The Stallion (15 page)

Penny stopped in her tracks and turned to face this imperious woman who seemed to have the ability to command at will and to cajole, persuade and manipulate.

She was aware of a dark sensuality invading her body. And yet, in some strange way, she recognised it as if she had briefly touched it in the most erotic of dreams.

‘Yes, I remember,’ Penny said softly, her eyes meeting Nadine’s before she slid the bolt across the door to the grey mare’s stable. She glanced only briefly at Nadine’s face before
looking
down at the floor. Her cotton blouse now clung stained and damp to her bare breasts. She smelt of sex, and, if it hadn’t been for the savage yearnings rising in her body, she would be in her bath or on her bed, with Gregory running his soapy hands and sponge over her wet body or massaging her aching muscles. She sighed and shifted her weight from one curved hip to the other and waited for Nadine to make the first move as she knew she would.

Nadine grinned rather than smiled, her teeth chillingly white, and a cheroot clutched grimly in the corner of her mouth.

Despite being in a stable where combustible materials were used and stored, Nadine still smoked, ash flying and smoke curling up towards the dark wooden rafters where pigeons nested and vermin scurried. Languidly she leant one elbow against the stable divide, the blackness of her clothes strangely out of place among the earthy yellow ochre of the straw.

‘Y . . . es,’ said Nadine slowly to nothing in particular as she blew smoke in corkscrew spirals. ‘Y . . . es.’

A myriad nerve ends danced between Penny’s legs, yet her hands trembled as she attempted to put the grooming kit away where it belonged. If the episode on the log was anything to go by, she knew more or less what to expect, and how much the degree of discomfort was outweighed by the pleasure. For the first time she wondered whether Ariadne had gone through the same punishments. Inwardly she smiled. It was more than likely. She remembered her of old. Ariadne had started young, and had no boundaries when it came to experimentation.

Yes. She knew what to expect from Nadine. She also knew to some extent what to expect from Alistair. Earlier she had discerned his look once she had left the long grass and the tree trunk behind her. With Nadine, she had returned to the box. He had been there. He’d stared at her, a wistful look in his eyes
that
was not entirely readable. Her eyes had met his; had sparkled enough to let him know that she’d guessed he’d watched both what she had done with Stephen and what Nadine and the tree trunk had done to her. She didn’t need a crystal ball to guess that. There was mud on his boots. There was no mud in the show field, but there
was
on the field side of the stile. Clods of mud clung to his boots. Alistair had indeed seen her punishment, her lying full-length on the log. For a moment she had thought he was going to ask her something, even to reach out and touch her. This could be the moment, she had thought. But nothing had happened; and, despite her initial elation, she had once again been disappointed.

A cloud of smoke circled Penny’s head, blown there deliberately by the tall female with the gaunt face. Nadine’s very wide mouth smiled and her face seemed suddenly to be full of teeth, all white and large, and flashing devilishly at her.

‘I’m a very fair person,’ Nadine said suddenly – as if for some reason she thought Penny might have doubted it. ‘I have to be strict, you see. My brother requires it of me. It’s very important that everything is done in a way to suit him. He has little time to spare in his life for pleasurable pastimes, so only the very best will do, and then, only when the need is at its strongest. Everything has to be perfect. It’s all a matter of self-discipline. My brother is a great believer in self-discipline.’ The voice was as languorous and decadent as her pose, and dripped with the shadow of Oscar Wilde.

‘I see,’ replied Penny. So, she told herself, Nadine influences Alistair’s life. For a moment, she wondered if there was something decidedly unhealthy in their relationship. If that was the case, then through Nadine she could actually win her wager with Ariadne. It could even be easy if those recently dormant and dark feelings that were racing through her body were anything to go by.

Nadine left where she had been leaning and came face to face with her. Penny was aware of the scent of rich tobacco as Nadine kissed her cheek.

‘My brother’s handsome, don’t you think?’

Eyes still downcast, Penny hesitated before she nodded.

Nadine’s fingers twisted in her hair, which now hung tangled and slightly damp.

‘He is a very rich man, you know – and a very powerful man. Yet even powerful men have their weaknesses. Did you know that?’

Penny, uncertain about what reply to give, shrugged her shoulders and ran her tongue across her lips, but was disinclined to raise her eyes from the floor.

Nadine laughed close to her ear. Penny’s submissive stance, her air of ignorance, seemed to please her no end.

‘I can give him to you – if you do exactly as I say. I can arrange everything so it will suit you and suit him. What say you, my pretty pussy? Would you like me to do that for you? Would you?’ Sharp fingernails traced leisurely lines over Penny’s cheek. Chill thrills of excitement coursed through her veins. Her cheeks flushed in spite of herself as though she were a virgin about to lose such a state of grace for ever.

‘Can you really do that?’ Penny muttered, the dark feelings from within muffling the words in her throat and half-drowning the last vestiges of thought she still entertained with regard to the wager.

Nadine smiled, and a low noise issued from her throat as though she were growling or even purring. She laughed and seemed for the moment loath to answer. There was intimidation in her towering height, an icy coldness in the whiteness of her skin. The Snow Queen, thought Penny, that beautiful creature from a fairy tale who was at one and the same time both irresistible and dangerous.

Nadine’s close proximity had a strangely unnerving effect. Nadine was not touching her, and yet Penny was aware that Nadine’s body was only a fraction away from her own, held there in suspension. Just when she thought Nadine would cross that narrow divide, the long fingers – white as snow and cold as ice – trailed provocatively over the mounds of her breasts, then slid delicately beneath the gaping front of her blouse. Fine fingertips and long fingernails played with her rising nubs and, just as she was expected to do, she groaned with pleasure but kept her eyes on the floor.

White fingers with black-varnished nails stroked the creamy flesh of Penny’s breasts before they scratched, then squeezed, her nipples. A faint cry that seemed suspended between pain and pleasure escaped from her throat.

Almost with pleading, she looked up at Nadine as her breasts rose and fell against the cold white hand. A cheroot still smouldered between the first two fingers of Nadine’s right hand.

‘Can you do that?’ Penny repeated, thinking perhaps that Nadine had forgotten she had asked a question. ‘Do you have that sort of power over him?’

Smoky breath touched her lips before the cold flesh of Nadine’s mouth. Then a tongue rich in the tastes of wine, tobacco and depravity locked with hers. Surges of forgotten feelings welled up in Penny’s mind. She remembered her sexual experiences with Ariadne. She had always put their fumbling lovemaking down to adolescent experimentation. This was a woman doing this, and now she was an adult. Her eyes studied the soft crown of hair as Nadine bent her head to kiss her throat and nibble at her ear. The head rose, and the pale-grey eyes, so blackly lined, met hers.

‘I do have power over my brother, my pretty,’ Nadine answered, her lips but a breath away from Penny’s. ‘With my help, and only with my help, you will have him handed to you
on
a plate.’ Again, the head of shorn, white hair nuzzled against her, and the wide mouth enveloped her own. The large but fine hands held her shoulders, then fell to her breasts. ‘Just do as I say, and my brother will be yours.’

Penny, whose arms hung useless at her sides, sighed and her nipples rose with engorged passion. Moistness spread between her legs and those dark feelings inside wrapped round her like a warm but prickly cloak.

Nadine’s body was hard against hers and the smell of expensive perfume and aromatic tobacco made an odd and not unexciting assault on her nostrils. She moaned and closed her eyes as the kisses and caresses increased.

I have to do this, she told herself, the wager and her career still having some place in her mind. Then she corrected her statement. I want to do this.

There was a feeling of being on a helter-skelter as the fingers trailed onwards. Sex had the same laws as gravity. There was no way of resisting it.

She was only vaguely aware of the cheroot being thrown into the trough. It sizzled there, a last curl of smoke rising upwards like incense to an incarnate deity.

Nadine’s strong arms wrapped around her and drew her closer. Penny felt surrounded by her superior height and strength, yet cosy against the hard nubs of her breasts, which were noticeably underdeveloped. She trembled in Nadine’s arms, yet did not move. She waited for the orders she knew would come.

‘Take your clothes off,’ whispered Nadine against her ear.

Penny blinked, looked at the cool grey eyes for just a moment, then sat down on a bale of straw to pull off her boots. Her breeches followed. Then her blouse.

‘What about
your
clothes? Aren’t you going to get them off?’ she asked Nadine.

Nadine shook her head; smiling, she ran her eyes down over Penny’s creamy flesh.

‘All in good time, pretty,’ she said, tangling the index finger of her right hand in Penny’s copious pubic curls. ‘All in good time – in my time, of course.’

Strong, powerful hands pulled Penny closer before running down her back and clasping her buttocks. As Nadine bent her legs slightly, Penny felt the hard boniness of her pubic mound gyrate gently against hers, then gasped as she felt Nadine’s fingers invade the deep cleft between the cheeks of her bottom.

‘Don’t flinch, pretty pussy. Accept it. I will do it. You will accept it.’

With the help of her new sensuality, Penny controlled her urge to cry out. All the time Nadine smiled at her, as though she were a child or a china doll playing imaginative games no one else could understand.

Once the coldness of the fingers slid between her legs, Penny knew she was lost. Her breath caught in her throat. This was another woman doing this to her, another woman who would know what each reaction to her probing would be. One who had no doubt experienced the same sensations herself.

Nadine withdrew her fingers suddenly and undid her own well-cut trousers. She wore only the trousers, blouse and boots now. Her hat and jacket had already been discarded.

‘Here, put your hand here.’ The voice was hushed yet firm. Penny felt her hand being guided down into Nadine’s trousers and let it be so. Her fingers slid over Nadine’s flat belly. There was no spare fat. Sharp pelvic bones and silky skin without blemish passed beneath her touch. Penny stayed her hand a moment as she leant and rubbed her head against Nadine’s chest, her legs quivering like jelly.

Nadine’s fingers were doing delicious things to her slippery
sex.
Sometimes they merely probed up beneath her outer lips and dipped into her wet vagina. Sometimes the fingers squeezed her outer lips together and the varnished nails dug into crisp pubic hair. Penny whimpered then groaned her compliance and complete surrender to those probing fingers that slid so tenderly and pinched with such precision over her valley of hot flesh. She sucked in her breath as her own fingers met the shorn lips of Nadine’s sex. No hair. None at all. Her flesh lean – mean, even – between her open legs.

‘Surprised, my pretty pussy?’ said Nadine with a smile, her hot lips drowning any response Penny might have had. Nadine was not interested in negative responses. She only wanted the more positive ones. She ate them, Penny thought to herself; drank them in as anyone else might food or drink. Penny felt Nadine’s silky and warm labia begin to slide under the ministrations of her fingers. As their mouths sucked deeply and kissed deep, bruising kisses, their hands became more agitated, each imitating the movements of the other, each knowing what the other was feeling. Tentatively, Penny’s hand covered one small breast. The effect was sensational. She felt its firmness tremble beneath her touch, and felt the hardening erection of the pert nipple.

Eddies of pleasure spewed upwards in greater intensity as two of Nadine’s fingers played with her. The thumb and the rest of her fingers created havoc among her nerve endings, stroking her inner lips and squeezing at her excited labia and jutting clitoris. Her legs trembled more. She felt as though the hand that explored between her legs was also holding her up, helping her to ride the pleasure that pulsated around her loins.

The sensations were mind-blowing, too good to keep to herself. She copied, and heard the moans of sublime ecstasy emitting in soft rushes of breath from Nadine’s mouth.

In complete unison, raptures of orgasm jerked their hips, which made their arms quiver with transferred sensations. Penny cried out, unable to exercise any self-control at all as her climax washed over her, her hips jerking time after time to ride the hand beneath her. Beneath her own hand, she felt the denuded lips and the soaking sex of Nadine leap in unbridled rapture as her swollen bud yielded at last to her novice fingers.

Penny sighed, then stared wide-eyed up at the strong features, as the same hands that had given her pleasure clamped firmly to each side of her head. Intuition born of the dark feelings deep inside disposed her to think that pure pleasure was ended and might now be accompanied by pain.

‘You’re mine, Miss Bennet,’ said Nadine in that low growly voice of hers. ‘You belong to my brother, to the Beaumont estate. I’m a Beaumont, so you are mine. You might not think so, my little pussy-cat, but you are. And if you want my brother, you have to be mine – to do as I ask without question. Is that not so?’

Penny attempted to nod her head in the confines of Nadine’s strong hands. ‘Yes,’ she murmured through pursed lips, which were pushed into that shape by Nadine’s thumbs. ‘Whatever you say, Nadine.’