Drawing Temptation

By Mikala Ash

Torn by grief and desire, Amelia Keystone faces temptation. A Faerie invades her sleep, and for a price offers her the powers to save her fiancé, Lord Randolph Cressy, grievously wounded while saving Amelia’s life.

Gravely ill and invalided, Randolph is unwilling to force her into a lifetime committed to his care and rescinds his offer of marriage. As a distraction from her broken heart, Amelia considers becoming an Agent of the Queen and bedding the handsome agent Charles Graves. Can she resist one temptation and succumb to the other?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Dec 9, 2022

Book preview

Chapter One

A New Beginning

I pushed the domed head of Albert, my euphemistically termed Lady’s Helper, against the lips of my quim, nudging them apart, and slid it inside to fill my sheath with its soulless girth. I’d prepared myself with my fingers, massaging in fragrant oil to ease its passage, and rubbing the hard nub to stimulate my own reluctant juices.

In a vain attempt to bring the matter to conclusion I forced my former fiancé Randolph, Lord Cressy, into my mind’s eye, recapitulating our vigorous lovemaking on that glorious night at his estate. I tried once more to feel the lusty pressure of his lips on mine, the velvet touch of his fingers as he caressed my breasts, and the heavy thickness of his cock that filled me so completely. Albert’s thrusts become faster, deeper, until the pounding hurt, yet I could not achieve the physical release I so desperately needed.

In desperation I introduced Charles into my imaginary bed, the handsome and charming Agent of the Queen. In the past I had entertained fantasies of both men pleasuring me while Albert dutifully brought me to breathtaking climaxes. The two simulacrums of my imagination laboured to bring me to a sleep-inducing peak. No matter how they worked at my breasts and quim, fingering and fucking, sucking and kissing, no matter the acrobatic contortions my imagination, fuelled by dozens of sensational novels I’d read, nothing they did would give me that hotly desired release.

With a frustrated sigh I put Albert aside. I’d named the ivory phallus-shaped sewing kit as a homage to the empire’s fallen hero, Prince Albert. I’d purchased the device in Switzerland where I had taught languages and drawing at a prestigious finishing school for girls in Lucerne. Albert had comforted me during many a lonely night, and with frequent use found the sites of supreme stimulation without any conscious command on my part.

My nightly episodes of fantasy-driven self-abuse, as the learned scholars described self-pleasuring, and something I suspect men and women alike habitually partake of, had primed me, like a driver stokes the boiler of his stream engine, to respond to the slightest touch of the throttle. It was inevitable that the first instance of sexual attraction would lead me into temptation. My fall from grace and summary dismissal from the school was all too predictable.

The man with whom I risked my reputation was Lord Randolph Cressy, the father of Felicity, one of my students. She had, I was certain, been involved in matchmaking for her beloved father, thinking he and I were compatible. How she intuited that I have no idea, but she had been correct.

Our discovery in a state of dishabille by the headmistress had led to my instant sacking and expulsion to my homeland, alone and virtually penniless. Lord Cressy had eventually come to my rescue and had secured my employment with an old friend of his, Mrs. Graves, a philanthropist and woman of business, who employed me as a tutor for her ten-year-old daughter, Hesta. There I met her son, Charles, a charming and handsome man of action, Randolph’s equal in every way. Randolph had eventually proposed marriage, an incredible development given our differing stations. I’d been surprised, and Randolph, thinking I had reservations about our relative ages -- he was fifteen years my senior -- had given me time to consider the offer carefully before giving an answer. During those heady days I’d been stalked by an assassin and the adventure had resolved itself in terror, blood, and violence. Both Randolph and Charles were grievously wounded while saving my life.

The weeks that followed were difficult, and I’d become single-minded in my devotion to their care. Thankfully my earnest prayers had been answered, and both Randolph and Charles recovered. Charles travelled back to London, and I stayed with Randolph. The doctor had assured us he would mend eventually and would soon be his old self. The bullet had not damaged anything vital. However, his recuperation had not progressed as rapidly as I wished.

When his condition had improved sufficiently to allow him to leave his room, I took the first opportunity to confirm my acceptance of his proposal, making it abundantly clear that I desired most fervently to be his wife. I remember the moment like it was an image captured on glass, crystal clear, and ice cold in its precise representation of the moment. Randolph had been dozing in the sunlit garden, sitting in a bath chair, swathed in thick blankets.

Randolph, now you’ve recovered I can give you my answer.

His drawn features considered me. His once bright intelligent eyes now watery and weak. My dear, he said slowly.

My answer is, yes, I said quickly. Yes. Yes, and yes again. I wish with all my heart to marry you.

His lack of response cut into my heart like the assassin’s knife which Randolph’s intervention had saved me from. His gaze fell to the blanket wrapped around his knees. My dear, he repeated.

Even though Randolph spoke softly, his tone chilled me to the bone. What is it? My voice was weak, tremulous. I had a sense that I’d made a fool of myself, and that during those interminable hours confined to his sick bed he’d reconsidered his decision to marry a mere teacher, the daughter of a country vicar.

Amelia…

I accepted the worst. I know. You’ve changed your mind. I fought back tears. Don’t you love me anymore?

He jerked his head and fixed me with his eyes. I do, my dear, and for that reason I cannot burden you with my infirmity. I am not the man I was, I’m afraid.

The doctor says otherwise, I told him, my heart having sunk into the cold void of my belly.

Randolph shook his head impatiently. He is being kind, not wishing to betray his professional confidence, or to scare you. My dear, surely you can see I am damnably short of breath, and I feal faint with the slightest exertion. He paused. He tells me I will not improve. I would be a poor husband for a young vibrant woman. You deserve better. Charles, for example. He’s younger than I, and already recovered. He’s back at work, saving the empire.

I was suddenly angry. Randolph may have thought he was being honourable, handing me over to the better man, as if I was a prize thoroughbred who would achieve peak performance under the tutelage of a fitter master, but it stung my pride.

I swallowed down my ire. Randolph was not well. He was simply trying his best to give me my freedom. As a soldier and loyal servant of the empire, Lord Cressy was accustomed to sacrifice, and I flattered myself that if his protestations of love before the calamity had been true, he was now making the greatest sacrifice of his life. Randolph. I love you, I stammered haplessly.

And it would kill me to see that love die as you were forced to keep company with a broken wreck. No. Please. Forget about me. Make your way in the world, find the success, pleasures, and the love you deserve. In time you will forget this chapter in your life, and --

The speech sounded rehearsed to me. You’ve thought this through, I interrupted, resignation in my tone. That recognition of the impossibility of changing his mind was my own undoing. I began to sob.

I have only your happiness in my thoughts, my dear. I am not so selfish, no matter how I covet your touch and kisses, to steal your future for my own comfort.

He wiped my cheek where a torrent of tears had streamed down my face to drip from my chin into my cleavage. Don’t say these things, I pleaded, my lips quivering with despair. Wait till you’re better, then decide.

Don’t you see? It was he who was pleading now. I won’t recover. It pains me to see my reflection in your eyes, infirmed and useless. I don’t want to see the love light replaced with pity. That will poison my soul and kill me quicker than that bullet ever could. He said more, much more, and after I’d accepted that it was his dignity which was at stake, I was able to suppress my sorrow.

I held him close. I shall go, I mumbled.

Mrs. Graves will welcome you back, he said.

Does she know?

Of my proposal? No. She may have guessed, but I have said nothing. I had no time before Tibbs shot me.

Every night since I tortured myself with those memories. Like a tongue explores a broken tooth, or that insane need we have to lift the crust off a wound, I relived the joy of love, of giving myself to a great man, watching him risk his life to preserve mine, and his eventual ripping away of future happiness, leaving me empty and bereft of hope.

Self-pity, my adopted father the vicar had said to me when I once bemoaned my state as an orphan, to never to know my real father or mother, is a pleasant seeming demon who seduces and strangles the spark of divinity that lives within us all, leaving a dry, twisted creature in its place. Good for nothing -- a help to no one. As tempting as it may be, please do not, my beloved daughter -- please do not succumb to that comforting false fiend.

Emboldened, swearing not to surrender, I took a deep breath, and engaged Albert once more in the arduous task of bringing me some release, enough to let me sleep for at least an hour. I invoked the countenance of Henry, Mrs. Graves’s footman, who was a conceited servant who ogled me whenever he had the opportunity. It would be foolish to encourage him, but here, in my imagination it was permitted. I imagined his cock to be of immense, devilish proportions, that expanded like a balloon when inside me, and his mouth sucking at my breasts with such force that would leave me with imaginary contusions in the morning.

Albert resumed its bruising thrusts, and perversely the more pain I inflicted upon myself the closer to the desired climax I became. To give muscle to Henry’s imagined mouth I pinched my breasts, twisted my nipples, and the combined self-cruelty brought me to that place where exhausted sleep was finally able to drape a warm cloak over my sweat-slicked body.

Chapter Two

Nocturnal Impersonator

At first my return to the Mayfair home of Mrs. Graves had been difficult. I found it almost impossible to throw off my melancholy. Everything seemed to remind me of what I had lost, and time proceeded ever so slowly. However, resuming my duties as her daughter’s tutor in languages and drawing afforded me a distraction, something to concentrate on other than my own misery. I was grateful that both mother and daughter welcomed me back with no hint of resentment. I had, after all, been the magnet that had attracted the violence that they too had suffered at the hands of the traitor Tibbs and his murderous Italian lover; Charles had been shot, and Hesta traumatised by seeing him lying