Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [84]
I lay down, obedient, and felt the young adept's hands spread warmed oil over my skin, fragrant and pleasing. I had not known, until then, how much tension my body held; even the bath had not assuaged it. Bit by bit, it eased beneath her skillful massage, muscles easing one by one, until I lay upon my belly, loose-limbed and languorous, watching Raphael move gracefully about the room. He opened a coffer on his nightstand and withdrew a lump of resin, placing it in a small brazier, and the sweet scent of opium filled the room, a thin line of blue smoke redolent with visions. The music slowed, the lyricist's fingers wandering dreamily.
Growing light-headed, I sprawled at ease beneath the adept's slow-kneading hands; she bent low, when Raphael was not looking, to place a kiss at the base of my spine where my marque began, and I could feel her breath warm against my skin.
When her hands bid me turn over, I made no protest. I lay languid and waiting, watching Raphael Murain remove his clothing as the adept—I never learned her name—performed the arousement, hands slick with oil sliding over my body; my breasts, nipples taut and upright, my hipbones and the flat hollow of my belly, clever, oiled fingers exploring the valley between my thighs, parting me as one would open the petals of a flower. All the while, he smiled at me, undressing slowly to reveal a body lithe and boyishly muscled, the tip of his erect phallus brushing his belly. When he turned, I saw the marque of Gentian House limned on his spine, complete even to its moon-and-flower finial. As young as I, and as experienced. He took a long time with the languisement, until I could not tell where my flesh ended and his mouth began.
By the time he knelt over me, I was ready and more, and I cried out at the pleasure of it as he entered me, oil-slickened body sliding up the length of mine. There are those who think an anguissette knows pleasure only through pain, but it is not so. Though any one of my patrons would have seized his pleasure or forced mine, thrusting hard, Raphael Murain was an adept of the Night Court. He braced himself on his arms above me, smiling and moving in slow, languorous strokes, lowering his head to kiss me. Elua, it was sweet! His hair fell around my face in shining curtains, and I returned his kisses as only another of Naamah's Servants might, an intricate dance of tongues, slow and unhurried. His hard, slender chest brushed my breasts. I could hear my breathing, and his, and that of the young adept, who knelt watching.
One surrenders, as a patron; I never understood that before. I surrendered that night, to Raphael and Gentian House, the fragrance of scented oil and the sweet blue opiumsmoke, letting pleasure mount in slow-building waves, while we rocked on it as on the breast of the sea. It seemed to come from a very great distance when it broke, moving in a great tidal surge, vaster and slower than any climax I had known. I closed my eyes, feeling it spiral outward from our conjoined bodies to the vast reaches of time, wave after wave breaking on the outermost shoals of my awareness, distant and ponderous.
"May I?" Raphael Murain whispered when my eyes opened.
I felt him still moving inside me, and whispered back, "Yes."
It was his eyes that closed, then, long lashes curled like waves breaking; I gasped as he inhaled sharply, drawing in the very breath of our commingled pleasure. His body went rigid against me as he spent himself, a sweet, hot throbbing deep inside of me.
Afterward, we slept, and I dreamed.
Not since Joscelin had foresworn me had I spent a night's slumber with any other living soul; I could have grieved, to realize how much I had missed it. After all his careful grace, Raphael slept with a child's abandon, fine silken hair spilling across my face, limbs slack with spent pleasure. The lamps had burned