Improper Relations

by Juliana Ross

  To end things, now, was unthinkable. And though Leo had made no promises, had made no intimation of finer feelings toward me, I trusted him. He would do his best to keep me safe, I knew, and if we were found out, I was certain he would help me.

  Was it worth the risk? The very real prospect of ruin and penury?

  Yes. Though I might be damned for it, my answer was yes.

  Chapter Four

  At precisely two minutes past three o’clock the next afternoon, my mending basket hanging from the crook of my arm, I left Aunt Augusta to her nap and forced myself to walk as slowly as possible to the library.

  While dressing that morning, I’d found myself taking extra care with my hair as I brushed and plaited it. Fortunately I’d remembered, just in time, that I could do nothing differently, no matter how much I might want to please him. I must appear the same drab nonentity I’d always been, and that meant pulling my hair into the same unbecoming style I’d worn, at Aunt Augusta’s direction, every day for the past five years.

  My hair was the only truly beautiful thing about me. It had never been cut, and fell below my waist in thick, tumbling waves. It was auburn, so dark a red that it looked brown in most lights, and while my husband had thought it common—”People will think you’re Irish,” he had once grumbled—I loved it.

  Perhaps, one day, I would free it from its pins and allow Leo to see it.

  I encountered no one on my walk to the library, not even one of the servants. I let myself in, holding my breath in case the door decided to squeak, but its hinges had been well oiled and my arrival was as discreet as I’d hoped.

  I looked to the chair in front of the fire, but he wasn’t there. My heart tumbled in my chest, but then, hearing a rustle from above, I looked up.

  Leo was seated on the bench in the alcove, the same bench where I’d watched him and Ida. “Will you come up? Don’t forget to lock the door.”

  In seconds I was at his side.

  He took my mending basket and set it on the floor, then patted the spot beside him on the bench. Once I was seated, he bent his head to mine and spoke softly against my ear. “I couldn’t stop thinking of you today. Couldn’t stop thinking about last night. How beautiful you looked when—”

  At that I felt a flare of irritation, for I knew it was impossible for him to desire me so ardently. “There’s no need for flattery, Cousin Leo.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I’m not pretty. I never was pretty, not even when I was young. I know myself to be plain, and I’m untroubled by that fact.”

  “I don’t think you plain, Hannah.” He tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear, his touch sending a shiver of awareness along the tendons of my neck. “How can you be plain with such pretty eyes? They’re the loveliest shade of brown, you know. Dark and velvety. And your mouth is perfect, tiny but so lush.” His thumb brushed against my bottom lip, so fleetingly I might have imagined it.

  “You are pretty,” he continued. “It’s your dress that is plain. That, and you pull your hair back so severely. No one looks beyond it. All they see is a little brown sparrow. I alone know the truth about you.”

  “You’re kind to say such things, but you needn’t bother. I’ll do as you ask,” I told him. “I’m too curious to stay away.”

  “Very well, then. What do you want to know? What do you want to do?”

  I had thought about this many times in the hours since we had parted. “I want to do what Ida did, yesterday, when she knelt before you and took your…your cock in her mouth. I don’t know what it’s called, the thing that she did, but that’s what I want.”

  His hand, which had been tracing the curve of my ear with a single finger, stopped abruptly. “The accepted term is fellatio,” he said, his voice strangely hoarse.

  “I want to do that.”

  “Are you certain? I hadn’t thought to progress so quickly—”

  “I am,” I said, relishing my newfound recklessness. “I want it.”

  He hesitated a moment, his expression unreadable. Had I horrified him? But he’d seemed happy enough when Ida had been so bold.

  Then he smiled, and I knew I pleased him still. “You’ll need to kneel before me. Take this cushion and place it under your knees. No need to suffer. We’re not in church, after all.”

  Ignoring his profane comment, I knelt on the cushion. As Ida had done, I reached up to unbutton his trousers. My hands were trembling, so this took me some time, but Leo didn’t complain. Next I unfastened his braces, which allowed me to pull his trousers low on his hips, so low I could see the pristine white linen of his smallclothes. His penis was already erect, pushing needfully against the fabric.

  “If you want, you can begin by using your hand,” he said. “You don’t have to put your mouth on me until you feel ready.”

  I made no response. Instead, I unbuttoned his drawers, grasped his cock as firmly as I dared and began to stroke up and down its length, just as I had the night before. Long moments passed, punctuated only by the occasional grunt of contentment from Leo. I fixed my gaze on my hand and marveled at the way he grew and hardened with my every movement.

  A low cough interrupted my reverie. “Do you feel ready to use your mouth?” he asked.

  I nodded, though I was more than a little nervous at the prospect of kissing him so intimately.

  “Begin by licking it, just as you would a sweet. The ridge, at the head. And the very tip…oh, God…”

  His words trailed off in a deep growl of satisfaction, which had the effect of emboldening me. I opened my mouth wide and sucked in the entire head of his cock, letting my lips tighten over the ridge that defined it, then pulling back slowly. Next, I circled the ridge with my tongue before sucking him back in again. I did this over and over, loving the way he felt in my mouth.

  “Are you certain you’ve never done this before?” he asked, gasping a little, and I could hear how his breathing had quickened. I pulled away for a moment, just long enough to allow myself to look up at him, and was rewarded by the glint of excitement I glimpsed in his eyes.

  In that instant, I felt a spark of power kindle within me. Somehow, despite my inexperience, despite his dauntingly vast store of experience, I was pleasing him. The last of my inhibitions melted away, leaving nothing but a limitless swell of possibilities and pleasure to be captured and savored.

  I kept moving my hand up and down, just as Ida had done, and my mouth never stopped its exploration of the head of his cock, but it wasn’t enough for me. So I took a deep breath, opened my mouth so wide that the muscles of my jaw protested, and took in as much of him as I could manage.

  His cock was thick and long, certainly much bigger than his cousin’s had been, and I could only reach halfway down the length of it before its tip was bumping against the back of my throat.

  “Easy, there,” he soothed, and I felt his hand caressing my hair. “Don’t try to take all of me in your mouth. Just go as far as you can and let your hand do the rest.”

  I complied, quickly finding a rhythm that had him groaning, but still I wanted more. So I relaxed the muscles in my throat, willing them to comply, and surged forward. I wasn’t able to take all of him in, only another inch or so, but it had a galvanizing effect on him.

  “Christ, Hannah—this is perfect. You are perfect. You were made for this. Don’t stop, whatever you do…don’t stop,” he begged me.

  I took his cock into my mouth again and again, reaching a little farther each time, though my jaw was sore from the effort of having to hold my mouth open so wide. Between my legs, I could feel a dampening, even a slight trickle of moisture, and the pressure of longing had returned to torment me. But still I kept up the rhythm, hoping to please him, hoping to bring him that elusive moment of bliss.

  “Hannah, I’m going to come,” he muttered. “Let me pull away�
��I’ll spend in my handkerchief.”

  I ignored him.

  “Oh, God, I’m going to come in your mouth—forgive me,” he cried out, and then I felt a rush of liquid on my tongue, hot, salty bursts of it. I swallowed it greedily, loving the unfamiliar taste.

  His hands were in my hair, clutching at it, pulling my carefully coiled plaits and chignon askew, but I didn’t care. Nothing mattered, nothing apart from the feel of his cock in my mouth and his seed in my throat.

  At last the frantic pulsing in his cock subsided, and I drew back reluctantly, letting my hand fall away at the same time. I knelt before him, my hands folded in my lap, and tried not to think about what I’d just done.

  I could hear him pulling up his trousers, fastening the buttons, adjusting his braces. And then he pulled me into his arms and settled me with my face in the crook of his shoulder.

  “Thank you, Hannah,” he murmured, his mouth pressed to my hair. “That was delightful, in every possible way.”

  I wanted to offer my thanks in return, but instead I cuddled against him, willing the blushes to fade from my cheeks, letting my heartbeat slow as I felt the calming touch of his hand against my hair.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yes?” I replied.

  “It’s your turn now.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” he said, setting me on my feet. “I need you to remove your drawers.”

  “Remove my—”

  “I want to see you. Take them off.”

  And so I did as he asked, once again amazed that he could compel me to behave in such a daring and wicked way. He grasped one end of the bench, angling it out from the alcove. Then he knelt at the end that was jutting out, not bothering with a cushion as I had done.

  “I want you to recline on the bench, with your head at the far end and your bottom right here, in front of me. Put the cushion under your head. Are you comfortable?

  “I’m going to pull back your skirts, just up to your waist.” There was a rush of cool air as my naked thighs were bared to his sight, and the mortifying knowledge that he could see everything.

  A whisper of air ruffled the hair between my legs. When I realized it was his breath, I wondered if I would die of shame. But my heart kept beating, kept pounding, and after a few long, silent seconds I felt the featherlight touch of his fingers on the skin of my inner thighs. His caresses made me shiver, with alarm as much as delight.

  His touch moved inward, following the crease of my thighs before hovering over the soft curls between my legs. He was petting me, gently combing through the hair, tracing the half-hidden folds beneath. And then his fingers begin to push between the folds, ever so gently, and I felt a shock of cooler air as he parted me.

  I bit my lip—would I survive this waiting, fearing, wondering?—and felt the ticklish warmth of his breath as he spoke again.

  “I’m going to kiss your cunny, Hannah, and use my tongue on you. Don’t fight it, sweet. Just let it happen.”

  It was fortunate he’d thought to warn me, otherwise I would have jumped out of my skin when he first kissed me there. I fought to lie still, as I knew he wished—perhaps it wasn’t meant to be as pleasurable as the other things we’d done. As long as he enjoyed himself, I thought, I didn’t really mind.

  But then his tongue brushed against that tiny, sensitive nub that had been hidden between my legs for so many years, and a shock of awareness fizzed through my blood. It felt good. Very, very good.

  I couldn’t help wriggling a little, just to show him I wanted more. He responded by circling the spot with his tongue, at first lightly, but then with increasing fervor. As his tongue kept up its intoxicating rhythm, I could feel his fingers just below, tracing the spot where I opened. I flinched, just a little, when he pushed his forefinger inside me. One finger became two, then three, and the pressure of it was so good, so satisfying, so right.

  Still his tongue lapped at me, flicking the spot, teasing me so that I had to bite into the back of my hand to still my cries. It was too much—I couldn’t bear it—and then he began to suckle on it, and I thought I would faint then and there. The knot of bliss he’d created drew tight, so tight I couldn’t breathe, and then it loosened in an overpowering rush, pulling me free of the bench, of Leo’s mouth, free to float on ripples of never-ending bliss.

  Long minutes passed before I came back to myself, though it might only have been seconds.

  “Hannah?” he murmured, and I could feel the whisper of his words against my thigh. “I meant to tell you earlier—I’m leaving for Town tomorrow morning.”

  Stark, cold reality swept over me. He was leaving. Of course he was leaving.

  “But I could return in a week or two. We could continue our lessons then.”

  “If that is what you wish,” I answered, though I yearned to beg him to stay. “I suppose I should go back upstairs.”

  “It’s only just four o’clock. Don’t rush off. Talk to me, Hannah. Tell me of your life here. We’ve enough time for that.”

  But I didn’t want to talk about my pitiful life, for that would mean I’d have to think about it. “What’s the word for that place between my legs?” I asked him instead, and was rewarded with a burst of laughter.

  “Anatomists would call it your vulva.”

  “That’s not what you called it—you said something else.”

  “Cunny? I suppose I did. Not a word you should ever repeat outside this room, sweet.”

  “So cunny is the place—that sensitive place between my legs?”

  “Ah, no. That’s your clitoris. I gather there are learned men who say it doesn’t exist. But I think we’ve proved them wrong.”

  Chapter Five

  He left before breakfast the next morning. For the first fortnight of his absence I was untroubled; he’d said he might be gone as long as a week or two. My duties with Aunt Augusta kept me occupied during the day, and though I was bothered by frequent twinges of desire, no one around me seemed to notice. When my drawers caught and pulled against my cunny, making me gasp, I had the presence of mind to cough. Soon I was coughing often enough that Aunt Augusta ordered me dosed with her syrup for catarrh, a most unpleasant experience indeed.

  The rasp of my chemise against my nipples was an even worse torment. Every time I moved, it seemed, I could feel them stiffening against the linen, and images of Leo at my breast, suckling and nipping and tickling, would pop into my brain, no matter what else I was doing.

  At first I resisted the act of self-pleasure that Leo had shown me, certain I could wait for his return. But a third week passed, then a fourth, with no word from him, and I grew frantic with worry and suppressed desire. Had he tired of me already? Perhaps he’d found another lover, a woman of experience who knew how to please him.

  Soon I was waking in the middle of the night, my sheets and nightgown in a tangle around my legs, the place between my legs throbbing with need. It was unbearable—I could wait no longer—so I did as he’d shown me. When the great house was dark and silent and cold each night, I would hide under my bedcovers, close my eyes and allow myself to dream.

  As I touched myself I thought of his cock in my hands and in my mouth, and I remembered the feel of his mouth between my legs, licking and sucking at me until I came. In my fantasies I became Ida, and he was bending me over the table in the library, pulling my skirts out of the way, pushing roughly into me, fucking me soundly, and the sight of it, behind my clenched-tight eyes, gave me orgasms night after night.

  But then, after the beauty of my release had dulled and died, I would still be alone in my cold, drafty room, shivering alone in my bed, and I would miss him more than ever. I’d never been more lonely, ne
ver more alone.

  And then, as my hope faded to twilight, Leo returned.

  I had no knowledge, no presentiment of his arrival—he was simply there, one morning at breakfast, exactly thirty-eight days after he had left. Ignoring me, as I knew he had to do. Or perhaps it reflected a change of heart.

  I murmured a good morning to all, curtsied to the marquess and seated myself at some distance from the others. Plucking a slice of toast from the rack at my end of the table, I introduced the merest glaze of marmalade to its surface and ate as quickly as good manners allowed.

  I dared not look at Leo, but I could feel his presence as strongly as if he were sitting next to me. He and his father and brother hardly spoke, concentrating instead on their plates of curried kidneys, cold mutton and kedgeree. What passed for conversation seemed to revolve around their plans for the day.

  I listened, my heart stuttering, and learned that Leo intended to ride to Abbotsbury, a village some five miles distant. Perhaps he had a mistress tucked away in one of the ancient thatched cottages that lined its pretty lanes.

  I rose from the table, made my farewells to those still gathered and departed the breakfast room as quietly as I had entered. No one so much as nodded in return.

  When I was halfway across the hall I heard a door open and close, then the echo of boots on the marbled pavers. Someone was approaching. I felt a rush of warmth behind me, the brush of a hand against mine. I turned to look, but Leo was already departing, bounding through the great house’s entrance doors, which had been drawn wide for him by a liveried footman.

  Only then did I realize he’d tucked a scrap of paper into my hand. It took every ounce of discipline I possessed, but I resisted the urge to look at it, there and then, as I hurried up the grand sweep of the stairway. Instead I continued to Aunt Augusta’s rooms, begged her permission that I might collect a fresh handkerchief before we began work, and hastened to my bedroom.