8
Alarie
Lady Vitruvian returned to the High Court in anticipation of the Summer Ball. She was lovely, if plain, with hazy blue-gray eyes, long blonde hair, and features picturesque of a high fae lady. Lady Vitruvian’s hair had a slight curl to it as she stood in the foyer in a dress that sparkled with sequins in the light of the grand chandelier. Her gown, I noted, must have cost more than the collective price of every piece of clothing I’d ever owned in my entire life—that is, before the high lord bought me a new wardrobe.
I stood across the foyer from her in a less ostentatious, yet no less elegant, gown. It was a deep, dark blue satin slip of a dress, simple, with thin straps that accentuated my petite shoulders. The dress was backless, so I couldn’t wear a bra with it; instead, I’d chosen to embrace the fact that my nipples poked through the delicate fabric. My sleek, dark brown hair fell past my breasts with a small curl at the ends. The lady and I waited in polite silence before turning to the sounds of the high lord’s footsteps. He appeared at the top of the white-and-gray marbled stairs dressed in a fitted blue tuxedo, his muscled shoulders jutting out of his jacket like wings that tapered at his waist. His resoundingly commanding presence held our attention until he stood at the bottom of the stairs between us.
He turned toward me first, acknowledging me with a nod of his head before turning to his wife. I think Lady Vitruvian’s eyes tightened just a fraction when she noticed the way my dress complimented Jay’s tux, perhaps suspecting where my dress came from. Indeed, I’d come out of my shower that day to find the gorgeous gown and heels sitting at the end of my bed, perfectly sized and worth more than anything I’d ever had on my body.
If Lady Vitruvian was displeased, Jay did not acknowledge it. He stiffly took her by her elbow and led our charge toward the Ball. Having, at last, given up on my crush on the high lord, the sight of him with another woman didn’t sting nearly as much as I thought it would. In any event, my focus remained on my first appearance at a major Court event.
For the beginning of the night, I hung near Jay’s elbow, being introduced as House Vitruvian’s promising new liaison. I exchanged firm handshakes and polite banter, dispensing casual touches of lords’ arms and tactful compliments of ladies’ gowns, and answering inquisitive glances from across the room like arrows in my quiver, placed there by the high lord’s tutelage.
Walking around with the high lord, I began to truly appreciate the extent of his influence at the High Court. It was almost as if I were walking around with the King himself. Heads turned everywhere Jay went and conversations halted to provide him with their undivided attention wherever he appeared. It didn’t seem as if the Contra was disliked around the Court, but there was a definite air of caution around him, as if they were afraid to say too much, or really anything at all, when he was near.
I didn’t think I could ever see Jay the way the people at the High Court saw him. He was strong and stoic, and the air around him almost seemed to sizzle with a tension that only he felt truly comfortable in. But since the moment I’d met him, he had been kind to me. Firm but kind. I was naturally reserved myself, so Jay’s lack of smiles and chatter was comforting to me instead of unsettling like it seemed to be for so many others. He was my stern high lord and mentor, but he was also the man who poured my coffee in the mornings.
Eventually, I broke off from Jay, making my own rounds around the Ball. I ran into Jeremy Thierry, and he introduced me to a young lord from out of town, Lord Belford. After successfully making a few connections and picking up on a few useful kernels of information I would share with the high lord later, I conducted a scan of the great hall until I met Luke’s glance. He flashed me a grin, showing his pearl-white teeth as he ran a hand through his light-brown hair. He waved me over. Appreciating just how immaculately dressed Luke always was, I favored him with a familiar smile and began to make my way toward him.
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about really,” a man standing in a group with a few other lords said loudly enough for everyone in the area to overhear as I began to walk by. “She may be new, but she’s clearly tainted,” he said nastily.
He was talking about me and didn’t even have the decency to say it to my face. One of his toadstool friends snickered. Another one, a comely lord with light hair and a few freckles dotted across his face, shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
The high fae lord who had spoken had white-blond hair and the lightest blue eyes, and his face seemed stuck in a perpetual sneer, like everything and everyone around him exuded a stench that displeased him. He was waiting to see if I’d take the bait.
I bit.
I approached the group of high fae lords, meeting the pale eyes of the young lord who had wanted my attention. He shifted his stance as I approached, and I spotted Lady Elenor Kane standing behind him.
“Oh, hi, Elenor,” I said.
Elenor whispered “hi” to me as she stared at her feet, then shifted her position in the crowd until she was once again hidden behind the men around her.
“And you must be Cole Tragon,” I said. “Your reputation precedes you.”
Cole looked around at the other lords near him with a pleased look on his face.
“That wasn’t a compliment,” I said, deadpan.
Perhaps I should have tried to ply Cole with a smile before I moved to other tactics. But seeing Elenor there with him ignited a flame of white-hot anger within me. Elenor and I had not become fast friends, as I had originally hoped; but she was still a sweet enough girl, and if half of what I had heard about Cole was to be believed, she deserved better.
Luke approached at my elbow but remained silent.
Trying to capture the momentum of the conversation, Cole sneered, “You have to have your boyfriend come and save you?”
“Ah, you’re just jealous, Cole,” Luke retorted coolly, resting his hand on my arm. “And from the color rising in your cheeks, it looks like you’re the one in need of saving, not her.”
Luke’s comment got a few chuckles from Cole’s companions and a few others who had now gathered. Robbed of scoring any points with Luke, Cole turned his attention back to me.
“Jealous?” Cole asked incredulously. “You couldn’t pay me to fuck this mutt,” he sniped cruelly, confirming my suspicion that any attempts at friendliness would have been a wasted effort.
The laughter around us settled into an awkward silence. I felt Luke’s grip tense on my arm. I placed a reassuring hand on top of Luke’s. He knew I didn’t want him to fight my battles. I’d been called worse before. And, anyway, I knew Cole’s type: the type who wanted very badly to fuck me and secretly hated himself more than he hated me for it.
“Cole,” I said, my calm voice cutting through the bated silence of those who waited to see how I would react. “We all know that the women who end up in your bed are the ones who get paid and not the other way around.”
There were more than a few snickers from the crowd forming around us, confirming what I’d said to be true. One of the Court whispers I’d picked up and saved for just such an occasion was that High Lady Tragon bribed women to go to her son’s bed. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive enough to get women on his own—if you could look past the permanent sneer on his face, he was good-looking enough. But his personality was so vile, apparently, that the only way women would visit his bed was weighed down with his mother’s coin.
I hoped Elenor took heed of this show as the warning I intended it to be. Based on what I’d heard, Cole Tragon was not the prince she dreamed of in her happily ever after. Even if we weren’t friends, I hoped for better for her.
“And, anyway, there’s no amount of money your mommy could pay me to touch you,” I said.
Luke started off the laughter; he was quickly joined by several others. The red in Cole’s face continued to deepen. Without waiting for Cole’s reply, I pulled Luke by his bulging bicep toward where he’d previously stood talking with Rhett.
I felt myself immediately relaxing in Luke and Rhett’s company. I felt comfortable with them. Almost every minute I was not with Jay, I was with Luke these days. We attended all the same functions and meetings and were constantly running into each other, even when we didn’t attend the same events. I ran into Rhett at a lot of the same events as well, and the three of us would invariably conglomerate by the end of the night.
“That looked like fun,” Rhett commented as we approached.
“I enjoyed it,” Luke said with a chuckle, leaning into me.
“Al, how nice of you to save Luke from yet another dateless soiree,” Rhett teased.
“Hey!” Luke protested. “I could have brought someone if I wanted. There were some real solid contenders. But, you know, after the way the last one went, I decided it’s more fun for Alarie, here, to be my date.”
According to Luke, he’d recently gone on a string of unsuccessful dates. He claimed his dates never seemed to care for the amount of schmoozing he had to do at these kinds of Court events.
“Contenders, huh?” I asked skeptically. Truthfully, I had no doubt that many ladies were very much enamored by Luke, but I liked to give him a hard time.
“Yeah, but I don’t really need a date for these things anymore now that I have you,” Luke said, lifting both his eyebrows suggestively.
I noticed that the high lord’s eyes were trained on us from across the ballroom. I can’t say what made me do it. I knew he didn’t care about me, not like that. But, feeling his icy gray eyes bore into me, I playfully slapped Luke on the arm.
“Oh, you’ll just have to settle for me, will you?” I quipped, letting my hand rest around Luke’s sizable bicep.
I could still feel the high lord’s searing gaze on me. But I didn’t look back at him, not wanting to let him know I knew he was watching.
“What about me?” Rhett teased.
I sauntered toward Rhett with more sway to my hips than I normally would.
“What about you?” I retorted, sultrily.
Rhett was far too good at making women weak in the knees to react to my attempt at seduction. Plus, flirting with someone at the High Court was as common as discussing the weather back home. Everyone at the High Court flirted if they thought it would help them get some advantage. Rhett probably figured I was playing a High Court game, angling for something, and he was more than willing to be a participant. I moved in close to him.
“What if I wanted Al to be my date for once?” Rhett joked, his eyes penetrating me.
I licked my lips, holding his gaze a moment longer and then lost my nerve. I broke character, taking a step back from my devilishly handsome friend.
“Rhett, your date’s right over there,” I said, elbowing him at the same time I gestured toward an unbelievably tall, beautiful high fae blonde with sparkling blue eyes.
“Oh. Yeah,” Rhett replied jokingly, like he could have forgotten.
“And we all know there’s more where she came from,” I teased, referring to the queue of ladies who seemed to be on standby, waiting for Rhett to grace them with his presence.
Rhett had said that his powers were fading, but they still seemed to be pretty damn effective to me.
“You got me there, Al,” Rhett said with a laugh.
Half an hour later, again scanning the room and deciding what further mingling I could accomplish before heading back to the Vitruvian manor for the night, I caught the gaze of the high lord as he walked out of the main hall. He ever so slightly inclined his head toward the doorway, indicating for me to follow. I didn’t know all of his looks just yet, but I thought he looked pissed. Intrigued, I cut through the crowd, making my way to where Lord Vitruvian had disappeared.
Turning a corner, I felt his rough hand wrap around my wrist before I saw him. A hot flame shot up my arm where he touched me. The silence between us simmered as he pulled me toward a dim, abandoned alcove. He stopped his march and dropped my hand. Like a predator with his prey cornered, he took a menacing step toward me. And then another until I felt the brick of the wall behind me scrape against my skin. I jumped in surprise, realizing I was out of real estate to retreat. There was a coolness to his gray eyes that pinned me to the wall.
“I attended this Ball with Lady Vitruvian on my arm because she’s the lady of my House and that’s my duty,” he began sternly.
My heart thudded in my chest, but I didn’t interrupt him. He leaned over me, his palm resting firmly against the brick over my head. My eyes darted momentarily up and then down the length of his arm that caged me against the wall before I returned my gaze back to his stony, rugged face. Before I could think of a single word to say, the high lord continued.
“But you,” he said, sharply gripping my face with his other hand and turning it to him, “you’re the liaison to my House, to me, and you, my dear, are mine,” he growled so low and deep it felt like the rumble of his words penetrated me to my core.
The heartbeat pounding in my ears gave way to butterflies fluttering in my stomach. And my nervousness shifted to satisfaction.
He was jealous.
Noting the satisfaction on my face, the high lord raised his right eyebrow in warning. A devious smile I’d never seen before settled onto his face, as if to say I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into.
Indeed, I did not. His free hand, the one not caging me against the wall, moved to the small of my back, pressing our bodies together until I felt the front of him pressed against me. The feel of his body against mine ignited a pulsating flame of need within me. He moved into me, pushing a leg between mine, and taking advantage of the high slit in my dress. He pressed his thigh against the outside of my white satin panties.
I was already traitorously wet. He moved the top of his thigh slowly but firmly back and forth, my wetness helping the fabric glide against me. Jay nuzzled his face into my hair, pushing it aside so he could breathe onto my neck. Instinctively, my hips rolled toward his leg between my thighs at the same time I moved my head away from him, allowing him access to the length of my neck. A rumble of approval emanated from his chest.
“You think I’m just some boy from back home who you can tease and bend and keep me right where you want me?” he asked darkly, grazing his teeth over the side of my throat.
An exhilarating chill shot through my entire body as heat continued to gather between my thighs.
“Jay. I—” I began to deny it, but that was exactly what I’d done.
I’d tried to make him jealous. I closed my mouth, swallowing whatever excuse I was going to use.
His large hands firmly gripped my hips. Locked into his embrace, he began to rock me back and forth over the top of his thigh, his powerful thumbs digging into the little crevices where my hips dipped, making me angle into his movement. The rocking motion of his hands on my hips robbed me of words. I felt a spike of adrenaline matched by an immediate flood of excitement that settled between my thighs.
The friction between our bodies was quickly building into something I couldn’t believe was going to happen right in the middle of the hallway with the high lord. My mind raced as he rubbed against the outside of my slick satin thong.
For a fleeting second, I thought about objecting. But instead, a small show of my mounting pleasure escaped my lips.
“Good girl,” he whispered, brushing his lips against my neck.
His hand moved from my hip to my thigh, his fingertips digging in as he wrapped my leg around his waist. He rubbed the hardness of his length against me. A soft whimper escaped my mouth. I arched my back into him, eager to increase the resistance between us, giving up on words altogether.
My nipples hardened to tiny peaks, protruding through the delicate fabric of my dress. My back against the brick wall, he wrapped my other leg around him and began to thrust into me, rubbing me up and down against his length through his pants. His thrusts were getting faster.
I closed my eyes, unable to focus on anything other than the buzzing that climbed to a deep, fast pulsing where he moved against me.
“No, Alarie,” he barked, his hand grasping my chin as his hips continued to grind into me. “Eyes on me,” the high lord commanded.
I opened my eyes and peered into the high lord’s intense gaze. The hunger, the need to possess me, I saw there seared through me. The pulsing between my thighs pitched. My legs clenched around him. He wrapped his hand around my mouth, stifling my moans that multiplied as he increased the pace of his thrusting.
“Here’s your first real lesson from me, Alarie.”
My lips parted slightly under his hand, gasping for air.
“I will take what’s mine whenever and wherever I so desire. And since You. Are. Mine, that means that each and every one of your orgasms belongs to me.”
The throbbing heightened until it seemed in tune with my racing heartbeat, growing faster and faster with his hard thrusts into me.
“Now give me what’s mine. Come for me,” he demanded.
He circled his hips, finally hitting that one spot where it felt like all my throbbing was trapped, waiting to be set free. I released a muffled cry, my lips pressed against the inside of his hand, finding my reward for taunting the high lord.
He held my gaze as I rode out the explosion of my release, his hand still pressed against my mouth so hard that my lips pressed against my teeth. And then he dropped his hand, and I gasped in air.
He delicately righted me in my heels, taking the time to carefully lower the hem of my dress to the floor. Then he tilted my chin up to look at him until I stared into his deep gray eyes. He held my gaze as he lowered his mouth toward me, planting a chaste kiss on my forehead.
“You can go back to your boys now,” he said coolly, dismissing me like I was the one who had dragged him into the hallway.
He walked away from the alcove without another word. Jay placed his hand in his pocket and went back to the Ball like the front of him was not covered in the evidence of the orgasm he had just ripped from me.
Voices in a not-too-distant hallway floated to me. I looked down at my dress, double checking that I was back in order, then scurried back into the main hall shortly after the high lord.