The Duke of Hearts (The Highwaymen #2)

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

APPALLING.

THAT WAS what it was, and Arthford knew it. He wasn’t like his friend Nothshire, however, when it came to moral quandaries. He didn’t need to do the right thing. Arthford had long ago discovered that he could do all manner of things that were not strictly good or right without bursting into flame or being otherwise damned on the spot.

Maybe he was damned, at that.

Arthford didn’t much like to contemplate the afterlife. He was as educated a man as his status allowed and his father had been a secret pagan, really. Though his father had nominally been a member of the Church of England, all the real and true religious ceremonies he’d participated in as a boy had been dedicated to Mars, god of war, and Jupiter, the head of all the gods.

So, anyway, between all these things, Arthford had been given plenty of exposure to the idea that it was all bollocks. People had made it up, he thought. Everyone agreed that the Greek and Roman gods were made up. It seemed nonsensical to him that they would somehow think the Christian god was real, however.

Of course, he also understood that it wasn’t strictly about sense, not in the end.

People believed for strange and arcane reasons, deeply personal reasons, and he supposed he was sort of jealous of that, sometimes, in the end. It was the capacity for trust, truly, he supposed. Arthford didn’t trust anything or anyone, least of all himself. He certainly couldn’t expect himself to conform to some kind of standard of goodness.

It was not right, not right at all, to take the virtue of some girl who had been abused and used by her father and other men, who had been twisted up and broken in whatever way she’d been broken. To use her for his pleasure was disgusting.

He was disgusting, though.

He’d long ago come to terms with that, and he didn’t much mind it being true.

Besides, it must mean something that he wanted her, mustn’t it? He had thought he was sort of broken himself, that he would only ever want Seraphine. Wanting Miss Adams was clearly some gift from whatever god or gods he didn’t believe in.

And he’d be good to her.

He’d never bedded a virgin, true. Truth was, he’d only ever been with Seraphine.

Still, he thought he could do a halfway decent job at deflowering her. How hard could it be, anyway? Men did it all the time. He suspected most of them were terrible at it, so he didn’t even have to be that good to warrant some improvement over whatever experience she would have had otherwise.

Hell’s bells, if she’d been going to be married off to some man in an arrangement, it likely would have been dreadful. He’d be better than that.

And he’d definitely be better than some lecherous nobleman who’d purchased the right to have her, which she had indicated her father had been very close to doing. He’d killed her father, saved her from being debauched. Now, the debauchery fell to him.

There was a poetry to it, wasn’t there?

He actually felt guilty, that was the thing. He was trying to rationalize it. He was doing a bad job of it.

Well, didn’t matter. He was doing it. If it was very wrong, he would just have to live with the guilt. He was used to living with guilt, after all.

He felt guilty about having killed his father, that was true. He felt guilty because one was not supposed to kill one’s father, no matter what awful things one’s father did. One was supposed to simply bear that, bear it all, and respect one’s father, even if one’s father was a right blackguard.

Of course, he also felt guilty for not killing his father sooner. He felt guilty for the times when his mother had told him to go and hide and when she had marched out to present herself to his father and told him to hit her, not the boy, he’s only a boy, take it out on me, she had said.

He felt guilty for the times his mother had been bruised or hobbling, or the times that she had been bleeding or the one time she’d spit out teeth or—

Anyway, guilt was complicated.

And commonplace. For him, anyway, it was commonplace.

He was guilty all the time, anyway. This guilt? He could stand it.

He sauntered around the grounds of Briar Abbey as Mr. Adams cleared out, taking three carriages full of trunks and paintings and jewels and plates and the like. Arthford really should have been more specific about what it was that Mr. Adams could take with him, he supposed, but now it was done, and he couldn’t interfere any more, not now.

Interfering more would mean he’d have to wonder how long he’d had the plan in his mind subconsciously.

What did you think you could do for her that would be big enough to demand she spread her thighs for you?

No, it had not been that way.

He didn’t think it had.

Finally, Mr. Adams was gone, and Arthford went back to the front door and a servant let him in.

“Yes,” said the servant. “Miss Adams says she is expecting you. I’m to take you upstairs to the sitting room off her bedchamber, she says.”

Arthford eyed him. Would servants carry this tale, the tale of the man who buys a house for the pleasure of fucking a woman?

Oh, servants would die for a tale like that.

He was going to have to spend more coin to shut them up on the way out of here, for Miss Adams’s sake. He didn’t care what they said about him. But if she ever did decide she wanted to get married, it wouldn’t do for her to be thought of as his whore. He would not leave her that legacy.

“I’ll follow you,” said Arthford.

“Yes, this way, sir,” said the servant.

When he got to her sitting room, she was still wearing trousers. She was also drunk, or very nearly so. She was sitting on an easy chair with a glass of port. It was nearly empty.

Arthford stood near the doorway as the servant shut them in together. He wished to tell her that she could say no, that if she felt the need to get drunk before she did this, that maybe she didn’t really want it, and that he would not be the sort of man to force her.

He wished to say it. He even meant it.

But he didn’t say anything like that. He just came across the room and picked up the port and took a drink of it right from the bottle. “Getting a little drunk is probably just the way to make this less awkward.”

“I’m not drunk,” she said, and she didn’t sound drunk, admittedly. She wasn’t slurring her words or anything like that. “I can handle my port.”

“As well as any man?” he said, eyeing her trousers.

She shrugged. “If you wish me to wear a dress just so you can take it off me—”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I like the look of your legs, I must say.” He sat down in a chair next to hers. “And I don’t mind if you do want to look like a man.”

She turned to him, furrowing her brow.

He shrugged. “I just think it’s rather less of a thing than people think it is, that’s all. Did you know that the Greeks and Romans were quite permissive of that sort of thing? Men with men and women with women.”

“I suppose,” she said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Well, if you feel like a man—”

“I don’t,” she said, but too quickly.

He drank more port. “I’m going to tell you something. God only knows why I am. I’d appreciate if you never repeated it. My father was overly enamored with Greeks and Romans. He didn’t fixate on that part, the men-fucking- boys part, though… well, I suppose I’m lucky in that way. He did seem to think the male-on-male part was, erm…” Maybe he couldn’t say this out loud.

She dragged her upper teeth over her lower lip, gazing at him.

He drank more port. “I watched him. He made me watch, that is. I was too young to be watching, and God knows no wants to watch their father have sex, whether it’s with a woman or a man, but anyway, I suppose I grew up thinking it commonplace is all. When I was at university, there was a boy there, my age. We had a sort of mutual fascination with each other.”

“You had a male lover,” she said softly.

“I don’t know if I’d call it quite that,” he said. “I was too afraid to let him… and he wasn’t keen on it either. We mostly used our mouths on each other, in all truth. So, that boy’s mouth, and Seraphine, and that’s all I’ve ever stuck my prick in.” He drank another swallow of port. “Well, true, there may have been a few penetrable objects in my curious youth. Look, all I’m saying is that I like it about you, I suppose. Maybe it’s why I find you so fascinating. You’re sort of both? Aspects of maleness and femaleness? It’s intoxicating.”

She blushed.

“Apologies,” he said. “You likely didn’t want to know any of those things.”

“Your father truly made you watch him?”

He nodded, drinking more port. “That wasn’t the worst of the things he did, really.”

“Watch him with men?”

“He never did seem to dally with women, truthfully.”

“In their… arses?”

“That’s how it works.”

“Did it seem to hurt them?”

He nodded. “That seems to be part of it, at least the way my father did it. One of the reasons I never wanted to, you know, was that I couldn’t quite enjoy hurting other people the way he did. I don’t know why not, maybe I’m as much a weakling as he always used to say I was, but I’ve never been that way.”

“Enjoy hurting other people,” she said softly. “Yes, there’s something of that in it, in the entire business, isn’t there?”

“Doesn’t have to be,” he said, but he knew he was lying, because it was true, there did. Someone had to be doing the hurting. He just happened to like being the victim, that was all.

However, this, here, her. Couldn’t be like that. She wasn’t like Seraphine, and she wouldn’t take control of him. This woman was a virgin. She’d need him to take control.

The thought made him hard, actually.

Well, then.

He drank more port, smirking.

“What?” she said. “What’s funny?”

“Me,” he said wryly. “I’m a laughingstock, Miss Adams.”

She held out her glass. “More.”

He poured.

She got up, taking the port glass with her, swirling the dark liquid around in the glass as she wandered. “We should go to my bedchamber, I suppose.”

“Getting right down to it, are we?” he said darkly. “I suppose that’s best, yes. You likely don’t want to hear any more awful horror stories of my father and my childhood.”

“Is that why you did it?” she said, gulping at the port. “Because you knew what it was like to have a father who liked owning you and using you in some way.”

“Yes,” he said. “I wish someone would have killed mine for me instead of leaving the task to me.” Oh, dear. He’d just admitted that out loud, that he’d committed patricide.

But all she said was, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

They gazed at each other.

“Let’s go to your bedchamber,” he said eventually.

She nodded. There was a door that opened off the sitting room. She opened it up and went inside. He could see a hint of the bed and the coverlet through the open doorway. He went after her. He took the port.

Inside her bedchamber, he closed the door, though he didn’t think anyone would come into that sitting room and see them. He leaned against the closed door and drank more of the port.

“I want you to undress for me,” he said.

“Of course that’s what you want,” she said.

“Dunrose says you were good at it,” he said, but he said it to the port bottle, not to her. “I think that means you liked some aspect of it, and I understand that, I do. I know you can hate a thing overall, but like some little bit of it, some bit that makes you feel… I don’t know… powerful? Alive? Desirable?”

She was quiet.

He glanced at her, but she was looking at the bed. He looked back at the port and kept talking. “If it isn’t that way, and you don’t wish to make a performance of it, then forget about it.”

She came over and took the port bottle away from him.

He surrendered it.

She walked over to a writing desk and set it there and then came back to him. She reached back, behind her neck, looking directly into his eyes, and started to undo her buttons.

His trousers suddenly seemed incredibly tight. He had been hard already, but now he was very hard. He let out a little noise.

She could no longer reach any more buttons from that angle, so she moved her hands so that she could and continued with her buttons. The bodice of her dress was loose. One sleeve fell off her shoulder. She looked at the fabric, making a face, an exaggerated face of surprise. “Oops,” she said, with a little shrug.

He swallowed.

She smiled, a coy smile. “Everything you were hoping for, Your Grace?”

“Better,” he said, his voice not strong.

This made her expression falter, but only for a moment. She smiled, but the smile was different, more genuine. She lifted her shoulder, and the dress’s sleeve fell down further.

He could see her stays beneath, the hint of her bosom. His cock pulsed.

“Well,” she said, lifting her shoulders, her voice breathy. “I think this is very loose now. I could take it off.”

“You could,” he agreed in a hoarse voice.

“That what you want, Your Grace?” she whispered.

What had he said about how he was going to have to take charge of her? Nonsense. She was taking charge of him, sure as anything. “You know it is.”

She pulled the half dress off slowly, achingly slowly, and it made him crave her. He could not wait to touch her.

Now, she was in her stays and a pair of trousers, and he thought she looked delectable. There was something about the look of it, the rebellion of it, the collision of the masculine and the feminine, and he was hard from the deviance itself, he thought. He wanted to unbutton the falls of her trousers himself. He wanted to find her cunny beneath those male clothes.

But she was working at the laces of her stays. These laced up the front, and she had untied them and was loosening them. Each tug that loosened them meant more of her bosom was free.

He watched that, his mouth dry until she was just one tug away from showing him her nipples.

Then, she stopped. She pressed her stays up against her chest. She smiled at him, a wicked sort of smile. “I don’t know, Your Grace,” she said.

“About showing me?” he said, and his voice was deep and rich.

“Maybe I’m nervous,” she said in a knowing and teasing voice.

“Are you?” It sounded like she was pretending, but maybe she wasn’t.

“I think,” she said, nodding at him. “You should take something off, too. Even things up.”

He chuckled. “Oh, all right. Definitely. I can do that.” He shrugged out of his jacket. He undid his cravat. He unbuttoned his waistcoat. He pulled his shirt free from his trousers. “How about this, then? I’ll be bare from the waist up, too? Even enough?”

“Yes,” she said, swallowing.

He yanked off his shirt and she gaped at him, her expression changing as she looked at his arms and his chest and she let go of her stays and they fell down and there were her perfect teacup shaped breasts, the nipples small and light brownish pink and tight little points. He could feel it in the root of his cock, feel how he was getting even harder, and he reached for her.

She put her hands on his chest. “You… are all men like this without their clothes?”

“I suppose,” he said, though he wasn’t quite sure what she meant. “Lift your arms, Miss Adams.”

“Call me Marjorie,” she said, lifting her arms.

“Simon,” he said, pulling her stays up and over and then tossing them away.

“It’s only, I’ve seen paintings and sculptures, but they’re usually less… hairy.” She tangled her fingers in his chest hair. “And I like the hair. A lot.”

“Oh, do you?” he said, smiling at her.

“Very much,” she gasped.

He kissed her, pulling her bare upper body into his arms. Her skin was incredibly soft. He wanted to run his hands all over her.

MARJORIE WONDERED IF she was only attracted to the Duke of Arthford, or if it was that men didn’t present themselves with the most alluring aspects of themselves on display. If she had ever seen this before, a bare chest like Arthford’s, which wasn’t that hairy, admittedly—well, it didn’t look hairy, because the hair on his chest was fair, blond, curly, like a little halo of golden curls all over his upper pectoral muscles and clinging to the rounded muscles on his stomach and gathering and darkening the lower on his stomach that it got. She had her hand, now, inside his trousers, tracing the hair as it disappeared below his belly button.

“Let me help you, Marjorie,” he said in a deep, lilting voice, and he started on the falls of his trousers, baring his body to her, baring the darker, thicker, coarser hair until—

“You’re not wearing smalls,” she said.

He laughed, sounding embarrassed. “Sometimes they itch, and I don’t. I obviously had no idea I was going to take off my clothing in front of someone besides my valet, though. I forgot.”

She peered at him, at the part of him that was sticking out of his unbuttoned trousers. She’d seen these before, too, but they were different in art, too. They weren’t this curved or this erect or quite so… big.

“It’s all right,” he said, his voice soft. “You’re not frightened of that, are you?” He made a noise in the back of his throat. “Well, then. That’s a thing I hadn’t known about myself and perhaps wish I didn’t know.”

“What?” she said, telling herself that she should look at his face and not his… his male thing… there was some vulgar word for them, what was it?

“Oh, just that, apparently, it might arouse me if you were frightened of my prick, that’s all. But it’s not even a little bit frightening, I must say, so that’s preposterous.”

Prick, that’s it. “It’s… intimidating,” she said. “It seems like it’s going to be a sort of, erm, tight fit.”

“ Yes, ” he hissed, and he kissed her again.

She gasped her surprise against his lips, and he guided her hand onto him, which meant that he let go of his trousers, and they fell down to his ankles. He wrapped her hand around the girth of him, wrapped her hand very tightly around him.

“Tight’s good, then,” she managed. She was out of breath for some reason.

“Yes,” he said again. “Here, like this, stroke it, Marjorie.” He guided her.

She did it, running her hand over the long, curved length of him. He was very, very stiff and his skin was hot.

“That’s good,” he informed her, eyes shut, a smile playing on his lips. “There, you see, not frightening at all.”

She couldn’t help but laugh, just a little laugh. She still felt intimidated. How was all of this supposed to fit inside her body? She didn’t think that was going to be particularly pleasant.

On the other hand, she’d heard that it was painful for virgins, hadn’t she? Wasn’t there some practice of displaying bloody sheets or something that she’d read about?

He was kissing her neck, and he had cupped one of her breasts with one hand. He was kneading it, ever so gently, which was nice, actually, because she liked it when he stretched the taut tip of her nipple, but she was mostly too overwhelmed by the thought of blood to be feeling anything nice.

“I am frightened,” she breathed.

He stopped kissing her neck, and moved so that he was looking into her eyes. “Are you?” He reached down and moved her hand off of his prick. “Well, stop that, then.”

“I thought you wanted me to be afraid.”

“So did I,” he said with a shrug. “Apparently not.” He nodded. “Go and lie down.” His trousers were around his ankles, so he labored across the room to the bed, and she giggled as she sat down.

He joined her to remove his boots and yank off his trousers and socks.

Oh, well, then, he was entirely bare.

She looked down at her own trousers. “I got distracted from taking everything off for you, didn’t I?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “What distracted you?”

“Your very big prick obviously,” she said.

And he tackled her back onto the bed and kissed her.

She had obviously said something he liked. She liked the kissing, so she kissed back, tangling up her tongue with his. She liked having his bare chest against her bare chest, too. She arched her back up and rubbed her nipples into his chest hair. That was very nice.

His mouth left hers to kiss his way down to her breasts. He sucked one of her nipples into his mouth and she cried out at the sensation, which was bright and good.

He moved to the other one, gave it the same treatment and when she reacted with another little cry, he seemed to settle in to keep doing that.

She didn’t mind.

She let him suckle her, back and forth, back and forth. It was dizzying, and it felt very nice.

He worked on the falls to her trousers, and she let him do that, too.

He tugged them down and bared her small clothes and she kicked off her trousers.

He sat up, abruptly. “I keep getting distracted, too.”

She blinked up at him. Her breasts were wet, the tips of them tightening as the air in the room touched the places he’d had his hot, cavernous mouth. “I didn’t mind.”

He smiled at her. “No, I could tell. You have lovely breasts, by the way. I would have given you the house to look at them, I really would have. I’m happier to taste them, though.” He bent down and kissed them both and then put a hand over one. Lazily, he toyed with her nipple as he talked to her. “But what I was going to do was to show you that there’s nothing frightening about my prick.”

“Oh?” she said. “W-well, maybe there isn’t, but maybe it’s just because I’m a maiden, I suppose. Because I’ve heard it is, um, painful the first time.”

He thought about that, still toying absently with her nipple. “Oh, maybe I have, too.” He nodded at her smalls. “Well, then, this is what we need to see, Marjorie, my pretty girl. Show me your cunny?”

Why did that make her feel so strangely shivery, his words?

He thumbed her nipple. “We could just use our mouths like that boy I was with in university, of course. I wouldn’t mind that.”

“M-mouths?” She looked at his prick. “You mean…?”

He was grinning. He rubbed his thumb over her mouth. He pressed it between her lips.

She shivered, but it might have been a good shiver. She wasn’t sure. “I’ll just show you.” She was wriggling out of her smalls, pushing them down out of the way.

She kicked them away and then lay still on the bed, looking at him. He was perched next to her, bare, his chest mesmerizing, and that hard, curved part of him sticking out of the thatch of dark blond hair at his crotch.

She thought about putting her mouth on it. It seemed exciting in addition to being positively disgusting. Maybe the disgusting part was exciting in some strange way. Her heart started to pound.

“Open your thighs for me, Marjorie,” he said. His thumb pushed further between her lips.

She licked the pad of his thumb.

He moaned.

She moaned too. She opened her thighs.

“Look at you,” he said appreciatively. “Look at this lovely, pretty, untouched cunny.” He tugged on her ankle, turning her so that his face was right between her open knees. He gaped at her. “It is untouched, yes? Not unseen, but untouched.”

She swallowed. “Y-yes.”

“So, I’m going to be the first.”

“Honestly, he wouldn’t—my father wouldn’t let me show myself here. Except once.” Should she tell him that?

“The second man to see it,” he said. He tilted his head to one side, still staring. “Something perverse in me wants to know who he was.”

“I shouldn’t have said—”

“It was Dunrose, wasn’t it?”

She tried to close her knees. He wouldn’t let her.

“It’s all right, Marjorie,” he breathed. “That doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me at all that you’ve been looked at here. Or that you might like being looked at. Is that why you wear men’s clothes, too? Do you like being out of the ordinary, watchable, something new and exciting?”

She squirmed, but she let her legs fall completely open, and she tilted her pelvis at him, really showing him everything.

“What if I wanted to show you off?” he whispered. “What if I liked that?”

She gasped, shaking her head. “No,” she breathed. “No, please—”

“You liked it when Dunrose looked at your cunny, didn’t you?” His large warm hand was traveling up her inner thigh.

“I…” She should contradict him, she supposed, although she didn’t know if she could rightly claim she never liked being looked at, not exactly. After all, there was always that strange bit of odd power in it, in being wanted, in having something that other people craved looking at. It wasn’t as if Dunrose hadn’t looked at her, at any rate, even if he hadn’t been the one who’d looked at her there .

“You liked being desired,” said Arthford. “You liked being on display, driving them all mad, and then leaving them out of their heads with wanting you, but not giving in to them.”

“I… I didn’t,” she said.

“No?” he said. His hand was all the way up her thigh now, inches from her sex.

Her body clenched.

He noticed. “Well, I like it, Marjorie. I like your much-desired cunny. I like to think how many men have wanted to touch it. I like that it’s me that gets to, though, in the end.” His fingers stopped, in the air, right next to her sensitive flesh. “May I?”

She nodded.

He wasn’t looking at her face. “May I be the first to touch this very pretty cunny of yours, Marjorie? Please?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

He traced the seam of her. The lips of her sex were closed, but as his fingers gentled their way over her, they fell open.

She let out a ragged breath.

“Good girl,” he soothed. “Show me everything. That’s it.”

She tilted her pelvis up, showing him.

He brushed his fingers over her, making a little circle around the sensitive nub at the top and then sliding the tip of his forefinger into her, barely nudging inside. “You’re wet,” he observed. “Does that hurt?”

“N-no,” she whispered.

He moved his finger out and circled her nub again.

She gasped.

“You like that, don’t you, sweet girl?”

She only moaned.

“Answer me, Marjorie, if you’d like me to do it again. Do you like it when I toy with this pretty little clitoris of yours?”

That was what it was called? “Yes,” she gasped.

“Good girl,” he said and made another circle around it. Then he pushed his finger inside her again, further this time. “You are tight, sweet thing, but there’s plenty of room here for my prick. I’m going to fit just fine.” He moved his finger out and ran it slickly over her clitoris again, and she shivered and sighed.

He kept his hand on her, tracing around the most sensitive part of her body as he climbed up to claim her mouth. He kissed her.

She made noises in the back of her throat, feeling unsteady and vulnerable. It felt so good the way he was touching her.

“Here’s what I think,” he said. “I want you to be frightened, but I want it to be unfounded when we actually get you nice and crammed full of me. I want you to be worried that it won’t fit or that it’ll be too big, but when I actually fuck you, I want you to love it .” He rubbed her clit.

She moaned again.

“You love that, right?” he whispered. “What I’m doing to you now?”

“Yes,” she panted.

“Good girl,” he said. “So, here’s what you need to do for me, if you don’t mind. You need to lie back and let me play with you right here, and you need to let your pretty little cunny get very, very wet and very, very ready for me.”

She sighed, liking this, liking the way he was talking to her.

He kept going. “First, pretty Marjorie, I am going to make you come. Hard. And then I am going to take your virginity. I’m going to slide right into your slippery little hole, and maybe it’s going to be a tight fit, but…”

The way he was rubbing her felt good, and his words, his tone of voice, it was all so very affecting, and she was getting wetter for him.

“It’s going to fit,” he said in a gravelly voice. “And you’re going to like it. And I’m going to like it.” He kissed her chin. He ducked down and kissed her nipple.

She let out something like a sob, her entire body feeling too tight, like a string on a violin, ready to be plucked.

“I’m going to love it,” he groaned. “Going to love that sweet, little, tight, untouched cunny of yours, going to fucking adore being the first man to ever get his prick into it. And I’m going to fuck it nice and thoroughly.”

He was stroking her and it was getting to be too much, but pleasantly too much. She was vibrating, ready for it, the string that must be plucked and soon .

“I’m going to fuck it and fuck it and—”

“Please,” she whimpered. She moved her hand down to guide his finger. She needed him there, right there , just a little lower.

“Oh, good girl,” he breathed, and he sucked on her nipple again.

She whimpered again, her voice broken and affected.

“Like this?” His finger was in exactly the right spot now, exactly .

She couldn’t make words. She made little mmphing sounds of affirmation, slamming her eyes shut, straining her neck back, panting loudly, and the pleasure seemed to grow inside her like a coming chord of an orchestra, like the sound of all the instruments warming up together, that cacophony of noise, growing and growing and—

“You’re doing so very well for me,” he whispered in a ragged voice. “So well, Marjorie, you’re incredibly wet.”

She mmphed again, and it was as if the sound surrounded her, as if the string inside her vibrated at just the right resonance. She climaxed, her mouth wide open but silent, her body entirely still except for the place where she was clenching in little, mad spasms.

“Oh, yes,” he breathed. “Like that, Marjorie, just like that. That’s exactly right.”

She was embarrassed for some reason. She sat up, burrowing her face against his chest, pushing his hand away from where he was pleasuring her. She whimpered into his skin, hiding her face away.

“Oh, yes, that’s good,” he said, his voice a knowing lilt. “Just what I want from you, to still be frightened of my massive cock.”

She was just embarrassed, but maybe it was better to play his game. She moved her face and looked up at him. “It is just… big.”

“Talk more about that,” he said, shoving her playfully back onto the bed. He settled between her thighs, jutting his member out at her.

She looked at it. “I really don’t think it’s going to fit.”

“That’s right, because it’s enormous, yes? Say that, say it’s enormous.”

She let out a little giggle. “It’s enormous, Your Grace. It’s, er, huge. Gigantic. Ever so large.”

“Perfect,” he muttered. “Lord, you’re good at that.” He put his thumb back between her thighs.

She jerked away because he brushed her just-climaxed clitoris, which was sensitive.

“Oh, apologies,” he said. His finger went lower. He was rubbing her wetness, she realized, rubbing it out and around, rubbing it all over.

She cringed. “I am afraid,” she whispered.

“Yes, that was very good,” he whispered back.

“No, I’m serious,” she said.

He carefully lowered himself over her, holding himself up on his arms. “It’s just a prick, Marjorie. It’s not even really big. I think it’s probably pretty average.” He grinned at her.

She made a horrified face. “Average? But how is it even possible? How do people manage this?”

“Let me show you,” he said and reached down and slid himself around against her and then tucked himself right inside.

She made a choked noise.

He made an answering one. His eyes were closed. “Tight, yes, very fucking tight. God in heaven, Marjorie, you feel good .”

He felt… big. She tensed, not moving a muscle as he penetrated her, inch after inch, stretching her and stretching her.

He was kissing her again.

She let him kiss her. She even tried to kiss back, but she wasn’t even breathing or moving, so it was difficult to move her tongue or her lips. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing up at the ceiling.

He broke the kiss. “All right, well, this is not how I was hoping it would go, admittedly.” He affectionately brushed a thumb over her cheekbone. “That’s all of me now. You needn’t worry there’s more.”

“Oh, good, because it’s a lot,” she gasped.

“Does it hurt?”

She wasn’t sure. She shut her eyes, trying to feel for pain, and then realizing, no, if a thing hurt, you knew it hurt. “No,” she said, eyes still closed. “It’s… a lot.”

“Bad?” he said. “You wish me to stop?”

“No, don’t stop. I suppose… you gave me pleasure, and I must return that. It’s only fair and right.”

“Yes, but it didn’t cause me discomfort to pleasure you, Majorie, and I don’t know if I can take pleasure if you don’t like it.”

She opened her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Of course.” She drew in a shaky breath, and then she put her hands on his shoulders. She summoned the self within her that liked being looked at, that liked being an object of pleasure. She summoned that self, because she wanted him to want her and to have her and to take his pleasure using her body. Something about that was delicious in some forbidden and very arousing way. “I like it,” she said in a throaty voice. “I do like it, Your Grace.”

He hesitated. “Don’t do that,” he breathed. “Don’t… pretend.”

She held his gaze. “I’m not pretending,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie.

He searched her eyes, her expression, and then he thrust into her.

Oh, my, the curve of him, dragging against the inside of her body, what was that? It was intense, very intense, but she liked it. “Do that again,” she groaned, throwing her hands over her head.

“Yes?” he said. “You’re certain?”

“Please, please,” she urged him.

“You’re either the most fantastic actress in the history of the world or else I’m too distracted by how perfectly you’re gripping my cock to know the difference,” he gasped. “Christ, Marjorie, I like being inside you.”

She arched her body into his, rubbing her bare breasts into his bare chest, letting out throaty noises sounded might have sounded like she was still begging him for it, and maybe she was, begging for his cock, begging to be fucked, begging to be taken, begging to be deflowered.

Then she moved her hips and she found a perfect angle to take that curved part of his prick. Yes. There, just there. She shuddered, unable to do anything except pant and plead and make truncated attempts at words.

“Good?” he said, his voice strained. “That’s good, or that hurts, I can’t tell.”

“Good, good,” she managed. “Please.” Oh, Lord, she was going to have another climax, wasn’t she? She was reaching, building for it—

No, she needed—

She pressed her fingers over her own mound, between their bodies, questing, just…

Yes, a bit of pressure like that, and then when the tip of his perfectly curved prick hit her inside, right there , through the little wall of her flesh and muscle and all of those sensitive little bright spots of goodness, then—

She fell apart.

She let out gasping sobs as she built to a great height and then tumbled down, spasming on the way, this climax different than anything she’d ever felt, anything she’d ever done on her own, because she’d never climaxed around something, never had anything to clench on , never been so perfectly crammed full when it was happening, and the sensation of him hitting her in so many wondrous spots, it made everything feel too much, too good, too intense, too perfect.

“Fuck, you’re going to make me come if you keep making those noises ,” he ground out.

She tried to apologize, and then she wondered if that was a bad thing, making him feel like he was about to climax? It couldn’t—

He pulled out of her, pressed his prick into her belly and spurted all over her skin.

She let out a cry of surprise. She supposed she knew they did that, that liquid came out of them. Pricks, that was. They spent. She knew that. It was just… she hadn’t realized it was going to be so much or so sticky or all over her.

It was puddled on her belly. It had just jetted out, ropes and ropes of it. It had painted the underside of her breasts.

She gaped at it, at his release.

He tossed himself down on the bed next to her, face down. He breathed noisily.

She turned her head to look at him.

He said something into the bed, something muffled.

Well.

That was done, then.

She was no longer a virgin.