Bad Love: Tainted Love, #3

By Louisa Trent

Siam: The half-caste love child of a concubine. A virgin widow desperate to know a man's touch. An innocent lady schooled in the Oriental art of seduction. A sophisticated socialite with secret naughty yearnings.

Siam carved a path to economic independence by forfeiting desire to raise six stepdaughters. Her self-sacrifice ends with the death of her wealthy husband. She can now do as she pleases, think only of herself, and she vows never again to be bound by the chains of love. Passion, yes. Lust, of course. Physical fulfillment -- oh, God, please! But not devotion. After embarking on a series of meaningless and unemotional affairs, she plans to marry into her moneyed New York circle.

Then she meets a lowly dishwasher in a backwoods Maine hotel.

Theo: The youngest and most inhibited of the three Donovan brothers. A romantic bear of a man on the rebound from a broken heart. A bedroom conservative with repressed sexual needs. A latent alpha male who uncovers his dominance..

With Siam.

Despite her reluctance to surrender, he demands she accept all of him, even if that all includes...love.

BAD LOVE is the latest in the historical series that began with TAINTED LOVE, preceded by the story of BLEEDING LOVE...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trent Publishing
• Release date: Apr 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533791573

Louisa Trent

Louisa Trent has been published in ebook format since 2001. Her erotic romances have been with Ellora's Cave, Liquid Silver, Loose Id and Samhain. Refusing to be "branded" ( Louisa has a rebellious streak ) she writes across the genres -- contemporary, historical, paranormal, multi-cultural, and sci-fi. Basically, she writes whatever piques her interest, and she is a writer of many passionate interests. Readers can reach Louisa through her website: www.louisatrent.com .

Book preview

Prologue

The year 1899, Manhattan, New York…

Mrs. Susan Lindsmore reclined on her daybed, her languid pose belying her inner excitement. Gluing her gaze to the sitting room’s oak-paneled door, not a tic or twitch disturbing her carefully composed expression, she tunneled a hand beneath the gold toile pillows plumped at her back…and screeched with all the dignity of a fishwife, Where the fuck has it gone?

This month’s issue of Licentious, an illustrated underground periodical dedicated to indulging all the sensual pleasures, was missing.

Fear clutched at her heart. No. No. No. This could not be happening, especially not now when she needed relief so badly. Who could have discovered her hiding place?

The housemaid, perhaps. Yesterday, while polishing the furniture with beeswax or beating the brocade upholstery for dust, the daygirl might have stumbled upon the naughty magazine.

Or possibly Mrs. Harris. Cook dropped off the week’s menus just last night. That fidgety woman was forever touching the cushions.

Please, pleeeaaaaase, not one of her six stepdaughters during their all-too-frequent visits, anyone else but her innocent darlings.

Panic-stricken, Susan twisted in the seat, groping, clawing, punching the perfectly arranged, tastefully beige, always plump, decorative pillows, disorganized tassels and fringe flying every which way.

She held her breath as her fingertips collided with something suspiciously paper-like between her hip and the chair’s mahogany side. That deliciously decadent something must have slipped from its hiding place this morning while she pretended to count cross-stitches on her ghastly boring needlepoint pattern.

A yank dislodged the discreetly wrapped package. Like a squirrel recovering a hidden acorn from the lawn, she warily settled her buried treasure on the outermost region of her lap, ready to dig her guilty pleasure back under the pillows at a moment’s notice should one of the girls barge in on her. As an additional precaution against discovery, she draped the gray sash of her loose-fitting surah and cashmere gown over the flat envelope.

One could never be too cautious. Or sneaky. Her darlings had an uncanny knack for interrupting at the most inopportune times.

Like now, when she was randy as all hell.

From the outset of her custodianship, she had welcomed her husband’s brood into her private sanctuary. After all, as their father’s second wife, the children considered her an interloper here at Number 22, and she’d had much to prove. Naturally, the girls resented her presence. Naturally, they had striven to drive her away. All motherless children misbehaved the same.

To earn their trust, she’d had the lock removed from her private sitting room door and encouraged her new family to come to her with their problems at any hour, day or night.

Just her foul luck, the annoying brats had taken her up on the offer. She had not enjoyed a moment’s solitude since. Like Mary Shelley, she had created a monster. Only her Frankenstein was a beautiful six-headed she-beast with golden ringlets and an irritating propensity for giggle fits. In this very room, she had bandaged interminable scraped knees, taught a myriad of schoolroom lessons, bolstered endless symptoms of flagging self confidence, and listened to constant tales of woe. She had always been there for the girls, had always attended to their wants, no matter how large or small.

Or silly. Extremely and utterly silly.

Girls born to privilege were such insecure twits. Always concerned with what others thought of them or their hair or their clothes or which boy they had tendre for that week, while sheltered from the hard reality of actual survival. Thank goodness, poverty had spared her their ignorance.

Apart from the monetary, she supposed there had been compensations for the vexation. Sloppy kisses – if one cared for that sort of messy thing. Clumsy hugs – each of the girls had nearly strangled her at one time or another. Lisped declarations of undying devotion – what idiot would be taken in by such claptrap? Pride taken in their successful launches into New York society…

By sheer luck, her stepdaughters had all turned out admirably well. No biological mother could have been any prouder – or more relieved – at the girls’ debutante balls.

At any rate, she had done her duty, and now it was time to get on with her life, the one she had put on hold for the last fifteen years. Thirty-three was not all that terribly long in the tooth. Still, according to Sir Isaac Newton, gravity could drop her tits to her feet any day now, so she had not a moment to waste.

She intended to shake up her dull routine – providing none of the girls caught her at it.

Nothing must jeopardize her darlings’ tidy and safe little worlds. Nothing must disillusion them, especially not her. God help her, the girls sincerely believed they loved her.

Loved her?

They knew absolutely nothing about her.

What they loved was the illusion of her, the stylish perception she projected for their sakes, not the real flesh and blood her. Her stepdaughters actually assumed, because of her fluency in the language, that she was French. They envisioned her as a displaced aristocrat of pristine lineage, an impeccably coiffed Marie Antoinette – only in possession of her head.

Romantic rubbish! She could hardly countenance their flights of fancy.

Although, never once, not by thought, word, or deed, did she dissuade them from their ridiculousness. In fact, she guarded their naïveté for it served all of them. Gravity might someday drop her tits to her feet, but those feet were made of clay. What a shock it would be to her darlings’ delicate systems if they learned the truth about her.

Her background was a sordid one, even by her own low standards. As a former Five Points street swindler, a pickpocket extraordinaire, and the daughter of a Siamese concubine trained since birth in the art of satisfying a man, Mrs. Susan Lindsmore was not at all what she seemed.

A bit of an onion is what she was in reality. Expose one layer of deception, and there were more layers lurking beneath it, all quite pungent and guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye.

Not her eye, naturally. She was too hardened for tears.

Chewing her bottom lip in wanton anticipation, she slid the brown paper wrapping off her package. Her mouth agape, she shivered. Ohhhh, my. Oh, my, my, my.

The editorial staff of Licentious had outdone themselves. This month’s edition, by far and away, boasted the most explicit cover yet.

Unable to contain herself, she stroked the hand-painted lithography depicting a couple making mad, passionate love. In the great outdoors, of all unlikely places. Amid tall ostrich ferns and stout zebra grasses, the nude woman rode an equally nude man. Her perspiring flesh green-shadowed, her astride positioning scandalously uninhibited, the model clenched her thighs about her partner’s hips as he – dear Lord – bucked beneath her.

One happy subscriber, she ogled the pictorial from every angle, including upside down, pronouncing it an absolutely flawless execution of the subject matter, with meticulous attention to detail. Never mind the implausibility of the scenario. Never mind that, in real life, the sharp foliage of the various plants would flay the man’s broad back to the bone and slice the woman’s knees to a bloody pulp. Never mind that such a humid environment would teem with creepy, crawly, icky insects of every description and variety. Never mind that, ordinarily, she found pooling and dripping sweat anything but attractive. Pesky logistics and intellectual analyses aside, Licentious never failed to inspire her.

Bunching her dove gray mourning gown up over her belly, she slid a hand under her petticoats and into the gathered waistband of her drawers.

Oh, goody. The area between her legs was soaking wet, as well it should have been given the stimulating visuals. Without further delay, she began practicing her favorite vice.

Tossing herself off, a phrase she had lifted from another voluptuary magazine, the Pearl. Soon, ecstasy approached. The release was wonderful. And necessary. But afterwards, she was still alone. No lover was there to hold her, to warm her as the tremors faded, leaving her chilled and as limp as a dishcloth.

Muttering all sorts of foul gutter epithets under her breath, she slapped her gown back down to cover her toes.

Self-pity would get her nowhere. She was a woman in charge, who took action, who made things happen. Why should carnality be any different?

Flipping the pages of her pleasure aid to the personal ads and skipping anything to do with mail-order brides and their ilk, she scanned the column for anonymous trysts of an erotic nature.

And there it was, in black-and-white, succinct and to the point, pragmatic carnal requirements that mirrored hers:

WANTED: A 25- to 35-year-old female for sexual companionship in Maine. Two weeks of rustication in a seaside setting. Lodging and expenses provided. Ideal spot for rest and recreation. Only experienced female applicants need apply. Anonymity guaranteed. No romantic entanglements, no background questions. Reply to publisher for face-to-face interview.

A holiday to indulge herself before Cynthia’s lying-in? Heavenly. But dare she do it? Dare she respond to the ad?

The pianoforte displayed a family photograph of her six stepdaughters arranged in chronological order from the eldest –  twenty-four-year-old expectant mother Cyn – to the youngest – just graduated last June from a Switzerland finishing school, eighteen-year-old Essie. A separate picture of Mr. Walter Lindsmore, her deceased husband, stood off to one side. She owed the wealthy merchant a debt of gratitude, but did she owe him the rest of her life?

No!

Picking up paper and fountain pen from her nearby writing table, she composed an appropriately vague response to the gentleman’s Licentious personal ad.

Chapter One

Bar Harbor, Maine…

Theo Bear Donovan rolled to a naked slump at the edge of his extra long, extra wide, double bed and dropped his shaggy head into his hands.

Why had Betsy gone and done what she did? What impulse had driven her? Had he ever really known the woman he had married?

Regardless of the answers, he missed her. As the sunlight burned the darkness away, he still reached for her at the start of each and every day.

After his wife’s death, he had taken to cracking the window before retiring every night. A howling nor’easter could be rattling the glass panes, and he still left the sash open in case Betsy’s troubled spirit wanted to come inside. Despite what had happened between them, maybe, just maybe, her wandering soul would pay him a call. Then, they could have it out, once and for all. Shout at one another, break some dishes…fix the past.

Come home, Betsy. Please come home. So much needs to get said.

Lifting his head from his hands, Theo stared at her photograph on their bureau. Betsy had been his first girl. His last woman. And she had twisted the idea of love until he hardly recognized it anymore. He hated what she had done. Hated how she had destroyed everything he held dear. Hated how she had clouded his memory of their marriage. Had it all been a lie?

He gave a long, resigned sigh. Deep within himself, he accepted that she was lost to him in death. But what was tough to accept was that he had lost her in life. Even so, he could never hate her. The moon would sooner fall from the sky than he could hate Betsy. He only wished he could hate her, only wished to Christ he could let a bad love go.

Clenching his hand, he hammered the wall at his side, shattering the plaster.

He had to get out of here.

Jumping to his feet, he fumbled his way into a newly pressed white muslin dress shirt, nary a wrinkle to be seen anywhere, a pair of never-before-worn socks, and his Sunday-best black wool trousers.

He grimaced. The scratchy wool, fine for keeping him awake during church service, irritated his morning hard-on.

Pushing a hand under his waistband, he redistributed the weight of his stones and coerced his cock over to the alternate side, where his erection would hopefully be less obvious. Looking down, he checked the repair.

Shit. Unless the woman he was off to see wore thick spectacles, she was bound to see the bulge. Ten inches of flint was damn near impossible to hide. Something had to give.

Ripping open his trousers, he fisted himself, his grip unflinching as he struck flint until sparks flew. The stream of ejaculate arced, the plug caught in the folds of the handkerchief he managed to whip out just in time. After balling up the evidence and tossing it into the laundry basket, he trotted his ass to the washstand with his limp cock hanging out.

The Bar Harbor Inn provided two baths per floor, his and her accommodations, with modern white porcelain fixtures in each. For convenience’s sake, every guest room also came equipped with a basic basin, pitcher, and chamber pot.

He tried to avoid the mirror hanging above the washstand but his reflection outsmarted him. Wincing at his bleary-eyed face, he rubbed a cum-scented hand along his blunt chin.

Facial hair had proven too much a bother in the rough-and-tumble life he had lived as a lad, working timber camps, sleeping in cramped bunkhouses, migrating from one job to the next. Vermin infestations came with the territory, and beards and muttonchop sideburns made fine homes for the nasty little buggers. While he still owned a profitable timber outfit, he quit lumberjacking years ago.

Even so, old habits died a hard death. Regardless of current fashion, he kept a clean-shaven appearance and trimmed hair, the strands well below the ear, but not brushing too far past the collar. And he never slicked it back or styled it up with any of those fancy gentlemen’s oils. None of that perfumed pomade for him. That shit reminded him of bear grease, and there was no reason to give folks another reason to call him Bear when his size had already earned him the nickname from his brothers. They’d had some gall too, considering they all looked alike.

Donovan men were tall and black-haired. That was just the way it went. His eldest brother Doyle stood well over six feet. His middle brother John was about the same, if not a bit more. He, himself, had topped six-two at thirteen, and that was before his growth spurt. A gigantic growth spurt.

To minimize his wild-animal appearance, Theo spoke softly. Leastwise, he never growled. For the most part, he was big but harmless.

He hoped the woman he was off to meet agreed.

In preparation for the big introduction, he had bathed the night before. Shaved, too. Even so, he moved his fingers over his face, hunting down any stray bristles he might have missed. First impressions were important.

Hmm. Not too bad. Another session with the straightedge would wait for later.

Attending to the rest, he splashed water on his face. Keeping an eye on the hour, he sluiced out his mouth, a heap of salt added to the tin cup for good measure. The chamber pot caught his rinsing spit. After polishing his crooked smile with a line of tooth powder spread on a brush, he salt-rinsed and then spit again. He concluded his toilette with washing, drying, and stowing his cock away.

There was no hiding the sad fact that he was too big and raw-boned to be mistaken for handsome. Ready or not – not – Theo left his private apartment next to the tavern for the inn’s front hall, the reception area for guests.

Be back in time to take the new group of rusticators for a midmorning tramp, he hollered into Jess, who was putting together flapjacks and biscuits in the kitchen. A dozen or so have a hankering to hike the old Wabanaki hunting trail. Some talk about seeing Sieur de Monts Spring too. ‘Course, the damn city slickers also claim to have a burning desire to climb Cadillac Mountain. When they see how far they have to truck in their stiff shoes, I wager their soft haunches will never leave the buckboard seat.

Buckboard, huh? Jess gave an easy laugh. Feed wagon not good enough for ‘em, then?

According to longstanding rumor, the ladies all took to Jess’s quiet ways and winning smile, enough leastwise to land him in a different widow’s bed every night of the week.

He was particular though, even discriminating, seeing as he did to only the needs of lonely local women. Even so, Jess spread himself mighty thin. Some nights he got so busy, gossip said he had to double up on the females, two at a time, in his bed.

Hey, Bear, when you buying that fancy new carriage to hook up behind the team? asked his smart aleck cook.

Theo shook his head. Hell, flatlanders must think paved streets run between the trees up here in Desert Island. You wait and see, next vacationers will be aiming to drive Ford’s gasoline-powered motorcars through the mountains.

Inspired by the paintings of the Hudson River School artists, wealthy visitors, including robber barons from eastern cities like Boston and New York and Philadelphia and such, came to Maine in droves by coach, train, and steamers, all of them hoping to experience Authentic Maine, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

Whatever the expression meant, it was fine by Theo. Rusticators kept his inn’s thirty rooms filled and him in greenbacks.

Make up a picnic basket to feed twelve heartily, would you, Jess?

Ayuh. Will do, Bear. Get right on it. Pheasant soup to pig-hunted truffles. Caviar and everything. With a good-natured chuckle, Jess waved him off and then returned to his wooden spoon stirring.

The inn’s side door slapping at his back, Theo stumbled down the inn’s stone stairs, his wool coat and tweed cap bundled up under an arm. Hugging the craggy shore, he headed out for Josie’s lighthouse.

Maybe, by the time he arrived at the meeting spot, the frosty nip in the March winds would cool his male fever. Maybe the brisk walk would dull his sharp sexual appetite. Maybe the soothing sounds of the ocean would lull his carnal agitation. Jerking off had hardly taken the edge off his cock-hunger.

After rounding a rocky bluff, Theo spied a lone female off in the distance. As he had stipulated in their correspondence, she waited for him – right on time – on the short jetty leading out to the beacon. Was her