Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“You’re better at this than I expected you to be,” he says with a smirk.
Then he lowers his head and sucks my nipple into his mouth and it’s as if lightning has struck directly to my core. My clit throbs and the new piercing stings. I squeeze my legs shut against both.
“Thank you, Guardian,” I say in response to both the compliment and his tongue playing in delicious circles over my flesh.
He lifts his head and puts the goblet on the table. “You must be hungry. Here.”
Luthian picks up a fork and spears a slice of a root vegetable. “There’s no way to make an arousing display out of this, surely?”
I consider the challenge. I never would have considered eating an arousing activity, in the first place. But I assume, based on the way his chest rises and falls as he watches me wet my lips, that it’s my mouth that’s meant to tempt him.
And so, I lean toward the bite he offers me, chin lifted and chest tipped to give him a better view of my exposed breasts, and ever so slightly show my teeth before I take the bite, my lips lingering as I pull back.
The smile he gives me fills some long neglected well in my heart. I’m pleasing him. I want to please him.
I should want to please the prince, I realize. That’s my goal, the entire reason I’m sitting in Luthian’s lap right now. And not just the prince; I’ll likely find myself in the king’s bed.
“Perhaps while you feed me, you can tell me about the king,” I suggest, walking my fingertips up Luthian’s chest.
He considers me a moment, evaluating my performance. “Cut back the simpering. Not too much. But you come off as transparently wheedling.”
“Oh. Thank you, Guardian.” I wait for his next instruction.
To my surprise, he offers me another bite and begins, “Neither he nor the prince will be impressed by a breathy, obvious show. But with the king, you must be more careful. He embodies the court, and so takes pleasure to the limits of torment, derives great pleasure from that torment. He will likely hurt you, in body and spirit. He won’t kill you or disfigure you. That ruins the game for him. But he will hurt you.”
I shiver, barely able to swallow the bite I’ve taken. I want to cling to Luthian, to demand why he’d hand me over to someone who would harm me. But I’m not supposed to question. “I trust you, Guardian.”
He goes quite still, searching my face. And after a very long, silent moment during which the sound of my own heartbeat seems to triple in volume, he says, “Very good. I believed it, for a second.”
“Thank you, Guardian,” I say, but I must look down.
If he doesn’t want to believe it, I can’t stand for him to accidentally see that it’s true.
“Guardian,” I begin, while he selects the next morsel for me. “Forgive me, but you said that you would... that we...”
How do I broach the topic of my inexperience? I’ve never considered it at all, until he brought it up. I’m not sure I have the words to describe what I’m asking, because it seems so absurd.
“Find your voice, Cenere. I do so loathe indecision,” he warns me.
“I thought you would couple with me. You seemed disappointed that I haven’t been intimate with another, before.”
The corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement. “Haven’t you?”
“Well..” I don’t remember it. Maybe he was with me while I was insensate with pleasure. But I remember keenly every moment of the agony he left me in that morning, twisting the pillows in my hands, arching my back, screaming under an onslaught of climaxes that I only escaped through unconsciousness. I would have known if he’d pinned me down with his body and pushed that massive cock into me.
“Do you think that what you did with Sarta wasn’t physical intimacy? That it’s not sex because you weren’t penetrated by a cock?” he asks and selects a roasted glimmer fern stem. He taps the end against my lips and I open for it, flicking my tongue across it before taking a dainty bite.
After I swallow, I answer him. “It was intimate. And not. It was instructive and pleasurable, but it did lack the passion I’ve read about in books.”
“It’s passion you want.” He isn’t asking me.
I discern that this is a trick. “It doesn’t matter what I want, Guardian. I know I’m learning the mechanics of it all. I shouldn’t have questioned you.”
“Some questions are useful,” he tells me, giving me another bite. “You will need to learn passion, both earnestly and how to feign it. But you’re correct. It’s important now to become skilled at the mechanics, so those become second nature. I promise, I will take you soon. When you’ve proven yourself a worthy enough lover.”