by Nia Farrell
“You still have it?” The question was casually posed, yet the air felt suddenly charged. I angled my head to look in his eyes, beautiful, rich turquoise, such an unexpected hue despite having blonde hair. The sudden heat in them sent lightning down my spine. The hairs on my arms stood at attention.
“Um. Yes.”
The gemstone eyes sparked. His beautiful lips twisted into a deviant’s smile. “Let’s go.”
We took the stairs, avoiding the vertical steam engine. I scurried after Edward, whose greater stride ate up the length of the hall. He unlocked the door, then pulled me in after him, slamming it shut behind us and pinning me against it.
I wished that he would kiss me, fondle me, ravish me. Instead he pressed his body against mine from hips to foreheads. I felt his desire and sensed the tightly controlled leash he held as his breathing grew heavier, nostrils flaring, each exhalation fanning the flames of my arousal.
“Don’t let me,” he said, drawing the line, daring me to cross it.
I palmed his erection. “I won’t,” I promised. “Not until we’re both begging for it.”
“Elena...”
“Call me Lane.”
“Fuck.”
He grabbed my wrist and ground himself against me, humping my hand. Thirty seconds later, he climaxed, his rhythm breaking, his body shuddering as he came like a boy in first blush. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I needed to take the edge off before beginning Lesson Two.”
I shivered in anticipation.
He smiled darkly. “Stand by the end of the bed, facing it, and strip…Lane.”
I did as he asked, then waited with bated breath, listening as he rummaged. He set something on the table near the door. Removing the fruit from the bowl, he took it into the bathroom. When he returned, he had shed his own clothes and carried toweling, draped over his arm. The fruit bowl he’d appropriated was full of wet washcloths.
He set the bowl on the bedside table and spread a towel atop the sheets. “Laundry tomorrow,” he said, a heavy promise in his voice. “Lie down over the center of it, on your stomach.”
I did as he asked, aware that anything feminine was essentially hidden from his view.
“Lesson Two. Taking it like a man.” Edward fetched what he’d left at the table. I sensed as much as heard him fisting himself, applying lubricant of some kind, I suspected.
I hoped.
“The key is to relax. There are rings of muscles to push past, and clenching them makes things unnecessarily unpleasant. You can trust me to not hurt you, but more than that, you can trust me to pleasure you enough that you’ll be more than willing to repeat the experience—particularly if it means keeping your hymen intact. Yes, yes, I know you don’t care,” he said when I stiffened, “but there are others who do. A woman is expected to come to her bridal bed a maid. Taking you here—” he tapped my tightly ruched ring with an oiled finger “—won’t limit your choices. Now, relax.”
His finger swirled, teasing, occasionally dipping, just the tip, into my other nether hole. He pushed in deeper, and my body responded to his skillful manipulations, until he was finger deep inside me and I was pressing back against him, silently begging.
He kissed the small of my back and licked it, tracing the knobs of my spine with his tongue before murmuring against it. “What do you want, Lane, hmm? Tell me.”
“More,” I whispered. Whatever he would give me. However much I could take.
“And if it’s too much? What is your word to stop me?”
“Delphi.”
“Yes.”
He added more oil and slid two fingers into me, scissoring them in a manner that made my hips buck off the bed. “Oh!” I squeaked when he shoved them deep and held, pressing them into me, against me. He slid them out. Shoved them in. Added a third finger that stretched me as wide as I’d ever been, making me ready to receive him.
“That should do it,” he said, moving higher, until his legs bracketed mine and he was supporting his weight on one arm. The feel of craggy knuckles was replaced by silken flesh. The dome of his erection pressed against my opening, seeking entrance. I made a concentrated effort to allow it, huffing little breaths as he pushed his way inside in increments, an inch forward, half an inch back, another inch in, half an inch out, until he was nearly seated to the root, his heavy, dangling testicles cradled in the seam of my thighs.
He hissed in my ear and tunneled deeper, forging his way to where no man had been, despite the offers I’d received. Then, I could not risk discovery. Now I craved it. I wanted to bare myself, body and soul, to this man. I wanted him to take me as Lane, to possess me as Elena, to make me his in every way that he could.
“God save me,” he grated, lowering himself onto his forearms so that his hair-dusted chest brushed my back. “You feel so damn good. Too good. I want to cut loose and pound into you. I want to take you like a mollycoddle. I want to fuck you like a slut.” This, while he moved, hips flexing, the pinch of initial discomfort at his girth gradually yielding to pleasure. He filled me, again and again, slipping out, only to re-sheath his length in my welcoming warmth.
The towel beneath me rubbed my front, abrading my sensitive nipples into hard, tight nubs. I worked my hands beneath me and took hold of my breasts, splaying my fingers and squeezing to the rhythm that Edward was setting below. I bit back a moan.
Hearing it, Edward jacked into me, gradually loosening his leash until he was slamming his hips into me, fucking me, taking me like I truly was his mollycoddle. He slipped his arms beneath mine, curled his hands around my shoulders, and held on tightly while he hammered into my tenderest flesh. A new tension took hold of me, coiling low in my belly, making my feminine cove clench, as if to stay the flood of moisture that drenched the towel beneath me.
“I can’t. I must. Ah, Lane!” he cried, exploding inside me, shooting streams of ejaculate into my depths, jerking and shuddering as he emptied himself. He spasmed one last time, then grabbed hold of my hip and rolled us, still joined, onto our sides. He fisted my hair and bit my neck at the same time his fingers invaded the delta of my thighs, sliding through my nether curls to claim my hooded jewel and tease it, circling, rubbing, pressing, pinching, finally stroking it in a frenzy of motion.
I pushed back against him, craving the friction he provided that drove me to the precipice, then sent me hurtling over the edge. “Edward! Oh! God!” I cried out, feeling my womb spasm and my body clench around his softening length. He kept stroking, bringing me to orgasm a second time, and a third before his hand stilled.
He seemed loathe to move and kept his fingers where they were, cupping my sex and threaded in my hair, though his hold there had gentled to a comforting rather than commanding touch. We lay there, replete, so…so one in the moment, even our breaths were synchronized.
I took heart when he continued to embrace me, inside and out. It gave me hope that he had enjoyed it, despite my lack of experience. Hell, he might have enjoyed it more, simply knowing that he was my first. He’d promised that he would please me. I never doubted that he would, but I also never imagined what it would feel like, being taken that way. Now that he’d given me a taste of forbidden fruit, I’d never be satisfied until he’d shared it all.
Until he’d taken me like a mollycoddle and fucked me like a slut.
Edward waited until his penis was flaccid before slipping free of my body. I bit my lip to keep from whimpering at the loss.
He used the wet cloths and towels that he’d brought to clean us, keeping his touch both tender and nonsexual, particularly when it came to my private parts.
“You will want to visit the water closet,” he said, offering the benefit of his wisdom and experience in these matters. “If you are not too tired, I shall draw us a bath.”
Us.
If I was tired before, I wasn’t now. “Yes, Sir. Please, Sir.” The honorific fell so easily from my lips, student to teacher, younger submissive female to his older, more dominant male. There were so many things I had yet to learn. “You
have no idea how demanding I can be,” he’d told me. “You’ve no idea of the things that I like. The things that I crave. What it takes to satisfy the basest of my desires. I don’t want to ruin you.”
If I read him correctly, he was taking immense satisfaction in my downfall, giving me instruction, teaching me what he liked and how he liked it. If we kept it up—and there was no reason to believe that we would not—by the time we reached London, Edward would have shown me how to satisfy his every need, including his darkest desires.
Chapter Thirteen
I’d never have taken Edward for a hugger, but I came awake, wrapped in his embrace. The weight of his arm was deliciously heavy on my chest. His large hand cupped my breast.
We had slept in the nude, starting with the bedclothes kicked down and ending with the top sheet draped across our loins, staving off the “chill” that one perceives when hellish heat abates, however infinitesimally.
He would wake as most men did, turgid and needy. As he was still asleep, I saw no harm in helping him along. Slipping free of his hold, I scooted down and took him in my mouth, gently suckling until an erratic shift in his breath and the clenching of his fingers alerted me that I had his full attention.
“Do you want me to stop?” I asked, offering a choice, now that he could make one.
He blew out harshly. “Christ.”
I tongued his sac and kissed the base of his cock. “Do you want this?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes. “If it’s too much, one word will stop me. What’s your word, Edward?”
“Bloody hell.”
“But that’s two—”
The next thing I knew, he’d flipped me onto my back, with my feet by our pillows and my head resting on the sheet he’d shoved down. Whatever I’d thought, I wasn’t expecting him to straddle my head with his knees and shove his tumescence down my throat at the same time he claimed me with his mouth.
Oh. My.
I gripped his hips and held fast, hands flexing with pleasure, fingers pinching when it was too much, too deep, too hard, too intense. He coated his finger with my juices and pushed it past my sphincter, revisiting the path he’d blazed last night.
“The same,” he growled against my tenderest flesh, arching his back enough that his cock slipped free of my mouth. “Take your finger and do the same to me.”
Holy mother of pearl.
Not wishing to hurt him, I bit off my middle nail and stuck my finger in my mouth, wetting it thoroughly before pressing it to his sphincter. “Put it in,” he ordered. I obeyed, listening to his breath, a low hiss between his teeth. Hearing the soft moan when he wanted more, I gave it, rubbing the spot he wanted me to find and catching his cock, leading it back to my lips, and taking him in my mouth once more.
“Lane. Christ,” he ground out. “Harder.”
I gave it to him without question, knowing he could take one small finger after what I’d had up my ass last night. I fucked him, sucked him, and was likewise used by him in turn. Our bodies burned. The pressure built, until we were both wound so tight that when I shattered, and he exploded, it took a good ten minutes, once we’d rolled on our sides, to find all the pieces.
“Fuck,” I said, knowing how Edward responded to a naked woman’s foul mouth in bed. Arching my neck, I met his appreciative gaze. The half smile that he’d been hiding slipped free of his shadows, dazzling me with its brilliance.
“Good morning,” he said huskily. “Sleep well?”
“Good morning to you, too, Sir. And yes, I believe I did, despite the warmth of the night.” And the soreness I could still feel, and the hollow ache that longed for him to fill it.
“The weather should improve.” He looked at me, his gaze silently assessing. “You could come with me.”
I sighed, wistful. “Would that I could. But the crowds, the noise, the heat—I fear that I would not fare well, and I refuse to ruin your experience. Thank you, but no. I shall stay here, sketch and read and do laundry. Yours,” I added pertly. “The hotel staff can take and replace the towels and sheets, which are certain to give rise to incestuous rumors, once they’ve seen the state of them.”
“Does it bother you?” he asked, tracing a circle on my pelvic bone with his thumb.
Oddly enough, it didn’t. But then I’d answered only to myself for so long, I was used to giving less than a fig for the good opinions of others, saving Daniel and those who were truly interested in my art.
“No,” I said. “The fact that your father was married to my mother is history, Professor Wainwright. She is gone, and you are here. Now, having distracted you, I am obliged to point out that if you plan to be at Tammany Hall by ten o’clock, you’ll need to get moving.”
And keep moving…hopefully far enough to remain out of reach of the unhappily married Kate Chase Sprague and the happily widowed Morgan Chase, and hurry home to me.
In the end, Edward chose to have the hotel launder his shirts, as they had the means to complete the process, with proper soap, flat irons, and starch. Which left me to sketch and read and think of new ways to tempt a certain recalcitrant professor. My morning and noon meals came and went. By the time Edward returned to take me to supper, I’d formed a plan and set it in motion. Ordered at breakfast and delivered with lunch, two small books of blank paper had joined my art supplies, awaiting the illustrations that I was plotting in my head.
I’d decided to make flip books, two erotic vignettes for each volume: one drawn front to back; the other viewed back to front, once the book was turned. The miniature wonders were small enough to tuck in a pocket and hide in a large hand, should subterfuge be required. I’d counted the pages but needed to make certain my ideas would fit before committing them to paper. Ending a story in the middle of licentious action would be an epic failure, and no fun for either of us.
Knowing better than to start on that particular project, I worked on landscapes until Edward returned.
“You will need your best dress,” he said as he walked in the door. “We are dining out tonight.”
I stood, shocked, until he swatted my bottom as he walked past me. “Now,” he growled, his tone threatening punishment for anyone dragging her feet.
I shook out my evening dress (the one that opened in the back) and layered myself until everything else was on but my dress, bonnet, and gloves. Edward played lady’s maid, guiding the yards of fabric over my head, fastening the hooks for me, checking the angle of my bonnet, and making certain that my gloves were on before he opened the door.
I braved the vertical steam engine, pressing my hoops to make my skirts fit. The hand that Edward placed at the small of my back proved sufficient distraction that I was able to breathe through my anxiety. I exited the beastly conveyance with my stomach shaky but intact.
The drive to supper calmed my spirit and restored my equilibrium. Edward had made reservations at Delmonico’s, whose fame had apparently reached England. This past April, Charles Dickens had dined in their restaurant nearest us, at Fifth and Fourteenth Streets. Nothing would suit, save that we do the same.
It was a grand gesture, ridiculously expensive, and every bit as good as he promised.
It was also a lost opportunity. We could have had ninety minutes of incestuous innuendo and culinary foreplay, had we been alone in one of the private dining rooms, the closed door allowed only because we were presenting ourselves as siblings. There were strict rules of conduct to which restaurant patrons must adhere. No single women could dine unaccompanied. No closed doors on a private room when a man and woman were there alone, even if they were married.
I supposed I could have come as Lane. The risk would have been worth it, to have Edward all to myself in a place where he would almost certainly have allowed nothing to happen, but no. This was Edward’s American experience. Thus we were seated in the midst of the privileged few at Delmonico’s. Elitist shite, Daniel would have pronounced it, ever offended by the differences in the classes. I had to comport myself like a lady, when all I wanted to do (af
ter watching Edward conquer his rack of lamb) was drag him into the nearest storage closet and offer him a taste of mine.
The professor relived his day at the convention. The twelve ballots cast. The delegates and their positions. Kate Sprague’s father Salmon Chase had switched parties, and Edward failed to see how a former Republican who’d served on Lincoln’s cabinet could support the Democratic platform that would keep men of color second class citizens. At least the Republicans advocated full rights. The Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship was due to be ratified any day. The right to vote would require another Constitutional amendment, but who knew how long that might take? Washington was still in turmoil from the failed attempt to impeach President Johnson, the proceedings over which Salmon Chase had presided.
Keen and unbiased observer that he was, Edward did not share Kate Sprague’s belief in her father’s ability to secure the nomination. He believed that it was too late in the game. From the beginning of the convention, the momentum had been behind Seymour and it continued to be so.
“A year from now, it won’t matter to anyone but her,” I said, not feeling the least bit of sympathy for the impending death of Kate Sprague’s dream, not when she’d used every opportunity to outshine, outclass, and outdo Mrs. Lincoln when she was First Lady. “Come the next swearing in, we won’t have a Democratic President, let alone Chase and his daughter living in the White House. No one can run successfully against General Grant. I say that not just because I served under him. It’s who he is. What he thinks. How he manages to succeed where others have failed. You mustn’t believe what they say about his drinking. He’s a devoted family man, a shining example of leadership. Add to this, a Republican platform that would serve to bind the nation’s wounds, not make them fester, and I guarantee that he shall win.”
Edward’s eyes lit at the challenge. “Would you care to wager upon it?” he asked, his tone a little too casual. My hackles rose.
“On what?”
“On margins, of course.” His blue-green eyes nearly danced. “When there is no question as to outcome, what’s left are figures, pet. How many votes for Grant. How many votes for Seymour. Just to be clear, we shall forecast percentages of the popular vote, rather than your Electoral College. Since you’ve been a good girl, you may choose first.”
