‘It’s dreadful hot in here. Help me loosen these stays.’
‘Annie . . .’
James knew what his neighbour was about when she knelt before him, thrusting out that plump white bosom of hers, but he tugged at the thinning lace all the same with a world-weary air.
‘I reckon that Emma doesn’t have the lips for it,’ said Annie, holding James’ gaze with bold intent. ‘Those black-guards would’ve been queuing up to get in my mouth. Don’t you reckon?’
She puckered her generous lips and James, having pulled the sides of her bodice
apart to free some of that tight-bound flesh, patted her cheek.
‘Really, Annie, I don’t expect payment for teaching you. There is no need.’
‘It wouldn’t be payment, Jem. It’d be for friendship. For comfort.’
‘Comfort,’ echoed James, looking down at the delicious slopes of her cleavage.
‘You know I’ve always liked you.’
‘And I you, Annie, very much, but don’t you tire of it?’
‘Tire of . . . well, in the ordinary way. But this ain’t the ordinary way, not when it’s you and me.’
She dared a little dart up and a peck on the lips.
He grabbed her by the elbow and held her face close to his.
‘You’re too good to me, Annie,’ he said. Their mouths brushed, tasting closeness, a salt-sweet flavour.
‘I want to be good to you, lovey,’ she whispered. ‘I want you.’
Surely, thought James, it would take a man of stone to resist a pretty girl’s offer to slide her pink, wet lips down the length of his shaft and suck it to completion. And he was no man of stone.
He made no move to stop her when her fingers began tugging his chemise from his waistband, nor when she unbuttoned his braces.
‘That Emma should come to me,’ she said under her breath. ‘I could show her how to keep her lips always soft with beeswax.’
‘Beeswax?’ said James, tickling her behind her ear with his forefinger.
Annie had his trousers and undergarments around his knees now.
All he had to do was lie back and . . .
‘Feel the softness,’ she breathed.
He did. He felt the softness, as she kissed him from tip to root and then with her saucy tongue bathed his heavy sacs.
‘Oh, you’re too good,’ he muttered when the wet ring of her lips sealed itself around his girth.
He shut his eyes, slowly feeding every inch of his erection into her, imagining it as something medicinal that would benefit her health. It was what she needed, a good mouthful, a swallow of cream to keep her warm for the rest of the day.
He opened one eye and watched her head of brassy ringlets bob up and down. The curls were falling loose after the exertions of the night before and needed re-twisting into papers before she put on her working clothes again. James liked the effect, though; the metaphor of it. He was like one of those ringlets, once so coiled and taut, now snaking down into perfect laxity. Where would it end? Where would his life go, now that it was all in a day’s work to write obscene literature and get himself sucked off by his best friend, the whore next door?
He put his hands to her head, positioning her so that he could watch her hard at work, see that scandalously painted mouth staining his cock red with whatever bizarre compound of beetroot juice and berry she had put on her lips before coming to his room.
Lord, but she was a good little cocksucker, getting his blood up to just the exquisite degree he liked before he plunged into that final rush. And here was his crisis, high up above him, way down beneath him, meeting in the middle and roaring out of him.
He took a fistful of ringlets and emptied himself into her, feeling his strength drain out of him in short bursts until he was fatally sapped, wasted by pleasure again.