Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [36]
And of course those three daughters would be the prime target. He’d caught a glimpse of them on the news, running through the air terminal followed by the press. They were as defenseless and vulnerable as their mother had always seemed to be. Only, beneath that softly beautiful surface Jenny was known to be made of steel, tempered by her years of struggle and ambition. She’d packed a lifetime of rejection and being used into those bruising years between thirteen and nineteen—before she became a star. It was something he and Jenny Haven had in common.
“Fitz”—Raymunda ran her fingernails along his spine—“what shall we do first tonight, Fitz?” He hardly seemed to have heard her. She tried again, sliding her hands around his waist, pressing her naked breasts against his back. “I know what I’d like to do.” Bending her head she ran her pointed little tongue along the smooth flesh of his shoulder.
Fitz pushed away her hands and stood up abruptly. “Go get dressed, Raymunda.”
“Dressed? But why? I’m here—waiting for you. Don’t you like me in this robe?” She knew the virginal act had been a mistake, he liked his sex rougher than that. Raymunda ripped off the embroidered Swiss cotton and sprawled across the bed, stretching her long, muscular legs. He’d always liked her legs, he liked the way she gripped him with those strong muscles when he was on top of her.
“Get dressed. We’ll go out later.”
Raymunda flounced off the bed, dragging the robe around her shoulders and striding furiously toward the door. He hadn’t even noticed her, he’d drawn back the curtains and was just staring out into the night.
Through the window the turrets and towers of Manhattan sparkled with a million lights, a scene that brought Fitz unfailing pleasure—though he was never sure whether it was the magnificence of the city itself, or the reminder that he, a kid from the Texas backlands, had made it all the way to being a prince of this toughest of cities, and his palace was this rooftop eyrie from where he could view his kingdom. Tonight he didn’t notice the view.
A faint smile lit his severe, attractive face as he remembered that afternoon when he had fallen in love with Jenny Haven. He was thirteen and he had spent his single hard-earned dollar on a seat at the movies and a bag of popcorn that had soon been discarded, forgotten in the surge of emotion he had felt when Jenny’s disarming blue eyes had gazed directly into his, smiling at him from the screen of that little Texan flea-pit movie-house. It was the first time he had ever truly known what it was to want a woman, feeling that thrusting urge in his groin not just for some youthful fantasy about the girl with big tits and sticky red lipstick behind the counter of the soda fountain but for this wonderful blond creature of scented flesh and satin lips—for that’s how he knew she would be.
He had grown up because of Jenny Haven. Because of her he had known suddenly that there was more to sex than the hurried mutual gropings for experience and curiosity that were his infrequent lot right then. You “made love” to a woman like Jenny Haven.
He had sat through the movie twice and left the cinema only when it closed, begging one of the studio stills that decorated the glassed display panel in the foyer from the amused cashier. That picture of Jenny in sweater and shorts, perched on a stool, a finger held under her coquettishly tilted chin, had adorned the flimsy walls of his many cheap rooms as he wandered through Texas. He had sent for others, and even after he had met and married Ellen, he had still kept them. He believed it was because of what he learned vicariously from Jenny Haven that he had known how to treat women. “You make me feel sexy and beautiful,” Ellen had told him, even when they were desperately poor and living in that shabby trailer in the middle of nowhere.
He had met Jenny once, years later, at a party in Beverly Hills. He had been nervous knowing that she was to be there. What if meeting her destroyed the image that he had built