The Promise of Steel Page 2

  His palms set to her waist, softly at first, like he still wasn’t sure she was real. He was still pressing his hands to her bodice with little testing pulses of pressure, like he was testing the stiffness of the corset for some reason.

  Harriet shifted over, moving her body up onto his with a quiet, held-in gasp.

  She reached out and carefully unbuttoned the first button at the top of his shirt, then the second. His hands pulsed quickly again at her waist, but she only stopped to wonder why for a brief moment before tugging open another button.

  His kiss was becoming more fluent as she worked her way down his chest. She pulled his shirt open and slipped her hand under the thin cotton of his undershirt, ghosting over the tight skin of his stomach.

  He seized up again. There was a jagged, vicious scar there, she knew, she’d seen it. He touched it when he thought no one was looking. Set his fingertips to his shirt right about where the raised pink welt split down his stomach. She shushed him.

  “It’s alright,” she whispered. “Joshua, just breathe, just breathe and let me undress you.”

  He dropped his head away from the kiss, breathing hard. It was fear,not arousal. His hands around her were too tight. Each breath too heavy. Harriet tightened her hands in his shirt and forced herself to still the desire in her body. She couldn’t just tear him out of his clothes like she used to. Too much was different, small steps needed to be taken.

  “Harriet…Harriet…I…” he started. “It has been so long, Harriet.”

  “For me as well,” she retorted. She was shocked at her tone. She was too loud, almost accusing. Joshua looked up at her, not quiteas shocked, but still surprised. His hands pulsed at her corset again.

  It was hardly surprising that she was frustrated. One could only be the sweet nurse in a house for so long. Particularly when one had to just helplessly wait for things to improve, and was expected not to try to assist a husband who was supposed to just be better with no outside help.

  She gulped in air to steady her nerves and set her forehead to his. “I want you to make love to me.”

  “Harriet—”

  “Shh… it does not need to be right now. But please, if we could… at least…something, Joshua. Something. I miss you.”

  Joshua’s eyes, only an inch or two away, met hers, sad and shocked all of a sudden. “Miss me?”

  Harriett, feeling daring, pressed her lips quickly to his. “Yes, Joshua. I miss you. You are so… walled up in your head. I worry about how hard it is to bring you back. I worry you’ll go off into your own mind and I will never feel you with me again. Joshua,” – she sucked in a steadying breath–“How long before tonight has it been since you had even kissed me?”

  Joshua gulped and nodded. His hand came up from her waist and settled around her neck. He gently urged her back down into another kiss, and Harriet felt she might well weep from joy.

  His hands slid further down and opened the first tiny button of her dress.

  “I… Harriet, I truly do not know what I am capable of now.”

  “Shh,” Harriet said, beginning to undo the buttons of her own dress, starting at her waist and working up to meet Joshua’s progress down from her collar. “We can take small steps, my love. We’ll learn together. It will be alright.”

  Together, they finished undoing the buttons on her blouse. Harriet managed the more difficult skirt herself, then pulled both over her head and dropped them down onto the floor. Joshua’s hands settled back at her waist.

  “So.” Harriet carefully arranged the smile on her face. “You dream of me often?”

  “I do,” Joshua replied, still staring at her corset. It was odd. He had never paid any of her corsetry any special notice before. “Not as often as I would like.”

  Harriet took the light cotton undershirt between her fingers and tugged it gently out of his trousers. His hands fell to hers and she shushed him again.

  “Harriet, please,” Joshua panted. “I should leave it on. I’m… the wound is so ugly. Leave it on.”

  Harriet felt the pang in her heart again. “It’s just a scar, Joshua. I don’t think it’s ugly. Just…close your eyes. Let me be a good dream.”

  Joshua squeezed her hands again. She pulled his undershirt further out of his trousers, and while he didn’t move his hands away from hers, he also didn’t attempt to resist her.

  “Sit up,” Harriet asked quietly. Joshua, eyes still closed, lifted his torso from the bed. She pushed the light fabric from his shoulders and then kissed him deeply as she worked the undershirt up his body, inch by inch.

  He kissed back, his lips on hers, becoming more purposeful, more confident. She brought the shirt up to just under his arms and inched backward, just a little. Joshua’s eyes opened at the loss of contact, but he gave her a ghost of a smile and she pulled the shirt over his head.

  The expression on his face as he looked down at his own body was nearly surprise. He set his fingers to the jagged line that bisected his middle tentatively. Harriet wished she could see what he was thinking. It wasn’t just that the scar was ugly. Joshua had never been a dandy. His appearance wasn’t that important to him and such terrible scars had become a commonplace sight in London. There was a young man down the street from them with much of his lower face simply missing. Another man in their neighborhood was so badly burned that he hardly looked human anymore.

  Joshua’s scar was long and still, after many months of healing, livid. But comparatively, it was hardly ugly.

  His fingers set to either side of the scar, pressing gently as though afraid it would open up under his touch. Harriet set her fingertips under his chin and tipped his head back to look at her.

  He moved instantly forward, kissing her with all the fervor he used to have. She moved closer to him, scooting up his thighs to press their bodies together. His arm pushed at her back, bringing her tight to his body. Her hands found themselves in his hair, moving of their own accord.

  The only sound in the room, in the world, was their breathing. Joshua’s deep and fast, under his control, but still strained. Harriet could feel her own breath catching in her throat as she struggled to keep each one from becoming a moan.

  Being kissed like this was like a salve on a wound, each gasp and new press of flesh making her desperate for more. She wanted to feel Joshua’s body against her without impediment, wanted to feel his bare, warm flesh against her, his thick cock inside her, buried in her, arms around her as he worked into her, as close as two people could be. But she had to restrain herself, slowly coax Joshua out of his mood, out of his memories.

  Out of his clothes.

  She pressed her hips down against him, experimental at first, then with more urgency as the need for more, more skin, more touch, just more became unbearable.

  She rocked down against him, the moans she had been holding in pouring out as he pressed up against her and she felt the hard line of his cock through her bloomers. So close, not nearly close enough.

  Joshua’s hands scrabbled against her back, seeking out her corset strings, tugging them too hard and too erratically when his fingers did grasp them.

  She pulled back, set her palms at his elbows and pushed down.

  “Shh, you’ll cinch me in so tight I’ll never get out,” she said gently. “Here, here.”

  She carefully moved off his lap and turned her back to him.

  “Go ahead, love, undress me,” she said.

  ****

  Joshua felt like he was falling apart. Want and fear were rushing through his blood in equal measure, battering against the shore of his body. He felt exposed without his shirt, the feeling that he might split in two along that raised pink line only slightly lessened by Harriet’s touch. But notlessened enough that he wasn’t amazed at the concept of her corset.

  He had never though about it in any great detail before. It was just underwear. Only fascinating to an unmarried man unused to seeing it. The only strong emotion he ever remembered regarding Harriet’s corsetry with w
as annoyance at how difficult it was to get off in a hurry.

  But now as he touched the firm sides of the garment and felt how stiff and tight it was he could imagine it around his own body, holding him in one piece against the image of himself splitting open, which he logically understood was impossible, but always felt was inevitable.

  His shaking fingers pulled at the lacing, loosening it for Harriet so that she could unbuckle the front and he could feel her warm skin pulling him back out of that hole in his mind that he knew he could fall into at the lightest push.

  The fashion for corsets that nearly pinched women in half had passed. Harriet’s corset was a tube rather than an hourglass, but the tension of the strings still fought against his fingers.

  Harriet was fighting to steady her breath, as though the slight undulation of her torso was what was throwing him off, not his attempt to stay with her when his own mind was fighting back.

  He undid the knots after a couple false starts and tugged at the strings to loosen them with a motion that felt normal and familiar.

  There was a soft, muffled ‘snap, snap,snap’ noise as Harriet undid the front of the corset and pulled it away from her body. She turned back toward him, now in only her chemise. Her eyes were alight, like someone might look as they finally sat down for Thanksgiving dinner after a long wait.

  Still holding his gaze and smiling softly, Harriet began to lift the petticoat up, exposing her thighs. Joshua felt the palpitations of his heart stop, then speed up, almost the same way it had at the beach. It was hardly burlesque, but it made the next step so tangible, so imminent. He gulped and Harriet’s smile grew stronger, with a hint of the old Harriet to it. A little bit seductive, a little bit daring.

  He watched as she pulled her chemise over her head, revealing her round, pert breasts. She was naked. Her chest and cheeks were flushed the same seashell pink as her nipples.

  She crawled up the bed and sat next to him. One small, soft hand cupped his cheek and guided him back into a kiss that still tasted slightly of strawberries. The other hand settled at his trousers and palmed lightly over his stiff cock. He moaned into the kiss. Harriet tugged open the top button open and he could feel the tide of fear rising again.

  They had not been together in years. Not for the years he’d been fighting or the long months he had been healing. Years without her touch, years since an orgasm had involved more than a sticky dream or rushing himself off with his hand just to release the pressure, not even to feel any pleasure.

  He was going to pop like an overfilled balloon after only moments. There was no possible way that he would last long enough to reward all of her patient petting.

  She took hold of him through his trousers, not squeezing, but enveloping. He moaned as arousal temporarily won out.

  He’d missed her hands, the way she touched him. He hadn’t felt like a man in years either and here his beautiful wife wanted him to make love to her. He had missed her so badly.

  He felt another pull. The tightness of his trousers against his erection lessened.

  Fear again. His clothes were falling away, just as his body might fall away. And just because he knew it wasn’t true, knew the name of the fear—shellshock—didn’t mean he could fight against it.

  “Oh, Joshua,” Harriet muttered against his lips. He turned back into the kiss, concentrating on her. Her scent. Her warmth, her breath pulsing over him, her hands on him. He brought one arm around her warm, soft waist, touched his other hand to her round breast.

  His cock was throbbing with need. He startled when he felt her hand tuck underneath itand fish it out of his trousers. Now he was naked to the waist, and hanging exposed out of his clothes. Harriet tugged the waistband of his trousers down, not all that much farther down than they had already been, maybe an inch at the most, but it was enough for the fear to take over.

  His leg.

  What was left of his leg.

  How could he be expected to make love to his wife with… that hanging out in the air?

  He gasped and pushed her hands away. “No, no, Harriet, I…can’t, I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Shhh…Joshua. Joshua, why?” She muttered against his lips.

  He cleared his throat. “My leg, Harriet, my leg. I just…”

  Harriet pulled back from the kiss. Eyes wild, hair sticking out where his fingers had pulled it out of its shape. Lips kissed bruised, cheeks blood red.Shegasped for breath, set her forehead to his again and panted for a few moments before she began stroking him again, confident, steady strokes that made him quake with need.

  “Damn the leg, Joshua,” she said gruffly. “Lieback.”

  His body followed her instruction before his mind could object. He dropped backward onto pillows where he had been sleeping and watched her as she wrapped her delicate, almost doll like hand around his tumescent, ruddy cock and began to stroke.

  Watching the head of his cock disappear and reappear in her heavenly grip, it was several moments before he realized that she was still undressing him with her other hand,pulling his trousers and his underpants down inch by inch. They were below his groin now and she was still sliding them down. She stroked him faster and began inching them down further over his thighs. For every few inches of exposed leg, her tight grip moved over him faster.

  It was all too much. The pleasure, so long denied, screaming in his blood, the feeling of his onrushing orgasm taking him over, that tingle building at the top of his head and in his toes. Even the toes that weren’t there.

  But the fear was still there. The air on his skin taunted him, revealing his exposure. It wasn’t enough to stop the incoming train of his orgasm, but it was slowing it. Dragging it out as the fear started to creep back up, gain more power.

  He needed his jacket, he needed a blanket. Something around his body, something to hold him together.

  He cried out as the pleasure spiked in his body and, panicking, wrapped his arms around himself, holding his own chest and stomach as tightly as he could manage. His hips pistoned up into his wife’s grip as the fear started to fall away under the pressure of his arms and the desire took over. He rolled his head to the side, crying out into his pillow as he felt his whole body go rigid, and then felt his cock emptying, hot and wet over his stomach, spilling seed all over himself over and over again. Harriet’s stroke didn’t even slowuntil his cock pumped one last time.

  He lay there gasping for breath and feeling as though he had just run for miles and miles. It felt like hours before he finally opened his eyes.

  When he did, Harriet was perched on his thighs, naked as the day she was born, watching him with a hidden sort of smile. He pulled her down into a kiss, muttering “love you” and variations and nonsense over and over until she pulled away.

  Her blue eyes locked onto his own for a moment before she kissed down his neck, planting one kiss every few inches along his tendon. He shivered when she kissed down his scar. Her lips traced over his arms where they were still wrapped around his body. To his shock, she pressed a quick, perfunctory kiss to the tip of his cock, then dotted a few kisses down his thigh.

  “Harriet, no,” he whispered.

  His wifedidn’t even slow. She kissed the top of his thigh, and then kissed his stump. The smooth pink part that he tried not to look at. He huffed, protesting, and she kissed it again, then sat back up.

  “I love you, Joshua,” she sighed.

  “You need…I need to make you feel like this too,” he managed, head still spinning.

  “In a moment,” Harriet said. “Shhh… in a moment.” She cocked her head to the side. Her hips wiggled slightly. A movement he recognized. She was on edge as well. He could reach out, slip his fingers inside her and have her moaning his name in a few rubs and presses. He knew how. He remembered how.

  As though she could read his mind, she set her hands on his wrists.

  “Why did you wrap your arms around yourself?” She asked. “Why do you pull your jacket so tightly? Tell me the truth.”

&n
bsp; ****

  Harriet was surprised, and to be frank, even further aroused by the way that Joshua’s orgasm just kept going under her efforts. He was making an odd sound, a sort of vocalized shiver that came to crescendo with each pulse of his cock, spilling more and more fluid over her hand and his body. He was always wound so tight these days it was wonderful to feel the way that he puddled underneath her after he’d come. She was jealous of his release, but mostly glad. It felt like proof that things could eventually go back to normal. They just had to work out a few issues first. She could help with that. She’d said over and over and over again that she didn’t care about his injuries or his amputated leg. It did not disgust her. It did not worry her. He was alive and most of the time they were together.

  After so many cold, frightening, lonely nights, she was content with that much.

  Joshua had not listened, but maybe he would believe his eyes. She let herself be pulled down into his kiss, her body still demanding satisfaction. But she pushed the desire aside. First thing was first.

  She kissed down his neck.

  She kissed down his scar.

  With a thrum of daring she even pressed a kiss to the tip of his still half-hard cock and thrilled when it made him gasp.

  She kissed his thigh, and ignored his weak protests as she kissed the rounded end of his leg. Where there had been scars there was now only smooth new flesh, surprisingly soft against her lips. She kissed it again, to drive the point home, and sat up.

  “I love you, Joshua,” she sighed.

  “You need…I need to make you feel like this too,” he panted, wiping sweaty hair back from his head.

  “In a moment,” Harriet said. “Shhh… in a moment.” She cocked her head to the side. Her hips moved, outside of her control. Her body wanted to take him up on his offer, but now wasn’t the time. She set her hands on his wrists, where his arms were still tight around himself, as they had been since she’d undressed him.

  He seemed to think she hadn’t notice that he did that. Used jackets and blankets and the like as though they helped hold his body together. As though, for some reason she didn’t understand, his skin was not enough.