Guilty Pleasures (19 page)

Father Seamus Flynn was flying from Ireland to celebrate the wedding mass with Father Porter for his sister and Toryn. Neither Mrs. Flynn nor Mrs. O’Donel had ever flown, and neither was of a mind to, even for the wedding of their children. Toryn’s closest brother, Francis, lived and worked in the city.

He would come to stand up for his younger brother, and Maureen’s friend Jane would be her attendant. The two girls had had a wonderful time shopping for wedding outfits. Maureen had finally settled on a winter white silk suit with a narrow skirt, and a fitted jacket with a peplum. She found a wide headband with a wisp of veiling. Jane, who was a pale blonde, chose a pretty turquoise dress.

The renovation of the old carriage house behind the Devlins’ big house was completed. The downstairs still housed Mick and Emily’s precious Austin Healeys, along with a new small, efficient furnace. But the upstairs had new wood floors, wiring, and plumbing. It had been divided into two bedrooms, one large, one small; a living room with a fireplace and a small eating area; a galley kitchen; and a bathroom. Maureen was stunned by her employer’s generosity, for Emily had insisted that she and her nanny shop for furniture, and then all the ladies Maureen had come to know in Egret Pointe gave her a traditional bridal shower in the Devlins’ spacious living room.

Afterward, looking at all of her gifts, Maureen couldn’t help but cry. She had received bedding, towels, washcloths, pots, glasses, and dishes. Nanny Violet came with a fine large brown English teapot and a set of cups and saucers. “I can’t believe everyone’s generosity,” she said to Emily.

“Americans, like the Irish, are very generous people,” Emily said as she helped Maureen put everything away in the carriage house apartment.

The seventeenth of March dawned sunny and mild, as it sometimes did.

“Luck of the Irish,” Mick Devlin said.

The wedding was set for two thirty at St. Anne’s, with cake and champagne punch afterward at the Devlins’. Sean Michael was to be the ring bearer, and little Emlyn the flower girl. Emily thought her son looked adorable in his short navy pants and Eton jacket. Emlyn preened in front of her mother’s closet mirror, admiring her floaty pink dress. “I pretty,” she declared, and her father heartily agreed.

It was a simple ceremony with a brief mass. The IGA had closed for two hours so all its employees could see the handsome assistant butcher wed to the pretty nanny. The cashiers all sat together, sniffling happily. Karl, the head butcher, had brought his wife. Emlyn Devlin played her part beautifully, almost skipping down the aisle, tossing rose petals as she came. She was followed by Sean Michael, who was serious and intent upon not dropping the silk cushion, which held the two simple wedding rings. Jane, with a small multicolored bouquet, preceded the bride. Mick Devlin brought Maureen down the aisle to where Toryn and his brother stood awaiting her. He put her hand into that of her groom and gave her a kiss on the cheek before joining Emily. The vows were spoken. The mass celebrated. The cake cut. A toast drunk to the happy couple. The Mulcahy chauffeur took the bridal couple to the airport.

“Well,” Mick Devlin said, “there goes our nanny.”

“She’ll be back.” Emily laughed and secretly hoped that Maureen’s wedding night would be as wonderful as hers and Mick’s had been.

Maureen, of course, knew nothing of the island where her employers had spent ten naked days making love after their wedding. What she did know was that Toryn O’Donel, her
husband
—the word sounded so strange and yet familiar—was a worthy descendant of his ancestor, Toryn of the Thousand Pleasures. Honeymoon sex was supposed to be explosive, and it certainly was. Fortunately, they had been upgraded to a cottage when they checked in, which meant they didn’t disturb their neighbors.

There was a wonderful round sunken bath in their suite. They couldn’t resist. Oddly, Maureen didn’t feel any shyness about taking her clothes off before him. His blue eyes followed her every move, even as he was removing his own travel garments.

She had a lovely body, he thought. Long legs, high, full round breasts, a great butt.

Maureen was counting his assets as he looked at her. Wide chest and shoulders. Narrow waist. Tight butt, and a seriously long penis that touched a cord of memory in her.

Holding hands, they stepped down into the warm tub. The water came to his waist. Wrapping his arms about Maureen, Toryn gave her a long, sweet kiss. Feeling her breasts against his smooth chest, her belly and thighs against him, his cock began to stir.

Feeling it, Maureen boldly reached down and gave him a little squeeze. Toryn cupped her mons in his big palm, whispering in her ear as he did so exactly what he was going to do to her. Maureen giggled and told him what she would do to him. They kissed again as he backed her up against the wall of the tub. She continued to play with his cock.

“My, what a fine spirited laddie you have here, husband,” she told him. The column of flesh in her hand had thickened and lengthened, and it was very hard now.

“The better to fuck you with, wife,” he told her. “Put those sexy long legs of yours about me, little one. I very much need to be inside you now.”

She eagerly complied, and felt him guiding his penis to the entry of her vagina. “Yes!” she encouraged him, and then he began to push himself inside her. The sensation of him filling her, stretching the walls of her cunt until she thought they could not be stretched any more, was mind-blowing, especially when he began to thrust back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. With virtually no foreplay, he was bringing her to a climax. His hands cupped her bottom now as his thrusts grew deeper and harder.

“Don’t stop!” she gasped as the first wave hit her.

“I can’t,” he groaned. “I don’t want to! I want to be like this with you always. I’ve waited forever for us.”

This wasn’t her fantasy. This was her new reality, and Maureen decided that it was better than anything she had ever experienced. They remained in the tub fucking and fucking until finally, after she had experienced several small climaxes, they came together in an explosion of passion that left them both breathless. And when they had finally recovered, they adjourned to the big bed and took up again where they had left off. They seemed unable to get enough of each other.

After three days of sex and room service, Maureen suggested that since they were at Disney World, they might want to see some of it. He reluctantly agreed. Four hours later they were back in their honeymoon cottage, naked and making love again.

“We’ll come see Disney World again another time,” Toryn said.

“We could have stayed in Egret Pointe at the inn rather than come all the way down to Florida,” Maureen said.

Toryn laughed. “It’s warmer here.”

“We have the AC on,” she reminded him.

“Funny,” he said. “I’m not cold. Are you?” He pulled her down onto the bed on her back. “I’m horny,” he told her, grinning.

“You are always horny,” Maureen said. “I’m beginning to wonder what manner of man I’ve married.”

“One who’s hot for your body,” he said, pushing into her in a single motion. “And you’re hot for me too, or you wouldn’t be climaxing every time I fuck you, Maureen O’Donel. Admit you want me.” He began moving on her, and they were both quickly overwhelmed by the passion they seemed to generate in each other. It lasted most of the night, and when they were finally exhausted, they realized that they had missed dinner.

“We can’t keep this up when we go home,” Maureen told him. “I have four children to take care of, and you’ve got your job too. Maybe we should limit the sex to certain nights of the week.”

“Nope,” he said. “We’re both young, and we’ll manage.”

“I hope you’re right,” Maureen answered him.

“If we go to bed early,” he said, “we can fuck each other’s ears off and then go to sleep. If we get six to eight hours we’ll be all right.”

Maureen laughed. “Okay,” she said. “I’m game.” And then she wondered if her mother and father had been this way with each other, their actions leading to thirteen children. She had always thought of them as a sex-once-a-week couple. And after her father had died ten years ago, she wondered how her mother had managed without sex. She wasn’t the kind of woman to have a BOB.

They returned home to Egret Pointe to the carriage house behind the Devlins’ big Empire-style house. Both were due back at their jobs early in the morning, Toryn to the IGA at seven thirty and Maureen to the Devlins’ at eight. On that first day back, after the children had greeted her enthusiastically, she had seen to their breakfast and dressed them. They had played, and she had helped Essie with some errands, taking the quartet out with her. After lunch she had taken Sean Michael to nursery school. Essie had seen the other three put down for their naps, although Emlyn was beginning to consider that she didn’t need a nap.

Returning to the quiet house, Maureen went into the den and dialed the Devlins’ satellite provider. “I’d like to cancel the Channel,” she said, giving them the account number. “Yes, the last bill has been paid. Thank you.” She put the telephone back in its charger. She felt a small sadness, but then, she didn’t need the fantasy of Toryn of the Thousand Pleasures anymore. She had his descendant, Toryn O’Donel, and to her delight the reality had turned out to be even better than the fantasy.

J.P. AND THE REGENCY RAKE

J.P.
Woods was one of the most powerful women in the book business. As CEO of Stratford Publishing, she was a woman to be both feared and courted. Little was known about her personal life other than that she came from a town called Bug Light on the far north coast of Maine and that she had graduated from a prestigious New England women’s college with honors. She had begun her career in Boston, staying with a small publishing house for three years, and then come to New York, working first for Penguin in their NAL division, and finally settling at Stratford Publishing, where she swiftly scampered her way up the ladder of success.

At one point there was a rumor that she was Martin Stratford’s illegitimate daughter, fathered when he was in college. Martin, now chairman emeritus of Stratford’s board, found that rumor very funny. The other rumor—that J. P. Woods was or had been his mistress—he didn’t find amusing at all. It suggested that he was a fool. It implied that J.P. wasn’t worthy of the position to which he had appointed her. And it was even further from the truth than the first rumor. But Martin Stratford was the only person in the publishing world to know the truth of J. P. Woods’s background. He knew she had worked damned hard to get where she was today, and he knew that she deserved everything she had accomplished, given her beginnings.

Jane Patricia Woods had been born the oldest child of a Maine fisherman and his wife. She had four younger siblings: two brothers and two sisters. When she was fifteen, her father had been lost at sea. Life hadn’t been easy before he died, but after he died, it was horrific. Fortunately, they owned the small house in which they lived. It had belonged to her paternal grandparents. They were long dead, as were her mother’s people but for an older sister. Her mother worked in the local general store. They applied for and got food stamps and heating aid. And on Saturday night her mother went to the only bar in town, where she would pick up a man, bring him home, have sex with him, collect a few dollars, and then send the guy on his way. Along with her minimum-wage job, it kept the lights on and allowed for a few extras, like shoes and school supplies.

Everyone in Bug Light knew what her mother did on Saturday nights, but the truth was, she wasn’t the only widow in town supplementing a poverty-level income by going to the bar and picking up a man. More important, she went to the bar only that one night a week, and was in church with her kids on Sunday mornings. She didn’t flirt with anyone else’s man, and she didn’t allow any man accompanying her home to remain in her house longer than it took him to fuck her. As far as Bug Light was concerned, Dorcas Woods was a reasonably respectable woman. And they all knew that if she had had a better choice, she would have taken it.

But one night the man her mother brought home didn’t leave as he should have. Unable to perform, he had knocked Dorcas unconscious, then beaten her to a pulp. Then he’d crept down the hall to the bedroom where J.P. and her little sisters slept. J.P. had awakened to a hand over her mouth, a faceless man atop her. She tried to buck him off, but he was too firmly seated. She was terrified and angry at the same time. Then he spoke.