Chapter 11 #2
“That’s a lot of responsibility for any one person to have to take on.
” Casimir caresses my cheek and teases his fingers into my hair, sending tingles over my skin.
“It’s been weighing on you. Hmm. You’re done with your training for the day, aren’t you?
How would you like to take a break from having to be in control? ”
I peer at him through lowered eyelashes, swaying with the pleasure his touch provokes. “What do you mean?”
The courtesan offers a smile of promise that sends another tingle straight down the middle of me and clasps my hand. “Come with me, and I’ll show you. It’s been too long since I got to do any real pampering.”
Ooh, Julita murmurs. I want to see where he’s going with this, but then I’ll give you your privacy.
I’m not going to deny my ghostly passenger a little taste of the bodily pleasures she can no longer experience herself. She never sticks around for very long when things heat up with my men.
Casimir leads me through the Haven to the building where we’ve been sleeping. Most residents have made do with plump mattresses right on the floor, but one of the rooms has a full if low wooden frame. After we first explored the rooms, the men insisted I take that bed.
“Wait here for a moment,” Casimir says. He vanishes down the hall and returns holding a bundle of silky fabric. He tugs the door shut behind him. “Let’s undress you first.”
“Just me?” I ask as Casimir sets the fabric down on the bed and reaches for my plain dress. “Shouldn’t the nakedness go both ways?”
“I’ll take care of myself and you. All you’re going to do is enjoy the experience.”
Julita giggles. Well, I think that’s my cue to go. She dwindles into the faintest of tickles at the back of my skull.
I’m not sure I’m totally on board with Casimir’s goal.
The courtesan has a habit of putting everyone else’s needs—and pleasure—over his own.
But for the moment, I gamely help him strip off my dress and underclothes, everything except the ribbon I keep tied around my upper arm in memory of my little sister.
The magical warming system in this building takes the edge off the autumn chill. Casimir nuzzles my cheek with a gentle kiss, his closeness warming me even more, and then nudges me over to the bed. “Lie down on your back.”
The cozy fabric of the blanket cushions my old scars. As I comply, Casimir picks up his bundle of silk and unravels it into a few separate strips of fabric. He winds the end of one around my ankle and glances up at me to judge my reaction.
My heart skips a beat. “What exactly are we doing here?”
Casimir dips his head to press his lips to the top of my foot. “Making sure you’re fully aware that you’re not in control of this interlude—and you don’t need to be. What do you think, Kindness? Can you let me completely take over?”
When he says the words in that heated tone with the gleam of desire in his eyes, it’s hard to imagine why the idea should unsettle me. Of all my men, Casimir has never hurt me even unintentionally.
I trust him with my life. Trusting his skills with my body is nothing compared to that.
Still, my limbs have tensed at the idea of being bound. Casimir strokes his fingers over my calf, watching me.
“We don’t have to do this. But I think it might be good for you. Offer you a chance to remember that you can give up control without any kind of disaster. If at any point your feelings become too intense and you want to stop, all you have to do is say so.”
I drag in a deep breath, anticipation and my own desire overcoming my instinctive reluctance. “Okay. Keep going.” I let my gaze rove over his lean, graceful frame in the simple tunic and trousers he’s wearing. “But you did promise I wouldn’t be the only one undressed.”
Casimir chuckles and obligingly strips off his shirt and pants, leaving only his drawers. While I ogle his deliciously toned body freely, he ties the end of the cloth around my ankle to one side of the footboard. Then he repeats the process with my other ankle on the opposite side.
He’s left me spread open, my sex bared—and dampening with a heady heat as he flicks his hungry gaze over it.
But the courtesan isn’t finished preparing me yet. He moves to the top of the bed and binds my wrists together over my head, just snugly enough that I’d struggle to release them but not to cause any discomfort. He attaches that strip of fabric to the middle of the headboard’s slats.
“There you go,” he murmurs, bending over me. His lips graze my cheek, my jaw, my throat. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing you need to do. I’m the one in charge here, and I’ll play with you as I see fit.”
I haven’t heard Casimir sound quite so domineering before. His tone sends a giddy quiver down my spine.
He swings his leg over my waist to straddle me and captures my mouth. I give myself over to his searing kiss.
Part of me still wants to resist. My arms flex against their bindings with the urge to wrap my arms around my lover, to run my fingers down his chest.
A tremor of my magic reverberates against my ribs, offering to release my restraints.
I focus on the sparks of delight conjured by the press of Casimir’s lips and the caress of his hands down my torso. It’s not up to me what happens here. I don’t have to decide. I don’t have to try to keep up or give back equally.
As I sink into that acceptance, it’s a weirdly freeing idea.
Casimir nibbles his way along the edge of my jaw and down to the crook of my shoulder. Bliss flows over my skin from every place his lips mark with their delectable heat.
When he nips my collarbone, my hips jerk of their own accord. Casimir’s tongue darts out to smooth over the spot. “Oh, we’re just getting started, my darling.”
As he continues to tease his mouth along my upper chest, he strokes his fingers up from my belly to cup my breasts. He swipes his thumbs over my nipples in tandem, bringing a gasp to my throat at the combined jolts of delight.
Casimir works several more increasingly urgent sounds out of me with every skilled swivel of his hands. He kisses his way down my sternum, pulling backward so he kneels between my splayed legs.
The erection tenting his drawers brushes against my core, and I can’t help arching toward him with a needy whine. Casimir hums and laps his tongue over one stiffened nipple, letting the vibration of the sound carry through the gesture.
“We have lots of time to get to that. I won’t be satisfied until you’re absolutely drenched for me.”
A strangled noise escapes me. “I think I’m already there.”
“But I still have so much to enjoy here.” He slicks his tongue over the other nipple to set off a renewed pulse of pleasure. “You’re at my mercy, Ivy. I decide when you’re ready.”
My disgruntled huff breaks into a moan when he sucks the tip of my breast right into his mouth.
He strums it with his tongue and then scrapes the tips of his teeth across the peak. All I can do is writhe against my bonds with bliss.
He teases and suckles that breast until my head is hazed with the sensations, running his fingertips up and down my sides at the same time to spark even more delightful quivers. With another satisfied hum, he turns his attentions to my other breast.
One hand slides over my belly to delve between my legs. His hot breath spills over my breast in an approving sigh. “That’s what I like to feel. And I’m going to enjoy it fully.”
I understand what he means when he eases farther down the bed and lowers his head to where his fingers were just fondling me. The first swipe of his tongue over my clit makes my hips buck to the limits of my restraints.
The courtesan shoots me a pleased grin and buries his face between my thighs.
With every movement of his lips, every swirl of his tongue and graze of his teeth, ecstasy floods me. It washes over me in waves, until I can’t stop myself from straining against my bonds, rocking into his mouth to urge on my release.
Casimir sucks hard on my clit and curls two fingers into my channel to stroke me from the inside. But just as I shudder to the edge, he pulls back a few inches.
I growl in protest, my sex aching with need.
The courtesan licks my arousal from his lips and glides his fingers over my inner thighs. “You’ll come when I decide.”
“Fuck,” I groan.
But when he laps his tongue over me again, I have to admit the pleasure spikes through me even more forcefully. The burn of need deepens into a searing sensation that spreads all through my body.
Casimir works me over just as thoroughly as before. He thrusts a third finger inside me to fill me even better while he teases my clit with his mouth.
Every nerve in my body trembles giddily. I sway with the movements of his tongue and hand, spiraling toward my peak—
He pulls back at the last second again with a low chuckle that could almost make me come on its own.
A sound slips from my lips that’s almost a sob. Casimir presses a tenderly apologetic kiss to my hipbone and tugs off his drawers.
My pulse skips eagerly at the sight of his rigid cock. He rubs it across my sensitized folds in careful strokes until I really am sobbing… and then he plunges into me in one smooth thrust.
The sudden pressure sets off a chain reaction inside me. Pleasure crackles through my nerves and bursts through my body.
I bow my head against the pillow, crying out with the force of my climax.
Casimir holds still while my channel clamps around him, his skin flushing with restrained desire. When the haze clears from my vision, he smiles wickedly down at me. “We’re not finished yet.”
I’m too wrung out with bliss to argue. And not a single part of me wants to argue when the courtesan starts to rock into me.
He has to lean close to hit the right angle, clasping my hip with one hand and bracing his elbow next to me so he can caress my breast with the other.
He builds up his pace so gradually it would be torturous if I hadn’t just come. As it is, the ache of bliss builds slowly and steadily with every thrust until it’s radiating all the way to my toes and fingertips.
Casimir hits just the right spot to send an extra jolt of pleasure up the center of me. I let out a ragged moan—
And the bedroom door slams open.
Stavros jars to a halt on the threshold, his stance stiffening at the sight of us. As Casimir tilts farther upright to glance over his shoulder, a ruddy cast creeps up through the former general’s light brown skin.
He takes a step back. “I—I heard you cry out. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
My whole body has flushed hotter, first with embarrassment and then with a thrill at the matching heat that’s sparked in Stavros’s eyes.
He’s never seen any of the other men do more than kiss me before. His hand has closed into a fist as if he’s tempted to punch the courtesan right off me, but hunger blazes in his eyes.
Maybe I’m just high on the pleasure that’s already flowed through me, but it seems like a good idea to say, “You don’t have to go. You could join in.”
The next instant, my gaze darts to Casimir. I’ve immersed myself in his control enough that I’m not sure if I’ve stepped out of line.
He beams when he sees me check with him, flicking his thumb over my clit as if in reward, and looks at Stavros again.
“Yes, you could. I’m teaching our lady a lesson in letting the rest of us take on some of the responsibility around here.
She might pick up the material even faster with a professor pitching in. ”
Stavros wets his lips. Part of him is still hesitating, but his gaze smolders hotter.
With a strangled groan, he hurtles across the room and drops down at the edge of the bed by my shoulder. His fingers trail through the sweat that’s formed along my clavicle and up my neck to tip my chin toward him.
Then his mouth crashes into mine with all the ferocity I expect from this man.
As Stavros’s kiss consumes me, I notice a light tug and a loosening at my ankles. Casimir has adjusted the strips of silk to increase their length without completely freeing me.
He guides my knees into a mild bend and then lifts my ass so he can ram into me while staying upright. When I gasp against Stavros’s lips, the former general only kisses me harder.
The courtesan picks up his pace, filling me over and over again. The head of his cock strokes the most sensitive spot deep inside.
At my next moan, Stavros tears his mouth from mine to scorch a path to the crook of my jaw. His hand teases over my chest to cup one breast.
His cocky drawl, turned nearly liquid with lust, resonates into my ear with a tingle of his breath. “You like letting him take you, hmm, Lady Thief? How much can you open yourself up? Let’s see you give him everything.”
I thought I already was, but the words make me whimper with the desire to comply. Somehow I manage to splay my hips even wider, to buck even more eagerly into Casimir’s thrusts.
The courtesan groans in approval and rests his thumb on my clit. He fingers me as deftly as if he’s playing a song on my body while he pounds into me ever faster.
Stavros nips my earlobe before his darkened voice reaches me again. “So obedient for once. See how good it can be when you let someone else call the shots? Next time it’ll be me driving into you, taking you right over the edge.”
The combination of the promise and Casimir’s talented thumb sends me careening into ecstasy with the courtesan’s next thrust. As the blaze of my second orgasm roars through my body, a ridiculous stream of sounds tumble out of me.
Stavros’s mouth brands the side of my neck, his fingers stroking my breast through my release. Casimir’s grip on my ass tightens, and then he’s bowing toward the other man as he loses himself to his own climax.
We linger there for a minute, breathing heavily, coming back to ourselves.
Casimir slides out of me with all his usual tenderness and caresses my thigh. “You can always count on us to take care of you, Ivy.”
“In every way we possibly can,” Stavros adds in a raw voice.
Casimir unties my ankles and then my wrists. My hands immediately dart out to slip around the backs of their necks, drawing one lover and then the other in for another kiss.
As we nestle together for a moment, still coming down from the high, a pang reverberates through my chest.
Casimir made his point. I know not everything here depends on me.
But gods above, do I wish nothing at all depended on any of us. That we could stay here in this cocoon of peace for the rest of our lives.
What’s going to become of the trust and understanding we’ve forged when we have to face the judgment of the outside world once more?