House Rules (18 page)

The beating went on for what seemed a long time to Richard, and Helena began to cry out as it continued. He wondered what it seemed like to Helena, but she showed no sign of wanting it to stop. Richard wondered how she managed to transform the pain into pleasure as she was so obviously doing. Margaret supplied the answer. Abruptly, she stopped lashing her niece’s back and bottom and thrust the whip handle between her legs and into her. Helena gasped at the invasion, and then began to moan with pleasure as Margaret thrust the handle in and out. Helena began to rock her hips, riding with the thrust of the handle in her cunt, her head thrown back and her eyes closed as she savoured the sensation of mixed pain and ecstasy.

Her breasts were suffused with blood, the nipples engorged and crinkly. ‘Ohhhh!’ she cried, and again ‘Ohhhh!’ Her cries were long-drawn-out and shuddery as her body was racked with the orgasm. Her bound hands, high in the air above her head, twisted and tugged against the ropes that held her. Her knees buckled as she lost control, thrashing and jerking in her release, the whole weight of her shuddering body suspended from her wrists. If Helena felt any pain, she certainly gave no sign of it now.

Richard felt a tiny stab of jealousy as he saw the depth of her arousal. Even when they had had the time to pleasure one another, he didn’t believe that Helena had enjoyed his lovemaking nearly as much as she was enjoying what her aunt was doing to her now with the whip. At the same time he was excited, watching Helena come and imagining what it would be like to be in Margaret’s place, wielding the whip, his power over the girl’s body absolute as he drove her wild with pleasure. He knew in that moment he could do it. Would do it, if he and Helena decided to become lovers on a more permanent basis. And he knew that they would, that his turn would come. His cock was stiff with the knowledge and the anticipation.

At last it was over. Margaret withdrew the handle from Helena’s cunt and let the instrument fall to the floor. Richard, looking up at her, saw her own agitation in the flushed face and heaving breasts. He wondered then how she would react to a touch of the lash she wielded over others, whether she too could transform the pain to sexual ecstasy. And he imagined as well how it would feel for him to be the one to show her the way of pain she had shown to him and to those many others. I could get a real taste for this, he told himself.

Helena still hung from her bound wrists, flushed like her aunt, her breasts heaving as were those of the older woman, but with much more cause. She appeared to be exhausted by the fury of her release. She looked incredibly desirable to Richard, so that he wanted to close the distance between them and fuck her. The desire for her was almost strong enough to overcome his caution, but at the last moment he realised how Margaret would react. He was in no position to provoke her anger – not that he could reach Helena in any case.

Margaret recovered her breath and some of her usual poise, looking from her niece to Richard as if daring either of them to say anything. At last she spoke, breaking the silence that filled the room. ‘You see, Richard, how our little Helena loves her rather twisted version of sex. Do you find her so attractive now?’

Richard didn’t venture to answer the question, and luckily, Margaret herself seemed to regard it as rhetorical. She turned and stalked from the room, leaving the two of them to make what they could of the privacy. As soon as she had gone, closing the door behind her, Richard asked Helena if she was all right.

At first she didn’t answer, and he was alarmed. He moved towards her, but was brought up short by the tether around his balls. Nor could he touch her, with his hands held behind his back. But at last Helena looked up, opening her eyes and looking back at him. She struggled to get her feet under her once more and relieve the strain on her bound wrists. She was breathing more or less normally too, he saw with relief.

‘There’s no need to worry,’ she said huskily. ‘I’ve done this many times before, and it has done me no harm. Rather, it has given me a great deal of pleasure. You must have seen how I reacted to being beaten and to … afterwards.’ Helena flushed slightly but didn’t look away, as if gauging his reaction. After a pause, she asked the question that set his heart hammering. ‘Would you do that to me – what Margaret did?’

‘Yes, if that’s what you want,’ he replied. And he continued, as hesitantly as she, with a question of his own. ‘And would you do to me what Margaret has been doing?’ He nodded across the room to where the maid’s outfit he had taken off lay on the chair.

Helena replied, ‘Yes, if that is what you want.’

‘A marriage made in heaven,’ Richard said with a smile. ‘We will have to look after one another. No more hesitation or shame between us. OK?’

Helena nodded, smiling. ‘OK. If I could reach you, I would kiss you,’ she said.

‘If I could reach you, I’d do more than kiss you,’ Richard said. ‘But are you sure you’re all right? For a few moments it looked as if you were having a heart attack. I was worried.’

‘Not a heart attack. An attack of lust,’ Helena told him. ‘We will do it again soon. It’s the kind of thing more people should do. And,’ she added, nodding at his erection with a smile, ‘are you sure it was just worry?’

‘Touché,’ he said, with a smile.

‘Would you like to?’ she asked. ‘Touch me? Have me, I mean?’

Richard nodded but indicated his difficulties.

‘I think I can just about reach you,’ Helena said. ‘Come as close as you can.’

Richard moved until he was brought up by the chain around his balls.

She moved towards him, stretching her arms and arching her back, and she was right. They could touch. His cock was against her belly, and he could feel the silkiness of her pubic hair as he rubbed himself against her.

‘I think we can do even better than that,’ Helena said with a wide smile.

She lifted herself by her bound wrists and raised her legs, bringing them around Richard’s waist and crossing her ankles behind his back. Her heels dug into him as she pulled herself tightly to him. She wriggled against him until he felt himself slide into her. She was wet and parted from her earlier orgasms, and he felt as if he were dipping himself into liquid fire.

Helena began to thrust against him, raising and lowering herself with her arms while holding them together with her legs. At the same time, she used her leg muscles to pull them together and then allow them to separate as far as possible, never quite losing him as they moved apart, and allowing the delicious slide into her to happen again and again as they moved together.

It was the first time he had ever made love to a woman when neither of them could use their hands. And the sensation was something he had never experienced, not even when Margaret had ridden him. She had been able to use her hands, and she had. This time there was no touch except that of his cock inside Helena’s cunt, and it was if all sensation had been concentrated at that point. Hands would have been superfluous.

Helena worked single-mindedly to bring him to climax, thrusting rapidly. Richard could do nothing to arouse her except try to move his cock so that it contacted her clitoris, but he had no way to be sure he was succeeding. Helena’s acrobatic gyrations made her breathless, and he could see her nipples were erect. But then he couldn’t hold back any longer. He shuddered and came, jerking his hips with his own release.

Helena responded by going suddenly still, holding him deep inside her as he spent himself in great shudders. She was looking closely at him, watching as his climax took him, so her own took her by surprise. ‘Ohhhhh!’ she said, half wonderingly, her eyes opening wide. Then ‘ahhhhhh, ahhhhh God, ahhhhhh,’ as she was swept away on her own tide of pleasure.

Watching Helena as she lost herself, Richard was glad she had been able to come with him after her intense orgasms earlier. He wanted to hold her against him as she shuddered. He could feel her vaginal muscles clenching tightly around his cock, warm and wet. And all at once he felt relieved, less jealous, now that she had shown her response to him so unequivocally.

Helena clearly knew nothing of his feelings as she held herself against him. She was lost to everything except the spasms that were rocking her. When at last she subsided, she opened her eyes, and he saw there the light of her happiness and fulfilment. Not many men, he thought, get to see that. Sometimes it is lost in the dark. Sometimes it is ignored. Most often it just isn’t there. He thought himself very lucky.

Helena held herself against him for a long time, telling him without words that she was glad to be there, even in these bizarre circumstances. Finally she uncrossed her ankles and lowered her legs to the floor, grimacing as she took the weight off her bound wrists. Richard saw that her body was covered with a faint flush still, and she smiled happily at him.

‘It would be nice to be able to lie down with you now,’ she said. ‘But at least we can talk. And look at one another,’ she added.

‘What shall we talk about?’ Richard asked, grinning. ‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax somehow seem less than appropriate.’

Helena frowned in perplexity. ‘Why should we talk of those things?’

‘Never mind,’ Richard replied. ‘There’s always slaves and sex and mistresses. You know, people like us, and your aunt Margaret.’

‘Yes,’ Helena said seriously. Then she smiled. ‘Oh Richard, stop teasing me.’

‘I wasn’t teasing,’ he said. ‘I suppose we need to talk about what to do, both now and in the not-too-distant future. We’ll have to get away from here – get away from Margaret’s domination, I mean, exciting as that sometimes can be.’ He paused, then went on suddenly in a rush, saying the words because he knew that hesitation might spoil everything, ‘Would you like to come and live with me in England? My house is much too big for just me. And much too lonely, though I never thought so until these last few weeks.’

Helena hesitated in her turn, and he was afraid she would say no.

He went on, ‘You could carry on your business from there. We have our own quota of sadists, masochists, bondage freaks and assorted fruits and nuts. They don’t speak of “the English disease” for nothing.’

She didn’t answer him directly. ‘Is this not a case of pots accusing kettles of blackness, as you say in England?’ Helena asked. Then she smiled, and he knew everything was going to be all right. Just as suddenly, she became serious. ‘But never mind. I would like that very much.’

Richard felt glad and relieved all at once. He began to imagine Helena’s reactions as she explored the familiar old house, discovering for herself the things he took for granted because they had always been there. And he imagined his delight and pride in showing her the place he called home, rediscovering the old familiar things through her eyes.

Though there was still the matter of what to do about Margaret, they talked of their new plans, she with her wrists strung up to the whipping frame and he with his wrists behind his back in handcuffs: of making the journey from Hamburg to England, of their landing, of the trip through the English countryside to Bacton, of walking in the woods and along the beaches of North Norfolk, of the everyday details of shopping and settling into the new relationship.

‘I don’t know if I could sleep in handcuffs,’ Helena said, looking at his. ‘But I want to try it one day, when we are safely in England. Then we will be able to make many new experiments to please each other.’ Then, changing the subject, she went on, ‘But now we need to talk a bit more. Especially if I am to run away to a foreign land with you.’

‘And are you going to run away with me? You’re not just teasing me when I’m unable to retaliate?’

Helena became serious at once. ‘Of course I will. But do you really want me to come?’

‘The old house will be much happier with you in it.’

Helena leant over and kissed him. ‘Now tell me more about yourself and this house in England where we will live. I know practically nothing about what you do, how you live, what you want.’

‘Well, for starters, I want you.’ That got him another kiss.

‘But,’ he went on, after Helena had moved away, ‘I can tell you that I am an unattached, though not a confirmed, bachelor, a man of adequate, though not lavish, means – just in case you had visions of yachts on the Riviera. I work, whenever I choose, at architecture. I draw plans for barn conversions and additions to country houses that scarcely need the room. I take time off whenever I want to. Like now. This is the kind of man with whom you are invited to share an old house in the country. Still want to come?’

‘More than ever,’ Helena said. ‘I will have room to begin my business, as you promised?’

‘I look forward to that,’ Richard told her. ‘You can support me when I grow tired of working. I always wanted to be a kept man.’

It was growing dark in the room when the talk turned back to the immediate problem of what to do. Richard told Helena of his success with the safe, and of the impressions he had taken of the key. She was elated at his success, and said so. She also agreed to take the wax impressions to her stepmother, who knew everyone in the village, including of course the locksmith. He would be able to make the required keys, and in the requisite secrecy. Then, keys in hand, it was only a matter of taking the damning evidence and running away like truants over the sea to Bacton.

And, in truth, it all seemed that easy, until Margaret herself came back to the drawing room to see how her charges were faring. ‘This place smells like a brothel on a Saturday night,’ she told them. ‘What have you two been doing while I have been away? No, do not tell me. I already know. You’ve been at one another, difficult as that must have been.’

It wasn’t a hard conclusion to reach on the smell alone, but, as if that weren’t enough, there was a trail of semen down Helena’s leg which Margaret noticed at once. And of course Richard’s pubic hair and cock were damp as well. Most damning of all, his cock did not come to attention at the sight of her, as it had been wont to do.

Margaret noticed that too. What might have been a smile came out as a grimace, a tightening of the lips and facial muscles. The look vanished as quickly as it had come, perhaps because she didn’t want to reveal her displeasure to them.