“Yes,” she hissed, convulsing against him, against her bindings, tipping her hips to get more.
He drove hard and deep, still tormenting her nipples.
“What’s my name?” he asked, his hips pounding into the heated cheeks of her backside, stinging pain with each thrust, shafting pleasure in its wake.
She quivered.
“What’s my bloody name?” he demanded.
“I-I don’t know.”
He pulled out.
She gasped and cried, “No!”
He went to where the tethers were looped around a hook on the wall, released them, gave them slack and demanded, “Knees.”
Serena dropped at once to her knees.
He re-secured the suede in a manner her arms were still over her head, walked to her front and shoved his cock in her face.
“Worship,” he grunted.
She did not like the taste of herself. She’d taken it the time he had her before without thought, but this time, the length of their play, the attention she was receiving, along with the inattention…
He took hold of her hair, yanked her head back, with her arms still straight over her head, pain charged through her shoulders.
“Worship!” he barked.
She opened her mouth.
He released her hair, drove between her lips and fucked her face.
She suckled him, hoping to give him what he wanted, earn her reward.
Instead, he used her mouth for so long, she knew he would again flood his seed in her throat and she wanted it inside, but elsewhere.
Just when she’d given up hope, he pulled out, put his hands to her bindings, released them but before she could drop her arms to regain control of them, he jerked both down, twisted them back and then up so they were contorted unnaturally.
She grunted, forced forward into him now, as he held them in one fist, bound them again and then shoved her head down, cheek to the floor.
“Stay,” he ordered.
Oh goddess.
He moved.
Back to the hoop, she moaned as he took away all slack, lengthening her arms, pulling them up behind her.
He then moved again, dropped to his knees between her calves, and he penetrated her, driving into her pussy.
Her reward.
“Yes, please, yes, please,” she whispered.
He thrust, harder and faster, grunting with the effort, smacking her arse as he did, gripping it tight.
She panted, whimpered, taking each thrust, the fringe at her belt coasting across her skin an agony of bliss, she was going to climax just from the pounding.
But he again pulled out, and with a heavy sigh, released his seed all over her arse.
She blew out her breath, holding every inch of her body still, waiting, for she knew all he would need to do was tweak her clit and she’d explode.
He smacked her arse with both his hands and again gripped hard.
“You don’t climax until you know my proper name.”
With that, he released her bottom and took his feet.
She slid her eyes to the side, gazing up at him in desperation as he tucked his cock into his trousers.
“But—”
Gazing down at her, he put his finger to his lips.
Serena quieted.
He dropped his finger and finished with his fly as he shared, “You speak when spoken to, Your Grace.”
She nodded fervently.
“Little mouse,” he said softly. “That is what you’ll be. Do you understand me?”
She did not.
All she knew was she needed to.
She shook her head.
“You are mine, princess. At all times. Even when you aren’t with me. You sleep. You eat. You breathe. You wait for me to call on you. When I do, you do precisely what I command you to do. You tell no one of me. You don’t call attention to yourself. You connect with others only as much as you have to.” He bent slightly at his waist. “And you don’t touch yourself. At all. Unless you have my leave.” He straightened. “And if you’re a good, quiet, obedient little mouse, you’ll receive your reward.”
“All right,” Serena agreed.
“All right, what?”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Do not take your eyes from me unless I command it.”
She opened her eyes.
“All right, what?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, sir, I do not know your name.”
“You will know it. And you will wait to know it until I give it to you. But in all I’ll be to you, the proper way to address me, I am Master.”
Oh goddess.
She could not speak that word.
She could not.
But she would.
She had to.
To get what she needed.
“Say it,” he ordered.
“Will I get a reward?” she bargained.
He bent deep and bit, “Say it!”
“Master,” she whispered.
He moved behind her, dropped again to his knees and leaned over. Holding her by her hips, he shoved his face between her thighs, suckled hard at her clit and made her orgasm within five seconds.
Blindingly.
Worth it.
Worth everything.
Completely.
“Thank me, little mouse,” he murmured, stroking gently inside with two fingers.
“Thank you,” Serena said with feeling.
“I’m sorry?”
She gulped.
And she gave him what he was to her.
“Thank you…Master.”
He stood. “You’ll be attended.”
And then, to her humiliation, leaving her still quivering from her orgasm, kneeling, bound, prostrated, his seed dripping down the backs of her thighs, Serena of the Nadirii waited to be set free.
But really, even if he had just finished using her, she waited to be called to service again.
And hoped she would be.
Soon.
33
The Budding
Prince True Axelsson
The Lantern Room, First Floor, East Corridor, Catrame Palace, Fire City
FIRENZE
True studied his betrothed as she stood at the screened windows, looking out.
She was incredibly lovely.
Lovely in repose. Lovely in reflection. Most lovely when she smiled.
Cassius had won Elena.
He’d done it with a brooding look down at her from the podium at the parade.
True knew this for he had felt her loss in that instant as if she was physically attached to him and had been torn away.
And now he had to hide that grief from a beautiful woman with kind, sad eyes.
A woman who was falling in love with him.
“Are you going to confront him?” she asked the screen.
He’d told her of Carrington and his father.
And Silence.
Mars knew.
And Farah could have no desire but what was best for Firenze, and what would be her kingdom of Wodell, therefore it was not a risk to share the knowledge with her.
Regardless of all of this, he trusted her.
Not because she was falling in love with him.
Because he sensed, above all, she was trustworthy.
“It might expose Silence,” he replied.
She turned her head his way.
Yes, she was incredibly lovely.
“If they were speaking in a way that could be overheard, it could have been anyone that reported this to Mars and you. Most especially Mars. There’s at least one servant in that corridor at all times.”
True trusted Farah.
But he did not share that he had noticed his cousin had an unnatural ability to hear things others could not. So he could not know that just anybody would have overheard this conversation.
What he did know was that his cousin could.
Silence tried to hide it, and she’d been so roundly neglected in her home
and by the people around her, he reckoned she succeeded.
But she hadn’t hidden it from him.
“I do not wish to risk that, and Mars definitely doesn’t.”
She smiled a small smile. “He wouldn’t. He’s much charmed by her.”
“My cousin is charming.”
The smile that received was not small.
It faded as she turned fully his way and walked to him.
She stopped close enough to reach out and touch.
But she didn’t do that.
“May I speak candidly?” she requested.
“In all things,” he granted.
Her beautiful almond eyes softened.
“You must negotiate this counsellor out,” she said.
“I know this, sweets,” he replied. “But he has a hold on my father that is unhealthy. If I even begin to suggest it, he ends our discussion.”
“This unhealthy hold,” she began. “Do you think he knows something about the king that makes him do his bidding?”
“Blackmail?”
Farah shrugged uncomfortably.
“It would surprise me,” he told her.
“But it isn’t out of the question.”
“There are times, Farah, when Father doesn’t take Carrington’s counsel. These are whims or when he tires of Carrington’s nagging or when I suspect my mother has had his ear. And Carrington doesn’t like that much. If he knew something sensitive about my father, my father would just be a puppet.”
“Hmm…” she murmured, her gaze drifting off.
“We know his plan and even if he convinces my father and moves forward with it, we leave for Wodell in but days. The journey to Notting Thicket is less than three weeks. He would have little time to bring any fullness to his schemes, and being closer to them unfolding, I could keep an eye, uncover them and assume on my own shoulders whatever would fall when they’re exposed.”
She turned her attention again to him.
“On your shoulders,” she said quietly.
“It is the right thing to do.”
“It is the True thing to do.”
His name was odd and on more than a rare occasion caused some confusion.
But True was not confused with her current meaning.
“I can take it on my shoulders,” she suggested.
True blinked.
Slowly.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“When we get to your capital city, and I will say, a capital city named Notting Thicket is someplace I very much desire to see, in hopes the city is as charming as its name,” she said with a grin to start. A grin and words that were designed to deflect his attention from the dangerous absurdity of what she would say next. “I will pretend I heard something, or saw something, and did what Silence did, though no one will know she did it. I would tell my prince…and my king.”
She would do nothing of the sort.
“You won’t do that, Farah,” he stated.
“No one would question it.”
“It would make you visible.”
“And I’m not visible now?”
True felt a burn hit his throat.
For she was.
Even if those who felt her very visible were pretending that she was invisible.
Carrington hadn’t yet acknowledged her.
But that didn’t matter.
His mother, father, Aunt Vanka and Uncle Johan very poorly masked their antipathy to his future wife.
It was beyond rude as to be sickening.
“I’ll have a word with my mother, Farah,” he said gently.
She shook her head. “No, True. We’ve spoken of this.”
They had.
They’d discovered there was very little on which they didn’t agree.
Except that.
“She’ll be your mother-in-law,” he noted.
“It is often the mother-in-law does not like her son being taken away by another woman, no?”
That wasn’t it and they both knew it.
“I’ll be talking to her, Farah.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the only way to make someone who does not like you for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and only to do with their preconceptions, or, I’m so sorry, True, their ignorance, is to prove them wrong.”
He made no response because he didn’t have one.
He would not know.
But he suspected she was right.
“It will not help matters and might hinder them if you waded in,” she carried on. “Regardless, you have enough to occupy your time. That’s the least of your worries.”
He had something to say to that.
“My future wife is not the least of my worries, Farah,” he retorted. “You need to mark that, sweets. You might not have the regard of my mother or my father, and regrettably, that is true. But you have mine. You are beautiful and kind and sage and my wish is to lift the sadness from your eyes and give you at least peace, but I would strive for happiness.”
She gazed up at him, her appealing, puffy lips slightly parted, her eyes like burning topaz.
Yes.
She was falling in love with him.
He felt that look in his groin.
He wanted to taste her and that need grew greater with every moment he shared with her.
He simply would not do it until she knew the man who claimed her mouth, or any part of her, wanted only hers without the loss of the one who fates ripped away fresh on his mind.
He feared she’d get little respect where she was going.
And in truth, outside of Mars, her mother, Silence, Ha-Lah, Elena and her women, she got little respect where she was now.
So she would have his.
In all things.
“I will allow this to carry on, for a time,” he told her. “But, Farah, I’ll stress it will be for a time. You’ve done not one thing to earn this rudeness. I will abide it for your sake at your request. But there will come a time I will not. Do we have an understanding?”
She sighed and said, “I suppose.”
He grinned at her and replied, “My deepest appreciation.”
She cast her eyes to the side briefly in her brand of an eye roll, her lips tipped up at the ends.
“Come,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand to tuck it in his elbow. “We must prepare for dinner. As meetings have concluded, Queen Elpis has decided to do the presentations this evening, rather than tomorrow. We have less time to get ready.”
He led her to and through the door.
The corridor was busy.
“There is much happening,” she said under her breath. “And oddly, I fear it more than the rising of the Beast.”
“It will all work out in the end,” he assured.
She looked up at him just as he turned them to the stairs.
And she trusted him fully in return, gazing at him as he guided her to the stairs, taking his lead without looking where her feet were falling.
There was something gravely affecting in that.
So much, it also made his throat burn.
“How could you know?” she queried.
He folded his hand over hers at his elbow.
“Because in the end, the Beast is rising. No one will think of trade and proclamations and wars and regents. When we defeat him, there will be naught but relief that those who are still breathing are indeed breathing. The rest will fit in place as it should. Good and just.”
They made it to the top landing as she murmured, “This is very true.”
True led her to her door and bent to kiss her cheek.
“Send a servant when you’re ready to be escorted down,” he ordered after he straightened, though he didn’t need to. Since meeting her, if he was at dinner, he’d done the same. “I’ll attend you.”
She gave him her look of shining topaz, budding love glowing in her eyes.
And yes.
She was so very lovely.
/>
She was also his.
And he was hers.
And he wished nothing in that moment but to want to be hers.
Eventually.
34
The Presentations
Lady Silence Mattson
The Throne Room, First Floor, West Corridor, State Wing, Catrame Palace, Fire City
FIRENZE
I sat on a stack of cushions next to Mars’s throne.
The stack was nearly as high as his seat.
But it was no chair.
And had no back.
It was difficult to be perched on cushions, unable to recline. I knew this because this was how I had to sit, on my stack of cushions, throughout the parade.
Though this time, Mars noticed this with a narrowing of eyes practically the second I rested my behind on them, and after but moments of me sitting as such, he solved this problem by pulling me to the side so I could lean against the arm of his chair.
This also allowed him access to the back of my exposed neck, something he took advantage of, stroking it lightly with his finger.
This felt nice, at first.
This was then noticed by his people.
Everything was noticed by his people.
And the way they noticed Mars touching me was not something they appeared to like.
So even though he kept doing it, and it was lovely, it sadly didn’t feel as nice.
I’d been told of the presentations, though I thought I had until the next afternoon to prepare for them.
But Elpis wanted it done prior to having dinner that night as well as to clear the schedule to have more time to prepare for the big event the next day. When the discussions at the diplomatic table ended early that afternoon, she had her chance, and took it.
So there I was, wearing the Dellish wedding gown Tril painstakingly crafted along our journey from the exquisite fabric we’d been lucky to find when we went into town to urgently pull together my trousseau.
I was glad of the chance to wear it for an important occasion for Tril’s sake. All that hard work would be sad to waste.
And I was glad to wear it because it was important I put forward my best for this ceremony, not only to represent Mars, but Wodell.
At least these were my thoughts, in the beginning.
Yards and yards of diaphanous material in a pink so pale, it was almost white. There was embroidery so delicate throughout, it looked almost like lace. This grew heavier down at the scalloped hem. An also scalloped, demure V-neckline and graceful, full sleeves that gathered tight at the wrists with a satin ribbon and flared out to a dramatic ruffle of embroidery.
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