Nearly a month of evenings passed. By now Sarah had suffered through twenty-three evenings in a row in which Tom Wilde had teased and tormented her just as much as she had teased and tormented him, if not more so. No longer did he ask her to take him as her lover, and for that she had been grateful. She was not sure that she could live for much longer without giving in to him.
She had started to crave his touch, to live for the moment when she could enter the salon for the evening and he would come forward to take her arm and to claim her as his own.
Twenty-three evenings. It was both too short and too long a time. Too short, for it seemed as if it had been just yesterday when first she met him. Too long, because with every day that passed, one day fewer remained of the time he would spend with her.
Tom tightened his grip on Sarah’s arm as he led her to one of the sofas arranged in front of a large curtain. Mrs. Erskine had just announced that the evening’s entertainment was to be a play—a new variation on their amusements for the past three weeks and more. He could only hope that it would prove less inflaming to his libido than the usual games.
Sarah still belonged to him for another week, if she didn’t kill him first.
He could swear that she had kept him in a state of constant excitement since the day he had first met her, poring over one of Mrs. Erskine’s naughty books and stroking her sweet little pussy.
How she’d blushed and stammered when he had caught her out. He’d thought she would be easy game, that she would fall into his hands like a soft, ripe plum ready for the picking.
Hah. He could laugh at his conceit now. There was nothing soft or ripe about Sarah. She was as hard as any common street urchin and twice as remorseless. No woman with an ounce of kindness in her would have kept him on tenterhooks as she had kept him. One moment she was playing the most delightful games with him, undressing for him down to her thin linen shift, allowing him to view her nearly naked body and put his hands under her skirts, sitting on his lap and letting him kiss her on her cheek, her lips, her neck.
The moment he took one step too far, though, she was gone in a flash. Touching her naked breasts was off limits, though she flaunted them in front of him nearly every night by wearing the lowest-cut bodices he could ever wish for. Though she let him stroke her legs whenever he was lucky enough to win a forfeit of her and asked for her stockings as a prize, she would allow him to go no higher than the top of her garters. Just the once, he had reached higher and stroked her pussy. It was dripping wet and more than ready for his touch, but still she had slapped his hand away and pouted for the rest of the evening. And for all that he demanded, even begged, she would not take him to her room and take him as her lover. Her refusals hurt him so much he had finally stopped asking.
He had a week more in her company and then he would have to give her up. Though he made a good living from his scurrilous pamphlets, he was not so wealthy that he could afford to entertain a high-class mistress like Sarah indefinitely. Especially not at the ruinous rates that Mrs. Erskine charged. It was best that he give her up now before he grew addicted to her presence.
His pretty daisy was no longer a poor milliner but an expensive courtesan and out of his reach. He would have to drum that into his head over the next seven days so that it did not hurt so badly to hand her over to someone whose pockets were deeper than his own.
He glared at the gentlemen crowding around them, jostling for a sofa with a good view. Sir Richard Etheridge had made no secret that he was sniffing around Sarah’s skirts still. The moment he relinquished her, Sir Richard would come forward and claim her. Sir Richard would claim the right of sitting opposite her in their nightly card games, salivating over each morsel of flesh she laid bare as she stripped down to her shift. He would claim the right to pull her onto his lap and kiss her, to put his fat arms around her waist and nuzzle his grizzled red sideburns into her soft neck.
But, by God, if Sir Richard ever claimed the right to take Sarah upstairs and strip her naked on the bed, there would be trouble. If he ever tried to plaster his gross body on top of hers, to suckle on her white breasts, and to thrust into her pussy with his fat hairy cock, then, by God, he would kill the bastard. If he couldn’t fuck Sarah, then no one else would either.
He took possession of a sofa close to the curtain, pulling Sarah down close beside him. The rest of the sofa was quickly taken by a pretty dark-haired girl whom Sarah addressed in a friendly tone as Polly, and her partner, a stiff-necked older gentleman in a morning suit.
The lights were put out and the room became quite dark. He took advantage of the darkness to pull Sarah onto his lap. Judging by the rustling and giggling going on in the gloom behind him, every other gentleman was doing the same.
A light came on from behind the curtain, illuminating the area beyond it. Behind the curtain two shapes appeared with the light behind them, their silhouettes clearly visible as black shadows on the curtains.
At the other end of the sofa Polly, also sitting on her partner’s lap by now, clapped her hands together. “A shadow play. Oh, what fun.”
The shadows behind the curtain revealed themselves as a man and a woman: the man by the shape of his top hat and walking cane, and the woman by her voluminous skirts. Together they began to strike poses behind the curtain, the gentleman doffing his hat and bowing to the lady, and kissing her hand, and the lady curtsying back in her turn.
Tom yawned and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Polly had been a mite too hopeful. So far the shadow play seemed interminably dull to him.
He focused on the woman sitting in his lap. Despite her hard-hearted ways, she was quite delightful. He did not feel the need to put on a show for her or to act as if he were anything other than himself. Early in their acquaintance she had told him quite firmly that she would rather have the truth from him than any foolish lies. He had taken her at her word, and she repaid him in kind. Truth to tell, he had not had such an honest relationship with a woman since his old nurse—who knew all his faults and foibles and every misdeed he had been guilty of as a child—had died.
The shadow couple behind the screen was getting more animated now. The man was kneeling to the woman, his hand on his heart, clearly professing his ardor for her. In short order she was swooning into his arms.
He shook his head at the silliness of it, and surreptitiously adjusted Sarah’s skirts so he could put his hand on her stockinged knee. He half expected her to push him away again, but to his good fortune she seemed too enthralled by the silly antics of the shadow people to pay him any mind.
Pushing his luck, he moved his hand a little farther up her leg to caress her thigh. She made no complaint but gave a little shiver and pressed herself more firmly into his lap. Though it was small consolation for the pain he had been in for the past three weeks and more, he hoped she was getting as frustrated as he was. Given that she was inflicting the pain on him, it was only just that she should share in it.
His cock started to rise at the feel of her bottom wriggling against his groin, and he shifted her slightly on his lap so it had room to expand. Before the end of the night his cock would be standing to attention as stiff and as proud as any soldier in the Queen’s army. Sarah’s teasing ways always had that effect on him.
The actions of the shadow people had changed again. The shadow gentleman, if he was not mistaken, was now engaged in divesting the shadow woman of her clothes, silhouettes of skirts and petticoats appearing behind the screen, only to be tossed to one side. He began to give the shadows on the curtain decidedly more attention. The shadow play was turning out to be more interesting than he had thought.
Garment by garment, the shadow man undressed the shadow woman, to the cheers and shouts of the audience on the sofas, until she was quite naked behind the curtain. The complete outline of her shape was visible, down to the peaking of her nipples at the ends of her pert breasts, and the patch of hair between her legs.
Now she began to take the most suggestive poses, bending over to show off her breasts and rump and opening her legs wide to suggest a sight of what lay between them.
Tom began to stroke Sarah under her skirts, running his hands over her silky smooth stockings. His cock was already getting hard in his trousers. By God, he’d give half of what he owned to have Sarah posing like that for him, to have her naked in front of him displaying her pussy to his sight. No shadow woman could be half as enticing as the hard-hearted woman wriggling on his lap.
Meanwhile, the shadow man was stripping off his own clothes behind the curtain, tossing away his top hat and cane, his jacket, his shirt, his trousers. In a few moments he, too, stood behind the curtain as naked as the day he was born, the silhouette of his erect cock clearly standing up proud and stiff against the light.
Tom could feel Sarah’s shock at the sight. She held herself tense in his arms, not moving a muscle, except that a little gasp escaped her.
He hugged her closely to him, his own cock stiffening further under her, until it was nestled firmly between her buttocks. “This shadow play is more entertaining than I first thought,” he whispered in her ear.
“It is truly shocking,” Sarah mouthed back, but she did not take her eyes from the stage.
He slipped his hand farther up her leg, until he reached the top of her stocking, and then farther again, until his fingers rested against her bare thigh. Her muff was so close he could feel her hairs brush against his fingers, but he did not dare caress her there. Not yet. He did not dare provoke another attack of the pouts.
The two shadows now began to strike poses together. The man took her breasts in his hand, then knelt in front of her and took them into his mouth and began to suckle on them. With his free hand Tom stroked Sarah’s own breasts through her bodice, mimicking the suckling on the stage with his fingers, and was rewarded with a shiver of pleasure.
The shadow people held their pose for a few moments and then swapped places, the woman coming to kneel at the man’s feet.
Tom gasped as the woman took the man’s cock in her mouth and began to suckle on it. He could almost feel the suction of her mouth on his own cock as he watched her. The twin delight of watching the shadow people pleasure each other, and stroking Sarah’s naked thighs at the same time, was making him painfully hard.
When they finally moved from their pose, the man’s cock had swollen even bigger in size and jutted out from his body like the prow of a ship.
Tom was sure his own cock was at least that big by now. He leaned in close to Sarah’s ear. “God, I want you to suck on me like that.”
Sarah gave her head a tiny shake. “I am not your whore,” she replied in low tones, but her voice was quavering.
Tom smiled quietly to himself and moved his hand a fraction higher on her leg. The shadow play was clearly getting to her as well.
He rubbed his cock between her buttocks, teasing himself with wanting so much more.
The shadow woman was now standing with her legs apart and the man kneeling again at her feet, his head buried in her muff. From the writhing of the woman’s shadow and the feminine cries of delight that came from behind the curtain, his tongue was being very well employed there.
Sarah was positively melting in his arms. Tom dared to move his hand higher still, until he was cupping her mound. She tensed up and stopped breathing for a second and he braced himself for a scolding, but it never came. She started to breathe again, a little more heavily than before, and made no protest.
He let his hand lie on her mound, motionless, until she softened in his arms again. Still he did not move, luxuriating in the warmth of her.
Finally the man stood up again and bent the woman over at the waist. He held up one finger, showing it clearly against the curtain, before thrusting it into her cunt and taking it out again. Then two fingers of his were held up before he dipped them in and out of her cunt several times. Finally he held up three fingers against the light and then thrust all of them into her, leaving them there for some seconds before taking them out again.
The shadow woman was wriggling her rump around in delighted fashion and the shadow man’s cock was as stiff and as proud as ever.
The shadow man approached her, cock in his hand, and guided it home deep into her cunt. From the shadow on the curtain, Tom could see that he was buried in her up to the hilt. His own cock was aching with desire to do the same. Sarah had kept him so close to the edge for so long that watching them fuck was almost enough to make him come in his pants.
Sarah wriggled against him, rubbing her pussy against his hand and panting quietly. His fingers were dripping with her juices.
At the other end of the sofa, Polly and her partner had given up any pretense of watching the shadow play. Instead, Polly was kneeling between the gentleman’s legs and sucking on his cock with noisy vigor.
Sarah glanced at them, spellbound at the sight for a moment, and then looked away again, her face reddening.
“Polly’s partner is in luck tonight,” he murmured in her ear. If only Sarah would be so accommodating he would be in heaven.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she muttered back at him.
It was not only his hopes that were up. His damned cock was about to explode.
Even if he couldn’t fuck her and relieve the tension that was building up in him, he could still give her pleasure. He rubbed her pussy a little harder, and was rewarded with an extra wriggle. It was time to try his luck and see if she would welcome a little more.
Her cunt was so slick and wet that his finger slid inside her as easily as winking. Her legs fell open of their own accord to allow him to add a second finger to the first.
She was too far gone in lust to do anything other than welcome him as he fucked her with his fingers, sliding them in and out of her wet cunt, rubbing them over her clit and her pussy, and then thrusting them back inside her.
Polly gave her gentleman one last vigorous suck and his semen spurted into the air, splattering the four of them with tiny droplets.
On the stage in front of them, the shadow man withdrew his cock from the shadow woman’s cunt just in time to spurt his cum over her naked ass.
Sarah gave a surprised cry in the back of her throat and he felt the rush of her juices as she orgasmed under his hands.
Tom slowly withdrew his fingers from her cunt, holding her tightly on his lap until her breathing returned to normal. His cock still hurt with wanting to fuck her, or even for the solitary pleasure of stroking himself into oblivion, but he forced his desires to fade to a manageable level. Even more than he wanted release, right now he simply wanted to hold her tightly in his arms and to love her.
For Sarah, the last week passed by at a gallop. At the end of this night, the month was over. Tom’s funds had run out and he would no longer be able to claim her exclusive ser vices.
She was a free woman—free to sell her ser vices to the man who tickled her fancy the most, or who tipped her the most generously. If she chose wisely—an older gentleman who wanted the appearance of being a rake more than the reality, for instance—she could earn a few pennies to put aside for a rainy day and still keep herself pure.
She clutched Tom’s arm tightly. Why did she care so much about her virginity? She had stripped down to her shift in mixed company, and let Tom touch her everywhere, even there. His touch had given her more pleasure than she had ever known.
In just a few short hours he would be gone from her life. She would never be able to pay him back in kind for the pleasure he had given her.
So why did she feel as though her heart was breaking?
Her thoughts were broken into by the sound of Mrs. Erskine’s voice. “Ladies, go hide yourselves.”
Sarah picked up her skirts and scampered out of the doorway with a couple of the other girls. Tonight, after Sarah had lost half her clothes to Tom in a few hands of ecarte, Mrs. Erskine had changed the game. This evening they were to play hide-and-seek—with a difference.
Sarah and two of her friends were to hide themselves anywhere they liked on the premises—always excepting the coffee house, which was in public view. Once Mrs. Erskine had counted to one hundred, the others were to come and find them. Whenever one of the seekers found one of the hiders, the seeker had to join the hider in her hiding place, until the hiding places were so full that not another body could squeeze in.
Sarah paused at the top of the stairs. “Quick, hide yourself,” one of the other girls whispered to her. “They will be coming up any moment now.”
Without thinking, Sarah ran to her bedroom, the place she knew best, and shut the door behind her. She considered crawling under the bed, but the floorboards were too cold and uninviting. Besides, she did not want to dirty her white linen shift.
She would not crawl into her bed, either, and hide under her bedclothes—that would be an invitation to the seekers to play all sorts of indecent games with her.
The draperies at the window. They were heavy velvet and came right down to the floor. If she arranged herself artfully she could hide behind them and no one would be able to see her.
Already she could hear the rush of eager feet coming up the stairs. Quick as a flash, she darted behind the curtains, standing right up against the wall and tucking her feet in so that not the barest morsel of slipper peeked out from under the bottom.
Quiet as a mouse she crouched there, hardly daring to breathe. She hardly dared to hope that Tom would find her before anyone else did. And if Tom could not find her, she did not want to be found by anyone else.
The noises in the corridor came closer. Her door opened with a squeak and she held herself as still as could be. In trooped at least three people—she could hear the muted scuffle of two girls in slippers and the heavy thumps of their companion in sturdier walking shoes. A threesome, searching the bedrooms for her.
There was a squeak and a rustle of petticoats as one of the girls sat on the bed. “There’s no one here,” she said in a voice of mock complaint.
“I am,” her male companion said, and the bedsprings squeaked in protest again. “Come and pay me some attention.”
“Mmmm, so you are.” There was silence for a few minutes, except for some more squeaking, a fair bit of rustling, and more than a little giggling.
Sarah dared to breathe again. The seekers were too occupied with one another to notice her hiding behind the curtain.
The noises went on for so long that she became curious and opened the curtains a tiny fraction so she could peep between them. As she’d guessed, a man and two girls were lying on her bed. The girls were dressed only in their stockings—all their other clothes were discarded at the end of the bed. Their companion was fully dressed still, though in disarray. He had kicked off his shoes and his shirt had come quite untucked from his trousers, which had slipped off his buttocks.
The girls were locked together in an intimate embrace, their arms wrapped around each other and kissing each other with open mouths. He was lying behind one of them, his hands on her naked hips, thrusting in and out of her with all his might.
As Sarah watched, he gave one last thrust and lay still for a few seconds before rolling off the bed and refastening his trousers. “Grab your clothes, ladies,” he said to the two girls who showed no signs of stopping. “This isn’t going to find us anyone.”
“Do you want to find someone else?” The girl’s voice sounded definitely pouty. “Aren’t we enough for you?”
“Come on. Let’s go.” The tone of his voice brooked no argument.
Sarah quickly hid her face behind the curtains again as the two girls got off the bed, picked their clothes up off the floor and left.
Her solitude did not last long. As soon as the threesome left, another couple entered.
“This is her room.” The voice belonged to Suzanna, a thin-faced French girl with a mean temper and a streak of envy a mile wide.
Sarah stopped breathing again. She dared not hope that the other person in the room was Tom. All the girls knew how much she liked him, and Suzanna would rather sleep on a bed of nails than do a good turn for one of her fellows.
There was a rustle and a clink. “Thank you, my dear.”
Sarah gave a start. That was Sir Richard’s voice, thick and slightly slurred with drink. Sir Richard must have bribed Suzanna to show him which was her room.
Bother Suzanna and her petty greed. The girl would betray her own mother for half a crown.
She really did not want to be caught behind the curtain with Sir Richard. He would be sure to try to maul and kiss her, and she would have to spend her evening fending off his fat fingers and trying to evade his scratchy red whiskers.
Unfortunately he was not as easily fooled as the threesome. He started to look around for her in earnest, opening her wardrobe, getting down on to his knees and looking under her bed.
“Come on, girl, make yourself useful,” he barked at Suzanna, when he did not immediately find anything.
Suzanna’s slippered feet scuffled into action. Sarah’s heart forgot to beat as Suzanna walked directly over to the drapes and pulled them open. “Here she is.” Her eyes glittered with malice.
Sir Richard’s piggy eyes gleamed with excitement as he waddled drunkenly over to her. “My dear girl, I am so pleased to be the first one to find you.” He shuffled inside the curtain, pressing her close up against the wall with his heavy body. “I have waited for this moment for a long time.”
She tried to wriggle away from him, but with his bulk on one side of her and Suzanna on the other, there was nowhere for her to go. She shuffled along the wall away from them, only to find herself at last penned in a corner, like a rat in a trap.
Sir Richard wasted no time in pleasantries. With a gleam of drunken lust in his eyes, he reached up and grabbed at her breasts with his greasy hands. “Very nice,” he mumbled, breathing brandy fumes into her face. “Very nice.”
She tried to shake him off. “Sir Richard, please. You are drunk.”
He gave a snorting laugh and tugged hard on her bodice. “Drunk with love, my dear. I’ve been watching you for weeks now, wasting yourself on that rascally young Grub Street guttersnipe, stripping in front of him and letting him stare at your breasts and touch and kiss you.”
The accusatory tone of his voice and the pressure he was exerting on her bodice started to make Sarah seriously uneasy. “Mr. Wilde paid Mrs. Erskine for my company,” she said, tugging her shift away from him. “I could not refuse him.”
He snorted again, in disgust this time. “He has no manners and no breeding and I could buy and sell him fifty times over. You are wasting yourself on him, my dear. You deserve a real gentleman to look after you.”
All of a sudden her bodice gave way with a loud rip and Sir Richard staggered backward with surprise, a piece of her linen shift dangling from his fist.
Sarah tried to hold the remnants of her bodice together over her naked breasts with both hands. “Sir Richard, that is not the work of a gentleman.” Her voice was shaking.
He was advancing toward her, his evil intentions clearly written on his face. “It doesn’t matter, my dear,” he said, as he deliberately ripped the remnants of her bodice open, letting her breasts spill freely out. “I can buy you twenty more.”
His aggression scared her. If he tried to hurt her for real, would anybody hear her if she called for help? Or would they think her cries were all just part of the game? “I don’t want twenty more chemises. This is not a game anymore, Sir Richard. I want you to leave my room at once.”
His hands were all over her breasts, pinching her skin cruelly with his vicious fingers. “Now then, my dear, don’t be so touchy. I just want to play an innocent little game with you. The game that men and women have always played together.”
“Please, let me go.” She was struggling with all her might, but she could not get free of his hands.
He leaned against her, pressing her body into the wall with his bulk so she could not move, and then reached down to fumble with his trousers. “I’m willing to forgive you for playing around with that Grub Street hack and for not coming to me as pure and innocent as you were a month ago. I lay the blame firmly on his shoulders. He stole you from me, and forced me to bide my time until his money ran out. But you will come to me now and let me taste your sweet naked body.”
His cock sprung free from his trousers and nudged up firmly against her mound, making her feel sick to her stomach. His intentions were crystal-clear. He would not be content with mauling her breasts—he was going to rape her.
She gave Suzanna a look of entreaty. “Will you stand by and let him misuse me so?”
Suzanna shrugged carelessly, her face mean and pinched. “You think you’re so much better than the rest of us, refusing to spread your legs for the gentlemen. Sir Richard is going to show you that you’re no better than the rest of us whores.”
Sir Richard was stroking his cock furiously with one hand as he groped under her petticoats with the other. “I’ll show you your place, I will,” he grunted. “I’ll use you as I use my wife, and the slut of a governess she employs, and the house maids, and every other whoring little bitch who flaunts herself in front of me. I’ll fuck every last one of you whenever I please. I’ll fuck you all until you scream and beg me to stop, and then I’ll fuck you some more.”
Suzanna smiled a thin-lipped smile, feeding on Sarah’s terror. “And I shall enjoy watching you get your comeuppance as he ruts on you.”
“Get down on your knees, girl, and suck my cock.”
Sarah whimpered and shook her head. Her only thought was how to escape from this nightmare.
Sir Richard gave her a vicious blow with the back of his hand. “That will teach you to disobey me. On your knees.”
Whimpering from shock and from the pain of the blow, Sarah sank to her knees.
Sir Richard poked his cock roughly into her unwilling mouth until she gagged on it.
“Damn you, girl, you’re enough to ruin any man’s ardor,” he grumbled. “Come on, you,” he said, gesturing at Suzanna. “Come and show the little whore how it’s done properly.”
Suzanna dropped willingly to her knees and took his cock deep in her mouth, sucking on it with gusto. “You taste good,” she purred when she finally came up for air, throwing a malicious glance at Sarah.
He took his cock out of Suzanna’s mouth and thrust it back at Sarah. “Your turn now, girl.”
Sarah gagged uncontrollably again as his cock touched her lips and turned her head away. Having his hairy member thrusting down her throat was too disgusting to bear. The risk of another beating was nothing in comparison.
He gave up with a noise of disgust and pulled her to her feet. “Damn you for a sullen whore. I will have to teach you better manners.”
“She needs correcting,” Suzanna suggested, still kneeling at his feet. “A good whipping would soon sort her out.”
He dragged Sarah over to the bed and pushed her down on her back. “I will whip her later.” With one hand he held her down while with the other he tore away her petticoats.
She would not let him rape her. She would not. Clawing and biting at him with all her might, she tried to wriggle away from his grasp.
Sir Richard was panting with the effort of holding her. “Come hold the little whore down,” he growled at Suzanna.
“Yes, Sir Richard,” Suzanna said meekly. She sat at the head of the bed and grabbed Sarah’s flailing arms, pinning them to the bed.
Her grip was strong for such a thin, fragile-looking woman. Try as she might, Sarah could not break free.
Sir Richard forced her legs apart with his fat fingers. His thick cock was grasped so tightly in his hand that the purple head bulged threateningly.
Despite her last desperate struggles, she could not get free. Sir Richard would rape her. There would be no escape.
Her stomach heaved and the room began to spin around her. As if from far away, she heard herself scream—an animal scream of pure terror.