It was her aunt’s fault, Mademoiselle Charlotte Daney would reason later on while arranging objects in the comfort and safety of her room. Like many females of her day and breeding, Charlotte was educated at a local convent in Olgart, a fashionable but fading town fifty miles south of Paris. Charlotte’s parents expected their lovely flaxen-haired daughter to remain sequestered until a suitable marriage match could be made. There was, however, another daughter to consider and this was proving to be an obstacle to poor Charlotte’s happiness. For a mate must be fettered to Isabelle, now five-and-twenty and a headstrong little bead before the younger daughter could be presented to society.
If it were not for her good Aunt Louisa Tournelle, Charlotte feared she would go mad. At night, the petite blonde pleasured herself with nimble fingers but by day she craved a real man’s member roiling inside her. Louisa recalled what it was like to be young; twice a week she brought her carriage round to the convent and within hours she and her niece were commandeering the magnificent, albeit sometimes brutal, streets of Paris. While ostensibly finding a need to run an errand or visit an old friend, Aunt Louisa turned her muslin-clad back while Charlotte was making off with some dashing garçon or other.
And now there was to be a bal masqué at the Comte Cherel estate and Aunt Louisa had to work all manner of charms to wangle an invite for her favored niece. Oh, Louisa liked Isabelle well enough but thought the girl selfish in her steadfast refusal to marry. “And why should she marry?” was an unsolicited question she once posited at a holiday gathering. “Isabelle has it too good at home. Dismiss her maids, brother, and I guarantee you’ll find your daughter chomping the bit to find a husband soon enough.” Isabelle had refused to speak to her aunt for the rest of the evening.
But why should poor Charlotte suffer? Here was a buxom, healthy girl four-and-twenty years of age, ripe as a fig mid-air falling from a tree. Her loins were wanting to part for a lover . . . or two. The golden crest of her locks should be crowned with laurel, the dewy petals of her lips were meant to be kissed morning, noon and night!
No, Louisa would not brook her brother and sister-in-law’s old-fashioned ways. She would not stand by while Charlotte’s youth was lost for the sake of convention.
When Aunt Louisa presented her niece with a mask for the party, Charlotte cried, “Oh, Aunt, darling. It’s perfect!” And it was, tiered in black velvet with satin furbelows on either side, Mlle Charlotte Daney was sure to garner at least one admirer. Louisa chuckled to herself as she pictured Charlotte wrestling a swain to the nearest daybed like a lepidopterist expertly using a butterfly pin. Louisa, a retired schoolteacher, always contended there was nothing weak about her sex.
Heads turned when Charlotte made her entrance at the ball but, not knowing a soul, she was quickly ignored. She just as quickly grew bored until she sighted a man whose laser-cut subterfuge made him look dangerous. The mask didn’t hide the strength of his jawline or the sensual loop of his lips. What would it be like to have that mouth pressed to her quim? She shook the image away and sidled to the buffet table where she hoped to find a mountain of cream pies. Charlotte was about to bite into a morsel of sweet when she felt a man’s breath envelop her, like a pocket of summer air.
“Eat too many of those and I’ll be happy to help you loosen your stays,” the voice said.
“Pray, what other diversions are there?”
“An arch answer. You must be a married woman on the prowl.”
Charlotte noted the man licked his full lips and an erection was trumpeting in his trousers. He’d make a fine bedfellow indeed, the hungry girl thought, but before she could respond a woman in a boat of bombazine approached the two and whisked away Charlotte’s quarry.
“Come, Edwin. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Edwin took the lady’s arm while casting a rueful glance in Charlotte’s direction. Once again, Charlotte was alone. The poor convent girl didn’t even have her aunt for company; Louisa had dropped her niece off with the intention of returning in an hour or two.
She ate another cream pie and drank a glass of champagne. She danced a few quadrilles but no one struck up a conversation with her afterwards so she sat in a corner and daydreamed. She remembered walking along the Seine with an Italian gentleman who was visiting Paris on business. Charlotte could still taste the pâté on his tongue; still feel his eager hands on her orbs. She closed her eyes and drifted into blissful reverie until a couple noisily plopped down beside her.
Well, she simply had to amuse herself somehow. She wandered the great rooms until she found one that was empty and filled with useless bric-a-brac. The walls were painted a pale mauve and the paintings were so innocuous as to be forgotten immediately out of purview. Panels in a millefleurs design shielded a settee meant for sipping a tisane or engaging one’s maid in idle gossip.
Charlotte sighed and was about to soldier onward when she saw the most delightful thing. She moved toward an end table to admire an exquisite objet d’art: a crystal perfume bottle with an egg-shaped rubasse stopper. She held it in her palm for a moment before slipping it in her handbag. Charlotte turned and gasped – she had been caught.
Edwin of the trumpeting trousers was back and he gave Charlotte another rueful smile. “Are you so listless as to stoop to such ghastly measures as stealing? Or, wait! No, don’t tell me. You’re in a wretched position. You need to pawn a piece of crystal to pay creditors who knew and cosseted your profligate desire for silk all along.”
“You’re intolerable,” she said, half-admiring his gambit.
“And you’re in trouble with the great Comte Cherel if you don’t do as I say.” With that, Edwin sat heavily on the settee, his thighs wishboned and sturdy as tree trunks. “Lift up your skirts, young lady. You’re going to ride my haunches until you’ve been properly punished.”
Charlotte’s cheeks flushed many shades darker than the walls now spinning round her. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Sir! You are not a gallant!”
“No, Mademoiselle Charlotte. I am a libertine. And you are a woman greedy for adventure. Half the men in Paris whisper your name in the dark as they reach for their stiff members. Now, come. Your behavior merits a spanking. Take your licking like a good sport. Then I’ll let you go.”
Charlotte lifted her tulle skirts and unrolled her silk stockings. Torquing her body over Edwin’s knees, she felt the first stirring of arousal. His fingers flitted like feathers over the crack of her bum before reaching down to clear a wedge of space betwixt her thighs.
“This is for your insolence,” Edwin murmured, almost to himself, though Charlotte heard him clearly. The first blows were like the smattering of applause and the convent escapee bit her bottom lip to suppress a giggle. “And this,” he said, as the blows rained harder, gathering into a storm, “is for having the audacity to steal from your host!”
She tried to wiggle free but Edwin had a secure hold with one sinewy forearm girding her waist. So she relaxed into every sensation, maddening her persecutor in the process.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, little minx!”
She cleaved to the ribbing of his stockinged calves and let her bum rise like a shoot. She wanted more, even as tears coursed under that silly mask and mottled her rouge.
The libertine’s hands moved swiftly now; the effort put into each biff had him grunting like a mule. Still, she lifted that pillowy tush of hers, taunting him with it.
Soon, the echo of his palm slip-slapping against the bare bulbs of this young woman’s beautiful bum threatened to overtake any other sound he had ever heard. He was afraid he’d go deaf from the mutations of his own desire. She was gorgeous, this creature. Dangerous and delectable: her supple flesh completely responsive to his touch.
Suddenly, with the fear of looking too long into the abyss of sensual pleasures, he gently pushed Charlotte off his lap.
“Enough,” he said. “You may get dressed. Replace the crystal and we’ll forget this little incident ever happened.”
Charlotte’s lips curled into a mocking smile. “Maybe you’ve had enough. But right now you’re going to fuck me. If you don’t, I’ll go crawling to our host, unable to walk after what his brute of a guest did to me over a simple misunderstanding.”
“Why you—”
“Take me from behind. Do it now.”
Planting her knees close to the edge of the settee and pinning a tasseled pillow beneath her elbows for ballast, Charlotte looked over her shoulder with a commanding glance.
“All right,” Edwin intoned. He didn’t care how wet she was; his cock had been bursting for purchase ever since Charlotte’s husky voice confronted him at the buffet table.
He was expecting her cunt to be tight as a reticule but he slipped in easily and for a moment he balked at an unnecessary barrier to his enjoyment. Edwin pulled away and dried his cock off with the tail of his shirt, then plunged back in again. He gripped Charlotte’s hips in order to drive his thrusts in deeper and delivered a few more slaps to her derrière in the process. The sure knowledge that the quim he was into had already been taken aplenty oddly stirred his appetite all the more.
He wanted to see all the merry minstrels who had lined up to play fiddle to this cunt. It was a glorious envelope not meant to be steamed shut and suddenly he yearned to pound this pussy for all he was worth, drive into it until their sweating humping bodies were propelled out the door, across the dance hall and onto the manicured lawns.
At the cusp of climax, Edwin bellowed, cradling his cock in hand while covering Charlotte’s bottom with the meringue of his semen.
They never removed their masks. Charlotte quickly dressed and left the room while Edwin buttoned his britches. She was gone before he even had the chance to wipe the sweat from his brow. The last words he would remember from this conquest (or was he her prize?) would be: Take me from behind. Do it now.
Well, they had both found a way to make a tiresome evening palatable. Now he had to find a washbasin lest his fiancée get a whiff of his diversion and leave with her yearly income of £60,000. His mind wandered to a shop girl he fancied last time he visited Rome. She had a heart-shaped face and a bottom you could have carved a turkey on. He remembered she too liked to be spanked to fruition. His fiancée begged him for an Italian honeymoon and he had reminded her Paris was the city for lovers. He’d have to tell her he had changed his mind.
Aunt Louisa had been waiting in the foyer for close to half an hour. Her eyes went as big as doilies when she saw her niece.
Back in the carriage, on their way home from the Cherel estate, Louisa leaned forward and said, “Why, Charlotte. You look like you’ve been properly fucked.”
“I have, darling. I have. But now, I just want to close my eyes and rest a bit. I didn’t get enough to eat; I’m feeling faint with hunger.”
The older woman petted her niece’s wrist. “There, there. Cook will fix you something when we get back to your old auntie’s haunt.”
“You’re not taking me back to the convent?”
Louisa smiled with unmistaken devilment. “Tomorrow, sweetheart. In the morning I have a new gardener coming over named Rico. Rico’s from Portugal; I think you’ll like him.”
Charlotte’s aunt lived in the most fashionable quarter of Paris. Charlotte retreated to her haven of a guest room and wrapped herself in a cocoon of freshly laundered sheets under a damask coverlet. Her sleep was soundless and dreamless, the blissful comfort of the recently sated.
In the morning, she woke late, past ten. A maid served her a hearty breakfast of ham, cheese, fruit and croissants along with a pot of strong tea. She would need the sustenance.
Her aunt was right about Rico. Charlotte liked him from the start. Though they didn’t speak the same language, their bodies sung paeans of love.
Charlotte took Rico to her room and into her bed. At first the young man was shy, but when Charlotte removed her chemise, baring her breasts to those callused hands of his, well, he was all over her.
They tenderly made love, a nice contrast to last night’s rutting. Nice to mix it up a little bit, Charlotte thought. Rico’s cock was like a world made flesh; it filled her to the point where she would have fain let one of her limbs drift off to sea. When sex was this good, it created panicky sensations in her chest; she didn’t want it to end and tried to focus on keeping this body, this wonder of maleness close to her.
But even the best lovemaking ended eventually, leaving Charlotte alone in her room at the convent with its gray walls and mattress so narrow she couldn’t turn over twice without falling to the cold cement floor.
Louisa had packed her a nice picnic basket to take with her: plenty of fruit, cheese and chocolates. Really, life could be worse.
She held her aunt’s hand in the carriage and gave the generous woman a kiss on the cheek, thanking her for all the kindnesses.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Aunt Louisa.”
“Quite simply, Charlotte, you’d go mad. You’re a woman made for love. Four gray walls and a cold bath once a week? That’s not the life for you. I’d let you live with me but your parents say that would take you right out of the marriage market.”
Charlotte’s gloved hands turned to fists in her lap. Louisa gave her charge one last hug before closing the door of her carriage.
She called out of the window, “Chin up, darling! I’ll be back in a few days.”
Aunt Louisa was said to have been quite the beauty in her day, wasp-waisted with a high bosom and a tornado of sunshine-yellow hair. Now, Louisa’s body was as thick as the gated door guarding the mausoleum where Charlotte spun out her days and her aunt’s hair was white as a cloud. Charlotte had many things she wanted to think about before the convent’s inevitable dinner gong sounded like a death knell.
But first she wanted to take that perfume bottle out of her handbag and place it next to the water pitcher on her nightstand, the only furniture she was allowed in her room. She would remove that lovely crystal with its impossibly delicate stopper and she would think about that.
Yes, that would be the first thing she wanted to think about.