Parlor Games

by Jess Michaels

  “I am here, aren’t I?” The corner of her mouth creased in a mirthless smile. “Not starving in the streets or laboring in the work house for a pittance with no hope of ever getting out again.”

  “I admire your spirit. You are brave. A survivor.”

  Bravery would have been holding her head high as she died by inches in the work house. True courage would have allowed her to forget the needs of her body while she took care of her soul. Bravery was not selling her body for bread because she was afraid of hunger and cold and want. “I took the easy way out. There is nothing brave about that.”

  He came nearer to her, and traced down the line of her cheek with his forefinger. “Is it so very bad, being here?”

  “I am glad you have bought my time for the month,” she confessed, in the spirit of truthfulness that had overcome them both. “You are easy to talk to and you do not stare at me like Sir Richard did last night. He made me feel somehow dirty.”

  He grinned at her. “You forgot to mention that I am a far finer figure of a man than he is and that you like me immensely.”

  “Sir Richard is a fine figure of a man,” she protested with an answering smile. “Well, anyway, he is very fine.”

  Tom made a face. “And he cuts a perfectly ridiculous figure in his gargantuan striped satin waistcoats. He is as big as a house. You could put a tasseled saddle on him and ride him about town, and pretend you were in India riding an elephant.”

  She suppressed a grin. Really, she should not think of Mrs. Erskine’s guests in such a way, but Sir Richard did look uncomfortably like an elephant. “You are a scoundrel.”

  His eyes brightened. “You like me in spite of the fact that I am a scoundrel?”

  She could not help but laugh. “It is very wicked of me, but I suspect that I like you all the more because of it.”

  A movement behind her caught his eye, and a groan escaped him. “Speak of the devil.”

  She turned in the direction of his gaze to find Sir Richard the fat bearing down on them, huffing and puffing like a steam engine.

  He bore down on Tom, fixing him with a steely eye. “You called me away last night to no purpose. There was no vote in the House last night.”

  “Was there not?” Tom lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “I must have been mistaken. I do apologize.”

  Sir Richard Etheridge was not appeased. His chubby fingers were clenched into tight fists at his sides and his breath came in even shorter bursts than usual. “There was no mistake about it. You called me away on purpose.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Sir Richard Etheridge jerked his head in Sarah’s direction. “You wanted the wench,” he ground out between clenched teeth, “so you thought to get me out of the way with a damnable lie.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, my dear old fellow. All’s fair in love and war.”

  “I am not your dear old fellow.” Sarah was almost frightened by the vicious ice in Sir Richard’s voice. “I claim no acquaintance with you. You are not a gentleman.”

  Tom examined his fingernails with a show of interest. “True, but then neither am I a fat lecher.”

  Sarah stifled a horrified gasp as Sir Richard’s face went as purple as a peony at the insult.

  He turned to Sarah with as much dignity as he could muster and offered her his arm. “Come, girl. You can see your companion has no breeding. Will you not do me the honor of your company instead?”

  Sarah shook her head, not knowing what to say that would not make the situation worse. Really, Sir Richard looked as if he would be struck down with apoplexy, he was so angry. Tom was such a scoundrel to tease the poor man so.

  “You’re too late,” Tom said before she could gather her wits sufficiently to reply. “She is not mistress of her own destiny at the moment. I have made arrangements with Mrs. Erskine.”

  Sir Richard took back his arm and glared at Tom, thwarted malice writ large in his piggy eyes. “You have not heard the last of this,” he warned, as he turned on his heel and waddled away. “I am not a man to be lightly crossed.”

  Sarah shuffled uneasily at his threats, but Tom merely roared with laughter. “He is not a man to do anything lightly,” he sputtered, loudly enough that Sir Richard could hear.

  Judging by the sudden stiffening of the ramrod posture of his back and the increase in pace of his waddling, Sir Richard heard this last insult only too well.

  Sarah was saved from replying to Tom’s latest sally by Mrs. Erskine, who called the company to attention. “Make yourselves ready, ladies and gentlemen,” she called. “For a game of blindman’s buff.”

  4

  Sarah watched as one of the gentlemen set a hard-backed chair in the middle of the room, with a small table covered in a lace cloth beside it. With dignified ceremony, Mrs. Erskine placed a large-figured hourglass firmly on the top.

  A round-faced fellow with a pronounced look of mischief in his eye promptly plumped into the chair with an emphatic “Me first!”

  Mrs. Erskine tied a thick black blindfold firmly around his head, covering his eyes. “Can you see anything?”

  He waved his hand in front of his face. “Not a thing. It’s as dark as midday in a London fog.”

  With this confirmation, she reached over and turned the hourglass over, starting the flow of sand.

  One of the coffee house girls stepped forward. With a deliberate gesture, she removed the pins from her coiffure and leaned over the seated gentleman, shaking her long dark hair down over her shoulders and allowing some stray strands to caress his face.

  Leaning toward her, he breathed in her scent, looking for all the world like a pouter pigeon stretching its neck out for a tasty morsel.

  “I do declare,” the pouter pigeon said with a series of appreciative sniffs. “We appear to have Mrs. Isabella Beeton in the parlor this evening. No one else, I am sure, could smell so deliciously of home and hearth and all other good things.”

  A snigger ran around the room. Sarah joined in the laughter. Aside from the Queen herself, a less likely player of blindman’s buff could not be imagined. Mrs. Isabella Beeton’s Book of House hold Management had been like a second Bible to her mother. The very thought of such a pillar of respectability taking part in naughty parlor games was positively sacrilegious.

  Egged on by the gentlemen, the girl started to undo her bodice, releasing the buttons one by one. Sarah stifled a gasp of shock as she realized the girl was wearing only the thinnest lawn chemise under her bodice. Her exceedingly generous breasts were practically bare.

  The girl leaned into the temporarily sightless man seated before her and pressed her bosom to his face, nigh on smothering him with her attentions.

  The pouter pigeon chuckled wheezily, his face buried happily in her chest. “Surely this cannot be the breast of our honored Prime Minister, William Gladstone. Even he could not be this liberal.”

  The assembled men roared with laughter at the idea that the devoutly religious Prime Minister should be thrusting his naked bosom into anyone’s face.

  Showing no sign of wanting to move his face away, the pouter pigeon chuckled again. “Besides, I do not think I will ever see the day when En gland’s Prime Minister has such a delightfully bountiful chest as this.”

  Sarah did not think it was such an absurd idea as all that, but the gentlemen evidently did. Their laughter redoubled at the very notion that a woman would ever be Prime Minister.

  The laughter quickly turned to a cheer of delight as the girl removed her bodice altogether and tugged her chemise low enough for her breasts to fall free. She teased the seated man’s mouth with her nipple, brushing the tip of her breast against his lips and then withdrawing before he could taste her properly.

  Sarah watched in trepidation as the sands in the hourglass diminished rapidly. The girl’s display as she twirled before the cheering men, her large firm breasts completely exposed and nipples crinkling with the attention, made her palms sweat. Would she be called on to do the same? To prance
around half-naked before the whole assembly as they called out indecent suggestions?

  “Relax,” Tom whispered in her ear, sensing her nerves. “You are mine, remember? If you are called on to perform, it will only be for me. I will not demand more than you freely offer.”

  “You will not?” Although she was hardly experienced at being a coffee house girl, she did not think it likely that any gentleman would pay a vast sum of money to have her at his disposal for an entire month and then not pressure her to lie with him. Polly had warned her that she would not be able to keep her virginity indefinitely or she would soon lose her popularity. A new girl with a new face would join their group and Sarah would lose her novelty value. Teasing the gentlemen, Polly warned her, would only take the customers so far. Eventually they all wanted to be fucked.

  “Not tonight.” He drew her closer to his side until she was pressed up against his thighs. “After all, I am in no hurry. I have a whole month to tempt you into offering me everything.”

  “I will not offer you everything however long you wait,” Sarah said, turning her head away from him. His confidence irked her. He ought not be so sure of himself and of his powers of seduction. What ever he may think of her, she was not a wanton.

  “We shall see.”

  Sarah tossed her head at him and focused on the game again. The victim was still searching blindly for the girl’s breasts as she teased him mercilessly, never letting him have more than a fleeting taste. As the last grains of sand trickled through the hourglass, she placed a nipple at his mouth in a final tease. There was no time for him to give the proffered nipple more than a quick lick before the sands of the hourglass ran out and the gentlemen all bellowed “Time!”

  The girl darted away from him and skipped around the room in victory, her breasts bouncing in the gaslight.

  The pouter pigeon groaned as Mrs. Erskine approached to remove the blindfold. “Maggie, you are a cruel wench to torment me so.”

  Maggie stopped dead. “You knew who I was all along,” she accused him.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so?” she asked with a pout. “Didn’t you want to win my company for the evening?”

  He stood up again, his sight restored, and surreptitiously adjusted his trousers as he moved toward her. “Your breasts were too delicious. I had rather lose the game than guess your name and give up the taste of you a scant second too early.”

  Maggie giggled, her hurt vanity appeased. “You are a flatterer,” she said, allowing him to take her arm.

  “And you are a tormentor. You know how to whet a man’s appetite and leave him hungering for more. Will you let me taste you again?”

  In reply, she simply giggled again and led him to one of the outer sofas.

  Mrs. Erskine chose the next victim, Sir Richard, and bound him to the chair, blindfolding him securely. A sweeping glance through the room and her eyes lit on Polly, who came forward to stand before the corpulent politician.

  As soon as Mrs. Erskine overturned the hourglass, Polly grabbed Sir Richard’s hand and sucked his index finger, taking it all the way into her mouth and slowly withdrawing it again.

  Sir Richard grunted, whether in pleasure or impatience Sarah couldn’t tell. Though she had grown up in a country vicarage, she had never learned the art of translating the speech of pigs.

  Polly released his finger, moved in front of him to stand astride his knees and lifted her skirts over his head. When her skirts were at their highest point Sarah plainly saw, for the briefest of moments, that Polly wore nothing underneath.

  Sir Richard’s hands moved under Polly’s skirt and, with a sudden movement that nearly caused Polly to topple, he pulled her toward him.

  The gentlemen cheered and called out encouragement to him when Polly arched her back and let out a moan of pleasure. Sir Richard’s hands and head were plainly busy underneath Polly’s skirts.

  Sarah put her hands over her eyes, spreading her fingers the tiniest bit so she could still see through them. It seemed there was to be no end to the debauchery she would have to witness in Mrs. Erskine’s house.

  What Sir Richard was doing under Polly’s skirts she didn’t like to conjecture, but Polly certainly seemed to be enjoying it. As the sands in the hourglass ran inexorably out, Polly writhed and moaned under his attentions, her head thrown back and her eyes closed as if in the throes of ecstasy.

  The room held its collective breath as the last grains of sand in the hourglass slithered toward the funnel. With uncanny timing, Sir Richard let out a muffled “Polly!” just as the last grains fell.

  Polly squeaked with delight at being guessed and lifted her skirts to release Sir Richard’s head. With a sly look, she turned toward the audience of gentlemen and lowered her skirts a tad too slowly, affording the entire room a view of her neatly trimmed bush.

  Sir Richard released the blindfold himself and stood, Polly’s juices clearly visible on his chin. “I believe I have won your company for this evening,” he said as he pulled her away to a darker corner of the room. Polly followed him with a squeak and a giggle, not at all loath to oblige.

  Mrs. Erskine walked through the crowd of gentlemen to choose the next player. Though Tom and Sarah were standing toward the back of the crowd, she bypassed the eager gentlemen at the front and took Tom by the hand. “Let us see how you perform, Mr. Wilde,” she challenged him.

  He allowed himself to be led to the chair where he was duly blindfolded.

  As soon as his sight was obscured, Mrs. Erskine took Sarah by the elbow and propelled her inside the circle of watching men. “Mr. Wilde will not pay for your company forever,” she whispered into Sarah’s ear as they made their way over to the chair. “It is time you began to learn what pleases the men who come here. You are not a Polly, to flit carelessly from flower to flower. You will want another protector to secure you as soon as Mr. Wilde loses interest in you.”

  With shaking hands, Sarah overturned the hourglass. There was no point in worrying just yet about Tom losing interest in her—he had paid for her for the month.

  Though she did not want to attract the men who stood around her watching, she wanted them to be amused and entertained with the game. Mrs. Erskine would be displeased if she bored them.

  Most of all, she wanted Tom to know, not just to guess, that it was she who stood before him.

  As she stood there, irresolute, the men around her began to turn their heads away and titter. The cause was easy to divine—they were distracted by Sir Richard Etheridge and Polly, who were getting very intimate in their dark corner. The esteemed politician was half lying on the couch, his trousers around his ankles, while Polly sat on top of him, moving rhythmically. Her voluminous skirts could not hide the fact that she was fucking him in the corner.

  They were making no effort at concealment. To Sarah’s horror, and the amusement of the gentlemen, Sir Richard grunted with Polly’s every downward thrust, sounding remarkably like a pig at the trough. Even Tom, blindfolded as he was, was facing the direction of the noisy couple.

  Sarah could not compete with such an open and public display of intimacy. Nor did she want to. Instead, she wanted to tease, to entertain, and to allow the men’s imaginations to complete the picture.

  She grabbed Tom’s hands and held them to her face. Would he know her by his sense of touch alone? She guided his fingers over her eyes, round her ears, down the nape of her neck, shivering at the intimacy of his touch. Though he was only touching her face, his caress was more private and more sensual than all the thrusting and grunting that was emanating from Sir Richard’s corner.

  Tom’s hands rested on the nape of her neck as she repeated the caress on him, running her hands over his face and neck, learning every ridge and hollow of him with the sensitive tips of her fingers.

  In turn Tom gently ran a finger up Sarah’s throat, over her chin, and gently parted her lips where she kissed his questing fingers.

  Her fingers mimicked his as they explor
ed each other in gentle caresses.

  The surrounding crowd had gone quiet and were watching them intently, ignoring the overt display in the corner.

  Intent as she was on caressing Tom, she did not notice the hourglass until the last grains of sand were falling. She squeezed his earlobes hard in a silent message.

  His lips curved in a smile. “Miss Sarah Chesham,” he said quietly, just as the last grain of sand fell.

  The men in the audience applauded loudly as she removed the blindfold and, to her own surprise, planted a chaste kiss on Tom’s lips.

  He took her by the hand. “I have won your company for the evening?”

  Sarah nodded, her mouth dry. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that, thankfully, Sir Richard and Polly had finished their display and were lying quiescent on the sofa. The thought of providing such a wanton display made her breathless with fear, and also, she had to admit, with excited anticipation. She could never behave like that in public. Not with Tom. He would think she was a shameless tart.

  Maybe one day when she had lost her virginity and was a whore in every way, maybe then she would feel ready to take part in such public fucking. Maybe one day she would lie on a sofa in the middle of a crowded room, spread her legs wide apart and invite a man to climb on to her and fuck her. Her pussy began to grow shamelessly hot at the thought of watching them watch her fucking. But she was not ready for that now. Not yet. “I will not—”

  Irritated, he cut her off. “I know. You won’t fuck me on the sofa in the corner. Believe it or not, I wasn’t going to ask you.”

  A wave of what almost felt like disappointment swept over her. “What were you going to ask for?”

  “Your company and your conversation. Is that too much to expect?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then stop scowling and try to look as if you are enjoying yourself.”

  If Mrs. Erskine had not been watching her suspiciously, she would have stamped her foot. “I am not scowling.”

  “Far be it from me to contradict a lady. You must simply have a particular way of smiling that I mistook for a scowl.” He dragged her to the closest sofa and pulled her down next to him. “Come sit down on my lap and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I guarantee that will wipe the scowl off your face.”