Steel and Promise

by Alexa Black

  Yet she rode Teran’s fingers, drawn away from any thought of Teran’s enjoyment by the silver threads of sensation running through her body. The thumb moved off her clitoris and she whimpered, only to wriggle as it slid down to her entrance.

  She whined again, a shapeless, needy sound, as Teran’s thumb slid in, stretching her impossibly. She recovered herself enough to breathe as the last of Teran’s hand slipped inside. The stretch burned for a moment. Then Teran’s hand settled inside and rested there.

  Cailyn paused to catch her breath. She panted, unable to silence herself.

  All this was bad form, she knew. She also knew that Teran didn’t care.

  Teran moved inside her, gentle and sure. Cailyn mewled, her reason slipping away as the sensation flooded her mind. She knew nothing but Teran’s movements.

  “You are mine,” Teran whispered, her voice sharp.

  Cailyn heard the words from a great distance. She heard the pleasure in them but wondered at their meaning. She whispered a response. Whatever Teran wanted, she wanted to be.

  The hand moved inside her. Her head rolled back. Sounds came from her mouth. She was beyond thinking, beyond orgasm, beyond everything but the movement inside her. She strained against the bonds, sensation overloading her, until Teran’s hand grew still, then slid free.

  She sobbed into the silence.

  “Yes,” she gasped out. “Yours.”

  Teran ran her fingertips over the bonds around Cailyn’s wrists.

  “My little one.” Teran smiled down at Cailyn.

  “You may see to Valik now,” Teran said, pushing a small bottle of salve toward her. “If you still want to.”

  *

  Cailyn swallowed, her mouth dry. She wished Teran had given her time to prepare. But if she meant to do this, she would have to do it now. Regardless of her gaping flesh, the sweat plastering her hair to her head, the ache in her thighs from Teran’s cane.

  This was an indulgence.

  “Valik?” she asked as the doors hissed closed.

  “Derys,” he said. Cailyn could see bruises on his chest from Teran’s fists. For a moment, she thought of pressing the tender skin. She shook her head and the moment passed.

  She did not look down at his groin. She didn’t want to.

  “How are you doing?” Cailyn asked, setting the salve and cloths down. She hadn’t had the training Teran’s servants had, but she would make the best of it.

  He stretched and yawned. “You’re very lucky, you know. Teran Nivrai favors you. Most of the dark channels can’t say that.”

  How do you know? It’s not like we go around telling one another our business.

  “I am lucky. But it’s difficult for me.”

  Valik smiled. “She’s fond of you. She wouldn’t have spent half her time talking to me about you if she weren’t.” A grin flitted across his face. “Or bothered letting you use her knives on me.”

  Cailyn swallowed, a hard lump in her throat.

  “You weren’t as bad at it as you think, you know.”

  “Do you need anything?” Cailyn sat on the edge of his bed. “I don’t like that she left you after all of that.”

  “She’s Teran Nivrai. I expected it.”

  He stretched, then winced and sighed in lazy satiation. “They took good care of me. I’m a little woozy, but I’ll be all right.”

  “Let me at least treat those bruises.”

  He grinned and lay down. Cailyn spread salve on his skin. When her fingers ran over the marks, he trembled.

  “You really do like it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you don’t?”

  Cailyn looked down at herself. Sweat coated her body. Bruises and a new scrape speckled her chest.

  She shook her head. “I want to please my lady. I enjoy serving. With Teran that means pain. But what she did to you—” She flinched. “You were eager for it.”

  He laughed. “No wonder I’d never seen you on the dark channels before!”

  “I never expected to be here.”

  She thought of Teran, of the changes in her voice when it became rich with desire, of the sensations she felt when the pain no longer frightened her. “But yes. I like it.”

  “You took an assignment from Teran Nivrai without ever having been on the dark channels before?”

  She nodded, then wiped the salve off her hands. “I couldn’t pass it up.”

  Valik gave her a knowing smile. “I should ask you why you stayed around.”

  Cailyn busied herself picking up the cloths and the bottle of salve. “And I should be getting back.”

  “All right.” Valik nodded and waved. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Cailyn said and walked back out.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Teran drew back the bedcovers as Cailyn entered. It was the sort of thing a courtesan would do. But there was no mistaking the look in Teran’s eyes. This was no invitation. She slid into the bed next to Teran, trying to be graceful.

  Strong arms wrapped around her, holding her fast. Teran bit her shoulder. Her neck arched, the response automatic.

  “You’re greedy now,” Teran purred. Her breath moved on Cailyn’s ear.

  Cailyn’s flesh, raw and open, twinged at Teran’s touch. “I’m tired of fighting you, my lady.”

  “It’s you I want.”

  Teran traced kisses down Cailyn’s back. Cailyn didn’t want to shiver, but the response came anyway. She trembled under the sudden gentleness.

  “And I think you feel the same,” Teran went on. Her fingers moved to Cailyn’s nipples. Cailyn closed her eyes, imagining the gleam in Teran’s eyes.

  Teran rolled Cailyn’s nipples between her fingers and twisted them. Cailyn’s hips bucked, a marionette’s hips, responding only to Teran’s touch.

  “How much would it cost to keep you?” Teran nibbled at Cailyn’s back.

  “What?” Cailyn snapped.

  Teran nuzzled Cailyn’s back, her lips feather-gentle. “It seems a shame to let you go when this is over.”

  Cailyn rubbed her eyes. “Stay with you?”

  “Teran’s whore, they call you. How would you feel if it were true?”

  Cailyn winced.

  “My lady, I am the daughter of Loriel Derys. I didn’t choose this so that I could withdraw from it. I have no interest in serving anyone exclusively. Not you or someone else.”

  “Exclusively? I wouldn’t dream of it. I have no interest in taking you away from your work.” She wrapped her fingers in Cailyn’s hair. “It suits you.”

  She pulled Cailyn’s hair just enough to sting. “Serve whoever you want. Go wherever you want. Make whatever money you want. None of that matters to me. You have your father’s gift. It would be a shame not to use it.”

  “Then why suggest that I stay with you?”

  “Because you would come back to me. No matter where you went, no matter who you served, you’d be mine in the end. That’s all I want. For you to do as you like and return to me. Just like here. Just like now.”

  To return to this, over and over. It would be too easy. Too easy to wrap her hand around Teran’s head, draw it down to her lips. Too easy to forget anger and fear and open instead.

  She sighed. This thing with the Councils, whatever Teran thought of it, Cailyn would never feel comfortable in the bed of a torturer. Not fully. Not enough to leave it and return to it over and over. Lazy and warm as she felt now, her misgivings would catch up with her.

  But if none of that had ever happened? If Teran had asked her the same question after a long, leisurely stay?

  Could she have said yes?

  She could spend her nights at Teran’s side, never leave lonely and tired. Never sleep alone after serving someone who unnerved her or who took liberties she didn’t want. Never wonder if new clients would be fools born into money who considered a courtesan’s body their personal playgrounds. Never wander onto the dark channels, the yen for pain nipping at her heels, without knowing if the nobl
e she found knew how to give it well. Never fear that serving meant going without her own pleasure.

  “My lady.” She kept her eyes trained on the ceiling. “You know I can’t agree to that.”

  “I know.”

  A flick of long fingers, and the lights dimmed. Cailyn settled against Teran’s body. Was Valik spending the night in the other room, attended by silent servants in gray? Or had they sent him off already?

  He thinks I’m the lucky one, she thought as her eyes closed.

  *

  Lord Keriel lounged on the same bed as before. “Hello again,” he said.

  He held something in his hands, flat, thin, and gray. A tablet of some kind, though its screen lay black and dormant. Rather than read it, he toyed with it, passing it back and forth between his hands.

  Cailyn stared ahead. She held her chin high, imagined the metal around her neck shining like armor, a talisman clasped there to protect her. “My lord.” She bowed, curt and cold, with all the precision she’d learned over the years.

  “Still attached to Nivrai, I see.” He cast a pointed glance at the collar.

  “My lord?”

  “I didn’t expect you to stay.”

  “I agreed to a contract,” Cailyn said, her voice cold. “I intend to honor it. In full.”

  “Fair enough. But there is something I think you should know about her.”

  “My lord?”

  He shuffled the tablet from hand to hand. “I gather you were surprised when Teran told you she’d take this assignment.”

  “That is a personal matter.”

  “Is it, Derys?”

  “What my lady does for the Councils is between her and the Councils.”

  “And not you?”

  “If she tells me anything, my lord, that is no business but mine.”

  The tablet froze in the cage of his hands. “Of course. But there is something I wanted to tell you.”

  Cailyn looked at the muted brown and green of his shirt. She didn’t answer.

  “Teran is no one’s friend, but she has her own idea of honor. It doesn’t include torturing rebels.”

  His long fingers curled over the surface of the tablet. What is that thing?

  “You heard her tell us off. She came as close to refusing us as anybody ever could.”

  “My lord, I don’t understand why you should bring that up now, after you told her you couldn’t stop this.”

  “You know her well enough to know that she would never obey us without an incentive.”

  Cailyn blanched. “An incentive?”

  “They promised her something they knew she would accept, no matter what.”

  Cailyn’s hands shook.

  “Tell me,” she said, regretting the words as soon as they left her lips.

  “You.”

  The room spun in her vision. “Me?”

  “You.”

  She put a hand to the wall for support. “But that’s impossible. Guild law says—”

  “Guild law doesn’t matter.” He sat up and stared straight at her. “The Councils have already promised her a full pardon for anything she does.”

  “With the prisoner.”

  “With anyone. Surely you don’t think the Councils give a damn what she does with you.”

  Cailyn’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. Teran had always been scrupulous about Guild law. She’d never needed reminding of it, unlike some clients who’d been far less violent.

  “My lord, I’m already promised to her until this conference is over. Unless you’re trying to tell me you think she would go against my wishes.”

  He ran his fingertips over the dead screen of the tablet. “She wouldn’t want to. But she might if she thought she had to.”

  “Had to?”

  “Tell me: have you ever refused her?”

  “My lord, I can’t—”

  “Of course you can’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”

  “She would never have done such a thing to Mariel,” Cailyn whispered.

  His eyes shone bright, greedy green. “Mariel was her slave, Derys.”

  “Mariel was—” She bit her lip. That was Teran’s private life, and Cailyn would never spill those secrets. Especially not to Ben Keriel.

  “Mariel was a gladiator. Entertainment. He’d live and die in service to Nivrai no matter what. The only thing Teran taking him home changed was how. Then he caught the wasting sickness and faded away.” He chuckled. “She should be glad no one knew about him. She tore apart a man for fun. A few years later, he became weak and sick.”

  “My lord!” Cailyn cried. “You’re not saying you think she—”

  He chuckled, low and harsh. “I’m not saying a damn thing. But there are plenty of people on the Councils who would think that’s a little too convenient.”

  “She would never harm him.”

  The hand holding the tablet clenched tight. “She never had to.”

  “My lord!”

  “Derys, surely you don’t think she obeys Guild law because she believes in it.”

  Cailyn raised her head. “My lord, if Mariel was just entertainment, then so am I.”

  He looked down, muttering. “I see you’re going to be harder to reach than I thought.”

  His restless hands moved again, curling over the thin edge of the tablet. “It’s hard to get her out of your blood, isn’t it, Derys?”

  Before she could answer, he turned his head away. Cailyn’s gaze followed his to the portrait of Dion.

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” he said. “But what will you do when the conference is over? When she calls for you again and you can’t refuse?”

  “What?” Cailyn cried. “They can’t—!”

  “They already did.”

  “Already did? What are you saying?”

  “You belong to Teran Nivrai now. She just hasn’t told you yet.”

  Cailyn’s mouth worked. Numbness spread through her body.

  “You’re lying,” she choked out.

  “No, Derys. I’m not. What do you think it took days of meeting to decide?”

  “What—if you’re right—what will she do with me?” Cailyn whispered.

  “You’d know that better than I would. All I know is that she doesn’t want to let you go.”

  How much would it cost to keep you?

  “My lord,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “Lady Nivrai has always paid close attention to my limits and needs.”

  He looked down at his hands. “I’m sure she has.”

  “My lord?”

  “You’re a challenge for her.”

  “A challenge, my lord?”

  “You’re not on the dark channels. You’re not the sort to swoon over her from the beginning. So she took her time seducing you. Surely you didn’t think she did it out of kindness?”

  He looked back at her, his gaze sharp. “She has you wrapped around her fingers.”

  “What?”

  “Teran’s whore. That was her plan. It’s got nothing to do with respecting you and everything to do with winning you over.”

  Teran’s whore. Everyone knew it. Everyone said it.

  “But my lord,” Cailyn stammered, trying to find words. “Lady Nivrai understands that my life is my own. She’s told me so herself.”

  “The proof will come when you want to leave and she lets you,” he answered. He gripped the tablet hard.

  “No!”

  “I was in the room where the Councils decided it.”

  “My lord, just saying that isn’t proof.”

  He shook his head. “I thought she wanted your love, at first.”

  Cailyn quieted. She wanted to leave, to protest, to insist on Teran’s innocence.

  But Teran had already lied once before.

  And long conversations with courtesans sometimes loosened nobles’ lips. Especially if they wanted to keep talking.

  Which, apparently, he did. “I thought she wanted that gladiator’s love, too.”

&nbs
p; Cailyn bit her lip.

  “I asked her about you. I told her I thought she wanted your love. But if she did, how could she agree to what the Councils offered?”

  “And what did she say?” Cailyn asked, putting on her best expression of breathless interest.

  “She said ‘Love? I don’t want her love. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it. I want her loyalty.’”

  Cailyn shuddered.

  “She doesn’t care what you think or how you feel, Derys. Not as long as you’re hers.”

  She raised her head to look at the painting. She’d noticed the eyes before, lovingly rendered.

  His eyes are gray, Teran had said.

  She’d also said that Lord Keriel lied.

  “That remains to be seen, my lord.”

  “So it does.” He swept a long arm in front of his chest in a conciliatory gesture. “But I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Cailyn spat, the words bitter ash in her mouth.

  “You say she’s been kind to you. She’s never kind without a reason. She wants to claim you for herself. But trust me. If she can’t, she has no problem coming to the Councils for backup. She was willing to torture to keep you, Derys.”

  Cailyn said nothing more. Her voice would break if she tried. She summoned up all of her training to give him one last imperious look.

  Then she fled down the hallway as quickly as she could.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Teran hadn’t laid out any clothes for the night. At first, Cailyn had hoped that it meant Teran would give her time to choose her own outfit, to dress and primp before Teran returned. The little rituals of grooming calmed her, and she needed them now.

  But the videocall had been absolutely clear. She was to be naked and positioned over the bed when Teran came in after her shower.

  She’d chosen her earrings, bracelets, and anklets with absurd care. Teran wouldn’t notice them, but it gave her something to do.

  And small details could matter. Noticing someone’s favorite color, for example, could be the difference between giving someone a pleasant evening he’d soon forget and giving him a delightful evening he was sure to remember.