The other men applauded as he freed his straining cock and pressed in.
“Five minutes, sir,” said Mr. Llewellyn as he consulted his watch.
“What say you, Eddie?” someone called out. “Is it Angelique whose measure you're taking, or one of the others?”
“Hard to say,” Sir Edmund answered a little breathlessly, gripping her hips as he pulled slowly out of her, then pushed back in. “Perhaps if she came, and I could hear her voice. Is Angelique the noisy type, Soames?”
“You'll have to see for yourself,” replied Soames in a deliberate effort to mislead Sir Edmund as to the identity of his prey.
Leaning over, Sir Edmund reached between Iris's legs, causing her to thrust her hips and moan.
Caroline's pantaloons were already soaked through where Rexton was caressing her; she quivered from head to foot. It was those little jet beads rubbing against her clit that had driven her so close, so fast—that, and what was transpiring in the middle of the room.
Caroline climaxed when Iris did, but whereas Iris bucked and cried out rather theatrically, much to her audience's delight, Caroline strove not to move or make a sound. She shuddered deliciously as he held her tight, her head thrown back on his shoulder, her fingers digging into the arms of the chair.
Sir Edmund yanked himself out of Iris with a groan and milked his cock, fetching all over her. To ejaculate inside another man's slave was considered discourteous.
Buttoning his breeches as he gained his feet, he said, “You're not Angelique at all, are you? I've heard her come, and she does it in French. I'll wager you're Iris.” He pulled off his blindfold, crowing in triumph when he saw that he'd guessed correctly. “Put my name in the hat, Llewellyn. Who's next?” he asked, holding up the blindfold.
Inigo was next. The slaves elbowed each other aside with breathless giggles to put themselves in his way.
Rexton cradled the spent Caroline in his arms, enjoying the weight and softness of her. He caught himself absently rubbing his cheek against her hair, and grimaced. She was a slave, for pity's sake, not a lover.
He shoved her off his lap and grabbed her leash. “Let's go.”
When they got to their chamber, Rexton started changing into riding clothes, and instructed Caroline to do the same. She hadn't yet worn the riding habit she'd been provided, which consisted of a short spencer jacket of bright blue silk twill over a full-skirted dress of the same fabric. It struck her as oddly conservative hanging next to all those indecently sheer gowns and negligees—until she removed the jacket from the hanger and got a good look at the dress.
The neckline, which was trimmed, like the collar and sleeves of the jacket, in thick gold braid, wasn't just low; it scooped all the way to the high empire waist, with no fabric whatsoever in the area of the bosom, which was clearly meant to be displayed in its entirety. Caroline put it on with her back to Rexton, then quickly donned the jacket, which was double-breasted, with big gold buttons.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did. He looked dashingly sporty, having changed into snug buckskin riding breeches, a fawn waistcoat, and a handsome brown riding coat. Caroline was almost grateful that he made her keep her gaze lowered. If she were permitted to look directly at him, she was all too certain her admiration would be emblazoned on her face, which would shame her deeply.
What was happening between them was not about admiration or affection or anything of the kind. She was his property, nothing more, a thing to use and then discard at the end of the week. Little would she have suspected when she first came here that the arrangement would suit her as much as it seemed to suit him. Rexton had been right when he accused her of playing the slave because she was too cowardly to admit her “dark desires.” As a slave, she could satisfy those desires without having to acknowledge them as her own.
He looked her up and down, then produced a white neckcloth from his trunk and handed it to her. “Ladies generally wear one of these when riding. And I trust there are proper boots and gloves in there—and a beaver hat.”
“There are.” She stood in front of the cheval mirror fumbling with the cravat until he came up behind her and did it himself.
“A hunting knot, I think,” he said as he wrapped the swath of starched white linen around her throat, over the slave collar. He crossed it in front, tucking one end under her jacket and smoothing it down. He stilled, his hand cupping her left breast over the cravat. He gently squeezed her, then nudged the cravat aside and caressed her bare flesh, her nipples tightening as his warm palm grazed them.
“What a very interesting garment,” he murmured, meeting her eyes in the mirror for a fleeting moment before they both looked away. “And how very naughty of you, Miss Keating, to try to hide this particular detail from me.”He gave her nipple a reproachful pinch that drew a sharp gasp from her. “You were wrong to have done so. You know that, don't you?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Every aspect of what you do or say or wear or think is to be governed by me,” he said as he finished tying the cravat. “You forgot that for a moment. You need to be reminded who your master is, I think.”
He brought a pair of tall riding boots out to the balcony and sat on the pillow-covered chaise to tug them on. Caroline laced up her half boots, wondering with a mixture of dread and anticipation how he meant to prove his mastery over her.
“Open the black box,” he told her, “and fetch the rubber dildo and the jar of cold cream. Oh, and the rin no tama, those little steel balls. Bring them out here.”
Nine
CAROLINE'S STOMACH CLUTCHED at the mention of the two-pronged rubber dildo, but she did as Rexton had commanded. The balls felt hollow, with something heavy that rolled around inside them, creating a faint tinkling sound.
“I'll take the rin no tama,” he said, holding out his hand. “You are to open the jar of cream and coat the narrower of the two phalluses. Don't be stingy with it. The more you use, the easier this will go for you.”
Reminded of what she had witnessed that first night between Lili and Dunhurst, she obeyed him unhesitatingly, but with a fair measure of trepidation, holding the loathsome object by a fat knob at its base.
He took it from her. “Lie across my lap.”
Caroline did so, positioning herself according to his directions so that her back was arched and her bottom canted up.
As if he'd read her mind, he said, “I'm not going to spank you this time. You seem to fancy being spanked, and I don't care to make this unnecessarily pleasurable for you.”
He pulled her skirts up, not seeming to care that they covered her head—or perhaps that was deliberate. “Widen your legs as much as you can while keeping them on the chaise,” he said as he parted the crotch slit of her knitted silk drawers, opening it so wide that her bum was almost completely bared.
She felt his fingertips at the mouth of her sex, and then something cool and smooth that he slipped into her—one of the steel balls. The second ball followed the first. She felt them inside her, weighty and warm, having instantly absorbed her body heat.
“You will keep these inside until I remove them,” he said. “Clench yourself shut if you have to.”
She tensed as he parted her bum, knowing what was coming. He had never touched her there, nor inserted anything.
“Yes, I know you don't want this,” he said.“That is, after all, the point.”
The tip of the greased phallus nudged the tight opening, while the larger phallus slid part of the way into her sex. He gave it a shove; she flinched at the thick intrusion into both orifices. The smaller phallus was as slender as a man's thumb, but it felt massive and vaguely wrong inside her.
Rexton said, “Relax, Miss Keating. The worst of it is over.”
He eased the device in slowly, working it this way and that, until both phalluses were plunged deep. The one in her sex pressed against the little steel balls, creating a pressure that aroused her intensely, notwithstanding Rexton's disregard for her pleasure.
He slid the device in and out of her at a maddeningly unhurried pace, until she couldn't help but grind against his thigh, aching for release.
He slowly withdrew the devilish instrument, saying, “Not this time. This was merely a demonstration—or the first part of it. What I wish to do to you, I will do. What you want or don't want interests me not in the least.” He lowered her skirts and lifted her off him. “Put on your hat and gloves, Miss Keating. We are going for a ride.”
The first part of it.
Caroline wondered about that promise—or threat—as she and Rexton entered a path in the woods sharing the same slowly walking horse, she sitting in front on the oversized saddle he'd requested of the stableman, along with his calmest, most imperturbable gelding.
She didn't have to wonder long. When they were about a quarter mile along the path, shadowed by primordial trees alive with the chittering of birds, she felt his free hand moving behind her; he was unbuttoning his buckskin breeches. A thrill of excitement coursed through her at the prospect of finding relief from the red hot lust that held her in its grip. It was those rin no tama balls. Whatever it was that was rolling around inside them vibrated with every thudding footfall of the big animal. The effect was extraordinary. She'd been teetering on the edge of climax ever since they started riding.
Rexton said, “Take the reins, Miss Keating, and be careful not to pull on them. Sèbastien swears the beast will simply follow the path at a walk no matter what, but no point in testing that, is there?”
“No, my lord.”
“He fancies you.”
Caroline couldn't have summoned a response to that even if it were permitted.
“While he was saddling the horse, he whispered that I was a lucky man, because you are the prettiest of all the slaves.”
It surprised Caroline that the taciturn Sèbastien should have said such a thing. The young stableman, who had no English, had spoken very little when she and Rexton came for the horse. He was solidly built and nearly as tall as Rexton, with a certain rough-carved beauty to his face and a quiet, watchful manner. Were he garbed as the viscount was, in a riding suit and kid gloves, he would have had no trouble passing for a gentleman, but a man's clothing defined him to the world; a rough homespun jacket and fingerless leather work gloves did not a gentleman make.
“Put your feet in the stirrups and rise up,” Rexton said.
This she did, heart thumping. Before they left the room, he'd pocketed something from the black box, but she hadn't seen what it was.
He lifted her skirts in back, resting the mass of silk and linen and lace on his arms as he widened the slit in her drawers. “Ease yourself down—slowly,” he said, guiding her with a strong hand on her hip.
She felt him conducting his manhood between her bottom cheeks until its head pushed against that aperture which had never accommodated anything until that rubber phallus—a phallus that was considerably narrower than the one between Rexton's legs. She jerked forward instinctively.
“None of that.” He pulled her back easily and pressed his hips forward, lunging into her. She cried out.
At first, she thought he'd buried himself to the root, but then she realized little more than the head was inside her.
“Sit back down and take your feet out of the stirrups,” he instructed, gripping her hips with both hands to steady her. “And keep yourself limp if you don't want this to hurt.”
He returned his own feet to the stirrups, using them for leverage as he slowly penetrated her. It felt like a wooden club being shoved inside her inch by inch, but the discomfort was not what she had feared, in large part because she was so slippery inside—which, in retrospect, was almost certainly Rexton's reason for having used that cold cream–slathered dildo on her.
When he was fully buried inside her, with her tucked up comfortably against him, he took the reins back, curling his other arm around her waist. Having overcome the shock of being so unnaturally breached, Caroline actually found herself relishing the sense of deep and absolute invasion. Every step the horse took on the twisting, turning path jarred them a bit, causing him to shift back and forth inside her and jostling the little steel balls.
“Oh!” Caroline exclaimed when she suddenly realized she was about to climax. She came hard, bucking and crying out. Spasms gripped him rhythmically where they were joined.
He groaned. The muscles of his thighs tightened into stone; his fingers dug into her waist. She thought he would finish then, too, but he seemed to be trying to resist.
They continued on, his breath shuddering, and hers, too, as the little steel balls worked their magic and another orgasm detonated. His groan was more ragged this time as her body squeezed his. She felt his chest pumping against her back; his entire body was rigid.
She spent again, and this time it was Rexton's undoing. He roared as his seed discharged in pulsing waves that wrested a jolting climax from her just as the other had been winding down.
“My God,” he whispered amid gulps of air. It took them both some time to catch their breath. When he withdrew from her, she found that she actually missed having him inside—especially given that the rin no tama were maintaining her in a state of heightened arousal.
They continued in silence along the path, which snaked through the vast, sprawling woods along a circuitous route that seemed to have no rhyme nor reason. After a while, Rexton pulled on the reins, turning the horse down a narrow track through the woods that was so overgrown, Caroline would never have noticed it on her own.
He said, “You may speak as you wish, Miss Keating.” It was not a privilege he granted often, or lightly.
Caroline said, “You are a very wicked man.”
His chest shook with a little gust of laughter—and then he sighed. Caroline didn't need to see his face to know that those shades had been drawn down over his eyes again.
“I trust that experience was not painful,” he said.
Caroline hesitated, not sure how to answer that, for there had been some discomfort in the beginning.
“Was it?” he asked, sounding almost worried.
Caroline chuckled.
“Did I say something amusing?”
“No, my lord. It's just that the real you so rarely breaks through that façade of cold indifference you affect.”
“It is no façade, Miss Keating. You think that because, like most people, especially women, you are blinded by sentiment. You want to believe that all people are good and caring deep inside. But they aren't, and I am a case in point.”
“You say that not because you don't feel,” she said, “but because you do, and it unnerves you. I wish I knew what happened to you to make you so afraid of letting people get close. Was it a woman?”
“Resume your silence.”
This must be the Nemeton, thought Caroline as they dismounted in a grassy clearing surrounded by huge, oddly misshapen oaks. It was late afternoon, but the days were very long this time of year, and the sun was bright, casting sharp black shadows across the clearing.
“How far will you ride?” the stableman Sèbastien had asked Rexton in French.
“Only as far as the Nemeton,” Rexton had replied.
Sèbastien had given him a look of surprise. “You know of this place?”
Rexton had said, “I happened upon it last year, while I was exploring the woods.”
Secluded though the clearing was, the groundsman was obviously tending to it, given the close-cropped grass. A rectangular stone table carved from lava stood in the center of the clearing next to a stone-rimmed fire pit that looked as if it hadn't been used in a very long time. The top of the table was eroded with age and carved in a complex design of circles and knots surrounding the words dibu e debu.
“It's an altar,” said Rexton as he looped the horse's reins over a tree branch. “The Celts who once lived here regarded oak trees as sacred. This was a holy place to them. They used it for orgiastic rituals, among other things.”
Orgiastic? Caroline would hav
e questioned him about that, had she been permitted to speak. During the short time she'd known him, Rexton had displayed, despite his debauched nature, an impressive fund of knowledge that indicated he had taken his studies seriously—at one point.
He said, “The druid, or high priest, would have sat over here.”
Caroline followed him to the largest and most bizarrely gnarled of the surrounding oaks. At the base of it, to one side, sat a squarish boulder.
“You shall sit here.” He patted a bulge on the trunk at the juncture of two thick branches growing parallel to the ground at right angles to each other.
Before she could process that, he lifted her and set her on the shelflike bulge, which was perhaps three and a half feet off the ground.
“What are you—” She bit off the rest when he shot her a look.
“Do not make me punish you, Miss Keating.” He stretched each of her legs along one of the splayed branches, hiking her skirts up so that he could spread them that wide. “I daresay this little interlude will be trying enough on its own. And no, this is not a punishment. It is merely the second part of the demonstration I began before we left the château.”
Ah, yes. “This was merely a demonstration—or the first part of it,” he'd told her as he was sliding that blasted rubber phallus out of her. What he was doing to her now, whatever that was, represented a continuation of his instructive display of mastery over her. “What I wish to do to you, I will do. What you want or don't want interests me not in the least.”
He had already sodomized her. That he'd made her enjoy it didn't negate the fact that he'd done it against her express wishes. What further indignities did he have in store for her?
He peeled off his gloves, unwrapped his cravat, bit the end, and tore it lengthwise, producing a long, narrow strip. Walking around the tree, he pulled both of her arms behind her so that they were hugging the massive trunk and lashed her wrist cuffs to each other with the band of linen. He must have pulled it tight; she could barely move her upper body. Ripping the remnants of his cravat in two, he bound her legs to the branches on which they rested, tying the strips over her stockings between her knees and her garters.
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