“Be right there. Let me wash up!”
Brenna veered off and followed Piper into the ladies’ room.
“How did you guys get here so fast?” Piper asked, rinsing soap from her hands.
“Mrs. Benson had a whole team of movers, so everything was loaded in less than a half hour. And Baz had everything in shipping crates, ready to go. And it didn’t hurt that Mick drives like Stevie Wonder on speed.”
Piper was feeling too nervous to joke around. She dried her hands and tossed the paper towels in the trash. “But what about—”
“It’s all under control,” Brenna said. “Everything for the A exhibit is in the museum loading dock as we speak. Everything for the B exhibit is safely tucked away in the rented storage facility. Here’s the key, by the way.” Brenna dropped it into Piper’s palm. “And I labeled and double-checked every item personally, Pipes. There were no mistakes. Please don’t worry.”
Piper sighed. “I just don’t want LaPaglia picking up a two-hundred-year-old dildo instead of Mr. Harrington’s pipe stand.”
Brenna laughed. “He wouldn’t know the difference. Everything going okay here?”
Piper nodded, then ran her fingers through her hair. She was trying to keep a lid on the panic she was feeling, and thought she had done a good job—until right that moment.
“Speaking of LaPaglia, do you think he suspects anything?”
“God, no,” Piper said. “He’s too worried about what font I’m using on the display boards and the color scheme to notice I’m a lying, scheming double agent.”
“This is no time to doubt yourself,” Brenna said, her voice kind.
“Ha! The funniest part is that we’ve got four weeks now until the gala, and even if I were only putting together one exhibit, I’d be a wreck, but no—I’m a crazy person putting two installations together at the same time, and one in secret!”
“Shh,” Brenna reminded her. “It’s not going to stay that way if you don’t keep your voice down. Have you reached Claudia Harrington-Howell yet?”
“No,” Piper said. “She’s still in the ashram in India and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Her assistant said she has complete faith in my abilities and I should carry on as planned.”
Brenna laughed and held open the restroom door for Piper. “Hey, well, she can’t say she wasn’t consulted!” The two women walked down the main center hallway of the museum. “What do you plan to wear to the opening?”
Piper stopped in mid-stride and stared at Brenna. “Oh my God, I don’t have a dress for the gala! With everything going on, I totally forgot. I guess I’ll wear a nice suit.”
Brenna clutched at Piper’s forearm. “No,” she said.
“Fine. I’ll go online and—”
“Let me take care of this for you,” Brenna jumped in. “You don’t have time and I’d be honored. All I ask is you be available for a fitting so we’ll have time to get it altered if need be.”
“A fitting?” Piper snorted. “It’s not my wedding, for crying out loud.”
Brenna grinned. “No, but in a way it’ll be your ‘coming out.’”
“Out of work, you mean.” Just then, Linc Northcutt came strutting down the hall behind Brenna. He nodded at Piper, then turned away, and she swore he shook his head as if he knew what she was up to.
What a little prick.
They continued on to the café. Mick already had the food containers arranged on a large table, and paper plates set out. Piper could smell the rich spices from across the room.
He kissed her sweetly and pulled out a chair for her. The two of them didn’t bother to hide their relationship anymore—it had been written on their faces since that night at the bed-and-breakfast, anyway.
Everyone served themselves tandoori chicken and tikka masala and enjoyed lunch, and since it was nearly two o’clock, they had the place to themselves. Piper was fascinated by Baz and Brenna’s discussion of sex toys in ancient Mesopotamia, though the conversation had Nanette Benson blushing. As she looked around the table, Piper knew the exhibit would not have been possible without their help and friendship. Baz Tate’s connections had come through with a variety of artifacts—lingerie and underclothing, shoes, jewelry, hair combs, and even examples of Regency England pornography. Nanette had been extremely generous in loaning antique furnishings and décor similar to what would have existed in Ophelia’s opulent world.
When she stopped to think about it, Piper was astounded at what was possible when she asked for—and accepted—the help of others.
“Looks like the construction is coming along,” Baz said, a smile in his brown eyes.
“We’re right on schedule,” Piper said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “The hard fixtures for each chamber will be in place by tomorrow, and then we can focus on wall and floor coverings, lighting and signage, and the acrylic shields and cases.”
“Did those wallpaper samples help?” Nanette asked.
“Oh yes! Perfect. I was able to get small-scale facsimiles made for what will become the parlor and the boudoir. It’s going to be lovely.”
“How about the voice-over artist? Did that go well?” Brenna asked.
Piper nodded. “Fabulous,” she said, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “And she gave me a price break on the additional diary readings, since I’m paying for that myself.”
“Jeesh, Piper,” Brenna hissed. “How much of Granny Pierpont’s money are you spending on this?”
She shrugged, a little uncomfortable with the answer—almost four thousand dollars. “Most of it’s going to the artist I hired to construct the main visual installation. If he can make my idea come alive, it’s going to blow everyone’s minds.”
Mick made a quick survey of the cafeteria to make sure no one was in earshot. “Have you had a chance to talk to Melvin?” he asked Piper.
She shook her head. That was going to be a bit tricky. The night before the gala, the museum always held a soft opening of the new exhibit for museum staff and the board of trustees. Only after that was over and everyone had gone home could Piper and her accomplices switch out the exhibit. It would be an all-night process, and would require Melvin turning his head to the tomfoolery.
“I’ll talk to him soon,” she said. When she noted Mick’s worried expression, she added, “Melvin’s a good guy. He won’t give us any trouble.”
Twenty-four
London
Lord B____ picked me up in his carriage mere moments after the setting of the sun. I did not invite him inside, but met him at the door clad in a full-length cloak of forest-green velvet. The evening was misty and chill, but that was not the reason for my concealment. When I sat across from him and the carriage jolted into motion, I gazed silently at him as I unclasped the frog at my shoulder. The cloak fell open to reveal that I wore nothing but stockings and high-heeled shoes beneath it.
It was rewarding to see his eyes widen and his jaw drop. Handsome and self-assured men look very appealing when flabbergasted. I ran my hands down my bare thighs to my knees, then pressed them slowly apart, spreading them wide.
His large hands came down over my own and moved them aside, replacing them to push my knees wide. I leaned back against the cushions and ran my fingertips up over my body, pausing a moment to tease my nipples even harder in the chill. His eyes darkened at that, his jaw clenching tight. I lingered a bit longer, just to watch him watch me, then stretched my hands high over my head. I looked as if I were bound, just as he’d fantasized.
“Well?” I breathed the word. “Will you not keep your side of the bargain?”
In an instant he was on his knees before me. His big body parted me wider, until my feet were stretched almost to the opposite walls of the carriage. I found a parcel hook far above my head and clung to it as he leaned close into my cunte and kissed it. His warm fingers stroked me up and down lightly, then disappeared into his mouth.
“You are wicked honey and wanton salt,” he murmured, his breath hot on my spread labia. “I want t
o feast on you for hours.”
He began to lap at me, his tongue slipping up and down and in and out to circle my clitoris. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to lust, pure and simple. Just as he’d said, my cries were drowned by the clatter of the carriage wheels upon the cobbles. I made no attempt to be quiet, but moaned and cursed and cried obscenities until he finally thrust two fingers deep into me and sent me over the edge into a hot and shameless orgasm.
I shouted then, loud and long, aware that we drove through Covent Garden at that moment, that the crowds swarming the square would surely hear me. I relished the wickedness of it and cried out all the louder, reveling in my own wildness.
I caught a glimpse of Lord B____’s face in the light of a street lamp as we passed and saw a like enjoyment in his eyes. He wanted the world to hear and envy us both.
Robert would have been appalled at the very thought of such an act. Even Sir would frown.
At last I had found a playmate I could not offend. I knew that no matter how low I might care to explore, Lord B____ had already gone beyond me and would not judge. Moreover, I found I did not care if he did. I wanted the danger and the darkness and the wickedness I felt rising inside of me. It was beautiful and animal and it wanted out of its cage, damn Sir and even damn the Swan and her Seven Obligations.
No one owned me.
No one.
* * *
Lord B____ wished me to go away with him to a house party the next week. After some urging, I finally consented. I had not yet allowed him to penetrate me and I knew he was eager to do so at last. I did not truly understand my own reasons for this restriction, for I am normally most generous in bed. I told myself I was simply exploring the power of taunting and suspense to increase arousal. Lord B____ seemed to enjoy the game for the most part. After all, I made sure he reached satisfaction in other ways. He had a great fondness for fellatio, in fact. We had devoured each other like animals for the past ten days and I found myself a bit edgy and overheated from it all. A good rogering would set me right, I told myself.
Once I had given tentative agreement for the excursion, Lord B____ informed me with a smile that it was a particular kind of party. “It is a bacchanal,” he said languidly as he teased my nipples. We lay entangled in my great copper bath and I had just given him a quick release with my soap-slicked hands. I still tingled with unfulfilled arousal and his relentless tweaking of my nipples was making it worse by the moment.
Then his words penetrated, though nothing else had. I raised my head from his damp chest and looked into his gleaming blue eyes. It could be difficult to ascertain his seriousness sometimes. Or his sincerity. He was a slippery fellow, bathing or clothed.
“An orgy?” I had never attended an orgy. That wasn’t Robert’s style of entertainment. I imagined piles of sweating, gleaming bodies, men and women touching and kissing and sucking and fucking in a great heaving mass of lust and wickedness. Men with men, women with women, watching and being watched.
I wanted to be bad. This would be bad, indeed.
“You like that, do you, you dirty thing?” Lord B____’s fingertips tightened harshly on my nipples. I took the pain, writhing against him, riding the pulse of fear I felt when his darkness rose thus in him. It excited and alarmed me at once, flooding my body with sensation, stilling those unwanted thoughts in my mind, thoughts of friends lost and pledges broken.
“Yes,” I breathed. “I like it.”
“What do you like?” His voice went deep and harsh. “Tell me.”
This was something I had learned from this man. Sir had taught me to use all the words without shame. Lord B____ had taught me to use the words for arousal itself. Speaking them and hearing them added a wicked layer to our pleasure that I had not known before. I took a breath to speak. Before I could say anything, I felt him slide his soap-slicked fingers down between my buttocks. When he pressed the tips of two fingers to my anus, I shivered. Lord B____ wanted to take me there most of all. He told me that often as I sucked him, that one day he would soap his cock and spread my buttocks and let the tightness of my anus wring the cream from his cock.
At first the idea had appalled me, but as he slowly circled my sensitive anus with his slippery fingertips, I felt my arousal increase. He pressed a single finger deeper.
“Tell me,” he urged. He twisted that fingertip.
I gasped and began. “I want to watch,” I confessed. “I want to be watched.”
He laughed, a deep rumble against my cheek. “You enjoy making a spectacle of yourself, I know that much. Shall I fuck you in the center of the ballroom, take you on the floor like a bitch in heat, while all eyes watch you whimper and cry as you come?”
The image made me shiver. “Would that really happen? Is it truly that sort of party?”
He probed me more deeply, using his fingertip like a small cock, thrusting in and out. “You tell me, wicked Ophelia. Tell me how it will be.”
I closed my eyes and clung to him, hiding my hot face against his chest. I could not shock this man. I could not repel him. I opened up the darkest chamber of my rather extensive imagination and said the words aloud. “You will bind me,” I whispered. “You will tie my hands and then lead me to the center of the crowd.”
With his other hand he continued to twist at my nipples. The sensations from both directions drove me more deeply into the picture in my mind. “You will rip my clothes from my body and display me for everyone’s eyes.”
I felt his cock rising again, pressing hard to my belly, though I had recently wrung him dry. He liked the image I painted, and that knowledge made me braver still. “While they watch, you will press me down to my knees and remove your rigid cock from your trousers.”
He tilted his pelvis, pressing his erection against me, sliding it against my soapy skin. “You will open your mouth, before all their eyes, and take my cock deep into your throat.” His hand left my nipples and moved lower.
I wrapped my arms about his neck and pulled myself higher against him, until his questing fingers could find my cunte. All the while, his slippery penetration of my anus had never halted. Now his finger was thrusting up to the second knuckle, fucking in and out slowly and relentlessly. When his other hand began the same process to my cunte, I gasped and shuddered, pressing my body hard against his.
“You will be my little harem slave,” he went on, sounding a bit breathless himself. “You will service me while they all watch. I will bury my hands in your hair and drive my cock deep, then pull it wet and slippery from your lips, only to do it all again. Your hands will be bound behind you and your beautiful breasts will bounce from the force of my thrusts.”
I could see it, just as he described it. “You will be huge in my mouth. So big I will not be able to take it all.”
His fingers quickened. Two long fingers now fucked my cunte and I felt another slippery finger ease its way into my anus. He had never penetrated me so, but he had told me that he wanted to train my anus to take his cock someday. I knew what he was doing.
I made no protest.
Instead, I lost myself in the story. “I need to be fucked,” I moaned. “In front of the crowd. Pull your wet, slippery cock from my mouth and push me to the floor.”
“On your back or on your face?” he gasped, sliding his cock faster and faster against my soapy belly.
I shuddered. “Facedown,” I whispered. “Facedown with my bare breasts on the cold marble and my buttocks high in the air, my hands bound behind my back.”
“Yes,” he breathed. “Your hair is loose and wild and it hides your face. All gazes are riveted to your beautiful bottom, bare and inviting. I want to spank that bottom, to leave the shape of my hand pink and angry on your ivory skin.”
“Yes!” I panted. “Oh yes!” I was impaled now, two fingers deep before, two fingers deep behind. I had never felt such a thing before. He began to thrust them in unison now, harder and faster until the force of it slid me up and down his big body, the pressure of my slippery body s
atisfying his rigid cock at the same time.
“I will fuck you there, my hot little bitch, in front of everyone! I will take you hard and fast until you come, quivering and begging and weeping in your release. The world will see you come for me!”
I came for him, then and there, my cunte contracting tightly against his invading fingers, my mouth gasping my release into his neck even as his cock spurted hot and throbbing against my belly. I clung to him, shivering at the power of those dark and disturbing words to bring me to such pleasure.
That and his hands—his relentless hands, with daring fingers and shameless invasion tactics—sweet heaven, how I responded to those clever, wicked hands!
After those hands, perhaps I feared that I might not survive an intimate encounter with his cock.
* * *
When our breathing had eased, I remained where I was, my face hidden against his neck. Though the water was chilling rapidly, I had no wish to open my eyes. I held very still as he slid his fingers from my cunte and then, more slowly, from my anus.
“I believe,” he said meditatively, “that we shall be needing another bath.”
Oh God. Hot embarrassment flooded my face. My confession and my response had shocked me, never mind him!
“Ophelia, my little harem girl, why do you cling like a limpet from the sea?”
I clenched my eyes tight but allowed my death grip to ease from about his neck. My body slid back down into the bathwater and I shivered.
“Tell me that you are not discomfited by our little fiction?” He laughed outright. “You are! Why, I had no idea you were so sweet!” He made it sound like a ludicrous fault.
I pinched the skin just above his navel. “I am not sweet,” I muttered.
“You are! Sweet little Ophelia, still a virgin—at least in places.”
I turned my face away and he relented, pulling me into the warmth of his arms. “Don’t be ashamed of a few dirty words, my pet. They are just words, meant to add to our pleasure. When we are done, the words wash away in the bath, just like the other results.”
A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man Page 23
