Unlaced

by Jaci Burton

  A glint of red caught her eye and she held the garment at arms’ length to see. “Merciful Sister, look at the rubies!” Five of them glittered from the bodice, in a perfect arc of baleful fire, each shaped like a tear—or a drop of blood.

  “That’s the grade they call heartsblood,” said the Sergeant. “Brother’s balls, how did she afford it?”

  “It was a bargain, in one of those strange dusty shops in the Melting Pot, the kind that come and go. Even then, it took every gold cred she had, all her savings, but she thought it was worth it for her Duke. Poor Shalla-Mae.” Meg glanced quickly at that hideous hair. They’d have to wash it before they could lay her out. “It called to her, she said. And she had to have it.”

  “Give us a few minutes to dress,” said the Sergeant, “and we’ll find a door or something to carry them on.” He paused. “You’ll need to make him decent before his family comes.” He indicated the twisted body of the Duke with a jerk of his chin.

  Meg winced. But she knew what the soldier was thinking—the gossip would be vicious, hurtful. Poor Rose, scandal wouldn’t bother her—she was accustomed to notoriety—but the loss of one of her treasures would. The experienced courtesans and the eager apprentices, the boys and girls both—she loved them all with a fierce protective love. There was more than an element of bossy big sister in Meg’s employer.

  An hour later, alone in her small suite on the second floor of the Main Pavilion, Meg discovered she still had a ball of black velvet clutched in her fist—Shalla-Mae’s corset. She had to set it aside so she could brew a calming tisane, but doing so took a surprising degree of effort. How lovely it was! Yet again, her fingers strayed to stroke and pet.

  When she heard Rose’s light tread in the passage and then her knock, Meg thrust the garment hurriedly into the back of a drawer. As she straightened, she couldn’t help feeling like a felon. Not that it mattered. Unaccountably exhilarated, she turned to greet her employer with a smile on her lips that felt almost . . . wicked.

  “Thank the Sister for you, my dear,” said Rose, accepting a cup. “That was awful.” Her beautiful caramel-colored skin, usually glowing with health, still had a slight undertone of gray.

  “Yes, it was.” Meg poured for herself with steady hands. “But everything’s arranged. The Sergeant even went to the Wizard’s Enclave with a message for the healer. Shalla-Mae looks as decent as the woman could make her. The Duke wasn’t such a problem.”

  “Poor child.” Rose put the delicate cup down with her usual grace. The set had been her gift. “There’s no doubt, is there? About what she did?”

  Meg shook her head. “No. The Sergeant fetched his duty Captain. They checked everything.”

  “Valuable man, the Sergeant. Did you give him a chit? It’s the least we can do.”

  “Two, actually. He said . . .” She broke off, conscious of the warmth in her cheeks.

  Rose cocked a brow. “Why, Meg, you’re blushing.” She grinned like a boy. “He asked for you, didn’t he?”

  The Sergeant had taken the chits with a courteous nod and tucked them into his belt pouch. He’d shot Meg an appreciative glance, one that raked her from head to toe, with lingering stops at the fullness of her breasts and the generous curve of her hips. “You’re a fine-lookin’ woman, Mistress Meg. I don’t suppose . . . ?” A brow quirked and he gestured at the corset in her hand. “You’d look tasty in that, I’m thinkin’.” His voice had thickened.

  Then he’d caught her expression. “Not now,” he added hastily. “I know it’s not a good time. Next week, mebbe. Or the week after? I’m a patient man. Rhiomard, at your service.” He’d given an oddly antiquated bow.

  Rose sighed. “You said no, didn’t you?”

  “Rose, you know I don’t . . . do that.”

  The other woman snorted. “You’re female, aren’t you? You have needs, same as everyone else. Give it to him for free, if the money bothers you.”

  Meg rubbed her brow. “We’ve been over and over this. I’ll get there, but in my own time, all right?”

  Rose looked her in the eye and Meg braced herself. Here it came. Again. “He’s dead, Meg love. You found that out years ago. By the Sister, it’s past time to let him go. You said he loved you. Wouldn’t he want you to be happy?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Because she wasn’t sure. How could she be?

  It had taken her almost four months to earn enough for the bribe because the pale clerk at Torza’s headquarters refused even to speak with her until he saw the color of the creds in her purse. Her first job had been with the merchant who picked her up on the road to Caracole. When he’d suggested Meg earn her passage in his caravan on her back, she’d showed him Da’s knife and offered to cook the evening meal. After the miracle she wrought with stale biscuits, stringy meat, and dried vegetables, there’d been no more talk of whoring. A woman Meg’s size knew how to cook, because she liked to eat. And after the curdle pie, the merchant had asked her to marry him.

  Smiling calmly, Meg had refused, and when the caravan reached Caracole, she secured a place at The Garden as a kitchen maid. And now, here she was as Housekeeper, unflappable as ever, and completely indispensable, according to Rose. Meg sighed. If only she could still the turmoil inside her.

  Nathan and John had enlisted together. She wouldn’t believe it until Torza’s clerk pushed the documents across the desk to show her the thumbprints, a thick sprawling signature that looked like John’s. Fifth Company had shipped out the next day, en route to a job down the coast. The man riffled through pages, while Meg stood, dumb as a beast, her world unraveling around her.

  Deep inside, a small voice whimpered, “But you promised, you promised . . . ” The urge to drop to the cobbles and curl up in a fetal ball was almost overwhelming. He didn’t love her—or at least, not enough. It had been a lie, all of it.

  A year later, she learned they’d succeeded in quelling the island rebellion in question, but now the company’s contract had been extended for garrison duty. The following spring, with dry disapproval, the clerk revealed that one John Lammas had been disciplined four times, once severely. Severely? She wanted to vomit. The Sister knew John had never suffered fools. Ah gods, why couldn’t she hate him?

  But worse was to come.

  On her next visit, Meg stood shivering in her winter cloak, one of Rose’s castoffs. Although it was warm enough, it was too short for her and the wind whistled around her calves. Fifth Company had finished the tour of duty and its ships were returning to Caracole in convoy. Hardly daring to breathe, she watched the clerk’s ink-stained finger travel down a column and trail to a halt. “Trinitarian galleys,” said the clerk. “His ship went down, Mistress. All hands drowned. Fucking pirates.” And then he’d looked up and seen her face. “Uh, sorry.” Afterward, Meg could never be sure whether the apology was for the language or the news.

  She recalled laying the coins down on the table very precisely, one after the other. Clink, clink, clink. Unable to speak, she’d reeled out into the sunny street and stared for a long time at the bright blue water in the canal. How deep was it? Deep enough? What had the sea and the passage of time done to John’s big body, the body she’d loved so much?

  “You want children, don’t you?” Rose was saying. “I know you do. Can’t do that without a man.”

  Deliberately, Meg inhaled, held the breath, and let it out. “Life goes on, I know that. And he left me, though he promised he wouldn’t.” She met Rose’s gaze and shrugged. “He met someone else, I suppose, someone more to his taste. When I see him in my dreams, his face is always so clear. It’s as though the Sister sends him. But when I wake . . .” She bit her lip. “I forget the precise shape of his jaw, his ears, his hands.”

  “You see?” Rose’s lovely face was sympathetic, but determined. “What about that man from the moneylender’s? What’s his name?”

  “You mean Yaso?”

  “That’s him.” Rose waved an elegant hand. “He’s definitely a long-term prospect.
”

  Meg chuckled. “Oh yes, long-term, not to mention long-winded. Godsdammit, Rose, he’s likely to bore me to death.”

  Her employer rose in a graceful flurry of blue brocade. “But you’re not going to give him the chance, are you?” she said shrewdly. “Ah, Meg.”

  It wasn’t as though Meg had been completely celibate. Two years from that hideous day at Torza’s headquarters it had taken for her to select her first lover, but only a month to part from him. No one was quite . . . satisfactory. Even now, she only needed the fingers of one hand to count them. Less, in fact.

  How could any man measure up to the memory of John Lammas?

  Meg had the smallest of The Garden’s four bathhouses to herself. Gratefully, she dropped the sturdy bar across the door and unlaced her gown. Even though she’d changed her dress the moment she’d returned from the Pavilion of Clouds and Rain, she still felt soiled. Violent death, she supposed. She hadn’t seen it before.

  Standing naked in the shallowest tub, she sluiced herself with buckets of scalding hot water and scrubbed every inch of her skin with a rough cloth and lashings of rose-scented bath cream. Gods, that was better.

  Glowing pink and dripping, Meg padded over to the deep porcelain tub and flipped open the spigots. Sighing with the anticipation of a good soak, she watched the steaming water gush into the bath. Plumbing like this cost a fortune, even in a city as sophisticated as Caracole, but Rose had invested wisely. The bathhouses, with their luxurious appointments and under-the-floor heating, were one of The Garden’s most popular attractions. Shalla-Mae had been a specialist in the slow art of the erotic bath.

  Involuntarily, Meg’s eye fell on her clean clothes, folded and waiting on the padded bench, and her belly fluttered with strange excitement. Seizing a towel, she dried herself off while water splashed behind her. As she watched, the neat pile wobbled and everything slid off the bench to the floor, save for the corset, a small sprawling patch of midnight black, spiced with the wicked flare of rubies. Meg blinked. Strange. How had the corset come to be there? She must have brought it with her, but she didn’t recall . . .

  Sister, it was a gorgeous thing. Tomorrow, she’d put it in the box she was packing to send to Shalla-Mae’s family, but for now . . .

  Slowly, Meg reached out and the corset came to her hand like a wild animal condescending to be stroked. As if in a dream, she swiveled to face the mirrored wall, holding the garment up before her nude body.

  Oh, oh, oh. It made her look . . .

  Meg swallowed.

  Hands trembling, she loosened the laces and slid the corset over her head. It settled against her skin in a velvet caress that sent a thick wave of sexual heat spiraling up her spine. Panting a little, she reached behind her and tugged the laces, but she must have pulled too hard because the corset tightened around her rib cage in a sudden, smooth rush that forced all the breath out of her in an undignified grunt.

  Her vision grayed out for a moment, and when she came to, the first thing she saw was her reflection, posed like a dark queen in some wicked, erotic dream.

  The boning forced her up straight, her back arched and her swelling breasts offered as if on a plate, the areolas candy-pink, tight with arousal. Sweet Sister, had her waist ever been so tiny? She’d always been well fleshed, the charitable might have called her voluptuous, but surely she’d never looked so infinitely fuckable in her life?

  Not only fuckable. Edible.

  The black velvet made an exquisite contrast with the delicious golden creaminess of her skin. She twisted to peer over her shoulder. The globes of her buttocks were magnificently framed and presented, quivering with every panting breath. And between her thighs . . .

  Meg faced the mirror, widening her stance. The pale skin of her inner thighs shone slick with arousal, and from the lips of her plump slit, dark pink folds peeped, so puffy and engorged they looked angry. She could swear her heart beat there, her clitoris sitting up high and hard, like a tight ripe berry. The blood thundered in her ears, a regular, vicious surf, and the rubies on the bodice seemed to twinkle in time.

  Her blue eyes had gone so dark they were almost black with lust. Gods, she needed a man! Preferably on his knees before her, worshipping her with his mouth. Meg narrowed her eyes and an image slithered out of her subconscious, complete in every lascivious detail.

  Five

  The man’s back was to the mirror, his face buried between her thighs, the line of a muscular back and buttocks pleasing to her eye. She’d never fantasized in such detail before. Sister, she could see the light gleaming off the cruel silver cuffs that bound his hands behind his back. He’d been whipped, precisely and without mercy, the bloody marks crisscrossing his spine in an aesthetically pleasing pattern.

  The blood’s so pretty, like rubies.

  Meg moaned, her clit quivering under the expert lash of his dancing tongue. In a faraway corner of her mind, she knew it was the familiar touch of her own fingers, but she was lost . . . lost in the cruel beauty of forced submission. Her body sang with power.

  He’s only a man, a toy.

  Yes, only a man, made to serve, to serve her pleasure. Meg slid to her knees, her thighs splayed, and the man went with her, crouching awkwardly without the use of his arms, his ass canted high in the air. But his busy tongue didn’t miss a beat.

  Now she could see his balls, drawn up tight and hard, the shadow of a long thick cock jutting below. A band of metal cinched him hard, a cock ring. As she watched, it tightened viciously all by itself and the man’s low moan of anguish puffed hot against her slick flesh. Meg’s empty sheath contracted, her clit convulsing with pure, white-hot pleasure.

  Panting, she braced herself on one hand, the other still busy between her thighs. Gods, what was wrong with her? The images were so powerful, they seemed real. She shook her head, trying to regroup, reground. Pain, whether hers or another’s, had never held any attraction. This . . . dream . . . these thoughts . . . were horrible, not like her at all.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Meg fumbled for the laces in the small of her back, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to get a grip. She writhed, feeling the silky brush of the man’s hair as he pillowed his head on her thigh.

  It’s him.

  What?

  Meg’s eyes flew open. John’s dark eyes gazed up her, with an expression she’d never seen in life. Almost . . . sly.

  He left you.

  “You promised,” whispered Meg, burying one hand in his thick black hair and gripping it. “John, you promised.”

  Faithless, faithless. Betrayer.

  “Bastard, you bastard!” She dug her fingers into the lash marks and watched the blood well under her nails, relishing the flinch he couldn’t hide. “Wasn’t I good enough?”

  Punish him. Go on.

  There was a leather quirt in her hand, metal-tipped, barbarous. Growling, Meg raised it above her head, John staring up at her in terror.

  Then his expression relaxed and he smiled, a wholehearted smile of love and trust. “Meggie,” he murmured. “My Steady Meggie.”

  And a tide of warm water washed up over her calves and her bare bottom.

  Sister! The bath!

  Meg leaped to her feet and lunged at the spigots, the boning of the corset stabbing the underside of her breast. Outside, a night bird called shrilly, its voice like the fading echoes of a woman’s angry, wordless cry. Staggering a little, she wove her way over to the padded bench and collapsed, her mind confused and foggy.

  She must have fallen asleep, surely? Or had it been some kind of waking dream, a hallucination brought on by shortness of breath? Sister, the corset was cutting her in half! Slowly, she reached behind her, grasped the laces firmly, and loosed them. A wriggle and a curse, and she had the thing off, clutched in her hand. Numbly, she watched the water trickle away through the cunningly placed drain holes in the floor. Thank the Sister it hadn’t reached the priceless rugs. Getting the marks out would have been a bitch.

  Peering at the
corset, she gave an irritated huff. Look at that—it had frayed, an inch or so along one seam. What a pity. Such a beautiful thing . . .

  She didn’t realize she was rubbing the velvet of it back and forth across her cheek until a ruby caught her perilously close to one eye. “Shit!” Meg flung it away and clapped a hand to her cheek. Her fingers came away red.

  But the pain seemed to clear her mind. Godsdammit, she had work to do. Reluctantly, she turned away from the brimming bath and reached for her gown.

  The Sailor’s Lay hadn’t changed. John took a long step sideways the moment he was past the swinging doors. Putting the wall at his back, he waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom.

  And for his guts to stop churning.

  He still didn’t deal with crowded areas well, but he had nowhere else to begin, no other ideas. This was one of the few places in Caracole he remembered, the rest was gone in a blur. All he knew was that Meg was in the city—or she had been, six years ago.

  After his mother had come around from her faint and his sisters had stopped screaming, it had been his first question. “Is Meg still here?” He hadn’t needed to ask after Da. His father’s aching absence was all too clear, his broad-brimmed hat hanging dusty from its peg. John hadn’t been there to say good-bye or to help his brothers run the farm.

  The long cruel years had taught him to hide his feelings, but it was hard, so very hard, to tell them about Nathan, how he’d held his brother in his arms as his life ebbed away. He let them assume it had happened in battle, been quick and clean, but it hadn’t. It had been prolonged, ugly, an infection developing where the shackles had rubbed Nathan’s ankles raw.

  But the boy had been lucky. Captain-Pasha Imaran Indivar Imalani had been too busy to notice he was too weak to row. If he had, Nathan would have been tossed summarily over the side. Now that John came to think of it, such a fate might have been more merciful.