“You can go back to sleep in a minute, but first, there’s something we have to do.”
She didn’t stir as he pulled the covers away, revealing every honey-gold inch of her.
His cock was already stiff with the morning and the sight of her. He wrapped his fist around it, wincing as his balls tightened, irritable and frustrated at routine abstinence punctuated by brief, cursory and largely unsatisfying jerk-off sessions.
Klym had reached for him more than a few times. If he wanted to, he had no doubt he could manipulate her into using her hands or probably even her mouth on him, and a thousand times a day, he promised himself he’d let her, but somehow, the moment came, and he just couldn’t bring himself to take anything more from her.
It had to be given.
He climbed up the bed, so he knelt over her chest, and set up a quick stroking rhythm.
Her lids flickered open, her gaze settled on his activity, and she tried to lurch upright, but he held her still with a hand on her shoulder. She glared at him as if he were the foremost pervert in the navigable universe. “What are you doing?”
He just kept on stroking. “Just another minute.”
“Don’t you dare point that thing at my face.” She scuttled backward into the pillows at the top of the bed. Her tits jiggled and bounced. “It’s one thing when we’re… you know. I was sleeping.”
He kept on stroking. He was getting close. “Just be quiet.”
Her tits bounced again as she tried and failed to shift away. He grabbed one and kneaded it hard with his palm, still stroking away.
“Tor!” Her eyes bulged. “Have you gone mad?”
“I said I had to mark you. Be still.”
“Mark me? With your...” Her cheeks turned pink. “Is this really necessary?”
“Yes.” It wouldn’t fool anyone, but it would confuse the issue, and with her being Argenti maybe no one would ask questions.
“Isn’t what you did last night enough, pushing it inside?”
Vintalla. “Shut up, Klym. No, it’s not. Argenti Bond, Vestige fuck. Shoving my cum inside you, while fun as hell, isn’t the same thing. If I don’t do this, the Alliance can take you. They’d lock me in prison, steal my throne, and if you think you’ve been taken captive now, it’s nothing to what the Alliance would do if they got their hands on you. And even this might not be enough.”
Shockingly, she obeyed. Just lay there, glowering at him.
He worked fast, and it didn’t take long. His balls tingled, and the tip of his cock exploded.
Her nose wrinkled and she sputtered at the splash across her sternum and a second trail up her neck to her chin. “Honestly.”
He laughed at her expression, ruining the shitty orgasm, but his balls felt slightly less bloated. It was sad, what she was doing to him. Ten years ago, he’d have been happily cavorting with a myriad of women and not a thought to spare.
“Soon, Klym, I will do that inside you.” He rubbed it into her skin, spreading it over her sternum and up her neck. “And when I do, you’ll scream for me.”
Something moved in her eyes. “Wh-what are you doing now?”
“Marking you.”
“I have to wear that around all day? That sounds a bit... sticky and rather unsanitary.”
“Too bad.”
“I’d rather not. Is there an alternative?”
“I could fuck you right now? Say the word, I’m ready.”
The light shifted from pale lavender to warm rose as she shifted uncomfortably. “No.”
He toyed with a length of her hair. “I could pee on your feet.”
A surprised bubble of laughter burst from her lips. “No.”
He dropped his palm back on the splatters and spread it along her neck. “Then no, there’s no alternative. I’m rubbing my—what did you call it?—my stink all over you.”
24
They all hate me
THE HOLO of Agammo’s butler snapped and cracked, fading from blue to gray. “Agammo is indisposed, miss.”
Indisposed was probably code for lost in the red haze with Malina. Strangely, the thought brought no anger or hurt with it, merely frustration at being thwarted again. Her father wouldn’t help her. Agammo wouldn’t help her. If Agammo was indisposed, that meant Malina was too. She wasn’t close enough to any of the girls at home for them to help.
Thanking him, she dragged her fingers along the reassuringly familiar pearls at her neck, and exited the room to find Janna waiting in the hallway.
Janna’s brows lifted high when Klym exited. “Why is my brother letting you comm some other man’s house?”
Klym lifted her shoulders, unsure how to answer. It was their agreement, and Tor hadn’t argued at all when she’d told him that morning.
Janna—who she was fairly sure Tor had ordered to be kind to her—led her through the cassia to a cliffside grove of trees in the gardens of the Roq, pointedly ignoring the glares of the felanas. While Janna had been reserved but kind, not one of the other women had so much as smiled at her this morning.
She tugged at her clothes. Tor must have arranged for her dress to be duplicated the night before, because a new dress, in the Argenti style, had appeared this morning, along with a seamstress.
She’d ordered several new Vestan-style outfits, but they weren’t ready yet. And she felt silly now, wearing the long skirt, the tightly cinched waist, and fussy collar. As if she’d arrived at a tea party dressed in evening attire.
She’d brushed her hair down after bathing, careful to follow Tor’s edict that she leave enough of his mark to preserve his scent. She could smell him now, woody and musky, but subtle. Just a reminder—Tor was here.
Just thinking about it sent a low-level thrum across her skin. It was a bit disgusting, but there was a certain primal element, a carnality to it that, coupled with the possessive gleam in Tor’s eyes at that moment in time, that made it... not just disgusting.
Sunlight flickered through the trees, warm but tempered by a cool breeze that
