Thar Shaddin

Flossie sighed contentedly as her waist and ribcage expanded beneath her now relaxed stays. She leaned forward to touch her cards and after a moment's consideration, flipped over the card on the top of the right pile. She sat back in her chair and gazed at the cards on the table from that vantage point. Her dressing gown drooped open to form a looser "v" at her decolletage and the puffy line of flesh above her corset was partially revealed. Though the restrictive garment had been loosened, her smallish bosom still squeezed up against it. She in fact appeared to have particularly well-kept and smooth breasts compared to many working girls, and had probably never been pregnant.

"How long?" She blinked at the cards on the table and clapped the tips of her fingers together. "Oh, eight!" she announced, pointing out the sum of the two cards thus far revealed. She leaned forward again--with a little bit of a grunt--and picked up a die from the table to turn the "1" face up in front of her, tracking her own score. "A litter of swine to start the season," she recited. Incorporating the esoteric, ritual phrases into gameplay was a common way of bringing smalltalk to the table if it was ever lacking. Flossie, however, hardly lacked for smalltalk.

"Oof, I've been here the longest of the girls. Befar, you knaw, befar Kenny was really running the, em, business?" She inhaled pleasantly and glanced toward the stairs before she folded her hands in her lap and explained. "It's laik, his father, Sarf, before he passed these few years ago, mercy, he owned this place but didn't manage it. But after he passed, mercy, the managing pimp didn't want to work for the boys--Kenny and Mads--and as it turns out, Mads wasn't intersted in doing the business anyhow. So the other two girls went with the pimp. Good riddance! And then, you knaw, Otter was Sarf's cousin and he was caring for her because of her parents. And by that point, when Sarf passed, goodness, she decided she ought to work, and she's so good. Oh, but I don't say that from experience, guny, she's not my sart." Flossie fanned her face with her fingers lazily, an action in stark contrast to the rapid, rambling nature of her gossiping.

At that moment, Otter herself appeared at the landing, and Flossie gave her a tight smile, as if embarrassed to be caught talking about the girl. Otter either didn't notice or didn't care, as it became immediately evident she was towing a client. He was a few steps below her, but the crown of his head still loomed above hers in the frame of the staircase. As he came up the last two steps, he proved to be a few heads taller than the girl. He was a tall, dark, and passably good-looking trick--not such a large man, but with an impressive reach that he demonstrated by wrapping one arm around Otter and spinning her around to face him where they stood in the parlor. He kissed the top of Otter's head--her feathery nest of white-blonde hair--and inhaled deeply.

From her chair, Flossie watched the proceedings with a practiced stare. Her lips were poised in a not-quite smile, casual in appearance but carrying all the coyness she intended. She tipped her chin downward, and the coy expression carried to her deepened gaze. It was a work face, one that girls would put into practice on clients as a matter of habit. Whatever it did for them--made them feel wanted, made the girls look prettier--it was one of the tools to help the trade, and Flossie was simply working.

The john glanced up over Otter's tousled head and smiled at Flossie and Stella in turn. He had the satisfied leer of a man who felt he'd gotten the better end of a deal. Otter smiled blissfully at them over her shoulder. Her thin shoulders pressed inward, and her fists were sandwiched between her clavicle and her john's ribcage. The john appeared to hold some sort of dolly in his hand, a stuffed toy perhaps, which he rubbed against the small of Otter's back. They both giggled and practically fell into the first room past the staircase--the first of only two--and shut the door. Immediately there was the sound of Otter's gasping laughter and the pounding of feet against creaky floorboards, elbows and knees against furniture.

Flossie grinned at Stella. "Rake thinks he's Otter's boyfriend," she whispered, while nodding toward the cards to indicate Stella's turn. "And she at the very least laiks working with him." Flossie rolled her eyes in the direction of the room where Otter's squeaking vocalizations could very well have been excited conversation or sexual gratification. "Lucky for her, rait? I don't get my laughs while I'm working. . . you?" Flossie licked her lips and made intense eye contact with her own cards in the moments after asking Stella that question.

"Servant hands," she said smoothly as she turned over two cards, a four and five. She smiled almost slyly. It was through cards that she could add numbers together fairly quickly, and was probably one of the ways she had learned any math at all. She had never been schooled and could only add comfortably up to twenty-four. Working girls didn't need to learn frivolous things like math and writing; such things were worth almost nothing in Stella's world.

While Flossie talked, and talked, and talked some more, Stella busied herself for a moment with flicking the corner of one of her cards with feigned interest. The woman spoke so quickly that she wasn't even really able to get all of the words, nevermind make any sort of sense from them. Gossiping was one of those things people did only to pass the time, and maybe because they found some weird kind of enjoyment out of it. Stella had never been very good at making or following small talk, but the good thing about it was that she could simply nod her head, and selectively hear the answer to the question she had actually asked. Flossie had been here the longest, but that didn't really make it any easier to judge what sort of items she might have stowed away somewhere. Stella wasn't sure if she really seemed like the kind of person to hoard little expensive trinkets and such; if anything, she seemed like a simple person without depth or reason. Such was her judgment of the matter, without any real perspective or understanding at all.

The talk stopped with the suddenness of a horse hitting a wall, which was the only reason the black-haired girl looked up, first at Flossie and then along the trail of her eyes to Otter in the hall. She was with a man, so Stella smiled lightly in that polite, working-girl way, the same way Flossie did, then looked back down. She had no interest with the dealings of clients or the work of the girls in the brothel. That was an area where she figured she had seen it all. She didn't find it dirty or strange, just boring.

She kept her eyes on the cards even when she felt the man looking over at them. They were still audible, even when she hoped they would be out of earshot, so Stella took a moment to comb her long hair with her fingers and push it out of her face. Flossie started talking again, but this time she could actually understand and connect with her, you know, like a person.

A smile bloomed, and it seemed almost close to a real one. "Nah, werking hasn't never been too fun fer me. Werk is werk, and damn it beats staggerin' around plowin' fields y'know?" There was actually truth in her statement. Stella would never be able to work in a field, or at least she didn't think so. To her this had always seemed like the easiest way to work and earn money. The problem came in the way her brain treated and interacted with other people, with poor management problems in the pimps that had owned her, and in her own stupidity and lack of perspective.

She flipped her cards again and glowered at the resulting pair of ones.

Flossie leaned forward with another grunt to nudge the one-point die over in Stella's direction after her first hand turned up higher. She sat back with a small frown and ran the tips of her fingers under the top edge of the tight corset, smoothly rearranging a nipple that had been tweaked into an uncomfortable position.

"Auf, but guny, Ai'll disagree that work's jest work. Ai'll say we've all gat our talents, hm!" Her statements were punctuated by the half-crooning, half-tittering sounds Otter made from behind the nearby door.

"But you're rait that work can be naw fun at all." Otter's excited peeps from the next room seemed to supplement that this was not the case for everyone, but Flossie was ready to make a point. She brushed an imaginary lock of hair from her temple--her actual haircut was a bit too short to actually fall into her eyes--and tipped her head at Stella. "But if we've gat naw work tonait after all, I guess that leaves room for fun." Her right foot stretched forward under the card table and grazed the instep of Stella's right foot.

Flossie let her gaze drop down to the cards for a long moment before she reluctantly leaned forward again to turn over another pair of cards--reluctant, after all, because the change in position required her to withdraw her foot several inches to accommodate the shift in her center of balance. The cards she turned were also a pair; these were elevens, or as some customs had them, Garrisons. She had sat back halfway again before she remembered that the two pairs on the table signified the task of finding a sum among the visible cards. This being the first half of the game, the players were to pick out two cards summing fifteen, and the first to do so would get those points. Flossie scowled with concentration at the spread of cards, murmuring digits to herself. She, unlike Stella, was not as quick with arithmetic.

At this point, the stairs creaked again to herald the arrival of another. It was Mads, the older, quieter, less pimping of the brothers. He glanced toward the room where Otter and Rake's noises had settled into a muffled rhythm, then looked pointedly at Flossie. "Uhh. . . Sorry, but. . . Davrib needs to work pretty soon here, and. . . the dishes." He frowned at the awkwardness of that, reluctant to delegate the goings on of a whorehouse.

Flossie gazed back at him, forgetting for a moment that she was trying to add up card values. Without saying anything, she seemed to have had an effect on Mads, as he rubbed his elbow and shifted where he stood. "I mean, I could see what Kenny thinks is best," he sighed. It wasn't that he minded Flossie's disobedience to his unearned authority, exactly. It was just a little embarrassing in front of a guest.

"Why dan't you do that, yeah. Where's Kenny anyhow? Maybe you could join us far a drink then?" Flossie's eyes crinkled convincingly as she nodded, and thus managed to dismiss him.

She turned back to give Stella a look not entirely unlike those Udorl gave Kenny, but there was real mirth in Flossie's eyes. "Really, Kenny's the best I've ever worked far, naw kestion about that."

She picked up the die and rolled it to read out the "Five," aloud. She picked at the cards in front of her with her nails, and groaned lightly as she remembered the corset digging into her sides. A slight zip sound whistled subtly as she pulled free the lower tie in front.

"Ai'll say we've all gat our talents, hm!" To this Stella shrugged and nodded a bit, deciding then that Flossie was somewhat right. She supposed that she had something of a talent, or at least enough of a talent that individual clients kept asking for her name above the other prostitutes in her brothel. Could aggressiveness really be considered talent, though? That seemed debatable one way or another in this context, and in the end she guessed it didn't really matter.

The black laces on the corset one by one pulled free as Stella became slowly more relaxed and even interested in Flossie's jabber. Otter's comical squeaks from the other room had even loosened her a bit,and occasionally a louder noise would make her chuckle under her breath. She didn't flinch at Flossie's touch, but that was partly because she was still wearing boots. Actually the touch made her realize that she was wearing them and the moment Flossie leaned over the table to turn the cards, Stella lifted her foot and started undoing the laces on her boot. So many laces. Too many.

"Shite," she said as she looked up to find the pair, and with her boot laces in her hands and her foot hovering a foot off the ground, she awkwardly leaned her head out to look for fifteen. Her lips moved slightly while she multitasked with boot and math. The pressure seemed more than normal to add up a few silly numbers.
"Davrib needs to work pretty soon here, and..." "FIFTEEN!" and the boot was free from her foot. She pushed forward the four and one of the elevens quickly before returning to Pal Tahrenor and looking up at Mads, her neck still stretched.

Stella sat up again and pushed her back against her chair, watching the exchange between pimp and whore, the whole time keeping her eyes on Mads. He was an interesting one, too soft to be working in such a position. She subconsciously pushed her fingers through her hair and freed a few tangles that had already managed to take hold, only looking to Flossie when his footsteps were halfway down the stairwell. The laces on her other boot started slipping free then as she worked her fingers against the strings.

"He seems awful young him, I dunnae abou' that. Wha's he so good fer anyway?" She was genuinely curious. The thought of stealing from them tonight hadn't escaped her mind, but somehow the atmosphere was pushing her thoughts toward a different place.

Flossie seemed unruffled by Stella's small victory, and even graciously turned over the die on Stella's side to reflect the rise in her score. In fact, Flossie's attention seemed much more invested in the effect the game was having on Stella, win or lose. She stretched her legs out beneath the table again as she sat back in her seat and nudged the loose ends of Stella's boot laces with her toes.

"What's he good far. . .?" she asked with a glance in the direction of Madaftren's departure. "Auf, you mean Kenny, of carse! Yeah, Mads now he's good far not too mech, but he's a kind soul, laik. . . But you're asking why's Kenny the best I've worked far, hm?"

Flossie went through a few of the motions of the card game--effortlessly, almost mindlessly, as one who played nearly every night for years on end. She smiled down at the table and periodically lifted her gaze to steal long glances at Stella's decolletage from beneath her eyelashes.

"Well, have you ever had a pimp who was a virgin?" Her smile lit up with a coy twist as she said so, and she peeked at the staircase to be sure they weren't being overheard. "Of carse he's not a virgin anymore, in case you had lingering doubts--" at this, Flossie leaned in to playfully swat Stella on the elbow, as if Stella had done something sassy.

Flossie bit her lip and her gaze wandered to a dim spot on the wall, as she recollected some feeling. "But that's how it started off, you knaw how boys are befar they've had a go with a lady? Sweet, I think. I think boys are sweeter. . . Even though that's changed, he's the same with us, guny."

Flossie sighed and turned her gaze back as she slapped another card on the table. "I guess, you knaw, he needs us laik we need him." She shook her head ruefully as she counted up a modest few points. "He could be in over his head," she added, just quietly enough that Stella would have to listen carefully to hear.

Within a few minutes, Mads returned up the stairs. Flossie seemed at one surprised, baffled, and slightly pleased. She clearly had not expected him to come back. He had brought the old crystal bottle of sherry with him, and another glass.

However friendly the gesture, the elder brother still seemed as ill-at-ease as before. He stood awkwardly by their table rather than taking a seat, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he seemed to wait for someone to say something. Flossie turned her chin down to hide her grin.

Perhaps partially due to the bit of alcohol she'd consumed, Stella seemed to be smiling more often now in that sly, snake-like way. This time she noticed Flossie's foot play and raised a brow with the smallest of grins, but she didn't return the gesture. She watched the game absently, listening to Flossie's smooth, accented voice. Her fingers flipped cards and rolled die and pointed at cards to play or to use. It was all methodical, rehearsed so that she could focus the rest of her attention on the talk. Small talk used to be something she didn't like, but it was one of the few ways to pass the time in such a place. They were artists of conversation in their own unique ways (although Flossie was arguably better than Stella).

A virgin pimp. Stella's face lit up with a kind of deviant wonder, like a cat who was prideful of leaving something dead on the doorstep, or who sat on a fence to torment neighborhood dogs.

The light touch on her elbow normally might have made her flinch or jump, ready to hit back. There was a mesmerizing spell on this house, one that made her feel like a prized guest instead of a young whore who'd been brought here for purposes unknown. Her thoughts were far away from whether or not they knew about her owner, or whether they would turn her in, or hurt her.
So instead of reacting with anxiety, she shrugged in admittance of her doubt.

"You know how boys are before they've had a go with a lady?"
Something in her memories flickered, like a candle burned down to the base. She nodded.
Stella was watching the points on Flossie's side rack up when the woman mumbled something she couldn't hear. Her brow furrowed a bit and she stared at the table, trying to figure what she'd said before she gave up after a few seconds.

"Madaftren," she said it in a weird way, soft and almost expectant of him. "Oh good! You've brought me more booze," she said playfully, and twisted around to retrieve the glass she'd had her brandy in on the end table. Raising it to him, she grinned and looked at Flossie, who also looked amused. She waited for him to pour her a bit and then reached down to finally push her unlaced boot off her other foot.

"Well tha' feels better." She laughed a small, short chuckle and rolled her die.

Mads poured a scant glass for Stella--it was almost as if he wasn't interested in getting the whore totally blitzed--and holstered the bottle against the heel of his hand. He stood there awkwardly, more or less looming behind the girls as they relaxed in their element.

Flossie squashed her teasing smile down with her knuckles and held up a glass for him as well. It was a bit of a reach for Madaftren from where he stood, and as he wavered towards leaning in to pour hers, something in his attitude seemed to crack. He stepped over the invisible boundary that seemed to divide the girls and their heady parlor from the starker staircase and hallway, then planted himself on the couch beside Flossie.

"There's a boy naw!" Flossie barely concealed her surprise with a little rise in pitch. "You never sit with es," she added, with a meaningful glance towards Stella to reinforce the exposition. They would have to gossip in code, perhaps. But she didn't want to scare off potentially skittish game--either of them. . .

"Hem. . . sweet Udarl, she's rather awver her persistent nausea these days, isn't she?" Flossie took a risk with that remark; there was the chance he'd shy off to tend to his pregnant lass.

Madaftren inhaled and exhaled heavily through his nostrils as he plunked his glass down on the table, then tipped an inch of brown liquor into it. "She's alright these days," he said with a thoughtful roll of his jaw. He stared into his drink for a few long moments. It took a firm sip of sherry to bring him to raise his gaze directly to Stella's.

"So are we up to anything more exciting than embroidery up here?" He stole a glance at the boots deposited under the table and looked right back up at Stella.

A series of yelps and giggles trickled in from the adjoining room. Flossie fanned her fingers over her decolletage and pretended to shake away a blush.

"Ah. . ." Mads didn't seem in his element, and he didn't have the type of quick-witted response his brother or the girls might have to that awkward interruption.

"Well, we'll have to try hard if we're to have mar excitement than that. . ." Flossie supplemented for him. She reached over and took a sip of sherry from the bottle.

Stella stared sadly at the glass, resting it in her palm and dangling it there intentionally. She rolled the small amount of sherry sitting in it, looking at Madaftren a bit vaguely while Flossie tickled him with her words. With a quick toss, she swallowed the meager bit of alcohol he'd given her and set the glass on the low-slung coffee table. Flossie's glance at her pulled another weak smile out of Stella's lips, which transitioned to a sort of tipsy blush. She could feel a familiar warmth running through her, a generally good feeling that was uncommon for her to feel at all.

Originally she had planned to get a bit closer to these people so that they wouldn't suspect her to thieve from them. Now, she'd nearly forgotten about the whole ordeal due to the food and wine and didn't have to act in order to satisfy them. The strangeness of their relationships was quite enough to entertain her to begin with. All she had to do was sit there, play cards, and participate in the gossipy twitters and bits of voice that were expected in such establishments. That was easy enough. Flossie was one of the rare individuals that Stella enjoyed the company of, genuinely at that. It was all surprising and strange to her.

In response to talk over the pregnant woman's health, Stella began methodically putting cards on the table in front of Flossie. She'd seen a handful of pregnant women throughout their pregnancies in her time. Udorl looked pregnant enough to have gotten past pregnancy illness.

"Jus' gettin' comfortable now, an' smashing over Flossie at Claret!" she said, and admitted that it was a little more exciting at least than embroidery with a nod of her head. To be fair, she'd never tried it.

Otter's little sounds and giggling from the other room made Stella grin a sort of blush out, although not out of embarrassment. She swung a short look at Flossie and nodded cryptically. Otter did seem to enjoy that man's company, if nothing else. That was a rare gift in this world. Stella could count on one hand the number of clients she'd had whom she'd enjoyed. The business wasn't really meant for her enjoyment. Especially given her situation in comparison with Flossie and her house. A part of her felt envious of such treatment.

"To have more excitement than tha', yeh'd have tah get me real smashed," she let out a small, breathy laugh. A rare noise for her. "Or pay me double. How's about tha'!" She joked, kicking Flossie under the table with a stocking-covered foot lightly, for good measure.

"But Udorl. How far is she along then?"

Mads wrested the bottle back from Flossie, and in turn she pretended to put up more of a fight. "I just don't know if the bottle's that deep, Floss," he said with a sly roll of his jaw. When he glanced over to Stella again, he was fighting a blush--apparently he was making himself shy with his own banter.

"Udorl is um--how far along?" he stammered. "Ah, she's um. . ." He seemed distracted, taking his time with the simple question. "The baby's coming in three or, um--less than four months' time."

For all the softness of her features, Flossie could cut a sharp line with her squint when her mood was particularly piqued. "Davrib says it's a son," she cooed over the lip of her glass. She gazed expectantly in Madaftren's direction, like a mother goading her child to brag about his accomplishments.

Mads put the bottle to his lips and appeared to take a large swig, but smacked his lips rather dryly as he glowered at the tabletop. "Davrib said Udorl would be born a twin," he said.

Flossie giggled and arched her neck in a stretch, at the same time extending her foot to slide against Stella's instep. "Davrib wis Udorl's nursie," she supplemented, for Stella's sake.

"And, last I checked, there was only one Udorl," added Mads, "and Davrib was wrong on that divination. Not a very good diviner of fates, missing something like that."

Flossie managed not to mar her good nature even as she rolled her eyes, mildly annoyed with Mads for not playing along as proud papa. She made a little vocal sigh as she leaned back over the table to see that Stella was, indeed, trouncing her. She picked up another card and worried it between her fingers while contemplating strategy.

"More like a witch, really," Mads spoke up again, and sipped at his brandy. Actual exposure to openly magical types was so limited in Marn that folk tales had a better sway on the local imagination than in more cosmopolitan arenas. He seemed to be joking, but Flossie sat up rather abruptly.

"She's not the witch," she whispered between her teeth. She gave Stella a puzzling, wide-eyed look.

Mads, apparently misunderstanding the article of Flossie's sentence, merely laughed and sipped a drop from the lip of his bottle. "Well, she's got a third nipple." His sudden, deep blush betrayed his shyness and surprise at what he'd said.

Flossie snorted a laugh and looked just as surprised at him. "Nat laik you've seen it!" She held out her glass for a top-off. The whore appeared much more mirthful and rosy than the moments before, not much vexed by talk of witches and losing her card game as long as the conversation stayed light. "I haven't a third nipple, Stella, guny, have you?"

Madaftren's blush spread to his ears and he shifted in his seat. Flossie teased him by slipping her middle and index fingers down the center of her own shallow decolletage and tweaking at the spot where an imaginary third nipple might be. "He maight need es to prove it, if he believes jest what he hears. . ."

A son.
Stella tried to imagine what it would be like to have a child at her house.
She frowned when the realization dawned on her that she would never have a child there, as Johnston would likely immediately sell her if ever she was to become pregnant. That, or he would force the baby out of her - an even more likely scenario.

Flossie teased Stella's foot with her own, and brought her attention back to the real world. The movement persuaded a little smile from her full lips, and Stella shifted in the armchair, flicking an eye to Flossie while she spoke of Udorl and then to the table of cards. She made another dice roll and grinned at the results.
"And, last I checked, there was only one Udorl," said Mads, and Stella almost said 'thank Teo for that,' but she didn't have enough drink in her to bother with it. She tried to make a mental note to keep sarcasm and nastiness to a minimum, but from experience knew that it was rather pointless.

The term "witch," however, was bad enough to make Stella a bit tense. Many references to magical types, especially those so blatant, were enough to make her feel uncomfortable. It was just one of those things; you could curse at Stella all you wanted, but talk of witches and faeries always put her a little more on edge than it should have. Still, he was clearly joking, so she pushed the feeling aside.
"She's not the witch," said Flossie, and gave her a telling look that made Stella jokingly place her hand on her chest and fan herself with the other. "Surely not!" she joked with a fake Western accent.

A third nipple!
Stella snorted an awful noise and doubled over tipsily in her chair for a moment, clutching her mouth with her hand while she giggled silently. She steadied herself and rose in her seat again to flip two cards over on the table, revealing a four and six. She frowned at the result.
"No I've not a third, last I checked," she said, and looked at her exposed cleavage. She poked the top of her breast rather playfully and it wiggled a bit. She noticed that Flossie was teasing Mads just as badly and grinned more; they were on a similar wavelength. She loved to torture shy men, and women for that matter. She just never did.

"You dun' think I could've grown one do ye? Maybe the heat... Or the food!" She looked at Flossie wide-eyed and whimsical, a faux fear spread across her brow.

Flossie was happy to indulge the company of a girl who liked to tease and a man who needed some teasing. She wasted no time hefting herself up from her seat and over to Stella's spot, tut-tutting in feigned concern as she went. "Really jest abawt anything could cause the deadly affliction. . ." Flossie kept a sideways glance on Mads as she sidled up behind Stella's armchair. She curled her fingertips over the back of the chair and leaned down to put her lips at the level of her temple. "We ought to check," she cooed over the expanse between them and Mads.

Her left hand reached down to sweep Stella's hair to one side, off her shoulder, and the other traced down the side of the girl's jaw to rest its fingertips on her collarbone. She propped her weight up with her left hand against the back of the chair. Flossie's hands were warm and rosy from the liquor, and her touch was bold and just a little firm. She pulsed her fingertips a few times to coax that enjoyable wobbly effect out of Stella's flesh again. "Mmhm. . . well she seems to be put together laik a girl should be. . ." She dipped her fingers a little lower, into the divot in Stella's exaggerated cleavage, the spot some wealthier prostitutes liked to daub with fragranced powders. "Ah, very warm," she commented towards Mads with a drawn out smile.

He mostly stared down at his hands, clasped around the liquor bottle, and offered them an upward glance and a reluctant smile every few moments. He didn't seem particularly bothered, just not aware of how to comport himself in the situation. Given that he lived in a meager whorehouse, he wasn't especially well versed in that sort of banter. "Find anything?" he finally said as a fierce blush crept up his features. He trained his eyes downward and bit his lower lip against a grin.

"Goodness," Flossie murmured against Stella's temple. A deeper, warmer intake of breath seemed to indicate she was becoming less interested in the playacting aspect of this game. She slipped her fingers up but let her thumb hang nestled under the fabric of Stella's bodice. "Now I seem to afflicted with a third nipple--down there." Her loose fingers swooped over the curve of Stella's right breast. She squeezed and giggled. "How does one cure that?"

Mads, for his own part, looked mildly intrigued and confused. Even married men weren't always clued in to the basic intimacies of a lady's undercarriage. Flossie hardly seemed to notice how successfully her teasing of him was going; she was more intent on exploring the malleability of Stella's breast and the warmth of her jaw beside her lips.