Estelle's Story Page 3

  My God, this man can kiss!

  It was by no means a particularly comfortable position to be kissing, doubled nearly in half as she was, her breasts pressed against her knees as Alek’s tongue danced a duet with her own. Comfortable or not, Estelle shivered as though from cold while her body grew rapidly and steadily warmer from Alek’s kiss.

  I could kiss these men all night, Estelle thought.

  It was the sudden conscious awareness of what she had just thought that forced Estelle to lean away from Alek, pulling out of his grasp to end the kiss. Her eyes darted back and forth from Alek to Julian as though truly seeing the two men for the first time.

  “You…I shouldn’t have done that,” Estelle stammered, painfully aware that the situation was getting out of control but having no notion of what it was she could do to change circumstances.

  Julian’s hand once again went to the back of her neck, his touch gentle yet evocative. “I’m feeling short changed. He got a much better kiss than I did.”

  Julian’s face was kissably close to Estelle’s. She nibbled on her lower lip, unable to understand how these men could make her behave in a manner so opposite to her usual disciplined ways.

  When Julian pulled her down, Estelle did not resist. He kissed her more firmly this time, sealing his mouth over hers. Baring his teeth, he bit her lower lip with just enough force to hint at pain. When she gasped in protest, he soothed away the pain with his tongue. A moment after that, Estelle was kissing intimately with Julian, sucking his tongue deeply into her mouth.

  As Estelle felt the hem of her dress being raised, she wondered whether it was Julian or Alek who was behaving so boldly. While her tongue danced erotically with Julian’s, she felt strong fingers touching her calf, caressing her through her silk stockings. She shivered, surprised that she did not shriek out in fury at the effrontery. But there was something strangely erotic about being touched without knowing whether it was Alek who was sliding his hand up her dress, or Julian. It took a full minute for her kiss with Julian to end, and by that time Estelle’s juices were flowing as never before.

  “Wait…wait…please,” she whispered, frightened at her body’s traitorous response to these men.

  But they didn’t wait. Men like Alek and Julian never waited. They took what they wanted because life was theirs for the picking. Since Estelle’s right arm was around Julian’s shoulders, she really only had her left hand to defend herself with. She even tried to avoid their kisses, but her efforts were to no avail. And with each kiss, either from Alek or Julian, Estelle’s will to deny them diminished.

  Estelle was kissing Julian, trembling with passion as his tongue caressed hers, when she felt Alek’s fingers easing inside the leg of her drawers. She moaned into Julian’s mouth as Alek caressed slowly up her leg, touching her lightly through her stocking. When his fingertips moved higher still, above her stocking top to tantalize the velvet-soft skin of her thigh, Estelle’s moan filled the tiny carriage. And an instant later, when Alek ran his fingertip along her moist entrance, caressing a pussy made slick with excitement, she cried out even louder.

  She reached for Alek’s hand, needing to end his caresses. Fear and loneliness and sexual frustration, Estelle now realized, had made her weak and vulnerable. But that was no excuse, the stern voice of self-discipline said, to behave so wantonly with two men she had met only minutes earlier, men who did not even know her name or station in society. Granted, they were gorgeous men, and their sensual skills were second to none, but these facts hardly gave Estelle license to free herself of a lifetime of inhibitions, the angry inner voice complained.

  Long, strong fingers curled around her wrist. Alek pulled her protective hand to the side. Estelle felt his strength, his suppressed power. His face was eerily pale in the darkened carriage. She was looking into his eyes when his finger, already slick with her juices, eased between lust-enflamed pussy lips.

  “Oh, God!” Estelle cried out as pleasure, shocking in its intensity, slithered through her system.

  Julian was holding her right wrist to keep her arm around his shoulders. Alek was holding her left wrist. They were powerful men, and being held so securely, unable to defend herself from their bold caresses, made the thought of bondage slither over the surface of her mind, an enticing but forbidden temptation.

  First just one finger eased in and out of her. Then it was two. Estelle’s overheating passions allowed the undulating passage to be slick and tantalizing. She kissed Julian, opening her lips invitingly, and was immediately rewarded with his tongue. Trembling with need, she shivered from Alek’s bold caresses on her clitoris. His tongue, and the sensations his probing fingers caused, were more charged with eroticism than anything she’d ever experienced.

  She wrenched her face away from Julian and gasped once again, “Oh, God!” But then it was, “OhGodOhGodOhGod!” in rapid-fire succession as a relentless tightening began within her pelvis.

  She knew what the tightening meant. Occasionally, when loneliness and sensual neglect became too great, Estelle would close her eyes, dream of having a romantic lover, and caress herself. The only times that Estelle had ever experienced an orgasm were when she was alone. The vicious and sensually incompetent man she married had never been able to give Estelle an orgasm. Early in their marriage, before she had learned the true depths of the man’s villainy, she had wondered whether he was even trying to please her. Her good friend Katya had assured her that women were quite capable of having an orgasm, just the same as men. But Estelle never really believed this to be true until she experienced one, during the second year of her marriage, when she masturbated to satisfaction.

  But the relief was always short lived, and the excitement not nearly what she was experiencing now.

  Pleasure built upon pleasure. The fierceness of her onrushing emotions was frightening, but Estelle was incapable of asking these men to stop. She knew that she should be cursing them, despising them for what they were doing to her, but her words of protest and contempt never quite managed to find a way to be spoken.

  And then the ecstasy turned to agony as Estelle teetered at the edge of the precipice. “Alek!” she cried out an instant before the climax shuddered through her. Five powerful, convulsive spasms caused her body to twitch as though she was receiving a high-voltage electrical charge directly into her body.

  The problem with ascending the heights of emotions is that, upon satiation, the higher one has ascended, the farther and deeper one plunges. The highest of highs are always followed by the lowest of lows. Immediately upon finishing her first-ever climax caused by a handsome man, Estelle was deluged with an onslaught of self-awareness and self-doubt. What had just happened? And why had she allowed it to happen? What temporary insanity had taken control of her life?

  “Wait,” she gasped, breathing deeply from her climax. “Please stop. Please.”

  She watched as Alek eased his hand out from beneath the skirt of her fine wool dress. Estelle, able to think clearly and lucidly at last, clamped her knees protectively together. She was unable to look directly at either of the men who had stolen control of her better judgment and willpower.

  There was a harshness in Julian’s tone when he said to Alek, “We’ve got to get her to the flat.”

  “Exactly,” Alek agreed instantly.

  Estelle was shaking her head as she interjected, “No, I can’t go. I can’t be alone with you two.” She shook free her left hand from Alek’s hold. Estelle needed time to think, but she couldn’t find it within herself to part company with these enigmatic men just yet. “Do you know of any place where we can go that is public, but private?”

  A shiver of apprehension went up Estelle’s spine when Alek and Julian looked at each other and said in unison, “Mademoiselle Clarisse’s!”

  * * * *

  Alek was pleased when Mademoiselle Clarisse escorted them to the most rearward booth in her establishment. While privacy for all the guests at Mademoiselle Clarisse’s was assured, being in the m
ost remote, high-backed booth ensured that they would be undisturbed and unseen.

  “No sense in changing poisons halfway through an evening,” Julian said, sliding into the horseshoe-shaped booth’s bench seat. “Clarisse, I’d like a schnapps, if you’d be so kind.”

  “Of course,” Mademoiselle Clarisse replied, a professional half smile a permanent fixture on her face.

  “I’ll have the same,” Alek said.

  Estelle made a small wave of her hands and said, “Nothing for me.”

  But Alek said quickly, “Mademoiselle Clarisse, why don’t you pick out a wine that you think the lady might enjoy.” His blue gaze was warm as it flicked over Estelle. “Something delicate. Nothing too heavy.”

  “Of course,” the proprietress replied.

  Alek let her get several steps away before he went after her, catching her gently by the elbow to stop her progress. When she turned to face him, the tall Austrian bent low to whisper. What he had to say wasn’t for Estelle’s ears.

  “Do you have a back room we might use?” he inquired.

  Mademoiselle Clarisse’s eyes widened briefly. “Since when did you and Prince Julian decide to share women?” She wasn’t at all offended, only curious.

  “It’s not like what you’re thinking,” Alek replied. He and Julian were frequent visitors, and they had always brought a minimum of one woman each. It wasn’t unusual for them to arrive with a woman on each arm. “We didn’t plan for this to happen.”

  “In all the years that I have been running this establishment, I have never allowed anyone into my private office. No one.” She gave Alek a genuine smile. “I’m sorry, but I must say ‘no’ to you, my friend. To allow you and the prince to use my establishment for your assignation would be to set an unfortunate precedent. Others would want to be granted the same privilege. Before long, I would be running nothing more than a bordello. And what would the authorities say to me then? Even with friends like Prince Julian, I would be out of business, or worse.” Her eyebrows did a little dance above amused slate-gray eyes. “The woman you’ve come with—I don’t think I’ve ever seen such beauty. Not ever. Where on earth did you find her, and how have you kept her under wraps? I thought I knew every lovely mistress in London.”

  Alek smiled down at Clarisse. She was nearly fifty but still immensely pleasing to the eyes, having kept her trim figure. Her dark hair now held a touch of gray in it, but her eyes were still the brightest blue, and when she laughed it was the laugh of a young woman, not someone who had outlived one husband and all three of her infant children.

  “There’s not much I can tell you about her because there’s not much that I know.”

  “Ah!” Clarisse exclaimed with obvious delight. “A woman of mystery. How delightful for us all.”

  Alek put his hand lightly on Clarisse’s shoulder. “Are you sure you couldn’t bend the rules for this dissolute Austrian count?”

  “I am sorry, no.”

  “Then I’m going to need to console myself with schnapps. Lots and lots of schnapps. The lady refuses to be alone with us.”

  “She is an intelligent as well as beautiful woman. The booth will give you limited privacy. I can provide all the schnapps you can drink.” Clarisse kissed the tip of her index finger, then brought it to Alek’s lips. “Now go to your friend and that mysterious young woman. I’ll see to your needs.” She winked mischievously. “This is the most discreet establishment in all of England. In the years I’ve been here, only one person spoke of who he had seen here—and I banished him for life the instant I found out.”

  Alek laughed, bent low to kiss the proprietress on the cheek, then turned and headed back to the booth where Julian and Estelle were ensconced. As he walked, Alek brought his hand to his nose and inhaled softly. The aroma of Estelle’s passion was still on the fingers he’d used to pleasure her into an orgasm. His smile was wolfish…

  Chapter Three

  “You must believe me when I say I’ve never, ever done anything like this in my life.” Estelle turned violet eyes toward Alek. She appeared to be on the verge of tears, and his heart went out to her. “You men saved me.” She closed her eyes briefly and shuddered. “I was so scared when those monsters came out of the shadows, I thought I was going to faint.”

  Estelle took a swallow of the champagne that Clarisse had chosen. When she set the glass down, Alek took the champagne bottle from the silver, ice-filled bucket and refilled her glass.

  Estelle gave him a look and said, “You’re trying to get me drunk.”

  Alek shook his head, picked up his cut-glass crystal goblet half filled with schnapps, and replied, “No, I’m trying to get myself drunk.” He winked at Estelle, and her lips quirked in a smile she tried to suppress. “You’ve got the most luscious mouth. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  Estelle looked down at her champagne glass on the table. Only a small candle in the center of the table illuminated the three. “Stop saying things like that,” she whispered.

  “Why? It’s true.”

  Estelle lifted her eyes to Alek’s and said quietly, “I’m married to an odious man. He’s the most evil man in England. I…I never wanted to marry him, but my parents said I had to.” She smiled sadly, and her gaze drifted down to settle onto her champagne glass. “I guess I tried to love him…at least at first.” Her eyes glistened wetly. “He makes happiness impossible.”

  “He has money, or a title, but I’m guessing he doesn’t have both,” Alek said, getting a hollow feeling in his stomach. “Am I right?”

  “My family has money, his family has the peerage.” Estelle nibbled on her lower lip for a moment. A tendril of honey-blonde hair curled down from her temple. She unconsciously wound the silken strands around her forefinger absently. “He really wasn’t too bad at first. But then he changed.”

  “What were you trying to do tonight?” Julian asked.

  “Almost every night he goes to a gambling house and drinks. He gets drunk and then he goes to a house of ill repute.” Her lips pursed briefly into a thin line. “I was hoping to catch him doing something that would give me a legal reason to divorce him. The church…and the Queen…they let men divorce their wives for almost any reason, but the men can have as many mistresses as they want, and the wife can do nothing about it.” Her eyes, so deep a violet they were almost purple, lifted to Alek’s face. “Every time I try to leave him, he threatens me. I…I live a hellish existence.” She reached out and placed one hand over Julian’s, and another over Alek’s. “He hates me, but he won’t let me go. He takes”—her eyes squeezed shut for a moment—“utter delight in torturing me.”

  Julian suddenly leaned back in the booth and exhaled slowly. All eyes turned toward him, and he said, “Your husband is Prince Horace, isn’t he?”

  Estelle closed her eyes and nodded. “He’s a monster. I can’t tell you how much I hate him. I’m scared to death of him.”

  Alek had heard of the odious prince, though he’d never met him personally. When Estelle finished her third glass of champagne, Alek once more reached for the chilled bottle. This time, Estelle made no effort to prevent him from refilling her glass. The flaring lust he had felt for the blonde princess had been thoroughly dampened by the awareness of the hellishness of her life. He refilled his glass with schnapps. If he couldn’t get sexual satisfaction, he could surely get drunk.

  * * * *

  Prince Horace Moreland was drunk, but only a little, as he sat in Madam Stansky’s salon, surveying the most recent prostitutes to arrive from the Balkans. He raised his glass, half full with absinthe, and drained the licorice-tasting libation in two big swallows.

  “I don’t like them,” he announced, viewing the young women attired in sheer lingerie, standing in a line like soldiers on inspection. “I told you, I want a slender girl, not one of those sows!” He looked at the women, and added viciously, “Oink! Oink!”

  Only a very observant person would have noticed Madam Stansky’s outward sign of anger directed at one of h
er most steady customers. Just the slightest tightening at the corners of her eyes gave testimony to the madam’s emotional state.

  “Look at the girl on the end. The blonde one in the pink peignoir. Is she not slender? And she’s only been here two days.” Madam Stansky’s tone was both solicitous and salacious. She was a master of her trade. “Just two weeks ago she was on a farm near Smolensk with her family. Now she’s here with me, unsullied and lovely and yours…for a price. She’s hardly been touched. Look at those lovely breasts. So perfectly formed.”

  “They’re too big,” Horace announced, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “She’s a cow.” He poured more absinthe into his glass and dumped it down his throat. His gaze was filled with contempt as he glowered at the women, unable to see their inarguable beauty. Nastily, his lip curled upward in a snarl as he concluded, “And they’re too fucking old.”

  “The blonde has just turned eighteen,” Madam Stansky replied in quick defense. “Prince Horace, surely you’re not suggesting—”

  A venomous look from Horace silenced the former prostitute’s defense of her wares.

  Horace pushed himself out of the brocade chair. He stood unsteadily for a moment, first looking at the prostitutes, then at Madam Stansky. The condescension and contempt in his bloodshot brown eyes was undisguised. “I’m going someplace where they’ve got pussy worth buying,” he announced.

  Madam Stansky, surveying the three-quarters-empty bottle of absinthe, stepped closer to the prince, though she wisely kept out of arm’s reach. “Prince Horace, about your bill…?”

  At five foot eight, Horace was not significantly taller than the madam. But he felt much taller, and that was what was important to him. His eyes grew even darker as he replied, “I’ll pay your fucking bill just as soon as you get some girls here that interest me.”