Darker Passions: The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Kilpatrick, Nancy

  “Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods!” Lady Agatha raised her large hand in wonder, and accented the verb.

  “American novels,” answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail. As an afterthought, fork poised in mid-air, he said, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”

  I had to admit, I admired the man’s tongue, which rivaled my own.

  My immediate concern was the act of joining the others at table, from the perspective of my stinging behind. Once I’d helped the Duchess into her seat, I took my own, my painful bottom squalling as it made contact with a scarcely-padded cushion. I inhaled sharply. The Duchess of Monmouth turned, solicitous, her bright eyes sparkling in a manner that spoke of more than sympathy. I should not receive the leather phallus too soon, it seemed.

  The Duchess of Harley, ever the hostess, took the conversation one step farther. “Our English girls have no chance nowadays. It is most unfair. I wish to goodness America had never been discovered.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Mr. Erskine, “America has never been discovered.”

  I could not stay my tongue. “I myself would say that it had merely been detected.” This brought guffaws from the men, and giggling from the ladies. The Duchess of Monmouth, in particular, found my remark excessively witty, which led me to appreciate her attributes a great deal more. I watched her white hands move daintily with the silverware, and when I whispered to her, “A rather droll affair, don’t you agree?” her full red lips smiled.

  Lord Henry, his mouth full of carrots, said, “American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past.”

  “Most American women behave as if they are beautiful,” the loquacious Mr. Erskine contributed. “It is the secret of their charm.”

  The Duchess would have none of it. “Why can’t these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the Paradise for women.”

  “It is,” I offered, turning toward the Duchess of Monmouth slightly. “That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.”

  Beneath the table, I felt a stockinged foot rubbing against the outside of my calf. The Duchess of Monmouth was definitely struggling to capture my attention, which pleased me considerably. I reached beneath the table and grabbed her little foot. She turned sharply in my direction. Her eyelids fluttered a bit, and her lips parted. The dreamy quality in her eyes spoke to me. Slowly I massaged her instep. A peculiar desire came over me: I wanted to see her fanny, and I wanted to see it red!

  At this thought, the Duchess of Monmouth seemed to begin to pant, at least her bosom rose and fell with great rapidity. I glanced quickly around the table, to ensure that our actions went unobserved. Lord Henry was staring at us!

  The man had a way of dampening all of my pleasures, without so much as lifting a finger! And here he was again, stuffing his face with chutney, interfering with my business.

  Lord Henry infuriated me! The cool, calculating look in his eyes, the stern twist of his lips. Something so self-assured on his face that said he would have his way, no matter what. Well, it was my intention that he not have his way, at least with me.

  The dinner was a bust, to be sure. The Duchess of Monmouth plead a prior commitment that evening. But as she pressed her hand in mine upon leaving, she said coyly, “Please, Dorian, you must come visit me. Perhaps for tea. Or better still, in the country, at our estate there.”

  “With you and your husband?” I asked.

  “Oh, my husband travels a good deal. I should think he would be away, at least in the month to come. And when he is not traveling, he is sleeping. A weekend would be a challenging time frame, don’t you think?”

  “Dorian would be happy to come.” It was Lord Henry. Answering for me. Meddling still further. “We both would,” he added, managing to invite himself.

  Before I could get in another word, he said to the Duchess of Monmouth, “Come, Gladys. Let me escort you to your carriage. Dorian must sit and talk with our hostess, who is still, no doubt, irked by his lateness.”

  “You were late also,” I reminded him hotly.

  As he moved Gladys Monmouth toward the door, he turned with that awful cynicism sketched across his face. “Yes, but then I have been properly chastised by the Duchess. You, Dorian, have not.”

  I sat, painfully, with the Duchess and her other guests, enduring dull conversation and stale gossip. One by one her guests departed, but not soon enough for me. Of course, on this count, Lord Henry was correct: last one in must be the last to leave. Soon, only he and I sat with the Duchess.

  I was about to take my leave when she turned to me. “Tell me, Dorian, a handsome young man like yourself must needs have a bevy of lovelies at hand. Is that not so?”

  “Oh, Dorian is the rake of London,” Lord Henry offered.

  I scowled at him.

  “But no wife. How odd. Most men will marry in order to provide enough of a facade so that they may have affairs.”

  “A sound theory, Duchess,” I said. “However, I am still young enough that the affairs may be less hidden. Besides, I have often observed that in married households, the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.”

  “True enough, Dorian, but there are benefits to having at least one regular paramour.”

  The Duchess was of the class that sprinkled French words and phrases liberally into their speech, compensating, no doubt, for a lack of imagination.

  I sipped at the brandy, which was making me very lightheaded indeed.

  “Love is a proper basis for marriage,” she said, determined to continue with this vein.

  “The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding,” I countered.

  “And there your youth shows, Dorian,” Lord Henry said. “For marriage is not the issue, if I am addressing your concerns correctly, Duchess.”

  “Proceed,” the dowager said with a dismissive hand.

  “I believe the Duchess is suggesting that when one flits from flower to flower, gathering nectar, it may be quite amusing for a time. But the lasting pleasures come from a longer-term engagement, the end result, the honey, as it were. Youth cannot afford to pause.”

  “Youth is its own punishment,” I noted sourly. Wherever these two were leading the conversation, it was boring me. When I finished my Brandy, I was set on leaving. My debt had been paid!

  “One needs a ‘debut’,” Lord Henry was saying. “Preferably with an erotic scandal.”

  “Such nonsense!” I cried.

  The Duchess had thoughts on the matter. “One should never make one’s debut with an erotic scandal. Heavens! One should reserve that to give an interest to one’s old age.”

  I was a bit tired of all this verbal jousting. Perhaps it was the hour. Or my physical condition. Or just the numbers of beauties making themselves available to me with such frequency. And, of course, Lord Henry put me off as well. In any event, I said the unthinkable. “Duchess, surely during the mature years, a woman puts away these silly notions of erotic scandals!”

  The heavy pause that followed brought it home to me that I had committed a vile social transgression. The Duchess sat stiffly in her chair. Lord Henry, for once, was quiet. Both stared at me. Through my bleary-eyed state, even I recognized my faux pas. The error needed rectifying, but I was damned if I would rouse myself to do it. I felt I’d endured enough that evening, catering to the whims of London’s wealthy and emotionally maimed.

  “Dorian, you have insulted the Duchess almost irredeemably. But I plead to her, on your behalf, because you are young and therefore insensitive, to permit you a chance to make amends.”

  I know I slurred my response, which was a derogatory remark of some sort.

  In an instant, Lord Henry had me by the arm and had flung me across his knee. The movement was so quick, I did not know what had occurred until I was staring at the Persian carpet, struggling to keep from vomiting.

>   “Please, Duchess. His bottom is yours for the whipping.”

  I began a protest, both verbal and physical. But I was too much into my cups to bring either off.

  I lifted my head to see the Duchess walk to the fireplace.

  There she lifted one of her wicker canes from an elephant’s foot stand. It was long, perhaps an inch thick, although my perceptions may have been off. I knew my behind couldn’t take much more, and I struggled anew.

  The Duchess hastily made her way toward me. Lord Henry held me fast, my wrists behind my back. My flailing legs did not aid me at all, and whatever was coming from my mouth was indecipherable, to say the least.

  Although she was an older woman, the Duchess possessed quite a wallop. The cane cracked against my ass as if held by a blacksmith. I’d never been caned before, and the impact, even through clothing, was astonishing. The force of her blows had me wailing in no time. And she didn’t let up. The only good thing about all this was the slim weave of fabric between my well whipped ass and that diabolical cane, if such could even be a benefit.

  I found the pain not something I could easily cope with. Had Lord Henry not help me so rigidly, I might have gotten free. As it was, that proved impossible, and I could only submit to the most severe thrashing of my life to that point.

  The Duchess took out years of fury on my behind, of that I am convinced. My inebriated state saved me, to some extent, but I knew that on the morrow I would suffer like never before.

  It took some time for her to get her fill. And when she was done, she sat in the rocker near the fireplace, cane still in hand, saying to Lord Henry, “I think he’s ready to apologize.”

  “Indeed,” Lord Henry said.

  He hoisted me to my knees and walked me that way toward the Duchess, who was busy lifting her heavy skirts. Beneath, she wore no undergarments. Her mature pussy lay like a full-blooming rose surrounded by white fur, moist—for the whipping had obviously aroused her.

  Lord Henry pushed my tear-stained face toward her cunny and, with throbbing backside, I licked and sucked the Duchess to orgasm, which did not take long.

  When this was done, when she had come a third times, Lord Henry yanked me to my feet. “I’m certain he is repentant,” he told the Duchess, or some such, for by then I was barely cognizant of anything.

  What next I recall was reclining in Lord Henry’s carriage, or rather kneeing, my ass to him. He removed my trousers, and I did not resist, for what was the point now?

  His long, firm fingers found my womanly slit and massaged me there, stroking at first gently, then harder. Two of his fingers slid inside my wet cunny and thrust in and out, while his thumb penetrated my anus. I was aroused mightily. My bottom ached and throbbed and the double penetration quickly brought me to my first vaginal-anal orgasm.

  The sensations that washed over me left me trembling, my bottom thrusting back against the determined fingers, the sounds coming from me lascivious and sultry in the extreme. Lord Henry continued to fuck me in this style through the streets of London, right to the door of my home. And by then I had come more times than I could count and my anus and vagina were nearly as hot and sore as my screeching bottom.

  Once I had righted my clothing, Lord Henry opened the carriage door and helped me exit. Just before he drove away, he said to me, “Inform Dorianne that I shall visit this evening. And I expect her to receive me.”

  With that he was gone.

  I entered to find Miss Pruit dozing in a chair by the door, her hairbrush in hand. I attempted to slip by her unnoticed—heaven knows, she couldn’t hear me. But some perverse fate caused her to wake at that instant.

  Before I could get far, she ordered me to lower my trousers and fall across her knee. I was beyond help at that point. She pulled me down and I could not resist.

  She paddled my behind to another level, and by the time she finished with me and sent me to my room, I was wanting more penetration. The fevered state of my rectum and cunny kept me tossing and turning, rubbing my sore bottom against the harsh linens, penetrating myself until I heard the cock crow. As London awoke, I fell into a heavy dream, my fingers still in my holes. All I can recall of it is that Lord Henry’s voice imbedded the images, leaving me both highly aroused and intensely angry.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the evening, I heard the doorbell chime, and knew it was Lord Henry. For several moments, I listened to Miss Pruit and Lord Henry talking. Then Miss Pruit’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  “Dorianne,” she said stiffly, “Lord Henry is in the parlor, claiming you invited him.”

  “I did no such thing,” I said, equally stiffly. “He invited himself, apparently. Well, you may tell him that I am not available.”

  “He claims to have word from your parents.”

  I sighed mightily. My parents, Renaissance couple that they were, traveled a great deal, and their correspondence home proved infrequent, at best. As a dutiful daughter, I could not not be interested in such news, yet I was loathe to take it from this source. With another heavy sigh, I said, “Alright, Miss Pruit, tell the persistent Lord Wotton that I shall be with him directly.”

  I took my time getting dressed, wearing one of my most unflattering smocks, a drab green that did not at all suit me, with a very high neckline, and long sleeves, hiding as much flesh as possible. I had no thought of encouraging him, and hoped that excess of a nature he did not appreciate would have the opposite effect of enticing the man.

  When I entered the parlor, Miss Pruit and Lord Wotton were drinking cordials, absinthe, by the color, and the sugar cube on the slotted spoon attached to Miss Pruit’s glass. My governess was several sheets to the wind already, with a hideous smile on her nearly toothless mouth, and eyes clearly blurring.

  “You have news of my parents?” I asked immediately, hoping to cut his visit short.

  Lord Henry took a seat on one half of the American Loveseat my parents had brought back with them from a trip to New England. He had seated himself in the crook of the top of the ‘s’ curve facing the fire. He stretched his arm over the back and patted the other ‘s’ curve, facing away from him, although the two halves of the small soft were but several inches apart. I sat as he requested, hoping that this small appeasement would send him on his way sooner.

  “You look ravishing tonight, Dorianne.”

  Indeed, I had seen in my boudoir mirror that the dull dress did little to dim me; my face was ripe with color. Obviously my excursions of late had been having a beneficial side effect.

  As if to verify his own statement, Lord Henry added, “You are a woman in bloom.”

  I gave him a withering glance. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Miss Pruit had begun to doze. “Tell me of my parents, Lord Henry, for I am exhausted this evening, and must make my way to bed.”

  “Your bedroom, Dorianne. I picture it as a feminine retreat, writhing in ruffles and lace, pastel colors submitting to the harsher tones of the woods.”

  “Surely a gentlemen does not imagine a lady’s bedroom.”

  “And is it so wrong for a man who will one day wed the woman of his desires to envision her private sanctuary?”

  I stood quickly. “If you will excuse me, Sir Henry…”

  He grabbed my hand and, in a fraction of a second, was before me. His breath rushed down to my cheek, and the piercing look in his eye gave me pause. “No man has really mastered you, Dorianne. I will be the first. And the last.”

  I shrugged him off and, with an irate look, strode to the door.

  “Your parents…,” he began.

  I turned hastily, and testily said, “Yes?”

  “They send their greetings. Via my friend Lawrence, who has just returned from the Continent.”

  “Their greetings? Is that all?”

  “Children love their parents and therefore must accept as much or as little as they give.”

  “Children,” I snapped, “begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes th
ey forgive them.”

  With that, I turned on my heels and called, “Matilda! Show Lord Wotton the door!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Three days later I returned to Vita’s for my phallus. I found her in the rear, strapping the bottom of a bearded burly man. The look of his clothing piled on the floor, and the briny smell of him said he was a seaman, perhaps the captain of a merchant ship.

  She had him over her workbench, his behind at the edge— from the looks of it, she’d been reddening it for quite some time. Amidst the sea of crimson were bloody islands. In the afternoon light filtering through the sooty window, liquid appeared to be flying through the air. At first I thought it was blood. It took me a moment to realize that she had well-oiled his bottom, and I surmised that this was to increase the heat.

  The captain, as I’d come to think of him, enjoyed this merry whipping. Vita had the arms of a man, and I suspect after a long tour at sea, ordering men about, inflicting the odd flogging himself no doubt, the captain needed this harsh release. Certainly, he came here of his own free will to receive it.

  I took a seat near the leather curtain, just inside the backroom, and watched Vita for another half hour. By that time the captain was beyond himself. I had to admire Vita’s style. She was smooth in her delivery. She alternated, one time letting the leather strap pause on the ass, the next stroke snapping it hard and fast and pulling it back from the flesh in a split second. Occasionally she worked on the backs of his thighs for variety, no doubt, and to give the cheeks a rest, lest they numb. I took it all in, learning from a true Mistress of the Leathers.