Tight Laced (9 page)

“Write your name there.”

He obeyed.

“Now,” she whispered, “taste me.”

Eagerly, he burrowed his head between her thighs and began to work this tongue amidst her folds. Instantly a rush of pleasure spread from her centre, out to her limbs, and she clenched his face between her legs.

“Oh, Lacy,” he muttered from the small tangle of hair on her mound.

“Am I sweet?”

“As fresh as honey.”

“Circle your tongue there. Faster. Harder.”

He did so, and the friction caused a bolt of lust to snatch her up in its grasp.

“I am a virgin,” she managed. “I wish to remain so.”

His tongue ceased and he groaned around words that breathlessly labored from the place between her legs. “And so you shall.”

He lapped the juices from her valley and deposited kisses all around her pulsing center.

“Pinch my nipples,” she demanded, and when he did, a bolt of desire pierced her.

Lacy was near to boiling over. “I want us to reach the heavens at the same time,” she said.

“I only need your touch, My Good Lady,” Darlington answered.

She reached her hand around his thickened cock, squeezing it tightly at its base, her hand, as constricting as a vice.

They pressed their lips together, their sex-covered tongues combining hungrily. He worked his fingers through her patch, against her swollen nub. His shaft thrust against her thigh, and her channel tightened before the sudden squirt of pleasure overtook her.

She came as she felt his sac spasm, and a burst of hot liquid rode her hipbone, her thigh, the outer lips of her cunt.

She wasn’t sure if she’d called out when she came, but if she had matched the sound inside her head the impish innkeeper must, at this point, be thinking that another heir would be presented nine months hence.

Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor coveters, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God
.

~ Corinthians I, Ch. 6, vv. 9-10

W
AKING UP NEXT
to a woman – a sham wife, no less – was something entirely foreign to Darlington. His dalliances were strictly about carnal release. Never had he invited a girl to lie on his arm after satisfying himself.

He’d awoken before she. The early sunlight boldly splashing them despite the filthy window glass. When his eyes settled upon her sleeping face, he thought he might still be slumbering. Dreaming of angels and the great beyond. Her arched brows softly framing her closed eyes. Lashes curled up at the end like fronds.

She lay on her side, her cheek over prayer-positioned hands. He longed to caress her face, but worried he might awaken – and thus scare – her.

It did not surprise him that she failed to wake early, for they’d been up most of the night, their unquenchable rapture needing satisfaction again and again. His face heated at the memory of it all, and he chanced to peek below the blanket in order to confirm his member still existed and hadn’t been sucked off of his person.

For a virgin, he could not believe how expertly she’d taken him. The carnal knowledge practiced only by the most accomplished courtesans.

The thought of it stirred him yet again. His cock would now truly have a mind of its own. How was he to attend to the sober parts of his day? The disaster of the mine?

And then he remembered his promise to Lady Bloomsbury, and his manhood retracted itself like a sword to its sheath.

“Duke,” came a soft voice from the pillow benext to him.

“My love?”

“We must leave here in short order, yes?”

“I wish it weren’t so.”

She propped herself up on an elbow, her hair mussed, one of her breasts audaciously uncovered. “You mustn’t tarry over our exploration. Only know that you have left me fully satisfied. And, perhaps more importantly, intact.”

Something about her easy dismissal annoyed him. How could their act be relegated to the scientific? “Exploration? Is that what we’re calling it?”

She sat upright and took his face in her hands. “Delicious exploration. I will forever think of dragons differently.”

He pushed her hands away, and vaulted out of the bed. “You are fortunate, Lacilia. You may go on and explore all you like, whilst I must return to my duties, and, in so-doing, marry a woman I will never love.”

She sighed. “Ah, poor, pitiful Sarah Jane.”

“I hardly would call her poor. Pitiful, perhaps.”

“You will make a good husband, Darlington. And I shall be auntie to an assortment of little dukes and duchesses.”

This inflamed him and he spun round. “I shudder at the thought of filling that half-wit with my heirs.”

“Darlington! That is my sister you speak of!”

He felt like a lout. Why had he uttered such a thing? His thoughts were all in a jumble. His heart, broken. He sat on the bed, his head in hand, and fretted, “If things were different, would you ever consider marriage? To me?”

Her hand lighted upon his shoulder. “I do not see me marrying in the near future. When and if I do, it will indeed be for love. And it will be to a man who is honorable, and, I dare say, hungry. For, as you may have guessed, my appetite for carnal pleasure is quite profound.”

Her touch and her words were too much. Darlington rose, yanked on his breeches, buttoned his shirt and strode quickly toward the bedroom door. Without looking back at her he managed, “Please be quick. My man is most likely having fits as I am so tardy.”

They rode in silence. She, at rein again, and he, scowling beside her.

Her heart did feel for the man. What lay ahead for him was nothing short of dreadful. But she could hardly preoccupy herself with unknotting his debacles when she herself faced quite a mess.

There was no doubt that her stepmother would make life difficult for her upon her return. Perhaps she’d lambaste her, threaten to cut off her inheritance. Could she do that?

She became so lost in thought that she failed to turn up the narrow road to Cockermouth, and the duke had to pull the reins from her hand and redirect the team.

“If you insist on driving, at least do me the courtesy of coaching them properly.”

“My apologies,” she countered. And she meant it. She deplored lack of competence in others, but she held herself to an even higher standard. “Shan’t happen again.”

He hip-checked her and took over the middle, the reins now solidly in hand. “No, it shan’t.”

She deserved as much. Her father had indulged her to a point, but he’d chastised her more than once about her willfulness. “No man will stand for it,” he’d told her.

Up ahead, there stood a blockage of carts and officers, all done up as though off to war.

“Goodness,” Lacy muttered. “What could that be about?”

They came to a halt at the blockade, and a heavily whiskered man wearing a custodian helmet strode up, and lifted his truncheon.

“What is the meaning of this?” asked the duke.

“Duke Darlington Moore?” inquired the bobby.

“Yes?”

“We are here to escort this
fe
male to safety.”

Lacilia was incensed. She climbed down from the carriage and wagged a finger at the peeler. “Safety? Why, that’s absurd. I am perfectly safe, if you please.”

The bobby grasped her arm and affixed an iron shackle to it. “Lacilia Bloomsbury of Highcastle, I am hereby ordered to arrest you under suspicion of illicit activity.”

Darlington squeezed himself between the peeler and Lacy. “This must be a mistake. The lady and I did nothing wrong. She was merely delivering me to my horses here in Cockermouth.”

“Aye, a day later than expected. And where, pray tell, did you spend the night?”

“Are you daft?” Lacy spat. “There was a storm through which neither man nor beast could travel.”

“Beast, is it?” laughed the constable.

Lacy’s wrists were already bearing the stress of the irons. The bobby handled her roughly. “You know what we do about tarts in this town. Don’t matter if you was princely born or not.”

Lacy’s mind raced. How dare this policeman man-handle her. When her father …

Darlington must have read her face – the abrupt remembering of her father – her champion – no longer able to intercede in her behalf. “Unshackle her this instant, or I’ll have your badge!”

Suddenly, there was another voice in the mix. A gravelly woman’s voice. “You’ll do no such thing.”

Lacilia followed the sound, until her gaze fell upon the two women clad in mourning dresses flanking a clergyman. Sarah Jane’s eager grin spread her face. In her tight fist she held a sodden nosegay of lilies of the valley, and her nose was red from sneezing. Small welts dotted her throat.

The last thing Lacy heard as she was pushed into the back of a horse-drawn paddy wagon, was her stepmother commanding Duke Darlington to take her sister’s hand.

Intractable women might become happy wives; young ladies who have gone astray will return calmly to the bosom of the family; and married women formerly averse to sexual duties might immediately find themselves with child.

~ Isaac Baker Brown – a summary of benefits from a clitoridectomy