She shows me into the bedchamber and shuts the door. She turns away from me after we enter.
“Annabelle. Look at me.”
I am not sure what prompts me to say the words.
She turns and I see, somehow, that I was right. Her eyes are stormy—and full of desire.
“Get on the bed,” I say, knowing what I want to do. I want to give her what she gave me in the woods. To make her ache for me the way I did for her.
“Alfred,” she says. “You do not give me commands.”
She is protesting. But I won’t stand for it.
I shake my head. “On the bed. Now.”
She lowers herself onto the coverlet.
“Very well. As an experiment. If you insist.”
I stride over to her and, without so much as a kiss, drop to my knees. I shove her skirts up, exposing her stockinged legs.
Thankfully, she wears no drawers.
I put my mouth to her core and she lets out a small sound of surprise.
I lick and suck the way she taught me, filling her with my tongue and then my fingers. I tease her clit until she is writhing on the edge of the bed.
Then I stop.
“Do you know what you do to me, Annabelle?”
“Don’t stop.”
“Answer the question. And then I’ll continue.”
“I am very close. You are displeasing me.”
“Then answer and I’ll give you what you want.”
“If you don’t obey me, Alfred, you will lose your post.”
The words sound hollow to me. I do not think she will dismiss me—I do not think she would endthis—over so trivial a violation.
“Answer me.”
She snakes her hand downward, apparently so desperate for release that she will take it herself.
I grab her wrist.
“No, Annabelle.”
I don’t know what possessesme.
“Alfred, you are making me angry.”
Her voice has a whine to it. I have never heard her sound so uncontrolled.
“Answer.”
