Humming a bit of disbelief, Mallory continued to tease with her fingertips, dragging her nails across the creamy skin until there were trails of pink in their wake. “You didn’t deck Felicity McGovern?”
Wiggling the rest of her dress down and kicking it off, Dawn’s chin rose as she tried to appear as honest as possible. “No, I told you. I was good.”
“Shame… I would have liked to punish you for it, though it’s not as if the little twat didn’t deserve it.” Mallory chuckled. “Ah, well.”
Dawn’s eyes sparkled with humour, and she rose up to lean on her elbows against the bed. “'Twat did you just say?”
“Hush,” Mallory ordered, swiftly leaning down to bite and suck a nipple through Dawn’s bra.
Her body bucked beneath them, Dawn squealing and then moaning long and loud as Mallory's fingers grazed up a thigh to massage at hopelessly damp underwear. The fact that they were so wet already was telling, and she paused to pull back and slow down. Unlike the previous time they'd done this, she wanted tonight to last longer. As the methods of delicious torture were removed, it left Dawn groaning in frustration. Mallory tugged at her hands to topple them both to the floor, and claimed her lips in a heated kiss.
“I promised to take you on the floor. I always keep my promissis.”
Chapter 6: Vena Amoris (The Vein of Love)
Rolling over, Dawn straddled Mallory as they lay on the bedroom carpet. Pleasure had been from dragged from her body moments earlier, but Mallory continued to touch her, hands and mouth insistent on laying claim to every inch of skin.
“Mallory,” Dawn murmured her name, but not in the throes of passion. She wanted her attention.
Every time they'd come together up until today had been rushed, and Mallory wanted to savor the smaller moments. She didn't want to say it aloud, suspected Dawn would become frightened that their affair would vanish into thin air. Desperate to make a more solid connection to give credence to how she truly felt, she pushed Dawn again to slow down.
She didn't give teenage persistence much credit until this very moment, but acceded the fact when Dawn mumbled her name again and tried to wriggle back on top. "Mallory?"
“Mmmm?” came her muffled reply, mouth locked onto the thrumming pulse of Dawn's neck.
Dawn made her request, voice wavering a bit. “I want... to be inside you. I need to feel you.”
Beneath her, Mallory stilled completely, and imagined being turned to stone. Wrapping her fingers in Dawn’s long hair, she turned her face away. Green eyes stared into the sky outside her window, stalling as she tried to find the trust inside her heart to acquiesce. It was such a simple request – such a normal one between two lovers – and yet blood rushed in her temples, making her slightly dizzy. If only...
Dawn could never know the extent of her pain, or why she now gulped greedily at the warm air of the bedroom. She refused to sully Dawn’s soul with such a secret, or to allow it to cloud the brightness she felt when they came together. Hugging her golden haired ingénue closely, Mallory relished in the comfort when Dawn’s arms curled around her back to embrace her in return.
“Well, that’s different,” Dawn giggled lightly. “You’re usually so sharp around the edges.”
“Am I, now?” Mallory bit back, though she knew it to be true. She could so rarely afford to be anything but cautious, sharp, and dignified when interacting on a daily basis – and it spilled over into her manner of making love. She relished in the control, having none over herself for so long. But this was Dawn – sweet, innocent, loving Dawn. If she could have chosen anyone to ask this of her, it would have been this angel.
“You know you are,” Dawn teased. Her body seemed to understand Mallory’s hesitation in some sense, urging her to place a gentle kiss to the taut sinew of the woman's neck.
Deliberating whether to give up the aspect of power between them, Mallory mulled it over. Trust was a luxury often unknown to her, and she'd only ever given it up to one before in this way. Of course, trust seemed a luxury to Dawn as well, and she had shown vast improvements in the matter towards Mallory recently. That warmed her to the concept of sharing herself fully, and Mallory’s chin nudged it’s way up and down.
“Yes, you may love me,” came the permission, her voice surprisingly breathy and light.
Dawn gleamed with happiness at the answer. She moved Mallory back against the edge of the bed, kissing her mouth ever so slowly and languidly, delighted to be the one drawing out the blissful moment. While slowly trailing her hand down Mallory's quivering abdomen, something clicked in her expression as she comprehended the need to take her time.
Her nails drew lazy patterns across the curve of Mallory's ribs and down to the sharp hipbones that jutted out from either side of soft belly. She smiled as she catalogued each of these things, finding joy in the study of opposites, the juxtaposition of both Mallory's mind and body.
Mallory bit her lip to stifle a moan as the wandering fingers finally reached the drenched, sensitive flesh between thighs, and began to stroke there.
“Are... are you okay?” Dawn asked hesitantly.
“Uhhm,” Mallory answered in a groan. Her eyes screwed shut, and she felt somewhere between delirious and conflicted. “Mm-hmm,” she finally intoned, biting her lip even harder.
When Dawn slid a finger inside her blazing heat, Mallory cried out before whimpering. She was always so strong, and to hear such a vulnerable noise from her own lips piqued an unbidden flash of anger. "Slowly!" she warned, and gasped a few breaths before apologizing for the outburst by gentling her tone. "Slowly, please."
Her brow furrowing in intense concentration, Dawn didn't flinch or move away. Instead, she dauntlessly paid soft compliment as she went, her whispers full of awe before she kissed her way up the other side of Mallory's neck. “You feel…. amazing. Like velvet."
Below her touches, the words released a rush of wetness from Mallory. She groaned again, her own excitement returning at the sensation of slickness running down her leg.
Sliding off Mallory’s thigh, Dawn climbed between her quaking legs. The fact that they were shaking confounded the expression of her sweetheart, but Mallory fantasized that perhaps the Dawn thought it had just been a long time since anyone had loved her this way. The deceit made her unusually sad, and she pushed the thought away.
At a loss for what to do precisely, Dawn let instinct guide her. Laying Mallory down, she placed her own hips behind the hand currently pleasuring silky depths, and moved her body in a thrusting motion.
Her own mind a jumbled mess at this unexpected development in their lovemaking, Mallory became desperate for something to hold onto. While she reached around to claw at Dawn’s round bottom, her thoughts turned to the glaring truth of her unpreparedness to be loved upon - something that perplexed her, since she was usually so cautious in these matters.
She had never anticipated that Dawn might want her this way. The young woman was inexperienced, and still so innocent. Even so, when Dawn's rough and floundering hands had brushed against her damp curls, it felt like the sweetest caress. This too, was perplexing.
Firm breasts capped in sharply aroused nipples pressed against her torso, and she began to move her hips with the motion. Each thrust brought her closer to completely losing it, but for the first time in forever, Mallory found that she didn’t care. Her toes began to curl, her climax building. The motion between them began to take on a feverish pitch, and the sound of skin on skin echoed the room. Her senses were totally off kilter, and in a moment of vulnerability, her moaning veered onto the edge of screaming.
That sound had always petrified her, the sounds of her own screams. It unnerved Dawn, for sure.
“Dawn, oh my Dawn,” she cried out, burying her face in the girl’s neck. “I'm sorry...” Finding she was unable to say anything more, Mallory still considered it better than the screaming.
In response, Dawn held Mallory with tenderness beyond her years. She pressed her thumb in small circles above whe
re her fingers moved, and whispered ever so softly into her ear. “I love you,” she declared. It was not a question, nor was it timid and unsure.
As her heart thundered from that realization, Mallory was struck mute. Dawn was attempting to coax her to trust with life's most universal truth, just as she had done for Dawn. Her mind whispered the words over and over: trust, and love. It was only fair that she should give it in return, as Dawn gave it gladly.
Within the gentle hold of Dawn's arms, Mallory came apart, her thoughts overcome by the roar of waves crashing against the walls within. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and like the trajectory of their lovemaking, she found herself unable to stop it - the crumbling of stone and ice, slowly being rebuilt with something invisible, and yet stronger. For the first time, she hadn't wanted to.
_____________________________________
Dawn balanced the science book on the heavy schoolbag on her lap as the small bus she was on drove through yet another village towards St. Augusta’s. She had refused Mallory’s offer of driving her to the school, even though she didn’t have tutorials today.
Not wanting to waste money on a cab, Dawn had hoofed it a mile from the cottage in the early morning to wait at the bus stop. The issue with the bus was that it took forever to get where you were going. What would have been a thirty-minute jaunt in the blue Jag was taking two hours with all the stops.
Though lessons had officially finished, the teachers were holding tutorials until the exams. Wanting to do well, she’d planned to avail of them all. She also planned to fit in a few hours of study in her old room while she was there.
The school's end of year hockey match against Sanderson College from London was the day after their final exams. She imagined her hockey kit was washed and hanging in the locker room at school, and it elicited Mallory's voice in her mind. 'My, my... Your love of field hockey certainly has paid off.'
Smiling dreamily, she opened her book to the most recent bookmark and attempted to focus. Scanning further down the chapter on the vascular system, Dawn’s eyes fell upon the acronym she had scribbled on the page to help her remember three abdominal arteries.
C.S.I.: Celiac artery, Superior mesenteric artery, Inferior mesenteric artery.
As she tried to read, this morning’s lovely wake up popped into her imagination.
Mallory kissed at her fingers, one at a time. Now awake, Dawn’s eyes fluttered open, and a smile spread across her lips. Grinning back, her mouth-wateringly tousled beloved leaned down to kiss the knuckle of her ring finger.
“Now what’d you do that for?” Dawn asked, pursing her lips.
“Vena amoris – the vein of love. Before medicine discovered how the circulatory system functioned, people believed that a vein ran directly from the fourth finger on the left hand to the heart.” Mallory held the finger up, in her grasp.
Dawn snatched her finger back, and giggled. “Is that your way of saying ‘I love you, too?’”
Still gloriously nude, Mallory slid out of the bed. As she padded out of the bedroom towards the bathroom, there was a purposeful sashay to her hips. Turning to look over her shoulder, she blew a kiss towards the bed where Dawn still laid.
Coming back to the present, Dawn snorted and shut the book in frustration. Having aspirations to study and possibly work in the medical field after University, she had been taking Miss Sørensen’s higher-level anatomy lessons from her first week as a student at St. Augusta’s. Her test scores had been excellent all year, and she didn’t want to break the momentum. It was going to be hard though, with the distraction of being in love.
Rain splattered the plexi-glass window of the bus, lulling Dawn’s mind into relaxation again. She thought about the other night in the club, and Serena Windsor's yammering about Mallory and Miss Sørensen. She had wanted to smack the stupid bitch in the face, both her and Felicity McGovern.
The other girls knew she’d spent at least one night with one of the teachers, and it was probably around the whole school by now. She would be a complete pariah if they knew she had been at Mallory’s for close to a week. The next week and a half couldn’t go fast enough.
Realizing she was about to miss her stop, Dawn swore under her breath, and pulled the bell.
_____________________________________
In the convent, the nuns were having Sunday lunch. It was quickly descending into a ruckus over the rumours flying around the girls’ dormitory halls.
“You two know who it is! You have a duty to share it with the other sisters,” the music teacher Sister Gartrell seethed at Sister Eileen and Sister Williams. Her eyes blazed in indignant anger as she awaited a response from the nuns on the opposite side of the table.
Sister Eileen calmly ignored her to mix some butter into her mashed potato, while Sister Williams scowled back, and crossed her arms.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Angela,” Sister Eileen finally replied, looking over the rim of her spectacles at her accuser. “Details concerning Miss Rose and the woman she’s carrying on with are not for all and sundry.”
Stabbing at a piece of steak and kidney pie with her fork, Sister Gartrell pointed the piece of cutlery at Sister Eileen. “The novitiates let it slip when I threatened them with the rod that Miss Rose has been staying with Miss Moore for her safety. That paired with the rumours of a dalliance… You had better hope the newspapers don’t hear of this,” she rambled. “Or you’ll be the one who gets it in the neck from the diocese, not me! Everyone knows the Moore woman is-”
Sister Eileen slid a sideways glare at Sr. Williams, and banged the carton of butter down on the table to signal the end of the discussion.
Though Sister Williams loathed Miss Moore, she rather liked playing bridge more than her dislike for the woman. She pressed her lips together, and stared back down at her plate.
Across the school grounds in one of the classrooms, Elisabeth Sørensen’s mobile phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans. Lining the first slide of the tutorial onto the projector, the platinum blonde reached around and retrieved the device, swiping a long finger across the screen.
Reading the text message, she smiled faintly before putting the phone in the coat on the back of her chair.
Felicity and Lisa sat down the back of the classroom, watching the teacher. Between them, they hadn’t achieved a score exceeding 40% in Anatomy all year. Elisabeth surmised that Felicity was particularly pissed off that she had to take this tutorial rather than see her boyfriend, and sighed softly at the work ahead.
“I’m not even going to fucking Uni,” the girl groused to Lisa, who wasn’t happy to be attending class either. “I shouldn’t have to take this poxy class.”
“I suggest you take that up with the Principal, Felicity,” Elisabeth announced with narrowed eyes from the lectern. “Until then, you are here so I recommend you focus on the lesson. You might actually pick something up.”
“Like Dawn,” Felicity said under her breath, unable to resist the dig.
Elisabeth turned around, fixing arctic blue eyes on the schoolgirl. “Excuse me?” Her voice was just as cold as her stare.
Felicity didn’t dare repeat it.
Elisabeth continued to stare her down. She’d heard exactly what her student had said. Her phone buzzed from the coat pocket once more, and she reached down to read the incoming text.
Watching raptly, Felicity and Lisa must have seen her face grow even paler than usual.
She stuffed the mobile phone back into her pocket, and threw a coat quickly around her shoulders. “Fuck, Mallie,” Elisabeth muttered to herself.
Her grin victorious, Felicity waggled her eyebrows at Lisa as Elisabeth sprinted towards the exit.
“Stay here, all of you!” she yelled, anxious about the text's contents, and ran down the hallway.
As fate would have it, Elisabeth spotted Sister Eileen near the girl’s dormitory private room hallway, and skidded to a stop. “Eileen! Sr. Eileen, oh God!” she panted, trying to catch her breath. “You have to go
finish my tutorial. The medics and police have been called to Mallie’s home. Miss Clark from the ambulance corps texted me…” she paused to think a moment, to cover her tracks, and then continued. “Since I’m listed as an emergency contact...”
Sister Eileen’s eyes widened rapidly, and she hissed at Elisabeth, peering behind her down the hallway. Unfortunately, Dawn Rose had gone missing, and Elisabeth deduced that the girl had finally gone back into her room. Nuns never liked the girls to know anything personal about their instructors.
“What do you mean, the medics and police?!” Dawn squeaked as her head poked out of a room. Her face was horrified, crumpling under the warning of tears to come.
Elisabeth's eyes narrowed in suspicion as she stared down the hall at the display. “I don’t know, Miss Rose. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary before you left this morning?” she asked.
Peccatum in Carne: Sins of the Flesh (The Three Sins of Mallory Moore Book 1) Page 7
