“I…yes,” she admitted. “I liked it.”
“You touched yourself,” Lucien said. And he manoeuvred his fingers underneath the cotton of her drawers and drew one long digit between the lips of her cunt, pressing a touch harder when he reached the nub of nerve endings at the apex of her slit.
Lilly almost jumped out of her skin. “Yes,” she gasped.
“Like I’m touching you now.” He twisted his fingers in her sticky curls.
“Yes…”
John leaned in and sucked her earlobe into his mouth, and Lilly shuddered. As he withdrew, he murmured, “We like that you were watching us, Lilly. We’d like to watch you.”
“We’d like to watch you lose that prim-and-proper professional woman front that you put on,” said Lucien, working his fingers between her legs and setting up an electric sensation that made her moan and gasp.
She let her eyes close. She felt as though a current was thrumming through her body, setting up sparks of sensation just beneath her skin and making flashes of light burst in the darkness behind her eyelids. Excitement fizzed and crackled in her belly and arced up her spine. She opened her eyes but found that she could focus on nothing but the sensations Lucien was creating as he played his long fingers through her slick folds.
“We’d like to watch you sweat and writhe and come apart in our arms,” John added. He nipped gently at the skin of her throat, and Lilly’s eyes fluttered shut again, her eyelashes feathering her cheeks.
“I want…” she said, then caught her breath as John flicked his tongue against the shell of her ear. “I want to watch you again.”
Chapter Seven
They had undressed each other quickly but tenderly, lingering occasionally to press a kiss to the hollow of a collarbone, or to play hands, trembling with excitement, over a pale, perfect buttock.
Lilly had perched on a chair and watched, her breath shuddering in and out as she fixed her eyes on the erotic dance the two men had performed as they shed their clothes. There was an element of performance to their lovemaking, she thought, as though they were kissing and touching for her benefit. The thought made her feel hot and flushed. An exquisite pulse began between her thighs, and she shifted restlessly.
Now John pushed into Lucien, slowly at first, then increasing the speed of his thrusts so that his thighs slapped against the smooth, perfect flesh of the detective’s arse.
She watched as John pumped his thick, ruddy cock into the other man’s grasping hole, and she squeezed her thighs together, the sight of it making her feel as though she might come without ever touching or being touched. Lucien twitched and moaned as John fucked him, bracing his arms and proffering his arse up so that his lover could get further inside him.
“Is she watching us, John?” Lucien’s voice was husky and strained. “Is she watching you fuck me?” He fisted his hands in the bedcovers, lowering his head, his neck and spine a long, pale, quivering line of tension.
John looked over at her, never breaking the rhythm of his thrusts. “Her cheeks are pink. Her hair’s coming out of that prissy little bun she wears.” He briefly closed his eyes. “She’s excited.”
Lilly squirmed, but everything he said was true. She found herself wishing that John was fucking her, thrusting his fat cock into her wet, welcoming pussy while Lucien toyed with her nipples, licking them, biting them.
She couldn’t understand how seeing these two men together had made her so wicked and so wanton. She had always been bright, outspoken and unconventional, but she had never before done anything she shouldn’t—certainly nothing so outrageous as watching two men together in the most intimate possible way. Or wishing that she was being fucked by one or the other of them…or by both.
Yet when John’s eyes locked with hers and he said, in a voice low and full of need, “Lilly,” she knew she was lost.
He thrust into Lucien with vicious abandon, and Lucien’s pale cock, looking painfully hard, bobbed and slapped against his belly.
Almost without her own volition she stood, moving closer to the pair, where John had Lucien bent over the bed and was fucking him without mercy. Lucien wriggled back onto John’s cock, and John groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, stilling as he sought to control himself; to delay his inevitable orgasm.
She didn’t know what she was doing. This situation was beyond her experience—beyond even her wildest imaginings. But she unbuttoned her dress and allowed it to fall to the floor, then began yanking urgently at the lacings of her corset, her arms twisted behind her back, her breasts outthrust.
As she shed the rest of her clothes, John slipped his cock from Lucien’s arse and the detective straightened. They stepped apart, and Lilly stepped between them, self-conscious but unbearably aroused, and sat on the edge of the bed, aware of their eyes on her breasts and of the cool, slightly rough cotton of the bed covers against the heated flesh of her pussy lips.
Lucien stepped forward and placed his hand on Lilly’s chest, between her breasts, over her heart. She yearned for him to stroke her breast, to take her pert nipple between his fingers and pinch it, but he didn’t. Instead, he exerted a gentle pressure until Lilly was lying on her back on the edge of the bed.
Her heart pounded and a bead of perspiration rolled down her side, tickling her skin and making her squirm—though not as much as the men’s heated gazes on her naked body.
John put his fingers between her legs and she blushed. She couldn’t believe she was doing this—that she was letting them do this to her. But she gasped and writhed when he turned to Lucien, who was fondling his cock, and said, “She’s so wet. I could fuck her right now, she’s so ready for us.”
He pushed his finger inside her and it slid in smoothly, gliding through Lilly’s slick juices. Her thighs tensed, but then she relaxed as he began to move his finger in and out, setting up a delicious rhythm that made her cunt clench and her thighs quiver.
He pulled his finger out of her and meandered his way up her body, over the soft roundness of her belly, leaving a trail of moisture. He palmed her breast and leaned over her body, murmuring sweet reassurances into her ear as he used his other hand to position the head of his cock at her opening.
She locked her hands behind his neck and drew him closer as he worked his way into her, the stretching, burning sensation strange but so welcome. He slid his tongue into her mouth and flicked it against her palate, and the sharp pinch of pain as he surged the rest of the way inside her was almost lost in the warm arousal that flooded her as he suckled on her tongue.
She turned her head to the side as Lucien climbed onto the bed and knelt beside her. John leaned up and kissed the pulse point in her throat and the hollow between her breasts. Then he moved down her body, dipping his tongue into her belly button before playfully tugging a curl of dark pubic hair between his teeth. She half moaned, half laughed, and he looked up at her with those extraordinary pale, silver eyes before turning his attention to her weeping cunt.
She gazed down her own body and saw John working his way in and out of her, his cock glistening with her juices, and yelped as Lucien curled his clever, pink tongue to lap at her clitoris. Her cunt pulsed and spasmed, grasping John’s cock more tightly as she twisted her fingers into Lucien’s curls and held him against her. He lapped at her and she felt herself rising towards a peak of excitement that made her feel as though she might shatter, or melt.
She released him and brought her hands up above her head, stretching and writhing, giving her body over to the erotic mayhem Lucien and John were wreaking on her tender flesh.
She looked down again to see Lucien licking her cunt, then turning his attention to John’s dick, laving its base with the flat of his tongue as John thrust in and out of her. And she found she wanted to do the same.
She tugged on Lucien’s hair until he moved up over her, then pinched and pulled at his arms, his thighs, until he straddled her face, the tip of his erect cock hovering just above her parted lips.
Uncertain, she took the
very tip of him into her mouth, startled by the heat of his silky flesh and the salty taste of the moisture that pearled the slit. Encouraged by his moan, she opened her mouth further, sucking him into her mouth and relishing the harsh, effortful noises he made as she hollowed her cheeks and caressed the underside of his shaft with her tongue.
All the time, John continued to thrust in and out of her, increasing the speed of his thrusts as she became wetter and more open, until he was almost pounding into her, his balls slapping against her buttocks.
Her jaw ached from holding her mouth open as she swirled her tongue around Lucien’s cock, and she felt as though she could hardly breathe—partly because Lucien felt so huge in her mouth and partly because her chest was jerking with shallow convulsive breaths as her arousal built from the delicious friction John’s frantic thrusts between her legs was causing.
The orgasm struck her like a bolt of lightning, spirals of sensation coiling from her centre to make every limb limp and deliciously weak. Her cries were muffled by Lucien’s cock, and as he spilled into her mouth she swallowed convulsively to stop herself from choking.
She felt John slip from her body, still erect, and although a tingling, fizzing languor overtook her limbs, she was desperate for him to reach completion, too.
He moved up the bed and sprawled next to her, lying on his back, his skin dewed with sweat, his cock, several shades darker than the skin on the rest of his body, erect and twitching.
Then Lucien leaned across them both and took John into his mouth. Lilly found herself locked between their bodies—John at her side, moaning and thrusting as Lucien sucked on him; Lucien curled over her belly, his skin warm and sweat-slick against hers.
Lazily, she moved her hand to her cunt and began to rub herself, gently at first, then increasing in speed and intensity as John swore and thrashed his head from side to side and Lucien’s body tensed as he put his all into sucking John towards completion.
She shattered again, crying out and squeezing her thighs together around her fingers just as John bucked and groaned, and Lucien laughed around his cock, pale throat working as he swallowed his spend.
They lay tangled together, afterwards, John with his head on Lilly’s breast, Lucien nuzzling the soft curve of her belly as she rode on a sleepy wave of sexual satisfaction. Lilly knew she ought to feel ashamed of herself, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She told herself that nothing that felt so incredibly right could possibly be wrong.
Chapter Eight
When she’d been there before, there hadn’t been such an audience. That evening at Dr Cain’s House of Solace was almost like being at the theatre. There was the table, around which the séance would be held. And here were the devotees, who had come to bear witness.
Lilly must have looked pensive, because Mrs Langley, newly maternal, squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, dear Elizabeth. You have been here before. You cannot be afraid of dear Mr Langley, who was a gentle soul.”
Lilly wasn’t afraid of Mr Langley, poor soul that he was. She wanted to know, though, what change had happened in Dr Cain’s séances in order for Lucien and John to send her here. New technological jiggery-pokery, Lucien had said. Yet there had also been his strange insistence that a detective should never eliminate the impossible. Strange…
Her nipples pebbled at the thought of the detective’s pale, peculiar eyes and John’s sturdy, healthy lust, but she fought the sensation back and tried to concentrate on what was happening.
The room was quite brightly lit, but soon a young woman moved quietly around the periphery, turning down the gas lamps so that the room was cast into a dark and shadowed, flickering gloom.
A hush came over the company as Dr Cain walked in. He was a short, rotund, unassuming-looking man. But Lilly knew, from the times she had been there before, that contained within that unremarkable form was a degree of charisma and persuasiveness that could hold almost anyone under his spell.
It made her angry, if she was honest with herself. Mrs Langley was silly and officious, but she was intelligent enough and she wasn’t a bad woman—certainly she didn’t deserve to be duped by a cynical money-maker with the promise that she could have her late husband back.
Yet despite herself she found she was drawn to him. His voice was quiet, calm and persuasive. Almost hypnotic.
He gave a spiel about contacting the spirits of the dead—how uncertain it was; how lost those on the other side could be. Then he sat down at the table and he took the hands of the people sitting on either side of him—an elderly lady, and a nervous-looking woman in her mid-twenties who clutched convulsively at the hand of a much older gentleman sitting to her other side, presumably her husband.
A few minutes of mumbo-jumbo followed, then Dr Cain, presumably channelling the spirits, slumped back in his seat, his eyes rolled up into his head so that only the whites showed.
Mrs Langley gripped Lilly’s hand and said, in an excited whisper, “Now, my dear Elizabeth, we shall see. We shall see!”
This time, Dr Cain’s young, female accomplice had little part to play in the proceedings. She sat off to one side, looking wary, while instead a mist rose up from a large, square box the doctor had placed in the middle of the table.
It shimmered for a moment, then took on a form. It was nothing like the detailed images Lilly had seen when she had been there before—the creations of light projected onto gauze, which had been almost photographic in their clarity. This was an amorphous shape, small and huddled, with two large, hollow spots where eyes might be. And it spoke in a voice quite unlike the hoarse mumble the accomplice had adopted. Clear, high…and frightened.
“Mama… Mama… I’m so cold.”
The woman holding Doctor Cain’s hand tensed and her eyes shot open, but she gripped his hand ever more desperately.
“Arthur?” she whispered. Then, in a tone that would have melted all but the hardest of hearts, she cried, “Arthur?”
The phantom over the table seemed to bow towards her, as though leaning in for comfort.
“Mama,” it said. “I’m so cold. I’m so frightened. Will you come to join me soon? The man hurt me. I think he killed me.”
This must be Mrs Gaffney, the mother of the boy who had been killed. Lilly shuddered. The boy’s words were not the usual message of reassurance that mediums peddled. I’m happy here… All is peace and light… I want you to go on with your life, and to be happy. The child sounded lost, and terrified.
And yet, as he continued to speak, and as his mother asked him—beseeched him—to tell her that he was at peace, the skin on Lilly’s back began to crawl. The spirit—the child—knew what Arthur’s favourite toys had been. He asked his mother for news of his puppy. And he sounded lonely…and dreadfully convincing.
The ghostly form above the mechanism flickered and blurred, almost taking on solid form, then scattering again into a wispy, hollow-eyed miasma.
Lilly glanced across at Mrs Langley and saw that she was frowning. This was not what she was used to, and not what she had expected. But, as Mrs Gaffney’s husband led her weeping from the room, and the next spirit emerged, a broad smile split her face. It was Mr Langley.
He, too, was a hovering, insubstantial spirit, though perhaps a little more defined than the boy had been. Lilly thought she could see the shadowed hint of a moustache.
She wanted to be pleased for her landlady, but she felt uneasy. There was something wrong here—something desperately wrong.
And when Mr Langley began to speak, the smile dropped from Mrs Langley’s face and she clutched convulsively at Lilly’s hand.
“For goodness’ sake, Martha, stop bothering me. I’m dead. You always were a nag, but you have a good head on your shoulders. Why not do something useful with your life? You’ll be with me soon enough, wittering at me about smoking my pipe. In the meantime, use the brains God gave you.”
Lilly stared across at Mrs Langley, and saw that her face had gone the colour of parchment. Her eyes were wide, her lips trembling
, and she looked as though she might be sick. “That’s my husband,” she whispered. “That’s Mr Langley, my Eric. He’s got him in that box.”
And Lilly realised the awful truth. Dr Cain was the murderer. And he wasn’t killing for financial gain—that much Lucien had already established. He was killing so that he could trap the souls of his victims in the monstrous contraption that sat on the table in front of them. He hadn’t stolen from the victims, because he had a plan that would bring him much more money that the paltry few pounds he could have taken from their poor, still-cooling corpses.
She was on her feet before she had thought it through. “Dr Cain,” she said, and she was surprised by how steady her voice sounded. “I am making a citizen’s arrest. You are guilty of the murders of Arthur Gaffney, Henry Watson and Mary Allan. I don’t know how you got hold of the soul of the late Eric Langley, but I will find out.”
If she’d thought about it at all, she might have expected some support from the other people in the room when she made this revelation, but instead she was met with goggle-eyed astonishment and, in a few cases, muted laughter.
She was shocked—but it was nothing to her surprise when Mrs Langley got to her feet and said, in the strident tones Lilly knew so well from the single time she had trodden dirt into the stair carpet, “Don’t you dare laugh. I might be a silly woman, at times, but I am not stupid. That was my husband, as he was in life. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but Dr Moriarty Cain has done something dreadful. It must be stopped.”
The others there had no reason to listen to Lilly, but they had seen Mrs Langley every week, spoken to her over the tea and fruitcake afterwards, exchanged stories of their messages from the dearly departed, and at her words a hubbub set up across the room.
A small man with a pencil moustache and rather frayed cuffs got to his feet and cast a lingering look at Mrs Langley, speaking, Lilly thought, of a secret tendresse. Then he said, “What do you have to say to these accusations, Cain?”
Private Investigation Page 4