La Bonne

by Michèle de Lully

  I didn’t dare look at Petros, that would shatter the pretense of innocence. But if he was human and alive, he had to be affected. God knows I was. Putting my hand to her belly, I spread the lotion down to the very top of her bikini bottom, pushing just a little against the already low-cut fabric.

  “Stand up,” I told her, and obediently she did. The thrill of power that shot through me almost undid my restraint. Oiling her legs, I spent perhaps a little too much time on the inside of her thighs.

  “My turn,” I said when she was done, and now I could risk a look at Petros. Like a gentleman, he was not staring at our ridiculously salacious exhibition, but the bulge in his bathing trunks was definitely not the water-shrunk package he had come out of the ocean with.

  “Damon,” he called to the sailor lounging at the railing. “Could I get a beer?”

  The man did not speak, but to his credit, he did not leer either. I noticed when he returned that he had two beers, one of which he kept for himself. Stationing himself at his post on the railing, he caught my gaze—since I was desperately trying to look anywhere but at Petros while Amanda oiled me up, or at her, either—and the hard sparkle in his eyes was as good as a leer.

  But too discreet to complain about. Despite his lounging about, Damon was thoroughly professional.

  So now I could not look at him, either. The implied invitation was clear. No one in the crew would ever dream of propositioning Amanda, but as a fellow servant, I was fair game. The idea of relieving myself with one of Petros’s wiry sailors—or perhaps with several of them—was just one of the fantasies running through my head.

  Nothing speaks to the desperation of my condition more than those torrid thoughts. While my best friend was rubbing my all-but-naked body with oil in front of her fiancé and the object of my lust, I was fantasizing about being gang-banged by his crew. Three months without a man and I had become one. Sex was all I could think about.

  Amanda finished with me and flopped into her deck chair, exposing her body to the sun. I almost jumped on top of her. Instead, I sat down, spread out, and went to work on my second wine cooler.

  We made small talk, resting in the sun from our labors. They from the swim, and I from my fantasies, which had exhausted me while leaving my desires unquenched. I don’t know how he managed to hold out so long, but finally Petros said he had some captain’s chores to do before dinner. I was pretty sure one of them included polishing his main mast in the privacy of his cabin.

  Amanda and I went back to our cabin to dress for dinner. As soon as we were inside with the door closed, she hugged me tightly.

  “What is that for?” I asked, a little unnerved. My fantasies were still ringing in my head.

  “That was amazing,” she giggled. “The oil thing. Petros was beside himself.”

  “Um,” I said. I might have noticed if I hadn’t been so beside myself, but I could hardly say that.

  But in true Amanda fashion, she could.

  “It had to drive him crazy. It drove me crazy. When you pushed your hand down my belly, I wanted you to keep going so bad.” Now her hug turned into a cuddle.

  “Amanda,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Like you did this morning,” she whispered. “With your fingers.”

  “Amanda!” I snapped, and pushed her away.

  “What?” she asked, in complete innocence, on the verge of tears. What could I say? That everything we had done so far was wrong?

  I couldn’t shame her like that. “You’re supposed to be thinking about him, not me,” I said instead.

  “I do. But it helps to think about you, too.”

  Now I was too confused to think up any more lies. So I just blushed.

  “I’ll never make it through dinner,” Amanda groaned. “I have to do something now.” And without further ado she stepped out of her bikini, fell backwards on the bed, and began masturbating.

  I was left standing there, still swamped with the feelings of love and protection that her trust had exposed in me, watching her pleasure herself and knowing that she was thinking about me while she was doing it.

  Amanda looked up at me with her innocent eyes, without a trace of self-consciousness, fear of rejection, dominance, anger, greed, or any of the other emotions I had always associated with sex, and asked, “Could you touch me like this morning? Just a little bit?”

  It was like someone else was in control of my body. I knelt on the bed over her, put my fingers between her legs, and gently stimulated my best friend, employer, and chief competition for Petros, to orgasm. While I did it, she held my free hand in hers, our fingers intertwined, and whenever her eyes opened from the ecstasy she floated in, her gaze sought out mine. When she climaxed, she grabbed my servicing hand with hers and tried to force me deeper inside.

  “No, ma cherie,” I whispered, and closed my fingers into knuckles that ground against her swollen mound. Her hips bucked involuntarily, and she ground the back of her head into the pillows, gasping for breath until the flood receded.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and without forethought, brought my pleasing hand to her lips and kissed it.

  Now that spirit seized me again, unfolding from some hidden place inside me. I opened one of my fingers, still wet, to her lips. Obediently she kissed it, and when I pushed, she let it slip into her mouth and licked it with her tongue.

  She did not recoil as I fed her each of my other fingers, but accepted this new exotica with eagerness and joy.

  “Your turn,” she whispered when my fingers lay against her face again. With both hands, she tugged at my bikini bottoms.

  “Yes,” I said huskily. I stepped out of them, and her hand went instantly to me. “My turn.”

  I looked at her beautiful face, framed in all that golden hair spread out on the pillows, and wanted to possess it.

  She watched me climb up the bed and straddle her face with an astonished smile, as if she had not guessed such a wonder was allowed. Trapped between the pillows below her and my thighs above her, she made no effort to escape.

  Holding the headboard of the bed with my left hand, I wrapped my right hand in her glorious hair. The dominating spirit in me took control of my mouth. “Kiss it,” I said, like men had said to me while holding my head at their waist.

  She raised her head to comply. When her lips touched my most tender spot, an arc of pure electricity shot through me. I let go of her hair, snatched a pillow and stuffed it to my mouth, stifling my involuntary squeal of pleasure. I had had men do this to me before, with various levels of interest and success, but her softness, innocence, and hunger burned me. Without hesitation she plunged into me, her tongue invasive and smooth, her lips suckling and warm, my own wetness splashing to my thighs. I held myself still, my legs locked like iron, as she fed from me, each little thrust of her tongue inside me rocketing up my spine in a way no other penetration ever had.

  Shoving the pillow deeper into my mouth, I looked over my shoulder to see her long, lovely body stretching out under me, and her fingers furiously working between her legs.

  If I made a sound, if Petros came through that door, it would be over. He would take her on the spot. No man, not even our noble prince, could withstand this lure, this eagerness, this unquenched desire. I imagined Petros’s lean body on top of her, penetrating her, pushing on her with such force that her eager tongue was driven deeper into my body.

  The image swamped me, dragging me down into swirling depths. Fisting the pillow into my mouth, locking my body into immobility so I did not thrash and pound the walls and scream, scream, scream, I climaxed with a ferocity I had never known.

  I came to lying on the bed, wrapped up with Amanda, arms and legs intertwined while we snuggled together. Only ten or twenty minutes had passed since we had entered our cabin, but my life had changed. I could not bear the thought of giving up what I had just discovered. I could not wait until I could do it again, force my innocent kitten to service me with her eager joy.

&n
bsp; I had made my choice. I knew what I wanted, and it was Amanda.

  Chapter Seven

  This newfound resolution lasted while we dressed, chattering like school girls. It lasted while I lovingly fixed her hair, making her as pretty as I could. It lasted while we held hands and walked to the galley, her white gown maddeningly close to transparent in the dusk. Even though I had plenty of experience with that naked body, I kept trying to get a better look at it through the gown. So did the crew. A surprising number of bumps and clatters followed in our wake, as men walked blindly into various walls and bulkheads of the ship they knew like the backs of their hands.

  My resolve lasted right up until Petros greeted us for dinner. Then my wayward loins spoke up, shouting to my brain that what they really needed was a good stiff pounding from a good stiff cock attached to a well-oiled, lean masculine body with the face of an archangel.

  “Your beauty is unsurpassed tonight, my dear,” he told the gold-crowned girl next to me. When he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, the image of her face between my legs jolted me.

  “Courtesy of my indispensable companion,” she answered, and lifted my hand to Petros so he could kiss it.

  I had to fight down a surge of jealousy. Of course he could not kiss me on the lips. She was being as generous as she could, sharing his affection with me, and besides, she had just called me indispensable. My heart stuttered.

  That meant she wanted to keep me, too.

  “Thank you,” Petros said, looking into my eyes. “For this double vision of loveliness, I will be forever grateful.”

  Such flowery nonsense. It rushed to my head like the sugar from an entire box of bonbons.

  I could do this, I thought. I could live like this, lusting after him and relieving myself with her. Except, of course, once they were married, she would not be in my bed every night. But we could have afternoon trysts while he was away doing whatever it is princes do in the afternoons.

  Eagerly I convinced myself of this beautiful future.

  But after dinner, standing on the deck in the moonlight, watching the ship cut gently through the water, the night wind wiped such fantasies away.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Amanda asked me.

  “Go on in,” I said. “I’ll come to bed in a minute.”

  “Don’t stay out too long,” she whispered, and kissed me lightly on the cheek. Then the warmth of her presence was gone and I was alone.

  The sea was the same one I had swum in that morning, but instead of crystal blue it was black and opaque. Like my future.

  I’d never had an affair with a married man without getting caught. The idea that I could carry on an affair with both husband and wife was ludicrous. We would be discovered. I would be a traitor to Amanda and a pervert to Petros. Disgraced, I would be cast out, and their fairytale marriage would be ruined. And if the tabloids got wind of it, their lives would be ruined.

  Throwing myself overboard right now would be less painful for all of us.

  “Careful there,” said Petros, coming up behind me with the silent grace of a cat. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me away from the rail, like he was afraid I might really jump. “You—” he started to say, but I interrupted him. Turning in his arms, I kissed him, deeply, passionately, without restraint.

  He did not pull away, and for a time we existed only there, our bodies melded together and joined in fire at the mouth.

  “Mon amour,” he whispered in my ear when we broke apart. “Why do you do this to me?”

  “It won’t happen again,” I said miserably and turned away from him.

  But his arms did not let go, and I stayed in his embrace, though I faced the open ocean again.

  “Then stay with me,” he whispered, his voice and his promises as seductive as the fabled call of the sirens. “Tomorrow, at Ermoupolis, we will put Amanda on a plane home, and together we can return to the sea.”

  “Don’t be silly,” my mouth said, but my body could not resist. I pressed my buttocks against his body, and the hard spot they found sent tingles up my spine.

  “How can I lie with Amanda, knowing that you are a room and a million miles away?” His breath deepened as we ground together, making heat between us.

  “You can’t,” I said while my back arched into his solid chest. “I have to leave, it’s clear.”

  “How can I let you go, knowing you are staring into deep water like a sailor without hope?”

  I clutched the railing in both hands, the better to push back into him. The fabric of his slacks was thin, and my dress even thinner, but if not for those millimeters of cloth we would be committing the most serious transgression.

  Ironic how my conscience could justify grinding against my best friend’s fiancé’s erection because we weren’t actually having intercourse. His hand cupped my breast, and I slid up and down against the front of his pants.

  “We can’t do this,” I whimpered.

  “I cannot stop,” he said. “Not when I know you need me.”

  “Amanda needs you.” The sound of fabric on fabric making heat was washed away by the cool wind.

  “But I need you.”

  “If you had me, you wouldn’t want me,” I argued. “What honor would I have if I robbed my friend?”

  “Why must duty always prevail? Am I not entitled to happiness of my own?”

  “Because you’re only happy when you are doing your duty,” I answered him. “And that’s why I love you so much.”

  In frustrated silence, our bodies acted out a pantomime of what they could never have.

  Pushing my hair into his face, my voice cracked and low, I begged him. “When you do this to Amanda, will you sometimes think of me?”

  “Mon dieu,” he said, and shuddered. Then he leaned against me, as if all the strength had gone from his legs.

  “Captain, I think there’s been an accident on deck,” I whispered, trying not to giggle.

  “The sun…lotion…all day,” he gasped. Pitiful excuses, but he was just a man, after all. They can’t help it.

  What was my excuse?

  “I have to go,” I said, no longer smiling. “We can never do this again.” I slipped from his embrace, and he let me go.

  But a few steps away he spoke quietly to me.

  “I need you too. If you go, I will follow.”

  “I’ll stay until the wedding,” I promised. “After that, you’ll forget me. Amanda is everything I can never be. You’ll see.”

  He did not argue with me, but his posture shouted denial. In the wake of that iron resolve, I fled.

  —

  My cabin was no sanctuary from desire. With business-like efficiency I stripped and readied for bed, only to have my reserve shattered by Amanda’s playful smirk. And the carrot she fondled playfully, holding it to her lips for a kiss.

  “I stole it from the kitchen,” she grinned. It was thick, heavy, and long. Bright orange, too, but in the dim moonlight from the porthole I could overlook that.

  “What the hell for?” I asked, suddenly worried.

  “I wanted to know what it looks like. I mean, when you…you know. I want to see it.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said, but my loins disagreed. The thought of anything hard and long was exactly what they wanted right now.

  “Fine.” Her perfect lips screwed up like an angel pouting. “I’ll keep it for myself.” And she moved her hands under the sheets, the carrot disappearing with them.

  “Don’t you dare!” I gasped, yanking the sheets off her. I was put here expressly to prevent what she was about to do.

  “Oh, relax,” she giggled. “I’m not that stupid. But it feels nice when I do this.” The sultry vixen was back again as she rubbed it between her legs.

  My recent experience above deck had left me aching with emptiness. Not that I had ever been able to say no to her.

  “All right, fine. Just stop that.” I crawled into bed and lay on my back, my legs spread. “Go ahead,” I said, trying to be petulant,
but coming out almost desperate.

  She giggled and prodded me with the thing. When I jumped from the contact, she laughed again.

  “You get used to the cold,” she whispered. “And it’s lots warmer than it was, anyway.”

  “It’s not just that,” I told her. “You can’t just jump in like that. You have to warm me up first.”

  “Like this?” she said, and bent her head to my thighs.

  “Oh God, yes,” I moaned when her lips touched that magic spot again. Yes, exactly like that.

  She might have said something else, but I was locked in a fantasy of Petros bending over me like that. I hardly needed warming up. I had come into the room ready, and nothing about seeing Amanda in her nightgown playing obscenely with a carrot had changed that. I could not even tell she had begun until she lifted her head and I saw only half a carrot.

  “More?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “More,” I gasped. “Harder, and don’t stop licking.”

  With a wicked smile her face disappeared again, and her long soft hair spilled over my legs and belly. I arched my hips to let her inside, and surrendered myself to climax.

  “My God,” she said sometime later, her face glowing with fiery astonishment. “Is it really like that?”

  “Yes.” I kissed her tenderly. “You’ll see.”

  “I can’t wait,” she cried in frustration. “I want to know what it feels like so much.”

  “You have to wait, Amanda.” I hugged her tightly to take the sting of denial away.

  “Please,” she sobbed, and I could feel her entire body burning in unquenched desire. “Please.”

  “Shh,” I whispered. Moved by pity, I slipped my hand to her thighs and touched her gently.

  “Do that thing with your fingers,” she begged. “Just a little, like before. Please.”

  “You know I can’t,” I told her, almost annoyed at her whining. And then, holding her there in the dark while she begged to be violated, that dark spirit rose up in me again. Lust burned in me, confused between Petros and her and my own enigmatic desires.

  “If you really want to know what it feels like to be penetrated, there is something unique to these Greek isles…”