unfastened.
‘Not yet,’ he said, taking both my wrists and flipping me onto my back with my arms apart so that I was pinned into place. He nuzzled the side of my neck. The sensation was both arousing and ticklish. He kissed his way towards the dent between my collarbones. Sitting across my legs, he pushed my nightgown up to my waist, revealing my belly and the dark triangle of my pubic hair beneath. He smiled when he saw the neatly trimmed arrowhead. Glancing at the front of his trousers, I saw that he was already straining the front of them, as he grew hard in anticipation of what was to come.
He continued to push my nightgown further up my body. I sat up and raised my arms so that he could pull it off over my head, leaving me entirely naked. I flopped back against the pillows in a posture of complete abandon. Playfully, I hooked my little finger in the corner of my mouth and regarded him, daring him to do what he would.
Slipping from the bed to stand on the floor, he took me by both my ankles and pulled me so that my bottom was on the very edge of the mattress with my legs dangling freely. He knelt on the floor between my legs and kissed his way along the inside of my right thigh. The feel of his hot breath on my Venus mound was excruciatingly delightful.
‘Don’t tease me,’ I begged him.
‘I’ll do whatever I want,’ was his response.
Of course he would and I would let him. He already knew that. Carefully, he parted the lips of my vagina and ran his tongue along their shiny insides. He let the tip flicker over my clitoris, sending darts of electricity through me. Slowly, he moved his tongue from side to side. I pushed my pelvis up to meet his mouth, encouraging him to go faster, but he teased me horribly, keeping the pace slow. It was both agonising and completely wonderful.
At the same time as he licked me, letting the intensity build at such a leisurely pace, he put his finger inside me. I felt myself close around him, taking the finger greedily, only reluctantly letting it slide out again. I asked him to finger-fuck me again. He refused with a shake of his head.
Instead he quickened the movement of his tongue. I picked up a pillow and held it over my mouth, biting into it when the pleasure became almost too much for me. Round and round, his tongue traced the outline of my clitoris. With his fingers, he stretched my labia apart to better reach the tiny nub of pleasure that was already throbbing and hot.
I felt my stomach muscles tense. My toes pointed. My breath grew shallow and rapid. I knew I would not be able to hold on for very much longer.
I came, as I always did, in great crashing waves of ecstasy. My body bucked and twisted. I cried out in delight. I ended by laughing out loud.
Afterwards, I lay on the sheets, exhausted but very happy indeed. My masked lover climbed back onto the bed beside me. He ran a finger down the centre of my body, eliciting one last shiver of sheer joy. He slid up the sheets so that we were once again face to face. He kissed me on the lips. I felt the taste of my own skin on his tongue.
‘That was delicious,’ he said. ‘But now it’s my turn.’
Chapter 6
I woke up feeling slightly less rested than I should have done, but all the same, I started work as soon as I’d had some breakfast. Greg Simon had given me quite a short deadline. There was no time to waste.
Fortunately for me, like my thesis subject Luciana Giordano, Augustine du Vert had kept a diary. More accurately, Augustine had written a memoir, about her life in Paris, beginning at the moment she went to work for Arlette Belrose. This Arlette was one of the most celebrated kept women of the age, a courtesan reputed at one time to have been the lover of Prince Napoleon. When she died, Augustine’s memoir was found among Arlette’s most precious treasures. No one knows whether Augustine had ever expected or hoped to see her story printed, but Arlette’s enterprising grandson made a fortune from the