Chapter 4
As Angel was going back to her room, she passed the open door to her father's bedroom and noticed that the bed still had not been made nor the sheets changed. She lay down on the bed and hugged herself. The sheets still smelled of last night's lovemaking. She thought first of Damien, and then Lucien, and then her mother's lover, Touro. She wrapped her arms and legs around a pillow and rolled over on the bed, her ash blond hair spilling over the side. Glinting in the sunlight was the silver hairbrush—her first lover. Nearby on the dresser stood a framed silver wedding photograph of her father and mother. Angel had been surprised when it had appeared again last spring on her father's dresser top. After her mother had left, her father had disposed of every remembrance of her mother, either had things packed away or thrown out. He had also let the gazebo fall into disrepair. Angel pleaded with him to let her redo it. He agreed. It had been sanded and repainted, and Angel had selected a fabric to recover the furniture as near to what her mother had used as possible. Angel stretched out her arm, picked up the silver frame and stared at it. Her father had been a darkly handsome Frenchman. Odd, she thought, to think of him that way. She had never considered him handsome. Probably because she had never loved him. Her mother was a beautiful young creature with ash blond hair and violet eyes.
After the murder, her mother had fled to New Orleans and her father never mentioned his wife again. Angel wondered if they had been in love. Had they had sex before marriage? Was it good for them? She closed her eyes and wondered how it had been with them.
Maxim Leveque met Suzanne in France. He had been searching for her for a long time ...
"The year was 1918, only a few months after the first World War. Leveque had moved the family's business to Jamaica just before the start of the war. He purchased some land containing the ruins of a manor house which had been destroyed during the native rebellion of the nineteenth century and he had set about building up the remains. A local architect was called in to restore the house with as much authenticity as possible, and when it was finished, Cinnamon Hall, as it came to be called, was one of the most charming of the great houses on the island.
After his business was firmly established and he was settled in his home, Leveque began to feel lonely for the first time in his life. The white islanders were loud and rough and not the sort of people he cared to socialize with. His home had a staff of four native servants who were kept on their toes by a young black housekeeper named Verbena. She had come to work for him after losing both her husband and child in a malaria epidemic on Haiti. She took to Leveque as a sort of compensation and was constantly giving "advice."
"They ain't nothin' wrong with dis house dat a good woman couldn't fix, Monsieur Leveque."
He was annoyed by her impertinence, but he knew that she was right and decided to set about the job of finding himself a wife. The island was filled with many young women who were attracted to the handsome Frenchman, but Leveque found their suntanned, robust appearance unappealing and their manners rude. He was searching for an ideal. A blond pale beauty like his mother had been.
He had to return to France on business and hoped that there he might find a compatible woman to marry. The crossing was slow, but Leveque was expectant of what the trip might bring. He was met in Bassin d'Archchon by his younger brother, Philippe, and his wife. They drove him to Bordeaux where Leveque stayed in his brother's townhouse which was located in the most fashionable part of the city.
After dinner that evening, he explained to his brother and sister-in-law the other purpose of his trip—the business of finding a suitable wife. Philippe's wife, Claudine, was ecstatic. It would give her a chance to be more social than usual. She arranged dinner parties, tea parties and music parties, and although Maxim hated affairs of this sort, he realized that it was the proper procedure to meet young ladies.
He began to despair because none of the parties had turned up anyone that he was even remotely interested in. When the return invitations started coming in, he had been invited to the Jamet estate which was located in the low mountain region just outside Bordeaux. The Jamets were wealthy wine makers and Leveque remembered meeting them at one of the various parties. He was informed by his sister
He began to despair because none of the parties had turned up anyone that he was even remotely interested in. When the return invitations started coming in, he had been invited to the Jamet estate which was located in the low mountain region just outside Bordeaux. The Jamets were wealthy wine makers and Leveque remembered meeting them at one of the various parties. He was informed by his sister-in-law that they had a daughter who had not accompanied her parents to the festivities, and perhaps he would meet her there. Leveque was not very optimistic about the prospect of meeting the daughter of the winemaker. He pictured her as probably being a dumpy, coarse girl of the country, but he had been very wrong.
He first saw Suzanne in the formal gardens sitting beside an ornate gazebo surrounded by male admirers. He had never seen anyone so exquisite as she. She looked as cool and blond as a glass of perfect champagne. She turned and caught his glance and instead of lowering her eyes, she looked at him and smiled slightly. She stood up, excused herself, opened a parasol and walked across the verdant carpet of grass toward a pond. Leveque seized his opportunity and within minutes caught up with her. Leveque was nervous, but her charming directness eased him.
"Hello, monsieur. How do I look close up?"
"Ravishing."
"And how do you mean that? Am I ravishing to look at or do you mean to ravish me?"
"Both."
"Well, you're honest anyway. Why did you want to talk to me, consieur?"
"I'm looking for a wife."
She started to laugh, but stopped. "I can see you're serious, aren't you?"
"Very serious, and you're the girl I intend to marry."
She looked at him and thought to herself, he is certainly attractive, but I don't intend to marry him, do I?
By the end of two weeks, they were married. Suzanne's parents, while not exactly approving of Leveque, gave in to their headstrong daughter's wishes. They sailed for Jamaica following the wedding ceremony and when they approached Montego Bay, Suzanne was enchanted by the lush green vegetation which was spattered with brilliant flowers and the ridge of mountains which resembled a dinosaur's back.
"Maxim, I never dreamed anything could be so beautiful."
They drove through the gateway to the colonial style house. Verbena was waiting at the foot of the staircase and she ran to greet them bubbling with excitement. Leveque introduced them, and Suzanne embraced Verbena and said, "I know we'll be friends."
"Amassi. De master go to get a wife and he come home with de prize."
The only thing that bothered Leveque about Suzanne was that on their wedding night on board ship he discovered that her hymen had been broken. She wasn't a virgin. Suzanne explained that it had been because of a riding accident and Leveque had accepted her explanation, but still it bothered him. He was also troubled by the robust way that Suzanne enjoyed sex. He had been brought up to believe that well-bred ladies weren't supposed to enjoy it so much. Suzanne was different. She loved sex with her husband. She was insatiable. She also did things to him he had never experienced outside of whorehouses. He was delighted, but at the same time worried by her worldliness. He wondered where she had learned such tricks.
Verbena served them dinner on the veranda and Suzanne chattered about the things she wanted to do to the house.
"Anything you wish," replied Leveque "within reason."
"I would love to send for my gazebo—the one I was seated by when you first met me. It would make a lovely addition to the garden, don't you think?"
"Whatever you like."
"Oh, Maxim, you're so good to me." She looked directly into his eyes as she always did and ran her tongue over her moist pink lips saying, "Tonight, I'm going to be good to you."
Leveque started to get an erection.
"After we've both bathed, have Verbena send up a chilled bottle of champagne."
Suzanne bathed herself in jasmine scented bathwater while her husband bathed in another room. They met in the master bedroom. A chilled bottle of champagne had been placed on the side of the bed with two exquisite glasses. Suzanne asked her husband to open the champagne, then to lie down on the bed. When he had, she lifted the glass to her lips, drank it down in one gulp and giggled lasciviously. Then she picked up the bottle and drank from it, holding the liquid in her mouth. She crawled between his legs, took his large cock in her hands, slid her mouth over his organ and surprised him with the coldness of the champagne which she had kept in her mouth. Some of it ran out of the corners of her lips, down over his balls and between his legs to his ass. She began lapping up the chilled champagne. Spreading out her tongue, she took long licks over the base of his cock and completely covered his balls with little button bites, sliding first one of his swollen testicles into her mouth and then the other. Then she did something she had never done before. She moved her head down between his legs and at the same time pushed his strong legs up into the air. She buried her face between the cheeks of his buttocks and kissed his asshole. It was a soft kiss at first and then it became more fervent. She flipped out her tongue and circled the pink opening several times before jamming it inside. Leveque was shocked but at the same time thrilled. Nobody had ever done that to him in his life, not even the whores he had been with. He clasped his legs around the ankles and let her continue her ass sucking. She poured more champagne between his buttocks and licked it up, always returning to his asshole and concentrating on it with her long slender tongue. Each time she went deeper and deeper.
He cried out, "Stop it. Stop it, Suzanne. I'm going to come."
She quickly moved her head away from his buttocks and jammed her lips down over the swollen head of his cock. Spurts of his semen hit against the roof of her mouth. Then she slid her mouth off his cock, leaving her mouth open wide. She stuck out her tongue and caught the hot drops of come on it. Leveque was out of his mind watching his beautiful young wife take his load on the tip of her tongue. When he finished shooting, she ran her fingers up and down the full length of his cock to squeeze out any last drop. Then she swirled her tongue around in her mouth and swallowed it.
Leveque lay his head back on the pillow and felt suddenly depressed. "Where did you learn all these things," he asked.
Suzanne's eyes flashed. "What do you think? That I went to a school for making love? To some people it just comes naturally. Are you accusing me of being with a man before I was married?"
Her outrage was so adamant that Leveque found himself believing her, or wanting to. Suzanne, convinced that he was convinced, lay down beside him, nibbled on his ear lobe and said, "And now, darling, I want you to fuck me."
"Suzanne, you know I hate it when you use that kind of language."
"But I want it, Maxim, I want it!"
She rolled over on top of him and got on her knees and began rubbing her vaginal mound over his body. She slid it over his cock which was beginning to get hard once again, then she rubbed it down over the full length of his thigh, pausing at his knee to press against it. She moved on down over his calf until she reached his foot. She took his foot in her hand and rubbed her cunt against the five toes. She reached down and parted her cunt lips and let his large toe slide partly into her hot slit.
"Please, Maxim, I'm so excited."
He sat up in bed and grabbed her by the arms and threw her on her back.
"That's it my darling, take me roughly!"
He crouched between her legs and sucked on her throbbing breasts, taking her nipples between his teeth.
"Bite me, bite me hard!"
He brought his teeth together over the jutting ends and bit. She groaned in ecstasy.
"Now the other one, darling."
While he was chewing on her nipples, his hand slid down to her wet crotch and his finger plunged ruthlessly in until it penetrated to the second knuckle. Suzanne writhed with joy, emitting moist whines of pleasure. He slid another finger in and began poking them in and out of her hole.
"Your cock," she screamed, "give me your cock!"
He positioned himself so that the fleshy nob of his prick was pressed against her cunt lips and he rubbed it back and forth over her hot flesh.
"Don't tease me anymore, Maxim. Shove it in! Fuck me, fuck me!"
Leveque grunted bestially and slammed his cock into her cunt in one brutal stroke. His cock was in up to the hilt. He groaned with delight as he felt his cock head bang against the deepest reaches of her womb. She fucked back against him grinding his rod against her clitoral terrain. She milked him with her cunt muscles. Maxim broke into longer, smoother strokes, bringing his cock in and out of her clapping vagina and then thrusting forward into her until she could feel the harsh slap of his bloated balls against her buttocks. She moaned with a mixture of pleasure and pain and her moans caused him to quicken his thrust, hot and deep as she thrashed her body wantonly beneath him. When she was getting ready to come, he could feel it in the way her legs and thighs jerked. He grabbed her legs and pushed them up higher until her knees fell over her shoulders with her cunt completely vulnerable, then he plowed his cock home, smacking it into her brutally.
Suzanne screamed, "Fuck me harder, Maxim, harder! Hard as you can!"
His hands clasped her buttocks and positioned them for his cock. Then he really slammed her. She cursed and grunted as he dipped his prick in and out of her steaming cunt. Suzanne squealed in orgasm and they both felt his jetting spray of come coating her cuntal walls, spurting high, completely filling her with the scalding juice.
Afterwards as they lay in each other's arms, Leveque's doubts about his wife's pre-marital innocence came into his head again and clouded his mind.
Suzanne christened the great house Cinnamon Hall, after the bushy evergreen trees which Leveque imported from South America for his own personal use for colognes. Suzanne wrote to her parents asking to have her gazebo dismantled and sent to Jamaica. When it arrived, she placed it near the edge of the garden. She decorated it in her favorite colors, lemon and lime.
Leveque was pleased with the way his young wife ran Cinnamon Hall. She was efficient and imaginative. The only problem was that Suzanne liked to entertain and Leveque did not. He felt he didn't have time for the social graces and he was jealous of the way other men looked at his beautiful young wife.
In the sixth month of their marriage, Suzanne found that she was pregnant. It was a difficult pregnancy. She was often sick for days at a time and became quarrelsome, but Leveque was indulgent with her and showed more concern for the child in her body who he was convinced would be a son, than in Suzanne.
She went into labor prematurely and it took over twelve hours of excruciating labor to bring forth the child. When she at last appeared she was a serene, pink-faced cherub with a mist of blond hair and eyes as bright as diamonds. She was the most beautiful child that Verbena and the midwives had ever seen. The baby, nicknamed Angel, was placed in Verbena's care. Suzanne spent her days in the gazebo writing bitter things in her diary about her husband who avoided her by working long hours. When they did see each other, they fought, cruelly hurting each other as only two people can who had once been in love.
Angel grew up virtually ignored by her father and mother. When she was five years old, her father was travelling quite a bit to Europe and America. Her mother took a lover, a strapping young native who worked at gardening, named Touro. Leveque had not been jealous of the extremely tall, handsome young man because he was black and the thought of his wife sleeping with a native was beyond his comprehension. They became lovers and at the times when Leveque was travelling, they would spend entire days in bed together in the master bedroom. Even when Leveque was in Montego Bay, Suzanne would send for Touro who would slip up the back stairs of the house and into the bedroom to pleasure her. Then late one afternoon Leveque, feeling the effects of the heat wave, decided to leave the shop. He drove up the mountainside and parked the Bentley in the garage. Instead of going in by the front door, he walked around to the back to see how construction was going on the swimming pool, another of his wife's whims.
Satisfied that the men were doing proper work for the money he was paying them, he ascended the staircase to the balcony and the master bedroom. As he reached the top step he heard his wife groaning. At first he was startled, thinking she was ill. Then he heard her call out, "Puck me, Touro, fuck me harder!" He froze, not believing what he was hearing. He turned around and surveyed the garden and saw that the black gardener was not at work. He crept closer to the room and listened to his wife's lewd pleas to a young black lover.
"Oh, Touro, fill me up with your big black cock! Jam it home! Give it to me, lover, give it to me!"
Leveque felt ill. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead like blisters. He eased closer to the doorway and looked inside. His wife was on her hands and knees and Touro was on his knees behind her jamming his huge black cudgel in and out of her cunt. They both saw him at the same time. Suzanne nearly fainted. Touro quickly withdrew and backed away from the bed—away from Leveque, who had the look of a madman about him. Leveque glanced down at his wife's gaping cunt and at his servant's huge black cock, much bigger than his own, and began howling like an animal. He rushed to the dresser where he kept a loaded gun, flung open the drawer and held the revolver in both hands.
He aimed it first at his wife who had collapsed on the bed in sobs. He stared at her over the top of the gun for a few moments, but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. He turned around and aimed it at Touro who was madly fumbling with the hallway door which Suzanne had kept locked to keep out other servants. A shot resounded in the air and a large bloody patch appeared in Touro's back. He screamed and turned around. Flinging his arms wildly, he rushed past Leveque and out the doorway toward the balcony. Leveque fired again. This time the shot caught the native at the base of the spine. He threw out his arms and fell forward, tumbling over the side of the balcony and landing below in a clump of orchids. Leveque ran down the stairs, still screaming wildly and waving the gun. Touro was still alive when he reached him. He emptied the last four shots into the man.
"Don't, Papa," Angel screamed, "don't! Touro loves Mama—you don't!"
He looked up at his small child with such anger and hatred that if he had had another bullet, he would have shot her. Since that day and that moment, Angel and her father created a gulf between them which never was to be bridged.
Leveque sent for the police, but wasn't charged with murder. He was completely exonerated because of his position in Montego Bay and because of the circumstances. Suzanne left Cinnamon Hall in disgrace. She packed her belongings and caught a ship which took her to New Orleans, where she worked in a house of prostitution called the Garden of Delight, in the French Quarter. Suzanne Jamet Leveque loved her work and she was good at it and within several years had amassed enough money to open a house of her own and she became legendary in New Orleans.
Of course, Leveque had heard about his wife's activities and it had made him even more bitter toward women. The black women he took to bed he treated like whores.
Angel pressed her lips against the glass of the wedding picture and sent a kiss to her mother wherever she was. She had overheard the stories of her mother's profession and she was glad that she was like her mother in almost every respect.