by Nia Farrell
I reached behind me and took things in hand, fingers grasping, pulling, squeezing, twisting, while my palm provided the friction he needed, bursting onto my back, pulsing streams of ejaculate flooding my flesh. Edward hummed his approval and kept up the same slow, deliberate pace he had maintained since his restart. Like a marathon runner trained for one goal and determined to reach it, he resisted pushing, held off finishing despite my attempts to speed things along. Doing so only earned me a punishing kiss, or a bruising grip on my tender backside.
Daniel kept himself in play by cupping my breasts and licking my neck, interrupting the wet slide of his tongue with suggestive nips, sensual bites, and, in places, searing suction that was hard and long enough to leave marks. It was as if, being denied the cove of my femininity, he sought to anchor his claim on me in other ways.
Edward was not oblivious to it as he pumped away, steadfastly working his length in and out, in and out, plowing my field already over-wet with fluids, his and mine, noisome sex that reminded me of the Field of Lost Shoes, where muddy ground sucked the brogans off the feet of VMI cadets as they charged the Union lines and changed the tide of the battle. I dimly realized that my mind was wandering, that I was disengaging. Like a soldier in the rear guard, my orgasm was held in reserve, awaiting orders that would not come tonight. Edward had told me so, and the professor was a man of his word.
“Ow!” A sharp bite on my breast and a hand on my throat got my attention quick enough.
“Here,” Edward growled, hips snapping, fingers tightening. “With us.”
I understood what he said. Knew what he demanded, my full attention on him and Daniel, but the awkward teen who’d lusted after her teacher wondered, what was the point? My hope for more stripped away, I felt my eyes burn and found myself crying, fat tears escaping my closed lids to roll down my face and wet the pillow.
“Bloody hell.” Concern laced Edward’s voice, albeit with the merest thread of annoyance. I was relieved to hear that he wasn’t angry with me, or overly upset, but when he stopped fucking me, the fragile hold that I had on my emotions broke.
“I—I’m s-s-sorry,” I blubbered. “I’m here. I’m sorry. I want…I ca—can’t….”
“Shh. It’s all right, pet.” He started to pull out and I grabbed his hips, fingers scrabbling for purchase.
“Please,” I begged him, tightening my walls around him, refusing to let him go. “Please!”
The next thing I knew, Edward was on his back with me atop him. His brow was furrowed above his turquoise eyes, his gaze intense as he searched mine.
He grabbed my throat and lifted his golden head to whisper in my ear. “Take it,” he said. “Take what you need. I’m here. We’re here.”
I felt Daniel’s large, calloused hand on my back, stroking, tracking a long, slow line from my neck to where Edward and I were joined. Wetting himself, Daniel pushed a finger in my pucker, then two. I hissed and ground down on them both. Now that I had Edward’s permission, I intended to make the most of it.
When Daniel added a third finger, it was almost like having a cock in my ass. “Yes,” I moaned, pressing my clitoris hard against Edward’s pubic bone. “More. Fuck me.”
Edward looked past my shoulder at Daniel. “My boy, it’s safe enough with the ginger gone this long and a cock well-coated with oil. Or I could suggest a new experience for Elena. Both of us in her cunny at once, or her arse, if she prefers.”
I felt Daniel tense at the thought of his cock sharing space with Edward’s, rubbing together as they tried to fit inside me. While I knew, theoretically, they could (two penises were smaller than a baby’s head, after all), I had no desire to test it and neither did Daniel.
“You’re fine where you are,” I told Edward.
I turned to kiss my Irishman and whispered, “Oil.”
Chapter Forty-One
The scaffolding at the abbey came down. The windows went in. The cleaning crew finished. Saturday morning, we bundled against the cold and walked the half mile down together to inspect the new home of Lane Davenport Art.
Just seeing the expanse of leaded glass windows sent shivers of excitement coursing down my spine. Fresh tuck pointing made the building look perpetually well-loved, with no hint of its former derelict condition.
Daniel planned to build a lockable, wooden coal bin behind the building. While our neighbors were aware that an art gallery would soon be opening in their midst, the street-front side lacked identification. I would have preferred making my own sign to hang on the building’s exterior but had drawn it out instead, entrusting it to a professional display artist whilst I continued working on my sculpture. Installation had been promised within the fortnight.
However, there still remained much work to do on the interior. Installing heat. Constructing partitions and display walls. Creating a comfortable oasis for meals and such in the former choir loft, using the furnishings from my apartment. Eventually we would have running water, but for now the cistern and pump and the privy out back would have to suffice.
I chose the north transept for my workspace. The sacristy was too dark, and while either crossing arm could be partitioned to help contain the dust from carving, the light in the north was superior, plentiful but diffused.
The stone cavern of the interior was a nearly blank canvas waiting to be filled. Only the stone altar remained from its former incarnation, a fixture that could have been removed, except it would provide the perfect display space for more ethereal pieces, if I was ever called or commissioned to carve angels and such.
With the temporary lease on the warehouse due to expire, having been secured prior to Daniel’s arrival, Edward had arranged to have everything moved this weekend, while the three of us could be on hand to supervise. Word was sent, and after lunch, multiple wagons were loaded and unloaded, with air blistered blue when talk turned to moving my marble. Fortunately, both Daniel and Lucy’s gypsy understood the physics required for handling a four-ton stone, in terms of technique, manpower, and horsepower. Because of the complexities, the crated marble would be delivered next week. Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis must wait.
Daniel’s manifest was a saving grace when it came to placement. Furnishings from my apartment went to the choir loft. Crates from my studio went downstairs. The pieces in temporary residence at my home studio would come last, once the system of moveable walls was built, painted, and ready to display them.
When Edward locked the door Saturday evening, I was ordered not to return until he could accompany me, which meant that I must likely wait for the weekend. The studio for now was Daniel’s domain. None of the men charged with moving the marble needed my distraction, and neither did he, if he were to get things finished on time for our grand opening, now slated five weeks hence, on the twelfth of December. Elections would be done and the holidays upon us, perfect for catering to patrons in a buying mode. To generate interest, Edward planned to run ads in a number of papers, once per week, then daily the week of the twelfth.
I finished the study for The Arrangement, now retitled Oi Treis Erastés, or The Three Lovers. Forbidden to visit the new studio, I made amends for my neglect and paid visits on Wednesday to Aunt Elizabeth and on Thursday to Masey, who took time out from her writing to see me. As beautiful as ever, she glowed with excitement while sharing the premise of the story that she was working on, with a heroine who sounded remarkably like herself and a hero who seemed modeled after Edward. Jealousy momentarily reared its ugly head, but I shoved it down and smiled in sisterly solidarity. I wanted to encourage her, to support her emotionally if not financially, and she wished to do the same. Plans were made for her to attend the grand opening of Lane Davenport Art in December, accompanied by Dr. Wainwright as his ward.
On the eve of November’s Friday the Thirteenth, I felt incredibly blessed. I’d never been overly superstitious. Of course, I observed those things (like walking under a ladder) that seemed simple common sense, but tossing salt and knocking on wood would never be ha
bits of mine. Daniel, on the other hand, swung like a pendulum between utterly oblivious to nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, depending on the situation. Fortunately, he shared my refusal to attract bad fortune on ill-numbered Fridays and managed to pass the day productively, free of incident.
We celebrated the week’s worth of accomplishments with an impromptu concert. Daniel played his fiddle, and I indulged Edward’s request for a song, then another. The king commanded my performance, and I obeyed.
Such a little thing, but Edward seemed to take great pleasure in listening to me. To us. Ensconced in his favorite wing-back chair, a glass of wine in one hand, his other fingers tapping the upholstered arm, he well-matched the picture that he presented to the outside world. His neighbors and peers saw the professor as a man of wealth and breeding who taught history because he was driven to share his love of it, not because he needed additional income. He had a valet (who did little beyond seeing that his clothes were cleaned or replaced) and a full staff, so well-versed in their duties that they kept his household running like a well-oiled machine. No one outside would guess that his servants danced in the hall outside their master’s study, let alone imagine what happened behind its closed door once the fiddle fell silent.
Sydney knew, of course. And Mary Margaret, by virtue of her intimate acquaintance with Sydney. Which meant, if I had any questions, or simply needed to talk to someone with a closed mouth and open mind, it was either talk to Sydney or suffer in silence.
Edward wanted things that I wasn’t certain I could physically give him. Fisting. Dual penetration of a single orifice. He remained willing to help me explore my options, including other partners, male and female, but the way that Daniel’s hackles raised when the subject was broached, I knew that my Irishman was as possessive of me as I was of him. We were willing to share each other with Edward but beyond that, no. No.
Just…no.
We rose late, having slept but a little. Edward had been particularly lusty and claimed every orifice of mine before the night was through. He had yet to breech either one of Daniel’s, and I would have sworn, the way that he’d fixated on Daniel’s mouth, that he would kiss him again. But it was too soon. Still.
There was no sense rushing things. And so it was, we remained sensitive to each other’s needs and wishes and enjoyed the same pleasures as on the many nights before.
Breakfast was a quiet, contemplative affair. We served ourselves from the sideboard, ate, then made ready to walk to the studio, bundling against the cold. I walked on Edward’s arm, with Daniel close behind, keeping up a monologue of what to expect when we got there, describing the ingenious system of small, interlinked stoves that were being installed. The vent pipes would be hidden behind the beams and feed into one leading to the loft, where the smoke would be directed through the roof. The building would have heat and the stone walls would be spared, free of holes to accommodate the flue.
While modern heat and historic preservation were all well and good, I was most interested in seeing the display walls that Daniel and Young Frank were building. Daniel and I knew what we needed, and he’d come up with a design that in theory should work. Just how well, I would know once I’d seen it.
My stomach pinched just a bit as Daniel unlocked the front door and swung it open wide, allowing me to see the first set of walls, joined together to form three sides of a square. Each section was independent, mounted on casters for easiest handling, with hardware along the edges that allowed them to be locked together either in a straight line or at a ninety-degree angle. They were nine feet tall, to better envision how a painting would look in an individual room where ceiling heights approached twelve feet or more, yet they seemed dwarfed in the lofty expanse of the space.
Daniel read my concern. “Ye don’t want them bigger. They’ll block too much light. Once we hang some pieces, ye’ll see, they’ll work fine.”
Foin. He drenched the word in saucy Irish, and had done it deliberately, from the twinkle in his emerald eyes, damn him.
“No,” I said firmly. “It’s too cold.”
“Yer bed in the loft has blankets enough for a Chicago winter. Clean sheets, too. Had Lucy launder ‘em after I caught her and one of her men coming away from snoggin’ under the stairs.”
“Wait. What?”
Daniel grinned like he’d just found a rainbow’s end. “If it looks like sex and smells like sex…”
I punched his arm. “No! Her men!”
He shrugged and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Twins, I’d guess. Practically identical. If ye hadn’t been studying the faces so much, ye’d see that their hair grows a wee bit different in the back. Halfway up, the growth pattern changes, and it’s not just the waves being crimped from wearing a hat. If one didn’t swoosh left and one swoosh right, they’d be damned identical.”
“Well.” I sorted through my mental images of Lucy’s gypsy and no, I’d never studied the back of his head, just the face that I was intent on carving. And to learn that he was a twin…well, that explained why some days, he wore a softer look and sometimes his countenance was harder.
“Does she know?” I wondered, feeling strangely protective. “By God, if they’re using her….”
“Yes.” Edward hummed, eying the loft, with its empty bed and clean sheets and blankets enough to keep us warm, so long as we stayed beneath them. “Or she should.”
“How so?”
“Well,” Daniel drawled, “one calls her a ‘rare jewel’ and one calls her ‘my treasure.’ In Gaelic, of course. Nothing like the mother tongue when it comes to wooing a lass, eh, darlin’ girl?”
He brushed a kiss behind my ear, and my knees melted. I could feel my will caving in on itself. The lure of the loft was growing stronger by the minute. “Not fair,” I whined. “At least wait until we get home.”
Edward angled his head upward and held out his hand. “Let’s inspect upstairs, shall we?”
I hesitated, torn and cursing the cold. Taking his hand would literally be placing myself in it, acquiescing to whatever it was that he had in mind, and a stubborn, independent manly part of me balked at it. Instead, I lifted my chin and told him to lead the way, keeping both of my hands free for my skirts, which must be either lifted sufficiently or tripped upon.
Seeing my things was a bit surreal, slightly disjointed, being out of context as they were. It was the same as Chicago, yet different, due to the open layout of the space. My dining table and chairs were nearest the stairs. Against the wall, my kitchen cupboard, with its pull-out cutting board, held table service above, pots and skillets and mixing bowls below, with flatware and cooking utensils tucked into the drawers below the bottom shelf that I used for meal preparation.
Beyond the kitchen area was seating. A dilapidated green horsehair sofa, left by a former tenant as not worth moving. A high-backed winged chair and the ottoman I’d found to let Daniel elevate his leg and rest when I’d worked him too hard. Our eyes met, and we exchanged soft smiles, remembering.
My one piece of fine furniture was the wardrobe that had belonged to the paternal grandmother I’d never met, alive when I was born but gone soon after. My father had inherited it and some little else, and had officially given it to me on my sixteenth birthday, blissfully unaware that thirteen months later, the country would be at war, and a year after that, he’d be dead, killed at Pittsburg Landing.
I ran my hand over the warm walnut, tracing the familiar lines with my fingertips, feeling the stories held in the grain, wondering what would go in it, now that I was Lanie again.
“Thank you, Daniel,” I said, my voice husky with emotion. “Thank you. I hate it that I had to abandon you and leave you to deal with everything alone. Pack and ship, store and move. I’m amazed it traveled so well.”
There were a few new scratches, as one might expect, traveling half a continent and an ocean’s expanse, but the edges weren’t chipped or dented, and finials still adorned the pediment top. It was my prized possession, rankin
g first on the list after Daniel’s things.
“I’ll be making screens for up here,” Daniel said. “Ye’ll want some walls for privacy, if yer stomach acts up and ye need to lie down, or for models to change into costumes.”
Most of my subjects were clothed, this was true. I’d a fondness for Shakespeare, and Elizabethan styles had brought more than Romeo and Juliet to life. “Yes,” I agreed. “I’ll want the bedroom space closed off, but I’d like the rest of it to stay open. If we’re breaking for lunch, we can look down and see who comes in. Tell me, Edward, are teachers ever tempted to play hooky?”
“Every day,” he rumbled, blue fire sparking in his gemstone eyes. “But I cannot expect students to deny their urges if I fail to master my own.”
Intentional or not, he drew a line that I managed to ignore.
“Well, then,” I said. “You’ve enough practice on a daily basis, you should have no problem controlling them now. My poor iron bed wasn’t intended to hold your weight and Daniel’s and mine, and it certainly wasn’t designed for your favorite sport.”
Coming up behind me, Edward put his hands on my waist, pulled me back against him, and murmured in my ear. “My favorite sport? Fencing? Swordplay wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“It most certainly was.” I yelped when he found my breast and nipped my ear. “Your blade parrying with Daniel’s, both of you hilt-deep in my sheaths. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You. Are. Wrong.” This, in his teasing voice, repeating the words that I’d told him to say.
I batted at his roving hand, headed for my buttons. “I’m right. Speaking of which, we still need to talk about Bath.”
“Bath.”
“Yes. The trip to Bath. Our bet,” I reminded him. “Grant won.”
“Ah.” I could feel the smile curving his face. “Yes, Grant won, but you, princess, did not.”
“What?” I pulled free, needing to face him, to read his expressions while he explained himself.
