Asher

It begins innocently enough, or so you believe. Edward is in his study, his voice drifts occasionally through the doorway—soft murmurs to himself, the scratch of pen against paper.

Leaving you alone with her.

You are arranging the drawing room for tea when she appears beside you. Not suddenly, Jane Murdstone never startles, but with the quiet inevitability of a shadow sliding across the floor.

At six foot three, she hardly needs to assert herself. Her height alone narrows the space around her. The black of her dress absorbs the light, her dark hair is wound tightly at the nape of her neck, not a strand permitted rebellion.

“The roses,” she says, voice low and precise as she eyes the vase you’ve just filled. You inhale slowly. “They’re arranged too loosely. Edward dislikes that. Recut the stems at a sharper angle. Forty-five degrees, no more.”

You bite back the urge to point out that Edward has never once commented on the flowers. “As you say, Miss Murdstone.”

She doesn’t smile. Instead, she plucks a bloom from the vase herself, holding it up to the light like evidence in a trial. Her long fingers dwarf the stem, snapping it cleanly with a sound like breaking bone.

“Watch,” she instructs, demonstrating the cut with surgical calm. “Precision matters. Sloppiness betrays weakness of character.”

The barb lands, but you nod, resetting the vase under her unblinking stare. Edward calls from the study then and you both straighten, the momentary truce holding until he shuffles in, oblivious to the frost between you.

He drinks his cup without remark on the flowers, praises the blend—your choice, pointedly, and retreats again. Jane waits until his footsteps fade before resuming.

“Your posture at the table,” she murmurs, circling you as you clear the cups. Her shadow falls long across the rug; you feel it like a weight on your shoulders. “You lean forward when you listen. It suggests eagerness to please. Unbecoming in a wife.”

“I lean forward because I’m attending to conversation,” you reply, stacking saucers with more force than necessary. “Unlike some, who merely judge it.”

Her eyes narrow, but her tone stays even, almost gentle—the worst kind of reprimand. “Judgment preserves order. You would do well to cultivate it. Edward needs a partner, not a simpering girl chasing approval.”

The room tilts with suppressed fury. You set the tray down, turning to face her fully. She’s close now, too close, her height forcing you to crane your neck. Up close, her features are sharper than ever. High cheekbones, pale skin stretched taut over bone.

“Perhaps Edward needs a wife who trusts his judgment,” you say quietly, “not a sister who polices her every move.”

A muscle ticks in her jaw. “You mistake vigilance for interference. This house, his life, demands standards you have yet to grasp.”

The afternoon drags on like this, her orbiting you through domestic tasks, each reprimand a velvet-wrapped blade. In the parlor, she adjusts your embroidery hoop. At the pianoforte, where Edward briefly joins to hear you play, she critiques your tempo afterward. Even as you mend a tear in Edward’s coat under her supervision, she looms by the window, arms folded, dissecting your needlework stitch by stitch.

“You hesitate,” she observes, voice dropping as Edward dozes in his chair nearby. “Confidence, girl. Or do you fear the thread will snap?”

The word girl ignites you—reductive, infantilizing, as if your engagement evaporates your womanhood. Your needle pricks your finger, a bead of blood wells on your skin. You suck it away, glaring up at her silhouette against the light.

“Fear is your domain, Miss Murdstone,” you whisper, low enough not to wake him. “You haunt every room like a governess without a pupil.”

She steps closer, skirts brushing your knee, her shadow swallowing you whole. “And you play the fiancée without conviction. Shall I wake Edward to ask his thoughts on your… performance?”

Your heart hammers. Edward stirs, mutters, settles again. The air thickens, electric with what’s unsaid.

By evening, as twilight bleeds through the curtains, you’re alone in the drawing room—Edward called away to a neighbor, leaving you to tidy under Jane’s watchful eye. She’s relentless now, her reprimands shedding civility like a snake’s skin.

“Your hands,” she says, seizing your wrist mid-dust as you polish the mantel. Her grip is iron, thumb pressing against your pulse. “They tremble. Compose yourself.”

You wrench free, spinning to face her. “Compose myself? While you dissect me like a specimen?”

Her lips thin. “Discipline is mercy. You’ll thank me when it spares you humiliation.”

“I’ll thank you to leave me be,” you snap, voice rising despite yourself. “This is to be my house. My life with him. Not your prison of rules.”

She straightens to her full height, a tower of black bombazine and suppressed rage. “Your house? You are a guest here. Tolerated. And barely.”

The dam breaks. You shove the polishing cloth at her chest, it bounces harmlessly off. “Tolerated? Like your endless corrections? Your control? Edward sees right through you, a spinster clinging to his sleeve!”

Her face drains of color, then flushes dark. In two strides, she’s upon you, hand snapping to your chin, forcing your gaze up. “You know nothing of control. Or clinging.”

You slap her hand away, the crack echoing. Her eyes widen—shock, then something feral.

“You will apologize,” she hisses, crowding you back toward the wall.

“No.”

Her palm slams the panel beside your head, caging you. “You will apologise before you make a mistake you cannot mend.”

You brace for a slap, for her to shove you against the wall and storm from the room in righteous outrage. Instead, she grips your wrists again, and yanks you forward with a sharp, startled sound, your bodies colliding with enough force to knock the breath from your chest.

Your gasp is swallowed by the solid line of her, by the unforgiving stays beneath her dress, by the sheer height of her, enclosing you in shadow and black wool. You feel caged, caught—and, horribly, treacherously, something inside you thrills at it.

“Is this what you wanted?” she bites out, face inches from yours. Her breath is hot against your cheek. “To provoke me? To see what I would do if you pushed hard enough?”

You mean to answer with contempt, with some cutting retort that will slice clean through the tension. Instead, what comes out is little more than a whisper. “You were already waiting for an excuse.”

Her eyes flare, and that is when you see it—what you were not supposed to notice. The dilation of her pupils. The way her gaze flicks to your mouth, a quick, punished movement, as if she hopes you will not see the betrayal of it.

Your wrists ache beneath her fingers, but the bite of her grip sends heat crawling up your arms, pooling low in your belly. You should be repulsed. You should be doing anything but leaning forward, just slightly, as if drawn.

“You are outrageous,” she says, but her voice has dropped, roughened, the edges fraying. “You should be begging for my forgiveness.”

“I will never beg you for anything,” you whisper.

Her gaze lingers on your throat, and when she speaks, the words come slower, like each one costs her.

“You do not want me to let go.”

It is not a question. It is a diagnosis.

You hate how true it is.

Your laugh is breathless, shaky. “You think very highly of your own influence, Miss Murdstone.”

“Jane,” she corrects fiercely, as if the sound itself could anchor her to sanity.

“Jane,” you echo, because you are foolish, because the name feels like a sin in your mouth. Her fingers spasm around your wrists.

In one swift motion, she pins you back against the wall, caging you there with her body. The impact knocks a framed print askew. The glass rattles, a brittle protest. You gasp, more from shock than pain, and she presses closer, using every inch of her height to tower, to loom, to dominate.

“Look at you,” she murmurs, voice low and almost horrified. “You cannot decide whether to strike me or—”

She does not finish the sentence. She does not need to.

Your hands, freed for an instant, find the front of her bodice, fingers clawing at the rigid line of buttons. You don’t know whether you mean to push her away or drag her nearer, the result is the same. The fabric creaks. Her breath catches.

“Or what?” you demand. “Go on. Say it. You correct everything else I do—why stop your tongue now?”

Her hand moves to close around your throat—not squeezing, not yet, but firm, possessive, her thumb resting against the frantic thud of your pulse. Your head tips back against the wall, baring more of your neck to her. She stares as if transfixed.

“You do not know what you ask,” she says softly, and there is something almost broken in it. “You do not understand what it would mean, if I… indulged you.”

Your voice shakes, but it doesn’t falter. “Then show me.”

The last thread of her restraint snaps.

Her mouth crashes into yours with none of the delicacy expected of a woman of her station. There is nothing gentle in it, it is all teeth and anger and pent-up hunger, years of denial exploding at once. Your back scrapes the wall, you cling to her shoulders, to the hard line of muscle beneath all that severity, to anything that will keep you from collapsing.

You taste tea and steel and something undeniably her, something sharp and addictive. She kisses like she argues—unyielding, punishing, determined to win. You fight her for control out of instinct, answering her roughness with your own, biting her lower lip hard enough to make her hiss.

Her hand tightens on your throat in reflex, a warning squeeze that sends heat shooting straight through you. You flinch, but you don’t pull away. If anything, you arch into her.

She feels it. Of course she does.

“Oh,” she breathes against your mouth, half-mad with revelation. “You like this.”

Humiliation scorches your cheeks. “You are vile.”

“And you are lying,” she snarls, and kisses you again, deeper, forcing your lips apart, swallowing whatever protest you might have made.

Her free hand fists in your skirts, dragging them brutally upward, bunching the fabric around your hips. The sudden rush of cool air through your open drawers makes you gasp into her mouth. She curses under her breath, a raw, unladylike sound you have never heard from her before.

“Tell me to stop,” she says, the words barely more than a growl. Her forehead presses to yours, both of you panting. “Say it now, and I swear I will.”

You stare up at her, at the war raging behind her eyes—discipline and desire tearing each other to pieces. You realize, with a jolt, that this is the only mercy she will offer you. This single, trembling chance to retreat.

You should take it.

“Do it,” you whisper instead. “If you’re so certain I don’t understand, then teach me.”

Whatever fragile restraint remained in her shatters completely.

Her eyes burn into yours, wild and triumphant, as if your surrender has unlocked some forbidden part of her she’s kept chained for years. “You have no idea,” she rasps, “the ruin you invite.”

With a savage yank, she tears your skirts higher, the fabric of your drawers ripping at the seams under her strength. Her long fingers dig into the soft flesh of your thighs, spreading them apart with ruthless efficiency, pinning one leg against the wall. You’re exposed, vulnerable, the cool air shocking against your dampening core—and she sees it, her gaze dropping to where you’re already slick with unwanted need.

“Filthy,” she mutters, voice thick with disgust and hunger. Her thumb drags roughly over your folds, parting them, circling your clit with deliberate cruelty—too hard, too fast, just enough to make your hips jerk involuntarily. “All this from hating me? Look at you. Dripping like a whore.”

You snarl, grabbing a fistful of her hair and yanking her head back, exposing the long column of her throat. “And you’re no better,” you hiss, grinding against her hand despite yourself, chasing the friction. “Touching your brother’s fiancée like this. You’re depraved.”

Her laugh is low, broken. A sound that vibrates through her chest into yours. She retaliates by thrusting two fingers inside you without warning, deep and unyielding, curling them against that spot that makes your vision white out. You cry out, biting your lip bloody to stifle it, but she pumps harder, her palm slapping wetly against your clit with each brutal drive.

“Say it again,” she demands, free hand clamping back over your throat. “Call me depraved. I dare you.”

You do, choking it out between gasps: “Depraved—monster—” Your walls clench around her fingers, betraying you, and she groans, her own arousal evident in the flush creeping down her neck, the way her thighs press together beneath her skirts.

She withdraws her fingers abruptly, leaving you empty and aching, and shoves them into your mouth instead. “Clean them,” she orders, eyes locked on yours as you suck, tasting yourself on her skin—salty, musky, humiliatingly intimate. Her breath hitches, pupils blown wide. “Now kneel.”

The command ignites fresh fury. You shove at her chest instead, hard enough to make her stagger, but she’s too tall, too strong. She grabs your waist and lifts you, pinning you down onto the nearby settee like you weigh nothing. The springs creak under the force. You bounce once, skirts a tangled mess around your waist, legs splayed obscenely.

She looms over you, unbuttoning her bodice with one hand while the other holds you by the hip. Buttons ping across the floor, forgotten. Her chemise gapes open, revealing the swell of her breasts, nipples hard peaks straining against the thin fabric. She’s breathing as raggedly as you are, raven hair falling loose from its pins, framing her sharp features in disarray.

“Spread your legs wider,” she says, shedding her skirts with frantic tugs until they pool at her feet. No undergarments. Her cunt is bare, glistening, a dark thatch of hair framing lips swollen with need. She straddles your thigh, grinding down hard, leaving a slick trail on the fabric of your drawers. The heat of her, the sheer size of her bearing down—it’s overwhelming, possessive.

You buck up against her, nails raking down her arms, drawing red lines. “Make me,” you spit, but your hand betrays you, reaching for her breasts, squeezing roughly until she moans a raw, guttural sound that makes your clit throb.

She slaps your hand away, then grabs your wrist and forces it between her legs. “Feel what you’ve done to me, then. Feel how much I loathe you.” Her clit is fat and pulsing under your fingers. You circle it viciously, pinching just to hear her gasp, her hips stuttering. She’s soaked, dripping onto your skin, and the power of it surges through you as she fucks herself on your fingers, riding them with punishing rhythm.

She eventually pushes your hand away with a groan, but she’s not done with you. She leans forward, her weight crushing the air from your lungs, and grinds her soaked folds directly against your cunt—labia sliding wetly over yours, clits bumping with each filthy roll of her hips. It’s messy, graceless, the obscene squelch of it filling the room alongside your mingled curses and moans.

“Tell me you hate me,” she pants, one hand fisting your hair to yank your head back, the other bracing beside your shoulder as she ruts harder, faster. Her breasts drag against yours through the thin barriers of fabric. “Say it while you come.”

“I hate you,” you sob, the words fracturing as pleasure coils tight in your belly. Your legs wrap around her waist, heels digging into her back, urging her on. “I hate—God—Jane—”

Her own name breaks her. She kisses you again, all teeth and tongue, swallowing your cries as she grinds her clit against yours in short, brutal thrusts. Your orgasm hits first—shattering, humiliating, your walls spasming around nothing as you soak her thighs. She follows seconds later, shuddering atop you with a choked growl, her release dripping hot down your skin.

For a long moment, you’re both still—sweaty, ruined, chests heaving. Her forehead drops to your shoulder, black hair tickling your neck. The rage hasn’t vanished. It simmers, waiting.

“You will regret this,” she whispers finally, voice hoarse.

You turn your head, lips brushing her ear. “So will you.”

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