Lafayette Hills

She gathered the pile of fabric and slid it over a dress form before returning to the door, wearing little more than her smile. Gregor did not have a view of the door, but he only needed to wait moments before the same man corralled her back into the room with a few enthusiastic hoots. He was much shorter than her, and to describe him as pudgy would be putting it nicely.

The little man's hands moved like lightning. Despite her clear attempts to control his attention, he deflected her time and again. Before long, he had her pushed over the bed. Her long legs gave her too much height. Spreading them wider to accommodate him looked all wrong, and soon the woman crawled onto the bed. Only the tips of her toes and her hind end extended over the edge.

The man's belt was off in a flash, and in less time than it had taken for her to get out of her dress, he was inside her and groaning at the top of his lungs. For her part, the woman was writhing and grinding, but all motion behind her ground to a halt almost instantly. Gregor did not think it possible, but after only a few more seconds the man backed up with a silly grin on his face.

"Mmmm," the woman said, running her tongue across her lips. "Lovely."

"By God, your arse."

"You know," she purred, "I know of a certain noblewoman, delicious in every respect, whose... largesse... outshines even mine."

"Oh," he said, casually stroking his already-softening member, ignorant of how he drooled onto the floor.

"Hair the color of honey on a bright May morning. Full lips. Do you know of whom I speak?"

The man nodded eagerly.

"Perhaps I could entreat her upon your behalf? I've heard tell that she is most agreeable, and may have even made certain inquiries... about you."

"Oh."

For a moment, it seemed like the man might be getting hard again just at the thought of it, but the woman gave him no such opening. She slid from the bed and draped a long piece of silk over her shoulders. It enshrouded her form, and she gave him a smirk over her shoulder that left no room for misinterpretation.

"Now," she said, seeming to rise to her full height, "if you don't mind?"

"Of course," he said, backing out.

For a moment, she gave the appearance of tending to other things, but the sound of the man's raised heels clacking down the hallway were unmistakably more distant by the step. She moved quietly in his wake, shut the door he'd left open, and returned to the curtain with the same smirk.

Gregor's cheeks were flush, and his pulse was racing. She had not forgotten he was there after all.

"Now then," she said, drawing the curtain away and gesturing back into the room. "I have been assured of your gifts by several whose opinions I trust. What did you just see?"

"S-sex," Gregor stammered.

"Come now," she said, removing the silk from her form and smiling. "Don't be shy. What else?"

Gregor swallowed. Though her movements were subtle, she was actively trying to distract him. It was a trick.

"He... The Magistrate, that is—"

"Good."

"He is both insecure and oblivious to his shortcomings. He... he can't avoid knowing how short he is relative to others, hence the heels—"

"Good," she purred.

"But other things, he seems perhaps unaware of and probably cherishes his ignorance. It's a curious mix." Gregor licked his lips. "He had a sore on his penis."

At this, the woman's eyebrows rose.

"A... a visit to the white woman, on the hill, might be in order."

"Yes," she drawled, staring through the wall and into the distance. "And soon."

"I only heard a little, from just before you entered the room, but it seems as though he is easily manipulated. Especially if-if sex is a possibility."

"Very good. And all true, though I did not know about his... condition."

"The noblewoman you mentioned. She hasn't inquired about him, has she?"

The woman shook her head with a smirk. "But she is agreeable. She would do just about anything if I desired it."

"Does this... noblewoman... have a jealous husband? A Lord, perhaps?"

"Just as clever as I was told. Yes. Yes she does."

"And you're going to pit those two against each other?"

"Keeping the loyalists chasing their tails," she said, "and each other." She turned and walked back past the bed, where a longer, more appropriate gown lay waiting on the inside of a closet door. "Continue."

"You loved it," Gregor said, following her as far as the middle of the room. "He thought it was because of him, because you were smiling, but..."

"But?" When he said nothing, the woman smirked. "Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because I was in control." She moved to sit on the edge of the bed, and crossed her legs very precisely. "From the moment he entered my estate, I showed him what I wanted, let him hear what I wanted, and led him where I wanted. I warmed him up without touching him to the point that just the slightest stimulation pushed him over the edge. I did that. Close your mouth."

Gregor had not realized he was slack-jawed, and quickly brought his lips together.

"Good girl," she said with a smirk.

***

"Wait," Mrs. Longley said, looking up. She pointed to herself, frowning. "I'm the one that reveals Gregor as a girl?"

Mary nodded, trying and failing to hide her smile.

"I... No. No."

"What?"

"Mary," she said, sounding frustrated, "how could you? I mean... It can't be this easy to influence you."

"What?"

"This is your magnum opus, Mary. Your Ring trilogy. It's your vision! Having me swoop in and change the landscape of it like this, it... it cheapens it!'

Mary was mortified, the pit in her stomach spreading into a yawning chasm. "No, no I—"

"Destroy this," Mrs. Longley said, holding the stack of papers out into the space between them. "Burn it, shred it, I don't care, but don't keep that twist as you have it."

"I didn't do it because of you," Mary gasped. "I did it for us."

"What do you mean, 'us'?"

"Like a... like a... a secret. A secret that only you and I know."

"Go on," the older woman said.

"Only you and I would know that the reason the Marchioness is the one is because you were the one, and that makes it... like... a secret within a secret."

"Oh," she said, leaning back. "That does change things." She stared out her window for a moment, frowning in thought while her fingertip caressed the pages. Mary couldn't help but stare at them in fear, almost as worried about a folded corner or crease as much as she feared the rejection of her execution of the twist. "And then what? What happens next?"

"The... you..." Mary licked her lips again. "She convinces Gregor that there is... there is power in sex. And that, despite what some may think, women can control that."

"Yes, and?"

"And that Gregor can be of better use to the resistance if she shed her appearance and put her skills to use as a... new servant of the Marchioness, or handmaiden. Something like that. Where she can follow the Marchioness but be mostly invisible. I haven't..." Mary looked down, voice trailing off as she ran out of steam.

"I love it." The older woman stood up, much to Mary's surprise, and smiled. "I love it!"

"You do?"

"Yes, because now we," she said, pointing back and forth at Mary and herself, "we are the inner circle. Oh, I like that a lot."

"I'm glad," Mary said, though even she had to admit that her flat tone did not convey how relieved she felt inside, and so she added, "Very glad."

"But no more!" Mrs. Longley shook her head. "I don't want to influence this. It dulls the shine of having been included in the first place if I orchestrate my place within. At that point I may as well write it myself, and I have neither the talent nor desire."

Mary settled back down on the couch across the living room, and it felt as if a great deal of tension had dissolved. The older woman went back to the pages, reading them slowly.

"How is your writing going?" she asked, without looking up.

"Much better. Maybe... maybe thirty pages in the last two days?"

Her eyebrows began to climb. "And it takes how many written pages to equal a single typed? Two?"

"Three, maybe, depending on how much dialogue there is."

"Wow. That seems like a lot."

"It is," Mary said. "It was really good to... to write like that."

Mrs. Longley finally looked up after flipping a page over, and she gave Mary a weighing look. "How long had you been stuck before that?"

"Almost a week."

She gave an approving purr, and smiled as she resumed reading. "I'm glad to hear we... shook something loose. Let me know if you want another one."

"Another one what?"

Mrs. Longley looked up with an amused smile. "You can't play dumb with me, dear."

But Mary didn't know. There were too many possible interpretations. Instead, she fell back on another tried and true method and pretended to understand. "Okay," she said. "I will."

"I have more, you know. I procured a bottle of them, not just those two, and now that I have a seller..."

Pills, then. Mary licked her lips. "I'll have to see."

"If this is the kind of writing you produce afterwards," the older woman said without looking up, "we should take them semi-regularly."

"Oh?" Mary had hoped to keep the sudden discomfort she felt from her voice, but judging by the quizzical look Mrs. Longley gave her she'd been unsuccessful.

"Did you not like it, my dear?"

"I... liked how it felt at first," she said, blushing and looking away. "When I woke up the next day, though—"

"Yes, but then you went on to produce this!" She held the papers in the air and waved them gently. "Unless that's not what you mean?"

"What?"

"I know you enjoyed the feeling," she said, "but did you enjoy what we did?"

Mary bit her lip, hard, and nodded hesitantly.

"You were wonderful, you know."

"I didn't do anything," Mary said bashfully.

"That's all right. It was your first time." The older woman leaned back and smiled. "Which was better? The sex, or getting your writing back on track?"

"Actually," Mary said, "I'm still behind schedule, but, uhm..."

"You're on a schedule?"

Mary blinked, immediately playing everything she'd just said back in her head. "Yes," she said, after a long pause.

"In that case."

The older woman uncoiled, rose from the chair, and left the room in the time it took Mary to sort out what was happening, and even then she was surprised when Mrs. Longley returned with two pills and two glasses. This time her glass was filled with water, lacking the lingering, vanilla smell. In hindsight, it was easy to look at the effect of taking the pill as having a sort of up-down-up pattern with each phase longer than the one before it. From a numerical standpoint, taking the pill was the obvious choice, and so that's what Mary did.

"The miracle of science," Mrs. Longley said, as she swallowed hers. "Such a tiny little pill. As time goes on, and they refine their techniques, pills like these will last longer with smaller and smaller side effects. Soon, there will be a pill for everything."

"Just like the Jetsons," Mary said.

"At last," Mrs. Longley said with a smile. "A reference we both understand." The taller woman sat down next to Mary, planting her hand just beside Mary's knee. "Tell me, did you enjoy it? When I touched you?"

"Yes," Mary said, nodding.

"How did it feel? The pill, I mean. How have you come to understand what you felt about the time before you left?"

Mary shook her head. "I still don't know," she replied, looking down. "I mean, it felt good, but it was so much. I'm... I'm still..."

Mrs. Longley moved her hand from the couch to Mary's knee, and Mary stared.

"My dear," Mrs. Longley purred, "you have experienced something that was wholly new. Something so far outside of what you have known reality to be that it will take you some time to reconcile yourself to it. Give yourself that time."

Mary nodded.

"Experiences like that" —she paused to smile and look down— "like this, will change you, little by little, and expand your world. Things you thought impossible will seem possible, and become possible. You will begin to manifest your own reality, and your own destiny."

For a moment, a single fleeting moment, Mary rejected that any such thing could happen. She knew what was possible. She saw the paths of people's lives. She'd witnessed the human experience, in all its grim glory, and knew what lay in store. She'd been as certain as anyone could be.

The longer that touch lingered, though, the more it felt like she might have missed a few things.

"I feel I must confess something," she said softly. "That pill, it..." She smiled as she let her fingertips trace over Mary's skin. "I might have left out some details. While it does change your experience, and alter your consciousness to a certain extent, the real purpose is..."

She seemed to lose herself in touching Mary's arm.

"Is what?" Mary asked, and that seemed to bring the other woman back to the moment.

"Sex," she said simply.

The girl felt her brow furrowing of its own accord. Her time in front of the mirror came to mind. "No," Mary whispered, hoarsely.

"What a strange answer to a statement of fact." The older woman tilted her head, and stared deep into Mary's eyes not for the first time. "Do you think you can will the truth to be different than it is?"

"No, I..." Mary looked down at herself and shook her head. "No." The gentle caress on her skin was distracting, and becoming more so by the second. "Not... With me?"

"Of course with you," she said, as her hands moved up toward Mary's shoulder. "Why not you?"

"Because I look like this, and you look like..." Mary trailed off, her cheeks ablaze. "I'm not shaped like other girls."

"And what do you think a woman needs to be shaped like to be attractive?"

"I don't know," Mary said, feeling defensive even as her defenses crumbled. The drugs hadn't even kicked in yet, but that touch was too much.

"There, you see? You don't know after all. More importantly, you lack the confidence to even pretend you might."

"I've never really had any of that."

"That," Mrs. Longley said, delicately brushing Mary's hair behind her shoulder, "is the least surprising thing you have ever confided in me." She pursed her lips and tilted her head ever so slightly. "Would you like to hear my theory on confidence?"

Mary nodded.

"It isn't something we can ever have by ourselves, in isolation. It lacks purpose in isolation. Confidence is something that must be instilled in us, and drawn out of us, by others. It needs an audience."

That thinking ran completely counter to mantras her parents had repeated to her often, that confidence came from within, but Mary had to admit that there was a kind of internal logic to the theory that intrigued her.

"I want to try something with you," she said, "and I want you to be thinking, in the back of your mind, about confidence. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," Mary whispered, though in truth she did not think she would be able to keep much else in focus the more the older woman touched her.

"You see, there is a boy who lives across from us. Behind." She tilted her head toward the back porch, and Mary's head turned. "Mr. Longley and I both see him, sometimes, watching from his window. Never inappropriately, mind you. As far as I know, he's never watched me with another lover..."

Her voice trailed off, and what stuck with Mary as she looked out the window was the word 'lover'. Mrs. Longley's hands slid up under Mary's shirt, and Mary gasped as her breasts were cupped.

"Then again, I never noticed you either," the older woman murmured playfully. "Now, I have decided on a change of scenery today, as you may have noticed."

Mary looked down at the couch; a soft, rich brown that cradled her. "It's lovely," Mary said, reaching down to fondle the couch as she herself was being fondled.

"I hope you realize that, if I chose to touch you on any piece of furniture, the end result for you would be the same."

Mary nodded, and brought her other hand up to brush gently along Mrs. Longley's upper arms. The sensations in her nipples grew as they hardened, and she let out a soft moan.

"I picked this couch for the contrast. We are both of a fairer complexion, and so our skin stands out against the couch like this. It is in the contrast, you see, that beauty becomes so obvious."

"I do," Mary said, nodding and feeling even more grateful for the couch. "We'll be very visible, but..."

"Ah," the older woman said, following Mary's gaze into the yard. "I understand your hesitation." She moved her hands around behind Mary, and with a little pull Mary scooted to the very edge of the couch. Mrs. Longley moved to the floor, standing on her knees. She pulled up on Mary's shirt, and up on her bra, and Mary sucked a sharp breath between her teeth as her hard, sensitive nipple was bathed in the warm, wet attentions of a tongue.

"Tell me," she said between licks. "If someone was watching us, right now, what would that say about us?"

"Us?" Mary repeated. The word felt so laden with meaning upon her tongue.

Mrs. Longley smiled, and took Mary's wet nipple between her fingers. A sharp pinch and a roll between her fingers curled Mary's spine, bringing their faces ever closer.

"Time is money," the older woman said, enunciating clearly as the tip of her nose brushed its opposite. "Attention means time, and therefore attention is money. If someone was watching us, right now, what would that mean?"

Mary's head was spinning, and she just barely managed to shake her head as an answer.

"I'll tell you what it would mean," she purred, lips brushing her own. "It would mean we are worth watching."

Their lips met softly. Tenderly. Mary had never been kissed before. It struck her as wrong to have been fingered before she'd been kissed, but now that the moment had arrived she was just so glad it had arrived at all. So grateful. She pursed her lips and leaned in, kissing the older woman over and over. Softly. So, so softly.

"You are worth watching, Mary, because you are beautiful."

The words circled round in her ears, providing retroactive justification. She was worth watching, because she was beautiful. The idea of it, of being watched, and of being counted among the beautiful, filled her with so much love, and soon Mary's lips were wet with tears of joy. There was a sense of validation for her in that moment, and Mary tried to hold on to that not simply for how good it made her feel but also for later assessment as, perhaps, the thing her writing had been missing.

"So beautiful," Mrs. Longley whispered, and Mary was surprised when the older woman's tongue slipped between her lips the next time they went to kiss. She gave a soft gasp— wetness that was not her own invading the sovereignty of her mouth —but the more it went on the less she took exception to it. While she did not understand the function of tongues being so involved in kissing, she could not object to it having experienced it.

Her shirt slid over her head in the span of a breath, and she fumbled out of her bra just as fast if not so gracefully. She felt especially awkward as she watched the older woman shed her robe with a rolling of her shoulders, but then the feedback loop came around and the attention of the beautiful woman washed over her.

Mrs. Longley played with her breasts endlessly, teasing and pinching, as they kissed. The longer it went on, the more Mary was sure that such stimulation would only take her so far. Just as she was about to say so, the older woman pushed her back. Mary reclined, slouching against the back of the couch, and found that she hungered for fingers between her legs.