Satisfaction Page 18

  She felt more and more like the heroine of a penny-dreadful novel, the one where the husband was gone, the brother was in love with her, the father was the villain, and a secret treasure was waiting to be discovered that would save them all.

  But she found nothing like that, even though her imagination ran riot as she pursued her search item by item, piece by piece, starting first in the dining room, and moving on to the parlor.

  That was about all she could do in the course of the morning, and before the dressmaker arrived, and she wasn't that reassured by the fact that nothing turned up.

  Satisfaction / 159

  She had expected that.

  But it was imperative that something turn up somewhere.

  Mroow. Emily, pacing by her side as she moved from sofa to table to paintings in the parlor. Hugo is very clever.

  Or this is a fool's quest, Jancie thought, running her hand behind the painting which hung near a side chair. And she and Edmund were the only ones in the world who thought Hugo's sudden rise to wealth and status could be subject to conjecture.

  God, it was so long ago—who would care, except her and Edmund?

  She was fairly certain that he and Olivia had not yet been living at Waybury when Hugo set out for South Africa with her father. But that was all so deep in the past, it was becoming harder to remember what was the truth and what was her father's story.

  Or what she'd embroidered all on her own.

  Still, she was here now, living the life she should have led all along, and there was some justice in that. But there would be much more in the way of reparation if she could somehow make Hugo pay her father his fair share.

  There was nothing behind the painting. Nothing under the chair.

  She was on her knees, groping the underside of a drawer in a side table, when Bingham knocked loudly on the door, balefully announcing that the dressmaker was there.

  Chapter Eleven

  He lay naked and sprawled across an ermine bedspread that was drenched with his ejaculate, every inch of him limp, exhausted, and dissatisfied. The three naked women who had been coaxing, prodding, and jacking him off were still stroking and stoking him with all the expertise for which they were famous, but for some reason, his penis wasn't as responsive as it usually was, even after hours of fucking.

  Ridiculous. These were some of the most beautiful courtesans in the world, trained specifically to pleasure a man with expert fingers and submissive bodies and the erotic arts of the ancients.

  And still he was limp, unresponsive—too drunk, maybe ... or too sober, He reached for the nearest breast and tongued the thick, round nipple.

  Not quite as sweet, as succulent as . .. no—

  What it was, was a well-used nipple nuzzled by many men in many rooms of this house. A nipple that had been fondled and suckled by a thousand different mouths and tongues, and thus his overture to the nipple was meaningless-—to the whore, and to him.

  She didn't care who sucked it, who fucked her. It was all of a piece—he could see it in her eyes. Fun for a while, but let's get on with it.

  Satisfaction / 161

  Maybe she sensed he perceived her ennui. Maybe someone was watching—most assuredly someone was watching, but whether it was the prurient voyeur who was always lurking behind walls and curtains, or the madam, she couldn't know, and she bent herself to arousing him all over again, doing her work, her task.

  She took his penis in both hands and began stroking it in a rhythmic motion. The second whore immediately burrowed her head between his legs, her tongue rooting at his balls, pulling the flaccid sacs into her mouth. The third whore assaulted his mouth, shoving her tongue against his and working it slowly, waiting for his interest to heighten.

  Being paid to make love with him. No interest in him, just in the money that would come after.

  Hell. It was cunt, What did he care where he got it? One was the same as another, and he had three at his disposal whenever, however, he wanted them—one, two, or all three at a time: penis, fingers, mouth. A man could die happy with himself stuffed in three cunts like that.

  They were all over him suddenly, his three naked whores, squirming, stroking, fondling, pulling, kissing ... his penis stiffened, his body quickened.

  There—it had nothing to do with wife cunt. He was just exhausted; whores were always ready and on. All they had to do was lie there.

  One of them was on her back now, her legs lifted high and wide, waiting for his penis to penetrate her.

  He obliged, jamming himself into her, pumping at her furiously, and going nowhere instantly. There was something about used-up cunt; even though it was wet and it was hot, it was also passive and jaded. It didn't enfold him and hold him because it was so wide-stretched, and he had to work hard to generate friction in its slick, slack depths.

  A man shouldn't have to work for cunt. He should just slip right into a nice, tight tunnel and find repose there.

  He found nothing in the whore's slack body. His penis agreed; his penis wanted wife cunt and it just wasn't there.

  After three days—the equivalent three days he had sought to exorcise his craving for her—he had found no surcease. He was bored with the winding, grinding whores and their slippy, used

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  cunts, and their practiced moans and groans, their perfunctory nipples, their pretense of pleasure.

  Shit. He rolled over, away from them and their grasping bodies. They came after him, desperate to please now because it meant loss of money, loss of face if anyone who came to Bullhead Manor left dissatisfied.

  Everything promised, nothing withheld, pleasure beyond reason, ecstasy beyond price.

  Not for him. For three days now, with a variety of houris, odalisques, and whores, he had felt no bone-splitting lust, no saturating need, every orgasm nothing more than his will to sustain it.

  Hell.

  If a man couldn't find satisfaction at the Bullhead, there was nothing left for him anywhere. He might just as well die.

  Or skulk home to be pussy-whipped by a wife.

  God—go home to his.. . wife.

  What was he thinking?

  He pushed away their groping hands, their mechanical, questing hands, with no more feeling for the body they were fondling than a puppet. He pushed himself off the bed, noting abstractedly that his erection didn't notice the difference, and he wondered why he couldn't lose himself in his orgasm and subsume the rest.

  For some reason, he couldn't. It was an odd, strained moment with three of the most beautiful Bullhead whores kneeing at his knees, mouthing his penis, stroking his buttocks. A man had to be dead not to want them, and he wasn't dead—he was quite alive and pulsing and hard, but he didn't want them.

  He didn't want to fuck them.

  They comprehended quickly and began vying for his attention; if he called for another cunt, they could lose their position, their luster as the most exclusive courtesans in London,

  They were coming at him again, determined. They toppled him onto the bed again, and began ravaging his flailing body any way they could get at him.

  "My lord, let me . . "

  "Oh, no—I have the secret. .."

  "Go away—I know just how to .. ."

  They knew nothing—they who knew everything, which meant

  Satisfaction / 163

  he was going mad because he suddenly saw their lushly painted faces as caricatures, their bodies as empty shells, their skills as perfunctory and meaningless.

  He couldn't wait to get away from them, but there was something else to be taken into consideration: the voyeurs, always present, having paid for their pleasure, who would whisper in the dark and spread rumors about his lassitude, his unwillingness, and the whores' inability to arouse him.

  The thought of that exploded into a dozen scenarios, none of them favorable to him. And most injurious to this most elite secret club, which depended upon discretion and satisfaction.

  Jesus. A man couldn't say no in this bedev
iled place. He had no choice but to hand himself over to the whores and let them do what they would. As long as he could perform, whether he wanted it or not, everyone would be satisfied.

  He felt as if he were outside himself, watching the mechanics of it. The whores devoted themselves to his penis, his scrotum, his mouth. They gave him their nipples; one after the other, they took turns massaging him top to bottom, while one of them straddled his head and lowered herself to just within reach of his tongue.

  Caught, corralled, and saddled. The voyeurs were watching. What man wouldn't just give up and give in? No choice. Pedestrian cunt. Take me away . . .

  ******************

  She and Emily had now thoroughly searched the first floor. Had spent a whole day taking apart the library, book by book, looking for answers. A bankbook, a reckoning statement of some kind. A receipt. Things that could conceivably be hidden in a book or behind one on a high shelf where no one would ever think to look. Or maybe a family Bible.

  But there wasn't a family Bible—why should there be when Hugo had invented himself out of whole cloth and a stash of diamonds that should have been half hers. And Edmund's.

  There wasn't anything yet that she could point to and say, Hugo betrayed her father. And it was beginning to look as if that would never be, and that the only reparation she might be able to make was to bring Edmund to Waybury to live—which couldn't conceivably happen until Hugo passed away. Then, she could make her father's life comfortable and rich with all the things that Hugo

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  had cheated him of, including a beautiful home and servants to attend his every need.

  The thought pushed her on when she felt tired or discouraged, which was often; the temptation to just throw up her hands and say "enough" was overwhelming as the days passed and nothing came to her hand that remotely suggested that Hugo was living on ill-gotten gains.

  Worse still, Kyger was as distant as the sun, and urging her to find someone to manage Waybury's tenants.

  "Everyone's run away," he pointed out one morning at breakfast. "Perhaps you should run away. I'm planning to—why should I be saddled with Lujan's legacy when there's nothing in it forme?"

  That was the kind of statement Lujan would make. Jancie was secretly horrified, but all she could say was, "Don't leave." What she meant was, Don't leave me. He was serious as stones about it. He was fed up with how Lujan was wrecking up his inheritance and his marriage, and he felt no just cause to save either.

  "If you leave," Jancie said, a little desperate, "what will I do?"

  "And if I stay, what will I do, being in love with you as I am."

  "DON'T say that."

  Kyger shrugged. "It's self-preservation on all sides, Jancie. This isn't my trust, and I took it on anyway, because I love this place as much as anyone. And it can never be mine until Hugo is gone and if Lujan ever should—" He didn't say the unthinkable, but he gave her a speculative look. "Would you marry me then, I wonder?"

  "DON'T..."

  "I have to go."

  He always had to go. It seemed to her he never stayed. He was always out the door by nine o'clock and most days he didn't return until almost nine o'clock. Where he was until then, she couldn't fathom—certainly there wasn't enough of Waybury's business to occupy him all those hours.

  But then, it wasn't her business, and that was the point. Her occupation was lady of the manor. The dressmaker came and they parsed out a half-dozen suitable dresses for a daughter-in-law in mourning to wear—grays and lavenders and deep blues.

  Satisfaction / 165

  And the rest of the time, after the half-hour she spent with Mrs. Ancrum discussing the meals no one was here to eat, and housekeeping duties, she spent alone—no, with Emily—using that precious time to finish her search of the main living rooms of Waybury.

  She was meant to be the lady of the manor, she thought. She thought she did it with an ease and a grace that could have been inborn. The only one she couldn't charm was Bingham, the paper-thin butler, who looked at her with unceasing disapproval as if he could read her heart.

  She ignored him, for the most part. He was one of all those who would be here until Hugo pensioned them off. And perhaps that ought to be soon. She didn't like him—he didn't like her.

  Meantime, she and Emily could take their search up to the bedroom floor, secure in the knowledge that there was no one around to see what they were doing.

  Except sometimes she had the feeling Bingham was lurking.

  Was he?

  She stood on the landing and surveyed the hallway, which stretched across the width of the house to the stairs that led to the attic.

  Where, after all, had she not searched on this floor?

  Oowww , . . Olivia's room.

  "I can't—not yet. . ."

  M'ow . . . do something.

  She opened the door to Hugo's room instead. He'd been gone nearly a week, as had Lujan, and yet his room had the scent of fresh furniture polish, and his bed had been changed and smoothed as if he had slept in it last night.

  Oowww. Emily, emphatic, pacing around the room.

  Where would a thief conceal evidence of a cache of diamonds, and thirty years after the fact?

  That was the sticking point—that she was counting on there being something left, something for reparation. Something that after this much time he would be careless about.

  The man who bargained down your compensation and counted each shilling you spent on-a dress?

  Such a one could be parsimonious as a parson. And Jancie knew all about being prudent with money.

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  Eeeoww ... A new sound, as Emily ducked under the bed.

  Jancie stared after her for a moment, and then dropped to her knees to look under the bed.

  Pristine as pearls. Nothing there but Emily crouching, her golden eyes fixed on her as if there were something she ought to be comprehending.

  Eeooowww. ..

  "There's nothing here ..." Jancie whispered, feeling a zing of disappointment even though that was exactly what she had expected. So why was Emily so insistent?

  "Beg pardon, madam .. ."

  Oh God—Bingham.

  She edged her way out from under the bed and sat on her haunches. No excuses. Servants weren't supposed to have opinions, anyway.

  But he was looking down his nose, his lips pursed, waiting for some explanation.

  Best not to move or to give him the satisfaction. "Yes, Bingham?" Was her tone haughty enough, lady-of-the-manor cool and supercilious?

  "Beg pardon, madam." He paused a moment, waiting, and she cocked her head at him inquiringly. "A note from Mr. Lujan, madam."

  She didn't move. "Let me see it." Which forced him to step toward her and hand it to her.

  Returning Saturday. Just those brusque words in his slashing handwriting.

  "Thank you," Jancie said dismissively, she hoped.

  Owww, Emily said, Emily understood.

  "Exactly," she whispered.

  ******************

  When a man's juice was drained like that, with the houris pulling and pushing on him for hours on end, he came to consciousness the succeeding morning with an unholy ache in his loins that was numbing. He felt rubbed out, sapped, distended to a point where he thought he'd never be tight and right again.

  He couldn't wait to get out of there—anything was better than this charade. It wanted only to send word to Waybury and get his ass on the road.

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  It was all March's fault that he had drunk himself to a stupor and allowed this triadic sensory seduction that brought him no satisfasction whatsoever.

  It wasn't wife cunt.

  No, not thinking that way; whipsawed if I let that idea get the upper hand. A man just had to sometimes see to his responsibilities, make sure his brother wasn't being too responsible, too consoling. Too in bed with his wife .. . Cunt.

  Christ.

  His mouth was dry and coated with ju
ices. His body was stiff and wracked, his penis at half-staff, wilting as he lay there, unable even to respond to the thought of .. .

  He wasn't going to think it. Waste of time, this whole fuck festival. Gave him nothing but an ache in his balls and an abraded penis which wouldn't be good for anything for days.

  Maybe he ought to hole up and recover before . .. hole up in his wife's hole . ..

  Shit. There was no getting around it—his penis was hot for wife cunt. He could give in to that. Especially after these three days.

  BUT—he would make it clear to her once again, he wasn't balling her because he loved her. Or because he wanted her sappy declarations of love. Fuck that. A man didn't marry for love. He married for heirs, and for a good, deep, uncomplicated, uncritical fucking hole. That was her purpose—that was the bargain. And in turn she got the luxuries in life she had been denied and a good, hard, regular fucking.

  It was a good bargain, especially considering how their families' destinies were so interconnected. It was reparation in a way. She should be grateful, actually. He'd take gratitude and satisfaction over love any day.

  So would his penis, now standing tall and looking a little more interested.

  "A virgin takes the trick over a whore any day," he muttered. Time to go home. He raised himself to a sitting position. "MARCH!!!! We're going back to Waybury . .."

  She felt a compulsive need now to find something, anything that would point to Hugo's treachery.

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  She climbed to her feet after Bingham withdrew, thanking heaven Hugo had gone to London, and she didn't have to make excuses to him why she was poking around the house.

  So much easier this way.

  Even with Bingham silently watching her. Even back out in the hallway, she felt a sense of his presence.

  Had he been watching her all along?

  And now Lujan was coming back home. Another pair of eyes. Lord—stay away—she wasn't ready for a reckoning with him yet, nor did she want to examine her confused feelings about him. Or have him questioning just what she was doing all day long.