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She was wet and hot and exhausted afterwards. Once deciding that she could take no more, Hannah collapsed on the bed and fell immediately to sleep. She had no idea then or later if Jarrett Cain had climaxed. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care.
In the morning, Hannah woke first
. The heavy form snoring beside her surprised her, until she turned over and remembered what had happened the night before. She sat up and looked down at the slumbering body, wondering if she should feel something for the man. After all, he had this time been more like a lover to her than a brute. Even when he punished her with the repeated sharp smacks, there was an eroticism about the act that felt nothing akin to the abusive beatings she’d suffered at his ranch. He was a different man with her now, and a handsome one too. But he was a soulless and conniving one as well. In that regard, he hadn’t changed. He might give her body pleasure, yes, but she was far beyond feeling affection for the man who had so thoroughly ruined her life.
“What you doing, girl?” Jarrett stirred in bed, trying to sit up, while at the same time trying to grab her. Averting his grasp, she’d hastily pulled off the bed and covered her nakedness with her robe.
“You don’t get me again, not today,” she said curtly. “I’m too tired and it’s time for you to go. I have to make breakfast for Mamie and the girls.”
The man took in her impassive expression; then his face slowly broke into his typically surly grin. “So, let me get this straight, you’re not whoring for Mamie, you are her maid, the cook, eh?” He raised his eyebrows in amusement. “And I’m the first whoring you’ve done?”
“Yes. That’s right. But what happened here means nothing, Jarrett. And it doesn’t make what you did to me right. Nothing ever will.” She started to brush the tangles from her hair. “I probably shouldn’t have given myself to you—” she stopped brushing and thought again, “or maybe that’s just the old me talking. Actually, the truth is that I don’t figure I have any right to the prettiness of love when the ugliness of my degradation runs so deep. But I accept that I like hard, mean sex. The kind you’re so good at. I need it, if you will. Long as you don’t abuse me again, I’ll be your whore from time to time. But I make no promises. While I’m in this house, I’m Mamie’s girl, and I’m obliged to do what I’m told.”
With eyebrows raised in admiration, he quipped lightly, “No one ever said you didn’t have spirit.” He sat up and swung his feet around, hoping for one last grope—or more, but she was out the door before he could pull her back.
After Jarrett left, Hannah resumed the work that she’d been hired to do. She felt a little less tense than before; after all, the sex had been satisfying. This was good, she thought.
“You sure were banging the bedsprings, deary,” Helen, a tarty blond-haired prostitute said, as she was passing through the kitchen. “I heard you took Jarrett Cain. Now that’s somethin’.”
“He’s just a man,” Hannah returned, as if she were an old pro at turning tricks.
“You sure you never whored before?”
“Oh, this was the first…” she was almost ready to confess the whole truth, but stopped. No! She wouldn’t say a word. No way would Daniel ever know. She turned away from the woman and filled the sink with hot water from the kettle. The movement was so like home, in her own kitchen. She recalled with a painful wince that Daniel would be arriving there soon, if he hadn’t returned already. He’d find her gone and be in a frenzy of worry.
She wanted to be there, to fold up inside his arms and cry, to feel him kiss her head, and caress her back as his protective loving poured out over her to make things right again. It was just a wish, however, a dream, a hope, a useless fancy that could never be realized. There was no way that he could forgive her the betrayal—not in his heart. She’d worked this over in her mind a hundred times since she left. Of course, he would say the right words because he was an honorable man and would not forsake her. She was his duty. But she could imagine how the months would pass and he’d become more distant, eventually bitter, as the acts that maligned their marriage sifted through his mind again and again, rankling his conscience. He’d see her differently, loose-willed and unsavory. How could he not?
It was better this way, better that they both find new lives without the other and without that terrible pain. She imagined that eventually her longing for him would go away and he’d be just a memory, like one of those picture postcards you bought at the carnival. Daniel once bought her several when a traveling carnival passed through their valley. They now lay forgotten in an old steamer trunk, tattered, just faded images of another world. In time, her memory of Daniel would be as vague as those discarded postcards.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jarrett came to Mamie’s again a few days after his first visit and Hannah took him in her room again. Perhaps he was the penance she must pay, her sentence for the adulterous crimes of lust. By that logic, however, the crime just kept getting worse. The interest on her debt compounded. Something inside her couldn’t turn him down, although this second time was much less intense than the first. She felt deflated and uninspired. He probably noticed, but he seemed satisfied enough. As before, she refused any conversation or intimacy other than what was strictly physical. This time when he left her ‘boudoir’ he appeared much less the man that he’d been before, more like the other silly, hungering, horny fellows that frequented Miss Mamie’s because they couldn’t get a good woman without paying for the pleasure in hard cash.
A day later, Hannah heard the whoops and hollers of some kid in the parlor. Amy’s childish giggle followed. She was the youngest of Mamie’s girls, just eighteen, but the saucy blonde had been doing this long enough to handle any young man, including the crazy kids, the first-timers, the hard-bangers and the mean-spirited brutes. She was born a whore if any woman was. After a turn in her bed, every man came out smiling.
Hannah chuckled to herself hearing the laughter in the other room, and then thought nothing of walking through the parlor bearing a load of clean linens that needed to go to the second floor. But when she turned for a quick glance at the happy couple groping on the settee, the eyes of the young man turned in her direction and the two locked in a fierce, unmoving gaze that didn’t break until the curious Amy blurted out:
“You know each other or something?”
Beau was the first to respond in shocked surprise. Wiggling from the couch, he righted his trousers, flushing with embarrassment, and moved to his feet. “She’s my sister.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Amy giggled again, covering her blushing face.
The siblings didn’t talk, but just stared at each other speechless, and Amy, understanding the scene for what it was, slipped silently from the room and closed the parlor door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Beau finally gathered his wits enough to ask.
Hannah had no idea what to say. As if the weight of all her recent past had just fallen from the sky and drenched her all at once, she wanted to crumple to the floor, but she couldn’t even do that.
“Hannah, answer me!” he said, taking a parental tone with a wayward child. “We all know I’m no stranger to whorehouses, but you have no business here. Where the hell is Daniel, dammit?”
“I had to leave him.”
“Leave him? Why?”
“Beau, I can’t discuss this with you.”
“You damn well better. Does Daniel know you’re here?”
