In the Flesh (18 page)

And then, even as she rode the crisis, he tested her further. His fingers slid from her body, and in the blink of an eye, the
godemiche
replaced them, mutely requesting entrance. Poised to penetrate it felt cool now, having no life of its own, and hard, so unlike the resilient quality of the skin and muscle and tendons that constituted a human finger.

But what it shared with a living man, within a certain approximation, was its size.

“Relax,” he murmured again, kissing, stroking with his free hand, gently encouraging with what seemed like the sheer power of his will. “Relax, dear one, relax. All will be well.”

Beatrice fell back, bewitched by the low, sweet huskiness of his voice. Her flesh felt mellow and loose, still glowing with pleasure, but the ivory phallus was an unyielding, inanimate object against her. She understood the reasoning of employing it thus. It had no rampant lust-crazed male driving it…but still, she wished it was Ritchie’s cock, not a faux one.

“Soon…don’t worry…soon,” he crooned, astounding again her with the strange way she seemed to be able to read her. “This way is better…I promise. You’ll enjoy me more, when the time comes, for accommodating our friend here.” He pushed more purposefully with the
godemiche,
edging the very tip of its carved shape just inside her.

“If you say so, Ritchie. If you say so.”

“Trust me.”

Should she? Could she? After Eustace Lloyd, she should never ever have trusted a man again, but somehow she knew that if she wanted Ritchie to stop right now, he would do so. And not even be angry with her. And it was because he
would
stop that she didn’t want him to.

As he pushed, Beatrice suddenly experienced a yielding of her flesh, a sense of give that wasn’t really painful but quite distinct. It lasted barely an instant then the phallus slid in with a measured glide. A gasp escaped her lips, and a tear slid from the corner of her eye, but not from pain, or even relief. No, the emotion seemed jumbled and new, past understanding. She could only slide her arms around Ritchie and hold him close, as touched and moved as if it had been him inside her.

“Good girl…good girl,” he purred, his voice velvet as he murmured more nonsense encouragements in her ear. Slowly, he withdrew the
godemiche,
then slid it in again, repeating in a soft, easy rhythm, each stroke feeling more familiar than the last.

So this is what it feels like to be fucked?

It wasn’t quite what she’d expected, but then, she wasn’t sure what she
had
expected. This delightful friction seemed to work upon her like a magical mechanism, building up exquisite tension. Would a real man inside feel this way, too? She supposed so, but Ritchie’s cock would be warm, and hard in a more pliable way. Feeling the rhythmic stroke of the faux phallus, she longed for the coming hour when it would be him.

“How does it feel? Do you like it?”

Beatrice opened her eyes to see Ritchie watching her face, monitoring her like some magical doctor of love with his patient. She blushed, knowing her pleasure must be written large across her features.

“It…it feels most particular, and really quite pleasant.” She bore down on the thing, trying to quantify with a part of herself that had never quantified anything before. She groaned and moved her thighs, gripping the thing with interior muscles. The deliciousness mounted and tension gathered in her belly.

“Touch yourself, Bea…while I fuck you with it.”

Of course, that was it…the perfect thing. Her fingers were moving toward her center before he said it.

Oh, how luscious. How delightful.

The
godemiche.
Her own hand. Ritchie still kissing her, his free arm sliding around her and clasping her to him. As her fingertip circled, pleasure crested again in a yet bigger wave.

Beatrice cried out and surrendered, perfectly happy, her body rippling and flexing around ivory.

* * *

“
YOU’RE NOT GOING
, are you? I thought…well, I thought we might…um…perhaps, do it? Or I might at least see your masculine appendage.”

When Beatrice returned from the bathroom, the sight of Ritchie donning his coat, with his necktie already perfectly restored and his boots firmly laced, was like a body blow. She’d been sure that their delightful interlude with the
godemiche
was just an appetizer.

Ritchie stared at her, his face a picture, and Beatrice almost laughed despite her disappointment. She was beginning to enjoy shocking him.

“Sweet Beatrice, I would love to stay,” he said, his voice a mixture of amusement and regret. “More than anything. But I have business to attend to, and they are matters rather pressing.” Smoothing his lapels, he came toward her and when he reached her, he cupped her face between his hands. They felt as warm and gentle as when he’d been handling her body. “I’ll make it up to you, dearest, mark my words.” His finely marked sandy eyebrows quirked. “And I promise you an entirely free hand with my masculine appendage next time we meet. He will be at your service, in any capacity you require.”

“I should think so!” Beatrice had to laugh this time. He was absurd, but strangely loveable for all that. The most peculiar man she’d ever met, and yet somehow, she could no longer imagine giving her virginity to any other. Even dearest Tommy was becoming fainter and fainter in her imagination, like a beautiful image finally faded by the sun.

And by the brilliant radiance of Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie’s sensuality.

“Do you forgive me though?” he demanded, pressing a kiss first to her brow, and then to her lips, touching delicately as if he feared a loss of control. “I’m sure you must think me the most perverse of men.”

“I do. I do indeed, Ritchie,” she responded, her mouth barely a whisper away from his, “but I think I’m rapidly developing a taste for all things perverse. Which is convenient for the pair of us, wouldn’t you say?”

Ritchie stared at her, his eyes serious. Once again, she got the impression that she’d exceeded some kind of expectation he’d formed of her.

She’d exceeded her own expectations, too. Her plan had been to dispatch her obligation to him and, at the same time, take some pleasure in him, and learn the ways of men—before returning to a quiet, unremarkable life away from society.

But now, the plan and her expectations were changing by the moment. And the prospect of a future pounding out letters on a typewriting machine did not seem as satisfactory as it had once done.

“We’ll do very well together, you and I, Bea,” said Ritchie at length, smoothing his fingers over the finely patterned satin of his waistcoat. “I shall be occupied for the rest of this day with matters arising from my trip up North, but I promise you that tomorrow we will spend time getting to know each other.” His long, sooty lashes, so thrillingly dark in one so fair, swept down in pure provocation. “And I’ll introduce you to those parts of me you so fervently desire to explore.”

Impetuously, Beatrice reached down and cupped the part in which she was chiefly interested. His cock was hard in the fine dark worsted of his trousers, and when she squeezed him, he let out a laughing oath.

“Beatrice. Beatrice. Beatrice. You plague me.” His hips jerked forward as if they had a mind of their own and were intent on forcing his cock into her fingers. “If it weren’t for the fact I’d wired several important investment brokers to meet me at my club, I’d gladly stay here and let you play with my cock to your heart’s content.” The beast stirred, hot and hard within his clothing. “But alas, the appointment is made now and it would be injudicious to let them down.”

She was disappointed, but she was also worldly now, and felt strangely philosophical. Giving him a last, light caress and a kiss on the cheek, she drew back with a smile on her face as she adjusted the sash on her new Oriental robe. “Yes, a gentleman with your extravagant tastes must ensure that his business prospers enough to sustain them.” Dropping him a wink, she wound the strip of satin around her fingers. “And you and I
will
have a lovely time together tomorrow. I insist on it.”

“You can wager your life on that, Lady Yum-Yum, I assure you.” He looked her up and down, the kimono clearly meeting with his approval. Beatrice wondered if he’d ever attended
The Mikado.
Unlikely though it was, with such a long run, perhaps he’d been in a box that night with some society beauty, while she’d been in the stalls with Charlie and her parents. If the performance hadn’t been quite so wonderful, she might even have looked up and seen him. “Now, you take a rest, frisky miss, then you and Sofia can enjoy a long, intent dissection of my many quirks and foibles.”

“Your
very
many foibles,” averred Beatrice, arching her eyebrows at him.

“Indeed.” He was brisk now, already drawing away from her if not yet physically gone. “I’ll send a carriage around to South Mulberry Street for you tomorrow at seven. We’ll take an early supper at a place I know. Very quiet and discreet, but I think you’ll find it diverting.”

The desire to grab him, rip open the silken robe and press her body against his was so intense that Beatrice could almost taste it. But instead, she reached up, stroked his face and bestowed a light kiss on his lips.

“That will be wonderful. I look forward to being diverted, Ritchie,” she murmured, stiff with the tension of not demanding more. “It’s something at which you excel.”

“As do you, Beatrice. As do you.” Ritchie’s voice was a growl, and his kiss almost savage though it was only a moment before he put her from him, turned on his heel and strode to the door. Once there, he turned for a last look at her, his face fierce yet so tender her heart turned over.

And then he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet thud that seemed to reverberate like a thunderclap.

The pretty room, so filled with things, felt suddenly empty.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Not so Secret Secret

“AND YOU’RE QUITE CERTAIN
this woman is Edmund Ritchie’s wife?” demanded Eustace Lloyd of the rather disreputable character who sat across from him in the Ten Stars pub in Clerkenwell. Len was an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a friend, and Eustace had been put on to him because he was a known winkler-out of the kind of personal information that figures in public life almost invariably didn’t want winkled out.

“That’s correct, guv. She’s his missus all right, and they don’t make much of a secret of it.”

“I see.” Eustace took a sip of his ale and grimaced. It wasn’t what he was used to, but one had to blend in when one met in places like this. “And how did you find out all this?”

“They’s having some renovations done to the place, and I managed to get myself on the work crew for a day or two…then struck up a conversation with one of the maids. Like you do.”

Renovations?

Eustace frowned. When he’d heard idle talk in a less salubrious gaming club than he normally frequented, he’d assumed that if Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie
did
have an insane wife, she’d be locked away in some horrible Bedlam, as many such creatures conveniently were. But an establishment that was well maintained didn’t suggested that.

“What are the conditions? I take it the place is an asylum.”

Len paused to take a long swallow of his own ale, then signaled to the barmaid for another. “Well, suh, if Willow Lodge is an asylum, I wouldn’t mind being a loony myself. It’s a cushy number, it is. Good grub, comfy rooms, and the staff on instant dismissal if they don’t treat the inmates soft and sweet. It’s more like a private rest cure for the nobs than a madhouse.”

This wasn’t what Eustace wanted to hear. What prospects for blackmail were there if Ritchie’s wife were being well cared for in comfortable surroundings? Good God, the accursed man was more likely to garner sympathy than censure.

But perhaps not…

“And Mrs. Ritchie? What of her, what is her condition? Sometimes these wives are shut away simply due to some disagreement with their spouses, cruelly incarcerated when in fact they’re quite sane. I suspect that’s the case in this instance?”

Len accepted his new pint of beer, laughing and winking at the barmaid in the process. Eustace wished that the man would get on with it. He disliked this place intensely, with its smells of body odor and cheap gin, and tobacco smoke one could cut with a knife almost.

“Oh no, Mr. Lloyd, she’s a bedlamite all right. Quite demented, so my friend Maisie says. Has to be restrained, does Ritchie’s missus, although they gets nice padded straps, with sheepskin, I believe. She’s quiet on the laudanum, as a rule, but they have to give her it by the bucketful to stop her ravings…and keep any knives and other sharp stuff well out of her reach.” Len drank deep. “Oh, and lucifers too…she likes to set fires. Mostly after she’s had a visit from her dear hubby. That seems to set her off.”

Eustace leaned forward, even though Len didn’t smell a lot better than his surroundings. “So it’s Ritchie’s cruelty that’s driven her to this condition?”

“I wouldn’t say that… Maisie says Miz Margarita speaks most fondly of the fellow when she’s having her good days. It’s just when she’s having her bad turns she raves about all men and their lewd and filthy ways.”

Curious, very curious. Clearly there wasn’t much hush money to be had from Ritchie in respect of his wife’s treatment.

But knowledge of an insane spouse who wanted to kill Ritchie for his “filthy ways” might just be the lever that would pry Beatrice away from the bastard, at least, and lure her back into his arms—and his studio—in gratitude.

Still, though, the reason for Margarita Ritchie’s incarceration piqued him.

“So, he locked away his wife because she lost her wits,” he prompted, taking a tiny sip of his unappetizing beer. “As simple as that?”

“Ooh, no, guv…not just that.”

“Then what?”

“She got locked up because she murdered his kiddy from his first marriage, they say…did the little lad in by smothering him in his cot, poor mite.” Len shuddered, then quaffed down more ale, as if calming his nerves. “Then she went after Ritchie with a letter knife and tried to burn his house down!”