The Red Velvet Horse (Siren Publishing Allure)

by Iona Blair

  Holt looked as if he hadn’t slept since the robbery, his handsome face haggard and gaunt. “I…” he began haltingly. “Look let’s go up to my suite.” He attempted to take her arm to guide her towards the elevators, but she shrugged him off.

  “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she raged, and stalked out the door before he had a chance to respond.

  * * * *

  A miserably unhappy April curled up on her easy chair and sought escape from her troubles in the ongoing erotic adventures of Hannah Wilks.

  I have now been working at Mrs. Cloud’s establishment for about six months. Much of it spent either bent over or mounted on Neddy; a jiggering and buggering contraption second to none.

  My bottom is in a constant state of tenderness, the faint pink lines from old birchings lying alongside fresh red stripes from recent ones. But I love every well-applied stroke of them, and never has my cunny been better lubricated or prone to such violent twitchings.

  Meanwhile, I find myself employed in the tiresome task of looking for suitable accommodations. This has become imperative, as my landlady, a sharp-faced shrew named Violet Ruth, has been hiking up my rent because of my manner of employment.

  It was during these perambulations around various rental properties that I found myself near my old home on Simcoe Street. On impulse, I decided to go into the haberdashery shop across the street, and see if Jeannie Fife, one of the assistants that was particularly helpful to me, was still there.

  “Well I never,” she declared when she saw me, her overbite looking almost sinister in her open-mouthed glee. “I’d just about given up all hope of ever seeing you again.”

  For want to see me she did, ever since a gentleman had been inquiring about me almost one year ago.

  “He had gone across the street at first, of course. And finding you gone with no forwarding address had checked to see if anyone here might have any idea where you had moved to.”

  A blinding swathe of sunshine cut through the high-paned windows and settled on the colorful bolts of cloth on the long cutting table.

  “Did he leave a name?” I asked in a state of considerable apprehension. Could this have been an agent sent by my brutal husband, Ned Beasley?

  “Well you know I did write it down somewhere.” Jeannie moved a dangerous looking pair of scissors out of the way before rummaging through a cabinet drawer. “Along with how he could be contacted.”

  While Jeannie looked for her notes, I was entertained by the bustle of activity from the “flying foxes,” an elaborate system of wires and pulleys that ran the length of the store.

  After writing the amount of a sale on a docket, the sales assistant would put it in a container along with the money. A tug on the pulley would send it to the cashier in the upstairs office, who would then return the change in the same manner.

  “Ah, here it is,” Jeannie exclaimed at last. “His name was Tom Bateman.”

  “Tom…” I repeated the name stupidly, and unable to reconcile this moment in a busy Toronto shop with the dark and handsome tram conductor whom I had loved so dearly in the gentle wet drizzle of Vancouver. Who had for some inexplicable reason simply stopped writing to me, and that, after so many passionate letters swearing his lifelong devotion.

  Why would he suddenly go to all this expense and effort to locate me now?

  Had he now abandoned whomever he had put in my place at that time, and now sought to reinstate himself in my injured affections?

  The thoughts churned around in my feverish mind as I trod the dirty sidewalks in my quest for decent lodgings.

  Later that night, after a particularly energetic rogering from old Jock, who as usual diddled me in all three orifices, I sat down and penned him a brief note.

  For all that we once were to each other I ended dramatically. I signed it, as was my custom, with a simple H.

  Because I was intending to move from Violet Ruth’s mean lodgings, and had not yet secured other premises, I affixed the address of my employer Mrs. Cloud.

  A reply arrived by return post.

  My very dearest and most darling Hannah:

  If you only knew how I’ve despaired of ever hearing from you again, torturing myself with thoughts of you lying sick or dying, or (may god forgive me) lying happily in the arms of another. And now I receive this blessed letter written by your own lovely hand. Oh my darling, my only true love, my sweetest one, why did you suddenly start ignoring my letters? Leaving me in a state of misery so great, I often thought of committing the great sin of self-destruction…

  This just wasn’t possible, I concluded with eyes narrowed like arrow slits. It was the other way about. It had been his letters…but wait, there was something wrong here…something very, very wrong indeed.

  Tom had obviously kept sending me letters, which I had never received. He had addressed them to the Simcoe Street address as usual. So where had they gone?

  I clenched my hands in a gesture of suppressed fury, someone, and I was beginning to get a very clear inkling of just who that someone might be, had intercepted them and kept them from me.

  For Mattie had formed such a close dependency on me, that she feared anyone who might displace her.

  Why hadn’t I thought of this before, rather than simply blaming poor Tom?

  She had obviously perceived Tom as her greatest rival, and had decided to remove him from the arena once and for all.

  Why you conniving little bitch, I fumed, with a dangerous degree of silent venom. I’m going to make you sorry you were ever born…

  “I wanted to keep you all to myself,” Mattie wailed, her pale eyelashes beaded with tears.

  “I could have you imprisoned for years for this,” I spat out furiously. “Didn’t you know that tampering with the King’s mail is a federal offence?”

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized profusely. “I never meant to hurt anybody…I just wanted to be with you…forever.”

  I could sense rather than hear the nosy landlady’s interest on the other side of the parlor wall. Violet Ruth was well known for her prying and gossiping ways. “Go to your room, I’ll deal with you later.” I immediately soaked a twig of birches in a bucket of brine. They would be nice and razor sharp for applying to Mattie’s plump bottom later on that night.

  “I’m sorry Ma’am…so sorry,” the wretched girl cried. “Please don’t birch me…please.”

  “Lift your night-dress and bend over the bed,” I ordered in a voice that would have frozen hell. “I’m going to spank you until you can’t sit down for a week.”

  Whack…whack…whack…whack…whack…whack…the brisk strokes fell in perfect tempo and unison, leaving a series of ugly red welts on the maid’s upturned behind.

  “Ow...” she screamed, terrified I daresay, that I meant to beat her to death.

  “Keep that up and I’ll put a gag in your mouth and tie your hands,” I threatened. “Bite down on the bed cover, and take your stripes without complaint.”

  I whacked the hell out of the deceitful little bitch until blisters formed on her behind and blood trickled down her legs. Then I tossed down the birch and stalked from the room.

  Mattie recounted what followed later to me when we were once again on speaking terms. I have taken the liberty of fleshing it out here for literary richness.

  “My god what has that monster done to you?” It was Violet Ruth, stealing quietly into her bedroom after she had heard me leave for work. “Oh you poor little dear…I’m going to call the constable.”

  “No…no…please don’t. I deserved to be spanked…I did a terrible thing…a criminal act.”

  Violet hunched her narrow shoulders in disgust. “I can’t imagine anything that would be bad enough to deserve a thrashing like you’ve just taken,” she argued bitterly.

  But try though she might, was unable to pry out of Mattie; exactly what she had done to warrant such a beating.

  Her thin lips pursed in distaste, she nevertheless bathed the maid’s wounds as gently as she coul
d, and then applied a soothing ointment.

  “Ow…oh lord it hurts...” Mattie moaned, as the sour-faced Violet tended her injuries.

  “Well that’s what you get for having a two-bit whore as an employer. I know a good family who are looking for a nursemaid for their children. I can put in a word for you if you like.”

  “No...” Mattie sobbed. “I want to stay here.”

  “Have it your own way then,” Violet shot back in obvious displeasure. Then she fetched a piece of clean linen and diapered Mattie’s well-scourged bottom.

  Chapter Five

  April felt stunned and more than a little sickened over the savage beating Hannah had meted out to her maid. And yet, if she had been in her position, and a lover’s letters sabotaged, she wondered if she might not have been just as brutal in her retribution.

  It was also important to judge people in their own time. In Hannah’s age corporal punishment was standard practice throughout society, with servants often being brutally whipped by their employers for trifling misdemeanors.

  She eased Spice gently from her lap and went to stand by the window. A tiny squirrel foraged around the hazelnut tree.

  Since the terrible revelations about Holt’s infidelity, she had refused to speak to him, unless absolutely necessary. An ugly atmosphere of tension surrounded the once happy shop, and it was left to Fern to practically run the place single-handed.

  April was in a state of shock, stumbling her way through a landscape that had become frighteningly unfamiliar and threatening. She just couldn’t understand how Holt could have betrayed her trust so cruelly. The personal pain caused by his cheating overriding even the concern about financial ruin.

  * * * *

  Holt too, was finding it a torment to live in such a purgatory of the spirit, self-castigation for his transgressions scourging him to the core. He remembered how the affair with Carla had begun, and winced anew at his stupidly for ever having started it.

  April had been away at the time, on family business, and he had found himself getting increasingly lonely and horny. He had always been faithful to her, and although tempted several times, had never strayed. But the lure of something different spurred him on. We’re not naturally monogamous, he told himself to ease the pangs of guilt, and besides April will never find out about it.

  He wondered where to go for that kind of thing? He had been out of circulation so long, he felt like a novitiate trembling at a forbidden altar.

  “Sensuous blonde available for discreet encounters.” He found the brief advertisement tucked away under Escort Services, in the back pages of the local newspaper. It was just what he’d been looking for.

  Carla was a petite, curvaceous woman with large brown eyes and a mischievous grin. “Would you like to start with a bodysuage?” She led Holt into a small room dominated by a professional massage table.

  He felt self-conscious at first, dropping his clothes and lying naked as a jay bird in front of this pay for play stranger. But as Carla worked her magic with sensuous body oils and scented candles, he felt himself begin to unwind and a slow creeping warmth steel furtively into his loins.

  “Hand relief, a blow job or a fuck?” she offered with no inhibitions whatever, after she had kneaded every inch of him with nimble and practiced fingers.

  “A blow job, please…” He would be less likely to catch a disease that way, he reasoned. Fucking a mouth was infinitely more exciting than being merely jerked off by a fist, anyway.

  “Mmmm…that’s good…I love it,” he murmured, as Carla treated him to some of the best head he’d ever had. Her tongue flicked around the head of his cock and bathed the entire shaft with rhythmic electrifying movements.

  He was aware of a door closing suddenly from somewhere down the hall, and out in the street a car door slammed twice in quick succession.

  “Oh yes…yes…” he cried out as his climax drew near and Carla increased the tempo to match the wild undulations of his hips. Then she cupped his balls gently with one hand and shimmied her little finger into his anus with the other one.

  “Oh God…that’s great…I won’t last…” he gasped in feverish abandon, as the great well of frustrated cum burst forth like a bulging dam bursting at the seams.

  “You sure you wouldn’t like to fuck me? It would round the whole thing off nicely.” Carla ran her hands over his body, paying special attention to his bum and inner thighs.

  Holt was getting hard again, and the thought of vigorously fucking this well-accomplished little sextress, held great appeal for him.

  So donning a condom that looked as if the swelling of his cock would break it, he eagerly joined Carla on the bed in the back room.

  “God, but you’ve got a lovely little cunt.” He held back the lips to examine the small pink flowers within. Then he played with her clit for a while, curious to see whether it was true what was said about prostitutes. Namely, that they never became aroused.

  Carla proved them wrong. For her clit soon became as rigid as a tiny cock and her cunt wet and swollen.

  “So you do really want to be fucked,” he remarked in some surprise. He wasted no time in mounting her and giving her the fucking of her career.

  “Come back and see me again,” she invited, while he dressed quickly and made for the door. “I enjoyed that. I truly did.”

  He believed her, for he had felt the powerful contractions of her prolonged orgasm tug away at his rutting cock as he had fucked her within an inch of her life.

  He patted her bum, which jutted out at a seductive angle beneath the thin chenille robe. Then after tucking an added tip into her cleavage, tripped happily downstairs.

  He had visited Carla regularly after that. Feeling guilt at his deception of April, yet driven on by the excitement and his clamoring hormones.

  * * * *

  “I don’t see how we can hold out much longer,” April told Holt, breaking the angry silence long enough to discuss pressing financial matters. “Ever since the robbery we’ve just been getting by on a wing and a prayer.”

  It was late on a rain washed August evening and the rich aroma of freshly perked coffee wafted through the store.

  Holt bit down on a pastry and licked the icing off his fingers. “We won’t have to,” he replied mysteriously. “There’s going to be a sizeable injection of cash forthcoming very shortly.”

  “What did you do, rob a bank?”

  Holt quite maddeningly, refused to elaborate. Except to repeat for the umpteenth time that he took full responsibility for the robbery and the lack of insurance coverage.

  “I forgot to arm the security system, and neglected to keep up the premiums. It was unforgivable.”

  * * * *

  Nick Eglassio was a little brown nut of a man, with a shrewd expression and hooded eyes. Always dressed to the nines in yellow waistcoats and diamond stickpins he knew everyone in the art business, and particularly those who were less than honest.

  “I heard about your misfortune, and I’m so sorry,” he said to Holt with a valiant attempt at sincerity. “And of course, I thought of you immediately when this particular…business deal came up.”

  I bet you did, Holt thought bitterly, amazed to find himself actually consorting with someone as disreputable as this.

  They were sitting in Nick’s bizarrely furnished office, which had a clear view of the gallery floor below. An elongated African warrior in cast iron brandished his spear beside an early Ming dynasty figure with pigtails and a Fu Manchu moustache. Animal skin rugs dominated the floor and walls.

  “So what does it involve?” Holt asked warily. Desperate for some quick cash, yet only too familiar with the kind of underhanded business arrangements Nick dealt in, forged artworks being his specialty.

  “Just a couple of items that you could sell for me in your shop,” he replied glibly, flicking the ash from his cigar towards a hefty jade ashtray.

  “Stolen, I suppose?”

  “No, but they were supposed to be.” Nick laughed w
ickedly. “And the insurance company has paid handsomely for the theft.”

  “If there are any questions asked, where am I supposed to have…acquired this merchandise?”

  “I’ll take care of that.” Nick stuck the old stogie in the corner of his mouth and worked it around with relish. “I’ll provide you with legitimate looking paper work, just in case anyone gets nosy. But that’s highly unlikely.”

  “Give me a couple of days to think about it.” Holt felt intensely uncomfortable with the whole thing. He didn’t want to involve April without her prior knowledge. And yet, didn’t want to add to the mess he had landed her in, by asking her to participate.

  It was a conundrum that he wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy.

  Yet, the fact remained that Village Antiques was about to go under. Only a bold move could save it.

  “Nick Eglassio?” April was wide-eyed in disbelief. “How could you even consider doing business with him? The man’s a well-known crook.”

  “Believe me, I don’t like the idea any better than you do. But it’s either that, or go belly up. Which is it to be?”

  * * * *

  Since the robbery, Holt had been avoiding seeing Carla. Not only in order to save money, which he could no longer afford, but also because he suspected that she might have had something to do with it.

  He had not breathed even a hint of this suspicion to another living soul, too ashamed of having been used as a dupe. Yet, the persistent memories of Carla seeming more than a little interested in the store’s security system, as well as the value of the merchandise continued to haunt him.

  “This is absolutely gorgeous,” she had gushed, referring to the Edwardian pearl pendant he had given her for Valentine’s Day. Then, assuming (correctly) that it came from Village Antiques, asked him if they had a lot of similar pieces of comparable value.

  “Quite a good selection at any given time,” he had replied frankly. Never thinking for one moment that she could have any ulterior motive for asking. But then, even now he wasn’t certain that she did have.