A Certain Latitude (8 page)

“I can do that,” he said, embarrassed that she was washing him, and then gave himself up to the pleasure of her fingers working through his hair, rubbing his scalp. More lavender, something else…

“Rosemary and sage,” she said as he sniffed. “And lemon verbena in vinegar. I distilled it last summer.”

She helped him rinse his hair and then sat on the box, still close enough to touch him if she wished, while he stood and soaped himself. She watched with open interest, particularly when he soaped his balls and pulled back his foreskin to wash his cock.

“Does that give you pleasure?” her voice was a throaty murmur, as she watched his cock harden in his hand.

“Yes. And particularly knowing you watch me.” He stroked himself, just to see her reaction.

She paused in combing her hair, her tongue flicking out to lick her lips.

And this woman thought she needed tutoring in the amorous arts? He grinned with delight and finished washing—arse, legs, feet—then squatted to rinse himself.

She took the bowl and poured water down his back, following the stream with her cool hand, running her hand over his shoulder-blade, down his spine. She knelt next to him, her face close to his. She’d tied her hair back with a ribbon; it fell between her shoulder-blades in a wet club.

“Clarissa.” He took her chin in his hand, tilting her mouth to his. He wanted to kiss her properly, tease her with his lips. Her mouth was cool beneath his: she tasted of herbs and salt spray, and he had a sudden urgent desire to taste his semen on her lips.

“We’ll concentrate on your pleasure this time. I trust that is agreeable, Miss Onslowe?” he whispered into her mouth. He wanted to be formal with her, a prelude to the reversal of formality when they would obey a different set of rules. 

Her small gasp parted her lips to the tip of his tongue. Just the tip, no more; give her a taste, make her want him as much as he wanted her.

He moved his mouth to her neck—good, she was sensitive there, flinching a little, but only a little, as his bristles rasped against the tender skin, his tongue and teeth giving her a small taste of what might follow.

“Your pleasure?” he repeated.

She shivered against him in a satisfying way. “Quite. And the next time?”

“Oh, we’ll think of something, I’m sure. We could do some very…indecent acts of an advanced nature.” His fingers crept into her shift and closed over her hard nipple.  He pinched, not intending to hurt her, but not too gently. “Do you have any preferences, Miss Onslowe?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“I trust you’re prepared this time, Miss Onslowe?”

“Yes. Mr. Pendale.”

He liked the thought of her, shift raised, one slim hand reaching between her legs, inserting a sponge for his pleasure. He’d watch her do it when she was less shy with him.

“Good. I intend to come inside you. Several times.”

When she stood, and he stood too, drops of water falling against her shift, dampening it against her, she thought her legs might collapse with pleasure and nervousness. His erection pushed blatantly against her, his hand was still at her breast, and she wanted to touch him everywhere, barely knowing where to start. She reached her hands behind him and touched his back, the wet cool skin.

“You’re wet,” she gasped idiotically.

“Am I?” He nipped at her ear. “Probably not as wet as you are for me.”

Oh, God, he’s crude. Wonderfully crude.
He stepped from the tub in a shower of tepid drops, so he stood behind her.

“Part your legs for me, darling. Pull your shift up.”

“What about my pleasure?” As his cock bumped against her naked buttocks, she was afraid he’d take her there and then, when she wanted his delicious teasing to continue.

“Hold your shift up. That’s right. Now watch.” His hand, dark and square against her belly slid between her thighs, parting her, touching her exactly where she yearned to be touched. His other hand pinched and stroked her nipple. He murmured that he wanted to frig her all the time when he wasn’t fucking her; he wanted her to come and come; he wanted her lovely quim squeezing his cock; he wanted her wet and soaking him, milking the honey from his ballocks—crude, shocking things in his beautiful, resonant voice, words that made her pant and moan with excitement.

Then he stopped as her thighs tensed for her orgasm.

“But, first, we’ll take off this shift.” He stripped it from her and turned her around to face him, cupping her breasts in his hands. “You’re a pretty woman, Miss Clarissa Onslowe. And I’ll do all of that for sure to you. But first…”

His cock reared dark and hard against her belly. She stroked one finger down its length and smiled as it jumped, a drop of fluid stretching and dripping onto her hand.

He caught her wrist to stop her. “Later.” His voice was rough, and she realized then his excitement matched hers. “Sit down. On my box, I think.”

She sat.

“Open your legs for me.”

“What—”

He knelt before her, put a hand on each knee and pushed her thighs wide apart, quite firmly, as though not brooking any argument. Her secret parts were exposed, vulnerable to his gaze—he was looking between her legs, at her cunny. She was wet and swollen, embarrassed, vulnerable, excited.

He raised his gaze to her. “You want to come, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper.

“Oh, you’ll come, Clarissa.” He stroked one finger slowly, too slowly, down the ridge of her clitoris—she shook with pleasure—down between her swollen labia, pushing just inside her for one moment, and then back up, circling. “I’m told women like this way the best.”

Before she could protest he dipped his mouth to where his fingers played and replaced them with his tongue. She’d heard maids at Thelling’s whisper of it,
tipping the velvet,
giggling to each other that it was the best thing a man could do, although they thought so highly of their cocks … and, oh, yes, what a strange and wonderful thing it was. Who would have thought a tongue— tempting and wicked in her mouth—could be used so, and his lips, and even a hint of his teeth. His hands stroked up her sides, closed on her breasts and pulled her nipples hard, and she gripped the edge of the box tightly, torn between wanting to watch what he did and flinging herself back to enjoy his touch. She caressed his head, the springing curl of his black hair, pushed against him—
yes, Allen, please
—then grabbed with both hands to steady a world flying apart. Coming, oh, not nearly enough of a word for what happened, for the glorious tumult of spiral, rolling, boiling over-ness—she laughed, still gripping his head, and repeated his name.
Allen. Allen. Allen.

She slumped forward, her head on his shoulder, gasping for breath and still laughing. He’d never before had a woman who laughed when she came, and he wondered whether he should be insulted. But, no, it was a splendid thing in its own way; he certainly preferred it to women who wept. At least this way he could be certain she’d enjoyed herself.

“Thank you,” she said, which made him laugh too.

“My pleasure. No, your pleasure. Our pleasure.” He touched a finger to her open quim, wet with his saliva and her own excitement, stroked and watched her face. “Shall I do it again?”

“Oh.” She looked quite thrilled, like a child at a fair being offered a second gingerbread man. Then she glanced at his erection and giggled.

“And what is so funny?” He tried to sound appropriately outraged.

“It’s—would you like to—to fuck me?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and this extraordinary woman who had avidly watched him finger and tongue her cunt and play with her breasts actually blushed. “I thought you might be uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable with lust for you? That’s one way to put it.” He grabbed her legs, locking them around his arse, his cock bumping up against her. “How do you like to do it best?”

“Best?” she echoed him.

He glanced around at their surroundings. If he took her on a berth he’d get splinters in his arse, and there’d be nowhere for his knees and…he wanted a big feather bed with bedposts to tie her to, and big and soft enough to spread her out and fuck her and fuck her…somehow the fucking part would happen here, but he wasn’t sure how.

He stood and opened the door, shoved the tub and bucket outside, and grabbed the quilt from Mrs. Blight’s bed. “Come here.” He tossed the quilt to the floor and pulled her down with him. “Tell me how you like it,” he repeated.

She looked confused.

What the devil had her lover been about?

“You know, on top, on your side, standing up, sitting, from behind…let’s try a few positions and you can tell me what works best.” He positioned her on her back, spread her legs and thrust forward, making, to his great embarrassment, a small whimpering sound as he entered her.

He wanted to come. Oh, Christ, he wanted to come.

“Well, this is quite pleasant,” she said in a voice of cheerful determination that made him laugh again.

“If I were a more sensitive soul I might slink away and kill myself. ‘Quite pleasant,’ indeed.”

“I beg your pardon. Ecstatic, wondrous, like me to make me swoon?” She frowned. “I did it this way before.”

He sighed in mock dismay. “Miss Onslowe, please do not boast of your conquests to me. It is most unseemly. Unless”—he bent to nip her ear and she squirmed beneath him in a most satisfactory manner—“unless you seek to arouse me unbearably by recounting an experience of absolute filth.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t find it particularly arousing then.”

“No need for apologies. Let’s try this.” He turned onto his back, hoisting her on top of him, admiring the neat drop of her breasts into his hands.

She looked at him, confused, aroused.

“Move, darling,” he said, thrusting upward.

“Like this?” She rose, slid, sank. And again.

“Oh, yes.” He gripped her hips, his balls and buttocks tightening. “Clarissa, I won’t last like this. Let’s try another way.”

“Mmm,” she said, swiveling her hips in a most distracting way. “Oh. Oh, I like this. I can rub myself against you.”

He gritted his teeth. “We’ll come back to this later, I promise.”

“Promise?” She raised his hands to her breasts.

“Yes.” With a heroic effort he unbalanced her, tipping her off. “On your hands and knees, if you please.”

She hesitated.

“You’ll like it,” he said.

“It’s most vulgar,” she said, presenting her backside to him. “Why do you want to look at my arse?”

“Because,” he said, guiding himself in, entranced by the sight of his cock disappearing into her quim, “your arse is ‘ecstatic, wondrous, like to make me swoon’.”

She made a snorting sound of disbelief and rocked back against him.

“Also, I can do this.” He slapped one creamy buttock.

“Ow! Don’t!”

“Or this.” He reached his hand round, seeking her clitoris, and found it swollen and hard. She was closer than he thought, or possibly than she knew herself. She moaned, moved with him, sighed. He moved his hand to her breast, so he could watch the wet slide of his cock, the tense and sway of her buttocks.

“Allen?”

“Yes, my love?”

“May I go on top again?”

He groaned. “In a moment.”

“Please.”

He’d promised to pleasure her, and so he would. Allen Pendale kept his word, so even though he thought it would kill him, he withdrew one more time and flung himself on his back.

Damn her, the coquette took her time mounting him, rubbing shamelessly against his cock and leaning to kiss him—which he quite enjoyed, or would have enjoyed more, if he had not been so eager to rush to the finish. She wriggled around, fine-tuning her position on him, while he tensed and moaned beneath her.

“Do you like this?” She pinched his nipples with her fingers.

“I—I don’t know. Maybe.” He thrust into her, impatient now.

“Stop!” Her face had an expression of intense concentration. She moved slowly, finding a rhythm to her liking, and he prayed he could hold out for her. He sought frantically in his mind for distraction: Latin declensions thrashed into him at school—no, too much effort; the Catechism—forgotten, and surely he would rot in hell—while she drove him on and on…Kings of England and their dates, William the Conqueror, 1066 to 1087; William Rufus, 1087 to 1100, killed in the New Forest hunting; poor bastard, Stephen, no Henry, can’t remember; yes, Henry I, 1100 to…

“Allen, can you feel that, can you…” She clenched on him hard, her face alight with wonder, and he let go, soaring to the heavens.

Ecstatic, wondrous, like to make him swoon. Precisely.

Afterward he held her, stroked her, and told her how beautiful she was. She didn’t quite believe him—it sounded far too much like the sort of idiotic things a well-pleased man might say, and she knew she wasn’t beautiful in any conventional sense. Once, in the only comparable circumstances she had experienced, another man had told her he loved her passionately and would never leave her—which he did the next day, abandoning her to the wrath of both an innkeeper demanding payment and her scandalized and tearful family. But she wouldn’t think of her past folly now, not with Allen Pendale warm and large and very much present.

She sat, untangling herself from his arms.

“What are you doing? More, already?”

“I want to look at you.”

She knelt beside him, skimming her hands over his body—too muscular and broad to truly be called beautiful, and densely furred on chest and groin—legs and arms covered with a fuzz of black hair. His cock stirred as she ran her hands down his chest and onto his flanks.

“You insatiable slut,” he said, the affection in his voice taking the insult from his words.

“You are so very dark and hairy,” she commented.

He grunted. “My mother used to call me her little changeling.”

“That wasn’t very kind.”

“You saw the miniature of my sister. My brothers and sisters are, for the most part, tall and slender and very fair, like our father.” He stopped quite suddenly, and she wondered what he had been about to say next. Did he suspect he had been fathered by a man other than the Earl of Frensham?