Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
A moment later the whole of my master fell into place, though. His charcoal jacket sat over his broad shoulders with almost irritating perfection. His pale shirt lay open at the throat. He moved through the hall with the same calm certainty with which he had moved through the cell, and the fact that he belonged equally in both places—in ritual stone, naked beneath a red robe, and here among polished tables and discreet wealth—struck me hard.
My body reacted before any thoughts properly formed. I felt my spine lengthen. My thighs pressed together a little despite the ache. Heat climbed from my cheeks to my scalp.
He found us almost immediately, his gray eyes taking in the little section for new columbae, the bowls, my posture on the mat, Giovanna with the leash in hand. Something unreadable but very warm flickered in his expression.
Giovanna turned her head toward him with a smile of greeting on her lips.
“She is behaving herself,” she said.
Henrik’s gaze moved to me. “Are you, lille en?”
I lowered my eyes at once.
“Yes, Herra,” I said very softly.
He came closer, and the smells of the refectory seemed to rearrange themselves around the scent of him. He looked down at the bowls on the floor, then at Giovanna.
“In the mead hall,” he said, in that measured voice that could somehow make barbarism sound like policy, “a man does not leave his girl to feed like a forgotten dog. Not when she has served well.” His mouth shifted, almost into a smile. “We feed a favored creature like this one from the hand. It reminds her who provides.”
Giovanna arched one dark brow. “How touching. The North discovers tenderness.”
“It isn’t merely tenderness,” Henrik said. “It’s also, and more important, ownership.”
My face burned hotter.
He crouched. The expensive fabric of his trousers tightened over his thighs, and I had the distracting, humiliating thought that I knew exactly what those thighs felt like against my body. He took up the bowl with the torn bread and olives. His fingers selected a piece of bread first, dipped it into the oil so that it grew golden and flecked with herbs, and he held it to my mouth.
“Open, lille en.”
I opened.
The bread touched my lips. I took it carefully from his fingers, trying not to brush them with my mouth and then feeling heat rush through me because of course I wanted to suckle on those long, strong digits. I chewed. The bread tasted impossibly good. Somehow it seemed as if thousands of years of skill had gone into balancing the sea salt with the yeast. The olive oil lit up my mouth.
He fed me an olive next, pressing it just lightly enough to my lower lip that I had to take it from him with unmistakable submission. Then another piece of bread. Then a segment of orange, whose sharp sweetness burst over my tongue and made me almost dizzy.
Around us, I could feel attention gathering. Not the formal scrutiny of the control room, but something looser and perhaps crueler, more dominant: communal curiosity. I kept my eyes lowered and my mouth obedient and took what he gave me.
“That’s enough,” Giovanna said after a little while, though her voice carried the quality of someone observing an experiment with interest. “If you spoil her, Magnusson, we’ll have to start over.”
Henrik set the bowl down. His hand came under my chin and lifted my face just enough that I had to look at him.
“And what do you say,” he asked quietly, “when your Herra feeds you from his hand?”
My throat tightened. I knew the answer before he asked; my body seemed to know everything before my mind caught up, these days.
“Thank you, Herra.”
He looked at me for another moment. The way his eyes crinkled made my heart jump, to my distress. “Good girl.”
My reason recoiled from the glow in my chest, and the fact of that glow brought new heat to my cheeks.
Then, without any warning beyond the tiny shift in atmosphere that seemed to precede so many things with him, my master rose. I heard the nearby table fall quieter. He unfastened his belt with calm, economical movements, then opened his trousers and drew out his cock.
I forgot to breathe for a moment.
The long shaft had become hard already, and I watched it grow even firmer and longer. The sight of my master with his manhood thick and heavy in his hand, standing in the middle of the elegant refectory in his charcoal jacket and open-necked shirt as if this were the most natural thing in the world, sent a shock through my whole body so acute it made the soreness between my thighs pulse.
Giovanna did not move. I could feel rather than see her stillness beside me.
“Show Bellatrix Hestiaea,” Henrik said, “how a bed thrall thanks her master properly.”