The Queen's Consorts (17 page)

But the sister council knew they wouldn’t do that.

Calder and Taryen were already too brainwashed by loyalty. They weren’t men at thirteen, but they were more than old enough to know they had to survive for their queen. They had to endure for their people. To die was to fail, and failure was not an option.

The council wouldn’t kill them because they were a little too useful and appealing to get rid of, but they did their level best to beat the loyalty out of both Taryen and Calder. So he suffered silently for his lifemate, for his queen, for his people.
This time like all the others.
He would let Laysa hurt him. Then he’d reward her for the abuse by pleasuring her of his own free will, because that was the deal. If it wasn’t, Calder was fairly certain he could refuse her. There was a wild rebellion throbbing through him he hadn’t experienced before, and he tried to focus on it instead of the brutality of that flogger striking him again and again, and again. He counted on instinct,
ten, eleven, twelve
, having learned long ago that to miscount was to put him back at one.

“Thirteen.” He thought his voice sounded a little stronger, more in control as he held on to that idea of finally freeing himself of the sisters’ hold on him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. If Laysa demanded it, he could refuse her. Another lash, this one harder, more furious and less trained than before, and he had to take a step forward when she ripped it away. Still he said evenly, “Fourteen.”

He could feel the warm, wet slide of blood soaking his loincloth and dripping down his legs. As always, the urge to fight welled up in him the longer she hurt him, but he stood there stoically instead. As he fought the most basic instinct of survival to maintain his dignity, the image of Sari came up in his mind, and he nearly lost the battle under the extreme urge that rushed through him, demanding he turn and eliminate the threat of Laysa now. If his will were his own, he could kill her easily, even with his wrists bound, and he wanted to, desperately.

Like Macro had said, Calder wasn’t hers, and serving Laysa felt so wrong and repulsive Calder didn’t know how he was going to manage pleasuring her now that he had Sari’s smile ingrained in his mind.

He shouldn’t be Sari’s either, but for some reason—he knew he was.

Sari realized something as she watched Taryen pull off his leather pants, revealing a firm, tanned backside she was dying to touch. The drugs hadn’t really kicked in until that moment.
Whatever she’d experienced while watching Calder and Taryen perform had been nothing but a warm-up, the first sparks that would eventually grow into a raging, deadly inferno that consumed everything in its path.
Her thoughts splintered as she looked at him, making her forget anything but a hard, driving need to touch.

Just a little.

Until that moment she’d never valued the knowledge she’d gathered from the Order of the Seven Swords. Now she wondered what he’d sound like if she got on her knees for him. She needed to be his pleasure slave for the night.

Just once.

Sari wanted to know what it was like to have someone she ached and yearned for over her, in her, loving her and making her come alive. She’d seen so much sex. She’d done so many unsavory things to survive, but until Taryen and Calder had fallen into her life, she’d never considered it a pleasing activity. Being a slave to another’s passion for her was never anything but tedious.

Now her entire being was wound up and tight with the need to please and serve.

She pulled at the tie to her gown, allowing the silky material to pool at her waist, thinking this man was literally worth dying for. “I want you,” she admitted, her voice low and seductive even to her own ears.

Taryen turned around, his concerned gaze darting from her face to her bare breasts. “I think that’s the herb talking.”

“I wanted you before the herb.”
She quirked an eyebrow at him before she felt a stab of pain in her chest.
“And Calder… What’s Laysa going to do to him?”

“A bath will help.” Taryen walked over to her, ignoring her question about Calder, even if the agony was written all over his face. He helped remove her gown, his capable hands working on the knots with a practiced ease she found arousing. “The waters are almost too hot at this time of night. They change them during the performances, knowing they’ll be just the right temperature when we get done with our after-dinner appointments. Maybe the steam will help.”

“Maybe.”
Sari fought to think clearly. She walked to the sloping side of the massive pool, trying to ignore the feel of Taryen’s hand on the curve of her bare back. She put her foot in and hissed. “Ouch!”

“The herb makes you more sensitive to touch.” Taryen’s hand ran over the curve of her hip as he stepped close enough that she could feel the evidence of his desire against her back. “It makes the pleasure more intense.
Much more
.
But it also makes uncomfortable sensations more difficult to bear.”

Sari took his hand, which was still wandering, making it obvious he was losing the same battle she was. Together they stepped into the pool. She bit her lip rather than complain about the burn. Mentally she knew it wasn’t hot enough to cause damage, but her skin was so incredibly sensitive to the touch, it twisted the dial up on the intensity of everything.

She turned to him, hoping to take her mind off the hot water. She focused on something much more distressing. “Why won’t you tell me what she’s going to do to him?”

“Because telling you won’t change anything.
It’ll only distress you, and I don’t think he’d want that.” Taryen shrugged before the crack of misery sounded in his voice. “I’m sorry.”

“Lie down.” Sari wanted to somehow erase the lines of worry at the corner of Taryen’s eyes. “We’ll distract each other while we wait.”

Taryen obeyed so quickly Sari realized it was her will being forced onto his. She wanted to feel bad about it as he stretched out on the sloping marble side of the tub, but he didn’t seem to mind as he laced a hand behind his head and put his naked body on display for her, a guilty smile tugging at his lips.

“You’re very accustomed to women admiring you, aren’t you?”

“I am.” Taryen’s smile faded. “Does it bother you?”

She shook her head.
“Quite the contrary.
I find boldness and confidence attractive.”

Taryen’s dark gaze ran over Sari’s body as she waded over to him in the shallow water, making her feel like he was actually touching her with that look.
“As do I.”

The water still felt like a thousand hot needles against her back and legs, but she ignored it as she walked along the side of the pool and found soap and a cloth resting in the corner. She went back to him quickly. “Have any of the sister’s ever cleaned you?”

“Like a servant? No,” Taryen croaked, his eyes wide as he looked at the cloth and soap in her hand. “I’m supposed to—”

“Please let me serve you.” Sari cut him off as she winced at the guilty pleasure. “At the Order, we’d clean the customer first before
we
—”

Taryen’s face showed such true shock at her words, Sari couldn’t finish. He studied her for a long, breathless moment. Fear, desire, hope
,
it all seemed to flash in his eyes along with a dozen other turbulent emotions, and it left her wondering if something much more profound than just a confession of her duties at the Order had transpired without her realizing it.

She was just about to say something, perhaps even retract the offer in shame, when he reached out and grabbed her hand. “Your pleasure is
truly
mine, Sari. Clean me if it helps make you comfortable.”

He hadn’t addressed her as he would the other sisters. He used her name, unadorned, as if he were talking to a lover rather than one he served. Sari lowered her gaze, realizing Taryen understood what she couldn’t voice out loud. She was approaching this the only way she knew how to deal with intense intimacy like this, like a sex slave, and he was allowing her the freedom to do what made her calm.

Feeling grateful for Taryen on so many different levels, she ran the washcloth over his beautiful, muscular body, admiring him as the soap and bubbles rolled off his tanned skin and floated around them in the water. Then she found his hard cock and stroked it, making the soap lather as she cleaned him. She ran the cloth over his balls with her other hand.

“Gods.”
Taryen arched, his head falling back against the marble as he let out a choked groan of pleasure. “I need you to forbid me from finding release.”

“Please wait for me.” She hoped that was command enough to keep his body in line, realizing how intense it must feel with the buildup of her cleaning him, the hot water,
the
herb making him yearn. “I know it’s the herb.”

“It’s not the herb,” he growled through gritted teeth as he ran a hand up her arm, soothing Sari rather than stopping her. “I’ve suspected it since you arrived, but now I know it’s just you. Drugs wouldn’t be required to love you, Sari.”

“I like touching you,” she admitted with a guilty smile.

“I like letting you.” Taryen’s fingers tangled into the curly hair at the nape of her neck. He tugged her down until she was hovering over him. He eyed her lips as he arched once more into the stroke of her palm against his thick, steely cock. “Kissing’s a bad idea right now.”

“Very bad,” Sari agreed as she let Taryen pull her closer, never once stopping to notice that she was bending to his will if nature intended it or not. “But touching you isn’t a great plan either.”

It seemed to be a good enough argument, because Taryen leaned up and captured her lips. He claimed her mouth in a crushing kiss that stole her breath and made her forget the hot water as a new kind of heat spiraled through her bloodstream. She fell against him, her body flattening against his. They were both naked, just slick, soapy skin against skin, and it felt
so good
. Almost like coming home. There was only one thing missing, but even thoughts of Calder faded to the background behind the white-hot rush of lust.

She rubbed herself against Taryen’s cock, feeling it slide against her stomach. She moaned into his mouth as his tongue slipped past her lips. She opened wider to the onslaught, wishing his tongue wasn’t the only thing pushing into her like it belonged there. It’d be so easy to move a little and—

She pulled back, her breath a harsh pant against his lips. “I need you.”

His breathing was labored too, and his dark eyes shone with hunger, but rather than say anything he just studied her as he ran a soothing hand over her cheek and down to the curve of her neck. His touch was suddenly a little too magical to be normal, but his healing didn’t work like it should. It inflamed rather than calmed her. Sari moaned when she felt the small flash of his lust crashing with hers. He was nearly as far gone as she was, and that knowledge was nothing less than a complete turn-on.

“What if we don’t tell anyone?” she pleaded, feeling desperate to the point of insanity. “We could keep it a secret.”

“I highly doubt that. When we do this,
everyone
will know.” Taryen choked on the words as if they physically hurt him. “We should talk instead of kiss. I think there are many things you don’t understand about yourself. Things Macro probably should have informed all of us about.”

She let out a frustrated groan and buried her face in the curve of Taryen’s neck. She inhaled his enticing scent as a distraction against the pounding need between her legs. She licked at his skin, savoring the clean, masculine taste of it.

She moved lower, feeling like an addict, licking and tasting him until her lips lingered over the place where his heart was beating hard and fast. He cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him.

“Let me free you. It’ll help clear your thinking. We’re in serious danger.
Far more so than I realized before now.”
He pushed her wild curls away from her face, his fingers getting caught in the flowers. “And I know the herb makes the denial of release extremely uncomfortable. Let me do what the gods entrusted me to do.”

She frowned. “But you took the herb too.”

“Yes, but I’m used to that sort of discomfort.”

Sari heard what he didn’t want to admit. The sisters likely left him hard and needy on purpose. Even if they couldn’t use his cock for their pleasure, they could still admire it and pretend the arousal was for them. Or perhaps they were just sadistic bitches who liked to watch him suffer while they forced Taryen to please them.

She traced her fingers over his abdominal muscles before she cupped his cock. It was still soapy and slipped easily through her fingers in a way that had Taryen arching into the caress with a low groan.

She placed a soft, reverent kiss against his chest. “You want to know what I’ve been fantasizing about since yesterday morning when you touched
me?
”

“Tell me.”

“Let me show you instead.”

She moved lower and then slid down his body, completely uncaring about her hair now floating in the bath when the attendants had spent so much time on it. She splashed water over him to wash off the last of the soap, and he grunted in shock when her intentions became obvious.

“Sari, listen to me. Have you ever considered—” His voice caught when she leaned down to lick the underside of his cock, tracing the thick vein up to the wide head of it. He tugged on her hair, trying to urge her back up. “You’re not supposed—” He let out a gasp of pleasure when her lips wrapped around him despite his protests. Her tongue swirled over the tip eagerly, and he choked, “Gods help me.”

She cupped his balls as she took him deeper, relaxing her throat muscles to make way when he was so impressively big. Taryen became pliant under her, as if anything but a complete surrender to the embrace of her mouth was impossible, and it was an extremely potent experience for both of them.

So much so, the bliss of hearing his low rasp of shuddering ecstasy, of knowing she was the one giving it to him, had Sari feeling the first breath of genuine happiness she’d ever experienced in her entire life. She hadn’t realized how truly unhappy she was until now. More than even his touch from yesterday, what Taryen was allowing her to do
healed
Sari on every level of her being. A light, bubbling feeling fought its way out of the darkness to the sound of Taryen’s pleasure, and she clung to it.