He abruptly broke the kiss and led me across the room. Beside the door, there was an antique folding screen carved from wood, only a little taller than me. He guided me behind it, a hand on the small of my back, and then turned me so that I was facing into the room, obscured behind the screen. He grabbed my clothes from the chair and dropped them next to my feet, then bent close and whispered in my ear.
“Spread your legs.”
I hesitated and then opened my legs, sliding my treacherous heels along the polished wood floor, until they were wider than my shoulders.
“Put two fingers in you.”
I blinked at the coarseness of it, flushing red, but he just smiled and watched me. My eyes flicked to the door, then back to him, but there was to be no escape. I slowly put my hand against my groin and slid first one fingertip and then another inside myself. I was already wet there, and my fingers felt amazingly, deliriously good.
He nodded. “Now stay like that,” he whispered.
Leaving me behind the screen, he walked over to the door. I heard him open it – to send the visitors away, I presumed.
It was his two business aides, the man and the woman. They talked for a second at the door. And then, to my horror, he invited them in.
There was nothing I could do but stand there completely silent while they talked.
At first, I thought it was just a joke: that he’d send them away again almost immediately. I didn’t dare move a muscle: I barely dared to breathe.
Then they began talking, and I realized he fully intended to have whatever meeting they’d come in for, whether it be five minutes or an hour, and he expected me to stand there throughout.
Silent. Naked. With my fingers inside me.
After just a few minutes, my legs began to ache. I was still standing with my legs spread wide, yet I didn’t dare move them closer: I knew my heels would squeak on the wood.
It was warm in the room. The breeze blowing in through the large windows kept the Prince and his guests cool, but I was sheltered behind the screen. The air was hot in my lungs and the temperature was still rising.
My heels had me almost up on tiptoes, the backs of my legs and the insides of my thighs burning. Standing perfectly still in that pose was even making my core ache: I kept feeling myself wavering and had to correct it before I started leaning.
This can’t go on for much longer
, I thought.
And then he offered them drinks.
Behind the screen, I tensed and balanced and screwed my eyes closed in fear every time one of them got up from their seat: what if one of them came around the side of the screen? What if I made a sound? There was no reasonable explanation for what I was doing naked in the Prince’s room.
It was so quiet, I could hear the sound of their pens as they took notes. I felt beads of sweat start to form on my upper chest.
And as I stood there, thighs straining, body quivering, I felt, unbidden, the deep, dark currents begin to stir inside me.
Oh God, not now! What’s wrong with me?
My fingers were already inside me, up to the first knuckle. I didn’t have to make any conscious effort: as my body responded to the situation, as I moistened, my fingers slid deeper almost of their own accord.
The Prince’s aides were sitting maybe ten feet away, completely unaware of me. What would they think if they found me here, dressed only in stockings and high heels, my fingers in my slickened sex?
Oh God….
I’d be humiliated. What sort of woman would do something like that? All they had to do was peer around the edge of the screen…if I made even the slightest sound….
God!
The thought of them coming over, discovering me, hauling me out naked….
Ah!
My fingers were all the way in, now. I didn’t move them: didn’t have to. The trembling of my body as I struggled to maintain my position was enough to rock me against my hand. A drop of sweat rolled down my breast, hovered on my erect nipple and dropped to the floor.
And then I heard one of them get up and walk directly towards the screen. I didn’t know who it was: the Prince? One of the aides?
The footsteps stopped, right on the other side of the screen. We were a foot apart, separated by a thin piece of wood. I held my breath.
A jacket suddenly flopped over the top of the screen, the top half of it hanging down almost in my face. The person walked back to their chair, and I let my breath out.
Everything came together, then: the fear, the heat, even the pain of my aching muscles, and most of all the fact I was doing this, all of this, because he’d ordered me to. The Prince. His Highness.
As my thighs threatened to buckle and spill me onto the floor, as the heat rose and made it difficult to breathe, as the aides discussed and planned and debated, I began twisting my hips, only daring to move an inch from side to side, rocking in a circle against my hand, faster and faster, grinding against my fingers until….
…!
I came, in a glorious, terrifying rush of heat that seemed to draw all strength from my muscles, leaving them ready to collapse. My body strained, my eyes screwed closed, and I bit my lower lip hard to keep from crying out. The spasms raced through me: I wanted to buck and twist and kick, but my only outward movement was one heel lifting off the floor an inch, my leg vibrating like a violin string as all the energy pulsed through it. As the orgasm died away, I let it slowly down with a tiny click.
I stood there on swaying legs while they wrapped up the meeting. The jacket was whisked off the top of the screen. A moment later, the two aides filed out and the door shut behind them.
Jagor appeared around the edge of the screen, and smiled. He took a step towards me and I collapsed into his arms, a puppet with its strings cut. He held me close as I quivered and shook.
“You did well,” he told me, his eyes twinkling. Just that hint of lightness amidst so much dark, the spark that let me know it was all okay, no matter how far things went. While the darkness, the way he…I tasted the word on my tongue:
dominated
me left me weak, that spark was affecting me in a whole different way, making my stomach do back flips.
“I—” My voice seemed incredibly loud after so long spent silent. I don’t know what I wanted to do: swear at him? Thank him for the orgasm?
He picked me up, one large hand under the backs of my stockinged legs, the other under my back, and carried me across the room. As we passed the windows, the cooling breeze washed over my heated body and I actually groaned out loud: that’s how good it felt. He laid me tenderly on the bed, and I automatically stretched my aching limbs, reveling at the feeling.
When I looked up, he was standing at the foot of the bed, gazing down at me. That’s when it really sank in that I was lying on the Prince’s bed. My thighs were spread from stretching my legs, the curls there damp with arousal. My breasts were shining with sweat, the nipples still hard from the orgasm. And I still wore my black hold-ups and shining black and red heels.
It would be impossible to look less like a librarian
, crossed my mind.
Then he was climbing onto the bed, and I gave a low, half-pant, half-moan of need, reaching up for him. He didn’t take off his clothes; just covered my breasts with his powerful hands, the sweat-wet nipples sliding hard over his palms and making me arch my back in delight. His hands slid under me, down my naked back and ass and around to my hips. He hooked my legs apart and I knew he was about to fuck me.
He raised himself up just long enough to shove his suit trousers and briefs down. I gasped, unable to help myself. He wasn’t just long, but thick: hard and throbbing. I swallowed hard at the sight of him as he rolled on a condom, my mind lurching with the sudden reality of it.
This is really happening: we’re really going to—
Then he was on me again, his thighs between mine, and I felt him pressing, spreading, sliding up into me,
oh GOD
straight up into me, one long thrust almost to the hilt. His hands thumped into the bed either side of me and he began to move. He was stretching me deliciously and after a few thrusts he’d filled me, the coarse hair of his groin pressing right up against me on each in stroke, the depth of it making me cry out not in pain but in pleasure.
I was in the Prince’s bed, dressed like a harlot, writhing under him as he fucked me fully clothed. That should have appalled me, but somehow it made it even better.
His thrusts increased in pace, his face drawn into a savage mask, anger and lust possessing him. This wasn’t making love: we were both far past that, consumed by our need. His hands found my breasts again, and he squeezed, first gently, then firmly, and finally, as his thrusts reached a crescendo, almost hard enough to make me cry out. Somehow, the roughness seemed to intensify my pleasure, make the liquid friction inside me more exquisite.
My hands were clinging to his arms, caressing the hard muscles there. His body seemed to cover me, hulking over me like an animal devouring me, and I threw back my head and let him. His let out a deep growl of pleasure as he suddenly thrust all the way into me and held there, his groin grinding right up against my clit, his weight heavy on me as he came. That was enough to send me over the edge, my body quaking as my orgasm rolled through me. I clung onto him, fingers finding his hair and knotting in it, until we both collapsed panting on the bed.
After many minutes, he rolled onto his side and kissed me. When he broke the kiss, his eyes were full of sadness. “I am sorry,” he said in English, the gentleness in his voice a vivid contrast to his harsh accent. “But you should go. You cannot stay here too long.”
I nodded and started to look for my clothes. It hit me that this was how it would always be: stolen moments and illicit couplings; hiding and lying. What about in a month? Six months? A year? Did he intend to keep me as his secret, or would he eventually tell the world? And what the hell would it be like when we eventually went to Asteria: where, judging from what the aide had told me on the plane, the slavery stories were very real?
I glanced over my shoulder. He was still lying on the bed, watching me dress, and that smile of his, that dark and dangerous smile, made my insides light up all over again, even in my post-orgasmic haze.
I decided those questions could wait.
Chapter Four
I stood under the shower with the spray cranked to cold. I shivered, but the freezing water didn’t cool the deeper heat inside me.
I’d crept from Jagor’s room as soon as I’d dressed. Legs weak, I’d managed to stumble back to my own room only to immediately strip off again. The rooms were air-conditioned but I couldn’t seem to cool down: hence the shower. As the surface chill gradually started to sink in. my mind began to process what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I tried to start with the small stuff.
I was in Europe. OK, I was a long way from home, but not for the first time.
I’d just kissed my old life and job goodbye: I didn’t even know when I’d see my apartment in New York again. A bigger jerk at that one. I’d
liked
my old job, however mundane it was. But I couldn’t complain about the money: Medenko had quietly slipped me a contract on the plane and I’d had to do a double-take at the numbers. And with accommodation and meals – even my clothes - paid for, all that money was just piling up in my bank account.
I’d accepted a job with a guy I barely knew with the understanding that on the side, we’d be conducting some sort of clandestine, torrid romance. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t me: this wasn’t the same woman who made excuses to avoid even the tamest, most reasonable date that Gwen set up for me.
I knew exactly what had come over me, what had pushed nice, sensible, “librarian” Lucy into the back seat and put the new me behind the wheel. The towering, broad-chested colossus down the corridor, with those eyes; those hands; that accent. When around him, I actually felt drugged: like everything was moving in slow motion yet at the same time breathlessly fast.
And what about the other side of it – the side beyond normal sex? I fingered the loose ring he’d given me, my thumb and pinky spinning it round and round. Did I want the sort of relationship where I needed a safeword? A few days earlier I would have laughed – and probably blushed – at the idea. Now…I still didn’t understand what was going on inside me, but I knew I wanted more. It disturbed me, how much I wanted more.
And all of this – Jagor, the job, our relationship, the kinky sex – it was all tied to Asteria itself. I’d be one of only a handful of outsiders in the super-secretive kingdom and if the stories were true, as the aide on the plane suggested…. I tried to wrap my head around women as slaves. What exactly would my status be, when we got there?
My legs had already been shaky: now I let them fold and sat down heavily on the floor of the shower booth, head down, freezing water plastering my hair into a wet sheet that hid my face. I was mortified
by some of what I’d done. But I wasn’t scared. Somewhere down in the pit of my stomach, where the fear should have been, I felt a warmth: a reassuring chunk of solidity like when you hug someone and they make everything okay. I trusted him: didn’t know why, had no good reason to. But I did.
Something else, too: the biggest mental shock of all, the one that made me close my eyes and take deep, heaving breaths of air that was gloriously chilled by the spray. I was in love: poor Lucy couldn’t-land-a-boyfriend, home-alone-on-a-Friday-night-again Snow. I had a nasty, cliff-edge feeling that this was The Real Thing. I could feel all those previous times I thought I’d known love changing; the memories fading and turning pale.
What now? Both in a relationship sense and in a right now sense? When I’d finally cooled down and drunk a long glass of iced water, I dressed. Then, without any instructions from Jagor, I did what any girl would do. I phoned my BFF.