amazon_syren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amazon_syren) wrote2006-09-13 09:19 am
amazon_syren) wrote2006-09-13 09:19 am
Entry tags:
Snow White OR The Rose and the Glass
So...
May I present: Part One of my erotic re-telling of Snow White.
Warnings: Well, it's erotica, so it's clearly not work-safe. As mentioned before, it involves some wierd family dinamics. If sorta-kinda-inscest (step mother) in a fictional setting creeps you out, you may wish to skip this.
Oh, and all the sex is gay (f). But that's less of a deal (and pretty typical of my smut).
Feel free to nit-pick as you will. I'm hoping to get a good heaping dose of constructive criticism for this one. Please? :-) Note: It's written very floridly. I did it on purpose, cause I think it works with the baroque setting (Early 1700s, Bavaria),but also because I just really like flowery prose, even if I can't stand Anne Rice anymore, so please bear with me if that style doesn't work for you. (I hope it does, though. :-)
Oh. Also note: It's about 8.5 pages long. So you need a bit of time on your hands. :-)
Enjoy! :-D
The Rose and the Glass
There is a rose garden on the castle grounds, safe behind its high walls, secure and serene. It was my mother’s, or so I was told when I was very young.
My mother died, you see, when I was but a child. Her hips were too narrow to let her son pass through into this world, and so they both died in child-bed. I had long been weaned by then, of course, and so my father – heirless, as I was but a girl and fit only to be married off, not to inherit his title – none the less felt he could take the time to properly grieve the loss of his wife and his only son.
He grieved for five years, and I grieved with him, a small, sombre child clad in black lace and velvet, though I can scarcely remember her now. I have seen the portrait my father commissioned. I had white skin, and rose-red lips even then: A child of winter, just like my mother, so unlike my father who was golden as the sun. It has crossed my mind, since, that I was not his child at all.
But his mourning came to an end, and he washed the ashes from his hair, and donned robes of crimson velvet and amber silk, and went to seek a wife.
He was almost forty when he went a-courting, and the woman he courted was barely seventeen. Far closer to my age than his.
But he was noble-born and landed, and such a difference in age was nothing unusual, and so it was only a short time before I was introduced to Marianne, a woman barely out of girlhood, my stepmother.
I was ten, I remember, when I met her for the first time, and taking the very first of my slow steps towards leaving my own girlhood behind.
I had heard the poets singing that the king’s new bride was the most beautiful woman in the country – I believed it. Her skin was pale as cream – summer to my winter – her amber hair was bound up in a crown of braids, and her eyes were apple-green. No frail blossom, she was sturdy, with full hips that could bring forth son after son with no trouble. She greeted me with a mother’s kiss, and I smiled at her.
The next five years passed unremarkably for me, though my step-mother, unfortunately, proved to have the same difficulties as my birth mother. She miscarried twice and when, in my fifteenth year, she finally bore a son, it was only to watch him die within a month of his birthing.
My father cursed, when he thought I couldn’t hear him.
My step-mother – who was less than ten years my senior – wept on my shoulder at the child’s death. We had developed a rapport, you see, in so far as a child and a woman may have such a thing, and a sisterly affection to go with it. I brushed out her long, red hair and kissed her mouth.
“It will be alright, Marianne,” I told her. I had never been able to call her ‘mother’, so close to my own age was she. “There will be another baby. You’ll see.”
A child-woman’s kiss to her sister-mother, such it was, though I think it was the beginning of a much deeper entanglement. I had been growing those five years, of course, my small breasts bound up by my bodice, I had endured my first courses not two months before my brother had died. A woman now, and the only child of a father with no heir. I knew that my destiny was to be married off to some noble of the land, or else to a prince of a neighbouring kingdom whose loyalty my father’s cousin the Duke wished to secure. I understood that this was my duty, yet the reality of the situation – that I, too, would be taken to a lord’s bed for his pleasure and be expected to bear sons, and perhaps a daughter – had not entirely dawned. Even still, the kiss I gave Marianne, placed on her soft lips, her cheeks flushed with weeping, awakened something within me that I had not yet known was there. For all that I was a woman grown, I was still very much a child, and only just beginning to understand the workings of my own body.
My father, perhaps to further my understanding, or perhaps simply because he doted on his only child, had brought me a silver looking glass – half as high as I was, and framed in polished jet. It was twin to the one he brought my step-mother, burnished white-gold and framed in rosy ivory, which hung in her private chambers.
My stepmother would visit me in my chambers, sending my maids out of the room so that she could lace my stays herself. She would look at our reflections in the silver glass, and smile.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she’d say, “who’s the fairest?”
I would look, and compare our two images – amber flame or ebon night? Cream or snow? The apricot blush of her lips, or mine: the colour of blood or berries?
“I don’t know,” I would say, for how could I compare, when we were so different.
Marianne would smile, wrapping her arms around me and kissing my cheek. “I do,” she’d whisper in my ear, and I would tingle to my toes at her closeness. I was learning.
A year later, I was still un-betrothed. I think my father was yet hoping for a son to inherit. Perhaps he felt he could not promise me to anyone without the dowry of his estates to sweeten the game. Marianne, for her part, had seen physicians who had bled her with leaches to draw the bad blood from her womb, and she had had whispered consultations with midwives (I was privy to them, for she told me everything after they had gone) about what she should eat, or drink, or not eat, or not drink, until she couldn’t sleep for trying to keep it all straight.
She tried so hard.
The night she miscarried for the fourth time, it nearly killed her.
The winter snows were flying outside the windows, and I could hear her weeping from the other end of the hall. My father’s temper was as stormy as the weather, and he had taken himself down to the wine cellar to drown his grief and his anger away from the frailties of women.
I went to her chamber.
There was blood. The midwife had applied a poultice to ease my sister-mother’s pain, and had departed with the child (I heard the servants whispering outside the door of a mangled body with legs in place of arms). I didn’t want to ask.
“Marianne?” I called to her.
She was awake, still, with tears staining her cheeks.
“Oh, Marianne, I’m so sorry,” I said, and went to her.
I crawled into her bed, and held her, brushing away her tears until she was empty and hollow and exhausted, and could sleep. I slept beside her. The midwife found us lying together in our shifts, when she returned in the morning to change Marianne’s bandages and make sure that her wounds were healing.
I brushed Marianne’s hair that morning, and many mornings after, until she was well again. I helped her dress, the morning she was well enough to take breakfast with my father again. I caught our reflection in her mirror, the twin to mine, as I was lacing her stays. I saw the fullness of her breasts above her bodice, the curve of her hips under her skirt, the cream of her skin and long copper coils of her hair. I saw her eyes on mine.
“Mirror, mirror,” I murmured, remembering our old game.
She twined her fingers in mine, breaking my gaze.
“Nothing in this world is fair,” she whispered, sadly.
I wrapped my arms around her, stroking her spun-copper hair.
“You are, Marianne,” I whispered, breathing the scent of her skin.
She whimpered then, and crumpled against my shoulder, weeping anew. She was twenty-three, and childless, but for me.
And I was not her child.
The matter of my father’s children had been haunting me for some time. You see, my father travelled the length of Bavaria every year, and was gone for weeks at a time, taken up with affairs of state. It occurred to me, as I became more worldly, that perhaps he did have a son – or many sons – by a woman who was not Marianne.
Having been struck by this thought, I went to Marianne and put the question to her:
“Do you think it’s possible?” I asked, as we sat side by side, at our needlework.
“I do not doubt it,” she replied, bitterly. “Had I such a useless wife, I would look elsewhere.”
I was shocked. I had never heard her speak in such a tone.
“Marianne,” I began, hoping to comfort her – how could she think she was useless? But before I could continue, she hissed through her teeth. She had caught herself with her own needle. When she held up her hand, a thick drop of blood hung, like a jewel, on her fingertip.
“Let me see,” I said, gently. I took her hand in mine and kissed the wound, pressing my lips to her finger so that it sealed and bled no more.
We were silent a moment longer. When I looked at her, her cheeks were flushed.
“Marianne,” I began, my voice hushed. “What if you were to… look elsewhere. I have heard the chamber maids whispering that perhaps the problem is with my father, not with you.” I hesitated, for it was a dangerous thing I was suggesting. I lowered my voice further, leaning close so that my lips brushed her very ear. “Perhaps… If you were to take a lover…?”
She turned to meet my eyes, shocked.
“I could not,” she said, and then looked furtively over her shoulder. “I— I have tried,” she confessed, when she saw that there was none to hear. “I have tried, god forgive me, for a long time. After our first year, I took a gardener between my legs in the rose garden, when your father was away for three days. When he was in the North, I bedded two guardsmen under the arbour of red roses – I took them separately, and told them each that my husband would surely kill them if so much as a rumour of their actions reached his ears. Two years ago, when the Baron and his family were here, I took his son under the roses – it did not take long, for young men are always eager, and he was more so than most – we were back before the dance was done…” On and on it went, her litany of failed lovers, and I sat, open-mouthed, and listened to it all. “That is all of them,” she finished. “The problem is with me.”
“Oh, Marianne,” I murmured. I took her hands in my own, stroking her fingers. “Marianne, I’m so sorry.” I grieved for her, truly I did, but my young mind was also fevered with questions. I remembered the baron’s son, who had stared after Marianne for the entire three days that his family had stayed. Now I knew why. I wondered what she had done with him, where had he touched her, and how.
For all that I was sixteen by then, and for all that I had seen the sheep rutting in the fields, I knew not the slightest thing about the arts of amour, only that I woke some mornings, wet between my legs, and aching for something that I could not, or would not, name.
I laid aside my embroidery and gently took her hands.
“Marianne,” I begged, “please… You must tell me what it’s like!”
For a moment more she was silent, shocked at my request, perhaps. But then her eyes lit with secret merriment and she smiled. She took me by the shoulders and kissed my mouth.
“Are you so eager to learn?” she asked.
I nodded, every bit as eager as she thought, and more. I had felt her kiss through my entire body. Eager indeed.
“After dinner tonight, I shall take some air, as is my custom” she told me, conspiring. “Walk with me in the garden, and I shall tell you all you wish to know.”
I kissed her hands and her mouth in gratitude. At last I would have words to put around my desires, I would be able to name what it was that I so longed for!
“How shall I ever wait?” Indeed, I did not know.
*****
But wait I did, and survived the dinner hour without slurping my soup or swallowing whole my portion of lamb and barley. As the meal closed with summer pears baked in brandy, I fought to keep my demeanour calm.
At last, my father rose, signalling that we could depart.
“I shall take some air in the Rose Garden, Husband,” Marianne announced. “The blooms are fair sweet at this time of year.”
“They are,” he agreed, amiably.
“Will you not walk with me, daughter?”
“Of course,” I said, looking up as though surprised. “If that is your wish.”
“It is,” she replied. “You are a woman grown, and there is much you need learn.”
To this, my father chuckled, though I know not what he thought.
“I shall leave you to your women’s business, then,” he said, kissing his wife on the cheek, and me on the forehead, as befitting a child. “I shall be in my study.”
We curtsied, and he departed. Only then did I meet Marianne’s eyes. Did they shine as brightly as my own? I shall never know.
“Teach me then,” I whispered, “for I am a most avid pupil!”
She led me to the rose garden, taking my arm as we walked. She wore a gown of bronze silk tonight, and I was dressed in midnight blue. The colours lay upon one another, and were most pleasing to behold.
She brought me through an arch-way, over-grown with climbing roses, golden and ivory, and blushing peach, and past hedgerows glowing white in the dusk-light, until we reached an arbour, sheltering a chaise carved out of marble.
A wooden trellis it may have been, once upon a time. Now it was a living arch, covered with glossy, dark green leaves and thick with roses. The blooms were deeper than crimson, dark as blood, and their scent was heavy in the air. The ground was thick with rose leaves and fallen petals.
“It was here,” she said, quietly, “in that very spot.”
“Tell me,” I breathed, as she led me under the roses.
“Here I met all of them,” she said, seating herself on the marble, and drawing me down beside her. “What shall I speak of, first?”
“The guardsmen,” I decided.
“Which one?” she asked.
“You choose.”
She chose.
“I shall tell you of the first guardsman,” she began. “He is now, but was not then, the captain of the guard—”
“Captain Alphonse?” I gasped.
“Shh!” she whispered, giggling. “The very one!” She took my hands in hers, and told me, in whispers, what he had done for her, the way he had fallen to his knees and confessed his undying ardour, how she had let him kiss her generous mouth, her neck and her cream-coloured shoulders.
My mouth had gone dry, listening, my breath racing at the mere thought of it all.
“You like this, don’t you?” she asked, teasingly.
“I do,” I breathed, my eyes wide.
She leaned closer, and I could feel the heat of her body.
“Would you like to know how it feels?”
“Oh, yes!” I whispered, wondering what it would be like, and so certain that it would be wonderful.
She smiled, invitingly.
“Close your eyes,” she murmured, brushing my cheek with her hand. I did as I was told, alight with anticipation. “Imagine,” she went on, her lips brushing my ear, “that you are sitting beside the most beautiful creature you have ever seen in all the world.”
“I am,” I confessed.
“Good,” she whispered, and I understood that she did not know I meant her.
I felt her hands, then, feather light on my bare shoulders, her fingers tracing the line of my collarbone, my jaw. She stroked my skin until I was trembling, quivering all over from her touch. I felt her breath, soft and warm on my throat, and then her lips, softer still, brushing my skin. She kissed my neck, not the kisses she had given me for years, quick and sweet and not nearly enough, but something more. She kissed me hungrily, this time, her mouth moving on my skin until my heart was racing in my breast, and my breath came ragged in my throat.
Her hands moved, as well, one arm around me, gathering me close, the other hand tracing the curve of my jaw, my neck, slipping lower, teasing my flesh where it met the edge of my gown. My back arched, my head falling back, allowing her more room.
“Oh, god, Marianne,” I whispered, before I could stop myself.
I heard her gasp, and felt her draw back.
I opened my eyes, met her gaze.
She regarded me carefully with her leaf-green eyes, her breath shallow in her breast.
“Do you mean it?” she asked, softly. Her hand came to rest on my own.
“Marianne…” I stroked her fingers. She was older than I by only seven years, and she had been with me for half my life. What else could I tell her but the truth? “I do.”
Would she run from me? I thought not, but how could I be sure?
She touched my cheek. I closed my eyes and shivered as her fingers brushed my skin, trailing down and down.
“Do you want this?” she murmured, uncertain.
“Yes,” I breathed, reaching for her. I wanted her! Her mouth, and her arms around me, mother and sister and lover all at once.
I drew closer, cupping her face in my hands, and kissed her mouth, slowly, trying to kiss her the way she kissed me. I felt her lips part under mine, felt her tongue dart into my mouth as I breathed her breath. She tasted of the brandied pears we’d eaten. I wondered if I tasted like that, too.
She eased me back against the stone arm of the chaise, her mouth moving to my jaw, my throat. I felt her hand cup my breast and felt myself flutter deep under my skin, down in my belly. My breath caught in my throat.
“Tell me you like this,” I heard Marianne whisper, huskily, urgently.
I wrapped my arms around her and whimpered my assent. I had never felt anything like this before. It was as though my whole body was fizzing, my thighs and my abdomen were twitching as though they had a mind of their own. Her mouth was on my breast, soft lips teasing my flesh. I strained towards her, back arching.
“Please,” I gasped. “Please don’t stop!”
Her fingers were busy at my bodice. I felt the laces give, felt the evening air on my breasts as she peeled back the blue silk. Then I felt the warmth of her breath on my skin – how I ached for her mouth! – She gave me all that I desired, taking me into her mouth, her lips closing ‘round my tight nipple, her tongue teasing, firm and moist until I felt I was going to burst. I pressed her closer, pleading for more, more.
But she pulled away, panting. I know not if my distress showed on my face, but I feel it must have, so great was it within my heart that I felt I would weep.
She looked at me, her green eyes gone dark. Her fingers brushed lazily over my breasts, inflaming me still.
“…Why?” I asked.
“I think,” she began, her gaze drifting over me, lingering on my throat, my breasts, “that we have lingered here long enough—”
“No, please!” I pushed myself up off the chaise, pressing myself against her, brushing her lips with my own. “Marianne, please! I shall break, I swear it!”
She kissed me then, hungry and deep, and I clung to her as though I were drowning. But she re-laced my bodice, drawing it tightly closed.
“I must take you inside,” she whispered, stroking my cheek. “I shall help you prepare for the night.”
“But I could not possibly sleep tonight,” I protested.
But she caught my eyes with her own, her hand lingering at my breast.
“I had not intended you to sleep.”
I shivered at the promise in her words.
*****
She led me to my chambers, walking proper as mother and daughter, her arm in mine, though I surely trembled at her touch. She sent the maids away, lit the lamps, and bolted the door. Only then did she turn to me.
She came to me then, brushing her fingers lazily over my bodice. Oh, how I shivered, leaning into her touch.
“Shh,” she murmured, as she unlaced my bodice. “Be patient,” kissing my ears, my cheeks, softly as breath. She unbuttoned the cuffs of my sleeves, peeled the blue silk back and let it fall to the floor. My skirt followed, pooling like a dark sea at my feet. I could feel myself trembling as, slipping out of my shoes, I stepped into her arms. I reached up, twining my arms around her neck, pressing close to her.
When she kissed me at last, she devoured me! I felt her fingers in my hair, her arm tight around my waist. I felt her teeth graze my lip, her hand brushed my cheek, my shoulder, tugged at the laces of my stays. I pulled the pins out of her hair, dropped them to the floor as the long coils spilled over my hands. She loosed my corset and let it fall, bending her head to my breast, circling with her tongue until I groaned.
“Marianne, please!” I reached for the laces of her bodice, but she took my hand in hers.
“No, my sweet,” she whispered, kissing my fingers, my palm, my wrist. “Not yet.”
“But I want you,” I murmured, pouting, planning the front of her gown with my free hand and wrapping my arm around her waist again.
“You’ll have me soon enough,” she answered, sucking my lower lip. “Look,” she murmured, and turned me towards the great mirror.
The candles burned low before it, and I caught our reflections in the glass. She stood behind me, half a head taller, her arms wrapped around my body.
“Watch,” she whispered, reaching up to cup my breast.
She kissed my neck, my shoulder, teasing my nipple with her thumb until it tightened. I watched, but I did not watch myself. I watched how the candle light played on her hair, how our tresses mingled together, flame and smoke, amber and jet. I reached up to stroke her hair, and she reached down.
I closed my eyes, then, letting my head loll, as she loosened the laces of my petticoats. I felt them fall, slipping past my knees, felt her hand rest, warm, below my navel, felt my abdomen spasm under her touch and my breath grow ragged as her hand moved lower.
My eyes flew open when she touched me, slipping her fingers through the dark curls between my legs.
“Marianne!”
She nipped my shoulder with her teeth. Her fingers slipped and slid, teasing the slick folds of my flesh.
“Shh,” she whispered, kissing my shoulder where her teeth had grazed it. “Enjoy it.”
“Oh god,” I breathed, my hips straining against her, moving of their own accord. “God, please…” the pressure in my abdomen was mounting, I could feel my thighs twitching, could see myself reflected in the mirror, my skin flushed and my breath coming in ragged gasps. The nipples of my small breasts were tight as new buds and I watched her take one between her fingers. She pulled gently and I heard myself whimper at the sensation that rippled through me. Below, below, her fingers flickered against me, slippery with my own wetness. I felt the pressure begin to crest, breaking over me like waves, and I had to close my eyes, biting my lip. I felt her lips on my throat, and her hands, her hands, bringing my farther and farther, tumbling me over the edge. I felt I could not stand, my knees had turned to water and my pulse raced, making me dizzy.
“I shall faint,” I panted, my body still twitching in the aftermath of her pleasure. But her arms were around me, pressing me to her, and I did not fall.
Slowly, she lifted her hand from between my legs. She touched each of my nipples in turn, leaving them with drops of nectar, sticky, clinging to them. I watched her in the mirror as she lifted her fingers to her lips, sucking them. Her green eyes held mine in the glass.
“Did you like that?” she murmured, circling my nipple with her finger.
“Yes,” I gasped.
She led me to my bed, I on stumbling feet, my heart racing. Was there to be more? Could I survive if there was? Was it possible to expire from pleasure?
She laid me down, stroking my body with light fingers, until I quivered and squirmed under her touch.
“Oh, you are wicked!” I panted, my back arching as her fingers trail between my breasts and down, circling my navel, and further down, to the wet, throbbing place between my legs. “Oh!” I whimpered when her fingers brushed the sensitive folds of my flesh, my hips strained towards her hand.
She bent her head, and I felt the smooth muscle of her tongue, oh heaven, there between my legs, lapping, pressing, circling, I felt her sucking gently, felt the pressure building again, though I thought I could take no more. I pressed her closer, my hand tangled in her hair, whimpering her name like a novena, my other hand at my own breast, touching and teasing myself. Her head moved between my trembling thighs, and I squirmed against her mouth, as the waves mounted and crested, and I tumbled again into shaking ecstasy.
When I came back to myself, panting and trembling with aftershocks, she lifted her head, and looked at me. Her generous mouth was slick with honey.
“Kiss me,” I begged, holding out my arms. She rose and bent her mouth to mine, her long hair falling like a curtain around us. I tasted myself on her lips, sucking gently, her face cupped in my hands.
“What of you?” I whispered, at last, trailing my fingers over her collarbone, brushing the swell of her breasts. “What would you have me do for you?”
She kissed me again, and I twined my arms around her neck.
“Sleep,” she murmured. “Sleep and dream of me.” She straightened, though I clung to her.
“I would sleep better if you were beside me,” I suggested.
She chuckled, low in her throat.
“Were I beside you, you would not sleep at all, for I could not resist you and my kisses would keep you awake.”
“Marianne…” I murmured, smiling, taking her hand and bringing it to my lips. I sucked her fingers and watched her eyes grow languorous.
“And you call me wicked,” she whispered, throatily. She bent again, brushing her lips over mine, and I kissed her hungrily.
“Stay,” I begged.
“Tomorrow,” she breathed, though her hands were playing lightly on my skin, making me shiver with need. She cupped my breasts, planed my thighs, until I could not keep still. “Tomorrow,” she promised, “you shall have all that you desire!”
She kissed my mouth, and then my hands, each in turn. She rose, and went to the mirror, twisting her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. In the glass, she watched me watching her, and smiled.
“Tomorrow,” her lips framed the word, silently. She extinguished the candles, all but one, and unbolted the door.
By the lamplight in the open door, she looked a proper wife, demure and reserved.
“Sleep well,” she called, softly, as she departed. “I’ll see you when you wake.”
The door swung shut. In the dark I sighed, letting my own hands rove over my body, and prayed that morning would come quickly.
*****
So? Feedback please? (I'm like a crack-addict for that stuff, I tell you). :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
May I present: Part One of my erotic re-telling of Snow White.
Warnings: Well, it's erotica, so it's clearly not work-safe. As mentioned before, it involves some wierd family dinamics. If sorta-kinda-inscest (step mother) in a fictional setting creeps you out, you may wish to skip this.
Oh, and all the sex is gay (f). But that's less of a deal (and pretty typical of my smut).
Feel free to nit-pick as you will. I'm hoping to get a good heaping dose of constructive criticism for this one. Please? :-) Note: It's written very floridly. I did it on purpose, cause I think it works with the baroque setting (Early 1700s, Bavaria),
Oh. Also note: It's about 8.5 pages long. So you need a bit of time on your hands. :-)
Enjoy! :-D
The Rose and the Glass
There is a rose garden on the castle grounds, safe behind its high walls, secure and serene. It was my mother’s, or so I was told when I was very young.
My mother died, you see, when I was but a child. Her hips were too narrow to let her son pass through into this world, and so they both died in child-bed. I had long been weaned by then, of course, and so my father – heirless, as I was but a girl and fit only to be married off, not to inherit his title – none the less felt he could take the time to properly grieve the loss of his wife and his only son.
He grieved for five years, and I grieved with him, a small, sombre child clad in black lace and velvet, though I can scarcely remember her now. I have seen the portrait my father commissioned. I had white skin, and rose-red lips even then: A child of winter, just like my mother, so unlike my father who was golden as the sun. It has crossed my mind, since, that I was not his child at all.
But his mourning came to an end, and he washed the ashes from his hair, and donned robes of crimson velvet and amber silk, and went to seek a wife.
He was almost forty when he went a-courting, and the woman he courted was barely seventeen. Far closer to my age than his.
But he was noble-born and landed, and such a difference in age was nothing unusual, and so it was only a short time before I was introduced to Marianne, a woman barely out of girlhood, my stepmother.
I was ten, I remember, when I met her for the first time, and taking the very first of my slow steps towards leaving my own girlhood behind.
I had heard the poets singing that the king’s new bride was the most beautiful woman in the country – I believed it. Her skin was pale as cream – summer to my winter – her amber hair was bound up in a crown of braids, and her eyes were apple-green. No frail blossom, she was sturdy, with full hips that could bring forth son after son with no trouble. She greeted me with a mother’s kiss, and I smiled at her.
The next five years passed unremarkably for me, though my step-mother, unfortunately, proved to have the same difficulties as my birth mother. She miscarried twice and when, in my fifteenth year, she finally bore a son, it was only to watch him die within a month of his birthing.
My father cursed, when he thought I couldn’t hear him.
My step-mother – who was less than ten years my senior – wept on my shoulder at the child’s death. We had developed a rapport, you see, in so far as a child and a woman may have such a thing, and a sisterly affection to go with it. I brushed out her long, red hair and kissed her mouth.
“It will be alright, Marianne,” I told her. I had never been able to call her ‘mother’, so close to my own age was she. “There will be another baby. You’ll see.”
A child-woman’s kiss to her sister-mother, such it was, though I think it was the beginning of a much deeper entanglement. I had been growing those five years, of course, my small breasts bound up by my bodice, I had endured my first courses not two months before my brother had died. A woman now, and the only child of a father with no heir. I knew that my destiny was to be married off to some noble of the land, or else to a prince of a neighbouring kingdom whose loyalty my father’s cousin the Duke wished to secure. I understood that this was my duty, yet the reality of the situation – that I, too, would be taken to a lord’s bed for his pleasure and be expected to bear sons, and perhaps a daughter – had not entirely dawned. Even still, the kiss I gave Marianne, placed on her soft lips, her cheeks flushed with weeping, awakened something within me that I had not yet known was there. For all that I was a woman grown, I was still very much a child, and only just beginning to understand the workings of my own body.
My father, perhaps to further my understanding, or perhaps simply because he doted on his only child, had brought me a silver looking glass – half as high as I was, and framed in polished jet. It was twin to the one he brought my step-mother, burnished white-gold and framed in rosy ivory, which hung in her private chambers.
My stepmother would visit me in my chambers, sending my maids out of the room so that she could lace my stays herself. She would look at our reflections in the silver glass, and smile.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she’d say, “who’s the fairest?”
I would look, and compare our two images – amber flame or ebon night? Cream or snow? The apricot blush of her lips, or mine: the colour of blood or berries?
“I don’t know,” I would say, for how could I compare, when we were so different.
Marianne would smile, wrapping her arms around me and kissing my cheek. “I do,” she’d whisper in my ear, and I would tingle to my toes at her closeness. I was learning.
A year later, I was still un-betrothed. I think my father was yet hoping for a son to inherit. Perhaps he felt he could not promise me to anyone without the dowry of his estates to sweeten the game. Marianne, for her part, had seen physicians who had bled her with leaches to draw the bad blood from her womb, and she had had whispered consultations with midwives (I was privy to them, for she told me everything after they had gone) about what she should eat, or drink, or not eat, or not drink, until she couldn’t sleep for trying to keep it all straight.
She tried so hard.
The night she miscarried for the fourth time, it nearly killed her.
The winter snows were flying outside the windows, and I could hear her weeping from the other end of the hall. My father’s temper was as stormy as the weather, and he had taken himself down to the wine cellar to drown his grief and his anger away from the frailties of women.
I went to her chamber.
There was blood. The midwife had applied a poultice to ease my sister-mother’s pain, and had departed with the child (I heard the servants whispering outside the door of a mangled body with legs in place of arms). I didn’t want to ask.
“Marianne?” I called to her.
She was awake, still, with tears staining her cheeks.
“Oh, Marianne, I’m so sorry,” I said, and went to her.
I crawled into her bed, and held her, brushing away her tears until she was empty and hollow and exhausted, and could sleep. I slept beside her. The midwife found us lying together in our shifts, when she returned in the morning to change Marianne’s bandages and make sure that her wounds were healing.
I brushed Marianne’s hair that morning, and many mornings after, until she was well again. I helped her dress, the morning she was well enough to take breakfast with my father again. I caught our reflection in her mirror, the twin to mine, as I was lacing her stays. I saw the fullness of her breasts above her bodice, the curve of her hips under her skirt, the cream of her skin and long copper coils of her hair. I saw her eyes on mine.
“Mirror, mirror,” I murmured, remembering our old game.
She twined her fingers in mine, breaking my gaze.
“Nothing in this world is fair,” she whispered, sadly.
I wrapped my arms around her, stroking her spun-copper hair.
“You are, Marianne,” I whispered, breathing the scent of her skin.
She whimpered then, and crumpled against my shoulder, weeping anew. She was twenty-three, and childless, but for me.
And I was not her child.
The matter of my father’s children had been haunting me for some time. You see, my father travelled the length of Bavaria every year, and was gone for weeks at a time, taken up with affairs of state. It occurred to me, as I became more worldly, that perhaps he did have a son – or many sons – by a woman who was not Marianne.
Having been struck by this thought, I went to Marianne and put the question to her:
“Do you think it’s possible?” I asked, as we sat side by side, at our needlework.
“I do not doubt it,” she replied, bitterly. “Had I such a useless wife, I would look elsewhere.”
I was shocked. I had never heard her speak in such a tone.
“Marianne,” I began, hoping to comfort her – how could she think she was useless? But before I could continue, she hissed through her teeth. She had caught herself with her own needle. When she held up her hand, a thick drop of blood hung, like a jewel, on her fingertip.
“Let me see,” I said, gently. I took her hand in mine and kissed the wound, pressing my lips to her finger so that it sealed and bled no more.
We were silent a moment longer. When I looked at her, her cheeks were flushed.
“Marianne,” I began, my voice hushed. “What if you were to… look elsewhere. I have heard the chamber maids whispering that perhaps the problem is with my father, not with you.” I hesitated, for it was a dangerous thing I was suggesting. I lowered my voice further, leaning close so that my lips brushed her very ear. “Perhaps… If you were to take a lover…?”
She turned to meet my eyes, shocked.
“I could not,” she said, and then looked furtively over her shoulder. “I— I have tried,” she confessed, when she saw that there was none to hear. “I have tried, god forgive me, for a long time. After our first year, I took a gardener between my legs in the rose garden, when your father was away for three days. When he was in the North, I bedded two guardsmen under the arbour of red roses – I took them separately, and told them each that my husband would surely kill them if so much as a rumour of their actions reached his ears. Two years ago, when the Baron and his family were here, I took his son under the roses – it did not take long, for young men are always eager, and he was more so than most – we were back before the dance was done…” On and on it went, her litany of failed lovers, and I sat, open-mouthed, and listened to it all. “That is all of them,” she finished. “The problem is with me.”
“Oh, Marianne,” I murmured. I took her hands in my own, stroking her fingers. “Marianne, I’m so sorry.” I grieved for her, truly I did, but my young mind was also fevered with questions. I remembered the baron’s son, who had stared after Marianne for the entire three days that his family had stayed. Now I knew why. I wondered what she had done with him, where had he touched her, and how.
For all that I was sixteen by then, and for all that I had seen the sheep rutting in the fields, I knew not the slightest thing about the arts of amour, only that I woke some mornings, wet between my legs, and aching for something that I could not, or would not, name.
I laid aside my embroidery and gently took her hands.
“Marianne,” I begged, “please… You must tell me what it’s like!”
For a moment more she was silent, shocked at my request, perhaps. But then her eyes lit with secret merriment and she smiled. She took me by the shoulders and kissed my mouth.
“Are you so eager to learn?” she asked.
I nodded, every bit as eager as she thought, and more. I had felt her kiss through my entire body. Eager indeed.
“After dinner tonight, I shall take some air, as is my custom” she told me, conspiring. “Walk with me in the garden, and I shall tell you all you wish to know.”
I kissed her hands and her mouth in gratitude. At last I would have words to put around my desires, I would be able to name what it was that I so longed for!
“How shall I ever wait?” Indeed, I did not know.
*****
But wait I did, and survived the dinner hour without slurping my soup or swallowing whole my portion of lamb and barley. As the meal closed with summer pears baked in brandy, I fought to keep my demeanour calm.
At last, my father rose, signalling that we could depart.
“I shall take some air in the Rose Garden, Husband,” Marianne announced. “The blooms are fair sweet at this time of year.”
“They are,” he agreed, amiably.
“Will you not walk with me, daughter?”
“Of course,” I said, looking up as though surprised. “If that is your wish.”
“It is,” she replied. “You are a woman grown, and there is much you need learn.”
To this, my father chuckled, though I know not what he thought.
“I shall leave you to your women’s business, then,” he said, kissing his wife on the cheek, and me on the forehead, as befitting a child. “I shall be in my study.”
We curtsied, and he departed. Only then did I meet Marianne’s eyes. Did they shine as brightly as my own? I shall never know.
“Teach me then,” I whispered, “for I am a most avid pupil!”
She led me to the rose garden, taking my arm as we walked. She wore a gown of bronze silk tonight, and I was dressed in midnight blue. The colours lay upon one another, and were most pleasing to behold.
She brought me through an arch-way, over-grown with climbing roses, golden and ivory, and blushing peach, and past hedgerows glowing white in the dusk-light, until we reached an arbour, sheltering a chaise carved out of marble.
A wooden trellis it may have been, once upon a time. Now it was a living arch, covered with glossy, dark green leaves and thick with roses. The blooms were deeper than crimson, dark as blood, and their scent was heavy in the air. The ground was thick with rose leaves and fallen petals.
“It was here,” she said, quietly, “in that very spot.”
“Tell me,” I breathed, as she led me under the roses.
“Here I met all of them,” she said, seating herself on the marble, and drawing me down beside her. “What shall I speak of, first?”
“The guardsmen,” I decided.
“Which one?” she asked.
“You choose.”
She chose.
“I shall tell you of the first guardsman,” she began. “He is now, but was not then, the captain of the guard—”
“Captain Alphonse?” I gasped.
“Shh!” she whispered, giggling. “The very one!” She took my hands in hers, and told me, in whispers, what he had done for her, the way he had fallen to his knees and confessed his undying ardour, how she had let him kiss her generous mouth, her neck and her cream-coloured shoulders.
My mouth had gone dry, listening, my breath racing at the mere thought of it all.
“You like this, don’t you?” she asked, teasingly.
“I do,” I breathed, my eyes wide.
She leaned closer, and I could feel the heat of her body.
“Would you like to know how it feels?”
“Oh, yes!” I whispered, wondering what it would be like, and so certain that it would be wonderful.
She smiled, invitingly.
“Close your eyes,” she murmured, brushing my cheek with her hand. I did as I was told, alight with anticipation. “Imagine,” she went on, her lips brushing my ear, “that you are sitting beside the most beautiful creature you have ever seen in all the world.”
“I am,” I confessed.
“Good,” she whispered, and I understood that she did not know I meant her.
I felt her hands, then, feather light on my bare shoulders, her fingers tracing the line of my collarbone, my jaw. She stroked my skin until I was trembling, quivering all over from her touch. I felt her breath, soft and warm on my throat, and then her lips, softer still, brushing my skin. She kissed my neck, not the kisses she had given me for years, quick and sweet and not nearly enough, but something more. She kissed me hungrily, this time, her mouth moving on my skin until my heart was racing in my breast, and my breath came ragged in my throat.
Her hands moved, as well, one arm around me, gathering me close, the other hand tracing the curve of my jaw, my neck, slipping lower, teasing my flesh where it met the edge of my gown. My back arched, my head falling back, allowing her more room.
“Oh, god, Marianne,” I whispered, before I could stop myself.
I heard her gasp, and felt her draw back.
I opened my eyes, met her gaze.
She regarded me carefully with her leaf-green eyes, her breath shallow in her breast.
“Do you mean it?” she asked, softly. Her hand came to rest on my own.
“Marianne…” I stroked her fingers. She was older than I by only seven years, and she had been with me for half my life. What else could I tell her but the truth? “I do.”
Would she run from me? I thought not, but how could I be sure?
She touched my cheek. I closed my eyes and shivered as her fingers brushed my skin, trailing down and down.
“Do you want this?” she murmured, uncertain.
“Yes,” I breathed, reaching for her. I wanted her! Her mouth, and her arms around me, mother and sister and lover all at once.
I drew closer, cupping her face in my hands, and kissed her mouth, slowly, trying to kiss her the way she kissed me. I felt her lips part under mine, felt her tongue dart into my mouth as I breathed her breath. She tasted of the brandied pears we’d eaten. I wondered if I tasted like that, too.
She eased me back against the stone arm of the chaise, her mouth moving to my jaw, my throat. I felt her hand cup my breast and felt myself flutter deep under my skin, down in my belly. My breath caught in my throat.
“Tell me you like this,” I heard Marianne whisper, huskily, urgently.
I wrapped my arms around her and whimpered my assent. I had never felt anything like this before. It was as though my whole body was fizzing, my thighs and my abdomen were twitching as though they had a mind of their own. Her mouth was on my breast, soft lips teasing my flesh. I strained towards her, back arching.
“Please,” I gasped. “Please don’t stop!”
Her fingers were busy at my bodice. I felt the laces give, felt the evening air on my breasts as she peeled back the blue silk. Then I felt the warmth of her breath on my skin – how I ached for her mouth! – She gave me all that I desired, taking me into her mouth, her lips closing ‘round my tight nipple, her tongue teasing, firm and moist until I felt I was going to burst. I pressed her closer, pleading for more, more.
But she pulled away, panting. I know not if my distress showed on my face, but I feel it must have, so great was it within my heart that I felt I would weep.
She looked at me, her green eyes gone dark. Her fingers brushed lazily over my breasts, inflaming me still.
“…Why?” I asked.
“I think,” she began, her gaze drifting over me, lingering on my throat, my breasts, “that we have lingered here long enough—”
“No, please!” I pushed myself up off the chaise, pressing myself against her, brushing her lips with my own. “Marianne, please! I shall break, I swear it!”
She kissed me then, hungry and deep, and I clung to her as though I were drowning. But she re-laced my bodice, drawing it tightly closed.
“I must take you inside,” she whispered, stroking my cheek. “I shall help you prepare for the night.”
“But I could not possibly sleep tonight,” I protested.
But she caught my eyes with her own, her hand lingering at my breast.
“I had not intended you to sleep.”
I shivered at the promise in her words.
*****
She led me to my chambers, walking proper as mother and daughter, her arm in mine, though I surely trembled at her touch. She sent the maids away, lit the lamps, and bolted the door. Only then did she turn to me.
She came to me then, brushing her fingers lazily over my bodice. Oh, how I shivered, leaning into her touch.
“Shh,” she murmured, as she unlaced my bodice. “Be patient,” kissing my ears, my cheeks, softly as breath. She unbuttoned the cuffs of my sleeves, peeled the blue silk back and let it fall to the floor. My skirt followed, pooling like a dark sea at my feet. I could feel myself trembling as, slipping out of my shoes, I stepped into her arms. I reached up, twining my arms around her neck, pressing close to her.
When she kissed me at last, she devoured me! I felt her fingers in my hair, her arm tight around my waist. I felt her teeth graze my lip, her hand brushed my cheek, my shoulder, tugged at the laces of my stays. I pulled the pins out of her hair, dropped them to the floor as the long coils spilled over my hands. She loosed my corset and let it fall, bending her head to my breast, circling with her tongue until I groaned.
“Marianne, please!” I reached for the laces of her bodice, but she took my hand in hers.
“No, my sweet,” she whispered, kissing my fingers, my palm, my wrist. “Not yet.”
“But I want you,” I murmured, pouting, planning the front of her gown with my free hand and wrapping my arm around her waist again.
“You’ll have me soon enough,” she answered, sucking my lower lip. “Look,” she murmured, and turned me towards the great mirror.
The candles burned low before it, and I caught our reflections in the glass. She stood behind me, half a head taller, her arms wrapped around my body.
“Watch,” she whispered, reaching up to cup my breast.
She kissed my neck, my shoulder, teasing my nipple with her thumb until it tightened. I watched, but I did not watch myself. I watched how the candle light played on her hair, how our tresses mingled together, flame and smoke, amber and jet. I reached up to stroke her hair, and she reached down.
I closed my eyes, then, letting my head loll, as she loosened the laces of my petticoats. I felt them fall, slipping past my knees, felt her hand rest, warm, below my navel, felt my abdomen spasm under her touch and my breath grow ragged as her hand moved lower.
My eyes flew open when she touched me, slipping her fingers through the dark curls between my legs.
“Marianne!”
She nipped my shoulder with her teeth. Her fingers slipped and slid, teasing the slick folds of my flesh.
“Shh,” she whispered, kissing my shoulder where her teeth had grazed it. “Enjoy it.”
“Oh god,” I breathed, my hips straining against her, moving of their own accord. “God, please…” the pressure in my abdomen was mounting, I could feel my thighs twitching, could see myself reflected in the mirror, my skin flushed and my breath coming in ragged gasps. The nipples of my small breasts were tight as new buds and I watched her take one between her fingers. She pulled gently and I heard myself whimper at the sensation that rippled through me. Below, below, her fingers flickered against me, slippery with my own wetness. I felt the pressure begin to crest, breaking over me like waves, and I had to close my eyes, biting my lip. I felt her lips on my throat, and her hands, her hands, bringing my farther and farther, tumbling me over the edge. I felt I could not stand, my knees had turned to water and my pulse raced, making me dizzy.
“I shall faint,” I panted, my body still twitching in the aftermath of her pleasure. But her arms were around me, pressing me to her, and I did not fall.
Slowly, she lifted her hand from between my legs. She touched each of my nipples in turn, leaving them with drops of nectar, sticky, clinging to them. I watched her in the mirror as she lifted her fingers to her lips, sucking them. Her green eyes held mine in the glass.
“Did you like that?” she murmured, circling my nipple with her finger.
“Yes,” I gasped.
She led me to my bed, I on stumbling feet, my heart racing. Was there to be more? Could I survive if there was? Was it possible to expire from pleasure?
She laid me down, stroking my body with light fingers, until I quivered and squirmed under her touch.
“Oh, you are wicked!” I panted, my back arching as her fingers trail between my breasts and down, circling my navel, and further down, to the wet, throbbing place between my legs. “Oh!” I whimpered when her fingers brushed the sensitive folds of my flesh, my hips strained towards her hand.
She bent her head, and I felt the smooth muscle of her tongue, oh heaven, there between my legs, lapping, pressing, circling, I felt her sucking gently, felt the pressure building again, though I thought I could take no more. I pressed her closer, my hand tangled in her hair, whimpering her name like a novena, my other hand at my own breast, touching and teasing myself. Her head moved between my trembling thighs, and I squirmed against her mouth, as the waves mounted and crested, and I tumbled again into shaking ecstasy.
When I came back to myself, panting and trembling with aftershocks, she lifted her head, and looked at me. Her generous mouth was slick with honey.
“Kiss me,” I begged, holding out my arms. She rose and bent her mouth to mine, her long hair falling like a curtain around us. I tasted myself on her lips, sucking gently, her face cupped in my hands.
“What of you?” I whispered, at last, trailing my fingers over her collarbone, brushing the swell of her breasts. “What would you have me do for you?”
She kissed me again, and I twined my arms around her neck.
“Sleep,” she murmured. “Sleep and dream of me.” She straightened, though I clung to her.
“I would sleep better if you were beside me,” I suggested.
She chuckled, low in her throat.
“Were I beside you, you would not sleep at all, for I could not resist you and my kisses would keep you awake.”
“Marianne…” I murmured, smiling, taking her hand and bringing it to my lips. I sucked her fingers and watched her eyes grow languorous.
“And you call me wicked,” she whispered, throatily. She bent again, brushing her lips over mine, and I kissed her hungrily.
“Stay,” I begged.
“Tomorrow,” she breathed, though her hands were playing lightly on my skin, making me shiver with need. She cupped my breasts, planed my thighs, until I could not keep still. “Tomorrow,” she promised, “you shall have all that you desire!”
She kissed my mouth, and then my hands, each in turn. She rose, and went to the mirror, twisting her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. In the glass, she watched me watching her, and smiled.
“Tomorrow,” her lips framed the word, silently. She extinguished the candles, all but one, and unbolted the door.
By the lamplight in the open door, she looked a proper wife, demure and reserved.
“Sleep well,” she called, softly, as she departed. “I’ll see you when you wake.”
The door swung shut. In the dark I sighed, letting my own hands rove over my body, and prayed that morning would come quickly.
*****
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