by P. J. Fox
Ash, who wasn’t exactly opposed, had nonetheless been confused.
Corporal punishment was still a fact of life at Harrow, despite having been banned a few years previous. There was a caning bench, much like the one John would later keep in his dungeon, although a good deal less padded. Canings were administered to the bare buttocks, the unfortunate often held in place by his peers. For an extra dose of pain, his legs were forced wide so that occasionally the cane hit the tender flesh between.
One boy had come up with the game wherein another boy was used as a caning bench. The unfortunate was held in place by the insertion of his cock. It wasn’t long before the combined stimuli inextricably linked orgasm with agony. Ash himself had had more than one orgasm while bleeding. An orgasm he didn’t want but couldn’t avoid. At least at first.
He’d had dozens of cocks in his mouth before he ever touched a woman.
Dozens of cocks in his mouth, and up his ass. He’d taken the lead with more than one boy, as well. Being hurt, subjugated, humiliated had made him want to wield the cane; to be in charge. But there were others for whom the experience had awakened a thirst. For more, and worse. Their shared interest bound them. Their shared release.
If nothing else.
Ash wasn’t, in fact, homosexual. Although he’d retain a lifelong openness to the idea. He continued to enjoy group sex as well, but more when there was a woman present. Sex with men was something like a sport. A sport he truly enjoyed, when offered the opportunity. But he’d never considered having a relationship with a man, and never would.
Truthfully, he’d never considered having much of a relationship with anybody.
He didn’t consider himself relationship material.
He’d thought about women. A great deal. But he didn’t have much chance to meet them and, on the rare occasions when he did, they didn’t like him. At first, because he was too small and too shy. And then, because he was too dark. Too foreign.
He wasn’t dark. Not really. But he was foreign.
And as to the other…he hadn’t noticed, much, not at first, but he’d changed from the boy who used to pose in front of the mirror. He’d grown, becoming a tall and broad-shouldered first boy and then man. Features that had once been called pretty resolved into something refined and patrician. His gray eyes were striking, the heritage of a British ancestor.
But all that came later.
He was still young when he came home for the summer, one of the last summers for which he would come home, and became reacquainted with his ayah.
He’d been little more than a child the first time he’d touched a girl. Doing so had brought certain pleasurable sensations for her, or so she’d claimed—she’d asked him to touch her, curious about what would happen—but even the slightest attempt to insert a finger proved impossible. The pain, she’d claimed, was unbearable.
He remembered that, later, studying his ayah across the breakfast table. Wondered if a man had touched her like that. Wondered if she was a virgin. She’d been young when she’d come to them, barely past twenty. Barely educated, and barely an adult herself, but deemed suitable to care for small children. As she would have been in Queen Victoria’s time. In so many ways, his father’s household was a relic of the past.
As was Anju, whose name meant one who lives in the heart.
She was beautiful and soft-spoken, but there was a certain glassy hardness in her eyes when she administered corporal punishment. A spanking here or there, nothing terribly serious. Ash couldn’t recall having been excited at the time, but remembering now his cock grew painfully hard. And he knew, watching her watch him, that she wanted him, too.
He was still young, and so was she.
She was not a virgin, as he discovered.
But he made her squeal like one.
He was not yet sixteen.
SIXTY-SIX
His first encounter with Anju had been horrific.
He’d touch himself, thinking about it, for a long time afterward.
Being little more than a child, although he’d thought himself quite advanced, he’d had no inkling of how to approach a woman. And no courage to do so, even if he had been able to think of something. In books, and on film, men always knew what to do. Just knew, with no one telling them. Which led Ash to believe, correctly as he came to learn later on, that men were ridiculed for needing advice. Or, at least, for admitting to needing it.
As an older, and much more confident man, he’d discovered that women were excellent sources of advice. He’d honed his considerable lovemaking skills through soliciting feedback. Professional sex workers gave the best; they understood the source of his interest and felt no need to lie.
Some had tales of woe but most, the ones he frequented at least, had chosen their paths. I’m no different from the woman who has a one night stand for less than the cost of a parking ticket, observed one woman. He’d had some of his frankest, and best, conversations about sex with her. She was the woman who’d taught him how to wield a whip.
But before her, there was Anju.
He knew he wanted her. Wanted her as he’d never wanted a man. At night, he writhed in a twist of sweat-soaked sheets as he imagined his hands on her skin. What her skin would feel like. His lips on her nipple, hard and aching with desire. He imagined her arching her back, her lips parting slightly as she gave herself up to him. Himself on top of her, inside of her. She’d be warm. Velvet.
Would she be tight?
He burned to find out.
He didn’t know how to approach her.
He watched her nibble her toast in the mornings, envisioned those same lips on his cock, and felt a surge of that old terror.
Would she laugh at him? Push him away, like the child he was? Could he somehow overpower her? What if she didn’t find him attractive? He wasn’t the thin, too-pretty boy he’d been, but he was no man either. Except in his own mind. He didn’t want to admit this but, at the same time, knew that it was true. And how could a boy seduce a woman?
Being a son of the house if not the son—that title belonged to his oldest brother, the one who’d survived childhood—Ash had the run of the place. Which meant that his keys opened the servants’ rooms as well. He wasn’t sure if Anju knew this or not, and didn’t care; he crept into her suite while she was out and hid in the closet until she returned. And then he watched her disrobe.
She was glorious.
She wasn’t tall, but she had a certain litheness about her despite her curves. Curves he traced with starving eyes as she unwound her sari. Style-wise, she tended toward the plain and Ash, even then, thought plain clothing on a woman a waste. She was conscientious, too, folding the cloth neatly for what seemed like hours. But then, at last, she unzipped her petticoat. Her back was to him; his breath stopped in his throat as black lace panties were revealed. Black lace panties encasing a firm, smooth behind.
She stepped out of her petticoat, folded that as well, and then unzipped her blouse. He wished she wore her sari without a blouse, as the women south of Goa did. The Gujarati sari was entirely too concealing. He longed to see Anju draped in yard after yard of translucent fabric, the dark of her nipples just visible.
She turned, then, and his heart skipped a beat. Her breasts were round and firm, but not in the fleshless sense that he’d later come to associate with cosmetic surgery. She was lush.
She looked down at herself, touching a nipple. Moving it back and forth. There was something almost clinical in her examination, as though she waited to see what her nipple would do.
His cock was rock-hard in his pants. Aching, it strained against the restricting fabric. He swallowed. Every nerve tingled. He could hardly bear the pain and, at the same time, didn’t want it to end. There was a sweetness to it, to experiencing what he’d later come to think of as the purest form of need.
She paused, the tip of her tongue darting out to wet her lips.
He acted without thinking.
Throwing open the closet door, he explod
ed into the small room. And then he stopped. They stared at each other. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He’d never been so humiliated in all his life. Now she knew. Knew that he was desperate. Knew that he’d been watching her. That he touched himself to thoughts of her tongue, her hands, every night. That he was a scared and spoiled boy who couldn’t control himself at all.
Her eyes dropped, studying the bulge in his pants.
“I want you,” he said.
“You’re too young.”
“No I’m not.” He sounded like a child in his own ears. Petulant.
“You don’t know what to do with it.”
Yes I do. “Show me.”
She laughed. At the idea. At him. He tensed. His erection, if anything, grew harder. He was a ball of pain, radiating outward. He wanted to run. He wanted the earth to break apart beneath his feet and swallow him whole.
She took one step, and then another. And then she was in front of him. Reaching out, she trailed her fingernails down over his stomach. He felt their sharp edges through his shirt.
Her hand fastened on his belt buckle. There was a pause, tense. And then, in one swift motion, she jerked the buckle open and freed him from his pants. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t dare.
She dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth. The action was oddly detached. Businesslike. There was no pretense of not understanding, of demurring as he’d been taught to believe girls did. Even so, she knew exactly what she was doing. She might have been cold, but she was far from disinterested. Her tongue wrapped him, massaging him, perfectly in tune with his every response. She was playing him, not like he was an instrument but like he was her song. That she’d written. He’d heard the phrase, putty in her hands, but had never before understood what it meant.
She knew when to speed up, and when to slow down. She took him to the brink of climax again and again, each time forcing him back. He grabbed the back of her head, holding her to him, his fingers twisting in her hair. He was sure that he hurt her; he didn’t care. He wouldn’t have been surprised to lift up his hands and find the blue-black tresses curled around them, having been pulled out by the roots. Had he been able to form the storm of imagery in his head into some kind of coherent thought pattern.
He moaned, thrusting his hips forward. Suffocating her against himself. And still she didn’t relent. Didn’t give him what he needed.
He needed release. He needed to feel himself filling her mouth with hot come, to hear her choke as he forced her to swallow. To take him inside herself again, to accept the proof of his dominance over her. To accept his tribute.
She stopped altogether.
He moaned again.
Her tongue flicked out. Again, and again. Faster and harder now. She let him use her, thrusting himself down her throat as he lost himself in an orgy of abandon. His eyes rolled back into his head. He convulsed. Hot seed filled her mouth.
He thought he might die.
Stumbling backward, he fell against a chair and sat down. He recognized the feel of the fabric; this was part of a set that had once belonged to his mother, a needlepoint bergere. He hadn’t wondered where it had gone, after she’d died; all of a sudden, reminders of her were just gone. He felt an odd moment of disconnection, seeing his environment with new eyes and wondering what he’d just done.
Anju smiled slightly. “Go now,” she said. “You have homework to do.”
He did not. He stood. “No.” He said.
He took a step toward her, careless of his dishabille. He didn’t feel sated; he wanted her ten times more. The fire was building within him again; he could feel it. Needed to act on it: to force her to the ground and take here there on the rug, to dominate her as she’d dominated him. He wanted to wipe that smirk off her face as he made her come, screaming. He wasn’t a child, goddamn her.
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to him, roughly. He was stronger than she was; she was just a woman. He was a son of this house, and a prince.
She slapped him.
His ears rang. His vision doubled. She’d left a line of fire along his jaw.
“Go,” she said, her voice hard.
SIXTY-SEVEN
He didn’t sleep much after that.
He watched her eat breakfast every morning, just as he had before, his cock hard and her eyes knowing. She didn’t meet his gaze often but when she did, her lips were invariably parted as she licked some crumb off her finger. Or popped a grape into her mouth.
She hadn’t touched him again.
He hadn’t returned to her room, although he’d accosted her once outside of it.
At that point he would have welcomed another slap. He craved her touch, any touch. His skin tingled at the thought of her. But she simply ignored him, and that was worst of all.
Standing outside her door, deflated, he’d heard the click of the lock.
He went back to his room and touched himself, and wished that he were inside of her.
It came to the point where he couldn’t think about anything else. He was obsessed: with claiming her, with asserting the dominance that even then he’d begun to feel but didn’t understand. He couldn’t bear the fact that he followed her around like a lost sheep and, equally abhorrent, he couldn’t put his desires into words. He just knew that what she’d done, claiming him like that, had awakened something deep inside. Something beyond mere desire. This wasn’t what he needed; it was who he was.
He wanted her spread-eagled on the bed, preferably tied, so he could explore her at will.
He was in his father’s office, snooping around to see if the old man was up to something interesting, when he looked up and saw her. He was standing behind the desk and she, in the door. Their eyes locked, and neither of them said a word. He didn’t know what she was doing there and didn’t want to know. All he wanted to know was if she was wearing panties. If she was wet. If she sighed when she came.
There was a small bathroom on the right-hand wall, accessed through one of two matching doors on either side of the fireplace. A British design, for a British household. His whiter brethren weren’t the only men who mourned the loss of the Raj. Wordlessly, coming around from behind the desk, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside.
She protested feebly.
He locked the door.
He pressed her against the bathroom wall. It was a small room, little more than a toilet and sink, so the man of the house could attend to his most basic functions without encountering the outside world. She gasped. He pressed himself against her. She was soft beneath the fabric of her sari. Yielding. And she’d yield to him.
“Now,” he said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “You’re too young.”
“I wasn’t too young before.”
“That—that was different.” But her protest was feeble.
“You wanted me then, and you want me now.”
“No!” The word was little more than a whisper.
“You wanted my cock in your mouth.”
As he spoke, he slid his hand up her thigh. She didn’t resist him. Her flesh under her sari was warm. He felt her thigh, her flank. The secret space between her legs. She was wet.
With his free hand, he struggled to free himself from his pants. He’d take her here, now, against this wall and he’d be damned if anything could stop him. He knew he should take his time with her, pleasure her, but his need overrode his aesthetics. There would be other times, when he’d explore her more thoroughly. Make her come again and again until she passed out. But this, this was conquest. This was for him. He didn’t care whether she came or not. Hoped she didn’t. Hoped her whole consciousness was devoted to knowing that he’d possessed her. That her body was his. That he’d won.
He kissed her and she turned her head. “We can’t.”
He kissed her again, pushing her sari up until the fabric bunched at her waist. She wasn’t wearing panties. He wondered briefly if she’d come here to
meet his father, and decided he didn’t care. Still pinning her, as much with his mouth as with body, he dug his fingers into her bottom and lifted her. Then he drove into her.
God, she was wet and tight and perfect.
And this time, she returned his kiss.
He was in heaven.
Until he heard his father’s voice.
At first he thought he must be hallucinating. He’d thought of his father only seconds before, and now…but no. He was hearing his father’s voice. His father had returned to his office. With another man, and they were discussing some business deal. Something about timber. His father sounded aggravated, which was never a good sign.
Anju’s eyes widened. We have to stop, she mouthed.
No. It wasn’t as if they could leave the bathroom now. What would he do? Bid his father good day as he pulled up his trousers? Pretend that he and Anju had been having tea?
He kissed her lips, her cheek, the hollow of her neck.
“…Call him and tell him I….”
She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, her lips parted.
“…Sustained yield policies designed to….”
He drove into her. Again, and again. He was in her to the hilt and he wasn’t deep enough.
“…More common approach to forest management, wouldn’t you agree?”
He shuddered, gasping, feeling himself spasm inside her.
They were silent for a few minutes, their breath loud in the enclosed space.
Someone rapped on the door.
And that was the end of his affair with Anju.
SIXTY-EIGHT
In the years that followed, Ash’s father undoubtedly wished that he’d let Anju remain at the palace. He might have even contemplated the wisdom, in retrospect, of paying for her to return with Ash to London. If a few snippets of overheard conversation were any indication.