12
Alarie
Inodded, feigning casualness even though it felt like my skin was on fire where he had touched me. After a few minutes, Jay returned to our table and returned to work.
Unsurprisingly, talk regarding Lord Belford consumed the High Court in the days following his murder, in the days Jay had been gone. But what was surprising was that it was more so the fact that Lord Belford’s wounds couldn’t be healed than the fact that he had been stabbed and left to die in a hallway that dominated the chatter. I wondered if that’s where Jay had been—smoothing over relations with House Belford, cleaning up House Tragon’s messes. Where was House Belford? I stood up from my chair, reaching for a book on the far side of the table in which I knew a map with a location of each House was located in the front of the text.
Seconds after I sat back down, Jay closed the book in his hand so forcefully that it made a definitive clap. I jumped. Then he rose from his chair. Probably just another messenger at the door. But then I felt his strong hand grab my small face between two fingers.
“Alarie,” he purred, his tone deep and thick with his intentions.
He forced my face to turn up to his. I met his eyes, laden with his desire, and the growing heat between my thighs exposed the truth of what I’d tried to deny for weeks.
“I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time,” the high lord explained matter-of-factly.
“And what is it that you have been thinking about, Jay?” I asked flirtatiously, forcing more confidence than I felt into my voice.
A devious smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. “Of how you’ll taste.”
I swallowed hard, gulping down the air from the deep breath I’d taken. The heat pulsing within me ignited, forming a burning flame of desire.
“Every morning, I sit at breakfast with you wondering if you’ll taste as sweet as the berries you run across your lips, teasing me,” he said.
He ran his thumb across my lips like I’d done with a strawberry many times before.
I tried not to blush at being called out for my efforts to get his attention. It was true that I’d never really given up on the crush I had on him. I’d thought of the high lord almost incessantly since I’d arrived at the manor, wondering what he was doing when he wasn’t around me, trying on every outfit and thinking of whether it would draw his eye, finding ways to casually touch him when we sat next to each other each day in the library. I’d been thinking of him, his body pressed against mine, last night while I’d lain in bed.
But he couldn’t know that, I reassured myself.
His thumb ended its journey across my bottom lip, plunging forcefully into my mouth and catching me off guard. He ran the pad of his thumb over my teeth, before prying my mouth open farther, like he was examining how far it could open. Seemingly satisfied, he closed my mouth.
“I plan to find out. Right. Now,” he growled, his voice simmering with the promise of things I’d only dreamed about.
I considered for a moment, not because I didn’t want him—I did. He was stern and domineering and bossy, and his every word pushed the flame of my desire for him higher and higher—but to consider the implication of getting involved with my high lord and mentor. The only real thing that gave me pause, I decided, was his wife. I thought I already knew the answer to my question based on what I’d already seen and heard, but I had to know.
“And Lady Vitruvian?” I asked, my voice a low whisper.
I couldn’t keep the reluctant hope out of my voice. The high lord continued to grasp my face firmly.
“There’s an arrangement. So, this”—he indicated his hand on me— “isn’t a problem,” he replied curtly, clearly not wanting to distract from the moment to elaborate. “And that, my dear, is all that you need to know for now. Now the next words that come from your pretty little lips better be my name, yes, or some combination of the two,” he ordered.
I took a deep breath, raising my eyebrows at his overtly domineering demeanor. He stared right back at me, his hard gray eyes unflinching and unapologetic. To my own surprise, my desire for him to touch more of me overpowered my normal instincts to rebel against anyone who ever tried to tell me what to do.
“Yes, Jay,” I said, aiming to please.
“Good girl,” he purred, letting his hand drop from my face.
I felt both warmth from his praise and a chill from the loss of his touch.
Jay sat back in his chair and turned to me, encircling my tiny waist with his strong hands. He lifted me easily and placed me in his lap, making my neck accessible to his mouth as my thighs lay over his legs, close to the feeling of him growing harder by the second.
Then he began a delicate trail of kisses up my neck. He placed an inquiring hand up my skirt on the inside of my thigh, brushing the top of my thigh-high.
I threw back my long hair, relishing his lips on my skin, and opened my legs a little wider for him, causing his hand to move farther up my leg. I wanted his hand to creep farther and farther up my leg until he found the fire within me that ached to be stroked higher.
I felt the length of him, hard and poking at the back of my thigh. He ran a fingertip over the outside of my satin panties and the apex of my sex. I swallowed a hungry gasp of air. He found me already soaked with my desire for him.
“So eager to please, so wet,” he said, brushing his lips on the side of my neck.
He greedily pushed the fabric to one side and released a growl of approval against my breasts. Then he slid a finger into my soaking warmth. I had to take my bottom lip in between my teeth to stifle a moan.
“You remember your first lesson, dear?” he asked as he gently, methodically, plunged his finger in and out of my wet little space as his palm rubbed against me.
He played in my wetness, the confirmation of my need for him.
“Um hmm,” I moaned.
“Good. Because you’re going to ride my hand until you come for me,” he demanded.
I was consumed with the feeling of his movements inside of me. I burned with the need for more.
“Now what do you say, Alarie?”
“Yes, Jay?” I ventured.
The steely glint of approval in his eyes confirmed that I had answered correctly.
And then I began to move with the rhythm of his hand, my need rushing me to push his fingers farther inside of me until my breathing hitched. I took part of my lip between my teeth again. I was close. So close.
He adjusted his hand, keeping two fingers inside of me, and used the palm of his hand to rub against the crown of my sex until the fire within me was about to consume my entire existence.
“Be a good girl, Alarie. Now come,” he ordered in the domineering tone mastered by a 300-year-old high lord used to getting his way.
The flame within me rose to soaring heights. I shuddered around him. He grabbed my jaw with his other hand, setting his mouth over mine, and I breathed a moan into his mouth. He sucked in the breath of my orgasm hungrily as he kissed me for the first time. His tongue swept over my teeth and the roof of my mouth as if he could taste my orgasm. Slowly withdrawing his hand from inside of me, he rested it on my inner thigh.
“As part of your first lesson, you will learn to always come for me,” he said in the commanding voice of a high lord.
An afterglow upon my cheeks, the remnants of my pleasure dripping onto his pants, I simply nodded. I didn’t know what lessons he was referring to or what “always” entailed, but at that very moment, I wanted nothing more than to find out. I eyed the bulge in his pants.
“Tell me what you want, Alarie,” he demanded.
I normally wasn’t shy, but I hesitated to answer his question. Already somewhat confounded by finding myself more malleable under his hands than I’d ever been at any other point in my entire life, I now struggled to put what I wanted into words.
I squirmed in his lap, rubbing my ass against the length of him. He groaned, digging his fingers into the curves of my hips, but continued to look at me expectantly.
“Answer me,” he demanded.
“You,” I managed to say. “I want you,” I said, a little more confident.
He delicately ran the back of his hand across the side of my face before placing a finger under my chin to hold my attention.
“Then get on your knees, my dear, and do your very best to please me,” he ordered.
His deep voice skated over my skin, reigniting a surge of desire within me again. I slithered off his lap and kneeled between his legs as he remained seated in his chair. I knew what to do, but I’d never done it before. I’d only been with one guy in my entire life, and that had not been a particularly involved or lengthy experience.
I was amazed by Jay’s calmness, conscious of how desperate I’d been for my own release. I was all too aware of the desire that continued to well up inside of me, wanting more of his hands on my body.
I proceeded to unbutton his pants and let his hardness spring loose. He continued to look at me with that same burning calmness as I broke our gaze to peer down at the full hard length of him. I took him in my hand, stroking his impressive length. A low growl escaped his lips, and I felt a wave of excitement, a kind of power from eliciting such a response from a man like him, a man who was always in control of everything and everyone around him. But with him in my hand, I felt like I was holding onto the beginning of a loose thread. And if I tugged at it just right, then just maybe he, and the power he held so closely, would come undone for me, because of me.
Emboldened, I took him in my mouth, first just the tip and then more and more, finding I could take the length of him but that he slid down my throat. But I didn’t gag. I began to truly enjoy myself, feeling more powerful each time I made my way up and down the length of him.
Jay’s large hand grasped my chin, tilting my head up toward his face, holding it there so that I couldn’t look away. It was a difficult angle, but I saw his hunger for me in his piercing gray eyes, and it made me want to redouble my efforts. He moved his hand from my chin to the nape of my neck, where he entangled his hand into my long hair. I was desperate to please him, but I tensed as his thrusts came faster and more forceful. Then I really did gag around him.
“You can take it,” he reassured me.
“That’s it,” he said, hitting the back of my throat as I began to relax again. “Just like that,” he crooned, leaning farther back into his chair but not releasing his grip on me.
“Now breathe,” he ordered, pushing his way forcefully to the back of my throat again.
Even when he was fucking my mouth, he was giving me a lesson, I thought, my usual ornery nature momentarily rearing its head. But I was determined. I breathed in through my nose and focused on taking him deeper. He continued thrusting the hard length of him in and out of my mouth until he found his rhythm, and then his release, spilling down my throat. His grip in my hair went slack, and I knew I’d succeeded.
I went to rise from my knees. Jay grabbed me and placed me on his lap. He, again, commended me.
“Hmm,” he rumbled, his hand resting on the inside of my thigh. “That was good.”
I brightened at knowing my hard work had paid off.
“Where did you learn how to do that?”
“I didn’t. That… That was my first time,” I admitted, hating the shyness in my voice.
Normally so confident, I felt so timid at finding myself in new territory, especially with a man like Jay. He merely nodded in approval.
“Learning to please me with every part of your body in every way will be your second lesson, my dear. But you have to master your first lesson first. You’ve done spectacularly, and I have no doubt you’ll continue to do so, but you’ll not touch me again until I’ve decided that you’ve mastered your ability to come for me when I command it.”
He looked at me expectantly, waiting for my reply.
“Yes, Jay,” I replied, knowing that was the answer he was looking for this time.
Resuming his stoic high lord demeanor, he gave me a chaste kiss before lifting me off his lap and placing me back in my seat, making it clear I was to return to my studies. He buttoned up his blue dress pants and went back to his book, licking his finger to turn a page, the same finger he had stroked within me minutes before.
“Strawberries,” he noted appreciatively under his breath, as he continued his reading.
I burned in satisfaction at the sound of approval in his voice. Always come for him, learn to please him, lessons. I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d just signed up for, but those were the kind of lessons I could look forward to. I struggled to return my focus to the book before me.
Led by Prince Heroux, the forces of Valencia rebuffed the advance of the Alancian army… I read and reread the same sentence several times, trying to ignore the wetness threatening to escape my small panties. I let out an exasperated sigh, finally turning the page of my book that had taken me entirely too long to get through. Jay released a small, self-satisfied chuckle, as if he knew of my internal struggle.
As he stared at the books before him, I watched his face revert back to that of the aloof high lord. I ran a fingertip across my lower lip, contemplating which path forward would be more tortuous—his continued attention solely upon me or my inability to touch him in return.
My lessons for the rest of the week continued with me and my books taking turns sprawled out on top of the large table in the library.