The Acquisition

by Louisa Trent

  That was a rebuke if ever she'd heard one. "Unguent?" she scoffed. "You are mistaken. No unguent this, sir. Merely a perfumed oil. Gentlemen do so enjoy a scented cunt," she said, intentionally using the crudity.

  "I do not."

  She looked around and up at him. "No? Then, I will certainly not use it until I am once again in the presence of a gentleman."

  A pause, then, "I will leave shortly for the docks."

  She turned completely about. "When shall I expect your return?"--a cloaked way of asking when she should expect to earn her money again.

  "I will be busy all day today, and most likely into tomorrow. The barrel problem."

  "Most ship owners do not handle small nuisances like leaky barrels themselves," she offered.

  "I do. The Suzanne is due to leave port high tide on Wednesday, and she must be made ready. After that, I must attend to business in Boston. I should be gone four weeks." His eyes fixed on her nipples. "Possibly less." His expression went taut as his gaze dropped to her thighs. "Three weeks if I push."

  "Much can be said for pushing." She opened her legs.

  His mouth twisted. "Yes ... well ... ahem ... I can conduct some of the business here just as easily as there, and I think all things considered, I shall. Would you kindly instruct Peggy to have enough food on hand to entertain a few guests--my business associates and their wives, here at the house--in three weeks' time?"

  "Certainly," Harry replied, knowing she would do no such thing. She would handle the entertainment of his guests herself: Peggy would be far too overwhelmed to put together the kind of elaborate entertaining a wealthy and prosperous ship owner like Captain Kane would be expected to provide. She would plan her menus while he was gone. It would take her mind off missing him. She mustn't ever miss Joshua again.

  "During my absence, you should expect visits from the dressmaker. I will want you outfitted quickly."

  "Very well." She replied, her hand pushing down her belly to her opening. "Would you care for a quick one, Captain Kane, before you start your busy day?"

  "No thank you. That is not why I am here."

  She laughed. "Oh, surely it must be! Now, how would you like it? Shall I drop to my knees at your feet? You seemed to have liked my mouth on you well enough last night."

  "I said--no thank you."

  That is what he said, but he spoke the words not into her eyes but at a point much lower, the direction of his gaze more than a little telling.

  Because of Joshua's protection and influence, she had remained innocent of the grim realities of living in a rough whaling seaport; anyone who had interfered with her would have had to answer to the man for whom she now served as whore. Behind his back, Josh was called names, disgusting and loathsome epithets, but no one called him coward, and no one disrespected his mother. Harry sensed he had hated his mother's profession, but he never spoke ill of the woman who gave him life, nor did he allow any one else to. There were rumors, unconfirmed rumors, that he had once very nearly killed a man who had insulted his mother. He might have hated what his mother did, but he had loved her.

  While she was at Ruby's, Harry had learned that Joshua was one of the regulars. Naïve at eighteen, this information didn't sit well with her. The idea that her hero had paid to have women see to his baser urges ... or that he was even in possession of base urges at all ... had made her rethink her view of him. Things get around in whorehouses, and every whore to the last at Ruby's had good things to say about Joshua and his lovemaking. He was never rough, paid well for what he wanted, and had a lusty appetite, needing it more frequently than any man any of the whores had ever known.

  This morning, his features appeared strained, and she took his tenseness as her personal failing. She always put in a good day's work for a fair day's wage, always gave as good as she got. Always! And as he was giving her a fortune for the use her body, she was not about to shirk her end of the arrangement.

  She turned and walked away, back towards the bed.

  "Oh, sir, you have such a lovely thick cock," she purred and bent over the bed, her feet on the ground, her upper body lifted up from the soiled bedding on her arms, which allowed him the freedom to play with breasts should he choose. It was a whore's positioning. "Your cock is so big and hard. Do me hard, sir. Deep and hard. I want your big, hard, thick luscious cock inside my cunt."

  A sound came from behind her, a vocalization she could not identify. But whatever it was, her owner did take her at her word that she wanted it deep and hard, his hand wound itself tight into her hair, his mouth bit the side of her neck, and his cock, which felt indeed big and hard inside his trousers, pressed against her.

  "I have a yen for something different this morning," he said, his finger prodding at her back opening, deep and hard.

  She forced her body to relax as the digit entered, joined soon after by another. The enormous pressure, so charged with the forbidden, sent an exultant shiver from her anus to her vagina. "Harder," she grated out.

  The two fingers began to drive up into her, working her hard and deep, and she moaned in excitement. "Harder!" she ordered.

  "Christ," he rasped, and did her harder still, one hand at her front now too, a finger entering her vagina, searching and finding her clitoris.

  It hurt, this new invasion, and she liked the hurt, gloried in it; there was something very appealing about the pain. "Mmm, oh yes, mmm."

  Her body started to shake and shudder. She couldn't help it. Pleasure or pain, she could no longer tell. Giving over to it, she came on a high-pitched scream, like the most common of dock slatterns.

  Finally, she was measuring up to Joshua's low opinion of her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "If I can get a good price, I would like to add another one or two whalers to my fleet this year. Do any of you gentlemen know of a owner fallen on hard times, who might be willing to give me a good price?"

  Cornelius Tucker, the whaling merchant, responded. "There's the widow Monroe, out of Marblehead. It's my understanding that since the death of her husband, she's run the business to ground. You could wed your way into that deal. She's of childbearing age. The fertile side of thirty, and a looker too. One child from the marriage. Understandable, as the husband was twenty years her elder, and they were only wed two years before his death. It's said she's sweet-tempered. With looks and docility, she won't stay long on the block. If you're interested in staking a claim, best get your bid in quick before you lose an opportunity of a lifetime. "

  Josh gave a nod, already making plans to meet the Widow Monroe. Not that he would ever consider marrying his way into a business venture, but he would be a fool not to consider all other available avenues to obtain those whalers. But when Mrs. Smith came towards him wearing one of the new gowns he had instructed the dressmaker to sew during his three-week absence from New Bedford, a silk mauve designed to emphasize the fullness of her bust and narrowness of her waist, all plans to meet the widow were forgotten.

  His little whore looked delightful, swaying along the garden path but a few yards away from where he stood with his group of business associates. Josh patted himself on the back for ordering the gowns made sans bustle. He cared not a whit that current fashion decreed the enhancement of the derriere, he wanted to see the natural line of Harry's backside, which was seductive all on it own without the absurdity of added padding. Her derriere certainly seduced him, as did the rest of her.

  Her pleasure had become his obsession.

  Sex. He had never hungered for it as much as he hungered for it now with her. If she would only climax with him, delve all the facets of sensuality alongside him, his companion in carnality--wouldn't that be the stuff of rapture? Memories like that would sustain him when Harry moved from him to the next man, the one with the fattest purse.

  Three weeks ago, he'd had to tear himself away from Harry in that sparsely furnished bedchamber, and he hadn't seen her since, not until this very moment.

  She was almost, not quite, abreast of him an
d his business associates now. His heart actually hammered in anticipation. He was unable to concentrate, the conversation going on around him faded into the background, no more than an irritant, like a bee that cannot be gotten rid of. Harry was all-important.

  He had missed her, dammit! Knowing she slept in his home without him had been its own form of torture. The only thing that had kept him going was the knowledge she did sleep in his home, even if without him. Had she slept naked under the covers on that narrow servant's cot?

  She had come abreast of their little group now; any moment she would look up and smile at him...

  And there she went, eyes lowered, ignoring him in the same manner she ignored the gentlemen he was with, no difference.

  How dare she ignore him! He might have been a hunk of stone garden statuary, for all the attention she paid him.

  Her deference infuriated him. Had she smiled at his business associates, given them a flirtatious wink, he would not have been nearly as angry. He would simply have chalked up the behavior to her whoring background, and let it go at that. But no, she didn't do this. She didn't smile and wink and flirt; Harry had behaved like the best of well-trained servants.

  Harry was not his servant! She didn't hold any respectable position in his household. In fact, he had left strict instructions for Peggy to take charge of this evening's entertainment. Peggy had served the meal, but she could not have cooked those fancy French dishes; she could not have made things run smoothly. He owed his household's well-greased efficiency to Mrs. Smith.

  And that filled him with rage. Harry was his whore, and as such, the very least she could have done was spare him a smile and a wink on her way to wherever it was she was going. Where the hell was she going, anyway?

  He stalked her with his gaze, noting the liquid way she moved, knowing her body moved that way because it was not constricted. Mrs. Smith ... his fetching whore ... wore no whalebone under her new gown. Without a confining corset, her lush, firm breasts shifted ever so subtly with her steps. And her hips! Without a bustle, her bottom undulated as she went on her merry way. Where was her merry destination?

  His garden shed!

  She opened the door.

  What did she want in there?

  Honey! It had to be the honey. Harry must need honey for the dessert she had made--not Peggy--to go with the après dinner coffee and tea.

  Spectacular meal enjoyed, the ladies had retired to the drawing room to gossip, while the gentlemen had adjourned to Josh's study for a glass of port and a discussion of business, then out to the gardens where they could smoke their cheroots without offending female sensibilities.

  Joshua stamped his cigar underfoot, turning his full attention briefly back onto his guests. "If you will excuse me, gentlemen? I must have a word with my housekeeper. I will rejoin you and the ladies inside in the dining room." He gestured to the side door. "If you would please enter the house though that entrance? For some reason the bees are active tonight, and should you pass near the apiary and garden shed, you might well get stung."

  With a formal dip at the waist, Josh left his associates to seek out Harry.

  He didn't close the door to the garden shed after him, partially to see her in the dark interior, partially for another motivation entirely.

  Too busy making her selection from the various crocks upon the shelf, Harry failed to acknowledge his arrival.

  He made a sound.

  She looked up. Eventually.

  "Oh, sir," she said evenly. "You startled me."

  She didn't look even mildly startled to him; his presence left her sublimely unaffected.

  "What? No welcome home kiss for the master of the house, Mrs. Smith? Considering the amount I am paying you, I would have expected you to fly into my arms, copious tears raining down your face." Crocodile tears, to be sure, but she could at least have put on an act.

  "Welcome home, sir," she said, like the most servile of servants. Not even a peck on the cheek did he get!

  "Are you so indifferent to my homecoming, madam, that you cannot at least favor me with a glance?" he said peevishly.

  "Not indifferent, sir, merely careful. An intimate regard is exceedingly improper in a servant. Had I addressed you before your guests, the salutation would have constituted grounds for immediate dismissal."

  "Since we are alone now," he began, his frustration growing by leaps and bounds, "I expect you to behave with somewhat less discretion."

  He went to her. Bending down, he took the hard and disapproving line of her lips with his.

  It was their first mouth-to-mouth kiss. His mouth had been all over other places, but not since that night seven years ago, had he kissed her mouth.

  She trembled. Was she remembering too?

  She pulled away. "Sir, this is most unwise."

  "I am not paying you to lecture me on what is and what is not wise, Mrs. Smith," he said sternly. "This time, when I kiss you, I want your mouth open and reciprocating." He lowered his jaw once more.

  He tongued the seam of her lips--not locked this time, simply closed--and made his way inside.

  It was better than sweet, the way she kissed him back. He wanted more.

  Lifting her arms around his neck, he clutched her to him, her lush body melting into his hard body. Now, this was a homecoming!

  Fool! He thought, breaking it off forthwith. Hers was but a paid welcome.

  "Remove your gown," he ordered, irritated for forgetting that this was business, not affection.

  "M-my gown?"

  "That is what I said," he replied.

  "But I am nude under my gown, apart for the silk hose and garters."

  It was better than he thought. The imagery she provoked! Was there anything more stimulating than the thought of a peeled down female, naked save for garters and silky hose? "What color are the garters?"

  "Pink. Bright pink."

  Vulva pink, he had instructed the dressmaker.

  His cock jerked within his trousers. "Carry on, Mrs. Smith."

  "But your guests are right outside in the gardens."

  No, they were not. Josh could see the backs of black coats file to the side door, just as he had instructed--no one intentionally leaves themselves open to the possibility of a bee sting. They were alone outside; only Harry didn't know that. How far would she take this servile routine of hers?

  "Let us not pretend that you have never before been nude in the company of men, Mrs. Smith." He recalled her calling another group of associates into his study. She had been completely unconcerned when they had charged the room to look her over. Now that he was the one calling for the display, she didn't seem to like it nearly as much. Why was that? Could it be her dislike had something to do with him holding the upper hand?

  In his fury over her earlier indifference, Joshua relished that superiority. "You said you could please me," he reminded her. "Our contract is based on that premise. This pleases me."

  "But the gentlemen..."

  "Ignore their presence, as you ignored me in the gardens."

  Her features tightened, her eyes darted to the open door, which afforded her no view of the gardens, not from the angle where she stood.

  In persuasion, he bent and kissed the hollow in her throat, and as her pulse hammered, felt her capitulate to her own wanton nature.

  "You know you want to do it. You enjoy men looking at you. Admit it! You like them to admire your body. Why pretend otherwise?" He took her lips again, and when they clung, he palmed her unfettered breasts over the silk of the gown, petting her half-hearted resistance away. By the time he was done, she was panting, as malleable to his wishes as her nipples were hardened to his touch.

  The usual row of buttons and hooks ran the length of the mauve silk, upwards from the dip at the spine to the nape of Mrs. Smith's lovely neck. Had he been her lover, not merely someone in a long line of male someones who had bought and paid for her services, he would have helped her with the nuisance of disrobing. But he was not her lover, and gentl
emen do not help whores disrobe.

  But he would watch. Which he did, avidly, as she reached behind her to undo the row of buttons and hooks, the release of which she accomplished with a surprising self-sufficiency. When her busy fingers stilled, her arms fell back to her sides. "Must I, sir?"

  "Drop the gown forward," he said, pouncing at this, an opportunity of a lifetime: Never before had he been able to exercise authority over Harry.

  "Oh please, sir, might we not retire to a bedchamber?"

  "I intend to have you, Mrs. Smith. Right here, right now. No further delay. Do you begrudge me my sport?"

  "N-no."

  "Then why do you hesitate?" he asked, refusing to allow either her rosy blush or her bashful glance toward the door to move him. Her shy expression was all part of the performance. But this show was all his.

  She licked her lips. "Very well."

  Like a petal falling from a dusky rose, the silk bodice of her mauve gown drifted to her waist.

  Bare, her large breasts jutted full and high, the tips flagrantly upright and hard, so red, they competed with the color of her hair. The exhibitionistic nature of the adventure arousing her, Harry fairly vibrated with lust. Her lively, mischievous eyes bounced, her gaze met his, challenging him. No longer servile, she became his partner in this.

  Where did all that lust go when he was inside her?

  No doubt she enjoyed foreplay, the thrill of seduction, but she only suffered him when he was buried inside her.

  Not this time!

  Josh reached for the crock behind her on the shelf, removed the cover, and dipped a finger in, applying the scooped honey first to one lengthened nipple, and then to the other, coating them diligently. Round and round, his finger went, until those turgid red nipples glistened, sticky and golden, shining in the narrow band of light from the open door.

  He lowered his mouth. Took a teat in, licking and sucking noisily, biting her, just a bit, giving his sweetheart only a little pain, no more than he could handle.

  Her head fell back, her throat arched, her mouth gaped, soft mewing sounds ushering forth. Christ, but Harry was beautiful when she was pained. Why had he never realized before she needed an edgier sort of courting?