There was a rustling in the ivy at the window. Mandy twisted and strained, expecting to see an owl. It was Sophie, balanced precariously on a ledge. Mandy remembered how high up above the ground they were.
The window opened with a squeak which woke Sonia.
‘What?’ Sonia murmured sleepily, then whispered Sophie’s name excitedly as she saw the girl climbing down into the bedroom.
Mandy relished her freedom from the gag and sighed with relief as Sophie’s fingers loosened the knots of her irksome bondage. Untied, Mandy wriggled off the bed and rubbed her wrists as Sophie undid Sonia’s restraining ropes.
‘The door’s locked,’ Sophie warned.
Mandy nodded.
‘We’ll have to go out through the window.’
Sonia and Mandy hugged and kissed their rescuer.
‘Partridge is down in the kitchens. Erica is punishing her. I must go down –’
‘We’ll come with you. We’ll help any way we can,’ Mandy whispered.
‘I just want to be there, afterwards…’
‘I know,’ Mandy said sympathetically.
Sonia whimpered, admitting to her fear of heights. Naked and afraid, her eyes filled with tears and her breasts trembled.
‘Stay here, we’ll come back for you later.’
‘No, don’t leave me, Mandy, oh please don’t leave me,’ the little minx pleaded. ‘I’m more scared of Erica.’ She rubbed her striped buttocks, remembering the cruel slice of the cropped blonde’s cane.
‘I must get to Partridge,’ Sophie said impatiently.
‘Yes. You must be with her.’ They exchanged glances, then smiled. ‘We must all go,’ Mandy added gently, putting her arm around the little minx. ‘Sonia. Do you trust me?’
Sonia nodded vigorously.
‘Then listen. We’ll put a blindfold on you and get you out of here, OK?’
The minx was silent but eventually agreed. They found a strip of linen and, with her soft bosom brushing Sonia’s breasts, nipple to nipple, Mandy tied it tightly around the trusting eyes that gazed lovingly into her own. Sophie took one hand, Mandy the other, as they guided Sonia to the window.
‘I’ll go first,’ Sophie volunteered. ‘I’ll take the same route that got me in.’
Mandy nodded, holding Sonia gently to her breast as she watched their rescuer clamber out on to the ledge.
‘Now you,’ she whispered encouragingly. ‘I’ll be with you all the time. Just feel your way. Don’t think about anything.’
Sonia’s cleft widened as she straddled the window sill and pawed her way out on to the ledge. Mandy’s controlling hand guided the shivering girl’s thigh, remaining at the left buttock as the minx stood up and clung to the ivy. Mandy gave the captive cheek a reassuring squeeze.
‘Get closer in towards the ivy,’ Sophie urged.
The minx shuffled closer in to the wall, her bosom rustling the dry leaves. Mandy checked the hand and foot holds.
‘We’re going to go sideways, like crabs. It’s only twelve feet then there’s another open window,’ Sophie explained.
Their progress was slow. Sonia, wedged between the supporting thighs on either side, gripped tightly as she inched her way along the ivy-clad wall. She suffered the most: with her breasts squashed into the ancient brickwork, her nipples were ravished up into peaks of fierce pain. Then she froze, refusing to go any further. Mandy caressed the nape of the minx’s neck, then drew her fingertip slowly down along the dimpled spine.
‘In a moment, you will feel me. I will be inside you. As long as I am connected to you, you have nothing to fear.’
The minx nodded, brushing the ivy with her fringe, then gasped aloud as Mandy slid her straightened finger inbetween her cheeks, directly into her tight warmth.
Guiding and gently propelling Sonia, Mandy kept her finger tightly in place. She felt Sonia’s sphincter grip. Connected so intimately, and feeling more secure, the little minx inched gingerly towards the waiting window.
Inside, Mandy cuddled and comforted Sonia, examining and then kissing the bruised breasts. Holding the shivering minx tenderly, she undid the blindfold and praised her for her bravery. Cupping her naked buttocks, she squeezed the cheeks gently as she sucked on each nipple to soothe and ease their soreness.
Sophie had been rummaging for clothes but could only unearth a pair of white cotton panties and a pair of black sheer tights. She handed them over to the naked girls with a rueful grin.
‘That’s all, folks,’ she said, doing the Bugs Bunny voice.
Mandy grinned, took the white panties and coaxed Sonia into them. Easing the stretched cotton up over the minx’s buttocks, she fingered the elastic and let it snap into the slender waist. Sonia knelt to help Mandy into the sheer black tights but there was no more time for amorous play – Partridge was being punished downstairs. Even as Sonia’s inquisitive fingertips were dappling against Mandy’s meshed bottom, the brown-eyed housekeeper was being severely lashed.
‘Let’s go,’ Sophie urged.
They followed her down through the silence of the sleeping house. Sternwood Grange was in darkness as they crept, floor by floor, down to the kitchens in the basement. The glow of yellow light greeted them as they approached along the final passageway – as did the ominous sound, the swish-crack, of a slicing leather strap. They froze. Against the yellow wall ahead they saw, silhouetted on the peeling plaster, the dark shadow of a naked woman. The line of the ripe breasts, wide hips and rounded buttocks was unmistakeably that of a voluptuous woman. Sophie moaned softly as her eyes traced the familiar curves of Partridge. Mandy reached out and held Sophie’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
The shadow showed the nude’s arms stretched up and drawn together at the wrists. Above the bound wrists, they could just discern the faint shadow of the links of a taut chain. Partridge was naked and strung up in the Gibbet for her punishment.
A harsh snapping sound accompanied the flickering shadow of a leather belt: the curve straightening out as it savaged the swell of the naked cheeks. Sophie gasped and bounded down the passageway towards the light. Mandy followed swiftly, her nyloned footfalls silent upon the flagstones. Reaching out, she caught and restrained the girl in front. Folding Sophie in a comforting embrace, she drew her back away from the danger of discovery.
‘No. We can only wait. Wait and watch. When it is over, then you shall comfort her. We all will comfort her.’
Sophie pressed her tear-stained face down into Mandy’s shoulder. Mandy felt her wince as another crack-snap of the belt signalled the kiss of leather across defenceless cheeks.
Sophie looked up and nodded tearfully. They kissed, all jealousies and misunderstandings forgotten. Mandy felt once more the softness of the other’s body pressing into her as Sophie flinched in response to the sound of the strap across the naked buttocks in the kitchen. The punishment was out of sight, but it haunted their imaginations, forcing them to visualise the cruel hide licking the reddening cheeks. Sonia joined them, her eyes wide with fear as she gazed at the shadow of suffering etched upon the flaking plaster of the wall.
Eight more times the strap was raised, out of sight, in the kitchen. Eight more times, they saw its shadow crack down across the silhouetted buttocks. Eight more times, the huddled girls shivered at the sharp snap of leather across quivering flesh – and renewed their shivering as they heard the grunts and moans of Partridge in her suffering.
They scattered, scampering into the shadows like mice before the paws of a patrolling cat, as Erica emerged from the kitchens. Her cropped head down as she trod the flagstones, she rolled up the leather strap into a tight curl. Halfway down the dim passageway she stopped, thrusting her buttocks up against the plaster wall. Dragging up her skirt and yanking down her panties, Mandy watched as Erica brought the leather strap – curled around her right fist – against her exposed slit. Signalling Sonia and Sophie to remain absolutely silent, Mandy crouched and gazed as, further down in the shadows, the punisher pleasured herself with the instrument of punishment with increasing ferocity.
Mandy closed her eyes and tried to extinguish the flame of erotic curiosity, the flickering tongues of dancing lust, that burned in her brain. She shuddered with delicious dread at the thought of the warm hide, soft and supple and fresh from the buttocks it had just blistered, rasping against the wet, silky flesh of Erica’s labia. The cruel lash which had planted hot kisses upon soft creamy cheeks was now being plied against the punisher’s splayed, wet slit.
Opening her eyes and peeping into the shadows, Mandy’s tongue grew thick in her dry mouth as she watched the cropped blonde ruthlessly leather her clitoris. Arched up on her toes, her thighs wide, her panties stretched between her knees, Erica was punishing herself against her open flesh-lips with the tip of the strap.
The black mesh of the tights grew warm and damp at Mandy’s pubis as she watched the sadistic punisher use the strap to a different purpose. Mandy tried to deny her excitement and wet arousal but succumbed to the overwhelming thrill of pleasure coupled to pain, of delight bound tightly to dread. Sad as she felt for Partridge, she relished the sight of the cropped blonde punishing her slit sweetly into orgasm.
Erica came silently, pounding and grinding her naked buttocks into the rough plaster wall as her knees buckled under the powerful spasms of her climax. The leather strap slowly unfurled to dangle, limp and lifeless, down from Erica’s open right hand. Mandy saw, under the light bulb, the glint of wetness spangle the dark hide, saw the sweat glisten on the cropped blonde’s face – and sensed the wet heat at her own slit behind the taut mesh of the sheer tights that clung to her pubis.
Silently, Mandy wiped her moist palms on the sheen of her black-nyloned buttocks. Erica staggered away from the wall and adjusted her panties and skirt. Shouldering her strap, she strode off into the darkness. The three girls regrouped. They had, from their respective hiding places, all witnessed Erica’s display of self-pleasuring. Mandy sniffed at the heady pungent tang of their mixed scent of arousal.
They hurried into the kitchen to find Partridge stretched in the Gibbet, her heavily fleshed buttocks an angry shade of red where Erica’s strap had lashed the naked cheeks. Sophie kissed and comforted the housekeeper, whispering soothing words as their lips fused. Sonia’s palms sought out and found the ripe breasts of the whipped woman. The minx squeezed the captive bosom tenderly. Mandy’s lips, and tongue, worked busily across the swell of the punished bottom, licking and lapping, kissing and healing the ravished cheeks.
The three comforters crushed the comforted between their urgent bodies. Mandy’s arms encircled Partridge, pulling Sonia’s face into the punished housekeeper’s bosom. The minx’s pantied pubis kissed the bound woman’s sticky labia, the cotton clinging to the pouting flesh-lips. Mandy’s sheer black tights grazed the whipped buttocks as she pressed her hips into the rounded cheeks. Up above, the chain rattled as Partridge bucked in response.
Exchanging tongues, Sophie and the housekeeper kissed deeply, lingeringly. Sonia ground her panties firmly into the warm delta as she sucked fiercely on the nipple in her mouth. Mandy felt the first spasm of the housekeeper’s orgasm as the hot cheeks quivered against her cool belly.
Sonia’s hands slipped down over Partridge’s hips to capture, cup and squeeze the heavy cheeks. Her fingertips scraped against the sheen of Mandy’s black tights. Peeling the waistband down, the minx scrabbled at Mandy’s pubic fuzz. Mandy blindly sought out Sonia’s mouth. Prising the minx’s lips from Partridge’s breast, she slid her first and second fingers deep inside the open mouth.
Up above, below the dry rattle of the Gibbet’s chain, Partridge and Sophie were tonguing each other furiously, both fused into an inevitable, rapidly approaching climax. Below, Mandy and the minx fingered each other frantically. The chain jerked and danced as all four came: slit to slit, flesh to flesh, in a welded paroxysm of liquid lust.
‘My honey trap has caught quite an interesting little haul,’ the voice of Erica snarled, her low voice breaking the silence of their exquisite joy.
Mandy turned, her eyes clouded by orgasm, her face slack and pale. Sonia squealed with fear.
‘Take them to the gym. Yes, all four of them,’ Erica instructed.
Mandy shrank back from the three sallow-skinned, dark-suited men who stepped forward. They did not obey the cropped blonde immediately, but stood, mouths open, drinking in the last ripples of orgasm convulsing the nude in the Gibbet.
‘Quickly, your master will be waiting,’ Erica snapped. ‘You can enjoy these bitches at your leisure later.’
Mandy, obeying the strict instructions for silence, followed Erica and one of the three dark-suited thugs along the corridor towards the gym. The others followed behind, shepherded by the remaining two heavies. They must be the muscles, not the brains, of Erica’s party, Mandy calculated. Iraqi or Syrian, she could not tell. Probably cruel and definitely dangerous, she decided. The henchmen of the buyer of Sternwood Grange. But why were they being brought to the gym? She had waived the rights to the deeds. Why would the shrewd solicitor risk complicating matters? Risk Mandy fouling up the sale?
They were led into the gym. Celia ignored them, other than instructing Erica and the heavies to gag and then tie the four captives to the wall bars. As Mandy, Sonia, Sophie and Partridge were stripped of whatever scant clothing they wore and bound face inwards to the gym wall, Celia continued her discussions with a hawk-nosed man of Arabic appearance. Mandy only managed a fleeting glimpse before rough hands peeled down her tights, palmed and pinched her buttocks dominantly, then yanked her arms up and bound them tightly by the wrists to the wood.
‘So glad you could join us,’ the solicitor began drily, sauntering across the polished floor of the gym to address the four bare bottoms. ‘May I present Mr Ozzam,’ she continued, ‘he is from –’
‘Many countries,’ a silky voice intervened. ‘Details do not matter, nor do border controls. One has so many passports.’
Turkish? Or did Mandy catch the flat vowels of Eastern Europe there. Albanian, perhaps. Latvian possibly. Celia’s careful laughter broke into Mandy’s thoughts. ‘But of course. Details do not matter. Mr Ozzam is here to purchase Sternwood Grange.’
‘It is agreed,’ Mr Ozzam replied in the cosmopolitan accent Mandy found so difficult to place. He clapped his hands delightedly, adding, ‘It is everything you said it would be.’
‘There’s more,’ Celia added teasingly.
More? Mandy froze, fear forming in her brain.
‘Three million,’ Ozzam enthused.
‘Three million, sterling,’ the solicitor echoed, clearly proud of her coup.
He’s being ripped off, Mandy calculated. She knew the valuation and potential. How had she hoodwinked him?
‘And when you refurbish, build and extend, your investment will be doubled in a year.’
Mandy frowned. So that was it. She knew now how Celia had managed to rip Ozzam off by several hundred thousand. Sterling.
‘Mr Ozzam runs a very similar establishment in Beirut. He is, he assures me, always looking for fresh faces.’
‘Flesh, certainly,’ Ozzam whispered excitedly. ‘Faces, they do not matter so much. But new flesh is highly prized in my humble house of pleasures.’
The half-formed fear in Mandy’s brain took shape. Suddenly, she knew what Celia had in mind.
‘Sternwood Grange comes, as the contract will specify, with fixtures and fittings. These four beauties are an option, Mr Ozzam. Would you care to inspect them more closely?’
The heavies stood aside smartly, their leather shoes squeaking on the polished floor, as their boss strode across to join the solicitor beside the four bare bottoms.
‘Your ancestors probably enjoyed the delights of examining naked females before the slave sale, Mr Ozzam,’ Celia observed suavely. ‘I hope you have inherited their skill and judgement.’
Ozzam thumbed Sophie’s soft rump, and traced the swell of her outer thigh.
‘Young and tender, Mr Ozzam. To be served up, like pink, juicy lamb, to the discriminating appetite. The flesh of both are sweet and tight. An older man’s meal.’
Ozzam fingered the stripes across Partridge’s whipped cheeks. Mandy heard his breath coming in excited gasps.
‘Mellow fruit for you, Mr Ozzam. Sweet, succulent and darkly fleshed. Think of a seasoned fig, split and oozing after many summers.’
Ozzam grunted excitedly, knuckling the housekeeper’s cheeks fiercely then palming them expertly as if weighing her swollen buttocks. As he turned to Sonia beside her, Mandy heard his curse of approval.
‘A filly, Mr Ozzam, who has yet to taste the bridle or the bit. A spirited filly yet to bear the weight of a rider across her flesh. An interesting acquisition.’
‘Worth her weight in gold,’ Ozzam muttered, fondling Sonia’s apple breasts. I know a prince who would drown me in diamonds for one so young, so untried.’
Turning to Mandy, he paused.
‘An English rose, Mr Ozzam. A rare bloom in the desert.’
Mandy shrank from the cruel hands at her bosom, the thick fingertips rubbing her nipples, judging her flesh expertly. The hands caressed her belly and thighs, then spread around to her bottom. She felt both thumbs at her cleft, then sensed his face close to her skin. He sniffed deeply.
‘An English rose,’ he grunted. ‘With an intoxicating perfume.’
She felt the thick thumbs splay her cheeks wide apart, and burned with shame as he bent down to inspect her intimately.
‘This one, like the others, has been whipped recently, no?’
Mandy felt the stubby fingertip tracing the red lines of Erica’s cane strokes.
‘All of them have been punished since sunset,’ Celia conceded. ‘That one especially needs the kiss of the cane. Be sure to remember that. Stripe her regularly, Mr Ozzam, and she will perform exactly to your pleasing.’
‘I will remember,’ Ozzam promised.
‘They will all respond well to discipline,’ Celia continued. ‘They are like flowers in the desert, my dear Mr Ozzam.’
‘How?’ he queried. ‘Flowers in my desert suffer and thirst before they blossom.’
‘Exactly,’ she whispered. ‘These four thirst for punishment. Be sure that they suffer before they blossom. Especially our sweet English rose.’
‘Excellent,’ Ozzam grunted. ‘I will remember that when they are in my humble house of pleasures.’
‘Why not reserve them for those clients who prefer fiercer pleasures: the delights of the whip and cane?’
‘It is as you say. These four will serve my very discerning gentlemen.’
Mandy shivered. Beside her, she heard Sonia whimper anxiously into her gag.
‘We will exchange contracts tomorrow,’ Celia concluded, guiding Ozzam to the door.
‘And those?’ Mandy heard him say. ‘Are they included in the price?’
‘Of course. I promised you a little extra, didn’t I?’
‘But, my dear lady, they are worth –’
‘They are a token of my good will. I will have them marked as sold for you,’ the solicitor said reassuringly. ‘Erica.’
Erica stepped forward and, opening a red lipstick, drew a thick red circle on each of the four naked bottoms. Mandy clenched her buttocks but Erica’s spank softened them into submission: loathing the cool kiss of the lipstick, Mandy felt the large O branded on her left buttock.
‘See? They are now yours. But come. Let us take some supper together. And, tomorrow, we shall have a whipping party in honour of the sale of Sternwood Grange. A fitting memento, I think.’
‘But how delightful. I may have the very whip for just such an occasion,’ he replied, his voice fading as he passed through the gym doors.
When Ozzam had stroked his thumb down the length of the minx’s cleft, he had caused her to jerk violently in her bondage. The sudden jolt had slightly loosened the cords at her slender left wrist. Straining and struggling like a rabbit in a snare, she wriggled and writhed in the darkness until her aching left arm was free.
They were startled by her soft voice when she had untied her gag. ‘I’ll just undo the other arm if I can and then I’ll undo your knots.’
Moments later, the freed hands were unpicking the cords of those still bound until all four women sank their bottoms down on to the polished wooden floor, easing the burning ache at their wrists. Partridge, overwhelmed by the evening’s events, sought information and explanations.
‘So much is happening that I don’t understand,’ she sighed.
They told her, each whispering excitedly as they fitted in another piece of the picture which puzzled her.
‘I remember,’ the brown-eyed housekeeper said. ‘It was your eighteenth birthday. Your aunt was very cross with you –’
‘And you came upstairs and –’
‘Whipped your bottom. Amanda Silk, why of course.’
They hugged in the darkness, delighted at their reunion.
‘But Celia tricked Mandy out of her legacy,’ Sonia chipped in breathlessly, quickly completing the story.
‘Then we’d better all get out of Sternwood Grange tonight,’ Partridge decided, her tone emphatic. ‘I will look after you, girls. I’ll get you safely back to London. Trust me.’
‘Dear Partridge, always so loyal. But I’m staying,’ Mandy whispered. ‘You three go. And look after each other. I’ve got things to do here.’
‘But you can’t,’ Sonia protested, kneeling closer to Mandy in the darkness. Their breasts brushed. Mandy felt the minx’s pink slit press her belly and shivered with delight. ‘You know what she’s planned for tomorrow. A whipping party. And then it’ll be off to Beirut and I’ll never see you again,’ she wailed.
‘I’ll be OK,’ Mandy promised. She gave them her London address. ‘We’ll meet up there in a day or two.’
‘You’re not going to try to take on that solicitor woman,’ Sophie gasped, appalled. ‘She’s dangerous. And Erica, she’s –’
Mandy kept her plans secret, but consoled them. ‘No, I’m not going to deal with those two just yet. They will have to wait.’
Tearfully – little Sonia sobbed and clung on hard – they whispered their farewells in the darkness of the gym, promising to reunite in Notting Hill before the week was over.
‘Be sure you all get right away,’ Mandy made them promise. ‘It’s your only chance.’
Reluctantly, they promised.
‘You must get away. But I must take my own chances.’
Mandy had worked out, by a process of elimination, that Ozzam would be in the gilded bedroom in the East Wing. As Celia’s guest of honour, he would have been given the stateroom once graced by the presence of the Cavalier king.
Stealing through the moonbeams that fingered the darkness up on the second floor, she was within ten feet of the massive double doors when a strong hand closed around her mouth, and its partner grasped her wrist and twisted her arm up behind her back. An ever watchful heavy had pounced silently out of the shadows and intercepted her.
‘What you want? What you do?’ snarled the man, the garlic on his breath overpowering her as much as his skilful strength.
‘Mr Ozzam,’ she mumbled meekly into the hard palm at her lips. ‘I have been sent to pleasure him.’
‘He sleeps,’ the heavy grunted, pinning her to the wall, squashing her bosom painfully as he lodged his knee in her buttocks.
‘Then wake him,’ Mandy gasped. ‘Or,’ she added with a brazen bluff, ‘face his anger in the morning.’
The knee left her cleft; she peeled her breasts from the wall. She felt the grip on her arm loosen – a fraction – as the bodyguard considered this.
‘You come,’ he decided, dragging her naked body up to the double doors as if it were a bin bag. Dropping her on to the carpet, and pinioning her down with his foot, he tapped on the aged oak. Three short raps and one long. The left-hand-side door opened immediately. Mandy saw another heavy loom into the moonlight.
‘She has come for the boss.’
‘He sleeps.’
‘Then wake him.’ Pause. ‘Or,’ Mandy’s goon said, stealing her line, ‘face his anger in the morning.’
It worked. Minutes later, both heavies were sent into the exile of the corridor beyond the closed double doors as Mandy stood, nakedly demure, at the foot of the once royal bed.
‘So, English rose, you have come to pleasure me?’ Ozzam purred, staring at her with hot, narrowed eyes.
She gazed back at him, wondering when and how to begin. ‘I was worried,’ she whispered.
‘You were worried? On what account?’
She took a deep breath, feigning an effort. ‘That in your humble house of pleasures, the other girls already there would be more accomplished, more versatile, more experienced than me. I do not want to disappoint.’
‘Do not have such fears, girl. The whip and the cane await you. One will teach and the other will train you so that you will learn to give complete satisfaction. But I do not understand. Why come to me tonight?’
‘I thought – it was a foolish thought – that I would learn from you. When you touched my nakedness earlier I felt your skill and strength. Your touch was sure and certain, my body told me so.’
‘So?’ The tone could not disguise his evident pleasure of her flattering tribute. Between his thighs, the silk sheet bulged.
‘Who would buy a sports car without a test drive? Try me now, tonight,’ Mandy added quickly. ‘Teach me what I must know.’
Ozzam’s interest intensified. Mandy palmed her breasts, bunching them deliciously, then dropped her fingers to pluck at her pubic fuzz. She was vulnerable, naked and delicious in her guise of reluctant willingness. His eyes flickered slowly like those of a lizard stirring in the sun. Under the taut silk, Mandy saw his keener interest thicken and rise proudly.
‘Come into my bed, English rose. Let us see if we can open your soft petals tonight while the dew is still on them. Let us sip your nectar and judge its sweetness –’
‘And if I am ready to be plucked,’ Mandy murmured, slipping in alongside his naked body.
Ozzam was in his late forties, his body firm and lean. Mandy saw the scars on his shoulders and thigh. Not the scars of bar-room brawls, but of AK-47 fire and shrapnel. Ozzam had lived in the very teeth of death. Such men were without mercy. His eventful life had aged his face, adding cruel lines to his dark eyes and sensual mouth. Mandy peered shyly at his mouth. This was a man who had tasted all the dishes, all the delights of the flesh, she calculated. Now she was his titbit for the hour, naked as a shorn lamb. How could she hope to satisfy this greedy epicure, to whet and sate his jaded appetite?
Already his hands, then his mouth, were feasting at her bosom. His thick shaft raked her upper thigh and pierced her belly as he lurched over in the bed of silk, poised to crudely mount and penetrate her as she lay wide-thighed below.
Closing her eyes, she tried desperately to remember any and every trick she had picked up while serving the clients here at Sternwood Grange. Her brain became a kaleidoscope of fragmented images as she felt his hard flesh nudging at her labia. One idea burned brighter and deeper than all: taunt and tease.
Yes. That is what she should – must – do. Not strive to please him in passive surrender but plan her assault on his quivering senses with subtle skill. Taunt and tease. She would kindle in him a raging desire – then deny him satisfaction.
She wriggled herself free from beneath his nakedness, and nimbly straddled him, splaying her buttocks on to his thighs and pinning him down with her hands on his sinewy shoulders. She felt his steel muscles ripple beneath her soft naked warmth, and knew that he could pitch her off and ravish her in a split second.
‘I am here to please and pleasure you, master,’ she murmured, bending to lick his nipples teasingly. ‘Grant your servant, this English rose, a chance to blossom.’
To her delight, she felt the coiled tension in his shoulders slacken. He was surrendering – but the jerking twitch of his shaft up against her bottom was a stern reminder of his savage potency. It was going to be dangerous.
Shuffling her satin-smooth buttocks slowly and sensually up along his body, she nudged her breasts into his face. Dangling the luscious globes an inch before his eyes, she nipple-teased him, skimming his cheeks and then his lips with the pert peaks before crushing her bosoms down to bury him in their soft warmth. Jerking back her hips, she swept her cheeks down against his shaft: the rod of pulsing iron speared her cleft as she jiggled her breasts and drowned him. Suddenly, skimming her wet slit down his flesh, she sat back between his knees and captured his erection between her bouncing breasts. She bunched her satin cushions between her trembling palms so that her nipples kissed his glistening spear. He gasped and swore softly, pumping his hips violently to enjoy the warmth and depth of her tight cleavage. She crushed her breasts together until they ached, capturing and trapping his thrusting shaft. Slipping her right hand in front of her bosom to keep him ensnared within her flesh, she searched for his balls with her left hand. She found the sac and squeezed.
Ozzam’s belly tensed; his eyes became fierce slits. Mandy knew that he was coming, was about to explode in her bosom. Swinging her breasts free, she released him. Denied what he chokingly desired, his left hand taloned the silk sheet in a paroxysm of fury, ripping it as a tiger claws its prey. The twitching shaft beat the empty air, pulsing and throbbing in vain. Mandy just managed to hide her smile of triumph as he cursed and begged for release.
‘Daughter of a witch, finish me,’ he grunted, ‘finish me.’
‘As you command, master,’ she whispered softly.
He eased himself back into the pillows, surrendering his erection with a mixture of pride and submission. Lowering her face, she pursed her lips and blew softly on the angry head of his shaft.
‘Feel the sweet zephyr as it blows upon the burning sands at sunset. Feel how good it is, my master, prince of the desert, to have the cool wind caress your burning flesh.’
He moaned drunkenly, threshing beneath the weight of her thighs and buttocks. Her cleft was hot and sticky; she pressed it down into him firmly, branding him with her heat. He screamed a curdled scream of violent delight. She slipped her left hand up between his thighs, fingernailing him deliberately before capturing his balls once more between her thumb and fingertips. Twisting and turning his sac, she owned and controlled him completely.
‘You’ll taste the whip, bitch. I’ll lash you –’
‘This –’ she spoke serenely, ignoring his blustering ‘– is the healing balm of the cool oasis.’ Her voice was now a carnal sigh. She spilled her spittle along his throbbing shaft. ‘How sweet are the waters at the oasis, my prince of the desert, feel how they cool your heat.’
‘Now,’ he roared, pawing desperately at her head to force her mouth over the erection an inch below. ‘Now, bitch. Take me. I, Ozzam, command it.’
‘Patience, my master. Not yet. Not yet,’ she murmured softly, ‘for my prince should know that there is an even softer place for his aching flesh to rest. Truly, in all the desert, he will not find a tighter sheath for his sword.’
Turning deftly, she released his balls and swivelled her buttocks towards him. Quickly gathering his straining shaft in her hand, she eased her bottom towards its engorged head. Wedging the tip into her cleft, she slowly, tantalisingly, dragged it along the velvet flesh between her parted cheeks. Three times, in maddeningly slow succession, she forced the pulsing flesh between her heavy buttocks before nuzzling it against her wet sphincter.
This time, his scream was a silent scream. Grappling drunkenly, he tried to clutch her soft cheeks between veined, taloned hands. She brushed them away imperiously and, perched above his thighs, clenched her anal whorl’s rosebud muscle rhythmically – drawing his length in a quarter of an inch at each delicious spasm. Groaning in his ecstasy, he begged her openly and loudly for completion. Unable to thrust and penetrate, he was at the mercy of her cunning buttocks. She toyed with his anguish and protracted his sweet suffering.
He cursed her violently once more, but Mandy continued to deny him. His harsh words became sweet pleading, choking with suffocating torment. With a twisting lunge, he bucked and jerked, toppling her from her throne of dominance. She fell from the bed and lay sprawled, face down and bosom crushed on the carpet.
He pounced, straddling her, his spear once more at her gaping cleft. Greedy hands prised her helpless cheeks apart, forcing the cleft to yawn deeply. Her sphincter sparkled, a red rosebud on the tremulous verge of opening. He swallowed, and grabbed a fistful of her sweat-drenched hair.
‘My English rose, the moment has come for you to be –’
‘Take me, my master, for I am but a sugared sweetmeat upon your silver dish. I am as the honeycomb between your bared teeth: the passing pleasure of but a moment. But I know where,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘there is darker meat for your appetite. Meat more toothsome. Wild, untamed game, providing meat more fitting for my master’s table.’
The words arrested his lust, confusing and tormenting him. ‘Where?’ he choked in his fury. ‘Where?’
Before she could reply, she felt him shoot his load. The squirting stream of hot silver splattered her hair, neck, shoulders and dimpled spine. Pitter pat. Pitter pat. It rained down like a sudden summer shower kissing the hot asphalt of a blistering road. She squirmed, causing the spillage to course down her spine and collect in a puddle at the swell of her buttocks. She felt it swimming, then flow down into her cleft. He rose and staggered across to the empty bed. Mandy wriggled over and wiped her buttocks dry on the carpet.
‘Take me to this –’
‘Rare fruit? Come,’ she whispered. ‘I will show you.’
They stole out of the gilded bedchamber. Had Charles Stuart been so royally entertained? Mandy wondered, glimpsing the torn sheet as she left through the huge oak doors. Out in the moonlit corridor, Ozzam silenced the heavies. His authority at once quelled the surprise and concern.
‘Leave me be. I will go with this girl. I trust her.’
Mandy took Ozzam by the hand and led him down the corridor, turning out through French windows on to an octagonal balcony. They paused in the moonlight. She shivered, naked in the night chill.
‘Sit a moment. I have something important to tell you.’
‘You?’ he sounded amazed. ‘Something to tell me, Ozzam?’
‘Yes,’ she replied with quiet confidence.
Something about her serious tone of voice calmed him.
‘Buying Sternwood Grange is a very big mistake.’
‘Why do you say this?’ he barked.
‘Many reasons. To start with, you are paying too much. Several hundred thousand too much.’
He protested vehemently, but she was well rehearsed and armed with a flood of facts and figures. She presented her facts coldly and clearly – unit costs, overheads, depreciation – with all the professionalism her days at Millbank had taught her. Although she knew she had convinced him, he wavered.
‘Then there’s Special Branch. Always sniffing around.’
In the moonlight, his sallow skin paled. She explained that many of Sternwood Grange’s clientele were very important people. Important enough to have Special Branch interested in their welfare. She whispered several names. His eyes widened like a child’s with wonder.
‘And you can’t build, refurbish or extend. This is a Grade II listed building.’
She hit him with all her meticulous research carried out in London: land searches, preservation orders and severe planning restrictions. ‘You can’t even paint the back door without a full public inquiry. Anything historical, and the press descend like vultures.’
Three minutes’ silence followed.
He broke it with an angry, bewildered voice. ‘How do you know these things? What is your interest in Sternwood Grange?’
Should she? Dare she? She decided to risk it: telling him, briefly, her true identity and how Sternwood Grange was hers, not Celia’s to sell. And, she added, she was not selling.
‘If you buy, it will mean protracted court cases. And publicity,’ she warned.
That clinched it. The man with five passports and no nationality cursed softly into the night. Turning, he shrugged. ‘But where is this forbidden fruit you promised me?’
‘Come, let us pay them a visit. They are in bed by now, but not sleeping.’