Page 4 of What a Courtesan Wants
“Unlike you, I cannot say I loved my lord husband as you loved yours. But, I know how it feels when the time comes to move on with your life, and you realize you do not know how. My reasons for reticence were different than yours, but I still found it difficult to trust myself to make the right choice and let go long enough to truly enjoy it. It is difficult, Lucinda, but that first step is the hardest. Once you’ve made it, I promise you’ll be better for it.”
Lucinda forced a smile. “You are right, of course. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
With that, Millicent was gone, leaving Lucinda to confront the peephole and whatever lay beyond it. Through the wall, the muffled sound of a man’s voice came through, deep, silky, and spine-tingling. The voice of a master. She found herself duly impressed, even without knowing what was being said. The man had the kind of voice meant for giving orders or whispering filth into a woman’s ear.
Curiosity stoked, she shifted to the edge of her chair and reached out to uncover the peephole. Closing one eye, she pressed her face to the wood and peered into the next room, breath catching in her throat at the sight that greeted her.
A pair of broad shoulders and a wide, muscular back tapered into a slender waist and long legs, a pair of snug black breeches flaunting taut buttocks and powerful thighs. The muscles of that powerful body flexed and bunched beneath gleaming black skin, each movement sending ripples dancing across his back. A large hand gripped a handful of a woman’s hair, guiding her head in a familiar motion. The woman on her knees was sucking him off, sending the deep hum of his groans vibrating through the wall.
Lucinda shivered as the sound seemed to penetrate the hand she rested on the wall, sending a bolt of lightning up her arm and straight into her chest. She found herself moving closer, as if that would help her see what was hidden from her. But, try as she might, she could make out nothing of his cock with his back turned, and was momentarily envious of the woman who had her lips wrapped around it. If his front proved as impressive as his back, he wouldn’t disappoint … and, he’d just piqued Lucinda’s interest.
A knock on the door echoed through the corridor, and she snapped upright, hand falling away from the wall. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t her door that had been knocked on. Falling on the peephole again, she looked into the room just as Aubrey pulled free of the woman with a muffled curse.
“Don’t move,” he said, those words coming clear.
Lucinda bit back her own epithets as he buttoned his fall before she could lay eyes on his cock, though the thick outline of the hardened organ showing at the front of his breeches certainly looked promising. His chest and abdomen were a match for his back, bulging and ridged with muscle, his arms long and sinewy. He would stand a few inches taller than her, which appealed to her as much as the rest of him did. Being an unusually tall woman, she often encountered men who were embarrassed to stand beside her for how she towered over them. Even the tall ones seemed unsettled by a woman who could look them straight in the eye. Aubrey Drake looked as if he suffered no such insecurity.
“What?” Aubrey growled while throwing open the door.
Lucinda couldn’t glimpse who was on the other side, but Aubrey visibly relaxed when he saw the person. He nodded, then turned to gaze straight at her. She gasped, jerking back from the peephole as if burned. It took a moment for her to remember that an entire wall separated her from Mr. Drake and his bedmate. He hadn’t actually lookedather. Shaking her head and chastising herself for being a ninny, she resumed her place. Apparently, Benedict or Millicent had come to inform him he was being watched, because as he returned to his submissive partner he cast another glance at the peephole, though she couldn’t see enough of his face at this distance to determine how he felt about her presence.
The woman glanced up at Aubrey from her place on the floor, her lips moving. Her voice was too low for Lucinda to make out her words, though it did sound as if she asked a question. His brow furrowed as he stared down at her, one hand curling into a fist. He spoke, his words sharp as he took hold of the woman’s face, fingers biting into her jaw.
“Amateur,” Lucinda whispered.
Aubrey had clearly not given her permission to speak, and by acting without his leave the woman had just earned herself a punishment. Her heart raced as she imagined the myriad of ways he might go about chastising his bedmate. Her buttocks clenched as she remembered the vibrant sting of a hand against her arse, the dull thud of the cane, and the throbbing that followed a good thrashing with a riding crop. Her late husband had been a man of many talents, wielding a variety of implements for punishment with a skill that was unparalleled.
But, she could not think of him now, or her mind would take her to a place of grief and despair, and she had come here tonight to escape that. Observing another dominant could prove quite entertaining, and help Lucinda decide whether this man was worth her time. The word of Millicent was not enough for her to place herself in his hands. She needed to be certain he was more than a swaggering ass with an inflated ego who had branded himself with the title of ‘master.’ She’d met enough of that sort over her years as a submissive and had no tolerance for a man who didn’t truly know what he was about.
The woman lowered her head but nodded as Aubrey chastised her for speaking out of turn. Then, he pointed to a nearby footstool and issued another command, which the woman promptly followed by crawling to it on her hands and knees. Then, she draped herself over the cushion until her hips tilted upward, her bare arse displayed at the perfect angle. Aubrey took his time going to her, striding first to a table on the other side of the room, upon which Lucinda noticed rows of familiar-looking tools. She couldn’t make them all out from here, but recognized the glint of wrist shackles, plugs of various sizes, and a coiled whip.
Lucinda furrowed her brow when Aubrey chose only a single implement—a shining silver plug shaped like a teardrop. He went to the woman, kneeling beside her and running a hand over the curve of her arse, then down the back of one thigh. Lucinda watched, entranced, as he aimed the plug at the woman’s cunt, swirling it with his fingers as it disappeared into her. The woman moaned, squirming over the footstool as Aubrey agitated it inside her by its base, his other hand cupping between her legs to massage her clit. The woman’s moans of pleasure emitted through the walls, growing sharper with each passing moment.
Lucinda held her breath, certain the girl would climax at any moment—and without Aubrey’s permission she’d put herself at risk for further punishment. However, before she could reach her end, Aubrey abruptly halted his ministrations, pulling the plug free of her, studying it by the firelight. It gleamed with the girl’s juices, slick and primed for the place he would insert it next.
Watching them became a torment, as Lucinda recalled what it was like to be in this woman’s position—exposed and spread wide, defiled and mastered. Her nipples puckered, rasped by the constriction of her clothes as she watched Aubrey ease the plug into the tight hole of the woman’s rear passage. He took his time—his deep voice uttering words Lucinda was certain must be soothing. Still, he sounded resolute, as if he had no intention of backing down now that he’d committed to the act of punishing her. Once the plug rested inside the woman, its base winking in the firelight from between her cheeks, Aubrey slipped two long fingers inside her cunt.
Lucinda clenched her thighs as a responding pulse began deep inside her, a longing for that same touch. He stroked within the other woman until she began moaning again, raising her hips as if to invite him in deeper. But, he kept his thrusts shallow and slow, drawing it out until she seemed near to climax again before pulling away.
Oh, he was good. Lucinda didn’t need to see anymore. He knew exactly what he was about, but she lingered, wanting to watch anyway.
She observed with uneven breath and a pulsing clit as he removed his fingers before raising his hand to deliver the first blow. Lucinda squirmed in her chair as he spanked the woman with care and skill, concentrating his blows on the fleshiest parts of her buttocks and thighs, pausing to let each slap sink in before delivering another. By the time he’d finished, Lucinda felt as if she might go up in flames. Heat flushed her skin, and she was overwhelmed by the sort of desire that had eluded her since the death of the earl.
She allowed the cover to slip over the peephole before quitting the room. She’d seen more than enough to convince her that Mr. Sterling had been right to suggest Aubrey would suit her well.
Losing the love of her life had been a stunning blow, one that had removed all the color and light from her world. She’d closed herself away from society and from her friends and family to wallow in her grief, and had begun to feel half-dead herself. While she knew life could never be the same without her husband, Lucinda wanted to regain some modicum of the woman she’d once been. The woman who had reveled in kneeling before her master and allowing him to blot out the world until she felt only the blissful mingling of pleasure and pain.
It would seem she’d just found what she needed in Aubrey Drake.
“How did it go?”
Aubrey closed the door to the guest chamber before joining Benedict in the corridor. Pausing to finish off the buttons of his waistcoat, he raised an eyebrow at his longtime friend.
“Have you been standing out here the entire time?”
Benedict inclined his head toward a door across the hall. Stifling a sigh, Aubrey followed him into the empty room. After a long night of mingling with Millicent’s guests followed by his interlude with Mrs. Pamela Boyle, he wanted nothing more than to return home and throw himself into bed. However, he had other pressing business to attend if he wanted to go to that bed secure in the knowledge that his steady stream of income wouldn’t dwindle away to nothing. He’d been without an arrangement since the publication of the issue ofThe London Gossipwhich had exposed the existence of the Gentleman Courtesans. While he had a decent amount of money saved, he needed a new contract to ensure his personal finances didn’t dry up while he continued growing and expanding his reputable business.
