by Louisa Trent
He groaned under his breath.
He had left instructions with Mrs. Birch for Tegan to plait her hair. When she looked down at her slippers, the two childish braids fell over her shoulders, and her feathered tam slipped over one eye. Which she righted by knocking the cap farther back onto her head. An action that made her breasts shift. Again. Which made him groan. Again.
“Sir, what is the correct term for what I did to you?”
“What you did to me when?” She was always doing something to him. Notably, right now. Christ, his head no longer throbbed, but now his balls ached.
“When I suckled your cock,” she pronounced loud enough to wake the dead. “What is that sex act called?”
“Shh! Someone will overhear.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Orally pleasuring the penis is called fellatio. Oral stimulation of the clitoris or vulva is called cunnilingus. You will have your illustrated book when I take you meet my friend at Sally’s.”
“Sally’s?”
“A brothel.”
“Good. Considering my new station in life, a book on strumpet tasks will serve me well.”
“Strumpet tasks,” he repeated as a gent with a brass-knobbed walking stick came abreast of them and stopped.
“I cannot believe my eyes. Is that really you, Killer? I have not clapped sights on you in a dog’s age, not since our prizefighting days in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Harold the Hammer.” Sean slapped his old sparring partner on the back. “You are a sight for sore eyes. You wear the look of success well.”
“As do you, you brigand.” He nodded at Tegan. “I see you have a daughter. A pretty little thing.”
“Not my daughter, Harry. A friend’s daughter taking a stroll with her Uncle Sean on a late-summer’s day. After our walk, I promised her an outing to the ice-cream parlor.”
“A shame to keep you, then. But look me up, would you? We can talk about old times. I understand we have…er…a membership at the same…uh”—he glanced at Tegan—“club. We can share a pint of ale and more.” He wiggled his brows. “Just like the days of our misbegotten youth.” With a tip of his jaunty top hat, Harry went on his way.
One the heels of the Hammer’s departure, Tegan questioned Sean straightaway.
“Sir, that gentleman said you were a prizefighter. Is that true?”
He kept his answer brief. “Yes.”
“In Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“You grew up there?”
“I left after my last fight. The prize money staked my entry into steel, an investment that earned me a fortune.”
“And the club Mr. Hammer referred to was a flesh club?”
“Yes.”
“And they do what exactly there?”
“Everything you know nothing about.”
“But presumably, I shall.”
“Yes.”
“When, sir?”
“Soon,” he replied.
Tobias and he had planned to meet at month’s end, an appointment Sean meant to keep.
His creed was to even the score at all cost. Regardless that the philosophy had begun to lose its luster as it applied to Tegan, he refused to give it up. For what code would he have left to live by if not revenge?
Chapter Seventeen
After their walk through Central Park, after the promised dish of ice cream, Sean deposited Tegan back at the front entrance to his mansion. The satyr seemed to mock her as she opened the door.
After a light dinner, eaten alone in her room, Mrs. Birch informed her that the master of the house was off attending to “business” elsewhere.
Tegan surmised without having to be told what the nature of that business entailed.
Sean was seeing a fancy woman.
Brooding to herself because he had yet to seek her out, and then brooding for thinking such a contrary thing, because really, who wanted him to seek her out anyway, she passed the remainder of the evening curled up in her room with a book.
Ivanhoe.
The novel was left on the narrow servant’s bed. Because of a recent conversation about a stained-glass window paying homage to that same book, she knew who had left it there. Had it been left by anyone else, she would have thought it a very thoughtful gesture. But this was the robber baron, and the man possessed not a thoughtful bone in his body. His veiled hints followed by his merciless teasing followed by his torturous procrastination left her on tenterhooks.
When would begin her career as a man’s plaything?
One tepid intercourse in which she lost her virginity withstanding, most of the other occasions since had left her frustrated…and butter-basted. Apart from the cunnilingus, that is, which had been quite, quite outstanding.
She hardly felt like a fallen woman yet. Though, strictly speaking, she supposed she was. And a criminal too, according to the narrow definitions of the Comstock Act. The law banned all contraceptive information, methods, and most sexual activities as obscene if not illegal.
Nothing she could do about any of that now. She had made her choice, as Sean Griffith hastened to remind her at every opportunity.
She bathed. Read. Performed the required hundred brush strokes to her hip-length hair. Then gave up the wait for the captain of industry. At quarter to midnight, she retired for the night. Her erstwhile lover’s definition of “soon” could be next year for all she knew. Until then, he would hold her hostage.
She had only just dozed off in her narrow servant’s cot when the squeaky door hinges jarred her awake.
She shimmied up to a sit. “Sir? Is that you?”
“Expecting another admirer?”
“Hardly. I had all but given up expecting you.” The lamp turned on, and she shaded her eyes against the light.
He stood at the side of the bed and started undoing his cravat. “Remove the bloody childish nightgown.”
Resisting the urge to tell him that he had bought the offending garment, she did as he said. With a toss, she sent the white linen to the floor.
His gaze hooded, and his long reach brought him to her breasts. He captured her hungry flesh in his hand, cupping, then squeezing.
“You have fine tits, Miss Ellis.”
“Considering the nature of the circumstances, a little more familiarity would do me, if you please, sir.” Her belly flip-flopped outrageously as he tormented her nipple.
“Over onto your belly, then, Tegan.”
Beneath the covers, she scooted to a roll. Air chilled her skin as he removed those same covers from her person.
“Your legs,” he said tersely. “Spread them.”
His clothing scattered hither and yon—behind her, she heard their descent—and the unmistakable scent of stale perfume wafted to her nostrils. “Did you conduct your business at your private sex club, sir?”
“Always do. I have not disassociated myself so far from my past that I have turned my back on the neighborhood. Any property buying I do, I do in Hell’s Kitchen.”
His voice sounded thick. Not the sort of thickness she associated with the drinking of spirits, but the sort of thickness she had come to recognize as part of his man’s lust. The robber baron’s voice changed with lust. As did his face. His features hardened before lust and softened afterward.
When he first turned on the light in the servant’s room, his expression had looked very hard indeed. Had he not sated his lust at his club then?
“I had no woman tonight,” he said, answering her unasked question. “I tried. But you brought me back home without relief. A pity, because the whore was not opposed to anything. Then again, you told me the same.”
The heat of his hand scorched her bottom. Yet she shivered when he whispered, “Raise your hips, now, so I can prepare you.”
“With butter?”
“No need to improvise. I brought oils.”
“Sodomy oils?”
“Why, so eager?”
“Not precisely eager. I merely thought—”
“Hush. You
think too much. Plan too much. Plot far too much. Unfortunately, sodomy will need to wait. You have barely been stuck yet. That first time was so brief, but for your virgin’s blood, it would never have counted. Though you did get me off, damn your black-hearted deceit to hell.”
His anger thundered between them. Rather than frighten her, his anger reassured her that he had a heart. Her confession of extortion had evidently cut through his cool reserve and lit a fire within him. Willing to see where that fire took them, she hiked her hips.
His touch was there, moving between her legs, rubbing into her pubic curls. “Your bush matches mine in hue,” he said crudely, rubbing her harder, his fingers tangled up in the wiry threads. “I like that. I like that your sex hair is as black as mine. I like that your triangle is far from ladylike. Like that unruly wildness in you.”
He coated the notch of her femininity. A slick finger, then two, penetrated her privates. Her pussy. Her cunt. He coated her there with an oil scented with she had no idea what. She held still for him, proud in the knowledge that she had provoked a strong emotion in him. Until Sean Griffith, people looked right through her.
Well, perhaps the new supervisor of Central Mine had not looked through her. Mr. Owen, she understood now that it was too late, had looked right at her. In fact, he had seemed interested in her, in a man/woman way. Perhaps he might have wed her too.
Too late for her to make a respectable marriage now.
“Always from the back,” the robber baron whispered in her ear. His fingers, now three, pushed in and out of her. “I never take whores face-to-face.” He stroked her at the top of her sex. “Does this touch feel good on your clit?”
Her own writhing took her by surprise. “Yes, sir,” she said breathlessly.
“How about this?” He pressed on that throbbing scrap of flesh.
She shot up, her back arching, as her arms straightened. “Oh God.”
“Good girl, good girl.” He stroked some more. “Just like that, then. Doing fine.”
Was she? Was she doing fine?
She felt as though she were breaking apart. As though, he was breaking her apart. Her hips rocked back and forth, then up and down, and she vaulted her throat to the ceiling, as he rubbed and pressed and catered to her clit. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please, please, please.”
“Please what?” he asked.
“Enter me,” she cried, heedless of anything but need, but want, but desire. She bucked her bottom, trying to tempt him.
He laughed. “Such an excitable little thing. Bring that up higher for me.” A hand fell heavily on her bottom. “Your ass. Bring it up higher, I said.”
She would have done anything to please him so he would enter her. Anything to be filled. Anything to be put out of her misery. Already up on her arms, already at the limit of her endurance, she writhed and wiggled, attempted to do as he had directed. Her body racked with spasms, and sobbing uncontrollably, she hiked herself up onto all fours.
“Good girl. That is it,” he crooned. “Just what I wanted. You, like a little doggy, on hands and knees before me.”
With a wet, squishy sound, his digits withdrew from her passage. And now he was touching her everywhere, one hand oiled, one dry, massaging over her. He divided her hair into two thick hanks and dropped one each over a shoulder, baring the horizontal length of her spine. He crawled up behind her and reached below her rib cage to fondle her dropped bosom. Sniffing the side of her face, he sculpted her breasts and then pinched the swollen nipples. He said he would not sodomize her, not now, not yet, but his cock butted her raised bottom!
Butting was not good enough. She needed his hardness inside her.
“Please,” she begged tearfully. “Please, sir.”
He sawed his cock between her legs, passing over her cunt but not entering, and he continued to drive her wild with his hands. Biting her shoulder, he actually balled up his hand into the hollow of her underarm, the hair moist with perspiration. She heard him lustfully sniff her scent from his fingers.
In her frenzy to have him, her breasts had started to swing. She was completely bare, up on hands and knees, pleading with him to enter her, and yet her swinging breasts made her feel…made her feel…so raw, so uncivilized, so bestial that mortification filled her.
Her crying intensified as he withheld himself from her. Something was happening to her. The same something that happened when she touched herself, the same something that happened to her in the tomb. As that something built inside her, he entered her.
The penetration dried her tears.
It was so good. The fullness inside her. So very good. He had oiled her well, she was slick with the stuff and with her own excitement, and so there was no pain as he thrust deep and long, each plunge into her body’s core strumming her to a whipcord tightness, tripping her into oblivion. Taking the leap, she let go; a scream that tore from her throat as a honeyed pleasure filled her.
And still he kept moving inside her.
He brought her up, until she was kneeling upright on the bed with him behind her, his cock splitting her pussy lips, his hands pinching at her nipples, twisting her nipples, and it happened again. A long shudder and then release.
Two arms about her waist, he held her up now. Her body, satiated with climax, had gone limp. He could do anything to her, and she had no strength to resist. And what he did was to keep pushing in and out of her.
True, he had oiled her well. True, excitement had moistened her body. But after a while, even arousal could no longer stem the ache. Her cunt began to dry. The strokes he made, as deep as before, as hard as before, hurt. She whimpered in pain.
But contrarily, when he pulled out, she screamed, “No! Do not!”
“I can give you some more, Tegan. But only a little. Otherwise, I might rip you.”
He thrust into her again, stabbing at her like a knife, like a hot blade. She welcomed the cut. This was the most alive she had felt in her entire life.
His hands clenched on her breasts, the fingers taut but split, so that her nipples protruded between them as he began to ram her from behind.
In her extremity, her loins throbbed, pain lodged in her lower back. “Yes,” she moaned through her mouth. “Yes.”
“A few more and I end it,” he grunted into her hair.
“No, more,” she said through her grimace.
As she struggled to accept the pain, to make the pain part of herself, he brought her down to all fours again and then picked up her legs. Gripping her ankles in his hard hands, he used her like a slab of beef, his cock slamming into her.
And it was still not nearly enough.
As the pain in her passage increased, she felt it happen again. Only stronger than before, darker than before. The climax engulfed her. She screamed and convulsed. He pulled out, flipped her over onto her back, and ejaculated, the semen spewed against her greedily parted lips.
He fell on top of her, his tongue in her welcoming mouth, and together they swallowed his seed.
Chapter Eighteen
After it was over, after fucking Tegan, Sean sat back on his haunches, his palm splayed on her swollen cunt and shook his head in amazement. “You have a rare talent for it.”
She turned her face away, as if her gift shamed her.
Having none of that, he pulled her chin forward again. “I meant that as praise. You do, you know. Have a talent for fucking, that is. You sucked the last drop of cum from my cock and would have taken more.” He ran his hands down her legs and then, holding her ankles as he had before, split her thighs. No ceremony. No asking by her leave. They were past that now. He had seen her need, and she had seen his. A mutual unveiling, and now they had nothing to hide. Not sexually. He had hurt her, and he acknowledged the hurt. “How bad is it?”
“Receding,” she replied, acknowledging the same.
Bringing the lamp closer, he shone the beam of light at the slit, then unrepentantly opened the folds. He peered inside.
It was bad. He had stopped bef
ore tearing her, but she would wear bruises for days.
Not that a few bruises would stop him.
“The damage will heal,” he said, his voice soft now that she had sucked his anger from him. Because now he could, he fingered her with gentleness. “A cold compress will alleviate the swelling.”
Fully clothed, except for his cravat, he stood to get a cloth.
Straightaway, her thighs began to shut him out.
“No,” he said harshly. “Legs open. I should not be gone more than a minute.”
He hurried to the kitchen. Chipping at the block of ice stored in a metal chest, he wrapped the shavings into a clean dishcloth and returned to her.
She lay as he had left her: Naked. Listless. Legs well spread. Eyes glassy. Her arms raised above her head, palms up, fingers curled inward. Knowledge of what she had done no doubt sinking in.
Good.
He wanted her to know that she had only sought to ruin him, whereas he had succeeded in ruining her. The fuck, the first of many to come, went to evening the score.
Or so he tried to convince himself.
“Now do you understand? This is what your life will be like as a whore. Only you will service ten men a night, not just one. The only escape from degradation is for me to find you a protector after I am done with you.”
Her chin wobbled. “When will you be done with me?”
“That is up to you to decide. You are not imprisoned here. Contact Owens by post, and when you are satisfied that all that you wanted improved at the mines has been improved, then leave. Or leave now if you like.”
“And if I do, the improvements will end now.”
“Correct. The longer you stay, the more times I fuck you, the more mining concessions you will earn. But know this, if you do decide to leave now, there is no place for you to go. Until you learn how to please a man of sophistication, I cannot vouch for your expertise, and so I cannot place you. My reputation is on the line, you understand.”