L'Aimant – Chap 2 (M)
Summary:
(M-rated version of Chapter 2 of "L'Aimant". For the T-rated version of this chapter - and indeed for all other chapters of this fic - go to the story entitled, simply, "L'Aimant".)
A group outing to the flickers* proves to be a revelation - in more than one sense.
Set after "Broken Souls". November 1944.
In this chapter, we're still in the early hours of Saturday morning, 4th November. Foyle and Sam are at Steep Lane discovering each other for the first time.
*see "More Author's Notes" at end
Disclaimer:
The creative rights to the characters and plotlines in "Foyle's War" belong to Anthony Horowitz. This story is a not-for-profit homage to the television series, to the talented actors who bring its characters to life, and to a fascinating era.
Author's Notes:
Thanks to my lovely muses, dancesabove and TartanLioness who have nursed me every step of the way through the creative process.
For the T-rated version of this chapter, (and indeed for all other chapters of this fic), go to the story entitled, simply, "L'Aimant".
Any similarity to my own love-life is purely coincidental (does that actually mean anything if it's me saying it?).
I'd like to thank dancesabove for her excellent beta-work on this fic.
Previously, in "L'Aimant"
She took in his scent of Robin starch and spicy aftershave and… Foyle. His lips, two pads of supple, urgent joy, were moist and soft. He shifted and Sam thought that she would never breathe again.
Except of course she had to, and she did. But not before her hands had risen slowly to his hair and stroked at last the waves that gathered at his nape.
And having breathed, she called him "Christopher".
Chapter 2
Foyle stood in the hallway of 31 Steep Lane, feeding on Samantha Stewart's lips with the grateful intensity of a starving man invited in for supper.
Her hands had just reached up behind his neck to stroke his hair, and the action sent a gentle frisson of pleasure through his body.
To be pressed so close to Sam felt wonderfully comforting. But when she broke their kiss and whispered "Christopher" in an enraptured voice, the pace of their encounter shifted up a gear.
Ye gods! To hear his Christian name from Sam's lips shot a rocket to Foyle's core, altering in that instant every bleak and gloomy prejudice he held about his future. A long-dead section of his brain ignited, pushing powerful imperatives towards his groin. It was a rolling wave of pleasure heading full-tilt for the shore.
Foyle knew full well from memory, albeit distant, the inevitable consequence of such sensations if he didn't act right now, and so he pulled his lower body back from hers. Mercifully, then, the wave subsided.
"Mmm. Christoph..?" Registering the hurried shift in his position, Sam fretted that she had perhaps done something wrong. But Foyle's hands stayed firmly planted on her shoulders as his body drew away.
Their eyes locked, reading possibilities for now, and next, and later.
Foyle's conscience pricked him then. He cleared his throat.
"Samantha," he began—for she never could be simply 'Sam' again to him, like this. And then his troubled conscience forced him to confess.
"Samantha. You... are lovely. I'm... a fraud. I didn't ask you here to… be hospitable". He savoured her full name again: three velvet syllables of longed-for bliss. Then he held her gaze, and waited meekly to be punished and rejected.
Sam broke the heavy silence. "I had already worked that out, you know," she offered lightly, feigning nonchalance. She gave the tiniest of shrugs (lest it dislodge his hands atop her shoulders). "But seeing as I'm here... with not the slightest thought of prosecuting you for fraud... and not a leg to stand on when it comes to honesty, myself..."
He heard this for the pardon that it was. The corners of his lips turned downwards to suppress a smile, his eyes twinkling with affection as Sam fixed him with a gaze both challenging and insolent, her eyebrows raised in expectation. Then her eyes dropped to his mouth and settled there. She licked her lips.
Foyle wasn't one to shrink from challenges – particularly ones issued with such delicious directness - and so he leant in, gamely, to resume the kiss. This time his hands rose to caress her hair, his fingers plunging in amongst her honey curls, thumbs stroking at her temples.
Need to finish what you've started, came his inner voice again.
He mumbled through the kiss, "Samantha... Mmwould you…mmconsider coming upstairs with me?"
She pulled away and turned her head to give Foyle's hallway an offhand inspection. "I think it's really rather chilly down here in the hall, don't you?"
It was a blatant tease, and all at once, Foyle recognised that Sam was in the driving seat and had already made a choice of destination for them both.
Nothing in their previous dealings had prepared him for such a reversal of roles, but this was the moment that remodelled their relationship. Her resoluteness lifted a responsibility from his shoulders and absolved him of the guilty role of being her seducer. Foyle chuckled; reached to stroke her cheek. "As ever, you amaze me, Sam."
Sam was briefly proud of getting such a good result with just bravado. She had correctly read the circumstances and detected that her biggest obstacles would be Foyle's sense of chivalry and his burden of authority. Then she'd set out to seduce her man by circumventing one and banishing the other. Now Foyle was at her feet, as sure as if she'd hit him with a dustbin lid.
The "bin-lid" image, cruel though it was, cheered Sam considerably through her nerves. Bravado was all very well, but for the next stage she needed to be genuinely brave—not least because, here, she was entering uncharted territory. Virginity being both the convention and the curse of her sex and generation, she had never seen a man "there", let alone touched one.
But now it seemed that all this was about to change, and as Foyle led her gently up the dozen steps towards the landing, she felt a clutch of trepidation in her belly, as though she were ascending to a different plane.
The landing of 31 Steep Lane was actually familiar territory. At Foyle's kind invitation, Sam had lodged in Andrew's room for several nights when bombed out of her digs some years earlier. But never had she set a toe inside the DCS's bedroom.
Nor, she resolved, was she about to do so now. In her determined mindset, that world was of the past. Mr Foyle was no more. This man was Christopher.
Foyle halted at his bedroom door and stroked the soft fingers resting in his own. He rubbed his thumb across them, contemplating Sam's pale skin and nails. Then he drew her hand palm-upwards to his mouth, and placed a tender kiss there.
He pulled her gently towards him, and she sank into his arms, their bodies flush from mouth to knee. This time Foyle would make no attempt to keep his distance as the now familiar surge of pleasure filled the length of him. Sam felt the rise against her belly.
Conceding that a watershed had now been reached, Foyle upped the ante. He covered Sam's mouth with his own, pushing gently with his tongue to request access.
Granted entry, he invaded softly, deepening the kiss.
They stood like this some little while, exploring to the limits of arousal, pausing here and there to whisper urgent oaths, and names, and warm endearments.
Eventually the moment came when Sam's knees buckled with the intensity of their prolonged embrace. Foyle, sensing her about to crumple, broke the kiss, gathered her left arm around his neck, then bent his knees and scooped her legs from under her, resuming contact with her lips where they had just left off.
Sam had no time to register surprise at this manoeuvre. Although she had long admired the cut of his suits across his shoulders, it had never crossed her mind that someone barely taller than herself-in-modest-heels could wield such upper body strength and lift her like a rolled-up rug.
But then she had no proper point of reference for the male physique and its potential quietly to astonish.
This gap in her education was shortly to be filled.
With a kind of sixth-sense navigation (Brookie might have called it RADAR), Foyle steered them, blind, in through the bedroom door, still feasting eagerly on Sam's lips as she lay cradled in his arms.
In two or three steps he was at the bed, an eiderdown-topped, neatly-made affair. He stooped to place her gently down upon the quilt, leaning over her to continue the caress.
"So soft…" breathed Sam, and hardly knew if she was speaking of his lips or of the eiderdown. Either way, the epithet was challenged when he climbed up alongside her and pressed his body into to hers. "So firm," she sighed, and turned then to accommodate his form.
"Firm for you" he whispered hotly in her ear, and slid his hand up to cover her left breast.
Sam arched up at the intimate touch, turning her head to take his lips again. He kneaded her clothed breast, then slid his palm across the nipple standing proud beneath her dress.
"I think my layers are in the way," said Sam, unable to help a giggle as she recalled the moment with Foyle's overcoat outside the air-raid shelter.
Foyle stopped kissing for a moment and frowned down at her. He was supporting himself on one elbow, eyebrow cocked. "Hmm? What's so funny then, Miss Stewart?"
"Inside the air-raid shelter, you said you were wearing more layers than me. How could you possibly know?"
Foyle blinked, rewinding half an hour or so, then slowly quirked a smile as he recalled the brief exchange. "Umm. I suppose I… just an educated guess?" He ventured a lopsided grin. "But assumptions can make asses of us all, so let's just test that theory..."
His hands got busy, to delighted squeals from Sam. Foyle could have had her naked in a moment, but he didn't care to play the game alone. Instead he dropped his strength and let her bully him and peel him like an onion. The jacket, then the waistcoat, then the tie, the braces, shirt, and last of all, the singlet. He was naked from the waist up now, and she was lying laughing and exhausted in her petticoat and brassière, her honey curls strewn wildly on the pillow.
Then suddenly the laughter stopped and she was gazing strangely at his chest. Her fingers reached to touch the muscles there, and stroke the greying chestnut hair. "You're beautiful," she said wonderingly, "and strong. And you let me win."
"Always will," he murmured, eyelashes cast down. He chewed his cheek.
Sam rose then from the bed, charmingly dishevelled in déshabillé, and stood before him as he sat upon the eiderdown. She shook her hair, reached down to the hem of her petticoat, and in one movement drew the garment up and off. Foyle's face was solemn as he closed his eyes and screwed the lids tight shut. There was a struggle going on, thought Sam. His breaths were coming quite unevenly, and… what was that? A half-sob?
In that instant her peacock display lost its appeal. Sam rushed to wrap her arms around him, pressing herself against his torso where he sat. She stood between his legs and felt the heat of him. Her bosom was now level with his eyes.
"Samantha. What you do to me." It was a low whisper, tinged with torment. His arms enclosed her, and he buried his nose between her breasts, swooning on her scent.
"Christopher, I've never… been with…" she admitted ruefully, looking down at him, then bit her lip. "I wouldn't want to disappoint you."
The bark of laughter from between her breasts was startling, but not unkind. "Dear girl" he said, eyes streaming now with mirth. "I can't conceive of any way that you might disappoint me."
He drew back from her brassière-clad bosom and reached behind her, releasing the hooks that held her underwear in place. The straps fell down her shoulders and he eased the cups away. In seconds, once his vision had recovered, his mouth was glued fast to one nipple and his fingers settled round the other. Sam was whimpering now, and tossed her hair behind her, arching her back like a cat stretching in the sunlight.
As she bent backwards, she could feel his hardness against her belly once again; insistent, telegraphing urgent admiration.
Foyle paused a moment from his meal of Sam, and ran his hands gently up her arms. "Beautiful Samantha. Let me make love to you now, properly."
In the normal manner of Foyle utterances, this was neither question nor order, but an assurance of what would happen next. So when Sam answered with "Yes, now please, Christopher", it was more of a sweet postscript to a finished narrative than an endorsement or permission.
Foyle steered her from between his legs and guided her carefully back onto the eiderdown. He bent to slip his arm beneath her legs, then swung them deftly into the middle of the mattress.
He stood and watched her lying there, clad just in knickers, stockings and suspenders. She was a vision of abandon, pale and tempting in the wan illumination from the landing. He undid his waist and flies and let his trousers fall, with braces hanging, to the floor. His shorts were straining at the front as he bent to step out of the trousers.
Sam watched his every move, her breathing quickening as she contemplated seeing what was underneath Foyle's final layer. Her wait was over soon. Foyle promptly unbuttoned his last bastion of modesty at the waist and dragged the cotton garment past his hips, allowing it to fall. He shook his ankles free and moved across to mount the bed.
Sam's eyes were saucers as he walked. The thing was sturdy, yet it bobbed. And huge. However was such a thing meant to… swallowing her nerves, she raised her eyes and focussed on his face. He lay beside her now, slipping a warm hand beneath the waist-band of her parachute-silk knickers, his eyes fixed on hers.
Sam moaned as she felt a flood of moisture leaking from her lower lips. Foyle's hand was stroking past her pubic hair, one finger delving in between her folds to explore her core. All the while Foyle's voice was murmuring in her ear, "My darling. Mmm. My darling girl. Like velvet. Oh my love…"
Sam started to whimper and keen, then to arch and pant. Foyle's firm relentless hand was massaging and flicking at her nub, as he hummed praise to help her on her way. She felt now she was in an altered state. Reality was the gripping, tense sensation spreading from between her legs to every part of her, and she was swollen now, her lips and tissues were engorged with aching need and she was climbing - something - getting breathless, panting faster, both legs rigid - ahhh! The bubble burst and throbbing spasms shook her core. Sam folded to a heap of bonelessness and let the relaxation take her.
Foyle's eyes had never left her for a moment. He rested his hand now on her mound and stroked it, nipping at her cheek. "My beautiful, clever Samantha," he said. "Did you like that?"
Sam turned her body into his and cried with happiness. He held her for a long time, caressing and kissing her hair, while her hitching breaths subsided.
Gradually Sam calmed from her experience of ecstasy, and cast her lover a shy, apologetic glance. "I think you're being very unselfish," she observed. "Please let me do something for you."
"Ah, Sam. You see," Foyle smiled at her adoringly, "in all these things, your pleasure's mine."
"Yes BUT," Sam was not about to be put off. "You can't expect me to believe that you're not aching now, Christopher. I've seen your… umm, y-you."
Foyle chuckled mercilessly. "Sam. What goes up, can equally well come down. One of the hazards of nature. No harm done."
Sam sensed that she was being fobbed off, and, determined young woman that she was, she wasn't about to let him get away with giving her pleasure that she couldn't return. So she sat right up (to the best of her currently slack ability) and, fixing Foyle with a trademark Stewart glare, she reached across to grab the natural hazard now languishing against Foyle's thigh.
"Aaah! Sam! Samantha! Steady now. It's sensitive."
"Show me how sensitive," bullied Sam as she reached over to apply a few experimental strokes to the area, looking for reaction. And got her answer.
"Fine." She withdrew her hand and folded her arms. "Now show me what it does, because so far, it seems as if it's just for decoration." There was still a fair amount of steel in her glare, but she was showing signs of humour and of softening.
Unlike Foyle, who was experiencing a new kind of firm. So he took a long, deep breath, and mentally revisited every scene and nuance of their time together so far. The truth was that, just thirty minutes earlier when their mood had been more serious, he had been on the verge of gathering this gorgeous creature to himself and rogering her senseless. Now, bizarrely, he was in no hurry so to do. The only explanation he could offer for this stance was that the quality of Sam's climax under his hand convinced him that everything would be perfect between them. He had nothing more to prove.
He had reckoned without Sam's egalitarian nature, and felt slightly ashamed of himself for showing a lack of sensitivity. He suddenly felt very old-fashioned.
"Sam. Umm… I apologise for my dismissiveness. I have… well… no experience of, er, modern young ladies. I think that perhaps I could improve my… um… attitude. If you'll give me the chance, now?"
Sam's face broke into a rapturous smile. "Hooray!" and she kissed him full on the lips to seal the bargain.
Foyle pulled her closer, cradling her in his arms atop the eiderdown, and bent to kiss her mouth. It was a deep and considered kiss that promised rapture.
Sam felt once more the stirrings of arousal at her core, and leaned backwards onto the mattress, gathering Foyle on top of her. There was the hardness again, pushing now at the juncture of her legs through her silk knickers.
Foyle stopped a moment, cocked an eyebrow, and considered the obstructing garment. Drawstring waist (elastic was in short supply) with bow, and frills around the legs. "Miss Stewart, these are hardly regulation. You realise the Ministry has outlawed frills as waste of fabric?"
"I don't see how the Ministry could possibly find out," she countered pertly, "unless you plan to put me on a charge…?"
She raised her hips and pushed the knickers down her hips and legs, kicking them away with her ankles. Now there was nothing between her naked self and Foyle's erection, though the suspenders and stockings were still in place.
Foyle glanced down between them then, and sighed. If stocking tops were a remembered weakness of his, how much better was the sensation of loving intercourse framed by a suspender belt? He closed his eyes for an instant, collecting himself, and remembering his responsibility to Sam.
"You win again. Now, sweetheart, this will very probably hurt, the first time. And the only johnnies in this house are ten years old, assuming I could even find them. We shall have to be quite careful. Do you trust me?"
"Absolutely, s…Christopher." Sam had sobered suddenly, and found herself regressing at the sound of Foyle's now solemn tone.
"Very well. Remember that I love you. I'll do my utmost not to hurt you, or to cause you… us… any trouble." He cupped her cheek. "I'll keep you safe."
She nodded, and at that, he bent and kissed her neck, sucking gently on her earlobe. He gathered her right hand from by her side, lacing the fingers of his left through hers, and placed her hand above her head, resting on his elbow to gaze into her eyes. With his right hand, he stroked her belly and her hips, checking briefly that her core was still wet from her earlier arousal. Then he took himself in hand, positioning at her entrance.
"Samantha, are you ready now?" he asked, concerned. This time it was a real plea for permission.
"Yes. Oh yes," she breathed, eyes closed in ecstasy.
"Open your eyes, Samantha" he said gently, and as she did, he pushed his member carefully between her folds until just the head sank into her.
Sam sighed at the unusual sensation. It was a strange feeling to be invaded, but not unpleasant. Sam wondered then what all the fuss was about with virginity. People going on about how painful it all was. Honestly.
It was an easy mistake for her to make, because when Foyle continued with the penetration and introduced a further six inches of himself to her inner walls, her initial sigh of pleasure morphed into an anguished sob that shook Foyle's innards worse than any mortar fire he'd suffered in the Trenches.
"Oh. Wait. Sam. I'm. So sorry," he stopped dead, panting, mortified, even as her tightness stroked him to a throb of ecstasy he'd never dreamed he could expect again this side of heaven.
"Ah. Darling. Could you. Please. Just. Get… it out of me?" Sam's sob was a sad symphony of suffering, freezing Foyle in situ. He dared not move, either forwards or back, for fear of exacerbating either Sam's problem - or his own, which was that he was on the verge of exploding inside her.
That very moment Sam's inner muscles went into spasm, and so one problem then at least was solved, because Foyle came harder than he ever remembered having done in his life. …And did so right inside Samantha, with a bellow of enthusiasm, and - or so it seemed - a decade's worth of pent-up juice. He was made almost dizzy by the speed with which his member softened and shrank; on the plus side, he was then able to withdraw without causing any further discomfort to Samantha.
To both of them, the fright and the dismay of this disaster were so profound that they were momentarily struck dumb. Then Foyle looked down at her with an expression of mortification, running a trembling hand over his hair.
"Oh, God. Forgive me, Sam," he begged.
"You. Said…s-safe!" gulped Sam, stunned, eyes agog and mouth agape with shock.
Foyle knelt up then, and back from her, his head grasped in his hands. Not only had he just hurt Sam enough in taking her virginity that she had sobbed at the discomfort, but he had also very likely put her in the family way as well. The horror of these realisations warred viciously against his traitorous body, which, physically, was totally relaxed and sated.
They stayed immobile for some time. Foyle was an icon of abject misery, chewing at his cheek with pursed lips, tears welling up. He closed his eyes and reached up to wipe his forehead on his wrist.
But even as he sat there, hoping to be struck by lightning, a pale hand crept towards his thigh and stroked it. "Christopher." The voice was Sam's, a little tremulous, but recognisable now, at least.
Foyle closed his eyes again and moved his hand to shield his mouth. "Darling. Believe me. If I could take it back…" he began, and silent tears of exasperation and remorse came coursing down his cheeks.
"Christopher." Again, Sam's voice, increasingly a voice of calm. "Please don't feel bad." Deep breath, and then more brightly: "I shouldn't think that any harm's been done. And if it has, well, as my father always says, 'fortune favours the brave'!"
It seemed to her that there was still some use for her bravado after all.
Sam's mention of her father did sweet nothing to encourage Foyle. In his imagination, Iain Stewart had him flayed and then castrated, burning at the stake for good measure. But this was not a time to dwell upon his own preoccupations; his concern was, first and foremost, Sam.
"Don't know what to say," he whispered, and then demonstrated fully that he didn't. His face was tight-lipped, stony, still and stricken.
It fell to Sam to make the first move. She reached her hand out, clasping his, and drew him down against her in forgiveness. When he was lying down, she stole into his arms.
And Christopher drew the covers over them in silence, and sank his nose into her hair, and lay awake, still grim-faced, keeping vigil as she slept.
****** TBC ******
More Author's Notes:
For the next chapter, go to the fic entitled "L'Aimant". Don't bother following this one, which I've posted as a stand-alone because of its M rating.
(By all means skip the rest of these if I'm being a background bore.)
Virginity in Sam's day was a Heap Big Deal. As a late baby to a mother born in 1917, I've often listened to my mother on the subject. She scared the hell out of me, I can tell you. Not about the physical side, but about the moral opprobrium suffered by women who were known to have lost theirs prior to marriage. At any rate, her stories worked on me. I bet I was the last of my contemporaries to surrender mine!
Half of me didn't believe my mother. I thought she must be exaggerating. Then, an obituary of one Sarah Baring appeared in The Telegraph. This lady had just died at 93. A debutante in 1938, and erstwhile employee at BletchleyPark, home of the wartime codebreakers, she eventually married (and divorced, God bless her!) an aristocrat. Her take on virginity was as follows:
"Nobody told us anything about the facts of life. We were all ignorant, and if we had known we'd have thought it disgusting. Certainly, I and all my close friends would have considered ourselves defiled if we hadn't come to marriage as virgins. Even after you had become engaged, it made no difference. Virginity lasted right up until the wedding night.
"My mother had died before I got married, so my aunt, Kitty Brownlow, was supposed to tell me the facts of life. But all she said was: 'Don't worry too much if it hurts—it gets better.' I thought sex was just for procreation. At deb dances there were a few girls of whom we'd say 'They do it, you know!'—though perhaps all they did was cuddle and kiss behind bushes. But even that was definitely disapproved of. I never heard of any pregnancies, and can remember no sex scandals at all. If boys tried to pounce, the word soon got around. They were described as NSIT—Not Safe In Taxis—and girls warned each other to avoid them."
I showed this to my mum, and she fixed me with one of those "told-you-so" looks that mothers give to daughters.
Regarding my use of the word "flickers" in the summary: "flickers", as a term for cinema, was somewhat archaic in the UK in the 1940s, but two first-hand sources of mine remember using it or hearing it back in the days. It really harks back to the silent era, but I picked it for its slightly pompous ring – a bit like referring to your old mate Bob as Roberto ;0)
There's a book called "I Found it at the Flickers" written by John Michael Howson – the one review I've managed to find bills it as a nostalgia trip on growing up in Melbourne in the Forties. Indications are that it is out of print, but I would love to get my hands on a copy, so if anybody knows of one, please message me.
Pedantic point perhaps, but I misinformed you in the notes to Chapter 1 about the date of the last Hastings alert. It was in fact Thursday 9th November 1944. No matter – I would still have changed the date to Friday 3rd!
I hope you'll stick with me to the end of the story. There may be trouble ahead, but nothing that the two of them can't overcome together.
GiuC