Black Silk

The Scavenger Hunt, Vauxhall, London, September 1819

A
t any moment, five men would emerge from the bushes and make her submit to the most scandalous erotic pleasures.

Juliette’s slippers danced lightly along the path that wound between masses of dark trees. She had left the famed illicit Dark Walk for this narrow, unlit path—and her heart tripped in terror and arousal in her chest. Footsteps crunched behind her, and the heavy breaths reminded her that Lord Hadrian was following.

She was not entirely alone, yet the hairs at her nape prickled, and her spine felt as if buckshot rolled down it.

This had been Hadrian’s idea. He wanted to watch her be ravished by five strapping bucks. Yet she trembled at the thought of actually doing it. Of having him act as voyeur….

And beneath that ladylike tremble coursed a fierce flame of excitement. She’d always fancied being on the stage—she certainly could outperform the doe-eyed, large-breasted actresses her late husband had been addicted to. Tonight she would prove it. Tonight she would play the most provocative part….

Her thighs were beginning to ache. Really, she must have tramped a mile by now. How far was she expected to walk? Where were these men?

Or were there no men to be found here?

Had they interpreted the clue correctly?

Where risk and scandal frolic beneath man’s brilliant sky,

Five rogues await to make a fair lady cry

Her pleasure to the stars as she explodes with heaven’s light

And lets her love witness an orgiastic delight

Hadrian had grasped the meaning very quickly for a gentleman who had drunk an entire bottle of port. The liquor seemed to sharpen his wit rather than dull it and gave a bewitching boyishness to his devastating smile. Her heart had tumbled foolishly as she saw once again that he was more than a handsome (though lined) face, a superb seat in the saddle, and an admirable, though often wilting, cock.

His logic had made sense. Where else did risk and scandal frolic but on Vauxhall’s famed Dark Walk? And finally Juliette was walking in that notorious area, experiencing the thrill of erotic anticipation. All those years of being a dutiful lady, first a blushing, charming debutante, and then that decade—her youth!—wasted on Farthingale.

Now was her chance to snatch with both hands the sexual pleasure she’d dreamed of.

Five rogues
…

Man’s brilliant sky
must be fireworks. She had guessed that, and it seemed to bear out Hadrian’s deduction that they must go to Vauxhall.

Strange that there were no other couples here. Had no one else deciphered it? Juliette frowned. It was not that difficult a clue, really.

She had nothing. Not a penny! She must capture Hadrian’s imagination; she must coerce him to make her his mistress.

What other young widow would deign to play these lewd games with an aging rogue?
Any one of the hundreds of young widows left destitute and desperate,
Juliette thought with a wry grimace.

She must give him a grand performance.

She shivered and tightened her grip on her shawl.

“Mamselle—”

The voice had growled from behind her, slurring a version of “mademoiselle” in an accent that bordered on Cornish.

She swung around and almost fell back as wide lips parted on a white-toothed grin and flashing black eyes leered at her.

A black stubble-covered jaw. A dimple. A naked chest….

A naked crotch.

He wore no clothes, her seducer, and looked boldly proud of the fact. He stood, arms crossed, blocking the entire path, blocking her retreat.

He was all firm muscular planes, his stomach as flat as a board, and hovering in front of his navel, like a sword held aloft, stood his prick. She’d never seen such an enormous male appendage, and she heard a gurgling sound from the bushes, which was no doubt Hadrian, shocked by his competition.

“Have you a name?” she asked that dark-eyed man, despairing of what to say. She flicked out her fan and gently brushed aside the warm spring air.

“Trev,” he answered, grin broadening.

He took a step closer, slid his hand around her waist, and though she dug in her heels, he pulled her tight to his large body. Her fan tumbled from her hand and clattered to the ground. Dark hair mashed against her white dress—the dark swirls on his chest, the thick line down his abdomen, the mass of coarse black curls surrounding his thick, erect cock.

And that beast nudged her belly, turning her insides to pure heat as though a candle had replaced her heart and the warmth of the flame had become the blood pumping through her.

He kissed rough and coarse, mouth open wide, tongue demanding. He tasted of onions and smoke and small beer, and he grappled with her breasts as he kissed her so hard her spine creaked in protest.

She had never known such beastly behavior, such an invasion. This man didn’t care about her squirms of desperation or the grip of her fingers on his iron-hard forearm as she tried to struggle back. He intended to take her without mercy, and her body was becoming a puddle of simpering desire at the thought.

No!

This was an assault, and she was no lily blooded—no, lily-livered—chit who would sob silent tears after having her thighs forced apart by a brute whose victory was his climax.

She kicked his shin, but that merely prompted him to press his massive leg between hers, trapping her in her own skirts. She clawed at his neck and shoulders with her fingers, but she wore gloves, and he merely laughed with pleasure into her mouth.

The bushes whispered, and branches snapped, and Trev, the black-eyed Cornishman, let her free. She stumbled back as the others came out—four other men, all big, with bodies hewn by labor. Farmwork or dockyard work. Bodies touched by the sun, still carrying the sweat and grime of the men’s day, but primitive and elemental and sensual all the same.

Juliette skirted away from Trev as a man’s hands landed on her shoulders and turned her. She had played this game as a child—putting a smaller girl in the middle and spinning her about and taunting her until the tears streaked down.

She stood in a puddle of moonlight, feeling lost and foolish in the middle, and she swatted helplessly at the hands gripping her arms. The men were encircling her….

She didn’t like this. But this man’s eyes were a midnight blue, and they twinkled in appreciation at her thin dress, her dipping neckline. “I didn’t expect an angel tonight, lads.” A genuine appreciation burned in his eyes, and that flame whisked her breath away. “I am Rivers, my lady.” He groaned and bent to her hand, ripping off her glove and pressing his wet and hot mouth to her knuckles. He lifted, eyes pools of shadow, and paused with his gaze locked on her breasts.

Hands clumsy, she slipped her hands to the ties that looped around the small buttons to fasten the gown. Beneath the fluttering white muslin, she wore petticoats—which she quickly dropped to the ground—and a corset. She knew, with the sense of a mistress, that the men would not bother to remove her corset.

Her breasts filled the formed linen cups, plumped up by boning, surrounded by fanciful embroidery of vines and rose petals—but all in white. This was the ravishment of the innocent, after all.

Huge hands—Rivers’s hands were large, with blunt fingers and black hairs on the knuckles, and they covered even her admirable breasts. His thumbs plucked and strummed, and she quivered like harp strings, and her quim grew wet at his clever playing.

Wrong. Wrong. You mustn’t.

She shut her eyes, standing like that forlorn girl in the meadow as their hands slid over her and explored. Rough hands pawing, stroking, caressing her—covering all her skin. Neck, breasts, arms, thighs, and one intrepid man lifted her foot, cast aside her shoe, and began to tease her toes.

This was a harlot’s game. This was the fall from desperation to outright sin.

But wine and lust sang in her blood along with anger. She had foolishly grown jaded and lazy—she didn’t wish to bat her lashes at boring men and stroke their egos with more enthusiasm than she would stroke their cocks.

Now she must play the most illicit games….

Her lashes lifted as Rivers claimed his kiss. His hands slid down to her bottom, pushing aside other hands there. He lifted her and cried one word as he juggled her with one hand and found his cock with the other.

“Beautiful.”

It rang in her ears as he guided the head to her wet nether lips, as she waited, limp and lusting and afraid and wanting all at once. His hips drove forward, and it was done. He filled her, this man she didn’t know. He was inside her, thrusting into her, sending all her thoughts and her hopes and her fears skittering into darkness, and she held on to him and let herself be nothing more than her body, imagining him as nothing more than his.

He carried her, jostling his massive organ inside her with each stride, and she clung to him, unable to say a word. She knew his scent now, and she clung to that as tightly as she held him. She turned her head, startled to see Trev stretched out on a bench, holding his cock to the air.

They both meant to make love to her.

Games. Harlot games.

She could run. Perhaps she could marry another Farthingale and drape diamonds around her neck she bought for herself and let the weight and coolness of jewelry take away the yearning for warmth and love.

Harlot games.

How it happened, she did not know. She was laying on Trev, and his breath was hot on her ear, and his member was entering her bottom with exquisite slowness, and she had forgotten how to breathe.

Two men, both with dark hair that glinted with red in the moonlight, attended to her breasts. She shut her eyes, felt hands slide on her thighs, felt the blunt caress of a cock to her quim. She bit her lip as Rivers—for she knew his smile, knew his whispered endearments—filled her.

She kept her eyes closed tight and thought of Hadrian, who must have his eyes open wide—

They were thrusting into her, splaying her wide, and each ruthless thrust tugged her clit, touched every sweetly, agonizingly sensitive nerve. Men at her breasts, her mouth, men filling her impossibly full—

Oh!

She screamed as the climax tore through her. Heavens, she’d never expected—

Oh, good lord, she was about to die—

Aah!

The men drove hard into her, grunting and bucking. Hot semen rushed into her quim, her rump. A spray splurted over her naked breasts. Then—oh, goodness!—the man who’d pulled out of her mouth gave his shaft a rough jerk, and a stream of white cum hit her mouth and cheeks.

What a frightful mess. Hadrian had better be enjoying this; she wanted to cry suddenly, now that the pleasure was gone, now that she was sticky everywhere. Tears dripped to her cheeks.

“There now, lass,” said the man on top of her as his softened cock slipped free. The man below her grunted and withdrew also.

She felt a fool as he helped her up, but no one offered her a cloth to clean herself. Finally one picked up a white handkerchief, and she reached for it gladly, too embarrassed to look at any of the men. She focused on that white cloth—

It pressed sudden and hard into her face. Over her nose and mouth. Juliette clawed at the giant hands holding it there. She couldn’t breathe!

Hadrian!

Was this part of the game?

A man grabbed her arms and wrenched them back. Rope wound brutally around her wrists, clamping her hands, biting into her skin.

Were they going to force her? Rape her? Why, when she had been so willing?

A black cloth jerked over her eyes and was pulled tight. Someone knotted it, capturing her hair, pulling at her scalp.

No—!

Notation in
Winslow’s Volume for Wagering
at Winslow’s Gentlemen’s club, the upstart of such clubs:
Fifty pounds that the widowed Lady F—, who has been missing from Mayfair for two weeks, has run off with a footman rather than share the bed of Lord H—.