A Gentlewoman's Quartet. Portia Da Costa

the finger retreats, I still can’t speak. I can barely think.

      The rumbling, rocking carriage is filled with a luscious and spicy scent. It’s pungent and exotic, but still speaks explicitly of a man. The beauty of the fragrance only intensifies my trembling, and instead of cowering in a corner, I can’t help but gravitate toward the source of the scent. My unseen and also as yet unspeaking captor.

      A mouth settles on mine. A man’s mouth, with lips that are soft, almost velvety and yet muscular. Immediately he compels me to part my own lips and admit his tongue into the moist heat of my mouth. His tongue subdues mine, taking possession of me without effort and with no expectation of resistance. I’m rendered helpless but the sensation melts my belly.

      My kissing captor tastes as sweet as he smells, and if I were a weaker woman I’d swoon from the pleasure of it. But I’m strong. I don’t want to faint away and miss a second of this. Even though I’m in deadly danger, my senses are firing, my spirits lifting. So I enjoy him and his kiss becomes a laugh as my tongue seeks his.

      Am I too bold? Am I inciting my doom? Probably. But somehow I crave it. This is my fantasy, the one I described, brought to reality as if to order.

      The trundling motion of the speeding carriage is unbearably stimulating. Every nerve in my body is sensitized, and as we bump over cobbles, every knock and lurch excites the secret hidden parts of me that yearn for contact. Still kissing me, my abductor slides his hand under my short walking cloak and cups my breast quickly and roughly. Through my gown and my chemise, he flicks my nipple, coaxing it out from beneath the top edge of my corset. As he plays with it and rolls it between finger and thumb, my hips roll too.

      “So wanton,” he whispers against my mouth, his voice rasping and barely audible. He plucks at my nipple and I bounce on the seat as if my sex wants to press against him of its own accord. Still kissing me, he wrenches open the top of my gown, sending buttons pinging around the interior of the carriage, then reaches in with a bold, ungloved hand to touch my skin.

      His fingers are hot against my bare nipples, stroking and circling impudently, first one then the other. Tossing my head, I see his swarthy skin contrasted against the whiteness of my breast, and I make noises that no respectable gentlewoman should make outside the confines of her marriage bed. Noises that some probably never make in it.

      “You like that,” he growls. It’s an accusation, not a question, and I purse my lips wanting to shout, Yes, yes, yes!

      Bending over me, and divesting me of my cloak entirely, he presses his mouth against my breast, sucking a nipple between his lips and lapping at it with his tongue in a fast flickering action. I make those noises all over again, louder this time. As I gasp and moan, I wonder dreamily if he thinks this bold tactic of his will distract me.

      Divert my attentions from what his hands are now about.

      He’s pulling up my skirts and petticoats and I’m powerless to stop him because my hands are bound. Pressed back awkwardly against the upholstery, I can do nothing to stop him invading the world of my undergarments, pushing the layers of gabardine and flannel and linen aside to get to my drawers. With one last long, lewd sucking kiss to my breast, and a wicked nip of his teeth, he abandons my nipple in favor of focusing his attentions farther south.

      Being in darkness intensifies everything. Makes touch and scent and sound rule the realm of the senses. I hear his steady breathing as he goes about me. It seems so little affected by the excitement that grips me, as if he’s used to kidnapping women and making free with them on a daily basis. As if exploring their drawers is nothing exceptional to him.

      His scent seems to grow stronger and more intoxicating. Maybe it’s a special receipt? One that has narcotic powers to drug his victims and make them yield willingly to him? A blend based on rare spices that inflame a woman’s passions and prime her body for the most scandalous explorations…

      Touch…oh, touch.

      His fingers are deft, inveigling their way into the vent in my drawers. Sneaking in, sliding in, darting straight for the little triangle of frisky hair that covers my sex. Even though, against all reason, I want him to find me, I still jerk back as he starts to prize the curls apart to get to me.

      “Be still,” he growls, leaning against me, subduing me with his weight and returning to my breast with a rough squeeze with his free hand, while beneath, he rummages, wiggling his fingertips to slide them right into my cleft.

      Oh, Mr. Enderby, whatever would you think of me? Allowing myself to be fondled and fingered by this ruthless, unseen stranger, and worst of all, enjoying it?

      My hidden companion has skill. He knows how to touch a woman and manipulate her most sensitive parts. I whimper and surge, my body weeping and fluttering beneath my abductor’s fingertips.

      “Please…sir…I beg of you. I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t…” I pant, finding my voice at last even while my traitorous body squirms and rises, seeking the delicious sensations I’m trying in vain to deny. “This is for my husband, sir. No man but he should touch me there…and make me feel these feelings.”

      “And yet you respond to my touch, madam,” my captor points out huskily, while my flesh betrays me, fresh silkiness flowing to smooth the path of his ever-circling fingertip.

      “Please, no! I can’t help myself… If you touch me anymore I shall spend, and only my dear husband should witness that, sir.”

      Mercilessly, he jostles my clitoris. Ignoring my pleas, he rolls my nipple between his finger and thumb.

      “I think, perhaps, that you should learn to be generous with your pleasure, madam…and to exhibit yourself to men. To many men…” A stiff finger enters me, sliding in easily, and I moan out loud, appalled at the way I automatically start to ride it. “Who knows…your husband may well savor your wantonness and find his own pleasure in the thought, and sight, of you being fiddled with, and fingered and brought to climax by the hands of a whole multitude of strangers.”

      I sob as his finger slides in and out, in and out, tugging on the richly sensitive bud of my clitoris. In the darkness behind my blindfold, I’m suddenly presented, on show, laid bare to the eyes of many men. I’m an object. An experiment. Hands rove over me. Many fingers, not just one, take possession of me, exploring my every inch of skin, my every nook and cranny.

      Without any warning, the rocking carriage slows to a halt, and struggling with myself and with my bonds, I finally attempt to shake free my tormentor. The driver leaps down, his boots clattering on the pavement, and a second later, the carriage door rattles as he attempts to open it and allow us to alight.