Just as you Like

[eglantine_br]

Title: Just as you Like

Author Eglantine_br

Rating R for het smut

Word Count 2256

********* I want to point out, before beginning, that the word 'pretty' as late as the 18th century was both stronger and less gender specific. I hope the use of it is not to jarring. Also, I am pretty sure that Polly knows what she is talking about.

“Third on the left. Blue door.”



The woman placed her hand over the coins. She slid them toward herself. They were gone now. Will could not snatch them back. She looked at him more closely and her expression changed. “Such a face-- you are not facing an enemy frigate.” She smiled, and Will could see the beauty that the years had taken. “Just some kindness in the night. That is all. Go on.”

“Aye, ma'm.” He bowed a little. That made her laugh again.

It was not that he had any objection to it. Not at all, rather the opposite. But one must pay, and he had sent his money home, always. Or, well, not always. He bought himself coffee ashore. It was a small indulgence he thought of during his months at sea. Coffee at sea was seldom really hot, and it tasted of salt. The cups were washed in salt water of course, nobody wasted fresh water on washing. Will supposed that his face was coated with salt most of the time too. Anyway, coffee ashore was just different. He looked forward to it with a foolish yearning. Coffee bought in port burned all down his gullet, and it warmed him as he walked and sniffed the odd airs of cities. He allowed himself that. And he often bought small things to send to his sisters, sewing boxes, little poppets, once, for mother, an ivory busk. He wrapped them with care, imagined their smiles.

Little enough over the years, the last eight years.

But here in this strange place he had found money. He had found so much money that he could send more home than ever before. Mother could get some of the things that the girls needed. He had been gone so long he was not even sure what those things would be. Mother would know. Well, Sally would want a book, she always did. He knew that much.

And he would never tell and she would never know, that he had held some money back and done this.

Here was the door. His mouth was dry and his something in his chest had gone all light and fluttering. She was going to look at him and know the things he wanted to do. She would know. He was half hard already at the thought, and he had not even seen her.

William knocked briefly to warn her and he opened the door.

The room smelled of flowers, and there was another scent beneath that, complicated and strange in his nose. The flower smell came in on the breeze from the open window. He thought the other smell might just be girl.

She was sitting at a dressing table. She was wearing a shift only. It was white and thin, and he could see the curve of her back beneath it. Her hair was up, and her neck was bared too, small and thin and clean. He could see the pink backs of her ears. She could see him, he realized, reflected in the dark glass of the window. She was looking at him and he saw her mouth curve to smile.

“Miss--” God, his mouth was dry.

“I'm Polly.” Her voice was soft and low. It made the aching worse. He gave a moment of wild thanks she had not said Amy.

She turned to face him. “Would you like to tell me your name?'

“It is William. Well, Will mostly.”

“Ah.” Her smile deepened. She had a dimple on one side. Her hair was brown and thick and shining. Her eyes were ordinary blue, like his own. Just a girl, no older than himself. Nothing to fear.

“Let me take your jacket.” She reached up and slid it from his shoulders, down and away. Her feet were bare. There was a hook on the back of the closed door. She put the jacket there, empty and blue, his.

She ran her hand over it, stroking, as if it were delightful to touch, as if the wool was not felted and worn and old, as if it were special somehow. He knew it was not.

“There now. I think we can be friends, don't you?”

Will nodded. He reached out slow to touch her perfect shining ear. She took a deep breath and let him trace the helix. Her hand came up to his face, and she brought her own finger, slow along his lower lip tickling, burning. Then she unfolded it along his cheek, keeping him still as she stepped close. Her eyes were smiling. They came up to find his own,and the smile was for him.

“Do you have a girl at home, William?”

“No.” He was nearly whispering, his voice soft too. “Once, but not any more.”

“Ah.”

His hand was on her neck now, the back of it cupped in his palm. His thumb rested under the sharp angle of her jaw-- she was that small. He felt her sigh. She came forward to him, pressed against him. He knew she could feel the hardness of his prick, against her own soft belly It was trapped, achingly horizontal, by his drawers and trousers..

She reached down and brought it straight. Her hand caressed the length of it, just once, through the cloth, and he gasped a little.

“Lovely,” she said, and he wanted to believe it was so.

She set to work on the buttons of his waistcoat, looking down at her hands, then the smaller tighter buttons of his shirt, undoing each with a pop.

“Cuffs.” She said and he held them forth. She popped the buttons there too. Her hands were warm on his skin as she slid the shirt up and away. The hands came brushing down again, over his chest, t over his naked skin, light as floating sparks. Will shivered.

“Do mine?” She lifted her chin. The shift tied with a ribbon at the top, red and soft. It was tied a foolish bow, no proper knot at all. He plucked at the standing end and it came loose. The linen below was worn smooth, insubstantial, his hands were too calloused to feel it properly. It was soft, and her skin soft too, and all so warm. He looked to her face and she smiled at him again with her hands, quiet now, by her sides.

“Just as you like.” She spoke in a whisper.

He brought his mouth down to graze. He kissed at the soft places of her neck, her shoulders. Her collar bones were like wings beneath his learning lips. The linen of her shift still covered her breasts, he lipped there where the cloth lay against her skin.

She drew him close, and he felt more than heard the an appreciative chuckle . He could have stood that way for ages.

“The bed?” she said. And that was a fine idea too.

It was quite an ordinary bed, not too wide, and covered with a quilt of homely patches. He sat on the edge, feeling the ropes sag only a little, and drew her close again, between his knees. He was touching the backs of her legs now, the skin of her knees and above. He could feel her goosebumps, he had them too.

“Are you cold?”

“No.” She sighed a little and said 'Feels nice.”

He could lean against the middle of her this way, and the sound of her heart was there under his ear. He was drawing his hands slow up the back of her legs, charting all the places that burned in imagination.

With Amy it had been so lovely, but so brief, a kind of struggle, like drowning or fighting. They had been so breathless, the both of them laughing, whispering, sighing. Then it had been over. They had been tired, drained and damp. She had held his hand as they walked back to the inn. She had found them both coffee, and the sun had come up like any day. Only William had been changed. Only that once.

He had thought of Amy every day after that. And at night too-- different thoughts. Since Amy he had burned. He had wanted the women who passed him in the street. He had made fancies of women in his mind, fancies of his time with Amy. He had wanted to push close to someone, to be clasped. His very skin had ached with hunger. He had not known that that could be.

.
This girl knew it though. He felt her knowing.

She dropped to her knees, graceful, between his knees. She had his fly buttons now, and he bobbed free. He lifted himself to let her draw the clothing down and away. Her eyebrows were drawn together a little as if in concentration, and she stopped to press a kiss on the inside of his knee.

Her hands moved up and in, slow along his thighs. The shift was falling down off her shoulders. She shrugged out of it, let it fall. They were naked now, both of them. He could see her in the lamplight, lovely and strange. She drew back a little to let him look. She drew a hand down over her own taut abdomen, to to just where her soft fur began, and she watched his gaze track her hand. She smiled to see him looking.

“You have a pretty cock Will.”

She was looking at him too-- and he made a sound half laugh half groan, it was kind and ridiculous, and it made him happy. He had never dreamed to hear such a thing.

She took it in her hand, and he wanted to watch, but it felt so good that his eyes had to shut. He was hard as he had ever been, his skin tight, everything in him wanting to shake, and push, and relieve the aching.

She was stroking him now, so much more gently and slowly than he ever touched himself. Her hands were alien too, small around the girth of him, softer than his own.

“Shall I kiss it? Would you like that?”

“Oh God.”

He had not thought of this-- although he had heard it sometimes, in the dark below decks, the lapping, the suckling and the sound of anonymous groans.

His eyes had to open, and he realized that she was waiting for his answer, her hand still on him now.

“Yes, please, please.”

Her tongue flicked out once, impudent as a kitten's, to the rumpled place just above her clasped hand. She followed the lick with a close mouthed kiss such as one gives a maiden auntie. She sat back again a moment, to see how he liked that. Will was forcing his eyes open now, seeing, a part of this he had never thought of. Seeing her as she looked at him, seeing her with that tongue flicking out again, flicking. He had not dreamed. And he, oh. His hands were clapped onto the quilt like a lifeline, his hips lifting, his back squirming, his breath burning. He could not be still.

She came forward again, and down. She took him all into her mouth. William fell back onto the bed, rocking up into all the heat. Her mouth was slow too, and better than anything so far. It was, it was so--

“No, stop. Please, stop I--”

She stopped, just in time, and looked at him, rumpled and quizzical.

“I can't, it's-- I want-”

And she nodded and came up to lie beside him.

She drew him above her, and her eyes were solemn now. And Will was moving forward and forward, his breath rasping now. His hair had fallen into his face, and she stroked it back with her hand. He could feel the end coming now, it was close and he shuddered against it.

“Oh, no, no.”

“It's all right, let it come.”

And it came, like the recoil of the big guns, and he heard himself give a small sound, but inside it felt like shouting.

“There now.”

She stroked her hand along his spine. He was all against her still, limp as seaweed. And why, there was no reason at all, for his eyes to blink with sudden tears.

After a moment he had mastered his face. He rolled free of her. She was watching him, and he was small now, and tired.

She sat up and drew her knees in to watch him dress. It did not take long. Last of all he put the blue jacket on, shabby and settled to the shape of him. She took her shift from the floor and gave it a shake. She pulled it on and went to do the ribbon.

“Let me?”

“All right” She lifted her chin, and let him tie it in a better knot, one that would hold, but come free when she was ready. He trailed his fingers again over the skin of her throat.

She walked with him to the side door, and saw him off at the doorstep. The night was well on now, to morning. The sky was wan on the horizon. The strange birds were beginning to peep in the trees. The day was coming. Time to go.