The Ugly Dukeling

by Bex McLynn

  He knew his experience was atypical. The Mayreni had thoroughly woven siphoning into the fabric of their society. Cisnetta siphoned openly with his brother and Naosim. Dear friends gladly siphoned with one another. Siphoning centers all over Mayren matched people for on-site public siphoning while they enjoyed live music and light refreshments.

  Siphoning and sex happened between consenting couples, including philanderers and those committed to one another. Otherwise, the act was simply a benevolent, mutually beneficial transaction.

  Cisnetta had been correct. This needn’t be awkward, because it didn’t need to be more than what it simply was: two people engaged in an exchange. One offering. One accepting. Both getting what they needed.

  But Atrates wanted more. He wanted pleasure, passion, and possession.

  With a growl that wracked his chest and scored his throat, he shucked his jacket and slid back into the lancar.

  Cisnetta jolted, and he damned himself for frightening her until he caught, under the thick, cloudy blanket of magone, the sweet tang of her arousal. Damn his synten dose. His own arousal, determined to answer her call, thrashed against the crumbling barrier of his prophylactic, but the fortification held.

  Silently he cursed the Otar as his arousal sparked but never enflamed, leaving him to smolder with need. At least he could douse the fires of her frenetic hell.

  He extended his bare arm toward her.

  Cisnetta gazed at Atrates’s arm, now bared to her because he’d shed his military jacket. Her skin prickled, scraping against her clothes. She couldn’t afford the best garments. Her clothes were well worn, no longer stiff, yet each fiber chafed her skin. Her nipples rubbed against the cups of her brassiere and the banding of her underwear pinched at the juncture of her thighs.

  She licked her lips as her lust mixed with dismay. Atrates had settled on the seat with his opposite hand gripping his thigh. Her heart rate kicked as she gazed at the tendons on the back of his dark hand, then up to his corded forearm to the bugle of his bicep. His granite-gripping tension cut his form to perfection and stilled him like a statue. Not a ripple of budding frenesia rose to the surface.

  “Cisnetta.” His deep voice rumbled through her, and her core pulsed and ached.

  She swallowed, trying to ease her dry throat. “But your synten levels—”

  “I can take what you need me to take.”

  Although he shot the words at her, she knew it wasn’t an attack. It was only his bumbling of Mayreni nuance. She knew he meant that he would accept what she was offering, but he lacked faith in his adequacy. Therefore, he sought to convince her, in an assertive Otaric manner, that he would be enough.

  Her hand shook as she reached for him. She saw no need to tamp down on the frenesia that coursed through her. It rushed like floodwater beneath a low bridge, occasionally brushing against the underbelly of the planks as her bezeten levels swelled.

  With a ragged exhale, she pressed her hand to his skin, her fingers unable to wrap completely around the girth of his forearm. He remained granite hard beneath her palm.

  The lancar had resumed traveling, speeding them over the carriage grooves in the road. Though the ride was smooth, like gliding over a frozen pond on skates, she braced for his first pull of her bezeten. The waiting had her skin tingling and her breaths had become short and choppy. Just as she thought he needed a permissive signal, he siphoned.

  Cisnetta pressed her lips closed as her eyes popped open, but it was too late to seal off her whimpering moan. His pull on her bezeten lit up her palm. He had her curling her fingers into his flesh as his robust siphon coursed through her body, angling straight for her core and throbbing her clit like the flick of his tongue.

  She sucked in a startled breath as she closed her eyes.

  How? And dear god, why? Trone and Naosim—hell, every man she’d ever siphoned with—never struck such a euphoric yet sexually stimulating chord.

  She felt Atrates draw again. The siphon had her arching her back as her astonished gasp expanded her lungs. Her thighs clamped together, pressing against the long, lazy strumming of his siphon that engorged her clit.

  Her breath burned inside her lungs as her body locked up and shut down, unable to process the mix signals of lulling relief and growing arousal.

  “Atrates.” She heard the plea in her voice. But she was beseeching him for what? To stop? To continue? To finish?

  A deep, gratified growl filled the cabin.

  Her body, not entirely under her command, went limp when Atrates ceased siphoning and snatched her up, setting her astride his lap. With her hands gripping the crook of his elbows, he resumed siphoning with a hungry groan. Again her back bowed as she rocked her hips, rubbing against his lap. No answering hard cock connected with her damp, pulsating core. With a frustrated whimper, she rocked her hips once more, and the lack of stimulation had the needy throb of her clit punishing her with a small, aching spike.

  She dropped her chin to look down between them, but a warm, rough palm slid under her jaw and guided her gaze back up.

  Despite his hand cradling her face, the intensity of his magone-blue gaze held her.

  “That’s only a part of it,” he said. She knew he referred to his limpness because she caught a shimmer of doubt that lit his eyes. “I can still see you. Smell you. Taste you.”

  She shivered. “Taste?”

  He clenched his jaw, then said, “I can take your frenesia away.”

  Cisnetta’s childhood was not a sheltered one. She knew frenetic symptoms would include arousal, but her sexual stimulation had always struck her as a nuisance. It had never been intense, targeted lust ignited by desiring a specific someone.

  Atrates. She wanted brusque, wounded, tormented Atrates to ease her.

  Her answer rushed forth from her on a shaky breath. “Please.”

  Her world upended, tumbling as Atrates rose, twisted, and flipped their positions in the tight space of the lancar. His massive hands cradled her backside as her back pumped into the seat. Then he tugged down her trousers and panties, dragging them to her ankles. She tried to kick her shoes off, but he slid his hands down her legs with an appreciative groan. Grasping her ankles, he brought her heels together, and she obligingly butterflied her legs open.

  As he kneeled on the footwell of the lancer, her heel-to-heel feet trapped against the hard plane of his stomach, he ran his hands back up her legs, not stopping until he cupped her mons and used his thumbs to carefully part her wet folds.

  The whisper-touch of his fingers triggered a reflexive hip jerk from her and another whimper. “Atrates.”

  He bent over her. “I’ll take as much as I can, Cisnetta. I won’t leave you aching.”

  Aching. She couldn’t hide it, could she? Especially since he had spread her like magone petals and was now extracting her secrets—that she dripped for him.

  With her eyes locked on the matte black waves of his hair as he bent over her splayed legs, her body quaked in anticipation. When Naosim and Trone siphoned from her, the depletion always made her go slack with relief. Like sinking into a hot tub or succumbing to a deep tissue massage.

  This, though, threatened to shatter her.

  When Atrates siphoned from her, he skyrocketed her. He incited core-clenching, thigh-trembling, gut-coiling lust that reigned over her reflexes. He summoned forth writhing that masked her whimpered begging as invitation. She thrust her breasts forward while undulating her hips, desperately needing her nipples sucked and her slick, clenching pussy filled.

  The flat of Atrates’s warm, nubbed tongue pressed against her skin, then dragged up her thigh, following the trail of her slick arousal to its source, where he dove in and feasted on her.

  Cisnetta gasped and her sharp inhale was cut short, becoming choppy breaths as he stroked her clit with featherlight laps. Her heart knocked against her breast as blood rushed to the muscles in her core, plumping the tissue and stirring her nerves—heightening her reception of Atrates’s light licks on her engor
ged clit. Her body clenched and dripped, priming itself for stretching penetration that would propel her ascent to her release.

  As a pleading whimper rose in her throat, Atrates closed his lips around her clit and—god take her—he siphoned as he sucked.

  Her chest burned, her lungs billowing with trapped air as she keened. Her back bowed as she bucked against his mouth. Atrates’s hands dug into the flesh of her hips as she gave up her bezeten to him. He groaned, humming encouragingly, but her climb to the peak stalled.

  Desperate, she carded her fingers through his hair, combing back his heavy locks and meeting his ravenous blue eyes. She had no words. Her chest continued to burn with rapid, shallowing breaths. She must have conveyed her desperation, though, because he gave her hip a reassuring squeeze before removing one hand.

  Using two thick fingers, he skimmed the pulsing rim of her slit, coating himself. He pushed into her, one smooth slide that gave her swollen, grasping pussy exactly what it craved: something to greedily clench while penetration stretched the needy ache.

  He pumped his fingers into her, and she was done. The explosion of her orgasm blew her bezeten out of her system, creating a deluge that Atrates siphoned as his lips sucked and his fingers stroked. In response, her body snapped, and every muscle relaxed as blissful release thrummed warmly through her limbs.

  With her head lolling on her shoulders, she reclined against the seatback. Through the transparent ceiling of the lancar she could see the Ark blinking overhead in the nighttime sky.

  Contentment, relaxation, and gratitude pulsed through her like a low tide—rolling and retreating without any crashing waves or riptides.

  A tearing sound snapped her from her post-siphon daze. When she redirected her gaze, she caught the tail end of Atrates ripping the bottom half of his shirt—made of Otaric fabric that was said to be nearly indestructible—and improvising a rag. With gentle swipes, he cleaned her.

  As he tended to her, he never lifted his eyes. His focus remained on roleplaying the most sensual, tender lady’s maid that she could’ve imagined.

  He carefully lowered her feet to the floor then righted her pants. She was too lulled to note if her legs gave a straining protest, having been bent and pressed against him for so long.

  But now that he’d run out of tasks, he settled on the seat next to her and she saw that his tension had returned. He braced his shoulders, clenched his jaw, and pressed his lips into a harsh line.

  Her heart broke for him, prompting her to reach out and brush the back of her hand along his cheek. “I’m a den whelpling, you know.”

  He snapped his gaze to her. “Like hell you are.”

  His immediate, fierce denial was endearing. It managed to call forth his accent and each word resounded like the slot of a bolt-action rifle. But still, she wanted him to know.

  “Corporal Fowler found me in a siphoning den when his regiment liberated a village on the Continent. I was a child running wild in the den house. I used to hide under beds. Hearing… seeing…”

  Atrates’s features turned tender as he gazed at her. What an amazing thing to witness…

  “Cisnetta.” He drew her name out as his brow furrowed.

  Perhaps it was pity, but it also sounded like an apology. She knew enough from Trone, who’d heard from Valment, that Atrates’s battlesuit unit specialized in hunting down dens, liberating the women, and eviscerating the proprietors and any on-site clientele.

  Atrates, the wondrous man that he could be on occasion, now joined the ranks of the few people who didn’t look upon her with scorn or disgust when she’d shared her past.

  “The women who weren’t completely broken by that place, they told Corporal Fowler that they thought my mother’s name was Cisne.”

  Nothing.

  The quiet stillness frightened her, until Atrates pulled her over to him. “It makes no difference to me.”

  He hadn’t rejected her, and her body, though thoroughly dazed from her bezeten release, registered that additional sweet ounce of soothing.

  She sighed. “I simply wanted you to know.”

  Resting her head on his shoulder, she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 8

  Cisnetta rolled over in bed, burrowing her nose into her pillow and inhaling the sachet of magone stuffed between the down.

  She’d always conducted this morning ritual before rising from her bed, but this time, the overly perfumed scent irritated her.

  Shaking her head to clear her sinuses, she left her bed to dress. She slipped her blouse’s buttons through the holes at a leisurely pace, leaving the shirttails out as she dragged a brush through her hair.

  Upon walking into her office on the ground floor, she saw that the housemaid had already laid out her morning repast of buttered toast and tea.

  She started flipping through the pages of her ledger, looking for the measurements of the kitchen garden plot so that she could order seedlings.

  She flipped and flipped.

  Good god! Who had time to read through all these pages? Let alone write down this many notes?

  With a grumbled curse, she rotated the ledger horizontally several times because she’d written her notes upside-down.

  Eventually, she found twelve sets of measurements, all slightly different.

  God. This was what her life was like? Functioning in a constant haze of borderline frenesia?

  Unbalanced by that realization, she bit into her toast. The butter had already cooled and congealed. She needn’t sip her tea to know it would be tepid. Usually both tea and toast were piping hot, set before her as she addressed the action-items in her ledger. Now, as she nibbled on cold toast and flipped through the pages, she gawked at the recounting of her semi-frenetic life.

  Movement in the doorway had her glancing up. Naosim, dressed in pressed slacks and a crisp magone-blue shirt, stood there with a stunned look on his face.

  He ran his wide, tan eyes over her in astonishment. “You’re sitting.”

  A chill moved through her as she gaped at him. “I am sitting.”

  Naosim gestured to her. “On the couch.”

  Her alarm spiked as she agreed. “I am.”

  “You never sit on the couch!” His voice pitched.

  “I know!”

  Her eyes shot to her desk, which had been raised on wooden blocks because she always stood and paced as she worked.

  Naosim entered the room as he gestured behind himself, indicating the world outside the door. “A dozen different people are looking for you right now. The movers are here with the lanvans.”

  “And they didn’t think to check here?”

  “You’re never here.” Again, he flung an arm out. “You’re always out there.”

  Naosim was correct. She was always on the move. Her consistently high levels of bezeten constantly drove her like a strong wind billowing a sail.

  She went to rise, but Naosim rushed forward. “Stop, Ciss. You can’t go.”

  “I can’t?”

  He gently resettled her onto the couch. “You see Trone at the end of the week.”

  She gasped in understanding. “Bloody hell.”

  She had to conserve her energy, thus her bezeten, for Trone’s weekly siphoning session. What Atrates had taken, which had thoroughly relieved her, had stolen from his brother. How was she supposed to ease Trone?

  She turned panicked-filled, remorseful eyes to Naosim. “Oh, Sim. I let Atrates siphon and—”

  He knelt before her, resting a hand on her knee. “Don’t be sorry for this, Ciss. It’s simply, well, I’m shocked because I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “This?”

  “Not frenetic.” Affection filled his voice as he roved his warm gaze over her. “Your hair is down.”

  It was down. She never wore it down. When frenetic, she could never tolerate her hair covering her face.

  Naosim canted his head toward her abandoned desk. “Cobbs is calm, too.”

  Cisnetta glanced over at Cobbs. He sa
t in his blanket-lined crate under her desk and gazed at her serenely.

  Naosim nudged her. “Usually he’s squawking at your heels, clearing the path as you waddle through the house.”

  She tsked. “I don’t waddle.”

  “But he does, and you move at his pace, Cisnetta. Like you always do.” Then his shoulders drooped as he said apologetically, “I’ll send people to you?”

  Resigned to her self-incurred consequences that regrettably impacted Trone, she sighed. “You’ll have to. Oh, and you’ll have to bring me my meals.”

  “Simply ring whenever you’re ready.”

  “Ring?”

  With an affection-laced, exasperated sigh, Naosim pointed. “There is a bell pull, Ciss.”

  “Huh.” She stared where he directed, fascinated to see a bell pull. It must have been there for some time, because the blue velvet rope that hung from a hole in the ceiling was tattered. “So there is. Do you think they’ll answer? I mean, I’ve never used it.”

  “Pull it until someone comes. That’s what Trone and I do.” He rose and winked at her as he strode out. “Works every time.”

  He drew a laugh from her, but it was a short reprieve.

  Oh, what a bloody mess.

  Atrates intercepted Naosim outside of Cisnetta’s study. As he relieved the doctor of the tea tray, he frowned down at the meager offering of partridge, a sliver of cheese, and weak tea.

  Naosim shrugged. “It’s what she requested.”

  Atrates scowled at the man. “What she requested? Or what she knew you had on hand?”

  He’d been through the townhome and knew that the kitchen stores were barebones. That could be explained by their move to his mother’s manor, but someone should have been sent to market for the day’s tuck.

  Once at Barbotière, he’d make certain that the pantry and larder were stocked to bursting. Hell, he’d install an Otaric food replicator as long as it didn’t negate the benefit that chores provided the women who lived in a constant state of budding frenesia.