Content warnings can be found here

As the door slammed, Edward started to laugh again, but that made too many separate bits of him hurt. Instead, he brushed cold fingertips against the tender swelling on his jawline. There were also tight, hot lines of pain over his chest and back every time he tried to move, but there were no ribs cracked and it didn’t feel like he’d chipped any teeth. The hangover, though, was turning out to be a snarling monster with claws like hooks.

“Oh, Dickie,” he said, and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, smearing the blood. He had a cockstand, of course, but Thornton could always be relied upon to provide that. What he wouldn’t do was give the matter a tidy ending. No, there was always enough sign of the old Dickie to keep to Edward from hating him, and enough of the old Dickie to make that hate imperative, too. 

Tentative, Edward ran his thumb over the welt crossing his chest and winced. Really, the whole thing was just self-defence. It was all it had ever been. 

He sat up and looked about him. 

The room was trashed. 

Peaches would be bloody furious. 

With slow, staggering motions, Edward dragged himself to his feet and tried to set the chair to rights. It collapsed in a slow, untidy pile. Edward picked it up, dismissed it as a hopeless case, and broke it apart to put upon the wood pile. He was tidying up the rest of the mess when Peaches got back. 

She took one look at the bruises that were mottling his face and, frankly, aching like hell, and said, “Don’t tell me Bully Johnson found you?”

“No,” he said.

“Was it Sharp Rick?”

“Sweet, I settled with Sharp Rick.” Or near enough. “No. This was just an old school friend, and some love taps.”

She put cool, rough fingers on his cheek, but he knew if he didn’t play his cards right there was more than a slight possibility they’d be bestowing a slap, too. “Rick don’t want you to pay him back, Teddy. He don’t care about that no more. He wants to make an example of you.”

“You know, in my circle, debtors’ prison is about the worst you get.”

She shook her head and lay a butterfly-light kiss on his sore lips. “You’re a bloody fool.” She sounded so sad. 

Back, before all of this, she’d just been the prettiest, brightest moll on the game. She’d taken a shine to him, had Peaches, and his unshakable attachment to her had not helped to allay the paternal wrath. Now that the prodigal was apparently not in for the fatted calf, she was standing by him still.

“Lord, you’re beautiful,” he said, because she was. Her teeth were still her own and only a bit crooked, her skin clear and bright. She wasn’t on the game any longer, making her way by her wits - smart work, and small scale dishonesty. There was something fresh about her, despite the life she had led. She was fresher than him, anyhow. 

He kissed her breasts, where the sweet, soft circles of them were pushed up by her stays. They peeped out from her low collar, nestled in her white cotton, orange-pink and succulent as peaches wrapped in tissue paper and brought up from a hothouse in Kent.

Hence the name. Really, it wasn’t very original. 

“Stop that,” she said, “You can’t afford me no more.”

“Put it on my tab.”

“You already owe me seven and six.” But she shifted her hips towards his, let him run his hands down the soft cloth of her dress. She was tall for a girl, lean, with a tough-pretty face and her skin that had a delicate amber hue which she made no effort to powder. Her hair was as black as Dickie’s, with the same untameable curl, but today it was swept up under a mob-cap so Edward could not weigh it in his hands. Instead, he ran his tongue over her breasts and tried to ignore the just-visible knife hilt between them. 

“Don’t recall your rates being that low,” he told her, when his mouth was no longer occupied.

Her hand ruffled the hair at the nape of his neck. It was getting long now he could no longer afford a barber. “I didn’t mean for that. I’ve lost count of how much you owe me for that.”

“Peaches, when my ship comes in, I will pay you back every penny. And I’ll get you rooms in...” he hesitated, trying to think of a district that had the right whiff of both luxury and edginess.

“When your ship comes in?” She slipped her hand down the back of his shirt. “You mean when your father resurrects and accepts you back into the familial fold?”

“Peaches-”

“Stop romancing, you bloody fool. I got your suit back.”

He stopped kissing her. “What?”

“Well, I can’t have you moping round here in that shirt forever. It needs a wash.”

And there it was in her basket, alongside their supper; lawn shirt, cravat, coat... “That would have cost more than seven and six.”

“Good thing you don’t owe me, ain’t it?” Her dark eyes admitted no gratitude, would take no adoration.

“Anything would have done, Peaches. Farmer Giles’ old smock. Beggars’ rags, any-”

“I won’t have my man dressed like a labourer. Now, off with that and don’t you bloody dare pawn it again.”

He slipped the shirt off over his head and pretended not to notice the way she took a long, gloating look at his chest as he did. “Jewels,” he said, “Diamonds. Sapphires. Amethysts. And… and Paris, Switzerland. Wherever you want to go.”

“Will you just stop it?” She put one hand on his chest. Her fingers were cool on his ribcage. He tried to lean forward and kiss her, but she pushed back, keeping him at arm’s length. She was about to say something when she noticed where the hammer on Dickie’s pistol had caught him, and, after she saw that, she took another look at the welt from the riding crop, the red mark Dickie’s heel had left in, well, in various places. 

“Teddy, you sure this weren’t Johnson’s boys?”

“Absolutely. A veritable bastard, but an old school friend and nothing more.”

“And how did he find you?”

Edward shrugged, and ran his lips along her throat, “It’s just the way it goes with my sort. You can’t hide from a Prefect when they want a word.”

She slipped a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him, “Just for matters of my own preservation, do you have any friends who ain’t trying to kill you?”

He pushed against her: the starched cloth against his skin, the rich, warm smell of her wrapping him, the taste of her mouth where she chewed lemon mint to keep her breath sweet. “Oh, I’m sure there are some.” 

He walked her backwards on to the bed where he laid her down, sweeping the damnable mob-cap from her head as he slipped one hand into the tight fabric of her neckline. His other hand rustled under her full skirts, stroking up the strong, bare flesh of her thighs until his fingers cupped the warm hair of her cunt. He was so hard the buttons on his britches threatened to come undone.

She was hot, and she was wet, and he wanted to tear every last scrap of clothing off her so he could see every inch of her, so he could kiss her dark nipples. 

Once, he would have done that, and she would just have added the cost of the clothing to her bill. 

Instead, he took his hand away and helped her fiddle with the knots lacing up her skirts. But he was too keen - she shoved him back with a, “This’ll take all day with you doing that.”

Standing over him, she undressed. First, the buttons on her bodice, a practiced flick of finger and thumb, working her way down, until just the white fabric of her stays creaked about her. Edward reached down and freed himself from the constraints of britches, closing his hand about his prick as he watched Peaches drop her outer skirt, then her petticoats, one, two, a slow disrobing, until all that was left was the glory of her, dark legs with stockings tied with ribbons below her knees. He could see the secret lips of her cunt through the dark, curled hair, and he wanted to press his mouth against it, to kiss and to lick, but he did not look away from her face.

“Come here,” he said.

“Oh, ain’t we the swell today.”

“Ain’t that how you like me?”

“Sometimes.” She sauntered forward, defiance delicious in every swing of her hips. So close, but so very slow. Her corset still pressed her breasts up and flat against her, and she didn’t start with the lacing on it.

“Take that off.”

“No.”

“I should whip you,” he said.

“You’ve pawned your whip.”

With one hand still wrapped around his prick, he slid the other inside her, stroking, massaging with fingertips and the heel of his hand. Slick and rough and divine, she ground against him, moving with each touch of his fingers. He thrust against his palm, unable to stop himself. “I could just use my hand. Slap that pretty arse of yours.”

“That what your old school pal was trying to do?”

 “What, Dickie?” The memory swept over him, not of Mr Respectable Thornton, but Dickie Upright, square-jawed terror of the lower Sixth, and muse of a thousand mortifyingly bad sonnets. Edward tugged Peaches closer to him to block it out. He could smell her now, sweet and sharp as perfume. “No. He was more the type to have you suck him while one of his acolytes birched you.”

“So you were good friends then?”

“Friends? We were a byword.” 

She ran her nails down the shaft of his prick, making him gasp. He grabbed her wrist but she shook him off and kept the intolerable back and forth. It was not pain, not quite.

“I couldn’t sit down for most of it, and there wasn’t…” He strained against her, then trembled, pleasure coming in thick waves. “There wasn’t a tree on school grounds with a switch left on it by the end of that, and…” He clamped a hand around her back, pulling himself up until his face was against the taut, dark flesh of her stomach, “Oh, Christ. Slow down unless you want me to-”

She tugged her hand back, teasing. “Has he got my swell all worked up?”

Edward groaned, and rubbed his cheek against the soft, dark hair of her. “Don’t stop.”

“Well, you have.”

He brought raised his hand from her backside and brought it down, slapping her hard. She groaned a half-protest but he pulled her onto his face, his tongue pressed against her clit, his nose buried in the scent and the taste of her. Her strong, clever fingers worked in his hair, massaging circles into his scalp. 

“Oh,” she said, and, “mm, yes.” 

He licked the smooth flesh of her, the friction of her hair on his lips, almost grazing him. He would stay here all day, all night, all forever, not thinking about any of it, not the creditors or bloody Dickie, not anything except this drowning in her, this pleasing of her. She didn’t even need to be holding him, no. It needed nothing more than her fingers in his hair, and the sound of her cries coming deep and low, and all at once he would have given anything to have another pair of eyes so that he could see her face, so that he could see her throat moving, her eyes closing as she thrust her hips forward on to him. But all he could see from there was the tiny swell of her belly, the fine dark down on her skin. He moved his hands on her backside, gentle with his nails, pulling her closer to him, closer still.

She spent quick on to his lips, salt and drenching. It ran down his chest, as he tried to gulp it down, drinking her, but there was too much, so he pressed his mouth to her clit again while she trembled and shook against him, while her hands gripped on his neck. Then, soon, too soon, her fingers were pushing him back, away from her, her fingertips were wiping his lips clean and she was looking at him with something so soft, and sad, and overcome in her eyes.

“Your stubble’s chafing a bit,” she said.

He made a sound, somewhere between worship and plea. 

Peaches breathed out, shook her head as though there were no words left to her. “I can’t stay,” she said. “We need to eat before I go out.”

That was when he noticed how cold the room was. They couldn’t afford a fire on a calm, autumn day, and her breath was making mist in the air. He pulled her down on to him, loving the heat of her, the soft, wet place between her legs, the way the taste of her was on his tongue.

“I can finish you off, if you like,” she said.

“No. No. I just…” don’t want you to go. But those words were against the rules. She had made that very clear when she’d taken him in. “I miss you when you’re out.”

“What you miss is my cunny,” she said, with that sudden shutting down of tenderness that she had turned into an art form.

“You’re a hard little Peach, aren’t you?”

She relented and held him for a moment. He relaxed against her, feeling her wiry arms. The clean linen of her stays beginning to smell of clean sweat. She took good care of herself, Peaches. Took such good care of everything.

Only when he felt embraced, comforted, safe, did she pull away again. “I’m seeing Mr Travis, and Sir Hugh. It’s a gentleman’s party.”

The names were like thorns, caught in flesh. Old friends, the pair of them, or whatever you called people upon whom you’d counted, but whose doors had been noticeably closed since you’d fallen on hard times.

Edward nipped the bud of blossoming jealousy. “I thought you weren’t on the game at the moment.” He said it as careful and innocuous as if he were commenting on the weather.

She looked straight into his eyes and said, “I’m not,” with such simple sincerity that it could be nothing but a lie. “But Mr Travis was in the look out for a handful of girls he could rely on, and I’m not in a place to turn down the money.”

In her basket, the white lawn of his redeemed shirt glowed. He could face her with that, offer some kind of criticism. 

Something roiled sick in his stomach. Who was he to make her refuse business? Her pander? 

Yet how could he let her go? How could he expect her to sell herself to John Travis and Hugh bloody Wilks, and any number of other sods, just so that she could support him in his misfortune? 

She should have thrown him into the street months ago.

“Well, don’t let them play too rough. Should I wait up?”

She shook her head, the shine of her hair catching the weak beams of the daylight. “I’ll be late.”

“I could come with you. Not to... just to walk with you. See off any trouble, or…”

And again, that sadness. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Teddy.”

“No,” he said, and he laid a hand against her cheek, almost as though he expected to find tears there. “I suppose it wouldn’t be quite the thing.”