by Nia Farrell
As Wicked As You Want
(Forever Ours Series Book One)
by
Nia Farrell
AS WICKED AS YOU WANT © 2016 Nia Farrell
Edited by Anita Quick and Anne Bright
Cover Design and Layout by Crystal Visions
Stock Photography from bigstockphoto.com
Interior Layout by Anita Quick
Length 155,467 words/609 6x9 pages
All rights reserved on original material, which may not be reproduced or used without the written consent of the author, except for brief quotes in reviews. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book. Such action is in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement with-out monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
First Edition
Kindle Edition ASIN B01ICAW8LI
Long Branch Books
Shattuc, Illinois
Look for these titles by Nia Farrell
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SOMETHING ELSE (The Three Graces Book One)
SOMETHING DIFFERENT (The Three Graces Book Two)
SOMETHING MORE (The Three Graces Book Three), Finalist for Best BDSM Book of the Year, Ménage Category, 2016 Golden Flogger Awards
THE THREE GRACES TRILOGY paperback
Contains SOMETHING ELSE, SOMETHING DIFFERENT,
and SOMETHING MORE
SOMETHING SPECIAL (The Three Graces Book Six – sequel to SOMETHING ELSE) e-book and paperback
DARK MOONS RISING e-book and paperback
REPLAY BOOK 1: VIKING RAID e-book and paperback
by Nia Farrell and Jane Austen
PRIDE AND PUNISHMENT—AN EROTIC RETELLING OF JANE AUSTEN’S BELOVED CLASSIC
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Glossary
Biographical Sketches
Author’s Bio and Books
DEDICATION
To the hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of women, North and South, who served in the American Civil War, openly as female vivandières and in disguise as “male” soldiers. Two of them died at Gettysburg, but we will never know how many other women were there. Their identities remained their secrets to keep, and their secrets to share.
Sometimes choice was stripped from them, when illness or accident resulted in discovery, as was the case with Jennie Hodgers aka Albert Cashier who served in the 95th Illinois Volunteer Regiment, Company G, and in the 1st United States Sharpshooters. Sometimes their story was told but discounted, as was the case of Anna Glud, who served as a drummer boy Tom Hunley in her father’s unit under General Grant.
Thousands more women served as nurses, doctors, spies, munitions factory workers, and soldiers’ aid society members. Of the historical figures mentioned in these pages, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker is the only woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor, and Clara Barton went on to found the American Red Cross. As of this writing, the only monument to a woman on a Civil War battlefield honors Clara Barton’s efforts at Antietam.
~ Nia
INTRODUCTION
Forever Ours is a new series by Nia Farrell, historical BDSM ménages about the past lives of soulmates Grace Murphy, Nico White, and J. T. Santiago from Something Else and Something Special (The Three Graces Books One and Six).
As Wicked As You Want
As Wicked as You Want is a Victorian erotic romance BDSM MMF ménage with a bisexual British history professor, his American stepsister who’s been living as a man since serving in the Civil War, and her Irish messmate who serves as apprentice in her art studio and who has been fighting his attraction to “Lane.”
Facing arrest for desertion, Elena “Lane” Davenport reclaims her true identity and escapes to England with her stepbrother Edward Wainwright, a dominant bisexual who recognizes her assistant Daniel O’Flaherty’s submissive nature. It takes time to woo Daniel, but the three are settling into a true ménage relationship when Elena’s past threatens their very future. Chance brings them together. Will Fate tear them apart?
Set in 1868 Chicago and London, As Wicked as You Want is a BDSM erotic historical with an intrigue subplot. About 155,000 words, the story was inspired by true tales of women who served in disguise during the American Civil War, and of Pinkertons sent to arrest a soldier who had served three years but had failed to muster out.
Of the historical figures mentioned, one appears as a minor character. While it is true that Kate Chase Sprague had her father’s Presidential campaign headquarters in a New York hotel and that her husband was not with her, Mrs. Sprague did not consider having a liaison with my fictional British history professor. Her extramarital affair with U.S. Senator Rosco Conkling would come later.
Chapter One
Chicago, Illinois
Thursday, July 2, 1868
I didn’t know what to expect when the telegram was delivered, announcing the imminent arrival of Edward Wainwright, Esquire. The only Edward Wainwright I knew was British by birth, an Oxford-educated professor of history whom fate had made my stepbrother.
It was no secret that our mother had remarried after she’d deserted us (we were eighteen, after all), and that she was undeservedly happy in England. Her second husba
nd was a widower surgeon with two grown children, one of whom was about to come calling.
Family member or no, Professor Wainwright couldn’t have chosen a worse time. I was preparing the gallery for a showing of my sculptures and paintings—an exhibition which could potentially make my career or send it crashing to the ground, to lie with my broken heart and shattered dreams like pottery shards from a dead and forgotten civilization.
My assistant Daniel was proving to be as much nuisance as help today, questioning placement, failing to listen sufficiently, making me repeat instructions. Distracted by the God-awful summer heat, he was testing the limits of my patience. Infinite, it might seem, but I knew that it was not.
I supposed it was a blessing, to burn with an artist’s passion without a fiery temperament to match. Anyone else would have exploded like the Sultana by now. Instead, I made Daniel take a break with me, sit, and drink some water to replace what we’d been sweating out. I’d stripped off my frock coat and ditched my cravat, but the shirt beneath my brocade waistcoat was positively drenched.
He shoved the copper curls from his forehead with his sleeve, crooked a grin, and wiped the dew from his glistening brow. Daniel O’Flaherty was an effervescent Irishman. The promise of mischief was seldom absent from his emerald green eyes, and he was given to frequent outbursts of song, bawdy and otherwise. We’d met during the war and reconnected by chance last fall in Chicago, when he answered my neighbor’s advertisement for another tailor to replace the one who was about to exchange a mundane life in Illinois for the golden allure of Alaska.
As fortune would have it, Daniel’s ability to charm customers was the only real talent he brought to the local haberdashery, where tailoring and alterations were secondary to the sales of fabrics, notions, and other necessities of sewing. Desperate for work in a land where too many businesses posted “No Irish Need Apply,” he’d come to me, begging like the company’s canine mascot for a bone.
He was still here, a blessing and a bane, as he had been when we were messmates. Always teasing. Always eager for a game of cards, a stolen drink of contraband whiskey, wrestling or fisticuffs, a bet on which horse or grayback would win the next race. Sometimes I swear that he’d gotten under my skin and given me his own Irish infestation.
Considering the ills that I’d seen and those which I’d heard of, I suppose I could do worse.
“We’re nearly done,” he observed cheerily, his lightness failing to counterbalance the onerous weight on my shoulders. “A few more pieces, and we’re there.”
“Says you,” I snapped, almost cringing when I saw him flinch and I heard myself, words as pointed as a bayonet. This anxiety was killing me. I could not wait for tomorrow to come, yet dreaded it almost as much as marching shoulder to shoulder over open ground towards enemy musket barrels poised atop a long, stone wall.
We were finishing the last installation when the bell over the door rang, announcing an arrival. “One moment, please,” I called, occupied as I was, making certain that La Belle de la Rosa was securely centered on her pedestal. Done, I raised a silent prayer, stroked her fair cheek in benediction, then turned to see who’d come.
Whoever he was, he took off his hat upon entering, creating an image that literally stole my breath away. Even with his face cast in shadows, the man was beautiful, backlit by sunshine that limned his blond curls, kissing their tips and wreathing him in golden light. He was tall, pushing six feet three inches in polished boots. They peeked from the hem of trousers that were cut of the same expensive black cloth as his morning coat. He had long legs. Sturdy thighs. Lean hips. A wide chest. Broad shoulders. He was clean shaven, with no beard to hide the firm chin and square jaw. I watched his face as he came towards me, until he was close enough to touch.
I found myself drowning in the brilliant turquoise of his eyes. I swear, in that moment, I was lost.
The starkness of his tailored white shirt contrasted sharply with his black cravat and tanned skin. He wore a diamond stick pin of such size, I wondered that he hadn’t been robbed—but perhaps potential muggers had noticed his walking stick, or they’d seen the way that his muscles filled the seams of his garments and shaped the front without the addition of horsehair pads. I could certainly see him as a Greco-Roman wrestler—or as Pan, gloriously nude, posing while I sketched him from every conceivable angle and created studies for the statue I would carve.
I had the marble. Had had it for years, just waiting for him to come.
“Lane Davenport,” I pushed past the gravel that had suddenly lodged itself in my throat. “My apologies. The exhibition opens tomorrow,” I told him, “but I’d be happy to give you a preview.”
Stepping forward, I offered him my hand: smaller, paler, not as strong but certainly as capable as his much larger one, gloved in finely crafted black leather.
“Mr. Davenport.” The accent was British. His voice was deep and rich, with a resonance that touched me to the core, igniting an interest that I had not dared to pursue in years. “Edward Wainwright. I sent word that I was coming. Did you receive my telegram?”
God help me. This was my stepbrother? No. No. Surely fate would not be so cruel, not after everything I’d endured.
Yet here he stood, temptation personified, giving a new face to my fantasies. I suppose that was something, at least.
“Yes,” I said resignedly, suddenly cognizant that he wore no color but black and he was not smiling. I felt my stomach cramp and the bottom drop out, leaving me hollow inside. “This morning.”
A closer look revealed the fatigue of travel. He’d crossed an ocean to see me, or to see me while he was here for some other purpose. Either way, Mother should have warned me. Then again, my mother was capable of single-minded focus to the exclusion of all else. It was possible that it had slipped her mind. Or maybe….
Several things came to mind, none of them good. I stopped the direst thought. Even half-formed, it made my stomach churn. Perhaps to delay the inevitable, I apologized again. “I’m sorry, sir. May I get you something to drink? Water? Whiskey?”
Daniel slashed a look of annoyance that I dared to offer his private stash.
“Water would be lovely,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. He smelled of dust, horseflesh, and sweat, earthy scents that only added to his primal appeal. Professor Wainwright was a mature man, several years my senior and so clearly my better, in terms of both station in life and professional achievements. According to my mother, he was “of good birth.” He certainly dressed and looked the part of a well-made son. He had matriculated from Oxford and now taught at a university—though I was damned if I knew which one.
My mother’s sparse letters were generally short and incredibly trivial, with a marked absence of important details, and so I was left to make my own deductions. The man before me had good breeding, a higher education, and he had authored two books. That much, I knew. All this by the age of, what? Just guessing, I would place him in his mid-thirties. A man in his prime.
Or was that supposed to be me?
I sent Daniel to fetch another glass from my apartment upstairs and directed Professor Wainwright to the bench placed in front of a landscape that I had painted, a rose garden in winter—dark, jagged stems thrusting from drifts of snow, ending in bulbous, blackened hips. It was bleak yet beautiful, rich with memories of one summer’s blooms and promises for the next.
Life, death, rebirth. Ah, Lane. Lane.
Professor Wainwright remained silent, waiting, inert as a crouched lion, with a coiled strength that fairly radiated from him, however tightly he kept it under control.
He drained the glass I poured and politely asked for a refill. Somehow I sensed that he was delaying the inevitable, too.
“Is it Mother?” I asked flatly, striving to keep my lingering resentment to myself.
He heaved a breath, hot and harsh across the space between us. “Yes,” he said. “There was an accident. I am sorry, but she’s gone. She’s…she’s with your father now.”
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br /> “I doubt that.” He looked shocked at the vehemence lacing my voice. Children were supposed to adore their mothers, after all. “Oh, I do not doubt that she loved him once. Before the war. Before he went north, joined a Federal unit, and left us to languish in Richmond, targets of every Secessionist sympathizer and their uncle. We were picked and preyed upon, all but driven out. When news came of his death, poor Mother flew home to England, leaving her chicks to fend for themselves.”
“So bitter,” he murmured. “Not that I blame you. But I can tell you, she was in pieces when she arrived. She could not care for herself, let alone anyone else.”
No, she’d had Masey for that. She’d taken her, after freeing her first. Given Masey’s choices, I suppose I would have gone, too.
“That’s about right,” I said starkly, reliving our last days together. Mother, lost in laudanum dreams that allowed her to escape the reality that we were then forced to face alone, just the two of us. Lane and Elena, brother and sister, joined in our solidarity as closely as we had been in the womb that we had shared.
I remembered my manners, suddenly ashamed. None of this was his fault. He’d gone to a great deal of effort on our behalf. “I’m sorry, but thank you.” I laughed at myself, a short, bitter bark. “Dear God, it seems that all I do is apologize to you. I’m afraid this has caught me at a bad time—not that there’s ever a good time to learn of the death of a parent.”
“It was a shock,” he said. “My father—” he blew out softly “—is taking it rather hard. You see, he was with her when it happened. She was hit by a runaway carriage and sustained severe internal injuries. Thankfully she did not suffer long. Still, he was helpless to save her. He continues to blame himself.”
“Nonsense. Accidents happen.” I suppressed a shudder. Shoved the threatening memories back from whence they’d come and forced close that morbid door. (Would that I could lock it tight and toss away the key!) “Although you could have sent word. A letter? A telegram?” There had been wires across the Atlantic for a decade, after all.