This night she chose a man of maybe five and thirty. She had noticed him before but had never selected him because he always sat in the corner watching her, watching everyone. He seemed somehow troubled, almost fearful, and spoke only occasionally to her father. Her father seemed to like him, leaning in from time to time to laugh and share a word as he refilled his mug.
This day, however, he sat at a bench near the front of the room. He was clean and well dressed as usual, his linen sparkling white against his sun-darkened skin.
“What’ll you have?” she asked, knowing the response before it was given.
“You, tonight, if you’ll have me.” His voice was soft and warm, the words lacking the brashness with which they were usually delivered.
“An old line, sir.”
“And yet still heartfelt.” His eyes too were warm and soft.
“Is that why you’ve moved to the center of things? I thought you had an unnatural fondness for my father.”
He laughed. “No. I was afraid.”
That admission surprised her. She took a moment to consider her response.
“Of me?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
He was silent. She leaned in to hear him better.
“You are so alive in this thing. You wield your power so completely. I am awed.”
She smiled and kissed him on the side of his mouth. He flinched.
“I shall have you tonight,” she said as she straightened. “Ale?”
He nodded.
“That one,” she said to her father as she pointed to the solitary man. “I’ll have that one this week.”
“Good choice, daughter. He has waited long to muster the courage. He seems a good enough man. Maybe he’ll give you your relief.”
“Aye,” she said, nodding at her father’s word, but sadly, as she had little hope. This one was pleasant enough, but not unlike the many others in appearance.
At the appointed time, she went to the sun-darkened man and bade him come with her. The others looked on hungrily. Some whooped loudly and made catcalls, but none objected as the process was long understood and accepted.
When they entered the room, he stood meekly in its center, fully clothed and waiting.
“Well?” she asked.
He looked up at her questioning.
“Undress.”
“Everything?”
She nodded realizing that she wanted him unclothed. She wanted to see his body, to touch it.
Sliding the small buttons from beneath the loops that ran the length of her bodice, she watched as he unfastened and removed the black leather jerkin then began to pull the shirt over his head to reveal a broad chest with a spray of dark hair just at the center. The muscles of her sex clenched and she moved toward him. He looked at her warily and even took a step back, his arms still caught in the sleeves of his shirt.
She lowered her mouth to the darkly pebbled flat nipples on his chest and sucked. Her tongue toyed with the coarse hair that surrounded them. She licked the tiny nipples again coaxing them to rise. He groaned, his hands and arms still high over his head tangled in his shirt.
She pushed him back. He stumbled a bit until the back of his knees touched the mattress and he tumbled backward. She didn’t know what had come over her, but she felt fevered. Her puss twitched and she could feel the moisture running down her thighs. She never wore undergarments on selection night so there was no linen chemise or drawers to collect her rampant juices.
He wiggled a bit, struggling with the shirt.
“Be still,” she ordered and he stilled.
She stood over him looking her fill. Her bodice was splayed open and her breasts sat up high peeking out of the thickly embroidered cloth. They were full and free and buoyant, the nipples aroused, long and aimed at their prey. She felt his eyes on her and her puss twitched again, the muscles tightening in expectation.
“Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t try to touch me. If you do, I’ll call my father and he’ll toss you out. Do you understand?”
He nodded. In his eyes, fear warred with anticipation.
Kneeling on the floor beside him, she slowly loosened his codpiece and unbuttoned his hose, her fingers grazing his sex through the thick-paned wool. He was hot and hard and he jumped each time she touched him. She reached over, and with both hands, pulled his hose, codpiece and all, over his hips and down around his knees. His cock sprang out, full and long, solid and dusky like the rest of him. A nest of dark coarse hair framed his sex and his sac. Standing up, she surveyed her feast. He lay there, his arms still tangled in the stark white linen, much of which trailed down to frame his thick locks and pleasant face. His broad chest with its hair-dusted tabs and the narrow waist gave way to his rampant sex and taut thighs. He shifted his booted feet, the leather crackling as his legs rubbed restlessly against the footboard.
She moved between his open legs and lowered her mouth, closing it over his sex. The bulbous head filled her mouth, its shape and salty tang making her want to suck and slurp at it like the spoon when she made syllabub. She sucked and he moved restlessly beneath her moaning his pleasure. Her hands found the firm cheeks of his bottom and squeezed, relishing the sleekness and resilience of skin and muscle. He bucked beneath her, pressing himself farther into her mouth.
She took her mouth away and, pinching a bottom cheek, she spoke to him as though he were a recalcitrant servant. “Don’t move or there will be no relief. Remain as you are until you are given permission to do otherwise.”
Cowed, he looked down the bed at her and nodded, his hardened cock throbbing in agreement. She resumed sucking, enjoying the width and heat and flavor as it filled her mouth and the rasp of its various textures as it slid in and out. He squirmed, his thighs tightening as he continued to swell. Soon his size strained her mouth, and he was writhing on the bed, trying to keep from thrusting upward and barely able to contain himself.
Only then did she gather her skirts and straddle him. Her wet sex pressed into his groin. His crazed cock pressed into the crevice of her buttocks.
He watched her, his eyes devouring her breasts. She rasped her sex against the coarse hair of his groin. It tingled. She rubbed herself against it again, a lazy cat scratching an itch. The hard flesh of his sex wedged tight between her cheeks began a slow slide up and down.
She stopped, pulling herself from the growing pleasure, opened her eyes and glared down at him. Fear rounded his eyes. He closed them but only for a moment. His eyes sought hers, soft and pleading. His arms strained up toward the headboard.
She leaned forward, pressing her buoyant breasts into the hardened muscles of his chest, her nipples denting the flesh. Finding the pillow softness of his lower lip, she bit down. He groaned, his mouth seeking hers. Hers refused, nipping him again then using her tongue to lave the stinging lips.
He was breathing hard now, panting.
She rose up, nipped a shoulder, a nipple. Her tiny teeth found the tough skin at his rib cage. He writhed beneath her, moisture dripped from his sex and coated the crevice between her cheeks.
“Please,” he begged, his arms straining upward, his riding boots scuffing against the footboard.
“Please,” he cried. She nipped another shoulder, harder this time, and he bucked beneath her. His eyes were shut tight and his teeth sank into his lower lip.
Gathering her skirts higher, she rose and watched as she sank down onto his swollen sex. He made a grateful noise of contentment as her flesh swallowed his. She squeezed, causing her muscles to grasp at his eager appendage, but she had liked the way his girth pierced her, the way it had pressed its way in creating a rasping friction as it made its way up her channel to create a resonating bounce at her center. She rose and did it again and again until her whole body was wound so tight that she couldn’t think. His cries of pleasure coming from deep in his throat somehow penetrated her thoughts, and she moved her hand up to cover his mouth, to silence him.
Unbalanced by the movem
ent, she found herself sprawled atop him, his appendage lodged at a strangely pleasant angle. She pressed backward, his sex rasping against an uncharted spot. A jolt of lightning flared deep inside her. She tried it again. Her breasts tingled as they rubbed against the hair of his chest. The lightening flared again and he cried out.
Driven now, she pressed backward in earnest, a rhythm claiming her as the warmth grew and spread with each backward thrust. He was saying something or making a noise deep in his throat as he thrust upward, but she didn’t stop to chastise him because it felt too good and the light and warmth was growing.
Suddenly, she felt him hardening inside her, stronger than any appendage she had ever felt. She pressed back and he thrust forward. Back and forward they rocked and pressed and butted against each other until the lightning consumed them, the dam burst and they collapsed semiconscious into a heap of melded flesh.
Sometime after dawn, their flesh cooled and they were able to disentangle themselves, wash and dress. He kissed her forehead as he left, but he never offered his name nor did she ask.
Before the week was near an end, a large chest filled with silks, spices and jewels arrived with a note thanking her for “a memorable evening and an experience unsurpassed.”
It was unsigned and left no hint as to how the benefactor might be contacted. But what did it matter? She had no desire to become territorial. She had found her relief, and it had been all that she had dreamed. Now she could move on with her life. She considered selling some of the jewels and buying a small house in town, maybe a flower or milliner’s shop. There was more than enough. Her father thought it a grand idea and encouraged her to do so.
Although she would have denied it, the hope that the man would return kept her rooted in place. She waited tables, flirted with the customers, even joined in their bawdy songs, but she never took another man to her room.
Months passed and business was still good because many hoped that Treasure would renew her Selection Day trysts. Even if she didn’t, she was still a treat for the eyes and pleasant company. Further, the grog had suddenly become more potent. Rumor was that the barkeep had come into a recent windfall and diluting his spirits with less water was his way of celebrating and sharing his good fortune with his customers.
The man who had given her relief rolled in on a blustery night. Taking his old place in the far corner of the bar, he ordered his ale and took up his watch.
His cape whirled about him as he pushed through the heavy wooden door. She had seen him as he’d come in, but she’d not acknowledged him, not wanting him to think her territorial. Although that was what she was feeling. Yes, that and rage. Where had he been? Why had he not come for her? When she could stand it no longer, she made her way across the room, planted her feet in front of him and wrapped her arms across her chest.
“Well?”
“Good evening, Treasure,” he said as if nothing more than the tipping of a hat had occurred between them.
“And to you, sir. However, I find it off putting that you know my name and where I reside and I know nothing of you.”
“I am Leland Nash of Devonshire.”
“So Leland Nash, why have you stayed away?”
“I am please to learn that you took notice of my absence.”
“You gave me relief and I would have you again…to see if the effect can be recreated.”
“I was told that you granted each man only one audience. I was afraid to hope. So I stayed away.”
“You have cause to hope. Mind you, I am making no claim. I am not one to mark my territory as men do.”
“I would not mind,” he said to his ale rather than to her.
“Well, I am not one to do so. It’s just that you are the only one who has been able to assist me in finding relief and I would like to do so again.”
He looked at her then, his eyes searching hers. “It is thus with me, also.” He leaned forward so that only she could hear. “My member had often remained flaccid when I attempted involvement, and when a woman did excite me to arousal I could give her pleasure until she was beyond sated, but I could never achieve relief. It was my mother, you see.”
“Your mother?” she asked.
“No really, it was my father.”
“Your father?” she repeated his words.
“Yes, he was a philanderer and never returned the love and fidelity my mother gave him. He died as he came into a whore he had pressed against a wall. It took two coachmen to free the poor woman. My mother was inconsolable and in a fit of rage, she cursed her unborn son saying that ‘he should achieve relief only with his true love.’
“I had determined to remain celibate and would have joined a seminary if I hadn’t been my father’s heir and only son. A few months ago, I came upon an old woman huddled in a doorway as I made my way back to my rooms. I gave her a few coins to get food and maybe a warm place to sleep for the night. Grateful, she clutched my hand and said in a most soothing voice that what I sought was here.” He made a broad gesture that encompassed the entire pub.
“So I came here and saw you. I watched and waited, but it seemed impossible.”
She leaned forward and nipped his bottom lip. He smiled and licked the tingling spot.
The pub owner’s daughter no longer lives over the pub and Selection Day is only the well-embellished memory of the pub’s patrons. She and her husband live with their three children and his mother in Devonshire where he manages his family’s properties. They are well and happy and she and her husband often take time to hole up in their chambers while Leland lets his wife have her way with him and they find relief together.
SLEEP TIGHT
Janine Ashbless
The house, built of red brick, is Victorian by the look of it, with fancy piecework tiles all along the ridges of the complex roofline. It’s called the Gables, which is appropriate because that’s just about all anyone can see of it over the bramble thicket that clogs the whole garden. It’s been a decade since anyone last cut that. Do you have any idea how much bramble can grow in ten years? Some of those stems are fatter than my thumb, and the thicket stands about seven feet tall, pressing through the iron railings and sending out snaky tendrils to catch the hair of passersby on the street. The route to the front door is absolutely impassable. At least they won’t have had to worry about squatters getting in.
Ten years. You’d think people with that sort of money would have more sense. The whole place has just been abandoned.
“Access up to the house and right round the walls,” that cold little lawyer guy said when we stood on the front pavement together and eyeballed the wall of stems. They needed to do a structural survey every ten years, he explained, just to make sure the building was still sound.
“If I clear the whole lot you’ll find it loads easier to sell,” I offered. “It’d take me, oh…three, four days—it’s a big garden. Including removal of the brush, obviously.”
“The house isn’t up for sale, Mr. Risborough. We’re simply entrusted with its upkeep.”
With a shrug I quoted him for a day’s work: that was all I estimated it would take to cut a path through to the front door and around the building. He didn’t even try to bargain me down. So that was how it worked out. And here I am on a hot summer morning, my truck parked up in front of the gate, getting the brushcutter out of the back and filling its tank with two-stroke.
I feel good; I’m looking forward to a day’s work, to the powerful heft of the cutter under my hands, to seeing the bramble’s defenses fall before me. The harness goes over my faded Aerosmith T-shirt and the hook sits over my right hip so the brushcutter’s weight hangs comfortably, the cutting head swinging just above the tarmac. The band of my plastic helmet is already making my forehead sweat. My thick leather gloves grip the handles. Steel-toed boots and a pair of old chainsaw chaps make up the rest of my gear: they look a bit like cowboy chaps but beneath the blue fabric they’re filled with nylon padding. I’m not wearing them for fear of the cutter head
but because I don’t want my jeans shredded by the thorns. It’s too warm to wear coveralls.
The engine purrs like a tiger. Down goes the mesh visor of my helmet, efff go my ear-protectors as they settle into place, cutting off the outside world. All I’m aware of now is the silver shaft of my cutter, the triskelion of dark blades and the mass of interlaced shrubbery in front of me. The familiar smell of gas fumes burns my nose.
It’s just about possible to see the line of the path cut last time: the bramble rises a few inches less high, the stems are a little less thick though still hard and woody. Only the top surface of the mass is green and leafy, and right now it’s dotted with white flower heads. Everything below that layer is pure pain, the thorns curved like teeth. There’s only one way to tackle such a tangle: I lift the head of the cutter like it’s a four-foot hard-on jutting from my pelvis, squeeze the trigger till the blades sing and lower it onto the bramble from above. Stems shred. The whole thicket quivers. The weighted head falls, slow-mo, clearing a narrow slice through the biomass.
Up, down. Up, down.
It’s straightforward work but satisfying enough. No grave-stones or baby trees to worry about avoiding on this site at least. A fine mulch of vegetable matter soon dusts me from toe to throat but thankfully—unlike plenty of places I’ve worked—it doesn’t include any dog shit. If only if wasn’t so hot it’d be easy. What is it with the weather this year? Global warming, like they say? One day pissing rain, the next fiercely hot: Scotland to the Med in twenty-four hours. I’m glad I’m not working indoors.
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