Unfinished (Historical Fiction) - By Harper Alibeck Page 0,9
if he spent a year's salary, nipped in tight at the waist, her ribs narrowing to a point so simple in diameter that he wondered if he'd even need both hands to close the space. The three-quarters sleeves showed she was a modernite, not afraid to show wrist, and James wondered how free thinking she was in bed.
Her skirt dropped off from under the tight waist, made of a fine white material that he thought was linen, as it was an off-white color and slightly wrinkled. Three horizontal stripes along the hem of the skirt, perfectly matching the heather tone of her jacket, finished the look. She was a fashion plate, but an odd mixture of old-fashioned Boston style and progressive dress.
The woman was as tiny as he was big. He was close to triple her weight, he assumed, and would just as well be able to eat her entire head as plant a passionate kiss on those poison lips. He wondered what she looked like without the armor, or wearing a simple, flowing silk dress. Again, arousal plagued him, and he cursed his lack of undergarments. The morning had been a blur of hangover and prying last night's woman from his bed, and in the rush to smooth his hair and find a presentable business suit, he'd found himself without anything clean. The thick wool of his buttoned suit pants scratched against his hard bulge and he willed thoughts of Lilith Stone away, thinking instead of the night's lecture before him. Dr. David Burnham was in town, talking about Ellis Havelock's findings on the sexual invert and its importance in human development and society.
The erection lingered; attempting to preoccupy himself only brought him to the edge of an enormous hole in the middle of the road, nearly pitching down a good twenty feet into an open sewer pit. That did the trick. Construction on the Charles River Dam had been ongoing for months now, and his bosses bemoaned the interference in the roads, making the commute to the office damn near impossible.
The water table rose, and runoff from Beacon Hill filled some of the lower parts of the Back Bay, leading to flooding. Getting from South Central Station to the common was hard enough. Avoiding these unmanned pits was harder. What wasn't hard, anymore, was the other brain James' body used for the wrong thoughts at the wrong times. He thanked God he hadn't absentmindedly fallen down that enormous hole, for he'd surely have broken a leg. Or worse. Such an ignominious way to harm oneself while being distracted by Lilith Stone.
Fury and flush fought each other within her. The morning meeting whipped through her mind at breakneck speed, repeating over and over. Her father's attempt – yet again! – to declare her incompetent. That stupid lawyer. The bear in the room. An attractive bear, who lit her skin and blood on fire in a different way, all flush and flesh where her father simply made her pride burn.
Why was she comparing her father to this James Hillman? What was wrong with her?
Ah, her father had been trying to figure that out for years.
In truth, nothing was wrong.
Everything was wrong.
He had told her once that she had every quality he could possibly hope for in a child. Perseverance, innate intelligence, keen analytical ability, a good judge of character, and a steel-filled spine. But she was the wrong gender.
Oh, how he'd pounded that into her from day one.
“Then why didn't you have a son, father?” she'd screamed in response. They'd fought the day before he sent her to McLean, and she remembered the day in sharp relief, her life bisected in two by her committal.
His reply, so steady and low, chilled her. “Because your mother seems capable of only providing me with females and idiots.” Julia had been twelve at the time, nonverbal, and recently toilet trained. Her mother had taken up residence at the house in Toronto then, leaving Lilith in Boston to attend Dana Hall School in Wellesley. She'd been in her final year there, ready to move on to Radcliffe.
Rarely shocked into silence, Lilith stood stunned and wordless. Stone had grimaced and reached toward her, an apology in his eyes that would never make it past his lips.
“I...I speak the truth,” he sighed, tucking what little emotion he'd revealed away.
“Then may I speak freely?”
“When do you not, Lilith?” The sarcasm hung in the air like mid-summer's humidity in the Back Bay.
“You are a monster. That's why mother