"Sorry about that—" He paused, realizing he'd never allowed the amazing woman to tell him her name. The cruel, crashing waves of his arousal had abated somewhat, suddenly making it imperative that he find out who she was that instant. He lifted his head and opened his mouth but his query dissolved on his tongue.
He found himself leaning up on his elbows in a sleeping bag that looked like he'd staged a wrestling match in it. His cock was still rock-hard, despite the fact that instead of being sheathed in the stunning woman's pussy it merely throbbed against the pressure of a wood floor.
A half hour later Ryan reentered the bedroom, feeling miserable and grouchy after folding his large frame into a bathtub. Christ, he couldn't remember how old he'd been the last time he took a bath—three? At least there'd been plenty of hot water, although it ran through a separate tap from the cold, making it necessary for him to constantly check the water and attenuate the outflow of the two nozzles.
He got a strange, masochistic satisfaction from the fact that he didn't feel comfortable jerking off in the bathtub like he would in the shower. He deserved to suffer for getting more turned on than he'd ever been in his entire life over a dream woman.
But it hadn't been a dream, at least not like any dream Ryan had ever had.
Ramiro had called her a ghost.
"She's not dead," he said abruptly out loud.
Great. Now he wasn't only having hallucinatory sex that was so hot it'd probably put him off fucking forever for fear of the bitter disappointment of comparison, he also was talking to himself out loud.
And his cock still throbbed next to his thigh, indignant at being left unattended.
One brief recollection of what it'd been like to be buried fast in the woman's heat while she looked up at him with those big, velvety eyes stiffened him to full readiness once again.
It was going to be a day planned gleefully for Ryan by the devil himself.
He grabbed his jacket and shoved his hand in the pocket, poking around for his car keys.
His gaze landed on the red book of poetry. It still lay on the floor where he'd le
ft it after becoming bizarrely obsessed over those damned old photographs.
He bent slowly and picked up the book, hesitating for several seconds before he opened it. He impatiently flipped through the first few pages. The inscription was written in a long, spidery scrawl in ink that had faded to near invisibility.
September 14, 1904 Dearest Hope:
Happy twenty-third birthday. If the love you so generously show to your fellow man comes back to you even in partial measure, you will be a wealthy woman indeed. God loves and cherishes you.
As I do, Father
Ryan remained immobile, reading the inscription repeatedly as if he thought he'd discover something new and crucial amongst the relatively innocuous words.
A strange feeling of helplessness overcame him. He raised the book to his nose and inhaled, searching for the elusive fragrance of gardenias amongst a host of other scents like a miner panning for a bright flash of gold in a pile of rocks.
Before he could question his sanity, he reached into his breast pocket for a pen. He allowed the book to fall open to the well-thumbed page and wrote rapidly in the margin.
He tossed the book on his sleeping bag.
"Hope?"
His gaze swept over every corner of the room before he walked out, feeling every bit the fool that he undoubtedly was.
Chicago. 1906
Hope Stillwater lay in her brass bed and sweated.
The gas radiator rattled loudly in an ineffective attempt to heat her chilly room, so she couldn't blame her overheated state on anything but herself and her scandalous thoughts.
Much to her chagrin, her eyes kept returning to her wardrobe despite the fact that she tried her mightiest to keep them trained on the dull essay she attempted to read. Her father was a leading member of the Purity Foundation and had given her the tract earlier this evening to peruse.
Yes, yes, we know that white slavery is wrong, she thought impatiently as she set aside the essay and picked up her favorite book of Shakespearean sonnets instead. What creature in their right mind would condone such abhorrent practices? Hope herself engaged in an almost daily personal campaign to stop the kidnapping, and rape of innocent young women with the eventual purpose of selling them to brothels in the infamous Levee District.
But why must organizations like the Purity Foundation con-, tinually couch the issue in the black-and-white terms of keeping "decent" women safe from the slavering, bestial nature of men? It seemed to Hope sometimes that the strict sexual prohibitions placed upon women made the ideal environment for white slavers like the notorious Diamond Jack Fletcher to flourish at his trade.