The Red Velvet Horse (Siren Publishing Allure)

by Iona Blair

  Then there was the matter of the security code, and how the conversation had veered around to it on the night he had drank too many Vodka cocktails. They had been lounging in Carla’s heavily sexual back room, which had every appearance of a Turkish brothel, complete with beaded curtains and floor cushions.

  Had he told her what it was? For the life of him, he couldn’t now remember.

  Now that the need to get naked with a woman for full sexual intercourse was hot upon him, he relegated all these questions and doubts to the back of his mind, and headed for Missy’s Massage Parlor with a raging hard-on that would not be denied.

  “I’ve missed you,” Carla scolded playfully, as she led him towards the scarlet covered bed. Wearing harem pants and impossibly high-heeled shoes, her full breasts swelled out invitingly from the skimpiest of halter-tops. “What have you got for me there?” She dragged her long red fingernails down the length of his bulging crotch. “Feels good whatever it is!”

  Holt’s need was too urgent to indulge in this type of pre-coital flirtation and play. “Just bend over the bed and drop your pants,” he ordered her in a voice that sounded alien even to his own ears.

  “Wow, you really do have an appetite tonight.” Carla giggled nervously. She did as he wanted, leaving her shoes on and poking her behind well up in the air to accommodate him.

  “God that’s great...just great…” he muttered like a mantra, while he fucked the living bejesus out of the woman, whom he thought might very well have betrayed his confidences in the worst possible way.

  When she came and sat on his lap afterwards, curling up like a cat in a contented little ball, he wondered if perhaps he might be mistaken. Heavens, am I getting paranoid? Or, was he just seeking someone else to blame for his own carelessness?

  However, several weeks later, the Police recovered some of the pieces stolen in the robbery, and the dealer who had fenced them identified Carla as the source.

  “Well at least we have everything back now…or almost,” April exclaimed gratefully when she heard the good news. She had been working on a window display for Halloween at the time. “So you can tell that crook Nick Eglassio to take a hike. We will not be doing business with him after all.”

  Chapter Six

  Now that I was in touch with my darling Tom again, all else in life paled beside the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the very sight of his letters. “Marry me, Hannah, please,” he implored. “Let’s not risk losing each other again.” Yet, much though I would have loved to accept and move back to the sweet air of the pacific coast, I knew it was but a pipe dream. For I already had a husband living there, a brutal beast named Ned Beasley.

  Also––and this I will not attempt to either deny or justify–– I had got used to a more luxurious style of living and was reluctant to abandon this comfort to eke out a mean living as the wife of a tram conductor.

  That was not the end of it either. My sexual appetite had increased since working at Mrs. Cloud’s, and I simply could not imagine being restricted to one man forever, even if it were someone as handsome and dear as my beloved Tom.

  It was around this time that a most unexpected occurrence took place.

  Old Jock and I had just enjoyed a particularly rousing time astride the wanton Neddy. I could hear the church bells tolling in the distance, heralding in a New Year. As we clinked our glasses together, and swallowed the champagne in one greedy gulp, he asked me to be his wife.

  “I could never get enough of your sweet quim, lassie,” he declared with a frankness that did him credit. “And if you were my wife we could be shagging away like beavers every minute of the day.”

  “You do me a great honor, Jock,” I replied, once the initial shock had worn off, and I had contented myself that he was indeed serious in his proposal. “But please, give me time to consider.”

  Marriage was a big step, as I had found out to my cost with the monstrous Ned Beasley. This thought entered my mind with just the right amount of wryness to offset any bad feeling or bitterness, for these are poor bedfellows who rob us of joy, as certainly as they do no harm to the stinker who caused them in the first place.

  “Are you going to accept him, Ma’am?” Mattie asked, her plump little hands clenched uneasily in her lap. Concerned, no doubt, as to what her position would be in a new household.

  “I am,” I replied without hesitation. For Jock was a very wealthy man, having made his fortune in the lumber business. Chances such as this did not come along every day. While it was true that he was uncouth with the most vulgar of sexual appetites, he was not ungenerous. Always giving me a most handsome tip on top of the fee to Mrs. Cloud. Unusual for a Scotsman, or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe. There again, this unbecoming characteristic was probably attributed to them by their old archenemy the English. Scotland being a poor country, they simply didn’t have it in the first place.

  So were my thoughts as I prepared for my wedding to Jock Sinclair, a simple ceremony that was to take place in a small Presbyterian Church on the shores of Lake Ontario. They were accompanied also, and I daresay inevitably, by memories of my last engagement to the dishonest Jeffrey Sutton, and how cruelly my hopes had been shattered on that occasion.

  It was, therefore, with a great deal of relief that I saw my current venture go off without a hitch. When, on an idyllic Indian summer day in mid October, Jock and I were joined as man and wife in the sacred bonds of holy matrimony.

  What God has joined together, let not man put asunder…(Matthew 19:6)

  * * * *

  April set aside the crumpled manuscript, yawned and stretched. Her eyes were tired from pouring over the yellowed pages and faded writing. However, the literary offerings of Hannah Wilks were well worth the effort. The sheer indomitable spirit of the woman shone down through the years, with enough brilliance to give heart to even the frailest of souls.

  From where she sat in the window seat, she could see the lights of the city twinkling like earthbound stars on a backdrop of black horizon. Her thoughts were still very much in nineteenth century Toronto, at a certain lakeside church on an Indian summer’s day.

  My heavens, the sheer bold-faced audacity of the woman, marrying one man, while still wed to another!

  Hannah Wilks was now a bigamist.

  The question was would she get away with it?

  * * * *

  Jock Sinclair turned out to be a surprisingly good husband, if overfond of his native Scotch and possessed of a strictly unconventional nature. For instance, far from being ashamed of marrying a former prostitute he was actually proud of the fact.

  “Whores make the very best of wives,” he was wont to say. Especially when he was deep in his cups and the company jovial. “They’re just so damned grateful to only have to fuck one man that they’d never be unfaithful. And they’re damned good in the sack to boot.”

  This ribald remark was always guaranteed to bring forth many a hearty guffaw, often of an embarrassed nature. But fortunately for me, as I disliked being made the brunt of amusement in this way, Jock entertained seldom and only then a few old cronies whom he had known for years.

  Although uncouth and fond of rough expressions, he was generous with me, and always kind. We lived in an old granite castle of a place in the fashionable Rosedale district. On winter nights the draughts fairly swirled around the skirting boards and wainscots, blowing the flames around in the fireplaces and sometimes extinguishing them altogether.

  “I never thought I’d see the day that I’d marry an Englishwoman,” he often told me in a joking manner. Completely ignoring the fact that this particular one was a former whore as well. Which, to most modes of thought would be infinitely more significant, not to mention unacceptable. “But it just goes to show that we never know what tricks fate has in store for us,” he would add philosophically.

  Jock’s sexual appetite was boundless, and often kept me awake until dawn. “You’re saving me money lass,” he would tell me with the most disarming o
f smiles. “Can you imagine how much this would cost me in Mrs. Cloud’s?”

  At the very mention of my erstwhile employer and her high-class establishment, I would thank my lucky stars that Jock had taken a shine to me and made me his wife. For a whore has a very short shelf life, and I was fast approaching that age when I would no longer be employed in a top-notch house.

  Eventually, sliding down the scale to sleazy knocking shops, and then ending on the streets themselves. A sorry old pockmarked floozy in a gin-induced stupor, peddling my disease-ridden bum, for a few pennies, to anyone who would have me.

  Thanks be to heaven and Jock Sinclair, that horrific fate would never be my lot in life. Instead, I would be required to satisfy one man only, in the opulent comfort of a sprawling mansion.

  “Do you ever hear from Tom now?” Mattie Gwyn had the temerity to ask me as we strolled one day in a nearby park. For wasn’t it she who had intercepted his letters to me and destroyed them only a short time ago.

  “No, I do not,” I replied brusquely. “Although it is none of your business, and an extreme impertinence for you to question me thus.”

  I lowered myself carefully onto my favorite bench. Jock had been overly vigorous the night before and my bottom and both its orifices were decidedly tender.

  “Isn’t the lilac beautiful just now?” Mattie slickly changed the subject as she reached up and plucked a flower.

  “Gorgeous,” I replied coldly, but sniffed appreciatively at the snowy bloom she thrust into my face.

  The very mention of Tom had started up a line of thought that I would have sooner left dormant. For I felt guilty about the way I had abandoned him for the lucrative offer of marriage from Jock Sinclair. Loath to upset him by telling him the true nature of my defection, I had simply stopped writing and left no forwarding address.

  “The cowardly way out” a critical little voice spoke from somewhere deep within. I ignored its admonition and contented myself that I had done what was best for myself.

  The thought of my darling Tom with his handsome face and warm eyes sent a thrill as sharp as an electric current coursing straight through me. And despite myself, and my rigid determination to put this part of my life securely behind me, my body betrayed me, and I shivered with longing in the mellow mildness of the flawless spring day.

  What would Tom think of me if he knew how I’d earned my living for these last number of years? Would he accept me as wife despite of it, the way Jock Sinclair with all his many shortcomings had done?

  A strictly hypothetical question, of course, because I had thrust my former lover out of my new life and resolved to be a good wife to Jock, my most generous of benefactors.

  * * * *

  The summer of 1902 was a busy one indeed, with Jock converting his fine old house from flickering green gaslight to the stable bright glow of electricity. In addition, creating a sort of mini-brothel in a small antechamber off the master bedroom. For he had missed the raunchy Neddy in our sexual repertoire, and had now acquired a similar horse of his own.

  “Ride horsey, ride,” he was wont to say, as I sat astride the velvet beast, clad in my corsets, with bare bum protruding seductively beneath.

  Whack…whack…whack…He would give me a light switching across my buttocks and thighs, whipping up the rosy color and leaving me breathless and ready for the handle of the whip to penetrate my twitching cunny.

  “You’re ready to take it to the hilt too, you bad wee lassie,” Jock would murmur, as I squirmed and wiggled my way to a most satisfying crescendo; hugging the horse while my erect nipples rubbed against the warm fabric.

  Then he would pull me down until my private parts were flush with the rear of the “animal” and slide in his rigid cock, pumping me full of air in both cavities with a fine lusty poking that left me shivering with delight.

  “You are indeed a most astonishingly virile man for your age,” I would compliment my husband most sincerely, after he had completed the act of love; straightening up and alighting from the horse while the disconcerting little farts rumbled out of both cunny and bum.

  “And you’ve got a quim worth dying for,” Jock would reply most charitably. “And I’m going to feast on it right now.”

  The feel of his tongue on my quivering cunny lips, both inner and outer, never failed to take me straight to the heights of exquisite bliss. Trembling and twitching in an almost spasmodic frenzy as his thick fingers slid up my love tunnel and tapped determinedly on my most sensitive spot.

  “Oh yes…yes,” I would cry out enraptured, and feeling an intense pressure build within my womb, would bear down as if to birth a child and pass a great quantity of clear liquid instead.

  This was the most satisfying orgasm of them all, and it would leave me blissfully sated for days.

  Little did I suspect, as I reveled in the comfort and excitement of my marriage to Jock, that a dark cloud from my past was about to threaten my new found happiness.

  “Mrs. Cloud sent me.” The girl was well dressed if a trifle showy with bold eyes and bad teeth. It was a muggy August afternoon and I had been playing croquet on the back lawn, when Katy, the parlor maid, summonsed me.

  “I showed the…person into the library, ma’am,” she informed me stiffly, with an air of curiosity and disapproval.

  The message from my erstwhile employer and Madam of the most successful brothel in the city was simple. Letters had continued to arrive there from a gentleman in Vancouver (Tom, of course) and now he had presented himself at her establishment, in person.

  Foreseeing just such a calamity and seeking to forestall it, I had written to him prior to my marriage telling him that I was returning to England where I would take up residence with an Aunt.

  Damn the man, I thought with some passion, not all of it negative in nature. For I still had a tender spot in my heart for this most handsome and pleasant of god’s creatures.

  “He’s staying at Murray’s Hotel on Wellington Street,” Mrs. Cloud’s emissary advised with a titter, obviously enjoying the discomfiture of one so rich and privileged. This little event would certainly be the topic of all sorts of scurrilous gossip and speculation for a long time to come.

  Dreading seeing the pain on Tom’s face when he knew that I’d lied to him, I nevertheless, mustered what little courage I had left and went over to his lodgings that very evening.

  Thunder rumbled away angrily from the direction of Lake Ontario, and there were bright flashes of heat lightning streaking across the dark sky.

  The hansom cab dropped me near the entrance to the hotel, and I mingled with the commercial travelers and holidaymakers on the sidewalk as I made my way forward on wobbly legs.

  Tom was having supper in the dining room when I arrived, a small but pleasant enclave off the front foyer with an abundance of potted plants and wall prints of stagecoaches.

  “Hannah!” So delighted was he when I appeared in the doorway, he almost tipped over the table in his haste to stand up and greet me.

  “Tom!” I returned his welcome with a degree of emotion, which surprised me. For it wasn’t until I was actually in his presence that I realized how very much I still cared for this man.

  Had I been merely denying this passion for convenience’s sake, I wondered unhappily?

  “I’ve missed you sorely, Hannah.” Tears welled up in his heavenly green eyes. “Every single day.”

  “And I you, Tom,” I answered honestly. Although to myself I admitted that the depth of my yearning had clearly not been equal to his. For would I have traveled across a continent twice to seek news of him? Probably not, I thought with an uncomfortable twinge of guilt.

  I decided that honesty would be the best policy here. While I talked, I twisted a lace handkerchief nervously in my hands, and avoided meeting his eyes.

  “ How could you do such a thing?” His voice shook with shock and disbelief, when my halting discourse was finally over. “I thought you loved me, Hannah?”

  He was referring, of course, to my wo
rking in a brothel, and then marrying Jock Sinclair, whom I did not love.

  There was a small bowl of violets on the table, and as I touched their velvety petals with my fingertips, I couldn’t help but remember the last time Tom and I had been in a hotel together. It had been the Bryce Arms in Vancouver, where we had lain in rapturous abandon in each other’s arms until the early morning light, and under such different circumstances.

  Yet even then, I had chosen the material comfort and security of marriage with the brutal Ned Beasley, rather than commit myself to a life of poverty as Tom’s wife.

  “Oh, I do love you, Tom,” I assured him with the utmost sincerity. “I was left destitute, a poor widow without a penny to my name.”

  The clanging of a dinner gong drowned out my declaration of love. “It’s time for the second sitting.” Tom’s face looked uncharacteristically grim in the flickering candlelight. “They’ll need our table.”

  Outside the hotel, he walked at a stiff distance from me. “You’re looking well, Hannah,” he said. We strolled along the rain soaked pavements in the direction of the railway station. “Even more beautiful than I remembered.”

  “And you, Tom, you haven’t changed a bit other than to grow more handsome…and desirable.” There was a surge of hotness in my loins at the thought of him driving into my wetness.

  Hansom cabs galloped by, jostling for position on the crowded cobblestones. The harsh cries of their drivers rung through the damp evening air.

  I took Tom’s arm, relishing his closeness, for this was a young and handsome male who had won my affections so many years before. A far cry from the crude and aging Jock Sinclair, who stirred no romantic chord in my breast, and never would.

  “Kiss me,” I whispered hungrily, steering him into an alleyway between two sooty buildings. Not waiting for his response, I ground my lips greedily against his and forced them open with my tongue.