by Nia Farrell
“Good. I’ll have Young Frank bring up your bags. The house is plumbed, with water closets on each floor. Edward’s room and mine each have their own, but you’ll have the run of the one at the end of the hall until he has company, then you’ll have to share, I am afraid. If you plan a bath, it never hurts to let the staff know ahead of time. The boiler’s in the attic, and Young Frank has been known to let the kerosene run out.”
I showed him the water closet, with its copper tub and marble sink, separated from the actual water closet, which occupied a small room tucked into one corner. It was an odd arrangement for guests but I supposed that it made sense for a family. One son could shave while his brother relieved himself, etc., but Edward had no children. He’d spoken of them, of course. Usually in regards to the avoidance of making them—but now that Daniel was here, who knew what Edward would do? Although he’d never displayed jealousy where I was concerned, it seemed a trait of the male species to want to mark his possessions. A fertile belly was the penultimate proof, followed only by a baby nursing at a breast.
Stop, Lanie!
I wasn’t ready for that.
I might never be ready for that.
My eyes met Daniel’s in the mirror above the sink.
“A washer fer yer thoughts,” he said, reminding me of the leanest of times when neither of us had a penny to rub together.
Shaking it off, I pasted on a smile. “It’s nothing. Nothing. I’m still adjusting, is all. And now you’re here.”
“Aye,” he said. “As promised.”
His green eyes darkened slightly. He stepped closer, legs pressing against the back of my skirt.
“Lanie,” Daniel murmured, caressing my name, not touching me, as if he waited for permission that I could not bring myself to give.
“Lanie,” he begged. “Please.”
Reaching behind me, I caught his hand and pulled it to my breast, our hands juxtaposed against the black of my bodice, his fingers flexing against the swell of supple flesh. Next thing I knew, Daniel had swept me up into his arms and was carrying me to my room. The room he had not seen, with the interior door leading to Edward’s.
“Your bed,” I whispered, nipping the lobe of his ear.
There was a hitch in Daniel’s step when he realized what I was offering. I chased it with a kiss to his throat. “I’ve waited five years for this, ever since the contest. Do you remember the next night? You talked about having an ‘Irish toothache’ and I recommended chewing on yarrow. When you had to explain the euphemism…and I understood that you needed sexual release, you don’t know how tempted I was to offer you my thighs to use. You can use them now, if you’d like. Or my mouth. Or my—”
He slid me down his body and pinned me against the door, bending his ginger head, claiming my throat with lips and tongue and teeth. He pulled my hands over my head and held them while he ground his erection against me, letting me feel how much he wanted this too.
“Christ,” he breathed. “Lanie…I want…I need…”
I thrust my pelvis, humping against his muscled thigh. He groaned, straining with the effort of holding himself back.
“I have needs, too,” I reminded him. “Take it out. I want you to show me. Give it to me. Let me feel what I’ve been missing.”
He fumbled with his buttons, opened his pants, and pushed down his drawers, exposing the glorious column of flesh that had won first prize in winter camp. Seeing it made me glad that I had some experience, otherwise I would have been frightened rather than aroused.
I gathered my skirts, found my hems and lifted, catching my chemise and shoving everything up far enough to pull the drawstring of my pantaloons. Daniel’s eyes did not follow them when they dropped to the floor. His gaze was still locked on my raven’s nest of nether curls when I slid my hand between my thighs and pulled out two fingers coated with my dew.
“It’s a good thing that I’m wet for you.” I smeared it on the head of his cock and slid my fingers down his steely vein-roped flesh. “I don’t think I could handle you otherwise.”
Breath hissed between his teeth when I pulled him to me, hiked one leg and wrapped it around his hip. “There,” I purred. “Yes. That. Right th—”
A single, massive thrust, and he was in, a sinful stretch of tissue as my body struggled to accommodate him. He was longer and thicker than Edward, a good eight inches with a girth that made me grit my teeth and swallow the words that would have given him pause. I didn’t want him to stop. Even if he never touched me again, if he could not bring himself to be our Patroclus to Edward’s Achilles and my Briseis, I would always and forever have this much of him, at least.
The sight of Daniel O’Flaherty seared itself in my brain as he thrust into me, again, and again, each stroke bordering on pain, so deeply did he penetrate me. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The sheer lust on his face, nostrils flaring, jaw clenched, muscles straining with the effort of fucking me against the door. Hot eyes. Hotter breath. Sweaty hair and beaded skin. He plowed into me, angling so that my pearl ground against him, setting off the first of a series of paroxysms that flowed each into the other, one barely abating before the next crest came.
When I sensed the change in his rhythm and knew that he was close to his own release, I bit his ear to get his attention. “In my mouth,” I gasped when he knocked on the door to my womb. “To be safe, finish in my mouth.”
Almost immediately, I found myself kneeling on the floor, lips parted, taking him in, his hands fisted in my hair, hips pumping, head bobbing, the thick shaft scraping against the sides of my molars as it slid on my palate and down my throat. “Jaysus,” he breathed. “Jaysus, Lanie. I can’t…I must…”
I grasped his buttocks, dug my fingernails into those perfect curves of muscle, and took him deep enough to make my eyes water. He erupted in my mouth with a shout. I held fast, struggling to swallow the pulsing jets of semen that flooded my throat in buckets.
When I’d sucked him dry, I kissed his crown and sat back on my heels, not quite certain where to go from here.
Daniel crooked a wry smile. “We didn’t make it to the bed.”
“That can be remedied.” I held out my hand. He grasped it and helped me to my feet. “But I want you naked. I think I’ve seen all of you, but never at one time, altogether.”
He undressed for me, tossing his jacket over the back of a side chair, then his vest. He shrugged off his suspenders, his pants catching on the swell of his ass, his half-hard cock jutting from the opened fly. He undid his cravat, sliding it free from the collar of his shirt. He added them both to the growing pile before sitting to take off his boots and stockings.
I certainly had good taste in men. At six feet in height, Daniel was two inches shorter than Edward. Like stallions of different breeds, he was every bit as beautiful. His figure was more youthful, his chest still filling out with pads of muscle, the ginger curls thicker than when we were in the service but thinner than the thatch it would be, once he had fully come of age. His feet were rougher, sturdier, large for a man his size and calloused from his boots. His hands, too, had been shaped by his labors, with long, dexterous fingers capable of playing my body like his fiddle.
Daniel caught the waistbands of his pants and drawers and pulled them down as he stood, so that they dropped to his calves and pooled at his ankles. Kicking them off, naked except for my St. Michael’s medal, he sauntered towards me, his cock swelling and his eyes sparking with emerald fire.
“Yer turn,” he said, stopping with his feet beneath the hem of my hooped skirt.
“Pull down the covers, lie on the bed, and get ready for me,” I told him. “I want you to stroke yourself while you watch me disrobe.”
I was enjoying this, issuing orders and having him obey. He threw the covers to the foot of the bed and scooted back against the headboard, his back propped on pillows, his hair-dusted legs sprawled out below.
Never taking his eyes off me, he spat in his hand, once, twice, lubri
cating himself. He wrapped his fingers around his girth and tugged, again, and again, each pull ending in a twist that teased more pre-cum from his crown.
I unhooked my skirt and pulled the strings on the underneath layers, spreading the tops so that everything collapsed on the floor. Stepping clear of my mess, I crossed my arms and pulled off my corset cover, sucked in my stomach and set to work on the hooks, freeing them from bottom to top. I let it drop, leaving only my chemise, shoes and gartered stockings. After silently debating whether or not to strip completely, I took off my chemise and walked to the bed, the carpet muffling my footsteps.
I knew what Daniel saw. My breasts, once bound, were now gloriously free. My flesh was swollen. My nipples had hardened to diamond points. My waist was trim even sans corset. My hips were slight enough to maintain my masculine masquerade, but my coltish legs, had he seen them, would have certainly declared me a filly. There was nothing masculine about them—although my long legs ended in equally long feet. Covered in woolen stockings and stuffed into brogans, none of my messmates had been the wiser, including Daniel.
“Do you remember after Antietam?” I asked, watching his dexterous fingers pull and twist his erection. With our companions both wounded, we’d spent the night beneath our joined shelter halves, one of us sleeping, the other memorizing the planes and angles of his face by the light of a waning moon. “I was shaking, and you told me to close my eyes and imagine Ireland as you described it to me. Stone fences and patchwork fields. Tinkers’ carts and flocks of sheep. But it was the greens that transported me. Colors of an Emerald Isle, seen through a native son’s eyes. You offered exactly what I needed at that moment, Daniel. Now it’s my turn to reciprocate.”
I climbed onto the end of the bed and crawled over his body, spreading my legs to straddle his flanks, scenting the air with the musk of our earlier joining and the burgeoning tide of my arousal. I crawled higher, dipping my head to kiss his chest, his paps, his shoulder, his neck, the beard-stippled jaw, that tempting lower lip. I caught it between my teeth and tugged, eliciting a moan from the depths of his being.
He slid his hands up my sides to beneath my breasts, pushing them up and pressing them together, splaying his fingers and kneading the twin mounds of flesh. “Suck me,” I said, peeling his right hand away to expose my left nipple. He latched onto it, inhaling me. Lashing it with teeth and tongue, he feasted on me like a starving man.
I thrust my hands into his hair and tangled my fingers in loops of gold-struck ginger. The shades of his hair had always captivated me, the way the hues shifted with the prevailing light. Caught between the crowning glory of his hair and the magic of his mouth, all I could do was watch and feel, and pray that our first time would not be our last.
“Fuck me,” I rasped, my throat tight with tears that I dare not let him see.
Blindly he reached, taking himself in hand and sliding his cock along my slit, parting me with it, finding my center and thrusting at the same time that he grabbed my hips and pulled me onto him, impaling me on the first few inches of his manhood.
“More,” I said, lowering myself until my breasts brushed the curls of his chest and I was braced on my forearms. “Give it to me, hard and fast. Make me scream your name when I come.”
At least I hoped I would.
He bent his knees, dug his heels into the bed, grabbed my ass, and surged upward, driving in deeper, and deeper yet, determined to make it happen. Once he’d stretched me out enough to bury his full length inside me, he picked up his pace, upped it yet again, until he was giving it to me, hard and fast and deep enough to make me gasp with yet another orgasm in an endless stream of them. Changing angles, he managed to hit that magic spot that made my vision go white and my toes curl.
“Oh, Daniel!” I came on him. Ejaculated, really. I’d done it once with Edward. My version of his singular experience, I suppose, only I hadn’t had to wait three years to achieve it. “Oh. My. God. Thank. You.” I panted each word between labored breaths.
Daniel grinned, cocky Irishman that he was, and hit the spot again. “I aim to please.”
He’d never fired a musket before enlisting. By the end of the war, he could shoot the eye out of a face card.
“Just be careful where you aim to finish,” I reminded him when he started moving again. “If we don’t want this to end in pregnancy, when you’re ready, pull free and pump it out between us, where I can watch you erupt, hmm?
He lost his grin, and his eyes grew serious. “I don’t want this to end, period. Christ, Lanie.” He was making love to me now, his movements slow and sure and deliberate. “I thought that there was something wrong with me, to have the feelings that I did. Ye don’t know,” he said. “Ye don’t know.”
“Daniel, even if I were Lane, there’d have been nothing wrong with you. With us. The Church would have you believe that it’s wrong….” Lifting myself, I took hold of his cock, slick with my juices, repositioned it, and lowered myself onto him, taking him into my dark passage.
“Lanie?!” He was wide-eyed with shock and felt thoroughly aroused, his cock twitching inside me.
“It doesn’t feel wrong to me. It feels different, yes. And exciting, perhaps because it’s forbidden, in the eyes of the Church and according to the laws of man. But if you take me this way, you can sink into my depths, bury yourself to the root, and not worry about hurting me when you hit bottom. Most importantly, you can spill your seed in me here without risk of conception.”
I pushed down, taking more of him inside me. Pushed again, and again, until he was balls-deep. “Some would judge this wrong, but it doesn’t feel that way, does it?”
“No,” he groaned, his face contorted with pleasure. “No, it feels good. Ye feel good. Warm and tight and Christ Almighty!”
I’d reached behind me and grabbed his balls.
“And this?” I asked, sliding one finger down his taint to press against his pucker. “How does this feel?”
“Wicked good,” he grated. “Jaysus, Joseph, and Mary! Keep that up, and I won’t last.”
“All right,” I sighed, stopping short of penetration. Another time, perhaps.
He moved experimentally, easing his way, keeping his gaze locked on mine, judging his performance by the pleasure on my face. When he saw that I could handle it, he grew bolder, his movements more certain, his strokes going deep enough to fill me to the core.
Finally there came a break in his rhythm, a hitch in his breath. “Yes,” I chanted. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He pulled me down hard against his hips, impaling me on his full length as he erupted into me, hot spurts spewing into the depths of my being. He shuddered to a finish and I collapsed onto his chest, content to stay there while he stroked my back and hair.
We were still joined when the door opened, and Edward stepped inside.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In that moment, I knew. Knew what Edward had done. Master angler that he’d proven himself to be, he’d used me to hook Daniel like the fresh fish that he was.
I felt Daniel shift and slammed myself down on his hips, gripping him with my thighs and pinning him in place. “Don’t. Move,” I ordered. “Don’t. Speak. Not until I give you permission.”
He wasn’t Edward’s yet.
“I’m sorry, Professor. We’re a bit busy here. Please, don’t hold dinner on our account.”
“Too late,” he said wryly. “Babs is keeping it warm for us.”
I could imagine him, looming in the hall, listening through the door.
Judging from the lengthening shadows, we’d been at it longer than I’d thought. “I suppose I should thank you for waiting until we’d finished.”
“I was trying to be helpful.”
I managed to not roll my eyes. Daniel still looked ready to bolt upright and defend my honor, which for a man of his background would likely include declarations of intentions that no one was ready to hear, let alone entertain.
“Yes. Well. If you want to be helpful, we could us
e wet cloths and dry towels. I’m afraid we’ve made a mess.”
“So I see.”
Still, he made no move to leave, revealing his voyeuristic tendencies.
“Edward. Towels. Please?”
He sighed softly. “Coming.”
He closed the door behind him. Footsteps sounded in the hall, a man on a mission.
“Sorry about that. Daniel?”
He was eyeing me strangely, paling when he realized the anomalies in my nature. I wasn’t a virgin, and I wasn’t embarrassed by Edward’s presence, despite being caught in flagrante delicto.
I sighed softly. There was no sense dragging it out.
“Daniel, please. I want you to stay, but understand, if you do, you’ll have to share me with Edward. Of course, he’d rather it be the three of us together over the two of you taking turns, but I won’t pressure you on that front. Now, talk to me.”
Daniel clenched his jaw, his eyes nailing me with hot emerald shards while his color returned and then some. “Did the bastard force himself on ye?” he grated. “By God, I’ll kill him, stepbrother or no.”
“No! No. I can’t lie to you. Edward and I…we…well, we have an understanding.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” He huffed a heated breath. “I thought it odd, the way he looked at ye. At Lane.”
“You were not mistaken. The attraction was there, even before he knew I was a woman. The longer we were together…well, Edward is older. Experienced in ways that I am not. I asked him to teach me, and so he has done.”
“Teach?” he asked, incredulous.
“Yes.”
Daniel rubbed a hand across his face and shook his ginger head. “In Chicago, I pegged him as a sodomite.”
“Oh, he is that,” I said. “And a libertine. Fond of le vice anglais and open to partners regardless of gender. Trust me, he’ll want you in his bed, too, and not just for my sake.”
Daniel blew out a string of scalding curses. “Jaysus, Joseph, and Mary!” Thrusting ten fingers in his hair, he clamped his mouth shut tight.
