Devastated

by EM BROWN

  His only disappointment was that Kimani was back to spending the nights at her own place because she didn’t want to leave Marissa alone. He suspected a small part of her was still tentative about diving into a relationship with him with both feet.

  “What do you mean we may not know who wins until days later?” May asked Uncle Gordon as they stood together shortly after the polls had closed.

  “There are absentee and provisional ballots to be counted,” Uncle Gordon explained. “With ranked choice voting, the process of crunching the numbers is a little more complicated.”

  “The Registrar is posting results,” a campaign staffer announced.

  They gathered around a computer. A loud cheer went up as the results were posted. Though Gordon did not receive a majority of the first place votes, he had a wide margin as the second choice candidate for most voters. Even with the number of outstanding ballots to be counted, the numbers looked to be in Gordon’s favor.

  Kimani turned to Ben. “So we did it?”

  “The campaign consultant is crunching the numbers, but it seems so,” Ben replied.

  With a squeal, she threw her arms around him. He had never seen her in such a giddy state before. He liked it.

  By ten o’clock that night all the candidates except the school boardmember, who had a remote chance of winning if 90% of the remaining ballots went her way, had conceded the race to Gordon. Gordon gave a brief speech thanking his family and supporters. A number of people wanted to stick around to watch the election results for other races and continue partying.

  But Ben had plans to spend the rest of the night at The Lair.

  “What’s this?” Kimani asked as Bataar drove them into the city. She unwrapped the box in her lap.

  “Something to replace the wristbands,” he answered.

  She lifted the lid to find a leather choker studded with small diamonds. The collar also had a metal circle for a leash attachment. Because of the gemstones, it was not the sort of gift Kimani liked to accept from him.

  Knowing there was a high chance she would reject it, Ben felt strangely nervous.

  “Will you wear it for me?” he asked.

  She stared at it. “It’s beautiful, but...”

  Shit. He shouldn’t have opted for the diamonds.

  She turned her stare from the collar to him. “I’d love to.”

  His chest swelled, and he was able to breathe again.

  He knew he had to give her space, especially given all that she had been through and all that was yet to come. But soon, she would be all his.

  Not just for a week. But for the rest of time.

  A number of my readers had voted for me to include a threesome scene with Ben and Kimani. Although I couldn’t fit it into the novel, I am including it as bonus content. To receive this free bonus, simply click the link below or copy it into your internet browser:

  https://windcolorpress.activehosted.com/f/90

  Excerpt:

  Mastering the Marchioness

  Chapter One

  HANGING FROM A HOOK, her toes barely touched the floor. Instead of the mask worn by many of the other guests at Madame Botreaux’s Cavern of Pleasures, the young woman wore only a silk red blindfold. The rest of her was laid bare for all to see.

  Vale Montressor Aubrey, the third Marquess of Dunnesford, circled around her like a predator examining its prey, occasionally running the tip of a riding crop languidly over her nipples. Once or twice he pulled the riding crop back and flicked it against a breast. She gasped, then groaned.

  “Please...please, Master...” she pleaded.

  Peering at her thighs through his black and silver mask, Vale saw the telltale glisten of moisture at her mons. This one never took long.

  “Your punishment has hardly begun, m’dear,” Vale told her.

  “Please...forgive me...I was weak.”

  Suppressing a sigh, Vale pulled back the crop and lashed it at her buttocks. It was unfortunate. Her body was beautiful—with full ripe breasts that quivered when punished—but she had indeed proven weak.

  “I leave you to contemplate how you can do better,” Vale said with another swat of the crop.

  As he headed toward the stairs, past a number of men and women engaged in various forms of coupling, a masked woman threw herself at his feet.

  “Take me—I would be a far better submissive than she,” the woman declared.

  Vale looked down at her. His half-mask did not cover his frown or the hard set of his jaw, and she crept away in shame.

  “Pray tell that is not boredom writ on your face?” asked Lance Duport when Vale joined his friend and Madame Botreaux in the balcony from where they could view the activity below, much like patrons in an opera box.

  It was the favorite spot of Penelope Botreaux. She rarely ventured onto the floor of the Cavern of Pleasures—so-called because the large assembly area existed practically in the basement of her residence. Unfinished walls left the ground rock exposed. As there were no windows, only the dim glow of a few strategically placed candelabras penetrated the darkness.

  “I let you have the beauty when I could have made her mine,” Penelope declared from the settee upon which she lounged like a Grecian goddess, wearing a thin transparent gown over a body that time and a few too many glasses of ratafia had made plump in various places.

  “I regret your generosity is wasted on me,” Vale replied, removing his mask and looking over the balcony to where he had left the young woman. “Perhaps I am too old for her.”

  Penelope snorted. “I am over forty and hardly consider myself old. You are barely five and thirty.”

  “And you could best any of the younger men here,” added Lance as he raked an appreciative gaze over Vale’s body.

  An active life of riding, hunting, fencing, and an occasional bout in the ring kept Vale’s physique in admirable shape. His stockings encased calves that were the envy of his peers. His simple linen shirt opened to reveal a broad, strong chest. His tight breeches covered muscular thighs and left little to the imagination.

  Lance turned to Penelope. “You know half the women here—and men—would give their right buttock to be partnered with Vale. He needs more than a neophyte.”

  “Would you give your right buttock?” Penelope returned.

  Lance curled his thin lips into a salacious grin. “I would give both my buttocks. Do you remember Demarco?”

  “Ah, yes, how can I not? He was a beautiful brute. A Samson with that lush head of hair.”

  “And cocky as hell, but Vale had him writhing in submission within the hour. After such a conquest, I wonder that Vale should wish to trifle with the weaker sex.”

  Vale smiled. “Despite all appearances, women are not the weaker sex.”

  “Well, what the devil are you looking for?” Penelope prodded. “Apparently not men, nor women of unsurpassed beauty. You have spurned both novice and skilled submissives. Only Lovell Elroy has had more partners than you.”

  Vale pressed his lips into a grim line as he looked over the balcony at a man wearing a red mask flogging a woman. “Lovell is malicious. He cares nothing for the women he is with. I wish you would throw him out, Penelope.”

  “But the women flock to him—especially those whose hearts you have broken.”

  “Lovell breaks more than hearts, Penelope.”

  “Ah well, like you, he is a beautiful specimen to behold, and I do enjoy beauty.” Penelope held up her quizzing glass and blatantly directed her gaze at Vale’s crotch.

  “Egad, Vale,” Lance interjected. “Nearly forgot: felicitations to you on your recent nuptials.”

  Vale started. He had nearly forgotten that he was now married.

  “Indeed,” Penelope said. “Where are you hiding this wife of yours?”

  “We arrived in town but yesterday,” Vale answered. “She is with my cousin Charlotte at the moment.”

  He was not particularly interested in pursuing the subject. Though he was sure that Charlotte would pro
ve better company for Harrietta than he, he nonetheless felt a stab of guilt for pawning his wife off on a relative for the evening.

  “And will you be introducing us to her?”

  “Good God, no,” Vale shot back. “She is a simple girl from the country.”

  “Hardly sounds like the sort of woman you would choose to marry after all these years,” Lance commented.

  Vale shrugged. “Dunnesford needs an heir. Does it really matter whom I marry?”

  “Yes, but of all the beautiful and wealthy women setting their caps at you, why a chit for whom you seem to have ambivalent feelings?”

  “Her brother and I were the best of friends before he died at Yorktown in the service of His Majesty. We served in the same regiment for some time together, and I owe my life to him. At the age of ten, I would have drowned in the lake at Dunnesford but for his efforts.” Vale put back his mask. “I should return to the beauty. Her arms must be sore.”

  “Even if her constitution is weak,” Penelope attempted, “her arse must be a delight. I almost wish I were a man that I might experience the feeling of being inside her.”

  Her arse should have been delightful, Vale thought as he recalled how easily his cock had slid into the woman due to the immense amount of wetness that had dripped from her cunnie into her sphincter earlier. But there had been something missing with this one—as there had been with all the others. The women were more and more beautiful, yet his drive, his passion, continued to diminish. Perhaps it was only natural once one had experienced all there was to experience, tasted all that a feast could offer.

  “Ah, we have some newcomers,” Lance noted of a few people who had just walked onto the assembly floor. “Damn me, that brunette looks like Charlotte, but who is the one next to her with the lackluster brown hair and emerald necklace?”

  Vale narrowed his eyes at the three emeralds separated by two small diamonds and laced together with silver. At first, he paled. Then his jaw hardened as he answered, “My wife.”

  Chapter Two

  FOR HARRIETTA DELANEY, now Marchioness of Dunnesford, the eye holes in her mask were not large enough to accommodate her wide-eyed stare as she followed Charlotte onto the floor of Madame Botreaux’s Cavern of Pleasures. There were men and women about her in all states of undress, and yet she, clothed from head to toe in a modest evening dress, felt like the naked one.

  Not only were these men and women openly naked in public but they were engaged in all manner of...activity...in public. It hardly seemed real. Only in her fantasies—deep, dark fantasies that she had never shared with anyone—had she envisioned such possibilities. Only in London could such a place exist. Certainly not in the small town where she had lived for all four and twenty years of her life. The prospect of living in the City had been the one bright part of marrying the Marquess of Dunnesford. It was a marriage that made her among the luckiest women in England. And the biggest fool.

  “He has wealth and breeding and a title and is pleasing to the eye,” Bethany, Harrietta’s junior by four years, had cooed after the Marquess had finally accepted one of their mother’s numerous invitations.

  “Exceedingly handsome,” Marianne, who had yet to have her come-out, had sighed.

  Even Jacqueline, the youngest Delaney daughter at twelve, had agreed. “He looks like a prince.”

  Harrietta had to admit that King George himself was unlikely to have produced as grand an entry as the Marquess, arriving in his gilded carriage pulled by a team of four with gleaming white coats and footmen who appeared to possess more expensive garments than the wealthiest of the bourgeoisie. The Marquess was also perfection, from the finely powdered hair to the elaborate cravat tied at his throat, the rich velvet coat that flared from the hips, his delicately embroidered waistcoat, and down to the jeweled high-heeled shoes. He was elegant yet commanding. Powerful but refined. Regal and sensuous.

  Nine long years had passed since she had last seen Vale, and she no longer recognized him. She had dreamt of him, still flushed when she remembered their last encounter, and had heard much about him—especially about the many mistresses he had kept in those years. At the time of her marriage to him, he had been most recently rumored to be with an Italian countess. A family friend who traveled in the same social circles as the Marquess had described him as an aloof and arrogant rake—not the sort of man Harrietta had ever envisioned herself marrying.

  The Marquess was a stranger to her. He was not the Vale who once preferred the company of the Delaney family to his own, who had been Harold’s best friend, and who had been like a second brother to her. She resented this magnificent Marquess for failing to be the man she had fallen in love with as a girl. But Mr. Delaney had three daughters with no dowries. That a man of Lord Dunnesford’s stature would offer for Harrietta—poor and plain—was, according to Bethany, nothing short of the most miraculous gift Fate could bestow.

  Dear God, Harrietta thought to herself as she glimpsed a woman whose breasts were being serviced by the mouths of two different men, surely I belong in Bedlam for wanting to see this place?

  What she saw next answered her question affirmatively. A naked young woman was hanging from a hook like a slab of meat in a butcher’s shop while a man wearing a silver and black mask was circling around her—and striking her with his riding crop. Harrietta had never seen such tight breeches as those worn by the masked man. She flushed on his behalf. Her gaze traveled from his loins to his finely sculpted chest. The sinews of his strong arms revealed themselves as he pulled the crop back and lashed it against the woman’s backside. Harrietta eyed the planes of his pectoral muscles, the ridges that filled his torso, and the rugged hardness of his belly. She had not thought the naked body of a man could be so...captivating. The man would have made an exceptional model for Michelangelo.

  “Masterful, is he not?” Charlotte whispered.

  “What is he doing to that poor woman?” Harrietta asked, appalled yet intrigued.

  “Punishing her. She has displeased him in some way.”

  The young woman groaned...in pleasure. Harrietta felt warmth spreading through her body. Her own carnal experiences had been limited to a few encounters with the footman and the squire’s son. There had been groping—a few playful swats on the butt that she had surprisingly enjoyed—but nothing on the order of what she now witnessed. But she had imagined a world of greater possibilities ever since she had found a copy of Fanny Hill that Harold had hidden beneath his bed.

  “He is the most desired master,” Charlotte explained. “Only the most beautiful and practiced are selected to be his submissive.”

  “Have you ever been with him?” inquired Harrietta as she followed the hard set of his jaw. “I should think it rather terrifying.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes and a small smile played upon her lips. “I would be unworthy.”

  Harrietta studied her companion, who seemed to be reveling in a daydream. She liked Charlotte—and not because the woman was her only friend in London at the moment. Widowed two years ago, before she had turned thirty, Charlotte Kensington possessed a worldliness and self-assurance that Harrietta appreciated. It therefore surprised her that Charlotte would want to submit to a man like the one in the silver and black mask.

  When she saw the man leave the assembly floor, Harrietta felt relieved, though she was also curious to see what he might do next with the woman he had left hanging.

  “If you wish to leave, you have only to speak it,” Charlotte said.

  Harrietta contemplated the suggestion. She had seen more tonight than she had ever thought possible. Her mind whirled and she needed time alone to digest all that she saw. And yet, she felt a part of her awakening, a part of her that desired to see more, a part of her that was not merely curious.

  “Does everyone wear a mask?” Harrietta asked, stalling.

  “Mostly,” Charlotte replied.

  “Do you know anyone here?”

  “No, and that is part of the fun.”

  They
walked past a row of semi-private alcoves occupied alternately by two women licking each other, a group orgy, and a ménage-a-trois.

  “Are there no private chambers?”

  “Where is the thrill in a private chamber? Ah, it is the time for presenting,” Charlotte observed of a number of men and women who had begun forming a line in the middle of the assembly. “Did you wish to present tonight?”

  “Present?” Harrietta echoed. Her pulse began to quicken.

  “Those new to Madame Botreaux’s must first present themselves. Those of a certain seniority here are allowed to choose among the new ones.”

  “What happens if you do not like the person you are with?”

  “If you find you do not enjoy your initial encounter, you may request to present again upon your return.”

  Harrietta’s heart was pounding in her head. For a brief moment she wondered what her new husband would say or do if he ever found out what she had done. He had made it quite clear before they married that he would not interfere in the life she wished to lead if she would afford him the same consideration. The coolness of his tone as he spoke had surprised her. In truth, she had felt a little stung by it. She knew full well she was not the sort of woman to merit the attentions of a man of his wealth and stature. That he had offered for her hand had mystified her. She could only guess that he had felt some obligation to her brother to care for his family.

  He was certainly not interested in her. That much had become clear as crystal to her when he had chosen not to consummate their marriage on their wedding night. Instead, he had adopted a fatherly tone, assuring her that he would not press his privileges upon her but would wait until she was ready. What the bloody hell could he have met by that? The only answer that came to her was that he had no desire to bed her. Her lack of beauty had never bothered her before—Harold had often told her how he would sooner be in her company than all the Helens of Troy in the world—but on her wedding night, she had felt the pain of her plainness.