The Duke & the Pirate Queen

by Victoria Janssen

  Sylvie said, “You are confident of my interest, are you?”

  She sensed rather than saw him smile. “You haven’t stabbed me yet. You do carry a knife, don’t you?”

  “You are the one who wishes to stab me,” she said with a quirked eyebrow. “Do you expect that I bestow my favors on anyone who asks?”

  “Did I mention anything about bestowing?” he said.

  “As you said before, I strongly doubt I could afford you for even an hour, unless I melted all the gold off my boots.”

  “Not even then,” she said. She leaned into his side, closely enough to feel the hard ridges of his rib cage and the swift movement of his breath. “However, I might permit you to amuse me for a time.”

  “In exchange for—”

  Sylvie trailed her fingers over the small of his back and felt his breathing change. “There are many things about which I am curious,” she said. For instance, the identity of his court sponsor.

  “The land? The sea? The stars?” Raoul looked up, pointing at the sky with one gloved finger. “Did you know that the stars move?”

  “We are the ones that move,” she said. “Everyone knows that. Otherwise there would be no day or night.”

  He touched her chin with his free hand, then again pointed upward. “The stars move, as well. Sailors know it.”

  “I hate the sea,” Sylvie said with a little shudder. When his arm tightened about her waist, she sighed and followed his finger with her gaze. The stars weren’t as bright here as in the lush pastures of her home, but still they twinkled like tiny jewels sewn into a garment. She rested her cheek on Raoul’s shoulder and said, “I am more concerned with the affairs of the earth than of the sky. The sky is so far above us, you see. What we do changes nothing there.”

  “I had thought you might be the earthly sort,” he said. He resumed walking. “There is a gazebo ahead. The roof is open to the moon. I’m told it’s very lovely.”

  Sylvie stopped, dragging Raoul to a halt. She said, “I said nothing about accompanying you to a gazebo.”

  He peered down at her. In the darkness, his expression was impossible to discern, but she heard humor in his voice. “I had assumed that your hand in my trousers could be translated as acquiescence.”

  Abruptly, Sylvie became aware of her fingers pressed against bare skin. She had not realized her teasing had led to working her hand beneath his jacket and ruching up his shirt, until she could reach beneath his waistband. Now that she was aware, she drew deliberate lines with her nails and grinned as he shuddered. She said, “Perhaps you will accompany me. I can easily imagine what I would like to do with you.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “Are you worried I’ll unman you?”

  “Hardly that,” he said. He took her free hand in his and drew it against the fall of his trousers. Sylvie opened her palm and rubbed soft linen with hard flesh beneath.

  Unsteadily, Raoul said, “I must confess, I’ve never allowed what I think you’re suggesting.”

  Sylvie released his cock and laid her hand on his chest. She looked up at him. “I will make sure you enjoy it,” she assured him. People were always more malleable after she’d had her way with them.

  He laughed, but his laughter was choked. “Lady Sylvia, I hope you cozen your clients with more reassuring words.”

  “Pah,” she said. “Make up your mind.”

  He didn’t speak for long moments. His fingers curled more deeply into her waist, his thumb moving in idle circles over the fabric of her dress. At last he said, “It’s true I haven’t mapped this experience yet. Are you willing to guide me, Madame Sylvia?”

  Sylvie slipped free of his grasp and grabbed his wrist. “You will do as I say,” she said.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll stop.”

  “A potent threat indeed,” he said, allowing her to drag him down the path.

  Sylvie led Raoul to the foot of the white gazebo’s three steps, caressing the thin leather encasing his fingers. “You will do as I say,” she repeated.

  He looked back at her, solemn and intent. She could feel the tension in his tight grip on her hand. “I will do as you say, Lady Sylvia.”

  “Go inside, then,” she said. She watched the fine view of his rear beneath his short jacket as he climbed the three low steps and went to stand inside the gazebo. Good, he was learning to obey her already. When they were done, he would answer her questions without suspicion, or at least not any suspicions that mattered.

  Once inside the structure, he tipped his head back. She remembered the gazebo’s roof was open to the sky. He ought to be thinking of her, not the stars, but…perhaps she was growing soft, because it pleased her that he thought of things other than the court and all its intrigues.

  She entered the gazebo and removed her slippers before arranging herself comfortably on the bench that ran around the inner walls. Moonlight from the open roof, coupled with low light from a hanging lantern, created interesting shadows; it might be possible to hide against one of the walls and remain undetected by visitors, unless they listened and heard breathing. “Remove my stockings,” she said. “You will have to kneel.”

  Raoul crouched before her, the toes of his boots just beyond her feet. He looked up and remarked, “You only command me to do what I would prefer to do.”

  “Remove them slowly,” she said. “Use your creativity.” She paused. “Keep your gloves on.”

  He knelt and cupped the arch of her left foot in his gloved palm. She flexed against the warm leather and he rubbed her toes between his fingers, squeezing them gently. Sylvie closed her eyes to enjoy this more fully, and was thus startled when he gripped her calf and placed her foot on his shoulder. Her skirt still covered her to the shin, but she immediately felt more exposed to him. He turned his head and kissed in the vicinity of her ankle, dragging his mouth upward and nibbling with the edges of his teeth. His beard felt softer than she’d expected, but it still rasped against her silk stocking.

  He glanced up at her. Slowly, she licked her lips. He curled one hand around her calf and slid up to her thigh, seeking the top of her stocking. She closed her eyes again, holding her breath against the moment his gloves touched her. It was still a small shock when the gentle friction of leather on clocked silk changed to smooth, hot leather on her softest skin. Her eyes met his, and as he untied knots and hooked his fingers beneath the edge of her stocking, her breathing grew unsteady. Higher, she wanted to say. Reach higher, and fill me with those fingers.

  He peeled the stocking down slowly and, at her nod, dropped it on the floor, leaving her garter on her leg. He didn’t lift her other foot to his shoulder as she’d expected. Instead, he straddled her leg, gathering and lifting fistfuls of her skirt until he revealed the beribboned garter holding her stocking to her thigh. She lifted her foot just slightly, enough to bump between his legs. “Hold still,” she said, teasing him until he could no longer control his breathing. Then she stopped and rested her foot on the floor.

  He bent low and kissed her stocking, first on the embroidered band that supported the ties, then nuzzling beneath the silk, his beard prickling on her skin. She felt his tongue flick her, then he lifted his head and untied her stocking, leaving the garter still tied around her thigh. She tensed her muscle, then relaxed it, relishing the feel of the binding. Raoul pushed the stocking down her leg, both hands stroking their way to her ankle. “And now?” he asked.

  Sylvie thought for a moment. “Bind your eyes,” she said. “Use a stocking.” With rising pleasure, she noted that his chest began to rise and fall more rapidly. “First, remove your jacket.” She shrugged off her cape as he did so, then held out her hand for the jacket. Raoul drew back, until she tossed her cape aside. She filed the information away in her mind.

  Beneath the jacket, he wore a ruffled blue shirt tucked into a waistcoat of blue and gold with flat buttons. His waist was trim, accentuated by his clothing’s cut. She licked her lips.

  His jacket was warm, and the leather
scent rose up to surround her when she slid her arms into its sleeves. No blades were concealed within, she noted with surprise. “Bind your eyes,” she said again, and this time he picked up her stocking from the floor, straightening and folding it between his hands.

  “I will tie it on,” Sylvie decided. “Remain kneeling.”

  The wood floor was cool on her bare feet, but smooth and well polished. She noted that fact absently while she picked up her other stocking from the floor, took the folded stocking from Raoul, and then laid her free hand atop his head. His short hair felt crisp and springy. She tangled her fingers among his curls and lightly scratched his scalp. He pushed into her touch like a cat and reached up. “Hold still,” she said. “Arms down.” She padded his eyes with the folded stocking, then used the other to tie the pad snugly to his head. Then she waited.

  Raoul could not remain silent for long. “What next?” he said.

  “So impatient,” she answered. She paced around him in a circle, her skirts rustling across the floor. Now that he couldn’t see her, she glanced up and saw stars thickly clustered above their heads. It was indeed beautiful. But beauty was easily found. The man kneeling before her was just as lovely, and much more pleasing to the touch.

  Decision made, she returned to the bench and sat. “I require you to please me with your mouth,” she said. “You will not touch yourself. I will take care of that later. Tell me you understand.”

  He was breathing faster again. He touched his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Is there a trick?”

  Sylvie shrugged, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Being blindfolded isn’t enough for you?”

  He bowed slightly, like a swordsman in acknowledgment of a hit. “My gloves?”

  “You will wear them.”

  She sat mere steps away from him. He rose to his feet and swayed for a moment before reaching one hand in her direction. “I’m here,” she said. He stepped once, twice, three times. She dodged to avoid fingers in the face and his hand landed instead on her shoulder.

  His fingers trailed down her arm as he slowly crouched beside her, leather on leather; she couldn’t feel very much, but the sound was evocative. He hadn’t approached her mouth or neck, and seemed likely to bypass her breasts, as well. Her respect for him rose. He was taking her at her word, and approaching her pleasure by the most direct route.

  She pulled his jacket closed around her, and deeply inhaled the scent of leather.

  Raoul opened his hands and traced them just above the floor. “I can feel where the floor is located,” he said. “As if it presses up against my hands. It’s just—” he lowered his gloved hands “—just there.” He tapped his fingers against the wood in a dull, rapid tattoo. “And you, Lady Sylvia, you’re there.” He slid his hands along the floor until his fingertips encountered the hem of her skirt.

  “It’s not entirely silk,” he said, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. He brought it to his lips; his tongue darted out to touch and savor. Arousal bloomed in Sylvie’s belly. “If it were entirely silk, it would be more slippery.”

  “It’s silk and fine goat’s wool,” she said, astonished that he’d been able to tell through his gloves. “It wears better. Also, the cost is less.” She paused. “Are you finished being astonished by all you can sense without your eyes?”

  He grinned. “Surely you appreciate sensuality.”

  “I am not sitting here to be admired like a porcelain shepherdess,” she noted.

  “I’m not fond of porcelain shepherdesses,” he said. “Too finicky and easily broken.” He gathered up fistfuls of her skirt hem. “I want to give all I have. I want you to be able to take it.” Sylvie waited to see if he would thrust it upward, or venture to her waist to unhook her skirt from her bodice. Instead, he lifted her skirt and her layers of petticoats and dragged the mass of fabric slowly over his face, then his head, before letting it fall. Abruptly, Sylvie couldn’t see him, either.

  But she could feel him. The heat of his body scorched her thighs. She felt his gloved hands taking hold of her chemise. It wasn’t as full as her skirts. She wouldn’t be able to spread her legs very far apart while wearing it. She reached out and touched the mound of his shoulder; then she heard a ripping sound, and felt it, as well, deep in her cunt.

  Raoul’s gloved hands gripped her bare thighs, squeezing gently. He crouched lower, and she felt his hot breath on her inner thighs and on her mound. He inhaled deeply, and she felt coolness before a thin stream of warm air teased through her pubic hair. She closed her eyes at the wash of sensation.

  His hands crept higher, pressing her thighs apart. Sylvie did not resist; she leaned back against the wall, letting her legs fall open more widely.

  Time passed.

  “I do not have all night,” she snapped.

  Raoul laughed. He turned his face into her thigh and laughed some more. “I see you are overcome with pleasure.”

  “Not yet,” she said bitterly. “And after such a promising beginning, too.”

  “Promising, am I?” One of his gloved hands landed atop her mound, pressing in lightly. The leather pulled at her hair, almost uncomfortable, but her sensations were confused at the moment. With his other hand, he followed her thigh to her abdomen, and from there found her lower lips. Delicately, he spread them with opened fingers, and Sylvie bit back a whimper.

  Another stream of air hit her inner heat, and she gasped and grabbed his shoulder through layers of skirts. “Kiss me,” she demanded.

  He understood; he leaned forward and pressed his open mouth to her cunt, his upper teeth rubbing at her clit. She cried out, then swiftly muffled her voice with her hand. She had no desire to accidentally summon royal guardsmen.

  Raoul’s lips felt impossibly soft against her soft inner tissues. His tongue probed, sharp but delicate, finding the narrowest folds to explore. And all the while his gloved hands gripped and released, gripped and released, in constant underlying sensation.

  She wasn’t sure how long it continued. She wished she could reach through her skirt and guide his head, force him to more intensity, more of the occasional delicious nudges of his teeth behind the softness of his lips. “Your hand,” she gasped. “Your finger.”

  His right hand shifted, and then his gloved finger had breached the entrance to her passage, thicker and less slippery than a finger. The abrupt stretching almost hurt, and she laughed and gasped at the same time. “More!” she demanded. “Fuck me.” To convince him, she braced her hands against the wall and shoved herself toward his hand.

  He pushed back with a hand on her stomach, and she would have protested, except his finger entered her more fully. The leather of his glove was slippery with her fluids, but even so, as he thrust his finger in and out, leather dragged at her skin in a way that ought to have been uncomfortable but instead excited her more. She threw back her head, her mouth working with sounds she could not utter.

  Raoul’s mouth returned to her cunt. He tongued along the edges of his finger where it vanished into her flesh, outlining the extent of his penetration, making her all the more aware of how lusciously he stretched her. “More,” she said. She lifted her hands to grab his head, then let them fall, frustrated by the interference of her skirt. She would not be able to feel him through the fabric. She could only feel him beneath it, intensely and unmistakably fucking her with finger and mouth. She seized the lapels of his leather jacket and twisted them in her hands, desperately resisting the need to cry out, and cry out loudly.

  Raoul’s lips closed around her clit, soft, so soft. No hint of teeth now. She needed more intensity than that, and then he gave it to her, thrusting harder with his finger, turning his hand so his thumb could rub against her outer lips, adding another layer of sensation. She clenched her inner muscles on his hand, in a hard rhythm with his fucking, and immediately shuddered with a small climax, then another, then another. His gloved finger was much slicker now, moving quickly, almost too quickly for her to grasp with her cunt. She tightened on him
and gasped; he sucked hard on her clit; and then spasms rent her apart, her legs shuddering, her belly twitching, and deep inside, her cunt pulsing with long throbs of release.

  She fell back against the wall with half-closed eyes, gasping when he withdrew his hand and a residual orgasmic shudder passed through her. Raoul lifted her skirt and backed out from beneath it, dropping to a crouch in front of her. As she watched, he lifted his gloved hand to his mouth and thoroughly sucked each finger clean.

  Her eyes drifted down and noted his state of readiness. “You may remove the blindfold,” she said, taking care not to let her voice slur. She could easily have fallen asleep. She had not, she remembered, had sex in more than a week because she’d been busy pursuing information. Though she could view this, too, as being in the line of duty.

  Sylvie rose to her feet and shook out her skirts. Raoul, also now standing, was having difficulty with her knots; she took over and untied the blindfold herself, dropping her stockings on the floor.

  His eyes met hers. He didn’t speak, but his lips parted slightly.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He drew one finger along her cheekbone. “You look even more lovely than you did before, Madame Sylvia.”

  “How so?” He didn’t need to flatter her, and she wasn’t sure she liked that he had bothered. She was about to give him what he wanted, after all.

  His finger left a warm tingle in its wake as he traced the short length of her nose and shaped the corners of her mouth. “Relaxed,” he said at last. “Did we do that together?”

  Of course she was relaxed. That was one of the purposes of sex, after all. She reached down and cupped his genitals, to remind him what they were about. A gentle squeeze and caress told her his interest was still high. “I need to know something,” she said.