by Shirl Anders
“Oh my God!” Affinity squealed, jumping and turning and tripping all in what felt like the same motion. Then, she found herself landing on her posterior in the flower patch under the window. A large shape loomed over her and before she could think, the next thing that happened made her laugh outright. It was Beauty’s wet tongue licking her cheek.
“Oh you!” Affinity gushed fondly, grasping Beauty in a hug, then raised herself to sit beside him. “You scared the devil out of me,” Affinity scolded him as she thoroughly petted him, to his happily wagging tail. It took her a few minutes to catch her breath and her wits, when she finally realized . . . “How did you get outside, Beauty?”
Immediately, Beauty trotted away as though he understood her question and Affinity got to her feet to follow, hoping this did not mean someone had let Beauty outdoors. But what Beauty led her to was a small door within a door. “How clever,” Affinity whispered, watching Beauty push through the small door that moved inward with his nudge. This door was obviously built specially for Beauty to let him in and out of the gardens whenever he wished.
If she had been a man or just inches wider, she would not have made it through the door. However, she just fit sideways with only a few scrapes. Once inside, she found herself in a darkened pantry, and as she got to her feet, dusting herself off, she patted Beauty’s head. “Well I have gone and done it now,” Affinity whispered, looking down into Beauty’s loyal brown eyes.
She stood still for several minutes listening silently to the quiet house. There were no noises at all and she felt certain with some inner sense added that she was alone. Her goal in this search was to find some of Law’s interests and likes, as in the boxing that she now knew he favored. By the time she met him, she would know all there was to know about boxing. Wouldn’t that surprise any gentleman? A lady knowing how to converse intelligently about any sport and not just her next embroidering projects? These ideas that kept coming to her had such merit! A man and a woman could have true companionship, if they had things in common. It was so much better to have things in common than relying upon appearance and social standings. Yes, Affinity thought, these thoughts bolstered her. It was much different planning to do something as opposed to actually doing it . . . as in right now.
She started out very timidly, but quickly her curiosity and interest overcame her hesitations and she was quite enjoying herself. And that was when she found the journal. She’d looked through Law’s library finding a great many clues to his nature there. He was currently reading Mystery Island by Jules Vern set on a table by a comfortable reading chair that appeared well used. The library shelves held a great many books about military history and warfare, making her wonder if he had ever been to war. There was a chess set opened on the table, so she assumed that he liked chess. The room itself smelled wonderful also, like smoky cherries, pine, and books. The smoky cherry flavor in the air had her wondering, until she found a box of cigarillos, which were small thin cigars. She had heard of these. They were not a usual find in England and it took a lot of her willpower not to pocket one and later perhaps daringly try a puff. Then, as much to keep herself from taking a cigarillo, as to further her explorations, she moved from Law’s library into his study.
She’d come directly to his desk, naturally looking down, and spied what appeared to be a private journal set on top of the oak-inlaid desk. She fingered the brackish-brown and worn tooled leather on the outside cover of the journal, thinking that she’d not yet decided whether or not she would actually explore closed drawers or closets, which felt more like an invasion, just as opening this journal would be perhaps. The journal could simply be his household bookkeeping, but the look and feel of it spoke of being more special than that. And yet, she fully intended to look at his bedchamber. She could not come so far and not see the most intriguing part. That was very personal . . . a person’s bedchamber, and if she could do that?
“Of course I’m fooling myself,” Affinity muttered, suddenly snatching up the journal. “I certainly intend to look!” The solace in the back of her mind was that no one would ever know of this event. And that made it better. Didn’t it? “Well, of course,” she muttered, opening the journal to the first page.
It was prefaced by a short prologue.
. . . All that I do now, I do in memory of Magdalena. Please forgive my human frailties before a true courageous heart . . .
Affinity found herself sincerely hoping that Magdalena was a relative of the Duke of St. Martin, as she turned to the next page.
. . . The one named Molly with her red hair and a buxom build confided the sensitive nature of her breasts to me. The nipples to be exact. I never request these confessions, they came unbidden in the language of the streets that few of my station have ever entertained, I understand.
I often wonder if the confessions are pride on the ladies part or perhaps a cleansing to the new life that I beg them to consider. Yet oft times, I fear they simply see the need in my gaze. I must let it through to convince them. To show them my demons also and therefore our commonality.
Then I also wonder, if my nipples could be as sensitive if touched. They have risen and hardened upon occasion. Occasions of cold . . . or perhaps arousal. I wonder why women never conceive to touch a manly nipple. To perhaps take it to their lips and suckle upon it. I have never considered requesting a woman to do so. I imagine that I fear her repulsion or confusion at such a request. Yet in the same consideration, I have never been asked expressly from a woman to caress her nipples. I have simply yearned to do so and therefore have done it. I ponder in my masculinity, whether I would be brave enough to touch my own nipples and see what reaction I would find.
Molly of the delicate nipples has found herself as a grand cook at a modest household and married now to the huntsman there with one sweetly faced daughter to their credit. Whenever I chance by to sample a cobbler, Molly always praises her blessing in being found by the Benefactor . . .
“Oh my God.” Affinity fumbled for the chair behind the desk and sat down, nearly falling into it with a hard plop. The intimacy and the honesty of Law’s words overwhelmed her, heaped immediately upon the discovery that he was the elusive and compassionate Benefactor. “Oh my God,” she muttered senselessly again.
No one thought that the Benefactor was a nobleman by any means. Also this meant that it was he that would help Anne. She had the proof of it in her hand, and she’d had the proof of it that day Law was in the park. He’d set Beauty to help them, then he’d privately given Anne the card. The Benefactor’s secrecy now made so much more sense. The nobles across the breath of England would be aghast should it be known that one within their ranks helped common street prostitutes. Law could never keep doing what he was doing if this were known.
But why did he do it? Were there others that helped him? It was obvious this Molly he wrote of was a prostitute that he’d helped, sponsored to a better life as his moniker suggested. Yet all the unanswered questions and revelations seemed to become muted beneath Affinity’s thoughts about the discovery of a man’s sexual yearnings. It was so tangible, so raw, it drew her like a child to the seductive sweetness of candy.
. . . Young Nell with her black mop of hair and wide nearly toothless grin, has claimed to be the best knob sucker in all of London. I note that she started out being the best in the lower east end of the city and expanded with her slightly gaping grin. As with any great craftsman the details that Nell gives are prided in the finer points of her craft. And I must admit here to myself, that upon hearing the accounting, I was unable to keep my own cock from responding with more than simple interest. Duly noted by Nell of course, and I gather she enjoyed the response as though she had snuck a part of me, therefore, allowing me to sponsor her from the squalor life that she’d been driven to.
But I must admit that I was stunned to hear the verbal description of this art. It served to excite me beyond anything I have yet to feel. I have never had a woman’s mouth pressed to my cock before and have to believe t
hat it would be every man’s dream. Of course I had heard rumors of such a thing. Vague names called out that left much to the imagination and less to knowledge. Names such as cock sucking, mouth fucking, pecker blowing, cob sucking, or the delightful, gobble the sausage. Yet any man knows these nearly forbidden sexual acts will only be entertained by a woman paid for the effort. And somehow in my mind before, I envisioned, performed by the lowliest of creatures driven to such pursuits by poverty, like a slave.
Nonetheless, after listening to Nell, my perspective has changed tenfold and my yearning has increased as much. Would that I could set my own mouth to the project to relieve my enticement, curiosity, and anxieties. The wonders of the descriptions Nell revealed are not to be denied. Her tongue lay upon the cock-head lovingly, then caressed through the slit with vigor. Then, her soft lips pressed tightly to the rim, encasing the knobbed head compactly in her mouth and against the caress of her tongue. The wetness that she gives from her mouth to the cock that she proclaims most important. How she would grip the shaft firmly with one hand pumping the base of the shaft as her lips clench around the head while vigorously sucking.
. . . Even writing this, I am heated beyond what I could ever before imagine.
Then, Nell describes the art of mouth fucking and taking as much of the cock into her mouth as she is able. Rapid movements of her mouth up and down the shaft. In one mouth suction taking the cock deeper, and on the next, taking it shallowly. But always and I quote here, “Sucking that fine stiff pud with all yer heart.”
Ah, my heart beats rapidly at such wonder, yet then Nell paid me back for what little I will offer her in help, by telling me of the swallowing of a man’s seed. One of the most intimate pursuits I could imagine to this date.
And while I blessed Nell for the fantastical knowledge I now possess. Knowledge that I took freely. I also find myself silently cursing the knowledge, because I am set as the Benefactor and as such completely honor-bound never to take advantage. Therefore, from the ladies of the night that I seek to help, I must always remain respectable and above reproach, leaving me with the certainty that I will never have a chance to feel such delights.
But Magdalena’s suffering and death, caused by me, was so much worse. I am lowly to even envision regrets. Oh but if there was one lady out there that would consider freely pressing her lips to my cock . . .
Affinity felt her heart palpitating as though she were running, as her fingers curled over the worn pages within Law’s journal. She vaguely realized that each of the pages worn appearance meant that it had been read many times over. Yet, she was senseless, she had to admit, completely stunned. Never in her life had she heard or conceived of such a thing between a man and a woman. However, more amazing than this was that she was completely and thoroughly aroused.
She was shivering and flushed all at the same moment over what must be a pagan act. Why even her mouth watered strangely, and her sex. Affinity glanced down at the pocketed front of her breeches where her sex insistently ached more strongly than she’d ever felt before. A heated vapor seemed to rise from between her legs with a clinging scent filling her nostrils that instantly enlivened the aching thrum in her sex to new heights. Abruptly, she clamped her legs together with her body shuddering.
“Nell,” she stated, stubbornly trying to turn her thoughts from the overpowering images dancing in her mind. She needed a little more space to breathe or surely she would faint. “This, Nell, is my Nell,” she muttered, still breathless.
Creak . . . Slam!
Affinity nearly fell out of the chair as the sounds of the front door opening and closing walloped her hearing. Thank God, she did not cry out as she moved with more speed than she’d ever known she possessed.
Chapter Five
How in the world could a boxing match be erotic, Law pondered, setting his top hat and evening jacket to the coat rack in the entryway? He loved women, not men. He desired women, never men. Yet tonight he found eroticism in boxing. Two men stripped to their breeches, one with a dark hairy chest and arms and the other with a smooth chest. Both men were intent upon winning and were strong of limbs with pronounced muscular definition. It was not arousing at first, yet as they fought more and the sweat began to glisten upon their straining bodies, it became riveting.
Law strode to his study for a brandy and contemplation. Warrior, his faithful dog greeted him as he entered the study and he stopped to pet the russet colored setter as he continued to contemplate his feelings. Truthfully, it had been as though the dark complected boxer was the hunter and the smooth chested boxer was the prey. The prey had held his own for longer than the crowd had thought possible, yet in the end he’d succumbed to the hunter. No matter where the prey turned the hunter was there. And somewhere during the middle to the end of the fight, visions of a veiled woman with long flowing brown hair had come to Law. A woman that had asked after him.
“Really, I am writing too deeply in my journal,” Law muttered beneath his breath as he lifted his hand from Warrior and he went in search of that fortifying brandy. Still, he found himself unbuttoning his shirt before he grasped the glass of brandy and went to sprawl nearly disgustedly in a chair by the fire.
Law knew what was going to happen at the same time he wondered why he dreaded it. Why dread? He was in his own home. No one could see him. Damnation, he had needs, didn’t he? He was a healthy man. A young healthy man, who had made one tragic mistake, one inexperienced miscalculation. Damn, he would not think of that now!
Law shook his head, throwing off his memories to attack him relentlessly later as they always did. But now he would relieve himself, or exorcise a vision, or just be a man. He did not know which, but he did know he would not use his willpower to stop it, and he wondered why he would want to.
Then he purposely tilted his head back and set his mind to a vision. The woman was faceless, but her gown was split open with her large flowing bare breasts exposed. They were pale fleshed, dripping with sweat as they bounced heavily with her movements around the inner sanctum of the boxing ring. Her long chestnut colored hair with strands of deeper red and honey colors swayed and flowed around her petite height as she moved, while her nipples jutted outward like small defying lances. This was not a boxing fight with fists raised. This was a sexual dance where she challenged him to see all that she was and capture it, seduce it, and claim it.
Affinity clutched Law’s journal to her breasts, standing nearly on her tiptoes as she peered around the open doorway into the almost completely dark study. Her heart was hammering in her chest at nearly being caught sneaking around Law’s house, like a thief, by his unexpected swift return. Suddenly there was a resounding bong sound down the hallway from her and Affinity started, darting her gaze in that direction. It was only the grand clock in the hallway ringing the time of midnight. Midnight? Heavens, had she been prying through Law’s home that long? It had been hours, but then of course she’d found Law’s personal journal . . . a personal sexual journal, and reading it had engrossed her immediately. For hours it appeared.
A journal that she needed desperately to return to the study where Law now moved about. The only light was from the fire which Law now went over to stir, adding another piece of wood and making the flames dance higher. The golden reds of the fire in the room illuminated the side of his face and caught the dark highlights in the thick strands of his brownish-blond hair, while the ever-present dark shadow on his jaw seemed chiseled at sharper angles in the firelight.
Affinity’s heartbeat fluttered erratically and it was not because she’d broken into Law’s home and wantonly rifled through his things. It was because when Law straightened and turned away from the fire, she saw that since entering the study, he’d completely unbuttoned his shirt.
. . . I ponder in my masculinity whether I would be brave enough to touch my male nipples . . .
That passage from Law’s journal flitted through Affinity’s thoughts unexpectedly and took on new meaning as she gazed at Law’s chest. She fou
nd herself foolishly praying that wherever he moved inside the room, it would afford her a clear view of his tight-muscled and lightly hairy chest. The pangs of pleasure that had been throbbing ever higher in her sex and in her clit, while reading Law’s intimate journal, now took up intense bites that nipped into her core. It rooted her to the spot and whitened her fingers gripping the journal to her oversensitive breasts. That grip of her fingers was fighting the urge to rush her hand lower and rub deeply between her thighs at the aches bouncing in her sex. Then, her gaze widened and a second later her eyelids lowered as though a husky purr had run through her mind at the sight of Law sprawling in a wing chair. The angle of the blue-tufted chair gave her an unfettered view of him, relaxed into its folds, yet with some unnamed tension about him.
Perhaps that tension was the intensity of her gaze clinging to the sight of him with his shirt fallen open, showing the rippled muscles of his belly. My god, nothing she’d seen in her young life had looked as utterly masculine and divine as Law’s body, chipped and lean with his sinew tautly defined. He held a glass of liquor in one hand, yet it was his other hand that mesmerized her gaze. He was completely unaware of her presence. He was relaxing alone in his home, perhaps relaxing after helping another prostitute come-into-the-light this evening. The benefactor of another lady of the night who might have told him other sexual feats that he could ponder in his private journal. And that was why his hand was slowly rubbing over the outline of his male organ beneath the black material of his breeches.
Affinity’s core quivered as she watched him, trying fiercely to keep her breath from gasping. She should leave! She should set the journal on the hallway table and sneak away. Maybe he would never know. Perhaps he would always wonder how it got there. He might blame a servant. They could be fired for thievery. Touching something so private would make anyone furious. She could steal it, stuff it into her breeches now and flee. She wanted it. She never wanted to let it go. How could she wonder the rest of her life what else was written there?