Guilty Pleasures

by Bertrice Small

  “I am not sure,” Jane said softly.

  “Aye, you are,” he informed her. “The rule of the Channel protects you, my love. At any time you find yourself fearful, you may end the fantasy. But you will not.” Then he picked her up in his arms and walked to her bed, where he gently laid her down, joining her. “Tonight,” he said, “you will let me take the lead, and you will trust me, Jane.”

  “For now,” she replied.

  The words hadn’t even died on her lips when he began to caress her practically naked body. The stockings and garters still encasing her shapely legs added to their shared excitement. His touch was gentle, almost tender. She practically purred with the simple pleasure his hands were offering her, stretching her length that he might not miss an inch of her soft skin. And just when Jane thought he could get no better, he began to kiss and lick her flesh. She sighed with pleasure at his actions.

  “You are delicious,” he told her, stopping a moment to smile into her face.

  “You do not feel the need to hurry?” she said, noting his swollen cock.

  “No, I do not. The delights we will share joined will be even better for waiting.”

  Then he continued to explore her slowly with hands and lips and tongue. He did not confine his erotic actions to just her chest and belly. Whispering for her to turn over, he explored the line of her spine, a finger tracing the bone from her neck to just above her arse. His hands fondled the rounded hills of her buttocks, pulling them apart, a finger pressing against her fundament, but going no further.

  “Ohh!” Jane gasped as a short burst of pure desire flamed up in her cunt.

  Gently he nudged her onto her back again, and cupped her mons with a big hand. He could feel the heat, the moisture, and faint throbbing. He squeezed, and another little cry escaped her. Her legs fell open to him, and taking the invitation, he went down on her, spreading her labia open, finding her clitoris with his tongue, tasting her, feeling his cock grow tighter, savoring the essence of her on his tongue and lips.

  None of her lovers had ever made love to her as the Earl of Pelton was now making love to her. They had but one goal in mind, and that was to fuck her. And the truth was that she had entertained the same goal. All she had ever wanted was a cock in her cunt, a quick orgasm, and a farewell kiss. And she had led the dance herself, deciding whom she would take to her bed to satisfy her libidinous nature quickly, and then be gone. She had wanted lovers who would play stud to her mare in heat. Nothing more.

  Yet suddenly this fantasy of hers had taken an entirely different turn. For the first time in her life she was experiencing being made love to, and it wasn’t frightening, and she didn’t feel helpless. She felt—she searched for the right word—she felt “cherished.” His tongue was truly wicked as it foraged in her flesh. Jane cried out with a small clitoral orgasm, begging him, “No more, my lord. I want you inside of me. I need you!”

  He complied, kissing her with his lips and tongue so that she tasted herself, which added to the level of her excitement. Then, mounting her, he pushed slowly, slowly, slowly into her. She was almost ready to scream with her desire, but remembering how he had brought Monty on so nicely, she refrained from complaining. Fully sheathed, he said to her, “Look at me, Jane,” and she did. “Do you feel the throbbing?”

  She nodded and contracted her vaginal muscles about him.

  “Ahh, wicked one, do not tease me, else I am not able to give you all the passion that you deserve,” he cautioned her. Then he began to move upon her, the cadence of his rhythm increasing until the world began to spin about them.

  “Ah God! Ah God!” Jane cried out. “It is so good, Charles. So good! Do not stop. I beg of you. Ah, yes! I am dying! I come! I come!” And she did as she had never done before. Her vagina spasmed and spasmed and spasmed. She saw stars, and yet she felt totally in control of herself.

  “My love! My love!” he cried just a moment behind her, his juices pouring into her in almost violent spurts of his passion.

  Ping. Ping. Ping. The Channel is now closed.

  “Good night, my love,” Jane heard him whisper as she came to herself in her bed.

  “Damn!” she said. “Damn, and damn again!” She had just experienced the best sex she had ever had with an incredible man, and the Channel closed on her? She wanted more! She wanted him back! And she wasn’t going to be able to get him back for several days. She couldn’t play in the Channel every night, not with the week she had ahead of her.

  Her schedule was just too tight with the quarterly sales meeting and finalizing the autumn list and Martin Stratford’s semiannual family board meeting, where she had to answer the questions his uninterested daughters asked only because they were concerned with how much money they could get from their father’s publishing house shares if Martin took the company public, which he wasn’t going to do, or if some big conglomerate wanted to add Stratford Publishing to the list of their company. There weren’t many family-owned publishing houses left these days. J. P. Woods wasn’t a happy camper right now. But she did have a few more hours of shut-eye coming, and she had better take it if she was going to be on top of her game.

  Monday morning the halls of Stratford came alive with frantic whispers passed from office to office, desk to desk. J. P. Woods was on a tear.

  Her longtime assistant, Gloria, plunked the paranormal manuscript on the young editor’s desk. “Approved, but don’t go gushing your thanks, kid. Madam Publisher isn’t happy today for whatever reason. I’ll tell her you’re thrilled. When she calms down, you can do it personally.”

  “Gotcha,” the editor said, but she couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.

  “What’s bitten her?” Mick Devlin, the editor in chief of Stratford, asked Gloria. “She was fine on Friday. She get stood up or something over the weekend?”

  “Far as I know, she stayed home,” Gloria said. “Don’t say I said it, but maybe she’s going through the change. Women have a tendency to get in serious moods when that happens. You wouldn’t know that yet with your lovely young wife.”

  “Four kids, deadlines, and an occasional bout of PMS is bad enough,” Mick responded with a grin. “You mean it’s going to get worse one day?”

  “Just about the time those twins of yours are teenagers,” Gloria replied with an answering grin.

  Every dark, wet, and icy winter’s day dragged that week. J. P. Woods had never known such a long, slow week. By Thursday she was desperate to return to her fantasy, but Friday was the board meeting. Then her sister Marybeth called to say their mother had fallen on the ice and broken her hip.

  “Can you come up?” she asked. “She shouldn’t be alone when she comes home from the hospital, and I just can’t be running over there all the time. Julie won’t help out at all now that she has that job down in Boston.”

  “Find someone Mom would like to live in,” J.P. said. “I know your family keeps you hopping, but Julie and I can’t just pick up and run to Maine. She just got her job, and it’s the one she’s been gunning for over the last few years.”

  “But you’re head of a company,” Marybeth complained. “Why can’t you come home and help out, Janie?”

  “Precisely because I am head of a company,” J.P. answered. “Listen, sis, I saw that Mom has a decent house, and all of you have extras because of me. Now, you stayed in Bug Light, Marybeth. Find a good woman who likes to play poker. Someone who will look after Mom, cook, and keep the house for her. I’ll try to get up sometime in the spring. But I can’t come now.”

  “It must be wonderful to be so important,” her sister sniped.

  “It is,” J.P. said sharply. She didn’t have to feel guilty.

  “If the boys had stayed home . . . ,” Marybeth began.

  “For what?” J.P. wanted to know. “Dad’s boat went down with him. If it was difficult earning a living as a commercial fisherman twenty years ago, think of how tough it is now. Bug Light is practically all old people at this point. The military is the best plac
e for the boys, and they’ve both attained the rank of chief petty officer. In twenty-five years, they can retire with good pensions. It’s a helluva lot better than they could have done staying home. Now, find someone to stay with Mom. I’ll pay for it.”

  “But, Janie,” her middle sister whined.

  “I’ve got a meeting, Marybeth. Doc Parsons still taking care of Mom?”

  “His son,” came the answer.

  “I’ll call him. Tell Mom I send my love.”

  And J. P. Woods hung up. Just what she needed. Another complication in her life. And when the hell had it all become so difficult? After consulting her address book, she phoned her mother’s doctor and was put through immediately. “How serious is it, Seth?” she asked the young doctor.

  “Going to put a pin in her hip,” he said. “She’s in reasonably good health, Janie. You coming home?”

  “Can’t right now, but in the spring. I’ve asked Marybeth to find someone to come live in with Mom.”

  “I’ve got a good woman for the job,” Seth Parsons said. “Marybeth isn’t too good when it comes to judging character.”

  “I’ll pay a hundred dollars more a week than the going rate in Bug Light, Seth. I’ll take your advice and let you handle it. Call my sister. She’ll be relieved.”

  “You sound tense, Janie,” the doctor observed. “You keeping healthy?”

  “I’m fine, Seth,” she told him. Fine except that I want to be with a man who’s a total fantasy, and I can’t be with him until Friday night, and then only for eight hours at a time. Fine except life sucks. “Thanks for your help. Call me if Mom needs anything, okay?” She rang off. She didn’t want to talk anymore, especially with people who called her Janie and reminded her of a time and place she would rather forget.

  And then it was Friday. While the day dragged, J. P. Woods’s mood lightened. Just a few more hours and she would be with Charles Pell again. Would they pick up where they had left off? Would he fuck her again until she was begging for mercy, and loving every minute that his cock was flashing back and forth in her cunt? She didn’t care. She just needed to be with this man, who had so tenderly brought her alive and aware of true passion. She wanted to be in his arms, and this time, she would touch and lick and kiss his strong body, as he had done to her the other night. But she couldn’t take another week like the one that had just passed. She had to be with him more than just a few hours.

  She rushed home, almost too excited to eat the light supper she had prepared for herself this morning, but she heated it up, gobbled it down, and bathed. Then, at exactly eight o’clock, she climbed into her bed and pressed the A button on her Channel remote. She didn’t even have time to blink before she found herself alone in her bed in her London town house. Where was he? Where was Charles Pell, the Earl of Pelton? Had he left her? “Smithers!” she called to her maid, and the woman came.

  “Did the earl say he was coming tonight?” she asked.

  “After midnight, my lady. He was delivering Lord Reggie back to his wife. A right good job you did with that one. Miss Montague says the difference between the first time Lord R. fucked her and last evening was like night and day.”

  “Thank you,” Lady Jane said. “Do we have champagne on ice, Smithers? If not, see that it is done, please. The earl and I will celebrate our success with Lord Reggie.”

  “Right away, my lady,” Smithers said, and bustled out of the bedchamber.

  They had schooled Lord Reginald Bowie together, she and Charles! The knowledge excited her. Yes, they had. Graphic and sexual recollections of how they had done it suddenly flooded her memory. It was amazing that he was so like she was. They were a perfectly matched pair. “I will never let him go,” Lady Jane murmured to herself as she waited for her lover.

  Smithers returned with the two footmen, Flint and Bertie. One carried a footed silver champagne bucket, the other a large bottle of the bubbly. Smithers had two crystal glasses in her hand. Directed by Smithers, they set everything up as it should be, and then Flint opened the bottle containing the golden liquid, pouring her some.

  “You’ve both done very well,” Lady Jane said, praising the two footmen as she sipped her champagne. “You may all have the rest of this evening off,” she dismissed them, and the three servants backed from the bedchamber.

  It was not long before the door opened again and Charles Pell stepped into the room. “Good evening, my love,” he said. He walked across the Aubusson carpet, poured himself a glass of champagne, and raised it to her. “We are celebrating the return of a chastened and more sensitive Lord Reggie to his wife, I presume.”

  “We are,” she replied. “And perhaps we may also celebrate the passion you and I will soon share.” Jane looked at him coquettishly over the rim of her glass.

  “Indeed, my love,” he agreed. Then he said, “Jane, my darling, I have had the most wonderful idea. Surely there are young ladies in as desperate need of training as there are gentlemen. Would it not be as much fun to school a stubborn woman as it is to school a difficult gentleman?” His sipped the sparkling liquid in his glass.

  “Charles!” she cried. “What an absolutely marvelous idea! I agree. We shall expand our little enterprise to include certain ladies. I shall be jealous, of course, when you fuck them, you know.”

  “And I shall be jealous when they lick and suck your juicy cunt for me,” he told her. “But, my love, we shall have such great fun, won’t we? I would advise, however, that we move down to my country seat near Barrow in Suffolk once the season is over. We will give grand house parties together, which will allow us to discreetly get the word out regarding our little enterprise.”

  “People will gossip that I am your mistress,” Lady Jane said.

  “Will you mind?” he asked her.

  She smiled at him. “No. Not as long as you continue to love me.”

  “I will always love you, Jane,” he told her sincerely, and the look in his blues eyes told her he spoke the truth. Then he stood up, set his champagne aside, and quickly disrobed so that he might join her in the bed.

  Jane held out her arms to him in welcome. She had waited a lifetime for a man like this. Yet, until she had met Charles Pell, she had never believed that such a man actually existed. Naked flesh touched naked flesh, and within moments the world was exploding about them. She wanted nothing more than this world, this life, this man, and she would have what she wanted. She deserved it, damn it.

  “Mr. Nicholas!” His secretary’s voice cut through the silence in the office. The sound was a bit tinny coming through the old-fashioned intercom. He supposed he should really have it upgraded. Everything else in his offices was up-to-date.

  “Yes, what is it?” he answered.

  “We have a problem with the Channel, Mr. Nicholas.”

  “A problem? What kind of a problem?” Mr. Nicholas demanded to know.

  “We have a client who refuses to leave, sir,” the secretary said.

  “What time zone, and who is it?” he asked.

  “United States, Eastern Standard Time zone, and it’s J. P. Woods, the publisher,” was the reply he received.

  Hellfire and brimstone, Mr. Nicholas thought. What had brought on this bit of foolish emotionalism on J. P. Woods’s part? She was a cold, practical woman, and he actually had high hopes for her eventually. Well, he had best see to it himself. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “It’s a Regency fantasy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Nicholas picked up a rather complicated remote, programmed it, and then pushed an A button. There, up on the enormous flat-screen television, a scene of an elegantly appointed bedchamber appeared. J. P. Woods was sitting up in that bed, clutching the hand of her lover. Mr. Nicholas pushed the A button a second time so that he might be in the room with them. “My dear Ms. Woods,” he said by way of greeting, “this is not acceptable. Not acceptable at all. You need to be gone from the Channel now.”

  “Who are you?” J. P. Woods, aka Lady Jane, demanded.
“And how dare you materialize in my private quarters? This is my fantasy. I did not ask you into it.”

  “I am Mr. Nicholas, CEO of the Channel Corp. This pleasure dome is available from eight p.m. in the evening until four a.m. in the early morning. No client of the Channel may remain beyond those eight hours, Ms. Woods.”

  “It’s my fantasy, sir, and I am not relinquishing it for the next sixteen hours before I may come back again,” J.P. said.

  “Ms. Woods, you are a powerful, respected, and even feared woman in your reality,” Mr. Nicholas said.

  “And in my fantasy, I am a wealthy, sought-after woman of some mystery,” she told him. “I like it better.”

  “You like being fucked,” he said bluntly. “Here in your fantasy you may be as wanton, as perverted as you wish, and none of your contacts in the real world knows your secret. If they knew, you would appear weak, even helpless, and you do not want that, Ms. Woods. You wish to put forth an aura of strength, and you do.”

  “You don’t understand,” J. P. Woods cried.

  “Then make me understand,” Mr. Nicholas said.

  “Since that horrible night when my mother’s john tried to rape me, threatened my sisters and my whole family, I haven’t been able to really trust men. I am always watching, wondering what it is they will want of me and how they will somehow try to force me to their will. Because of that, I have never been able to fall in love. How could I? I couldn’t show any signs of weakness. I couldn’t allow myself to be taken advantage of and ruin my reputation in publishing. My business is like a small town. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is always looking for an advantage over someone else.”

  “But,” Mr. Nicholas said, “you have gained all you have by virtue of your hard work and your determination not to be taken advantage of, my dear Jane. Why on earth would you give all of it up for a simple fantasy?”

  “I have found the perfect man,” she answered him.