10. Chapter 10 #2
‘I cannot help but wonder if my memory is playing tricks on me.’ Her eyes lay on him, dark as storm clouds swirled with fog. She stroked one finger along her naked collarbone, and his gaze dropped to pursue the motion, then returned to her depths. ‘Remind me?’
Run, Zadora, run. Cassius pointed his toe, found steadiness in the floor… but instead of standing, he used the stability to inch across the glossy seat, closer, closer, until their thighs ran the length of one another.
‘What good will it do?’ he asked, and stole a breath of her. Lillies and lemon, surely. She was the scent of either sin or sunrise.
‘It will amuse me,’ she almost sang, barely louder than a whisper.
Cassius rested his cheek against hers. Pressed a small kiss to her ear.
Her breath caught. As he twisted his body to face her, he grasped her waist and clenched the fabric of her dress into his fist. Her eyes closed.
Each gentle lash skimmed her cheek, and the lamps caught their dark threads, like fine wisps of night.
He should stop. He wasn’t built to survive a woman like Odette.
He closed his eyes, found her lips, and claimed them, hard, deep, and possessive.
Like sugar syrup licked from a spoon when no one was looking, she tasted sweet, yet illicit.
A guilty pleasure meant for indulging in, not for sharing, nor for boasting about.
It was madness to kiss the woman who had dodged him, who’d caught him off guard and yet forced him to shutter his heart.
But surely it would be equal madness to refuse her when he was on the cusp of escaping, when he could soon recover in peace.
He parted his lips to nip at hers, tipped his head, and fisted her dress tighter.
Her chest swelled with an inhale, and her body curved in submission.
Longer, deeper, slower. A lick. A touch, the tips of their tongues meeting…
They separated, breathing hard.
‘Better than I remember,’ she whispered, toying with his collar.
‘Better than your princes?’ The line should have summoned the wall, but she only leant back and regarded him with a long, penetrating look.
‘You throw stones in a glasshouse. Am I so terrible because I enjoy fucking? Because I find a way to take lovers who will not try to control me? What do you want? Confessions? A list of names? Or penance?’ She stroked his thigh, then higher, firmer—over his cock, which was almost fully hard.
He groaned, half as a curse at his body’s betrayal, but mostly with unfettered lust. ‘Would you like me on my knees, full of contrition?’ As she spoke, she slid from the seat to the floor.
He twisted in a half circle to face her.
Sitting back, her feet tucked beneath her arse, she pushed his knees further apart and shimmied into the gap.
Fingers splayed wide, she ran her palms over the inside of his thighs, close to but not touching his cock, only letting the fabric pull tight over its firmness.
He groaned, and she smirked. ‘Should I feel guilty for enjoying the company of men the way you enjoy the company of women? How can I atone for my sins?’
Odette shifted even closer, until the heat of her breath infiltrated the fabric of his trousers and seeped through to his skin.
A gentle nudge against his cock sent his heart into a stutter.
Her fingers walked up his thighs, travelling over his pockets to the buttons at his waist. She popped them all open and freed his cock from his underclothes just as deftly.
Then she licked her lips and flicked her tongue against the stiff head.
‘We might be caught again,’ he said, the words both breath and groan. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘We shouldn’t,’ she agreed, then blew across the tip. He shuddered and gripped the piano bench, arching his back, unable to tear his gaze from her. ‘That’s what makes it so fun,’ she purred, and when she parted her lips, he caught a glimpse of her pink tongue.
Then she was drawing the head of his cock into her mouth, pushing up against him, her breasts—or maybe her chest, her ribs, who knew—pressing against the inside of his thighs.
Cassius jerked with the godforsaken heaven of her and struck the piano by accident, sending a discordant chord through the silent theatre.
He recoiled from the keys to avoid further noise, and clapped the fallboard shut, too.
Merciful heavens. He rested his elbows against the wood so he could watch her.
She wasn’t lying. She liked it. Her gaze unflinching, locked hard on his, Odette pulled back, almost to the point of releasing him, until just the hint of her lips still made contact with his obscene flesh.
Then she bent forwards to take half his shaft into her mouth with a greedy suck.
For one angelic moment, he thought he might die—he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only stare and drown in the transcendent pleasure of it.
His lungs screamed in protest, and he forced a gulp of air, exhaled it with a moan that soared up to the ceiling.
Odette released him with a small slurp, only to wrap her palm around him, tightening her grip as she stroked his length. ‘The acoustics, Cassius. You must be quiet. Or the entire theatre will know what you are doing.’
‘And you. They will know about you too,’ he said, his voice strained.
‘Moi? I think not. I think they would not assume I would ever…’ she circled her tongue around his cockhead, tunnelling into the tiny curves and undulations of the swollen veins that pulsed with the rhythm of his heartbeat, ‘…stoop to suck the cock of a man without a crown.’
And she drew him in again. Cassius flattened the back of his hand against his mouth to smother his groan.
He forced his breath to release in shallow bursts, swallowing any sounds that threatened to escape.
Odette kept her eyes trained on him as she bobbed her head, sucking harder, pulling him deeper, and Cassius shifted closer towards her.
Despite all the women he’d taken to bed, he’d never had the courage to ask for this, had never contemplated wanting something so debauched from his meek, uncertain, and oh-so-grateful lovers.
This was gentle, consuming, and so very selfish.
He vacillated between watching the intensity of Odette’s unwavering sapphire eyes and the stretch and flex of her skilled lips as they moved up and down his shaft.
Rocking into her rhythm, melting into the fucking, he tickled his fingers behind her ears with what little control remained, dodging the pins and plaits of her hair to cup the back of her head.
‘I am almost done,’ he whispered, the words gravel in his throat. ‘If you want to stop.’
Odette had been resting one hand on his knee, the other on his thigh, but now she ran her palms over his hips and dug her nails into his arse, the surprise grip softened by his trousers.
Her movements changed to a slow, torturous pace, and Cassius held her tighter, fingers clenching awkwardly at her scalp, then lifted himself a few inches off the seat to empty into her mouth.
He watched her for as long as he could, letting himself tumble into her gaze, following her slight flex and curl as she worked his climax from him, swallowing him.
Bliss. Completion. Only when the pleasure became too much, when the oblivion of how forsakenly good it felt to release surged against the warning to keep quiet, did he close his eyes through the last moments of gratification to savour them.
Then everything ebbed away, and the suppression eased into gasps that did not need to be silenced.
Odette released him from her mouth. She wiped a gloved finger along her lips. ‘Am I forgiven?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’ Cassius grabbed at whatever frills and fabric he could find and tugged her up, onto his lap.
He needed to kiss her again, had to know what she tasted like when she was his.
He claimed her mouth, rougher than before, demanded entrance, tasted her tongue.
He had to feel and breathe her, had to commit all this sensation to memory.