Pleasure and Purpose (3 page)

"Did I hurt you?"

"No."

Her cunt was hot, as he'd imagined. Slick. Tight. Her body embraced him, and his cock throbbed. He thrust inside her once, twice, in reaction rather than conscious effort, and she murmured something wordless.

Edward stilled, finding his control. As much as his body craved the mindlessness of fucking, his mind didn't readily relinquish its focus. He moved again inside her, water slopping between them. Her breasts moved enticingly, and he closed his fingers on her nipple, tugging. She made that noise again.

He thrust inside her again, harder, seeking swift release. She let out a sigh as his fingers rolled her nipple, the noise so sweet and perfect his balls contracted. He wanted to fuck, to grab, to press and pull... to bite ... he gave himself up to the ecstasy and pulled her closer, his hand finding the base of her braid and pulling to expose the line of that beautiful throat.

His teeth found her skin. He had to taste her. Fill her. Fuck her. Own her. Her cries grew louder, and his senses sharpened. Heightened. Harder he thrust, hand fisted in her hair and his mouth sucking greedily on her skin. He grabbed her other breast, then found her nipple with his mouth and suckled that as well, moaning at her flavor, salt and sweetness mingled.

He was going to explode. He fucked harder. Limbs tangled. His knee banged the side of the tub. Water sloshed between them like the sea against rocks.

She cried louder and a thread of alarm brought him back to earth. He was being too rough. Too fierce. Yet he couldn't stop now.

Stillness let out a last, shuddering cry and hot liquid erupted from his prick. His mind wanted to go red with it, but he held back, knowing to give totally into such passion meant being lost.

He loosed his fingers from her hair and sat back, panting. Her throat bore the mark of his sucking, a small red-purple bruise. She would likely bear the signs of his attentions elsewhere as well, and he swallowed guilt.

He caught his breath and looked at her, expecting stunned grief or the glint of anger, both expressions he'd seen on the women he'd taken to his bed in the past. She was smiling.

"Handmaiden."

"My lord."

"Get off me."

Her smile faltered, but she did as he said. Edward, shamed of what he'd done, pushed her aside and got out of the now cool water. He dried himself. The looking glass showed his face, stern, flushed with self-reproach. He looked away. Behind him the water splashed onto the tile floor and he heard the slap of wet feet.

"Have I displeased you?"

He tensed, expecting a touch, but Stillness didn't touch him. That she was there to provide him with absolute solace didn't excuse what he'd done. He could have taken his pleasure without causing her pain. Without speaking, he left the bathroom, and her.

His sudden change of behavior surprised her, but Nessa didn't hesitate to follow him. Her gown had remained dry and she pulled it on, doing up the buttons as she went after him on bare feet. She found him standing in front of the fire, no longer naked but clad in a loose spidersilk robe.

There were five positions of the Waiting, the folded position that was the staple of a Handmaid's existence. Nessa, uncertain what she had done to displease him, knelt with her heels beneath her buttocks and her body stretched out on the floor in front him, her hands placed flat on the ground next to her head in Waiting, Remorse.

"I plead your mercy. Tell me how I displeased you—"

"Don't. Don't do that."

Nessa looked up at him. "If I've failed—"

He stared at her, his expression unreadable. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting."

"That's not what you were doing earlier!"

"There are five positions in the Waiting," she explained, trained eyes taking in his tense shoulders and grimly curved mouth. "I was in Waiting, Remorse, for I've displeased—"

"You haven't! Get up!"

Her patron turned from her, breathing hard, his face still flushed despite the release he'd taken in the bath. After a moment, she moved forward quietly to put herself into the line of his vision. If he'd wanted her gone, he'd have ordered it.

A good Handmaiden did more than judge when to serve tea and how hot to run a bath, more than clean a messy room or help a patron dress and undress. The Handmaiden's purpose was to provide solace, for each soul that found it would send another Arrow to fill the lord Sinder's Quiver. Only when his Quiver was full would he and his wife and son, the Holy Family, return to bring peace.

There was more to solace than understanding how to create physical comfort. Handmaidens needed to create mental ease, as well. It took time, skill, instinct and intuition, and Nessa took no small measure of pride in her ability to guess the needs of her patrons, to offer them what they needed.

But what did her patron need? She'd thought her body, the release of tension. Yet his reaction, after, puzzled her. She'd failed. She needed to understand him more completely.

"It takes time," she said after a moment, voice quiet, "to understand what you need. I plead your mercy for having failed you."

"You didn't fail me." Edward's voice was cold. Distant. He kept his back turned to her.

"I'm here to serve you. But woman I begin and woman I shall end. I'm not a magicreator, nor a reader of minds."

He turned stiffly, giving her his profile. "I shouldn't have treated you as I did in the bath." This gave her pause. "You didn't wish to make love?"

His short, sharp burst of laughter had little to do with amusement. "That was not making love. That was fucking."

Her mouth curved slightly. "Did you not wish to fuck me, then?"

"I did. I did wish it." He scowled.

"I don't understand."

He turned to face her, reaching out to flick open the hastily fastened buttons at her throat. He touched the base of her throat, where his teeth had left their mark. She waited for him to speak, and when he didn't, Nessa wracked her brain to think of what he might wish to tell her. Her fingers touched the sore spot, which even now gave her a thrill at the memory of how he'd felt inside her.

"Are you worried about this?"

He nodded stiffly. "There was no need for it."

She spoke cautiously, treading with her words as carefully as she'd have stepped with her feet on uneven ground. "There was need, else you'd not have done it." Her patron stared into the fireplace. "There is never need to cause another pain for one's own pleasure."

"It's a small wound, only," she hastened to assure him, but he wasn't willing to listen.

"No wound is small when done apurpose!"

Again, Nessa hid her smile. "I assure you, I wasn't harmed." He looked at her. "The marks on your throat say otherwise." She dared a step closer. "Sir ... as your Handmaiden, I'm bound to serve you as best I can. To that end I will do what is needed, be it dusting your shelves or taking you inside my body. It is my purpose to do these things, but you must trust me when I say it is my pleasure, as well."

He didn't believe her, she could tell, and her sympathies roused for the man whose nature pulled him so fiercely in such opposing

directions. She took one more step closer, taming him as one tames the fox in the field. His face worked, fleeting emotion in his eyes she couldn't discern, before he stiffened and gave her his back again. "You are dismissed. I rise with the dawn. You may attend me then."

It wasn't her place to argue, and Nessa did as he'd told her without protest or a second look back.

A
nd this one," said Cillian, "can be heated in the fire." The Prince of Firth held up the long, thin metal rod, his green eyes alight with glee. He waved it, then hung it back upon the hook in the wall. He stepped back, admiring his collection, and turned to Edward.

"I do so love acquiring a new toy. Almost as much as I enjoy a new girl for my hareem."

"My lord Cillian," said Edward without pause, "one can only marvel at your . . . taste." Cillian, unaffected by Edward's disapproval, laughed. "Ah, Edward, my dear one, don't tell me the sight of them doesn’t get your cock fair to aching!"

"The girls or the toys?" Edward leaned against the heavy table and watched Cillian loosen the ties of his cravat.

"Both, of course." Cillian tossed the fabric to a naked woman who folded it neatly, waiting as the prince tossed off his jacket. She took that, too, and handed him a ribbon, which he used to tie back his fall of red-gold hair.

"You do have an exquisite hareem, my lord, but as for the other—"

"As for the other," snapped Cillian, "I know you better than you do, Edward. You long to have a woman on her knees before you. You yearn to watch the stripes appear on her skin when you flog her. You like to fuck her wet, hot snatch as she cries out your name and bleeds from your touch—"

"No," said Edward sharply. "You're wrong in that." Cillian looked at him closely. "Perhaps not that."

When Edward said nothing, Cillian sniffed and took off his white shirt, tossing it without heed to the naked maid. "You can deny your nature to yourself, but you can't deny it to your cock. Tell me you don't get hard at the sight of that."

He jerked his chin toward the nude woman in the center of the room. Her wrists were bound to the cross of ironwood. Her unbound hair, the color of shadows, flowed over skin the color of milky tea. Her legs were secured at the ankle, parted just enough for Edward to glimpse the tangle of dusky curls.

"I'm not here to discuss my bedroom antics."

"No?" Cillian grinned and hefted the flogger in his left hand. He trailed the thin leather straps over the back of his right. "Why are you here, then?"

"Because your lord father wished me to discuss the plans for your upcoming appointment."

"As Minister of the Council of Fashion." Cillian swung the flogger. "Ah, the sound of it is as nearly wonderful in the air as against her skin. Don't you agree?"

"The Council of Fashion is no less important a post than any of the others." Cillian stopped. "Spare me the merry ego stroke, Edward. I'm being granted the minister position to give me something to do besides fuck and drink and gamble. Isn't that right? And as my dear father doesn't trust me enough to give me a position which has real effect on the government of Firth, he's settled it that I'll get to oversee the length of trousers for the upcoming season."

"It's not my place to judge your father's decisions."

Cillian flung him a look so venomous it would have made a man unused to such ire step back. As it was, Edward merely braced himself for the flood of cursing he expected to follow.

"My father," the prince said in a surprisingly even tone, "pays you to play nursemaid to me. Placate and soothe my. . . irrational urges. To keep me in line." He smacked the flogger against his forearm, and though it left a red mark, he didn't even flinch. "Isn't that true, Edward?"

Edward had to admit it was. This agreement brought Cillian no joy, however, as evidenced by the cloud that crossed his fine features.

"My father pays you to keep me happy as well, does he not? Isn't that part of your duty, too?"

"No man can make another happy, my prince," said Edward with a hand over his heart and a half bow to soften the retort.

"Same as it ever was." Cillian snapped his fingers and a woman scurried forward with a jug of worm, of which Cillian quaffed a great mouthful. "And yet. . . not the same." Edward had learned saying nothing was more often the better course when dealing with the prince. Cillians answering smile was that of a man baring his teeth to barricade a scream. The prince wiped his lips and handed the jug back to the maid.

"When they deemed me fit to return to polite society," Cillian said, "it was with the understanding I'd never really regain the status I had before. No monarch wishes to wed his daughter to a madman, even one so dramatically recovered." Cillian grimaced, looking around the room. He let the flogger s trailing tails caress his arm. When he looked at Edward again, his eyes glinted with anger but his voice stayed calm.

"He didn't want to have to do it, you know. Didn't trust you. Has never trusted you, Edward, not since we were lads in school. It's made your place difficult, has it not? Being out of the king's favor, settling for the shite assignments. You could've sought a different trade, perhaps, but your own father was desperate for you to hold a higher place than he had. Spice merchant, wasn't he? Got his place in court by sheer hard work. Is that right?"

"You know it is." Edward kept his back straight, face without expression.

"It's what fathers do, isn't it, Edward? Hope their sons are better than they? What do you suppose my father thinks of me?" Cillian's laugh sounded like breaking glass. "No, he didn't want you at all, Edward, my dear one, but I insisted. My old school chum would keep me under control. He didn't want it to be you, not after what happened . . . what we both know happened . . . but it had to be someone, didn't it? And so now you have a nice house out of the city, and your table is never empty, your wardrobe never out of fashion. It's been good for you, hasn't it, my dear one? Looking after me?" Cillian's green eyes had gone dark with emotion.

"Yes, Cillian," replied Edward coldly. "It has." They stared that way for a few moments, much being said without being spoken, and Edward remembered how he'd once called this man brother. Then, at Cillian's whim, the moment passed. He swung the flogger against the back of his hand. "Ah, such a sweet sting. Are you ready for it, my dear one?"

The woman tied to the ironwood cross murmured and shifted again, the pink slit of her sex glistening. Cillian looked back at Edward with a grin that belied the tension between them.

"I don't give a virgin's fart for the Council of Fashion, Edward. Not about the difference between peacock and sky blues, nor about the cost of wool and silk, nor about trade routes or any other of that rot. Someday I'll be King of Firth and until then, I'll play as I wish. You want to know my plans for the minister position? What if I decree that all women should wear nothing but collars and men attire themselves in cock rings and codpieces?"