“Sit,” she said insistently.

Newland shrank into the chair.

“Do pay the mother of your unborn child some attention, dearest,” she said.

Newland frowned. He was trapped.

May continued dipping the toy in her sheath, and then rose up and positioned herself upon her knees. She squeezed her nipples, one at a time, threw her hair back, and then pulled the toy from her sheath. She brought it to her lips and placed it inside her mouth, moistening it further, and then brought it lower.

“I’d much rather it were you, dear,” she said and pushed the faux member inside her nether door. She writhed as the crown entered, and then her hips began undulating, taking the toy deeper inside.

“May?”

“It’s safe,” she whispered. “So . . . so safe,” she said, but soon she was at a loss for words. With one hand, she braced the toy as she slid it through her forbidden vessel. She squeezed her nipples with the other, and then slowly lowered her hand, following the curves of her body down to her intimate folds, where she found her inflamed pearl.

“Oh, yes, my darling . . .” Her eyelids fluttered, and then she opened them wide with a daring stare, that of a seductress, that of a woman filled with pure lust. Not blinking, she looked deeply into his eyes and continued to caress herself, taunting him, trying to entice him, while also moving her hips with a more determined and deliberate bend to consume the toy.

Though Newland did not move from his position, and merely watched, he was beginning to feel more aroused. Their stare remained unbroken.

May writhed and circled her shoulders as she moaned incessantly. Her voice was uninhibited, loud, and desirous. “If only you were inside of me,” she said, her voice scrappy, barely articulating the words.

Then Newland rose from his chair, his member now hard.

May closed her eyes. She suddenly shrieked aloud. It was moan that was altogether too familiar to Newland. When she opened her eyes again, setting her glance upon him exactly as it had been before she closed them, he thought they might continue. But she held her hand in front of her, stopping him cold, shunning him. The opportunity was irretrievably lost.

Chapter 16

Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in his library in East Thirty-ninth Street.

He had just got back from a big official reception for the inauguration of the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and the spectacle of those great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the throng of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted spring of memory.

“Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms,” he heard some one say; and instantly everything about him vanished, and he was sitting alone on a hard leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure in a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely-fitted vista of the old Museum.