The Price of Desire (13 page)

He reached out and brushed her soft curls with the back of his hand. She shivered at the touch and drew her shift up a fraction higher.

Suddenly he lost patience with her games. He wanted to see all of her. Right now. “Take it off,” he commanded.

“As you please.” She drew the shift straight over her head, her breasts thrusting into his face as she stretched backward.

He captured one of her nipples with his mouth, tugging on it to keep her back arched.

Scooting her down on his lap a little, with one hand he fumbled with the buttons on his breeches. He undid them only enough to let his cock spring free. “Sit on me. Take me inside you.”

Obediently she stood up, still straddling him. Her pussy left a patch of wet on his trouser legs, letting him know that despite all her protests, she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He took her hand and placed it on his hard flesh. With one soft hand on his eager cock, she guided him to the entrance of her cunt. And then slowly, oh, so slowly, she sat down on him.

She was as wet as London in the spring, and infinitely hotter. With his hands on her hips, he guided her to slide up and down on his shaft until her breath started to come in little pants and her eyes closed in passion.

She was about to come. He could feel her excitement from the first tentative tremors that were beginning to engulf her. But it wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to claim her, to brand her with his ownership.

He slid her off, holding her back from sitting down on him as she struggled to impale herself on his hard length once more.

He rose from the chair, taking in her flushed face and the smoky desire in her eyes. God, but she was precious to him. She was more than he had dreamed of, more beautiful, more accommodating, more luscious, more of everything than he could want her to be. “Turn around,” he instructed her. “I want to take you from behind.”

Dazed with unfulfilled lust, she was malleable as clay in his hands. With a few swift movements he arranged her as he wanted her, bent over at the waist with her elbows resting on the sofa and her legs wide apart.

Instinctively she thrust her bottom up in the air, making her cunt gape wide. He ran his fingers over her pink flesh, loving the silky wetness of her on his fingers.

She moved against his fingers, demanding more than the light touch of his hand. She wanted him inside her again, pounding her to the heights of pleasure.

His lust was demanding exactly that. With a firm hand he guided his cock to her entrance and then, with a long, fast thrust, he sank deep, deep into her.

With a gasp she arched back to meet him, urging him on.

Wet and tight, she closed around him like a sheath. Only the prospect of sinking back into her allowed him to draw out of her.

Her body clung to his as if she did not want to be parted, even for so short a time as this.

With his hands on her hips, he held her still, thrusting in and out of her with deep strokes that caressed him from the root to the tip. Her softness enveloped him, urged him on.

Reaching around her, he took her full breasts in his hands, squeezing them tightly as he thrust into her.

She was his. No one else’s but his. No other man had grasped her breasts in his hands as he took her against the sofa. No other man had seen her naked skin, white in the soft afternoon light, as she writhed under him.

He was still as hard as stone, harder than he had ever been. With Caroline in his arms, he felt like a king. He wanted to keep on pleasuring her for hours, with long, slow strokes that reached into her very soul.

He felt the tremors in her pussy that signaled her pleasure was not far away. Sinking deeply into her, he held himself deep inside, moving slightly from side to side to allow her to wring out the last drop of pleasure from his position.

One more long slow thrust and she could no longer hold out against the tide that swept over her.

Her tremors brought him close to the brink. Anchoring himself tightly with his hands on her hips again, he thrust into her with short, fast strokes until he felt his cum rise to the top of his cock. Then, with one last thrust, he buried himself inside her as his cum spurted out in hot jets of ecstasy.

Careless of the stains on his velvet sofa, he fell back onto it, pulling her on top of him.

Lying back on the sofa, Caroline entwined in his arms, he could think of nowhere else he would rather be. When he was with Caroline, he thought only of her. She had chased the ghost of Maya from his thoughts.

He would never forget his first wife and the happiness she had given him. Still, she had been gone for three years and more. It was past time the pain of remembering her faded from a white-hot shaft to a dull ache.

He had been right to follow his instincts and take a new woman to his bed. Possessing Caroline had helped the pain of losing Maya to fade. Thanks to his new mistress, his soul was his own once again.

The days passed pleasantly enough for Caroline in her new life as Dominic’s mistress. Being a fallen woman was not as dreadful as she had feared it might be. Most of the time, in fact, it was perfectly pleasant.

Dominic went into the City each day to conduct his business, leaving her at leisure to spend her days as she pleased. She had fewer duties than even when her father was alive. Then, she had run the household and done the household accounts. As Dominic’s mistress, she could hardly interfere with the running of his household, despite quickly learning that the cook was a drunkard who stole spirits out of Dominic’s cupboard and the housekeeper was such a tartar to the underservants that none of them would stay for more than six months at a time.

Her sisters quickly settled into their new lives, and though they visited every Sunday as they had promised, the rest of the week she spent largely alone. Her chosen profession having banished her from respectable society, she was completely cut off from her old circle of friends and acquaintances. She could have spent her days shopping for new clothes and other baubles, but after outfitting herself and her sisters with the necessaries, she no longer visited the shops. Tempting as it sometimes was to spend the bright guineas that weighed down her purse, her newfound independence was not going to be squandered on fashionable walking dresses, fur muffs, and other fripperies.

Besides, the joy of shopping was not worth the shame she felt when she ran into Captain Bellamy walking down Oxford Street with a blushing Kitty on his arm. She had turned away and pretended not to see them, but not before registering Kitty’s gasp of shock and the Captain’s avaricious leer.

All in all, it was easier to get her exercise walking in the gated park in the middle of the square where she lived with Dominic, admiring the babies in their prams pushed by smart-looking nursemaids, and avoiding the embarrassment of coming across old acquaintances or making new ones. When she was tired of walking in the park, there were always the financial newspapers that Dominic read over breakfast to amuse her, Mrs. Oliphant’s latest novel from the lending library for light entertainment, and her correspondence with the manager of her new property in Hertfordshire to keep her busy.

And in the afternoon it was time to dress for dinner and make herself ready before Dominic came home. As her role demanded, she spent each afternoon thinking up new ways to amuse and entertain him, transforming herself in the evening into a saucy wanton whose only thought was to tease and seduce him. Though she now had half a dozen pretty dinner dresses he’d bought for her, best of all he liked to find her dressed only in a light Chinese-style robe, her hair loose about her shoulders and her feet bare. More than anything else, it excited him to return home to find her waiting for him, her loose clothing artfully arranged so the merest touch from his fingers would brush it aside.

Many evenings they did not even make it to the dinner table the servants had so carefully set for them, but went straight to bed together. He was always hungry for her, and she was equally so for him. The merest touch of his hand on her naked skin could make her shake with wanting him, and she soon learned how to raise and satisfy his appetite. Learning how to please him was no hardship. She delighted in having him under her spell and making him want her more fiercely with every day that passed.

After she had slaked his hunger for her, they would eat their evening meal at a small table in the bedchamber Dominic had placed there for that purpose. The rumpled sheets on the bed gave ample testimony to their activity when the poker-faced footman brought up their food, but he never gave any indication that anything was amiss. Her father’s servants would have been scandalized, but Dominic’s took their master’s strange behavior in their stride.

Despite her evening games with Dominic, and her gratitude for being rescued from the workhouse, her life was quiet and lonely. When Dominic proposed one evening to take a holiday from his business endeavors and take her off on the train for a trip to Cornwall, she was delighted at the prospect and fell wholeheartedly in with his plans.

A week in Cornwall where she would not have to worry about meeting old acquaintances in the street, where she could be totally anonymous, sounded wonderful. And in Cornwall Dominic would be with her every day instead of just in the evening and at night. She had only seen one side of him, the side that burned to possess her. But in Cornwall they could not spend all their time abed together. She would get to know the Dominic of the daytime, Dominic the hardheaded businessman, instead of just knowing Dominic the lover.

The railway station, a grand brick building with a tiled floor, was filled with more people than Caroline had seen gathered in one place before. Everywhere there were people on the move, going this way and that, jostling each other out of the way, each of them bent on their own business. Businessmen dressed in suits, with a briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other, hurried out of the trains as they steamed into the station and disappeared off the platforms toward the City. A group of ragged urchins played at marbles in one corner, now and then running shrieking among the crowd in search of an errant marble. Flower sellers hung around the pillars with baskets of fresh violets and pansies, calling out for pennies.

Dominic stopped to buy a posy and pinned it onto Caroline’s bodice. “Flowers for my flower,” he said, raising her gloved hand to his lips in the middle of the crowd. Before she could reply, he tugged her back into the milling crowd and through to the platform.

It was quieter there, with none of the bustle and hurry of the main station. Gradually Caroline relaxed and began to enjoy herself.

“Good day, ma’am. Good day, sir. ’Ave a pleasant journey.” The guard in the guard’s van had treated them like royalty as Dominic gave directions to have their luggage stowed.

Like a real married couple they strolled arm in arm up to the locomotive at the head of the train. It was ten minutes yet before the scheduled departure, and Dominic wanted to have a look at the steam engine, given his interest in all things mechanical.

She refused to dwell on the fact that they were not a real married couple. A courtesan did not care about marriage—it was too commonplace and ordinary, too middle-class for one such as her. She stifled the traitorous feelings inside her that whispered quietly of her need for love and affection. She was a well-paid courtesan, and that was more than enough for her.

He stopped in front of the engine and simply stared at it with undisguised delight. “It’s not just a machine—it’s alive. It’s a huge dragon, spitting fire. A dragon that men have created and brought to life.”

Caroline’s excitement in making this trip was momentarily turned to awe when confronted with the huge machine. While not at all interested in the mechanics of trains, she had to admit to herself that Dominic’s words did have a certain truth to them. The engine did almost seem alive as it breathed steam and smoke, occasionally even speaking with little clicks as various valves opened and closed.

Afraid of getting oil on her pretty traveling dress, she stood back from the locomotive as the engineers brought up the head of steam, the pressure venting more frequently as the time to leave approached. Momentarily letting go of her hand, Dominic walked up and down, looking closely at the components of the engine, in particular the steam pistons that drove the train at speed down the track all the way to Cornwall without rest or pause.

Her fingers strayed to the posy on her bodice as she watched him poke his nose into the noisy, smelly machine. He was just like a small boy, taking delight in the inner workings of the thing. The locomotive was like a new toy.

Just as she was his toy, she thought with a rare burst of anger at both him and her situation, to use as he pleased and then to discard when he tired of her. He had spoken the truth in calling her his flower. She would provide him with a transient moment of pleasure before she wilted to insignificance.

Returning to her side, he let loose his exuberance about being so close to the hissing engine. “Isn’t it a marvel? That human ingenuity can design and build such a thing is a wonder. Just think about the changes railroads and the machines that run on them have wrought. England is more prosperous now than ever before.” He shook his head in amazement. “What will the next hundred years bring? Flying through the skies in ships of the air, that’s for certain.”

His enthusiastic monologue was brought to a halt as the conductor blew his whistle. “All aboard!”

She threw off her black mood with an effort of will. She had known all along where she stood with Dominic—there was no sense in letting it upset her now.

Dominic led them briskly back along the length of the train to the second to last carriage. This carriage was painted differently than the others, and had expensive looking lace curtains over the windows. She followed him up the few steps and stepped inside, where she gasped in amazement. What her eyes beheld was not the rows of seats of a second class carriage, nor even the comfortable compartments of first class. The whole carriage was decorated like the study of a grand house, with a large desk, books, armchairs, and couches.