16. Lucy #2
Lucy looked at her. Her bra was charcoal gray and low-cut, the kind that did its job and didn't pretend otherwise. Carrington's chest rose and fell. Her collarbones were prominent. Lucy put her hand between her breasts and felt Carrington’s heartbeat. It was fast, faster than she'd expected.
She reached around with her other hand and unclasped the bra.
The band loosened and the straps went slack on Carrington's shoulders.
Lucy drew the cups forward and down and off her arms, and Carrington's breasts were bare in the lamplight.
They were full, and the nipples were already tight and dark.
Carrington reached up, and Lucy caught her wrist and moved it back down to her side. She placed it on the sheet, flat, fingers open.
"Leave it there," Lucy said.
Carrington's fingers curled once against the sheet and then went still.
Lucy bent her head and put her mouth on the curve of Carrington's neck and felt the pulse in the carotid.
She breathed in, and it was her own scent, transferred.
The intimacy of that—that Carrington smelled like her—bloomed warmth through her chest. She pressed her tongue to the same spot and tasted salt, then moved down to the base of her throat, where the tendons met.
Carrington's breath hitched. Lucy felt it under her lips, the small catch and hold, and she waited for it to release before she moved lower.
She took her time. Her mouth traced the line of Carrington's collarbone, the hollow beneath it, the upper slope of her right breast. She could feel Carrington's fingers pressing in the sheet, but they stayed where Lucy had put them.
Lucy closed her mouth over her nipple. She circled it with her tongue, then drew it in, and Carrington made a sound, low and involuntary. Lucy kept going at the same pace and pressure, until Carrington's back arched slightly off the headboard and the sound came again, longer this time.
Lucy moved to the other breast, same deliberate, unhurried attention. Her hand came up to cup the first one, her thumb dragging across the wet nipple, and Carrington's hips shifted on the sheet.
She kissed her way down. Ribs and the soft skin below them. The plane of her stomach, where the muscle twitched under Lucy's mouth. She reached the waistband of the pants and sat up.
She unfastened and pulled them down over Carrington's hips, drawing them off each leg, and dropped them off the side of the bed. Underneath, Lucy could see the shape of her pussy through the panty’s fabric, could see the dampness.
She put her hand on the inside of Carrington's thigh and pressed her legs apart. Carrington opened without resistance, and Lucy settled between them on her knees, still fully dressed.
She hooked her fingers in the waistband of the underwear and pulled them off. Carrington was bare from the waist down, her legs open. Lucy could see everything—the dark hair, the soft folds beneath it, the wetness that had been building since before the first button came undone.
Lucy put her mouth on the inside of her thigh, pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses to the skin, working her way higher. Carrington's hips tilted toward her, and Lucy ignored it. She kissed the crease where thigh met body, first one side and then the other.
Lucy put her mouth on her pussy. She started slow, her tongue flat, a long stroke upward, and Carrington's whole body went taut. Lucy did it again and again, the taste salty and faintly musky that Lucy wanted more of.
She circled Carrington’s clit with the tip of her tongue without a pattern that Carrington could anticipate or brace against. Lucy slid a hand up and pressed two fingers against her entrance without going in.
She held them there while her tongue kept that same maddening, arrhythmic pace, and she felt Carrington's body push toward her fingers, seeking.
She pushed them in slowly. Carrington made a low sound that came from the base of her throat.
Lucy held still inside her, feeling the muscles clench around her fingers, feeling the heat and the wet and the way Carrington's body was trying to pull her deeper.
Then she thrusted her fingers before pausing.
Her fingers curled inside Carrington, pressing against the front wall, and her tongue circled her clit.
Carrington's back came off the headboard entirely and she reached for Lucy's hair.
Lucy pulled back and took Carrington's wrists in both hands and put them back on the sheet. She held them there for a moment, looking up at her. Carrington's face was open and flushed, her lips parted, her eyes half-closed.
"Leave them there," Lucy repeated.
Lucy’s mouth was on her clit and her fingers inside her pussy again, and she built it up slowly. She changed angles and pressure, bringing her close enough that Carrington's thighs began to shake—and then she'd ease off. The third time she brought her to the edge, Carrington broke.
"I don't want you to stop," she said. Her voice was wrecked, barely a voice at all.
"I know," Lucy said. She kept her mouth on Carrington's clit and she kept her fingers inside her. She set a steady, deliberate pace that she could feel building in Carrington's body. The muscles in her thighs locked, and her pussy walls tightened around her.
Lucy felt it happen. The orgasm started somewhere deep; she felt it in the rhythmic contractions, and then it spread outward.
Carrington's whole body seized. Her back arched off the bed.
Her free hand gripped the sheet so hard the fabric tore away from the mattress corner.
The sound she made into her own arm was raw and guttural and went on and on, wave after wave.
Lucy didn't stop until the last tremor passed and Carrington's body slackened.
Lucy drew her fingers out and pressed her mouth to the inside of Carrington's thigh. Then she stayed on her knees between Carrington's open legs and watched her.
Carrington's arm dropped away from her mouth. Her lips were bitten red. Her hair was fanned across the pillow and the sheet, dark against the gray, and it was a mess. When she opened her eyes, they were glistening.
Carrington didn't reach for the sheet to cover herself or check the time, but her eyes found Lucy’s.
She didn't say anything or smile. She just looked back, her expression open.
Lucy reached over and put her hand on Carrington's wrist again.
The pulse was still fast. Slower than before, but still fast. She pressed her thumb into it and held it there. Carrington closed her eyes again.
She pulled the edge of the comforter up over Carrington's legs, then she settled onto her side, still clothed, still watching, and she stayed exactly where she was.
Sometime after two, Carrington rolled over and crashed into her. An arm came over Lucy's ribs, and a knee landed somewhere near her hip. Still, she didn't wake. Lucy lay still underneath the weight of her.
She woke at twenty past four without needing the alarm she'd set.
The window was open at the bottom. The air coming across the bed was cold, and it smelled like wet grass.
Carrington hadn't shifted an inch. Four months of watching that woman, and she was always adjusting something.
Her breathing had gone slow and heavy, and it caught a little at the end of every breath.
Two things needed doing before six: Lucy's shirt was on the floor on the wrong side of the room, and she had to be out of the house before the chef arrived.
She didn't get up for either of them. She lay there instead with her arm burning where the pan had got it, and she knew exactly how this ended, and she was not going anywhere.
Lucy pressed her forehead into the top of Carrington's shoulder and stayed there in the dark, wide awake, for a little under half an hour.
At five, she muted the alarm before it sounded.
She dressed on the far side of the room with no light on, finding her shirt by touch alone.
She carried her shoes instead of putting them on.
Carrington was still lying face down where she'd rolled and hadn't shifted since.
Lucy waited at the foot of the bed as long as she could afford to, looking at Carrington sleep, then eased the door into the frame behind her without letting it catch.
The hall was gray and colder than the bedroom, and the handle of the courtyard door was cold enough to make her flinch.
She let herself out, pulled it shut behind her, and stood on the step in her socks with her shoes in one hand.
She slipped on her shoes and walked along the dewy grass back to the cottage.
Halfway there, she realized that her face hurt.
She put her free hand up and pressed her fingers against her own cheek.
She had been grinning since she had woken up.
She was inside the cottage at four minutes past five, still grinning, and she slipped off her shoes by the front door and went to lie back down in her own bed.