by Afton Locke
If only he could be in this bed with her right now, filling her with that stout muscle with the slippery, round head. Her trembling thighs opened. She clasped one of the pillows to her chest, imagining it was Leroy’s body, covering her and claiming her.
Enough of this. Her head was so full of Leroy, she barely even remembered dancing with Jonathan Carter. She got out of bed and dressed quickly, realizing she was supposed to meet him in church today. Leroy had told her to lie about it, but how could she?
She stepped to the mirror to brush her hair, which looked wilder than ever. Unable to believe what she saw, she peered closer. What on earth was that ugly bruise on her neck? When she touched it, it didn’t hurt. Leroy’s insistent mouth had been there, giving her pleasure.
Whatever it was, she could not let her family see it. With a racing heart, she scurried to her closet, choosing a dove-gray winter dress with a cowl collar. The itchy wool crepe material would be murderous in this heat, but what choice did she have?
She tiptoed down the stairs, hoping her parents were still sleeping. When she heard sounds in the kitchen, she thought Mother was preparing breakfast. Good. Rose would have a chance to find out what she’d already told Father.
Unfortunately, it was him, whistling as he stirred cream into a cup of coffee.
“Good morning, Rose.” His easy smile looked as happy as he sounded.
“Good morning.” She spoke slowly and with caution. “Where’s Mother?”
“She’s still exhausted from last night,” he replied.
Which meant she had one of her headaches. Watching her daughter being whisked away by the wrong man after the dance had surely caused it. Rose bit her bottom lip, wishing she didn’t cause her mother such pain.
“I’ll fix breakfast and take her up a tray,” she murmured, avoiding his questioning eyes.
“Why are you wearing your winter dress? Judging by the temperature this morning, it’s going to be quite a warm day.”
She tugged at her collar. “I thought it would look nice for Sunday.”
Especially if she planned to meet the mayor’s son at church. The unspoken truth jabbed her in the stomach.
Father clasped her wrist when she reached for the tin of oatmeal. “Breakfast can wait. Pour yourself some coffee and tell me all about last night.”
She wasn’t hungry anyway. If only Mother would come downstairs and rescue her from this conversation. Dutifully, she prepared herself a cup of coffee. When she started to pour cream into it as she usually did, though, she stopped. Today she wanted it as black and strong as her man.
She sat and faced her father at the dining room table. “There’s not much to tell. The mayor has a beautiful home on the water. A band played.”
Father waved his hand with impatience. “Don’t be coy, Rose. Ella told me you caught the eye of the mayor’s son.”
His eyes glowed with pride behind the steam from his coffee cup. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him so proud of her. Part of her wanted to tell him everything he wanted to hear so he would look at her that way forever. But Leroy’s face kept popping up between them.
She shrugged. “He asked me to dance.” Jonathan had also ogled her chest and pressed his hard cock against her on the dance floor, but she decided not to mention those things.
“They all believed you were white, didn’t they?”
Rose sipped her coffee and nodded. Now Father’s brown eyes glowed with something even more powerful than pride. Obsession? Whatever it was, she wished she weren’t in the middle of it.
“And what did you do after the dance, young lady?” A bit of reproach tinged his voice.
She accidentally inhaled some of the coffee and coughed into her napkin. If he only knew she’d been flat on her back in a car with bare, semen-covered breasts.
“Just some…conversation,” she muttered. At least that much was true.
He nodded with approval. “Excellent. Is the mayor’s son planning to court you?”
Rose took another gulp of coffee, almost coughing again when it burned her throat. The moment she’d dreaded for the past couple of days had finally come. Should she tell the truth or lie?
“It’s Sunday, isn’t it?” she asked, stalling.
“Yes, Rose.”
She traced a drop of coffee as it ran down the side of her cup. “Most people go to church today, don’t they?”
He frowned. “Yes, Rose. What are you getting at? Why won’t you answer my question?”
Ever since they’d moved here, Father held “family services” in this house, letting them take turns reading from the Bible. She used to miss dressing up and going to church. Today, there was nothing she wanted more than a home service.
“I prefer our services,” she declared. “I do hope Mother can join us.”
After the lie came out, Rose’s belly clenched, but then released. It was done. Jonathan Carter may look for her in his church today, but she would not be there.
“Me too. Now tell me if you’re going to be courted. We’ll need to make arrangements so this worthy gentleman won’t figure out we’re your parents.” He glanced around the still-shabby room. “Or where you live.”
Her hands, damp with sweat, trembled in her lap, matching the throbbing heartbeat she was sure Father could hear.
“Jonathan…um…said nothing about courting.”
Her voice sounded high and reedy. Surely, Father heard the lies it dripped with. He frowned and drummed his fingers on the tablecloth as if he were formulating his next plan. Rose had been afraid of this. If the summer dance failed to find her a suitor, he’d just find another way.
“He did say he enjoyed dancing with me,” she added. “In fact, he looks forward to seeing me at the next dance.”
Father’s hand stopped drumming the table and moved to stroke his chin in thought. “He’s a shy one, I see. You must attend that next dance. When is it?”
Rose’s fingers stopped trembling. The danger was almost past. “I don’t know, but it will surely be soon.”
She hoped not. Dancing with the mayor’s son was something she didn’t care to repeat. Gazing into her coffee reminded her of Leroy’s dark skin and even his scent. Pretending she was white had satisfied her curiosity forever, but Leroy had aroused a different curiosity.
Instead of telling all these lies, she should simply tell her father the thought of marrying Jonathan Carter filled her with horror. But what good would it do? He’d never change his mind. If she had to marry at all, Leroy was the only groom she could imagine. Maybe she should simply elope with him. At least then she’d be safe from anyone her father might select for her.
Elope…
The very thing that would break the hearts of her parents forever. She couldn’t do it.
Rose was so lost in her thoughts she barely noticed Father staring at her in a strange way. Equal measures of worry and disgust flitted across his face.
“Father, what is it?”
Then she realized how bare her neck felt. The collar must have slipped. Keeping track of all the lies had kept her so occupied she hadn’t noticed. She automatically grabbed the collar and pulled it back up, but Father had already seen the worst.
“I cannot believe what I’m seeing,” he said with a strangled-sounding voice. “Is this why you were late last night?”
Oh God. He knew. Everything she’d done with Leroy in that car was written on her skin. If only her flesh weren’t so pale.
Her anxiety mixed with the coffee, making the blood race through her veins. “It’s not what you think. L—”
Thankfully, Father held up a hand to stop her. “Refrain from telling me the details, Rose. Just answer me one question. Did he compromise your virtue?”
Without asking, she had a pretty good idea what he meant.
“No, Father.”
He exhaled a gusty sigh. “Thank heavens. The mayor’s son will never buy the cow if he gets the milk for free, eh?”
Rose clapped a hand to her chest. Sh
e’d thought he’d meant Leroy and had almost confessed everything.
“For the next dance, I’m giving your mother orders to stay by your side the entire evening.” He stood and retrieved his empty coffee cup. “If you hadn’t degraded yourself, he would have asked to court you already.”
“Yes, Father.”
After he left the room, it was as if a storm had just passed. She took deep breaths to calm herself. Hopes of seeing Leroy tomorrow filled her weak muscles with strength. Despite the summer dance, nothing had changed in her life and she would do anything to keep it that way.
* * * * *
The next day, Leroy wiped his brow as he positioned another board to nail on the pier. What was Rose doing now? Were her parents angry when she’d arrived late the other night? This pier looked a lot different in the blazing late morning sun than it did by moonlight.
That moment had been so magical, he’d almost believed in Rose’s fairies. And the car… A raging beast had clawed inside him, urging him to rip off that pink dress and fuck her for eternity. The drops of his essence spread across her chest looked more beautiful than any painting. They said she was his more than any words could have.
He was so busy between his task and thoughts of Rose, he barely noticed the oyster boat arriving. Caleb came out of the plant with a big grin on his face as his brother got off the boat.
“Henry Rockfield, what the hell are you doing here?” Caleb asked.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re keeping busy down this way.”
The other man took off a cap full of fish hooks and Leroy doffed his own plaid cap. He was glad to be out of that ridiculous chauffeur costume and back in his own clothes. The man who’d almost broken down a window was someone else, not him.
Caleb clapped him on the back. “You’re supposed to be running my old plant, not boating.”
They looked so different, it was hard to believe they were brothers. Caleb was all hard edges, pale eyes and sternness in manager’s clothes. Henry, on the other hand, curly haired and round-cheeked, slouched in mud-spattered oysterman’s garb.
“You know I have to ride a boat once in a while to stay sane,” Henry said. “How’s Pearl?”
“Good. She’s talking about starting a family already. I told her to wait until I get in a full harvest this winter.”
“I have some news from Oyster Island that might help,” Henry declared.
The name Oyster Island sent a chill through Leroy despite the sweat dripping down his bare chest. Had he really looked in the window of the mayor’s home Saturday night, ready to break through it? He wasn’t in any hurry to go back.
While the men chatted, two workers from the plant came out, unloaded oyster bushels from the boat and took them inside for shucking.
“Are you ready for this?” Henry asked his brother. “The mayor’s wife wants to rent your old house in town.”
Caleb’s straw boater hat fell off and he was slow to pick it up. “She what?”
Henry put his hands in his pockets. He looked so friendly, it was hard to believe he was in the Klan. In name only, so Caleb had said, but Leroy had no desire to spend time around the man. He had no job to do, though, and this conversation sounded interesting.
“She wants to open an art school for genteel young ladies,” Henry replied.
Caleb threw his head back and laughed. “An art school?”
The other man shrugged. “I reckon she’s bored. Why not? The house has just been sitting vacant since you moved down here.”
“Why don’t you live in it?”
“It’s too big and fancy for me.” Henry rocked on his heels. “Besides, I sleep at the plant most of the time. You can use the money, can’t you?”
“Sure, I could use the money,” Caleb said as he mopped his brow with his handkerchief, “but the mayor is the reason I left town.”
“I can give her your answer when I return,” Henry offered, putting his cap back on. “So what’ll it be?”
“Why not?” Caleb finally said. “But she’s not going to get it cheap.”
After he named his price, the men chatted some more.
“When are you going to get yourself a woman, Henry?” Caleb asked.
The man’s cheeks grew pink. “I’m too busy running the Oyster Island plant, Caleb. You know that.”
“A man’s never too busy when the right woman comes along,” his brother said. “Isn’t that right, Leroy?”
“True enough,” Leroy admitted, grinning.
After Henry got on his boat and headed back to the river, Leroy thought about the news he’d brought. An art school for genteel ladies was surely a school for genteel white ladies. Rose was an artist. Her father was so obsessed with making her white, he might even try to enroll her in that school.
Oyster Island was too far to travel to by bicycle. Leroy could never keep this job and see her if she went there. He decided not to tell her about it. She could paint just fine in her backyard.
Caleb’s footsteps approaching on the boards pulled him out of his thoughts.
“I heard you banging out here in the dark this morning, Leroy.”
“Just trying to get my work hours in,” he said, hammering another nail.
Caleb picked a piece of nearby grass and chewed it. “I can see why you’re motivated. Rose is quite a beauty.”
“Don’t I know it?”
When Leroy reached for another nail, Caleb touched his shoulder.
“When are you going to marry that girl and get her settled here? Pearl needs another woman around to talk to.”
Leroy looked up. “I’m trying my best.”
His boss looked out at the water. “The special schedule you’re working can’t go on indefinitely. Certainly not when the fall oyster season hits.”
Not to mention how cold it would be in the winter. Too cold to sit with Rose outside on the waterfront. His boss was right. Things couldn’t go on this way forever but Leroy was afraid if he pushed too hard, he’d lose her completely. Better to let things go on as they were for a while longer. The white dance she’d gone to had been upsetting enough.
“I’d marry her today if I could,” Leroy admitted, “but her father doesn’t approve of me.”
He sometimes hoped if he worked hard and earned enough money, Charles Wainwright III would see him in a different light. But it would probably never be enough. The only thing that did matter to the man, the color of Leroy’s skin, was the one thing that could never be changed.
Caleb took the piece of grass out of his mouth and studied it. “Have you considered eloping?”
Leroy stuck a nail in his mouth, chewing on it along with the words. “It has crossed my mind.”
But he knew without asking that Rose would refuse. She was too loyal to her family to do something so drastic and he didn’t want to trick her into it.
He had no choice but to try to change her mind.
* * * * *
Leroy dismounted from his bike that afternoon. Rose was so wrapped in concentration while painting she didn’t look up. When he sneaked up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, she jumped off her stool. He grabbed the half-finished painting of a duck before it toppled to the ground.
“You startled me,” she exclaimed.
He set the painting back on the easel. “Where’s your mother?”
“It’s too hot for her. I—”
Her rosy scent already had his blood pounding. He needed to kiss her before he talked to her. Her soft mouth parted under his while he clasped her lower back, reaching down to cup the curves of her ripe ass. Her tongue was already his, darting into his mouth where he captured it with his own.
Her tantalizing nipples hardened as they pressed against his chest, but his cock had been hard way before that. Hell, it had been hard during the entire ride, making the bike seat darned uncomfortable.
“I missed you, sweet girl,” he breathed into her fragrant hair while he untied the ribbon binding it.
When he
realized how sweaty he was, he let go of her.
“I hope I didn’t soil your clothes. It’s a hot day to work and ride a bike.” He eyed her flawless tan skirt and creamy blouse. “How do you manage to stay so clean while you paint?”
“I’m very careful, but I don’t mind your being hot and dirty,” she said in a breathy tone that squeezed his balls tight. “You feel and smell like a real man.”
He gripped her body to his again, harder this time. Looking up at the oak tree branches, he wondered if he could fuck her up there without killing them both. The self-control he’d barely held onto in the car deserted him now.
Marry her. Caleb’s words sounded as clear as they had the first time Leroy had heard them today. Ravishing her body wasn’t necessarily going to help him reach that goal, however.
The sight of a dark mark on her neck stopped his thoughts.
“What’s this?” He pulled her hair back and stroked it. “Did I do that to you?”
She nodded and smiled. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Leroy rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I sure didn’t mean to do it. I don’t even remember doing it.”
The passion they generated between them was scarier than a hurricane. If they weren’t careful, it could cause some real damage.
“Your parents didn’t see it, I hope,” he added.
She rubbed the dark patch. “I’m afraid they did, but they think Jonathan Carter did it.”
“Well, I guess he was good for something.” Tension pulled at his limbs. “What happened yesterday? Did you…go to church?”
She shook her head and picked up one of her clean brushes, spinning it between her fingers. “I stayed home and didn’t tell Father about Jonathan’s invitation.”
“Good girl,” he said. “You did the right thing.”
“I’m so tired of lying.” She put her hand to her forehead. “I can’t do it anymore.”
“I know,” he said gently. “Let’s sit down and talk about it.”
