from between your buttocks. You loved that John could see you wearing my cum on your body when I took you naked into the house. Oh, yes. You would have let him have you.” “It was only that you had…you had aroused me to such a degree that I would have accepted him had you determined that as my penalty for my previous transgressions.” “Six years later, I do determine it.”

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Chapter Seven

Outside in the bushes, John polished his binoculars. His heavy breathing had clouded the lenses. After defogging the glass, he propped them back atop his nose. At this resolution range, he might have been in the bedchamber with the married couple, a participant in their passion, not a voyeur peeping at them from several yards away. Lily’s expression showed so clearly, he could almost read her thoughts. No need. Through the open windows, John could hear everything she said. “I cannot believe this, Doyle! You are forcing me!” “You took a marriage vow to love, honor, and obey me, and I mean to hold you to that pledge. This is something you must do. Lance the wound, Lily. It has festered too long.” “And I have no say? No right of refusal?” “You are my wife. I owned your body that night in the garden shed, and I own your body now. This is for me to say, to decide, not you.” Her fingers gripped together on her lap. “How do you know Molly is the one for John?” “Your model is an earth mother personified. She will pamper him while giving him a brood of babes. Have no fear, my brother will see her through different eyes once he gets you out of his system with a few romps in the hay.”

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Her breath caught. “A few?” “The fly in the ointment. His obsession with you is so great, I fear one time with you will never do the trick.” “Really, Doyle. I simply cannot comply.” Putting aside the hairbrush on the sill, his brother pulled away from his wife. “Undo your nightgown.” She shook her head vehemently. “This is neither the time nor the place.” “I must disagree. And you, as my dutiful wife, will submissively bow to my husbandly prerogative.” “You forget yourself! I am the mother of your child.” “Madam, it is you who forget who is your master.” Marriage had evidently not gentled his brother’s violently dominant streak. While John looked on, Doyle parted his wife’s modest white nightgown. A hard yank sent the ladylike pearl buttons popping every which way. Without further ado, he sent his hand plunging downward over her now-exposed chest to capture a bare breast. Lily’s nipples hardened almost immediately. As per her own volunteered admission, of late, his sister by marriage had been faking her response to her husband. Did she call those jutting tits faking? Clearly, she had either lied to him about her lack of responsiveness or had assigned her previous pretense to the past. Clearly, Doyle had reached his wife on some primitive level. Clearly, she still enjoyed her husband’s rough handling. The lady was not faking it. Before John’s widening eyes, his subject was growing aroused. So was the voyeur. But when Doyle picked up Lily’s thick hair, baring her graceful nape, envy tempered John’s excitement.

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Shit. Life was unfair. Doyle intended to kiss his wife. The lucky fucker got to brush his lips across that vulnerable spot at the top of her spine any damn time he felt like it. His big brother was hard. Tough. He had never, not to John’s recollection, ever shown fear. He was plenty frightened now. Not for himself. For her. His knuckles had bleached white, his fingers had tensed. But he gentled the kiss bestowed on his wife’s spine. After the kiss, Lily spoke more freely than before. “How will you tell your brother he may approach me?” “In the unspoken way of close siblings,” Doyle replied. “You mean, you will tell your brother he may have me without actually saying anything at all.” Her voice dripped haughtiness. “Exactly, darling. To put such a sensitive matter into words would only embarrass us both. Never fear, he will know I have made you available to him.” In the silence of the night, John could hear Lily’s shallow pants, her moans and groans. He could almost smell the musky scent of sex wafting on the air through the open window. A carnal bouquet must surround them. The nostrils of Lily’s aristocratic nose quivered delicately with each of her inhales. Doyle’s face came into view again, his features darkly brooding. Drawn taut. Intense with anticipation. Worry for his wife competing with lust. No dirty laughter between those two tonight, John predicted and then coughed in dismay. Usually, at this point during peeping, he would begin to masturbate. Not this time. This time, he two-handed the binoculars. Get himself out and he might miss something. A stealthy as a panther, Doyle moved in on Lily. “Stand.” “Just a moment, dear. I was about to cream my face.” “Allow me to do that for you.”

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John snickered to himself at the double entendre. Who would believe his sober brother had a sardonic wit? Doyle pushed Lily’s torn gown apart until the edges gaped, revealing all of his wife’s breasts.

Thrusting breasts with very enflamed nipples. Lily gasped in offended outrage. “This is absurd.” “Offer me a breast.” “And if I refuse?” “Molly has made it clear if I need to find release, something with which you have only suffered through these past weeks, she will enthusiastically welcome me in her bed. And she has very nice breasts, the nipples large enough to take clamps. And you know how much I enjoy clamps.” She presented her breast, a hand cupped beneath. “I can take clamps too.” “I know, darling.” Doyle bit the end of Lily’s dainty tit until she squealed. Then, popping the bruised end from his mouth, he said, “Show me the slit, if you please?” “I do not please!” “A rhetorical question, my love. Do it.” “Doyle,” she squeaked. “Really!” At her continued show of defiance, he tore the lacy nightgown from her wiggling and squirming body and yanked her to her feet. This led John to reconsider his prior evaluation of Doyle’s lovemaking style. After the deaths of their parents, his elder brother had raised him and his younger brother. Though they had been subject to discipline, the punishment for their misbehavior had never taken a corporal form. Did his brother’s roughness in lovemaking come naturally to him? Or was it, rather, necessary to her? For her to achieve satisfaction?

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“Time for us to relearn patterns lost in domesticity and parenthood, darling,” Doyle said gruffly. “I love our little Will with a possessiveness that frightens me, but eroticism is difficult to maintain with a child always about underfoot. One never knows when the pat of little feet will interrupt a steamy session of D/s. A child would never understand why Papa is tying his mother to a bed. Or taking her naked outside to the gardens, where he…” At Lily’s heated gasping, Doyle left the rest go unfinished. Much to John’s frustration. “Move over more, darling.” “Any farther,” she said breathlessly, “and I shall be situated directly before the window, and I have not pulled the curtains as yet for the night.” About time someone noticed. “Anyone might see us,” she panted. Wait. Hold up. Who the hell would see them? The house was located deep in the forest. His brother and sister-in-law only had one neighbor. Him. Had he been played the fool? Duped? Had she known all these years he watched her? Lily, the exhibitionist. John might have known. Disregarding his wife’s objections -- pretense or real? -- Doyle grasped her wrists and pulled her to the window’s center. “What has gotten into you this evening?” Her nose went up in the air. “I shan’t be treated like this.” He brought the flat of his hand down on her bare rump. “Next time you talk back to me, I use my leather strap.” She licked her lips, but said nothing.

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Doyle’s face darkened. “Stay.” His hand smoothed down her belly to her mons. “Open your legs. I need to get at the slit. Spread it wide.” He scraped his teeth against the side of Lily’s swan-lovely neck, then raked his fingers through the thick red pelt. Doubling over his hand, until his knuckles protruded, he pressed against the notch. “First time, like so.” “Doyle, I really would prefer you not --” Doyle reached inside the bureau drawer to his side, drew out a length of supple leather. After folding over the strap, he gave her a swift lash across the fullest part of her buttocks. She shivered uncontrollably. “Your preferences have no weight here, darling. Not any longer. I have been far too lenient with you in the bedroom. Here, you do what I say. I should have reassured you of my mastery over you long before now. But no. I held back. Played the gentleman. I am no gentleman, Lily.” “But men only fist the lowliest of prostitutes,” Lily said. “Or perhaps, a mistress.” Doyle took off the kid gloves. His voice no longer placating, he replied, “Or a woman who wronged them.” “I suppose I do fall into that last category. You fisted me before when I led you on and then broke us off.” “Exactly right.” Emotion strangled his voice. A table to his left held a second lamp. Doyle turned the brass pin to high. Bright light flooded the room, a second spotlight that further illuminated their activities at the secondstory window. As the lamps blazed, Lily covered her exposed nipples with an arm, while her free hand went low, to cover her loins. “Stop that,” Doyle chastised his wife. “Better still, raise your hands above your head.” As soon as she complied, he smoothed his fingers into the curve of her arm. “Hmm,” he murmured. “I discern your flesh heat. Not dry heat, either -- moist, unladylike, fertile, jungle heat. The kind of humidity that dampens the red hair under your arms and at the nape of

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your neck. The kind of heat that swamps your pussy. Our discussion has gotten your blood pumping. You have always been susceptible to words, my darling. Of course, everything is context. And presentation. Vulgar and coarse language you would never countenance at any other time, you welcome preceding intercourse. Dirty words are foreplay to you.” In evidence of this quirk, she writhed. Doyle smiled. “My, my, my. Are you willing to explore dark and carnal areas we have not explored in a while?” John watched his brother drag her vacated boudoir chair slightly off to one side at the floor-to-ceiling window and take a seat. He looked ridiculous. A craggy-faced ruffian perched on a lady’s pink velvet tuffet. Regardless of how he looked, John envied the lucky fucker when he placed his wife’s foot atop his thigh. Doyle had Lily close to hand. And to his tongue. And to his teeth. And lips. And hell, yeah, his cock too. While John gritted his teeth, Doyle swung Lily’s leg wide, in an explicit pose. Thanks to the inventor of his high-powered binoculars, John could actually see her wetness. And something else too. Plump and pretty, her clit decorated the top of her sex like a strawberry on a scoop of vanilla pudding. His brother envisioned a different fruit. “Your cunt is as succulent as a peach, darling.” At the compliment, Lily’s body snapped like the strings on a harp. Doyle had played Lily in much the same way before their marriage. While John looked on, his brother had flaunted his possession of her, openly stroked her clit. And she, far from balking at his arrogance…and the audience…had convulsed, just as she did now. If not for needing to grip the binoculars, he would have clutched his chest. Only a jolt from one of his electric generators would get his stalled heart beating again when Doyle rubbed into Lily’s glistening folds, and one by one, his bent fingers disappeared inside her body’s clasp.

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John shivered uncontrollably, right along with his sister-in-law. His brother was working his wide knuckles inside Lily, and the invasion had her bucking. Half agony, half carnality, if John correctly read her expression. And if the look on her face played him false, the repositioning of her feet told him true. Her legs had shifted. Not to prevent the invasion, but to ease the trespass. She further widened her stance, and the binoculars slipped from John’s hands. Without the strap around his neck, the field glasses would have plummeted to the ground. Lily was toppling into climax, an orgasm so stark, John’s own loins clenched. Witnessing her small death, dying inch by frustrated inch, he fumbled at his trousers. Too late. The joke was on him. And the cum. He came before ever getting himself out. Sticky. Shamed. Christ, horrified. He turned away from the scene unfolding before him. But not before the unthinkable happened. Everyone said Doyle and he looked alike. That they bore a striking familial resemblance to one another. In fact, some said all three Donovan brothers were the spitting images of one another, especially around their dark eyes. For a fleeting moment, before John stumbled back down the rutted drive for home, their two identical gazes met through the glass. Doyle knew. Not only knew, but had just offered him an unmistakable invitation.

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Chapter Eight

No sense delaying the RSVP. John visited Doyle at his in-town architectural office the following day. Hunched over his blueprints, he looked up as he entered. “John,” he said civilly. “Doyle,” he replied just as civilly. Resisting the urge to hedge, he came right to the point. “When?” “Next week. While Will is still gone from home.” “And Lily agrees?” “My wife will do as I tell her to do.” “I would prefer a consensual affair, one not founded on coercion. I gave up rape long ago.” Doyle slammed his palm on the desk. “Since when do you care if my wife consents or not? You have been spying on her without her agreement for years.” A deserved condemnation. Nevertheless, for the sake of expediency, he did try to circumvent an argument. “No law against looking.” “In public, yes. When she knows it, yes. But you stand up on that roof watching her through your telescope at every opportunity, all of them private.”

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“Only vague shapes can be seen at that distance.” “Drop the deceit, John. That is my only rule in all this. I insist upon complete honesty between us. Otherwise, this grand experiment turns into a free-for-all. Why are you here today unless you spied on us last evening?” “I used binoculars, not a telescope.” “A splitting of hairs.” He threw down his reading glasses. “You should have knocked at the door. You might have joined us.” “Had I a taste for orgies, I would have attended a house party in up-country. I know the very place.” “As do I, having once brought Lily there.” Even as his balls tightened at that revelation, John professed, “I love her.” “You want her. There is a vast difference between wanting into her cunt and love. I am unconvinced as to the enduring nature of your attraction.” “It started when I just turned eighteen. I am thirty-four now. I should think sixteen years classifies as ‘enduring.’” “Once you have her, your feelings will dissolve. She was the one who got away. The one your charm and good looks failed to impress. Her choice of me over you tweaked your competitive streak, and so you cannot dismiss her from your mind.” “I love her,” he insisted. “Her cunt is only part of that love.” “Very well. We shall soon see. I give you free access to her cunt and everything else too, including her heart. In my company, initially, in a sharing proposition.” “Why are you doing this?” “To get the situation out in the open, once and for all.” “There must be more to it, damn it. Tell me why you would do such a thing.” Doyle took a deep breath. “Because I love her. And you.”

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“Not only did I see you last night, I heard you as well. You two pity me. You believe me a hopeless drunk.” “No, not hopeless. Not by a long shot. I believe you and my wife need to face the past. I believe you both need to let past history go. I believe both of you need to move on. Could be then you will have no more reason for the Green Fairy.” “And what if Lily and I choose to move on together? Without you,” he sneered. “If that is to be the outcome, it is best I know.” John raked both hands through his hair. A gift had just landed in his hands, and he was not about to refuse it -- even if he found the motivations of the giver impossible to comprehend. If Lily were his wife, if she belonged to him, he would never share her. But Lily was not his wife, she did not belong to him. Not yet. “Any other stipulations, Doyle?” “The particulars will be arranged later. For now, I only know this much -- the ménage will not take place in our room, not in the bed we sleep in as man and wife, but in the guest chamber downstairs.” He chuckled. “Also, do not expect an invitation to come over for dinner first. Our minds will not be on the meal and that would waste Lily’s delicious cooking.” “Fair enough.” He could do without Lily’s questionable culinary skills. Turning on his heel, he walked away, only to stop dead in his tracks. Once again, he faced his big brother, the man who had raised him. “Not just chaste kisses. You allow me everything with her?” “Everything.” Doyle tagged John with a gaze steady and unblinking. “My wife has a healthy carnal appetite and is not averse to any domination scenario. This includes the application of humiliation and the administration of pain. Lily is more complex than what appears on the surface. That is all I will say in this regard. What we have done sexually over the years is between my wife and myself. You must find out her mysteries all on your own.”

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“I want you to know -- I would never have raped her back then.” “No need to tell me. I am already well aware that the incident would not have culminated in force. Lily had feelings for you then, and she has feelings for you now, despite herself. Giving her permission to act on her sexual curiosity, to experiment a bit, makes this as painless as possible. I only ask for honesty between us. That last is my only unwavering condition.” With a nod of acceptance, John took his leave of the architectural office.

***** At the fall of a familiar footstep behind her, Molly continued scooping ashes from the front parlor’s fire grate, a messy and thankless task that left her starched white apron covered in soot. She performed the chore, along with other similarly distasteful household duties, in exchange for a room and one meal a day at the boarding house where she lived. A meager pauper’s existence, to be sure, but at least she had a dry roof over her head. And her pride. Behind her, a throat cleared. “I could use a haircut.” What the man could use was a swift kick in the bollocks. Charity forbade her from supplying the boot. Instead, she looked over her shoulder at the wretch, mirroring the same exact position she had been in the last time they were together. Would she never learn? Apparently not. Her too-soft heart turned over in her too-ample bosom at the sight of her bedraggled fallen angel. He hovered at the door, his shoulders hunched, his bloodshot eyes baggy, his attitude one of absolute misery. She shored up her defenses -- lest she give in and cradle the dimwit in her arms. “Humph! I would say you need more than a trim. You look like death warmed over.”

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“A little tussle will fix me up in short order.” With a theatrical leer at her chest, he crossed the threshold, stepped into the room, and reached. She slapped at his hand, the same gesture as the last time they were together. Having already decided she would never learn, she stayed her imbecile’s course and ignored his foolishness. “What did I tell you the last we tussled ?” “Ho! Easy question there, honey,” he said with his usual boastful charm. “You said you would have nothing to do with me until I took the pledge. Well, I am here to say, the bottle and I have parted company.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you, now? Since when?” “This morning. Nine a.m. Sharp.” Biting a tongue she conceded was a wee bit sharp at times, she resisted pointing out that noon was still thirty minutes off, which meant his period of abstinence had lasted all of two and a half hours. When his sobriety was weeks, not minutes old, then she would consider taking him back. Easier thought than done. Refusing him was a hard row to hoe. Aye, she was tough on herself, but weak when it came to John Donovan. The man addled her senses. Like the new morn sun rises over Galway Bay, glorious and hopeful, the underlying reason for his sobriety dawned on her. Dare she believe he had given up the absinthe for her due to her ultimatum, and his haircut served as only an excuse to come ’round and tell her so? No way of telling unless she asked. “Why did you give up the drink?” He might have lied to get back into her graces, one and the same as her bed. Instead, he stripped the romance…and his chance of getting laid…clean away. “Lily disapproves of my drinking, so I seek to rectify at least one of my bad habits.” A well-deserved cuss word eased the hurt. “Bitch.”

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“Please refrain from making coarse epithets about her.” Why did she have the misfortune to fall in love with this pigheaded man? “Who said I was talking about Mrs. Donovan? My curse was directed at you.” His mouth opened, snapped shut, then laughter burst forth from his lips. “Touché. I believe I did let my pussy show.” “You just insulted every woman alive.” “Patently false. I love your gender. Not nearly as much as I would like, due to the limited amount of hours in the day and my need to make a living, but I do try.” He did not. The man was not nearly the scoundrel he would have her believe. Neither was she that much the fool. She put up with a lot, but never would she have tolerated rakishness from him. For the past five years, John had stayed faithful to her. And if ever he did stray, he would tell her so. The man, for all his faults, was inherently honorable. And then she had her answer about why she had fallen in love with him. His integrity had captured her soul. He lived by his own strict code, a personal standard at odds with his addiction and his besotted infatuation with his brother’s wife, both transgressions for which he suffered grievously. “Mol’,” said himself. “Since you no longer welcome me to your bed, am I to believe you have found a new protector?” She smirked. “What mean you -- new ? As if you ever cared enough to protect me.” “I care plenty about you! I offered to set you up in your own house, to place you on a retainer so you would be assured of a steady income to do with as you chose. I am not a pauper, you know. I can well afford to keep a mistress. But you refused to hear of the arrangement. You wash floors by choice!” “To keep my self-respect, I wash floors.” “I told you long ago I could only give you my cock. I never lied to you.”

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“Have it your way,” she snapped, his inconvenient integrity coming back to bite her in the arse. “So tell me, honey -- have you picked up another admirer?” “Perhaps. I shall soon see.” Her thoughts went to Doyle Donovan, a luscious stud of a man. She could tell he was head over heels in love with his wife and would never ordinarily countenance unfaithfulness, and God knows she loved John…but… She did wonder. And fantasize. Well, she was not dead yet, and every woman alive had naughty thoughts. Doyle, she surmised, was prone to dark passions, unseemly predilections that a ladylike wife might find offensive. She had long suspected that John, too, had much the same familial tendencies, and they were partially to blame for his addiction. He relied on alcohol to suppress his yearnings. From her knees, Molly looked up at John. Her brogue thick with her preoccupation, she said, “Ye big dolt. If ’tis a haircut you be wanting, best help me up.” His grin was pure horse manure. “Anything you care to do for me first?” “Bugger off.” “Lift your skirts in back.” She clucked her tongue. “When the shakes set in, your mind will be far from that activity. More than likely, you will beg me to kill you, not fuck you then.” “Will you be there for me then, Mol’?” “A fine opinion ye must have of me to think otherwise,” she scolded, hurt that he felt the need of asking. “Who else but me? Only I would put up with yer damn mischief. I will have ye know that I would choose no other place else to be but here with ye.” She placed her hand in his palm. Such was the state of his addiction that the delirium tremens had already begun -- his fingers twitched around her intertwined fingers.

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She went home with him, to the old Donovan place. As she had predicted, his irritability started in soon after. A noise awakened her in the middle of the third night of her stay. Rousing herself from Theodore’s bed, which the youngest Donovan brother had vacated for marriage six years prior, she tossed a wool shawl over her nightdress, and went to investigate. As she walked along the hall, she crossed her fingers. Perhaps that scratching was mice in the walls. Alas, a subsequent stumble over a pair of enormous bare feet in the front parlor informed her otherwise. After lighting the lamp, she crossed her arms over her breasts and surveyed John’s slumped posture in a well broken-in chair. “Sleep evading you, then?” “Damn you, woman. You never listen to me. I told you about the insomnia this morning during that hideous breakfast you forced down my throat.” “Proper meals minimize withdrawal symptoms.” She laid the back of her wrist against his head. As was always the way, his low-grade fever had spiked come the evening. “You need a cold compress for the sweats.” “What I need is a fucking drink.” “Remember? As a condition of my nursing you back to sobriety, I poured out all the liquor and spirits on the day of my arrival.” “Spiteful hag. Tomorrow, I go into town and hunker up to the bar at the tavern.” She spoke over his raging. “You are in no condition to ride a horse.” He thought about that for a minute. “I got feet.” “Yes, you do. And you will use them when we take our walks after a healthy and hearty breakfast of porridge, cream, and honey.” “Disgusting glop not fit for pig slops. No wonder you Irish immigrate here.”

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“Irish immigrate because they have nothing to eat, not even pig slops. Getting out of the house will do you a world of good.” “Too busy drinking for any fool walk. And you can hold the damn mushy gruel you call breakfast.” “That gruel is your road to recovery, and you will eat it if I have to ram the spoon down your throat.” She refused to coddle him. He picked up a book and threw it at her head. And missed. Deliberately. Even in the grip of a hallucination, he would never intentionally hurt her. And he had not once let down his control enough to cry. The same control applied to his past use of her in bed. He never let go of his firm grip on his male power. But soon, she would experience John’s savagery in bed. There was a bit of the barbarian in him, for all that he kept that side of himself in check with dulling alcohol. But once the absinthe leached from his system, he would be the lover she hungered for. After making a great show of ducking yet another flying literary missile, she bathed his fevered face and forced him to sip water. From an unbreakable tin cup. His road to recovery came with a few ruts along the way. “Why do you bother?” he asked. “Why not just let me die?” “Hush. None of that now. No giving up. There are few problems without a resolution, few unfixable mistakes.” Combing back his black hair, neatly shorn from her barbering, but drenched with perspiration now, she said nothing more, only held him in her arms. At dawn, she realized taking a walk had been optimistic. Morn had broken, true, but his stubborn fever had not. Instead, hallucinations descended.

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Not convulsions, for which she said a silent prayer as she held him down in the chair. She could handle him, and she did. That night and the next. Even when he pushed her aside, tottered to a shaky stand, and headed for the door, she handled him. “Going out,” he muttered. “Where?” “To see Lily. Doyle told me to call on them. In the boodwar.” She rolled her eyes at his comical French pronunciation. “A fine showing you would make in the boudoir. Would you want her to see you in this state, sweating and shaking?” He hung his head. “Guess not. Guess I should wait. Who would put up with a lover smelling of puke?” Providing the lover was John, she would and had. Nevertheless, she waved him into the WC. “The stale aroma is easily fixed. Into the tub with you.” Once she had him corralled inside the small room, she drew him a hot tub, helped him climb naked over the high porcelain sides -- in his miseries he could do no more than shuffle his big feet -- and then left him alone. No coddling. Not for three quarters of an hour did he emerge. Worry for his safety brought out the worst in her, and she smiled. Evilly. “Time to take our constitutional.” “I never walk for my health.” “You will henceforth,” she said cheerily. “For the love of Christ! Avenge yourself on me some other way, would you? Your happy chirping sets my teeth on edge.” She sent him a sunny smile, the perfect foil for his sullen pout. “We can converse along the way to pass the time.” “Are you actually suggesting we wile away the hours of my detoxification with idle small talk?” His nose wrinkled. “Generally speaking, I never converse with females.”

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“Specifically speaking, you will now. I am all ears.” “Are not,” he said querulously and dropped his gaze to her bosom. “You are all something else, something not quite as dainty.” Saints preserve us! Amazing, truly amazing, how his flirting made her blush like a virgin. After five years of intimacy, he should never have been able to bring the color up into her cheeks. Then, she realized her mistake. Despite five years together, they remained strangers. They occasionally shared a bed for an hour or so, but no real intimacy. And his flirting was just another way of keeping her at a distance. She knew him, but he knew nothing about her. Right from the beginning, from that first night in a big fancy house in Portland, where she had toiled as a kitchen maid, and he had come to install a new electrical generator, their relationship had been woefully lopsided. He had wealth and she had nothing, not even employment after his work put her out of hers. That night they first met, he had gone on and on about his dreams of Lily. She was fed up. Good and sick of it. He had dreams? Well, not that he had ever asked, but so did she. She cleaved to those dreams while dragging his mulish arse out the door. He looked up at the sky. “Looks like rain. We should go back to the house.” “You sound like a druid, always examining the clouds for bad omens.” She pulled him along. The man had enough common sense not to put up a fuss. And she had enough romance left in her not to feed her grievances against him. They could neither of them go back and undo the past. There was only the actuality of the now, only the possibility of a future. In the end, they took a grand, long stroll. Side by side. But not touching. Not hand in hand like lovers, not walking out together like a couple.

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And neither of them spoke another word.

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Chapter Nine

A week later, John treaded water in the stream that connected his property to Doyle’s land. Molly dog-paddled in a circle around him. “I slept like a baby last night,” he told her. “Grand.” He stopped floating and stood chest deep in the crystal-clear water. “See.” He held out his hands. “No shakes.” “Grand.” Molly continued her kicking and stroking. Fretting over her lack of attention, he whined, “I thought you would be jumping up and down for joy.” And he could admire her jiggling breasts while she did. “Selfish swine. Would you have me drown?” “Huh?” “This stream may not be over your head, but it is over mine. And though I grew up only a few steps from water, as you can see, a swimmer I am not.” “Oh.” He mulled her answer over. “I suppose asking you to risk drowning to celebrate my progress would be too much of an imposition.” He eyed her wet cleavage with deep regret. Then, eyed her deep cleavage with wet regret.

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Molly glared at him. Were his thoughts that transparent to her? “Your progress will continue if you eat right and exercise each and every day,” she lectured. “If I fall back into my old bad habits, you can give me a swift one.” “I shan’t be here to remind you, never mind apply my boot to the seat of your britches.” “Why not?” “Apart from the impropriety of continuing to stay here with you --” He guffawed. “Since when do wagging tongues bother you?” “In my private life, aye, I follow my own rules. But without the independence of wealth, I cannot thumb my nose at what others say. No one will hire an immoral maid in fear of losing the silverware.” “But you already pose nude.” Molly had kept him on his toes since day one. Nothing ever slid past her sharp eyes and tongue. She called him on his peccadilloes, making him own up to them, big and small sins alike. As in all their debates this past week, and there had been many such verbal exchanges between them, all of them heated, all of them impassioned, all of them very highly enjoyed by him, he argued his side’s merits with gusto. “Paintings of you hang all over town.” She grinned, her freckles bouncing on her cheeks. “They sell like hotcakes too. Displayed one day, bought the next. But I only get away with that bit of naughtiness because this is a community of painters and folks who see life modeling as fine art. Flaunting convention and openly living with a man is different.” “Artist models do it all the time.” “They cohabit with the artists who paint them. Apart from the marriage license, they consider themselves wed. That life is not for me. Though I am lapsed now, I was a raised a good Irish Catholic girl. Without a ring on my finger, my address is my own.”

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“But you fuck without the benefit of marriage.” “I fuck according to the mandates of my heart, and I admit the fornication is a sin, a sin that I enjoy, and that enjoyment is why I have avoided the confessional for the past five years. I feel no contrition and so, in good conscience, I avoid Father O’Neil’s booth at the rear of the church.” Suddenly impatient with the conversation, he said, “So live on what you earn from modeling.” “Those fees are as fleeting as youth and beauty. I must look to the future when my teats drop to my knees, my arse flattens to a potato pancake, and my belly is as lumpy as the main ingredient used in the recipe.” He searched for a diplomatic turn of phrase to offset her female concerns, which were ludicrous from his male point of view, but with sobriety, his usually quick wits and facile tongue had deserted him. He contemplated his big feet, magnified to bear size in the transparent water, as he tried to come up with something meaningful to say, but he had no practice in the area. Superficial teases, yes. But nothing that counted. He supposed he might have said something like, In my eyes, you will always be a

looker, Mol’. But that banal remark in no way expressed his true feelings, whatever those true feelings were. His feelings were a complicated mix he had yet to sort out. A phrase like that was the best and the most honest expression he could muster under the circumstances. Somehow, nothing measured up. The best and most honest missed the mark. Regardless of how staunchly he would mean the words, they were only words. He owed her a debt of gratitude for all the care she had taken of him. But his wit was not so dull that he would ever say so aloud to her. Utter anything about gratitude, and his head would soon encounter the wrath of her swinging fists. The woman did have an Irish temper. Her temper aside, he enjoyed having Mol’ bustling around the house in her efficient, take-charge fashion. He had yet to work out the whys of it in his mind, but he liked talking

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to her, when he felt like talking, which was getting to be more frequent. Even her mean bullying appealed to him. She was the salt of the earth, was Molly Fitzgerald. A lump in his throat made swallowing a tricky proposition. Christ, what would he do when she left? Miss her. Dumbfounded, he realized her departure would rip a hole inside him. Not even withdrawal from the absinthe had done that to him. Though sick as a dog, he’d still rejoined the world of the living all in one piece. Giving up the stuff had left its mark, and he would always need to fight reaching for a bottle, but there was no hole ripped inside him. Why did she have to leave? Their arrangement could continue, as is, regardless of what happened the next week between Lily and him. And he would tell Molly so. Later. After a lengthy absence, his hard-on had just returned, and his poor, fuzzy brain could only handle one instinct at a time. The need to get inside her took precedence over any words, poetic or hackneyed. And he had to take action fast. While he had been lost in thought, dreading her going, Molly really had gone. Not far, but out of his reach. She had dog-paddled to the edge of the river and climbed out of the water. Now she stood on the bank. During their morning swims in the stream, for some fool reason, she always kept on her drawers and shift. The muslin of both undergarments was thin, and soaked, and sticking to her skin. Her huge nipples were right there for him to see, the enormous points protruding. Bounding out of the stream, he rushed after her, hungry for her, starved for her. In a feverish attempt to get at those womanly nipples, he fingered the unbleached fabric of her

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chemise. “Let me help you, honey,” he cajoled with a tug. “Take this off. Dripping-wet underpinnings will only get in our way.” She brushed his fingers aside. “No, John.” “But you said when I sobered up we could.” “What about Lily? Do you still intend to see her?” “Hell, yeah. I told you so, Mol’. I never lied to you about her. Or about anything else, either.” “Perhaps not, but you do want your cake and eat it too.” “Not a slice of cake have I had in over a week. Not even a nibble.” He wiggled his brows in the lecherous tease that never failed to earn him a hoot and a holler from the local barmaids. He had taken none upstairs, not since Molly, but he still flirted with them out of habit. As was her habit, Molly rolled her eyes. “The answer is still no.” Not one to give up easily, he changed tactics. Dropping persuasion, he tried on candor for size. “Though I might have implied otherwise during a fit of delirium, I have not bedded anyone but you since that Fourth of July when we began to…” After years of getting by on his expansive charm, candor made for a tight fit. “When we began to…well…you know, Molly. “I know nothing of the kind. What are we to one another? You tell me.” This, all of this, was so bejesus hard to spit out. Joking was easy, but serious conversation took the stuffing right of him. “I have been faithful to you -- in my own way.” “And which way would that be?” “With my coc -- penis. I have not stuck it into any other woman but you since you came to me that Christmas Eve.”

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Not at all mollified, she folded her arms across her bosom, hiding her glorious titties from his sight. “Humph.” “Madder than a hen cutting teeth,” he muttered under his breath. What had he done to rile her now? Females were never testy with him. Never peeved. Well, there was Molly, of course. She had been full of piss-and-vinegar right from the very beginning. “I did tell you we could never be about the other thing.” “You mean love?” “Yes. That,” he said, suddenly discomforted. “I never want to hurt you. But you know my affections reside elsewhere. I told you the score right from the start. I always want to be upright with you.” He ran a finger up his jutting cock. “In every meaning of that word.” She turned her back on him. Sluicing water like a fountain, she walked away, her back straight, her hindquarters in motion. Christ, but Mol’ had a splendid ass. Now sober, he could better appreciate its contours -- an altogether voluptuous and mouthwatering heart shape. He scrambled after her, taking care not to trip over his tongue hanging out. As she took the patched petticoat up off the ground, he dropped his gaze to her hips, taking in her pussy, the dark curls of which shadowed her open-crotch pantaloons. She read his mind. “No,” she said firmly. “Yes,” he said just as firmly. Taking a step toward her, he reached a hand inside the necessary seam and palmed her mons. “Yes,” he repeated. As she shook her head back and forth, he slipped a finger inside the notch. Wet and juicy, and hot hot hot, despite the chill of the stream. “You want me,” he whispered. She leaned her giving body into his. “Deary me. Such a bold and boastful man.” “Insightful too,” he said with an easy grin now that he had succeeded in changing her mind.

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She clucked her tongue. “Alas, your perception only reaches to the end of your fine cock.” One backward step took her away from him. “Now, our merry swim is over, and I have packing to do.” “But what will I do with this?” he asked, pointing downward. “My cock is hard enough to pound rocks to sand.” “Grand! Go fix the rut in the drive as you promised. That hole could use some dirt pounded into it.” And with that little gem, she flounced off in the direction of the house.

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Chapter Ten

Molly placed her tired feet up onto the garden bench and reclined against the soft pillows. She sighed in rapture. Modeling. One of only two occupations she knew of where a woman could earn money while lying naked on her back. To be exact, the artist had specified she stretch out on her side for the pose, but the point still held true. And she thanked her parents once again for giving her the common sense to use everything at her disposal to her own best advantage, her present naked pose included. At her leisure, Molly observed the artist at work. Preoccupied with shadow, form, and whatnot, the painter remained unknowingly exposed to her perusal. A nice bit of irony, that the artist was the vulnerable one here, not the model without any clothes. Lily seemed more relaxed today. The bloom had definitely returned to her rose, as if she had gotten herself righteously fucked. By all outward indications, her husband was not only bonny, he also possessed a virile appetite.

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Lily looked up from dropping splashes of pigment onto her palette. “A short while ago, Doyle fisted me in front of our bedroom window. John, apparently, was outside watching. I thought you should know.” And here Molly had considered herself unshockable. How to answer that bon mot ? And how much did Lily know? Molly kept her answer brief. “I had no idea John was a peeper.” “But you do know we share a history. A complicated history.” Before they went any further, Molly needed clarification. “Did I mishear or did you say Mr. Donovan fisted you?” Lily continued to lay out her colors. “Yes, and not for the first time. Has a man ever fisted you, Molly?” “Er…no…ma’am. Am I missing out on something?” Lily chuckled as she squeezed color from one of the small traveling tubes that some artists used while painting outside. “Shall I tell you about it, Molly?” How could she resist? “Fine by me. Gossip will relive the boredom of posing.” “Very well. Talking may help me too. I can tell you are not judgmental.” Molly snorted. “Hardly. I have a past too, you know.” Lily smiled. “In Boston, where I taught for many years, I lived with women artists, and we would often talk into early morning. Real talk.” “Sex talk you mean?” “Is there any other kind of real talk between women?” Molly nodded. “Go on, then. And just to relieve your mind, I am no town crier.” Lily picked up a fat brush and began to sweep the horsehairs across the canvas. “I found the fisting wretchedly humiliating. I was angry with him for forcing me into that undignified

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position before our lit window. The pressure building inside me hurt. And I absolutely adored submitting to him.” Molly had a hard time picturing the activity. ’Course if a babe could squeeze out of there, a fist should be able to fit. “For the first time in months,” the artist continued, “I lost myself to mindless sensation. Holding on to the window seat with all my might, I moved to the rhythm of his fist’s thrusting. Soon, that token participation became not nearly enough. Groaning, then clenching my teeth, then greedily rocking my hips, I actively sought out more of his knuckles.” Lily glanced over at Molly. “This is not to say I acknowledged the urge to my husband. The fledgling reawakening was just too new to share with a man.” “Indeed, I could not agree more. Why tell them everything? We women must keep something to ourselves and for ourselves.” “But the problem was -- he insisted I acknowledge it. And I thought, ‘How dare he bring attention to how much I crave the undignified taking? How dare he interrupt something that was all about me, not him, with some sort of running narration?’” “Inconsiderate lout. How were you supposed to let go while talking up a storm?” “Exactly.” Lily sighed. “Anyway, when I refused, he cupped my jaw. Not brutally. Not using all his physical force. But determined that I should acknowledge the desire. He coerced me to peer up at myself in the glass panes. At first, I cringed at my reflection. ‘Oh, dear Lord,’ I thought. ‘What has come over me? Certainly, no mother should appear so wayward as I appear in that window.’” “Nonsense,” Molly said stoutly. “Unless mothers had lustful urges, all children born to women would be one and onlies. I hope you continued to seek what was yours by right?”

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“Yes, I ignored my censorious musings and actually stared at my bared breasts. Much fuller since giving birth, they positively bounced with each incremental encroachment of Doyle’s fist into my vagina.” Molly wrinkled her nose. “Vagina. Is that what you call it ?” “Correction. Make that my pussy.” Molly chortled. “Better still, make that your cunt, and we will have us a deal.” “Cunt. How perfectly filthy. I absolutely adore the word. Before carrying a life in my womb, I had no problem considering that area of my anatomy only in sexual terms. Since pushing Will into the world, I guess I consecrated that area to a higher purpose. But last night, as I stared at my naked self in the glass, a wildness came over me, an unforced recapturing of my youth. I returned to those days of heightened sensuality when my cunt was a hedonistic playground, not a shrine to fertility --” The artist lowered her voice. “I have no urge to bear another child. Not now. Perhaps, someday. But not now.” “I would love to have a child.” “Regardless of the circumstances?” “Most babes are conceived regardless of the circumstances. Regardless of the father too. They pretty much are governed by their own set of rules.” “No rules rule my husband. Once, he painted my nipples carmine and my labia the same. I was a virgin at the time, and the vivid scarlet pigment positively shook all my preconceptions about my identity. Who was this person with a scarlet-painted cunt? Was she a virtuous lady or no more civilized than in a female animal in heat? The former bored me.” “And the latter?” “Liberated me. My flushed appearance reminded me of that prior occasion of selfdiscovery. I have a cunt. Not just a womb for the breeding of babies, but a passage meant for the giving and receiving of pleasure. How frightfully delicious.”

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“I always thought so,” Molly agreed. “Doyle laid a leather strap across my bottom for disobeying. Discipline appeals to me on some base level.” “I am of a similar bent. A little flogging here and there can spice things up in the bedchamber.” “Funny, I can admit my fondness for corporal punishment to you, but not to my husband. My need for pain shames me.” “We women are all raised to be nice.” “But Doyle knows I crave it, anyway. He said, ‘You like some debasement with your passion, my love. You like the sex rough, slightly tawdry, a bit depraved. Voyeurism. Exhibitionism. Sodomy. Sundry other perversions -- you enjoy them all. You receive sexual gratification from all the vices that society ladies pretend to know nothing about.’ Why would I not know about them? He was the one who taught me!” “Men.” Molly harrumphed. “And they call us illogical.” “Doyle believes having two men inside me will trip me over the edge like I have never been tripped before. He can hardly wait to see my expression as I fly. Those are very nearly his exact words. Molly, one of the reasons I am telling you all this today is due to your…suggestion…about John.” So Doyle had told his wife! Not one to retreat from an awkward situation, Molly took the initiative. “And how do you feel about my suggestion?” “I believe your arguments have merit.” Molly gulped a breath of relief. “But I do have reservations. Despite my artistic leanings, my somewhat unorthodox views on life…my fantasies…I have never succumbed to sexual adventuring. After marriage, I left all my wild yearnings behind and made myself over into a respectable matron, a staid

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pillar of the community, a dignified woman of prominent social position. With motherhood, I willed myself into yet another transformation, sublimating myself and my selfish desires in favor of absolute slavish devotion to my child. And now this -- another reversal!” “Women constantly change throughout life. Men simply stay the course.” “Exactly.” “But sometimes change is good.” “You sound just like my grandmother! I shan’t turn into a younger version of her. I will

not !” “But why not? You loved her.” “I did. But while loving the independent and unconventional woman who raised me, I have always decried her voluptuous embrace of life, in all its myriad forms. I cannot become another Victoria Hill, a lover of two men simultaneously. My grandmother rejoiced in the dualism, saying her love increased twofold when she shared her heart and body with her husband and lover. But how can love, particularly marital love, expand to include an outsider? In my mind, including a third party would surely disrupt the marital bond and eventually lead to a breakdown of intimacy between the primary couple. Infidelity destroys the sanctity of marriage. I denounce the very idea!” “Hardly infidelity if all parties involved know and agree.” “Now you sound like Doyle! And I must admit that any argument I make against your suggestion is my mind analyzing the situation, not my loins reacting to the suggestion. Heaven help me, just the thought, just the image, of two virile men making love to a woman at the same time, sends me spiraling into mindless abandon, not a coherent thought in my head.” Lifting a hand, Molly fanned her face. “That is a righteously good argument for trying a threesome.”

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“I suppose so. But I love my husband. How can I fantasize about such a thing and still daydream about John, about what might have happened those years ago? How can that…well…excite me?”

Because you are human, ye great silly goose, Molly longed to scream. Instead, she kept her silence. How far to indulge their sexuality, both the sublime and base, was something all women needed to find out for themselves. “I want you to know, Molly, I value our budding friendship.” Molly tried not to show her surprise. This whole discussion was all very civilized. All neat and tidy. All bloodless. Had this been her husband under discussion, Molly would have gone for the throat of the “other woman” involved and had done with it. Minimally, she would have ripped the floozy’s hair out by the root. But then, she was but a poor Irish farm girl. She may have acted on the stage, she may have cavorted with notorious libertines, may have rubbed shoulders with the great thinkers and politicians and literary giants of the time, but at heart she would always be a simple lass. Being born into poverty had few advantages, with the exception of having no time to ruminate over inconsequential nonsense. Starving folk concentrated on serious matters, like filling their empty bellies. Fretting over nonsense like the “meaning of life” was the province of the wealthy. The meaning of life has no meaning to a corpse. And a corpse is what John would be if they all stood by and did nothing. She would keep him alive. What she would do, she would do to that end, and to no other. So despite Lily’s philosophical jabbering, despite being sure her own eyes must have glazed over from all the listening, Molly said, “I value our friendship too,” and God help her, she meant it. Lily rubbed her temples. “Oh, dear. I am so dreadfully sorry for the inconvenience, but I cannot continue our painting session today. I have suddenly acquired a beastly case of the megrims.”

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“Understandable. The sun has been shining in your eyes for the last two hours, ma’am.” The artist sighed. “Just so.” She touched her shallow brim. “I should have worn the garden hat. The straw.” “Can I get you something? A cool cloth?” “Sounds like heaven. But no need to bother yourself. The maid is up at the house today for light housekeeping. She can fetch me some chipped ice from the icehouse for a cold compress.” “Are you sure there is nothing I can do to help?” “Well, actually there is…if not too much of an imposition, if you happen to come upon my husband, would you please tell him I have retired to our room? He worries so.” “Of course.” Molly snapped to a sit on the bench and tunneled her arms into the silk dressing gown. “In fact, tell me where I might find him, and I shall leave in that direction and deliver the message.” “Oh, that is simply too kind. You should find him in his office to the rear of the barn. We just had the annex built so Doyle could work at home when he felt like it.” Rubbing her forehead, off Lily went, leaving Molly with one whole hour to kill before she was due at the Blanchard’s mansion to scrub floors. Behind the changing screen, she pulled on her clothing. Her gown had seen better days. Once, the blue serge had been fashionable. But not in this decade. The plain basque and skirt was uninspired and worn, and did nothing whatsoever to disguise the natural lines of her statuesque figure. Particularly, if she left off the enforced restrictions of underpinnings…the bustle pad, rigid Armorside corset, and stiff petticoats, an oversight she had tried many a time with John. The idiot had never noticed.

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Molly patted her full breasts, and then smoothed her palms over the generous curves of her bottom. She was at her wit’s end. She had to get John’s attention, somehow. If successful, her plan would help all of them. Molly would finally gain the attention of the man she loved. John would find out his monumental attraction for Lily amounted to no more than a hill of beans. Lily would regain her view of herself as a sexual creature and realize once and for all she need not repeat her beloved grandmother’s way of life. Doyle would get a responsive wife back in his bed. Her coconspirator had already agreed to play his part. The only question remaining to be seen was: Could the man act?

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Chapter Eleven

Molly tapped a reverential knock at the office door. Doyle called a benign, “Come ahead.” As she crossed the threshold, her coconspirator leaned back in his chair. “I thought it must be you.” She cocked a confrontational brow. “Because knocking is generally confined to the province of servants, sir?” “No. Because I scheduled no appointments for this afternoon. I assumed, under the pretext of some errand, you would you use the occasion of your modeling to persuade me once again to your point of view.” He checked his watch. “Although you are here sooner than I anticipated.” He smiled. “Mrs. Donovan released me early due to her unexpected illness.” Immediately his smile straightened, and every muscle in his body tensed. He appeared to will his voice to an even tone. “Nothing serious, I hope? The breakfast fish did taste somewhat off.” He jumped from his chair. “I should run up there and check.” “Letting the day girl know of your concern will not serve Mrs. Donovan well.” His gaze whipped to her. “You know of my concern?”

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“Your wife mentioned you worry over her. And then there is that knot pulsating in your jaw. A sure indicator of concern.” “Oh.” He visibly tried to loosen his expression. “I would not have town gossips rip my wife to shreds, calling her unstable, questioning her sanity, hinting of her inability to raise our child.” “I would say her melancholy is on the mend, sir. She showed a lighter mood during our painting session today. And she spoke to me about what weighs on her mind.” “Her grandparents’ deaths?” “No, sir. Not directly. And I am not at liberty to tell you more. She spoke with me in confidence, woman to woman, and I must respect her privacy, even if it puts me in a tenuous position with you. But I will tell this: her talking is a good sign. Women need to talk.” “But you said she is unwell?” “The megrims sent her up to the house for a lie-down is all.” He sighed. “I would do all I can, everything I can, to see her happy again. Like you, I thought her despondency had begun to lift, but taking to her bed midafternoon is a crushing blow to my optimism.” He took a determined step away from his desk. “To be on the safe side, I think checking on her is in order.” “I would leave her for a bit, sir. The sun did her in for sure. The glare was in her eyes the whole time I posed.” His relief rushed forth with a gusty exhale. “Only the sun’s glare. She is all right? I was mistaken -- an overreaction on my part.” “I have no physician’s license, sir, but I have seen grief before, and in my opinion, she is not suicidal.” “She forgot to wear her gardening hat?” “Exchanged for one with a narrow brim.”

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He collapsed back into the chair. “I shall buy her a new parasol. A hundred -- a thousand -- new parasols. Or better yet, a tent of sorts. One she can carry with her.” Molly laughed. “Just like the wandering Tinkers do.” “Exactly. I shall see it done immediately.” “A moment of your time, sir, before you go tent buying --” “Certainly.” “About our last conversation, sir.” He gazed off into space, clearly preoccupied by his wife. “Sir?” He blinked. “Er -- yes?” “Your brother has started his recovery.” “From absinthe?” “From all alcohol and spirits. He has practiced total abstinence for almost two weeks. I think he is ready to begin the next phase of his recovery.” “A return to health that is contingent upon fucking my wife out of his system.” He shook his head. “This is preposterous.” “He is only sober due to your wife. He had no wish to touch her with palsied hands.” “Considerate of him.” He dropped his head into his palms. “Please forgive my sarcasm, but this impending threesome has stretched my always fragile civility thin.” “Foursome,” she spoke up to say. He looked up at her. “Pardon?” He tapped his fingers on the desktop. “This will only work to all our advantage if I am also included in the plot. Did you forget? Or simply not care to remember?” In answer, Doyle looked away. She pressed. “Do you still agree?”

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“I find none of this agreeable. Am I expected to rejoice that the head of this beast turns on jealousy?” She shrugged. “Humans are simple creatures. Threaten what they hold dear and they react territorially. John might better appreciate what he has in me if he sees that another man also finds me attractive. And your wife might see you through new eyes too. She loves you, sir. She is only groping for answers, as all us women do.” “Since mentioning this threesome -- I beg your pardon -- foursome to Lily, her carnal appetites have grown to the voracious. Twice alone this morning. And her headache may just be a ruse to get me back inside the bedroom for another round. She is insatiable.” Molly twittered. “You could have a worse problem.” “I think I do. I cannot help but feel this thing with Lily is not about sex at all,” he exploded. “But about grief.” “People cope with loss differently, sir. Look at Hamlet.” “I beg your pardon. What would an immigrant woman of dire circumstances know of Shakespeare?” He stared at her. “You are not at all as you appear, Molly Fitzgerald.” “If my exterior reflects my interior, I should appear exactly as I am. You see before you a woman in love, a woman willing to go to any extreme for that love.” “I believe you.” “I have everyone’s best interests at heart. Including yours, sir.” “Mine?” he blustered. “Apart from wishing to see my wife happy and content again, what best interests are those?” “You know what it is to take care of others, to take responsibility, to provide support and nurture,” Molly said. “For years, you sacrificed for your brothers --” “Not so,” he interrupted. “Caring for my brothers was no sacrifice. If anything, raising them was a privilege that I enjoyed. They needed me.” “But you must have needs as well. What do you require, eh?”

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“I love my wife. I will only ever love my wife. I certainly have no desire to share her with another man, not even my brother. But I will do what I must to keep her happy. Her happiness is my requirement.” “Anything else?” “Of course, I would like John and me to be closer. I want to feel at ease with him again, to laugh and joke with him again.” “Go on,” she prompted. “What will make you happy ?” “No further complications,” he replied, the admittance drawn out of him on a wheeze. He washed his large hands over his craggy face. “Some naughty and meaningless fun. A little heel-kicking, letting loose. A large heaping of hard and randy fucking. Although our connubial times have increased of late, I still find myself too absorbed in my wife’s welfare to let go. I want to let go. But with her. Only with her. I have only ever wanted her.” He cleared his throat. “To that end, I see no reason not to put this show on the road. I will have John over to the house at his earliest possible convenience.”

***** John could only wonder -- was traipsing over to his brother’s place a fool’s errand? Doyle’s message told him to drop by that evening for an after-dinner cheroot, a notoriously male way of wiling away an eve. For other men. For brothers, certainly. Not for Doyle and himself. The house looked deserted when he arrived. He supposed he might have consulted his binoculars first before heading over. But since this ménage was placed into motion, he’d felt no need to continue his hobby. Why fantasize about Lily if he could have the real woman? With everything out in the open, his cravings for spirits had also lessened. Not gone entirely, but tolerable. He was ready to leave go of his wish to die.

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Made no sense to knock, seeing how he was expected and all. He entered the house, wiped his feet on the braided rag rug, his boots leaving behind muddy prints from the ditches on the drive he had yet to fill. That delaying tactic used up, he craned his neck into the front parlor. Empty. Where did Doyle usually smoke cheroots? The downstairs library, maybe? He took the three steps necessary and peered inside the room. Seated at a small scribe table in the corner, Lily was finishing up what looked to be a preliminary sketch of Molly. His heart sank at the charcoal rendition of her face. As he knew he would, he missed his Irish colleen. Obviously, she was still posing, but what else had she been up to since giving him the ol’ heave-ho? For five years, she had given him an abridged edition of newsworthy events, not only in town, but all over, foreign countries too. He had traveled the world, but he had never known a woman as well read or as politically savvy as Molly. Everything interested her. Now that it was too late to ask, he would like to learn how she arrived at her astute observations. Doyle chose that moment to walk over to Lily and kiss her. Midsmooch, his brother looked sideways at John and gestured over his wife’s head for him to enter. Damn peculiar. The blasted setup felt artificial and tinged with wrongness. Under the circumstances, dropping the idea seemed the best solution. Rather than going ahead, he started backing up. Then, Lily smiled at him. “Hello, John.” And the longings of his misspent youth came rushing to the forefront.

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Leave now, and he would never know. Leaving now would be tantamount to an admission of having wasted nearly half his life wanting a woman who was more air than substance. Molly was made of substance. She was the realest person whom he knew nothing about. For all that Lily and Doyle had invited him -- his brother in the note, his sister-in-law with that welcoming smile -- John gingerly crossed the threshold. If not for his cock dragging him deeper into the room, he would have taken off and run like hell. Lily’s expression had undergone a swift transformation. As if she too entertained second thoughts, she looked…well…stunned. Moving with the swiftness of a cheetah, Doyle stepped behind his wife. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he drew her to her feet. “Easy, darling,” he whispered. “We have no interest in rushing you or this.” He turned to him. “Right, John?” “Right,” he muttered, trying to shake off his despair. What the hell was he doing here? In no shape or fashion did he belong in this too-quiet room. His cock disagreed. While his sober mind balked at joining his body to Lily’s, his erection enthusiastically endorsed the ménage. “No rush here,” he added absurdly. What else could he say? What was appropriate under the circumstances? Not every day does a man get to fuck his sister-in-law, particularly while in the sights of her husband. What was the social etiquette? Maybe he was being presumptuous in even thinking they would consummate the threesome tonight. Could be heavy petting was as far as they would go. Doyle broke the heavy silence without saying anything at all. He placed his hands on her breasts, an out-and-out pinching and fondling that had John’s cock jumping. Without a

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thought as to the irony, he took a step forward, sealing his bulge to her lower belly, replaying that time in the hall, with her in the middle between him and his brother. Doing what he had been hungry to do then, John kissed her. Her lips clung. When she moaned into his mouth, John deepened the kiss, his eyes closed to block out the light. Or maybe her face. No cheroots tonight, he thought aimlessly, and sent his tongue down her throat, a Frenching a lifetime in the making. She grabbed onto his coat, either to hold herself up or to hold him up -- both seemed to apply -- and joined her tongue to his. The room spun, or they did, and Doyle took charge. John had waited for this moment for so long, and now that it was happening, the mechanics felt almost anticlimactic. All of his life had built to this one kiss, and rather than feel jubilant, he felt sad and let down. The kiss felt more like an epilogue than a prologue, a literary topic Molly could go on and on about for hours. She would never annoy him like that again. His cock shook off the melancholy and ground against Lily. And once again, Molly popped into his thoughts. Why did he and Molly never kiss? She jerked him off with her hand, with her mouth, she let him have her pussy, but not her lips. In the beginning, he had tried to kiss her -- women expected a little nuzzling -- but she always turned away. Why? Doyle was undoing Lily’s gown, and things started happening too fast. Why was no one talking?

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Molly was never quiet like this in the bedroom. Bawdy talk. Dirty laughter. Lively arguments at the most irritating times. Once, she had even danced a naked jig on his sea chest. Noisiness defined their private moments. The woman would not be still. Would not allow him to forget, even for a second, who she was. Who was she? He had never thought to ask. Shit. He should have fixed those ruts in the road as he had promised Molly. Why had he kept putting it off, putting her off? He should have done that one small thing for her. But no. And now it was too late. She had left him, and he stood inside his brother’s house, about to fuck his wife. How had things gone so wrong? As the top of Lily’s gown slipped down her arms, John took the opportunity to say, “We can wait on this, Lilybud. No reason to do anything you might not feel ready to do.” “No, I want to do this. I need to do this. There is no point delaying the inevitable.” That was it. She had hit the nail on the head. A sense of inevitability had settled around all three of them. The situation had gone past the point of no return. Regardless that he was having second thoughts, some regrets, regardless that he might have wished to push back the hands of time, there was no going back, no repairing the damage now.

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Chapter Twelve

Lily stepped out of her gown, and John kissed the tops of her breasts, the mounded flesh rising like perfect cream puffs from her corset. She was beautiful, lovely beyond compare. No words adequately described her exquisite proportions. Except they were not Molly’s proportions. Except he missed Molly’s ample shape. Her full breasts had cradled his thick head just right. Her hips had set him afire. Her rear had fit his loins like two pieces of the same puzzle. What the Christ was he doing here? Now that was a different sort of puzzle. He was the outsider here, the stranger at the gate looking in. The interloper. The annoying extra piece left over after the puzzle’s completion. No matter how he tried to force the issue, he would never fit. He would never share anything with his sister by marriage. Except this. Except sex. Was that enough for him? He wished he could discuss the dilemma with someone! The only one he would ever tell something so revealing, something that put him in a bad and indecisive light, was Molly. And she was off somewhere without him. Where?

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Maybe with her nose in a book. She was well-read. Better informed about the great works than he, and too knowledgeable about all literature to have spent her life either modeling or cleaning other people’s houses. What had she done before they met that night in Portland? He had never asked. Suddenly, an overwhelming need to know all about her came over him. Not a polite inquiry about her favorite color and whatnot, but a rude and overwhelming urge to know everything about her, including her past lovers. Even if the questions resulted in him getting his face slapped again. He grinned. The woman had a fierce temper. That was one thing he knew about her. One thing he knew about himself was his habit of repeating mistakes. Then he recalled Molly’s prosaic advice. “There are few problems without a resolution, few unfixable mistakes,” she had said. But try as he would, he could find no way out of this mess. With the sort of solemnity that had no place in a naughty ménage, he untied the drawstrings that held Lily’s undergarment in place until it was no longer in place. Lily’s dainty breasts spilled into his waiting hands without any tugging on his part. With Molly’s bounty, he sometimes had to scoop. No more scooping for him. As Doyle released his wife’s hair, John worked at releasing his misgivings. Choking up inside, he took Lily’s nipples between his fingers. Her eyes excluded him. Her gaze sought Doyle. Her jaw slackened as John played with the ends of her breasts. They were beautiful breasts, but he already knew that. When he cupped them, the weight was not what he expected.

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Molly’s fullness, her roundness…her moans as he squeezed her flesh is what he had expected. Somehow Lily was naked. “We can use the couch,” said Doyle, his voice sounding rough and greedy. “All right,” John answered, a pleasant and smooth confirmation. Doyle, taking the initiative, released his cock. John had seen his brother’s manhood up close before. While they pissed outside together, up against a wall in a meadow, while out on a ride, a tree in the wood during the hunt, a boulder by the stream before taking a swim. As brothers living in the same house, neither of them were strangers to one another’s morning erections. None of those circumstances matched the embarrassment of this. John turned away, concentrating his attention on his own cock, which was firm and ready to go. Doyle reclined on the couch, fully clothed. Lily, used to marital habits, followed him down. They started kissing. Really kissing. Both of them seeming to forget that John was there. Maybe forgetting gave his presence in the room too much meaning. What is there to forget about a shadow on the wall? What is worth remembering about someone who had never been there in the first place? John backed up. “If you will excuse me?” The lovers gave no indication of having heard them. He might have known -- shadows are silent. Lovers are not silent. As Lily melted into her husband’s body, Doyle gazed up into her face. “I very nearly lost you,” he said hoarsely.

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“Never,” she sobbed. “You will never lose me.” He brushed his fingers over her wet cheeks. “At long last, tears. You need to cry for them, darling. You loved your grandparents. Never be afraid to let go with me. You cried on my brother’s shoulders.” “Because the tears refused to come on yours. You worry so about me.” “Because I love you.” “I love you too, which is why I thought to spare you my sadness, Cuddles.” Ye gods. Cuddles ? Lily called his big hulk of a brother Cuddles? To the sounds of their obnoxiously sweet lovemaking, John closed the door firmly and gratefully behind him.

***** The following day, John went in search of Molly. He found her on her knees. A suitable position for what he had in mind, but the wrong location. “Get up.” “Why?” “Because I said so.” “As if that mattered.” She waved her hand at him. “Off with you, now. I have work to do.” “You sure do. Sucking me off tops the list.” “Go to hell. You shan’t go from her to me without even a bath in between. You look for all the world as though you have been digging ditches.” She sniffed the air. “And you stink of lust sweat.” “Wrong. On all counts. I am not arriving here after being with Lily. For your information, I have been filling ditches. All day. Afterward, I went looking for you without taking the time to go for a swim or a jump in the tub. Which is why I stink.”

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She pulled back onto her curvy haunches. “What happened between Lily and yourself?” “Nothing.” “Why not?” “Had to get up bright and early the following day to fix those ditches. I needed my beauty sleep.” “Beauty sleep. I see. You pulled back for that and no other reason?” “There is another.” “Tell me. Tell me quick.” Her eyes lit up. He wrinkled his nose. “She calls Doyle Cuddles during lovemaking. He was there too. A threesome.” Something flickered across her face, disbelief most likely. Her expression altered again. “Cuddles!” Her mouth fell open in surprise. “Go on with ye now.” “Would I tease you?” “Only all the time.” “A good thing, I keep track of your schedule or I never would have found you.” She snorted. “Ye keep track of me schedule,” she repeated with a brogue so thick he could barely understand her. She was losing her temper. Molly always was at her most Irish when she worked herself into a fine head of steam. “Why ye hardly know I exist, ye big lout!” Rather than debate the issue, something he had no patience for now, he yanked her to her feet. “You, Miss Fitzgerald, are coming with me.” “I never do, ye selfish rogue. Do ye notice nothing a’tall?”

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What did she mean? In his hurry to get inside her, his brain was slightly muddled. Oh, sex! She meant sex. He frowned, trying to recall Molly climaxing. “Ye do that. Ye think on it, ye big Yank dolt, and while ye do, think of how a woman might climax with very little in the way of petting and with a huge, thick cock shoved down her throat or in her hands and no place else.” “Thanks for the compliment.” “I gave ye none, conceited arse.” Trying to jolly her out of her pique, he joked, “I quote, ‘with a huge, thick cock.’” “Add dense, and I might have been describing yer damn skull.” This was not going well. “Shh!” He held a finger to his lips. “Unless you want to scandalize the children of this residence, I suggest you leave with me quietly, or else.” Her eyes dared him. “Or else what?” “I throw you over my shoulder like a sack of Irish potatoes.” Remembering their last argument on the same subject, he quickly inserted, “The unlumpy kind.” She planted her hands on her commendable hips. “Stop bloody bothering me. I have wages to earn.” “What if I pay you for your companionship the next week?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted saying them. He had been trying to hurry her away, and so had reverted to old habits, fallen back on the straightforward nature of their old relationship rather than trying to forge a new course with a destination that mystified him. Since they started off with him paying her for sex and continued with him helping her out with money, the notion of money for service rendered had sprung to his lips and departed. No way of recalling the insult, he waited helplessly for her to scold him or laugh at the idea that she would accept cash for lovemaking now that things had changed between them.

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“I am no whore,” she said steadfastly, just as he had expected she would. “But only a fool turns down a way to make a living.” “And you are far from a fool.” That would be him, for thinking she would stay with him of her own accord, without payment. Evidently, the change in the nature of their relationship had been all in his mind. Nothing had altered between them. What could he do? Regardless of his consternation, he still had to have her, and if she was selling, then he was buying. He set down the terms, harsh and unsentimental stipulations suited for a legal contract. “You would need to do everything we agreed about that Christmas Eve we met.” “And I told you then, I would allow you all. I have not changed my mind.” She undid the ties, then flung her apron onto a nearby chair. “We best leave -- as soon as we arrive at terms over the amount.” “Name the figure.” She did. As a sign that she wanted him as strongly as he wanted her, he thought she would name a low amount. But no. Not his shrewd Molly. She named a staggering sum. “Agreed,” he promptly said. “And you will earn every penny.” She shrugged. “Up to you.” He hurried her along to his place. “Strip,” he said in the yard. She tossed her head. “To the skin, I suppose.” “You taunted me with your flesh all during my recovery.” “I never did.”

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“You wore underpinnings during our swim. This week, you will wear not a stitch. And I mean all of the time.” “Have it your own way. I model for a living. Nudity means little to me.” What did mean something to her? He knew she prized money, but what else, who else? Not him, certainly, despite her constant declarations of love. Words were meaningless. Only actions counted. And her actions of selling sex called her a…called her a… A word he refused to think in reference to her. He would not think it. Even when she dropped her clothing at the right price. “You take my breath away,” he said begrudgingly. “More exercise should improve your lung capacity.” She smirked. “Oh, I intend to increase my exercise this week.” He spanked her bare bottom. “To the stream.” Halfway there, she looked back over her shoulder. “Is it true you peep at your sister-inlaw?” she asked, the saucy minx. “It was once true.” He placed his palm on her bottom and squeezed a cheek. “Not anymore. I retired my telescope and binoculars to a locked drawer. I may just throw away the key.” She raised her throat and looked up at the sky. “Seems a shame to pack everything away. Just look at those stars. See how bright they shine.” “I do,” he replied. But his eyes were on her, not on the sky. As they continued to the water, he moved his thumb into the deep crevice between her generous buttocks and held it there, against her back opening. “I want in here,” he said speaking low, his need shaming him, for all that he had paid for the right. He had purchased her ass, and he planned to get his money’s worth during the week ahead.

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“Now?” she said. “Shall I stop here?” Her voice was even, the tone containing no negative inflection, no censure. Her question carried the same weight as if she were asking him to play a game of poker. “Does nothing shock you?” he asked petulantly. “Very little.” For some reason, her answer angered him. She had come to him five years ago experienced, but not knowing the extent of her experience unsettled him. “You have nothing against sodomy?” “I told you long ago I did not.” He could tell, since her brogue had long departed and her speech sounded cultured and precise, that she was not at her ease with him. A good thing, because he had wants and needs that frightened even himself. The ease of familiarity had no place between them. She had known him for five years, and she knew him not at all. Sober after all this time, he hardly knew himself. Powerfully dark urges were rising within him, and he intended to let those dark and powerful urges out. On her. They had been lovers -- or rather, he had paid her for sex -- for five years and had never once asked her anything personal, but suddenly, he needed to know her secrets. It seemed only fair, as she would soon find out about him, all the secrets he kept hidden, to ask. “There must be something you will not do or allow to be done?” “Bestiality,” she replied, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “I was raised with farm animals. I find them not at all attractive. Now, here we are at the stream. Do we talk, swim, or fuck?” Were the choices the same to her? Did all the activities bear equal weight in her mind? “Swim,” he pushed out through his teeth, still guilt-ridden and not quite pinpointing why. He had paid her for this week, as he had paid her right from the beginning. He had

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never lied to her. He had no reason for guilt. Even when she told him she loved him, obviously a lie, he had told her the truth. But he was withholding the truth now. He loved her. And she had accepted money for a week with him. Was that her idea of love -- putting a price tag on their time together? They splashed in the water. After washing the mud off himself, he bathed her. His big hand moved over the full slopes of her breasts. He longed to sink his teeth into her flesh, and not playfully, either. He could easily take a bite out of her, if only to see if she could feel anything honest and unguarded. In his present angry and confused frame of mind, he could easily hurt her. “Foreplay?” she asked. “Crazed lechery,” he replied. “Your body is the stuff of madness.” “Oh, lovely. Just lovely. Now that you have given up on Lily, you plan to substitute a mirage of her for a fantasy of me.” “I see you, Molly, for who you are.” A mercenary and unfeeling woman. “And what I cannot see at the moment, I plan to see soon, and touch even sooner.” He took her elbow and led her to shallow water. “Open your legs.” “Of course.” She spread her thighs. Beneath the pale moonlight he looked, then touched what he had only haphazardly looked at and touched in five years, most of those occasions done while under the dulling influence of absinthe. Sobriety magnified all his senses. Anger and confusion heightened his emotions. And with that look and touch, it started. Even within the context of his deviant appetites, even within the context of his anger and confusion, he had still intended to hold back, to have the fuck be sweet. And gentle. He thought to control his dark urges, not the other way ’round. But at that look and touch, a

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horrible spate of blood lust had taken him over, and he knew himself incapable of tame congress. Or restrained excesses. Unable to help himself back, he forced her thighs apart.

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Chapter Thirteen

John was prying her legs apart as Molly was breaking apart. Would she never learn? She had thought John was about to tell her he had pulled back from beautiful Lily due to discovering his love for her, somewhat less than beautiful Molly Fitzgerald. What a romantic dunderhead was she! Luckily, her acting skills saved her pride, and she was able to hide her foolish disappointment. Without any consideration, John sent a finger, the longest middle digit, up into her body’s clasp. She bucked but made no move to pull away. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

No more than loving a man who does not love me. “A bit.” “Shall I stop?” “In a week,” she replied with a smile. Not a sad smile, not a smile of yearning, a feigned neutral smile that masked her heartbreak.

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For years, she had orally and manually pleasured this man. There had been few occasions of real intercourse. And many of those occasions had been quick, and sometimes incomplete, owing to the softness of his penis -- absinthe made for impotence. Of late, he’d had difficulty not only keeping it up, but getting it up. Now this. A sexual crucible. A trial by perversion. A test of her capacity to withstand carnality manifested in all its myriad forms. John had a fierce hunger on him. She felt the vibrations of his rampant male virility coursing through his toned and muscled body -- his love of swimming had kept his body firm despite his absinthe addiction. No evidence of the flab that spirits usually caused bloated his male physique. While glorying in his return to good health, she had not had an erect cock inside her for a very long while. Before John, she had only had the one other lover, a wealthy gentleman of conservative sexual habit. Now this! Her passage was regretfully narrow. Only a temporary condition, true, but still, the first few penetrations were bound to cause her pain. When he added a second digit, her cunt all but revolted. He steadied her, a grip on her upper arm. Fingers now bit into her flesh above and below. “One more,” he said. She braced herself, as he gave her the third and last. “How many men have you had?” Now when that it was too late, he thought to inquire about her past. For this, their last week together, she owed him her body and nothing more than her body. “A score,” she lied. Let him think what he would. He already thought her a whore. “Open more. You feel tight. And dry.” “My monthlies are due any day. That would explain the dryness.”

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“Monthlies due? Good, no need to take the precaution of withdrawal. Your very convenient inconvenience will decrease the chance of conception. And if you begin your time during the week, we will continue anyway. I am not squeamish.” She shrugged. “With buggery there is no risk of conception any time.” “I shall bear that in mind.” “Shall I call you ‘sir’ throughout? Some paying gents prefer the formality.” “Yes,” he snarled. “Formality between us is excellent. Why operate under any false illusions of sentimentality?” “Why indeed…sir ? You are paying me a fortune, after all.” “Glad you hung on for five years?” “Oh, aye,” she said spitefully. “Every drunken snore was worth it. The price you agreed to pay me more than compensates for all those times you slept through.” “I am not at all tired now,” he raged, and pumped his wrist, his three thick fingers thrusting wickedly inside her. “If you cannot find my clit, I shall absolutely delight in showing you the way.” “I can find it all right,” he grunted, and did. For the first time in five years. She went rigid, every tendon tightened. Conversely, her jaw slackened. Unused to the pained pleasure, she panted, “Oh-oh-oh,” and then cried out a ragged scream. Her first orgasm, brutally achieved and unexpectedly received. She had not been prepared for the turmoil of joy. Proving a resisting woman could still derive physical release even with a sore cunt and a broken heart. Removing his hand from her body, he dressed, then dragged her back to the house. She put up no fight, but was thankful for his lack of neighbors. There was no one to see her humiliation. Apart from Doyle.

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He waited for his brother by the steps. “I came over to tell you the drive looks good. You fixed all the ruts.” He eyed her naked body, wet from the stream, flushed with her climax, and nodded. “‘Evening, Molly. Everything all right?” “Everything is fine, sir. Including the fee John is paying me for a week of sexual deviancy,” she said with grave precision. In her performance, she might have passed for a Yank. Her diction was pure New England gentry. Mimicry had always been her strong suit on stage. “You accepted money?” Doyle looked taken aback. “I see.” John made sure he did. He brought her to a stop before his brother, and cupped her bare breasts, one in each hand. Standing behind her, he kneed her feet apart with his boot. “Yep, Molly has agreed to entertain me for the week before she leaves town with a wad of cash.” He plucked at her nipples, and God help her, they tightened and pointed. “Give my brother a look, honey. Put on a show. Just add exhibitionism to the bill. He was generous enough to consent to sharing his wife with me, the least I can do is return the hospitality.” Not everything she did was an act. Her passion for John was real. But her bravado was sheer drama. The ménage was unbearably awkward. Then again, most first times doing anything felt uncomfortable. Especially love. This was her first time for that too. Sure, she thought she had loved the other man, the wealthy Newport businessman who had introduced her to luxuries. But now she realized what she had felt for him was mostly awe. Her first infatuation, an Irish stable lad, had been more puppy love more than anything else. A short-lived summer romance before she migrated to this country. They had never gotten past the hand-holding stage -thanks to her strict parents.

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She was twenty-five now. And what she felt for John was a mature woman’s love, a love money could neither buy nor bind. A love he could not destroy, regardless of how hard he was currently trying, a love not even a broken heart could diminish. With that said, she needed a nest egg. She could hardly stay in Bar Harbor after this travesty. So, she must plan for her future without John. And that plan called for cash. John had paid her well for this week. Enough money to pay off her parents’ debts. Enough to start over somewhere else. Enough to follow her dream. But there was not enough money in all the world to console her. She loved him. Had proven her love a thousand times over. Offering her money threw her love back in her face. It was the last straw. She gave up on him. Absolutely gave up. All John required from her was sex? Fine! After the week was done, she was finished with him. But, for now, the show must go on. She straightened her spine. “What would you have me do, sir?” John whispered hotly in her ear. “Open your legs, honey, as you did for me at the stream. You know, after we came to terms on the price of your ass. Give my brother a little preview of things to come.” He moved around to her front, to watch. John had turned the tables on her. Called her bluff about Doyle. After making her bed, now she must lie in it. With two men. Her back arching, her flushed breasts jutting, the reddened nipples pointing, she did as he told her to do and spread herself wide. John spoke to his brother. “Molly has agreed to anything I want. What I want is a ménage. Interested?” Doyle’s gaze dropped. He directed his voice to the slit between her legs. “Is my participation agreeable to you, Molly?”

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“Aye,” she answered. When both men remembered to look again at her face, she cocked her jaw, her chin defiantly jutting, and circled a jutting nipple with a slow and sultry finger. “More than agreeable,” she said breathlessly. John patted her pubic hair. “These pretty curls will have to go.” He parted her nether lips. “I need to see this lil treasure whenever I like. Ain’t this a beaut, Doyle?” He rubbed her clit. Could she believe it? After years of repressed animosity between the two brothers, John was now actively seeking Doyle’s approval. Unfortunately, their reconciliation came at the expense of her humiliation. For all of a few seconds. Then holding the full attention of two virile men set her afire. Saint Paddy help her, she always had craved the spotlight. Wholly aroused, she ground her pelvis against John’s hand, seeking a deeper connection. “Molly is a beaut,” Doyle agreed. John stepped away and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Go on. Have a feel.” “With the lady’s permission,” Doyle said, giving a gallant dip at the waist. Oh, God. She loved John, she did. But she was not made of tin. Who would not grant Doyle permission? After five years of near-carnal abstinence, she could eat both men alive. Or, better yet, have both men eat her. She chortled to herself. Just as quickly, her nervous giggles subsided. Doyle smoothed a palm from her belly to her mons. His finger slipped inside her slick pubic lips. Merciful Christ! But her cunt was slippery.

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John stepped behind her. He must have released his trousers, for his hard cock rubbed against her backside. Sweet Mary help her, she leaned forward. Outside, in the open, her teats toppling, then swinging, she moaned as his luscious cock butted her arse. “Yes, yes, yes.” Do it now! I have

to have ye. “I am afraid, with the utmost regret, I must request a rescheduling,” Doyle said, breaking his contact with her. “Lily is expecting me home. For dinner.” John guffawed. “Lucky you. The woman can burn water.” “Everything she makes goes well with wine.” Doyle grinned broadly. “A good deal of wine.” He picked up Molly’s hand, placed a kiss on the sensitive underside of her wrist. “Thank you. After this warm-up, my wife will be cooing in delight. See you soon, Molly.” “Soon?” John shook his head. “Why?” “Oh, you must not have heard. Lily wants to sketch Molly in flagrante delicto and has requested my…um…input. At first, I resisted. But I never could turn Lily down when she wants something. Tomorrow evening, Molly?” He winked. “Fine by me,” Molly replied, and winked too, as John drew her up the stairs onto the porch. Inside the house, he could not keep his hands off her. They were everywhere at once. His fingers continued to roam her as they moved down the hall to his room. Doyle’s old bedchamber. “Over to the sea chest,” he said. “Rest one foot on top.” She had wanted John to let go, to lose control, and he was, but what she had not anticipated was her own overwhelming susceptibility to his dominant side. Despite everything, her wounded pride, her crushing hurt, her horrible disappointment, she surrendered herself to him and to her own burgeoning need.

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She went where he directed her and did as he told her to do, though he had made no commitment to her, had not spoken of love, and had only paid for the use of her body. “Ready?” he asked. “For what?” she asked, eyeing him roll up his sleeves. “Doyle fists Lily, and I intend to do the same to you.” It was too much. Even here, John competed with his brother. She had always been just a substitute for Lily. “The hell you will.” Down came her foot. Spirits low, but head held high, she marched to the open door. A scant inch short of her out-of-joint nose, he slammed it shut. “We are doing this.” “No!” He reached for a leather harness hung on the wall where they stood. “I say yes. And since I am paying…” He left his meaning to hang. She struggled, she hit and slapped and bit, but in the end, his strength was too great, and he overpowered her. A few twists and turns, and she was all wrapped up in leather straps, one wide strip under her breasts, one over her breasts, until they bulged out enormously. Another strap encircled her waist. She could no longer move her arms. Bound, but not completely helpless, she lifted a knee. Laughing in hilarity, he dodged the blow. “C’mon, honey.” He gave the restraints a yank. “Over to the bed.” “No!” she cried raggedly, choking on her rage. And her excitement. He pulled her there like a mare and pushed her down. Still for a crushed heartbeat, she fought back the next. Until he tied her ankles. One to each post, done with his shirt, which he had whipped off and ripped in two.

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Immobilized, she waited. Not for long. He got up on the bed with her and began touching her. Everywhere. Places he had never bothered to touch before. He thumbed her lips. Tenderly. He kissed her the same. She bit him. Hard. Blood tasted like salt in her mouth when he pulled away. “Guess you never had fisting done to you before, huh? There must be some oil or such in the kitchen to help you along.” He left her then to rummage around her cooking supplies, the ones she had left behind. He returned. Thankfully, not with cooking grease, but with an oil she used for softening her skin. He poured the lotion on his ham-sized hands in front of her widening gaze. And then smoothed those oiled hands all over naked body. She started to pant. Before he even touched between her splayed legs, she was damning him in her mind for not hoisting the curtain on the show. And then the performance began. He returned to the bed and pressed against her notch. She heaved up and spat at him, but he kept pushing his bent knuckles inside her. Unable to stop him, unable to prevent herself from squirming, she groaned, “Oh God, oh God, oh God, no no no.” This was too real. Too revealing. He had stripped her naked and then taken her ability to act away. “Do not do this to me.” He did anyway. He put his folded fingers inside her, squeezing the width of his hand span inside her, until all his knuckles had lodged themselves deep. He pumped his arm, rotated his wrist. Oh, gently, but the unexpected pressure panicked her. The slurpy wet sound made her blush.

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“You will tear me down below.” She panted. He ignored her concerns. “Come, honey. You know you need to.” Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. Tears of pain. Of denial. Of love for this man. She cried even as she came. The second time in her life, his dominance prompting both. “Good girl,” he soothed afterward, and the pressure inside her eased as he took back his hand. Rather than relief, she experienced unspeakable privation. Understatement. She was starved for more of the same, the hollow between her legs actually weeping, just like her eyes. “Rest now,” he said softly, and left her there, tied to the bed and alone.

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Chapter Fourteen

During the night, John returned to his room with a straightedge razor, honed to perfect sharpness on a strop. He also carried his softest badger-bristled shaving brush, a cake of hard soap, a drying cloth, and a basin of warm sudsy water. He turned on the lamp at the bedside. Before she even awakened, he had taken a seat at the edge of the mattress and began soaping the area he needed to prepare. Her delectable pussy. She grumbled sleepily. “That tickles. What are ye after now?” “Your plump lil clit.” Since she was lying on her back, her legs splayed wide, he could get at her easily. “Men! All senseless idiots,” she hissed. Chuckling at her hurled insults, he scraped her pubic curls until she was bare. He smoothed his palm over her smooth skin. “Pussy sore, honey?” “Everything, including a sore pussy, is covered in the price,” she replied tartly, and turned her face to the wall. “Well, in that case…” He knelt between her legs and mouthed her cleft. “Uh-uh-uh.” Forgetting the straps that he had used to bind her, she tried to rise up in the bed.

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He pushed her back down without missing a lick. Christ, but the little piss-and-vinegar mercenary tasted sweet. He curled his tongue and shoved it up inside, piercing her core, and then aimed for her clit. Bull’s-eye! She bucked wildly, hollered what he suspected were a few choice Gaelic words, and then juiced, her cream pouring into his mouth. Molly said she had never climaxed with him. That meant they both had a lot of catching up to do. Maybe some making up for lost time too. At least, on his part. Through the years, she had provided release for him, and he had never once -- according to her -returned the favor. Selfish, that. He figured he owed her. That she had accepted payment should have negated his debt, but somehow he still felt indebted. Somehow, despite the mercenary nature of their relationship, he still had feelings for her. Confused, angry, vindictive, excited feelings for her. Not love, naturally. No man in his right mind would allow himself to love a woman who came with a price. But maybe he would call on her after the week was over. After she quieted, he lapped at her some more. No rush. He took his time, capturing every last juicy dribble with his tongue, sucking her honey into his mouth, and then from his lips and chin. He sent his gaze upward, climbing the hills of her titties, scaling to the summit of her peaked nipples, and then smiled at her in triumph, his grip holding her legs open. Never again could she declare he had not done right by her. Plenty riled up, but too boneless with satiation to do much more than glare at him, she just lay there. He blew a gusty breath into her slit while he got himself out.

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Had he ever been so hard? Even peeping at Lily, had his cock ever twitched like this? Even having his hands on Lily, had his erection ever throbbed like this? Damn. Not even close. Her hips were thrusting, and so was his prick. He dropped his sights from her face, looked longingly between her open thighs, to the passage that seemed to have been made just for him, and with deep regret passed her pussy over in favor of something else he wanted to try. He brushed soap bubbles into her cleavage. “Oh, no,” she cried, a fit of giggles besetting her. “Tickles?” he asked, amused despite his anger. Not waiting for an answer, he mounted her. Holding his weight up on his bent elbows, he slid his cock between her plumped breasts, still bound in tight leather. “Christ, but your big titties make me crazed,” he growled, and slid his length back and forth between them, making sure to keep the head of his cock out of those stinging soap bubbles while not crushing the breath from her. He put no effort into making it last. The thought of irritating her soft skin bothered him. “Open your lips,” he growled, and when she did, took one last stroke and aimed. His load tagged her just right. “Swallow,” he ordered. Not to his recollection had he ever asked that of her before. She just felt too damn good. And despite ruining everything, he loved her still. He had to loosen her hold on him. Taking charge of her every move should do it. “Need to go?” he asked gruffly. Her eyes as wide as platters, she nodded.

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He undid her from the bed, took the harness strap in hand, and led her to the night chamber pot. “Squat,” he said crudely. “What about the commode in the WC?” “What about it?” “Please, may I have a wee bit of privacy, sir?” He was mighty damn proud of the indoor plumbing he’d had installed, but -He folded his arms over his chest. “This or nothing.” For someone who modeled in the nude, Molly was modest about her person. But there was no better way of reminding himself…and her…that she accepted cash for her ass, than to start treating her like a common…like a common… The thought refused to form. “Now or never,” he said harshly. Blushing, she squatted while he held the leather strap. After she had relieved herself, he patted her pussy dry with a linen cloth and helped her back up to her feet. Her chin dropped. He hardened himself against her embarrassment. “Best get used to being my personal property, honey. Christ knows I paid enough for the privilege.” He took her to the basin and sluiced her off with the sudsy water he had used to shave her and then rubbed her dry, rubbed her until her milky skin glowed rosy, and his cock was thrusting. So much for breaking her hold on him. “Back up,” he said grudgingly. When she moved too slowly for his tastes, he jerked the harness. That brought her ass up tight against his bulge right quick. “Bend over.” “My hands are tied. I-I have no balance.” “You ain’t gonna fall and hurt yourself, sugar. Your ass is way too valuable.”

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She tried to round on her own, but in the end, if he wanted in her end, he could see he would have to help her. One arm slung across her jiggling titties, he bent her, and then got himself out again. At the rate he was going, he should just let himself hang out of his trousers. He could not get enough of her. “Rub up into it, honey. Take it nice and slow.” He took his greedy cock in his free hand. “Good girl,” he said softly, when she pushed her hips back into the precum dripping head. He slipped his cock inside her round bottom cheeks while pinching the end of a lush tit between two fingers. Not hard, just enough to show his approval. Seeking more than he was willing to give, she wiggled her ass. “Not so fast, sweetheart. My cock ain’t going in. Not yet. I just want to get a feel for your size.” Dainty was her size, he thought dismally, the head of his cock bumping the eyelet. “Sir, sir, sir,” she said and forced the issue. “Hey. Whoa there, honey,” he said with lusty laugh. “Not so fast. What did I tell you?” He let go of his hold on his cock and kneaded her bottom. “I can tell you like it. You like it a hell of a lot. Tell me so.” At her obstinate silence, he swatted her ass. “Say it, or you get nothing.” “Please,” she begged. “More like it,” he grumbled. “But you ain’t getting it. Not tonight.” His jaw arched. His throat too. He was coming. Again. Just from the hot thrill of her, of doing what he wanted to her, and having her appreciate the effort, like the little horny animal she was.

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He exploded, his semen squirting against her ass and then spilling down her legs. Afterward, he helped her back up. She was red in the face. From the blood rushing to her head, most probably, since shyness from a woman like her was only a man’s fantasy. He put himself away. But unable to put her away, he stared at the stain his cum had left on her tight buttocks. “You sleep on your belly tonight.” He undid her arms and led her back to the bed on the leash. He helped her get up, and then undid the harness so as not to squish her nowswollen titties while she slept. He plumped the pillow. “Lie down.” After she reclined on her front, he stuffed the plumped pillow under her belly. Her semen-stained ass hiked up nice and high, even higher than the first time. “Go to sleep, honey.” As she settled in, he did too, at the edge of the bed, watching his cum dry on her body. How would he ever let her go in a week’s time?

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Chapter Fifteen

Molly slept almost twelve hours, nearly halfway ’round the clock, without stirring. She only awakened after a rude nudge was applied to her posterior. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead. Time to play.” Molly tried to do as the idiot instructed her, but she felt too leaden to move. For the sake of expediency, she supposed, he lent her assistance. An arm wound around her waist, the newly masterful John helped her stand. She brushed up against him. “Quit that, now, honey. I want to tie you again first. No use begging me for it yet.” Conceited swine! He had completely misinterpreted her contact with him. She was wobbly with sleep! Brushing against him had been unintentional, not purposefully provocative. As if she would ever beg him to take her. Then she remembered she already had. But her pride was left somewhat intact, because he had said, “Want to,” and oh, she could tell he did want to. His tight grip told her so. And regardless of how she felt about the matter, tie her he would. What was the point of arguing? She nodded dumbly.

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“A loose restraint,” he told her. Adding, “Unless you struggle. Will you struggle?” “That would depend.” “On what?” “On the looseness -- struggling would be impossible with a taut restraint -- and on what you have a mind to do.” “In that case, a loose restraint -- I enjoy watching you shimmy -- and I have a mind to use a dildo. To stretch you.” He touched her crevice. “Back here.” His finger slid around the anal ring. “Despite your checkered past, your opening is virgin tight.” She was virgin tight because she was a virgin to anal intercourse. Not that she would tell him. Let him think what he would. He had already drawn the conclusion that she was a whore with his “checkered past” remark. Having one previous lover and accepting John’s

offered monetary help did not make her a whore. In a feeble attempt to moisten her throat, as dry as her pussy was wet, she swallowed. This was so hard to admit! Especially after only just thinking she would never beg. “I must have my mouth on you.” His hand fell from her bottom as she sank naked to the floor at his feet and peered up at him. “Please,” she pleaded. “May I?” “May you what?” Such a cruel man. “May I suck you off, sir?” “May you suck me off how?” Was there another method? “With my mouth on your cock,” she ground out. The fiend! Why did he persist in toying with her? “And what will you suck from my cock?” John and his teases! Was this a lesson in physiology?

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No, she mused a moment later, not a lesson in physiology. Her inquisitor thought to torture her. “Your cum,” she spat, as she would certainly not spit the topic under discussion. “I would suck your cum from your cock.” There! Could she be any plainer? He chuckled. “With your teeth bared like that, I fear emasculation.” She dropped her chin, her eyes suitably downcast. Before losing her mind to her raging hunger, she said, “I promise to be gentle.” “Threats leave me unmoved, honey.” “You are not in any immediate danger of castration. Why would I bite off the object of my greed?” “You make a sound argument. Very well, have at it,” he said amicably, and crossed his arms over his chest. Huge arms. A huge chest. Both muscled from years of physical labor. Before, desperation to appease her hunger had dried her saliva. Now, recognition of John’s tremendous strength made her mouth water. She had been attracted to him from the very first moment. In that attraction, she had followed him from Portland to Bar Harbor. Five years later, he still beguiled her. With his voice. With a look. With a touch. The mere thought of his big, callused hands on her body set her to shivering. Damn him, anyway. He understood his impact on her! Why bother tying her to the bed when the force of his will alone would keep her? He owned her. She was his. Totally his. And not just for this one week. For the rest of her life. If he chose to hurt her with his passion, she would welcome the bruising. No! Not only welcome the bruising. She would take pride in the bruising. She loved how the width of his cock stretched her lips, filled her mouth. Loved how the head, satiny smooth and oh-so-eager, bumped against her throat. Loved the taste of his

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salty ejaculate on her tongue. Loved how the heavy weight of his sac settled in the hollows of her hands as she swallowed his cum. She loved him. He tugged his thick cock from his trousers. “Be thorough with me, honey.” “As thorough as you will be with me later.” With malice aforethought -- or, perhaps, with malice of extended foreplay -- she curled her tongue around his shaft, from wiry nest to bulbous tip, making him wait, endure, as she had waited and endured. When she finally relented and sucked on his angry purple flesh, she performed the service as one would suck poison from a snakebite, unconcerned with the potential for teeth marks or contusions, only concerned with the continuation of life. Her life, not his. She would die without this. She worked on him long and hard, until he swelled so much against her throat his blood-engorged size very nearly choked her, gagged her, suffocated her. She gloried in the discomfort. After her fevered mouthing, he shot his semen home, a viscous plug she gulped with sloppy relish. Some cum oozed down her chin to fall between her hurting breasts, the nipples swollen and red from his pinching. And from her own wanton arousal. Most of the cum trickled down into her belly, where it would never plant a child. She would have loved to carry his child. Too late for any of that now. Gratitude in his dark gaze, he brought her up from the floor. “Lick the remainder off my lips,” she ordered. To her mind, this directive in no way broke her one cardinal rule, a moral and self-imposed imperative that forbad her from seeking out his sinful kisses, not under any circumstance, regardless of the temptation.

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He put his mouth on hers, cleaning his cum from her Cheshire cat grin and then kissing her, a full French kiss. Ack! She was going to hell now for sure. So why not enjoy her sinning? Still, she had her morals. Thinking to pay the devil back for sorely tempting her, she placed an ungentle love bite on his tongue. He broke the kiss, broke them apart, broke her heart all over again. “Vixen!” he bellowed with all the tragedy of a Shakespearean character, and she was lost. She received the appropriate discipline for her bloodthirstiness: a sharp smack across her left buttock. At the end of this week, her body would show the black and blue symbols of his intemperate regard. While having no wish to rush ahead, she could hardly wait to see her trophies in seven days time. He drew her along with him to the bed. “Come with me.” She never had, she mused sadly, but my, my, my…but she wanted to. Without the courtesy of advanced warning, he stopped. “Not here,” he decided at the footboard. “I think the voyage we are about to undertake warrants a different setting.” With his cock jutting from the front of his gaping pants -- John’s rapid recovery time astounded her -- he took her naked out into the hallway. A few steps and they were at the door. He gestured her outside. “Onward to the maze.” The maze. A living green puzzle of evergreens. Doyle had planted the spruces years ago. Now, the trees stood well over twenty feet tall. While she negotiated the twisty ins and outs of the labyrinth, muffled male conversation startled her.

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“Workmen are installing a new fountain in the center,” he explained. “Remain quiet, and spare your modesty.” Two hands on his shoulders, he pushed her down to an all-fours position on the grass and tried to make her scream. John wanted the workmen to hear her. That was the whole point of this exhibitionism. He opened her up in back, and his hard cock sawed back and forth against her upper thigh. “You look good in dried semen. But I suppose all your paying customers say the same.” Conscious of the eavesdropping workmen, located not more than a few feet away, she said nothing in return. And when John sent an investigative finger into her hole, she bit her lip against the cry of delight. Sparing her nothing, certainly not her pride, he showed her what he planned to push inside her. The wooden dildo was exaggeratedly huge and painted a garish red. “You cannot possibly expect me to accommodate that,” she whispered. “I do,” he said like a wedding vow. “Ready?” She would show him. He would not get the better of her. After licking her lips, she jerked a silent nod. Nothing else to do, she let him have his devious way with her. The massive phallus soon found its way between her buttocks. Never having felt the likes of anything like it, she hammered the ground with both fists and bit down on her tongue until she tasted blood. “One inch,” he said, coolly. “Nine more to go.” She hated him then. Not for the hard length that he was coercing her soft body to accept, but for his willful and hurtful distancing from her while he did it. How dare he force her to come apart while he held himself back in reserve? Seething in anger, Molly rocked her hips.

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“Tell me when you have had enough. But bear in mind, these are my dimensions too. If you cannot manage this, you will never accept me.” Perspiration popped on her back and trickled down her spine, falling into the crack of her bottom. Hot and masculine lips kissed the droplets away. She cried softly, hoping he would kiss her freckled face the same. “Stubborn wench,” he soothed, and slid his free hand to her belly. A finger entered her cunt. “Mmm. Wet.” Like a bitch in heat, she thrust her pelvis to gain a deeper connection, which the fiend naturally refused her. And then she no longer cared. Not about him. Not about the workmen. Not about the impossibly hard, impossibly thick, impossibly long, impossibly red phallus protruding from her hindquarters. She wailed her climax for all to hear. All did, and they came a-running. A total of five laborers raced to the spot where she panted and wiggled and moaned and groaned, her arms stretched out before her, her bottom high in the air. “I demand more,” she said defiantly. “Do it again.” In an effort to calm her, John kneaded her shoulders. “Everything is in order, gentlemen,” he said to the slack-jawed crew and helped her waddle to a stand, the red thing still inside her. The group’s spokesman nodded to the protruding phallus. “I can give you a hand getting that out of the lady, sir.” He chortled. “And pushing something larger in.” If John expected an outraged gasp from her, he had greatly underestimated her mettle. Playing offended maiden was a miscast role if ever there was one. She could handle these buffoons, and John too. She tossed her head. “He may not need a hand, but I could use one or two.” She sent the crew a bawdy wink. A couple of intrepid volunteers stepped up to the task.

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John wedged himself between her swinging teats and their grasping fingers. “You have had enough excitement for one day, honey. Return to the house. And you men -- back to work.” “Very well.” She tromped past them and started back across the lawn for the house, an undignified waddle, the dildo waving at John like a red flag at a ferocious bull as he followed. And she must make no mistake here, now that he was off the bottle, John Donovan had all the makings of a ferocious bull. The very result she had worked so hard to achieve. Finally, he had started to show anger. At long last, as the sun shone down on his handsome face, he had begun to reveal the darkness that lurked beneath his charming surface. To take him further, midway to the house, she took the bull by his horns and provoked him. “Cut me.” John went still. His reply reflected the wariness of his suddenly tensed posture. “Molly --” “You want to. And I want it too. Cut me,” she ordered through clenched teeth, the raspy quality of the tone so feral, she hardly recognized the voice as belonging to her. Taking up her full breast in a hand, his huge palm cupped underneath, John pinched the elongated tip. An agonized expression crossed his face. Then, he deliberately scored her tender skin with a fingernail, until a red line imprinted her flesh. She repeated the refrain. “I said cut me.” “A shallow break only,” he said. “Where the skin pigment changes from dusty rose to snow pale.” “Not good enough. Make. Me. Bleed.”

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He produced a gentleman’s pocketknife from the interior of his trouser pocket and flicked the small blade open. “Do it,” she said. With quick precision, he brought the point across the sloping top of her breast, a sharp slice a leaf of paper might make.

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Chapter Sixteen

A droplet of blood beaded on Molly’s pronounced nipple. Bile burned John’s throat as she arched back against him and purred. Christ, every civilized instinct urged him to look away. But an equally dark compulsion forced him to taste her pain. In abject servility, he dipped his jaw and sucked the blood from her flesh. Who really ruled their sex play? Was he master here or slave? Master! He could not allow her to rule him. The wound still trickled, despite the urgent sucking. Reaching between her bottom cheeks, he pulled the monstrous dildo out of her and then smeared his fingers with the seeping blood. “I want in,” he seethed, and stuffed his bloodied fingers into her puckered back opening. “Here?” she asked. He ignored the slight tremor in her voice. “Why the hell not? I paid enough for the right. And you have already assented to the buggery. Your blood will ease my way.” He coated his cock with a few more drops collected from the tip of her nipple.

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Like a marauding barbarian, he lifted her up, until her legs straddled his hips, and then raised her higher, until she hooked her ankles around his waist. Her nipple still bled, crimson flecks that dotted her soft skin. He ran a finger down her spine and into the crevice that separated her shapely buttocks. She shivered. Pain? Arousal? One and the same? “Beg me,” he said cruelly. “Tell me how much you want me.” “I always have wanted you, right from the first.” “Not this way, I wager.” Her shoulders lifted and her breasts, one bleeding, one not, shifted. “All ways are the same to me.” Giving her a taste of what to expect, he pressed his bloodied cock into the crack. “Yes-yes-yes,” she urged. He found the hole, and pushed. “Nice deep breath,” he said, recalling her dainty size. She did as told, and he thrust, the bulbous crown insistent at the closed gate. Tight. Too damn tight for entry. And despite a coating of blood, no slippery slide into sodomy. Using the same knife he had used on her, he slashed his forearm, then withdrew his cock to coat it with his own blood, not just the top but all the way down the length. He rubbed his bleeding forearm across her swinging breast, the bleeding one, until their blood joined, then pushed into her. A clean penetration that ended in a pop as her reluctant flesh gave way. One sharp breath and she tried to retreat.

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“No,” he said sternly, his grasp on her buttock inescapable. “Bear down when I push. My money’s worth, remember?” “Aye, aye. All right,” she wept. The mercenary woman would do anything for money. Even allow him assault. He pulled his cock all the way out and pushed ruthlessly back inside. Just as he had instructed, she pushed down, until the base of his cock melded to her buttocks, his wiry pubic hair scratching her tender skin, the length of his shaft as far up inside her dainty hole as he could go. His lungs on fire, he could scarcely breathe at the illicit sensation. A stout tree grew nearby. Taking her with him, he backed up against the trunk for leverage and thrust again, deeper this time, ramming his cock to the hilt as she bore down. “So good, so good,” he panted. “Molly Fitzgerald, the best damn fuck I ever had.” They came together, both of them howling in agony to the sky like hurting beasts.

***** “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Doyle asked John the following evening. “Molly loves you, you know.” “She loves only my money.” Doyle pulled at his ear. “She seemed sincere in her affections. That one is deep.” “You will soon find out how deep.” With a chuckle, John threw his arm companionably around his brother’s shoulder. Doyle shook his head. “Molly has a good heart.” “And a better cunt and ass.” The two men walked to the bedroom. John stopped outside the door. “When does Lily arrive?”

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“Next time. She wants me to have this first time alone. For the sake of my adjustment. I have only been with Lily since our marriage. And even before that, there was only her.” “Understanding woman.” “I am only here at her behest,” he said with a touch of defensiveness. “Initially, she balked at the idea of a ménage. Now she insists I participate. For the sake of an erotic painting, of all things.” He shook his head again, this time ruefully. “Women! Who can understand how they think?” “Not I.” “But I do know this -- Lily has a renewed interest in life. And in me. She is not all the way back yet, but I am hopeful my cooperation will return my Lily to me, whole of mind.” “Then we should get started.” John swung open the door. Molly was weaving her hair into a plait when they entered the room. The rich sable length reached her hips. Her bare hips. She spun around and faced them as they approached. “Gentlemen.” Doyle went still. “You are changed, madam.” Her eyes twinkling, she smoothed a palm over her denuded genitals. “John’s handiwork. Who am I to deny a simple man his simple pleasures? And actually, now that I have grown used to the look, I rather like it.” “I do too,” Doyle replied. “Thank you, sir.” She performed an incongruously naked, if graceful, curtsy, her full breasts bobbing. Doyle noticed. Only a corpse would ignore those rosy and swollen nipples. “Gentlemen -- now that we have dispensed with the polite pleasantries -- who gets my pussy and who gets my arse?”

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Both men coughed. Doyle said, “My preference is of no import. I am here as an invited guest only.” “And as such, you should get first pick,” John offered magnanimously, while his brain revolted against giving any part of Molly away. “Oh, bother.” Molly grinned. “Blindfold me, and the first pick is mine.”

First pick? John’s gut protested. Nevertheless, he replied, “Seems a fair solution.” With a theatrical flourish, Doyle whipped off his cravat. “Shall I do the honors?” Molly, the little strumpet, giggled. “But of course.” Afterward, John manfully stepped up to the task of spinning her. A full turn sent her into Doyle’s arms. “The elder,” she guessed, with a tinkle of girlish laughter. Obviously, she, the little naughty minx, was enjoying herself. Going up on tiptoe, she cupped Doyle’s jaw with her palms, an assertive move that brought his head down to hers. Molly had such a commanding presence, that John had never before realized how diminutive she was in stature. She came up to just under the notch in Doyle’s chin. Nor had he really understood her youth. He had no idea as to her true age, but in her natural state she looked all of twenty-one. Lively and trim, her thighs shapely and smooth, her belly flat, she was the picture of a nubile wanton. She kissed Doyle on the lips. And bugger him for a scoundrel, the fucker kissed Molly right back, his fingers clenched on her lush bottom. Doyle wanted Molly’s ass, and she appeared amenable. John’s own amenability had badly slipped.

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This lusty session with Doyle had lasted too damn long. But since Molly showed no objections, John vowed not to blink first. Schooling himself to calmness, he continued to look on, a rigid stance that welded his knees, as Doyle familiarized himself with Molly’s giving body. Odd, those clinging lips. Molly disliked kisses. At least, his kisses. Every time he tried to kiss her, she always pushed him away. And here she was abandoning herself to Doyle. His brother! John knotted his hands into fists. Molly had never enjoyed doing anything in bed with him. Confirming, she had only stayed with him for the money. No longer able to stand idly by and watch them go at it, John rounded on Molly and pressed his lips to her delicate nape, bared by the plait. She groaned. But for which of them? A fine kettle of worms John had opened. He should never have invited Doyle to join them in a threesome. A strange desire to have Molly all for himself consumed him. Formerly, he had never cared if she practiced exclusivity. In fact, he never once asked if she did. He only knew he did. After fulfilling her monetary obligation this week, she had every right to leave him and find a new protector to support her. Wait a minute. Support her? Molly supported herself. The woman did nothing but work, sunup to sundown. Work, work, work. She never stopped. One odd job after another. She could hardly squeeze him in for all the positions she held. And she had no expenses. She lived in a run-down boarding house free of charge, cleaning rooms in lieu of the rent. Hand-me-down rags covered her back. And apart from

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full titties and a lush bottom, she was slender everywhere else. The woman had to spend no money at all on food. And unlike himself, she had no bad habits to subsidize. Not that he begrudged her the cash, but what the hell had she done with all the money he had given her through the years? Though she had plenty of maternal instinct, she had no children to support -- at least not to his knowledge. Of course, he had never inquired. But with all her bossy interference, he had no doubt she would a make a brood of thumb-suckers a caring mother. As Doyle continued to kiss Molly, a lightning bolt struck John. It was if he had never seen her before. Why had he wasted so much time mooning over Lily when he could have had this desirable woman under him in bed? Why had he wallowed in self-pity over a voyeuristic fantasy when he’d had the realness of Molly at arm’s reach? He tapped Doyle on the shoulder. “Ahem. Mind if I cut in?” His brother took his sweet time looking over at him. “Oh!” he said finally. “Forgot you were there.” “Well, I am. And about this sharing idea…” Doyle grinned broadly. “Not working out for you?” “Not the sharing sort, I guess. No offense.” “None taken. We Donovan men are monogamous by nature. Take Theo. The youngest of us, the first to wed, and still happily in love. Can you see him in a ménage?” “With Betsy?” John asked, horrified. “He would never share her with another man. He loves her to distraction.” “My very point.” Doyle straightened his clothing. “Well, then. Thank you for that astonishing kiss, Molly.” His eyes hooded, he dipped low at the waist. “But my wife awaits me at home. No offense.” “None taken.” She whipped off the blindfold. Her smile was both knowing and alluring. “And good luck.”

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“I think I may need it.” He winked at her as though they were coconspirators. “She told me she has something to discuss, and she needs me to give her my full and undivided attention. I gather I have not in a while.” Molly whispered in Doyle’s ear, and then stepped back, giving him room to leave. Molly would never tie a man to her with strings. “Listen to your wife, Mr. Donovan. We women have a right to be heard.” His brother nodded, but absently. “Er -- Molly, please call me Doyle. I consider us -um -- friends. I will deliver your message to Lily. And my answer to you is yes.” Those two were up to something. But what? With Doyle’s departure, John turned to Molly. “You can leave now too. Naturally, the money is yours to keep. You put in five years hard labor with me, and you earned every last cent. I figure I owe you. Just tell me what you want.” “What I want? Since when do you care what I want?” She shot him a look of incredulity. “Just tell me,” he said glumly. “I want to scream. Make me scream, John.” Without reflecting on her answer, he took her hand and led her to the bed. Tossing off his clothes, he reclined amid the rumpled linens. Though her pussy called to him, like a siren’s song, he gazed up into her eyes. “I want to please you, but how? I only know what would please me.” “What man does not know that?” She climbed up on the bed too. Raked her fingers through his messy hair. “But tell me.” Before he lost his nerve, he said, “Ride me. Ride me hard, Molly.” “Hmm. For once our pleasures coincide.”

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Chapter Seventeen

After years of doing without, of giving up everything, sacrificing all her dreams, Molly found selfish hedonism incredibly difficult to enjoy. But, sweet Virgin Mary, she was giving it her most sincere attempt. She had a yen for adventuring. Not to discover new lands, but to find herself. Who was she now that she no longer had to be someone else? While an obliging but obtuse man who tickled her fancy waited for her to do something, she allowed her thoughts to wander. Never again would she need to wash another rich person’s floor. Never again need she sublimate her desires for the benefit of anyone else, even if that anyone else was comprised of a pack of quarrelsome individuals she loved. The money John paid her would finally pay off her family debts and free her to find her own way. Out from under the yoke of love’s responsibility, it seemed fitting that she also took the top in bed. Like the strumpet she had never been, she mounted John. What a heavenly and indulgent sensation it was to have a virile and accommodating…and woefully dense…lover try to make up five years of neglect.

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She might have let him off the hook after giving her those wondrous orgasms. But what the hell, she liked having her fancy tickled, liked having every bit of his concentration centered on pleasing her. A very narrow limelight, to be sure, after the stage’s spotlights, but surprisingly, enough. John figured he “owed” her? For once, the dimwit had figured right. Her resentment fell away. Why continue to nurse the hurt when his indifference, though intentional, had not been mean-spirited? True, he still thought she was in this for the money, but he had trusted her enough to show her his dominant side, that thrilling dark part of himself. And, incredibly, he had called off their deal. She would push him for more. And if he was not yet ready to give her more, she would leave on the morrow. No regrets. No recriminations. No looking back. Her love was not the closed-fisted kind. She seated herself astride his naked body. This was for her. All for her. And what she wanted…no, demanded…was John’s luscious, thick cock inside her. Intent on pleasing herself, she lowered herself on top of the silky, plum head. “Molly.” He gasped at the first touch of skin on skin. She only smiled and took him in, as deep as she desired. The timing, the location, the force of the strokes all were under her jurisdiction. She had played the role of submissive for long enough, and now it was time to switch. She would say this much for John Donovan -- the man knew how to lie there and keep his mouth shut. Well, perhaps not entirely shut. His lips gaped in shallow pants as she rode him hard and fast and long. Until she screamed.

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“Wait,” he said, as she dismounted. “Why are you stopping, Mol’?” “You will get yours on the morrow,” she replied, and with a huge yawn, turned her back and fell asleep. She only hoped she snored.

***** The next day, the unbridled hussy of the night before had disappeared. In her place was a softer, contemplative Molly. Looking at him with soft doe eyes, she rose from the bed and held out her hand to him. “John, would you make love to me outside?” “Where?” he asked. “The maze.” He had treated her so arrogantly, not only yesterday, but for the past five years as well, how could he refuse? Anxious to make it all up to her, he jumped at her request. Placing his hand in hers, they went there together, naked, both of them eager to begin the new day with coupling. Hopefully, this would start them on the road to a new beginning, a new life together. During the night, while watching an exhausted Molly slumber, he had come to his senses, a slow awakening of what he had almost lost, but which, hopefully, he had arrived at in time. Molly had taken his money, but she could not have possibly stayed for the money. No amount of cash was worth the shit she had put up with from him. Which left only one explanation -- she really did love him. He was as far away from deserving her love as the moon was from the earth, but he would show her he loved her too. Even if it took him the rest of his life. Where would he be without her?

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Dead or wanting to be dead. “Whereabouts in the maze?” he asked, hardly breathing. His desire for her was so strong, so real, it frightened him. “In the center ring,” she said, and drew him there. She lay down on the grass and took him over her. “Go slow,” she said. “Make it last. Make me come.” At first, his strokes were tentative. Fear of disappointing her made him fumble. As though he had never entered her before, he entered her as a virgin bridegroom might. His unwieldy erection seemed to only get in the way, but his manhood was all he had to offer her. Other than all of himself. Every last part of himself. He put all the good stuff inside him into that first gentle stroke, and then for the sake of an honest beginning, showed her the worst with the second, a harsh and impatient battering that had somehow slipped past his control. “Sorry,” he gasped, hugging her too him, the clean green scent of grass blending with the sweet tartness of Molly. “I meant to keep this slow.” “No need, no need, no need. You feel so good inside me like this.” Despite telling him to make it last, she responded to his swift thrusts. Not with the unreliable flash of struck flint, but with the enduring brightness of an electric lamp. What a blessing that she could meet and match the unruly part of himself. Her face took on a transfixed expression that tore at his heart. Molly was coming. He had done that for her. Pleasured her. In the center of a maze, built to weave in every direction with the goal to confuse, Molly’s rapture was open and honest and real. She seized up, every muscle and tendon in her shapely body going tight. “John,” she screamed and held on to his back, her strong legs wrapped around his spine as he pumped his

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life into her. He gave all himself into her care, the dark parts, the fragile parts, his insecure man parts. Molly held them all. Trusting himself to her care, he shouted his climax through the tall evergreens that made up the puzzle of the maze. He dropped his mouth to hers. “Molly,” was all he could think of to say and sealed her lips with his lips. She accepted his kiss. In fact, she melted into him, her mouth clinging. Until they both ran out of air. “Molly, I need to tell you something.” “Me too.” “Ladies first.” Telling her he loved her could wait a little while longer. “This is the end of the arrangement. I leave Bar Harbor this afternoon with Doyle.” “What?” She cushioned her head on a bent arm. “Your brother has agreed to take me away, so if you could give me the bank note you promised…” John stumbled to his feet, his limp cock swinging in his haste to get away from her and his humiliation. “Of course.” How could his brother have gone behind his back and stolen his Molly away? Only, his brother had taken her, not from behind his back, but out from under his nose. And Molly had never truly been his to steal. “And Lily?” he thought to ask. “She knows all about it. Doyle will have told her by now.” That long kiss between the two of them. The way his brother had eaten her ass up with his eyes. The way John suspected the two of them were somehow in cahoots.

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Now he knew what they conspired about, why Doyle refused the ménage -- his brother wanted Molly all for himself. Far be it for him to stand in their way. “Give me a few minutes alone at the house to dress, then I will leave you to your departure preparations,” he said, and rushed away.

***** In the two days since the two lovers took off, absinthe called to him, but John refused to answer. He visited Lily, as sober as a judge, to seek information about Molly’s whereabouts and to confirm that his brother had left with her. His sister by marriage came to the door at his knock. “Doyle around?” “No,” she said noncommittally. “Where did he go?” “He gave a Molly a ride in the carriage to a destination I am not at liberty to disclose.” She pointed a warning finger at him. “And I know you, John Donovan, so do not try to weasel the information out of me. I have been sworn to secrecy. Wild horses would fail to drag the information from my lips.” John believed her. But where was her righteous indignation? Suspecting she was in the dark about Doyle’s infidelity, he tread warily. “When does he get back?” “Six weeks. In the interim, I intend to enjoy my freedom. His absence could not have happened at a better time. Will returns today, new nursemaid in tow, and I have work to do before he arrives. An erotic project.” Not his place to tell Lily she had a philandering husband on her hands. Not his place to squash her enthusiasm. Doyle had gotten his own ass in this fix, and he had some explaining to do.

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Nevertheless, he was kin, so he asked, “Anything I can do?” “You have already done quite enough. Thank you, John.” What the hell was she talking about? He would think she was being sarcastic, but he detected no biting bitterness in her tone. She seemed genuinely content. And at peace. “I am here for you, Lilybud. Whatever you and little Will need.” “What I need is to get back to my work.” He understood; he had buried his sorrows in work…and the bottle…for years. “Well, I guess I should get going then and leave you to it.” “Ta-ta for now.” Grinning, she shooed him off, like an annoying fly. Or, a fondly regarded, but essentially unwanted, pain-in-the-ass brother-in-law. The aborted ménage seemed to have cured her latent attraction for him. And son of a gun, he could not have cared less. He was completely free of his obsession. But the cure hurt worse than the ailment. His cure had been Molly. But that was no innocent ride Doyle had given her in the carriage. Those two had run off together. And their treachery hurt. The days without hearing from Doyle or Molly turned into a week, and then stretched to two. After an endless month, the gossip started, a laughing murmur at first and then fullfledged guffaws whenever some of his associates spied him walking through town. He found out what the hilarity was all about when he went to service a customer’s electrical generator and accidentally encountered his face -- and more -- staring back at him from a stretched canvas. As it happened, the customer owned an in-town art gallery. The generator was located in the back of the shop, in a very private room that catered to the erotic tastes of wealthy patrons. That was where John stumbled upon a painting titled: Molly and John, Making Love

in a Maze.

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The signature scrawled on the bottom belonged to Lily. So -- even Molly’s passionate pleasure had been a lie. All of it, everything, was a lie. Getting even with him for his voyeurism, the two women, artist and model, had set him up. “Know where I can find the woman in the painting?” John asked, as he paid his customer, the gallery owner, the purchase price. “I hear tell something about her being one of those song-and-dance actresses.” “Pardon?” “Supposedly, she performs nightly at the Portsmouth New Hampshire Music Hall.” The owner held up the framed work. “Taking this with you?” “Might as well. Wrap it up, would you?” As a reminder of Molly’s duplicity, he hung the portrait in his bedroom. That same afternoon, he saddled up Thunder and rode out of town. He had a sudden hankering to see a honky-tonk show.

***** At first glance, Molly had fallen passionately in love all over again. And how could she not? The Portsmouth Music Hall was beautiful. Regardless of how many times she glanced upward, the gilded dome ceiling took her breath away. Then there was the horseshoe balcony and the magnificent proscenium arch. Not to mention the esteemed company in whose footsteps she walked. John Philip had performed here, on the very stage she walked across every night. It took a lot to humble a proud woman, but the grandeur and history of her surroundings made her feel small and insignificant. Not for long, though. The nightly applause did wonders for her conceit. As did the reviews -- audience and critics alike adored her. Or, rather they adored the character she played.

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Regardless of the accolades, after her performance, Molly Fitzgerald, the woman, went home alone. She would always have a soft spot for weepy drama and Shakespearean tragedy, but cheery musical theater better suited her upbeat temperament. Her supporting part was small, but she gave the performance her all. Some said she stole the show. Who was she to disagree? Molly mused, removing the last of her makeup. Muffled voices. A scuffle. Fists colliding. A grunt of pain. On her seat before the mirror, she frowned at her freckled reflection. What was going on out there in the theater’s narrow backstage hall? “Stop, sir! You cannot go in there,” the stage manager shouted. “That dressing room belongs to the star of the production. Molly Fitzgerald.” Regardless of his warning and the erroneous compliment -- she was not really the star, the door almost flew off its hinges as what she could only conclude was a rabid male fan -her costume revealed a large amount of cleavage -- burst into her changing room. She jumped to her feet, prepared to give the intruder a piece of her mind. And if that failed to set him down, a left hook to the gut -- her boxing brothers back in Ireland had taught her how to defend her honor. But where was a good, thick, cast-iron frying pan when she needed one? Before she could confront the man, a familiar voice asked, “Is he here?” So much for thinking the intruder was an enamored fan who wanted a private audience with her. This scowling man was no fan. John Donovan no doubt detested her. She straightened her shoulders. Boxing his ears would never do. Only mortal combat would put this man in his rightful place. “Who are you talking about, ye great loon?” “Doyle,” he spat. “Is the fucker here?” So much for thinking her actions had solidified the two brothers’ sibling affection. “What would he be doing here?”

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“You two are lovers.” He jerked his pigheaded jaw to the back of the room. “Is he over there, hiding behind the screen?” He put up his fists, pugilist-style. She shook her head in disgust. How little he understood either his brother or himself! “When have any of you Donovan males ever backed away from trouble?” Holy Mary! The clan reminded her of her own idiot brothers. John’s clenched hands dropped to his sides. “So, where is he? Back at the squalid love nest you two rent?” “For your information, not that it is any of your damn business, I reside in a lovely women’s hotel, where hotheaded men such as yourself are not allowed past the first floor. Male visitors are only permitted in the front parlor, where a chaperone is always present.” Now, she really was in a huff. What did he take her for? “The word ‘actress’ is not synonymous with the word ‘slut.’” She closed up her plain blue dressing gown and crossed her arms over her heaving chest. Having not yet had chance to change into her street gown, she was naked under the wrapper, a fact that John noticed straightaway. He spoke to her nipples, and aye, the points had hardened -- the man was an idiot, but she still lusted after him. “You know that is not I meant, Miss Fitzgerald.” “How would I? You come barging in here, making all sorts of false accusations.” “Are you saying Doyle and you are not lovers?” “Your brother’s kiss made my toes curl, but he is a much married man. Besides, at the time, I was already in love” -- she turned the knife on herself, a self-inflicted wound from which there was no recovery -- “with you.” “Fine way you had of showing it,” he grumbled. “You made me the laughingstock of Bar Harbor.”

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“Oh. You saw the portrait. A grand piece of erotic art. I was privileged to pose for Lily, as should you be.” “I bought the painting.” He rubbed his neck. The man was so tense! “One of them, anyway. Christ only knows how many more are on the loose in town. You conned me into that blasphemous lie.” Resentment laced his tone. “What lie?” “That I pleasured you.” “No lie, idiot. You made me scream in bliss. What care I who sees an honest portrayal of a woman in the throes of passion? I am hardly a shrinking violet. And you will live down a different reputation than you had before. Though why you would wish to live down your prowess in bed is beyond me. I should think that painting would give you all sorts of bragging rights at every drinking establishment in town.” “Thanks to you, not one drop of liquor has passed my lips.” “About time you thanked me too, ingrate.” John brushed his too-long hair away from his dark eyes. “You need a trim; ye look for all the world like a…like a…like a --” “A devastated man. Which is what I am. I have missed you, Molly.” “You will find someone else to suck your cock.” “That is not what I meant, either. You are deliberately misunderstanding and misconstruing my intentions.” “You burst in here, like you owned the bloody place and me on top of it, and then you have the additional bloody nerve to --” With a yank, he pulled her toward him and smashed his mouth against hers. No tongue, but a good-enough kiss as far as fair-to-middling chaste kisses went. Perhaps, one day, he might even learn to kiss like Doyle, a fine kisser and an even better actor.

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“Sorry,” he murmured, and set her away from him. “Pawing you will not solve anything.” Was the man ever deluded! Now that he had come after her, pawing her would solve quite a lot. But she kept her dignity, despite her moistening pussy. “You should leave.” He looked down at his big feet. “I know. I should. I have made a donkey’s hindquarters out of myself.” “That you did,” she said stiffly. To her mind, he had done a grand job, but if he thought a kiss made him an ass, let him think it. He moved toward the door. “You act.” She sighed. “Yes. I act.” “On stage.” “Where else but on stage?” She heaved her hands onto her hips. “What are you implying?” “That you acted with me.” “Never. Though the ménage was a ruse. Neither your brother nor myself had any intentions of ever going through with it. And do not go blaming Doyle. The threesome was all my idea.” “Really,” he said, voice neutrally flat with disinterest, same as always. “I did it to bring you and Lily to your senses,” she offered, though he had made no attempt to ask. He nodded. “You succeeded. I have no feelings for Lily anymore, and she has none for me. Those feelings have disappeared, if they were ever real feelings to begin with.” “How is she doing?”

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“She seems happy. Will is back home, and she hired a nursemaid to care for him while she paints. Her work is going well, if the enormous price I paid for Molly and John, Making

Love in a Maze is any indication.” “You missed the point. The money is not what her current work is about.” “Yeah, that would be about getting even with me for peeping at her all those years.” “Not about that, either. Your cock just happened to be available. You might have been anyone. You were never the point of the exercise.” “Is that how you feel? I might have been anyone?” “Shame on you for that being one of the first serious questions you have ever deigned to ask me.” She dragged him to the door by his collar. “Good evening to you, sir,” she hissed, and slammed the door behind him.

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Epilogue

After ironing things out in his head, John returned the next week to the theater and repeated the same routine as before. But proving himself capable of learning from his past mistakes, this time he refrained from decking the slick gent posted out front in the hall. After tipping his hat, John offered the manager a monetary bribe, which the burly moose pocketed before passing him on through. Nice protection the theater company offered its stars. Nervous as a boy at his first social, he knocked on Molly’s dressing room door. “Who is it?” she called. “A fool.” The name fit. Molly agreed. “Come in.” He did. Molly pointed her finger at his nose. “You struck my stage manager again.” Her remarkable jaw jutted at him. “Is he all right?” “Not only is he all right, the wad of cash in his pocket makes him a hell of a lot richer.” “Is it always about money with you? About buying people? Paying them for what you want?”

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He had hurt her. But figuring out how to take her hurt away left him stymied. Here, he made a living fixing things, of bringing light into dark places, and he floundered in the dark, unable to fix her hurt. “I should never have offered you money,” he said, soulfully. “I guess I just never thought you would stay, otherwise.” “I stayed for five years, John. And not for the money. Though I will admit, the money was welcome and put to good use.” “Then why did you stay?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, John?” He took the wilted nosegay of posies out of his pocket. “For you.” Only then did he notice the masses of fresh red roses lining the wall of the room. Looked like he was competing against admiring throngs for Molly’s affections. He picked up a small water glass, an unpretentious vase for an unpretentious token of his undying love and devotion. He only thought that. The words never actually left his mouth. Too charming. Molly hated his blarney, as she always used to call it.

Used to. Was everything in the past tense between them? He gripped the cheap glass in his hand. “Where did you first act?” “Dublin.” “Musicales?” “Dickens. Shakespeare. New playwrights, as well. Character roles mostly.” “So…so, you like acting?” “I love acting. Everything about it. Actually, I have spent my whole life acting. That ended when I met you. You are the only person with whom I have ever truly been myself. Perhaps because you never placed any demands on me to be anyone other than myself.”

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“But if you loved performing, why give it up?” “To help out back home. I was willing to starve for my art, but letting my family starve was another matter. How could I act out plays about keeping one’s humanity and then lose my own to selfish ambition?” Oh, he should have known. A fine woman like Molly never would have taken the money for herself. “Where do they live?” “Who?” “The family you were willing to sacrifice yourself for.” “No sacrifice. Pride. Stubborn as mules, they are, refusing to give up on the land, refusing to give up on the country. The whole noisy lot of them are still back in the Old Country. Galway. A farm, where there is never enough of anything to go around.” Somehow, the makeshift glass vase slipped through his sweaty grip. He knelt at her feet to pick up the shattered pieces. “I promise to buy you a new one of these.” “Some things cannot be replaced.” But it was only a cheap water glass. Then, he understood. Molly always had run deep. “Like broken trust, you mean?” “Yes.” “I know I let you down. Plenty of times. I should never have believed you ran off with Doyle. But broken trust can be repaired, Molly. Maybe, made even stronger than before. Though the fix may take years.” He looked up at her beseechingly. “Do I have years to try to mend this break?” “Yes, I believe you do.” “Thank you,” he said solemnly. “Still, I should get started right away. Time’s a-wastin’.” “My thoughts exactly.” He took her hand in his. “But first, I need to tell you something.”

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“What?” “I love you, Molly Fitzgerald.” “I know,” she said and, heedless of the broken glass, yanked him up into her arms.

Louisa Trent I am a writer raised in a family of storytellers. My earliest and fondest memory is of my Irish Nana relating a mystical story of a man looking in a window upon a beautiful lady whose long silvery hair swept the floor as she walked. With a simple telling, my grandmother drew me into her tale. A man. A woman. A forbidden love that wouldn't die. From opening word to shivery conclusion, I lived that story with her. Many years later, I'm still awed by the spell of the fantasy world she created with only the dip and swell of her voice. There's power in words. Hope in love stories. Joy in a happy ending. I'm proud to carry on my family's storytelling tradition. Visit Louisa on the Web at www.louisatrent.com.