"Yes?" His lips quavered wetly. I found the sight not to my taste.
"Once weekly of a morning, immediately upon her waking. You will modify her with some pretty nightgowns -of a transparent variety, of course. Shell-pink and a pale blue would suit her. You will take her bottom formally and without preliminary caresses or kisses. It is desired," 1 said regally, knowing him sufficiently insensitive not to appreciate that I was bubbling with silent laughter within. Cosseted more than she had been before, and no doubt later to be endowed with her own small carnage, Amanda would lend herself to it, I thought, with less difficulty than he anticipated. Within days she would derive more pleasure from it than she knew.
He nodded as if we were engaged upon some solemn discourse of State. Our footsteps sounded quietly upon the stairs. Amanda waited patiently in the hall, her features slightly constrained. To her surprise 1 kissed her cheek. Outside the horses of his carriage pawed the ground impatiently, their heads tossing.
"The requirements are understood," I said to her.
Not knowing of what I spoke she nodded, bit her lip, stared briefly at him and then dropped her eyes. He, believing obviously that she and I had already discussed such matters as 1 had conveyed to him, took her arm with rather more of a beseeching gesture than he had anticipated.
I opened the door. It is never my intention to have servants present at such moments. Bowing, he allowed me to precede them. I moved towards the carriage, motioning to the hastily clambering coachman not to descend. I opened the door.
"Raise your dress to the tops of your thighs when you are seated, Amanda, and so keep it until the end of your journey," I said. She blushed fiercely. Her eyes fenced briefly with my own and then indicated their surrender. "He will not caress you," I added as they entered, "you are both to remain constrained. Forward, coachman!"
Straining in their harness, the four horses moved forward. My last glimpse for the nonce of Amanda was of her thighs flashing, her lips parted in a rosebud O of wonder.
A ripple of laughter escaped me. My fingers toyed about the full, rich blooms of the rhododendron bushes which lined the driveway as I returned to the house. They had obeyed me-they would obey, no doubt for months, until a greater loosing of lust took them.
It was of no matter, though out of an impudence of power I would visit upon them later. The older female of the house-she who had sat so complacent upon our visit there-might then need attending to. I would anticipate no objections either from her spouse or from Amanda. The occasion would provide a first exercise for Maria.
NINETEEN
Caroline lay waiting for me upon my bed with a look of such tremulousness that I slid down upon her. The petals of her lips grew softer under mine.
"Do you remember French-drinking?" I asked her. She blushed, nodded and murmured softly, drawing me more protectively upon her. I toyed with her thighs gently and with my other hand ran my forefinger along the succulent curve of her lower lip. "You liked it?" I asked. She hesitated, then lisped a sibilant yes. Her breath flooded warm over my cheek.
"When we return I will dress you as a little girl," I said.
She giggled and clutched me tighter. "Will you?" she asked shyly. Her heart palpitated, our breasts bulbing together.
"There shall be sweetness, punishments and pleasures, Caroline. I shall bring you to them all. Fetch wine now-an uncorked bottle-go!"
So astonished was she at my sudden command that she leapt up immediately as I rolled away from her. "And a napkin," 1 added. Clattering with unseemly haste she was gone and had returned within several minutes. In the meantime I had stripped to my boots and stockings and told her to do the same. Then, before her wide-eyed look, I lay back with the napkin beneath my bottom and my legs spread and dangling over the edge of the bed.
"This is the way we shall French-drink in future," I told her and motioned for the wine, at the same time making her kneel between my legs. The bottle came cool, between my breasts. I inverted it so that the neck pointed downwards towards my belly, laid flat. The ball of my thumb held tightly over the neck.
Raising my feet I laid them against her back, impelling her mouth inwards where the lips of my quim awaited her first salute. Ali! the sweet brushing of her mouth, half shy, half bold. Slowly I eased my thumb from the bottle neck until it but covered half. The wine trickled down. Down in its trickling down it meandered. Over my belly coursing, into the bush of curls seeking.
"Lick-drink," I whispered. The cool flowing of the wine which I released in bubbling streams was sweet to my skin, yet no sweeter than the more eager lapping now of Caroline's tongue. The tip curled and filtered between the lips of my lovepot, seeking upwards to my sprouting bud as the wine rolled gaily upon it and was received into her mouth. I longed to buck, but I dared not or the wine would have shivered in sprinkling sparklings everywhere. My legs quivered and straightened, sliding down from her back. Brazenly I parted them wider, arching my toes as a myriad delicious sensations overtook me. The gurgling of Caroline's throat as she received the increasing flood of wine was itself music, yet I must not forget my place, my purpose, nor my disciplines.
"You shall French-drink so, Caroline-the prick in your bottom," I husked. "Wriggle your bottom as if now you were receiving it-lick faster!" I desired to cry out that I was coming, yet some instinct told me not to divulge even to Caroline the degrees of my pleasure. Muted whimpers broke from my pursed lips as a thousand tiny rockets seemed to soar and explode in my belly. The saltness of my spillings in their spurtings no doubt communicated itself to her in a fine spray over her tongue.
I sighed, relaxed, and knew at long last my pleasure. My thumb covered the mouth of the bottle anew. I permitted no more to flow. With a tender but firm motion I pressed her mouth away. I was truly soaked.
"Bathe me," I murmured. I rose and preceded her into the bathroom. "Do not speak-you may speak later," I told her. The sponge laved me. I arose and was dried again. I took her then to the basin, bending her over it with my hand gripping the nape of her neck and washed her face.
We returned to the bedroom where I lay back full length. A scent of saffron came from the drawer of my dressing table where Mary or Maria had evidently sprinkled it with herbs. Waiting with owl-like eyes of blue, Caroline sat tentatively beside me and gazed down upon me. My fingers played with the backs of hers.
"Do you understand?" I asked.
Her lips moved as if to seek words that had long flown.
My arm reached upwards, looping about her neck and drawing her down of a sudden so that the corner of her mouth came to mine.
"You will know your purities, Caroline. The O is a purity. It circles within and without itself, knowing no otherness. Your mouth is an O-your bottom presents an equal roundness. Between your thighs the O has surrendered itself in its outerness to an oval, an ellipse. Within its knowing is the O-between your bottom cheeks another. The O of your roseness. The male stamen will enter it and impel the long jets of its succulence within. You will receive, absorb-even as your mouth absorbed. Did it not?"
I seized her golden hair, making her squeal. Her face lifted in startlement. Then, by a loosing of my clutch, she slithered down and buried her nose between my breasts. Her arms encircled my waist.
"Do not punish me for it," she murmured.
I played with her locks, running my fingers through the silky curls.
"Punishments and pleasures, Caroline. Have I not told you? You will suck it in my presence, bent upon your task. The while that it throbs in your mouth your bottom will receive the whip."
"Oh, please no! Beatrice, no!"
"There shall be stables, too, Caroline. I have engaged Maria to keep them clean-to monitor my captives. Shall you be one?"
Caroline dared not to raise her eyes. Her mouth nuzzled between the orbing of my breasts. I waited long on her reply. The whisperings of shyness, shyness in her mind breathed their illicit thoughts upon me.