Sophie shook her head, even as she arched into the caress. “It’s plain linen. Dyed plain brown.”
Then why the ribbon?Maddie fought a smile. Sophie Roseingrave was practical but wistful; sensible and sensual both.
Maddie slipped her hands around Sophie’s waist, then up to the laces at the back of the dress. Her hands busied themselves untying. She leaned forward to breathe her next question into Sophie’s ear. “How could you ever go home if I destroyed your dress?”
“I wouldn’t,” Sophie said at once. “I’d have to stay here helpless, to be used however you pleased. Utterly at your mercy.” She sounded anything but fearful, wriggling close to give Maddie’s hands more room to work behind her back.
Maddie chuckled and bit Sophie’s earlobe as the dress loosened; the other woman gasped and giggled. Together they pulled up Sophie’s skirts and got the dress over her head and arms. Sophie’s petticoat and light stays went next—unboned, as Maddie’s were. “Your turn,” Sophie said, and reached for Maddie’s gray gown.
Maddie caught her hands by the wrists and spread them wide, one to either side. “Not so fast,” she said. “Let me look at you.”
Sophie squirmed. “If your plan is to make me scream in frustration...”
Maddie simply looked—at the breasts curving so temptingly beneath the linen, true, but also at the garment itself. Sophie’s chemise was good cloth, but old. It had been much mended by a hand clearly hurrying through the job. Maddie dropped one of Sophie’s hands so her fingers could trace seams like old scars.She embellishes her sensible gown, but wears these wounds close to the skin,Maddie thought.She doesn’t expect anyone ever to see them—or to take notice of them when she’s being laced up at home.
“Is this your stitching?” she asked. Meaning:Did you hurry through a task you disliked, or were these marks made by someone else’s hands?
“I’m not much of a mender,” Sophie muttered.
Impatient,Maddie thought to herself. She ran her fingers over the soft fabric, almost transparent with age and wear. That thinness hinted at what waited beneath: softness and skin and sweet, slippery places. And somehow, despite all her teasing promises, Maddie hesitated to strip that last scrap of cloth away from Sophie’s body. It veiled her form—but it said so much about her choices.
Of course Maddie yearned to see what Sophie Roseingrave looked like when she was bare and wet and willing. But apparently Maddie was greedier than she’d realized—because suddenly she wanted more than that. She wanted to see as deep as she could into Sophie’s mind and heart, too. To learn every secret that lived in the darkness there.
The shock of all that wanting made her hands shake like leaves in spring wind.
The impatience Maddie had deduced apparently got the better of Sophie. Her voice turned tart and teasing: “If my poor sewing bothers you so much, you need not look at it so closely.” She covered Maddie’s eyes with one hand and climbed into her lap, knees straddling Maddie’s hips.
Her next kiss brooked no denial. Sophie slanted her lips hard over Maddie’s, her tongue stroking almost angrily.
Maddie’s soul soared in the darkness and she yielded gladly. Who would have thought justice-minded Miss Roseingrave had such wonderful lechery in her? Sophie was a plump and perfect lapful, all hungry mouth and quivering thighs as she guided Maddie’s hand beneath the hem of that thin chemise. Tender skin, sweet curves, and—ah, yes, slickness and heat beneath soft curls. Maddie teased those soft folds until Sophie growled again—oh, that sound! Maddie drank it like wine, her eyes squeezed shut beneath Sophie’s palm.
Sophie broke the kiss to offer a threat: “If you don’t fuck me now I’m going to do it myself and make you watch.”
Maddie shuddered in delight. “Next time,” she gasped, then took two fingers and slid them deep and fast into Sophie’s cunny.
Perhaps too fast: Sophie squeaked.
Maddie went still.
Sophie breathed out, long and low, and her hand trembled where it covered Maddie’s eyes. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, and spread her hips a little wider. “More of that, please, Miss Crewe.”
Maddie didn’t need to be told twice. She pushed her fingers up again, heat engulfing her up to the last knuckle, feeling her way for the deepest, silkiest slide.
Sophie’s hips bucked insistently. Maddie pressed up with the heel of her hand, grinding against the throbbing pearl just above where her fingers played.“Yes,”Sophie gasped. She kept talking, breathing pleas and encouragements and demands, her fingers pressing against Maddie’s eyelids, her palms going damp as her pleasure built. She rode Maddie harder, straining up on her knees to give her hand room to work. This had the delightful effect of bringing her breasts high enough that Maddie could lean down, eyes still covered, and suck at one linen-veiled nipple until it went tight beneath her tongue.
Sophie cried out and came, her cunny rippling as Maddie’s fingers worked within her. She cupped Maddie’s face in her hands and kissed her desperately, small sounds almost of pain pouring from her throat.
Maddie kept her eyes shut tight through it all, drinking in every gasp and whimper, every sound of pleasure made by the woman above her. It was only when Sophie slumped with release, panting and spent, that Maddie realized she’d never removed so much as a stitch of her own clothing.
The church bells of St. Severus tolled midnight.
Maddie opened her eyes.
“Oh!” Sophie sat up. Her face was mottled white and red, her dark hair all but falling out of its pins in tousled locks. Her chemise had rucked up around her hips, the neckline wantonly askew, and the linen clung wetly at her breast where Maddie’s mouth had been.
Miss Roseingrave looked utterly ruined, lust dampened and pleasured within an inch of her life.
“I’m meant to be asleep at home,” she said, “ready to open the shop in the morning while everyone else sleeps late.”
