Beloved (41 page)

Blossom made Precious appear almost svelte.

“Come and sit by me, Blossom,” Pomeroy said. He could have chosen better, but no matter, he’d make the best of this piece.
After all, a little idle diversion was all he intended.

The woman was older than she’d appeared at first. Probably at least five and twenty. Pomeroy preferred his females young.

Blossom sat beside him, her eyes still lowered. A simple enough pretense at a demure nature, unless Pomeroy was much mistaken.

“She’s fat,” Precious announced.

Blossom’s eyes flew open and no trace of shyness lingered in the malign glare she aimed at Precious.

“Hardly fat,” Pomeroy said, amused. “Nicely covered, what, Blossom? Round in all the right places, hmm?”

She slanted a knowing look at him.

“Blue becomes you,” Pomeroy said, enjoying the waves of jealousy emanating from Precious.

The thud of feet on carpet approached and Milo came into the sitting room. At a loping, graceful pace, two tall men followed
him and he closed the door behind them.

Pomeroy studied the muscular young bucks with interest. They had thick, black hair, slender, handsome faces, and large, dark
eyes that darted between the other occupants of the room, then back to each other. The two appeared to communicate without
speech. Their skin was the color of pale coffee and glistened—all the way to the loose, white trousers they wore. They were
both naked to the waist.

“Well, now,” Milo said, rubbing his hands and smiling as if he were about to preside over a tea party. “Shall we get started?”
He seated himself behind his desk and propped his chin.

Blossom wriggled closer to Pomeroy. He was more interested in the two men. They concentrated on Precious. She dipped her head
and looked up at them, swinging her full, peach-colored skirts from side to side in what Pomeroy had dubbed her “winsome girl”
manner.

“It’s been some time since we saw you, Mr. Wokingham,” Milo said, inclining his head at the men. “Entertain the young lady,”
he told them. “Pretty heads are for enjoying pretty things. They’re no place for business, and they can’t manage both anyway.”

One of Milo’s trained performers promptly sank to his knees while the other hoisted Precious’s skirts and sat her astride
his partner’s neck and shoulders. Squealing, she tried to cover her legs. Her efforts were useless.

Pomeroy laughed and slapped his knees. “Most enter-tainin’, Milo. Most entertainin’.”

“Is this to your liking, lady?” the man beneath Precious asked. “I am your slave.”

“Ooh!” Precious squealed again. “Whatever next?”

Her “slave” rose to his feet, and she gripped his ears.

“Do not fear, lady, I will not drop you. Your pleasure is our only wish.”

Precious clung and giggled, her face growing very flushed. The man wrapped his arms around her limbs and rocked her back and
forth on his neck. “To pleasure you, lady,” he said, showing strong, white teeth.

Pomeroy watched the expression on Precious’s face change from confusion to mounting arousal. He shifted to readjust himself
inside his trousers. “Innovative,” he said to Milo. “A marvel how you acquire this supply of novelties. But we have a score
to settle, my friend.”

“Oh, Pommy!” Precious cried, her eyes popping wide. “Pommy! What’s he doing to me?”

“He” was the second handsome “slave.” Lifting Precious’s skirts over her head, he bared her bottom and used his supple thumbs
to massage the dimples at the base of her spine.

Precious squirmed and moaned. She let go with one hand to bat at her skirts, only to grab her human mount again when she almost
lost her balance.

“Doesn’t this please you, lady?” Thumbs asked. He pinched Precious’s white bottom until she yelled, then reached beneath her
to apply swift, rhythmic strokes. “Or this, lady?”

Pomeroy hitched at himself and said, “I’m here on my own behalf this time, Milo. One word to my father, and I’ll see you in
the gutter. I have decided to take matters into my own hands. Things will happen my way, and quickly. Do I make myself plain?”

“Plain as plain, Mr. Wokingham.” Milo continued to smile. Even as Precious raised her bottom like a rider going over a jump,
he continued to smile. Milo smiled when she panted, and when the stroking between her folds grew more insistent. When she
bounced and grunted, Milo still smiled.

Pomeroy’s breathing felt labored. He pushed an arm around Blossom’s shoulders. Her eyes darted from the spectacle in the middle
of the room, to Pomeroy, and she passed her pointed tongue around full lips.

He looked from her lips to her breasts. A little enjoyment was the least he should allow himself, particularly since it would
annoy Precious.

“What have we here, then, Blossom?” he asked, tugging a white muslin fichu from the neck of her pink gown. Plump breasts were
revealed to the large upper rims of darkly rouged nipples. “Very nice, my dear,” Pomeroy said, his concentration momentarily
diverted.

Precious’s whooping cries reached crescendo an instant before she was tipped, facedown, upon a sagging divan. Thumbs flipped
her over, and the two men sank beside her. Precious, her eyes glazed, hooked a dark head beneath each arm and appeared dazed.

“Anyway,” Pomeroy said, clumsily opening the front of Blossom’s bodice. “As I said, Milo, there’s a score to settle, and we
both know what it is. I’ve already waited too long.”

Two silver balls materialized from a pocket in one of the men’s white trousers. He handed a ball to his companion and they
took turns to insert them into Precious, whose mouth opened in silent but obviously delighted amazement. She tried to sit
up.

“No, no, lady,” the man who had produced the silver balls said soothingly. “Stay as you are. You will know joy as you have
never known it.”

Thumbs removed his trousers, revealing a rod big enough to make Pomeroy frown. Inserted swiftly in the wake of the balls,
the effect of the giant shaft on Precious was beyond all. She screeched and grabbed, and bucked and begged. …She begged for
more of whatever these perverted, deformed beasts gave her.
Whore
. As perverted as they were. His father should know of it. That would… No, he could not tell his father, or his own plans
would be revealed.

With the final parting of Blossom’s bodice, Pomeroy was confronted with enough to absorb him, at least partially, for some
time.

With detached pride, Blossom watched him play with her provocatively prepared nipples. She rested her hands passively in her
lap while he scooped her immense breasts into his hands.

“Quite a show, eh, Mr. Wokingham?” Milo asked. “Worth a bit, I can tell you.”

“And they’ve earned a bit, no doubt,” Pomeroy responded, pinching Blossom’s nipples and waiting for a response that never
came. Annoyed, he took one of her flaccid hands to his crotch. She squeezed him hard, but her expression still didn’t change.
“Is she simple-minded?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Milo said, chuckling. “Some gentlemen like a placid one. She can be something else if you want her to be.”

Pomeroy studied Blossom and decided a silent woman was exactly what he needed at the moment. Precious made enough noise for
several women. “Just keep squeezing,” he told Blossom, jiggling her swelling breasts. She felt it, all right. “Squeeze until
I tell you what I want next.”

Blossom squeezed.

“What I intend to get isn’t going to be shared,” he told Milo, rushing as he felt his control slipping. “Do you understand
me? You know the problem I’ve coped with for years.”

“Some gentlemen like to share.” Milo glanced at Precious, who writhed, a clever male mouth attached to each breast. “Some
ladies, too, I might add.”

Pomeroy narrowed his eyes. “I have shared enough. I’m not a child anymore. This time
I
decide how my affairs shall be accomplished. The devil take my father and his
wedding
plans. I’m not interested in his selfish games. What I want, I want, and you know you’ve got to get it for me. And quickly.”
At least Precious was too “involved” to hear a word he said. Later he might need her help. He was more likely to get it as
long as she didn’t know he’d soon have no use for her.

“It may not be possible to do what you ask quickly.”

“Get down there,” Pomeroy ordered Blossom, shoving her to the floor between his knees. The scents of spent sex wafted on the
room’s stale air, and he wrinkled his nose. The sooner his business—all of his business—was completed here, the better. He
tore his trousers undone and told Blossom, “Use your mouth, now. Use it well.”

Milo said, “I have not been idle on your behalf, Mr. Wokingham.”

“Your time is up,” Pomeroy told him. “I have already given you too much latitude.”

“Surely you don’t expect me to work miracles.”

Blossom used her mouth very well. Pomeroy shifted forward on the couch. “I expect you to make good on our bargain.”

“But—”

“I’ll give you until the end of the week to get me what I want.” He found release and fell against the couch. “Until the end
of the week to get me what I’m owed.”

“Mr. Wokingham—”

“Today is Monday. On Saturday I’ll be back, and I won’t be satisfied with having
her
between my legs.” He pointed at Blossom.

T
he dowager duchess watched the proceedings as if she witnessed hasty marriages in her family’s London home every day.

Saber observed the aged bishop, an old acquaintance of his grandmother’s, give the specially prepared license the briefest
of perusals. “You do testify to the willingness of the bride’s parents to agree to the marriage, then, my lady?” he asked,
his voice quavering.

“Do get on with it, Dullington,” Grandmama said, leaning heavily on her cane. “Much longer and we’ll both be dead. Won’t matter
who was willing then, will it?”

The bishop bowed, showing the top of hair as white as his skin, raised all but transparent palms to the heavens, and “got
on with it.”

Saber glanced at the woman beside him and whispered, “Ella?”

She peeked up at him, her expression deeply serious, and she frowned.

In other words,
silence at so weighty a moment
.

The ceremony drew rapidly toward a close.

Saber put an arm around Ella’s shoulders and noted the bishop’s disapproving sniff. She wore a simple dress of cream silk
banded with inserts of lace and scattered with tiny pearls and crystals. Flowers fashioned from lace, and with pearls and
crystals at their centers, nestled in her smoothly upswept hair. Her only jewelry was the ruby star that had been his first
gift to her.

She held a single cream rose, taken from one of the bouquets he’d never instructed Devlin to stop sending.

Exotic elegance radiated from Saber’s bride.

“It’s my duty to instruct you in the …er…” the bishop’s voice trailed off.

Saber raised an eyebrow and waited.

“It’s my duty to instruct you in the duties of a husband and wife,” Dullington said, and went on to do so, at length.

“You are my wife,” Saber whispered. “Ella, you are Lady Avenall, my love.”

Her smile trembled. “And you have acquired a great trial, my lord, a great burden. I will do my best to make that burden as
light as possible.”

He wanted to tell her the only burden would likely be hers.

“Mama and Papa should be here,” Max said loudly, creating a shocked silence.

Saber turned to his new brother-in-law, but the young man wouldn’t look at him.

“That’s quite enough, Max,” Grandmama said.

Max’s expression became truculent. “Well, they should be. We should wait for them to get back and do this all over again.”

“I hardly think—”

“He’s overset,” Blanche said, surprising the small gathered company by interrupting Saber. “Come along with me, Max.

We’ll go and sample the wedding breakfast. We aren’t required here.”

“Most thoughtful, Mrs. Bastible,” Bigun said. Resplendent entirely in gold for the occasion, he joined Blanche. “I’ll accompany
you.”

Max stuffed his hands beneath the tails of his coat. “I’m only worried about you, Ellie. Will you look after her, Saber?”

Grandmama said, kindly enough, “Your sister is not being taken from you. She will continue to be your champion.”

Saber cast a thoughtful glance at his grandparent. He must not forget how insecure this boy had been and how, even now, the
specter of abandonment must never be far from his mind. “You will have another home now, Max,” Saber said. “You may come to
Ella and me whenever you choose.”

Max nodded, a crimson blush on his cheeks. Flanked by Blanche and Bigun, he went quietly from the room.

Crabley, who had been a silent witness throughout, cleared his throat and said, “Well, congratulations to you, m’lord. I’d
best get to that breakfast before our young friend demolishes it. We all know his, er, capacity.”

The bishop completed his instructions as if there had been no interruption. Grandmama presented him with the fat envelope
Saber had provided and smiles instantly wreathed the cleric’s dour face.