Thyme II Thyme (16 page)

We may not have gone clubbing that evening but we did not get the early night I had originally hoped for and it was probably lucky the hotel had thick walls, otherwise there would have been others who didn't get to sleep until late and we may well have found ourselves out on the street before midnight.

I should have guessed what was going to happen when we retreated upstairs after dinner. Lying on my bed was the black rubber corset, stockings, collar, gloves and boots from the night before, all polished and gleaming as they had been when I first saw them.

'My little present to you,' Anne-Marie told me, smiling at the look on my face.

I realised she must have nipped upstairs during the time she had said she needed to pop to the toilet during the meal, and spread everything out for my return. 'They must have cost a small fortune,' I protested.

She patted my hand gently. 'You're worth it and you deserve it,' she said quietly. 'Besides, I just got a small bonus from my trust fund last week so I'm not short of a bob or two at the moment. And I also bought your cute little outfit,' she said, turning to Andrea. 'Your cock looked so sweet in all those straps, I couldn't bear the thought of waiting to see it like that again.'

'Not tonight, surely?' Andrea gasped.

'And why not? I think you should wear it all night and then you can share a bed with the two of us safely.'

'But I thought—'

'Nothing too strenuous,' Anne-Marie waved my protest away airily. 'Just a nice little costume cuddle-up with my two favourite girls.' Which was a bit like believing Hitler if he said he just wanted a little stroll across the border, but Anne-Marie had this way about her that just seemed to convince everyone she was right. Very soon I found myself once more in the role of Teenie the Slave, with a sullen looking Andrea once again strapped and restrained, only this time with a complicated harness holding a gag similar to mine firmly in her mouth.

Anne-Marie herself wore a red rubber cat suit with high-heeled ankle boots and gloves, but it seemed she was not intending to play an active role in the proceedings, at least not just yet. Instead, she unclipped my wrists from either side of my chain belt and pointed to Andrea. 'See if you can make her come,' she instructed. 'Just stroke her balls and what you can see of her cock but don't worry about her nipples. They're falsies, as you know. They may look impressive but she can't feel a thing through them. I tell you, Andrea, we ought to think about getting you real tits; you don't know what you're missing.'

With my hands free again, I suppose I could have removed my gag easily enough and protested that I would rather go to sleep, but the truth is that the sight of Andrea in all her white leather restraints was a huge turn-on for me and I wanted to see just how well I could control her for a change, having twice now been helpless at her hands.

I beckoned for her to come closer and this she did, lowering her eyes. Hesitantly, I extended one arm and carefully cupped her glistening sac in my rubber-gloved hand. I heard a sharp hiss from behind her gag and felt a tremor run down through her body. So far so good, but would she fight against it, or go with it?

I squatted down, wishing I had my tongue free, for that dark purple plum was just asking to be licked. Instead, I managed to work one latex-covered finger in past my gag, wetting it with my saliva. I withdrew it and carefully transferred the spittle to Andrea's cock-head, massaging it around until it gleamed with my wetness. My reward was a further groan from her stuffed mouth and an even greater swelling of the imprisoned shaft. I shuddered myself imagining how painful it must be growing for my poor victim, but I knew I was expected to continue until I had finished what I had started.

Inside me the two dildos suddenly seemed to have grown larger, as if in sympathy with the tethered flesh-and-blood version I was now tormenting. I stroked again, cupping and squeezing with my other hand, and Andrea began to whimper. I hesitated again, looking up in some alarm, but Anne-Marie urged me on.

'She's perfectly okay,' she whispered. 'Just suffering the most delightful torture of all. Take your time and don't rush it. Let her suffer as long as possible. She takes some bringing off, as you know, but all this might be a bit much for her, so go easy and make it last.'

It was a more than surreal situation, one almost helpless slave torturing a completely helpless slave to the very verge of erotic madness, or so it seemed. Andrea's feet began to move, performing a slow dance in time to my stroking and squeezing, yet not once did she make as if to pull away from me. She groaned softly, little mewling sounds like those of a trapped kitten squeezing past her gag. On what I could see of her strapped shaft, the veins bulged a dark blue, the thin leather bands seemingly about to cut through that tender flesh.

'Perhaps you should fuck her now,' Anne-Marie whispered. 'You've both earned it. You take your belt off and I'll loosen her straps. Better I do that in case you pinch her too hard.'

My two dildos slid out as one, dropping onto the carpet between my boots with soft thuds that should have had me cringing with embarrassment, but all I could focus on now was the cock that was being prepared for me. With each strap that was removed it seemed to grow bigger and bigger until only the scrotal strap remained, as had been the case the previous evening.

Anne-Marie turned back to check that I was ready, and then stepped aside. 'She's all yours, Teenie,' she smiled. 'Do your worst.'

Still gagged, I could only gesture or push and this I now did, guiding Andrea back until she was against the bed and then pressing her against it, first to sit and then to lie stretched out on her bound arms, probably a most uncomfortable position, although I could tell she was now past caring about such things. Thanks to the ball strap her cock jutted conveniently upright and I lost no time in drawing myself up, my knees straddling her so I could poise my already soaking quim over it. I lowered myself onto the bulbous head, letting it press against my opening as I rocked back and forth a little, teasing her and making her wait for the moment of ultimate possession. Then suddenly I felt the rounded tip slip inside me as she strove desperately to push up into me. Only for a second did I consider rising up to continue the deprivation before I let myself sink, devouring every inch of her erection in one swift killing dive, crushing my buttocks hard against her outspread thighs and bringing forth a choked scream of sheer ecstasy from behind her gag.

'Fuck her slowly, Teenie,' I heard from behind me. 'Make her wait and draw everything from her. She'd do the same to you and no doubt will before long... that's it, my two sweet little girl slaves. Yes, that's perfect!' I saw the flash and realised dimly that Anne-Marie was now photographing this curious scenario, but I did not care. For one thing, I was unrecognisable in this outfit, and for another more important reason, I could not have stopped now had I wanted to...

And so it was eventually back to Dorset, this time deeper into the county and to the village of Marlin Cross, really no more than a hamlet comprising seven or eight cottages, a garage that looked as if it had been closed for a decade or more and a pub that had been closed for even longer, its faded paintwork and boarded windows witness to a diversion of the former main road that had left it high and dry.

'Not very promising,' Andrea observed, stating the obvious. 'No sign of the Carpenter empire here.'

We had discovered during our final sortie into Somerset House and another visit to the British Museum that Saul Carpenter had almost certainly been born Saul Carpentier, son of a French aristocrat of Jewish descent, the family having fled to England to escape the terror and afterwards changed their name to the English spelling. Beyond that, however, we were no wiser than we had been before.

'Looking at these buildings,' I said as I leaned back against the side of the car and stared up at the crumbling pub facade, 'I'd guess they were probably built after eighteen thirty-nine. The style is mid-Victorian, probably between eighteen sixty and eighteen ninety, although those two end cottages at the bottom of the street are probably a bit older.'

'You do know your history,' Anne-Marie complimented me. 'They all just look old to me.'

'You can tell from the windows,' I explained. 'These are much later, but the two buildings down there may well have been built as early as the mid-eighteenth century. Possibly estate workers cottages; they're about the right size.'

'Except there's no estate left any more,' Andrea observed, 'so what's the point of hanging about here now?'

'There's a larger village about two miles further on,' I said, consulting the AA map, 'Minsley Hampton. It looks more promising. The main road comes back around and goes right through it, so presumably there'll at least be a pub there still.'

'Oh, alcohol!' Andrea sighed. 'And food! Please!'

There
was
a pub with alcohol and a selection of pies and pasties, if little else. There were also several dozen cottages, a couple of larger houses, a post office and a general store manned by two elderly looking females who simply had to be sisters.

'Remember,' I said as we sat in the farthest corner of the bar nursing large vodkas and lemonade, 'we're here researching for a film company that specialises in period dramas for television and my name is Teena Brown, just in case there's a Spigwell or a Thyme connection hereabouts.'

'If I was related to any of these,' Andrea looked down the length of the room to where four very rural types were propping up the far end of the bar, 'I wouldn't like to own up to it. This is the sort of place where they've only just stopped eating their children and a virgin is a girl that can run faster than her brothers!'

'Shut up, you daft bitch!' Anne-Marie hissed. 'We need cooperation here, not you putting people's backs up before we even get going.'

We left Andrea at the table with strict instructions not to move. Two of the men at the bar were already casting covert glances in her direction and not because they suspected her true gender. Again that skirt length of hers was drawing the wrong sort of attention.

We introduced ourselves to the landlord, a cheery enough individual who told us his name was Norman Bartwell, and he became even cheerier when we mentioned our fictitious film company and the possibility of location shooting in the area. You could almost hear the sound of cash registers jingling in his head as he conjured up images of a thirsty film crew and countless extras invading his pub, which would have become large enough to water a small army.

'Great Marlins, you say,' he repeated, scratching his stubbly chin. 'Yes, I've certainly heard of it, though it ain't been around in my time here and I've had this place, and my dad before me, for nigh on fifty years now. There was a Marlin House, of course. The War Office, or someone, used it during the forties, but Jerry must have found out about it and they snuck in and bombed him one night in forty-two... or was it forty-three?'

'And whereabouts was that?' I prompted.

Norman scratched his chin again. 'Well, you'd want to go back down the road about a mile-and-a-half and turn off up Vole Hill Road on the left. Then, about a quarter of a mile up, you'd want to be making a right and then another left near the top of the hill, and then follow the road down until you get to the stream, or what's left of it. You'll see some woods there and the house was behind them, but there's nothing left of it now. They took away the rubble to fill bomb craters on the Brimley aerodrome just before D-Day.'

'Who lived at the house before the army people took it over?' I asked.

'Old feller by the name of Spreadwell, or something like that.'

'Could it have been Spigwell?' My pulse suddenly picked up a gear.

Norman considered this. 'Might've been,' he conceded, 'but then again, might not. It was a long time ago, and I wasn't more'n a young lad. Funny bloke he was, though, bit of a hermit. Hardly ever came into the village.'

'Was there an estate there in his time?' Anne-Marie enquired.

Norman shook his head emphatically. 'No, definitely not, it was all farms across from Meg's Mount to Sprigley Cross, all except for a stretch along by the old river course that was flooded and marshy.'

'Meg's Mount?' Again my heartbeat picked up speed. 'Where's that? I haven't seen it marked on any maps.'

'Oh, bless you, my dear, and neither will you,' Norman laughed, 'not on any official maps, any ways. No, you'll see it on the ordnance maps as Filton Hill, but people hereabouts always calls it Meg's Mount.'

'Do you have any idea why?'

'Well, it's only an old tale, but there was a story that there was once a witch lived hereabouts and she used to sit naked on the big white ridge of rock at the top of the hill whenever there was a full moon. Folks said she used to ride it like it was a stallion.'

'And her name was Meg, was it?' asked Andrea, who despite our threats had now wandered up to the bar in time to catch these last exchanges.

'Well now, young miss,' Norman replied, his eyes twinkling, 'if she'd been called Lizzie, then I reckon the place would've been known as Lizzie's Mount, don't you?'

We all laughed at that, all except Andrea, who had decided it was time for a good sulk. We ordered her another drink and pressed on with our host.

'Who else might know some of the old stories?' I continued our friendly interrogation.