Raising the Devil

by Diana Thorn

  Catherine turned to him and offered a tentative, shy smile. She was a vision, and he couldn’t resist the urge to pull her close, to part her filmy drapery and finger her downy cleft. Her expression turned from shy to languorous and she snuggled closer, resting her head against his chest. If the slickness of her folds was anything to go by, his bold girl was definitely excited by the thought of the night ahead. He continued to play with her, petting her weeping slit and tangling his fingers in the soft curls there until he realized they had neglected a detail that might give their whole game away.

  “Blast!”

  It was not precisely what Catherine expected to hear when his fingers parted her folds. She was already wet, had been as soon as she donned the scandalous gown and began thinking about the eager hands and jutting cocks that would be on her and in her tonight. Now, bewildered, she stiffened in her husband’s arms.

  “What is it?”

  “Madame R shaves her pussy. Most whores do.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t like the idea of wielding Stephen’s straight razor down there.

  “Come,” he said, drawing her by the hand to her dressing table chair. “I’ll do it for you.”

  He brought warm water and soap and lathered her then scraped, the sensations driving her arousal higher. The tiny corner of her soul that had felt fear about being touched by so many strange hands, that knew such gatherings could bring out the worst impulses in men, was soothed by the careful caress of that razor. Stephen would keep her safe, cherish her even in the midst of this thing they were about to do. Just as he was doing now.

  The feeling, when she stood, of being bare down there, was oddly liberating and decidedly erotic. With every step she took, she felt as if a man were caressing her. The water had washed away her earlier arousal but now it came back fourfold. By the time she arrived in the library with Stephen’s hand protectively at the small of her back, her thighs were slick with moisture.

  His preparations took her breath away. And frightened her a little. He’d hung black crepe over the windows, casting the room in shadows, and small statues of gargoyles and other grotesques had replaced her china dogs and shepherdesses. She did not like the inverted cross hung over the fireplace and she said as much. “Is all this really necessary?” she asked. “This devil business?”

  Stephen snorted. “It’s schoolboy nonsense, I’ll grant you, but you’re about to be debauched by a gang of overgrown schoolboys. Did I ever tell you what we were doing the night before I met you?”

  “Carousing,” she said.

  “We had a notion that we were all great libertines like our grandfathers. Francis Dashwood and his naughty Hellfire Club reborn. There was this bit of doggerel about summoning the Devil. You had to fill the chalice six times over and Beelzebub would appear and make a bargain with you. Naturally, the chalice was an attractive young woman and you can well imagine what we filled her with. Have no fear. The Devil never appeared. Just an appallingly large bill from the courtesan in question, and the devil of a headache in the morning.”

  She laughed. “I suppose there is no harm in it, as long it’s merely playacting.”

  His lips quirked in a wicked smile. “The playacting is only a small part of it. Wait until you see the props,” he said, unveiling what she thought was simply one of her needlepoint chairs disguised with a black cloth.

  Instead, it was a device. There was no other word for it. It was not a chair, nor was it quite a table, though it might, under some circumstances, be considered a bench. It was polished wood and tufted leather, the height of a desk, but long and narrow and padded, with gate legs that could swing out in a number of directions. Each movable leg and all four corners of the bench were adorned with a brass ring.

  Stephen reached beneath the padded top. Catherine heard a spring release, then watched as her husband lifted one end of the leather bench and raised it so that all but a short segment, no more than a leather-covered ledge, really, was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. He held out his hand.

  She took a step forward, uncertain what to do. He patted the small leather ledge. “Sit.”

  “I’ll fall off. It’s not big enough for my bottom.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be. Most of your luscious bottom is going to be held up by the men fucking you.”

  His words sent a bolt of lust straight through her body and she found herself scurrying to the bench, eager to feel the leather against her skin. She perched her bottom on the ledge, leaned back against the tilted pad and sighed.

  “Put your hands above your head,” Stephen ordered, the hitch in his voice betraying his own arousal.

  As he bound her wrists to the brass rings above her head, she felt her breasts lift and peek out from the gauzy gown. Her nipples tightened and she gave in to instinct and parted her legs.

  She was floating now in a state that she experienced rarely, only when their love play wandered into the domain of dominance and submission.

  Until she felt the flat of Stephen’s hand smack her pussy. The sting brought her to a new and entirely unexpected place. Alert but languid. Aroused but passive. Free.

  “Lift your knees up,” he ordered, taking on the persona of the demanding master.

  But she wanted to feel that delicious sting again. So she disobeyed.

  And he smacked her left nipple.

  She almost came just from that. She thought for certain he would touch her then, but instead, he pulled up a chair and sat while he arranged her. He lifted her knees and perched her heels atop the movable gate legs at the bottom of the bench, then bound her ankles to the brass rings there so she was spread wide open, her knees grazing her breasts. She had never been so utterly exposed.

  “Catherine, I’m going to gag you before I bring them in. We must arrange a signal that you can use if you are in distress.”

  “But you’ll be here to protect me.”

  He swallowed hard before answering her. “I’ll be here, and I will protect you, but you may decide you want to call it off. You may not like the way someone touches you. The reality might not measure up to the fantasy. If you want it to stop, for any reason, you need only give the signal.”

  He stepped out of view behind the device for a moment and she realized how completely the angled bench limited her freedom. When he returned, he remained behind her, out of sight, and she felt something cold and smooth dangling at the end of a velvet ribbon pressed into her hand. He was tying a small bell to the ring that restrained her left wrist. She could feel the weight of the brass. It was a heavy bell. It wouldn’t ring accidentally. She would need to grasp it and yank. It would be a loud, brassy sound. There would be no mistaking her distress.

  “Ring the bell if you become the least bit frightened or uncomfortable.”

  Then he gagged her. She had expected something soft, like the silk ribbons that bound her wrists and ankles, but the thick belt he placed over her mouth was stiff leather and silenced her completely. The feel of it spreading her jaw made her cunny clench, and as she fought and failed to swallow the sudden rush of saliva, she felt an answering torrent of moisture release between her legs.

  That was when she heard the first carriages jingling in the drive. Stephen looked at her, his eye detached, professional, assessing. He’d done this before, with some other woman. And she couldn’t allow herself to feel jealous, because she was about to fuck five of his friends.

  Then his expression turned warm and intimate and he bent to drop a kiss on her smooth mound and swipe his tongue over her engorged clit. “My delicious wife,” he said decisively, and left her.

  That was when it began. When she experienced, unmediated by Stephen’s presence, the full effect of the bench, the room, her bondage. She tugged lightly at her wrists and found there was no play in her bonds. Nor in those at her ankles. And the gate legs were fixed in position by some locking mechanism. Only her bottom had some freedom to move. She could lift herself a few scant inches above the padded ledge, but no more. Her knees were be
nt too close to her breasts. But even that small movement was infinitely arousing, flexing her exposed nether lips and pressing her thighs against her sensitive nipples.

  She was writhing when the door opened and she saw Stephen’s expression of fierce possessiveness, quickly hidden as the others filed in, laughing and drinking.

  Then they stopped. And she felt five other pairs of eyes caress her. Felt five gazes turn from astonishment to pleasure to lust in an instant. They wanted her.

  Wait. Not five men. Six. There was a sixth. Besides Stephen. A man she recognized but had not seen up close in years. James Cartwright. Her former fiancé. They had been engaged long before she met Stephen. Then Waterloo had happened and James Cartwright had been listed among the dead. She’d mourned him, of course, but then she’d met Stephen.

  A year ago, James Cartwright had returned to England, unable or unwilling to say where had been for the last five years. Why he had allowed his friends and family to mourn him for so long. Catherine had heard of his return, seen him once across a crowded ballroom, and felt a wave of hurt and anger. And now the man was here.

  Her husband strolled over to her side and parted her costume to reveal her pink slit. He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I’m sorry about Cartwright, my love, but he tagged along with the others, and after his miraculous resurrection from the dead, it would have been suspicious for me to deny him. I do not think he will recognize you. When he knew you, you were a green girl. But if you are worried, I will find some excuse to refuse him your charms.”

  She was worried. Worried that Cartwright would recognize her. Worried that she still felt something for him. Worried that Stephen would sense, on this night of all nights, her unresolved feelings for another man.

  Cartwright, for his part, did not seem thrilled to be there. He hung back, did not surge forward with the others to examine the erotic tableau she presented. And then she was surrounded by eager, appreciative men who closed in around her, blocking her former fiancé from sight and mind.

  She ought to have been frightened, bound and spread like this, with such men—former soldiers all of them—still fit and trim, looming over her. But Stephen was there, just at her side, his hands tracing reassuring patterns over her heated flesh.

  It was Sutton, tawny and slender, who reached out to touch her first. “By God, Fessingdon, I didn’t believe you’d really done it. Convinced the lovely Madame R,” and as he said this, he pushed the draperies away from her breasts and took one in each hand, “to take on the regiment.”

  Stephen reached down between her legs and stroked. She whimpered. “Steady on, Sutton,” he warned. “She’s not ready yet. And she has a long night ahead of her.”

  Sutton huffed. “I know how to prime a weapon before firing, Fessingdon.” And he dropped to his knees and placed his mouth on her cunny.

  She screamed. It came out muffled through the gag, but the sound delighted the rest of the them and she was dimly aware, as Sutton’s tongue rasped against her clit, of the soft swish of clothing loosening, jackets sliding from shoulders, breech buttons popping open. Her head lolled and her vision narrowed on bluff and hearty Mainwaring taking his cock in one hand and pinching her nipple with the other.

  She writhed and when she looked up to find Stephen, still patiently standing over her, she wished the gag was gone and she could beg him to end her torment and make one of them fuck her.

  Then Sutton probed her with a finger. Long and slim and elegant like the rest of him. She doubted anything had ever reached so deep inside her. His finger tickled and stroked her womb while his tongue worried her little bud. Suddenly she faced an unanticipated terror. She was going to come. Hard. And she would squirt. On his face.

  She shook her head. No. No. No. He must stop. Or at least, he must move his face. Her fingers grazed the bell cord but she couldn’t bring herself to ring it. She wanted to come. She beseeched Stephen with her eyes, but his own countenance was thoroughly entranced by her torment.

  She tried to hold back but it was impossible. That clever finger was relentless. The first tremors gathered. She fought them but then her back arched, her body stiffened and she convulsed.

  If Sutton expressed distaste at the jet that showered him, she didn’t hear it. Her mind was someplace else entirely. Her consciousness returned first in the small things. The bite of the silk at her wrists and ankles, where she’d twisted so hard in her release, the slipperiness of the leather beneath her ass, inundated by her embarrassing loss of control.

  But when she finally opened her eyes, it was not to disapproval or disgust. Sutton was wiping his lips on a handkerchief with the sort of gusto a gourmand reserves for the conclusion of the finest meal, and Stephen was gently pulling tendrils of sweat-soaked hair from her face.

  Then Sutton leaned forward and impaled her on his cock. She had no idea he had even opened his trousers, but when she looked down, it was to see his tawny curls meeting her newly hairless pussy, and she came again on his first stroke, a muted sensation compared to what had come before, but distinct all the same.

  His cock, she realized, was much like the rest of him, long and slender. Not so thick as Stephen’s. It didn’t drag deliciously at her opening on the withdrawal, nor fill her with quite such completeness, but it reached deep inside her and rubbed insistently at her sensitive womb.

  His own climax was discreet. He halted his thrusts, flexed his hips while buried deep inside her, then sighed quietly. She tried to tamp down her disappointment. He had not brought her with him at the end, and if the meager trickle she felt inside her was anything to go by, she would not be dandling a tawny-haired infant in nine months’ time.

  And he left her with a throbbing ache, a persistent, unsatisfied arousal that threatened to become a cramp if not relieved. When something silky poked at her breast and she looked down to find bluff and hearty Mainwaring rubbing his equally healthy-looking cock against her nipple, she whimpered imploringly.

  “Lovely slut,” he murmured approvingly. “I’m sorry I balked at the price the last time you were on offer.” He stepped between her legs and fingered her clit, but she was long past being satisfied with manual stimulation. Or so she thought. He used his thumb to circle delicately, surprisingly gentle for such a big man. She tilted her hips up in approval, in offering and, hell, in desperation.

  He only chuckled and continued his deft circling. “Leave you wanting, did he? Don’t worry, my lovely slut, I’ll give it to you good.”

  She only wished he would. Her cunt was beginning to clench and she wanted it filled when she came. Nothing else would relieve the dull ache.

  She felt him fit the head of his cock, blunt and fat and round, to her opening. He pushed, gently at first, his thumb continuing the delicate circling, but her body had tensed with wanting, was closed against him.

  “There now,” he crooned. “Open up for me, my lovely slut.”

  She felt herself flutter open a little at the filthy endearment, but it wasn’t enough for his girth. Her head whipped back and forth in frustration. She needed his cock, but she couldn’t relax enough to take him.

  He tried pinching her nipples, suckling them, whispering soothing nonsense in her ear, running his hands over her buttocks, but nothing worked and she felt the prickle of tears in her eyes.

  Then Stephen leaned close and whispered something in Mainwaring’s ear. Mainwaring nodded. Nothing changed for a moment. His thumb still circled her clit, his thick cock still pressed at her tight entrance. Then she felt the blunt fingers of his free hand curve over her buttocks, slide into the crack of her ass and stroke her rosebud.

  Oh. He stroked again, spreading the moisture that trickled from her cunny. And again. Her clit. Her ass. He circled them both. She started to relax. And he pressed. Not just his cock, but his finger as well. The one began an inexorable slide into her pussy and the other into her ass.

  Her eyes felt wide as saucers. So did her cunt. And her ass. His finger went deeper. She looked up at Stephen.
He knew. He knew what this man was doing to her. Had told him to do it. And he was watching, assessing, to see if she enjoyed it. “Yes,” encouraged her husband, “take it.”

  She did. It was as if Mainwaring wasn’t there at all, even though he was diddling her clit and fucking her pussy and relentlessly probing her ass. When his finger and his cock were sheathed, he began to pump, and though she was aroused to an extent she had never experienced before, no climax built inside her. Instead, his attentions held her at a steady level of throbbing pleasure. And frustration.

  She was being fucked, briskly and with novel deviations, but it wasn’t enough. She needed something more to push her over the edge. She turned to look up at her husband, and that was when she saw the glimmer of metal in Stephen’s hands.

  She’d never seen anything like the shimmering chain before. It was short, no more than ten or twelve inches, and it was capped on either end by large spring clips. She still didn’t understand when he gripped her nipple and pulled. Then he applied the first clamp.

  She bucked under Mainwaring, her weighted breast flapping, the clamp pinching hard as she tried to jerk away.

  “Oh, that’s good,” groaned Mainwairing. “Give her the other one. I can feel her cunt clenching.”

  Stephen chuckled, satisfied by the effect the clamp was having on her. She shook her head no and he hesitated for the merest second, but when she did not reach for the bell, he grabbed her other nipple and clamped it.

  She bucked again. And with three more strokes from Mainwaring she was off. Clenching and spasming with an intensity that sent tremors through her thighs and belly.

  Finch was next and she came for him when Stephen removed the clamps, and she realized, dimly, that her husband was controlling more than the access to her body. He was controlling her pleasure as well.

  Chapter Three

  The fourth was a friend of Stephen’s she did not know well, but she was exhausted by that time, and when Stephen urged the man to stroke her clit to bring her off, she shook her head. Stephen nodded his understanding, stroked her hair and praised her beauty and her fortitude while his friend rode her.