It Stings So Sweet

by Stephanie Draven

  “I think you want to be. You want to feel shivery and nervous like you did making this film, doing something you’ve never done before. You want to feel like your innocence is being taken from you all over again.”

  My mouth runs dry and I squirm in my seat, not sure what’s exciting me more: the things he’s saying, or watching myself be seduced on the screen. “And you think you can make me feel that way?”

  Leo dips closer, his voice low by my ear. “I think I’m making you feel that way right now.”

  My breath catches. “I think you are.”

  Leo makes his move, tracing the tip of his finger down my bare arm. “I’d like you to undress for me.”

  This unapologetic statement of his desire quells any resistance. I turn away from him, looking back over my shoulder to ask, “Will you help me with the hooks in the back?”

  The corner of his mouth curls with approval. He runs a palm between my shoulder blades before setting to work on the clasps. He doesn’t fumble; he isn’t at all clumsy. His warm breath sweeps down my spine as he opens the hooks one by one. When he’s finished, he slides my gown down over my arms until it reveals the silk of my skintight chemise and bloomers. I stand, letting the gown fall to my feet.

  Leo’s hot gaze sweeps over my body. The high rounded breasts. The long, lanky, stocking-clad legs. He takes his time, drinking me in from head to toe.

  “Aren’t you going to take anything off?” I ask, low and sultry in the dim light.

  “No. You just told me you liked being naked while everybody else is dressed.”

  “That was when I was eighteen,” I protest, giving him my trademark pout. “I’m not a girl anymore.”

  “But you are an actress,” he says, snagging my wrist. “So let’s pretend you’re just a girl again.” He draws me into his lap and I let him do it, settling with satisfaction against the hard ridge of his erection.

  It’s easier for us to watch the film this way and on the screen, the bartender lays me naked on the floor behind the bar. Watching my younger self shiver with anticipation creates an echo of that emotion in me now, and I lean back against Leo and sigh. He cups my breasts, weighing them in his hands, squeezing them with satisfaction. On the screen the bartender strokes his hands down my naked sides, trying to coax me to relax. In the here and now, in Leo’s arms, I don’t need any coaxing. Whatever this is between us is something dark and dirty and desperate. He runs his hands down my body as bold as you please. And when he uses his fingers to tug at my garters, I spread my knees for him.

  “Tell me what you want, Clara,” he says, the deep resonance of his voice making me quiver.

  “I want you to touch me,” I breathe.

  The warmth of his palm travels higher to the heated valley between my legs. When the evidence of my arousal kisses his fingertips, he growls like a hungry animal. “You’re so wet, Clara. I hoped you would be.”

  In the movie, rendered in grainy black and white, I see the pale expanse of my hips undulating as the other woman strokes the bartender’s cock, then guides it into me. It’s close-up and I can see everything vividly. If I was mesmerized before, now I’m paralyzed with the pleasure of watching myself getting fucked by a man who hasn’t even taken off his underwear. The woman keeps hers on, too, even as she playfully licks at my young breasts, drawing my nipples up tight and hard.

  “You like watching this movie,” Leo murmurs, his mouth behind my ear, his other hand up under my chemise, rubbing my nipples until I’m caught in some world between reality and film. On the screen, my mouth falls open in silent pleasure at her touch. In Leo’s lap, my mouth falls open with gasps of pleasure that supply the missing sound.

  “Tell me you like it, Clara.”

  I do. I can’t help but think that I would have filmed it differently, but I’m caught up in the magic of the movie. I had no idea it would be so raw. But I don’t want to admit it to Leo. Not even when he draws my own hand down, using my fingers to rub the damp curls between my legs. I’m eager to touch the place that throbs with need. I want to touch it while he pushes his fingers inside me, but he doesn’t allow me to disentangle my fingers from his. He sets the rhythm. He strokes me over and over, until I’m squirming in his lap, the friction of his tweed slacks warming my bottom.

  “Keep your eyes on the screen,” Leo says. “This is my favorite part.”

  I look up to see the lean bartender roll onto his side, pulling me with him so that one leg is up over his thigh, and the camera has a better view of his swollen member disappearing into me. With one hand on my ass for leverage, the bartender strokes in and out and in and out. I love watching the tension in his muscles, the tightening as he gets closer to orgasm. I loved it then, and I love watching it now.

  “Did he make you come?” Leo asks.

  We can’t see my face on the screen, of course, because the picture is so tightly focused on my widespread legs. We’re just a tangle of aroused bodies and the memory of it is flooding back. “I came when he did …”

  Leo’s clever fingers force me to stroke myself in just the right way. “Let’s see if you can do it again. I’m guessing a lotta guys jerked off watching you in this film. Seems only fair you should enjoy it, too.”

  The thought of men watching me like this is too much. The fires of arousal lick up my insides until all my skin prickles with heat. “And what about you, Ace? Did you jerk off watching this film?”

  He chuckles. “Till my hand blistered.”

  The idea of him masturbating to these flickering images of me is such an overwhelming rush that I clamp my thighs. It doesn’t stop him. Leo Vanderberg pushes on, pushes past the cries of protest that die in my mouth. He’s still a veritable stranger; it can’t be possible that he should know my body so well, but he’s such a quick study that I’m already on the edge.

  “You like that, do you, Clara? Knowing that I saw you naked before we met and that I’ve already fucked you a hundred times in my mind.”

  It makes me so excited that I can only whimper in helpless reply.

  “Let me taste you,” he says, encouraging me to lift my sticky fingers to his mouth.

  I do it only because I’m utterly under his spell. He catches my fingers with his lips, then sucks them between his teeth, groaning as he continues to stroke me, giving me no room for reprieve.

  On the screen the bartender stiffens in orgasm, and Leo rubs me, faster and faster, biting down softly on my fingertips. I’m coming. I’m coming on the screen. I’m coming with the bartender. With the flapper. With Leo Vanderberg. I cry out, immersed in pleasure, my body arcing back against him, thighs shaking, eyes tightly squeezed shut. The waves of ecstasy wash over me again and again until I collapse against him. I would fall to the floor were it not for the tight hold he keeps on me. He cradles me until the sweat cools and makes me shiver. Then he takes off his jacket and wraps it around my shoulders, saying, “Easy, Clara. That was just a test run.”

  On the screen, the bartender wipes me clean with a napkin, as if he were a gentleman, then kisses me with a great deal of affection. For some reason, I hadn’t expected to see that in a dirty stag film. This film has always been something shameful in my past, something I feared. Somehow, I didn’t expect the affectionate kissing and stroking and holding of hands afterwards. There’s an adorable mischief to it all as the bartender, the girl, and I peek our heads up over the bar with naughty twinkles in our eyes.

  At this cheeky end to the film, I find myself smothering a giggle.

  Leo laughs, too. “That’s what charmed me. You enjoyed every minute of that, Clara. And when it was over you wanted to do it again. You brought a joy to it that made it almost wholesome.”

  “I feel anything but wholesome,” I say with a come-hither look.

  My climax hasn’t satisfied me and I want him, badly. When he lifts me out of his lap, I expect him to unbuckle his belt and bend me over. Instead, he deposits me back into the chair and goes to turn off the projector. I see him in silhouette, standi
ng there next to the expensive machine.

  “Aren’t you coming back? I have more buttons you can push,” I purr.

  He folds his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you come to me … on your knees?”

  Surely, I’ve misheard. “You want me to crawl to you?”

  “I wanna learn you, Clara. I do wanna push your buttons. I want to push them in ways they’ve never been pushed before. I wanna test your limits. So do it. Get down on your knees and crawl.”

  Annoyance flashes through me. “I don’t crawl for any man.”

  “Don’t do it for me, then. Do it for the jaded girl, the cynic who thinks she’s done it all twice and that life’s got no more surprises left for her.”

  This argument is strangely compelling, so I shrug out of his jacket and drop down to my knees, inching my way towards him, the carpet rough on my bare hands. I feel his hungry eyes on me, his breath heavier with each move I make. “You want to throw me down and fuck me, don’t you, Ace?”

  “More than words can say, but I’m slow to pull the trigger, Clara. I know how to wait for my moment …”

  “Your moment may have passed, because I’m feeling awfully sore at you.”

  “What else are you feeling?”

  I keep crawling and once I settle into it, I feel the seductive sway in my own hips. “I feel like a cat in heat.”

  He beckons me closer with one finger. I nuzzle my forehead against his knees, then slide my cheek up his leg until it’s resting on his throbbing erection. His hand goes into my hair, taking a fistful of it, and then he bends my neck back.

  That’s when he makes the mistake of looking into my eyes. I know how to make my big brown eyes smolder, how to pull a man into their dark depths and make him weak in the knees. Leo’s not immune. His breath catches, and I take advantage of the moment, skimming my hands up his long, lean thighs. Mesmerized by the flash of my red painted nails as I unfasten his belt, Leo says, “Oh, you really are a dangerous woman …”

  That makes me grin with lascivious intent, a grin that only widens when I open his trousers and his steely erection springs free. I love the look of him. He’s ramrod straight and thick, though not so much that I shouldn’t be able to take him all the way. And that’s just what I do, sliding the red circle of my lips down his shaft in one smooth stroke that makes him unsteady.

  Pulling back with a profound sense of satisfaction, I say, “You might want to take a seat …” Before he can argue, I trail my tongue over the swollen knob of his cock and little drops of salty fluid coat my tongue. Given the way his hand flexes in my hair, I know he wants to stop me, but when I bat my eyelashes at him as I work his member, the fight goes out of him.

  He sinks down into the chair like a man without free will.

  Every man likes it a little different, and I quickly learn that a swirl of my tongue over his shaft drives him wild. A lustful growl rumbles up from his chest as his legs tense. Using my hand as a guide, I thrust him between my lips, taking him hot and hard as he mutters a dark oath. He likes it. And I like it, too. Especially the way he’s already throbbing against my tongue, ready to explode.

  He fights for control, saying, “That’s a pretty lipstick stain you’re leaving on the base of my cock.”

  I don’t let him rally. I rub my whole body against him, drawing his leg between my thighs, letting my swollen sex rub against him for relief even as I suck him like I do when I want a man to lose himself in me.

  Leo curses again and twitches in my mouth. He’s going to come. All I have to do is close my eyes and let it happen. That’s just what I do.

  His grip in my hair tightens and he holds me still as his body tenses, then releases into my mouth. “Good god!” he cries, as if his orgasm takes him by surprise. The sounds of pleasure he makes seems to set my skin on fire. He tastes clean, masculine, salty.

  I let him watch me swallow, then lick at the corners of my mouth like a cat who has discovered a bowl of milk. “And here I thought you said you were slow to pull the trigger, Ace.”

  He gulps at the air, as if he’s run a marathon. “Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  I’m too smug to let him get away with it. “Says who?”

  He taps me on the nose. “You just taught me an important lesson about underestimating my opponent. Now I know what kind of woman I’m up against. Next time, I’ll know better than to let you have your way with me.”

  “I hope next time comes soon, because I need you inside me.”

  “Oh, looking at you on your knees like that, I could go again right now,” he says, fastening his pants with a rueful sigh. “But we’ve both had enough for tonight.”

  I’m so worked up that I grab at his belt. “I haven’t had enough!”

  With a look of delight, Leo jerks me up into his lap, bringing his face so close to mine that our noses nearly touch. He speaks softly, with devastating confidence. “Listen, Clara, the day I fuck you—and trust me, I am going to fuck you—it’s not going to feel like this. It’s going to feel like the first time. You’re going to be scared. Embarrassed. Needy. And you’re not going to be in control.”

  I’ve got no snappy comeback. I can’t even find the words to reply. Everything inside me goes soft and I’m afraid to speak. I don’t know why I want that so badly—or how he could know something about me that I don’t even know about myself. And it makes me so angry that I break free of his grasp. “Don’t say it like it’s a promise.”

  His voice lowers dangerously. “But it is.”

  I thump his arm. “What if it’s a promise you can’t keep? What if it’s something you can’t make come true? You can’t say a thing like that to a girl and then let her down.” I barely know what I’m saying. It’s all half-drunken gibberish to me. Maybe I had a little too much of that Dutch courage.

  Still, he doesn’t dismiss what I’ve said. “You and me, I think we’re a lot alike, Clara. We live by our own code, but we do have a code, don’t we? I’m not gonna let you down.” He disentangles from me, takes the reel off the projector and puts it back into its canister. “Here you go. Here’s your film. See? I keep my word.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want it.”

  “Yes, you do. I love this film and I’ll be sad to see it go, but it can hurt you. Destroy it before someone uses it against you.”

  “I wouldn’t be here tonight if you didn’t have that film,” I argue. “You may think otherwise, but you’re wrong. I wouldn’t have come if you didn’t have something to hold over me. It was the excuse I needed to see you. And it’s the excuse I’ll need to keep seeing you.”

  His eyes narrow. “What a very bad first impression I’ve made if you think I’d ever use this film to do you any real harm.”

  I give a shake of my head. “I don’t think you would.”

  “Then what the devil do you expect me to do with it?”

  “It’ll be enough to know that you have it. That you could do something dastardly with it. That you could show it to someone else, anyone else you like, whenever you like.”

  Leo tilts his head, eying me as if for the first time. “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises … Would you like me to show it to someone else, Clara?”

  “No, but the fantasy arouses me so much I don’t think I can stand.”

  He tucks the reel under one arm and steadies me with the other. “Well, then. By all means, let’s find you someplace comfortable to sit.”

  CHAPTER

  Four

  Miraculously, he finds a diner car open at this hour. It’s all shiny stainless steel, too bright and glib, but glitter has always cheered me. A few people in the car recognize me and the waitress has to shoo them away so we can have our coffee and dessert. Still, they’re staring at us, so I cross my legs under the table to affect a pose of elegance. “Tell me, Mr. Vanderberg—”

  “Back to Mr. Vanderberg again?” Leo asks, taking a healthy bite of blueberry pie. “I’d rather hoped we were on a first-name basis now …”

>   Given that I can still taste him on my lips, I concede the point. “Tell me, Leo. What is it that you really want?”

  He swallows, wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin, then leans close. “I thought I’d made that abundantly clear, but in case I’ve been too subtle … I want to fuck you.”

  “You could have done that half an hour ago in the studio,” I say, trying to ignore the way his words reignite the fire in my loins. “Which tells me there’s something else to it. You’re a good-looking man. You could have it from a hundred girls. You could have that waitress taking orders at the counter. She practically swooned when she saw you.”

  He grins. “So did you.”

  I don’t deny it. “Maybe it’s ego. Maybe a flying ace like you needs a movie star on his arm to feel the rush he’s used to. You don’t want to settle for an average girl—”

  “I’ve never settled for anything in my life.”

  “Or maybe you’ve got a score to settle against Big Teddy Morgan, so you decided to take me from him.”

  Triumph gleams in his eyes. “So you admit that I’ve taken you from him.”

  I shouldn’t admit it, so I sip my coffee.

  Leo tilts his head, staring. “Well? Are you going to break it off with him?”

  “Why would I?” Even though I’d been thinking about moving on, it just isn’t sensible to break things off with Teddy Morgan. This is nothing more than a torrid affair that will burn itself out in a day or two. There’s no good reason not to cling to the security that comes with being the mistress of a very rich man. No reason except that I just wouldn’t feel right about it. “Alright, I will. I may be a hard-drinking gold digger with loose morals, but I do have some small sense of decency.”

  “As do I,” Leo replies, stabbing another bite of pie. “Which is why you ought to know better than to think this is some scheme to get back at your Daddy Warbucks. I’ve got nothing against Teddy Morgan, unless you count the business about the war memorial.”

  Now here’s a new wrinkle. “A war memorial?”

  He looks abashed. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I don’t wanna spoil the mood.”