'I have not, Mama'. 'Do it soon, my love. Many are the preparations that we have to make. September is a good month, is it not?' 'Yes, Mama'. I was close to tears, although she knew it not. The long night on the bed upstairs seemed long gone then. I wanted once again a tongue between my thighs. Upon retiring, Papa met me on the stairs and escorted me along the corridor. 'It is September, then', he said-had clearly listened, or Mama had told him so. 'September, yes'. The sad song of the year. Dying of leaves and winds that wait on the horizon's rim. A dolefulness was on me and I wished again to cry. My room received me as rooms do receive-the furniture that waits to speak and yet cannot, most stolid of all servants that one knows. Wanting to throw myself upon the carpet, plead with it to bear my footsteps still, and ever on. He closed my door and leaned against it. Eveline would lean to hers and hear me if I did not whisper in the night. 'When you kiss, Emily, keep your lips apart'.
Mama said legs, had said to Jane so, but I said it only in my head and kept a deep, soft blankness in my eyes.
'Yes, Papa'. 'If I show you-were to show'. The room was frozen, and the furniture was blind. 'I… I will keep my lips apart, Papa. A little, just a little, yes'. 'Yes… ah… Goodnight, then, Emily, goodnight.' 'Goodnight, Papa.' My drawers off, playing with myself, when he had gone, had gone. I heard-I thought I heard-a cry, faint cry, from Jane's room and a squeaking, bumping of her bed. And then I slept, I slept, I slept.
CHAPTER 4
I was to be given away much as is a piece of furniture that has known its better days in other houses, other rooms- to be transported to another territory, put to crochet work, tea parties and receptions, put upon display. 'It is true, my pet, but do not cut your arguments with a blunt knife', Mama said when I uttered up my thoughts to her. 'She who swims with the current, Emily, can often find a better shore, a secret cove or two, a mite of sunlight others have not glimpsed. Be thus and thus as is a sapling under snow. The snow melts and it springs upright again, no worse for the weight and cold opinions of the burden that it bore. When you are being naughty, though, indulge yourself with all discretion and with quietness such as will not disturb those whom you do not wish to know of it'. 'You must have a stable, then', said Jane, and laughed.
She had rolled her bottom several times in ours-had come flush-faced and told me almost all. 'You may both be tested still. Make not a mockery of it', Mama said, and then-regarding me carefully and with such a look as bids one not to respond directly to what is said-she added, 'You, Emily, are our first to wed. There will be jollities-be sure of that'. 'Yes, Mama', I said, while Jane clapped her hands and remarked, 'Oh, you will be sportif, then?' 'Shush', Mama said, 'she may be as she will. Modesties may have to be abandoned on the day; I see no help for it'. 'It means our drawers may droop', said Jane afterwards to me. I gazed at her askance. 'You know well what I mean', she added, and gave me a tender and appraisive look.
'No, I do not', I answered, for her clever ways had cause to irritate me sometimes, but at that she raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. 'The droit de seigneur? You have not heard of it? He who chooses to be your Master on or just before your wedding day has the first rights to you. Your husband cannot say him nay'. 'Oh, I do not believe that, Jane', I said with pettishness, but as the days and weeks went by I had a sense of an encumbrance on my being, a sense of waiting; eyes appraised me as they never had before. My legs, I felt, were seen beneath my skirt, and the protuberance of my breasts, my bottom, measured, just as I was measured for a wedding gown.
Beneath its frills, its taffeta and lace, I was to wear a waist corset and a camisole of silk. Drawers were not mentioned. 'As to drawers, Mama', I said, but before I could complete the sentence, she had interrupted me. 'On such a day you do not cover up too much, my love. The reception will be private, after all. There are tastings to be considered. Be obedient and you may yet surpass us all. The men must have their merriments- the ladies, too', came her reply. And I, seeking in my sudden maze of thoughts no explanations from her, turned to my cousin, Julie, who had come to stay with us. 'Tastings?
What did she mean?', I asked. Julie was of my own age, height and figure, svelte of hips. She often had a sly look in her eyes. We lay abed, our nightgowns rucked up to our thighs. 'Oh, Emily, you do not know? I was tasted on my eighteenth birthday; sometimes it is done. You must display your pussy first-not look too shy nor look too eager. Tasting only means the lightest touch, above, below, and yet it makes one quiver so. I knew not where to put my eyes, holding my skirts up as I did, was bid to. First, the gentlemen all touched my bottom, then my cunnylips, oh lightly, lightly, but it tickled so. The ladies bent and passed their tongues up inbetween my thighs. I felt the flickering of wet tips there and jerked my bottom, but was smacked and told to stand, to stand upright, knees straight and legs apart.
Then I was taught to kiss. Have you been taught?' 'A little, yes'. I blushed within the dark. 'Touchings of tongues, your lips apart, and titties, bottom, felt? I felt my knees weaken. Full a dozen tongues came in my mouth. Each cupped my thing- my cunny, quim. I, swoony, swaying, clipped my thighs, but they were slapped apart again.
It does not matter who it is who kisses you or feels your fur, soothes fingers underneath your belly or explores your bottom's curves. Some ladies, licking me, said I was creamy there'. 'Oh, Julie, are you?' Head swirling with her wicked words, I upped her nightgown and exposed her curls, she wriggling, giggling, lying back, extending her warm thighs apart. Her thatch was dark and wondrous, and the lips beneath were tinged with pink and moist as a cut peach. 'Don't do it-no, you mustn't, Emily…' But even as she spoke she pressed my head down, down, lips slipping on the soft, silk skin, whorl of her belly button and a musky scent, aroma of the female who is coming up on heat. 'Goo-goo!', she choked, for I had found her curls beneath my mouth and then-with tracing tongue-her spot, whimper of acorn flesh that quivered, rose, and like a tiny penis came erect. Shifting I shifted, wriggling further down, toes snarling in the wrinkled sheet until my face came up between her thighs. 'Taste me!', she moaned and pressed her bottom down bringing my nose up just above her mount, inviting me to search her with my tongue. Her cunnylips were puffy, pouting out. I toiled my tongue between the shell-like folds and found again her waiting clitoris, bringing a squeal of joy from her.
'Like this?' My voice came hollow from the deep, dark deep, between the ruffled sheets. Her heels dug in, her bottom jerked.
'Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes', she moaned, slip-slobbery my mouth against her quim, the salt of her, the musky-warm aroma of our kind, gliding my palms beneath her roguish bottom cheeks to hold their wriggling still while I licked on. Words burst inside my head like starshells, but I could not speak. I heard her grimace her pleasure to the dark, dark of my darkling room, and then she spilled, salt-savour of her seepings on my tongue that rapidly was coated with her cream.
'Oh, Emily! Oh yes, oh yes! Again!' I wanted all, though, all, and worked my body up, my nightgown wreathing up above my breasts and found hers bare and brought them tip to tip, brush of my muff to hers-brush- tingling of our swollen titties then. She poised them, made them roll together, tip to tip, raising her legs criss- crossed around my waist. Dance of our hips and spillings from our cunnies and our tongues, we threshing, incoherent, mouth to mouth. And in…
And in the quiet that followed, in the quiet, came such caressings as can make the lustiest of males seem bores at times-which is to say, when they have threaded one and lie cock-limp, oftimes begin to snore, the globbings from their reservoirs all done. In Sapphic pleasures all is otherwise. 'Tis delicate, long-laboured often, and is sweet. One lies in pure contentment, arms relaxed, thighs sprawled apart and fingers intertwined with murmurations of a fond desire which has a selflessness most males eschew, or know not how to bring to it.
'Tasting is nice', said Julie, and I said 'Yes', -said 'Yes', I said, in some naivete as we both were. I had longed learned to kiss-I knew it then-but with a male it was an otherness. Yet even so the creeping vines of warm desire were intertwining in my veins. Julie's head drooped on my shoulder and she slept while I meandered in the rose arbours of my thoughts. There were dreams to be had here; I, and that old lady of the past, had both been right. 'What happened afterwards-after your tastings?', I wished to ask of Julie, but her breath was soundless in her slumbering, or seemingly she slept, but as a gentle knock came on my door and I heard the slightly squeaking handle turn, I lay back with my eyes closed while at the same time I felt my cousin stir. The door opened, creaked, and then was stilled.
Footfalls upon the carpet, and I turned my back, presenting shoulders only to the visitor. Papa! I knew it by his breathing then.
