Author's Note: Wow, I have actually been working on this on and off for over a year. Thank you so much to everyone who has left a kind comment encouraging me to keep going and telling me how much you love this series. It meant the world to me!
I didn't forget about you and I kept going!
Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy this next installment.
III.
Weeks passed by quickly now that Louis had arrived to stay.
On occasion she would journey to Versailles when summoned but she always returned even if it was deep into the night or very early in the morning. She and Clara ate nearly every meal together, spent quiet afternoons in the library reading to each other, and passed the chilly nights in Louis' bed sleeping soundly when they weren't making love. Clara only returned to the blue rooms assigned to her in the east wing to dress or when Louis was late returning from the Sun King's ever growing palace.
Clara found Louis to be a welcome distraction after the months of near monotony she endured before her arrival. She'd only had music lessons, every book in the library to read, writing letters to her friends in Vienna, looking after Sebastien, and garden walks with Constancia to break it. As much as she enjoyed them all, it didn't give her the same flavor to life that Louis provided. There wasn't much to do in the wintry French countryside but having her lover and patron so near warmed her heart. Even Constancia seemed brighter, she switched out her black and grey attire for deep hues of green, blue, and earthy browns instead.
The deep cold of the season came abruptly one morning to the wooded manor.
Layer after layer of powdery snow blanketed the grounds overnight. Clara woke before Louis to a stretch of white outside their window that quieted the usual greeting of birdsong she had become accustomed to.
Pulling back the heavy blankets, she shivers as she reaches for her oversized robe nearby, the lapels lined with rust fox fur, and hefts it over her shoulders. The soft rugs and animal skins on the floor guard her feet from the cold but the fire is long dead. Winter's chill crept into the bedroom while they slept.
As she draws closer to the window, the brown-skinned soprano pulls the heavy garment tight around her nightgown to guard herself from the cold and peeks outside. It is snowing too much to see much of anything but what she could see was caked in frost. From Louis' windows she could make out the vague outlines of the stables and the stocky build of its caretaker struggling to pull the heavy doors shut behind him. Once it was, a smile tugged eagerly at Clara's lips. No one would be traveling in this weather, the poor man could barely close up the barn.
No one would be coming to the manor or leaving it.
That meant only the stable attendant, the cook, the rosy unmarried maid, Constancia, Louis, herself, and of course Sebastien were the only souls on the grounds. All the other staff lived in the hamlet nearby and her music tutor would certainly not be coming today either. The manor would be quiet and Louis would not be called away.
"
Mon dieu
, it is snowing isn't it?" Louis groans behind her. Rolling over, she is half covered by the heavy blankets, revealing the lean musculature of her back. In her sleep, her auburn hair has become a frizzled mass of curls but it did nothing to shield Clara from her lover's hazel stare. This time of year, her deep olive skin pales with the lack of sun but her freckles kept their color, creating a stark spattering of brown speckles over her body.
Clara can only smile as she approaches the bed again, removing the heavy housecoat from her shoulders and diving back into the warmth beneath the blankets. Louis welcomes her with open arms and the smaller woman finds herself quickly enveloped in them, pulled to her lover's nude body. She has kept her strength during the winter and her hold around Clara borders on possessive. Without warning, Louis pushes her head between her lover's breasts covered by only her cotton chemise and breathes in the scent of her body still lightly perfumed from last night.
Last night she'd gone to bed before Clara, the Huntress recalled.
She'd stayed up after dinner to practice her music and had Constancia accompany her on the harpsichord. Louis remembered vaguely heading back to her chambers and stripping to only her shirt before crawling into her bed piled high with furs. The sheets felt particularly cold against her body when she slid beneath them; however, the dark wine from dinner and the faint wafting of her Nightingale's crystal aria effortlessly lulled her to sleep.
When Louis woke again, the fire had died down, deep quiet held, and it was dark in her room. There was the smell of lavender and rosewater, so reminiscent of her first love, and the faint touch of warm, slender fingers tracing her jaw.
Her eyes struggled to adjust in the blackness, making out the familiar shapes of her hunting trophies that lined the walls and a silhouette above her. She remembers kissing the knuckles of that hand then whispering a beloved's name with a longing that could only come to light when she was deep in her cups.
She is answered by a soft murmur of French and the black of night closing in as the fire finally dies. Suddenly she feels something soft, wet, hot, and so familiar between her thighs, taking long languishing laps at her folds. Warm hands and arms hold her beneath the blankets, encircling her waist to keep the leanly muscled woman flush against a warm mouth.
Her nipples tightened and hardened beneath her plain shirt as her body grew increasingly hot and sensitive. That same mouth grew bolder, she remembered, and latched itself around her clit to suck it just as she always liked. Gentle yet insistent, perhaps even sweetly demanding, wet slurps made her shiver as her first orgasm washed over her then briefly cry out when a stronger second one followed close behind.
She doesn't remember anything after that, the combination of two climaxes and several glasses of deep red wine put her firmly to bed. Waking up and seeing Clara at the window this morning is all she remembers next but something tugged at her.
Last night, it could not have been her songbird shoving her tongue between her thighs in the dark.
Clara feasted on her on numerous occasions. She was intimately familiar with not only her plush mouth but the point, width, and texture of her tongue. The young soprano treated the lips of her cunt like a fruit to be savored and cherished from the first bite to the last. Never did she rush the act and never did she seek to pull pleasure from Louis so much as nurture it instead.
The tongue from last night attempted to wring her into knots and succeeded. Pointedly so. It was ravenous and yet somehow frustrated.
Deep in her thoughts, she idly ran her fingers through Clara's hair (hardly listening to what she was saying) until she was jolted out of them by a gentle rap of knuckles on the door. Before she could protest, the singer was out of her arms and answering it for her.
