The Stallion (2 page)

‘It’s very difficult to do . . . here.’ She licked her lips as her eyes flitted over the faces of the crowd. Those that did look her way she knew were only taking in her good looks – the dark hair, the dark-blue eyes – not what she was; not how she was
underneath.
They could only imagine her flat belly, her silky thighs and the heart-shaped tangle of dark curly hair that nestled between them, hiding an awesome thirst that had need of quenching.

She wore stockings, chocolate against the milky creaminess of her skin. Her calves were taut and ankles slim above the black straps of her high-heeled shoes.

She was shapely, she was sexy, and she was loving every minute of this. As she walked, she could feel the movement of the black, lace-edged suspender belt and the whispering rasp of sheer stockings as her thighs brushed one against the other. She relished the heightened sensation of vulnerability that encircled her exposed sex. There was nothing else between her and public outrage – except for her coat.

‘No one can see,’ he said suddenly as if reading her thoughts. ‘Only you and I know what you look like beneath that coat, but only you know how it feels. Describe it to me. I want to share it with you.’

His sigh filtered into her thoughts. She licked her lips and looked at him sidelong again. She studied the crisp, dark eyebrows and the thatch of dark hair. He was handsome. She had to admit that. But distant, somehow remote. His eyes stared straight ahead.

‘I want to know exactly what you feel,’ he said somewhat impatiently.

Impatience, she thought, was only to be expected. Alistair Beaumont was a man of influence; a man of money who was used to giving orders and used to having them obeyed.

Choosing her words carefully, she formed her answer. So much depended on them. She took a deep breath and licked her dry lips. ‘Hmmm,’ she murmured as the cool silk caressed her skin. ‘The silk is very cool, very smooth. It’s rubbing my nipples. They’ve grown bigger. They’re stiff, almost painful.
Cold
air is circulating between my legs. I can feel it disturbing my pubic hair.’

Poetic, she thought; my words sound poetic. She was aroused by them as well as pleased. Funny, she thought, that no matter how cool the air, my cleft is still hot – still moist, demanding.

Her voice was husky and low. Her own words excited her. Within her body, the bud of passion that sat so secretly among lips of pink flesh was reminding her of its existence; reminding her of the effect her lurid thoughts could have on it. Fleetingly, she glanced at the other people who hurried along the pavement. She voiced what she was thinking.

‘What would these people think if they knew; if they could see?’

She glanced swiftly at this man who could use his money to back her expertise, and perhaps extend her sexual experience
and
give her ownership of a thoroughbred stallion who had covered more than twenty mares already this year. She uttered a silent prayer that he would confirm his decision today.

Her body bristled with anticipation as draughts of cool air caressed her slim thighs, but did nothing to cool the heat that burned between her legs.

‘They see nothing. They hear nothing.’ she heard him say. ‘Go on.’

Somehow, she knew what she had to say next, what he wanted her to say. The words seemed engraved somewhere inside her along with the birth of her new desires. Her body trembled when she answered.

‘It excites me, as though I have some kind of power over them. I am doing something that is strictly taboo, that they would condemn me for. Yet I am doing it. Despite them, I am doing it.’

She did not add that he, too, was one of them. Perhaps he thought this gave him power over her, as though she were doing it purely for his enjoyment. She wasn’t. This was for herself.

Will this one small act be enough to gain his body? she asked herself. Had Ariadne refused to do this, yet still got the sponsorship for her showjumping season but not the man to go with it? No, she told herself. Ariadne would not have refused. There had to be more to this.

He cleared his throat, turned and smiled at her. ‘That’s very good to hear, my dear. Very good indeed. I think you might be exactly what I’m looking for.’ One arm reached out and curved around her back as he guided her through the midday crowds towards the bank. An ordinary occurrence. Something people did every day. But not dressed as she was. Not attired only in shiny stockings, a crisp, black-lace suspender belt and a cashmere coat.

‘How else does it make you feel?’

The silk lining, that had only lightly trembled against her bare back and taut, rounded bottom, now slid over it from the touch of his arm. She clenched each pearlike orb of her rear, one against the other. It was hard to suppress the urge to thrust forward. Her legs and secret lips parted as she extended her stride to take in the two steps up to the door of the bank. Before very long her love juice would begin to flow, and then . . .

He repeated his question.

She took a deep breath before answering. ‘In need.’ It was an honest exclamation, but one offered in a hushed gasp, secret and meant for nearby ears only. Briefly, she caught sight of his smile. She returned it and knew instantly that she had won his sponsorship for the coming competitive year, and everything else that went with it.

Eyes bright and heart beating with excitement, she watched
him
as he made his way forward along the roped-in queue over the dappled cream of the cold marble floor.

For his age, Alistair Beaumont was a good-looking man. Nearing late forties, dark hair only faintly streaked with grey, and a deep cleft almost dividing the strength of his square jaw.

He was well built; not that of the over-zealous athlete or weightlifter, but a smooth firmness coupled with confidence in his own good looks, his own good body. He was of average height. His status was otherwise. There was nothing average about that. His clothes cried out what he was. His shirt crisp Sea Island cotton; his jacket Highland wool in a neat, checked pattern; trousers of purposely faded green, countrified English casual, yet obviously made by some Italian fashion house.

Alistair Beaumont looked wealthy and was wealthy. He had no real need to be here today queuing with the common herd. There were more than enough people in his employ, beholden to his benevolence, to send off on the mundane errands of life.

But today, Alistair George Beaumont had an ulterior motive. Today it seemed he had put her to the test. If she was as committed to her career as she said she was, then she would do it. What would she do, he had asked her, to gain his backing? Anything, she’d told him, absolutely anything. And she’d meant it.

She’d been living with Mark a while now, and he hadn’t been entirely happy about her joining the Beaumont yard. They’d ended up rowing about it. Bitterness had erupted where once there had only been deep words of undeniable lust and passion. She would be leaving him, and now he accepted that.

A fleeting self-consciousness made her raise her hand to push back the thickness of her bouncing hair, not quite brown,
and
not quite black, but as rich in colour as the darkest brandy. Her hands felt cold even though they had been sat in her pockets during their walk.

She looked at her long fingers. Fine, slim, but very strong when they were inside a riding glove, exercising the most energetic showjumper or three-day eventer. Yet so expert, so exciting when they were caressing the muscles and equipment of a yearning lover, wielding the crop or whip that was so important in the training of either.

Her blue eyes gleamed as she thought of the member that hand had only lately released. Mark, back there at her own stable yard waiting for her, waiting to see if she would gain what she wanted. He would be petulant, perhaps. If she was successful, he knew he would be losing her. Her time with Mark had been good, but now it was basically over. All the same, she would miss him and that rich, ripe cock that reared so subtly in her hand when she squeezed his balls, or playfully tweaked at the bulbous end and poked her fingernail into the weeping opening. But she had to move on. So far in her life she had not found precisely what she was looking for.

‘You’re incorrigible,’ he’d told her. ‘Restless. Nothing’s ever good enough.’

Was she? That wasn’t the message she was receiving from these volcanic upheavals she was feeling inside. As yet she didn’t fully understand them. She only knew that after today, a day she’d spent sauntering half-naked through a shopping precinct in a large city, she would never be the same again.

As she watched for Beaumont’s return, Penny shifted her long limbs slightly. Moistness dripped in pearl-like droplets from the dark hair that nestled between her legs. Vaguely, she felt it run like quicksilver down her inner thigh and wished suddenly for a hot tongue to lick it all the way back up to her yawning opening. Once there, the tip of a hot tongue could
poke
inwards, lick slavishly around the satin pinkness of her vulva before entering and plugging the gap for a brief moment before something more substantial was inserted.

As she savoured her thoughts, she pivoted slightly on one heel, the soft whiteness of her inner thigh nudging gently against the thick bush of her ticklish pubes.

A bank clerk ogled her from behind the thickness of his glass screen on which was written
FOREIGN EXCHANGE
in big green letters. She smiled at him. He blushed and bent his head.

‘All done,’ said Alistair at last, sliding his cheque book into the inside pocket of his well-cut tweed jacket. He smiled as he said it. She smiled back. To those around, an ordinary enough passing of pleasantries between two good-looking people. But to her, and, she guessed, to him also, there was an undercurrent of understanding. Instinctively, she knew she had passed the test. His sponsorship was hers, her commitment was his, and her excitement at what was to come overwhelmed both.

Back at his office – with just the two of them in a room with very high windows and very thick carpets – he became suddenly withdrawn. It was as though he wanted her out of the building as quickly as possible. This was something she did not understand and was not prepared for.

Slightly peeved by his sudden lack of interest in her, she dressed slowly, turning boldly in front of the full-length windows which stretched from gold and white ceiling to lush, blue carpet. By doing that, she knew she would better catch the light on her breasts and belly.

But Alistair had picked up a pen, and appeared to be concentrating on the sheaf of papers that came into view once he had opened the brown-leather letter folder on his desk.

His desk was big and incredibly baroque – the size of a dining table to most people, and a substantial barrier between him and her.

Only the decorations inlaid in maple and gold leaf within the pattern of the desk testified that he had any interest at all in that process which humans have abandoned themselves to since time immemorial – lovemaking.

Satyrs with outsize phalli chased blatant nymphs, their buttocks round and presented more for penetration than in fearful flight.

One nymph, prominently displayed in the centre panel of the huge desk, was accommodating one satyr in her mouth, whilst another she rode, his hands spread like forked twigs over her breasts, nipples gripped vicelike between finger and thumb. Another satyr came from behind, his phallus already half-hidden between the cheeks of her pear-shaped bottom.

The nymph looked strangely bloated, as though all the fluid that had, and still was, spurting into her was filling her veins, seeping in a frothy mass just beneath her skin.

Penny was stunned. Not by the leering satyrs and willing nymphs, but by Beaumont not throwing her on that plush, blue carpet and taking what she was only too willing to give.

She was deeply disappointed but made an enormous effort not to show it. She had been so sure he had wanted her and she had been wet and ready for him.

Her disappointment stayed with her all the way back down the wide, sweeping staircase and through the green-and-white decor of the enormous reception hall, which was big enough to take a fair-sized orchestra.

His behaviour had confused her and given her a slight feeling of insecurity. Didn’t he like her body? She couldn’t believe that. Her body was good, perhaps even beautiful. Men had told her that – many men. And what was the purpose of making her walk through the streets like that? It must have aroused him; in fact, she was sure it had. His eyes betrayed his
desire
even though she detected no evidence of an erection behind the sharp-cut fly of his trousers.

Of course, she could have made the first move, yet somehow she had instinctively known it would not have been welcomed.

Never mind, she told herself as she swept out of the wide front door and between the Palladian columns, white yet sparkling slightly pink in the late autumn sun, time is on my side. I’ll be back, and I’ll be successful.

Now the wager seemed even more attractive than it had been. Now it wasn’t just a case of acquiring Ariadne’s prize stallion; it was also a case of massaging her own damaged ego.

On the drive home, she wound the window down. Her face was pink and her mouth dry as she fought to control the mix of arousal and confusion resulting from her experience with Alistair Beaumont.

She could have pulled over in a lay-by or some grassy incline on the way home, whipped off her knickers and brought off an orgasm all by herself, but she didn’t. She needed a man, and Mark was back at her own stables.

The pent-up desire, the aching need, would be all the more exhilarating, all the more spurring to their mutual satisfaction. And anyway, she did have something to celebrate.

2

‘YOU HAD TO
do
what
?’ Mark was incredulous; and, although aroused by her statement, more than a little jealous.

She avoided looking at him. She hated it when he was jealous, but no matter what rules had been laid down at the beginning of their relationship, this was the one emotion he did have difficulty dealing with.