Twenty-Four
Avirin
Days later, Cascade is on her way. Everyone else at Mothry Cottage seems almost as excited as Avirin, whistling while they bustle through preparations.
Selbie is in particularly high spirits, chatting excitedly when Avirin joins her to pick vegetables in the garden.
When Cascade finally arrives, she kisses everyone on both cheeks before she lifts Avirin’s chin.
“Would you look at that?” Cascade smirks knowingly toward Pye. “Married life agrees with you.”
Dinner is a delicious spread of Cascade’s favorite foods, salmagundi and celery à la crême and fried battered cardoons.
It’s a magnificent arrangement, and Avirin is pleasantly surprised that everyone who works at the cottage joins them for the meal.
Emory, the human woman whose quick stride Avirin noticed through her door.
Marsyas, a satyr who pulls out his flute at the end of the final course.
Chap, a young man intent on learning to handle the horses, no matter how many times they nip at him.
They all dine together while Cascade regales them with stories of the latest gossip from the city.
Any rumors about Avirin’s transformation are conspicuously missing.
Cascade must be censoring the more brutal news, but Avirin appreciates it all the same.
It is far easier to put her concerns out of her mind in this room full of warmth and laughter.
After dinner, the foursome retires to the sitting room.
Pye stokes the fire while Selbie pours the cider and settles onto the loveseat with Cascade.
Avirin fidgets with her glass. As the woman of the house, she knows what she should be doing.
She should perch on the edge of her chair, smile presentably, entertain her guest. Yet Cascade takes one look at her and waves her hand.
“Do not trouble yourself, Lady Riften.” She lights a cigar and takes a slow puff, letting the smoke linger in her mouth. “I know where to find everything in this house. I can attend to myself.”
Lady Riften. It’s the first time Avirin has been called that. It makes her feel strangely buoyant, and with a smile, she takes the chair opposite Pye and listens while he and Cascade reminisce about their childhood.
One glass turns to another. Before Avirin realizes it, the air in the room has grown cozy and lax. Her feet slip out of her shoes and curl up beneath her. Pye unties their cravat. Selbie drapes her legs over Cascade’s lap, and Cascade traces her fingers along Selbie’s knee.
Avirin can’t help but watch them murmuring to each other, their eyes locked and heads inclined.
Never has she seen two people so comfortable together.
She noticed it all throughout dinner; Selbie and Cascade passing dishes to each other without looking, their faces shifting into the same expressions, bodies moving with an innate awareness of the other. How can they be so in tune?
Is it their peculiarities?
The question shocks Avirin, and she almost stifles the thought, but she clings to it instead.
By the ton’s standards, these two women should be saddled with shame, but Cascade and Selbie aren’t.
They do not shove any part of themselves aside or linger in shadow; they sit in the center of the room with their love on full display.
Perhaps fully knowing oneself — fully embracing oneself — is what makes it possible. Without that, could they ever give the whole of themselves away? Could they ever truly know the depths of someone else?
Gooseflesh lifts on Avirin’s arm, and she realizes Pye is watching her from across the room. The attention makes her shiver.
“Are you cold, dear wife?”
The words are innocent enough, but everything Pye says is tinged with impishness. He’s toying with her, goading her, issuing some unspoken challenge. She wants to resist its power and give into it all at once.
Pye swirls the drink in their glass. “I can add more logs to the fire.” He rests his palm on one of his thighs. “Or you could join me.”
Her pulse thuds. No matter if they are husband and wife, they are among company. Two people sitting so closely would be unheard of…yet Selbie and Cascade have already done so. No one stormed the cottage to balk at their indecency. The world did not end.
Avirin doesn’t realize her body is moving until she’s already standing. Pye’s head tilts, hair slipping out of their eyes. Cascade and Selbie watch, mischievous and hungry.
Avirin tries to maintain her breathing as she crosses to Pye’s armchair.
He looks up at her. his legs falling open in submission.
It notches something tighter in her stomach.
Joining him may have been her choice, but she has no doubt he knew what decision she’d make before she did.
If she had denied him, he would have taken it in stride.
Since the moment they met, there has always been a luscious certainty when Pye looks at her.
How does he predict her? How does he maintain his poise, even when she tries to shake him?
He takes the glass from her hand and sets it beside his. She lowers herself to his lap, but her spine refuses to be anything but rigid, clinging to some ingrained sense of propriety.
Pye eases a warm hand up the back of her neck, his every motion fluid against her stiffness. “You can relax.”
She bites back a sound.
Their voice stays low and steady against her ear. “Give your weight to me. Sink back.”
Heat curls between her legs, fanned by Cascade and Selbie watching them.
It feels like Avirin’s on display in some exquisite humiliation.
Look how helpless she is for me. How pitiful.
She doesn’t know why it spurs her desire.
It should feel wrong, yet with Pye behind her, her mind melts.
She forgets the rules she’s always been taught.
She forgets everything she’s supposed to do, to say, to feel, and gives herself over to desire.
Cascade wets her lips. “Now, Pye…” Cascade mouths against Selbie’s jaw, but both women keep their eyes on Avirin. The couples are in a tantalizing tug-of-war, pulling their partners closer every time the other pair does. “Why did you request my presence so urgently?”
Pye whispers against Avirin’s ear “Should we tell them about our agreement?”
She shudders. The evening has slowly heated to a boiling point, and her hunger is fully awake now. It’s been almost three weeks since she last fed, and that craving makes her bold, the emptiness inside her growling like a starved animal. “He’s depriving me,” she says. “He won’t touch me.”
Selbie gasps.
Cascade hums.
Pye laughs so deliciously that Avirin wants to tear off his clothes and fuck him right in this chair. In retaliation, she rocks her hips, delighting in the hard length that stirs against her. He smirks against her neck. “My, what spirit you’ve found!”
“They’re keeping you celibate?” Cascade clicks her tongue. “What are you running here, Riften, a cider mill or a nunnery?”
Pye taps gently on Avirin’s hips to encourage her to move again. She does as she’s bid, swirling in search of every labored breath Pye takes. His mouth moves against her pulse. “You’re not going to tell them why?”
Avirin has no doubt Pye has already described their “situation” in his letter, but why should she let him off so easily?
Taunting each other is the nearest they can get to indulging, and Avirin intends to tease until neither of them can stand it.
Her lips turn down in a pout. “He riles me on purpose. He comes back from the orchard glistening with sweat. He walks the house in stockings and nothing else.”
From the giggle Selbie hides behind her hand, it’s clear neither she nor Cascade believe it, but they play along all the same. “Oh, my.” Cascade takes one last puff of her cigar before she sets it aside. “How fortunate I arrived when I did.”
“If he refuses to satisfy you…” Selbie rises from her seat with playful admonishment toward Pye. “Then it’s only right that someone else take up the mantle.” She extends both her hands toward Avirin. “Here, sweetness. We’ll free you from the shackles this cruel lord has imposed upon you.”
Avirin winds deeply back against Pye before she stands, and Selbie guides her to the loveseat between her and Cascade.
The two women fuss and fawn over her plight until their touches become more intentional.
It happens so naturally that Avirin doesn’t realize what’s changed until the soothing hands on her back become firm around her jaw.
Until the chaste kisses on her cheek become lingering ones at the corner of her mouth.
Until the cooed words of comfort become low sounds of encouragement.
It stokes the steadily-growing fire in her stomach, and her mouth falls open when Selbie eases a hand beneath her dress. “Come now,” Selbie whispers. “Let me relieve your burden.”
Her lips are a breath away from Avirin’s, and Avirin’s eyelids grow heavier by the second. The closer Selbie’s fingers move toward her core, the closer Avirin’s mouth drifts toward hers, their breaths caught between them until Selbie reaches the apex of Avirin’s thighs.
When she gasps, Selbie matches her, lips parted against each other’s as Selbie circles Avirin’s clit through her shift.
There’s something so enticing about the layers they still wear, but none of it is enough to hide Avirin’s desire.
It soaks through, wetting Selbie’s fingers as she brushes their noses together.
“Gods,” Selbie breathes, “he turned this away?”
Then Selbie sinks to the floor and pushes Avirin’s skirts up to her hips.
It exposes her garters and stockings, leaving a draft on her bare sex mixed with the heat from everyone’s eyes.
Selbie hums appreciatively, and Cascade leans back to watch.
Pye tips the cider glass to their lips and never looks away from Avirin.
Selbie presses her mouth between Avirin’s legs, making her gasp and arch. Her pupils threaten to expand, but she holds them back, trying to keep focus. Cascade twirls one of Avirin’s curls around her finger. “You have been left in need, haven’t you?”
Selbie’s tongue rolls against Avirin’s clit and presses into her with a lascivious sound.
She pulls back only enough to speak against Avirin’s folds.
“Perhaps I should have given you a proper welcome to the cottage.” Her lips brush Avirin’s clit.
“I should have snuck into your bed and laid under your covers until you retired. I would have licked you from sunrise to sunset.” With two fingers, she parts Avirin’s cunt and drags the flat of her tongue against her.
“I wouldn’t let perfectly good pussy go to waste. ”
“It’s true.” Cascade rests her arm on the back of the loveseat to brush Avirin’s hair behind her ear. “She can go for hours. You’d have to beg her to stop.”
Avirin whimpers, and Cascade soothes her sounds with a kiss. She tastes as rich as syrup, her movements smooth and decisive, opening Avirin up until she’s breathless.
Cascade trails her tongue against Avirin’s swollen bottom lip. “Do you like the way she eats your cunt?” When Avirin nods, Cascade tilts Avirin’s chin to look at Selbie. “Tell her. Tell her how much you like it.”
Avirin’s head swims. Selbie’s mouth is wet and messy, her cheeks glistening while she works, her eyes honed on Avirin’s.
Avirin pants. “I like — the way you —”
Innocently, Selbie’s eyes widen, but she suctions her lips around Avirin’s clit, tongue fluttering until Avirin loses her thoughts.
“Poor thing,” Cascade clucks before she, too, sinks to the ground between Avirin’s legs.
Both women press Avirin’s legs open, keeping her pinned and spread while they lick and suck and kiss her. Their tongues swirl and tangle together, smearing over Avirin’s pussy, their moans vibrating through her body.
Pye watches it all. His expression never changes, reclined and relaxed, so in control that Avirin would almost believe he was unaffected — if not for the fire blazing in his eyes.
It fans the flame inside her. Everything he does provokes her, inspires her, refuses to allow her to remain where she is. He fills her mind with possibilities, calling to her like a faerie ring in the forest.
What if?
She wants to move him just as profoundly. She wants to break him. She wants to sabotage his control so that he can’t resist her, so that he no longer cares for doing what is “right.”
She pulls Cascade and Selbie up to meet her. They both kiss her hungrily, the three of their mouths smeared with the taste of her. Avirin inhales slowly, and blue smoke spills from both them into her.
It’s heady and intoxicating. Avirin had forgotten what it feels like to have her thirst quenched and filled to the brim. She drinks and drinks until Cascade eases her back against the loveseat.
Avirin takes labored breaths and pats her hair to assure herself that no horns have sprouted. Cascade and Selbie run their hands over her breasts, down her stomach, around the curve of her hips. “Look at you.”
Avirin can imagine the disaster she is: hair mussed, dress wrinkled, cheeks red and puffy. But her senses are sharper, her skin brighter, her body nourished. She is more powerful. She can handle more.
“I do enjoy having you as a toy,” Cascade muses, tracing one finger across Avirin’s clavicle.
“The lady of the house, so desperate to please.” Something scandalous glints in her eyes, and she grips Avirin’s jaw.
“I bet you’d do anything we asked of you.
I bet you’ve just been waiting for the chance to serve. Isn’t that right?”