Nan Ryan (7 page)

Johnny Roulette felt his heart kick painfully against his bare ribs when he looked at the tiny dark-haired beauty, naked save for her sheer black stockings, blue satin garters, and blue satin slippers. Of all the women he’d had, of all the ones he’d seen nude, the one standing before him now was by far the most beautiful. Taking a step back, he shook his head, unbelieving.

“Jesus, darlin’, you’re pretty.” She started toward him. He held up both hands, palms out. “Stay there just as you are for a minute. Let me look at you, sweetheart.”

Shyly, Nevada stood before him, an erotic nymphet from his fondest sexual dreams. Her dark hair cascaded down around her shoulders; a long shimmering lock curled appealingly around one breast. Her skin was a luminous alabaster that brought to mind fine cultured pearls. Her breasts, high and full, were tipped with the palest shade of rose. Her delicate ribs showed beneath the pale skin; her waist, as he’d already learned, was incredibly small. Her stomach was so flat as to be concave, but her hips flared voluptuously. Her legs were not long, but they were perfectly shaped, her knees dimpled beneath the black stockings. Between her ivory thighs a perfect triangle of dense curls was as black as the seductive stockings hugging her legs.

Staring at her with hot appreciative eyes, Johnny Roulette was again struck by the highly seductive blend of babyish innocence and earthy provocativeness. She was every man’s fantasy of sweet and naughty sexiness.

Swallowing hard, Johnny Roulette smiled, took a step toward her, put his hands into her hair at the sides of her head, and tilted her face up to his. Brushing his open lips to hers, he said into her mouth, “Let me love you.”

It was all a sweet blur for Nevada after that. There were hot, hot kisses and Johnny, on his knees before her, taking her shoes off, peeling her black stockings down her legs, and impulsively kissing her naked toes while she clung to his wide bare shoulders to keep from falling.

Then she was lying on her back in the very middle of that soft, cool bed and Johnny was leaning over her, murmuring endearments, pressing kisses to her eyes, her ears, her cheeks, her throat.

When he rose from the bed and began unbuttoning his tight black trousers, Nevada turned her head and watched shamelessly. Her eyes swept over his broad, powerful chest and heavily corded arms, his long muscular legs as he removed his trousers. When he sent his white linen underwear to the thick carpet below, allowing his thrusting masculinity to spring free, Nevada experienced a twinge of fear. She had never seen a man naked, and while in a way she was horrified, she couldn’t take her eyes off that frighteningly huge shaft of engorged flesh surrounded by thick black curls. Her throat grew tight and dry. Something Johnny had said earlier came rushing back to her, and now it held new meaning;
What I have in mind may be impossible for us
. Staring at the awesomely big, naked man, Nevada knew exactly what he had meant and her apprehension escalated.

But then Johnny was back on the bed, kissing her, his hand cupping her face tenderly, his tongue on hers, and her fear evaporated.

She settled into the softness of the satin-sheeted bed and sighed with pleasure when Johnny nuzzled his sure, slow way down to her breasts. And when she felt his warm wet lips enclose a throbbing nipple, she said his name and put her hands into his hair. She held him to her while he gently sucked, his tickling mustache adding to her bliss.

For a long, lovely time Johnny did nothing more than kiss her mouth and her breasts. When finally she was writhing against him, her little body burning, Johnny laid a hand on her flat, trembling stomach. A muscle jumped in his jaw when he realized that this beautiful naked woman was so small his big square hand practically covered her entire belly.

Nevada noticed too. Her passion-glazed eyes lowered to the hand resting lightly atop her stomach. It looked larger than ever and darker, lying there on the whiteness of her stomach. It was a square, powerful hand. The gambler’s fingers were long and tapered, nails blunt cut and clean. A hand strong enough to choke the very life from a man.

But it was a slow, gentle hand on a woman.

Nevada watched that big brown hand move caressingly down over her stomach. She held her breath when it nudged her thighs apart and Johnny, turning his hand over, let his knuckles glide down the sensitive insides of her thighs. And she found out just how gentle that brown hand was when, carefully, slowly raking through the curls concealing that most feminine part of her, Johnny again caressed her with one well-placed dark finger.

Nevada’s back arched and her head bore into the satin-cased pillow as the tip of Johnny’s middle finger touched her with a tenderness and skill that made all the air rush from her lungs.

“Johnny!” she exclaimed, her eyes flying up to his handsome face. His gaze met hers and she saw a hot light shining in the depths of his black eyes.

“I know, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Nodding frantically, Nevada became aware of other things that felt good as well: the crisp hair of his groin, the hot hardness of his erection pulsing against her bare thigh. His need was physically evident.

But desire, she would, soon learn, is often a greedy, selfish emotion, and being healthy and quite human, Nevada was most aware of his slipping, sliding fingertip spreading heat and pleasure with its slow, gentle touch.

Johnny, brushing kisses to Nevada’s open mouth, continued to caress her until he had her silkily wet and completely ready. Carried away, blazing hot, Nevada simply sighed and nodded her agreement when he murmured, “Darlin’, you can take me easiest if you get on top.”

Johnny, swiftly stretched out on his back, put his hands to Nevada’s waist, and lifted her astride him. With one strong hand remaining at her waist, he urged her up into a kneeling position, then slowly, carefully brought her back down on his straining erection. Nevada was so blazing hot and so much in love, she didn’t cry out from the piercing agony of his penetration. Her small body quivering with shock and pain, she gripped Johnny’s ribs, pushed down and settled herself on his engorged flesh, and made not a sound.

But Johnny Roulette did.

His black eyes widening with drunken dismay at what he had done, he swore loudly, “Dear God in heaven!”

7

Johnny Roulette awoke the next morning with a toothache, a headache—and a heartache.

Bright summer sunlight streamed through the open portholes of the luxurious
Moonlight Gambler
stateroom and into his closed eyes. Slowly his heavy lids lifted and Johnny reluctantly roused from a deep liquor- and loving-induced slumber. Everything about him hurt. His jaw was throbbing, his head pounding, his stomach afire, his heart squeezing painfully in his naked chest.

Cautiously, hoping against hope he was alone in the tumbled bed, Johnny slowly turned his aching head. And saw on a beige satin pillow beside him, the pale angelic-looking face of Nevada Marie Hamilton. Turned toward him, she was sleeping as peacefully as a newborn babe in her crib. Long dark eyelashes made spiky crescents on her ivory cheeks and her mouth—that soft sweet mouth—was slightly parted.

Frowning, Johnny let his eyes slide down only as far as her bare lovely breasts before turning away, impulsively gritting his teeth and paying dearly for it. The stabbing pain in his aching wisdom tooth increased dramatically from the thoughtlessly applied pressure.

Johnny’s eyes closed with agony, physical and mental, as it all came flooding back. The onset of the miserable toothache. Drinking hard liquor in his Plantation House suite. Boarding the
Gambler
at dusk.

Nevada onstage, singing “Frankie and Johnnie.” Nevada tossing the dice and winning. Nevada sitting on his lap at supper. Nevada standing before him wearing nothing but black silk stockings and blue satin shoes. Nevada, naked and beautiful, willingly climbing astride him and … and …

Johnny’s pain-clouded black eyes came open to stare unseeingly up at the ceiling.
Damn my hide! Damn me to eternal perdition! It wasn’t bad enough that in my drunken stupor I took the girl’s virginity. I didn’t stop there!

Johnny’s eyes squeezed tightly shut once more as the memory of the remainder of the long night came back.

“Dear God in heaven!” he had sworn loudly when he felt the tearing of tender female flesh and saw the agonized look come over Nevada’s pretty face.

At once he’d gone completely still beneath her and, putting his hands to her upper arms, he’d meant to ease her up and off him as painlessly as possible.

But Nevada had willfully shaken her head no, settled more closely down on him, and squeezed him with her tight sweet body until he’d found it impossible to stop. And after that he’d managed, in his whiskey-and-champagne haze, to shove any demand for adult, responsible behavior aside. He’d lain beneath the bucking beautiful girl, mesmerized by the bounce of her bare breasts, her grinding hips, the close warmth sheathing him, squeezing him, driving all logical thought and good intention right out of his head.

Afterward he had carried her straight to the opulent bath, climbed the carpeted stairs to the marble tub, and stepped into it holding her in his arms. He bathed her, and himself, and climbed out, telling her, Stay right where you are. Trailing water and soapsuds across the deep, rich carpet, he soon returned carrying chilled champagne and two sparkling glasses.

They sat in the tub and drank until at about three in the morning Nevada yawned and said, “Johnny, I’m getting sleepy.”

“I know. Let’s get some rest, sweet,” he said.

But when she stood in the tub and stretched unself-consciously, her small slender body gleaming with beads of water, he wanted her again.

“Wait, darlin’,” he said, continuing to recline in the tub below her.

“What is it?” she asked sleepily, soapy bubbles sliding down her pink-tipped breasts and shapely thighs and slim legs, her naked glory reflected in the tall gilt mirrors surrounding them.

Reaching for her hand, Johnny laced her slender fingers through his, rose to kneel on one knee, and pulled her to him. Burying his face against her slippery belly, he pressed hot kisses to the clean smooth flesh, unbothered by the taste of soap on his tongue.

“Johnny,” she weakly protested, and reluctantly lifting his head, Johnny grinned, puckered his lips, forcefully blew away a cluster of thick bubbles clinging alluringly to the raven curls between her thighs. Nevada giggled, but when his dark face made a move toward her, she gripped the hair of his head and jerked his head back. “Johnny!”

Smiling, he lithely rose before her, took her in his arms, and kissed her. When his lips left hers, he cradled the back of her head in his hand and pressed her face to his gleaming chest. He looked over her head at their images in the mirrors behind her. While he leisurely admired the slender curve of her bare back and narrow waist and firm rounded little bottom, Nevada began to press warm openmouthed kisses to his wet chest.

They stood in the marble tub, embracing amid the glistening bubbles, becoming more and more aroused with each breathless kiss, each intimate touch, each glimpse of their bare entwined bodies reflected in the mirrors.

Desire dictating, they climbed out of the marble tub but did not return to the bed. Wet, slippery, and passionate, they mated wildly there on the deep blue carpet before the tall gilt mirrors, relishing the sweet joy and recording forever in their respective brains, the erotic sight of themselves making love.

It happened all over again once they were back in their soft bed. Meaning only to go to sleep, they lazily kissed each other good night. When those kisses strayed to other places, to other parts of the body besides their mouths, a slow sure fire began to burn, a fire that was finally extinguished by a pleasingly lethargic kind of loving. They took their slow indolent time about it and when, long after the act had begun, they attained fulfillment together, it was by far the sweetest, deepest climax of them all.

“I love you, Johnny Roulette,” Nevada said happily, while she lay draped atop him, her cheek resting on his chest, his body still a part of hers.

Those words rang in Johnny’s ears as he lay naked in the harsh morning sunlight. Sober, guilty, and sorry, he had taken the virginity of a foolishly naive girl who, with her face washed clean of paint and powder, looked to be about fifteen years old.

Wanting nothing more than to get dressed and be gone, Johnny, carefully easing Nevada’s arm from his chest, moved to the bed’s edge, swung his long legs over, and stood up. His eyes never leaving the sleeping woman, he circled the big bed and began collecting his discarded clothes and hurried into the other room.

He was dressed and peeling off some bills to leave her, when she spoke his name. Johnny jumped as though he had been shot and turned to face her. She stood in the open doorway, a sheet wrapped around her, a puzzled expression on her face. He laid the bills on the table. “Why didn’t you wake me, Johnny?”

“I … there was no need.…” He shrugged wide shoulders.

“You’re leaving?” She lifted a hand to push the sleeptumbled hair from her face.