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  He did not smooth his hands over the length of my hair as he normally did when we were about to go out. Of course, the length itself was gone.

  ‘Time to go,’ he sighed and pulled my hand. ‘We’ll make it as quick as possible.’

  ‘My necklace!’ I raced back in and grabbed the antique necklace he had given me for Christmas. It complimented the vintage nature of the dress. My hands were shaking just thinking about Miriam Beckett. Such a prude, such a bitch. I felt sick.

  ‘Let me.’ He draped the necklace at the hollow of my throat and clasped it. Then he kissed the nape of my neck. That spot. It gets me every time. I froze and let the pleasant tickle and tingle run down my spine.

  Then his hands were in my hair. Shoving up under the chunky layers along my neck. His fingers slid up to rest below my ears, which made me shiver. He sifted my newly shorn hair through his big fingers and I heard him make a low sound. A pleased sound? I wasn’t sure. Then he gripped a fistful of my hair at the base of my head and tugged ever so slightly. I gasped and felt my nipples bead against my silk bra.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said again but this time his voice was a little thicker. A little slower.

  We went.

  Somehow, all through dinner, all I could think about was how it felt when Jacob gripped my hair and pulled. How it was pleasingly painful. When I closed my eyes I could feel it; a phantom sensation of him yanking me by my short stylish hair. By dessert, I couldn’t stop shifting in my seat. My panties were damp, I was bored beyond belief and all I wanted was to get home so I could find out what it felt like when he pulled my hair like that with his cock buried deep inside me.

  ‘I have a migraine!’ I blurted with only two spoonfuls of sorbet under my belt. What I really had was a soaking wet cunt and an overwhelming urge to run screaming from the boredom.

  ‘I’d better get you home then,’ Jacob said gallantly and mumbled his thanks and goodbyes.

  I was the only one who noticed his subtle smile. Or the way his eyes flashed with a hunger that had nothing to do with dessert.

  We didn’t speak on the drive home. Jacob piloted the car with one hand. The other was perpetually in my hair. Twirling, yanking, sifting. The only sound I made resembled the purr of a content feline.

  In the house, he was deliberate. He hung up our coats, checked the door, fiddled with the thermostat. I waited. It was all I could do to keep from hiking up my dress and demanding his services right then and there. I knew better. The waiting made the event more exciting. The waiting was the foreplay.

  Without a word, he took my hand and firmly led me up the steps. He bent, removed my shoes and put them neatly to the side. Standing together. The heels aligned as perfectly as if on display in a shop window.

  Then the stockings. Then the tie of the dress. When he pulled the second tie, he finally spoke, ‘I love taking you out of one of these things. It’s like unwrapping a present.’

  I didn’t say anything. I swallowed and my throat clicked. My heart hurt it was beating so hard. My eyelids shut and I hummed aloud as he dragged his warm hands over the flat of my belly and then hooked my panties with his thumbs and pushed them down. His mouth gave my pussy just enough attention to leave it wanting. Just a few delicate tastes of my sensitive flesh. A few flicks to my swollen clit. Then he continued his trail upward as I shivered and shook and fought the urge to beg. He bit my nipples through the lace cups of my bra as he unhooked it, then, lowering it with dramatic care, he hung it on the knob of my bedside table drawer. Each breast received its reward. Each nipple tortured into perfect tautness. And when I was shifting and breathing in little fits and gasps, he spun me and pushed me to the bed.

  ‘How wet are you now, Annalee? I bet you’re gushing. I bet I could stick all of my fingers into that perfect pink cunt. Should I try or do you want something else from me?’

  I whimpered.

  He pushed me so my upper body was bowed against the mattress, my ass in the air. I sighed, this was how I liked to be. Held down by him. Taken. Overpowered. He slid his hand along my neck as the other was busy with my cunt, my clit. He shoved his hand into my hair and gripped a nice fistful tugging to the precise level of pain I like and slid a thick finger into my ass. I bucked under him, fire spreading from my hair to my ass, flowing like quicksilver into my soaking sex. I wanted to plead with him but I knew better.

  ‘You want something else. I know you do. If I stare at your pussy, I can see it moving. Greedy, greedy girl. It contracts and expands like it’s dancing.’ Jacob laughed and I heard the smacks echo through the room before I felt them. Then the fire set in. The burn of sharp cracks of open palm to the soft flesh of my bottom. He yanked my hair and with the combined pain I felt a warm slow trickle slide down my inner thighs.

  His finger wiped some up. I heard him lick his finger and laugh. With a final tug to the tender roots of my hair he shoved into me. His hips banging me mercilessly, driving me into the mattress as he gripped me with the most fragile part of my body. My scalp sang with pain even as my cunt tightened around him. The agony in my scalp making the pleasure that flowed nearly to my womb that much more sweet.

  More smacks and I bowed under him as much as physically possible, my body demanding release even as my soul relished the torture.

  ‘I say three,’ Jacob ground out the words. His voice was heavy and thick. His hips moving faster. He was going to come.

  I would go with him.

  ‘One!’ he shouted out and I could tell he was fighting for control. My body jerked and my cunt grew tighter. ‘Two!’ The sensation of tension. The heavy feeling of almost release. ‘Three!’ he bellowed with the final blow and a perfect painful yank to my scalp.

  I came. A great spiralling orgasm that had me sobbing under his bucking body. Fire and light and pain and pleasure became one as I let go and fell into it. No body, no time. Nothing. A single nerve ending singing with unbearable pleasure. That was all I was for that moment in time.

  Jacob fell against me, helping me to lower myself flat on my stomach. He laid on me, crushing the breath from my lungs but I liked it. The fingers that had just yanked and tortured, smoothed along my scalp in soothing circles. I felt the mattress wet beneath my face. I was crying. I usually did.

  Jacob kissed the nape of my neck. Bare, naked, and on display for him at all hours now that my curtain of hair was gone. His cock had gone soft inside of me but we stayed that way. Connected.

  ‘I owe you an apology, Annalee,’ he laughed in my ear. His hand found my breast and gave a possessive squeeze.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘I love your new hair,’ he chuckled again and then gave my nipple a twist.

  I gasped and squirmed under him and then I was laughing. ‘Thank you. I knew you’d come around.’

  Master, Come For Me Again

  by Kitti Bernetti

  My writing tasks are complete. Exhausted, I sit alone by the guttering candle and strain to hear his hard, familiar footstep on the paving below. I press a hand on the wine-coloured velvet bodice at my breast. It stills my constant heart, which thunders at the thought of Sir Hunter Tremayne.

  So would yours, dear reader, had you been lucky enough to feel the kiss of his whip on your naked quivering skin. Please God let him ride his steed quickly to be at my side. I cannot resist agitating the curtain and peering down to the dark sodden earth below, willing, willing him to arrive. My ears strain for sound of approaching hooves, all they hear is rain drops spattering at the casement like pebbles. The clock ticks the minutes by interminably. It is bitter cold without him.

  My quill pen agitates in its holder from the gale forcing its way in at the casement window. Sir Hunter will be with me soon. Very soon.

  To pass the time, and keep me from pacing the room again, I take up the two documents on the desk and read the words on which I have been engaged. The first is my Last Will and Testament, completed an hour ago and signed by the cook, the housekeeper and the butler, now dismissed and in their beds. My three
faithful witnesses.

  ‘I, Elizabeth Langdale, of Hampshire, England, being of sound and disposing mind and not being actuated by any duress, menace, fraud, mistake, or undue influence, do declare this to be my last Will, and that bequests detailed below be carried out in accordance with my wishes this day, the 15th December 18—’

  But, constant reader, you will be more interested in the second document I have written. It tells of my first meeting with Sir Hunter, of the things he taught me and the reasons for the strange bequest in my will. I am a woman of fortune and many would squabble over my leaving my considerable wealth to Frederick March, a mere servant, unrelated to me, if I did not explain the reasons for this curious bequest.

  Come. Walk with me as I move aside the folds of my skirts and sit by the fire’s fevered glow to remember. Read, read on…

  ‘My tale starts the first day Sir Hunter had cause to speak to me. A poor child of fifteen, I had only briefly glimpsed the Master in the parish church of a Sunday. Head bowed in my distant pew, I would steal a glance at Sir Hunter’s haughty figure, six feet of him, striding to take communion. I took pleasure in that arrogant bearing, the aristocratic nose down which he peered at those of us who were truly beneath him. Nothing would have induced me to approach the great man. What business would I, the daughter of a dairy maid, now a milkmaid myself, have had with such a pillar of our community? Our paths would only cross on these weekly occasions and I knew he never deigned to look at the likes of me.

  However, I must correct myself. There was one isolated incident during which I witnessed a flicker of interest from Sir Hunter in my lowly self. It was a fine summer day, the sweltering heat taking all by surprise. I had swooned in church as if I would faint. The sermon droned interminably long, the heat seeped in unrelieved and the air hung sickly with the scent of drooping lilies in vases at the altar. Too timid to leave mid-service, I sought to relieve my distress by loosening the ties of my dress. My hand crept up to the sweat-glowed skin at my collarbone and down to the laces at my breast. Hoping no one was observing a mere farm girl, I took the laces and loosened each one. My eyes drooped at the relief afforded me and I fear I nodded off to sleep. Awaking, startled, I found the organ playing and the congregation rising at the end of the service. I confess I leapt to my feet, not quite knowing where I was. In so doing, the front of my loosened bodice fell away to reveal pert breasts and the small cherry brown of an escaped nipple. A small rivulet of sweat collected between the full globes and trickled onto the cotton of my chemise. Anguished at the realisation of my near undress, I grasped the cotton and self-consciously grasped it to my bosom. But not before I felt eyes upon me and looked up to find Sir Hunter’s hungry gaze ravishing me. Something in that glance struck a chord within me. His look was stern with a sliver of harshness which prickled my belly. It reminded me of the look in a swordsman’s eye just before he dispatches his prey. An appreciative quirk of his brow told me Sir Hunter had not only witnessed my distress but that he delighted in it. One word issued from his lips, ‘slut’. A suffusion of pink overflowed my neck. Fearing I would faint, I grasped my little basket, gathered my shawl tightly to me despite the oppressive heat and escaped like a vixen with the devil at her heels.

  Even with that moment of connection, and being under the same church roof many times after, Sir Hunter never rewarded me again with eye contact. I was as ignored and insignificant to him now as ever. I’m ashamed that I prayed (may the sweet Lord forgive me), alone in my bed, that circumstances were different. On occasions thoughts of him so invaded my head that my hands slid down under the hem of my nightshirt. Driving my fingers into my fevered body, I imagined with longing what it would be like to be explored by Sir Hunter’s manicured fingers. But fevered dreams aside, we were stations apart in life. Gradually I accepted that his azure gaze would never alight upon a poor besotted milkmaid again.

  Not until that is, the day three years later, in a grimy street in London town when I was astounded to find it was Sir Hunter’s face which greeted me when I knocked at a strange door. But I move on too swiftly, dear reader, and risk leaving you behind. Let me explain. At the age of seventeen, happily living in the village and existing on glimpses of Sir Hunter for my amusement, I was shocked on returning to our cottage one day to find that my poor dear mother had passed away. Her passing was unexpected. Always a red-cheeked robust female, no one imagined that she could fall so completely to the consumption. Like a sturdy beech tree felled by the woodcutter’s axe, one minute she was with us and the next, she lay in her coffin under the cold unforgiving ground, her sweet body giving way to corruption and the worms’ attentions.

  My grief was boundless. But it was compounded by the shocking realisation that I was now alone and stared that unforgiving curse, poverty, in the face. The kindly farmer who had employed us and who had supplied our meagre living accommodation succumbed to the coughing sickness the month after my mother. The new owner, a harsh man and a stranger in town, licked his fingers when he met me, lifted his chin and said, ‘Now you’re a right saucy creature and no mistake. Wouldn’t I like to have your virgin lips to moisten my hardness?’

  One night, alone asleep in my bed, I heard him enter the cottage he now owned. Whisky staling his breath, he wrenched off the bedclothes, gripped my neck and fondled me with his calloused hands. As he began to unbutton his britches, I panicked, kicked the drunken sot away and raced out with only a dress, shawl and some pennies. With the little I had, I walked from village to village. But I was young, and growing painfully thin. At all the hiring markets, it was the voluptuous maidens or the clodhoppers with physiques of youths who were chosen for work. I was the girl left standing at the end of the day. I was the one who had been prodded and commented on and left with no employer willing to take a chance on me.

  Like so many innocents before me, I made my way to London town to try my luck on its rat-infested pavements. Oh, those days of misery. Bent like an old crone, clutching a dirt-spattered shawl, I trudged through storms, my wooden pattens barely keeping my skirts above the mud. Sleeping under hedges, foraging for food, I existed on crab apples sour enough to turn milk.

  When I finally reached the city it was alien to me, peopled as it was with rushing individuals clawing their living from the rancid alleyways. My last pennies, carefully preserved, I spent on a meagre room in a boarding house above a public house where I was able to wash my shattered body and clean my clothes. My only bit of luck in all those dark days was meeting a girl within lodgings near Fleet Street who had a country accent and was only a year or two older than myself. Perhaps recognising in my plight something of her own past, dear Martha possessed the looks and kind hands of an angel. She allowed me to share her accommodation and fed me for a fraction of the cost of a room of my own. Lighting a fire in the cosy attic room at the top of the house, and helping me dry my clothes she asked, ‘And do you have any prospect of work here in London?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘but I have heard that anyone can find work here.’

  ‘Hah, don’t believe it. The streets are more paved with cabbage leaves than with gold. And sadly there’s no call for dairymaids in these parts. Nevertheless, there is a gentleman who provides employment for young maidens like yourself. He is only in town sometimes, having a vast estate in the country so they say. But, he is here at present. I know because I was working for him myself only the other day.’ At this point, she cupped my chin in her hands and stroking, fixed me with her gaze. ‘You scrub up well dear little Lizzie. In fact I would say your rosebud skin and kitten-eyes would be most prized by this particular gentleman.’

  ‘If this gentleman could help me I would do anything for him. Work hard on my knees, scrubbing floors and serving his every whim,’ I told her. I guessed that industrious servants were hard to come by in London, but I would see him proud if he could rescue me from my plight. As Martha brushed my damp hair, petting it till it shone, I began to feel a spark of hope.

  Martha continued, running her hands lov
ingly through my hair to dry it, ‘He is very rich and only likes the finest of things. Girls queue up to be under his protection. But he is also very choosy. Not for him will any wench do.’ She wound my waist-length hair around rags as she spoke. ‘When I have set your hair, we will look in my cupboard and you can try on one of my old dresses. When I first came here I was as tiny as you. I have fattened up nicely since then but I am sure we can find you something better than that old grey woollen thing.’

  Rifling in her bedroom cupboard Martha pulled out the most delectable midnight blue silk gown. ‘Why, this is a rich woman’s gown,’ I cried, ‘how did you come by it?’

  Martha smiled. ‘Oh there is money to be made in this town if you know how. And the gentleman I was speaking of will show you how, little Lizzie, as long as you let him, and do every thing he asks like a good girl.’

  She helped me step into the gown and I stood as resplendent as a fine lady. Curves I had not before witnessed appeared under the tightness of the laced bodice and the full skirt. Down the neckline was sewn black lace and tiny black beads which twinkled in the candlelight. A neckline much lower than I was used to exposed the swell of my bosom but Martha only laughed at my concerns and told me the rich gentleman would have no qualms about that.

  That night we lay together in her little bed. I was so grateful for all her help and for the way she held me close in her arms, ‘to warm us,’ so she said. She rubbed my back and my neck, ‘to ease the aches and pains’, and kissed me softly on the neck whispering in my ear that all would be well. I had never been caressed like that and it caused a strange moistening between my legs which embarrassed me.

  My head spun when her hand moved to my chest. She giggled girlishly as she cupped my breasts, and exclaimed at how neat they were. Like little Bath buns fresh out of the oven she said, they needed tasting. I was a little shocked when she moved her lips down to my breasts and kissed them. I felt suddenly surprisingly warm and had to lift my nightshirt to cool me down.