But now, so close to this perfect moonlight slip of a girl, she felt like she was entirely made of those impractical bits of fluff, all woven together into something gossamer-fine and unspeakably dangerous.
One of Alice’s hands was fluttering in the general neighborhood of Molly’s elbow, as if it were lost and needed directions, so Molly took it and guided it to her breast. She wanted those clever hands all over her body, she wanted to taste every bit of that soft mouth.
“Oh, fff—” Molly groaned, biting back a curse as Alice’s hand cupped around her breast.
“Is that all right?”
No, it was not all right. Nothing was all right. It turned out that Molly had spent her entire life wanting this woman’s hand on her breast and hadn’t realized it until now. “Don’t stop,” she managed.
Featherlight touches through her shift were only going to drive her out of her mind, though. She broke the kiss long enough to sit back and pull her shift over her head. And then, oh, the look on Alice’s face, the wide-eyed wonderment and plain workaday lust. Molly thought she might burn from the heat of that gaze.
Alice was keeping her fingers tightly wrapped around the sheets, so Molly cupped her breasts in her own hands, as if she were weighing them, stroking her thumbs over the hard tips.
“I’ve imagined you doing that,” Alice whispered, her eyes wide.
She had? “You have?” Molly had known the effect her breasts had on Alice and often felt the girl’s gaze following her hotly around the room. But the idea that Alice imagined Molly touching herself wasn’t even something she dared to think of. “Tell me more.”
“I...” Alice shook her head.
“Show me, then. Show me what you did when you thought of me doing this.” She lightly twisted her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers.
“Oh...” Alice breathed, squirming under Molly. Her hands were fisted in the sheets, as if she were afraid that if she let go, her hands might do something unspeakable. “No. You show me. Let me watch.”
Molly had her hand between her legs on the next heartbeat. As if she had to be told twice. Slowly, making a bit of a show about it, she traced the seam of her sex. “Just like that, nice and easy.” Beneath her, Molly felt Alice try to buck her hips, straining for contact, breasts arching up. “The only trouble,” Molly said, “is that I haven’t enough hands to do the thing properly.”
And then Alice’s clever hands were on Molly’s breasts, stroking and teasing, squeezing and caressing, followed by her mouth, wet and hot and sweet. How had Molly ever thought her a shrinking violet, a meek and mild country mouse? Alice rose to every challenge; she met Molly more than halfway no matter what.
Molly felt her pleasure start to gather, to tighten into something that couldn’t be stopped. A few more strokes of her finger and she burst, collapsing onto Alice’s chest. She could feel the other woman’s heart beating frantically, could feel the rise and fall of her chest with each shallow breath. Molly kissed her soft, parted lips before moving lower, kissing a path down to the lace trim of Alice’s night rail.
Each one of Molly’s kisses kindled something dreadful in Alice, something that would surely have been better left undiscovered. These touches bore no resemblance to her own solitary pleasure, carried out on the rare instances she had a bedchamber to herself. Molly was stoking a flame Alice had previously thought a mere spark, something easily dismissed and ignored, but which was now going to burn the house down if she didn’t do something about it.
If she asked Molly to stop, she would. Alice knew that. The trouble was that she wanted Molly to keep doing that, keep pressing her lips to the curve of Alice’s neck, keep her hand threaded in Alice’s hair, keep doing those things and more. Not just this moment, not even just now, but on and on. It wasn’t a safe thing to want. But Alice did want it, and that was reason enough.
Alice moaned when Molly’s lips closed around her nipple through the thin linen chemise, fervently licking and sucking, and she seemed to be relishing every soft murmur she drew from Alice’s lips.
“Show me,” Molly said, lifting her head away from the now-wet linen. “Show me what you do when you think of me.” She rucked up the hem of Alice’s night rail, and when Alice felt the cool morning air between her legs, her brief wave of embarrassment was quickly displaced by the urgency of desire. Alice took the hem higher, until it was under her chin and she was fully exposed, on display, for Molly’s hot, seeking gaze. “Oh, God, look at you,” Molly said. She skimmed her hands down Alice’s sides, from ribs to waist to hips, as if Alice were a rare and precious thing.
With one hand still on her hip, Molly used the other hand to stroke between Alice’s legs. “Is this how you like it?” She brushed fingers across Alice’s tender skin, so lightly, nothing more than a whisper of a touch, skimming again and again over the place where all her want was concentrated.
Alice stifled a cry. That was most definitely not how she touched herself. She was more given to efficient, workmanlike self-pleasure, nothing like this torture.
“Or is it like this?” Now Molly’s fingers were parting her. Another flush of embarrassment, quickly dismissed as trivial. “Maybe like this?”
Now there was a finger inside her, which was a strange thing to contemplate. “That’s not how I do it,” Alice whispered. It had never seemed quite necessary—she could get the job done without that, after all.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” Alice whispered. “Please don’t stop.” She really didn’t know what would become of her if Molly stopped. Perhaps she’d crumble into a heap of ash. Perhaps she’d cry. Who knew? She hoped she didn’t find out.
Molly didn’t stop. Instead she did something magical with her hand, so that she was touching inside Alice and also stroking that sensitive place outside with those infuriatingly featherlight touches. And then—oh—she bent her head to Alice’s breast and drew a nipple into her mouth, this time without the linen between them.
Alice was dimly aware that she was arching her back, trying to press into Molly’s hand. She was vaguely conscious of the stream of whispered blasphemy that was pouring from her mouth. But compared to the twin sorcery of Molly’s hand and mouth, none of that signified.
Her climax felt wrenched out of her, terrible and miraculous all at once, wracking her body with an intensity one usually associated with disaster—carriage accidents and hurricanes.
“Molly,” she said. “Molly.”
“I’m here,” Molly said, holding her tight.
