TAMING MAY

Megan McFerren

May enters, clad in sun. Garlands of light drape and fall from her skin, left strewn in gold across the plush rug. Gossamer curtains curl and fan on the breeze through arched picture windows, and carry in the scent of lilacs hanging heavy from the walls outside. It renders the room luminous in a way May’s never noticed before, soaking into the dense wood of the dining table, seeking into the secret spaces of the elaborate cornice molding encircling the room.

“Come.”

Hannah’s voice strips May to attention and centers her to the caress of woven scarlet carpet underfoot. The tea service blinks blindingly when she passes through swathes of sun, the silver tray heavy and cold against her hands. She does not yet look to the woman waiting poised at the head of the table, and instead demurs her gaze to the steaming pot and porcelain cups, the arrangement of biscuits circled around an ivory dish.

When she stops beside her, May’s eyes rest upon the masculine riding boots that wrap leather warmth up Hannah’s calves. Skintight cream breeches above, the long cascade of a velvet tailcoat—May wonders where she found it all, and her mouth tightens into a frown a moment too late for her to stop it.

“Speak.”

May swallows down her displeasure, and resisting the trembling in her arms, extends the tea service a little farther.

“Your tea, madam.”

“Not about the tea, darling girl,” Hannah purrs. “Set it down.”

The tray clicks to rest on the sprawling table, as empty now as the rest of the house with the usual family and attendants enjoying an afternoon picnic far out on the grounds. May withdraws her hands and presses them to her bare thighs, motionless but for a practiced patience in her breath. She makes a small sound when a thin stripe of black crosses the corner of her vision, and restrains the next noise as a fold of leather touches cold beneath her chin.

“Look at me.” Hannah raises the crop, lifting May’s face to meet her own. In an instant, May drinks her in, the flaxen hair knotted elegantly at the back of her neck, the high collar pressed stiff against her strong jaw. Her eyes are an endless darkness, glimmering with light, and to look into them is to seek the bottom of a well. “What have I done to earn such displeasure?”

“There was no displeasure, madam.”

Hannah tips her chin aside, and her pink peony smile unfurls into bloom.

“No?”

“No, madam.”

“You’re lying,” Hannah says. May’s chest tightens, and even without the spill of sun across her freckles, her cheeks warm. “Twice, now, I’ve asked you to tell me. Twice now you’ve argued. I would not suggest pursuing it thrice.”

May’s breath leaves her all at once, and she curls her hands together at the small of her back. “I was surprised to see you dressed for riding,” she manages.

“You frowned, darling, did you think I’d miss it?” A threat ripples like a shadow beneath Hannah’s words.

“I was dismayed to see you dressed for riding,” May corrects, embarrassed. Her fingers tighten against each other to fight back the urge to close her eyes. “It struck me as out of place to take tea in that way.”

When Hannah laughs, pitching her head back in delight, it cracks sharp through the silence so carefully preserved.

“As if it were the only thing that will strike you,” she grins. She lets the promise hold, pressing broad white teeth to her bottom lip, and then smooths her expression. The riding crop, unyielding, pushes May’s chin higher. “What charming hypocrisy, to judge my garments when you yourself have none. And during tea, no less,” Hannah chides.

She lets the whip drift downward, tracing the curve of May’s throat. Despite the summer heat, the stroke of oiled leather between her breasts shivers her, hardening her nipples and tightening between her legs. Were she permitted to move, May would close her thighs firmly and squeeze. Were she permitted to move, May would spread her belly over Hannah’s knees and grasp the legs of her chair. She would beg, to have now what she knows in a flutter of anticipation is coming.

“Patience,” Hannah tells her, and May blinks in surprise to hear her desires so directly addressed.

“I’m sorry—”

Hannah taps the crop against May’s thigh, hardly enough to make a sound, but more than what May needs for goose bumps to erupt across her skin.

“Serve.”

May moves with caution. The cup and saucer first. The biscuits next, and the empty plate to accompany. May knows well this service, used at countless teas and luncheons. She has seen them since she was a little girl. She knows just as well that Hannah takes two sugar cubes, set without sound into the cup with impractically tiny tongs sized only for that purpose. There is an order and a form, in every turn of wrist to spread the offering before her mistress, and in every muscle that tightens up the stretch of bare thighs to her ass. Grasping the teapot, May pours a steady stream that seems to mirror the heat running through her veins, rising to steam on her sigh as she sets it back in place. A tip of milk is added, blooming pale—no more than that.

It has been a lesson hard learned, over stolen afternoons when they are free enough to play. May’s skin aches with the memory of stripes and slaps that have left their mark to ensure the ritual is flawless, without effort, though it takes every part of her to make it seem so.

With a sleek slip of one leg over the other, Hannah brings the crop again to touch May’s inner knee. There it rests, and May thinks she feels it tapping a quick tempo, only to find that Hannah holds it motionless and it is her own pulse rising instead.

“Is something wrong, madam?”

“Tell me what you want,” Hannah answers, a curl of amusement in her words.

May presses her tongue between her lips to wet them, mouth dry.

“To serve, madam.”

Flat leather finds the inside of one thigh, and then the other, pressing insistently. May works her heels outward, toes following, to widen, farther and farther. Still hovering bent across the tea service, she fears that if she continues to spread her legs, she will spill out her whole being onto the floor. The warm air cools her thighs, revealing how damp they’ve become, and a fierce blush blossoms unbidden over the swells of her body.

“Stop,” Hannah says, and May shifts not a muscle beyond her hammering heart. Not until a snap of the crop against her leg curls her fingers against the table, not until a quick flick against the other forces her to swallow the moan that begs to break free. “Answer properly. You know better.”

“I wish to learn how to serve you, madam,” May breathes. Head bowed, her sable hair hangs in curls around her face, unbound, released from the tidy braid that normally holds it tamed. When a gloved finger slips a lock behind her ear, it is as shocking as a strike, and every bit as tender.

“Tell me why.”

“I wish to learn how to serve you, madam, because you are wise in the ways of service and generous to teach me,” May breathes, all at once like a breeze that lifts the curtains to nearly the ceiling.

Hannah strokes the backs of her knuckles, clad in kid-leather, down the knobs of May’s spine, and as if by doing so fills her lungs with air, only to push it back out when her hand teases upward again.

“I am that, darling,” agrees Hannah. “I’ve not spent my days idle like some spoiled girls, who lounge about doing little and thinking less.”

May watches the woman’s boots grind against the carpet as she stands and circles behind her. Toes first, twisting slightly, to leave behind a halo of earth. May knows Hannah hasn’t been riding. She couldn’t have been, and certainly not with the whole assorted household out on the grounds. Another step flakes soil from the soft bend of leather, and this time, May doesn’t frown, but can’t stop herself from asking:

“Are those mine?”

May’s dark curls spill into the cruel grasp of Hannah’s fingers. Shoved downward with a gasp, May bends until her stiff nipples harden near to numbness, brushing the table. The crop presents itself once more against her thigh, only a touch but enough to make May whimper, and when she tries to close her legs again Hannah’s booted foot stops the movement.

The whisper of her breeches, the heat of her groin against May’s ass is enough to pitch her whimper to a moan when Hannah leans heavily over her back. Leather stings hot against her thigh and May shifts to her toes to try and stretch the quivering muscle, but there is no give between Hannah’s body and hers, hardly space enough to draw a breath.

“I’m sorry, madam,” May pleads.

“You are a brat,” whispers Hannah. “A spoiled, greedy brat.”

“I want to serve—”

“But you don’t—truly, you don’t,” Hannah says, voice lilting higher as she tightens her fist and turns May’s head aside. “Had you your way, you’d spend it sitting here, in my chair—”

A strike, for emphasis, makes May’s body rigid under her. The stripe of red tightens to a burn so hot it’s nearly cold, and as the numbness passes it sends static discharge prickling sharp beneath her skin. May moans, unbidden, and her voice reverberates against the ancient wood beneath.

“Whose chair is it, darling?”

“Yours, madam,” whispers May, her breath pooling pale against the table. Another clap of the crop lines her thigh. “Whose house is this, darling?”

“Yours, madam!”

Another, crossed over to the other side as if spurring a racehorse on to victory.

“And whose boots are these, darling girl?” Hannah purrs, ducking her head to sweep a kiss across May’s shoulder as she sobs in gratitude.

“Yours, madam.”

May’s fingers curl shaking against the table and she shifts her weight under Hannah. She stretches backward to meet the slow undulations of Hannah’s hips rubbing against her. She leans forward to find the fine hairs between her legs parted by a bit of intricate decor carved into the table. It’s enough to grind against, rocked slowly by Hannah’s steady thrusts. It’s enough that May’s cheeks, already ruddy, darken to a torrid scarlet when she feels a wet trickle down her thigh.

The bliss of unyielding contact against her clitoris dizzies her when she rubs against the table. A moan betrays her bliss but rather than dealing another punishing snap of the crop for May’s arrogance, Hannah’s hand settles against her hip instead. The glove is cold, a startling contrast over heated skin, and in Hannah’s palm the woven handle of the whip abrades, juxtaposed against gentle fingers.

“It is all mine. I am the one who has worked to make this place what it is,” Hannah says, her voice a purr like that of a great cat, a tiger contented but with all the potential to lash out at any moment. “The boots and the chair, the house and you,” she adds, and May does not need to see Hannah’s grin to hear it in her words. “You especially.”

“I am yours, madam.”

“My beautiful serving girl,” laughs Hannah. “My darling May.”

The crop is set on the table, as if in warning for further disobedience. May sighs rattling relief, and with abandon shoves her hips back against Hannah’s. Electricity twines sparking up her legs when Hannah’s touch seeks trembling thighs, and bursts white behind her eyes when Hannah parts May’s lips to stroke her fingers through her maid’s wetness.

Only a fingertip penetrates, a teasing little touch, not nearly enough to satisfy the coiling tension in May’s belly. Pressure winds sinuously from her pussy, shortening her breath and spurring her pulse, and May fears only distantly the return of others to the house. Hannah would not risk being caught this way, no more than May herself—indeed, the retribution that both would suffer would be unconscionable, and so May trusts, as she always has, in Hannah’s wisdom.

If she deems May’s service unacceptable, she will tell her.

If she decides that May is better bared or dressed, she will make certain that she knows how she prefers her to be.

And if there is time enough for this, then May can do nothing more than spread her legs a little farther in welcome and moan when Hannah works a damp, gloved finger inside of her.

Cold leather warms in the heat of her body. As if her fingers were a cock, Hannah grinds her hips forward and pushes deeper inside, opening May’s cunt. She is already wide with wanting, dripping embarrassingly slick over Hannah’s hand, and she looks across her shoulder to the woman mounting her. Freckles dapple Hannah’s cheeks in the sun, her hair unwound around her face from the effort of taming May. Lips swollen with desire, parted flushed and panting, she is lovely, and May finds herself as breathless in seeing Hannah take her as she is in being claimed.

A second finger joins the first, thrusting her enough to jostle the tea setting where it sits untouched. Whimpering, May lifts a shaking hand to Hannah’s in her hair. It loosens, their fingers join and May drags Hannah’s hand against her mouth. Her breath swells hot back against her lips as she groans her adoration into Hannah’s palm, nearly laughing when Hannah closes her fingers over May’s mouth, enough to restrict her breath but not to stop it. May’s legs shake under the rhythmic, rough fucking against the table; she pushes to her toes as if to join her body with the way her heart reels higher, faster, spinning to dizzying heights.

Hannah’s fingers curl inside of her, rubbing against the little bulb inside that would level May to her knees if not for Hannah holding her in place. Her voice rises, pitching into shorter gasps, until a helpless cry takes her and the tightness, rigid in her body, breaks. Like a rope pulled too tight, May snaps and uncoils, the reverberations of her release rocking her body in echoes that roll from her throat to her toes and back again.

Even when Hannah works her fingers free, May still ruts against the table, a mindless motion of joyous, animal pleasure.

She knows who owns her.

And just as May is certain she could not love Hannah more, she strokes her fingers across May’s damp, parted mouth and grasps her chin, to turn the girl to face her. Bare backside against the table, gloved hand between her legs again, May slips her arms around Hannah’s neck and nuzzles the stiff collar of her shirt.

“Keep me,” May begs her, delirious with delight and fondness both.

“Always,” Hannah promises. “Always, darling.” She smooths May’s wild curls from her face and claims her with a kiss.

When her family returns, her mother greets her first, as servants bustle past the dining room with the remains of their picnic. “Sweetheart, we missed you terribly. The weather was simply lovely. Your father resigned himself to reading beneath a tree, so he didn’t join us in croquet. More’s the better, as I was able to win without him knocking the balls off across the field.”

Brisk steps carry her to where May sits at the head of the table, dressed in a soft white cotton shift meant for sleeping.

“I’m just taking tea,” May responds, as her mother sets a hand to her brow.

“You’re not feverish,” she says, before pressing a palm to May’s cheek. “Are you feeling better?”

May offers a smile, and lifts the cup to her lips. The tea is cold but sweet, and not only because of the two cubes of sugar within. Past her mother, she shares a smile with Hannah, standing with the other maids and clad once more in her somber dark dress and white pinafore. She looks away only when Hannah grins, and May’s thighs ache in memory of being taught again who is truly in ownership here.

May’s cheeks warm, from a fever all her own.

“Yes,” she agrees. “Much better.”