‘Yes, I want you to take me home now,’ she told him.
‘And I want – you,’ George responded.
Louise tried to sidestep him as he came towards her but the bedroom was too small and all he had to do to throw her down on the bed was take hold of her arms and force her backwards.
‘No, George. You mustn’t,’ Louise protested, feigning anger. This was just as she had imagined it would be: the delicious feeling of power and wantonness, the knowledge that George was overwhelmed by his desire for her. If she could do that to George then how much more easily would she be able to manipulate someone older – and richer. Avarice gleamed in her eyes.
‘It’s too late to play teasing games now, Lou,’ George warned her. ‘You’ve been coming on to me for weeks, and you know it. Stop worrying, you’re going to love it. Your kind always does. Careful, you don’t want me to go tearing that pretty blouse you’re wearing, do you? What would Mummy say?’
She was genuinely angry now – she hadn’t planned for things to go this far. Teasing George was one thing, actually letting him do ‘it’ was another.
Somehow Louise managed to fight him off and push her way past him to the door, but it was locked and whilst she struggled helplessly with it he caught hold of her, dragging her back to the bed.
This definitely wasn’t what she wanted or how things were supposed to be. George was tugging at her clothes, undressing her swiftly and expertly, despite her protests and struggles, until all she was wearing was her pale pink silk chemise and her matching French knickers with their lacy edging.
Automatically when George let go of her and stood up to remove his own clothes, she lifted her hands to cross them over her breasts. She wasn’t going to let him know that she was apprehensive. Men like George didn’t feel any sympathy for women who cried and pleaded; a woman had to stand up to a man like George. Louise knew that instinctively.
She might be nervous but she was still curious enough to risk a look at him. She hadn’t seen a man naked before, not properly, although she was familiar with the feel of that thick jut of flesh rearing up in swollen urgency, having allowed George to put her hand on it on several occasions, including one time when he had unbuttoned his trousers and pushed her hand inside his underwear to really touch ‘it’.
She hadn’t expected that it would look so ugly, nor have that awkward-looking pouch of flesh hanging beneath it.
‘Like what you see?’ George asked. ‘Want a closer inspection?’
She tried to look nonchalant as she gave a small shrug, but she was wasting her time, she realised, because George was more interested in pushing down the straps of her camisole to bare her breasts, before cupping them in his hands and then kneading them and tugging almost painfully on her nipples.
She relaxed a bit when he started to kiss her – she was, after all, on familiar territory here – but when he transferred his mouth from her lips to her breasts she tensed again and then tensed even more when she felt him tugging – sucking – on her nipples, first one and then the other. An unfamiliar sensation zigzagged right through her body, causing a dull ache low down inside her that began to grow in intensity. George’s teeth suddenly raked her nipple, causing her to cry out and jerk away from him, but he pulled her back, sliding his hand into the open leg of her knickers, and touching her almost roughly where she had secretly and daringly touched herself before but never like George was doing, working his fingers into her, ignoring her protest that he was hurting her, rubbing that special magical place she had found during her own explorations until suddenly Louise wasn’t thinking about how she could bend George to her will any more because she wasn’t capable of thinking anything, only doing; arching her back, moaning and crying out, protesting when George abandoned the source of her pleasure and instead pushed a pillow beneath her hips and then rolled on top of her, raising her knees and then pushing slowly into her, ignoring the stiffening that accompanied her demand for him to stop.
But he refused to stop, and then miraculously the pain disappeared, and the sensation of him thrusting deeper and faster inside her became a challenge she felt driven to meet, and then a need that had her crying out to him.
When he groaned and tensed Louise wondered what was happening, fearful that something was wrong, and even that he might be stuck inside her, but before she could panic, he groaned again and pumped furiously into her, before exhaling in satisfaction and slumping over her.
It hadn’t been at all like she had thought it would be. George had been so rough, too rough at times. And all that sweat and hard work, and that sticky wetness she could feel leaking from her now that George had removed himself from her.
‘There, I told you you’d like it, didn’t I?’
Louise was sitting up in bed, the sheet dragged up to cover her breasts whilst she smoked the cigarette George had just lit and passed to her. George was lying beside her, his head propped up watching her with a smug expression on his face.
‘No, I didn’t like it at all,’ she denied sharply. She was still angry at having her hand forced.
George laughed. ‘No? Then what was all that, “Oh, George, please, oh, George. Oh, oh …” all about then?’ he laughed.
She had enjoyed it, Louise admitted, but she was still furiously cross with George. After all, this was not the kind of place in which she had expected to lose her virginity. She deserved better. But she’d make him pay …
Lady Rutland wasn’t at all pleased that Amber had been invited to the private pre-ball dinner party Beth’s parents were hosting on the evening of Beth’s coming-out ball, when Louise had not, but since her grandmother had not only written to her saying how delighted she was that Amber had been invited to accompany Beth to the South of France, but had actually also telephoned her as well, Amber had felt justified in ignoring Lady Rutland’s crossness.
Lord and Lady Levington’s Belgrave Square house was far grander than Lady Rutland’s in Cadogan Place; the flowers to decorate the ballroom had been sent up from the hothouse at Chevenely, their country estate, having been expressly grown for Beth’s ball.
Since it was the first time she had met the Earl of Levington Amber had been worrying that she might not earn Beth’s father’s approval, and that the invitation to the South of France might be rescinded. However, to her relief Lord Levington had treated her most kindly, putting her at her ease straight away.
Amber had been partnered for dinner by Beth’s elder brother Henry, Viscount Hollowes. Fresh-faced, with Beth’s soft brown hair and his father’s hazel eyes, his manner slightly awkward and intense, Henry had talked earnestly to Amber about Australia over dinner.
‘Henry isn’t really used to girls,’ Beth had confided to Amber. ‘Mummy thought it would be good for him to stay here in London whilst I was doing the season, but Daddy said that it was more important that he went with him to Australia.’
Beth looked truly radiant tonight, as much because of the presence of her godmother’s son, Alistair, as anything else, Amber suspected, watching her friend later as she was whirled round the dance floor in Alistair’s arms. Sturdily built, with red-gold hair and bright blue eyes, the Hon. Alistair McCrea might not appear as glamorous as some of the more polished debs’ delights, but there was a reassuring quality about him. He was the kind of young man who would take his responsibilities very seriously, Amber could see, and those responsibilities would naturally include his wife. Ultimately he would inherit not only his father’s title and Scottish lands but also a small Hertfordshire estate that would come to him via a great-uncle on his mother’s side of the family, Beth had confided to Amber, and Amber suspected that Beth was halfway to falling in love with him already.
Lucky Beth, Amber thought, to be able to fall in love with someone so