Oil of Roses Ch. 13

"Theresa… you're so… lovely… I could…spend… my life… just looking… at you."

Oh, very good! Truly the most spastic protestation of love since the Hunchback of Notre Dame! With such a silver tongue it's no wonder you wake up next to the slatterns you do.

"Edward," she said, turning all the way around, "please, look to your heart's content. I am yours to do with as you will, whether I am to eventually return to Mr. Grimes' possession or not. Right now, I… am… yours. He gave me to you, you accepted."

She went to him, naked, vulnerable and motioned to be picked up. Haltingly he did so, all too aware of her nakedness and his reactions to her. She sat on his arm and looked at him.

"Edward, sir, please do more than look. You are so beautiful and so terrible in your beauty…"

"I'm not beautiful…"

"To me you are. I'm looking beyond your face to the man who dropped his life at a second's notice to do his friend a favor. I'm gazing past your flesh at the man Carol told me about on the way over here, the man who helped save Margo years ago and helped Harry give Rick what he deserved. The man who would kill for his friends without a second's regret. I'm looking beyond your visage to a man who has held me and carried me almost non-stop for hours tonight. Who in spite of his size and strength has treated me more gently than any man I've ever known before in my whole life. I'm seeing the man who looked at me with so much tenderness it frightened me. Do you hear me Edward John Janak? The tenderness in you, not the strength or the size or the ferocity, the tenderness frightened me. It washed over me and I prayed I wouldn't fall in love with you right there and then.

"That man, Edward, that man is beautiful and it's a terrifying beauty because of the strength of the emotions inside him. I know you can't or won't see it when you look in the mirror but believe me, sir, there is so much love inside you it's like looking up at some great dam stretching across a mighty river. You know what's behind that dam and no matter how much you trust it, the weight of what's behind it frightens you a bit."

"I'm not… all that… I'm a monster."

"Edward, who told you that? Who?"

She grabbed the sides of his head and tugged at it as if to force him to look at her.

"Please, look at me Edward and tell me who lied to you like that?"

"We better get you in that bath before it gets cold."

She looked at him sadly. "Perhaps we'd better."

He started to wash her and he watched himself as he did so. He watched how gently he touched her. How careful he was with her.

"Edward, I can wash myself, if this is making you uncomfortable."

"No, let me, please."

"Edward," she said as he washed her hair, "as you bathe me, every stoke of your hand, every move of your fingers is an act of pure love, so gentle, so caring, how can you call yourself a monster."

Eddy jerked as if hit with a cattle prod. "I… I… I can't finish this, I'll be in the other room, you call me when you need me."

Eddy fled the room before he burst out in tears over her.

No heart lurching, no crotch lurching, no cock lurching… no heart lurching, please, he thought.

A little while later he heard her call him. Going in he found her sitting on the edge of the tub watching it drain.

"Theresa, yes I care about you and yes I'm careful with you. You're a woman and you're small and you're frail and I could hurt you without meaning to. I couldn't live with that. Not again. And I won't deny what anyone could see by looking at my body. I find you very beautiful and I want you.

"But I'm not going to have you, I can't have you, you'll be going back to Harry when it's safe for you to do so and I don't want that… pain. So what I want is immaterial, just like what you want. My job is to protect you and hide you. Now come here and let me dry you and then let's get you to bed."

He dried her, deliberately, delicately, carried her in and sat her on the bed.

"Now, I know they're dirty but let's get you some clothes on to sleep in."

"Why, Edward? I want to sleep naked, next to you, naked as well. If you dress me, as soon as you're asleep I will take off whatever clothes you put me in."

"What if I order you to leave them on?"
"Then do it Edward. Order me. Command me. Tell me to wear clothes and I will. Tell me to sleep on the floor and I will. Tell me to crawl down to the elevators naked and push my butt into the air for everyone who gets off the elevator, and beg them to fuck me, I will.

"There's only one thing I can conceive of you ordering me to do that I will not."

"What's that?" he asked, wishing he could call her bluff and bring himself to order her to do something, anything.

"Order me not to love you. Command me to deny how I feel about you. Tell me to lie to you and say that I don't want you. Deny my heart the right to give itself to whoever it chooses. I do love you, I can't deny it and I won't lie about it. I want you. My heart has been yours for hours."

"That was more than one thing."

Tears flowed down her cheeks. "So I suck at math."

Eddy fell to his knees, defeated but still fighting.

"But Harry…"

She slipped off the end of the bed and came to him, her perfect lips meeting his, her tears wetting his cheeks and mixing with his own as they started to flow.

For an eternity he was blessed to kiss her lips and he could taste her and her taste was like a sweet wine and she tasted like lavender smelled and his arms were around her and he was lost but still he fought on.

"Harry will want you back."

She looked at him. "Edward, Harry and Carol rescued me. They didn't buy me for themselves. Do you think so little of the people who love you that you can believe that they would deny you your happiness to take possession of something they didn't want in the first place? Can't you see and hear how much they love you? Don't you know that even if Harry'd had to spend twenty thousand for me, if you asked him he would give me to you gladly, just because you asked? Are you really that ignorant of how your friends feel about you?

"Edward, this is moving so much faster than I thought it could and I don't care. Don't you see, they didn't just buy me to rescue me; they bought me to rescue you.

"I'm yours if you want me, I'm yours if you'll have me, I'm yours already; take me, use me, love me, do whatever you want with me, please."

And she was in his arms and it was a dream because in real life Quasimodo never got to hold Esmeralda, never got to kiss her, never had her take his clothes off and climb on top of him as he lay on the bed in shock, never had her tongue thrusting into his mouth as she rubbed her wet and warm cunt against his belly, never felt her curl her fingers in his chest hair, tugging on it. He never gazed into Esmeralda's eyes as she blessed him with her tears, murmuring to him "I love you".

In a quieter moment he asked "Why do you want me to call you Theresa when everyone else calls you Tamara or Tammy?" as she kissed him all over his chest.

She stopped and looked at him. "It's going to sound perverse, but it's not. It's what my Daddy called me. Not that he and I ever did anything like this, no. But with him I always felt safe, I always felt loved. I always knew that I had a refuge. That's why I want you to call me Theresa, because in those ways, you remind me of him.

"Now Edward, I think it's time you made love to me."

He lifted her up and was about to position her on top of his erection when she said "Edward, please sir, you on top of me."

"But what if I slip? What if I lose my grip and I fall on you?"

"Edward, you won't fall on me and even if you did, I'm not that fragile. Beneath you I won't feel threatened, I'll feel sheltered."

Reluctantly, able to refuse her nothing, he did as she asked. As he looked down at her tiny body below him, he was so terrified he lost his erection.

"Hold on, sir, let me get that for you."

She slid down the bed and took his deflating cock in her mouth. She caressed his balls with her tiny hands as his dick began to swell in her mouth. Soon he was erect again and she moved back up onto a pillow, putting herself into position.

"Would you like me to beg for it, sir?"

"Seriously beg, never. If at times you want to playfully beg, that's fine."

She smiled at him, a glint of mischief in her large brown eyes.

"Oh please sir, fuck me, fuck me now before I lose my mind," she said in a silly falsetto. "Sir, if you don't take me right now I'm going to start singing every annoying pop song I can think of and I've spent a lot of time listening to annoying pop songs. And I don't sing well, have I mentioned…"

He had put his cock at the entrance to her cunt and the warm wetness sucked him in like there was a magnet between her legs. Then he was inside her, slowly moving deeper and they were moving together and Eddy was amazed because to him, it felt like King Kong making love to Fay Wray. It was a physical impossibility, but it was happening and she was so beautiful and they moved together so perfectly. Minute by minute he watched her, amazed at her beauty and then she was coming and he watched the blood rush to her skin and it was like a fall of autumn leaves being blown across a bank of snow.

He watched her stifling her cries. "If you want to make noise I want to hear it" he said. And she gave her passion voice and Eddy listened to her music and his tears fell on the bed and somewhere in her climax he came and didn't realize it was happening until he felt himself come inside her and he let himself down closer to her and she began to run her fingers across his chest above her, almost pawing at him as he finished his orgasm.

Afterwards they lay side by side and she looked up at him.

"Sir, would you like me to clean you before we go to sleep? I can get a washcloth or I can use my mouth…"

"Do you really know what I want, Theresa? I want you to be here in the morning and I want you to at least pretend to still love me, if just for a little while."

She climbed atop him and looked at him, face to face.

"Edward, I am so sorry that the world has hurt you so badly, oh God I am so sorry. I wish I could take that pain away from you. No one, ever, deserves to feel that, least of all gentle, noble, beautiful you."

"Sir, I'll give you all you want and I'll go you one better. I'll still be here in the morning and I'll still love you, really and truly. You'll still be beautiful and I'll still know there's no one I'd rather belong to than you. I'll still want you, I'll still love every second of every day that I'm with you, I'll still need you more than I can say. Will that please you?"

"That's more than 'one better'."

She smiled, "So I suck at math."

And she laid her head on his chest, and they went to sleep that way, with her stretched out atop him.