by Eden Myles
“Yes, of course,” I agree. Tiberius was, above all else, a good businessman. “Then…you’ll allow Stuart to court me? No objections?”
He pressed his lips together but his face remained unreadable. “I can’t see how I can prevent it.” He set the brandy down and came to me, pulling me into his arms, against the warmth of his skin. He pulled his robe around us both. He held me like that for a long moment, his fingers playing over my hair as if I were some comforting old toy to him, a doll designed for his pleasure alone, and then turned with me in his arm and carried me to his bed. “You’ll make him a pretty bride, Lucky,” he said as he tossed me down onto the goose down mattress, “one day.”
I skittered backward as he climbed over the foot of the vast, four-poster bed and crept catlike toward me, but before I’d reached the head of the bed and the mound of pillows there, he’d captured me, covered me, and was kissing me. He kissed me like he was dying and I had the breath to keep him alive. He licked my lips until I parted them for him, then he crushed his mouth against mine and his tongue went in, slick and fast and hot like the brandy. His hands slid along my sides, following the contours of my body, and I sighed into his mouth.
“It would never work out between us, you realize,” he said breathlessly between his endless kisses.
“Yes, of course,” I agreed. “You’re not at all suited to this type of life.”
“Yes,” he managed.
“And we’re completely incompatible.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, we are.”
“I would make you miserable.”
“Yes. Absolutely,” he said as his hand slid between my legs. I spread my legs farther apart and angled my pelvis up to meet his light, fluttering touch. His fingers circled the edges of my sex before parting my labia and rubbing at the wet inner flesh. His mouth found the side of my neck and he growled faintly as he licked and bit the tender flesh there. I made soft, kittenish noises as he softly tormented me. “I’m not entirely certain I even like you, Lucky,” he said.
“I know I don’t like you,” I groaned and gripped the edges of his dressing gown before pushing it off the broad expanse of his shoulders. “You’re awful, simply awful.”
“An ogre,” he agreed. “And you’re cursed. A disaster.”
“Yes, I know.”
Unlike most proper gentleman, Tiberius’s body was rigid and sun-baked from cavalry training on the Peninsula—not the soft, white bodies I was used to seeing here in Smithtown on both men and women. I knew from experience that his back and chest were covered in small scars from various battles. He had old knife scars, rapier scars, even a scar from a musket ball that had grazed his shoulder at a precariously close angle. I did not think that Stuart had any scars. He had never been in any wars; he was simply too young. He wasn’t like Tiberius; he was pale white, and whole, and young, and unmarked, and comely. A man any women would swoon for. Tiberius was as different from him as night was from day. I traced the musket scar near Tiberius’s clavicle with my finger while his fingers went deep into me and made me thrust up and up against his hand.
“You’re always so wet when I touch you, Lucky,” he said softly and sweetly against my well-licked and well-bitten neck. “I wonder, will you be this wet for Stuart when it comes time?”
I moaned throatily as he pumped his fingers in and out of me. His lips dropped to my breast and he took one nipple in his teeth, hard, sucking and biting it as he continued to push me toward my release. My hips undulated against him and I could feel the lovely pressure building and building. “Come inside me,” I offered in an intimate whisper as I kissed the soft, rich dark curls of his hair.
“Not yet,” he said and sucked each nipple deep into his mouth until they glistened with his saliva. “I want to watch you come for me first.” I squirmed uncontrollably beneath him until I felt a burst of pleasure and my body thrashed against his, gushing my wetness all over his learned fingers. When the wave of my release finally let me go, I fell back onto the bed, trembling and kissing the corners of his mouth.
“Now,” he said. His roughly callused hands gripped my legs behind the knees and he pulled me frantically beneath him while simultaneously sliding my legs up over his shoulders, sheathing himself deep inside me all in one smooth, fluid motion, like he was the blade and I the scabbard. I cried out at the first hard thrust, but Tiberius caught my cry in his mouth and I quickly found myself panting and groaning into his mouth as he lunged fiercely in and out of me.
I raised my hips to boldly meet each shocking thrust of his cock so that for a time we strained against one another and the only sounds in the room were our short, staccato breaths and the slick wet sounds of him plunging deeper and deeper inside my body. As the ferocity of his rutting increased, the groaning and squealing of the bedsprings joined our personal symphony of lust. He was both fierce and gentle with me, pinching and twisting my nipples even as he drove himself to the hilt inside me over and over, almost but not quite hurting me. Finally, he reached up and gripped my reams of tangled, damp hair and rolled over so I had the privilege of being on top, a place I’d never been before.
“Ride me,” he commanded breathlessly, his eyes gleaming wildly in the firelight, and I did. I rode him hard, taking him deep inside and letting my inner muscles grip his cock just as fiercely as I could, until his fingers snagged painfully in my hair and his eyes had almost rolled up into his head. Near the end he threw his head back on the pillows and let out a fierce, bearish groan of release and I giggled and leaned forward to kiss his exposed throat even as he convulsed within me and filled me with his seed.
When some of his senses had returned to him, he looked at me curiously. “What is it?”
“You sound like a bear when you spend yourself,” I laughed.
He raised an eyebrow at that. “And how would you know what a bear sounds like when it spends itself? Have you been keeping company with a bear?”
I giggled at that too. He could be so funny at times! I wondered if Stuart was ever funny when he made love. “Have there been many women, Tiberius?”
“You sound jealous.”
“Tell me.” I slid my hands under his arms where I knew he was extremely ticklish, but he stayed my hands before I could torment him.
“There haven’t been many women, no. Most ladies are afraid of this.” And he traced the scar along his face, following the line of it expertly as if he had touched it many times in the past.
I wreathed my arms around his neck and leaned down to kiss the scar. “Tell me about it. I keep thinking you received it in battle, that you saved a woman from being ravished by Napoleon’s troops, or a child from a crazed madman…”
“Oh Lucky,” he said, sounding amused. “You do know you read too many books of romance?”
“Tell me or else... ” And I started reaching for his underarms again.
He looked serious for a moment, then he said, “I was a young man when I received this scar. I was in love with a woman in London named Alice. She was the first woman I had ever had such feelings for. I was sixteen at the time, very full of myself.” He paused and his eyes turned dark. I tried to imagine him at sixteen, whole and unscarred. “Alice was married to a man named Hastings. He was older than me, a sergeant in the King’s army. When he finally returned from his tour of the coast, and he found I had been sharing Alice’s bed all through that summer, he was furious, of course. But I didn’t regret what we had done. Alice, like Hastings, was older than me, you see, and she taught me many skills in the art of pleasuring a woman.”
He fell silent for a long moment as if remembering those times. “Naturally, Hastings was furious. He challenged me to a duel to reclaim Alice’s honor, but since I did not know how to handle a pistol at the time, we settled on knives. I had grown up in the East End, you understand, amidst the criminals and moneylenders in the Yiddish slums. I was very good with a knife.”
I shuddered slightly.
“Hastings was a soldier, he had military skills, whereas I
had only my youth and my rage, and there’s something to be said for experience. The first strike was his.” Tiberius stopped to trace the scar on his face once more. “The pain and humiliation sent me into a kind of frenzy, I expect. I don’t recall much after that, except coming to my senses with Hastings’ body laid open beneath me. I remember thinking he looked like some slaughtered lamb…”
He trailed off and I tightened my hold on him, trying not to picture it all and failing horribly.
“Alice was distraught. So much so that she threw herself over Hastings’s body and wept upon him. I remember her covered in his blood, and the hate burning in her eyes for me. I understood her love for him then, I think. That day, I finally understood what love was. Not two bodies writhing together in the dark as she and I had done all through that long, hot summer, but real love, the kind that’s seated in the heart. That’s the love Alice had for Hastings.” He paused and gathered my hands and settled them on his heart. His eyes seemed to pierce me. “Following that, I joined the King’s army myself. I wanted to learn to control what I had unleashed within myself. I wanted…well, I was a foolish lad back then. I expect I wanted to gain redemption.”
“Did you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know that I ever truly can.” He traced a lock of my hair down my cheek with his fingertip. “Will you stay with me tonight, Lucky? Just for tonight? Sleep with me?”
I knew I would hear the cock in the yard crow, and that if I was quick, I would be able to make it back to my room before anyone else was awake and noticed me, so I nodded. He immediately rolled me to the side, his cock still buried deep inside me, and wrapped himself around me. He suddenly felt very cold against my skin.
I held him, warmed him, until we both fell asleep.
***
The following Sunday, Stuart came round to court me once more. We took a carriage ride out to the woods surrounding the estate—properly chaperoned by Nellie, this time—and we had a pleasant picnic beneath a sprawling sycamore tree in the last days of an extended Indian summer. I listened, shivering excitedly in my muff, while he described New York City to me, the vast number of bustling people, the inns, taverns and shops on every street corner, the hawkers that sold almost anything you could think of, even the pickpockets scurrying about. I had been to the city a few times with my father, of course, but those times had been brief, and I’d seen little past what I could glimpse as he ushered me from our carriage to the bankers or whatever business office he was visiting. I had never strolled the streets! I had never seen the buttonwood tree that the traders and speculators gathered beneath on Wall Street to share securities.
A few weeks later, Stuart took us down into the city for a two-day holiday, which was both thrilling and exciting—though Nellie, who did not like the city, complained the whole stay about cutthroats and thieves lurking outside our inn window. The Sunday following that, which was the first week of December, Stuart invited me to the governor’s ball for Sinterklaas, a winter holiday normally reserved for children, where Saint Nicholas, the Good Holy Man, gave out gifts to those children who had obeyed their parents during the year. But our governor was known for his elaborate affairs, and he had chosen to make it a masked event just to scandal proper society. Stuart said the most important men and women in the village of Smithtown and the surrounding regions would be there.
I hadn’t had many occasions since my father’s death to attend a soiree, never mind a masked ball, so I thought how nice it would be to see the lighted candles, holly boughs, and costumes and watch my friends dance the minuet, though of course I would not. I had an ugly fantasy of somehow burning down the governor’s mansion should I attempt such a daring move with the witch’s curse hanging over me.
Nellie abhorred all such gatherings, claiming they were the devil’s playground and were full of mischief, so I took my cousin Rupert with me as my escort. Charlotte was there as well, along with her husband Darcy, who had received a personal invitation. I wore my blue velvet winter gown, trimmed in white fox fur. It was a very old gown, having belonged to my mother before me, but I was so delighted to find it fit me, I even refused the gown that Stuart had sent on from the dressmaker’s. I was so very pleased that I had, because once Rupert and I arrived at the ball, we quickly discovered that Stuart was dressed in a burgundy tailcoat. If I had worn the gown he had sent, a similar burgundy, it would have been an open insinuation to everyone present that I was his lover or finance, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Charlotte, Rupert and I sat on a fainting couch in one corner of the vast ballroom and watched everyone mingling and dancing. They seemed to float by in their swirling gowns and tailcoats, the candles and lighted paper lanterns in the room glinting off sequined tailcoats and the precious gems sewn right into the ladies’ ball gowns. The governor swished by in his long, befurred green-and-red coat and saintly crown, dressed as Saint Nicholas himself, and gave out gifts to all the pretty, unmarried girls.
Charlotte and I dutifully held up the masks over our faces as our friends approached to greet us. Charlotte’s was a smiling gold cat mask and mine a scary Chinese mask that someone had said was an Oni, or bad spirit. Rupert thought the whole thing ridiculous and simply sat between us ladies, fluttering a gold fan in front of his face as the room filled with so many heated bodies all doing the minuet.
“Now I know why it’s call a crush,” Charlotte exclaimed, trying to find a familiar face—or rather, a familiar mask—in the swirl of dancers.
“He’s quite handsome, your Stuart, isn’t he, Cousin?” Rupert said, zeroing in on Stuart, who was making his round of our friends without his mask.
“Rupert,” I said patiently. “Please don’t get it in your head…”
Rupert laughed. “Don’t worry yourself, Cousin. He’s really not my type.”
“What does that mean?”
“That blond hair? Those good looks? Most definitely the signs of a shallow soul. And look how soft he looks! I bet he stubs his toe and has to stay abed for three days. I prefer a man I can mark with my teeth and a riding crop who won’t go hiding behind a woman’s skirts.”
Charlotte sighed. “You really can’t take him out, can you, Lucky?”
“No,” I admitted sadly. “Cousin Rupert is a lost cause.”
Rupert laughed at that too. I wondered how I would tolerate his whinnying laugh for the duration of the evening. “Oh my,” he finally said, peeking around his fan. “And there, dear Cousin, is your ogre.”
I looked, and looked again. Tiberius and his valet had arrived fashionably late at the party. Tiberius, I realized, was dressed in a plush royal blue velvet tailcoat, though whether that was an accident or by design, I had no idea. I swore violently under my breath, drawing the disapproving glares of both Charlotte and Rupert. “I simply cannot believe his arrogance!” I said, standing up.
“Dear, I’m sure it’s nothing but a happenstance,” Charlotte said, trying to calm me.
“I’ll bet!”
I started making my way across the floor, toward Tiberius where he stood talking to the governor, when Stuart cut me off. “Would you like to dance, Lucille?”
I almost didn’t realize he was talking to me. There were so few people who called me that.
“Lucille.”
I finally looked at him, at his blond, princely figure, and wondered why it was I could become so distracted and enraged by the very sight of Tiberius when he didn’t love me, when we had no relationship past what we could do to please each other physically. It was like La Belle picking the beast over the prince in the fairy tale. It made no sense. I wished I could convince my heart to see what my head already knew to be true. “Yes,” I said softly even as Tiberius looked up and focused his one good eye on me. “I would love to dance, Stuart.”
I slipped my gloved hand into his and we danced, he well, me less so. But to his credit, Stuart did not complain, even when I trampled his feet. Directly after, the governor wanted to dance with me, his eyes permanen
tly fixed on my décolleté. After that, two more gentlemen requested a dance, and by the time they were finished, Tiberius was nowhere to be found.
Spotting Stuart talking to the governor, I tried to make a break for the balcony, hoping to find him there, but before I made it halfway across the room, I heard the tinkling sound of the governor striking a knife against his wineglass to gain everyone’s attention. I stopped abruptly, jabbing the heel of my slipper through the hem of my gown. “Attention, ladies and gentleman, my good friend, Mr. Stuart Brinkerhoff, has an announcement to make.” Then the governor stepped back to allow Stuart to take the floor.
Stuart stood there, wineglass in hand, looking positively radiant. He glanced at me and smiled. “Thank you, all of you, for being here tonight. Part of the reason we are here is, of course, to celebrate Sinterklaas, though I must admit I have another, covert, reason to be celebrating tonight.” Again he looked at me. Again he smiled.
The others in the room looked as well, and I immediately felt like some strange insect being pinned down and analyzed.
Stuart continued by saying, “For the past few weeks I have had the great honor to be in the company of a truly remarkable woman—a woman who has managed to turn the economy around in this town. Miss Lucille Van der Meer.” He paused and the others murmured among themselves. I dearly wanted to sink into the floor. “And tonight I wish to announce that I intend to have her hand in marriage…”
I squealed like a scalded cat and raced from the room.
***
“Dear, it’s not that bad,” Charlotte said when she had succeeded in cornering me privately in the governor’s library.
“Yes, it is…yes, it is!” I said as I paced back and forth across the governor’s fine Oriental carpeting, trying not to trample my ruined hem. I pulled at my hair. I pulled at my skirts. “How dare me? How dare he embarrass me like this?”
Charlotte put her hand on my shoulder as she dogged me. “It’s not so unusual for a man to make a public announcement of marriage.”