The crew served us lobster and a crisp white wine. Ismelda explained what she’d lined up for us.
“I thought we should start slowly,” she said. “It’ll be afternoon in Paris when we land. The only thing I have set up for you this evening is a drinks reception with some French dignitaries.” She frowned, as if personally offended. “The president can’t be there, but several ministers will be.”
That was starting slowly? I’d met a few VIPs as Jagor’s aide, but this was different. Instead of just hanging back and nodding politely, I’d be expected to talk to them. I glanced down at my clothes.
“Don’t worry, Exkella: I have a temporary dresser for you until you get to Asteria. She’s already putting your wardrobe together; you can change when you land. There will be a dress for tonight’s reception and suits for tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Sightseeing.”
Even our downtime was being meticulously planned. I sighed. At least the nights would be ours alone. I smiled at the thought of Jagor and me alone in an upmarket hotel room.
Ismelda was blushing. “I, ah—I also asked the dresser to get the items you requested for the Exkella, Your Highness.”
What?
Jagor smiled. “Good. Even—”
“Yes, even the red underbust corset.”
I’d been wrong. Apparently, even what happened in the bedroom wasn’t private. I glared at Jagor. “Could I speak with you in private, please?” I said tightly.
Ismelda sensed the storm brewing and departed. When the door had closed, I wheeled on him.
“You ordered
lingerie
through your retinue?” I demanded. I was mad as hell: we’d been apart for what felt like months, and now I finally had him back I wanted it to be about
us.
He shrugged. “Lucy, you’re going to be my wife. I think they suspect we have sex.”
“But in Monaco you went to all that trouble to
hide
what you bought for me....”
“When you were my aide, it was inappropriate.”
“Well it’s
inappropriate
to discuss my underwear with your assistant! How come she knows about this...this corset before I do?”
He was frowning at me. “I enjoy buying things for you. Do you not enjoy wearing them?”
I remembered the constricting, delightfully sexy corset in Monaco. The way he’d made me wear it out in public. “Yes, but—”
“And you know that I’ll own you, soon. And choose your clothes for you, or at least guide your choices.”
He sounded different. He hadn’t moved, but he seemed to be closer, somehow, as if he’d grown larger. The back of my neck prickled.
“I don’t care, Jagor,” It was weird, using his name. I’d got used to
Your Highness.
“I don’t want you discussing me like that. Like I’m some...some....”
“Possession?” His eyes were gleaming now and his lips twisted into a smirk.
My face was hot with anger, but I had the weirdest feeling. It was like I’d been furiously pedaling a bike, only to crest the hill and find there was a steep drop on the other side. Only instead of braking, I was pedaling even harder. “You don’t own me yet!” I snapped.
It was almost as if I wanted us to be arguing.
“But I will soon,” he told me. “I’ll own you, Lucy; you will wear my collar and do
exactly – as – I – say.”
I just glared at him, too wound up to speak. Even though none of what he said was a surprise; even though I
wanted
to be owned by him. This was crazy: why would I want us to be arguing? Why would I bait him? And I could see something else in his eyes, now: a hint of laughter. He was enjoying himself.
“I think you need to start getting ready to be owned,” he told me.
“Ridiculous!” And I did something I’d never done before: I actually stamped my foot like...well, like a spoilt princess.
What was going on?
“Do I need to teach you a lesson, Lucy?” he asked.
Oh.
Suddenly I understood. Understood why I was gasping for breath, why his presence seemed to swell and touch me even though he hadn’t come any closer. Why my legs felt as weak and unsteady as a newborn foal’s and a dark, delicious heat was spiraling down to my groin.
“Do I need to teach you a lesson?” he asked again. He wasn’t smiling: not with his mouth, at least. But in his eyes I could see it; the sparkle that told me this was play, that he’d never hurt me.
You were worried it wouldn’t be like this anymore,
a little voice in my head sang out.
Time to find out.
“Yes,” I said very quietly.
“What was that, Lucy?”
“Yes,” I told him more clearly.
He smiled and walked past me to a chair. As he sat, he suddenly grabbed my waist and pulled me down across him, drawing a surprised yelp from me. I wound up lying over his lap, my head hanging down and hair trailing, my legs kicking in the air.
I suddenly knew, very clearly, what it was he had in mind. He’d spanked me before, but that had been in a dimly lit private bedroom, after hours of build-up and teasing in public. This was in broad daylight and unexpected: he was throwing me over his knee on a whim. “I—Jagor, I didn’t mean—” I’m not sure whether I was protesting for his benefit or my own.
It didn’t matter.
He took one of my hands in his and I felt something cold push onto the ring finger of my right hand. I didn’t have to look to know what it was. The safeword ring. He’d kept it. He’d ignore me, unless I took it off.
I felt my skirt wrenched up, and then my panties yanked down to my thighs. I gasped and tried to get up, but the soft leather armchair was huge: my hands didn’t touch the floor and I had nothing to push on. “Stop,” I moaned. “Don’t—Someone might....” I looked at the closed door, behind which Ismelda was no doubt waiting to come back in.
The firm muscles of his thighs flexed beneath me, settling into a comfortable position. His huge hand rested on my naked ass for a moment, the skin deliciously warm. “They may come in. They may not.”
I swallowed. “I—”
His hand seemed to rise and fall all in one instant, the
crack
as it hit exploding around the cabin. I cried out in shock and sudden pain, the heat flowering and spreading across my ass. “AH!”
“If they come in,” he told me, “They won’t be shocked. Do you think they’ve never seen a man discipline a slave before?”
I started to speak, but his hand fell again: I actually felt the
whoosh
of air this time ahead of it. I yelped and struggled, my breath coming in hoarse gasps now. His other hand burrowed under me, seeking my naked sex. He cupped me and I moaned.
“Perhaps I should ask Ismelda to come back in here....” He paused for effect. “To hold you down.”
The thought of it made me go weak: the image of her tight, disapproving face glowering down at me, her hands on my shoulders as Jagor spanked me. His hand swung down again.
Crack!
“That’s three. I think you deserve ten,” he told me. His hand whistled down again, the pain exploding out like fire across my skin, but a deeper heat blossoming inside me. The hand on my sex started to massage me roughly and I let out a long, low groan. I could feel how wet I was.
He spanked me a fifth time and my long bare legs kicked in the air, red heat crackling outwards down my thighs. His fingers were on my folds. Between them. “Ahh!”
Jagor started to growl, a low rumble that set every one of my nerve endings twitching, making me pant harder and faster. His fingers suddenly strummed at my clit and I was bucking and shaking, my hair a tangled curtain as my head thrashed. He spanked me five more times, faster and faster and on the final one – even though I’d long since lost count of where we were – I came, my knees pulling up to my body, my head pressed hard against his leg.
He slowly turned me and sat me up. I was red-faced and panting, all the blood having rushed to my head. I hadn’t cried, this time. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“Better?” he asked me, and it was about much more than the argument.
“Better,” I gasped. And it was. My question had been answered: I was his exkella and soon to be his wife, but I was going to be his slave too. Wife sex
and
slave sex. I could live with that.
***
When we landed, a limo whisked us away. A Renault, I noticed, with what looked like government plates. I wondered if the whole French government had to drive Renaults.
I’d presumed we were going to a hotel, but we stopped outside an apartment block. Medenko led us inside and into a private elevator. When we emerged, we were in the penthouse: a sprawling apartment with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and servants’ quarters. There was a small staff – by palace standards – just a chef and a butler. A small army of maids would visit while we were out each day, we were told.
The apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows with views out over the city: I stood right in front of one with my arms stretched out along the pane, and it felt like I was flying. There was apparently a rooftop garden, too.
We’d been there perhaps five minutes when the entry phone buzzed. I suspected whoever it was had been there cautiously early and had been cooling their heels across the street until they were sure we’d arrived. I wasn’t used to inconveniencing people: my whole life until then had been about standing in line without complaining and working late at a moment’s notice.
The bodyguards carefully vetted the newcomer and then showed her into the lounge. She was a petite blonde woman, no more than 5’4” even in her towering heels. She glanced at me and I saw her eyes date, price tag and identify the brand of everything I was wearing. She gave a very discreet sniff of pained disapproval and then curtsied, as if she’d done it many times before.
I was embarrassed, but a little part of me was singing inside. Someone was curtseying to me!
“There’s no need to do that,” said Jagor, walking in. “Lucy is the Exkella: she’s not a princess yet.”
Aww!
The woman rose smoothly, as if she hadn’t been curtseying to me at all, and curtsied to him, instead. “Your Highness. Exkella. I am Patricia Bosse-Rameau.” She spoke in quick, heavily accented English, the syllables ground smooth as beach pebbles. “I am here to assist the Exkella with her wardrobe.”
I marveled at the way she made
assist
sound like
help the American idiot who has no concept of style.
Jagor kissed me lightly on the back of the neck. “Then I will go.” And he left me alone to the cruel mercies of Patricia.
First, she made me get out the suitcase I’d brought from New York. When I’d left Asteria, I’d left behind all the clothes Jagor had bought me, so these were my own clothes: what I wore for the UN. They weren’t expensive, but they were perfectly serviceable blouses, skirts and heels.
Patricia lifted things out one by one, her expression carefully neutral. Then she put everything back and stepped back from the case.
“Do you wish to wear any of these clothes, or would you prefer an entirely new wardrobe?” she asked. Her tone was neutral. Very, very neutral.
“Um. I think perhaps a new wardrobe would be a good idea?”
She nodded quickly and closed the case. I think she would have locked it and thrown away the key if I’d let her.
Patricia measured me in about a hundred different places, not writing any of it down. Then she pulled out a smartphone the size and thickness of a playing card and spoke into it in machine-gun French.
“Your clothes will arrive in fifteen minutes,” she told me. “I will ask your chef to bring coffee while we wait.”
***
One whole side of the living area opened onto a balcony, so we sat out there while we sipped dark, smoky French coffee and talked. Patricia apparently flew around the world doing what she was doing now – fourteen cities, by my count, in the last few months – but was back on home turf to help me. After several minutes of feeling incredibly unstylish and dull by comparison, I was surprised when she asked, “Exkella, if I may ask: what is it like?”
I actually thought she meant the UN. In my mind, I was still
Lucy Snow, translator.
I caught myself just before I said
quite interesting if you like languages, but the headphones hurt your ears.
“Being the Exkella?”
“Asteria.”
I kept forgetting that no outsiders ever saw it. “It’s...like Prague?” I’d never been to Prague, but I’d seen photos. “Very old, with a lot of money.”
She wasn’t interested in the architecture, though. “Is it true what they say about the women?”
I thought I could just detect a blush through all that ruthless efficiency. I was going to have to get used to explaining it, I realized, even though I barely understood all the details myself. “Depending on what you’ve heard...yes, probably.” There was a pause, and I wondered which of us was more embarrassed. “Was there something specific?”
“You are...owned, Exkella?”
“I will be, yes.” It felt strange to say it.
“And the Prince, he may use you as he wishes?” I saw her swallow. “Dress you...take you...punish you?”
“The Prince treats me with great kindness and care,” I told her. “But yes.” Patricia caught her breath and I saw something in her eyes.
Longing.
I thought back to Gwen. God, how many of the women I met were going to have this reaction? I was starting to wonder if there was a huge, untapped sea of secretly submissive women out there.
The entry phone buzzed and suddenly, with a last flush of the cheeks as she drained her coffee, the ironclad Patricia was back.
***
Everything fit beautifully: although knowing Patricia, if it hasn’t she’d have formed the fabric into shape by brute willpower alone. There were stylishly cut suits – a shade less obvious than those Jagor’s dresser had bought for me, but no less sexy – with shoes to match. There was a range of what Patricia called “traveling clothes’: jeans so tight I wouldn’t be able to slip even a credit card into the back pocket, a three-quarter jacket made of snow-white leather and a selection of sweaters and tops. All this despite the fact that sometime in the next week, the process would be repeated in Asteria and I’d have another new wardrobe.