by Louisa Trent
She took the necessary steps to bring her close to him and splayed her thighs.
He looked, noted the dots glistening on her pubic lips, and nodded his approval. “Very nice,” he said coolly. And hotly touched her, though there was no need to confirm the obvious.
He stroked between her legs, a lingering caress that moistened his fingertips, and then pressed her clit.
She went off like a shot, writhing on the cusp of climax. Suddenly, he knew he had to feel her skin on his, her nipples against his nipples, her loins melded to his loins. He never got naked with prostitutes. Joint nudity was just bad form, and an intimacy he rejected. But strictly speaking, money had not passed from his palm into hers, and so strictly speaking, he could ease up on his usual reluctance to bare himself to a prostitute.
“Go to the bed,” he said, rushing to strip.
Tiptoeing over, she kneed the coverlet. But as she went to recline on her belly, he stopped her.
“On your back,” he said tersely and kicked off his boots.
The sun was just going down, and he had not bothered to close the velvet window curtains. Letting her see him, scars and ridges and all, he went to the bed.
She reached out to him straightaway. “I knew you would be muscled, but I had no real idea of what you, or any man, would look like without clothes. Statues yes, but not a real man.”
“I am plenty enough real,” he grated out as his cock stood at attention.
Without any compunction, she touched him, a finger moving from mushroom head to base, before cupping his balls. “So heavy, but I knew that before. I wish I had some artistic talent, for I would dearly love to draw you, just as you are now.”
He felt the same about her. She was sprawled on his bed, no self-consciousness, allowing him to see all of her from every angle, and he wanted to have her like that for all eternity. Something for him to remember her by when she went to someone else, another man, who he intended to handpick for her. Someone warmer than himself, someone who could perhaps come to care for her, as he could not.
As she touched him, he touched her. When touching her with his fingers was no longer enough, he used his mouth, suckling her nipples, and then that pleasure spot at the top of her sex.
“Mmm,” she moaned and pulled him close. “Oh, yes, just like that. Lovely. So lovely.”
As she climaxed, he caught her lips with his, sharing a kiss he had refused her until then.
As he kissed her, he entered her body and began to move, began to make love to her, for the first time. And he knew, as their perspiration mingled, as their fluids combined, as the sounds of their mutual climax rose around them, that he could never allow her to get that close to him again.
Chapter Twenty-two
Tegan’s nose was a bit out of joint.
Two days after their romantic coupling in his bedroom, two day after their kiss, Sean had high-handedly ordered her to a brothel. Her fantasy that he was perhaps beginning to come to love her, as she was perhaps tentatively beginning to come to love him, had turned out to be unfounded.
On his side.
On her side, she still felt the same fragile stirrings of affection. Whether those fledgling feelings grew into true love remained to be seen. An unlikely possibility at present, considering they were on their way to a bawdy house. Obviously, Sean Griffith could hardly wait to palm her off on his friend.
On the way up the long private walk to the brothel door, her lover at her side, Tegan braced herself for any and every eventuality.
Her master, her lover, the man who simultaneously made her shriek in pleasure and in pain, had mentioned her “meeting” another man, but at this point, no circumstance he cooked up would surprise her. Even if he abandoned her, she would not have batted an eye.
She would have run like Hades as soon as he turned his back, but she would not have batted an eye.
After the episode in the tomb, she had prepared herself for his dastardly carnal chicanery. The man had a devilishly delicious mind. With his imagination, he could easily pen a romance novel. Guaranteed, she would drool over the naughty passages. Where did he arrive at his exciting ideas?
No question his style of lovemaking was rough, and yes, “fucking” better suited the description. Somehow, though, his brand of ravishment suited her. He seemed able to reach inside her imagination and satisfy each fantasy.
Except the one where he came to care for her. Perhaps, even eventually, love her.
The man was sublimely talented. She very much feared that, after him, a tepid missionary position with some other man would leave her wanting. Though the missionary position with him had very nearly moved her to tears. He had been so tender with her their last time together.
And now this!
He grinned at her. “In that white pinafore and blue polka-dot gown, you look all of twelve, a schoolgirl on her way to class.”
“Apropos, as I imagine this will be a learning experience, sir.” She waited beside him as he inserted a silver key in the lock. “All education helps one grow as a person.”
“We shall see about that, little girl.” Sean pushed her ahead of him into the foyer, where a butler greeted them with a bow.
“Good evening, Mr. Griffith.”
Sean nodded. “Clive, I have a guest with me tonight.”
“Very good. I shall let Madame know.” He held out a hand. Your top hat and coat, sir?”
After Sean handed them over, Clive turned to her. “Your bonnet and wrap, Miss?”
After removing both and rendering them into the butler’s care, Tegan surveyed her environs.
The hall looked boringly normal. Staid even. Dark cherry woodwork, no marble or gilt to be seen anywhere, not a naked anyone hanging from the glass chandelier or sliding down the staircase’s curved banister.
She heaved a sigh of disappointment.
But brightened considerably when Sean led her into what appeared to be a well-stocked private library. Or on second thought, a children’s playroom. It was so difficult to tell. Perhaps it was a combination of the two.
“All the books here are available for purchase, as are the toys,” Sean told her. “They are also illegal. Put anything you wish on my account, only take care to have the items wrapped in brown paper before we leave the premises.” He gestured toward the extremely tall and flamboyantly coiffed, red-haired proprietress shelving odd-looking glass ball devices. “While I attend to some business with my associate and friend, Tobias, Miss Eddie will help you.”
Miss Eddie, finished with the stocking, waved a massive and hairy hand at her and said in a distinctively masculine baritone, “Anything you want, honey, from glass Ben Wa balls to foot-long dildos, we have it all. Just name your pleasure.”
“Shocked now?” Sean whispered to her.
Tegan pulled her eyeballs back into their sockets and managed to say, “Oh…um…thank you, Miss Eddie. May I see your selection of anatomy books?”
*
After making a fast deal with Tobias to acquire additional property in his old Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, Sean returned to the library to collect a blushing Tegan. “Find everything?”
“Yes. With Miss Eddie’s elucidating help. Actually, I placed several books on your credit tally.” Like the schoolgirl he was doing his best to pretend she was, Tegan giggled.
Hilarity that far surpassed the humor of the topic under discussion.
His suspicions, always at the forefront when dealing with her, spiked. “Buy anything else?”
“Several glasses of the most divine lemonade. My throat was sooooo parched.” She laughed uproariously.
He stared at her flushed cheeks, her glassy eyes, her too-enunciated manner of speech. What the hell was wrong with her?
He said uneasily, “I have several purchases to make too. But they can wait for later.”
“Miss Eddie is so sweet.” She twiddled her thumbs in a bizarre fashion that had Sean frowning. “He invited me to watch him perform onstage. As it turns out, he belon
gs to an all-male burlesque troupe. Imagine that? Burlesque! Can we attend one of his shows?” She wove back and forth on her feet. “How did your meeting go with your, and I quote, ‘business associate and friend, Tobias.’”
“The meeting went well.” He caught her elbow to support her before she tripped. “Tobias would like to meet you now.”
“I should like to meet him too. I should like to give him a big, fat kiss for not keeping you overly long on stuffy and boring business.”
“Feel free to do that.”
Her eyes crossed. “Do what, sir?”
“Kiss Tobias. He is upstairs waiting.”
“Lead the way, sir. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”
Her glassy eyes, her heightened color, her too-exact speech—Tegan Ellis was fuddled. “How many glasses of lemonade did you say you had?”
“Three.” She covered her mouth as laughter bubbled out from between her lips. “Perhaps five. I feel quite tipsy. Although, having never tasted hard spirits, how would I know? I can say, however, that the Gunjah Wallah Company’s maple sugar hashish candy was very good indeed. I had several of those.”
Sean groaned. Tipsy? Ha! Miss Eddie had gotten his demimonde rip-roaring drunk. And then, for good measure, drugged her. The candy was edible cannabis.
And maybe all for the best. With the lemonade and candy in her system, her inhibitions would be lowered to nonexistent.
Just the way Sean wanted them.
The next step of his planned retribution would go easier on her if any lingering resistance had crumbled.
Holding her up, they proceeded upstairs.
As was the custom of the house, doors to vacant boudoirs remained open, done to whet the appetites of prospective club members. Even the doors to some occupied rooms remained ajar to entice clients with voyeuristic leanings. Exhibitionists always welcomed an audience.
They passed numerous gents lurking in the hallway, most of whom were jerking off to various dominant and submissive themes played out within dungeonlike interiors.
Always curious, Tegan broke free of his guiding hand and raced ahead. Before he could catch up and prevent her from getting into mischief, she was peeking inside doorways.
At the threshold to one room, she called to him. “But, sir, what are they doing in there? Why is that man wearing a dog collar? And why is he begging for a bone held by that leather-clad woman?”
“He must be hungry,” he replied and hurried her along.
After that, an overwhelming compulsion to cover Tegan’s eyes fell over Sean. Fighting the ridiculous urge, he dragged her past the more tasteless sexual tableaus. Fortunately, the brothel did not allow bestiality, but the madam catered to every other fetish under the sun.
He swept her past the exotic Oriental room, where every surface seemed to be black-lacquered and red-painted. Past the regal French room gilded in gold. The Persian garden room sported a palace where any dynastic prince would have felt right at home. A Moorish room of Northern Africa came with tents and camel statues. In the Turkish harem room, a client could fuck as many nubile handmaidens as he desired. At one time or another, Sean had tried out all the rooms.
Except one.
Digging in the heels on her flat-heeled slippers, Tegan came to a dead stop before that one’s open doorway.
“Why, an English schoolroom!” Excitement hitched the alto pitch of her speaking voice to a childish soprano. “Look at all those books! And how very convenient! A bed. Only the dungeon room had an actual bed.”
“That was a rack, little girl, not a bed.”
“Is that why the gentleman was screaming? I must have missed the screws.” She looked up at him. “But anyway, this English classroom looks interesting. Shall we go in and take a look around?”
“No. The schoolgirl scenario leaves me cold.”
“Cold?” She looked down at her childish white pinafore, touched her beribboned braids. “But you insist on dressing me as a schoolgirl.”
Tegan was inebriated. Because she would recall very little of what transpired this evening, he admitted the truth. “I am not sexually drawn to young innocent misses. Your childish outfits were supposed to put me off you. The ploy failed,” he said bitterly. Any reminders of his botched academic career irritated him.
And yet thinking about taking her against the chalkboard made him hard. “Now, shall we go?”
Pouting, she stamped her foot. “No!”
“You spoiled brat. I have better things to do than humor your childish whims.”
When, sticking out her tongue, she kicked his shins, he’d had just about enough. “Stop your misbehavior at once.”
“I have been a bad, bad student.” She posed a finger at her chin. “I should never have flipped my skirts at my schoolmaster.”
“I recall the petulance, the foot stomping, the kick.” He frowned. “When did you flip your skirts at me?”
“Just now,” she said and did.
When he saw the hoyden had deliberately left off wearing drawers under her gown, he pushed her inside and slammed the door behind them.
Sean rounded on her. “You are bare beneath your skirts.”
“Yes, sir. Quite bare, sir.”
“Go to the chalkboard and write ‘I must wear drawers’ one hundred times in your best penmanship.”
“But a bare pussy feels so lovely, sir. And besides, whenever I am with you, my drawers become distressingly damp.”
“And does going without proper underclothes eliminate the dampness?”
“Oh no, sir. If anything, I am damper today than ever before. Here look.” Raising her gown to the waist again, she exposed herself to him. “See? Quite slick.”
He reached for her.
In a flounce of blue polka-dot skirts, she skipped away. “Here I go. Off to the chalkboard to write my fingers to the bone. By the way, is that a bone in your trousers, schoolmaster?”
“Only a shameless hussy would have noticed.”
“But it is so huge, how could I not notice?” Picking up the chalk, she began to write her punishment assignment.
“You misspelled the last word, miss. The correct spelling is not d-r-a-w-s but d-r-a-w-e-r-s.”
“But the misspelled one has fewer letters and therefore takes less time to write. Already my hand grows weary.”
He went up behind her. “No more games, Tegan. Put down the damn chalk.”
Defying him, she kept writing.
He took the chalk from her hand and bent her over the desk. A toss sent her childish gown over her head, a reach put the teacher’s ruler in his hand, several strikes against her bare rump tanned her truculent hide.
She was cooing at the finish. “More, sir.” She wiggled her bare bottom at him. “Please, sir. More.”
Sean was about to take himself out and put it in her when he remembered Tobias.
He pulled her up, straightened her out. “You are to come with me.”
“But I never came at all. You stopped my punishment too soon,” she whined as Sean delivered her to Tobias in the room next door, a rustic boudoir designed to portray an American Western saloon, complete with naked-lady paintings on the walls and sawdust on the floor.
“You never came, pretty lady?” Tobias drawled. “I can do something about that sad state of affairs.” His business associate kissed Tegan’s lips.
And damn her, anyway, she responded. Her mouth opened, and she greedily took his partner’s tongue.
The kiss went from hot to wild, and Sean’s irritation grew.
When Tobias finally let Tegan come up for air, she was panting like a bitch in heat.
She fanned her flushed face. “I do believe I like your friend, sir.”
While Sean scowled, Tobias picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “I am delighted to hear I meet with your approval, ma’am.”
“Oh, you do.” She giggled, drunkenly. “Now do something to meet with my disapproval.” The little tart winked.
“I can think of lots of th
ings. And some of them are even legal. Ask your bad-tempered friend.”
“Oh, Sean is indeed bad tempered, though hardly my friend. He positively loathes me.”
Tobias stroked his gun, not the toy one holstered at his hip. “Well, I positively have a hankering for you, ma’am. In that purty blue getup, you remind me of a prairie flower or a Texas bluebonnet or such.”
“Enough speechifying, cowpoke. Get nekkid,” she slurred, “so we can try out that rickety bunkhouse cot over there.” Both arms tossed over her head, she started shedding her clothing.
A startled look passed over Tobias’s face. “Shucks, Sean! Is this gal hot to trot all the time or is it something I said?”
“Cannabis,” Sean explained. “And Miss Eddie’s famous lemonade.” He sighed. “But even without them, she is a wonder in bed. Giving. Sweet. A real handful between the sheets.”
“Aw shucks! Figures, she’d be here with you.”
Sean held firm to his plan. “Your lucky night, my friend. Tonight, we share.”
Tobias cocked a brow. “I reckon you said so, but are you sure?”
“Never more sure.” After their last time together, Sean was committed to breaking Tegan’s hold on him. That last time had felt so right with her.
Too right.
He needed to get her out of his system, out of his blood.
No better way to do that than sharing her with another man. A threesome would break the fantasy that Tegan could come to care for him. Only him.
She was now naked, and Tobias whistled through his teeth. “That filly is a beaut, all right.” He tossed his ten-gallon hat back on his head. “Understandable, you being smitten with her and all, partner. Ain’t never seen nothing finer.”
“You got it all wrong, partner,” Sean strained through his teeth. “Tegan is just another cunt to me.” To prove it, he pushed her toward his business associate and took up a position behind her. The ménage was about to begin.
As Sean kissed the back of Tegan’s neck, hot tears tracked down the side of his broken nose. He had to do this. Had to. After this threesome, he would be able to let her go when the time came. Just as he had let that other woman go. The one he thought he loved. That threesome had done it for him then, and this threesome would do it for him now. And he had to let Tegan go. They had no future, him and her.
