Fic: Light As Air (Benjamin January mysteries, NC-17)
Title: Light As Air
Ratings/Warnings: NC-17 for explicit f/m sex, breathplay
Fandom: The Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hambly
Pairings: Rose/Hannibal
Notes: This is the reason I've been so busy lately - managing to get this story finished before the deadline. This is a treat I wrote for curtana for the Seeing Color exchange, though it's actually based on prompts from the Smut Swap exchange a few months ago. I started it then, but didn't manage to finish it in time, and luckily had a second chance to write it.
Summary: Rose conducts an experiment on Hannibal, which leads to unexpected places. (Set during Good Man Friday.)
7216 words. Also available on AO3.
It has never before occurred to Rose how similar holding one’s breath could look to arousal. Hannibal’s cheeks are pink, and with each second that ticks past on her pocket watch his eyes lose their focus, growing hazy and half-lidded. Even his lips look well-kissed, although she knows the effect is only from how tightly he presses them together, sealing his air within.
An odd thought. Rose ignores it and concentrates on the watch sitting on the desk before her.
Hannibal had brought her a gift this morning, a book he’d seen in a secondhand shop and thought she might want. Since it is February, the time of year when musicians are most in demand and Hannibal therefore slightly less impoverished than usual, she was nearly as grateful for his presence as for the book itself. Benjamin has been away in Washington City these last few weeks, and though Zizi-Marie, Gabriel, and Baby John keep the big old house from feeling empty, their company is not the same as that of another intellectually-inclined adult.
Hannibal remained to talk with her while she examined the book, though he kept his eyes resolutely turned away from its contents, which proved to be finely detailed engravings of muscles and bones. Rose was unsurprised. Hannibal’s scientific curiosity has never extended to human physiology, of which he will only say, “idcirco ars nulla medicina est”. She has even seen him turn green when conversations between Benjamin and herself wandered into surgery or anatomy. But when she exclaimed over a cross-section of a lung, captured at a finer scale than she’d ever seen before, his attention was caught. He commented wryly that his own were surely less perfect than that in the drawing, and she began to ask him questions - questions that, in retrospect, were rather prying, though he answered every one of them willingly enough. Willingly, but not always ably; he had not trained as a doctor, after all, and quite often he could only tell her what he felt and not its cause.
Rose wanted to know more; she usually does. And so she had proposed an experiment: he would hold his breath and she would record the time, to be compared to the times of others’ held breath. A crude approximation of lung capacity, perhaps, but she could hardly fill him with liquid. After a momentary hesitation, Hannibal had agreed. She’d noticed the pause, the nervous press of his fingers against the arm of his chair, but had been too tempted by the promise of new knowledge to stop. And whatever second thoughts he might have had seemed to genuinely vanish as they moved from the gallery to what had once been - and hopefully someday soon would be again - a classroom. He waited patiently as Rose took out paper and pencil, then ran back downstairs to borrow a pocket watch from Benjamin’s study. It was all simple enough.
And then she began to actually measure his breaths, and found herself thinking, inexplicably, of desire.
She does not know why the idea comes to her; there is nothing sexual about held breath, about a pocket watch and a notebook and an empty classroom. But since she would rather not explain herself to even so gentle a questioner as Hannibal, she chooses not to pursue the thought. “Are you well?” she asks him instead. “Or do you need to stop?”
Of course Hannibal can’t answer with his breath held. He lifts a hand, palm up, and shrugs. An enigmatic gesture, but Rose thinks he is leaving the choice to her. Again a strange desire stirs within her. This time she shoves it away harder, jotting down the time with a firm hand before nodding in his direction. “You can let go.”
She hears the air gush out of Hannibal, then the quick intake of his breath, but she keeps her eyes on her notebook even once she has finished writing. Three neat rows of recorded times look back at her, each one slightly shorter than the one above it. Hannibal’s lung capacity seems to be decreasing as they go. She writes stress of repetition? beside the latest time, and then frowns at how stark the declaration seems.
She looks up and finds Hannibal’s breathing nearly steady. “Whenever you’re ready,” she says, and waits for him to take that last deep breath, like a diver entering the water.
They fall into a rhythm: Rose gives the command and Hannibal holds his breath. While they wait to see how long he will last, tension grows and stretches, like a drop of water waiting to fall, like a song where the next note is inevitable even to her. The soft ticking of the second hand on the watch is a swifter pulse within that larger tempo; Rose’s heart beats in time with it, pounding in the quiet of the room. She can’t help but be aware of her own breath as well; she even finds herself holding in her air at the same time as Hannibal, her body taut, her mind full of excessive anticipation. When he finally breathes out, the silent pressure releases too - at least until Rose starts the cycle again. The hold and release of it make her feel lost in an endlessly repeating loop.
And then Hannibal breaks the rhythm by abruptly standing.
She stops writing mid-notation, but he turns from her and leaves the room before she can even form a question. She sits as she is for a moment longer, frozen in utter surprise. It’s not like Hannibal to storm off - if that is what he has done. He hadn’t seemed angry.
Rose looks around herself in search of a clue. The classroom, like the rest of the house, is furnished in a mishmash of secondhand items and hand-me-downs, except for a few extravagances like Rose’s microscope. Hannibal had been sitting on the incongruously pretty chaise longue that Minou gave them when Henri bought her a new one last spring. It is upholstered in a pale pink velvet that matches nothing else the Januarys own, the primary reason for its relegation to this classroom. Hannibal had passed a hand across its surface when he first sat down, smiling at the feel of the velvet’s soft nap, or perhaps at some memory of the delicate item of furniture from its former life in Minou’s charming cottage. Now empty, the chaise longue gives her no answer.
There seems to be nothing to do except to follow Hannibal. Rose does so cautiously, for she is not entirely certain that he wishes to be caught.
Perhaps he does, for he hasn’t gone far. He stands at the head of the stairs to the house’s main floor, a mere dozen feet beyond the door of the classroom. Rose watches him before approaching. She can hear Zizi-Marie’s voice downstairs; the girl is laughing, though her exact words are indistinct. Rose and Hannibal had looked in on her on their way to the classroom; then she had been sewing in the dining room, Baby John sleeping by her side. Gabriel must have arrived home or one of her friends is visiting.
After a few moments it seems clear that Hannibal has no intention of either escaping farther or returning, and Rose steps closer to him. She lifts a hand to touch his arm but, not knowing how he will respond, refrains. He must be aware of her presence, but he has made no sign of it. “Hannibal?” she asks quietly.
He sighs. She has only a profile view of his face, but she thinks she sees him wince before he straightens his shoulders and turns to face her. His habitual politeness takes over as he does; she imagines it settling into place like a mask. “Allow me to apologize, Rose,” he says. “I’m afraid I’ll be of no use to your scientific inquiries after all.” His voice is steady and he smiles, but she notices that he doesn’t meet her eyes.
She can guess what’s wrong, and curses herself for not thinking of it earlier - or rather, she did think of it, and conducted the experiment anyway. It is far from kind to ask a friend theoretical questions about the very real death dogging his heels.
She lets herself touch his arm now, a light brush of fingertips just above his elbow. “There’s no need for apologies. Or, if there is, I should be the one giving them.”
Hannibal looks straight at her in surprise. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Rose raises an eyebrow. “Well, someone’s upset you.”
“Only myself.” He falls silent again and looks away. Zizi-Marie’s voice carries up to them once more, the happy childishness of it sounding an entire world away. Rose waits. Hannibal, she knows, does not speak easily when he feels deeply, and she will not press him on this for all the world. Even if she is curious. She has indulged her curiosity to his detriment once already today.
Finally he speaks. “The problem is not that you have asked me to do something I dislike. Rather the opposite - I enjoy it too much.”
Rose turns the words over in her mind, trying to work them into a pattern that makes sense. She can’t find one. “I don’t understand.”
“You are correct: suffocation should bring unpleasant thoughts to the mind of a consumptive. This is how I will die, unable to breathe the air all around me. Unless”-he smiled briefly-“I win a bit too much money in a poker game before then. To any rational mind this experiment would therefore be a source of terror and dread. No - I grant myself undeserved courage. It is a source of terror and dread. And yet... fascination also. Like Odysseus, I am drawn to the siren’s song.” His eyes flick up to hers for a moment, gauging her reaction, and then he continues, his voice plainer, without his usual protective cocoon of classical quotations and poetic meters. “I enjoy it when I can’t breathe. Enjoy physically. Not when it is merely a matter of illness, of course, but to relinquish control into the hands of someone kinder than death, someone more capable than I am, someone who - who cares for me. There is pleasure in that.”
Silence falls between them. When he continues, he has better control of himself. “I mention this only to explain, you understand. I would never ask such a thing of you, Rose.”
“Why not?”
He stares at her in shocked surprise, but Rose is sincere. His awkward roundabout way of explaining himself has given her plenty of time to consider the matter, and she finds it not to be the great horror he clearly believes it is.
“Because....” He visibly searches for words, and for once closes his mouth without finding any. He continues to stare at her, and then adds, “Don’t tell me that you’re interested.”
She shrugs. “Well, I’ve never heard of it before but it doesn’t seem so terrible, considering some of the things people do in bed. There are far worse indulgences.” He blanches at the implication, but she doesn’t give him the space to speak; she doesn’t want to talk of her own shadows. “You’re not in love with a mule, unlike poor Titania. Does Benjamin know of this?”
He drops his gaze. “Yes.”
“And what does he think?”
She knows, of course, that he and Benjamin sleep together without her presence; it seems only reasonable that some of what they do is different from what the three of them share. Still, his voice is low and shamed when he answers, “He has assisted me.”
“And Benjamin is such a respectable man. If he approves, it can’t be so bad.” She smiles and tucks her arm through his. “Come back and sit, and tell me more.” For a moment Hannibal looks as though he will insist that she must be shocked and appalled, but then he shakes his head and places his hand atop hers.
Back in the classroom, Rose draws the door shut behind them, hesitates, and then turns the lock. Zizi-Marie and Gabriel are unlikely to grow curious - they’re too familiar with the tendency of conversations between their aunt and her friend to dip into Greek or Latin or elaborate mathematics, subjects neither of them particularly enjoy - but it is better to be safe than sorry.
Hannibal retakes his seat on the chaise longue and Rose pulls her desk chair closer. She won’t need her notes now.
“Shall we try again?” she asks. “Or is there more you should explain first?”
Hannibal’s eyes skip from her hands to her feet to the outer edges of the room, but never reach her face. “No. It’s simple enough in practice, if rather inexplicable in theory.”
She leans forward. “Then hold your breath.”
His gaze finally comes to meet hers as he draws in air and holds it. She wonders if this is how he and Benjamin play the game, but doesn’t ask. She prefers to find her own way into it. Her body certainly doesn’t seem to need advice. She feels again the warm stirring of desire, and this time lets it come.
Such openness is still unfamiliar, though it has been two years since she married Benjamin and not much less since she took Hannibal as a lover as well. Rose spent too long putting aside inopportune desire, sweeping it away like dust; for most of her life she could allow no trace of such a feeling to show on her properly-kept surface. To welcome it instead is like stretching a limb that has fallen asleep: pins and needles come with the rush of blood.
She was very young when she realized that love is an impediment to the knowledge she has always longed for. Or, at least, that is how others see it. Any hint of passion that she allowed herself - should her eyes follow another student across the room, should she smile when he spoke to her, should she show any sign of enjoying male company at all - was used against her. Her step-mother saw those smiles as evidence that Rose would be happier if she were married, her father saw them as a reason to deny her more schooling, and Mathieu - but Rose does not like to think of Mathieu.
It was no easier when she came to New Orleans. A teacher - particularly one given the care of innocent young girls - simply does not feel desire. At least not if she wants to stay employed. In the crowded confines of the city, it seemed that there was always someone watching for the slightest slip in her demure facade: her students’ parents, her neighbors, even the other women in the marketplace. And so she learned to swallow down the first stirrings of attraction, to bury them deep inside herself, and treated desire as a mild inconvenience to be ignored.
Even now as a married woman the rules have not changed much. A wife loves her husband, that goes without saying, and yet Rose is aware that it is not entirely acceptable to consider a man as dark-skinned as Benjamin truly handsome. Certainly the ache of attraction she sometimes feels when she looks at him - a shortness of breath and a tightness in her belly - that is not to be spoken of. Even worse is what she feels for Hannibal. A properly married colored woman does not lust after a white musician - at least, whispers the ghost of her mother’s memory, not one who is poor.
She should have been keeping count while she thinks, but the numbers slip out of her grasp. Hannibal hasn’t even moved and already her body is responding to him. Perhaps, if she tries, she can slow the racing of her heart, dull the prickly awareness of her skin, even relax the anticipatory tension of her muscles. But there’s no need to try; here and now there is no one to scold or deny her. She may do as she likes.
Hannibal holds his breath until she says, “All right, that’s enough.” Then the air spills out of him in a great noisy rush; he opens his mouth, his nostrils flare, his cheeks are red. She sees too how bright his eyes are, and how they still watch her even as he leans forward, gasping. She reaches for his shoulder to steady him, but it doesn’t grow into the coughing fit she momentarily worries it might. In a few seconds he’s again breathing normally. He straightens back up and leans into the touch of her hand, smiling with parted lips.
There’s so many things she could say, but all she does is, “Again?”
“Please.”
She puts her fingers to his mouth, gently, just to see if she can feel him breathe. But there’s nothing, no stir of air to betray the appearance of held breath. It’s shorter this time - she supposes that he hasn’t entirely recovered from the previous attempt. She can feel how he strains to wait until she gives him permission: his lips are pale and taut as he presses them together beneath her fingertips, and his hands, resting on his knees, twitch in small jerky movements, as though there’s something he would reach out for.
When she tells him to release, the rush of air makes her light-headed, and there is a low, throbbing pulse between her legs. She sets her fingers on his lips again, but this time they are open. She feels their paper-thin texture, their warmth, how he shivers under her touch. She carefully traces their outer edge, watching him wait for her direction. Instead she says, almost conversationally, “Is there anything I could ask of you that you wouldn’t do?”
“Anything you asked?” He’s joking, but his voice is still hoarse from coughing and she hears the truth hidden in his lightness.
How thrilling, she thinks, in the ever-logical corner of her brain where she watches her own reactions, to have a lover entirely at my mercy. She knew that Hannibal was hers to command - he’d told her so often enough - but she’d never guessed he meant like this.
He feels too far away. There’s an obvious solution to that, so she leaves her chair and climbs onto Hannibal’s lap, hauling her skirts up to her thighs to allow her to face him. Her knees press into the back of the overstuffed chaise longue, Hannibal’s slim hips held tight between them, and she settles her weight onto him. He’s clearly surprised, but he adjusts easily to the new position; one hand goes to the small of her back to help her balance, and the other settles gently just above one of her knees.
“Again,” Rose says, and touches his face, her thumb lingering on the softness of his lower lip. Hannibal obeys without a word. Rose is close enough now to feel the swell of his chest as he draws in air, and to see the stillness of his throat afterwards. His lips thin under her thumb as he presses them together to form a barrier.
She counts not seconds but her own heartbeat, loud in her ears. She leans in to watch how Hannibal is affected by the lack of air. At first there is nothing, only his dark eyes locked onto her own, desire and satiation mingled in his expression. He wants this so badly, she thinks, he is so grateful that I have taken control of his breathing from him. She feels almost dizzy with the knowledge, as though she is the one lacking air. She could stop, or she could press him further and further - she could do whatever she wants. She is unaccustomed to such power, but now that she has it she doesn’t want to let it go.
She waits until his nostrils flare and his lips twitch - he is fighting to do as she has told him, fighting even against his body’s instinctual need for air - and then she tells him, “Now.” Air bursts past the fingers she holds to his mouth, out and then in, out and then in again. As soon as he reaches some semblance of steadiness Rose kisses him hard. She cannot kiss him as often as she would like, so now she closes her eyes to better focus on his taste, on the feel of his arms coming up around her to press her close. There are days of longing in this one kiss.
She needs more, needs to bring him still closer. She tries to take hold of his hair but it is bound back in a queue, too tightly braided for her fingers to catch. She fights with his ribbon, tears the knot free, then yanks at the braid, messily pulling his strands of hair apart. It must be somewhat painful, but she is in too much of a hurry to regret it and Hannibal doesn’t seem to mind. He ducks his head forward to give her better access, shifting his kisses to her neck and shoulder. The fabric of her dress muffles the sensation, but she hears the poetry he murmurs between each soft press of his mouth.
Rose sighs with relief to finally bury her hands in his hair. She scratches her nails down his scalp and lets his hair run smoothly between her fingers, then brings her hands to the roots again and impulsively clenches hard. Hannibal’s head snaps back, neck sharply arching and face forced up, but even at this provocation he only groans her name. She kisses him like that, holding him in place, and thinks, mine, mine. Hannibal is so open beneath her, giving himself to her without hesitation or reserve. She feels drunk on the power of it, on how he trusts her.
She pulls back just enough to demand, “Again, Hannibal. Again, now.”
He doesn’t need to ask what she means. His cheeks puff with held breath, and she brings her mouth to his. He can’t kiss while holding his breath, not really, but she feels his lips purse nonetheless. She licks along the seam of his mouth and feels him shudder under her, caught between the conflicting desires of kissing her and obeying her.
His mind wins out over his body, because his mouth stays closed. Rose kisses the corner of his lips, back across his cheek and along his jaw, her hands fisted in his hair to hold him tight against her. She kisses his ear, bites teasingly at the earlobe, then says, “Let go.”
The breath explodes out of him and he tries to turn his face towards her - to kiss her, to look at her; whatever he wants she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t allow it. Rose holds him in place as she listens to him pant, as she feels the heave of his chest against her breasts. After a moment she lets go and he drops his face against her shoulder in total collapse. She lets her arms fall loosely down around him and tilts her head to place her cheek against his hair.
They rest there, no sound in the room except for their out-of-sync breaths; Rose’s might be quicker than is warranted, but it is no match for Hannibal’s fast, shallow draws. She considers their situation as she lies against him, taking stock of her own physical reactions. “I think,” she says musingly, “that I begin to understand why you find this quite so appealing.”
He laughs shakily. “My dearest Athene. Of course you would want the knowledge of it.”
It’s not exactly knowledge that she wants, though she doesn’t bother correcting him. What she feels is wordless and intensely personal, despite Hannibal necessarily being wound all through her experience and perception of it. As much as she needs and wants him here, this burning ember in her chest is hers and hers alone.
She removes her spectacles and balances them carefully on the back of the chaise longue, then helps Hannibal out of his jacket and waistcoat and sets them too aside. His linen shirt isn’t much of a barrier; when she sets her palm against his chest, she can feel the rapid beating of his heart. They begin to kiss again. The first exchange this time is slow, exploratory, but neither of them are patient for long, and despite his shortness of breath and Rose’s awareness of the children in the house, soon they are once more clinging together, trading furious, biting kisses. She brings her hips forward to press against him, and feels his erection beneath her.
She sits back on her heels, which breaks the kiss and leaves Hannibal gasping after her with red, swollen lips, and works swiftly at the buttons of his trousers. She pushes them as far down his hips as she can manage without needing to leave her present seat, then strokes the cock she has uncovered. Its heated skin and hard flesh are a pleasure in her hand, the head already damp with precome.
Hannibal’s breath goes ragged for a new reason and he leans in to kiss her. Rose feels like she has drunk raw alcohol, her veins burning with delight; her mind is whirling with this new knowledge. That Hannibal was willing to assist in her experiments she knew, but that he should want her like this, that he should be attracted to her control and power and even perhaps domination - it is not possible, and yet it is. She can feel how real it is. His cock is hard in her hand and there is no mistaking his reaction.
She keeps her hold on his cock as they kiss, but the disarray of her skirts and beneath them her still-laced corset make it nearly impossible for her to feel it where she wants to. It should be warm and smooth and stiff against her stomach, not merely this faint pressure. She grinds herself against him, needing to feel the physical evidence of his desire beneath her again, gasping each time she does. Hannibal kisses her frantically at such treatment, his hands scrabbling across her back, slipping on the cloth of her dress. She angles her hips, trying to work herself against the hard line of his erection, but there is a rumpled fold of her skirts and his trousers still between them. It’s not enough.
She pulls back and announces, “I want you inside me.”
Hannibal’s hands freeze on her hips. They don’t do this often. Rose is well informed of the risks if she should give birth to a child too fair-skinned to be plausibly Benjamin’s - not that she is particularly interested in bearing anyone’s child at the moment, not so soon after Baby John. But her prudence is due to the social consequences, nothing more; Hannibal’s fear of a potential pregnancy is greater, a nearly wordless dread that she knows has little to do with logic.
Even so, his caution is not quite enough to outweigh his desire. She moves her thumb in a half-circle just below the head of his cock and it stiffens further, his hips twitching as he fights the urge to thrust up. “Are you certain?” he asks, his voice near to cracking under the strain.
“Yes.”
She takes firm hold of the arm of the chaise longue for balance and raises herself onto her knees. Hannibal tips his head back to look up at her, his eyes wide with anticipation. She pauses for one instant, letting herself fully grasp the extent of her control. She can feel it in the air like the electric charge before a storm. No matter what she does - go or stop or something else entirely - Hannibal will follow. Her heart pounds and her mouth feels dry and she wants desperately to feel him within her, to encircle the most vulnerable part of him. She steadies his cock, holding it in place for her next move.
“Tell me when you’re close,” she says.
“Of course.”
She sinks down, and Hannibal gasps at the first touch of his cock against her entrance. There is a brief burn as she works herself open over the crown of his cock, but then it is a smooth slow slide the rest of the way down. She listens for each catch and stutter of his breath, wanting every off-rhythm inhalation like she wants his touch, the heat of his length inside her, the way he sighs her name. Such little sounds to arouse her so much. When she is entirely seated, her ass against his thighs and her mound snugged tightly against his lower belly, she slips her hand out from around the base of his cock. Her fingers are wet with her own moisture.
Hannibal pants as he adjusts. His breath gusts across her face, the hot air felt as well as heard, and it heightens her pleasure. She knows that he will hold off for as long as he can, for her sake, but nonetheless she tightens her inner muscles around his length, just to see how he reacts. He chokes, a rough sound that is half laughter and half a sob, and Rose closes her eyes. To have such influence over him is astonishing. Her every action, no matter how small, draws a response from him. Is this how Benjamin feels when he plays before an audience? By pressing one key he can command a note to ring out, he can make music that expands to fill an entire hall and overwhelms the people within.... Rose feels capable of grander deeds than she ever has before.
She begins to move. First with a small stroke, rising just a bit before dropping back down. A test of the feel of him inside her, the sensations of sex in such a position. Hannibal’s hand slides up her thigh towards her clitoris, offering his usual assistance, but she brushes him aside. She wants to do this for herself. She circles the edge of her clitoris with two fingers, making slow, wide circles; despite the passion of the moment, she feels no particular urgency to finish quickly. In fact she realizes that she wants to see Hannibal climax first. She can make him do so, she knows. He would do almost anything for her, but this thing - this, they would both enjoy.
Hannibal watches her stroke herself, then his eyes flick back up to meet hers. How he looks at her - Rose feels a great bubble of joy growing in her chest, pressing against the inside of her skin as though it’s too much to keep contained. She leans backward, her spine arching as she presses herself down more firmly against Hannibal, and he reaches back to cup her ass, holding her steady. She sighs - almost moans - pleased by how this new angle lets her feel his cock inside of her even when she is still, the stiff rod of it jutting against her inner walls.
She is pleased too by how this angle gives him a better view of her hand, working slowly but steadily over her clit. She can tell by the sharpening of his gaze. It is heady, the power she has over him, how entirely he is at her mercy. She could laugh from sheer delight, shout for joy - instead she moves.
No long thrusts or hard strokes, not in this position. Instead she mostly circles her hips, grinding her entrance down against Hannibal, lifting herself only enough for the sweet slide of his last inch back inside her. It’s a small form of sex, encompassing only a few inches of movement, but fierce in its intensity. Sweat springs up on Rose’s back and chest, her winter dress now hot and constricting. Her fingers speed up, and she rubs the pad of one directly over the hard knot of her clitoris. It is perfect. She is dizzy, giddy, and each little pulse and jerk carves off another sharp-edged slice of pleasure. Her inner muscles clench around Hannibal, nearly out of her conscious control, responding only to the rapture she is feeling.
He doesn’t, perhaps can’t, tell her what he is feeling, but nonetheless she knows his experience is as acute as her own. His fingertips dig into the flesh of her ass as he tightens his grip, and he groans her name, his voice roughened by the difficultly of being quiet. He thrusts up into her with what little leverage he has; it doesn’t make much of a difference to the drag of his cock inside her, but she loves the feel of his muscles jerking, the buck of his body beneath hers.
She squeezes her thighs together, his slim hips trapped between her knees, and hangs on to the arm of the chaise longue as she moves above him. She feels powerful; she wants more.
“Hold your breath,” she says recklessly.
Hannibal does not protest that it’s an impossible request, though perhaps he thinks it; Rose certainly does. He’s already panting, his face redder than before from their exertions. But he tries - she can see him try, his lips thinning, the tendons in his neck standing out, the sound of his breath going silent for one brief moment. His whole body trembles, from the shiver of his hands on her skin to the jerk of his cock within her.
“That’s enough,” Rose commands a heartbeat later. “Good, Hannibal, good, let go now.” She’s suddenly afraid of her own power. She doesn’t know the limits of this game, and in her rash acceptance of it, she might have hurt Hannibal, pushed him too far. She doesn’t know how to safely handle such open trust.
But as soon as he can speak again, Hannibal says, “I’m close - hurry, Rose - “
She laughs in relief and climbs off of him. He assists her somewhat awkwardly, a muscle in the corner of his jaw jumping under the strain. She hesitates then, for they are both still fully dressed. Her legs are bare where she has hiked up her petticoats, but Hannibal’s cock stands up from the rumpled waist of his trousers. She catches hold of the bottom hem of his shirt and quickly drags it up to his chest, pinning it there for one stroke - two -
And then he is coming, his cock jumping in her hand, its head such a dark shade of red that it looks painful. The seed lands mostly, as she hoped, on his stomach. Some spills down onto her fingers, still hot. She catches it on her thumb and smears it back onto his softening cock; Hannibal groans quietly. His hand wraps around her own and gently peels her away. “Too sensitive,” he says by way of explanation.
Rose carefully studies his face, but there’s no trace of the fear or pain that she dreaded finding. Instead he looks emptied, washed clean. As though what they have done here has been more than just sex, but has removed some old, clinging stain and left him pure. It reminds Rose of the beach after a hurricane: all the driftwood and animal tracks and dead seaweed swept away, with nothing left but the sand and sky.
She slips off of Hannibal’s lap and lies on her side across the chaise longue, her right leg still stretched across his thighs. He follows slowly, supporting himself with a hand so that he lies half next to her and half above, and kisses her. It is a long kiss, lesiurely; Rose opens her mouth to him and stops worrying. She slides back into the pleasures of the moment: Hannibal warm against her, tasting of coffee; the uncomfortable line of her corset against her breasts when she arches up to him; the drift of his hand up her thigh, pushing back the skirts which have once more fallen down around her legs.
She takes Hannibal’s hand and guides it up when the kissing deepens. At first he merely touches her clitoris, but she tells him, “No, I want you here,” and folds his fingers into the correct position.
At first he skims along her outermost folds - a tease, a tickle - but she has no chance to protest before he pushes two fingers into her. She is wet and still open from his cock, so his fingers sink easily into her. This is what she wanted, the sensation of being full, the resistance when her inner muscles clench, and all she can do is sigh.
Hannibal’s fingers are slim and skilled, a violinist’s fingers. She closes her eyes to consider their fineness and the deft way he moves them. Her body is a string on his fiddle to be played, adroitly plucked to vibration at just the right moment. Benjamin’s hands are wider; stretched out from pinky to thumb, he can span her entire waist. They are strong enough to lift her on top of him, support her as she moves over him. Rose is glad to know both.
She drops her hold on Hannibal’s wrist and he moves his hand for her - so sweetly, so simply. There is no stretch, and barely any friction - only pressure and a sense of rightness. He brings the heel of his hand down against her clitoris, and that is the last thing she needs to finish.
Her orgasm is not like his. It is not sudden or explosive or dramatic; she barely even recognizes its peak. Rather it is like slow crests, each one building upon the previous until the waves roll all through her. She drops her head back against the seat of the chaise longue and her toes curl, propped up in the air by Hannibal’s hip. Even after the pleasure begins to reduce it goes on and on, the fading away as slow and gradual as the former climb.
Hannibal kisses her through all of it, even when she tips her face away from him for more air. He merely changes position and kisses the line of her jaw, the soft spot behind her ear, the curve of her throat, and what little of her breasts are revealed above the edge of her bodice. It seems like years pass before she reaches down to stop his hand, though objectively she supposes it can’t have been more than minutes.
Rose has absolutely no desire to move. She hooks her heel behind Hannibal’s knee to pull him closer and slides her hand beneath his shirt, resting it on his thin chest where she can feel the beat of his heart, the in and out of his breath.
He reluctantly resists her tug, separating from her side to climb back onto his feet. “I ought to wash. I’ll dirty your dress.”
Rose nods and watches him move across the room to the water pitcher where he cleans himself. When he has finished, he brings the cloth back to her, damp and folded, and carefully washes the inside of her thighs. She spreads her legs to allow it but otherwise does nothing to help. Afterwards he stays where he is, kneeling beside the chaise longue with his hands on her re-covered knees. She feels the weight of them, the moisture of the washrag, even through the muffling layers of petticoats and overskirt. “Thank you,” he says.
Rose hauls herself up into a proper sitting position. She takes Hannibal’s hands in hers and waits until he stops contemplating the hem of her dress and actually meets her eyes. “Perhaps it has escaped your notice - it has been a rather busy last few minutes - but nothing I have done today was for your benefit alone.”
He smiles and allows her to pull him up to sit beside her. “And I thank all the gods for that. Even if I do not entirely understand how it comes about.”
Rose shrugs. “I don’t entirely understand your role in the matter either. But perhaps if we did, it would not have worked so well. Attraction is a quality of magnets, not of mirrors.”
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing,” he murmurs, and raises their still-clasped hands to his lips to kiss her inner wrist. “And glory is quite the right word.”
Despite all the weary satisfaction weighing down her limbs, that brushing kiss awakens the desire for more. Rose knows it isn’t possible; they’ve probably dawdled too long in private already. If Benjamin were here, she could invite Hannibal to spend the night, but without a husband to give her countenance her behavior must be more constrained. Frustration makes her careless, and she takes her hand back from Hannibal more roughly than she intends.
“It’s all right,” he says before she can explain. “You should check on Baby John and the others. And it’s past time that I put on a performance for the benefit of your neighbors. It’s a piece titled The Proper Departure, in which I appear fully clothed and respectful and having in no way just seduced the lady of the household. A thankless role, perhaps, but we all pay our dues to society.”
Rose laughs and passes him his jacket and waistcoat, which had become wedged into the indentation between the seat of the chaise longue and its back. Hannibal puts them on and she takes up her spectacles to pass a critical eye over him; he looks rumpled, but so he often does. There’s nothing in his appearance to suggest what has passed between them. She turns her attention to herself, standing to shake straight her skirts and replace a shoe that had fallen off at some point in the proceedings. She doesn’t keep a mirror in the classroom, so she can’t be certain that she is equally unmarked.
Hannibal steps close before she can ask for his opinion. He reaches for the back of her neck, and for a moment his sudden, unexpected nearness is terrifying. The feeling is gone as quickly as it came, before Hannibal has even finished lifting her necklace and guiding its pendant cross back around to her front. The thin chain tickles her neck as he gently tugs on it, and then he steps away.
“There,” he says. “Entirely the proper schoolmistress.”
Her skin feels chilled from fear, even from such of brief wave of it, but that’s not all of her. Desire remains like a warm spark in her chest. She could swear it lodges in a specific, physical spot, though rationally she knows there is nothing there except for her heart and lungs, the blood and bone of any human body. She reaches for her newest set of memories to chase the last of the cold away: Hannibal between her knees, thick inside her, fingers trembling on her thighs, cheeks red, eyes wide. Breath held.
Hers, all of it. There’s nothing that can take it away from her, not even her own past.
The knowledge steadies her. She nods her thanks to Hannibal - who is just beginning to notice her strangeness, his smile fading in puzzlement - and heads towards the door. She pauses before unlocking it. “Shall we do this again?”
“Of course! Can one desire too much of a good thing?” His voice is bright, surprise and relief mingled.
Rose smiles, leans forward for a last brief kiss, and then opens the door.
***
Hannibal Citations:
Ægri quia non omnes convalescunt, idcirco ars nulla medicina est.
Because all the sick do not recover, therefore medicine is not an art.
- Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.4
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
- Proverbs, 25:2
Can one desire too much of a good thing?
- Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act IV, scene 1
The book of engravings in the opening is not real (as far as I know), but was inspired by Jacques Gamelin's Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie: dessiné d’après nature. You can look at some scans of the book here.
This entry was originally posted at http://brigdh.dreamwidth.org/25065.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Ratings/Warnings: NC-17 for explicit f/m sex, breathplay
Fandom: The Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hambly
Pairings: Rose/Hannibal
Notes: This is the reason I've been so busy lately - managing to get this story finished before the deadline. This is a treat I wrote for curtana for the Seeing Color exchange, though it's actually based on prompts from the Smut Swap exchange a few months ago. I started it then, but didn't manage to finish it in time, and luckily had a second chance to write it.
Summary: Rose conducts an experiment on Hannibal, which leads to unexpected places. (Set during Good Man Friday.)
7216 words. Also available on AO3.
It has never before occurred to Rose how similar holding one’s breath could look to arousal. Hannibal’s cheeks are pink, and with each second that ticks past on her pocket watch his eyes lose their focus, growing hazy and half-lidded. Even his lips look well-kissed, although she knows the effect is only from how tightly he presses them together, sealing his air within.
An odd thought. Rose ignores it and concentrates on the watch sitting on the desk before her.
Hannibal had brought her a gift this morning, a book he’d seen in a secondhand shop and thought she might want. Since it is February, the time of year when musicians are most in demand and Hannibal therefore slightly less impoverished than usual, she was nearly as grateful for his presence as for the book itself. Benjamin has been away in Washington City these last few weeks, and though Zizi-Marie, Gabriel, and Baby John keep the big old house from feeling empty, their company is not the same as that of another intellectually-inclined adult.
Hannibal remained to talk with her while she examined the book, though he kept his eyes resolutely turned away from its contents, which proved to be finely detailed engravings of muscles and bones. Rose was unsurprised. Hannibal’s scientific curiosity has never extended to human physiology, of which he will only say, “idcirco ars nulla medicina est”. She has even seen him turn green when conversations between Benjamin and herself wandered into surgery or anatomy. But when she exclaimed over a cross-section of a lung, captured at a finer scale than she’d ever seen before, his attention was caught. He commented wryly that his own were surely less perfect than that in the drawing, and she began to ask him questions - questions that, in retrospect, were rather prying, though he answered every one of them willingly enough. Willingly, but not always ably; he had not trained as a doctor, after all, and quite often he could only tell her what he felt and not its cause.
Rose wanted to know more; she usually does. And so she had proposed an experiment: he would hold his breath and she would record the time, to be compared to the times of others’ held breath. A crude approximation of lung capacity, perhaps, but she could hardly fill him with liquid. After a momentary hesitation, Hannibal had agreed. She’d noticed the pause, the nervous press of his fingers against the arm of his chair, but had been too tempted by the promise of new knowledge to stop. And whatever second thoughts he might have had seemed to genuinely vanish as they moved from the gallery to what had once been - and hopefully someday soon would be again - a classroom. He waited patiently as Rose took out paper and pencil, then ran back downstairs to borrow a pocket watch from Benjamin’s study. It was all simple enough.
And then she began to actually measure his breaths, and found herself thinking, inexplicably, of desire.
She does not know why the idea comes to her; there is nothing sexual about held breath, about a pocket watch and a notebook and an empty classroom. But since she would rather not explain herself to even so gentle a questioner as Hannibal, she chooses not to pursue the thought. “Are you well?” she asks him instead. “Or do you need to stop?”
Of course Hannibal can’t answer with his breath held. He lifts a hand, palm up, and shrugs. An enigmatic gesture, but Rose thinks he is leaving the choice to her. Again a strange desire stirs within her. This time she shoves it away harder, jotting down the time with a firm hand before nodding in his direction. “You can let go.”
She hears the air gush out of Hannibal, then the quick intake of his breath, but she keeps her eyes on her notebook even once she has finished writing. Three neat rows of recorded times look back at her, each one slightly shorter than the one above it. Hannibal’s lung capacity seems to be decreasing as they go. She writes stress of repetition? beside the latest time, and then frowns at how stark the declaration seems.
She looks up and finds Hannibal’s breathing nearly steady. “Whenever you’re ready,” she says, and waits for him to take that last deep breath, like a diver entering the water.
They fall into a rhythm: Rose gives the command and Hannibal holds his breath. While they wait to see how long he will last, tension grows and stretches, like a drop of water waiting to fall, like a song where the next note is inevitable even to her. The soft ticking of the second hand on the watch is a swifter pulse within that larger tempo; Rose’s heart beats in time with it, pounding in the quiet of the room. She can’t help but be aware of her own breath as well; she even finds herself holding in her air at the same time as Hannibal, her body taut, her mind full of excessive anticipation. When he finally breathes out, the silent pressure releases too - at least until Rose starts the cycle again. The hold and release of it make her feel lost in an endlessly repeating loop.
And then Hannibal breaks the rhythm by abruptly standing.
She stops writing mid-notation, but he turns from her and leaves the room before she can even form a question. She sits as she is for a moment longer, frozen in utter surprise. It’s not like Hannibal to storm off - if that is what he has done. He hadn’t seemed angry.
Rose looks around herself in search of a clue. The classroom, like the rest of the house, is furnished in a mishmash of secondhand items and hand-me-downs, except for a few extravagances like Rose’s microscope. Hannibal had been sitting on the incongruously pretty chaise longue that Minou gave them when Henri bought her a new one last spring. It is upholstered in a pale pink velvet that matches nothing else the Januarys own, the primary reason for its relegation to this classroom. Hannibal had passed a hand across its surface when he first sat down, smiling at the feel of the velvet’s soft nap, or perhaps at some memory of the delicate item of furniture from its former life in Minou’s charming cottage. Now empty, the chaise longue gives her no answer.
There seems to be nothing to do except to follow Hannibal. Rose does so cautiously, for she is not entirely certain that he wishes to be caught.
Perhaps he does, for he hasn’t gone far. He stands at the head of the stairs to the house’s main floor, a mere dozen feet beyond the door of the classroom. Rose watches him before approaching. She can hear Zizi-Marie’s voice downstairs; the girl is laughing, though her exact words are indistinct. Rose and Hannibal had looked in on her on their way to the classroom; then she had been sewing in the dining room, Baby John sleeping by her side. Gabriel must have arrived home or one of her friends is visiting.
After a few moments it seems clear that Hannibal has no intention of either escaping farther or returning, and Rose steps closer to him. She lifts a hand to touch his arm but, not knowing how he will respond, refrains. He must be aware of her presence, but he has made no sign of it. “Hannibal?” she asks quietly.
He sighs. She has only a profile view of his face, but she thinks she sees him wince before he straightens his shoulders and turns to face her. His habitual politeness takes over as he does; she imagines it settling into place like a mask. “Allow me to apologize, Rose,” he says. “I’m afraid I’ll be of no use to your scientific inquiries after all.” His voice is steady and he smiles, but she notices that he doesn’t meet her eyes.
She can guess what’s wrong, and curses herself for not thinking of it earlier - or rather, she did think of it, and conducted the experiment anyway. It is far from kind to ask a friend theoretical questions about the very real death dogging his heels.
She lets herself touch his arm now, a light brush of fingertips just above his elbow. “There’s no need for apologies. Or, if there is, I should be the one giving them.”
Hannibal looks straight at her in surprise. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Rose raises an eyebrow. “Well, someone’s upset you.”
“Only myself.” He falls silent again and looks away. Zizi-Marie’s voice carries up to them once more, the happy childishness of it sounding an entire world away. Rose waits. Hannibal, she knows, does not speak easily when he feels deeply, and she will not press him on this for all the world. Even if she is curious. She has indulged her curiosity to his detriment once already today.
Finally he speaks. “The problem is not that you have asked me to do something I dislike. Rather the opposite - I enjoy it too much.”
Rose turns the words over in her mind, trying to work them into a pattern that makes sense. She can’t find one. “I don’t understand.”
“You are correct: suffocation should bring unpleasant thoughts to the mind of a consumptive. This is how I will die, unable to breathe the air all around me. Unless”-he smiled briefly-“I win a bit too much money in a poker game before then. To any rational mind this experiment would therefore be a source of terror and dread. No - I grant myself undeserved courage. It is a source of terror and dread. And yet... fascination also. Like Odysseus, I am drawn to the siren’s song.” His eyes flick up to hers for a moment, gauging her reaction, and then he continues, his voice plainer, without his usual protective cocoon of classical quotations and poetic meters. “I enjoy it when I can’t breathe. Enjoy physically. Not when it is merely a matter of illness, of course, but to relinquish control into the hands of someone kinder than death, someone more capable than I am, someone who - who cares for me. There is pleasure in that.”
Silence falls between them. When he continues, he has better control of himself. “I mention this only to explain, you understand. I would never ask such a thing of you, Rose.”
“Why not?”
He stares at her in shocked surprise, but Rose is sincere. His awkward roundabout way of explaining himself has given her plenty of time to consider the matter, and she finds it not to be the great horror he clearly believes it is.
“Because....” He visibly searches for words, and for once closes his mouth without finding any. He continues to stare at her, and then adds, “Don’t tell me that you’re interested.”
She shrugs. “Well, I’ve never heard of it before but it doesn’t seem so terrible, considering some of the things people do in bed. There are far worse indulgences.” He blanches at the implication, but she doesn’t give him the space to speak; she doesn’t want to talk of her own shadows. “You’re not in love with a mule, unlike poor Titania. Does Benjamin know of this?”
He drops his gaze. “Yes.”
“And what does he think?”
She knows, of course, that he and Benjamin sleep together without her presence; it seems only reasonable that some of what they do is different from what the three of them share. Still, his voice is low and shamed when he answers, “He has assisted me.”
“And Benjamin is such a respectable man. If he approves, it can’t be so bad.” She smiles and tucks her arm through his. “Come back and sit, and tell me more.” For a moment Hannibal looks as though he will insist that she must be shocked and appalled, but then he shakes his head and places his hand atop hers.
Back in the classroom, Rose draws the door shut behind them, hesitates, and then turns the lock. Zizi-Marie and Gabriel are unlikely to grow curious - they’re too familiar with the tendency of conversations between their aunt and her friend to dip into Greek or Latin or elaborate mathematics, subjects neither of them particularly enjoy - but it is better to be safe than sorry.
Hannibal retakes his seat on the chaise longue and Rose pulls her desk chair closer. She won’t need her notes now.
“Shall we try again?” she asks. “Or is there more you should explain first?”
Hannibal’s eyes skip from her hands to her feet to the outer edges of the room, but never reach her face. “No. It’s simple enough in practice, if rather inexplicable in theory.”
She leans forward. “Then hold your breath.”
His gaze finally comes to meet hers as he draws in air and holds it. She wonders if this is how he and Benjamin play the game, but doesn’t ask. She prefers to find her own way into it. Her body certainly doesn’t seem to need advice. She feels again the warm stirring of desire, and this time lets it come.
Such openness is still unfamiliar, though it has been two years since she married Benjamin and not much less since she took Hannibal as a lover as well. Rose spent too long putting aside inopportune desire, sweeping it away like dust; for most of her life she could allow no trace of such a feeling to show on her properly-kept surface. To welcome it instead is like stretching a limb that has fallen asleep: pins and needles come with the rush of blood.
She was very young when she realized that love is an impediment to the knowledge she has always longed for. Or, at least, that is how others see it. Any hint of passion that she allowed herself - should her eyes follow another student across the room, should she smile when he spoke to her, should she show any sign of enjoying male company at all - was used against her. Her step-mother saw those smiles as evidence that Rose would be happier if she were married, her father saw them as a reason to deny her more schooling, and Mathieu - but Rose does not like to think of Mathieu.
It was no easier when she came to New Orleans. A teacher - particularly one given the care of innocent young girls - simply does not feel desire. At least not if she wants to stay employed. In the crowded confines of the city, it seemed that there was always someone watching for the slightest slip in her demure facade: her students’ parents, her neighbors, even the other women in the marketplace. And so she learned to swallow down the first stirrings of attraction, to bury them deep inside herself, and treated desire as a mild inconvenience to be ignored.
Even now as a married woman the rules have not changed much. A wife loves her husband, that goes without saying, and yet Rose is aware that it is not entirely acceptable to consider a man as dark-skinned as Benjamin truly handsome. Certainly the ache of attraction she sometimes feels when she looks at him - a shortness of breath and a tightness in her belly - that is not to be spoken of. Even worse is what she feels for Hannibal. A properly married colored woman does not lust after a white musician - at least, whispers the ghost of her mother’s memory, not one who is poor.
She should have been keeping count while she thinks, but the numbers slip out of her grasp. Hannibal hasn’t even moved and already her body is responding to him. Perhaps, if she tries, she can slow the racing of her heart, dull the prickly awareness of her skin, even relax the anticipatory tension of her muscles. But there’s no need to try; here and now there is no one to scold or deny her. She may do as she likes.
Hannibal holds his breath until she says, “All right, that’s enough.” Then the air spills out of him in a great noisy rush; he opens his mouth, his nostrils flare, his cheeks are red. She sees too how bright his eyes are, and how they still watch her even as he leans forward, gasping. She reaches for his shoulder to steady him, but it doesn’t grow into the coughing fit she momentarily worries it might. In a few seconds he’s again breathing normally. He straightens back up and leans into the touch of her hand, smiling with parted lips.
There’s so many things she could say, but all she does is, “Again?”
“Please.”
She puts her fingers to his mouth, gently, just to see if she can feel him breathe. But there’s nothing, no stir of air to betray the appearance of held breath. It’s shorter this time - she supposes that he hasn’t entirely recovered from the previous attempt. She can feel how he strains to wait until she gives him permission: his lips are pale and taut as he presses them together beneath her fingertips, and his hands, resting on his knees, twitch in small jerky movements, as though there’s something he would reach out for.
When she tells him to release, the rush of air makes her light-headed, and there is a low, throbbing pulse between her legs. She sets her fingers on his lips again, but this time they are open. She feels their paper-thin texture, their warmth, how he shivers under her touch. She carefully traces their outer edge, watching him wait for her direction. Instead she says, almost conversationally, “Is there anything I could ask of you that you wouldn’t do?”
“Anything you asked?” He’s joking, but his voice is still hoarse from coughing and she hears the truth hidden in his lightness.
How thrilling, she thinks, in the ever-logical corner of her brain where she watches her own reactions, to have a lover entirely at my mercy. She knew that Hannibal was hers to command - he’d told her so often enough - but she’d never guessed he meant like this.
He feels too far away. There’s an obvious solution to that, so she leaves her chair and climbs onto Hannibal’s lap, hauling her skirts up to her thighs to allow her to face him. Her knees press into the back of the overstuffed chaise longue, Hannibal’s slim hips held tight between them, and she settles her weight onto him. He’s clearly surprised, but he adjusts easily to the new position; one hand goes to the small of her back to help her balance, and the other settles gently just above one of her knees.
“Again,” Rose says, and touches his face, her thumb lingering on the softness of his lower lip. Hannibal obeys without a word. Rose is close enough now to feel the swell of his chest as he draws in air, and to see the stillness of his throat afterwards. His lips thin under her thumb as he presses them together to form a barrier.
She counts not seconds but her own heartbeat, loud in her ears. She leans in to watch how Hannibal is affected by the lack of air. At first there is nothing, only his dark eyes locked onto her own, desire and satiation mingled in his expression. He wants this so badly, she thinks, he is so grateful that I have taken control of his breathing from him. She feels almost dizzy with the knowledge, as though she is the one lacking air. She could stop, or she could press him further and further - she could do whatever she wants. She is unaccustomed to such power, but now that she has it she doesn’t want to let it go.
She waits until his nostrils flare and his lips twitch - he is fighting to do as she has told him, fighting even against his body’s instinctual need for air - and then she tells him, “Now.” Air bursts past the fingers she holds to his mouth, out and then in, out and then in again. As soon as he reaches some semblance of steadiness Rose kisses him hard. She cannot kiss him as often as she would like, so now she closes her eyes to better focus on his taste, on the feel of his arms coming up around her to press her close. There are days of longing in this one kiss.
She needs more, needs to bring him still closer. She tries to take hold of his hair but it is bound back in a queue, too tightly braided for her fingers to catch. She fights with his ribbon, tears the knot free, then yanks at the braid, messily pulling his strands of hair apart. It must be somewhat painful, but she is in too much of a hurry to regret it and Hannibal doesn’t seem to mind. He ducks his head forward to give her better access, shifting his kisses to her neck and shoulder. The fabric of her dress muffles the sensation, but she hears the poetry he murmurs between each soft press of his mouth.
Rose sighs with relief to finally bury her hands in his hair. She scratches her nails down his scalp and lets his hair run smoothly between her fingers, then brings her hands to the roots again and impulsively clenches hard. Hannibal’s head snaps back, neck sharply arching and face forced up, but even at this provocation he only groans her name. She kisses him like that, holding him in place, and thinks, mine, mine. Hannibal is so open beneath her, giving himself to her without hesitation or reserve. She feels drunk on the power of it, on how he trusts her.
She pulls back just enough to demand, “Again, Hannibal. Again, now.”
He doesn’t need to ask what she means. His cheeks puff with held breath, and she brings her mouth to his. He can’t kiss while holding his breath, not really, but she feels his lips purse nonetheless. She licks along the seam of his mouth and feels him shudder under her, caught between the conflicting desires of kissing her and obeying her.
His mind wins out over his body, because his mouth stays closed. Rose kisses the corner of his lips, back across his cheek and along his jaw, her hands fisted in his hair to hold him tight against her. She kisses his ear, bites teasingly at the earlobe, then says, “Let go.”
The breath explodes out of him and he tries to turn his face towards her - to kiss her, to look at her; whatever he wants she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t allow it. Rose holds him in place as she listens to him pant, as she feels the heave of his chest against her breasts. After a moment she lets go and he drops his face against her shoulder in total collapse. She lets her arms fall loosely down around him and tilts her head to place her cheek against his hair.
They rest there, no sound in the room except for their out-of-sync breaths; Rose’s might be quicker than is warranted, but it is no match for Hannibal’s fast, shallow draws. She considers their situation as she lies against him, taking stock of her own physical reactions. “I think,” she says musingly, “that I begin to understand why you find this quite so appealing.”
He laughs shakily. “My dearest Athene. Of course you would want the knowledge of it.”
It’s not exactly knowledge that she wants, though she doesn’t bother correcting him. What she feels is wordless and intensely personal, despite Hannibal necessarily being wound all through her experience and perception of it. As much as she needs and wants him here, this burning ember in her chest is hers and hers alone.
She removes her spectacles and balances them carefully on the back of the chaise longue, then helps Hannibal out of his jacket and waistcoat and sets them too aside. His linen shirt isn’t much of a barrier; when she sets her palm against his chest, she can feel the rapid beating of his heart. They begin to kiss again. The first exchange this time is slow, exploratory, but neither of them are patient for long, and despite his shortness of breath and Rose’s awareness of the children in the house, soon they are once more clinging together, trading furious, biting kisses. She brings her hips forward to press against him, and feels his erection beneath her.
She sits back on her heels, which breaks the kiss and leaves Hannibal gasping after her with red, swollen lips, and works swiftly at the buttons of his trousers. She pushes them as far down his hips as she can manage without needing to leave her present seat, then strokes the cock she has uncovered. Its heated skin and hard flesh are a pleasure in her hand, the head already damp with precome.
Hannibal’s breath goes ragged for a new reason and he leans in to kiss her. Rose feels like she has drunk raw alcohol, her veins burning with delight; her mind is whirling with this new knowledge. That Hannibal was willing to assist in her experiments she knew, but that he should want her like this, that he should be attracted to her control and power and even perhaps domination - it is not possible, and yet it is. She can feel how real it is. His cock is hard in her hand and there is no mistaking his reaction.
She keeps her hold on his cock as they kiss, but the disarray of her skirts and beneath them her still-laced corset make it nearly impossible for her to feel it where she wants to. It should be warm and smooth and stiff against her stomach, not merely this faint pressure. She grinds herself against him, needing to feel the physical evidence of his desire beneath her again, gasping each time she does. Hannibal kisses her frantically at such treatment, his hands scrabbling across her back, slipping on the cloth of her dress. She angles her hips, trying to work herself against the hard line of his erection, but there is a rumpled fold of her skirts and his trousers still between them. It’s not enough.
She pulls back and announces, “I want you inside me.”
Hannibal’s hands freeze on her hips. They don’t do this often. Rose is well informed of the risks if she should give birth to a child too fair-skinned to be plausibly Benjamin’s - not that she is particularly interested in bearing anyone’s child at the moment, not so soon after Baby John. But her prudence is due to the social consequences, nothing more; Hannibal’s fear of a potential pregnancy is greater, a nearly wordless dread that she knows has little to do with logic.
Even so, his caution is not quite enough to outweigh his desire. She moves her thumb in a half-circle just below the head of his cock and it stiffens further, his hips twitching as he fights the urge to thrust up. “Are you certain?” he asks, his voice near to cracking under the strain.
“Yes.”
She takes firm hold of the arm of the chaise longue for balance and raises herself onto her knees. Hannibal tips his head back to look up at her, his eyes wide with anticipation. She pauses for one instant, letting herself fully grasp the extent of her control. She can feel it in the air like the electric charge before a storm. No matter what she does - go or stop or something else entirely - Hannibal will follow. Her heart pounds and her mouth feels dry and she wants desperately to feel him within her, to encircle the most vulnerable part of him. She steadies his cock, holding it in place for her next move.
“Tell me when you’re close,” she says.
“Of course.”
She sinks down, and Hannibal gasps at the first touch of his cock against her entrance. There is a brief burn as she works herself open over the crown of his cock, but then it is a smooth slow slide the rest of the way down. She listens for each catch and stutter of his breath, wanting every off-rhythm inhalation like she wants his touch, the heat of his length inside her, the way he sighs her name. Such little sounds to arouse her so much. When she is entirely seated, her ass against his thighs and her mound snugged tightly against his lower belly, she slips her hand out from around the base of his cock. Her fingers are wet with her own moisture.
Hannibal pants as he adjusts. His breath gusts across her face, the hot air felt as well as heard, and it heightens her pleasure. She knows that he will hold off for as long as he can, for her sake, but nonetheless she tightens her inner muscles around his length, just to see how he reacts. He chokes, a rough sound that is half laughter and half a sob, and Rose closes her eyes. To have such influence over him is astonishing. Her every action, no matter how small, draws a response from him. Is this how Benjamin feels when he plays before an audience? By pressing one key he can command a note to ring out, he can make music that expands to fill an entire hall and overwhelms the people within.... Rose feels capable of grander deeds than she ever has before.
She begins to move. First with a small stroke, rising just a bit before dropping back down. A test of the feel of him inside her, the sensations of sex in such a position. Hannibal’s hand slides up her thigh towards her clitoris, offering his usual assistance, but she brushes him aside. She wants to do this for herself. She circles the edge of her clitoris with two fingers, making slow, wide circles; despite the passion of the moment, she feels no particular urgency to finish quickly. In fact she realizes that she wants to see Hannibal climax first. She can make him do so, she knows. He would do almost anything for her, but this thing - this, they would both enjoy.
Hannibal watches her stroke herself, then his eyes flick back up to meet hers. How he looks at her - Rose feels a great bubble of joy growing in her chest, pressing against the inside of her skin as though it’s too much to keep contained. She leans backward, her spine arching as she presses herself down more firmly against Hannibal, and he reaches back to cup her ass, holding her steady. She sighs - almost moans - pleased by how this new angle lets her feel his cock inside of her even when she is still, the stiff rod of it jutting against her inner walls.
She is pleased too by how this angle gives him a better view of her hand, working slowly but steadily over her clit. She can tell by the sharpening of his gaze. It is heady, the power she has over him, how entirely he is at her mercy. She could laugh from sheer delight, shout for joy - instead she moves.
No long thrusts or hard strokes, not in this position. Instead she mostly circles her hips, grinding her entrance down against Hannibal, lifting herself only enough for the sweet slide of his last inch back inside her. It’s a small form of sex, encompassing only a few inches of movement, but fierce in its intensity. Sweat springs up on Rose’s back and chest, her winter dress now hot and constricting. Her fingers speed up, and she rubs the pad of one directly over the hard knot of her clitoris. It is perfect. She is dizzy, giddy, and each little pulse and jerk carves off another sharp-edged slice of pleasure. Her inner muscles clench around Hannibal, nearly out of her conscious control, responding only to the rapture she is feeling.
He doesn’t, perhaps can’t, tell her what he is feeling, but nonetheless she knows his experience is as acute as her own. His fingertips dig into the flesh of her ass as he tightens his grip, and he groans her name, his voice roughened by the difficultly of being quiet. He thrusts up into her with what little leverage he has; it doesn’t make much of a difference to the drag of his cock inside her, but she loves the feel of his muscles jerking, the buck of his body beneath hers.
She squeezes her thighs together, his slim hips trapped between her knees, and hangs on to the arm of the chaise longue as she moves above him. She feels powerful; she wants more.
“Hold your breath,” she says recklessly.
Hannibal does not protest that it’s an impossible request, though perhaps he thinks it; Rose certainly does. He’s already panting, his face redder than before from their exertions. But he tries - she can see him try, his lips thinning, the tendons in his neck standing out, the sound of his breath going silent for one brief moment. His whole body trembles, from the shiver of his hands on her skin to the jerk of his cock within her.
“That’s enough,” Rose commands a heartbeat later. “Good, Hannibal, good, let go now.” She’s suddenly afraid of her own power. She doesn’t know the limits of this game, and in her rash acceptance of it, she might have hurt Hannibal, pushed him too far. She doesn’t know how to safely handle such open trust.
But as soon as he can speak again, Hannibal says, “I’m close - hurry, Rose - “
She laughs in relief and climbs off of him. He assists her somewhat awkwardly, a muscle in the corner of his jaw jumping under the strain. She hesitates then, for they are both still fully dressed. Her legs are bare where she has hiked up her petticoats, but Hannibal’s cock stands up from the rumpled waist of his trousers. She catches hold of the bottom hem of his shirt and quickly drags it up to his chest, pinning it there for one stroke - two -
And then he is coming, his cock jumping in her hand, its head such a dark shade of red that it looks painful. The seed lands mostly, as she hoped, on his stomach. Some spills down onto her fingers, still hot. She catches it on her thumb and smears it back onto his softening cock; Hannibal groans quietly. His hand wraps around her own and gently peels her away. “Too sensitive,” he says by way of explanation.
Rose carefully studies his face, but there’s no trace of the fear or pain that she dreaded finding. Instead he looks emptied, washed clean. As though what they have done here has been more than just sex, but has removed some old, clinging stain and left him pure. It reminds Rose of the beach after a hurricane: all the driftwood and animal tracks and dead seaweed swept away, with nothing left but the sand and sky.
She slips off of Hannibal’s lap and lies on her side across the chaise longue, her right leg still stretched across his thighs. He follows slowly, supporting himself with a hand so that he lies half next to her and half above, and kisses her. It is a long kiss, lesiurely; Rose opens her mouth to him and stops worrying. She slides back into the pleasures of the moment: Hannibal warm against her, tasting of coffee; the uncomfortable line of her corset against her breasts when she arches up to him; the drift of his hand up her thigh, pushing back the skirts which have once more fallen down around her legs.
She takes Hannibal’s hand and guides it up when the kissing deepens. At first he merely touches her clitoris, but she tells him, “No, I want you here,” and folds his fingers into the correct position.
At first he skims along her outermost folds - a tease, a tickle - but she has no chance to protest before he pushes two fingers into her. She is wet and still open from his cock, so his fingers sink easily into her. This is what she wanted, the sensation of being full, the resistance when her inner muscles clench, and all she can do is sigh.
Hannibal’s fingers are slim and skilled, a violinist’s fingers. She closes her eyes to consider their fineness and the deft way he moves them. Her body is a string on his fiddle to be played, adroitly plucked to vibration at just the right moment. Benjamin’s hands are wider; stretched out from pinky to thumb, he can span her entire waist. They are strong enough to lift her on top of him, support her as she moves over him. Rose is glad to know both.
She drops her hold on Hannibal’s wrist and he moves his hand for her - so sweetly, so simply. There is no stretch, and barely any friction - only pressure and a sense of rightness. He brings the heel of his hand down against her clitoris, and that is the last thing she needs to finish.
Her orgasm is not like his. It is not sudden or explosive or dramatic; she barely even recognizes its peak. Rather it is like slow crests, each one building upon the previous until the waves roll all through her. She drops her head back against the seat of the chaise longue and her toes curl, propped up in the air by Hannibal’s hip. Even after the pleasure begins to reduce it goes on and on, the fading away as slow and gradual as the former climb.
Hannibal kisses her through all of it, even when she tips her face away from him for more air. He merely changes position and kisses the line of her jaw, the soft spot behind her ear, the curve of her throat, and what little of her breasts are revealed above the edge of her bodice. It seems like years pass before she reaches down to stop his hand, though objectively she supposes it can’t have been more than minutes.
Rose has absolutely no desire to move. She hooks her heel behind Hannibal’s knee to pull him closer and slides her hand beneath his shirt, resting it on his thin chest where she can feel the beat of his heart, the in and out of his breath.
He reluctantly resists her tug, separating from her side to climb back onto his feet. “I ought to wash. I’ll dirty your dress.”
Rose nods and watches him move across the room to the water pitcher where he cleans himself. When he has finished, he brings the cloth back to her, damp and folded, and carefully washes the inside of her thighs. She spreads her legs to allow it but otherwise does nothing to help. Afterwards he stays where he is, kneeling beside the chaise longue with his hands on her re-covered knees. She feels the weight of them, the moisture of the washrag, even through the muffling layers of petticoats and overskirt. “Thank you,” he says.
Rose hauls herself up into a proper sitting position. She takes Hannibal’s hands in hers and waits until he stops contemplating the hem of her dress and actually meets her eyes. “Perhaps it has escaped your notice - it has been a rather busy last few minutes - but nothing I have done today was for your benefit alone.”
He smiles and allows her to pull him up to sit beside her. “And I thank all the gods for that. Even if I do not entirely understand how it comes about.”
Rose shrugs. “I don’t entirely understand your role in the matter either. But perhaps if we did, it would not have worked so well. Attraction is a quality of magnets, not of mirrors.”
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing,” he murmurs, and raises their still-clasped hands to his lips to kiss her inner wrist. “And glory is quite the right word.”
Despite all the weary satisfaction weighing down her limbs, that brushing kiss awakens the desire for more. Rose knows it isn’t possible; they’ve probably dawdled too long in private already. If Benjamin were here, she could invite Hannibal to spend the night, but without a husband to give her countenance her behavior must be more constrained. Frustration makes her careless, and she takes her hand back from Hannibal more roughly than she intends.
“It’s all right,” he says before she can explain. “You should check on Baby John and the others. And it’s past time that I put on a performance for the benefit of your neighbors. It’s a piece titled The Proper Departure, in which I appear fully clothed and respectful and having in no way just seduced the lady of the household. A thankless role, perhaps, but we all pay our dues to society.”
Rose laughs and passes him his jacket and waistcoat, which had become wedged into the indentation between the seat of the chaise longue and its back. Hannibal puts them on and she takes up her spectacles to pass a critical eye over him; he looks rumpled, but so he often does. There’s nothing in his appearance to suggest what has passed between them. She turns her attention to herself, standing to shake straight her skirts and replace a shoe that had fallen off at some point in the proceedings. She doesn’t keep a mirror in the classroom, so she can’t be certain that she is equally unmarked.
Hannibal steps close before she can ask for his opinion. He reaches for the back of her neck, and for a moment his sudden, unexpected nearness is terrifying. The feeling is gone as quickly as it came, before Hannibal has even finished lifting her necklace and guiding its pendant cross back around to her front. The thin chain tickles her neck as he gently tugs on it, and then he steps away.
“There,” he says. “Entirely the proper schoolmistress.”
Her skin feels chilled from fear, even from such of brief wave of it, but that’s not all of her. Desire remains like a warm spark in her chest. She could swear it lodges in a specific, physical spot, though rationally she knows there is nothing there except for her heart and lungs, the blood and bone of any human body. She reaches for her newest set of memories to chase the last of the cold away: Hannibal between her knees, thick inside her, fingers trembling on her thighs, cheeks red, eyes wide. Breath held.
Hers, all of it. There’s nothing that can take it away from her, not even her own past.
The knowledge steadies her. She nods her thanks to Hannibal - who is just beginning to notice her strangeness, his smile fading in puzzlement - and heads towards the door. She pauses before unlocking it. “Shall we do this again?”
“Of course! Can one desire too much of a good thing?” His voice is bright, surprise and relief mingled.
Rose smiles, leans forward for a last brief kiss, and then opens the door.
***
Hannibal Citations:
Ægri quia non omnes convalescunt, idcirco ars nulla medicina est.
Because all the sick do not recover, therefore medicine is not an art.
- Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.4
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
- Proverbs, 25:2
Can one desire too much of a good thing?
- Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act IV, scene 1
The book of engravings in the opening is not real (as far as I know), but was inspired by Jacques Gamelin's Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie: dessiné d’après nature. You can look at some scans of the book here.
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