When he awoke in the morning, he was first conscious of the warm, rounded figure in his arms. Her back was to him, her braid partially caught under his own head, the rest of her hair a few inches from his nose. It smelt heavily of cheap soap and did not seem so silky in the early morning light. He did not care. His right arm was folded up against her back and he could feel her body expand against it with every breath. His left arm passed beneath her left and rested against the clothed curve of her left breast.
The next thing he became conscious of was the firm, soft swell of her buttocks pressed against his pelvis. His bodily response was partially brought on by the need to pee, partially by the effects of sleep, but mainly by the knowledge that his dick was only inches from her tight cunt. He remembered the look on her face the night before and moved his body away; the last thing she needed was to awake to a prod in the posterior. As he did so, she rolled over, and her arms came around his neck, pulling his mouth down against hers. He felt himself stiffen in response to the movement of her warm lips and the soft, but firm, mounds of her breasts against his chest. When she finally released him, she was smiling.
"What was that for?" Ned asked her.
"You didn't leave me here."
It sounded like the line from a fairytale play. But this was no play. He was no hero, come to save her from the abyss that was the East End; he had nowhere to take her. She was no heroine, no Cinderella; her recent falls from grace had been her own fault. They were both flawed and far from idealistic. He worried that, if he bedded her, he might never want her again. It had happened before. He didn't want that to happen. He couldn't let it happen.
Abruptly, Ned pulled away. "Have you got a chamber pot?"
Victoria nodded. "Under the bed."
She watched as he took the small, shining white pot from beneath the bed, thankful that she had emptied her own urine from the bowl the day before. Bodily functions were never supposed to be mentioned, the evidence of them never seen.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him unbutton the grey fly of his trousers. She knew from previous inspection that he had quite a noticeable bulge there. From within the trousers she saw the white fabric of his drawers and something else, something meaty, edging its head out of the opening in the front of the drawers. She gasped as his hand reached for his thick organ and quickly averted her gaze in fright as his eyes met hers.
"Are you watching me?" Ned asked.
Her head trembled as she gasped, "No- I- No-"
"Do you want to...?" He let the question hang, feeling himself stiffen even more as he regarded her embarrassed, red cheeks. He sure as hell couldn't pee now.
"No-" Victoria felt heat rise to her face and chest like a wave of fire. Her insides were melting, her heart pounding in anticipation.
"You didn't let me finish the question," Ned accused with a smile. "I was going to ask whether you wanted to get breakfast."
"No, you weren't." Victoria's eyes flashed back to his groin, which he had endeavored to cover with a protective hand.
He sat on the bed beside her, feeling the warmed fabric where his body had so recently lain against hers. The lumpy straw mattress beneath pressed through its shabby lining and into his buttocks. He had already inspected the bedding for fleas and found none, thank god. As he lay back, he heard the springs groan beneath his weight, and wondered for the umpteenth time exactly what was holding this platform up. It was only a thin, single bed, perhaps it would not hold two people for terribly long. He felt Victoria's body shuffle from his side.
He moved closer to clasp the soft curve of her waist, knowing that the wall barred her from moving any further away. Her head turned to face his, the soft lips tantalizingly close. "Please don't-" he heard her gasp into his opened mouth. It was a different protestation from the one she had given the night before. The air around her was live with arousal. He could feel it in the trembling flesh of her hip, see it in the sweat forming upon her brow and smell it in the faint, musky smell of the female sex that seemed to cling about her body like a skin. When he kissed her, her lips were flaccid for a moment, then they started to respond strongly. In a simultaneous maneuver, she had turned her body toward his, pulled his mouth down tightly against hers and pushed her tongue inside his mouth. She pressed her full breasts into his chest, her arms pulling him so close that their heartbeats seemed to be one. At the same time, she kept her hips as far from his erection as possible. The fluid movements of her full lips, arching breasts and to a lesser extent, her tightly closed thighs that every now and then jolted his member, were incredibly arousing. It was his turn to gasp when she finally let him go.
He had to pull away. "I think you should get dressed," Ned whispered to Victoria. "We should get breakfast, then I have to go. First I'll urinate, though." He told himself that it was the right thing to do, to leave the act undone, the words unsaid. Then he could never hate her. For a second, he saw her eyes gleam with disappointment, then she turned back toward the wall as he tried to make himself flaccid. It did not work. Quickly, and rather painfully, he buttoned his arousal back into his trousers. She left the bedding a moment later, her face partially obscured by her braid and the lean of her head, so that he could not see the tears ebbing upon her dark eyelashes. With her back to him, she reached for a drab gray dress, which had been draped carefully across the chair before he sat upon it. She took that cage of womankind, the corset, from the top drawer of her chest, along with a fresh pair of drawers.
"Do you want me to wait outside?" he asked.
