Your comments are golden! thank you so much! this should be book length by the time i'm finished so those craving more, more will be had! +cyber hugs if welcome+
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Very soon a hall full of biologists, patrons, and more than a few deviants looking for a show would all see that Dorothea's body responded like bottled lightning to his touch.
Anthony felt rather like a steam engine in need of a good whistle.
He sat in Bridger's office while his mentor went over and over his introductory speech and he could feel the need to have Dorothea under his hands building.
"Do you think the hysteria will stay at bay?" Bridger interrupted his own dry, academic speech. "While we agree she is definitely suitable as an exhibition piece, it is not so long since her every living moment was beset by choking and entrapment of the lung."
Anthony felt a mild rattle of his own nerve and steeled it.
"I'll be there," he assured Bridger, smiling as best he could. "You worry about keeping the crowd focused on the purpose of the exhibition, I'll ensure our piece of art is not scared by her debut."
"I like that," Bridger's eyes warmed, "art. How very poetical of you, Halloway!"
He kept his face in the same encouraging smile, very carefully not reacting with embarrassment. Bridger did not need to know that Dorothea had come to his rooms.
That she had pulled a blinding climax from him.
That they had kissed.
That she made his heart gallop and tension melt from him and the world feel sweet.
Anthony's fingers tapped arhythmically against the arm of his chair as Bridger read his notes in silence and the lack of Dorothea Chase made his celiac plexus ache. Since the night she had come to his rooms they had met once, here, but solely for Bridger to go over what would happen. He had not had his hands on her or in her since.
He should worry about the power she had over him, but the idea of her being manipulative was laughable. It was her naivetée, he suspected, that had led to her facing adulthood and shattering under the strain.
A strain he was now experiencing, albeit in a much weaker dosage.
The rattle of a small carriage reached his ears and he straightened out of his chair and started walking in one smooth movement. Four strides from Bridger's study to the door and he was pulling it open. She flinched, but he got to see her face go from surprise to delight. He got to enjoy the blush that followed and the confident smile she tried to control.
By God, she was always beautiful but that smile in all its strength and gratitude and indulgence made his knees weaken.
"I suggested to the jarvey that he wait?" She might be confident in herself, but she still needed his help justifying her decisions. "So that we might arrive with plenty of time."
"An excellent idea, Miss Chase," he approved, waving his fingers to the cab driver so he did not doubt their interest and take his horse on to the next fare. "I shall call Bridger and join you within!"
Standing over her he caught the scents of lavender and bergamot, but it was wishful thinking that he could have tasted her on his palate.
Soon.
Soon enough he would show other men how he pleasured a woman.
His woman.
He cleared his throat, realising he had been staring down into her face, and she drew in a breath, blinking, and her smile became mischievous.
"Oh. Right oh!" She turned with a swoosh of her town coat and he made himself walk within.
"Bridger, we're holding the hansom," he could stop himself grinning, but he could still hear the effects of her in his own voice. "Miss Chase is a little anxious about our arriving on time."
Bridger, to his credit, looked at the clock but did not relay its tattletale information.
"Gather our coats, I shall be but a moment."
Halloway tore their wool coats from the wardrobe in the hall, called a farewell to Bridger's housekeeper, and all but leapt from doorstep to cab.
"How are you, Dorothea?" He bundled himself in next to her, piling the coats over their laps so he could reach for her. Her fingers met his and he clasped them, trapping her hand between his and her thigh.
"Terrified," she gave one of the shattered mirthless laughs that had punctuated their early meetings.
"You'll love it," he promised, "but I know that is no comfort now. I shall be there. No one will touch you but me."
Ever.
Anthony did not like the possessive, primal echo in his brain. It made him feel like the monstrous deviant he had been accused of being. It made him feel as if he could claim ownership of her, but as he warred with the goosebumps and tamped down a wondering about whether or not she would want to know what he was thinking, it crystallised into something else.
Anthony stretched his hand, pressing her fingers into the delicious pillow of her thigh.
Tonight he would get to touch her again.
Tonight he could show other people the music he conjured in pleasuring her. They would know what he, Anthony Halloway, did to this gorgeous woman.
What he had been created to do to her.
What he was blessed to be able to do to her.
"Good," she murmured to herself. "If I think about that, the hysteria stays down."
She squirmed up against the pressure of his hand and his breath caught, slamming under his sternum. Dizziness swept through him as his cock went hard faster than it ever had before her. Even as a confused adolescent, surely nothing had ever sent his cock to stone like Dorothea Chase.
"Be good and wait then, Miss Chase," he turned his head, leaning so his breath would stir her hair.
The noise she made was revenge and reward in one.
A desperate gasp of a whimper, bitten off as Bridger came trotting down the steps and confirmed their direction with the jarvey. He launched into the confined space and Anthony slid his hand back from her with a concerted effort.
"Is everyone excited?" Bridger asked, and Anthony gave him a flat look. His friend and saviour's face was too impassive, too bland, to not have intended the innuendo.
"Terrified," Dorothea replied, and he wished he could take credit for the tremble in her voice.
"Mr Halloway will take excellent care of you, dear Miss Chase," Bridger snatched at his document case, clutching to reassure himself he had not forgotten it.
"And Doctor Bridger will take care of the audience," Anthony added. "All you have to do is be yourself."
Her glorious, gorgeous self.
Once again the pressure of possessive jealousy filled his brain. Territorial bollocks, quite literally.
"Have you been well then, Miss Chase?" Bridger interrupted the pulsing silence, shifting on his side of the cab and knocking his knee against Anthony's so his thigh pressed against her again.
She was feverishly hot and he felt parched.
"Indeed. It has been only a while since I saw you both," Dorothea leaned against him. Tempting and taunting with just a little deliberate pressure.
"Is your mother well?" Bridger and his small talk. This ride was going to be interminable. And he could not indulge, not with Bridger there and not when they needed her in a neutral state and not already panting.
Anthony endured their small tall as it passed from enquiries to discussion about scones that should have helped him calm down except the words 'cream' and 'jam' on his Miss Chase's tongue had him wildly fighting fantasies about her nipples being his own sweet confection.
They already resembled little raspberries when she was aroused. Pink and puckered and sweet between his lips.
Agonising torture done and their destination arrived at, Anthony stared at his lying pocketwatch by gas lamp, refusing to believe it had only been twenty minutes.
"Excellent," Bridger returned from paying the jarvey and Anthony realised he had not given Dorothea his hand in climbing from the cab. A flush of guilt prickled under his ears and he offered his arm.
"Shall we, Miss Chase?"
She was staring at the new building, brick and tile with lights peeking through gaps in the window shutters.
"I..." She was breathless with fear, her hysteria trying to break through her natural composure. "I. Can. Do. This."
"Of course you can, my dear Miss Chase," Bridger gestured to him and her big eyes turned from the academic building with delusions of gothic and fixed on his face.
She stepped to him and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.
"Mr Halloway," she murmured as he drew her gently after Bridger, who had strode on, document bag under his arm, muttering his opening remarks under his breath.
"Miss Chase?"
"If... they laugh at me, will you please get me out?" She was fighting the anxiety, but it still shone through, like the candle and gaslight behind the shutters that found a way out.
"Miss Chase," he chose his words with care, "if they laugh at you I will see you into a changing room and then go back and beat them until they fully appreciate their great mistake."
She rewarded him with an airy chuckle, her fingers tightening on his arm.
"Besides which," he looked sideways at her hat, wishing he could see her eyes, "they won't. You are beautiful and your responses are what anyone making love to a woman would love to hear."
"Oh Mr Halloway," they entered the grand hallway of the Medical School where Bridger was getting directions from the porter. "You say the sweetest things."
It's true, though, Dorothea.
"Do you not like the groans you get out of me?" he murmured into the brim of her hat.
"I love them," she whispered, looking up at him and giving him the eye contact he had been dying for. "It makes everything better. Hotter. Positively pentecostal!"
He grinned, adoring the mild blasphemy and smug that he made her hot, made her a hedonist. Or rather, showed her how to be hedonistic so he could luxuriate in her indulgence.
"Here we go then, Miss Chase!" The porter had shown them to a side room adjoining the lecture hall. He eyed her, but before Anthony could get protective or possessive, the man smiled and said:
"They normally get stiffs in that lecture hall. You'll be a lovely change, Missus!"
And Anthony was on the verge of exerting his presence when she gave a dirty little snort and he realised she had caught the potential double entendre and was controlling laughter instead of fear.
"I know stiffs means cadavres," she put a clenched fist to her lips. "I know that!"
They thanked him and Bridger clasped Dorothea's hands, taking her from Anthony's arm to reassure her and bid them a brief farewell so he could press the flesh and Dorothea could change and so on.
