The Shawcross family were wealthy and well-known enough to be worried about scandal. When their eldest daughter Francis, shamefully unmarried at the age of twenty-one, was found consorting with Suffragettes and other agitators, she quietly disappeared--sent off to Europe, many people said, to be re-educated, or sent out of the way to a nunnery.
In fact, she wasn't sent anywhere at all. Her parents had her declared legally insane by a local doctor and sequestered her away in a comfortable little room in the attic. She was confined to her bed, arms cuffed to the headboard, except when the doctor or her brother walked her in the walled-in garden for exercise and sunlight.
Her older brother, Peter, provided most of her care. Her father found it beneath him to associate with such a willful daughter, and she was strong enough to overpower her mother when angry, but Peter was big enough to keep her in line. Many men his age might have found it tiresome to be placed in the role of caregiver, but Peter embraced his duties; he fed his sister, bathed her, changed her clothes. And in the evenings, he visited to be sure she slept well.
It was six months into his evening visits before Francis finally gave in.
Peter slipped into her room that night as usual, smiling when he saw the way the moonlight caught on her bright, angry eyes. He closed the door behind himself and locked it--he had the only key, and he didn't want to be interrupted--and watched the way his sister's wrists shifted restlessly in their bonds above her head.
"How are we feeling tonight, Frannie?" he asked, friendly. She didn't respond; this was an improvement, compared to the venom she had once spat. He was starting to tame her. "Well enough, I hope," he filled in for her when the silence continued.
He sat on the side of the bed. Her fingers curled into fists, her eyes fixed on him in the dim room, lips pressed together in a thin line. She was already breathing harder, her breasts swelling under the thin fabric of her shift, nipples stiff enough to leave little peaks, and he didn't waste any further time on niceties. He reached down and cupped one of her breasts in his hand, feeling the soft weight of it. Francis immediately sucked in a sharp breath and squirmed, squeezing her fists tighter as her glare glazed over into a different kind of look.
He teased her breasts for several minutes, alternately kneading the soft flesh for his own pleasure and tweaking the sensitive nipples to make her gasp and writhe. And she did writhe--after six months of his attention and no release, his sister's body had been reduced to an aching, weeping animal, responding to any stimulation like a creature in heat.
He had given her one opportunity for a climax a few months earlier; he had uncuffed one of her wrists and informed her that she was free to touch herself as she liked, but he wasn't going to leave the room. She had gone from lustful to angry, called him all manner of nasty names. When he had just calmly locked her back in her cuffs again and left, he had seen the regret on her face.
Now, he thought, as he watched her shake and arch under his fingers, she would have jumped at the chance. But it was too late; he wasn't going to offer that deal again.
When he'd had his fill of her breasts, and when she was panting and rubbing her thighs together like a whore, he reached down and placed his hand on her stomach. Her knees immediately fell apart, inviting his attention shamelessly. He chuckled low and she turned her face away, flushing.
"There's no need for that," he assured her. "You can hardly help it, can you? This is inhumane, the way that I treat you. Isn't that what you said last month?"
She didn't respond. As he began to roll her shift up, exposing her knees and then her damp thighs, she began to tremble with anticipation.
"That's it," he murmured, and then groaned in appreciation as he hiked her skirt up to her waist, exposing her glistening, pulsing sex. "You can't help any of it. You must ache so badly here."
He placed a hand over her wet lips and massaged them in a slow rolling motion, and his sister finally voiced a sound, though there weren't any words to it; just a desperate low moan as she lifted her hips into his hand. He rolled his fingers again, then moved up to place a finger against the underside of her clit, feeling it twitch against him as her cunt clenched.
"Five tonight, I think," he informed her, and she moaned again, this time in despair. She was extremely unlikely to find her release based on anything he did with her--the longer he touched her, the slower he moved, until she whimpered like a tortured thing, dangling on the edge of pleasure--but five strokes was pitifully few, even so.
He smiled at her distress and pressed down firmly with his finger, dragging it in one long, slow stroke up the underside of her clit until he reached the sensitive tip, finishing with a little swirl that made her cry out. "One." He did it again, and she cried again in helpless pleasure, the muscles of her stomach twitching under the rucked-up fabric of her nightdress. "Two."
"Oh," she moaned as he placed his finger at the base again. "Oh, oh, oh. OH--" she bucked her hips and bit back a too-loud cry when his finger again swirled at the tip.
"Three," Peter said. "Goodness, you really are on a hair trigger tonight, aren't you? Is it because of the peppermint salve I applied after your bath?"
Francis whimpered, which may have been an answer, or may have just been because his finger was at the base of her clit again. As he dragged his finger up, she whimpered again and again, more urgently, her thighs shaking; as he swirled around the tip, the whimpers choked off into a pathetic squeak.
"Four. Just one more, now," he said. Her eyes were closed tight now, teeth buried in her lip, her whole body tense. Focusing on the pleasure, he assumed; trying to eke out what she could in a desperate bid to relieve herself.
He pressed his finger against the base, and felt the little flutter of her clit responding. This time, he dragged his finger up slowly--so slowly--and when he reached the tip, instead of swirling, he just gave another firm press and then let go. "Five."
"Ah," Francis cried out involuntarily in despair, her toes curling into the bedding. Then, as he moved to stand up--not righting her shift; he found she was much more biddable if he left her exposed all night--she gasped out a quiet, "please."
