Clarissa’s body lifted and she leant her head back on the pillow, stretching the pale slender line of her neck. Her fingers worked furiously until she cried out, her hips pumping, her thighs trembling. Then she slumped into the bed, breathing fast, her lush peony lips parted in blissful ease.
Marldon watched, grinning with satisfaction. He could not have hoped for a better bride. Not only was she beautiful, particularly when aroused, but she had a deep seam of wantonness that was begging to be tapped. While a frigid widow who left him alone might have been easier, this was going to be much more fun.
Clarissa sat up sharply, her lips curving in a smile of sly resolve. Her eyes flashed about the room, then she sprang to her feet and began tugging open drawers, overturning the silks within, pulling them out in rippling streams. She seemed not to notice or care that the contents were her own.
Alec frowned in confusion. What the hell was she up to?
She snatched up a silver-backed hairbrush from the
dressing table and circled her fingers around the slim handle. She eyed it thoughtfully, before tossing it on to a heap of petticoats. She grabbed a hand mirror and repeated the process before standing still, hands on hips, gazing about the room. Then her mouth twisted with devious pleasure. She rushed to the fireplace, stepped over the brass fender and clasped one of the mantelshelf candelabras. From its centre she pulled a stout, unlit candle.
Her fist gripped its thick length and her shoulders dropped with a huff of relief. She widened her stance and cupped her other hand between her legs.
Damn it! The artful minx was about to deprive him. She was going to take her own virginity.
Clarissa screamed as the door banged open. Lord Marldon was on her like a cat, wrenching the stick of wax from her hand and bearing her back on to the bed.
‘My compliments on the delightful show,’ he snarled. ‘However, I’m afraid at this point I must intervene.’
Clarissa thrashed beneath him, horrified to think that he had somehow watched her. ‘I will not give you my maidenhead,’ she cried breathlessly.
‘Who said anything about giving?’ replied Marldon with a scornful laugh. He pinned her down and pressed a fierce kiss to her unresponding lips. ‘Come now, Clarissa,’ he said. ‘Enough of the prim-little-miss act. It fails to convince and it’s beginning to grate.’
He edged up her body and knelt heavily on her spread arms, rendering her defenceless. She squealed in pain, the weight of him crushing into her delicate tendons. In one swift movement, Alec pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall. His chest was pale and taut, polished ivory tapering from wide shoulders to a trim waist. His hips were narrow, and beneath his black broadcloth trousers his groin bulged demandingly.
Leaning back, Lord Marldon sought out Clarissa’s sex.
He watched her, scrutinising, while his skilful fingers probed, teasing folds that were soaked with desire.
His unremitting tyranny thrilled her, and the receding throbs of her climax blazed to his touch. Her hot flesh drew his caress deeper and the last vestige of defiance ebbed from Clarissa’s body. Her eyelids dropped. She moaned gently. Her loins rose in small, questing nudges.
Marldon smiled and shifted his knees from her arms, straddling her breasts.
‘Undo my trousers, Clarissa,’ he said in a gentle command. ‘Release me. Explore the tool which will deflower you.’
Clarissa’s compliant fingers drifted nervously over his crotch. His prodigious length lay angled across his belly, a hard unyielding line. She craved to see him, to handle him, and yet she feared him greatly. Marldon urged her on with an impatient jerk of his hips. She fumbled with the buttons. His erection sprang free of his garments, proud, virile and dauntingly large. The flaring glans shone like a huge amethyst, and the veins entwined about his shaft looked ready to burst. Hot excitement shivered through Clarissa and she reached out to clasp him.
‘I trust you find it preferable to a candle,’ he said.
Clarissa nodded dumbly. His warm, stiff potency pulsed fiercely within her fist. She moved firmly along the sturdy length, wanting to please Lord Marldon; then he would please her.
‘Your changed attitude is most encouraging,’ he said, his hand still playing between her parted legs. ‘I may propose marriage before the night is out.’
‘Then I will refuse,’ she whispered.
A clear bead of fluid trembled at the slitted end of his phallus. She ached for the first taste of him and, with brazen hunger, she stretched to lick the droplet away. Her tongue tingled with his saltiness and she lingered there, lapping at the contours of his stout, glistening tip.
‘Control yourself,’ he hissed sharply.
He stood, crossed to the door and locked it.
‘Privacy seems to appeal,’ he said, pocketing the key. ‘So, for the moment, I shall guarantee it.’
He stripped off his remaining clothes and moved towards the bed. A ladder of muscle ran from his chest to his stomach, his thighs flexed with strength, and his cock reared massively from a nest of rich, black curls. He leant over her, light slithering from his broad shoulders, and his hot mouth suckled on her breasts. Her nipples ached with shame and need.
Clarissa pressed upward in an arc of giving, her body crescent-like.
Marldon threw back his head and gave a long laugh of conquest.
But it didn’t matter; she didn’t care because he was scooping her to him and, with disarming speed, he had flipped her on to her front. Clarissa, crouched on all fours, scrunched the coverlet in her fist, tensely awaiting the rip of his penetration.
He held her buttocks apart and slicked moisture from the valley within her labia up to the puckered indent of her anus. She whimpered plaintively. This was not what she wanted; she did not want delay. His finger nuzzled at the crinkled rose, and pressed damply against it. Clarissa flinched at the intimacy, her breath heavy and desiring.
‘That virginity will be the next to go,’ he said huskily.
Then, to her relief, she felt the orbed head of his cock nuzzle within her pounding sex-lips. She moaned impatiently, so eager and open for him, so wet. Taking a vigorous lunge, Marldon pushed into her. His stern iron prick breached the closure of her flesh and Clarissa cried out, a note of pain lost in a wail of pleasure as he plundered her tight, eager tunnel. His rigidity crammed into her, filling her utterly, stretching her wide.
He moved in deep half-thrusts, nudging repeatedly at the neck of her womb. Keeping the whole of his cock inside her, he ground his loins, circling his thick shaft
against her slipperiness. Clarissa sobbed, snatching gasps of ecstasy.
‘Ah, you like that, don’t you?’ he breathed. ‘Tell me, Clarissa. Tell me you like it.’
His pelvis continued to roll and she wailed without restraint. Marldon drew slowly back and gave one hard slam. His phallus butted deep, and the power of it spread through her like the quivers of a gong.
‘Tell me,’ he urged. ‘Tell me you like it.’
Lodged high, he gave little shoves, prodding at the core of her.
‘Yes,’ cried Clarissa. ‘Yes, I like it. Yes.’
She felt his withdrawal and instinctively she gripped him, moulding her muscled passage to the density of his prick.
Marldon forced a gasp into a quick laugh.
‘Good,’ he said throatily. ‘Hold me tight, Clarissa. Don’t let me go.’ As he spoke he drew further back.
Clarissa squeezed him hard, relishing the suck of resistance. The bulb of his glans lingered within the entrance of her vagina. She was pliant and awash with juices, receptive to his next leisurely glide. Then she was clenching him feverishly, her sex clamped around his retreating staff. She moaned with new delights and pushed back, meeting the next hungry surge of his cock.
Marldon grasped her hips, moving her to his rhythm, driving into her depths with steady luxury. Her glossy wet walls tensed and slackened, a fluttering intuitive caress. She shoved against him, banging her buttocks into his flat firm belly, urging him to a quickness, as quick as the pulse which hammered in her blood.
She heard him trap a groan in his throat. He dug his fingers into her haunches and his stroke shortened; his tempo rose. The weight of his balls swung into her vulva, sending shudders to her clitoris. Her pleasure mounted; her crisis swelled.
Marldon slowed. He tunnelled a finger down the deep cleft of her buttocks and began stirring pressure over the
ring of her anus. Clarissa moaned with black excitement, feeling the tight portal relax beneath the insistence of his massage.
‘No,’ she whispered lamely. ‘No.’
‘You’ve abused the word far too much,’ said Alec. ‘It no longer has any meaning, Clarissa.’
His questing digit invaded, sliding to the knuckle, boring deeply into her dark secret passage. She cried out helplessly as he drove it back and forth, slowly at first then with increasing speed until his finger matched, thrust for thrust, the rhythm of his hard, pounding cock.
Clarissa heaved and squirmed, gasping in mortified enjoyment. Hot intensity flooded her loins and belly, and Marldon’s flesh, plunging remorselessly into both openings, blurred all boundaries of sensation. She could scarce distinguish one hole from the other. Her body seemed to be melting into a tumult of sweet, burning confusion.
She drew frantic breaths. Her gathering rapture shortened, converging on a deep, whirling centre. Then the tension lashed its release. She wailed, soaring on a heady plateau, before the moment shattered and precious, tumbling waves devoured her.
Marldon gave her no quarter. He drew his finger from her anus and reached around to claw at her breasts. He pressed and squeezed their hanging softness, his cock powering into her with brutal ferocity. His body slapped harshly against her fleshy cheeks. His hands clutched in an animalistic frenzy. Then he uttered a roar of gratification, held a long jerking thrust inside her, and released the scorched seed of his pleasure.
‘Christ,’ he said, slipping out of her. ‘I’m glad your father does not know you intimately. If he did, he would not have offered such a generous dowry.’
The cold, crude remark stung like a whip. Clarissa snatched a pillow to her nudity and twisted around to face him, her eyes narrowed with contempt.
‘You foul man,’ she blazed. ‘You foul, repugnant man.’
Marldon’s brows flicked in a quick arch, and he feigned mild surprise.
‘You didn’t seem to mind too much,’ he jibed.
Clarissa’s shameful conscience overwhelmed her. How could she have surrendered to him? No, it was worse than surrender. She had responded to him with greedy, unconcealed lust; she had delighted in his every action. She hated him bitterly for making her succumb to his base, heartless appetite.
‘This means nothing,’ she said vehemently. ‘You forced me to it. And even if you do it again and again I will never, ever be your wife. You could put a pistol to my head and still I would say no. The moment I contact my father, he will withdraw his promise.’
‘I think it might be a little late for that,’ said Alec. He moved away from the bed and rummaged in the heap of his discarded clothes. ‘I have the dowry contract here if you’d care to see it,’ he said, producing a sheet of folded paper. ‘Look at these signatures. They are far more valuable, albeit less charming, than your angry words.’
Clarissa looked at the swirl of her father’s name and the scratch of Lord Marldon’s. ‘My father cannot, would not have done this,’ she gasped. ‘There is no reason to it.’
‘You think too highly of him, Clarissa,’ he replied dispassionately. ‘He’s really no different from all the other parvenus in society: desperate to introduce a little nobility into the family, to add a touch of refinement to his vulgar wealth. Businessman first; father second.’
Clarissa shook her head. She knew it made sense and yet she could not comprehend it. She had not thought her father a man to pursue those ends so ruthlessly. The truth hurt more than anything: he had signed her away.
‘I shall refuse to go along with it,’ she said defiantly.
‘Then he’ll disinherit you.’
Clarissa turned her head aside. ‘I don’t care,’ she said sulkily.
‘I’m afraid I can’t quite see you as a seamstress,’ he mocked. ‘Nor a governess. Of course, you could try whoring. But even your appetite wouldn’t be enough to keep you in the pretty frocks you’re accustomed to.’
‘Then why am I here?’ she asked, still without looking at him. ‘If it’s all so cut and dried, why not just meet me at the altar?’
‘I thought I’d try my hand at the preliminaries of courtship,’ he said. ‘An old-fashioned notion, I know. But I thought it only polite.’
Kitty could swear something strange was going on. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Clarissa since she’d gone off to the Pleasure Gardens the evening before. And that Frenchwoman was definitely up to something.
Pascale had declared that mademoiselle was too tired for breakfast that morning. That didn’t concern Kitty overmuch and, when she’d crept up the stairs to tap gently on the bedroom door, it was only because she’d hoped to find Clarissa there, drowsing in a happy haze. Kitty was always eager to hear her stories of dancing and romancing. But no one had answered and Kitty, a little concerned, had peeked into the room. Clarissa’s bed had not been slept in.
She’d said nothing, though she’d thought it mighty funny. But funnier still was that when she’d returned to clean the room – later than usual because ‘mademoiselle’ kept on sleeping – the bedsheets were all rumpled and the pillows all bashed at. Had Clarissa done that? Or Pascale?
And then, according to Pascale, Miss Clarissa had gone off to spend a few days with her cousin who was unwell. Well, Kitty hadn’t heard her leave.
After some thought, she could only conclude that the young miss had cooked up a plan to spend secret time with her new lover. Perhaps that was what Alicia paid Ellis and the Frenchwoman for.
He
kept Aunt Hester diverted while
she
covered for whatever Clarissa was
doing. But it didn’t seem right, and the whole thing nagged at Kitty. She couldn’t put it from her mind and she’d been skulking about all morning, trying to catch the footman and Pascale off guard.