Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

by JetBoy and BlueJean

A brief summary of what has transpired thus far. (To get a breakdown of the earlier chapters, please see Chapter Links for descriptions)

Orphaned at the age of eight, sixteen-year-old Doris Sloane has spent half her life in a Catholic orphanage, where she was trained to care for young children. Our story begins when she is taken into service at the home of Victoria Shaw, a widow with three daughters: Melinda (ten), Sophia (eleven) and Becky (fourteen). Doris is thoroughly satisfied with this new life, but her orderly world takes an odd turn one night when she is seduced by Mrs. Shaw. Surprising herself, Doris responds eagerly, fully returning the pleasure she has been given.

In the days that follow, Doris and Victoria couple frequently, and Doris becomes skilled in the art of lesbian lovemaking under the tutelage of her mistress. She is deliriously happy, but her joy is tainted by the fact that she is only engaged to serve in the Shaw household until Melinda, the youngest, turns twelve. To complicate things even further, Doris has fallen madly, passionately in love with Victoria, and lacks the courage to tell her so.

One of Doris’ duties as nanny is to give Melinda and Sophia a bath every other day. The girls often invite Doris to join them in the large Japanese-style tub, but she always refuses, believing it isn’t proper. When she mentions this to Mrs. Shaw after a bout of lovemaking, Victoria suggests that Doris do what her youngest daughters want: get naked and bathe with them. Furthermore, she encourages Doris to pay closer attention to the girls’ nudity, to notice how beautiful they are in the altogether.

Doris finds this a bit strange… but that evening, while giving Sophia and Melinda their bath, she takes the time to study them more closely, and is startled to find herself feeling somewhat aroused.  The girls notice her interest, and on subsequent evenings, eleven-year-old Sophia begins to tease Doris by flaunting her nakedness. This only fuels this budding desire Doris feels… and very soon, she is masturbating to lewd fantasies of Victoria’s daughters.

One afternoon around this time, while the girls are at school, Doris in asked to join Victoria for a light luncheon in the back yard. There, Victoria offers the girl a permanent home as a member of the family, then tells her, “I love you.”

Doris is overwhelmed by emotion at first… but she joyfully accepts, and they celebrate by undressing and making love. 

Then next day, Victoria tells Doris how she first became attracted to women. It began at the age of sixteen, when she was given the service of a personal maid, a lively Irish girl named Nora, who would quickly become young Victoria’s faithful friend and companion. They would become lovers, but it ended disastrously when they were caught in the act. Nora was sent away, and Victoria was left devastated. More than twenty years later, she still mourns the loss of her friend.

Doris does what she can to console Victoria, then goes to bed hoping Nora managed to find happiness, wherever she might have gone.

The story resumes here. Do enjoy.

I

After shipping the girls off to school the next day, I made my way along the thoroughfare back to the house.

Mr. Farnsworth was busy mowing the lawn, clay pipe fixed firmly between his teeth, his push mower carving out neat lines through the grass.

I paused by one of the rose bushes that lined the long driveway, the splayed pink petals and darker pink interior of its blooms invoking something of the gynaecological. “Can I pick one?” I called out to the old gardener, gesturing to one of the larger flowers.

Mr. Farnsworth clattered to a halt with his mower. “Eh?”

“The roses. May I take one?”

He looked ponderously off into the distance, taking a long, leisurely puff of his pipe, as if he was contemplating the meaning of life itself. “Please y’self,” he finally said. Taking up the mower once more, he resumed his steady trek across the lawn.

Careful to avoid the nasty-looking thorns, I snapped the rose off at the stem, bringing it to my face to breathe in its delicate scent.

I found Victoria sequestered in her study, rotary telephone in her hand. She paced back and forth in front of her desk, moving only as far as the cable would allow.

I quickly made to leave, not wanting to interrupt, but she waved me inside.

“No, Mr. Jefferson, it’s not the transaction itself that’s the issue. It’s the fact that I did not authorise it. As far as I’m aware, I’m still the managing director of Shaw Mercantile, and you’re still the director of operations, am I correct in that assumption? Yes? Oh, that is a relief. Well, now that we’ve established the company hierarchy, may I very strongly suggest you don’t try cutting me out of the decision-making process again? Good. Yes. Yes, that’s very reassuring to hear. How are Susan and the children, by the way? Excellent. Send them my love. Goodbye, Mr. Jefferson. Thank you.”

Victoria replaced the receiver in its cradle, then offered me a weary smile. “Is that for me?” she asked, noticing the rose.

I peered down at the bloom in my hand, now wondering if my gesture of affection might seem childish. “Oh. Yes. I can come back later, if you’re busy.”

“I’m never too busy for you, my love. Come and have a seat.”

I sat in the chair opposite her desk while Victoria emptied a fluted vase previously filled with wildflowers that Melinda had given her, now shrivelled and dry. She reached out for the rose. “What a nice thought,” she said, then furrowed her brow in mock concern. “Or… am I presuming too much in thinking it’s for me?”

“Oh, stop teasing,” I told her with a grin, handing her the offering. “Of course it’s for you. I picked it on a whim. Was it silly of me?”

Victoria slipped the rose into the vase, then set it down upon her desk. “No, not at all. I’d like to think I have enough of the romantic in me to appreciate such a gesture.” She slowly traced a petal with the tip of her finger. “My late husband once compared me to a rose, you know. It might’ve been mistaken for a rare compliment, at least until he clarified his meaning: that I was beautiful but full of thorns.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

She raised a brow at me. “That I’m beautiful, or thorny?”

I gave her a playful scowl. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“Well, he was right as it turned out. I do have thorns. Poor old William learnt that in a most unpleasant way.”

“Oh, dear. That sounds… ominous.”

Victoria had bent her head to partake of the rose’s sweet perfume. When she glanced up at me once again, there was resolve in her eyes. “I owe you the remainder of my story, don’t I?”

I shook my head. “You don’t have to tell it. I wouldn’t want to see you upset again.”

“Nevertheless, you shall hear it. And this one has a happier ending. Well… for me, at least.”

II

Losing Nora left me utterly devastated, a shadow of the bright, joyful girl I’d once been. In the midst of this grief, my parents, panic-stricken by the potential scandal my dalliance might cause, decided to marry me off as soon as possible.

William Shaw had briefly been considered a potential match, but later disregarded due to his age – I was sixteen, he was twenty-nine – and because he was rumoured to have dissolute ways. Now, though, with so many possible suitors promised to others or killed in the Great War, Mother and Father were unwilling to spend time searching for a more suitable candidate. So William was brought back into the fold, and I was unceremoniously given to him as a wife.

Needless to say, I wanted no part of this arrangement. What little I’d seen of William Shaw was more than enough for me. But Father would not permit a word of objection, not after the way I’d ‘disgraced myself’. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that I would be driven from our home and disowned if I refused this marriage.

What else could I do? I had no money, no resources to call my own. If I went to any of my relatives for help, Father would tell them about Nora. “No one in our family will take you in – no one,” he told me. “I’ll see to that.” I believe now that he was bluffing, and would never have dared to cast me out for real… but his stratagem worked, and I married a stranger out of fear.

The wedding itself was a quiet one, thank goodness. I might well have fainted in the presence of a large crowd. As it was, I barely recall it, too occupied by the struggle to conceal my despair. Somehow, we got through the ceremony, then I was seated next to William in the back of his car, being chauffeured to what was to be my new life.

That evening, my new husband was all too eager to consummate our marriage. He was not an attentive man in the bedchamber, satisfying his base needs without any regard for the frightened young woman beneath him. That first time was quite horrific, painful and humiliating in equal measure. After that, it just became one more thing to endure.

I thought marriage might become easier for me, given time, once William and I grew to know each other better. But something soon became quite apparent to me: William Shaw was a bully.

There are two kinds of bullies: those who know they’re tougher and meaner than everyone else, and have every intention of proving it. Then there are the bullies who are weak and insecure, preferring victims who are smaller and weaker than themselves. William Shaw was of the latter. And who would serve better for this purpose than a new bride barely out of her childhood years?

There were hints about his true nature from the start, but it was six months after our wedding, once all pretence of civility had been put aside, that the brutality began in earnest. Soon enough, I was doing all I could to avoid straying into William’s path. Mrs. Broomfield and Miss Haggerty made some effort to protect me, but there was little either of them could do that wouldn’t have resulted in immediate dismissal, and that would have made my situation even worse. The kitchen was as much a sanctuary as I could hope for, given that men like William prefer to dole out punishment without witnesses.

With Nora still very much in my thoughts, utterly alone and constantly under siege from a drunk, abusive husband, I saw only one means of escape. I came very close to taking my own life several times during that first year of marriage. Ultimately, it was becoming a mother that saved me.

I was eighteen when I gave birth to Rebecca, and she was the most beautiful, amazing thing I’d ever seen. I doted on her, poured all my love into this small, helpless bundle of joy that had been granted to me. She gave me purpose, a reason to carry on.

Even William, who mostly saw babies as a source of annoyance, seemed to soften in the presence of his first child. The abuse ceased for a while, but nature had intended him to be a bully, and soon enough he returned to form. I bore it with a new resolve, for I was no longer the only one who needed to be protected.

My husband had always been an enthusiastic drinker, but after the birth of Rebecca he began to lose himself in the bottle more frequently. Often, I would pass his office only to find him slumped against the desk, a glass of whisky clutched protectively in his hands. I was glad of those occasions, if only because they rendered him incapable of further cruelty.

It was commonplace to have our butler Brenton help my wreck of a husband upstairs to bed while I cleared up his papers. I’d always had a good head for numbers, so I soon found myself organising documents, or signing off on transactions that William had been too drunk to finalise. It became clear that I had a real aptitude for business, and I gradually took a larger role in the day-to-day affairs of the firm. Without a doubt, Shaw Mercantile would have gone under if it were not for my intervention. As the years went by, I took more and more control of my husband’s shipping company, if only because I knew we would lose everything otherwise.

When I was twenty-one, Sophia was born, and Melinda arrived a year and a half later. By then, William was so ravaged by drink that he was barely able to function. He didn’t take to his younger daughters in the same way he had with Rebecca. In fact, he barely seemed aware of their existence. For the most part, I was able to avoid his wrath, taking the children out on day trips with Miss Haggerty, and busying myself with the upkeep of Shaw Mercantile. William was either unaware I was running his business or pretended to be, I was never quite sure which.

My children, the upkeep of Shadowglen, and the maintenance of my husband’s business had forced responsibility upon me, giving purpose to my life. But despite having found and nurtured that inner strength, I still found myself on the receiving end of my husband’s cowardly rages from time to time. He blacked my eye one night, enraged by a “high and mighty” look he accused me of giving him while he fumbled through unlacing his shoes. I was obliged to explain it away by claiming to have walked into a low-hanging tree branch whilst strolling the grounds.

Then came the fateful day when William discovered that his pretty English rose was quite capable of drawing blood.

Melinda was barely a year old. I remember she was cradled in my arms while William and I were having a particularly nasty row about something or other. By that point, I could give as good as I got – in the verbal department, at least.

Brute though he was, I never dreamed William would dare to strike me with a babe in my arms, so when he took a swing and almost brained Melinda instead, I was dumbfounded, then livid with rage.

I managed to keep a calm demeanour, but later that evening I found William drunk in the bath, trying to shave himself with no success. By then, his hands seemed to have developed a permanent tremor.

“For God’s sake, help me with this – this bloody thing!” he growled. “I keep cutting myself!”

Calmly taking the straight razor from his shaking hands, I set about scraping away the stubble from his wretched face.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Of course you do.

Once my husband was impeccably shaved, the razor slowly made its way down to press against his jugular vein. Alarmed, William made to snatch at my wrist, but I stopped him in mid-motion with a single word. “Don’t.”

“Y-you… you wouldn’t dare, you mad bitch,” he squeaked, his face a deathly pallor.

My voice was cool and steady, which must have alarmed him even more. “Oh, I would, though. I’d like nothing more than to draw this blade across your throat and watch the life drain out of you.”

His eyes were frantically rolling, but he made no further attempts to move. “What the hell’s got into you, woman?!”

The razor still firmly resting against William’s quivering throat, I spoke low and clear into his ear. “If you ever lay a finger on me or my children again, I will kill you without hesitation, do you hear? You’ll never even know it happened. One evening you’ll pass out in your cups and never wake up again. If you have any sense left in that whisky-soaked brain of yours, you’ll mark me well, husband.”

With that, I pushed the straight razor back into his hand and closed his fingers around it. Perhaps that was foolhardy of me, but my message was clear enough: I’m not afraid of you anymore.

I left William in his tepid bathwater, eyes filled with terror.

That was the day I finally saw my husband for what he was: a cowardly, pathetic little man. It was also the day he saw me for who I was: a woman who had reached her limit. He never raised his hand to me again.

After that evening, William’s presence at Shadowglen was akin to that of a ghost. He occasionally spent time with Rebecca, but barely acknowledged the rest of us. His only real refuge was in a whisky glass, and he spent the remainder of his life in an alcoholic stupor.

Four years later, he was dead. As his spouse, and in the absence of an official will, everything he owned went to me – the house, the company, the money. I was set for life. And more importantly, I was free.

III

“Goodness me,” I said, as Victoria leaned back into the soft leather of her Chesterfield, lacing her hands together. “Remind me never to get on your wrong side.”

“Oh, I’m quite certain you could never invoke my wrath, Doris dear,” she told me with a smile. “But if you’re not over here in my lap with your skirt up around your waist in the next few seconds, who can say?”

And so I did as my lady wished. She hadn’t told me to slip my knickers down and off, but I took that extra liberty anyway. Parking myself on Victoria’s lap, I was rewarded with a finger plunging in and out of my cunt.

“You’re so wet,” she hissed in my ear. “So warm and wet.”

“I’m always wet for you,” I murmured back, a series of small orgasms going off inside me like firecrackers, one after the other. Often it happened this way – a prelude to a much greater detonation, which was quick to follow.

Once I’d caught my breath, Victoria pushed me away, then hiked her own skirt up, shifting forward to the edge of the chair and drawing her legs apart. She pulled the gusset of her knickers to one side, but not before I could notice the large damp patch at the crotch. “Eat my cunt,” she commanded.

I was down on my hands and knees in a moment, trailing my tongue through her musky folds. She smelled wonderful, a rich, earthy aroma every bit as enticing as the perfume of the rose upon her desk. She prised herself open for me, unsheathing the swollen nub of her clitoris. I took it into my mouth to suck, then flicked it back and forth with the tip of the tongue. Seeking and finding her arsehole, I wriggled a finger inside, fucking her bum while I attacked her cunt with my mouth. Soon enough, I had provoked Victoria to climax, her hands clutching handfuls of my hair while she cried out my name.

After discarding the rest of our clothes, Victoria had me sit on the edge of the desk while she drew one of my legs up and slotted her cunt against mine. Grinding against one another, we came several more times that morning, my thorny rose and I.

IV

With Victoria away on one of her forays into the city the next day and Shadowglen all to myself, I had ample time to consider her many revelations.

So much made sense to me now – the nature of her relationship with the brute of a man she’d had no choice but to call husband, her true desire forced into the shadows of an unhappy marriage, like so many others during that era of unbending convention. And the estrangement of her mother and father, who had engineered that terrible union. Now I knew why the girls rarely spoke of their grandparents. I don’t think they had much contact with them, if at all. There had been no visit from them since I had come to Shadowglen, that much I knew, nor from their paternal grandparents, for that matter.

And yet, that sham marriage had given her three beautiful daughters. I wondered if her bond with the girls had carried her through those years, a beacon of light in an otherwise dark world. Would she have succumbed to despair without them at her side?

And then there was us. Victoria and I.

If the revelations concerning her relationship with the housemaid and the marriage she’d subsequently been forced into weren’t enough, Victoria had left me reeling with her offer of Shadowglen as my permanent home, where I would live as her partner and lover.

Of course I was over the moon and eager to accept, but I also wondered how a relationship like ours could endure under the circumstances. 1935 was really no more tolerant or enlightened than 1919, when Victoria had been caught with her friend Nora, as far as romantic love between women was concerned. Which meant we would have no choice but to conceal our true feelings behind the walls of Shadowglen. We would be living a lie.

But then, wasn’t society fed and fueled by lies? In the orphanage alone, I’d been exposed to hundreds of them… and a glance through any newspaper might unearth dozens more. Lies told to the world, lies we told to ourselves. Did it really matter if Victoria and I added a few more to the grand tally?

Then there were the girls to consider. Would we have to keep our love, our passion a secret from them, too? Was such a thing even possible with the five of us living under the same roof? I didn’t know if Becky, Sophia or Melinda were even remotely aware of their mother’s penchant for other women.

I thought about all this as I dusted and polished and ironed. I thought long and hard. But honestly, I’d already accepted my situation. I loved Victoria, I loved the girls. And come what may, Shadowglen was my home now. After everything Victoria had told me, I no longer wanted to wring my hands over things I couldn’t control. This was the hand life had dealt me, and considering my humble circumstances, it was more than I had any right to expect. Perhaps it would work out, perhaps not, but regardless I would take each day as it arrived, and allow myself to be happy.

I didn’t have long to dwell on such things in the coming days, anyway. You see, Victoria wasn’t quite done surprising me.

V

Evenings at Shadowglen followed a familiar routine: The girls would return from school and spend an hour playing in the garden (or up in their rooms if the weather was wet) while Mrs. Broomfield and I prepared dinner, and Victoria finished off work in her study. After we’d eaten, and the dining room table cleared, I would spend a while helping the girls with their homework until bath time beckoned, or if it wasn’t bath night, simply let them scamper off to do as they pleased. Later, clad in dressing gowns and nighties, they would come down to the living room for mugs of cocoa before bedtime.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let us return to homework at the dining room table.

It was still early evening, but the last of the summer daylight had been all but blotted out by dark, angry clouds and sheets of monsoon-like rain. The thunderstorm seemed to charge the air around us, invoking a kind of tense, unspoken exhilaration.

It was hot and humid. Sophia and Melinda were particularly giggly that evening, their eyes sparkling with a scintilla of mischief. Victoria – who had recently been spending more time with us whilst the girls worked on their homework assignments – cooled herself with a small Oriental fan, the first couple of buttons of her blouse popped free. Becky, so keen to emulate her mother, had partially unbuttoned her school shirt as well.

Victoria kept peering across at me, giving me smiles I couldn’t help but return. I’m sure Becky must have recognised them as more than just friendly exchanges. She kept stealing glances at me herself, almost as if she were vying with her mother for my attention. It seemed there was another kind of tension in the air that night – the one inside Shadowglen feeding off the other percolating outside.

I wasn’t immune to the charged atmosphere in the room. My nipples were inexplicably stiff and sensitive beneath my cotton shirt, and a dull, pleasant thrum stirred between my legs, leaving me aching for the attention that only a lover or a restless hand can offer.

I rolled up my sleeves, and tried to concentrate on the task at hand, placing a finger upon the textbook lying open before me on the table. “So, if Queen Elizabeth I reigned between 1558 and 1603, how many years was she queen?”

The question was directed at Sophia and Melinda. As the eldest sister, Becky scribbled away on her own separate assignment, occasionally peering up to ask me or her mother a question.

“Stop kicking me, Sophie!” Melinda groused as she counted away on her fingers. She was sitting between me and Victoria on one side of the table, with Becky and Sophia on the other.

“How do you know it’s me?” Sophia returned with a smirk. “It might be Becky or Doris kicking you. Or even Mummy!”

“I know it’s you because I can see your head bobbing up and down,” a grinning Melinda replied, and bounced up and down in her chair to illustrate the point.

“Keep your feet to yourselves and concentrate on your homework, both of you,” Victoria told them, and Sophia gave a little pout.

Melinda slid her chair back from the table. “There. You can’t get me now, Sophie, can you?”

It was very hard not to notice that the ten-year-old’s plaid skirt had ridden up to her waist. Harder still to ignore the sight of her white knickers as she crossed and uncrossed her legs. Victoria had encouraged me to admire the beauty of her two youngest daughters as they bathed, but I had done more than that, much more. I had allowed myself to see them through a lens of sexuality; even summoned up images of them while I masturbated. Surely that hadn’t been Victoria’s intention. Would she be cross with me if she knew? It seemed likely.

But still, those knickers… tantalising flashes of white against the pale, smooth flesh of Melinda’s inner thighs. The child seemed oblivious to my furtive peeks as her legs scissored to and fro, and God knows I tried not to look. But isn’t it always the way that when you do your best not to look at something, you just end up doing it all the more?

I managed to drag my eyes away from between Melinda’s legs for the umpteenth time, then glanced up to find Victoria peering back at me. Good God, had she noticed where I’d been looking? She didn’t appear to be angry, or even annoyed – on the contrary, she regarded me with an amused smile.

Perhaps she hadn’t seen what I was up to. Or she simply read nothing untoward in it. After all, it was Victoria who had insisted there was no shame in looking. She could hardly blame me for taking her advice to heart, I reasoned. Nevertheless, I felt my face turn warm under her gaze.

“Forty-five years!” Sophia cried out, making me jump.

“Hmm?” I murmured.

She scowled at me. “Elizabeth I was queen for forty-five years. Pay attention, Doris!”

“Why was she called the Virgin Queen?” Melinda enquired, her legs now thankfully closed.

Becky gave a little snort, but didn’t look up from her textbook.

I did my best to compose myself. “Well… she never took a husband or had children.”

“Why not? Didn’t she need children to take over when she died?”

“Yes, ideally she would’ve produced heirs, but… honestly, no one’s really sure why.”

“Perhaps Elizabeth decided no man was up to the task of prince consort,” Victoria said cooly, her eyes probing mine. “Who knows? She might’ve preferred a queen consort instead.”

“Mother!” Becky admonished, then gave me a brief furtive glance, colour tinging her cheeks.

The younger girls seemed puzzled. “How can a queen have a queen?” asked Melinda.

“I think your mother is making a little joke,” I mumbled. “So, er… yes, forty-five years was the correct answer, Sophia. The next question…” I scanned the textbook in front of me, glad to have something other than Victoria’s unyielding gaze to command my attention. “What was the name of the theatre where Shakespeare’s plays were staged?”

“The Globe!” Melinda proudly announced.

“Very good.” I replied.

And all the while thunder rumbled outside like the laughter of gods. The rain hadn’t let up a jot, the air still humid and clingy; charged with possibility.

VI

Come morning, the rain and thunder had given way to clear skies and sunshine. A fine day for hanging out washing, which was just as well, as it was laundry day.

Having done my fair share of scrubbing clothes by hand in the orphanage scullery, Victoria’s top of the range Savage electric washing machine was a gift sent by heaven. Initially I was terrified of the noisy thing, and tried without success to convince Victoria that washing clothes the old fashioned way would get them cleaner. But I soon came to relish feeding sheets and garments of clothing into the drum, then watching with a peculiar species of hypnotic awe as they went round and round.

I never got used to the spin cycle, though. Even with the lid firmly attached, I would stand well clear of the big vibrating behemoth, convinced it would suddenly explode and destroy half the house, or worse – suck me into its whirring maw and swallow me whole, leaving nothing but a pair of vacant shoes to prove I was ever there.

I was pouring detergent into the revolving drum, happily humming away to myself when I felt hands around my waist; warm lips teasing the nape of my neck. I gasped in pleasure, pushing back against Victoria’s body, eager to give my lover whatever she wanted.

One of her hands appeared in front of me, delving into the unwashed pile of clothing on the counter to snatch up a pair of white knickers, the same ones Melinda had worn the previous evening. I’d rubbed myself to a splendid climax later that night, pretending she’d been letting me look up her dress on purpose.

Victoria held her daughter’s underpants before me for a moment, then brought them to my face.

“Wh-what are you doing?” I mumbled through the soft cotton. It held a light, musky scent, and I felt a twinge of excitement in the midst of my confusion, knowing it was the aroma of Melinda’s sex.

When I tried to pull the knickers away, Victoria batted my hand aside. “Shhh… Isn’t this what you want, Doris? I saw you last night, peeking at my little girl’s smalls. Or is it what’s underneath that interests you?”

“I d-don’t know what you mean,” I protested, squirming inside and out.

“Oh, I think you do,” Victoria insisted. “There’s no need to deny it. In fact, I was rather hoping you felt that way.”

What on earth did she mean by that? Goodness knows, Victoria was no shrinking violet when it came to sex – I’d seen her do things that would make a sailor blush – but this was something new, and it unnerved me a little.

Drawing Melinda’s knickers away, Victoria let them drop into the pile of clothing, then pulled the whole lot onto the floor, along with the unwashed sheets and towels. “I need to ask you something very important, Doris,” she crooned. “But first, I’m going to fuck you.”

With our own clothes stripped away and added to the pile on the floor, we lay down and made love hard and fast amongst the dirty laundry. Victoria ground herself against my sex with an urgency that thrilled me. I twisted my hips and pressed into her, seeking that sweet spot where cunt aligns perfectly with cunt. We came against one another that way, our union brief but no less exquisite for that.

Our clothes given up for lost amongst the jumble of dirty laundry, we scampered naked up the stairs and retreated into Victoria’s room, laughing like giddy schoolgirls. We lay stretched out on the bed.

I remembered Victoria’s earlier words. “What was the important thing you wanted to ask me?

Victoria gazed at me for a long moment, as if she was weighing her options. Finally, she spoke. “You know, Doris… I often wonder how my life might have been different.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Nora and I had been allowed to be together, to live as lovers. If society had permitted such a thing.”

“But then you wouldn’t have had the girls,” I pointed out.

“No. And I have no regrets… except for not knowing what became of poor Nora, of course. Still, I wonder how things would’ve turned out if we’d been able to pursue our love. She and I never had a chance. But if I want to give the girls the choice I never had, I must do so before they get much older and society manages to sink its damned hooks in.”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, and my confusion must have shown.

“I believe most women and girls have sapphic tendencies, Doris,” Victoria opined. “I don’t know what purpose that might serve from nature’s point of view, and I don’t think the same can be said of men and boys – at least, not to the same extent – but there’s always been a certain intimacy between women that’s hard to define.

“My daughters might grow up to marry men and have children of their own, and I have no objection to that, if it’s what they choose. But I want to show them there’s another way. It might be too late for Rebecca – she’s old enough to know her own mind, and just as stubborn as I was at that age, but I believe Melinda and Sophia are still young enough to be receptive to new possibilities.”

I propped myself up on an elbow, carefully regarding my lady. “I don’t quite understand. You think the girls need some kind of… education in how women make love to other women?”

Victoria ran the tips of her fingers down the contours of my body, across the swell of my breast and rib cage, then over my hips and thighs. “I’ve seen how you look at my daughters, Doris. All three of them. You’re not very good at hiding your true feelings, my sweet. And wasn’t it me who encouraged you to pay close attention to Melinda and Sophia when they were naked? Would you be shocked if I told you my intentions weren’t altogether innocent?”

I opened my mouth to speak, realised I had no words, then shut it again.

“And surely you’ve not failed to notice the way the two of them act around you. I certainly haven’t. The way their eyes sparkle, how they get silly and giggly. They’re especially animated when they come down for cocoa after their bath.”

“I… I began looking at them, just like you said I should,” I told her. “They noticed straight away – I suppose you’re right, I’m not very good at hiding things. But they seemed to like it. Now it’s as if they want me to look at them whenever their clothes are off. Maybe it’s just a fun game to them, or maybe—”

Victoria intercepted my fumbling attempt to explain with a new question. “Are you attracted to my daughters, Doris? Tell me truthfully, and know that I have no objections either way. None at all. But you must be honest.”

I stared at her, unsure how to proceed. Once the words were out, there would be no taking them back. Of course I was attracted to the girls. Hadn’t I masturbated to thoughts of them? Wasn’t I seizing every opportunity to ogle Melinda and Sophia’s bare bodies in the bath? Didn’t I long to see Becky strip down to her underthings in front of me again, just as she’d done that day in the shop changing booth?

Victoria demanded the truth. How could I give her anything less?

“I think they’re beautiful, Victoria. Yes, I find them attractive. And I… I think about them that way, yes.”

She reached across to kiss me full on the lips, lingering for a long moment before pulling away and fixing me with an intense look. “Do you love me, Doris?”

“You know I do.”

“And how far would you go to please me?”

I took her hand and kissed the palm, the gesture almost as much an act of fealty as it was affection. “I’d do anything for you,” I murmured.

“Would you?” she asked. “I wonder.”

She seemed to consider her next words carefully. “Tonight you’ll bathe with Sophia and Melinda. You will wash them, and let them wash you. You’ll touch them intimately, show them how girls may pleasure each other. And if you can, Doris, you will bring them to climax. Do you understand?”

I slowly nodded my assent, trying to absorb the full meaning of her words. Victoria was instructing me to seduce her two youngest daughters. There was no room for misinterpretation.

There were questions, though. Whys and Hows and What-Ifs. But I was very aware of not rocking the boat at that particular moment. I had dreamt of being intimate with the girls, had fantasised about it, and now, against all my wildest expectations, Victoria was actually giving me permission to do just that. Devious though it might have been, I didn’t want to give her an opportunity to change her mind.

So I reduced my questions down to just one. “Aren’t they too young to feel that kind of pleasure?”

Victoria pulled me on top of her. “Girls are able to become aroused at a very young age. Even as babies, in fact.”

I didn’t ask her how she could know that, nor did it seem important at that moment. With my mind filled with illicit thoughts of her children, and all the wild possibilities that bath time might bring, Victoria Shaw and I fucked the afternoon away like two rutting animals.

On to Chapter Nine!