Treasure

by W. A. Hoffman

  “Aye,” she squeaked, and heaved a sigh that must have drained all the air from her thin body. She at last met my gaze, though, and I saw earnestness and fear in her huge brown eyes.

  “My dear Agnes,” I said kindly. “That is a most gracious offer, and I will be happy to instruct you in such matters without carnality. You need not…”

  “You do not find me attractive?” she squeaked with tears.

  “Nay, nay, that is not the matter at all,” I said quickly. I felt completely off balance for the conversation, as if somehow the blanket wrapped about me and Gaston clinging to my back would topple me so that I fell in a clumsy heap of social inappropriateness. “It is just that you need not provide such service. I would not have us take advantage of you in that fashion.”

  “But you are not taking advantage if it is a thing I want,” she protested. “I would learn, and you are the only two men I can think of that I would be willing to learn of such things from.”

  Gaston moved so that he wrapped an arm around me and brought his mouth to my ear. “Oui,” he breathed.

  I squirmed enough to be able to see his face.

  He nodded resolutely, and his eyes were calm. “My Horse does not hate or fear her – as long as you are with me.”

  My cock sprang to life as the implications of his words and hers took root. I nodded.

  I turned back to Agnes. “My dear, we will accept your offer, gladly. And… If one of us was in a position to marry you, we would. We have long considered it, but circumstances are such that… well, I could not put Vivian out and Gaston’s father…”

  She shook her head. “Thank you, but I do not know if I wish to marry either of you, anyway.” She stood and wrung her hands. “What should I do?”

  My thoughts were scampering about like excited dogs, and yet I still possessed the clarity to realize our current sleeping arrangement would not be amenable to three; and, as Gaston had been at me twice this day, there was another matter that must be tended to. “Let us all move to the bathing room, where there is a brazier and water.”

  “We will bathe?” she asked incredulously.

  “Aye,” I said and reluctantly slipped from beneath the blanket to find a pair of breeches. “For your first lesson in the matter of sex involving men – though I know that is not what you truly wish to learn – if you plan to tryst with a man who you have any reason to believe has been busy with other men, you must always make sure he washes his prick.”

  Gaston cursed quietly – due to his presumably having forgotten this detail in his excitement – and rolled out of the hammock wrapped in our blanket.

  “And for that matter,” I continued, as I surveyed the empty atrium and the short distance to the bathing room, and decided I would gain nothing by donning more clothing. “You should always inspect a cock before allowing it entry. There is no sense in playing with a member that shows signs of the pox or other ailment.”

  “How will I know what that looks like?” she asked.

  “It is usually quite obvious,” I said, “but ours are healthy and yet different, and so they should provide you some basis for future comparison if that should ever be required.”

  Gaston had donned breeches and nothing else as well, and left our blanket on the hammock. I was pleased in this, as it would stay dry and thus we would have a warm place to return to.

  We sprinted to the bathing room, and I hurried to get the brazier going while Gaston happily discovered that the upper cistern had indeed been refilled since the fire. He filled the tub partway, and the sudden stream and pool of water seemed to suck up what little heat the room had possessed. Even as the brazier finally caught, I thought my choice of locations for this endeavor might have been foolhardy. Agnes handed us her damp blanket, and Gaston and I huddled together on the floor beneath it, waiting for the coals to produce heat.

  “Have you had any carnal experiences at all?” I asked Agnes as we waited.

  She shook her head sadly.

  “Even poor or unwanted ones?” I asked carefully.

  This shake was quicker than the last, and her expression was one of surprise that I should ask, without a trace of fear or defensiveness. I was relieved.

  “Do you pleasure yourself?” I asked.

  She shook her head again, but this time she ended the gesture with a sigh. “I have touched myself,” she admitted. “But… I do not understand the way or why of it. It made me uncomfortable.”

  “How?” I asked. “Well… how did you touch yourself, and can you describe the nature of the discomfort?”

  “I touched my privates,” she said and flushed anew. “You once told me to do so,” she added quickly. “You said I could discover how to please another that way.”

  I wondered when the Devil I had done that, and then remembered her watching over me after I had taken the beating in the tavern. I had been quite drugged.

  I grinned. “Aye, I did say that. And you found no pleasure in it?”

  “It made me… ache… Not like when I have my monthly, but with…” She shrugged helplessly.

  “With desire?” I offered. “With need?”

  She frowned and nodded. “I suppose that is how it is spoken of. It was interesting for a time, and sometimes I would do it just to feel that, but it seemed to serve no purpose and I have felt I was doing it incorrectly.”

  I smiled in sympathy and recalled that it was different for women. Their sex did not seem to possess a mind of its own that knew damn well what it needed.

  “The pleasure comes when you tease or push that desire to the breaking point,” I said.

  “So I did not do it long enough?” she asked with concern. “It became painful if I did it too long.”

  “Aye, aye,” I agreed. “It is a matter of intensity and varying the sensation. Do not fear, I will teach you. If you are pleased with nothing else this endeavor might offer you, I am sure you will be pleased with that.”

  This seemed to warm her enthusiasm, much as the coals had finally begun to do for their corner of the room. I invited her to doff her clothes and join us beneath the blanket. Though we still wore breeches, I was thankful at this stage that my ardor had cooled as I made a place for her to sit within the tangle of our legs. Gaston was hard against my side, though. I pressed closer to him, and his arm pulled me closer still.

  She did as I asked; and no surprisingly sumptuous beauty emerged from her shapeless dress. Though she was now nearly two years older, she was still every bit as skinny and under-endowed as she had been when first we met. Her hipbones could bruise a man, and her breasts could barely be cupped; yet there was much of a woman about her, and she would not be confused with a boy by any but the blind.

  Shivering, she slipped into the space I had made for her, facing Gaston with her shoulder to my chest and her knees pulled up. I wrapped her in the blanket. Her skin was icy, and I chastely rubbed her arms and legs to warm her until she relaxed enough to lean against me.

  For some strange reason that only our Horses understand, I was brought to recall a memory of long ago: not of the last time I frolicked with both a man and a woman, but of a cold and rainy day in a barn with Shane when first we had pleasured one another.

  I turned my head to find Gaston and saw worry in his eyes – for me. He knew me well enough to read my slightest shudder, and I took great comfort in that and the memory receded.

  “The first time I ever… played… with another was on a cold and rainy day such as this,” I said to both of them. “We had been riding when the rain came, and we hid in a barn and doffed our clothes and attempted to warm one another.”

  Gaston nodded his understanding – he knew the story – and kissed my cheek.

  “Was it with a girl or a boy?” Agnes asked.

  “A boy,” I sighed. “I was thirteen and he a year older.”

  “Is that when you learned you favored men?” she asked.

  “Nay, I had realized that before then,” I said with a smile. “The boys had begun to speak
and brag of women, and all I thought of was them.”

  “Aye, I know that well,” she said. “This is nice; neither of you are hairy.” She frowned at her words. “I mean to say, when I think of men, I think of them as being hairy and sweaty, and I find revulsion in the thought of them being near me. I do not find either of you revolting, and… Being held is nice. No one has held me like this since I was little.”

  Tears filled her eyes and I pulled her close in empathy.

  “Oui, it is nice to be held,” Gaston breathed. “No one ever held me that I could remember until Will.”

  “My mother held me,” she told him. “We were too poor to have a governess.”

  “You were blessed, then,” I said.

  She smiled and wiped away her tears only to have her eyes fill again. “I loved my mother and father. I miss them.”

  “I am glad I have found my father again,” Gaston said. “I never knew my mother. I did not truly know him until these last weeks.”

  She looked up at me. “Your father is a beast; was your mother kind?”

  I snorted. “Nay. I had a governess I was fond of, though. She would hold me when I was little.”

  She ran an inquisitive finger up my arm to my shoulder, and then she frowned. “What happened to your chest?”

  Gaston stilled.

  I sighed and decided something akin to the truth was the only thing readily available. “We were frolicking and managed to spill a large amount of wax on me.”

  She grimaced in sympathy. “Did it hurt?”

  I nodded with a small smile, and quickly kissed Gaston on the lips. He sighed.

  “Does it hurt now?” she asked.

  “It is tender, aye.”

  She nodded, and her inquisitive finger ventured to Gaston. “And do your scars hurt?”

  He held his breath for a second at her touch, and then shook his head.

  “They are different in sensation for him,” I told her, and put a finger next to hers to run across the pattern of his scars. “He still feels beneath them, but it is a duller than what he feels on the unmarred skin. Avoid this.” I ran a finger wide around his scarred right nipple.

  “It feels odd,” Gaston added. “It is not pleasurable.”

  “His other one is fine,” I said, but as his left nipple was pressed against my shoulder, we could not reach it and he did not seem prone to move to allow us to.

  “Do you have any places that feel odd to the touch?” I asked as I caressed her cheek.

  She stilled like a scared rabbit beneath my finger and closed her eyes. “I do not think so.”

  I explored her face and neck with gentle fingertips, and she sighed. She stilled again as I wandered to her collarbone and then between her raised knees to the space between her breasts. I thought she might faint from lack of breath as I slowly worked my way toward her left nipple, and I finally touched it just to get her to gasp. Soon, she was leaning back against my upraised leg, with her hands grasping at Gaston’s arm and my shoulder, and her legs spread as much as the space would allow, and we found her pleasure faster than I had imagined.

  When she stopped gasping, she raised her head to regard me with wide and wondrous eyes and proclaim, “That is why people do it.”

  Gaston erupted in mirth.

  As she was not the first woman – virgin or otherwise – I had been the first to bring across that threshold, I was not nearly as surprised. I cuddled her close and kissed her forehead before tilting her head back and teasing her lips with mine until she opened for me to explore her mouth: a thing she seemed amenable to me doing: a thing which gained me a poke in the ribs and a tight hand about my balls from my matelot.

  I pulled away from her mouth with amusement and turned to him. “Would you not have me enjoy her at all?” I murmured chidingly in French.

  I was initially faced with the Horse’s stubbornness; but though it was fractious, he seemed to have it in hand, and my balls and turgid member received a far more pleasant caress and my lips an apologetic kiss.

  “I had not seen you kiss another,” he murmured before kissing me deeply.

  When he let me breathe, I found her watching us with narrowed eyes.

  “I would like to see you make love,” she said as if it were a curiosity.

  “You will,” Gaston muttered in English, which set me laughing.

  He disentangled himself from us and stood to put a kettle to boil on the brazier and transfer some glowing coals to the tray beneath the tub. I despaired of that much water ever growing warm. I stood and stretched, as much to readjust my member in my breeches as to straighten my spine and legs. She lay on the floor in the blanket and regarded us.

  “Are you aroused?” she asked. “May I see it now?”

  I gave my matelot an inquisitive glance, and he snorted with annoyance at either his jealousy or my teasing him of it. I dropped my breeches and kicked them away, and she knelt to peer at my member with the same frown she wore when studying a thing beneath a lens before sketching it. I watched Gaston’s breeches join mine in the corner with hungry eyes.

  “Have her please you,” he said huskily in French.

  As always, I would deny him nothing, especially not when he asked in such a manner.

  I bade her stand and she came to me with outstretched hands. I caught her wrists and said, “With any lover, be it man or woman, it is best not to start with the organs of desire.”

  She nodded her understanding and redirected her hands to my neck. Then she proved she had indeed been an apt pupil, by stroking and exploring me gently much as I had done her. She even mimicked my movements in playing with her nipples, and I was surprised at her adeptness in discerning action from sensation.

  Gaston watched us all the while with a lustful gaze that kept me far harder than her ministrations. At last he slipped behind her. She started a little as he put his arms around her, and her eyes went quite wide as he adjusted their positions, and I knew he had nestled his cock between her buttocks. Then his hands were running down her arms while he nuzzled her neck, until he at last reached her hands and guided them to my member. He whispered in her ear of how I liked to be touched while I held her hips and tried not faint from dizzy pleasure.

  She squeaked with delight and surprise when I came on her belly. Then she explored the stickiness of my jism with a child’s amusement. Gaston used my come to lubricate his slow exploration of her body until she was panting and grasping at me with sticky fingers and I was kissing him over her shoulder. She came such that her being pinned between us was all that kept her from sinking to the floor.

  “May I take you?” Gaston asked her.

  She nodded mutely, and he lowered her to lie on the blanket. I sank down the wall to lie beside her on my side, with my head propped upon my arm. We watched Gaston empty the kettle into a basin and dutifully bathe his member.

  “This first time it will be uncomfortable and might hurt,” I said gently.

  She nodded, “I know,” as if it was a small matter, but I could see the fear begin to grip her.

  I ran my hand over her body and sank my fingers between her legs. She squirmed a little as I explored her readiness. Gaston returned to us and gazed in wonder as I pulled my well-lubricated fingers from her.

  “You are as ready as you will ever be,” I teased her lightly in order to tell him he might proceed.

  They each nodded at what they heard, and Gaston eased himself between her legs. With amusement I recalled the last time I had seen him between a woman’s thighs: at Jamaica’s birth. I studied his face and found as much fear there as Agnes’ still held.

  I wiped my fingers on the blanket and then caressed her face and turned her head so that she looked to me. “Close your eyes,” I whispered. “And relax.”

  Then I looked up at him again, my eyes asking the questions I did not wish to voice in her presence. All I could think was how very fast touching her cold flesh had taken me back to a barn I did not wish to remember. Was a girl spread before him carry
ing him where he had feared it would?

  He took a deep breath and nodded that he was well enough. He did not take his eyes from me as he positioned himself and slowly entered her. Then he held still, and I held his eyes as I would a rope to keep him from falling even when she gasped and tensed at the discomfort of his presence.

  At last he looked away and fought a sob. I glanced to her and found her eyes still tightly closed and her teeth upon her lip. I caressed her cheek and then his, and wiped his tears away before they fell upon her. He kissed my fingers.

  “I do not like this,” Agnes whispered.

  I looked to her and found her eyes open. Thankfully she was only staring at me. My hand went to her cheek again and I kept it there to keep her facing me while I kissed her forehead.

  “Do you want him to withdraw?” I asked.

  She shook her head as much as I would allow. “He can finish. Will it take long? I feel I am on a spit.”

  I chuckled. “Aye, it does feel much like that. Some come to enjoy it.”

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Aye, very much.”

  She began to turn her head to Gaston and I glanced at him and found that though his eyes were puffy, he was in control of his emotions again. I let her see him.

  “Do you like it?” she asked him.

  He shook his head and smiled at her. “Not as much as Will does. It is odd and... aye, as if one is impaled.”

  “Gaston is usually the one within me and not the other way around,” I said quickly.

  “Oh, so you do not take turns?” She seemed surprised.

  “Nay, not… evenly,” I said.

  “Do you need to move?” she asked him, with a frown that said she did not think that would be pleasant at all.

  “I will go slowly; and you will tell me if I should stop,” he said.

  She nodded, and he began to move. She grimaced a little, and clutched at my hand, but then her expression became one of perplexed curiosity and she studied the ceiling and wall with her tongue in her cheek, as if she were attempting to determine if she liked the taste of the endeavor.