“I love your ass, Lucy,” he told me. “It’s perfect.” He leaned forward and kissed it, hard and firm, in the centre of one cheek. His fingers moved infinitesimally inwards towards my sex, and I twisted, trying to coax him to touch me. “Not yet,” he chided me. He paused, and I knew what he was going to ask. “Has anyone ever taken you there?”
“No,” I managed. It was suddenly hard to breathe.
His fingers inched in toward my sex and began circling. I gasped and twisted again, wanting them –
needing
them on my core, but he moved with me, foiling me. “Never?” he asked.
“No. Never.”
His fingers were barely touching me: only the lightest brush of the pad of each fingertip, like a butterfly’s wings. It was maddening – every time I twisted and moved, trying to get them to land on my sex, he’d allow it just enough to raise my hopes, to keep me moving. But he’d always move with me just enough to keep them clear of where I needed them. I felt like a parched sailor taunted with a cool glass of water. It seemed to open up a direct line between his questions and my deepest, darkest desires: it was next to impossible to lie.
“Would you like to?” he asked.
My instinct was to say
no.
But it wasn’t the truth. As the initial shock of the idea rippled through my brain, making me tense and gasp, the
idea
of it, the forbidden nature of it, seemed to arc straight down into my depths and ignite something there – a twisting, shameful fire that made my stomach lurch with guilt.
Except there was no need for guilt. I was his slave, and if my owner wanted it and I happened to enjoy it…well, that wasn’t my fault, was it?
“Yes,” I whispered.
His fingers played higher now – he was standing, and I imagined how his thighs must be flexing, his naked body straightening up, the tight globes of his ass clenching. I wanted so badly to see him, but I had to stare at that featureless wall, completely reliant on sensation.
His hands were sliding up over the corset now, following its curves, slowing until they were barely moving, making me wait for the instant when they would finally…touch…my…breasts.
They hovered over them, not quite touching, and I had to resist the urge to push forward, to fill his palms with my flesh. I could feel my nipples puckering and stiffening at the closeness of his presence. He stepped closer, and I felt the hot hardness of him against my inner thigh. His mouth was at my ear, nuzzling there for a second, and then: “Tell me, Exkella.”
I swallowed. Admitting I wanted it was one thing, but actually
asking
for it?
“I…I think I want to try it.”
He didn’t move, just licked the outer curl of my ear. I knew he wanted more.
“I want to try it.”
My whole body was rigid with the tension of not touching him, of holding myself back from those wonderful hands. His mouth at my ear, licking, letting me know it wasn’t enough.
“I want it…
there
.” It turned into a gasp as his hands captured my breasts, my swollen nipples rasping against his palms, his fingers squeezing. He pushed me against the wall, his body molded to mine. One hand slid down to my aching sex and his fingers found me; opened me. The hard curves of his chest pressed against my back, my breasts pillowed against his roving hand and I moaned, my cheek against the cool wall, as fingers slid inside me.
“Open your legs,” he commanded, and I opened them without thinking, my wider stance dropping me, forcing me to stretch up with my arms. I felt myself flower open around his fingers and my eyes fluttered closed as he pumped me. I heard the foil packet tear and then the rubber sound of the condom: my insides fluttered, because I knew what would come next. He drew me backwards slightly, making me bend at the waist and arch my back. My heels were just barely on the floor now; I was utterly his, powerless and open to him. I felt his fingers slide from me, and then the head of him, hot and thick, pressing for entrance at my swollen lips.
I groaned as he slid up into me, my insides fluttering at the smooth thickness of him. It felt so different from when I was on my back. Facing the wall, restrained, all warning taken away from me, I had to guess what he was going to do next: whether he’d go fast or slow or deep or shallow. And yet it wasn’t like being taken by some faceless stranger; I felt
him
as clearly as if I could see him; my lover, my prince.
His hands were on my hips as he rammed himself into me, his size stretching me deliciously, my breath coming in hot little pants beneath the corset. Being unable to see seemed to enhance the sensation; I felt every millimeter of him, thrilled at every breath in my ear.
And then, as his steady rhythm carried me higher and higher, I felt his finger, slickened with lube, circling my ass. I was helpless, and not just from the cuffs: the dark fire inside me was far too powerful to deny. He pushed the finger gently into me and I groaned, eyes opening at the new sensation. There was no pain, just radiating pleasure. As he took me I could feel myself gradually getting used to his presence there: relaxing around his finger. And as I relaxed, he moved deeper.
His other hand slid around to my sex, drawing a sharp cry of surprise from me as it started to circle my throbbing bud. I was grinding my hips now, pushing back to meet his thrusts. He added a second finger, his hardness and his pumping fingers working together to coax me higher, higher. He had me on the verge when he stopped and suddenly withdrew from me. I stood there panting, unable to speak, as his fingers left me, too. Then the head of him was nestling between my cheeks.
“God—” I said suddenly. He paused, and I knew he’d stop if I wanted him to. But I wanted it, wanted to see what it was like, wanted to feel him there. “Go on,” I told him. “Do it.”
He put one hand on my hip and the other on my sex, circling my swollen, aching bud again. I ground my hips back against him and as he pushed I felt myself opening. “Ahh….”
His body was pressing tight against me – we were almost one as he moved on me, millimeter by exquisite millimeter. My eyes were wide, staring at the blankness of the wall, and I could almost see the two of us there, the tableau was so vivid in my mind. Me standing legs apart, collared and cuffed, arms stretched up above me, back arched like a bow. Him behind me, thrusting into my upraised ass, his mouth at my ear, his fingers at my core. He moved again and I groaned with the tightness, and then he was in me, sliding up into me, and
God
, the impossibly intimate sensation of it…. It was to normal sex what tongues are to kisses on the lips.
He was gentle, and it was me, spurred on by his circling fingers, that started to push back against him, wanting more of him. My legs were straining and quivering with the intensity of it, the core of me slick and hot from his ministrations, when finally I realized he was all the way in me, his groin pushed tight against my cheeks.
We stood for a moment like that, my hands twisting and jerking almost unconsciously at the metal ring – not trying to escape, just venting the sensations, the sexual heat of having him there. When he started to move in me, rubbing my bud in time with his thrusts, I became entirely
his,
every thrust vocalized through me; not in pain, but from the feeling of pure tightness, of feeling every inch of his size. His thrusts built to a frenzy and I cried out, long and hard, as I tipped over the edge, a raging dark red heat that made me thrash my head, my hair covering my face as I came and came and came.
***
Later, cuddled in the darkness, his chin on my shoulder, he asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I whispered. Then, half-joking, “But I’m not sure how.”
I felt him smile; even princes aren’t above the most basic ego boost of all.
Chapter Nineteen
When I think back to that night – the night it all went wrong – the first thing I recall is the rain. It was the first real rain we’d had in a while, and it seemed to wash all of the summer out of Asteria and leave autumn behind. I watched it pelting down from the back of the SUV and cuddled into Jagor’s chest.
A week had passed since the yacht; a week of early morning training with the Queen and careful, small-scale public appearances with Jagor. We’d heard nothing more from Sarik, but we were due to see him at the opera party that night. It was some highly traditional and very popular work by an Asterian composer, but when Jagor admitted that even he found it utterly impenetrable, I pretty much gave up on deciphering it. I sat next to him, my hand in his, and let the music wash over me, marveling at conceits like the opera glasses, the private box. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for all sorts of things to happen in the private boxes – particularly the royal ones – but not at an event where we were the guests of honor.
Time seems to slow down in my memory, as we get closer to the event. We saw Sarik and Telessa on the stairs and he smiled and waved. When he came close enough to speak his tone was completely different. “I’ve found something,” he told us. “We need to talk: somewhere private.”
Jagor looked around at the crowd. We were expected for drinks with the cast, the producers and various well-heeled patrons of the arts. “After the party,” he murmured. “Find us, and we’ll go somewhere quiet, even if we have to drive there.”
We separated from them, then, and wound our way down a grand staircase. The reception was in the opera house’s lobby: waiters glided through the crowd with trays of champagne and a crystal bowl fully six feet across had been used to create the biggest flower arrangement I’d ever seen, with hundreds of snow-white roses and vivid green trailing ivy.
Jagor stopped beside it to talk to some dignitary. We’d somehow managed to miss all of the waiters, and after four hours of Asterian opera I needed a drink. I spotted a waiter by the doors and began to work my way through the crowd, a watchful bodyguard just a few paces behind me. It was Stavo, one of the two who’d
looked
at me in the boutique at Monaco, what felt like months ago. Now that I understood, I’d grown a lot more comfortable around him and, now that I wasn’t baiting him or trying too hard to talk to him, he’d relaxed around me.
The waiter had his attention on someone else, and I’d almost lifted two glasses from his tray when he looked around and saw me. I remember his mouth opening wide in panic when he saw who it was. I smiled and gave him a little wink.
There was something like the opposite of sound, as if the world had drawn its breath before shouting. I felt something heavy and soft thump into my back and I was flying, smashing into the waiter, my mouth open in shock, mirroring his. I remember seeing tens of shining champagne flutes tumbling through the air and wincing, thinking they were going to hit me.
Then the noise washed over me: a roar like being next to an express train with no time to clap your hands over your ears.
There’s some time missing, then. I think two or three minutes, because when I came to, or came out of shock, I couldn’t hear sirens yet.
There was smoke – an acrid, grey-white haze that burned your lungs. I was lying on top of someone – he was face down but breathing and I realized it was the waiter. The fog in my head gradually cleared and I tried to get up, to get off the poor man, but there was something on my legs. I kicked and kicked, panicking, and eventually got free and rolled over. The weight on my legs, the thing that had hit me in the back, was Stavo. He was dead, the back of his suit just rags and blood.
I became aware that the lobby doors were bare, like trees in winter: all the glass in them had gone, and the street outside glittered. There were white roses everywhere, some of them spattered with red.
I looked behind me, at where the crowd had been. There was no-one standing. A few people were kneeling, and sobbing or screaming. There was no floor: just bodies.
The flower arrangement had gone. My brain finally woke up and reminded me that that’s where Jagor had been.
Strong hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled. I was dragged out of the lobby and into the street, just as I began to scream hysterically. They kept dragging, so I thrashed with my arms and legs, still screaming. In the middle of the street, they stopped and someone got in front of me. A man all in black.
“Exkella!”
I didn’t understand.
“Exkella, it’s Captain Sorovic! We’re taking you to safety!’
The crash team.
“Jagor’s in there!” I was screaming. I couldn’t stop screaming. “Jagor’s in there! Jagor’s in there!”
“We know. Three of us will take you, the rest will get him.” They half-walked, half-dragged me to a military vehicle. Sorovic got in the back with me. We sped off almost before the doors were closed.
“Are you hurt?” Sorovic wanted to know. I looked at him blankly. “Exkella, are you hurt?” When I didn’t respond, he gently turned me and checked my back for blood. I was shaking.
Jagor’s dead. Or lying in the lobby, bleeding to death.
“I want to go back,” I told Sorovic. “I want to go back and find him.”
“We need to get you to safety. My men are searching the lobby for him now. They’ll bring him to the safe house.”
His phone rang and he spoke into it: quick bursts of Asterian. The vehicle we were in wasn’t designed for comfort; it was military-noisy, and we were surrounded by wailing sirens. I couldn’t hear what Sorovic was saying, never mind the other end of the call.
A few minutes later, though, we’d cleared the center of the city and the sirens were far behind us. We stopped at a red light and there was just the clattering of the engine.
“We’ll see you at the safe house,” Sorovic was saying. He’d been almost shouting over the noise, and now he lowered his voice.
“Good work. See you there.” That was all I heard of the man on the other end – he’d been shouting too, and didn’t know it had gone quiet at our end. Five words, innocent enough.