Whispers of the Flesh

by Louisa Burton

Lili came to stand before him, so close that he could feel her heat, breathe in the exotic floral warmth of her skin, plummet headlong into those inky eyes.

  She reached up and, with a fluid gesture, lifted his hat off his head and spun it away into the darkness. His heart thundered in his ears as she untied his cravat, pulling that off along with his collar.

  Unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt, she said, so softly that he could barely hear her, “Swim with me.”

  David undressed down to his shirt and drawers as she waded into the pool. When it was deep enough to swim in, she did so, disappearing around the curve of the crescent for a little while before reappearing. She swam with practiced grace, seemingly unencumbered by her chemise.

  She stood, whipping her head back to fling her wet hair off her face. The water rose to just beneath her breasts, to which the chemise clung damply, revealing their lush contours and the shadows of her nipples.

  “You’re not going to leave your shirt on, are you?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Even if he was willing to invent some specious excuse, it would be pointless. Lili was a woman experienced in the ways of the flesh. He was quite sure she knew why he wanted to retain the long, concealing garment.

  David braced himself for a jolt of cold as he stepped into the water, only to feel a delicious, all-encompassing warmth . . . followed by a thundercrack of lust so profound that it almost brought him to his knees.

  “Are you all right, David?” she asked.

  “Just a bit . . .Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  She beckoned him with a provocative smile as old as mankind.

  The stone floor of the pool felt pleasantly smooth beneath David’s feet as he entered the water, with just enough friction to maintain his footing, and no trace of the sliminess he’d half expected. It sloped downward until he was standing waist deep with a suitable expanse of water, about two yards, separating him from Lili. The watery phosphorescence set her face aglow, as if she were bathed in the very light of heaven.

  “Keeping your distance, are you, Mr. Beckett?” she teased. “Is it to protect me from you, or the other way ’round?”

  He looked away, a grudging smile tugging at his lips.

  She splashed him with water, which so startled him that he gasped with laughter. He reflexively splashed her back. With a squeal of mock outrage, she leapt upon him and dunked him underwater.

  He surfaced, his legs tangled in the clinging billows of her chemise, his hand brushing a soft and weighty breast.

  He took two stumbling steps backward, skimming the hair off his face.

  With a nonchalant smile, she said, “Come,” then turned and swam away.

  David stood staring after her for a moment—One wish . . . Swim with me—and then he swam, too. He followed her around the curve of the crescent to find that the pool narrowed, flowing through a doorlike opening before widening again. Very little light from the main pool penetrated into this secondary lagoon, making it seem as if night had suddenly fallen—a moonless night, but alive with darkly glinting stars, courtesy of the crystalline walls.

  The water was deeper here, as David discovered when he found his footing; it came up almost to his neck. It was too deep for Lili to stand, of course. She kept her head above water by holding on to his shoulder with one hand and the side of the pool with the other, and lazily treading her feet.

  There was no gradual declination here, the pool walls being roughly vertical. Peering into the darkness, he could see that they were almost completely surrounded by a flat shelf of stone. He squinted at a heap of something, trying to make it out. The shelf, although no more than six or eight feet wide at its broadest point, was furnished with rugs, pillows, and perhaps a dozen fat, unlit candles on the floor and in iron wall sconces.

  “We call that la Galerie des Diamants Noirs,” she said.

  “The Gallery of Black Diamonds,” he said. “Most appropriate.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “I thought you didn’t speak French.”

  Scrambling for a response, he said, “The, er . . . most of the words sound like their counterparts in English—galerie, diamants . . .”

  “As for ‘noir,’ I suppose it’s been used in enough poetry and so forth . . .”

  “Exactly.” He cringed inside at this wormy prevarication. Having long ago resolved to be, in the words of the Fifteenth Psalm, “He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart,” David was determined to avoid outright untruths during the course of this investigation. He had realized some lies of omission would be unavoidable; he just hadn’t realized how many would pass his lips.

  Redirecting the conversation to safer territory, he said, “This is quite a cozy little haven.”

  His voice sounded both hollow and strangely deep as it echoed off the walls. There was a winded quality to it, too, not because that brief little swim had tired him, of course, but from Lili’s closeness, the warmth of her hand on his shoulder, the teasing underwater caress of her chemise as her legs pumped back and forth in a languid rhythm.

  “This is one of my favorite places,” she said, her own voice taking on a velvety resonance that seemed to vibrate within him, stoking his arousal even as it soothed his nerves.

  The strange intoxication that had crept up on him as he’d ventured deeper into the cave took on a different, dreamier quality in this dark little sanctum. There was that lingering surge of lust, yes, but something else as well, a sense of ethereal harmony such as he had never known. It was like being drunk, but without the mental bedlam, just pure and idyllic contentment.

  “You seem . . . contemplative,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that’s the right word. In truth, I feel . . . not quite like myself.”

  With a knowing smile, she said, “Our guests ofttimes experience a certain confusion of the senses in here. It has to do in part with the hardened lava that formed this cave system eons ago. From what I’ve been told, it is imbued with a special sort of magnetism. We call it le magnétisme hallucinatoire. Some experience a milder form of the same disorientation within the walls of the castle, and also the stable and carriage house, because they were built of volcanic stone taken from this mountain. This force even affects the water of the cave stream.”

  “And the other part?”

  “Other part?”

  “You said the phenomenon was due ‘in part’ to the hardened lava.”

  Lifting her hand from his shoulder to stroke his cheek, she said,“You are a man of many questions, David. This need to get to the root of everything, to ferret out answers to the unknowable . . . it will only lead to misery. As will the demands you place upon yourself. You are so rigid, so correct. Your expectations of yourself are exacting to the point of cruelty—self-inflicted, to be sure, but cruel nonetheless.”

  Her eyes, enormous in the scintillating darkness, were almond-shaped, heavy-lidded, utterly mesmerizing. David could not, for the life of him, tear his gaze from hers.

  Softly she said, “Have you never wanted to lie with a woman, David?”

  “Of course.” To deny that would have been absurd.

  “Most young men of your station relieve their urges by frequenting the local brothels. Were you never tempted to visit them yourself?”

  His hesitation must have been telling, because she said, “You did, didn’t you? But you paid the women there to pleasure you without actual intercourse—to fellate you, perhaps?”

  “No! My God, no,” he said, momentarily astounded to hear her speak of such a thing—but of course Lili was no ordinary lady. Some would protest that she was no lady at all, but despite her libertinage, she was far from some common grisette. “I never . . . nothing like that.”

  “But you have been to brothels,” she said.

  “Just once.”

  “When?”

  David looked away, raking a hand through his wet hair. He could refuse to answer her, but in his pleasantly bleary state of mind, he
just couldn’t quite see the point.

  “My, er, my brother Louis dragged me to one in London shortly before I left for . . . left home for the first time.” “Come on, Davey, don’t be such a Nancy boy. Don’t you want to exercise the old lob before those Jesuits make a bloody eunuch of you?”

  “What of your reverence for the bodily integrity represented by virginity?” Although Lili was echoing his words, to her credit, her tone was not mocking.

  “I had no notion where he was taking me till we were in the place. It was a handsome town house, finely appointed. One would never have known it was . . . that sort of establishment. Louis had poured gin down my throat beforehand—all part of his scheme, of course. I told him he could lead a horse to water, and so forth. He said, ‘Fine, let’s just watch the show. Perhaps you’ll have a change of heart.’ ”

  “Show?”

  With that interjection, David became suddenly aware of what he was telling this woman whom he’d met barely twenty-four hours ago. It was the lulling influence upon his mind of the strange forces lurking in the walls around them, the very mountain looming above them. He should have been ashamed to be here like this with Lili, much less recounting this particular experience, but he felt too tranquil for shame.

  “Tell me,” she said as she stroked his arm. “I won’t be shocked. Was it a lewd performance?”

  “You know of these things?”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  His jaw literally dropped.

  “Was it just a little tableau in the drawing room,” she asked, “or something more elaborate?”

  “Well, er . . . more elaborate, I should say.” Emboldened by her candor, the nocturnal intimacy of the dark little grotto, the voluptuous embrace of the water, he said, “It was a . . . well, a stage play of sorts, conducted in a double parlor that had been turned into a theater, with chairs and couches facing a little stage that had been furnished like a sitting room. Some of the couches for the audience had curtains ’round them so that . . . well, for privacy if a fellow was sitting with one of the . . . women of the house.”

  “Did this stage play have a story, or was it just a series of vignettes?”

  “No, there was a story. A maidservant and the master of the house . . . well . . .”

  “Let me guess,” said Lili. “The maid had been disobedient, and the master had to punish her.”

  “Something like that. It was called ‘Taming the Trull—a Master’s Revenge.’ ”

  “Tell me about it.”

  David groaned theatrically. “He . . . he suspected she’d been stealing from him, pilfering small items, so he told his footman to keep an eye on her. The footman spied on her from behind a curtain as she started dusting and polishing her master’s sitting room. She dusted for a bit, and then she lay down on a couch and . . . lifted her skirts and . . .”

  “Pleasured herself?”

  “With the, er . . . handle of the duster.” David had never seen the female sexual organ before that evening, nor imagined that women engaged in such behavior. He’d watched with utter fascination . . . and an adamantine erection.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Bright red hair and an Irish complexion.”

  “I take it the footman found this little display interesting.”

  “He, er, rubbed himself as he watched her. He was a brawny fellow, tall and muscular, and he wore very snug breeches, so that one could see . . . well, that he was genuinely aroused.”

  “It must have been quite a shock to you, in your naïveté, to witness such things,” she said.

  “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was aghast.”

  “But you didn’t leave.”

  David sighed.

  “What happened next?” Lili asked. “Did she steal something?”

  Nodding, David said, “She took a silver wax sealer from the master’s writing desk and secreted it . . . inside herself . . .”

  “The quim or the arse?” Lili asked, as conversationally as if she were making drawing room small talk.

  “The, er, latter. She coated it first with some of the linseed oil she’d been using on the furniture. And then she got up and started polishing the desk with the seal still in her.” David heard himself saying these outrageous things with a sense of hypnotic detachment. “The footman came into the room and told her he’d keep mum about what he’d seen if she would give him a French trick. I didn’t know at the time what that meant. He took off his coat and opened his breeches, and she got down on her knees. I couldn’t believe it when she . . . took him into her mouth.”

  “Did it excite you?”

  “How could it not have?” He was hard as a club just remembering it all . . . and recounting it to the beguiling Lili as she floated so close, her hand light and warm on his shoulder, her legs brushing his from time to time as she treaded water.

  “Did he come?” Lili asked.

  Come. David had always assumed that this word, with this particular connotation, was one that only men used, or were even aware of. Fool.

  He shook his head. “The master entered the room with a friend of his, both of them in riding clothes. He was livid when he saw what the help had been up to while he was away. The footman started babbling excuses, but the master would have none of it. He and his friend wrestled the fellow into a hardback chair, tied him up, and shoved a gag in his mouth.”

  “With his breeches still open and his cock out, I suppose.”

  “Er, yes. The master demanded of the maid whether she’d stolen anything. She denied it, showing him that her apron pockets were empty, but he didn’t believe her, so he ordered her to strip and hand him each piece of clothing to examine. She refused at first, until he threatened to sack her without references, and then she reluctantly undressed down to her stockings and a . . . It wasn’t an ordinary corset, because it didn’t come up to . . .” He gestured in the vicinity of his upper chest. “It was of black satin with a great deal of boning, very snug about the waist, like a wide, tight girdle. I don’t know what to call it.”

  Lili chuckled. “It’s called a girdle. It’s for cinching in the waist while leaving the bosom unencumbered. Did she have beautiful breasts?”

  “They were . . . very large and white.” And, if he wasn’t mistaken, she’d reddened her nipples with the same rouge she’d used on her lips. “The master and his friend stared at her quite openly as she disrobed, the tiedup footman, too, and I could see that all three of them were aroused. She said, ‘There, you see? You’ve found nothing because there was nothing to find.’ The master said, ‘We’ll see about that,’ and he ordered her to bend over and hold on to the writing desk, so that her . . . posterior aspect was facing the audience. He made her spread her legs, and then he searched . . . inside her for the seal.”

  “The arse, or . . . ?”

  “No, the, er . . . the other. He felt around with his fingers, shoving them deeper and deeper, the thumb, too, until his entire hand was buried to the wrist. The maid was groaning and struggling and begging him to stop—the friend had to hold her down. She admitted that she’d filched the seal, and told him where it was, but that only earned her a whipping on top of . . . the bit with the hand. He took a riding crop to her bum as he worked the hand around inside her, saying . . . well, some things I would rather not repeat.”

  “You like it hard and nasty, don’t you, you thieving cunt? I’ve never felt such a wet pussy. Fucking whore. Trollop. Lying little slut. Let’s feel that clit—why it’s hard as a bullet.”

  “He bet his friend ten quid that he could make her . . . well, bring her to climax in twenty seconds, and she said he couldn’t make her do it if she didn’t want to. He pulled the seal out part-way and shoved it in and out of her while stroking her very quickly with his fingertips, and she did climax—or pretended to. But Louis told me he was sure she really did, because the master had her stand up and turn ’round then, and she had a sort of mottled flush all over her chest and face. He said that happens to women w
hen they come.”

  David almost apologized for uttering so vulgar a word as “come.” Absurd, of course; Lili had used that word herself, and “cock” and “quim” and “arse.” He really was a prig.

  “Some women flush like that,” Lili said, “especially the pale ones—but there are even women with my coloring who do.”

  He wondered whether she did, but even in his current, serenely muddled state, he had the presence of mind not to inquire.

  “What happened next?” she asked.

  David suspected, from the breathiness of her voice and the way her eyes glistened in the dark, that his ribald recounting was affecting her the same way it was affecting him. He supposed the smutty little scenario, however brutal and unsavory, had been designed to titillate, and titillate it did. It was a heady feeling, knowing that he had the power to arouse this exquisite seductress without even touching her.

  “The master ordered her to finish up the dusting and polishing just as she was, practically naked. He made her crawl on all fours to get under the furniture, that sort of thing. He and his friend sat on a chaise longue and smoked cigars and fondled themselves as they watched her. The footman was watching her, too. He was moaning through the gag and writhing and thrusting his hips.”

  “He was still hard?” Lili asked.

  “Oh, yes. The master laughed and said it looked as if the footman needed a good dusting, too. He had her brush him with the feather duster—his cock, I mean—very lightly, over and over again, until the poor bloke was bucking and thrashing like a wounded bear. The way the chair was creaking, I was sure it was going to break apart at any moment. It may have been just a stage play, but the sensation was obviously very real. Finally, his body went all rigid, and his eyes rolled up, and he . . . well, he ejaculated.”

  “Just from being brushed with the duster?” Lili asked. “Are you sure he actually came, and didn’t just pretend?”

  “It shot halfway across the stage.”

  “Mm . . .”

  “The master stretched out on the chaise then, and took out his cock, and had her sit astride him. He had her like that while his friend got behind her and . . .”