Velvet

by Xavier Axelson

  His words sent a worrying thought through me. Had Duir remained unaware of my absence?

  I released Sylvain and he made his way from me, but stopped in the passageway from store to kitchen.

  “There is unease in the streets. It is good fortune the coronation is tomorrow.”

  I laughed. “Your speaking better about Duir’s crowning is something I thought I’d never hear, but you should know, Sylvain, he asked after you yesterday. Perhaps old wounds may be forgotten.”

  “Perhaps,” Sylvain answered carefully before he left the room.

  Chapter 10

  When I arrived at court, Horace immediately ushered me to Duir’s chambers. He was in a state of anxiety over Duir’s procession. When I first saw the fear and worry on his face, I knew my disappearance the day before had been discovered.

  “The clock is a cruel master,” he muttered as we came to Duir’s chamber door. “Do say whatever you must to speed him along, Tailor. I don’t like to think what will come of His Grace being late to the cathedral!”

  I barely had time to sigh in relief before Horace thrust me towards the heavy door. Surely if Duir knew of my absence, Horace would have known of it. Had I merely been lucky?

  Before I could further gather my wits, Horace disappeared and I stood within the bedchamber of my friend and king. The sun made its way from behind the melancholy of early morning, and lit the room with its brightness. The weather had changed. It was a good omen, I told myself as I followed the sound of familiar voices to Duir’s inner dressing chamber. If luck favored me, I would soon know.

  “Your Grace,” I said humbly at the entrance. “It is Virago, here to assist you if I can.”

  The voices ceased and Duir’s voice was made clear. “Come and join this debacle, Virago. Perhaps you can make sense of it!”

  I pushed open the door to find Auberon, Briar, Cale, and Duir all in various stages of dress. Attendants scrambled about gathering discarded pieces of clothing while the men laughed and carried on over mugs of ale and picked figs, dates and nuts from two large bowls.

  “What goes on in here?” I marveled as I walked among them.

  Cale shouted after an already frenzied attendant. “Bring the tailor ale.”

  I took the mug and nodded reassuringly at the attendant. I knew all of them well and could only imagine the debauchery Auberon and the rest had them up to on such a serious day. Duir and his men’s kind receiving of me revealed they were ignorant of my leaving the castle and I was appreciative for whatever vice or distraction brought this about.

  “We are celebrating before I must be so severe, dear Virago,” Duir shouted, then came up and threw his arms around me, nearly making me spill the mug of ale on him.

  I’d wisely packed the velvet for Duir’s vest and my tools in the pack I’d secured across my back, so it was safely out of the way. Duir wore only his braises and he smelled of the almond oil he often wore on special occasions.

  “So I gather,” I answered, returning his embrace. “But surely you must be getting ready to leave. Have you not any idea of the time?”

  “Bother the clock,” Auberon shouted.

  Over Duir’s shoulder, I could see Auberon sitting on the edge of a couch wearing only a long peasant shirt and barely covering his modesty. He thrust a fig in his mouth and talked while chewing. “Duir is King. They wait on his arrival!”

  “You find me in a quandary. I am unsure of what to wear. I know what is expected, but these fools…” Duir’s smile widened as he faced his friends. “These fools only have eyes for Therese’s whores and gluttony.” When his eyes found me, they glittered knowingly. “I need your expert eye.”

  “Only one?” shouted Cale from where he rested. “Here, Virago, come let me slide my blade just so!”

  At this, all three men burst into laughter. Duir held my gaze, walked over to a large gilt mirror and reveled in his full reflection. “All childishness must be put aside. Virago is correct, I am a King!”

  At this, the men were silenced.

  Briar had been observing the madness from a nearby sofa. He left his seat, mug in hand, and came closer to inspect himself in a mirror situated opposite Duir’s. “What say you, Virago?”

  “Am I to dress all of you like little boys?” I chided, half amused. “Surely, you are all more interested in me completing His Grace’s coronation vest.”

  “Yes,” shouted Auberon. “What of this fantastic vest, Duir? Am I not to have Virago make something splendid for my wedding? Tienne has already issued her request and you say nothing!”

  Duir held up a hand. “You shall have splendor for your wedding, too, Auberon, but you must be patient. You shall all wear the uniforms of the King’s men and be happy to do so.” He grabbed a nearby discarded garment and threw it at Auberon, who wore a sour look on his handsome face.

  “Now take your leave, and ready yourselves!” Duir shouted playfully before swallowing the last of the ale in his mug.

  I watched as the attendants gathered the men’s clothes and tripped behind their masters, who boisterously made their way to the other dressing rooms allotted for royal guests.

  “They are ridiculous,” Duir remarked, unlacing his braises. “But they are loyal, steadfast, and brave. Well, each has at least one of those qualities. It is more than one in my position can hope.”

  Seeing Duir naked made me want Seton. Why hadn’t I given in to him? Would I never know true release, or would I only know the agony of one who always longs for something beyond his reach?

  “What is it? Your brow is furrowed like a priest who has passed a brothel!”

  “Forgive me.” My eyes desperately tried to find something other than his naked body to stare at. “I think your leather coat, with the fox collar.”

  With a resigned swig of my ale, I went about my task of dressing Duir for the procession. In the end, we decided Duir would wear a doublet of wine brocade with cream-colored calfskin breeches and the jacket of black leather with a fox collar, as I’d suggested. As I helped him into the jacket, I thought of my brother and how he despised those who wore fur.

  Shaking Sylvain’s image from my mind, I presented Duir with his gloves. “Your gloves, Your Grace.”

  As he took the gloves, I bowed respectfully. “You look like a man who is the ruler of a thriving land. I am proud to be in your service.”

  He admired himself in a nearby mirror. I couldn’t quite believe he stood before me as the King.

  He admired himself in the mirror. “You have been a good friend and tailor to me, Virago. You know me better than most.”

  An urgent knocking beckoned from the door. We looked at each other. I could see the apprehension in his eyes.

  “Will you not come with me? I look on you as a brother as I do Auberon, Briar, and Cale. It would be right to have you by my side this day.”

  I smiled, but shook my head. “The days of me being by your side as a play friend are over. You are a King, and I am your tailor. Besides, I must stay behind and finish your vest.”

  He put hands on both of my shoulders and stared hard into my face for a moment before he smiled. He let me go and greeted those who would bring him to the royal carriage.

  Chapter 11

  An ecstatic hum buzzed among those who had gathered at court to follow the procession. I wove my way through the ornately dressed crowds of gentry, stopping here and there when someone recognized me, mostly the women of wealthy houses who sought my approval of their gowns or my suggestions for an autumn wardrobe. It felt an eternity before I found the cool sanctuary of the workroom. The memories of the times I spent playing in this room while my father worked threatened to overwhelm me, but I resisted the lure of the past.

  A single window, long and wide, looked out over the stables. The noise of carriages, horses, and shouts from grooms and coachmen carried up on hay-scented breezes. The sun continued to shine and I relished the light coming in through the open window. It would certainly be a fine day for Duir’s procession from
court to the cathedral. How kind of him to ask me to attend the procession. I hoped this kindness, and not erratic moodiness, would guide Duir’s hand during his reign. One never knew how a monarch would rule or how those who lived under their hand would fare. I thought of Horace and his dismal comment, “The clock is a cruel master”. Indeed, I thought and set about my work.

  An hour later, a knock on the workroom door interrupted my labors. “Yes?” I answered distractedly, not allowing my eyes to leave the vest. “What is it?” When I didn’t get a reply, I put the vest on the table, stood and went to the door. I opened it, half-expecting one of Duir’s attendants frantic about forgotten gloves or some other trivial matter, but found myself instead staring into the eyes of Seton.

  “Forgive the intrusion. May I come in?”

  I felt my breath catch in my throat. I’d been foolish to think my work would distract me from what had been unleashed between us. Seeing Seton before me stirred all the passions I’d felt the night before. In fact, my passion for him felt even stronger. Unable to say anything, I stepped aside.

  “Thank you,” he said in a low voice. “I am lost in the court. When I am not playing, I merely wander the unfamiliar passages and think.”

  Before closing the door, I leaned out and was surprised to find no one about.

  “Everyone has left,” Seton informed me from behind. “Only the castle guard and servants remain.”

  I closed the door and sought my chair.

  Seton had gone to the window. “How grand the royal carriage is. I’d never seen such a thing before today. Have you? It made me wish I were a king, if only to ride inside something so splendid.”

  “I’ve seen the royal carriage before,” I replied. “You forget, I grew up among such things.”

  “And yet you remain with the servants and not in attendance of such a momentous event?” he asked, amused.

  I picked up the vest to continue stitching, but my fingers trembled and I pricked myself. I winced and thrust the finger to my mouth.

  “Come, you mustn’t be so serious.” He removed himself from the window, came over to me, took my finger from my mouth, bent to his knees, and pressed my finger to his lips.

  When I tried to pull away, he laughed and only tightened his grasp.

  “Why must you torment me?” I asked, embarrassed to hear the plea in my voice.

  “I am the tormentor?” He drew my finger once more to his lips, which he licked slowly so I could feel the wetness of his tongue. “It is you who plagues my thoughts, you who inspires the music I pluck for this court. It is you who torments my passions!”

  My breath caught as Seton slid my finger into his mouth. A moan escaped my lips and mixed with the sounds coming from the stables. I tried to pull my hand away and this time succeeded. Seton hadn’t moved but stayed before me on bended knee.

  “Let me make love to you and ease the torment in both our hearts. Did you not know it in the moonlight last night? Did you know I did not go home but slept by the pond next to your shop?”

  My thoughts flashed to earlier in the morning—Sylvain by the window. Had my brother sensed Seton’s presence? My eyes scanned the velvet and for a second, all memory of how to create the vest fled. I tried desperately to grasp the process of stitching, cutting, pattern, and construction but the harder I tried, the less I seemed capable of remembering. If he was tormented, I was plagued.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I continued to stare blankly at the vest. “It is as if I am lost within my own life. If you are lost in the passageways of this castle I am lost in the corridors of my own heart. Which is worse, I cannot say.”

  Seton edged closer on his knees. He yanked the vest from my lap. “You have other needs besides those of the needle and thread, and in denying your heart, you have become lost, but how easy it would be to find yourself.” His hands found my knees and pushed them apart, exposing my erect cock, straining the worn leather of my breeches. “I will find you,” he promised. “I will undo what you have so carefully done.” His hands traveled up my thighs and the chair on which I sat squeaked as I squirmed under his touch.

  I wanted to shout my want of him, but could only suffer under his touch. His caress besieged me, my body a prisoner to the teasing circles his fingers now drew on my inner thighs, below my cock and balls. When his fingers found one and then the other of the swollen orbs, I grunted loudly and felt my legs begin to shake. “Undo me!”

  “I wish nothing more,” he responded, and tore apart the laces at my waist with an animal-like ferocity.

  My cock bounded free, engorged and slick with glistening wetness. I heard Seton make a pleased growl in the recesses of his throat. I grabbed the root so it stood straight up and barely touched Seton’s chin.

  “Shall I swallow your cock?” he asked anxiously. His pink tongue flicked across his lips in anticipation.

  Possessed of some demon, my hands answered his question by finding the top of his head and guiding his mouth to my cock. The way his eyes widened as his mouth swallowed the rigid shaft only enticed the demon inside me, and I responded by bucking up from my seat, forcing the full length of my hardness into the depths of his throat. When he gagged, I moved away, but he resisted my withdraw and forced me back inside. He made guttural noises of consumptive happiness as his tongue slurped nosily around my prick.

  “Take me,” I moaned, my hands forcing his head down. I didn’t want it to end. It could have gone on forever. It would have been bliss to die in his mouth, to spew my seed within the secrets of his insides. When I felt his hands reach under me, grab my ass, and yank my breeches to my ankles, I feared I would buckle to his ministrations and spill over, but I resisted only to be rewarded with the incorporation of his hands. One stroked my rigid cock in unison with his oral attentions while the other tenderly tugged at my balls.

  “Seton,” I cried out. “I beg you!”

  My plea was answered not with a ceasing, for Seton’s rhythmic motion of tongue, mouth, and clenched fist only intensified. My breath came in short gasps. Sweat soaked my shirt. I tried to restrain myself, but when Seton’s hand released my aching sack, pulled my hips forward on the chair and found its way to my ass, I knew a pleasured doom. A finger slid between and found my entrance. The thought of him inside me sent my mind spinning and my pleasured resistance vanished. I succumbed to my release. When I tried to pull myself from Seton’s mouth, he pushed my hand away with a grunt. He would swallow my seed? The realization only sent me further into the arms of my demon.

  “Fuck!” I cursed aloud, as each shudder of climax shot more of me into his mouth. I saw his cheeks bulge.

  “Shall I get you a bowl?” I asked.

  Seton spit my seed into his hand. “Turn around.”

  “Seton—” But he cut me off by pressing his free hand to my mouth.

  “Stand up, turn around and bend yourself over,” he instructed in the same sharp tone.

  I started to shake, but felt a heat inside me reach out to his commands.

  He grabbed my hips. His thighs hit the backs of my legs as he urged me to bend over. Once exposed, I felt a strange, embarrassed excitement join the burning lust raging through me. I reached and touched my ass, taunting him to take me.

  “You are as sweet as pie,” he said, the stark hunger in his voice plain. “And how I long to get inside your sweetness.”

  I looked and saw Seton’s face hungry with purpose, and his hand cupped with my seed. “Take me,” I gasped. Although I longed to say more, I was silenced when I felt the warm leak of my come and his spit trickle between the split of my ass.

  “You desire me?” he asked huskily.

  “Yes,” I answered meekly. My answer was greeted with a slap across my backside. I flinched with anticipation. A blush raced to my cheeks as I felt the sting of another slap. When I opened my mouth, I could only gasp, “Yes,” and my body moved closer to the heft of his swollen cock.

  “You shall have me.” He grabbed his cock and spit upon it.

>   I turned and could see the thin line of drool clinging to his lip. He swiped at it with his hand and pressed his cock against my ass. I whimpered and grabbed at the seat of the chair and found a scrap of the purple velvet I must have dropped. Its decadent softness only heightened the tension I experienced as the head of Seton’s cock teased the hot entrance of my body.

  He groaned as he met its resistance. “Virgin.”

  This caused my cock to begin to throb greedily. I stroked it and in doing so felt the tension ease. “Now,” I insisted.

  “Uggh, yes,” Seton replied and this time, when he pressed, I relented and felt him enter me. I clawed at the velvet, the base of the chair, my fingers scratched helplessly alongside the worn fabric of the seat cushion.

  Slowly, he slid deeper.

  “More, I need more.” The pain I felt as he entered only fed the punishing need inside me to be captured by him. I knew if I held out, the bliss of knowing him inside me would melt the pain and I would be free to enjoy his demanding cock.

  Seton pushed harder, and dug his fingers into my shoulders until I winced. Instead of asking for a reprieve, I bit hard into my lower lip and forced myself to relax and take him.

  He must have felt my insides loosen because his return thrust came faster, which forced my breath to catch, and I gulped the sex-stained air. His smell, my seed, our sweat, and the smell of hay and horse from the stables were heady and only intensified my need to be driven by Seton. I would be his stallion, if only he would ride me forever.

  “Yes,” I heard him moan as he continued his claiming of me. “I want all of you.” His hips bucked hard, sending me into a world of pain and complete bliss.

  I continued to massage my cock, each pleasurable stroke meeting the delicious pain of Seton’s thrusts. My body tensed and tightened around his plunging cock. I wanted him to find release, his pleasure paramount to my own. “Faster,” I groaned. This utterance met with furious compliance.