by Penny Dawn
"So you've heard of him. Lady Morgana's betrothed."
Sebastian felt his eyes grow large.
Across the room, Preston of Bismalle puffed up his broad chest like a peacock's tail feathers.
"Sir?" Sebastian coughed out another puff of smoke and beckoned the knight closer with the twitch of two fingers. "What might happen," he whispered, "if he doesn't lay with a virgin on his wedding night?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I think you know."
"Well, then, I suppose he may change his mind about hunting ambassadors." Beau clapped him on the shoulder and winked. "You be a good boy now."
* * * *
"How large is his penis?"
With Alexis' question, Caroline spun around so fast, she nearly fell off her breakfast chair. "Excuse me?"
"Ambassador Vuitton's cock. Is it long and hearty? Short and stubby? Is it terrifying to consider the meat of it in your mouth, or the welcoming kind you want to pet like a kitten?"
Tiffany shuddered behind her book.
Caroline laughed. "I didn't see it."
"Do me a favor." Alexis speared a strawberry. "Have a look next time. If he's making his way down the family lane, I ought to know what's in store for me."
"You're disgusting," Tiffany said.
"I'll confess to the gods later." Alexis flipped long, brunette curls over her shoulder and smiled at Caroline. "So what can you tell me?"
A moment before Caroline was about to retort, Morgana rustled onto the terrace and sighed as she took her seat. "What a prick."
"Oh?" Alexis' brows shot up. "Carrie was just saying she didn't see it."
"And thank gods, she didn't." Tiffany shook a plantain in her sister's direction. "What is wrong with all of you? Our world is headed for pandemonium! Witches and warlocks in the woods, and now this threat of war!"
"You really read too many fairy tales." Alexis turned back to Morgana. "You were saying?"
"It's nice, as penises go." Morgana took the proffered plantain and began to peel it. "Penises of any shape and any size still do the job after all. But the problem is that the larger the cock, not so the man's depth. The ambassador has tools, and believe me, he knows how to use most of them. But there's no connection between this one"--she bit into the fruit--"and this one." She tapped her heart.
"Maybe that's all you were looking for," Caroline said, "and so that's all you found."
"All I wished to find," Morgana agreed with a nod. "And if you're as smart as you act, you'll realize that any man making time with sisters deserves nothing more than a few heated pumps in a coat closet during a party."
"Did he talk to you during sex?" Caroline asked.
"I don't remember. I don't think I was listening."
"Well, he's going to talk me into the greatest orgasm that ever was, and he won't lay a hand on me, let alone his prick."
"You're right about that. Beau won't let him anywhere near you. He's quarantined him on the second floor, in the smoking suite."
"The smoking suite?" Caroline pushed back from the table. "Perfect. His voice will carry up through the butterfly garden."
Morgana splayed a hand over hers. "I don't want him to hurt you."
"He won't."
"How do you know?" Tiffany asked. "How do any of you know anything about what men do? Look at our father. He's the lord of this castle, and he hasn't a clue as to what's going to happen with Bismalle. With him as our example, how do you know anything?"
"Some of us experiment." Alexis grinned. "I say we all sneak to the masquerade this year."
"Royal ladies at a masquerade?" Tiffany straightened in her chair. "That's the most despicable idea I've ever heard! Think of the riff raff we'll find there. Of the magic expressed in those secret rooms."
"For the last time, Mother spun tales of the power of Locken, but there are no witches or warlocks. Get over it."
"Caroline, I wish I'd waited." Morgana tightened her grip on Caroline's hand. "I wish I hadn't given him even the small pieces of me he has."
"I don't know how to explain it, but I know it's different between us. I'm not imagining a thing. He kisses as if he majored in it at the academy, and makes love like he's playing the harp."
Tiffany looked up. "He plays the harp?"
"Very well actually." Caroline realized she knew that, too.
Alexis giggled. "A renaissance man!"
"You said he barely touched you," Morgana said. "How do you know how he makes love, if he touched only your breast?"
"That's all he needed to touch."
"I should think it's quite enough!" Tiffany dropped her book next to her plate still full with fruit. She pushed both away, as if the topic of conversation had stolen her appetite for both food and literature. "A man with whom you've never spoken touched your breast! Are you mad? That's more than enough."
"She's right. It was enough." Caroline shrugged. "I know the rest."
Morgana's gaze narrowed. "How?"
"I don't know. It sounds silly to say it's greater than sex, because it's all been very sexual, but..." Caroline pondered telling her sisters about the mirror. With a slight shake of her head, she opted to wait. "What is his first name? Do you know?"
Morgana shook her head. "Ambassador was enough for me."
"It's Sebastian. And I don't know how I know that either. I just know."
* * * *
Sebastian retreated into the butterfly garden while Sir Beauregard's team prepped the smoking suite, which was to be his quarters during his open-ended stay.
"Prepping" meant hiding recording devices--visual and audio--which Sebastian could bet had as much to do with Lady Morgana as the investigation into the assembly's Corps for the Olympian Societies.
They weren't going to find a damn thing on the assembly of the foreign embassies, and as far as Morgana was concerned... God, who could dream of her, after he'd kissed Caroline?
His gaze trailed to a third-story window. He kept looking up there, thinking he'd heard her call to him, but it was probably just the locusts. Likely that wasn't where she kept her quarters anyhow.
"Sebastian."
His groin tightened with the sound of her voice, and shading his eyes from the sun, he looked up again. It had to be her room.
"Why are you looking up there?" The voice was now behind him, and when he spun around, she was close enough to touch. "Really. Why?"
"I heard you, and I thought--"
"How did you know that was my room?"
"I didn't."
She extended a finger, upon which a purple butterfly sunned its wings. "They say the locusts are a sign of evil. Interesting they've arrived just in time to announce you, don't you think?"
"Is that what you think of me? You think I'm evil?"
"You scare me, but I don't think it's your fault." She cradled his hand and coaxed the butterfly into his palm.
"What about me frightens you, m'lady?"
"You make me forget my good sense." She said it with a smile.
"Because you allowed me to kiss you?"
"Because I feel as if I've kissed you in a thousand interesting places. And by places, I don't mean geographical locations."
He felt the corner of his mouth turn upward. "Touché. Why do you suppose?"
"Maybe it's what you desire and what you wish your past had been."
"You're sharp. Like your sister."
"Are you going to compare everything I do to the way Morgana does it?"
"No." A companion butterfly landed in his palm next to the other, and together they flitted away. "M'lady, I apologize. If I could begin again, I should like to go back to the weeks after your mother's funeral to choose my woman wisely."
"And if I could begin again, I'd go back to the weeks before my mother's funeral." Her smile, brilliant and warm, sent a shock of thunder through his heart. "I understand my sister and I look quite similar, but didn't you realize in speaking with me I wasn't who you thought?"
He drew her in close. "M'lad
y, with all respect due to your sister, speaking wasn't exactly our forté."
When she glanced up at him, her eyelashes fluttered over her dark blue irises, rivaling the beat of butterfly wings on nearby blossoms. "Pray, what do you expect our forté will be, when you've already had your way with one Carman heiress? I've heard her stories, and I can't think of a single thing you didn't do with her already."
"I can." Church bells pealed in his imagination, and she gazed heavenward, as if she'd heard them, too.
"Share your thoughts?" Her pouting lips puckered, exhibiting her feminine charms by the multitudes. Ah, those lips. So skilled. Gentle, yet firm. And when wrapped around his shaft--nothing short of phenomenal. If he had to guess.
He traced her lower lip with his ring finger. "Perhaps you ought to stop thinking and get on with the doing, m'lady."
She leaned into him. Her breasts taunted and teased. How he mustered the strength not to lower his mouth to the line dividing the bulging softness he'd never know. With a subtle nudge of her pelvis, she extended an invitation.
His hand accepted several moments before his head and cupped her between her legs. Her heat seared through the fabric of her skirt.
"Ohhhh, Sebastian."
Already half-hard, he now sprang to full attention below the belt. "Lady Caroline?"
"Tell me you need me." Musical, breathy.
Under his direction, her hand found the bulge in his pants. "He speaks for himself."
"A man of few words," she whispered. Although she'd acted coyly in the parlors, the curl of her lips and the arc of her brow previewed a wiser, more experienced lady.
He dove into her eyes and swam through imagined intimate moments. He wanted desperately to experience all of them with her. The curve of her ass cradled in his hands, the heat of her cunt as it tightened around his shaft... "M'lady."
"Sebastian!"
The call came from behind him, and he ignored it with all his might, concentrating on the slip of satin beneath his fingers. So close now. So close to fingering her slickness, to knowing she needed him as much as he needed her.
"Sebasssssstian." The hiss at his ear shot pleasure through his system, and it settled at the tip of his rod. Her fingertips padded over the length of him, and her irises deepened to nearly black. "I want you in my mouth."
"Ambassador Sebastian Vuitton!"
The second call from behind was louder, more succinct, and it jerked his attention from the vixen with her hands at his fly. He froze at the sight of Lady Caroline standing behind him, and when he spun back the other way to see nothing but a garden full of blooms and butterflies, it became clear he'd imagined it all.
Half a moment later, he realized the hand stroking him must've been his own. While he'd already taken his hand from his crotch, his fully-endowed cock still pressed his boxers out of his pants like a cotton carrot.
He swallowed hard. "M'lady."
Chapter 4
* * *
"He shan't bother you during his stay." Sir Beauregard peeked into Lady Morgana's suite to find her stretched on her bed, leafing through a book of scanty lingerie. "I've taken extreme measures."
"You needn't worry about me." She dabbed her finger against her tongue and turned another page. "Caroline is swept away by him. She's the one you ought to monitor."
"Do I detect a note of jealousy?"
"Hogwash." She met his gaze. "Whatever would I pine for where the ambassador is concerned? Kinky sex with implements? No, thank you, sir. I can manage that on my own."
"You have no cause to do a single thing on your own, Morgana. I want to see you tonight."
A smile touched her lips. "I adore the way you still ask for my company, even when you know it's already yours."
"Unofficially, yes, I always long for your company, but this is official business concerning Carman. We must discuss the ambassador's fancies. It might do me well to borrow your jewels."
"My jewels?" She rolled onto her back and, flirting, parted her legs. "As sexually secure as I am, I'm not quite ready to take you in feminine attire." She lifted her skirt, exposing legs bare of pantaloons. He fixated on her tiny, lace panties. "But if you wish, you may borrow these as well."
"You're damn mischievous."
"What do you want with my jewels?"
"You'll know, if you need to know."
"Then you obviously don't know me as well as you ought to." Her stare was the ocular equivalent of drumming fingernails against a table top. She wouldn't relent, and he would've known it, even if she hadn't added, "No jewels without explanation."
He fingered the shimmering clip securing a golden tendril of her hair. "Before this was a mineral, it was liquid. Before it was liquid, it was vapor. In its vaporous form, it is perhaps as valuable as it is adorning your lovely head." He could've been more straight-forward, but few things intrigued him more than watching wheels turn in her beautiful mind.
"The ambassador isn't here for me." Her tongue snaked over her lower lip. "Although he says he's here to neutralize the Bismallian threat, and he looks forward to relishing the benefits a woman may provide, he's here for what Olympia--and more precisely, Carman--owns."
Beau nodded. "I need to know what he knows of our mines, whether he seeks stones or vapor. If I leave your collection at his disposal--"
"You're insane if you think I'll allow my jewels to be stolen to prove a point!"
"Do you think I'd let him one foot past his suite with anything of Carman's in his pocket? And that includes any handful of you."
"But there's no motive. The embassy is neutral. Naturally, if they're in need of our resources, we're willing to sell."
"For a price. Are they willing to pay?"
"It's Bismalle with a history of unpaid debts."
"Neutral parties can also be greedy, and when neutral parties strike, our former enemies can become our allies."
"Bismalle? Join us? You're mad."
"They will join our forces when they learn the truth, but we must prove it quickly, before it's too late to act."
"Why now? Why would the assembly of foreign embassies act against us now?"
"Their own fuel sources are low."
"They've been low for decades. They have a plan to recycle fuel."
"Plans are costly, m'lady."
"So is the war you assume they're starting. I suppose men would rather gnash their teeth than put pen to paper. Honestly, I wonder how this world has survived as long as it has!" She shoved the catalogue into his hands and made her way toward her armoire, from whence she yanked a pair of bloomers. "Do something useful, will you? Choose for me something you'd wish I'd wear on the hottest night of the century. That ought to keep you busy, while I speak with my sister." She stepped into the satin knickers.
"Caroline? But what--"
"You use swords and armor. Women use the tools we're given equally as well, and often without bloodshed. Because I'm in no position to use mine against the ambassador, Caroline must."
"Don't put her in any position she can't handle."
"Why, Sir Beauregard, I thought you understood! She's a Carman lady. She can handle anything." She pivoted toward the door. "You may tempt the ambassador with my jewels, but only if he refuses to succumb to temptation of another kind."
* * * *
"You were a million miles away." Caroline tried not to look at Sebastian's open fly, or the rod, almost hidden with white cotton fabric, prodding out of it.
"I..." His cheeks flushed with what she assumed was embarrassment. "I was thinking."
"Of?"
"I apologize for what happened this morning. It seems my poor judgment has landed me in a bit of a pickle."
She propped her hands on her hips. "I want to make one thing abundantly clear."
"Yes, m'lady."
"I don't fall for packages wrapped in brown paper, and never will you entice me to play any of the games you played with my sister."
"I beg your pardon, m'lady, but it was your sister who played
with me."
"Very well." She glanced at his fly, despite her vow to herself not to. "Dress yourself and meet me on the west mezzanine for afternoon tea."
"I wish I could, m'lady, but I have an appointment at the Olympia Hunt Club."
"Of course you do." She pretended to know already and turned back toward the castle. "You'll have to be late."
"M'lady?"
His salutation arrested her on the spot. "Yes, ambassador?"
"I can't help thinking I'm important to you, and you, to me. Do you feel as if...as if we know one another?"
"Intimately." She refused to look over her shoulder, but continued on. "I'm certain, in your case, you're confusing what you know about me with what you know about my sister. Do your pants back up and meet me on the mezzanine in twenty minutes. We have business to discuss."
"Pray tell, lady. This is the strangest trip I've been on, and I can't field another surprise. What business do we share?"
"It's business of a personal nature, and I believe you already know how we come to share it."
Her answer could not have been clearer, even if she'd wanted it to be. Truthfully, she didn't know where to begin, or what they'd discuss, but she knew she couldn't bear never speaking to him again, never feeling his lips nipping at her breasts, or his fingers searching her with patient thoroughness.
Morgana fell in step beside her once she entered the palace. "I've convinced Beau to call off the ambassador's tail for two hours."
Caroline glanced at her sister. "They're tailing him?"
"Not for the next two hours. Seduce him."
"In time, I'd planned to."
"Well, you'll have to do it quickly."
"I suppose I should ask why?"
"The safety of our kingdom relies on the answers he'll give you."
"Answers?" Her heart caught in her throat. "To what questions?"
"Foreign countries need our fuel. The assembly of foreign embassies is attempting to drive a wedge between Carman and Bismalle to weaken our alliances, so they may take it."
"And you think the ambassador will offer this information?"