Born for Silk (The Cradled Common)

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Aster

Silk Girl Vows:

For The Cradle, I will guard my seal of purity.

A voice stirs me.

The Endigo’s snarl coils around me. “Your tongue can’t be trusted, little girl. Let’s take it off for you. It gets you in so much trouble.”

I wake up to those words and a rumbling stomach. I cover my face, breathing into my palms.

Panic and anguish coil together in my mind, growing in size with each new thought.

‘You will never speak again.’ ‘No more questions from you.’ ‘Your tongue can’t be trusted.’ What about my Meaningful Purpose? What about all I have endured to get here? The nights I convince myself it would be better here, the split toes from ballet training, the hope of being a Sired Mother. The loneliness and optimism and perseverance.

The ball in my head pops.

Jolting upright, I fist my pillow and toss it across the room, knocking a small fertility statue over, the thing falling, shattering across a black boot.

Wait.

My eyes shoot up from the steel-capped boot to see Rome sitting in the dark corner of the room on the large red leather sofa I’ve yet to sit on.

Radiating confidence, he is leaning back, his thick arm draped over the high rest. His chest is bare—shirtless— and shadows dance across the deep grooves of his abdomen.

I swallow.

He stares at me. “You dream.”

Shit.

I’m not ready to see him.

My pulse thumps so hard the thin column of my throat seems to protest.

I have so many things I want to say, ‘get out’, ‘why?’, ‘you’re a monster’, ‘I trusted you’, ‘I liked you’, but my mouth only peeps open before closing on a thought: ‘You will never speak again.’

Never speak again…

The image of my tiny hand scooping that small bird up comes to mind. I seem to always seek meaning from my oldest memory. After all, it must be there for a reason.

Maybe the useless little thing didn’t try to escape, wasn’t brave or determined to spread its wings. It simply hit the glass because it was ignorant and confused about its situation and place in the world.

I feel ignorant and confused about mine.

Upside-down bird.

Upside-down bird.

“Are you hurt?”

I turn my face from him and roll my shoulder. There is the dullest of aches, but nothing new to me, given I have been bullied and shoved around my entire life.

“Answer me.”

All the contradictory messages suddenly pull me in every direction. This way—'you’re weak.’

And that way—‘I am enamoured with you.’

This way—'get out.’

And that way—'are you hurt?’

I can usually roll with the punches; I always have. Iris. The Endigo. A life of servitude. No questions. No answers. But lately the punches have been soothed and kissed and I don’t know how to adapt to kindness after cruelty.

I suddenly let a quick, pathetic little sob break from between my lips. Then, wipe a single defiant tear away.

He rises to his feet.

“Aster. You’re in pain.”

He walks toward me, and I shuffle backward along the bed, not wanting him to touch me— melt me.

“Don’t do that, little creature.” Darkness barely conceals the regret in his gaze. “I lost my temper. I’m here to make amends, dammit.”

He could slide on and stalk me across the mattress, but he doesn’t. He circles the post and comes to the side, sitting down, facing away from where I huddle.

Outside of the shadows now, his muscular back is completely visible, a landscape of stories written with angry scars and tattoos.

“Fuck,” he mutters, thrusting his hands through his hair and dragging them down his face as if to tear at his thoughts. “You missed dinner, too.”

That is what he has to say?

I missed dinner?

I sit in confused silence, and my soul is not as content with him as it was with the queen.

Nope.

It is on fire.

When he finally turns to stare at me, my shoulders fall to behold the regret in his blue gaze.

I don’t care.

I will not forgive him.

But… But I want to hold him. My hand twitches with need. The need to run my fingers down his thick neck again. He liked that. He practically purred as if the beast inside him was being stroked and tamed.

“Say something. That is a direct order. Did I hurt you?”

“Yes,” I admit, but not the kind of pain he means. “I’m Fur. Did you know that?” I want him to know. So he can send me away to a new catchment, once and for all. I can be a Silk Girl to another lord.

Never see him…

Never see him again.

Stop this whiplash.

For good.

Another small tear slides down my cheek.

“That is why I am unfit to be a Silk Girl.” I add. “ Different . It must be.”

“You’re not unfit,” he says, curt.

He stands up and nods toward my cloak, which hangs on a silver claw by the closet. “Put on your cloak. I’m taking you to get something to eat.”

I blink at him. My body is frozen on the mattress. I admitted to him that I am Fur, not just Common but born amongst outlaws, that I wasn’t born to be a Silk Girl originally, that my need for Meaningful Purpose didn’t start in the womb, and he…

“Did you hear what I said, Sire?” I press.

“I heard. I know what you are. Better than you do. Now, do as you’re told. Cloak.”

I don’t like that answer or its ambiguity.

I stand up in my night dress, the ends skirting the flooring, tickling my toes. “I am awful at my Trade.” I square my shoulders at him and peer up, immediately shadowed by his giant frame. “Yes,” I press on despite looking like a mouse agitated with a bear. “I ask too many questions. I’m suspicious and pry. I consider the world, now and before, and why it is the way it is. This is true. But you, you started this thing.”

I pace in front of him, focused on the floor before each step. “You held my hand and pretended to care. You saved me and carried me to your military vehicle—you could have made someone else do it. You organised oatmeal with honey for me. You cornered me in the banquet room and... Now you’re here, in this room while I have no veil on. You blur the line of our appropriate interactions. Why? Why do that to me? I could have been well-behaved. I could have if you had kept the line between us.”

Breathing hard, I stop my back-and-forth and stand in front of him with my hands gripping my hips.

I peer up at him and… I blink. He is grinning. Not smirking but actually grinning. I’ve never seen him grin. It- it transforms his face.

How patronising.

How annoying.

I smile back.

“You’re so tiny.” His lips only widen and while my knees buckle under the beauty of his grin, his words irritate me.

So tiny…

Drained to the point of mindlessness, I relent and watch him retrieve my cloak, coming up behind me.

A warm caress rolls down my spine as he drapes the cloak on my shoulders and lifts the hood over my black hair.

“You need to keep your head low. Hide your pretty face. Do you have any energy left after that little outburst to do as you’re told, little creature?”

Drained, I simply nod. I’m too emotionally exhausted for much else.

My stomach rolls, the movement large enough to speak volumes for the hunger I’ve been quelling.

Still behind me, he says, “I want you to know that I heard you.”

I exhale hard, closing my eyes and holding them like that as he speaks. With his chest, large and hard, so close to my back, he warms me to my bones.

“I blurred the lines because I don’t want the lines. I apologise if that confused you. I was thinking of myself, and what I wanted.”

His huge hand moves to the side of my neck, sliding down to massage the shoulder he wounded.

“I will make amends for hurting you,” he whispers, a deep baritone of dark promises. “Now. Follow me. Chin to your chest. Don’t let anyone see your face or I will have to kill them.”

That last phrase widens my eyes.

The door opens, and I am walking into The Circle, with his looming body a barricade behind me, before my next thought can surface.

I amble slowly through the holding space.

The cloak cuts across my eyes but I risk looking at the Guard who is passed out on the floor by the entrance. What about the other girls? They aren’t secure.

Rome’s body presses to my spine, and I realise I have stopped moving forward.

“Move forward, girl,” he states, and I continue taking a step at a time down the dark corridors.

Girl? He never calls me that.

His hand grips my neck through the fabric of my cloak, heat wrapping around my throat with his long fingers. Despite my best efforts not to, I hum from the sense of security he brings.

I stumble.

Concentrate.

I’m too busy watching my step from under the seam of the hood that I can only take in the hues of the lamps reflecting on the polished white and gold flooring.

We turn and enter a room with heavy white double doors, the floor decor changes to grey ceramic tiles, the scent of sizzling butter swirls around my nose.

“Out while I eat,” Rome suddenly orders, his voice proceeding the sound of pans and other metal items being placed down, and quick, nervous footsteps.

Then silence.

It’s unsettling, yet I like the energy his power creates. I only wish he wielded it with more kindness.

I hear my breath in my ears.

Rome lowers my hood. Bright lights make me squint. I peer around to see a large kitchen fit to create banquets, fitted with triple ovens, twin stone tops, a walk-in fridge, and a long, wide shiny steel island bench for preparation. This space is so clean, it sparkles.

When I feel his hands on my shoulders, I inhale quickly. His knuckles caress the skin at my collarbone as he slides my cloak off my shoulders. He lays it to the side.

Vulnerable like this, I hug myself. The material of my white night gown is thin and slightly translucent. It’s the same one that every Silk Girl wears to sleep in.

Rome lifts me to sit on the island bench, my legs dangling, toes just free of the hem of my skirting.

Warmth pools in my belly and makes me squirm.

He moves close.

My mind blurs as he stands, an intimidating wall of muscles, only a head taller than me now.

And I’m not sure I like it. I’m scared of being this close to his lips. Lips that snarl and hurt me, but that I want to touch with mine.

I look at him. Study him.

It’s bright in here so I can identify the different blues in his gaze and understand his state of mind from his deliciously dishevelled hair and large black irises— he is wearing all his remorse on the outside right now.

I like seeing him.

The real him—Rome.

Concerned eyes move over me, stopping at my shoulder. He lifts my arm, inspecting the entire length, then the other. He brushes his finger over a small grass wound from when he dropped me. “My temper is a problem. My sister…” He sighs roughly, changing the course of his sentence. “This will not happen again.”

His stare is paralysing when he lifts his hand to my lips and traces the curves. I part my mouth to let him explore the flesh. His fingers are warm, firm, demanding.

“I like your lips,” he states, then sweeps my hair over my shoulders, exposing my bare neck. “And your throat.”

“Because you want to strangle it?” I ask, sad, throwing his own nasty threats back at him before he can do it himself. Warn me. How awful he is. I know. I saw.

He drops his hand.

Picks up mine and places them on his bare abdomen.

Shit.

He’s like a rock—course and unforgiving.

I stroke the rippling muscles as they respond to my touch as if his inner beast presses back, demanding more gentle attention. He grips the counter on either side of my hips, his knuckles turning white as he leans in. Caging me. It feels intimate in an emotional way—a wholesome way.

Like he just wants to be stroked in privacy with me.

“No,” he says, his voice deep. “Not because I want to strangle it.” He leans down and presses his lips to my pulse.

And. I. Almost. Explode.

The warmth from his mouth currents across my skin, rising hairs and tightening my nipples.

He groans at my response to his soft, barely-there kiss.

I close my eyes.

More.

Touch me.

Touch me.

My body starts to vibrate, burn, and my core pulses.

I rock my hips into the space between us, lifting my chin and inviting more of his mouth.

He accepts. Dragging his lips upward from my throat to my chin, where his teeth trail along my jawline.

I part my knees and shuffle forward to the edge, wanting his body to fill the inches of space between us. Before my backside can slide off, he presses his hips to catch me, his hard length meeting the soft, warm delta between my thighs.

He grinds against me, his abdominals bunching beneath my fingertips as he applies pressure to that spot—that spot. Yes .

I drop my head back further as his lips roam around my neck, down to my collarbone.

He nips it.

Drops to my heaving chest.

He skates his lips over my hard nipples, tormenting the aching beads with very little attention. I wonder if that is for him or me—the light touch.

Will he combust if he does more?

I will combust if he doesn’t.

“Please, my king.” I don’t know what I am asking for. I do. And I don’t. “Make it stop.”

A groan leaves him, his shattering resolve thickening the air. I pant its heavy, dark essence into my lungs as he releases the counter to position my feet on top.

My hands leave his abdomen as I lean backward, placing them behind me to brace my torso on an angle. I don’t know what he is doing. It— are we going to do it here?

We can’t.

It’s against the rules.

I thrust my hips in the air and his mouth hovers over my dress as he slides down to my breasts, taking his time. He kisses my nipple. The subtle stimulation reaches inside me and draws out a moan.

He continues leisurely over my stomach, stopping between my legs, where he nuzzles the place that yearns for attention—pressure. He mouths me over my dress, and I shudder from hundreds of tiny electric shocks.

“What are you doing with your mouth?”

This was not in my studies.

“My king?”

Between one confused thought and another, Rome has pushed my skirting to bunch at my hips.

Between my ‘no, this isn’t right,’ and my, ‘please make the need stop,’ he has torn my knickers down the centre and snapped the threads at each leg, stuffing the tatted remains of it into his front pocket.

My brain turns to mush.

With me exposed and weeping with demand, he straightens. Groaning under some kind of restraint, he stares at me open for him. All for him.

I can feel the wetness between my thighs cooling in the air and know that he can see it.

I pant as his hungry gaze penetrates the slit between my thighs, its heat driving in deep. So deep, I almost feel him, what he wants, what he’ll do.

“I’m going to keep you,” he declares, tracing a thin scar on my inner thigh leftover from Iris’s attack months ago.

One of his hands wraps around my upper leg, holding me, while two thick fingers touch the swelling valley between my lips, sliding up and down with ease.

I blush from my ears to my toes.

“You blush really pretty for me, little creature. Mm . I have thought about this pussy,” he tells me, moving his fingers in the warmth from my entrance, then lower, to a place that should not be touched. Ever. But he explores the outside of every inch between my thighs. “I couldn’t have even imagined this . And I imagined it a lot. So, so fucking sweet.”

He uses his thumb and forefinger to open my lips.

I close my eyes, unable to watch him staring so intensely at me there.

“Your hymen is perfect.” The warm tip of his finger slides around something strange and sensitive inside me, as though mapping the dimensions. “I don’t want to ruin this, but fuck. Fuck. I have to taste you.”

He moves. I hear it.

Then his hot mouth is on me, lips open and sucking at my centre while his thick tongue flattens and laps at me.

That does it. I drop to my back on a throaty cry, my legs spasming and shaking.

“Mine,” I hear the word rumble through me.

The overwhelming size of Rome, in comparison to me, has my pelvis pinned to the counter under his weight.

And the pressure.

Yes.

The pressure is everywhere I need it.

"Fuck. I've wanted my tongue inside you since that first day in the parlour."

Writhing, I reach for his hair and tug on it, pulling him away and pushing him down. “Is this— Is this normal?”

He reaches up with his other hand and wraps it around my throat, bracketing me to the counter and sending me a message—'Nothing will stop me.’

He uses his thick tongue to part the folds of skin that protect the place I've barely ever touched and never seen.

I open my mouth, moaning, my eyes squeezed shut, veiling the reality of where we are and what he's doing so inappropriately with my body. And how I want more of it. I'm insatiable with need for him.

I don’t know how long he licks and mouths me, or what sensation is what, or what my name is, but my ears are burning, and my spine feels like it might snap, and then?—

He turns his mouth and sucks on something higher than my opening, a bundle of nerves tightly pressed together.

Over and Over.

It feels like my bones seize-up, agonising and wonderful, like reaching out and touching death’s fingers without the pain, on the edge of something, a sensation that eclipses everything else.

I moan long and hard, writhing against his face. Shuddering, heart thrashing, feverish— Am I dying?

His tongue thrusts into me as I convulse around it.

Terrified of what is happening inside my body, my moans mix with whimpers as I ride the wonderful sensation despite my fears.

The pulsing, the electricity, the heat and tightness, slowly dwindle.

Bringing me down.

Lowering me.

Unfolding me.

When it’s all over, sweat mists my forehead and slides down my temples. My palms meet my face. I pant into them as he hovers over me, the heat from his body rolling along mine.

“You’re safe, sweet Aster. My sweet Aster with the sweetest pussy and the softest moans.”

“Is that what you felt?” I say, reeling from that otherworldly experience. “When I pleasured you?”

“Let me see you.” When he pulls my hands away from my face, his blue eyes dive into mine. "I'm going to do that,” he purrs, his tongue lashing out to taste his lips as he talks, “every time I need to make amends. It will be often, little creature. I’m short-tempered, but I'm keeping you. Understand?”

I blink at him, floating. "How?"

"Just obey me. Do as I say. I'll spoil you. You'll always be safe with me."

"Always?"

Questions fire inside my brain all at once: what about when I’ve finished birthing? What happens then? He must mean, until then. Correct? Until I’ve fulfilled my Meaningful Purpose. Then I will be a Sired Mother, and…

Blossom’s words echo in my hazy mind, ‘nothing lasts forever. Enjoy it while it lasts.’

Okay.

I can do that.

Can’t I?

He strokes his knuckles down my blushing cheek. "Look at you. Dragged into depravity with me. Embarrassed by how much you enjoy the way I lick your wet pussy."

“My what?”

He taps my nose. "Now that I've eaten. It is your turn, little creature.”

Aiding my shaky body, he helps me sit again, my muscles like goo, my brain mush—all my anatomy basically loose and gummy. I like it.

He grabs a muffin from within a glass dome container and holds it out for me, the fluffy pastry looking small in his big hand.

I take it, but notice it’s got a dollop of that yellow pudding stuff on the top. My nose creases for a moment but I soften it. I’ve never been a fan of it. We were served it on apples in the aviary.

His brows furrow. "What is it? You don't like something.”

"No. It's fine.” I smooth my silken gown down my legs. “I’m dizzy, is all.” I lower the muffin to my lap. “What did you just do to me? What was that part of me at the top, a… button … or something, that you touched?”

“You know all about my anatomy, but the part of you that is specifically for your pleasure, you know nothing about. Interesting.” His nose dips into my hair, and he hums. “I will show you very soon. I will take you on a little tour of all the pretty parts that will make you moan for me. But, for now, tell me what is wrong with that muffin."

I try to focus. "It's fine, my king.”

He leans back to stare down at me. "Fine is not acceptable. Ever. Tell me what you want, or I'll summon The Trade Cooks in here and have them slave away all night until they create something worthy of more than a fine from you."

"Don’t do that.” I breathe out hard. “I just don't like the yellow pudding stuff on the top."

"Custard.”

"Yes."

His lips quirk. "That’s lemon butter."

I look at the blob. "Oh."

My face feels warm from what he did to me, and when he scoops a dollop of the lemon butter onto his finger, pleasure stirs me to a puddle.

I instantly wrap my mouth around the tip, sucking the sweet, citrus flavours, moaning.

His eyes darken and he steps backward, leaning against the opposite counter, his gaze never leaving me. “Eat.”

I look down and see the hard, long length between his legs even through his pants. I know how big that is. How thick and hard. In the Silk House, when I imagined the male anatomy, I always considered it would be… tender .

I lick the butter from the top of the muffin, and it pulses in his pants. Shit.

When I had the thick head inside my mouth, it throbbed like that heart I fed Odio. I didn’t know that they moved on their own.

I thought they were, well, fragile.

Nothing fragile about his…

“Stop looking at me like that, little creature. You don’t know what you’re asking for with those big, fuck-me eyes.”

I snap my gaze back to his, finding an expression, dark and frightening.

Using the muffin to redirect my mind, I eat it. It’s good. Tart and sweet and dense, filling.

He watches me enjoy it

Too soon, I take the last bite and lick the doughy residue off each finger, feeling better now that my stomach isn’t empty.

“Is it unbearably heavy…?” I ask, glances at it again. “When it’s like that?”

It unsettles me how still he is at this moment.

“You want to know what my cock feels like while I watch you lick that muffin and then suck your fingers?” His voice strains. “When your little tongue comes out and laps at that butter, my cock throbs like a wound. I can feel my arteries pounding, the pulse is thunder between my ears.” He reaches down and palms his large bulge curving up between his hips. “It feels like my blood is literally boiling.”

He pushes off the counter and possesses the column of my throat. “Like your throat right now. Thump. Thump.”

I whimper, because he’s hot and close and threatening, but I’m not afraid. Without meaning to, I relax into the tight collar he makes with his hand. He dips, his lips meeting my ear, heavy breath rushing into my hair. “But the pain I felt inside my cock while I was licking your wet pussy was worse. Much worse. That was the sweetest agony of my life.”

The question dances on my tongue; will you come to me later tonight? I’ll stare at my veil and pretend I don’t recognise your deep groans, scent, possessive touch.

I open my mouth to ask when he reaches for my cloak. “Time to go back to your room. The Guard will be awake soon. We can’t have him reporting this.”