He followed, slowly, watching her dim figure round the corner. By the time he had reached it, she was swallowed up amidst the stragglers making their way to the fringe of the crowds in the square.
Cesare wandered down to the square where in a roped off space around the pump and an old statue, the fireworks were being exploded. Rockets were still scarring the sky and on the ground a trelliswork of Roman candles, Catherine wheels and other specialities were popping and whirring in profusion and hurtling sparks into the shrieking, joyful crowds. There was no sign of Dorotea, nor yet the Duke of Alfaro's party. Many people were drunk and there were several necking sessions being carried on openly in a way which would have shocked everybody to the core on a day which was more realistic than the present.
Soon the crowds began to waver back to make room for the grotesquely masked figures, many several times life size which marched into the square, followed by great floats and carts with tableaux from which more fireworks were being hurtled into the flame-scratched sky.
Men were swigging back wine from flasks and couples were dancing, alone and in groups. There was singing, shouting and, doubtless in some dark doorways, there was fucking too.
Cesare began to get into the mood of the crowd. He was disappointed that he'd not managed to possess Dorotea that very night. It had left him hot and frustrated. She had an impish animation with her loveliness, and her obvious desire for. him increased his own for her. Now his penis was hot and unsatisfied and his face still flaming from the passion which remained unrequited in his loins. He held out his hand for a flask of wine which was readily passed to him by one of the merrymakers and took a long draught. He joined the group from which he'd received this beneficence and took stock of its members. Among them was an attractive and rather young girl whose cheeks were flushed and whose skirts swished in abandon as she danced and sang. She appeared for the moment to be with nobody and Cesare joined the dancing group next to her.
“You're so beautiful,” he whispered to her as they swung around each other in the dance, and her laughing, tipsy eyes laughed up at him and she pouted her mouth as if she wanted to ' be kissed. A young bud ripe for the plucking, he said to himself as he kissed her lightly on her rosebud lips.
The group raced toward the edge of the crowd for a better view as more floats and carts rumbled into the square. Cesare caught the girl, who was about to run with them and waltzed her into a dance. Laughing and leaning back from his arms, she allowed herself to be danced away from the crowd, until they were almost lost in the gloom at the edge of the square. There Cesare kissed her more ardently and she responded with a similar, but innocent ardor.
“Let's go and salvage the remains of the ox,” he suggested.
“But I'm not hungry.”
“I am?we can dance all the way and be back in a moment.”
She threw back her head and laughed at the thought of dancing through the streets and they moved off with one accord through the gloom of the lane which led to the field where the skeleton of the ox was sagging over the dying fire. On the way they were passed by a group of armed men, who stared at them closely as they passed. You'll find her when you join the throng, Cesare thought with a twinkle. His thoughts roamed for a moment over the face and body of Dorotea. He put his arm around the girl at his side, who was laughing and chattering. A good second best, he thought.
When they reached the field, the fire was a small, flickering spot in a distant point. It was dark and he led her away from the fire. She didn't seem to notice and when, near a clump of small bushes he pulled her around and kissed her again, she closed her eyes and threw back her head. The soft lips on his enveloped him in flame. Her dark hair was lavender-scented. He caught her neck in his hands and crushed his body into her. He stroked her breasts over her dress and drew her down onto the grass in the gloomy shadow of the bushes. She did not resist while he roved over her breasts, but when his hand moved away and traveled up her leg, lifting the hem of her dress and moving up a soft bare thigh, she pulled her face from his.
“No, no,” she said.
He ignored her protest, held her tightly and moved his hand right up until he could feel the concave heat of her crotch and his fingertips brushed against a soft down.
“No, no, no,” she said softly but desperately. She tried to pull away and closed her thighs over his hand. As she struggled he held her tighter and then his fingers were brushing the soft, hanging folds of her labia. When he dug inside she cried out and began to whimper. She was evidently a virgin. But tonight was revelry night, the night for deflowering, and Cesare was at boiling point from his earlier encounter. Holding her struggling body he pulled, tugged and tore off her undergarment and stretched her back on the grass. He slithered from his own undergarments and felt the cool night air on his rigid prick.
“No, no, please, no…” the girl begged. But the caress of his fingers in her vagina which was moistening rapidly seemed to have subdued her. It was now herself she was fighting as much as him.
Cesare wasted no time. He swung onto her and jabbed his prick at her hole. “No, no, no?Oooooooooh!” His penis had coursed into her wet flesh, in pain and excitement. Her mouth screwed up. This was it. This was the point of waiting finally reached on a dark carnival night in a cool field with a strange man. It hurt, but it was exciting and after a while it began to give pleasure. Cesare, thrusting deeper and deeper into her body which quivered like a frightened animal's imagined to himself that it was Dorotea, with whom he looked forward to emulating today's performance on the morrow.
CHAPTER 12
Dorotea had rejoined the Duke of Alfaro's party, explained her absence due to being lost in the crowd and then wandering in curiosity, and had finally left the carnival early. Drunks were already lying around the streets and the Duke and his entourage, who returned to his chateau with her, saw some scenes which the Pope could not officially have approved of.
The Duke, with lovesick, desire-jaundiced eyes seized every opportunity to catch her hand, to press against her, to look down the front of her dress. He seemed to her really like a child. But she could forgive him. If she hadn't come to stay at the chateau she would never have met the Duke of Valentinois, with whom her thoughts were overwhelmed. She wondered how he would execute the daring plan he had decided on for tomorrow. They said he stopped at nothing. That was what thrilled her?the thought of being in the arms of a man who stopped at nothing, to know that even as you felt his organ filling you he was a strange, iron-willed man who stopped at nothing, would take from you whatever he desired and there was nothing you could do about it.
Back in the chateau, she retired to her own suite of rooms, undressed and stood by her window, staring out over the empty grounds to the distant glow of the village. She had been violently frustrated, but now she could wait until tomorrow. But if only he were here with her in this room, if only he could see her from the grounds and find a way in. She might have suggested it…
But down in the grounds, hidden among the trees, another figure was watching her windows?the Duke of Alfaro. And when he saw her slim, tight, curvaceous form appear in its fleshly state at her window he nearly died from apoplexy. His gaze became transfixed, his eyes bulged, he hardly breathed during the several minutes that she stood gazing dreamily out over the hill and her body was there for him to see, vaguely, at a distance, but well silhouetted by the lights in her room.