“Greedy little slut.” He smiled as he pressed another button. The dildo moved back and forth at a leisurely pace. “Faster?”
She nodded.
Of course. Faster, harder. It was practically her mantra.
He pushed a button. It speeded up, but evidently it still wasn’t enough for her. She looked at the remote with pleading eyes. He shrugged and made it go faster. She wanted yet more, but he said, “All in good time.”
She moaned and writhed like a chick in a porno, only in Chloe’s case, Inigo had no doubt whatsoever as to her sincerity. He straddled the bench over her shoulders and unzipped his trouser fall, freeing a cock that felt like a column of steel-reinforced concrete. Because of the bench’s incline, Chloe’s face was at the same level as said organ, at which she gazed hungrily.
He removed the ball gag. “Lick your lips,” he said, then he grabbed her head and pushed himself into her mouth.
Chloe fellated him like a woman who was literally starving for the taste of cock and balls, feasting on them with practiced zeal as he thrust faster, faster.
“Oh, yeah,” he whispered as it started, that pre-orgasmic thrill of tension that seemed to radiate between his cock and his tail—or what used to be his tail. The spot where it had been removed was still acutely sensitive, especially when he was aroused. During sex, it almost felt as if someone were pressing the tip of an electric vibrator right there, the pleasure buzzing up his spine, down his legs, all along his cock.
Inigo’s legs started quivering, his heart thumping like an Aerosmith bass vibe at a hundred-forty decibels. Here it comes. “You want it in your mouth or on your tits?”
“Tits,” she said, arching her back to thrust them out.
He stepped back, squeezing out spurt after spurt while she thanked him and begged for more.
He zipped up, cleaned her off, and went to turn off the Personal Trainer, but she said,“No, don’t! Please, sir, leave it on.”
“I thought you might be getting sore, but whatever.”
“Lick me.”
“What?”
“Lick my pussy. Please, sir. Suck my clit. Stick your tongue in my—”
Inigo jammed the ball gag back in her mouth. In keeping with character, he should have refused to do her bidding, but her bare-naked pussy, all desperately pink and swollen, was just too appetizing to resist.
Crouching next to her, he said, “For a sub, you sure like to get your way.”
“Hey, man, it’s me,” Inigo murmured into his cell phone as he stood at an open window of the gym, slugging back a rejuvenating dose of tequila while Chloe, still strapped to the bench, luxuriated in her subjugation. The other Follets generally spoke French with each other, but he preferred English, which had been the semi-official language of Grotte Cachée ever since the first British administrateur, Lord Henry Archer, started inviting certain of his countrymen and their American colonists as houseguests.
“Hey, what’s up?” Elic said.
“So, listen, bro,” Inigo whispered as he glanced over his shoulder at the subject of this covert phone call. “I’ve got Chloe up here in the gym, and I’ve been doing my damnedest to keep up, but man, I am telling you, she is inde-fuckin’-fatigable. Which is awesome, except the old heroic dimensions”—he gave his crotch a gingerly pat—“need a little power nap between workouts. Which is where you come in, my friend. Where art thou right now, brother?” Inigo took a healthy swallow from the bottle.
“At your place with Lili, watching a movie.” They usually watched their DVDs in Inigo’s apartment because of his sixty-inch TV.
“What movie?”
Elic sighed. “Casino Royale.”
“Wait, haven’t you seen that movie, like, three or four times already?”
“Lili can’t get enough of the blond James Bond. That scene where he walks out of the ocean is like porn to her. So, what’s up, man?”
“When’s the last time you got some? Coupla weeks ago when those Cirque du Soleil chicks were here, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Your balls must be throbbing like a motherfucker by now.” Another swig of tequila.
“You could say that.”
“Why don’t you come on over to the gym and help me out with the Energizer hottie? The tits are real, man, and she’s got the Dyson vacuum of pussies—never loses suction. And need I tell you she is premoistened for your convenience? I’m not talking sloppy seconds here. I’ve been money-shotting ever since I realized I was gonna have to call you in for backup.” With another glance over his shoulder, he grinned and dropped his voice down a notch, “I’ve got her wrapped up like a birthday present, bro, you gotta come check this out.”
“Hold on.” His voice so muffled it was almost inaudible, Elic said, in French, “Lili, you know that little redhead of Inigo’s? He wants to share her with me, and you know I can use it. You can finish the movie without me, right?” A brief pause, and then he said, “Sure, man, I’ll be right up.”
“Oh, but listen, bro, you gotta be a real prick with this one, or she’ll get all pouty and shit. Call her a dirty little slut. She loves that.”
“I’m on it.” Click.
Elic must have been chafing at the bit, because he was there about two minutes later, with that locked-and-loaded glint in his eye that meant Chloe was really in for it.
Chloe, still strapped to the bench but with the steel dildo unmoving inside her, looked startled to see him. But then she took him in—six and a half feet of golden-haired, well-muscled male with a rock-solid bulge in his jeans—and despite the ball gag, she almost seemed to be smiling.
Elic whipped his black T-shirt off over his head and tossed it aside. “I hear you’re a dirty little whore who likes it rough,”he said in his deep, vaguely European-accented voice as he stalked toward her.
Chloe stared at him yearningly until he started unwrapping the tape from her hands, and then she shook her head frantically.
Inigo, leaning against the windowsill as he lit a cigarette, said, “Hey, don’t do that, bro. She likes that shit, I told you.”
“I’m with the program.” Pulling her arms down straight, Elic taped her wrists to the merry widow so that her hands rested on her upper thighs. He stepped over the foot of the bench, which was narrow enough and low enough to the ground that he could kneel between her splayed legs. “Open your cunt,” he said as he unzipped his fly.
She parted her labia.
He pushed into her, burying himself in one smooth thrust. His head fell back, the air rushing from his lungs. After more than a few days of abstinence, Elic was always on a hair trigger, and it had been two weeks.
“What did I tell you?” Inigo said as he lifted the tequila bottle to his mouth. “Like a vacuum cleaner, no?”
“Stop that,” Elic said, slapping Chloe’s hip as she started thrusting wildly. “Be still.”
“I’ve only let her come once since I strapped her to that thing,” Inigo said. “She’s a little tense.”
“How does this work again?” said Elic, indicating the Personal Trainer.
“I’ll do it,” Inigo said as he pulled the remote from his pocket. “She likes it fast.”
“It’s for me, not her. Make it do this,” he said, demonstrating a rotating motion with his finger. “Yes,” he breathed as the device started churning inside Chloe, massaging his cock in a steady rhythm as it did so.
“Don’t move,” he told Chloe, gripping her hips as she started squirming again.
Elic didn’t thrust, didn’t move a muscle, but within seconds, his breath was shuddering, his face flushing. A vein bulged on his forehead. His body grew rigid, except for his hips, which trembled as he let out a long, low groan. The climax went on for some time, as they generally did with him, and then he slumped over, panting. “Stop that thing.”
Inigo aimed the remote and pushed a button. “You laugh at me every time I have one of these built, but you’ve got to admit, they can add a certain je ne sais quoi, non?”
“Oui. You got any lube?”
“You kidding?” Inigo stubbed out his cigarette and brought the bottle over. Watching Elic take his turn had rousted the old rolling pin from its slumber; Inigo adjusted it through its leather pouch to give it some stretching room.
Elic took the lube and dripped a little onto Chloe’s vulva, making her squirm. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “Just your hands. Make yourself come.”
Inigo caught Elic’s eye and mouthed a prompt.
“You filthy slut,” Elic added.
She began eagerly masturbating with her taped-down hands, both orifices still stuffed full.
Inigo took back the lube, drizzled some onto Chloe’s breasts, and rubbed it all over them, squeezing, stroking, teasing the nipples . . . His cock felt like a length of steel pipe that had been forced into a too-small leather sack.
Chloe moaned helplessly.
“I said don’t move.” Elic held her hips down as they started moving.
She whined in frustration through the gag, but managed to hold still until the orgasm hit, and then she convulsed as if zapped by an electric prod, the gag muffling her groans. Elic closed his eyes, his ass contracted, clearly relishing the sensation.
He gave her a moment to catch her breath, then said, “Again,” as he set about fucking her with long, slow strokes.
“You mind a little company, bro?” Inigo asked as Chloe went back to fingering her greased-up pussy.
“Be my guest.”
Inigo straddled her, unzipped his pants, squeezed her slickened breasts together, and rammed his cock between them. “You like this?” he asked Chloe. “You like getting it from two guys at once with a dildo up your ass? You like getting your tits fucked? Course you do, ’cause you’re a dirty, nasty little slitch.”
“Slitch?” Elic said breathlessly.
“Slut and bitch,” Inigo rasped. “Slitch.”
Chloe nodded as if to say You haven’t heard that?
The three of them came at roughly the same time amid a chorus of groans, Inigo ejaculating onto Chloe’s throat and upper chest. As Elic withdrew his cock, dripping with his extra-thick semen, she twitched her hips as if begging to have it back.
“You’re not sore?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“All right, then,” he said as he stroked his erection back to life.
“Told you, man,” Inigo said as he reached for his tequila. “Inde-fuckin-fatiguable.”
Adrien Morel stood outside Emmett’s library alcove with that day’s Le Monde and a cup of coffee, watching Isabel, sitting on a sofa with her back to him, leaning over a book in her lap.
She hadn’t heard him approach, the carpet having muffled his footsteps. He told himself he should turn and walk away before she realized he was there. Her emotions were getting enough of a workout right now, what with her father’s condition; she didn’t need him injecting himself into the mix.
He’d just about decided that he really should leave when a cloud drifted somewhere far overhead, and a bolt of sunlight streamed through the window and touched her hair, and he found himself utterly transfixed.
Isabel’s hair, looped with a covered rubber band into a prettily disheveled pseudochignon, had darkened only slightly from the cool platinum it had been as an adolescent. Adrien recalled having been captivated by it during that Christmas break she’d spent at Grotte Cachée when she was sixteen and he not quite eighteen. He used to catch himself gazing at it during those long hours they’d spent sitting around talking and listening to music, marveling at its pale, silken sheen.
Once she caught him staring and blushed, but he still couldn’t look away, so struck was he by the contrast, at her hairline, of her scalding pink skin against the silver-blond roots of her hair.
Isabel turned a page of her book, whispered, “Holy shit,” then gave her cheek a little slap. “Fucking potty mouth.”
Adrien chuckled.
She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, stared for a second. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Not long. I just came up here to read the paper, then I’ll be heading back to the lodge to finish scanning some scrolls for L’histoire.” The Histoire Secrète de Grotte Cachée was a project Adrien had launched some time ago, an attempt to take the written accounts of his ancestors and combine them into one comprehensive, multivolume document for the benefit of future gardiens and administrateurs.
Apologize for the intrusion and leave, he told himself. “What are you reading?” he asked, coming close enough to look over her shoulder.
She closed and held up the book, which was about twelve inches square and bound in age-softened black leather with the initials D.B.R. tooled on the front.
“Ah, the Beckett notebook. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at that. May I?” He gestured toward the couch.
“Sure,” she said, holding the volume to her chest. “Of course.”
She was wearing big, dangly, primitive silver earrings that should have looked all wrong with her sleeveless white blouse and tan shorts, but instead looked just perfect. Her skin was like cream except for rosy-gold sun stains across the bridge of her nose, the upper ridges of her cheekbones, and her shoulders. Would those spots feel hot to the touch, he wondered, if he were so foolish as to reach out and stroke them?
As he sat—careful to maintain his distance from her—Adrien noticed the stack of books on the table: three biographies of Beckett, one published in the nineteenth century, two in the twentieth; a modern, limited edition set of his four books about landscape design in a slipcase, although they had the first editions as well; and an original edition—there had only been one—of the obscure but intriguing Dæmonia.
“Making a study of David Beckett, are we?” Adrien asked as he set down his coffee cup and newspaper.
“Why do you call him by his middle name?” Isabel asked. “And that terrace garden is called the Beckett Garden. Shouldn’t it be the Roussel Garden?”
“Beckett is the name he went by when he came here in eighteen twenty-nine,” Adrien said. “He was posing as a, well what we now call a landscape architect in English, and he had a genuine love for that field of work, but he was actually a Jesuit demon hunter who’d been sent by the Church.”
“Ah, I’d wondered what that book about demons was doing mixed in with all these books about gardening.”
“That one,” Adrien said, nodding toward the Beckett notebook still pressed protectively to Isabel’s chest, “has got to be the rarest and most valuable book in your father’s collection.”
Lowering the book to her lap, Isabel opened it almost reverently. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “we had an encyclopedia that had anatomy illustrations with transparent overlays showing, like, the bones over the organs and the muscles over the bones. I used to spend hours looking at those pictures, flipping the overlays back and forth. This book reminds me of that. The paintings are amazing—so detailed, but so vigorous and colorful. And I can’t stop looking at the little maps, you know, the garden plans, and comparing them to how those gardens look now. The whole thing just blows me away.”
Adrien said, “What was it that provoked that heartfelt ‘holy shit’?”
“Let me find it again.” Isabel leafed through the book slowly, so as not to damage the brittle old pages. The front section was composed of notes and fastidiously inked plans showing layouts of Beckett’s proposed gardens and parklands. Following that were twelve watercolor illustrations of different vantage points around the château and grounds as they had existed in 1829. Tipped in over each illustration was a painting on translucent vellum showing how that particular view would look after its suggested overhaul.
Isabel stopped at one of these before-and-after illustrations and handed him the book, saying “The difference is unbelievable. It doesn’t look like the same space at all.” He caught a whiff of her perfume, the same scent she’d worn last August—earthy, complex, not sweet, but deeply
feminine all the same.
“Ah, the courtyard.” Adrien lifted the overlay very carefully, cringing at its muted crackle. The painting beneath was an overhead view—from the northwest tower, he would guess—of the castle’s central court as it had looked before its Beckett-inspired overhaul. The fountain, with its sculpture of a couple making love beneath a stream of water from a jug held by a servant girl, was the same, but it was otherwise bare except for a perimeter of box hedges.
He lowered the overlay and smoothed it down, marveling at the transformation. It was one of Beckett’s more symmetrical designs, with a walkway of volcanic paving stones spanning the length of the courtyard from the gatehouse to the great hall’s majestic doorway in the north range. In the middle of the courtyard, this central aisle was interrupted by the fountain, which it circled. Branching off from this circle were smaller paths laid out in a knotlike pattern, un hommage to the decorative style of Grotte Cachée’s Gaulish forebears. In the grassy spaces between the knots stood twenty-four cherry trees, depicted in full bloom. Stone benches were situated here and there along the paths and on either side of the fountain.
“The courtyard is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been,”Isabel said. “Seriously, it’s one of my favorite places in the world. And this picture—I mean, it could have been painted this afternoon. It still looks exactly like this after, what—a hundred and eighty years?”
“Especially with the cherry trees being in bloom,” Adrien said.
She said,“I assume Roussel—or Beckett, or whatever you want to call him—came back to supervise the execution of his designs.”
Shaking his head as he handed back the book, Adrien said, “Your ancestor, Bartholemew Archer, saw Beckett’s plans through to completion—all of them, down to the last detail. Beckett himself never came back to Grotte Cachée. About a year after he returned to England, he married the daughter of one of his landscaping clients, Wilhemina Rhodes, and fathered quite a brood of children.”
Smiling, Isabel said, “One of his books is dedicated to ‘My darling Mina.’ Not all of the plans were implemented, though.”
Whispers of the Flesh Page 18