Dark Matter

“The matter, sir,” she said, smiling, most lasciviously, “is that.” And she pointed to the unmistakable evidence that I too had enjoyed the experience; and kneeling before me, she touched my privy parts through my breeches and asked that she might look upon them.

“I have seen my brothers,” she said. “But only when they were boys. And I have never seen the privy parts of a man who was ready for love, so to speak. All that I know, which is very little, is from a book,” she added. “Aretine’s Postures. Which raises as many questions as it supplies answers. And I should like very much to gaze upon Priapus, now.”

“What if Doctor Newton should come into the room?” I said.

Miss Barton shook her head and, through my breeches, squeezed my cock most affectionately. “Oh, we won’t see him again tonight. Not now he has started to think upon that cipher. He will often cogitate upon such problems all night long. Once Mister Bernoulli and Mister Leibniz suggested a problem to him that kept him occupied until dawn. During that time I spoke to him, entreated him to go to bed, offered him some cider, and yet he paid me no heed at all. It was as if I had not been there.”

“But if Mrs. Rogers should disturb us,” I protested.

“She has gone to bed,” she said. And then: “You studied for the Law, did you not, Mister Ellis?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then you will know what a quid pro quo is, sir.”

“Indeed I do, Miss Barton.”

“Then what about a quim pro quo?”

I grinned and shook my head that she did know such a word. But amusement turned to surprise and ecstasy as she lifted her skirts and suffered me to fondle her belly, thighs, and cunny parts. And pressing my mouth to these, I licked her from stem to stern, which drew such gasps from her lips as I thought would wake the house; but each time I tried to draw my head away, she gripped my hair most tightly, and held my mouth there until she was done.

So that when finally I unbuttoned my own breeches to show her my prick and suffered her to look upon me, I was as mighty a figure as ever I have been in my life. So that Miss Barton marvelled that such a thing as human lovemaking were possible.

“To think,” she breathed, squeezing my cock in her fist, “that so large a part of a man can go inside a woman’s quim.”

“One might as well wonder that woman do give birth to infants,” said I.

“Yet how vulnerable it is,” she continued, marvelling. “How tender wounded looks its head. As if it has been struck hard about the face. And yet how frightening also. For it seems almost to have a life of its own.”

“You say more than you know, Miss Barton,” I said.

“The seed emanates from the small fissure, does it not?” she asked.

“It does and will if you are not careful,” I said.

“Oh, but I want to see the ejaculate,” she insisted. “I want to understand everything.”

“The ejaculate is most phrenetic,” I said, “and I cannot answer for where I would fetch off.” Feebly, I added, “On your gown … ”

“Perhaps if I gathered it in my mouth,” she said; and before I could forbid it, she had taken my whole member into her mouth, after which I was quite incapable of resisting her further anatomical enquiry of me, for so it did feel, until I had fetched off in her mouth. Which to my horror, she swallowed.

“Catherine,” I said, withdrawing my privy parts from her cool hands, and doing up my breeches again, “I cannot think it safe that you swallowed that.”

“Why, Tom, dear, it is quite safe, I can assure you. There is no danger of being brought to bed with a child. A woman’s womb may be of her belly, but it is not connected to her stomach.” She laughed and then wiped her lips with a kerchief.

I drank a draught of cider to try to calm myself.

“That was most instructive,” she remarked. “And most enjoyable. I am most grateful to you. And in truth, now that I have seen and tasted a man’s cock in all its glory, there is much that doth seem clear to me.”

“I am very glad of it, Catherine,” said I and kissed her forehead. “But the only thing clear to me now is how much I do adore you.”

For a long while we sat in front of the fire, holding hands and saying very little. I would kiss her and she would kiss me back. And thinking us to be as intimate in all things as it was possible to be with another human being, I now made a terrible mistake.

A mistake that perhaps cost me my life’s happiness.