Innocence Examined

by Emily Tilton

  James started at the coarseness and felt his eyes widen, but did his best to cover over his surprise. Here in Sir Gerald’s house, he realized with an inward smile, it seemed that coarseness constituted refinement, and to speak elegantly made one appear affected.

  Or, rather, elegant speech still made an important part of the conversation of the house—but to appear at one’s best in Cadogan Square, one must pepper one’s words with pleasant shocks of degradation, as an acknowledgment of the natural rights of the men present. Miss Loomis said with a blush as James bowed over her hand, “I am charmed to make your acquaintance, Dr. Fairleigh.”

  Miss Dalrymple said, “I am very pleased to meet you, Dr. Fairleigh. I am sure you know that Sir Gerald likes to help Miss Loomis and me understand our places, and I am sure you do not take it amiss, for I hear you are such another as our gentlemen.” Her blush was even deeper and prettier than Miss Loomis’.

  James, slightly intoxicated perhaps by the freedom of his strange new situation, replied, “Do you mean to say that you are not a fucking piece, Miss Dalrymple? Mr. Vance offered your charms to me earlier today.”

  “Oh-ho!” said Vance, standing on the other side of Charlotte. “Gerrie, it appears our young doctor’s conversation will prove just the kind we like best.”

  Miss Dalrymple looked sharply at Vance, and James had a pang of regret, for the beautiful green-eyed girl seemed wounded by the news that her gentleman had extended such an offer to a stranger.

  “Dr. Fairleigh,” said Miss Loomis, “you will find that you may put my dear Charlotte out of countenance quite easily with such talk.”

  “I apologize…”

  “No, you will not apologize,” Vance said. “I venture to say that Charlotte’s cunt is as wet as the Thames at the thought of being given to you. Charlotte, must we lift your skirts and verify my proposition, or will you admit to it?”

  James looked at Miss Loomis, whose eyes had narrowed as she regarded Vance. Charlotte’s blush had only deepened, and she looked down at the carpet. “I will admit to it, sir,” she said.

  “Are you as wet as the Thames, Charlotte Dalrymple?” Vance asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

  “Should we have Dr. Fairleigh fuck you over the settee, right now?”

  “If you please, sir.”

  James was about to demur, though his cock stood against his drawers as hard as iron and he felt he could easily have done his fucking right there in front of the apparently polite company despite the singularity of the circumstances. Just then, however, Caroline entered the parlor, dressed in a lovely green silk gown that nearly took James’ breath away with the desire that, fixed for a moment upon Miss Dalrymple, now transferred itself entirely to Caroline.

  Her eyes found his, and she smiled to see him.

  James had the sudden urge to try to steal her away from the house that instant: to rush to her, gather her into his arms, and make off through the hall and the front door into the night. He would have her before morning, but before he had her he would tell her all about himself and she would tell him all the secrets of her heart. They would take the post-coach down into Shropshire; they would be the only passengers, and he would deflower her there in the coach. By morning, they would be living happily upon one of his family’s ancestral farms, where they would read poetry to one another, and he would exercise the right of the phallus upon her every morning and every night, while she cried out her loving submission under him.

  “James,” Caroline would say, “only you could have made a woman of me this way. I longed for your cock, and I am so glad you give it to me so very roughly, for that is what I deserve, for I am such a naughty girl. You must be sure to whip me very often as well, for I must be punished, to learn my place and to learn how to please you.”

  James’ heart felt like it would pound its way out of his chest, as this whole fantasy played itself out in his imagination at the mere smile of Caroline Hollins. He imagined it, he was certain, but nonetheless he had the impression that a stillness had descended for that moment, in the meeting of his eyes with Caroline’s, and that she, too, must be thinking of just such mingled sweet and lustful images as James himself did. Then he saw her blush, just a very little, under his gaze, and he wondered, seeing the pink spots on her lovely cheeks, whether he really did merely imagine that her thoughts ran along the same lines his did.

  “Ah, Caroline,” said Sir Gerald, and the strange moment ended, for Caroline looked obediently at her guardian at the sound of his voice. “We can go into dinner.”

  “Perhaps not so very quickly,” said Vance. “It would do to acquaint Miss Caroline with the conversation we had just now, would it not? As well as with how special this night will be for her?”

  “Vance…” Sir Gerald began.

  “Miss Caroline, Dr. Fairleigh here was about to fuck Miss Charlotte.”

  Caroline looked at James with a furrowed brow. Panic rose in James’ breast. Had Vance said it to make Caroline think ill of James? Now James had a terrible dilemma, for if he told Caroline that he had not intended to take Vance’s outlandish suggestion to fuck Charlotte Dalrymple over the settee here in the parlor, he would appear both to be unsuited to this household of natural men and to have a special amorous interest in Caroline, but if he blithely declared that he would certainly have fucked Vance’s mistress there and then, Caroline would think him a brute unworthy of her love.

  Was he not a brute, though? What was the difference between a natural man and a brute? Troubled, James put that question at the back of his mind for later consideration.

  James opened his mouth to protest, and say something as suave as he could muster, about how Vance had made the kind offer, but he did not wish to accept it for fear of delaying dinner, but Caroline spoke first. “I should like to see that, Mr. Vance.”

  “Miss Caroline!” said Miss Loomis.

  But Sir Gerald, spurred on by Vance, wished to show his own naturalness. “Anne, you will hold your tongue if you do not wish to have a flogging. Caroline begins her new role tonight, and if I choose that she should watch Dr. Fairleigh fuck Charlotte, that is what will occur.”

  “Do you wish to fuck Miss Charlotte, Dr. Fairleigh?” Caroline asked, looking straight at James with the same intimate smile with which she had greeted him at her entrance into the parlor. “What would Dr. Brown say about such a thing?”

  James could imagine that from another girl the question might have been remonstrative, as if to say, Dr. Brown could not approve of that sort of thing, could he? From Caroline’s lips, it had an innocent, fascinated curiosity that made him once again want to embrace her for the marvelousness openness of her mind and heart.

  “He would say, I think,” James replied, still looking into her crystalline blue eyes and hardly believing that he spoke so frankly, “that if I wish to fuck her, and Mr. Vance, the man to whom she belongs, wishes to share her favors with me, I should not hesitate to exercise my right of the phallus upon her.”

  “Would fucking Miss Charlotte mean that you do not also wish to…” Here it appeared that Caroline’s new courage at last failed her, and she cast her eyes down to the carpet, making of her lips an adorable little line and showing high color in her cheeks. James felt certain that she had almost said “…that you do not also wish to fuck me,” and his heart seemed to grow as light as a feather for an instant.

  The bell rang then, however, and James, disappointed for a moment that they could not continue the conversation—though he had no idea what he would have said to Caroline in light of the implied invitation to deflower her—nevertheless had the supreme joy of taking her into dinner. Vance seemed to frown for an instant at the sight, but as the only single persons there, at least to the extent of the peculiar arrangements in Cadogan Square, it was entirely natural for James to give Caroline his arm, and for her to take it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As dinner began, Caroline could not quieten her mind no matter how hard she tried. The impre
ssion of Dr. Fairleigh’s strong, wool-covered arm, gathering her bare little one inside its crook, mingled with the inchoate image of him fucking Miss Charlotte in the parlor, and her terrible desire to see at last what it looked like when a man fucked a woman.

  “Caroline,” said Sir Gerald as soon as the fish had been served out, “tonight will be a very special night for you.”

  Caroline glanced to her right to see how Dr. Fairleigh reacted to the baronet’s words. He nodded slightly, as if to tell her to pay close attention to what her guardian said.

  “In the drawing room, Miss Anne’s and Miss Charlotte’s maid Mary has been strapped down upon her belly over a special divan.”

  Caroline felt her eyes go as wide as saucers. “Why?” she whispered.

  Mr. Vance said, “Sir Gerald and I will fuck her after dinner.”

  “Is she naked?” For some reason Caroline felt she absolutely must know the answer to that question.

  “She is,” replied Sir Gerald.

  Suddenly all the little hints Caroline had dropped, and all her little investigations—even the shameful examination by Dr. Brown and her vow to serve Sir Gerald’s cock—seemed like coquettish fancies. The idea that sweet little Mary lay in the next room, without her clothes, held down by leather straps, waiting for the masters of this house to come and… use her seemed to rob Caroline of her wits. Her heart fluttered, and she realized that between her legs the warmth she had felt when she had heard that Dr. Fairleigh might fuck Miss Charlotte in front of her, which had dissipated a little as the normality of dinner supervened, now came back so greatly that she felt her wetness trickle a tiny bit onto her thighs.

  “Must I watch?” she asked in a voice that seemed to her even softer than a whisper. Even as she asked the question, Caroline realized that she did so not because she wanted to escape the spectacle but because she needed—she positively yearned—to be told that she must, that she had no choice.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Fairleigh, “you must.”

  She turned to him and gazed into his eyes. To hear this compulsion from him seemed somehow to be felicity beyond anything she had yet experienced either through her mundane life of books and parties or through her new, magical, lascivious life of cocks and cunnies and nighttime degradation. His voice, and indeed his whole calm, bright presence, seemed to her to bind together the two things—the mundane and the erotic—and to promise her daily joy even as it promised her nightly heat, lust, and delicious shame.

  “And Dr. Fairleigh will supervise your observation,” said Mr. Vance. “He will thrash you if you do not pay close attention, for that is his duty here. In fact, I think we had better make sure he thrashes girls thoroughly right away. Dr. Fairleigh will thrash Mary before we fuck her.”

  “Charles!” Miss Charlotte cried. “Sir Gerald said that if Mary went willingly to the divan, she would not be thrashed! Anne and I promised her!”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Vance. “It shall be you whom our new friend thrashes, Charlotte. He will do it in front of Mary, so that Sir Gerald and I will have nice cockstands, and so that Mary will understand the price of disobedience.”

  “Oh, Charles,” Miss Charlotte said with a little sob.

  “Come now, my dear,” Mr. Vance said. “We both know what you are like after a flogging.”

  Caroline would never have dared speak out at the dinner table before tonight, but her new role in the house seemed to embolden her. “What is she like, Mr. Vance?” she asked.

  Mr. Vance smiled broadly. “Tell Caroline what you feel after I flog you, Charlotte.”

  Miss Charlotte looked down at her fish. Caroline could see she had blushed fiercely yet again, the marble whiteness of her lovely face flushing down to the neckline of her pink gown. Mr. Vance laughed, but Caroline to her surprise thought the laugh not his usual, rather cruel one, but a laugh possessed of a deep affection for Miss Charlotte. For a moment, Caroline had thought that Mr. Vance had been trying to force Dr. Fairleigh to display in front of Caroline some cruelty of the doctor’s own—just as for a moment, out in the parlor, she had supposed that Mr. Vance, in saying that Dr. Fairleigh had been on the verge of fucking Miss Charlotte, had wanted to demonstrate to Caroline that Dr. James Fairleigh would not be an affectionate companion for her. She suspected that Mr. Vance had rather mistaken her character, for both incidents had served only to endear Dr. Fairleigh to her.

  Now Mr. Vance said, “It is Charlotte’s secret, Miss Caroline. She is far the more dear to me for it. I will not make her say it out, but I will claim my right to say it for her: Charlotte is never as amenable to my cock in any other circumstance as she is after I have flogged her.”

  Miss Charlotte had closed her eyes at these words, and she shook her head very slightly, as if she would do anything to be able to deny it. Caroline could well believe that Mr. Vance spoke the truth, for as she thought of Dr. Fairleigh punishing her she longed for it, and then for the way he would employ his cock upon her afterward. Blushing herself, she remembered the strange vision she’d had in the parlor, the moment she had lain eyes on him, dressed for dinner. She had seen them running away together, and living together; she had seen him spanking her and fucking her, though she still did not even as yet know exactly what fucking meant. She had seen herself upon her knees before him, begging him to show her his cock and to put it in her mouth.

  The fish was cleared, and the roast laid. Sir Gerald began the conversation once again. “Caroline, you will see, at our little ceremony with Mary, that Miss Anne and Miss Charlotte must prepare the girl for fucking, and also prepare my cock and Mr. Vance’s cock. You will watch closely and learn, for it shall not be very long before you are required to perform the like service at the fucking of another girl.”

  Again, Caroline’s heart fluttered, and her stomach churned under her corset. “Really, Sir Gerald?” was all she could say in reply. Her cheeks grew terribly hot.

  “What a pretty blush!” Mr. Vance said. “Yes, Miss Caroline, indeed. Your fate is decided, and will not long be delayed by this period of observation that Dr. Brown has decreed.”

  “Really, gentlemen…” said Dr. Fairleigh.

  Mr. Vance looked at him. “Dr. Fairleigh, have you an objection to our speaking to Miss Hollins thus? Does not Dr. Brown devote a section of his essay to the freedom of speech a natural man should employ with a girl who belongs to him?”

  Caroline blurted out, “To whom do I—will I… that is to say, whose am I…” Her voice trailed off ineffectually, and she chewed her bottom lip in frustration. She looked at Dr. Fairleigh, who returned her gaze with a clouded brow, his forehead set in an attitude of frustration, as if he were not free to say what he really thought.

  “Tell her, Fairleigh,” said Mr. Vance.

  “Tell me what?” Caroline asked.

  Dr. Fairleigh’s voice sounded thick, but Caroline could not discern whether it was with excitement or with reluctance. “You belong to Sir Gerald, Miss Hollins. At the end of your period of observation, he will exercise the right of his phallus and possess you for the first time in front of an invited audience of natural men, and then you will be shared amongst all those present. I am told that this will happen once we have all moved to Sir Gerald’s new home in the Hebrides; there we natural men will enjoy your charms, and the charms of many other girls, as frequently as we like, in accordance with the right our cocks confer upon us.”

  Caroline felt panic rise in her chest. She fought the urge to stand up and flee out into the night. Her breathing came harsh and quick. Could Dr. Fairleigh allow it? But had not Mr. Vance shown her that Dr. Fairleigh was a natural man, just like him, Dr. Brown, and Sir Gerald?

  Did she not wish Dr. Fairleigh to allow it, and to be one of the men who shared her?

  “B-but… why?” she stammered.

  “Dr. Brown believes, as I do, too, that you have a very special erotic nature. Dr. Brown believes that by training you through observation, and then letting an audience experience your submission, the trut
h of his theory will inspire thousands of other men to exercise their rights, and make thousands of girls like you happy.”

  “Thousands of men will… have me?”

  “No,” said Sir Gerald, chuckling. “Dr. Brown thinks that if I invite twenty or so, they will spread the ‘inspiration,’ as he calls it, to hundreds, and they to thousands.”

  “Truly,” Mr. Vance said. “Sir Gerald and I do not care, so long as after this show Brown proposes we can have you as we will have little Mary this evening, as often as we like. Once it is over, you will be a fucking piece just like Miss Anne and Miss Charlotte, and they will train you further.”

  Caroline looked at Miss Anne. Two red spots had appeared upon her cheeks, but Caroline could not tell from her haughty expression exactly what that color portended. With this expression Miss Anne regarded Sir Gerald. “Miss Anne,” Caroline whispered. “I am sorry.”

  Truly, she was sorry. All these things were so new to her, and there seemed no guidance to be had from the lessons in etiquette provided to her by Miss Standish. She thought, though, that she should be sorry, because it must make Miss Anne feel sad to hear that Sir Gerald would have Caroline for fucking. Caroline knew that Miss Anne thought her envious of the mistress’ position Anne held, closer to Sir Gerald than Caroline’s own position as his ward. But Caroline had never harbored any feeling but affection for the older girl, whose evident kindness to Miss Charlotte always made Caroline wish she could be party to their intimacies. Now it seemed she would have a place very much like Miss Anne’s, but she felt terribly sad that it would apparently come at Miss Anne’s expense.

  But Miss Anne turned to Caroline with a radiant, if slightly teasing, smile. “Oh, Caroline, don’t be a goose. Charlotte can’t admit her need for these wicked things, but I most certainly can. Now we shall all three be fucking pieces together, and whipped together.” Miss Anne laughed a silvery laugh. “Just wait until I am told to give you a gamahuche!”