Biting her lip, Letti remained silent, not daring to allow even the slightest whimper to escape. Though the drag on her sensitive walls made her nails dig holes in the expensive bed clothes and her toes to curl with tension. Still, she put all of her efforts into keeping herself lax where the male rammed his cock in and out in a rapid tempo.
She only hoped – her only saving grace – was that he found release quickly and didn’t prolong the tortuous moment.
Feeling a cool droplet of his sweat her lower back, she knew from experience that he was close. The faerie pig always dropped sweat when he was close to blowing his top.
On cue, his thrusts sped up, and became erratic. Desperate not to let anything come in the way of having this end, she put another burst of her last remaining strength to hold her arms right where they were, anchoring them. The bitch mistress of the harem, Marilynn, liked to give her floor duty the days she knew that Banner requested her to his bed in the evenings.
He suddenly reached forward and grasped her around the neck, squeezing a little harder than usual. But still, this wasn’t anything new to Letti. She didn’t let it waver her stance. From the sounds of his grunting and snorting from the wild exertion he endured, he was more than pleased by her efforts.
It made her bristle, the thought of “pleasuring” him in any way, shape or form. She knew, though, that it was really for herself. If he didn’t finish soon, she could be there all night, subjected to even more of his despicable attentions.
Seeing an end nearing closer and closer, Letti focused on remaining still so much that she barely registered the chamber door opening. It wasn’t until Banner’s rhythm began to slow and he shouted, “What is it?” to whoever dared risk the head on their shoulders by interrupting him.
NO! Letti silently screamed. The soldier standing in the doorway looked more bothered by the obvious angry look on the face of the man behind her than the fact that he was currently rutting with a castle slave.
Damn it, she thought. She’d have to bear another hour or who knows how long, for Banner to get back to this point. Her body was exhausted. She wasn’t sure she could keep it up. Which meant she’d suffer any punishment he saw fit to see that she did.
“General, my apologies,” the younger man began. Letti knew him as a castle guard, not one to venture out of the mound unless the king did. Which was hardly ever.
“What do you want?” Banner ground out, continuing to slowly rock in and out of the slave as he spoke, trying to keep things fresh for when the man left and he could finish.
“Sir, King Sylus has issued the slave’s release,” he said shakily.
Banner didn’t process what the young man was saying for a second, maintaining his back and forth motion with his hips. When his words sunk in, he stilled.
Letti wasn’t listening, as she always seemed to get into trouble when she appeared to be listening to things that weren’t her business. The rules of being a slave, be invisible but useful.
When Banner’s hips slowed though, until they stopped entirely and he slipped out of her abused sex, did she start to clue in to what had been said.
Slave’s release, she recalled.
Does he mean me, she thought. As it started to become clear, she looked over her shoulder to gauge Banner’s expression for his reaction.
When he walked backwards on his knees to stand on the floor again, he waved his hands as if to say he wouldn’t be stopping her if she got up. She didn’t sit and contemplate it for a second, scrambling off the bed, unworried about her nakedness. He’d requested she arrive to him naked, so there wasn’t anything to cover up with anyways
“You’re free to go,” Banner clarified with an odd sense of amusement for someone who had just been cuckolded.
Jerking her head to look back and forth between the other soldier and him, she decided this wasn’t a joke. She could walk out and not face punishment. Not daring to take another moment to second guess it for fear they’d choose to negate, she rushed for the door, where the man still stood stonily.
As she squeezed past him and the door jamb, she heard Banner call out, “My condolences!”
Stopping dead, she frowned. What? She questioned silently, frowning as she processed his meaning. When it dawned on her, her already weakened and tired legs went loose and began to fold beneath her. Catching herself against the cold rock and clay wall even as tears began to blur her vision. The hard thumping in her chest, she was sure was her heart breaking. A low keening rose from her throat, a broken sound that all who’ve lost someone would recognize. It changed and morphed to become a wail full of pain and sorrow for the piece of her soul that had been torn away.
No one stopped to help her up or walk her back to the harem’s chamber. Not a single person who cared would dare face the ire of the king and his guards by stopping their chores to do so. Those who did care guessing her anguish, looked down to her with empathy and quiet sorrow as they passed by.
“Uh, disgusting,” a man said as he skirted around her and knocked on Banner’s door.
Glancing up, she saw the man’s face. It was Bain. She could hear Banner call out, “Enter!”
After the castle began to quiet and the lights had been dimmed for the night, she found the strength to lift herself off from the cold stone floor and stumble under the support of the wall back to her cot in the harem’s chambers. After dressing in her gray threadbare servants dress, she gathered the meager things she could call hers and wanted to keep in a hole ridden pillow case. The four other women watched on and helped her with her thong sandals just big enough to cover the bottoms of her feet. Calluses took care of the rest.
They all took turns hugging her goodbye, except Marilynn, before she picked up her makeshift sack and walked out of the chamber. The guard standing sentry in the hall nodded to her and then looked to the left. Following his gaze, she spotted another guard who stepped to the side, indicating that she should proceed him down the hallway.
He led her down a twist of halls and corridors before finally arriving at a simple looking set of double doors where another guard stood waiting. At their approach, he quickly moved to open the doors. She barely made out what looked like another hallway but different from those she’d just walked through on the other side of the veil. Stepping through, the faerie took her by the upper arm to guide her down the mansions hall, past living areas filled with overstuffed, expensive furniture and a grandfather clock before exiting the main door and outside in the cool evening air. The porch was well lit and she could see the sentries patrolling the perimeter. A car, a gleaming black sedan, waited at the end of the walkway, engine running. The driver’s side door opened just as they descended the porch steps. A male wearing a human chauffeur’s uniform climbed out and jogged around to open the passenger’s side door. No one said a word as her escort ungracefully helped her into the backseat. But before he slammed the door shut, he said gruffly, “Don’t touch anything,” before locking her in the deafening quiet of the car’s interior.
The driver didn’t speak either as he put the car in gear and pulled away from the house and looped down the elegantly curved paved road that led to the main road.
Watching her step through the scáthán, an invisible weight took up residence on Fallon’s chest. The logical side of him knew that she would be safer in Unseelie than she would have been had she stayed in D’lanasis. It was only a matter of time before he could no longer control himself and claimed her carnally, throwing caution to the wind, fucking everything up, if she had stayed. Though his logic fought hard with his instinct to follow and drag her back to the Nead. It beat at the walls of his mind, making his head hurt. Lifting a hand to his face, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger. Rubbing there for a few seconds before dropping his hand back to his side, looking over to Kaer, who seemed to be purposefully looking anywhere but at the huge mirror on the wall.
“Come, friend,” Fallon said, leading the way out of the storage room, nodding to Keegan who
stood nearby, indicating he could lock up. The Seelie knew they had a scáthán so they kept the room locked and an alarm system, complete with motion detection, alerted them of unexpected visitors.
That and the steel door only slowed them down a few moments but a mass message alerted to all that had a phone or computer. It was the best defense they could manage.
They walked silently through the main cavern and into the darker tunnels, past the bachelor barracks and into another storage room filled with linens, sheets, towels, some rolls of toilet paper, even some simple first aid supplies. There was a metal locker with three doors pushed up against the far wall. Kaer stepped ahead of Fallon to deftly twist the combo lock on the left one. Making quick work of it, he had it unlocked and was opening the door in a matter of seconds. Reaching into the empty locker, he pulled down on the coat hook at the back, flicking it downwards one, two, three times. Stepping back, both of them waited patiently. At first nothing happened, but, after a second or two, a metallic slick sound could be heard behind the wall, followed by the sound of wheels rolling as the lockers slid along the wall to the right, revealing a narrow doorway leading to a darkened hall, lit only by a small dim lamp mounted on the hard concrete that made up the interior, unlike the cave’s natural hardened dirt and rock.
Stepping through first, Fallon tucked his wings high and tight against his back to keep them from scraping against the walls. It looked as if the passageway was made for him. Kaer followed close behind him, reaching for a metal bar that stuck out from the wall above his head at the mouth of the entrance. His muscles bunched as he pulled down on it. A protesting creak could be heard as he did, but it did go down easily, making the lockers roll back along the wall again, covering the corridors opening, shutting them in. As they continued down the tunnel, a lamp would turn on to shine a shadowy glow to guide them. After a good twenty minutes or so, they came to a rusted steal door, and another metal lever above Fallon’s shoulder. Reaching up, he pulled down on it, but there was only a soft clicking sound rather than a hard clanking on the end where they’d started.
Pulling a hand out of his pocket, he reached up and yanked it down. This time though, he looked up at the small red light glowing dimly above it. The camera actually moved up a half inch and then returned to it’s original position. As soon as it stopped moving the distinct click of a lock being disengaged sounded before the door started to open on it’s own, but just a crack. Fallon pushed it open wider as he stepped through, Kaer following close behind. They were met by Deanna holding a black tablet, ready for action.
“Mo ri,” she said in greeting.
“Have they waited long?” He asked, standing in front of her as the door shut behind them, a display of antique copper distillery drums mounted on what appeared to outsiders like a decorative metal accent wall.
“Not long, I told them you had an emergency,” she replied, turning when he head for the door of the small office like room. It had all the usual tools and essentials one would find in an office, desktop computer on a standard sized dark wooden desk to the right of the secret paneling. A black telephone with multiple lines on one corner, tools of the trade: pens, pencils, scissors, a stack of yellow sticky notes, gathered in the other along with the ever important easy to grip stapler. The chair that was tucked in behind it all had good lumbar support.
Fallon could hear that Kaer had followed them out, but went left when they had gone right, down a short quiet hallway, Deanna’s heels clicking on the glossy concrete floor. Fallon was thankful they’d painted over the disgusting puke green color on the walls, the newer latte color was so much more pleasing to the eye.
He breezed his way into the conference room at the end of the hall, where a small group of men and women congregated, small talk regarding the cooler weather being held. Upon his entry though, discussion grew quiet as eyes all turned to him. The four of them settled back into business mode. Robert Lang, a large barrel chested middle aged man, with brown eyes that told a person he didn’t tolerate bullshit when it’s dealt to him. His shaved head bouncing a shine from the fluorescent ceiling lights, gave a nod to Fallon as a way of greeting, which Fallon returned.
Leann Debois was a Fomorian hybrid; Fomorian on her mother’s side and human on her father’s. Her mother had a wild spirit, taking many escapades away from the Nead for a time, until she found she was pregnant, in which she settled down just long enough to raise the girl to finish high school. Fallon obliged her desire to attend college and learn business. It’s what gave him the idea for the company to begin with. Leann was happy to be working for the family business. She inherited all of her mother’s softer feathers: silky brown hair, that she wore to her shoulders in a wavy style, doe-round, whiskey eyes and a darker mahogany complexion. Her height though, she must have acquired from her sire, her mother’s petite height contradicted Leanne’s five-foot seven inches.
She sat on the opposite side of Charles Strap at the table, who was beside Long. The other man was friendly but never stupid. He saw an exit to anything before anyone else did usually. Younger than Long, his full head of hair was styled and trimmed closely and regularly. His eyes were a light blue-gray that seemed to strike a fancy from Leann, though she would probably by embarrassed if anyone pointed it out to her. He was probably an even six-foot, Fallon estimated. He could kind of see the appeal, judging from a female’s point of view. The man was clean shaven, good natured but could handle himself in a tussle, Fallon could attest to that.
The two business partners wore the standard expensive tailored charcoal suits with ties, though the dull gray tie that Long wore spoke volumes in comparison to Strap’s. Fallon wore similar attire, minus the tie. Joseph was there as well, still wearing his work shirt, jeans and boots from when he’d seen him at evening meal time.
“Sorry for the delay,” he said in way of a greeting, moving to sit at the head of the table closest to the rest of the group.
“Right, well, lets just get down to it then, shall we?” Lang suggested. He never was a patient man.
“Yes, lets,” Fallon agreed.
“How close are you to being ready for introduction?” The older man asked.
“We’re estimating the end of the next month,” Fallon answered, ignoring the papers that Deanna had set in front of him.
“That soon?” Strap asked. Fallon met the man when he was a boy. Fallon had rescued him from an abductor after the kidnapped had killed his parents. Charles was the last surviving heir of a real estate legacy that had stumbled into a drug trafficking operation without realizing it. Fallon would have just left the boy on the steps of a police station or something to that effect, however he hadn't been sure who the boy could trust.
Fallon had tracked the tinneas dearg Fomorian from the murder scene in the couple’s home and to their son’s boarding school, where he’d already been taken. That night a sword similar to the one he’d used on Karshan sent the tinneas dearg to rest rescuing Charles. He found a relative for him to stay with and went about finding evidence to shut down the human end of the operation. Once that was complete, the one issuing death warrants had no cause. And as far as they knew, the police had simply collected the evidence they needed to take it out completely. They had no idea that it was Fallon supplying incriminating evidence to the investigators.
There was no lying to the boy about the existence of creatures like himself and he didn’t stop searching for the one who had saved him. He resurfaced as a young adolescent, barely any facial hair on the whelp, when he showed up on the streets near the Barr. His presence was brought to his attention when he was spotted skulking on rooftops in the dead of night The sentries stayed out of sight of course, and always followed him home for security reasons. When Fallon took on sentry duty one night in the area, he saw the boy hunched over a sketch book, the particular page he studied was that of a Fomorian, as best to the boy’s recollection, that is. A likeness to Fallon that showed not that of a monster, which he’d expected but of a solemn male looking u
p to the moon with his wings tucked high against his back, a pensive expression on his face. It was that drawing that told Fallon that Charles Strap didn’t see him as the beast from nightmares and could possibly accept them for who they were without fear. The boy was more man than Fallon had anticipated. When he revealed himself the following night, proving Charles’ childhood memories to be correct and not some hallucinated appellation as his great-aunt had chalked it up to be. He shook his hand, thanking him for saving his life so long ago, though it didn’t seem that long for Fallon.
He kept him under his wing, so to speak, ever since. When he went to college, telling Fallon that he wanted to major in chemistry, the two had a long talk about the future.
“We’ve bumped up some resources so that we could expedite things a little. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time or money,” Fallon answered Lang.
The other man didn’t say anything to that, but he did look pleased.
“I’ve already set up a tasting at Sharpone’s Restaurant, a VIP event, seventy-five people. Another one to be at Lystell’s the following week, on their showcase menu,” Leanne offered. She was in charge of advertising for the moment, and events. She took care of the licensing and other necessary legal paperwork with the assistance of Deanne.
Strap remained silent, looking less pleased than Lang, excitement void from his aura entirely. Fallon caught on to this, but kept quiet on the matter. He had a feeling it wasn’t a conversation for mixed company. And Lang, being just an investor, was mixed. One who had no qualms of who he did business with, or what they were, in this case. As long as the business was legal and promised to be profitable, he ignored the wings and fangs. That’s not to say Fallon didn’t notice his heart rate jump and sweat dampen his expensive suits when said anomalies caught him off guard. Fallon, unashamedly, found the reactions humorous, but would never let on to it.
Lang stood up then, buttoning his blazer as he did. “Well, this is all very satisfying,” he said, making his way around to Fallon, who stood up as well, a little more carefully.
Ascending Into Light (Descending Series Book 2) Page 9
