The Irish Devil

by Diane Whiteside

  The two men exchanged nods of perfect understanding before Hal proceeded down the block, carpetbag and rifle in hand. He kept his distance from other pedestrians, as he had first learned in Natchez Under-the-Hill at fourteen. That way, he could see anyone who wanted to attack him—and there seemed to be many interested in doing so. If this was a Sunday school, then what was Rio Piedras like? What kind of situation had Viola found herself in?

  The recommended hotel was a tidier establishment than any other on that block, with a few respectably dressed men and women lounging on its porch.

  Hal stopped when he saw the gold mourning brooch adorning one of the women. The brunette wore flashy attire otherwise, typical of a respectable woman throwing good money after bad taste.

  Hal’s mother and his sister Juliet would have laughed at her. Viola would have tried to interest the woman in other choices.

  He approached her eagerly, heedless of their audience. “Excuse me, ma’am, but can you tell me where you obtained your brooch?”

  The woman’s face paled, and she looked around as if seeking rescue. Her eyes fixed on a man a few feet away, but he remained engrossed in his conversation with another. Every instinct honed in Hal’s sixteen years as a pilot sprang to attention.

  She returned her attention to Hal and visibly gulped before answering. “It’s a family piece. I inherited it from my grandmother.”

  Hal frowned at the blatant lie and pulled out his watch. “Ma’am, that brooch is an exact match for my watch, down to the monogram and the ship. Only two such brooches were made, one for my sister in New York and one for my other sister who left Colorado a year ago. Did you obtain it from my sister Viola?”

  Everyone on the porch was now openly listening. The brunette fell back a step, glancing nervously at his rifle. He was immediately grateful for his villainous appearance, if it would force the truth out of her.

  “No. I mean, yes, she sold it to me,” the woman stammered. The man was finally coming toward her, his homely face alive with concern as his hand slipped to the Colt on his hip.

  “When? Is she still alive?” Hal demanded, dropping the carpetbag to the porch’s floor but keeping the rifle in his hand. His voice cut the silence like a knife. The watchers on the porch murmured but didn’t move, while passersby gathered on the street to stare.

  “Viola Ross is quite well, mister,” the man interjected.

  Hal’s attention swung to him. “Where is she?”

  “In Rio Piedras.”

  “Living with Donovan,” the woman added. “In sin,” she added spitefully, sidling behind the homely man.

  Hal stiffened. Calm flowed into him, the same ice he’d once felt while running the blockade past Confederate forts on the Mississippi. “What did you say?”

  The brunette shrank back at his tone, leaving the man to answer. His fingers hung barely an inch above his revolver’s butt as he spoke. “My wife meant nothing disrespectful to your sister.”

  Hal stared at them both for a long moment until the woman dropped her eyes sullenly. Their audience was motionless. “Here’s twenty dollars for the brooch. I’ll return it to my sister.”

  He thumbed out gold pieces, watching the two closely.

  She hesitated, hissing under her breath, then unpinned the golden token and tossed it to him. The pair scuttled down the street a moment later, clutching the money.

  Tomorrow’s stage couldn’t reach Rio Piedras too soon for his taste.

  Viola sat at the piano and tried her best to concentrate on the Chopin nocturne. William had made his excuses just after supper, murmuring something about seeing to the horses. But other things kept distracting her, like Lennox’s surprising inactivity.

  She’d not seen Lennox since he’d watched, with the rest of Rio Piedras’s residents, the supply train leave for Fort McMillan. She’d spent a few hours at the depot afterwards to finish up the paperwork, then returned to the compound via the private stairs. She worried what that blackguard would do next.

  Better to think about her clothing instead.

  She was attired in a simple blue silk dinner dress, cut modestly enough for dinner at her grandmother’s house. Her silk stockings were equally respectable, as were her black kid dancing slippers. She had no idea where William had found such items in Rio Piedras since they were far too demure for a parlor house, even Mrs. Smith’s upscale establishment.

  No, the true problem was what lay underneath, or what wasn’t underneath. She wore a white silk chemise, as tissue-thin as an evening scarf and embroidered with white roses at the neck and hem. It could have been invisible, for all it concealed of her body. She wore nothing else, neither drawers or corset.

  The weather was unseasonably warm and rather humid for the desert, including a brief thunderstorm just before supper. She was sweating lightly and the two layers of silk clung to her. The chemise in particular showed a strong disposition to hug her breasts.

  Her breath caught at the carnal images evoked by that thought and her hands stilled on the keys.

  Viola lowered her head and took a deep breath. She tried to play the nocturne from where she’d left off but fumbled to a stop after a few measures, distracted by thoughts of what William would do to her naked pussy. She quivered.

  After she had herself back under control, she performed a set of those carnal exercises he’d prescribed. A week of doing so, whenever she stopped playing, had strengthened the muscles he’d so wickedly introduced her to. She began the nocturne again, but from the beginning.

  It flowed smoothly this time, singing of the night and the magic therein. She escaped into its world more easily, forgetting the clothes and William’s possible plans.

  Suddenly, a light silk cloth floated over her head. Viola stiffened in shock. Then two strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her back against a broad chest.

  “Ah, my faerie queen, I’ve captured you now,” William purred in her ear. “Will you fight me with your hands and feet and teeth? Or will you try to spin another spell, like the web your music weaves?”

  Viola blinked. He’d spoken before of fantasies, of escaping into a pretense of being someone else and enjoying the carnal delights of their world. They’d enacted a small fantasy at his office. But to become a faerie queen? She was an ordinary person, not an exotic, powerful being.

  “I’ve hunted you for years, faerie queen,” William continued. “You will be my lover now.”

  Viola’s breath caught at the possessive note in his voice. She made up her mind quickly. If he wanted her to be a faerie queen, then she’d do so. If nothing else, it would be so very different from her everyday life, she could forget everything else.

  What might Spenser’s faerie queen have said? She tried a phrase and an experimental wiggle, as if struggling to break free. “Foolish mortal, you forget yourself. Unhand me immediately,” she snapped.

  “Never!” William responded, tightening his grip on her. “And you’ll not call me a fool tomorrow, after you’ve learned the delights of my bed. You may do your best to break free, but you’re mine for tonight.”

  So he wanted her to fight a bit? Very well. She began to struggle more vigorously, lifting her elbows and trying to slide out from under his embrace. “Wretched brute!”

  “Not quite as easy as you thought, eh?” William laughed and picked her up. A quick twist, then he tossed her over his shoulder.

  He strode out of the room purposefully, but the silk prevented her from seeing exactly where they were. She was certain he hadn’t taken her out onto the colonnade and into the courtyard, but she could guess little more. Judging by the direction and number of steps, he’d bypassed their bedroom.

  Viola continued to try to break free but his iron strength kept her close. She kicked and pummeled his back, calling him the worst names she could think of as she demanded to be released. The longer she fought, the more she felt like an abducted queen.

  But he simply laughed softly and kept moving.

  He entered a room new
to her, whose door closed with a solid thud behind them. William stood her on the floor and lifted her arms over her head.

  Viola tried to shake the cloth from her head but couldn’t. She ordered angrily, “I demand you release me, clumsy lout!”

  Her only answer was a low chuckle. He quickly wrapped a soft rope around her left wrist and tied it to something else, an anchor that kept it in nearly the same position no matter how hard she tried to move it. Her right hand received the same treatment. Then her left foot, and finally her right.

  “Importunate peasant,” she tried to snarl, but her breath broke on the last word. Merciful heavens, her situation was so close to her old fantasy of being a captive maiden. Heat burned deep inside, from her breasts to her pussy. She could barely breathe for anticipation.

  “Indeed. And you’ll soon be grateful for my persistence.” William whipped the silk away from her head and tossed it aside.

  Viola blinked in the brilliant lamplight, but her eyes quickly adjusted. She stood on a carpeted platform in a large room, probably a storage room once but now empty and immaculately clean. The ceiling’s exposed beams hosted strong iron hooks, from which a series of ropes descended. Persian rugs covered the floor, while a curious hammock hung in one corner.

  But she had no time to consider the hammock now. Not when each of her limbs had three ropes attached—one from the front, another from the rear, and the third arriving from the side. Her hands and feet could each move a few inches in any direction, enough for comfort but not to fight him.

  “What say you, my faerie queen? Do I hold you fast now?”

  He had changed from the polite suit of suppertime into work clothes. A rough linen shirt covered his broad shoulders above coarse woolen britches and high leather boots. His fists were propped on his hips, a riding crop dangling casually from one. A peasant’s costume indeed, and he couldn’t have looked more magnificent. The platform raised her high enough to almost look him in the eye.

  And her core considered him a very fine prospect indeed, given how dew gathered between her legs. But a faerie queen’s arrogance still ruled her tongue. “As soon as I’m free, you’ll regret this treatment,” Viola sniffed. “I’ll turn you into the toad you already are.”

  William’s eyes danced. “You must learn to keep a civil tongue in your head, sweetheart. Calling your host a toad is hardly proper language.”

  “Toad is only one of your relatives! You are closer to a…uh…”

  His mouth closed over hers. Viola choked, gasped, then melted. He was such an expert kisser, it was hardly fair to expect her to fight. She blinked like a drunken fool when he finally lifted his head and she realized his big, callused hand was fondling her breast. Quite boldly, in fact.

  Her breath caught as small darts of heat danced from his fingers and into her veins, totally unhindered by her clothing. “Wretch,” she announced with deep sincerity as she closed her eyes, to better savor the feeling. How the devil could she even pretend to fight him if he insisted on handling her in such a fashion?

  “Foolish faerie,” he chuckled softly, then kissed her again. Long minutes later, he released her mouth and drew a knife from its sheath at his waist.

  Viola quivered, feeling a shocking burst of dew slide down her leg. He looked so magnificent and completely male.

  William set the sharp blade to the shoulder of her dress, blunt edge to her skin. “I’d never harm you, sweetheart,” he insisted, blue eyes intent on hers. Merciful heavens, when he looked at her like that, it was all she could do not to tell him he could do anything he wanted to her.

  “I know you wouldn’t. But you should release me so I can return to my kingdom,” she answered, slipping back into character.

  “Don’t be absurd, sweetheart.” He sliced open her dress without so much as scratching her skin. One shoulder of the dress fell forward, exposing the thin chemise and the quivering flesh underneath.

  “You peasant, you,” Viola moaned at the controlled violence. Her heart thudded and her bosom rose and fell rapidly, flushed with passion.

  Aroused and impatient, she watched as a second cut destroyed the dress’s other shoulder, while a third cut down the front left the blue silk pooled around her ankles. Her hips pressed forwards toward him, but he simply swatted her derrière lightly, in a clear demand for patience.

  He paced around her, leisurely studying every facet of her body. “Perfect,” he pronounced. His pretense of indifference would have been more effective if he hadn’t sported such a strong ridge behind his trousers’ fly.

  Then William set his lips and tongue to work on her nipple. He suckled her hard and deep, drawing her needy flesh into the heated depths of his mouth as if she wore nothing. The chemise could have been in New York for all the protection it offered.

  “Dear heavens, William,” Viola moaned and writhed, wishing she could hold him. Yet the sensations he evoked were somehow stronger because she had only them to focus on, not the eternally distracting feel of his hair or skin.

  She gasped and jerked in her bonds at one particularly deep pull. He repeated the caress again and again, making her arch toward him in the same rhythm. It caught deep in her bones and ran down to her core, where the tempo evoked a flood of dew down her thighs. Her pulse pounded stronger and stronger. Her head fell back in agony as orgasm hung so close, and yet so terribly far away.

  Then his teeth closed around her nipple and delicately bit her. The sudden sharp sensation flashed through her veins and burst into her core. He bit her again and she fell, gasping, into rapture.

  She struggled slowly back to awareness and found him nuzzling her shoulder.

  “Are you awake yet?” he asked, seemingly more interested in her collarbone than her answer.

  “Ah, yes, I believe so.” Why was he asking?

  “Good. Time to attend to your other breast then.”

  “What?!”

  William lavished exactly the same attentions on her other breast and once more launched her into rapture.

  Viola sagged afterwards. Her body seemed boneless now, sustained only by the grip of his ropes.

  “You are so beautiful like this, a perfect expression of passion waiting to be unleashed. Your mouth red and full, your breasts hard and crowned with ripe nipples, and your mound outlined by thin silk,” William mused. “The only question is how shall I enjoy you first?”

  He kissed the nape of her neck and licked it. He lightly nipped the sensitive point where neck and shoulder come together. She shuddered and tried to regain her scattered wits when he stepped away for a moment.

  Viola blinked, then gasped when a round fullness pressed against her asshole. “William, uh, mortal man, what are you dealing to your faerie queen?”

  The fullness slipped in easily, her flesh now pliant to his every whim. She whimpered, then moaned as it shifted inside her, sending a wave of pleasure into her pussy. “What the devil have you done?”

  A second fullness nudged her in the same place. “I am filling you with beads, sweetheart, that your every dimension may be awakened to my will,” William purred, his voice a dark velvet rumble against her ear.

  The second bead eased inside. It felt enormous, yet her flesh seemed made to hold it. Viola moaned again as her pussy clenched in sheer delight. “Oh, William…”

  “That’s my sweet filly.” His own breathing harsh, William slipped a third, then fourth, and finally a fifth bead into her asshole. She was stuffed with delight, the pressure reaching up through her spine to her breasts and triggering lances of sweet sensation into her nipples.

  “Good girl. You’re doing well. Just relax, sweetheart, and enjoy yourself,” he crooned, and steadied her with gentle hands on her hips as her body slowly adapted.

  Viola shuddered and arched and groaned his name again as unknown muscles clenched and rippled and hummed in pleasure. An orgasm flowed through her gently.

  She stood still afterwards, shuddering for breath. If she moved too abruptly—and almost any movement fel
t like a possible trigger—the beads caressed her insides and sent wave after wave into her pussy. She was quite convinced any incautious jerk would send rapture bursting over her again.

  “Now, sweetheart, you must come alive to my music,” William said softly.

  She blinked at him. He stood directly in front of her, a small many-tailed whip lying across his hand. It looked soft and harmless, even with a knot at each tail’s end, compared to his big bullwhip. Her pussy remembered its interest in his skill with a whip, and quivered happily.

  “Oh yes,” Viola purred. “Oh yes.”

  She felt the softest leather imaginable trail over her shoulder. The little knots rippled over her skin like the opening notes of a sonata.

  Viola whispered William’s name in gratitude and hunger. How had he known she longed for this?

  He ran the little whip over every inch of her, interspersing that caress with others by his hands and mouth. Her sweat and his mouth dampened the chemise’s silk until it clung to her and almost vanished.

  Viola shuddered and moaned. She twisted and arched her body to follow his touch, whether given by his skin or the leather that was an extension of him.

  William’s touch changed slightly. Subtly the whip’s caress became sharper, like a sonata moving from andante into allegro. The changed rhythm echoed through her body, raising fine tremors in her muscles and her pussy. The beads easily transferred the whip’s rhythm to her core, until she didn’t know whether the beat came from outside her skin or inside.

  His hands and mouth dwelt on her, building her anticipation through the kisses and caresses she most loved. She couldn’t have said which touch was his hand or the whip—both came from him and both excited her to the bone.

  Viola moaned with pleasure as the whip danced over her body now, like Chopin’s great “Fantasie Impromptu,” in which no note ever fell where expected yet each one was perfect. Every stroke drew a response from all the cells in her body, as the rhythm beat into her muscles and bones and fired through her veins. Her deep inner muscles clenched again and again around the beads, building waves that echoed in her pussy.