Chapter 51: Carlotta

My next stop was a school the voracious Maria had told me about, and I never would have found it without her directions. There was a two-story, frame structure of some size and several outbuildings including what I assumed were slave quarters. The "Academy," as it was styled was a school for young ladies, and, as I soon found out, it was for very loyal young ladies whose parents were all rich, Tidewater Tories.

When I rode in, the girls were out disporting themselves on the green, watched by two older women who were more my age. I could feel a large number of female eyes on me and my string of good, young horses. I hobbled my critters to let them graze at the edge of the broad lawn and then went and introduced myself to the head mistress, a tall woman of thirty or so called Carlotta H--. Some would likely call her beautiful but I'd say she was more strong than lovely, certainly more determined than anything and hardly ladylike in bed.

Over the next several days, Carlotta and I got to know each other quite well, and even liked each other, after a fashion, but we started out striking sparks. I sat across a neat Baltimore-made, skinny-legged table-desk from her and told her who I was and that I had been buying horses from Maria. I asked if she was concerned about roaming bands of raiders, both Arnold's men and Simcoe's, who had been despoiling far and wide and making women special targets. She smiled and said that she had no worries whatsoever on that score since she and her school were under the protection of Banastre Tarleton.

"Really," I said, raising an eyebrow and thinking this might lead to my capture or killing of the cowardly British cavalry leader if I could use her as bait.

"Yes," she cooed, turning to look out the window and showing me her fine profile, a good nose and a strong chin. "He was quite impressed with this place and with some of my young ladies."

"I'll bet he was," I said, ready to spit. "I hope you kept them under close guard. He had a terrible reputation, you know, brags about it, all the women he's had, the virgins he's ruined."

"Oh? I found him most charming, quite handsome, very manly." She smirked knowingly as if at a private joke.

"Did you?"

"Quite. I do not think I've met a gentleman of his caliber elsewhere. He swept me away with his gallantry, and he thrilled the girls with his heroic stories." She braced back her shoulders and lifted her chin, poking her high breasts hard against her trembling lace.

"He's a vain popinjay as well as a cowardly villain," I said. "And if you bedded him, you've slept with the devil."

"Sir! Do you know him so well then?" she asked, obviously furious, leaning forward and giving me a fine view of her ample breastworks as she spat out the words. She wore a well-tailored silk dress with bold vertical stripes of yellow and violet, and it was cut as low as any I had seen in my travels. She was rightfully proud of her body which certainly overflowed her stays and spilled from her fancy shift with its narrow, lacy straps. The word "ripe" was the only one I could think of at the time. I decided she was ready to pluck and smiled at my interior joke.

"I've seen his work," I said. "He's not fit to live much less associate with honest people or good women."

"And I suppose you fancy yourself his equal."

"I'm as good as any man and better than that brutal, fat, cowardly, fart-faced Brit," I declaimed, feeling a bit pompous but enjoying the view as her chest heaved invitingly. I could not understand how her nipples stayed hidden behind their filigreed screen.

She stood and came around her desk with a swish of her long skirt, furious. I stood to meet her, put my arm around her waist and my other hand on her bare shoulder and kissed her, gently and then with some vigor. She kept her eyes open, returned the honor and slid her tongue tip between my open lips. "Braggart, would you like to try to prove your claim?" she asked, twisting in my arms. Her breasts were as hard as apples. "I doubt that you are even close to Colonel Tarleton's virile abilities although you certainly smell stronger."

I kissed her again with a firm grip on her buttocks. She leaned back and smiled, pleased that she had provoked me I suppose as our bellies mashed together with my swelling spar trapped between them.

"Now?" I wondered aloud into her mouth as I licked her soft lips and kneaded her bottom.

"Do you only work in the dark?" she asked, grinding against me, eyes wide and very alert.

We watched each other hurriedly undress in the back room of her clapboard cottage to the sound of girlish laughter coming through the open window. She had a very impressive body, lean and well muscled. Her breasts stood high, firm and pear-shaped with sharp-pointed tits, her stomach was flat, her hips and buttocks muscular and rounded, her thighs perhaps a bit heavy and her shoulders mannishly broad, her back straight and strong muscled, her buttocks well-rounded. She looked like she would be awfully good on a horse or in bed. She was an almost uniformly golden color; her hair was dark brown and, judging from the braided roll atop her head, very long. Her nipples were bright pink buds arising from darker, dollar-sized circles.

I suspected there was an Indian or an African or perhaps both somewhere deep in her bloodline. I suppose she weighed at least ten stone and stood about five-seven or so. We were near the curtained window, enjoying the breeze, holding hands and looking at each other for a bit, waiting for the first move, trying to breathe slowly. "I'm ready," she said clearly and she smiled. "Are you?" She looked down and made an odd noise. I watched her belly quiver.

I pushed her back to her high bed which stood under a linen canopy and a good yard off the floor, deep with coverlets, pillows and thin mattresses. She yanked aside a bright, geometric quilt and sat on the edge, facing me, legs together, her muff looking like a small, burrowing critter of some sort hiding between her mounded thighs. Laughter was in her eyes along with what I suspected was a bit of fear.

After all, she faced a well-aimed cannon pointed right between her eyes. I slid my hands down to her warm, firm thighs and prised her legs apart with little effort. I stepped between her knees, set my weapon in place, put my hands on her broad hips, gritted my teeth, held her eyes, forced a smile, gathered myself as if I were about to leap a wide creek and then took her with all my concentrated butt, leg and back muscles in the single, rising, explosive motion that must have lasted a full minute.

She came right off her mattress with a deep howl, bounced on the bed once and wrapped her legs about me, falling back, arms spread and mouth soundlessly gaping. I stood as motionless as I could, rooted to the floor, holding myself erect in a good approximation of the position of "attention." I gripped her pelvis and buttocks tightly and half-turned her whole body from side to side, shaking her and skewering her. Only her shoulders, her hands and the back of her head touched her covers. She looked frightened, staring at me between her heaving breasts, her rib cage stretching her skin, throat arched and veins popping. I smiled, looking down where we were joined.

"Oh God," she moaned and twisted her head back and forth, stuffing her wrist into her mouth briefly. "Go on, go on," she cried, clawing the air as I held her there, "What are you waiting for?" But I still stood stiffly, proud of myself and my position of control, watching her writhe and beg on my spear. I felt the muscles in her thighs and belly contracting. I still waited as the seconds ticked by and her body continued to spasm.

"Please," she cried, "Damn you! What are you waiting for?" She scratched at me, grabbed my wrists and tried to pull herself up from the bed. I yanked my hands from her grip and put them together in the small of my back. Her long hair had come loose from its braid and was tangling about her face, getting in her mouth as she writhed. "Oh God," she moaned, stretching her neck as I remained statue like. "I beg of you."

Then I lowered her gently to the bed by bending my knees, held her at the waist and began a normal, healthy swiving, until I was sure her reluctance and doubt were gone. Her legs slid up under my arms. She twisted and turned on the edge of the bed as I increased the pace steadily to the rate of the drumbeat in my ears. The bed rocked, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump and moved sideways, flexing beneath us.

She moaned and gasped, her tongue lolled, and she made a series of sounds like an animal caught in a trap, and then she just panted steadily beneath me as sweat broke out on her flushed face and heaving chest. I slowed and almost stopped, my feet still on the floor beside her bed, my hands gently kneading her luscious breasts, popping her erect nipples between my fingers. I backed up a half-step.

"Don't!" she cried, obviously fearing I was abandoning her. Her hips heaved upward. Her legs clamped me in. She screamed into the quilt corner clamped in her teeth as I pistoned it into her.

For a good while she was able to meet my lunges with teeth-clenched heaves and contractions of her own, but she spasmed repeatedly, tired and relaxed after a while, slowly lowering her legs, feeling very limber and sweat-slick in my hands, nearly boneless, as I maintained about a marching pace, a hundred a minute at least. She bounced and squirmed like a speared trout, eyes fluttering and mouth slack. Her hair spread out like a dark fan. She breathed rapidly through her mouth and closed her eyes. I wanted to hear her beg me to stop.

I grabbed her under the thighs and lifted her body farther up on the bed, sliding her on her rounded back, never missing a determined stroke; hate of Tarleton in my mind and determination to best him in my blood. I crawled up after her, pushing her body along before me, plowing her. Now I mounted to my knees among her tumult of quilts, dug in my toes, and her teeth clacked with every angry ram. I could hear myself grunting with exertion. Sweat dripped from both of us.

If she had come again, I had not noticed, and I did not care, but the area where we met had become a sodden mess. I drove her up the big bed until her forehead was braced against the top, her neck bent, arms spread wide, fingers clawing the covers. I arched above her and grabbed the headboard of the heavy walnut bed, using its leverage to penetrate even deeper. It helped my aching back, my tiring stomach, groin, legs and belly muscles. "Oh God, God," she cried. "Dear God." The bed creaked in time with my efforts, music to my ears. I was, I knew, merciless.

The canopy rocked above us, swaying in time with our mating. I lowered us again to the mattress, listening to the bed complain: creak-thump, creak-thump, creak-thump. She shook and trembled below me, mouthing prayers and pleas, her eyes roaming wildly. Now I held the headboard with one hand and her shoulder with the other. The heavy wood flexed some, and I used its energy as I bent bow-like watching her shocked face react to what had become almost an endless impaling. Again her head thunked the board solidly over and over, her feet kicked behind me in a rapid tattoo and her fists pounded the mattress left and right, left and then right. "Please, please," she cried weakly through cracked lips.

Her eyes were closed. She drooled and blood dripped where she had bitten her lower lip. Her tongue seemed stuck in the corner of her mouth. I was afraid she might swoon so I finally slowed and then stopped, still angry. I bent, brushed her hair aside and kissed her gently, holding her as if she might break. I very slowly withdrew and lay on my back beside her, catching my breath.

She gasped and moaned for a bit curled beside me, pawing at my arm. Somehow she pulled her limp body atop mine, joined our mouths, then our bodies and mumbled, "Oh lord, oh lord." I thought we both were spent, but we soon began again, a mutual humping that she initiated. She put her hand to my face, her fingers in my mouth and whispered, "Stop, stop, please, make me stop. I need to rest. I must stop this."

She lay astride me, her knees nearly to my ribs. Mentally, I was prepared to do it all again, to prove what I could do and Tarleton could not, but physically I felt exhausted, spent. A small voice murmured, "Quit while you are ahead."

"No more, please," she sobbed, still impaled, rearing back and forth on what I had left. "I've never," she began, "never. Oh Lord, how could you? How could anyone? It was inhuman, cruel."

I pulled her down, kissed her sweaty brow and rubbed her strong back. She cried out. "No, no more. We must stop. Damn you, I must dress." She dragged herself up and kissed me, gnawing at my mouth.

"Do you really want to stop?" She gasped and collapsed back into my arms.

"Oh yes, yes, please, please," she begged, her hands gripping, her mouth dripping saliva as she shook her head and flailed her hair back and forth, rising and falling on my groin, smacking our bellies together.

"We can stop," I said to her, "here," and I held her at the pelvis and brought her fully upright, sitting on my loins, eyes squeezed shut, her face sweat covered, lower lip clamped in her teeth. "Is that enough?"

She breathed out a weak, "No."

I grabbed her and held on tight while we went on a rampage, a regular frenzy that rolled us over and over, nearly off the edge of the bed. She screeched endlessly. This time I was sure for she climaxed for she leaned and howled out a long cry like a cat in distress while I held her and pumped out my pleasure in her. She then collapsed on me again, feeling limp and exhausted. There's nothing like a challenge.