by TylerRose.
G’Ven came down just before the evening Gathering, and congratulated her on her future post and her first successful sale and purchase without his oversight.
“Your father would not give you the post if he didn’t think you were capable of it.” He took the ornate key from around his neck and placed it over her head. “I give you the job now. You will make a fine Houseman, Kellina.”
“But—I didn’t want you to give it up. Not like this.”
“Rest easy, dearest child. I am very old and very tired. I am ready to retire. I was waiting for Mankell to get over himself, and the Gar’s conventional thinking, and realize that you are ready. He has. You can conduct tonight’s Gathering and I will sit on a bench and watch for a change.”
He went to the Hall to get a seat and do just that. Whenever anyone came to him to ask about something to do with the House, he told them to ask Kellina.
“Has she selected an assistant yet?” Tavak asked.
“Go ask her,” G’Ven said with uncustomary glee, the burden of the House lifted from his shoulders.
Tavak went to find her, offering himself rather than asking if she’d picked someone. She accepted and set him to returning messages that could be returned. Others, her father would have to attend to personally, and he wouldn’t look at them until tomorrow. She went to her own room to change into a dressier dress in a solid color so the key was prominent, hanging below her chest. She couldn’t help but smile, a tear in her eye.
Her mother would be so proud. All the attention was always on Curry, for being the heir, but they had the same mother and Kellina missed her mother just as much as they did. Maybe more.
Going to the Hall, she met Lar Tyler at the door. Those sharp blue eyes immediately saw the key and she smiled.
“Good for you.”
“Thank you,” Kellina replied, smiling but suddenly bashful about her promotion, and stopped to let the guest enter the Hall first.
Mankell was waiting for Tyler, and took her by the hand. She didn’t want to sit but wouldn’t tell him why. They walked the room and mingled with the visitors already arrived.
“Will I get the rug back tonight?” he asked when they had a moment between visitors.
“No. Tomorrow maybe. And I expect I’ll leave the day after that.”
“So soon?”
“I looked into the society. Stirred up trouble and took down a corrupt official and a piracy conspiracy. What more do you want me to do?” she teased him.
“I want you to stay, Tyler. You don’t owe the Congress anything, I’m sure. You can choose to stay if you want to stay.”
“I am far too young to be tied to one man or one place, Kell. Enjoy the time we have left. If you make it too difficult for me, I won’t spend it with you.”
She walked away to speak with G’Ven and he let her. When she left the seat next to the aging Houseman, Mankell took her into his arms for a Waltz.
“You’re right. You cannot stay, regardless how much I desire you should. Shall we eat our supper and retire to my rooms so we can be alone?”
“Don’t you have guests coming?” she asked.
“Some are already here. That is what a Houseman is for. I have no doubt Gar Untrock will very much enjoy speaking with my new Houseman. I see G’Ven has already handed over the ceremonial key. I can leave the Gathering without guilt.”
“You? Guilt? Perish the thought. You should at least perform the toast in your daughter’s honor.”
He saw the particular expression in those eyes and nodded.
“Houseman, my toasting glass.”
Kellina already had it waiting, and brought it on the small tray while men present quickly took theirs from the trays on the tables.
“Today we celebrate a new beginning for the Rosaas, with the first nominee election in fifteen years. More importantly, we celebrate the promotion of my first daughter from assistant to my Houseman to Houseman in her own right. The first woman ever to hold the position. I can think of no one who can be more trusted to run my House. Kellina!”
A shout of her name by brothers, uncles, cousins, nephews, in this moment all of them recognizing her. Drinks drunk down, and Mankell sent his glass flying into the fireplace to shatter onto the pile of shards to a loud and rousing applause for the woman of the hour.
Mankell took Tyler out on his arm, and sent four young men out of the House to enjoy an evening to themselves for the first time since she arrived. Only Pisod followed, but he had to take the long way around. Mankell still wouldn’t allow him to use the private stairs.
No sooner was she inside than he turned her back to the wall to kiss her. Her passion in return had him on the edge of his own control. He opened his pants, pulled her dress up, lifted her leg and had her there with his entire House on the other side of the wall.
“Zitara,” he whispered in his climax.
Clothes straightened, they continued up to find Pisod sitting on the cot glaring at the door.
“Take the night off, Pi. Please,” Tyler said. “He’s already proven he can protect me without help. I insist. Take the night to yourself.”
Pisod sighed out his annoyance for the Gar’s impropriety, and walked the corridor to the corner stairs. Returning to the Hall, he danced with Kellina, agreeing to spend the night in her room, which was next to his.
Tylerwas more languidduring the morning session of painting. While she dozed off and on, G’Ven worked on the rug and the feathery bottom edge of her leg on the fur. When she woke, he worked on her face, hair and hands and the position of a page whenever she held it up.
Taking a walk around the square corridors during a break, G’Ven did not want to walk down the stairs to go outside.
“I can teleport us,” she offered.
“You are kind, Lar Tyler, but no.”
They continued to walk and talk and she listened to a story of Mankell as a young man on his own Gar Quest. A funny story of how he had thought he could make a deal on his father’s behalf and ended up having to spend two weeks hand digging a trench for a drainage pipe.
“Gar Quest?” she questioned.
“It is the way of a young man to want to separate himself from his father. To prove he is man enough to stand on his own. Curry’s has ended because the man he was going to trust turned out to be a murdering thief. It has taken the wind out of him for a while. He may resume with a different course; but one failure is often enough.”
“What will you do now you’re no longer Houseman?”
“I will move into a small place in the village. Gar Mankell has kept one available for me for the last year, anticipating my retirement.”
“You don’t want to live inside the House anymore?” she asked.
“I am old and tired and the stairs are too much anymore. I will move to the village after you have left us.”
“I will miss you,” she said, meaning more than after she left.
“I will miss you as well. Your presence here has brought fresh breath and brightness to a sad and weary House. You will never know the gift you are in lifting a man’s spirits.”
She kissed his cheek and they returned to the room to continue the painting. She stood a moment to look at it.
“Can you make the Tihi figure more prominent in my hair? Outline it a bit more, perhaps?”
“I will. Anything else you would like me to change?”
She stood back half a step, deciding if things were her own critical eye or if they really needed to be changed. She decided it was just her.
“Nope. Not a thing. Will I be able to give it to him tomorrow?”
“Yes. I will varnish it tonight and it will be dry enough to be wrapped in the morning. Will you take a copy with you?”
Hopeful tone. He wanted her to have a copy but could not make a copy so quickly by hand.
“I will,” she smiled, and dropped the robe to cross to the rug and put herself into position.
She was nearly to the end of the book, in La’Sek’o’s era, and
he was nearly at the end of the painting. He outlined the carving in her hair; put a little shine on her fingernails; gave her breasts a bit more of a rosy color where the areola could be seen. Other little details went in, until he was sitting there looking at her and then the painting and seeing nothing he was compelled to change.
“I believe we are finished, Lar Tyler.”
She got up, picked up the robe to put it back on before looking, and could only smile. It was exactly what she’d wanted. She kissed his cheek again.
“Thank you, G’Ven. It couldn’t be improved. Can you cover it? I don’t want him to see it until I give it to him.”
He put a pair of clamps on the top edge, angling them so that the cloth would be held away from the drying paint.
“I’m pleased you like it. I’ve not had such a lovely subject in a very long time.”
“Would you please tell Gar Mankell that I would like to see him here?”
G’Ven said nothing, leaning heavily on his walking stick as he exited. She sent the Mondragoon back to her room, the pitcher and goblet back to Mankell’s, and waiting on her side on the fur. Mankell came in and Pisod left.
Three steps, seeing her, and Mankell halted.
“Who won the election?” she asked.
“At this moment, I could not care less. For someone who cannot stay, you make it remarkably difficult to let you go,” he said, reaching the edge of the fur.
That coquettish smile of angled eyes and saucy lips undid him. Again. He lowered to his side, facing her, caressing those enticing curves while she opened the buttons on his shirt. Open was enough and she moved closer to press herself against him, skin to skin and mouth to mouth with her arm going around him to lay the hand on his back under the shirt. He opened his pants.
Removing nothing, not even his boots, he had her there on the luxuriously soft fur.
“You feel you have to go,” he said, finished but still joined with her and enjoying lingering kisses. “Know that you have a home here whenever you have a desire for it. A night. A year. A lifetime. My home is yours. That room will always be kept ready and available, Zitara. I will always be available to you. Any time of day or night. You have only to ask.”
“Asking is the part I have trouble with,” she admitted, barely above a whisper.
His eyes close above hers in a close intimacy like she’d had with Nails, he did not try to minimize her struggle. “I know.”
Over the next day, he became more tender with her as the hours passed. He was at her side every minute. All day long, members of the House bid her farewell and thanked her for exposing the piracy and Rosaas conspiracy. A formal apology had been extended from the Rosaas to every victim of Osan’s crimes, and whatever merchandise could be retrieved was returned. The ship’s First Mate gave up the information in exchange for his life, and became the owned soul of Gar Untrock.
Gar Untrock had been voted into the 3rd Rosaas chair. The Investiture was aired live on the news channels but it was a closed feed and she wasn’t allowed to watch. Since she wasn’t allowed, Mankell did not watch either.
Instead, they went walking down to the pond one last time, Pisod tagging along but keeping his distance.
The male Tihi bird no longer needed to head butt her palm, but wouldn’t let Mankell pass until he offered his hand to be smacked. Tyler sat near the bank and within seconds had a gaggle of Tihi chicks flocking around her. The one she saved from drowning and being eaten hopped up into her lap for a snuggle as he did any time she came to visit them.
“When do you go?” Mankell asked, sitting beside her and taking an onslaught of head-butts all around his hips and thighs.
“Tomorrow morning after breakfast. I’ll pack tonight.”
“Stay with me tonight?”
“I will. Maybe you should ask the Rosaas if you can be an envoy to the Congress. Our paths might cross on the station now and then.”
One of the birds head-butted his knee just right.
“Enough birds,” he declared, getting up and taking her with him to walk up the hill to the House.
To his bedroom.
“If I have one more evening with you, we will spend it here. Alone. For this one night, you will know what it is to be the Gar’s Favorite.”
“I thought I already knew. You certainly didn’t take it easy on me the night before last.”
His hand slipped around her wrist, bent her arm behind herself to thrust her hips forward toward him. Her breath quickened, eyelids flashing wider for a split second but holding his steady gaze.
“And the rougher I am with you, the more you like my attentions. Take off your shoes and pants.”
“I need my other hand—“
“No you don’t. You can manage with one or you can teleport your clothes off of yourself. Take your pick.”
She had a feeling he’d more appreciate the physical effort, and kicked her boots off. One handed, opening the button of her jeans and pulling down the zipper. One handed, pushing down the top of her jeans as far as she could at several points around her waist until they were far enough that they could fall to her feet. Body pressed to his, she stepped out of her jeans one slow foot at a time, not at all struggling against his tight grip.
“Now the shirt.”
“I need my arm,” she said softly.
“No, you don’t. Obey me.”
Sounding so much like Nails that her heart skipped a beat and her breath stuck. Hand to the bottom edge of her shirt, she pulled up and up until she could pull it over her head and forward, then to the side to let it hang down her arm at the elbow.
“Now mine.”
“I can’t reach your feet.”
“Try. See what happens.”
She lowered and he bent over to let her kneel. One handed, tightly holding the back of his heel while he pulled his foot out. The other, and she stood tall on her knees to open his trousers, eyes up to his again. Pull after pull around until they were down, not putting her mouth around his cock, and he stepped out of them.
Standing, opening the buttons of his shirt and pushing down off his free arm and around until it was hanging on his other forearm. He let go long enough to drop his shirt and take hers off her arm. She didn’t move, left her arm in position except for the inch needed to get her shirt off.
“So you can obey.”
“Now and then,” she smiled.
Her arm in her back pulled her along as he walked backwards to the nearest sofa. He sat in a deep slouch.
“On. You do the work this time.”
She knelt on the cushion and lined him up to sink deep down and start a strong rhythm. He gave her a powerful spank that knocked the breath right out of her. The sting of it spread outward and upward and she jerked down onto him in a climax so hard and spontaneous her cum exploded out to soak his waist and her thighs.
“You’re accustomed to that?” he questioned.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of attention. Do it some more.”
He obliged, gripping her neck tight to hold her down on his chest. His brutally hard spanks had her squirming and jerking on him, her arms around him to hold equally tight. She bit his chest, hard enough to make him grunt but not hard enough to break the skin or make him want her to stop. Nails never wanted her to bite. For some reason, tonight she was compelled. His soft fur under her cheek beckoned her to kiss and lick and bite and he delivered one methodical, shockingly hard spank after another.
By the time he took her to bed, her ass was weeping tiny droplets of blood and she was as deep into the endorphins as Nails had ever put her. He sat up with her, carried her to the bed, laid her gently on the coverlet, and used her with the force he’d still been holding back. She took him and wanted more in a passion beyond humanoid capacity.
After a particularly good orgasm, he flipped her over to mouth and lick the wetness on her bottom. A taste of blood that was not blood, clear platelets and plasma. He mouthed his way up her back until he was in position t
o have her anus with the same force.
He loved to hear her scream like this, knowing the entire House could hear her, kept her volume up as long as he could.
“It’s good to be the Gar’s Favorite, isn’t it?” he growled over her ear.
Her reply was another of those screams into the pillow. He pulled it out from under her and threw it off the bed, gripped a handful of her hair and lifted her face up off the mattress.
“Let my House hear you scream. They know their Gar is ferocious with his women. You aren’t the only woman they’ve heard screaming in my bed. Only the loudest.”
Said with a ram so violent she clenched from fists to toes and vibrated under him. Shocked silence and then a relaxing groan that released the warm flood of her cum and drained her strength. She was quiet and still, tranquil as he continued in a more even pace.
“Maybe you are too accustomed to this handling,” he said, liking the way she lifted her bottom to receive each easy stroke.
She would leave in the morning…and continue to feel his hands on her and his presence inside her for days.
Bright morningand it was time to go. G’Ven brought the painting to her room, a younger man of the House carrying the 3’x3’ finished product. Tyler made a copy of the paper covered square and sent it with her belongings to the shuttle waiting for her out on the lawn. She kissed G’Ven on the cheek and thanked him.
“I will always remember your kindness.”
“And I will always remember your spirit,” he replied. “I will give your painting to the Gar in his suite after you’ve gone.”
“Be well,” she said.
“Be you.”
She smiled, letting him have that last word. Down to the portico and half the House was there to see her off. She hated protracted exits. She thanked Ch’Wik, Saber and the other two for their diligent service; congratulated Kellina one more time; was walked to the ship by Mankell. Pisod went up into the shuttle to give her a moment.