#...sloooooowly...

[circular-time]

okay so this was more like a 40 minute doodle

nyssa of traken

[zephhhhh]

simple ref of the chilb

[gay-for-the-snz]

Beneath the Bed (F, dust, SWH)

Hello! I am slowly going through and pulling together some of my old WIPs to finish them and get them posted, and this is one of them! SWH, dust, set in FL setting. 4k

⁂

"You look radiant tonight, Ms. Penbrook."

She laughs, flashing the young Lord a lascivious smile. "I know." His eyes widen in surprise, taken aback by her forwardness, but he clearly doesn't mind, instead pulling her a tad closer as they twirl.

She knows that all eyes are on them, and how could they not be? How could anyone look away from the most handsome couple on the dance floor? Every lady in attendance is seething with envy, knowing that she has been able to secure him a position on her dance card.

He is the most eligible man here, and every mother in London has been attempting to see her daughters introduced to him all evening. Brothers, cousins, sponsors of all stripes have been making introductions, and yet here she is. A woman with no title, no land; she has nothing but a reputation that far precedes her, and one that should be keeping him at a distance to protect his own.

And yet...

Here he is in her arms, holding onto her as they waltz, faces dangerously close to one another's.

She drops her voice to low, sultry tones, just loud enough for him to hear and no one else. "You must have a place on every dance card in this room; your whole evening filled with eligible young socialites. Will you try to find another space for me tonight?"

"I would take my place off of every card, if only you asked me to."

"I dare say our host would be none too pleased by this."

"What care I for the whims of my host when I could have you in my arms for a whole evening?"

"Surely you'll care when you're not invited back to any further parties?"

He leans close, their lips not quite touching but warm breath on one another's skin. "I could care about nothing beyond you."

"Perhaps we should find somewhere to speak privately, then, to discuss our plan for the evening."

Her meaning is hidden under only the thinnest of veils, but it's enough to satisfy his need for a pretense. Why Society types always bother with it, she isn't certain--after all, anyone with eyes that see is well aware of what is going to happen when they disappear, even separately--but the requirement of a pretense is always there.

The song ends, and she lets her hand linger on his arm just a bit longer than she needs to, before she slips off the dance floor and to the fringes of the room. She sweeps off to the side, leaving the sounds of the party behind her as she begins to explore the halls.

Servants don't stop her--a few well placed bribes this morning ensure that. She knows the layout of the house well enough, having both cased and taken this manor before, and she makes haste directly to a room she knows should have what she's come for. Not jewelry, nor artwork, nor a safe; her target is something much less well guarded, and much more valuable to her client.

Ledgers.

Someone, it seems, is not forthcoming and honest with their finances for their business, and she has offered a tidy sum to come collect the evidence. All she has to do is--

"Ms. Penbrook." He's breathless as he pushes her against the wall, his hands on her waist. "I've made my excuses, we have a few moments before someone begins wondering where I've gotten off to."

This is highly inconvenient. She can't exactly rob their host while she has company, especially one so influential--and unknown--as this one. It wouldn't do to be sent back to New Newgate over someone's financial paperwork.

She leans her head to the side just slightly, fighting not to try and extract herself from his grip. She has more lucrative things she could be doing than being held by a man who feels as if she's the first woman he's ever touched. "Your Lordship..."

"Please--accept my apologies for being so forward." He lets her go, reluctantly, but his hands hover beside her like the ghost of a lover's embrace. "I know a room where we can be alone."

"Are you certain? I wouldn't want either of us to be seen..."

"Of course. Our families have been friendly since before the Fall, I know this estate as intimately as I know my own body. Come, we'll be afforded enough privacy to know eachother the same."

He's a bit suave, she'll give him that. "Lead the way, sir."

They wind down the hallways, her trailing him like a shadow close on his heels, and she can't help but glance back at the door to the study as they pass it. There's no way she can request they go into there--if he knows she knows which room it is, it will seem suspicious, and if she doesn't know what room it is, then he'll simply reject the suggestion in favor of somewhere more practical.

He suddenly cuts left, through a doorway into a room that looks like it's seen little use in this last century. Cloths hang over the furniture, veiling them all from view like funeral shrouds, but he whips one off with a dramatic gesture to reveal the bed beneath it.

The bedposts are ornately carved, real wooden pieces that must have cost a fortune when it was first purchased. Now it stands disused, cast in the faint glow of a single candle and the thin, gauzy light of the false stars through a crack in the curtains.

He takes her hands and leads her to the bed with some trepidation, gently seating her on the edge of the mattress. "Ms. Penbrook--"

"Call me by my name if you intend to know me. I won't tolerate being held at arm's length when you're holding me."

"Florence..."

She lets him draw close to her, burying his face into the crook of her neck to inhale the scent of her perfume between hot kisses. "Your Lordship--"

"Frederick. Call me Frederick."

"Frederick," she puts her hands on him, pushing him back ever so slightly. "Are you certain we'll have privacy here?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely. There are few servants that will be anywhere except focused on guests and serving the party, and this is a wing that rarely sees any guests. No one will be here, unless they're here to try and find the same bit of privacy as us." As if that was the only question of the evening, he grips a hand beneath one of her thighs to lean her back against the bedding, and begins hastily undoing his belt and trousers. "You look radiant tonight."

"So you've said." He looks at her with such adoration and lust it's almost amusing, were it not interfering with her ability to do her job. She came here with one purpose, and one purpose only. There are still ledgers waiting for the embrace of silk gloves and Parabola-linen pockets, to be passed along to one of Baseborn's solicitors.

But she's occupied, now, with Frederick sliding up her skirts to make use of her as if she was no more than an object for his pleasure

"Florence, I--" He trails off, brows knotted together in an expression that's caught between irritation and confusion. She almost asks what's the matter, before he answers the unspoken question by turning sharply away from her. "aDSH'ue!"

He openly sprays the exposed skin of her shoulders, and the bedding beside her. He sniffs sharply, shakes his head like a dog, before he recovers with another liquidy sniffle.

"Bless you."

"Thank you." He makes some vague gesture towards the room at large, as if this will elucidate matters on its own, before he clarifies slightly further. "Dust."

Ah. Yes, well, that would do it. He sniffs again, and she can catch the faint sheen of moisture that glistens in what little light they have to see one another by.

He rolls back from the crouched position over her to rest back on his knees, ass settled on his heels as he peels his gloves off to scrub at his nose. She's struck, briefly, by how this is exceptionally at odds with the upbringing of a lord. For a man so wholly polite in the public eye, and so wholly boorish in private.

She can see snatches of his expression as it wavers, the way his lip pulls back from his teeth in an irritated snarl. His breath catches in his throat, the anticipation arresting him into a rigid facsimile of the man who'd just been intending to ravish her. He barely turns away again, openly spraying her shoulder and the blankets. "adDSH'ue!"

"Bless--"

"Hah-! aADDZzhue!"

"Ugh, do I need to call on Stone's preservation for you?" She grabs the edge of the blanket to wipe away the spray from her skin with a grimace.

"That won't be necessary." He sniffles, digging a handkerchief out of his pocket and blowing his nose into it with a distinctly wet sound. "I don't think I'll be needing the queen's blessing over a bit of dust."

Perhaps it's the sheer quantity, or perhaps because he's calling such attention to it, but she can feel the prickle of irritation in the back of her own nose as well. Something uncomfortable, but just enough to make her aware of it. She wrinkles her nose against the feeling, and gives a sharp sniff.

"Where were we...?"

He undoes the pretty little buttons on her garters, sliding them down so that he can run his fingers over her bare thigh. She grimaces, glad for the shadows that hide her expression from view. Perhaps, if she's lucky, this will be a quick endeavor and she can carry on with her evening without any further interruptions.

She can smell his cologne more fully from this close distance as he nibbles at her throat. It's some spicy, peppery thing, she thinks. She knows ladies who would be able to tell her everything in it, every note and layer within it, but all she can tell from it is that it's one that she's never smelled on someone before--a rare feat by now, she supposes, a decade into this profession.

It isn't displeasing, by any means, but something about it makes the prickling irritation a bit more insistent. Perhaps it wouldn't be bothersome, were she not already paying such attention to the feeling, or were the air not so thick with dust from cumbrous movements to keep the noise to a minimum.

She puts a hand on his chest unceremoniously, pushing him away from her.

"What are--"

"Be quiet. Did you hear that?"

"Nothing but your heartbeat, my dear--"

"Hold your flattery for someone who's interested in hearing. Listen."

The distant music is audible, the party still very much going on, but something else accompanies it: laughter. It drifts closer to where they're cloistered, and the dread sinks into them both at the same time. His reputation means nothing to her--should they be caught together, he will be seen in a much worse light, but she will remain more or less same, save for a trip to the Tomb-Colonies.

However.

If they are caught, she will be tossed into the street on her ear. If she is tossed onto the street on her ear, she will never retrieve the documents she's been sent to collect. If she fails to retrieve the documents, she will not be paid, much less see the benefit of a continued business relationship.

This cannot be. She licks her fingers and pinches the candle to snuff it, before pushing him off of her and hurriedly rearranging the sheet that had once hid everything from view. "What are you waiting for, the sheets to begin to lift themselves? Get off the floor and help me hang this."

"What do you intend to do, tell them we were simply taking a promenade and ended up in here?"

"I don't intend to speak with them at all. Hang the sheet and get under the bed."

"You can't be serious?"

"By all means, if you're privy to a better plan, I invite you to share it with me!"

He's incensed, clearly, at being ordered about by some woman off the street, but he does as commanded, if only because he lacks any suggestion that would be more prudent than this one. "You owe me an apology once this business is over. We will be finishing what we'd begun."

She laughs, a harsh, bitter sound, but once he gets the sheets into some semblance of an order, she rolls beneath the bed like some kind of wretched beetle, dragging the candle underneath it with her and scooting far enough underneath for him to join her. It's cramped, but thankfully the bed is large and lavish enough to afford enough room for two, even if the size was meant to accommodate them above rather than below.

The door opens just as they've crawled into position, no time to readjust from the ungainly, cramped position they've been forced into. She can feel his warm breath on her exposed chest, his face so close he's nearly touching her clavicle with his nose. Were this a less perilous situation, or there any light to see by, she's certain he would appreciate the positioning more thoroughly.

Light floods the room from a pair of candles, the whole room awash in a green glow from their flames. "Are we alone?"

"I'm certain of it, darling. Not a soul will find us here. No one visits this part of the house, and there's a party to be enjoyed; who would come looking for us here?"

She recognizes one voice as the daughter of their host, her dancing shoes shining in the flickering flames. The other voice, she hasn't the faintest. Her voice is too low from fear to be able to be picked out from the crowd in her memory--perhaps the newest baroness? That parvenu she's heard so much about recently? A young lady lucky enough to have lied her way into here without an invitation of her own, sponsored by someone else?

It matters little. With a flourish, the sheets are pulled from the bed, the frame creaking softly as they mount it--and, presumably, one another. With any luck, they'll be eager enough to enjoy one another's company that they don't take long to have exhausted themselves. Until then, they'll simply have to wait.

Several minutes pass in this manner, the ladies giggling and shushing one another, murmured exchanges too low for her to make out what's being said, when he shifts slightly against her. She can feel the rhythm of his breathing change, almost imperceptibly at first, then more urgently.

He nuzzles his nose against her skin, the tip of it warm, and unable to sniffle, he leaves a trail of wetness behind him where he rubs against her. Oh, gods. She has little difficulty in keeping quiet--it's the one time she considers it a blessing that her sneezes often evade her, and even when they come, they're soft, dainty things. He, however, made it clear earlier that he has no such talents or inclinations.

She puts a hand to the back of his head, unable to free the other one from its current position pinned against the wall, and pulls him tightly against her. His breath is quieted and constrained by his newfound position, and the pair of sneezes are squelched into near silence, nothing but a muffled explosion of moisture directly against her collarbones.

They're hardly satisfying, she's sure, but it's enough for now.

Unfortunately, the attention seems to have made her own nose jealous. She's aware of just how strong his cologne is now, with not even the space between their bodies to slip a sheet of paper. She wrinkles her nose hard against the feeling, but it's in vain, and she knows it. She can't afford the sound of a sniffle, so she's forced to just lay there while her nose drips.

Above them, there are stifled moans and whimpers, but one or both of them seems to lack any real experience in pleasing another lady; they're too irregular and short lived to time anything by, leaving the pair above just as unsatisfied as the pair below.

Frederick dares to shift slightly, and the action does little to ease his discomfort, but much to her chagrin, she finds it serves to align his boyishly tousled curls perfectly to gently rest beneath a freckled nose, the tips brushing daintily against her with every shift and every fluttering breath.

She doesn't dare release her grip on him--if she does, she's left with no doubt that he'll give them both away--but that also means she's left with no hand with which to scrub away the ticklish intrusion. She cranes her neck, but it isn't quite enough to get away from their touch, so she steels her resolve to force it from her mind as best as she's able.

She's distracted by the soreness in her shoulder, protesting at the strange angle she's been laying in; by the swelling of the music off in the distance, announcing that they've come to the more exciting portion of their dancing; by the conversation above them that's died out and given way to nothing but the sounds of pleasure, stilted as they are.

A candle is knocked off the edge of the headboard, landing on the candle with a streak of light before extinguishing on impact. It startles her so badly that they both jump, the noise of it covered by the pair of gasps from the suddenly disengaged ladies. The shadows seep further into the room, illuminated now by nothing but the lone, guttering candle on the opposite corner.

"Did it burn the carpet?"

"I don't think so."

"We'll have to scrape the wax from the carpet?"

"Leave that to someone else. A careless servant before this wing was shuttered for the summer from the lack of guests."

They don't seem entirely convinced that this is the correct decision, but whatever reservations they may have, they don't allow it to delay them long. They resume their previous actions, and she begs them to be satisfied and make their exit in short order.

She can do nothing to soothe the itch that's now sunk its claws deeply into her, crawling its way along through her sinuses. She takes a shaky breath through clenched teeth, unwilling to risk the disgusting, wet, obvious sounds of her sniffling if she does so through her nose.

Frederick seems to be faring no better against her, and she feels him jolt with another handful of sneezes that are growing less restrained this round compared to the last. She squeezes him, not for any reassurance, but rather as a command, a reminder that they must not be caught. If they escape this unscathed, she is ensuring she is never coming back to this manor again for a party.

She capitulates herself, though; one breathless "-chu!" that does nothing to scratch the itch, but soft enough to be covered by the moans and whimpers above her. Frederick pinches her admonishingly, and she digs her nails into his skin at his reproach. They can't make eye contact from the way they're entwined, but she can feel the grimace on his face, and trusts he can sense the glower on her own.

It feels like eons, the rise and fall of empires, the coming and going of the Sixth and Seventh Cities, but they finally exhaust one another enough to be satisfied--or to consider that their presence will be missed. One remarks to the other, through pants, that they'd already filled their dance cards for the evening; gentlemen will be none too pleased to miss their dances, especially if they don't return in some semblance of order to avoid being discovered for their deeds.

They gather themselves, taking a moment to check and assure one another that they look divine, truly, not a hair out of place, nor a button undone, nor a pleat ruffled, and usher themselves out of the room with an unceremonious return to the party they'd so rudely abandoned.

They'd scarcely closed the door before the two of them peel themselves apart from one another, crawling from beneath the bed and stretching aching limbs just enough to free themselves from their previous tomb. He's the first to double over, the sound of his sneezing harsh and productive in the otherwise quiet room, barely muffled behind an ungloved hand.

She ignores him, far too focused on her own nose's demands. She takes a desperate breath, and immediately snaps down with a handful of them. "Hh'chu! 'schuE! 'gsCHUE!"

She's still on the carpet on hands and knees like an animal, and awkwardly sits back to rest her ass on her heels while she rides out the duration of the fit. He outdoes her in volume by far, as does the ferocity of the fit, but she fills the gaps between him, muffled into a handkerchief that isn't hers.

The corner bears an elegantly embroidered monogram and someone's coat of arms for their family history--she doesn't remember who, nor does she care. Some up and coming young Lord or son of a Duke, or a parvenu who claimed to be when trying to impress her with tales of his lineage and all he could provide to her.

By the time it peters out to something that allows them both to catch their breath, she knows the tears are ruining the careful layer of make-up she'd applied before this evening. Not enough to be obtrusive and draw the ire of Society, but enough to add that touch of allure that attracts all eyes to her.

Frederick has a sheen of sweat on his brow when he strikes the match and lights his candle between them. It illuminates him like a particularly hay-fevered cameo. "Well."

She scowls as she scrubs at her nose, now certainly thoroughly pink from the attention, through the damp fabric. "Well."

"We seem to have found ourselves upstaged by our companions, haven't we?"

"Do not suggest it."

"What? It would be a shame not to finish what we'd started, especially when it seems they were unable to. Disappoint a room twice in one night? Perish the thought."

"You're a boor."

"You're a dollymop."

"I am anything but an amateur." She blows her nose, the sound of it wet and congested. "We've been gone too long, the two of us together. People will start to talk, and while I am no stranger to scandal, you have much to lose."

"Perhaps you're worth losing it for."

They've leaned so close to one another, now, that they're nearly nose to pink nose. "Once you've lost it, you'll have lost my interest as well."

He stares at her in tense silence for a few, pregnant seconds, before he pulls her into a hungry kiss, hands roving down her sides to hold her by the waist. "Incorrigible. You're incorrigible, my dear."

His nose is damp as it nuzzles against her breastbone again, kisses peppering her freckled skin. She pulls him back by his collar, pressing their foreheads against one another. "Apologies, Your Lordship, but our moment has passed. Perhaps next time, you'll find us seclusion that remains so."

"Why don't we finish what we've started now?"

"We're both a mess, and my dance card had few gaps on it before we left. They're going to miss me, and you'll have to answer for my suitors who you've robbed of their opportunities."

"Let them be cross with me. Let our host or your suitors demand an explanation, and I'll gladly give one to them."

She stands, hands reached down to pull him to his feet, and then releases him to handle himself. Her eyes sparkle as she looks over her shoulder at him, mouth curved into a wicked smile as she holds onto the jamb as she prepares to slip out. "Farewell, Frederick."

[norsenby]

I was in a shibari class recently where the instructor showed a neat trick for riggers who's smaller/lighter than their bottoms and uhh ò/////ó

[hey-hey-j]

but what if I made them hold hands in their ref sheet......

[hemaris]

i have an art insta now because i want a backup in case something happens to this webbed site and also because i love attention. so u can follow me there IF u want 🤸❤️

[theancientfootsteps]

7 months on T = gently reintroducing my voice to the concept of mixing like I'm trying to introduce a cat to a new food

[madeimpact]

Hey rq like this to stay mutuals?

[waitineedaname]

I need to bite Luo Binghe

[galionne-vibin]

They will not leave my brain somebody help

[springsung]

.... he's got a feeling he should come back another time. adults are being weird again.

[coleopterabyte]

If YOU know any good anthro bug games/media on itch.io or other platforms (popular ones notwithstanding), please let me know. Not only do I want more to play, but I'd love to boost smaller creators.

[incangencence]

ooc: I’m gonna do these last couple of kiss memes in my inbox, and then lurk… might toss one or two easier replies out, but my brain is just… sleepy mush.

[karu-sano]

Ibthink I would like to start a Tokyorev yume/oc server....

[fireboltsystem]

You ever FEEL your headmate in co-con fall asleep. Super sweet and calming ⌨️

[violant-apologia]

noman's doing alright, all things considered! we'll see how that holds