Pleasure and Purpose (39 page)

He didn't mind, though he enjoyed dancing. King Allwyn's court had been a bit duller than Cillian's, for the new king sponsored entertainments every night. Since his appearance in court, Alaric and Mina had attended the entertainments every night for close to a full sevenday.

"Your wine, my lady."

"Thank you." She took the glass and sipped. She might not dance, but her toes tapped in merry time to the music and her cheeks had flushed rosy to go along with her gleaming eyes.

She was the most beautiful woman in a room full of fine-featured ladies, and he could only stare like a sudden, gape-mouthed fool when she smiled.

"Alaric?"

He'd worried her. Knowing it warmed him more than her smile. He took the chair next to hers. "You are like no other woman in this room."

She laughed. "I stand out amongst all the others?"

“To me.”

She cupped his cheek. "You're very sweet."

The music changed from a simple country tune to one of the newer, more fashionable dances Cillian had commissioned. Alaric hadn't yet learned it, but he looked to the dance floor anyway.

"Are you certain I can't convince you to allow me to escort you for a dance?" Mina patted him. "I'm sure. But you go. There are a number of unaccompanied ladies who look to be fair itching for a partner."

This suggestion puzzled him. "You'd not. . . mind?"

"Why should I mind, sweetheart?" Mina lifted a brow. "It's custom in Firth as in other places, is it not, for men and women to dance together even if they're not wed or betrothed?"

Neither of which they were, he was reminded. "Yes, but—"

"Then go enjoy yourself," she said.

She wouldn't be jealous, was what he thought she meant to say, but knowing that was true didn't sit well with him. Reminded she was with him for a purpose and not from pure desire, Alaric frowned.

"Oh, don't put the pout on," Mina teased. "Go. Dance."

"Do you order it of me?"

Her smile faded and something dark crossed her gaze. "Do you push me to do such a thing, here, in front of your peers?"

"And if I do?"

"Then there are many other demands I could make of you that would better suit me than to have you dance with other women."

The thought of it, of being so attuned to her command he would follow even in public, aroused him. She saw it, he knew she did, and it echoed in the rise and fall of her breath and the slide of her tongue across her lips.

"But I shall make them later," Mina breathed. "Now. Go." So he went, if only to prove to them both how obedient he could be. Alaric joined the dancers as they lined up across from one another and found himself partnered with a sweet-faced girl he thought he might have known, if only she'd have kept her eyes on his face and not at the floor. She had a familiar giggle, but perhaps he only thought so because she sounded so much like so many of the women there. Had he made love to her? The touch of her gloved hand told him nothing, nor the sly smile she gave him as they turned and went down the row to the end of the line in time to the music. She fluttered her eyelashes at him but made no move to speak, though a good part of the dancing was usually spent conversing with one's partner. This dance, though, switched off partners readily, and in the next round he stood across from another woman entirely. This one he had no doubts he knew. This one didn't waste her time with a simper. She gave him her hand, though.

"Puppy," Larissa purred as they moved close and then apart. "What a pleasure." Even a week before he knew he'd have reacted, maybe even making a spectacle of himself right there on the dance floor. And she'd have eaten it up, he saw by the gleam in her eyes. She'd have reveled in watching him perform for her. Of watching him make a fool of himself in front of his peers.

Not like Mina, who might have asked him anything with the assurance he'd do his best to comply, but who'd required nothing that might make him look the fool. Larissa loved having reason to condescend and even better, reason for anger. She must have been expecting a different reaction from him. In the past she'd have left him no room to wonder about her feelings but now she only stared.

They bowed and circled one another. Larissa eyed him. "You look . . . different."

"And yet you look exactly the same," he murmured as he took her hand to move down the row.

It wasn't time to change partners just yet, though he might wish to escape her. Larissa squeezed his fingers and pulled him closer than the dance required. Alaric allowed it but only because he could see Mina from across the room.

He might have made a scene, before, but now there was no need. Nothing Larissa could do or say could prompt him to it. Not even when she pulled him closer and the metal box pressed again at his belly.

"Your lady keeps you on a rather long leash."

"Perhaps she knows I'll come back to her without being short-tethered." The music ended just then, and before they could begin to call the next, the crowd parted and closed around them. Larissa made him move to the side of the room. Against his belly, the metal box scratched.

Larissa leaned close and put her hand on his waist. The metal pressed him. She had to feel it. Larissa smirked.

"My, my. Has my boy been visiting you? I didn't think you still. . . indulged. I heard you'd gone off all that."

Alaric swallowed his retort. Larissa studied him. Really studied, not just swept him up and down with her gaze to make him feel as though his appearance was lacking.

"You never used that garbage when you were with me."

Alaric slid a hand into his shirt and pulled out the box. It fit just right into his palm. Inside, the contents rattled. "No, Larissa. I never used it when I was with you, no matter how hard your 'boy pushed it."

She ran her tongue over her lips in a gesture that had fascinated him in the past but now left him cold. "I heard you went deep, Puppy. What a shame."

"I wish you wouldn't call me that."

"If wishes wore saddles, I'd have no need of a pony." She laughed, a bright and tinkling sound like chimes of glass. Larissa lifted a brow and looked purposefully at Mina. "You might have done more for her, Puppy. You might have at least dressed her properly. It is your place, you know, to provide for her."

The crowd dispersed around them, another dance starting. Alaric didn't join it, and neither did Larissa. She ran a finger across the lace at his cuffs.

"She's kept you tidy, I see. But then you always did clean up rather well. It's a pity you haven't seen fit to do the same for her."

Before he could reply, she laughed in his face. "You've no idea what I mean, do you? Oh, by the Arrow, you do so amuse me more when I need not tolerate your simple head every day."

The words stung but he only smiled.

Larissa's laugh died in her throat. "She's a Handmaiden. Yours. You're bound to provide for her. Clothes appropriate for the season and activities. Food. Shelter. Whatever she requires, it's yours to provide. And yet you parade her about in the same shabby gown she's worn most every day since her arrival. What, she has but the two, yes?”

Alaric's eyes went to Mina, now chatting with Cillian's betrothed. It was true, she wore the same gown, but he'd become so accustomed to the sight of it he hadn't noticed it was the same one. Larissa laughed again.

"You serve her quite poorly. More poorly even than you served me.

"I served you with everything I had!" he cried, pricked at last into anger. Larissa blinked, then reached a hand to flick the lace at his throat. "Ah. The puppy bares his teeth."

"You chose to end our relationship after accepting my ring. You chose it, Larissa, not I. You agreed to become my wife and you . . ." He couldn't continue, not without raising his voice and drawing attention to them both.

"You've not learned a thing," she told him. "Don't you know there's no joy in requiring submission from a man who never, ever, bites back?"

"I never wanted to bite you," Alaric said. "I loved you." Larissa could be cold, and she could be cruel, but now she looked at him with a fondness he'd never thought to see again. "If you'd loved me less, I would have loved you more." Thoughts swirled, but no words came out. Alaric felt the touch of her hand on his cheek but it was gone before he could react. She sighed and shook her head.

"Take care of her better," she advised. "Responsibility goes both ways, Alaric. Spend all the time on your knees before her that you desire, but don't forget to take care of all she might need, as well."

The music swelled and Larissa left him, only unlike before, this time, Alaric was still standing when she went.

"Tell me about yourself."

Mina looked into Alaric's grinning face and leaned back on the pillows. They'd spent a leisurely hour in the bath, after which he'd rubbed her skin with fragrant oils and carried her to the bed. Now he was feeding her grapes. It was a bit of silliness, a role-play with him the part of the hareem boy, but it pleased them both and did no harm.

"Hmmm," she mused. "What would you like to know?" She had no quarrel with talking about her past. Unlike many of her Sisters who chose to come to their patrons as unmarked parchment, Mina had ever believed her duty required her to give her patrons of herself, a task made too difficult if she kept herself locked away.

"Anything. Everything." Eagerly, he knelt in front of her on the bed.

"What's gotten into you? Invisible Mother, if you don't stop wiggling the bed, I swear we'll both fall off." She studied him, looking for signs of the drug in his eyes and skin, but saw none.

He leaned in to stroke a hand down her side to rest on her hip, and when she tilted her face up, he kissed her mouth. "I just want to know you, Mina." She laughed against his lips. "Oh, Alaric. What do you think you might need to know?" His mouth moved across hers and over her cheek, down her throat, across the tops of her breasts. He kissed a path down to her belly and rested his head there. "Something you've never told anyone else."

This gave her pause. She touched the softness of his hair but didn't stroke. "If I've never told anyone else, what makes you think I'd tell you?"

"Because soon you'll go away. And I'm safe."

His breath slipped across her skin and warmed her. So did his touch. She couldn't deny what he said was true, though how he'd guessed it, she didn't know. "I would imagine I'm less interesting than you believe, but very well. Something I've never told anyone else. Let me think a bit."

He kissed her belly and slipped his arms around her. He hummed with his lips on her skin. Tickled, she laughed and tugged at his hair until he left off to look at her with that same mischievous grin.

"I lied about my age when I joined the Order."

This was clearly not anything like what he'd thought to hear. Alaric sat upright, eyes wide. "Did they ever find out?"

"If they had, sweetheart, do you think that would qualify as something I never told anyone?" She did, in fact, believe at least a few of the Mothers-in-Service suspected she wasn't as old as she'd claimed, but none had questioned her.

He laughed, chagrined. "No. I suppose not."

Alaric settled back against her and Mina contented herself with running her fingers through his hair. So soft, the color of good, rich butter. . . no, sunshine, she decided. Summer sunshine. And, amused at herself, she sighed into laughter. He looked up at her again. "Why did you lie?"

"Because I wanted desperately to become a Handmaiden. It takes a long time to train for the position, but unlike many other vocations, the Order won't take a girl under the age of ten-and-six into apprenticeship."

He hummed again on her belly and slid a hand up her leg. Alaric nuzzled into her as though he couldn't bear to have one measure of his skin not pressed to hers. She liked it, Mina thought as her fingers stroke-stroked along his scalp. This closeness.

"Why did you want it so desperately?"

"Because nobody believed a girl of ten-and-three could possibly know her own mind. I could be betrothed, even wed should my parents will it. I could bear a child. But command myself? Never." Mina shifted and her voice lowered as her fingers twisted.

"And command another? Unthinkable."

He stretched against her, not pulling from the tug on his hair but leaning into the embrace. "You knew, so young?"

"Oh, my sweetheart, I have ever known I was meant to control, not be controlled. I knew it from behind my mothers skirts, I knew it when my body changed and first drew the hungry glances of my father's friends. I knew it before the first time I had a man on his knees before me."

She didn't miss Alaric's small groan. She smiled and pushed his head lower. He obliged at once, sliding on the sheets to move between her legs. She parted her thighs for him, already arching her back to press herself into his hot, wet mouth.

"But at ten-and-three, nobody would believe I could know this. So, I left my house and went to the Order, and I. . ." She sighed as his tongue found her clitoris. Her words expanded, melted, dripped from her lips without making sense.

With Alaric's mouth on her, working her flesh to ecstasy, Mina's mind opened to the first time she'd been so pleasured. The Mothers-in-Service who'd accepted her into the Order hadn't pressed her for her age, but they'd kept her in training long enough it didn't matter if she wasn't of consent when she joined. Years had passed while she studied. More years than most of her Sisters had to face, but then her natural inclinations had led her down some more . . . strenuous . . . paths.

Stephan, the man brought from the fields to the house, had been the one they chose for her, the first man to act the part of patron. Mina had never asked him how many young women he helped to initiate into the role of Handmaiden, but she knew without question she'd been the first to take him instead of the other way 'round.

Alaric shifted and added the stroke of his fingers inside her. Mina moaned his name, urging him on. His mouth worked in time with his hand, bringing her fast to the edge but holding off at the last moment, keeping her burning.

"I learned how to make people give me what I wanted in a way that satisfied us both." She drew in a breath and ran her tongue over her lips, tasting salt. They rocked together. She let him take her away with his touch. She let him bring her back with it as well. She cried his name when climax shook her, and it tasted right as though she couldn't have said anything else.