Martinique (The Acolyte Book 1) (3 page)

I could see the witch lifting her hips from the bed to cleave to him, her belly rising and falling, obviously increasing his pleasure. His breath was heaving. One hand was toying with her clit as well, and she yowled with enjoyment, like a cat caught in the briars. He leaned over, taking one of her breasts in his mouth and tugging on it, as I heard her whisper, "Bite it," and he did as she commanded. The master was not the master at all. She was playing him like an instrument, using his own lust as her weapon, and even I was mature enough to realize it.

After a joining that seemed to go on forever, he threw back his head with a roar of triumph, pumping and twisting even harder, and I was sure it was what I felt beneath the covers at night, except that, rather than soft and achingly sweet, it was violent, primitive. Perhaps it was my father, or perhaps all men, I had no way of knowing. I only knew, with a heavy heart, that I had lost him. Worse, that he had never been mine, and never would be.  I could bear to watch no more. Turning away, I slipped over the railing and into the greenery, walking across the turf, my face wet, flooded with tears.

I don't know how my father sensed my awareness of the situation, although, at that age, I suppose I wasn't particularly subtle. For the first time tension settled between us, and I spent as much time as possible out of the house, and even more time with the Ducasses, knowing it would anger him if he heard of it.

It was a heavy tension but a silent one, though it was bound to erupt at last. And it did, one day in the kitchens, as I was pressing one of his shirts, a task that now left me petulant. My father entered the room, to ask the cook about dinner, and glanced aside, seeing a coil of smoke rising from the cradle of the iron.

With no real censure, he said, "Careful, Létice. You're going to burn that."

It wasn't his fault. He couldn't possibly have known, couldn't have understood, that he had struck to my very heart, like one tiny spark to an island distillery, turning sugar to an explosive inferno that could rage for days with volcanic fury.

I lifted my face and stared at him only a moment, before I flung his shirt to the floor, shouting, "Then why don't you have Solange do it for you? If she can learn how! All she does is sit on her ass anyway!"

I think, in that moment, he was so stunned that discipline and anger had been driven from his mind. But just as his face darkened, I turned and ran from him, upstairs to my bedroom. I locked myself in the rest of the night, refusing dinner, even refusing Nana admittance. Consumed with rage and grief, I had no subtle instinct of warning in the laden silence, and no idea the calamity about to befall me.

Two sullen weeks later, the axe descended, at breakfast.

"In one month's time your uncle will be arriving in Fort-Royal to load my first shipment of coffee. You will accompany him, back to France. I've written to l'Acadamie des Femmes at Saint Geneviève. It's the finest Catholic girls' schools in France. They had already said they would welcome you at any time. You will finish your education there. You're becoming a young woman. It's far past time for you to see something of the proper world." Softening but little, he added, "It's for the best."

I had been dismissed. Like a servant who hadn't been satisfactory. The shock and pain of it was something that, even now, I truly cannot bear to dwell on.

I had no idea why, in my bitterness, I was determined I would not leave my island home a virgin. I believe I was trying to punish him. If he had no desire for my maidenhead, I would offer it up elsewhere, to someone who cared enough to take it.

I began plotting that very night, to ease the rage that was holding sleep from me. I knew from Nana's wisdom that I would suffer no swollen belly from it. I'd seen her brew up the concoction myself. It gifted me with even more courage.

In mapping out my first attempt at seduction, I found myself hoping that what Nana had said so often was true, that men of every color had one thing in common, this being they would take almost anything that was freely offered. I felt sure I wasn't ugly, but beyond that wasn't certain if I were pretty, or worse, desirable. There was nothing exceptional in my appearance that I could see, nothing alluring, like Solange Doumier.

The most famed beauty on earth, the incomparable empress, Josephine, was a woman of Martinique, but this was small comfort. Unlike her, my coloring was typical of the north of France, of Normandy, my mother's ancestral home. My skin was fair, and though Nana mixed a salve to keep it so, there was still a tint of the sun in it. My hair was honeyed, but not blonde enough to suit my desire for the golden curls of a Madame Tallien, my eyes blue, but not sparkling with enticement like Madame Récamier. These were among the great French beauties whose lithographs had been cut from the newspaper and kept in my bureau drawer. I longed to possess at the least, if not beauty, the sensuous air of the great courtesans, a thing it was said was even more important. The incessant taunts and hoots of the boys my own age meant nothing, since they would hoot and taunt anything that had a hole between its legs.

As the days passed, my banishment looming, candidate after candidate passed through my mind and was discarded. A few men among my father's friends were attractive enough, but I felt certain they would be constrained by their friendship for him. Their sons were far less temperate, and the libertinage of some was nearly legend, leaving me with a sense of danger for myself, in their drunken loutishness. I even thought of Solange's brother, César, a desirable man, and there would be such poetic justice in it. Yet this I recoiled from, not for my sake, but his. If it were ever to reach the ears of anyone else on the island, it could endanger his work, and make him anathema to the planters, among whom he was slowly and carefully building alliances. He would have taken the white daughter of one of the
grands blancs
, and would never again be trusted. Even if I could make him want me, I wouldn't see him destroyed by my selfish desire to have vengeance on his sister.

As fate would have it, my choice of a ravisher in the end was one of opportunity rather than strategy. Eugène Ducasse was my own age, and for two years his taunts and hoots had been the loudest of all, while he seized every chance to reach inside my bodice or lift my skirts. His importuning was, in fact, annoyingly incessant, despite his being a handsome young man, with chestnut curls and a winning smile.

The opportunity arrived without planning or thought, and I knew I had to take it, for I was leaving very soon. The sun had yet to set, and there were at least a dozen of us swimming that Saturday. Deliberately I headed off alone, and when I swam around the nearby cay, to my delight, he followed.

Nana had once joked that every man had a favored part of a woman's body, and I knew Eugène had never left his Mama's teat behind, forever trying to get his hand around one of mine. As we swam past the sandbar and closer to shore, I dove underwater and loosed the coiled tie of my madras, my movements unseen. Eugène had swum underneath me, and sure enough, tried to grope one of my breasts when he came up the other side, while I spun out of his reach. But still leading him slowly toward the shore, and the darkened, quiet cove.

As the others faded away, far from us, we circled one another in the water. He wore only a pair of tattered breeches cut at the knee. The boys swam naked when they were alone, but donned such as this when the girls were with them. I brushed my shoulder lightly over his bare chest, and the contact drew him even nearer, until he put his arms around me as I floated, growing serious.

"Let me, Létice. Please, let me, just once. That's all.  Just once."

For the first time, I didn't extend my usual ridicule or irritated retort. Instead, I pushed myself from him, but not far. I freed myself in one easy movement from the loosened madras, letting it drift to shore on the waves. Then I floated again, arching my back so my bare nipples broke the surface.

Eugène was awestruck, gazing at them for some time. When he reached out I pulled away, but once again, not far. As if feebleminded, he repeated his words.

"Let me, Létice. Please. I know you'll love it. I hear the women in my father's room at night. They yell like dogs in heat."

"How romantic."

Dropping his voice, he tried another tack.

"I'll give you anything you want. Anything."

These words brought an unpleasant catch to my heart. My father's words to his witch.

I snapped, "I don't want anything, Eugène." Softening, I deliberately pressed my hand over the front of his breeches, once. "Then again, maybe I do want something. I haven't decided yet." Teasingly, I repeated, "But maybe I do," with what I hoped was a provocative smile.

His face was dazed, wondering if I had found a new and much crueler way to reject him.

"What do you mean, Létice?"

"I mean that soon I'll be eighteen, and my father is going to lock me up in a nunnery for the next two years. I mean that I'm a woman, and I want to find out what all the fuss is about." I turned my head again, still floating, my breasts still the object of his enraptured stare. I raised them even higher. "Can you show me what it feels like? Or are you still a little boy, and all talk."

His face grew flushed, his hand reaching out and closing over one again. He squeezed it, too hard.

"Just let me, and I'll show you I'm not a boy anymore. You'll be a woman then."

"How do I know that? How do I know you've even done this?"

"Of course I've done it!" he fired back, in a way that told me nothing of the kind was probably the case. It surprised me, for I'd thought that surely, at the least, he'd taken advantage of the quarters, with his father's shining example of morality before him. Perhaps he'd been forbidden it for some reason, by his father's whim, or more likely possessive jealousy over his private hunting ground.

"Well, I suppose you'll have to prove that, won't you?"

My own father called me his little fish, for I'd taken to water before I could walk, and could out-swim just about anyone on the island. I'd even gone far enough out to play with the dolphins and the harmless cat sharks and sea turtles that we sometimes captured to make into so many delicacies. Leading Eugène where I wanted him to go was child's play. I tightened my legs like a mermaid and flipped about, speeding away from him, and as I'd hoped, he followed.

Though I took a circuitous route, I was heading for the high rocks of the cove, with the twisted hallways and secret alcoves within, darkened chambers like a phantasmal manor of stone with a sand floor. Purposely I came out of the sea naked in the full light of sunset, the waves surging around my legs. I walked slowly toward my wrap, my head up, rather than crouching and running for it. Then I draped it around me, wet and clinging. His open-mouthed stare was quite satisfying.

He charged out of the water, fighting it rather than letting it carry him as I had. With no word, no preamble, he grabbed me, yanking me toward him. I stumbled in the sand, but he still pulled me against him, his hands everywhere.

"Let me kiss you, Létice! Please, let me."

I began to wonder if he knew any other imperative verbs. How strange it was, even then, when I had no understanding of the sort of man I wanted. For I'd already offered myself to him in the most brazen way possible, after two years of his relentless pleading and teasing. I'd already made it clear the prize was his. And yet he found it necessary to go on cajoling and whining, in a way that began to cause me distaste.

Still, I let him lead me to the cove, where in the dusk that was falling, within one of the maze-like passages, we would be seen by no one.

Eagerly he stripped off his breeches, and propelled me to the ground in a fashion that was just short of being pushed. I did glimpse his erection, hardly impressive compared to my father's, but then again, I thought, perhaps all for the best, this being my first time. Before I could say anything he was on top of me. He began to kiss me, grinding his mouth against mine, while I waited for him to calm himself a little, praying it would be better then.

My wrap was still between us, covered in sand and water, and he dragged it away, until I felt only his body over mine. It was the first time anyone's nakedness had ever met my own, and I couldn't help but be excited by it, as he went on kissing me, which was not so pleasant. It surprised me that, being a Frenchman, his kiss was so awkward, and though he tried to put his tongue in my mouth, in truth what he managed far better was to slobber all over me. His lips were terribly chapped, and this, too, made the sensation less than agreeable.

In the end it didn't matter, for he grew bored with my mouth fairly quickly, falling instead on my breasts, as I'd fully expected, licking and sucking and squeezing. This, too, excited me a little, but only a little, and I felt the slickness rising from inside me, far thicker than the beads of water between my legs. I'd seen the expert way my father had lowered himself over his witch, touching her with driving passion, but with a certain expert skill. Compared to it, Eugène seemed like a greedy child, trying to stuff as much flesh in his hands and mouth as he could.

Soon, far too soon, he was foraging between my legs, even though I wasn't ready for it. Still, each time he brushed over the crown I drew in an excited breath that he didn't seem to hear. I actually lifted my hips, trying to call his hand back to the place that gave me such pleasure. Instead he was rooting, like a pig in truffles, everywhere but the place I was begging without words for him to touch.

Breathless, he croaked, "Let me
now
, Létice," as he continued his quest. There was a rage growing inside me then, an ugly aversion. Remembering what Solange had said to my father, I suppose I thought I might touch some chord of manhood within him by demanding, "Then do it, Eugène! Fuck me!"

My incendiary words startled him. I heard his indrawn, feverish breath, and he did, indeed, race to obey, increasing his speed, but not his skill. Instead, my words so overheated him that he seemed to grow even clumsier, and more determined, his eager fingers groping me in spasms. But when I opened my legs farther, it must have stretched the passage wide enough for him to find it at last. With a little cry of victory he shoved himself inside me, and to my shock I nearly screamed, the sound only muted by the fact that I choked, as well. I'd known it would hurt. But after all Nana had said about the natural inevitability of it, I hadn't expected that much pain, especially considering the size of the cod doing the ravishing.

He must have heard me scream, it couldn't have been otherwise, but he behaved as if he hadn't, pumping away madly once he'd found what he sought, until I thought his eyes might roll back in his head. Unlike my father and his whore, he said no word to me, nor did he look at me, as if too overwhelmed by his own sensations to realize someone was lying beneath him, someone still suffering with every thrust, a thing I made clear as my cries continued in time with his hips, all to no avail.

After a lesser number of strokes than my father had laid on me with the switch, his eyes glazed over, his body stiffening, and I felt the cock inside me begin to throb, until soon a heat spread out in me, one I barely felt through the burning pain. He ground on, slower now but deeper, each stroke accompanied by a contortion that gripped him. At last they eased, and he shuddered, groaning, his eyes closed tight.

With no warning he collapsed on top of me, and I realized it was over.

For a few minutes, as he fought for breath, I wondered if the pleasuring would begin now. I wondered if it had only been such an empty, fumbling anguish the first time. But I realized the truth of the thing when he raised himself on his palms on either side, looking down at me with a broad, satisfied smile, his brown eyes sparkling.

"God, that was incredible. You're wonderful, Létice."

Wonderful. I was wonderful. I'd lain down beneath him on the ground and spread my legs apart. A cow could have done the same. And he called me wonderful, his eyes bright, as if we'd traveled up to paradise together.

With that, I wriggled my way out from beneath him, bent only on escape, snatching up my madras as I ran for the clean, clear water. I heard his voice behind me shouting, "Wait! Aren't we going to do it again?"

Thoughtlessly, and I suppose cruelly, I called back over my shoulder, "Not if I can help it!" before I plunged into the water, diving beneath, going as deep as possible as quickly as I could.  Shame was beginning to settle over me, of a sort I'd never felt before, my first taste of a very adult regret. Swirling underwater, spinning my body like a crocodile, I rubbed with my wrap between my legs, trying to wash away any remnant of him in the depths of the crystalline water.

Time has softened the memory, and yet, one of the most vivid images in my mind came that night, after I'd hidden myself in my room. I washed out my wrap, as I always did, and saw a thin strand of blood on it. It took me an addled moment to realize it was my blood, my virgin blood. A thing I could now never offer a husband. I'd given it away in a childish rage to a pretty and pathetic boy. Rather than hanging it on the line, I hid the madras until it was half-dried, and the next night I burned it. I had two days left at Presque Isle. With any luck, I would never set eyes on Eugène Ducasse again.