“No. It will be an entirely original one, written by me.”
“Featuring a slew of carnal acts?”
“Featuring nothing you cannot read aloud to a child in a room of his elders.”
She snorts. “You, writing a story that is safe for children? Go ahead; tell it. I will be on the lookout for hidden depravities.”
I have written a number of stories that are not only safe for children, but intended specifically for children. This one, however, has always been intended for her.
Until now, I have been dropping hints of my sentiments for her. Fairly broad hints at times, but still, hints that can be plausibly denied. Once I tell this story, however, everything will be laid bare and there will be no going back.
“Well,” she prompts me, “are you going to start your story before I fall asleep?”
I realize with a startling clarity that she has been testing just those semi-revealed sentiments tonight, trying to gauge the depth and intensity of my affection for her. Well, now she is about to learn just how deeply and intensely my feelings run.
I turn more fully toward her and begin. “Once upon a time, there was country named Pride. It was a proud country; everyone, from the king and the queen on down to the lowest street sweeper, was proud. But no one was prouder than the prince of the realm, a handsome young man by the name of Narcissus.”
“And he was so enamored of his beauty that he couldn’t stop looking at his own reflection?”
“My dear,” I admonish, “how little faith you have in me. Would I bother to recount such a hackneyed story to you? Trust me; you have not heard of this one.”
The skepticism on her face tells me she is not entirely convinced of my originality, but she says, “Go on then.”
“The most fashionable mode of travel in the country of Pride was a dirigible powered by none other than its owner’s personal pride. The prouder the person, the bigger his or her dirigible, and the higher and faster it flew. No one in all of Pride had a greater or fleeter dirigible than Prince Narcissus’s, which was, aptly enough, called Narcissus’s Pride.”
“And which will be thoroughly punctured by the end of your tale?”
I tsk. “Only ignorant foreigners would propose such a repellent deed. In Pride one would no more think of puncturing another’s dirigible than one would sell one’s mother on the town square.”
“And are you absolutely sure that the practice of mother selling isn’t a popular pastime in Pride?”
I burst out laughing at her ridiculous proposition—and choose not to dignify it with an answer. “The prince devised his own contest for ladies who wished to win his hand. For seven years running, the prince’s contest had been a three-day dirigible race, which he won handily each time. The entire country began to grow anxious for their prince, for he was of an age when he should settle down and beget heirs.
“Unbeknownst to the world at large, Narcissus had long been in love with a young woman of Pride named Fidelia. Fidelia knew Narcissus existed, of course, but that was the extent of her awareness of him. The prince and his fancy dirigible mattered little to her. In fact, from time to time she would make fun of him to her friends, mocking the size of his dirigible, and what one man could possibly do with so much hot air at his disposal.”
My bride’s eyes narrow a little. She is beginning to catch the drift of my story.
“Word would get back to Narcissus and he would pace the high towers of the palace, unable to sleep. From time to time he turned the telescopes in the astronomy tower to Fidelia’s bookshop in the city, to watch the light in her upstairs window, wishing he could be in her room with her, reading together.”
My bride’s expression changes when I mention Fidelia’s bookshop. She is, of course, no lowly bookseller—her brother is a peer of a higher rank than I. But the parallels are too obvious to dismiss.
“My,” she murmurs, her tone meringue-light, “for a moment I thought he meant to tie her to her bookshelves.”
“Please, he is nowhere near as romantic as I am. Now, where was I? Ah, every three months Fidelia went on a book-buying trip to several nearby lands. The prince always watched for her return—when she came back from those trips was when she would come to the palace with a crate of her best finds for Narcissus to inspect, and he waited for those meetings with a yearning only those who’d known unrequited love could understand.”
She sits up slowly, yanking a sheet about her shoulders. Unrequited love, those formerly unmentionable words, have at last been spoken.
It is more difficult to go on with her staring at me, but I do. “Pride was a country of largely predictable weather. They were in the middle of the dry season. Fidelia’s freight of books was loaded on drays normally used for barrels of ale, and not the covered wagons she’d have used in rainier seasons. But as the prince watched her progress on the dusty plains outside the city walls, what should he see but a storm on the horizon, fast approaching.
“He immediately called for Narcissus’s Pride, his wonderful dirigible. But by the time he reached her drays, the storm was nearly on top of them. There would be no time to transfer her books for safekeeping inside the gondola of the dirigible.
“The prince did not hesitate. Much to Fidelia’s openmouthed shock, he pulled out his dagger and sliced into his dirigible, opening it up into an enormous water-resistant tarp to place over her books. Fidelia, recovering her composure, found large rocks to place all along the edges of the tarp to keep it from flying away during the storm.
“They finished and ducked inside the dirigible’s gondola just as rain came down in torrents. ‘Why have you destroyed your beautiful dirigible?’ Fidelia at last asked. ‘They are only books.’
‘Maybe,’ answered Narcissus. ‘But they are your books.’”
My bride blinks at Narcissus’s fervent declaration.
“To this day people talk about how the prince won the hand of his beloved only when he first took a knife to his Pride. They were married the next spring and lived and ruled happily together for many years.”
Utter silence. My bride gazes somewhere toward the mantel. I cannot tell whether my story pleases her or merely makes her feel as if she’s been run over by an omnibus.
“A happy ending,” she murmurs. “That is depraved indeed. What will you think of next?”
“A great deal more depravities, of course. I like happy endings.”
She looks back at me. I feel transparent, as if my heart is beating in the open.
“You could have told me that story five years ago. Ten years ago, even.”
The weight of all my years of stupidity presses down on me. “I didn’t know how to tell it then.”
Her eyes bore into mine. “Didn’t know how, or wouldn’t?”
“Maybe both,” I admit.
She shakes her head. And keeps shaking her head.
I get up, find my dressing robe, and kiss her on her forehead. “Good night.”
Her gaze follows me out the door.
Chapter Five
THE NEXT DAY I JOIN Grisham and my bride at play, showing up with a vulcanized rubber ball used for tennis. “Here. He likes this one.”
“Thank you, my lord.” She takes the ball from my hand and sweeps me openly with a glance.
Heat engulfs me. But beneath the warmth, I feel the cold finger of uncertainty. It is a terrifying sensation to be at her mercy—she who’s always had so little regard for me.
She tosses the ball a good distance, her motion strong yet graceful. “Go get it, Grisham.”
Grisham lopes off. He cannot run as fast as his four-legged peers, but run he most assuredly does, listing a little, and at a very respectable pace.
She looks back at me. “Come to think of it, you never mentioned last night what Fidelia did with her bookshop after she married Prince Narcissus. Did she need to give it up, eventually?”
I did not expect that particular question. My answer, however, comes readily, as if I’ve always known exactly what h
appened after the end of the story. “She did sell the shop. But then she went on to establish a national library, one with a collection that was astounding for both its breadth and depth.”
She tilts her head, a slight curve to her lips. “Did she?”
“Of course. And everyone, from princes to paupers, was welcome in her library. But she did not stop there. She used her influence to foster a culture of reading in Pride, so that when the country celebrated the golden jubilee of her husband’s rule, there were many more bookshops in the capital than there had been when she’d dealt with books for a living.”
Grisham is back, the rubber ball held happily between his teeth. She rubs him on the head, takes the ball, and tosses it again.
Her attention returns to me. “You have interesting views of what a woman is capable of, Larkspear.”
“I am not afraid of who you are, Lady Larkspear.”
I am only afraid that she might crush my heart underfoot.
Her eyes gleam. “Really? Don’t you know that such a statement all but begs to be tested?”
My stomach tightens. “Then test me.”
She pulls down the brim of her hat and glances at me sideways. “I intend to. Most assuredly.”
THAT EVENING, BEFORE MY VALET has even left, she walks through the connecting door into my bedroom, clad in a black dressing robe embroidered with a green-and-gold Chinese dragon at the hem. Around her neck, draped like scarves, are several of the sashes I’ve used to tie her to her bed—red, blue, green, all eye-poppingly bright against the black silk of the dressing gown.
The restraints are coming back. For me.
My stomach drops even as my cock rises.
“Thank you, Matthews,” she addresses my valet. “I’m sure I can see to any further needs on Lord Larkspear’s part.”
Her words are perfectly appropriate, but the proprietary look she casts my way…Matthews, that most phlegmatic of men, hurries out with a blush on his face.
Quite unsubtly, she locks the door behind him.
My mouth turns dry. “So, my lioness leaves her cage.”
She smiles with a wolfish flash of her teeth. “It is lovely to be back in the wild, prowling and scenting prey.”
“And the hunter becomes the hunted?”
“It’s only fair, isn’t it, that everyone gets a chance?” She draws the sash from her dressing robe.
I try not to stare too obviously at what the now-gaping robe reveals, but it is not easy, given that she intends me to look. Indeed to gawk at the swell of her breasts, the dip of her navel, and the red curls that mark the very center of my life.
“Take off your shirt, darling.” There is not an iota of hesitation to her voice. She is in her element. In command.
The last time she called me darling, it was to pretend that I was someone else. My heart trembles a little at the memory. “You will make me blush.”
“Then you will be blushing all night,” she replies with mock severity. “So put aside your maidenly reticence and do what I tell you.”
My blood pounding in my ears, I pull my shirt off. She comes close and trails a hand over my abdomen. “Pretty,” she murmurs, passing the sash through her fingers. “Very pretty.”
Then she pushes me against a bedpost and binds my hands behind my back with the sash. Now I am the one in fetters. She inspects me from all angles, smiling as if she has been let in on a marvelous secret.
“I’m beginning to see why you liked it so well when I was shackled. Did it make you feel powerful, Larkspear?”
Powerful? Yes, but only in the sense that at last I had the chance I’d long craved to change her mind. The chance for a new beginning.
“I feel powerful, darling.” She lets the robe fall from her shoulders, then extracts her hairpins and shakes her head. Her hair tumbles free, a glorious cascade, strands of it brushing her taut nipples. “Sublimely powerful. I can do anything I want. And you…you will like it.”
She walks away from me, the ends of her hair brushing the very top of her bottom. My mouth becomes completely parched. She swings herself around on the next bedpost and poses as if she, too, has her hands tied behind her back. Then she laughs at her own joke, strolls to a low chest of drawers, bends over it, her sex shamelessly displayed, and looks back at me. “Is this something you like?”
“Yes.”
She straightens, sits down in a chair, her legs wide-open. “You like this too?”
“Yes.” My voice is hoarse.
She returns to the other bedpost and rubs her breasts against it. “What about this?”
“You are making me mindless with lust.”
She laughs softly. “No, Larkspear, I am going to make you mindless with lust. And the first step is the removal of the rest of your clothes.”
She hooks her fingers in the waistband of my trousers. “Your body, darling, is a thing of beauty. Let us never obscure beauty, shall we?”
It should come as no surprise to her that I am desperately aroused. But still she draws an audible breath as she pushes my trousers past my jutting cock. “What a monster,” she murmurs. “You think I want to be sodomized by this?”
“Why not? It’s your monster.”
“My monster.” She runs a finger along the side of my cock. “Hmm.”
She drops to her knees before me. I forget how to breathe.
“You were terribly rough with my monster the other day.” She keeps stroking my cock. “Look at it. It’s still all swollen and tender.”
I stare at her. “Make it feel better, then.”
She gives the head of my cock a quick kiss. It flexes. “Does that help?”
“No.”
She licks it. “How about this?”
I breathe hard. “Still not much use.”
She looks down a moment, as if puzzled. Then, before I quite realize what is going on, she takes me into her mouth. I jerk with the pleasure of it.
She releases me with an audible pop. “That?”
“Perhaps, if you keep at it.”
“My goodness, you are demanding for a man with his hands tied behind his back.”
My knees turn weak as she takes me into her mouth again, slowly, slowly, then not so slowly. I want to spill my seed down her throat right away. I want to hold off coming forever, so I can remain in her mouth for the next eternity.
I cannot hold off forever. Her eager lips, her mobile tongue, her teasing, hungry eyes. My muscles tense; my breaths shatter; my hands clench behind the bedpost. I am on the verge.
She moves back just enough so that her lips hover near my cock, but do not touch it. “Are you better now?”
“No.” God damn it. I need to be enveloped by her hot, willing mouth. “No!”
She makes an exaggerated moue of disappointment. “Well, I guess there is nothing more I can do then.” She rises. “Perhaps I should bid you good night and go back to my own room.”
“Don’t you dare go anywhere.”
Her brow rises. “Oh, you want me to stay more time?”
She is punishing me. For having had the temerity to tie her up. The temerity to try to make her fall in love with me. “I want you to finish what you started. I never teased you like this.”
She takes my chin in her hand. “You can’t blame me for your own shortcoming. Why did you never tease me like this?”
I cannot think. “What?”
She smirks a little. Her hand grips my cock. I leap in her fingers, so close, so very close.
She lets go again. I growl with frustration. She cups my balls and lifts them, as if testing their weight in her palm. Then she spreads her hand on my abdomen, leans in, and licks my nipple.
I grit my teeth. She bites my other nipple, not hard, just enough to make me shiver.
She licks my bottom lip. “Did you enjoy doing all this to me—making me moan, making me writhe, making me lose control?”
“Yes.”
Her lips are so close. I surge forward, take them with mine, and find her tong
ue. She yanks away.
“Yes, I enjoyed doing all this to you,” I tell her. “I loved forcing a reaction from you. I rejoiced when you could no longer deny your arousal. And I daresay it made me grow two extra inches when you screamed loud enough to shake the rafters.”
Her countenance darkens. The next moment she is back on her knees. She sucks me vigorously, voraciously, her cheeks hollowing with the force of her draw. I cry out with the knifelike pleasure. She takes nearly the entire length of my cock into her mouth. I feel the force of her will as my cock slides into her throat.
I ejaculate, spurt after spurt after spurt. She swallows everything, her eyes never leaving my face.
When I am finished, my balls empty, my sinews limp, she rises to her feet. “Did you enjoy that? Or did you hate it?” she whispers in my ear.
“Both,” I answer, my breath rasping. “Maybe…maybe I hated it more.”
She bites my lower lip. “Then you know how I felt, darling. You know exactly how I felt.”
I’M SORRY,” I TELL HER as she unties me from the bedpost. “Please forgive me.”
She casts me an inscrutable glance. “Forgiveness has to be earned on your back, Larkspear.”
I chew the inside of my cheek for a moment, then climb onto the bed and lie down. “Like this?”
She puts her dressing robe back on and sits down at the edge of the bed. “Don’t you know I love someone else? Does that make no difference to you?”
She is not mocking me, or trying to hurt me, but only trying to understand why I behave as I do.
“I don’t doubt you loved him long ago. But for years now you’ve loved only the memory of the man he once was. He is not the same man and you are in love with someone who no longer exists.”
Her lips press together in a line of displeasure. “Very arrogant of you.”
“Does not some part of you secretly agree with me? If this man takes up with your sister, would you be pleased for her?”
Her face is stormy. “And what if I tell you that I still miss him?”
I breathe past the pain in my chest. “Maybe you will miss me more, if you were to lose me now.”
The Bride of Larkspear: A Fitzhugh Trilogy Erotic Novella Page 6
