‘It’s deep, love,’ she said. ‘And dark. And all wet for you.’ She pulled her skirt up to her waist. ‘Look,’ she said. She had spread herself, to give him a look at her. ‘Don’t tell me that isn’t a pretty thing. A perfect little cunny, that.’ Her gaze went from his face to his groin. ‘And you like the look of it, and don’t you pretend you don’t.’
She was right, of course. As soon as she’d started to raise her skirt his dunderheaded member had started to swell, demanding its due. As if his limbs weren’t weak enough, without having to lose blood to its ambition.
‘I’m tight, Mr Steep.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘Like a virgin on her wedding night I am. Look, I can barely fit my littlest finger in there. You’ll have to do me some violence, I suspect.’
She knew what effect this kind of talk had upon him. A little shudder of anticipation passed through him, and he proceeded to take off his coat.
‘Unbutton yourself,’ Mrs McGee said, her voice bruised. ‘Let me see what you have there.’
He cast his coat away and fumbled with the buttons of his mud-spattered trousers. She watched him, smiling, as he brought his member out.
‘Oh now look at that,’ she said, not unappreciatively. ‘I think it wants a dip in my cunny.’
‘It wants more than a dip.’
‘Does it indeed?’
He knelt between her legs, and, reaching out, removed her hand from her sex, to give himself better sight of it. Then he stared.
‘What are you thinking?’ she said.
He fingered her for a moment, then ran his moistened digit down to her arse. ‘I’m thinking…’ he said, ‘…that I’d rather have this today.’
‘Oh would you?’
He pressed his finger in a little way. She squirmed. ‘Let me put it here,’ he said. ‘Just the head.’
There are no children to be had that way,’ she said.
‘I don’t care,’ he replied. ‘It’s what I want.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ she replied.
He smiled at her. ‘Rosa—’ he said softly ‘—you could not deny me.’
He slipped his hands beneath her knees and hoisted them up. ‘We should give up all hope of children,’ he said, staring at the dark bud between her buttocks. They have always come to nothing.’ She made no reply. ‘Are you listening, love?’ He glanced up at her face. She wore a sorrowful expression.
‘No more children?’ she said.
He spat in his hand, and slickened his prick. Spat again, more copiously, and slickened her arse.
‘No more children,’ he said, drawing her closer to him. ‘It’s a waste of your affections, smothering love on a thing that hasn’t even got the wit to love you back.’
This was the truth of the matter: that though they had together made children numbering in the many dozens, he had for her sake taken them from her in the moment of their delivery and put them out of their misery, if the cretins ever knew misery. He would dutifully come back when he’d disassembled them and disposed of the pieces, always with the same grim news. That though they were fine to look at, their skulls contained only bloody fluid. Not even a rough sketch of a brain; nothing.
He pushed his prick into her. ‘It’s better this way,’ he said.
She let out a little sob. He couldn’t tell whether it was out of sorrow or pleasure, and at that moment didn’t really care. He pressed against the warmth of her muscle, his prick utterly enveloped. Oh, it was good.
‘No…children…then…’ Mrs McGee gasped.
‘No children.’
‘Not ever?’
‘Not ever.’
She reached up and took hold of his shirt, pulling him down towards her.
‘Kiss,’ she said.
‘Be careful what you ask for—’
‘Kiss,’ she said again, raising her face towards his.
He didn’t deny her. He pressed his lips against hers, and let her tongue, which was nimble, dart between his aching teeth. His mouth was always drier than hers. His parched gums and throat drank deep, and murmuring his gratitude against her lips, he pressed hard into her, their hold on one another suddenly frantic. Her hands went to his throat, then to his face, then to his backside, pushing him deeper, while his fingers pulled at her buttons to gain access to her breasts.
‘Who are you?’ she said to him.
‘Anyone,’ he gasped.
‘Who?’
‘Pieter, Martin, Laurent, Paolo—’
‘Laurent. I liked Laurent.’
‘He’s here.’
‘Who else?’
‘I forget all the names,’ Jacob confessed.
Rosa brought her hands back up to his face, and caught tight hold of it. ‘Remember for me,’ she said to him.
There was a carpenter called Bernard—’
‘Oh yes. He was very rough with me.’
‘And Darlington—’
‘—the draper. Very tender.’ She laughed. ‘Didn’t one of them wrap me up in silk?’
‘Did he?’
‘And poured cream in my lap. You could be him. Whoever he was.’
‘We have no cream.’
‘And no silk. Think of something else.’
‘I could be Jacob,’ he said.
‘You could. I suppose,’ she said, ‘but it’s not as much fun. Think of someone else.’
There was Josiah. And Michael. And Stewart. And Roberto—’ She moved her body to the rhythm of his litany. So many men, whose names and professions he’d borrowed to excite her, wrapping himself in their reputations for an hour or a day; seldom longer. ‘I used to like this game,’ he said.
‘But not any more?’
‘If we knew what we were…’
‘Hush now.’
‘…maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Not as long as we’re together. As long as you’re inside me.’
They were knitted now, so tightly wound around each other, limbs and kisses intertwined, they would never be separated.
She started to sob again, the breath pushed out of her with every thrust. Names were still coming to her lips, but they were fragments only, pieces of pieces—
‘Sil…Be…Han…’
She was lost to sensation; lost to his prick, to his lips. For his part, he had given up words entirely. Just his breath, expelled into her mouth as though he were resurrecting her. His eyes were open, but he no longer saw her face, nor the candles that shook around them. There were instead vague forms, particles of light and dark, pulsing before him; dark above, light below.
The sight brought a moan from him. ‘What is it?’ Rosa said.
‘I…don’t…know,’ he