“Why did you wrap your arms around yourself?” She asked. “Why do you pull your jacket so tightly? Tell me the truth.”
His eyes snapped back open and he gulped. “Umm… it’s a dark story,” he said.
That was promising. Usually he just shook his head and refused to talk about it.
“That’s alright.”
“I… my mind is changed from what it was.”
Harriet carefully controlled her voice. She was emotional, and frustrated and trying to keep herself from demanding that he just stop being so damned stubborn.
“I know that, Joshua,” she huffed. She could hear a little frustration in her voice, but it could have been worse. She squeezed his wrists more tightly. “Shh, I know. You’ve changed. Your body is different and I hope I’ve shown you that it doesn’t matter to me. And if your mind is different too that’s alright, but I need to understand it. I can see your body. I can touch it.” She ran her palm lightly over his cock for emphasis, making him shiver. “I can understand it. But I can’t do that with what is happening in your mind. You have to let me in.”
Joshua watched her as she spoke and glanced down at his own body when she finished. He shifted his truncated leg, and pushed his arms up against hers. He slid them up her forearms and circled them around her upper arms, pulling lightly. She followed. Tucked her naked body against his. The air of the room was cool against the sweat on her body, but Joshua was warm.
He kissed her hair, and he talked.
She had expected awful things. She’d thought she was prepared. He didn’t go into much detail, but he details he did offer stuck. She laid an arm around him and pulled him close. Held him tight. Held him the way he had been holding himself: like his body needed to be held together.
“So… this terrible image strikes you?” she asked, after they’d been quiet several moments.
“Often,” Joshua said. “But not nearly as often as it used to. It was constant in the field hospital. Paralyzing. Now it’s… occasional. It’s getting better, my love.”
Harriet digested this information and tightened her grip on her husband. “It happened when I was touching you.”
“I’m sorry,” Joshua replied.
“No,” she said softly. She pulled her arm a little tighter around him. “This helps?”
“I know it’s silly.”
“Would it,” Harriett started. Her idea was unorthodox but they had never been models of propriety. “Would it help you to stay here in your mind if you could feel held in?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Joshua, I have an idea.” She pulled out of his embrace and twisted at the waist, reaching down to the floor to retrieve her corset. She saw his eyes lock on it, saw his Adam’s apple bob.
“You’re joking. You want me to wear… ladies’ underthings?”
“The boning is steel,” Harriet explained. “You’re too broad chested for it, it’ll pull tightly around you.” She carded a hand through his hair and ran a thumb over his cheekbone. “Think of it as… a very large bandage.” She set the corset on him. He was frowning at the long, tea-rose pink, tubular thing, particularly at the small amount of lace at the top, but the way his palms pressed against it, just like they had when it was around her body, betrayed his interest.
“Again. I know you want to help, but asking me to wear ladies’ underthings?” He was still frowning, but his eyes were a little lighter, and he looked almost like he might have ifhe were just teasing her in the old days.
She kissed him and dropped her hand back down to his cock. “I want you inside me,” she said, in her best ‘harlot’s whisper’. “And while you’re inside me, I want you to be thinking about me, not off in a bad memory. I know you’re getting better, Joshua.” She kissed him. “Let me make you feel better.”
****
It had taken some effort and a lot of giggling. Joshua had been relieved to find that Agnes, who like her sister was less proper than women were expected to be, had slipped a note under the door, indicating that, for no particular reason, she and John had gone for another walk and would be gone for at least two hours so that Harriet and Joshua could enjoy some “rest and privacy”.
Joshua was much longer in the torso than Harriet, and much more broadly built. To get it around him Harriet had needed to unlace the back of the corset, pull the two pieces apart, then fold it around his body, do up the hook and eyes at the front and tighten the laces behind him until it fit.
As ridiculous as he felt, he was able to appreciate the humor of the situation. They were both naked, him with his bare buttocks toward his wife, holding onto one of the bedposts for balance while she pulled the laces tight and made the corset stiff around him.
Each tug of the corset strings helped too. He felt firmly secured inside himself and it did feel wonderful.
“Say when,” Harriet huffed as she hauled at the strings again.
He probably should have said it then. He could already feel the way that the corset was constricting his chest to the point that it was difficult to breathe. He let Harriet pull twice more before she finally tied it off.
It felt good. He felt safe.
Better than that. Harriet was naked and smiling, andso tickled with the whole thing that she was holding back laughter with very little success. Joshua was even amused at the general ridiculousness of the whole predicament.
“Yes, laugh, go ahead,” he said, mock-scolding. He grabbed Harriet’s arm and let himself topple backward onto the bed, using his weight to pull her close.
“Alright, wife,” he laughed. “Now it’s your turn.” He leaned forward and took one of her round, pink nipples into his mouth, turning her giggle instantly to a gasp. Her hips snapped against him and a fine tremor ran through her body. Her hands dug into his hair.
This was almost like their first time together, in Harriet’s father’s carriage in the dark and dusty carriage house. Agnes had been the only chaperone available that day and it had been all too easy to persuade her to laxness.
He had been so eager to see Harriet that day. So eager to touch her. So glad that she had warned him of her intentions for their morning stroll that day so he’d had time to prepare himself before coming to see her, which had largely consisted of bringing himself off as quickly and quietly as he could in his own bathroom before he had combed his hair and left his house.
He wrapped his hands around her waist, squeezing handfuls of her plump buttocks. She moaned and stepped even closer to him.
“The bed, Harriet. The bed,” he rasped. He had perhaps, let her pull the corset entirely too tight around his chest. His breath was shorter than it should have been. He was just a little lightheaded.
But he was safe and held together and happy.
Harriet dropped onto the bed and flopped onto her back. She waited until she knew he was looking at her and slowly, invitingly, spread her legs open, revealing the flash of pink between her porcelain white thighs.
He barely resisted the urge to dive for her. He was hard again from touching her, hard from watching her bounce around naked as she had dressed him, and now he was even harder from watching her spread open and invite him inside.
It was a little difficult to maneuver over to her with one leg, but the real challenge was moving in the corset. Itcame down to his hips, making the knee-walk he was attempting quite difficult. He really had let her pull it too tight.
She guided his body onto her own, bracing him as he figured out how to line himself up with the distribution of his weight so changed since the last time they had made love. He wobbled a little as he finally arranged himself. Harriet’s hand slipped between them and gave his cock a few firm strokes before she shifted down on the bed so that she could guide him inside herself.
He fought back the impulse to swear as he felt his cockhead slip just past the warm folds of her opening. He exhaled harshly as he moved deeper within her, the soft, moist flesh of her so welcoming. The corset was too tight around his chest for him to pu
ll the whole breath back in as he thrust into her. The restriction of oxygen and the long time without her made every sensation intense.
Harriet’s fingers digging into his biceps as she threw her head back and cried out with pleasure.
The sensitive skin of his truncated leg, ticklish where the soft fabric of the duvet rubbed against it.
The feeling of the sweat beading up at his temples.
And most of all, the tight, hot, wet, perfect, fantastic and, in fact, awe-inspiring feeling of Harriet’s body against and around his own.
Nowhere in this roaring pleasure was there the feeling of pain or horror or splitting in half. He was dizzy with exertion, but he was in one goddamned piece.
“Oh, Joshua,” Harriet gasped. He responded with a low groan as his hips worked into her with confident snaps that made them both cry out in pleasure.
Harriet’s hand moved up to his hair, combing through it, pulling at it as she worked back onto him, moaning and muttering. He could hear his name interspersed in her litany and it was like it turned a light on within him, a warm glow beyond arousal as they moved together.
She convulsed under him, her arms moving down to his back and clutching at him. The pull of her arms was too much, too unexpected. It upset his balance and he fell onto her with a “whumph” as the last of the air in his lungs was expelled.
Harriet screamed out.
“Har… breathe,” Joshua managed. The safe pressure of the corset around him was suddenly too much, made it too hard for him to breathe.
“Shhh, shhh,” Harriet replied. She pushed him off of her, down onto his back and climbed right back onto his body, slipping his cock inside her with one quick movement. He thrust up and gasped again for breath as he found himself instantly back inside Harriet’s hot core.
“Can’t breathe!”
“I know what it’s like,” she panted back. “Shh… I know. I know. A little longer, so good, promise.” She spat out words as she worked herself onto him. “Trust me.”
“Yes,” he gasped, trying to suck in air. He needed more breath than what the corset would let him bring in. It wasn’t like suffocating, but it was like running a mile through water. And on top of that struggle, he was trying to breath like this with his cock buried inside a woman he had long suspected was perfect and now he felt he could prove that she was.
He could feel another orgasm building. Feel it bubbling in every part of his body. Feel it like it was rushing through every blood vessel and shooting through every nerve.
He shouted—loud, shockingly loud. So loud that the people all the way down at the beach must have heard him.
He felt tugging at the front of the corset as he pulsed and thrust inside his wife, still struggling to drag air into his lungs. Suddenly the breath caught. His chest expanded unhindered and he felt the air rushing in, felt the edge of his orgasm flare up again, a sudden finale of pleasure as he gulped.
It was like coming back to life. In so many ways. He lay breathing, naked, nothing around him but Harriet. His leg was exposed, his scar was exposed and he felt free.
Harriet collapsed down onto the bed and he pulled her into a shower of grateful kisses while he held her close.
“I wasn’t sure about that last bit, but you were getting very red.”
“Perfect, perfect,” he managed in response. “Angel.”
“Good,” she replied. “I’d hoped so. It’s something I have… had the odd curiosity about. Ever since that time in the park, back in the trees when I still had mine on.” She tangled her fingers in his hair. “It was a very pleasurable experience.”
“We could… we could do that again,” Joshua said. “You can give it ago.”
“Not quite yet,” she laughed. “I need to rest after all of this.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Harriet sighed happily. He felt her cheek press against his chest. He tossed the edge of the blanket over them as her breath started to steady and fell into a dreamless sleep.
*****
The next day was even lovelier than the days that had preceded it. The strawberries in the garden were sweeter. Harriet and Agnes were giggling as they gathered them for another picnic. Harriet had not gone inappropriately into detail for her sister, the corset had not come up, but the change in her demeanor, and with it Joshua’s, was not discreet.Agnes teased and Harriet saw no point in denying her happiness or the reasons for it.
Harriet popped a strawberry in her mouth just as she heard the door open.
She looked up. John and Joshua were standing at the back step, both in their grey bathing costumes, identical low necked shirts and knee length shorts. Joshua was unabashedly displaying his prosthetic and the place where the metal met flesh.
“Ladies!” Joshua called to them. “Shall we go down to the water to cool off?”
“I’m dying to see if he rusts,” John laughed. Joshua pushed him fraternally and John hit him back. Agnes shot her a mocking grin that said, very clearly “Boys.”
They set up the rest of the picnic and went down the beach. Joshua came to play with them in the water this time, leaving his false leg behind with the picnic basket.
After they’d played in the water for a while, and after they’d eaten their picnic, Harriet and Joshua snuck away to exchange strawberry kisses in the sunset.
The End
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The Promise of Steel Page 3
