“Men?” I asked, because there hadn’t been any men in The Hunt.
Alexander placed a hand on my hip and whispered in my ear. “There have been male slaves in the Order for decades, even before it was officially sanctioned, but they still aren’t allowed in The Hunt. I think they believe it ruins the aesthetic.”
I blinked at his droll comment and then giggled in shock when he winked at me.
We made to move forward when a scene on the stage to our left caught Alexander’s eye and he stopped mid-step. My gaze followed his to witness a small woman around her mid-forties kneeling in the middle of the stage while her Master used her mouth. Her back was a brutal tapestry of red, white, and raised pink scars from old but savage whippings. I gasped at the ugly horror of it, turning into Alexander slightly for comfort.
Unwittingly, his hand cupped my hip and pulled me closer even as he didn’t take his eyes off the woman.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Yana,” he whispered before he could check himself.
He looked down at me, blinking memories from his gaze like cobwebs and then his mouth pursed unhappily as he moved us forward again.
He led us to a free table near the front of the main stage, and as he took a chair, I folded to my knees at his side, widening my thighs to adjust to the thickness of the plug between my cheeks. He stroked my hair ideally as he perused the drinks list, but it wasn’t long before a server came to take his order and not much longer after that for Sherwood to take the empty seat across from us.
“Good evening, Thornton,” he greeted in his papery voice as his slave knelt beside him.
She was a woman not much older than me, though her body was aged with scars. Not for the first time, I was grateful Alexander had bought me and not some other more perverted Master.
“Benedict,” Alexander said, rudely calling the head of the Order by his Christian name. “You summoned me and here I am.”
I peeked through the curtain of my hair to see Sherwood’s mouth thin and curl in distaste at the slight.
“I hardly summoned you. It was a friendly invitation. You hadn’t brought your slave in the club yet, and I thought to remind you of that.”
“Oh?” Alexander asked as he accepted his brandy from the server. “Then what was your rationale for mentioning poor old Knox?”
“It was just an inquiry, old chap. I’m sorry if you were offended,” Sherwood intoned innocently.
I gritted my teeth against his saccharine lies.
“If we must speak business though, brother, there is something I’d say.” Sherwood emphasized as he tossed the cherry from his drink onto the ground by his feet and his slave immediately leaned forward to eat it of the floor with her teeth like some kind of animal.
I looked away.
“By all means.”
“Well, I’ve heard a rumor that you’re hoping to acquire NF News. I wanted to talk to you about using Winston to sweeten the deal.”
“No.”
“Don’t be so hasty. Mr. Winston might be a new affiliate of the Order, but he is still a brother, and as such, he gets priority in these kinds of situations.”
“No,” Alexander repeated coldly. “I’ve told you countless times before, and I am not a fan of repeating myself, Benedict. I will not pad my portfolio with dirty Order money and politics, I do quite well enough without them and I’d rather not have the headache.”
“I don’t care whether or not you ‘don’t want the headache,’” Sherwood seethed quietly. “You are a part of this Order and this is how things are done.”
“If membership could be rescinded, you know I’d be gone.”
There was a deep, ugly silence like a festering wound.
“Think about your priorities, Thornton,” Sherwood advised in his silken tones that even I knew signified a threat. “You wouldn’t want to end up like your dear old mum, dead before you time.”
The air around the table turned electric, and I was sure, for one terrifying second, that Alexander would strike down the man where he stood.
Instead, his voice was dry ice as he said, “The next time you mention my mother or threaten me, make sure you have a gun in your hand to back it up with immediately because I’ll come for you. And you won’t like what happens when I catch you.”
He stood back from his chair and offered me his hand so I could get to my feet in my towering heels.
“We’re leaving,” he growled softly just to me as we began to weave through the tables.
A few men called out to Alexander, but he ignored them.
I was happy to leave that place and particularly those people, but a small part of me was sad we wouldn’t be able to have our scene.
“Don’t worry, topolina,” he whispered into my ear as he held the door open for me and then swatted my ass when I moved by. “I’ll fuck your sweet arse the moment we get home.”
I squeezed my hand firmly over the thick, veiny length of Alexander’s cock until a pearl of precum beaded at the tip. It was my favourite game, teasing him and playing with his gorgeous cock using only my hands so that I could lick off every drop of moisture as it pooled at the head.
It tasted divine, communion from a sacred church.
“Hands behind your head.”
Before I could even consciously compute the words, my hands were linked at the back of my scalp. Alexander slid his hands through the gaps in my bent arms and wove our fingers together in my hair.
Then he began to slowly, firmly fuck my throat.
He used me at his own pace, dragging the weight of his cock out of my throat and over my tongue so gradually I couldn’t help but gag and swallow around him. On each inward thrust, he ground his hips into me, my nose against the coarse brown hairs over his pubic bone as he forced me to take him to the very root even though I could barely breathe.
It was methodical torture.
I never could have known how sensitive my mouth could be, how each rasp of his head over the crown of my mouth could feel sublime, and how every time he sank in my throat, I’d feel so resplendently full.
The place between my legs was a wetland.
I could feel how wet I was as I rubbed my thighs together, desperate for friction.
“Get that cock nice and wet and ready to take your arse,” Alexander ordered in his perfect, upper-crust tones.
I sucked hard, desperate to hear him groan.
His hands tightened in my hair painfully in response, and he hissed as I flicked my tongue over him before he pulled completely out of my mouth.
His face was a mask of pure lust as he rubbed his thumb over my swollen, damp, and red lips. “Go to the window.”
I was surprised because we were in the bedroom next to a colossal bed with posts only Alexander could find so many ways to utilize, but I followed his orders. The window was huge, stretching from one side of the wall another. It was one of the many modern architectural details in his other very traditional Mayfair home that made it incredibly beautiful.
“Press your hands to the glass and show me your bottom.”
I did as he said.
“Wider.”
I strained my legs even farther apart, teetering slightly on the high heels I still wore. My ass was clenched so tightly around the plug in this position, I wasn’t sure he could get it out.
“I know you were disappointed that we couldn’t preform tonight, bella,” he practically purred as he moved behind me and ran his nose down my neck. “You would have been the envy of all the men in that room tonight.”
I moaned softly as his tongue followed the path of his nose, licking up my carotid artery and then biting gently over my pulse.
“But this will have to do for tonight. I’m going to fuck you right here against the window so that anyone lucky enough to pass by will be able to see how gorgeous you look with a cock in your ass.”
His fingers trailed feather-light down each notch in my spine over the curve of my tailbone, then deep between my legs where he
gently tapped at the diamond imbedded plug in my ass.
“Does that feel good?” he asked me, nuzzling into my hair and tap, tapping at the plug.
I could feel every inch of my skin, every electron, proton and neutron in every atom of my DNA and they were all abuzz with electric pleasure.
“More, please, Master,” I asked, trying to keep from whining.
“My greedy girl.”
“Yes, Master.”
He twisted the plug inside me like turning a valve, and it released some of the pressure inside me and replaced it with a yearning emptiness. I groaned, rolling my forehead against my hands and fogging the glass beneath them with my steamy pants.
His fingers delved into my ass, twisting one, then two, and then three until I was so full I couldn’t move.
“Move against my fingers,” he demanded, his other hand curling around my hip cruelly so that the edge of pain brought my mind to the moment, to the feel of him in my ass and the glass against my breasts. “Fuck yourself against me.”
God, I groaned at my shamelessness as I rolled my hips back, tipped my pelvis so that his fingers dragged across every inch of sensitive flesh inside me. It felt so foreign, a pleasure that was heavy, striking chords inside me that resonated like a bass instead of tenor.
It wasn’t enough. I kicked back my hips faster and faster, but the angle wasn’t right, and I couldn’t move fast enough. A noise of keening frustration rent the air, and I realized it was me making that sound.
“Hush, beauty,” Alexander soothed me as he popped open a bottle of lube behind me and then used his slicked fingers to prep me. “I’ll take care of that ache for you.”
My breath stuttered when the wide crest of him caught at my hole and then slowly, irrevocably pushed inside. Something in my brain popped open like a champagne cork and everything turned fizzy, my blood popping with sensation as I was flooded with endorphins.
I tried to impale myself back on his cock, but he held me steady, slowly working his way inside until my hips were cupped in the bowl of his lap and I was seated to the root on his length. His hand moved over me, plucking my nipples until they sung bright arias, strumming my clit until thrummed like metronome, keeping time the escalading tempo of pleasure rising to a crescendo in my gut.
Then he started to move, and my entire body started to play its own harmony, manipulated by the shape and pull of Alexander’s body into mine.
“You’re going to come all over me, aren’t you?” he taunted me as his rhythm changed, and he began to pound into me, ceaselessly of my pain or pleasure, chasing his own climax because he was my Master and I was just a slave.
I groaned endlessly in response, so lost it was a wonder his voice could penetrate my lust drunk thoughts.
“You love my cock in your ass, in your pussy, in your mouth, and between your tits and thighs. You love it anywhere you can get it,” he continued against my neck as he nipped at the flesh there.
“I’m, I, I’m going to…” I trailed off, losing my ability to speak in any language as my impending climax tightened every muscle in my body to the point of pain.
“Yes, Cosima, come for me,” he said, and it was the sound of my name in his mouth, spoken in that sexy British voice that catapulted me over the edge of the most extreme orgasm I’d ever had.
Every circuit in my body lit up so that all I saw was light and all I felt was bright pleasure coursing through me from the point where his cock sank deep into my body. And then it became too much, and everything short circuited.
Seconds later, I passed out against the glass.
When I woke up, I was in bed with Alexander between my legs, cleaning me with a warm, damp cloth in the dark.
I tried to speak, but my speech was slurred nonsense.
Alexander looked up from his work to give me his small, slightly lopsided smile. “You passed out on me. I can’t say I’ve had a sub do that to me before.”
I frowned.
Alexander shook his head at me and tossed the facecloth to the floor before lying beside me and pulling over the covers. I sighed when he drew me against the hard lines of his body, my cheek against the inflexible swell of his pec and my fingers caught in the grooves between his abs.
“You have no need to be jealous of any one in my past. I had subs before you, but no slaves, and never anyone for longer than a few months. Even then it was casual because I had no need for a partner, only a warm, wet, and obedient woman.”
“Nice,” I mustered dryly.
His chuckle ruffled my hair. “Not everyone is looking for their future spouse.”
“I can’t imagine you married,” I said as I yawned into his chest.
“Probably because I don’t ever plan to be. I’d have to be out of my mind.”
“You don’t believe in it?”
He was quiet for a long moment as he contemplated my question. It occurred to me that it was only ever after a scene, when I was wrapped around him, that Alexander tenderized and conversed with me like a true lover.
I’d have to take better advantage of it.
“I believe it in it,” he said at last. “I might be the pessimist, but I can’t think of a single married couple who is happy for it.”
I didn’t know one either, so I didn’t say anything.
“I have to believe if I ever felt moved to marry, it would be because I wanted my lover to have my name, my protection, and the promise of my love no matter what should happen in the future. I think it’s a promise that should never die, even if the love is gone. One that says I will care for you, stand up for you, and be there for you no matter what.”
I blinked into the darkness at the beauty of his words and the impossibility of them coming from such a man. But then I thought of other things he had said when his guard was down, how I was brave like the Goddess Athena and a queen who had been convinced she was a pawn.
It was the contradiction of his cold exactness and his warm soliloquies that seemed to crumble my defences before I knew they were even destroyed. It was impossible to stay on my toes around him because his behaviour was unpredictable, and his erratic moments of beauty were arresting.
Which reminded me of his strange behaviour upon seeing that submissive in the club.
“Who is Yana?”
His body stilled. “We won’t speak of her.”
“Okay, let’s talk about what happened with Sherwood tonight. Why was he threatening you, and why shouldn’t you be a little more concerned about it? I thought you said these men would kill you if you didn’t do as they said?”
“They can try,” he muttered darkly.
“Xan.” I propped myself up on one hand so I could look into his face, and I watched his face soften at my nickname for him. “Please, tell me what happened tonight.”
He sighed, an indulgent and vaguely irritated sound. “Fine, but lie down.” As I settled, he tangled his fingers in my hair. “The Order isn’t just about hedonism and women. It’s also about keeping the elite men of Britain in the upper echelons of business, politics, wealth, and society. I own a media company that I inherited through my mother’s family that I’ve made very lucrative. There are any number of people I should be supporting financially for mayor of London and Prime Minister, or hiring at my company because it is dictated by the Order. I refuse to do so.”
“You always have?”
“Yes. I know it’s hard to believe, given our current state, but I never approved of the Order even though I was groomed to be a leader of it by my father.”
“How were you groomed?” I asked, drawing my fingers in soothing patterns over his chest in the hopes that it would distract him into staying open and pliant with me.
He hesitated. “My father always kept slaves. It was something I’m not sure if my mum knew about at the time of their marriage, but she certainly knew about it when I was a lad. Mostly, they were kept out of our sight in the servants’ quarters or the dungeon, but when I was nine, my father decided I should begin my training
as a sadist.”
I stopped breathing.
“He took me to the dungeon and introduced me to the current slave Davenport. She was only eighteen and so pale and thin… I could see her veins and bones beneath her skin. Noel taught me how to train her like a dog, how to present for her Master and crawl and beg prettily for more. I had my first orgasm by her mouth and then on my tenth birthday, I lost my virginity to her.”
“Oh, Xan,” I breathed, flattening my hand over his heart as if I could reach inside and soothe the scars there.
“It was a few months after that Noel decided to teach me how to discipline her. I was a tall boy and strong from sport, so he felt I could properly employ a whip. First, he strung Yana up to the ceiling and ‘put her through her paces.’ By the time he was halfway done, her back had opened up and blood dripped like red rain to the floor. I couldn’t stand it, so when my dad wouldn’t stop at my screams, I tried to take the whip from him.”
My hand flew to my mouth and tears gathered in my eyes as I understood where this was going.
“Noel took Yana down and let her weep in the corner while he strung me up and gave me the rest of her punishment. At some point, I passed out from the pain, which only made Noel angrier. Davenport men, especially the heir to the Dukedom of Greythorn, do not succumb to anything, even pain. He flayed me until my back was a bloody mess, and then he left me there on the floor. I was lucky one of the kitchen maid’s sons had heard the screaming, and he came down to investigate. It was quite the ordeal, though it gave me Riddick.”
“He was the maid’s son?” I asked, shocked that the two had been together that long.
Alexander nodded, brushing the hair away from face and rubbing the strands between his fingers. “There’s more in my storied history with the Order, but that was my first taste of their beliefs, and I didn’t like it.”
“But you’re a Dominant and a sadist now?” I ventured timidly because the terminology still confounded me sometimes, but I was fairly sure that was true.
“I am. I learned in time what my own boundaries were, and they were pretty much the same as any God-fearing man’s. I don’t take my pleasure from making you bleed or eat scraps off the floor like Sherwood’s slave. I don’t enjoy the thought of sharing you or watching you be raped. I’m just a simple man with a hankering for the sound of my sub’s tears and the sight of the flesh after it has been reddened with a crop.”
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