when pain is over, remembrance of it becomes a pleasure

by doraemons

Summary:

Anne and Frederick Wentworth, in exquisite marital felicity.

Chapter 1: box the jesuit

Summary:

If he closed his eyes, the moonlight through the porthole might no longer illuminate the chasm between reality and fantasy.

Captain Wentworth was too brilliant, too pragmatic in his post to allow the interference of personal afflictions in professional duties. But if he was a mite brisk in the issuing of his orders, if his inquiries into the health of his Lieutenants and their families were made as common civilities rather than out of sincere affection and curiosity as they had been before - if he chose to look out behind their vessel at the faraway shoreline of England during the visiting Admiral’s Dinner, rather than graciously entertain his fellow officers with tales of the Asp hours into the evening - then it was of no one’s concern but his own, and his behavior went unremarked upon.

But not unnoticed. For their part, the crew of the Argo were not unconscious to their Captain’s agitation, perhaps because many of them had sailed with him the previous year and thus knew well the cause: the noticeable absence of Mrs. Wentworth (now a Lady Wentworth, after the exploits of the Argo alongside the Bellerophon over the summer). When at last the First Lieutenant resolved to inquire after her, it was communicated to the crew that Lady Anne was in perfectly good health, albeit in a delicate condition that would render her unable to sail long voyages for the better part of a year at least. Congratulations and well wishes were offered by the crew and accepted; but none could be a balm to Captain Wentworth's heart.

**

When he retired that evening, he could not settle. Twice he rose to the writing desk to make additions to his letter, though he had sent Anne the last only a few days prior. But where pen had always been his staunch friend and confidant before, it seemed to fail him now. He pressed a kiss to the writing paper and wondered if it was as good as kissing the cold night air.

At last he blew out the candle and lay back, placing the still-unfinished letter on his bedside table and clutching the silvery hair ribbon his Anne had given him to keep under his pillow, trying not to feel as though he were the homesick Ulysses to her distant Penelope. He could almost feel her smile against his cheek - if he closed his eyes, the moonlight through the porthole might no longer illuminate the chasm between reality and fantasy. The rough seaman’s hand caressing his thigh would be a slender white one half its length; the soft rise and fall of waves outside the porthole was his wife’s open-mouthed sigh.

He shivered. In between kisses their attention was jointly drawn to his breeches, of course; she was all blushing delight, he, all heat and reverence. Here with her, he tossed aside Sir Captain Wentworth and became Frederick again, her Frederick. Still in his lap, she traced the shell of his ear with her lips. Her hand fell to his chest and she felt his rapid heartbeat, and she smiled in flushed pleasure against his skin. Here she was before him, in that state of fire that he so adored, that he had never forgotten even when he once tried to convince himself he had.

The silk ribbon was still clasped tightly in his other hand; all her pale honey hair billowed around her waist and took on the ribbon’s silver shine in the moonlight. The twinkling of starlight reflected in her dark eyes brought to mind the glittered surface of the Mediterranean Sea at night. She hovered over him, her silvery hair curtaining his face and hers, and took his length in her small hand; and their mouths met again and again for breathless minute after minute, or perhaps hours. He had the handsomest of mouths, she told him as she always did, and he smiled and laid her back so he could kiss down her stomach - then lower - to show her yet again, he said with playful solemnity, that his mouth was not merely ornamental.

As her giggles became mewls again, every curve of her delicate frame, every gentle slope of smooth, sweet-tasting skin drew him in like rolls of waves over vast acres of rippling ocean. He temporarily abandoned his path downward, kissing back up over her stomach again to her keen whines. The cool mist of the cabin had grown warm and syrupy-thick; the scent of saltwater in the air was replaced by that of sweat and desire. He skipped past the space between her thighs and moved down to her knees to drop kisses, one after another in quick succession, and she whined and pawed at him again, kittenlike. Before her little feet had the chance to beat against him, he balanced himself up on his elbow to kneel before her, and placed more soothing kisses on her flushed skin as he parted her legs.

His sweet Anne, so elegant and self-possessed in conversation and in manners, cried with total abandon in bed. But here, he could not suckle upon her sex for hours as he liked - the wooden walls of a ship were thin - and she stifled herself with a tightly-fisted pillow. She did not succeed in quieting herself entirely, however, and with each lick and suck into and above her slit, he heard and felt the susurrations of the sea. He might've been in his brother's church: his head bent low, lapping at sweet Communion wine; his eyelashes fluttered half-open and closed in a different sort of intoxication. He was content to drown there, her supplicant, but once she was overcome another time she pulled him up, and the hand not in his hair reached down below the hem of his nightshirt.

Frederick clutched her tighter, tighter, for dear life, and she pressed one bruising kiss after another across his chest. Outside, waves crashed against the windowsill and he no longer spared a thought for muffling any of his ragged gasps of sweet and good and mine in the juncture of her neck and shoulder as she happily agreed with yours, yes, I am yours, yours, yours, and then and you - ah - and you are mine - and he had groaned and pressed her so vigorously into the mattress that their bones were one, he had surely crawled out of his skin into hers, and she must have melted out of her flesh into his.

He nosed through her fragrant hair and breathed in lavender and attar of roses, her dear scent, and wrapped one hand around her waist and the other gently, firmly around her long neck, right as he arched into her touch - into his own. The rosy tips of her breasts were crushed against his frame; he bent his head to lick into her rosebud mouth; rose, roses everywhere, all he could smell were rose petals and her wet heat. Distantly, he felt that he was atop the White Cliffs of Dover, overlooking the sea - that he was at the edge of some great precipice. Anne turned her head to nip his ear, and her breath warmed the tendrils of hair at the nape of his neck. Her next words came out as a sigh: Frederick, I love you.

With a final shuddering breath, he buried his face in the skin of her silky throat, his silk pillow, and spent into her hand, into his, her name on his lips.

Notes:

Box the Jesuit: Sailors’ term for masturbation.

Chapter 2: give a green gown

Summary:

“I was thinking that we might see a faerie here.” She knew what he would say before he said it.

“I see one already.”

Some administrative naval business, routine and not a focus of this narrative, necessitated for Captain Wentworth a visit to Scotland. The Wentworths decided to make a summer trip of it, and lodged in the forested estates of Frederick’s former superior officer and their now family friend, whom he had previously served under aboard the HMS Speedy. Though the man himself regretfully could not be present to entertain them, his relatives did well to make up for his absence upon receiving Anne, her husband, and their little children to their great house: a sprawling, turreted seat set high above the North sea, with pale stone walls rising from the green sweep of lawn as though grown out of the earth alongside oaks and Scots pines. The children oohed and aahed at towers standing like watchful sentinels, catching sunlight through the gaps between their turrets; each of their wide windows looked out across forest and water. The long drive was shaded by old trees and gave way to a gracious entrance court, where the bustle of their arrival was soon softened by the warmth of their hosts.

One evening saw husband and wife on a leisure walk through the woodland park praised by the groundskeepers as having “the finest, most fertile soil in north Scotland, that could rear any quantity of healthy plant life,” whilst their son and daughter remained indoors playing blind man’s buff with their host family’s children after dinner.

The couple followed the line of hedgerows into an opening in the woods. Bellflowers and shell-pink dahlias hemmed the lush green path; once or twice they each knelt and plucked a blossom to tuck into the cut of the other’s shirt-pocket and décolleté, and behind one's ear and in the other's hair. Gloaming sun-rays imbued the greenery with the same rich colour as Anne’s malachite earrings, filtering through limned oak trees onto mossy earth. Each breeze was heady with the the smell of honeysuckle. She rolled one flower back and forth between her fingertips and sipped the nectar, then offered it to her husband. He leaned in and suckled at her tongue instead. His mouth met hers, again and again, sharing sweet honey between them.

The tall oaks above them grew sparser until they at last reached a sun-soaked meadow. Grass flowed in bonny waves all around them and purplish sprays of evening primroses sugared the air. Butterflies flitted over the bluebells in the shade, under the large oak in the center of the clearing.

Anne suddenly had the absurd thought that they were being watched by faeries.

But no, that wasn’t right - it was really the sense of immense life all around. Every branch and blade of grass was a little village of hundreds of thousands of little creatures in seemingly sedate, well-rooted calm that was in fact not at all so, reaching up into golden sky and then below into near-abyssal darkness, which too bore little flames of light wherever sunbeams managed to reach and grab hold: and perhaps that was the truer light.

She recalled reading of “animalcules,” microscopic animals supposedly covering every thumbs-width of the earth. Were they here, unwitting witnesses to her walking with her husband and kissing him? A great tide of affection swelled within her chest for each and every one of them. She walked toward the oak tree, Frederick following closely behind.

When she looked to her husband’s face again, he was smiling. His eyes held a soft light. “What are you thinking, Anne?” He drew one of the violet asters around them and began to stroke it across her collarbone.

“I was thinking that we might see a faerie here.” She knew what he would say before he said it.

“I see one already.” She knew what he would do before he did it, too. He kissed her.

When they pulled apart, even the thin white evening gown Anne was wearing seemed too much for the damp air. Her skirt hiked up to her knees as she reached beneath it and peeled sweat-slick stockings from her legs. “One wouldn’t think Scotland’s summers could leave me drenched after Bermuda.”

Upon hearing no response, she looked up. Frederick was leaning against the broad trunk, lawn shirt a stark white against the brown bark. He had dropped the flower in his hand, his arms crossed with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows as though he were back at sea. There weren’t any words for the look in his eyes.

She walked to him. Distantly Anne heard what ought to have been the piercing trills of a wren, instead dulled as though she were submerged in water. She could neither hear the lush swallows, what might have been skylarks, nor the gurgling stream that they had passed on by some time ago. In her belly she felt a familiar heavy, liquid sensation. Frederick held out his hand, not once looking away from her eyes, and when she placed her silk stockings in his open palm, he turned and deposited them in the hollow of the oakwood trunk behind him. He looked over his shoulder and conferred a slow, easy smile. From far away, a sweet-smelling breeze sailed toward her.

**

They lay there under the shade, his head resting on her bosom and his hands fluttering over her willowy legs and hips, man and wife melting into one another in the soft bed of Eden-green grass.

Then his fingers did a small cunning movement on her. Anne let out a breath.

He propped himself up on his elbow and mouthed at the valley between her breasts through her gown - the corners of her lips turned up - and in an instant he had her neckline pulled low. His hands and mouth were stealing her up in cunning squeezes and caresses, and she threw back her head, luxuriating, stretching out her lithe frame like a panther. He sucked kisses into her skin, licking, flicking his tongue around her nipple, closing his lips around the little nub and pulling, tugging with his teeth, then laving slow, deliberate circles with his tongue over her areola in a vicious cycle. After each set of ministrations, he blew cool air over the wet skin. His thumb was making little circles, too, now, over - there  - she could hardly think, lost in her soft cries and bucking into his hand, and the forest suddenly seemed deathly still in comparison. The roaring in her ears was growing louder and louder, her wails so pitched and obscene that she must have frightened off the deer and wood warblers they had seen earlier, her body writhing so vigorously that he had to pin her down with his thigh - and then he bit down not on her nipple but the flesh right above it, and hooked the fingers already inside her up and forward -

And she cried out. All the little releases that had climbed out of her were nothing to the immense wave that at last broke shore, and when she twisted in his arms, he moved with her and continued his cosseting with his hands and tongue. She fell, limp and boneless.

His fingers separated from her with a wet trail, and he sucked the moisture from them while she caught her breath; her sap was still oozing out from between her thighs. She reached up on trembling arms to kiss him and missed him once, twice, then gave up entirely now that they were laughing too hard for their open mouths to do anything but scrape teeth.

Still chuckling, she spread one hand across the blade of his shoulder and reached delightedly down their bodies with the other. She stroked him just once before he slid into her again, slow and happy and warm, stretching her raw.

“You - you feel - oh,” she stifled herself in his shoulder until he gripped her chin and gently set her head back into the earth with a plea for her to continue, and made it through a round or two of her "yeses" and "ahs" and "oh pleases" before he tucked her knees over his shoulders, and leaned close over his wife until their flushed faces were hardly a breath apart. 

He pressed her down into the earth and set a brutal tempo, quite mindless with sensation, secure in the knowledge that years of marriage had long accustomed her to his size and strength. It was invigorating, it was perfect, and every inch of her from the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet burned with some brilliant flame as he impelled into her over and over. When she again felt the familiar tightening and release, she hooked her feet deeper into the sinews of his back and pressed downward with almost bruising force, and he, with a long groan, spent deep inside her and collapsed - but within moments, Frederick knelt before her again and buried his face between her white thighs, alternately kissing and nosing at the top of her swollen sex, tasting the tangy mix of her spend and his, sapid evidence of their rapture - until another release simply flooded her.

** 

The two lay tangled in a giggly embrace. She took his face in her small hands and smiled against his lips, at the taste of herself still on his mouth.

"Who do you think won?" he asked.

Anne nuzzled her nose to his. "Mm. How do you mean?"

"The children. They must've finished their game. Who won, would you say?" 

She hmm-ed again with a short laugh and yawned. "Whoever cheated most outrageously, I imagine."

"No faith in their sense of strategy or tactical thinking," he observed.

"But you do, you have faith. Very well, trust a naval captain to appreciate military precision in children's games."

Frederick's fingers tightened around her waist. "It's not military precision I'm appreciating at the moment." His eyes lingered on her still-flushed face, on her hair spread behind her on soft moss. "Though your tactical retreat from the drawing room was masterfully executed. 'Perhaps we should survey the gardens,' indeed."

"The gardens did warrant surveying," she protested. "They're beautiful."

"I see. And what is your assessment, Mrs. Wentworth? Are the roses properly cultivated?" He gave her a quick kiss. "Is the land - thoroughly - plowed?"

Anne started laughing again and he deluged more feather-light kisses and licks to her cheeks, soft and wet with her earlier tears and perspiration. 

Years later, when the twin boy and girl sired from that evening’s activities were well and grown, Anne would attempt to account for their mutual fascination with botany and natural history. There was a reason, surely, why Theodore (“Ted” to friends, “Teddy” to family) was elected as a Fellow for the Royal Society before he turned two-and-twenty, and Hope’s botanical paintings would be displayed in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge for some decades to come. Frederick would turn to Anne, let his smile turn insolent in the way he knew she liked, and say: it was small wonder, given what fertile ground they’d been planted in.

Notes:

Giving a green gown: sexual intercourse, performed out of doors, on the grass; ‘a throwing of young Lasses on the Grass and Kissing them.’

The names “Teddy” and "Hope" were borrowed from oldshrewsburyian and her excellent story For Those In Peril On The Sea.

The "great house" owned by the Wentworths' family friend is pretty much Dunrobin Castle; I was inspired by Barry Lyndon!

Chapter 3: make feet for children’s shoes

Summary:

As a girl, Anne could pretend in front of Lady Russell that love was vulgar; that love was for wayward women. But when night fell, she dreamt up a man in whose arms she’d make anchorage, who made love like a sailor stilling salt from water.

Anne’s temperament and ability peculiarly suited her to the duties of a wife and mother, or so Lady Russell had often remarked to Lady Elliot in her final months - perhaps to praise and comfort, perhaps to plead that the sickly lady ought to persevere and see her grandchildren by the daughter most like her. Little Anne had flushed every time she overheard. 

What were those duties? How best should they be performed? Years later, Anne had dutifully studied Aristotle’s Master Piece and a number of other marital hygiene manuals at nineteen, sure of their applicability in her near future; then again at two and twenty, in wistful remembrance; and then again, secretly, at five and twenty, in one of her low moods during which she could not bear to leave her bed even to go on her daily walks to Lady Russell’s or to meet the tenantry and cottagers of her father’s, and had become dangerously apt to wallowing.

Afterward, she had stopped.

When she was thirteen, the subject mortified her; she was too young to appreciate the gravity of marriage and motherhood, she admitted that freely, but there was something more to her unease at Lady Russell’s happy speculations: fear. Terror warred with longing as she wondered what it might be like to have a husband - at best, an equal partner in life, to protect and cherish her and rely on her understanding and capability in turn. The more she saw of the society around her, even the society that discerning Lady Russell introduced her to, the less faith she had in finding such a person; the intelligent landowner, the benevolent and charming gentleman born into rank and consequence and deserving of every birthright, seemed something out of the fairy tales that her mother had read to her and Elizabeth. But what a thing it might be to have someone who saw her for herself, who understood her, who wanted to listen to her, who had insights of interest to tell her in turn!

Would his consideration extend to the duties of the marriage bed? Girls talked at school, married women shared stories, and workers and their bonny girls snuck out to corners of the grounds, unaware of their young mistress reading silently nearby. Anne possessed an innate curiosity, a trait she could not say was deserving of reproach given how well it had served her before. It was not unnatural, then, that she should wonder about this particular marital responsibility.

Prior to the act, “want of exercise and idleness were very great enemies to the work of generation, and indeed, enemies both to soul and body.” In this instruction, an older Anne would see a great deal of wisdom. The weeks spent climbing and hiking across the gentle cliffs at Lyme prior to her marriage, and the few months aboard ship assisting in various tasks - and learning some basics of self-defense from her husband (she was a poor shot, but could comport herself decently with a dagger and boarding cutlass, to Frederick’s pleasure), and her habits of practicing by herself as a form of exercise afterward - these had brought about great improvements in her. Sallowness and frailty had given way to a gently toned, lissome figure, and consequently, or so she suspected, her confinement had been a speedy affair: as Sophia Croft had said afterward, entirely smooth sailing.

Martial felicity was also encouraged: “Women, in order to conception, should avoid all manner of discontent, and the occasion of it; for discontent is a great enemy. to conception; and it so dispirits either man or woman, that it hinders them from putting forth that vigour which ought to be exercised in the act of coition.” This was such a matter of course that Anne thought it not even worth consideration.

Perhaps the complexity lay, then, with the act of conception itself. There were a great many rules, it seemed; one ought not to perform the act too often, “for satiety gluts the womb, and renders it unfit for its office.” An order perfectly consistent with Lady Russell’s gentle strictures when Anne had first prepared to come out to society. It was even in accord with Mary’s whispered confidences after the birth of her sons. But it was not at all congruous with Anne’s wishes; that much she learned, too, as she grew older.

As a girl, Anne could pretend in front of Lady Russell that love was vulgar; that love was for wayward women. But when night fell, she dreamt up a man in whose arms she’d make anchorage, who made love like a sailor stilling salt from water.

**

It had been two years since their son was born, and now that Frederick was on shore leave for some short months until he gained command of the Argo once more, every time she saw her husband seat their son in his lap, kiss his dark hair and lashes, and ask him, “Are you my sweet boy?” followed by “Yes, you are,” with a pinch of his pink cheeks, fierce longing gripped her heart like a vise. Dreams of another sweet little baby overtook her nearly every night: a girl, perhaps, with her own pale hair and Frederick’s blue eyes. When she brought up the possibility of another child to him that night, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.

Several “darlings” and “sweethearts” were happily murmured beside her lips, to her jaw, in her neck - he was on top of her now, their kisses deep and lasting, and at last he pulled back to peer down at her face with soft eyes, kissing her palm. “Just think of it,” he said quietly. “He might read to her when they are older.”

She pulled him back down to her mouth.

His hands were everywhere on her, hungry, ardent, and she spread herself for him, open and pliant, arching into his mouth with each of his little nips on her skin. Every little thing around her - his feverish body above her, the smooth rub of the soft sheets below - every sensation turned her blood to liquid fire. Her hands roamed over the smooth muscle of his back, delighted with the feel of it flexing underneath her fingertips, in raptures over every inch of skin she was allowed to touch and claim for herself as she rolled her hips together with his.

Heat continued to spread from her center to the very ends of her fingertips and to the soles of her feet; her limbs felt as though they were alight, and the unremitting need inside her had grown into a great meteor burning her up -

“Frederick - I feel as though I - I think I shall - ”

“Yes, that’s it, my treasure, let go, my good girl, my Anne - ”

“No-ohh, I feel as though - ” She could hardly speak. How would she tell him she felt not only her imminent orgasm but something more, altogether beyond -

And then she was overcome, and she cried out - and, this time, she expelled onto him what might have been a spray of her own release. She had not even a moment to be wondering or embarrassed when he suddenly gave a loud, delighted groan and sank into her with such force that she was bent in two; she was sugar syrup, she was molten, and somewhere in the very back corners of her mind she realized her release was not quite done with yet, though surely it had lasted hours or perhaps several sunlit days. When she finally reached the tail end, Frederick likewise spent and collapsed over her with a harsh gasp but didn’t waste a second - pulled out and had his fingers, slick with her arousal and his, hooked in her, curling up, up, up, wringing pleasure from her body until that same mysterious sensation came over her again, as though she were a pot of hot, honey-sweetened tea about to spill out everywhere - and lo, the same rivulet of sweet water escaped her, and she heard his mumbled “My God,” from far away, as though she were at sea and he on some distant, celestial shore. 

Once they each had caught their breath, she suddenly registered the large damp spot on their bedding. She turned, blushing, to speak in regard to wetting him and the blankets so thoroughly, but he cut in before she opened her mouth.

“It is a perfectly natural act; indeed, it may occur when there is - when - upon continuous caress, and - I felt no discomfort. Rather, I,” he paused and cleared his throat. “I hope you know there is nothing to be ashamed of.” His eyes were gentle, but his expression was as carefully neutral as it had occasionally been earlier in their marriage: back when she had inquired about different acts of lovemaking and asked him to tell her what else they could do, and he had given no hint of his own preferences so as not to influence her likes and dislikes until she stubbornly drew them out of him.

“But did you like it?”

He glanced down and murmured something, presumably in assent, but exactly what, she was sure not even he knew. She stared at him. When he at last met her eye, he looked away almost immediately. The hint of a flush was steadily rising up his neck, and the corners of his lips twitched ever so slightly.

She realized, with a jolt, that he was very pleased with himself and trying not to show it.

“Well, love,” said Anne pleasantly, raising her head to prop her chin up on both hands, “I am always glad to be a credit to your self-regard.”

He turned on his back and threw an arm over his red face.

“But,” she continued with mock seriousness, paying no mind to his laughter, “I think I may deserve more credit for my earlier display.” In over three years of marriage, his easy, sportive manner had fully penetrated her own. “You have always said that there are none so capable as I -”

She was interrupted by his mouth descending upon hers. The reader may rest assured that Frederick discharged his conjugal duties with a sailor’s characteristic thoroughness, and that night, Anne’s sleep was dreamless.

Notes:

Make feet for children’s shoes (also make feet for children’s socks, ...stockings, ...for socks): to beget children.

This chapter was inspired by Salma Deera’s poem Salt.

Chapter 4: quail-pipe, and the making use of

Summary:

"[Mary] had something to suffer, perhaps… in seeing Anne restored to the rights of seniority, and the mistress of a very pretty landaulette."
– Persuasion, chapter 24

Anne wondered what was keeping her husband. The moment the thought struck her, their coachman materialized from inside the building with fine naval alacrity.

He tipped his hat to her with a bow. “Beg your pardon, madam. The Captain insisted upon a long bath before he came to you and sincerely apologizes for the unnecessary delay.” 

Anne smiled to herself. She knew Frederick bathing himself now, before meeting her and after months at sea, had nothing to do with wasting time and everything at all with saving it. She nodded in gratitude at Jeeves as he went back in and hoped in vain that the evening air would cool her flushed cheeks.

If pressed later, she could not have articulated what she thought or felt when the door opened to reveal Jeeves carrying a leather valise, followed by - him. But she saw his radiant smile - and such a look in his eyes - !

He helped her into the landaulette but paused before stepping in, and motioned to Jeeves with a request that he take a different route back to the lodgings.

The man looked attentive but unsurprised with the request. “Through Greenwood?”

“Yes - and away from the hills, further south where the roads are very flat - so the ride may have no bumps and jerks, or as close to none as possible, if you please.”

Anne turned redder.

“That may take longer, sir - upwards of a full half-hour, even.”

Frederick smiled. “We’ll make do.”

**

Light from the landau’s lanterns diffused through the heavy curtains and bathed them in a reddish-orange haze. The air inside the carriage body turned thick and warm.

Their mouths separated with a soft smack each time he broke a kiss to dote on her - to call her “my sweet” - kiss - “my dearest” - kiss - “Anne, my Anne - ”

She cupped his face in her hands so he couldn’t pull away and met his mouth soundly.

When they could speak again, his hands settled on her waist from where they had been wandering along her sides and her front. He nipped at her lower lip and wondered aloud why she wouldn’t let him tell her, at length, how very much she was missed.

“I already know what you shall say to me,” she murmured, brushing her nose from side to side against his. “You already know all I have to say to you.”

He angled his head so his lips were at the junction of her jaw and ear. “What,” and his mouth was moving lower now, “would you say again?”

She moved back (to his playful whine) and simply looked at him with dark, slow-blinking eyes. She added to the coquettish effect by tucking a curl of hair behind her ear before she sank to her knees in front of him.

At first she merely laid her head on his thigh with an exhale, wanting just to feel his heat through his clothing. They were quiet for a few minutes. Her eyes were closed, but she knew he was watching her, hungrily tracing the features that he hadn't had the opportunity to admire for weeks. She could smell his cedarwood and bergamot shaving lotion.

Then something shifted in her, and she opened her eyes and brushed her lips against the front of his trousers, smiling when he let out a soft laugh. She drew his straining length out from his fall-front and swirled her thumb over the tip to spread the droplets of moisture over and around the slit of his head, and blew cool air over the damp skin.

He was petting the top of her head now, as if despite himself. Her soft hair was so steeped with the tenuous light filtered through gaps in the closed window that it nearly glowed, and when his other hand lifted up from the seat to caress her cheek, she nuzzled his cock against the curve of her delicate chin, her pretty face - skin like poured cream! - with a sweet smile. She raised the tip to her pink mouth, parted just enough for him to feel her warm breath. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lower lip further - she pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the head, then another, and another - and when she began giving little kitten-licks from root to tip, he leaned back against the cushioned squabs with half-lidded eyes, languid and easy, and watched her mouth attend him. 

At last she removed her small hand from his hip and brought it up, giving it a series of long licks, and wrapped it around him before she took him deeper into her mouth, slow and measured. Her placid suckling turned to unyielding suction; he felt her soft tongue apply even strokes to the vein along the side of his cock. The delicate cupid’s bow of her upper lip, and the slightly fuller bottom lip - the sight had so set him aflame when she first smiled at him years ago - were hot and wet around him, stretched from his length and girth. Her eyebrows were slightly furrowed now; her eyelashes fluttered and closed now and then - he patted her cheek each time in a silent entreaty for her to keep them open and look at him, and so she did, up through that thick fringe of lashes darker than her hair... which, he noticed, was falling out of her chignon from her efforts. He carefully assisted the process until the long, heavy curls were loose and gathered in his fist so as few tendrils as possible fell into her face.

She looked up at him in thanks with shining, nymph-like eyes, and he nearly came undone in an instant. 

The sight of her working her mouth and hand on him, dripping with a thick coat of her own bubbling saliva; the sound of her mellow voice, moaning and humming around him; the feel of her sucking at him while he bestowed upon her such a glowing and tender look that she received nearly as much pleasure as she gave - these were already earth-shattering - yet it seemed this was not enough. She must move the svelte hand steadying herself on his knee to reach below her skirts until they were rucked up to her hips; she must play with herself as she nosed the skin of his pelvis until wet, wanton sounds were won by her fingers from her sex as notes from piano keys.

…and he abandoned all efforts (whatever few he’d made) to keep quiet, and whatever small part of him that still had his wits about him vowed to raise Jeeves’s salary later. 

Great God, he loved her pretty mouth. She was so sweet and lovely like this, kneeling before him, taking him in so well; she was so good for him and so perfect, his good, sweet girl, beyond all compare - and it wasn’t until he registered her high whines that he realized he’d said all this out loud - and finally he did what he should’ve done an age ago and gently fisted both hands in her hair, shoving himself down her slender white throat, and she tried to nod her eager acceptance, but her mouth was too full to do anything more than remain wide open and pliant as he worked his cock deeper and deeper into her - as much as she could take -

Every so often, when he felt her struggle for breath, he drew out of her to wipe her wet eyes with his thumb and rub and pet his cock at her cheek, on her tongue, leaving a glistening trail between them that dissipated into her waiting, wanting mouth once he re-entered her. But she was in the throes of pleasure as much as he was, perhaps not only because of her own clever fingers but because of what she was doing to him, what he was doing to her, fucking her face - and wasn’t that a thought, the idea of his arousal as interesting to her as her own, just as hers was to him - so he broke his earlier steady rhythm and gave into the sensations, using her mouth with abandon and moving faster, more forcefully, his hips bucking into her rough and wild, both man and wife engulfed in some great, all-encompassing fever -

He barely managed to warn her before his climax, but he was not alone. Both came to harbour as one, as though two hearts and bodies were perfectly fitted to each other by God and nature.

As she caught her breath, he pulled her up into his lap and cradled and kissed her throat where she had taken every drop of his seed, and held her face and pressed his lips to her forehead, both of them laughing delightedly in between several breathless “my darlings” and “my lovelys” - she was always giggly and yielding like this after she took him into her mouth, as if she were wine-drunk, which then fueled his own mirth - and upon sucking the last of her dew from her fingers, braided her hair and watched her pin it up for some moments. Once he set her and himself to rights, he enfolded her in a firm embrace for the last few minutes of their journey. Anne allowed herself to curl up against his solid chest, real and warm before her; for she was never more in repose than when she was in his arms at last, homeward-bound.

Notes:

Quail-pipe: A woman's tongue or throat.

Chapter 5: bumbaste (or: in a dog fashion)

Summary:

Frederick Wentworth knew intricately and intimately what a disabling injury would entail. Harville was, after all, one of his dearest friends, and Frederick had seen with his own eyes what would endure and found it far weightier than what would fade. And small injuries were dealt with easily - kisses here, rosewater salve there - and would perhaps lead to fresh tales of excitement for their young children, or at least their eldest, who was old enough to understand what would be narrated. The challenge lay, then, in the middle ground.

Frederick Wentworth knew intricately and intimately what a disabling injury would entail. Harville was, after all, one of his dearest friends, and Frederick had seen with his own eyes what would endure and found it far weightier than what would fade. And small injuries were dealt with easily - kisses here, rosewater salve there - and would perhaps lead to fresh tales of excitement for their young children, or at least their eldest, who was old enough to understand what would be narrated. The challenge lay, then, in the middle ground. 

That evening after dinner, Frederick listened seriously to Hope’s detailed account of a boarding action performed by their cat Ulysses in reaching for a pot of milk that morning, refereed a very tense game of marbles between Teddy and Aria, and read from Tales of Shakespeare until Edward fell asleep. It was following these proceedings that Anne found her husband in their bed, reclining coolly in the center of a small fortress of cushions.

The sight of him in his open nightshirt, sipping on a tisane of orange leaves and wrinkling his nose at the nutmeg - so mundane and yet miraculous - turned her heart to glass. She blinked back the traitorous tear in her eye and hurried into bed with him, trying not to tremble, and brushed her fingers along the bandage around his exposed midriff.

In a few short months, there would be no scarring, and the skin would be as smooth and clean as before, the surgeon told her at the quayside, undoubtedly meant as a consolation; she did not know how to express to him that scars or no, a drop of blood shed by her husband was worth to her all the hundreds of ships of the Wooden Walls. She suspected he already knew.

When she could manage it, Anne looked up into her husband’s face at last, and for a moment her breath caught. He was smiling so softly, with such gentle grace, that some part of her she hadn’t known was frozen since his departure began to thaw. Frederick set the teacup on their nightstand and held out his arms in invitation.

Anne pressed her face to his chest. She wanted to melt into him like sugar into tea. He secured his arms around her without a moment’s hesitation, stroking her spine, speaking sotto voce reassurances into her ear, brushing stray teardrops from her eyelashes, and finally cupped the high arch of her cheek to look her in the eye. She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

With his lips he parted hers, moistened her small white teeth, licked into her mouth, shared the taste of warm honey and citrus between them. He traversed her lips gently - a dusting of petals - then went back inside her, felt the slide and silk of her fleshy tongue along his. My husband is home, she told herself. My husband is home, safe, and he is making love to me. He was drawing a circle around her mouth, placing warm kisses at each corner, then blowing cool air over the wet skin to make her smile. Honey was being harvested in her mouth. 

“You’re trembling,” he told her. “Come, let me take off your nightgown.” A delicious shiver curled down her spine as he pressed his mouth to hers again. You’re not well, she wanted to cry out, but he smiled again and shook his head.

“I am well, Anne.” He brushed her ear with his lips. “Let me show you.” His long fingers inched up her thighs and felt the damp of her - even through her thin gown - and hummed a laugh against her jaw when she further betrayed herself with a soft sigh. As though lifted by a great wave, she rose from their bed and walked to the other side of the room.

He watched her at the dressing table as she removed her pearl pins and sent her hair tumbling down into a sleek rope. She met his eyes in the mirror and stood, still facing away from him, and, in a single smooth movement, released the lace ties of her night-rail and let the garment slide down her willowy figure until it pooled at her feet. She swept her heavy plait over her front and exposed her pale back, the dip into her lower waist. The lit fireplace limned her silhouette with gold and amber.

She smiled back at him over her shoulder, and he decided in a flash how he would have her that night.

When she drifted over to stand at his edge of their bed, he took hold of her by her hips, and his hands strayed outward to slowly fondle and squeeze her rear while he smiled languidly, eyes half-lidded in pale enchantment. She ran her fingers through his hair and looked sweetly down at him, and he knew that they were of the same mind - as natural to them as breathing - before she climbed into bed, turning on her stomach and bracing herself on her forearms. Running a hand over the blades of her shoulder, with a sparkle in his eyes, he asked: “Well, and may I, my Lady?”

Anne simply smiled and assented where normally she would have giggled adorably and played along with his game, and he knew the events of the day were not out of her thoughts.

No matter; he would relieve her; he was determined.

He descended down her body with light kisses until he reached the apex of her thighs and could lick long stripes in the flesh between, holding down her legs whilst she squirmed back against his face.

Rutting his weeping cock into the bedsheets, he fell into the long-established, near-instinctual pattern of alternating between suckling and flicking his tongue. He’d just begun to apply firm, direct suction to the hood of her clitoris when he felt her flutter and tighten around his fingers - she was that eager for him - and within what seemed to him mere moments of his lips parting her slick folds and forming a seal over the swollen red-pink bud blooming out at him, she was overcome. He clung to her between her legs, holding fast in his open-mouthed kissing - through her cries and shudders and babbling at him - as she rode his digits and tongue out through a luminous peak, only to ascend another vast, radiant mountain, and another - even higher - and she was soaring.

When she returned to the Earth, feeling like she had just come to, he was kissing her everywhere - her scalp and her dark gold hair, the tips of her ears and her nape - distractedly maundering, “I love you, I love you, dearest, I love you,” over and over, as out of his head as she was. So she moved one hand behind her and groped at him to encourage him to shove himself inside of her, not seeing why they should wait any longer, but he merely enveloped her hand with his and slowly ground against her. He ran his cock along the swollen, pouting lips of her sex and let it catch against her entrance and the fine, sodden curls of hair there, suddenly feeling very wicked. She turned her head fully to the side again so she could meet his eyes - and in a moment, between his ministrations, he gently but sharply struck her bottom with the flat palm of his hand.

The sound rang in their chamber, briefly overriding the crackling of the fire.

Yes, he had done it, he had spanked her like she was a small, ill-behaved midshipman or a boy in want of discipline from his governess! A dam had burst. They weren’t able to stop giggling and grinning - like schoolchildren! - and the tension and worry of the preceding hours had fully dissipated, her relief was palpable, and in his triumph his ceaseless hands roved all over her ribs, the plane of her stomach, the curve of her lower back, all that he had the right and privilege and duty to explore as he sank into her fully.

The honey wine at dinner had loosened him and turned him to molasses - to cold cream, she thought with a gasp, as he twined her thick braid around his fist and leaned down, skimming fleeting kisses down her spine. He laughed softly into her skin when she pushed back against him with a keen whine and asked her if it felt good, if she liked it, still received her broken “yeses” as though they were benedictions, but shed his conscientious study of her, pressing one foot into the mattress for leverage, and took her as he liked, as she liked; and he did it all with his characteristic vigour, dear and longed for, whilst she squeezed and pulsed around him.

She was blooming in his hands. Anne wished she could tell him how she felt now that he had returned safely to them all, how incandescently happy he made her, but all she could manage were sighs and breathy little laughs. He caressed the sides of her throat with his mouth and kissed the words she couldn’t say. She felt dewy and fresh like the early minutes of dawn. As he quickened his movements, her hips were now arched so high in the air that she was sure her body formed a steep upended V like the bow of a clipper ship cutting through dense seawater. He eventually dropped down to his forearms over her back, his body fully covering hers so the blades of her shoulders were crushed against his beating heart - she reached behind her to stroke his forehead and grasp his dark hair - and he pressed his mouth into the nape of her neck.

As he found his release with her, aligned as one, he kept murmuring tender, nectarous words into her skin. Sweet, incomparable Anne. You, alone, are my harbour, he told her. His voice resembled a shipwreck, yet he evinced the most exquisite grace as he lovingly doted on her-!

He stayed inside her at her behest; after some minutes, when she recovered enough - though her ears were still ringing - to grind against him, still erect inside her, he reached around her to pinch and rub lightsome circles over her little hill, both of them grinning a little when she felt him twitch inside her. Frederick withdrew from her entirely to watch the leisured drip of his spend and her own wetness out of her slit and down her thighs, and, despite himself, he rubbed some of it with his cock over her firm buttocks before smoothly pushing back inside her.

At first he kept up the same sharp pace he had earlier, hot with lust at the steady staccato of “ah, ah, ah” that she emitted with every thrust as he fucked deeper and deeper into her. But suddenly he slowed and pulled himself upright, guiding her up with him.

With a hand at her neck, he positioned her against his chest and lightly tipped her head backward until her eyes met his. She met each thrust, slow and warm, as they moved together like two coordinated waves, attuned perfectly to the other’s crests and troughs and augmenting their conjoined movements. When he kissed her open mouth from above her, it was not hurried. It was careful and controlled, and he seemed to be saying: I am here. You have me.

Loosening his gentle hold around her throat and waist, he wandered to her pert breasts, fuller and heavier now after her last confinement. He grazed his fingers against their soft curves wonderingly, in case of their being tender, and she answered his silent question by placing her hands over his to grope at herself harder.

As he ground against her, his length pressed deeply over that wonderfully familiar spot inside her, sliding and caressing instead of hitting at it, and she cried out a dozen “yeses” and pleas for him to not stop until he ceased muffling his pleasured groans in her flesh and bit down. A long, piercing mewl escaped her. She, beyond all speech, rolled her hips sinuously against him, his frame coiled tightly around her like harp strings around a wrest-pin. A thought struck her: if they were at Kellynch Hall and, as they had done on occasion, made love surrounded by her father’s spare mirrors (genially lent to them by Admiral Croft and thus “put to good and proper use for the very first time,” as Frederick had quipped), she might see her breasts and nipples reddened from his care, faint remnants of his strong hand over her stomach and thighs, kissed-bruises over her neck and the swell of her bosom; she went mindless as he delicately set her back down on the bedding and continued to fuck into her from behind.

Then, then, he felt her clench and pulse around him with an ecstatic cry - again - and this evidence of her climax lit his own like a match - 

He blinked hard to vanish the dark spots in his vision. Frederick rested his cock over the cleft between her buttocks as he spent over her - over the perfect curve of her rear, and between the couplet of alluring dimples on her lower back that he liked to grip and kiss and hook his thumbs in - and he saw stars.

Registering her pant and tremble from head to toe below him, he gently extricated himself from her and kissed her shoulder. She was so lovely and warm; the pleasant aches in her body were giving way to a slow, languorous feel. Upon regaining some of her breath and wits, she realized just how much of his spend was all over her, thick and sticky - and she blearily sat up, laughing hoarsely, turning to her husband to tell him so, only to find him blinking slowly with eyes slightly unfocused.

“Frederick?” She watched in growing concern as he passed his hand across his eyes, seemingly almost dizzy - and reached out to cup his face - then cried out and leaned forward to hold him when he suddenly swayed slightly on his knees, before he righted himself as though nothing were amiss.

Anne stared at him as he dampened the kerchief on their nightstand and cleaned her skin, grinning like a boy; when he was done, he admitted the extent of his exhaustion, particularly now after their exertions. She redonned her dressing gown in an instant and wobbled out of the Master’s chamber on shaking legs - like a newborn fawn, clutching the walls and railing as he laughingly called her back - resolving to fetch him lavender tea and a willow bark tincture, before she bid him tell her everything.

Notes:

Next time, on Sex Sent Me To The ER…
Bumbaste: to have sexual intercourse, esp. in the ‘rear position’; but also to spank on the buttocks (source: Green’s Dictionary of Slang).
Dog-fashion: having sexual intercourse in which entry is made from the rear; thus dog position.

Chapter 6: take a flyer with wall-fruit

Summary:

Then they smiled as one; he, that sanguine, easy smile that dimpled his face just so; she, sweetly, bloomingly, and with a flush in her cheeks. He reached out toward her, and she melted into him.

Outside, there may have been tension, uncertainty; beyond the walls of this ballroom, there were undoubtedly Bonapartists refusing to accept defeat, causing trouble for the Liberals in the streets of Paris: she was conscious of these facts. But at this moment, no shadow fell on Anne’s heart. The war was over, they would celebrate tonight and - most importantly - her husband was safe and warm beside her, their arms touching: they were going home. 

There was a soft glow about her, as though her gown were spun from candlelight, and a lamp shone out from her insides. The sea air had done her very well these past months, just as it had in those brief days at Lyme, and most of all, whenever she came to these sorts of gatherings with Frederick - even the few in the year six - she felt near faint with love. At once so clever and cultured, but so boyish with her and her alone! She adored his eagerness to make life more lovely and romantic. As if he sensed her thoughts, he shot her a sweet smile and took her hand in his, and kissed her open palm. Around them was a hum of conversation in English, French, German, and Russian, punctuated by laughter and the clinking of champagne flutes, men and women in bright, shining colors toasting to the heroes of Wavre and Waterloo. Sitting too close to her husband, pressing her thigh to his, Anne attended the large orchestra positioned on a raised dais playing a lively quadrille. His gloved fingers rubbed warm, soothing circles into her knee. Blissful hours had passed, both highly conscious of the other’s body hardly a breath away.

With the final chords from the strings, the conductor took a bow, and in the midst of brilliant applause, she turned to her husband for a minute and simply admired him with a smile: his heady cologne, his tall, lean figure. How soft was his dark hair! What fine eyes he had, and what a fair complexion, glowing despite years of active service in foreign climes-! He, suddenly conscious of her admiring him, turned to face her, looked away for a moment with slightly flushed cheeks (her heart leapt), then back at her, and tucked a curl of hair behind her ear in gentle bemusement.

She grinned, raising her voice slightly to be heard. “You are very handsome, Captain.”

He laughed. “You are very, very lovely.”

“You make me lovelier.” If she were younger, she might have blushed at herself for such pretty musings, but hadn’t the chance anyway; he kissed her then, quickly, so none could notice.

Not one poet’s verse could have captured her perfect happiness; not Keats, not Burns, not the Bard himself. They excused themselves, as they knew they must, reassuring a jovial group of Prussians in their path that they would return in time to share the final round of cake and Bordeaux with them (though they seemed, in Anne’s view, rather quite drunk already).

Husband and wife stepped out onto dark, dew-clad summer grass, passing by the pavilion, tall apple trees, a clear, cold fountain in easy conversation as they walked together.

He pulled at a sleek curl of her hair and twirled it around his fingers. “I am no longer wrought for these grand assemblies, you see,” he said, though every partygoer they’d been introduced to had been fully charmed by him and his lovely new wife, had even endeavoured to express what a favourite the Wentworths had become to all those who made their acquaintance, and the shine in his eyes told her he was aware of - and gladdened by - this fact. “I’ve become thoroughly domesticated: an old married man.”

“Compared to you, then, I am still a blushing bride.”

“I’ll see to that blush myself, madam.” He took her small chin between two fingers and kissed her with such fervor that she felt, in that moment, that he had rather thoroughly undomesticated himself - and her, too.

Once he had done, he enfolded her gracile frame into his embrace for some moments, bending his head and nosing her sweet-smelling scalp. She pressed her face into him and took an immense, shuddering breath into her husband’s chest. His body smelled like ocean and forest: his hair, like sea salt; his skin, like sandalwood; it was as if he were the only man truly born of the earth.

When he pulled back, she looked up at him, blinking slowly, wearing a beatific smile. Her hair was pulled up into his favoured Grecian style; a few curls framed her smiling face. She looked like a nereid as anything. He drank in the sight of her dark deer’s eyes, sparkling with happy warmth - he had put that there, and their friends and well-wishers, and that was worth more to him than any promise of future elevation in rank and profession - the pretty flush on her elegant, high cheeks, the long swannish line of her neck, her high breasts that pulled into her sylphlike waist underneath the thin silk gauze of her sea-foam gown, and he quietly uttered odes to all that he was observing of her - as she listened affectionately, watched intently his handsome mouth forming ardent words, and bloomed and blushed under his attentions. Where once she might have demurred at his keen looks and remarks, she now looked up at him clear and steady through full eyelashes, emboldened by his love and hers and by the love of all their friends who wished for them every earthly joy.

“My Frederick,” she murmured, reaching up and running a hand through his hair. 

“Yours,” he agreed readily, and took her wrist between his fingers and dipped down to plant a light, morning-dew kiss on her lips, then another, and another. “Yours -” (kiss) “- always -” (kiss) “- without end -” (kiss)

The last lingering, piquant kiss permeated her to the soles of her feet. He tasted like Ratafia and cream. 

She tilted her head back, a summons, and he bent his neck, nuzzled against her cheek, and she felt his lips press the underside of her jaw and - o, the heat of it - his fingertips danced across her pulses, keeping count in between each kiss as his lips traversed down her neck, the hard points of his hip gradually grinding into her. They moved flush together, one continuous, slow-writhing figure - his weight crushing her against the wall, her fingers wrenched tightly in his coat, claws in prey, staying him in place - drawn together as swirling currents, churning, sliding against the other to give rise to a great tempest; and lo, there was that familiar boiling, sweltering pressure low in her belly, oozing lower and lower into the crevice between her legs - she felt the tremors then, and pushed up into him faster and harder until they were both gasping into the other’s neck and hair - and there was nothing either could do to stop that great eagre of ecstasy, of complete and total fulfillment, from overpowering them.

He reawakened to their surroundings.

He might've been splashed by cold water from the gurgling fountain near them. In an instant, he was perfectly conscious of the muffled sounds of the ball they had left behind, of the dark green grass all around them. Damn. Swallowing the new tightness in his throat, he quickly guided them both further away from the party, eyes darting in every direction in an attempt to determine if someone had seen or heard them. He ought to apologize, he ought to be ashamed - they were out in the open, anyone at all could have come by, for heaven’s sake - and each met the other’s eye, and for a brief, horrible moment the words of remorse were on their lips -

Then they smiled as one; he, that sanguine, easy smile that dimpled his face just so; she, sweetly, bloomingly, and with a flush in her cheeks. He reached out toward her, and she melted into him.

Hand in hand, husband and wife walked toward the greenhouse in the back gardens.

**

He was kneeling before her, looking up through heavy, sea-dark eyes. Frederick’s hands had pushed up her skirts, caressing her; surely by now he would’ve had his tongue a thumb’s length up into her, yet he only watched her quietly, waiting for her word.

Recalling his eyes aglow with admiration at Lyme - that she, at the time, had scarcely taken notice of in favor of the blood trickling out from Louisa’s head - when she had given him and the other men orders, Anne abruptly had the image of a bright and eager midshipman and herself wearing a Captain’s epaulettes. She smiled to herself and repeated a variation of something he had mindlessly whispered in her ear while buried deep inside her before, for it still made her dizzy just to think of it: “Good boy. So good for me, my sweet - my Frederick.”

Anne might be pardoned for the start she gave at her husband’s answering groan. Not a trace remained of his captain’s voice, all authority surrendered to her tender dominion. Such was the case for some men - for those accustomed to being obeyed, even, by hundreds of their fellows at a time: they grow an appetite for their wives’ governance.

“What do you want, love?”

He attempted to nose the slit between her legs but she fisted his hair and pushed him away from her. His breath came out in rough pants.

“Please, please - my Anne - please, anything - ”

“Use your words, darling.” Her voice was soft, she looked amused in her own fine, elegant way, but for once, she almost didn’t seem gentle to him. She knew, he knew she knew - he wanted - how he wanted - he begged her, quivering - pleaded her name with his smooth, ordinarily strong, resonant voice -

Anne was still smiling when she, with her hands firm in his hair, pressed his face into her sex at last. He accepted her gladly, craning his neck out to steal away as much of her into his mouth as she would allow.

Her fists tightened upon his scalp and his head spun with the sting of it, the pain, the pleasure. The entire earth had surely shrunk to his mouth and her flesh; there could be nothing else; he was aflame. And abruptly, in the midst of all this - was it Benwick’s influence? How funny - he recalled one of Sappho’s verses: As the sweet-apple reddens upon the highest branch, high on the highest, missed by apple-pickers - nay, not missed, simply out of their reach…  

But not out of his, he thought, his wife’s rosy little bud blushing out at him under his tongue. He very well knew how to pick this particular apple, lovingly and meticulously so…

Spiced wine and punch turned everything funny, and he chuckled into her silky flesh, which evidently pleased her - given her louche moan - oh, her calves were very nearly wrapped around his back - hah. Quiet, composed Anne. He couldn’t help laughing again. She thrust haphazardly into his face - almost punishingly, and he resolved to behave - faster, now, rhythm growing less and less steady, and he sucked on her zealously, wishing desperately that he could swallow her whole - and there it was, the tidal wave. Her legs clenched and trembled around him, warm, slim thighs tightening around his neck, and for several thrilling moments, he couldn’t breathe - until at last her quivering subsided and the current passed on. He gently supported her weight so she wouldn’t sink to her feet.

When he resurfaced, his face was shiny and wet. He regarded her with soft, deferential eyes. “Was that -”

“You know it was,” and she pulled him in by his collar and bit his lower lip.

They kissed and kissed, and he loosened the silk strings of her stays enough for her soft nipples to surface above shore in a sweet, jaunty motion - and that graceful little bounce of her flesh enchanted him, and she knew it: with her small hands she cupped her exposed breasts, bathed white in moonlight, and pushed them together, sending a shudder down his spine, as he rucked up her dress higher still in a clenched fist and rutted helplessly into the fold of her stocking-clad knee, pressing kiss after burning kiss to her breasts before taking one into his mouth.

Suddenly, before returning his mouth to her skin, he drew back and fully lifted her up against the wall - his grip on her thighs keeping her up against the smooth stone, her knees folded up by his elbows to keep her open for him - and her moan was so deliciously, beautifully obscene: he heard her avid “yes, yes, yes - oh, put it in me,” and he was lost. No good in being gentle now; she was so damned slippery by reason of his mouth and fingers earlier, he might have just as easily shoved himself into a pot of hot wax.

She gave a loud, keening cry, and her hand flew up to her mouth to quiet herself - and by instinct he pulled her hand away to better hear her, until he remembered where they were.

“Your voice suits so well for lovemaking,” was his whispered defense, and they laughed quietly together, then his cock twitched inside her and they laughed some more. Then - with a sailor’s precision - he shifted just so, aiming for the spot they both knew would wreck her, as she looped her arms around his neck and let him do as he would with her. A few more thrusts and another soft cry left her mouth, so he removed his fine hand from her waist and gently held a long finger against her mouth with a soft “shh, sweetheart,” then reawakened to the feel of her silky lips - and couldn’t resist caressing, until she took the hint and let a digit inside her mouth, then two, and he stroked the soft flesh of her tongue as she moaned around him - and he had her like that for some minutes, or days, or perhaps a lifetime. Each time a sharp slap of skin against skin echoed in the evening air, he issued a rough little exhale and turned her mind to jelly. Anne felt his light on her, within her; her whole body seemed to be irradiated with his light and heat and she was sure her insides were glowing. She could have been the green ray at sunset they’d seen on their journey home, when they stood at their ship’s railing and exchanged kisses away from the crew. She was a great, towering candle that couldn’t be blown out; her insides were the lamp’s wick, and he, hot, molten oil.

Where was shame now, or guilt? On the contrary, the mischief of their location and their misconduct therein, the dangerous knowledge of how exposed they were - all of it was exhilarating.

“Heaven-born creature!” he muttered, then nuzzled the bare junction of her neck and shoulder, whispering fervid avowals of how he would adore her: a far sea moved in her ear. Anne recalled learning of a punishment used by some (crueler) sailors on their subordinates (and the immediate pride in her fair-minded husband upon learning that he had it banned on his ship): flogging around the feet. A man would be tied to a small boat’s mast, and his bare feet lashed with a cat-o'-nine-tails by the bosun’s mate ‘til he bled out. It was brutish. But she wished, now, that she could be tied to her husband, sailor and wooden mast, joined from mouth to foot with nothing between them. Shivers took hold of her entire body. She pressed her face into him, clamping her teeth down on his shirt fabric - watched him through thick lashes and devouring eyes. You could take me standing. She hadn’t planned on speaking the words aloud, too engrossed was she in the heat and sensations of his length and girth. The realization came when he made a sound like a man knifed in the ribs.

Before her mind could catch up with the rest of her, he tucked her up onto his stalwart thighs flexing beneath her, as though she weighed nothing - what was it Homer had said regarding his hero’s form? God-like Ulysses, with thighs comely and great, her lust-addled mind supplied - and, within seconds, was bouncing her slender form on his cock, giving her leave to do nothing else but wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face into the lean muscle of his torso as she clenched and - impossibly - opened and tightened still, hot around him. Where inside her, now, was he? Her belly? Her ribcage? That was how it felt - she was sure her whole body was split open, with his sheathing himself inside her again and again and again, fucking into her deeper and deeper still, until - there, there-! How close she was - she would plead with him if she were not altogether beyond speech -

As if on cue, with his usual preternatural perception regarding her person, he shifted so she could angle slender, shaking fingers down between their bodies and rub herself to perfect satisfaction alongside her husband, who was grinding his pelvis, holding her squirming body over his toned thighs in a near-bruising grip, as he spilled deep into her, as she took up the whole Hundred Days inside of her: the sleek ship’s sides and its tall mast, its long wooden pipes, the carriage ride home.

They slid down and collapsed in a pile on the night-dewed grass, panting and giggling in exquisite rapture. Still they were alone. He sent up a brief prayer in thanks for this bit of good fortune, with whatever remnants of his mind still capable of thought - then, upon regaining some hold on himself, sent up another, albeit in apology, for calling upon heaven in such a state. 

Regaining his breath after - well, after who knew precisely how long - he inspected her with a fond smile. “Now, how will you walk? Knock-kneed, I suppose.” He hovered over her on one elbow and began to clean her with his handkerchief, then, when the cloth became too soiled, with his tongue.

“Mm. I have managed before, and on a ship, besides.”

“I ought to have - expelled - into the grass.”

“Expelled more, you mean.”

What followed was a series of jokes about the Embassy’s fertile gardens while she laughingly entreated him to stop in no convincing manner. Still chuckling, she pushed him onto his back so she sat astride him, her thighs on either side of his hips. His warm hands resumed their rightful place on her waist with some hesitance - he knew his size -

“Oh - wait, Anne - so quickly? Will it - ngh,” God, she was making it difficult to think, the way she swiveled her hips over him like that, but he kept on, “Will it not - ah, hurt-?”

She shook her head, smiling wider, and when he was about to protest once more, though every cell of his being chided him for it, she covered his mouth with her hand. “We may proceed, and you ought to attend me - for I know how keen you naval men are to be called to order by your wives.”

He laughed again, giddy at his wife’s teasing.

“Depend on it, Anne,” was his sweet promise, and he raised himself up to return his lips to hers.

Notes:

Partly inspired by the poem “The Shipfitter's Wife” by Dorianne Laux.

Take a flyer: to have swift and spontaneous sexual intercourse, usually when both parties are wholly or partially dressed.

Wall-fruit: sex, kissing or intercourse, against a wall.

The Sappho lines are from her collection of bridal songs, “Epithalamia.”

Chapter 7: gamahuche, gamahuching, gamahucher

Summary:

Some wild, ungovernable emotion surged up from within, telling her that anything was possible, that their future was boundless and free, and Anne felt it, her good luck - the shared Wentworth luck, as Admiral Croft called it - her exquisite happiness. Oh, she wanted to do anything her husband wanted to do - know everything he knew. She wanted to do everything with him, for him.

Sophia Croft received a great deal of happiness from hearing of her newest sister’s (belated) wedding trip through her letters. Anne had written that Italy was everything she had hoped for, from Frederick’s prior descriptions, and magnitudes more. She wrote of narrow streets and being jostled against her husband’s side as they waded through busy crowds, where she drew appreciative smiles from tanned, winking fishermen and Frederick threw sidelong glances at her with a grin. She loved that untroubled, unrestrained look on his face. Those at Uppercross hadn’t seen anything - they only thought they’d seen him at his most charming and amiable, they didn’t know how sweet his smile could really be and how he could laugh-! Sophia, she said, your brother is so free and open and happy now. Mrs. Croft wondered if Anne understood that it was her doing. She was sure she did.

Anne wrote of the dewy mist in the early mornings, of walking on stone paths warmed by the Tuscan sun, of laundry hanging above them in bright-coloured banners and fluttering in the coastal breeze. The air, she said, was cool and fresh near the water, but rapidly mingled with a thousand different scents in the street: warm cheese bread and roasted coffee from the refreshment stalls, perfumes from all over the continent, a dozen different sweet and earthy smells; everywhere about them, life pressed close. Women with white kerchiefs wrapped around their hair leaned from balconies and called down to their friends. Boys darted past with trays of bread or fruit, coins jingling in their pockets. She smelt frying squid and vegetables, and lemons newly cut, and always, always, the salt breath of the sea.

But there were things Anne had not written of, Sophia knew, which she could not tell her; this was evident by the gaps in the otherwise detailed descriptions of her daily life. While Mrs. Croft decided to do her youngest brother the mercy of not teasing his lovely wife overmuch - at least, not in writing - she could easily guess at what the new Mrs. Wentworth had left out, and simply smiled to herself at the younger set’s marital felicity.

This was one such - unwritten - occasion. Late autumn in the Mediterranean was wonderful, Anne decided, because rain showers were so frequent, and the cooled air meant Frederick must hold her to him as closely as possible - though he needed no incentive. The night before, she’d slept and stirred awake several times throughout the storm outside, and upon coming to, always saw and felt Frederick’s strong arm around her waist. The rain droplets on the high windows had acted as little lenses and refracted dots of light onto their bed and his hand, and moved about like an army of faeries marching across the coverlet. Each of the dulled sun-rays filtered through their gauze curtains could have been one of Cupid’s arrows.

She smiled at herself for the verse her mind was composing subconsciously, but couldn't restrain herself; she was so inclined to please and be pleased by everything. For just a short while ago, who could have thought - indeed, least of all, herself - that she would be harboring hopes - exquisite, shining hopes! - which may now gradually become fixed.

Anne looked up and saw her husband watching her closely. Her cheeks pinked in happiness, and he laughed: a low, rough sound that gave her a thrill. He placed one soothing hand over her lower belly, not yet rounded, and with the other, raised her fingers to his lips. 

It was later that day, after the rain had passed and the sun had begun to warm the stone walls of the inn, that Frederick spoke of an outing he had been planning almost since their arrival.

He had received a note from a former Captain, now an Admiral, inviting them to make use of certain privileges he enjoyed in the port. The Admiral, Frederick explained, had commanded a squadron in those waters during the peninsular campaigns, and in consequence had been granted a degree of friendship and favour by the local authorities. He had always held Frederick in particular esteem, and upon learning of the Wentworths’ presence in Livorno, had immediately sent word. It seemed the man had secured them entrance to rooms he used when he was stationed here: to private lodgings for vapour baths, prepared in the Ottoman style. 

“I had meant to surprise you,” Frederick said, fastening her cloak beneath her chin, “but the fellow insists we allow him to play host from afar.”

Anne, who had only read of such places in travel accounts, felt an eager warmth at the notion: not merely because it was novel, but because Frederick was so clearly pleased to share it with her. And vapour baths were recommended for women in her condition, besides.

The walk to the bathhouse took them to narrow alleys and cobbled roads covered in puddles that flashed like dropped coins. The air smelled like wet stone and sun-warmed seaweed. Frederick kept her hand securely within his arm, steadying her when they crossed a slick patch or stepped aside for porters bearing crates of figs or shimmering fish. The streets grew quieter as they approached an older quarter of the town, where domed roofs and arched doorways revealed the layered history of the port; Roman, Venetian, and Ottoman influences in the brickwork.

A porter in a short blue vest bowed them inside. Anne felt the moist air change at once into that of soap and something like eucalyptus. Frederick guided her through a cool antechamber and then into a more secluded room, where a single high window admitted a brilliant shaft of light. She opened the gauze curtains to a view of the Mediterranean coastline with a smile. It was her constant pleasure, to watch the glittering sea from the shore.

The low murmur of attendants faded until the lovers were alone in one another’s eyes. Rose petals were arranged in hazy spirals along the tiled edge of the basin, blurred by the rising steam. Anne touched one with amusement.

“Very pretty, Captain.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “very pretty,” and bent down to capture her lips. When he pulls back, there’s the start of a smile fluttering at her mouth, so he kisses her again to bring it out. 

And licks into her open mouth, fingers lightly trailing down her spine. Yes, she understood perfectly why he had requested the extra barrels of hot water and nothing further from the valet nor maids - besides the unspoken promise of privacy. 

They had been left the customary linen wraps neatly folded, and Frederick lifted one for her, crossed to the small room and drew aside a curtain for her, gave her privacy to loosen her garments; they emerged clad only in the light cloths set out for guests, and the warm vapours curled around them in welcome.

***

She had worn one of his favourite pairs of garters on her, an engagement gift: a silk, blush-pink ribbon with a fine sheen, cut at each end in elegant, swallowtail-shaped edges. The ivory embroidered panel on each garter was stiffened to hold its shape and had a dark stitched border of green leaves and red rosebuds. They framed the delicate French script that ran across the panels; on the top garter was written, "MA DEVISE EST DE VOUS AIMER;" on the bottom, "ES DE ME JAMAIS CHANGER." My guiding principle is to love you and never change. His fingers skimmed across the silky ribbons. They dipped just below to graze her thighs, and she shivered. Never inconstant…

His hands slid smoothly up the sole of her stocking, firmly stroking up to her knee and back down to her toes. With his lips and teeth, he undid the satin ties and slid the thin stocking down each lissom leg until it was fully off of her. The motion - the ease of it, or perhaps the sensuality - brought to the surface memories of his humming Figaro as he sat and shaved in their ship’s cabin, and her watching from their bed in silence before rising to slide her arms around his waist. She had pushed her chest into his back; she brushed her lips against his neck, then her tongue; she would lick the back of his neck, slowly - and he’d turn around and catch her by the waist, and she would giggle at the feel of his half-shaven stubble on her belly and her thighs -

Outside, the waves of the sea seemed to soften into stillness.

Now fully unclothed, Anne sat up on the heated stone platform, her hair unbound and falling in a damp, luxuriant cascade down her back. She watched her husband kneel in bathwater fragrant with rose oil and orange blossoms, and he began to bathe her feet.

And he did so with such assiduity, such fervour and thoroughness as was his military habit, that she could not but be moved. It was not the work of a moment, no, it was not a matter of merely soaping up the tops of her feet and splashing a jug of bathwater over her. He must employ lemon water to disinfect her soft feet, first, and gently, meticulously scrub her soles with ash soap applied to one of the silk cloths the attendants had readied for them for this purpose - a kese, they’d called it - leaving her skin pink and clean and velvet to the touch. 

Then he kissed the pulse point of her lathered-up ankle, cradling her right foot in his hand - then trailed more kisses along the faint bifurcations of blue veins along the dorsum of her foot from where they branched out like thin plant roots - then traveled to her soft soles, where her toes met the balls of her small feet, and finally her heels - and licked a long stripe along the length of her. 

“Ahh… oh, ooh -” she couldn’t help her giggles, and he hummed a soft laugh against her skin.

“Ticklish?”

She could hardly answer for laughing and merely hummed in liquid pleasure, nuzzling her foot against his fair cheek; he took that for the invitation it was and grazed his teeth along the instep, nipped at her toes, dipped and swirled his pink tongue in the soft flesh between: and alternated between gently suckling and licking before he popped her out of his glistening red mouth, and resumed pressing tender kisses along the sides of her feet and ankles. He rubbed his cheek reverently against one long leg and heard her soft sighs.

“Good?”

“Mmm.” But in the midst of the languid haze he’d put her in, she suddenly felt very daring, or even wicked, and accordingly she did not want to merely yield to his attentions - if only to see how he would respond to her misbehavior. Biting her lip, she danced her foot out of his grasp and stroked up the interior of his thigh. He flinched as though burned.

Oh?

She kept her foot there, watching for any sign of objection - there could be none - she moved higher, to stroke against the taught muscle of his inner thigh - he shuddered.

“Anne.”

“Hmm?” She blinked slowly at him with dark, coquettish eyes - he was not fooled for a moment, his dry look told her, and that only thrilled her more - she wanted to test him further - and she kept worrying her lip between her small white teeth, and his heated gaze was torn between that soft, pink mouth and the foot presently brushing lightsome circles over his groin. She was driving him mad with that paltry point of contact -

And then she pulled her foot away with tinkling laughter. But that would not do at all, and he caught her heel and pressed it to his arousal, grinding his hips desperately into the arch of her foot with a feverish moan.

“Frederick!” she laughed, surprised but quite cooperative, letting him do as he would. And he pressed her foot with harder, faster friction upon his weeping cock as he rutted against her - until at last he gave a broken gasp and ejaculated in a dripping string of pearls onto her skin.

“And now,” she said warmly, still in giggles as he collected himself, “you shall have to begin all over again, I'm afraid.”

He grinned and, indeed, returned to massaging the mild castile soap into her feet, and once he had done, into her long legs, with his hands ascending her thigh in steady, measured movements. Anne luxuriated in his attentions, saw his sedulous eyes as he took deliberate, gentle care of her. He rose as his hands roved over her hips, and she hoped that he would get distracted again, but he continued to diligently lather up her body, pausing only to plant a kiss over her lower belly, and perambulated over her breasts which would one day be swollen with milk, he thought, and across her collarbones and neck, though perhaps washing her did not require quite so much squeezing and fondling of her chest - he caught her eye, and they both grinned - and placed a quick kiss over the small beauty mark on her left breast, over the heart. She turned to the side and swept her wet, heavy hair over her shoulders, and he stopped to admire the sight of her, lovely and rosy-armed, a fair-haired mermaid. In this dreamlike spell, he washed her slender back and rounded buttocks - again, he could not resist a light smack and a bit of groping - and finally took up the wash jug to clean her off.

“Sit back, love,” he instructed her, and she closed her eyes with a smile as he began to work rose mallow paste into her hair. She hummed at the feel of her husband’s fingers combing through the wet strands, separating them with care, rubbing and massaging her scalp in slow, caressing motions. 

“This one has to sit in your hair the longest, so I have applied it first,” he informed her, and she was amused to observe that he seemed pleased with himself. She told him he’d charted admirably. Point of fact, she teased, he’d even taken soundings before venturing in.

“Nothing so bad as all that,” he pinched her cheek and she let out a little squeal. “Next is the soapwort,” he warned, and she stopped rubbing the side of her face with one hand to obediently bend her head and shut her eyes tightly again. He poured the boiled leaf water over her scalp, consequently mixing it with the glutinous paste from earlier - careful to do it slowly so the foaming solution couldn’t enter her ears or eyes - and unconsciously bent down, and brushed his nose against the top of her head with a smile.

“It smells marvelous.”

She hummed. “That’s the rose water and crushed hibiscus mixed with the mallow; there was some almond oil in the soapwort, too.”

“We’ll have to purchase more bottles for home. Now, hold steady.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she agreed, though she deliberately shifted just enough to make him huff out a laugh.

He settled on the stone slab and took her in his arms. One finger slowly stroked down her front, between her breasts and then down her soft, still flat (for now) belly, the adorable dimple of her navel (and his tickling finger circled the tiny hollow and made her laugh), and paused between her thighs - and he held her in place with one soapy hand as his wife squirmed. She felt his words against her lips as he spoke.

“We still have some ten or so minutes of waiting to do, for your hair.” His voice was low and rough. “What can I do for your comfort in the meanwhile, darling?” His long finger brushed against the folds of her sex. She was so wet that his teasing strokes were frictionless, like moonlight through water.

“I love you,” Anne sighed. 

Frederick smiled. “Shall I recite poetry?” and his digit entered her - her mouth fell open - and he began thusly:

“The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? -”

At some point during his delivery, he’d added a second finger in her, then a third - “oh, God, Frederick,” - and set about moving his thumb afresh in clever little flicks at the top of her slit. He moved faster and faster inside her as she rocked against his hand, watching her writhe ecstatically in his embrace, and sucked and bit at her breasts, pressed fervent kisses to her with each verse -

“See the mountains kiss high heaven 
And the waves clasp one another; (a kiss against her brow)
No sister-flower would be forgiven 
If it disdained its brother; (a kiss to her delicate nose)
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea: (a kiss upon her pink cheek)
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?”

He’d only just finished the last line when he felt her spasm around him, her hips rolling and shuddering like a tidal wave against his hot hand, nearly sobbing with relief before he pulled her into a deep, hungry kiss.

“Sweet girl,” he muttered some time later, their foreheads pressed together. “Come, let’s have you finish.” Anne’s face warmed. Vulgar innuendo should not be seen in perfectly innocent remarks from her husband, she reprimanded herself, but this became increasingly difficult to believe with him bare and warm before her.

He rinsed her hair with the perfumed water, massaged orris root into her scalp, then rinsed again, smiling as she spoke of the soaps and washes she wanted to bring back to England. Then he told her that she may dry herself off and relax in the antechamber until he’d finished bathing. Naturally, she refused. She bid him to stand and he chuckled to himself as he obliged her. 

Picking up the translucent bar of soap from its little tray, Anne began to lather her hands and his skin. She decided to start from his feet as he did with her, if only to allow herself a new vantage point to appreciate the firm contour of his buttocks with a little grin.

Like a medical rubber, she kneaded his tall, strong legs, the lean muscle of his narrow waist and back - beautiful and blessedly, extraordinarily unmarked, despite the dangers of his profession and the distinguished rank he had attained therein, with the exception of a small beauty mark on his right thigh.

“You’ll have me smelling like an English garden before long,” said he. She kissed his shoulder blade.

When he sat down in the water again, he closed his eyes and leaned back, his face set in a faint smile, his sinewy arms - and there was a tiny mole on the upper part of each that she inexplicably found adorable - spread along the edge of the raised tiles. As she settled into the bath with him and rinsed soap suds off him with the ewer, she drank in the sight of him looking relaxed and calm, Apollonian, young and boyish with several locks of his wet hair falling into his eyes, and she doted on his fine, striking features: the small shadows cast by his long, dark eyelashes, the gentle slope of his straight nose, his high cheekbones, that soft, delicate mouth and sharp jaw. Thus it followed that she attended the rest of his vigorous figure closely - his muscled abdomen beneath the offing of bathwater and toned, athletic waist, and lower still, the shallow grooves that ran from his hip bone down to his groin, the fine, gently curling hair that began to take root there - recalling portraits in her schoolbooks of the Apollo Belvedere and the David, and feeling that there was a great likeness in many respects - but not in one significant area. Oh, heavens, she was nineteen again.

And she grinned upon sudden remembrance of what Lady Russell had unwittingly alluded to in Bath, what seemed an eternity ago.

“Indeed,” she could not help laughing to herself, “‘the handsomest and best hung of any.’” 

“Hmm?” He opened his eyes and tilted his head in smiling incomprehension, and she laughed more and shook her head, grabbing a bottle of chamomile for his person from the edge of a washing basin.

“You know, I am happy that you find me so lovely,” she said quietly, rubbing the oil into the crevice of his warm thighs. At his vehement outpouring of praise for her perfection of body, mind, and character, she kept on, red-cheeked: “It is all the greater gratification to be estimated as a beauty by a man such as yourself,” and here he kissed her cheek, “for you know well the unparalleled - and I acknowledge my partiality, but even so, I am convinced that in this matter anyone would agree - beauty of your face and form, and it is a greater credit to be awarded the common cant of praise by a tremendously handsome man than a plain one.”

She meant to sound teasing in the last of her speech, but suspected that she only managed to be rueful, and wondered if he would steer them both back to safe waters and reinstitute a playful manner; he did not. Instead he uttered quiet words of thanks with a keen, knowing look. And she could not quite meet it; she knew at once he had penetrated the feelings she hadn’t planned to give voice to. Yet had she not known he would? Was that not her secret intention - for him to coax the words out of her?

Anne made to continue lathering upwards again, before he gently took her wrist in a silent request for her to speak again.

Her feelings made it so she could not but keep her gaze lowered and her voice low. “I take after my mother in many ways, I think; in character and in appearance - certainly, more than I do my father.”

Yes, he was quite aware of this already.

“And… we all of us share a part of what - well, what my sister would term, ‘the Elliot countenance,’” and his quiet chuckle emboldened her to smile, quickly, and continue louder, “but otherwise, other than the colour of our hair, some advantage in height, and perhaps our complexions, we share somewhat little, at least in appearance, that is - my father and I. Because I have such resemblance to my mother. Particularly our eyes; so totally different is this feature, my dark eyes and Father’s pale ones, that I believe…” that he, a man who values one’s looks above nearly all else, had refused to find much to admire in mine, and for a young girl, that knowledge was somewhat painful to bear, is what she did not say, but there was no need to.

Frederick kissed her. She wrapped herself around him with all the strength she could muster and realized, with some surprise, that tears had appeared in her eyes.

“Anne,” he finally whispered, “Anne, Anne, oh, my love.” He made such promises to her - avowals of her worth, of his love for her - brushing away tears with tender thumbs, and she wondered why she seemed to have become more childish as a married woman than as a girl, but he simply cradled her face in his hands and looked on her with such eyes - eyes that could melt solid gold. With that look, he made her feel like the only woman on earth. She was a ship waiting for his capture; she was a prize.

She whispered to him that she loved him, and took his hands in hers, she turned them to drop kisses on his palms. “Where once I had grown wan and weary, the sea, and meeting the Harvilles and the Crofts - having some useful occupations of my own, and traveling, and seeing new faces all around - these have all aided my looks a great deal - though none so much as your affection - and I can be happier now. You see,” she laughed wetly, “I, too, have the Elliot pride!”

He nudged her nose with his. “Firstly, might I remind you, madam, that now, if you have any improper pride - naturally, you do not -” she bit his lip and he laughed, and continued speaking into her mouth, “but if you did, it would strictly be the Wentworth pride. I ask you kindly to remember that.”

How could she respond to such an appeal but with amazed, overflowing joy? And the resulting gust of laughter and feverish kisses conferred on his person were, in Captain Wentworth’s professional view, so light and happy and buoyant, as to keep afloat the largest ship of the line in all His Majesty’s Navy.

“And next, next - ah, afford me a moment, Anne-!” Any protestations and requests to be allowed to speak, however laughingly made, were stopped in their path by the force of such kisses that a naval wife might bestow, until she had her fill for the time being (or rather, was too breathless to continue indefinitely) and he could continue conversing with her about her petty fears, doing it with his natural grace and solicitude.

She nuzzled his neck. “Back then, you know, one couldn’t help but reflect on the possibility of you proposing to another.”

He drew back in playful solemnity, putting a hand over his heart in a tragedian fashion, and she delighted in his faux theatrics - wasn’t it something, how a little time and much love could plaster over a painful memory and grind it to fine dust?

“You know full well by now that Mrs. Benwick -” she grinned again at his pointed emphasis of the lady’s new name - “would never, ever, ever have received an offer from me of my own accord, no matter my stubborn, misguided attempts to attach myself to another; and you know very well, Mrs. Wentworth, that by our visit to Lyme, my misplaced anger at you had long faded, and having seen your capability for myself in the preceding weeks, it was then only a matter of time before I reawakened to the knowledge of my love for you.”

“And so you must know,” she replied affectionately, meeting his eyes and looping her soapy arms around his neck again, “That once I had met you, no other man could or would ever, ever, ever -” he licked her cheek like a cat and she laughed, swatting him away, “- stand comparison, and I would sooner resign the remainder of my life to being Lady Russell’s companion or ward than consider accepting an offer from any other.”

“Happy thing indeed, then, that no resignations were necessary!” And now that such saccharine reflections were taken care of, they resumed their feverish kisses. 

She mused on her teary words just earlier - how silly she’d been, crying to him regarding her looks and those days at Uppercross - matters she didn’t give a thought to! Exhuming past nothings that she was sure were long forgotten! So this was what Mrs. Harville meant when she spoke of the sentimentality and all the absurd little anxieties that creep up on a woman in the beginning months of being with child, especially one’s first. It was a slight mortification. But very soon, all she could think of was how much she admired Frederick’s even-keeled response: his swift, loving removal of each of her doubts and diffident worries, one by one, in such a sanguine and easy a manner so as not to discompose her further. He had spoken before of his great fortune in marrying her - well, what of hers! What a good man she had won as her husband, as her partner in life and the father of her progeny - and she seemed to have such strength in her now-! She had nothing to regret in her years of living, nothing at all, all the past was swept away as riptides into the current! Suddenly a vision stretched before her, of the rest of her life together with Frederick and their child - even children, perhaps - oh, couldn’t she hope? Some wild, ungovernable emotion surged up from within, telling her that anything was possible, that their future was boundless and free, and Anne felt it, her good luck - the shared Wentworth luck, as Admiral Croft called it - her exquisite happiness. Oh, she wanted to do anything her husband wanted to do - know everything he knew. She wanted to do everything with him, for him. 

When they parted for air, he gazed at her with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I love that look of yours,” he said roughly. “Like you want to eat me up.”

Anne sat up in an instant, pushed him down and draped herself over him, and kissed every corner of his face, then a trail down the center of his chest and abdomen and licked there - tweaked and pulled at his nipples as he inhaled sharply, then bent and licked, sucked, tugged the small, hard points with her teeth until he groaned and bucked his hips - then moved lower, and lower, and lower. He raised himself on shaking elbows balanced over the ledge of the bath to watch her, his wife: sweet and bold, open and easy, unblushing heat and fire.

He jutted up proud as a sailship’s mast, his flushed tip standing upwards of his navel. There was a miniscule beauty mark on his loins, she realized, on the skin of his pelvis. What about it was so endearing to her? Perhaps it was evidence that she hadn’t merely dreamed all this happiness up, that her Frederick Wentworth was real flesh and blood and yes, happy, passionately, rationally hers, no matter what, bursting with love and heat for her. Her tongue peeked out to meet his cock, and she wrapped one kittenish hand around him to press and rub and stroke and tease. But as she hovered above his sex, he gently put out a hand to stop her mouth from descending onto him properly, and beckoned her up to his face -

Oh, he wanted his lips between her legs instead, did he? She smiled and shook her head. Every time she’d done this for him - for them! - he’d insisted on loving her with his mouth immediately before and afterward, out of - (unasked for) consideration perhaps, or some sense of husbandly duty - gentlemanly duty, more likely, with his sense of gallantry - and she would protest again and again, telling him he ought not to feel as though he were repaying some debt, but he would stand his ground; and in this matter, at least, she could not keep up the parry for long. His sweet, hot mouth, and his long musician’s fingers - his warm seaman’s hands - were not to be resisted. And he knew it, she thought, by the gleam in his eyes when she at last gave in, without fail. But not today; this time, she would nail her colours to the mast.

He tapped her nose with a finger still smelling of hibiscus and oranges, and she looked up to see his head tilted to the side as if to say, I’m waiting. The smile on his mouth told her that he’d read all her thoughts on her face - now warm and flame-red as any fireplace, she was sure - and the usual protests commenced, of her telling him that he need not feel obligated, and the usual rejoinders were given, of how if this were obligation, then there could be none sweeter; until she decided to change course.

“This should not be a discussion every time - I suppose, if we could both attend each other in one go, then the matter would be resolved.”

It was said unthinkingly, but he was silent for a long moment, his expression wry, and -

Ah. 

Upon seeing the look of comprehension dawn on her dear face, he guided her, with bright, sparkling eyes, in turning around, and lowered her rear to him - and how she loved when he thus managed her, just as she knew he adored her governance over him - he kissed her heel and the small soles of her feet beside his face, and thus they descended into mutual rapture; into flame.

She alternated between suckling at his smooth head, thick and weighty on her tongue, and tonguing the vein on the side of his member - intermittently licking the globes at his base, taking one slightly into her mouth and tasting a hint of mild soap, grazing her teeth across the sensitive skin just so, as she knew he liked - and set her delicate hands upon carefully playing with his soft sac when she returned to his heavy member, the whole instrument shining with her spittle. There was still the same blazing, overpowering need, but something else, too. A part of her relished in the novelty of it; she loved when her husband shared new things with her (incidents that came to mind might have included the night when she’d bound his hands and torso with rope and spare rigging and ordered him about; or one highly interesting game of pretend in which she was the sole lady aboard a captured vessel, and he, a rather libidinous pirate), and it was strange, she thought, how she had of course never done anything like this before, had never even had the imagination to think something like it could be done, but she knew precisely what to do: she knew each gesture immediately and intimately. She was inventing something ancient. 

But perhaps it was also because she could do no wrong here. As she pulled herself off his cock for a moment and glanced over her shoulder to glimpse his wild eyes, his flushed face, she knew he would be happy with anything and everything she did to and with him.

An abrupt restlessness washed over her. She took him back into her mouth and bobbed her head up and down his thick length, determinedly undulating over him - the beginning was an adjustment every time, due to his size - her jaw opened as far as it could. Her legs were shaking; her thighs might as well have been made of blancmange; she felt red-hot with desire. But she would not let him bring her to completion first. She wanted to compete with him over this, and she wanted very much to win. This was like their contests in their bedsport aboard ship, she thought, in which they tried to cause the other to make noise despite the necessity of staying quiet. She had quickly found out that even in this matter, Frederick was terribly driven. Now, it was no different.

He’d sunk into his task. His tongue - that little flame - charmed her flesh, weaving in and out of her and seemingly around and through her. Closing his eyes as he ate of her, he let himself linger on her spit-shone folds, opened to him like pink iris petals. His lips fastened around that already oversensitive, fabiform part of her, the pads of his fingers were hooked deep into her flushed thighs and buttocks, listening to her delicious whimpers, and he was now saying such perfect things between her legs - “so good” and “sweet” and such words as could kindle the dampest hearth, but she couldn’t make sense of them all - his voice reverberated through her in a caress of its own, a penetration. It pulsed straight from him into her blood. For a time all she could do was warm him in her mouth and writhe her hips back against his face.

But then he goes on, with: “my Anne,” and “mine,” and - 

And now she’s indignant, and feels a fierce rush of - protectiveness - no, possessiveness - over him, and the new life growing from and within her - and she thinks, again, of how different this is from all those years of training herself to want very little, to push memory down and trudge forward - and says, almost violently, “Well, you are mine,” and takes the whole of him into her, all the way into the very back of her throat.

Frederick gasped and his hips jerked up. Rapture! He immediately stilled and tried to draw back, and she distantly had the premonition of what he would say - no, she would not let him apologize for this, she tightened her thighs around his neck to stifle him and heard his soft mmph - and convinced him, with a pinch to his thigh, to fuck her mouth recklessly - but he would not be outdone. He had the hood of her clitoris neatly pleated between his lips, the fever was both of theirs. Valiantly, miraculously, he buried his nose and mouth into her further, and ground his face against the whole of her sex, and her muffled cry went straight to his cock -

She squeezed his neck with her trembling thighs, tighter still, and worked herself against him, riding his face with abandon, their hearts and bodies an inferno, twin flames and engines of pleasure, and all the avid currents of their climax coalesced into a great harbour wave. He was spilling into her throat whilst she swallowed as much as she could, his thick spend, and he felt her spasm and clench with his churning, relentless section, he continued drinking of the bitter honey that seemed to pour from her endlessly -

And when at last the tempest passed, he gently lifted and maneuvered her to face him again, and lightly licked away the bit of his seed dribbling from her lips. She let him kiss and care for her in a content fog; her mind was slow and sated, as though intoxicated. But through it all, Anne felt the height of victory.

She blinked blearily: it took a strong effort to attempt to regain some awareness of her surroundings. Finally she could keep her eyes open long enough to meet his gaze, and she saw that familiar proud look on his face: the same one she saw when she had taught a fresh young midshipman the difference between being athwart-ship and athwart-hawse, and when she’d first stepped on their ship and they both realized quickly that she did not suffer from seasickness, and sometimes for no reason at all, when he thought she wasn’t looking. But there was something else in his expression too, she decided: a cognizance and - conceivably - shyness? His next words were spoken softly and bashfully enough that she had to strain to catch them over the fine sprinkle of rain outside the window, over the surface of the sea. 

“Thank you.”

“None of that.” She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him on his wet nose and lips.

***

That night in bed, with her warm in his arms, he hears his wife’s low whisper: “Frederick?”

“Mm.” 

“When we are back in England, let’s ask Edward for a portrait of your late mother and father.”

He agrees with a smile, kisses her forehead sleepily, and together they sail away to dreamland.

Notes:

Gamahuche: to perform oral sex; thus gamahuching, fellatio or cunnilingus; gamahucher, one who performs oral sex.

Medical rubber: masseur, one who is massaging another.

Kese: exfoliating cloth used in Turkish baths.

The poem that Wentworth recites as he washes Anne’s hair is “Love’s Philosophy,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley; it was published in 1819, which is technically after when I envisioned this chapter taking place... let's just ignore that, hahah... (and in that vein, I believe the first usage of the term "beauty mark" is recorded to be the 1840s, oh well!) but that whole scene was partly inspired by the film Out of Africa, in which Meryl Streep gets her hair washed by Robert Redford (rest in peace) while he recites poetry to her. The bar of “translucent soap” is the original Pears soap, made of glycerine, which was produced as a mass-market soap starting 1807 in London.
Anne’s silk garters are real! Here's the article I saw them in.

Regarding the symbolism of Beauty marks:
Women: A mole on the left breast denoted “success in undertakings, an amorous disposition, and that their children [would] be mostly boys.” If over the heart, … [a woman was said to have] sincerity in love, quick conception, and easy travail in childbirth.”
Men: Moles on the right arm indicated “vigour and undaunted courage,” and a mole on the left arm declared “resolution and victory in battle.” A mole on the right thigh denoted a person would become rich and have good luck in marriage. A mole on the loins indicated “vigour, especially in the duties of love.”

I told myself I wouldn’t make this chapter painfully sappy like all the others, but then I listened to “(They Long To Be) Close To You” by The Carpenters on repeat as I wrote this, and, well... anyway, all the talk of eating and sucking and whatnot - particularly Frederick’s assertion that Anne wants to “eat him up” - is based partly on when Anne “devoured” his letter in the novel. I like that he gives her the much gentler “sunshine” and “tenderness” and “affection,” while Anne more violently “pierces his soul,” “devours” him, “breaks” him, etc. I think it’s easy to fall into the trap that Austen lays for us at the start of the novel, in which Wentworth may seem the height of masculinity while Anne seems very traditionally feminine. In reality, as the story progresses, we find out that he is sensitive and shows “the kindest sympathy” and “natural grace,” while Anne has “heroism and fortitude,” and is “firm” in mind and principles. Likewise, Wentworth is associated with care-taking, childcare, paperwork, etc, and he's equated with not only but "national importance" but that of the “domestic,” e.g., “domestic happiness;” Anne takes charge in a crisis and gives orders to men in a medical emergency, and she is “placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind.” Thus I felt that the heroine and hero have met in the “middle” as rather androgynous figures, in spirit and character.