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Post by Pharinet de Marchet (D) on Apr 14, 2006 14:17:50 GMT -5
My hand itched to slap the smugness from his face. Leave a palm print on that fair skin. And yet the way he looked at me, stripped me bare and cataloged everything he wanted to do to me... It made my heart speed and my nipples harden. I wanted to slap him, not bed him again! My face flushed with the heat of my anger and reluctant desire.
"Not my fealty, my lord, just my husband's and his House. And if this is your idea of fun, taking advantage of a woman in her grief, you are hardly fit to earn my respect and loyalty." And as if the gods delighted in my humiliation, my hair spilled from it's loose knot and cascaded around me again. Oh yes, make me look the whore while protesting my innocence. I should just leave.
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Post by Sylvestre de Valmont(D) on Apr 14, 2006 17:09:20 GMT -5
“Oh that’s much less interesting,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “But your fealty I could enjoy. That might be worth having.”
I was gradually becoming more in control of myself. I still felt strangely bare and dazed, as if the encounter, as if she, had flayed me like flame. This is what too much time in the country can do for you. My emotions were, quite frankly, a mess. And that would never do. It was so out of character. It was vulgar. It was tedious. There was a part of me that almost feared her. It was a very small part. And please note the ‘almost’ there present. She was capable of regarding me with such scorn and fury that it made me reluctant to meet her eyes. I can usually face down the most determined disgust with a charming smile and a quirked eyebrow. A thousand virulent curses on the countryside. I do believe exile has made soft. But there was also something, I must confess, exciting in it. It was an emotional and sexual knife-edge … and I relished it. But to be honest, the largest part of me (that’s my brain … … no … really) just wanted me to collapse somewhere and stop fretting … and doze and drink and smoke and dream it all over again.
I was about to send her on her way but something stopped me. I think I wanted to confuse her a little further. Confuse her. And run my hands through the dusky silk of her hair once more. I went to stand behind her, gathering up the rebellious tresses and beginning to braid them with a certain degree of skill. “I don’t want your respect or your loyalty,” I murmured. “I want other things. At least I’m honest about it. Taking advantage of you, indeed.” I snorted. “Convince yourself of that if you like but you opened for me like a flower before the sun.” I paused. “To be more poetic about it, than perhaps you entirely merit.”
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Post by Pharinet de Marchet (D) on Apr 14, 2006 17:23:38 GMT -5
I was immobile as he braided my hair, his fingers deft and sliding through the long strands. I could feel each gentle tug and twist as the cable formed down my back. That racing lust again, his hot breath striking the exposed skin of my nape. I trembled, awed and afraid at the reaction running through me.
The man saw entirely too much.
"As much as I'd like to lie, you're right. In a moment of weakness I wanted comfort, is that so wrong? But you didn't have to... " I paused, the image of Clovis' warm eyes as he looked at me. That swelling sensation happened behind my eyes again and I ruthlessly held it back. I was so ashamed of myself and my weakness.
Weak even now, because I couldn't leave, couldn't make myself return to my empty, shabby house that only held dust and despair. I turned just enough to look him in the eyes, like mirrors, showing so little of what was inside only reflecting back at me what I imagined I saw.
"What do you want?"
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Post by Sylvestre de Valmont(D) on Apr 14, 2006 18:01:46 GMT -5
She trembled beneath the adroit workings of my fingers. That pleased me. Beneath the pride, there was the woman who had writhed beneath me on Clovis’s desk and pleaded with me for release. I liked her better. This other woman – with the endless sorrow in her eyes and the defiance in every line of her posture – she was a creature I could never understand and never possess. But I could drag her down to join me, me and the dust and the filth of the world.
“I’m not the one who keeps obsessing about wrong,” I said, with a shrug. “What do you want me to tell you? That you were, right, wrong, justified, forgiven? What does it matter? You’ve done it now. And, make no mistake about that, it wasn’t something I did to you. It was something we did together.”
Task done, I tied a scrap of fabric from the bodice of her dress around the neatly braided hair to keep in place. She was looking at me again. She was searching my face as if she wanted to find my soul. Hah, if she found it, she could let me know.
“What do I want?” I repeated. I knew she meant what did I want from her. I didn’t really know yet. Her body most certainly. But how often and in what ways, I had not quite decided. So I dodged the question. “Many, many things, my dear, some of them terrible, some of them beautiful, a lot of them purely selfish. But at the moment? Something to drink and something to smoke. Why,” I arched a brow, “what is it you want?”
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Post by Pharinet de Marchet (D) on Apr 14, 2006 18:20:13 GMT -5
Oblivion. Your hands on me again. Clovis. A half completed dance. My sons... your lips on my own.
"A drink." I went over to my discarded glass, filled it and the other nearly full and set the decanter aside. I handed him the tumbler and took a large, numbing sip of my own. Oh how it burned.
"And we may have done this thing together, I let myself do it, but that still doesn't undo the fact that it was wrong. I suppose it's just easier to victimize myself than take blame for my actions." another large sip, a mocking laugh. I looked at him again, helplessly drawn to stare at him, a living flame and I the moth.
"Do you know the worst thing? No matter how much my mind protests, my body doesn't. To it, sensation is the only thing it wants. Craves. To the exclusion of all else. And that is what is wrong. I don't know what I want, and it seems, neither do you." I set my glass aside and stepped close to him.
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Post by Sylvestre de Valmont(D) on Apr 15, 2006 13:35:15 GMT -5
I rested my hips against the edge of the desk and took a swallow from the glass she handed me. It was sublime stuff, and had probably been slumbering in an oak cask for decades. Rather like me, then. But you really had to applaud Clovis’s taste. My eyes closed briefly as I savoured the rich, warm liquid. I hadn’t been in a position to enjoy anything nearly as good as this for years. I think I may even have sighed with the simple pleasure of it. When I opened my eyes again, she was watching me intently and, I think, somewhat hungrily. Ye Gods, the woman was insatiable.
“I’ll leave the angsty moralising to you,” I answered, dropping my gaze to the light-flecked amber coloured brandy swirling in the crystal tumbler. “But then I’ve never really subscribed much credit to the virtue of self-punishment. You needed it and I wanted it…” Hah, perhaps I had needed it too but I wasn’t about to admit it. Need is such an ugly word. “Where’s the wrong in that? But right or wrong I certainly don’t want to have a tedious conversation about it.”
She was close enough to me that I could feel the heat from her body again. My own stirred, more out of habit than inclination by this stage. “Oh I know what I want,” I said, “and I tend to ensure I get it. And when you decide to let yourself have what it’s clear you want … come visit me again.”
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Post by Pharinet de Marchet (D) on Apr 16, 2006 22:17:02 GMT -5
I grit my teeth and curtsied a final time. Good manners made up for much, even poor breeding. Not in his case, even if he had manners...
"I won't be back here, and certainly not to see you." Even to me the words sounded like bravado, nothing more. I calmly left the study, cloaked in as much pride as I could muster.
The winter air hit me and I breathed deep. I debated on walking, but my thighs ached. I haled a carriage and vowed to scrub my skin raw upon reaching home.
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Post by Sylvestre de Valmont(D) on Apr 17, 2006 8:05:37 GMT -5
I let the sound of my laughter follow her from the room.
When she was gone, there was a silence in the room so thick and heavy I could almost feel it touching me. The dark wood and the carpeting seemed to muffle everything, drinking light and sound until there was only me and the empty passage of slow time. It was like being an exile again, and something close to panic welled up inside me, quickening my heartbeat again and making the hand that held the brandy glass tremble. I half wished I hadn’t made her leave. Perhaps I could have had her again. I glanced around the room. It almost felt as if Clovis was watching me. Perhaps not in fury, as I would have hoped, but in disgust.
At that moment the door opened and the servant I had accosted earlier stepped into the room. “Begging your pardon for interrupting you, your Grace, but I noticed the other lady has taken her leave and I thought you would want to be informed that another lady – a different lady – has called.”
I widened my eyes. “What, another one? Is there no rest for the wicked? Did you think to take her name.”
“Indeed, yes, your grace. It is the Duchesse L’Envers, your Grace.”
I pushed myself from my lounging position. “Evangeline,” I whispered to myself. “Well well well.” I stared down at the nearly empty glass in my hand. Had I really almost finished the glass? I was probably well on my way to intoxication. It was probably not the wisest idea in the world to meet Evangeline with one’s wits slightly blunted to say nothing of several years of resentment I had tried very hard to pretend I did not have … but then … who was I to turn away another glimpse of those violet eyes.
“She’s in the morning room, your Grace,” said the servant.
I nodded. “I’ll see her at once.”
There was a silence.
“Your Grace.” He sounded hesitant.
“What?”
“I have taken the liberty of providing a shirt, your Grace. And coat.”
I chuckled, as he helped me into them. “You are ambitious, aren’t you?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“I’ll see you go far.”
“Thank you, your Grace.”
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