The Acquisition

by Louisa Trent

  Harry couldn't come up with an example, which was why she intended to ask Josh. At least, she knew he didn't lie. And if it were true, why she would just have to bravely grit her teeth, and let Josh do that to her, she supposed. She loved him so...

  A tap on the door prompted her to call: "Come ahead!" Those knuckles had to belong to Josh, for no one else would bother to knock before entering a whorehouse room.

  The man she loved crossed the threshold with his usual no-hurry gait. Upon seeing her struggle to sit up, he loped to the bed in a long-legged stride.

  "Here. Let me help, " he said, sounding concerned.

  His concern irritated her no end. She was as drunk as a skunk, but otherwise as right as rain. And to make matters worse, once her spine was vertical, he fixed the bed linen up under her arms, all neat and tidy, ruffled her hair, patted her head, and smiled.

  Her fists balled up. She could easily have hauled off and punched that good-looking smile to kingdom come. As it was, she bared her own teeth and snarled. There is only so much fondness a grown woman can take.

  Josh being Josh, he mistook her bared teeth as a positive sign, and rubbed her hair some more.

  She gave up. She absolutely gave up. The man was impossible! He would never see her as a grown woman. If she didn't love him, she'd give up and walk away. But she did love him, and so would give him this one last chance to notice her.

  She stayed still under his patting palm. "I am not a tadpole anymore."

  He shrugged. "I know."

  No, he did not know! He was as thick as a pea-soup fog rolling in off the harbor, she thought, covering her mouth to squelch a dry heave, trying not to be sick again.

  "Need the basin, sweetheart?"

  "No," she croaked.

  Sitting back down on the bed, Josh pulled her onto his lap, and ordered in his craggy baritone, "Tilt your chin."

  He held her head over the basin while she was sick. Again. How mortifying! After rinsing out her mouth, he rubbed her back. There was nothing intimate in his touch. There never had been. She could dream though, and often did. As Josh placed soothing strokes on her skin, her eyes drifted closed. She wished he'd never stop.

  "Better?" he asked, after a little while.

  Unlike Josh, she was not always honest. "No," she promptly lied.

  "Just relax against me," he said, gently kneading her neck.

  Lovely little bonfires flared inside her body. She imagined his strong, capable hands cupping her titties, kneading them like biscuit dough, all digits sinking into her flesh. She was near desperate to turn into him, and kiss his eternally-smiling mouth.

  "Better yet?" he asked.

  "Getting there."

  "Think sunny thoughts, maybe it will help," he told her, as though she were still a child tagging along with him and Ben during hot summer days spent fishing and swimming, followed by cool nights with nothing more important to do than watching fireflies.

  "Josh," she began, allowing the bed linen to accidentally-on-purpose slide off the tips of her titties, thus baring them to his gaze. All's fair in love and war, after all, and this bed was the battlefield.

  Josh scooted out from under her hips. "Need help with that nightshirt?"

  "No..."

  "Good," he said, amicably. "Pull it on."

  Before she could protest, he was out the door. Again. Leaving her. Again.

  Just as well, Harry decided, sniffing a raised arm. Stinking to high heavens was no way to seduce a man.

  Reaching for the washcloth, she scrubbed her body. Then, curious as she had never been curious before, she squeezed the rag, not so much to wet the bed, only so that a few drops of warm water trickled between her open legs. Her finger followed the same path, delving the folds she had never dared delve before, traveling the route she would seduce Josh's member to take--at least, according to Mary.

  When she came to a barrier, she stopped. Detoured. Conducting a shallow search, she found a little nubbin. Experimentally, she rubbed the small projection.

  Mmm. The sensation was almost painful, yet oddly enjoyable too. Why had she never done this before? she wondered, splitting her thighs and moving her finger more energetically.

  Soon her hips rolled, as waves of something unexpected and wondrous crashed over her, lifting her up and tossing her about on stormy seas, an empty cargo vessel needing ballast to keep her steady. But she wasn't filled and she wasn't stable, and she didn't know if she could sail towards shore alone.

  She wailed for help. "Josh! Josh! Josh!"

  Unprepared or not, the waves--not puny splashes either, more akin to tidal waves--swept her along. She yelped, then screamed, then hit the breakwaters hard, a honeyed bliss unlike she had ever known before, tossing her about before she floated on calm seas.

  Too bad it couldn't be like that with a man, she mused, and toppled face down on the bed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Josh had been waiting out in the brothel's hallway, pacing the floor, while Harry made herself decent, when he heard her scream for help.

  A mouse, he decided, and cracked the door; no river rat could have gotten past the barricade of him.

  It would appear his little Harry was growing up, Josh concluded, getting an eyeful.

  When a man lives in close quarters with thirty horny whalers for months at a time, that man soon learns not to barge in on someone in a private moment. He would remain outside until Harry finished up--though, unable to drag himself away, he continued to watch the events unfold from the threshold.

  From time to time, Josh paid to observe a female at play. The vice was an uncomplicated and basically harmless pleasure in which he openly indulged. That is to say, he never watched from a secret vantage point, as he did now. While the clandestine nature of spying on Harry added to the sexual thrill, the voyeurism also filled him with self-loathing. This was Harry he was watching! It was perverse!

  Inherently erotic too, the way she examined her body, the delicateness of her stroke, the rapt attention on her face, the tightening of her pretty features as satisfaction approached...

  Christ! Harry went off like a damn canon volley.

  If those cries of ecstasy were any indication, Harry had the makings of a sensual woman.

  Someday.

  She was still in the getting-acquainted stage with her body, still far too young and inexperienced to control the pleasure, to draw out the climax.

  He could teach her. Show her how to extend the orgasm, how to increase one contraction to several. Who better to educate a sensual novice than a man born and raised in a whorehouse, a man too familiar with the sins of the flesh, a man who knew what the pleasures of naked skin were, and what they were not ... a man who well-understood that sex is no substitute for love.

  He could teach her, save that Harry didn't see him as a potential lover; she saw him as a little maiden sees an older adult in her life: a father, brother, doting uncle ... some male relative whom she respected.

  Respected! Her admiration was akin to hero worship. Harry looked up to him as some sort of mythical figure, her perception of his abilities completely unrealistic. No mortal man of mere flesh and blood ... and ejaculate ... could possibly meet her high standards. The way she saw him made him uncomfortable.

  And even if it killed him, he was determined to live up to her misguided view of him. Looking like somebody in Harry's eyes, was what drove him to make his fortune, and making his fortune was what kept him away from New Bedford for increasingly longer and longer periods of time.

  Josh had been twelve years old when Harry was finally launched, puny and weak, from her dying mama's belly. As a two-year-old, she had toddled after him and Ben wherever they went. At eight, her father had died, leaving her alone. For one reason or another, Ben couldn't manage her care, so Josh had stepped in and taken over.

  Hell of a job he had done too, by the looks of things.

  Passed out cold in a drunken stupor, a lopsided grin plastered on her face, naked in a whorehouse, what would H

arry's Quaker parents say if they could see her now?

  That their daughter had needed a firm hand, no doubt, and that the mixed lad, the bastard son of a whore they had shown good faith to, had let her--and them--down.

  Dressed in her brother's cast-offs, toiling in taprooms, about to be evicted from the rented shack she called home; it shamed Joshua he had not done right by Harry. But he had left money with Ben for her care--where had that sum gone?

  Too late now to wonder. It was time now to take action. He needed to step in and take complete charge of the little spitfire. Protect her, financially and otherwise. To do that, his control had to be made legal. Wedding her was the only way to accomplish that goal.

  Josh raked his hands, both of them, through the soft texture of his short-cropped, curly hair. That goal sounded noble. Altruistic. Even heroic. Though he admired Harry's father, respected the man's Quaker philosophies, Josh was not a selfless man; his motivations reflected his ambitions and his lust. His every thought of the redheaded seductress was impure. He wanted Harry, and the only way to keep her for his own was to wed the saucy wench. He wanted to be Harry's first. He wanted to be her last. And he was fully prepared to kill any man who tried to get some of Harry in between.

  Maybe in other places, sophisticated society places, he could keep her as a mistress. Here on the waterfront, a woman who bedded a man was called either whore or wife. Harry would not be called whore by his making. A ring on the hoyden's finger was the only way to keep her respectable.

  He needed that respectability too. Wedding Harry would serve his ambitions well, would cause folks to discount the fact that though he was born free and lived white, his skin hue was darker than most.

  Before his mother had died, pox-ridden from years of whoring, she told him he was the descendent of kings...

  Inconveniently, she never specified which nation. His looking glass told him his bloodline was anybody's guess. His angular features were certainly not totally African, and neither were they intrinsically European, nor were they distinctly anything else, though his prominent cheekbones hinted he had some Cherokee in him somewhere. Christ knows, he had searched out a similar face to his in his travels, and he had yet to find an exact match, which left him to believe he was a little of everything, a hodgepodge, a mixture of dissimilar ingredients. No one specific race predominated in his lineage; of that one truth he was certain. Mostly, he was something other than the locale he happened to be exploring.

  Josh wished he could have made his father's acquaintance. As it was, he was left to wonder the mystery of his family tree, what strange combination of continents went into his making. It was only good fortune that in the seaport of New Bedford, where various-hued complexions were a usual sight, he was accepted at face value, which was to say, people took him for a seaman. Here, his swarthy complexion went without comment.

  For the most part. Some folks--men in taverns after downing too many pints--still talked. Josh let them. Until and unless they questioned his right to live free. That's when he silenced them. With his fists. With anything else available to him. Harry wasn't the only one temperamentally unsuited for the Quaker way of life. Josh only hid his anger better.

  Half relieved, half in consternation, at his decision to wed her, Josh would have preferred declaring himself after this next voyage. Four years was a long time for a new bride to wait for her man to come home. Faithfulness would present a problem for the undisciplined, hot-blooded Harry. She was so bejesus young! In four years she would mature. Maybe then, she would see him for the man he was, not the hero she wanted to believe he was.

  Like a man starved, Josh ate up Harry's appearance, taking in the nipped waist, spanning it visually from hipbone to hipbone, before eyeballing the contours of her flat little belly. If he got her with child before he left, how would his babe ever fit inside that small belly?

  Harry was too young, her body still too immature and narrow to carry any seed he might plant. And if she did somehow manage to carry to term, alone on the shore, there was no guarantee she would survive the birthing. Young mothers died all the time trying to push out babies planted too soon. Harry's own mother had died in childbirth, and she had already given birth once before. He would just have to take his leave of her before expulsion--though withdrawing was no guarantee against conception. Neither were the herbs and poultices and barriers and douches, which whores used to guard against motherhood. There was a grim reason why knitting needles were right popular items in brothels; and it had nothing to do with making socks.

  Josh blanched at the thought of leaving Harry in port alone and in the family way. Frightened and vulnerable young women, even married ones, were sometimes driven to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do, desperate measures to avoid giving birth--especially to a babe with some mixed blood in its veins. Then again, there were accidents at sea all the time. Bringing down the huge whales was an occupation fraught with danger, and whalers were not the safest ships to sail. Suppose he left her a widow with a child, and no way to manage?

  To block out the stinks and noises and prying eyes of seamen roaming the halls, going from whore to whore, Josh closed the door after him and crossed the floor. Snoring on her back, one knee raised, her pussy still wet--this time, he didn't pretend to look away--his young Harry looked anything but the innocent virgin. Oh, but she was. Josh knew the difference, and he could always tell. Harry was as pure as the first fall of snow. Her untouched virginity pained him, and yet he coveted it more than he had ever coveted anything.

  His gaze never leaving Harry's nude body, Josh stripped off his own clothing. Taking up the linen he had used to bathe her, he held it to his nose, breathing in her female essence before rubbing the linen, that still carried her musky lingering scent, down the length of his jutting cock, from stem to stern. Slow. Then fast. Imagining the cloth's damp folds were Harry's damp folds, Josh came on a muffled moan.

  After cleansing his spent lust, and with sharpness taken off his man's need, he took a seat at the edge of the bed, reached out a hand, and fingered a strand of red hair that fell over Harry's forehead. It felt silky against his rough palm, which was why he patted her head at any and every opportunity. After they were wed, he would tell Harry not to cut her hair again. He didn't like that she wore it short, like a lad. He wanted Harry's hair long enough to tickle her bottom.

  A very nice bottom it was too. A little additional flesh would have served him better, but as things stood, as long as she was healthy and hale, he wouldn't change one of her dainty curves, including the mischievous curve of her mouth. Her sensuous lips, lush and full and cherry-red, were made for kissing, though he had never once kissed her on the mouth. On the cheek, yes. The top of the head, yes. The forehead, yes. But never the lips.

  Bending, Josh lightly took Harry's parted lips, which tasted of whiskey and clung to his. When he offered her his tongue, she took it. Greedily. Murmuring a woman's plaintive sighs deep in her throat.

  Wanting her so bad he shook with it, Josh broke off the kiss and flung himself away from the bed, his lungs heaving for air. He had to go, get out of the room. This wasn't right! He wanted the vows said first!

  Halfway to the door, clothing gripped in a hand, the wayward drunkard slurred, "Don't go! I'm cold."

  A room at Ruby's whorehouse came cheap--meaning everything cost extra, save the bedbugs. To put a layer between his flesh and fleabites, he paid for the frayed and grimy linen, but had forgone the moth-eaten wool blankets. What the hell, he figured, he was used to sleeping on a cold and drafty whaler, used to going without creature comforts for months at time, why use good money best spent in other ways?

  Depriving himself of carnal relief was something else again. Ignoring his man's need just wasn't wise, not when he had planned on spending as much time as he could with Harry while he was on shore. Because he had chosen fornication over warmth, Harry was shivering.

  "Cover me, Josh!" she cried through chattering teeth.

  At eight, when she had lost everything, to fill the void grief left in her young life, Josh had given Harry everything he had inside him to give. Maybe it hadn't been enough, but it was all he'd had. He had always been naught but ship caulking in her hands. Now, selfishly, he needed something for himself. Knowing she was drunk and couldn't possibly know her own mind, knowing that at eighteen her mind was still immature, knowing her innocent mind might not equate what she had just asked him to do with copulation, as in a stud covering a mare, he whispered, "Are you sure, sweetheart?"

  "I'm sure."

  "Sure, as in you're cold and you need a blanket, or sure as in you're cold and you need me to warm you up ... in another way?"

  "I want you to put your thing inside me."

  Well, hell's bells! She couldn't have made it any clearer.

  A boyhood spent in a brothel had afforded Josh a unique insight into sexuality. Between observation through open doors and his own direct experiences, he knew how to give enough pleasure to diminish pain and, conversely, how to give enough pain to enhance pleasure. He understood and practiced different methods of stirring a woman, of guiding a female to passion. When it came to females, there was no need for him to use a sextant; with a seasoned navigator's familiarity, he sailed in charted waters.

  Save when it came to virgins. With virgins, he was hopelessly lost at sea.

  Very much the virgin, his sweetheart's port was unaccustomed to seafaring visits of any kind; there would be no clear and pleasurable sailing into her tight inlet. The first few voyages were bound to be storm-wracked.

  And still, Joshua had to have Harry, despite everything he knew to be right and decent and proper. Despite it all, Josh had to make Harry his.

  Walking back to the bed, Josh got in beside Harry and took her into his arms.

  "You're so nice and warm, " she said, cuddling close, nuzzling her cold nose into the crook of his neck.

  So much for making the little drunkard his, Josh thought, supporting Harry's bright red head so it wouldn't roll backwards and hit the bed-board when she let out one hell of a snore. He couldn't even make her stay awake!

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