by Eden Myles
Finally, he collapsed atop me, still inside me, his weight pinning me almost uncomfortably against the bed, but I didn’t think he had the strength to move just yet, so I reached up and ran my hands over his hair and nuzzled the scarred side of his face as I brought my legs up and wrapped them around his waist.
I squeezed and he convulsed against me again, spurting deep inside. “Lucky, really,” he said in a strangled voice and shuddered violently, his gesture sending the oil lamp over on the bedside table.
The drapery immediately went up in a burst of hot, licking flames, and Mr. Sloan swore under his breath, extradited himself from my body, and jumped to his feet. He immediately reached for my basin of morning water and used it to splash out the flames. I lay curled on the bed, hugging myself and savoring the feelings deep inside me, and watched the white shock of his face.
“Do you believe in the curse now, Mr. Sloan?” I asked.
HOUSE OF DOLLS
Smithtown, New York, 1805
Tiberius’s books were a mess, and I made certain to let him know about it first thing when he arrived that morning. As he was carrying in a heavy valise and setting it on my father’s desk, I looked up from the secretary where I was working and said, “Who does your books? You? They’re simply abysmal! I can’t make heads or tails of any of it!”
Tiberius unlatched his valise but didn’t immediately open it. We had decided to move most of his business operations into my father’s study while he worked with me to get the cotton mill up and running. It would prevent him from having to travel unnecessarily between his boardinghouse in town and my father’s house. He had been resistant to my suggestion at first, for no other reason than because it had been my suggestion and not his, and Mr. Tiberius Sloan wasn’t the most agreeable of men, but I had worn him down with my good sense. Now he looked over at me with a scowl so deep his dark eyebrows almost met in the middle of his forehead, which made him look even more ogre-ish than usual.
I’d thought he was ugly once, with his sharp European features, ugly, puckered scar running down one side of his face, and his pale, blind left eye, but so much had changed in just a week. He wasn’t an ugly man, I had decided. Scarred, yes, but not inherently ugly. He was infuriating, however, particularly where his books were concerned. His mouth quirked up on one side. “Actually, my mother does my books for me. She’s very sweet.”
“Oh,” I said, jerking upright and feeling quite the fool for speaking so plainly. I was naturally nervous around Tiberius, so of course my inherent bad luck reacted. I managed to knock over the inkwell with my elbow, and soon I had black squid ink splattered all over my father’s fine hardwood floors. I cursed and sprang up. I had nothing but my handkerchief to limit the spill, but before I could bend down to ruin it in the fallen ink, Tiberius was there, staying my hand.
“Let it go, Lucky. I brought some housecleaners with me, along with my personal valet. They can manage the mess.”
“I can’t afford to pay housecleaners!” I protested. Because of my father’s bad gambling debts, I had lost the family fortune. I had nearly lost the house I grew up in, except that Tiberius had been able to cover my debt to my father’s moneylender, Mr. Van Tassel. Now I owed Tiberius.
“But I can.”
“Tiberius…” I said, annoyed by his display of wealth, “you have no right to make such decisions in my father’s house!”
“Mr. Sloan,” he corrected me. “You agreed to be my personal secretary and courtesan, Lucky. When we are working, you will address me appropriately. May I remind you of the rules?”
Rules! With him, always rules! A few days earlier, he had sent a letter to me listing all his “rules”—how I was to conduct myself around him and others, how I was to address him. Even how I was to dress! I stood up straight and eyed him with derision.
He stood over me, eyeing me steadily back. “I could punish you for that look, you realize.”
My mouth quirked up in a smile. “You could, but you won’t. You’re not my husband, Mr. Sloan,” I drawled. “You hold no real power over me.”
“I may not be your husband, but I am your gentleman.” He narrowed his ogre-ish eyes. “Get down on your knees.”
I held his eyes until I felt my face blush. “No.”
He reached out and set his hands on my shoulders. “That wasn’t a request, Lucky, it was a command.”
“No! I will not let you treat me this way in my father’s house…!”
“Hush.” He pushed me steadily down until I folded to me knees, my skirts crumpled around me. I looked up at his long body, at the intensity of his face, and as I watched, he ran a hand over the substantial bulge in his breeches. I thought about what we had done that night he visited me in my room and felt my face heat further. A week had passed, but my mortification remained. Proper women did not do the things I had done with Mr. Sloan. But then, I had ceased to be a proper woman long ago.
“You need training, Lucky, conditioning, to be a proper courtesan.” Keeping his eyes on me, he unbuttoned his breeches and slid his cock out. Like that night, it was huge and swollen, with an angry, purplish head. It mesmerized me like a serpent. I had never seen a man’s cock up close before. As I watched, it swelled further and clear, pearl-like droplets of what I knew from anatomy books to be Bulbourethral formed and started running down the sides, toward his hugely swollen testicles. He hadn’t let me touch it that night we were together. I reached out and touched it now. It felt warm and hard and alive in my hands, and it twitched in response to my touch.
He grunted like I’d hurt him and pushed my hands away. “Don’t touch. Lick.”
I had read about such things in the Karma Sutra. I leaned forward and licked carefully at the little slit that continued to weep. He tasted both sweet and salty, but not unpleasant. He let me swirl my tongue against his velvety soft crown for a few moments before sinking his fingers into the coils of hair on the back of my head. He held me while he forced himself past my lips. I tried to draw back before I gagged, but he said, “No. Take it, Lucky. All of it.” His voice was hoarse and low as he forced his cock into my mouth.
I managed to take half his length before I started pulling back, afraid I’d gag on him and make a fool of myself, but he held the back of my head and bucked sharply into my mouth. He shoved almost his whole length into me before pulling out and thrusting slowly in and out, clenching my hair and growling softly with pleasure. I filed this exercise away in my mind. Perhaps I could use this technique to my advantage in the near future.
He thrust and thrust until he spurted his hot seed down my throat. I swallowed before I choked on him. There was an old wives’ tale that a woman could get herself with child just by swallowing seed, but I was educated and knew better. Besides, the witch’s curse that had made me clumsy had also rendered me infertile. I would never have children, or a husband, or anyone. He made me lick his cock clean, then swipe my tongue down over the soft, warm sac of his scrotum where some of his seed had spilled. And, finally, he held my hair and forced my head down so I could lick up the few droplets that had fallen to the hardwood floor at his feet.
“I like the sight of you on your knees, Lucky.”
“Mr. Sloan, please…” I said, suddenly afraid someone—my nanny Nellie, or my solicitor, Mr. Smit—might show up. Perhaps I didn’t have much of a proper reputation, but if they found me on my knees, licking up the seed of my business partner, they would finally know how far I had fallen just to save my father’s house.
I tried to straighten up but he kept his hand on my shoulder. “Please, what?”
“Please let me up.”
“Soon. After you understand this isn’t a game we’re playing. When I speak, you listen. When I give you a command, you obey. That is what it means to be a gentleman’s courtesan. Do you understand, Lucky?”
I was close to tears when I felt him come up behind me. His cock was already readying itself and he pressed his swiftly hardening member against me so I could feel his heat and stre
ngth even through the layers of my clothing. He leaned against my back, holding me down on all fours on the floor, and scooped some fallen hair away from my ear. He kissed the side of my neck tenderly, his mouth wet, his beard scratching me, then worked his way up my cheek to my ear. He kissed me like he wanted to consume me, as if it had been more than a week since I had let him into my bed and my body. The touch of his lips and the roughness of his cheek sent uncontrollable shivers down my body. Finally, he told me a word in the cup of my ear, and then told me to remember it.
“It’s our personal safe word,” he explained even as he continued to rub his ever-stiffening cock against me. “Eventually, when I introduce you to the Society, you’ll be given a new word. But when we’re alone together, this will be our safe word.”
“The mysterious Society again.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. What is a ‘safe word’?”
“It’s to keep you safe. To keep both of us safe. When you use it, I’ll stop whatever I’m doing because I’ll understand you’re not comfortable with me any longer.”
“As if I have a choice?” I cried.
He slid his hands under me and clutched my corseted breasts tightly. He said, again in the shivery cup of my ear, “Love, you always have a choice. But it’s my wish you’ll submit willing to my affections. It’s only fair, don’t you think? I did pay off your father’s debt to Mr. Van Tassel. In a way, I paid for you.”
I groaned in response. That, too, had been in the letter he’d sent me. But I didn’t like Tiberius’s tactics. In many ways, he was as much the extortionist as Mr. Van Tassel. Mr. Van Tassel wanted my father’s ruin. Tiberius wanted my virtue. “Mr. Sloan, please, please…”
He rubbed the hardness of his cock against my backside and said, “My good girl. My good little filly. I love hearing you beg.”
“I’m not begging…Mr. Sloan, please…don’t do this. I’m not some animal to be bent to your will. I’m not a horse to be mounted.”
He ignored my pleas. I felt my skirts flipped out of the way, and then his hands sliding my petticoats and drawers aside so I felt the sudden coolness of the room on my bare bottom. He slid a hand between my legs and rubbed boldly at the wetness seeping from my opening. I groaned and moved against the stimulation of his hand. “If you don’t want this, why are you responding so well, like a little filly in heat, displaying for her mate?”
“I’m not…” I began to protest, but his fingers thrust in and out of me and I completely lost the thread of my argument. To his credit, Tiberius was a very good lover, very different from the stories I had heard from the married women in the village. Even Charlotte, my lifelong friend, had never told me about the things I was learning with him. My hips moved automatically, pushing back against the invasion of his fingers. I hated the power he held over me, hated the way my body craved him, responded so well to him. I wanted him inside me, wanted to feel my body clench down around his cock as it had that night, milking him dry, taking every drop into my body. He fit inside me so well.
“You’re beautifully wet and ready, Lucky,” he said to me, his voice barely more than a whisper against the shivering skin on the side of my throat. He slid his damp fingers over my backside and steadied me. He said, “Spread your legs for me, my filly. Give yourself to me.”
I whimpered and tried to wriggle away instead. He sank the fingers of his one hand into the tender skin of my backside to steady me while his other lifted up and then came swiftly down, cracking against my ass. I let out a squeak of surprise as the pain, desire and humiliation roared through me. “I said spread your legs,” he said in a much harsher voice. “Now.”
I didn’t want to risk another slap. I might cry out in earnest, and that might bring someone to the study, so I spread my legs are far as I could and still remain upright on my knees.
“Good girl. Lower your head and put your lovely arse in the air for me.”
I obeyed him and lowered my face until I could rest my enflamed cheek on the floor. The hardwood pine was as polished as a mirror, and I could see him clearly as he mounted me. His hands moved less gently and more insistently between my legs. I grunted in humiliation as he parted all my wet, dripping folds to better learn every part of me. The mortification of being so exposed was such that I wanted to look away, but morbid curiosity kept my attention focused on what he was doing. He let out a rattling breath of delight and I felt his breath on my moist, shivering opening. “You’re a good girl, Lucky. And you’ll make a good little courtesan.”
I should have been outraged by his words. Instead, I felt a kind of elation bubbling up. I had pleased him. I wondered how many women had pleased him in the past. I wondered how many women there were in his past, and if he had spoken to them in a similar way.
“You’re lovely, simply lovely. Wet and tight. Do you like me touching you?” he asked as his fingers traced over all my wetness.
I groaned at his touch. “Yes, sir. I do,” I said, though it was entirely unnecessary because I had gushed at his words all over his hand.
His slippery fingers moved deeper inside me, making me rock back and forth against them. I felt a brief, intense pinch that made me grind my hips back against him. “Do you want me, Lucky?”
I told the truth. “Yes, sir. Now, please. I want you now.”
“You can’t have me now.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, trying to be obedient.
He reached across the length of me and stuffed his handkerchief into my mouth so I couldn’t even ask what was going to happen next. Then he went back to touching and fondling me between the legs while his other hand rubbed against my backside. “You need training and a steady hand before you join the Society, Lucky. You’re far too willful for your own good,” he chastised me. Then he brought his hand down sharply once more and I cried out around the handkerchief at the sudden, intense pain. The crack of his hand against my bare flesh sounded loud in the close little room. His fingers pushed up inside me even as his hand came down to spank me in two more quick processions—sharply and without mercy. I cried out at the strange commingling of pain and pleasure, my bottom stinging while his fingers continued to pleasure me inside. Soon my hips were rocking frenetically to the stimulation of both his hands.
“That’s for defying me, Lucky. You won’t defy me again, will you?”
I shook my head no, no.
“You’ll listen to your gentleman, won’t you? You’ll obey him without question?”
I nodded yes.
He lowered his head and his hot tongue flitted against my wetness like a little flame, teasing, tickling, until I moaned with the sensation. First he licked, then he sucked at my opening until my moans turned to whimpers around the handkerchief and I trembled violently for him. The more he licked, the wetter I became, and I knew it wasn’t simply a matter of his saliva. Finally, he stopped and I felt his tongue move higher up, against the one place I never would have thought a man would ever touch a woman. Heaven! His tongue wet me thoroughly before pushing insistently forward a little ways. I felt my belly clench in a familiar way and all the pressure burst out of me in release. I cried out, a stifled moan, and my body clamped down around his fingers still lodged deep inside me as I jerked spastically in response. He kept his tongue rooted inside me all through my convulsions.
“Good girl,” he said when it was over. I knelt there on the floor, shaking from my climax, and listened to Tiberius licking up all the juices my body had to offer.
Finally, he pulled the spit-dampened handkerchief from my mouth and used it to wipe at my lips. He cupped my chin in his big hand and drew my head back so I was staring up at the ornate tin panels of the ceiling. He murmured little words of reassurances into my ear even as I felt the now very swollen head of his cock pushing a little ways inside my wet heat, parting my folds. I closed my eyes and whimpered as he teased in and out of me in a steady, controlled rhythm, my need to feel him inside me so powerful I couldn’t hold still.
He r
eleased my chin and took a handful of my hair to steady me like a pair of reins. “I told you that you were ready, my filly, ready to be taken, ready to be filled.” He breathed hoarsely in my ear and lunged, pushing his cock fully into me, spreading me wide. I cried out at the first impact and tried to thrash away but he was already deep inside me, and the pressure of his body held me against the floor so I couldn’t move at all. He pulled out and then slammed his cock inside me again all in one smooth motion, pushing my hips forward and then dragging them back. I wound up biting my bottom lip to keep from crying out at the intense sensations rocking my body.
He was huge, and he stretched me almost painfully. My body automatically clenched down around him, trying to hold his heat and power deep inside me. His violence frightened me, thrilled me, and made me want him more. I knew he meant me no real harm. It was just this need…this sexual frenzy of his…and, after all, he was a lonely man. I knew what loneliness did to you. Intimately.
I groaned and ground my hips back against him, taking him deeper and deeper, until I could hear the low, throaty cries of pleasure being torn from his throat. We moved against one another, he slamming into me and me taking him ever deeper with each impact. Eventually I arched my back and took him in as far as I could, tightening myself down around him. He cried out my name, his thrusts more erratic now as he reached his end, and then I felt him hold himself very still within me as he had that night, just before his seed burst inside me. I realized he was all instinct now. He held me against the floor, his teeth nipping at the back of my neck so I cried out in fear and excitement as he convulsed deep inside me, my entire body jerking in response. The burning heat of his release flooded me, not once, but twice, and I listened to him sighing as he climaxed as if he had never experienced such relief in his entire life.
I crouched there, sore and strangely satisfied, though I knew I ought to be mortified by what I had submitted to. Tiberius remained spent but locked inside me for some moments as if he were trying to reawaken himself to the reality of our world. Finally, he kissed the side of my neck, under my ear, and eased his way out of me, trying not to harm me. His warmth gushed from me and dripped down the insides of my trembling legs, and he used his handkerchief to soak away some of my embarrassment. Finally, he stood up, cradling me in his arms as easily as if I were a child, and carried me over to the secretarial, where he collapsed into my chair with me in his lap.