She pressed her mouth tightly closed. “Good. A little more,” Gustav said, his voice tight. She felt his hand burrow into her drawers, and let out a gasp. “Shh,” he said, laying his other, mechanical hand on the small of her back. “I’m just checking.” It was enough, she thought, to be lying half undressed in the crepuscular, squalid studio. Enough that she had shared her most shameful and abominable desires with him and found herself trapped in a cage of her own making. That he would now lay his hands on her— “Stop,” she said, suddenly. With no little difficulty, she pulled herself upright. Her bodice was awry and her clothes crumpled. Yet her defilement had not made her a mewling wreck, at least. A hot coal burned in her breast. This feeling was familiar. Violet was angry. “Sir,” she said.
