Dr Casswell's Student (12 page)

If she detected his presence she gave no signs, but Casswell knew exactly what the little Oriental had on his mind. Sarah Morgan was so awash with passion, so far along the route toward oblivion that Casswell doubted if she knew her own name. While Oscar tightened his grip on her, pulling her closer to him, Chang ran a speculative finger across the puckered rosebud between her pale buttocks. Sarah stiffened for an instant – but it was her body now, not her intellect or reason that was guiding her, and as the host and guest sat silently and watched, her body opened like a flower and accepted Chang’s dark caress.

With relative ease the little Oriental pushed a straightened finger home, and as he did he smeared Sarah’s delicate flesh with the rich fragrant juices from her coupling with Oscar.

Chang’s finger aped the rhythm of the lovers, echoing Oscar’s deep thrusts, and then, at the peak of the arc, he slipped his finger out and nuzzled his cock against the same tight entrance. Sarah visibly stiffened and held her breath, and then slumped onto the large chest beneath her as Chang eased into her fully with one long thrust.

As Chang’s hollowed buttocks moved slowly back she arched up again, her eyes closed, and moaned her delight. Oscar’s fingers slid down over her taut belly and began to caress the wet folds of her quim, as if to calm her. It was enough. Sarah began to buck and roll her head, twisting back and forth as wave after wave of orgasm washed over her like a stormy ocean. And as she surrendered to the storm clouds of oblivion, she carried first Oscar and then Chang with her into the very depths of the ocean of desire.

Casswell closed his eyes and savoured the unforgettable image of such animalistic passion. In his mind he fed from them, replenishing his dark desires. His pulse raced. On many occasions he had shared a woman with Oliver Turner, and he knew only too well how contagious the extreme sensations could be as they rolled between each of the players.

Turner grunted his own approval of the show before him. ‘It would appear this time, my dear Rigel, you may well have your new Beatrice,’ he said with a grim smile, his unblinking eyes never deviating from the screen.

Casswell nodded with quiet satisfaction. ‘I’ve been thinking much the same, Oliver. All in all, she is an excellent find – and I thank you for that. Now, what say you we have that game of billiards I promised?’

Casswell refilled his own glass, as on the screen the satiated performers began to disentangle themselves. Although the doctor was loathed to admit it, to himself or anyone else, he was envious of the young chauffeur for making Sarah so tender… so eager.

As Chang finally led Sarah back to her bedroom, a vivid impression of Beatrice hurrying back through the woods to the castle filled her mind. It seemed that amongst both their duties was the role of compliant sex slave to any number of their masters’ servants.

Sarah glanced at the inscrutable Oriental. Tonight her body had given him the thing he craved most of all, even though her mind had not – initially, at least – been quite so willing. As he opened the door to her room she was aware that at some level they too were kindred spirits; both served Casswell without question, and both had to share his secret passions. She wondered if there would ever be a time when he might be an ally.

As they reached the bed she searched his eyes for any sign of a bond between them, but Chang’s expression was as impassive and unfeeling as ever. She shivered, and did not resist as he made her lie down and fixed the chain he led her by to its sturdy frame.

It would have been fairly simple, had she wanted, to free herself. Chang’s action was really no more than a gesture, but even so, it was a potent one.

Through the long night Sarah dreamt
she was Beatrice, running between the contorted trees of a dark and stormy forest. Exhilarated by the chase, her pulse beat like a drum. Close behind her, Chang was in pursuit, carrying the leather collar and lead, while behind him ran Oscar, exquisitely naked, beautiful, bounding like a stag through the dense undergrowth, his powerful cock swinging between his muscled thighs.

As she dodged left and right between low branches and fallen trunks, Sarah felt that Rigel Casswell and Oliver Turner were hidden somewhere close by, watching her every move, and ultimately it would be them rather than Chang or Oscar who would catch her…

When Sarah finally opened her eyes, daylight was streaming in through the open curtains, and to her surprise Chang was arranging a tray of tea on the bedside cabinet. It was the sound of him moving around that had woken her. She studied him through sleepy eyes. The contrast between his role as servant and the events of the night before could hardly be greater.

Sarah arched her back and stretched, aware of the chain still fastened to the bed. She smiled at her enigmatic companion. ‘Good morning,’ she sighed, natural good manners overcoming all other emotions.

‘Good morning,’ he returned flatly. ‘Doctor Casswell will be going out later. He expects you to accompany him. I will run you a bath and assist you in your preparations.’

‘Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘What time will he expect me—?’

‘I have already told you,’ he snapped before she could finish, ‘you talk too much! Where I come from a chattering concubine would have her tongue cut out! Any loss of pleasure is more than compensated for by the delight of their unquestioning silence!’

Sarah gasped at his belligerent outburst. If he had meant to shock her he had certainly succeeded.

‘The sooner you learn to speak only when spoken to the better,’ he concluded cruelly. ‘Now, you will bathe, and then you will breakfast. There is time for you to continue your work this morning, before the doctor leaves for his meeting. When you have washed and eaten I will help you dress.’

Sarah decided it would be wise to do as she was told without further comment. Her thoughts were firmly fixed on his unexpected outburst and his unnecessarily threatening attitude. It was hard to fathom exactly what he was truly thinking – or what he was truly capable of. All she knew with any certainty, was that it would be in her best interests to do as he told her.

It was nine-thirty when Chang led Sarah downstairs to the study. A fire roared and spat in the grate. Everything appeared to be exactly as she’d left it. She switched on the computer and settled herself comfortably at the desk. In some ways, despite the familiarity of the objects around her, it felt as if months had passed since she had last visited the beleaguered slave girl and her master.

Sarah picked up Casswell’s file, and then, looking at her transcript on the screen, re-read the last few lines of the previous day’s work. In an instant she was catapulted back into the events at the castle. Beatrice had been trapped in the woods by Michael, and as the darkness crept towards them, the dense trees deadened the sounds of the slave girl’s fears:

…‘Scream all you like, my dear Beatrice,’ he gasped in my ear, his breath as hot as flame on my cheek. ‘No one is going to hear you. No one will come to your rescue. Your precious lord and master is already safely back in his apartments with his cousin Lord Usher and that dissolute bastard priest. We are all alone, you and I…’

Hot tears coursed down my face.

In the short time between Michael’s discovering me with my master, and the time I crouched before him in the mud, everything in my life had changed. I just pray that I have not lost everything in those few brief moments. Though repellent to me, I know too that I am beholden to that evil boy.

Around me in the woodland the shadows lengthened, or perhaps it was fear alone that made the world around me seem such a dark and unforgiving place. I have no idea how I got back to my chamber, nor where Michael went after his passion was spent. But in my heart I already know I have not seen or suffered the last of Michael and his obscene desires…

Sarah hastily turned the page, wondering if now that Michael’s lust was satisfied he would leave Beatrice alone, although she knew in her heart that was unlikely. With her fingers poised above the keyboard, she read on:

…Today began as bright as any this season. My master and his cousin, the Lord Usher, announced – even before we had time to break our fast – that they intended to take my lord’s sons out to join them in the hunt. But even as my master stepped down into the chamber my heart fluttered with desire, and I looked away for fear of blushing and betraying all I that feel for him.

As he and the rest of his entourage turned to leave, he beckoned me closer and caught hold of my arm, tipping my face up towards his, recklessly, as if he didn’t care who might see us together.

My cheeks flamed wine-red.

‘I want you to come to my chamber as soon as we return,’ he said. ‘I would have you read a little to amuse me, Beatrice.’

With all my heart I heard the need and the desire in every last word, and feared that others might hear it too.

I nodded and curtseyed deep. ‘As you please, sire.’

He smiled, and I saw the passion in his dark eyes. God preserve me from such thoughts, such hunger as coursed through my veins at that moment.

The little boys’ noisy and excited departure left me with the family’s two daughters, Alice and May, who were well pleased to be rid off their boisterous brothers, with all their noisy and mischievous rough and tumble.

I thought to suggest that the girls and I spend the remains of the morning at our embroideries, when I saw to my horror that Michael had been watching me from the shadows of a slightly ajar door. He beckoned me closer.

‘What do you want, master Michael?’ I asked, in as civil a tongue as I could manage.

The boy leered at me. ‘Not I, pretty Beatrice. Oh no, not I. It appears that your fame is spreading. The mistress wants to see you in her apartments as soon as you have settled the girls with their nursemaid.’

I stared at him. In some ways my mistress has always seemed a distant figure in the life of the castle, more removed, more remote, more formal than his lordship. She spends much of her time following a pilgrim’s path. Since I arrived, thrice now she has been on long pilgrimages to the great shrines.

So, it did not bode well that she summoned me to her chambers. The children’s nurse, Aggie, has many times told me that my ladyship was a woman who should never have married. If it weren’t for her father’s insistence she would most likely have taken the cloth and spent her days in the cloister behind a convent wall.

She is a dour woman, despite a strong-boned beauty, and in middle age her ladyship’s face has settled into hard lines and her blue-grey eyes are as cold like flint. In the dark of the night I have often wondered about the couplings between my lord and lady. Was there ever any passion mixed with their sense of duty that fuelled their desire? I cannot imagine my master ploughing that particular furrow with any sense of relish.

But enough; my thoughts are wandering. Michael was still there in the chamber watching me, his eyes fixed on me like a hound on a hare.

‘It doesn’t pay to keep her waiting,’ he goaded with a sneer. ‘I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

Once I was certain that the girls were safely closeted with their nurse I set off through the narrow passageways of the castle towards my lady’s apartment in the east tower. Michael led the way, as if there was some possibility that I did not know where I was going, though with each step my heart grew heavier and heavier as I considered what might lie in store for me. What spiteful tales had the upstart servant told?

As we reached the great oak door that divides my lady’s chambers from the rest of the castle, I was horrified to find that Arturo, my master’s man-at-arms, was awaiting our arrival on the landing.

‘Well, well… what is it we have here?’ he said with a sly grin as he took my arm in a painful grip and led me into the anteroom. ‘A whore? A pretty little painted trollop who repays a noble kindness with adulterous seduction? Have you any idea what the punishment is for adultery, oh corrupter of the sacred marriage bed?’

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing, and felt my pulse quicken with fury. Rounding on the vile brute, I snapped, ‘If there is a corrupter here it is not I, Arturo, as you well know. You and that bastard priest—’

Arturo laughed heartily in my face, his evil eyes fixed upon me. ‘Oh, how very little you know of the realities of life, my dear little slut. The truth would be of little importance to an angry mob. The heathen peasants would only be interested in how things appear. How they would crave to get their hands on that pretty little body of yours.’ His eyes crawled up and down my transfixed body, and he licked his thin lips with a serpent’s tongue. ‘Mmm, I will take the greatest of pleasure in seeing the arrogance beaten out of you, Beatrice. And when you are broken – truly broken – I have been assured you will be mine to do with as I please…’ he sniggered as his eyes fixed themselves on my heaving breasts, ‘and you would not like that.’

I stepped back in terror. ‘W-what do you mean?’ I whispered.

‘Enough of this!’ snarled a female voice from close by. I span on my heel and saw, to my horror, that my lady was watching our exchange. And to my astonishment her eyes, usually so cold and unfeeling, were aglow with an inner fire that quite unnerved me.

‘Strip her and let us proceed immediately with the punishment,’ she snapped, waving to Arturo. ‘There is much to do.’

Before I could protest or defend myself Michael and Arturo had grabbed my arms and ripped away the bodice of my gown. I screamed out in indignation and humiliation, fighting to cover my nakedness, but no amount of pleading or begging would stop them. Their bloodlust was truly up, and I was their prey!