by Louisa Trent
Stepping behind her, Doyle slid his arms around to her front, his hand capturing an unfettered breast. "Nothing lurid about your charms, Lily. If ever there was an elegant little baggage, it's you."
Her nipples tightened. She felt his strokes in her very core, in the liquid heat that dripped down her bare leg. Thighs rubbing together, she whimpered her need of surcease.
"Shh," he whispered, and worked the hooks on her gown. "Let's get you out of this dowager's gray silk, shall we?"
Once she was nude, Doyle nuzzled her throat as she arched into him, his hand moving over her belly to disappear between her legs.
"Oh, Doyle," she sighed, her fear of intimacy a thing of the past.
"My, you are wet."
"Yes," she agreed; it was ridiculous not to agree as her red pubic hair glistened with beads of lubricating moisture. "I hurt for you, Doyle. Isn't that what you wish?"
"Perhaps," he said, uncovering the hood covering her clitoris.
"How much longer do you intend to make me wait?" she asked in anguish.
"I have waited ten years for you."
She could easily cry, for if he had waited at all, it was for retribution, his pound of flesh, not really for her.
But still she begged, "Please, make love to me."
Putting her aside, Doyle reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, withdrawing a flat glass jar.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Crimson pigment."
She shook her head, scandalized. "I don't use face paint."
"Don't play the innocent, Lily. You know damned well the carmine is not intended for your lips, at least not these lips," he said, stroking the seam of her mouth.
"But I really don't understand..."
"Very well. Play Miss Prim if you wish." He twisted the top off the glass jar, dipped his finger in the paint pot, and reached between her legs.
"Open," he spoke to her thighs.
When she did, he painted her nether lips with the color from the paint pot until her vulva was a vivid shade of crimson. After examining his handiwork, he painted her nipples, the carmine exaggerating their distention to lewd proportions.
His eyes were very dark when he finished, the pupils almost black. "Turn around."
Faced to the wall, he cupped her bottom. "You whored for men at Frank Johnson's bequest," he stated, his fingers moving along the seam between her bottom cheeks.
Since his was not a question asked, silence served as her only answer.
He pressed a finger to her back opening, and she didn't refuse him.
"No virgin here, either--eh?"
As a question, it was poorly asked, and so deserved a poor reception. "Sir, you set yourself up as my master; come into me and judge my experience for yourself. I shall be your whore tonight, tomorrow, and the next night, too, if that is what this is all about. I know my debt and I intend to pay it. Until I return to my life in Boston, I recognize that I am in bondage to you."
"Bondage. Now there is a pretty word." His fingertip slipped inside her anus. "I bought you a gift," he said conversationally, his unnatural penetration deepening. "It's on the bedstand. I thought you might wear it when we go downstairs."
Her gaze went to the thin package, her payment for services rendered, she supposed.
As he widened the dimpled opening, a two-finger stretch of the sphincter muscle, she whispered ruefully, "You are far too kind, sir."
His fingers were withdrawn. "You will require lubricant." He spoke close to her ear, as though telling her a secret. "You are delicately made, and I will not have you hurt. These parties tend toward ... intemperance. Bend at the waist, and I will see to your care."
She rounded, no shame, no pride, like the whore he thought she was.
He must have oiled the finger for it slipped with ease into her buttocks; the carmine pigmented one went back into her vulva, up high this time, into her vagina, both fingers now moving within her body's clasp in slow, synchronized rhythm.
She moaned through her mouth, seeped in erotic pleasure, knowing she would do anything he asked of her this night, and not out of indebtedness. No, her bondage to Doyle had begun long before Frank was killed; she had been in sexual servitude to him since she was no more than a girl.
"How many men will have me tonight, Doyle?"
"All of them. Now come for me, Lily, before I take you downstairs."
And she did, on a scream.
He ruled her completely.
* * * *
She went downstairs on Doyle's arm, a lovely Persian shawl with a floor length fringe covering her nude body.
"Thank you for the gift," she told her companion, who was fully and formally dressed in evening attire, as they entered the foyer.
"Many men must have bought you gifts over the years; many men must have spoiled you."
Spoiled? She didn't feel spoiled.
Lillian looked away, to hide her suddenly smarting eyes. "Will you partner me any time during the course of the evening?"
"As I brought you, I have proprietary rights over you. If you wish, I shall be the first."
"It's not what I wish, sir, but what you wish."
"A gentleman does not like his host to think him selfish..."
She tossed her head. "Some gentlemen practice exclusivity in their relationships."
"As do some ladies. But you are not a lady and I am not a gentleman and fidelity isn't a part of our history."
On that low note, Doyle escorted her through the double doors into the darkened 'game room'.
As an artist, Lillian was familiar with the human form in all its many manifestations. She also considered herself to be an independent thinker, open to new ideas...
She closed her mind to the possibility of the stark scene before her eyes. She wished no part of such soulless debauchery!
But her eyes remained riveted to the fornicating couples on the pillow-strewn marble floor. A gas sconce was lit, and by that dim light she deciphered a naked tangle of twisting bodies, a writhing pile of mating males and females. No one seemed specifically paired with anyone else. Various and sundry body parts were exposed, bent, splayed, and penetrated.
Two men were on a woman who was positioned on all fours on a huge black velvet pillow. One male was at her rear, going into her buttocks; the other male was in front, his penis swallowed up in her mouth. Did Doyle expect her to participate in this aberrant distortion of lovemaking, this impersonal swapping of body fluids?
With a shudder of disgust, she turned her face away.
Doyle retrieved her wayward chin. "You must have done this sort of thing before. A woman like you needs this sort of thing..."
No, she did not need this, or anything like this! She needed Doyle, only Doyle! She was no sexual sophisticate. Immoral decadence was not for her!
Leading her forward, Doyle presented her to the undulating mass of intertwined bodies.
For once, Lillian was grateful for her breathing problem, grateful it prevented her from deeply inhaling the scent of meaningless sex.
An extraordinarily handsome gentleman rose from the writhing entrenchment where he had been reclining between two females, a brunette and a blond. This classically handsome male, this perfectly proportioned Adonis, shook Doyle's hand.
He smiled politely at her. "Good evening."
Doyle performed the introductions. "Lily, this is our host, Mr. Kenneth Fornsworth. Kenneth, may I present my guest this evening, Miss Lillian Hill."
Mr. Fornsworth dipped at the waist, his slight bow in no way disturbing the jaunty angle of his hugely erect member
She nodded, and performed an absurd, but obligatory curtsey. "Mr. Fornsworth."
Thus observed, formalities were immediately dismissed.
"Your guest is beautiful," Mr. Fornsworth spoke the compliment directly to Doyle, but touched her hair.
"Yes," Doyle agreed. "She is."
"I adore redheads. I would presume the color is natural?" Their host eyed her upper limbs; thankfully, t
he shawl fringe covered them for the most part.
"I leave it to the discretion of the lady to categorize her attributes for you."
Doyle looked at her, brow raised, a challenge in his dark eyes. "Lily? What say you?"
She had nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to this preposterousness exchange.
"Might I see her?" Mr. Fornsworth politely inquired of Doyle.
"Once again, that is up to the lady."
But Lillian knew it was not; nothing had ever been up to her.
Squaring her shoulders, Lillian parted the Persian shawl, which she had, up until then, kept clutched modestly around her. With a shrug, she sent Doyle's gift to the floor.
"She is perfection! Absolute perfection," their golden-haired host enthused. "You must love her red pussy."
"I love everything about the lady," Doyle answered their host, but spoke to her eyes.
Oh, Doyle! What are we doing to one another? What are we doing here? We don't belong with these people!
The solitary gaslight went out, and in the total darkness, she was guided to a heap of pillows on the floor while bodies moved all around her, indiscernible from one another. In the anonymous moving mass, her legs were parted. Raised. An extra velvet pillow stuffed beneath her bottom to raise her pelvis. Her bosom was stroked, the nipples thumbed into painted peaks. Hands fondled her. Belly. Bosom. A multitude of fingers invaded her pubic hair. How many there were or whom they belonged to, she couldn't say. But she could say she spread herself open for any and all penetration.
Two fingers slipped inside her vagina; one entered her buttocks; a thumb manipulated her clitoris as the grunts and sighs and cries of lovemaking went on all around her. Her partner was one man, two men ... any man. She was available for all comers.
The finger in her oiled anus increased to two; the two fingers in her carmine-colored vagina became three; the thumb on her clitoris worked more diligently, forcing an unwanted climax upon her.
Rage built inside her, and exploded.
"No!" she screamed.
Blackmail or not, she would not have gone to bed with Frank! She would not have loved one man and slept with another. She would never have been unfaithful to the man she loved.
Not climax, but relief came then. Bitter, bitter relief.
The stroking hands, those anonymous stroking fingers that offered anonymous pleasure fell away. With a reach for her Persian shawl, she was racing outside. She needed to escape the sights and sounds and smells of the tawdry game room.
Doyle was fast on her heels. "Lily, wait! No one else touched you. Only me. I had to see ... to know ... what kind of woman you really were."
Damn him! Was that a test?
Sobbing, the Persian shawl whipping behind her, she kept running.
Doyle caught up with her at the stables. He held onto her arm.
"Don't you touch me," she cried and tried to wrench free of his hold.
"Talk to me, Lily. For once, before it's too late for us, you tell me the truth. This time, don't run away," Doyle pleaded.
She shook him off. "Let me go!"
"Not this time!" He grabbed both her hands. "Never again will I take the easy way out with you. You begged me not to leave that night. You pleaded with me to stay with you. I wouldn't listen. Knowing you were insecure about us, I left you alone in your bedchamber. You were desperate to make love, and I said we had to wait. I never once asked you the reason for your desperation. Instead of talking it out, I left you out of the discussion.
"Tell me how angry you were with me then! Tell me how angry you are with me now for bringing you to this disgraceful house. You can do it. Go ahead."
"Do not placate me," she raged. "Do not patronize me. Since when do I need your permission to be angry?"
"Then, dammit, tell me!"
Assign the man she loved feet of clay?
Rather than tell him of her disappointment, she ran for the stables.
Doyle caught her up inside a stall. Yanking her into his arms, he said softly, as though speaking to a child, "This time, you are not to take the coward's way out. Take me to task for what I did."
Mindless of the surroundings, her breasts heaving as she strained to get oxygen into her lungs, she screamed, "How dare you treat me like that? How dare you doubt my feelings for you? You had the audacity to throw my response to you in my face! Do you think I could help my feelings? Do you think that I ever could help them? I loved you when I was seventeen years old, a woman's love, but you kept pushing me away. Always pushing me away. Even in bed that night, you pushed me away. You refused to make love to me. You treated me like an infant, like I didn't know my own mind. "
"Go on, Lily. Tell me all of it. Get it out in the open, once and for all."
"I told you I loved you, I begged you to stay with me, I pleaded with you to make love to me. But you left. You said it was to check on your brothers. That was a lie. You left because you didn't respect me as a person. You offered me marriage, after I attended the museum school. I knew you were only putting me off, as you always put me off." She said, mournfully, "I needn't have gone all the way to Boston to learn my craft..."
"You were talented, Lily. Boston offered the best artistic training for women artists. I did not want you to have regrets somewhere down the line."
"Why wouldn't you allow me sacrifice even the tiniest corner of my dream for us?"
"There is more, Lily. Say it. Get it all out."
"Why," she wailed. "Why did you leave me? If you hadn't left me ... if you hadn't left me..."
A fit of weeping seized her, preventing her from going on.
"I will say it for you. If I hadn't left you, if I had stayed that night with as you as you begged me to, none of the rest would have happened. But I swear, I left because I thought it was the right thing to do. You needed the freedom to change your mind. And I ... I didn't wish to tie you to me with sex."
She started to laugh.
"I was older," Doyle said, his eyes changing from brown to the color of a starless midnight. "You weren't a virgin, but even so, a man can take advantage of a younger lover. Satisfy her curiosity about sex. Show her things. Force her to grow up before she is ready."
"Sexual curiosity? You think that is what it was all about? I loved you! My love tied me to you, not some transitory itch!"
Darkness approached, and this time, she didn't fight the blackout; she welcomed the numbing descent of unconsciousness. She needed to escape like she had never needed to escape before.
Doyle took her by the shoulders. "You can express anger without punishing yourself. Go ahead--let me have it. Tell me you hate me! Just don't blackout!"
She wheezed through tortured lungs, "Do you think I am proud of myself for the way I have always responded to you? All you ever had to do was say the word and I was yours."
"Tell me the rest!"
She wanted to tell him the rest: about Frank; about the blackmail; about ten years of threatening letters, about the gift of her virginity that he had refused. But she felt so weak...
"I couldn't help it," she said, slipping into blackness. "There was nothing I could do! God help me ... I tried... But I wasn't strong enough!"
Doyle's pained face was the last thing she saw. Then mercifully, there was nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lily regained consciousness in the cottage's winding drive. She was slumped next to Doyle on the carriage seat, attired in only the Persian shawl, over which a blanket had been added for warmth.
"Are you all right?" Doyle asked worriedly.
Reaching up a hand, she pushed an unruly strand of dark hair away from his anxious eyes. "Poor Doyle! You keep having to pick me up off the ground, don't you?"
"My only concern is for your health."
"Well, concern yourself no longer. For the most part I am completely well--if you discount my small breathing problem and a few other assorted trifles. And I am fine now."
"You cannot continue to faint this way!"
&
nbsp; She twittered as a small bubble of mirth escaped her lips. "Not faint this way? Then which way shall I faint?"
"Lily." How was it that one small word could be invested with so much warning?
Doyle took her shoulders in hand. "I need honesty from you. Stop this act. You don't need to pretend with me. Tell me your thoughts. I prize your genuine opinions, the uniqueness of who you are." He shook his head. "At times, I think you are completely unaware of how you have subjugated your true personality. At other times, I know you perform a deliberate masquerade for the benefit of others. I live in constant fear that I may never find the real you ever again. I miss how we used to argue. I miss how you used to call me an arrogant ass. Come back to me, Lily. I miss the real you."
"Real? My goodness, not in years have I been anywhere close to authentic. If real is what you demand of me, I shall just have to pretend, I suppose," Lily countered on another bout of hilarity.
She walked to the cottage's pitted granite stairs, dreading going inside alone, but covering her fear so that Doyle wouldn't know.
"The lamps will need lighting," Doyle said, commandeering her art supplies, opening the door, and preceding her inside.
"Would you care for a nightcap?" she suggested, hating the small clutch of fear in her voice. "Brandy is in the liquor cabinet," she said, on an airless breath, her feet refusing to budge from the porch.
From inside the hallway, Doyle frowned. "Do you feel faint?"
An ink-purple wash painted the sky tonight. Rain hung heavy in the air. She felt a storm in her soul. Rain and beach roses and great streams of crimson, seeping into wet sand and onto a white nightgown...
"Lily...?"
The subdued question came from a place far away, so difficult to pinpoint exactly where.
"It happened in the late spring," she murmured, trying to get a bead on the location of that gruff male voice. "Frank's death, I mean. Isn't it curious that a season that signifies rebirth is always associated in my mind with death?"
She pivoted. "I rather feel like taking a walk."
"Where?" asked that faraway voice.
She thought for a moment before arriving at a decision. "To the Widow's Walk."