"I want you," I said to her one morning as we sat to our breakfast, "to teach me how to read."
It had been a week since I had broken into Briar, and found her sitting at…at my uncle's desk.
We had fallen into a comfortable pattern. It, by all outward appearances, may have seemed similar to our life at Briar before, but it could not have been more different. Gone were the lies, and the fear, that had hung over us before.
We spent the week getting to know each other. I told her my life story, and she told me hers. We had shared tears, especially when I spoke of Mrs. Sucksby, and the madhouse, both topics that affected us deeply.
I asked what had happened to all of ... my uncle's books. Some she had destroyed, she said. Others, she had sold. I asked her why she had kept the ones she had, and she colored slightly at that. She pulled one from the shelf, and began reading. It was much like the stories she wrote herself.
"Read me another." I requested after she had finished the short passage. She had pulled another book out and read another similar passage, her usually even reading voice becoming breathless. That fact, added to the actual words she was saying, caused a quickening in me, and I could feel myself growing damp.
When she had finished that one, she laid it on the edge of the desk, on top of the previous book, and looked up at me again. Our eyes locked. I could not speak, but she knew what I wanted. She pulled another book from the shelf, the one–I recalled—that had pictures in. She read more, slowly walking toward me, her voice deepened by the emotion stirring in her gut, a stirring that was mirrored in my own gut.
Finally she reached my side, where I had leaned back against the doorjamb, dizzy with longing. She finished the third passage and turned the book to me, to a page I had not seen. Upon the page was an image of two women, nude but for their garters and stays, pressed into each other enacting the scene that she had painted with her breathless words.
She held it up only for a second or two, before dropping the book to the floor and pressing her body against mine. Usually, we took our time, undressing each other until we were both bare, enjoying the feeling of our naked goose-pimpled flesh pressed together, but the words she had read had lit an untamable fire in us, and we were both feverish and impatient with need.
She pressed her lips to mine, her hand pulling up on my skirts, pushing down into my drawers until they found the fissure in that mound of hair, slick with need. She pushed her fingers in, and I shifted my hips, pushing my thigh up between her legs as best I could. But there were layers, too many layers, of fabric. I yanked at her skirts until they were bunched up between our stomachs, finally reaching her own drawers. I pulled her to me now, my hands on her round bottom, my thigh seeking out the space between her legs, pushing up and feeling her own wetness through the thin layer of cotton that separated us. We ground together, slipping up and down across each other, the air peppered with moans and grunts between our kisses.
It was the next morning that I told her I wanted to learn to read. It went frustratingly slow at first, as she taught me the letters of the alphabet and the different sounds they each made. I was in a hurry to learn, not just so that I may read the stories she had seen fit to keep for herself, or the new ones she wrote, inspired by our nights in bed together, but that we would be coming forward soon to secure our inheritance, and I wanted to be sure that I could read the things that I would have to sign from the banker, and from the legal people. I wanted to be sure that no one ever tried to swindle me again.
To encourage my speedy learning, she began to write me notes and leave them around our rooms, the library, or the dining room, some spoke of love, and made me feel warm all over, some spoke of sex, and made me feel hot. She would not read them to me, but made me sound them out myself, enjoying the new mode of communication that was becoming open to us, and I thought occasionally, enjoying the sound of my voice as I read what she would like to do to me, or hoped I would do to her.
I learned quickly then, knowing the rewards for my progress would be worth the hard work I put into it. I found that as I came to know more words, my knowledge of the world seemed to change too. I didn't just learn words, but concepts and meanings, some mundane, and some…
We sat together on either side of the large desk in the library. She wrote, and I sat with one of the books she had kept from…my uncle. This book was one of my favorites. It was an anthology of stories, all involving women. It did not have pictures, like some of the books had, but those books all had stories with men in them too. Sapphicus Eroticas, on the other hand, contained only stories involving women. I had almost read the whole book, and was on one of the last few, when something I read gave me pause. I put the book down and looked out the window.
"What's the matter?" she had looked up upon my movement, and laid down her pen. As always, there was ink smeared on her fingertips, and a smudge of it on her cheek. I would scrub it off later in our bath.
"I don't think I much like this story. Violent, it seems."
"What's that you've got there?" She looked down at the open book, trying to read it upside down.
"Sapphicus Eroticas."
"Sapphicus Eroticas, no, there's no violence in THAT one. I've destroyed all of the books that were violent, repulsive."
"Well, you mustn't have read all of this one, then, because it's violent."
"Read it to me," she requested, seeming confused.
I cleared my throat, and began, "She lay back, quivering with need, as the lady coated herself with the oil, pouring the remainder over her stomach, then slicking it down, with an equally quaking hand, to the heart of her need. She fisted her…" I trailed off. "See there, why should she strike the other woman? They had been pleased with each other before that point."
"What do you think she means, by fisting?"
"A blow, yes? Like…" I punched my hand through the air, hitting the palm of my other.
She looked down, the color rising in her cheeks. "Um no. That is not what is meant by fisting."
"What then? It does not sound pleasant, but rather harsh."
"Oh, as I understand it, it can be very pleasant." She looked up at me, and the eagerness in her eyes caught me off guard.
"What is it, then. Is there a picture of it, in one of the books."
"No picture, I have looked. But a more detailed explanation, in…" She looked to the side, and pulled a book bound in dark leather. There was no writing on the cover, only a fleur-de-lis. "Come," she said, leading me out of the library and up to our rooms.
When we entered, and she lead me to the bed. We lay beside each other as she read me the passage which she spoke of. She was right, it was not violent, but as I looked down at my own hand, I thought that it must be painful. Still, my heart quickened at the thought. I found it intriguing, and found my body responding, dampening as if to ready itself for the act. My drawers growing wetter than I think they had ever been.
After she read she dropped the book, and we both stared up at the canopy, breathing as if we had just run a long distance. I rose then, wanting to feel her the way the passage had described. I removed all my clothing, until I was nude as the day I was born. She pushed herself semi-upright on her elbows, watching me as I worked, a hungry look darkening her eyes. I walked to the wash basin and grabbed a bottle of the fruit-scented oil that we kept there to moisturize our hands after washing, and brought it back to the bed with me.
She sat up to meet me in a kiss, during which I shifted our weight and pulled her down, until she was laid on top of me, pressing my body into the soft mattress with hers. We continued kissing, until her roving hands found the source of my wetness. She sat back then, and gasped, before raising quickly off the bed to remove her own clothing, ripping her bodice in her haste to remove it. She did not care, though, her eyes trained on me as she worked, anticipating the moment when our skin would meet.
As she undressed, I poured a bit of the oil out on to my hand, slicking it between my fingers. I understood, now, its presence in the story I had been reading, though I had grown so damp that I questioned whether I would even need it.
She came back on top of me, kissing me in earnest. My hand sought hers out, and when I found it I began slicking the oil across her soft skin.
She pulled back, looking at me. "Are you sure?" She asked the question, her voice heavy with lust.
I nodded. "I want to feel you inside me."
I pulled her hand lower, pressing it to the slippery spot between my legs as I kissed her again. Her fingers slid easily across me, like they always did. She inserted a finger, then a second. She pulled back again, looking into my eyes as she inserted a third finger, more than she ever had before. I panted and laid back as she inserted another, grasping at her arms as she continued using her thumb on that sensitive spot, curling her fingers inside me.
Finally, she lowered her thumb, joining it with the others, twisting and rocking as she pushed deeper within me. She met a moment of resistance and stopped, looking for any sign of pain in my face. There was no pain save for the aching within me to be filled beyond anything I had ever felt. I grabbed her arm then, and pulled it as I rocked my hips forward, pushing her past the barrier, her hand finally soothing that ache. I gasped then, not from pain but relief. I felt tears begin to form at the corners of my eye, again, not from pain or sadness, but from the intensity of feeling her within me, connected in a way that went beyond any intimacy we had ever experienced.
I moaned her name, then. "Maud, oh yes, Maud. I love you."
I pulled her face back down then, kissing her. We didn't move for a minute, but for the moving of our mouths and the beating of our hearts. "Oh God, I love you too, Sue," she said between kisses.
Finally, I rocked my hips up, and she began moving her arm, rotating her wrist inside me. We began slow, but soon I needed more. "Deeper, please, deeper." I begged, pulling where my hand still grasped at her upper arm.
We moved together like that until I felt a tightening of every muscle in my body, a quivering within me, and my back arched. It moved me far more than I had ever experienced in my life.
As I recovered she collapsed on top of me. "God, Sue. You are so beautiful," she breathed, peppering kisses across my face, neck and chest. "I could feel you like never before, holding me tight, squeezing."
"It's not violent or painful. It's good, it's so good. You have to try it."
I was so glad I was learning how to read, and I looked forward to the rest of the stories I had not yet read, wondering what treasures they had in store for me.