Lessons and Lovers Read online

  Which was ironic, given his lack of sexual memories and his total inability to remember whether he’d ever made love to a woman!

  Since his accident he’d certainly wanted to fuck. Often and achingly so.

  The first time had been in the clinic itself with the kind, dark-haired nurse. He’d got stiff while she was tending to him. She hadn’t been pretty—in fact she’d been fat and homely—but her breasts had been round and soft as pillows and as she’d leant across him, his penis had risen up and pointed at them in tribute. The sight of that had made her eyes sparkle, and she’d told him “not to worry, it was only natural” and then taken him firmly in her gentle hands and rubbed him until he’d sobbed out his release.

  After that she’d masturbated him every day, sometimes more than once, and evaded him cleverly when he’d tried to caress her in return. “You’ll soon have women falling over themselves for you, ragazzo,” she’d told him cheerfully, “And with a face and body like yours, it’ll be the beauties that want you. Plain old things like me won’t get a look in.”

  And Renata, his adopted cousin, was a beauty! Darryl couldn’t remember having sex, but he did know what it was and he’d wanted it immediately when he’d seen Renata. His new awareness had told him that she returned the feeling but it’d also told him she was almost as confused and scared as he was. At the Palazzo di Angeli, the ancestral residence of his adoptive family, he’d found out the reason. Fausto, who’d hated him on sight and didn’t even seem to like Renata all that much. The two of them had frequent and very noisy bouts of lovemaking that drove Darryl’s fingers irresistibly to his crotch. But even though he was concerned for Renata and hated leaving her, he’d also been relieved when she’d halting told him it’d be better if he were to live somewhere else for a while.

  Which had led him here, to 17 Pengilley Gardens, London, England, the home of Lady Henrietta Miller, Renata’s recently bereaved and astoundingly beautiful English friend. Another rare and sensual woman who already had a lover.

  Things were different in this house though. He could sense it. There were currents of sadness and loss from the death of the late Sir Piers, but on the whole Darryl already felt much more relaxed than he had at the palazzo.

  What’d happened in the car with Lady Henrietta—or Hettie as she insisted he call her—had made his head spin and his groin feel like bursting, but afterward he’d sensed no animosity in her. Quite the contrary. Hettie was confused like her friend Renata, but she also found him attractive. She’d suffered a devastating bereavement but at heart she was fighting her grief with a vibrancy and love of life that fired Darryl’s blood and made him hopeful for his own future happiness.

  And Lady Hettie’s lover was far less hostile than Fausto.

  It was obvious that Signor Starr and Hettie fucked. Darryl had felt the vibes immediately, the palpable erotic current that arced between the lady and her servant even when they were yards apart. Darryl’s heart had at sunk at first, expecting polite animosity from the tall blond, but after a few moments of chatting with Starr he realized his fears were unfounded. True, the man was somewhat cool and remote, but that seemed to be his nature rather than anything specifically directed at Darryl. Starr seemed to adhere to a very old-fashioned standard of discreet, unobtrusive service in public. It was only in private that Darryl suspected that things were very, very different.

  The book he was studying was not one of the ones Mrs. Phillips had pointed him to when he’d first come down to the library.

  When he’d woken up after a long refreshing sleep he’d dressed and wandered downstairs. The brisk but kindly housekeeper had provided him with tea and a snack and then had shown him briefly around the house. She hadn’t mentioned the whereabouts of Hettie and Starr, and Darryl hadn’t asked.

  After his tour, Mrs. P had settled him in the cozy wood-paneled library and shown him roughly how the vast assembly of books was arranged. She’d pointed out history, geography and various classics. She’d also shown him Hettie’s selection of contemporary novels, science fiction and thrillers. What she hadn’t shown him, but what he’d found for himself was what seemed to be an extensive collection of extremely explicit erotica. The book he’d finally chosen was a superb photographic anthology bound in white leather. The theme was sexual intercourse.

  He flicked the pages slowly, frowning at his frustrating lack of knowledge yet at the same simmering with excitement. The broad idea of fucking was familiar to him, it was coded into the genes and so basic to life that instruction was unnecessary. But it was the refinements that Darryl was curious about. Where did women like to be touched? What gave them pleasure? How could he make it better for a woman without exciting himself so much that he came immediately?

  Studying a picture of a man holding a woman’s breasts, he could see that she was enjoying the sensations. Her face was distorted and her teeth bared, but he could tell it was pleasure she was feeling not pain. He imagined what Hettie’s breasts might look like with a man’s hands upon them. The image of her was clear and beautiful, but in his imagination, all he saw was her, not the man.

  Hettie had gorgeous breasts. They were just the right size. When he’d seen her nipples harden in the car, his cock had stiffened in his jeans. And just thinking about them now had the very same effect. He could feel—and see—his erection pushing up against the zipper and bulging inside the blue denim. He laid his hand lightly on the hot swollen place and with the other hand flipped over a page.

  It was a close-up, done in black and white but he could imagine the colors. A man was caught just in the very moment of pushing his cock into a woman’s sex. There were no faces or limbs, just the shot of the nested genitals and his finger touching her a little way above the penetration. The tip of his finger itself was pressed amongst the folds, resting on a tiny budlike structure. The clitoris. That was it! Dio, there was so much to remember… So much that he was sure he must have once known.

  The man was in her cunt. His cock was in her cunt. Her pussy. Her sex. And he was touching her clitoris.

  Pressing harder on his cock, he imagined that the cunt in the picture was Hettie’s and that it was his finger dabbling in her wetness. Her pussy was pink, beautifully soft and wet, and she felt much better around him than his own hand ever could. Although even that felt pretty good at times.

  The temptation to unzip himself now was almost unbearable, but there were people about the house who might come in and catch him exposed. The idea of Hettie seeing his cock made the organ itself throb dangerously. But he certainly didn’t want Starr or Mrs. Phillips to walk in and catch him masturbating. Perhaps he could take the book to his room later? Look at it in a safe place and caress himself in comfort?

  The next photograph had some similarities to the previous one. It was a close-up shot of a woman’s sex, but this time there was no cock and no finger. A pointed tongue, either a man or a woman’s, was licking at the swollen glistening flesh.

  It was too much. Moaning, Darryl rubbed furiously at his cock through his jeans and imagining the taste of Hettie on his tongue. He couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t be delicious!

  And the texture… In his imagination she was soft and yielding. And she cried out as he’d heard her this afternoon. Moisture flowed from her as sensation took her. A sensation that must be huge and sublimely beautiful if it in any way resembled his feelings when he came. If it was anything like the way he felt now, as he orgasmed helplessly and his semen pulsed out into his briefs while he threw his head back and groaned with pleasure.

  “Darryl?”

  Darryl heard the word quite clearly through the bliss of his climax. It was so distinct that he suddenly realized that it wasn’t actually part of his fantasy. Looking up, blinking, he saw a figure standing near the doorway.

  Lady Henrietta Miller, clad in a thin, floating, black silk evening dress. Her eyes were round and bright and a smile played around her soft, red mouth.

  It was one of the most beautiful sights she’d
ever seen, and even though Darryl was fully and modestly clothed it was supremely and breath-catchingly erotic.

  Hettie had seen men touch themselves before. Piers had never been ashamed to masturbate for her, nor she for him, and she adored the sight of Starr casually fondling himself in preparation for a second bout of lovemaking.

  But this was different. So pure, so unconscious, so uninhibited. A heavenly tableau… Darryl’s hand was a blur at his crotch, his strong throat was arched and vulnerable and his smooth angelic face distorted as the supreme moment racked his senses. It was everything she might have imagined of him and yet more, despite his lack of nudity.

  As the crisis left him, she watched his slim hips drop back into the chair and his face and body relax.

  Touché! You’ve watched me and now I’ve watched you. She almost spoke the words aloud, but before she could his eyes flicked open and she found herself smiling.

  “I’m sorry. I disturbed you,” she said, at a loss for anything else. As she watched, he shifted slightly in the great leather wing chair and her own sex shivered at the thought of how sticky and tingling his must be.

  “It’s perhaps as well,” he replied, his voice astoundingly even as he closed his book, put it aside and rose politely to his feet. Hettie felt awed by him, taken aback that he could still be so self-possessed at a moment when another man might be tongue-tied and blushing with embarrassment. She felt herself blushing instead, her mind filling with images that were probably just as sexy as the ones to which Darryl had been masturbating.

  Even when he wasn’t coming, her handsome houseguest looked a picture. He’d obviously showered and changed, because his coal black hair had a soft damp sheen to it and his skin looked deliciously fresh. His form-fitting jeans were the same ones he’d arrived in, or some very similar, but he’d put on a clean shirt to come down to dinner. Another silk one, but this time short sleeved in a shade of palest lemon. The misty color was a perfect foil for the drama of his unbound hair and the rich butterscotch-brown of his skin and Hettie couldn’t imagine any model in any magazine looking sexier.

  “What’s your book?” she inquired, trying hard not to sound squeaky and self-conscious. As she sat down in the chair next to Darryl’s, he flopped down beside her and handed her the book.

  Images d’Amour was a gorgeous volume. With an art degree and several years spent working in galleries before her marriage, Hettie could appreciate the work aesthetically as well as sexually. Perfectly shot photographs of couples making love were presented starkly with no superfluous text. It was no wonder that Darryl had become aroused. The photos got to Hettie too, every time she looked at them.

  “It excited me,” he said as she flicked the pages, his tone quite casual as if masturbation was a subject that virtual strangers often discussed. “I hope you don’t mind… What I was doing, I mean?” His brown eyes regarded her steadily, without a trace of self-consciousness or shame.

  “No—not at all,” she stammered, feeling a hot blush rise in her cheeks and her nipples stiffen involuntarily in her thin black bodice, “It’s natural. Everyone does it.”

  “Do you, Lady Hettie?” he asked softly.

  “Please… It’s just plain ‘Hettie’,” she whispered, evading him.

  “Hettie.” The word was like an intimate caress itself, the way her inquisitor said it. “Hettie, do you touch yourself? Do you give yourself pleasure?”

  “I-I—” The answer was locked in her throat. She wanted to tell him but her vocal chords felt as if they were paralyzed.

  “I’m sorry, Hettie, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said quietly, “It’s just that I know so little. Or at least I do now… Sex seems to be one of the areas that was blanked by my head injury. It’s very frustrating.” He bit his full lower lip and something melted inside her, “I’m a man, Hettie, but I can’t remember what it’s like to be one.”

  He spoke haltingly, but the expression on his pure, serious face told a clearer story. And for a moment, Hettie felt the maddest urge to try and fill in the gaps for him. He could be hers now if she simply flipped down the straps of her dress, drew him to her naked bosom then lay back and let him take her. She imagined his stiff eager cock rising again, nudging against her, then sliding in. It was only a short while since Starr had pleasured her completely and thoroughly, but astonishingly she already felt like making love again.

  Her fingers twitched as if she were really about to loosen her clothing, but then a bell tinkled high and sharply in the corridor outside the library.

  “It’s the dinner bell,” said Hettie as Darryl quirked his sleek black eyebrows. She felt confused and disorientated. How could she feel attracted to Darryl when Starr’s cool, intense presence was becoming more and more imprinted on her consciousness? She glanced at her companion and felt the sharpest pang. He was astonishingly desirable, but acknowledging that desire felt painfully like a betrayal.

  And not of her dead husband. Of someone all too living.

  Frowning slightly, she watched as Darryl rose smoothly to his feet and held out his arm to her, “Lady Henrietta,” he said, his voice formal yet velvety, “May I escort you to dinner?”

  Hettie had to smile back at him. He was such a gem. “Of course, Signor di Angeli, I’d be honored.”

  And with that she stood up, took his arm, and let herself be escorted to the dining room.

  Starr fell back against the mat, his breathing heavy and his near-naked body streaming with sweat. How many sit-ups had he done? He couldn’t remember. He only knew that no amount of hard physical exercise could purge his mind this time.

  He lay there for a moment, centering himself, then rose quickly and reached for the bottle of mineral water on the tallboy. Drinking deep, he attempted to focus on his body and gauge his levels of energy and fitness, but all he could really think about was Hettie and what she might be doing with—and saying to—the Italian.

  “You’re jealous, man,” he whispered to himself, then smiled grimly at the enormity of the understatement. He’d seen the way his adored Hettie had looked at di Angeli. And while he’d told himself ferociously that it was not his place to even have an opinion on the matter, he couldn’t suppress the gouging surge of sexual envy he experienced each time he’d seen Hettie cast an interested glance at her new houseguest.

  Don’t be a bloody fool! He took another long drag at the water bottle, then put it aside and peeled off the thin, perspiration-soaked jersey trunks he’d been working out in.

  In his tiny bathroom, he spun the showerhead and bared his teeth as he stepped beneath the punishing, brutally ice-cold flow. The water should have dowsed his turbulent emotions and calmed his wayward body, as it so often had before when his longing for Hettie had become unmanageable. But this time the regime was ineffective. His mind and his heart whirled, and despite the confusion of his thoughts and the freezing shower, his cock grew rigid.

  “Fuck!” he growled, then spun the dial to a more comfortable temperature. Why suffer when the prescription wasn’t working? Why suffer any more than he already was? Than he always did.

  In his fantasy, the woman he loved, the woman he would do anything for, endure anything for, give anything for, stepped into the cubicle and drew close to him. The now-warm water streamed over her lush but slender body and plastered her lovely mane of golden hair against her skull. Starr groaned like a martyr in torment as a hand closed around his penis. In his dream it was her hand but in reality it was his own.

  He had loved Henrietta Miller from the instant he’d first set eyes on her, but if he were to remain an honorable man and worthy of the trust that Piers Miller had placed in him, he could never claim her. He was sworn to protect Hettie and to take care of her—even service her libido when it was required of him—but no more than that. He was her servant and she was his mistress. He knew that his rigid adherence to his role might seem archaic in the twenty-first century, but he’d made a pledge to himself. A pledge in honor of the man who had raised him from the
gutter—and from the easy slide into petty, then more serious crime—which he could not break.

  The vow was that he would never take advantage of what he and Hettie shared. Never pressure her for more. He wanted and needed her love. It was a glittering prize that shimmered constantly in his imagination. But to pursue it so soon after the death of Piers Miller was to insult his mentor’s memory and exploit Hettie’s confused emotions and her grief at the loss of her husband. She’d loved Piers deeply, and still loved him. She’d been faithful to him emotionally, even while she’d shared her body with Starr. And that was why he could not claim her.

  And yet there was a primitive, territorial part of him that raged to make her his in every way. Heart and soul as well as body. His ancient brain, where instinct held sway, told him that she was his woman and he must imprint himself on every part of her.

  I am not a fucking caveman!

  He still felt guilt at giving in to his needs the other night. But the urge to show her some physical tenderness after the long months of their mutual celibacy had become too great. And it had finally driven him back to her bed.

  His fingers stilled for a moment on his cock at the recollection. He’d barely been able to contain the bittersweet joy he’d experienced when she’d welcomed him. He’d hidden it scrupulously, but as he’d entered her exquisite body, his heart had been singing.

  Yes, he was proud of his iron self-discipline, and it never failed him. He couldn’t allow it to. Except at private moments like these, when there was nobody but himself and his aching cock to witness his internal agony.

  “Oh Hettie, I love you!”

  His voice was a ragged, falling cry of longing as her phantom hand rode smoothly back and forth along his engorged rod. His heart twisted as he imagined—remembered—her delicate yet intoxicating touch on his flesh and the way she always and unerringly found the sweetest and most responsive spots. Time after time he’d had to pry her warm fingers off him for fear that he might come in selfishness and not pleasure her at the same time. He’d made yet another oath to himself that his agenda in bed would always be to focus solely on her experience, her satisfaction and her orgasms, even at the expense of his own. If he came in the process, it was a treasured by-product, not the object of the exercise.