Dangerous Pleasures (27 page)

Four guardsmen entered now. One of them was very young. “He’s a virgin,” the grizzled older guardman said. “You must be his first woman. We’ll get you good and ready. Then you must suck him to a stand and take him.” Then he unfastened her shackles, and two of them joined her in the bed. The old guardsman spoke.

“Normally a man respects another’s woman, but the master has given us his woman as a treat this night. You are most fortunate, lad. See what fine tits she has. You get to feel her up, and suck on those big rosy nipples.”

The two men in bed with her demonstrated as the boy looked on with excited eyes. He would need little priming, Annie considered.

“And their cunnies can also be given a lick and a suck,” the narrator continued. “Show the lad how, Viktor.”

And the soldier called Viktor dove between her open legs to lick and suck upon her as the old guardsman explained about the sensitivity of her clit. Annie squealed as Viktor sucked it, and he gave her a small clitoral orgasm. She could see over his head that the young guardsman had a decided bulge in his breeches now. The narrator saw it, too.

“Time to give the lad a bit of a lesson, eh, my lady?” He reached down to help her from the bed as the other two guardsmen jumped up. “You know what to do.”

Annie smiled at the younger man. Then, falling to her knees before him, she unlaced his breeches and pulled out his cock. It was small, but had distinct possibilities. She took him into her mouth and began to suck upon him. Her partner groaned as the old guardsman spoke again.

“Now, lad, shortly you will have a great desire to release your juices, but do not. Another time, aye, but tonight you want to know what it is to fuck a woman. Be careful with him, my lady. When they’re green they’re undisciplined.”

Annie nodded as she brought the young man to a good stiff stand; then she released him, drawing him back with her to the bed. They fell upon it, and under his companions’ guidance the male virgin found the opening to her vagina and eagerly rammed himself into her. Annie laughed at the look of wonder that suffused his face. She wrapped her legs about his torso and said, “Now, darling, thrust it back and forth. Go deep and hard. You cannot harm me.” Then, taking his head in her hands, she kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth.

The young man atop her moaned, pulling his head away from her, his eyes glazed with his need and his lust. He pistoned her with vigor as his mates cheered him on. Annie squeezed his hot prick with her vaginal muscles, and his eyes practically rolled back in his head. He screamed as he came, collapsing atop her with a whimper. The others cheered, but then the old guardsman pulled the younger one from her.

Annie saw the gleam in his brown eyes as he did so, looking down lustfully on her lush body. With a smile she beckoned him to mount her. “Come now, and finish what the lad started, if you can,” she teased him.

The senior guardsman unlaced his breeches and pulled out an engorged cock of most sufficient size. “Will this do you, my lady?” he said as he climbed atop her to thrust deep. “I know how to satisfy a wench, and in time the lad will, too. But for now your kindness and generosity should be rewarded.” And he fucked her until they both reached a delicious climax as Annie heard the ping of the closing bell.

What a pity. The Beast had not had time to return and pleasure himself once more. But Annie knew that when she next visited him her fantasy would pick up exactly where this one had left off. The older guardsman would be fucking her to that lovely peak. And then the Beast would return to have his way with her. And she knew he would strap her again, for he seemed to enjoy it, and if the truth be known, so did she. Rolling over, Annie fell asleep.

It had been a very vigorous night, and she was fortunate that it was Saturday, and she would not have to arise early for work. This was Nora Buckley’s weekend to remain on duty at the Spa. One of them always had to be available there for emergencies. Nora, of course, had her apartment. And Annie now had a small studio apartment for herself for those weekends when she watched over the Spa. She loved the elegant bed-sitter with its small galley kitchen and luxurious bath. And she loved all the amenities that came with her employment.

“You can get any of the treatments offered here, and they’re free to you as an employee of the Spa,” Annie told Mary Finch. “They do seaweed wraps, facials, manicures, pedicures, salt scrubs, massages.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Mary said nervously.

“You’ve never done anything like that, have you?” Annie probed. “Hey, I didn’t know about most of this stuff either until I won that contest and then came to work here. The head of the corporation, Mr. Nicholas, likes his employees to be happy and relaxed. He’s very kind.”

“Does he live here, too?” Mary Finch wanted to know.

“No, but he does have an office. It’s kept locked when he isn’t visiting us,” Annie explained. “He comes now and again to see how everything is going. Nora Buckley is an executive in his corporation. She says he’ll move her on to another project once he’s satisfied that the Spa is getting along nicely. Try a manicure, Mary,” Annie tempted her. “We’ll go together, okay? Set up appointments for us with Mei and Pei.”

Reluctantly Mary Finch obeyed Annie’s instructions. And at the appointed time she followed her boss downstairs to the elegant treatment rooms. Mei and Pei greeted the two women cheerfully, sat them down, and set to work. When Mary’s hands had been manicured Mei asked her, “Polish?”

“Oh, no,” Mary said. “I don’t wear polish. I don’t want to draw the wrong sort of attention to myself.”

“Clear polish won’t make you a harlot,” Mei said in practical tones. “Let me show you, Mary Finch. You don’t like, we take off.” Then she proceeded to cover Mary’s nails with clear polish. When she had finished she said, “See? No bad girl. Good girl. Mrs. Miller, now, she a bad girl.” And the manicurist cackled.

Pei and Annie laughed, too.

“Just because I like bright red polish now is no cause to say I’m bad,” Annie said.

“You miss Devyn? Connor say he bet you miss Devyn,” Mei said slyly.

“Connor would lose, then,” Annie replied coolly. “I don’t miss Devyn, and you should know better than to listen to Connor’s gossip. He’s worse than an old lady.”

“He screwing this week’s old lady,” Mei remarked.

“Oh, my!” Mary Finch turned bright red.

“Mei!”
Both Annie and Pei spoke in unison.

“Well, that’s what he say,” Mei said.

“Pay no attention, Mary,” Annie told her assistant. “How do you like the clear polish? I think it’s quite nice.”

Mary nodded. “Me, too. My mom always says I’m too cautious.”

“Well, next time we’re doing pedicures,” Annie told her with a grin. “All this luxury is ours for the taking. It’s a shame not to avail ourselves of it.”

“I suppose,” Mary Finch said softly, glancing at her hands and smiling shyly.

“Wait till she get her first massage,” Mei said, laughing at Mary’s surprised face.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

T
he summer had raced by, and before Annie knew it autumn was looming on the horizon. The girls were home from camp, and it seemed to her that Rose and Lily had grown at least a foot while they were away. Their coltishness was morphing from the preteen years into their teen years as they celebrated their thirteenth birthday two days after arriving home. They had all had a wonderful summer. Amy, who had turned seventeen in June before they left, had matured even more. She had loved being a counselor in training.

“I’m going to be an AC next summer, Mom. The camp director said they are very much looking forward to having me back. His parents ran the camp when you and Aunt Lizzie were there. He says you two were a little wild.”

Annie laughed. “I don’t ever remember being even a little wild. It must have been Lizzie he was thinking about.”

“I think I might like being a teacher,” Amy said.

“Now, there’s a fine and noble profession,” Nanny Violet responded. “My sister was a teacher for many years.”

“How was your visit with her?” Annie wanted to know.

“Fine, dear, just fine. Margaret has a sweet little cottage on the edge of a village near the town of Hereford. We had a lovely time chatting, gardening, and going to all the summer events. I hope to retire there one day myself,” Nanny Violet said. “Now, when is my laddie coming home from the beach?”

Wills arrived just after Labor Day with his grandparents.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Phyllis Bradford remarked to Nanny Violet. “My hat is off to you. He’s a wild little Indian, and I am utterly exhausted looking after him for so many weeks, with Annie’s father doing nothing to help except taking him out on the golf course now and again.”

“You could have brought him home anytime, Mom,” Annie murmured.

“I’m learning to play golf,” Wills announced proudly. “Grandpa is getting me my own set of clubs. He says golf is good for a man.”

Phyllis Bradford rolled her eyes. “He’s made a convert,” she said.

“And Grandpa says I can come play with him this winter in Arizona during the school break,” Wills continued.

“Only if you have good school grades,” Nanny Violet told him. “Golfing with your grandfather is a special treat, and not given out to boys who don’t study properly.”

“You’ve lost weight again,” Phyllis noted. “You’re working too hard, Annie.”

“But I love what I do, Mom,” Annie replied. “Nora Buckley is giving me more and more responsibility. She says if she got sick or couldn’t be there, I would have to know everything there is to know about managing the Spa, because I would be the one in charge, and she’s right. It’s true we’re a small spa, but all of our fifty rooms are booked almost year-round. And the guests’ comfort is our first priority.”

“Listen to you,” Phyllis said admiringly. “You’ve only been there a year, and already you sound so professional. I always knew that Lizzie would be someone special, but I never considered that you’d be anything more than a good wife and mother.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Annie smiled at the backhanded compliment. There would have been a time when she would have resented her mother’s words, but not now. Annie felt sure of herself now. She knew that she was more than just Nat’s widow and the mother of five. She was a woman who was in charge. Except, of course, in the Beast’s castle, and she smiled a secret little smile.

Nathaniel returned home briefly before going back to Princeton. He had spent a summer interning with an environmental group. “I’ve decided I’m going to go to law school when I’ve finished my undergraduate studies,” he said at a Sunday family dinner.

His grandparents smiled and looked proud.

“Yale or Harvard for you,” Lizzie said. “I’ll help.”

“Lizzie!” Annie protested.

“Look,” her younger sister said, “we want him coming out debt-free, and you’ve got the others to think about. Thanks to Nanny, Amy has shaped up, and will go to a good college when she finishes high school. Two years from now she’ll be gone.”

“Gee, thanks, Auntie,” Amy said wryly.

“And we’ve always known the twins were smart.”

“I want to go to veterinarian school,” Rose said.

“I want to go into animal research,” Lily told them.

“And who knows what Wills will turn into when he grows up?” Lizzie said.

“I want to be a spaceman,” Wills piped up, not wanting to be left out.

“See?” Lizzie said. “You’re going to have your hands full, sis.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Annie said.

“What kind of law?” Lizzie asked her elder nephew. “Have you decided yet?”

“Environmental law,” he told her.

“Not a hell of a lot of money in that, Nathaniel,” Lizzie said. “Intern with my firm next summer, and see what we have to offer.”

“You do litigation,” he replied. “I don’t want to do litigation.”

“We do other things, too,” Lizzie said. “The Channel Corporation is my client, and I do all kinds of work for them. It’s fascinating. Intern with us. It will look very good on your application to law school.”

“It’s a good opportunity, buddy,” his grandfather put in quietly.

“Okay, I’ll think about it,” Nathaniel said. “But interning with your high-profile, high-powered firm will be like interning for the devil, as far as I’m concerned.”

Lizzie laughed. “I guess it does look that way, doesn’t it?” she replied. “Big shops like ours are always feared by the little guys.”

In November Nora Buckley told Annie that Mr. Nicholas was so pleased with the way the Spa was performing that he had asked Nora to go to California to check out locations for a second spa. “He wants a small town with the charm of Egret Pointe, rather than someplace trendy, like Monterey or Napa,” Nora said. “I’ll probably have to look in the mountains in the northern part of the state. There has to be some cute little villagey spot where we can find another perfect site.”

“You’ll need easy access to transportation,” Annie remarked. “Or I suppose you could offer transportation to the clients. Make that the only way to get there. It would appear to be even more exclusive if you did that,” she mused.

“That is a wonderful idea!” Nora replied enthusiastically. “Oh, by the way, you’ll be in charge while I’m away, Annie.”

Annie took a deep breath and exhaled.

Nora laughed. “Well, who else did you think was going to manage this place while I’m gone, sweetie? You’re ready. Both Mr. Nicholas and I think you’re ready.”

“Oh, God,” Annie said. “I hope you’re right. What if I screw up, Nora?”

“You won’t,” Nora said. “You know you’re going to be taking over here a lot more now that the corporation has decided to expand these spas. Mr. Nicholas is talking Europe, as well as an island in the South Pacific, and Central America, probably Costa Rica. Because I have the experience from the planning stage to operations I’m going to be the one he’s sending out to choose the sites and oversee everything, the way I did here.”

“What you’re saying is that I could end up being the manager here if I do a good job,” Annie replied slowly, thoughtfully.