Lessons and Lovers (2 page)

“It’s awkward, Hett. Darryl’s…er…twenty-two…or twenty-three, I think. But he still seems quite innocent somehow. He looks at me. You know…
that
sort of look! It’s as if he wants to be taught about…about sex and stuff!”

It was all wrong to laugh, but Hettie couldn’t help herself. Mirth bubbled in her throat, and sharp-eared Starr, who’d obviously heard the other woman’s shrill voice, laid his hand lightly over his mistress’s mouth to stop her giggling. She could taste herself on his fingers and her cunt twitched in response. It took several moments to suppress both amusement and desire.

Renata had a very strange dilemma.

“Sexuality goes deeper than memory, Ren. He can’t have forgotten what sex is!”

It sounded preposterous, and yet maybe there was a grain of truth in what she’d just said. For so long she’d felt neutered by her own grief. Both physically and emotionally. Mourning Piers, she’d forgotten what lust felt like and her feelings had been bound up, as if in a closed box. She, who’d always lusted and laughed and had so much love to give. Maybe this unknown Darryl had also been traumatized like that?

Ren’s next words confirmed her theory.

“Oh he has! I’m sure he has! And I wouldn’t mind telling him things. Being kind of like an aunt or something. But Fausto won’t have it! He doesn’t want Darryl around, and he certainly doesn’t want me giving him sex education lessons!”

She fell silent and Hettie got an ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach. Starr’s barely perceptible nod said he was coming to the same conclusions as she was.

“Ren? What’s all this leading up to?” It was a pointless question. Any idiot could work out what was coming next.

“Well, Fausto’s cleared off and he says he’s not coming back until Darryl’s out of the palazzo.” She paused, and though Hettie couldn’t see her, she knew her friend was gathering herself, “I was wondering if Darryl could come and stay with you a while? I know it’s a bad time. But maybe some different company would be good for you! You must be lonely in that great big place all on your own. Oh, I know there’s Starr. But he’s so… Well, he’s so sort of formal, and detached, and hung up on mistress and servant protocol and stuff, isn’t he?”

Hettie looked up. Starr was leaning over her now, his face as calm as ever, his chiseled but generous mouth curving in the faintest of smiles. He eased a lock of hair from her brow, then smoothed the whole long, damp golden mass of it reverently across the pillow. His mouth touched hers, kissing her slightly off-center to avoid the telephone. His fingers closed on her breast, felt the hard-peaking nipple then tensed slightly. Hettie knew, with a shiver of delight, that he’d soon be inside her again.

How does this fit into mistress and servant protocol
? she wondered for perhaps the thousandth time, feeling a breath-catching twist in her heart that was dangerously unrelated to the sex.

“What do you think, Hett?” persisted Renata, dissolving the fleeting thought, “Can Darryl come and stay with you? He’s quiet, but he’s actually quite charming in his own way. And he speaks perfect English. Really! And you’ve got all those filthy books in Piers’ collection that he can read. He can do his learning and his sex revision from them, can’t he?”

There was desperate hope in Renata’s voice, and Hettie looked to Starr for help. Only if he approved, would she take in Ren’s shy charmer. Her cool blond servant regarded her steadily for a few seconds, then took her hand and kissed it. When he looked up again, he nodded.

“Okay, Ren! He can stay for a while.”

“Oh, thank you, Hett! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I love you! I knew you’d help me!”

“All right! Don’t go overboard! Just one thing, though.” Starr was kissing her again now, his lips warm and drifting on her bare, rounded breast. “Can the arrangements wait until tomorrow? I’m…um… Well, I’m starting to actually feel quite drowsy now and I’d like to get some sleep.” It was a white lie, but she was entitled to it.

She gnawed her lip as Starr sucked roughly at her nipple, biting it slightly. She couldn’t talk to Ren much longer, not while this beautiful torture was going on! There was no way she could suppress the screams of another orgasm.

“Oh yes, of course! Everything will be fine now!” Ren’s voice was buoyant, “I’ll call Fausto. He’ll come back when he knows Darryl’s leaving. Everything will be wonderful now! Thanks again, sweetheart, you’ve saved my life. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye, Hett! Sleep tight!”

“Goodnight, Ren!” said Hettie on a long broken gasp. As the connection died, Starr’s fingers slid back between her sticky thighs. And the magic torment began all over again.

Dropping the lifeless receiver, Hettie tried to caress his sex in return, but he guided her hand away before she could even lay one finger on his stiffness.

“This is for you alone, Milady.” His voice was muffled, the words tangled around her nipple as he sucked and sucked and sucked.

But I want more!

Fighting for coherent thought, Hettie pushed at Starr’s shoulder and made him lift his head.

“Let me touch you. Let me do something for you. It’s what I want.”

A strange, complicated expression passed across his astonishing face, then with a wry twist of his lips and a slight shrug, he reached for her hand and put it upon him.

The miracle of Starr’s cock never ceased to amaze her. He was so hard, and yet the skin there was fine and delicate as satin. He stirred in her hand and seemed to grow harder than ever, if that were possible. As she gave him a slow, exploratory squeeze, his eyelashes fluttered and his lips parted in a stifled gasp.

For one frozen moment in time, Hettie almost seemed to feel Starr’s pleasure. It was as if he were allowing her into his male mind and showing her what her touch did to him.

But the intimate communion was over almost as soon as it had begun.

“Enough, Milady,” he whispered, gently but firmly putting her hand from his flesh, then bending over her and taking her nipple between his lips once more.

And now each pull on her breast seemed to pull on her clitoris too, seemed to pass right through her struggling body and meet the gentle petting finger between her legs. Pinned between two nodes of pleasure, she could only thrash and moan. Tearing at the sheets beneath her, she soared to first one excruciating climax, then another and another and another.

“Thank you, Starr! Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!” she chanted in time to the pulsations that rippled through her. The sensations were sublime, and yet, even in the midst of them, her mind longed for something more, something different. She had no intimate name, no romantic lover’s name with which to praise this incredible man who was so close to her, yet more distant than the stars he was named for. He had never offered a first name, and there was something so remote about him—even now!—that still made her afraid to ask.

Orgasming continuously, she babbled and raved, and her obedient demon switched to a different assault. Two fingers went deep, deep inside her, sliding easily into her buttery flesh and curving deftly to press against her G-spot.

One firm touch there and she was screaming and kicking her legs, her bottom bouncing high off the sweat-soaked sheet.

But Starr would not be shaken from his target. Or his infernal internal stroking.

“Please,” she begged hoarsely, not even knowing whether it was for less contact, or for more. Her fingers flew to her jumping clitoris. To meet
his
caressing finger at her body’s most exquisite nexus.

She was still rubbing when she felt his hand withdraw and his mouth leave her breast. She whimpered with loss, but the cries were wildly premature. Within moments, his cock filled the void inside her and his firm lips were covering her mouth.

She sobbed silently as their breaths mingled. A kiss was somehow closer, more joined even, than the sex. If he could kiss her so sweetly, it must mean that he cared for her in some deeper way? As he began to fuck her, she worked her clitoris greedily in time to his thrusts. The combined stimuli were deliciously wicked. Each time he plunged deep, her fingers were jammed against her flesh. It was a double pleasure. A double fuck. And in moments she was coming again, the orgasm doubly strong.

“Starr!” she keened as her body seemed to dissolve and reform, her complicated emotions calmed, for the moment, by simple uncomplicated pleasure. Grief for her late husband, confused guilt, frustrated longing to touch the heart of the man inside her…all were soothed by the power of magnificently satisfying sex. “Starr!” she sobbed, smiling beneath his lips as a warm flow bathed her pussy, his thick rush of semen a balm for all her ills.

His own orgasm was intense, staccato, almost animalistic, and on the last thrust, he collapsed and sighed heavily into her neck. It was just a long exhausted exhalation, but at the very limits of her hearing, Hettie knew she’d heard her own name.

“Oh, Starr, that was beautiful!” she murmured, winding her arms around him, trying to crush every inch of herself against his damp, hard, muscle-packed form.

But he gently pried her off again.

“Let me up, Ma’am. I’m too heavy. I don’t want to squash you,” he whispered, shaking himself free and lying down—long, golden and magnificent—beside her.

“What if I want to be squashed?” she replied, drowsily resigning herself to being “Ma’am” once more.

It was no use taking him to task about that again. She couldn’t be upset or angry with him after the beauty he’d just made for her. The way he’d lifted her from the pit and made life bright again. Badgering him about what he called her—either while they fucked, or at all other times—made not one iota of difference. He was as intransigent about her name as he was about his. Starr was always, always “Starr”, and Hettie was only “Hettie” when he had his cock lodged deep inside her.

Which it wasn’t now, so she was “Milady” as she curled up alongside him and got the warmth of his strong arm around her shoulders, drawing him against her. She was tired now, really tired, but as she started to drift, stray thoughts popped into her head.

What was she going to do about Darryl? She’d agreed to take him in, and yet the presence of another man in the house would only make the task of understanding her relationship with Starr more complicated.

Without thinking, she sighed, and as she did so, she felt Starr’s grip on her tighten infinitesimally, as he sensed her tension.

Why now?
She knew even as she thought it that there really was no other choice.
Heaven knows, I know enough about grief and confusion and loneliness… How can I deny the poor man a refuge?

We’ll just have to go on as we are a bit longer, Starr
, she told her servant silently, instinctively pressing her cheek to the warm cushion of his muscular chest. She’d so longed to breach this beautiful man’s barrier of formality, and find out if the locked-down feelings she sensed—and prayed for—in him were as real as she hoped them to be. As real as hers were, she acknowledged in sudden astonishment, shocked at first, then in her mind seeing her late husband’s smile of impish approval.

Oh Piers, what’s happening to me? Is it really possible to love two men at once?

She’d loved her husband, really loved him, but she knew he would have been the first person to encourage her to seek love again. And perhaps even put forward his choice for the recipient of her love. God knows, the two men had been as much friends as employer and employee. Within the bounds of Starr’s strict adherence to protocol, of course…

For a long while, her thoughts circulated around and around, touching on Starr, Piers and occasionally the mysterious Darryl. But finally, and mercifully, all her anxieties began to melt and become formless in the face of sheer exhaustion, and she surrendered to the comfort of the living pillow of Starr’s chest.

When she woke the next morning, Hettie felt unexpectedly refreshed and at peace with the world. Despite the troubled whirl of her thoughts before sleep, she sensed, in the optimistic light of day, that some sort of progress had been made. She and Starr had been physically intimate again, and that was one step closer. Closer to the goal she sensed her heart wanted, and that every instinct told her that Piers would have wanted for her too.

“I’m think I’m getting better now, old thing,” she murmured softly, talking to her reflection in the mirror as much as to her dead husband. “I really think I’m going to be okay soon. I’ve just got to go for it, haven’t I?”

Piers would’ve been delighted, she knew, to see her eyes looking brilliantly sparkling again. And to recognize the glossy sheen that only comes from superlative sex overlaying her smooth pale skin.

The most radical proof of recovery though was actually thinking about Piers without pain. She missed her dead husband, of course, but now she could think about the rest of her life, and what, and who, she wanted in it. She could remember the good times with Piers, but she could also believe in the possibility of better ones to come.

Especially now Starr was back in her bed performing his “special” duties. The ones he’d begun when Piers had become too ill to make love. The strong, quiet blond had been a sort of combination of personal assistant, concierge, bodyguard and chauffeur throughout the whole of the short Miller marriage, but in the last few months of it, sexual surrogacy had been added to his multifunction role.

Hettie had said nothing about Piers’ reduced libido at first. His gentle lovemaking, his clever hands, and his experienced, exploring mouth had always given her immense pleasure and made her climax repeatedly. Even if their sex sessions hadn’t been that frequent. But as a woman with generous erotic appetite, she soon became painfully frustrated as the gaps between those interludes became longer and longer and longer.

She had taken up horseback riding. She’d swum twice, three times a day. She’d started a rigorous aerobics program. And she’d masturbated in every private moment she could grab, rubbing her pussy with a frantic desperation that’d often made her sore but rarely eradicated her need. She’d even tried therapy. And though it’d been good to talk to someone about her frustration, talking could do nothing for the fires that burned in her sex.