I have endeavored to be good all my life. I am a religiousman. I believe in the Lord that I serve and the religion that I promulgate.
I lie face down on the bed fully clothed and groan.
Every day, I awake with a hard cock that it takes everything in me to ignore.
I have read many treatises about the deleterious effects of self-abuse. Most especially that damned book by William Acton. The good doctor believes that self-abuse deforms the body and harms the spirit. I never wanted to deform myself. I want to arrive at the marital bed whole. And so I do everything I can not to touch myself. But sometimes, very, very occasionally, I break my rules. When I cannot stand it for another moment. I won’t take myself in hand—that is too far—but I will do…well, this.
I groan again, my cock fully engorged now. I imagine pressing my mouth to Miss de Lacey’s full lips. I imagine tasting that tart, pink tongue with my own. I palm her breasts and hear her breath catch. I kiss her roughly in a way that would surely horrify a decent woman, and she welcomes it.
My bollocks ache from lack of release. It has been a month since I allowed myself this indulgence. My cock is thick and angry, burning through my trousers. It is a hot, heavy, furious thing and I can deny it no longer. I thrust gently against the bed and my cock sings in appreciation, seed already seeping into my smalls. I thrust again and find myself at that threshold of sin. I moan at the sensation, at how sweet it is, and how wicked.
We may confidently assert that no man is entitled to the character of being chaste who by any unnatural means causes expulsion of semen.
Those words again. Ones that I try, ardently, to obey.
When I was a boy of thirteen, I engaged in self-abuse regularly until I was caught by a maidservant who told my father.
He called me into his study. He told me that self-abuse would steal my health and rot my brain. And then he told me that whenever I wanted to touch myself, I should read that book—he slid it across the table to me—to remind me why I shouldn’t.
I was never entirely successful. I stopped taking myself in hand, but I found other ways to find pleasure.
Once, four or five years later at school, a master caught me rutting against my bed.
I received a birching and they sent a letter to my father.
He sent me a missive full of disappointment and reproach.
He called me depraved.
After that, I only let myself have a release when I couldn’t stand it anymore.
And always in this indirect manner.
For a moment, I consider stopping. Could I hold back now?
But I know I can’t. Not today. Not after meeting her.
There is a scene from the book that I should not have. The one with the green cover. In it, a woman kisses a man and lets him fondle her breast and he spends from that alone.
Now, in my mind it is myself and Miss de Lacey in that scene.
I imagine kissing her once more, taking her tongue into my mouth. I imagine that it isherI buck against, not this coverlet. The futility of such visions does not make them any less sweet. Annabelle de Lacey, of all women, will never let me have her—and I couldn’t bed her even if she wanted me.
But I cannot help it.
I cannot help imagining what it would be like to kiss her. To touch her breasts. To hear her sighs.
I come then, convulsively, emptying into my trousers. The pleasure is so intense that I cry out, and I pray no one is about to hear such racked, pathetic groans. They cannot be mistaken for anything else. They are the sounds of a deprived, desperate man giving himself what he shouldn’t. I imagine Miss de Lacey watching me with her superior, cold manner and shudder with pleasure again.
As the euphoria ebbs, the shame trickles in.
I am supposed to lead my parishioners, but I myself am debased.
I know I have wounded my body and soul. And all for selfish pleasure. So that I can pretend to consummate hopeless dreams. This break in resolution is worse than usual. Usually, no particular woman enters my mind—it is closer to a bodily function, a simple release.Thisis different.
If my father knew about such doings, he would horsewhip me to London and back.
I remember the way that Miss de Lacey held her teacup. Those long, slender fingers.
