Read The Price of Desire Online
Authors: Leda Swann
Tags: #Fiction, #Erotica, #General, #Romance, #Historical
Christ, no wonder her old husband had recently given up the ghost. The tender ministrations of his wife would be enough to fell any old man with a fit of apoplexy.
His distracted musings were brought to a shuddering halt as Caroline took as much of his cock as she could, sucking on him gently while moving her head back and forth. She was fucking him with her mouth.
Damn it, if she kept that up, he was going to spend too soon, before he had even had a taste of her pussy. He pulled away, forcing himself to forgo the delights of her mouth for the hopes of very soon sinking himself deep into her cunt.
He guided her to the wicker chair behind her and seated her with a gentle pressure on her shoulders. “I want to taste you now, just as you tasted me.”
Her face once again exhibited a slight unease, but she allowed him to seat her and spread her legs wide apart.
She was so eager, and yet strangely innocent. The combination was utterly irresistible.
He reached under her skirts, moving his hands up her silk-clad legs until smooth silk stockings made way for cotton bloomers.
The bloomers would have to go. He found the drawstrings that held them closed and tugged on them to loosen them, pulling them free. She provided tacit permission by lifting her hips and allowing her undergarment to slide down her silk stockings. He pulled them over her ankles and tossed them aside.
Now that her pesky bloomers were disposed of, she was open to his gaze. Lifting her skirts, he pushed her legs farther apart. The dim gaslight illuminated her wet cunt. The fine reddish blond hair that adorned her head also provided a gold surround for her pussy. Her lips were parted, revealing the glistening pinkness inside.
He admired the sight for a few moments before moving his head closer and inhaling her heady scent. He loved pussies. He loved looking, smelling, touching, tasting them. They represented the center of a woman, the essence of what made women special.
Finally he allowed himself a taste, his tongue lightly flicking in and out of her opening.
At the touch of his tongue on her pussy she gave a start and squeaked with surprise. Her body tensed under him.
Ah, so old Mr. Clemens had not been a fan of licking his wife’s pussy. More fool him. And he had no doubt that the Captain had been too selfish a lover to take pleasure in the sweet taste of his Caroline. Their loss was most definitely his gain.
Feeling unaccountably satisfied that he was introducing her to a new game, he continued to lick her and suck at her, hoping he had not lost his touch at pleasuring a woman in this way.
Her hands were now tangled in his hair, grasping him hard, but pulling him toward her rather than pushing him away.
Encouraged by her whimpers of pleasure, he moved his lapping tongue to the center of her pleasure. Parting her cunt with his hands, he ran the flat of his tongue over and over her clit, causing her back to arch in delight.
Her gasps of pleasure grew louder and she wriggled down in the chair so her ass rested on the edge, then leaned back and held her legs open wider than before. Spread-eagled as she was before him, she offered him access to every intimate part of her body.
He took advantage of the position to move his tongue to her ass, where he tasted her sweet tight hole, his nose buried in her cunt.
His own cock was throbbing painfully. Knowing how close he was to having her completely was tormenting him, but still he continued to lick her.
He wanted to taste her orgasm before he thrust his cock into her pussy. He wanted her to come apart for him under his mouth and fingers, making her pussy drip with juice, making her soft and open for him.
With long lingering strokes of his tongue, he lapped at her, over and over. Her body tensed with desire, wound tighter and tighter with every stroke. Holding her buttocks firmly, he increased the pressure as Caroline’s breath started to come in short pants. Suddenly her entire body stiffened, the blood pulsed through her pussy in waves, and she cried out as she came.
She flopped back in the chair, panting, her face pink from her exertions. “I never knew it could be like that.” Her eyes were full of wonderment and, surprisingly, of gratitude.
His own desire throbbed urgently now, desperate to be sated.
With Caroline still seated on the chair, he afforded her no respite as he rubbed his stone-hard cock up and down her swollen cunt, making it slick with her juices. She was ready for him, and he was more than ready for her. He had been aching for her for what seemed like hours now.
Slowly he pushed into her. Though her pussy was dripping with juice, it was a tight squeeze for him.
He paused halfway, thinking he felt a slight resistance, but before he could think too much of it she pulled him close, causing him to be completely engulfed.
The deed was done. She had a man’s part thrust up to the hilt in her body, and she had felt it breaching her maidenhood. She was no longer a virgin.
Ah, but she was glad that she had had the courage to experience loving before she died. What a waste it would have been to go to her death without having experienced the mind-numbing pleasure that she had felt with his mouth and tongue on her most private parts. She had had to bite her tongue to keep herself from screaming out when that first rush of intense pleasure swept over her.
And now the feeling of him inside her was kindling her desire anew.
She thrust herself against him, pushing him deeper inside her. Never had she felt so alive as she did in this moment, with the taste of him on her tongue and his manly part buried deep inside her. She wanted the moment to last forever.
Oh, how she wanted to live.
With his cock buried, Dominic kissed her deeply. He then started a rhythmic motion, loving her with his whole body. Slowly and deeply he thrust into her, the pleasure building with every stroke. Her body welcomed him, her pussy muscles closing around him so tightly it was as if she wanted to keep him inside her forever.
Over and over he thrust into her until he saw the signs of her orgasm approach once more. Without warning, he withdrew completely. “Turn over. I want to take you from behind as animals fuck each other. Nothing but pleasure.”
In a daze of lust, she allowed him to flip her over. He placed her knees on the chair seat, tipping her ass up into the air, with the backrest for her to grip.
As soon as she was firmly anchored, he parted her firm, white buttocks and without hesitation plunged back into her open cunt.
God, she felt even better in this position than she had in the last one. He wanted to fuck her a thousand ways to Christmas, until they had exhausted every possible way they could fuck each other.
With little short strokes he brought himself close to orgasm before relieving the approach of the inevitable with deeper, longer strokes that caused her to cry out in pleasure.
He paused a moment with his cock nearly completely removed, to admire the sight of it slick with her juices at the entrance to her pussy. Before he’d had enough of admiring the sight, she pushed her ass back, once again burying him in her soft wetness.
Reaching in front of her, he teased her sensitive clit, while he made short movements deep inside her.
Each time he reached the deepest part of her, a whimper of pleasure escaped her and her entire body shuddered. “Please,” she moaned, writhing against his hand and begging him to release her from her sensual torment. “Please.”
With that he could hold off no longer. Releasing her clit, he grabbed her buttocks tightly and rode her with full fast strokes until he felt his seed about to spurt.
With a cry of his own he buried himself as far as he could, his whole body shuddering with release as stream after stream of hot liquid jetted from him.
As the hotness of his seed spurted inside her, he felt waves of pleasure wash through her body. Her pussy muscles clenched in orgasm, extending his own pleasure and milking him of every last drop of seed.
As her orgasm washed over her and then slowly receded, she collapsed bonelessly onto the chair. Dominic fell on top of her, still inside her, his cock slowly losing its hardness in utter satiation.
He moved to one side, allowing Caroline some room to breathe. “You are truly a surprising woman,” he murmured, brushing a tendril of hair away from her eyes. “So proper in public, so wild in private. You intrigue me.”
Now that her passion was spent, he could see reality intrude into her mind once more. There was a sadness in her that his lovemaking had not dissipated, though the brittleness was no longer so evident.
“I shall visit you. Soon.” He was already looking forward to having her again, this time on a bed where he could undress her fully and feast on the sight of her nakedness without fear of interruption.
Now that he had tasted her, he knew that once would not be enough for him. Already his cock was stirring beside her, nudging against her hip, wanting another taste of her perfection.
She looked gravely into his eyes, and he got the uncomfortable feeling he was not looking into the same eyes as before. “I do not think we will ever meet again, Mr. Savage,” she said with a slight smile. “But I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for what you have shown me here tonight.”
And with that she raised herself off the chair, smoothed down her skirts, and without a backward glance or even a thought for her bloomers lying discarded in the corner, walked out of the door.
Dominic watched her walk away from him, her hips swaying. Caroline Clemens was full of surprises. So hot and eager, yet so inexperienced in the art of lovemaking. The combination had been a heady turn on, even for him, who prided himself on his coolness and on being impervious to all feminine wiles. If his time in India had taught him nothing else, he had learned how to harness the power of human sensuality, to use it as a tool or as a weapon, but always to keep it under his control and never let it overpower his good sense.
These few stolen moments with Caroline had come close to destroying the teachings he lived by. She had affected him more powerfully than any woman had before, which made her both infinitely more alluring and infinitely more dangerous than other women. His inexplicably strong attraction to her must be kept tamed so it did not grow so powerful that it broke free of all restraint and devoured everything in its path.
Even though he was sated for now, he surprised himself by not wanting to let her go. She belonged to him, body and soul. His lovemaking had cast all thought of the Captain out of her mind, he was sure of it.
Yet if so—and he was sure it
was
so—why was she walking away from him so steadily, not so much as turning her head to gaze after him? Her coolness infuriated him. He wanted to be the cool one, the sensible one, while she burned with a passion for him that she could neither resist nor deny.
Once the door closed behind her, he clambered back into his trousers, smoothed down his clothing and prepared to join the company again. His dalliance with the delectable Caroline notwithstanding, he still had some important matters of business to attend to tonight. Distractions were all very well in their place, but they must not be allowed to interfere with the real business of the day—making money.
The room was all abuzz with quiet chatter when he rejoined his cronies. Something momentous had clearly happened while he had been otherwise engaged in the conservatory, as practically every woman in the room had gathered together in a tight huddle. The whole lot of them were whispering animatedly at each other, sounding just like sparrows in a tree at sunset.
He turned to Adam Farrell, a banker who had befriended him when he first returned from India. “What are all the women fussing about?”
Adam shrugged. “Something about the Clemens girl, I believe.”
“The Clemens girl?” Not the Clemens widow? It was an odd way of referring to her, but he supposed she was hardly more than a girl.
“The good-looking blonde in the black dress,” Adam explained. “You must be acquainted with her. I saw you talking to her earlier this evening. You seemed particularly engrossed in the conversation.”
He shrugged off Adam’s comment. His preoccupation with the delicious Caroline was his own affair. “What about her?”
“Her father, Isaac Clemens, was a speculator, and not a very good one. He lost everything and then shot himself.”
“Isaac Clemens was her father? Not her husband?” Damn it, had he been so blinded by lust that his good sense had utterly deserted him? “She was in full mourning. I thought by her dress that she must be his widow.”
“Clemens was a widower, his wife died some years ago. When he died, the Clemens girl lost the dowry he had promised.”
“She was in widow’s weeds,” he murmured, more to himself than to Adam. “In full black.” Oh Christ, what had he done? He’d assumed she was a sexually frustrated—or an unfaithful—young widow more relieved than upset at the death of her elderly husband. It had never crossed his mind that she could possibly be anything else.
So much for acting the sophisticated lover. He’d tossed her black skirts above her waist and fucked her hard and fast from behind. Quite likely she’d been a virgin before tonight, too, for all that she’d been as randy as a two-bit piece and had welcomed his fucking like one born to the game. No wonder she had seemed so inexperienced. But he’d been so cunt-struck that not even her obvious newness to the game had been enough to stop him.
“She was due to be married in a week or two, but her fiancé, it seems, has just tossed her over for a wealthier prospect.”
“She was to be married?”
“To Captain Bellamy.” Adam made a face. “Not that I ever thought much of him, but a husband is a husband, especially when you have nothing but your pretty face to recommend you.”
His assessment of Captain Bellamy’s motives had been accurate, then. The Captain’s loss had been his gain, and the delectable Miss Clemens had been ripe for the taking. “What will happen to the girl now?” He hoped she had no other man waiting in the wings wanting to marry her—at least not until he’d had his fill of her. Already his cock was half standing in his trousers at the thought of fucking her again.
“Girls. There are a half-dozen Clemens sisters at least. The one here tonight is the eldest. They have no other family that I know of—leastways my wife knows of none, and she is usually
au fait
with all the gossip. Old Isaac will have left something for them to live on, I suppose. An annuity or some such that could not be touched by his creditors. It’s what any decent man in his situation would do before he pulled the trigger.”
With no father and no husband and little money to call her own, poor Caroline would be desperately vulnerable. If she had half an ounce of sense, she would be looking around for a convenient man who would help her support herself—for the right consideration, of course.
A man just like him. Not inconveniently committed elsewhere, and willing to be generous to a woman who captured his fancy.
Dominic smiled to himself. That would explain why she had given him such an unexpected welcome in the conservatory. She had sensed his obvious interest in her and thought to snare him while she had the chance.
His smile widened. There was no doubt about it—she was a clever woman, and with a solid practical streak to her as well. Though some of her narrow-minded set would frown upon her actions, he admired them. He appreciated her courage and good sense almost as much as he craved her soft, white body.
Dammit, but he would gladly sign up to pay her bills if it meant he could keep her in his bed for a good while longer. Though he would lay good money on it that she had been an innocent until tonight, she was hot and eager enough to keep him interested for months.
Caroline walked through the dark streets alone, arriving home just after midnight. Her interlude with Mr. Savage had not caused her to change her decision even by the slightest degree. On the contrary, it had only made her more determined on her course of action. She had cut off her last possible hope of rescue. No longer did she have even her virginity, for what it was worth, to bargain with.
Not that she had been able to bargain with it when Captain Bellamy gave her the opportunity earlier in the evening. The thought of becoming his mistress, when she should have been his wife, disgusted her.
And who else would want her anyway? Now that she was no longer a virgin, her worth in the marketplace where human flesh was traded would be even less than the paltry two hundred a year the Captain had offered her.
Her face hardened. She would never forgive him for driving her to these straits. If she had her way, her very ghost would come back and haunt him when she was dead, and drive him to madness and despair. It would be no more than he deserved.
Her evening slippers in her hand, she unlocked the front door and crept through the silent house to her papa’s study, alert for the tiniest creak or rustle that might disturb her sisters and brother. They could not wake. Not now.
The pistol, she knew, was back in the gun cabinet, locked away where her young brother could not accidentally get to it.
But the key? She thought hard for a moment in the stillness of the night.
Then she remembered. After Papa’s accident, she had put the key away in the top drawer of his desk, where he always kept it.
She rummaged around for it among the mess of papers. Poor Papa had never been good at keeping his papers in order. That had been his downfall in the end.
Her fingers came across something cold and hard. Ah, there it was.
She was shaking so much she could hardly pick it up, and then it took her an age to fit it into the lock and turn it. Finally the cabinet door swung open. There was the pistol that had murdered her papa, the same pistol that would soon claim the lives of the rest of her family.
It was heavy, heavier than she had expected. Holding it carefully by the butt, she pulled open the hammer and rotated the cylinder, counting the bullets one by one as she did so. Six brass cartridges gleamed in the dim light.
One cartridge had been fired. The bullet that had killed her father. Only five were left. Five was one too few.
She steeled her soul against the despair that welled up in her. No matter that she would not have the quick death she had hoped for of a bullet in the brain. Her bed was made with good, strong linen sheets to make a rope out of to hang herself when the rest was done.
She thumbed the hammer shut again. There, she was ready. She had to hurry and not falter along the way. Though the first shot would wake them all, she still hoped to finish her grisly task before they fully realized what was afoot.
The pistol held firmly in both hands, she opened the door to the study and held still for a moment, listening. No one stirred. The entire household, such as it was, was fast asleep.
Her stomach clenched in pain as she began to creep toward the stairs that led up to the bedrooms on the upper floor. Her brother had to be the first. He was the youngest, and of all of them he would understand the least why she had to do this.
He was asleep, his small body curled up under the bedclothes and a half smile on his face, as if he were in the midst of pleasant dreams.
She knelt down beside him and kissed his sleeping face. “Please, darling, forgive me,” she whispered as she brought the pistol to his temple. Silent tears were streaming down her face. “This is for the best, I swear it.”
She brought the hammer back, cocking it, the pistol making a loud click in the silence of the night.
He stirred under the bedclothes and his eyes opened. He did not seem frightened to see his sister in front of him, holding a gun to his head. “Are you going to shoot me?” he whispered. “Like Papa shot himself?”
She did not answer. She could not. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth with the horror of what she must do. Her finger moved on the trigger, pulling it back a little ways.
He sensed her hesitance and put out a small hand to comfort her. “I do not mind. I will be brave and not cry out,” he promised her.
As she pulled the trigger, the strength in her arm faltered and the muzzle of the gun dropped away to the floor. The pistol disturbed the silence with a loud report, blowing a jagged hole in the floorboards at her feet.
She sank down bonelessly onto the bed, staring at the hole in the floor with horror. “Forgive me, Teddy, but I cannot do it. I cannot shoot you.”
He sat up in the bed and threw his arms around her neck. “Do not cry, Caroline. I am glad you did not shoot me. Who would look after you all now that Papa is gone if I am dead, too?”
The noise had wakened the other girls. One by one they came running into Teddy’s bedroom, their eyes wide with fright.
“What is it, Caroline? What has happened?”
There were no words to explain what she had just tried to do. No words to explain away the horror of her lack of courage, the disaster of failure.
Teddy spoke up, his boyish treble firm. “It was an accident. Caroline was showing me how to load Papa’s gun and it went off by accident.”
Emily looked suspiciously at him. “Caroline was showing you how to load Papa’s gun? In the middle of the night?” She turned her gaze to her sister. “Caroline?”
Caroline could not answer. She could not even look at her sister. Uncontrollable sobs wracked her body. Clutched in her fingers, the pistol burned her to the bottom of her soul. She had nearly killed Teddy, her own brother, the darling baby of them all. How could she live with herself after tonight? How could she live with her failure?
“I begged her to. I couldn’t sleep,” Teddy lied resolutely.
Emily’s sharp gaze went around the room. Although she clearly did not like what she saw, she put her arms around her younger sisters and drew them into a huddle where they could not see the damage the shot had caused. “Next time you can’t sleep, ask for a glass of warm milk instead,” she suggested wryly. “It makes less noise.”
“Nobody was hurt,” Teddy reassured her. “You can all go back to bed.”
With one last suspicious glance at the pair of them, Emily shepherded the other three girls out of the room.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Teddy put an arm around Caroline’s shoulders. “They are gone now. You can stop crying.”
The kind gesture only redoubled her tears. “You lied for me.”
His face went white in the moonlight. “Are you angry that I told a lie?” She could see his mind whirring over in the dim light. “Are you angry with me? Is that why you were going to shoot me?”
She reached out and ruffled his hair. How precious he was to her. How precious all her siblings were. They were all she had to cling to, all that she had left. “I am not angry with you. I am just…sad.” What would a young boy know of the utter hopelessness of their situation, of the despair that gripped her soul whenever she thought of what must befall them all? She had tried to save him from such knowledge, but she could not.
“You are sad because Papa is dead and we have no money.”
“I am sad because Papa is dead,” she agreed. “And you are right that we have no money. None at all.”
“Do we have enough money to buy a pony?” Having a pony of his own had been his dearest wish for months.
“No, not enough money for a pony.” Poor Teddy. He would never get the pony their papa had promised him. “We do not even have enough money to buy food for tomorrow’s dinner.” She hated having to burden him with the details of their situation, but he had a right to know. She had given him that right tonight.