Evil's Niece (4 page)

As we entered her quaint little shop, Madame LaRue gawked openly from where she stood beside a sewing machine, checking the work of her assistant.

While it was true Monique presented an unseemly image in this haven for society’s finest, at least she’d tucked her breasts into her dress again and had looped the loose hair back on to her head. Her smile radiated a zany mischief that made my heart dance despite the explanations I’d have to make.

Or would I? By God, this dressmaker had collected enough from Proffit coffers these past seven years that she could put up with anything — or anyone — I brought into her shop! I walked towards her with my politest smile.

‘Good afternoon, Françoise, Nicole,’ I said, nodding at the two in turn. ‘This is my new maid, Monique, and we’re here to fetch those dresses you’ve just completed.’

My companion prodded me with her elbow.

‘And,’ I added, ‘I’d like to experiment with a few new things as well — for some upcoming masked balls. My husband is in the running to become the next mayor of New Orleans.’

This
widened their eyes with the respect I normally received. ‘Why, congratulations, Miss Eve!’ Madame LaRue gushed, steering me towards the back dressing rooms with a proprietary air. ‘Mr Proffit will make our city a fine leader, indeed. And I should think his lady would want the brightest Mardi Gras colours — stunning sequins and beaded trims for —’

‘Black lace,’ Monique stated from a few steps behind us. ‘Perhaps something in scarlet as well. Silks and satins. Fabrics that cling to her curves and drape alluringly.’

My seamstress scowled over her shoulder. ‘But those colours are far too severe for Miss Eve’s auburn hair and fair complexion. Might I recommend —’

‘Black,’ I insisted as we reached the door of a private room. ‘With your most outlandish feathers and sequins — in scarlets and purples. Greens and golds!’

‘Severe and outlandish —
oh-la-la
!’ Monique summarised with sultry glee. ‘That would suit my Aunt Evil quite well.’

Once again the seamstress stared at me as though I’d lost my senses, yet as I entered the richly appointed fitting room, I was filled with a giddy sense of adventure I hadn’t known in years. Whatever my maid had in mind would be the perfect foil for Chapin’s high-handedness. Within moments, another assistant hurried in with my four newly completed gowns, and then we were left alone while Françoise and her staff found the fabrics we’d just requested.

I watched Monique scrutinise the gowns. With quick fingers she tested the flounce of the sleeves and the fullness of the skirts, glancing from the dresses to various parts of my body. I removed my hat and gloves, and then felt her brown eyes assessing me as I unbuttoned the jacket to my forest-green walking suit.

‘Your new gowns are fine, as far as they go,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Fine, for the wife of a politician. But if you wish to seduce him, Aunt Evil, you must expose —’

‘I really wish you wouldn’t call me that. It makes me feel like I was spawned by the devil.’ I was removing my outer clothes, to try on something else, and the glint in those dark Cajun eyes gave me pause.

‘But that’s how you must think now,
ma tante
,’ she explained. ‘Evil! Wicked!’

To make her point, she grabbed the lace edging of my corset cover and tore it off me. ‘Men, they want to
see
their women, hints of skin and lengths of leg that get their minds off everything but their cocks. And this corset must go. It only gets in the way — cuts ugly marks into your skin,
oui
? And by the time a lover gets it off you, it’s no wonder he’s lost interest!’

At that moment, Madame LaRue entered the room and blanched. We must’ve made a startling sight, with me being stripped and lectured by a young hussy who cast all decency aside with my clothing.

‘I’ll come back later, when you’ve decided what you’d like,’ the little woman murmured. She dumped her armload of fabric bolts in the nearest chair, exiting with a
tsk, tsk
that would’ve done a nun proud.

Monique grinned lasciviously. ‘Oh, I’ve already decided what I’d like,
merci
. And I’ll say it again, Aunt Evil — you have absolutely
nothing
to feel inferior about. You have no idea how beautiful you are, or how to use that beauty to your advantage. But Monique will teach you.’

My pulse pounded, for when had I ever heard such praise for my body? The breasts and midsection I kept bound beneath a corset…the legs and arms I always covered like a proper wife…the wavy red hair pulled up into a pompadour and hidden beneath the compulsory hat. When the young woman behind me finished unlacing my stays and flung away the tight foundation, I let out a sigh of utmost…downright hedonistic relief.

I caught my breath, however, when Monique stepped in front of me with a furtive smile. ‘Take off your camisole and drawers,
cherie
. Then we’ll drape you in that fine black lace.’

My windpipe tightened until I thought I’d never breathe again. Yet my fingers did her bidding, peeling away the last layers of fabric, leaving me bare before her, except for my dark stockings and pumps. I stood there nervously, unsure of what to do with my hands, until they instinctively covered my breasts.

‘
Non, non, non
,’ she murmured, brushing them aside to catch my fingers with her own. ‘You must show yourself proudly…stick them out and wiggle them. Feel them shifting on your ribcage while your lover warms them with his fiery gaze. Because he will,
ma belle
. No one in his right mind could resist you this way.’

Was there a hidden meaning couched in Monique’s remark? She’d used the male pronoun, as though still referring to my husband, yet I couldn’t miss the quickening of her respiration…the widening of those jet-black pupils in eyes that nearly filled her face. When she licked her lips, a feline gesture giving a quick glimpse of her white teeth, something inside me quivered.

‘Ah,
oui
, the nipples, they’re responding now,’ she murmured, still holding my hands out at my shoulders as though we were dancing. Monique then shifted me, side-to-side, watching the shimmy of my loose breasts, letting her gaze wander to my navel and below. ‘Black lace, so fine and provocative. It’s time to try it,
oui, ma tante
?’

I doubted she was talking about the bolt of fabric in the chair. My body stiffened at the idea of what she was gazing at, and what she might do to it, yet I felt a traitorous trickle of warmth pooling inside me…down there. Down where a proper lady didn’t explore, much less contemplate such activity with another woman — and in a room where my seamstress might walk in at any moment!

‘I don’t think —’

‘That’s right — don’t think!’ Monique released me, pivoting to fetch the bolt of fabric. Knowing the effect she was having on the body of a woman who swam far out of her depth and feared drowning in this sea of new-found sensuality. ‘This lace, it’ll give you a whole new perspective on clothes. After today, you might never wear anything else, Aunt Evil.’

With deft motions, Monique unwound a long length of the soft, raven lace, making it shift and whisper in the little room. Smiling, looking so decidedly French, she then pulled it tight over my breasts, walked around me to catch the starting edge, and then tossed the final length of it over my shoulder.

‘
Voila!
A dress fit for a naughty queen — or a mayor’s wife on the make,’ she added with a chuckle. ‘Attend a party dressed in this — nothing more! — and you’ll be the belle of the ball, madame.’

I glanced in the full-length mirror and sucked in my breath. My bare shoulders glowed with excitement above the filmy black wrapping of lace, which flowed to the floor yet left my nakedness clearly visible beneath the swirling pattern of roses and ivy.

Before I guessed what she was about, Monique came up behind me and plucked the pins from my hair, sending it in an unruly auburn cascade past my shoulders. Then she turned her own hair loose, casting aside the white wisp of a cap by tossing her head, to stand before me with the most brazen expression I’d ever seen.

‘It’s all in the details,
oui
?’ she murmured. She shifted the lace at my shoulder so it draped more dramatically, and arranged the main layer so clusters of roses stretched strategically over my aching nipples. ‘A simple clasp at the shoulder, to hold it in place, and you are covered,
cherie
. Yet so very, very revealed.’

‘I couldn’t possibly wear this in front of guests!’

‘
Non?
Then add little black panties — they’re all the rage. Or a garter belt like mine.’

‘But they’ll show through the —’

‘But of course!’ she cried with an exasperated wave of her hands. ‘And if that husband of yours doesn’t take you under the nearest table immediately, he
will
when he thinks someone else will beat him to it. Competition is a good thing,
non
?’

My head was spinning with the airlessness of the room and the brazen way this young lady talked. Again she adjusted the cowl of black fabric that draped over my shoulder, with the look of a Parisian artiste — except then her palms slithered lightly down to brush my breasts, lingering there as she looked me in the eye. Monique’s face was mere inches from mine, her rouged lips parted and her dark eyes wide. She was the rudest, most abrupt, unpredictable person I’d ever encountered.

And I was quivering. Holding my breath as I wondered…feared…anticipated what she might try next. One of her hands slithered down the lace along my waist, past my hip towards my inner thigh. And then she
slapped
it.

‘Foot on the chair!’ she commanded, and at once my body obeyed.

‘Now look at the effect. The dress parts at the edge, allowing a view of shoe, and then stocking, and then…bare thigh the colour of sweet cream, draped in black see-through roses, madame. I swear to you, I’ve never seen a more provocative sight.’

She was studying my reflection in the mirror as avidly as I, yet her eyes lingered at the top of my thigh, where a hint of auburn peeked through. As though in a trance, she knelt before me and slowly pushed aside the filmy curtain of lace with a single finger, so close her breathing warmed the place between my legs. As though entranced by this maid’s magic, my folds tingled and parted and my foot slipped forward on the chair. Liquid dribbled down my leg, and I thought I’d wet myself with this uncontrollable excitement.

Never had I been so open, or so intimately studied, for Chapin had never ventured down this path. And never had I felt so — evil, indeed! — deliciously wicked, despite the fear making my pulse pound below my belly. I drew in my breath, watching in the mirror as Monique moved closer.

At the first sign of her pointed pink tongue, I almost bolted. Monique clamped her hands around my inner thighs, and with a low moan she moved in. Her face, from that angle, looked positively alive with lust — something I’d never dreamed of inspiring, or accepting, from another woman. Yet I’d heard about this sort of kiss, and wondered…

The touch of her tongue made me gasp and, for want of a way to brace myself, I clasped the sides of her head. My fingers wove into her warm hair, feeling the pulse above her ears pounding as rapidly as my own, while Monique eased upward. She lapped as delicately as a cat, closing her eyes so those long lashes shivered at the tops of her cheeks, as though she’d never sampled such ambrosia.

I wanted to close my eyes and scream with the sensations coursing through me, but I didn’t dare bring Madame LaRue running in — nor did I want to miss that marvel taking place beneath my springy mass of curls. In the mirror, I watched her dark head bob between my spread legs, saw her lips parting mine for intimate kisses like I’d never dared imagine.

‘Open yourself,
cherie
,’ she whispered. ‘Let Monique catch every drop and show you how it feels to shatter from the inside out.’

I flexed, and the spasms of desire shot like lightning through me. Was all that moisture coming from her tongue, or my…sex? The wet, rhythmic licking sounds filled the little room, kicking up a salty scent I found extremely heady. My hips were rocking forward to meet her advances, making the black lace tickle my thighs. Those same hot longings Dewel had inspired at the courtyard gate were cresting as she followed the edges of my folds and then ran her tongue hard up the centre, pushing my mound higher with her fingertips to open me even further.

My God, I felt lewd, yet I was beyond stopping. A panting sound surrounded us and, when I glanced at the mirror again, I realised it was me. Humping and breathing so hard, chasing after an elusive rainbow of pleasure I couldn’t yet define —

And then she thrust her tongue inside me.

I lurched, and my grimace was that of Chapin’s blonde as she neared completion. ‘No,’ I rasped. ‘No more! I can’t take any —’

Faster she licked, high against that hot little button where every nerve burned. I swore I smelled smoke. I tried to pull away, but Monique grabbed my backside, kneading with strong fingers that cut into my flesh like the iron bars of that gate — driving her tongue upward and so furiously, we were both quaking.

‘Monique, please!’ I panted, grasping for that last straw of sanity even as I realised an uncontrollable madness ruled me. I felt ready to soar, and when her fingers slipped beneath the lace to pinch a nipple, my insides lurched as though I’d fallen from a cliff.

As I convulsed, she stood to kiss me, stifling my scream. I clenched my eyes shut. My jaw dropped with the extreme need to cry out, made more intense by the wet, slippery lips that covered mine as she thrust her fingers into me. My body shuddered as though someone had shot me through with a lightning bolt — going far beyond the shocking sensations I’d allowed myself when Dewel pressed me against that gate. The current grabbed me and
shook
, until I collapsed into the chair like a wet rag.

My maid fell forward against its upholstered arms, her hair flying wildly around us as she caught herself. She wiped her mouth against the back of her hand with a glutton’s gusto, and then she giggled. ‘Your first time,
oui, ma tante
?’