Chapter 6 #2
“We must also think of your aims,” murmured Edward, praying someone wouldn’t pass by the door and carry out news that Dick Stone had fallen in love. Would be bad for business.
“I suppose,” she said, sighing into his cravat.
“The only problem is that there’s no way a wife of mine would tolerate me having you as a friend,” said Edward. “She could be the most understanding woman in the world, but talk would destroy her.”
“Well, at least this way I’ll have my own money,” said Tabby.
“And even if my wife opposed our friendship, I wouldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d understand her concerns.”
Tabby moved to pull back from his chest, presumably so she could look Edward in the eye, but he placed a gentle hand at her neck and held her in place.
“Why’s that?” she asked, her exhalations hot against his cravat.
“You’ve now slept in my bed—”
“Our bed.”
“Yes, precisely,” he said with a chuckle, feeling that curl that so tempted him.
“Sleeping shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But what about the fact that I’ve fucked you? Licked your cunny? Sucked on your pretty little nipples?”
Her breath was coming faster.
“And I plan to do it all again,” he said, gently pushing Tabby against the wall and sucking kisses into her neck. “She’s going to hate you, Tabitha, all because I…”
She’d taken his hair in hand and forced his gaze to come to hers. This confession seemed momentous, and he could see why she’d want to watch his lips say it. Tabby’s eyes dropped again, and Edward tugged on that tempting curl resting over her shoulder to bring them back up.
The problem with yanking on a wig attached in only the most temporary way is that it rather ruins the moment when it slides off, suddenly leaving a girl with her cropped locks exposed.
Edward had the wig in hand, or rather, the curl in hand and the wig dangling against the floor. Tabby covered her face in horror, her gaze darting to the mirror and then looking away.
“I’m ridiculous,” she said, eyes filling with tears. “This whole thing is ridiculous.”
“No, no,” said Edward, wrestling with the wig to get it into his hands, then trying to shove it on her head. She balked, pushing him away.
“Don’t try. Don’t try to make…make me what I’m not. I’m ridiculous. I don’t have hair and I don’t know how to dance and we can never be friends,” she ended in a whisper.
Edward slammed the wig down on the dressing table and held Tabby’s upper arms to prevent her from bolting. “What’s the meaning of this? What are you saying?”
“Look at me,” she said, gesturing to her dress. She looked remarkably well, and he thought her hair adorable, especially now that he’d gone to the trouble of getting the lice out.
“I’ve looked my fill.”
“Don’t make me say it, Edward,” she rasped. Oh, his heart ached at the sound, but he needed to hear her so he might dispel whatever clouded her mind.
“You look lovely, Tabby.”
“I don’t, don’t lie to me! I know I resemble a lad in a dress because, well, that’s what I am! Or was, until you found me out. But I’ve been a boy for far longer than I’ve been a lady, and—”
It was too much; he couldn’t hear this a moment more, not without sliding a hand to her waist and pulling her close.
“I can’t become a courtesan overnight! Or even a woman! It’s impossible! I’m impossible!”
When Molly warned him that Tabby was delicate, he should have listened. His tailoress was an eminently sensible woman, and he’d been a fool. Only the rending of his heart could fix this mess.
Edward used the hand not at Tabby’s trim waist to cradle her neck so he might tilt her head back.
He had never thought he would see her dear cheeks streaked with tears in all his years of knowing her as Tobias.
But today hit something very tender indeed.
Something not even public humiliation and a hard slap from an auctioneer could reach.
“Do you think me so inconstant?”
Her eyes traced his face, and he let the words hang in the air for a moment as he sought to master himself. Her tears were just too much to bear.
“It’s just that I’m not—”
He had her pressed to his waistcoat again, damn her. He didn’t want to hear a fucking word against her, especially not from her own mouth. “Gather your hems, Tabby.”
“What?” she asked.
“Lift your skirts. I’ve something to tell you, and I mean to punctuate it with my fingers.”
She brought her fine new hems up, jerky and unsure, all while he stroked the soft hairs at her nape.
“That’s it, show me your little kitty,” he said, letting his palm slide up between her thighs. She squeezed them together, trapping his fingers.
“But I have smalls on,” she said. “Molly — the Breechess — she didn’t have drawers made up, so—”
“If you think that would stop me,” he said, pressing his fattened cock into her hip so she could feel how he ached for her cunt despite her lack of lacy underthings. “Now, I’m going to shove my hand into your smalls and make you come so you don’t have any thoughts at all other than pleasure.”
“Oh,” she said as his hand dipped into the waistband of her smallclothes.
“Did you really think me so inconstant as to give a single fuck what you wear?”
“But you didn’t think that when I was a lad.”
“Precisely because I thought you were a lad!” he cried. “I wouldn’t interfere with a child!”
“I told you plenty of times I was full grown,” she protested with a whine as Edward slid two fingers between her nether lips.
“Forgive me for being conscientious,” he said, teasing her entrance in a way that didn’t seem very contrite at all.
Edward slipped a finger, then another into Tabby’s channel, holding still and pinning her in place on his digits.
“Are you going to fuck me?” she asked, fully under his control.
He stepped closer and spread his fingers inside of her, letting her feel the strain and stretch.
“Oh, I’ll fuck you alright,” he said. “But what you don’t seem to understand is that I don’t give a damn how we do it.”
Edward worked in and out, getting his thumb involved in rubbing her slippery little nub.
“I fuck you, you fuck me, I give not a single fuck how we do it. So long as you’re with me.”
She stopped writhing as she made sense of what he was saying. “But I don’t have a piece, Edward,” she said slowly as if explaining something very complicated to him. “How would…”
“You like how I fill you, just like this?” he asked, pressing his fingers into a spot that had Tabby trembling.
She whimpered, her lips becoming well-bitten as she fought the impulse to cry out.
“You could fill me. You could abandon dresses today and only ever wear breeches for the rest of your days.”
“But your wife—”
“Fuck my damn wife!” he growled, working her harder and holding her near. Edward was dangerously close to spending in his breeches or spilling the secrets in his heart — he wasn’t sure which was in danger of happening first.
“But Edward—”
He was guilty of overpowering her, using his superior experience with lovemaking to quiet these doubts in her mind, and he didn’t regret it. This was a worry he needed to put to rest for good.
“Do you think there’s a form you could take that would change what I feel for you?”
It might as well have been a confession of love.
For him, it went beyond the words that others had said so many times before.
The words that dried and blew away when seasons changed.
This? This was something eternal, burrowed deep in his soul and causing him daily, pleasurable pain.
The thought of living without that ache became unthinkable.
“Wear what you wish; we can fuck however you like,” he said. “Just please, Tabby, put those doubts aside. I can’t bear to hear them. You’re breaking my heart.”
“I don’t—”
Edward lowered his face to hers until his hot breath against her lips stopped her speech. She was shocked. Good.
“I almost thought you were going to kiss me,” she said with a nervous laugh, her hand coming back to steady herself on the dressing table.
“I mean to,” he said. “If you continue speaking nonsense.”
She nodded no, and he retreated to give her space.
“Oh, I don’t mean…I wasn’t upset,” she said, her expression free of guile. “It’s just that you surprised me. Dick Stone doesn’t kiss. Everyone knows that.”
He crowded her once more, forcing her little arse onto the dressing table. “Then it’s a good thing I’m Edward to you, Tabby.”
And he lowered his mouth to hers for his first kiss in a damn long while.
She was soft and slow, tentative as he recalled how to do this and guided her through it. When he sucked her lower lip and then upper, she moved against the fingers still within her channel, giving him license to drown her in sensation.
“Tabby, my Tabby cat, any way you’ll have me,” he whispered as he peppered kisses over her tear-stained cheeks.
“Oh god, I wish you were inside me,” she sighed, almost as if she were as anguished by this stolen moment as he.
“But I am, darling,” he said, thrusting harder.
“Your cock. What would it feel like to have all of your seed inside my belly?”
Edward groaned, his boy jumping in response. She was going to kill him, flood his smalls with spend.
“You’d give it to me, wouldn’t you?” she asked plaintively. “Even if I’m not a fancy lady?”
He was on the cusp of telling her exactly what she meant to him, explaining just how much he adored her when he thought better of it and covered her mouth with another bruising kiss as he brought her to paroxysm at last on his slick fingers.
Tabby’s feet kicked slightly as her body shook under the force of the eruption, and she clung to him as she went through the waves of bliss.
Edward now sported a wet spot on his breeches simply from bringing the young woman he loved to pleasure. Mortifying, but still worth it to have felt her break on him once more without him spilling his feelings.
Nothing good would come of Tabby knowing the truth of his heart.