Rosemarie Ch. 01

It was the end of July in Indianapolis Indiana, but even the privilege of living on Meridian Street in the most exclusive part of the city, just blocks from the Governor's mansion and the Booth Tarkingtons, didn't spare the Marion Thorntons and their guests from the oppressive summer heat of 1919. They were hosting their neighbors, the William Colliers, for dinner in honor of Mr. Collier's nephew, who was visiting from New York. Jake Collier worked for his father in the publishing business however had decided to take his uncle up on an invitation to visit them in Indiana for part of the summer. Therefore the Colliers, their two daughters and their nephew Jake were breaking bread with the Thorntons and their only child, their daughter, Rosemarie.

While they loved their daughter dearly, Marion and Evelyn Thornton were afraid that she was looked upon as somewhat over the hill by the young men of their acquaintance. While she was undeniably attractive, with dark hair, rosy cheeks and a lovely red mouth, at age 23 she was considered a bit long in the tooth by many. The fact that she had waited for three years for her fiancé to return from the war in Europe, only to have him return with a French bride, was completely beside the point. That, combined with her natural reserve, led many of the gossips of their circle to speculate that there was some untoward reason that she was unable to keep her young man's interest.

As a result of all this supposing, Rosemarie had few suitors however wasn't nearly as concerned about it as she knew her parents were. Truth be told, there were few amongst their acquaintance that held her interest. However, given her parents concern over her marital status, she had a sneaking suspicion that the dinner that they'd given wasn't so much to welcome Jake and demonstrate the hospitality that Hoosiers were so famous for, as to introduce him to their daughter.

Had Jake any idea that July in Indiana was the meteorological equivalent to the steam bath at the Yacht Club in New York, he would have postponed his visit. However, a young woman whom he'd been seeing a bit too regularly had been looking at him with definite matrimonial leanings, so it had seemed like an opportune time to put some distance between them. Now that he was here, it had occurred to him earlier in the evening that the dinner was not, perhaps, as innocent as it had seemed. However, as Rosemarie was not an unpleasant looking young woman, he didn't object to the manipulation. After all, his visit was only three weeks in length and then he'd be gone.

After dinner they retired to the large library, with the men taking up residence at one end and indulging in after dinner cigars, while the ladies settled in at the other and spoke of the upcoming social season in the fall. Mrs. Thornton mentioned that Rosemarie was also heading up a fundraiser for the downtown library in a few weeks in order to make some repairs to the building.

"Yes, Rose is an avid reader, Mr. Collier," Evelyn Thornton said to Jake in what she hoped was a subtle effort to give the two something in common to talk about. "I dare say she's read many of the things your father's company has published."

"Indeed, Miss Thornton?" Jake said, acknowledging Rosemarie politely. "And, what are you currently reading, if I may ask? I know we've published several new mysteries recently that have been very popular."

"Actually, I'm reading 'In Defense of Women'. Mother thinks it's a bit radical, but I think it has several interesting points," Rose said, noting the surprise on his face. "I don't believe that I agree with all it says, for instance I don't believe all men to be the bumbling fools that the author seems to label them, but I believe it has many distinguishing thoughts."

"I know many who share your opinion. I also know many who think Mr. Mencken is a complete fool, but it's mostly men who follow that train of thought so I suppose it's understandable," Jake said with a tinge of irony.

The two talked for a time more before Jake was drawn into conversation by his uncle and Mr. Thornton, largely involving the bank of which Mr. Thornton was president and the current projects that his uncle's architecture firm was involved in. Finally, shortly after ten the Colliers bid the Thorntons a good night and walked down the wide sidewalk to their equally impressive house next door. It was just a short time later that the occupants of both houses were in bed, seeking sleep in the midst of the stifling heat.

Rose woke up several hours later, bathed in perspiration. While both of her bedroom windows were already open, she crossed to the French doors that opened to the small balcony just outside her room and opened them, trying to encourage even the smallest hint of air circulation.

Crossing over to her washstand, she poured water from the pitcher into the large bowl and dipped a cloth into it. While the Thornton house had a large bath with a shower, Rose always kept the water pitcher in her room full in the summer for situations just like this one. She often rose in the middle of the night in order to cool off with a quick "bird bath" as her mother called them.

Lifting her waist length hair from her neck, she dipped the cloth in the water and ran it around her neck and then down her throat, stroking up and down as the water cooled her skin. Glancing at the French doors that were standing wide open, she dismissed her concern that anyone from the Collier residence would be up and about, and untied the front of her thin nightgown. Dipping the cloth in the basin once more, she stroked it down her chest and between her breasts where the moisture from her body had trickled. Unable to resist the temptation of cooling herself further, she slipped the straps of the gown down over her shoulders and arms to her waist and then down over her hips, until it lay at her feet in a limp pool of fabric. She felt decadent, standing in front of the open doors without a stitch on as she bathed herself, but the slight breeze combined with the water to provide some relief and cool her skin.

As she ran the cloth over her breasts and stomach, her mind drifted back to Arlen, her former fiancée, and their time together before he left for the war. While she was no loose woman, Rose was no prude either and recalled several Sunday afternoon drives when Arlen would pick her up in his new, enclosed Cadillac sedan and take her for a drive. They would often end up at their favorite spot along a secluded pond outside of the city and would indulge in some heavy petting. While they had never completely given into their carnal desires, Rose couldn't help but remember the feeling of his mouth upon her neck as he unbuttoned the front of her dress, or his hands upon her breasts, squeezing and caressing, circling the nipple with his thumb as he plundered her mouth with his tongue. The closest they had ever come to consummating their love was when they were reclining in the back seat of the car while Arlen had suckled her breasts as she caressed him through the fabric of his dark pants. That was the day that he'd unfastened his trousers and shown her how to please him with her hands. She had been an adept pupil and soon had him worked into a fever, with him ejaculating into her best linen handkerchief. After that they jested about making sure Rose brought a spare hankie along when they went for a drive.

As her thoughts had wandered, Rose had absently caressed herself with the wet cloth, returning to her breasts and traveling down over her stomach to the thatch of dark, downy curls over and over. Shaking herself back to the present, she patted herself dry with a towel and then retrieved a fresh nightgown from her bureau. Slipping back into bed, she had almost drifted off when a movement in the full length mirror which stood opposite the French doors caught her eye. At first she thought it was perhaps a lightning bug that she saw in the reflection, but then realized that what she saw was the small, steady red glow of....something. Then, to her astonishment, she saw Jake Collier wander out to the second floor terrace of the Collier residence, cigarette in hand.....the terrace that was directly across from her bedroom! Her face flushed with renewed heat as she realized that the Collier's guest rooms were on that side of the house on the second floor. But, surely he hadn't seen her...had he? As she looked at the spot where she'd stood in front of the bureau, she realized that she would have been standing directly in the ribbon of moonlight that fell across her floor. However, she had been standing far enough into the room that the only way anyone could have seen her would to have been to look straight in from the adjacent room at the Collier's. From the room that, it appeared, Jake Collier occupied!

Rose lay in bed, feeling embarrassment and humiliation, and then ... gradually .... something else. Because, as she lay in her bed, she saw that Jake was looking intently toward her open doors and she thought about what he'd just seen. This man who had spent the evening with her family and was scheduled to spend another three weeks with his relatives had just seen her completely nude. Nude in a way that no one, save her mother, ever had. And, for reasons that she couldn't quite explain, she suddenly found that knowledge exciting. She continued to watch him in her mirror as he stood, wearing nothing but his trousers, casually leaning over the iron rail of the second floor terrace as he finished his cigarette, his eyes still trained on her open doors. Was....was he waiting for her to return? To perhaps reveal herself to him once again?

All of these thoughts ran tumultuously thought her mind as she lay there and watched his reflection until he took one last drag on his cigarette, flicked it over the rail and then returned to his room. As Rose looked at his retreating form, she knew that it would be a good long while before sleep found her that night.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake had been unable to sleep as well, with the combination of the abysmal heat and the thoughts of the young woman that he'd met that night running through his mind. In just the short time they'd conversed he found her interests, at least in reading material, to be different than most of the young ladies of his set back in New York. Their tastes ran to romances and mysteries, while Rose had surprised him with her interest a book of heavier substance. He had also been surprised that she had recently read and absorbed a book about the Ottoman Empire and the political upheaval that had resulted in the assassinations of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, leading up to the war that had just been fought. A beautiful woman who showed an interest in the realms of the world which were not directly related to her own corner of it was a bit out of Jake's area of expertise.

In Jake's world he was known as a distinguished young man who would one day inherit his father's publishing empire, not simply by the fact of heredity, but also because of his business sense. He talked intelligently about numerous subjects with men who were decades his senior, always leaving the impression of a coolly intellectual young businessman who would go far in the world. As a result, Jake experienced his intellectual stimulation either with the men that he worked with or the men at the club, not from his lady friends.

Jake, as many men of the day, divided the women of his own age into two categories; those you married and those you slept with. The former were the young ladies of society whom you escorted to all the right parties in all the right places attended by all the right people. Your names were linked in the newspaper and your families brunched together on Sundays. These young women, while most were attractive and witty in their own way, knew that their reputation was one of their biggest bargaining chips in the matrimonial sense. Therefore, many clung to their virtue until their wedding nights or, at the very least, until an engagement ring was on their finger, a date was set and the invitations sent out, before they allowed their betrothed to sample the forbidden fruit. These were the women who would be the mother of your children, your partner through life and a reflection of you; therefore a man had to choose carefully and not do his thinking with his cock.

The latter kind of woman was much easier to deal with, in Jake's opinion. Every few months or so Jake and two or three of his friends would make the trip to Atlantic City to, supposedly, enjoy the shore and fresh seafood. In actuality they spent their time enjoying the charms of the girls in Lady Lilly's brothel. While Jake had dallied with a few of the local girls here and there, over the years he had decided he preferred the women at Lilly's for a variety of reasons. He hated to build up the hopes of some of the young women in the area whom he met at the beach or along the boardwalk, young ladies who were looking for a prospective husband and were sometimes willing to spread their legs for someone as handsome and prosperous as he, in hopes that it was a gamble that would pay off with a marriage proposal. After a particularly tearful parting with a young miss that he'd spent the better part of a week with, and a good portion of that time plundering her delightful little pussy in one of the beachfront hotels, he'd decided that he'd limit his future encounters to professional women. Women who knew the score and, for the right price, relieved his stiff cock AND his conscience all at the same time.

His favorite girl at Lady Lilly's was an enthusiastic young Jewess named Rebekkah with long dark hair, large, soulful brown eyes and beautiful, pendulous breasts with large dark brown nipples. She was always thrilled to see him and would drag him up the stairs for hours of spirited fucking in any and every position known to man. Rebekkah had taught Jake a wide variety of ways to please a woman and introduced him to more ways that a woman could pleasure a man than he had known existed. He had always wondered how someone who was as young as she could have developed such a sexual repertoire, but decided to not question it too deeply and just thank his lucky stars for it. It was she who first introduced him to the delights of oral stimulation and he would never forget the first time she had closed her mouth over his swollen cock and taken the entire length down her throat, working it in and out until he had shot his cum and she had swallowed each and every drop. She had also been the first woman who had allowed him into her rear entry, showing him how to ease the way with fingers coated in sweet oil before thrusting his thick cock into her tiny brown opening. He'd developed an immediate affinity for that particular pleasure and loved to grasp her hips and rock her back onto his length over and over, as the sounds of their grunts and slapping skin had filled the room.

But the thing that he had liked the best about her was her complete lack of inhibition when it came to nudity. Most of the women that he'd been with, those who WEREN'T prostitutes, had felt the need to cover themselves with either sheets, blankets, robes or nightgowns immediately after sex. He'd always thought it odd that, even though they may have just fucked their brains out, the woman would immediately feel the need to cover the body that he'd been laying on top and inside of just moments before. However, Rebekkah was happy to walk around as naked as the day she was born from the time that he would arrive at Lady Lilly's until he left. As a matter of fact, she would often walk him to the front door and kiss him a passionate goodbye without a stitch of clothing on as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Jake enjoyed nothing better than waking up and seeing her standing naked by the window, allowing his eyes to travel over every inch of her body. He loved the female form and, during the weeks that he traveled to Atlantic City, he always got to indulge in that pleasure to his hearts content.

However, before he'd come to visit his uncle there had been no time to make a much needed trip to relieve many of the tensions that had built up, not only at work but by the teasing of Mabel Claridge ,who was determined to link her name to his in the matrimonial announcements in the newspaper. She would unfailingly find a way to innocently press her breasts against his arm as she leaned over to whisper to him, or allow her hand to briefly run along the inside of his leg as they were at the theater. While he had finally realized that he would never see her as marriage material, she had managed to put him in an erotic mindset that had had no outlet. Therefore, as he had sat in his room at his uncle's house at two AM after the dinner at the Thornton's, Jake could hardly believe his eyes and his good fortune.

He had been too hot to sleep for long, thus he found himself sitting in a chair facing the doors that opened out onto the second floor terrace of the large, stone house. He was smoking a cigarette, his head leaning against the back of the chair when he saw the French doors of one of the second story bedrooms in the Thornton house open. He watched as Rosemarie opened them wide and stood for a moment, running her hand down her throat to remove the moisture there. He watched as she moved back into the room, as she poured the water into the large bowl on the bureau. He realized that she would be unable to see him if she looked over, that he was sitting deep in the dark room. However the moonlight spilled directly through her doors, creating the perfect pale spotlight in this erotic performance. He continued to watch as she stroked the cloth down her throat and over her chest, then his breath caught as he saw her look his way before she unlaced the front of her gown. He felt the throb of his cock pressing against his pants as he watched the thin, white covering slither down her body until she stood there in the moonlight, her body completely exposed to his gaze. His eyes traveled hungrily over the lush curves of her breasts, seen only in profile but incredible just the same. He continued down over the womanly curve to her waist and soft swell of her stomach, just barely catching a glimpse of the patch of dark hair between her softly turned thighs. And her ass! What a perfectly formed delight, neither too flat or too full, just two perfectly curved globes that begged to be cupped and caressed by a man's hands.

How was it possible that she had hidden that luscious body beneath the dress that she'd worn earlier? Its modest cut had made her seem to have an ordinary, trim figure but the woman that he was watching could have been the inspiration for Venus herself!

He continued to watch as she ran the cloth over her body over and over again, seemingly caught up in a trance, whether caused by the heat or something else, he couldn't tell. All he knew was he was loath for the performance to end when he saw her remove the fresh nightgown from the bureau and slip it over her head. He sucked in another draught on his cigarette as he saw her pass from his sight back into the room, presumably to return to bed and seek the elusive sleep that they both craved.

He wandered out onto the terrace, leaning against the rail to finish his cigarette and to try to alleviate the pressure in his crotch. He once again pondered this woman whom he'd met that night. A woman who was demure on the outside, had an active, intelligent mind, and who had a body that could rival that of any woman that he'd ever known, both socially AND carnally. He wondered how he could ever act in a casual manner towards her when they next met, having seen her as he just had. He didn't know what the next three weeks would bring, but he suddenly found himself hoping that the heat of the summer wouldn't break anytime soon!