In the end, Mr Davis did have the courtesy to mop me clean most gently with a towel from the washstand.
Thus was I flushed with two triumphs when the master walked through the door. He embraced me as if we’d been apart for years. Laughing with delight, I pulled him to the bed and we lay entwined together while I told him everything that had passed. He caught his breath when I revealed how Mr Maxwell kissed my mouth deeply afterwards, as if to savour the taste of his own mettle. And my darling groaned and held me tight when I described the way Mr Davis made a naughty mess all over my bubbies.
‘You see, my love, I’ve had the soup and roast, but I’m still hungry for my pudding. It’s your turn to submit to these lips that were the undoing of your old friends. Oh, how those brazen gentlemen sang for me in the end – swearing and grunting and crying out as they spent. We turned the tables, sir, we did indeed.’
‘Oh, God, yes, Irene, show me just how you pleased them.’ The master was quivering like a jelly, but his manhood was as rigid as an iron bar. I took that dear appendage in my mouth and sucked it like the sweetest candy. Time and time again, I brought him to the brink of spending, then pulled him back again until he sobbed for mercy. At last, I relented and gave him the hard sucking he craved for his climax.
And I let my favourite relish linger in my mouth for some time before I swallowed.
‘Lips like heaven,’ he whispered afterwards. ‘I swear no woman has ever understood me as you do, darling. But I must tell you …’
‘I know, Charles, our time will be over when you marry, but I’m still yours for three days more.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, no, my little nightingale, I won’t give you up now. Mine is no love match, and many a married man before me has made special accommodation for his true heart’s desire. Indeed I’ve come up with a wonderful plan. Would you like to hear it?’
Basking in his gaze, which saw me and loved me for all that I was, I knew I could refuse him nothing.
His hand was heavy, hard, and easily spanned the width of my backside. I closed my eyes against the quick, stinging slaps. The heat that suffused my face matched the throbbing burn that was spreading across my bare bottom. I was mortified. My curiosity, as usual, had got the best of me and I’d allowed this thing to go too far. I moved to rise, my hands gripping his hard wool-clad thigh, but the large hand that had been resting on my back, the feel of its weight enough to keep me still, pressed down firmly just as another stinging slap sliced at my bottom. The sound seemed to reverberate. I tensed. The long-fingered hand fell again, three times in rapid succession. To keep from crying out, my fingers gripped and twisted the thick stitching at the rim of the settee’s cushion, and the fabric of his trousers. I could feel the white-hot stripes it left. The walls of my sex began to clench, and the flesh began to swell and grow moist. I squirmed restlessly and the hand at my back grew heavier.
Embarrassed by the growing dampness between my legs, I buried my face in the thick, dark cloth, only vaguely aware that it was the tail of his evening jacket. My teeth scraped my lower lip and held on. Tears crowded my eyes and I couldn’t breathe. The flat of his hot hand fell again, and his fingers slipped between the high round cheeks of my bottom, their tips sliding down to tease my slick opening, a brief reprieve before the sting came again. A tear slipped through a lash and ran the length of my cheek. The scalding hand fell again and the tips of my breasts tightened as the red heat streaked through my body. My heart beat faster and the soaking folds of my sex throbbed.
In the other room, a low reedy flute was playing Waltz No. 1 from Mozart’s Three Waltzes, the cello close behind, trying to catch up; both seemed lost in time and tempo. The harsh pulse of hot hand against supple flesh was a far more thrilling music. I imagined the maze of long white marks his fingers had made on the reddened skin. A woman laughed, high and shrill. The brush of full skirts against narrow walls; the pungent smell of tobacco. The voices in the hall grew more distinct.
‘Ward made short work of him, he did …’ The sound of a hoarse male voice made husky by years of smoke. A quiet laugh then the soft thump and swish of silk like a woman being pressed against wallpaper. The sounds drifted through the closed door, but the searing hand paid them no heed. Slap, piercing sting; I gasped, my fingers knotting then flexing against the coarse cloth. Slap, slap, and then a long slow throb. Two fingers pinched and twisted a bit of plump flesh high on my arse. The shock ran the length of my body, leaving me trembling. My sex pulsed and tightened. I could feel the moisture seeping. His hot palm and hard fingers burned against the flesh of my thighs; again, quick and sharp.
The image of the wooden rod my tutor used to use flashed on the inside of my closed lids. ‘If you’re going to be brazen enough to demand that you be allowed to study Latin, you should at least put forth an effort,’ the bespectacled young man had barked as he wielded the thin length of wood. There was always the swishing sound and then the biting sting across my thighs. My breasts felt heavy and my nipples felt as though they were piercing the fabric of my bodice. I pressed my lips together, trying to suppress the moans. My fingers snagged between a layer of soft wool and coarser upholstery as I tried to bury my face, but sounds still escaped.
‘It would have been a better fight in 1829. Byrne was in better shape two years ago.’ The voice in the hall was light, playful and very female.
‘What bloodlust! An hour and a quarter of raw knuckles and bruised ribs not enough for you?’ the man’s whiskey-smoked voice again.
‘Shh, remember, I was never there.’ Silence, the rustle of fabric pressed and sliding against the wallpaper, a moan. Long fingers slid down the crevice of my bottom and slipped in, through the wetness that seeped from my sex.
A giggle from the other room. ‘Not here.’ The shuffle of dancing shoes, the light click of heels on the wooden floor before the narrow strip of carpet claimed their sound. I trembled, my stomach pressing into the slightly open V of his lap.
‘You like that, don’t you?’ he whispered, his voice cold like the sting that followed as he raised his hand and let it fall hard and tart against the fleshy rise of my arse. Again, and once more, harder, before he shoved me off his lap and I tumbled in a whirl of lace and taffeta to the carpet at his feet.
‘You’re Ethel’s cousin Jen, are you not?’
I nodded.
‘An unmarried girl of barely twenty.’ His eyebrows were arched and high as he spoke. ‘Are you accustomed to spending time alone with men who are not related?’
I shook my head while surreptitiously rubbing cool fingers over a particularly searing spot on my bottom, but I couldn’t think. I was only aware of my stinging backside, the knowing tingle between my legs and the hard press of my nipples against the crisp corded pleats that ran the length of my bodice.
He stood over me. Tall. Long legs in slim trousers. The brocade of his burgundy waistcoat beckoned me. I wanted to touch the thick swirling thread that made up its intricate design. I wanted to run my finger around the tight swirls and trail it down past the last gold button. It had worked its way free of its hole and shone like a brilliant jewel, a garnish at the bottom of his waistcoat that drew the eye to the two pointed tips of lush brocade. They framed and nearly touched the beginning of the long bulge that lay invitingly just beneath his waist, a plump sausage that trailed down to just inside his thigh. I reached out to touch it.
‘No!’ His voice was soft but firm, his eyes dark.
Someone