Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

  He gave her what she demanded, his own gasps and pleasure a mere unavoidable consequence of his obedience, an afterthought. She could feel his determination to please in every thrust.

  All at once he stopped, his breath hot and shuddering on her neck. “I’m going to spend.”

  “Then pull out and use your mouth. Don’t spend.”

  His eyes were feverish; he had to pause to collect himself, shutting his eyes and taking long breaths. He crawled backward away from her with his arse a little in the air, she guessed to keep his cock from rubbing against the sheets. Spreading her folds with his fingers, he sucked her pearl directly into his mouth. She shouted.

  “Put your fingers in me,” she demanded, her voice cracking. “As many as you can.”

  He shoved them gracelessly in and fucked her with them, his other hand coming to rest lightly on her thigh. She raised herself on her elbows to watch him, his black hair falling across his forehead and his elegant mouth working, the smooth, well-tailored line of his shoulders and the undignified hunch of his legs. The liquid heat of his tongue against her pearl had her shuddering and desperate. But still she craved something more, something darker.

  She reached down to twist her hands in his hair and yank his head up. His hot eyes seared into hers, his mouth wet with her juices. “Tell me what you’re going to do to me later to punish me for making you wait.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Not let you put your clothes back on for dinner.”

  The idea was excruciating: sitting down to dinner naked. The looks, the comments. They wouldn’t wait five minutes before bending her over the table and sharing her amongst themselves like a dish of potatoes. She pushed his mouth back down onto her cunt and came, screaming, a moment later.

  He was breathing hard, wrung out, when she opened her eyes. She pushed him away with a foot on his shoulder. “Thanks,” she said, smiling. “Now take your clothes off.”

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Simon did as she asked. He hesitated to look at her—but when with an effort he did, her eyes were roaming over each new swath of exposed skin, so he could watch her watch him without the vulnerability of meeting her gaze.

  He had never particularly admired his own naked body, and was always half surprised when lovers evinced no disappointment at it. But she said with satisfaction, “I’ve wanted to see this since the moment you walked into Number Eighteen,” the pleasure she’d taken from him turning her voice rich and sleepy.

  “Really?”

  Oh, God, that was something Clement would say, and Simon had always hated it in his friend: I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it. Why hadn’t he thanked her graciously? His pantaloons caught on his ankle, forcing him to hop on one foot for balance, his erection bouncing. “I mean. I only ever came to that club to see you. Well, a friend dragged me there the first time. But after that...” The pantaloons came off with a jerk and he tumbled back onto the bed.

  She giggled. “Turn around and bend over the bed.”

  The bed was conveniently waist-height. His chest sank into the counterpane as he buried his face in his folded arms. He was relieved she couldn’t see his face any longer—and dying to see what she would do to him in this vulnerable position.

  He was realizing that she had been right. It was all only playacting, and what was the harm in that? He’d always loved the theater, though he was too shy to ever tread the boards himself.

  Maggie’s hands swept up the muscles in his back to his shoulders, and down his spine. She squeezed his arse. His cock brushed against the counterpane, an improbable bright flash of pleasure. “Please,” he begged, enjoying the ragged sound of his own voice.

  She spanked him lightly. “Please what?”

  “Please touch my cock.” His excitement grew, and with it a strange sense of liberty. He could act as pathetic and crawling as he liked just now, and she wouldn’t think any the worse of him. And later—later he could act as cruel as he liked, and she wouldn’t dislike him for that either. “I need it.”

  The playacting was half the pleasure of it, in fact. She wasn’t forcing him to do anything. He wanted to be here, in this humiliating position, and she knew it. That was the most wonderfully humiliating thing of all.

  He had wanted to obey her, earlier, as much as he had wanted to fuck her. He shut his eyes and remembered plunging into her welcoming flesh. He remembered her cunt clenching around his fingers as she spent.

  He shivered violently when she walked her fingers down the crease of his thigh. “And if I don’t?” she said.

  He moved one hand down to do it himself.

  Her fingers closed on his wrist, twisting his arm behind his back and forcing him to stay prone. Not hard enough to really hurt, but the blood rushed to his cock. When he turned his face to the side so he could breathe, she bent over him to say in his ear, “You don’t want that.” Their arms nestled between her breasts. “You want me to do it.”

  She pressed her knee between his legs, holding them apart, her thigh against his arsehole. It made his balance slip a little, made his position just a little more awkward.

  Rebellion surged in him, eager to be crushed. “I don’t,” he said, praying she’d understand it was part of the game. “I don’t want this.”

  She paused for a moment, weighing his sincerity; before she could ask, he thrust his hips slightly back against hers in silent invitation. She wrapped her hand around his cock at last. He pressed his forehead into the mattress and held himself taut, not sure if he was straining for orgasm or braced against it. Her hand worked him quick and unstinting, and that was better than teasing would have been. He couldn’t resist it or even catch his breath and she knew. She knew he was awash with pleasure—

  “It doesn’t matter if you want it or not,” she said conversationally, twisting his arm a little harder. “Because I want it, and you can’t stop me. Now spend.”

  He gave it his best for her. Almost—

  “And do it hard,” she said fiercely, almost like a threat, leaning all her weight on his back. “I want to feel it.”

  There. His hips jerked wildly, fingers curling against her chest. She loosened her hold on his wrist but didn’t let go, tethering him to the bed as pleasure racked him. Her cheek pressed against his back, to feel each tremor.

  At length she kissed his shoulder and pushed herself upright by his hips. “Was that all right?”

  He was crumpled on the bed, arse in the air. Standing hastily, he scrambled for his shirt. She ogled him contentedly as he did it, though, so he didn’t rush to retrieve the rest of his clothes, instead taking a seat tailor-fashion on the bed, his long shirt covering anything sensitive. “It was marvelous,” he admitted.

  Her eyes sparkled. “I thought so too.” Less self-conscious than he, she flopped down on the bed on her stomach, feet in the air, propping her cheek on one palm to look up at him. He ran a hand over her bare back and the curve of her arse, reflecting that God was a better craftsman than humankind. The world’s most exquisite temple, its most lifelike sculpture, could show no arch or contour as easy and graceful, as perfectly proportioned or pleasing to the eye. His hand slid to her thigh, fingers curling inward. It was hard to believe that a week ago, she’d been the untouchable hostess across the room at Number Eighteen, especially when she rolled onto her side to see him better, and he could see her much better.

  But sadness crept into her face. She looked down, tracing a design on the sheet with her finger. Little hearts, he realized with a jolt. “I don’t want to go home. I’m so happy here.”

  Hope flooded him. She wanted to stay with him, and not go back to Henney.

  But it wasn’t fair to be glad she was unhappy. And maybe she was only enjoying being on holiday. “I know I’m going to miss the five-course meals and the feather bed,” he said carefully.

  “That’s part of it. But honestly...” She glanced at him and cut herself off. “I only...I like Number Eighteen. I love it, even. But I’ve been the
re five nights a week for almost six years now, and...I’m bored. A little bored. I don’t know if I can last another six years. But I don’t know what else I could do! I haven’t saved a penny. I couldn’t even have afforded to stay in a hotel while Meyer’s away. I don’t know how we’re to get through the summer while everyone is in the country.” Her finger was tracing diamonds now. Right—cards. She was a card player. The hearts hadn’t meant anything. “What if Meyer doesn’t come back?” she whispered.

  “What makes you think he won’t?” Simon asked, surprised. He didn’t hate the idea...but it occurred to him that he himself could hardly keep her in the style to which she was accustomed.

  “Nothing. But you never know what will happen when someone visits his family abroad.” She sighed. “I’m sure Mrs. Hennipzeel wants him to stay.”

  “Mrs. what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He goes by Henney so you Englishmen can pronounce it. But his name is Hennipzeel.”

  Simon giggled.

  She sat up and reached for her shift. “So Hennipzeel is funny, but Skeffington isn’t? Aloysius? Throckmorton?” She huffed. “Radcliffe-Gould,” she said darkly. “Next you’ll be making fun of his accent, as if you don’t all talk like you have a head cold or maybe your jaws are sewn shut.”

  Simon felt as if she’d slapped him. She thought he sounded like his jaw was sewn shut? “So it’s all very well for you to laugh at my name but I can’t laugh at Henney’s?” It’s not because it’s foreign. It’s just a funny collection of sounds. I can’t help what I think is funny. He knew none of it would appease her.

  “I take it back. I can’t wait to go home.” Maggie laced her stays jerkily. “Five-course dinners, pfft! At least at home I can eat in peace.”

  He couldn’t pretend not to know her meaning. Clement had let up after the visit to his mother, and even once or twice ventured a Leave her alone, but the other guests could not seem to stifle their curiosity—Can you eat this? Why not?—their helpfulness—Oh, I don’t think you can eat that, there’s suet in it—their concern— You poor girl, aren’t you hungry?—their pity—But oysters! How can you live without oysters?—and, in a few cases, their thinly veiled scorn—It’s all rather Byzantine, isn’t it?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, defeated. “I don’t know how to make them stop.”

  “Oh, there’s no way to make them stop.” It was almost dinner time now; instead of putting her day dress back on, she whisked herself into the dressing room. Simon tugged on his pantaloons and followed, watching her flip through her dinner dresses three times before shrugging and pulling out a fresh petticoat and a pink striped silk robe, which she regarded skeptically.

  He wanted her to smile again, and stand near him. “Would you like to take a tray in our room tonight? I could talk to the cook.”

  She looked at him for the first time in minutes. “Ohhh, it’s tempting.” She hesitated. “No, I’m trying to make friends of the other guests so they’ll come to Number Eighteen. I can’t do that if I let them intimidate me.”

  Intimidate me. The word struck him sharply. She’d been carrying it off so well that it had never occurred to him she felt intimidated.

  But perhaps that proved his own lack of imagination, not her extraordinary aplomb. To be a poor Portuguese Jew in this assembly... He searched for an analogy—and picturing himself at a hunting-and-shooting party surrounded by strapping, red-blooded, athletic types from school was unpleasant enough, even frightening, that he was abruptly swamped with guilt.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it. I oughtn’t to have bitten your nose off.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I should have apologized at once. I don’t know why I didn’t; I’m sorry for that too.”

  Her expression eased, and seeing it, so did the tightness in his chest. “Thank you. I—thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Let me make it up to you.”

  A corner of her mouth curved. “Oh, I will. Later.”

  He laughed, suddenly very aware again of her breasts plumped up by her corset. How had he not been looking at them all this time? Her bare feet were adorable, and her calves. “I didn’t mean that, though.”

  “If you want to make it up to me, talk up Number Eighteen to your friends.”

  Once again, he was impressed by her devotion to her business, when he could barely bring himself to mention his own trade to prospective customers for fear of being thought over-forward. But as business-mindedness was a quality associated with Jews, he refrained from saying so. “Having met you, I’m sure they must all be planning to go at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.” Her pleased expression belied her words.

  * * *

  “Perhaps we should rejoin the ladies,” Simon said for the third time.

  Clement blew a smoke-ring. “If you and Miss da Silva want to go upstairs, we aren’t stopping you.”

  Guilt smote Simon. He did want to take Miss da Silva upstairs—an hour ago, for preference. But he was Clement’s guest and he really had been ignoring him. Surely he could make it through one full evening. “Never mind. I’ll have another glass of port.”

  Clement filled Simon’s glass about twice as full as custom dictated. “Would you like a cigar?”

  “Have I ever taken a cigar when you offered it to me?”

  Smiling, Clement blew another smoke ring in his direction, something Simon had always found very attractive. “Yes, once, and you spent half an hour coughing.”

  “Perhaps we might have some singing after dinner,” Simon said, missing all at once the long evenings he and Clement used to spend together at the piano.

  “Let’s play Magical Music,” St. Aubyn suggested. “But you shouldn’t spend all night at the piano yourself, Throckmorton. Let someone else have a turn so you can play.” He laid a hand lightly on Clement’s knee. Clement laughed flirtatiously and cut his eyes at Darling to see if he was watching.

  Simon gritted his teeth. He had once been jealous of his friend’s power of fascination, but with age and experience he’d realized that in addition to good looks and winsomeness, a large part of Clement’s seductiveness resided in smiling at people as if they were extraordinarily wonderful, allowing minor liberties with his person, and listening to things that bored him as if they didn’t, all of which Simon disliked. He found it hard to believe Clement enjoyed it either.

  “Since you ask it, my dear,” Clement said. “Simon, will you play?”

  This was an intentional kindness, as Simon liked playing the piano and disliked Magical Music. The game required one member of a party to leave the room, while the rest determined a task for him to perform when he returned—for example, removing flowers from a vase. The person at the piano then provided hints by playing louder when the player neared the vase, softer when he lost the scent, and so on. As with most parlor games, it revolved around being watched and laughed at, and played in this company, all the tasks would be scandalous if not actually obscene.

  Simon gulped down his port. “If Miss da Silva is not too tired, certainly.”

  When the gentlemen at last rejoined the ladies, Maggie’s eyes met Simon’s at once. He wanted nothing more than to take her upstairs.

  “We mean to play Magical Music,” Clement announced. “Do you agree, ladies?”

  Simon crossed to Maggie’s side. “They’re bound to require you to come into intimate contact with one or another of the guests. Would you rather retire?”

  She looked around the room. Everyone was already whispering suggestively to one another. “I would probably enjoy it. But I don’t mind retiring. I imagine this was the sort of thing you brought me so as to avoid.”

  It was, and yet he had found a reluctant pleasure in evenings like this, once. Perhaps if he tried again—without using Clement’s insistence as an excuse he was grateful for, yet resented—he would find the pleasure greater. He had liked watching her with Sir Geoff and St. Aubyn. “Let’s stay.”


  He took his place at the piano, and the game proceeded apace: St. Aubyn kissed Sir Geoff, Sir Geoff fondled Miss Abrami’s bosom, etc., each command growing in daring until Darling said, “Miss da Silva hasn’t been in play yet. I say Miss O’Leary kisses her cunny.”

  Her eyes flew to Simon’s, hot with desire. “If Radcliffe-Gould doesn’t mind,” she said demurely. Her tone told him it was part of the game. She wanted him to be the one to yield her up. The atmosphere in the room already had him half-hard, despite his lingering embarrassment—or maybe partly because of it. At this, he stiffened further.

  You’ll be wet and ready for me when I take you upstairs. He imagined saying it aloud. “No objection,” he said blandly.

  Miss O’Leary was let back into the room. The young woman stood before each member of the party in turn, Simon’s soft reel falling off when she stopped. Then she came to Maggie, and Simon plunked out a few swift chords.

  Miss O’Leary swept her hands through the air, shaping at a distance Maggie’s head, shoulders, breasts, and hips. When she neared her feet, Simon eased his foot half off the soft pedal, watching Maggie’s breathing quicken in anticipation. Finally Miss O’Leary understood she was to lay her hands on the hem of her skirts. She drew them up Maggie’s stockinged legs and over her bare thighs as Simon played louder. St. Aubyn whispered something in Clement’s ear, and Clement laughed. Sir Geoff looked jealous. Were he and St. Aubyn—? But Simon would have to attend to gossip another time.

  Maggie kept her legs primly together and took her skirts, holding them out of the way. Simon released the soft pedal as Miss O’Leary drew her legs apart. People giggled and called out encouragement. From this angle Miss O’Leary blocked everything from Simon’s sight except Maggie’s stockinged knees and a sliver of bare thigh to either side.

  He switched back to due corde as Miss O’Leary’s hands slid up her thighs. “So not my hands, then.” Miss O’Leary mimed sticking her elbow up Maggie’s cunt.