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She's really just a maid, to the rest of the Thirlwall Household. A maid that they hired to keep their garden-centered mansion clean down to the corners of the big front windows on the third floor. She fit right in, too; all lace garters under her black skirt, perfectly curled vanilla hair and thick eyelashes. She never spoke much either, which is what the eldest daughter liked best.
Jade can remember laying out on her spanse of luxurious bedspreads, rolling onto her side to see Perrie coming in the front gate with a few dainty leather suitcases. She leaned up on her elbows to watch the blonde coming in through her window, and a sly smile crawled on Jade's cherry lips. Everyone knows that Jade was the princess, and everything pretty that came in the door was hers from then on. Ms. Edwards would be no exception.
It started with tea, where Perrie would serve the Thirlwalls in coifed dresses and barely-fitting blouses. Jade looked more thirstily at the maid's garter latches than at the cups of ginger tea being filled before her.
With a flash of brilliant blue eyes; Perrie looked at Jade for just a moment, then turning her glance back to the cakes she was passing out. Jade crossed her ankles under the table and sipped at the hot tea. She could remember thinking 'two could play at this game'.
Because Perrie was definitely a tease, there was no way around it. What sort of a professional maid packs only lingerie-esque uniforms and looks at people like some sinful seductionist?
On the way to tutoring lessons in the garden-cottage, Jade would pass the maid going down the stairs; they'd share the same look they always did. The Thirlwall girl would give her one of seeming disinterest although they both saw right through that, and Perrie would pass a slow glance up from Jade's dainty high-heels, up over her dress-edged thighs and finally to her face with not a word passed.
It did become a game, of sorts. Perrie kept on teasing Jade in front of the family at tea, and Jade would keep giving her mysterious looks to the maid, as if humoring a secret between just the two of them. Jade liked to think that Perrie was her little secret. To her father and mother; she was Ms. Edwards, laundry folder, feather duster. But to Jade, the young woman was a delicious prize that belonged only to her.
Her parents could tell you how Jade reacted when she didn't get the things she wanted. Such a pampered little rich girl always got her way, and when she didn't, she would throw a storm of a tantrum. Breaking all of their expensive cabinet adornments, ripping the curtains, anything just to express her anger. With this prize, Jade would be patient for once. Because the payoff would be worth the wait.
One afternoon was particularily awful. Jade curled a black strand of hair around her pinky finger as she bit into a fluffy buttercake, and Perrie dropped the mother's handkerchief with a timid "excuse me". Jade choked on the dessert as Perrie bent over and exposed her undergarments between porcelain legs. She hid a grin of disbelief; blushing to her cheekbones and looking at her gloved hands.
Her parents spoke to her about leaving for the week to visit family in London, and Jade nodded to what they said, barely listening. Perrie sauntered back to the house from the garden but Jade saw that the maid had acknowledged her parent's news. They both understood what this meant; seven days to indulge, a chance to call a truce.
That evening, her parents departed the Thirlwall grand gate and Jade changed from tea clothes to night clothes. As the daughter of a rich and famed couple, she could of course import french lingerie to wear at hardly any cost. Her parents didn't notice anything she did with the money.
This particular piece was light turquoise; with light layering over her ribs and skimpy skirt linings over the waist. She knew it wasn't anything less than what to expect from Perrie.
Jade left her hair down and laid out on her bed, just sinking into the queen-sized pillows and lazily twirling a hand in the canopy curtain.
Perrie was there when the clock downstairs struck nine. She closed the bedroom door behind her and climbed onto the bed of the Thirlwall girl, smirking with a tin canister in her grasp.
Jade sat up with heavily lidded eyes, and cocked an eyebrow. "Is that the sugar tin?"
"I've got a bit of a need for sugar at the moment. Surely you wouldn't mind, princess?"
"Do what you will. We have all the time we could ask for now."
Perrie took the lid off and gently pressed Jade back onto the bed, proceeding to dribble a line of sugardust over the tanner girl's exposed belly.
Jade leaned her head back and bit back a small moan as Perrie straddled her; lapping at the sugar over her midsection and occasionally gifting bites. Not enough to hurt, but enough to tantalize. Jade thought about how she could live with Perrie teasing her for the rest of her days.
But when she couldn't hold down her desire anymore, Jade sat up and threw Perrie down on her back in one swift move. Perrie giggled, "Anxious?"
Jade crashed her mouth onto Perrie's instead of answering, licking into the other girl's mouth as much as she wanted to. They both elicited noises of delight as their bodies winded into the sheets. Perrie inhaled Jade's scent from all around her and submitted to her employer's daughter's touch without so much as a protest.
"Going to have to take this pretty thing off," Jade pouted in remorse for the black and white costume before stripping it from Perrie in slow parts. In the end, she opted to leave the stockings on the maid, they were just too decorative.
Perrie was beautiful herself too, Jade realized in a pang. She smiled down at the woman below her, "You're gorgeous, my girl." Perrie only beamed and writhed in slight need. Remembering the task at hand; Jade focused back on the very thing she'd been dreaming of since Perrie had arrived.
And then Jade was everywhere; suckling at the other girl's nipples, racing her left hand over any and all skin within reach, using her index and middle right fingers to press onto Perrie's sweet spot. Perrie mewled and arched into Jade's ascended body, panting in time with each swirled press of a fingertip between her legs. Jade thought about asking Perrie to quiet herself but the sounds of the blonde coming undone were just too good.
"Louder," Jade whispered, lowering her lips to Perrie's entrance after a trail of nibbles by her hipbones. Perrie obliged with a keening beg, causing the Thirlwall girl to grin before licking inside. The loud keens rippled out of Perrie, because she was a good girl, and she did as she was asked. She belonged to Jade now.
When Jade had the girl below her throbbing in stimulation; she returned to slip their mouths together, mixing the sugar and taste of Perrie's inside. Her hand worked into Perrie with a heavy roll of her wrist before they both had to break off in a breath of ecstasy.
"Fuck," Perrie exhaled. Jade watched the maid's beautiful jawline from where she was resting their chests together.
"Naughty word, sweetheart," Jade chastised. "Bad girls must be punished."
She thrust her fingers deeper into Perrie; building a more rapid rhythm and scissoring her entrance. The blonde moaned, face flushed and mouth wide. "You're delicious," Jade practically purred, moving to tug absent-mindedly at the bows on Perrie's garters.
They both reached the point of over-stimulation at around the same time, chests heaving, skin warm, and joints trembling.
Jade's lingerie was half-off by the time Perrie reached her orgasm, but she proceeded to remove it all afterwards, moving sleepily under the blankets. The maid got out of bed, though, dressing in a cream-coloured robe that was hooked by Jade's bathroom. As she tied the straps around her waist, Jade eyed her, "Where are you going?"
"No where," Perrie answered, flashing beautiful teeth at the Thirlwall girl. "I'll see you in the morning, my queen."
Jade scowled. Her heart dipped as she watched Perrie leave the room without so much as a kiss goodnight.
"I make love to you, and you leave me alone for the night?" Jade grumbled dejectedly to herself. But, drained as she was, the Thirlwall girl allowed the maid to leave as she laid back down.
When sunrise came, Jade readied for her day as the sound of some New Orleans jazz record floated from the record player downstairs. She dazedly looked off the bed at the strewn mess of lace on the floor, memories of the night before rushing in like the tide.
With a slight start; she realized that there would be no need for proper dress with her parents gone, so Jade pulled on panties before heading to her father's room to steal one of his white dress shirts.
A handful of the buttons were left undone, because the game was back on today. Surrendering would come much more frequently this week but the game was most definitely back on. Jade padded down the dark-wood staircase with a yawn.
"Perrie, love?" She called.
"In here!" The maid answered from the kitchen. Jade smiled, knowing that; of course Perrie would still be doing her duties. Perrie was swaying her hips to the music, back turned, so that Jade's eyes fell to the curve of her sides. Today was going to be hard.
"What've you made for breakfast then?" Jade asked, coming under the dining room arch to see a platter of tiny muffins and a pitcher of blackberry tea. Perrie had on one of Jade's calico-flower print dresses, causing her to wander when Perrie had snuck into her closet.
Perrie caught Jade's gaze on the garment, "Oh I assure you I've not been robbing you. I've just got a bit of a fondness for wearing my lover's clothing."
Jade grinned cheshire-like, "Lover." She fought down blush when she spotted the sugar-tin on the table.
When the two girls finished their breakfast, or at least what they could stand in silence without dissolving into laughter, they headed out into the garden to walk before the sun got too high. It's just that all of this was unbelievable, they had seven days to love and touch and breathe without anyone to see.
Their bare feet stepped through the grass of the garden and over slightly warmed pathstones, shoulders brushing both against eachother and against the floral hedges to the side of the path. The Thirlwall house was far enough in the countryside that Jade had no worries of anyone seeing her outside barely dressed, or the maid in her clothing.
"Tell me about yourself," Jade asked tentatively. It wasn't like her to try and get to know people. Usually she gave closed hard stares at anyone who tried to know her.
Perrie stepped over a sprout between the stones, "Born and raised in a poorhouse by the seaports down south, never got proper schooling, rough family situation and all that. My aunt paid for me to go to a finishing school where I got an offer for maid interning. Took it up, now I'm here."
Jade shook her head rather sadly, "Perrie I didn't mean your history. I mean, don't get me wrong and I'm very sympathetic for your childhood gone awry. But I mean... Like what's your favourite flower?"
Perrie's face contorted in confusion, "You want to know what my favourite blossom is?"
"Well, just your little things about you. I've picked up a list of things myself from observing you but I can't see through your eyes. Start with the flower, then keep going."
Perrie was utterly perplexed, as if she didn't see the importance of such answers. "Favourite flower is probably, the daffodil. It just smells so nice and has," she twisted her fingers to accentuate the shape of the petals, making Jade giggle. "Frilly things. I like cheesecake, and bluebirds, and the noise that sails make when the wind hits them." Her face softened as if hearing the sound of the sails instead of the trees. "What about you?"
"I suppose I'll start with flowers as well," Jade said as they rounded the corner, stepping into the gardenhouse. Perrie sat down on a loveseat with a mocking face; primping her skirt and hair as if she were a rich girl. Jade offered a sound of amusement, but something chilled on her insides. Nonetheless, she wrapped herself into Perrie's arms.
"For flowers I say... snapdragons because of the name, and I like kittens, and honey."
"I'll be your kitten," Perrie murmured by Jade's ear, her breath ticklish and sweet with muffins.
Jade couldn't repress a grin, and a wave of pleasure at Perrie's words. "Will you now?"
Perrie took her tongue and licked a stripe across the side of Jade's neck, ending with a barely audible "meow." All sense of humour eluded Jade when she noticed just how good her hips felt pressed back against Perrie's. She tightened her grip on Perrie's forearms, "Inside, now."
After noting that neither of them had showered for the morning, the girls headed quickly to her parent's bathroom to take advantage of the giant cast-iron tub. They were a mess of bubbles, kisses and wet skin until the water got too cool, then they wrapped a big towel around them both and fell back on the bed. "We should dress fancy tonight," Perrie suggested, touching noses with the other girl.
Jade seemed taken aback, "Fancy, like what, pearls and dresses?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
"Why?"
"Well, I never quite get over seeing you all dolled up. Plus there's one dress I hung up to dry one day, it's your mother's, and it is just beautiful; I've been dying to see it on you, actually."
"Hm, which one?" Jade rolled out of the towel and headed for her mother's grand wardrobe.
Perrie sat up, flicking her hair over her shoulder, "The light pink one? All satin with the strings of jewels as the midpiece? I don't know I guess I've just always wanted to have a fancy date, secret fantasy."
"Not using me, are you Perrie?" Jade questioned slyly, turning to glance back from the rack of dresses. "Taking advantage of the girl with the money in any way you can?"
"Oh please, if I wanted riches I'd have signed on to work with the Tomlinson-Styles residency. God knows Harry buys enough ridiculous things to satisfy Louis' hunger for diamonds that they need maids to dust."
Jade giggled, knowing personally what the duke Styles was like. Then, she found the dress Perrie described, so she released it off the hook.
They spent the remaining hours from sunset applying shades of makeup; the pinks of blush overlapping with the shadows of their cheekbones, mascara swiped gracefully at their eyes and lipstick applied with expertice. Jade put on the dress Perrie liked, telling her that she could choose anything from her mother's wardrobe.
As Jade was fixing the clatch of a crystal pendant around her own neck in the foyer, she heard the light clicking of heels on the stairs. She looked up to see Perrie donning a midnight-black gown with blue tinges over her eyelids. Wow, blue. Perrie had known a very good tradesman to get blue eyeshadow in this age; that was the most expensive tone.
Jade paused, breathless as she observed Perrie coming down the stairs. "Blazing hell, you're the most beautiful thing, my girl."
Perrie ran a hand next to her on the banister, reaching Jade and flashing a smile unlike any other. Perrie had this very specific smile; one that was aesthetically pleasing in every way, one that made you forget where you were and instead wonder why the room seemed spinning, but it was knowing. The kind of smile someone who had seen death a hundred times inside themselves would show you. Jade wanted to say one thing, but she rid herself of the words with the next breath and said another; "Would you care to dance, Lady Edwards?"
Perrie's eyes could not have seemed more sorrowful.
They danced like the swirling flame of a candle, rotating and switching and gliding with the step that only an upper class girl knows how to do. Perrie's finishing school had taught a very good dance department, Jade gathered. But like a candle; they both seemed to melt, almost.
Everything that Jade had thought this would be faded through the day. She'd imagined scandalous makeout sessions, sneaking out of her room at night and tiptoeing past her parents' to get into Perrie's bed. Jade had seen Perrie as an object of pleasure; the maid that didn't just make her bed, but was the girl crying her name out in it when the moon was high.
But now she wanted to weave herself into the blonde's world. Perrie had gained a surprising amount of worth to the Thirlwall girl by the evening's end. The two had crossed necks, heads tilted into the other girl's soft and perfumed hair. Jade's inner walls were no where to be found.
When their ankles tired, they linked arms and made their way upstairs without a word. Perrie had prepared champagne in the kitchen but neither of them quite felt the atmosphere.
Instead of roughing her way through an act of dominance, Jade decided to give soft and submissive a chance. She slipped off Perrie's dress with careful hands, allowing the blonde to remove hers afterwards, and they guided themselves to the dimly-lit bed with the movements of wax sliding down a candle length. Easygoing, close together.
Jade reclined back and spread her legs to accomodate Perrie nestling between them, one leg on each side of Jade's thigh. Slowly, Perrie leaned down and matched her slightly-opened mouth onto Jade's glossy scarlet lips, and then they were rhythmic again.
Perrie grinded down onto Jade's upper thigh, arching her back in rolling motions so that her hips were tight across the other girl's leg, and they kissed in patterns. A few small ones, then their lips catching deeply at an angle. Jade's spine rippled and her breath hitched as Perrie began to tweak one of her nipples, her other hand braced against the mattress. The room was filled with the sounds of brushing skin, the wet release of their kisses every time one broke, the occasional sigh of bliss.
And Jade felt something unfrost over her heart, the coming of a new season, the seeding of something that healed rather than oppressed. She didn't just want to do this with Perrie every night; she wanted to be beside Perrie forever. Perrie and her nearly translucent skin that made everything she wore so alluring, her waves of muted blonde hair, her history which was much more overbearing than Jade had seen. She wanted to escape from this upperclass life, and go to New York City with Perrie to watch the way her face would alight from the glittering skyscrapers at night. Jade wanted to cause real smiles across her face instead of the washed up ones she always received.
Eventually, the groove of their bones began to slow, and Perrie rolled off Jade so that their faces were together and legs tangled. "Don't leave," Jade pleaded quietly, when she felt Perrie start to pull away. "Stay tonight."
Perrie exhaled longly, but she obeyed Jade's wish.
In the morning, before Jade awoke, Perrie untangled herself from the other girl's grasp as carefully as she could. The sun was barely making it through the curtains; it was early, and soft yellow, and Perrie was in need.
Each step after she left the room was barely felt, like something was carrying her down the hall instead of her own feet making the steps. Perrie could never control it, the being dragged. Technically something was carrying her. A mistake, a monster of numbness, a map with a destination nearly reached.
No one ever plans to become addicted to cocaine.
Raised in such a sketchy area of English piers, you can often come across things that commoners don't see imported. Perrie was told that the euphoria was worth it, and that it really does no harm, and so she'd tried it on a dock with her friend Jesy back home. It had been hell since.
During finishing school Perrie would get a "blow", as they called it on the streets, when her dorm mate was asleep. The etiquette coaches always commended her for being such a positive and energetic person.
And it worked; she always got off with a great high, Perrie would feel like she had wings in her mind that set her free, she aligned every star in the sky and the burns collided in a billion fireworks. But then the long term effects began to set in towards the end of the semester.
Perrie would lie awake with tears streaming down her face, sad for unknown reasons, reasons she couldn't draw from anything but the use of cocaine and how it was eating away at her ability to feel pleasure. She wondered how Jesy was doing back home.
Her friends joked about how her pupils always looked so wide, and how Perrie always put more sugar in her tea than the others. Sugar put her mind at ease; a visual substitute for what she couldn't absorb until later in the night.
Eventually, she knew what would happen to her, and through many isolated blitzed out nights, accepted her fate. Perrie knew she would die young, so she marked off a few things in her head that she wanted to do first. One, live in a beautiful home. Two, fall in love, or at least receive love. Three, dress like a princess for once.
Perrie unclicked the latch of her suitcase, trying not to catch her own pitiful gaze in her mirror. Trying not to think about how much she hated Jade for having the life she did, and instead about how Jade was so beautiful when she was asleep, her very face instigating something like emotion in Perrie again. But when was the last time Perrie had felt anything without her sweet illegal sugar? It was either get a blow, or sink into oblivion without it, there was no quitting.
With a spread across the vanity desk, a brace of shaky palms and a damaged inhale, Perrie was abducted into bliss.
"Perrie, love?" Jade giggled as she called the maid's name out into the corridors. She'd put on Perrie's robe from the morning before, suddenly feeling just how good clothes sharing with someone you loved was.
She practically skipped to Perrie's bedroom; figuring that that's where the maid must have gone so early, if not downstairs.
Jade turned the corner and her eyes fell on the curled up shape of the blonde on the floor. Her smile fell away; twitterpated dazzle being hurriedly replaced by heartsick concern. "Perrie?"
Running over, she dropped to her knees and turned Perrie's heavy form over. The girl's eyes were glazed and unseeing, porcelain skin cool to the touch and joints rigid. "What happened to you? Perrie, Perrie-" Jade shook her frantically, tears welling in a torrent of hurt and despair, her vision blacked over for a few moments and the air was ringing something evil. Jade screamed only once, then she was lifting Perrie's upper half into her arms with all the strength she could muster and wrenching sob after hitched breath, how could Perrie have died so suddenly? This wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't, Jade finally had a glistening beautiful thing in her life, Perrie had brought out the greatest in the Thirlwall girl with just soft touches and an open soul. She couldn't be gone.
Jade clutched helplessly at Perrie's arms to no avail. No amount of tight pulling could bring Perrie back.
She looked at the mess of powder on the floor, at first thinking that it was fallen face powder, then realizing it didn't have the same consistency. Jade reached shakily out to the white substance with the arm closest. The tiniest of crushed crystals met her fingertips.
"Cocaine. It's cocaine, Perrie, drugs how could- how could you do this to me?"
With a closer look, Jade started to note the shadows under the maid's eyes and her dry lips, how had she never noticed any symptoms or anything? Why had she never looked close enough through layers of blush and lipstick?
"How could you do this to me!" Jade shrieked although no one listened. "You loved me how could you hurt me l-like this? ...Did you ever love me at all?"
She was only able to stay in the room so long, then the overbearing silence became too much, so Jade returned to her bedroom after a long kiss to Perrie's cheek. The first thing she did was call the mortician, and give him the Thirlwall estate's address with a brief explanation. Then the train-station to see what the next leaving for the ports would be. After that it was only some mad-driven instinct.
Jade filled two suitcases as hurriedly as she could with clothes and essentials, trying to choose her less expensive dresses and accesories. She was trying to leave her silver-spoon life behind as much as possible with this. Every single movement was accompanied by flashes of memories with the girl in the room down the hall; and as much as Jade tried to burn them out, she had a growing intuition that the memories would never leave her wherever she went. She felt Perrie smile in the back of her mind.
The last thing Jade did before departing the mansion was visit Perrie's bedroom, and take the ovular glass perfume off the vanity. Just one thing to keep with her when she needed consoling, the fragrace from her lover's neck, because where else would she get it? Jade spared an elongated glance at Perrie's body laid on the bed, as she had been placed by the Thirlwall girl sometime ago. "I'm leaving, but I'm not leaving you, my girl. I'm going to New York to live for the both of us. I'll do everything for you and I'll never forget how you made me feel, even though it wasn't enough for you to stay with me."
With a renounced smile the Thirlwall girl turned her eyes to the floor and made her way out of the bedroom, heart eclipsing something like the moon.