Portia Da Costa (17 page)

The pleasure went on and on, then suddenly, the high wave ebbed. She was spent. Completely. Her body went limp, bereft of energy and any remaining scrap of tension, and Adela subsided onto the bench as if wrung out. She almost slid sideways, but Wilson, between her thighs, prevented her collapse.

There was nothing to do but lie there and breathe. Thoughts would not come; awareness of her surroundings was vague, peripheral. A nocturnal bird hooted in a tree somewhere close by, and the odor of night-scented jasmine blended with other fragrances, some vegetal, some human yet also feral.

Adela’s eyes snapped open as a tiny ripple of residual pleasure assailed her: Wilson drawing out the tiny penknife. As she struggled to sit, he pressed it to his lips, coiled up its little chain and tucked it in the pocket of his frock coat. Then, still kneeling before her, he straightened her stockings and helped her struggle back into her drawers, holding up her skirts while she rocked this way and that, negotiating the fastenings.

“There, all decent again,” he said, his tone vaguely cool as he stood and flipped down her skirts and petticoats.

Still winded, Adela didn’t know what to say. She supposed she should thank him, but hadn’t he also got what he wanted from her? Her capitulation to her own desires and an admission that she was a wanton? Just moments ago, she’d been elevated to paradise, a transcendent being forged in ecstasy by his perverse skills. Now she felt again that she was simply a licentious creature of appetites, and low in his eyes. Roughly or with sophistication, it seemed he could render her helpless and a slave to her senses either way.

“I should go. Mama will be worried if I’m out here too long.” This wasn’t strictly true. Mama would be happier the longer they stayed, and by now she must be already hearing wedding bells.

“Of course. She must be concerned that I’ve debauched her pure virgin daughter.” Wilson’s tone seemed to suggest that he, too, comprehended her mother’s thinking on the matter.

Adela stared at her cousin in the moonlight. He was frowning, and his curly hair was awry. His face was still wet from pleasuring her. Wiping his hand across his mouth, he apparently discovered this and reached into an upper pocket for his handkerchief.

When he turned to her, though, he sat down on the bench at her side, and instead of attending to his own face, cradled hers and dabbed at her lip with the square of pristine white linen. Taken aback, Adela allowed him to do so.

“You bit your lip. It was bleeding.”

Sure enough, crimson stained the cloth, and as she saw it, Adela realized that she could taste a coppery tang. She’d dug her teeth so hard into her lip that she’d broken the skin...and not even been aware of it. Running her tongue over the wound, she winced. It was actually quite sore.

Wilson’s expression was complex. He was still watching her mouth as he stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket, and the close scrutiny made her nervously lick her lip again. A tremor of something fierce crossed Wilson’s face as he followed the minute movement.

“Yes, you should go now, cousin,” he said harshly, apropos of her earlier remark.

“I...I will.” She searched around for her reticule and found it, feeling uneasy now. Something seemed wrong. Well,
more
wrong than the fact that, once again, she’d somehow allowed her cousin to make free with her. Now that he knew her secret, it would be better to have as little to do with him as possible. Yet still she couldn’t make herself go.

And she knew why....

Always a proponent of fair play and reward for effort, she couldn’t leave without ensuring Wilson’s pleasure, too. And it didn’t matter in the slightest that his
will
had been served by what he’d done to her. She’d feel beholden to him if he didn’t also climax. And as a New Woman, she was entitled to serve her own will, too.

“What are you waiting for, Della? Rush off to Mama now, only slightly sullied.” He paused. “Or should I say, slightly
more
sullied than you were before.”

Ignoring the jibe, but storing it away for a time when she might remind him that he was the one who’d “sullied” her in the first place, she shuffled toward him. “Not yet, Wilson. There are unfinished matters to attend to.” Taking a deep breath, she reached out and pressed her palm to his groin, savoring his sharp gasp of surprise.

When she squeezed slightly, he tried to push her hand away. “Don’t trouble yourself, cousin. My appetites are not so uncontrolled that I can’t contain them.”

“Implying that mine are,” she said silkily, not allowing him to dislodge her fingertips from the front of his trousers. Regardless of his apparent disdain, his cock was hard like a rock beneath the fine worsted, and seemed to swell even as she cradled him. “I
chose
to let you pleasure me, Wilson. You know that you would have let me walk away if I’d really wanted to go.”

His eyes flashed. His expression of lust and admiration was delicious. “You have me there, Della,” he said, then glanced down, laughing at the irony when she gave him another warning squeeze. “Will you need my handkerchief?” He tweaked at the white corner of it, still peeking from the pocket of his coat.

So confident. So sure of himself. Adela narrowed her eyes. She’d shock him if it was the last thing she ever did to him, or with him.

“No, that won’t be necessary.” Kicking out her skirts behind her, she sank to
her
knees this time, and before he could protest, attacked the fly buttons of his trousers.

“What the hell are you doing?” It was less a protest than an expression of excitement.

Still at work, and already rummaging in his linen, Adela looked up briefly. “What do you think I’m doing, Wilson? Surely such an experienced libertine as you has received fellatio before?” Reaching in, she found his cock, huge and hard, and so familiar. Not just from this afternoon, but from seven years of imagining. “The scurrilous gossip says that apparently the great Coraline is an expert in the art...although I’m hoping my modest efforts will be acceptable.”

His whole body stiffened now, not just his masculine part. “Get off, Della. Leave me alone.” Ah, she’d struck an emotional nerve, not just a physical one.

In the midst of her determination, cold gripped Adela’s heart. Ah, yes, the great Coraline, not to be spoken of...
That woman,
but sacred to him, and not to be mentioned by a lesser mortal, even if that mortal was about to supply carnal pleasure. With a grim resolve, Adela took a firm hold on Wilson’s cock and drew it out of his drawers into the perfumed night air.

“No, I won’t leave you alone,” she said, beginning to slowly and meticulously pump him.

“Oh, God... Della... No...”

Regardless of her cousin’s words, Adela knew she’d got him. He was pushing into her grip, his lean hips thrusting forward, seeking more. His token show of reluctance became a complete sham when he grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand and cradled her head with the other. Long fingers dived into the silky hanks of her coiled coiffure, and several pins loosened and fell to the ground.

“No?” she inquired, looking up at him. But he was gone now, his eyes blank, gazing into the middle distance. Thinking of Coraline? After all that had taken place today, was he fantasizing about the Parisienne? Had he been dreaming of her
all
the time?

Damned cur! I’ll show you!

Parting her lips, Adela stuck out her tongue and swirled it around the plump tip of Wilson’s cock. It was slick and wet, in anticipation of pleasure. So much for his reluctance. His flesh disregarded his higher mental functions.

“Yes!” he growled, pushing forward, trying to insert himself. But Adela gripped his shaft, holding him.

Were all men so greedy? Even the experienced lovers? Working at her own pace, she lapped at the head of Wilson’s cock, caressing it and exploring it, but not yet taking it in. Pleasuring with the mouth was something Adela rather enjoyed, but she hadn’t attempted it as often as she would have liked to. Sophia’s establishment was a pleasure house
for
women, and the boys there were so deliciously skilled at touching, caressing, licking, that it was sinfully easy to just lie back and luxuriate in it all, rather than to get up on one’s haunches and be the active protagonist.

But that didn’t mean that Adela didn’t know what she was doing, and now she was resolved. She’d get the better of him. She’d go all the way with this.

“Oh, Della, Della, please...” burbled Wilson, gripping her head and her shoulder. His fingers were digging in hard now. Thick strands of her hair had come loose from their casual acquaintance with styling, and hung coiled to her shoulders.

After one last daring lunge at his eye of love with her tongue, Adela enveloped the head of Wilson’s cock with her lips. And sucked.

The foray wrung a harsh cry from her cousin, and his hips bucked forward, but still she controlled him. With the fingers of one hand wrapped around the length of him, she inveigled her other hand beneath him and gripped his firm bottom through his trousers with the other. She sucked, then flicked, sucked, then flicked, repeating the sequence while she squeezed hard on the muscular round of his left buttock, pushing her fingertips toward the central groove.

“Oh, my dear, dear girl,” he groaned, panting as she worked him. Adela almost smiled around his flesh, that he should call her a girl when he was barely any older than she was, just a year, nothing more. “I never realized you could be such a temptress. Oh, this is too delicious...too delicious....” He gasped, his voice tight. “But you really must desist or I’ll spend in your mouth.”

Desist? Never! To defeat him, make him so helpless that he couldn’t contain himself, that was the entire object of this particular exercise. Fierce with resolve, she redoubled her efforts. Sucking harder, diving at him with her tongue, seeking out ever more tender spots. Fondling his muscular male bottom with her fingertips, and probing the cleft as rudely as she could through his clothing.

“Oh, Della...Della...please. I can’t hold on much longer. You must stop.”

“No,” she growled, the word muffled and made uncouth by the obstruction in her mouth. Digging with the tip of her tongue, she probed ferociously at the groove beneath the head of his penis, and at the same time pressed hard on the vent of his anus.

Wilson let out a choked cry, his hips hammering, and thrusting his cock roughly and without control into her mouth. As it leaped and leaped, salty fluid bathed her tongue, and triumph was a silent, roaring cry.

Got you, you devil! Got you!

His cock still leaping, Wilson swayed where he sat, then seemed to brace himself, the muscles of his thighs tense. He still sought support, though, his hand gripping her shoulder.

“You wicked siren, you...” He ground out the words, chest still heaving. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You did it to best me.”

Adela withdrew, ejecting him and licking her lips, not sure whether she was angry or jubilant. Perhaps it was a little, or a lot, of both. Shaking Wilson off, she rose to her feet, but not before whipping the white handkerchief from Wilson’s pocket and dabbing her mouth with it. Men, they were such an ungrateful lot.

“Yes, I believe I did.” She half flung the handkerchief back at him and he caught it neatly, but then crumpled it in his hand as if not sure what to do with it. “I’m tired of you thinking you can make free with me, Wilson. And then judging me, because even though you enjoy the fruits of my experience, you disapprove of the way I’ve acquired my knowledge. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you’re a hypocrite.”

He glared at her, his eyes raging and confused. He still seemed to be half out of his senses from the pleasure she’d given him, and when he lunged up and forward, she danced away lightly, sweeping up her reticule and turning to make off down the path to the house.

An iron hand grabbed her arm. “Clearly, you’re an apt pupil, Della. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better sucking. These men of yours, the ones you draw and fuck, they must be the most accomplished tutors.” Wilson was shaking with anger, but what right did he have to judge? Did he think he should have been the one to educate her? If he’d not been such an arrogant beast seven years ago, he
could
have been that instructor. Or perhaps if she’d been a little more tolerant of the foibles of a randy young man?

“But I can show you more, cousin,” he went on. She could feel him shaking, the intensity transmitted through his fingers on her arm. “Believe me, I can show you more than these bought-and-paid-for stallions ever could.”

“Let me go, Wilson, and kindly put your cock back in your trousers.” She kept her voice low and controlled, even though the wildness in his eyes made her shake, too. She was reminded once again of his enormous strength, so powerful in a man of relatively slender build. That was familiar, but this degree of passion was new, and it terrified her.

For a moment there was a standoff. Had Wilson even heard what she’d said? But then his fingers loosened and when she shook her arm, his hand dropped away and he set himself to rights.

“This isn’t over, Adela,” he said to her retreating back as she sped away.

It is if I can help it.

“It is. Leave me alone. Keep your distance,” she said, not turning, still striding. She would have to be very careful, and lie low for the rest of the house party. Or remain in the safety of groups.

She must never be alone with Wilson, ever again.

* * *

S
MOKING
ALONE
IN
a shadowed corner of the kitchen garden, Blair Devine was well placed to watch a male figure approach him. He remained hidden until he recognized Edward Foster, a valet of his acquaintance, with whom he’d had profitable dealings with before. Devine had been pleased to see the man’s employer among the house party guests.

“Evening, Mr. Devine. How’s tricks?” Foster’s grin was sharp and wily. “You wouldn’t have a spare fag about your person, would you? I’m gasping.”

Devine offered his cigarette case, filled with the fine Turkish cigarettes he purchased in Bond Street. Foster took one, and Blair gestured encouragingly, so the valet took a handful more and secreted them in his top pocket. Money oiled the wheels, but other little treats smoothed the way too.