Read Online In the Garden of Sin by Louisa Burton - Free Book Online

needful that he kept locked in a box within himself.
    And once again, his smile faded and he abruptly turned away.
    “Um, which one shall it be?” I asked.
    He scowled in puzzlement.
    “Which madrigal would you like me to sing after supper?” I asked, indicating the book in his hand.
    He thrust it at me, saying “You choose. One’s as good as the next.”
    I sang my current favorite, to an enthusiastic reception from everyone save Domenico Vitturi. He clapped politely, but he didn’t smile, and when the others stood and cheered and demanded an encore, he turned and left the room.
    His frosty demeanor hadn’t thawed between then and now. “’Tis a skill you need to learn,” he said, pointing across the steamy pool.
    Inigo sat with Bianca’s head in his hands, guiding her movements. Her sheaf of dark, wavy hair hid the sight of her mouth on his sex, but his directives left no doubt as to what she was doing. “Open your throat, Bianca. That’s right, just relax it. I know you can’t take it all, and I don’t want you to gag, but perhaps another inch…”
    “Inigo,” Vitturi said as he lifted his bad leg over the good, “perhaps ’tis time for Mistress Leeds to try her hand at the French arts.”
    I closed my eyes, summoning the backbone to get through this.
    My reluctance wasn’t lost on the Venetian. “Pleasuring a man with one’s mouth is a fundamental erotic skill, Mistress Leeds. If you want to be one of my courtesans, you must learn to do it—and not just tolerate the act, but relish it.”
    I looked toward Elic, who seemed to share his sister’s inclination to protect and defend me, but he was clearly unaware of anything at the moment save his tutelage of Sibylla. He and the darkly beautiful Florentine were moving together slowly, sensually, his buttocks clenching and releasing, the muscles of his back and shoulders flexing with every languid thrust. Hishead was lowered toward hers, his hair draping both their faces in damp tendrils.
    I turned to look at Inigo, his gaze on me as Bianca’s head bobbed up and down, up and down. He said, “You needn’t take it in your mouth, Hannah, not this first time. I just want you to taste it, to know the feel of it on your tongue.”
    “It taste
delizioso,”
Bianca said as she lifted her head from the organ in question and moved aside to make room for me between his legs. “Come, Hannah, you must try. Is not so bad—you see.”
    I waded across the pool, thinking
Remove yourself from it. Just do what has to be done
.

OME,” INIGO SAID, gesturing me closer. “Get comfortable.”
    I knelt on one of the steps with my face at the level of his glistening cockstand, which he held in his fist. It looked more than a little forbidding, with its twisting network of veins. There was a tiny slit on the purplish tip, from which oozed a bead of clear fluid.
    Inigo took my hand and stroked my fingers up the shaft, which felt very warm and hard and surprisingly silken. “Touch your tongue to it,” he said.
    Remove yourself…
    I closed my eyes and leaned forward, feeling a woozy sense of disbelief that I was actually doing this, and extended my tongue until the tip of it met hot, smooth skin.
I’ve done it
, Ithought, but before I could pull away, Inigo closed a hand around my head and gently restrained me.
    “Pretend you’re a cat licking something delectable,” he said. “Start down here at the bottom.”
    I drew in a steadying breath and licked the erect organ upward from the base, surprised to find its warm, fleshy taste not at all unpleasant.
    “Don’t let your hands be idle,” Inigo said, guiding my right hand to the slippery head and tucking my left under his bulging “stones,” as Elic had called them, to a stretch of firm flesh which he told me was actually the root of the shaft. “Rub it gently, in rhythm with your tongue… That’s right…”
    I wondered what Domenico Vitturi was thinking as he sat there watching me from across the pool. How