Darker Passions: Dracula Page 4

  Behind her, in the doorway, stood a severe-looking couple, servants no doubt, from their drab attire. I wondered if in fact this was the famous Hodge and his wife Verna, who had been in the employ of my rich friend's family since she was a child and had remained since her parents were accidently killed on a trip to India several years before. Whether they were common household help or in fact kind folk who nurtured Lucy, I knew not. What I did know was that this emotional display in front of them was unbecoming.

  "Lucy," I said, taking her firmly by the shoulders. I would have spoken sternly, but the girl has such a mischievous look about her, the twinkling in her violet eyes, an impish grim; she never ceases to bring a smile to my face. Instead, I told her sincerely, "It's wonderful to see you as well."

  "Oh, Mina, you aren't embarrassed, are you?"

  Even as she said it, I felt my face color.

  "Come, you silly goose." Her arm circled my waist, snaring it almost, and hip knocking against hip, she guided me to the front door.

  "Mina, you've heard me speak of Hodge and Verna. They've been like parents to me, tutoring me in the ways of the world."

  Hodge was a lean man, nearly hairless, and bespectacled.

  His wife was equally slim, with greying hair pulled back severely into a bun. The ways of the world? I wondered what these two cross-looking people could teach Lucy. I cannot say why, but I distinctly felt jealousy coming towards me from both of them.

  After the introductions, Lucy dragged me into the parlor, unbuttoning my jacket en route as I unpinned my hat—Verna took both away, reluctantly leaving the room, it seemed to me. Once we were alone, I seated in the winged armchair and Lucy on the footstool before me, our knees touching, her hands clutching mine, she said, "Mina. You are a woman now, while I'm still a girl. Tell me, what is it like to be married?"

  Married. That is a word to ponder. It is certainly not the joyous state I had anticipated. "Jonathan is a decent man," I said carefully. "A good provider."

  Lucy giggled and jumped up to kiss me. "Oh Mina, you can't know how funny you are! I'm hardly interested in his business acumen. I mean in the bedroom, of course."

  My friend Lucy had always been more than forthright. As girls at the finishing school for young ladies where we met, Lucy had never ceased to find trouble for herself, including the headmistresses' paddle against her backside at regular intervals. All because of her quick tongue that refused to bow to convention. The girl had not a tactful bone in her body and the constantly reddened state of her fanny attested to that.

  But Lucy was a dear and it was her directness that appealed to me. Besides, we had confided in one another it seemed like all our lives; I saw no reason to hide anything from her now.

  "Well, you're to the point as always. What would you like to know?"

  "Does he fuck well?"

  "Lucy! Your language is shocking. Wherever did you learn to talk that way?"

  "Why, from Hodge and Verna, of course."

  These two obviously had not been a good influence. "You must not speak like this in public. What if anyone would hear you?"

  "But I'm not in public. I'm in private. Alone with you."

  With that she leaped up again and snuggled onto the seat next to me. Both of our bodies did not fit into the confined space so she draped her leg over mine and slid her arm behind my shoulders. With her free hand, she played with the pearl buttons down the front of my silk blouse.

  "Is it warm in here?" I asked, feeling flushed.

  "Ummm... Now, Mina, share your secrets with me. How is Jonathan as a lover?"

  Staring into those exquisite Iris-colored eyes, I knew I could only tell her the truth. "Wanting."

  "In what way?"

  "He does all the right things, if you know what I mean, and yet..."

  "The pond does not ripple."

  We both laughed until tears came to our eyes.

  "Oh, Mina, I've missed you," she said, kissing me again on the lips, hers sweet and fleshy.

  Suddenly she jumped up. "Come along. You must be tired and

  dirty from your trip. I'll have Verna draw you a bath and we'll chat while you bathe, like we did at Miss Whippit's Finishing School for Young Ladies." The last she said in a haughty tone, ending with a giggle.

  Within the hour Verna had emptied a dozen buckets of water into the wooden tub in Lucy boudoir. I unbuttoned my blouse and let my heavy wool skirt slide down my body. The servant untied my petticoats and, before I could stop her, slid my bloomers down my legs, leaving me bare-assed. Lucy insisted on unlacing my corset. "You have a lovely figure but this undergarment is so unflattering," she chided me. "No wonder Jonathan can't perform to his potential."

  "Lucy! Really!" Saying this in front of Verna embarrassed me mightily and my cheeks flared crimson. I turned my back on Verna, only to feel the eyes of that woman glued to my exposed bottom. All of a sudden I was aware that my nipples had hardened.

  The dour servant stood at the door with my clothes in her arms, just watching as Lucy slowly unhooked the whale bones that confined me. My lungs began to expand to their full capacity and air reached my skin. Soon I was naked before the two women and the full-length mirror.

  Standing next to the petit Lucy, I was surprised to find myself attractive in my own eyes. Whereas she is short and very curvaceous—a classical hour-glass figure—I am far taller and slimmer, although I, too, have a small waist. Our breasts are equally full, it seems to me, although her derriere is perhaps a bit higher and rounder than mine.

  "Lovely," Lucy said from behind me, staring at my form in the mirror. She ran the palms of her hands up my hips and waist, her fingertips swelling over the sides of my breasts. Then her hands went back down. "Poor, exhausted Mina." I felt myself lean back against her. Her hands moved down my belly and her fingers tangled with the hairs between my legs, then up, past my belly again to my breasts, then back down.

  I have no idea how long I stood thus, Lucy soothing me, murmuring sweet sounds in my ear, my head back against her shoulder, my eyes closed.

  "I've brought the birches."

  Verna's voice startled me and my eyes snapped open. I saw her in the mirror, my clothes no longer in her arms, in fact, nowhere in sight. Instead she held a handful of short green birch switches, tied neatly with a pink ribbon. Somehow she must have gone into the garden and returned without me hearing a thing.

  "Oh goody!" Lucy exclaimed. "Mina, my darling, you must try the hydrotherapy from Scandinavia. It's all the rage this year."

  "Hydrotherapy? Whatever are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about stimulating your skin. So you'll have a fresh look, as they do in the Alps."

  "I'm not in the Alps, I'm in Whitby."

  "Oh, Mina! You've always been such a prig. Stop it!" She stamped her little foot and it was such a pretty, endearing sight, her golden curls tossed petulantly, that I had to smile. "All right, Lucy. If inflicting your hydrotherapy on me will make you happy, you may. What do I have to do?"

  Again Lucy grabbed me and kissed me full on the lips, a moist kiss, hot and dark. It was a lifelong habit of hers, apparently, and had not died out with childhood but had taken on intricacies, yet I didn't mind. Jonathan was the only other person who had kissed my lips and that was entirely different. His lips were soft in a pointless way, while Lucy's held a plumpness that felt like an invitation.

  "Verna!" Lucy ordered. The servant went to the wall. A thick pink braided cord, like the type pulled to summon the maid, rested against the wall. Now I noticed that it ran along the ceiling and hung down into the middle of the room, ending in a loop.

  "You won't be wearing these long," Lucy said, as she tied a pink wrist collar to each of my wrists. She connected the collars together with one curve of an S-shaped piece of metal. "Now, lift your hands high above your head."

  I did as she asked and she hooked the other end of the

  S-shaped metal over the loop of the cord, then nodded to Verna.

  Immediately Verna yanked
on the rope. Before I knew what was happening, I was lifted off the ground so that only the tips of my toes brushed the Oriental carpet.

  "Lucy!" I demanded, "what are you doing? Lower me at once!"

  "Patience, my love. You have always had plenty of it, now's the time to bring it to the fore."

  Verna handed Lucy the stark bouquet of birches then wrapped the cord under her armpit and around her shoulder several times. Lucy circled me, swishing the branches in the air, a lascivious play on her full lips. The entire time she ran a hand over my breasts, up the inside of my thighs, here and there. "Your skin is like an old dried apple! You don't take very good care of yourself. This stimulation will open your pores so that the bath waters might do their work and penetrate more fully, enabling you to relax completely. The Finns do it in their Saunas all the time. Verna has taught me. It's an ancient technique."

  Verna! So this was from where the perversion stemmed. As I spun on the cord, and I could not help but spin, my eyes locked with Verna's. The audacity! I thought. A servant, having the impertinence to look me in the eye. But all I said was, "We're not Finns," and that I said breathlessly, for the fear I felt had coupled with not only embarrassment but excitement.

  "No, we are British and our heritage deems that we claim the ways of the world as our own and adapt them to our special needs. Anyway, Mina, I know you hate new things, still, perhaps you'll enjoy this. But even if you don't, I will."

  She lifted her arm high and brought the birches down on my bottom. The switches stung right across both cheeks. Particularly where the ends had struck, it felt as if half a dozen bees had a go at me. I'd hardly time to gasp before the next blow came, this time along my hip.

  Lucy could not have weighed more than 7 stone, but she did not spare those deciduous rods. They landed on my stomach and I looked down to see six red streaks welling from my skin. The stinging reached my other hip, then moved up my back and over my shoulders then back down to my bottom, which received the birches again. Then she moved down my thighs.

  I had, in all my lifetime, never been birched. Unlike Lucy, who suffered that and more at the hands of our headmistress, I had been a good girl and the rods had not sought me out. But they found me now, lashing the front of my thighs, the back and front of my calves, making the skin quiver and my body jerk as I spun helplessly. I moaned and protested mightily, to no avail.

  Despite the sharpness of the thin branches, there was something pleasurable in such heat. My body did feel as though it was opening, but to what, I knew not.

  She finished, or so I thought, with the undersides of my feet. But that was not to be the end.

  "Spread your legs!" she ordered.

  The servant Verna stared at my groin.

  "Oh, Lucy, I cannot," I pleaded.

  The willows struck my breasts, one at a time, and twice as hard as she had been using them. I yelped like a puppy.

  "Obey me!"

  I opened my legs, which meant that I now had not even the minor support of my toes brushing the floor.

  "Wider!" she commanded, the switches reiterating that command against my stinging bottom.

  "I'm spreading them as far as I can!" I cried. "Lucy, for God's sake, have mercy!"

  Instead of mercy, she showed me the Devil's tortures by whipping the delicate inside of my thighs, the right, the left, the right, the left, and then she brought the birches up from below and switched the vulnerable place between my legs that only Jonathan had ever touched, and he barely. He had never set me on fire so. Hot fluid broke within me as she whipped and whipped. I could do nothing but shriek in pleasurable pain.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks as I was lowered to the floor.

  I do not recall the wrist cuffs being removed. Suddenly Lucy and Verna stood one on each side of me, lifting me up. "Bend your legs," Lucy said.

  I did as I was told.

  They lowered me into the steaming water and pushed me down until my hot skin was covered with hotter water, to the neck, ripping another moan from my throat.

  Lucy pulled my head back and kissed me full and hard on the lips, her tongue sliding inside my mouth.

  I jumped to a seated position, alarmed. "No, Lucy. You must not! I am a woman, not a man."

  Gently she pressed my shoulders down so that the back of my head rested once more against the tub. "Of course you're a woman, which is why there is nothing illicit in what we do. If I were a man, now, that would be another story, wouldn't it?"

  Lucy washed my shoulders and chest with a soapy sponge, an unusually rough variety. The dried sea creature rubbing my nipples reddened them more than they already were, forcing further moans from my lips. She washed my back and had me kneel so that she could rub the sponge over my hot lower cheeks, very fast and hard, making them burn, then she slid it down under me, where it scoured spots I had not known existed. After she washed my hair, both she and the servant Verna dried me with thick towels and led me to a canopied bed in a room nearby.

  The linen felt cool against my hot, tingling flesh, and the old-fashioned feather-type mattress allowed me to sink into it.

  "Drink this," Lucy said, handing me a small Waterford crystal sherry glass. I drank the amber liquid in one gulp.

  "Sleep until dinner," she said, kissing me on the forehead.

  She pulled the covers up to my neck and tucked them tight under my body so that I felt encased, then she closed the curtains at the window and left.

  I lay in the quiet darkness. My body danced with sensation. Never had my skin felt so alive. Not an inch of me had been ignored by Lucy's thorough hand, for which I was grateful.

  With each breath, I felt my nipples strain against the starched linen, pressing, demanding to be paid attention to. The heat between my legs was intense and the flesh pulsed with each beat of my heart. My bottom against the linen-covered mattress felt so hot I imagined steam rising from it. For wasn't it those areas that had received the most attention?

  Part of me wanted to find a way to answer the call I heard and yet I did not know how. Until this day, only Jonathan had roamed my flesh and I felt that he had taken but a quick tour and missed the most important sites along the path. Lucy, sweet Lucy, had managed to spend time admiring each natural point of interest, tending it with loving concern.

  I drifted into a deep warm sleep in which I dreamt of myself as a wild animal, both riding and being ridden under the sweltering African sun. The yearning for release became unbearable. My heart pounded throughout my body and my breath quickened as the heat of the day and the heat within combined. I thought I would incinerate and cried out.

  Suddenly a dam burst between my legs and cool water flowed.

  My entire body trembled uncontrollably. I lay exhausted, then cooled.

  My eyes popped open. Verna was lighting the lamp. The covers lay clumped at the foot of the bed; my naked body exhibited before her, legs spread, nipples hard and swollen, and she examined every inch of me carefully. I felt liquid seep between my legs and Verna noticed.

  "The mistress awaits you for dinner," she said, a strange smile on her lips, and left.

  Chapter Seven

  Lucy and I had a fine meal of roast pork, apple sauce, and new potatoes from the garden that Hodge tended. We laughed and talked and I ate as if I'd not eaten in a year.

  Immediately after dinner, Hodge came into the parlor and announced, "Doctor Steward."

  "Send him right in," Lucy said, jumping to her feet.

  A tall man with reddish-blonde hair entered the room. He looked annoyed and preoccupied. Lucy stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the lips. He removed a pocket watch from his vest pocket and checked the time. Then he pulled on his waxed moustache.

  "Mina, I'd like you to meet my friend, Dr. Steward. John, Mrs. Mina Harker."

  Dr. Steward took my hand, although it was obvious he was distracted and anxious to be elsewhere. "Mrs. Harker," he said, then, "Miss Lucy, I'm afraid I cannot stay long. The hour is late and my patients need my attention, particularly Mr. R
enfield, of whom I have spoken. If we could attend to our business sooner—"

  "John, do sit down," Lucy said in a light but firm voice. "You're being rude to my guest, and I shan't forgive you for that. Mina has traveled all the way from London and her husband is on the continent in some dreadful country called Transylvania. Mina has a problem, a martial difficulty."

  "Lucy!" Now she had gone too far.

  "Oh, Mina, for heaven's sake, John is a doctor. He knows about these things."

  My face burned crimson. Embarrassment flooded me and I could look neither of them in the eye. "I believe I shall retire," I said coldly. "The trip was arduous and I am exhausted. Please forgive me." I did not wait for a reply but raced from the parlor.

  Once safely in my room, I felt too upset to sleep. The air was warm and dense, as if a storm were approaching. I paced for a time, then decided to compose yet another letter to my husband. Jonathan had been gone several weeks now, off selling real estate to an old baron in the Carpathian Mountains. I had written daily, as my wifely role dictated I should, and yet had not as yet received one reply. Of course, Transylvania is a backward country and I did not expect the mail service to be what it is in England. Still, I felt angry at Jonathan and, when I was honest with myself, realized my ire was based more on feeling failed by him when it came to his husbandly duties. Still, we were married, and I must write.

  I picked up a fountain pen and dipped it into the inkwell, about to touch it to paper, when I heard a tapping on the wall. As it did not cease, I stood and hurried across the room. It seemed to be coming from behind a portrait. On impulse, I pushed aside the framed oil of some stern Westenra ancestor and was startled to see a large hole in the wall, the size of an eyeball. The tapping had not ceased but the sound of Lucy's voice clearly came from next door.