Martini
I was in the closet, putting the finishing touches on my accessories, when my male strolled in.
I knew he was coming. He’d not only text commed to share when they left, he’d done the same on their approach.
I had hoped to knock him dead with my outfit by being ready early and hanging with Gayle or Aleece and making an entrance for pre-dinner cocktails, so Tanyn’s timing was bad (I refused to think mine was, or that I’d frittered away too much of it picking the perfect earrings—that said, I’d picked the perfect earrings).
Though, it was also good, since we had time for him to update me before we were set to meet the others for drinks.
I turned to him with a smile, then I let out a surprised shriek because he was on me.
No, not on me.
All over me.
He ripped up my skirt, a delicious feat, considering how the usually immovable latex dragged against my skin. He then ripped off my panties and lifted me by the cheeks of my ass, slamming me against the wall.
“Get me in you,” he growled.
Given the fact my sex had flooded due to his actions, I did not delay.
Working between us swiftly, I released him from his jeans, took hold, lined him up, and he stroked in.
Taking all of him, loving every inch with a ferocity that lowkey terrified me (just not in that exact moment, in that exact moment I was feeling very different things), my head slammed back into the wall.
Tanyn slammed into me.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he grunted as he thrust inside.
I rounded him with arms and legs, tilting my hips to get more and sinking my teeth into his neck until I tasted blood.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he groaned as he thrust harder.
I fisted a hand in his hair, forced his mouth to mine, but he didn’t kiss me.
His teeth caught my lower lip and tugged it viciously.
The pleasure from the pain detonated between my legs, and I whimpered.
He let my lip go and ordered gruffly, “Lift your knees. Up my sides.”
I did that and it allowed him to drive in deeper.
As such, I could do nothing but pant, moan, clutch, clench and eventually, come really, really hard.
After a few more thrusts, Tanyn followed me.
When it was over, and we’d come down, he was holding me by my ass against the wall, still hard inside.
After he finally pulled his face out of my neck and caught my eyes, I asked, “So, you like the dress?”
That caused just a growl.
It sounded and felt marvelous.
More marvelous?
He walked me, still hard and inside, to the bathroom.
A novel experience.
But a mega one.
Only after he set me down on the basin did he slide out so he could tuck himself back in, straighten his jeans and go grab a cloth to clean me up.
After we saw to business, he lifted me gently to put me on my stilettos, and then he went to the effort of tugging the tight mocha-nude latex back over my hips and down my thighs.
“You ruined my big entrance,” I noted as my male seemed rather taken with the task of unnecessarily smoothing the latex over my ass, hips and thighs.
“Mm?” he asked distractedly.
“This dress is payback for this morning. You were supposed to be tortured through dinner. As far as I could tell, your torture lasted half a second.”
He stopped smoothing, straightened, caught me at my hips and grinned.
“Promise, it’s still going to torture me.”
I believed him, considering the mock turtleneck, short-sleeved, to-the-knee dress molded to every curve of my body in a way it highlighted them at the same time they were a tease.
“And now it appears I need to change for dinner,” he said.
Using both hands, he caught me by the base of my head for a quick kiss, but he let me go only to claim me again by capturing my hand and pulling me to the bench in the closet.
There, he released me and went to his clothes.
It seemed he wanted me to hang out while he changed.
Considering I was all the way down with that, I sat, crossed my legs and watched him select a pair of navy trousers, a matching cashmere sweater and a pair of oxblood shoes.
I then watched as he disrobed.
I was so entertained by this, I didn’t speak until he’d pulled his trousers up over his very fine ass, which made his ass no less fine, it was just as fine but now covered in material.
“So?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me what happened? Because I, too, have news, and we’ve company, so we can’t dally in our closet for hours.”
He halted in the process of pulling his sweater down his stomach to lift his brows at me.
“We’ve company?” he asked.
And yes.
That did come out of my mouth.
“Our closet?” he kept at me.
Dear gods.
“Focus, King Tanyn,” I demanded.
His lips twitched, he sorted his sweater then came to sit beside me to put on his shoes.
Fortunately, he did this talking.
Unfortunately, what he had to say was not to my liking.
“We’ve a problem.”
“You mean, another one?” I asked.
Both shoes were on, neither tied, when he turned to fully face me.
“Regardless of the fact we identified the males we captured within an hour of capturing them along with identifying their dead compatriots, and they have known ties to traditionalist groups, which in turn have ties to Arnaud, and that translates to Tatra, even under truth serum, they denied all of this.”
By heaven and hellfire.
“Yes,” I said softly. “That’s a problem.”
And it was.
You couldn’t beat truth serum. It was infallible.
So what in the hells was happening?
“They say they’re members of the Space Junkies,” Tanyn told me.
“That…doesn’t make sense,” I replied.
The Space Junkies were an activist group who wanted beings to stop building in and populating space.
On the one hand, I could see this claim from the perpetrators.
I could, since, if we did what the Space Junkies wanted, not only would all space stations, but also all satellites be dismantled and recycled, which would knock out a lot of tech capabilities, not to mention research and military resources.
And this, in turn, would send us back a couple hundred years and we’d be living like it was the 1900s.
And one could say the traditionalists wished to send us spiraling back in time.
On the other hand…
“They’re non-violent,” I told Tanyn something he knew. “And Sigil would not be a target. Yes, there’s modern tech there. But for the most part, it’s a bastion of another age. Not to mention, it’s not in space.”
“They said they’re escalating so they can get more attention for their cause.”
“They’re roundly considered nutjobs, highly averse to tech, so they not only wouldn’t have access to attack craft, but they wouldn’t use it. But no one wants to give up their Palms and holos so we won’t have satellites no one can see, unless they’re in space.”
“No, this does not track.” Tanyn bent to tie his shoes.
But I sensed he was avoiding me.
“Tanyn,” I called.
“Fuck,” he muttered to his shoes.
Yes. He was avoiding me.
“Tanyn,” I snapped.
He finished with his shoes, straightened and turned to me, taking my hand.
Not a good sign.
“We had to draft another request to present to a magistrate because we need to take bloods from these males and determine if they’re under the influence of the control drug Tatra used.”
Oh shit.
“Or if there’s something else at play. And”—he squeezed my hand—“Aleksei has instigated the same in Night’s Fall in order to take Arnaud’s blood.”
“Can this drug circumvent even truth serum?”
“No, we don’t believe so. But we’re checking. And there might have been some other drug developed that can.”
My blood turned to ice at what this might mean regarding our current situation, but also in broader terms.
If you could beat truth serum, you could literally get away with murder.
“This Space Junkies bullshit is not a good lie,” Tanyn said.
“However, truth serum is irrefutable. That said, the knowledge that we know my father was drugged has been kept in the strictest of secret. Even his and Mom’s exhumations have.
We made the decision not to go public about any of this until we had a good deal more information on all of it.
In fact, there isn’t a single member of the Assembly who knows any of it has happened. ”
Yowza.
But, good call, as some of them could be in Tatra’s camp.
Tanyn kept going.
“It’s proving a good decision that we’ve not.
They’ve no idea we know what Tatra did. We’re beginning to get an understanding of the extent of her resources.
If we did not know this, not only would the Space Junkies get the blame for their actions, our investigations would be deflected down a road that would perhaps force us to target innocents but not take us where we need to go.
Now, for the first time, I feel some relief because I think we’re making the right moves that will take us down a road to understanding what the fuck is going on, and who’s behind it. ”
“How long is it going to take to get this warrant?”
“We’ll have it by morning. They’ll take the bloods and process them immediately. In other words, we’ll know more, also by morning.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Now, you said you had news too?”
I turned into him and lifted both legs (my skirt was so tight it wouldn’t allow me to do just one) so I could rest them bent at the knees against his thigh, and I asked, “Have you ever seen a pic of Selediel?”
His brows inched together. “The celebrated fae beauty?”
I nodded.
“No.”
“There’s one under a cover in the citadel.”
“Okay,” he said slowly.
“I asked Zyra to send me some snaps of the items in the rooms not in use, just in case there might be something salvageable, including the paintings on the walls.”
With that, I took my knees from his thigh, got up, went to my dressing table and nabbed my Palm.
I brought it back and resumed my position while pulling up the pic Zyra sent to me.
Once it was on display, I showed it to him.
Like me, it took him a moment to see what there was to see.
I knew he saw it when he said, “Bloody hell.”