by Louisa Trent
"Please Doyle! Make the breech now. Don't force me to wait. I wish to be yours completely..."
He ignored her plea and reached behind him on the bed for the belt.
"No two belts are the same," he said conversationally. "Yours has been tooled with a lily motif."
He brought it around and showed it to her.
"Lovely," she said, admiring the craftsmanship from an artistic point of view; from a woman in love's perspective, she did not at all appreciate the delay.
"It goes like so." He strapped the slender leather belt around her waist, his thumbs deliberately grazing the points of her nipples during the cinching. The wretch!
"One strap dangles against the mons; the other goes between the female's buttocks," he explained, his thumbs moving back and forth over the tips of her swollen and achy breasts.
She writhed, alternately moaning and purring, willing to do anything if he would just continue to pet her.
While pinching one nipple rather firmly--more painfully than she was accustomed to--he started to push something that felt larger in size than a man's thumb into her anus.
"Doyle?" she asked in alarm, pulling against the silk restraints a bit.
"Hush," he soothed, scraping his thumbnail across her distended nipple. "It will be done and finished soon. The plug, by the way, is made of mahogany, sculpted to fit just right and to stay in place as the lady goes about her everyday routine. How are you doing thus far?"
"Fine," she replied, because after he had asked, he began to suckle her nipple and his mouth felt every fine indeed.
But then, as he pushed the device home, she began to buck wildly against the unnatural trespass. Building inside her was the insistence to tell him to stop, to reveal that she wished him inside her, not some cold piece of sculpted wood. But needing to prove to Doyle--and to herself--that in the most essential of ways she trusted him, she clamped down on that insistence.
"I shall never be a proper Bostonian now," she half-sobbed, half-laughed, when he finished and the plug was in place.
"Ah, but are you comfortable?"
She licked her lips, and gave him her honesty. "No."
"You soon will be--when you get used to it."
When he moved it--the thing--in and out, her head fell forward, her chin dipping onto her chest, the smooth mahogany devise mimicking the motions of intercourse.
"Doyle..." she cried, panicking at the illicit sensation.
"I know this is all new for you. But remember, if you cannot tolerate the plug, you will never accommodate me."
He spoke to her in a calming tone. "You were made for this, Lily."
No, she was made for loving him! But love was a subject they both assiduously avoided speaking aloud. This was sex, not commitment, and they both knew it.
"Now, for the vaginal stimulator," he said, reaching between her legs and placing a wood sprocket inside her so that it rubbed against her clitoris.
"Comfortable?" he asked solicitously again, as he snapped both devices in place on the belt.
"Divine," she murmured. "Heavenly," she whispered, her hips moving. "But how will I use the necessary?"
"You have only to ask, and I shall unlock you."
"Tyrant."
"Yes, but a benevolent one. You will come to me during the day when I am at the office, and I shall fuck you; in the evening, I shall visit you here at the cottage."
"Yes." She moaned, because he had started to play with her again, and the movement of the mahogany devices excited her nerve endings. "Might you perhaps ... that is, if you wouldn't mind ... fuck me now?"
"Too soon. But come to me later this morning and I shall," he said, rising from the bed.
"How will I ever tolerate the separation? Every time I move, I am aroused.
"Will you be free at ten?" he asked formally.
"But that is four whole hours away!"
"I can squeeze our appointment in earlier if you don't mind a certain lack of privacy; I expect a client in my office until that hour. But we could go into the anteroom off my office, I suppose. The walls are thin, but if you keep your screams low, he shouldn't hear..."
"Ten is fine," she snipped.
"Good! I am so pleased we have reached a mutually convenient time. Meet me outside by the maze. I suggest you catnap 'til then." He released her from the silk restraints and helped her recline on her side. "Now sleep," he ordered, kissing her lips.
He whistled as he left.
Her eyes drifted obediently closed, the activity of the night before having worn her out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Not having anything more appropriate to wear, Lily dressed for her first ever tryst in a prim silk day dress with a small horsehair bustle and nary a scrap of superfluous decoration. Save for the beautiful Persian shawl Doyle had given her, she looked as plain and modest as a sparrow.
Her appearance, however, belied her tempestuousness.
Underneath the gown she was nude, and very nearly climactic. The devices inside her excited her with each step she took. Her breasts were already peaked in anticipation of illicit sex and she was quite damp between the legs with carnal expectancy. As soon as Doyle touched her, she knew she would come.
Lily arrived five minutes early for the assignation.
Doyle arrived exactly on time, sauntering down the slope with his long-legged stride. At the entranceway to the maze, he made her a bow.
No kiss was exchanged, as they were not alone.
A small army of laborers that Doyle employed to prepare the various sites of his projects scurried back and forth. Prospective clients and artists of one kind or the other also milled about his property. Discretion was the rule.
"Are you well, Miss Hill?" he asked, smiling at her, then nodding at a passing workman.
"I am very well. Though, I grow impatient, sir."
He took her hand and placed it at the front placket of his trousers; his coat and her shawl obscured this scandalous act from view. "As do I."
Of its own volition, her palm closed around his hard pulsing member. "My, my, Mr. Donovan! I do declare you speak the truth."
"All of what your fingers enclose is for you, Miss Hill."
"Goodness! Would that I am deserving!" she said modestly, though secretly she reveled in the knowledge that she had had caused that fierce swelling.
As another workman walked past, Doyle pressed her close, as though she was perhaps a tad hard of hearing and he wished to relate an architectural proposal to her.
Gamely, she cradled his erection, done while smiling at yet another laborer.
"Don't smile too broadly, my dear, lest you give us away. I am disinclined to have our dalliance bandied about town," he whispered.
"Then why ask me to meet you here, where we are in danger of someone finding us out?"
"I do admit to some subtle exhibitionist tendencies."
He hiked up her gown to the belly, her bared skin shadowed in shawl. "Spread yourself open."
She parted her limbs. "Like so?"
"As well as mild exhibitionism, I also must confess to some fairly severe greed. More, Miss Hill. Much more."
"Your vice is my opportunity." She separated her thighs for him.
His finger dallied over her vulva.
"Why, you lurid young lady! I do believe your cunt is wet. I may have to tell your grandmother about this."
"Oh, please do not!"
"But your honey is absolutely dripping. This is shocking," he blustered. "Such unseemly behavior warrants punishment. Something must be done!"
She battered her lashes. "Will you take a strap to me in the woodshed?"
"And have you climax at the first lash? I should think not," he said, righteously. "I shall have to come up with some other discipline." Taking her hand, he led her inside the green bower.
"We go to the bench in the middle," he told her, hurrying her along.
At the bench, he lifted her skirts once more and unplugged her back and front openings. "Go see
k your relief, young lady." He indicated a break in the evergreens. "The necessity is through there. Leave your gown inside."
"But Doyle, I am naked underneath."
"Such a bad puss." He gave a sanctimonious shake of his head.
"Seriously, someone might see me..."
"You must certainly practice care then. And Lily, as to my seriousness--return to me in that wretched gown, and our meeting today will be concluded posthaste."
"Yes, Doyle. I understand, Doyle." She slipped out through the trees.
When she returned, naked but unobserved, Doyle was seated on the bench, still fully clothed. She stood before him, half bashful, half defiant.
"Good girl," he complimented her state of undress.
"Thank you, sir."
He one-handed the front of his trousers and his huge member lanced upwards.
"Go down on me," he directed.
"Pardon?"
"I am about to explode here, Lily. Put your mouth on my cock, and take off some of the edge. Otherwise, in my need for release, I might hurt you. It's been hours, you know..."
She needed no timepiece to count off the minutes; her body was well aware of how long it had been.
She dropped to her knees in front of the bench, between his spread legs, and touched her tongue to his penis.
He was hot. Silky smooth. Enormous. Dripping with pre-come. His scent wafted to her nose. Good heavens, but she loved his musky maleness. Mouth open, she took sin down her throat.
He spurted with a groan after only two meager thrusts.
She could not have withstood more. As it was, her throat felt bruised, too bruised to...
"Swallow," he commanded, looking through narrowed eyes at her confusion. "The grass is already seeded."
His features took on a slumberous smugness as she took a hasty gulp.
"You took to that like a duck to water," he praised. "You could give lessons."
"Drawing and painting, now fellatio. Have my talents no end?"
"We shall soon see," he drawled, and took her over his lap.
* * * *
As they began, so they passed the remainder of the week.
After such days, it was not surprising that her sleep at night was deep and restful, entirely free of nightmares; only lovemaking interrupted her peaceful slumber.
On their last morning together, Doyle removed her chastity belt and kissed her goodbye at dawn, leaving for his business trip to North Country. Exhausted from lovemaking, she returned to bed as soon as the door closed on his back. She was quite sure she would have slept through the remainder of the day if not for the sound of something coming from the direction of the recently established Memory Garden.
Thinking Henri might have gotten loose when Doyle left earlier and was out there rolling around in the newly planted catnip, she jumped out of bed, pulled on her wrap to cover her nudity, and raced out the backdoor, calling as she went, "You mischievous cat! Wait 'till I get my hands on you..."
At first glance, Lily knew that no cat had caused the destruction before her: every plant in the Memory Garden had been ripped out of the ground and shredded to green bits and pieces.
In the middle of the ruined plants, speared on the prongs of an old, rusted pitchfork, was an envelope.
Willing herself forward, she released the expensive stationary from the pointed ends of the gardening tool and tore open the letter.
The words were chillingly explicit:
YOUR LOVER CAN BE DESTROYED AS EASILY.
The individual who had destroyed the garden knew that Doyle and she had become lovers!
Lily ran back inside the cottage and locked the doors.
The person who sent that hateful note might have been in the garden earlier that morning. He might have hidden in the bushes when she and Doyle were inside her bedchamber making love...
Whoever left the note had stalked her, violated her privacy, and had now threatened her lover.
Who?
The name that sprang to mind was Doyle's own brother, John.
John had volunteered--so unlike him, since he clearly despised her--to repair the wheel on her grandmother's cart, thereby hiding his own earlier tampering. John had installed her grandmother's new electric generating system, the one that had mysteriously failed the night her axle gave way. John must know that Doyle had just left that morning to go out of town on business...
Had John planted that note on the metal tongs of the pitchfork?
But wait! Though Lily had no doubts that John would threaten her, he loved his brother! He would never threaten Doyle!
But were the words on that expensive stationary truly a threat against Doyle? Or, were the words meant as a warning to her not to hurt Doyle?
The meaning might be taken either way.
And either way, this was another secret to keep from Doyle.
The Donovan's were a tight-knit bunch. Their love for one another was as fierce as it was exclusionary. John saw her an outsider, the deceitful bitch who had returned to town to ruin everything. She understood John's resentment. She also understood Doyle's over-protective nature. Torn between John and her, whatever side he championed, guilt would destroy Doyle.
She would never place the man she loved in such an untenable position.
The time had come for her to take her leave of Bar Harbor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lily entered Tony's studio the following afternoon, her lie to cover her precipitous departure duly prepared and rehearsed.
The artist looked up from his canvas. "My dear! This is an unexpected pleasure. We haven't a sitting scheduled for today, have we?"
Shutting the door behind her, she came right to the point. "I have come to say goodbye, Grandfather."
Tony stopped undraping his work. "Grandfather! Victoria told you!"
"Yes. Grandmother told me the whole story before she left town, but I already knew most of it."
"Are you all right, child?"
She nodded. "Thinking back, I realize that you were always there for Grandmother, as well as for me. You took care of us. I am proud to have you as my grandfather."
He wiped at his eye. "I love your grandmother and I love you. It was an honor to look after you both."
Tony set out his brushes like a surgeon would his scalpels. "We never conspired to keep your true heritage a secret, but out of respect for Victoria's husband, we thought it best."
"I am not a child, Tony. I understand what a person will do for love."
His eyes were haunted when they glanced into hers. "And you love Doyle. Which is why I went along with his scheme for you two to meet here at the studio for a clandestine evening alone. Your grandmother will tell you, I am something of a romantic. I could no more keep Doyle away from you than I could stop the truth from coming to the surface." He tssked. "Look at the condition of this brush." Leaving his easel, he went to a shelf against the wall.
Out of her eyeshot, Louisa heard him strenuously blow his nose--her grandfather hated public displays of emotion.
Once again under control, he took a can of brush-cleaning turpentine from the shelf and opened the top.
Caustic fumes immediately poured into the room.
Less than thirty seconds later, Lily felt her lungs painfully constrict. Perspiration beaded on her forehead. Try as she would, she could not draw a deep breath.
"That odor..." she wheezed through burning lungs. "What is it?"
"A special turpentine, distilled especially for me. I use it to clean my brushes. I don't find the less pungent varieties nearly as effective. Some of my brushes are as old as me, you know, and like me, require a doting attention." He looked up, and his smile straightened. "Child, what is it?"
Lily clutched the chair in front of her for support. "I cannot breathe."
"You must be allergic, my dear. Some people are, I am told." He twisted the top back on the can. "The odor will dissipate in less than an hour's time."
She coughed. "You mean there will be no s
ign of the turpentine in an hour?"
His nod affirmed this.
"That night..."
"Which night?"
"The night in my bedchamber, the night Frank Johnson died," she insisted. "I had a severe reaction to some noxious vapors at the cottage, the same sort of reaction I am having right now. My airway constricted." She tried to stay calm but the implications were terribly frightening.
Tony rushed to a window and cranked it open. "Come here, Lily!"
"All these years," she rasped, dragging herself to the fresh air. "All these long and empty years, I thought I had imagined the smell. I thought I was mad."
"You are far from mad. You see, Lily, I was there that night in the cottage. I took the connecting footpath between houses."
The explanation is what she had dreaded to hear. "You ... you were there?" She covered her lips with fingers that trembled. "The wind was gale force--you might have been swept over the edge of the Widow's Walk and killed!"
"There was no other choice. You are my grandchild, you were all alone at the cottage, and I had to check on you. I had to know you were all right, my dear."
"I don't know how you ever made it on foot!"
"It was a struggle, but I had the strength of ten men that night. How could I ever have lived with myself if something had happened to you in that storm?"
"And the caustic aroma?"
"Before racing over to check on you, I was cleaning my brushes. My gloves were still in my back pocket. I had no idea that you had a hypersensitivity to my turpentine."
Lily's knees buckled. She clutched the window frame, clawing at the sill to remain standing. "My God! It was you? Tony--you were in my bedchamber that night?"
"I was not only there; it was I who killed Frank Johnson."
"But how," she gasped. "Why...?"
"After I dragged that maggot off you and you ran outside, Frank pushed me to the floor. He actually had the gall to go after you. I got up, and gave chase. Thankfully, you hid, giving me time to catch up with that little piece of offal. When I addressed him, man to man, Frank had the temerity to insult your grandmother with his vile, contemptuous remarks. Well, my dear, that was the last straw for me. No one insults your grandmother in my presence and gets away with it!"