by Louisa Trent
“According to those in the know, the reporter is a fixture at The Crimson Garter, a fixed weekly appointment,” the conman advised. “He must be branching out, trying more illicit stuff.”
The conman had stamina, and that was for sure. I had been the happy recipient of his vigor several times the night before. And he would have made me happy here again too…until the appearance of the reporter ended everything.
“Osborn never misses an appointment at The Garter with Sally, an eighteen year-old waif who gets a House bonus for patrons who cut her. The madam receives a shitload of cash from the reporter. I tried to get the owner there to give your Mr. Osborn the boot, but no dice. Bloodied and in pain, young Sally still sees Osborn every Friday.”
Today was Thursday.
“Your reporter will most likely head over and see young Sally on the morrow. Busy fella, huh?”
“You bastard! You planned all this,” I cried. “The day. The location. The exhibitionism. You wanted me to see Mr. Osborn at a brothel in the Red-light District. You knew he would visit The Light Skirt today. The madam at The Garter must have informed you!”
I made the accusation with absolute certainty. But why go through all the trouble of blatantly setting me up?
Because a picture was worth a thousand words, perhaps?
There could be no other motivation. Due to the carnal intensity of our arrangement, the conman knew me fairly well, regardless of the briefness of our liaison. Realizing he could have talked himself blue in the face, and I still would not have accepted his word about the reporter, he had arranged another loss of innocence for me.
There was but one stumbling block in my logic. Deliberately hurting me was not the conman’s way. Yes, he could be rough in bed…and everywhere else…but in respect to our enjoyment of certain erotic play, we were compatible. He dominated, I submitted. I deliberately sought out his discipline, which he cheerfully delivered. Everything we had done thus far met with my complete endorsement, if not my instigation. None constituted the same kind of hurt as this.
The reporter’s disloyalty struck me to the very quick. My every romantic illusion about Mr. Osborne was gone.
With both my fists, I pounded the wall I front of me. “Why,” I sobbed, my bare breasts heaving, the rough bricks, coal black with chimney filth, abrading the distended nipples. “Why do this to me?”
The conman reentered me, began to hammer me. Brutally. He went so deep inside me, my cunt seized up. I rode it out, even when he squeezed his palm between my upper body and the brick wall and took my breast in his hand, first one, then the other. He pinched the nipples, and an agony of blinding release shot through me.
I could not risk screaming. Crying out would draw attention to us. So I bit my bottom lip almost clear through, the blood of my bitterness harsh on my tongue.
“Your reporter likes to cut women. Now he is visiting the vilest whorehouse in the area. Are those the attributes you always dreamed of in a husband, Miss Malone? What will you do when he sharpens his knife on you, or when he auctions you off to some mask-wearing reveler at a BDSM dungeon?” After withdrawing from my body once again, he tagged the interior of my buttocks with his semen.
Even now, he took his responsibilities seriously.
Odd, how I expected no less of him.
Indeed, there had been only one time, the very first time, that he had not protected me from conception. After missing the point of no return carnally, he had spewed inside my natural passage, a loss of control he must deeply regret.
Not me. I could not regret it. I felt no remorse over his slip.
While a plug of his spent passion rolled down the interior of my thighs, the conman closed up my cape and led me away.
Chapter Nineteen
No one had seen us together in the Red-light District. Not arrive and not leave. I was quite confident about this. The conman had kept his distance, walking behind me the entire time we were out and about, close enough to grab me should I take off on him, but not so close as to raise suspicions. Apart from this, passersby were mainly scurrilous whoremongers and the thieves who robbed them. No interest in me at all, not with a ferocious lion at my side.
My scandalous adventure in exhibitionism would not destroy my future. But what future would that be?
I had thought to wed Mr. Osborn, have his children, as many as I could conceive at this late point in my life. I could still do that, pretend ignorance of his visits to and mistreatment of whores. Many society wives did the same. Most likely, he would do no harm to his wife…
“I still mean to build a life with Mr. Osborn,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud. “I love him.”
“No, you do not love him. You love who you thought him to be. The reporter will kill a woman someday. Do not choose to be the one he finally does in.”
I thought I might vomit.
The conman had opened my eyes to the realities of my situation, showed me the foolishness of sticking my head in the sand. By going out on the limb with his unwelcome honesty, he may even have saved my life.
He would get no thanks from me. Why had I ever agreed to this arrangement?
“Do not think to touch me,” I choked out as we came abreast of his residence and his palm went to my elbow to escort me inside the dark and narrow passageway that led to his back door.
On my own, I went on ahead. Pausing at the threshold, I wrapped my arms around my middle, tears of disappointment streaming down my cheeks, my upset all thanks to him. Thanks to him, I must drop my pipe dream of becoming a wife and mother and return to my spinster’s life, perhaps wiser for my folly but definitely more cynical due to it. Going forward, I would continue my lonely existence on the periphery, an onlooker, an eavesdropper of those actually involved in life.
How would I be able to stand it?
I shook my head. “I cannot return inside with you after this. I cannot bear even the thought of doing so. Why did I start this up with you? It was the worst mistake I have ever made.”
“Because you never made any mistakes before, never lived before,” he said gruffly. “How could you? You had never given yourself the chance. Welcome to being a part of it all, Miss Malone. You should be grateful to me for waking you up.”
At his cruelty, I spat. “Until the night we met, I was a complete stranger to you. You said you thought me a prostitute! And yet you presume to lecture me, to talk to me of gratitude?”
A shadow crossed his eyes. Like any good conman, though, he kept his thoughts to himself.
Did he, at this late juncture, suspect me of having been a virgin our first time? Is that what he meant by his waking me up?
Oh, God. His possible knowing the secret I tried to keep from him just compounded my wretchedness, stripped me of my dignity and left me no place to hide. Had he only continued having relations with me out of pity, a sympathy affair?
My washed-out blond looks were far from unusual. Nor was I vivacious or young. Nothing would have drawn him to me, not even my money. Even if he had read about me in newsprint after the fact, those articles reported me as being a spinster. Certainly, the usual readers would have assumed me inexperienced, but he was no ordinary reader. He might not have concluded I was a virgin from those pieces.
He was a conman! He rubbed shoulders with common riffraff, prostitutes and thieves and others of their ilk. He had probably taken it for granted that, spinster or not, I knew my way around a cock.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
I thought I could get away with him never knowing. The room had been pitch-black, he had over-indulged on alcohol, and I never let on to my virginity. Indeed, I had done everything to hide my ignorance from him.
“Bedding me does not equal knowing everything there is to know about me, sir.”
“I know you enjoyed the fucking,” he unsentimentally replied. “No emotion expended. Just physical release. Mindless sex. I provided you with that. I still can.” He raked a hand through his hair. “At least stay the night
. You should not be alone, Miss Malone, at a time like this, when you are newly disillusioned.”
Keeping to honesty, I nodded, a grim bob of my lowered chin. “You may be right about that.”
“I know I am.”
“Very well. Give me some time to bathe. Alone,” I said, setting some new parameters to our coming together. “Meet me in your orientation room, say at midnight. I should rest first.”
“Resting is a good idea. I shan’t interfere with your need for privacy. And, then, on the morrow, we are done. I will see you home in my carriage. Tonight, you take charge of what happens between us.”
I looked up into his face and saw neither deceit in his lion’s eyes, nor sympathy, only a sort of understanding. And so I went deeper with my honesty. “My heart is broken. I need you to replace my emotional hurt with hurt of another kind, a sexual hurt. I cannot tolerate what I feel now.”
“You are a woman of strength. You just have not come to terms with that realization yet.”
“I cannot bear it, I tell you. I cannot!”
“Mr. Osborn is not worthy of your crucible.” He brushed his knuckles down my jaw. “But it will be as you suggest. You spoke of being unable to tolerate this pain you feel. Well, your suffering is more than I can bear. For my own sake, I will do anything you say to bring you relief.”
“Another partner.”
He drew away from me. “Another man instead of me?”
“No. With you. Two men. That is possible, is it not?”
“Possible, yes,” he said uneasily. “But not optimal. And not Mr. Osborn. That gutter rat stays out of this.”
“No. Not Mr. Osborn. Someone else. Can you find such a man at such short notice? He need not be a gentleman. Someone like yourself, an acquaintance of yours from the Red-light District. I would be willing to pay him for the inconvenience…”
“Does it always come down to money with you?”
“Yes,” I said miserably.
“Not this time, Miss Malone. No cash will change hands here. I can find someone. The most decent man I have ever known. He owes me favor.”
I smiled a hard smile. “I suppose it would take a favor to get a man to bed me.”
“That is not at all what I meant,” he growled. “Everything I say to you is always fucking wrong.”
“I suppose I bring out the worst in you,” I replied, a comment on his indecisiveness, something I had neither seen nor suspected in him.
“No, Miss Malone. That is where you are dead wrong. You bring out the very best in me.”
“To prevent my name from appearing in newsprint somewhere down the line, do not give him my name, please.”
“This man is not that type. No way would he fuck then tell.”
I snorted. “Informers sell secrets to the society pages all the time, people you think would never do so in a thousand years. Everyone can be bought.”
“Not this man, I tell you. But have it your way. I will not breathe a word about your identity to him or to anyone.” He turned to go.
I stopped him before he left. “Did you bed this young waif at the brothel, the whore you tried to convince to stop receiving Mr. Osborn?”
Receiving. A delicate wording for a man who enjoyed cutting women not all that far removed in years from childhood.
“You mean Sally? No. Never touched her. She arrived a while back. Before meeting you, I had not bedded anyone for some time.”
“Because of this new leaf of yours?”
The proof of his change was in the pudding and, from my perspective, his pudding was only half-baked.
“A new leaf, Miss Malone, and something else too, something more personal, something I am not at liberty to divulge at this time, or perhaps ever, but which is no less true for my inability to speak it.”
At my eye-roll, he left me alone, to lick my wounds, to wallow in self pity over Mr. Osborn, to wonder over my barely suppressed rage at the conman.
* * * *
When a knock came on the “orientation” room door precisely at midnight, I was bathed, rested, and ready to do the inconceivable:
Couple with two men at once.
And why?
To purge another man, my almost fiancé, from my system. And because a full fleet of randy sailors would be too difficult to obtain at such short notice. Oh, yes, I was in a rare mood…
And the conman took me seriously. No patronizing. No trying to talk me out of it. His respect for my anger and grief worked as a balm on me.
Amazingly, less than a month ago, I had been a spinster, a virgin without any carnal experience whatsoever. Never mind that! More telling was my inability to chat with a man in a social situation. Those socialites – bitches all of them – who looked down their noses at my ineptitude then, should see me now.
I shuddered. Bad idea, that. The thought of anyone seeing me now, in this, my deepest and darkest moment of despair, was enough to send me racing to a cloistered nunnery for the remainder of a life. Not that any of them would have me after what I was about to do.
Two men.
I understood the mechanics of fucking one man…now, I did…but two?
I avoided the mirror during my preparatory toilette. Why would I choose to see the pain that must surely be etched on my face? I could hardly breathe for the crushing hurt I felt. Not that I would let on that an elephant sat on my chest. I had no intention of discussing the sensitive subject ever again, not with anyone. Tonight, for a short while, I wished to forget that agony, not make it a subject of polite conversation. Action was what I needed, not talk.
“Enter,” I called out gaily. After flicking off the single light in the room, a bedside lamp, I turned to my guests.
Presumably just two, a tasteful ménage, not an all-out orgy. In all honesty, I was in emotional pain, not stupid. A pair of cocks would be an adjustment enough for me.
“I prefer not to see either of you,” I announced, taking the lead while allowing my silk receiving gown drift to the wooden floor. “Or, for you to see me. Hence, no lights. Better this way.”
“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
I did a double-take. That was the conman speaking, his voice originating from my left-hand side. But why the endearment at this late stage in the game?
He and I were over. Finished. After tonight, I would never be with him erotically again. Should we bump into one another in the Red-light District, I would pretend we had no previous acquaintance.
From the left again: “This is the friend I told you about – ”
“Fine, fine,” I said impatiently. “No need to go on and on, sir. This is a one-time only arrangement. Your friend’s name is immaterial to me. I hate to be rude,” I explained to the shadowy shape on the right, “but I shan’t expect to recognize you after this evening or hear from you ever again.”
“No ma’am. Not likely. Unless you and I both wanted to, and I first had your lover’s permission.”
My back went up. The conman was not my lover!
I tossed my head. “No chance there. Henceforward, I am swearing off all male companionship. Now how would you like me? Will the bed do?”
“Yes. The bed is fine,” said the conman.
His friend agreed. “Yes, ma’am.”
So polite.
Courtesy was not something I wanted either. Nice manners would only get in the way. What I wanted was two cocks ramming away inside me, pushing me to a pained oblivion and perhaps a night’s peaceful sleep afterwards. I felt weak, vulnerable, and I hated it. I had stepped outside the narrow confines of acceptability and now I must accept the empty years that lay ahead. Tonight would brace me for breaking it off with Mr. Osborn, an engagement that had never gotten off the ground, the same as my first one, the one I had also cancelled…but for an entirely different reason.
I must carry a marital curse, I mused, walking naked to the bed, and not at all bashful about it.
No going back to maiden lady demureness, not after fucking two men simultaneously. What I had
feared – growing into respectable lace-capped spinsterhood – would never happen to me now. I was burning my bridges in the only way I knew how:
With a bonfire.
The mattress squeaked as I kneed it.
“Go to your side,” the conman announced. “More comfortable for you that way.”
“And what would be less comfortable?”
“Anything else,” he replied.
“All-fours then,” I suggested. “A pose with which I have some familiarity.”
From out of the darkness, a stranger’s abrupt laughter exploded.
His appreciation for my touch of humor went straight to my head. Feeling quite witty, I laughed too, a throaty and sensual and knowing sound that I would better deserve after tonight’s threesome.
I went to hands and knees on the bed, my heavy hair hanging like a curtain around me, my somewhat aroused breasts pointing straight ahead, my legs immodestly open. “No delay,” I ordered, holding a sob inside. “Get to it.”
“How?” asked the conman.
My brow puckered. “You mean there is more than one way?”
“Two men. Who gets which orifice?” he said, brashly spelling it out for me.
The conman sounded disgruntled. So what? I was the one who hurt. Not him!
“Christ!” Exasperation colored his voice. “Why are you doing this Miss…never mind. I know why. All of this is completely unnecessary. What the hell are you trying to prove?”
Now he was arguing with me. A last ditch and futile attempt to change my mind. But, at least it was without the patronization I had come to dread. This was two equals sorting out a difference of opinion.
“Prove? Why, nothing, sir. But a little numbness would be most appreciated.”
“I can give you that all by myself. Why drag someone else into this? Not his battle. Our battle.”
“I disagree, sir. Apart from possessing a cock, you have very little to do with this.”
