by Ruby Scott
He leaned down to kiss her again, but she stopped him with a quick and breathless, “Wait.”
He frowned down at her, confusion clouding the passion in his eyes for a mere second before she rested her fingers against his length, still fully clad in trousers.
“I’m ready now,” she whispered, trying to convey with anything but words that she wanted to reciprocate the pleasure he was bringing her.
He understood, nodding and quickly taking his clothes off. She was able to take all of him; a trick of ignoring her gag reflex that she had learned long ago. It was just as good seeing him from down here, and now that she was able to have her eyes free, she could watch both of them at one time.
She watched as in the throes of passion, Michael reached out and placed a hand against Andrew’s shoulder, drawing him closer and squeezing his bicep hard enough to bruise. Michael whispered not her name, but Andrew’s, but it didn’t bother Megan one bit.
This was different than anything she had done before. The threesomes she had been a part of before had been with straight men. They had kept touching each other to a minimum. It had been about her, and they had ignored the other man, leaving the triangle of giving and receiving incomplete. This was a completely alien experience, to see two men that clearly cared for each other with her. It was beautiful in a way that Megan didn’t think anything else would be. It was a complete circle, and it satisfied something deep inside of Megan.
The cresting pleasure made her forget anything else, and she came in a white-hot shuddering wave of pure bliss. Andrew came next, arching above her in a sight that would rival the sight of heaven in its beauty, and finally Michael spent himself, leaning over Megan for a few moments before claiming her lips in a demanding, rough kiss that softened at the end to something slow and tender. Something that melted a part of her that she had thought was permanently hardened.
To her surprise, he then pulled out and grasped Andrew’s arm and repeated the action, nipping at his lips slightly as a form of permission before fully kissing him. The doctor grunted and pulled himself flush against Michael.
After a few moments, the two broke away from each other and Michael collapsed on one side of Megan, spooning himself against her. He murmured something in her ear that sounded like a thank you, and then he was asleep.
Megan smiled slightly and glanced up at Andrew. He was frowning down at her. “Are you in pain?”
“No, Doctor,” Megan said. “Come to bed,” she added softly, reaching a hand out for him. He hesitated a moment, and she recognized the look. It was the look of deciding whether to face one’s fears or flee from them. She was in no position to give him the advice to stay, because she had run her entire life, but her entire being ached for him to face whatever demons he had dealt with in his past and lie against her and complete the circle.
When he slid into the bed next to her, Megan smiled and closed her eyes. His arms went around her, and she was cocooned in handsome men. This was something she could get used to.
As she drifted off to sleep, Megan finally concluded that she was done running. She finally felt as if she fit in. The feeling was a foreign one but the best emotion she had felt in her entire life.
THE END
© Copyright 2015 by Maya Grey - All rights reserved.
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His Russian Darling
by April Jane
1882
Rosaline Belikov never meant to become a mail order bride. In all truths, she already had a husband and she didn’t want to leave her home that her mother had made for them after emigrating from Russia two decades ago. It was only a matter of money and the case of the snake that ate its own tail. An endless cycle, and endless loop. An ouroboros, Rosaline thought it was called. She had heard some frightening tales about that beast.
It was ironic that the only way that Rosaline could save her husband was to become someone else’s wife. That bitter statement pounded its way through her head the entire time she rode to meet her new husband in the strange land people called Montana. It was wild there, her mother had told her as she kissed her forehead and wished her off with tears in her eyes. She had also told her that it would suit her well.
Rosaline hadn’t gotten the chance to bid Adrian a proper farewell, and that sank into her gut like a cold stone the entire journey there. Off to be married, and she didn’t even say goodbye to her husband.
The carriage came to a lurching halt, shaking Rosaline out of her thoughts quite rudely. She scowled up at the ceiling of her neat and tidy covered carriage, wondering if the driver had something against Russians. Her accent wasn’t thick enough to immediately identify her as Russian, but she had that pale air around her; steely grey eyes and blond hair that looked whiter than anything else. Matched with her creamy skin to rival the moon, she looked more phantom than human. Russian darling, her father had always called her before he went off to war and never came back.
“We ‘ave arrived,” the footman shouted. Perhaps he believed all Russians to be deaf, as well. Oh, how she wished to spend this early grey morning wrapped in the arms of Adrian. He would smell of cloves and wood smoke, and the wool of his jacket would be rough under her cheek.
Instead, Rosaline wrapped her shawl more tightly around her and exited the carriage, pretending not to notice the footman’s lack of help. He simply deposited her luggage in front of her and smacked the horses’ rumps with the whip, and they were off without so much as a farewell.
Rosaline sighed at the rudeness and took a look around. The property that she was meant to go to was directly in front of her, but she hesitated before walking down the long gravel pathway. The house was large enough, but it was absolutely dwarfed by the mountains surrounding it. Rosaline had never seen mountains so tall nor so richly colored. She hardly remembered the emigration; she had been only a squalling babe of two at the time, but she knew that on their journey they had passed through mountain ranges. She would have to write Mama and ask her if they were colored a deep purple with the ends painted some shade of lilac in and amongst all of the clouds.
Picking up her meager belongings, Rosaline decided not to dawdle any longer. She had to get this over with sooner or later, and it was like pulling a shard of wood out of one’s finger: better to do it quickly to stop the unnecessary pain.
Her boots crunched against the ground rocks as she walked up the path and she took a few deep breaths—as much as her corset would allow. The damnable thing had to go if she were going to be in a place so free and open. Without her corset, Rosaline could fly if she so pleased.
Another set of footsteps that matched hers knocked Rosaline straight out of her thoughts. She jerked herself back down into the present, back into her confined body and her current situation. A man was walking towards her, and something in Rosaline’s stomach dropped. This must have been her husband.
She took a deep, steadying breath and displayed her best smile. “Mr. Fitzgerald?” she asked.
He was tall, much taller than her, and she didn’t like that she had to crane her head back in order to meet his gaze. When her eyes collided with his, she was instantly set on edge by the steely gaze and the sheer amount of knowingness that was present. He gazed down at her without so much as a twitch of those unnerving eyes for several moments before he smiled, displaying shockingly white teeth. Didn’t all ranchers from the rural areas of Montana have tobacco stained and rotted teeth? That is what Adrian had said. She disliked the way he was glancing her over, as if imagining what she would look like in her shift and less. The thought of anyone but Adrian laying a single finger on her made her want to retch.
“Miss Belikov?” he returned, l
ifting his gaze to hers once more. Rosaline curtsied, trying to cover her discomfort. Something about this man unnerved her to the bone, and it wasn’t just his gaze or his height and the way he looked at her. She wanted to go home, suddenly, to smell the familiar scent of Adrian as he held her against him in the long nights and spare moments in the days. She imagined that even now she could hear the reassuring pound of his heart through the soft cotton of his shirt. If she closed her eyes—no, she needed to walk. Edward Fitzgerald was already moving away without even bothering to give her proper welcome and he glanced back after a moment to see if she was following. His features were mostly covered by a wide-brimmed hat, and she wondered what color his hair was suddenly. He had lines around those unnerving eyes that seemed to speak of many years out on the field underneath the punishing sun, but she knew how much the sun could age one’s skin without a parasol. Damn Mama to not allow her to bring her own. She would have to go into town and buy a new one with the few meager coins she had been allowed to take with her.
Rosaline hurried to catch up with the man. She wanted to call the carriage back, wanted to get home as quickly as the lathered horse would allow her to go, but she steeled herself. The money would go to Adrian and he would be able to make a life for himself. That was more than she could ever give him by being there in the flesh.
The house was large, larger than she would expect for a farmer who lived alone and only had his livestock to tend to. Edward went up the porch steps with an amount of noise that showed that he owned the place and could do whatever he pleased. Rosaline wondered if it was for show or an unconscious gesture that came from years of being alone.
He held the door open for Rosaline as she lugged her one and only bag inside. She glanced around. The house had looked well-worn on the outside, and it was much the same way on the inside, however clean it may have been. Who cleaned for him? She wondered suddenly. From what she had gleaned from Edward Fitzgerald, he wasn’t one to clean his own house. He didn’t also seem to be the kind of man who kept maids and cooks. The letters they had traded seemed to point to him being a solitary man. Who else would have lived with him?
Before Rosaline could contemplate that further, Edward stopped her at the bottom of the staircase. “Would you prefer your things in my room or the bedroom down the hall?” he asked, almost nonchalantly. Rosaline knew that she should say his room, knew that she should just give into this already, but her heart still belonged to Adrian, no matter what circumstances separated them.
“Down the hall,” she murmured, attempting to gauge him for his reaction. He looked at her for several moments, eyes not quite narrowed, but on the verge. “If you don’t mind, sir,” she added dipping into a shallow curtsey.
“Of course not. You must be comfortable,” he said amiably, and Rosaline looked back up at him. He slid his hat off, and for a moment Rosaline had to push back a gasp. He was so much older than her. Silver streaks wound through the dark hair and she could see that the wrinkles were not only caused by the sun but his own age. Edward Fitzgerald was a good twice her age, old enough to be her father, and she was marrying him.
Covering her surprise, Rosaline dipped into another curtsey. “Thank you, sir,” she said.
“Call me Edward,” the man said, and for the first time, she heard a note in his voice that sounded more fatherly than husbandly. Rosaline felt something that was stuck in between surprise and disgust rise up in her throat. How was she to marry a man who was a good twenty years older than her? People would talk. She came away from her home to get away from the people talking about her behind whispered gloved hands, speculating if she was actually the daughter of this man. How was she to stand this? This was worse than her so-called ‘illicit’ affair with Adrian, much worse. She would be trapped in this marital bond for the rest of her life and there wasn’t a single thing that she could do about it.
Rosaline came to terms with her fate as they went up the creaking stairs. She resigned herself to whatever life she may have to live now as they walked down the hall, past a partially open door that looked to be Edward’s. Rosaline glanced inside and instantly began running everything she had seen through her mind. Unmade bed. Sloppy. Boots lined up at the edge of the bed. Organized. Already, her future husband was a contradiction. The curtains were open, letting pale light filter in, catching the dust motes that danced in the air like gold particles. On the desk there was a neat stack of papers, an assortment of quills and ink and blank paper. Also organized.
Edward opened the door next to his, holding it for Rosaline much as he had the front door. Rosaline squeezed past him, dragging her bag inside.
Clean, nondescript and completely what she had not expected. Her room looked like something she might find at home while wandering the cramped halls of her own house that had been in the family ever since her parents had emigrated over from Russia. It was, in a word, cozy.
She dropped the bag onto the modestly sized bed and turned to face Edward. “This will suit me perfectly,” she said, glancing up at the rafters in the ceiling, spying many cobwebs that had collected dust over the years. So he was without a maid.
When she glanced back down, Edward was giving her a disconcerting look with those soul-seeing eyes of his. She clenched her jaw and fought to keep smiling. She expected him to open his mouth to say something that would make her regret telling him that she liked the room, but he only turned away and closed the door. Just before it clicked into place, he glanced over his shoulder; not quite far enough to actually look at her and said, “If you want, I will prepare tea. Come down when you have settled.”
Then, the door was closed, and she was the only one left in the room. For several seconds, Rosaline stood there. She simply stood, nothing else, looking at the door that had closed so suddenly.
Rosaline’s friend Sasha who lived on their street back home had whispered that her sister had become a mail order bride and they had never seen or heard from her after. They could only assume that she had been killed by her husband. She had feared for Rosaline’s life and her peace of mind when she had informed her that she was going to the rural territory of Montana in order to become a man’s bride whom she had never met.
Rosaline understood Sasha’s fear for the first time since leaving her home. Edward Fitzgerald had proved to be changeable in the snap of a finger, emotions flitting from one to the other without so much as a blink from him. She would have to attempt to feel him out before she could even begin to trust him—if that was even possible in her case. She was only here to save Adrian, nothing more. She only wanted his happiness and the ability for him to stay here so that maybe one day she could free herself from the confines of this marriage that was no better than arranged and fly back to him.
Taking a deep breath, Rosaline realized that, once more, she was still confined in the heavy corset her mother had forced her to wear even though she would be riding all day for several days in order to reach this distant land that people called Montana.
She quickly undid the clasps of her dress, shucking it onto the bed. A plume of dust billowed up from the area that she had laid the dress down, and Rosaline made a sound of disgust. Apparently no one had been in this room for years. She wondered who it had belonged to initially, and how long the inhabitant had been gone. A sudden morbid thought of her sleeping in a dead person’s bed shocked Rosaline, and she took a sharp breath, quickly undoing her corset so that she might get out of this room more quickly until she could convince herself that this was no more than childish folly that was playing with her brain. As she dusted her dress off and dragged herself back into the loose fabric, she let out a deep sigh of relief. She didn’t understand why her mother required her to wear a corset; it hardly changed her shape at all. Perhaps it gave her more of a waist than she had naturally, but she thought it made her look comically proportioned. Mama had insisted, however, and because Mama was the head of the family and made all of the important decisions, Rosaline had listened to her mother. She usually knew best.<
br />
Not in this case. Rosaline took her first deep breath of free air, relishing the ability her ribs had to expand and contract without any hindrance. Feeling better than she had upon entering the room, Rosaline put a bright smile on her face and opened the door once more to go find the enigmatic Edward who would become her future husband and talk to him over a nice cup of tea.
###
Rosaline shifted uncomfortably in her sleep as a sudden sound that didn’t belong in her quiet room met her ears. She wasn’t quite awake, and passed the sound off as something that she had heard in her dream and flipped over to her other side, flipping a few errant locks of hair out of her face when they cut off her supply of cool air. She opened her eyes a moment later to slits as she heard a creak. Now, she was most definitely awake.
She moved her hair off of her face completely and widened her eyes. The glow of a candle illuminated her room, coming closer. She blinked at the dancing flame, trying to place the source of it in that way that people who still happen to be half asleep have the ability to do. At first, she believed it to be her mother coming to check on her and she mumbled out an incomprehensible testament to her perfect health, and then she realized that the light was hitting the walls wrong for it to be her own room. With crashing reality, she returned to her senses and yanked the blankets up further around her thin nightdress that was the only thing covering her nearly translucent shift.
It was Edward coming towards her. Rosaline feared for herself in that moment, feared for her virtue and her reputation. Edward set the candle down on the nightstand beside Rosaline’s bed and sat down on the bed, back facing Rosaline. She couldn’t help the small sound that came out of her at the foreign movement that was completely unexpected.
“Do not fear,” Edward said. His voice was smoky and distant, as if he were speaking to her through some mystical mirror that Mama had always told her existed. “I will not lay a finger on you if you do not wish it. I have learned much about you from our conversation over tea, and I know that you are not ready for any kind of physical interaction.”
