Tipping the Velvet (32 page)

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nose was very straight; her mouth was a full mouth that had aside with my corset and chemise - seemed at her touch to once, I guessed, been fuller. Her eyes were a deep hazel rise and swell and strain against their wrappings. I felt like and, in the dim light of the low-turned gas-jets, seemed all a man being transformed into a woman at the hand of a pupil. When she narrowed them - which she did now, the sorceress. My cigarette smouldered at my lip, forgotten.

better to study me through the blue haze of tobacco smoke -

Her hands moved lower, and stopped at my lap, which now, one noticed the network of wrinkles, fine and not so fine, in as before, began to pulse and heat. The silken cravat lay which they were set.

rolled there; and as she fingered it, I blushed. She said, The room was terribly warm. I unfastened the button at my

'Now you are prim again!' and began to unfasten my throat, then lifted my cap and raked my fingers through my buttons. In a moment she had her hand through the slit of hair - afterwards rubbing my palm against the wool of my my drawers, had seized a corner of the cravat, and began to thigh, to wipe the oil from it. And all the time she watched tug at it. The silk uncurled, and squirmed and susurrated its me. Then she said, 'You must think me rather rude.'

way out of my trousers, like

'Rude?'

an eel.

To have brought you so far, without enquiring after your She looked absurdly like a stage magician, producing a name.'

handkerchief or a string of flags from a fist, or an ear, or a I said, without hesitation, 'It's Miss Nancy King, and you lady's purse - and, of course, she was too clever not to know might at least offer me a cigarette, I think.'

it: one dark eyebrow lifted, and her lip gave its ironical curl, She smiled, and came to me, and placed her own fag, half-and she whispered 'Presto!' when the cravat was free. But smoked and damp at the end, between my lips. I caught the then her looked changed. She held the silk to her lips, and reek of it on her breath, together with the faint spice of the gazed at me above it. 'All your promise has come to wine that she had swallowed.

nothing, after all,' she said. Then she laughed, and stepped

'If you were King of Pleasure,' she said, 'and I were Queen away, and nodded to my trousers - now gaping whitely, of of Pain ..." Then, in a different tone: 'You're very course, at the buttons. 'Take them off.' I did so at once, handsome, Miss King.'

fumbling with my shoes and stockings in my haste. My fag I took a long pull on the cigarette: it made me giddy as a showered me with ash, and I cast it into the grate. 'And the glass of cham. I said: 'I know.' At that, she raised her hands underthings,' she went on,' -but leave the jacket. That's to the front of my jacket - she was still wearing gloves, with good.'

the rings on top - and ran them over me, delicately and Now I had a heap of discarded clothes at my feet. My jacket lingeringly, and sighing as she did so. Beneath the wool of ended at my hips; beneath it, in the dim light, my legs my uniform my nipples sprang up stiff as little sergeants; looked very white, the triangle of hair between them very my breasts - which had grown used to being as it were put dark. The lady watched me all the while, making no move 271

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to touch me further. But when I was finished, she went to a all. For on the top of the jumble, on a square of velvet, lay drawer in the bureau; and when she turned back to me she the queerest, lewdest thing I ever saw.

held something in her hand. It was a key.

It was a kind of harness, made of leather: belt-like, and yet

'In my bedroom,' she said, nodding towards the second not quite a belt, for though it had one wide strap with door, 'you'll find a trunk, which this will open.' She handed buckles on it, two narrower, shorter bands were fastened to it to me. It felt very chill upon my overheated palm, and for this and they, too, were buckled. For one alarming moment a moment I merely gazed stupidly at it. Then she clapped I thought it might be a horse's bridle; then I saw what the her hands: 'Presto!' she said again; and this time, she did not straps and the buckles supported. It was a cylinder of smile, and her voice was rather thick.

leather, rather longer than the length of my hand and about The room next door was smaller than the parlour, but quite as fat, in width, as I could grip. One end was rounded and as rich, and just as dim and hot. On one side there was a slightly enlarged, the other fixed firm to a flattened base; to screen, with a commode behind it; on the other stood a this, by hoops of brass, the belt and the narrower bands japanned press, its surface hard and black and glossy, like a were all also fastened.

beetle's back. At the bottom of the bed there was, as she had It was, in short, a dildo. I had never seen one before; I did promised, a trunk: a handsome, antique chest made of some not, at that time, know that such things existed and had desiccated, perfumed wood - rosewood, I think — with four names.

claw feet and corners of brass, and elaborate carvings on its For all I knew of it, this might be an original, that the lady sides and lid which the dull glow of the fire threw into had had fashioned to a pattern of her own.

exaggerated relief. I knelt before it, placed the key in the Perhaps Eve thought the same, when she saw her first lock; and felt the shifting, as I turned it, of some deep apple.

interior spring.

Even so, it didn't stop her knowing what the apple was for A movement in the corner of the room made me turn my

...

head. There was a cheval-glass there, big as a door, and I But in case I still wondered, the lady now spoke. 'Put it on,'

saw myself reflected in it: pale and wide-eyed, breathless she called - she must have caught the opening of the trunk -

and curious, but for all that an unlikely Pandora, with my

'put it on, and come to me.'

scarlet jacket and my saucy cap, my crop and my bare bare I struggled for a moment or two over the placing of the bum. In the room next door all was hushed and still. I straps, and the tightening of the buckles. The brass bit into turned to the trunk again, and lifted its lid. Inside was a the white flesh of my hips, but the leather was wonderfully jumble of bottles and scarves, of cords and packets and supple and warm. I glanced again towards the looking-yellow-bound books. I didn't pause to gaze upon these glass. The base of the phallus was a darker wedge upon my objects then, however; indeed, I hardly registered them at own triangular shield of hair, and its lowest tip nudged me 273

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in a most insinuating way. From this base the dildo itself

'Not yet,' she said. 'Not yet, not yet!'

obscenely sprang -not straight out, but at a cunning angle, With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the so that when I looked down at it I saw first its bulbous straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the head, gleaming in the red glow of the fire and split by a while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. I near-invisible seam of tiny, ivory stitches.

guessed her purpose. With her hands close-pressed about When I took a step, the head gave a nod.

my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered

'Come here,' said the lady when she saw me in the doorway; herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed still harder. I lifted sink, with an ever speedier motion. At first I held her hips, my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers, and let her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft the fingers of the other creep round her thigh to her and stroke it. Now the base's insinuating nudges grew more buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on insinuating still: it was not long before my legs began to the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise.

breathe more harshly. She took her hands away, and turned Soon her breaths became moans, then cries; soon my own and lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, and gestured voice joined hers, for the dildo that serviced her also for me to undress her.

pleasured me - her motions bring it with an ever faster, ever I found the hooks of her gown, and then the laces of her harder pressure against just that part of me that cared for corset: beneath this, I saw, she was mottled scarlet from the pressure best. I had one brief moment of self-hundred tiny creases of her chemise. She stooped to remove consciousness, when I saw myself as from a distance, her petticoats, but retained her drawers, her stockings and straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, buckled her boots and, still, her gloves. Very daring - for I had not inside that monstrous instrument, panting with pleasure and touched her at all, yet - I slid a hand into the slit of her sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think drawers; and with the other I caught hold of one of her nothing, only shudder; and the pleasure - mine and hers -

nipples, and pressed it.

found its aching, arching crisis, and was spent.

At that, she put her mouth to mine. Our kisses were After a second she eased herself from my lap, then imperfect ones, as all new lovers' kisses are, and tasted of straddled my thigh and rocked gently there, occasionally tobacco; but - again, like all new lovers' kisses - their very jerking, and at last growing still. Her hair, which had come strangeness made them thrilling. The more I fingered her loose, was hot against my jaw.

the harder she kissed me, and the hotter I grew between my At length she laughed, and moved again against my hip.

legs, behind my sheath of leather. Finally she pulled away,

'Oh, you exquisite little tart!' she said.

and seized my wrists.

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And thus we clasped one another, sated and spent, our legs was a handkerchief on the little table before the fire, and inelegantly straddling that elegant, high-backed chair; and with this I wiped first it, and then myself. I lit two as the minutes passed I thought with something like dismay cigarettes, and left one smouldering. Then I poured myself of how the night would now proceed. I thought, She's had a glass of wine and, in between gulps, began to retrieve my me fuck her; now she'll send me home. If I'm in luck I stockings, my trousers and my boots from the pile of might get a pound, for my trouble. It was the prospect of clothes that lay strewn across the carpet.

the sovereign, after all, which had lured me to her parlour in The lady reappeared, and seized her fag. She had changed the first place. And yet, now, there was something into a dressing-gown of heavy green silk, and her feet were inexpressibly dreary to me at the idea of quitting her bare; she had that long second toe that you sometimes see company - of surrendering the toy to which I was strapped, on the statues done by the Greeks. Her hair had been and quieting the tommish urges it and its mistress had all properly unfastened, combed out, and rebound into a long, unexpectedly revived.

loose plait, and she had at last removed her white kid She raised her head and saw, I suppose, my downcast look.

gloves. The flesh of her hands was almost as pale.

'Poor child,' she said. 'And do you always grow sorry, when

'Do leave all that,' she said, nodding towards the trousers your business is complete?' She put a hand to my chin and over my arm. 'The maid will deal with it in the morning.'

tilted my face to the lamplight, and I caught her wrist and Then she saw the dildo, and caught it up by one of its shook my head free. My cap - which had remained on my straps. 'I should, however, remove this.'

head through all our violent kisses - now fell off. She at I was not sure that I had heard her properly. 'The morning?'

once returned her hands to my face, and fingered my I said. 'Do you mean that I should stay?'

pomade-stiffened hair; then she laughed, and rose, and

'Why, of course.' She looked genuinely surprised. 'Are you walked into her bedroom. Tour yourself some wine,' she not able? Will you be missed?' I felt light-headed suddenly.

called. 'And light me a cigarette, will you?' I heard the hiss I told her that I lodged with a lady who, though she would of water against china, and guessed that she was using the wonder at my absence, wouldn't worry over it. Then she commode.

asked if I had an employer - perhaps at the laundry I had I moved to the glass, and examined myself. My face was as mentioned? - who would expect me on the morrow. I scarlet, almost, as my jacket, my hair was ruffled, my lips laughed at that, and shook my head: 'There is no one at all looked bruised and swollen. I remembered the dildo at my to miss me. I've only myself to think of and please.'

hip, and stooped to unfasten it. Its lustre was cloudy now, As I said it, the toy at her thigh began to swing.

and its nether straps were sodden and limp from my own She said, 'You did, before tonight. Now, however, you have lavish spendings; yet it was as indecently rigid and ready as me . . .'

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Her words, her expression, made a mockery of my efforts The lady was still gazing at me. She said, 'I have waited for with the handkerchief: I was wet for her anew. I reunited you to wake, before ringing for breakfast.' There was a bell-my trousers with her discarded petticoats, and added my pull set into the wall beside the fireplace: I had not seen that jacket to the pile. Next door, the silken counterpane had the night before, either. 'I hope you are hungry?'

been turned back, and the sheets beneath looked very white I was, I realised, very hungry indeed; but also slightly and cool. The chest kept its still, enigmatic place at the foot nauseous. My mouth, moreover, tasted abominable: I hoped of the bed. The clock on the mantel showed half-past two.

she wouldn't try to kiss me again. She didn't, but kept her It was four, or thereabouts, before we slumbered; and distance. Soon, piqued by her new, queer, self-conscious perhaps eleven when I woke. I remembered stumbling to air, I began to think that she might, at least, come and put the commode some time in the early morning, and recalled her lips to my hand.