Page 38 of Nineteen Eighty

He watched her over the bowl, letting her intense eyes eat away at his soul.

And when he finished eating, he asked, “Hey, I was thinking. Wanna fuck?”

Her green eyes sparkled in the dusty shack. “Jesse, my baby, that is, won’t be awake for another couple of hours.”

“And your husband?”

“Even longer.”

Charles rolled his car behind Ophélie just after midnight. His exhaustion kept him from parking it inside the old livery. He didn’t even know if he could walk that far back to the house, with the afternoon he’d had.

Angelique. Dear Lord in heaven, he’d met his sexual match. Perhaps his sexual nemesis.

The woman had taken him to bed, but she hadn’t been after what he’d been asking for. There’d been ropes and shocking violence. Whips. A thick-linked chain. He’d come twelve times. Twelve! Not even in the days where he pretended to go to college had he been able to summon such stamina. Every slap against his flesh sent his libido screaming into overdrive. When she did that thing with her finger… God, no one had ever dared try that on him before, but he’d let her, and if someone had told him that move was an instant orgasm he might’ve tried it on himself sooner.

In the morning, he’d be bruised, head to toe.

Charles smiled. Abbeville. Angelique.

He hadn’t gone down for this, but it turned out to be just what he’d needed.

Cordelia was asleep in the parlor, Adrienne snoring against her shoulder. Charles hated to wake her, but knew Cordelia would want him to, so they could put sweet Ade back in her crib.

“Oh! I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“It’s all right,” Charles said, keeping his voice low. “Want me to take her up?”

Cordelia gently peeled the infant away. “Sure. If she wakes, she might be hungry. There’s a bottle in the fridge in her room.”

Charles nodded, as if he had a clue how to feed her.

But that wasn’t true. He’d fed Nicolas. He’d done everything for his son, in what now seemed an entire eternity ago.

“Everything okay here?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Charles didn’t know why he was forcing this small talk, but he thought it had something to do with trying to bring himself back down to reality after that surreal afternoon with Angelique Fontaine. “How are the girls? Nicolas?”

“The girls are fine. They had play dates with their cousins today, so they fell asleep hours ago. It’s Tuesday, so Nicolas is in New Orleans.”

“What do you mean?”

“We talked about this. He’s living with Augustus on the weekdays now, at least during the school year. His school is only a mile from your brother’s house.”

Charles didn’t remember this conversation at all, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. He vaguely remembered saying no, unwinding this arrangement, but that had been months ago.

“Right. Okay, I’m going up to bed. You should do the same.”

“I will. Oh, I almost forgot. Maureen called. She wants you to stand as godfather to Alain.”

Charles was surprised by this. “Really? She said that?”

“She said that. The christening is next month, so you should let her know soon, one way or another.”

“Godfather,” he whispered as he carried his infant daughter up the stairs. After all the bad blood between him and Maureen, it was the last thing he expected.

And as he laid Adrienne down in her crib, holding his breath for the cries that would signal an even longer night, he remembered something else.

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