by Lisabet Sarai, Amy Armstrong, Sam Crescent, Cheryl Dragon, Tanith Davenport
“Are you related in any way to the Baltimore Alcotts?” Catherine MacIntyre inquired, dabbing her lips with her damask napkin. “Robert Alcott was a major investor in Alasdair’s first railway, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but there’s no connection.” Olivia’s fair skin was flushed, though whether with excitement, embarrassment, or a mixture, Andrew couldn’t decide. She certainly looked ravishing in the burgundy velvet gown he’d chosen for her, despite the fact that it was off the rack. The newly electrified sconces kindled red-gold sparks in the nut-brown curls piled above her forehead. Teardrop pearls dangled from her earlobes. A matching choker circled her throat and drew the eye to her flawless décolletage.
Almost like a slave’s collar. She shifted in her chair, making him smile. It was likely that she was feeling the effects of the spanking he’d delivered later that afternoon, after they’d both recovered from their initial crises. He’d brought her to climax twice more while she’d been stretched across his lap, but he hadn’t yet been inside the juicy cleft that clung so eagerly to his probing fingers. That would have to wait for tonight, after this endless dinner. He wanted to have plenty of time to plumb her body—and her secrets.
Was it possible that she was still a virgin? She’d been adept at sucking him. Her independent upbringing made it likely she’d spent plenty of time alone and unsupervised. Still, even when she was acting the part of a whore, there was something of the lady about her bearing, a natural aristocracy despite her humble origins.
“Mother, I told you earlier. Miss Alcott’s father was Prince Stefan Taksony Esztergom of Hungary…”
“Please don’t jest, Mr MacIntyre.” Olivia’s cheeky grin belied her polite words. “In all honesty, Mrs MacIntyre, I cannot claim any sort of distinction or noble blood. My father teaches history at Amherst College—my mother, mathematics. As for me, I graduated from Wellesley with a degree in English literature. I’ve studied poetry and painting in Paris. At the moment I earn a modest living as a representative of the Union of Women Textile Workers.”
The buzz of conversation and the clink of silver around the thirty-foot table died away. The guests at his mother’s ‘casual dinner’ rustled their silks and satins. Letty’s fiancé, Harold Fisk, nearly choked on his roast beef. Selena Larimer seemed about to slip under the table with embarrassment, as if it were she who had been revealed as a traitor to her class. Mary Beth Linton smirked at her sister, then beamed a look of sympathy in Andrew’s direction.
His mother was the first to recover. “That’s very interesting. When were you in Paris, and where did you study? My nephew Philip was at the Sorbonne for a year, back in 1902…”
Andrew prayed Olivia would have the sense not to drag the topic back to her job as an anti-capitalist rabble-rouser. Hopefully his escort for the weekend would not insist on discussing the immorality of her hosts. If the blasted girl would just keep her mouth shut, his mother’s consummate social skills could smooth over almost any gaffe.
Olivia seemed content to have caused her sensation. The conversational fabric reknitted itself around non-controversial subjects, though the company seemed chastened and nervous. Most made their excuses earlier than they might have done on another occasion. Andrew was grateful. He was eager to get hold of his own wayward guest and to punish her for her imprudent behaviour.
However, as his mother’s host, it was his responsibility to send off the visitors who were not staying at the mansion. This task occupied him for a good half-hour. When the last carriage had departed the circular drive, he stepped back into the entry way, looking around for Olivia.
Catherine MacIntyre watched him from halfway up the grand oval staircase, her hand on the gold-plated banister. She shook her head, her expression sombre.
“Where in the name of heaven did you find her, Andrew? And what possessed you to invite her to this house?”
“It’s my house. I’ll invite whomever I please. ”
“But a labour activist! How completely inappropriate! I’m sure the news is all over Newport by now. Boston and New York will know by tomorrow morning.”
“So what?” Andrew patted the pockets of his dinner jacket, seeking his cigarettes. “Why should I care?”
His mother sighed. “I expect we’ll have at least a few cancellations for the ball. People are afraid their reputations will be tarnished if they’re seen in the same room with someone like her.”
“What do you mean ‘someone like her’? She’s a perfectly delightful creature, beautiful, intelligent, well-spoken and polite despite where she comes from.”
“But Andrew…”
“I can buy and sell them all, Mother, and they know it. They’ll come to your gala because they go where the money goes. They want your favour, and mine. Mark my words, no one will cancel. They wouldn’t dare.”
Finally locating the embossed silver cigarette case, he removed one of the slim cylinders and stuck it between his lips. He was almost ready to light it right there in the massive, two-storey atrium as a gesture of defiance, but the genuine sorrow in his mother’s face stopped him.
“Everything will be fine, Mother. Don’t worry about Olivia—or about me. I know what I’m doing.” He headed for the darkened terrace, brandishing his box of matches. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
As he leaned on the granite balustrade, though, holding the fragrant smoke in his lungs and listening to the ocean sighing against the cliff, he wondered. What was he doing with Olivia? That afternoon, she’d pleased him beyond measure. He’d come down to dinner as excited as a kid at Christmas. The sight of her, resplendent in her finery, had only improved his mood. But the memory of her behaviour at dinner reminded him how alien she was to his world. He couldn’t realistically imagine a future that included such a foreign creature, delicious as she was. After the weekend, she’d be gone, and he’d be faced once more with the odious requirement that he choose a spouse from among his peers.
“You seem pensive.” Olivia glided up to stand beside him, gazing into the night. Her scent had him half hard in seconds. “Are you feeling guilty? Contemplating the immorality of your life?”
“Miss Alcott, it is you who should feel guilty. You managed to completely disrupt my poor mother’s dinner. She’s quite distressed.” He bent to bury his nose in her soft curls. He couldn’t help himself.
“I regret having caused her pain, but someone needs to tell the truth about this life of yours. It’s a bit obscene. You have everything you could desire. You can do whatever you want.”
“Do you think so? I’ve far fewer choices than you’d imagine—as you saw this evening. I’m shackled by wealth and privilege, imprisoned in a kind of gilded cage. Before I do anything, I must consider the expectations of family and society.”
“Can you not consider sharing with the poor unfortunates upon whom your wealth is founded?” Her face was shadowed, but her voice was like music.
“Are you lobbying for that extra dollar in wages, Miss Alcott?” Slipping his arm around her back, he stroked the side of her breast through the velvet.
“That was, if you recall, a part of our bargain.”
He ran his finger down her neck, along her collarbone and into the hollow between her breasts, all bared by the evening gown. She shivered and pressed against him.
“I’ll think about it, Olivia. Meanwhile, what about your part of the bargain? Your agreement to follow my orders in every particular? You weren’t very obedient this evening.”
“You never ordered me to lie—Sir.” She gazed up at him. Now, finally, he could see the sparkle in her eyes. “However, if you feel I deserve it, well then, you must punish me.”
Andrew took her arm and led her back into the echoing halls of Wavecrest. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
Chapter Six
“Seven!” The strap whistled through the air. Olivia steeled herself as leather bit into the tender flesh of her ass, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Her lips pressed togethe
r to contain her cries. Her eyes were screwed shut to hold back tears. Each stroke hurt twice as much as the previous one, but she was determined to endure the punishment Andrew MacIntyre had decreed—twenty lashes with his hand-tooled belt of Moroccan cowhide—without complaint.
“Eight!” A starburst of pain exploded at the point of contact, then faded to a throbbing ache, echoed by the insistent pulse in her clit. Her buttocks, already sensitised from his earlier spanking, felt as though they’d been roasted over an open flame.
“Nine!” Despite her determination to be stoic, she could not help flinching away from the vicious strap, but she could not escape. Her bonds permitted only the most limited movements.
Andrew had her bent over the footboard of the bed with her buttocks in the air, her chest upon the mattress and her arms stretched over her head. Ropes looped around her wrists and pulled them towards the far bedposts on either side of the pillows. More rope fastened her ankles to the legs of the bedstead, keeping her thighs spread wide. She could do little more than wriggle, and when she did, her pebbled nipples rubbed against the silk coverlet and triggered another sort of agony.
The pain was terrible and yet somehow it excited her beyond belief. It was not the sensations per se that inspired her arousal. She feared the next application of the lash as much as she craved it. What thrilled her was the realisation that she embodied Andrew MacIntyre’s darkest fantasies. Everything he’d ever imagined, she could give to him. Unquestioning obedience. Willing surrender. A ripe, strong female body for him to use as his toy and his comfort. In the breathless moments between his strokes, they were deeply connected by complementary need. That connection was intoxicating.
“Ten!” The belt snapped as it met its target, landing precisely on the delicate underside of her rear cheeks, near the crease where they met. The awful sting forced a cry from her throat, before she caught herself. Hot embarrassment at her weakness mingled with the fire consuming her ass and the fever in her pussy.
Her inadvertent vocalisation made Andrew pause. “Olivia, are you all right?” His fingertips brushed across her welts, waking new pangs that sizzled straight to her sex. She arched backwards, seeking greater contact, and was rewarded by the warmth of his palms, massaging and soothing her battered flesh.
“I’m fine, sir.” The confidence and certainty she heard in her own voice amazed her. “You may continue with my punishment.”
“No, no—I don’t want to damage you.” His hands wandered along the curve of her hips to her waist, then up along her sides to the splayed swell of her breasts, flattened against the mattress. Everywhere he touched, he kindled shivers of delight. He had to lean over her to reach that sensitive spot and the wool of his trousers stung her abraded skin. Awkward, constrained by her bonds, she rubbed against the hard bulk prodding her buttocks. His sigh of pleasure only added to the heat building between her thighs. More of his weight settled upon her back. If only he were naked!
“Miss Alcott, I’d love to thrash your delectable ass until it’s twice as red as it is now. But it’s too much—much too much for the first time.”
“I deserve it, sir—ah!” He had wormed his hand beneath her body to capture her swollen nipple in the pincer of his fingers. “Oh!” He ran his tongue down her spine to leave a wet, tingling trail. “And—ah—oh, sir!” He’d pulled back far enough to slide a finger into her soaked depths. Although he kept well away from her clit, the stimulation still had her teetering on the edge of climax. “I—oh!—I can handle it, sir. It’s not my first time.”
The admission tumbled out before she could stop herself.
“What? What do you mean?” His growl suggested anger, but his fingers continued their slippery dance among her folds. She fought the waves of release threatening to engulf her, struggling for clarity and control. Men were so possessive. How could she explain that Dmitri was long gone, that now, tonight, she belonged solely to Andrew?
“In Paris—I had a lover, a master—oh, please, don’t stop…”
He’d pulled his hand abruptly out of her weeping pussy. The sense of loss was devastating.
“I’ll do what I want. Go on, slut, tell me more.”
She squirmed against the ropes that kept her from touching him. Their welcome bite helped her to focus.
“He was a poet. Russian. He knew—knew me in a way I’d never experienced. I didn’t understand at the beginning, but he showed me, taught me…”
“I knew it, damn it all! I felt it, the first time I saw you.” Tears welled in her eyes at his harsh tone. “Did he whip you, this master of yours?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cane you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Torture your nipples? Gag and blind you? Suspend you from the ceiling? Stuff his fist into your anus? Mark you with his blade?”
Shame flooded through her at this litany of sins. Even Andrew MacIntyre was appalled by her secret desires.
He grabbed her rear cheeks and pulled them apart, as if to inspect her most private parts. Her juices painted the insides of her thighs, clear evidence of her perverse excitement. His nails dug into the welts he’d inflicted. Sweet torment winged through her helpless body.
“Speak up, slave. I want an answer. Which of these obscene things did your so-called master do to you?”
Olivia fought a paralysing sense of humiliation, unable to reply. “All of them, sir,” she whispered finally, terrified of his reaction but compelled by the force of his will. “All of them, and more.”
Andrew abruptly released his hold on her, backing away so that she could no longer sense his heat. Was he leaving, abandoning her in this compromising and uncomfortable position? Had he gone for his knife, to cut her free and dismiss her? She craned her neck, but he was out of her line of sight. She heard quiet rustling as he moved about the enormous room. Was he retrieving an even more painful instrument with which to punish her?
“Sir?” she ventured, well aware that slaves were not supposed to speak unless specifically instructed to do so. The quaver in her voice revealed her desperate need. She didn’t care. “Please, sir… I’m sorry…” There was no answer.
Her heart spiralled down into a pit of gloom. A vision of her future stretched before her, bleak, sterile and unsatisfying. She recalled her despair when Dmitri had left her, the blank hours, the months of aching, unrelieved need. For some reason this was far worse. Though she’d known Andrew less than a day, the sense of connection was far more powerful than she’d ever felt with her sly, seductive Russian master. Dmitri had been irresistible but cruel, a true sadist who had loved to see her suffer. Andrew, in contrast, appeared to be a basically decent man, despite his deviant sexual needs—although those needs were less deviant, apparently, than her own.
If only she’d kept her mouth shut.
Then all at once he was behind her again, his strong hands gripping her hips and his rigid cock poised at her entrance. In an instant, Olivia soared back to the heights of arousal where he’d taken her during the beating.
“What are you sorry about, wench?” A single jerk of his pelvis seated his cock in her wet depths. Gasping at the sudden, delicious intrusion, she couldn’t answer. He moved inside her, hard and sure, glorious and right—stretching, filling, fulfilling. His wiry pubic hair scratched the backs of her thighs as he buried himself to the root.
Olivia strained against the pull of her bonds, arching her spine, wanting more. Instead, he drew back, emptying her. He rubbed his slick cockhead back and forth across her outer lips, carefully avoiding her clit and driving her crazy.
“I beg you, sir, don’t tease me…”
He laughed and swatted one sore butt cheek. “Be still!” Pleasure and pain rippled through her in alternating waves. “I’m in control here. You’re just my slut—the repository of my lust. And a very filthy little slut at that…”
Was he in fact disgusted by her past? Perhaps not to the extent that Olivia had feared.
She relaxed, opened herself, let hi
m use her. In response, he slid back inside and resumed his thrusts. As she gave herself up to him, he rewarded her by increasing both the force and the speed with which he fucked her. She floated on a cloud of bliss, releasing any thought of her own satisfaction. She was content to be a vessel for her master’s pleasure.
“Yes—uh—I’m surprised—a well-bred—educated—socially conscious—ah! You’re so damn wet, Olivia—so tight…” He drifted off into incoherent grunts as he drew closer to the point of no return. His magnificent cock grew longer and fatter than ever as he rammed it into her depths.
She focused on the stony bulk that stretched her so wide, clenching her inner muscles in rhythm with his strokes. Her one desire was to feel him spend inside her. He did not chide her for disobeying his exhortation to be still—but then, by now he was beyond speech. Later he might rebuke her—might even punish her…
It could have been the tantalising notion of his punishment that tipped the scales. It could have been the exquisite swirl of his finger around her clit. It may well have been the fact that even on the brink of his own climax, Andrew was aware of her and her desperate need. Whatever the cause, as he exploded and filled her with his spunk, she came as well, in a rainbow-tinged cataract of sensation that left her trembling and breathless.
He slumped on top of her, a welcome weight. His jism leaked from her cleft to dribble down her thighs. Her shoulders ached from pulling against the bonds. Her ass throbbed in the aftermath of her strapping. Olivia realised that her face was stretched into a silly grin. She felt ridiculously happy—no, more than happy, full of joy at the marvellous way she and Andrew fitted.
Her lover—her master, at least for the moment—stirred and moaned.
“By God, Olivia! Are you trying to kill me?”
She struggled to suppress a giggle. “Of course not, sir!”
He clambered off her, then circled around to plant an energetic kiss on her lips. “You’re an amazing woman. I had no idea…”
“I thought you said you knew, when you saw me…”
