Chapter Five Forbidden Tastes
A cable from Washington arrives when we finally stop kissing, and Sam has to go back to work. I float to my desks, filing and typing in a haze.
I’ve been kissed. I kissed a man, a gorgeous, rugged, dangerously attractive man. A debonair, dashing man.
Things my books only hint about, he says?
I rush through my work at double time, and seize my new copy of Forbidden Tales, the romance special edition, so special it cost fifteen cents instead of ten.
I know that because of the obscenity laws, which are probably a good thing, as Mother adamantly says, there’s nothing truly “descriptive” in the story.
But today has given my imagination a boost—and helped my body finally understand what happens when the story reads, “He kissed her, and her blood pounded in her ears. Her heart raced. She was begging for him to give in to his darkest desires.”
And when he carries her off to his tower, the yacht, the secret hideout, or wherever it is that the couple retires to? I understand better than ever that there’s got to be more than just kissing.
My entire body feels like a toothache, throbbing, persistent, and unable to be ignored.
I wonder if Sam feels it, too? I wonder if other girls are like this for their beaus, or if there’s something wrong with me?
I know something is wrong. Something that’s never happened before is happening now. I’m soaked through my underthings, almost to the point where I’m afraid to sit on the upholstered chair behind my desk in case I leave a wet crease from the silky slick dampness between my legs.
I hurry to the washroom, past Sam’s door, darting inside to clean myself up and splash cold water on my face.
Only, when I go to remove the offending wetness, I can’t deny how good it feels to be touched between my legs. I suddenly want to sit on Sam’s knee and press myself to him.
I want to press my entire body to his.
I want a wedding night, and I want to know all of the ways a man can touch me that would make this aching throb go away!
My hand slips back between my legs, a place that’s only to be touched for hygienic purposes.
Maybe what I’m doing isn’t “clean,” but I don’t care.
With a gasp of surprise, I find a swollen spot that’s hard and firm in the midst of so much soft wetness.
This little hard spot is the golden apple, the secret treasure.
I touch it again, faster this time, and then I let my fingers linger.
I bite my lip, knowing Sam is just across the hall, that I’m at work, that all of this is wrong. It’s forbidden on every level.
But I can’t stop.
I hang up the phone and stand by the door to my office, daring to open it just a crack.
Susie’s in the washroom. The heavenly smell of her arousal is stronger than ever, and it just keeps coming. She lets out little muffled cries that my ears pick up, cries another human probably couldn’t make out.
She’s touching herself.
I want to help. I want to watch.
For now, all I can do is listen and imagine.
It’s strictly forbidden to do this, to eavesdrop, to envision my secretary naked, or imagine her impaled on my cock, imagine her sweet pussy on my face.
It’s wrong to have my fist wrapped around myself for the second time in a single workday, handkerchief ready to catch the mess she’s about to make of me.
“Susie,” I breathe out, a low, needy growl.
“S-sam.” A little mewl that’s followed by a gasp. She didn’t mean to cry out any more than I did.
Did she hear me, or can I only hear her because I have enhanced senses?
“Susie, sweetheart,” I whisper, a little louder.
“Sam. Mmm, Sam!”
I almost bite through the wall. I want to be there with her, to give her that first rush of pleasure—if it is her first. I don’t care—it’s the first she’s had thinking about me, after kissing me.
Suddenly, I can’t hold back anymore. It’s as if her voice is right against my ear, and my nose is pressed to that sweet, fragrant spot between her hips.
“Fuck,” I hiss, almost silently, spilling into the handkerchief. I discard it as soon as my legs cease shaking, and listen for the sound of typewriter keys before I can go to the washroom and clean up—again.
Once the day’s letters are done, the desk is polished, and a drawer is set aside for first aid supplies, I give in to the guilty temptation of reading a book—a book that now seems a bit less mystifying. Now I think I understand what it means to “tremble beneath her bodice.”
Pressure is building everywhere as I squirm in my seat, wondering what makes that slickness appear, what triggers the need to rub that unexplored spot.
Will Sam know about it? Does he care if I do?
What kind of girls know these things? It’s one thing for Sam to kiss the air straight out of me, but it’s probably quite another for me to want all of that and more, even before we’re seeing one another, before we’re engaged.
A little voice warns me that I’ve known Sam Silverman for such a short time, while a sassier, hot-tempered voice tells me that I know so much about him from reading his letters and working with him.
Sam’s voice echoes in my head. “I want to do so much more than kiss you, honey. But all of that can wait.”
No. No, it can’t. I bite my lip and re-read the lines where the hero whisks the damsel in distress away from the cruel scientist and into his apartment. The tension. The touching.
My hand slides guiltily to my lap as I hear Sam’s voice on the phone in his office, talking low and urgently about the contract a courier delivered.
I made myself reach a delicious, unknown peak this morning. Can I do it again?
My eyes close. I lean into the padded corner of my chair, and—
“Are you all right, Miss Spade?”
My eyes pop open, mouth following suit. A guilty flush sweeps over me as Sam stands in the doorway, jacket off, tie loose, and hair a little mussed.
Damn, that man is a picture.
Before I can make my throat work, he’s striding over to me, peering over my shoulder, and his large, warm hand steals my book—and my fingers.
He traps my hand and the spread pages under his grasp, his eyes reading the spiciest lines, the lines that no nice girl should ever read, let alone re-read a dozen times, pretending she’s acting it out with her boss.
“Trembling beneath her bodice, hmm? You know, I’ve heard that line before. I think they use it in a lot of these spicy little numbers.” Sam’s free hand gently massages my shoulder, and I moan before I can capture the sound.
“Where exactly is a bodice? Here?” His hand skims down my arm. Moves to my waist. “I always thought it was the top half of the dress. Am I right, Miss Spade?”
“Uh-huh,” I gasp out, even though Mr. Beezledorf would lecture me for using such sloppy speech. It’s all I can manage.
“So the trembling spot... Would that be here?” Sam’s hand ghosts across my thighs, making me bite my tongue in surprise, surprise at how much I want it, and surprise at how his forbidden touch excites me.
“Or do the mean beneath, as in underneath the bodice itself? Here?” His hand now trails around the V of my buttoned shirt, fingers touching the bare skin below my throat, and daring to slide beneath my collar.
“It could be both,” I hiss, eyes closed, lost in the sensation of his slightly rough fingertips tracing unexplored skin.
“Could I make the trembling stop? Or does a lady wish for it to continue?” Sam asks, lips against my cheek.
“H-how do you make it stop?”
“With kisses.”
“Kisses?” That doesn’t sound dangerous.
“Kisses like you’ve never had before. Kisses I’ve never given before, the kind I only want to share with you.
Because I want you to stay with me, Susie, even if ...
Even if it takes a while for you and me to make the sort of life we’d both like, I’d still want to share it with you.
I know it’s fast, but I’m not like other men.
I won’t want something from you, and then act like it didn’t matter. Okay, Susie?”
I’m not sure if I even comprehend what Sam is saying, because his hands are still sweeping lower and lower, and his thumbs move now, to flick my top two buttons free. His hands move lower still, finding my breasts, soft and warm, with nipples tightening in a way that’s new and delicious.
“I want to be with you, Sam. I already feel like I was supposed to see your ad, and come to this little town I’d never even heard of, even though I’d lived just a little ways away my whole life.
I never planned to be a secretary. I never thought I’d find a man who’d know about Forbidden Tales, or Torchy Blane, or—oh, God!
Kisses like that,” I groan when his hands slide into the cups of my brassiere, circling softly over my nipples.
“You’re so hard. That means you enjoy this. When I’m hard, that means I enjoy your nearness, too, honey, but that’s going to wait. I know you want to wait and be a respectable Mrs. Silverman.”
Mrs. Silverman. Mrs. Susan Silverman. My heart does backflips and slams into walls of pleasure as Sam’s tongue flicks my earlobe and his fingers grip my nipples, plucking them like picking flowers, a soft pressure to squeeze, and the slightest pull.
He must’ve been with other women before me—but that’s not something I can change, and nothing I care to worry about if it taught him to make me feel like this.
“God, Susan, you’re so beautiful. Incredibly beautiful.”
Sam’s mouth is on my neck, and his breathing has the edge of a growl to it, raspy and raw.
One hand scoots underneath my breast to cup it, his magical fingers still creating that gentle push-pull on my nipple that has me helpless in his arms. Involuntarily, the muscles inside the warm, wet spot I’ve newly discovered start to squeeze, begging for something.
For Sam.
His hand is there, in my lap, pressing between my thighs lightly. “I can kiss you here, Susie. It’ll be wonderful. But some girls are shy, and some girls would rather wait. I’d wait for you, sweetheart, if that’s what you’d like.”