He lowered the stopper and she felt his hand reach beneath the hem of her skirt and slowly move upward along her stocking. 'Open your legs,' he whispered. Clasping the edge of the counter beneath her hands, she did as he asked. He trailed the stopper up along the inside of one thigh, over the top of her stocking and onto the bare skin, moving it in slow circles to the very edge of her panties. She moaned and eased her legs open wider.
He laughed wickedly and withdrew his hand from beneath her skirt. 'Not yet, pet. Not quite yet.'
They moved through the silent store, going from one department to another, talking very little. He caressed her breasts as he fastened an antique Georgian pin to the collar of her blouse, rubbed her buttocks through her skirt while he slid a brush with a filigreed sterling handle down the back of her hair. She tried on a crocodile belt and a pair of kid shoes with needle-pointed toes. In the jewelry department, he removed her pearl earrings and replaced them with gold clips encircled with dozens of tiny diamonds. When she protested the expense, he laughed at her. 'One spin of the roulette wheel, pet. Just one spin.'
He found a white maribou boa and, pushing her against a marble column, slid the blouse from her shoulders. 'You look too much like a schoolgirl,' he declared, reaching behind her to remove her bra.
The silky fabric slipped from his fingers to the carpeted floor, and she stood before him naked from the waist up.
She had large, full breasts capped by flat nipples the size of half-dollars, now hard and puckered from her excitement. He lifted each breast in his hand. She delighted in showing herself to him and stood perfectly still, the chill of the column decidedly welcome against the heat of her back. He tweaked her nipples, and she gasped. With a laugh, he picked up the soft white boa and draped it over her bare shoulders so that it covered her. Then he slowly moved the feathered ends back and forth.
'Jack-' She wanted him to take her there. She wanted to slide down the length of the column, open her legs, and take him inside her.
'I've developed a sudden craving for the taste of Joy,' he whispered. Pushing the boa away on one side, he covered her large nipple with his mouth and began an insistent sucking.
She shivered as heat filled every part of her, burning her internal organs, searing her skin. 'Please…' she murmured. 'Oh, please… don't torture me any longer.'
He pulled away from her, his restless eyes teasing. 'A little longer, pet. I haven't finished playing yet. I think we should look at furs.' And then, with a half-smile that told her he knew exactly how far he had pushed her, he rearranged the boa over her breasts, lightly scraping one nipple with his fingernail as he settled the ends in place.
'I don't want to look at furs,' she said. 'I want…'
But he led her to the elevator where he operated the levers as if he did it every day. As she rode upward with him, only the white feather boa covered her naked breasts.
When they reached the fur salon, Jack seemed to forget her. He moved along the racks, inspecting all the coats and stoles on display before selecting a full-length Russian lynx. The pelts were long and thick, the color silvery white. He studied the coat for a moment and then turned to her.
'Slip off your skirt.'
Her fingers fumbled with the side zipper and for a moment she thought she would have to ask for help. But then the catch gave and she slid the skirt, along with the half-slip beneath, down over her hips and stepped out of them both. The ends of the boa brushed against the very top of her lacy white garter belt.
'The panties. Take the panties off for me.'
Her breath was coming in short, soft gasps as she did as he asked, leaving only her garter belt and stockings in place. Without waiting to be told, she pulled the boa away from her breasts and dropped it to the floor, pushing her shoulders slightly back so he could feast on the sight of her breasts, ripe and outthrust, and her mons with its silky covering of dark hair framed by the lacy white straps of her garter belt.
He walked toward her, the magnificent coat outstretched in his hands, his eyes glittering like the jet studs in his snowy shirtfront. 'To choose the right fur, you have to feel the pelts against your skin… against your breasts…' His voice was as soft as the lynx pelts as he slid the fur along her body, using its texture to excite her. 'Your breasts… your stomach and buttocks… the insides of your thighs…'
She reached for the coat and clasped its fur to her skin. 'Please… You're torturing me. Please stop…'
Once again he drew away, but this time only to slip the jet studs from the front of his shirt. Chloe watched him undress, her heart pounding and her throat tight with desire. When he stood naked before her, he took the coat from her arms and laid it with the pelts turned upward on a low display platform in the center of the room. Then he stepped up and drew her along to stand next to him.
The touch of his naked flesh against hers fired her excitement until she could barely remember to breathe. He ran his hands down along her sides, then turned her so that she faced out toward the display floor. Moving slightly behind her, he began stroking her breasts as if he were arousing her for an invisible audience watching silently in the dark salon. His hand trailed down over her stomach, along her thighs. She felt his penis jutting hard into the side of her hip. His hand moved between her legs, and the heat welled up from his touch, a yearning for release from a myriad of pounding pulses inside her.
He pushed her down into the soft, thick fur. It brushed the backs of her thighs as he opened them and positioned himself between her outspread knees. Turning her cheek into the soft pelts, she tilted up her hips, giving herself to him in the center of the fur salon, on a platform designed to display the very best that Harrods had to offer.
He glanced at his watch. 'The guards should be coming back on duty right now. I wonder how long it will take them to follow our trail here.' Then he thrust himself inside her.
It took a moment for his words to sink in. She let out a hoarse exclamation as she realized what he had done. 'My God! You planned it like this, didn't you?'
He crushed her breasts in his hands and drove himself hard. 'Of course.'
The fire in her body and the terror of discovery joined together in a shattering explosion of feeling. As her orgasm crashed over her, she bit into the flesh of his shoulder. 'Bastard…'
He laughed and then found his own release with a great, noisy groan.
They barely escaped the guards. Drawing on a minimum of his own clothing, Jack threw the lynx coat over Chloe's nakedness and dragged her to the stairway. As her bare feet flew down the steps, his reckless laughter rang in her ears. Before he left the store, he tossed her panties on top of a glass display case along with his engraved calling card.
The next day she received a note saying that his mother had been taken ill and he needed to return temporarily to Chicago. While she waited for him, Chloe lived in an agony of jumbled emotions-anger at the risk to which he had exposed her, excitement at the thrill he had given her, and a wrenching fear that he wouldn't come back. Four weeks passed, and then five. She tried to call him, but the connection was so bad she couldn't make herself understood. Two months slipped by. She was convinced he didn't love her. He was an adventurer, a thrill seeker. He had seen the fat girl inside and wanted nothing more to do with her.
Ten weeks after the night at Harrods, he reappeared as abruptly as he'd left. 'Hello, pet,' he said, standing in the doorway of her house with his cashmere suit coat carelessly hooked over his shoulder. 'I've missed you.'
She fell into his arms, sobbing out her relief at seeing him again. 'Jack… Jack, my darling…'
He ran his thumb across her bottom lip, then kissed her. She drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the face. 'I'm pregnant, you bastard!'
To her surprise, he immediately agreed to marry her, and they were wed three days later at the country home of one of her friends. As she stood next to her handsome bridegroom at the makeshift garden altar, Chloe knew that she was the happiest woman in the world. Black Jack Day could have married anyone, but he had chosen her. As the weeks passed, she determinedly ignored a rumor that his family had disinherited him when he was in Chicago. Instead, she daydreamed about her baby. How exquisite it would be to have the undivided love of two people, husband and child.
A month later, Jack disappeared, along with ten thousand pounds that had been resting in one of Chloe's bank accounts. When he reappeared six weeks later, Chloe shot him in the shoulder with a German Luger. A brief reconciliation followed, until Jack enjoyed another turn of good fortune at the gambling clubs and was off again.
On Valentine's Day 1955, Lady Luck permanently deserted Black Jack Day on the treacherous rain-slicked road between Nice and Monte Carlo. The ivory ball dropped for the last time into its compartment and the roulette wheel
