Chapter 8
VAELIS
My hand is on her neck and she is walking.
Not because I'm forcing her. The hand isn't force—it's cold, and firm, and it sits against her nape in a way that the pre-heat interprets as a command before her mind has a vote.
The submission response. She has been fighting it for thirty-one days with a precision I have genuinely admired, and right now she cannot fight it, and she knows she cannot fight it, and she is walking beside me with her jaw tight and her gaze fixed on the middle distance as though if she stares hard enough at the manor wall it won't be happening to her.
Two of my court staff come around the corner of the east path and stop.
Their eyes do what eyes always do—her neck under my hand, the state of her, the hard outline still visible against my breeches—and I don't break stride or look at them.
Let them see. By tomorrow it will be self-evident to every person in this manor, and I find I am entirely unconcerned with that.
She doesn't look at them either. That pride. I intend to do a great deal with it this evening.
I walk her through the manor and up to my rooms, take my hand off her neck, and watch her step inside and turn around.
She still has the professional face. I didn't expect it—thirty-one days of pre-heat and the morning she's just had, and she is still holding Clara's mild expression, stretched thin at every seam, but present. Hanging on with everything she has.
Remarkable woman. I mean it without irony, which is unusual for me.
"My lord," she says.
"Close the door," I say.
She closes it. I look at her for a moment—the flush spreading from her throat toward the neckline of her dress, the pressed thighs, the slick I can smell from across the room, thick and warm and omega-bright in a way that has been a specific low weight in my balls for thirty-one days.
Both cocks hard against the cloth. They have been since the garden.
The ache has graduated from patience to something considerably less comfortable and I am done ignoring it.
"Kneel," I say.
A beat. The calculation running behind the professional face: Clara would kneel, a merchant's assistant in a lord's private rooms doesn't refuse, refusing breaks the cover she will not break. She knows this and I know she knows it and we both know that is precisely why I said it.
She kneels.
The sight of her does something particular to me.
I have watched her hold herself upright for thirty-one days—the spine always straight, the chin always at exactly the right angle, the composure so absolute it was sometimes easy to forget it was a performance at all.
And now she is on her knees in my rooms in the morning light, her skirts pooled around her, and she is still holding the chin right and the composure intact, and both my cocks throb with the specific satisfaction of watching her manage it from the floor.
I walk around her slowly, letting the cold of me reach her from every angle.
I watch the pre-heat track me—the small shiver each time I pass behind her that she cannot stop, the change in her breathing when I come close without touching.
I stop behind her and look down at the back of her neck, the fine hair at her nape, the line of her spine disappearing into her dress, and feel my cocks throb in sequence.
Heavy. Slow. Very aware of what is kneeling at my feet.
I put my hands on her shoulders.
Cold through the fabric. She goes rigid—and then underneath the rigidity, her body contradicts her entirely, a slow shudder working down from her neck through her spine, the pre-heat answering the cold of me with no input from her at all.
Six centuries and it still does something particular to me, that shudder.
The body's honesty when everything else is performance.
I prefer it to the cover, but I am also not going to tell her that.
"Still," I say.
"I'm still." Not quite Clara's voice.
I slide my hands down her arms slowly, feeling her warmth through the cloth, the fine continuous tremor she cannot suppress. I find the laces at her back and begin undoing them.
"My lord—"
"Still," I say. Pleasantly.
She goes still. The laces come loose and I push the bodice open and slide my hands inside, around her ribs, feeling the heat of her skin against my palms, and pull her back against my legs.
She gasps. Suppressed immediately, but I have it—a small caught breath, halfway between protest and something else she won't name.
I bring my hands up and cup her breasts.
Cold palms against warm skin, and the sound she makes she doesn't catch in time.
A whimper—short and furious and real—and her hands come up and grip my wrists and don't pull.
Just grip. I work my thumbs in slow circles and feel her nipples harden against my palms, feel her back arch slightly, just slightly, the body's argument again.
Her scent sharpens considerably. I breathe it in.
"How strange," I say, over her shoulder. Conversationally. "The Merris line carries no omega blood. You told me so yourself." I press my palms together, feeling the warm weight of her, and her breath hitches. "And yet."
She says nothing. Her knuckles are tight on my wrists.
"The pre-heat reads as fully developed." I roll my thumbs and feel her shudder. "The scent. The slick. The submission response." A pause. "Remarkable thing, biology. So much more honest than people."
"I don't know what you mean," she says. Clara's voice, held together by will alone.
"No," I say. "I'm sure you don't."
I squeeze once, slow, and she makes another sound—lower this time, a small broken thing she hates, I can feel her hating it in the set of her jaw—and then I release her and step back.
"Hands and knees," I say.
She goes down. Her skirts pool around her and I push them up—over her thighs, to her waist—and her scent reaches me all at once, warm and thick and soaked, and I stand behind her and breathe it in and feel both cocks throb with the specific weight of wanting that has been building for one month.
She has been slick since before the garden, building for hours, her body producing this with nowhere to put it, and the sight of it and the smell of it does something to my patience that I am aware of and managing carefully.
I press my thumb along the inside of her thigh, through the cloth of her underthings, and stop.
Just the pressure. Her hips try to rock back and I hold them still with my other hand and wait.
"What do you want?" I say.
"Nothing." Strained to the edge of it. "I'm fine."
"Miss Merris." I press fractionally harder and her exhale shatters.
"What do you want."
"I want—" Her jaw works. "I want you to stop."
"Do you."
I remove my hand entirely. The sound she makes is involuntary and immediately suppressed and I have it: the specific note of absence registering before the mind can catch up. I let her feel the cold air where my hand was and stand back.
"Stand up," I say. "Come here."
She stands. She comes. Clara's posture—chin up, hands at her sides—and I take her by the shoulder and turn her to face the desk.
"Bend over."
Something shifts behind the professional face—not Clara's calculation this time but the real face, her face, showing through the seam. Her voice when it comes is not Clara's either.
"No."
Both my cocks throb. Hard, slow, once. The weight of them against my breeches is considerable and I am completely aware of it.
I unfasten my breeches.
Both cocks out—the upper curved and heavy, flushed dark, a bead of silver already forming at the tip; the lower straight and thicker, my balls drawn up full and aching beneath—and I watch her eyes go to them and stay.
She tries to look away. They come back. Her lips part on something she doesn't say.
I take her hand and wrap it around the upper cock.
Her eyes drop to it immediately—she can't help it, the same way she couldn't help the glances in the study—and I watch her take in the weight of it, the flush, the bead of silver at the tip, and I watch what that does to her face before she can arrange it.
"There it is," I say pleasantly. "You've been looking at these for five lessons."
Her jaw tightens. Her hand doesn't move. It also doesn't let go.
I press two fingers gently against her lips.
She opens for them before she decides to—the pre-heat again, the same pre-heat that has been making all her decisions today—and I slide them in and feel what I expected to find: the warm wet of her mouth, more than it should be, pooling at the back of her tongue.
She realises what I'm doing at the same moment I do it, and she bites down.
Not hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to be a message.
I look at her. She looks back at me, my fingers in her teeth, her hand around my cock, and there is fury in her eyes and something underneath it that she cannot keep off her face entirely.
I laugh. Quietly, privately—not at her, exactly, but at the situation, at myself, at the specific pleasure of finding something in six centuries that still surprises me.
“One month," I say, when she releases my fingers, "and she bites." I consider my hand briefly. "Noted."
I hold her gaze and press her palm flat against the upper shaft, over the bead of silver.
"Bend over the desk," I say, "or tell me what you want instead."
The pre-heat is written all over her—flushed from her hairline to her throat, thighs soaked, her scent so sharp in the warm room it sits at the back of my tongue. She is fighting with everything she has left. She is losing. We both know it.
She turns and bends over the desk.
I take my time. I push her skirts up and smooth my palms up the backs of her thighs, feeling her shaking under my hands—a fine continuous tremble, her whole body at this register—and pull her underthings aside.
The sight of her makes my balls draw in.