A Gentlewoman's Dalliance Read online

  “Very handsome,” breathed Benedict again, his long fingertips flexing as if they hungered to handle her. Low in her belly, longing surged, a matching hunger. “But she’s haughty, too, isn’t she, Leonard? She needs to learn the lesson of humility.”

  Mary’s eyes flew to Leonard’s when he coughed, and put his hand to his mouth. His eyes were alive with merriment and it was a chuckle he’d suppressed. Regaining her sense of the game, she wanted to laugh, too, but she contained her response to smiling with her eyes only at her adoring husband.

  This is fun, she thought, lowering her gaze to hide the curving of her lips. It wouldn’t do for the “submissive handmaiden” to break out into the giggles.

  “A little more exposure, perhaps?” her husband suggested. His cheeks bore a slight flush, so familiar to her, the two patches of pink the signal flags of his desire.

  “That’s an excellent suggestion. May I?” The younger man deferred to Leonard, nodding at Mary’s bosom, then turning as if to ask permission.

  “Go right ahead, old boy.” Her husband nodded, running his tongue over his lips, as if anticipating the view.

  Unfamiliar hands deftly attacked the hooks down the front of her corset, unfastening several, and then loosing the small bows that secured her chemise. His pale eyes commanding hers, Benedict reached into her garments boldly, cupped his fingers under her breasts and lifted their weight to bring them into the light. As he bared her nipples, he flicked them with his thumbs, back and forth.

  “No…no…” keened Mary. Not that she meant it. Far from it. Wild passion surged in her blood, an intense thrill that made her want to shift her thighs to ease the ache gathering between them. It didn’t seem to matter that it wasn’t her beloved Leonard touching her. The caress of her husband’s eyes was as real to her as that of Benedict’s fingertips, the heat in their beloved gray depths so intense she had to look away. Her gaze skittered about, but came to rest on her own exposed curves, and her thick, roseate nipples, so firm and puckered and eager.

  The tips of her breasts throbbed so hard that she almost imagined them visibly pulsating, their beat keeping pace with other rhythms: that of her heart and the low heavy thud at the apex of her thighs. Mary bit her lips, containing a moan. She would have given anything to touch herself now, regardless of the eyes of a stranger upon her. The call of her puss, and of the very seat of her pleasure, the little bud of her clitoris, was almost agonizing. Her fingertips fluttered, ready to dive into the split of her open-vented drawers and find the prize with which they longed to make free.

  “She’s lusty, isn’t she?” remarked Benedict, his pale eyes apparently seeing her thoughts, perhaps her soul. “A woman of intense appetites… Quite a handful, I’ll be bound.” His fingers plagued her nipples again, flicking and tickling.

  “Oh, absolutely,” confirmed Leonard, thrusting his hands into his pockets as if content to observe her response to the other man. Through the veil of her lashes Mary could see that there was something of a disturbance in her husband’s trousers. Benedict’s dalliance with her was firing Leonard’s passions as much as her own. “She takes a lot of satisfying, does my dear wife, either in the normal fashion or by the efforts of her own hand.”

  Mary gasped, feeling her blushing face turn pinker than ever.

  A smile played around Benedict’s lips as he seemed to consider this. “Well, in that case, perhaps you would care to see me demonstrate a few techniques you could use to master her and bend her lewd desires to your preference? There are always new refinements to be tried.”

  “Splendid…do proceed. You have a free hand with her, old man.”

  Mary was about ready to swoon. Her head felt as light as thistledown and her body almost sang with anticipation. She was at the mercy of two of the most virile and handsome men in London, enveloped in her own fantasy come true. Images danced in her mind of what they might do to her, and of what delicious new outrages they might perpetrate on her body.

  “Come along, Mrs. Brigstock. I think it’s time I smacked your bottom now.” Benedict’s voice was quiet and conversational, as if his words were perfectly commonplace and he’d merely suggested that they share a song at the piano or a game of whist. As he took her hand and led her across the room toward her husband’s venerable old mahogany desk, she heard Leonard moving about behind her. Perhaps deciding which seat would give him the most commanding view. Then came the clink of glass, which told her he was helping himself to a brandy from the tantalus. A small snifter to accompany the show.

  Standing by the desk where Leonard wrote his letters and perused his business documents, Mary trembled, every nerve tuned in readiness for the sensations that lay ahead. She’d wanted to be spanked. She did still want to be spanked. But natural apprehension made her heart leap and skitter.

  “No need to be afraid, Mrs. Brigstock,” said the specialist, his light blue eyes almost hypnotic and impossible to look away from, even when he plucked at her nipple and gave it a wicked little tweak. “A little pain is good for the soul and for the senses. It heightens one’s perception, and brings all the sensations into focus. After suffering, the pleasures to follow are always sweeter.”

  I believe you, I believe you, she wanted to say, but instinctively knew that as part of the game now, she shouldn’t speak. Turning to Leonard she signaled compliance with her eyes, her spirits soaring on his answering smile of love.

  “Very good,” opined Benedict, as if the exchange had been written in letters ten feet high for his convenience. “Now I’d like you to lean over the desk and rest upon it. Reach over and hold yourself steady. Grip the edge.”

  Mary complied. The position was both comfortable and uncomfortable; she was supported, and yet her corset pressed against the slopes of her breasts, forcing them upward. The surface of the blotter rubbed against her nipples, and she imagined mundane words of business pressed against them, in reflection. Down below, the lower edge of her corset dug wickedly into her belly, creating a sly infernal pressure upon her vitals.

  Turning her face to Leonard once more, she gnawed upon her lower lip, and the heat in his gaze made her surge against the desk, her body craving pleasure or pain or both. She closed her eyes, rocking her pelvis against the solid, unyielding mahogany.

  “Tut-tut…contain yourself,” commanded her young disciplinarian, laying his hand flat on the small of her back. The pressure made things worse, plaguing her sex.

  “Yes, please try, my dear. There’s a good girl.”

  At the sound of Leonard’s voice, Mary fell still.

  To please you, my darling…to please you.

  Her knuckles white, she grasped the far end of the desk. What would happen when the first blow fell if she could barely contain herself at this stage of the proceedings?

  For a few moments all was silence, save for the crackling of the fire in the grate and the very faint hiss of the gas lamps. Wild imaginings ranged around Mary’s mind. She tried to form a notion of what the spanks might feel like, but her thoughts were too jittery to bring to order. Especially when other notions, just as blatant, crept in.

  She pictured Leonard taking her over this very desk, pushing in, rutting her hard, stirring her to spend again and again while he whispered lewd and loving nonsensical words in her ear. She could almost feel his sturdy member stretching her inner topography, moving to and fro, to and fro, to and fro. Her hands tightened on the desk’s edge for a different reason now, anything to prevent them from stealing to her cleft and seeking to ease the ache there.

  “What are you thinking about, Mrs. Brigstock?” said that cool, young voice suddenly, and as Benedict spoke, Mary heard the rustling of clothing as if he were taking off his coat. When she stole a glance at him, he’d laid the garment aside. Slipping out his cuff links, he began rolling up his sleeves.

  “Mrs. Brigstock?” he prompted, and Mary realized she’d given him no answer.

  What could she say? The truth would incriminate her, and if she told a lie, she knew that
not only would Benedict not believe her, but neither would Leonard. He knew her too well, especially of late, since they’d been closer.

  “I…I was imagining what a spanking might feel like.”

  “Not having second thoughts, I hope,” inquired the younger man, leaning close. He wore a rather more exotic shaving lotion than she might have imagined for one so severe. It was strong and spicy, almost dizzying. She rather liked it, but on the whole preferred Leonard’s more reserved choice, a light but distinguished concoction from Trumper of Curzon Street, with fresh bouquet that hinted of limes.

  What thoughts are these? Comparing the merits of shaving lotions? I do believe I’m going quite mad with anticipation.

  “If you don’t wish to proceed, my dear, we can stop, you know.”

  Leonard sounded solicitous, but she knew he’d been looking forward to this as much as she had. Even if she had been falling prey to misgivings, she knew she’d still press ahead, just for him.

  But there were no misgivings. She was on fire to know all, and to join the inner elite of the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. To be as daring and knowledgeable as Sofia and Prudence and Arabella, women to whom the engravings in Divertissements represented an experience, not an undiscovered country. She wanted to play the outrageous games that they enjoyed.

  “I wish to proceed!” Her voice rang loud and clear, if wavering a little.

  “Bravo, my darling.”

  “Bravo, madam.”

  “And I wish to proceed now, if we may,” she went on boldly, the heat in her loins making it next to impossible to stay still again. “Please don’t prevaricate further, Mr. Holcombe. Get on with it. Do your worst!”

  Both men laughed, and Mary almost giggled herself, but contained it in a secret inner smile.

  “Very well,” the specialist said, before plucking at the fabric of her drawers and sliding the two portions apart to reveal her bottom.

  Mary quivered like an unusually substantial aspen in a breeze. No male but Leonard had ever seen her bare buttocks, not even her doctor. But now she was on show to a mysterious stranger she’d met a scant hour or two ago. Her ever-surging blushes seemed to engulf her entire body in the space of a few seconds, and it felt as if her rounded rump was pink already even before a single blow had fallen.

  “Delightful,” said Benedict in a low, intent voice, and across the room Leonard shifted a little in his chair, as if easing the fit of his dark trousers around his erection. There was impressive prominence in his elegant Savile Row tailoring.

  Cool fingers settled on her newly revealed skin, the distinct points of fingertips easily discernable. Slowly, slowly, the specialist tested the pliancy of the muscle there.

  “Firm, too. I must compliment you on the condition of your body, Mrs. Brigstock. Do you take exercise?”

  “I, er, very little, actually, Mr. Holcombe. Just a little walking on occasion. I should do more…. I…I think I may purchase a bicycle. I have a friend who cycles and she speaks very highly of it.”

  What am I babbling about?

  But Benedict ignored her chatter, and suddenly, and with no further warning, he set about her.

  He began with lazy, rhythmic pats, little more than that, as if warming her up for the main attraction.

  But then, a pat became a gentle slap.

  And a slap, a sharper blow…

  And before she knew it, Mary was receiving an accomplished spanking.

  Oh, it hurts! It hurts!

  And it did.

  For all his effete looks and his smooth, well-kept hands, Benedict Holcombe was far more stringent and more rigorous than he appeared to be. Swift, hard wallops fell across the entire acreage of her trembling, churning rear, and Mary moaned and yelped yet more with every stroke.

  It was painful, far more than she’d anticipated, sharp and hot. Yet somehow, within the space of mere moments, Mary realized to her astonishment that she was lifting herself up time and time again, her bottom rising to meet the spanks, instead of trying to wriggle and squirm away from them.

  “Oh, well done, Mrs. Brigstock, well done,” purred her disciplinarian. “You’re clearly something of a stoic as well as a sumptuous beauty.” He punctuated his compliment with a particularly stinging slap.

  “You flatter me, Mr. Holcombe,” said Mary through gritted teeth, even as another blow fell. He was belaboring her buttocks with the precision of a metronome, and covering every inch with sizzling fire.

  “No, he doesn’t. You are beautiful. Especially in this condition.”

  Despite the relentless spanking, Mary’s attention snapped back to her husband, still in his chair. Leonard’s demeanor wasn’t quite so relaxed now. He sat farther forward in the chair, inclining toward her, his eyes fierce and avid, an expression of raw desire upon his face. The way he seemed to devour her made her sex ripple, aching with emptiness. And a yearning to be filled by her husband’s cock.

  Oh, Leonard…Leonard…

  Sensations. Emotion. Pain. Lust. All combined into a maelstrom that tossed Mary’s dazzled spirit hither and thither. Her body seemed to be exploding with energy. She bucked about across the desk, first pushing up her rump for Benedict’s strokes, then bearing down in an attempt to grind her aching cleft against the wooden edge beneath her and massage the sensitive pearl of her throbbing clitoris. If she hadn’t been holding on to the far side of the desktop with both hands, for fear of tumbling off it, she would surely have reached under her belly and rubbed herself to a fast and furious crisis.

  As it was, a particularly heavy slap knocked her hard against the unforgiving desk and her sex quivered, right on the brink, almost there….

  “Leonard!”

  Mary barely recognized her own voice. It was hoarse and cracking, yet it rang with desperation…and command.

  Her husband sprang toward her, pushing the younger man aside in his own desperation. All semblance of the louche, relaxed observer was now gone, as if it had never existed, and her dear husband inclined over her, his breath a hot zephyr against her neck and shoulders. “My dear…my dear, what is it?” he breathed, his voice as rough as hers as the cloth of his evening coat brushed her ravaged buttocks and she let out a hiss and jerked against him. “Was it too much? Oh, my darling…should I have restrained him?”

  “No! Not that…” Panting hard, Mary surged again, arching and twisting and pressing her pain against her husband’s thighs and loins, stirring her own heat and glorying in the hardness she found there. “But I’m burning up, my darling. I need you in me…please fuck me!”

  “Of course, my dear… Yes!” Leonard made to slide a hand beneath her, to grip her corseted waist and pull her upright, his intention obviously to escort her to their bedroom.

  “No! Here! Right now. I cannot wait.”

  For an instant, Leonard went still. Would he balk? Just a few feet away stood Benedict Holcombe, silent and watchful.

  A breath later, her husband’s growl of passion made her almost forget the younger man. “Oh, Mary…my darling Mary,” Leonard gasped in her ear. “You are magnificent! A goddess of love…my own perfect Venus.”

  Her heart light with relief and love, Mary twisted around again, struggling to share a messy, awkward, ill-aimed kiss with her husband over her shoulder. She found only the corner of his mouth, but it was sweet, honey-sweet for all that, and against her simmering bottom, she felt him fumbling with his linen. He struggled for a moment, and she could swear she felt a fly button or two burst off and go whizzing across the room, but then she felt first the brush of his hand, and then the press of his hard, familiar flesh against her hot, spanked skin.

  “Oh, yes, my dearest man…oh, yes.” Reaching behind herself, she met his fingers with hers and they tangled. Laughing both, they guided his member toward its natural harbor together. “That’s it…push it in…ooh…ooh…yes!”

  More by blind luck and hunger than measured judgment, Leonard slid home. It was far from elegant, but Mary groaned, loving the sensation of her husband�
�s penis filling and stretching her. Even if it did mean that his clothing rubbed mercilessly against her sore bottom, buttons and seams digging in cruelly as he thrust into her. As he gripped her by the hips, his strong thumbs were unremitting, too, but the streaks of torment only fired her all the hotter. Bucking like a frisky pony she dished her back and pressed ever closer to him to make a better fit.

  “Yes, my love, yes…oh, that’s splendid,” growled Leonard, plumbing her deeply, then holding still, into the hilt. “You are the warmest, most heavenly haven. This is paradise, my dear…paradise….”

  For me, too, my dear, for me, too.

  And yet still there was another observing angel, and as Mary rocked and heaved, and Leonard reciprocated with powerful forays of his own, she turned again to glance toward their watcher…and found he was no longer watching them.

  Benedict Holcombe had disappeared, left the room without either of them even being aware of his departure. For a moment, a pang of disappointment gripped her and Mary stilled. But then the faint odor of lime, her Leonard’s tantalizing shaving lotion, tickled her nostrils.

  Oh, my darling, forgive me. You are here…you are here, inside me.

  Fired anew, she wriggled, churning her pubis against the desk as Leonard swung his hips and found an ever sweeter spot within her channel. Her sex fluttered, almost at the point of crisis, but somehow, in the back of her brain, a cool observer to match Benedict himself still had the ability to think and question.

  Did you desire me at all, Benedict? Or is it simply the act of punishment that stirs you? If that?

  Shaking her head to dislodge the shade of the specialist, she gasped and moaned, teetering on the very Rubicon’s edge.

  Or is it even my handsome Leonard who piques your lust and you cannot bear to see him swiving a woman?

  Strange questions that elicited strange, fragmentary visions. Peculiar musings like a mist, unstable and transitory. When Leonard reached beneath her belly, rummaging for the seat of all her pleasure, the ability to think finally dissolved like fog, too.