Blooming: Veronica Read Online Free PDF Page B

suggested. Now scoot, Robert! Scoot.
    “See that you do.” He squeezed her bosom.
    Uh. Uh. Uh. Oh! It was the first time he or anyone had ever touched her breast, and her breathing stuttered in her throat.
    “You like that,” he said and continued to fondle her.
    “Yes, yes, indeed I quite do,” she uttered haltingly, “And…and…not to worry over my getting the advance from Papa. I shall make up something, a story, about how I need a…a…”
    Red-handled cane.
    Where had that come from?
    Worse still, where had he come from?
    As Robert cupped her bosom, plumped above the corset, the staid gentleman from the audience popped into her mind. Her heart slammed against her ribs and her belly knotted, while down below there came a rather odd sensation, an opening, a gnawing…the same sort of wanting she had experienced earlier when fantasizing about what the staring gentleman from the book reading would do to her.
    With his red-handled cane.
    Goodness! She could easily couple again.
    Not with Robert. With the man who had said, “ Miss Cooper, a moment of your time, if you please .”
    His voice. His voice.
    His lovely, deep, melodic, sexual voice had demanded more of her than she could give, and so she had fled, willing herself not to remember the timbre of his voice, to forget that he had ever approached her.
    Nothing worked. Not even having relations with Robert had exorcised the memory of the staring gentleman from her thoughts.
    What if fear had not gotten in the way and she had consented to speak with him? Would she still be here with Robert now?
    “Go on,” she practically shouted at her lover. “Leave.”
    He gave her nipple one last hard twist, making it ache, making it burn. Or, was the man with red-handled cane responsible for her reaction?
    “When your daddy forks over the sawbuck, come see me down on the pier.”
    Ten dollars! How would she convince her father to advance her a full quarter’s allowance?
    But…
    All right,” she said, relenting, just to get him gone. “When?”
    “Next Tuesday night, the alley where the whores congregate,” Robert shot over his shoulder as he left through the open hallway door, a door she could have sworn she had closed.
    Carelessness like that might very well spell her undoing. Someone, anyone, a passerby…a gentleman with a red-handled cane…might have observed her through that open hallway door. One thing to write a fictionalized diary account of her life, and quite another to have events acted upon her—without her expressed desire or consent. To grow into the sort of woman and writer she wished to be, she must open herself up to sexual adventures. Societal restraints must not hem her in. She must not allow fear of the unknown and the possible judgmental condemnation of others to stand in her way. To do so would only lead to stagnation in her personal and professional life. Writers drew from the world around them, after all. And sex was part of that world. But she must retain authorship of those experiences; they must not write her into a corner from which there was no graceful escape. To do that, she must filter those experiences through her own level of comfort. Being seen in the act by a hoard of anonymous strangers was just too, too terribly tawdry for her.
    Though— though —with that said, the thought of being observed by the man with the red-handled cane was not entirely objectionable.
    As a forgotten man’s semen cooled, then congealed inside her drawers, she shivered uncontrollably.

Chapter Five
     
    In front of Talbot’s desk, Walter Higgins removed his fogged-over spectacles and swiped them across his coat sleeve. “Sir, I just now finished reading this week’s edition of Around Town and in the Know and I thought you should know—”
    Talbot nipped the discussion in the bud. “Salacious gossip holds no particular interest for me.”
    “This scandal sheet article will interest you, sir.”
    “Very well. Go on, Higgins. Spit it out, so we