Slave of Darkness

by Francesca Lewis

  At last the beating ended. Sir Edward unrolled the towel and pressed the damp material to her burning flesh, gently moulding it to her. When he pressed the coolness against her belly, to her horror and total disbelief, she trembled from head to toe as a tiny climax rippled through her.

  ‘You see,’ whispered Sir Edward, his mouth close to her ear. ‘You too like dark pleasures.’

  Marianne wanted to tell him she didn’t, that this had been too much, but it would have been a lie. No matter how much she denied it, her body had taken pleasure from the beating, although she was still unable to understand why.

  She was removed from the bonds and the two men lifted her on to the kitchen table, which had been covered with more towels. Judith sat at the end where Marianne’s head was and pressed down on her shoulders, while the doctor parted her legs and opened his bag. ‘I’ll make her clean for you,’ he promised Sir Edward, who was standing looking down at Marianne. She looked back up at him, wondering what lay in store for her yet knowing that, whatever it might be, he was ultimately going to possess her.

  She still wasn’t prepared for what the doctor did next. Opening her up, he inserted a length of rubber tubing inside her vagina. It felt thick and strange, and as soon as it was in place she felt warm liquid gurgling out of the tube to flood her. She gasped, more in shock than discomfort.

  ‘It’s only a douche,’ said Judith. ‘My brother is naturally anxious about disease.’

  Marianne knew this wasn’t true. Sir Edward didn’t really believe there was anything unclean about her, he simply wanted to savour her humiliation.

  She began to cry, feeling trapped and shamed in front of them, but they ignored her. A few minutes later the doctor removed the rubber piping.

  ‘I think that’s enough,’ he announced.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Sir Edward. ‘I shall now take Marianne to my room. While we are gone I wish Tabitha to be totally cleansed and then the pair of you may punish her in any way you choose.’ His fingers tightened around Marianne’s wrists. As he dragged her from the room she glanced back over her shoulder.

  Judith was placing fresh towels on the table and a timid Tabitha was being positioned on her side with her knees pressed up to her chest while the doctor was taking a particularly evil-looking contraption out of his bag, a contraption Marianne devoutly hoped would never be used on her. Then the door was slammed shut, cutting off Tabitha’s cries, and she was hustled up the stairs and along the corridor to Sir Edward’s bedroom.

  Once inside she stared about her. It was beautifully furnished, with heavy gold and green drapes at the window. In the centre stood a large canopy bed with silk hangings. There were lit candles around the room, and a rocking chair in one corner.

  ‘Now we’re finally alone,’ said Sir Edward. ‘It will be interesting to see if we suit each other as well as I anticipate.’ Marianne remained silent, having no idea whether she should speak or not. ‘Have you nothing to say?’ he asked.

  ‘I – I’m afraid,’ she whispered, knowing that, although the moment she had longed for was finally here, she spoke the truth.

  ‘How wise of you,’ he said dryly, and led her over to the waiting bed.

  Chapter 8

  Marianne’s eyes searched Sir Edward Sharpe’s face as she tried desperately to read his emotions, but it was impossible. As usual, his eyes were bright with excitement but his expression was impassive. She longed to see a softening in his features, some indication that he desired her because she was special rather than because she was helpless and his to do with as he wished.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked.

  Hastily Marianne lowered her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.

  He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Not as sorry as you’ll be by the time I’ve finished with you.’

  She wanted to ask him why, needing to discover why he felt this need to hurt her, but she didn’t dare frame the question. Instead she waited, quivering from head to toe. Despite his words, she felt her body tighten with desire.

  ‘I don’t think I want you wearing the leather belt,’ he remarked, reaching for the buckle. For a second, as he pulled it tighter in order to release it, Marianne found herself unable to breathe. She gave a gasp of relief when she was released from its confining stricture. As he ran a finger round the deep red indentation left behind she felt the sensitive flesh leap beneath his touch.

  ‘How delicious,’ he said to himself, before picking her up and depositing her in the centre of the canopied bed. The mattress was soft and deep, her head was resting on a mass of pillows and the silken fabric of the bedding was highly sensual against her bare skin. She watched as Sir Edward removed his clothes before pulling on a brocade dressing gown, then sat on the bed next to her supine form.

  For a moment he simply stared down at her, and everywhere his eyes travelled her flesh began to glow, as though his gaze radiated a strange warmth. Then, when he’d seen all he wanted, he gave a guttural groan of desire and buried his head between her soft breasts.

  ‘Such glorious, wanton curves,’ he mumbled, his teeth gently grazing the yielding flesh. Marianne sighed with delight. This was what she’d longed for; to feel him touching her in a normal way, to have him making love to her as though concerned about her pleasure. His mouth covered hers and she felt his lips urgent against her own. His tongue probed her mouth, searching until it met hers.

  The kiss went on for a long time, and as they kissed his hands were on her breasts, caressing them, lightly teasing the nipples to hardness. Soon she was murmuring sensually as she responded to his skilful lovemaking.

  When his mouth left hers she wanted to pull his head back down. Remembering she was meant to be Marianne Clifford, who would never have done any such thing, she kept her arms by her sides, and when his tongue began to lick lightly down the slender column of her throat she swooned. He moved his mouth and tongue up and down the delicate flesh, and all the time he was caressing her breasts. Soon her breathing grew rapid and she could feel her sex opening for him, already anticipating the moment when he’d plunge into her, filling the aching void his touch was creating.

  Gradually, with deliberate slowness, he kissed lower down her body. Occasionally he nipped her flesh between his teeth, but the tiny flashes of discomfort only heightened her excitement and she moved restlessly as the pleasure seemed to swamp her. She felt as though she was melting, liquid already seeping from her entrance. At last, to her delight, his head was between her thighs and he was licking away the evidence of her excitement, his tongue briefly moving inside her, swirling around for one bliss-inducing moment that almost brought her to orgasm. At last she felt his tongue travelling towards her yearning clitoris and, despite her best intentions, she gave a cry of excitement.

  ‘Oh yes... yes!’ she gasped.

  Immediately he lifted his head, shifting his body until his face was once more level with hers, and then he kissed her hard again, forcing her to taste her own juices. ‘How dare you!’ he hissed threateningly, while his fingers tightened cruelly around her breasts. ‘Have you no sense of decency at all? Do you think I don’t know what you want?’

  ‘I just want you,’ she sobbed with frustration. ‘Is that so wrong?’

  ‘You’re trying to trap me,’ he accused furiously. ‘You with your ripe curves, your lush charms and your air of false innocence. Do you think I’m a complete fool? Do you really believe I’d let a girl like you become important to me?’

  Marianne didn’t know how to reply, but she was beginning to understand what motivated Sir Edward. Clearly this cruel, sexually perverse man was obsessed with his sister’s companion, but he hated himself for it. She sensed that whilst he claimed to be attempting to subdue her flesh, he was actually trying to subdue his own by destroying the hapless Marianne.

  ‘Look at you,’ he continued, flicking contemptuously at her breasts with a series of rapid
blows that had her squealing at the injustice. ‘No decent young lady would behave the way you are. No decent young lady should take pleasure in any of this.’

  ‘Then why are you doing it to me?’ she wailed.

  ‘You want me, do you?’ he continued, ignoring her question. ‘Very well then, you shall have me.’

  Tearing off his robe, he caught hold of Marianne and turned her roughly over before pushing a bolster, folded double, beneath her hips so her buttocks were raised high into the air. ‘Don’t move,’ he ordered as he left the bed.

  Marianne turned her head and saw him take a small cut-glass bottle from a mahogany table. He removed the stopper and poured some sort of fragrant oil over his fingers, before returning to the bed and placing the bottle beside it. She felt him parting her buttocks with one hand and then, even as she realised what he was about to do and tried to twist away, he gripped her tightly and thrust two oiled fingers inside the puckered opening, invading her where she’d never been invaded before.

  It hurt. Marianne screamed but he merely pushed her face into the bed, muffling the sound, before continuing to move his fingers in and out while she sobbed.

  Despite everything, despite the humiliation and discomfort, she wanted to stay with Sir Edward in his time, to find out what else he had planned for her. She curled her fists into the bedspread, determined to keep back her cries of protest, and gradually realised that the pain was changing to a different sensation. As his educated fingers moved waves of pleasure rolled through her. Soon she could feel the heavy pulse of rising desire throbbing within her.

  She was no longer aware of any pain, only a perverse excitement, and she groaned at the realisation of how much Sir Edward was changing her.

  As she relaxed and embraced the sensations, Sir Edward withdrew his fingers. He gripped her hips with both hands, and she felt the tip of his erection nudging insistently at the opening where his fingers had so recently been. She was uncertain, fearful that this intrusion would be much worse. Yet she had to know, had to discover whether this, too, would give her pleasure. He moved against her, sliding inside her just a fraction, but even that was enough to make her hold her breath anxiously.

  Seeming to sense her reticence, Sir Edward reached lower and caressed her sex lips, which had swollen and parted in their shameful excitement. He massaged around her clitoris, although never touching the tiny swollen nub directly, and soon she was writhing in ecstasy as her enjoyment increased again and her muscles grew taut with desire.

  She was very close to coming now, totally open and vulnerable, her flesh desperate for ultimate satisfaction. For a moment he allowed two fingers to enter her but, as she tightened herself greedily around him, he withdrew those fingers and sank his erection into her bottom with one smooth thrust of his hips.

  For a moment Marianne froze. The pain returned, temporarily blotting out all pleasure, and her body, confused by the conflicting signals, halted its inexorable rise to orgasm, leaving her stranded.

  ‘Relax,’ he whispered gruffly. ‘Don’t fight me. You feel so tight and delicious. Don’t you want to give me pleasure too?’

  ‘Yes, I do...’ she wept softly. ‘I do...’

  ‘Then stop resisting me.’

  Marianne tried to obey him, breathing slowly and deeply to relax, and slowly the discomfort ebbed again. Now as he moved inside her there was only pleasure, and she gave herself over to his control totally.

  He seemed to recognise the moment when her resistance vanished because his hips moved more insistently while, at the same time, his fingers began to caress her sex again. She could feel her climax approaching once more and when he coaxed her clitoris she screamed with delight. A red mist seemed to settle in her brain and all she wanted was to be further debased and humiliated. She longed for this terrible form of pleasuring to continue so that her body would finally be free of its incredible tension.

  Sir Edward’s breathing rasped harshly, and through her own swirling orgasm Marianne knew he too was on the point of no return. She heard herself wantonly encouraging him, and Sir Edward finally spent inside her previously virginal and most private of places.

  After a few minutes she felt him slip free, and waited for him to pull her from the bed. But to her surprise he lay down beside her exhausted form, catching her face between his hands and staring intently into her eyes.

  ‘Well, well. You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, little Marianne. Who could have pictured a scene like this on the day I interviewed you?’

  She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to admit how much pleasure she was getting from the dreadful things he was doing to her, but his hands kept her face imprisoned and his eyes held hers with arrogant ease. He smiled at her obvious discomfort.

  ‘You’re ashamed, aren’t you? And so you should be. I hate to think what Dr Proctor will have to say when he hears of this.’

  Marianne was mortified. ‘Please – please don’t tell him,’ she begged.

  ‘But he’s your physician and he’s trying to subdue your flesh. Should he not know everything about your lascivious nature?’

  Marianne felt tears welling in her eyes. ‘I know it’s wrong,’ she sobbed. ‘But I can’t help it. The things you do are terrible, and yet...’

  ‘And yet they please you,’ he said confidently.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered shamefully.

  ‘Then Francis and I must continue to work on you until you become a respectable woman again.’

  ‘But that’s not what you really want,’ she said without thinking. ‘You like me like this.’

  His expression darkened. ‘I trust you’re not arguing with me, Marianne?’

  ‘Oh, no, of course not,’ she hastily corrected herself.

  ‘Good... good.’ His possessive hands released her face and she turned sulkily onto her back, staring up at the canopy above her. Her lover, because that was how she now thought of him, reached down to the floor and picked up the glass bottle from which he’d taken the oil earlier. He poured some more into the palm of one hand before beginning to massage it into her breasts and belly. It felt wonderful; his touch was once more gentle and attentive, the movements gliding, quietening her over-stimulated flesh until she felt her eyelids begin to droop.

  ‘It seems you have an infinite capacity for pleasure,’ he remarked, his fingers moving insistently over the soft flesh of her thighs.

  ‘Please stop,’ she murmured, but her voice carried no conviction.

  ‘Your body does not say that,’ he replied curtly. ‘Subdue your flesh and I will stop.’

  Marianne groaned. It was impossible to resist these astonishingly delicious caresses. Her nipples were erect, showing clearly that his touch was arousing her once more.

  Marianne heard Sir Edward chuckle quietly when he parted her sex lips, and she instinctively flinched, pressing herself down into the bed to try and escape the falling drops of oil she knew would only heighten her desire even more. Escape, however, was impossible. She was moaning, her head rolling restlessly on the pillows while he remorselessly massaged the oil around her sex lips, into the incredibly sensitive channel and around the clitoris, still recovering from her previous orgasm.

  ‘How swollen with lust you are,’ he murmured thoughtfully, his hand cupping her sex. ‘I wish you could see yourself.’

  Marianne didn’t need to. She could tell precisely what was happening to her.

  ‘You like this?’ he asked, lightly gliding an oiled fingertip over the head of her clitoris.

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped, ‘I love it.’

  ‘And this?’ His fingers moved inside her, stimulating, teasing. She groaned, her pleasure threatening to peak again.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured.

  ‘I don’t want your pleasure to spill until I permit it.’

  The very fact that she was forbidden to come whilst so near the edge w
as almost enough to precipitate her pleasure, and she moaned despairingly as his knowing fingers continued their mischievous duties. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and concentrated as best she could – but the inevitable happened. With a violent shuddered she groaned and climaxed as the oiled fingers drew every last drop of ecstasy from her drained body.

  ‘You are a wanton little hussy,’ he accused icily. ‘I find it difficult to imagine how Francis and I are ever going to control you. There’s no doubt in my mind that you will need a great deal of discipline.’

  Clearly the prospect delighted him. In a strange way it delighted Marianne, too, but it also made her fearful. ‘Why do you do this to me?’ she asked weakly. ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘It isn’t your place to understand me,’ he said, getting off the bed and pulling his robe on once more.

  Marianne sat up. ‘Do you wish me to go now?’

  Sir Edward shook his head. ‘Position yourself over the bolster again, face down.’

  She glanced at him and saw, through the opening in his brocade dressing gown, that he was once more erect. With no resistance left, she obeyed without another word.

  ‘Keep your face in the bedspread and your eyes closed,’ he ordered. When she seemed to be positioned exactly as he wanted, she was astonished to hear him open the bedroom door and start talking. Because of what he’d said she didn’t dare lift her head to see what was happening.

  Instead she waited, every muscle tight with fearful anticipation. Then the door closed and she heard two sets of footsteps moving to the bed.

  ‘There she is,’ she heard Sir Edward say. ‘You know what you have to do, John. I trust you won’t disappoint me.’

  ‘Of course not, sir,’ she heard the lad gabble, and only then did she summon the courage to lift her head. Glancing back she saw the young gardener tugging at his breeches, clearly unable to believe his good fortune.