16. 15
Davian’s mouth pressed into my neck, burning eager kisses down the slope of my shoulder.
Then lower, still. My knees weakened again, and he must have noticed, for one arm came around to hold my body to his like a vice.
He lifted me, his teeth grazing my neck as he pushed us back against the wall beside the door.
His arm snaked away as he held my shoulders, punishing my throat with kisses. The cold metal of his mask made me gasp as his lips burned like a fire in contrast. He would move back as if he would say something, then kiss me again.
I hated and venerated myself in equal measure for creating my additional rule. It was saving me from breaking my agreement to Ekris just as it damned me to never know what his mouth tasted like. I knew if I kissed him back, I would be lost.
After a minute of this sweet torment, he moved.
Usually I led this dance, guiding my patrons towards the bed, even guiding their hands towards my body, encouraging them until their natural courage caught up. There was no such need here. There was just need here.
He knelt before me, and I laced my hands into his hair. It was so soft, like silk through my fingers. I dragged my nails across his scalp.
He groaned as he gathered my skirts in his hands and threw them over his head.
My hands fell away, and I prayed to anything but Ekris.
I leaned back heavily against the wall as he grabbed my thighs with no delicacy, pressing kisses below my smock.
Metal hit the ground; I froze, but only for a second.
He had taken off his mask.
It lay now on the floor, his face hidden only by my skirts. What was he keeping from me? Some disfigurement he believed I would shy from in this moment of pleasure? There was nothing that could keep me from wanting him now.
His fingernails dug into my flesh as he licked up my left thigh and pushed my smock roughly upwards.
I couldn’t even think about how far this was from usual. All I could feel was the hot wetness of his tongue and the graze of his teeth as his hair tickled at my hip and his mouth moved closer and closer to where I needed it.
He reached the apex of my thighs, where they met and clenched in anticipation. A finger came up to brush at the thatch of dark hair covering me, the tip touching the dampness there. Davian groaned again. Unconsciously, or consciously, I hardly knew, I widened my legs.
It was the only invitation he needed. He pressed his lips to me in a restrained kiss. I whined, and I felt him chuckle against me, his warm breath making my back arch.
“If I had the willpower right now,” he said, and every word made my skin ache. “I’d make you ask for it. I’d make you beg.”
I sucked in a breath and tipped my head back. The very idea. The only man I’d ever asked was Ekris. After I served his patrons, after they had their fill and left the room, I would call him in my head. I would ask for that sweet escape only he could bestow.
This man. This mortal. He would have me beg him like a god. I was glad he had not the patience, for I do not know how far my faith would have stretched.
Barely a second passed between the last word leaving his mouth and the feel of his tongue. He licked me, right there, right above my entrance.
My hands came up, hitting the wall either side of my head as he pushed me against the wall, holding me pinned with his tongue lapping at me again and again.
Our conversation, our almost-touches, had brought me closer to that relief than I had fathomed possible, and now this; his rapid lavishing of attention on me, his feral grip and devouring. I felt the pressure mounting already.
He didn’t stop, didn’t let up the repetitive and constant strokes against me, knowing exactly where he needed to be.
His fingers kneaded into my thighs, his thumbs gripping hard enough to bruise, and I could not care.
I only felt my need rising, my heart pounding, my head drifting into that plane where no reason could find me and only lust could blossom across it.
I could feel my heartbeat everywhere, and the sensation was mounting so deliciously I knew there wasn’t much time. I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t let him give me that which I’d only accepted from Ekris. This was his relief, his alone.
I moved, pushing his head slowly down and away. After a brief pause, he ducked back under my skirts with a groan, appearing back into view with his mouth covered in my wetness and his mask back on… I would not see under it this time, then.
He gave me a confused look. “No?”
I pushed my skirts down and fell to my knees, meeting him on the floor. He looked at me with darkened eyes as I pressed my lips to his cheek. I could smell myself, and him, and the mixture was heady and salty. I copied his motion, kissing down his jaw and to his neck.
He groaned and dropped his head back, whispering my name like it was its own prayer.
I pulled back and stared at him, loving the look of need on his face. It was my new favourite expression of his.
“Stand up,” I whispered.
He smiled, and stood. He anticipated the plan as soon as my hands reached for his waist. Davian pulled his shirt off first, baring his chest to me.
I saw the mark of Samiscus, jagged golden lines like lightning over his ribs.
I wanted to taste it, inhale his skin inch by inch, so I could feel the wave of our combined impatience like a rising tide.
He pushed down his trousers and braies in one movement, and his cock bobbed hard in front of me.
It was thick and straight, and my tongue lapped at its tip before Davian had fully straightened.
I held him in one hand, and he hissed. I rolled my tongue over him again, tasting.
Then I leant in, taking the first part of him into my mouth.
Here, finally, I felt on stable ground. If not for the heat between my thighs and the quivering mess of my mind, Davian could have been any of my patrons.
I found my rhythm again, using my years and years of training.
When to move slow, when to move fast. There was a dance to it, the act of pleasure.
The cues in the tension of his legs, his hand coming down to grip my hair.
It could have almost been a normal job. Except for Davian’s hold, gripping my head like a tool at his disposal. After a few minutes, just when I thought my conquest of him was nigh, he asked me to relax my mouth.
I followed his instruction, and he held me still, firmly but carefully. Then he thrust into and out of my mouth. My training and my desire to please him suppressed that urge to gag as the full length of him hit the back of my throat. He held himself there, testing me, moaning, and then retreated.
He praised me in soft words as he filled me with his hardness. I loved every second of it.
“You’re so good,” he murmured. “Keep taking it like that. Yes.”
And I did. He held me and fucked my face to the rhythm he wanted, and rewrote half my training in a single experience.
It wasn’t just the action, but the words.
Our patrons were instructed to treat us with reverence, and their passion had never strayed this far.
Was this the sex of a Samiscan? None of it was against our teachings, and yet it felt wrong somehow.
Like I shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, like Ekris wouldn’t want me to.
After a minute, he released my head. “I’m close,” he said.
I took up where he left off, continuing the same rhythm he had desired, taking him as far as I could.
“Annie,” he whispered. “Fuck. You don’t have to—”
No part of me slowed. This was the Ekrissian way, the Ekrissian gift. I choked and swirled my tongue and moved even faster.
Davian growled. Then he came, hard.
I slowed but didn’t release the hold of my lips around him.
“Fuck, fuck,” he groaned.
His hands came down, but only to rest on my head, and I swallowed everything he offered.
It was a relief, to be needed like this, to give someone what I had been trained to do.
I rubbed my thighs together as my need only grew.
I wished I could pray to Ekris after this; I wished I could ask him to take some of this heat away.
I had never known an aching need like it.
I released my mouth from him, licking my lips as I swallowed the last drop.
I looked up at his face, finding the satisfaction in his catlike grin, wishing I could see his entire face.
The candlelight fell behind him, casting his dark hair with a golden halo, like how the Ten was depicted in the paintings.
This was the moment I lived for as an Ekrissian.
Staring up and knowing I had done my God’s bidding, and done it well. I basked in his smile.
Davian raised his hands from my head and pulled up his trousers, fastening them with a shake of his head.
Then he crooked a finger. I stood, and he brushed a thumb over my cheek.
This wasn’t new or different to how other patrons might have treated me after their relief, and yet, there was something in his eyes, something in his touch, that felt entirely different.
There was power in it, there was an influence over me, commanding and compelling me.
I stared at his chest, the brown skin beneath a smattering of dark hair, and his golden mark splintering like broken sticks across his left rib cage.
Davian hissed when I traced a fingertip over it, and grabbed my hand.
He pulled my finger into his mouth, running his tongue over its tip like I had just done to him.
I bit my lip and stared at his lips around my finger, my body craving more and more of him.
He tilted his head and released my finger, his smile still coating the words. “Will you not let me complete my work?”
I shook my head. “I cannot—I can only know that relief from him.”
Davian’s eyes darkened. “Robar?”
I flinched. Not because he named my intended, but because I had not thought of him once.
If anything had stopped me, it had been my faith, not my once betrothed.
What did that say of me? He might have moved on, but only for not remembering me.
My memory was intact. Should it not follow that my loyalty should remain, too?
“Ekris,” I answered.
The clouds behind his eyes shifted. “Ah. That seems its own kind of torment, to only find your needs met in waiting for his blessing.”
I felt wetness drip down my thighs, and could only agree. “Before, I didn’t have to wait. This is a problem of my own making.”
Davian leant in and nipped at my earlobe. “If you do ever want to ask for it, you know who to come to.”
I shuddered. “I will wait for my place next to Ekris. I will wait for him to restore me.”
Davian chuckled darkly. “Delaying your pleasure, then. We will make a Samiscan of you yet.”
I took a step back from him, still tasting him on my tongue. “I should leave.”
He appraised me. “Is this all I get from you for a gold? Fifteen minutes with my Ekrissian?”
I fluttered my eyes closed, trying to keep my composure.
If I allowed him anything more, if I gave him any more of me, he would pull that pleasure from me.
I hadn’t the power to deny him if he started again.
“We should stop here. Not complicate matters further. We are to be working together. You still need to clear your name and find your killer, I still need to know about Ragnifort. We should be careful. This—This was—”
“A mistake?” he filled in, coldly.
I opened my eyes to see him watching me with a hard look. I shook my head slowly, and saw his jaw unclench. “A cure. Working through whatever attraction lay between us.”
Davian raised an eyebrow, and I felt the challenge in it.
I stared at the floor, concluding my point. “Now we can continue to the conclusion of our mysteries with a level head.”
For a moment, nothing was said, and neither of us moved.
I feared his response almost as much as I craved his provocation.
He plucked his money pouch from the belt on the floor.
I watched every motion, every muscle flex as he straightened.
His chest was still bare and his neck still bore the damp marks of my mouth.
He stared at me as he pulled open the bag and reached in.
Our eyes never broke from one another as he took a gold coin between two fingers and offered it to me.
“For your work, then,” he said, his chest moving as he studied me.
I broke our eye contact first. I stared at the coin.
He was right, I was being a coward by leaving now.
One gold bought an entire evening in the house of Ekris.
I could not claim this was some act in service to my god.
He wasn’t watching, I wasn’t his anymore.
This was an escape, only following enough rules to hopefully not push me off my path of return to him.
“I’ll see you in three days,” I said.
I only lingered long enough to see his smirk drag at his mouth and his fingers flick the coin back into his hand. Then I turned and wrenched open the door. I forced myself to walk out, even as I heard him mutter something behind me.
A cure. How could I have been so foolish as to believe I could clear him from me this way? I thought of his smile, his mouth everywhere, his hands gripping my head. No, I had only awoken something much more dangerous.
Folly and damnation. One would surely follow the other, and I would be cast out by Ekris forever, as firmly as Ragnifort from the Ten. What was I doing?
Three days. I had three days to get my head back together, to learn anything I could about his wife, or the God of Fire.
After this party, maybe we would have the answer to both our mysteries.
The House of Wisdom could know something about Ragnifort, after all.
A few more days, a week at most, then I could distance myself from Davian for good.