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I Do -- an anthology in support of marriage equality

By: Alex Beecroft | Other books by Alex Beecroft
Published By: MLR Press, LLC
ISBN # 9781934531716

Word Count: 84166
Heat Index

Available in: Adobe Acrobat

About the book

Do you support the right of any human being to marry the person they love? The right to say 'I Do' to a life of commitment and sharing with the that one special person? We do.

We hope that marriage will soon be a dream that everyone can share. That's why the following authors of LGBT fiction have donated stories to this anthology, in aid of Lambda Legal Fund's fight for marriage equality:

Tracey Pennington, Alex Beecroft, Charlie Cochrane, Clare London, Storm Grant, Lisabet Sarai, Sharon Maria Bidwell, Jeanne Barrack, Marquesate, Z.A Maxfield, P.A Brown, Allison Wonderland, Erastes, Zoe Nichols and Cassidy Ryan, Emma Collingwood, Mallory Path, Jerry L. Wheeler, Moondancer Drake, Fiona Glass, Lee Rowan.

All profits from the sale of this anthology will be donated to the Lambda Legal Defense to fight Prop 8 in support of marriage equality for all.

An excerpt from the book

Lydia sat at her dressing table, Bermuda’s vivid, bright sunshine sleeking the tumbled curls of her black hair with highlights of blue steel. Her nightgown was pulled up tight against her neck at one side, and had fallen off the other round shoulder, baring blushing, rosy skin. The window’s light turned the thin lawn material translucent, revealing shadows of curves; her full hips, the pink rounded swell of buttocks and swing of full, hard breasts.
Kicking off the sprigged cotton coverlet (an end of roll luxury he still considered extravagant) Robert squirmed to the edge of the bed. Mattress ropes creaked beneath him, overstrained, and his body groaned in answer, equally tight. It hurt to walk, his prick so stiff, his balls and the pit of his belly clenched and shuddering with need.
His hand left cold trails of sweat on her skin as he slid it across her bare shoulder and into the fur-soft heaviness of her hair. Oh God, please!
She flinched – like a slap across his face. “Lydia…” he begged, months of need and pleading and physical pain trembling in his voice. Her back seemed to freeze solid beneath his fingers. That was fine, he could work with solid; he could be another Pygmalion and love even this statue, if she would only hold still and let him. Shakily, he rubbed the back of her neck with his thumb, positioned himself so that the infernal, burning torment of his prick lay rigid in the long faint shallow of her spine. A little involuntary thrust turned his world dark at the edges with need, almost too painful to be good.
Lydia breathed in with a gasp through her teeth and hurled herself to her feet, off balancing him. She backed away, her eyes feverish and her steps jerky with emotion. The movement dislodged the baby suckling at her breast. As she pulled her nightgown protectively up to her throat the child’s whimper of surprise became a wail of protest.
“Lydia,” Robert tried again, unable to understand her cruelty. “I need…”
Her face crumpled around her gritted teeth. “Oh yes! You need, and our son needs, and between the two of you I am become nothing but the flesh with which you slake your desire. Passed from one to the other, and what is left for me?” Toby sobbed in earnest now, his little fist beating against his mother’s collarbone, and for a moment Robert envied him – he too would shove, would beat, even force if it wasn’t… if it wasn’t…
Lydia snatched up her unlaced stays from the table, held them in front of her – a whalebone shield. Her frantic breathing pulsed through her swollen breasts, making them swing, but her gaze was icy water; frightened, frantic. “You make me feel like a beast. As if there’s nothing human left of me. I cannot bear it, Robert! I cannot! I will run mad!”
Didn’t she realize that she made him feel like an animal too? That the only thing separating her from his bestial need to rut was… “Aaah!” he cried, “aah, goddamn it!” and, overturning the table with a crash that made her huddle further into the corner, he hurled himself out of the room, slammed the door behind him, and, leaning back against the wall, he stroked himself furiously.
When he had come all over his hand and belly, he slid down the wall into a crouched, shameful bundle, dripping and trembling. If it wasn’t that I love her, God, how I would hurt her. So close he had come this time. So close, and he was ashamed. This could not go on.
~
“And at least four bales of the finest grade canvas you can provide.” The quartermaster of the naval dockyard – one Bill Wilkins by name – was a young man, despite his steel grey wig. The crinkles about his eyes had been etched staring into deep distances and laughing, rather than by time. He had one of those fine, open faces Robert had come to associate with sailors – cheerful; not much troubled by responsibility or forethought. “For skyscrapers,” he added, looking out onto the bustle of the docks, where HMS Kingfisher was taking on barrels of salt horse under the direction of her lieutenant. “And royals.”
Robert made a note on his pad, pressing so hard that the lead in his pencil broke, again. The bottom brass cover of the notepad fell off the end of its screw onto his foot, and all the little leaves went flying across the cobbles to scatter, bobbing, on the murky, stinking water. He snatched a couple from the air, narrowly avoiding running into the traces of his own cart. The horse’s head plunged, her nostrils wide and her flicking ears unsettled. The jangle of the harness matched his nerves. “Forgive me. Everything I do goes awry today.”
“I have known days like that,” Bill nodded with a smile at the stump of his leg, the wooden pin that protruded from a flapping gape of uniform breeches. “But for this I’d still be at sea, with the prospects of honour and command. I literally put a foot wrong, and bang, I’m an invalid, lucky to find work ashore. If I lose this job, I’ll not find another one. At least you have only yourself to please, and all your faculties to do it with, eh?”
It was, for such a relative stranger, a long and intimate account. And yet his gaze never once touched Robert’s face, but lingered out on the edge of the wharf, among the Kingfisher’s men. A soft gaze from those candid, blue, farsighted eyes. Bill’s lips quirked up a little, and his hand rose to straighten the set of his wig, lingered to play with the hairs of the pigtail. One of the dockside whores must have sauntered up to interrupt the loading, Robert thought, turning to look, but no. He caught only the startled, accusing flash of dark eyes as Kingfisher’s lieutenant looked down, throwing the shadow of his tricorne over his face.
Bill’s crutch slipped from a rounded cobblestone. He lurched to one side, caught himself with a muttered oath. His tanned cheeks burned dusky with a furious blush. “Well, I’ve...I’ve to work. Good day to you, Mr. Digby, and may I expect you within a sen’night with that canvas?”
Robert too lurched away, struck in the chest with the certainty that yet again he had done or said something wrong, still unable to understand what. Recoiling, his shoulder hit the horse’s cheek just below the eye. Spooked already, she reared backwards and set the cart rolling down the incline of the docks towards the waterfront.
At the bellow of a sharp, commanding voice, a dozen of Bermuda’s black sailors ran to intercept the now terrified, plunging horse, and at this new threat she got her feet back under her, strained against the wagon’s traces and threw it in a rattling curve – sparks bursting bright beneath the metal shod wheels. The corner of the tailgate struck the Kingfisher’s neat pyramid of barrels, knocking out a supporting corner. As Robert finally managed to seize the reins and still his errant horse, the barrels came bounding down, thudding and crashing, rolling like thunder. They scattered the sailors and went barrelling into Kingfisher’s dark-eyed lieutenant, knocking him off the jetty altogether.
He fell with a soggy splash into a harbour where all Bermuda poured its waste, the barrels falling after with heavy, contemptuous splats.
Bill Wilkins lunged forward. “Oh my God! Mitchell!” He brushed Robert aside and stumped, pain in the set of his mouth, fast as he could towards the water. Robert lingered just long enough to watch Lt. Mitchell struggle ashore, dripping with mud, salt meat and turds, and reassured that no permanent harm was done, he took the chance of Bill’s distraction and fled.