Bulbs a-blaze about the mirror, set in the frame to mercilessly light that face, the planes of it, those cheeks, the nose. Thin lips uncolored, unlined eyes with only a hazeled hint of green. Black hair brushed simply back, shorn at the temples to a stubble that seamlessly prickles the line of that jaw, and all in brightly sharp relief against an empty darkness that helps the light to chisel shoulders and collarbone, bare and hairless chest, long sinewy arms bent to lay those hands upon the table, backs of them starkly rumpled with veins.
“Now why, mon lapin,” a voice slinks from the darkness, “would you want to go and look like that?”
The Starling smiles at herself. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“You never sleep, do you,” that voice, purringly close.
“Sometimes I do.” The Starling looks over her shoulder, away across the basement where the darkness is relieved by a dozen candles flickering before a bed, about a nest of cushions and bolsters laid on the floor, wraps and spreads and Turkey rugs and nestled among them two sleeping heads, the hair of them spread over pillows, black curls, bright floss. To one side a high-backed wing chair where Costurere sits drowsing, a snuffer in one relaxed hand, and Aigulha curled at her feet. The Starling turns back to the mirror. Over her other shoulder the shadows unfold a striking nose, a chin, a wicked, painted smile. “Do you find beauty, tiresome?” that voice, from those lips. “Pleasure, to be passé? Is that why you sink back to this, like a warm bath?”
“I am only ever what I want to be,” says the Starling.
“You want to be what pays the bills, ma sucrette. And la femme’s what’s been engineered, over the centuries, to best provoke, and evoke, le plaisir. If you want to do it wholesale.” In the mirror, fingers lift a shining strand of yellow hair, tuck it behind an ear. “It’s not our fault. Just the way the world’s been wired. Otherwise, you might well suddenly decide it’s a great big mustache you want, to look like,” a chuckle, “Big Jim Turk,” as the Starling’s stroking a knuckle along a lush mustache, gazing dourly from a face now smaller, in a head a touch more wide, sun-ruddied in the blaze. “Lord love her,” those wicked lips twist wryly, “I do not see what she sees in that man.”
“You don’t?” says the Starling, shaking out long and jet-black locks, though the bangs clipped short are brightly pink. She’s smiling again, apple-cheeked and dimpled.
“Oh, oh, no, that face, on that body – !”
“This?” The Starling shrugs, slumping in the chair, blue-veined breasts pink-nippled, broadly full, settling softly atop a soft swell of belly.
“Good lord,” a hand comes up, those blue eyes in the mirror look down, “oh, put that away. That’s cruel.”
The Starling’s fingertip strokes a delicate chin. “There’s no cruelty in this, but what you bring.”
“Oh?” Shuff and swoop in the shadows, shifting from stoop to kneel, head dipping to slip yellow hair behind a shoulder. “Do me.”
“Do you.”
“You never do me. Either of us. Do me.”
A sigh, a stretch of a lengthened torso, hairless chest now once more flat, apples slipped from cheeks. “You already have a double.”
“Do me. But slow. Slow enough that I can see you do it.”
“Slow,” says the Starling, licking wickedly painted lips. Turning away from the mirror and something, a trick of the light as it’s passed over gleams the passing locks from loosely rumpled darkness to yellow pressed severely straight, slipping trimmed a strict straight hem, a gleaming lowered curtain. Those eyes, now blue, blink once. “Slow enough?”
“It’s like,” smiling up, “looking, at my sister.”
“Not,” says the Starling, smiling down, “a mirror?”
“You can’t tell us apart, can you.”
The Starling looks back to the mirror, as up beside her hikes that same face just below, same nose, same eyes, same severely yellow hair. “In pictures, no,” she says. “I can’t. But if I see you in motion, with each other. Or speak with you.”
Ettie’s smile in the mirror turns smirkward. “I can always tell when it’s you, and when it’s her royal majesty. It’s something,” tucking a yellow strand of the Starling’s hair behind an ear, “you do,” she says, “or don’t. Something missing. A lack,” as the Starling looks to Ettie there beside her, “or the presence of,” and tips her head to press a kiss to those murmuring lips.
The Starling sits up, lifts her mouth away, unsmudged, “a, a lack,” Ettie says, fingers lifted to her mouth. “I suppose,” she says, “you think, it looks like the game is tied.” The nails of them clipped close, shelled in the same glossy red.
“Are we playing a game?”
That hand to the Starling’s knee, now. “Evoking, and provoking,” says Ettie, seemingly to herself. “It’s a matter of sensation,” looking up. “I can guess, surmise, presume,” those fingertips further along the Starling’s thigh, “but I can never know, not for certain, what this,” back down the length of it, to the knee, “feels like, to you. All I can ever truly know,” and that hand drops now to Ettie’s lap, “is what it is I feel.”
The Starling shifts in that folding chair, knees a bit further apart than before. “This is something you say to johns,” she says.
“There are but two responses to this bitter truth,” says Ettie, hiking herself back up, both hands on the Starling’s thighs. The Starling sits forward, hands coming to rest on Ettie’s shoulder, her upper arm, “This is just a thing,” she says, lips coming close, “that you’ve cooked up, to have something to say to the ones who want to talk.”
“Are you a john?” says Ettie.
Another kiss, that they both lean into, yellow heads together, turn and twist and dip and lift away with a hiss, the Starling’s eyes closed, pursed lips now redly smeared. “One might,” says Ettie, drawing her fingers up a shivering stretch of belly, “retreat,” thumbing a nipple bluely pinked, “into the sensations one might feel oneself, the experience, of what one does know, for certain, to be real, or,” lifting the Starling’s hand from her shoulder, lick of a kiss for the knuckles, lip-print pressed inside the wrist. “Or, one might relentlessly pursue,” turning the hand over in her hands, the nails of those fingers painted the same hard glossy red, but shaped to meticulous points, “whatever, hints, might be found,” a kiss for the inside of the elbow, and then there, just below a breast, “that what one’s doing to evoke,” another kiss, wickedness askew about her mouth, “provokes,” the Starling gasps as those lips close about a nipple, gently, and those sharp-nailed hands leap into the air to float a moment, aimlessly. Ettie’s hands unseen, tucked away somewhere between them, “the effect, that one intends,” she says, hiked up a bit higher, nose-tip brushing the Starling’s nose.
“What is it you want,” says the Starling.
“Haven’t you been listening?” Ettie’s hands still somewhere between them, smile broadening as the Starling shivers. “What I want. What her majesty wants. That’s what I see, when I look at her. What I don’t when I look at you.”
“You’re saying,” the Starling swallows, eyelids sagging half to shut, “I retreat.”
“I’m saying,” Ettie leans close, looks up, “you don’t pursue.”
“Your sister doesn’t, either.”
Ettie looks away, looks down. “You tell me.”
“You don’t see that lack,” says the Starling. “That need.”
“That question,” says Ettie.
The Starling, smiling, slowly shakes her head, lids lowered, shut away, “No,” she says. “I do not love you, Stephanie Halliwell.”
“Oh,” says Ettie, still looking down, between them, “I think you want me. Well enough. I mean, it’s not a perfect barometer, but.” Between her hands in the Starling’s lap a slender cock’s been lifted pale and bobbing to a quickening pulse. “I didn’t mean for that,” says the Starling, hand slipping down Ettie’s arm, “let me just,” but Ettie shrugs the hand away, “All the more reason,” she says, bent over.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Didn’t you have enough of that already?” grumbles the Starling.
“No,” says Ettie, “no,” stroking, kiss-smudged lips so close. “Not on this body,” she says, and takes it in her mouth.
The Starling’s hands come to the back of Ettie’s head, but fall away with a grunt of something like frustration when Ettie sits back again on her heels. “Costurere?” she calls.
“What are you,” says the Starling, but again, “Costurere,” and over on that wing chair, Costurere starts awake. “Put on some music,” says Ettie, “something soft, and bring yourself here. With Aigulha.”
Stirs and murmurs, shaking awake, a click. A chorus hushly croons, caramel lips like hers, and a syncopation shuffles through the basement, so I could kiss them, but all she ever do is hurt, as the two of them in crisp white underthings approach the blazing mirror and the two of them, sat upon the folding chair, knelt before it. “I’d change my hair,” says Ettie. “Color it black. And not so straight – not curls, no, something loosely full. However long you’d like. And, Aigulha? Something minimal, avant-garde – black leather. Straps. Buckles. I trust your eye. Don’t lose heart, dear Starling,” as with an “Of course, miss” Costurere steps up behind her, and a “Right away, my lady” Aigulha steps out of the light of the mirror, where racks of clothes-stuff crowd the shadows. “This won’t take long,” says Ettie, and she sighs, as Costurere runs gold-flecked fingers through already darkening hair, and lifts a silvery comb.
The Starling looks down at the erection in her lap. The sun keeps rolling in, that singing voice in the shadows, and the sea fog is great, and I smile, for a while.
Costurere steps back, and Ettie gets to her feet, shaking out a newly heavy helmet of black hair. Aigulha reaches under Ettie’s arms to buckle a wide black leather belt about her torso, just beneath her breasts, cinching it tight, draping a yoke of braided data cables up over her sternum, about her neck, down the line of her back, plastic plugs of them twisted together a-dangle above the cleft of her buttocks. Costurere presses a finger to Ettie’s lips, restoring the cleanly wicked line of red, but Ettie catches her wrist to lick a crumb of gold from a fingertip, turns it about to kiss the rough callus beneath a nail. Her other hand takes hold of Aigulha’s, lifts for a kiss to the palm, and then, their hands still held in hers, Ettie turns her smile on the Starling, sat back in that folding chair, arm propped on the back of it, hair still yellow and severe, eyes yet blue and nose that nose, long lean legs crossed at the ankles, her softening cock a-droop. “Oh, ma crevette,” says Ettie. “We’ll have to do better than that.”
“You want me, doing you, to fuck you, doing her,” says the Starling, matter-of-factly.
“We’ve been over this,” says Ettie, “you’re doing my sister. You don’t have it in you to do me. Do try to keep up.” Turning to Costurere, “Go on, wake them,” and then, to Aigulha, “Gently.” Holding out a hand to the Starling as the two of them set out across the basement, toward the candlelit nest. “Well?” says Ettie. The music about has changed, someone’s chanting over kiltered thumps, sad eyes, bad guys, mouth full of white lies, and the Starling takes her hand.
Wraps and drapes, shawls, scarves, chiffons drawn aside, the two women asleep on the rugs and cushions, the Queen a-sprawl on her belly, one arm flung over a purple bolster, profuse black curls a fan over her shoulders, a pillow for Chrissie’s gleaming yellow head, curled on her side, an arm about the small of her majesty’s back. “Miss?” whispers Costurere, knelt over Chrissie. “Ma’am?” Aigulha, bent over the Queen.
“Not that gently,” says Ettie, plopping herself on the rugs beside Chrissie, gripping a shoulder, rolling her over, slithering yellow into her lap. “Hey,” she says, conversationally loud. “Doodle. Wake up.” Colorful cables a line down the curl of her back, she tugs Chrissie’s silvery camisole back into place. Chrissie pulls her arms about herself, draws up her knees, gold-spangled lips a-twist in a grimace, “mmf,” and “what?” and blinking thickly, opening her eyes, to see Ettie smiling down. She closes them up again.
“Snug as a bug in a rug?” says Ettie.
“In a rug,” says Chrissie, faintly. “The nicest insect.” Frowning. Opening her eyes. “Your hair’s different.”
“I got you a present,” says Ettie, sitting up, out of the way, to reveal the Starling stood among the candles, one arm up, hand of it laid against shoulder, fingers coiled in locks of yellow severe, and something uncertain in guarded blue eyes.
“I,” says Chrissie, “what?” Looking over and up at Ettie, sleep-muzzled, confused, looking back to the Starling, who’s starting to smile, whose other hand there by her thigh, “oh,” says Chrissie, sitting up.
“Look at you, there,” Ettie, sat up close behind Chrissie, chin over her shoulder, “such a big, beautiful sister.” Those wicked lips so murmuring close. “Think of what you could do to yourself, ma moitié.”
“Do you want this?” says the Starling, hoarsely.
“Do you?” whispers Ettie, and only a wincing frown at the interruption. Chrissie’s already shifting her hips on the rug, laying her weight back against Ettie who spreads her legs to make room, awkwardly propped on an elbow till Costurere kneeling a cushion slips beneath, tugging and tucking, stroking, soothing an arm, a shoulder, hair yellow, black, Ettie scowls, snaps “Go on,” shrugging from under that solicitous hand. The music’s changed again, a thumping, more insistent beat, my face is drawn, someone’s sing-songing, my face is drawn with this num-ber to pen-cil. Off to the side a murmur, a rustle as the Queen sits up by Aigulha, the lickerish wick of a kiss, a sigh as Costurere scoots back, but Ettie’s settled against the cushion, Chrissie’s kissing her hand, Ettie bends lightly to press a kiss to Chrissie’s forehead. The two of them look bluely up as one, as the Starling steps onto the rugs, sinks to her knees before them, cock wobbling, erect, those knees between Chrissie’s ankles, falling forward, hands to either side of Ettie’s hips. Swaying forward over their bellies, breasts brushing breasts, lifting to tilt a kiss for Ettie’s mouth. Smiling. Pushing back as Chrissie lifts herself, and kiss and kissing again.
Ettie slumps back, and the look on her up-tipped face, a grunt like a laugh as they start to move atop her, and in her hand clutched tight is Chrissie’s hand, so very like her own, the nails cut close and glossy red, even as Chrissie’s legs twine about the Starling’s legs so very like her own, long and palely lean, like Ettie’s enwrapping them both. Ettie lifts her head back up by Chrissie’s bobbing eyes closed Starling intent the two of them on the thing they’re building, and all that slippery glassy gleaming yellow hair. Looking over, then, to the Queen close by, laid on her side on the rugs, an arm about Aigulha before her, a hand in Aigulha’s lap, and Costurere knelt behind, the three of them watching intent on what’s happening before them. “Like, what you, see?” says Ettie, between gasps, but softly, too quiet for anyone else to hear, or even notice.
•
He laughs, a joyous yawp that startles her awake in the pastel sheets, “The fuck?” she rasps, blinking owlishly.
“Oh, sweetling,” he says, “don’t take it amiss,” laid his full length atop the sheets. “Merely the wonder of it overwhelms, at times. The living, as I’ve done, from the one end of the world, to the other.” A hand still on the wiry black that mats his sun-ruddied breast. Shoulders red as well, quite red, and peeling here and there in lacy flakes among the shortly coiled hairs that riddle them. “As I’m doing,” he says, absently scratching. Hips and legs untouched by sun, cleanly pale beneath more matting black, lank down the shins of him to his ankles, thinned about wide knees, thickening up his thighs in wiry whorls that converge on the tangled copse of his groin, an extravagant nest for the quiescent nubbin of his cock. “It will let itself out, from time to time.” Smiling at her, and she leans down quickly to plant a kiss, there below his thick mustache. “Well, I’m glad you made it,” she says, shoveling locks of black hair out of the way, over a shoulder, looking up, frowning, at the thin light seeping through dust-shrouded glass. “The hell time is it,” she mutters, leaning out over the edge of the mattress to fish through discarded clothing. He rolls on his side after her, playfully slaps a jiggling buttock, “Hey,” she growls, thumbing a rosy plaque of a phone to life. “Shit,” she says. “I bet the sun ain’t even up yet.” Dropping the phone to the tangle of T-shirt and hoodie and tights, she rolls onto her back there beside him. “But here I am. Awake.”
“If it’s time you’d look to pass,” he says, fingers trailed between her breasts. She pointedly lifts his hand away. “There’s shit to do,” she says, looking down the length of him, then back to his ribald smile. “Besides, you’re not up for anything.”
“But the work of a minute, and I’d be up for anything at all, with you,” he says.
“It is entirely too early for anything that corny,” she says, but he kisses her, and kisses her again, with a gentle fondness, and she shakes her head, trying not to smile, “Tickles,” she says, lifting a hand to his face, but not to push him away. She strokes that thick mustache, black of it hatched with white.
“It’s Sunday, less I’ve scrambled the weekly round,” he says. “A day of rest, for all of us under the sun.” A relishing smile, there below his mustache, her fingertips. “If you would not lie with me, then perhaps just lie, with me?”
She snorts up a giggle. “You’re awfully proud of that one, aren’t you.”
“It’s this blasted ebullience!” throwing up a gesture, hand dropping to her thigh with a slap. “I’m giddy with the wonder of it. And the joy.”
“Is that what it is,” she says, warmly skeptical.
“The wonder,” he says, “and the joy.”
“That’s nice.”
“You like it?”
“Yes, I, not that, wait, wait, too much. Just there. Like that. Like that.” Lifting her chin as he dips for a kiss. There’s a knock at the door.
He looks up, back over his shoulder, at the second knock. “Gloria?” calls someone through the door.
“Day of rest,” she mutters, and then, “Who is it?” she calls.
“Ah, Melissa?”
He cocks a brow. She’s shaking her head. “What’s up,” she calls.
The doorknob turns, the latch clacks, “Shit!” yelps Gloria, kicking her way under the sheets as he sits back against the pillows, arms folded, ankles crossed, watching bemused as the door’s swung open, a woman peering around the edge of it thick lenses freezing in the act of taking a step into the room, “Oh, I’m sorry,” she’s saying, as “Close the goddamn door!” shouts Gloria. “Jesus!” The door jerks shut.
A moment then, Gloria clutching the sheets about herself, Big Jim stretched the length of him nude atop all those pastels, and silence out in the hall. Then Jim starts to laugh, a gust stopped up behind the fist he lifts to his tight-shut lips, leaking in wheezing gasps. Gloria shoves him and the laughter bursts out, a blowsy guffaw.
“Sorry?” says Melissa, out in the hall. “Really. Sorry.”
“It’s not even six,” calls Gloria.
“I know, I, I couldn’t sleep. I heard voices?”
Jim’s eyes squeezed shut, shoulders shaking, he’s only partially successful in not making much noise at all. “And?” snaps Gloria.
“Uh, Anna told me? Once, she said. You sometimes had. Bacon?”