The library was silent, save for the scratching of Ines’s quill. She sat hunched over her desk, the lamp casting a warm circle of light on the cream-colored paper.
Outside, the night was dark and still, but inside Ines’s mind, and on the page before her, her creativity was threatening to spill over.
"Stefan...!" Doris moaned.
Ines wrote the words, her hand trembling slightly. She could hear the moan in her own head. It wasn’t Doris’s voice. It was her own. The low, helpless sound she had made in this very room, on this very desk.
Doris pulled her head back, giving him access to the large expanse of the skin of her neck.
Ines paused. She remembered the feeling of Carcel’s breath on her neck. The heat of his mouth. The way her head had fallen back, surrendering.
Doris should definitely do that.
As she looked at the lovely moon that was high on the sky from his tall window. Stefan muffled her moans with his kiss.
"Shhh!!! Do you want Mrs. May to see you in this position, Doris?" he whispered against her lips.
He nibbled at her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. His other hand gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles white with the effort of holding back.
"Do you want her to see what we do when everyone is asleep? You know how stern she is. Keep your voice low."
Ines dipped her quill. Mrs. May. The housekeeper. A fictional stand-in for the very real, very terrifying possibility of Edith, or worse, Rowan, walking in. The thrill of the danger, the forbidden nature of it—it was all pouring onto the page.
He kissed her neck, a hot, open-mouthed trail of fire. His other hand moved, unzipping the back of her maid’s uniform. He took one of her nipples into his mouth.
Ines’s breath hitched. She could feel it.
The sensation of Carcel’s mouth, the pull, the heat.
As he sucked and nipped at the bud, Doris was whimpering. She felt she was unraveling.
Stefan kissed her as though she would leave him at any moment. As though he were drowning, and she was air.
"Stay with me, Doris," he groaned. " Don’t threaten me with leaving again. Do you hear me?"
Doris nodded, unable to speak, still intoxicated by the feeling of his hands on her bare skin.
Stefan removed her uniform completely. It fell to the floor in a heap of black and white.
He cleared his desk with a sweep of his arm, sending papers flying. He lifted her, positioning Doris on the edge of the mahogany surface, her legs open for him.
"Do you know you are so beautiful, Doris?" he whispered, his eyes dark with hunger.
His hand traveled to her thighs, stroking the soft skin, before plunging them into her very wet center.
"I have always wanted you," he growled. "For myself alone."
Ines stopped writing.
Her quill froze in mid-air, a drop of ink threatening to fall.
"Do you know you’re beautiful?"
She heard it. She has heard those words before. Many times. In Carcel’s voice. The low, intimate rumble, right in her ear.
She closed her eyes. She remembered how his hands had roamed her body. How his lips had been on her neck, her breast. How he had looked at her, with that raw, desperate want.
The lamp flickered a little, the flame dancing in a draft. Ines opened her eyes and looked at her manuscript.
Gladys is coming tomorrow, she thought, a wave of panic washing over her. To collect this. And it’s not yet completed. I promised her and ladies are waiting on Mr Pendleton to release the new volume.
Before, she had been having trouble because of a lack of experience. She had been guessing. Stumbling in the dark.
But now...Now she has experience. And that has become a problem.
Now she couldn’t stop herself from wanting more, she admitted to the empty room. From having to do it with him every night. From wanting him to not just touch her, but to... to finish it.
She shook her head violently, trying to dislodge the image of Carcel’s dark eyes.
"Focus, Ines," she whispered fiercely. "Focus on Stefan. Focus on Doris."
She looked at the remaining empty space of her manuscript. She had to finish the scene. She had to give the readers, and Gladys, what they wanted.
She dipped the quill again.
"...Stefan. Please don’t stop," Doris begged.
Doris let out a sound that Stefan loved. A sound of pure, unadulterated need.
"Say it again, Doris," he ordered, his voice rough. "Say my name. Like how you did just now. Say it."
He growled against her throat.
Doris held his face, her hands framing his jaw. "Stefan," she whispered. "Please don’t stop."
Stefan crashed his lips against hers, swallowing her cry as his fingers increased their tempo. He moved inside her, a relentless, driving rhythm.
Doris moaned into his mouth as the spring inside her exploded.
Her hand, flailing blindly in her ecstasy, mistakenly hit his inkwell on the floor.
Clatter.
She shuddered, her body convulsing, holding Stefan tight.
Outside the door, footsteps approached.
Mrs. May was bringing a glass of milk to Stefan, since he would be working late.
Knock, knock.
"Your Grace," the housekeeper called through the heavy oak door. "Is everything all right? I heard a noise."
Doris and Stefan froze. They looked at each other, breathless, disheveled, and caught.
Ines dropped her quill. She sat back in her chair, exhaling a long, shaky breath.
A cliffhanger.
It was perfect. It was cruel. It was exactly what the genre demanded.
She smiled, a small, satisfied, writer’s smile.
"This," she whispered to the finished page, "will make the ladies beg for more. Gladys will love this."
She carefully arranged the pages, blowing gently on the wet ink. She felt... lighter. She had poured the heat, the confusion, the overwhelming physicality of her feelings for Carcel onto the page. She had turned her secret, scandalous reality into fiction.