Ursa’s penthouse feels like a home. The front door leads into a lavish living room with a thick patterned blue rug over the cool-gray marble floors. The couches are a paler gray with blue and gray patterned pillows. A large white stone fireplace sits in one wall and in the corner opposite is a deceptively delicate fountain that stretches nearly to the ceiling. The windows overlook the city, spanning the breadth of the wall opposite the door. It’s remarkably cozy.
Ursa props a hand on her hip and looks at me. “Strip.”
“Excuse me?” The question is out before I remember why I’m here, what the next seven days will entail.
“Strip, Zurielle. One item after another until I tell you to stop.”
I reach for the back of my dress without another thought, responding to the command in her voice. I should be questioning this, should still be demanding answers, but I want to obey. Still… I unclasp the top of my dress and pause. “I thought you and Alaric are friends.”
Ursa’s red lips curve. “We are.”
“You don’t think he’s going to have a problem with you and I having seven days’ worth of sex?” It was one thing when I was giving myself to a stranger. Ursa is a stranger, technically—but only to me. Alaric knows her. He’s known her in the most biblical of senses.
“Alaric understands how things work in Carver City.” Her expression doesn’t change. “Sex is only sex, until it’s not.”
I frown. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“The dress, Zurielle.”
I release it and let it flutter to my feet. I was more naked than this on stage, but I can’t help holding my breath as Ursa drinks in the sight of me. She peruses me from the top of my head, down the length of my body, pausing on my feet before retracing the same path upward. By the time she reaches my face again, I’m trembling.
She licks her lips. “First things first. Hercules explained to you how safe words work?”
A word that’s an emergency failsafe if something happens that I don’t want. A way to make everything stop, even in games where “no” doesn’t really mean “no.” It seems strange and almost too good to be true to trust someone to honor a single word, but Ursa’s expression is deadly serious as she waits for my answer. “Yes, he explained it to me.”
“Pick one. Something you won’t use in casual conversation on accident.”
I swallow hard, this entire situation suddenly becoming that much realer. “Hurricane.”
Ursa considers me for a moment and nods. “Very well. Did you like being on stage with Aurora?”
I flush hot. “I think everyone could tell that I did.”
“That’s not an answer.” She snaps her fingers. “Kneel.”
I obey. The rug cushions my knees, the floor catching me even as the room seems to spin. It’s so solid. A strange thought, but I can’t help it as I look up at Ursa. She seems larger than life, a goddess to be worshiped with words and actions. I want to worship her.
“Did you like being on stage with Aurora?” she asks again.
This time, I don’t try to dodge the question. “Yes. I loved it when she touched me. I loved how she whispered in my ear that everyone was getting off on it, and I really loved it when she stroked my clit. I wanted more.”
She nods and moves closer until the hem of her dress brushes my knees. Ursa sifts her fingers through my hair, petting me in an almost innocent way. I’m still trembling, poised on the verge of something I don’t understand. This is pleasure, yes, but it’s something beyond that. Kneeling at her feet, knowing that I’ll obey any command she gives right now, having her touch me… It all combines into a need that takes my breath away. “Please.”
“Please what?” She still sounds warm, welcoming, completely at odds with the look in her dark eyes. I don’t know why the contrast pulls at my chest—lower—but it does.
I want the warmth.
I want the bite.
I want it all.
“I feel…” I’m not sure how to put it into words. “I need.”
“Ah.” She twines my hair around her fist and tugs sharply. She inhales as I gasp, as if she can taste the sound on my lips despite the distance between our faces. Using that hold on my hair, she urges me to my feet. It hurts a little, but the pain does something funny to my head. I feel floaty and warm, warm, warm, my pulse throbbing in my pussy until I’m shaking.
Ursa releases me. “Take off everything. I want to see what my million dollars purchased.”
A million dollars.
She paid a million dollars for me. Or, more likely, for some kind of revenge, but it’s hard to remember that with her staring at me like I’m a dessert she’s about to sample. It takes me several tries to get my bra undone, and even longer to work the clasps on my faux corset. As I slide my panties down my legs, she turns and walks away. I pause. “Um?”
“Did I say stop?” She doesn’t look at me.
“No.”
“No, Mistress,” she corrects.
“No, Mistress.” I listen to her heels click down the hallway and then keep stripping. It’s tempting to just shuck off the garter belt and thigh highs, but I make myself undo them first and take them off properly. I’m removing the last stocking as she reappears with a glass of red wine in her hand.
Ursa says nothing as she circles me slowly, but I can feel her gaze on my bare skin. I’m achingly aware of how lacking I must be. She’s lush and full of curves and soft in the very sexiest of ways. I’m a string bean by comparison, narrow hips and small breasts. I’ve never wanted another body as much as I do in the moment when she’s at my back.
At least until she finally comes to stand in front of me and I see the hunger in her eyes again. As if she can’t decide which part of me she wants to devour first. “You’re very beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” I blurt.
“I know.” She sips her wine slowly. “Sit on the couch. Spread your legs.”
I stumble to the couch and sit on the center cushion. She follows and perches on the heavy marble coffee table in front of me. I hesitate but finally spread my legs, inch by inch, until I can feel cool air against my heated flesh. It takes everything I have not to slam my knees shut as she studies me there just as thoroughly as she studied the rest of my body.
Another slow sip of wine. “You’re very wet, little Zurielle.”
“Zuri,” I whisper. When Ursa arches her eyebrows, I explain. “My friends call me Zuri.”
“We aren’t friends.” She says it almost kindly. “I’m going to fuck you until you come so many times, it’s my face you see when you think of god. But we are not, and never will be, friends.”
I can’t quite catch my breath. “Oh.”
“I’m going to touch you now.” She doesn’t wait for me to answer before she coasts one hand up my thigh to use her thumb to part my pussy. “So wet and pink. I think you like being on your knees.”
“I—”
“You will not speak until I give you permission.” The sentence comes out absently as she keeps up that slow exploration with her fingers, circling her thumb gently over my clit. “You will not speak, and you will not move, and you will not come. Do you understand me, little Zurielle?” Her gaze flicks to my face. “You may answer.”
Now I truly am gasping. How can she strike to the very heart of my dark desires with a few short words? “Yes, Mistress.”
Another sip of her wine and she sets the glass aside. “The next time you speak, it will be to request my permission to come.” She lightly drags her fingers up my thighs to my hips and then yanks me to the very edge of the couch, my legs on either side of hers. “Better.” She takes my hands and guides them to the backs of my thighs, pulling my legs up and out, exposing me in a way there’s no hiding from. “Hold just like this.”
It’s uncomfortable and embarrassing, and I forget both those things as she resumes touching my pussy. Slow strokes of her fingers as she explores me, circling my clit, tracing my entrance, dipping down to press her
thumb against my ass. I jump at the last, but then quiver as I force myself to hold still. Ursa doesn’t press inside, but she watches me, cataloguing every reaction.
She presses one hand to my lower stomach, holding me perfectly still as she goes back to playing with my clit. “Look how eager you are. You sold yourself for love, and you’re so wet for my fingers, you’re practically shaking with the need for more.” She licks her lips. “Would you beg for my mouth, I wonder?”
Humiliation and shame lance me, but somehow they combine to a greater desire. I am suddenly sure I will beg for her mouth. I press my lips together hard, determined to obey and keep the words inside. She’s wrong. She must be wrong. I love Alaric. My body might be confused right now beneath her expert touch, but it’s just sex. It doesn’t mean anything.
It can’t mean anything.
“So unfaithful, little Zurielle. Such a little slut.” She smiles slowly. “Would you like my mouth? You may answer.” I open my mouth to deny her, but she cuts me off before I can spill the lie. “If you’re going to speak, you do it honestly.”
I don’t want to. We’re barely an hour into the seven days and I’m already dancing across lines I thought were set in stone. I had thought to merely endure, but Ursa is forcing me to be an active participant, forcing my betrayal with both word and action.
All the same, I can’t lie.
“Yes.” I sound like another person, someone needy and desperate, someone on the verge of breaking. “Yes, Mistress, I want your mouth.”
“So eager,” she murmurs, her gaze dropping back to where she hasn’t stopped stroking me. “I suppose a little appetizer won’t hurt.”
The words don’t make sense, but then they don’t matter at all as she dips down, her locs sliding against my thighs, to drag her tongue over me. Her mouth on the most private part of me is slippery and sinful, and I dig my fingers into my thighs to keep from reaching for her. It feels so good, so much better than I could have dreamed. She licks my pussy like I’m her favorite flavor of candy, like she wants to taste every inch of me.
Pleasure swarms me, buzzing through my veins and making me shake with need. I never want this to stop, but I’m devastatingly aware that I’m on the verge of disobeying her already. “Ursa,” I gasp. “Mistress.”
She barely lifts her head. “Mmm?”
“May I come?”
Her dark eyes flick over me, pausing at my breasts before settling on my bottom lip. It stings from where I’ve been biting it in an effort to keep silent. “Yes.” And then she lowers her head and resumes eating me out.
My toes are curling with pleasure, the room spinning around me. I’m so close.
I barely register an unfamiliar sound in the distance. I’m too focused on my pleasure. Ursa sucks hard on my clit and then I’m coming, the orgasm bowing my back and drawing a cry from my lips. I fight to keep my eyes open, a dark, dirty part of me loving that there’s red lipstick smeared on my pussy from her mouth. A mark that she’s given me, for all that it’s temporary. I don’t know why it’s so hot, only that I don’t want her to stop.
She doesn’t.
The elevator doors slide open as Ursa slips her tongue inside me. I look up and blink, sure that I’m hallucinating. Sure that I’m not splayed out on this couch, Ursa’s mouth all over me, as Alaric walks into the penthouse.
Except he doesn’t disappear. I blink rapidly, but he’s still there, something like shock written across his features as he takes in the scene before him.
The man I love is watching another woman eat my pussy.
Oh my god, what have I done?
Chapter 9
Ursa
Zurielle goes tense beneath me, and I smile against her pussy. Really, this was too easy. That doesn’t stop me from licking my lips as I lift my head. I expected to win the bidding. Expected Alaric to show up and interrupt us.
I didn’t expect to enjoy Zurielle’s responsiveness so much.
Even now, with her eyes wide from horror and guilt, she’s still silent and holding herself open for me. She’s still obeying.
I press my hand to her lower stomach, as much to keep her in place as to feel the delightful little shakes from the orgasm she just had. Only then do I look over my shoulder at Alaric.
He stands just inside the elevator, looking every inch the Prince Charming he plays for everyone else. Gray slacks, black button-down, black hair styled in a careless sort of way that’s just shy of being rakish. And those eyes. He’s able to lie with his eyes better than anyone I’ve ever known. Right now he’s a blank slate, waiting for me to take the lead.
I love a man who knows his place.
I crook the fingers of my free hand. “Come here, lover.”
There. The tone is set. He doesn’t have to lie anymore, though I’d be a fool to trust Alaric to pursue anything but his own interests. Everyone in this town is selfish; he’s just a little more upfront about it. At least to me. The other patrons of the Underworld think he’s something else altogether.
Alaric crosses slowly, his gaze sliding over me, lingering on my mouth, and then giving Zurielle a similar treatment. She opens her mouth, no doubt to blurt some kind of explanation, and I shoot her a look. She clamps her lips shut, expression miserable. I shouldn’t be warmed by that instant obedience. I truly shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. She’s such a delicious little subbie.
Alaric reaches us and slides his hands into his pockets. “What do we have here?”
“Darling, you’re being mean. You can stop pretending. She’s mine for the week. There’s no going back now.” I won’t allow us to go back. Just like I won’t allow him to continue the façade that he’s not an active participant in this. I allow a slow smile.
His lips quirk. “Then I suppose the cat’s out of the bag.”
“It is.” I lift my chin. “Give me a kiss.”
If Alaric were truly the nice guy he pretends to be, he’d brush a quick kiss to my mouth and make a hasty retreat. He’s not. He never was.
He cups my chin and kisses me like it’s been years since we’ve seen each other, like I wasn’t riding his cock a little over twenty-four hours ago. He licks the inside of my mouth and I know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s soaking up every bit of Zurielle’s taste he can. Wicked boy. I allow it, just like I allowed him to stand over me. Alaric kisses me with all the expertise of someone with his history. But it’s more than sheer skill. For as calculated as he is, he gets lost in it. He tempts me to do the same.
When he finally lifts his head, I’m fighting not to lean into him. I raise my brows. “Go wash the Underworld off you. You’re free now.”
Another quick kiss to my lips and he’s gone, walking away without a single look at Zurielle. I narrow my eyes. That was too cold. He can be calculated and manipulative, but Alaric has a heart beneath all that scar tissue of his past. And no one with a heart would be able to remain unaffected by the slow tears tracking down Zurielle’s cheeks right now. Even I’m not completely unencumbered by her watching her rose-tinted future slide down the drain.
The only reason to be so cold is to avoid showing his hand. His guilt.
Interesting.
I tuck the knowledge away to test out later and turn back to Zurielle. She’s even pretty when she cries. Of course she is. She’s like a living fantasy created solely to entice me to play with her. Even if she wasn’t Triton’s daughter, I’d be sorely tempted simply because of how her lower lip quivers.
Still, she obeys.
I lightly stroke her lower stomach with my nails. “You may speak.”
Her breath shudders out. “You and Alaric…”
“Mmm?” Best to let her get it out now.
“You’re together.”
“Yes. We have been for some time.” Or as together as two people can be with our respective circumstances. I can’t help adding a qualifier every time my mind skirts too closely to what together might look like now that he’s free. It’s entirely possible that he’s been usin
g me as much as I’m using Zurielle. Only time will tell, and I’m not foolish enough to let him closer than he already is in the meantime. Or that’s what I tell myself as I look down at this woman who fancied herself in love with Alaric. I’m not nearly so naïve. Truly, I’m not.
She blinks those big eyes at me. “You tricked me.”
She may be naive, but she’s intelligent enough to connect the dots quickly. Good. Still, I’m inclined to play this out a little longer. “Did we?”
“Did you send him to Olympus for me?” She shakes her head. “Of course you did. Gods, I am so stupid.”
“That’s about enough of that.” I tap her hands where they still hold her thighs. “You were outplayed, darling. Nothing more, nothing less. Sit up.”
She sits up, still obedient even as another tear slides down her cheeks. Have I ever cried so freely as this girl does? No. Never. There is a time and place for emotions to take the forefront, but they are never, ever in front of an audience. Even if I weren’t the leader of an entire territory, I am a Black woman. Extreme emotions in front of others will never result in the outcome I need. Better to craft a face to give the world. What weakness I have is restrained to those moments alone, and even then I don’t let them escape all that often. Not when doing so will undermine everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish.
Zurielle obviously hasn’t learned a similar lesson or she’s been protected enough not to feel the negative results. Either way, I enjoy her tears far more than I should.
She wipes angrily at her face. “I didn’t know we were playing a game.”
“Now you do.” I don’t sit back, don’t give her space. “Life is a game, darling. The faster you learn that, the better time you’ll have of things.”
She narrows her eyes. “I don’t understand you. You’re so cruel and so kind at the same time.”
“One does not negate the other.” The best cruelty lashes unexpectedly, the sweetest kindness can hurt so acutely. I’ve learned to wield them interchangeably. I like it. I lick my lips, tasting the combination of Zurielle and Alaric. With the end result all but guaranteed, I can allow myself to fully enjoy the next seven days. “I’m in a good mood, so I’ll give you a choice, little Zurielle.”
The Sea Witch: A Wicked Villains Novel Page 7