by Louisa Trent
Life, that is.
Praying my newly acquired poise did not choose that moment to desert me, I turned toward the door.
“You are not thinking to leave now are you,” he asked, the stranger’s tone now fraught with disappointment. And perhaps, pain physical in origin. Had he stubbed his toe?
“Certainly not, sir. I am not going anywhere,” I said with a free and easy chuckle.
“Thank Christ,” he said soulfully, a prayer of gratitude more than blasphemy.
“So long as you make my wetness worth both our whiles, I shall remain, sir. Can you?”
“That depends.”
Considering his former rabid interest, this new hesitation of his took me aback. “Depends? On what, sir?”
“On whether or not you are here by yourself.” Meeting me by the door, he said against my drop earring, a simple onyx to match the rest of my mourning attire, “No escort in the other room? I should not wish to stab another gentleman in the back.”
Oh. Pooh. After writing him off as a complete and total rake, did this mean the stranger possessed a sense of honor after all?
His tardy recollection of morality could ruin everything. I would never regain my nerve again to do anything so bold and wanton. Whatever this turned out to be, it must happen now!
Turning into his arms, I whispered, “I am presently between lovers.” Not really a lie.
I bit my lip. All right. It was a lie. Not even a genteel lie of omission. An outright lie. And I intended to keep those lies coming. Apparently, I was good at dishonesty. I could add that talent to my list along with blackmail and bullying.
I pressed my achy breasts to his chest.
Dratted corset. I wanted the too-tight contraption gone! By my own instigation, if need be. But would that its disposal be done by him!
I bit my lip all the more. Did men ever take such liberties with women? Did they ever rip underpinnings straight away, tearing the girlish fabric and virginal ribbons and lacey trim suitable for an ingénue but not for a grown woman in the process?
Thrilling!
“Between lovers but still in mourning for your deceased husband, perchance?” he softly interjected.
It was as I suspected…he thought me a grieving widow.
Not a hindrance to the proceedings. Having him think I was pining away for a lost mate would not halt whatever it was that might unfold. And that was all that counted.
“Not really in mourning, sir,” I replied, digging myself a deeper hole with my creative tale-spinning. “He was years old than myself. And ill for some time. No children. If you understand my meaning.”
Fingers crossed that he did, for I was having difficulty in the area. I had only repeated something I had once heard a young widow say of her years older husband.
“I see. Impotent. Still, I am sorry for your loss, madam.”
“Actually, I gained more than I lost with his death, sir. A lovely house, a large sum of money, a secure standing in the community. I had none of those before.” Did that sound hard-hearted?
To make up for that callousness…and please my need for something tactile…I ran my fingers through his thick, tawny-streaked hair. “In the dark, I cannot see your lamentable fairness.”
“Why lamentable? You and I share much the same coloring. Perhaps our likeness is what drew you to me.”
See there! A tactical error! That was what truthfulness achieved.
“Using that logic, sir, I would seek out a lover with the same anatomy as myself. Our likeness there would be more so.”
“Some lovers do share the same anatomies. Boston marriages involve two women, right?” he said smugly.
I had heard of two unmarried women living together in a great friendship and never thought anything of their fellowship. Indeed, I thought spinsters having a “life partnership” through the years a practical antidote to loneliness. Was he implying these women had a physical bond too, just like in a marriage?
I swallowed my gasp. My, but I was uniformed! My ignorance must be dealt with. I was too old to understand so little of life.
Having a connection with anyone, male or female, was a cause of gladness. Many a time, I wished for a bond with either gender. But that sort of emotional intimacy with another human being seemed beyond me.
That made this all the more perfect. A onetime temporary encounter in the dark required no intimacy whatsoever. Nothing would be expected of me after my return to the light.
“Boston marriages.” I nodded my head in approval. “Right you are, sir. As for myself, however, I crave that which makes two lovers different.”
“My cock would factor in there.”
Goodness, but he was forthright. However, I had not been thinking about anatomy. I had been thinking about…thinking about…what had I been thinking about?
Not romance. Definitely not romance. Romance did require a direct emotional closeness. But cocks…
Lacked all subtlety, I soon discovered.
Carnal enlightenment had arrived with a sledgehammer’s blow. The bulge in his trousers, the make he had been so proud of, had not been his tailoring at all, but his cock!
Lord, how slow-witted could I be? And naïve. Terribly naïve. Something else I was too old to hang onto. Past time I rid myself of those.
“Yes, your cock most certainly factors in there,” I said braver than I had ever been before.
“And that, madam, is all that you require from me, all you want from me? Only a fuck? Just a fuck to assuage carnal hunger?”
Well, when he put it like that, and with such articulateness too…
Yes!
I wished to grow into a mature woman of thirty-two years, not for complications in my well-organized life. I wished to escape my castle tower and rejoin the human race, better informed than previously.
But a fuck?
Bring on the smelling salts.
Kisses would have been pleasant. Kisses I could handle. At the ripe old age of thirty-two, I had suddenly developed needs in want of satisfying. Still, small steps. One had to start someplace to rejoin the human race. A fuck felt to me as if I would be jumping in at the middle, not the beginning of my education.
That was me, though, not him. I suspected our mouths joining in the dark would never satisfy a man. Not this man, anyway. Why would he settle for something people experienced in early adulthood…
Except me. I had no such carnal experience. Not with handholding. Not with kisses. Not with embraces. Certainly not with fucks. Admit that, and he would think me not only a liar, which might not bother him, but utterly odd to have gone off with him into this room.
I swallowed my apprehensions. “Yes, just that,” I replied, stumbling mentally over repeating aloud that very bad dock word I knew of but never in my life would permit myself to use. I was not that kind of woman. I was a lady right down to my excruciatingly uncomfortable, boned corset.
“Assuagement of carnal hunger sounds divine, sir.”
“Sounds cold to me,” he grumbled.
My turn to laugh. “Warmth was not my first impression of you either.”
“So I have been told.”
“And tell me nothing else. I have already said too much about myself. As have you. Next we will be sharing childhood bedtime stories. One sort of intimacy smothers another, you know.”
I did not know. Once again, I was inventing this as I proceeded. But it only stood to reason that it would work that way and so I said, “How many couples wed fifty years still chase one another around the dance floor with a gleam in their eye? That gleam is lost in the talk of dyspepsia and what not, is it not?
“Bloody hell, but you are the pragmatic one.”
“Here is more of the same sort of pragmatism: Will removing only my drawers suffice during…” I gulped down all my standards, moral and etiquette both, then forced out “…the fuck?”
Chapter Five
My mother had never given me the “bridal talk”. I never came close to wedding anyone, so why exp
lain the marital bed to me?
Waste of her time.
But one does not remain in the company of street orphans for long and learn nothing.
Pubescent lads were a veritable font of carnal knowledge, all of which they gleefully dispensed to do-gooder spinsters like myself. Shock-value, I suppose. A contest to see if they could make me squirm in discomfort. Short of blocking my ears, I could not possibly have remained completely ignorant while in their presence. Thanks to their brags, I knew what went where during coupling and what might pop out nine-months later as a result. Where I got stuck on was everything in between. For example:
I had learned through rumor and innuendo…and Brian McDowell, a twelve-year old waif of uncertain parentage but specific stealing ability…about an elderly whoremonger who had lost his life through the misfortune of suffering a stroke in a brothel. Apparently, he died after taking a young whore’s cherry. This, after she charged him a small fortune for it.
This confused me. Why would an old gent pay so much for a single piece of proffered fruit? Furthermore, how exactly had the old geezer died?
Brian insisted the elderly whoremonger died of apoplexy following a fit of “carnal excitement.”
I never understood this. What did a cherry have to do with “carnal excitement?”
The story made no sense! Choking on the cherry, yes. Those pits could reap havoc with a person’s windpipe, especially with an elderly person. But Brian made no mention of pits. Only the young whore’s cherry, which he snickered incessantly about. And why eat fruit in a brothel? Were there not better things to do in a house of ill repute?
Perhaps tonight this gent would fill in the blanks…when he was not filling me with cock.
Ugh. So vulgar.
Good! Soon my niceness would be a thing of the past. My virginity with it. I wanted my virginity shattered.
If that was how it was done. Was it?
Not unless the evidence of my virginity was made of glass. Highly doubtful. Dangerous as well, I should think. All those slivers, like daggers, ripping me apart.
Gathering a hunk of his hair, I pulled up on my trophy as I would a stallion’s reins, not to stop his wild gallop, only to slow him down. There was so much to learn and more to remember.
For example…every moment of my first and last time with a lover. These I would commit to memory. Not that I had all night here to do so. A lengthy absence was sure be duly noted and discussed beyond this dark room’s locked door. Eventually. A long time arriving eventually. Though, even then, when my lack of presence was finally noticed, no one could possibly suspect the reason behind my truancy, not with my impeccable reputation. Ah, the usefulness of a boring existence! The nice Miss Malone do anything that smacked of excitement?
Hardly.
I had been pigeonholed, and in that neat little compartment I would remain. Unless I did something drastic to break free of my solitary confinement.
Starting right now.
I gave the strands in my clutches another hard yank. No particular reason why. Just for the sheer hell of it. Just because I could.
The freedom that came of not having to be nice all the time! This man would see me at my most naked, in more ways than one.
“Rough – is that how you like it, little peeper? I ask, not from the standpoint of having any objections. Because, believe me, I do not. I ask because of you. By your own words, your deceased husband was old and feeble. So – unless your lovers since have been more active – rough will hurt you.”
By suggesting I had not enjoyed a lover’s companionship for a while, he had just handed me a ready-made excuse for my untried clumsiness…should he detect it in the dark. Should I take it?
And risk his holding back with me? Of never knowing a man’s true touch, not a carefully orchestrated facsimile?
No censorship! No explanations. A full-out taking.
To achieve this end, I would tell him as little as possible about myself. The more we discussed, the more I would reveal about myself. Not a good idea.
And if as a result he hurt me?
Pain was preferable to feeling nothing, I told myself again. I was so tired of being numb.
I went on the offensive. “Do you intend to talk all night, sir? Or are we here to fuck?” No longer caring about him slowing down, I ceased yanking at his hair.
“Setting parameters is always wise,” he related. “Conversation achieves that end.”
Most disappointing, this sudden philosophical bent of his. Where had my partner in adventuring gone?
Wherever he had disappeared, this would never do. I did not have all night. After all, I was not here to discuss Aristotelian theory. I was taking the advice of the letch, and trying to get myself good and laid. Whatever that signified.
Honestly, where carnality was concerned, I stumbled around in the dark, not knowing what was factual and what was false. I needed some light shone on the subject. With that admitted, getting this person to take advantage of me seemed like a horrible amount of trouble. Amazing how five-month, post-wedding babies were ever conceived with his attitude. He seemed ready to back out of what I had wished be an enlightening experience.
Testing his resolve to continue without setting parameters, I made to move away. “I can now see this was a mistake. You cannot give me what I want, sir. I shall resume my search for an impromptu escapade elsewhere.”
Circling my wrist with his fingers, he brutally pulled me back against him, my bustle flush against his person.
Now, we are talking…
“I can give you what you want, and then some, little peeper.”
I sniffed. “See that you do.”
“Christ. Wait!”
Everything stopped. Again.
“Now what is it?” I asked, this time actually doing it, actually tapping my toe.
Oh, my! Petulance felt utterly divine. No wonder spoiled ingénues tapped and stomped and threw fits, generally carrying on as if they were the only ones in the world.
“We cannot proceed,” he said, sounding anguished to my impatience. “As it so happens, I had no plans for doing this tonight.”
How very vexing! He was indeed bowing out on me.
For once in my polite and well-organized life, I allowed my irritation to show. “What of it?”
“So – I have no rubbers with me. Continue, and there might be unfortunate repercussions from tonight’s activities.”
What did he mean repercussions? And what on blessed earth were rubbers?
Mr. Goodyear’s invention went into automobile tires was all I knew about rubber.
“Venereal disease and contraception cannot be left to chance,” he advised. “A rubber barrier guards against those. I cannot sheathe myself without a prophylactic.”
Oh. Now I understood the alternate meaning of the word rubber. The man-made material would envelop his cock…if he’d had one available, which he said he did not. Not a cock. That was available. A barrier.
Inexperience like mine was not a laudable condition. Why was virginity not held up to ridicule as the ignorance it was?
Stupidity should not be the gold standard to which young girls aspired. Why not cultivate the dispensing of information instead? Avoidance of all discussion created more unwanted children, some of whom landed on the streets of the Red-light District, whoring and stealing, while the lucky ones ended up in a good orphanage, where they would at least be fed and clothed. Not loved, of course, the central problem of warehousing children.
Already, my information on the subject of carnality was growing. As well it should at my advanced age. I now realized that caution was required during an escapade of this nature. Unforgiveable that only now did I take disease and conception into consideration, and that was at this man’s instigation.
In my own defense, I was not an irresponsible person. Far from it. But ignorant of all aspects of carnality, I could not possibly know what I should have made sure of from the very beginning. Plus, all of this had happened so fast! A sp
ur of the moment madness over my increasingly empty existence.
My mind was not working properly. In evidence, not once had I taken into account that I might end up far worse off after this escapade than before.
Loneliness could be dealt with in other ways than this!
Disease…bringing a child into the world…both would alter my life in untold ways. Had I been better prepared, I would have understood these issues were far too serious to brush aside in a quest for carnal knowledge.
“I must leave, sir. This was an idiotic idea. Forgive me for leading you on, for allowing you to think I would engage in careless promiscuity.” I tugged at my arm to free myself from his grasp.
I thought him a gentleman. Naturally, I assumed he would release me immediately.
My assumption proved mistaken, but on how many fronts? Granted, he did not release me. But did that make him not a gentleman?
By virtue of narrow definition, he was here tonight, attendance at an event by invitation only. He might be a cad, but he was a cad who was a guest, making him a gentleman by society standards.
Frankly, his refusal to let me go excited me all the more. What did that make me?
When he laid his sculptured lips to the side of me neck and nuzzled the sensitive spot under the earlobe, I no longer cared what that made me. I practically purred in appreciation. Then, when I was languid with acquiescence, he did the unthinkable.
He walked me through what he was doing to me:
“I am prodding you from the rear with my cock.”
This I already knew. Not an accident then?
“Now, I am cupping your bosom – the left breast – in my hand.”
His itinerary was silly. It was also necessary. Regretfully, I could not feel his touch due to the stiffness of my undergarments. Nor could I see what he was doing in the dark. Nevertheless, I did the expected thing and gasped at the dual advance on my person…once it was explained to me
And what if, as a result of a myriad reasons not to continue, I pulled away from him, called a halt to everything, suggested we discussed ethics instead, like two Aristotle scholars?
In my estimation, his fury in me would be justified. Indeed, I think he would be correct in calling me a tease. However – the fault here was not entirely with me, the woman. Blame rested elsewhere too.