A Victorian Virgin? Ch. 03

Victoria's fingers fumbled to please him, but he quickly directed these away. "Let me." Rapidly, he inserted his fingers in the fold beneath each button and wrenched her blouse open. He stared in disappointment at the grainy, grey fabric of her chemise, the pert rounds of her breasts just visible beneath this. This would not do at all. He did not tell her this; at least this barrier of fabric made her feel comfortable in front of him. The blouse was buttoned tightly at each wrist. He jerked these closures open quickly, so that he could slide the stiff, dark fabric down from her shoulders. She shuddered as the cold air struck her skin, her nipples visibly becoming more erect through the thin material of her chemise. Ned did not touch her, not yet. "Now me," he said.

"Pardon?" Victoria asked. She did not remain confused for very long. His hands grasped her wrists once more, directing her fingers to the starched breast of his shirt. He felt the ligaments and tendons of her hands flex in his grip. Her fingers were sticky with sweat. "I-" he heard her gasp. She scrambled with his buttons, just as she had done in room twenty-one of the Hawke Clinic, the tips of her fingers flicking lightly against his chest. Ned had dressed himself today, a rare feat when not working for his uncle; normally his father's valet at least laid his clothing out whilst he stayed at home. Consequently, there was no singlet or underclothing beneath his shirt. The dark curls of his chest hair were revealed to Victoria's sight and touch, cloaking the rigid muscle beneath.

Ned watched those stormy eyes dilate as he forced her small hand to rest on the hot skin above his heart. As a nurse, she must have seen and touched such things before, but this was different and she knew it. "It's because of you that it is beating so fast," he whispered into the crown of her black hair. "I dare say your pulse is in the same condition." She did not flinch as his calloused hand snaked beneath the neckline of her chemise and held the smooth, soft skin above her breast. Instead, he felt the pressure of her palm increase upon his chest as her lips gently found his. It was a virgin's kiss, pure, soft, the passion locked inside her mouth just as her body was locked inside the chemise.

The doctor held the kiss for a moment, feeling his Nightingale's passion increase with every movement of her lips until her tongue pushed against his teeth, demanding entrance. Now he pulled his handsome face away. His hands departed from her chest to her shoulders. "Why don't you take off the camisole?" he murmured. He saw her hesitate. Quickly he urged her on. "Please, Victoria. I will not hurt you. I just want to see your beautiful breasts."

Victoria felt her insides quiver at the thought of standing before this man in vulgar nakedness. He was regarding her with expectation rather than disgust. She found it strange that he might find her body attractive, unbound or cased by the manipulating fashions of the day. She personally considered her pink-nippled breasts to be incredibly ugly. Why would he want to see such hideous mounds of flesh?

Ned's grin encouraged her. She pulled at the pillow of loose fabric about her waist until the hem of the chemise was extracted from her skirt. Then she struggled to pull it over her shoulders, her breasts jolting as she finally succeeded. She heard him gasp and her heart sank. She was ugly, so terribly, terribly ugly. She swiftly averted her body from his sight. She had ruined everything; her repulsive body had turned him away.

Ned was given barely a glimpse of her full, voluptuous breasts before Nightingale turned away. "What's the matter?" he hissed. He did not care whether he hurt her feelings now. They were too close. He grabbed her bare shoulders and compelled her to turn. His hands forced her arms to her sides as he looked at her beautiful chest. Two well formed, firm, deliciously full breasts, milk-white and blue-veined stared back at him. The nipples were small and hard, pale and pink. Her body curved down beneath those breasts, the stomach flat, the waist tiny. For a moment he could not speak, then he gasped, "God- So beautiful-"

"Beautiful?" Victoria breathed. Her eyes watered and her heart flickered as his fingers gently traced the smooth, white skin of each breast. He weighed them in his hands, cupped them so that they rested in his warm, sweaty palms. He fingered each nipple, feeling the soft skin harden even more under his touch. Then, gently, he lowered his hot mouth onto her left breast and heard her sharp intake of breath. She gasped as he slowly massaged and suckled her with his tongue.

What happened next was a blur. He pulled back from her and tore his shirt from his body. With renewed passion, he advanced upon her, his hasty fingers struggling with the fastening of her skirt, his chest and lips pressed against hers. "Careful," he heard her whisper as she hurriedly unlatched the hooks the held the heavy fabric of her skirt tightly about her waist. The skirt dropped to the ground with a thud, dragging with it the connected petticoats. She stepped forwards from the puddle of thick fabric, tripped indelicately and pitched forth against his chest. He caught her without trouble and guided her to the dirty-white shrouded bed, hoping to God that there were no fleas infesting the sheets.

Victoria fell stiffly upon the coarse fabric of the coverlet, fleas being the least of her worries. She was suddenly, desperately terrified. Here she was lying in the best part of nakedness, only a pair of loose, seamless drawers covering what little modesty she had left. She saw him looming over her, his pale, tautly muscled chest, beastily hairy, she thought. His hands ran over her the fabric binding her legs and she shivered inside, the hair upon her legs pricking at his touch.

She could not move to respond or deny. She just lay there and waited for the sound of his belt jangling from his waist, for him to mount her, push inside her body and cause her pain. She considered it her own fault; if she did not want him moving inside her then why was she here? All those years of seeing Charlotte acting so happily as her horrible husband nibbled her neck, kissed her lips or patted her bottom. Those nights lying awake in the bedroom next-door, listening to the stifled gasps and grunts through the papery walls, disgusted yet strangely aroused. And here she was. Her limbs were as rigid as the solid rock of a petrified tree.

Ned Hawke did not wrench his trousers down nor did he climb astride his Nightingale. She was far from ready, although at moments she had surprised him, especially when she had actually helped him take her skirt off rather than query what it was he was doing. He attempted to part her legs, but found the muscles clamped tight. Reluctantly, he removed his hands and strolled around to the other side of the bed. "Are you quite comfortable?" he asked as the mattress creaked beneath his weight. "You're not cold, are you?"

"I'm quite all right, thank you," Victoria whispered.

"That's good to hear." Ned rolled to face her, the bedsprings once again making that alarming whining sound. He'd hate to hear them in full thrust, clattering and whingeing as if the entire structure was about to collapse beneath the amorous couple. As it was, it worried him to think that whatever held the bed together was so loose that it moaned and squeaked with every small movement. This place was a hellhole. He would certainly never bring his Nightingale back here again.

That reminded him of Nightingale lying beside him, her long dark hair flared about her head and over her bare body. His loins stiffened from just gazing upon those soft breasts, beneath that pretty face in her pool of hair. He didn't touch her. He would let her think and wait, perhaps even ask him to continue. Such was his egotism. "I'd never hurt you, you know that."

"I know." Somehow, she knew that he would not touch her now unless she asked him to. She wanted him to. She wanted to push and thrust and ride against him. She wanted his hot mouth to devour hers and that hard man-thing to pulse between her legs. "You wouldn't- hurt me, if-," Victoria stammered. It was too embarrassing, too vulgar to say.

"If what?" Ned gently stroked the skin of her cheek, feeling the soft down of invisible hairs prickle at his touch. He had her, he knew. She was gagging for a fuck; not that she was going to get one. A few kind words, a few kisses and pats, that's all it had taken. It had not been nearly as difficult as he had expected. If she had been any of the other nurses, he would have only felt contempt for her.

"If we- I'd like it, I think, perhaps-" she could not say the words. She relied on the look in her eye as she turned her head to face his mouth, so close yet so far away.

There it was again. That terrible rattling bed, ruining the moment for him. "What is it that you want? I'll give you anything, you only have to say the word and it is done."

Victoria leant closer, so that her left breast nestled on his elbow. "I'd like it- You-" How could she possibly phrase such a request? "I want you- inside me," she whispered. Did he understand, from such a stammered, suggestive sentence?

Her final words, as quiet as a scattering of autumn leaves across bare grass, jolted Ned inside. His heart leapt and he felt an answering movement from deep within the pit of his loins. "Really?" he gasped, already knowing her reply before it left those sweat-dampened lips.

"Yes."

Ned kissed Nightingale softly upon the lips and then upon the cheek. He wrapped his arms about her body and pulled her as close as he could. Her silken hair rested between them, like a sheet of whisper-light satin. He waited until he felt her body relax in his grip, skin to skin from the waist upward, fabric to fabric from the waist down. Slowly their kisses became more intense and urgent, until they were the sort of heart squeezing and body encompassing movements that caused them to writhe like sweaty snakes against each other's passion. They rolled together back in the centre of the bed, Victoria's head resting on the slack support of the shabby pillow.

Ned's mouth left Nightingale's and migrated south to savor her beautiful body. He heard her moan as he gently manipulated the sensitive, soft skin of her breast between his lips. When his face rose from the blossoming flesh, he saw her watching him with a bemused expression upon her face.

"What's the matter?" He queried.

"Don't worry." Her breasts shook with stifled laughter.

"Am I hurting you?"

"No, no, of course not," Victoria giggled.

Ned lowered his lips tantalizingly close to her skin then quickly pulled his face away. He regarded her with a bright smile. "Then what is it?"

"It tickles." She gave another, strangled giggle.

"You don't like it?" She did like it, and he knew it, but he had to hear it from her mouth. It was far more gratifying that way. He let his tongue lightly touch the hardened tip, hoping for a gasp or a moan as his fingers traveled whisper-soft up the inside of her thigh.

"I-" She shuddered involuntarily. "I love it," she groaned.

Ned sat up and smiled. His unruly dark hair stood uncontrollably out about his head. His eyes seemed bluer. Somehow, the dark patch of hair upon his chest did not seem so unattractive any more. "Well that's all you're getting of that for the moment," he whispered, with an easy grin.

"Oh and why's that?"

In reply, Ned Hawke shuffled further down the bed, narrowly missing the heavy leather of her boots. Damn it, he should have taken those off her earlier. It was too late now. Gently, he parted her legs with his fingers, feeling the muscles tighten instinctively under his touch. For a moment, he stared at the glistening mass of dark curls poking from the split in the front of her drawers. Then he lowered his mouth and slid his hot tongue past the coarse hair and into the slippery apex of flesh. The skin impulsively stiffened and he heard her gasp as if in pain. He licked her lightly and tenderly, enough to have her gasping and shuddering, but not enough to bring her to a screaming, writhing climax. That was for next time.

Victoria lay back in horror as she felt Ned's kiss upon her most private of parts. What on earth was he doing? It was disgusting. To think that he should want to put his mouth anywhere near that dirty, wet region from which urine and babies were expelled. Why would he gain any pleasure from committing such an act? Why did she enjoy the feeling?

From her vantage point against the drab flat pillow and creaking bed head, Victoria could see the dark hair of Ned's crown nestled in her pubes. Beyond that contorted his back, strange in its musculature in that she would expect somebody from such an occupation as a doctor to be softly cloaked in fat rather than bound in hard muscle. She could see every movement, every twitch of his head and hair. She could feel everything; his hair, his hot breath, his wet tongue, his fingers. She should have been disgusted. As it was, she was embarrassed that she wasn't. Embarrassed that her body was throbbing, hardening and slickening under his mouth. She was sickened that her heart beat louder than rain upon a cavernous space and that she could hardly breathe even though air was swamping her lungs. "Please," she heard herself moan. That's all she could say.

His hunting tongue reluctantly disengaged itself. "What is it?" he whispered, hoarsely. "Am I hurting you? Do you want me to stop?"

"No," Victoria gasped.

"Then what is it?" His voice sounded cross, irritated. She could hardly see his face, but what she could see was a deeply furrowed frown branding his forehead. His fingers tightened their grip on the soft, pudgy skin of her inner thigh.

When Nightingale did not reply, Hawke further detached himself from her body, propping himself back upon his elbows so that he could see her pink-cheeked face. He hoped that he would not have to hold the position for terribly long; he still had a cramp in his lower back from the other night. He was irritated now, not in the mood for this stopping and starting at his Nightingale's every whim. She had gotten under his skin and that was not a comfortable place for her to be. That was the problem. He had seen her as an object, but now saw her as a person. He had thought of her far too often over the past few days. Damn it. It would take a lot of work to purge her from his system.

"I'll stop if you do not like it." Let her beg him to continue. He knew that she would. It was then that he saw it, a tiny flash of movement in the corner of his eye. Not one, but two, maybe three, so small and fast that he could hardly see them but for the backdrop of Nightingale's white flesh. He instantly felt his flesh crawl, whether from the presence of these tiny pests or sheer disgust, he knew not. "Jesus Christ!" he swore. Frenetically he pulled himself from the bed. "Get up. You'd better get up!"

"What is it?" Victoria asked in alarm.

"Fleas! The bed is crawling with the fucking blighters. Dirty, shitty, fucking hell-hole!" Ned turned from the soft, inviting figure upon the bed, his arousal instantly slackened by the presence of the uninvited, blood-feeding insects. He picked up his discarded shirt and pulled it on so frantically that he lost a button from the cuff. It spiraled, unwatched, to rest beneath the bed. His tie was knotted uncomfortably tightly, the collar of his shirt skewed beneath the strip of fabric. He flashed a look to Victoria, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching him wearily. "Get up and get dressed. I cannot have this. Get up, we're leaving."

Victoria quickly stepped into her discarded skirt and pulled it up about her waist. Next came her chemise and her blouse. Ned Hawke was frightening her with his coarse language and violent movements. She flinched as he threw her cape at her, followed by her hat. The hat-pin, loosed from the hole in which it had been stabbed, clattered to the floor. Ned did not wait for her to pick it up or drape her cape about her shoulders. He was already out the door and down the hallway before she caught up with him.

He rattled the bell at the desk as if it was the head of the woman who had given him the room. He imagined that wrinkled, floppy skinned face lolling backwards and forwards as he gripped her by the shoulders. He did not stop ringing the bell until the woman was standing impatiently in front of him. It was a fight to control his anger, but he managed to speak quietly and coherently, his words edged with blades. "I would like my money back. That room was infested with fleas."

"There's just no pleasing yer, is there?" the woman asked, flashing her mouthful of tartar-walled teeth. In all honesty, she had not been aware of the fleas in room four. Indeed, it came to her as a shock. The sheets were changed regularly, so why should there be fleas in that room? Bloody toff was probably making it up.

"I want my money back," Ned demanded.

"We've never had trouble wiv fleas afore. Are yer sure yer didn't imagine them?"

The rage boiling inside Ned Hawke became hot, burning steam. "I know what I saw. I want my fucking money back now!" His tightly clenched fists hit the desk to emphasize his point. Damn it. He knew he was losing it. He could have controlled his anger, but he didn't want to. This woman needed to see exactly how furious she had made him. She had ruined everything.

The woman's sallow, yellowed skin paled. Her eyes seemed to retreat into her skull like a snail into its shell. "Calm yerself-"

"Calm myself?" Ned spat back into her face. "The first room you gave us was overpriced, noisy, dusty and smelt odd. I had to pay ten pounds extra to get this room, which was a minor improvement upon the last one. The ceiling was flaky and the wooden panels were unpolished. The bed whined and squeaked as if it were about to disintegrate about our ears. And the bedding was infested with crawling, jumping fleas! I want my fucking money back. All of it."

The woman would have argued further, had she not seen new customers advancing along the hallway toward the desk. Hurriedly, she unlocked the cash-box kept in the second drawer of the desk. Her chubby, yellow-nailed fingers flicked through the money as she counted it out in her head. "Yeah all right, I'll gives yer yer money back. I'm very surry that this 'as 'appened to hinconvenience yer, sir."

"I bet you're sorry," Ned snapped, sarcastically. He took his reimbursed money back and placed it in his coat pocket. He didn't really care about the money, there was plenty more where that came from. He cared that he had taken his Nightingale somewhere that had been substandard. He felt as if he had let her down. Now he gripped her elbow tightly and lead her past the man and woman who had just entered. He did not look at the people, he looked at her. God, she had not even had time to rearrange her hair. It was all crammed, higgledy-piggledy beneath her hat. She'd have to do it in the cab.

He told her he was sorry, helped her dress her hair, and fixed his tie. At least he could give her a decent meal, which he did. Afterwards, they walked down the street, his arm resting almost too comfortably in the crook of her elbow. They stopped to wait for a cab and kissed goodbye.

*

Victoria climbed the steps up to the rooms belonging to Charlotte and Sam Morpeth carefully. She felt unusually light-headed after the last of a series of passionate kisses with Ned Hawke. Her heart was beating faster than any drum and her body felt hot and sweaty from the increased blood flow. The strange, hot, wetness had returned between her legs, accompanied by a dull throbbing. The muscles of her inner thighs clenched as she recalled the sensation of Ned Hawke's tongue running over her flesh. It was not unpleasant. Indeed, she would be lying if she said that she didn't like it. Now she felt that movement again, even though she was alone. Tightening her muscles did not help; it made the sensation all the more enjoyable. Her cheeks flamed with knowledge as she stopped outside the door.