About An Invitation to Ruin

An Invitation to Ruin is a modern translation of Rococo diaries and letters previously released as part of the Sacred Heart Diaries collection, comprised of the letters and journals of France’s well-born daughters in the final days of the Ancien Regime. The material, gathered by Candacis Vremont, exposes readers to the hidden desires of the time - a willful noblewoman and her mother’s groom, a virgin and her masked lover, a brazen temptress playing the repentant sinner, a betrayal come full circle and forbidden love.

For more titles in the Rococo Diaries series, visit http://www.annvremont.com.

Introduction

Born in France in 1768, Candacis Vremont had a difficult childhood. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to Candacis. Sixteen years later, her father took his life after bankrupting his estate. It was then that Candacis was sent to a small convent in the countryside. As the populace of France became more hostile to the French aristocracy, Candacis found herself surrounded by other young noblewomen sent to the convent by their parents to ensure their safety. Having lived an isolated life of titled poverty, Candacis was fascinated and appalled by the whispered stories of these privileged young women. In the spring of 1787, as France's troubles were worsening, Candacis wrote to her cousin, Philipe, with an unusual proposition. The letter is translated, below, from the original French.

Dearest Cousin,

I read with joy the success of your new publishing venture. You are truly a self-made man—your father, like mine, having left you to survive on your own wits. And how you flourish!

Despite knowing that you are a successful businessman, I have trouble accepting the allowance you have sent. Here, at the Sacred Heart, I have grown accustomed to earning my way. The sisters insist on it for all their charity cases. That is why, dear Philipe, I have a proposition for you. Enclosed is Beatrice. a literary pilfering from a diary carelessly left among bed linens I was collecting. If you think it suitable—publish it.

The content might startle you, but please, Philipe, do not judge me too harshly for writing such a story. I am still the same chaste creature who worshipped you as a small child, dogging your every footstep whenever our fathers visited one another. But the things that I see and hear at the Sacred Heart! Truly, the French people are right—the aristocracy has become too self indulgent, too sensual, too deluded to recognize its own hypocrisy.

Oh, Philipe, you would not believe your senses to see the passions that find their fruition among the young women at the Sacred Heart. I have heard their whispered confessions, seen the pages of their diaries and smuggled love letters. Whether their escapades are wrong—I do not judge. Perhaps all God's creatures are entitled to such pleasures. I only wish to tell their story, to provide an inside glimpse at the so-called nobility that seeks to hold its common citizens to a higher standard than it holds itself.

As ever,

Candacis

BEATRICE

March 12, 1787

Home two days and the count stands at one cup, three bowls and a serving plate smashed, but not a one of them in Mother’s presence. Maria keeps her silence. How I hate the two of them!

March 13, 1787

I spilled tea on Mother's favorite white lace tablecloth this afternoon but Mdm. Bilodeaux was taking lunch with us and the ever efficient Maria had the stain removed before Mother could remember to punish me. How Maria conspires against me!

March 15, 1787

I started my nervous, tearful confession to Mother this morning—the kind that always sets her head to aching—but before I could tell her I had lost my sapphire and diamond brooch, Maria placed it alongside my plate. How could she have found my hiding spot? I wish that I could send her away. But then I would lose him.

March 18, 1787

Finally! After services, Mother sent Maria to deliver a dinner invitation to Mdm. “Bilodeaux” (she of the famous lost love letters). I had to serve our tea again and in the fine porcelain pot Mother purchased from Monsieur Henri. Oh, the worry in Maria's eyes as she dragged her cheap wool cloak onto her shoulders and headed into the rain! She is in the kitchen now, sobbing as she cooks tonight's dinner. She knows. She must know! His scent covers me, the swing of my skirts send it swirling around me as I move through the house in a triumphant daze. The slightest shift of my gown causes ripples of pleasure that threaten to drive me into a maddened ecstasy as it brushes against my swollen and bruised flesh.

How long I desired this day, I cannot remember. Certainly not the first time Mother ordered Louis to take me into the pantry and punish me for having forgotten my parasol at church. What was I then? Twelve, almost thirteen? Father had been in his grave two months, no more.

I was furious and crushed that time, too angry to realize that he was trying to be gentle. Later, I would learn the force that he was capable of. But that first time, I fought in earnest.

Did it take months or years for my struggling to change? How long before, instead of fighting to be free from his blows, my exertions were aimed at pressing against him as hard as I could, rubbing myself against his thick muscles in mock fight, forcing him to encircle my upper body with one arm while I ground against him with each blow?

Fifteen perhaps? My form as filled out as it is now so that I was no longer a girl, older already than the Queen when she married.

And the thrill of the first time I felt him harden against me. “Soon, soon,” I had prayed as a delicious wetness spread between my legs. But he’d pushed me away. And then she came. First, into the house as a serving maid, then between us as his wife. Only loathing and a fearful longing filled his face when he looked at me after that. Still, I would have him. She would not separate us. And today, I have made him mine.

I was sitting on the stool next to the pantry when he came home. Mother was upstairs, her rage at my clumsiness spiking through her head and sending her to her room with another one of her headaches. Maria was still out. Just me and him. Pieces of the broken pottery rested in my lap as I sat, eyes downcast, waiting for him to say something. But he remained silent, only the light twitching of his thigh muscles showing his agitation, his anger. Embarrassed, wanting him, I felt my cheeks flush.

Grabbing me by the elbow, he jerked me to my feet. The larger shards of porcelain broke when they hit the ground and I stood there, mute, staring at them. Tears of frustration caused my vision to blur. Would he refuse? Mother would fire him. She would find another groom and send him away. He had threatened me with that the last time she had sent him to punish me. Pleading with me then to stop provoking her, his voice had alternated between hot passion and cold fury as I denied any willful wrongdoing.

Now he stood silent, waiting. Why? I felt my body begin to sway. More tears welled up. “Louis?”

“Enough, Beatrice!” He pulled me into the pantry, his free hand slamming the door behind us and reaching for the wooden board in one fluid motion.

A crate rested against the opposite wall and he dragged me towards it as I reached for the door, moaning in protest. “No, Louis.”

I could feel the heat building between my legs as he positioned my body over his legs. I tried to back up, but he used the paddle to block me. I pushed forward, the move pulling my bodice tight against my chest. The lace rubbed against my hardened nipples as my breasts threatened to escape. The rough scratch of cloth lace on my skin was a delicious torture and I strained forward, grinding my hips into him. “Please, Louis, do not do this,” I cried, tears already spilling down my cheeks as I turned to look up at him.

He pressed between my shoulder blades, forcing my head past the plane of his legs. My hips rose to meet the paddle as it bore down. “No,” I gasped, sliding forward over his thighs until he had to bring one arm underneath me to hold me still. I could feel the dig of his fingers into my shoulder, the press of one half of his chest against my shoulder blade.

The board fell again and I clenched my thighs, the inner muscles pulling tight and sending a wave of heat to flush my entire body. The hits became more frequent, my body falling into a rising rhythm of contractions.

“Stop. Louis. Do not. Stop.” I was on fire. I had lost count of how many times he had hit me. Far more than he ever had, but I still felt no release, just a building wetness as I ground against him. “No, Louis,” I pleaded with him, my voice filled with true hysteria. “Do not do this.”

He raised my skirt, finding this time no underskirts. I gasped in real shock as the cool air hit my skin. The smell of my excitement filled the small room and I heard him groan as he brought the board down onto my bare flesh, my innermost recesses exposed to his view at last. All pretense flew from me. Legs parting, I collapsed against him, trembling in anticipation of the next blow.

Louis jumped to his feet, sending me sprawling across the pantry floor. Anger flooded into me as I stood up. He was still holding the board, his fist clenched around its slim handle. Lips slightly parted, he struggled for breath while he stared wildly at me. I took a step toward him and he grabbed me, spinning me around and pushing me against the pantry door. I started to speak, but he shoved the board's handle between my teeth as if he were inserting a bit into one of Mother's horses.

With his other hand, he raised my skirt again, forcing my legs apart with his feet. Cold air rushed up, licking at my heated thighs, cooling the swollen folds of my lower lips. His thumbs, rough with calluses, parted the fleshy barrier and he thrust into me, flattening my body against the door. I cried out once in surprise against the board’s handle as his swollen manhood broke the fragile layer of tissue that had so long separated us. Another stroke out, slower, seemingly longer than his intrusive thrust, erased the pain. I pushed against him, followed the thick retreat of his manhood, hungry for more, and he rammed back into me.

The door rattled on its hinges as he pumped my body, filling me with his thick shaft again and again, the tip almost leaving my body with each stroke, battering the already swollen flesh at the entrance to my womanhood. My nipples grew impossibly hard, aching for his rough touch as he slammed into me.

“Mine,” I moaned against the handle, a hot tingle fanning out across my body as I began to shudder with the thrill of his touch. He pressed his face into my hair, murmuring my name over and over as triumph and his seed surged into me, our bodies locked in a deep grind as a final wave of ecstasy washed over us.

He couldn’t know what I was saying behind the makeshift bit. It was enough that I knew.

“Mine at last.”

March 19, 1787

That so much pleasure could be mine so suddenly! And at the expense and pain of that cow wife of his, no less. I had her draw a bath for me before dinner although I was loath to lose the smell of him from my skin. She came into my room, carrying the water, her face puffy from the tears she had cried. I stripped in front of her as she filled the wash tub as I always did. This time, I ran my hands over my bruised body, stopping to examine each thumb print he had left upon me. The smell of our lust still hung ripe in the air around me and I passed near her, giving her the last scent of her husband’s perfume that she would ever have. I know I should have felt some pity, shame even, as she started to cry anew. But I couldn’t. She was the usurper! I had only claimed what was always mine, what never should have been lost to station or wealth.

I made her stay as I stepped into the water, reading clearly that she wanted to flee. I ordered her to wash my back. Let her touch me, I thought. Let her touch the flesh that he has touched, that still burns hot with the memory of him! And, meek cow that she is, she did.

She took the cloth lightly to my back and I turned to look at her, grabbing my breasts as I did so. “My breasts are so swollen, Maria,” I said. “Why is that?” She only shook her head and stared down into the shallow water of the tub as her hands mindlessly moved over my back and arms.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to shrug the tension from them. “Everything is so tight today,” I continued. “I do not understand.”

She sobbed then and I could only imagine how she would have cried had she been on the other side of the door as Louis rode my body. How, hearing the banging and moaning, she might have opened the door. The idea of her watching brought my nipples to a peak and I leaned back against her touch, letting her see my excitement. Her attempt to avoid my gaze was miscalculated, taking her eyes to the very center of the issue!

Spreading my legs, I took the washcloth from her and wiped between my lower lips, letting my hand linger there, the strip of cloth providing no barrier to the pressure of my touch over that sensitive dangle of flesh that had throbbed with the molten pulse of the very earth with Louis inside me.

“I m-must s-set the t-table!” she stuttered and backed away from the tub. She stumbled from the room, her gaze frozen on me as my hands moved on to explore my thighs, the soft swell of my stomach and then my heavy breasts with nipples that had beaded a dark salmon.

“By all means, Maria,” I said, cooing at her like the doves she watched outside the kitchen window. “I am unusually hungry tonight.”

Ah, but the hunger had nothing to do with food. I wanted Louis again. I couldn’t wait. I wanted to see the passion in his face this time, not feel it from behind! And so I finished my bath and floated around the room, dressing myself, mismatching buttons because my fingers trembled with need—the need to be touched and to touch him, to wrap my hands around the marvelous circumference of his manhood, knowing that its swollen state was my doing…and Maria’s undoing.

At the dinner table, I was of no use in conversation…of no use at all. Maria hovered like a hawk, trying no doubt to avoid Mother sending me to Louis for another punishment. Poor thing, she didn’t understand. The pretense was no longer needed. I could call to him directly, express my need to humble my body before him without the sham of disobedience. How could she not know that I only had to arch my back and spread my legs and he would answer in turn? Thrust for thrust!

Dinner was with Mdm. “Bilodeaux” in attendance. I suffered her in good humor, silently musing over the brief notoriety she had gained two seasons ago with a few misplaced love letters to a much younger cavalier.

When dessert was at last cleared from the table, I made my apologies and returned to my room, leaving Mother and Mdm. Bilodeaux to their prayer books. Locking my door, I stripped and crawled onto the bed, rolled on it, stretching my limbs this way and that, imagining Louis on top of me. Catching sight of my body in the cheval mirror, I jumped up and dragged it to the foot of my bed. Returning to the mattress, I rested on my knees and leaned back, examining the upward push of my breasts and the way my nipples stiffened with excitement.

My examination continued downward, and I parted my lower lips, letting my fingers play over the button of flesh at the top. I pulled and stroked at it until the light cream that dampened the folds of my womanhood thickened and coated my fingers. Gently, I probed at the opening, tried to gauge how many of my slick fingers were needed to equal his rod. Surely, the head had been bigger than all five of my fingertips pressed together.

I moaned at the thought, startling myself and releasing a flood of worry that Mother might be out in the hall, however unlikely. No, if Our Lady of Letters had departed, Mother would already be in her chambers on the opposite side of the floor. Not once that I can remember has she entered my room since father died.

Sweet isolation! Once I had hated it, now it served a purpose. Quickly I tossed a light robe around myself. The sheer lace and chiffon were meant to cover more substantial cloth and I could see my body, every curve, every inch of impassioned flesh, through the fabric. Opening my door, I poked just my head into the hall outside. The way to the servants’ stairs was clear and I dashed down the hall to them—going up, not down.

At the top landing of the stairs, I opened the small window that looks onto the back courtyard. I could see that the lanterns were still lit in the stable despite the late hour. Was he avoiding Maria? Drinking? He did so, I knew, after my punishments. Was he doing so again?

From further down the stairwell, I could hear the sound of Maria doing the dishes and cleaning up the rest of the kitchen. It was a muted, somber sound, and the plain, black livery mother demanded the servants wear since father’s passing took on a new meaning in my imagination. I could see Maria in my mind’s eye, clothed in the color of death—the death of her marriage, of his tolerance, of my tolerance, of her presence, of the barrier between us that she had been...but no longer would be.

Pressing my upper body against the window, I watched for Louis to leave the stables. Would he look up? He had to. Not just because it was his nature to look over the house before he entered for the evening, but because I willed him to. My heart began to beat faster, pounding against my ribcage when I saw him barring the stable doors for the night. In the low light of evening, I stared at his back, watched the ripple of muscles as he lifted the heavy slat of wood and set it in place. He turned, his gaze going first to the kitchen entrance to the house and then traveling higher.

He stopped at the second floor, his attention focused on the window opposite my bedroom door. So different the view must be now that he’d sunk his shaft deep into me, felt me squirming in delight along its length!

Higher! I willed him, almost tapped at the window to make sure he would not miss me. But I didn’t need to. His gaze caught mine a heartbeat later, his dark brows rising in inquiry. I brought my hands to the front edges of my robe in answer, parting them slowly to reveal my breasts to him.

Louis looked around at the yard—I imagine to make sure no one was watching our dirty little exchange. How I wanted someone to see it even though I half-feared the world’s hypocrisy and retribution should they find out. (I pictured myself like Mdm. “Bilodeaux,” confined to the company of women such as my mother with their pretentious attempts at reforming my soul.)

I didn’t let the fear stop me. I pulled the robe’s edges farther apart and cupped my breasts, offering the tender tips to Louis like the rare delicacies they are.

And then I backed away from the window and waited.

He didn’t make me wait long. I heard the kitchen door open and close, heard Maria offer a tentative greeting, heard her voice falter as he moved past her to the staircase.

“Where are you going?” she asked him. He mumbled a reply, something too low, too slurred with liquor or passion for me to make out from where I waited two floors up. She offered to do it for him and his voice sharpened to a stern rejection.

I counted his footsteps, realized he was taking the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding in time with each fall of his boot on the risers. Quickly, I pulled my robe back together as I decided to make him work for another glimpse of my bare skin.

“Beatrice…”

There was a question in his tone, in the way he said my name. I think it was my sanity—or his own—that he was unsure of.

“Louis,” I answered, my voice rumbling with the need that had grown monstrous over the last few hours.

Below us, everything went quiet. My heart sang at the silence. It was as if the world had stopped for us and she would hear. Maria would hear my passionate moans. If she dared venture onto the stairs, she would hear the slap of our bodies against one another, hear him call my name.

But the silence did not thrill him as it thrilled me.

“Your mother—”

“You know her, Louis,” I answered, my voice shrilling at his possible retreat. “She is in bed, asleep or with a dozen pillows propped around her head. We might as well be the only two people in the world.”

I dropped my robe and moved to him. “We are the only two people in the world, Louis.”

“Saints! I want…” he started.

I rubbed my breasts against his broad chest, ran my hands up his arms. “What do you want, Louis?”

When he only stood there, like a deer that had just caught the scent of a predator, I took his limp hand and shoved it between my legs.

“Is this what you want?” He nodded his head, his gaze awakening with lust. “Then tell me,” I said and started to move away.

He grabbed me, jerked my body closer and shoved his hands deeper into the pocket between my thighs. “I want you, Beatrice, this tight…”

“Tight what?” I urged him to answer, flexing the muscles that his fingertips only dared to graze against. I knew nothing of the vernacular that he used. There must be other names for these pleasures points, for the honey pot so wet from the mere anticipation of his touch. I wanted to know what they were, hear them roll off his tongue, watch the shock spread across his face as I repeated them in turn!

“This tight pussy,” he moaned and pushed a finger deep into me.

I leaned my head back, thrusting my breasts up as I stood on tiptoe to ease the penetration of his hand inside me. “Pussy,” I said, echoing all the passion his voice had held. “You are making it wet, so wet.”

I pressed my palm against the front of his breeches. “And what is this to my pussy?” I asked, squeezing its firmness for extra emphasis.

“My cock.” He panted his answer, his hand sliding over my button.

“Oh,” I gasped. “And that?”

He gave the tip a rough tug that had me panting in unison with his heavily drawn breaths.

“Your clit,” he answered.

“Those are not nice words,” I said, feigning indignation.

Pulling me closer, he shoved several of his thick fingers into me, his coarse evening beard scratching my throat and cheek as he nuzzled my ear. “Because you are a dirty whore,” he answered.

And he meant it! I could hear the hate in his voice, the shame. But nothing spoke as loudly as his lust. It rumbled in his chest, rushed out hot against my neck. He meant it, but he didn’t mind because I was his dirty whore.

“Yes,” I moaned and pumped against his fingers, my pussy jealous for his cock. “A whore, a bad little whore. And what are you going to do to me?”

“Fuck you,” he groaned, pushing me hard against the wall. He tugged at his pants, freeing his cock from its unbearable confinement. Its tip bulged, the soft twilight that filtered through the window giving just enough illumination to reveal the translucent beads of his desire pearling in the slit. My own slit was already a flood of need and I arched my body, trying to raise my pussy high enough that he could spear me with his cock.

I felt his hands curve beneath my bottom and he lifted me, my back sliding up against the wall. I spread my legs, wrapped them around his waist and he brought me down onto his shaft with a vicious tug that had me squeezing the air from him with my thighs.

“Yes, fuck me,” I begged, then louder, that Maria might hear his betrayal. “Fuck me, Louis, fuck me!”

The landing was narrow and the ceiling of the third floor low. I raised my arms above my head, placing my palms flat against the ceiling. My legs I thrust out until the soles of my feet met the wall, reveling in the control and penetration the tight space allowed.

His fingers bit into the flesh of my bottom, the calloused tips carelessly rubbing against my nether hole as he lifted me up and down the length of his shaft. Craning his head, he caught one of my breasts in his mouth and sucked at the nipple, pulling it hard, stretching the tip and then biting the pale flesh surrounding it hard enough to mark me. (Ah, what will she think of those marks when she sees them!)

The thick flesh of my pussy swelled from the relentless assault of his cock against and inside me. I cried out, nearly screaming as the tips of his fingers once again found the puckered hole hidden between the half globes of my bottom.

“Yes, hold me like that!” I panted. I squirmed against him, trying desperately to bury his cock deeper and to pull his fingertips into that other hole even as my body recoiled in shock. I knew that if any part of his hand penetrated me there, my body would burst.

He was grunting, sucking at my breasts like some newly birthed pig, noisy, greedy, his spit mingling with the light layer of perspiration that covered my throat and chest and the heavy drip of sweat from his forehead.

“Like that!” I demanded again, trying to clamp down on his finger as it strayed closer to the hole.

“You would fling us into hell,” he accused, letting go only to grab me by the waist.

“Afraid of damnation now?” I laughed and he slammed me against the wall once in warning. I laughed at him again and he threaded one hand through my hair, pulling me away from him and forcing me onto the landing on my hands and knees. I looked down the stairwell and saw candlelight still flickering up from the kitchen.

“Fuck me, Louis,” I hissed and reached behind me to spread my pussy lips for him.

His hands closed around my hips like a vise and he rammed his cock into me, my head bouncing once against the banister from the force.

“Again!” I commanded him.

He obeyed, leaning as he pumped his cock into me. His fingers, curled like meaty hooks, pulled at my breast, pinching the nipple to a blood-red peak. With my opposite hand on the floor, I braced one shoulder against the banister and began to rub my clit in time to the deep thrusts of his cock inside me.

“Yes.” I panted my pleasure down the stairwell, moaning and groaning to Maria’s torment. “That feels so good, Louis. Sooooo good.”

My nails grazed the skin of the two swollen sacs that hung from his cock and he shuddered against me, the tremble of it filling my pussy. “I feel like I am on fire, Louis.”

Just as that heat began to blaze across my entire body, I felt his seed ripple through his engorged cock, felt the muscles at its base twitch inside me.

“I am coming,” he bit out, his voice and body exhausted as he yelled it again. “I am coming, Beatrice.”

That was the final thing he said to me last night. His body locked mid-thrust, shooting so much of his seed into me that it spilled down my thighs before he even withdrew.

Withdraw he did. Nothing sweet or lingering. There was no need for tenderness, after all, was there? Not for such a dirty little whore. No, enough that he had fucked me like I wanted him to. When he was done, he picked his pants up from the landing and left, his face a storm cloud of confusion.

Me, I scooted down the stairs and crawled to my room. I pulled myself up onto the bed where I let my fingers explore the angry flesh of my pussy. How I wished it was daylight so that I could see the puffed red tissue, see the white pearls of his seed still dripping from me. I spread my fingers in the delicious mess, ran them over my clit and down along the crack of my bottom to that other hole to gently explore its edges, more fire bursting from my center as I probed deeper.

And that is how Maria found me this morning, my hand still buried between my legs, my body rank with the sweat and seed of her beloved husband, my lover.

March 22, 1787

She must have threatened him. How else can his careful avoidance of the house be explained? That he didn’t want me? Impossible! I saw in his eyes how his desire still burns. And I have caught him looking up at my window each night since. But he stays down in the stables!

Yet she could only keep him from me for so long, now that we’d been together. Duplicity or fate was bound to reunite us. Which it was, I still cannot say. Did I mean to cut Mother’s finger at tea this evening or was it really an accident?

She was reaching for the bread, which was alongside a bar of butter. And I was reaching for the butter…with the saw-toothed knife Maria had used to cut the bread. Looking out the window, I was thinking of Louis and didn’t realize which knife I was holding until I heard Mother’s bloodless gasp.

The lace tablecloth, on the other hand—not bloodless at all. Who would think that one bony little finger could channel so much blood? Even now, I wonder whether she sent me to the room, to him, because of her finger or the precious scrap of fabric.

That she sent me, of course, is all that really matters. I had to bite down on my tongue to keep the tears of joy and laughter from rolling down my cheeks. Maria raced into the room, begging forgiveness for my clumsiness. Even telling Mother that it was sinful to send me for a beating! Sinful, yes, what would go on in that room, what had already gone on in that room. Still, I would wager my opal earrings that Maria will be on bended knee tonight at church praying that her lie be forgiven while I lounge in my bed, still playing with the wet field of today’s lust.

His gaze was wide, frightened even, when he came in from the stables, Maria having been sent to fetch him. He smelled of sweat and horseflesh, but it only made me hotter for him.

“Maria says you cut your mother?”

Maria was standing in the kitchen, watching us, and he glanced back over his shoulder at her. She didn’t look away and he turned back to me.

“It was an accident,” I told him, my voice trembling. How different from the last time I had sat on that wobbly stool with the broken pottery resting on my skirts. I had feigned being innocent then, now I truly was. But still I craved his punishment. I realized I had missed the feel of the board against my flesh, of his forced dominance of my body when he otherwise would shrink from his own desires.

“This can be no accident, Beatrice.”

“It is,” I protested. “I…I was thinking of you.” I looked at Maria as I said this, saw her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. Louis stiffened, his body freezing half an instant before he would have looked back at her.

I hardened my tone, wiped any trace of timidity or fear from it. “But I am ready for my punishment despite such innocence.”

His nostrils flared at that, his sensuous mouth pressing into a hard line. “You dare claim any kind of innocence?”

“Yes.” So sweet was my voice, as sweet as the honey that pooled between my legs. He must have smelled my excitement, too, for his stance softened. “Look at me, Louis,” I entreated, still sweet, still light with youth. “I am just a girl, barely eighteen years on this earth.”

I raised my hand and gestured around the room. “This house and the convent are all I know of the world. Mother, the sisters and girls at Sacred Heart, you and Maria, Mdm. ‘Bilodeaux’—these are the only people I know.”

I let my gaze play over his safely cloistered cock, its swelling already evident, and then raised my head to stare him down. “If I have lost any claim to innocence, where, among so few people and places, should blame be placed?”

His arm shot out, pushing the door to the pantry open. “Get inside!”

“Louis, no!” Maria moved across the kitchen, her hand extended as if its frail strength could stop him. “Do not do this.”

Ah, my own entreaties thrown back at him in his wife’s voice. No, Louis, do not. Stop. Do not stop, Louis. Yes, that is what I had meant all along, perhaps even that first day when I thought my struggles real. And I had made him immune against such pleas. What were her tears and threats compared to the pleasures my body offered him?

I was still sitting on the stool and he grabbed me by my upper arm, pulling me to my feet. She reached us before he could shove me into the room and I let each of them tug at me. I tugged back, feeling my bodice stretch as husband and wife yanked at a sleeve. The lace binding loosened and I smiled in anticipation of a breast popping free as Louis tried to drag me into the pantry and ravish me while Maria tried to stop him.

He let go of a sudden and I crashed against Maria, my full breasts pressing against her smaller ones. Our faces came so close I could have kissed her on the mouth, let my tongue play over her thin lips before charging beyond the pearl gates of her teeth. She must have seen some of my intent written across my face. She scrambled away, but not before Louis caught her. She paled beneath his tight grip while I thrilled at the raw passion that blazed across his features. He would not let her come between us again.

“Get inside,” he repeated, not looking at me, knowing innately that I would obey, that my whole body was shaking with the need to obey.

He released Maria and dismissed her with a stern command to return to the kitchen. He closed the pantry door and dragged a heavy sack of flour against it, then looked around the room, measuring and discarding potential implements of pain and pleasure.

“Take your clothes off,” he ordered.

I started stripping, stopping every now and then as I watched him arrange the crates in the room. Each time he would urge me on in my disrobing with an enraged gaze that promised a painful retribution. At last, I was naked in front of him, my hands across my breasts as I tried to calm my excitement.

He had made a rough set of steps with the crates, one serving as the bottom step and two more stacked together to form a top step or platform. Grabbing the paddle from next to the door, he tapped the lower crate.

“On your knees, Beatrice.”

As I moved to comply, he shoved me forward and pressed my chest against the top platform. Slamming the paddle down next to my head, he grabbed my arms and pulled them back until one of his large hands encircled both my wrists. He fished a loop of leather lacing from his pants and bound my hands together.

“What—”

“Quiet!”

God help me, a fresh burst of cream coated my pussy at his barked command. I shut my mouth only to have him pry it back open when he forced his belt between my teeth. Only my moans were tolerated, his breathing growing heavier with each delighted squirm of my body as I waited to find out what he would do next.

Keeping one hand on the belt’s ends, he twisted the strap until I was forced to look back at him. His pants fell to his ankles and his cock, purpled with his readiness, pulsing in the air like a third arm. He stroked it a few times, my mouth and the leather between my teeth growing wet as I watched his hand sliding over his shaft. I squirmed some more, damning the string that kept my hands from touching him or relieving my own need.

Releasing his cock, he picked the paddle back up and delivered the first blow to my bottom. The wood of the crate, unsanded, scraped at my breasts as the power of his arm pushed me across the crude platform’s surface. Again he hit me, my bottom surely purpling to match his swollen cock. I jerked, pain and pleasure combining until my pussy was a mad throb of need.

Another hit and frustrated tears rolled down my cheeks. Yes. More, please. Take the gag from my mouth so that I can beg you for more, Louis. Unbind my hands so that I may grovel with them clasped around your ankles!

Another hit and the dam broke, my body thrashing violently as my pussy constricted with pleasure. He dropped the paddle and took a belt end in each hand, pulling my head back as he kicked my legs to the sides of the first crate, stretching my pussy tight before he rammed his cock into me. Louis worked the ma