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‘Barbara Fanshaw’ was a difficult name to carve into a candle. It had so many curves to it, and so many little ‘a’s. ‘Booby’ might’ve been worse, but at least it would have been shorter. She had already started though, heating a leatherworking needle from her glove repair kit over a flame and pressing it to the wax over and over, drawing out those many complicated curves that made up her name.
At least she was only using first and family. If she used the whole bally thing with all of the middle names and hereditary names and honorary titles and so forth, she’d probably run out of candle… even though it was rather a hefty thing.
A pillar candle, the vicar called it. The church pew was a marvelously meditative place, it was said, and Barbara found she got some of her very best ideas there. This one came from watching one of those young altar boys struggling to jam a thick candle onto its spiked holder. The boy was just slightly too short, and the holder too heavy to tip, but rather than ask one of his fellows for assistance, he chose to tough it out and get the candle on its shaft by main force. It resulted in a rather funny hopping sort of dance that badly distracted a fair number of the parishioners, drew them from their contemplation of the divine. Barbara’s contemplations were more in the vein of where she could procure candles like that. The vicar knew.
Just as Barbara carved out the final curve of a ‘w’, the parlourmaid entered with a slight curtsy.
“Lady Nicola Snowcock, ma’am,” the maid said, before departing and shutting the door behind her. The staff was on standing orders to always show Lady Snowcock in, but still announced her every time, to keep up appearances.
“Snookums!” Barbara exclaimed, coming around the desk. “Why must you go anywhere without me? Can there be any reason, really?”
“My brother’s wedding, Booby,” Nicola said, accepting the kisses Barbara pressed to her cheek.
“He could’ve married here,” Barbara countered. “I’d have put him up in the stables.”
“With the horses?”
“It was good enough for our lord Jesus,” Barbara sniped, “but not good enough for your brother and, oh what’s her name, your new sister-in-law?”
“Delphinia.”
“Christ, what a yoke.”
“She’s a duke’s daughter,” Nicola reminded her.
“And your brother only an earl. Well, well.” Barbara clasped Nicola’s hands, then started pulling the kid gloves from them. “And how was the ducal palace? Or castle, or whatever it was?”
“Castle,” Nicola confirmed. “Cold, mainly. Great big Elizabethan pile built from pink Cheshire stone, looking like someone forgot a birthday cake on the bank of the River Dee.”
“Well, I’ve just the thing to warm you up, my dear.” Barbara pulled Nicola close, squeezed her bottom with greedy fingers. Thank heaven the fashion for large bustles had gone. “Are you terribly travel-worn, darling girl? Shall I leave you to warm your cockles by the fire and stoke the flames of my desire by waiting?”
Nicola gave an unladylike snort.
“I haven’t got any cockles, silly thing.” Nicola returned the embrace. “If I had, I should think you’d have noticed.”
“Perhaps I’ll just check,” Barbara said, and steered Nicola toward the desk.
“It’s a good job you don’t keep a secretary,” Nicola said, hoisting herself up to sit on the surface. Papers rustled and crunched under her skirts. “I’d hate to disarrange her work.”
“It’s a good job you only wear these boots when you travel,” Barbara shot back from where she knelt on the carpet. “You know they put me quite beside myself.”
Shiny black boots with a strong arch, high heels, a row of jet buttons marching up to the knee and a strongly pointed toe drew Barbara’s hands and then her lips, kissing from the ankle up the calf on the left, and then from the top back down to the toe on the right. Any time Nicola wore those boots, Barbara would find herself watching the sharp toes peeking out from under her walking suit, thinking about the sultry curve of the heel, how they made Nicola’s thighs so shapely under her dress where nobody could even see them— it always drove Barbara wild. She’d quickly have to find some secluded corner in which to get her hand, or better yet her head, up Nicola’s skirts, make her come shuddering and stifling a shout into a handkerchief.
Nicola made an impatient noise as Barbara tongued the buttons, and then hooked those same ruthlessly stimulating boots over Barbara’s shoulders to pull her in, even as she hiked up her skirt and petticoats.
“Booby dear, I do believe you are allowing yourself to be distracted.”
Barbara let out a little laugh, and pushed her nose into the warm linen of Nicola’s combinations.
Let us see who is distracted, she thought, and breathed deeply of the damp cloth.
Nicola had been on a train for whoever knew how long, and if Barbara knew her Snookums, a good portion of her time alone in that private berth would have been spent reading and re-reading Barbara’s latest letter. Nicola wouldn’t touch herself then, but she’d sit, feeling her pulse rise, feeling her cunt getting wet. She’d blush prettily, and maybe ask a porter to open the windowglass for her, and she’d fan herself, but she wouldn’t touch. Barbara could smell the wanting, feel the heat radiating from her, the way the linen had soaked it up and gone soft and humid between her thighs. It took just a moment to part the cloth with her nose, to take that first lick from hole to head and groan into it.
“Ah!” Nicola’s fingers went into Barbara’s hair, sending pins loose. “Yes! Christ, I missed you!”
I’ll bet you did, Barbara thought, but did not say as she lapped hungrily, swallowing wetness, tracing her way up until Nicola began to truly shake. She circled the clit and licked under it and sucked it into her mouth and pushed two fingers into Nicola’s leaking hole. It would need to be at least four fingers, before she did what the letter promised.
“The cockles are meant to be in the heart, aren’t they?” Her fingers worked hard in the glove of Nicola’s body. “I shall have to touch to the heart of you, then.”
God, how she loved the sounds Nicola made, the high, unabashed moans as Barbara sucked her and fucked her all at once. She was delicious around Barbara’s fingers, and loose enough for three then, and her thighs (so thrilling in those boots) trembled at either side of Barbara’s head.
Barbara pulled her face away, and Nicola sagged against the desk with a heartfelt whine.
“Can’t have you coming yet, my dear little duck,” Barbara said, though her fingers never slowed their thrusting. “You did read my letter, didn’t you?”
“Only a thousand times,” Nicola replied, breathless. “Oh god, the things you wrote, the things you imagine—!” Her hands, shaking, fought to strip off her clothing, flung the pieces off heedless of where they landed. A wooden cup of pencils clattered noisily to the floor. Nicola’s blouse hit a potted palm and hung from it like a scene from a Haggard novel. When she was stripped down to her corset and combinations, her stockings and garters and those damned enticing boots, she lay, propped up on her elbows, knees spread, glasses slipping down her nose, and gave Barbara a look. “How do you come up with such depravities, Booby Bluestocking? Something in one of your books?”
“Actually this one came to me in church.”
“Ah, the good book.”
“You did leave me to my own devices while you went traipsing off after sororal obligation,” Barbara complained, adding a fourth finger. “Where else was I supposed to turn?”
Nicola didn’t answer, partially because it wasn’t necessary, and partially because she had the full flat of Barbara’s hand up her cunt, stretching her, making her scrabble fruitlessly at the desk top as Barbara stroked her deep inside. She was so smooth, and so wet, and Barbara leaned in, pushing her fingers in as deep as they could go, listening to the luscious sounds of it, to Nicola’s fitful gasps.
“I’m going to use every hole you’ve got,” Barbara said. “You can’t miss me quite so much if you feel me still inside you tomorrow, hm?”
“I can, I can!” Nicola protested. “I miss you even when you’re in me. I feel I want to fold you up inside me, swallow you whole and keep you. I want to be a locket to your whole self, my dove, my darling!”
Barbara chuckled, flicked Nicola’s clit a few times with her free thumb.
“Take your combinations off, and lie back,” she instructed. “I’ll just fetch our things.”
When she returned from the bedroom, Nicola had done as she asked, and lay naked but for her stockings and boots on the desk’s paper-strewn surface. She pushed her glasses up as Barbara drew near, pupils growing fat and glassy at the sight of the riding crop.
“I know you like a whipping, my little whippoorwill,” Barbara said, warm and indulgent. “Will you hold your legs open for it?”
Nicola did, putting the auburn curls between her thighs on merciless display. They were shiny with wetness, and as Nicola’s pussy spread open, the lips swollen with desire and friction, her hair turned to dark chestnut where Nicola dripped shamelessly under Barbara’s ravenous eyes. The crop sailed through the air, and hit right at the top of Nicola’s glistening slit. Nicola squealed, but did not shy away.
The next three hits pinked up the right thigh. The three after that peppered the left, and had Nicola sucking in sharp, pained gasps.
“You like that, sweet chick? Shall I give you some more?”
“Hgnn,” Nicola grunted. “Please, you know what I want.”
“You’d like me to give it to you here?” A strike higher on the left thigh, loud in the little room.
“No-oh-oh,” Nicola moaned, hips bucking up off the wood. The tangy scent of her arousal was thick in the air.
“Ah, I see. Here, then?” A slap lower down, nearer to the curve of Nicola’s arse. Nicola squeaked and twisted, but shook her head.
“Of course, pretty partridge,” Barbara said, trailing the leather loop over the reddened skin. “You shan’t be satisfied until I abuse you here,” the crop cracked against her clit, five hard hits in a row, “for nothing so excites this sobbing quim like having your button beaten.”
Over and over, Barbara brought the leather down on Nicola’s flushing cunt, until her face was as wet as her seat, tears streaming as she begged to be made to come in that way. Barbara knew she could, but shoved the crop up under Nicola’s bent knees instead and bade her keep it there, while she fetched a few pillows from the settle. These went under Nicola’s hips, and tilted her body so that both of her holes pointed up into the air.
With efficient motions, Barbara oiled a glass instrument the size and shape of a goose egg perched on a pedestal. It slipped into Nicola’s arse easily, for all that she’d been two weeks without it, and Nicola wailed, and twitched, and the clouded glass base quivered against her opening.
“I truly ought to have sent you off to Cheshire with this in your arse for companionship,” Barbara said. She rapped against the glass with a careless knuckle and made Nicola shudder and keen. “Might that have kept you warm in that drafty old castle?”
“Should I have— Christ, Barbara! — should I have curtsied to his grace the duke, with a plug in my arse? Sat at the front of the cathedral and watched the bishop bless my brother’s sacred union, wet to my knees thinking only of how you fuck me?”
“Well, now you mention it…” Barbara said, and then brought her hand down hard on Nicola’s puffy pussy. She fondled it roughly, dipped fingertips in just to hear Nicola panting. “Lovely girl. You’re the only one for me, you know. Shall we get married in a castle, too?”
“You do talk a lot of nonsense,” Nicola got out. Her body rolled into Barbara’s teasing touches, stomach quivering.
“Why not?” Barbara went on. “Nothing to stop us dressing in white, and this country is practically riddled with castles. If we do it in a ruin, people will simply think we’re a pair of ghosts.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Nicola said. Her voice was steadier as Barbara pulled her hands away and went to fetch the thick candle.
The church used white ones. This one was white at the center, with the outermost dips being red, almost vermillion, almost the exact color of sealing wax. Barbara’s name, carved down to the white, stood out bright against the red as she showed off her handiwork.
“I see you were serious,” Nicola commented. Her tone was light but her eyes were not, all the summer blue swallowed up by dark, needy pupils. They always seemed to suck in all the light in the room when she got like this, as if the force of her wanting was a physical thing that drew everything she saw toward her, captured them in an inexorable pull like the void at the center of a whirlpool. Barbara was dragged down, and pressed kisses to her upturned lips. She tasted of lemon cake. Her mouth opened, wordless, as Barbara began to push the pillar candle into her.
It was thick, and went in slowly, Nicola barely breathing as she was filled. With the glass plug in her arse, she was tight even with all the stretching, and tiny shocked noises fluttered in her throat as each inch worked in.
“Can you feel the carving?” Barbara asked, when her whole surname had disappeared into her lover’s cunt, and the final ‘a’ in Barbara began edging in. “Feel me inscribing my name inside your hot channel? I’m marking you mine, you know. When you clench down on that, it’ll stamp my name into your innermost parts, like a brand.” Her thumb traced the stretched flesh, felt the texture of her signature as it slid down deeper. Soon only the capital ‘B’ remained visible, and Nicola nodded mutely, eyes shining, lips wet and parted around ragged, shallow breaths. “Tell me,” Barbara said, and Nicola closed her eyes, tensed and relaxed, and the ‘B’ slipped in.
“I feel it,” she said. “It’s rough, where the rest is smooth. Felt it pushing into me, every letter, like I was eating your name with my cunt.”
“You were, my starling.” Barbara unfastened her own skirt and let it puddle with her petticoats on the floor. “Now, stay still a moment.”
She struck a match. The phosphorous caught, hissed, and a flame jumped to life.
“My love, you look so pretty by candlelight,” Barbara said with feeling, and then she touched the burning match to the candle’s wick, and let the flame lick the wax until it ran.
“Oh!”
The first rivulet of wax flowed down, met Nicola’s straining flesh, and more followed it as she twitched. It was paraffin wax, less hot than tallow or beeswax, and shouldn’t cause lasting damage, but Nicola would surely be tender afterward, her pussy pink and raw.
Barbara massaged the glass plug, providing a counterpoint of stimulation, and found that any time she moved the plug, the candle tilted, pushed through the thin membrane inside Nicola’s body. She grinned, and angled the plug so the wax spilled more freely, a splatter of red and white against Nicola’s spanked clit.
Nicola choked on a gasp, hands gripping her hair, her collarbones, her small, peaked breasts. She pinched her own flesh, pulled her nipples harshly, teeth flashing behind her kiss-swollen lips as she rode through the pain, heightened it, luxuriated in it. Her hips juddered. The wax splashed in ecstatic stripes up her thighs, and Nicola began to beg.
“Oh please, please, I’ll spend. Will you let the wick burn down to my flesh? Oh god, it’s so big, and it stings, and I’m so, so full…!”
Her lashes fluttered, and she writhed, the wax cracking and flaking away only to be replaced with more drips, more splashes. Barbara moved around the desk, stood at Nicola’s head to get a better view.
“Tip your hips up, darling girl, let it spill on your sore little hole and further, yes, that’s it, doesn’t it feel nice where you’re already so sensitive, so bruised? A bit more now, my sweet sparrow, so it covers you.”
Nicola’s glasses were fogged. Her lips moved as if to form words but none came. The wax ran steadily over her clit and Nicola’s whole body was tense, like she really might come from this alone.
Barbara took up her sealing stamp, and pressed it to the gathering wax, right over Nicola’s clit, and marked it with her intaglio. Nicola watched over the wire rims of her clouded spectacles, shouted, and began to come.
“Yes, my love, my swan,” Barbara said, petting Nicola’s hair, her neck, the delicate hollow of her throat.
“So hot, so hot!” Nicola cried, her orgasmic thrusts pouring hot wax all over. Her body jerked, jostling the weights that filled her, driving her higher and higher, tears turning her lashes into wet points and then as the last throes shook her, she jolted so strongly that the candle went out.
Barbara smiled down at her as she heaved in breaths, and flicked her clinging wax seal from Nicola’s clit. The underside held a perfect sunken relief impression of Nicola’s most intimate parts.
“I think I’ll keep this,” Barbara said, tucking it into a desk drawer. “You see it’s for reasons like this I don’t keep a secretary.”
“That, and you couldn’t send such sordid letters,” Nicola noted. Barbara laughed, moving to help Nicola remove the candle, the glass egg, even those boots she liked so much. Little flakes of wax littered the desk, the carpet, in the folds of their discarded clothing, even on some of the papers that had lain on the desk before Nicola arrived.
“Couldn’t I?” Barbara asked, taking her chair as Nicola took in the extent of the destruction with hands on hips. “Shall we invite a younger girl to come work for me, see what she makes of my overtures to you?”
“No,” Nicola replied, firmly.
“Suit yourself,” Barbara answered easily. It hadn’t been a real suggestion, and she forgot all about it as she reached for a box of cigarillos and another match.
“What’s this?” Nicola held a crumpled paper, found under a footstool. When she turned it round, Barbara recognized it.
“I expect Bubby left that behind. My nephew.” Somebody had let him at a set of chalk pastels, and he’d entertained himself making a dreadful mess for a while. “He hides his drawings wherever he goes, like some mad little elf distributing gifts. He’s three.”
“Your brother’s boy,” Nicola recalled. “How funny to think of you as an auntie.”
“Yes, I know,” Barbara said. She tapped her cigarillo on the edge of a rock crystal ash tray, sat back to watch Nicola pull on at least her combinations, even as she tugged the pins out of her hair. “You shall soon be an auntie too, by the unfortunate Delphinia.”
Nicola’s hair fell down her back, a tousled cascade of burnished copper. Barbara’s blonde had begun going ash grey two years ago, when she was only forty-two.
“Did you ever want children?” Nicola asked, not looking at Barbara, but instead at the messy pastel drawing.
“Not I,” Barbara said. “I am committed to my spinsterhood. All this time I have been solitary as an oystercatcher.”
Nicola did look, then, a small smile tilting her lips.
“I believe it is ‘solitary as an oyster’,” she said.
“Not the way I mean it,” Barbara replied. She tossed her 1847 copy of A History of British Birds, Volume II across the desk. Gamely, Nicola turned to page 7, and read the description and habits of the widely-dispersed shore bird. Beside the short reference to their mating, and how the birds form pairs when they come to nest, was a passage in neat, spidery script, a hand she recognized immediately and intimately.
Tho’ you fly the whole world over, still returning to your lover, ne’er to live within the cloister, we two birds are catching oysters.
“Oysters,” Nicola said, with a hand to her heart. “And cockles.”