Chapter 4
“Whatever do you mean?” asked Lydia, still dazed from the shudders that had wracked her body so recently.
For their part, Chamberlayne and Denny moved quickly, adjusting their breeches and scrambling to stand guard at the door. They were used to following orders without question. Lydia was not.
“Carter, what is the meaning of this?” she asked, covering her breasts instinctively and struggling to bring the bedclothes about her hips — though Carter had already seen all of her bare.
“You know how crowds can turn,” he said with an uncharacteristic wave, as if he were attempting to wave her concerns away. This was not good; if he couldn’t tell her what had happened, there must be a disaster brewing downstairs.
“What has he done?” asked Lydia, her voice flat. Somehow, she knew exactly who was to blame for this: her dear husband.
By now, she stood before the major, and she considered poking him if he dissembled. She didn’t need to.
“After Wickham sold a third stake — to me — the assembled men protested that he’d be too flush to beat and threatened to leave the inn,” said Carter. “We don’t have long until the game begins.”
Lydia knew little about wagers, but their complaints didn’t sound unreasonable. This would be far from the first time George had attempted tricks at the betting table. He’d come home bruised and bloody on plenty of occasions, waving away Lydia’s questions.
“So he’s stopped offering new stakes in the game?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Carter, the single syllable drawn out into something long and winding. Which could only signal that there was more to the story.
Lydia poked his uniformed chest to prompt him to continue, just as she had on many cheerful evenings of flirtation before her marriage. Carter, the oldest and most senior of the officers, turned his nearly black eyes on her with a softness she hadn’t expected.
“So now he’s selling rights to watch your use, a shilling per man,” said Carter at last.
“My use…”
Carter had the decency not to shift on his feet or delay in answering. “He offered the last man staking him the chance to fuck you. Quickly.”
Lydia shook her head, trying to understand.
“Then who will wager for me during the game?” she asked, none of this making sense considering his earlier proclamation that only the winner of tonight’s game would fuck Lydia.
Carter nodded. “He must…he must think he can make enough by letting other men watch to offset any losses. Or…”
Lydia’s eyes closed of their own accord. Whatever he might say next would only pain her. “Or?”
“Or he thinks the men watching will be unreasonably hot to fuck you after witnessing what happens in this room.”
Lydia looked towards the door in fear. It was a mercy that Carter had reached this room in time and put his junior officers on guard; they stood at the alert, hands ready to seize their swords.
“When these men who have paid to watch come up the stairs and find the door blocked…”
“They’ll be shown to the room next door,” said Carter, steady despite the danger posed to all of them by a marauding band of voyeurs.
There was no saying what such men would do after paying their coin and seeing no show.
He was outwardly commanding and cool, but she noticed that his upper lip twitched and his jaw was tight.
“Next door?” Lydia asked, looking around. “What will they do there?”
Carter moved Lydia so her back rested against his solid front. He pointed to the wall. “I’m guessing that somewhere there is a hole for spying.”
Lydia’s knees locked, and she forgot to breathe.
“Steady now,” Carter whispered.
Her head nodded no of its own accord. How could she be calm when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall?
What would happen when the men who had paid to watch her humiliation and abuse discovered that she was instead being held so tenderly by the major and guarded by two captains?
“You sure about this? The colonel will have our arses,” said Chamberlayne to Denny from his place against the door.
“You like the lash well enough for both of us. Care to take mine?” asked Denny, casting his friend a stern look over his straight nose. Then they chuckled at their private joke.
If there were any justice in the world, George Wickham would…well, Lydia didn’t know a suitable punishment for such a scoundrel. He was more than a scoundrel or cad; did a word even exist for this man?
“What am I to do?” she asked faintly. It was both a question about now and also the future: how was she supposed to live under the control of Wickham?
Asking Carter wasn’t entirely fair; he and his fellow officers had given her an alternative, and she’d refused. Lydia couldn’t picture what that life would be like, having never seen previously respectable ladies from good families living with three men who shared her. What would her mother say!
In the weeks since returning to Wickham, she’d daydreamed about what it would be like to leave the world she had known and become a notorious woman.
She might have a maid-of-all-work again, and other servants, but how would she fill her days if the number of people she might call upon was severely restricted by her downfall?
Yet as she heard those heavy stomps and shouts outside, she realized that living under Wickham’s hand might very well mean she had all the loss of status she feared, with no benefits.
And a good deal of danger besides, as he became more and more reckless in offering her about.
Any man in Meryton could have had her tonight — provided he had the money.
Lydia was lucky that her old friends came to her rescue.
“There now,” murmured Carter, bringing his arms about her bare waist. “Steady. I’ve got you.”
“What are we to do?” she whispered. “Crowds turn violent when they don’t see what they paid for!”
That dear man stroked her belly until flutters distracted her from a growing sense of doom. “We’ll give them a show,” he said.
Lydia nodded. Carter was right; it would be best to accede to the demands of the crowd for the safety of all. Fortunately, she was wet and ready from Chamberlayne and Denny pleasuring her.
“We’ll give them a show…while showing them nothing,” concluded Carter.
Lydia’s confusion must have been clear because Carter laughed and turned her just so while angling her body. “An old trick: show the enemy what you wish him to see.”
She glanced at the wall shared with the bedroom next door. And then she realized: her body would be mostly positioned away from their gaze.
“How wet did the men get this little cunny?” asked Carter behind her as he roughly opened the placket of his breeches. “Did they make your sweet honey run down your thighs?”
“Glazed m’ mouth, she did,” said Chamberlayne with a grunt of satisfaction as he adjusted his cock.
From his position next to him at the door, Denny smirked. “I felt a little spray when her cunt shook.”
Lydia gasped. “You did not!” she cried, mortified at the idea of her body behaving in such a manner.
“Only one way to find out,” said Carter. His chest was warm in his scarlet coat against Lydia’s bare back as he took his cock in hand and bent his knees until it could slip between her thighs.
At first, Lydia was confused, waiting for him to slide into her channel. But when he set a quick pace and thrust in and out of her legs without entering her quim, she could only moan.
His cockhead dragged over her cunny lips, pushing through the wetness from her pleasure, and glancing over her nub. Carter bent over her, showing his clothed back to the wall, so he appeared to be using Lydia with relentless force.
All the while, he held her, placing one arm about her belly for support and keeping a hand over the breast otherwise exposed.
“Now this is the part where you wail and beg for mercy, my dear,” he said, panting from his exertions and the toll of holding her pliant form.
He could have easily slipped into her sheath, taken his pleasure, and filled her, but Carter worked his cock expertly to glance over her aching cunny while not slipping inside.
His body smelled of sweat, a sweet, salty fragrance that mixed with the starch on his shirtsleeves and essence of cloves. It was the heady scent of possession and power, only compounding the bliss she felt at his considerate control.
“Carter,” she cried.
The major slowed his thrusts so he could speak. “Those men next door — do you know what they paid to see?”
Lydia glanced at the wall. “A lewd act? My…body?”
“They paid a shilling to watch a wife used most brutally by rough soldiers. They want a look at what the winner of tonight’s game will get over and over as he slakes his lust on your body.”
Lydia’s blood ran cold.
“We’ve taken measures to protect you; it is no accident we’ve staked your husband three times over so he might win. But those men next door are fighting over the right to look through a peephole so they might witness your distress.”
Her eyes flitted to that room and then closed as if doing so might shut out the terror beating through her head. She sniffed back tears.
“So when I say to beg and wail for mercy, I don’t want to hear a milquetoast exclamation suitable for teatime. Keep them watching; don’t send them to the door of this room because I don’t know that even three of His Majesty’s officers can hold those men back.”
“Please!” she cried out, this time loudly. “Please don’t, please don’t hurt me.”
“That’s it, darling,” said Carter, rewarding her with his cockhead grazing her swollen bump.
“It hurts!” she yelled, her body bowing as she felt the immense weight of pleasure from the major’s unorthodox fucking of her thighs. “Don’t hurt me, not there!”
“Your plump little legs are squeezing me so well, sweetheart,” whispered Carter, canting his hips and driving home. What the men watching from the other room couldn’t see was how the head of his cock emerged from between Lydia’s legs as he ostensibly fucked her.
She yelled words of protest and resistance, all while watching his cock slide between her cunny lips and peek out each time he shoved forward. The scarlet head of his cock was mesmerizing, thick as he helped her through this unexpected trial.
For a moment, her balance faltered, risking exposure to the men next door. Carter gasped and righted her. “Apologies, my dear,” he said against her hair.
“It’s only to be expected from an old man,” she teased, knowing very well that Carter was not above forty.
“Old man, my arse. Blast, Lydia, the things I’d do to be back in that cunt again,” Carter moaned under his breath.
“Then do it, fuck me,” murmured Lydia, longing to feel his thick cock stretch her.
“Not yet, not here,” he grunted. “For now, put a hand on it.”
When Lydia faltered, he helped move her hand where he wanted, still out of view of the men watching from the other room.
The first time Carter’s cock drove into Lydia’s palm, she pulled away in shock.
“There, now, I won’t hurt you,” he said, directing her back.
“But what about you?” she asked, regarding his cock with trepidation as he thrust into her fingers.
“Feels wonderful,” he said.
Lydia glanced up and found that Denny and Chamberlayne watched them with heated expressions from their posts at the door. Denny had a hand on his clothed cock, and Chamberlayne’s breeches seemed to have a wet spot on the front near his still-fattened piece.
“Another wail, I think, and some begging,” coached Carter from behind her.
Lydia let loose a scream and a litany of curses as she played the role of a woman used most terribly — while experiencing the tenderest care at the hands of an expert strategist.
As she caught her breath following the outburst, Lydia watched Carter’s wet cock slip through her thighs. She directed it up, so it pushed more decidedly against her quim. His cockhead pressed into her nub and set her legs to shaking.
“That’s it, put it where you need it,” said Carter, his whisper rough after putting on a show of yelling abuse at her. “Take what you need.”
“Is it good for you, too?” she asked, her body rising to a peak despite the terrifying circumstances in which she found herself.
“I’m struggling not to spend all over you immediately, sweetheart,” he said. After so many nights in his company, she could hear the smile in his voice. Her heart moved strangely at his consideration.
“I think I’d like that,” she said, working her hand over that angry cockhead. “To feel your seed against my skin again. Feel it so close to where I need you to fill me.”
Carter gasped, and his spend shot forth within an instant, flowing over her fingers and dripping onto the floor since there was nothing but her hand to catch it.
She thought to work his cock through his release, but her own struck her most abruptly as she watched his seed glaze her quim and felt the friction of his shaft between her sensitive lips.
On and on she shook, her body supported by Carter as she erupted with no thought for the watching men in the room next door, only the sensations he gave her.
Lydia reacted with a jolt when she heard something splatter against the floor. The noise came from Denny, his breeches open and cock erupting after watching her little show with Carter. Chamberlayne wasn’t much better, his hand back on that wet spot in his breeches.
“Are you feeling well, Lydia?” asked Carter, slowing his motions and pulling from between her legs. “Do you think you can go downstairs now?”
She wanted to beg him to stay. To keep her in this room, drowned in pleasure, and never go back to the outside world. But she wasn’t a silly girl of fifteen anymore, and she knew there was no way to stop her meeting with Fate. This most blissful interlude was over.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
“Well, I’ve fucked and filled the slut. I suppose it’s time for the actual game to begin!” shouted Carter.