Philadelphia 1952

Philadelphia, 1952

Her name was Carina Marie Esposito, and she was every woman's Other Woman.

She was the name whispered in low voices behind thick curtains, the sigh tucked between the sheets when a husband rolled over, oblivious. The quiet scandal that no one spoke of--but everyone knew.

A woman who could have had any man in the city--but wanted none of them.

Instead, she had their wives.

She had them in dimly lit apartments with lace curtains drawn tight. In the back seats of sleek black Buicks, the smell of cigarette smoke thick in the air. She had them pressed against kitchen counters, aprons still tied around soft waists, lipstick already smudged.

She had them panting, trembling, ruined.

And she never let them keep her.

The first time Virginia Russo saw her, she was dancing--one of those dark little jazz bars downtown, the ones where certain people went, the kind of place where men in pressed suits never looked too closely at two women sitting too near.

Carina Marie moved like a woman who knew she was being watched--shoulders bare, a silk cocktail dress in deep wine red, tight in the bodice, fitted to her hips, ending just below the knee with a slit meant to make a woman stare. The soft glow of the club's lights gleamed against the delicate beading at the sweetheart neckline. The cigarette in her fingers burned low but never forgotten.

Her hair was a perfect Italian brunette wave, glossy, sculpted, pinned at one side with a silver comb. Not a curl was out of place. Her lips--deep red, the color of sin itself--parted just enough to exhale smoke in lazy, knowing plumes.

Virginia should have looked away.

She should have gone home.

Instead, she sat there, smoothing the folds of her powder-blue day dress, cinched at the waist, full-skirted and proper, as if it could protect her from what was about to happen. Her pearl earrings, her white gloves, the delicate lace trim of her slip beneath her skirt--all markers of a woman who was supposed to belong to a man, to a home, to a quiet, decent life.

But Carina's eyes found her in the crowd, dark and knowing, and Virginia--a wife, a good wife, a proper woman--felt her stomach drop into her heels. Her navy blue pumps, the ones her husband had picked out for her.

She should have stood up, should have turned, should have walked right back out into the night.

Instead, she watched as Carina tilted her head, invited her forward with nothing but a look.

And Virginia went.

Because women didn't invite each other like that--and yet, Carina had.

Because proper women did not want other women--and yet, Virginia did.

Carina bought her a drink. Whiskey, no ice. She watched Virginia's hands shake as she lifted the glass, the way she hesitated before pressing it to her lips, careful not to smudge her lipstick--Revlon's "Cherries in the Snow," delicate, feminine, perfect.

"Nervous?" Carina asked, lips curling in amusement, voice like silk draped over steel.

Virginia swallowed, setting the glass down too quickly. "I should go home."

Carina leaned in, the scent of tobacco, Chanel No. 5, and something floral filling the air between them. "Then why haven't you?"

Virginia opened her mouth, but there was no answer that wasn't a lie.

So she let Carina touch her wrist, slow and deliberate. Let Carina's manicured fingers, nails painted the same deep red as her lips, trail higher, over the pulse at the base of her throat.

She let Carina lead her out the back door of the bar, into the alley, into the dark.

She wasn't the first. She wouldn't be the last.

Carina had been here before--had done this before--with the women who came to her, helpless against their own hunger.

She had unzipped dresses in dim hotel rooms, fingers tugging down silk stockings with slow deliberation. Had traced the soft curves of women who had only ever known men's hands, showing them what a woman's touch could do.

And tonight, Virginia Russo--someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's good little housewife--was shaking beneath her, eyes wide, breath shallow.

Carina could hear the excuses in her breath, the I shouldn't be here trembling on her tongue.

So she silenced her with a kiss.

Virginia shuddered.

She let her.

Hands gripping at Carina's dress, clutching, desperate, her body betraying everything she thought she knew about herself.

Carina smirked against her lips. She always knew.

Knew what women wanted, knew the moment they decided to stop fighting it.

She slipped a hand up the inside of Virginia's thigh, fingers pressing over soft white cotton, already damp.

Virginia gasped, body arching, breaking.

Carina didn't stop. She dragged Virginia against her, let her feel the weight of her own surrender. Her fingers slid higher, parting fabric, teasing, finding exactly where Virginia had always needed to be touched but never had been.

Virginia choked on a breath, hips jerking against Carina's hand, fingers twisting into dark curls. She was lost, gone, helpless, and Carina loved it.

"Tell me to stop," Carina whispered, lips brushing her jaw, her throat, lower.

Virginia didn't.

Because she couldn't.

Because she didn't want to.

Carina never kept them.

She never let them keep her.

She left them with shaking hands, with smeared lipstick, with the scent of her still clinging to their skin. She left them ruined--for men, for their old lives, for the small, quiet world they had known before her.

She would be nothing more than a memory. A ghost in their sheets. A sin confessed in the hush of a darkened church, rosary beads clutched too tight.

And she would never regret a single moment of it.

Because Carina Marie Esposito was no one's wife.

She was every woman's Other Woman.