"Shall… shall it be as with Frederick?" her whisper came to me aloud.
"Penis-bearers?" I mocked her lightly. "I shall have you blindfolded sometimes, my sweet. You will not know who your stallion is."
"Will you not love me, Beatrice?"
I drew her up slowly until her face came over mine. Broadening my stockinged thighs, 1 allowed her legs to slip between mine and pecked at her lips.
"In obedience there is love-in love there is obedience," I said. I slid my hand upwards beneath the long fall of her hair at the back and took her neck between thumb and fingers. It pleased me to do so even as I sensed that it pleased her to be held in this way. I felt her trembling. The moist lips of her pussy nestled into my own.
"Have you not been stilled, Caroline?"
"Please kiss me-please, I want your tongue," she husked. I smiled. Her moods were as the light passing of summer clouds. I could reach up and touch them.
"Suck upon it," I breathed. Possessed as I am of a long tongue 1 inserted stiffly into her mouth. The suction of her lips was delicious. She moved them back and forth over the sleek, velvety wetness and murmured incoherently while I squirmed my hand down between our bellies and cupped her plump little mount. The curls frizzed to my fingers. Caroline squirmed, endeavouring to bring her button to my caresses, but I laughed within her mouth and smacked her bottom suddenly with my free hand making her yelp.
"D… don't!" she bubbled. Her face hid itself against my neck. "What is stilled, Beatrice?"
"The male stem in your bottom, my love-urging, gliding, deep in. There it stays for a long moment and is withdrawn."
"OH!" I could feel the heat of her blushing against my skin, "it. .. it would be too big!" she stammered.
I laughed. The ceiling received the pleasure in my eyes. A warmness flowed over me. Caroline had, after all, been reserved for the cock I would present to her.
"Your bottom cheeks are deliciously elastic, Caroline. The first time you will experience considerable tightness, but you will yield. You will feel the veins, the knob, the inpushing-the breath will explode from your lungs. But on the second," I went on, ignoring her wrigglings that were meant together with her silly, tumbling words to express refusal, "on the second bout, my sweet, your rosehole will receive the repeated pistoning of the cock until you have drawn forth his spurting juice." "No! I don't want to!" she whined. "Then you will be whipped first-or strapped perhaps."
With each word then 1 smacked her bottom loudly, ringing my free arm tightly about her slender waist while she jolted and struggled madly. Finally I let her roll free. Her pert bottom was a perfect picture of pinkness, splurged with the paler marks my fingers had imprinted. Drawing up her knees she sobbed and lay with her face against the wall.
I waited. After a moment when she had not moved I rose and put on my dress. Immediately she spun over and lay upon her back.
"Wh… what are you doing?" she asked. Her eyes were blurred with tears, her hair mussed. In such disarray she looked at her prettiest.
"Maria will learn to use the strap on you now," I said severely. Without looking at her I brushed my hair in the mirror.
Caroline rolled immediately off the bed and, kneeling, hugged my legs.
"If I say that I will-please!" she begged.
I glanced down at her and then resumed my brushing. "It is not for you to say, Caroline," I answered briefly. I moved away from her by force so that she slumped upon the floor, looking as forlorn as she could contrive. It was a game that she was learning, I could sense, yet her knowing must not be too great. Not as yet. In a year or two perhaps. The fine balance of yes and no was truly here.
I looked down upon her once more. The violin troves of her hips were indeed sweet, the upsweep of her bottom infinitely appealing. With a slightly greater plumpness than Amanda there possessed, Caroline would surrender eventually to her pleasures more than she knew.
Head hanging and eyes clouded, she rose slowly to her feet and endeavoured to hug me. I stood unmoving.
"Do not let Maria strap me hard," she murmured. Her fingertips fluttered about my back like petals falling. When I did not answer she snuggled into me closer, manoeuvring one thigh and trying to press it between my own. "Do you not love me?" she whispered.
I raised her face at last.
"In all my being," I replied softly and kissed her mouth. "Now go upstairs-4 shall strap you myself. You will learn."
"Yes," Caroline whispered. It was a plea rather than acceptance. Another moment and I might have relented.
"Go," I said again, "wait for me-over the bar. Leave your dress here." Her footsteps slouched. Her look was a lostness – sweet and well contrived. It passed across my mirror and was ignored.
Five minutes later the strap swathed heat across her cheeks.
In her sobbing cries as she gripped the bar beneath was her surrender.
TWENTY
In the week that followed I made ready for our departure. Katherine made her future appointments with me. Maria's husband, Ned, was interviewed formally. He would come into service with me, I told him carefully. His uniform would be that of a valet. He would be put to many different tasks. Maria-I was pleased to think-had evidently scolded him into agreement beforehand since his continued nodding during my conversation became almost tiresome. His physique, however, was entirely suitable -his thighs good, his loins muscular.
There would be Frederick also, as I apprised Katherine. He had been permitted no further licence with her. To ensure that, I had kept him to the house while she was elsewhere. The day before leaving I called her to my room.
"You will devise a play-not too simple a one, Katherine. I will have it performed a few weeks after we have settled in again."
She curtsied playfully. I had not asked her to sit. "Shall there be many players? Six or eight, perhaps?" she asked.
I merely nodded as if my thoughts were already elsewhere. It is a simple enough trick. It keeps those I need, desire-or would work to my will-in a state of slight imbalance.
"You will engage Amanda in it," I said. "We shall then best see her progress-and her silver stocking bands, no doubt. And the maid at Arabella's house-the young one who attended upon us. I want her. You will obtain and bring her."
The play itself would be of no great importance. The words, the acts, could be peeled away at my discretion and replaced by others. Arabella possessed a controllable wantonness, as I had witnessed. She would present a voluptuous example to occasional novices. As to the young maid who had lain at my feet after tonguing me-the sly-eyed, sloe-eyed one-there was a hint of impudence in her eyes that I could quell at will or use according to my whims.
On the morning of our departure I made Caroline ready in the prettiest of blue dresses with matching bonnet and patterned stockings of the same shade. For myself 1 wore a modish back dress, severely buttoned to the neck, with a pearl choker. My bonnet was a three-cornered one. It gave me a slightly swashbuckling air without looking flirtatious. As to the kid gloves I had desired, I had now a dozen pairs in different shades. My uncle's wallet had been well pillaged.
Maria and Jenny, I attired in oatmeal cloaks with hoods. Beneath, they were naked save for stockings and boots. I placed them, together with the clothes and cases my uncle had been made to endow, in the smaller of two carriages outside.
Aunt Maude had relinquished Maria not without reluctance. We had discussed much in private. I broadened her horizons. There would be garden parties from Friday to Monday on half a dozen occasions throughout the summer, I said. We did not use the word "weekend." It was considered common. From the gatherings, both my aunt and myself would make a discreet choice among the females and, occasionally, their escorts-whether related to them or not. They would be drawn aside and would receive special attention. The likeliest females would be cosseted and flattered. In the privacy of bedrooms there would be means of bringing them to undress and even of displaying them to the males through peepholes in adjoining rooms.