Cressida's Dilemma

She took a step beyond her hiding place, turning at Ariane’s gasp, and gasping herself to see that this magnificent creature, wearing not a stitch of clothing, was no longer like the several sculptures of naked men with which she was familiar.

No, while Ariane swept her hands all over him in a manner beyond Cressida’s imaginings, her expert tongue flicking against the backs of his knees, his body was behaving in a way which Cressida had never observed with her own eyes, though she’d been aware of the changes in her own husband during the prelude to their coupling.

Shocked and fascinated, she stared at his swollen member, which had seemingly a life of its own as Persephone kissed his mouth and Ariane rose to her knees, kissing higher…

And higher…

The pleasure haze dissipated further. Cressida could not move, fascinated and horrified in equal measure as she watched Ariane gently cup the pouches beneath her husband’s rampant manhood.

No, she’d never seen a man naked. Not in eight years of marriage. She’d been gently pleasured in Justin’s warm, secure embrace, but always in darkness. She’d never seen her husband clad in less than his nightshirt or banyan.

The pupils of the magnificent creature in the middle of the bed dilated, and he threw back his head as Ariane, with calculated care, put her mouth to his engorged member and slowly circled it with her tongue.

So appa

rent was his rapture that Cressida felt her own body pulse with sensation, despite her shock.

She put her hands to her face to cover her gasp.

No one seemed to register her. All eyes were on the scene in the center of the bed—eyes greedy, lascivious, wanting…

Cressida cast her gaze around the dim room, her terror growing. This was not a sight for a gently reared woman like herself. She had to escape.

In the gloom, she thought she recognized the door through which she’d come and stumbled toward it, turning as the man groaned his pleasure.

A final glance at his glazed eyes made plain that he was enslaved by this extraordinary act.

Cressida turned the doorknob and staggered into the corridor, gasping for air. She had spied on a naked man in the throes of passion when she had had no right to. What had she done? Her recent fascination now seemed nothing more than wicked prurience.

She was going to be ill, she knew it. Panting, sweating, she sought desperately for the privy, which, to her relief, was pointed out to her by a motherly looking woman dressed in cerulean silk.

When Cressida returned weakly to the passage a few minutes later, her savior was waiting for her, a look of sympathetic concern upon her face.

“My dear, let me take you somewhere private where you can compose yourself.”

The kindness of the woman’s expression, and her thoughtfulness—so different from what she’d expected to find in a place like this—made Cressida want to burst into tears.

With a grateful nod, she allowed herself to be led into a small, private sitting room at the back of the house, where she was gently pushed down onto an Egyptian sofa. When she looked up, the woman was proffering a handkerchief dipped in Cressida’s favorite lavender water.

“My dear, I think you are out of your depth,” murmured the woman as Cressida cooled her forehead and dabbed the corners of her trembling mouth. “Shall I order a carriage to take you home?”

Go home? Cressida shook her head. How could she go home in this state? She was shaking like a leaf, her mind roiling with images of the naked man she’d just seen and the ecstasy he’d clearly experienced at the hands of… What was Ariane? A woman of the night? Yet she claimed she was this man’s wife. Did that mean that what they shared was sanctioned by the church? Surely not? Ariane had said she was ‘just like her’. Like Cressida, hinting they both were married women sharing a private sadness. No, Cressida had nothing in common with Ariane, and the sooner she was out of this place the better.

“I think you need to take a few deep breaths,” said the woman. “It will make you feel much better.” Her smile took years off her age, her twinkling brown eyes suggesting a surprising depth of insight and intelligence for a woman who lived in such a depraved setting as this.

Cressida covered her face and rocked as images of beautiful maidens kissing each other and magnificently muscled men with rampant members chased around her brain.

Her remembered excitement and the dampness at the juncture of her legs made her whimper with guilt.

What had she done? What would Justin think if he knew she’d witnessed such a tableau and…that she’d been excited by it? He’d never look at her the same way. Never touch her…

Enough presence of mind remained for Cressida to understand the irony of such a fear. The way she was conducting herself in this marriage, Justin never was going to touch her.

She had to take matters into her own hands.But how?“I think, my dear, you did not understand what it meant for you to come to such a place.”Cressida opened her eyes and found she was staring directly at a pair of once-elegant dancing slippers beneath a cerulean skirt.Taking in the faded elegance of the woman’s dress, the gray in her jet-black hair and the sympathy of her expression, she questioned her original assumption of this woman’s calling. After all, Cressida was here, in this house, and she wasn’t a…

A what? Her heart seemed to thud to her feet and she looked down.

After what she’d participated in, she didn’t know what she was. She put her hands to her mouth to stifle her wail as she raised her eyes once more to the woman’s kind face.