While I work, the raven flies over and perches on her bare shoulder, fluffing his feathers, watching me. She shoos him away for once. His claws have left pale pink indents in her skin. I ache to touch them, to run my tongue over their clefts.
When she stands, I pull the dress around her, delighting in the brush of the crimson fabric over her curves, the sound of it sliding, each small hook and eye to be closed, the touch of skin to skin.
“Exhale,” I say, my fingers tight on the stays.
She sighs, the sigh of a million small things lost in the woods and never found, and I pull the stays.
“Again,” I say.
A second time and the stays pull her tight, wrap her in their silk so that her breath is forced from her in a low grunt.
“Again,” I say.
This exhale is from the belly and the heart, the wind of the south when winter leaves, the bear waking from hibernation, the whoosh of bluebird wings through air.
My fingers wrap the stays, pull until she is gasping for breath. She can barely look at herself, even now.
“Do you want to stay, my queen? Skip the party?” I ask. It’s bold. It might be too early to make this move, and yet I’ve waited a hundred years, it seems, through the king and the couriers and finally through Snow. It is now or never.
“No,” she whispers.
“No?” The stays are cutting into the crooks of my fingers, turning them pale at the knuckles. I can’t imagine what it must feel like inside that dress; the stays are made for a queen. They will not stretch nor break.
“Yes,” she said. “Please.” It’s the first time she’s ever said please anything to me.
“Please what?”
Her eyes close against the reflection of her. Her crown of hair shines black as wings.
“Please let me stay.”
I laugh—oh, it is the laugh of pleasure and power—and loosen the stays until her breath rushes in a gasping inhale.
“You have to go, my queen,” I say. All proper servant girl now. “It’s what’s expected.”
It is hard to be queen. All that power all the time. All those expectations. All that topping.
Her cry is the anguish of a rabbit being released from a trap into a coyote’s mouth. She lets her head fall to the dressing table. From her bedside, the raven caws, a chatter of black song.
I undress the queen each night. I had done so for many years, loosening her stays, sliding the fabric from her skin. For the past week, since the party, she’s eyed me warily, a startled deer unsure whether to run or go still, knowing only that she wants to be caught. I stay the good girl, her good girl. Doing only what is asked of me. It’s a small dance, a bit of sport, and occasionally when she looks at me, it brings a bit of life back to her cheeks.
Every day that she must be in public is hard for her. Tonight, her potion is worn to a bare glimmer. Her eyes sink into grey pools, her skin is returning to its rash-marked rudd. Not fit for a queen. Not fit at all. I will make her beautiful again. Not with her silly potions, their temporary glamour.
When she’s naked and in front of her dressing table, I take her silver comb in my hand. The tangles are thick and spidered, coarse as horse hair. I go slowly and carefully, letting her rest, letting her regain her strength.
“They won’t find Snow,” she says.
She’s right but I don’t say so. I weave her hair into small braids, make them into reins, as if she were a horse, bridled and ridden.
I fist my hand in her hair, pull her back so that she must look up at me. Her face, her throat, pale and pink.
“Enough mourning,” I say. “Do you understand?”
She glares at me, sparks of life. From her bedside, the raven caws, flaps his wings.
“Do…” I say, a tug of her hair for every word, my fingers tracing the long line of her neck. My nails turn in to lightly score her skin. “…you understand?”
“She…” My queen closes her eyes as she says this. “…made me feel beautiful. She made me beautiful.”
I want to slap her silly face, I want to rake my nails over her skin until she bleeds, I want to uncover the mirror and make it speak the only truth it knows. But the queen’s not ready for that.
Instead, I keep my hand tight in her hair, lean over her upturned face, kiss the red lips of her mouth. She tastes of potions and despair, her tongue a sleeping thing that must be coaxed into waking.
I will make her beautiful too.
I pinch her nipples, one after the other, pull them into points and then release them, loving every time she moans into my throat, every time she shudders. Still holding her hair, keeping her still, I push my hand between her thighs, play in the wetness that already fills her, a stream of want. I tease her until she’s bucking against my light touch.
“Please,” she says.
I pull her back, take the comb from its spot on her dressing table. The silver makes a pretty smack against the curves of her breasts, the insides of her thighs. It brings her skin to flush, petaled and pink.
“Beautiful,” I say in her ear as the comb does its work against the point of her clit, as it hits home again and again. “Beautiful,” I say.
But I know she doesn’t believe me.
From her bed, the raven caws and caws.
Snow has been gone seven months. The huntsman hasn’t been found. Even the raven has been spending more and more time elsewhere. It’s time.
While my queen bathes—she’s almost fully herself now, no potions needed—I open the closet and pull the white dress from the very back of it. My queen gasps when she sees it.
“No,” she says. “Not that one.”
“Do you trust me?” I ask. I’m already bringing the dress to her.
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Do you love me?”
I can’t hear her answer over the rustle of fabric, as I settle the alabaster strips around her skin. It barely covers any of her, only the curve of her hips, a line up her belly, swatches below the hang of her breasts. I can’t hear the answer, but I know what it is.
“On all fours.”
She does so without protest, the dress moving like white feathers around her. Swan Queen. Down on her hands and knees in front of me. So beautiful. So mine. “Open your mouth,” I say.
She does. Obedient. Wanting. Willing.
Into her mouth goes the apple-red gag, tied in place with leather stays. She looks up at me, her eyes wide.
“It’s a good color for you. Red,” I say.
She shudders lightly. She knows what I mean.
I kiss her around the gag, laughing as she tries to kiss me back. My fingers find her nipples, tighten over them until they’re as red as the gag. Until she’s moaning, her breath quick and heaving.
I lean her forward, tease the places that the fabric doesn’t hide. I spread her open until my fingers, all of my fingers, my small fist reaches deep inside her.
My other hand wields the leather riding crop that leaves long thin lines on her skin.
She’s screaming inside the gag, writhing into every lash, opening herself up more and more around the push of my fist. The alabaster fabric shows every bit of sweat, every drop of blood. They glitter like pearls, like rubies.
Her clit is an easy thing to find, even with the crop still in my hand. Tall and pointed as a glass mountain, the very tip a delight to the curve of my fingers. It doesn’t take long; I flick her clit two, three times and she’s bucking me nearly out of her, sucking breath around the gag.
She comes quiet and hard, like a queen should, all shudder and arch and breathstop.
Barely waiting for her to finish, I take the gag from my queen’s mouth. Her breathing is so fast it’s barely there. Her eyes are glazed over, unfocused.
“Do you love me?” I ask.
“Yes,” she breathes. Like the mirror, in this moment she cannot lie.
“Then ask,” I say, and I turn her face toward the uncovered mirror.
She shakes her head, a tiny m
ovement.
“Ask,” I say again.
“Mirror, mirror…” She closes her eyes, swallows hard. “I… can’t.”
Oh, my queen. The things we do for love. The crop makes such beautiful lines, crisscrossing the already red bleeds of her ass, her hips. She whimpers, bows her head.
“Ask,” I say. Third time, and she knows that she must.
She looks at her reflection, really looks. The mirror is magic, yes, but it is not her magic, and it owes allegiance to nothing but the truth. It shows her herself, on all fours and naked before it. Her chest is crisscrossed with raised welts, their surface pink and purple. Bruises flower on the inside of her arms, across the ridges of her collar bone. Her makeup is smeared, the black of her eyes, the ruby of her lips. Her ass is snow white and blood red. Her skin is stained with a thousand drops of blood that bloom like the smallest of roses.
There is nothing more beautiful in this world or any other.
She begins again. This time she makes it through. “…who’s the fairest of them all?”
“You, my queen,” says the mirror. “Are the fairest of all.”
It’s true. Snow is dead. The huntsman is dead. Even the raven is dead. Don’t ask me how I know. What I do know is that there is nothing more truly alive in this whole country than my queen.
From her place on the floor, my queen lifts her gaze to mine. Her smile is a radiant thing. It alone could force roses to bloom, cause ravens to talk, turn servant girls into rulers, get princesses lost in the darkest of woods.
And it is only for me.
Love is a thorny thing, fraught with peril. I have held a lot of beating hearts in my hands, but hers is the one I love best.
THE LAST DANCE
Kristina Lloyd
Don’t get me wrong, I love my sisters, but being the youngest of twelve totally sucks, especially when my siblings are such famewhores. They drag me here, there and everywhere, and when I try to refuse they accuse me of being selfish and spoiling it for everyone. “Eleven? What will people think if part of us is missing?” Emotional manipulation and its best mate, guilt, are so entrenched in our family dynamic I’m tempted to lay places for them at mealtimes.
We were conceived on the IVF program and are the world’s only surviving dodecaplets. My mother needed two hospital beds, one for her body, one for her belly, before she pupped her litter of twelve. Hardly surprising, but she didn’t survive. We were brought up by our father—or publicity agent, as I prefer to call him.
Our lives have been sponsored by a range of companies taking care of everything from baby booties to buzzing sex toys. I swear, the house practically levitated the weekend we received our first box of freebies from LoveStuff, a dozen Double Fun Pocket Rockets. But you don’t get anything for free in this life. “Who do you dream of?” the marketing people wanted to know. For me, with my new toy taking me to heavens I’d never explored, the question wasn’t “who” but “what.” Oh, and I’d dreamed all manner of terrible things; of being abducted, tied up, and spanked; of sucking cock till I couldn’t take any more; of muscular men getting soapy in the shower; of being fucked by strangers who called me “slut” and “whore.”
“David Beckham,” I told them.
“He’s married,” said my father. “Say Prince Harry.”
Ultimately, I could forgive my father for being overbearing, controlling, and insensitive. After all, bringing up twelve identical daughters isn’t easy or cheap. However, he lost my sympathy by contracting us to appear in a fly-on-the-wall reality TV series when we were too young to appreciate the consequences. Our lives have been lived in the spotlight, and the spotlight was inside our home. The show, Full House, ran for seven years, and even though the TV cameras have long since gone, I can’t shake off the feeling I’m being watched.
On the night it all started, I felt unseen eyes tracking us before we’d reached the end of our street. As ever, we’d snuck out of the house under the cover of darkness, avoiding our father’s place and the security cams he’d installed. We know people follow us—autograph hunters, paps after a photo, journos after a scoop—so we confound them by splitting up and taking indirect routes to our destination. They want a picture of the twelve of us together, but we won’t give them that. They also want to know where we go each night, but we’re not giving them that either. Even my sisters occasionally want a break from the attention.
But that’s the trouble with fame. You can’t have it on your own terms.
“I think someone’s on to us,” I whispered.
“You’re so paranoid,” scoffed sister seven, Gina.
“Doesn’t mean you don’t want to kill me,” I replied.
Gina and I don’t get on. I wondered if she knew my secret. I shouldn’t have done it, I knew I shouldn’t. But her boyfriend, Gilchrist, was this beautiful black guy from Putney, tall, built, and bald, with slim, graceful hands. And not so long ago, I’d found him in the cloakroom of Club Sub, sitting on a bench, exhausted, gorgeous, his legs spread wide. His mouth was parted, eyes closed, sweat gleaming on the dome of his head. He was wearing a red military jacket, tasseled epaulets squaring his shoulders, shiny gold buttons glinting in the half-light. The jacket was undone and, oh boy, so was I. His chest, chocolate brown and broad, was scattered with tight black whorls of hair, his pecs perfectly contoured, his stomach taut but not ripped. His flesh folded in a lean band above the buckle of his belt and his crotch bulged.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, giving me a tired, dutiful smile.
The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. “Silly Gilly,” I said because that’s her cutesy little name for him.
His smile didn’t change. “Gina,” he said, unable to hide his weariness.
I giggled and swayed toward him, the floor cool through the holes in my worn-out shoes. “I think I’ve had too much to drink.”
Gilchrist looked more interested. “Yeah?” he said, sitting up straighter.
And that’s how I came to betray my sister by pretending to be her and sucking off her boyfriend in a nightclub cloakroom. I still get flustered to recall how I’d knelt between his thighs and how he gripped my hair, keeping my mouth low and steady around his hard, fat length. And when he came, his long, tormented groan sounded like a cry wrenched from a creature of the underworld.
“Ah, Gina,” he murmured afterward. “You should drink more often.”
But Gina doesn’t drink.
She dances. We all dance. Every fucking night.
Most people have heard the rumors. Local newspapers report on the Dancing Dozen who keep the area’s cobblers in business by sending in their shoes for repair each day, twenty-four soles worn out after who knows what shenanigans. That’s not enough of a story for the nationals though. They want the dirt. They want to know where we go, who with, what we’re wearing, and whether cocaine or professional footballers are involved. Their desperation is such that one tabloid, let’s call them the Daily Scum, has offered a substantial reward to anyone who can provide evidence of our late-night activities.
Ordinarily, our father would be down like a ton of bricks on such blatant incitement to press intrusion, particularly when he doesn’t stand to profit. However, he also wants to know where we go, and he probably has an eye on a sponsorship deal with Reebok, so with this one, we’re on our own. It’s a relief, I can tell you.
In our separate groups, we made our way through London’s late-night streets, reconvening at Waterloo Bridge, where a fog was gathering to swathe the Thames in a spectral murk. Sisters three, four, and ten were late, so we hung around at the top of the steps, anxious and impatient. The haze was shot through with the city’s lights snaking along the banks, reflections on the black water like a sky of fallen stars. To the west, the gleaming palace of Westminster was a golden, gothic ghost casting a stern frown upon our illicit adventures. I swear, that building has my father’s eyes.
Across the river, the slow-turning wheel of the London Eye glittered above layers of mist, ma
king it seem as if a phantom fairground were luring us to the other side. Or was it my father again, watching us peep-eyed through the environment?
When our remaining sisters had caught up with us, we hurried over the bridge because, no, it wasn’t a charmed fairground that drew us, nor could my father follow our every move, much to his frustration. Our nightly haunt was Club Subconscious, a darkly magical place of music and revelry in a Southwark venue three stories low, a former underground car park now transformed into a night club.
Well, “darkly magical” is their advertising slogan. To be honest, it’s a bit of a meat market but at least it’s members only and no one cares about our fame. I mainly go because my sisters would kick up such a fuss if I refused. (“We’re nothing if we’re not twelve!”) Plus, it’s the only time I get within sniffing distance of any action because we always have our boyfriends, twelve good, strong men, faithfully awaiting us on Waterloo Bridge, ready to dance until dawn.
Trouble was, we’d got the wrong boyfriends. My lover, Leander, hardly ever put out. I wished I had what Gina had. Wished I had Gilchrist. Maybe it was the mist or the odd sensation we weren’t alone, but that night, as we crossed the bridge, I felt we were on the brink of change, as if something in the shadows were waiting to upend our lives and sprinkle them with stardust. When that something in the shadows stepped on my toes, I got the jitters.
“Ouch!” I said.
Lustfully Ever After Page 7
