Carew looked as though he had been carved from a lump of lard, except that his cheeks were pink.
He cleared his throat before he found his voice. ‘Did your father find out?’
‘Yes. So did mother. You see, my sisters liked what I did and so did my aunt. We kept doing it. That was the trouble. In time, it was only to be expected that we would all be found out.’
‘But your sisters were not sent from home?’
Katie shook her head. ‘No. My sin was greater than theirs.’
Carew frowned in amazement. ‘In what way?’
Katie beamed brightly. ‘I had decided that I did not want to be a haberdasher.’
Carew stared then, as Katie began to laugh, he too burst out laughing. ‘Oliver, you little swine. I was half believing you. Come here, you little devil.’
He took her head in the palm of his hand and tousled her shorn hair. Then he bent her over his lap and landed a few heavy, but playful slaps on her behind. ‘But you enjoyed my little story, sir,’ she said, smiling up at him, her eyes as wide and angelic as she could make them. ‘I could see you did.’
She dropped her eyes to his groin. Lightly, she brushed over his rising mound with her fingers. Carew stopped laughing. His eyes darkened and his breath quickened.
As if in slow motion, Katie positioned herself so that she could more easily reach out and touch the hardness that was now so obvious. Beneath the touch of her fingers, his piston jumped against the material of his trousers.
She looked into his eyes. She saw the trembling of his bottom lip, the flush of rushing blood colouring his face, and his eyes - so blue and so wide - stared at what her fingers were doing to him.
‘You should not be doing this.’ The words were half drowned on his rushing breath.
‘But I am doing this, and I am enjoying it. Are you enjoying it too?’
He licked his lips. He sucked in his breath. He tried to answer, but could not. He closed his eyes as if he did not want to see what she was doing to him.
‘I think,’ she said gently, ‘you had a purpose in letting me watch you last night. I think you wanted to teach me something and also to give me pleasure. Now, I will pleasure you.’
He neither spoke nor opened his eyes.
Smiling, Katie lowered her head and, just as the parson’s daughter had done, used her mouth to undo the buttons of his trousers.
Beneath the touch of her teeth, she felt his penis growing hard as iron. His smell, the aroma of fresh manhood and fresher sweat was in her nostrils. Soon, that pulsating rod of hardening flesh would be in her mouth, his salt upon her tongue.
The smell of his warmth drew her mouth and her chin inside his clothing. With her hands, she enticed his penis from its cosy lair. As its crown came into view, she deftly flicked her tongue into the tiny opening, then retreated and ran it around its collar.
Helplessly trapped by his own obsession, he threw back his head and moaned. She could almost hear his cry for mercy on each strangled breath. Why, he would be asking himself, is this boy doing this? And why am I letting him? Would that he would stop, would that he would...
But there was no letting him off. In Oliver was Katie, and Katie had every intention of confusing him, driving him to distraction and denting his masculine ego. Only once that was truly injured could she hope to score over him and the competition.
Her lips swooped up and down the length of his stem. With her fingers, she could feel the heat of his semen driving ever upwards along its narrow channel. His member throbbed as his fluid pumped up and up to his crown until it spurted between her lips. Rocking to and fro, up and down, she sucked it all from him, and savoured his creaminess on her tongue before swallowing it with as much satisfaction as she had the wine.
Gently, she kissed its swollen head as his erection died, then lay her head against it almost as though she were keeping it company. It pleased her to do that. It was warm and large, and one day it would fuse completely with her own sex. That, she was sure, would happen.
Carew lay flat on the ground, immobile, his hands tucked beneath his head.
He was staring at the sky, his heart still thumping in his chest as though with anguish. He wondered about Oliver, and about himself. He lay still but, inside, his senses whirled like leaves in a gale. I’m being sucked into a maelstrom, he told himself, I’m being drawn into something I wish to avoid, yet cannot resist.
Katie too was thinking her own thoughts.
If I was a cat, she was thinking, I would be purring.
Her head felt strangely better. This moment had occurred and she had to take full advantage of it. Beneath her head and her body, she could feel his muscles tense. At any moment, he might jerk himself away from her and throw her aside. She could not, and would not allow that to happen. Talk soothingly to him, she advised herself, put his mind at ease.
‘Are there many beautiful women coming tonight, sir?’
He sort of hummed a reply.
‘Will you have any of them? Will you put your member in them?’
Carew sighed, and with his sighing, his tension seemed to lessen. ‘Perhaps. It depends on how the mood takes me.’
‘Do you actually like women?’
She felt him shift more forcibly under her. He wanted her to move. She ignored the signal.
‘Of course I do.’
His reply was quite sharp.
‘Do you treat them all like you did Miss Priscilla?’
Carew hesitated. ‘Not entirely. But I do like variety. I have never, my dear Oliver, come across a woman yet who I so desired that I would chase her. She has to chase me. Please me, not me please her.’
‘Will you ever chase a woman?’
He chuckled. ‘That depends on whether I am besotted by her, I suppose. So far, I have not been besotted by any woman.’
‘Or man?’
Carew shifted more fiercely. This time, Katie removed her head from his groin. As Carew straightened up, he averted his eyes and did up his trousers.
‘No man! No man at all!’ He got to his feet and walked away.
Watching him retreat from her was painful. She got to her feet, bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. She had a powerful urge to run after him, clutch at his body and make him stand still. Then he could look at her as she peeled off her clothes and exposed the breasts and the sex of a woman.
She saw him kicking at the grass and the gorse as he walked. Eventually, he stood immobile on the rough crag among the whispering grass, his body a mere silhouette against the wideness of the sky.
This, she told herself, was the man she had set out to master, yet she sensed his pain.
Despite her grounding in suffrage, her adherence to the rights of women and her unfailing belief in their creed, she had a sudden urge to overturn the whole lot, run after him, and declare herself his slave.
But her beliefs were too strong. Carew Bentley Thompson was everything the women’s movement had set out to challenge. She was challenging him in a devious, subversive way. She was making him question his own sexuality and, in that, she held power.
In the beginning her obsession had been about conquering him, winning his attention, then dumping him like she had a hundred others. But somehow, she knew that things would not be that simple. In making Carew question his own sexuality, she was also questioning hers. More and more, she was becoming very aware that she was all woman - far more so than she had ever expected. And what’s more, she wanted Carew more than she had ever wanted a man before.
Chapter 12
The crowd from London duly arrived and, once dinner was over, glasses clinked and the gramophone was belting out some pretty lively music. Drink flowed and dancing feet and wandering hands became more energetic as the evening went on.
Carew was content to stay at Thompson Towers, dr
ink too much, dance too much, and let providence take its sexual course. But, as at all parties, there is always that point and always that person that suggests a different distraction.
It was a ginger-haired, fresh-faced young man named ‘Polo’ Gibbons who suggested having a car race and Carew, badly in need of diversion, seconded his suggestion.
‘Ten pounds bet!’ exclaimed Polo as he slammed two gleamingly white five-pound notes on the table. ‘Seconded!’ cried someone else, and did the same. Other bets followed among a chorus of enthusiasm from male and female guests alike.
‘You are a brave man indeed,’ Carew said. ‘Seeing as your forte is to have a horse between your legs and to be hitting a ball from one end of a field to another.’
There was immediate laughter when Polo commented that horses were not the only thing he had between his legs.
‘Enough of your boasting, Polo,’ Carew went on once the laughter had died down. ‘If you insist on racing, then a-racing we will go. We will race out to the abbey ruins and have a midnight supper there. It will most definitely make a change. Things are getting a bit hum drum here.’ Saying that, he reached out and hit the needle arm from off the same old record. ‘If I hear that bloody Black Bottom Rag one more time, I shall kick that bloody gramophone all round the bloody room!’
Carew, who had already drunk more than his fair share, swigged back another large glass of brandy. He tottered a bit as he reached for his motoring things from the ever-present Imran. As he pulled on his gloves and slapped his goggles onto his head, he ordered the man to prepare a hamper and more drink and bring it out in the Bentley to the old ruins. He would take the Bugatti which was red and seated only two, but was faster than any car to be driven by his contemporaries.
The male guests dashed for their greatcoats and goggles, the woman for their close-fitting hats and their silky summer coats.
Usually, Carew would have dallied over who he invited to share his car with him, taking glorious delight in the way each woman vied for his attention. As it was, tonight was different.
Surprisingly, it was Suzanne he invited to share the car with him. Suzanne was always there for the plucking - or suchlike. Normally, he would have gone for a girl he had not had sexually, but his brain was befuddled by too many glasses swigged down too quickly.
It was Imran who wound the handle and brought the engine into throbbing life.
‘Tally ho!’ Carew shouted as he let go the handbrake and, almost taking Imran on the bonnet before he stepped aside, sped off down to the main gate.
Other engines roared into life behind and skits of dust wafted upwards to the lines of beech trees that bordered the road to the gate.
The moon hung low and the sky was bright. The road was practically empty except for the brace of cars that spewed from the gates of Thompson Towers. The night would have been quiet except for the drivers and passengers singing, laughing and waving their arms, and being everything gay, young things were supposed to be.
Winding and steep, the road they travelled followed the line of the river. As they cornered and the tyres screamed, they dropped down that little bit more. Now and again, a roadside rabbit would run to safety, its eyes glinting like chips of amber in the glare of the headlights.
Surrounded on all sides by thickly forested hills, the road snaked to the valley floor.
Down in the valley, and near the river, the ruins of the abbey pointed darkly at the sky.
All the way, Suzanne had clung to Carew’s arm. Her closeness unnerved him. With sober clarity, he recalled the day he had seen her being rogered by his head groom. But it wasn’t so much what she had been doing that occupied his mind. Despite the amount of drink he had consumed, his member hardened in his pants as he remembered Oliver’s fingers upon his flesh. That, he realised to his own shame, was the reason he had brought Suzanne.
‘This is wonderfully spooky, darling,’ cooed the over-attentive Suzanne as they pulled up before the crumbling stones that reared up darkly before them. ‘Do you think it’s haunted, Carew darling?’
‘No, you stupid bitch. The only spirits here tonight are the ones we’ve brought with us.’
With a dumb look on her painted face, Suzanne stared at him. ‘You what?’
‘Spirits,’ he said, then took his flask from his pocket, toasted her health, and drank half its contents.
His head reeled, so he closed his eyes, then he threw back his head and opened them again. The skeleton of the abbey filled his eyes. Perhaps she was right, he thought. Perhaps it was haunted - just like he was.
Gaunt and glassless windows of what had been the nave framed a bright moon that seemed to hover above the blackness of the hills.
There was a mist in front of Carew’s wavering gaze. He was looking at the abbey but not seeing it. Am I really here? he asked himself. Am I really everything I think I am?
He did not voice his thoughts.
As other cars swerved to a halt on either side of them, he felt Suzanne’s fingers run down over his shirt to the front of his trousers. He groaned, appreciative that her touch had momentarily dispersed his thoughts.
Suzanne groaned too. What she found there was far larger than she had expected.
‘My!’ she exclaimed, her eyes wide with delight. ‘Now that is what I call a hard-on. I sure didn’t know I had that good an effect on you!’ At the same time as kissing his cheek, she tightened her grip.
Carew was startled from his imaginings, imaginings that did not include her. But he’d had plenty to drink, so bravado among this crowd was not difficult to adopt. ‘An offering,’ he shouted as he escaped her grip and got out of the car. ‘Let us go forth and make an offering on the altar.’
He grabbed hold of Suzanne, then held the giggling girl at arm’s length, his fingers tight around her wrist. Not that she seemed to mind very much. She was laughing more loudly now, her eyes bright with expectation as they darted from him, to the ruins and to the rest of their crowd.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ cried one dizzy redhead whose lipstick differed little from her hair. ‘Fizzy,’ she shouted, ‘I’ve got fizzy.’ She held a bottle of champagne in each hand. A whoop of delight went up from the crowd. ‘I thought you would all approve, darlings. In fact, I knew you would!’ she shouted.
‘She’s drunk. She’s bloody drunk,’ said Carew, and wondered why he found it so funny.
Laughing and giggling, the redhead led the merry throng among the fallen stones and through the Norman arch that had once had a door in it.
Straggling buddleia, elder and clumps of flowering weeds filled the inside of the high walls. Arched, glassless windows framed the dark sky outside.
In total darkness it would have been frightening. As it was, the moon shone but did little to ease the overall eeriness of the place.
Carew, dragging the laughing Suzanne, reached the jagged stones that had once been the altar. Once there, he grabbed a bottle of champagne from the wild redhead and took a mighty swig. He didn’t spill a drop.
Before the redhead reclaimed it, he looked searchingly at the champagne bottle. Could he regain his old self purely from a bottle?
No, he told himself, no, he couldn’t. But he had to make an effort. How, he didn’t know, and when was an even more awkward question.
‘Forget it, old chap,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Just bloody forget it.’
‘What?’ cried Suzanne, still laughing, still dancing around as though the gramophone and the Black Bottom Rag had come with her.
‘We’ll do a play,’ Carew shouted. ‘We’ll do something very old, very haunting, and we’ll start with a sacrifice!’ Turning to Suzanne, he curled his fingers over the front of her very low-cut dress.
‘Oh, sir. Take pity on a poor virgin, sir. Please!’ Suzanne played her part, feigning fear, and at the same time taking advantage of his grasp
ing fingers and slipping out of her dress. ‘A naked sacrifice. I will be a naked sacrifice,’ she cried, her hair flying and all the dizziness of drink in her eyes and her actions. Completely unabashed, she proceeded to take off her clothes until only her stockings and her garters remained.
A sheen of sweat covered her naked body which, touched by the light of the moon, made it shine like silver. Her breasts were pretty and of average size. Her belly curved gently down to her posy of pubic curls.
There was egging on from those gathered, saucy suggestions, and other comments that were downright lewd. Not that Suzanne seemed to mind. Exhibitionist to the end, she dropped naked to her knees before Carew. Clinging to his legs, she bent low, her bottom high. It shone before his eyes. Those who watched gasped with delight, and Suzanne giggled as couch grass and virulent weed tickled her breasts. Carew smiled disdainfully as she kissed his shoes, his knees, and the hidden lump behind his trousers.
‘Bitch!’ One word brought the laughter to a mere trickle as the man who had accompanied Suzanne to the party lay the flat of his hand across her rump.
Suzanne yelped.
Silence descended on those watching. For a moment there was tension in the air, but only for a moment.
The man slapped her behind again. ‘Get on with it, you bitch. There’s a queue forming to get into you and, seeing as I lost the bet to be first here, I’m first to put my own engine into you!’
Laughter broke out afresh as Ted, the man who had slapped Suzanne’s behind, proceeded to undo his trouser buttons.
Willingly, Carew stepped back. He frowned as though he could not understand what was happening - although, of course, he had orchestrated such scenarios a hundred times before. But tonight things seemed different.
‘Too much to drink,’ he mumbled, and reached for the support of a flying buttress.
No one noticed him fade into the shadows. He did it slowly, as though he were melting and becoming a shadow too. Unseen, he paused and watched as they took hold of the screaming, giggling Suzanne and lay her out on the stone altar. He was forgotten - even by Suzanne.
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