The depth of that feeling bothered him. This no longer seems just a temporary affair.
That thought hovered in his mind while he arranged for a hot bath and a meal for them both and got her to drink and snack on some fruit. What am I going to do?
The steaming water of the white oval bath beckoned. Soap smell clashed with the ripe scent of sweat and lovemaking. The room’s clearer voltaic lights shone on her butt when he stripped the clothes off Sofia.
“Now that is nice.” He ran his fingers lightly over the redness.
“Eep!” She jumped, but he held her hip so he could look.
“Your whole bottom is red.” The stripe marks had merged. No bruises, though. None he could see.
“Well.” She smirked at him, then ran her hand gingerly over her ass. “That’s your fault, Sir.”
“It is indeed. In.” He indicated the tub. While she gingerly tested the water with her ass, then slid slowly in he leaned past the shampoo bottles to wind out the two windows. Heavy, green-tinged bullet-proof glass and riveted steel frame—a leftover from when the siege was real. Stars pinpricked the night sky. Below, past the compound’s lower wall, gleamed the dark water of the Bosporus and the lights of boats out night fishing, or ferrying folks from one bank to the other, or maybe other, less legal activities.
“The window?” She frowned. “Can’t people see in?”
“No. Not once we’re in the tub. Besides, if anyone sees your naked body, what does it matter?” He stepped into the tub and pulled Sofia between his legs. Water sloshed and spilled over the edge.
“Ohh. Warm. So tired.” She sighed and fitted herself against him. When he cupped her breasts, she only tilted her neck and wiggled her butt into his crotch. “Ow. That’s stinging…but in a nice way.”
“Good.” He kissed her ear.
“So crazy that I like this feeling.”
A knock at the door signaled the arrival of their dinner. To Sofia’s consternation he allowed the servant to bring the food into the bathroom. She submerged to neck level in the water as the food was set on a timber chair next to the bath. The man left, quietly shutting the door.
“Looks good.” He sniffed the aroma. “Ahh. Yuvarelakia. Lamb-and-herb meatballs and bread.” As he’d ordered, the cook had put all the food in one deep plate. Two goblets brimmed with deep red wine. A small second plate of honeyed pastries would be dessert.
“I can’t believe you let him see me naked!”
“Others have seen worse. Besides, I covered you with my hands, and then”—he tweaked her ear—“you sank, and the bubbles did the rest.”
When she went to grumble, he reached under the water and pinched her butt.
“Ouch!” The water sloshed again as she tried to shift away. “Not fair!”
“Who said I was?” While she digested that thought, he grabbed the plate and a fork. “Here.” He swirled a meatball in the red sauce and held it near her mouth so she could bite it. “How did it go today with the Clockwork Warrior?”
“Good.” She swallowed and went on, “He’s magnificent in real life. I can see the break lines, I’m sure! That was part of my thesis. On his waist area…”
He let her ramble on as he fed her more. The details didn’t concern him, only that she was happy and the mission to pry the secret loose seemed likely to succeed.
“And if all goes well, you plan to take up this job with the government?”
She craned her neck around, twisted the fork from his fingers, then turned her whole body. “Yes. I will. I’ll feed you now. Open.” Her green eyes looked up at him above that kissable mouth.
For a second he thought of retrieving the fork, but she seemed so determined and so cute. He gave in. “Why?”
“Why what?” She tore off bread and offered it to him.
“Why that? What does your family think of such a job?”
Sofia ducked her head, sucked in her bottom lip. “Who cares?” She flicked that glass-green gaze at him, then took a deep breath. “Okay. Yes, I care. I want to impress my father. That’s my big secret. Well not as big as…” She cleared her throat. “I hate him and yet I love him at the same time. He’s always thought me the stupid one. Not smart stupid but life-lesson stupid.” Her brow furrowed. “I was supposed to marry whoever he chose. And he disowned me.”
“You’re a strong woman, making your own way. Maybe someday, he’ll see that.”
“Pfft.”
His Sofia had worries. Nothing too complex, though. What would her father think of me? Not that he cared either. If I ever decide to…
Now why was he thinking that? Marriage was for the birds. That was almost his motto. Her other words ran past him. Her slipup that she’d meant to conceal. He wrapped a curl of her hair around his finger and tugged. “So, what then is the second big secret?”
Her blush would have rivaled the redness of her ass.
“Nothing.” The bubbles on the water apparently fascinated her.
“Sofia.” He tugged on the curl again.
“No.”
“No?” Her head shaking might cause her head to topple if it kept up, so he tightened his grip until she ceased, then made her look up. “I wonder how long it will take me to drag this secret from you?” Her look of horror made him laugh.
“I’m not ever ever going to tell you. Now, enough about me. What about you. Your past?”
A chunk of pastry plopped into the bath water, and she fished about looking for it.
So determined not to tell him? Perhaps he could make her, perhaps not. This seemed more a personal embarrassment than a state secret. He grimaced at the memory of Claire’s secret. That had been an entirely other class of secret—a disaster label would have suited it.
No, his little Sofia was just appalled. He’d wait. Pry it out of her slowly, carefully, if he had to. Some secrets hurt coming out, like a splinter wedged deep in your foot. “Eat some dessert, and I’ll start talking.”
When she put a piece of the pastry in her mouth, he let go of her hair. Her nipple peeked through the bubbles. Tempting. He teased it with finger and thumb, and she hummed in appreciation. “Don’t stop eating, Sofia, or I’ll make you talk about that secret.”
“Hmph!” But she took another bite and a sip of wine. Under the water, her ass rested against the side of his thigh, and her legs, with knees bent, went over the top of his other leg.
While he talked, he played with her nipple some more.
“I think I told you that I have been protecting or under the command of Theo Kevonis since soon after I arrived in London about fifteen years ago?”
“Yes.” She drove her finger around the surface bubbles, popping them. “It was that simple?”
“Indeed. When I met him, I knew he was a man I wanted in my life.” Time hiccuped as his mind presented him front and center with a matching thought. Just as you are the woman for me.
He sat back until he bumped the porcelain of the bath. Hell and damnation. Can this be true? I need to think about this more—later, though. He inhaled deeply and reassembled his purpose. “I was honored when he accepted me into his command.”
Sofia eyed her nipple and his fingers toying with it. She touched her lip with her tongue tip and squirmed. “Umm…before that? Did you say you came across the mountains?”
“Have some more wine.”
“You’re making me all bothered, doing that.”
“Good.” He raised a brow. “Move your legs apart, and I’ll keep talking.”
The indignant huff made not smiling difficult. He managed. When the water rippled from her legs moving, he submerged his hand and found the apex of her legs, then curled his fingers into her cleft.
Eyes half-closed, lips parting, she squeezed his hand with her thighs. “I have to sit still for this? To get you to tell me your past? Seems unequal.”
This time the smile spread too fast for him to stop it. “If you’re too tired, say, and I’ll stop.” While she decided, he stroked up and down her slit. The diff
erent, slipperier moisture of her pussy met his fingertip.
“Uh.” She wriggled. “Keep going. I’ll survive.”
“I thought so.” He found her clit and slowly circled it. Under the water, he felt it stand up harder every second.
“God.” Her head relaxed back, and she slid down into the water a few inches as her back arched. “That is good. Your childhood, then.”
Even with him playing down there she asked him? He gave in and filled her in on events in Greater Asia before the monarchy took control. The food riots, the starvation, the dead in the streets. His parents had been interned for being in the wrong subnational ethnic variety. He’d escaped over the mountains with a group of other young people of similar mind. His parents had died a year later, before he could figure how to get them out.
“Oh.” Sofia tensed and frowned, and then he felt her hand rub up and down the back of his arm. “I’m sorry.”
He paused, hand still in her crotch, but the urge to bring her to orgasm was fading. “It was a long time ago. I’m over it. I haven’t forgotten, but I no longer let it bother me.”
“Ah.” She nodded, screwed up her mouth. “You said not all of you made it over the mountains?”
Ah. She’d hit unerringly, the one place that still hurt.
“Yes. Some good friends died. That, I still try not to remember.”
“Sorry.” She patted him again, leaned in and hugged him around the shoulders, then yawned. “Maybe we should just sleep?”
The past had killed his idea of seducing Sofia. Those memories never went away easily.
While he dried her with one of the big green towels, she apologized again.
“It’s okay.” He wrapped the soft towel around her, pulled her into him, and kissed her hair. “You didn’t know.”
After he got her to lie on her stomach on the bed, he examined her rear end again. Nothing to worry about there. A perfect cute bottom. He found some light oil and started a massage from her feet up—poking between her toes, kneading the muscles of her calves, her thighs, her buttocks, and then her back. Her groans of utter pleasure slowly turned into the soft breaths of the sleeping. He lay down beside her, observing the quiet rise and fall of her chest, before he rearranged a few strands of her hair, then pulled the sheet over them both.
Having to sleep beside this woman seemed a strange sort of magic. Gradually Sofia was enticing him out of his shell. He knew it, he felt it. Though it worried him, it also pleased her. He could stand a little change for this reward.
As he too fell into the land of dreams, his past swept over him. The sea of snow poured down the slope, engulfing Xiang—it never became less frightening. His palms sweated. His heart pounded. Dead and buried in seconds. The armed patrol following on their heels had left no opportunity to try digging her out, even if they could have found her body.
Of them all, she had meant the most. Not his lover, but close. Perhaps, in time, they would have shared a bed.
When they’d set out to escape, she’d clutched at his arm, and asked if he would protect her because she was frightened.
Yes, with my very life.
When he closed his eyes, sometimes he would hear her ask that question again, over and over. The horror of his failure had never left him and crept across his skin most nights, soaking him with sorrow and self-loathing.
Blackness rolled over his last thoughts. Would she come to him in his sleep? He turned over and tried to relax into the pillow. Farewell, Xiang. She would ever haunt his dreams and his nightmares.
* * * *
It had been some time since he’d woken up next to a woman and had the leisure time to appreciate it. Once he’d used his foot to gently shift the sheet down to past her ass, he spent a long while watching Sofia. With the side of her head on the pillow and sunlight from the courtyard window haloing across her hair, she looked like an angel.
When one eye peeped open, a smile curved her full lips. “Hi.”
“Hello, my lady. I like that smile.” He traced her lips with his thumb, marveling at her softness. “Women are so round and easy to look at compared to a man.”
“Oh? And you have such a lovely deep voice and”—she laid her palm on his chest, then one side of her mouth curved up even more—“squishy muscles.”
It took him a moment. What did she just say? Then he choked back a laugh, wound his hand in her hair, and slid her across the pillow until their noses touched. “Squishy? I think you just stepped off a cliff, my lady.”
The chortle she let out made him realize how much he loved this silly side of her. And it gave him so many good reasons to smack her ass again. In one flowing move, he rose, hopped off the bed, then grabbed her ankles. He flipped her onto her stomach despite her squeals, and dragged her closer to the edge.
After one firm wallop on her backside, he sat on her ass and tickled her under her arms and down her sides.
“Dankyo!” She wiggled and tried to get free. Her flailing arms got captured quickly and held at her back. Which made her squeal even louder.
Yes. He grinned. “Ticklish, are we? So do I have squishy muscles?”
“You do! You do!” She gasped, and the giggles burst into half-choked cries. “No! Stop! Stop! You’re not squishy.”
He stopped.
After a last giggle, she sighed. “You’re nice and hard and muscly—just the way I like my men, all my many, many lovers.” Another giggle erupted.
He leaned in, squashing her down, covering her back with his heavy body, then took a good mouthful of the side of her neck and bit. “Bad woman. I know you are exaggerating.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sofia shuddered. After he’d bitten her neck, Dankyo had casually shifted back along her body, spread her legs, and put his cock to her entrance. She tilted her bottom up and wriggled to entice him in.
“In my own time.”
She heard the sound of a drawer opening and closing, and then a condom wrapper.
With his hands on either side of her, he slowly pushed into her.
Nerves buzzed to life inside her channel, and her clit sat up and took notice. But, too slow. Frustrated, she rubbed her groin into the bed.
“Uh-uh. No.” Dankyo put both hands to her back with his thumbs on her lower spine. “Stay still.” Then he resumed his slow thrust and withdrawal.
Frowning, she slumped, face burrowed into the sheets. Couldn’t he see she needed and wanted force? At last she whispered, “Faster.”
“Faster? I think I’ll introduce you to something of Henry’s I’ve borrowed. Though first…” He withdrew from her, pulled something else from the drawer, and tied her hands at her back.
The snug feel of soft rope somehow calmed her. She waited, happy, with her head on the side on the cool sheets, until a flicker of blue flashed. Something crackled and snapped like a dying voltaic lamp.
Alarmed, she strained to look. In Dankyo’s hands, a long snub-nosed cylinder of steel and glass hummed and grumbled like a piece of machinery on the prowl. Little pieces of violet lightning snapped about inside the glass.
She tensed, drawing her neck back in an attempt to put distance between her and this thing. “What…is that?” she squeaked. “Is it safe?” Frantic, heart jumping, she looked from it to Dankyo and back again.
At a click, the lightning and noises died. “It’s safe.” A little devious smile possessed the corners of Dankyo’s mouth. “You’ll see. Eyes to the front, Sofia.”
After an unhappy grunt, she turned her head. “So this is like the ‘puzzle of the day’?”
“If it is, you’re good at those. What would you call this?”
The hardness of the device prodded coldly at her thighs for a second before the tip nuzzled her lower lips and slid in her juices to the apex of her legs until it nudged her clit. He held it there. There was a second click.
Something buzzed deep into her, engulfing her clit, widening the harmonic vibrations like the shock wave of an explosion, growling on top of her most sensi
tive part.
She screamed and shuddered, arching so tight her breasts lifted from the bed. She was hurtling full throttle toward an orgasm. Bliss rippled outward. Heat consumed her groin, and in seconds she was nearly there.
Dankyo thrust himself high up inside her, and halted only when his flesh slapped into hers. Sensations cascaded—the sucking out of his cock, then the repeated slam of his body into hers. The feel of his long shaft curving up into her, tunneling in, while that thing ate away at her body and turned her into one humming buzzing hot creation…
Everything broke—thundering over her like some last huge wave roaring home. Nothing but pleasure existed. She gasped wide-mouthed, strained. Her pussy spasmed and unclenched. After a final strangled gasp, she crumpled onto the bed. The thing still buzzed at her clit. Oh God, such painful pleasure. She tried to roll to get away.
“Done. Already?” The thing landed heavily on the bed where he tossed it. “I see great possibilities for this gadget.”
Boneless and unable to move, she groaned as he drove into her again and again until he came. With his body jammed tight against her buttocks, Dankyo waited, recovering. He roved his hand up and down her side.
“So.” He sucked in a breath. “What might my lady have named this little machine?”
Face still buried in the sheet, and hazy from the after effects, she let out a small guttural noise.
Dankyo patted her. “I don’t think nnerg counts as a name. Perhaps later? Theo’s wife, Claire, called it a vibrator, though Henry prefers reciprocating sexual probe.”
The smug amusement in his tone made her fumble for a smart reply. But she was still tied up. Bad idea. She inhaled, then opened her eyes. “Untie me?”
“Indeed. Then breakfast. I’ll pick some clothes.”
She twisted to look at him and plead with her eyes. “Can I choose? Please?”
Slowly, face set, he shook his head. “No, while in Byzantium, you will allow me to have the pleasure of dressing you.”
Tricky man—he’d phrased that as both an order and a compliment. She couldn’t help smiling. Funny, but after all her protests at the airfield, she liked the idea of him dressing her. Except, God. What would he pick?
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