He heard her softly tinkling laughter and turned. She'd rolled over on her stomach and was peeking between the bedstead curtains in full amusement, chin resting on her forearms crossed atop the massive mahogany footboard. Lewrie shrugged and grinned back at her, at last found his cundum packet and unbound the tied ribbons to lift the flap and pull out a whole handful, showing them to her before returning to the side of the bed.
By then, Charite had rolled back to the bedside, quickly, eagerly posing herself. Her hands grasped the upper canopy railing and, half standing on the short assisting ladder with one dainty foot, and with her other slim leg resting on the mattress, thighs far apart, she pretended to swing slightly, almost childlike, as she watched in wide-eyed wonder to see him sheath himself and bind a cundum on. Once done, her welcoming, warming, growing smile was all the invitation he needed.
He embraced her about her thighs, pressing his face against the soft-fleshed and fragrant warmth of her firm, flat stomach, kissing up to her breasts again to restore his slightly cooled ardour, squeezing gently at her bottom; kissing slowly downwards over her belly that was almost shuddering, quivering under his lips and the tip of his tongue.
Sliding over and sitting down where she'd been when he left her, Charite leaned back on her hands again, parted her sweet thighs, lifted her knees, and resumed the left-right squirming of her hips, and the upward, forward hungry thrusting of her groin, as steady and gentle as waves breaking at a slack tide.
"Mon Dieu, please! Maintenant… now, cher! I can't take any more!" Charite huskily begged, clawing him upwards, sliding her body to the very edge of the high bedside, then embracing him in a death grip as frantic as someone about to drown. Lewrie rose, stepped up, dragged her to him with one hand at the base of her spine, and guided himself back to the pleasure seat. Succulently hot nether lips, slick and engorged… that first inch into Paradise swiftly, even more easily regained… both of his hands seizing her hips and another, short half step to the bedside, gliding in, gliding upward… half his manhood all at one steady, gentle thrust… an inch more, then one more… drawing back and hearing her sob in shuddering want… then all of him, ramming himself home, eliciting a startled shout as he felt his cap bumping against the sea-bed of her depths, sunk to the root, and she clung to him desperately, legs clasped high around him, ankles crossed on the back of his hips and demanding, quickening his pace. Head and long, glossy hair tossing and turning, she whined and groaned, whimpered, and laid her head on his shoulder for a little time, softly bawling like a newborn calf, a trickle of saliva from her gasping, panting mouth on his skin…
"Je vais jouir!" Charite cried at last, "I am going… aahhh." A baby shriek, a broken, quivering-whimpering sudden sinking away, arms and thighs turning flaccid and limp, though her quim pulsed, squeezed and suctioned like a Chinee finger-puzzle, as if to draw all of him in and keep him secreted forever, and for a few, floating moments of absolute ecstacy, nothing else in the universe existed for him but their groins, his shaft, her gulf. Even the sounds she made, the endearments she grunted, receded, and all he could hear, cared to hear, was the hot, sweet liquid sound of sex before his own moment arrived. A long, inarticulate deep-voiced lion's roar, and he burst so deep into her, losing all cognizance, a siege-mortar's shell exploding, trails of violent smoke spreading outward, outward behind the red-glowing jutting embers of his passion. And his arriving restored her strength for a few minutes, to clamp damply sweet thighs and arms about him, force-squeeze her. belly muscles to match the last upward jerkings he used to tease her, fiercely clinging, kissing, and stroking in pleased reward.
She fell back onto the soft, yielding feather mattress finally, one arm over her eyes to get her breath back, legs wide apart as if to wish him gone from her, but Charite needily moaned in limp protest when he finally shrank away and withdrew. He stripped off his used cundum and clambered up into bed with her, scooped her to him, and pressed his length along hers, gently nestling her close, and both of them all but purring in delight.
"Fantastic," he whispered into her ear, drawing forth her happy chuckles and fondly closer pressing, her head on his chest. "Charite, darlin', you are simply marvelous. So sweet, so handsome…"
"I please you?" she asked, almost hesitantly, her head averted, as if fearing he hadn't been.
"Two steps past Saint Peter's gate into Heaven itself," Lewrie truthfully avowed. "You're a little peek of Paradise, cherie."
"You do not ask if you…" Charite said, sounding small and meek as she turned her head from one cheek to the other to peer up at him.
"Sort of got the, ah… impression that I did," Lewrie teasingly muttered back, giving her a warm squeeze, a cozy jounce. She slow-blinked her eyes and nodded her recumbent head, then the most beatific smile slowly blossomed on her face, a longtime, committed lover's expression that told him all. She slid up his body 'til they were face to face, draping herself on him, one sticky-damp thigh slyly insinuated between his as she said, "Oui, tres bon, aussi… you did. You will, encore. Or should I go now, and let you sleep?"
"Sweet little dear'un!" Lewrie protested, holding her tighter. "Cundums in London came by the dozen! One down, eleven to go…?"
"Hah!" she cried in bawdy delight, laughing with joy. "You are that formidable? Then as our backcountry 'Cadiens say, 'laisser les bons temps rouler'!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
And the "bons temps" did, far into the night.
Charite entranced him, amazed him with her eagerness, even stunned him a few times with her expertise. One moment she was as sweet, loving, and fond as a blushing new bride, purring like a cat with half-slit sleepy eyes. The next moment she could be as fierce in her ardour at kissing and foreplay as a milkmaid, a Jill, tearing at her Jack with only five minutes to spare in the dairy barn's loft.
And she was so skilled at other times, almost suspiciously so; she chuckled, so pleased with herself, like the costliest courtesans who had experienced it all, yet still beguiled with believable eagerness.
She'd start half the fun, shyly "bride-like" one time, then as demanding as a boa constrictor the next. She could slink across the room to fetch something, wine or a washcloth, and taunt him with her nudity, certain of her comeliness and its effect on him.
She'd hike a leg over a chair-back, twine about a bedpost and bare everything, as bawdy as the cheapest jade ready to take six pence for a "knee-trembler" in a dockyard alley. And she must have seen a good collection of "risible artworks" somewhere, good as any his father, Sir Hugo, ever had squirrelled away, for some of the "poses" she struck looked damnably familiar to him! Lewrie reacted, of course, just as he had in his wide-eyed, pubescent days… to the detriment of their upstairs maids and serving wenches!
Then there were good old-fashioned Christian fucks with him on top, plunging away like Billy-O, followed by turn-about, with Charite riding St. George atop him like a jockey whipping into the last corner at the Newmarket race course. Followed by a return to the side of the bed, ankles crossed behind his neck, and squealing like a shoat… followed, perhaps finished off, by another turn-about, bent over face-down and her legs thrashing and dangling before him, and her nails clawing at his hips, her teeth gnashing on the bed linens.
"Oh la, Alain, mon cher amour," Charite said with a sleepy sigh, spooned with him in the light of a fresh candle, watching his face in the conveniently placed cheval mirror. "I am so glad you come to New Orleans! To Le Pigeonnier, tonight of all nights… What does bring you to my city?"
"A dowdy brig with a weedy bottom," he lazily quipped. "Nothin' at all like yours, sweetlin'. Uhmmm…" he purred, taking some more fondling strokes of the temptingly yielding aforesaid.
"No, do not tease!" She prettily pouted, making a moue at him. "You are British, I think. So many things you say that I do not hear Americans say… Is it not dangerous for you, with Britain and Spain at war?"
"Used t' be British, love," Lewrie told her, dredging up his new biography, just in case he was too sated, drink
-muzzled, and jaded to make a mistake, even with an intriguing girl with nothing to do with piracy. "Used t' be. But… they sort of got tired of me, so off I went and turned American. New start.
"You were a… criminal, fleeing British law?" Charite posed with a fearful, fretful sound of sudden concern, tossing herself over to face him abruptly.
"No, I'm not outlaw, dear'un," Lewrie assured her with a grin. "I've already faced my court and been sent away. A court-martial, in London. I was in the Royal Navy… once. Lieutenant Willoughby, if you can feature it, Commission Sea Officer. God, Crown, and Country…"
"Oh la, what happened?" she all but wailed in commiseration.
He fed her the whole fiction, chapter and verse, that Peel had penned for him, that he'd rehearsed with Pollock before coming ashore. Drink made it come out slurred, slow, and believable; weariness after all their sporting made it sound plausible even to his own ears, with just the right touch of tiredness with his own life, even bitterness.
Damme, I could've become a Drury Lane actor! he cynically cajoled himself as she seemed to eat it up like plum duff. Especially the part about India and the Far East, the Great South Seas…
"How grand!" Charite marvelled. "What fun, to see elephants or tigers, rajahs or even… real pirates/" She was as excited as a tot on Christmas Day, pounding pillows so she could sit up on the headboard and listen raptly. "You must tell me everything of your adventures… the next evening we are together. That is," she shied, going miss-ish, and meek, "uh… if you wish to…"
"Oh, aye!" Lewrie swore, "no doubt o' that, sweet'un," suddenly engorged with desire to have her again, night after night of heavenly, bawdy bliss. "Truthfully… I cannot get enough of you!"
She rewarded that ardour with a soul-kiss, snuggling him down alongside her. After a long, purring moment, she asked, "You had to come back when the war began… from the Far East?"
"Aye, but late. Too late for a shipboard commission," Lewrie said, spinning his lie again. He departed from the script, creating a chapter on the fly from his own experiences. "I finally got aboard a perfect scow of a Third Rate ship of the line as Fourth Lieutenant… fourth out of five, d' ye see? Went to the Mediterranean, worked out of Gibraltar. That's a place t' see, too, ma cherie/ We took part in the Toulon expedition, in the time of the First Coalition, when the damned Spanish were our allies. I rose to Third Officer, but we sailed home for repairs, and she ended up dropping her bottom in Porsmouth harbour. Too long laid up in ordinary, weeded, wormed, and dry-rotted, so they had to scrap her. That was… '95, it was. I thought I'd board another ship, but… things didn't work out the way I wished."
He sketched a miserly three months ashore on half-pay between assignments, before being forced to beg for employment, the best, and soonest, opening being in the Impress Service! Ashore!
Midshipmen making Lieutenant, if they turned up two hundred "recruits" by Christmas; intercepting merchantmen in Soundings and pressing most of the crew, leaving just enough to work her into port; splitting the seamen's pay with the ships' masters, to boot! Brothel, tavern raids in connivance with publicans and "Mother Abbesses," of inflating per diem pay and the rum and ale bought to gull volunteers, lodging costs, and pocketing the difference… The bribes from weeping parents, wives, and employers to spring a swept-up man…
"And you… profited from all that?" Charite asked him, hesitantly, though his tale had lit her merry blue eyes with delight.
"Had to," Lewrie gruffly seemed to admit, " 'cause I needed the money so perishin' bad!" he cynically barked, for that was his father's excuse for disowning him and shipping him off to sea. "Life ashore costs more than sea duty, and every officer but the titled wealthy are forever in debt, and even a goodly share o' them! Everyone else was working a 'fiddle' on the King's money, but me, they caught! I never seem t' be able to prosper or hold my luck for long, d' ye see, love."
"How terrible for you… for your family, quel dommage!" she actually sounded affected by his fraud. The candle's glint revealed a hint of moisture in her eyes, to Lewrie's chagrin.
"No family to shame, really," Lewrie lied. "I was a third son, and we were never that close."
"Poor Alain!" she groaned, hugging him close to her. "And was there ever… a young lady whose heart was broken to see you shamed? Were you ever affianced, or…" she meekly asked in a wee voice, her head nigh buried in the crook of his shoulder.
"What the money -was for," Lewrie told her, forcing a credible hitch into his voice. "I was wed. Daft thing for a mere Lieutenant t' do. Our Navy thinks married Lieutenants are useless… lost to the Service, with their minds half-ashore. But… she died."
He blushed tomato-red, covered his chagrin by busying himself at his wineglass; that was a lie most damnable to say, as if a word was parent to the wish; as if he'd called fickle Fate to heed him and harm Caroline!
"Mon Dieu, no! Pauvre, pauvre … poor, dear man!" she said in a shuddery tone, quivering against him.
"Sweetest, kindest… not a rich match, no, but… Caroline was my landlord's daughter, when I lodged in Portsmouth," he grunted.
Damn, damn, damn! he chid himself; Why'd I give her real name? This won't do, it's gettin' too personal! Should've said, "No, never wed," should ve said Cheapside, 'stead o' Portsmouth, where 1really was with the 'Press! Christ, let's hope she wasn't listenin' all that close… or geography's not her strong suit! Else, I'll never put a leg over again. And God help me, I want to!
"How did it…" Charite asked, and he could feel moisture on his shoulder; she was really weeping for him! He felt like such a cad, but… in for the penny, in for the pound. It was too late to recant.
"She got sick soon after we wed," Lewrie continued, his voice most believably husky, with many a pause to marshall fresh stages in a tale of woe. "All the coal smoke… she began to suffer a wracking cough, sometimes spotted her handkerchief… We tried an apothecary at first. Then a naval surgeon I knew. He sent us to a proper physician, who sent us to a London physician, and it all cost so bloody, bloody much, and… nigh onto an hundred pounds, yet she still went weaker and paler, wasting away. And carrying our first child as-"
Charite flung herself on him, trembling fingers pressed on his mouth. She kissed him with a fierce, life-giving hunger for almost a whole minute, then sank her head into the small of his neck, sobbing!
You mis'rable, fraud bastard! Lewrie scathed himself, glad that she could not see his face. He wanted her yet wasn't sure he could look her in the eyes, not after this. His wife, Caroline, had sickened once, when he'd been so far away in the Mediterranean, and it had been a near-run thing that she'd lived and, recalling that, and his being so estranged from her sweetness now, his own eyes grew moist, but… the shudders that took him, that could have been mistaken for response to his old grief for a dead wife, were the result of sour amusement! At himself, mostly, for being such a charlatan, for being such a good liar!
"You stole to save her. Oh, Alain. That is so… noble," she said at last, rising on one elbow and swiping her tears. "You were almost… admirable!"
"Didn't help, though," Lewrie said, flinging an arm over his eyes as a mask. "I was court-martialed and flung out. Signed aboard a Yankee ship in Falmouth as a mate and got by. But the captain, an idiot, wrecked her off the Cape Fear. Ran her on a shoal they call the Lump, 'twixt Old and New Inlets into Wilmington. I decided to be an American… New world, new life?… and damned if aboard my next ship, as Second Mate, a British frigate didn't stop us and nearly press me 'cause they said my certificate was fraudulent? Hah!"
"So, you come on a Yankee ship to New Orleans?" she asked, and he fretfully caught what sounded hellish-like… connivance, gentle, beguiling probing in her tone; this made him forget his false tales and perk up and take notice.
"No," he answered, wondering why she sounded so curious about his means of transport. "I came on the Azucena del Oeste. She's the Panton, Leslie Company brig. British-owned, but Spanish-flagged, if you can feature it. They hired me on at Char
leston, after I cooled my heels there a few weeks, looking for another ship. Where I washed up when Wilmington had nothing to offer," he quickly stuck in, about to confuse himself. "As a new American, I can go inland, up the Mississippi to the Yankee settlements. They talked up the opportunity… and this part of the world, like it was the Promised Land. 'Get in on the beginning,' they swore. A little outside my normal line o' work, but for command of river boats now and then, but… it sounded damn' promising. And…" he paused, allowed himself some bashfulness, as if coaxing a shy miss to bed; back on his stride once more. "Indians to see… hundreds of miles of unspoiled wilderness! I s'pose I like the idea of a… a fresh, new adventure, and nothing the same, twice! A share of the profits, for my share of the risk, and… do I find a parcel of land that suits, well… start my own freehold."
"That is what you do for Panton, Leslie, Alain?"
"Filled in as a ship's mate, on the way here. Head up guards for their pack-trains," Lewrie speculated, as if he meant it. "Hoist my own 'broad pendant' someday… commodore of the canoes or barges, if their river trade from New Orleans gets that big."
"So… you would come back often to New Orleans, mon cher?" Charite teasingly asked, her blue eyes merry and beguiling once more. She leaned against him, stroking him with a sleek, soft thigh, breasts pressed against the side of his chest. And Lewrie was delighted that her near-side nipple was beginning to stiffen.
"Now, would you find that so extremely… pleasurable?" he teased right back, immensely relieved that they seemed done with his bogus curriculum vitae and were back to intimate trifles. He stroked her bare hip, purring to her, his voice deep and inveigling.
"Alain…" Charite posed, frowning in thought and coyly biting on her delectable lower lip for a second or two, "New Orleans is going to be a tres important seaport, no matter how far from the ocean. The American trade up the Great River, what our planters grow… not only the cane for sugar, molasses, and rum, but now the rice and cotton, and both so much closer to get than from India or China, n'est-ce pas? If our businessmen need to send goods out where they can make profit, other than in Spanish ports," she sneered, "we will need ships of our own, else the Yankees or Spaniards rob us blind. The, uh…"
The Captain`s Vengeance l-12 Page 19