Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [65]
"I'm not done," Nicola L'Envers y Argon said mildly, taking hold of the back of my neck. "On your knees, if you please."
I knelt, bowing my head automatically; the tension on the cord caused the silken length working its way between my nether lips to tighten, making me gasp. I raised my head, forced to kneel with back arched and breasts out-thrust.
"Now," she said, satisfied, "you begin to understand."
And then she set about finishing her work, binding my ankles tight together, and running the cord to knot it at my wrists. No matter how I moved, the cord grew taut between my legs, slipping back and forth. Lest I mistake it for chance, she had cunningly tied a knot there, a small, hard protuberance in the soft cord that taunted me, rubbing against Naamah's Pearl every time I shifted, causing me to bite my lip.
It pleased her; it pleased her a great deal. I could not help but gaze at her, on my knees, my chin upraised by virtue of the cord's necessity. Nicola prowled around me, smiling, violet eyes alit with pleasure, a finely-made deerskin flogger in her hand. There were steel tips at the ends of it.
"Do you like this?" she asked, almost tenderly. "Hmm?"
"No."
Her arm moved in a swinging, sidelong gesture, and streaks of pain burst across my buttocks, my lower back, and my tied hands. I cried out and jerked against my bonds, causing the cord to saw into me, making my breathing ragged.
"You lie, don't you?" Nicola brought the flogger across me in a backhanded blow, raking across my breasts; the painwas so vivid I saw stars, and Kushiel's red haze. "Don't you!" She struck me again. I tossed my head involuntarily to avoid the blow, and the cord tautened against my efforts, tightening at the wrists, the knot between my thighs riding up and down against the sensitive node of flesh there. Nicola laughed, and trailed the flogger over my flesh; like an idiot, I struggled, bound tighter each time I writhed. The cords bit into my flesh everywhere, and a throbbing tide of pleasure rose in me. "Fight it, then, and see if you may free yourself," she taunted, striking me again. "Fight it!"
Half-obedient, half-defiant, I did, until the cord drew so tight my hands were numb, and that knot, that little knot, rode up and down, up and down against Naamah's Pearl, slick with moisture against my swollen flesh, pleasure mounting higher the harder I struggled against it, until I surrendered and cried out at the waves of pleasure that overwhelmed me.
When I opened my eyes—for I had closed them involuntarily—I saw the rich weave of Nicola's woolen carpet inches from me, and felt it scratch against my cheek. I'd not known, till then, that I'd fallen on my side.
"You may struggle all you like, but the result will never change," Nicola's voice said far above me, rich with amusement. "What I learned, I learned well. What will you give for your release, Phèdre nó Delaunay?"
"Anything you want," I whispered, trying not to move. The least gesture set off fresh ripples of ecstasy, giving me further into her hand.
Nicola crouched down, flogger in hand, her lovely, amused face close to mine. "What I want," she said, "is your signale. You have only given it once, I am told. To Melisande Shahrizai. Or was that only because you loved her?"
Before the moment those words left her mouth, I swear, I was not thinking of it at all—politics, betrayal, the game of covertcy, and Nicola L'Envers y Aragon's part in it all. These things I relegate to a small part of my mind, the only part I hold back from a patron, and think on afterward. But when she spoke, a connection formed, and I did somethingI had never done before with a patron. I could not help it. I did not mean to laugh, but I did; soundlessly, barely shaking, lest the very act of it trigger further arousal. Nicola regarded me with startled displeasure.