Dark Enchantment (20 page)

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ said the stranger, accepting the cup. ‘Oh, Goodman Gansevoort, you should have seen her in her youth, under moonlight, as naked as Eve.’

Maarten felt the blood charge to his face. Mercy made not a sound, but watched their guest from under her lashes.

‘Her eyes wide and her lips inexpertly rouged,’ the stranger reminisced. ‘The slick of five women painting her face and the pearls of six men strewn upon her spread thighs. Oh, you should have seen her face, Goodman Gansevoort, as I revealed myself to her for the first time. Such dread and such eagerness as she abased herself, spreading her pert and pretty buttocks with her own hands –’

‘Enough!’ Maarten groaned, slamming his open palm on the table. ‘Stop shaming her!’

‘Shame?’ The stranger cocked an eyebrow. ‘Does she look ashamed?’

She did not. The lambent, poised expression on her face made jealousy coil in Maarten’s guts like a nest of garter snakes.

‘Mercy, kiss my boot,’ said the stranger gently, and without hesitation she bent to press her mouth to the foot he presented to her. Her lips parted, her pink tongue licked at the dark leather. She kissed eagerly, without restraint. He
sipped
his cider and watched her coolly. She lapped at his instep; then he tilted his foot. His boot was rather more pointed at the toe than was fashionable in these parts, Maarten saw, and she opened her mouth to take it in as far as she could, working her lips around the width. His sole must be resting on her tongue, Maarten realised. He’d walked across the farmyard in those boots but she showed no distaste. Her eyes in fact were lifted for the first time to gaze steadily upon her erstwhile master’s face, in perfect openness and surrender.

Maarten Gansevoort’s heart felt like it would burst his ribs at that sight.

‘Now tell him, Mercy,’ said the stranger, ‘why you signed yourself to me.’ He withdrew his foot from her mouth, and the momentary gape of her lips was obscene before she licked them. ‘Tell him.’

‘When I was young,’ she whispered, eyes once more downcast as if focused far away, ‘there was nothing but toil and fear. No frivolity, no indulgence, no joy. Even their God was dark and bitter, and I hungered for colour and delight. And some came to me and whispered that there was a master who would promise those things. So I went with them. I knew what I was doing. They debauched me and I was their willing whore. It was the first time in my life I was not a dull drab thing, not just a servant, not just a girl-child. And then he came to me.’

Maarten tugged at his plain linen collar, releasing some of the heat.

‘You see?’ the stranger asked his host pleasantly. ‘Such memories she has. And one of the few things I have in common with your kind, good people, is – let us say – nostalgia. A capacity to regret what has been lost. I miss my sweet Mercy.
So
with your permission, Goodman Gansevoort …’ He stood, setting his flagon aside.

‘What?’ said Maarten thickly, as the stranger held out his hand to Mercy, who placed her fingers in his.

‘I intend to make a cuckold of you, friend.’

Maarten opened his mouth but no words came out.

‘We will retire to the bedchamber to spare your feelings, Goodman. Of course you will hear her scream her pleasure; I can hardly prevent that. She was always most vocal, I remember.’

Maarten gripped the table edge as if he would overturn it.

‘Maarten,’ said Mercy swiftly: ‘Be at peace. Please, my husband.’ For a moment her eyes focused warningly on him, pinning him to his seat, but then he seemed to slip her mind. Her gaze turned back to their guest and she led him away to the inner room, and the door closed.

Maarten Gansevoort was in agony. He felt as if his stomach was full of knots. The room with its blazing fire was suddenly too warm, so he stood and flung off his woollen jacket and paced about the floor. He went to find his flintlock musket, and even got so far as to reach for the lead, but his hands fumbled uselessly with the box and he gave up. He scratched at his sweating chest and rubbed angrily at his crotch, sickened to find a most disloyal tumescence which he immediately put down to anger. He could not believe he was permitting another man – or anything in man’s form – to take his wife from under his nose like that, no matter that man’s status or puissance. He could not believe that she seemed so willing, when their marriage had been so warmly content. He could not bring himself to face the confession she’d made, though it rolled around the margins of his mind painfully. He put his head in his hands and groaned, tried to pray but recoiled from the
words.
How could he pray when he had let such a guest into his house?

Without intending it, he suddenly found that he was holding his breath, listening. Nicholas Scratch had been right about Mercy’s tendency to cry out in the throes of rutting; often he’d had to stifle her noises with his hand or the corner of the quilt, lest she disturb the whole household. When she fornicated she did it without restraint. It was one of the things that made his blood burn for her.

Reaching a decision, Maarten Gansevoort slipped off his blunt-toed shoes and crept on stockinged feet towards the inner door. He knew every board in the house he’d built, and not one of them creaked under his weight. He reached the bedchamber door and crouched down. The handle was only a smooth dowel that ran through from one side of the sliding latch to the other, and hadn’t been pegged in place. With much hesitation and care, he pulled the stick clean out of the door, leaving a round hole to which he applied his eye.

He could see quite clearly. The chamber with its shuttered windows, lit by candlelight. The big bed that he had made himself for his first marriage, spread with the cream quilt that Mercy had brought as part of her trousseau. Mercy standing at the side of the bed, facing the door, the stranger’s bare arms about her from behind. He had evidently removed his clothes, though Maarten could see little of him. Mercy’s own clothes were in disarray, her bodice unlaced, her shift pulled down from her shoulders, her big freckled breasts bare and cupped in the stranger’s groping hands, her plump brown nipples being plucked and flicked and pinched. Her neck was twisted at an angle and there was a look on her face of such painful need that Maarten Gansevoort caught his breath. Her mouth formed a quivering ‘O’ as if she were
moulding
it about some virile member. She writhed her sumptuous hips, grinding her ass cheeks into the stranger’s crotch, and covered his hands with her own as he mauled at her.

Nicholas Scratch licked at her white throat, chuckling, then turned her in his hands and pushed her to her knees. Suddenly his body was visible, the unblemished body of a muscular young man, perfect in every way. His stiff stood up rampantly erect from a nest of black curls, dark with blood against the paler skin of his thighs and belly. He took himself in hand and laid the other hand on Mercy’s head as if in blasphemous blessing. But all he was doing was pressing her lower. She put her face to the fat pouch of his scrotum and kissed it fervently.

Maarten Gansevoort loosed the drawstring of his breeches and slipped his hand inside his clothes, ashamed beyond words, yet aroused so much he could no longer wait. His own member was hot and sticky and as hard as smoked meat. He stroked himself, feeling his balls clench, feeling the length in his hand grow thicker and longer with every beat of his heart. To see his wife kneeling obediently before a stranger, to see the plump out-thrust of her skirted behind, the eager caresses of her hands upon his hard thighs, the flash of her tongue as she licked all the way up his cock and then took it in her mouth, slipping it deep into her throat – it was unbearable. The slurping noise she made as she sucked him, the look of satisfaction on the stranger’s face, the way his hand twisted in her hair, the bob of her head as she rose and fell upon him with unholy appetite …

The stranger’s eyes lifted to the door. His expression slipped from pleasure to triumph. Then the door cracked its latch and slammed wide open, back against the wall, splintering its hinges. Maarten Gansevoort was revealed kneeling
in
the doorway with his breeches open and his stiff in his fist.

Mercy’s eyes opened wide, and for a moment she detached from the false idol to which she was giving worship, leaving it plum dark but shining with her spittle. Maarten felt as if the floor must open up and plunge him into the fiery pit of hell at that very moment.

‘I see you’ve come to lend us your blessing, friend,’ said the stranger, greatly amused. He gestured. ‘Enter.’ Then, when Maarten only gasped and goggled, his voice hardened to a silky command. ‘You must be half a witch already, Goodman Gansevoort. There is a broomstick between your legs and I see by your face you have been riding it hard. Join us now. On your knees.’

His dignity gone, without any other recourse, Maarten shuffled forwards on his knees almost to Mercy’s side. His whole body was aflame with shame.

‘See now. Your wife was just about to take Communion,’ said the stranger, directing her back to the glistening plum of his cock.

With deliberate showmanship he delved deep down her throat, pumping long and smooth, pulling out to show his full length all wet from her suckling, then plunging in once more, all the time Maarten watching, unable to tear his eyes away. He knew when the stranger came off because Mercy nearly choked, eyes watering, nostrils flaring, struggling for breath as her throat worked frantically to receive his outpourings. When Nicholas let her go her mouth came away as milky and sticky as a nurseling’s.

‘Kiss her,’ the stranger ordered in a voice both quiet and implacable.

Maarten leant in, his lips finding hers. She was still gasping for breath. Her mouth was soft and wet, her tongue slippery
under
his, and he was shaking so hard he felt he might collapse. He could taste it – the stranger’s spend – sharp and salty, and he wanted to die for shame. Then her hand fumbled past his and found his cock. She stroked it as if comforting a frightened and frantic animal, and he groaned into her mouth even as tears spilled down his cheeks.

‘Now stand up Goodman Gansevoort, and prepare your wife for me. Remove her clothes and lay her upon the marriage bed.’

Maarten’s eyes met hers. He read in them regret and fear, but above all a terrible selfish need. It was too late for her to hide her desires from the man she had pledged herself to. Her promise of faithfulness was worthless. She nodded almost imperceptibly, urging him on in the debauchment of their vows. So he rose and drew her to her feet, and completed the unlacing of her bodice, the discarding of her petticoats and shift, revealing to her master the full curves that he had thought belonged to him alone, the creamy swells of hip and buttock, the copper tangle of her puss. His hands quivered as he caressed her warm skin, feeling her gasp and heave to his touch, all for another man. Then he pressed her back and laid her upon the bed, climbing up beside her.

‘Touch her,’ whispered the stranger. ‘Touch her slit.’

Her thighs were already loose; when he slipped his hand over her mound they parted wantonly. Her eyes were not on him; her attention was raptly fixed upon the stiff of the stranger, which stood as engorged as ever. It had not drooped for a moment after the man’s first crisis. Maarten parted the petals of her puss with his fingertips.

‘Is she wet?’

‘Yes.’ Maarten cleared his throat. ‘She is, sir.’

‘Put your fingers in her quim. Tell me how she is.’

He obeyed, half closing his eyes. ‘She is soft, and wet and
hot.
She sucks at my fingers.’ Mercy moved under him, moaning. His own cock, a goodly length by most accounts but meagre fare against his guest’s weapon, was as hard as wood.

‘Is she ready for my quimstake, Goodman Gansevoort?’ The stranger ran his hand lovingly up his beam. ‘Push your hand in deep. Is your wife ready for me?’

‘Ah. Oh yes.’ Mercy’s wet grip undulated around his fingers. He could smell her sex.

‘Then go kneel behind her head and hold her wrists.’

Maarten took his place as he was told, drawing out her arms over her head. Her big firm breasts heaved, the nipples pointing at the roof beams. He wanted to touch them, but he had not been given permission. So he watched as the other man knelt between her splayed thighs, scooped his hands around her waist, lifted her backside from the bed and impaled her slowly upon his cock. Her back arched almost beyond endurance, Mercy wailed. Maarten pinned her wrists to the coverlet, keeping her stretched, sweat running down his temples as he watched her take her pounding. It was a display of such strength and endurance that his heart was in his mouth. That length of meat rammed into her, deep and rhythmic, pushing her body to its limits. Nicholas Scratch’s face was wreathed in a triumphant smile, candlelight dancing in his eyes, every stroke both a master’s punishment upon a runaway servant and a reward for her shameless concupiscence.

She was more beautiful in that moment than he had ever seen her, and that realisation hurt him to the core. It was as if he were seeing the real her for the first time, as if she’d kept the best part of herself hidden from him. He would have liked to have spent his seed in her open mouth or poured it out as an offering on her wobbling breasts. He would have
liked
to have done it as the stranger filled her with his cream, but he knew himself unworthy, so he only watched as Nicholas Scratch showed his appreciation with a facility that no mortal man could ever possess. He came with teeth bared and his throat stretched, barking his triumph, and he did it over and over again, as often as Mercy did, jetting into her wet cauldron and laughing with satisfaction as she was reduced to heaving, wailing, incoherent exhaustion. Then he dropped her to the bed and stood back, stroking a cock that stood as proud as ever. ‘Turn her over,’ he said. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

‘What?’

‘I wish to sodomise your wife. Have you ever tried that, friend?’

‘Of course not,’ he whispered. ‘It’s a sin.’ His heart was hammering.

Nicholas Scratch smiled. ‘Roll her.’