Erotica Harem

Please don’t ‘read between the lines’ with my comments. I say what I think free of insinuations. I am a retired martial artist and retired police officer, thus I look at things differently. This is one person’s opinion. Keep writing and always have fun!


Title: Falling in Love w/ the Enemy

Chapter: 11

Author: KAT

Plot: Alistair & Thomas await a huge snowstorm heading in and batten down the hatches and take to bed. YUM.

Style & Voice: 3rd person via Alistair

Referencing: consistent

Scene/Setting: their home

Characterization: Good

Grammar: Good. Improving

Just My Personal Opinion: I have little to suggest here; looking good. With chapter lag, it would be good in the beginning to tell us who Jacob is


Chapter Eleven

December-1883

Avoy, Georgia

Alistair Sampson

Alistair stepped out of the house and joined Jacob on the front porch. Behind him, Thomas peeked from the doorway. In the distance, the sky quickly turned white, and the wind whipped through the pine trees, snapping back the branches.

“How long?” he asked, pulling his wolf-fur coat tightly around him.

Jacob peered off into the woods, his face scrunched in a frown. “I reckon two…three hours tops. Your workers and their families are safe in the cabins down the road. They have plenty of food, water and logs for the fire, enough for this damn blizzard.”

“I’m glad you returned safe,” Thomas whispered from the doorway. Alistair noticed he kept his left hand behind his back.This sentence is out of place. Try putting it in a paragraph by itself just above this para.

“Thanks, and I’m happy Alistair is allowing you to stay inside, the barn is no place for any man tonight.” Jacob’s eyes seemed to twinkle with amusement.

Alistair felt a deep blush of embarrassment spread over his face. He’s never going to let me hear the end of it, is he? If he only knew that Thomas and I sleep naked side-by-side every night. True, all of his lover’s stuff was kept in the guestroom, but it was to fool everyone. He could sense the wedding ring on his finger, hidden in his pocket. Every day he woke, he couldn’t believe they had gotten away with so much and no rumors had yet started. Still, that lingering doubt refused to go away.

“Well.” Jacob began his descent from the porch. “I best be heading back to the guest house. My wife and the young’ins are probably wondering if I made it home alive.”

“Take care and don’t you worry,” Alistair paused to smile at Thomas. “I will make sure Thomas is safe tonight.” His lover turned his body back inside to stifle a giggle and perhaps another thing.

“I don’t doubt you will.”

Jacob turned to leave. Just as Alistair started to close the door, his friend suddenly reached into his bag and pulled out a few letters. “Oh, my! I almost forgot. You have some mail.”

He reached out to grab the letters from the man's gnarled hands. A Virginia postmark on the top letter caught his eye, and a shiver of dread ran through his body. God, I hope she’s not returning. “Thank-you and I’ll see you when it stops snowing.”

With a tip of his hat, Alistair watched Jacob hurry off into the night. delete 'watched' and just write he rushed off, or hurried He sighed, closed the front door and prepared himself for the worst.

*****


“Do you think we need extra blankets? Are there enough logs for all the fireplaces to last for weeks? What about food? I forget how long we will be snowed in?”

Alistair smiled at Thomas’ worried face and threw a few more branches do u mean logs? Branches are small and burn quick on the fire. He wished he could toss the letter in as well, but had yet to read it.

“Don’t worry, dearest. Last winter I survived being trapped in this house for three whole weeks with a nagging wife, who happened to be on her period. is 'period' appropriate for the time period? SMIRK. Maybe add on the period 'part of the time', as I doubt it lasted 3 weeks. In between her crying, screaming, complaining and demanding an impossible hot bath, I somehow kept my sanity.”

Thomas plopped down on the rocking chair, his black hair swishing about. “Are you glad I’m a man?”

“For many reasons,” he replied reaching down to kiss Thomas' forehead. “Oye, I might have bad news. Jacob brought the mail and one letter is addressed from Virginia.”

“Is she returning?”

Alistair could hear the nervous tone in Thomas’ voice. Settling down next to the chair, he pulled the letter from his coat pocket and turned it over in his hand. “I don’t know. To be honest, I’m quite scared to see what is written. I will say to you that nothing will change between us.”

With shaky fingers, he tore open the flap on the envelope, took out the letter, unfolded it and read aloud:

“My dear son-in-law,

I hope this letter finds you well? I never knew the real reason why my Alice returned home to us, she never confirmed it. She took to her old room and stayed for weeks never saying much to us, or the servants. A month ago, she caught ill from an open window and took a turn for the worst. When the doctor finally arrived, there was not much he could do. He leeched her, but quickly the virus spread. We lost her yesterday on the last weekend of November. She is buried in the family plot on our land. I am most sorry that we did not inform you, but…”

Alistair stopped reading and tossed the letter in the fire.

“Allie,” Thomas screamed and reached to grab it before the flames could lap it up.

“Leave it be. My wife is dead, and I feel nothing for her or my old family.”

“How can you say that? You may not have loved your wife, but she was a human being.”

A look of disbelief crossed over Thomas' face.

“Darling.” Alistair reached over to run his fingers over the man’s cheekbones. “Alice only wanted me for my money and I agreed to marry her to keep my attraction to men a secret. I cheated on her with three men during our years of marriage. Before Alice came along, I lost my virginity to a male prostitute, I had a one-night stand with two drifters, and the other was Harvey.”

Thomas leaned his face against Alistair’s palm. “Do you love her just a bit?” His eyes growing big with concern.

Pausing to look at the fire and the charred remains of the paper, he sighed. Alice was a cold, cold woman. Always demanding, wanting, and needing. Her cooking was awful, as well as her sewing and housework.

“Dearest.” he turned back to Thomas. “I am sorry that she became ill and passed away at an early age, but dying of pneumonia is quite common during the winter.” this is a good way to get into into a story via dialog

“As you wish, baby.”

The room grew cooler as the men drifted off into silence. Alistair was fully aware that he had insulted Thomas in some way, but couldn’t understand how. His ex-wife didn’t mean anything to him; the two of them were nothing. She spent his money, and he spent the days dreaming of men out in the fields. He taught her from day one of their courtship that their relationship was for show only; she thought it because of his wealth. Pity, she had to find out the truth in such a harmful way.

With a deep sign, he turned and kneeled on the floor, pillowing his head in Thomas' lap. nice line Seconds later he felt fingers running through his hair. “Thomas,” he called out. “Why does it pain you to hear me say I don’t love my wife?”

He heard the man inhale, then exhale. “Because nobody loved me as a child," he finally answered in a shaky voice. "My parents shunned me, belittled me, ignored me, and did not love me. When we were in school, that day you destroyed my book, I went and told my father I lost it. He only gave me a look of pity and handed me several quarters to buy more. I could see in his eyes that he felt ashamed that I allowed a bully to steal my belongings. He knew that I had lied, I’m guessing he was a bully himself in school."

"Weeks before I left Atlanta, the two of them tried their hardest to try to get me to stay and not run off to university. Mother kept on baking pies and telling me that ‘we would be a family forever-’ she was a controlling bitch. She never apologized in her entire life. Whenever she would make me cry, she would either buy me something, or bake a chocolate cake in lieu of apologizing. I’m guessing that she was too embarrassed to admit her wrongdoing, so she bought things instead. Those two bastards could buy me the world and it would never compare to a genuine apology."

"I finally left their house when they went to spend the weekend in the country. I saved fifty-dollars from my job as a sweeper in my father’s office, well that and I stole twenty-dollars from his desk the night I left. I remember it quite well. I packed my belongings into two valises and headed for the train station. I wanted to go far north for several reasons, one is that my father would never look for me in a big city and second is that I heard rumors it would be easier for two men to find one another there."

"Upon arriving at the station, I bought a ticket for the first available train heading north, which happened to be Boston. Once I arrived there, I immediately enrolled in a local university and years later, I became a teacher. As far as I know, my parents probably thought I disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Thomas stopped talking and Alistair buried his face in the man’s stomach, only to pull up and whisper. “I had no clue that you were abused as a child.”

“Abuse?” His face took on a quizzical look. “It is not a crime to beat a child? I was never beaten, but to have parents ignore you and tease you, and buy you things instead of loving you that should be a crime as well.”

Taking the man’s hands in his own, he brought them to his lips. “They both should be crimes, dearest. Alas, they’re not, but my God, why on earth were you planning on returning to them when we first met?”

A sly smile crept on Thomas' face. He leaned out so that the two men were face-to-face. “Revenge, plain and simple. I wanted them to see that I have forgiven them and I pity them. I learned that you teach others how to treat you. During my childhood I taught my parents to treat me like a lap dog because I allowed them to. My mother became so used to it that she literally tried to force me not to move, she wanted me around her forever so that she could toss all of her hatred on me. The Bible says to ‘honor thy parents’ which means to honor their life, not accept the hatred and sins they commit. It also says that there comes a time when a man should put God before them. He does not want us to be any man’s verbal servant, including family. So, I wished to go back to show them that I succeeded without them and received my teaching certificate. Once they saw for themselves that I had turned out to be whom I wanted myself to be and not them, I was going to flee to New Orleans.” Thomas paused to catch his breath. Alistair continued to stare in awe. After a moment, he continued:

"Did you not know before I learned to love myself my days were spent fantasizing about my family treating me awful? I would imagine myself with them, or out in public and they would start their belittling and teasing, which my mother seemed to enjoy. When I would get upset, she would just smile and say, ‘Oh, we’re just teasing and you must learn to live with it,’ then she would laugh and once we got home she would bake me a cake."

"When I studied in Boston, I took a Latin class and one assignment had me translating old Babylonian texts. I worked all night in the library and became amazed at the lessons I learned from them. I read ‘love yourself and so will everyone else’ and ‘you teach others how to treat you.’ It dawned on me that The Bible taught the exact same thing."

"I began to love myself and saw myself not the burden my mother convinced me to be since birth. I know that they never wanted to have me and I think they took it out on me. I imagined myself as a teacher and finding a wonderful man to be with. Whenever my thoughts crossed into my horrible parents, I would stop them and began to tell myself that I deserved better. I somehow trained my brain to cease all negativity and later that year I met Alexander."

"He was going through the same thing I did. His overbearing parents didn’t love him, he was a sickly child and they brought him up to believe that he would always need their care. I tried to teach him to love himself and he was making wonderful progress, but still clung to his tyrant father’s cruel upbringing."

"That fateful day in the university I watched the brute of a man beat his son for kissing me. I felt angry and worried and then calm washed over. The next thing I knew the dean gave me the option to run before I could be arrested and I did. Alistair, I just know that if Alex would have pitied his father and banished all thoughts of that man from his life, then he would still be alive.” Thomas looked down and wiped his nose from a handkerchief pulled from his pocket. I like all this. Great way to talk about the challenges in life and how we are responsible for ourselves

Blinking in disbelief at the confession, Alistair felt overwhelmed with emotion and ashamed of his past treatment to his friend.

“I’m sorry I bullied you in school. It was like you confessed. Your parents cheated mine and I took it out on you because you had this aura surrounding you that gave off ‘scared, unloved, little boy.’ I knew even at an early that you would accept every insult I threw at you.” Wrapping his arms around Thomas, he pulled the man from the rocking chair and led him over to the bed.

With a laugh, his lover called out, “Don’t worry about it, dearest. I allowed you to treat me that way.”

Lowering him to the bed, he crawled over next to him. “Still doesn’t excuse how I treated you then and the first two days you lived with me.”

Pulling the quilts over their bodies, Thomas curled up next to Alistair. “I have another secret to confess. That night during the storm I called out to you in my mind. I’m guessing it worked because you came and we have been together since.”

Smiling at the sweet confession, he began to undress his lover. “I do feel bad that Alexander had to die a violent death from the hands of the one man he became afraid of the most.”

Thomas smiled back and reached out for a kiss. “I think wherever he is, he approves of us. He would have wanted me to go on in life and find someone else and I would demand the same for him if our roles were reversed.”

“I am glad for that,” Alistair replied as he removed the last of his lover’s clothes, pulling the man closer. Feeling a little devilish, he whispered, “It doesn’t matter how cold it is outside and in this room, I will keep you warm.”

Throwing back his head in laughter, Thomas allowed Alistair to push him back into the pillows. “I love how silly you’re.” Typo

“Because you allow me to say silly things to you,” he smirked back.

“Exactly, now come keep me warm. I am dreadfully cold.”

Alistair draped the blankets over their heads. Outside the wind and snow continued to pound against the glass. They would be trapped in the house for a week at the most and he couldn’t be happier.