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fbfh · 1 year ago

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curiosity is a wonderful thing - ch. 3

wc: 3.1k

pairing: slow burn childhood best friends to lovers ben x reader, audrey x reader

warnings: ben is stressed, audrey is a bad gf, mild claustrophobia/dark spaces/being under ground warning (description of falling down the rabbithole into twonderland but it's fun and you love it so it's not scary lol), mild exposition dumping

summary: ben prepares for the arrival of the Isle kids, and gives audrey the benefit of the doubt a little too much. you have time to sneak away to your favorite place in the world, and the only thing that's missing is ben.

song recs: in a world of my own - kathryn beaumont, welcome to wonderland - scarlett rose, wish you still felt this way - sophie meiers x 90sflav

a/n: i love this fic. i love this series. this started as a comfort daydream and now it's a thing and I hope yall are ready for the next chapter cause it's gonna be good. I hope this brings yall the comfort it brings me <33

tags @yesv01 @magcon7280 @hopefullhearts @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sunshineangel-reads @strawberry-cake1 @dustyinkpages @kiara7777

After about a week of constant meetings, arrangements, and press conferences, a week of even less sleep and even more coffee than usual - something Ben didn’t know was possible to achieve - it’s finally the day he’s been working tirelessly toward. It’s the day the kids from the Isle are finally on their way to Auradon. He rushes back to Auradon Prep with you at his side after a very stressful, successful press conference. Even though he seems totally composed on the surface, you can tell he’s a bundle of nerves. You walk quickly beside him as he goes over the agenda for their arrival.

“Their rooms are all set up, Fairy Godmother said Jane can help them get settled into their classes - god, what am I forgetting?” Ben rambles, fumbling through all the papers in his bag. His eyes land on his copy of his press conference note cards, and that jogs his memory.

“Right,” He continues as you look up at him, and he knows he has all your attention. “I don’t think I’m going to have time to write a new speech for their arrival…”

He pauses for a moment, seeing if there’s some little pocket of time he can find to make this date extra special for them.

“Ben, you’re more jam packed than a tea cake. You can’t overwork yourself and run into the ground, not when you’re this close.”

Ben considers for a moment, realizing you're right.

"You have a point…" he agrees with a reluctant chuckle. "I'll use the same speech I used for the press conference." He decides. You’re silent for a moment.

“...Alright.”

“What?” Ben asks, able to read your expression like a book.

“Nothing, just-” You hesitate, then give him an earnest look, like you don’t want to hurt his feelings. He chuckles and braces himself, knowing whatever you’re about to say will be a necessary - albeit, hard - truth.

“You don’t think it’s a bit much?” You ask gently. “Too formal, given the circumstances?”

He considers for a moment. He thought it did great at the press conference, but maybe there are a few parts he can revise for the arrival of the Isle kids.

“Uh… yeah. I- I can cast eyes over it, we still have a little over an hour. That should be enough to make any tweaks.” He finishes.

You nod as you follow him into the conference room that he’s turned into a makeshift headquarters for all of his first proclamation business. He sets down his bag and pulls out all his paperwork and his planner. He hears you set your stuff down a few seats away from him and looks up. You’ve been working so hard and helping him out so much with all of this. He couldn’t possibly have accomplished a fraction as much without you. He walks over to you, gathering up your stuff.

“Look bunny, why don’t you, uh,” he starts, leaning over slightly to make sure no one’s about to walk through the doorway. “Why don’t you head down for a while. You have enough time if you go now.”

Your eyes light up at his words. You’ve been keeping your Wonderland visits to a minimum to help Ben and support him as much as you can, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Really?” You ask softly.

“Yeah, I’ll cover for you.” Ben lets out a soft grunt as you tackle him with a hug. He chuckles lightly, giving your back and shoulders a gentle pat before you pull away a moment later.

“I’ll run my speech by you when you get back-” He begins, then cuts himself off, remembering something. “We got your watch fixed, right?”

You’re glad he remembered, and you fish around in your tea pot bag for a moment before pulling out the weathered bronzy pocket watch. Time works differently in Wonderland, and it’s hard to keep track of. You've tried everything you can think of, and your pocket watch is the only thing that seems to keep you from constantly being late. Granted, you're still late or nearly late a lot, but it’s much better than it used to be.

“Yes,” you nod, showing him the little ticking hands, currently resting at the words ‘on time’. A fresh bubble of excitement pops inside you and you let out an excited giggle, hugging Ben tightly one more time.

“Thank you!” you exclaim in a soft whisper before he sends you off. You run over to the corner of the room to summon a rabbit hole. Ben watches in fascination as the tile floor begins to crumble in front of you, giving way to grassy dirt before continuing to crumble, going down, down, down. It’s a large, vaguely irregular circle about half as wide as your wingspan. You look back at Ben with another silent thank you, before jumping straight down into the hole. As soon as the last of you is out of sight, the tiles rebuild themselves without leaving a trace of you. Ben stares at the spot where you disappeared, feeling vaguely melancholic, but mostly happy that you’re getting to spend time doing what you love. That you’re happy.

“There you are, Bennyboo,” Ben whips his head around at the sound of Audrey’s voice, and he’s relieved she hadn’t shown up sooner. It’s not that sneaking off to Wonderland is a bad thing, but most people tend to discourage you from visiting too often. Wonderland is a timeless domain, like Neverland, and it and all of its inhabitants are much different from those from Auradon - usually referred to as Overland or the Main Land by people from Wonderland and Neverland.

Wonderland runs on pure, neutral chaos and nonsense, which is a very hard concept for people from Overland to grasp. Overland runs on a fundamental structure of good vs. evil, so it’s easy for people to perceive things from Wonderland as good or bad when they’re really just made up of madness. The reason people try to keep Wonderland contained is because you can’t fight nonsense with sense, you can’t fight chaos with logic. If something powerful from Wonderland got into Overland, like the Jabberwocky, or any number of powerful plants, animals, or magic, Auradon would be practically defenseless. That’s one of the reasons that Belle and Adam decided to reach out to your mother, and continue to form such a strong bond with her. If Wonderland nonsense managed to get out into Auradon, it would be uncontrollable chaos, and the only person who could stop it would be your mother - and now, you.

It took Ben a while to understand Wonderland, to understand you. You and your mother are very special cases; Alice was from Overland, but adapted to be part of Wonderland, and Wonderland became a part of her. You, however, were born in Wonderland and raised in Overland. You’ve adapted as well as you can, but you always do much, much better when you can sneak away for regular little trips. Ben has asked to join you before, but it’s too dangerous. People from Overland rarely adapt to Wonderland nonsense and usually end up going mad, which is why your mother is such an asset to the Auradon government - she’s actually able to serve as a liaison between Wonderland and Auradon, and keep an eye on things.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of stigmas surrounding Wonderlandians, stigmas Ben has grown to resent more and more over the years, but most of it boils down to Wonderlandians being weird, crazy, dumb, and volatile. The more Ben has come to understand you, the more he hates the small comments and little stares directed toward you. Luckily Ben has been able to protect you from a lot of it. People very quickly found out that if they said anything bad about you or Wonderland, it wouldn’t end well for them. He can’t get rid of the stigmas, but he can protect you from them as much as possible.

Audrey flounces over, sitting next to him.

"You are never going to believe what Arabella just told me at cheer practice."

“Uh-”

“She said-”

“Um, Audrey.” Ben finally manages to interrupt. She looks confused about why she’s not the one talking right now.

“I want to hear all about this, I really do,” Ben says, “but we’re going to be greeting the kids transferring from the Isle soon-” Audrey huffs, already disinterested.

“And I wanted your feedback on my speech.” He finishes, handing her the papers.

“Oh, sure. There’s that…” Audrey says, pretending to read it over for a moment. Before she finishes, she sets the papers down on the table, and gives Ben a chipper look.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Bennyboo. You never disappoint.”

She sits on the table in front of him, continuing to tell him all about what Arabella said Herkie did. Ben tries his best to listen, he really does. He just can’t keep his mind off his speech, and he can feel himself beginning to spiral and overthink. He has so much riding on this, he can’t afford for his speech to be fine, he can’t afford for anything about this whole ordeal to be fine. Her words keep echoing in his mind, you never disappoint, Bennyboo. He knows she meant it to be supportive, but he feels like all the pressure he’s been convincing himself he can handle is just reinforced. He was hoping to get some real feedback from Audrey, maybe a little encouragement, but-

He stops himself before the thought can go any further. Audrey is his girlfriend, and Ben should be able to trust her word. You would never lie to him about something this important, so he chooses to trust that Audrey wouldn’t either. He tries to shut up the worries clouding his mind and tries to pay attention to what Audrey is saying. She’s probably just trying to distract him from worrying, give him something else to think about for a while. You can always tell when he’s overthinking, so Audrey is probably trying to show him that she cares, that there’s nothing to worry about. That if she’s talking about something like cheer team gossip at a time like this, when Ben is getting ready for one of the most important days of his life, then everything must be under control. Besides, if he needs to he can look his speech over by himself after Audrey leaves. He might have time to. It will all be fine.

The moment you let yourself fall into the dark rabbit hole, your stomach flips as you begin free falling through the darkness. A little dirt sprinkles down on your head from where it closes up above you, and you narrowly manage to avoid some roots snagging in your hair. After a few moments, your descent slows. You spin slowly as you glide down, and in the pitch black darkness, you can feel your internal gyroscope going crazy. You breathe in the heavy, earthy air, and for a few moments, you don't know which way is up or down. You have absolutely no sense of direction for those few beautiful moments, and you don't want to. Soon, your descent speeds up again, and you find yourself tumbling through tree branches, eventually landing on a rough surface in the dark.

“It should be here somewhere…” you mutter, feeling around for a doorknob. After a moment you feel it, cool aged metal in your hand. You twist it, revealing a beam of light through a doorway. It’s going to be a close call, but you think you’ll just be able to fit. You manage to squeeze through the entrance, exiting out of the door - which is situated in a large tree trunk, and into Wonderland. You crawl forward, taking it all in. You take in a deep breath of the still, earthy, floral air. It’s heavy in your lungs, like a deep dream. You fully exit, and the door slowly closes behind you.

The world is quiet.

There’s an almost suffocating stillness in the atmosphere of Wonderland, one that would be uncanny and unnerving to you if it weren’t already so deeply comforting. It’s the same grounding sense of peace and stillness you get when you’re young and walk carefully through your dark house at night in search of a cold glass of water. There’s that feeling in Wonderland, everyone is asleep except for me. I ought to be asleep too, I best not wake them. The world around you is still, still, still. It’s as still as a stone, or a lake made of glass. You soak up the familiar surroundings, and you feel like you’re finally visiting an old friend.

In spite of the pitch black sky, which is barely visible through the treetops, you can see what’s around you just fine. But if you look too far, there’s a darkness off the beaten path, one that stays just at the edges of your sight no matter where you go. It always looks to you like those hazy dark shadows around the edges of old photographs. You look down at the beaten path - this one being made of black and white irregularly shaped checkerboard tiles nestled right into the dirt. They twist and turn, splitting out and reconverging haphazardly into the darkness. They’re a bit worn and dirty, but you suppose any outdoor tiles would get that way eventually.

You follow it back the way you came, spinning around as you do, and notice the way it splinters into little shards, cracking and fragmenting into a mosaic of sorts before petering out at the base of the tree, with grass and dirt poking up in between. You feel yourself begin to settle, at home with the lack of time flowing around you, and you take in another breath. Your nose and lungs are kissed gently with the smell of damp, freshly turned earth, plant life, and that unmoving sort of smell that shows up after it rains, but still before any birds and animals come out from their hiding. The type of smell when flowers are wet, and have not yet opened themselves back up.

Reaching into your trusty teapot bag, you fish around in there until you find your camera. It’s old, very old, and completely obsolete ever since the boom of technology that appeared around the time you and Ben were born, but you love it nonetheless. A year or two before you and Ben - and most of the other kids your age - were born, Auradon successfully made an alliance with Atlantis. They traded their protection of Atlantis and a promise to leave them alone, in exchange for a little bit of their technology and power sources. Adam also promised to make sure Rourke never saw the light of day again, a promise Queen Kida was happy to accept. The trade led to light speed innovations based in Atlantean tech; smart phones, computers, video games, and countless other innovations that brought Auradon into its new age. Flash forward to now, Atlantis is the tech capital of the world, and magic is obsolete. Your camera can’t give directions or tell time or backup to cloud storage, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You snap some pictures of the tiles before you begin exploring. You never know what entrance to Wonderland you’ll fall through, and you love documenting each one. You walk carefully through the forest of dense trees, looking at flocks of haughty looking dodo birds and peonies that gossip to each other, whispering with a laugh as you pass them by. Soon you stumble into something very interesting. You thought it was a cluster of blue bushes, but were surprised to find out they’re really birds. The bird bushes (or maybe bush birds) startle at your presence, squawking and leaving feathers (leaves?) in their wake before they fly off.

You manage to get a few pictures of them too, and you’re excited to show Ben. You’ve tried taking pictures with your phone before, but Wonderland makes technology… unreliable at best. Plus, there’s no service down here anyway. That’s why you took to journaling, drawing pictures and taking photos and writing down everything you see. This way you can share it with Ben, this way it’s almost like he’s here in your favorite place with you.

You follow the blue speckled bush birds - as you’d dubbed them - until you lose track of them. It’s no matter though, since you soon hear some lovely singing coming from under a sparkling berry bush growing fruit shaped like bells. You crouch down, lifting up the leaves, and find a choir of inchworms practicing their harmonies. The leader looks up at you in a huff.

“I’m terribly sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt.” You say. He huffs, and turns back to his choir, conducting with a little twig. You decide to sit and listen for a while as they rehearse under the coverage of glistening pink leaves. You find some oversized, brightly colored mushrooms growing nearby, and sit down on a comfortable one. You pull a teacup out of your bag, trying to decide which tea to drink while you watch the inchworms and listen to their masterpiece slowly come together.

You zip the lid closed, and pour the spout to the cup, settling on some raspberry tea. With honey, you think, and lemon. You smile as a lemon wedge falls from the spout, plopping gently into your cup. You take a sip, and it’s perfectly brewed as ever. You go through several cups of tea, growing more and more invested in the drama between the inchworms. One is insisting on taking the high harmony, even though it’s obviously out of his range. You’re half way through… one of your cups of tea, you lost count rather quickly. By now the inchworms have perfected their harmonies for the chorus, and the first verse. Your attention is ripped away from the inchworms when your bag starts ringing. You open it up, digging out your pocket watch. The bronze hands have spun all the way past most of the little notches, and you nearly drop your tea when you see where they are. Your eyes follow the hands, which are nearly pointing to the word Late! in fancy script.

“Shit!”

#curiosity is a wonderful thing #ben florian #ben florian x reader #daughter of alice!reader #descendants #descendants x reader #OOF #ya bitch is going through it #but it okay #it ony a movie #pls tell me smwn gets that reference #i say it ony a movie about 30 times a day #oh and i got the 'i thlammed my penith in the car door' song stuck in my head again #i sang it for i think 15 is minutes straight at the end of my shift at work today #silently ofc

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rotting-ink · 6 months ago

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*giggles and twirls my finger through my hair* Sooo, do our lovely LI have any kinks and what are they?

oh lots but we gotta keep it short and snappy, dont we?

Book 1:

L Rawlins- It's a secret, but Primal Play. They act like they're too in control and good to want to resort to animalistic ways but god, they're so repressed and would love to fuck the MC in werewolf form.

Seir- Worshiping but in a humiliating/degrading way. Cooing at their master for their lovely hole, their pretty chest, perfect for being used, all the while dragging their claws over their sides.

V De Winters- Big part is knifeplay. They enjoy watching you squirm as they press the cold blade against your skin, but wouldn't want to hurt you. Also loves watching you squirm against restraints.

Z Chambers- They adore sensory play. They're also a switch, so if you want to take turns being blindfolded, they're ALL for it. Also gags, bondage, anything that adds to the experience.

S Della Rovere- Public sex. If they're not allowed to tuck their hand into your undergarments in the corner of a bar, then what's the point? They love risky sex.

Book 2:

Saleos- Petplay. They want to be the one in charge of taking care of you, they want to become the master and you their familiar. They want you in a collar at all times, even a subtle one.

Starling Knight- Clothed sex, usually semi public that's rushed. They're busy but god, they could kiss you if you come visit them and you two can have a quickie.

A. Lancaster- Predator and Prey. Look, they help hunt down the Witch. What makes them think that A doesn't want to do the same in a relationship? You get an hour to escape into the forest or the town. And no matter what, they'll truss you up and have their way with you. Safeword and tap system in hand though.

Book 3:

Quincy Beaumont: God, what AREN'T they into? They're the kinkiest. They love toys, they love public sex, they love all pleasure. But most of all, they love marking. They need you covered in hickeys and bites at all times.

D. Woolf: Slow, intimate sex. They're not that kinky, and in fact, the most submissive of the group. Just use them. Use them however you want. Fuck them, sit on their face, ruin them. Please.

E. Rawlins: They love taking you to extremes. Edging to overstimulating. Scenting you by rubbing their cum into your skin. Biting and making sure to ruin you for anyone else.

#just love interest things #l rawlins #e rawlins #nsft #v de winters #s della rovere #z chambers #inky kinky scene #saleos #seir the familiar #starling knight #d woolf #quincy beaumont

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helloheyhihowdyheya · 1 year ago

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Rose Thorn Blues | pt. 2

Peter Parker x fem!reader

Part One Masterlist

Summary: Begrudgingly, you let Peter Parker help you with the story. Even if it leads you two going undercover as a couple...

Word count: ~4k

Warnings: Enemies to lovers!! Fake dating!! Banter. More Criminal activity. Swearing. A lil bit of tension.

A/n: Well, I thought I'd share this smaller part before I head on vacation. Sorry it's not longer, but I hope this holds over until I'm back home! Thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts <3

“Should I be regretting this?” you asked, immediately shaking your head as Parker wheeled over to your side.

“Too late.” He grabbed your notebook from your hands, kicking his feet up on your desk as he began to read. His lips moved silently along with the words, each curved syllable whispering past his mouth. You looked away when his eyes flicked to yours, those lips tilting into a grin even as he continued reading.

His fingers flipped the worn page of your notes, leaving you to pick at the hem of your shirt while waiting for him to finish.

You pulled your legs closer to you, trying to focus on the material of your pants rather than the urge to draw yourself into your body. But your nerves flared at the edges of your senses, telling you made the wrong choice. And only once you were about to pretend to need coffee just to step away, Parker blew out a tight sigh.

He muttered out, “Christ…”

Swallowing down the jolt in your muscles at his words, you turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Is that good or bad?”

His hand scratched along his jaw, his gaze following the words before slowly rising to meet yours. “Uh, your research is… good. Really good. But this,” he said, gesturing to the notebook, “is pretty bad.”

You chewed on your bottom lip, that quiet doubt inside your mind growing ever so louder. Barely blinking, you stared off wondering where this could go. Where you could end up if you went through with it. Your attention only snapped back when Parker cleared his throat.

He watched you, your expressions, with no humor on his face as he whispered, “So, you really went to this warehouse… by yourself in the middle of the night?” His finger pointed at your notes that indeed held your observations from last night. Still, that didn’t stop you from trying to lie and come up with anything that wouldn’t incriminate you.

When you didn’t answer, instead glancing at your fingers intertwining, he scoffed. “You know you could’ve really gotten hurt going there alone. Or worse. I don’t think these guys play around.”

“I wasn’t alone. I talked with Spider-Man,” you said, as if that could convince Parker that your plan hadn’t been a bad idea. But he raised an eyebrow at you, a half-smile on his face.

“Yeah? Now you’re buddy-buddy with him too?” A ghost of a laugh escaped him, but his eyes hardened, not leaving you. “I’m serious, sunshine. Spidey’s not gonna be there to always save you. We gotta do this carefully.”

Choosing to ignore the unyielding tone his words were wrapped in, you grabbed your notebook back from him, your jaw set. “I know that, Parker. And I’m not exactly in harm’s way now that I don’t have any other leads. All he’s got is some BS fundraiser I can’t get into,” you said, sitting back in your chair. Silently, as you traced a finger down the writing you’d gone over dozens of times already, you grumbled under your breath about the rude receptionist you’d talked to about it.

“A fundraiser?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The collar of his long-sleeve shirt swooped down an inch, drawing your eyes to the shadow of his chest before nodding. He then asked, “What could we find out from that anyway? Not like Beaumont is gonna be any more truthful with those rich people than he is with the general public.”

He brought the end of a pen to his mouth, beginning to chew on it before you could realize he took it from your desk. You just pressed your lips together, letting it go as he thought out loud some more — now beginning to spin in his desk chair.

“He’s hiding plenty of secrets as is, I’m sure there’s gotta be some that we could uncover by getting close, right? Maybe we could-”

“Parker! Where are those pictures you promised me!”

Jameson’s voice boomed through the office, sending the both of you jumping in your seats. Parker cleared his throat and called back, “Emailing them to you now, sir.”

Beneath the sound of Parker’s squeaky desk chair rolling back to his side, you heard Jameson swear under his breath. You didn’t dare peek over the half-wall and risk getting yelled at too. Instead, as frantic typing came from Parker’s keyboard, you wrote on a post-it note, “Able to stay late. We can talk about this piece. In peace. Haha…”

You folded it in half twice before tossing it over onto his side and returning to research — even as it felt useless to do so. A small twinge of hope trickled up your spine, so subtle you barely noticed it before it reached the base of your head. A hope that Parker said yes.

As another site turned up blank, you told yourself asking him was just to move this story along, even if it meant spending the evening with the intern you always seemed to stand in the shadow of. But this story could bring you over the top and show Jameson you deserved that job.

A few minutes later, a flash of paper flew from Parker’s side and landed right on your eye.

“Shit…” you groaned out, lightly rubbing your eye and blinking it repeatedly — all while you heard suppressed laughter from the other desk. Quietly, you muttered, “Dick,” and opened up the note. The only thing added to it was a poorly drawn thumbs-up.

With that settled, along with the weird relief at his answer that you shoved lower and lower, you worked on some of your assigned stories. One blurred into the next, all of them superficial enough to turn your brain fuzzy over the course of the work day. You wondered what Alice was working on and if they ever made her feel like this.

By the time people began packing up for the day, long after your mediocre lunch from the closest food shop, your head nearly felt numb. At least this story could be the break you needed from all this — all the unimportant parts of reporting, like who broke up with who, and how Spider-Man is somehow the reason for it. Again.

You rubbed a tired hand down your face, letting the warm darkness of it swallow you for a moment. Your head shot up finally once a granola bar clattered across your desk.

Parker’s head then appeared from around the half-wall, the wave of his dark hair looking ran through. “I stole it earlier today, but I think you need it more than I do, sunshine,” he said, pointing to the bar with a tilt of his head.

Your stomach growled as you grabbed it, ripping it open. “That’s such a stupid nickname,” you muttered before taking a bite, looking up at him with a half-assed glare.

“It’s more creative than you calling me ‘Parker.’ That’s just my last name.” He laughed, his eyes lighting up.

Quirking your head, you blinked slowly at him. “If I’m sunshine, then you’re moonshine. Makes sense too, cause I need to be drunk to even tolerate you, Parker,” you grumbled, finishing off the granola bar.

And before he could open that stupid mouth of his, you threw away the wrapper and said, “I think Jameson’s gone if we want to start on the story. We-”

“Now?” Parker’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at you, his hand coming up to run down his neck. “Immediately vetoing. C’mon.”

Before you could ask any questions, he stood up and walked toward the doors, shouting over his shoulder, “Keep up!”

As much as your mind resisted listening to him, your eyes and legs definitely needed the break. So you followed after him, staring at his back as you made your way down the building’s steps.

Out on the sidewalk, the sun sat lower in the sky at this hour. Clouds scattered throughout kept the air from getting too hot, the feeling bringing a content smile to your face.

Blinking at him, you saw the way the sunlight showered down on Parker. The effortlessness of his hands sitting in his pockets and his hair laying perfectly messy — even his goddamn freckles glowing in the light — set a sparking anger in your chest. It only twisted, turned more sour, when he opened his mouth.

“You know… it’s not polite to stare at someone. Even if they are ruggishly handsome.”

A laughing scoff escaped your mouth, your eyes instead drifting across the crowd of people passing along the sidewalk. “I was just trying to figure out how your head fit such a little brain inside it. Does it just roll around like an acorn in there? Maybe a pea?”

Feeling the glare from his side-eye, you caught his growing half-smile. “Yeah? Could a pea-sized brain be smart enough to find us an actual dinner?”

“I mean… probably. But,” you said, tilting your head at him, “that’s not the worst plan you’ve had.” For emphasis, your stomach growled while you two walked down the street. And through grabbing carryout to eat back at the office, you made it a point to not stare at Parker — or do anything to give him a bigger ego than he already had.

His often irritating words certainly made it easy enough, like now as he spoke in between bites of his food from the takeout box. “So, I’m thinking–”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

You let out a laugh as he flipped you off, the shaking in your shoulders helping lift a weight from them. At least it was easy to laugh with him — or at him.

With a pointed stare, he continued. “I’m thinking that we have to find the connection between Beaumont and spidey… man. Spider-Man. With that warehouse you nearly burgled.”

You raised a skeptical eyebrow at him as he leaned against your desk. With your feet propped up next to where he sat, you ate your food from your desk chair. The office lay bare beside you two, your ID cards giving you access after hours. Unsurprisingly, the brainstorming hadn’t been terribly productive yet.

“I did not burgle anything… yet. But I haven’t seen anything between those two before. Maybe Beaumont’s just a big fan. He’s taking all our money just to grow his collection of supervillain memorabilia.”

Parker let out a quiet laugh. “Sounds like something Jameson would do.”

You internally shivered at the idea of finding your boss’s secret stash of Spider-Man collectibles.

Silence slipped over the two of you, just the noises of eating and the building’s air conditioning as you both thought through the details. Eventually, he said, “So this Ellis Beaumont guy has to have some sort of conflict with Spider-Man, meaning we could research what crimes of Beaumont’s that Spider-Man has stopped.”

An unsure look overtook your face. “That’s way too many to look through — and it’s not like that information is recorded anywhere. This politician keeps things tightly under wraps…” you sighed, letting out a tired laugh that didn’t feel all that funny. “It feels like I’m right back where I started.”

“Could that fundraiser of his give us answers?” Parker asked, his eyes glancing at yours.

You hesitantly nodded as you swallowed your next bite. “Probably, since it’s at his house apparently. But without an invitation, we’re kind of shit out of luck.”

“So we get an invitation and do some snooping during the event. Easy enough.”

Parker had put his food down, and you did not like the growing smirk on his face. “Before you say anything,” he told you, “I know a guy. It’ll be fine — we’ll just dress the part and do some investigative journalism.”

“Oh, so it’s bad to check out a warehouse, but we’ll just crash the fundraiser of a member of the government body and suspected criminal? You’re insane.” A scoff escaped your mouth when he nodded.

As you dropped your feet from the desk, you wanted to regret letting Parker in on this story or at least question who this guy was that could get you two into this fundraiser, but you had no better plan — or the guts to pull this off without him.

“This has got to be pretty illegal…” you whispered.

Parker gave you a smile that both calmed you and let butterflies loose in your stomach. “Absolutely. But Beaumont committed the crimes first, so we’re just evening it out.” He crossed his arms, the fabric of his long sleeve wrapped tight around them. With an expectant look, he raised his eyebrows at you. “So, are you in?”

A minute passed as you thought, considering any other plans that wouldn’t end with the both of you in jail. But you came up with nothing.

This better be one hell of a story. “Okay, fine. Let’s do this.”

“Great!” he said, clapping his hands together. “One more thing, though. We’re going to have to go as a couple. I’m thinking our last name could be–”

“Excuse me?” You cut him off, your eyes widening. Despite your mouth opening, nothing came out. You just dropped your gaze to the wall behind him as you let out a long breath.

“How else are we going to be convincing? All the other people joining are families or couples, right?”

He explained it so matter-of-factly. You understood, really. But pretending to be married to him while sneaking through a mansion? All for a ridiculous unpaid summer internship?

“Parker, have you come up with a torture plan?” You put your face in your hands, quietly groaning. You could be cordial with him and cautiously appreciate his (persistent) help on the story, but the idea of acting as a couple in love with him brought an uneasiness to your body.

Would Alice approve? It felt again like you weren’t following your heart, which wanted to hide deep down behind your ribs.

Parker looked at you, his mouth pressed tight. “Hey, not exactly like getting down on a knee to you was my original plan here,” he muttered.

Still, you looked back at him, ignoring the intensity of his stare. “So what will our last name be?”

Bennet, it turned out, would be the last name on your IDs and invitations for the banquet in two days. Sam and Rose Bennet.

During the days leading up, the two of you worked on regular assignments under the eye (and screaming) of Jameson.

But if someone looked closely, they’d see your leg constantly shaking beneath your desk and Parker’s nails being bitten down to the bed. They might be able to hear the whispered comments between the two of you — most about what your story would be. They would even see the things neither of you could make out, like the unasked questions on the tips of your tongues or the pull that seemed to exist between you and Parker.

The story you decided on was high school sweethearts — private school, of course. Something arranged by your equally rich and philanthropic parents, whose money you’d be happy to donate to Stronger Together during the fundraiser.

In reality, you both scrounged up enough money to rent nice enough clothes for the event and hoped that you wouldn’t have to pay for any extra damage. Besides the money concern, the risk of something happening to the clothes (and you, more importantly) weighed over your mind. Parker didn’t seem to have any worries, or voice them to you at least, about this whole plan going sideways.

So, you planned for it by yourself. Which exits would be best, which people you should probably stay away from. And you still didn’t ask how Parker exactly got you two into this, not that you were sure you wanted to know.

It didn’t even cross your mind the night of, not as you stood in your apartment, slipping on a floor-length gown that seemed to lay just right. Your fingers ran along your body, fixing things here and there until you were sure no rich politician would look twice at you and suspect something. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you weren’t sure you recognized yourself — or the idea you had of yourself. Maybe that was a good thing.

Your frayed nerves turned electric as your phone went off, a text from Parker letting you know he was here. For a minute, you hesitated. The constant thrumming in your chest clouded your thoughts, telling you something that you couldn’t quite make out.

As a second, more impatient, text came through, you gave one last glance at yourself and walked out into the hallway.

Each step to the front door in shoes that squeezed your feet much too tightly felt like a jolt to your heart. A breeze pushed past you as you walked out to his car — one that he’d have to park far away so the valet couldn’t see his shitty 2004 Honda Civic.

Parker stood leaning against the side of the vehicle, one hand scratching at his jaw and the other shoved far into his rented tux’s pockets. He stared down at his shoes, his vacant look telling you he also had a thousand thoughts running through his mind.

But as his gaze drifted up, connecting with yours, that worried crease between his eyebrows smoothed out, his hand dropping from his jaw down to his lap. Your steps slowed, your fingers clutching tight onto a purse you borrowed from a friend.

Those honeyed eyes turned bright as a ghosting smile spread across his face. You took in the image of him staring at you in that tuxedo — one that you could tell he wasn’t used to if you looked too hard. Not that you were doing that, of course. Still, the expensive material sat nicely along his tanned skin from the summer sun.

Though, you couldn’t figure out what felt off about him until you came closer, the buzzing in your ears growing much too loud as you neared. Reaching a hand up, your eyebrows furrowed, you went to fix his hair. The caramel strands sat straight and slicked back. It didn’t look like he’d run his fingers through it a hundred times.

But as you felt his breath brush along your skin, saw the stillness of his body, you paused. Too close. Too much, even for a fake couple.

You dropped your hand by your side, begging your body to calm down. You avoided his eyes as you took a step back. “Sorry,” you whispered, maybe for the first time to him, “Your hair just looks so…”

“Stuffy? Obnoxious? Greasy?”

“Pretentious is what I was going to say.”

His tight laugh brought some sort of relief to your tense muscles, even as he pushed off his car and muttered, “Glad we both look the part then.”

You raised an eyebrow, staring at him while fighting a smile. “You know, Parker — or Bennet, I should say — a real gentleman would’ve opened my door for me.”

Right before he plopped down in his car, he said, “You’re lucky I’m even picking you up, Mrs. Bennet.”

Quietly, you let out a huff and got into the passenger seat. Your hands brushed along your dress, straightening it out.

As you picked off a stray piece of lint, you said, “I’m not sure this is the right way to start as a couple.” You tried to make your words sound easy, but it didn’t even sound convincing to you.

Parker began driving, keeping his eyes on the road as he drummed a finger along the steering wheel. “You’re right — but don’t let that get to your head, sunshine. Okay, when did we first meet?”

“We first met fifteen years ago, but we didn’t start dating until ten years ago when our parents put us together. Toward the end of high school…”

“Where we went to different colleges but made the long-distance thing work. Somehow,” he said, waving a hand as if it didn’t matter or no one would ask how.

“And now, using the money we’ve saved up through our parents’ endowment funds and-”

“Wait, what does that even mean?” you asked, realizing he came up with this without telling you until now.

“It uh… it’s something to do with donations. I Googled it — it’s fine. Anyway, we’re using that and their savings to give back like they have always wanted. Great, fool-proof.”

Pursing your lips, you nodded for a second before shaking your head. “Parker, that makes no goddamn sense. This is a terrible idea.”

“Well, we’re going to be there soon, so too late now.”

“It’s actually not too late,” you told him, your throat feeling tight. “Let’s just turn around, okay?”

“Hey,” he said as the car came to a stoplight. He turned to look at you, the shine of the light illuminating half of his face.

His voice came out soft. “You nearly burgled a criminal’s warehouse, and you lied to a government official’s secretary, or something. This will be a piece of cake, alright?” Ever so quietly, a warmth bloomed in your chest, melting the cold fear that’d been wrapping around you. You gave him a short nod, making him give a tight-lipped smile and keep driving. “Great! Now, suck it up, sunshine, and come up with a better backstory. I can’t do all of the thinking in this marriage.”

A laugh bubbled up from your mouth. You rolled your eyes, even though your fidgeting had calmed down.

With a long breath out, you said, “What about if my grandmother left me money in her will, and I’m honoring her memory by giving it back to the city she loved?”

“Not bad… and sorry for your imaginary loss. I think it’ll keep people from prying too much further.”

“I hope so,” you muttered, hoping this half-baked plan would work.

Eventually, Parker slowly rolled the car to a stop. He parked on a smaller residential road a few blocks away, but you could still see the lights shining into the sky from Beaumont’s place. His castle to overlook all the peasants of the city.

Your shoes clicked across the pavement, the two of you nearing the mansion. With each step, you tried harder to ignore your heart hammering louder.

You breathed out a shaky breath when Parker held out his arm next to you. Hesitantly, you took it, wrapping your arm around his. Normally, you might’ve ignored the hardness of his body or the warmth seeping into your skin, but the solid, unyielding feeling of him brought some sort of grounding.

Leaning his mouth toward your ear, Parker said, “Which one do you think is going to pop first? The vein bulging from Jameson’s forehead or the huge one in his neck?”

The laughs you let out were sharp and involuntary, a smile breaking out on your face. Looking at him, at the grin he sent your way, you said, “Definitely the one on his forehead. And you’re going to be the one to make him mad enough to pop it.”

“I’ll be sure to wear those plastic ponchos the next time I’m late.”

“So… Monday? We can pick one up after the fundraiser for you.”

The giggles underlacing your words slowly died down as you turned the street corner, your eyes catching all the other couples approaching the towering house. Valets stood at the front, taking car keys from guests before they came to the doors — guards standing on either side.

“You’ve got the invitations?” you whispered to Parker, your hold on his arm growing tighter.

He quietly scoffed. “Of course I have them. Who do you think I-” His words stopped, his hands patting down his suit jacket for the invitation. Right as you felt your stomach threaten to curl in on itself, he flashed you a grin. “Just kidding, they’re right here,” he told you, grabbing them from his pocket.

With a forced smile plastered to your face in front of all these guests, you gritted out, “I’m going to murder you.”

“You are too funny, dear,” Parker said, or more likely, Sam Bennet said as the two of you walked up to the doorman holding his hand out for the invitations.

The way Parker’s mouth curled around the affectionate name felt foreign at first, but the way the doorman looked at the two of you — as if you really were a happy couple — made it feel right.

And that was it, that was all it took for a softness to flow over you and let yourself become Rose Bennet. For tonight.

@hollandweather @dil3mma @reidslovely

#peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter parker x fem!reader #tasm!peter #tasm andrew garfield #tasm peter parker #tasm spiderman #the amazing spider man #spider man x reader #spider-man x reader

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karahalloway · 11 months ago

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(Less Than) Noble Intentions: Chapter 16 - Snakes in the Garden

Fandom: TRR

Pairing: Drake Walker x F!OC (Harper Gale)

Series Summary: The social season may be over, but Harper Gale’s problems are just beginning. With everyone at court a potential suspect, can she and Drake survive the engagement tour and get to the bottom of the plot against her and clear her name? An AU take of TRR2 featuring my OTP - Harper & Drake.

Masterlist: (Less Than) Noble Intentions

Chapter Summary: Harper greets the world as the new Duchess of Valtoria, but that is not the only newsworthy item that rocks the Apple Harvest Festival...

Word Count: 7,300

Rating/Warnings: M (swearing, angst, possible ulterior motives)

Chapter theme song:

A/N1: Things are slowly coming to a head! Thanks for bearing with me on this series - I know I have a lot of other projects in the works, so I have not been updating as much as I probably should. But, we are finally getting to the exciting parts (as if what's happened until now hasn't been exciting 🤣) as after this chapter, we are into the meat of the engagement tour, and all the juicy plot changes that I have been wanting to write for over a year will finally come to a fore! *evil laugh*

A/N2: If you have not heard of TURN - the TV show from which I borrowed the chapter theme song - then, I can highly recommend it (especially if you like historical dramas, US history (specifically the Revolutionary War period), or just really good story-telling)!

A/N3: This is also much submission for @choicesjanuary2024 Day 12: Smiles / Secret

Chapter 16 - Snakes in the Garden

"Are you sure I look okay?" I ask, nervously pulling at the high-necked strip of emerald lace that circles my throat.

"Stop fiddling!" Bertrand berates, slapping my hand away. "We are running late as it, and we cannot afford to lose any more time to last minute touch-ups!"

"Yeah, but—"

"You look great, Harper," Maxwell assures me with a beaming smile. "Marcie did a great job."

The petite make-up artist that the Beaumonts had procured out of thin air bobs a curtsy to my right. "It was my pleasure, Your Grace."

Her words hit me like a whiplash.

Your Grace.

My new form of address. One I'm not sure I'm ever going to get used to. Lady Harper had been one thing, but that had always felt like a curtesy. A temporary formality that had been extended to me by virtue of my sponsorship by the Beaumonts during the social season.

But there is nothing temporary about my current situation. The weight of the ring on my hand — and its implications — bears down heavily on my finger... and my thoughts. Especially since I still haven't found a moment alone with Drake to finish our conversation from this morning... or bring him up to speed on my new status.

Because no sooner had my ennoblement been sealed with the very expensive — and very potent — champagne, than the Beaumonts had shown back up (somewhat mercifully) to crash Christian's surprise party.

And from there it had been a whirlwind of hair, makeup and outfitting for the all-important Apple Harvest Festival where I am due to make my grand debut as the new Duchess of Valtoria.

A position of some importance — Bertrand has stressed, multiple times — given that in addition to the impressive estate that I am now the official caretaker of, I also have a seat on the infamous Council, as well as a seat on the even more exclusive Privy Council. Not to mention my own fleet of staff, vehicles, bank accounts, and carefully curated online profiles.

Which is why — on top of everything — the ever-industrious press corps have worked at record speed to throw the fruits of yesterday's labours together into an exclusive, twelve-page spread as part of a special edition of Trend magazine, which dropped this morning.

And while I haven't actually had a chance to read through the copy that currently sits on the coffee table of my room (together with every other major national and international news publication), Maxwell has assured me that the social media reactions have — so far — been positive. The snaps of my stress-fuelled efforts at yesterday's apple pick have apparently helped.

Which means that Jonathan's PR gamble is starting to pay dividends, and I now have a public image to maintain. Not just for myself, but for Cordonia as well. Because when I step outside today, I'll be representing everything that the kingdom under Christian's burgeoning rule is striving to be — beauty, modernity, opportunity.

Definitely not the best day to wake up with a litany of awkwardly situated bruises!

Thankfully, both Maxwell and Bertrand seem to have had a chance to pull themselves together after this morning's surprising (and definitely explosive!) turn of events, and — after the initial shock — have set about covering for mine and Drake's mess with the same coordinated precision that they employed to pull the Beaumont Bash out of their butts.

With the result that they somehow managed to transform me from the black and blue disaster I woke up as, into the picture of a polished and refined lady.

I glance apprehensively out at the bright sunshine blanketing the hills. Hopefully, the carefully applied window-dressing survives the literal trial by fire it's about to be subjected to. Because just like yesterday, the temperature is set to climb into the mid-90's today as well, which means I'll most likely end up sweating buckets again, thanks to the Edwardian nature of my dress's neckline.

And what I definitely don't need today is for all the blush and cover-up getting smudged away so that everyone at the event can start speculating about the intimate placement of my of hickeys!

I close my eyes wearily. God, I can't wait for all this to be over...

"No catnaps!" snaps Bertrand, slapping a wide-brimmed hat onto my head. "The people are waiting on us!"

I barely have time to grab my matching clutch before the Beaumonts are whisking me out of my room and down the length of the corridor towards the manor's lawn.

"Surely the Festival can start without us...!" I gasp as I stumble after Bertrand in my heels.

"No, it cannot," he reprimands. "All members of the Council must be present for the ceremonial tree planting."

I frown. "Tree planting? Isn't that a little... agrarian for the aristos?"

"It is a time-honoured tradition!" corrects Bertrand. "Cordonia owes its existence and livelihood to the noble Ruby, so it is the duty of the Council to ensure that the fruits of our bounty are secured for future generations! Hence, the requirement to plant new saplings at the end of each harvest!"

"If you say so..." I concede as we pass through the back doors of the manor.

Based on what I saw at the apple pick, Bertrand's pronouncement seems optimistic at best, given that none of the aristos even bothered to lift a finger to a tree yesterday.

But, looks can always be deceiving, so maybe today is the day that the I am pleasantly surprised for once.

A deafening cheer erupts as the Beaumonts and I step out onto the manor's steps.

Snapping my head towards the source of the commotion, I see what appears to be thousands of people crammed behind velvet-lined cordons, screaming and jostling for position like they're in the front row of a Taylor Swift concert...

...and it takes me a second to realise that it's my name that they're shouting.

"Duchess!"

"Lady Harper, we love you!"

"You're the true Apple Queen, no matter what anyone says!"

"Wow..." I blink, taken aback by the fervency of the crowd's reaction. "I didn't realise I had such a rabid following..."

"Best wave to them," suggests Maxwell, leaning in as he raises his arm into the air with a wide smile.

"Okay..." I concede hesitantly, turning to the crowd to do the same.

The last time I experienced anything remotely like this had been on the red carpet at the Derby — my first public outing as a suitor. But even the bright flash of the cameras and the intrusive questions that the reporters had flung at me paled in comparison to the reaction I am receiving today.

Phones and cameras are thrust into the air as the Beaumonts and I descend the manor's stairs to the accompaniment of the increasingly frenzied cheers and shouts of encouragement. Even a few bouquets of flowers fly through the air, narrowly missing my hat.

And I can't help but smile in the face of the genuine outpouring of support from the crowd. Because it sure as heck feels good to be on top for once!

However, arriving at the edge of the orchard where the tree planting ceremony is due to take place, I am greeted by a very different type of welcome.

Snooty expressions drip down the ends of aristocratic noses as the members of the Council pass silent judgment on my somewhat bombastic entrance.

"They're just jealous," Maxwell whispers to me as we take up our spots at the edge of the gathering.

"Yeah..." I agree with a stilted voice. "That's what I'm worried about."

I know firsthand of the lengths that these people are willing to go to in order to exact vengeance for perceived slights. And I did not particularly feel like painting a target on my back a second time while I am still trying to recover from the hurt caused by the first.

Maybe this is a mistake...

But I don't have time to think on it long, because the public erupts into an even more deafening outburst as Christian appears with Madeleine on his arm.

"Look at her..." snips a voice from behind me. "Acting like she's Queen already."

I whip around in disbelief. "Olivia!"

The Duchess of Lythikos cuts her green eyes over at me with a derisive look. "Oh, don't look so surprised, Harper. Just because you are now a duchess, does not mean that the rest of us have taken early retirement."

"Trust me," I grumble under my breath, "this was not the plan."

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized," she replies sagely.

I quirk a brow at her. "Meaning?"

"Meaning," she expounds surly, "opportunity breeds opportunity. And only by exploiting every advantage will you uncover previously hidden gains. Do they not teach The Art of War inyour schools?"

"No..."

She scoffs under her breath. "Explains a lot."

I roll my eyes at her as Christian and Madeleine pause on the steps for photos and a couple of quick sound bites. "I guess this means your sabbatical was productive?"

"Exceedingly."

I heave a breath. "At least one of us is making progress..."

"Oh, don't sell yourself short," she counters out of the corner of her mouth. "Your recent advancements have served as a welcome distraction..."

"Not sure if that’s a compliment, or not..." I admit sourly.

"You have more power than you realise," she insists quietly. "Make sure you use it."

"Wow..." I mutter, glancing over at her in genuine surprise. "Friendly advice from the Scarlet Duchess? What else have you learnt during your time away?"

"Our interests are temporarily aligned, nothing more," she replies, shooting daggers across the lawn towards Madeleine. "And I'll fill you in shortly."

"Well, it's good to have you back, regardless," I say with a dip of my head. "Your Grace."

Olivia shoots me a sidelong look. "Don't get sentimental on me, Duchess."

But I can see the hint of a smile pulling at her lips.

Christian and Madeleine arrive at the edge of the trees. Stepping up to the row of waiting saplings, Christian pulls a stack of notecards out of his pocket and delivers a short speech to the click of the cameras.

As the mandatory applause dies down, he slots the pieces of paper carefully away... and pulls off his jacket.

"What are you doing?" hisses Madeleine as the crowd descends into a hubbub of excited reactions.

"Taking a leaf out of the Duchess of Valtoria's book," he replies, handing his jacket off to the closest shocked Councillor as he sets about rolling up his sleeves.

"Out of—!" Madeleine bristles in indignation, while trying to maintain an outwardly calm composure. "The only thing you have taken is leave of your senses! Now get back here and—!"

Ignoring his fiancée's outburst, Christian grabs the ribbon-bedecked shovel out of the hands of the footman that was holding it, and steps up to a clear patch of grass. Adjusting his grip on the handle, he digs the metal blade decisively into the ground to the accompanying slew of clicking camera shutters.

"Shall we?" asks Olivia with a sly smirk as she pushes her way to the front of the line of gawping nobles.

"Let's," I agree, instantly catching onto her plan.

"Lady Harper!" hisses Bertrand from behind me. "What do you think you're—?"

"Lending a hand to the King," I throw back over my shoulder as I step to the front of the row of aristos who are looking mutely onto the sight of their monarch working up an actual sweat before them.

Grabbing another shovel from the pile in the corner — these ones obviously having seen some honest work already, judging by the dirt encrusted on their faces — I join the King of Cordonia in enlarging the hole in the ground.

Because regardless of Christian's underlying motives for ennobling me, and whatever his broader game may be, what he is doing right now is bigger than me, bigger than him, bigger than any of us. And that deserves recognition. Especially when he is taking such active — and public — strides towards being the change he wants to see unfurl during his rule. Where the ruling class doesn't just offer empty platitudes and hollow ceremony, but actually practices what it preaches. So, what better way to do that, than by planting the seeds of change in front of thousands of people in the literal heart of the kingdom?

Christian rewards my arrival with a nod and a smile as I take up position next to him.

Hefting my shovel, I slice it into the earth that he's already uncovered, using the somewhat flimsy sole of my heeled sandals to drive it deeper.

Scooping the blade back out, I suddenly feel a presence to my left. Looking up, I see that Maxwell has also joined our impromptu work crew.

Throwing me a wink, he drops his shovel in next to mine.

With the three of us working on tandem, it takes us almost no time at all to dig out a hole large enough to house the new apple tree.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead — the weatherman had not lied, that's for sure! — I see that Olivia, with some assistance from Hana, has already prepared the sapling by shunting it closer to the hole and removing the burlap covering from its roots.

Laying down our shovels, we help her manoeuvre the tree to the edge of the dint. Cheers and applause rise up from the onlookers as the sapling thuds into the earth. Olivia uses one of the knives from her hidden arsenal to slice off the twines holding the branches together, and the tree unfurls itself with a satisfied snap.

"Your Majesty!" shouts a reporter, who I recognise as Frederick Capone. "One for the Cordonian Times, if you please!"

"And for the CBS!" adds Donald Brine, muscling his way to the front.

"Certainly," accedes Christian graciously, holding his arm out. "It was a group effort, after all."

We all gather in — sweaty and dirty, but smiling — as the press corps immortalises the scene...

...and I innocuously sweep my hair over my shoulder in a vain effort to try and hide any bruises that may have become uncovered as a result of the unplanned exertion.

"Thank you for joining me in my moment of impulsivity," Christian acknowledges softly as the bulbs flash.

"Please," scoffs Olivia out of the side of her mouth. "It was coordinated from the start."

"The people don't seem to mind," counters Hana with a demure smile as she faces the cameras.

"With the exception of about half-dozen," I note, glancing back at the disgruntled looks of the Councillors from behind us, as they try to save face by applauding our efforts together with the rest of the crowd.

"They'll fall in line." Christian assures me as he lifts his hand with a wave.

I feel a prick between my shoulder blades. Turning my head, I catch sight of the cold fire radiating out of Madeleine's gaze from behind the mask of her perfect smile.

"Maybe not everyone..." I mutter under my breath as I turn back towards the paps.

I'm already on Madeleine's shit list for daring to return to court after my very public humiliation and banishment. On the night of her engagement tour launch party, no less! So, the fact that I ended up upstaging her — again — probably means that I've sunk even further down the ladder of her estimations.

To what end, I have no idea. But I'm going to have to start being more careful from here on out.

Once the press are finally placated, we disperse across the lawn in search of some much-needed refreshments.

"Harper!"

I swallow a groan as I'm brought up short, mere steps from the freshly squeezed, rosemary-infused lemonade that I desperately need after toiling away in this heat. "What now, Bertrand...?"

"I... uhm..." He clears his throat as I turn to face him. "I wanted to apologise for my earlier outburst. It was unseemly... and in retrospect, short-sighted."

"What do you mean?" I ask with a frown. Bertrand very rarely — if ever! — apologised.

"The public reaction to the tree planting has been overwhelming," he clarifies, pulling his phone out.

My eyes bulge as I take in the view count on the screen. "A hundred thousand views already!"

"And counting," Bertrand adds. "And that is only one website."

"And look at the comments!" I exclaim, scrolling through the feed. "They're loving Maxwell as well!"

"Yes, it appears that my brother has a keener instinct for media relations than I do..."

"You should tell him that," I say. "It would mean the world to him."

Bertrand looks momentarily taken aback. "I... Well..." He clears his throat again. "Yes. Maybe I will. He deserves some recognition for his efforts in diverting — at least temporarily — the negative attention away from our financial predicaments."

"A simple hug and a 'thank-you' will do," I tell him with a knowing look.

Bertrand reels back in abject horror. "I will not subject my brother to such a sordid display of affection! Especially in public!"

I heave a sigh. "And there's your problem, right th—"

I trail off as I spot a familiar figure signalling to me from over Bertrand's shoulders.

"Excuse me," I say, palming Bertrand's phone back to him as I move towards one of the marquees that had been set up at the edge of the lawn.

Slipping inside the flap of the tent, I come face-to-face with Ana de Luca.

"Your Grace," she nods, dipping into a curtesy, something she hasn't deigned to do before. "Thank you for making the time."

"Ana," I nod in return, wondering why the influential editor of Trend chose to pull me away for a private meeting. Especially after I cornered her so forcefully at Madeleine's garden party a few days ago.

"I suppose congratulations are in order," she continues, straightening back up. "Since returning to court you have managed to elevate yourself not just in rank, but in the eyes of the public as well. Rolling your sleeves up in tandem with the King was a masterful piece of image enhancement."

"I didn't do it for myself," I reply evenly.

"Of course," she nods quickly. "We must all step in line with our new King. But your reputation is certainly reaping the benefits as well."

"As is your bottom line," I point out.

"Your initiative is markedly boosting sales of this month's special edition, as well as traffic to our website," she concedes. "For which Trend is very grateful. But that is not the reason I pulled you aside."

"What is it then?"

"I found out the name of the photographer," she replies, reaching into her handbag.

I feel my heart jump in my chest. "You're joking..."

She raises a brow at me from behind the lenses of her black-out Versace shades as she pulls a small flash-drive out. "I can assure you that I am not."

I quickly pull myself back together. "No. Of course not..."

Handing the drive over, she adds. "On there you will find all the pertinent information I was able to obtain through my own means."

"Thank you," I say sincerely, taking the piece of plastic from her. "I honestly was not expecting this..."

She shrugs an elegant shoulder. "I said I would look into it, so I did. It is not much, but I am sure you have people who can hopefully take it further."

"I do," I affirm, slotting the device into my clutch.

"After all," she adds with a knowing quirk to her lips. "You are not the only one with a vested interest in seeing your name cleared, Your Grace."

With another quick bob, she exits the marquee.

I let out a low exhale as the tent flap drops back into place in her wake. "Thank God..."

Some much-needed progress at last!

Hopefully, Drake can take the information from the drive and do a deep dive into the photographer to see if they ever crossed paths with whoever it is that has it in for me.

Which reminds me...

Opening my clutch up again, I pull my phone out and type up a quick message to my elusive boyfriend.

I haven't seen or heard from him since the event started. And now I have two pieces of critical information I need to share with him. So, rather than chasing after him like some damsel in distress, I'm going to make him come to me for a change. Because time is of the essence, and I don't want to wait.

Hitting send, I exit the tent and head back towards the orchard. I figure that since everyone is on the lawn, the secluded garden hidden amongst the trees will give me and Drake the best chance to meet in private, away from the prying eyes of the court and the press.

Slipping between the tree trunks, I try to make my way as casually as possible through the orchard, as if I am simply out for a walk, in order to ward off potential suspicion. But, as I drift further away from the Festival, I start to pick up the pace, mindful of the short timeframe I gave Drake... as well as the exposed roots on the ground.

Because as much as I might want to hurry, I definitely don't want — or need — a twisted ankle the day before we're due to start the international leg of the trip. As Mom was right — I should take advantage of the upcoming whirlwind tour of Europe to at least try and get some sightseeing in. As who knows when I'll get the chance to do this again...

...especially if I'm forced to become a hermit because we fail to expose the mastermind behind the press scandal.

I shake my head. No. I need to stay positive. It's the only way I'm going to get through—

"Competing with a herd of elephants, Gale?"

I snap my gaze up at the sound of Drake's voice... and nearly trip over a hidden apple lodged in the grass.

"You try sneaking ‘round in four-inch heels," I grumble back at him, while using the trunk of a nearby tree to steady myself.

He mutters something under his breath as he steps over to me with an outstretched hand. "Here."

Grabbing his hand, I navigate gingerly away from the tree, only to find that the slightly rotten fruit has become impaled on the end of my stiletto.

"Great..." I groan, trying to flick the stupid thing off... But it stays stubbornly stuck.

"You're a walking disaster, y'know that, right?" drawls Drake as he drops down in front of me.

"Ha-ha, funny," I snark back at him while trying to balance on one foot on the uneven ground.

He meets my eye with a wry look as he finally manages to pull the offending fruit off with a squelch. "You're only gripin' 'cause it's true."

"Yeah, well, not all of us have... reflexes... like Neo..." I reply sardonically as I save myself from tipping over by grabbing onto Drake's shoulder.

He stifles a scoff as he tosses the apple into the trees. "You good?"

"Yeah," I confirm, righting myself again and letting go of his shirt.

Drake regards me critically for a long moment — as if expecting me to keel over again at the drop of a hat — before pushing himself up.

"Thanks," I say, laying an appreciative hand on his arm.

The humour fades from his gaze at the contact.

"Drake..." I start...

...but he's already pulled away.

"What did you want to talk about?" he asks, not quite meeting my eyes as he slots his hands into his pockets, the momentary lightness of our previous interaction gone.

I heave a breath.

We really need to talk about what happened this morning. But his suddenly standoffish demeanour makes it clear that he's not quite ready for that yet.

So, I decide to start with something less contentious.

"We have a lead on the photographer," I tell him, reaching into my clutch.

His head perks up with interest. "That was fast."

"Teamwork makes the dream work," I agree with a smile, pulling the flash drive back out and holding it out to him.

His posture suddenly stiffens. "The hell is that?"

I glance around me uncertainly. "What?"

"The fucking ring on your finger," he declares dispassionately, his accusatory gaze scorching into my outstretched hand.

My heart drops. Oh, no...

This is not how I wanted to break it to him. But unfortunately for both of us, the cat has now ripped itself out of the proverbial bag, so I'm just going to have to scamper after it.

Taking a steadying inhale, I look him square in the eye. "It's my new signet ring." I turn my hand over to show it to him.

His face darkens. "Fils de pute de—" he grits under his breath, snapping a hand out to grab my wrist.

My eyes widen. "Drake, what are y—?"

A storm is raging in his espresso gaze. "Signet rings go on the little finger. On the right hand."

"Oh," is all I can manage as he swipes the golden band off my left ring finger.

"You didn't know, did you?" he asks softly, reaching for my other hand... more gently this time.

I shake my head with a constricted throat. "No, I—"

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

My head jerks ‘round at the sound of the unexpected voice. "Christian!"

"I see you couldn't resist a somewhat impulsive stroll through the orchards, either?" he asks, more rhetorically than anything else. "The scent of apples is truly luscious this time of year."

"Erm... yes...!" I manage to squeak out, shoving my right hand behind my back. "Smells like apple juice!"

Christian's brow quivers ever so slightly at my slightly random — and obviously unexpected — comparison.

But I'm too busy coordinating with Drake to get the signet ring shoved back onto my hand while trying to palm the flash drive off to him without dropping either in the process. As both outcomes would lead to some very awkward conversations!

I feel the warmth of the metal slide onto the index finger of my hand (Drake had probably ascertained that the circumference of the band was too large for my pinky), and I'm finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Embarrassing backpedaling, narrowly averted!

Drake uses the opportunity to extract the flash drive from my hand as well, dropping the device casually into his pocket as he moves beside me. "She ain't wrong."

"No," concedes Christian, eying the two of us for a second longer than strictly comfortable. "She rarely is."

"So, umm... Are you hiding from the paps as well?" I ask in a bid to diffuse the growing tension in the air.

"No, I came looking for you, actually," he corrects, taking a step forward. "I saw you slip into the orchard, and thought it prudent to follow you."

"Oh?" I say, feeling my stomach tighten again. "Worried I might get lost?"

"I was hoping to catch you alone," he corrects, coming to a stop in front of me.

I swallow tightly as I see him glance over at Drake.

Please don't fight... Please don't fight...

Christian's gaze reverts to me. "But I suppose it is convenient for Drake to happen to be here as well."

My heart skips an uncomfortable beat. "It is?"

"Yes," he affirms. "I have received some news that you'll both be interested in hearing."

"Well, don't keep us in damn suspense, then..." mutters Drake with a noticeable edge to his voice.

I try to reach discretely out to brush my fingers against his, to reassure him that come what may, we'll get through it together, that—

"We found Tariq."

Christian's words hit me like a kick to the chest. The breath explodes out of me so forcefully that I am actually forced to take a step back in a bid to maintain my balance as the apple trees descend into a spin around me.

No way...

"Where?"

Drake's voice floats across the edge of my awareness. And even in my spaced-out state, I can feel the weight of the cold, calculated fury infused into that single word.

No corner... No mercy.

"Dubai," replies Christian, who also sounds like he's miles away. "He—"

But Drake's already spun away. "Send me the coordinates."

"Harper?"

I blink up at Christian in a daze. "Huh?"

"Are you alright?" he asks, laying a concerned hand on my cheek. "You... You looked as if you were about to faint..."

"I..." I swallow past the sudden dryness in my throat. "I'm okay."

"Are you certain?" he presses, peering down at me. "I could ring for a doctor, and—"

"No," I insist, pulling away from him. "I'm fine. I... I guess I just got caught off-guard..."

"It is an unexpected development, certainly," he concedes. "But hopefully still a welcome one?"

"Yes!" I blurt out. "Of course! I want to clear my name more than anyone, and Tariq is key to that! I just..." My voice trails uncertainly off.

Christian flashes me a knowing half-smile. "Feel some trepidation about the prospect...?"

"I guess so," I concede, my fingers moving unconsciously to the horseshoe charm at my wrist.

Because as much as I may want Tariq to pay for what he did from a rational point of view, from an emotional standpoint, I’m terrified.

As even though I know in the back of my mind that a lot of my trepidation has to do with the fact that I am still trying to recover from the psychological trauma that Tariq inflicted on me, a major part of me is also scared of what setting the record straight would entail in practice.

Christian had mentioned that there were 'methods of persuasion' that could be used to force a confession from Tariq. But then what? Would I be made to very publicly relive the entire horrible episode in the form of TV spots and interviews, or would we be able to get by with one official press release? And given my spotty history with the press, will people actually believe my side of the story...?

I mean, Meghan and Harry didn’t exactly fare well in the court of public opinion when they tried to counter the official royal narrative...

On top of all that, in light of my very visceral reactions to returning to Applewood, I have no idea how I'm going to react to seeing Tariq in person again. Would I burst into tears? Have a nervous breakdown? Dissolve into a panic attack? Stab him in the gut and then the nuts?

And (possibly worst of all) what if we discover that Tariq had been acting alone? And his attack on me — while traumatising — is in no way connected to the larger, and definitely more dangerous plot to remove me from the running for Queen? What then...?

"Your qualms are not as misplaced as you may initially think," Christian consoles. "It is a daunting prospect to face the person who actively sought to harm you."

Something in his tone catches my attention. "What do you mean?"

Christian heaves a sigh. "I do not know if you are aware of this, but several years ago, I was the target of an assassination attempt."

I nod tightly. "Yes. Drake told me."

"Then I presume he also told you how deeply the experience affected me," he says, catching my eye with an uncharacteristically guarded look.

"Yes," I affirm, thinking back to the conversation in Olivia's wine cellar that felt like years ago.

"What he probably didn't tell you, however," he continues, "is that I visited the perpetrator in prison."

My jaw drops. "You what!"

"Not publicly and certainly not in any official capacity." He shakes his head wryly. "I did not even talk to the man."

"Then why...?"

"I... I was having trouble reconciling with what had happened," he explains. "And moving past it. The trauma councillor that I was working with suggested that it was perhaps because I was subconsciously endowing the gunman with too much power, and thereby transmuting the man into something more akin to an evil monster."

A shiver runs down my spine at Christian's words. It's like he's talking about Tariq...

"So, to help break the negative emotional associations I had built up, my councillor arranged a clandestine meeting where I would have the opportunity to face the man."

"How... How did that go?" I ask nervously.

"I was terrified, of course," Christian admits. "I had no idea what to expect and each scenario I imagined in my head was worse than the last. But, when I finally got into room where the meeting was to take place, I was surprised by what I saw. As rather than some hulking, shadowy fiend, it was a pale, somewhat diminutive man sat across from me."

"So… what did you do?"

"We simply sat at a table and stared at each other," he recounts. "He with more than a bit of contemptuous malice, I have to admit, but in that moment, I realised that he was a flesh-and-blood person who had fallen prey to the same misguided emotions as I — anger, fear, resentment — just manifested differently. And that helped set me onto the path of true healing. As ultimately, I was able to forgive him."

"Forgive him?" I gasp disbelievingly. "For trying to murder you?"

"Nobody acts in isolation," Christian advises calmly. "Even the most unconscionable horrors perpetrated by the villains of humanity — torture, mass murder, genocide — sprout from the basis of an emotional or psychological motivator such as love, fear, greed, jealousy... to name but a few. So, while we may disagree with and condemn the action retrospectively from the safety of the moral high-ground, it is very possible that had we found ourselves in a similar situation, we would end up being just as guilty as the person we are looking to condemn."

"So, what?" I demand testily. "I should feel sorry for Tariq for what he did to me?"

"Showing empathy and compassion towards our counterparts does not mean forgetting or excusing the harm suffered," counsels Christian. "But it will certainly allow you to start on the path of true healing."

I shake my head as I turn away. "I'm not sure Tariq deserves that..."

"It is by no means an easy assignment," he admits, laying a hand on my shoulder. "But even if you cannot find it in your heart presently to forgive him, do at least try to keep yourself open to the possibility down the line. You may be surprised by the results."

Looking up, I can see that there is sincerity welling on his emerald gaze. And — for once — I don't doubt the true intent of his words. "Thanks. I'll think about it."

"As diplomatic as ever," he smiles, the tips of his fingers brushing down my back as he drops his hand. "And, regardless of what you choose to do, I'll be right by your side to support you."

"Thanks," I mutter with what I hope is a genuine smile, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that with Drake’s abrupt departure, it’s just me and Christian amongst the trees. Taking a step back towards the way I’d come, I ask, "So, umm... How did you end up finding him?"

"Instagram," replies Christian with a wry chuckle as he falls into step beside me.

My head snaps up in bewilderment. "He posted his whereabouts?"

"No," he laughs, looping my arm through his in reassurance. "Not intentionally, at any rate. He took shelter on his cousin's yacht docked off the coast of the Palm Jumeirah, and—"

"What's that?" I ask with a frown.

"One of a trio of artificially constructed archipelagos located off the coast of Dubai," he explains. "They are so called for their shape, which resemble stylised palm trees."

"Sounds... fancy," I admit, while trying to maintain some semblance of platonic distance between the two of us.

"They really are a sight to behold," he affirms, pulling me back to his side. "But it is part of the reason why we were not able to locate him initially — we knew he has family in the Emirates, of course, but—"

"He does?" I interject in surprise. This is certainly news to me...!

"Yes," he nods. "His father is a Cordonian nobleman, but his mother hails from the House of Al Falasi, the branch of the Bani Yas tribe that also produced Dubai's ruling family."

My eyes widen. "So, his mom is royalty?"

"No," chuckles Christian. "She is not directly connected to the Al Maktoum dynasty. But her family is nevertheless influential in the region. Which is why when we hit a roadblock with the French authorities, we decided to focus our efforts on countries where we knew he had familial or business connections. The Emirates, however, boast a multitude of private airfields, not to mention water-based ports of entry, so attempting to narrow down Tariq’s possible time and method of arrival and determining where he went from there was providing to be a complex undertaking. Especially since we had to ensure to conduct our enquiries outside of the official channels."

"Specifically, via social media," I supply dryly.

"Yes," confirms Christian, only half jokingly. "When we realised that Tariq must have switched off or changed out his phone, Drake suggested that we set up a facial recognition-based search algorithm that could scour the various social media and news portals in a bid to help us pinpoint his exact location."

"That sounds... technical," I admit.

"A few years ago, it would have been, But the technology is relatively commonplace now, thankfully."

"So, you managed to get a hit?"

"Yes," he affirms. "One of his cousins on his mother's side posted a selfie featuring his new yacht a couple of days ago... and someone who partially matched Tariq's features was visible on the edge of the frame. But it wasn't until this morning that our man on the ground was able to obtain independent confirmation that it really was him."

"Wow..." I manage. "Talk about blind, dumb luck."

"Never underestimate the awesome power of serendipity," counsels Christian with a smile as we reach the edge of the trees again. "It certainly played a hand in crossing our paths."

I swallow nervously. "Yeah, I—"

"You have some nerve!"

Before I have a chance to realise what is happening, Madeleine has swooped in from seemingly out of nowhere to intercept us with all the wrathful precision of a homing missile.

"Ow!" I hiss, feeling the ends of her manicured nails sink into my arm as she wrenches me off Christian like I'm some kind of plague.

"One would think you would be grateful to His Majesty for his benevolent generosity in elevating your previously non-existent status to that of a duchess," she spits with barely disguised contempt as she pulls me nose-to-nose with her.

"Get off me!" I grit, trying to shake her loose.

"Madeleine..." interjects Christian from behind me in a voice that I only heard him use once before... in the hallway at Ramsford when he realised that Drake had brought me back to Cordonia. "You overstep."

But the Countess of Fydelia seems to hear neither of us as she tightens her claw-like hold on me. "Yet instead, you repay him by not only by hijacking a royal event to serve your own shameless self-aggrandisement—"

I shake my head in disbelief. "Wait... Wh—?"

"—but then you have the unmitigated gall—"

"Madeleine," says Christian again, more forcefully this time. "That is enough."

But Madeleine is oblivious to the quiet threat suffused into the sound of her name, choosing to continue her tirade instead, "—to sneak off into the bushes with my fiancé in order to do God-knows-what when he should be—"

"I said, enough!" snaps Christian, coming suddenly between Madeleine and me with a face of thunder.

The force of his command is loud enough to cause a few heads on the edge of the lawn to turn curiously towards us.

Even Madeleine startles somewhat in response to the uncharacteristically vehement order. But not enough to let go of me.

"Can you not see what she is doing?" she demands indignantly as she turns to face Christian. "Or does she have you wrapped so tightly around her finger that you cannot even—?"

"How I choose to spend my time with the Duchess of Valtoria in private is of no concern to you, Countess," interjects Christian bluntly. "Or do I need to remind you of the conditions of our engagement?"

Madeleine's alabaster cheeks flush scarlet. "No..."

"Then I strongly suggest that you unhand Lady Harper, and ensure that this kind of juvenile outburst does not happen again."

Madeleine's eyes blaze with cold fury. But she relinquishes her hold on me, nevertheless. "My apologies, Duchess..." she snips, her voice dripping with insincerity.

I reach up to rub the spot where her nails had been on the verge of puncturing my skin.

Bitch...

Christian nods tersely in approval. "Now that that is sorted, I believe our guests are waiting. Lady Madeleine, if you'd be so kind..."

Madeleine takes his arm with a look that could've killed. "Of course, Your Majesty."

"Lady Harper," acknowledges Christian with a dip of his head as he starts to steer his seething fiancée away.

Knowing that all eyes are still on us, I drop into a quick curtesy as they walk past, on one hand grateful to Christian for shutting Madeleine down, but on the other hand wondering how badly we kicked into a nest of hornets in the process.

As it is clear that Madeleine is still raging with jealous insecurity... Perhaps even more so than she had been back at her manor when she cornered me in the bathroom. And the fact that — despite the massive diamond on her finger — I now technically outrank her is definitely not helping the situation!

So much for making allies at court…

Blowing a wayward strand of hair out of my face, I turn back towards the festivities…

…only to be greeted by a wall of judgemental eyes, and more than a few camera lenses.

"Great..." I mutter under my breath.

Whether catching me with Christian had been the genuine straw that snapped Madeleine's cool, or whether she deliberately fabricated the showdown to undermine the positive reactions I got from the press earlier, the end result is the same...

I'm going to be on the front page tomorrow. Again.

Exactly in what form, I have no idea. But I've been at court long enough now to know that the whole thing will be blown completely out of proportion, and the resulting story will generate even more press frenzy.

But if there’s one thing that Drake has taught me, it’s that I cannot allow myself to give the aristos the satisfaction of ever thinking that they’ve managed to squash me into the dirt. Because that would undermine the entire reason why I came back to court in the first place, and given how close we now are to claiming back the truth, it would be a massive and premature admission of defeat.

So, raising my chin defiantly, I make my way back across the lawn to rejoin the remainder of the Festival.

The story continues in Chapter 17 - News Flash

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thedancingcostumeyoungadult · 1 year ago

Text

A Season for Lovers part 4- S.R.

Words: ~6950 she's a beast folks

Parts 1, 2, 3

Warnings: 18+ only, minors dni, fem!Reader, fingering (fem receiving), unprotected piv smut, bitchy Spence, historical inaccuracy lol

Your head is spinning, the world around you reduced to the feeling of Spencer. The warmth of his skin that bleeds through his shirt, the rough graze of his stubble, his lips on your skin, he’s everywhere and it’s intoxicating. But you want more, your belly burns with desire and you claw at his shirt, needing him closer even as your bodies press flush together.

“Spencer.” You rasp when you break apart to breathe, swept away moments later in another kiss. Speaking between feverish kisses, you fight the fuzzy haze threatening your ability to form words. “I want you, Spencer- please- I want more.” He groans, a low, gruff noise that sets your skin on fire as he pulls back a bare centimeter, his lips still dragging across yours as he begins.

“Angel-”

“Please!” You implore, all traces of decorum gone from your mind.

“I can’t.” His breath fans across your skin as he dips his head to press another searing kiss to your throat. “As desperately as I want- As desperately as I need you-” Your hands clutch his shoulders as his lips drag along your jaw, his grip on you just as desperate as yours on him as you press your hips against his, your breath falling ragged from your lungs as your eyes fall closed. He groans against your skin at the pressure, nearly losing his composure as you move one hand to tangle in his soft curls.

“I will not lay you down in the dirt, my angel.” Your heart nearly stops in your chest at his words, spoken just by your ear and followed by kisses suddenly turned from scorching to tender. His hand cups the back of your neck with his large, warm palm. “Every atom of my being cries out for you, but I want to give you everything that you deserve and that is not out here, in the dirt.” You suppress a small moan as his hand grazes your hip and it’s your turn topress a kiss to the column of his throat, lingering for a moment as you feel his pulse fluttering under your lips. You want to beg, throw yourself at his feet and plead for him to take you. But you don't. While the idea of having him for the first time right against the tree makes your stomach flip, he wants it done right, and you're happy to give him that.

“All the sweeter for waiting.” You whisper, tilting back up to smile at him. He smiles tenderly back, his warm hands enveloping your face as he brings you into another kiss. This one is languid and unhurried, carrying the lingering promise of many more to come.

“It will be, I promise.” One of his hands trails down to press against the small of your back, sending a fresh wave of warmth through your belly as he brings his lips close to your ear. “I promise.”

Spencer hates this part of the season, the part where he is expected to be seen at clubs and gatherings where he would be forced to hold a conversation with some of the most vexing people he’d ever met, and he spent his days hunting murderers. He had no patience for their catty remarks and artificial sincerity. The dance of respectability and ruthlessness designed to weed out those considered unworthy.

Typically he would avoid the clubs altogether, but at the invitation of his future father-in-law, he feels himself obligated to make an appearance for at least an hour. The presence of Abraham Beaumont provided some respite, the calm sincerity of the older man mellowing whatever bullshit raunchy advice the men had to offer. Luckily, that cut the well-wishes at the announcement of his engagement mercifully short, allowing him to retreat to a table in the corner with his older companions. He found conversation with the two men surprisingly easy, spurred along by games of chess that they kept feigning surprise at losing, passing most of the hour comfortably.

Unfortunately, a presence that he had not anticipated was that of one Alexander Fields, who saunters up a mere twelve minutes before Spencer’s allotted hour was up, sinking down in the one empty chair at the table. His stomach turns at the way Fields looks at him, a thin veneer of pleasantness unable to fully hide the chill in his demeanor.

“Mr Beaumont, Mr y/l/n, Dr Reid, I hear congratulations are in order.” Spencer forces a smile, clenching his fist under the table as Fields gestures to the just-finished game of chess on the table. “May I?”

“Be my guest.” Spencer all but grits out, watching the other man reset the board.

“I suppose it’s about time that I settle my tab.” Your father says, moving to stand. Mr Beaumont follows him, shaking his head.

“Have one more drink and we’ll be on our way.” He claps Spencer on the shoulder as he goes, adding on “Come join us when you’ve finished with this, son.” The dig is subtle, but Fields bristles just enough to tell Spencer that he’d caught it.

“I won’t keep him long.”

“I’m sure you won’t.” Some of the nerves leave Spencer’s stomach as he allows the persona he wears at work to slide neatly into place. This was just mind games, nothing more, and Spencer had a habit of winning those.

Fields starts the game with aggression, looking at first to have the upper hand. But he’s clumsy, short-sighted.

“Miss Y/N is a fine prize, Doctor Reid.” Spencer’s stomach turns again, revolted at the way he speaks about you as if you were not even a living being. “Shame you had to force her father to go back on his word to get her.” Spencer tamps down the part of him that wants to knock his teeth out for even speaking about you, speaking coolly.

“You can’t fault a father for wanting the best for his daughter.” Bait. One of Spencer’s pieces falls.

“That depends on what you consider to be the best.” Another piece down and a bite at the line.

“Or what she considers to be the best.” That one stings, Spencer can see it. He takes a rook, and the tide turns. “It’s strange, the way you speak about her, as if she were cattle.” A knight goes. “It makes me wonder what you see when you think of her.” The last pawn. “Actually I know what you see. You see a dowry and a way to secure heirs.” A bishop. “A means to an end. But what you have so spectacularly failed to see is the brilliant, charming, talented woman who outmatches you in every conceivable way, and I pity you for it.” Fields has practically forgotten the game, his jaw clenched so hard Spencer swears he can hear teeth grinding as he speaks.

“Careful, Doctor Reid, I would hate for any unsuitable rumors to make their way around.” Sitting forward, Spencer fixes his gaze on his opponent.

“I don’t know who you think I am, Mr Fields, but I am no child, and I think you’ll find I can do far worse than rumors.” He tilts his head forward, his gaze unwavering. “I would imagine, with how deeply you desire the approval of these people, that there are things that you would rather keep in the dark.” Fields quickly schools his face back to neutral. He’s good, Spencer would give him that, but his eyes betray him with the subtle flash of anger and fear. He has him.

Satisfied in his victory, Spencer stands from the table, pausing only briefly as he passes his opponent’s chair.

“Checkmate in two, by the way.” He barely registers the scrape of the chair behind him before a voice interrupts.

“Careful, Mr Fields, no one cares for a sore loser.” Abraham Beaumont taps the end of his cane on the floor as he returns from the bar. “And we would hate to have to send a young groom to the altar with a blackened eye, wouldn’t we?” With a hardly dignified huff, Mr Fields disappears, allowing the older man to claim his vacant seat. He sets his drink down on the wood, gesturing to Spencer to sit back down.

“One more drink, lad, then we’ll cut you free.”

“And the flowers?” He leans forward, all sincerity and big brown eyes as he implores you to fill him in on every last detail of wedding planning. You giggle, leaning slightly away from him on the tiny bench before tilting back in, almost brushing your nose against his.

“White roses and alstroemeria.” His grin lights up his face.

“Love and devotion.” He steals a kiss from the corner of your mouth. “Fitting.” Sunlight streams through the panes of the sunroom walls, bathing the room in the warm glow of late afternoon. Tucked in a corner, away from prying eyes, you’re as close as you dared get, turned perhaps a bit too far towards each other. Spencer’s hand rests between his knee and yours, absently pinching a fold of your skirt and rubbing it gently, needing to be holding something of you.

“And how’s-” You stop him, leaning away teasingly.

“I am not telling you about the gown.” His face falls into a sweet pout that you know better than to fall for, leaning after you with his pleading amber eyes.

“Please?” You shake your head, trying not to laugh.

“It’s bad luck.” For propriety’s sake, you don’t kiss the pout from his lips, instead opting to press your fingertips to his chest, pushing him playfully back upright. He doesn’t let your hand fall, catching your wrist lightly and brushing a kiss to the fingertips that had just moved him. You slide your fingers along his cheek, cupping his jaw. “Only one more week, my love.” His hand covers yours, holding you as much as you were holding him.

“So soon and yet a lifetime away.” You take the quiet moment to admire him, the care with which he touches you, not as if you were fragile, but rather as though he was amazed that you were real. The thought brings something else to mind, something that Amelia had heard from her brother and passed along to you.

“I heard about what happened at the club last week.” His eyes widen in surprise and he sits up, keeping your hand in his but lowering it from his face as he clears his throat and shifts somewhat nervously. “About what you said.”

“I’m sorry if I took it too far.” You shake your head, squeezing his hand where it rests on his knee.

“No! Not at all I just-” You pause, searching for the words. “You see me, Spencer, as I am, not as a dowry, or a meal ticket, or a broodmare.” His shoulders tighten at the words, but you continue on. “You defend me as a person, not as property. You ask me a question and actually listen for the answer. My interests aren’t just things on a good wife’s checklist to you, and I wanted to thank you for that.” Propriety is forgotten as he gently cradles the back of your neck, resting his forehead against yours and hoping that he can convey all he feels in the simple touch.

“You are so much more than what they think of you, my angel.”

It’s strange, looking around your room now that it is nearly bare of personal belongings. Books, clothes, trinkets, most of your worldly possessions are neatly packed away, ready to be moved to Washington in a matter of days. Night is falling over the grounds of your family’s house, purple shadows deepening under a nearly moonless sky and you long to steal out to see Spencer, but tonight he wouldn’t be there. He’d gone back to Washington for a few days to put the final few things in order before the wedding. You toy with the worn edge of the book balanced in your lap, not really reading the words on the page, a small smile playing across your face. Spencer had given you this book before he’d left the summer you met, from the small personal library he carries with him practically everywhere. His handwriting dots the margins, little notes and thoughts hastily scrawled over several rereadings. It’s a nice little look into your genius’ brain, seeing what stands out to him, how he thinks.

On impulse, you snag a pencil from your writing desk and settle back into the window seat, flipping back to the beginning of the book. You read the familiar words with new eyes, adding your own ideas and responses between Spencer’s in the margins.

You write until the oil in your lamp burns low and your eyes sting with exhaustion. Letting the book fall closed, you drag yourself up and deposit the book and pencil on the desk, crawling into your bed with a deep sigh. It’s bittersweet to think how this would be one of the last nights you would ever spend in this bed. Your fingers trail along the delicate embroidery lining your pillowcase, a lump forming in your throat as you contemplate the chapter of your life that is coming to a close. Everything that you’d known thus far, your whole life, soon to be left behind.

But the next chapter is one that you and Spencer would write together, the idea of which fills you with such excitement that you can’t help but smile, pulling a spare pillow against your chest and tucking it under your chin, curling the rest of your body around it as you settle deeper under the covers. The future can wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow begins with a soft rap on your door, barely rousing you in time to sit up before your mother pops her head around the door, entering with a smile as she holds up a small but lovely arrangement of flowers. You know it’s from Spencer as soon as you see it, delicate pink alstroemeria and white bridal rose, the vase adorned with a silk ribbon.

“He's back?” You can’t disguise the eagerness of your voice as she sets the vase on the table by a window, adjusting a wayward flower before turning to you.

“He delivered them himself.” Your feet are on the floor even before she continues, rushing for your dressing gown. Her next words make you deflate, your shoulders slumping slightly, “He couldn’t stay, only wanted me to give you this.” She offers you a small envelope, sealed with small circle of purple wax, which you quickly snatch up and crack open.

All my love for you, my Angel.

You can’t help the way your hands shake as you smooth a flyaway piece of hair off of your forehead, the rest piled in ringlets atop your head. Small freshwater pearls dot the pure white fabric of your gown, framed by delicate scrolls of silver embroidery that trail down the skirt and train. More pearls adorn your throat and ears, glinting in the light filtering through the light curtains of your room. The final piece is the veil, snowy lace cascading down around your shoulders and pooling on the rug at your feet. Your mother appears in the reflection behind you, offering you a slightly teary smile before taking your hand, turning you to face her.

“Oh darling girl.” She cradles your face in her hands, kissing your forehead and pulling you into a tight hug. You’d both already cried enough over the past few days, so the embrace was short, just long enough for her to give you a slightly bruising squeeze. “Are you ready?” She asks as she pulls away, and to which you reply with a smile and a nod.

“I’m ready.”

It’s only a short walk across the street to the church, arm in arm with your father, your mother and Amelia trailing behind to keep your dress and veil out of the dirt. Your heart beats loud in your ears, drowning out all words as you step inside.

The church aisle stretches in front of you, the dusty red of the carpet sits in contrast to the delicate white of the silk and flowers adorning the pews. Golden light filters in from the windows above, illuminating the otherwise dim space. A modest collection of people are gathered in the pews, Spencer’s team with the Beaumonts and some additional friends on one side, with your family and friends on the other. But in truth your eyes slide right past them, drawn as if by magnets to him.

Spencer.

Your Spencer, his tousled curls lit up in a golden halo, sleek black suit perfectly tailored, looking at you as if you’d hung the very stars. Almost immediately tears spring to your eyes, streaking down your cheeks and as you draw closer you see his face shining as well, even as he smiles that giddy, boyish smile that makes your heart skip.

Before you realize it, you’re down the aisle, handing your bouquet to Amelia and receiving a quick, slightly tearful kiss on the forehead from your father before you both turn again to Spencer.

His hand is warm as yours is laid into it, gentle and comforting as he helps you up the final step to stand beside him. The minister begins, but you hardly hear him, so captivated are you by Spencer as he beams back at you, tearstreaks matching your own stretching down his cheeks.

There’s confidence in oneself, and that you’re no stranger to, but the feeling in your chest as you look at Spencer, that’s new. It’s past satisfaction, past surety, it’s an absolute certainty, beyond all doubt, that this man, this beautiful, kind, brilliant man that you are marrying, is right. He is right for you now, and for the rest of your life.

“Doctor Reid, do you have the rings?” For the first time since you’d entered the sanctuary, his eyes leave you, glancing quickly down as he produces two gold rings from the breast pocket of his suit. He lays them on the pastor’s bible, careful not to let them slide off. The pastor blesses them as you wait almost patiently, the scant few moments it takes proving too long for your excitement.

“Repeat after me…” The pastor’s voice fades away, replaced by the beating of your own heart, loud in your ears. By some miracle, neither your hand or your voice shake as you lift the larger of the two rings from the book, repeating the words you’d memorized weeks ago as you take Spencer’s hand again.

“With this ring I thee wed, with this body I thee worship, with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” You take Spencer’s hand, sliding the ring securely into place. He doesn’t let your hand fall, catching it quickly so the contact of your skin never breaks. Your eyes once again lock with his, every emotion you don’t have the words to express swirling in your chest, making you feel light as air.

“With this ring I thee wed,” He lifts your hand, sliding the delicate gold band into place, “with my body I thee worship, with all my worldly goods I thee endow. Amen.” The people in the pews, whose presence you had all but forgotten, echo the word back. Nothing in the world could take the joy from your heart as you and Spencer turn to the pastor, quickly signing the marriage license already waiting for you. Then he takes your arm in his, pulling you as tight to his side as was acceptable in public, and you both, now as husband and wife, make your way back down the aisle.

Though the ceremony was simple and rather short, what came after was anything but. You and Spencer emerge from the church to a chorus of cheers, whistles, and other joyful noise from the well-wishers gathered there. Your families trail behind you, joining in the din as they usher the newlyweds back to the Beaumont house. There is a feast laid out, a masterpiece of Lydia Beaumont’s own design, keeping your guests busy for the next few hours. You and Spencer sit beside one another, joining in various conversations happening around you but for the most part for you there is nothing but him, and for him there is nothing but you.

Finally, it’s time for you and Spencer to go. He’d arranged a room at the grand hotel in town, just one night before you left on your honeymoon. He helps you into the waiting carriage, grinning wildly up at you as you pause, waving one last goodbye to your family, before climbing in after you.

You can see Spencer in the mirror, watching you with soft eyes as you root around in your hair for the multitude of pins holding it in place. One after another the pins clatter into the tray, but your hair remains up, much to your frustration.

“May I help?” His quiet voice behind you makes your eyes snap to his. He steps closer as you smile at him in the mirror, letting your hands fall to rest on the vanity with a nod. He returns your smile with one of his own, now standing directly behind you.

You can’t help but watch him in the mirror, your eyes trained on his beautiful hands as they rise to your hair. A shiver runs down your spine as his fingers brush lightly up the slope of your neck. Gentle but sure, he begins to pluck the pins from your hair, the curls falling loose one by one. The sensation of his hands in your hair is heavenly, and you can’t help but let your eyes fall shut as you lean into the touch.

Spencer hopes that he’s not shaking outwardly, but his hands feel unsteady as he buries them in your hair. His head spins as the soft locks run between his fingers as he carefully extracts the u-shaped wires from your updo, going slower than necessary just to prolong this intimate moment between himself and his wife. His wife.

In the mirror he sees your eyes flutter closed, a contented look spreading across your features as he begins on the last section of pins. He almost falters, nearly too enraptured by the look on your face to focus on the task at hand. Your eyebrows relaxed, a small, blissful smile playing at the corners of your mouth as you lean against his hand. An all too familiar fire sparks to life in his stomach and he swallows hard as his brain conjures all the ways he could put that look on your face.

The last lock falls around your shoulders as he pulls the last pin free, the relief drawing a soft sigh from you. Loathe to stop touching you, Spencer gently cards his fingers through the strands, carefully working out any tangles he finds. When he’s done, he sweeps it all off your neck and over one shoulder, his hand coming to rest on the bare skin at the base of your neck. Before he can overthink it, he ducks his head, pressing a slow, soft kiss to the skin below your ear. You gasp quietly, your eyes flying open to find him in the mirror, his eyes still closed as he kisses you again, moving down the side of your neck.

“Spencer.” You sigh, letting your head fall back to rest against his shoulder.

“Yes, my angel?” He speaks against your skin, his lips raising goosebumps as he drags them across your skin, getting lost in your softness, the faint smell of lavender that clings to you. Your response isn’t comprised of words, instead you turn your face to his, nosing against his cheek until his lips meet yours. The both of you sigh contentedly as he shifts, kneeling at your side without breaking the kiss. His hand rests gently on your knee as the other slides into its familiar place on the small of your back. In turn you wrap your arms around his shoulders, gently pulling him closer and deepening the kiss. The low groan that escapes him only spurs you on, your fingers sliding up to tangle in his soft curls, the kiss quickly becoming fiery and urgent.

He wraps his arm securely around your waist and lifts you to your feet in one smooth motion, swallowing your small gasp of surprise in another fiery kiss. You’re a tangle of desperate hands as he undoes the buttons of your gown and you the ones on his waistcoat. Breaking from the dizzying kiss, Spencer steadies you with his hands at your waist while he presses his lips to your forehead. The loosened fabric of your wedding gown slips down your shoulders, the silk rustling as you drop your arms and let it slide to pool around your ankles. You can feel Spencer’s breath hitch in his chest when his hand comes to rest on your hip, now only covered by your fine cotton chemise.

Your hand on his chest makes him straighten, warm amber eyes immediately finding your gaze. The small furrow between his brows eases as you give him a small smile, reaching up to gather your hair back over one shoulder. You let your eyes drop demurely to the floor as you turn, casting him a doe-eyed look at the last second, speaking softly as you do.

“Could you help me?” You don’t miss the way his eyes widen slightly, a smile breaking over his face.

“Of course, angel.” You cast him another smile as you turn fully away from him. A small pause turns into a long one, before finally you hear Spencer speak.

“Um?” He puzzles quietly, and you can’t help but laugh that of all subjects to stump the genius of a man it was women’s undergarments.

“Have you never seen stays before?” You hear him huff at your teasing.

“Of course I’ve seen them.” He sounds downright grumpy and you crane over your shoulder to smile at him, watching him frown back at you as he mutters under his breath, his hand finding your waist again. “It’s the taking off that’s new.” You feel his hand find the laces and work the knot free as you turn back to face front. “Do I take it all the way out or just loosen it?”

“Pull the laces all the way out.” As you feel the garment loosen your hands instinctively come up to hold it in place, clutching it to your breast as nervousness swirls up in your chest, making you shift your weight restlessly from foot to foot. Spencer notices as he pulls the final bit of lacing free, his hand lingering on your waist as he steps around to face you. His other hand gently cradles your cheek as he searches your face, his eyes soft.

“My love?” He asks in a whisper. It’s just Spencer, you remind yourself, your nerves calming as you look up at him. Giving him a smile, you relax your hands and the stays slip but don’t fall, prompting Spencer’s hands to reach out, ghosting feather-light over the straps before carefully sliding them off your shoulders one after the other. Your breathing is ragged, your chest heaving as the stays hit the floor with a soft thunk, electricity running in the wake of Spencer’s fingers as he trails them back up your arms. His gaze burns into you with an intensity and desire you’d never seen before, his eyes darkening as they run over your form, still covered by the nearly translucent cotton of your shift. Flickering up to meet yours, his eyes soften, and he reaches for your hand, using both of his to press your palm flat against his chest. You can feel the warmth of his skin through the soft cotton of his shirt and your body once again floods with that strange, insistent ache.

You crash together like the tide, lips molding together as desperate hands wander into unexplored territory. His muscles flex under your palms as you drag them down his front and ball your fists in his shirt, tugging it out of his waistband and slipping your fingers underneath. He groans into your kiss as your fingers meet the warm skin of his stomach, his hand that had been trailing down your back flying down to grip the flesh of your backside, forcing a gasp of your own from your throat as he drags your hips against his. Your hands slide further up as he presses your bodies together, fingernails digging lightly into the skin. He lets you go for an instant, stripping his shirt off over his head in one motion before his hands return to your waist, pulling you back into the current as they wrap around you. Your hands explore unashamedly, trying to commit to memory the warmth of his skin, the sparse hair littering his chest, every plane and curve of his shoulders, you want to know it all.

Spencer’s hand dips even lower now, strong, slender fingers brushing along the back of your thighs through your shift and sending a jolt straight between your legs. Your whimper makes him break the kiss, his forehead resting against yours as you both gasp for air. One of his large, warm hands cradles your head, tilting your face up and away from his. You let your eyes flutter shut as he presses a tender kiss to your jaw.

“May I see you, Angel?” He speaks in barely a whisper, his lips dragging sparks across your skin as the aching in your belly grows almost unbearable and you gasp out a desperate “yes!”

His hands are gentle but deliberate as they press against your thighs and slide upward, bringing your shift along with them. Your heart hammers in your chest as his lips meet your throat once more, blazing kisses down from your jaw and over your collarbone. His hands reach your waist and you lift your arms, his thumb brushing along the curve of your breast as he draws the garment up and over your head. The fabric falls to the floor with a soft rustle as his eyes find yours. Standing to his full height, he keeps his eyes on your face as he takes a half step back, his hands finding yours and tangling your fingers together.

Finally, his eyes flit downwards and his jaw goes slack. You feel goosebumps break out on your skin as his eyes rake over your figure as if it were the last thing he’d see, the intensity of his gaze raising goosebumps across your skin. He looks for what feels like an eternity, surely committing the sight to memory as your skin burns for his touch. You slowly bring his hand to your side, shivering as his warm palm presses to your skin. His breath leaves him in one huff, his hand returning to the small of your back, dragging you forward and crashing your lips together. You both groan into the kiss as finally, at long last, your bare skin presses against his. It's the sweetest relief, like something you hadn't known you were missing being slotted into place. Your bodies fit together neatly, a matching pair finally united.

His hands wander, exploring your soft curves with something that felt like reverence, light and curious but with an undercurrent of desperation. You scratch your nails lightly down his sides and he lets out a guttural groan against your lips, his hands grabbing hard at your hips, one then falling to knead the flesh of your ass. It's your turn to gasp and whimper as your hips press together and you can feel the hardness in his trousers press against your belly. His lips leave yours, dragging down your throat and leaving tendrils of fire in their wake.

“Divine.” He follows the word with a scorching kiss. “Heavenly, oh angel-” He cuts himself off with a groan, his face buried in your neck.

His arm wraps securely around your waist and you let out a surprised squeak as he hoists you into his arms. Moments later he's settling you gently on the mattress, now dusting feather light kisses along your collarbone. He follows you as you lay down, his hand finding your waist as he buries his face against your neck, lavishing hot, wet kisses along your throat. He hovers above you, drawing desperate little gasps and whines from your lips as he sucks and bites at the skin of your shoulder, slowly traveling lower as his hand begins to wander up.

Your back arches as his hand cups your breast, his fingers digging into the soft flesh as he brings his mouth down to meet your hardened nipple. The wet heat of his mouth enveloping your sensitive bud draws a high whine from you, to which Spencer responds with a low groan, pressing his face impossibly closer to you and sucking harshly. Your hips buck upwards as you wail, your hands flying to tangle in his messy hair. He lets out another rough groan as your hips brush his, pressing briefly against his straining cock.

“Spencer, please!” You beg, desperate for something, anything, just more. Reluctantly he lets your breast fall from his mouth, quickly turning and peppering kisses all over the other one, making you giggle and squirm as he works himself out of his trousers. He relents with one last lingering kiss to your sternum as he kicks them off, finally raising his eyes to yours as he settles between your legs. You hold his gaze for a breathless moment before letting your eyes travel down. The sight that greets you sets your belly on fire and you feel your pussy clench in excitement. He’s achingly hard, thick, flushed, and leaking and fuck, you want him so badly. You can’t help but touch his cock, running your fingers lightly up the underside, causing his hands to grip desperately at your hips as he bucks forward a little.

“Fuck, Angel.” There’s a rasp in his voice that you’ve never heard before, which combined with the uncharacteristic language makes you clench your thighs around him.

“I need you, Spencer.” Your plea earns you a smile as he leans in to give you a sweet kiss.

“Just a little longer, sweet thing, I have to make sure I don’t hurt you.” As he speaks his hand trails up the outside of your thigh and over your hip, slipping between your legs. The pads of his fingers brushing against your sex makes you gasp, the sensation making your stomach drop. He slides his finger through your folds, drawing another needy sound from your lips. Nosing sweetly against your cheekbone, he whispers to you, low and warm.

“Do you touch yourself, angel?” Your cheeks burn as you nod, biting your lip against a whine as he teases through your slick again. His low chuckle as he presses a kiss to your neck does something strange to you, your thighs tightening around his hand.

“Show me.” You choke a little at his words.

“What?” He lifts his face from your neck, kissing you softly between quiet pleas.

“Teach me how you like it, angel. Please show me so I can make you feel good. That’s all I want, just wanna make you feel so good.” The undercurrent of desperation in his voice sweeps you away and you find yourself reaching down to cover his large hand with yours, whining as his fingers find that sweet spot that makes your back arch and your toes curl.

“Like that, Spencer, oh god!” He picks up your rhythm quickly, steady fingers working smoothly over your clit and drawing waves of the sweetest sounds he’d ever heard from your lips. Burning for more, you guide him further down, your breath catching as he follows your direction and slips the tips of two fingers into your warm pussy.

Spencer is mesmerized, drunk on the sight of your breasts heaving against his chest and the feeling of his fingers sinking deep into you. You clutch at his wrist, pressing the heel of his hand against your bundle of nerves, desperately rutting your sex against him. He curls his fingers, moving with you, losing himself in you.

“Spencer!” Your shuddering cry sends a rush of heat to his crotch and he can’t wait any longer. He pulls his fingers from you, crashing his lips against yours to quell the needy whines of protest you let out. Still kissing you, he guides your arms around his neck as he climbs between your legs. You both let out wanton moans as his cock presses against your wet heat, your legs immediately wrapping around his hips as your arms clutch tightly to his shoulders.

“Ready, angel?” A light, airy feeling floods your chest as he lines himself up and you nod desperately.

“Please, please, Spencer, I’m ready, please give it to me!” He pulls back, needing to see your face as finally, finally, he presses into you. Your reaction is immediate, eyebrows drawing together over heavy-lidded eyes, your mouth falling open in a sweet little o-shape as your back arches, drawing him even deeper until he’s fully buried inside of you.

“Do you feel that?” He whispers, nosing at your jaw as you pant for breath, the feeling of his thick cock holding you open forcing the air from your lungs as you cling to his shoulders. “You were made just for me, my angel, just like I was made just for you. We fit perfectly together.” You whine desperately as he rolls his hips ever so slowly, rocking into you. His fingers dig into the soft flesh of your thigh as he holds your leg steady over his hip. The next thrust sinks somehow deeper, causing you to let out a strangled moan as your nails dig into his shoulder. Your head rocks back against the pillows as he starts to go faster, each thrust forcing little gasps and mewls from you. His hand finds yours, tangling your fingers together and pressing a kiss to your knuckles before pinning it to the pillow beside your head.

“All yours.” You manage, the words coming slowly to your pleasure-clouded brain. “All yours, Spencer.” His cock hits impossibly deeper as he stops holding back entirely, fucking into you like a man possessed. It’s all you can do to cling to reality as his thick cock drags heavy against your walls, pushing you ever closer to the edge.

“Kiss me.” He demands and you obey, pulling him into a surprisingly sweet kiss as your thighs begin to shake, your pussy fluttering and clenching around him. You break the kiss but stay as close as possible, your lips dragging over his as you feel yourself unravel, the coil of heat in your belly snapping and sending your whole body trembling as you cum with a broken cry.

Spencer lets out a deep, rough groan as he follows you over. Each throb and twitch of his cock sends sparks through your core as he buries himself as deep as he can in your dripping pussy, your fluttering walls clenching as he pumps you full of hot, sticky spend.

You don’t realize how tightly you’d been clinging to him until your arms give out, collapsing back against the pillows with a shaky sigh. Spencer goes limp on top of you as well, burying his face between your breasts as you both fight to regain your breath and your senses. Hazy warmth floods your body as you lay there, boneless and content, with the comforting weight of your husband pressing you into the mattress. Euphoria bubbles in your chest and you let yourself laugh, a giddy, breathless sound that makes Spencer raise his head, one eyebrow raised quizzically. Your shaky hand cards gently through his hair before your fingertips trail softly over his cheekbones.

“You kept your promise, Doctor Reid.” A grin breaks over his face as he raises himself to hover over you, your body jumping slightly as his hips grind against yours, his cock still buried in you. He kisses you sweetly, one hand brushing away the hair stuck to your forehead.

“I am a man of my word, Mrs. Reid.” He stays in you for a moment, the two of you sharing several sweet, lazy kisses before he slips out of you, sitting back on his heels with one hand braced lightly on your knee. You both let out a quiet groan as he does, but yours is quickly replaced by a soft inhalation as you feel his seed drip out of you. Spencer watches, transfixed, as your spent pussy throbs lightly, another round of cum leaking from you as it does. He gives your knee a squeeze, pressing a kiss to the inside of your thigh, then a few more up your stomach and chest until he reaches your lips. You sigh contentedly into the kiss, your hands once again finding his warm skin as he lays himself next to you. He guides you to lay your head on his shoulder, his arm wrapping around you and tucking you safely against his side. Your body still buzzes faintly, a warm glow encompassing the two of you as the sweetest sense of belonging settles in your body. This is the world set to rights, this little quiet space with your husband at your side, nothing of the world can reach you here. And you get to be there for the rest of your life.

Oml thank you all so much for bearing with me I know it's been literally months since I updated this but finally this chapter is done!! What did you all think?? I'd love to hear your thoughts and please remember to like and reblog!!

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aconflagrationofmyown · 1 year ago

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A Whole Man is Hard to Find -chapter seventeen

-Summary: Rosey conducts a series of interviews with those who know the Captain intimately but through wildly differing association, a prostitute, his quartermaster and his doctor. Meanwhile above decks Captain Presley deflowers a new river with the support of Johnny Cash. Both lovers live for the few moments they can steal at the end of the day to savor each other.

-Warnings 18+: usual universe warnings apply with this addition of caning, mentions of past female rape, past murder and talk of Syphilis and the use of the archaic word “sodomy”. Along with current smut, which mostly includes gratuitous descriptions of sweat, sweaty balls, men being very hot when they’re sweaty so long as they’re Elvis and -it’s a lot of sweat porn ok?!

“Beaumont.” Aida acknowledged from her place on the floor, arm deep in the Captain’s personal trunks.

“Overton.” Rosey snickered at the stand off, keeping her pistol raised all the same. “What’re you in here for?” she repeated.

“So the captain didn’t send you back after all.” Aida ignored her, “My, my, isn’t he gettin’ brave now, defyin’ the colonel every which way.”

The power of her sneer nearly swayed Rosey. “A change of plans,” she diverted, “the Captain can do that.”

“Oh can he?”

“Yes.”

“That's new. He never could before.”

“He’s not beholden to his partner.” Rosey took aims to measure her language lest she commit an indiscretion, “They are, after all, just partners. Equals, there was a change of plans, that’s all.”

“Equals.” Aida savored the word as she rose to her feet before letting out a grating cackle that made Rosey flinch, “I’ll give ya credit for your ignorance, child, s’not like you’ve seen what I’ve seen.”

“No, no I suppose that I haven't seen what you’ve seen.” Rosey conceded, her voice dripping with disdainful accusation.

“No, how could you?” Aida hemmed her in against the door and Rosey felt torn between shoving this witch off or making an ally of someone who knew him so well, “Word on the boat is you’ve been kept quite remote on that little plantation, and sure, sure, he’s tidied himself up real nice for you, hasn’t he? How would you know what kind of man he is?”

The urge was strong to spit back in Aida’s face the proof that she had known him longer than she, that Rosey had ridden atop his young shoulders in peacetime and held him nowadays aboard while he cried his memories out. She wanted to protest that she knew him well. But those were not things due to Aida, the Captain had been upset she’d even seen them in the bath together, how much more would he object to their history being exposed. And besides, these were things to prove Rosey knew him, but Aida was right, she knew precious little *of* him. “I know the kind of man he is with me, and he’s a good man.” she murmured instead.

“Is he?” Aida wasn't sneering, she looked intrigued and Rosey’s heart thudded in fear of a misstep. Vaguely she recalled Elvis having told her in their early days that he had a reputation to maintain, to keep folks in line. Being a feared man didn’t deter him from tossing gifts into the crowd or holding babies or patronizing school charities. Rosey figured that admitting he was good to her could hardly damage his reputation. But the way Aida’s maimed eyes kept searching hers made her frightened of betraying him.

“Incredible the lengths men’ll go to for virgin cunt.” the woman declared at last and Rosey flinched at the language. “What’ll it last ‘em? A minute? Fifteen if he’s got willpower? And then poof, done, gone, you’re just like anyone else to him, after he’s done.”

“What were you snooping for?” Rosey didn’t dignify this sad prophecy with an answer.

“Oh, just some things-“

“Of yours?” Rosey snapped, the weight of her still clutched pistol reminding her of her worth and her dearness to him.

“You could say I have a stake in them.” she shrugged.

“What do you mean by that?” Rosey pressed her scornfully.

“You seen any photographs laying about? Or buried under all them books he hauls?” Aida asked her and while Rosey contemplated how to play her hand when she’d not only never seen photographs aboard or even imagined he’d possessed some, Aida went on while turning back to the trunks, “Id’have thought he’d make certain to have at least something in his arsenal if he’s gonna be a brat. ‘Stead it looks like his partner has everything required to sink him and Elvis hasn’t got anything but a stuck up girl-child to defend himself with.”

“Why would the colonel sink his own partner?” Rosey maintained, choosing to leave her place by the door and take a seat on the bed, sheets still thrashed and unmade from his devouring a few hours before. Her legs clenched at the memory.

“You’re good.” Aida proclaimed and some stupid and starved part of a Rosey actually preened at being praised by such a hardened individual. “You’re real good. What’s your deal with the Colonel?”

“I haven’t anything against the man, he’s just tiring.” Rosey insisted.

“No, I mean, what did he offer you to come along?”

Rosey pondered this line of questioning with a perturbed heart, realizing she either had a chance to spin a lie here or else get caught in one. “Who says we’ve got any deal?”

“Do I need to name your predecessors for you?” Aida asked, sitting back down on the floor with shameless confidence in the Captain’s prolonged absence, “Let’s see, of course there was Aida first,” she chuckled that harsh chuckle of hers at this self narration, “and then there was a Polly and a Tamara and we can’t forget the pretty, pristine Lucilla who had him turnin’ himself inside out to please her, all for not, all of them unable or unwilling to stay when the colonel yanked his chain. All of them reportin’ dutifully to the colonel on his wakings and his habits. And those ones were just the ones he made promises to, that promised him back. There was Etta, though she lasted all of a sneeze ‘cause the colonel was against her.”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re his spurned lover?” Rosey asked, amused.

“Ha,” the woman shook her head, “there ever been a woman spy who hadn’t had to play lover?”

“You’re a trash spy.” Rosey found it in herself to jest, “Look at your work,” she gestured to the clutter on the floor, “and halfway in you just spill it out that you’re a spy? Aida, I had some hopes you hated me but I trusted you didn’t think me a fool.”

“Didn’t say I am.” Aida smiled that awful smile of hers, wider than ever this time and Rosey noticed her gums were shiny and silver. “Said I was.”

Rosey kicked her leg out boredly and hummed. “During the war?” she ventured.

“Mm..” Aida just shrugged. “He really not paying you anything?”

“I’m not acquainted with the colonel.” Rosey summarized, “I’m here at the Captain's disposal, he’s the one who pays my wages. And you knew that already.”

“Lord girl.” Aida rose to her knees and began repacking the half emptied trunks, “Whatever it is you’ve done back home, won’t be worth sticking round here to escape. Trust me, they’ll string you up alongside us all if not worse. The world out there’s got a particular distaste for whores, they’d look kinder on a murderer.”

Rosey didn’t protest either title. “Leave the stuff be,” she commanded “with the way you’re cramming it back in -he’ll know someone’s been going through it. Trash spy, you are.”

“Mm, alright.” Aida dropped the books she held back to the floor. “Weird feller he is, to keep this but no photograph apparatus. Colonel must have it.”

“What on earth is that?” Rosey asked her, pointing to that something on the floor that looked akin to an oversized musicbox and had as its extension a wand at the end.

“A hysteria treatment.”

“Hysteria?” Rosey savored the word carefully, only having heard of it from books.

“Yeah, real handy for the uptight ones,” Aida leared accusingly at Rosey’s prim pose, “the ones so proper they’re liable to get strangled with their own collars.”

“How does it work?” Rosey ignored the barb, soothed by red hot memories of indulging the captain in ways that could never be dismissed as prudish.

“It vibrates.” Aida picked the thing up by its box and plopped it in Rosey’s lap. “Crank it.” she goaded as Rosey fumbled with her new burden and carefully began to turn the lever. It was a steam mechanism of sorts, that was obvious from the hissing sound alone and the way the wand’s

outer skin began to pick up in rotational spins, powered by the cord tethering the two women to each other. When she was satisfied as to its pace, Aida took the wand and held it to Rosey’s exposed shin and the girl felt her whole leg rattle from it.

“Hellfire!” Rosey snatched her tingling limb up and away from the device after a moment's indulgence.

Aida laughed at her again. “Husbands pay him a lotta money to hold this to their wife's frigid cunts.” she explained, discarding the wand on the scattered heap of books and neck clothes as she rose to her feet, “And plenty of women risk divorce just to feel it again. Reckon it turns ‘em hysterical, ‘stead of the other way ‘round.”**

Rosey thought of the bathtub -their first tryst- and colored, a grimace forming as that sweet memory became tainted with the knowledge that everything the Captain did with her had been done by him to multitudes before her. As transactions, no less.

“Don’t pity him, girl.” Aida warned, “That money keeps him soft and happier than most, and it keeps you spoiled and fed.”

“I only pity those who do it without alternative.” she muttered. “Captain Presley’s put that behind him.”

“Ha, right behind him. So close behind him it’ll snag him by the britches before the year is out.” Aida shook her head, “You’re a foolish idiot talkin’ him into a rebellion.”

“It’s no rebellion when it’s between partners.” Rosey sneered.

“I keep forgettin’ the whole ‘equals’ part.” Aida admitted with mock regret before continuing, “Bit hard to do if you’d seen what I’ve seen. If you’d seen one of those equals let the other cane his bare backside like a green school boy over a tiny defiance. Equals my ass. How much trouble have you gotten him in that he’d risk this much?”

Aida had approached Rosey during this sickening divulgence and Rosey fast felt her power in the situation escaping her but was too rattled by it to wrestle back her rightful dominance.

“I suppose you’re real proud of yourself for standing by during such an event.” Rosey managed to spit while shrinking against the wall. Her hands began to sweat, she tossed the hysteria box off her lap and gripped the sheets beside her to dry them, feeling for her discarded pistol “And for a man who gave you so much. You’re not even mad for him.”

“An event? It was a weekly pastime some years, that cane saw more of him than it did the pavement.” Aida puzzled, “He’s really told ya nothin’, has he?” that revelation brought Aida more amusement than Rosey could ever imagine so hideous a face could express while Rosey felt sick at the idea of how much harm one stupid piece of wood could inflict, “Are you sorry for the dog that’s made to do a party trick before it gets a bone, Miss Beaumont? Do you give a dog a bone when he refuses? Mad for him, hmph.”

“Why’re you telling me all this.” Rosey asked, shame and anger battling inside her.

“Stop that.” Aida ordered and shortly after Rosey felt a sting to her cheek as she was slapped. Too stunned to respond in kind she sat there with a gaping mouth as Aida inspected her reaction.

“Stop what?” she hissed, palm to her her tingling cheek.

“Actin’ like you ain’t starved for details.” Aida smirked, “Clever girl like you, must’ve found Miss Etta most boring -so much talk, so much talk, so little history actually said. You’re downright panting to snoop yourself, don’t deny it.”

“I-I-I’m not!” Rosey defended, “I’m not denying.” she amended.

“Prove it.” Aida smirked.

Rosey knew this was a test that a normal child would have passed years ago, school bullies or debutante rivals would have buffeted her so that a manic, washed up prostitute’s goading would have little effect. But Rosey was no normal child, sheltered and so little buffeted in the gentler forms of cruelty, she knew only the hard scrabble, hard edged tests of life. With a sinking feel of doing wrong yet a pulse quickening excitement for daring it anyway, she looked about the room for a prompt. Her eyes fell to the bindings the Captain had used on her bosoms, and beneath it the masculine costume Aida herself had loaned her.

And she recalled his blush.

“When you loaned us that garb,” she began and no matter how hard she tried to be brazen she couldn’t manage more than a hushed whisper, “you mentioned…equipment. You asked if he wanted the ‘equipment’ with it.” She looked up to find that Aida was holding her peace, more restrained than Rosey had ever seen her and far from being comforting it made her feel like she was about to be sprung upon by prey. “I want to know what that was. What you meant. What you use it for.”

-‘Depraved things’ -the captain had called them sternly, but he’d stuttered and hardened all the same at the mere suggestion of them.

“How did he respond when he saw you in ‘em?” Aida pried and Rosey thought maybe she’d misjudged her, and she was merely a lonely gossip shut up in this dark hold for too long. Rosey caught a glimpse of herself in the future. “Did he find you arousing?”

Rosey wasn’t about to divulge that but the rosy blush that earned her his nickname was quick to answer for her. “What’s the equipment?”

“A wooden cock.” Aida replied with commendable bluntness.

Rosey hadn’t even contemplated the existence of such a thing. Her marveling face must’ve said so.

“Attached in the common place on the wearer with a harness.” Aida was eager to share and Rosey felt unsettled again at the knowledge that cruelty and degeneracy were the only two subjects that seemed to bring the woman joy. “Plenty a’men like bein’ with men that way but there’s those that like a woman to take ‘em thataways, too.”

“So they-“ Rosey couldn’t help herself, the curiosity too burning to be tamped down, “-they…suck on it?”

Much to her surprise, Aida looked a little puzzled herself for a brief moment before replying, “Well, no, not usually. They pay me to fuck ‘em.”

“In the mouth?“ Rosey persisted, annoyed at the splitting of hairs between taking and being taken orally.

“No, in the ass!” Aida was equally annoyed until she realized by watching Rosey’s bewildered expression that the girl wasn’t playing dumb.

“How does…how does anything fit up there?” she balked, certain Aida was having a laugh at her expense. From the stigma of sucking a man that she had learned from youth, she naturally assumed it was because it was associated with acts performed by sodomites and was the one way men could pleasure each other without a cunt. “How large is this wooden -object?”

“Girl,” Aida smirked, “we’re talkin’ cock, wooden and otherwise, goin’ up the back way. A throat ain’t got nothin’ on the squeeze of a tight ass.”

An array of emotions and wonderments hit Rosey all at once, converging in her mind to fill her with that tantalizing tingle of newly acquired knowledge mixed with a substantial amount of shock and concern over the likelihood of the Captain having engaged in this activity. Which further exacerbated her curiosity as to why he would find the mere suggestion of a renewal of that type of indulgence arousing. “Does that not hurt?” she asked.

“Like hell if you ain’t prepped right.” Aida’s graying tongue flicked at her lips and Rosey felt a pang of dread in her stomach.

“How does one prepare for that?”

“Stretchin’ the rim out.” she shrugged, “All my clients pay for that -after all, if they’ve got time and money to pay a woman to bugger them, you can count on it that they’re much too delicate to take it raw.”

“But if you’re just, out and-“ Rosey bit her lip to try to find a kinder word but it was ugly business no matter how one put it, “if one was out hawking oneself?”

“Beaumont,” Aida lifted a tattooed brow at her transparency, “you can count on it that the Captain done felt like his insides were getting scraped raw most times. Ain’t no oil in a back alley or bent over a barrel, but sometimes, sometimes it must’ve been good. He’s got a lingering taste for it, or maybe he just likes pain.”

“You’ve done this, for him?” Rosey asked dismally and wished she hadn’t even before it rolled off her tongue.

To her surprise Aida answered, “No. reckon he took enough real cock to keep him staggerin’ well into the weekday most times.”

“But not anymore.” Rosey noted once more while raising her chin, and as if noticing her shift in mood, Aida began to retreat towards the door.

“No, not anymore.” she agreed before spitting out, “Gone a whole year without sellin’ ass and he already misses it. Some folks are born whores.”

“Say that of him again and I’ll blow your brains out.” Rosey promised, and by then she had retrieved her pistol.

“Keep your eye out for those photographs.” Aida responded tersely, making as if to go.

“You’ve a claim to them?” Rosey leant forward in the cot, persisting in pressing the issue.

“Mm, yeah, I do.” Aida eyed the pistol warily.

“What- what kind of photographs am I to be looking for?” Rosey asked, exasperated and curious only for her own sake. And his. “If he had such an apparatus there could be all manner of prints! And I’ve heard with the mechanism that some may be undeveloped-“

“These are developed.” Aida laid her hand in the door knob, “Older, too, you’ll tell by the style.”

“I’ve never seen one in the flesh! How am I to discern style?” Rosey protested. “What kind am I looking for?”

Aida stared hard at her before her mouth twisted, “Oh, you’ll know what kind when you see them, Beaumont.”

Rosey’s hands had turned from clammy to frozen in her attempt to disguise her panicked breathing. “Beyond the photographs, what is it you want?”

Aida stood by the door of the small room and swayed, side to side like a considering crow and Rosey gave her all the time she needed.

“I know you wanted me to catch you.” She insisted gently.

“Hmph.” Aida grunted, contemplating a confession it seemed, or else another mode of attack. Rosey would never know.

A knock rang out from the other side of the door and Aida’s hand flew to her own mouth, signaling with a finger to the lips for Rosey to be silent. To play that the room was empty. Rosey wouldn’t be caught abetting a woman as displeasing to the Captain as Aida and chose to ignore her.

“Enter!” Rosey answered instead, clear and assertive.

Aida was forced to move back from the opening door as the formidable bulk of Sister Rosetta entered, looking first at Aida and then down to the spilled trunks, then up and across to Rosey on her rumpled cot.

“Miss Beaumont,” ever the stickler for etiquette, Rosetta ignored the intruder for the time being and addressed herself to the one she was seeking, who also happened to be the lady of the boat, “Dr. Nicholas informed me that yesterday you charged him with a meeting this afternoon to review…certain questions you had?”

“Oh, yes, yes I did.” Rosey recalled her fiery stipulations for allowing the doctor to stay aboard. She didn’t miss the way Aida watched this interaction with avid interest.

“He’s asking a time, ma’am.” Sister Rosetta prodded, she was being awfully respectful and Rosey wondered if the woman knew of her recent marriage or was merely setting an example for Aida. Either way, Rosey appreciated it.

“How about, a umm, an hour from now?” Rosey calculated, “We ought to be on our way by then, and the more nauseating swells should have subsided. Nothing like going over numbers when the boat’s rocking.”

“I’ll see to it he’s conscious by then.” Rosetta replied with deferential irony and Rosey filed that remark away for later. “Exactly what are you doing in here, Overton?” she asked the old prostitute next.

“I was returning her clothes to her.” Rosey spoke up and Rosetta, in line with her newly found deference for Rosey Presley, accepted this fib with narrowing eyes but tight lips. “And, as that’s done with,” Rosey went on after a burdened silence in which Rosetta’s judgmental stare impressed upon her the need to do…something, “you may go, Aida.”

Aida did not exit in haste, she slipped behind Sister Rosetta’s considerable bulk and gave a searing, lasting, parting look of what Rosey feared bordered on conspiratorial camaraderie before shutting the door behind her.

Rosey sat on her cot and fought the urge to fidget on the cot, to kick her leg and scuff her boots under Rosetta’s unwavering observation. That hideous, vibrating apparatus was still lying sideways on the floor.

“Child?” Rosetta broke the silence at last and Rosey ground her teeth at the sudden absence of all respect and deference, merely parental concern remained and no small rebuke in it. It had been a show for that whore, then, and nothing changed. Nothing ever changed, Rosey would always be stuck as that cloistered little girl who grew up to be a stunted young woman.

“I’m glad you came by Sister, I’ve a complaint against you.” Rosey spoke up, daring this due to the sting of repeated losses of authority, first to Aida and now to her.

“With me?” Rosetta repeated, seemingly astounded.

“Yes.” Rosey smoothed her hands out on her lap, “It would seem a confidence I trusted you with a few nights gone, a confidence I would have kept to myself if not so shaken, was repeated to the Captain in its most gruesome and twisted manner.”

“By me?” Rosetta repeated, eyebrows raised nearly to the band of her exquisite turban.

“There was no one else to insinuate what he now believes as gospel truth.” Rosey pointed out icily, “He is under the impression, Sister, that he forced himself on me the other night.”

“Unsuccessfully!” Rosetta protested, “He knows he was unsuccessful. There’s no harm done.”

“The harm is in the intent!” Rosey cried out, “And in the fact he believes himself capable of it! He won’t even-“ with effort Rosey reined in her narrative to the details proper to be shared, “he would barely trust himself alone in his own room with me. And while that has been surmounted by vows and begging on my part -he is…tentative.”

“Not a bad thing.” Rosetta pointed out, chin lifted, “A man that -hungry, a man like that oughta be tentative. And that night should have proved it to you.”

“What occurred that night was not unwanted.” Rosey enunciated, near to a rage, “And I would not have him think otherwise. I did not tell you otherwise. I confided my wants to you and admitted my sins, that I wanted his babe! His love! And you took that, took that temperance of mine and told him he was a brute?”

Rosetta swiped her hand over her brow a half a dozen times as if battling something quite heavy before deciding on a course of action and hauling up the rickety chair to sit in front of Rosey, amidst the wreckage of the trunks. “You think well of him.” she noted and before Rosey could more adamantly rephrase this moderate sentiment, she held her hand up for silence, “And it’s well that you do. And it is well for him, too. But with such a man, it is well for him to know what he is capable of, and to not think too highly of his own restraint. Not when we are speaking of something as heavy as this.”

Rosey did her best to listen and give such a statement it’s due weight and consideration, but peeved at continued insinuation of her own naïveté felt compelled to retort, “Ma’am, I’ve seen a woman forced, my own sister in fact, I don’t need to be told about heaviness. I’m telling you now, I object to saddling a man, however volatile and, and, and hungry as you call it, with the taint of such cruelty. He would never.”

“You think I care about the act?” Rosetta scoffed but gently added, “Child, there’s sins and then there’s harm. And then there’s bringing a child into a world not fit to care for it. And that’s what I object to. That’s what he objects to. And that’s what deserves heaviness and fear from such a man, and you should fear it too.”

Rosey swallowed hard, the shift in Rosetta’s tone becoming softer than she’d ever seen and it took her unawares. In vain did she summon back her old ire, instead like a helpless student, she waited for more.

“Don’t be so eager for a babe, girl.” Rosetta murmured sadly, “Not in times such as these. Even good men betray you, and even the ones who don’t -they’re not promised tomorrow to provide for you. And in your case, without him, there’d be no Captain Presley to buy your child and bring him up as his own.”

Rosey tapped her boot on the floor rhythmically as an assorted pattern of clues formed in her mind and suddenly it was quite plain, all those hours teaching him math in her presence and watching her watch him frolic with the captain and her so very angry at the colonel for threatening him- “Cal is yours.” Rosey realized, “He’s your son.”

Rosetta pursed her lips and nodded, more vulnerable looking than Rosey had ever seen her stoic face, “And it would do him no good to know.” he mourned, “For I had a man, and he was a good man with ivory skin, blue eyes and a wife, and he told me he’d come back for me. That was a whole war ago.” she noted, “And the only man who came was Elvis, bought us both out of our debt. Freedom ain’t sweet when ya can’t eat and when the color of your skin affects your child’s chances. If you were to have a bastard, you’d be nearly in the same case as me.”

Rosey leant forward and tentatively laid a comforting hand on the stalwart lady’s knee, “I’d no idea. Not when I was teaching him -and you, right there, holding your tongue. I cannot fathom it.”

“One day,” she murmured, “you’ll love someone enough to hold your tongue, even if you want to claim them. And what kind of parents would you be? A man of pleasure and a murderess? This isn’t a just world and it’s certainly not a kind one, you’d never get to keep your child. Promise me, never a child, if I could spare either of you that, I would, that’s why I’m sayin’ what I am saying.”

“I can’t make that promise.” Rosey gasped, heartsick and persuaded, “I-I can’t, it’s not for me to make. Not alone.”

Sister Rosetta received this with grudging admiration for Rosey’s loyalty to his headship over her.

“There was a woman aboard, little over a year ago,” Rosetta’s tone turned dreadfully measured after her brief vulnerability and Rosey braced herself, knowing the tale was worth heeding if so circumspect a woman took to divulging secrets, “she was wealthy as was her husband. And the Captain had a fear that she had begotten a child off him.” Rosetta paused as if weighing her narrative once more, “He was most careful about that, you see, with his work, such as it was, most careful. It was paramount to him. But with this woman it was feared. Some couples are harmless, some women are needy, and some are depraved. They all pay the same. But,” she folded her hands again and again before rising and speaking to the door, “but this particular couple, they were crueler than most. Thwarted his precautions knowingly. Seemed to delight in it, like it was a lark to taint themselves with him. It’s a common thing paid for, a sort of abetted cuckolding with the husband engaged. It wore on him, Miss Beaumont, years and years of seeing marriage so demeaned and him being the instrument for it but -never to such ends as this. I don’t know what Etta tried, and I don’t know what Aida planned, but when these helpers failed he came to me.”

“What -what did he want?” Rosey begged. “What did he intend?”

“I don’t know.” Rosetta sounded like a jaded witness, “But he told me of it, told me he was begging God to finish that woman, anything to prevent a child of his to be raised by such degenerates.” Rosetta turned back to her, looking over Rosey’s head, “He gave himself back to God that night. And stuck to it until you came along. The next port of call he sent me to their room to deliver a telegram that had come in. It read of an emergency, the couple demanded a ramp be lowered before the boat had fully docked, they were eager to be off. Considering his passenger's request paramount to an order, the Captain lowered them a ramp.” Rosetta locked eyes with Rosey as the girl guessed a million endings to this harmless tale, “That was the only time Captain Presley has ever lost passengers while unloading. Crushed them between the hull and dock.”

Rosey found her mouth had gone dry when she tried to swallow her shock, choking on her own emotion, Rosetta went to the wash basin and brought her the pitcher, encouraging her to drink.

“Don’t you ever think that man takes the prospect of a child lightly.” Rosetta ended her caution quite simply and Rosey gave the pitcher back with nerveless hands.

“You think he-“ she could not say it the first try, which was ironic enough considering what unaccounted and horrible things she’d laid to his account when she first met him, “-killed them?” she whispered.

“Court ruled it was an accident, Me. Cash was an advocate.” Rosetta acted suddenly as if she was arguing against her own narrative, “And since then the Captain became a most revernat disciple of the gospel of his youth. There’s nothing more to be gained from guessing. Till you.” she added, “Now it bears some worth in repeating. Just, bear in mind when you’re fooling and he’s suggestible -he don’t take it lightly, child. He don’t take it lightly.”

Rosey repacked the trunks when Rosetta left her, unable in her rearranging to help herself from snooping in some small way. There was nothing very remarkable save a large assortment of knives that looked as motley as possible with different inscriptions and initials on them, suggesting other owners. There were strong ribbons of silk, too, 10 times longer than needed to tie up even Rosey’s long mane of hair, and clasps too, cosmetics of coal and rouge in tidy little containers. And a hairbrush that looked innocuous enough until one examined the phallic handle. Rosey nearly dropped the thing in startelement that she was holding something with veins and ridges so similar to the real thing while being pantomime.

It felt disloyal and she dropped it back into the trunk. It thudded dully on the wooden bottom and still no photographs were to be seen. A single cameo was wedged amongst books and when she cracked its decaying hinge open she found a picture of Captain Phillips looking ten years younger and without a lick of gray. Wartime portrait. She tucked it back in place and threaded the strange assortment of thin silk shifts and a large corset, as if for a big boned woman, around the more delicate things and stacked the books as best she could manage.

This done she went to her meeting with the doctor, such as it was with a table set up in a closet beside the Boilers that held pitchers and hoses in case of a fire in them, foggy and lost in early memories of the captain. Not the sunlit frolics of childhood that were dimly returning to her the longer she stayed with him but that dreadful first night they met. She wracked her brain for the little details she’s once worried to shreds in her fear of him but had since been smoothed out like so much jagged ivory in a near completed sculpture. She recalled the way he shoved through the New Orleans riff-raf with unblinking authority and the way he’d snapped his fingers and bought her with only mild protest from other bidders. She thought of his playful refrain to her these day “No murder, Rosey!” and realized with an ache that he may not have meant it so lightly. He was begging her off a path he had been down. The more she thought of him in those early days and the fear he elicited in her, the more she realized him capable of the tale she had just heard.

“Just once I wanna hear Old Beaumont’s daughter say ‘cock’ while grinding back on mine.” he had been so mean with his words that first time, goading and venomous at her for her lofty origins. Or was he just used to speaking like that to highborn ladies who got a thrill from a working class man soiling them?

It was more of a wonder that he was capable of love now, and hated himself as faintly as he did, with such a history. Each new little discovery of it that she made was like pricking her fingers on hidden pins in a seemingly complete cross stitch. If she could run above deck now and hug him and have him lave her pricked fingers with his tongue and promises -she would.

Instead, “Good afternoon, docter.” She greeted and closed the door of the closet behind them.

She took the seat on the far wall, which was only about three feet apart from himself with a rickety board serving as a desk. Rosey laced her hands around her ink pot atop her accounting books with admirable poise and gave him a smile. Dr. Nick’s smile wavered but he returned it all the same.

“To be perfectly honest, Miss Beaumont, I am confused by this, uh, interview, shall we say?” he admitted as she laid out her papers and asked for a list of drugs and medicines used in the captain's care. “I am not beholden to you or owe you any information, the art I practice is guarded by oath and the law of this land states no boat of this size can traverse without a doctor, i am thus immune to any threat you may make or change you may attempt. You are a purser, ma’am, and I am a physician. I suggest we keep to our respective callings, the better to pass this trip in a harmonious manner.”

“I am indeed a purser,” Rosey dipped her pin in the ink with methodical precision, “and as such I am to make an account of what comes and goes in our revenues. I am not here to play chemist sir, I am merely here to ascertain to what purpose we spend nearly 40 dollars monthly on Mercury. salts?”

“Pah.”

“The boat pays for that, sir.” She reminded, “Another ten for opiates, another thirteen for -“

“You are new to book keeping, yes?” Dr. Nick interrupted.

“No, I am not at all new to it.” Rosey answered truthfully.

“Book-keeping in a brothel, then?” he guessed, “Just as you would pay for lye or salt marsh to seed your fields, this vocation requires a vast array of…fertilizers. Stimulants and relaxants and numbing drugs -the human body can only sustain so much on its own power, Madame. I shall spare you the details but there are illnesses to treat as well. Rife amongst such work.”

“Spare me no details, which illness is which drug curing, Doctor?”

“The Mercury -Aida ingests that morning moon and nightly on my orders.”

“That’s why the entire woman is turning silver, I suppose?” Rosey shuddered and noted it down.

“An unfortunate side effect.” he conceded, “Along with vomiting and wasting, the disease can be attributed for the rest of her symptoms, the mind and vision. The rotting of brain matter and soft tissue that you have no doubt smelled. She is not alone, half the boat relies on Mercury to keep the rot at bay.”

“How long?” Rosey asked, “How long must they be on it for a cure?”

“Girl, there is no cure for such filth.” he grunted, “We are talking of back alley, degenerate diseases, lowborn blood and the judgment of God on all such products of lust combining to waste them away.”

“And what are you treating the malaria with?” Rosey moved onto another Devine pestilence that she was certain the captain suffered from.

“I don’t recognize anyone with it.” he objected, “No swollen tongues or yellow eyes.”

“It can be chronic-“

“-no, not in my study of it, it can’t.” he shook his head with surety, “Syphilis, that’s what we’re fighting aboard, and the Clap. I suppose we should think of getting you on a regimen if you’ve been having -relations.” he muttered with what Rosey truly thought might be blunt concern for her welfare. “There’s no cure, but these medicinals they are -essential for any quality of life to be maintained and for comfort to be found at the end. Essential. Syphilis, It’s a spirochete you see, not at all like a bacteria, under a microscope it looks rather like a corkscrew drilling its way into each cell, siphoning off the life from it.”

Rosey swallowed thickly at that image and jotted down another column, “What symptoms was the captain experiencing that such a disease was suspected?” the difference between himself and Aida’s derangement were obvious, but perhaps that was just a matter of time.

“He runs fevers, he has sweats, he is fatigued,” the doctor rattled a mundane list of ailments boredly, “he engaged in sodomy. It’s clear.”

Rosey bit her lip at the recent revelation as to the details of that act and retorted softly, “He vomits, almost every morning, he vomits. Does that not sound more of cholera, at least?”

“Where would he have gotten cholera?” The doctor scoffed.

“He was abroad for years during the war!” she retorted heatedly, “And was held prisoner in Elmira of all places -do you not think that sufficient to contract an illness without contracting the wrath of God, too?”

“Was he kept there?” Dr. Nick showed grave surprise, “I didn’t know him then.“ He explained as if that were an end to it, nothing remarkable about having judged a patient’s case without any history given. “I was hired by Colonel Parker to help ease him in his vocation, and for the occasional assist when sleeplessness took hold. You’ve nothing against sleep drafts do you?” he suddenly asked in horror at her ignorance.

“I’m here to account, sir.” she managed in a horse whisper and marked the Mercury salts for two, all the rest having been discharged from service. She started another column for unaccounted drugs which she figured she could assume with some surety that the Doctor himself indulged in.

“We really ought to get you on something, it spreads you know.” he insisted not unkindly.

Rosey shifted in her seat and thought of her innocence still so resolutely intact. “I think you’ll find that won't be necessary, sir.”

Come evening they were still at it, tallying figures and dosages that ran like Greek in Rosey’s head to the lulling of the familiar boilers clang, making white noise beside them.

A grating scrape silenced them both as the jarring sensation of the boat catching on some unknown barrier below them cast the fear of God on them both. Not in all her time aboard had Rosey heard something remotely similar. Not even when the Captain sidled the great monstrosity up the docks. He parked his boat smooth as a dance master, a little bump and sway and they’d settle as the ropes tethered them.

Not so this screech, it reminded Rosey and the doctor both that they were in a floating cask. Following was a disorienting little tip where the ink pot began to slide towards her and she caught it, unnerved by the small but unmistakable turn the boat was taking.

“Have you ever-?” she broke the silence as they still stayed unbalanced like a buggy relying on a single wheel for a reckless curve.

“No.” Dr. Nick had his eyes searching the ceiling as the lamp above them stayed slanted to the side like their balance. “He’s makin’ the turn,” he surmised sounding a little awed, “we’re headed into the Missouri.”

Rosey wondered if she’d feel it when the water changed, beyond the boat righting itself after the turn. She wondered if the Captain would at least, with those keen hands and attuned senses. Would the current change? Would the depths affect his grip on the wheel? Was the strain of the boilers her imagination or was it like they were truly fighting for access into the giant tributary. Would the river gods let him in? Hand braced on the wall as her chair went slightly askew beneath her weight, Rosey let up her first little prayer in ages and it sounded strangely directed towards the captain’s talent instead of God.

Up above decks the Captain’s eyes smarted from kerosene fumes and hours of squinting into the pale lamp-illuminated river mists, they gathered like shrouds on the old Mississippi’s surface as the inky waves danced into the edge of the black sky. Elvis felt like it was a funeral procession of sorts, all black robes and white smoke like he’d seen in New Orleans

‘Don’t count me out yet, ole Miss,’ he thought fondly, ‘watch me come back to you old girl’.

Jerry was to take the evening watch and still refused to go down below to catch his nap, too anxious for the damn turn into the tributary like the rest of them who knew anything about anything. Elvis tried to comfort himself that if he ran them into a sandbank and drowned them all, first day of the job, he’d at least be responsible for killing General Sherman.

As it was Elvis sniffed away the smarting fumes and gritted his teeth at the gnarly scrape that wailed into the night as he toggled the massive wheel to his left, a little too much, too soon? Or was he too late to thread the damn needle? The current felt like a damn whirlpool keeping him at bay and he had to stick out a foot off his high stool to force the wheel straight on his course. It was unnerving the way it would have spun and spun them to oblivion if he’d let go the slightest bit.

“Ya got it, ya got it.” Cash’s rumble sounded steadying in his ear and once again Captain Presley gave thanks for the Divine intervention and kind suspicions of Mr. Binder who didn’t trust his investment that far westward without the Waterway Committee’s watchdog tagging along to guard it. The fact it was ole Johnny Cash from dear dead days gone by and more recent redemptive ones, only made it kinder. Between Rosey’s pardon and Cash’s presence, Elvis was ready not only to repay Mr. Binder generously but even to like the man. “Ya got it, don’t spook, man.”

Johnny kept the damn unhelpfully small print map up in the right half of Elvis’ view, thumb tacking it to the top of the wheel for the past half hour as Elvis’ glued his eyes to each treacherous little bend of the entry way he’d never probbed before.

“Which one is it, damnnit?” he hissed to himself as every little juncture was running together on the map and maybe he shoulda brought his glasses if he knew this was going to be more about reading for hours straight and far less about seamanship.

Cash reached over him and wiped the off the compass with his jacket cuff and that was all the rebuke Elvis needed for his small tantrum. “Instruments ain’t lyin.” Cash grunted.

“Either of you bastards wanna ease us into this whirlpool, be my guest.” Elvis had to get his anger out or else tip them and he felt better right away at the guffaws it inspired.

“Fuck no.” Jerry chuckled nervously in back and Elvis hated him for the way he was just shy of talented enough to do this and thus could warm his hands around a hot canteen of coffee while Elvis’ numb and braised hands cramped on the wheel.

“Ease is the right word.” Johnny chuckled, “don’t let Lamar spook and gun us in.”

“I know, I know.” Elvis grunted as he felt himself get in a groove, the current finally splitting at the bow on either side like a welcomer instead of a barrier, “I-I think I’m in, I’m -I’m in somethin.” he added unsure, “Lemme me in sweet Missouri, lemme in Big Muddy.”

If one of the soldiers beneath them had been atop he might have laughed at the language or thought it pantomime but it wasn’t, none of the rivermen laughed, they just bit their lips at the necessary double entendrés and prayed the fickle water would listen.

“Mhmm, nice n’ easy you’re in, I feel what ya mean -tell Lamar not to spook.” Cash urged Elvis again as the boat began to tug into the bend as it ought, causing the deck and the whole dark horizon to tip to their right as they turned west.

“He knows!” Elvis bit back, knuckles white as the wheel tried to tug him fully to the side, his thigh working harder to pull him upright again.

“Does he? If it were me I wouldn’t trust a single fella who ain’t a professional lover not to gun it in, full steam ahead, right about now.” Cash admitted.

“Lamar don’t ya Fuckin’ do it!” Elvis grabbed the horn and hollered down to his boilers, “Make her swallow us whole if ya do!” and it was just in time too, the boat began to rattle and hum as if a few more scoops had been added and the bellows worked a few pumps beyond direction. “Quit pumpin’ so hard, damn you.” Elvis hollered again and his amplified voice rattled around the boilerdeck like Hades sending out a decree into the underworld, it made Rosey perk up across from Dr. Nick. “I tell ya when to add coal, fucks sake -no intuition for feelin’ it give, some folks…” Elvis trailed off in a grumble and let the horn fall with a clatter back in place.

The current of the Missouri runs southernly from its source in the great northwest and where it meets the Mississippi just north of Saint Louis, it forms a churning caldron of wrecks, tide pools and sediment. Enough steam is required to make the turn and keep one’s progress against a current that flows over eight miles an hour, yet too much steam and it will tip you right into the swirl of the conjoining streams.

“Sweet Jesus I feel like I’ve been turnin’ for hours.” he groaned, his shoulders burning from the strain, “Gonna run into the opposite bank this way.”

“How she feelin?” Was all Cash replied.

“Looser.”

“Looser bad or looser good?”

“When is looser bad?” Jerry asked with a snort.

“Looser’s bad when your fuckin’ wheel spins like a roulette wheel, ya idiot.” Elvis helpfully supplied.

“Yeah, never seen that yet.” Jerry conceded that he was a very good first mate and hadn’t allowed such a thing to even happen.

“I-I dunno man she’s loose but- but I feel her tug-“ Elvis bit his lip and tried to process both the instruments and the leading of the wheel. “-left.” he decided, “She’s tuggin’ left.”

“Then show her who’s boss.” Cash grinned and thumbed at the droplets on the map, squinting himself at the small type. “You plan to tuck us in before Kansas City for the night? Nice lil cove right about there.” He pointed at the map with his big blunt finger but Elvis had his tongue between his teeth and he leaned on the wheel spokes to pull the boat right.

“Just trying to get past this bend then I’ll think about goddamn coves.” Elvis grunted, “She won’t stop sucking m’bow to portside.”

“Want a hand?” Cash asked mildly.

“Fuck me it’s like asking the wife to fuck this mistress.” the captain muttured instead, switching from pleading with the river to begging his boat to go where it wasn’t built for, its high top decks -so spacious and regal for entertainment or speed- precariously teetering in the rough n’tumble of the backwoods river. “Ooooh hell she's tuggin’,” he exclaimed finally, “Lamar, Lamar! Gimme more now!” he yanked at his own controls, a stick that precariously opened the steam valves at whim so long as enough coal was supplied below, and the Proud Marie lurched into the turn with all the rage of an offended deity. “Cash? Wanna help?” he barked, wild haired and sweating in the gas light and looking more in his element than Johnny had seen him in ages.

“Bless me no, you juggle your own women.” he smiled instead. “Pay attention to that tuggin’, now. Don’t wanna die now we’ve threaded the damn thing.”

“Oh I’m payin’ attention, alright.” Elvis laughed. “But now she’s tuggun’ like the current’s suckin me ‘stead of pushin’, Cash.”

“How fickle is woman.” Cash mused while lighting up a cigar.

“Just think,” Jerry piped up encouragingly, “couple more hours of this then you can go lay on soft bosoms and catch some shut eye.”

Seeing as how it was already past ten in the evening, the thought of more hours was more tortuous than conciliatory. “Jerrah, how about you fuck off and make yourself useful. Light my cigar f’me again, damn mists keep puttin’ it out.”

“You can’t just breathe tobacco up here.” Jerry pointed out even as he struck a match and cupped it to the Captain's face.

The captain glanced at him, all sooty lashes and water speckled cheeks in the warm glow of the kerosene wick, “Watch me.” he puffed, as he felt the river give him a lane and he slotted in, pulling his wheel straight again. “This got me sweatin’ like a whore in church.” he whistled, no longer jealous of Jerry and his coffee.

“Works every time.” Cash agreed with a knowing smile and Elvis grinned back.

“We’re in boys, we’ve well and truly entered her.” he announced a mile in and half in, and had there been daylight, the mouth leading to the Mississippi would have been seen slowly shrinking behind them like a portal to the known world.

“Done so gentle, I'd bet she didn’t even bleed.” Cash patted Elvis' shoulder and he smiled back, fighting the urge to slump over the wheel and fall asleep now the day’s worst was over.

A few hours passed and the Captain did tuck them into a cove for the night, running the ropes out the hawser holes to secure them to the beached wreck of a more unfortunate predecessor on its banks. He woke Jerry where he’d slumped in his chair for his watch.

“Say hi to Rosey for me, EP.” he mumbled and Elvis didn’t begrudge him after having slapped him around a bit to thoroughly wake him.

“So you kept her aboard?” Cash asked him as they tromped down the multiple flights of ladders to the lowest deck, handrails and boot grips slick with mist and the single lantern Elvis held doing little to light the way.

“Cash, she killed for me.” the captain reminded in a dazed murmur.

“She’s really somethin’ then?” Cash made conversation as they creaked open the side door, an absolute racket of a sound in the otherwise sleeping boat, and stepped into the starboard side of the stables.

“Whadda you think?” Elvis sassed with smug awareness that Rosey really was something else.

“And ya love her?” Cash rumbled on in that easy way of his that would have you declaring shit you didn’t have figured out yet.

“Whadda ya think?” Elvis answered again and started weaving through the horses instead of going to his little closet and its cot and warm bosoms, “Hellfire, it’s a sea of horses down here.” he muttered as he walked down an aisle of where the tethered yet majestic creatures nipped at him with eager muzzles or else swished him with elegant tales, “Poor Beans, s’like berthing on a transport. Bullshit steerage accommodations for m’boy.” he bemoaned when he found him and Cash assumed Beans forgave all with the nearly amorous way the horse flung his head neck around Elvis’ and the two swayed in a cheek smashed embrace.

Removing himself from the equine reunion, Cash busied himself with going to the far side where the racks of loose hay puffed out between wooden slats and grabbed himself a bundle to replace Bean’s trodden supply. When he returned he found Elvis in discussion with someone, and after initially assuming it to be his tetched horse, Cash realized there was another fella down here with him, not one of the crew, just a sleepless soldier come to keep his horse company, or the other way around.

“Best cure for it.” Elvis was agreeing pleasantly to something the man had said and Cash assumed it was insomnia, “M’boy here’s always my first choice. Is your berth comfortable, got everythin’ ya need?”

“Yeah, it’ll do.” The man replied a few horses deep into the row and Cash squinted trying to make out a discernible facial feature in the gloom and all he succeeded at was recognizing yellow colored hair. “Sleep a whole lot better of they’d kept the female comfort aboard.” the man added with a joke.

“Ain’t fittin’ on a government boat, they says.” The Captain maintained a neutral tone and took to unsnarling one of the braids in Beans withers.

“I bet the rich bastard who ran this kept a few, ya know?” The man disagreed with a grin, “The guys have pooled together, we’ve got a decent amount of cash for anyone who wants to give us a tip to where we can find the maids. Can’t run a boat without maids.”

“You can.” Elvis replied a little harshly, “Leastwise they’re all men.” he added.

“Well, if we get desperate enough...” The fellow joked.

“If ya get desperate enough you’ll find yourself sucking lead outta my pistol ‘fore I let you mess around with my folks, that clear?” The captain crouched and yanked up the lantern he’d set on the floor and pushed it into the crowd of horses to make out the man’s face for future reference and illuminating his own. The man was nearly middle aged and was unremarkable really, in every way, except for the glinting brass uniform buttons running down the front of his navy blue jacket.

“Wh- shit me, you the captain?” the man asked in surprise, putting his hands up in a pacifying way, “Sorry sir, just kidding is all. It’s gonna be a long trip.”

It was indeed, nobody knew that better than Elvis and he decided the fellow was jovial enough, hell- if it weren’t for Rosey’s presence the captain would have taken such a joke in stride and he knew he was being irrational about it. He’d let rip with such humor himself at times and it didn’t mean anything, it didn’t and there was no use antagonizing his human cargo on the first day over a joke. The scuff of Cash’s boots behind him reminded him he didn’t need to be bowing up at everyone, mildness was the order of the day.

“Yeah, gonna be real long.” Elvis agreed and they exchanged tired smiles at each other, the fellow was missing a front tooth on his lower set and had a shock of golden hair that had turned a little straw-like from hard living. “You got a wife or kids?” he asked, stepping aside so Beans could munch on the hay Johnny brought.

“No, no I’m unattached.” the fellow replied, “It’s better that way I figure.”

“Whores don’t miss ya.” Elvis deducted with a conciliatory grin and the man took the offered olive branch with a knowing smile.

“I suppose they don’t.” the man laughed back. “You seem awfully familiar,” the man went on, “have we met? Did you used to work transport during the war?”

Elvis didn’t quite have the heart to tell the guy that even if they had met he was about as remarkable as a piece of straw and thus not memorable, a nice person didn’t deserve the insult so Elvis said instead, “Judging by your accent, I highly doubt I’d have been carryin’ you down river.”

“You an old Rebel then?”

“You’re a New Yorker?”

“I am.”

“Yeah, then, seems not.” Elvis shrugged, “Unless,” an awful thought struck him, “-you always been in the Calvary?” he inquired, his own interest peaked, knowing without a shred of vanity that his own face was not particularly forgettable and so when folks told him they’d met before he tended to believe them.

“No, used to be infantry.” the man was puzzled by this line of questioning, “Bought my own commission five years ago.”

“Shieet!” Elvis exclaimed, thinking he’d cracked it, “You ever guard at Elmira?”

“You were held in Elmira?” the guy repeated in disbelief.

“Uhuh, you ever guard there?”

“Hell no, a shit detail that.” the man was offended, “I was down chasing General Hood in Alabama.”

Elvis squinted at this dead end and stippled his fingers on Beans’ back, trying to think of an alternative meeting. “Hood was doing the chasin’, if I recall.” he snarked.

“And we were doing the killing.” the guy smiled back and Elvis let it be.

“Don’t leave the damn candle goin’ till it burns down,” Elvis warned as he and Cash turned to go, “the hay would be happy to catch and keep us from ever makin’ it to the Dakotas.”

“I won’t!” the man replied and as they walked down the cramped hallway that led to Hodge’s room and then Rosey’s, Elvis felt with the keen discernment of too much time spent in dark alleys that there were eyes pinned to his back in the dark hold, watching where he and his lantern went for the night. Elvis could curse the builder of this ship for all its lonely little cubbies, but he knew how to make use of them. Those eyes burned him all the way to his turn and he felt like scratching his shoulder blades, the itch was so strong.

Natural curiosity was a reasonable reason to give the man, but Rosey made the captain unreasonable, and before he turned he doused his wick and Cash stumbled straight into his back.

Instead of grumbling, his friend muttered, “lead on.” in a quiet tone that suggested he got the Captain’s ploy.

“You’re in here with Lamar,” Elvis opened the door to one tiny berth with double hammocks, “Charlie and Cal are across and I’m in through there to a storage closet.”

“Your girl got a gun?” Cash asked instead as he stood on his threshold, “I don’t like that sonuvabitch.”

“What do you take me for?” Elvis smacked his shoulder, “Course she does and not just any, I got her Stan Whatie’s lil ivory project.”

“No, hell, the Cherokee’s?”

“Mhmm, won it over cards.” Elvis said.

“I’ll be damned, you romantic bastard.” Cash marveled, “Don’t tell my June, it’ll heighten her standards and I don’t trust her standards on a game of cards.”

“I won’t.” Elvis snickered and bid him goodnight, creeping through the dark into the next room and fumbling between the cots till he thought he’d found Cal and placed a soft kiss on his forehead.

“You’re precious, ya know that?” Charlie’s voice murmured back instead and Elvis’ head reared back with a shocked snort before he turned to the other bunk and its far smaller and utterly unconscious snoozer and repeated the kiss on the forehead originally intended.

He then felt along the wall until he felt the small latch and he pushed it open to find Rosey in nothing but her nightgown, still burning the midnight oil with her nose in a Pharmakea encyclopedia.

“Baby.” he whispered in greeting, tip-toeing past the chair and the trunks to their cot and being pleased as punch by the happy little cry she gave as she flung herself up in the bed to receive his kisses.

“Elvis!” she acted as if it had been years and her love had grown in the meantime and the small kiss he meant to give turned into a full embrace and his intentions for keeping away until he could strip from his work coat and keep her nightclothes unsoiled were irreparably thwarted by her vigor. “Today was a year long, I’ve waited and waited.” she moaned into his mouth and he grinned pleased against her cheek and peppered it with kisses that smelled of tobacco, “You smell of kerosene.” she laughed once she finally released him and he grinned down at her happily.

“You alright, darlin’?” he asked as he began to unbutton his coat, “How’re them bruises.”

He nodded to her chest and she rolled her eyes before assuring, “They’re fine.”

“I wanna see.” he insisted, but made no motion to make her, just kept popping buttons on his leather coat and she rather shyly tugged the wide scoop of her neckline down to show the tops of her breasts, unsure if this was routine or if she was meant to be seductive.

“Aww poor bubbies,” he mourned at the still present marks of the bindings, “Hoist ‘em up a little, I wanna see the undersides.”

With burning cheeks, Rosey scooped a breast in each hand and pushed them above the covering of her linen gown. The flash of hunger that seared though Elvis’ compassion made her shift in want on the cot.

“You been puttin’ the oil on ‘em like I told ya?” he asked.

“Yes I have.”

“S’very important, don’t be lazy about it.” he insisted. “Poor pretty babies, can’t believe I hurt ‘em like that. Gotta put oil on ‘em.”

“I know Elvis.” she agreed, “And what about you? How was it? We felt when you made the turn!”

“Did ya?”

“Yes, and I heard you yelling at Lamar.” she smiled shyly and he didn’t know why she looked so pleased about it.

“Oh.” he exclaimed, “Sorry ‘bout that, didn’t mean to be so angry. He's just such a bull about these things and ya gotta just ease it in, insistent but not forceful, ya know?”

“Don’t be sorry.” she simpered breathily and licked her lips, “You sounded like you were-“

“Like what?” He asked, genuinely confused, as he tried to find a place to hang his coat, “We really need more pegs in here.”

“You sounded like -a lover.” she hissed the last part, knees drawn up to her chin on the cot and he could pinch her cheeks, she looked so cute in her bashfulness.

“Did I?” he hummed, turning towards her as he emptied his various pockets of knives and timepieces and the like. “And did that excite my lil girl?”

“Maybe.” she whispered.

Oddly, he sniffed the air at her answer and squinted as if the findings puzzled him, “You ain’t played with yourself though, have ya?”

“Why- no. No I haven’t.” she gaped in some surprise.

“See, I’d know.” He told her with surety, “When I’ve been above deck all day I get my senses cleared, ya see? And when I come back down I can sense anything.”

“Oh.” her cheeks still flamed.

“Who else has been in here?” He asked after another sniff and his face darkened.

“Oh,” Rosey startled, “Sister Rosetta, she stopped by to remind me of my meeting, and Cal too, for a bit.”

“An-who else?” he asked with the look and tone of a man who already knew.

“Uh, well then there was Aida” Rosey kept her voice light, “she came so I could return her clothes to her.”

“Why’d you return them?”

“We’re done with them.” she replied, puzzled, “Aren’t we?”

“No, no, not necessarily.” he frowned, “And what’s the rush to return ‘em? She ain’t goin’ nowhere?”

“I just- I didn’t think. Sorry.”

“I don’t want you near her, you hear me, Rosey?”

“I-I do. But it wasn’t…she just came by.”

“I bet she did.” he seethed and he undid his vest with savage jerks and Rosey swallowed hard.

“I understand. But -no harm done this time.” she tried to pacify.

“You don’t need to seek out whores for friends, alright?” he went on, “And you don’t need to listen to whores for nothin’ regarding us. If I wanted a whore I’d go get me one. Some things are left better untouched, lil girl’s brains bein’ one.”

“Is she dangerous?” Rosey asked.

“Oh she done a thing or two in her time.” He agreed mirthlessly, “And been done a thing or two back, I suppose.”

“The doctor says her brain is rotting from the illness.” Rosey crossed her arms uncomfortably at the recollection and the rather obvious proofs of the same that being around the woman gave. Even the stench of flesh rotting that lasted hours after she’d gone. No amount of perfume or douched lemons could contain it.

“Why was he tellin’ you ‘bout her case?” Elvis demanded again. “He don’t need to be tellin’ a lady like you ‘bout syphillis’n’shit.”

“Is that what’s killing her?” Rosey asked.

“Most likely.” he shrugged, “They injected the mercury salts into her eyes for it a couple years ago, didn't do shit to slow it. I take ‘em orally and they burn. A- a-a-and I ‘member thinkin’ while I was holdin’ her down for it: nobody ever paid us more for a bit a pain as I paid for that fuckery.”

“You paid for that procedure?” she shuddered.

“She begged me, they said it would help. I-I-I hate her but -I couldn't just let her…rot.” he shook himself, “I'd rather someone shoot me ‘fore I get to that point. Why was he tellin’ you all this?” he argued again, brows knit and a hurt expression on his face, “Why you diggin’ into all this?”

“Elvis,” Rosey sighed and he took a breath too, as if aware he was tired and cranky, “the meeting was to discuss medications, you recall? We -our boat- spends an inordinate amount on medicines and opiates for our…so-called employees.”

“Yeah, cause this way a’livin makes you sick, Rosey.” His hands smacked his sides listlessly. “S’why Aida’s so doped up. Fuckin’ terrifies the shit outta me, and if I didn’t think God wouldn’t like, it I’d toss her overboard as bad luck. But no way around it”

“But you couldn’t have always felt that way,” Rosey reminded, “you were lovers once.”

The captain stopped what he was doing and spun round to face her with some alarm on his face, “That what she told you? That we was lovers once?”

“Well,” now that Rosey thought on it, Aida hadn’t explicitly said so, she’d just listed herself in a line of the Colonel’s erstwhile spies and remarked how seduction was integral to such a role, “no, she’s didn’t say so exactly-“

“-Well we weren’t!” he declared adamantly, as if for his own benefit as much as hers, “Doin’ shit to another body so folks pay ya don’t make ya lovers. It jus’ don’t, Rosey. No more’n me shoveling coal with Lamar makes us married.”

“Alright.” she replied just as adamantly in order to calm him and held up her hands while she was at it. “So y’all did…work…together?”

“I reckon you already knew that.” he muttered, yanking off a boot rather clumsily, “Why’re you so nosy tonight, anyways, hmm?”

“I-I just wanna know you.” she sighed.

“You do!”

“Know *of* you.” she clarified what bit of self recognition she’d come to realize this morning.

“Know Of? Wh- what’ve you been drinkin’ down here girl?” The captain laughed, “Gettin’ all philosophical on me. Ya know me, historically, biblically and a lil too well. I ain’t got any notion ‘bout takin’ you into sordid lil avenues of my life that don’t make no difference now.”

“But I think they do!” Rosey protested a little vehemently and he stopped midway through easing off with his workboot, hand cupping the scuffed heel as he stared her down. “I think it’s pertinent! All this stuff we don’t speak of! Why -you don’t sleep some nights and I dream terribly and -you haven’t even showed your interest to me since you learned who I was!” she managed to insert the most pressing aspect there at the end and felt proud of herself for carrying on through his stare.

“Lil girl, you gone tetched?” He asked mildly, stumbling over to the cot, one clunky boot on and his other a sock foot, laying his beautifully fashioned and wheel calloused palm against her forehead, “Why, I ain’t barely drank anything all day for fear of washin’ away the taste of you this mornin’. Not shown interest? -huh.”

“I mean -your own.” she pointedly stared down at his belt buckle, or rather, the prominent seam below.

“Rosey!” he laughed at her, “I’m dog tired a-and I -my interest has been shown. Sweet Jesus I ain’t got the brains for this. Not tonight.”

“So you can manage it dog tired with Aida but not with me!” she shot back and they both seemed to be equally surprised that she was harboring such expired jealousy.

“I can manage it fucked outta my mind with a gal who didn’t use to look the way she does now.” he growled and then went on in a mocking voice, “And it’ll cost ya only three silver dollars to watch, ma’am.”

Rosey sniffed and shrugged off the barb, figuring she deserved it, “Etta gave me a remedy for this.” she whispered hopefully instead.

“Oh I bet she did.” He eased off himself and stood straight again to work on his remaining boot, “And I’d rather eat fire ants, thank ya.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Oh it’s great!” He assured with a laugh, “For the first five hours. Then ya start thinkin’ bout amputation. If I catch you slippin Horny Goatweed in my tonics’n’shit I’ll take you over my knee girl, I ain’t teasin.”

“I won’t.” she swore, disturbed at the mere notion of slipping anything into anything he took.

He patted her cheek in acknowledgment before sitting down heavily beside her and setting to yanking off his grimy shirt, the pit stains dark and visible as he raised his arms and struggled with the garment.

“What’s this really about?” he asked softly as the fabric cleared his flushed face, his hair soft and mussed, grease defining each half-hearted curl at the nape of his neck.

“I’m bein’ silly.” she acknowledged with a shy smile.

“Ain’t no crime that.” he smiled back, “Not on my boat. Hell, there ever been a time you ain’t silly, girl?”

“Maybe not.”

“Didn’t think so.” he teased, leaning back against the wall in a slump on the cot’s sagging bedding. “Can’t I jus’ be tired, Rosey?” he asked again, “And I’ll let you be silly.”

“Fair enough.” she sighed.

“Well go on now, be silly. I done told ya you could.” he prodded with a finger to her rib and she jerked from the tickle.

“I know you don’t wanna talk about it.” she shook her head, “And you're tired so- so I won’t make you.”

“I don’t wanna.” he agreed but added sweetly, “I don’t wanna talk about mine but I’ll listen to yours, long as you need. What’s goin’ on up in that noggin? Too many figures, hmm?”

“Secrets more like.” Rosey mumbled petulantly.

“Lord, you got more?” he sighed and didn’t seem angry but she let out a scoff that he’d think she meant her own, she thought of the photographs.

“No,” she chose to leave it be, “no, I’m talking about more curatives.” she teased.

“Girl, just cool it.” he laughed, “I’ll lick ya again.” he offered hopefully and with a little twinkle in his eye that could almost pass for energy.

“What about turtle soup?” Rosey dodged, hopeful that a teasing reference to the first night they met and her naivete and his flustered concern for her eating the aphrodisiac back would rouse a smile.

It did. Predictably his mouth quirked and those pillowy lips looked twice as lush and full now set in a heavy thatch of two day old stubble. He let out a groan of playful aggravation with her preoccupation.

He gently grabbed her listless hand from her own lap and placed it on the rough denim covering his crotch. “You do what ya like.” he sighed, “Can’t promise nothin’.”

The seam was rough but not stiff, as if he’d worn those trousers into softness even at that most vulnerable juncture. As always with his package there was something to pet, even as she ascertained he was not fibbing, he was as soft and tired as he ever got and remained so despite her touches. Even in sleep he was stiffer. She let her hand cup the soft stones spilling on either side of the thick seam, far down between his legs, rubbing at their full undersides and wondering if they ached like her breasts when confined. He shifted on the cot, not in a restless movement at all, but rather as if to settle in for whatever she wished, his legs spreading wider. He even bent his knee and raised his leg to plant one bare foot on the cot, spreading himself as wide as a girl for her attentions, his tall frame cramped and folded by sitting sideways on their little bed.

His soft state inspired soft touches and Rosey found some stupid contentment stroking his sack through the worn denim, running the back of her knuckles up to his shaft that he had tucked nearly to his belt. She realized that despite her boredom with today she was tired too, tired of thinking and tired of mental exertions and ever since he’d taught her, she found this physical outlet far more relaxing than a sleeping tonic.

“I kneed a man here, between the legs, once.” she whispered like a child telling stories at a sleepover and squeezed his sack just the smallest bit. His eyes that had drifted shut while savoring her touches opened up in flutter.

He didn’t seem perturbed by that, by her need for violence, just drowsy from being petted. She should make him sleep. “You can smack me there…if ya like.” he whispered back, entirely serious and not even slightly hesitant. “If ya like -or, or pinch?” he added again as if he’d missed the mark oniy by sheer variety of options as she remained frozen in concern by the offer.

“I don’t.” she got out at last and he shrugged and let his eyes close again. “I-I don’t want anything but gentleness for you.” she expounded and he bit his lip and held his peace for a moment as Rosey mentally smacked herself at the realization he did tell her things, they did talk about…things. He just didn’t do it like a girl unburdening herself or a sinner in the confessional. He offered little insights freely like this one and she was too busy being horrified to notice them for what they were: confidences.

“Jus’ tonight, right?” he asked and meant for it to be teasing but it felt burdened.

‘Maybe he likes pain’ -Aida had said.

“I’d-“ Rosey weighed her options with this newfound awareness in mind, perhaps he would tell her more often what he wanted -like the first few weeks- if she remained a blank enough canvas for him to create on, “I’ll be whatever you want.” she settled for that and began palming him again, enjoying the way the fabric between his legs was still a little damp, either from mist or else his sweat from sitting at the wheel, legs unable to spread or air out. The way his shoulders were dry but the pits of his shirt could be wrung out suggested the same and some strange, torrid appreciation for his toil made Rosey’s mouth water.

There was an oil stain down at his inner thigh and she thumbed it thoughtfully and felt how the fabric was stiff from the stain compared to the rest. He made a soft little noise of contentment under her touches, his one hand busy in the most lazy way with petting her hair that fell all the way to her hip.

Touching. Being touched. God! she’d had so little of it in her life, and so much fear of it for so long and now she was leaning beside a man petting the damp seam of his trousers like a cat's neck. She wedged her hand under his thigh for leverage and bent herself to kiss at him there.

She could hear the staccato of his gasp even from there. “Rosey I-I ain’t even washed, sweet cheeks.” he warned softly.

“I know.” she answered and her voice was a moan, inhaling his pungent sweat, nothing clean about him and she rubbed her face in the pure distillation of his daily exertions like a cat in heat. “I want to smell you.” she told him and it made him swallow hard as she laid her hand on his thigh, the one spread out with his foot up in the covers, and spread him even further, that damned inherent flexibility of his being tested by the strain. His outer knee hit the mattress and it was Rosey that moaned at his ability and Elvis felt like he might shatter into fragments at the erotic pride that rushed through him at the thought of having impressed her.

“Sometimes it’s better, feeling rather than…being felt?” she tried to explain against the damp denim.

“I know!” he sounded more awake and enthused than he had all day, more than even this morning. “I-I know it’s -it’s glorious ain’t it?” and he pet her hair again with happy fervor until she rose up and knelt in front of him, beginning to undo his belt determinedly.

“You’ll wash in the morning.” Rosey decreed as she unfastened the buckle and tugged at the button holding in his warm belly.

“Yes lil’mama.” he agreed with hoarse meekness and drew up his other leg to make her efforts easier.

She opened the fly and tugged it apart, being hit by a wall of musk as he’d predictably poured himself straight into the denim this morning, sans underpants to collect the sweat. He was nearly steaming in that denim hammock. She envied the wash maids and their tasks.

She told him as much and laughed incredulously. “You’ve gone silly.” Elvis swore again.

“No, they treasure your sweat-soiled clothes, I’m sure of it.” she shook her head and reached out with the tips of her fingers to touch the dank appendage and its hammock of swollen stones, the dark curls of his wiry hair almost shiny from the sweat. “Those girls find your trousers -they fight over them i wager- and the winner holds them up and presses them to their faces like this-“ and she put her face to him like a girl kissing at the reflection of a still pond, her hands winding around his waist and digging into the damp back of his trousers, kneading sticky, plush flesh there, too. “-and then she licks at your trouser seams,” and Rosey underscored her point by doing the same to the imprint of his seam on tender pink flesh, “and she moans over the tartness she tastes and the rest of them hate her for what they can’t have. And if she’s really brave-“ Rosey couldn’t believe her own mind at this rate but face pressed to the Captain’s musky balls, she wasn’t truly in possession of any rationale beyond him, him and him, “-she’ll take them to the little closet with the feed sacks and she’ll prop herself up and she’ll touch herself to the smell of you. Wishing she could thank you for your hard work.”

“I haven’t any washer maids.” he whispered while looking down at her eyes with wide, guileless blue ones that were somehow playing a part with their projected innocence while being more himself than anything else about him. “I got rid of them all.” he says.

“Then I’ll have to wash them myself.” she murmured back, raspy and coy, “And I’ll be the one to thank you accordingly.”

The Captain sucked in a breath so hard at this predictable reply that his bottom lip went with it, pinned between his teeth ‘till the vibrant pink turned white under his cruel bite. “Can I watch?” he asked, his voice hoarse with hope. “Watch you be my lil washermaid?”

“So long as you don’t let maid know.” Rosey cautioned with a smirk and dug her hands deeper into his backside, pulling him apart absentmindedly until she felt his cock wag beneath her chin with the first ounce of interest shown tonight. She reared back and stared at the docile thing, twitching pathetically when she dug her nails in a little harsher once more. He sucked in a breath and turned his head to the side and Rosey took her hands out of his trousers to tug the front of his pants further down those sturdy thighs.

She’d no real intention of exciting him after all, only missed him and wanted to taste him before sleep. Tomorrow or next month or eternity was ahead of her to sort out why he responded the way he did. For now her duty was to put him to sleep where he belonged ages ago.

“A big man like you has got to be discreet,” she plotted with him and his face eased as they returned to their play, “the little washermaid wouldn’t know how to face the captain if he found her in such a degradi-“

“-uninhibited position, yes, God, yes!” he interrupted her with an appreciative rush and turned the subject sweet.

“You'll wash in the morning, I want to smell you all night.” she murmured again as she stood up and fully tugged his trousers off over his long feet, making him close his legs from their previous bend.

“Yes’m.” He murmured a little dazed and he looked like he was answering while asleep, the poor man was so visibly tired and she tenderly pushed his naked form to lay down the proper way, all the way flat, on their bedding.

She was not sure what it was about skipping a bath that made him seem more manly, more than he even usually was, but seeing his figure laying there naked on the ratty sheets, hairy and greasy from sweat and the stubble coming in thick -she palmed a breast at the sight of it, distracted from her debate as to keep her nightgown on.

“Strip.” his eyes fluttered in an effort to stay open but they flicked up and down her cotton gown and his eyebrow moved in a motion that was as eloquent as a hand waving it off. “You’ll be warm enough w’me.” he assured her of what she was already sure of.

Rosey drew the gown over her head and tossed it beside the Captain’s denims, only her long hair a covering over her shoulders as she stared down at him once more, savoring the beauty she was about to embrace before reaching high above her and turning the gas lamp out.

Plunged into darkness, she shuffled the couple feet left before her shins hit the cot’s edge and a large, warm hand cupped the back of her thigh and tugged her in. She fell atop him and wiggled till she was tucked into his side, her hand petting at the light fur on his chest and her nose nearly buried in the swamp of his underarm.

He grunted disbelieving at her choice. “How’re you feelin?” she asked, touching his forehead in the dark with the back of her hand, finding it a little clammy but not fevered.

“M’tired.” he replied and none of that had anything to do with Dr. Nicholas and his ponderous list of life

-threatening diseases the man beside her was supposedly harboring.

“You’re not holding off…making love to me…for fear of getting me sick, are you?” she whispered the concern of the day, finally.

“I-I told ya why I’m holdin’ off, Rosey.” he sounded a bit pained but not angry.

“You promise? You’re not just putting it off to spare me -something?“ She begged.

“There’s been nothin’ I was ever less inclined to put off, my girl.” he murmured tiredly as he turned on his side, mashing his face into her breast, giving an accentuating hump of his pelvis against her hip.

“All my life, I ain’t ever been the first choice.” she muttered and his arm tightened around her, “I’ve killed for other women, for Maddy, the ones who were chosen. Wanted, when others-“ she trailed off before picking up in a thin voice reedy with confusion, “-I was talkin’ with Rosetta earlier and I realized I-I was there. I was there for it and not even they wanted me. A dozen men, one woman, and I-I was left alone. I know I should be glad of it.”

Elvis stared at the blackness that somewhere shielded a face he longed to read, but that poor little voice told him a world enough of hurt. He clutched her closer and was going to ask what on earth she meant, who and when and what sort of want she referred to when Rosey added as through in a sob:

“Poor Maddy.”

He startled and turned to grip her in a hug, processing what he was frightened she meant. “That -child, that ain’t no compliment.” he begged her to understand. “Even some of the worst don’t go for -you were a child.”

“Was I? I don’t recall.” she whispered.

“Yes you were.” he declared it, made it truth, “Jus’ ‘cause you only recall it now you’re grown, don’t mean you weren’t a child back then.”

“I’d forgotten.” She repeated, numb in horror at the thought of what else was buried.

“You -you recall anythin’ more?” he asked what he was so very scared to know, hardly sure he could carry the weight of more but certain only a coward would make her carry it alone.

“It took ages.” she whispered, “My knees hurt somethin’ awful from kneeling behind the stove. Took forever for them all to stop.”

The captain crushed her to him and she gripped his back like a shield, “You can tell me, Little Cricket.” he soothed, “Can tell me anythin’ at all.”

“Can I?” she sniffled .

“Mhmm.”

“Then I will -if I recall.”

“Good girl.” He whispered into the damp of her forehead, placing an almost fatherly kiss there.

“So you planned on it, marryin’ me fully? Sickness and all, you swear?” she smiled at the pitch black hollow of his throat, grateful to have it out and trying to gauge with her hands whether a fever burned his life away even now.

“Rosey, I didn’t once plan on you.” Elvis admitted with an affectionate pat and promptly fell asleep.

Go ahead and scream and speculate and gush all you want, I love. Hope you enjoyed💋

**dialogue credit to Captain Smitty

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#elvis presley #elvis fanfiction #elvis fanfic #elvis imagine #elvis x reader #elvis #elvis presley fanfiction #baby elvis #elvis presely smut #elvis smut #elvis presley fanfic #elvis au

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lonestarflight · 1 year ago

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View of the Apollo 17 Saturn V (CSM-114/LM-12/SA-512) launch from press site view at Kennedy Space Center.

Date: Decembre 7, 1972

Dan Beaumont Space Museum: link

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pigeonwhumps · 1 year ago

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Introduction and masterlist

Hi! I'm Ruth, they/them pronouns, 25, and I enjoy most types of whump! I do art, graphic design and writing.

I try my best to tag, but if I miss a content warning you'd like added, please just shoot me an ask! I won't tag lady whump as a content warning, but anything else I will if you ask.

Favourite tropes:

RECOVERY WHUMP!!!

Found family

Gagging

Muzzles

Pet whump

Whumper pressing down on whumpee's back to keep them from getting up

Branding

Whipping

Caretaker turned whumpee/whumpee turned caretaker

Hero/villain whump

Tall whumpee/small caretaker (or vice versa)

Tall whumpee/small whumper

G/t whump

Whumpee thinks caretaker is their new whumper

Incompetent/clueless caretaker (they're trying their best but they have no idea they're doing)

Non-human whumpee

Immortal whumpee

Human weapon

Picky:

Major character death

Mouth whump

Pregnancy whump

Squicks:

Graphic tooth whump

Everything taglist: @painful-pooch @i-eat-worlds @a-funeral-romance @rainydaywhump

Other taglists part 1 / part 2

Masterlist

↓ under cut ↓

BBU masterlist

General contents: pet whump, dehumanisation, amnesia, PTSD

Sam and Lucan 'verse

In a world where non-humans are enslaved, our characters are just trying to live out their lives in peace. And failing, mostly.

General contents: non-human characters, institutionalised slavery, fantasy racism, dehumanisation, PTSD

A Death in the Family

When his estranged father dies, Tristam, against his better judgement, attends the will reading, and ends up leaving with long-term bloodbag Sunday Afolayan and Eldrida, his father's former employee (and a terribly mistreated one at that, it turns out).

Even with Aileen and Evelyn's expert advice and friendship, it's tricky to bring Sunday back from the depths of his enthrallment, and Eldrida's struggling too. Six years under the cruel fist of Barnabas Sharpe was hard to survive.

It's a difficult recovery for both of them. But surely, things can't get worse now.

Contains: vampire whumper, non-human whumpee (vampire), lady whump, conditioned whumpee, disabled characters (Tristam has ADHD, Eldrida has anophthalmia, and Sunday has joint problems, a badly-healed arm, and an absence epilepsy-like condition), recovery whump, multiple whumpees

Botanist Whumpee

When the rich and powerful Sebastian Beaumont offers Alyssa a place to stay, she doesn’t expect to become his captive for three years. And when Silver rescues her at a party… well, the only thing she’s absolutely sure is better is that they don’t have a basement. They don’t have much of anything, actually. And she doesn’t know whether she can trust them or not, but she stays anyway. With no-one left to care about her, and Beaumont using all his money and connections to search for the pair of them, where else is she supposed to go?

Contains: recovery whump, captivity, lady whump, somewhat defiant whumpee, found family, intimate whumper

Cian and Row

In a world where superpowers are real, heroes and villains exist, and there's a large black market in powered people, Rowan's been enslaved for as long as they can remember. They're befriended when they're three by Cian Sinclair, a local empathic five year old, and at the age of eleven is rescued and adopted by the Sinclairs. Years later they become a supervillain, disappear for five years and reappear to reunite with their family, and attract another enemy, one far more powerful than their previous captors and obsessed with their healing powers.

Contains: slavery, PTSD, minor whump, past minor whump, immortal whumpee, discrimination, villain whump

Immortal Cannon Fodder

Phoenix, an immortal hero, joins a team that hurts them and uses them as cannon fodder. But their teammates are only doing what's necessary to help them all survive. Phoenix's regular sacrifices are necessary. And it's not like they've got anywhere else to go anyway.

It takes the arrival of Kai, a wolf-shifter and telekinetic, to help them see what's going on. But a friendship and a promised eventual transfer can't fix everything.

Contains: hero whump, abuse, past abuse, immortal whumpee

MD-264N

When MD-264N, the government's best weapon, runs to avoid being decommissioned and collapses on the doorstep of a small ragtag team of rebels, it's a surprise to everyone. But despite resistance, the weapon, now known as Morgan, starts to find their place, and the rebels soon find that they'll do anything to keep them free.

Out of the Frying Pan

Contains: living weapon, found family, dehumanisation/self dehumanisation, team dynamics, reluctant caretaker (not the main caretaker), recovery whump, caretaker whump, disabled caretaker (forearm amputee)

Operation Badger

In the year 2037, Earth is invaded by the Stex. 14 years later, superpowers start appearing in teenagers, and are apparently humanity's best defence against the aliens. What is Earth Security to do but train these people up as weapons?

Contains: sci-fi, living weapons, team whump, multiple whumpees, minor whump, aliens, disabled character

Five years ago Elis, former bodyguard and weapon of Lord Wulfric, was rescued from a fiery death by Col and Sæwin. He now lives in relative peace with them in Sorestan, a peace that's abruptly disrupted after an unwelcome visitor brings his past colliding with the present.

Contains: medieval whump, fantasy elements, living weapon

Out of the Water

Túathal, a merman, is captured and kept prisoner by pirates for his valuable scales. While Robyn, the youngest of the crew and not very popular, takes care of him, the others only bother with his scales (and anything that makes their extraction easier). Especially James. And once the rest of the pirates discover that Robyn and Túathal have become fond of each other, things only get worse.

Contains: merwhump, pirate whump, mutual caretaking, language barrier, outcast whumpee, defiant whumpee

Survival Skills

Whumpee is captured by a Whumper who wants to teach them survival skills. Painfully.

Contains: survival skills whump, sadistic whumper

The Greatest Show on Earth

Damon and Pythias are an unwilling two-person sideshow act in The Greatest Show on Earth, Pythias forced to kill Damon multiple times a day for the entertainment of paying circus patrons. Damon has been in captivity since birth, Pythias not quite so long (although certainly long enough), and they're both ready to get out.

But the outside world is even trickier to navigate than they imagined.

Contains: non-human whumpees, multiple whumpees, immortal whumpee, lady whump, circus whump, public whump, captivity, recovery whump, temporary character death (both implied and shown at times), guilty whumpee, whumpee as caretaker

Other writing:

Non-series whump masterlist

Miscellaneous writing, art and graphics

Fanfic/fanart (AO3)

BBC Merlin, Good Omens, Doctor Who, The Sandman, The Murderbot Diaries

Other stuff:

Whumpmas in July 2022 masterlist

Prompts

Ask games

Bad Things Happen Bingo

#whump #masterlist #whump masterlist #whump writing #whump art #updated intro and masterlist!#could do with one that has summaries and contents on...

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choicesficwriterscreations · 3 months ago

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CFWC F/AtoW: Aug 18 - 24, 2024

✒️ = Fanfic | 📱 = Text Fics/Edits | 🎨 = Fanart Ⓜ️ = Mature Content 18+ | 🔥 = Explicit/NSFW 18+ 🏳️‍🌈 = LGBTQIA+

BLADES OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

Aerin the master of yearning 🎨 | Aerin Valleros x F!Human!MC - @erixadraws

BLOODBOUND

Memory Lane ✒️Ⓜ | Adrian Raines x F!MC - @kinda-iconic

THE DEADLIEST GAME

Crystal: The Skinfluencer 🎨 | Crystal Gao - @storyofmychoices

Dante: The Actor 🎨 | Dante Valdez - @storyofmychoices

Farah: The Femme Fatale 🎨 | Farah Sabri - @storyofmychoices

Nick: The Host 🎨 | Nick Gallant - @storyofmychoices

THE FRESHMAN

The Press Secretary (Series) ✒️ | Chris Powell x F!MC - @eadanga Chapter 16

LAWS OF ATTRACTION

Milestones ✒️ | Gabe Ricci x F!MC - @eadanga

OPEN HEART

High 📱 | F!MC & M!OC - @liaromancewriter

Snuggling In ✒️ | Multiple Pairings - @jerzwriter; feat. characters from @storyofmychoices @lilyoffandoms

Summer Hideaway ✒️ | Ethan Ramsey x F!MC - @jerzwriter

Two Weeks 📱 | Ethan Ramsey x F!MC - @genevievemd

When Sparks Fly ✒️ | Aurora Emery x M!OC - @liaromancewriter

RED CARPET DIARIES

In One Kiss 🎨 | Thomas Hunt x F!MC - @chryzure C: @theartoflovingthomashunt

THE ROYAL ROMANCE

It’s your love I crave 🎨 | Maxwell Beaumont x F!MC - @erixadraws

Princesa Real 2 (Series) ✒️ | Liam Rys x F!MC - @belencha77 Chapter 32: Mas Alla Del Juego Chapter 33: Cumpleaños en Paris Chapter 34: Desafios y Amistad Chapter 35: Amigos y Aventura

The Royal Romance (Series) ✒️ | Liam Rys x F!MC - @eadanga Chapter 9, Part 3

The Royal Romance Retelling (Series) ✒️ | Multiple Characters - @fadingreveries Chapter 4

THE UNEXPECTED HEIRESS

Lillian & John 🎨 | John Somerset x F!MC - @bri1234

#choices fanfic #choices fanart #playchoices #pixelberry #cfwc fics of the week #cfwc art of the week #blades of light and shadow #the deadliest game #open heart #laws of attraction #the royal romance #the unexpected heiress #red carpet diaries #the freshmen

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alj4890 · 4 months ago

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Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

(Maxwell Beaumont x Olivia Nevrakis) in a Choices The Royal Romance Crackship

A/N Sorry this took so long. Life always finds a way to interrupt my plans with all my series. This chapter takes place the night of Liam's coronation ball.

Masterlist

Chapter 7

"Where is the appeal?" Madeleine hissed.

Olivia shrugged. She wasn't about to humor the countess with commenting on what was unfolding before them.

The press were swarming around Riley and Hana as they made their arrival in a horse drawn carriage.

"We've been top contenders this entire time." Madeleine furiously whispered. "How in the world did some random American win over everyone?"

Olivia frowned somewhat as Riley gushed to the press about how sweet Hana was in giving her a lift to the ball.

"She's nice." She observed. "People tend to like that in others."

"Nice does not mean you can effectively rule a nation." Madeleine reminded her. "It doesn't help you know the ins and outs of life at Court nor does it give one the finesse of dealing with foreign powers."

"Then you better hope that Liam agrees with you." Olivia taunted. "Or else, you're looking at our future queen."

Madeleine glared at her. "And that doesn't bother you? You who have pined for Liam since birth can watch him choose this nobody? Where's that infamous Nevrakis loyalty to our country?! Would you curtsy to someone like her?"

Olivia rolled her eyes over how dramatic Madeleine was being.

"If she is Liam's choice, then who am I to argue against him? He's our king now, Madeleine. Like every other Cordonian, we have to learn to accept the decisions he will make."

Gathering her skirt, she left the countess staring in disbelief.

***************

Oliva went directly to her chambers shortly after dinner for a chance to prepare for what was still before her.

Once alone, she took a deep breath as she began to plan for how the rest of her night would go. She knew she still needed to give Liam his gift, then she'd be forced to mingle and be seen at the ball.

She would have to find a way to sneak out and meet Maxwell at some point from the beginning of the ball until Liam made his choice. Then, if things progressed like she planned, they might even meet up again after the ceremony.

A thrill went through her at the thought. She'd done little throughout the day except think of how she felt in Maxwell's arms. It surprised her how easily his touch set her nerves to singing. She actually wanted to see just how much he could make her burn.

She walked over to the window, gazing out at her chosen spot. Her brow furrowed with the sight of servants going about the hedge maze to light lanterns at each of the numerous twists and turns.

"That's out." She decided.

The last thing she needed was to be caught under one of the lanterns in an illicit embrace with Cordonia's most fun loving lord.

She twirled about and began to pace. She needed a more private spot, one either dark or barely lit to begin this affair.

She considered other hidden nooks in the palace. The conservatory was somewhat ideal, but it smelled too much like wet dirt and fertilizer. The music room was far enough away from the ballroom and even soundproof, but there was no lock on the door. The library always had people coming in and out to have a break from the crowded ballroom. Even the various dens and studies left little to be desired in terms of privacy.

Her eyes darted to the king sized bed in her room.

We will have to be careful coming up here. If anyone saw the two of us going into my room, would they think we were meeting for something else or for sex?

Did she really care what conclusion anyone came to? Liam was choosing Riley this evening. It wasn't like Olivia was being unfaithful to him. And where would be the proof, even if someone did see her with Maxwell? Once the door shut and was locked, no one would know what went on behind it.

"It'll have to be here." She said to herself. "There's nowhere else we can go tonight."

Once her mind was made up on any subject, she did not like waiting around for it. Her lack of patience combined with her innate determination made being with Maxwell a forgone conclusion.

She wasn't above admitting she wanted him. The question that reverberated in her mind was a simple one: did she want Maxwell for life or merely for sex?

She knew his feelings for her went beyond a simple affair...but did hers?

Wrinkling her nose over something she wasn't quite ready to answer, she turned on her heel to check her reflection one last time.

Movement out of the corner of her eye made her still.

Glancing at the door, she noticed a letter that was slipped underneath.

Jerking her door open, she looked up and down the hallway filled with various nobles and dignitaries going in and out of their suites.

"Bastien!" She called out to one of the guards.

"Yes, your grace?"

"Did you see anyone stop by my door?"

The guard's eyes briefly touched on the envelope in her hand.

"No, your grace." He nodded towards the mysterious letter. "Is something wrong?"

"No." She gave a brisk nod of farewell and shut the door.

It must be from Maxwell, she thought with a hint of a smile. He used to write letters to me all the time.

Ripping into it, she eagerly began to see just what romantic nonsense he'd come up with this time.

Her smile disappeared the moment the words registered. Line after line revealed information on her parents and their mysterious death. Every single traitorous activity they participated in was gone into great detail. Then, at the end, there was the threat to reveal everything if she didn't withdraw and leave before Liam picked his chosen queen.

"No." She clapped a hand to her mouth.

It can't be true! They were heroes! They loved this country! All they spoke of was making it and Lythikos better. Their loyalty was beyond reproach. They would never risk everything for a chance to rule Cordonia.

They'd never risk leaving me alone.

Her temper took over her initial devastation.

It's a trick! Someone wants to make me doubt them. Make me leave here in disgrace.

But who?

One of the suitors?

Madeleine's desperate to win this. She lost her chance to be queen once before. To leave a loser again probably weighs on her, but she's above blackmail. Penelope knows she doesn't stand a chance. She's too stupid to ever think of something this clever. Kiara's too intelligent to use baseless lies to get her way. Hana doesn't seem to have enough nerve to ever do something like this. And Riley...

She stilled.

Maxwell swore Riley was genuinely kind. Could she be the snake in their group, pretending to be all that is good in the world?

Livid, Olivia shoved the letter in the pocket of her dress.

Swiping up Liam's gift, she stormed out of her room.

*****************

"I know it was you." Olivia hissed.

Riley whirled around, eyes wide in confusion.

"Excuse me?"

"I don't know what kind of game you're playing," Olivia glared at her, "but it won't work."

"What are you talking about?" Riley asked.

Olivia studied her and realized it couldn't be her. Riley had no idea about anything that went on in Cordonia, much less it's history. Why would she concoct some story about Olivia's parents when it was well known they were heroes? She already knew she was Liam's favorite. What would she have to gain in destroying Olivia's peace of mind and forcing her to withdraw out of disgrace?

"You didn't send it." She whispered.

Riley gently touched her arm.

"Send what?"

"Forget it." Olivia jerked her arm away and stepped up to Liam.

She somehow got through talking to him about her gift and then managed to calmly walk into the ballroom.

Her green eyes darted over the crowd, wondering who was out to get her.

She nearly flipped the person over her shoulder when she felt someone's fingers brush her hand.

Eyes narrowed, she turned around to see Maxwell.

"Hey." His tender smile appeared. "You look beautiful."

"Thanks." She mumbled.

"So?" He leaned closer. "When should we meet at the hedge maze?"

"That's not happening." She folded her arms, while glancing over his shoulder at the few nobles meeting in groups and pointing at each suitor.

They're either trying to figure out who Liam will pick or something worse. Am I the only one who received a threat tonight?

She then noticed the devastation forming on Maxwell's face.

"We're not happening?" He whispered.

"No, we are." She snapped. "Just not at the hedge maze."

Huffing in irritation, she hissed, "Meet me in my room in exactly one hour and ten minutes."

Before he had a chance to agree or say anything remotely how excited he was, she left him to mingle.

*************

"You seem excited." Riley teased as she tried to remember the dance steps.

"I am!" Maxwell grinned at her. "Tonight's the night where all our dreams will come true."

"I know I'm dancing with our future queen." He squeezed her hand before twirling her. "You will have your happily ever after. Liam will be with the love of his life. Bertrand will calm down and make it to forty without having a stroke."

"You really believe that." Her smile grew over how his words never ceased in boosting her confidence. "I love how you never doubt that everything will turn out like we hope."

He sighed softly as he thought of the one thing that made him feel so completely happy.

And I somehow ended up with the woman of my dreams.

"Have I thanked you for, well, everything?" Riley asked.

Maxwell's grin turned bashful. "I didn't do much to be thanked."

"Only encouraged me every single second. You have been by my side the entire time and made time for me and Liam to be alone." She reminded him. "You were the only person to believe I belonged here. You gave me the chance to see if Liam and I could have something more than some flirtation."

When the dance ended, she hugged him.

"You'll always have my thanks, Max, no matter how tonight ends."

He hugged her tight then noticed the stares they were receiving.

"Come on." He pulled away and tucked her hand in the bend of his arm. "Let's go see what they have to snack on."

**************

Between keeping an eye on the clock and discreetly interrogating the other suitors, Olivia's nerves were on edge.

There were times she'd stepped outside to reread the letter in an attempt to guess at who wrote this. One thing that bothered her about it was the amount of detail. There were dates and locations of where her parents had gone. This wasn't some simple threat that someone made up. There were claims of pictures and documents that would prove to the public the depth of her parents' betrayal.

Could it be true? Could they have done all this?

She knew her ancestors were notorious for doing whatever was best for themselves. A Nevrakis was known, not only for strength, but in using that strength to secure as much power as they possibly could by any means necessary.

Could her parents have been of that mindset? She recalled all the training they put her young self through. The speeches of how she needed to know how to handle herself if she was to one day rule.

Dear God. I thought they meant to rule as the Duchess of Lythikos. Did they really mean for me to rule as queen?

Her attention snapped from the letter to one of the outdoor bars. Sliding into the shadows, she hoped to overhear something that might point her towards a possible culprit.

Bertrand Beaumont was clinking glasses with, of all people, the former crown prince.

"It's been too long since we had a drink together." Leo added after taking a long sip. "How have you been?"

"Fine." Bertrand took a healthy gulp of his glass of bourbon. "I'll be even better once this night is over."

"I think everyone will." Leo snickered. "Liam is hiding it, but I think he's anxious."

"He has every right to be." Bertrand added. "He did just become king."

"It's not that." Leo rubbed the back of his neck. "It's about his choice. I think I might have ruined that for him."

Bertrand paused with his drink halfway to his lips. "How?"

"When I decided to abdicate, I thought Liam would have time to adjust. I didn't expect Father to make him immediately choose someone to marry, much less put him through this asinine social season." Leo grumbled.

"I understood why Father made me do it." He added. "I caused trouble everywhere I went." He downed the rest of his drink. "But Liam, he's always been the one to follow the rules. He never rebelled. Never gave anyone a reason to make public apologies on his behalf."

He sighed, motioning to the bartender for another round for the two of them.

"I worry that his sense of duty will deny him a chance at true happiness." He added.

"Perhaps not." Bertrand picked up his new glass. "King Liam seems to be rather fond of our suitor."

"Riley, right?" Leo grinned. "I've heard a lot about her these last few days."

"Nothing scandalous I hope." Bertrand shuddered. "House Beaumont can't afford even a hint of scandal."

"Nothing like that." Leo chuckled. "In fact, I think that..."

Olivia felt her heart drop. Bertrand's words echoed in her mind, drowning out their conversation, as she looked down at the letter in her hands once more.

House Beaumont can't afford even a hint of scandal.

If this letter ever got out to the public, her life would be ruined. No one would trust her. Any children she might one day have would be forced to hide in shame. Maxwell would be tainted by association.

He might even be forced by Bertrand to never see her again.

Gripping the letter that had the ability to implode her very existence, she quietly slipped back into the palace.

**************

Maxwell did his best to walk both discreetly and as if he wasn't in any hurry to wherever he was going. He glanced over his shoulder every few feet to make sure no one was following. The few times he caught someone behind him, they paid him little attention and ended up turning down a different hallway.

His heartbeat picked up speed once he was a few doors down from Olivia's room. He wasn't exactly sure how far tonight would take his relationship with her, but he knew he was willing to go any distance she wanted.

Tonight would be, at least he hoped, the beginning of many, many nights together. His mind was filled with plans for their future. Dates to sweep her off her feet were considered. Special places from their past were thought of as possible backdrops to when he finally professed his love to her. Time spent in each other's home to think on which one to use for a possible wedding if he was lucky enough to receive a yes to his proposal.

All this and so much more was within his grasp. After all the years of yearning and trying to get her to see him, he'd finally won. The dream was a reality. He could at least relax and know that nothing stood in his way.

Pausing before her door, he took a deep breath, glanced once more around him, and quietly knocked.

Olivia opened it, grabbed his shirt collar, and yanked him inside.

He didn't have a chance to say anything. The moment the door shut, she shoved him against the door to kiss him.

His body instantly reacted, pulling her close and kissing her back with all the passion he had just for her.

She moaned in delight, hands quickly getting to work on unbuttoning his shirt.

She broke away from his mind numbing kiss to unbutton his pants. Her eyes closed the moment his lips touched her neck.

"Get those off." She demanded when he seemed to ignore her efforts.

"What's the hurry?" He kissed her again.

She bit down on her bottom lip. She knew why she was hurrying. This was probably their only chance to be together.

Her decision to leave before Liam announced his choice was made the moment she realized that scandal would ruin her chances with Maxwell. She needed to discover the truth about this letter, and unfortunately that meant investigating on her own.

She couldn't involve anyone else. If she did, she might have to stand there and watch them walk away from her. It was best for everyone if she left them. Then, her heart would be protected. She wouldn't have to face being turned away in fear or disgust that she shared a bloodline with possible traitors if she distanced herself from those she actually cared about.

But for now, she'd allow herself this one chance to see what life might have been like, if she was free to be with Maxwell.

"We can't stay up here too long." She explained, unzipping her own dress. "People will definitely talk if we aren't waiting on Liam's announcement with the rest of them."

Her shimmery red dress pooled at her feet. With the way the gown was cut, it was impossible to wear a bra. Since she knew what they would get up to, she'd also decided against wearing any underwear whatsoever.

She felt her skin tingle in anticipation. Maxwell's bright blue eyes had darkened as he gazed upon her form. He hadn't moved a muscle as her dress slipped down her body. He'd only followed its path, taking in every bit of skin revealed.

Without a word nor taking his eyes off of her, he slowly shrugged out of his clothes.

Olivia felt her desire notch even higher. The serious expression on his face took her by surprise. She'd expected him to practically rush into her arms once she was naked. This unexpected side of him made her be the one to move towards him.

She draped her arms around his neck, pressing her pale body against the toned, hard planes of his own. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

"Touch me." She nearly begged against his mouth.

His hands cupped her face, thumb brushing against her lower lip. Silently he moved them down her body, only pausing when she gasped or moved restlessly against him.

The lower he went, the more she wanted. Grabbing his wrists, she pulled him over the to bed.

She sat down on the edge and tilted her head up when he remained standing. Her eyes met his.

"Say something." She pleaded, feeling suddenly nervous over his continued silence.

Swallowing, Maxwell knelt before her. His hands ran along her smooth legs, his eyes never leaving hers.

In a gravely voice, he said.

"I want you. I've always wanted you."

He surged up, pushing her down on the bed, lips crashing on hers.

She moaned, pulling him as close as she could. Her breath hitched when he broke away to kiss down her body. Scrambling back some to give him more room, she cried out in ecstasy when his tongue brushed against the tips of her breasts. The moment his lips closed around and sucked, she ran her hands through his hair, keeping him there as he sent desire through her veins.

His moans and whispers of how perfect she was made her heart ache as he continued to worship down her body. His determination to kiss and lap at every single inch made her writhe and scream his name in a litany that surprised her. Every touch of his hands, his lips, and body made her wish for the impossible.

She didn't want to have to walk away from him.

The moment he slid within her, she couldn't help but think how right it felt. It wasn't all supposed to clock this easily or this quickly. Shouldn't her experiment need more time? Had she been denying the truth in front of her longer than she first thought?

Unnerved by the realization, she cupped his face and kissed him more tenderly than she'd ever done with anyone.

The slow momentum he'd begun stopped the moment she wrapped her legs around his hips. She urged him on, moving faster towards what they both needed.

He harshly cried out her name when she clinched around him. A breathless whisper of his own name escaped her as she succumbed to the sensations he'd caused.

They laid there, still connected and holding tight to one another as their breaths began to slow.

Maxwell rose up some on his elbows to look at her face. A tender smile formed as he saw the brief look of wonder in her sated expression.

"Wow." He said, softly kissing her. "My imagination really, really sucks."

She snorted in disbelief that he could make her want to laugh at a moment like this.

"Does it?"

He nodded, lips brushing hers once more.

"Nothing in my fantasies could possibly live up to tonight."

"I take it you enjoyed yourself?" She couldn't help but smile while thoroughly enjoying the feel of him pressing her into the mattress.

"Couldn't you tell?" He eased off of her, rolled into his back, and pulled her on top of him.

"Oh I could." She settled more comfortably against him. "In case you are the least bit curious, I liked it too."

His grin blossomed in hearing that. A part of her was tempted to go into how much she loved being with him and in how she didn't want it to end.

She knew she couldn't. This would have to be a one and done experience.

At least until I finish my investigation and destroy whatever evidence I discover.

And possibly dispose the body of my blackmailer.

It was odd to willingly remain in his arms to bask in the afterglow. Normally she couldn't leave or kick her lovers out fast enough. She never wanted to talk or simply be held. They'd provided a service to her passionate nature and were no longer needed.

But Maxwell...

She wanted this. She wanted to hear any ridiculous thing that came to his mind. She loved the fact that he needed to touch her. His hands drifting down her back in lazy caresses was exactly what she needed while gazing at his handsome face. She loved seeing how perfectly content he was in this moment.

It reflected her own feelings with him.

Knowing he would insist on when their next night together could be if she didn't say or do something, she pressed a lingering kiss to his lips.

His arms wrapped around her with body already responding to her touch once more.

Moaning in frustration that they didn't have time for another round, she forced herself to leave his arms.

"We better hurry." She said while swiping up her dress on the way to the ensuite.

Maxwell hopped off of the bed and caught her before she made it inside.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind when she relaxed back against him and pressed a sweet kiss to her neck.

"Tonight meant everything to me, Liv." He admitted in a heartfelt tone.

Tears blurred her vision. She turned to respond with a deep kiss, holding him close for one last time before escaping.

Leaning against the bathroom door, she whispered.

"It meant everything to me too, Max."

**************

A short time later, Olivia found Liam talking to Riley in one of the acloves along the outer edges of the ballroom. Preparing herself for the inevitable, she told him she needed to speak to him.

When he seemed reluctant to leave Riley's side, Olivia blurted out that she was leaving.

"Why?" He searched her eyes for a sign of why she would leave before the ceremony was completed.

"There's no reason for me to stay." She glanced at Riley, hoping he would think it was because of her she was leaving.

She couldn't tell him the truth, especially when she wasn't certain what the truth was.

Liam stepped closer, lowering his voice to a whisper.

"What about the person you told me about? Don't you want to see if it's love or--"

She shook her head. "That's not going to happen now."

Saying goodbye before he could question her further, she turned on her heel and left all while ignoring the couple calling out for her to wait.

She made it outside and down the steps of the palace before being stopped.

"Wait a second!" Riley breathlessly pleaded. "Are you okay?"

"Like you care." Olivia snapped.

"I do." Riley gripped her hand. "I wouldn't chase you down if I didn't."

"Why would you?" Olivia grumbled, wrenching her hand free. "It isn't like we're friends."

"I thought we were on our way to being just that." Riley argued.

Olivia rolled her eyes. "I don't have time for this."

"Yes, you do." Riley moved and blocked her way into the waiting town car. "Now what's going on?"

Olivia handed over the letter. She didn't know what possessed her to trust this woman with it, but she suddenly wanted someone to know the truth of why she was running away. For some reason, she believed Riley would keep this secret.

Either I'm a fool for giving her something to hold over me, or she really is all that Maxwell claims.

Without a word, Riley scanned the contents, her mouth dropping open when she got to the end.

"Who did this to you?" She demanded.

"That's what I'm going to find out." Olivia snatched the letter back .

"We need to find them and demand the truth." Riley said, her own temper snapping at the thought of someone blackmailing Olivia.

"We?" Olivia laughed without humor. "There is no we in this. I have to find them. You," she sighed, "you have to go be with Liam."

"You're going to need help." Riley insisted.

She reluctantly stepped out of the way so Olivia could get into the backseat.

With the window rolled down, the fiery duchess reached out and grasped her hand in quiet gratitude.

"I'll be fine on my own."

"Do you think it's true?" Riley asked.

"I don't know." Olivia went to let go and found Riley holding tight to her hand once more.

"I promise I'll help you. I won't tell anyone that you're being blackmailed. Just tell me what you need and we'll get to the bottom of this. You shouldn't have to--"

"Stop." Olivia pleaded. She was surprised by Riley's fervent speech to help and by her own temptation to accept it. "Thank you, but you can't."

Easing her hand away, she nodded towards the palace.

"Go be with Liam. He needs you more than I do." She lowered the privacy barrier and told her driver she was ready. "And Riley?"

"Yes?"

"Watch your back." Olivia warned.

#the royal romance #trr #maxwell x olivia #maxwell beaumont #olivia nevrakis #choices the royal romance #choices fic writers creations #choices the stories you play

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