CHAPTER 14 #2
"Good," she said before I could ask. "That was good."
The praise hit me with embarrassing force. I brushed my thumb over her nipple and watched her control fracture. She stayed powerful inside the sensation, choosing it and letting it show.
I put my mouth where my hand had been.
Zara made a sound that went straight through the cracked cuff and into me. I kept the fire low. The air warmed like sunlit stone, never hotter. My tongue circled her nipple; my hand steadied her hip.
"Keep going," she said, breathless and irritated by her own breathlessness.
I smiled against her skin. "As my sovereign commands."
"Kai."
"As Zara commands," I corrected, and drew her nipple into my mouth again.
Her knees trembled. This time I moved before balance became a crisis.
"Can I lift you onto my lap?" I asked.
She looked down at me, cheeks flushed, eyes clear. "Yes. Slowly."
Slowly nearly killed me, but I managed. I lifted her by the waist and settled her astride my thighs, the open robe falling around us. Linen was a terrible lie between her heat and mine. My cock hardened against the fabric.
Zara acknowledged it directly.
She rocked once, testing, and watched my face.
"You are very controlled," she said.
"The bench and I are both making sacrifices."
Her smile turned sharp. "Touch me between my thighs."
My breath left me.
"With your fingers," she added. "Slow first. I will tell you if I want more."
"Yes."
I slid my hand down her stomach, giving her time to stop me and myself time to remember that wanting and taking lived on opposite sides of a line I meant to honor. Her muscles tightened under my palm, then softened by choice. When my fingers reached the curls between her thighs, she exhaled.
She was wet and alive in my hand.
I touched her clit with two fingers, light at first, and she shuddered so hard my fire flared in the floor beneath us. The stone warmed. Nothing burned. Zara's eyes opened.
"Controlled?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Good. More pressure."
I gave it to her.
Her hips moved against my hand, open and deliberate.
She took the rhythm and shaped it, one hand braced on my shoulder, the other at the nape of my neck.
I kissed her throat, careful to keep tenderness from slipping into teeth.
No bite. No blood. No claim. Just her body choosing mine for pleasure in a room built of heat that obeyed.
"Inside," she said after a long minute, voice lower. "One finger first."
I eased one finger into her cunt while my thumb kept circling her clit. Her breath broke. She was tight around me, slick and warm, and the trust of that undid more of me than lust could.
"Still good?" I asked.
"Yes. Ask with less panic."
"Add another."
"Carefully."
She bit my lower lip lightly, just enough to stop the joke in its tracks.
I added a second finger, slow as ordered, and curled them when her hips told me where pleasure sharpened.
Her mouth opened against mine. I swallowed her sound and gave it back softer.
The hot stone beneath her wet footprints had cooled to a dark path across the ledge, but between us heat gathered in clean, obedient waves.
Zara rode my hand until her court polish frayed into breath and command.
"There. Keep that. Kai, there."
I kept it. Same pressure, same rhythm, thumb over her clit, fingers stroking inside her.
My other hand held her lower back, giving her something solid to use.
Her authority held even as pleasure took her words apart.
If anything, she became more herself: sharper, more honest, less dressed in expectation.
She came with my name in her mouth and her hand fisted in my hair.
The sound nearly cracked the rest of the cuff.
I held still through it, moving only as much as she pressed into my hand, letting the pleasure take its course without chasing my own. Fire rolled through the floor under us, warm as a hearthstone, and stopped at the edge of her skin.
When her breathing slowed, I withdrew my fingers carefully and wrapped my clean arm around her back. "Stay or space?"
"Stay," she said at once. Then, after a beat, because she was Zara, "For now."
"For now is my favorite legal category."
She laughed into my shoulder, then lifted her head. Her eyes dropped to the hard line of my cock still trapped beneath linen.
"You are still hard."
"Astute."
"Do you want to?"
My body answered with humiliating enthusiasm. "Yes. Only if you do."
"I am aware. I am offering desire; settlement has no place here."
That sentence should have been written into law.
She shifted off my lap on slightly unsteady legs.
I reached to help, stopped, then moved only when she nodded.
Once standing, she retied the robe loosely around her waist but left the top open, either because she wanted to or because she enjoyed watching me suffer.
"Stand," she said.
I stood.
"Remove your trousers. If the cuff hurts more, say so. If the fire rises too far, say so. If you want to stop, say so."
I stared at her. "I'm having a small crisis about how attractive competence is."
"Have it while undressing."
"Yes, Princess."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Zara," I corrected, and pushed the linen down.
The air hit my cock, and restraint became physical labor. Zara's gaze moved over me without coyness. Appreciative. Deciding.