The Secret Pearl(2)

The gentleman removed his top hat and cloak and saw her eyes move over his face and along the ugly scar that began at the corner of his left eye, slashed across his cheek to the corner of his mouth and on down to his chin. He felt all his ugliness, with his near-black unruly hair, his dark eyes, his great aquiline nose. And it angered him to feel ugly in the eyes of a common whore.

He strode across the room, unbuttoned her pale gray cloak, which she had made no move to take off herself, and threw it aside.

Surprisingly, she wore a blue silk dress beneath it, long-sleeved, modestly low at the bosom, high-waisted, unadorned. But the dress, though clean, was limp and creased. A gift from a satisfied customer some weeks before and worn nightly ever since, he guessed.

Her chin lifted an inch. She watched him steadily.

“Take your clothes off,” he said, unnerved by her quietness, by her differentness from all the whores he had known in his youth and during his years in the army. He seated himself on a hard-backed chair beside the empty fireplace and watched her with narrowed eyes.

She did not move for a few moments, but then she began to undress, folding each garment as she removed it and setting it on the floor beside her. She was no longer watching him, but kept her eyes on what she was doing. Only when she came to her chemise, her last remaining garment, did she hesitate, her eyes on the floor at her feet. But she removed that too, drawing it up over her head, folding it as she had done her other garments, and dropping it to the top of the pile.

She set her arms loosely at her sides and looked at him again, her eyes steady and expressionless, as they had been before.

She was too thin. Far too thin. And yet there was something about the long slimness of her legs, about the shape of her hips and the too-small waist, about the high firm breasts that stirred the gentleman who watched her. For the first time he was glad of his decision to engage her services. It had been a long time.

“Unpin your hair,” he told her.

And she lifted thin arms to do so and bent to set the pins carefully beside the pile of her clothes. Her hair fell over her shoulders and about her face and halfway down her back when she straightened again. Clean, lifeless hair, not red, not blond. She lifted a hand to remove one strand from her mouth, her eyes steady on his.

He felt a surging of lust.

“Lie down on the bed,” he told her as he got to his feet and began to undress himself.

She folded the bedclothes back neatly and lay on one side of the bed, her legs together, her arms at her sides, her palms against the mattress. She did not cover herself. She turned her head to one side and watched him.

He undressed completely. He scorned to try to hide himself from a whore, to try to hide the purple and disfiguring marks of the wounds on his left side and left leg, which even in a mirror made him grimace with distaste, and which must repel any stranger not expecting them. Her eyes moved down to them and then returned calmly to his face.

She had courage, this whore. Or perhaps she could not afford to lose even the most repulsive of customers before she had earned her pay.

He was angry. Angry with himself for returning to whoring, something he had given up years before. Angry that he felt self-conscious and ashamed with a prostitute. And angry with her for being so much in control of her feelings that she would not even show her revulsion at his appearance. If she had done so, he could have used her accordingly.

And the thought revolted him and angered him further.

He leaned across her and took her by the upper arms, moving her so that she lay across the bed instead of along it. He grasped her hips and drew her forward until her knees bent over the side of the bed and her feet rested on the floor.

He slid his palms between her thighs and spread her legs wide. He pushed them wider with his knees, bending his legs so that they rested against the side of the bed. And he spread his fingers across the tops of her legs and opened her with his thumbs.

Her eyes were lowered, watching what he did.

He positioned himself and mounted her with one sharp deep thrust.

He heard the sound of shock deep in her throat and watched her bite down on both lips at once and shut her eyes very tightly. He felt all her muscles tense in self-defense. And he waited, standing above her, buried deep in her, watching her with hooded eyes, until the breath came vibrating out of her and she imposed relaxation on her muscles. Her eyes were fixed on his.

He slid his hands beneath her, holding her steady above the mattress as he leaned over her and took the pleasure for which he had employed her. She remained still and relaxed as he moved swiftly and deeply in her, her arms spread across the bed at her sides, her eyes wandering over his facial scar and looking back up into his. Once she looked down to watch what he did to her. Her hair was spread across the mattress to one side of her, where he had moved her across the bed.