Lilac

by Louisa Trent

  “I told you I would improve conditions at Central. Betterments were a condition of our agreement. And so I shall. Your trust in me leaves much to be desired.”

  “As does yours in me, sir.”

  “You have given me no reason to trust you.”

  “I would say the same, sir. And using humiliation as a device to chastise me for your unfounded jealousy does nothing to sponsor my trust in you.”

  “Me, jealous? Ha! Unfounded or not, jealousy for a relationship based solely on a business contract is the height of ridiculousness. Go to your servants’ quarters. My contempt needs to be fucked away.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, by a rear door that led out to the stables, he eyed an old, coiled-up leather harness. While Tegan went on ahead, he took up a couple of buckled straps and weighed their strength.

  They would do.

  Once inside the servants’ quarters, she turned somber eyes to him. “What would you like me to do next, sir?”

  “Go stand at the tallboy.”

  Shoulders back, she went unsmilingly to the chest of drawers and awaited his next order.

  He gave it immediately. “Stick out your bottom.”

  She did so. “Is this far enough, sir?”

  “It will do.” Tegan had violated their agreement and needed to be punished. “Six lashes with the leather across the fullest portion of your buttocks.”

  He went to her and placed her arms over the bureau top with her wrists clamped together, then looped the length around the bureau, buckling the ends behind the weighty piece of furniture. “Part your legs.”

  Semen rolled down the inside of her right thigh. He tried not to notice the sticky rivulet as he tied each ankle separately in the same manner as he had her wrists.

  He went to the bedstead, removing the necessary item. “I went to Pittsburgh for my business trip.”

  She tried to twist around to see his face. Held fast, her attempt failed. Though he was able to see her jutting nipples. Her excitement at the bondage was patently obvious.

  “You will have to trust me when I say that I put your changes into place at Central Mine. Everything that you asked for in our agreement has been done.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you!”

  “If you desire more changes—”

  “I do! I have so many plans for the mine.”

  “Then you must agree to all usage. Including another man. If it pleases me to watch, you will perform with the other man while I look on. If it pleases me to join in, you must not hold anything back.”

  Her wide shoulders slumped. “Agreed.”

  He palmed her buttock, his thumb moving inexorably into the crevice between the two halves. “Some women become aroused at the kiss of the whip.”

  She shuddered as he fingered her puckered hole. “I want you to know, I missed you while you were gone. I missed you, and so I ran to you on the drive.”

  Fooled too many times, he dared not believe her. She liked the carnal elements of their agreement, the rough sex, and that was all she liked. He just happened to be attached to the cock she had surprisingly come to crave.

  Stepping back and away, he let the leather harness strap fly.

  She took it well, holding steady. But on the second stroke, her body began to rock. On the third, she bucked against the restraints. On the fourth, she was writhing. At the fifth, her tendons went tight, her throat arched, her hips tilting and then grinding the air. On the sixth, Sean knew he was about to come.

  As was Tegan Ellis.

  He got his cock out, oiled himself well from the tincture taken from the bedstead. As she screamed out her pleasure, he entered her straight on between the lash-reddened cheeks of her buttocks.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she sobbed, holding nothing back, allowing him to see her full surrender for the very first time. “Oh, God, yes. Just like that,” she cried as he made her ass his a second time.

  He would never love her, that path led only to ruin, but as he fucked her ass, as he bellowed out his orgasm, he did acknowledge to never having been as taken with a deceitful whore as he was with her.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Late the next afternoon, Tegan lay on her side in bed with the robber baron at her back, his hands roaming her. She had been naked for hours and at his disposal. He knew all her curves, all her hollows, how all of her tasted and smelled. And so when he said, “Raise your knee to your chin,” she did so without question.

  His hand was there, at her slit, and he was rubbing his fingers into her swollen folds. She was so sore. All over, she was sore, but denying him never once entered her mind…

  Until he began pushing a massive phallus inside her.

  She tightened but still made no outward protest, as untold inches of cold rubber entered her.

  He moved her hand atop the device. “When I say the word, move the dildo.” He left the bed, went to the foot. “Come up to a squat.”

  She rolled up onto semen-fragrant sheets and, with the huge abomination protruding, spread her legs.

  “You can do better than that, little girl.”

  Grimacing, she splayed her knees wider.

  “Very nice,” he complimented and smiled. “Now touch your tits.”

  Her nipples stung. From his pinching, from hours of her own arousal. Nevertheless, she pulled at the crowns.

  “Christ, what you do to me,” he said.

  He still had not disrobed. After all the hours she had been bare, she had never once seen him naked. She could tell he owned a beautiful body, all hard muscles and clear definition. But still he refused to get naked and vulnerable with her.

  And why should that surprise her?

  Naked and vulnerable was the position he had assigned her.

  Walking behind her, he cupped her bottom cheek; then he diddled her there, at her back opening. He put something in her, forcing it in.

  “Oh, God no, sir. Whatever it is, the thing tingles.”

  “An anal plug, and it is supposed to tingle.”

  “Now? May I move the rubber dildo now?”

  “Not yet.”

  Oh, he could be cruel.

  To escape his sharp gaze she looked down at herself. Her entire body wore sex bruises, but her nipples were inflamed from his near-constant attentions. Between her legs felt swollen and slippery. Semen. Her own honeyed urgency.

  “Just about done here,” he said.

  Shamed that she must look like the whore she had become, she bowed her head, allowing her knotted hair to cover her face as he strapped a jeweled belt around her waist. “May I move the dildo now, sir? I need to. Please?”

  He came around to the front, separated her strands of fallen hair, and kissed her mouth hard, his tongue claiming the interior. At the end of the kiss, he said, “Do it.”

  He kissed her. On the mouth.

  The kiss literally stole her breath away. Swept her away too. And she no longer felt like a whore, but a woman a man absolutely adored.

  She began to masturbate, began to move the rubber dildo, as he watched.

  When she neared completion, he exposed his cock. The male part of himself looked swollen, bruised, as inflamed as she, as he took himself in hand and began milking the length while she watched.

  Both aroused by the other, it took but a few swift strokes to end it.

  She cried out his name—not sir, not master, not Mr. Griffith, but Sean.

  As he ejaculated onto her belly, his shouted, “Tegan, Tegan, Tegan,” reverberated in the cum-scented quiet of the room.

  *

  The next day, Sean ordered Tegan outside to take a breath of air between their carnal bouts. Not that she had requested a break, not Owen Ellis’s daughter, but neither was he about to fuck her into a grinning exhaustion. They were both strong-willed people, and this had become a contest over who would first cry a halt to their marathon fuck fest.

  He predicted neither of them would.

  In her stubborn pride, Tegan would fulfill the terms of their contract
, even if her ass fell off. In his need for vengeance, he would demand she pay for her attempt to use him, not once, but twice.

  But not at the price of her growing wan and sick.

  He would have his pound of flesh, but only an ounce at a time. No need for him to receive his due all in one day.

  “I took walks within the walls of your estate while you were gone,” she said as they ambled along the lawn.

  What with earning his fortune and all, he never had the time to enjoy the property. “You like it here?”

  “I love it here. The surroundings are so quiet and peaceful.” She took a deep breath. “And the air is so clean, unlike Pittsburgh.”

  “No need for these interminable hints,” he advised her. “I told you I put your requested mine changes in place, and I have already started to do so.”

  She nodded, her gaze straying to the river. “Forgive my rudeness, but how did a man like you ever afford this place?”

  “By first investing in steel. Then in Manhattan,” he said bluntly. “I have always been a gambler.” Which is how he ended up owning Central Mine. Coal was not something he would ever have invested in on his own.

  “The old friend of yours, the one we met during our outing to Central Park, mentioned prizefighting in Hell’s Kitchen. I have read about that area down by the docks, filled with thugs and dance halls and gambling and drinking establishments.”

  “I was born in Ireland, but when my parents died, my older sister sent for me to live with her in America. She had immigrated here a decade earlier. I grew up in a slum tenement.”

  “How horrible.”

  “It was better than shantytown on the river. Anyway, when she married and went west, I stayed on.”

  “And took up prizefighting?”

  “More respectable than pimping. And gangs never suited me. It was a natural progression from fighting to stay alive, to fighting to earn my fortune.” He shrugged. “And I was good at it. My last fight changed my life.” In more ways than just bankrolling his investment career. He had been a happy-go-lucky tough until Millie broke his heart and changed who he was inside. “And that is how a sort like me ended up here with a pretty lady on his arm.”

  “Sir, I am sorry for what I did. Though the cause was just, my method was wrong. I thought the ends justified the means. Now I understand two hurts do not make a well person, on either side. I do not expect you to cancel our contract. I only ask if you can somehow find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  While he had lost his innocence, his sense of wonder, a long time ago, she retained hers. And while life had numbed his feelings, she still suffered from a whole range of useless emotions. Young yet, she had yet to learn how to protect herself from pain, how to close herself off from sadness.

  Christ but he envied her.

  “No, I am afraid forgiveness is something I am no longer capable of. I can only get even. With that said, my offer to find you a protector after we are finished is still on the table. Take my offer of help. You will not survive without it.”

  She touched his arm, and his balls tightened. What she did to him, and with only a stroke of her fingers across his arm.

  “Thank you, sir. Let me think about it.”

  “Think about it! What is there for you to think about?”

  “I still believe I may one day find love like in a romance novel. Those chances diminish significantly if I enter a brothel. The same goes for those chances if I become a wealthy man’s mistress for mercenary reasons. I still retain hope of striking out on my own in commerce, of wedding the man of my dreams.”

  “Dream on. I have already sodomized you. In terms of respectability, that is pretty much the end of it.”

  “My end, anyway.” She chuckled.

  When he scowled at her, she quieted. “Let me explain. Naturally, I have heard vague biblical references to Sodom and Gomorrah, but my father was not a fire and brimstone, churchgoing man. Not precisely an atheist, but he practiced the religion of social reform and raised me to do the same. My conscience is a social conscience based on action, not on prayer. Outside of apathy, I have few preconceptions about the nature of sin. My catechism is the Golden Rule. And so, while buggery was everything outside my realm of both experience and knowledge, I had no inherent qualms about consenting to the act. Far from repelling me, the intercourse others might judge as illicit left me hungry for more of the same.”

  He narrowed his eyes, searching for the truth in her. “Does nothing shock you?”

  “Man’s inhumanity to man. That never ceases to shock me. But very little else. Far from what you might assume, I did not have a typical upbringing.”

  “You came here a sheltered miss.”

  “Not as a result of anything my father did. He never swaddled me from new experience, from knowledge. Granted, a mining town is hardly the hub of the cultural universe, but both my parents encouraged me to read widely.”

  “Owen Ellis must have had rules.”

  “No. My father never forbade me to do anything. And so he never punished me for disobedience.”

  “I shall. And you will obey me.”

  “Of course. That was our agreement, and I will uphold my end, by allowing you my end.” Another irreverent twitter.

  “Was your innocence caused by a lack of opportunity or a personal code of morality?”

  “I was only innocent about sex. And from no lack of trying on my part to gain information.”

  “The Pittsburgh Free Library?”

  “Exactly. My mother died before I reached puberty. Though my father was liberal minded, there are limits to what a male parent will discuss with a daughter. And with Comstock Act against dispensing sexual information, well…” She shrugged. “While admitting to ignorance, I had no compunctions about actual experimentation of all sorts.”

  “Little deviant.”

  “I cannot view acts between consenting adults as deviant.” She smiled into his eyes. “Shall we fulfill the terms of our contract again?”

  “Is my need so obvious?”

  She laughed. “I was speaking only for myself.”

  Back inside his house that was not a home, she walked ahead of him. When she started for the servants’ quarters, he stopped her. “Upstairs this time.”

  She blinked. “Upstairs?”

  “The master bedroom will be more comfortable. You might sleep easier in a larger bed. And the room has an attached bath. Afterward,” he said, suddenly regretting the sad lack of romance in their agreement, “you can soak your aches away in the tub.”

  “How kind you are, sir.”

  “Not kind. Never kind. Only practical. I mean for you to work off the betterments I have made to the mines, but hurting you will only spite myself.” He lowered his voice. “Never have I availed myself of a more amenable whore.”

  As he meant she should, she blanched at that last word.

  If he was kind at all, it was in his cruelty. She had to accept his help. Had to. Unless she did, Tegan Ellis would have no future.

  He brought her into his room and closed the door behind them.

  She spun in the middle of the floor. “My goodness! Your lady friends must love this suite.”

  “I have no lady friends. For the last fifteen years, I have only ever been with prostitutes. And I have never brought any of those above stairs.” He hardened his heart. “You are the first prostitute ever to set foot in here.”

  She stopped her spinning. “I should be honored, I suppose.”

  “I suppose,” he repeated. “Take everything off.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  As she got busy, he went to stand by the window overlooking the gardens. He turned his back to her as she disrobed.

  But not for long.

  No matter how hard he tried, he could never seem to keep from looking at her, from touching her. His helplessness provoked his normally even temper. She had used him, and he must be ever mindful, that regardless of her pretty apology, she would use him again for her min
ing cause.

  “Let down your hair,” he ordered as she stepped out of her childish slippers, shoes much better than any she had most likely ever owned.

  They had both grown up poor. But unlike in her close-knit mining town, poor girls like Tegan started working the docks at puberty in Hell’s Kitchen.

  A poor young woman like her could do far worse than to become a rich man’s mistress. Far worse. There was no need for him to feel guilty about holding that out as her only recourse now that he had ruined her.

  He walked slowly toward her. “Are you wet?”

  “Yes, sir. Very wet.”

  “You know what to do first.”

  As he had instructed her to do during their last long session, she turned her back to him and dipped at the waist for the removal of her anal plug. “Are you finding it easier to wear?” Trying to touch her as little as possible, he turned her to face him.

  “No. Not really.” She wrinkled her nose. “It still tingles.”

  “Where?”

  She examined her bare feet. “You know where.”

  “Where?” he barked.

  Her shoulders rounded. “My cunt. The foreign thing tingles my cunt and makes me want you all the time.”

  “Not me. The thing makes you want a cock. Any man’s cock. Your want is not specific to me.”

  “It feels specific to you.”

  “Only because you have yet to be with anyone else.”

  “And that is how I would prefer the situation to remain.”

  “Tegan,” he said patiently, trying not to ogle her nipples, which had progressed from semierect to an impressive, and highly complimentary, jut.

  Though she had come here to blackmail him, her body did desire him. There was no possible way, not in her naivety, to fake it. Her climaxes were real, and once again, highly complimentary. “The terms of the agreement are clear. You will be with someone else. As well as for my pleasure, this is for your own good. To succeed in your chosen profession, you must learn how to satisfy all tastes, not just my taste. As to the anal plug—with practice, you will grow accustomed to wearing the device. At any rate, whether you do or not, gentlemen will insist you wear one all the time. Now split your legs. I need to see if you need the sex oils.”