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Oh, but she ought to stop. She opened one button, then another. Her fingers brushed his skin through the thin linen of his shirt. His cock awakened with a vengeance, not understanding this was not the time, nor the place. “Minette,” he said softly.
But he didn’t tell her to stop, and so she unbuttoned his breeches completely, allowing him to jut out in full and flagrant arousal beneath the curtain of his shirt’s hem.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, and it sounded like a plea. Why was he pleading with her? He could button himself back up, stand, and leave the room, but for some reason he didn’t do this. She got down on her knees in front of him and he stifled a groan. No, no, no. Not no that she would do it, but no that he wanted it with a desire like fire. He wasn’t made of steel.
It excited him to see her on her knees.
He let out a long breath of self-loathing even as he reached to touch her hair. So soft, so fine. So blonde. So innocent. He screwed his eyes shut. Don’t think about that. She was the one who told him to close his eyes, and he determined to keep them closed as she drew away the tails of his shirt and exposed his pulsing length. She stroked his cock gingerly, with light fingertips, but the contact almost had him bowing off the chair. His thighs tightened.
“What did you learn in those books, before you were interrupted?” His voice sounded rough. Uncivilized.
“A lot of things. More than you think.”
“Show me,” he said through gritted teeth, resting his hands upon his knees. Minette bent over him. He heard the rustle of her skirts, then felt the tip of her warm tongue trace a trail around and about his cock’s head. If only he wasn’t so damned sensitive, so overwrought from lack of release. She began to lick him like a sugar cake, with a maddening, tentative delicacy. He didn’t want this—he didn’t—but he couldn’t stop her. It had been an endlessly frustrating day, and he was weak and hungry with need.
He felt her fingers grip him, not firmly, the way an experienced lady might handle a man, but with hesitant pressure. “Move it now,” he said. “Move your hand along my cock.”
She obliged him. “Like this?”
“Yes,” he said with another groan. “You needn’t be so gentle. Stroke it firmly up and down as you caress me with your mouth.”
She tried, but like any beginner, did not do exceedingly well. He didn’t care. He ached to be touched and caressed. The fact that it was Minette was an upsetting detail, but he didn’t stop her, because her mouth was warm and her tongue was surprisingly deft. All that chatter, he supposed. Silly Minette and her chattering. Minette, who was stroking and licking his throbbing cock.
He sat straighter. He meant to stop her then but she sighed and tilted her head, and licked lower, to the base of his shaft. She made a tentative swipe at his balls. They drew up at the thrill, the heady pleasure. Don’t do such things, he thought. “Yes,” he said aloud. “That feels good. Don’t stop.”
She bent her head and attended to him, stroking, licking, kissing, a clumsy mishmash of erotic attempts that contributed to a marvelous whole. She was making him so hot he could feel the flush of pleasure in his cheeks and his chest. He moved on the chair, biting back a growl as she opened her mouth and slid her lips down his length as far as she could go. He gripped his hands in his hair, only so he wouldn’t bury them in her hair and impale her mouth with his cock. One didn’t do such things to one’s wife. One didn’t do such things to a young woman one considered a sister.
And yet some tension was growing inside him, some ebbing of control. Misgivings were grinding against bodily needs, and reason was giving way to unruly fantasies. He had taken her once, his birthday night. Why not take her again? He wanted to be inside her so badly, fucking her, pounding into her. He could always push her skirts up over her face so he couldn’t see who he was violating. He could picture it. He could feel it. Rather than the tease of her lips, he could be enjoying the hot caress of her tight, wet pussy. He pictured her legs splayed out, and imagined tearing her bodice so her breasts spilled free—
Abhorrent fantasies. Violent lust.
“No.” He was telling himself no, that he mustn’t entertain such thoughts about Minette. She paused a moment in her oral exertions and looked up at him in question. He stared at her dumbly, too stricken to speak.
She bowed her head to caress him again. “No,” he said more loudly. He put his hands on her shoulders. “No, no more.” No more, or I can’t be responsible...
“I don’t mind it,” she said. “I admit I was puzzled when I saw the ladies doing this in those books, but if it feels good to you, then I enjoy doing it too. There’s something about, oh, I don’t know, the lazy, wet, sensual abandon of it all.”
“No, Minette. I have to go.” He felt close to breaking down, like he might erupt into a frenzy of emotion even worse than the frenzy of lust pounding in his brain. She looked devastated. “You did exceedingly well,” he said to reassure her, “but I think... I...”
I think I want to throw you on the bed and ravish you. And I shouldn’t feel that. I don’t want to feel that, not toward you.
He had to leave. He shoved his aching cock into his breeches and buttoned his flaps with frantic speed as he strode across her sitting room and fumbled his way out the door.
*** *** ***
They did not take dinner together that evening. His mother was ill with worry, and August felt too guilty to face his wife. Minette’s maid said she was asleep, and would perhaps like a dinner tray later. August couldn’t imagine how Minette had felt when he fled during her attempts to behave as a “proper wife.” He couldn’t bear to think about it. He drank a regrettable amount of brandy and went to bed.
Now, hours later, a servant was nudging him awake. “My lord, forgive me. It’s the countess again.”
He sat up, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Where?”
The servant brought his robe. “In the ballroom, at the piano. She won’t be led away.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
He accepted a candle from the manservant and made his way into the hallway. The house was quiet, still, a little threatening in the darkness. He’d been afraid of the dark as a child, afraid of so many things. He was afraid of Minette coming to harm in her nightly wanderings. She might sail off a balcony or fall down the stairs, or bed down too close to a fireplace when she finally came to rest. One more thing to fret about on top of everything else.
The footman shadowed him as he made his way to the ballroom. August heard Minette before he saw her, faint sobs and jarring notes on the pianoforte. He gestured to dismiss the servant before he passed through the door. His wife was scarcely dressed, wearing only a woolen night shift. The maid in the shadows must have wrapped the blanket around her. He dismissed her too and sat beside Minette on the bench.
“A-B-D and G,” she whispered, taking no notice of him. “A-C-G and, oh. Bother. I can’t even reach the keys.”
She tried again, playing a raw, dissonant chord.
“Your hands are too small for Telemann.” He laid his fingers over hers to still them. “It’s all right. Don’t cry.”
She wiped her cheeks and then sat still with her hands in her lap. He wrapped the blanket closer around her in the chilly room. It felt oppressively dim, lit only by the moon and a single candle left by the servants. He leaned down to catch her gaze. “Dearest, are you awake or asleep now?”
“I came here to practice,” she said, which didn’t answer his question.
“It’s very late to practice,” he pointed out. “You ought to play in the daytime. You should be sleeping in your bed.” She reached to play again and he stilled her hand. “It’s too late to play, and you’ve chosen too difficult a piece, at any rate.”
She resisted, fighting to move her hand. Groggy tears gave way to blinking awareness and finally, wakefulness. She rubbed her eyes, then sagged against his side. “I wanted to practice for tomorrow’s lesson,” she said. “I thought it was a dream.”
?
?No. You’re walking about again.” He studied the music on the stand. “I haven’t played this in years. You’ve been riffling through my music in your sleep?”
She squinted by the candle’s light. “Schwang-en-gess-gong...?”
“Schwanengesang,” he provided. “It’s German, like Telemann. Do you know what it means?”
“My German is not very good.”
“Swan Song. It’s a rather sad concerto.”
Minette stifled a yawn. He ought to carry her up to bed at once, but she felt so warm, and so close. “Swans are rather sad creatures. Or bad creatures, I should say. Very mean and given to violence,” she said in a drowsily indignant tone.
Very mean and given to violence. August remembered how sternly he’d spanked his wife earlier, only because he’d felt frustrated and cross. He ought to apologize to her. He would, perhaps, tomorrow, when she was not half-asleep. She gazed up at him with a fetching smile. Minette never held a grudge, not like those nasty swans.
