Chapter 18
Grimes
Ifeel unmoored. My carefully laid plans are veering off-course.
Somehow, Florian got under my defenses and got me to talk.
I should never have fallen for that “memory exercise”.
It was so obviously a ploy. He wants to pump me for information about my past. At least I didn’t give him any details.
But I told him about Jos, about the worst night of my life.
Jos almost died in a prison attack, and I was badly beaten myself while trying to help him.
I can’t even think about that night without shivering.
And Florian told me about his mother. Even if he suggested the exercise to get inside my head, his emotions were sincere as he recounted his own memory.
His eyes were misty with remembrance and sadness; he was close to tears.
Why did he choose something so intimate to share with me?
Why let me get that close? I’m afraid to think too hard on the answer to that question.
After the midday sun has lessened, I bring him outside to work.
I’d rather work in the mornings, before the sun has overheated the ground, but it beats thinking about what’s going on between us.
Florian seems uneasy too; neither of us wants to sit together in a silent house right now.
We dig silently, side by side, for a little while.
Then he plops down for a rest. He’s stopped asking me if he can take breaks.
Now he just stops when he likes. I sit beside him and take a drink from the water I carried from the well.
“Boss,” he says.
I sigh inwardly. That thoughtful tone doesn’t bode well for me.
“Now what?” I ask.
“I was just thinking. I know I surprised you, but is it really such a bad idea?”
“What?”
“You know. When I was polishing your boots, and then I—”
So much for his being uneasy. He’s unbelievable.
“Florian, I’m warning you.” I put on my gruffest, most forbidding voice. The kind that squashes entire barrooms of criminals and silences boxing gyms of hardened fighters.
Florian just waves my comment away—literally waves it away with one lazy, soft aristocratic hand.
“No, really. Think about it,” he insists. “We’re here all the time together, and you don’t want me to go into the city at night too much, which I totally respect by the way, because yes I do get into trouble too easily. But—”
“No need for buts. We can end the conversation there.”
“It wouldn’t have to mean anything. It would just be like… quenching a thirst, you know? For both of us. Like the last time.” He looks at me, big eyes half pleading and half playing.
This is my fault. He’s thinking about the spanking. I made it too obvious that I find him irresistible, at least physically if not in terms of personality. Now he’s offering me a pity fuck. My servant is offering me a pity fuck. How did my plan to humble him go so far off the rails?
“I’m pretty good,” he says, without an ounce of shame. “I’d get you off first. And then… and then you could decide if I’m allowed to get off or not.” He pauses at just the right moment, flashing his blue eyes at me, heat and sin right there. “I think you might be into that.”
I think I might, too. I shut my eyes, pleading with my cock to cooperate. Why is it so fucking interested in this ridiculous rich boy’s preposterous suggestions?
“Florian, I already told you. That’s enough.”
“Okay, okay.”
I open my eyes to find him hiding behind his curtain of dark hair. I’m not sure if he realizes how seductive that move is. Usually I’d say yes, yes, he does, but this time he seems honestly lost in thought.
“Living all the way out here in the desert is really new for me,” he says softly. “No people around, no company. You might be used to it, but I’m not. And it isn’t sex that I miss most. Like you helpfully said once, I have hands.”
“I said that?” I have no recollection of that. It sounds about right. Sounds like something I would say.
“You did. Anyway, I mostly miss having someone to talk to.”
“We talk,” I protest. “We just did that memory exercise.”
I’m glad he’s stopped talking about getting each other off, but this is hard to take in a different way.
When he looks at me with so much defenselessness, it’s hard to remember that he deserves his fate.
Hard to remember how he ruined my life. I remind myself of my musty cell, the tarred ropes stacked up and waiting to tear at my fingernails, Jos’ broken face after his beating.
“Sure, we talk a little,” Florian says, dragging me back from my dark memories into the light of the desert sunshine.
“But not like friends. Except for the memory exercise.” He glances up, hitting me with the power of those vulnerable blue eyes.
“Boss, why do you dislike me so much? I try so hard to please you, and it’s never enough. ”
Shit. Now I really wish he’d go back to being coquettish and annoying.
At least then, I can bat him away with insults.
Looking at him now, sitting with his aristocratic ass on the bare ground, one arm hooked around his knees as he looks at me so seriously, it’s too hard to hate him.
The straw hat on his head, the height of Rhennian fashion, is covered with red dust from the Galbravan desert, but he still wears it with unconscious style.
His perfect nose is sunburned and new freckles dot his cheeks.
His lips look soft. But it’s not his looks that draw me in.
It’s the need in those blue eyes. He isn’t asking for sex anymore.
He’s asking for something much more dangerous. Affection.
Too dangerous. If it’s going to come down to one thing or the other—if he won’t leave me alone until I give him either affection or physical release—I know which one I’ll choose. The one that means nothing to him.
I bundle him onto his back, fast and sudden.
His hat falls off and his long hair tumbles free.
His soft lips part and his eyes widen with surprise.
His breath speeds as he looks up at me. The dark pupils in the center of those sky-blue eyes dilate.
My body roars into life, so forceful it scares me.
I’m ravenous for this... for someone. Because it’s been too long.
Not because it’s Florian. Just because he’s a warm human body.
It’s physical. He hasn’t weakened me. Danger averted: this is much safer than talking.
That said, having him pinned under me feels damn good.
The hard planes of his body press into me, hips angled up like he’s unconsciously inviting me.
The soft skin of his neck calls out to be nipped by my teeth.
He’s been putting on even more muscle as I’ve been working him so hard and it suits him.
Makes him more masculine. Yet his face is still as angelic and out of this world gorgeous as ever.
The contrast excites me. My weight on top of him brings a swell to his cock that I feel through our clothes.
My cock twitches in answer. His eyes pull me in like a spell.
His hair lies flat and dark against the red ground, fanned out around his face.
I’ve never seen anything so stunning. My throat is so tight, my breath held at the edge of wonder.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Take your pleasure.”
“You mean it?” His voice is just barely a breath. His body quivers with wonder, wondering if I’m playing with him.
“I mean it. No trick. Go on.”
Fuck, hurry up. I need to watch him. Sweat pools beneath my hood as I picture it.
Watching him take his pleasure in broad daylight.
Seeing the tension in his delicate neck and the arch of his back in stark sun, not half-hidden in the muffled dark like when I spanked him.
I hold his arms, feeling up his newly strong biceps, crushing his hips to the ground with my own.
A smile spreads across his face, decadent, like I’m something to be used.
That would usually bother me, considering that he’s my hated enemy, but right now with his swollen cock pressed against me I can’t bring myself to care.
He starts to grind his erection against me, ever so slowly.
My chest tightens, desire surging, blood rushing south.
“Do you want to look into my eyes as I climax?” he whispers.
I nod. I can’t imagine anyone on earth saying no to that question as Florian looks at them like this.
“Do you know what’ll make me come hard?” he says.
I shake my head, barely breathing.
“Knowing I’m yours,” he says. “You’re in charge of me. My boss.”
Our history, revenge, even my own fucking name is a lost dream now. I need to watch him satisfy himself against me like it’s the only thing in the world.
“Hold me down,” he says.
I press his forearms above his head, palms up, his knuckles digging into red soil. His pupils get bigger, black pools on blue. His erection strains against my stomach.
“My trousers,” he pants. “Please.”
With one hand I unbutton them for him and then go back to holding his arms. He gets forceful. Rubbing himself against me without shame.
“I need more,” he breathes. “Talk dirty to me.”
Fuck. Might as well go all in now. I dip my face close to his, close to those soft, soft lips.
“Dirty? You like that?” I say.
He nods, sunburned nose brushing mine. His skin smells like salt and very expensive soap and red dirt.
“How’d I know?” I say, voice hoarse with lust. And some annoyance. He’s still Lord Florian, after all. Still a pain in the ass. “Maybe I should take you into town and report you to the authorities for slacking off. Rubbing yourself against me instead of working like I pay you for.”
“Barely pay me for,” he mutters with a flash of sulky defiance on his lips.
I tighten my grip on his forearms until he winces. “Careful,” I whisper. “Don’t push me too far.”
The threat brings fire rushing to his eyes. He bites his lip. My cock throbs with need.
“What would happen to me if you reported me, Boss?” he says.
I press my hardness against his thigh, close to his cock but not touching. Teasing him. “You’d be taken to the town square for punishment.”
He grinds harder against me until it almost hurts. Like he’s trying to meld our bodies. His pretty pink lips are bright red now, those innocent eyes hungry.
“How does that work?” he says.
I want to dip my mouth to his lips and steal the last of his breath, but I hold back. Kissing is too soft, too intimate.
“First they’d tie your hands,” I say. “Shove your head down. Make you put that ass up in the air. And then you’d be whipped in front of the whole town.”
He moans. Friction sears against my thigh.
He ruts against me like an animal in heat.
I drink it in like a man who hasn’t drunk in days.
Like I’m in a daze. But I remember to move my cloak aside so his precum soaks only my shirt, which is easier to wash.
What the fuck am I doing? My enemy’s precum is all over me. Do I plan to stop? No fucking way.
“Who would administer the whipping?” he says. “The city guards?”
I laugh softly, making a painful effort to sound cool and in control. “Not a chance. As your master, the honor would fall to me.”
His eyes flash at the word master. His breathing gets dangerously fast. He pushes himself against me like it’ll save his life.
Hot little grunts come from his throat, going straight for my cock.
I hold myself back from going farther, body burning up with the effort.
Florian, not so much. He lets out a moan, long and low and filthy as a whorehouse.
His eyes close. Warm wetness seeps into my shirt.
His eyes pop open again in a moment. They zero in right on mine with disconcerting affection.
“You’re amazing at dirty talk,” he says. “How’d you think up all that on the spot?”
I raise myself up so that my erection isn’t pressing into him. It’s late to play cool now, but I try.
“I didn’t think anything up,” I say. “A public whipping is exactly what happens when a master complains about an indentured servant.”
“Really? You could have me whipped anytime?”
“Of course.”
He thinks about it. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I know you’d never do that to me.”
His eyes close again. Satisfied. I’m still pent-up and mad about it, sweat trickling under my hood, my swollen cock torturing me.
“Anyway, I’m not really into pain,” he adds dreamily. “Light spanking only.”
Why is he talking about what he’s into as though it’s any concern of mine?
“Florian,” I snap.
“Oh! Sorry,” he says. “Of course. Your turn.”
My turn? I panic at the idea of those pretty hands on my cock.
Letting him take charge of my pleasure. Pleasure and Lord Florian Southland are not words that should go together.
I look around at the red dirt, the trenches we’ve been digging, the spades abandoned on the ground, the parched and scrawny branches hanging over us, like I’m waking from a dream.
My shirt feels wet and sticky and disgusting, soaked with Florian.
I promised myself never again after the spanking.
And here’s Florian lying spent and smiling under me, like we’re waking up in the same bed.
It’s shameful. I’m shameful. But it stops now. I won’t allow him control over me. At least I can prevent him from returning the favor. I spring to my feet, backing away, erection throbbing and complaining at being dragged away from my enemy’s receptive body.
“Boss, what’s wrong?” he says, looking worried.
“Nothing.”
He knows exactly what’s wrong with me. I need release, now. But not with him. Stars, not with him.
“Let me take care of you,” he says. “It’s only fair.”
“No!”
“Why?”
“Just… just go back to the house and change.” I take a breath. My ragged voice is scaring him. I must look and sound like a madman. “Please, Florian.”
I grit out the word please. Anything to get him to leave me alone with my shameful lust.
He shrugs, looking confused and hurt. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”
“It is. Go.”
He finally, finally, walks away. I finish myself off with angry strokes and take my release with absolutely no joy. When I’m done I lean against a tree, my breath fast and agitated, my head on fire.
This was not part of the plan.