Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) (2 page)

And it had an edge of raucousness, a hint of something conspiratorial and wicked.

A small knothole in the wall between the closet and the main part of the storage building allowed Mary to glance out at the two newcomers. One was the handsome, dark-haired young sexton, Mr. Bassett, who was supposed to be tending to his daily chores caring for the church grounds. The other was Mrs. Trumbull, the widowed proprietress of the village’s most popular pub, The Fox & Crow.

Mary was thankful she’d looked before simply walking out from the closet, because the laughter, apparently, was the result of what Mr. Bassett was doing to Mrs. Trumbull: embracing her from the rear and clamping his bare hands over the swells of her ample breasts.

Mary drew back from the knothole with a little gasp.

Mrs. Trumbull did not have the most sterling of reputations, it was true, yet Mary would have expected her to slap Mr. Bassett’s hands away. Mrs. Trumbull must be nearly forty, and Mr. Bassett was barely more than twenty.

But Mrs. Trumbull did not slap his hands away.

Quite the contrary—as Mary saw when she regained her courage and pressed her eye to the knothole again—the woman pushed her own hands on top of the man’s, encouraging him to squeeze her bosom harder, and let out a moan of pleasure.

Watching, Mary felt an unfamiliar pulse of heat wash through her.

She was not exactly naïve; she understood, in a general sense, that people did such things, regardless of the rules of church and civilized society. But she had certainly never
watched
it happen.

She really ought to say something to stop them—at least to stop them from doing where she could see them. And yet, at the moment, it seemed quite impossible to move her legs or use her voice.

Mr. Bassett pressed his mouth into the curve of Mrs. Trumbull’s neck, finding the sensitive flesh at the base of her gaudy red curls. His hands grasped the neckline of her bodice and wrenched it downwards. His hands dipped inside to cup her breasts and lifted them above the fabric, until their remarkable fullness was completely exposed. Her nipples were large, dusky red, and hardening to stiff peaks as the sexton took hold of them between his fingers and squeezed.

Mrs. Trumbull gasped and laughed again, a throatier laugh this time, and wriggled her buttocks against the front of Mr. Bassett’s breeches.

Now he moaned.

Mary’s heart thundered, and a strange pulse went through the tips of her own breasts.

Mr. Bassett’s hips began moving now, grinding against Mrs. Trumbull’s skirts.

Mary was a clergyman’s daughter, but in truth her father had been a most freethinking clergyman, and had always spoken in the most respectful terms of the beauties of nature and the divine quality of the physical body. He had not raised his children to feel shame about the flesh, provided no cruelty was involved. People were physical creatures after all, no different in their basic animal natures than the cattle in the fields or the birds in the trees.

Certainly, the two people before her were enjoying the pleasures of the flesh.

Mrs. Trumbull had her head thrown back and her chest arched outward, urging her breasts further into Mr. Bassett’s eager palms. Her skin was flushed, and even at this distance her pulse beat visibly hard beneath her jaw.

Mr. Bassett’s breathing had gone harsh and rapid, and all at once he reached down with one hand and hauled Mrs. Trumbull’s skirts up above her knees. And then upwards farther still, exposing her plump, pink thighs, and then the reddish curls at the joining of her legs.

One of his hands spanned both Mrs. Trumbull’s breasts, continuing to massage the dusky nipples, making the woman writhe, while the other hand plunged straight between her thighs and began to caress her there as well.

Mrs. Trumbull responded with a breathy moan, and reached behind her to grip her lover by the hips, pulling him hard against her backside. Her knees bent and her legs trembled as the sexton stroked and rubbed his hand against her most private place.

Mary felt her own pulse pound at the juncture between her thighs, drumming in her belly and through her breasts. Her mouth was dry, her breath short and fast. She could almost imagine a man’s hand stroking her in that very same place.
Viscount Parkhurst’s hand
.

Her head felt dizzy at the thought, and her bodice seemed to have grown several inches tighter than before.

Mrs. Trumbull was panting now, and making desperate mewing noises as she ground her hips downwards against the sexton’s caressing fingers.

Suddenly, Mr. Bassett, drew his mouth away from the woman’s throat and whispered hoarsely in her ear, “Bend over!”

Mrs. Trumbull gave a lascivious smile and did as her lover bade her. She bent herself in half, pressing her face against her knees, with her wide buttocks in the air above her.

“Grab your ankles, now,” he ordered.

Again, the woman did as he said, wrapping her fingers around her legs just above the tops of her half-boots.

A look of keen lust tightening his features, Mr. Bassett hoisted Mrs. Trumbull’s skirts up and bunched them around her waist, so her round, bare bottom was entirely exposed to his view.

For the first time, Mary could see that the front of his trousers was bulging as though he’d stuffed a couple of large potatoes into it. In a frenzy, he tore at his trouser buttons, and soon released his member.

It stood up, stiff and red and proud.

She’d never seen a man’s member exposed before, but it was like that of a horse about to mount a mare—huge, hard, veined, and dark with the inner pressure of his pulsing blood.

Mary’s blood was pulsing, too—it beat hard against the surface of her skin, heating her face, swelling her breasts, making the flesh between her legs throb.

Without thinking, she laid the heel of her hand low on her belly, then lower still, pushing against that place where the sensations were rioting. She curved her fingers inward, pressing through her skirts to the joining of her legs, and the instant jolt of pleasure made it nearly impossible to hold back a gasp.

In the outer room, Mr. Bassett stroked his member a few times, rough and hard, then gave Mrs. Trumbull a resounding slap on her naked arse. Then, putting one hand to each of the woman’s hips, he set his straining member against her wet slit and shoved it inside.

He groaned and Mrs. Trumbull cried out in pleasure.

The sight was almost too much for Mary.

The pressure of her hand through her skirts was no longer enough. Blushing at the impulse that possessed her, she lifted her hem, touched her shaking fingers to her calf, to her thigh, and slowly let them glide up to touch that most exquisitely, painfully sensitized spot at the juncture of her legs.

She had explored herself before, a few times, in bed at night, but never when her body was fevered like this. Her cheeks blazed at her own daring, but the need to stroke herself was overwhelming. Her nerve endings seemed to spark as her fingers moved over her flesh, sending rippling warmth through her belly, through all her limbs, making the muscles of her thighs clench and her knees buckle.

She had to lean her shoulder against the wall in front of her to keep herself upright.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bassett pulled his hips backward again, withdrawing his hard shaft, now shining with the moisture from Mrs. Trumbull’s quim, and then slammed forward again, drawing another cry from the woman, who stayed bent with her hands around her ankles.

Again and again, Mr. Bassett pulled out and rammed himself in, pumping his illicit lover with all the fervor of a rutting stallion.

In rhythm with his movements, Mary caressed herself, slick wetness gathering between her legs and making the pressure more stimulating than ever. Images of Viscount Parkhurst rose in her head—his broad shoulders, his strong thighs. Oh, the idea of him standing behind her, his trousers lowered, the muscles of his hips working as he pumped in and out of
her
…. She was trembling now, gasping for breath, fighting not to moan.

Luckily, neither of the people she was watching seemed to remember the need to whisper anymore, and were making far too much noise to hear anyone else. They grunted and whimpered and Mr. Bassett let loose with a string of filthy words: “God, yes, you’re hot and wet, Dinah. Always so slick and hot.”

Mrs. Trumbull answered him just as filthily. “Take me, Joe, take me hard. Give me all your cock, make it rough—yes, just like that.”

When it seemed things were approaching some sort of crescendo, Mr. Bassett suddenly pulled out and wrenched Mrs. Trumbull to her feet again. Roughly, he propelled her towards the wall, and she braced herself against it with both hands, her back still to him. He shoved her feet wider apart with one of his boots, pushed her falling skirts up and out of the way again, and wrapped a hand around her waist to stroke her from the front.

With his other hand, he reached between her legs from behind and took a generous skimming of the juices from her glistening quim.

To Mary’s shock, he took his now-slick fingers and began to work them against the puckered hole between Mrs. Trumbull’s arse cheeks.

The woman moaned with unmistakable excitement. “Oh, yes, Joe. Do it! Do it rough! You know how I like it.”

After he worked her for a while, his fingers slipping inside her hole, Mr. Bassett grasped his still-swollen shaft, took another slick of moisture from between the woman’s legs, and rubbed it over the swollen length. Then he pressed the head of it to the spot where his fingers had probed before. To Mary’s astonishment, he began to work his way in, the purpled head disappearing first, and then inch after inch of his thick shaft. Soon Mrs. Trumbull had stretched to let him in that second hole quite completely.

Both of them seemed quite overcome with pleasure at this most shocking act, as Mr. Bassett continued to rub Mrs. Trumbull from the front even as his engorged member withdrew and plunged into her arse again and again and again.

“You filthy wench,” growled Mr. Bassett as he pumped her. “Filthy, filthy wench.”

“Yes,” moaned Mrs. Trumbull. “Filthy. So, so filthy.”

“You’re here for me to swive. To swive whenever I like.”

“Yes, yes. Always, Joe.”

“Always,” he growled. “Always, my Dinah.”

Heat and tension built in Mary, too—something sharper, tighter, more urgent—and she moved her hand harder against herself, seeking relief. But she couldn’t seem to find quite the motion or rhythm that would take the edge from her growing desperation.

The movements of the pair pressed against the wall became more frenzied, and once again they seemed to be approaching some sort of crescendo.

Suddenly, even as one of the man’s hands kept stroking the woman in front, the other reached up to take a fistful of her red hair and pulled it hard, jerking her head backwards, as his hips rammed harder than ever against her quivering arse.

That seemed to be the last thing needed to bring them both to some ultimate pleasure. Mrs. Trumbull screamed and slumped against the wall in front of her, her bare breasts mashing against the wooden boards, her whole body convulsing, as Mr. Bassett let out a shout and drove himself one last time into her, his face contorted in fierce ecstasy.

The moment they were done, they drew apart and hurried to put their clothing to rights. Not looking at one another, not speaking even to wish each other farewell, they left the building, Mr. Bassett first, looking right and left before he went through the door to be sure he was unobserved, Mrs. Trumbull a minute later, just as stealthily.

And Mary stood trembling in the closet, her hand still between her slick thighs, caught in a strange, inconsolable state of half-pleasure, half-pain.

What sort of madness was it that she had just witnessed?

And how was she ever going to live the life of a spinster now?

Chapter Two

John Hollings, eighth Viscount Parkhurst, followed Miss Mary Wilkins up a steep slope through a heavily wooded area, finding he almost had to struggle to keep up with her vigorous strides.

She was a funny thing, this grown-up Miss Wilkins, with all her projects and causes and her apparently unshakeable belief that noblemen had been put on earth to serve the needs of the poor.

It wasn’t a bad belief, frankly. As little as he cared for the gruesome aspects of war, he’d loved one part of life as an army captain: the way the work of beating back Napoleon had given him a sense of real purpose.

Now that the wars were over and he’d returned to his country estate, life as a viscount threatened to be little more than sitting on his arse in other gentlemen’s studies smoking cigars, or being hunted shamelessly by local mamas hoping against all odds to convert him into a son-in-law, or at least to give their winsome daughters some practice at charming a wealthy bachelor.

So if Mary Wilkins wished to press him into service finding sites for good wells or new vegetable gardens for his tenants, he was more than willing to follow her.

Once upon a time, when she’d just been
Mary
to him, they’d spent much of their daylight hours in these very same woods, exploring the streams for good trout-fishing spots or searching for newts under interesting rocks. She’d been just as unstoppable then—fearless, and always game for an adventure. Thinking back on it now, those childhood days had been among the happiest of his life.