by A. Wendeberg
‘The other reason for the darkness is that…’
‘Hm?’ he hummed into her hair.
‘I don’t want to see you. No, shhh. Don’t speak now. When I find arousal in your face, I’m afraid you’ll look like a client.’
Sévère froze at her words. This was most certainly honesty he’d heard. And it scared him. He pushed himself up and reached across her to the night stand. A rustling, a match was struck, light flared.
‘You will see me and I will see you. Arousal and all,’ he said.
‘I can’t do it like this.’
‘Then you don’t. It’s your wedding night. You do as you please.’
‘It’s your wedding night, too,’ she reminded him.
‘It was your condition, not mine. I never asked you to share my bed.’
‘You did.’
‘Ah. Yes. I did.’ Lines formed between his eyebrows.
‘I know which games a client wishes to play the moment he enters my room. When I look into his eyes, I know at once why he came, what he needs, and if he plans to hurt me. And then I adapt. A simple reflex. To tell me to refrain from doing so, is as if I tell you not to blink when I poke you in the eye. Prostitutes who never acquire this reflex are the ones who find themselves at the bottom of the Thames, sooner or later.’
‘What do you see in my face?’ he asked.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I do know,’ she replied. ‘But it scares me. You scare me. You…look at me. I can’t describe it any better. You look at me. Me. As though you want to know what’s going on behind my eyes. You are very good at this, Sévère. At creating the illusion you care about me. You look at me, and you refrain from rubbing yourself on me, from grabbing my legs and spreading them to push yourself in. I find that disturbing. It is as though, tonight, not your arousal comes first, but mine. Not your pleasure, but mine. As an experienced whore I wonder what’s wrong with you, are you incapable? Which game could it possibly be that you’re playing? But I’m not a whore tonight and I’m at a loss as to what role I’m to play.’
A tear rolled off her cheek, and she stared down at the darkened spot where the teardrop had surrendered to the sheet, wondering why the bloody hell she was weeping.
Shocked, he placed his fingertip onto the small, wet spot. He swallowed, and tried to collect himself. He tried to think like an attorney at court whose every word counted.
‘That is the point,’ he said softly. ‘You’re not playing a role tonight. If I douse the candle, I will not know whether or not you enjoy me. When I do this…’ He brushed a strand of her hair from her face. ‘…your lids quiver and sink a little lower, but your shoulders tense. What does it mean? I don’t know. It’s as if two Olivias are here with me. If I douse the candle, how could I tell the two apart?’
‘Which one of the two do you want?’ There was mischief in her eyes, as though she was testing him.
‘The one who doesn’t believe she has to serve me. The one who punched my ribs a moment ago.’ He smiled at her and poked her stomach. ‘Is she here?’
‘She is. She never appears when a client is around. The other one is there, too. She’s a seasoned warrior and an excellent liar. You won’t get rid of her. You’ll have to get used to both.’
‘Hum. May I ask the seasoned warrior to watch over the other, while I touch you?’
‘You may,’ Olivia whispered, leant toward him, and smiled against the silky hollow where his neck touched his collar bone.
‘I might ask a lot of questions,’ he murmured. ‘But I don’t want you to think I’m interrogating you.’
‘What questions?’
‘May I touch you here, Olivia?’ he whispered and curled his hand around her neck.
‘Yes.’
‘And here? May I touch you here?’ His other hand ran down along her side to rest against her hip. A shiver spread from there all across her back. It warmed his palms and begged him to proceed.
‘You may,’ she said, and reached out to him. ‘If you stop interrogating me.’
‘Let me learn you,’ he whispered and took her hand into his, kissed it, and placed it between the two of them.
‘This?’ he asked again when he touched her face, her throat, her chest. ‘And this?’
She closed her eyes as he caressed her breasts. ‘Kiss me there,’ she said hoarsely.
He bent his head and closed his lips around her nipple, ran his tongue across it. Her flesh pulled into a tight bud, goose bumps raced over her skin. He drew small circles with his tongue until she writhed and giggled beneath him, then traced kisses down to her navel until she tensed.
He pushed himself up to lie next to her. His palm rested on her stomach.
She turned toward him. ‘May I touch you now?’
‘If you wish.’
Her warm caress was a shock of pleasure to his body.
She closed her eyes, her lips quirked, and she learnt his contours in her chosen blindness. Fingertips felt along the ridges of his abdomen, the sharpness of his hipbone, the slight trembling in his left leg, the soft fuzz that covered his skin there.
He held his breath.
Up her hands went, up along the inside of his thigh, skirting his bollocks and his cock. She touched his chest, raked her fingers through the hair that covered his breastbone, and flicked his nipples. He drew in a sharp breath. She leant in and kissed him where her nails had abused the sensitive flesh. Her hands ran around his ribcage, down his spine and found his buttocks. She drove her nails into the soft flesh until he hissed.
She opened her eyes and said, ‘Turn on your stomach.’
‘Not again,’ he huffed, half smiling.
She frowned at him and rolled him over. He allowed her hands to guide him. Her long hair tickled his skin as she bent over him and covered his backside with kisses.
He shut his eyes and revelled in her touch, moaned his delight and suddenly remembered that his role tonight was that of a liar. He wasn’t entirely sure where his lies began and where truth ended.
‘You are torturing me,’ he said gruffly.
‘Oh! You want me to stop?’
He pressed his face into the pillow and grumbled, ‘I don’t want you to stop. Never stop. But, please, allow me to hold you for a moment.’ He turned over and abruptly caught her, held her to him, his face in her hair, his breath heavy. He hoped his embrace did not feel like a prison cell.
‘May I kiss you here?’ he asked and touched her lips with his fingertips.
‘Be gentle,’ she said, and he answered, ‘I am,’ and bent to lay his lips onto hers.
‘There is a war,’ she whispered into his mouth, ‘inside me. The old and the new. Expected and unexpected.’ She bit his lower lip gently, and he moaned against her tongue.
‘I am hungry, trembling here,’ she continued, and led his hand to the juncture of her thighs.
His palm soothed her soft skin, his fingers teased her sex.
She sighed, tilted her hips toward him, and said, ‘If you were to bed a murderess, would you think of evidence, victims, postmortems, and inquests, or would you give yourself to her without a second thought?’
‘Why would I…’
She touched his erection. ‘When I’ve touched a man, I’ve done so only as a prostitute. My mind has always been at work. When you are at court, are you able to put aside your professionalism?’
‘Hardly. I see what you mean. What do you suggest we do now?’
She smiled against his mouth. ‘Try to fit the expected and unexpected together. Perhaps…’
‘Perhaps…’ he interrupted, pushed himself down along her body, and blew against her thighs. ‘…We might try something else?’
He parted her legs. ‘Expected, I assume?’
A wry smile.
He turned his attention to her feet, caressed them, then her ankles, knees, and thighs. He brought his lips to her skin, kissing up along the inside of her thighs and flicking his tongue
across her vulva.
‘Eeh!’ she squealed, jerked away, and laughed.
‘Did no one ever kiss you there?’
‘No. Yes.’ She laughed again. ‘My cunt has been licked, kissed, ravaged. But with you…here… I find my own reactions, those of body and mind, puzzling.’
‘Unexpected,’ he said with a smirk and brought his mouth down on her.
She grabbed his hair and wrung his neck with her thighs. He growled her name against her flesh.
‘Stop!’ she cried, and yanked his hair so hard his skull was on fire.
‘Am I too heavy? I didn’t bite! Or maybe I did?’ he asked, confused.
‘No, no. I’m…I…’ She hid her face in the crook of her arm, then threw up her hands in frustration. ‘Give me something expected, else I think I might fall.’
A satisfied grin spread across his face. He scooted up and kissed her mouth. ‘I want you to fall, my dear. A sharp drop, and then you’ll fly.’
Gently, he sank two fingers into her sex and rested the heel of his palm against the small and deliciously swollen button just below her pubic bone. Then he began a slow and steady rhythm.
He watched the blush rise to her cheeks, the flutter of heavy eyelids, the heaving of her chest, and how she tried to hide her face in the pillow. The movement made her back arch more, and brought her harder against him. She bucked and he felt her wetness soaking his hand, the heat she emanated.
The candlelight reflected off the small droplets of perspiration on her stomach, just below her navel. He bent to kiss her there.
She shivered and cried out, ‘No! I need you closer. Cover me. Hold me.’
And he gathered her in his arm, the other still stroking her sex. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Not like this. Not yet.’
‘Next time, then?’ he asked.
‘No. It’s complicated. Not yet. I want to touch you.’
‘Touch me, Olivia. Touch me wherever you wish.’
She arched into him and curled her arm around his neck. She pulled him into a deep kiss, a mating of tongues and lips, a collision of teeth. She straddled him, received him with a growl.
They froze.
She huffed a deep breath, clung to him, and pulled him deep inside her. ‘Hold me!’
‘I’m holding you.’
‘Kiss me.’
‘I’m…kissing…you,’ he whispered between kisses.
When she began to rise and fall, he felt every fibre of her body, the rolling of her muscles, her hands in his hair. The slide of skin against skin. The small, wet noises. Her ragged breath and his own. A trembling that began in her shoulders, travelled down along her sides, the small of her back, and over her buttocks and thighs.
He felt the tell-tale burning in his cock, and tried to direct his thoughts to a case. Whichever case.
He couldn’t think of one, couldn’t even find a name, date, location. He pushed himself up and held her to him.
‘Olivia, you have to stop for a moment, else I’ll…’
‘Shhhh,’ she breathed into his ear.
‘Olivia?’
‘Hm?’
He took her face into his hands. ‘I look at you.’
‘You do.’ She smiled. ‘Unexpected.’
He kissed her mouth and softly bit her lower lip. ‘You think too poorly of me.’ With that, he sank back onto the mattress and pulled her with him.
Sprawled atop of him, her hair was a curtain of thick black silk, shielding their faces from the soft light. Only the glint of his eyes was visible to her.
‘You can’t see me.’ She began to move against him.
‘I can see you with my hands,’ he replied, and learnt the curves of her hips, the ripple of her spine, the soft down at the nape of her neck.
He pushed back her hair, gathered it, and wrapped it around his wrist.
His eyes held hers as they exhaled with every slow thrust. He sensed how she opened up to him — not only her sex, which already accommodated him, but all of her. Her expression that turned from slightly shut and perhaps a bit bashful, to softening, and then, to open-mouthed and low-lidded, to surprise, and finally into something that looked like fury.
‘Faster!’ she cried. He bucked and she gripped the bed frame so as not to be thrown off.
He was mesmerised by her letting go so freely, by the clenching of her muscles around his cock. By the force with which she rode him. He couldn’t hold on to his own control any longer when she sank onto his chest, shuddering. He grabbed her hips and drove into her with abandon, felt fire rushing down his spine and into his balls. He cried her name, trembled, and took her face into his and kissed her hungrily, whispering against her lips that she was beautiful.
—The Morning After—
Sévère sipped at his tea and unfolded the morning papers. Netty slunk through the door, carrying a tray with fresh muffins, butter, jam, eggs, and cream. She cleared her throat. ‘Sir?’
He looked up from his reading. ‘What is it, Netty? Are you all right? You seem…upset.’ He’d almost said that she appeared dangerously close to explosion.
She cleared her throat again. ‘Sir. I…We…’
‘Is it the new maid?’
‘No it’s…it’s…’ More throat clearing.
‘Spit it out, Netty. I don’t have the entire morning to decipher your mutterings.’ He emptied his cup.
‘The Misses left at dawn. She had a large bag with her.’
The tea spurted from Sévère’s mouth onto his empty plate. ‘What?’
‘She… Mrs Sévère—’
‘What did she say when she left?’
‘She said she’ll return before breakfast is served.’
Sévère’s gaze swung to the place opposite him. A plate, cutlery, a cup on a saucer, a napkin. No Olivia. He pulled himself together. ‘She is a grown woman,’ he said, and waved Netty away.
As soon as the housekeeper had shut the door, Sévère let out a long breath. Could Olivia have had enough of him already? Had she had second thoughts that he’d been too blind to see? Had he hurt her in some way?
She’d sent him away before daybreak. To attend to women’s business. That’s what she’d said. Too proud to protest, he’d only nodded. But she’d seen his hesitation.
‘If I don’t wash your seed out of me, I risk being with child,’ she’d explained.
Perfectly reasonable. He’d thanked her for her honesty.
Should he have said something else? Something more? What was it one normally said to a woman after a wedding night?
‘Thank you for lying,’ she’d whispered as he took his leave. ‘You were very convincing.’
That wasn’t necessarily what one said to a man after a wedding night.
He’d made an effort to please her. A novelty to him, and, as it seemed, to her, too. He’d… Had he lied?
Abruptly, the door was pushed open.
‘Olivia!’ he barked.
Her expression darkened. She took a step back, held her hand out through the door, and pulled a scrawny something into the room. Sévère wasn’t quite sure if it was a boy or a girl beneath the layers of grime. His eyebrows rose.
‘I’ve abducted my maid,’ Olivia said. ‘Sévère, may I introduce Rose to you? Rose, this is Mr Sévère, the master of the house.’
The girl put a sweet smile on her face — a flash of white teeth amidst black soot. She swiftly walked up to him and pushed herself onto his lap, her face tilted upwards to meet his gaze. ‘Hello, Mr Sévère. How do you do?’
‘Rose!’ Olivia cried. ‘We’ve talked about this. Come back here.’
The girl pecked his cheek, hopped off his lap, and strolled back to Olivia.
Flabbergasted, and unable to utter a word of rebuke, Sévère picked up a napkin and rubbed the soot off his face and trousers.
‘Go down to the scullery. Ask one of the maids to show you to my room after they’ve thoroughly bathed you and checked your head for lice.’
‘Yes, Mary!’ Rose squeaked
. ‘I mean, Yes, Sir, Olivia, Sir!’ And she darted out the door and down the stairs.
Olivia toed the bag into the room and shut the door.
‘Dare I ask what this is all about?’ Sévère said, slowly recovering his composure. ‘You’ve abducted a child. You’ve broken our contract on the very first day. I am amazed, to put it mildly.’
‘I did not break the law. Hence, I did not break our contract. The girl was not in the custody of her father when I took her. In fact, it would be an extraordinary feat to identify her father, let alone to locate him.’ Olivia sat down opposite Sévère and poured herself a cup of tea. ‘Tea?’
He blinked. She took this as a yes, and rose to fill his cup.
‘I am sorry I presented her to you all covered in soot. She’d been assisting the chimney sweep before I took her. She’s usually clean and neat. And she’s eight,’ Olivia said when she’d seated herself. Her expression was forbidding.
‘She can’t be your maid.’
‘It’s in our contract. Do you want me to show it to you?’ A sharp glittering in her eyes. Ready for battle.
‘She can’t be your maid. She needs to attend school.’ Sévère calmly spread butter on his muffin. ‘But she may attend to you in the early mornings and afternoons as long as it doesn’t interfere with her education.’
A clonk drew his gaze away from his breakfast. He saw his wife swiftly bend down to pick her butter knife off the floor.
‘There are no day schools for girls, except if you count the ones in the workhouses,’ she replied once she’d taken control of her expression. ‘And those aren’t safe. There’s only one alternative: I will teach her to read and to write.’
‘Which would break our contract, which clearly states that you work for me and I employ a lady’s maid for you. Neither of you two will have time for what you are supposed to do.’
Olivia picked at a muffin and stuffed a crumb into her mouth. ‘I don’t need another maid. I don’t need to be serviced around the clock. She can help me with my dresses in the mornings and evenings, and I’ll find a tutor for her. I will, of course, cover the costs. Would you pass the honey, please?’