Step on up, swing your bat

[Zelda Rhodes]

Who: Zelda Rhodes & Jesús de Torres y Pineda
When: Summer of 1858
Where: Bloomsbury, the Rhodes family home

Historical: Zelda and Jesús have an encounter in her father's offices.

[Continued from here]

"Are you?" Zelda asked, voice more curious than biting, but she was then pulled forward across the desk as Jesús curled his fingers over her wrist. The movement caught her by surprise, and her breath hitched once in her throat before she'd steadied herself on her opposite palm. This was a new wrinkle in the ongoing and previously reliable dynamic of their relationship.

"I think you and I may have differing views on what qualifies as work," she said, and steadily held his dark gaze. He really was rather beautiful, and they were more than close enough for kissing now. Just a quick sway forward would close the distance between their mouths. She firmed her stance upon the floor instead, and her focus remained fixed.

"You really shouldn't suck on the end of your pen, Jesús," she said, ignoring his question as blithely as if he'd not asked. She lifted her free hand and thumbed across his bottom lip, where a smear of ink had been left by the nib. "You've made a mess of this lovely mouth. No one will ever want to kiss you like this, not even for a final goodbye." There were weeks yet before her departure, more than enough time for kissing and more should she allow it. Yet, if he disappointed her in bed, what a terrible going-away present that would be. No; better to maintain the status quo and satisfy herself with the thought of him and her own two hands.

[Jesús de Torres y Pineda]

Jesús could not have helped it if he tried, as he pulled her across the table and looked to her berry red lips as one would some fruit ripe and swollen with its produce. If but by his imagination, he pictured how easy it would’ve been to coax her into one needy kiss, to slip his tongue between her lips before he could push his spare hand to her breast, to act with such compulsion would’ve been his undoing, but what price would he have paid for but a moment buried inside of her? To bend her over the table. To sit her upon his lap. To simply kneel between her legs to taste her budding want. Despite the heaviness of his prick that seemed almost unimaginable between his legs, Jesús could not (or would not?).

Or so, it felt that way, till she picked her hand up to touch upon his lip, to nudge what ink had superficially made its mark against his flesh in some silent bid to draw his attention was perhaps an act he could not have overlooked. Suddenly, under a spell of flirtation, Jesús dropped his lower lip to catch her thumb between the edge of his teeth, to bite gently into the flesh as one would when questioning the taste of something unusual and untouched before. Still, he relented even when a noise of something that could’ve been read as one of many things (embarrassment, desire, pleasure or even anguish) vibrated up his neck, leaving him to pull himself from her annoying thumb, to release her hand in order to grab the wrist that held itself against his face, to keep her palm there as he ran his plump mouth from the pad of her thumb to her palm instead, his lip drawn against her skin as if the slow shift was torturous, as if he could not bare to push it aside.

With but the flicker of a moment he pressed his mouth against her palm there and then, smudging the ink against her skin in the transfer before he breathed deeply, his dark eyes staring into hers for a second before he pulled himself away, near laughing at the transaction as he released her and went to play with the order of books on the other side of the room; if only to hide his erection from her view.

“Sounds like someone has something on their mind, Zelda, if you want to kiss me I won’t tell daddy,” Jesús teased, putting one book on top of another as if it were but the single most important thing that he could be doing.

[Zelda Rhodes]

There was a moment there — Not much more than a handful of seconds, really — when Zelda felt she had perhaps misjudged him. The application of teeth against her thumb was erotic but was, to a point, expected. But then something within the man seemed to fracture, and she saw clearly for the first time how badly he'd been wanting her these years whilst toiling away at his papers and books. Those dark eyes carried more than lust in their depths, and she was as overwhelmed by the display as she was terrified.

But then the moment had been shattered, and Jesús was laughing, perhaps to cover what had been seen, and she was left hunched over his desk with the shape of his mouth still warming her open palm.

"If I wanted you, Jesús, I could have had you three years ago," she said, and it felt harsh to her own ears after the vulnerability of the moment before. Still, it was better this way, surely — That had been the gaze of a man after not simply desire, but devotion, and she hadn't the patience to endure anything akin to clinginess. He'd want her all the time, would be jealous, would manufacture ways to keep her from her final year at college. The way he'd looked at her — He might have been halfway there!

Straightening, she slid her hands across the front of her skirt, checking for wayward ink, and then made her way back toward the door. There she paused, knowing that she might simply continue on without a bridge burned, but afraid too of the weeks stretching out yet before she returned to Boston. "I'm sure there's a red-headed whore somewhere in London who can rid you of your affliction," she said, hand poised on the jamb, glad he was not looking at her to read the lie. Swallowing against her own cruelty, she turned and strode back into the house, leaving only the soft rustle of fabric behind her.

[Jesús de Torres y Pineda]

Jesús wondered if it was true that she could have taken him without the flicker of a mere eyelash seemed like a realistic prospect despite his ever present need to remain stoic, untouchable and beyond her certain reach. It was the curse of a man to have his desire pronounced and on display for all to witness, a mishap that pressed hard against the front of his trousers that had been bought some years previously to prepare for the much colder weather. Had he much to offer her but a quick fuck rushed between the papers assigned to his hand? No, not really, but Jesús had been lead to believe that sex could be as easy as one wished, if he listened to the ear of his ever dear friend, de la Cruz. There was no need for it to evolve, or for it to be anything more than a fumble, but if he was to be true to himself, something raw and real grew taut within him, stretching him thin against the bonds of his soul.

He scoffed out loud, a noise made to repel and reject the notion of one sinful coupling alone. He had no means to entertain it, even if he felt that strained edge of his cock that had grown in effect by her thumb pressed between his teeth. With another noise of apparent disgust, Jesús turned himself away from her, his eyes dark and serious as he tried to tend to the lettering on the front of the books he had picked from the table in his hasty withdrawal.

A red-headed whore meant… Well, he tried not to think about it as he arranged himself accordingly, his heart hammering in his chest at the idea of satisfying some primal urge if only to make a mockery of what he really wanted. Twisting his mouth downward, he turned his head and refused to look at her if only to halt the idea of watching her leave. But he did, for her words left her lips, noises left to wilt and loiter in the room as her hand went to open the door, his own voice shunned behind his lips and swallowed deep down his throat to where his vocal chords longed to say something else. But what was it that he could have said? I would never. I do not want. Good riddance. Come back? Well, it all seemed useless, but he did turn his head if only to catch the last stroke of her skirts disappear behind the door — he would see her again, of course, but each moment would be segregated to her father’s company and as such forced to toe the line he needed to keep to; a boundary he would appreciate all the more after this unlucky encounter. Still, he had some time before he had to reunite with his superior… So he descended, taking himself to get rid of the infliction he had cast upon himself in a few rigorous strokes.