Invitation to Ruin (2 page)

I made her stay as I stepped into the water,
reading clearly that she wanted to flee. I ordered her to wash my
back. Let her touch me, I thought. Let her touch the flesh that he
has touched, that still burns hot with the memory of him! And, meek
cow that she is, she did.

She took the cloth lightly to my back and I
turned to look at her, grabbing my breasts as I did so. “My breasts
are so swollen, Maria,” I said. “Why is that?” She only shook her
head and stared down into the shallow water of the tub as her hands
mindlessly moved over my back and arms.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to shrug the
tension from them. “Everything is so tight today,” I continued. “I
do not understand.”

She sobbed then and I could only imagine how
she would have cried had she been on the other side of the door as
Louis rode my body. How, hearing the banging and moaning, she might
have opened the door. The idea of her watching brought my nipples
to a peak and I leaned back against her touch, letting her see my
excitement. Her attempt to avoid my gaze was miscalculated, taking
her eyes to the very center of the issue!

Spreading my legs, I took the washcloth from
her and wiped between my lower lips, letting my hand linger there,
the strip of cloth providing no barrier to the pressure of my touch
over that sensitive dangle of flesh that had throbbed with the
molten pulse of the very earth with Louis inside me.

“I m-must s-set the t-table!” she stuttered
and backed away from the tub. She stumbled from the room, her gaze
frozen on me as my hands moved on to explore my thighs, the soft
swell of my stomach and then my heavy breasts with nipples that had
beaded a dark salmon.

“By all means, Maria,” I said, cooing at her
like the doves she watched outside the kitchen window. “I am
unusually hungry tonight.”

Ah, but the hunger had nothing to do with
food. I wanted Louis again. I couldn’t wait. I wanted to see the
passion in his face this time, not feel it from behind! And so I
finished my bath and floated around the room, dressing myself,
mismatching buttons because my fingers trembled with need—the need
to be touched and to touch him, to wrap my hands around the
marvelous circumference of his manhood, knowing that its swollen
state was my doing…and Maria’s undoing.

At the dinner table, I was of no use in
conversation…of no use at all. Maria hovered like a hawk, trying no
doubt to avoid Mother sending me to Louis for another punishment.
Poor thing, she didn’t understand. The pretense was no longer
needed. I could call to him directly, express my need to humble my
body before him without the sham of disobedience. How could she not
know that I only had to arch my back and spread my legs and he
would answer in turn? Thrust for thrust!

Dinner was with Mdm. “Bilodeaux” in
attendance. I suffered her in good humor, silently musing over the
brief notoriety she had gained two seasons ago with a few misplaced
love letters to a much younger cavalier.

When dessert was at last cleared from the
table, I made my apologies and returned to my room, leaving Mother
and Mdm. Bilodeaux to their prayer books. Locking my door, I
stripped and crawled onto the bed, rolled on it, stretching my
limbs this way and that, imagining Louis on top of me. Catching
sight of my body in the cheval mirror, I jumped up and dragged it
to the foot of my bed. Returning to the mattress, I rested on my
knees and leaned back, examining the upward push of my breasts and
the way my nipples stiffened with excitement.

My examination continued downward, and I
parted my lower lips, letting my fingers play over the button of
flesh at the top. I pulled and stroked at it until the light cream
that dampened the folds of my womanhood thickened and coated my
fingers. Gently, I probed at the opening, tried to gauge how many
of my slick fingers were needed to equal his rod. Surely, the head
had been bigger than all five of my fingertips pressed
together.

I moaned at the thought, startling myself and
releasing a flood of worry that Mother might be out in the hall,
however unlikely. No, if Our Lady of Letters had departed, Mother
would already be in her chambers on the opposite side of the floor.
Not once that I can remember has she entered my room since father
died.

Sweet isolation! Once I had hated it, now it
served a purpose. Quickly I tossed a light robe around myself. The
sheer lace and chiffon were meant to cover more substantial cloth
and I could see my body, every curve, every inch of impassioned
flesh, through the fabric. Opening my door, I poked just my head
into the hall outside. The way to the servants’ stairs was clear
and I dashed down the hall to them—going up, not down.

At the top landing of the stairs, I opened
the small window that looks onto the back courtyard. I could see
that the lanterns were still lit in the stable despite the late
hour. Was he avoiding Maria? Drinking? He did so, I knew, after my
punishments. Was he doing so again?

From further down the stairwell, I could hear
the sound of Maria doing the dishes and cleaning up the rest of the
kitchen. It was a muted, somber sound, and the plain, black livery
mother demanded the servants wear since father’s passing took on a
new meaning in my imagination. I could see Maria in my mind’s eye,
clothed in the color of death—the death of her marriage, of his
tolerance, of my tolerance, of her presence, of the barrier between
us that she had been...but no longer would be.

Pressing my upper body against the window, I
watched for Louis to leave the stables. Would he look up? He had
to. Not just because it was his nature to look over the house
before he entered for the evening, but because I willed him to. My
heart began to beat faster, pounding against my ribcage when I saw
him barring the stable doors for the night. In the low light of
evening, I stared at his back, watched the ripple of muscles as he
lifted the heavy slat of wood and set it in place. He turned, his
gaze going first to the kitchen entrance to the house and then
traveling higher.

He stopped at the second floor, his attention
focused on the window opposite my bedroom door. So different the
view must be now that he’d sunk his shaft deep into me, felt me
squirming in delight along its length!

Higher! I willed him, almost tapped at the
window to make sure he would not miss me. But I didn’t need to. His
gaze caught mine a heartbeat later, his dark brows rising in
inquiry. I brought my hands to the front edges of my robe in
answer, parting them slowly to reveal my breasts to him.

Louis looked around at the yard—I imagine to
make sure no one was watching our dirty little exchange. How I
wanted someone to see it even though I half-feared the world’s
hypocrisy and retribution should they find out. (I pictured myself
like Mdm. “Bilodeaux,” confined to the company of women such as my
mother with their pretentious attempts at reforming my soul.)

I didn’t let the fear stop me. I pulled the
robe’s edges farther apart and cupped my breasts, offering the
tender tips to Louis like the rare delicacies they are.

And then I backed away from the window and
waited.

He didn’t make me wait long. I heard the
kitchen door open and close, heard Maria offer a tentative
greeting, heard her voice falter as he moved past her to the
staircase.

“Where are you going?” she asked him. He
mumbled a reply, something too low, too slurred with liquor or
passion for me to make out from where I waited two floors up. She
offered to do it for him and his voice sharpened to a stern
rejection.

I counted his footsteps, realized he was
taking the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding in time with
each fall of his boot on the risers. Quickly, I pulled my robe back
together as I decided to make him work for another glimpse of my
bare skin.

“Beatrice…”

There was a question in his tone, in the way
he said my name. I think it was my sanity—or his own—that he was
unsure of.

“Louis,” I answered, my voice rumbling with
the need that had grown monstrous over the last few hours.

Below us, everything went quiet. My heart
sang at the silence. It was as if the world had stopped for us and
she would hear. Maria would hear my passionate moans. If she dared
venture onto the stairs, she would hear the slap of our bodies
against one another, hear him call my name.

But the silence did not thrill him as it
thrilled me.

“Your mother—”

“You know her, Louis,” I answered, my voice
shrilling at his possible retreat. “She is in bed, asleep or with a
dozen pillows propped around her head. We might as well be the only
two people in the world.”

I dropped my robe and moved to him. “We are
the only two people in the world, Louis.”

“Saints! I want…” he started.

I rubbed my breasts against his broad chest,
ran my hands up his arms. “What do you want, Louis?”

When he only stood there, like a deer that
had just caught the scent of a predator, I took his limp hand and
shoved it between my legs.

“Is this what you want?” He nodded his head,
his gaze awakening with lust. “Then tell me,” I said and started to
move away.

He grabbed me, jerked my body closer and
shoved his hands deeper into the pocket between my thighs. “I want
you, Beatrice, this tight…”

“Tight what?” I urged him to answer, flexing
the muscles that his fingertips only dared to graze against. I knew
nothing of the vernacular that he used. There must be other names
for these pleasures points, for the honey pot so wet from the mere
anticipation of his touch. I wanted to know what they were, hear
them roll off his tongue, watch the shock spread across his face as
I repeated them in turn!

“This tight pussy,” he moaned and pushed a
finger deep into me.

I leaned my head back, thrusting my breasts
up as I stood on tiptoe to ease the penetration of his hand inside
me. “Pussy,” I said, echoing all the passion his voice had held.
“You are making it wet, so wet.”

I pressed my palm against the front of his
breeches. “And what is this to my pussy?” I asked, squeezing its
firmness for extra emphasis.

“My cock.” He panted his answer, his hand
sliding over my button.

“Oh,” I gasped. “And that?”

He gave the tip a rough tug that had me
panting in unison with his heavily drawn breaths.

“Your clit,” he answered.

“Those are not nice words,” I said, feigning
indignation.

Pulling me closer, he shoved several of his
thick fingers into me, his coarse evening beard scratching my
throat and cheek as he nuzzled my ear. “Because you are a dirty
whore,” he answered.

And he meant it! I could hear the hate in his
voice, the shame. But nothing spoke as loudly as his lust. It
rumbled in his chest, rushed out hot against my neck. He meant it,
but he didn’t mind because I was his dirty whore.

“Yes,” I moaned and pumped against his
fingers, my pussy jealous for his cock. “A whore, a bad little
whore. And what are you going to do to me?”

“Fuck you,” he groaned, pushing me hard
against the wall. He tugged at his pants, freeing his cock from its
unbearable confinement. Its tip bulged, the soft twilight that
filtered through the window giving just enough illumination to
reveal the translucent beads of his desire pearling in the slit. My
own slit was already a flood of need and I arched my body, trying
to raise my pussy high enough that he could spear me with his
cock.

I felt his hands curve beneath my bottom and
he lifted me, my back sliding up against the wall. I spread my
legs, wrapped them around his waist and he brought me down onto his
shaft with a vicious tug that had me squeezing the air from him
with my thighs.

“Yes, fuck me,” I begged, then louder, that
Maria might hear his betrayal. “Fuck me, Louis, fuck me!”

The landing was narrow and the ceiling of the
third floor low. I raised my arms above my head, placing my palms
flat against the ceiling. My legs I thrust out until the soles of
my feet met the wall, reveling in the control and penetration the
tight space allowed.

His fingers bit into the flesh of my bottom,
the calloused tips carelessly rubbing against my nether hole as he
lifted me up and down the length of his shaft. Craning his head, he
caught one of my breasts in his mouth and sucked at the nipple,
pulling it hard, stretching the tip and then biting the pale flesh
surrounding it hard enough to mark me. (Ah, what will she think of
those marks when she sees them!)

The thick flesh of my pussy swelled from the
relentless assault of his cock against and inside me. I cried out,
nearly screaming as the tips of his fingers once again found the
puckered hole hidden between the half globes of my bottom.

“Yes, hold me like that!” I panted. I
squirmed against him, trying desperately to bury his cock deeper
and to pull his fingertips into that other hole even as my body
recoiled in shock. I knew that if any part of his hand penetrated
me there, my body would burst.

He was grunting, sucking at my breasts like
some newly birthed pig, noisy, greedy, his spit mingling with the
light layer of perspiration that covered my throat and chest and
the heavy drip of sweat from his forehead.

“Like that!” I demanded again, trying to
clamp down on his finger as it strayed closer to the hole.

“You would fling us into hell,” he accused,
letting go only to grab me by the waist.

“Afraid of damnation now?” I laughed and he
slammed me against the wall once in warning. I laughed at him again
and he threaded one hand through my hair, pulling me away from him
and forcing me onto the landing on my hands and knees. I looked
down the stairwell and saw candlelight still flickering up from the
kitchen.

“Fuck me, Louis,” I hissed and reached behind
me to spread my pussy lips for him.