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Subject: {ASSM} Bloody Beth, Chapter 1 (mf, historical romance, slow)
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 17:10:12 -0500
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Bloody Beth, Chapter 1
"For broadside! Fire!"
Six cannon spoke at once, the thunder of their voices making the deck
beneath Beth's boots shudder with violence. Six balls of hot iron
smashed into the opposing vessel, gouging a painful wound in the
ship's once-sleek side. An explosion from within the corsair ripped
open the deck and hurled wood, debris and soldiers into the ocean.
Beth loved the sight with her heart. After six winter months of
waiting, they would take their third ship from His Majesty's fleet
this year. Although she could clearly see the flags of the British
Merchant Marine flying from the corsair's mast, the information proved
correct as the deck was swarmed with soldiers from His Majesty's army.
The condition of the corsair's sails suggested that they had been at
sea the entire voyage-- no stops, some nine weeks at least. That meant
compared to her own men, the troops would be exhausted, underfed, and
quite probably sea-addled. They had failed with their own defensive
volley and only one cannonball had struck the Jacob's Ladder, and
although that one had ruined her ship's bow it had not come close to
sinking or disabling her.
The corsair, on the other hand, was now little more than a smoldering
ruin. A lucky shot with the reserve cannon had succeeded in bringing
down the rigging without completely unmasting her, and the last
volley, a broadside at close range, had gutted her gun ports on the
presenting side. Beth patted her wheelman on the shoulder. "Good job,
Stede. Keep her beam-on."
"I know m' job, Captain!" he said with good cheer.
Beth grinned even as she wrapped one hand around a pistol and the
other about her sword, her familiar friends.
The corsair seemed a good target for plunder. Although the vessel was
probably low on supplies, Beth had word of both riches and ransom. On
such vessels gentry traveled. Gentry had money. It lifted her heart
higher to know that she had done well by her men again.
"Grapples!" she shouted. Although young to command, she reveled in the
feel of it. Orders sailed past her teeth, unquestioned, unhesitating.
Her men, twenty-seven in number, were probably outnumbered by the
troops on the corsair, but numbers would not be the deciding factor
here. They were all good men and they had chosen her to lead them. In
the year since, she had not failed them, and she would not fail them
now. They took to their hooks and lines and waited for the
hand-to-hand battle. "I'm going down there, Stede. Do me well."
After the volleys of cannon fire, the explosion, and the exhausting
length of their voyage the corsair was on the losing end of a battle
and its crew knew it. The pirates had their sail and their rigging,
while the corsair had a hole in its side bleeding smoke. Beth shouted,
"Now!"
Eight strands of rope sailed across the distance between the two
ships. Muscles strained on the ropes and eight hooks pulled the two
ships into contact. Their wooden sides crackled with complaint. She
and her men surged over the railing, guns and swords drawn to the
ready. Even as her boots made contact with the merchanter's deck, the
glint of sun on steel told her that this was not to be easy. Her men
made no special effort to guard her more than any another. She found a
man on the wheel deck taking aim with a gun. She shot him in the leg,
knocking him down even as she charged the stairs. His gun fired as he
fell, the ball sailing uselessly into the sky. "The wheel!" she
shouted. Two of her men joined her at her side.
Another soldier jumped onto the wheeldeck, this one almost completely
liveried in the colors of His Majesty. He had steel drawn and Beth
took to him with relish, her sword batting his down even as he
charged. She had missed a good fight in the past few months; the last
haul had been in October.
The soldier, more lively than she expected, struck with a feint. Beth
paid for it with a swipe across the leg, screaming aloud with the
searing pain. He came in for the kill. She was faster with a throwing
knife, and one found itself lodged in his belly. He slumped,
unbelieving, as she finished him with her sword.
"Captain!" One of her men leaped to her rescue.
"It's all right, Bart. I've had worse." She lied about both, but she
was the captain and it was her job to be brave.
"That's crap and ye know it," Bart replied. "Let's get ye back to the
Ladder and have Seaburr look at you."
"That old..." she gasped at the pain. "That old barber's as likely to
kill me as patch me up." She tottered as she tried to stand.
"Aye, but ye can at least give him a try," Bart said, supporting her
with an arm under her shoulders. She got a good look at the battle as
he helped her into a standing position. She was the worst of the
wounded. The few left from the merchanter appeared to have given up.
At least after they were ransomed they could tell their admirals that
they hadn't gone down without a fight.
The cut wasn't deep, so while her men did the task of rearranging
stores from the captured corsair to the Jacob's Ladder, she suffered
Seaburr's pouring hot whiskey into the wound and sealing it over with
a salted bandage. She screamed without shame at the pain of it all,
but when it was over she thought she would survive and her leg would
be none the worse. It would scar, of course, but that was to be
expected.
"What have we got?" she asked her second in command. She had chosen
Spike to be her second for two reasons-- first, he liked women, and
second, he knew his letters. He also knew his job.
"We're rich, Captain! You were right to take her on. It's almost a
treasure galleon! We got the bastard's payroll vessel!" Spike rubbed
his hands with glee. "And a fine lady as well, a pretty ransom-- the
lady Jessica Speer, wife of the Duke of Coke."
"Then you'd best keep hands off her, and her serving woman, clear?"
she said. Spike nodded, not at all distressed. He wouldn't touch them.
What they could bring in ransom could serve him a month in a good
whorehouse, and Spike knew his numbers as well as his letters.
She looked over the poor bunch assembled on the deck of the corsair. A
few were dressed as formally as could be tolerated in the beastly hot
weather, but most were merely able-bodied men of land and sea, now
struck down by the weariness of travel and the shame of defeat. "Which
of you is the Captain?"
"I... I am. Thomas Hill, Her Majesty's Merchant Navy."
Beth regarded the soft, portly man without emotion. He wore the
clothes of a sailor, but they fitted him poorly. There were few truly
good sailors in the world, so she found no surprise to see someone
like this at the wheel. She supposed that his one true skill was
navigation. Such men were also hard to find, and he had the look.
Still, he had once commanded better ships, as most merchanters had.
She wondered what had happened to him. "Captain Hill, your people will
be treated as well as possible in the circumstances. None of you will
be harmed if all goes well. I am not my nickname. May I ask you, why
are you so poorly manned and so light, if you're carrying the garrison
payroll for Jamaica? Where is your escort?"
Hill took a moment, the sweat gathering on his upper lip. "We lost our
escort in a storm. I do not know if it sank or just disappeared over
the horizon. We were close to the Main and thought it better to risk a
fast run into Jamaica than head all the way back to England. I thought
that a small, light vessel might make it past any pirates. And there
are so few ships available for escort these days, so many have been
pressed into service to carry wood to rebuild London."
"London?" Beth asked, surprised to hear that anything had happened,
and saddened to think that she might never see that wondrous city.
"What happened?"
He wiped his brow with a handkerchief that had probably been white at
one time. "A great fire last year. Burned down fully a third of the
city. I suppose news would not have reached your ears all the way out
here."
Beth smiled mirthlessly. "No, I suppose it would not." She looked out
over the sea. The battle had begun well past high noon, she needed to
rest her leg, and night would be coming soon. The high seas were as
safe as anywhere in the Caribbean after dark. It would have to do.
"Spike," she said, "I am going to care for some things. Finish
stripping Captain Hill's vessel and then set it adrift. Maybe we will
come back for the wood later."
Hill began to protest but soon realized that there was no advantage to
it. Spike grinned. "Aye, Captain. Call on you around supper, then."
"That would be a good hour," Beth agreed.
_________________________________________________________________
Beth eyes opened before six bells of the second day watch rang. She
decided she should see what was happening on her ship. The pain under
her bandages was something she could live with as she rolled out of
bed and tried to stand upon her wounded leg.
She found a simple cane helped her get about a good deal. The sun was
low on the horizon when she emerged onto the deck of the Ladder. She
loved the scent of the sea, the freshness of the air at this time of
day. Her men were busy in the rigging, cleaning lines and caring for
the deck. Already, she saw lines over the bow showing that the men had
begun to patch the hole. She reminded herself to praise such readiness
to work. A hole that big could swamp the Ladder in a storm. But no
such storm threatened that evening, and if Beth had anything going for
her it was her almost supernatural ability to predict the weather for
the next day. That, alone, earned her a place of respect among the
pirates. Well, all except for the Captain William Morrow himself, an
enemy of sorts who accused her of being a weather witch. It was he who
had named her "Bloody Beth" a few years ago, accusing her of sinking
one of his boats and killing his men with a conjured storm, back when
she'd been little more than a curiosity and not even a captain then.
She wished she had such power.
"So, Spike," she said, startling her second as she hobbled up behind
him, "are we rich?"
"Rich?" He smiled as if holding back on a secret. "We'll not be kings.
But we will be comfortable. We can afford more stores. If we take out
the captain and ship's take, we can give each man almost forty
pounds."
Beth's eyes widened. "Forty pounds?" she gasped. "A man could live off
forty pounds for years in the Caribbee'!"
"Aye," Spike sighed. "It's a bad day for a pirate when he gets that
much money. He has no reason to keep plundering-- until he runs out o'
shillings. Or he gets killed by bandits or drinks himself to death."
Spike shook his head. "What'll we do, Captain?"
"We give it to them, Spike. And we give them the choice."
Spike nodded, his mass of blond hair flapping in the gentle breeze
even as the sun finally set. Beth hadn't noticed until now the blood
on his tunic. "You're hurt," she said, pointing at his shoulder.
"A scratch. Far less than your leg."
Beth sighed. It was that kind of night. Too much time in which one
could think. "We had a noble lady on board?"
"Lady Jessica Speer, wife of the Duke of Coke. He owns--"
"I know what he owns, Spike," she snapped coldly. The Duke of Coke
owned one of the largest sugar plantations on Jamaica. It was
difficult not to know who he was. He was one of those men who came and
went again and again, the sort who hated the heat and the mosquitoes
of Jamaica, but not who did not trust the people he left behind enough
to leave them alone for very long. To Beth, though, he was something
else. There was a man God would not forgive easily. Nor she. "Bring
her to my cabin, would you? I'd like to meet this lady."
Spike grinned. "We'll be there in a moment."
Beth returned to her tiny cabin and made a note in the log while Spike
and and another man wrestled the Lady Speer into her room. "You can
close the door," she said to them without turning. When she was done,
she closed the book, placed it in a drawer and latched the dresser
lock before finally turning to look at her prisoner.
Lady Jessica Speer was slightly taller than Beth. She had been caught
in little more than a collection of underthings: a satin kirtle with
buttons that led from elbow to ankle, with additional ties up to her
neck. Over that she wore a man's cloak that seemed to be just doing
the job of keeping her warm as the evening chill set in. The Caribbean
sea was like that; a hot Hell at noon and a colder Hell at midnight.
But to Beth, the look was overwhelming. Lady Speer's face was rounded
with high cheekbones, arching eyebrows, and a thick mane of black hair
that hung down over her shoulders. Beth's eyes looked downwards. Lady
Speer's body, what could be discerned of it through her clothes, was
rich with a quality Beth could not remember seeing in all her days.
She had large breasts, and Beth's eyes left them reluctantly as they
scanned back up to the woman's face. The eyes were angry, the face
scared. Beth took a deep breath. "Sit, Lady Speer."
Lady Speer took the chair offered with a jerk and sat down.
Beth turned her own chair around and faced her across the table. "No
doubt you wish to know what is about to happen to you," she began.
Lady Speer kept her silence.
Deciding that the silence might be broken with a little help from that
familiar friend, alcohol, Beth reached into a small, latched cupboard
and brought out two tin mugs and a bottle. "It's rum. We do drink it.
It is made everywhere on the islands and is better drunk early than
late." She poured for each of them and returned the bottle to its
place. "Drink."
Lady Speer looked at Beth with accusation. Her eyes flickered back and
forth between Beth's face and the mug of dark liquid waiting for her.
She grabbed the mug and downed it all in one gulp, her face crossed
with the kind of agony reserved for more medicinal mixtures. "Oh,
God!" she gasped, then clasped her hands to her mouth, her eyes
looking over the fingers with fright.
"You get used to it," Beth said as she sipped her own. The alcohol
seeped down into her body and warmed her arms. The throbbing pain in
her leg seemed to flare and then subside in the darkness. "Have no
fear, my lady. We are going to see to it that you reach your
destination unharmed. My men are not going to ravish you. They would
not know where to begin. Indeed, I think most of them are afraid of
you, as one should be afraid of an angel sent down from Heaven."
"I am not an angel," Lady Speer retorted.
Beth smiled. The rum was doing its business, loosening the other
woman's tongue and giving her the courage to talk. Beth appreciated
that, for she longed to hear more from this woman. More about England,
a land in which she had been born, but of which she had no memories.
And more from this woman whose mere presence captivated her in ways
she could not begin to express in words. "No, but you are a woman.
They have not seen your like in many a year. Do you know that there
are far fewer whorehouses in Jamaica than on the mainland? Men who
take to the wide sea are not interested in women. Indeed, they may not
have known a woman since their mother, against whom they are usually
sadly bitter. They sign onto the open sea because they wish to get
away from ladies and the pressures to marry."
"You are... of the female persuasion," Lady Speer said, pointing out
the obvious.
Beth laughed, ignoring the woman's attempted dig. "They have known me
on this vessel since I was eight years old, Lady Speer. They do not
think of me as a woman, they think of me as a part of this ship. And I
do not ask of them the things your world asks of them and so they do
not fear me."
Beth leaned back in her chair. "In any event, Lady Speer, you are to
be ransomed. Your husband will pay a willing hundred pounds, I
imagine, for you." She looked Lady Speer up and down again, wondering
what was going on in her own heart. She had a sudden urge to tear the
lady's clothing off and see for herself what lay underneath. She
realized that she was thinking like her men, or rather, like a landed
man. Was it curiosity, or... something else?
"That is not very much money," Lady Speer said. She seemed
disappointed to learn that the going price on hear head wasn't higher.
"It is in the Caribbean. And we are not feeling greedy. We have what
we came for off your ship."
Lady Speer's face twisted into an ugly snarl. "And you killed men for
it. You're a monster. You are all monsters, but you most of all. A
woman who defies her sex and acts with sword and gun, who leads a ship
full of eunuchs, and who steals from the land that gave her birth."
Beth had heard all of these accusations enough that none of the
enraged her any more. She took another sip of the warming rum and felt
better; being treated as an enemy made the Lady Speer seem more
distant and less interesting. That she could tolerate more easily. It
saddened her that she would not make enough of a conversation with her
ladyship for her to learn more of England, but she could learn in
other ways. She said, "If you feel that way. Mais je ne suis pas un
monstre."
Lady Speer reacted as if she had been slapped. "You speak French?"
"Oui," Beth responded. "And Latin. I was taken aboard this ship as a
child, Lady Speer, and have no idea what it means to be anything but
this. I am not defying my sex. I do not know what it means to be like
you, with your perfect clothes and your manners. I only know the men
with whom I share this ship." She leaned across the table and looked
into the lady's eyes. "What do you know of pirates?"
Lady Speer looked flustered. It was clear to Beth that she had not
anticipated being directly challenged. She leaned back in the chair
and took more of the rum herself. It had the desired effect: her face
flushed and her eyes seemed to water a little. "What is there to know?
They're smelly, dirty, unlettered... men!"
"I'm only the first two," Beth said, "And just now, you are the first
two as well. It has been a long day." A lock of hair had fallen over
Lady Speer's face. Beth could not keep her eyes off it. That, and the
alcohol haze through which both of them strayed, made the Lady look
more fetching than Beth could have imagined. She shook her head. "And
it will be a long week, at least, before you are ransomed."
Lady Speer's face fell. "A week?" Then she seemed to recover somewhat.
"Well, then. I will have something to tell my husband. You are sure
your men will not touch me?" There was something peculiar in the way
she said "men," Beth thought. Something very odd indeed.
"Quite," Beth said. There was a look in Lady Speer's eyes, and it
bothered her. Her heart was racing. She felt an uncomfortable moisture
between her thighs. "I believe we have had enough. My men will escort
you back to the hold where your handmaiden awaits."
After Spike had taken the Lady Speer away, Beth rolled into her bed
and closed her eyes. The wound on her thigh throbbed without mercy,
but the image before her imagination was what truly kept her awake.
She could not banish the thought of the Lady Speer from her
conscience.
She knew how a man might feel; she had long ago learned from the few
men who kept the brothels in business, the ones who had come to the
sea from paths other than the usual. Right now the man she kept for
her purposes was an Irishman named Patrick, a farmer who had joined in
the rebellion a few years back. He, and almost a thousand other men,
had been shipped to the Caribbean to serve in a penal colony. Patrick
had escaped and, although not a seaman, had found his way aboard the
Ladder. When her previous lover, Johnny, had decided to join three
others and make their way into Mexico to find a retiring land, she had
taken to Patrick easily. And Patrick had taken to her just as readily,
although always he carried a sense of sadness about himself. It was,
he said, for his wife, who had been killed by the British.
Try as she might, she could not be rid of her imagination of the Lady
Speer. She wanted to touch that purity of skin, that softness of
flesh. Her imaginings included kisses, her lips to that of the fine
Lady's mouth; her ears filled with the dreaming of what it might be
like to hear the Lady whispering words of encouragement and love.
Beth's hands crept down under the drawstring of her brais and into the
thicket of fur between her thighs. She had often watched her men
stroke themselves and, although the activity fascinated her, it had
held no attraction for her. They always looked like they were going to
hurt their little organs as they acted with such violence. They
performed the action with all the care of a man performing elimination
and, indeed, for many of them that's what it appeared to be. They
acted as if lust itself were a dirty thing that built up within them
like urine, and that it had to be eliminated, with effort if
necessary.
She still had some of the learning of her father, though, and
understood that what they were doing was an act better performed in
private, if at all. Unlike they, she did not feel some third element
within her that needed elimination from time to time. At least, she
had never felt that way before.
She tossed over in bed, feeling warmer than was right. Was she
feverish? Maybe she had taken ill, her wound grown gangrenous. That
might explain how the spirits tormented her with dreams, or maybe
nightmares, of the Lady Speer's softness. But she was not yet asleep.
Her fingers, as if possessed by an animation all their own, crept
between her thighs and found her pudendum. She startled when she
realized that they were seeking something that they would not find.
She had no prick to seize and stroke, no organ of release to call her
own. For all that she belonged on this ship and with these men, she
was a woman born and could not perform some acts by herself.
She rose from her bed and tightened the string about her waist before
heading up top. She came out into the main deck and saw three of her
men wandering about, keeping watch. "Bart," she said, "Is there
anything left to eat?"
The big man with the eternal grin looked back at her. "Aye. There's a
pig stew waiting for you. Made with salt found in Hell, but it's still
warm."
She thanked him and made her way into the galley. A tiny hole, it had
just room enough for one small stove. On top was a pot, fixed down
with iron latches, with just enough food in its bottom for two or
three. She took enough to feed just herself, and a hunk of black,
stale bread from the cupboard, and went back out on deck to eat. The
bread took a lot of chewing but was worth it. For some reason tonight
her belly felt bottomless and starving. She drank water straight from
a rainbarrel.
"Evenin', Captain," said Patrick's soft brogue. "I saw ye were
bandaged this afternoon. Not too badly hurt, I hope?"
"No, not too badly," she replied. "Not in body, anyway."
Patrick nodded. It never ceased to amaze Beth that no man on the crew
resented her relationship with Patrick. Among her crew were more than
a few sodomites who kept their pleasures with one another and the rest
simply remained celibate by choice, free of any associations save with
the bottle and their hands. Most pirates were like that, misfits for
that reason especially, but other reasons included. The men of her
ship were gentle enough souls when they were among one another,
calling each 'brother'. Herself included.
She looked up into his scruff and handsome, face barely visible in the
starlight. Memories of dreams raced into her imagination once more,
fantasies of the Lady Speer unwelcomed by her natural self. She
decided to attempt some magic of her own, the only kind she knew of,
to banish the beastly figments. "Patrick, I need ye tonight."
Patrick seemed surprised. He was not inclined to refuse. He
appreciated a good roll with a woman better than many on the crew, and
know his nights with her gave him no special standing in the morning.
"Need, Captain?"
She rose and stood close enough that she could smell the collected
sweat upon his brow. "Yes. I need you, Patrick." She reached out one
hand for his and he took it.
She led him back to her cabin, to her small, never-made cot. There,
she stripped the clothes from his body and allowed him to do the same
for her. He opened her shirt and gathered her modest breasts in his
hands, stroking and kneading their skin until he was almost hurting
her. She moaned with wanting him, with the force he applied to her. It
made her feel alive. His hands dipped into the line of her trousers,
pulling the drawstring open and dropping them to the floor. She
stepped out of the pile of clothes that had gathered about her feet.
In the darkness of her cabin, illuminated by a single candle and the
starlight of one small portal, she pressed her body up against his.
She felt the Irish steel of his flesh, the hard muscles of his body
against hers, and she wished that she could be as strong and as
powerful as he. Her hands reached down to stroke the erect prick
pressed against her belly. "The bed, Patrick."
"Aye, me Captain. You have inflamed me greatly." He followed her to
the tiny cot. It creaked under the weight of them both even as she
opened her legs and accepted his body between them. His prick sniffed
at her willing sex like a dog, so she seized it in her hand and led it
to its proper den. Patrick plunged into her body on one stroke. Her
desire had turned her insides to liquid and she accepted him readily
and lustily.
His thrusts were hard and demanding. Her soul exulted in this
expression of animal affection that was so beyond what she might have
learned from whatever pale, aristocratic jackass she might have
married in another life. His arms, as strong as the beams that made up
her ship, punched into the mattress on which they lay, and she wrapped
her fingers around those muscular limbs and held on for dear life. His
prick, his glorious manhood, plunged and emptied, plunged and emptied
her. His body heaved into hers like a stormy sea against a battered
ship, and like such a ship, Beth had no thought to anything but riding
out the glorious rut. "Patrick, yes!"
He was in his own heaven, or wherever it was men went when they
rutted. His body was a taut bulk of masculine line, his hips a
broadside against her own. She was holding on for precious life even
as he finished with a shout more like a cry for help than an
exultation of lust.
Patrick lay down beside her on his back, crowding her in her own cot.
"Thank you, m'Captain."
She leaned against him, curling her grateful body against his own, her
thigh pressing against the damp curls of his pubes. "You're welcome,
Patrick. I appreciate what you have done for me."
"And what you have for me. On a ship like this, the presence of a
woman is a welcome reminder of what I may have left behind forever."
The smell of sex filled the space between them, but even that had not
helped completely to wipe out the fancies that Beth had hoped Patrick
might prove the medicine for. And Patrick seemed withdrawn even at
this close range. "Patrick?"
"I thought of Nainsi, my wife, while we made that beast with two
backs. I miss her."
"She was killed by the King's Men, yes?" The story had come in small
drips through the year, but never had he told it to her whole.
"Aye, during the rebellion. Bastards shot her in the back. At least
she died with her womanly honor intact; she had only ever known me in
all her life. She was a beautiful woman, Beth, Nainsi was, with
reddish, curly hair, the whitest skin the sun had e'er touched, and
the full body that a woman who has borne children truly deserves."
Patrick rose abruptly. Beth's skin protested the sudden loss of his
warm body even as her heart sank. She feared she had asked too much of
him. "I'm... I'm sorry, Patrick, for reminding ye of her."
"Nae, that's not it," Patrick said. He kept his back to her as he
pulled on his pants and tied the cord that kept them up. "I'll just be
going back to me hammock." He paused at her minuscule desk, little
more than an oversized stool, and placed his fingertips on the small
rosewood chest that occupied one corner. "Captain, a pirate is a dead
man. He dies the first time about seven or eight years when the farm
is too small to be divvied up further and his mother throws him into
the streets where he is lucky to find a band of thugs and rovers to
call home. He dies a second time at nine or ten when he realizes that
women have no place in his heart any more and natural inclination
condemns him before God and his ministers. And he dies a third time,
out here, when the cruelty of His Majesty's Navy drives him to
rebellion and desertion and a price on his head."
Patrick turned to face her. "In such, I've only died once. But you, my
lady, have not yet died at all. Maybe it's my just bein' a man
speakin', but tossing yourself into that fight today was a damn stupid
thing to do. But for a damned villain, you still live, and you can go
back t' living. Do it. Before a cannon or a sword ends all your
chances." Before she could make a reply, he left, leaving her with her
confusion.
She felt saddened for Patrick and angry at herself for not knowing
when to leave well enough alone. Worse, even as she lay in her cot and
felt his seed seeping from her sex, she could not keep her mind from
thinking about... women. About her unique status among pirates-- only
the second woman to go to sea with a pirate crew and attain any
notoriety worth mention. She didn't even know the other woman's name,
but she could not stop dreaming about what her body must have
contained, her clothing must have hidden. Beth curled up in the bed,
thankful for Patrick's strength, but now sure that it would not be
enough to banish her queer, curious desires.
_____________________________________________________________________
Bloody Beth is Copyright (C) 1989-2002 Elf Mathieu Sternberg.
Distribution limited to electronic media not-for-profit use only. All
other rights are reserved to the author.
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/ (under construction)
I have seen the light. I was not impressed.
--
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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