I inch up on my elbows, grinding my teeth against the burning in my ass, stretch out my mouth in delicious anticipation. As I feel her warm toes brush my grateful lips, far away a bell is ringing and the stadium crowd is standing and cheering for her. Cameras are flashing. Who are all these people?
i live
i die
for you . . .
La Noy.
Dr Mullaley’s Cure
Delilah Devlin
I’d been warned that the doctor was a bit eccentric. That he dabbled in machinery and had been ostracized by others in his profession for the lengths he went to please his patients.
“You’ll never find another employer,” I was told. “Not once they see your only reference is Doctor Mullaley.” The mad Irishman. The charlatan who promised cures to bored housewives and whose waiting room hadn’t been empty since I’d arrived for my first day’s work. If I hadn’t already been turned away at every other respectable physician’s practice, I might have heeded the advice. However, those warnings only served to stir my interest.
I was intensely curious about the nature of the doctor’s cures, and even more so about the conditions he treated, but they were only spoken of in whispers and never in the presence of an unmarried woman. Which made me wonder why he’d hired me. Not that I complained. One glance at his tall rangy frame, frosty blue eyes and dark, slicked-back hair, and my misgivings evaporated.
However, my curiosity about the man and his practice wasn’t to be satisfied at that moment because the doctor waved me towards the reception desk where I worked at fitting in patients who walked in without an appointment. A task I found akin to cinching in the waist of a corset. There was only so much ribbon one could pull before something gave.
That something was the inimitable Mrs Davies. She arrived in a dudgeon. Cheeks flushed, eyes a little wild. It was a very balmy afternoon, and the painstaking curls at the sides of her cheeks had wilted and were stretching towards her jaw like earthworms. I couldn’t help staring while she tapped the counter with her finger, insisting her needs were of the highest import. If she didn’t receive a treatment that afternoon, somebody would hear about it.
At wit’s end, I gave her a false smile, said I’d find the doctor, and escaped down the corridor to the treatment rooms.
The corridor was as handsomely appointed as the waiting room with rich oak panelling below the rail, and burgundy brocade above it. But gaslight sconces were placed so far apart that shadows loomed between the doorways.
I paused at the first room to listen, hoping to hear the low timbre of the doctor’s voice. Faint moans came through the door, but since they didn’t have an urgent edge, I hurried to the next and pressed my ear against the wood.
Hands curved over my shoulder. “Pardon me, Nurse Percy.” The doctor firmly pushed me to the side and strode into the room.
Glancing around his tall frame, I spotted Mrs Headley who lay on a table that tilted with the lower half split in two.
My jaw sagged as I noted that while she was clothed in a sack-like gown, Mrs. Headley lay bared from the waist down, her legs strapped to the split “legs” of the table. Her fingers dug into padded handles at the sides. Most curious, there was a long, slender trough running from a tank latched to the ceiling, very like a toilet’s reservoir. The trough emptied into a funnel, which ran into a tube. The tube passed through a device with turning wheels that clicked like a clock’s inner gears, and then ended at a nozzle that spurted water in rhythmic pulses towards the juncture of Mrs Headley’s thighs.
How odd, I thought.
Mrs Headley moaned. Her gaze roved restlessly until she lighted on the doctor. “Please, Raymond, I can’t take much more. I’m very sure I’m ready for the next stage of my treatment.”
The doctor stood between me and Mrs Headley so I couldn’t see what he did, but then he aimed a frown over his shoulder. When he turned back, I entered the room and shut the door behind me, staying quiet as a mouse. He turned off the nozzle. The rhythmic splashes stopped, but wet slurping sounds filled the silence.
“I feel . . . nearly . . . oh, the agony . . . oh, doctor!” Mrs Headley gave a choked little scream, her upper body arching on the table before settling again. Her flushed cheeks shone with sweat, but the smile she gave the doctor was so filled with gratitude I felt a stirring of something akin to pride for the doctor’s skill.
However, pride wasn’t what tightened the feminine parts of me. Somehow, just knowing where the doctor’s hands were made the room feel quite warm.
Doctor Mullaley pulled down his patient’s gown, patted her hand and turned, drawing up short when he spotted me standing in front of the door. He jerked his chin to indicate I should precede him.
Feeling nervous and a little embarrassed by what I’d witnessed, I stepped into the hall and wrung my hands. “I wouldn’t have interrupted, doctor,” I blurted, “but there’s a woman at the reception desk demanding an appointment. Frankly, I thought she’d push right past me to find you if I hadn’t said I would go.”
“Let me guess, Mrs Davies?”
I nodded.
He sighed and looked up and down the hallway. “I have another hydropathy machine in the treatment room at the end of the hallway. While you were spying, did you happen to notice what I did to turn it off?”
“The hose from the reservoir? Yes.”
“The reverse turns it on. Take Mrs Davies there. Find her a gown and help her out of her clothes. Start the machine. I’ll be along when the others have finished their treatments.” He gave me a narrowed glance that seemed to note my appearance for the first time. “After you’ve settled her, find me. I think you might work out after all.”
I nodded, blushing beneath his approval and walked on air back to the reception room. Even Mrs Davies’s rude behaviour as she complained all the way down the hallway couldn’t dampen my mood. She didn’t relent while I undressed her until it came to her corset. Claiming I’d scratched her, she slapped my hands away, saying she’d manage the garment on her own. Not that she really needed one. Any garment constructed to shape her enormous belly would have required true engineering genius.
When it came to setting up the hydropathy machine, Mrs Davies showed me exactly where the nozzle needed to be placed for “maximum efficacy”. That lesson left me blushing because I set the nozzle to squirt at the knot at the top of her sex.
With Mrs Davies quiet at last, I went in search of the doctor.
I followed the sound of grinding gears and whistling pistons to another treatment room. Inside, the patient lay with her gown scrunched around her middle. Clamps with wire tethers were attached to her nipples. Her legs were spread and elevated, and another device pressed against her sex.
The doctor glanced up as I entered. “There you are. See the lever on the side of the machine?” He pointed to a large tin box with dials and gauges on the front and from whence the devices at the woman’s nipples and sex were connected.
I nodded, spying the lever at the side.
“Throw it up to start the current.”
The moment I did, a curious humming sounded from between the patient’s legs. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she moaned around the gag tied behind her head.
I glanced at the doctor, a question in my eyes.
He bent towards my ear. “She thinks it’s sinful to make noises when she culminates.”
“Culminates?”
The corners of his shocking-blue eyes crinkled. “Nurse Percy, has the mister never culminated when in the throes of his husbandly duties?”
My mouth dropped. “I’ve never married or witnessed a man’s . . . culmination. Are you telling me a woman can too?”
His gaze honed on my expression. “For the sake of your apprenticeship, I think it will be my duty to demonstrate my cures.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Just what sort of conditions are you treating, sir?”
The doctor checked the gauges, gave the woman a pat on her hand, then waved me towards the do
or. “Step outside.”
In the hallway, he stood close with his hands held behind him. Mine, I clutched against my belly as I listened to him describe the many illnesses of the body and mind that occurred when a woman didn’t release the noxious poisons boiling inside her. If a husband wasn’t willing or able to assist, then a woman sought the help of a doctor who specialized in such things.
“And these machines . . . ?”
He brought his hands forward, and I noted the length and thickness of those digits. “The machines save my hands from aching after endless pelvic massages.”
That was a term I had heard before. I’d even attempted to perform it on myself a time or two, but I’d given up frustrated just before I’d discovered the mystery that lay at the end of the quest.
“Doctor, I am unmarried but hope to be some day. I cannot allow you to directly . . . massage . . . that region,” I hissed.
His lips twitched. “Which is not a problem, dear nurse. I have designed devices meant to assure a woman’s sensibilities aren’t violated. Stay after work, and I will demonstrate them all.”
The rest of the day passed in a blur as I learned to apply the devices to other women’s tender breasts and nether regions, all the while admitting a deepening sensitivity in my own body.
When at last the office closed, the doctor led me into the treatment room which held the widest array of machinery, including one device still covered in a tarp in a corner. My glance must have lingered there.
“Something I’m developing,” he murmured, “but I’m looking for a volunteer to test it.”
When I opened my mouth, he shook his head. “You’re unmarried. This machine would shred your maidenhead.”
After all I’d witnessed this day, I thought there wasn’t a blush left in me, but my face heated.
His fingers trailed my cheek. “There’s a gown on the table that I’d like you to wear. When you’re ready, just open the door.” With that, he left.
The gown was a thin, dove-grey silk. I passed my hand beneath it and realized my whole body would be visible. Still, I didn’t hesitate to remove my clothing. He was a physician after all. I would do this in the name of my education and the furtherance of science.
When I was dressed in nothing but the gown, I opened the door a crack and peeked into the hallway. He stood with his back to the door. I cleared my throat, and he turned to meet my one-eyed glance. “I’m sure you’re lovely in that gown, but I promise not to ravage you,” he said, his voice a lovely rumble. “Open the door, Nurse Percy.”
Taking a deep breath, I stood to the side and let him enter, then locked the door behind him even though I knew there wasn’t anyone else about.
“Lie on the table, please.”
His brusque voice, the professional one devoid of amusement, was back. This was the voice that reassured the most skittish of his patients. His actions were just as clinical and brusque as he ran straps around my thighs and set my hands on cushioned squabs with a warning to keep them there.
As docile a lamb as any of his patients, I let out a quiet gasp when he pulled up the gown, showing care as he freed it from the straps before smoothing it up my thighs to bunch at my hips. I managed to remain silent when he parted the table’s divide and thus my thighs, even though he came to stand between them and fingered the dark hair that cloaked my Venus’ mound.
“I thought it would be coarse,” he said, “as curly as your hair is.”
My blush deepened, but I didn’t attempt a retort as he didn’t seem to require one. He parted my folds and swirled his fingers around the opening. “To stimulate you, my dear. I want your pretty little nubbin to come out and play.”
“But you didn’t do this before you started the machines for Mrs Davies or Mrs Smith.”
“Before I designed my devices, all my treatments began with direct stimulation,” he said, sliding his fingers between my folds to capture the moisture then smooth it around and around. “But my hands tired, and I could only handle so many patients a day. The demand grew, and I knew I had to do something or see them find physicians who might have less care for their sensibilities.”
“Your machines provide a service, I know. I’ve seen the transformations. Even Mrs Davies left cooing like a dove.”
He flashed me a grin, and then his gaze dropped between my legs again. “There she is. A little shy this one, but a lovely dark pink. Have you ever seen your love knot?”
“That’s what it’s called?” I said, jerking when his thumb rubbed it.
“It’s called many unsavoury things and a couple of medical terms that aren’t flattering at all, but for you Nurse Percy, it’s a love knot. You’re very sensitive. I’ll be sure to adjust the nozzle burst to something softer than I would for a woman who has had hers tweaked by a lover a time or two.”
“You really shouldn’t say such things to me.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied my face. “Nurse Percy, I’m your employer, and my business is one that requires civility and discretion when dealing with patients. However, you will need to accustom yourself to frank terminology. You will hear it now and again from some of the ladies’ own mouths. They cannot help themselves when they are . . . culminating.”
I swallowed hard, still so aware of where his fingers trailed and of the fact liquid flowed from inside my body, which he used to swirl over my folds and that sensitive, swelling nubbin he seemed to be fascinated with.
Something like a cramp tightened my belly and my hips curved. “Doctor?”
“Yes, dear. Let’s begin.”
He brought the hose down over his shoulder and took a seat on a stool, which placed his face very near the juncture of my thighs. While my eyes widened in shock, that maddening tension began to curl around my womb. Not an unpleasant sensation, but breathtaking nonetheless.
He’d removed his jacket, his shirt and undershirt. With his broad, lightly furred chest bare, he met my questioning gaze. “The water will splash. And I wish to be close enough to gauge the efficacy of the treatment.”
The very word Mrs Davies had used, and now I knew where she had heard it first. Strangely, that both reassured and dismayed me. He wasn’t treating me any differently than any number of women. Therefore, the humour he’d shared with me, as though inviting me into his confidence, wasn’t special at all.
Rather than think about how foolish I was, I concentrated on the sensations he produced, the warmth that built beneath the stir of his fingertips, the deep curling desperation in my womb.
The nozzle was lowered to just above my sex, and then he turned the ring at the base that released the water. The more he turned it, the narrower the stream and the harsher the pulse that beat against my love knot.
He made no sound, asked no questions, but must have read my expression, because he adjusted it back to a gentle pulse that excited but didn’t make me squirm.
He rose and walked around me, eyeing me from different angles, his hand coming down to touch the pulse throbbing at the side of my throat and pull the fabric taut against my breasts. “I do have a purpose,” he said. “Although your breasts seem lovely, I’m merely gauging the depth of your arousal by the reaction of your nipples.”
“What does one have to do with the other?” I asked, although the question was disingenuous. I knew full well that when I played with my breasts, I felt as though a thin, internal rope tugged my sex into arousal.
“Are you really so unaware?” he said softly.
I lifted my chin. “I’m not married.”
“But twenty-three and as well-formed as you are, I can’t imagine you’ve never felt a man’s embrace.”
“It’s awkward talking about intimate things like that just now.”
“Because what I am doing is so very intimate?”
“That’s precisely why it’s awkward.”
He shrugged. “I must gauge your breasts directly. Is that clinical enough for you? I have a device that will deliver a pleasant vibration to stimulate them.”
>
“The clamps? They aren’t painful? I know that Mrs Smith grimaced when you applied them.”
“And you stayed to watch her silently thrash upon the table. Did she appear to be in pain?”
“Of course not.” Although her rapture had been a nearly painful thing to watch. I’d had to concentrate on watching the dials rather than the churning of her body.
I pulled down the neckline of the gown until the gathered edge rode beneath my breasts. The tips were engorged. When his fingers twirled on the stems, I dug my fingers into the padded squabs.
“You don’t have to muzzle your cries. In fact, they’ll help me determine the course of your treatment.”
Freed, I moaned. The sensations he wrung from me, with the warmth pulsing between my legs, the crimping of my nipples, were already richer than anything I’d ever managed on my own.
Clamps were set, one at a time, on the tips of my breasts. Then he left me to throw up the lever. A humming vibration travelled through the wires delivering the faintest of electrical currents.
“Astounding,” I gasped.
“Isn’t it?” he said, his eyes lighting with enthusiasm. “I had to experiment for the longest time to find just the right amount of current.”
“Who did you find to serve as your subject?” I asked, wondering who had dared to put themselves at risk. But then again, here I sat, my nipples receiving electrical charges, my sex exposed to the lash of warm streams of water. “This is all very . . .”
“Stimulating?”
I snorted, an unladylike action, but one which only made him grin.
“The hydropathy machine wasn’t my own invention. I merely perfected the delivery system. This next device wasn’t my idea either, but I have worked with metal moulds to conform the seat to a woman’s anatomy, improving the sensations.”
The nozzle was turned off, and I missed the water, which had produced a sensual lethargy that made it impossible for me to stand against any suggestion the doctor might make. “What is the next device?”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11 Page 46