Lessons and Lovers Read online

  “Stroke me, Starr,” she whispered, commanding softly, “Touch me. Make me come.” Her body spoke too, reinforcing her words as she rocked her aching clit on him, making a firm pleasure-giving fulcrum out of the side of his outstretched hand. Using her mind-pictures shamelessly, she worked her loins to and fro, her fantasy self jiggling the tiny nub of her clitoris and laughing in exultation as her moisture welled from within her and trickled out over the whole of Starr’s hand and wrist.

  Adjusting herself forward she pressed her bare thigh against the slick shaft of his cock, then reached up to flip down the spaghetti straps of her slip and make her swollen breasts bare. Taking them one in each hand she began to squeeze and knead in time to the rhythm of her jerking hips. She was putting on a show for him. Just for him. Darryl had vanished. Her lewd performance was purely for the beautiful man on the bed. To pleasure him. To honor him. To breach the stern defenses he’d built around a generous, loving heart.

  Enflamed by emotion as well as by lust, she saw her servant-lover catch the same fire. Thrashing on the bed, he moved his body around with a frenzy that was as far away from his usual iron control as night was from day. His eyes locked with hers and he worked his lean hips and rubbed his sticky shaft against her. Then finally—with a resigned groan of surrender—he took his flesh in his own fingers and began to jerk himself in frantic time to Hettie’s own rhythm.

  Within a few moments he sobbed, arced up from the sheets and pure white semen pulsed out onto Hettie’s bare thigh. Thick heavy spurts of it anointed her. Its heat, and the rich, pungent aroma of it as it trickled across her skin, were too much for the hunger of her senses. She gave a great animal-like cry, pumped her hips in a blur then came hard and fast and wet against his hand.

  As orgasm consumed her, both in dream and reality, Hettie’s eyes flew open, and she turned—in bemused and mortified embarrassment—to meet Darryl’s calm, fascinated and utterly level stare.

  Her face pink, Hettie struggled to find something to say. She experienced a huge rush of relief when her traveling companion suddenly turned and pointed out of the car window.

  “Is this your house?” His soft voice gave no hint that he’d just watched her come. She could only nod, befuddled that the journey was already over and they were stationary in front of 17 Pengilley Gardens, the large London house that Piers had left her. Still stunned from her climax, and from knowing Darryl had seen and understood what’d happened, she felt incapable of coordinating or speaking. She could only thank her lucky stars—or more properly Starr—when the tall blond opened the car door and helped her out onto the pavement. She’d never leaned harder on his arm, nor felt more confused by her feelings.

  “Are you all right, Ma’am?” he inquired politely.

  “Yes, I’m—”

  No, she wasn’t. When she tried to walk, she felt dizzy and swayed, and within seconds there were two strong men holding her up.

  Like some kind of sprite, Darryl had darted around from the other side of the car, and was vying with Starr for the task of supporting the swooning damsel. If she hadn’t felt so flustered, Hettie would have laughed. Two knights for one fair lady, not a bad ratio. Not bad at all.

  This thought revived her, but as she mounted the shallow steps—with her honor guard still at her side—and the black-painted front door swung open, Hettie knew she needed time to think. This was all too much for her, not what she’d expected, and she needed time to organize her thoughts and understand her own emotions and desires.

  Darryl was a beautiful man and sexually desirable, not just an unwanted houseguest to be coped with. And yet even when she’d found herself fantasizing about him, the cool image of Starr had effortlessly hijacked the waking dream.

  He was taking her over, controlling her. And yet still he maintained his emotional distance.

  With perfect, impeccable decorum, he suggested, “Perhaps you’d better lie down for a while, Milady?” He let go of her arm but fixed her with his steely blue gaze. “I’ll show Darryl his room and arrange for his things to be unpacked.” He turned to Darryl, “And if you’re hungry, Mrs. Phillips, our housekeeper, will make you a meal.”

  “No! I’m the hostess. I should be looking after Darryl!” Hettie was racked with guilt. Darryl was a stranger in a strange land and she couldn’t just turn him over to someone else straight away. No matter how embarrassed she was or how kind and welcoming Mrs. Phillips was.

  “Thanks, Lady Henrietta…Starr… But it’s all right.” Darryl looked from Hettie to Starr, his smooth, face as calm as if he knew everything about their bizarre arrangement and found it unsurprising. “Please don’t go to any trouble for me. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to lie down for a while myself. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “Me neither,” said Hettie, then blushed furiously remembering the reason for her insomnia. Her eyes flicked automatically from man to man, checking for reaction as she quivered like a fawn in the curiously charged atmosphere around them.

  Starr’s face was a handsome, unrevealing mask as usual, but Darryl smiled, his eyes filled with that curious awareness again. He knew why she hadn’t slept, and it was a subject of intense interest to him. His eyes flicked in Starr’s direction for half a second, and it was all Hettie could do not to gasp aloud.

  He knows, the bastard! He knows! she thought, when she was safe in the privacy of her room and Darryl was in the kind but fussy hands of Mrs. Phillips, the cook and housekeeper, who was Starr’s opposite number and performed all the household duties that he didn’t. Starr himself, faultlessly efficient as ever, was busy with the luggage and the car, and Hettie was glad he was out of the way too. She’d sensed him watching her closely in those last few moments with Darryl, as if monitoring her responses, ticking off the telltale signs of her arousal, and logging the progress of this unexpected new dynamic.

  “Why the hell can’t you be jealous?” she demanded of him in his absence, darting around her room, unable to settle in one place for a second. She wished Starr were with her right now so she could pound her fists against that smooth, golden chest of his in the vain hope that she might force some kind of revelation out of him. Some kind of acknowledgement.

  If you’d just say something, Starr, just give me some kind of sign, I’d send Darryl away this instant. Find someone else to take him in, take care of him…and bloody well educate him!

  Just say something, you blond devil, say something!

  Confused, she threw herself facedown on the bed, trying desperately to calm her whirling thoughts and her surging hormones.

  Last night, on this very same bed, she’d been opened and taken by Starr. Had more sex in a few hours than some women had in a month. But right now, on these fresh crisp sheets and the pristine pink bedspread, she was ready to be taken again. At least that way she and Starr were close, exquisitely joined and intimate, and his body said everything his lack of words didn’t.

  The vision from the car returned again. Herself with her tall, ice god of a servant whose long cock and skillful fingers could thrill her to madness. And the watchful visitor from Italy observing them.

  Moving uneasily, she rubbed her tingling breasts against the counterpane and tried to remember if she’d ever felt like this while Piers was alive. They’d had some wonderful times, but surely she’d never felt as hungry and as sluttish as she did now?

  Maybe I should masturbate? Clear my mind of it all with one huge orgasm. She lifted her hips from the bed, and was just sliding her fingers beneath her, when there was a firm, sharp, tellingly familiar knock at the door.

  “Come in, Starr,” she called out, dropping down again and quickly pulling her hand out.

  “Are you all right, Milady?” he asked quietly from the side of the bed. His steps had been so quick and light that she’d barely heard him approach.

  “Yes, I’m fine, thanks, Starr,” she lied, knowing he knew it was a lie, “I’m just a bit tense.” Closing her eyes, she lay still, half wanting him to leave her alo
ne with her problem, half wanting him to stay and deal with it.

  He stayed.

  “A neck massage might do the trick, Ma’am.”

  What trick?

  Starr knelt on the bed beside her, his black-clad knee brushing the side of her breast. Without being asked she opened the top of her blouse and eased it awkwardly off her shoulders. She felt him lift her thick hair to one side and spread it over the pillow.

  “Just relax,” he whispered, but she shuddered violently when he slid her bra straps down her arms. He’d hardly uncovered any of her, really, yet she felt as if he’d bared her sex and stroked it. She moaned aloud when his fingers went cleverly to work.

  She’d no idea if Starr had any formal training as a masseur, but he was a master and an artist with his thumbs. Light as a feather at her hairline and down her spine, but firm and almost brutal as he dug into the taut knotted muscles of her upper back. Looming over her, he leaned his strong frame determinedly into each and every stroke, and as one tension drained away, Hettie felt another more crucial one flood in.

  Shifting his weight for purchase, Starr threw a long leg across her, and enclosed both her thighs between his. Hettie quivered beneath his gliding hands. His sex was barely an inch above hers and she couldn’t help imagining him hard. Hard as he’d been last night, inside her. Hard as she was soft and liquid.

  “Relax, Ma’am,” her murmured again, his big hands working their way across her shoulders, then smoothing down the backs of her arms to her fisted hands bunching against the bed. “Relax, Ma’am, go loose.”

  “I can’t,” she whimpered, her crotch a mass of fire as her bottom wafted upward in search of him. Shimmying with a hunger that never really seemed to go away, but just lie quiescent from time to time.

  Starr was erect now, and Hettie rubbed against his hardness with her softness. She felt ashamed of her own crude invitation, yet in an odd way reveled in it. Starr’s hands left hers, then traveled back up her arms and slid beneath her body, cupping her still-covered breasts without a word of warning or enquiry. In silence, he continued his treatment, caressing her swollen nipples with all the clinical methodism he’d used on her neck and her shoulders. His weight shifted and his center of gravity dropped slightly, and through several layers of clothing, Hettie felt his cock nudge her ass.

  For several long minutes, he rubbed his hardness slowly against her, riding the groove of her bottom with the same slow rhythm he was using on her breasts.

  Is he doing this for himself?

  Or was it solely a service to her? Through jeans and underclothes she could feel his bulge caressing her anus. Hot streaks of pleasure seemed to pulse from the point of contact and shoot straight to all the rest of her that wanted him. Her sensitized breasts throbbed in his grip, her clitoris ached, her pussy felt empty and needy and longing for the solace of his cock.

  “Starr, please… Oh please, for God’s sake!” she croaked, abandoning every shred of her pride.

  As the last word still hung in the air, the pressure was lifted away from her bottom and she felt Starr rearranging their bodies. He moved with uncanny lightness for one so large and muscular, but within seconds he was further back somehow, between her knees instead of enclosing hers in his.

  Mute and pliant, she felt his hands on her hips, lifting her pelvis until she was on all fours, her hips tilted. Then his fingers swooped under her, finding the fastening of her jeans and quickly and deftly uncovering her. In seconds she had the black denim cloth bunched awkwardly at her knees and only a pair of tiny black panties to shield her—a skimpy nonsense of satin and lace that’d slipped into the groove of her bottom.

  The pants themselves made her feel sleazy, less covered somehow than she would have been without them. They were damp at the crotch, and she knew Starr would be able to see it. See juiciness and see her lust. He’d know that to create so large a stain she must have been creaming and yearning for hours, thinking both of him, and of her angelic new houseguest.

  For a split second, Hettie imagined it was Darryl kneeling behind her while Starr watched. Darryl staring at her white flesh and her wet black pants. Darryl, revealed and rampant, poised to fuck her. She pictured Starr’s solemn face suddenly contorting with pure male jealousy. And possessiveness. In her fantasy, he pushed the younger man aside, banishing him as he, Starr, claimed his woman.

  And then it was just Starr, the perfect lover offering everything she needed and perhaps ever would need. Cool, accomplished Starr, sliding down his zipper, easing out his thick red penis then dragging its oozing tip against the surface of her inner thigh.

  Is he going to take me with my pants on? Would he push the gusset out of the way, and push in beside it, caressing his own length with the satin? Her sex quivered as if inviting him to do it like that, and her bottom jutted back at him of its own accord.

  Please take me! her body screamed silently as she marveled at the inner pictures. Her black-clad form, waiting and utterly lewd. Her rounded white ass, with cheeks exposed but bisected by a thin swath of silk.

  At the very last second she felt him pause, hover, then catch the elastic of her panties and push them down her thighs. With everything bunched at her knees, his access was limited. It felt gloriously primal and exciting. So intense that there was no time for niceties or comfort. Her pussy was swimming with silky, welcoming moisture as he nudged at her entrance, but hampered as she was, her legs couldn’t properly open and he had to reach down and peel back her labia to admit him.

  She moaned as his fingers explored her sex, opening her up, readying her. “Fuck me!” she exhorted him, jamming herself backwards against him, desperate to join with him. “Fuck me, Starr! Oh dear heaven, I want you inside me! Now!” she shouted, appalled at how wanton she sounded, but loving that he could make her that way.

  Starr’s cock probed but didn’t enter.

  He was teasing her, holding back, but Hettie was delirious for him. With a strangled cry, she slammed herself backwards, frantic for their bodies to become one.

  There was a shockingly wet sound of flesh sliding against fluid and then he was fully and deeply inside her, thrown across her back like a cloak of loving heat while his stiff penis throbbed in her channel. He was bearing his weight on one hand, but she felt the other curl around her thigh, his fingers digging in as he fought for maximum leverage.

  Thrusting steadily, he went right to the core of her, beating on her clitoris from within as he fucked her with exactly the primitive intensity she needed. Hettie buried her face in the pillow, stifling her cries of animal pleasure, her heart full of grateful wonder that he could read her desires so perfectly.

  “Touch yourself, Hettie,” he ordered with a shocking, unfamiliar raggedness. Her given name was harsh in her ear as he stroked relentlessly into her, all his quiet-spoken courtesy lost in the ferment of sex. “Do it! Stroke yourself! Make yourself come!”

  Falling forward, she obeyed him, forcing her hand between the bed and her body. Scrabbling in the heat and wetness between her shaking thighs, she sought out that tiny bundle of screaming, strung-out nerves, that pure white point of ultimate sensation.

  And when she found it, it was she who cried raggedly. The rush of her orgasm made her thrash and buck beneath him as finally his choking cry of release graced her ears.

  “My lady! Oh, my lady!” he sobbed as he came inside her, his essence bathing her womb as surely as his heartfelt words fed her soul.

  Chapter Three

  Are they doing it now?

  Darryl looked down at the book on his lap, then upward in the general direction of Lady Henrietta’s bedroom, trying to imagine a real scene, and real, beautiful bodies, rather than just a black-and-white photograph.

  Well, if they weren’t making love now, there was no doubt they’d done it earlier, because he’d heard them. Heard the harsh impassioned cries that were so like the noises he’d heard at Palazzo di Angeli when his cousin and Fausto had excused themselves and disappeared for hours on end. He�
��d known without being told that what he’d been hearing were the noises of sex. An activity that seemed to haunt his mind and his body even though he couldn’t seem to summon any memories of actually engaging in it himself.

  Why can’t I remember having sex? He frowned at the illustration he’d been studying. Per Dio, it’s just not possible I could forget doing that!

  When Darryl had woken up in a clean white Milan hospital room, his greatest feeling had been loss. Pure, aching loss. Loss of people and loss of places. Loss of the whole of his life somehow.

  He knew who he was. He knew his thoughts, his personality and his likes and dislikes. But it was the world around him that he’d forgotten. It’d disappeared, leaving only the vaguest fragments to frustrate him. Brief flashes, of which he couldn’t make sense and which gave him headaches when he tried to force them into focus. In the end he’d given up trying to remember and just taken the doctor’s advice. Which had been to relax and let his brain take its own time to heal and yield up the lost memories.

  It was a hard thing to cope with, yet in spite of everything there had been gains as well as losses. The thing he’d taken to calling his “awareness”.

  Darryl had a new power, an ability he was certain he hadn’t had before. Even if he had no way of knowing.

  It wasn’t exactly mind reading or ESP. It wasn’t as clear-cut as that. What it felt like was hard to put into words. The only comparison was a set of mental cat’s whiskers that were sensitive to currents of emotion. To feelings and moods. And especially sex.