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A RIGHT HONORABLE Soldier

By Mrs. Jane Hadley.

IN WHICH a visit to Sterling House inspires a great deal of morally questionable behavior.

XIII

Lebanon, Kentucky
Sunday, December 15, 1861

BRIGADE drill went better than ever, entire regiments maneuvering in support of one another without any major collisions. And dress parade after supper was encouraging as they marched through Lebanon proper in their full uniform. The boys were all trying their best, thinking that he was the particular object of the many young ladies who were viewing the parade.¹

It tickled even Cate to see the girls waving their handkerchiefs and giggling to one another, making her want to stand a little taller, march a little more crisply. It distantly occurred to her that she should be among them, giggling at the men rather than marching with them, but after so many months of drilling and disguising herself, the thought felt more foreign than nostalgic. Even her own name had tasted strange on her tongue when she’d whispered it to Henry the other night. Somehow, in the process of playing the part of Charley Smith, she was in many ways becoming him. 

Hower took roll himself at nine, in Osborn’s absence, and reported them all present to Lieutenant Thomas. When he returned, Cate and Henry were ready, quietly slipping out from the tent and making their way under the shadows of the tall, conical Sibley tents. They picked up Sam Corbett, Jim Bates, and Corporal Harris, along the way and the five of them slipped uneventfully past the guard and down the hill toward town. 

The streets of Lebanon were quiet, except for the meeting house between the coal and lumber yards on Mulberry Street. Within, they could hear the strains of soulful Negro singing as the Black community of Lebanon gathered for worship.² Cate slowed, straining to see through the window of the meeting house. She wondered for a moment how it was that she had come to be heading for a brothel instead of a church. If this were some serialized novel in Harper’s Weekly, this would be the point that she realized she had gone astray. But then Henry grasped her wrist and pulled her along with a secretive grin, and she decided that she would rather her life be a novel sold in a yellow jacket, with a title like The Ruin of Charley Smith or something.³ Or perhaps, she thought with a sly smile, she played the libertine in The Ruin of Henry Schaefer. She liked that even better. 

The Sterling House was another source of light and din in an otherwise quiet, sleepy village. The door was looked after by that tall, broad-shouldered man they’d see the other night, but it wasn’t as crowded, and their group had no trouble gaining entrance. The parlor was warm and close, filled with tobacco smoke and the loud laughter of men. There were a good number of uniformed men, but there were others, too. Locals, in suits fine enough to mark a man with the expendable income to gamble and buy the time of lovely women. Or the bodies of the enslaved. Cate recoiled from them as she passed.

Speaking of the women, there were four of them circulating the room. The brown-haired proprietess Cate remembered held court among a handful of adoring men, only one in uniform, as she dealt cards deftly and sipped from a small china cup. 

“There she is,” Hower said and grinned stupidly. Cate followed his gaze to the bar, where a red-haired woman pulled bourbon from a barrel in a bottle green evening dress. The corporal strode around tables and headed straight to the bar. Henry and Cate began to follow, but Sam Corbett pulled them back. 

“Better leave him to his own foolishness,” Corbett said.

“What do you mean?” Cate asked, watching curiously as Hower approached the woman. She was all gentle curves—there was not one feature that could be described as angular, except for perhaps her brows as her eyes alighted on Hower. 

“He spent an entire month’s pay on her last time, and he didn’t even get to visit upstairs,” Corbett said with a roll of his eyes. 

“What did he spend it on, then?” Henry asked. His eyes were so innocent, and it made Cate strive to suppress the lascivious grin that threatened to overtake her face. 

“Rounds of cards, drinks, the pleasure of her company at our table,” Corbett shrugged. “Damn waste, if you ask me. There’s piles of lovely ladies around these parts. No need to pay for what’s offered for free, am I right?” 

Jim Bates laughed, showing his large buck teeth. Cate scoffed and took a seat at the round table their group claimed. “When was the last time you were offered a lady’s attention for free? Last time I checked, ladies weren’t handing out favors to just any ugly bastard trying to steal a kiss.” 

Corbett glowered and the rest of the boys guffawed. 

“Like you should talk, Smith. How old are you again? Eleven? Twelve?” 

The cards were dealt as they merrily continued to rib each other.

“The game is poker,” Corporal Harris declared.

“Thank god,” Henry said. “If I have to play another round of euchre, I might throw up.” 

“Deal us in.” Hower had returned and arranged himself into the only remaining chair, inviting the beautiful woman at his side to take a seat on his knee. “By the way, fellas, this is Miss Lucy.” 

The boys all gave a cordial “how do you do?” even as they grinned rudely. Miss Lucy was even more lovely up close, her eyes keen and bright, her pink lips quick to smile, and her lovely dress casting a veneer of respectability that her ungloved hands belied. Her bertha sloped to reveal her bare, freckled shoulders, and her copper hair curled from its net and delicately decorated her neck. Cate swallowed hard, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was faced with a beautiful woman or if it was because she felt utterly haggard in comparison. She tossed a furtive glance over at Henry. To her relief, he seemed engrossed with his cards.

“Well, fellas, what are we playing?” Miss Lucy asked, her voice bouncing in that hoosier twang as she leaned forward and studied Elias’ cards, grasping his hand in hers. Cate stared at the audacity for a moment before she remembered she was in a brothel, and also that she had taken Henry in hand in an alleyway not a few nights previous and had utterly no legs to stand on when it came to judging propriety. 

Harris instructed Miss Lucy and Hower on the game at hand, and the men all proceeded to play just as they would were there not a beautiful woman in their midst. Well, that wasn’t precisely true. They ribbed each other harder, preened and peacocked, and after the first hand went to Corbett, they fell over one another to explain poker strategy to Miss Lucy. She was amusingly patient with them, especially considering she was much more likely to be a card sharp than a novice, given her place of employment. A round of ciders was delivered to the table with scarcely a twitch of a finger by Miss Lucy and several more rounds of cards and drinks left them all feeling a little lighter, a little looser, and a little louder. 

Cate watched with wonder as Miss Lucy played her comrades off one another, encouraging them all in turn with an easy smile or a soft touch of her fingers to her bare decolletage. While she sat on Hower’s knee, she lavished very little attention on him, instead fluffing the rest of them up to a point where—and Cate had no idea how she accomplished this—their group of soldiers seemed to understand their game of poker was somehow a competition for Miss Lucy’s attention. 

“I raise you all five cents, and I dedicate this hand most sincerely to the Venus of Lebanon,” Hower declared, tossing a nickel onto the table and settling his other hand quite familiarly on the waist of Miss Lucy. Cate stared at his hand, tucked in the generous curves that corsets were built to assist.  A Venus Miss Lucy most certainly was. She had a large, round bosom and a waist quite narrow in proportion, creamy white skin and soft, rounded shoulders and arms. She had a figure that most women—Cate included—had to contrive with all manner of padding and optical illusion, and Cate hated that she could feel herself blushing at the thought as she folded her hand. She sullenly told herself that the figure she saw was probably artifice, but one glance at Miss Lucy’s decolletage as she bent forward to merrily rake in Hower’s winnings made it clear that wasn’t so. 

“Deal me out of this next one,” Henry said abruptly, standing. “Nature calls.” 

He sidled out of his chair, and Cate felt his fingers gently brush against the back of her neck as he passed. Shaken from her inward humiliation, she looked up sharply at his withdrawing figure to see him glance quite significantly at her over his shoulder before he went back into the main hallway. 

Cate bit her lip as she took up her next hand. She didn’t even look at the cards as everyone anted up. She stared at the wall behind Corbett’s head, the wall Henry disappeared behind. He wasn’t just visiting the privy. He’d touched her neck, given her that look. That meant something. It had to. 

Cate blinked at her cards. She exchanged a two of spades for a Jack of diamonds. Her heart raced in her chest and the smoky air felt close and hot. 

“I raise you a penny,” Bates said, tossing his penny into the pot. The others anted in turn and when it came round to Cate, it was everything she could do to shrug nonchalantly and say, “I fold. I’m going to try my luck at billiards.” 

She stood and pocketed the rest of her coins, praying that none of the idiots she’d come with would be so inclined as to join her. Luckily, billiards didn’t have anything on Miss Lucy, and the boys carried on as if Cate hadn’t said anything at all. 

She sidled round the table and headed into the main hallway, nearly running full into Henry as she turned the corner. 

“Dammit, Schaefer!” she swore to cover her fluster. 

He grinned at her, all lopsided over straight, white teeth, and pulled her into the shadows under the stairs. It wasn’t fair, what that smile could do to her. Her heart hammered against her chest as Henry pulled her close. 

“There’s an open room upstairs,” he murmured into her ear, his breath tickling her hair. 

“What? How do you know that?” she snapped, because his forwardness was making her legs into jelly and she very much resented it. 

“I sneaked up there and checked.”

“Ah, so you weren’t in the privy.” 

“I’ve come to learn that it is the most convenient excuse.” His nose was in her hair, and she felt thankful she’d had the foresight to wash it. “Someone’s left the key in the lock, too.” 

She pulled back and regarded him with a serious stare. She felt a rushing in her ears, like a train was approaching too quickly for her to get out of the way. The French letter felt heavy in her pocket and the noise, the press of the thick, smoky air, the light alcoholic pulse of cider in her belly—all of it pulled inextricably on her will such that it only took her a second to say, “Show me.” 

Henry flashed his eyebrows and peered around the stairs at the man who tended the front door. It only took a minute or two before a group of men retired from the parlor and the doorman saw them out, allowing Henry and Cate the opportunity to tiptoe quietly up the stairs to the second floor. Cate grasped the back of Henry’s jacket and felt the absurd urge to giggle as they climbed the steps to the narrow hallway above. 

Henry led the way to a room at the back of the hall, the door on the left, and opened it with a quiet creak. Cate wondered absently what was behind these other doors, whether others were engaging in illicit debauchery with Miss Lucy’s sisters or something. She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around this hotel being a cover for a brothel. She’d always understood prostitution to be the lowest a woman could fall, but this place didn’t feel evil or tragic or anything like nefarious. It was fun, exciting, and … free. 

Miss Lucy had dominated their table, reduced the lot of her comrades to a dithering pile of idiots, and got them to veritably throw their money at her. She’d had her pick of the lot of them and it was her choice who she chose—if she chose anyone at all. Everyone said that marriage was the purest and most ideal condition for a woman, but in Cate’s experience, it had been a great deal more demoralizing than what Miss Lucy appeared to do.⁴

She was still looking over her shoulder, listening absently for any sounds to lay proof as to the true nature of the place, when Henry yanked her into the room. 

Cate stumbled in, a thrill turning over her stomach, and took in the small room, sparsely furnished, lit by a dimmed oil lamp on the wall, and wholly dominated by a large bed in its center. This was happening. She bit her lip and turned toward Henry, who was facing the door and turning the key in the lock. She let a smile creep across her lips as she advanced on him and ran her hands lightly down his sides as the bolt clunked into place. Henry hummed, a deep vibration she could feel in her hands, but he didn’t turn around. She pressed her body against his back, perhaps a little too forcefully, and tasted his neck as she dragged her hands up his arms, kneading his firm shoulders. He was so warm, and pliant, and he’d chosen her. She’d chosen him. He rested his cheek against the door as she kissed his neck, his lovely blue eyes fluttering closed as she reached under his arms and let her hands explore the planes of his chest. 

His sack coat was a problem. The bulk of ill-fitting wool was in her damn way. Her fingers blindly fumbled for his brass buttons, and she heard his breath hitch in his throat when he realized what she was doing. She managed to get the buttons loose without too much trouble and stepped back to pull the coat from his shoulders. 

“What if someone means to use this room?” Henry said in a ragged whisper. He made no move to turn around, and Cate seized upon the opportunity to pull down his suspenders and release the buttons of his shirt as well. 

“Then we’ll skedaddle.” 

“What if they see you?” 

“That’s what the lock is for.” Cate pushed him up against the door again for emphasis, taking hold of his shirt collar and squeezing it over his shoulders, letting it hang at his waist as her hands indulged in dragging over his bare skin.⁵

God, but he was such a well-formed man. His shoulders were broad and his waist tapered, his back a delicious topography of muscles and bone under smooth, lightly freckled skin. He let her roughly turn him round, pressing his back against the door and pressing her mouth hungrily to his. His hands twisted in her sack coat, seeking her own buttons, but she wasn’t about to let herself get distracted from her study of his bare skin. 

She pushed fingers through the blonde hair that dusted over his chest, dragged them over his ribs, slipped them into the edge of his waistband. She tore her mouth away from his and began kissing down his neck and chest, tasting sweat on his skin and feeling his chest heave with breath. He smelled so good—not in the traditional sense, because God knew they were both ripe again from drilling in the pleasantly warm Kentucky weather—but in the Henry sense. He smelled so well, like himself, that full, round, masculine scent of sweat and wool and earth. From an objective perspective, his smell couldn’t possibly be interpreted as ideal, or even good, but she breathed it in nonetheless like a man just saved from drowning. 

“God, yes,” Henry said as Cate palmed his growing erection through his trousers. His hips jerked into her hands. 

“I want to kiss every damn inch of you,” she murmured into his sternum as she pulled at the buttons of his trousers. She wanted him muttering and shuddering and begging for her. Then she wanted him to throw her back and fuck her through the bed. She distantly understood that these things were potentially at odds, but she didn’t give a damn because his cock sprang free as she shoved his trousers down to his ankles. She was struck by the urge to taste it. What would he look like if she got on her knees, used her mouth to pleasure him? Would he like that? She could hardly imagine he wouldn’t, although she feared he might never look at her the same way again. It was certainly not something a good girl would do. 

Cate looked up at Henry, her chin set in his navel, and wibbled. 

“What?” he asked breathlessly. His chest was flushed and sweat was forming in the hollow at the center of his chest. 

“I want to taste you,” she whispered, watching his face desperately. Would he think her disgusting for such a thing? Please say yes, she thought. Please want me. 

His eyes were round and his breath hitched in his throat. He managed a stilted nod, and Cate felt her overly eager desire waver for a moment. She wasn’t a good girl by any means, but neither was she a Cyprian, and she hadn’t strictly done this before. She became aware that there was probably a wrong way to do this, and she didn’t know precisely what it was. She realized she was still staring at him, holding relentless eye contact as his rapidly hardening prick poked at her breast. 

Cate bundled her doubts away and applied herself to the relatively easier task of kissing her way down to her knees, breathing in the smell of him that became sharper as she settled herself between his legs.  She kissed the hollows where hip and thigh met and listened to Henry’s ragged breath as he hung against the door, frozen and waiting. She imagined he was veritably dying of anticipation, and she smiled to herself as she let her lips brush down the length of his shaft. His skin was so soft, so velvety smooth and hot to the touch. She wrapped her fingers around the base, pulling his foreskin back as she pressed her lips to the tip. There was a bead of moisture there, and when her tongue flicked to taste it, she was surprised to find a pleasant salty sweetness. 

“God, Charley, you beauty,” Henry muttered and pushed his fingers through her short hair. Would he rather be looking down at a woman elegantly dressed like Miss Lucy, with long hair he could unpin to adorn her sloping shoulders? She shoved that thought well away before it could shake her and wrapped her lips round his cock, earning a desperate gasp. “Yes, please, Charley. Charley.” 

God, but she loved how he said her name. The name he gave her. That she’d taken for herself. Damn Cate Stowell Ellis. Damn to hell Richard’s useless name. Damn her father’s name too. Even her given name. Cate was never good enough. Cate was too much, too loud, too opinionated, too tall, too burdensome. Fuck Cate. 

Charley pulled back from him, suddenly realizing that throughout this entire endeavor, she had forgotten to breathe, and pulled in a shuddering breath. Henry looked drunk, eyes half-lidded and mouth hanging open. She probably didn’t look much different. 

“Come here,” Henry ground out and pulled her up by her collar. Charley stared at him and he stared right back, breathing heavy, then yanked her in and kissed her. She could hardly believe it. She wondered if he could taste himself on her tongue. Shouldn’t someone want to avoid such a thing? Shouldn’t one probably not want to put one’s mouth down there in the first place? 

“This needs to come off,” he muttered, pulling at her coat buttons with clumsy fingers. “I want to see you.” 

He gave up on the buttons quickly and pulled her sack coat over her head. Then she let him grapple with her shirt buttons for a minute before she intervened and finished them off. “Don’t pull my buttons off.”

“You have too many buttons,” he replied, shoving her shirt open over her clavicle and shoving her suspenders down. He regarded her trousers mournfully. “Entirely too many buttons.” 

Charley rolled her eyes and shucked her trousers off herself. Henry took the opportunity to step out of his as well, toeing his boots off. His eyes were on her and she became painfully aware of how her shirt exposed her down to her navel, no stays or chemise or other modesty garment to hide her. The shirt was her last frontier; she’d never been seen by a man in less. Richard hadn’t really bothered with any part of her apart from where he breached, proceeding with the most utilitarian of touches. It hadn’t been careless, though it had felt rather impersonal. Charley always suspected wanting her too much would violate his propriety, and she hadn’t thought much of it, given she’d scarcely wanted him at all. 

But she wanted Henry. She wanted him badly, and the thought of standing in front of him fully exposed made her throat clench with worry. She bent and busied herself with unlacing her boots.  She didn’t look like Miss Lucy. She hardly looked like a woman at all, which had been a boon these months she’d been passing as a soldier. But surely Henry would miss the gentle curves and hilly breasts, the soft, feminine submission a man should expect from a woman worth wooing. She toed her boots off and reluctantly straightened. 

Henry watched her with keen, blue eyes. He’d shucked his shirt and stood before her in a glorious display of masculine form, like a classical statue on a traveling display from Europe. He was all smooth skin and strapping planes, though she supposed the Greeks wouldn’t be particularly taken with his chest hair or freckles in their pursuit of the ideal human form in marble. Perhaps they wouldn’t have been keen to carve that furious erection, either, all the more pity. Charley didn’t look anything like that either, as masculine as her features tended. She was angular and skinny, with small breasts and no visible musculature. Something in between, not either ideal. 

“Go on,” Henry whispered. “I want to see you.” 

Charley let out a high squeak of a laugh. “You know, I’ve never … um.” For the love of God’s green earth, do not talk about Richard. “I find myself quite bashful, all of a sudden.” 

Her cheeks flamed, and she looked at the floor. She hated how vulnerable this felt. She wanted the heat back, the desperate lust. Despite how she’d longed to see him bare, to study his naked body at her leisure, at this point, she would rather he rip her shirt off her and get on with it. She frowned at her shirttails then glanced up at him. Henry saw her looking and squirmed a bit under her gaze.

“I suppose I can see what you mean,” he said, shifting his weight somewhat awkwardly. Charley smirked. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I want to see you, but not if you don’t want to be seen.”

“No… it just feels strange,” she said, watching him as she picked at the hem of her shirt. He was going to see her naked—she wanted that. They were both just going to have to face the fact that unlike him, she wasn’t anything near to a Greek sculpture. “But I’m not convinced, at least not in present company, that that’s such a bad thing.” 

⸻

XIV

Charley actually blushed. Henry thought he had better save that coy, unsure expression in his memory forever, because it did things to him—delicious, pulsing things. A strip of pale flesh down to her navel taunted him between the parted buttons of her shirt. It was long enough on her that she didn’t have to shuck it over her head; she could just shimmy her shoulders out and let it drop. Henry licked his lips, and his painful awareness of his own nakedness subsided as Charley evened the odds. Her large, dark eyes watched him carefully as she shrugged the shirt onto the floor. 

She was perfect. Henry knew he must have looked like some sort of half-crazed lunatic with a gaping maw and a raging horn, but he really didn’t care because she was unlike anyone he had ever seen.

Her small breasts were dominated by dark nipples that were already tight and hard, like they were beckoning him. Her belly was firm and flat, her waist not much narrower than her ribs or her hips, which flowed gently out to her thick, strong thighs. She could still pass for Smith, if it weren’t for teacup breasts and her glaring lack of a cock. He smiled, a little ferally, and stepped toward her. 

“Don’t,” Charley folded her arms over her chest.

Henry froze. That was certainly not the desired response. “What?”

“I know I’m not the Venus of Lebanon by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t need you to mock me for it.” 

“Did I mock you?”

“You can just wipe that snide little smirk off your face.”

“That’s what you thought that meant? I was smiling because I—” 

“—Oh, this is gonna be rich—” 

“Because,” he repeated a little more forcefully, “I think you’re exquisite, and I can’t wait to fuck you.”

Her mouth dropped open, and Henry felt a furious flush of embarrassment rush into his cheeks at how lewd he sounded. How did she get away with saying such filthy things while he sounded like some horrific villain in a novel? Her eyes softened as they flicked down to his cock, which seemed to have no qualms about saying such things and was continuing to point at her as though she were due north. It did nothing to help his embarrassment, that was for certain. He searched her expression for any sign of reticence. 

“I’m sorry, that was—”

“No,” she interrupted emphatically. “Say it again.” 

Henry hesitated. “I can’t wait to f—” 

“No.” Her brows crumpled together. “The other part.” 

Henry blinked. It felt like something slid neatly into place. “You’re exquisite.” 

He’d never seen such a raw expression on her face before, not even when he’d had her up over a barrel gasping for him to fuck her. She was naked in every sense, and he moved toward her cautiously. Cupping her face gently with both hands, he looked her squarely in the eyes. 

“You are beautiful,” he stated firmly and with feeling. “I love every inch of you.” 

Her eyes were wide and deep, and her breath shook as she exhaled. Then her hands were pulling his neck and her mouth crashed into his with a quiet whimper. The feeling of her hot, bare skin pressed broadly against his was a relief of unspeakable magnitude; he hadn’t realized he could miss something he never had, but once he had her flush against him, he knew it was this he’d been longing for since he knew how to. She was soft, hard, warm, silken, and his hands skimmed over her sharp shoulders, smooth sides, pulled her hips in hard by the soft flesh of her buttocks. His cock was trapped between their bellies and the pressure was at once both superlative and not nearly enough. 

Charley wrapped her arms around him in equal force, lips hungry and refusing to part even for a moment as she yanked him down over her onto the bed. Its ropes creaked as he caught himself on his elbows over her. He tried to pull back to grin at her, but she craned up. Her kisses were sloppy as she chased his mouth and wrapped her strong thighs around his waist. She ground her hips against him. He felt a scorching hot wetness at the base of his cock that made him gasp. Made him remember the fleeting feeling of sheathing himself inside her back in Pittsburgh. Her hands clutched at his shoulders, at his waist. She moaned loudly. Her cunt slid up and down his cock and reduced him to gasps and the mounting fear that he might come. 

He pulled back more forcibly this time, earning him a frustrated growl. 

“Where’s the French…” he gasped and found himself grasping for the word. “…thing. Letter.” 

She regarded him with a predatory grin, then squirmed out from under him and rolled to her feet, comically graceful. Henry collapsed onto his back on the bed and tried to catch his breath, squeezing his thumb and forefinger around the base of his cock and pressing against his balls. He feared it would only be a matter of a few thrusts for him before he came, which seemed like a waste of this whole production with the French letter, but he wasn’t about to yank back on the reins now. 

Every time they’d been together this way, she’d talked about how much she wanted him to fuck her. In the novel Elias had bid him to read back in Faribault, the maidens had all cried at the pain of it. The fellow had struggled to even get it in at all and when he had, it was all rended flesh and searing pain. Henry had always imagined his first time would be with a girl similarly inexperienced. He’d assumed as a matter of course that it would be painful for his partner, something he could only mitigate but not prevent. But when they’d coupled in Pittsburgh, Charley had been slick and yielding. She’d made all manner of sounds, some he hadn’t been sure were encouraging or plaintive. He’d hardly lasted long enough to find out. She’d squeezed around him like a vice—it seemed inevitable that it had hurt, at least a little. He didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted to please her, to push her to that sweet revelation, to watch what it did to her with the light of the oil lamp illuminating her bare skin. He did not, under any circumstance, want to waste himself too quickly or watch Charley merely endure it. 

It was with these thoughts spinning through his head that Charley clambered back onto the bed with a triumphant expression, bearing the paper packet with the French letter. His nerves dissipated as she climbed onto his thighs and pressed her warm folds against his balls. 

“Is that how you did it that night in the barracks,” she purred.

“What?” 

She nodded to his hand around his prick. He flushed. 

“No, I was just, um—” 

“Trying to keep things going?” 

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “The opposite, actually. Trying to pull myself back from the brink.” 

She bit her lip and smiled down at him like the most licentious libertine as she ripped open the packet. Removing the rubber sheath from its wrapper, she regarded it with scrutiny for a moment before pulling his foreskin back and putting it resolutely on over his hard length. Then, grasping him with one hand, she shifted over him and pressed his head into her soft, yielding entrance.

Henry let out a shuddering breath. The sheath muted the sensation, which was a relief since he’d been fearful of spending too quickly. She sank onto him slowly, bobbing her hips to work him in and out, each time a little deeper. Her expression was far away, her lips trembling as she exhaled. Henry watched her carefully for any signs of discomfort even as he was slowly enveloped in tight, hot ecstasy. How? How could this not hurt when she was stretched so tightly around him? 

But Charley sighed as her hand fell away and let gravity bring him full hilt inside her. Henry’s eyes flickered, and he groaned at the sweet bliss of it. 

“Yes,” she hissed, and he knew she felt what he did. She slid her hips up and down, forward and back, her thighs working as she fucked herself before his eyes. He could only heave for breath, his hips rising to meet hers on instinct. 

Henry couldn’t look away from her. Her jaw was slack, her mouth open and wanton, and her head thrown back as she placed her hands on his chest and rode him. Her firm breasts scarcely shook with the motion, flushed tips tight and his attention was seized. He reached up and brushed his thumb over one. Charley whimpered. It was a sound he was determined to earn again. 

He pressed his hand over her, her breasts a satisfying palmful, and flicked his thumb over her nipple, back and forth. Her chin trembled, and she squeezed her eyes shut, her expression tight and twisted and desperate as she swallowed a moan. She wrapped one hand around his and coaxed his fingers to roll her nipple between thumb and forefinger. He eagerly seized upon this new information and carried on as her hand dropped. Then, he felt her squeeze around his cock and God dammit, how was that even possible? 

She was so responsive, so lithe and sure, taking what she wanted and unafraid to demand it. She was a vision, riding him with grace, her nipple in his fingers and her curling lips gasping pleasure. As he felt his rapture coil tighter in his belly, his chest felt tight too. Sensations that he had only previously experienced around his cock reverberated through his entire body. 

“Charley,” he murmured without thinking. “My Charley.” His other hand gripped her waist like a lifeline and his hips rocked up into her, trying to match her rhythm. 

“Henry, I want you…” she gasped. He watched her dazedly, dark hair tumbled over her brow as she struggled to catch her breath. “I want you on top of me.” 

He could distantly sense that he might be overly eager as he seized her hips and pushed deep inside her as he rolled her onto her back. She gasped and wrapped her legs around his waist. She yanked on his shoulders and he fell onto his elbows over her, driving into her with abandon. He didn’t know what he was doing, his body just took over, and he hoped he was doing it right—it certainly seemed like he was, if her expression was any indication. 

Her lower lip was trembling, and her eyes regarded him as through a haze. Her muscles seized around him, her breath and hands shaking, and she blinked her eyes shut in a grimace. A cry ripped out of her throat, something raw and deep and carnal. She was coming, she was coming around him—he could feel every spasm and pulse tight around his cock. Just when he thought it was over, she carried on over again, keening as though struck by the pleasure of her climax in relentless waves. 

He let go, let himself close his eyes and sink into sensation. It was so intense it almost hurt, his muscles aching and sweat slicking his back, but in the most exquisite way. He rode through it, losing all sense of his surroundings until nothing else existed but Charley. Her hands gripping his shoulders. Her thighs around his waist. The slick slide of their sweaty bellies together. Her mouth and her smell and her eyes—her goddamned incredible eyes, deep and dark and captivating and beautiful. His hips lost the rhythm. His muscles shuddered and his release wracked through him. He pumped into her, his thighs shaking with the effort. When it was over, he let himself sprawl over her, boneless. 

Charley’s breath tickled his ear. Her scent was in his nose, her hair stuck to his sweaty forehead. Henry distantly realized he was probably crushing her. He started to rise, but her hands held him fast. 

“Not yet,” she murmured, her fingers curling through his hair. Her lips pressed a kiss to his jaw. Henry tentatively let his weight back down on her, and she hummed, a sound halfway between pleasure and distress. “I’ve, um … I’ve never…”

“What?” Henry said, startled, shifting so he could regard her with incredulity.

She snorted at his confusion. “I don’t have an explanation for it. But before you, I’ve never … uh, finished? If that makes sense?” 

Henry frowned at her as he rolled off, making sure the French letter came with him. “I’ve made you finish before, surely?” 

She nodded and flushed. “Just so. With fingers, of course. But I didn’t think it was possible without fingers. This is … new.” She exhaled and looked at him significantly. With her cheeks flushed like that, her lips red and swollen from kisses, she looked in every way the wanton Venus she’d denied she was. He felt that tight feeling in his chest again, the one that drew him so inextricably toward her. 

He kissed her sweetly. She buried her hands in his hair, arching into him. 

“I could go again,” she whispered, her lips brushing against his. 

“I could … not,” he replied, chuckling incredulously. She couldn’t be serious, could she? 

Apparently she was, because she drew his hand down between her thighs and urged him to help finish her again.

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Footnotes

1. Bircher, William. A Drummer-boy’s Diary: Comprising Four Years of Service with the Second Regiment Minnesota Veteran Volunteers, 1861 to 1865. United States, St. Paul Book and Stationery Company, 1889. ↩︎
2. Griffin, David Brainerd.  Letters Home to Minnesota: Second Minnesota Volunteers. Minnesota Historical Society, Stacks E515.5 2nd.G75 1992. ↩︎
3. Yellow book jackets came on erotic and pornographic novels by mail order to conceal the inappropriate contents. Giesberg, Judith. Sex and the Civil War. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2017. ↩︎
4. I mean, Cate is spinning tales here. Miss Lucy’s lot was likely more demoralizing than all that, because at the end of the day, even if she and her co-proprietresses were truly independent, they still had bills to pay and powerful local men to appease to continue operation. Lowry, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, 1994. ↩︎
5. You’re probably expecting a shirt that buttons all the way down, but it was much more common in this period for men to wear shirts that buttoned down to the sternum. The shirttails were long and it saved fabric and time to put them on and off over the head. Some saved fabric in other ways too, putting fine white fabric only on the cuffs, collar, and in a dickie style down the front and using cheaper calico for the body of the shirt that wouldn’t be seen under a waistcoat and coat. ↩︎

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