Release

by A. M. Sexton

  The waiters brought food, but I barely tasted it. I knew I was eating too fast, being ungrateful, but all I wanted to do was get to the next part, whatever that entailed. Being fucked over the table, or back in the lobby, or again in the carriage. I would have let him take me in the middle of the city’s plaza at that point, as long as it meant getting to come.

  “In a hurry, love?” he asked. The glint in his eyes told me he knew exactly what he was doing to me.

  Yes! I wanted to say. I’m in a hurry to spread my legs and feel you inside of me. But I was afraid if I admitted it, he’d make me wait longer, so I took a deep breath and made a deliberate effort to slow down. “No, sir,” I said. “I could sit here all night.”

  A pointless lie. My voice shook. I couldn’t keep myself from rocking forward a bit to feel the plug in my ass move. I had to fight to keep my hands on the table rather than reaching down and stroking my aching erection.

  “Oh?” he teased. “Then shall I order dessert?”

  I swallowed hard. I tried to still my hips, because the motion of the plug was making it impossible to think. I licked my lips, although it did no good, because my mouth was dry.

  “Well?” he asked.

  I thought about what I wanted to say, which meant thinking about what I wanted him to do to me. I couldn’t speak. I whimpered instead. It was ridiculous, an animal response. His smile grew. “Speak,” he said.

  “Please...”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. He was having a great deal of fun. “‘Please’ what?”

  “Anything!” It was a dam bursting, my last bit of reserve finally crumbling. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I’d beg if that was what he wanted. “Anything. Please. Anything you want to do to me, do it, but do it now.” My hands shook, and I rose from the table. I began to pull up my skirts. “Please. I don’t care what. I don’t care where.”

  This time, he did smile, a slow, predatory smile that made my knees weak. “As you wish.”

  He snapped his fingers and waiters come bustling from around the screen. I dropped my skirts but stayed standing on my quaking legs. If I sat again, the plug would move. If the plug moved, I’d come all over my dress without him even touching me. As tempting as that thought was, I wanted to do it right.

  Finally, he tucked my hand back into his elbow. He led me toward the door. “You’re shaking.”

  I nodded. My breath was coming faster as we left the restaurant. His carriage waited. I thought about the dark, warm interior. I thought about riding him all the way home, the way I had the first time we’d left La Fontaine. I thought about him on his knees in front of me earlier that night with his hand under my ass and his fingers deep inside of me. I whimpered and began to reach for my cock, but he stopped me.

  “Almost there, love.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said. It wasn’t a platitude. I honestly feared I might come before we made it to the carriage. “Oh, holy Goddess, I can’t wait!”

  “You can, and you will.”

  But the desperation was becoming too much. It was wrong. It was completely unnatural. I thought again of the champagne. “You drugged me!”

  “Not this time.”

  “You must have!”

  He laughed. “I didn’t. This is all you.”

  It’s all me.

  Yes, it was all me. This was my natural response to him. I wasn’t just a whore, tricked into wanting whatever he gave me. I was Misha. Sexy and exotic and more ready to be fucked than I’d ever been in my life. Despite what had happened a few days before, I wanted him in a way that terrified me.

  Not only that though.

  It empowered me.

  It’s all me.

  Through all of this, I had somehow let him take control of me and my life and even my desire, but those three words brought me up short. They reminded me that I did have a measure of control. Somehow, that changed everything. It didn’t mean I had to deny how aroused I was. It didn’t even mean I had to turn the tables on him in any way. It was a simple matter of knowing that I wanted this. That it was fine for me to want it.

  It’s all me.

  His driver opened the carriage door, and I climbed inside. I felt the carriage shift as Donato came in behind me. The door closed, and before I could even take my seat, he was on me. He pushed me down onto the floor and bent me over the seat, pushing my face into the fur throw that covered the leather. He grabbed the thin chain between my shoulder blades that held my dress in place and pulled, tearing the silk. In one quick motion, he ripped the dress off of me, leaving me bare and quaking in front of him. I grabbed a handful of the fur on the seat underneath me.

  I wouldn’t beg anymore. I didn’t need to. I simply braced myself, waiting for what would come, although I quivered from the deliciousness of the anticipation. “Hurry,” I said. Not begging.

  Commanding.

  “I’m trying, love,” he panted as he fumbled with his belt. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to wait this long. You’re the sexiest fucking whore I’ve ever seen.”

  I arched my back, pushing my ass at him, trying to spur him on. He groaned in response.

  Finally, he grabbed me. I felt a bit of pressure, and the plug was pulled from my ass, leaving me empty and unsated. Wanton and salacious.

  “Hurry,” I said again, more urgent this time. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

  And finally, he gave me what I’d been begging for all night. He pushed his cock into me and I screamed again, arching against him. “Yes!” He pulled the leash and my hair together with one hand, tugging my head back. He held his other hand on the small of my back, pinning me to the seat. He began pumping, not fast, but deep and hard, throwing all of his weight against me, moving in and out of me with a slow, torturous deliberateness that made me want to sob. His thrusts caused me to rub against the seat and I found myself bucking my hips, humping the carriage seat as he pounded me. The carriage was already moving, bumping down the road, the clop of the horses’ hooves setting our tempo, and I thought of the plug, of writhing in my chair as I sucked him. I remembered the smell of him. I thought of the yacht, the drug that was there but wasn’t here, the rhythm of rocking on the sea—a haze of images flashed through my mind as he used me, and I loved every single moment. I could admit that I wanted every stroke. I didn’t care that he was slamming into me harder with each passing moment. I didn’t care that he was pulling my hair and the collar both so hard I had to gasp to breathe, calling me a whore as he labored behind me. I didn’t care that he was fucking me with a passion that bordered on violence. I only knew it felt unbelievably good. So good that even though I’d begged for it to start, I didn’t want it to ever end.

  I was determined to maintain some semblance of control. I held out as long as I could, although I was shaking, my hands clenched in the fur, my muscles trembling with strain of keeping my orgasm at bay. I waited even until Donato had finished, emptying himself into me. He lay against my back, still shaking from the force of his climax. He wrapped his hand around my cock.

  “You’re perfect, little whore. Sigh for me.”

  It wasn’t a sigh. Not that night. It was more like a scream, but he didn’t seem to mind, and I wasn’t about to apologize. It was exactly what I wanted.

  What I needed.

  Release.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I woke the next morning in my own bed, my limbs heavy, my mind groggy with the comfortable, well-sated haze of the night before. We’d returned to Donato’s house, where he’d taken me to his bed and made love to me with a tenderness that rivaled what he’d shown me on the yacht. Still, when it was over, he’d sent me back down the hill to Talia’s.

  I didn’t mind.

  It was early. Outside, the temple bells rang, somehow quieter in the fog of morning than they were in the afternoon. The market was beginning to buzz but didn’t reek yet of piss or grease. The light that fell through my window seemed pure, cool with dew, lazy as a cat on a warm stone. It caressed my face. It fell across my be
d. It teased me into a blissful sensuality that had nothing to do with Donato.

  It’s all me.

  I threw the covers off to let the sunlight dapple my naked body. I arched into it like a lover. I let my hands roam over my sides and my hips, and finally I rolled onto my stomach and stroked myself to a glorious climax for no better reason than that I could.

  It felt good, not just for the simple fact of having come, but because it felt like taking control. I left the mess on the bed to be cleaned by the maids. It was a whorehouse. Semen stains were what kept them employed.

  I still thought of my clothes as new, but I realized, as I put them on, that they no longer felt foreign to me. The old Misha had worn rags and whored for coins, and afterward, he’d taken those coins and handed them over to somebody else. I was still a whore, but I had no intention of continuing to be their lackey.

  I was Misha.

  And I had a plan.

  The first order of business was to escape my spy, now that I knew who she was. Whether he’d meant to or not, Donato had given it away the day before. Tawny did well, he’d said. He didn’t know my name, or Ayo’s, or the name of his own butler.

  But he knew Tawny.

  A quick word with Talia was all it took to ensure that Tawny would be busy with a client all morning, and once I was away from the whorehouse, she’d have no idea how to find me.

  I went through the trenches, toward Anzhéla’s theatre.

  It had only been a few days since I’d last walked the streets, but it seemed a lot had happened in that time. Yellow leaflets littered the streets. This time, they held more than a list of the atrocities committed by Benedict’s lackeys from the hill. This leaflet spoke of rumors. It hinted at a revolution, led by the yellow-robed preachers. It implied that the priestesses were tired of being ignored and had a new High Priestess, ready to take her place at the head of the Council. It even asked if this High Priestess wasn’t in fact the original High Priestess, ready to claim vengeance against those who had deposed her.

  Will you be ready, the leaflet asked, when the gates come down?

  I shivered and dropped the paper. This was more than propaganda. This was practically a call to arms, and everywhere I looked, I could see the response. Shopkeepers stood in clumps on the sidewalk, talking in hushed voices. On one corner, a yellow-robed man held court, standing on an overturned crate to proclaim his allegiance to anybody who sought to overthrow the Council. Nobody was shopping. In fact, when I looked around, I realized I couldn’t see a single person with the marks of nobility upon their cheek.

  I altered my route, going out of my way in order to see the plaza.

  The vendors were set up there, as usual, but the entire courtyard seemed too quiet, and too still. On the outskirts, I saw clan kids, but even they seemed distracted. Not looking for marks. Like the vendors, they seemed to be waiting. But for what?

  I watched them all, the vendors and pickpockets, the whores on the corners, and the few customers like me, wandering idly amongst them without actually shopping.

  They were all watching the gate. Not staring at it overtly, but their eyes kept straying that direction. I looked, and found the source of their unease. A group of men flanked the closed gate, all of them holding some kind of makeshift weapon, mostly hoes and pitchforks.

  The gates between Upper and Lower Davlova had always been closely guarded from the inside. Anybody with the blue tattoo of nobility was allowed inside. Benedict’s policemen also lived inside the wall, which was why working for him was a coveted position. Other than the nobles and the guard, anybody wanting inside the white wall had to present a pass, showing that they lived there or worked there or were owned by a noble. But now, it seemed the nobles’ own security was working against them.

  “Been there all morning,” a fish vendor said to me. “Only one noble tried to come out, and he turned tail quick. But it’s only a matter of time.”

  And then what would happen? Would this self-appointed guard attack? Or would Benedict send his soldiers to arrest them all? Either way, I couldn’t imagine the outcome would be good. The lower city was at the tipping point. In the past, Benedict had used his raids to keep the trenches in check, but it wasn’t going to work this time. One wrongful death on our side of the wall, and the powder keg of rebellion would explode.

  No matter how it went down, one thing was certain: this would not be a bloodless revolution.

  I left the plaza, keeping an eye out for any pickpockets who were still on the prowl. I went past the gargoyles, waiting for one to pounce, wondering if they too were waiting for the wall to come down.

  It was strange, entering the den again. I was more careful than usual as I lowered myself through the drain, afraid I’d tear or dirty my clothes. I worried they’d changed the knock, but for naught. I didn’t recognize the tiny waif who let me in, but that didn’t mean much. I’d given up trying to keep track of the youngest clan members years ago.

  The den itself was smaller than I remembered, and smellier. At this time of the morning, many of the clan kids were still hanging around. Lorenzo threw me a casual salute. The rest ignored me.

  I knocked again on the trap door and was boosted up into the storage space by Jimbo.

  “Misha! Where the hell you been, brother? We figured you got snagged.”

  “Not snagged. Just working on something else.”

  He took in my still-bruised eye, then glanced down and whistled through his teeth. “Where’d you get them clothes?”

  “I bought them.”

  “And the black eye?”

  “Got in the way of someone’s fist.”

  He shook his head. “Must be some job.”

  “I need to see Frey. He around?”

  “Hang tight.”

  He left me in the closet, but returned a few minutes later to tell me that Frey was waiting for me in the projection room.

  Anzhéla’s office was as it had always been. There were no windows. The only lighting came from a few wall-mounted gas lamps. Anzhéla’s desk filled one end of the room. I was relieved she wasn’t there, and unwilling to consider what that relief meant. Frey sat behind his desk, playing with the electronic remnants that always covered it.

  I expected him to lay into me immediately for coming in through the den after being told to stay away. At the very least, I expected him to ask how I knew I wasn’t followed. But one look at my face brought him upright.

  “Holy Goddess, Misha. What happened to your face?”

  I touched my bruised eye. It didn’t hurt anymore. I tended to forget about it until I looked in the mirror. The edges had begun to fade from purple to a sickly shade of green. “Just doing my job.” I’d intended it to come out as a joke, but it fell flat.

  Frey crossed the room and used his hand under my chin to turn me toward the light, just as Donato had done in my room. “He do that to you often?”

  “No.” At least in that I could be honest. “Not often.” Standing so close to him while talking about it made me uncomfortable. I pulled free of his grip and stepped around him in order to take the seat on the near side of Anzhéla’s desk. The same seat I’d sat in when she’d given me the job. “Sometimes he gets angry.”

  Frey’s expression darkened. “That’s worse than if it was a sex thing. Rage is more dangerous than passion.”

  If that were true, how bad would it be when the two were combined? I didn’t want to consider it. Instead, I took a deep breath and said, “I need a favor.”

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. “What kind of favor?”

  “Will you tell me about your implant?”

  He froze, staring at me with eyes so dark and guarded, I worried he was about to hit me. But then he sighed, and all the anger seemed to drain from his body in that single breath. “I don’t suppose you’re asking out of perverse curiosity?”

  “Curiosity, yes. But mostly...”

  I let my words trail away, because I couldn’t say the rest. I couldn’t tell him about Ayo
’s words, or his anguish. I couldn’t tell Frey how he’d asked me to kill him because his implant wouldn’t allow suicide.

  Frey sighed and went to stand against the bar, crossing his arms across his chest. He watched me, and yet I had a feeling he wasn’t seeing me. He was looking inward, trying to decide where to start. “I was born on the hill. Did you know that?”

  “No. You don’t have any tattoos.”

  “Boys get them when they turn sixteen. Girls get them when they marry.”

  “Oh.”

  “And you know I was born a girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was supposed to be a doctor.” That didn’t surprise me. I knew Frey’s abilities when it came to healing. “My father had dreams of me being recruited by the Guild. I would have been the first woman, and he was determined. But...” He shook his head, looking down at his feet. He shuffled one boot against the wooden floor. “I’d told my dad my whole life I was a boy. Of course, he’d point out the obvious, that I was missing a cock.” His voice hitched to a stop, and I looked down at my boots, wanting to allow him his grief and his anger.

  “I know how crazy it sounds,” he went on at last. “But I always knew my body was wrong. When I was a child, I’d steal my brother’s clothes. My parents laughed at first, but later, they didn’t find it so funny. Once I hit puberty, it became pretty clear I wasn’t normal. Not by their definition, anyway. My father began to despair that the Guild wouldn’t want me. At the same time, they’d be unable to marry me off. I was ruining everything. So when I was nearly eighteen, they took me to a doctor.”

  “A Guild surgeon?”

  He nodded, reaching up to touch the strange bald spots near the back of his head. “It’s come a long way since then, but at the time, it was...”

  “Barbaric?”

  He laughed, a harsh, angry sound. “It’s probably still barbaric, but they’ve at least refined their techniques. This clinician told them he could fix me.” He sighed, letting his hand fall from his head. “It meant I’d never be a Guild surgeon. But there was still a chance I could finish my medical training and become a regular doctor. And, at the very least, my parents would be able to marry me off to some rich nobleman, so they signed the contract. They held me down and drugged me, and when I woke up, I was a girl in every way.”