Cassandra's Chateau

by Fredrica Alleyn

  Cassandra had swiftly sent him away of course but then she had known, as the Italian had not, that they were being filmed. If they hadn’t been, or if Cassandra had been in ignorance too, then the baron suspected it would have been a different story.

  He tried to distract himself by changing videos and watching Nicola’s body suffering through the endless permutations of arousal and denial that Françoise had designed for her own entertainment, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t concentrate, and in any case the girl would be beneath his hands that evening and he could enjoy her then. No, it was Cassandra who kept reappearing in his mind; her and her Italian lover. Swiftly he turned off the monitor and made his way to Cassandra’s room.

  She was just about to take a long bath before changing for dinner. They always had an extra special menu on the day Rupert and Françoise arrived, and she took even more care than usual with her clothes. When her door opened, Cassandra thought that it was Monique who had come to help her and didn’t turn her head as she continued searching through her clothes cupboard.

  ‘Run the bath please. I won’t be a minute,’ she said casually.

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t take your bath the moment you and Giovanni had finished together. It seemed a fairly strenuous bout of lovemaking,’ drawled the baron.

  A warning bell sounded in Cassandra’s head. He had never before discussed any sexual act that he’d witnessed between her and one of his chosen friends in anything other than amused tones. There was no amusement in his voice now but there was an edge to it that cautioned her to think before she spoke.

  ‘Well?’ he persisted, closing and locking her bedroom door behind him.

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled briefly at him. ‘It was quite strenuous; Françoise was right, he’s got a lot of energy.’

  ‘And skill.’

  ‘He improved,’ she conceded casually.

  ‘You told him he was wonderful; that sounds like a definite improvement.’

  So he’d already watched the video, thought Cassandra; watched it, and disliked it. ‘I thought I was supposed to help him. You don’t do that by telling someone they’re hopeless. Isn’t he here to learn some finesse?’

  ‘He’s here as a guest; if he learns some finesse during his stay that’s fortuitous for the girls he moves on to once he’s left. It’s not the same as Nicola you know.’

  ‘I never imagined it was. What shall I wear tonight, Dieter? The fawn silk or … ?’

  ‘I don’t care what you wear tonight,’ he said shortly. ‘You liked him didn’t you?’

  Cassandra sat on her bed and her dark eyes were puzzled. ‘Yes, I liked him, but I like Rupert as well. Is that wrong? Am I only meant to go to bed with those friends of yours that I don’t like, men like Nicola’s stepfather for example?’

  ‘He’s falling in love with you,’ sneered the baron.

  Cassandra felt very nervous. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! He only arrived here this morning, and I don’t think he’s anywhere near ready to fall in love with anyone except himself.’

  ‘Really? I think you’re lying to me. I think you know very well that he’s already besotted, and you gave a very good impression of a woman who felt the same about him.’

  ‘Then obviously my acting is improving, along with my sexual skills.’

  ‘This game is about Nicola; it does not concern Giovanni. He is simply a player, someone to take a turn in making it more fun.’

  ‘I know that,’ responded Cassandra, suddenly realising that the baron’s eyes were roaming over her in a way that suggested her bath might very well be delayed.

  ‘Take off your slip,’ he said curtly.

  Cassandra sighed. ‘Dieter, I’m tired, it’s getting late and I have to be changed for dinner soon.’

  ‘Tired out by Giovanni, or tired of me?’ His voice was dangerously low.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ she said placatingly. ‘We’ve got a busy evening ahead and I just want to be alert for that.’

  ‘I said take off your slip. Do you want me to fetch one of the maids to do it for you?’

  Now Cassandra was getting annoyed. He’d been the one who’d told her to take Giovanni for the afternoon, and now he was cross because she’d done her job too well. ‘I’m certainly not going to do it,’ she retorted, and got up to move towards her bathroom.

  He caught her by the arm, turned her to face him and tore the silk slip off her by ripping it straight down the middle. It was the first time she’d seen him genuinely annoyed, with none of the amused nonchalance with which he usually disguised his displeasure.

  ‘Dieter, don’t! This is silly. All I did was …’

  ‘I saw what you did,’ he muttered, pushing her back onto her bed and forcing a hand between her thighs as she tried to close her legs against him. ‘You loved it, you loved everything he did to you.’

  ‘It’s your game!’ she shouted. ‘You make up the rules.’

  ‘You played it badly,’ he retorted, and then he was taking off his own clothes as he kept her pinned to the bed with his legs. When he needed to remove his trousers he stared down at her. ‘If you move while I stand up I shall get Sophie to come and tie you down,’ he warned her.

  Cassandra had no intention of moving. She simply lay there, waiting for whatever was to come and wondering what she should have done when Giovanni had started making love to her so well.

  A few seconds later the baron was lying heavily on top of her, his hands thrust up into her long hair as he kept her head pinned between them.

  ‘I’m going to make you come for me like you did for him,’ he whispered softly, his breath warm against her face. ‘I want to see you helpless, lost in your pleasure, totally out of control, and until that happens we’ll stay here even if it means missing dinner and leaving our guests alone for the evening.’

  ‘Dieter, I can’t,’ she pleaded. ‘Not so soon after Giovanni and …’

  ‘You’ve had plenty of time to rest. What’s the matter? Do you like him better than you like me?’

  Cassandra had never seen him like this. He never showed any signs of lack of self-confidence, never asked her what she thought of him or how she liked to be touched. He’d always known instinctively, or so she’d assumed. This change in character frightened her. The game was hard enough as it was. She was fighting to keep this man, to remain with him for as long as possible, and now suddenly he’d turned on her for playing her allotted role with Giovanni too well.

  ‘I hardly know him,’ she protested, and the baron’s fingers tugged at her hair so that her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘What was so special about him? Why did you …’

  ‘Why did I what?’ she asked, needing to know what it was that had antagonised him so. But the baron couldn’t reply; couldn’t explain how the soft, contented look in her eyes had hurt him to such an extent that he’d felt an ache in his stomach and his hands had trembled with unexpected jealousy.

  ‘I’m going to make you come and come,’ he whispered again, and then he reached over to the side of the bed and took out a small jar that Cassandra knew only too well.

  ‘No, please don’t, Dieter. Not now; not this early in the evening. It’s too much, you know how it affects me.’

  ‘I want to see you affected like that. And you love it, you know you do.’

  He licked the tip of his middle finger and then dipped it into the lubricating substance contained in the jar. He ran his finger round her lips, and immediately they felt swollen and tingled, for the cool substance contained properties designed to stimulate the sensitive nerve endings of the body. He watched the expression in her eyes, the apprehension and the mounting excitement as her body began to remember what it would feel like when he touched her elsewhere.

  After a pause he let his finger dance across the very tips of her nipples, and then heard her gasp as the unguent began to take effect and now her protests were stilled as she began to thrust herself up towards him.

  He drew the hard
swellings into his mouth, letting his teeth graze against them, and Cassandra felt as though her breasts would split with the pleasure as endless ripples of excitement coursed through her. She heard herself moaning and began to twist her upper torso from side to side as the tension in her breasts mounted.

  The baron slid down the bed, put more unguent on his finger and parted her legs. Cassandra didn’t protest, she couldn’t do anything except moan in a kind of mad delirium of excitement as the cool jelly on her nipples continued its remorseless arousal of her nerve endings.

  When he ran his finger around her swollen clitoris she knew that in a few seconds he would have his way and she would be nothing more than a helpless writhing mass of desire, and she was right.

  After a few moments the familiar incredible heat consumed her between her thighs. Her clitoris felt huge, swollen to three times its normal size and when the baron’s tongue circled it, lightly flicking against the sides, her first climax tore through her. She knew what to expect. The climax went on and on. It seemed impossible but just as white lights exploded behind her closed eyes and her muscles rippled in tearing contractions he would let his tongue touch her again and her body would continue spiralling upwards.

  She was crazy with need now. Crying for him to keep licking her, demanding more and more touches from that soft, moist tongue as her clitoris burned and throbbed with an excitement that could never be assuaged.

  The baron watched as she twisted and turned, utterly lost to everything now but the swollen, blood engorged tissue and her need for relief.

  ‘Is it good? Tell me,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes, yes it’s glorious! Please, lick me again, Dieter. Please!’

  ‘No, I think this time …’ His hands seized her round the waist and he turned her onto her stomach then slid his jelly coated finger tip inside her vagina, letting it soak into the nerve endings at the opening.

  Cassandra’s body shook with the force of the climax that ripped through her and as she shook her nipples and clitoris were restimulated by the pressure of the mattress and she began to sob because unless he did something to help her this could go on for hours, without her craving diminishing.

  It was then that the baron lifted her gyrating hips and thrust into her, and because her body was hurtling from one climax to the next he was almost immediately surrounded by the hot pulsations of her inner walls and within seconds she was milking him as she screamed her excitement into the soft pillow beneath her head.

  At last, exhausted himself, the baron withdrew. He left her still twisting and turning on the bed while he ran her a bath and then carried her tormented body through into the bathroom and placed her in the water, sponging it over her breasts, parting her legs to make sure the unguent was removed from her clitoris and carefully inserting a finger inside her to cleanse her there as well.

  Slowly, as it was all removed, her body quietened. Now and then she still trembled violently as her muscles took time to cease their wrenching spasms, but at last she was calm again and lay in the bath staring up at the baron, her dark eyes unfathomable.

  ‘Wasn’t that good?’ he murmured, wiping beads of perspiration off her forehead.

  ‘It was too much; you know it’s always too much for me.’

  ‘But sometimes you ask for it; sometimes you need to experience it like that, don’t you?’

  She lowered her eyes for a moment. ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted.

  He laughed, his mood had changed and he felt triumphant. ‘Do you think that Italian boy would have done that for you?’

  Cassandra shook her head. ‘Not unless I’d asked him to, no.’

  ‘But you never like asking, that’s what’s so special about you,’ he murmured, slowly soaping her back and shoulders. ‘You need me because I understand you. I know what you need before you know it yourself. Isn’t that true?’

  She hung her head. ‘Yes.’

  The baron put a finger beneath her head and tipped it up so that she was forced to look at him. ‘That’s nothing to feel ashamed about. Perhaps it’s what has kept us together for so long.’

  ‘It was just the jelly; it was a chemical reaction!’ she protested.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he murmured, ‘I think that you even believe your own lies. It’s of no matter. I understand you very well. And now you must dress for dinner. We have an exciting evening ahead of us and you will be needed to assist me in controlling young Nicola.’

  Kissing her lightly on the forehead he left her to finish her bath in peace.

  Chapter Ten

  Bearing in mind Nicola’s state of sexual arousal, Françoise didn’t let her return to her room to change for dinner until she herself was dressed and could accompany the girl. She knew very well that it would have been impossible for Nicola, with her over-sensitised nerve endings and dissatisfied body, to have resisted the temptation to bring herself to a climax if she’d had the opportunity, and knew too that this was not what the baron wanted.

  Françoise chose to wear a soft apricot coloured dress, its front vent trimmed with a matching ribbon. The dress was gathered into tiny pleats at the shoulders and had a plunging neckline, while round her slender neck the Brazilian girl wound a long matching scarf. With her olive skin and model’s figure she looked stunning, and standing in front of her bedroom mirror with Françoise beside her, Nicola wondered what on earth she could wear that would make her stand out against such competition.

  Françoise, understanding instinctively that the baron would want Nicola looking unsophisticated this evening, picked out a silk fit-and-flare style dress with a frill around the neck and short puff sleeves. The background was cream coloured, with tiny flowers in apple blossom pink, moss green and mauve on it, and when Nicola pulled it on she looked much younger than her twenty-one years and, despite what had happened to her already, distinctly virginal.

  ‘Wonderful!’ enthused Françoise.

  ‘It’s not very chic,’ said Nicola doubtfully. ‘The baron told me that he likes his women to be well dressed. This is horribly old-fashioned.’

  ‘It’s so old-fashioned it’s back in style,’ Françoise assured her. ‘Let me brush your hair for you, and why not put your Alice band round it to hold it behind your ears – that will make a change.’

  Nicola was so aware of her tingling body, her swollen breasts and the dreadful heavy ache between her thighs that she couldn’t be bothered to argue. She let herself be guided by the other woman simply because she’d been controlled by her all the afternoon and it was difficult to break the habit, especially when her flesh was so desperate for sweet relief that her mind was incapable of thinking about anything else.

  When she went into the main dining room for the first time and saw Cassandra standing at the far end of the room she wished she hadn’t been so easily persuaded. The baron’s mistress had left her hair loose, but curled it under at the shoulders, and it was swept behind her left ear, revealing a large silver earring inlaid with dark blue sapphires.

  Her longline soft pink top glittered with hundreds of sequins and the hem was cut in jagged points, a pattern repeated at the ends of the elbow length sleeves. Beneath the top she was wearing a long pleated skirt in a slightly paler shade of pink and the outfit’s long, fluid line accentuated her finely proportioned figure.

  Rupert was talking to his hostess, while Giovanni was in animated conversation with the baron, and as Nicola walked awkwardly into the room, Françoise glided in behind her demanding some champagne almost before she’d crossed the threshold. At the sound of her voice the baron turned, interested to see how Nicola looked after her afternoon with Rupert’s highly skilled wife. She was a little more pale than usual, but the pupils of her eyes were still dilated and her mouth looked swollen. Desire was clearly eating away at her and he smiled to himself.

  Handing Françoise her champagne he then gave Nicola another glass of the cordial she’d had earlier that day. She shook her head. ‘I’ve already had it.’

  ‘Today I wish you
to take two glasses. It will make your evening much more pleasant,’ he added persuasively, smiling directly into her eyes and watching her expression change as she gave in simply to please him. ‘It makes me restless,’ she complained.

  ‘Tonight we’ll help you use up your energy,’ he promised, and laid a hand against the side of her neck for a moment, so that he could feel her pulse beating just beneath the surface of the skin. She kept her eyes fixed on him, every fibre of her body coming alive at this simple caress.

  ‘Since we’re all here now perhaps we should eat,’ he said lightly, removing his hand but giving the girl one final smile that promised her something delightful in the coming hours.

  This dining room had none of the intimacy of the one Nicola had eaten in before. It was rather dark with a long eighteenth-century table and matching chairs, intricately carved. The two largest were at opposite ends of the table. Around the walls hung pictures of various kings of France, but their faces had all been replaced by strange smiling demons and one definitely had the features of a woman.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Nicola as she took her seat.

  ‘The king is Louis XV, the face is that of Lucrezia Borgia!’ laughed Rupert. ‘It’s one of Dieter’s little jokes. At a party last year we had to go all round the chateau, find out where the paintings had been doctored and name the new face. It was extremely educational!’

  After a short pause Rupert sat down next to Nicola while Françoise and Giovanni seated themselves at the opposite side of the table. Then the maids arrived bringing the soup. It was a thick tomato soup with dill and cream and was totally delicious.

  However, after two mouthfuls the baron pushed his aside. ‘This is cold,’ he told the silently waiting Sophie. ‘I suppose you and Monique were chattering away in the kitchen and forgot to bring it up.’

  ‘We came as soon as you rang, sir,’ murmured Sophie, keeping her eyes lowered.

  ‘Nonsense, you can’t have done. I’m afraid you will both have to be disciplined for this. Let me think …’ He stared down the table to where Cassandra was sitting. She stared back expressionless. The soup was hot, the complaint merely a prelude to some scheme he’d hatched earlier and she knew it.