Clockwork Captive by Anh Leod Page B

Moans were one thing, but the whips revolted him. This delightful creature deserved pleasure, not pain.
    “Not that.”
    She closed the drawer with an air of satisfaction softening her lips, as if he’d passed a test. “No? I wonder why you chose me.”
    “Your portrait in the hallway below challenged me.”
    “Most men want to master the girl in that portrait.”
    “I don’t think like most men. I want this.” He lifted her linen to her waist, and buried his face in her crisp muff.
    She gasped. Her hands found the back of his head. He was sure shock and not design had motivated her quick movements. Wanting to continue to surprise, he tasted her slit with the tip of his tongue and stroked down until he found her channel. It rewarded him with a drop of musky fluid. He lapped it up, delighting in her individual taste, pulling her against his mouth with his hands on her naked buttocks. She felt firm, velvet-soft, and warm under his palms, and enticed him further with a tiny gasp of pleasure.
    He didn’t think she’d been a whore long. Her responses to his offered pleasure were too untutored for that, despite her scars.
    Testing her again, he speared her channel with his tongue, stretching her open. Then he slid his fingers up the insides of her nether lips until he found the tiny pearl at the apex. When his tongue found her there, she gasped again and ground against his mouth. He grasped the backs of her thighs, only to find her trembling.
    Outside, thunder cracked, and rain began to pound the cobblestones in the lane, drowning out her sounds of approval, higher pitched than her dark, pained moan, and the wet sucking sounds his mouth made against her velvety flesh.
    With a sense of triumph, he sucked on the tiny pearl and found her rear channel with his thumb. He dipped between her rounded cheeks, rimming the entrance.
    “You need not go to this effort, sir,” she whispered. “I’m here to please you.”
    He pulled away for a moment. “Liza, you do please me. Let me do this.”
    She sighed for a moment, staring at him, and then tilted her pelvis toward him, pulling him to her with strong fingers. Did she use crops herself against some of those faceless customers? His hands lifted from her buttocks and stroked up her arms, finding them rounded with muscle, not soft like most women’s.
    She verbalized her displeasure and he let his hands drop again, to play with her bottom. His tongue offered renewed attention to her pearl. When he sucked it in, she thrust against him, crying out her completion as her orgasm wracked her nubile form. His face was damp with her fragrant juices. He kissed her cleft and pulled away, allowing her dress to cover her body again, as modestly as the single thin layer of fabric allowed. As he was used to heavy, voluminous fabrics draping women like armor, being so close to a woman’s true form was unusually erotic in itself.
    She stumbled away from him, half-sitting, half-collapsing, onto the bed. A tiny chime emitted from her direction.
    “Ten minutes gone,” she whispered. He could see her nipples poking against the low-cut bodice when lightning sliced through the sky, brightening the dim room to near daylight for a moment. His next thought was of sucking those buds to even tighter peaks.
    He wanted to leap on her. “Will that infernal mechanism interrupt us so often?”
    “Every five minutes toward the end. It dictates every phase of our day.”
    He brushed aside the implications. “At least it is quiet enough, and a pleasing sound.”
    Her voice was harsher this time. “It gets louder. You can’t hide from it ever. They always find you.”
    Had she tried to escape? Were some of those stripes on her legs punishment as much as tradecraft? But his cock was gaining ascendance and he wanted to revisit that secret place between her legs, not chat. Still, he couldn’t help responding. “Why did you agree to this life? Surely there are other brothels with less controlling