Rose-Marie felt truly blessed by nature, as she stood naked on the balcony of her father’s palatial white mansion looking out onto her father’s ornate garden. Not only had she the good fortune to have been born and to continue to live here in St Lucia, one of the most pleasant corners of the French Empire, but she also had the good fortune of possessing a wealthy father who had chosen the Edenist way of life. In fact, the garden, the island as a whole, was very much like the Garden of Eden to whose natural state Edenists aspire.

Even had she not had the good fortune of birth, Rose-Marie believed she would have chosen the life of an Edenist. Clothes would be ever such a burden. And of course, she, like most people on the island, owned no clothes at all. Those who did own clothes were those who happened to owe their own good fortune of living in St Lucia to the misfortune of their ancestors having been brought to the island as slaves, a barbaric practice which had persisted in some parts of the Americas until early in the twentieth century. But Rose-Marie refused to feel guilty for the sins of her forefathers. Guilt, as Edenists believed, was an outdated notion that merely prevented people from enjoying the moment.

Rose-Marie strode off the balcony and into the shade of the house. It wouldn’t do to expose her skin to the sun too long. Skin cancer was the scourge of Edenism. Those few other places where a significant proportion of people followed the Edenist ideal, such as the British provinces of Queensland and New Zealand, the German Congo, the French island of Madagascar and the Dutch Philippines, these were all places in the sun, and the risk of melanoma had proven to be not at all friendly to European skin. The European empires may have been destined to conquer the world, but their people were better prepared to govern than to actually inhabit the lands they owned.

With a flick of her pale slim wrist, Rose-Marie spun the globe that took pride of place in her father’s living room. An old globe, but so little had changed over the years. The world was still a third red, thanks to the dominance of the British and their provinces, colonies and protectorates. Half of Africa, two-thirds of North America (all but the bits the Spanish, Russians and French had managed to claim), most of China, all of India and, of course, the Antipodes. And after the British, the crown for second ranking empire fought between the declining Spaniards and Portuguese, the Germans (flush after their conquest of Japan), the Dutch and, most importantly, the French. Her people. Led by King Louis the Nineteenth. The only empire, apart from the heathen Ottomans, where the monarch still had real power.

Rose-Marie picked up a remote and pointed it at the huge television that dominated the living room. She flicked through the channels, most of which were beamed down by satellite. Inevitably most of the channels were in either English or Spanish. The French grip on the Americas was so very tenuous. Louisiana, Florida, Quebec, French Guiana and a handful of islands in the Caribbean. But better than nothing. She watched ten minutes of some pornographic film broadcast in French, bored by the sight of the scrotum and the penis shaft thrusting upwards into the anus of the slender young lady whose screams filled the living room over the muted electronic beat. Bare flesh was so commonplace in Rose-Marie’s life that the presence of clothes on these pornographic actors seemed almost erotic. But the thought of sex still excited her. And she was so looking forward to seeing Yves who was due to visit that very afternoon.

Rose-Marie wandered back out onto the balcony, her fingers still a little sticky from where she had been feeling herself while watching Robert Roué fuck Raquel Raymond on the television, and returned her bored gaze to the garden. A bright blue and yellow parrot flapped across between some trees. A pair of grey squirrels chased each other up and down the trunk of another tree. The fountains burbled. The tails of the stone dolphins rising inward to the central spout while more water flowed from their open mouths. In the distance, a huge tanker was carrying oil from the British province of Texas to Europe, the hub of civilisation and culture. Two black servants were building an outhouse. Naked, of course. As was required of all her father’s servants. And there, pushing a wheelbarrow, also naked, was a young white man. It could only be the new head gardener. No white man would do menial tasks otherwise.

There was a small breeze coming across from the ocean, which caught Rose-Marie’s long blonde hair and briefly lifted it up off the curves of her buttocks. She brushed her fingers through her hair and studied more closely the figure of the gardener. Nicholas Noakes, her mother had told him he was called. One of those strange English names where all the consonants were sounded, even the final ‘s’. He’d come from the British province of Virginia, somewhere near the city of Alexandria. There weren’t many Edenists amongst these people. Protestants mostly. Puritans many of them. The most fiercely loyal of all the provinces of the far-flung British Empire. So loyal that the Congress of the British Empire was housed on a tall square building on the coast of the East River in New York, the administrative capital of British North America. An empire as vast as the British couldn’t be governed solely from London. (Although if this were true, how come the king in Paris was thought capable of governing an empire that covered more than a tenth of the world?)

However, what most took Rose-Marie’s gaze was not just the curious fact that Nicholas was that oddest of all sights, a white man in a manual occupation, but that he was sporting the most enormous penis she had ever seen. Even from this distance, it obviously hung quite low, swinging and flapping against his rugged hairy legs. Rose-Marie had seen many penises in her life. Many many many. And some, such as Yves’, she’d had the pleasure of exploring very carefully. Her fiancé’s penis was a fine example. When erect it must have been twenty centimetres long or more. And inside her cunt… It certainly felt big enough. But then, Yves’ was almost the only penis that had penetrated her. At least, the only one to do so more than once, those wild undergraduate parties excepted. But how could a penis as big as Nicholas’ be anything other than painful to any vagina it penetrated.

Rose-Marie felt her crotch again. She knew the answer, of course. She had seen enough pornography over the years to know that anything was possible. Though Yves quite simply did not have the stamina of a porn star. And most men of her acquaintance were similarly less well endowed. She herself was too thin, her bosom too small, her anus too resisting, for her to ever consider pornography as a career.

A maid knocked timorously on the door to the balcony. Rose-Marie smiled at her. She was definitely not of porn star material. Her large floppy breasts. Her rough hands. And that docility shared by all the servants she’d ever met. “What is it?” she demanded of the maid.

Her head bowed, the white cap on her head the only clothing she wore, but enough to denote her status. “If you please, ma’amzelle,” she said in her Creole French, “There is a gentleman to see you.”

“Is it Yves?”

“It is, ma’amzelle.”

“Well, don’t be such an idiot with formality. Just bring him in!” Rose-Marie cursed the maid, watching her brown buttocks wobble heavily as she turned away to escort her fiancé into her presence. Servants were so stupid! But so necessary. Almost a half the population of the French Empire was directly employed in domestic service. The dynamism of the industrial state had not been kind to other forms of unskilled or semi-skilled employment.

After Yves had arrived, and he and Rose-Marie had exchanged kisses, her fiancé leaned back, his hands on Rose-Marie’s hips and admired her. “Mon Dieu! You are so beautiful. I am truly a lucky man.”

“And I a lucky woman,” agreed Rose-Marie, studying him from the tangled black hairs on his chest to that penis of his that she loved so well. But as she looked at it, her thoughts wandered to the recently held vision of Nicholas’ manhood. And it wasn’t just the penis that was so much more striking on this Virginian. As she could see, past Yves’ shoulder, where the gardener was addressing the two black servants, Nicholas had a truly impressive man’s body. Muscular and firm. Buttocks that pinched in as he walked. A swell of clean firm muscle on his forearms and shoulders. And lightish brown, almost red, curly hair on his chest and at the base of his swinging, hypnotically attractive, penis.

Yves could see that his fiancée’s gaze had strayed. He turned his head around, swivelling his body to take Rose-Marie by the waist. “I see you’ve got a new gardener.”

“Yes. He’s British. From the province of Virginia.”

“Oh! A Yankee. Strange lot. Don’t make very obedient servants. But they have lots of initiative. Mind you, he has a well-built figure, hasn’t he? Very well hung! The better for shafting the American Indians.”

“They’re called ‘Native Americans’ now.”

“Political correctness. Pah! Where will that take the world? Start questioning the order of things and all hell will be let loose. All that fanciful talk of independence for the colonies and universal enfranchisement. Isn’t it enough that women can vote, provided they are of sufficient status? Isn’t it enough that the natives can have a say in the government of their territories?”

“Oh, Yves! Stop with the politics. You know how much it bores me. But that gardener. Look at how his dick swings. It must be a real monster when it’s erect.” Rose-Marie playfully stroked Yves’ more modest penis, pleased to watch it swell and grow beneath the afternoon sun. Yves kissed her on the cheek.

“Not in front of the servants, ma cherie. Let’s go indoors. To the couch.”

Rose-Marie giggled and pulled her fiancé by his steadily swelling penis into the main living room, past the huge piano that filled the far end of the room, and onto the sofa that stretched out by the huge unlit fireplace and the equally huge television screen. As always, when Yves’ prick was erect, all he wanted to do was to push it into his fiancée’s vagina and release its contents. Rose-Marie was in less of a hurry. There were several hours they could spend together until the evening, when they’d be expected to dine with her mother and listen again to a litany of complaints about how her father was always away on business and how insolent the servants were becoming in his absence.

She knelt on top of Yves as he lay down on his back on the enormous sofa, one leg dangling over the side and a cushion supporting his neck. Her arse was in his face, while her lips found their way to the tip of Yves’ now fully erect penis. But even fully erect, it seemed to be only the length of Nicholas’ penis when limp. This made her feel strangely weak with desire. A kind of moistness eased out of her vagina, even before Yves’ tongue reached out and licked at its folds. Rose-Marie took the shaft of Yves’ penis in the grip of her right hand, while supporting her weight on her left hand, and pulled and tugged on it, admiring the veins that pulsed through the skin that pulled off the glans, and stretched her body backward. No evidence now of that long foreskin which was one of Yves’ most striking characteristics. And then her mouth on the tip. It had taken Rose-Marie a while to get used to the taste of Yves’ penis. At first she had found it strange. The peculiar male odours. The different feel on her tongue of the smooth shiny glans and the main body where the hairs persisted almost halfway up its length. And, of course, the testicles. Or at least the taut scrotum pulled by the tension of the penis’s stiffness. Another taste again. And many more hairs to get tangled in her teeth. But Rose-Marie loved it now. She truly loved cock. And today she wanted to know it so much better.

However, Yves was hungry to get inside her. His prick was slippery, damp and twitching. The muscles around the top of his thighs shuddered with anticipation. His fingers probed and twisted inside Rose-Marie’s arse and vagina. His tongue slobbered in an uncoordinated but effective way over her clitoris and her pussy lips.

“Merde! You’re as wet as a species of fountain! You must really be wanting it. Come on. Let me in your doorway.” Yves rubbed her lips with his fingers, stimulating Rose-Marie to gasp in a passion, squeezing her cheeks on Yves’ prick.

“Not yet, mon amour! Just a bit longer!”

“Oh come off it, ma petite! Let’s just do it!”

And so reluctantly, Rose-Marie let herself be turned around and penetrated. It wasn’t that it wasn’t enjoyable. And today it seemed to last ever such a long time until Yves’ penis exploded inside her, the thick creamy sperm bursting free and dampening her thighs and crotch. But it still seemed too soon. And the penis was such a small sorry sight when it had expired. Rose-Marie studied the shrivelled shell, with its foreskin creeping back up to resemble the teat of a condom. A small puddle of creamy white dripped out of the pursed mouth.

“Where are we going this evening, ma cherie?” Yves wondered.

“Le Jardin Rouge, I guess.”

“Again? We went there just two days ago.”

“I told Celine we’d be there. We can’t disappoint her.”

Despite Rose-Marie’s best efforts in tugging and licking Yves’ penis, there wasn’t to be any more sex that afternoon, except the variety supplied by satellite television. More energetic well-endowed couples. But even these pricks, belonging to professional porn stars were less impressive than Nicholas’. Normally, only ten minutes of this kind of stuff was enough to bore Rose-Marie, but today she was especially curious of the genitals on display.

Dinner was precisely as dull and tedious as Rose-Marie had expected. Just how much mileage could even her mother make of the stain she’d found on the tablecloth? “It’s not as if the servants have got much else to wash!” complained Rose-Marie’s mother, whom her daughter sometimes guessed was not a natural Edenist. Despite plastic surgery, age had not been kind to her. Her small breasts were already almost flat and her brown tanned skin was prematurely cracked and lined. Rose-Marie hoped that she’d weather better. Too much direct sun on her mother’s skin perhaps.

Le Jardin Rouge was kicking tonight. A DJ from the North American mainland was there, bringing some vital vinyl from Miami and New Orleans. The dance floor was a heaving mass of bare flesh. Penises and breasts swinging and swaying and shaking with the pulsating electronic beats, the occasional English voice articulated over the rhythm. In music, as almost everything else, the British flaunted their world dominance. Why couldn’t French musicians ever use the mother tongue?

Although Celine was there, with Renée, Mathilde and Jacques, it was Yves who had most of Rose-Marie’s attention. She was determined to show her friends just how close the two of them were. None of her friends were engaged yet. Soon she’d be married and she and Yves would have their own home. Perhaps an apartment over the beach. And then Yves would work for his father. Or even go into politics. Rose-Marie pulled herself up onto her toes, pressing her bosom against Yves’, and then sliding down so that his erect penis, brought to life by the drugs, could slip into her vagina. She smiled at Celine, who was stroking Jacques’ penis, proud to show her how very close she was to Yves. And the music was still pumping. Slower. More romantic. More sensuous. As she slid up and down on Yves’ shaft, angling herself so that Celine would have no doubt of the fact of Yves’ penetration, struggling to fight off his natural inclination to pull her to him in such a way the view would be obscured. And their tongues and lips enmeshed in passion.

And then, the end of the evening, sperm still on Rose-Marie’s upper thigh and in her pubic hair, and even a small smidgeon of dried semen on her knee, and a last good night kiss, before the taxis took them back to their different homes. As the taxi pulled into the drive of her father’s mansion, Rose-Marie caught a glimpse of a muscular figure strolling through the moonlit garden. Despite the excitement of the evening, the sweat and sperm sticking to her hot bruised body, her heart still audibly jumped as she regarded Nicholas’ prick, swinging from side to side as he strode along the paved walk-ways, examining the flowers under his care.

Rose-Marie was driven by curiosity the following day to look at her father’s head gardener more closely. With all the fuss about skin cancer, she tended not to stay in the garden very long, unlike her mother, who, in any case, rarely emerged from the small conservatory near the artificial lake. She could see Nicholas bent down with a trowel and a garden fork, examining some bulbs just by the small copse at the far end of the garden. Rose-Marie wandered over to him.

“Hello,” she said in the imperious tone with which she addressed the servants. “You’re the new gardener, aren’t you?”

Nicholas turned his head round to look at her. From where she stood, Rose-Marie could just about see some of his prick, but most of it was hidden by the shadow of his knees. “I am. And who might you be?”

Two things immediately troubled Rose-Marie. First of all, he didn’t stand to attention like a servant should. Secondly, he didn’t address her with due deference. “I’m Rose-Marie de Rouen.” No change in the man’s quizzical expression. “Monsieur de Rouen’s daughter.” Still no change. “Your master.”

“‘Master’?” Nicholas laughed. “I’m sorry my French is not very good. You mean ‘employer’.”

Rose-Marie was puzzled. What difference was there? “Yes, employer.”

Nicholas glanced up and down at her, taking in her pale pert breasts, her slender thighs and the mound of her crotch. “So what is it you want, miss? Do you want to help me in the garden?”

Rose-Marie gasped. The impertinence of the man! She? Work in the garden? “Well, no. I just thought…”

“If you do want to help, there’s a lot that needs to be done. I could do with some assistance, you know.”

This wasn’t going as Rose-Marie had hoped. Not that she was especially sure where it ought to be going. Why had her curiosity brought her out here? She refused to be drawn on Nicholas’ line of discussion. “You’re from Virginia. In British North America. You’re British, aren’t you?”

Without standing up, with one hand still on a the trowel and his elbow leaning on his knee, a glimpse of long tail in shadow between his legs, and a smile that addressed her with none of the servility that Rose-Marie expected, Nicholas smiled but without warmth. “I prefer to think of myself as Virginian. And I would like to be in Virginia now if I had the choice.”

“Then why aren’t you? Is it because you’re a keen Edenist?”

“Edenist? No, Edenism is just one of those romantic, utopian ideals that decadent empires become keen on when they have no better ideas for change. I’m not an Edenist. It’s just no big deal not to wear clothes all day. And as a way of life, it’s no more radical than being a vegetarian.” Nicholas sighed. “I don’t live in Virginia because my home province doesn’t want me to.”

“Why’s that?”

“You really don’t know, do you? I’m a believer in American Independence. Like many people in British North America, I’m not satisfied with home rule and representative government. I want full self-determination. Independence from the British yoke.”

Rose-Marie was very puzzled. She really had no notion what Nicholas was getting at. “Do you want Virginia to leave the British Empire? Perhaps join the French Empire?”

“French Empire? Why would I want to exchange the tyranny of Westminster for the tyranny of Versailles? What an odd reason to be expelled from the land of one’s birth!” Nicholas stood up, and as he did so, Rose-Marie gasped. He was a tall man, but not exceptionally so. His chest was broad, his skin was brown, but shiny from the thick layer of sun cream that covered it, and between his legs, Rose-Marie just couldn’t help peeking, it was such a huge piece of meat, the foreskin not quite joining over the eye of his glans, the head of which she could glimpse, and testicles proportional to the penis they served.

With difficulty, she averted her gaze and looked into Nicholas’s light blue eyes. This was the first time she’d ever properly seen his face. The curls of his hair covered half his ears. Freckles covered his round cheeks and his smallish nose. And his teeth were broad and white, but smiled without too much humour. Rose-Marie struggled to defend her opinions. “I just don’t understand what you mean by ‘independence’. Every country in the world is in one of the big empires. British. French. German. Ottoman. Dutch. How else could it be? In the modern world, no country can be strong enough to survive unless it is part of a stronger more powerful economic and political unit.”

“Nonsense! It’s just the Europeans running the world for their own benefit. None of the empires would exist if it weren’t in the interests of the Europeans. Taxing the colonies to finance the huge navies and the armies of civil servants. The world would be a better place if the colonies and the provinces of all the empires were independent and governed for themselves.”

“But there would be war and chaos. The European empires have kept peace for more than two hundred years. There has been no major war since the Wars of Religious Freedom…”

“Except when the Germans invaded Japan and Korea. Or when the British and Germans divided up the last remnants of China. Or when the French massacred the rebels in Haiti. Or don’t these conflicts count?”

“Well, no. They don’t. No Europeans were killed. Well, not many of them.”

“I see,” sniffed Nicholas. He shook his head as if in despair. “I thought you Edenists might be a bit more enlightened. All this back to nature thing. The tradition of Rousseau and Thoreau. But clearly, more than being Edenists, you are just French Imperialists. Now, excuse me. I have work to do.”

Nicholas knelt down by the flowerbed, and busied himself with his trowel. Rose-Marie stood by, feeling hurt and embarrassed. This wasn’t right. Servants don’t behave like that. Even if they did come from the British Empire. She hovered there, her skin burning hot from inside. Hotter even than it would have been from just the Caribbean sun.

“You can’t just talk to me like that,” she struggled to say, to keep her dignity intact. “My father wouldn’t like it!”

“The fuck what your father likes!” Nicholas exclaimed in English, a language Rose-Marie understood perfectly well.

“He’ll go mad if he hears how impertinent you’ve been,” snorted Rose-Marie. “Servants don’t talk like that. It’s not right!”

Nicholas sighed. He rolled his eyes slightly and wearily stood up. Again Rose-Marie’s eyes were drawn towards that penis of his. And, she wasn’t sure, but didn’t it twitch a bit? “Look, Rose-Marie de Rouen, let’s not be silly about this. In Virginia, things are different to here. There aren’t servants. There are employees. It’s a free country. Where everyone can vote. Even if the majority of the population are so misguided as to prefer to pay their taxes to a government in North West Europe. It’s not easy for me to behave in the way that your servants do.”

Something melted inside Rose-Marie. The combination of this man’s impertinence and the authority he managed to command despite his lowly status, and the sight of his penis, nearly twenty centimetres of flesh, and still not erect. And dominating her vision wherever she looked. And somehow rooting her to the ground when she knew she should just leave. And telephone her father. And get him to dismiss this insolent foreigner and his radical ways. She attempted to say something; to articulate something through the cloud of her confusion, when, without knowing how or really what caused it, she suddenly broke into tears.

“Oh! For heaven’s sake!” Nicholas swore, in English again. “Stop crying, will you. It’s not as if I’ve hit you or anything.”

Rose-Marie sobbed. “I don’t know why you talk to me like that. I only wanted to speak to you. I didn’t want to…”

Nicholas’s voice became softer. He put a consoling arm over her shoulder. “Look, come on. Perhaps I was a bit harsh with you. You French. So damned emotional. Come over here. Let’s sit on the bench.”

Rose-Marie heard Nicholas’ words, but nothing was clearer to her senses than the sensation of that firm strong hand on her shoulder. So warm. So powerful. And then the two of them were sitting on a bench, facing out to sea, past a view of palm trees and scrubby bushes, punctuated by the chirrup of cicadas and the rustle of leaves in the warm sea breeze. And as Rose-Marie’s head was bowed, an arm around her silently heaving shoulders, she was looking directly at Nicholas’ penis. And yes, it was twitching. Only a little. But it was firmer. Stiffer. And visibly larger.

“What is it like in Virginia, where you come from?”

“The skies they go on forever. They’re blue and clear. With little fluffy clouds. And the clouds catch the colour of the light. You don’t see that here.” Nicholas stared towards the distance. “And there are lots of stars at night. It’s so beautiful. The most beautiful skies in the world.”

Rose-Marie placed a hand on Nicholas’ thigh. He was clearly moved by his memories. She could feel the brush of his penis against the back of her palm. The light hairs on her arm rose slightly, even though it was very warm. Her breath became shorter and her heart beat violently in her chest.

“Why! You’re shaking, Rose-Marie. What’s wrong with you?”

Rose-Marie shook her head. She wasn’t at all sure what she could say. She let Nicholas hold her more closely against his chest, feeling the brush of his hair against her skin. And then, with an impulsiveness that surprised her, she put her hand on Nicholas’ penis and squeezed it.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Nicholas asked, but not resisting her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just… It’s just… Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!” She pulled herself onto Nicholas’ face and showered it with kisses.

At first Nicholas was obviously puzzled. His penis was being stroked and tugged, while lips and tongue were wetting his face. His eyes looked around him with some disconcertment. And then his natural decisiveness reasserted itself.

“Rose-Marie. Not here. In the copse.”

“Yes. Not here. Not here. What am I thinking?” murmured Rose-Marie, but continuing to cover Nicholas’ face with the saliva of her tongue. And her fingers rolled beneath the base of the penis and grasped Nicholas’ testicles. So hard. So firm. Exactly like the shape of two hen’s eggs. Soft and unresisting. Hard and pliable. And pulsing with sexual potency.

“Into the copse! Hurry!” Nicholas breathed, standing up with difficulty as his huge penis stretched out in front of him, twitching and struggling into life, pulling the foreskin clear of the glans, at an angle now almost perpendicular to his waist and still growing. The skin pulling and pulling, so that his testicles were dragged along the penis’s length, away from the hairy base and the soft hairs of his anus. Rose-Marie let herself be guided by Nicholas’ guiding arm across the lawn and into the shadow of the copse, speckles of light coming through the dense imported leaves, onto the soft mossy ground.

And it was on this ground, surrounded by the debris of discarded tree-bark and pine needles and slightly damp moss and ferns, that Rose-Marie lay spread out, conscious of Nicholas’ tongue and lips and teeth chewing and licking and sucking on her labial lips, her clitoris and entering her lower mouth. While her tongue and eyes concentrated on Nicholas’ powerful manhood. Now fully erect. Forty centimetres or more in length. Full and erect. The glans itself almost as big as many men’s penises were when limp. She could get her lips around the purple bulging pulsing glans but not far down the rest of the penis. The bluish veins pulsed against her tongue and the insides of her lips, as she pulled her mouth up and down on its length, feeling it brush against her tonsils, almost making her cough. So hard. So warm. And so powerful. And now so slippery. As her spit slid down its length, spotting the reddish brown pubic hairs.

And eventually, and only when Rose-Marie was ready, so very ready, her vaginal juices spitting out like fat from a fire, a dribble of saliva worrying its way into her anus, then, and only then, as she gasped, delirious with passion and desire, Nicholas penetrated her vagina. And it slid in, at first, so easily. In. In. Slightly out. In. In. Slightly out again. There was a strange sucking, slapping, slurping noise as the body fluids that lubricated the genitals slid and slobbered against each other. And then, slightly at first, and then increasing, a slight worrying and then escalating dull pain, as Rose-Marie lost a new virginity that she hadn’t known she had.

Rose-Marie didn’t know in the confusion of her passion, where time dissolved into desire, where her senses enmeshed with her desire and ecstasy, what it was that made her cries of passion so loud and vocal. Was it the pain? Was it the pleasure? Was it even really pain she felt, but just a heightened pronounced feeling of passion. And she exploded into orgasm once. Twice. Thrice. And then how many times? At first minutes between each peak of passion. Then more rapidly. More frequently. Like a concertina of ecstasy. And then even after she knew that Nicholas had released as much sperm as he could. And his penis had shrivelled inside her, but still large enough to stay there. Even then, when she knew it should be over. One more time of passion. And orgasm. And then another. And then collapse. Perhaps even a brief loss of consciousness.

After this, Rose-Marie never spoke to Nicholas again. It would not be right. His dangerous opinions. His insolence. And of course she was betrothed and had no wish to harm what would soon be a successful marriage by any foolishness. But whenever she strode the garden, her parasol up to keep the skin cancer at bay, hand in hand with Yves, puffing away at his cigar, she would glance at Nicholas, his penis swaying as he strode across the lawn, a rake and a shovel over his shoulder and a pannier in his hand, she would always feel that warm, familiar passion between her thighs. A passion that often took Yves by surprise, but curiously seemed to cement their love.