Hinterlands (5 page)

“Come.
 
Come, get into bed with me.”

“Mum?”
She asked, scarcely able to comprehend what had been requested.

“Girl,
come here.”
 
Amelia obeyed
terrified, her breath caught in her chest.
 
She approached the bed to find the messy dark-haired girl, laying
nakedly upon her stomach, legs half parted, her perfectly round buttocks
flickering in the firelight.
 
The
sheets were a deep crimson, and her nude form appeared like ivory against them,
even in the gloaming. The girl was also gulping a steel goblet of wine,
spilling driblets onto the sheets.
 
She tossed the empty goblet off the far side of the bed and yelled
without even turning her head.

“Girl!
Where are you!”

“Right
here mum.” Amelia stammered.

“There’s
a jar of oil right there beside the bed.
 
Rub my body. Rub my skin with it.” The girl commanded with authority.
She then pulled one leg up to the side carelessly exposing the shadows that lay
between her smooth thighs.
 
Amelia
was terrified, but she did as she was told.
 
She quickly poured a small amount of the
oil into her palm and leaning over to place a knee upon the bed, she began to
rub it onto this girl’s back.
 
The
skin was smooth, the back slightly muscular and warm beneath her inexperienced
hands.
 
The girl was in her early
twenties perhaps, and was incredibly beautiful. Amelia brought both of her
hands to bear, rubbing oil firmly up and down the back, smoothing it and
kneading it. This girl groaned throatily from these caresses, and stretched
herself, arching her back just like the cats Amelia used to see on the streets
of London.
 
Each time Amelia’s hands
approached the soft buttocks, the girl responded vocally, emitted an
encouraging sound of pleasure. Emboldened slightly by this, Amelia tentatively
rubbed her hands over the rounded flesh, even venturing onto the backs of the
thighs, feeling excitement over this small exertion of power.
 
The girl moaned louder and slid one knee
high up to the side.
 
Amelia ran her
hands quickly over the girl’s buttocks, in circular motions, venturing two
fingers to push warm oil deeply into the crevice between each cheek.
 
She realized she was breathing hard and
was incredibly aroused, as the girl moved beneath her hands.
 
She could smell now the lavender, as well
as the girl’s body itself.
 
The
sheets smelled of it, the room was bathed in it.
 
Sandalwood and something wild she
couldn’t identify.
 
She found
herself nervously glancing toward the door in anticipation of some sort of
rebuke for this immodesty and the flickering fire cast her shadow wildly upon
the girl in front of her.
 
Amelia
had never experienced anything like this before and as she continued she felt
almost trancelike in her ministrations, intent on rubbing in a pleasurable way.
She found herself attracted to the buttocks and thighs, feeling their delicate
curves slowly with her palms, rubbing hard, and dipping them momentarily
between the parted legs. The flesh was soft yet resistant to her fingers.
 
Amelia hadn’t known a body could feel
like this, tender and slick.

She
felt instinctively she could place her hands between the woman’s inner thighs,
and her eyes began to focus on this particular shadow as she moved them in
ever-smaller concentric circles.
 
It
was deeply exciting to think of touching another woman there, in this private
place she was most curious and fearful of, even on her own body. She did so
now, all at once sliding her hand down between the girl’s buttocks, using her
fingers to explore the moist little folds of the sex bathed as it was in the
warm oil and its own juices. The girl emitted a deep sigh of approval, and grasped
the bed sheets roughly in her hands. The sensation was thrilling to Amelia, and
a whole host of images flashed through her mind, dirty things she should never
think; women and men, contorting in various states of pleasure, their faces
flushed and moaning, tearing at each other’s clothing, biting and sucking.
 
She saw Enza too, and they were kissing
again, only now Amelia was the one in control, her hands pulling Enza’s skirts
open, plunging down between the foreign girl’s thighs to feel the soft patch of
black hair there, wet with sweat and oil, and still further to feel the
feathery flesh bedew her probing fingers.
 
Enza’s wetness
.
 
How terrible a girl I am
.
The thought echoed through her mind,
yet the feeling was deliciously wicked, like stealing a loaf of bread. She felt
powerful and aroused, and these feelings were overwhelming in their
intensity.
 
She found that she
couldn’t stop her caresses, using one hand to rub this girl’s back, almost
pushing her down onto the bed, while stroking and pulling the wet little bird
between her thighs with the other. She felt her fingers parting the silken
lips, and sliding tightly within. The messy-haired girl was enjoying it, moving
her hips, fluttering and gasping upon the mattress. Her arousal was contagious,
and a force was overtaking Amelia deep inside, a hunger that could never be
sated! She felt her own body shivering…and then quite suddenly, the girl rolled
over to face Amelia, breaking the trance.
 

They
stared at one another momentarily both of them breathing hard. The girl’s
nudity, her perfect breasts, small torso, and conjunction of shadow where her
thighs came together, all fully exposed to Amelia’s gaze. The fire crackled in
the silence between them.

Without
warning the girl grasped Amelia’s face firmly in her hand, and pushed her
backward onto the floor, stunning her.

“You
have taken far too much liberty girl!” she shouted.
 

“I’m…I’m
sorry mum!”

“You’ll
pay for being so insolent!
 
Do you
hear me?” The voice was youthful, haughty, and poised.
 
Amelia was so shocked she couldn’t
respond.

“You
will be punished for giving me pleasure without permission!
 
Thoroughly punished.”
 
The girl strode nakedly and confidently
over to her dresser, and poured herself another goblet of wine.
 
Amelia sat still on the floor, holding
her cheek.

“I
am the Duchessa de Montaigne, and I know you couldn’t help yourself.
 
All of the serving girls are like
this.
 
You must be
trained
before you can give me
pleasure.”
 
She gazed at herself in
the mirror, ignoring Amelia. Then tipping her head back she gulped her wine
greedily.
 
Her stance, her ivory
skin, even the small undulations of her throat as she drank, all was sensual
and enticing.
 
She envisioned the
Duchessa pursued by every man, every woman, a glowing, untouchable creature,
tantalizing.
 
Yet Amelia had touched
her.

“So
I will send you to the stables, where you will be trained well.”
 
She strode over to Amelia and helped her
to her feet. Her violent mood seemed to calm suddenly. “So pretty, my little
darlings, my girls, yet so naughty and undisciplined.”
 
She shook her head as if disappointed.

The
Duchessa put two fingers under Amelia’s chin, lifting it in order to look into
her eyes for the first time. Shyly, Amelia met her gaze and noticed the
phenomenal beauty therein. They were dark brown and limitless, and she could
see reflections from the fire,
the fire
that she herself had lit
, dancing in those eyes, sensually.
 
This
is my mistress, this gir
l, Amelia thought excitedly. She knew she must
serve her completely.
 
She felt her
will simply melt away under this gaze.

Amelia
stood obediently as the Duchessa took a large sip of wine and pressed her
pouting lips directly onto hers, parting them slightly. Then there was the
first pleasurable sensation of the tongue as it slipped confidently into her
waiting mouth, followed by the warm liquid pouring forth as her mistress fed
her. She found herself gulping it down thirstily, drinking from her mistress,
eager for more. It was both bitter and sweet,
much like the Duchessa
Amelia thought
 

“They
will clip your wings there little bird. Then, once you are trained, you will
pleasure me
when
and
where
I choose. Do you understand?”

“Yes,
mistress” she whispered.

----------------------------------------------------------

Amelia
lay in the dim light, her mind creating dreams and stories based upon the lines
of cracked paint that spread across the ceiling. They formed little patterns
and shapes, and it was easy for her to drift away in fantasy at times like
these, times of great stress.
 
She
felt that she had grown accustomed to many different ceilings in her life, her
imagination always providing a welcome escape from the drudgery of London, and
all of its filth.
 
It
was
a deplorable city and she thought of
it now even though she didn’t want to.

She
saw the drooping, stone chimneys, and low hanging fog as it hung about the
slate rooftops.
 
She could hear the
loud voices of men as they milled aimlessly in the square, drunken and calling
to one another in the evening air.
 
A carriage driver sung the queen, atrociously, yet confidently,
oblivious to the many mothers who screamed from their windows for him to do
violence to himself.
 
As a girl she
slept to this musical cacophony each night, humming to her sisters as they
huddled together in their small apartments, buried beneath the sheets and
telling each other stories on their straw mattresses.

At
14 she had worked part time for an old seamstress on the corner, running up and
down the steps to retrieve heavy bolts of cloth from an attic on the third
floor.
 
She could still hear the
thumps of her leather shoes as she ascended the twisting stairwell imagining
that her feet were wearing grooves into the soft wood. She grew stronger and
her legs were long for her age, lean and toned, yet she was a clumsy girl, her
stockings always halfway fallen. It was there in this attic, with shafts of
light streaming in from the single French window, that Amelia achieved solitude
and silence for the first time in her young life. She would often sit amongst the
large bolts of cloth, daydreaming, wrapping herself in lace and scarlet,
feeling the different textures against her skin, pretending to be a noblewoman;
a woman who resisted every suitor. These suitors of course, were tall bolts of
cloth that she would dance with and sometimes pretend to kiss. She could
remember falling amongst the trimmings and hugging these imaginary men to her,
wrapping her slender legs around particularly smooth bolts of silk, feeling the
pleasurable sensations as she let the fabric slip back and forth against her
inner thighs and groin. She sometimes would remove her knickers completely to
get the full sensation as she ground against them wildly.
 
These actions would leave her panting
and flushed, and guiltily she would quickly straighten her skirt and run
downstairs, sure that someone had overheard her playing.
 
Of course there were other experiences.

Playing
in the streets was a dirty endeavor for any child. In order to remove the day’s
accumulated filth, her mother had often bathed them in a steel tub, one after
the other, everyone using the same water.
 
Amelia, being the eldest always went first.
 
She remembered one cold winter’s day, a
year or so ago, when something happened that forever changed her ideas about
her body.
 
She had just finished
bathing, having used the rough brush all over her skin, scrubbing the various
parts, paying special attention to her breasts, and tender parts between her
legs. She stood up naked and pink from the scrub-brush as her sisters all ran
about, yelling and fighting as to who would bathe next. It was then that she
momentarily glanced toward the window, and saw little Will Thompson and a few
of the other neighborhood boys all watching her from outside, eyes wide and
lascivious. She screamed, grabbing for her clothes and quickly shooing them
away, but that night was her first realization that she could be desired for
reasons other than her utility in service.
 

For
many nights thereafter she couldn’t get the image of those boys watching her
out of her head.
 
It was exciting to
think of how they must have felt, holding their firm little penis’s in their
hands. She found herself reliving the moment they spied her in her nakedness,
running her hands over her body in the darkness, masking her motions carefully
so as not to alert her sisters. As she had matured, Amelia had understood that
there were many reasons that men desired her.
 
She was considered frightfully
beautiful, so much so her mother had struggled to keep her plain, and it wasn’t
safe for her to travel alone through the square.
 
She was kept hidden away essentially, a
source of labor and conversation, a commodity, a beautiful flower kept close,
unable to bloom.

  
After two days at Hinterlands, she
certainly felt that she was a commodity, to be used for what purpose she knew
not.
 
What she could surmise after a
very short time however, was that the serving girls could be used for pleasure
here, at any time, and that there were great rewards in being compliant to
those in power.
 
The truth was she was
still confused about this, and many of the other girls seemed much more
knowledgeable in this regard.
 
Even
if they were knowledgeable, such as her friend Kitt, they weren’t telling
Amelia anything. She replayed the events in the Duchessa’s bed chamber over and
over in her head, feeling herself become aroused again each time as if it were
happening now.
 
How wonderful she
had felt, giving pleasure to a young woman her own age-a lady of fine
upbringing, and true mistress of the house!

The
Duchessa’s body haunted her psyche, and she could think of little else. It was
smooth, toned, and healthy.
 
It was
obvious that she had been raised on fine wines, meats, and pastries, and her
body was so different than the street urchins Amelia had been raised with.
 
Her lips were pouty, and full.
 
She looked as though she would bite
something at any moment. Amelia desired her, to be close to her. She wished
deeply that she hadn’t angered her this morning, that instead she had been
welcomed into her bed, to nuzzle close and to kiss her lips, as they had done
momentarily.
 
One thing was for
certain, she wouldn’t tell Kitt of these events.
 
There seemed to be an unspoken code here
that Amelia was starting to figure out, and it was that you didn’t speak of
these sorts of things, and that was that. Besides, she didn’t want Kitt to
think she was getting undue favor from the Duchessa.

Amelia
had just started thinking of the Duchessa again, and had begun running her
hands up and down her slender thighs, when Mr. Stephen burst into the room with
two strapping young men.

“Alll
right Ms. Kerrick! Up with you Lassie!
 
On Orders of the Duchessa, it’s off to the stables with you!”
 
He gestured for the men to grab Amelia.

“Mr.
Stephen get the hell out!”
 
Kitt
yelled jumping out of her bed in order to intercept their efforts. One of the
boys reached out to restrain her and she flung him against the wall. Then they
both set upon Kitt holding her arms as she struggled and yelled. Enza,
miraculously still in her bed for once, merely sat up tucking her legs beneath
her and watching.

Amelia
rose calmly, standing there in her nightgown. “Kitt it’s okay. Don’t fight
them.
 
I’ll go with them.
 
I got into a spot of trouble earlier…”
she spoke slowly and earnestly “…and the Duchessa requests that I go to work in
the stables for a while.” She forced a smile.

“Amelia
you have no idea what you’re doing…you can’t, they’ll…you just can’t!” Kitt
protested.

“I
must
please the Duchessa Kitt; I
can’t lose my situation here.
 
I
just can’t.”
 

She
began to gather her things together as the men released her friend. No sooner
were Kitt’s hands free than she slapped wildly at them both.
 
One of the men acted as though he would
return the favor and strike her, but after a moment he simply waved his hand in
exasperation.
 
She was far too wild
to contend with.

“Amelia,
be careful. It’s not what you think.
 
I’ve heard stories, and the girl’s come back, different.”
 
They both glanced at Enza who simply
glared back, as defiant as always, but now there was something else in her
comportment as well.
 
If it wasn’t
fear, was it possibly concern? Turning to Amelia, Kitt suddenly threw her arms
around her, embracing her and kissing her cheeks. Amelia thought she might
burst into tears.

“I’ll
be backing soon Kitt.” She reassured her, not really knowing if it was even
true or not.
 
She glanced around the
room, realizing there was nothing there she would really need.
 
There was no point tarrying.
 

Picking
up the small muslin bag she arrived with and wearing only her thin nightgown, Amelia
Kerrick dutifully followed Mr. Stephen out the door and into the darkened hall
beyond.

-------------------------End Part
One--------------------------

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