by Nia Farrell
But whose?
“Jaysus.” Daniel shuddered as he emptied the last of his seed inside me. “Joseph and Mary.” He pulled the blindfold off. “Are ye all right, Lanie? Christ.”
Edward’s cravat was wet with tears, and my swollen eyes were doubtless as red as the globes of my ass, currently rocking the cradle of Edward’s hips. “I’m fine,” I said hoarsely. “Ah, God.” Another paroxysm wracked my frame. Daniel moaned and licked my ankle, sucking on my skin as my body tightened around his.
“Well done, pet.” Edward slid a hand to my front and claimed a breast. “Daniel, use Elena’s knickers to clean the two of you, then hand my drawers to me, please.”
Still riding the high of post-coital bliss and not fully free of my punishment-induced state of transcendence, I let the men take care of me. Clean me. Hold me. Stroke and pet me. Eventually they carried me to Edward’s room and tucked me into bed between them, skin to glorious skin.
I belonged to Edward, and Daniel belonged to me. Whatever the future held, whether with or without child, I could trust them to take care of me, to see to my needs and satisfy my desires.
I drifted into sleep, feeling cherished and loved but no longer quite so frightened.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
My pregnancy scare lasted two days, until my menses finally started. Edward was the calm in the eye of my storm, which would have spiraled out of control, had he not taken things in hand, reminding me that I was his to protect and care for, and to discipline as needed.
Breathing easier, without the distraction of what if’s, I focused my attention on my sculpting, creating the study to use for my larger-than-life version of Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis. We reclaimed the rhythm of our daily lives. Work and exercise, therapeutic baths and deep tissue massages, visits to Edward’s family and mine, including members of my mother’s family who regretted how things had gone and seemed genuine in their desire to make amends.
My grandparents were dead, but I had an uncle, two cousins, and one aunt, never married. But then her “dear friend” who shared her home was female and no marriage would ever be recognized between them. Perhaps because of their situation, I was tempted to explain my relationship with Edward and Daniel. If our secrets were told, Aunt Elizabeth’s and mine, we would both be seen as aberrations in the eyes of society, yet if we accepted each other’s choices, we could offer support as well. I left their home knowing that, no matter what happened, there was at least one other person on this earth who might love me unconditionally.
Meanwhile, the work on the abbey had halted, waiting for the beams to be delivered and installed. I put Daniel to work making frames, some for me, some for Sydney, who was as anxious as I for Edward’s birthday to arrive.
The first of November was on a Sunday. Dr. Wainwright insisted on having us for lunch, and Edward’s nieces and our nephews insisted on second helpings of birthday cake. I packed extra knickers for the ride home and exited the carriage with my first pair stuffed between my legs to keep the leaks from running down my thighs.
I waited until after supper, and after Daniel’s massage, to give Edward his presents in my room where they were hidden. Sydney had taken a number of exposures, and I’d picked three to be made into prints. When Edward opened his box and lifted them out, the look on his face and Daniel’s made my heart sing.
The first print was me, dressed in men’s clothes, wearing my jaunty bowler. My head was angled down, and my chin tucked, allowing the hat to partially hide my face. I wore no shirt. My coat and vest were unbuttoned, revealing the curves of my breast.
For the second one, I’d taken off my coat and vest and stood facing away from the camera, one hip slightly cocked. My back was naked, save for the suspenders that crossed it, holding up my pants.
I saved my favorite for last. A side view, again wearing my bowler, my head down as if I were contemplating the codpiece that shaped the front of my pants. I had my arm closest to the camera posed with my hand casually tucked into my pocket and my elbow pointed back. My other hand clasped the back of my neck. Shirtless, my suspenders covered my nipples but the curves of my clearly female breasts were in profile.
Dropping my gaze, I could see how my portraits affected Edward. “So you like them?” I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from his lips.
“God, yes. When did you…?” He was looking at my hair, grown a good inch or more since I’d had them taken.
“Just after the others. I thought to give them to you for Christmas, but your birthday came sooner and I didn’t want to wait.” I looked at Daniel, who was rendered speechless for once. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for Christmas for yours, Paddy. Unless you’d rather get them on your birthday and receive something else in December.”
I’d kept the pocket watch portraits, so there would still be a small surprise for each of them, and a large one for Edward, with my Belle, safe in her crate in the warehouse, waiting for the renovations to be completed. I planned to display her, at least, at the open house we planned, even though she would not be for sale.
“Come here,” Edward rumbled, that lion’s throaty purr vibrating the back of his throat and resonating in my core. “Time for my birthday spanking. Thirty six and one to grow on,” he said, pulling me to the bed and turning me over his knee.
“Not fair!” I cried, glad that it wasn’t.
“Hold still,” he warned, shrugging out of his coat and rolling up his sleeves. He flipped my skirts over my head, pushed up my chemise, and pulled down my knickers. “Now count with me. Lose track, and we begin again.”
“One,” I coughed when the first blow landed with more force than I expected, leaving a hot, fleshy handprint on my cheek. “Two,” I croaked when he made the other side match. “Three…”
They rained down, harder once he’d warmed me up, blows interspersed with sensual strokes of his hand, rubbing my bottom, tracing my seam, exploring my crack.
“Thirty-seven. Daniel, bring the oil, please.”
Edward pulled me to a sitting position. My nose was running and my eyes were ringed red like a mutant raccoon. “Let me see your fingers.”
I kept them short, always thinking in the back of my mind that he’d sneak me into one of his clubs dressed as Lane. So far that hadn’t happened. Edward seemed content at home with Daniel and me.
“Good,” he said. “Now for my birthday treat.”
What?
“A singular experience,” he told Daniel. “Watch and learn.”
Edward shed his clothes, spread a towel in the center of my bed, and lay down upon it, feet apart and knees bent. His rigid cock thrust up from the bush of pubic hair that he’d re-grown. “Oil your fingers, Elena. Three should do for tonight.”
I released the breath I’d been holding, oiled my hand, and then oiled Edward, drizzling it down his taint and working it into his sphincter. “Give me the bottle,” he said. I handed it to him to keep. “Now. One finger and lick my balls.”
Having served in the Army and lived under the most primitive conditions, I appreciated Edward’s good hygiene. He had a clean, masculine smell, slightly different than Daniel’s, less woodsy and more musk. I tongued and suckled his testes, rolling them as my middle finger made a long, slow slide, in and out, in and out.
“Now curl it toward my front. Yeeesssss.” Pure pleasure rolled off of him when I found his sweet spot and worked it. “Two fingers,” he rasped, handing me the oil long enough to add a few drops.
I added my ring finger to my middle one and pushed as he did, his body welcoming my intimate invasion. “Lick my cock,” he growled. I slid my tongue from his sac to his tip, lapping at the pre-cum beaded there, swirling it around the crown, tracing the rimmed edge, teasing the sensitive place below the head at the top of his shaft.
“Three fingers,” he grated, “and suck me.”
I worked three fingers into him and let his body adjust before I started pumping, shifting my body to align my neck and let me take him de
ep in my throat.
“Fuck,” he hissed. “Harder.”
I plunged my fingers into him, fucking him with my hand while I took him in my mouth.
“Harder,” he grunted. I shoved into him, giving him what he wanted.
“Now for my special treat. Elena, I want your mouth where it is. Daniel, I’d like your fingers, please, in place of Elena’s.”
I froze, my lips wrapped around Edward’s manhood, my fingers curled inside him. I slid my gaze to Daniel, who stood watching us, lust on his face, confusion in his emerald eyes.
“I want it hard and deep, in ways that she cannot or will not do. It is your choice. I will never force you—either of you—to do anything against your will, but having spent hours using my hands to your benefit, I was hoping that you might spend a few minutes employing your fingers for my pleasure.”
Daniel stood, thoughts warring, the strictures he’d been raised with versus the freedoms offered here, in the relationship that Edward had been moving us towards since he arrived.
Daniel took the oil from Edward’s hand and made his fingers gleam.
“The same,” Edward instructed him. “One finger, then two, then three. Once we are there, I want you to cut loose. Pump that arm and give me everything that I know you have, hmm? Princess, you have lapsed in your worship. Any more, and there will be penance to pay.”
I scooted up on the bed to make room for Daniel and used my mouth and hands on Edward’s cock, circling the base with my thumb and forefinger, squeezing as I swallowed his shaft and fondled his balls. Rather than kneel between Edward’s legs, Daniel lay opposite me, propped on one elbow with our heads nearly even, his eyes lowered to Edward’s thighs and the hand he was shoving between them.
“Yes,” Edward hissed when the first finger went in. “That’s it. Yes. Stroke it. Curl it towards the front and feel for the bump. By damn, you’re a natural. Faster now. More firmly. I will let you know if anything’s amiss, but until then, do not be afraid that you will hurt me. One finger is nothing, is it, pet? Not compared to a fist, hmm?”
Daniel looked at me, trying to figure out who fisted whom.
“Daniel,” he snapped. “Back to me, please. Time for two.”
Oil duly added, the reprimand acknowledged, Daniel slid a second finger in, repeating the process and pleasuring Edward with his hand.
“Now three,” Edward grunted, propping the oil between a pillow and the headboard so that his hands were now free. He fisted them in my hair and pulled my head down hard, pushing deep into my throat, my nose pressing into his groin. “That’s it. Suck me. Fuck me. Harder, my boy. Give it to me. Ah. God. Yes, that’s it. Fuck it. Fuck it….”
Daniel’s forearm moved like a well-oiled machine, driving into Edward with the speed and precision and the force that he craved. Master of control that he was, Edward held off his climax for as long as he could, until Daniel leaned over, bit his nipple, and sent him rocketing, fireworks exploding, hips bucking, his legs trembling from the magnitude of it.
If it were an earthquake, it would have leveled a city. I’d never seen him come so hard, not even when I’d fisted him.
“Thank you,” Edward told us when he could speak again. “I can safely say, this is my best birthday ever.” He crooked a smile at Daniel and me. “You have no idea what this means to me, my boy, to have you both. To love you both. Our own little family, hmm?”
I couldn’t help it. I started to cry from the sheer joy of his words and the promise that they held. Edward loved us. Both of us. And the three of us were a family, even if we could not openly acknowledge it, even if it must be a secret shared with only an intimate few.
Like our statue, we were a work in progress, creating our own perfect trinity. The world might never see it, the world might never know, but as far as I was concerned, the rest of the world could be damned.
I’d found my heaven on earth.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tuesday was Election Day in the United States of America, with the fate of the country—and myself—hanging in the balance. Given the Presidential candidates, there was no doubt in my mind that General Grant would emerge victorious over Governor Seymour, but by how much?
Since Edward’s birthday on Sunday, I’d been plagued by the question, clinging like a monkey to my back as I raced to keep up with the shifts and changes in our lives. Edward asking more of Daniel. Now Daniel, asking more of me. When I performed his massage last night, he’d asked me to finger him, and I’d broken my rule to do it.
I started with one digit and took him in my mouth, for a better sense of what Edward had experienced. I didn’t know what would happen tonight, when it was Edward’s turn to play nurse. I intended to give them the privacy that they needed, to do whatever was required or desired.
All this yanked my thoughts back to the bet that we’d made, Edward and I, on the outcome of the election. He’d predicted a margin of fifty-one percent; I’d gone with sixty. Tomorrow’s headlines would declare one of us the winner, and I knew what I’d like for my part. A trip to Bath, to take the waters and inhale deep breaths of Austen air. I hoped that Edward might engage a professional masseuse to work on Daniel while we watched, picking up pointers to improve our techniques. But if Edward won…
I shivered, thinking of what he might ask, then put it from my mind. I’d started my cycle, only a day late this time, and knew what the next five days would bring. Rounds of sex. Buckets of cum poured into me. then dripping from me. Lazy baths and stacks of towel and drams of whiskey to take the edge off my cramps.
For now, I was alone. Edward was at the university. Daniel was at the abbey, inspecting the temporary supports that would be put to the test tomorrow, when the replacement beams that had been delivered would be set in place. We’d held off installing the windows until the beams were done, unwilling to risk breakage. If all went as planned, the abbey would have a final cleaning and be ready for occupation by the end of the week.
After breakfast, I went up to my studio, grateful for the heat from the small Franklin stove that Edward had installed as a kindness to me and my art, channeling heat without smoke and cinders. A bucket of coal and a shovel sat nearby, fuel to be added as needed, but the warmth rising from the rest of the house was enough to take the worst chill off the air.
As usual, I hoped to work on The Arrangement. I still wasn’t certain that that’s what I would call it. Still wasn’t certain whose faces would grace our bodies. Right now, I was leaning toward Lucy’s gypsy as Patroclus (wearing his softer look). Sydney had begged to be Briseis, but I hadn’t found anyone strong enough, commanding enough to be Edward’s doppelgänger, and my inability to envision it had brought my work to a standstill.
I paced my studio, eyeing canvases, flipping through my stacks of framed prints, praying to heaven for the help I so desperately needed. I paused by an opened crate of sketchbooks, dozens of them, a body of work reaching back to my youth. I grasped a handful and pulled them free, settling on the red velvet chaise longue to revisit my past.
And then I saw him. Adam Roth. My first love. My teacher. Doomed to never be more, by virtue of our ages, but the only other man I could imagine as Achilles.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
I felt the rising tide of inspiration fill my being and flood my fingertips, spilling into the chisel and mallet that I carried to where three figures stood, about fourteen inches tall, their faceless bodies entwined, their roughed-in faces waiting for the details to finish them. Regardless whose jaws I shaped, whose lips and cheeks and brows I formed, when at last they looked at each other, it would be through Edward’s and Daniel’s and my eyes, and no one else’s.
By the end of the day, I had Achilles nearly done. After supper, Daniel and Edward engaged in massage, and I went back to work, not stopping until it was nearly midnight and only then because I needed to attend to myself. I came out of my water closet with fresh rags between my legs to find Edward and Daniel standing by the doorway. Both of them were naked. Dan
iel was fully aroused and Edward was getting there.
“You’re late,” Edward accused.
“A day,” I quipped, seeking levity to break the displeasure radiating from him. “Not two, like last time, thank God.”
He straightened and stalked towards me. “Do you really want to joke about it?” he asked. “You wish to add to your punishment? I warned you what it would be.”
“But…I ate,” I stammered. “I took cider and water up with me. Please, Edward, I was so close. And I finished him. I finished Achilles. I found a face and carved it and, oh, you must come see. Both of you. Now. Please?”
Edward was a man torn. In the end, punishment was postponed. The men donned robes and followed me upstairs.
They gazed, wordless, upon the perfection of Achilles.
I sidled closer to Edward and placed my hand over his heart. “I didn’t mean to neglect you, or deny you or appear disrespectful or ungrateful. Being a writer, you must understand what it’s like for an idea to take hold and you’re helpless to do anything else until you’ve expressed it. Well, that’s what happened tonight. I’m sorry if I can’t explain it to your satisfaction. It’s a shade of gray in your world of black and white, neither right nor wrong, just there. Now, where would you like me for my punishment? Do you need to fetch your belt?”
He sighed and kissed the top of my head. “Not tonight, pet. It’s late. We are going to fuck you, then we are going to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day, for all of us.”
They left me in bed, saddle sore and incredibly messy. I soaked in the tub, ate breakfast in my wrapper, and had started to dress for the day when inspiration struck again.
An hour later, I appeared at the abbey. I’d thought to surprise Daniel, but Edward was there too, having arranged for someone to cover his class so that he could be on hand for the beam installations. He was the money man, after all. Any questions that arose could be asked directly to the one whose voice most mattered.
