A little Irish honey

by Valentine Bonnaire

Benjamin Tartare had always been an unusual man, to say the least. The things he fancied were very 19th century. Modernism had begun to bother him with the advent of Conceptual Art. Whoosh, and everything was gone — wiped clean without a trace. He’d had a fixation on the Pre-Raphaelites for as long as he could remember. Just looking at the pictures could give him a hard-on. All the classical nudes did.

He liked to stride around on the moors in a top hat and cape with a cigar, quoting old writers endlessly. The inhabitants of the village puzzled at him and called him an odd bird. Tartare tried to find solace in their pubs now and again, but the modern music didn’t much suit him. It was on one such foray down the ancient mossy cobblestones for a pint, that he’d spied Clementina out walking.

“Jove, who on earth is that?”

“Fancy a bit of that, do you?”

Too stunned to speak, Benjamin stared through the window of the bar. Jove handed him a dram of whiskey. Irish Honey it was, fairly the finest brand some writers ever sipped. Why it was rumored Joyce himself had quaffed the very…

“Good god, man.”

“Like silk?”

“That it is.”

“So is she.”

“A fancy woman, then?”

“A lady of the night.”

“Don’t you dare speak of her that way.”

“Benjamin, it’s true.”

“You musn’t…”

“Musn’t what?”

“Well I…”

“I don’t like to see an old chap get fooled.”

Both of them watched as Clementina crossed the street, lifting her skirts to reveal a dainty set of buttoned boots as if she were an Edwardian. The thump in old Tartare’s breast was audible. He felt he’d almost burst with happiness. Surely it was a matter of meeting his own kind for the first time in his life.

“She’s a ruffled little thing isn’t she?”

“That she is.”

“Perfumed.”

“That too.”

“Rouged.”

“Yes.”

“Her little boots, I…”

“Yes, Benjamin?”

“Jove, I have to take my leave.”

It was a good thing Benjamin had his great cape to hide the effect that she’d had on him. He swirled it around himself, a connoisseur of haberdashery. Brown velvet it was, to match his tweeds and little cap. That night in his great bathtub he sank below the depths many times and resurfaced over and over. Why, she was an Alma-Tadema come deliciously to life. A porcelain piece of all the stuff that females are made of in a man’s wildest dreams. He had to have her. He’d made up his mind. That night he wafted extra cologne over himself just before donning his dressing gown.

Pillows plumped on his lonely bed — he rested, surrounded by his art books — their pages opened to all his favorite figurative artists. None could rival what he’d seen in Clementina. He would possess her for his very own if he had to die trying.

Benjamin dressed quickly in the cold air of next morning on the moor. A fog embraced the village so thickly he was blinded by its mist.Where was she?

Clementina dressed in her bedchambers. An opened copy of Joyce lay face down. Its spine had nearly been broken from the many times she’d peeked into Ulysses. She was reading it purely for an understanding of the male mind. Each time she became more and more confused. Her pretty little head returned over and over to the passages about the Spanish Wall, or was it Moorish? She could never get them straight. It was the sexy trifles she was after, each time, and that was a giant tome if ever there was.

Her dresser held the most exquisite collection of lingerie. Little laced corsets, little garters, the finest silk stockings — most of them imported from France. Every single cent she made she plied back into her trade. On lace, but of course. Little did she know that she’d been spied by Benjamin. Nor did she know that he intended to make her his own. Silly little thing that she was, trifling over powders and perfume and little soaps. Why, she was nothing more than a wispy ruffle of a female. He’d somehow intuited that at once.

“Tea, milady?” The shopkeeper asked her.

“Oh, little cakes!” she squealed. His wife shot him a terrible look across the tearoom. He could have spent all day just inhaling Clementina if she didn’t keep her eye on him. All the women in the village felt the same way about her.

“Why, that little French trollop,” they’d murmur as she passed, and their husbands turned to stare. It was true that Clementina knew her power. She tried not to look at them as they stared. She tried not to upset the wives of the village any more than necessary. It’s that, so many of the husbands had tested her services she knew them all. Every single secret trick. Each man was different of course. Some large, some small, some requiring discipline, some not. She had a little leash for the bank owner, and a tiny paddle for the one she called “poodle boy.” With Clementina they succumbed to their wildest desires. In secret. She only required payment so she could have more lace and silk, as well as cakes. Nary a one had reached the deepest center of her heart. They served as little amusements every evening.

Into the tea shop Benjamin stumbled, mist laden eyes and all. Before him was a vision of golden shimmer and sheerest décolletage — capped by her little pink buttoned boots. His heart nearly dropped out of his chest at the sight of her.

“What a charming petit four you are,” he smiled, towering over her.

“I should like to lick every inch of you.”

Clementina was taken aback. No man on earth had spoken that way to her, certainly not “poodle boy.” Why, he wouldn’t have dared.

Her knees began to quiver under the little tea table. So much so that she couldn’t finish her tiny plate of cakes.

“I should like to start at your cunt.”

The shopkeeper and his wife watched from a distance as Benjamin took Clementina’s arm. He was helping her to her feet, so unsteady was she in her little boots.

“Spun sugar is how you’d taste.”

She swallowed hard. No man had ever spoken to her the way it had been described in Joyce. Except, this man was. She was speechless. Her frilly little curls bounced to and fro as she wavered. One whoosh and his cape had swirled around the two of them, as if he were a chocolate rogue. The wildness of his cologne blended with a shot of the Irish Honey he’d quaffed to give himself a bit of liquid courage. Jove had suggested it.

“Never let her see you slip,” he’d said. “Manhood is at stake in this village.”

It was true that “poodle boy” and the others had whispered about their sore bums and her boudoir, and the endless piles of lingerie they’d seen, not to mention those French stockings and the ruffles and the…

Under the cape his fingers gripped her firmly from behind.

He smiled as a squeal escaped her lips.

© 2013 Valentine Bonnaire. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

Bio: Valentine Bonnaire’s work can be found in the archives at Cleansheets.com and at ERWA in the galleries and Treasure Chest. “Flowering” will appear this year in The Mammoth Book of Quick and Dirty Erotica edited by Maxim Jakubowski. Three chapters of “Man in the Moon” appear in From Porn to Poetry 2 edited by Susannah Indigo.