Chloe in the Conservatory

The music reached the glass in thin bright pieces, violins and talk and the scrape of dancing shoes on a floor I had already left. I stood among the orange trees in the conservatory of a Hertfordshire house stuffed for the night with every family who wished to be seen, late spring and the lamps on the terrace throwing a wet gold across the panes. I was thirty-one and I had given no one my family name, not at supper and not in the set, because I had not come to hear Hartwell passed from mouth to mouth with the rest of the titles. I had come for a woman I had only watched until now. Chloe Thomas came through the door with her colour high and her gloves still on, twenty-four years old and done with being walked out as a merchant’s daughter for the inspection of men who wanted land or money or both. She saw me and did not pretend surprise. She shut the door with her hip and let the ball become a rumour again.

“I hoped it would be empty,” she said, and the smile that went with it was already a test. She moved to the nearest tub and ran a gloved finger along a dark leaf, watching me over it. “I left the set because I was tired of being paraded. You look as if you left it for something less respectable. I am trying to decide if you are serious.”

I did not offer her a name. I crossed the tiles and took her wrist with enough claim that her pulse had to answer under my thumb. I turned her so the trees stood between our bodies and the glass that looked toward the lawn, and I put my other hand at her waist where the silk still held the heat of dancing.

“I am serious,” I said. “A man who meant to send you back would have opened that door again.”

She laughed under her breath and lifted her face as if she might kiss me and then did not, leaving the last inch for me to take. I took it. Her mouth opened at once, wine and warmth, and when I gathered her skirt in my fist she made a noise into the kiss that had nothing of refusal in it. My hand found the split of her drawers and the soft hair beneath and then the slick heat of her cunt, already wet, as if the decision had been made before she left the floor. I dragged two fingers along her and felt her knees consider their job. She gripped the front of my coat.

“Someone will come through that door,” she said, and she did not take my wrist away.

“Then you will keep your voice in your throat,” I told her, and I pushed those fingers into her, slow enough that she would feel every inch of the stretch. She bit my lower lip instead of crying out, and I felt her cunt close around my fingers as if it had been waiting for something less polite than a dance.

---

I worked her that way until her breath broke against my mouth, and then I went to my knees on the warm tiles because that was the answer her tease had asked for. She looked down at me with her lips parted and her eyes dark. She put her hand in my hair instead of telling me to get up, and the permission in it ran through me hotter than the wine. I pushed the silk higher and drew her drawers aside and put my mouth on her cunt. The first taste of her was salt and heat. I licked her open, parting her with my tongue, then with the flat of it against the swollen bud of her, and her fingers tightened until it hurt in a way I liked.

She stood with her weight on me and on the rim of the tub, and when I sucked she made a sound she tried to swallow and failed. The music went on beyond the glass. A laugh rose from the terrace and fell away again, ordinary as weather.

“You cannot,” she whispered, and then her voice frayed into something hungrier. “Do not stop. If you are going to be this kind of man, be him.”

I did not stop. I held her hip with one hand and kept two fingers in her with the other, curling them while I licked, and I felt the tremor start in her thighs and travel up through the silk. Chloe’s head tipped back and the undone pin in her hair finally gave, and a dark coil fell against her throat. I sucked harder and fucked her with my fingers in a rhythm that had nothing of ballrooms in it, and she came standing, her cunt clutching, a broken noise leaving her that she pressed into her own wrist. I kept my mouth on her through it until her knees truly failed and I had to hold her up by the hips, licking the last of it from her while she shook.

She looked down at me as if she had not expected to be believed. I stood, my mouth wet with her, and I let her see it.

“You are either a fool or you meant that,” she said, and there was a tremor of humour in it, and something more exposed underneath.

“I meant it,” I said. “You asked me to show you. That is what showing looks like.”

---

Her hands were already at the front of my breeches. She was still unsteady and she still went to her knees on the tiles without being asked. She opened the cloth and took my cock out, thick and hard from the taste of her. She did not flinch from being seen wanting her this crudely. She put her mouth on the head and took me in, wet and hot, and I had to set my jaw not to shove to the root on the first stroke. She sucked with a filthy patience, tongue working the underside, and when I set my hand in her hair she made a sound of agreement around me and let me guide the depth.

“Look at me,” I said, and she did, eyes up, mouth stretched around the girth of me, and I pushed further until I felt the give of her throat. She took it. Her eyes watered and she did not pull off. I fucked her throat in short strokes, the wet sound of it louder than I should have allowed with the house so near, and she held my thighs and let me use her mouth. Spit ran down her chin and spotted the silk at her breast. I pulled back enough for her to breathe and she gasped, a raw little inhale, and went down again of her own will, taking me until her nose pressed my belly.

I held her there a moment longer than kindness required, feeling her throat work around me, and then I pulled out before I spent because I was not finished with the rest of her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and her eyes were bright and not at all sorry. A drop of spit still shone at the corner of her lip. I thumbed it away and she caught my thumb between her teeth, a small wicked pressure, and let it go.

“If that was meant to shock me,” she said, “you will have to try harder. I did not leave the set to be treated like glass.”

I lifted her to her feet. Her legs were not steady. Mine were not much better.

---

I turned her to the glass. The terrace lay beyond it, lamps and pale stone, and further out the dark of the lawn. I put her hands on the iron frame, drew her skirts up over her hips, and kicked her feet apart until she was open for me in the gold wash of the terrace light. I dragged the head of my cock along her soaked cunt and she pushed back onto it herself, taking me to the root in one greedy slide that punched the air out of both of us. I held her there, buried, my mouth at her ear, my chest flush to the damp silk of her back.

“They can see the shape of us if they look,” I said. “Tell me to stop and I will walk you back to the set with your hair as it is and no one the wiser except us.”

She shook her head. Her fingers tightened on the iron. “Do not dare stop. I did not come in here to be careful, and I do not want a man who gets careful now.”

I fucked her then, deep and steady, the wet sound of it hidden poorly by the trees, her cunt gripping me as if it meant to keep me. Shadows moved on the terrace. Two gentlemen and a woman in pale silk came along the flags, talking, close enough that their voices reached us through the glass. Chloe’s breath hitched. I felt her get wetter around me, filthy with the risk, and I did not slow. I reached around and found her clit and rubbed it in time with my thrusts, and she bit her own glove to keep from making a sound the walkers could claim. They paused to remark on the orange blossom, one of the men laughing at something the woman said.

I drove into her harder, and she came in a long shaking clench, silent and vicious, her cunt milking my cock while they stood ten yards away. I held still through it, fully seated, feeling every pulse of her, and when the walkers moved on I kissed the damp hair at her nape and did not pull out. Her forehead rested against the glass, leaving a small fog where her mouth had been.

“You liked that they were there,” I said.

“I liked that we did not stop,” she answered, and her voice had gone rough. “Do not make it pretty. I wanted them close. I wanted you not to care.”

---

There was a bench further in, painted iron and a forgotten cushion. I drew out of her and she made a sound of loss that I felt in my spine, her skirts still rucked and her thighs shining. I sat and pulled her into my lap facing me, her knees bracketing my hips, silk a ruin around us, and for a moment I only looked at her face because I wanted the person as much as the rest. She took my cock in her hand and put it back inside herself, sinking down with her forehead against mine, and we only breathed, joined. Then she began to ride me, not shy, using me.

I gripped her ass and took over the rhythm, fucking up into her, and I spat on my thumb and pressed it against the tight furl of her arse. She gasped. She did not tell me no. I worked the thumb in slowly while I filled her cunt, and her mouth opened on a silent cry. She was so wet it ran down my balls.

“Chloe,” I said, still inside her, and I felt her whole body go still around my cock.

She stared at me. I had never been given her name. I had used it anyway, and the knowledge of that sat between us hotter than the rest. Her hands came up to my shoulders.

“How do you know that,” she said, her voice shorter. “I never told you. I did not give you that.”

I fucked her through the question, thumb in her arse, cock in her cunt, and I did not answer it. She could have climbed off. She moved on me instead, chasing it, angry and wet and unwilling to stop for the sake of a secret. I rubbed her clit with my other hand and she came apart on my cock with a broken moan she buried in my shoulder, her arse clenching on my thumb, her cunt pulsing so hard I nearly followed her over. I held her through it and kept my name to myself, my mouth against her hair, while she shook and swore softly into the wool of my coat.

“It was not luck that you found me,” I said. “Do not tell yourself it was.”

Her eyes flashed when she lifted her head. She would not sit still for being called lucky, even as the last of the climax left her trembling in my lap, still full of me, still choosing not to leave.

---

I lifted her off me before I spent, because I wanted the last of it where I could see it. She made a protesting sound, empty and slick, and I stood her between my knees and took my cock in my hand, wet with her, the head dark and shining. I told her to open her mouth, and she did it without a joke this time, lips parted, eyes on mine. I stroked myself twice and came on her tongue, thick ropes of it, and she held still and took it, some of it spilling over her lower lip until I pushed it back in with my thumb. She swallowed what she could and left the rest shining there, and she looked up at me as if she were still waiting for the name I would not give.

“Who are you,” she said.

“A man who already knew what you were going to do when you left the floor,” I said. “That is all you get tonight.”

She stood. She righted her skirts as well as a woman could when she had been fucked standing and sitting and against glass, and she put her gloves back on as if that would make her decent, though nothing about her mouth looked decent. I tucked myself away. The door had not opened. The music went on in its bright ignorance. We had a minute, perhaps two, before some couple looking for air would blunder in and ruin her in the ordinary way, and both of us knew the arithmetic of that.

“You said my name while you were still in me,” she said. “I understand the meeting was not chance. I will not be grateful for being chosen like a thing on a list. I wanted to be taken without a contract, and you have done that, and I still do not know what you are.”

I almost told her. I kissed her mouth instead, tasting myself there, and I let her go to the door with no promise in my hands. She walked out of the conservatory with my spend still in her mouth, back toward the dancing and the men who thought they were inspecting her. Someone serious already knew her name, and she wanted him again without knowing what he was. I stayed among the orange trees until I could no longer hear her shoes. She did not yet know what it would cost when the next man already held one.