Like many noble women in her country, Emma was cursed with too much money and too little to do. Having lived nearly twenty-nine years in the world with very little to distress or vex her, she longed for a real adventure.
From her deceased parents the young woman had inherited a handsome estate, enough to sustain forever her lifestyle which was by no account humble. An aunt was her reluctant guardian, until she reached adulthood and became her own mistress.
Emma's taste was impeccable in fashion and food. Her closet was full of bonnets, dresses and slippers hardly worn, to be thrown out next spring; piles of sweet madeleines were always slowly rotting away on silver trays where no one was looking.
Naturally she was well versed in the art of love, body or mind. She knew by heart all thirty-six different ways a knight could save his damsel, or how a miller could trick a baroness.
She had an encyclopedia that boasted of all positions ever put in practice since Eve & Adam, each supplemented with detailed texts. She would flip from page to page and read from word to word, and stop at where she always stopped:
"My, oh, my..."
With her naked lovers she tried out these gymnastics in her laboratory of love, and more than once it ended up maiming a bed leg or two.
She once made love in a hotel right in the center of the capital. Their room was facing the street, and she left the windows wide open for a whole afternoon. What a scandal it created!
She was never short of lovers. Men waited in droves by her gate, hoping to ask for her hand in marriage and gain access to her title and immense fortune. She could lie in bed all day; her suitors would come to her, with gifts galore and lutes, tales to entertain, lusty male bodies to roll between sheets with.
But as Emma's years approached thirty, her days of happiness seemed to have grown far and apart. What used to work her up no longer did. She had never been so bored before. Now a blue settled on her secret heart.
What does one do when the ripest grapes don't taste sweet anymore?
Of course she wasn't thinking of marriage. A vow was death by a thousand cuts. She would not bear a man's child, unless he were worth a kingdom and lives like a saint.
The problem, Emma decided, was that her affairs were too polished and smooth, all sweet like her desserts and no thorn to prick and hurt. For what is real love without loss?
She was merely playing dress-up. Now she had outgrown the nest that bred her and longed for a wider sky. She made up her mind to pursue, whatever it was, outside her familiar walls.
Real adventures do not happen at home; they must be sought abroad.
And with her kind of money anything could be arranged.
Emma began working at a brothel. It was one of the better establishments in the city, and though the patrons were no nobility, they had obtained enough silver to buy their way into a glimpse of paradise.
To avoid being recognized, she wore a half-mask and claimed to be a foreign princess who had lost everything in war. The backstory was convincing enough for these commoners. She even faked a dramatic accent to play along.
She had her own small room, with the bed taking much of its space. It was a round red bed that would spin slowly as action got heated. When men came in at first they acted much like her admirers. They addressed her as 'your ladyship,' and asked about her ravaged homeland.
Their feigned sympathy never lasted long, however. They had paid to fuck her, and the conversation was only to get them stiff.
"Have you ever seen a bigger cock?" They accosted her. "Now come and put it in your mouth!"
Emma had never been talked to like this. She was both startled and turned on. As she sucked her eyes lowered.
"Look at you... a foreign whore who's never had a real man!"
She knew the other girls were working twice as hard, but life in a brothel was so much more than she thought. No time to mess around getting warmed up; they wanted to see her tits the moment the clock started ticking. She had to take many quick baths a day because how soon she began to smell.
The sex was run-of-the-mill, but there was adventure in the speedy iteration of warming men's sex in her mouth, of being prodded between her thighs and held tight by her waist.
She never got completely naked in bed. Like her mask, her lingerie only showed men what they needed to see, and it drove them mad.
After the rapture, and a brief time before they had to leave, they would talk to her again, this time more as equal partners. They complained about their fortunes, wives, and other frustrations. She listened, gave advices, and issued arbitrations. She became a patient listener when the world stopped revolving around her.
But eventually this new life wore her out. She was constantly making up tales and keeping track of which version she told to whom. The bubble of fantasy blew larger and larger each day. She had weaved an entire world and populated it with souls whose feet had never walked upon this earth.
She knew what the men were thinking, when they wiped the cream from her mouth with their thumbs, and when her legs splayed shamelessly before their hungry eyes.
They must feel like Genghis Khan.
So what if she's from a remote little princedom? She might as well be a demigoddess. They had soiled her and made her beg for it. That, as long as the men were concerned, was all that mattered. Emma felt like crawling in another woman's skin.
One particularly gullible client worried Emma most: he listened to how the rebels raped and pillaged their way across her beautiful innocent country with a shivering rage. He began to develop a plan to go back and recover her father's great seal and crown she had thrown into the icy river during her escape so her boat wouldn't overturn.
With the seal and the crown, he told her, they could crown themselves king and queen and rebuild her homeland from the ashes.
He had the money ready to purchase her freedom from the brothel. He would divorce his own wife of twenty years; he'd do anything for her, he said, kneeling by her bed pleading, kissing her toes one by one.
We'll leave tomorrow, he said. No, let's leave right now!
Emma had never seen anyone so miserable in love. She almost broke down and told him everything. She had to bite her own tongue to stop compromising herself!
She ended her brothel stunt the next morning.
But Emma had tasted another world. At home the suitors were thrilled for her return, but their faces bore her to death. She became lazy in bed, barely moving at all, and faking her orgasms in a comical pitch that even the most inexperienced man found laughable. What she used to stop and savor, now she just wanted to get over with.
Before long Emma was sending out her trusted servants again, searching for her next mission.
This time she became a bath maid.
There were public bathes in the lower districts, where men from all walks liked to frequent. The bath maids were always open for business. For a few coppers they would give a man a good scrub and help him with their hands. A few more coppers, and they would kneel in the steamy water between his thighs.
Any more than that was not allowed, for the place was not licensed for a proper brothel. But the owner was willing to turn a blind eye if things were conducted in the corners, away from his sight, as long as he got his cut.
Emma quickly learned the rules. Everything had a price tag here, and she should never let herself be touched without the promise of payment. At the end of the day the girls handed half of what they earned to the owner, who kept track of everyone's numbers. He'd scold those he thought were slacking off, and threaten to whip them.
She never let him know who she really was. This time she was just a poor young widow who's got an odd way of carrying herself. He took it for snobbery.
"If you don't like my place you can go to the streets! See how long your pretty face will last out there!"
Emma decided it was for the best, although it was a much more demanding job, for she could be invisible here, a nameless woman in a sea of men. She stroke and stroke until her arms started cramping.
There were always opportunities to make the extra coins. Some of these young men from the countryside had never had a woman before. She'd pick them out and take them to a corner, and get on immediately; they'd do it while standing up, her holding against the wall or let them restrain her arms.
There was a peculiar thrill to be on her feet, almost like stealing, as if she'd get caught and need to run away any moment.
The worst type of clients were a group of old men who had nothing better to do. Every day they congregated in a circle and chatted. Their ugly physique made her recoil. They'd pay one man's money for all, and had never-ending demands. Since Emma was the newcomer the other girls let her handle their nuisance.
The old men stretched what little money they had as far as they could. They'd ask her to sit on their laps and listen to their chatters. They talked about what wicked fun they'd have with her were they young again. They grabbed her tits and played with them as they argued with each other. Then they'd have Emma show them how women like to rub themselves.
One of them finally paid her to suck him. He could hardly get stiff. She knelt in the warm bathwater and wondered what she's doing with that soft ugly worm in her mouth, when she was slapped on face.
"What do you think you're doing? Have you dozed off?"
Others laughed. It wasn't a hard slap, but it was the first time someone ever hit her.
Emma looked up with clenched jaws and met his eyes. He had nothing but contempt for her. Yes, who did she think she was? Even if she told them no one would believe her. Those eyes still stared at her, as if asking if she wanted one on her right cheek too.
She swallowed her tears and began to suck.
That hit must have given him such a rush of blood, for the old man was now almost stiff. As Emma tried to satisfy him she felt another one of them on her back, his tongue drilling on the tender skin of her rear, wanting to break through the seal.
"Fart onto his face, chick!" Others cajoled.
The bath's steam caught her breath in her throat. She thought of these diabolical illustrations in her encyclopedia, and her thighs trembled like strings of a harp, until a shuddering shock consumed her entirely.
The man behind her placed a small basket between her legs and caught whatever she released in it; when her groan stopped he didn't miss a beat and rained it all down on her head. That was the last straw; Emma suddenly stood up, her shoulders shaking, and stepped out of the bath.
"Your time ain't up yet." The owner looked at her and at the clock.
