The Third Daughter Ch. 04

"Odd? Perhaps but also lovely."

We went, inevitably, to her bed. She led but slowly as if she were learning about me. Undressing was at her pace. Then came the deeper intimacies. Mouths first, then tongues, then hands. Hands roaming freely, as if to prove that we had no reservations, no doubts. Her fingers with their lightly polished nails ran along the soft flesh of my under-breast, circled my nipples, squeezed them exquisitely. I did what I could to match. I found my hand in her hair, behind her neck, over her breast. We kissed throughout, except when one or the other of us sought out a new pace to kiss, to lick, to suck, even to bite.

Her finger entered me, curling, stroking and I wanted her, desperately. She straddled my thigh and her cunt was wet on it. For a brief moment, she raised herself and looked down at me, pressing herself to my leg and rotating her hips. She raised a hand and slipped a finger between my lips and I felt possessed, occupied. Then it became more urgent, as if she'd had enough time to prepare for the final onslaught. I was pinned to the bed, with, now, two fingers deep inside me and her thumb on my clit. Relentlessly she rubbed herself, now hard, now soft against me. Her mouth covered mine and I felt her stiffen, as if something had alarmed her but it was her orgasm. It spewed out of her mouth into mine. It flooded out of her cunt onto my leg and it was that, that sudden, unheralded indicator of climax that precipitated mine. It felt, down there, like the confluence of two rivers. We held onto each other, like shipwrecked sailors clinging to a raft. Our breathing was laboured, as if we had run a marathon. The fluids between us began to cool and dry.

"Would you like a shower?"

I rolled her onto her back and stared into her eyes. "No, I want to clean you."

Sliding down, I licked her breasts, loving her still semi-hard nipples, down over her stomach, the feel of her wild triangle of hair slightly coarse against my chin and then that beautiful, still-flowering cunt, wet still and hot. I licked her, tasted her, drank from her and was rewarded with a small orgasm that gave me still more to clear away. I licked down to her arse and, nose in her cunt, I licked around it and over it then back up.

Sleep came. When I woke up, she was behind me, her arms around me, holding me, restraining me.

"Calm down," she said, inexplicably. "You're safe. Who is, er, Clancy?"

Clancy? Oh, dear God, she meant Clemency. "What did I say."

"You told her to leave you alone, go away and, finally, fuck off. Hardly appropriate for a librarian." There was a grin in her voice.

"What did she say?"

"Who? There's nobody else with us," she paused, "is there?"

"Sorry, just a nightmare." She stroked my hair.

I went to work that Thursday morning, dressed as I had been when I met Eleanor, except I wore no stockings but I did wear a pair of her knickers. "My best, so look after them."

I felt renewed, relieved. My day passed without my noticing it's passing. I arrived home and changed into a slip and a cardigan, made myself soup and toast and sat at my kitchen table.

Postscript.

Two Wednesdays in a row, Tina didn't turn up at the library for the reading group. I searched my phone for the call from Patience asking me to supper, but I couldn't find it. I went through the safeguarding forms at the library to see if I could find Patience's number or address but the forms for Tina were missing.

I decided to walk home past Clemency's house. It was away from my normal route home, but, try as I might, I couldn't quite remember the way.

I was turning out a drawer when I came upon the notes I had written when I first decided to try and get my head around Clemency's mysterious intrusion into my life. Tucked among the pages of the notebook was a small red square of silk, a conjuror's silk hankie. I was sure it was the one that Clemency had conjured into my suspender but now, there was no telephone number embroidered on it.

Eleanor and I went shopping one weekend and, as we passed a charity shop, she stopped suddenly. "Look at that gorgeous dress. You'd look fabulous in that for the Mayoral Ball." The dress was the deepest red velvet with two sheer black silk arrows sewn in the top and the skirt, pointing like arrows at the groin and with long sleeves of the same material.

I dragged her away, much to her surprise. The sight of it had made me feel hot and almost as if I might faint.

Eleanor asked me if we might ever consider moving in together. I said, do we need to wait?

Post-postscript

It seemed that Clemecy and all traces of her were disappearing. I was relieved. I felt that I could breathe again. Eleanor was lovely, safe, warm. Our sex was exciting, uninhibited and deeply satisfying.

I was wrong though. Two days before the Mayoral Ball at which Eleanor had invited me to be, as she put it, her date, I found a box on my doorstep when I returned from work. Intrigued, I carried it indoors and put it on the kitchen table, leaving it there while I changed.

I poured myself a glass of wine, then opened the box. Its contents were covered in tissue paper and there was an envelope with "Maggie' written simply on it. I opened it and there was a card. "I can't resist you and I couldn't resist this either. E."

I moved the tissue and froze. Dark red velvet. I stepped back, horrified. I lifted it out of the box, handling it like I might an unexploded bomb. The silk panels, arrows, the sheer sleeves; it was THE dress, of that I was certain.

I picked up the card and opened it. I almost screamed.

"You can't resist me. C."