‘How obedient you are,’ he said, rising from his chair and striding towards her. ‘I can see you are eager for your
cadeau
.’ He pushed a foot between her ankles, nudging her legs apart. ‘Do you wish to know the reason why I am to punish you so severely?’
‘Yes,’ she said boldly, excitement clutching at her heart.
Julian pressed a firm hand to her hot, pounding sex.
‘There are three reasons,’ he said with dispassionate calm. ‘One, because you refuse to share your bawdy plans concerning some dear virgin cousin.’ As he spoke he slipped his index finger into her humid passage. ‘Two,’ he continued, pushing in a second broad finger, ‘because you’re screwing an artist whose prick, so you tell me, is most handsome.’
The mention of Gabriel, again with that possible note of envy, caused Lucy to smile with secret delight. Was he actually growing fond of her? Enough to be covetous of her body?
‘And three?’ she breathed.
Julian merely smirked. Slowly, he drove his fingers into her, again and again. The pad of his thumb rocked her clitoris, intensifying its rich, aching pulse. There was no sound, save for Lucy’s light gasps and the soft clack, clack of her molten sex.
‘And three …’ he said at length.
He removed his fingers and played them teasingly across her distended outer lips. He stroked her with a maddeningly light touch, as if he were handling gossamer. It was unbearable. When he pressed his fingers into the wet seam of her folds, Lucy whimpered with gratitude. Pleasure coursed through her entire body before sinking to engulf her fiery loins. It throbbed there, a percussive heavy beat. She waited, her heart drumming wildly, for the announcement of her third unforgivable sin.
‘Because you conduct yourself like a whore,’ said Julian at last. He pushed once, hard. His three compacted fingers slammed into her.
Lucy groaned, her sex stretched around the awkward girth of his penetration. He shoved again, his knuckles banging into her soft, hungry flesh. When he next spoke he punctuated his words with a thrusting hand.
‘And I want you – over the table – your cunny wide for me. And I’m going to whip you – twice for every sin.’
In one swift movement, Julian caught hold of Lucy’s wrists and, twisting her sharply, clasped them behind her back. He pushed her towards the writing desk, mocking her when she stumbled, and leant her body across the green leather surface. The busk of her corset dug viciously into her belly, and she shifted herself in search of greater comfort.
‘Don’t dare to move,’ he said severely, sliding open a desk drawer – a drawer he knew contained no writing equipment. He withdrew several lengths of silken cord and murmured, ‘Perfect.’
Sir Julian stretched Lucy’s arms either side of the table and secured each wrist to a finely carved leg. She lay there, moaning faintly, as he repeated the bondage on her wide-spread ankles. The indignity and vulnerability of such a position thrilled her. She felt deliciously open, brazenly wet, and completely at the mercy of Sir Julian.
She listened to the sound of him moving about the room, undressing without haste. When he returned to stand behind her she instinctively clenched her buttocks. But he did not touch her. He laughed.
‘Hasn’t your Italian artist taught you the first rule?’ he scorned. ‘One must prepare a canvas before painting it.’
He spanned his fingers to her legs and edged slowly upwards, his thumbs trailing over her damp inner thighs. He massaged whorls over her skin, nudging inwards but never quite touching her seething sex. Then, moving to the swell of her rump, he caressed and pummelled the pliable twin globes.
‘So pale and succulent,’ he murmured. ‘So ripe.’
He nipped her twice and Lucy jerked with the sharp pain. Then his touch grew gentle, lulling her into relaxation. He blew cool air over her skin and gently parted her rounded cheeks. He breathed soft lines along her open crevice, lingering over her tightly pinched hole. Following the lines of his breath, his tongue trailed moistly along her deep furrow. His moustache rasped lightly, and he lapped at her wrinkled centre.
Lucy tensed, wondering if he would invade her most secret orifice. The thought inflamed her and, squirming against her restraints, she pushed herself towards him.
Abruptly Julian pulled away. ‘You expect to
take
your pleasures?’ he scoffed. ‘As and when you wish? Remember, Lucy, I am the one who gives. You are the one who receives.’
He fell into silence. The room grew heavy with tension. Lucy could not feel him, see him nor hear him. She stiffened, knowing the sweet onslaught was imminent.
‘Two for every sin,’ he said sternly. ‘On each side of your luscious arse.’
Lucy turned her head, pressing her cheek to the table. From the corner of her eye she saw him raise his arm. The leather strands flicked back. She braced herself. With a soft swish the whip arced down and cracked loudly
across one plump buttock. Lucy yelped, stripes of pain searing into her flesh.
Julian waited, allowing the smarting impact to subside. Then again he whirled the martinet back and the second lash fell, as cruel and swift as the first. The fanned-out thongs moulded to her curves and the sting, hot and sharp, rushed back to the surface.
Lucy whimpered as the pain transformed itself into smouldering pleasure. Then a third and a fourth lash. The scorching impact bit into the glow suffusing one half of her bottom. Two more deft strokes and a deeper radiance uncoiled to meld with the intensity burning in her sex.
Julian paused. ‘Oh, what a fine artist I am,’ he said. ‘One virgin canvas, the other streaked with blushes.’
He moved away from the periphery of her vision, his hand rubbing the cool area of her other cheek. Then another six lashes rained down on that untouched side. Each one rekindled the sting of the previous stripe, building up a savage heat until her two mounds were a symmetry of crimson fire. Then he stopped.
Lucy lay still, listening to Julian’s ragged breath. When she felt his hands again, they were no longer those of a chastiser but those of a tender lover soothing her raw, prickling flesh. Her blazing skin, alive with sensitivity, took his caresses deeper. Flames of desire licked around her womb and her juices ran freely. She shifted her hips, striving to press her simmering clitoris to a surface. But her tethered ankles would not allow for it.
‘Please,’ she begged, raising her pelvis high. ‘Take me.’
Julian grunted a short, scornful laugh and laid the length of his prick, heavy and insistent, against the split of her arse.
‘For one who prides herself so on shocking her noble peers,’ he teased, beginning to slide back and forth, ‘your language is remarkably coy. Will you say what you mean, Mrs Singleton?’
‘Fuck me,’ she said, through clenched teeth. ‘Please, oh, Ju – oh fuck me.’
The thick head of his phallus dropped and hovered momentarily at her wetly gaping entrance. ‘Such a pretty request,’ he breathed huskily. Then, with a vigorous lunge, he buried himself to the hilt. She cried out, the force of him shunting her forward. At once he pulled her to him and held her steady.
Lucy clenched her muscles to his swollen prick, and he drove into her, his thrusts long and hard. His flat belly pounded against her sore buttocks, and his hand reached around, seeking her clitoris. With a quick, fretting finger, he chased the urgency beating in the tight little bud. On the edge of extremity, Lucy uttered a staccato of shrill, breathy bleats. The hot spasms gripped and she wailed as their fierce, trembling energy consumed her. A growl echoed in the wake of her cry and Julian’s orgasm pumped into the final throes of her own.
Her tormented body sagged with blissful relief. Julian held his position, caressing her inside with a soft rhythm while gently stroking her tender rump. All his movements were perfectly in tune with the warm tranquillity bathing her senses.
‘Julian,’ she murmured when her breathing had steadied. ‘I adore your
cadeaux
.’
‘And I adore handing them to you, my sweet.’ He began unlacing her stays, adding to her sense of lazy release. ‘Though, if you recall, generosity alone was not my motive. You are now obliged to divulge your plans for cousin Clarissa?’ He withdrew from her and set about untying the cords at her ankles.
Lucy murmured a languorous half-groan. She’d forgotten their earlier bargain, and in truth she didn’t really have much of a plan. Alicia had merely expressed a hope that Clarissa, given the right encouragement, would yield to a little pre-marital dalliance.
After running various names through her mind, Lucy had concluded that Gabriel Ardenzi was probably the
best option. If Clarissa didn’t mind a man who wore his hair too long and who had a tendency, to say the least, to be capricious, then maybe she would succumb to his seductions. Persuading Gabriel to agree to it, however, would not be an easy task. A country virgin was hardly his usual choice of lover.
‘Pray tell,’ encouraged Julian, helping her to her feet.
Lucy unclasped her loosened corset, stepped out of her shoes, and rubbed at her reddened wrists. ‘Is there no end to your lecherous curiosity?’ she asked, standing on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips.
‘You should know better than to ask,’ he said, smiling fondly and tangling his fingers in her dishevelled curls.
Lucy sighed and padded across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘The strength of it is this,’ she said, rolling down her stockings. ‘I’m to find her a beau, and quickly, before Marldon arrives. I thought perhaps Gabriel would be suitable.’ She looked at Julian provocatively and said deliberately, ‘After all, there are few women able to resist his dark good-looks. And he
is
a most skilful lover.’
Julian raised his eyebrows, affecting surprise. ‘I didn’t realise that you were willing to share your bedfellows. I’d be more than happy to assist.’
‘
You
are a married man,’ said Lucy, with only half-feigned severity. ‘I already share you.’
‘Such a pity,’ he teased, joining her and playfully biting her neck.
‘And besides,’ continued Lucy, ‘I’ve been prevailed upon to take merely the edge off her innocence, not corrupt her completely. That prerogative belongs strictly to Lord Marldon.’
Chapter Three
CLARISSA, STEELING HERSELF
for disappointment, pushed tentatively at the door of the breakfast room. Please, Aunt Hester, she willed, don’t be sitting there.
Since Charles and Alicia’s departure, Aunt Hester, with her pinched, sour face, had presided over the household with a fearsome impassivity. She’d insisted on taking Clarissa to some dull afternoon teas and some even duller soirées, and summer had seemed to hold all the promise of a wet Wednesday. But yesterday Aunt Hester had taken to her bed, complaining of a dreadful fatigue. This morning she’d failed to appear for breakfast and Clarissa’s hopes were rising.
In the breakfast room, Kitty was leaning across the table, sweeping a cloth over its oak surface.
‘What on earth are you wearing?’ exclaimed Clarissa, catching a flash of red beneath Kitty’s crisp black uniform.
The housemaid grinned and hitched up her skirts, proudly displaying a pair of scarlet stockings.
‘Dandy, aren’t they?’ She beamed. ‘Real silk. Missis gave them me afore she went away. To say sorry for the saucing I got. Didn’t you get anything?’
‘I got Aunt Hester,’ replied Clarissa grimly. Then she hissed, ‘Has she been seen yet?’
‘Lor, has she!’ cried Kitty. ‘Came down to breakfast in her nightgown and wrapper, she did. And she was all of a moony flutter. I’ve never seen the like.’
Kitty pulled up a chair and sat before the table, her chin resting on steepled fingertips. Cocking her head to one side, she batted her eyelashes at Clarissa and smiled.
‘Could I harf another hegg, please, Hellis,’ she mimicked. Then she shrieked with glee and slammed her hands on the polished surface.
Clarissa laughed, protesting it was untrue.
‘On my mother’s grave,’ insisted Kitty, crossing herself. ‘And you have to say he’s a bit of a looker, isn’t he? Bit oily for my tastes, mind, but all the same he’s a looker.’
Sebastian Ellis was their new footman, another of Alicia’s appointments. Undoubtedly he was handsome, as a footman ought to be, but the idea of Aunt Hester falling for his charms was absurd. Still, if he kept her occupied then Clarissa wasn’t going to complain.
‘So where is she now?’ she enquired.
Kitty, her lips pursed, shook her head in sardonic pity. ‘Dreadful fatigued, miss,’ she replied. ‘Dreadful fatigued.’
Clarissa’s thoughts raced. There were new gowns to collect from the dressmakers, gowns that Aunt Hester would be sure to frown upon. Then perhaps later she could pay a call on cousin Lucy. Without Lord Marldon there was no one to introduce her to London society. And Alicia had said Lucy knew everyone there was to know and went to all the very best parties.
‘If she gets out of bed,’ continued Kitty, noting Clarissa’s expression, ‘then I’ll give her a mighty kick on the ankles.’
‘Thank you, Kitty,’ she said. ‘That would be much appreciated.’
Gabriel Ardenzi could never decide if taking a house in the suburbs of Chelsea had been a superb idea or a
terrible one. Away from the city smog, the air was good and clear. But on days like today the sunlight glancing off that damned river was infuriatingly harsh. He’d spent far too long this morning fiddling with oiled paper, stretching it across the windows in a bid to diffuse the glare.
He should have chosen the north-facing room instead. But no, he reminded himself, it was too small for a studio; it would have felt like a prison cell. At least here he could rack his unfinished canvasses against the walls and remind himself of things he’d rather be painting.
He stepped back from his easel and looked dully at the incomplete portrait. A society miss gazed back at him with bland eyes and a vapid smile. A good enough likeness, he thought bitterly. He tossed his brush on to a table cluttered with mixing bowls, phials and bundles of charcoal, and, yawning widely, wiped his hands on a rag. Christ, he’d been at work less than two hours and already he was bored. Commissioned portraits were the bane of his life and summer invariably brought a glut of them.