Читать книгу One Wicked Night - Noelle Mack - Страница 6

It began with one night. But what man would stop there? Not I, not then, for I was just twenty and not yet schooled in the infinite variety of pleasure. My sensual education began upon the stroke of twelve during that long-ago encounter. The lady and I loved each other well in that one wicked night. My beautiful tutor was someone I cannot name, wanton in all her ways but necessarily discreet, as she taught me to be.

In six hours with her I learned more than most men learn in six years of vigorous whoring, or during the sort of fashionable affaires de coeur that so seldom involve that most vulnerable of human organs, the heart. She was somewhat older than I and far more experienced, and she taught me well, pleased to have such an eager student who wanted to learn everything at once. My dear love—she was my first love—did her best in the brief time that we had.

Of course, we had known each other, although not intimately, for a while before she acted upon her secret passion, having guessed my feelings for her. Until our first kiss, I had never experienced such ardent tenderness. A decade later, I remember it well.

I am straightforward as a rule, but only the most romantic words serve to describe her, such were her charms. Where to begin? She had eyes the sweet brown of meadow honey, and unruly hair like afternoon sunshine, golden and long. My hand was lost in her tresses when she let her hair down and allowed me to touch her for the first time. But it was her open-hearted nature that captivated me most of all, expressed to perfection by a voice so soft and mellow that…ah, a man never forgets his first love, it is said. If he is given to writing, as I am, she will appear again and again, in many different guises.

She is in this book. But no—I cannot very well bestow the name of Book upon the heap of miscellaneous paper presently upon my desk, at my right hand. A casual look through it reveals pages and pages of my private musings upon my affair with a very different woman: Lady X. There are also rough drafts of erotic tales I wrote to please that insatiable female, penning the finished versions in a little volume of which there is only one copy. And, of course, many amorous missives from me, read attentively and promptly returned—my darling X was not the sort of female who bound such things in silk ribbon and sighed over them.

All were written in secret. My crest does not appear upon the cream-colored paper that makes up so much of the pile, mingled with torn pages from lewd chapbooks that she sent her maid to buy. I often wondered what the girl thought of those. She could not read but the illustrations made the subject quite clear.

A faint scent of perfume still clings to the note-sheets on which my darling scribbled sexual fantasies of her own that aroused me to the point of fever, a fever that only she could cure. Many of her notes bear only a swiftly penned message. Come to me. Words that I kissed each time I received them.

We are all doomed to remember our greatest joy, the mingling of our soul with that of another, when we are utterly alone, as I am now. Perhaps solitude has led me to attempt to make sense of it all. Certainly several of the stories I wrote were inspired by the Lady X, although other lovely creatures appear in them now and again.

It has been whispered that only I am privileged to know the intimate desires of the most sensual and daring women in London. Perhaps it is so. Some of these wantons are entirely fictional, but many are real, masquerading under different names and costumes. They, and the pages on which they appear in promiscuous array, crowd my mind as well as my desk.

I would be rid of them all. When I am done, I shall consign every page, every memento of her and the others, to the fire. Erotica created by a sensual imagination may well make the hottest blaze of all.

Ah, the myriad sources of my inspiration might not be pleased if they knew of their ultimate end in a drawing-room grate. But they will never know. It is not masculine boasting to say that I bedded many women in the ten years that passed since the night of my initiation. My heart, however, had remained untouched. It could be argued that my dear Lady X thought me, a rake with a deservedly wicked reputation, essentially naïve and easy to deceive. She was a highly intelligent woman.

Once our affair was over, I could scarcely comprehend what had happened between us. And so I collected these papers and began to reread them, adding to them here and there for my own edification and for no other reason. Certainly not for publication—do I repeat myself? I am a man of honor, and every lady’s secrets are safe with me.

Some minutes later…

I have returned with a glass of brandy that will fortify me to look more closely through my odd collection. I especially treasure the stories that Lady X set down in a fine, light hand that brings back the memory of her touch, something I would like very much to forget. But I find I cannot. Not yet.

Damnation! I have knocked over the glass—

The fumes ignited, owing to the shortness of the candle, which had burned low. The hour is late. For a few seconds, a blue fire danced over the surface of my desk but I pushed the hodgepodge of paper to the floor in time. However, I will take the mishap as a sign of sorts: I must be careful.

In any event, a trustworthy friend, Richard Whiston, who is also my secretary, has instructions to destroy my personal ephemera upon my death, if I have not done so first. Only he and I have keys to the safe hiding place to which I return the collection when I am done leafing through it and scribbling. Having rescued it this very night from untimely destruction, I suppose I should pick it all up and sort it as best I can…my contributions in one pile, Xavi’s in another…

There, I have done so—got it back upon the desk, if not sorted it—and finished the brandy in the decanter. After some moments of reflection I find I have not the heart to separate my things from hers. The task could be accomplished quickly. The writings of Lady X—she did beg me to destroy them, which I will in due time—are easy enough to distinguish from mine, owing to the different paper and the delightful small sketches that sometimes enlivened them. Here is one of hers—it has jumped to the top of the pile!—a drawing of a fetching little whore in black stockings and nothing else. She very much resembles X, who told her stories from a feminine point of view, of course, providing a highly stimulating counterpoint to mine. She had a rare talent for becoming anyone she pleased.

My naughty inamorata was the Lady X, of course. Notorious. Uncommonly lovely. And for a while, the talk of London. The scandal sheets never printed her full first names, Xaviera Innocencia, let alone her last.

Don Diego Mendez y Cartegna was her husband, a grandee in his own land, a person of great influence in ours as the Peninsular Wars dragged on.

Don Diego prided himself on his jealous supervision of his young wife. Nonetheless, Xavi assured me that after he had taken her virginity—adding that it was without a doubt the most unpleasant five minutes of her life—she never went again to his great gilt bed, knowing that her side of it was sure to be occupied by a housemaid or some other unfortunate female who did not have the power to refuse the lord and master of the household.

So perhaps her infidelity was justified—she thought so and I was not inclined to argue the point. My feelings for her had been sparked in an instant and the fire between us leaped high for many months. Yet our passion was unequal and it was clear from the beginning that I loved her rather more than she loved me. At least she was truthful about that.

Her desire for sex was more than a match for mine. Hence the little blank book in which I wrote, at her request and for her amusement, of amorous adventures. Rescued, it sits on the other side of my desk, holding down a ream of my preferred paper: foolscap. The word is appropriate. Love is a fool’s game, no matter one’s skill at it.

In that arena, I would call myself simply lucky, although there were women who told me—their fervent words, not mine—that my magnificent build and remarkable height and handsomeness and so forth and so on were enough to make them swoon. Romantic flattery, nothing more. Some females need a reason to be overcome, and if my appearance met with their approval, then well and good.

I myself do not set much store by physical perfection, being attracted just as much by intelligence and high spirits—the quality the French call joie de vivre—and the way a woman carried herself. If, underneath her frills and furbelows, a female of new acquaintance seemed quite at home in her own skin, as lithe as a healthy animal and as bold, then I marked her as mine.

Xavi had all those qualities and a sultry beauty of her own that set her apart from English women. She was outwardly demure; inwardly, not at all. She called to mind the most outrageous erotic fantasies.

Naked from the waist down, straddling a chair…her full breasts bared and held up high by her tight stays, her nipples turned deep pink from the light tugging and rolling between my fingers…her soft lips, parted to tell me what she wanted…ah, I envisioned her just in that way at the moment I saw her.

I happened to be visiting the studio of my good friend, Everett Quinn, a portrait painter of note. Men who had risen far above their humble beginnings, millionaire brewers and the like, came to him for gilt-framed ancestors to hang on the walls of their new country houses. Any ancestors would do, so long as their painted faces suggested a distinguished pedigree.

Bewigged, ruffed, clad in courtly velvet or sober Jacobean black, the subjects were entirely imaginary but they bore an unmistakable resemblance to whoever had commissioned them in the first place. Quinn’s skill at reinventing a given set of features through the centuries was unrivaled and he commanded high fees.

He also did the portraits of actresses lucky enough to bag a peer or wealthy lover. These men paid well to have their women immortalized at the height of their beauty and fame. Quinn had a knack for making them look altogether respectable at the same time, to everyone’s amusement.

It was at his studio that I first glimpsed Xavi. Quinn was seldom alone there, and various people came and went at all hours. There was an older woman, a Miss Reynaud, who did the drawings for the engraved reproductions of his paintings, which were peddled in the print shops; and Rob Hutchenson, the apprentice who mixed his colors and did the other dirty work; and his models, human and otherwise. For a while Quinn had kept two small spotted pigs he’d needed for a rustic landscape. They clattered about on the bare wood floors and stuck their snouts into everything and he’d had to give them away.

But on that day only the apprentice was there, a lad of nineteen or so who showed me in without taking my hat or my greatcoat. He didn’t bother to introduce me to a pretty girl, neatly dressed, who I took to be a ladies’ maid. Not of the more fashionable French type, to be sure, and new to her calling—the girl had an air of the Surrey countryside about her and seemed English to the bone. She sat quietly in a straight-backed chair and did not look up as I passed by. I assumed she had been brought along to give the appearance of propriety.

No doubt the subject of Quinn’s latest commission was in the next room. I wondered idly who it might be this time as I pushed aside the heavy curtain that blocked the door.

Quinn was always working and there were many paintings propped against the walls, some framed and some not. He liked to fiddle with them and add improvements: dabbing rosy cheeks on the plainer females and painting breasts upon females not thus blessed by Mother Nature, who had not thought to buy a pair of artificial ones in the shops to fill out their bodices.

But the woman I glimpsed in the center of the room needed no help of that kind with her complexion or her figure. Calling a halloo, I entered without further ado—Quinn cared nothing for social niceties—and then stopped and stared.

She was sitting on a raised platform in perfect stillness, her exquisite profile turned into the light that flooded the room from the high, north-facing windows, so that she did not see me looking at her. I was thunderstruck. She was remarkably beautiful, almost exotic, and her body, even clothed, was utterly graceful in seated repose.

Motionless and silent, she scarcely seemed to breathe, but I perceived the slight rise and fall of her bosom when I came back to my senses. I turned my back to her and mouthed a question to Quinn. Who is she?

He winked at me, noticing my obvious interest, and put down his brush and palette to answer, thinking for a moment before he raced through the syllables of a very long Spanish name, the sort of name which included ancestors and in-laws and several Catholic saints. She had just come to England, he explained. They had exchanged only a few words—sit here, look there—and he did not think she spoke or understood much English.

I looked over his shoulder at the woman whose outline was sketched upon the canvas supported by Quinn’s easel. Her gaze rested now upon two finished, nearly life-size portraits hanging on a wall of the studio, a matched set meant to convey the appearance of happy matrimony between the earl and the countess depicted. I had to smile. I knew both of them, though not well. In any case, their names—or the first letters of their names, followed by unsubtle dashes—frequently popped up in the press, which gleefully chronicled their affairs with others and their noisy public squabbling.

Xavi studied the portraits thoughtfully. Something about her deliberate consideration of the two, as if she were assessing everything from the sitters’ clothes to their character, suggested a considerable intelligence and made me think that she did understand us. But I could not stop Quinn from continuing blithely on, although he kept his voice low.

The lady who sat so patiently upon his platform was the wife of the Spanish ambassador, he explained. The man was descended from an ancient family of Castile and was a disgusting old goat—

“Have you met him, Quinn?”

“No. He sends payment through an intermediary.”

“What is his name?”

“The intermediary? He is called Vendela, I think—”

“Not him, her husband.”

“Oh—”

I barely heard my talkative friend say her husband’s name because Xavi had turned to look at me at last. Quinn chattered on, but she spoke not a word, observing me calmly with large dark eyes. Her lustrous black hair was swept up in a thick coil that left the nape of her neck adorned with a curl or two that I suddenly, passionately, longed to kiss. I had never seen so beautiful a woman, yet even a passing flirtation with this one was entirely out of the question.

Even if her husband’s name had barely registered—I did know I had never met the man—Don Diego’s position at court had. Although I did not spend time there, my own interests were at stake in those important circles, having to do with the manufacture of munitions—but I will say no more on that subject. My business affairs are recorded elsewhere and those papers will not be burnt. Suffice it to say that my plans were likely to make me a wealthy man. Or so I hoped. Like many a nobleman, I had inherited a distinguished title but little more.

I considered the matter for a moment, while I wondered where she lived. Dallying with the wives of powerful men was best done at some distance from London if it was to be done at all. Most of us took our pleasure with women who were not received in polite society in any case.

But someone like Lady X would be welcomed in the highest circles. Her looks alone ensured that she would be a sought-after guest at elegant soirees and balls, and surely she was about to burst upon the social scene. Being the wife of Don Diego might keep predatory males at a respectable distance, if he was as passionate and vengeful as Spaniards were reputed to be. But what had Quinn just called him? A disgusting old goat? I felt pity for her.

Gazing at Xaviera Innocencia, drinking her in, it occurred to me then that even had she not been married, she was very different from the brave little butterflies of London who flitted from one dance partner to the next, their fragile wings growing more tattered with each season, until at last they vanished into the brothels or married some poor but dashing officer past his prime as well.

She seemed to possess an inner strength that puzzled me not a little. I noted her air of reserve, attributing it to her youth and the strictures of the convent in which she had undoubtedly been shut away for her schooling, in the custom of her country. Married young, I mused, she’d had no time to invite the admiration of men.

That she was accompanied by a young and pretty ladies’ maid and not a hideous duenna of mature years was also something that puzzled me. Virtuous Spanish ladies were well-guarded. The modicum of freedom that we Englishmen permitted our women, single or married, was not her lot in life. But the girl I had seen on my way in seemed too naïve for the task.

Lady X might easily give a chit like that the slip. Don Diego’s beautiful wife had a sensual look in her eyes that mesmerized me. Her dark gaze held mine until Quinn took me by the arm and broke the spell.

Never one to stand on ceremony, he introduced me, talking loudly as if that would help her understand. She listened to him with polite indifference and looked me over so thoroughly that I grew erect and was forced to hold my hat over the front of my breeches so as not to give offense.

A faint, very faint, smile appeared on her curving lips.

I straightened my spine and fought to compose myself as she turned her face away, resuming her study of the paintings on the wall. Miss Reynaud came and went in silence, taking Quinn’s preliminary drawings for the portrait with her. She seldom spoke. In fact, she was so nondescript that she seemed to possess the power of invisibility, a standing joke of Quinn’s when the copyist was out of earshot.

To keep from staring at Lady X, I too studied the portraits of the earl and his countess, hoping to dampen the amorous fire within me. They had once loved each other wildly, had been so ardent, in fact, that they seldom came down to dinner at country house parties and were sometimes seen disporting themselves in the shrubbery. But, done in oils for posterity, their bland countenances betrayed nothing of their passionate past or their famously unpleasant quarrels in the present.

All love affairs were variations on that theme, I told myself, stealing another long look at Lady X. She ignored my conversation with Quinn, which was just as well. My few words to him were neither witty nor wise, addled as I was by her unexpected presence.

Perhaps Quinn understood. Waving a brush whose bristles were stiff and prickly with dried paint, he told her to step down and walk about to keep from tiring. Inwardly I gasped as she rose from her seat and arranged the folds of her gown about herself. The stuff of which it was made was not sheer, but neither was it impervious to the strong light that flooded the room. Her body was outlined beneath it, curving and strong. My hands tingled, alive with my instantaneous desire to caress her all over and give her the ultimate pleasure…I nearly dropped my hat.

Quinn, damn him, offered at that moment to take it and my coat, saying he would send his lad out for some tea for the lady and heartier refreshments for me, if I wished. I hesitated, then said yes. If I were to see the Lady X again, it was likely to be in circumstances that were far less intimate and easy. The idea of bowing and scraping to her and her distinguished husband at a ball, observing the necessary courtesies and making awkward conversation, was not at all to my liking.

By great good fortune, I had happened to meet her here first. No one but my friend Quinn could observe what I said and did—well, there was her maid, but I supposed the girl could be bribed and did not like her Spanish master in any case.

And perhaps the apprentice could be bribed as well to take the maid for a walk in the park—and if Quinn should happen to go out for ale and cheese at the pub on the corner, the Lady X and I might contrive to—I reminded myself that she spoke very little English.

As it happened, matters proceeded in precisely that way, and I soon found out that Xavi knew far more than she let on…

A month later, we became lovers, meeting first at Quinn’s studio by his invitation but when he was out. He was pursuing an affair of his own with a badly behaved duchess who had sat for her portrait and taken a fancy to him. She, a former artist’s model who flung off her clothes at the slightest opportunity, did not seem to mind the smell of turpentine and the splashes of paint everywhere.

But Xaviera did, expressing her displeasure in excellent if charmingly accented English. The nuns—I write the word with a smile—had taught her well, or so she said. All to the good, as I spoke no Spanish. As I wished only to please her in every way, I made a few discreet inquiries and another friend offered the use of his house in town, an anonymous three-story building on a quiet street. He asked no questions before providing me with a double set of keys, understanding without my saying so that my request must remain a private matter and no more was said. Xaviera assured me that her husband was preoccupied with intrigues of his own, both political and amorous. He would never know. I chose to believe her.

Once she had proposed that I write a book just for her—the small volume that I mentioned—we devised our method of exchanging it quickly enough. Xavi liked to read such tales at her leisure, preferring those I penned to all others. Thus she was always prepared for me, fully aroused, rosy with lust and eager for my caresses when at last I could steal away to the secluded house to which we had the keys. The place was impeccably furnished but otherwise empty, as my friend never came there, preferring his mistress’s apartments in Soho.

From time to time, we made solo visits, heading straight for the locked cabinet in the library where we would leave sealed letters for each other, billets-doux with practical postscripts that set the times of our meetings in advance. The arrangement required no assistance from servants who might or might not be trustworthy, and it proved to be mutually—and highly—satisfying.

As did the tales of lust and love that slowly filled the pages of the little book. As the months went on, I penned many stories for her private amusement, some too long to fit in the book as they were written. Once edited, they were added, but I kept the longer versions as well, splotched with ink and crossed-out words—ah, here is the first of those—and the thirty-first, thrown together by chance. I will read them later.

Xavi begged not to appear in any, by name or by description, should she be caught while reading them and her illicit pastime revealed. If that had happened, Don Diego would be sure to express his wrath in the traditional way, tying my poor Xavi face down upon the seat of a chair that she might study the design of his carpet while he rolled up his sleeves to prepare for the necessary punishment. Of course the old brute would ignore her feminine protests, caring nothing for her dignity. Up would go her skirts and down would come his hand upon the sensitive skin of her bare bottom, chastising her in a way that would not be at all to her liking. The lady preferred such attentions to come from me, of course, and to be given with love and subtle consideration for her pleasure, never in anger.

She loved to lie naked over my lap and I loved to serve as her chair, whether I was clothed or not. She pronounced herself comforted by the tight hold of my arm and warmed by my thighs, to say nothing of the immense erection trapped between them. It often took all my self-control to keep from ejaculating against her soft belly, as she bucked with the pleasure she took in a properly administered spanking.

Xavi very much enjoyed them, and that was but one of many outré scenarios in which she delighted. For myself, reddening her pretty bottom as she commanded me to do was an intense satisfaction as well. I endeavored to explore each one of her sexual fantasies to her satisfaction, in writing and in the flesh.

She vowed that my stories brought her to a pitch of excitement that had her lifting her gown the moment I entered the house for a rendezvous. When I had tempted her well and truly, she endeavored to return the favor by tempting me with the sight of her pretty cunny and the tiny red ribbon she sometimes tied in her short curls to expose her clitoris. I loved to see its tender tip peeping out, swollen with need, as she held her skirts high and begged for me to suckle it.

Kneeling before her, I did just that while she clutched my head and moaned with soft joy. Burying my face between her legs to savor every drop of her juice, licking and sucking with all the skill I possessed, I held and caressed her beautiful arse, squeezing her shapely buttocks. With my hands, I encouraged her to push freely against my loving mouth so that I could suck her to climax even before I fondled her breasts and nipples.

My darling Xavi was shameless to a fault, wanting more and more—sometimes more than an ordinary man could give. Is it boastful to say that I always rose to the occasion? Then I will boast. I often gave her a swift orgasm to start, so that her next would be that much stronger when I thrust into her, while she lay on her back or rocked on all fours, whichever she preferred. An aroused woman is both snug and juicy, the best and most stimulating sheath for a long, thick cock like mine.

I liked to fuck Xavi slowly at first, especially from behind, until tears of pleasure ran down her lovely face. Gently, always gently, I pulled her long black hair away from her face so I could see her cry, see the streaks upon her flushed cheeks, and how she licked them away from her panting mouth.

It aroused me beyond belief to see her well-fleshed arse shake as her hungry cunny took me deeper, and when she began to push back, moaning like an animal, I would go faster, clasping her hips to pull her tightly against my groin, and ram hard. Her breasts bounced freely and I dropped over her back to slap them with one hand, pulling on a nipple when I could catch one, nipping her ear.

Wanton as a cat in heat, she kept her face in a pillow to muffle her cries when I rose up and began again. She knew what I wanted then: for her to reach round and spread her buttocks for me as I swived on. The sight of her arsehole, pulsing and tightening in rhythm with the cunny filled up and banged hard by my unbearably stiff cock, spurred me to a dominating intensity that excited her to new heights. She came first, brought to ecstasy by my teasing fingers, and then I did, pounding with frantic haste, my balls no longer swinging, drawn tight between my thighs.

Still, my hands craved the feel of her skin and I caressed her trembling buttocks over and over, grateful that she knew just how to brace herself against my body, crying out as each hot jet of cum spurted forth inside her. At such moments, I lost all sense of the boundaries between us…we were truly one.

Is it any wonder I was so devoted to Lady X? She, in turn, craved my full attention. Was she devoted to me? Yes, in her way, when free time and our mutual desire coincided. In the meantime, she had the book, so small that she could keep it in a pocket concealed within each of her gowns. Since my numerous letters had to be returned with dispatch, it pleased me to know that its fine leather bindings were warmed by her body when she retained it, the little book swinging near her most intimate flesh.

When I had it in my keeping, I fancied that the very pages gave off her scent, a mixture of delicate female sweat and the smell of her cunny, the French soap she used, and even the starch that stiffened the fine linen of her petticoats.

I envied those petticoats. Her round-cheeked arse brushed against them, sat firmly upon them, all day. When not fucking her, it was my delight to have her sit just as firmly upon my face and take my tongue deep inside for a good session of cunnilingus, which is every lady’s delight. Xavi wiggled her behind while I did so, and I brought her down to enfold my face in bountiful flesh while I squeezed and caressed it—her skin was most sensitive there.

Shyly, she sometimes asked that I slip a fingertip just inside the snug puckers of her tempting little arsehole…then go deeper…then begged to have the whole length of my finger moving in and out. Thus probed, my tongue thrusting away, she reached a strong climax within seconds, strong enough to make her cunny squeeze my tongue just as it had done to my cock.

The sensation intrigued her and one day she requested that I stimulate only her arse and her arsehole, curious to see if she could have an orgasm in that way alone. As it turned out, she could not, but we enjoyed very great pleasure in the attempt, beginning with the softest of caresses and progressing to tingling slaps with one hand while the longest finger of the other probed her tender anus as deeply as she wished. My slaps had to be light enough to leave no mark. I took no chances on our being discovered. Still, I wanted to satisfy her, and well she knew it.

How quickly Xavi learned to tease me! Employing my technique upon herself at another time, she twisted round to give me a wanton look over her shoulder and licked her slender finger, pulling it in and out of her mouth. Then she set her knees far apart to help spread the rosy buttocks I had just spanked…and reached to touch the little hole between them with her wetted fingertip. Her action sufficed to make my cock spring up to full attention. I was wild with lust, compelled to hold my rod with painful tightness and even dig my fingernails into its skin to keep from ejaculating freely at that second.

Xavi glanced down at my cock and only shrugged, playing the role of bitch to her heart’s content. But her indifference excited me. Still holding my cock, I squeezed my balls hard until they ached unpleasantly, lest I shoot too soon. She only laughed, again looking at me over her shoulder.

I looked back but only for a second. She wanted me to stare at her hot arse and what she was doing to herself, and I did. Then—oh, I was nearly undone—then Xavi pushed her slick finger well inside the snug hole, up to the second knuckle, and asked me how I liked seeing her do that.

I made her pull her finger out and I believe she enjoyed what came next. I fucked her cunny for a full hour, my gaze focused upon her stimulated, pulsing arsehole, and my hands clasping and squeezing her womanly buttocks nearly hard enough to bruise them. Such pretty peaches—I dropped down over her back and supported myself on my hands so that her body would appear untouched to other eyes when we were done rutting like animals. I came again and again, three times to her four. Spent at last, I cradled her for as long as I dared.

But I did not always have my cock in her cunny or my head between her legs or my finger up her naughty arse. When our mutual desire for each other was fully satisfied, when we had the precious gift of time, we walked and talked like all lovers, grateful for our borrowed hideaway. We preferred the overgrown garden where we could not be seen from nearby houses, or the spacious rooms downstairs if the weather was inclement. She would play the piano and sing for me—her voice was a balm to me, melodic and merry. Xavi delighted in the gossip of London, and I was rather good at representing the conversations I had overheard, leaving out not a scrap of scandal.

Some served as bawdy inspiration for the stories I penned. I marveled at how mere words could work such wonders—but then, the sensual imagination of a woman is easily stimulated by one who knows how. After each rendezvous, Xavi would sometimes ask for a particular scenario. I would write another tale or two, and leave the book or loose pages in the locked cabinet at the house where we met, allowing her to peruse it when she could get away, and think about the fantasy until we met again.

Imagining her slender hand slipping down to stimulate herself while she read was a favorite fantasy of mine. I loved to think of her blushing, and then, overcome, pressing immodestly against a sofa pillow or rubbing herself through her dress, too aroused to wait for me. Should she feel the pangs of lust too keenly, Xavi would employ an ivory rod to enjoy complete penetration while she read. I had presented her with the thing myself, an indecent but thoughtful gift, as I was sometimes away and did not want my love to yearn too long for the sexual satisfaction she craved so…

I had left the book in the locked cabinet, our usual place, adding a few more lascivious details to a scenario that I thought we both might find highly entertaining, should it be her pleasure to indulge me. The next day, I entered the house alone to see that the book was gone, and found a note to tell me that she would be waiting at the appointed time. When I entered the bedchamber, Xavi sat upon the chair exactly as I had requested, her back to me. Her thick black hair cascaded down in waves, left unbound and concealing for the most part the abbreviated stays she had left on at my request. Her magnificent arse was completely spread, as I had asked that she show her little hole, which I always liked to see. Her legs, clad in silk stockings that were gartered with ribbons above her knees, were set wide apart on either side of the chair. Her cunny was nestled against the cushion, as I had specified.

Xavi glanced over her shoulder, giving me a heavy-lidded look that made it clear how aroused she already was. Not uncomfortably, she moved upon the chair and I caught a glimpse of white between her spread buttocks. She had the ivory rod in her cunny. All the way in, so deeply that I had not seen it at first.

“Lift up,” I said. “But not all the way.”

She obeyed, rising a few inches with one hand on the back of the chair and one hand on the base of the dildo so as to hold the head of the thing inside. The thick rod gleamed as it slid partly out, and I knew it would be hot to the touch, and slick.

“I want you to pleasure yourself,” I whispered, “just as you do when you are all alone, with no man to satisfy you.”

“Oh, Edward…”

She hesitated for a second but only a second. Then Xavi slid up and down on it—never all the way down and never up enough to let it fall. I crossed the room and stood behind her, instantly erect at the sight of the big dildo in her juicy cunny, amused by how skillful she was at using it in this unusual way.

“I would rather ride you,” she said softly, resting her cheek on the back of the chair, her voice wistful but suffused with sexual longing.

Her words made me smile, but I went down on one knee behind her and encircled the dildo’s base with my fingers, holding it in a fist. “Not yet.” The thing was indeed hot, and so slippery it was difficult to hold onto. I wanted her to slide up and down again, pound her arse and cunny against my fist, moving at the precise tempo that excited her to a frenzy. And I wanted to watch from this vantage point, nearly as close as if I were actually doing the fucking. “Show me how you ride, my love. Go as hard and as fast as you like.”

I pressed kisses upon her buttocks, nipping her here and there. Xavi sighed with renewed pleasure and slid down again. And again. And again. She seemed to very much enjoy the sensual pressure of my large fist against her nether regions as she came down. I held on to the ivory rod that was privileged to enter her cunny, relishing the sweet softness of her buttocks as they touched my hand upon each downward stroke. My fingers were wet from her flowing juices and I grasped the dildo harder, enjoying the odd illusion of jerking off inside her—I sometimes liked to bring myself to a punishing orgasm in this way—yet my stiff cock was still trapped within my breeches.

She began to cry out and her downward thrusts upon the dildo were faster…and faster still. Taking it as deeply as she was, there was no longer need for her to hold its base. Oblivious to everything but her onrushing orgasm, Xavi lightly pulled and pinched at her clitoris to stimulate herself. I had seen her do this many times and my arousal always matched her own, understanding that her little rod experienced the same intense sensations as my much larger organ.

Pulling on her clitoris harder now, she breathed raggedly. I knew she liked to do this in a mirror where she could observe her arousal, see the bit of flesh rolled between her fingertips and imagine herself ejaculating like me. I could just feel her busy fingertips touch my fist with every little tug and I steadied her, slipping my free hand under the short corset and holding her hip as she rode on. As always, I saw her pretty little arsehole tighten and pulse as the waves of pleasure coursed through her cunny.

I pressed my cheek on her bare buttocks, rubbing my face on her behind as she rocked upon the soft cushion, drenching it with her juice. Lucky cushion, lucky chair. Lucky me, to be witness once again to her moment of satisfaction, and be able to enjoy the animal quality of her moans. I soothed her through it, stroking her hair and her back, allowing the feeling to echo and die away little by little.

Then I stood up and let her turn around. Her lips were slightly parted and I freed my cock with haste, thrusting it inside her willing mouth, telling her to suck and suck hard. Playfully obedient, she did, sliding her tongue over the sensitive front of my rod and holding the bottom two inches clasped in her fingers, pumping assiduously. I was at the point of climax when I pulled out, surprising her. She opened her eyes and gave me a dreamy look.

“On your knees, my girl.”

Again she obeyed, scrambling off the chair to the thick carpet on the floor. Her black hair tumbled over her shoulders and breasts as she settled down but only partway, so that her mouth was level with my cock and balls. She looked up expectantly, not sure of what I wanted, but trusting me all the same.

“Open your mouth again.”

She did and I came a little closer, holding my cock fully in my grasp to keep it away from her eager tongue. It was my balls that needed a good licking. She began at once, instinctively knowing what I wanted, doing the honors with her silky tongue, giving me a warmly sensual bath. The sensation, once I forced my cock to wait, was most pleasurable. I wanted it to go on for a while longer. As she had spread her body for me, I wanted to spread for her. But over her. Above her. Dominant and fully male, with my hugely swollen cock brushing her face, until my balls filled her mouth and the sensual bath from her expert tongue began again.

“Get on the bed, Xavi.”

She wiped her wet lips with the back of her hand and grinned at me. Certainly ball worship was more easily done when the one who licked could lie beneath the recipient of the licking. Bare and beautiful, she clambered onto the bed and lay on her back, reaching out her arms to me as I joined her. We shared an embrace and kissed lightly, then turned head to foot. On all fours, I parted my thighs and let her wriggle up until her head was between them. I no longer held onto my cock. It excited me deeply to know that she could see nothing at the moment besides my cock and balls over her face, about to descend, and that she wanted to give me as much oral satisfaction as I craved. With a deft fingertip, she took a clear drop of hot fluid from the head of my cock, popping it into her mouth and tasting me with a satisfied sigh.

My dear Xavi reached up to play with my balls as my shoulders dropped down and I rested my head upon her thigh, aroused by the fragrance of her still-excited pussy and wanting to look at it as she licked me. I eased down and felt her take the heavy sac fully into her mouth. It felt deeply satisfying to be tongued so well, and once I was wet, she applied her sensual ingenuity to increase my pleasure, tightening her lips around one ball and letting the other slip out, then reversing it.

Lost in the feeling, I suddenly lost the sense of being dominant, even though I was still on top. And I lost the sense of being male, realizing to my unspoken surprise, that my mind was capable of encompassing both sexes. I allowed myself to imagine—I was not so overcome as to say so out loud and certainly I was not in a position that encouraged conversation—that this was what it was like to be a woman with a woman. No penetration. No rough handling. Nothing but a soft, wet mouth upon one’s private parts, making the sort of love that left not the slightest trace of the delight it provided, one lover truly drinking in the other with the utmost tenderness. Had I been born with a cunny I would have wanted this more than anything.

Murmuring incoherently against Xavi’s thigh, I let the fantasy of Sapphic sex take hold of my imagination. As if she could read my mind, she brought her hands up to my arse, kneading my buttocks in much the way I liked to do hers at times. She continued to tongue-tease my balls. The muscularity of my body did not allow for the voluptuous pleasure I always took in the softness of her flesh, but what ran through my mind as she stroked and caressed me more than made up for it.

Fully male as my body was, my thoughts at that moment were indeed those of a woman. I wanted only to yield for a little while, to be passive, to lie upon the bed and receive whatever my lover would give.

As it happened, my balls were out of her mouth—she was fondling them gently now, playing with me somewhat absently. I lifted up and turned around to stretch out beside her for a few minutes, cupping her breasts, arousing her again, whispering that I wanted her to keep her cunny on my face while she sucked and stroked me to orgasm.

Xavi only nodded.

I lay back and watched her swing her fine big arse around so I could see her cunny snugged between her thighs. Well, I was a man, after all, and a strong one, able to lift her and position her over my face even when I was lying down. And I did.

With her sex only inches away from my lips, the female scent of her intoxicating me, my unusual fantasy took hold of my mind once more. As she took my cock into her mouth, fellating me with uncommon skill, I imagined it as a clitoris, tiny but exquisitely sensitive. A woman making love to a woman would never choke on such a dainty morsel. That thought made my poor cock grow longer and stiffer, but Xavi moved back just enough to keep control.

Indeed, she was completely in control. Without telling her I had completely surrendered. Perhaps she chalked it up to a sensual languor on my part, perhaps she enjoyed the change from my usual vigorous performance. Xavi’s hands reached around and underneath my body and clasped my buttocks, squeezing rhythmically. A soul-deep sigh escaped me.

Lying on my back instead of on my hands and knees over her prone body, my buttocks were no longer tensed and hard. Blissfully, I allowed her to manipulate my arse, her hands between me and the bed, rolling just a little as she did so, taking with silent joy the subtle pleasure I had given her so often.

She continued to suck my cock and I knew I was very near climax. As tenderly as she, I spread my hands over the feminine arse so near my face, pulling her hips to me, pushing my face between her soft buttocks.

Xavi shifted position so that my tongue could explore her delicious cunny and tease her clitoris as well. No two female friends were ever so amorous as we were that day, and no ladies ever enjoyed their secret pleasure as we did. If she guessed what I was thinking as I came in her mouth and she in mine, my darling did not say. But I had not dreamed such dreams until Xaviera Innocencia became my lover, and I have not since. She awakened my deepest sexuality and I am grateful to her for that. So much of what we did ended up in the little book—it is an unbearably poignant reminder of our time together. It shall be the very last thing I throw into the purifying flames.

Did I mention that she was a storyteller in her own right? Yes…yes, looking back over these hastily scribbled pages, I see that I did. Drinking brandy in the hours after midnight is unwise. I find that the pen grows heavy in my hand. I would rather read…and let memory speak for me…