by Nia Farrell
I found myself lifted, tossed onto the bed on my stomach. Edward shoved off his suspenders, opened his pants, and kicked my legs apart with his knees. He took himself in hand and stroked my crevice, wetting himself on my juices. He tapped his cock on my pucker, teasing me, before sliding it down to my pearly gates.
Edward fisted my hair with his free hand and growled in my ear. “Lesson Four. Taking it like a slut. I want to hear you,” he grated. Flexing his hips, he pushed forward, muscling his way inside me, the sheer brute force of his invasion rending me asunder.
“Ah, God!” I cried, hoping like hell my body could accommodate him. “It hurts! You’re too big!”
He snapped his hips and plunged deeper yet.
“Edward! Please!”
And again, this time sinking all the way to my womb. “Ah, God! I can’t take it! It’s too much!”
“You can,” he growled, pulling my hair and making my back arch in an erotic bow that seemed to please him greatly. “You will.”
He withdrew perhaps half his length, then thrust in again, just as deep, just as hard.
“No!”
“Yes,” he hissed, repeating his actions. As sore as I was, my body yielded to his invasion, stretching, easing his way with the warm issue coaxed from the depths of my being. He possessed me, used me, made me beg him to stop, made me scream, then beg him for more. He was ruthless, demanding, commanding, in control of my body and responses, playing me like an instrument, not content until he’d coaxed music out of me.
As hard as I’d screamed (though I doubted anything would reach two floors down), now I basked in pleasure. Moans and whimpers, pleas and sighs. One orgasm flowed into two, then three. I met his thrusts, tension building in every magnificent line of his body. I heard the shift in his breath, erratic, labored. Felt the change in his rhythm as his own fever took hold and he cut loose on me, pounding into me with a keen desperation, chasing his own release. One thrust, then another, then—ah, God—he pulled out and pushed into another, tighter hole, emptying himself where his seed was safe to fall. His ejaculate eased his way, and he sank inside me, shuddering, chest heaving as he let go of my hair. His head fell to my back as he arched over me, holding me up by my hips, his arms banding my waist and ribs.
“Christ Almighty,” he rasped, the vibrato of his voice striking chords inside me that resonated from head to toe. “Are you all right? Was it truly too much? I would have stopped, you know, if you’d said Delphi, but God, the feel of you….”
This, while he was pumping his half-hard cock into me, igniting another set of nerve endings and stoking a different, darker fire.
“How can you do that?” I breathed. “Take me here, and there, and make me want however you choose to give it?”
“You don’t like my perversion?” he asked, pulling nearly out.
I reached behind and grabbed his hips, desperate to keep him where he’d been.
He nuzzled my ear and chuckled. “I think you do. I think you like le vice anglais. The spanking. The oral congress—having my prick down your throat and my tongue in your arse or your cunny. And my other veneries—taking you like a mollycoddle and fucking you like a slut,” he said in that rumbling baritone voice of his.
I’m sure there were students with no interest in history who signed up for his classes just to experience Professor Edward Wainwright. His golden beauty. His swoon-worthy voice. The passion he had for his subject matter resonating in hearts and minds and loins, damn them.
Jealousy made me spiteful. “Fuck off,” I snapped.
“What did you say?” he asked, a clear warning in his voice that dared me to repeat it.
“I’m sorry. Fuck off, Sir.”
He pulled my hair and shoved in deep, grinding his hips against my blistered bottom. “Apologize,” he grated through his teeth.
“No.”
He slammed into me again, deeper, harder, inside and out, rising to meet me in our sudden battle of wills. He bucked and started pumping, fucking me, biting my back, marking me, claiming me. I hissed and moaned and shoved back, ready to steal what he had to give, until the coil wound tight in my loins exploded, sending me violently over the edge and taking him with me.
We collapsed in a heap on the bed.
“You are going to tell me what that was about,” he said when he could speak again.
I caught his hand, brought it to my lips, and kissed it. “I’m sorry, Edward.”
His brow furrowed. The perfect line of his mouth was marred by a frown.
“I can say it, now that you’re not demanding it. Just so you know, I struggle with constraints. I can follow orders, do as directed, but the moment a challenge is issued, a line is drawn, well…that’s problematic. Something in my psyche…a flaw I’ve had since birth. As for the other...the fuck you? I envisioned you in a room full of students, every last one of them hot for you, and—” dear Lord, this was hard to admit “—I suppose I might have had…a fit of…of insecurity. It’s passed now, I believe. Or you may have drummed it out of me, one or the other.”
Bastard. He was smirking now. Any more, and he’d be preening like a peacock.
“Jealous, hmm?”
“Jealous?” I strove for incredulous and managed facetious. “Of whom? Just because your tastes don’t exclude one gender or the other, ergo, every consenting adult on the planet is a potential rival? Why would I be jealous?”
He harumphed. “Why indeed.”
“You’re no help.” I dropped my gaze and shook my head. Feeling very much out of my depth, I wondered aloud, “Pray, how else am I supposed to feel?”
“Desirable,” he said. Twisting his wrist, he caught my hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “Wanted.” He brushed his lips across the tips of my fingers. “Mine.”
“Oh. Oh, really?”
I knew that I was fishing for more, but Edward refused to rise to the bait. I caught a glint of humor lurking in the richness of his gemstone eyes just before he turned my hand and pressed a kiss against my palm, curling my fingers, as if to catch and keep it there.
I softened beneath his tender regard. “Um. Well. Yes, if you say so. Thank you, by the way, for taking care to not impregnate me. I’m just getting used to wearing skirts again…and now that we’ve done this….” Had sex. Hot, hard, male/female sex, even if it ended with me taking it like a man. “I suppose a child at this point would complicate things unnecessarily.”
Suddenly serious, he caught a lock of my black hair between his fingers and wrapped it once around. “Whatever happens, I am pledged to take care of you, Elena. To see that your needs are met, to keep you safe and well. And yes, a child would complicate things. Not that you couldn’t paint and sculpt enceinte and look stunningly beautiful doing it, but there’s a small matter of O’Flaherty. It will be shock enough to learn that you’re a woman. To greet him again with a gravid belly…well, that might be too much, to think that he hasn’t a chance.”
The way he said it, I wondered if he was attracted to Daniel, if he somehow imagined having him in his bed. In our bed. The two of them sharing me—
Or the two of us sharing Daniel.
Holy mother of pearl.
Chapter Fifteen
I stared at Edward, trying to imagine what he could be thinking. He kissed my forehead and sighed against it. “I can see that it is too soon,” he said enigmatically. “Let’s get you cleaned up, hmm? We both have a big day tomorrow, with what is likely the last day of the convention and making certain everything is packed and ready for us to sail on Friday. Stay here. I shall draw our bath.”
Our bath.
Desirable. Wanted. Mine.
I sighed with purest pleasure.
When he’d filled the tub with water, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the water closet, to minimize the mess we’d made. There were rusty brown streaks of dried blood on the sheets and on my thighs, proof of my virginity.
He set me down by the water closet. “Call me when you are ready,�
� he said, and stepped outside, giving me the privacy I needed after the session that we’d had.
“Come in,” I called out as I sank down into the warm water, still marveling at the luxury of a real bath with scents to add and a sponge to scrub after years of buckets and rags. “Tell me about your house, Edward. Is it plumbed, or will I have to heat water and haul it?” Drawing up my knees, I scooted forward to make room for him. “Not that it matters, mind you, but this is so very nice. I never imagined having it, but now that I have, well….”
Edward had stripped while he was waiting. His skin shone with perspiration. The cut of his muscles gleamed in the gaslight as he stepped into the tub behind me. Once he’d settled against the end, he reached for my waist and pulled me back into the cradle of his thighs. I did not immediately relax back against him, but that’s certainly the way I ended up, lolling against the hair-dusted planes of his chest while his fingers drew idle designs on my body.
“Practicing your hieroglyphs?” I asked in jest.
His hand stilled. “Actually, yes. How did you know? You don’t read them, do you?”
“I could,” I told him. “If you’d show me. All it takes is writing down what each one means, along with a phonetic pronunciation, and I’ll have it.”
His fingers stilled on my water-beaded skin.
“You saw the portrait I drew of your chest. I may not recall everything I hear, but for better or worse, I do remember what I see, exactly as I’ve seen it.” I gave him a moment to consider what that meant to an artist who’d been to war.
“Dear God,” he breathed.
“Yes, well. Some days it’s a struggle to function. Then again, I’ve won a coin or two, here and there, with it. Take your train book. I’d ask to see it, take a moment to memorize a page, then repeat back what’s on it.”
“A page?”
“You know. Erie Railway! Broad gauge double track route between the Atlantic Cities and the South, South-West, West, and North-West. Four express trains daily. 460 miles, without a change of Coaches. between New York and Salamanka, Dunkirk, Buffalo, and Rochester. Following that is the Abstract of the Time Table adopted May 11th of this year. I can quote it, if you’d like. Actually, I could repeat the book for you, since I’ve had time to look at it, but the swashbuckling tales of the piratess Anne Bonny are much more entertaining.”
He was hard again. Whether it was for me, for my gift, or for piratess Anne Bonny, I couldn’t say. But that phenomenal control of his kept his passion in check, and I yielded myself to his gentle but thorough ministrations. He cleaned the sweat and the scent of us from my body, washed the bloodstains from my thighs, used soap-slicked fingers to clean my tender flesh. Done there, he could not resist sliding them south and slipping one inside my nether opening, then two. I reached behind and grabbed his balls, juggling them in my hand, palm pressed to the base of his erection.
“Fuck,” he rasped into my hair.
I found myself lifted and impaled, his cock aiming for what seemed its favored spot, that dark portal whose use would prevent pregnancy on my part and assuage his taste for forbidden pleasures. I bit back a moan when he tunneled deeper, working his way in, until he’d sunk himself to the root.
“Ah, pet.”
He pulled me back against his chest. I let my head fall back and turned my face to nuzzle the column of his neck while his beautiful fingers, with their craggy knuckles and dusting of hair, took hold of my breasts, cupping and squeezing, lifting and weighing, finding the hardened tips and pinching them to diamond points. He tugged and twisted them, sending a bolt of current from my nipples to my core, making my pussy swell and throb and ache to be filled. Keeping one hand where it was, he slid the other down and added his fingers to the mix, stirring my pot, fucking me with his hand while I rode his cock.
He dipped his head and took the lobe of my ear between his teeth, tugging, biting. “Yes,” he hissed. “This. God, I’d love to fist you.
Fist me?
I may have squeaked. He growled and fucked me front and back, hips churning the water, sending it sloshing over the side. I bit my lip and tried not to moan.
Inside me, his cock swelled impossibly larger. “Come for me, Elena. Now.”
The heel of his hand pressed my hooded jewel, and I was lost, lost, my body clenching, squeezing, bringing him swiftly to his own finish inside the depths of my bowels.
He slipped free, rubbing and rinsing his softening member while he pressed a kiss to the base of my neck. “If there’s nothing else,” he said, “just let it go here, where I can clean you. Or do you need the water closet?”
“No,” I stammered, feeling my cheeks flood with color when my body obeyed.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I know men who would make a feast of it.”
The very thought made me shudder. “Ew! Don’t tell me that!”
Edward chuckled and changed the subject. “That’s the closest you’ve come to having two cocks inside you. How did it feel, being so full, hmm?”
“It was…all right.”
He bit my ear. “Liar.”
“Ow! It was…” How could I begin to describe it? “Erotic. Decadent. Arousing. Overwhelming at times, the feel of your erection, a counterpoint to the stroke of your hand, until suddenly they were in sync, stretching me, filling me, the pressure building until that last push sent me toppling over the edge. Thank you for that,” I told him sincerely. From what I’d heard, it was common for a man to find his own pleasure to the exclusion of his partner’s. I’d never experienced a paroxysm, and yet, each time, he’d brought me to one or more.
“Good girl,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around me, his praise stroking my flesh like a pampered pet. “That wasn’t so hard, was it, hmm?”
A telling tap at my waist let me know just how my words had affected him. “My God, man! Don’t tell me that you’re ready to go again! Forget Achilles. You’re Pan, you insatiable creature.”
“Only fitting,” he murmured, “when you’ve pledged to be as wicked as I want. Shall we see how well that works, hmm?”
Chapter Sixteen
It worked quite well, of course. I could barely walk the next morning. Edward ordered breakfast sent to me, and I spent a great deal of the morning in slow motion, arranging my trunk and readying my carpet bag, making certain that I had everything I needed for the ocean voyage ahead of us. Ten days, more or less, depending on fair wind or foul. Once I was satisfied with my progress, I filled the tub and soaked, fancying myself in a spa, taking the waters.
In England, perhaps I could persuade Edward that a visit to Bath might benefit us both. I could make it a tribute to Miss Austen, but I’d have to cast the good professor in a role, and none, I feared, was a perfect match for him. Wickham with a moral code? Hmm. A deviant Darcy seemed more like it, enjoying an intimate friendship with Bingley at one turn and sharing women with his cousin Fitzwilliam on the other. Would Miss Bennet have agreed to such an arrangement?
She might, if it meant keeping Darcy.
Shit.
I don’t know why I did it, kept imagining scenarios and working myself up into a proper set of nerves that made my stomach pinch and sour. I could not eat the lunch that was delivered and asked them to bring me a bowl of oatmeal, milk, and fresh fruit. I did not have to feign unwellness when Edward returned, jubilant with news that Seymour would run against Grant, as he had predicted.
It should be a day of celebration. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Grant’s victory in the November election was all but assured. Edward was taking me home with him, leaving for London tomorrow, and all I could do was lie curled up in bed, my hands clasped to my stomach, praying it would not worsen. Ulcerations could be deadly on land, let alone out to sea, days and days from the help that I might need.
“There’s no sign of blood,” I hastened to assure him, hoping to ease the look of concern that furrowed his brow and made the corners of his mouth turn down.
“Then the stress has made you late,” he
said. “You really cannot be with child.”
“Oh, God. No. No. Not that.” My face grew flush with embarrassment. “My stomach. I had ulcers once. Just the start. It hurt like hell, burned beyond belief. At its worst, I spat up blood.”
A look of panic flashed across his face before he brought it under control, steeling his features into a commanding mien. “I am sending for a doctor.” His tone forbade dissension. “If he does not clear you for travel, then I shall change our tickets for a later departure.”
“Or she,” I said, pointing out that the city had a women’s medical college. “Although I doubt that Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell has time to make house calls.”
For a moment, I thought that he might actually insist on sending for her. “Please, Edward, any capable physician will do. Surely the hotel can recommend someone.”
They did. Dr. Banks was tall, somewhat younger than Edward and nearly as handsome, possessed of good humor, quick wit, and an adroitness in his evaluation that inspired confidence in his assessment. Pronouncing me safe to travel with proper care, he suggested buying enough oats, canned milk, canned fruit, and pickled eggs to last the voyage, ensuring that my dietary needs would be met, regardless of the ship’s provender.
Edward pressed a brotherly kiss to my brow. “I shall return,” he promised, and escorted Dr. Banks from our room.
He returned with an early supper and a veritable larder of consumables in crates that reminded me of a box I’d once gotten from the Ladies Union Aid Society, sans the lye soap, tooth powder, woolen socks, and sleeping cap.
Tears sprang into my eyes. “Whatever did I do to deserve you?” I asked him. Yes, he was a sodomite, and an unrepentent hedonist, but he was also the most thoughtful, considerate, unfailingly generous man I had ever known.
He dismissed my gaze of abject affection with a wave of his hand. “It was nothing, Elena.”
