Chapter 12 #2
I ran my fingers over the fine metal, gasping softly.
It was about an inch wide, with a seamless surface that was smooth on all sides.
And from the front of it, a chain emerged—thin, delicate links that wove themselves out of the remaining silver and hung in a loose arc, the end curling into Aeldryc’s waiting palm.
There was a generous length to it, enough to keep me close.
Enough to do all manner of kinky things with.
The Queen studied the result. “Adequate,” she said.
I raised my hand.
The Queen raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Mr. Crane?”
“What if I want it off, like if it’s irritating my skin?”
“The collar will remain.” She corrected me without a flicker of sympathy. “He is not to leave your sight, Commander, unless you have him otherwise secured. Understood?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Very well. You are dismissed.”
Aeldryc stood and I followed. The chain swung gently between us, catching the light, as he led me out of the audience chamber, through the enormous doors, and into the corridor beyond. The footman closed the doors behind us, and we were alone.
The corridor was wide, long, and alarmingly empty.
The alcoves, recessed into the marble, offered the only cover.
I was admiring a vase when Aeldryc stopped, the chain pulling taut.
He glanced down the long hall, then back at me.
His hand was on my chest and he was pushing me backward, into the shadows behind a statue of some long-dead fae king.
My back hit the cold marble. We were hidden, but any passing guard or servant would hear everything.
“What,” he said, quietly, “were you thinking?”
“When?”
His jaw worked. “You all but told the Queen of Qoksmere that I fucked you.”
“You did fuck me.”
“You were—” He stopped. Breathed. The chain trembled in his fist. “And the shorts. I told you to dress appropriately. And you walked into a royal audience in—”
“Tailored shorts.”
“—in those.”
“They’re well-made shorts, Aeldryc. The hem is clean. The fit is perfect. I sewed them myself.”
“You sewed—” Something in his expression shifted, derailed for a moment by this information.
“Aren’t they cute?”
His eyes dropped to the shorts. To my thighs. To the exact point where the rolled hem ended and bare skin began. His hand on the chain tightened.
“Turn around,” he said. “You need discipline, and I can only think of one way to give it to you.”
Oh.
Oh.
“I knew this collar would make you fun.”
“Pip,” he barked.
I turned around. Slowly. Planted my hands flat on the marble wall, shoulder width apart, and arched my back, and presented my meticulously tailored short shorts to the Lord Commander of the Queen’s Grey Guard.
“I knew you wanted to continue what you started earlier.” I was deliberately taunting him at this point.
He grabbed the waistband of the shorts and tugged them up into my ass crack, and I couldn’t help myself, I moaned. He traced my bared ass cheek, his fingers gentle.
Then his palm, broad and hard and precise, cracked against the curve of my right cheek, and the sound ricocheted down the corridor like a gunshot.
The sting was immediate—hot, blooming, spreading from the point of impact outward in a wave that made my knees buckle and my cock jump.
I gasped and pressed my palms harder into the wall and the second strike came on the left side, symmetrical, punishing, and I heard myself moan and didn’t care that it echoed.
“You will not,” he said, and another strike, harder, “speak to the Queen”—another—“about what I do to you in the privacy of our bedchamber.”
Our bedchamber. “Got it,” I gasped. “But maybe you’d better spank me a few more times just to make sure I fully understood.” I arched my back further, giving him the access he needed.
His hand hooked into the waistband of the shorts and yanked them higher, pulling the fabric tight between my cheeks, the seam pressing hard against everything sensitive, and I choked on a groan. The exposed skin of both cheeks was burning now, and he kept going, each slap measured and deliberate.
The chain moved. I felt it before I understood it.
The silver shifted against my throat, alive with his magic.
The links loosened from where they hung and began to slide.
Down my chest, through the open collar of my shirt, across my stomach.
Warm, vibrating faintly, and I realized with a dizzy, electric thrill that he was controlling the chain with his magic while spanking me with his hand.
The chain reached my waistband. Slid under it.
Slipped past the fabric and curled around my cock, which was so hard it hurt, and around my balls, snug and warm and humming with his power.
The vibration was subtle and devastating, a constant buzz against my most sensitive skin.
I cried out and pressed my forehead against the marble.
“Oh god, fuck. Baby, that feels too good,” I whimpered.
“And the shorts?” he said, and his voice was rough, wrecked, not remotely the voice of a man in control of a punishment. Another strike, and the silver tightened a fraction.
“I wear them for you,” I panted. “Only for you. I—oh fuck—So everyone will know I’m yours.”
The chain pulsed in a wave that ran through every link simultaneously, from my throat to my cock. His palm came down hard on my ass at the same moment, and the combination of the sharp sting from behind and the deep, resonant buzz from the silver wrapped around me sent me quickly over the edge.
I came with my hands on the wall and my back arched and his name on my tongue.
The chain held me through it, tightening and loosening in pulses that matched the movements of my thrashing body, and his free hand pressed flat against my lower back, steadying me, anchoring me, as my legs shook and my vision went white and the pleasure crested and broke and left me gasping against the marble like a man who had been wrecked by a public hallway.
The chain loosened. Withdrew. Slid back up my body and settled against my chest, warm and spent and still faintly humming. My shorts were ruined—not structurally, but in the sense that I had just come in them spectacularly and the evidence was not subtle.
Aeldryc’s hand was still on my lower back. Warm. Heavy. His breathing was not steady.
“The corridor,” he said, after a moment, “was not the appropriate venue for that.”
“You’re the one who shoved me into an alcove.”
“You provoked me.”
“I’m going to keep provoking you. Fair warning. I will provoke you every single day for as long as you let me stay in this castle.”
I reached up and touched the collar. The silver was warm against my fingertips, still carrying his vibration, and I pressed my palm flat against it and felt the hum settle into my skin.
“Pip.”
“This is the sexiest thing that has ever happened to me,” I said, grinning up at him. “Definitely don’t want it to stop.”
Something happened on his face, something that wasn’t quite a smile, but a slight easing of the jaw, the way a soldier stands down from attention before he’s been formally dismissed.
He took the chain in his hand. Wrapped it once around his fist.
“Come,” he said. “I have training this afternoon, and you’re not leaving my sight. But first we need to change those… shorts,” he said, using the word with distaste, but I didn’t miss the way his eyes lingered on my ass.
I pushed off the wall, adjusted my ruined shorts, and my gaze dropped down to his erection. “I can’t leave you like that, now can I?”
Smiling, I shoved him back against the wall.
His trousers were a challenge, but I got the buttons undone before he could protest. Not that he tried.
His hands tangled in my hair, his breath hitching as I took him in my mouth.
He was close, and he let me feel it, his hips bucking against my face until he gave a low groan and gave me my favorite treat.