SO MUCH FOR the big bad domina. Hinano Kesada, you are a coward.
Kes berated herself all the way back from the garden. She was never short on words when they needed to be said, but looking at Morya, knowing she couldn’t give her refuge yet … The words had died on her lips. She couldn’t ask her anything, much less declare her love for her.
And what if her girl’s feelings had changed since they’d been together? It had been so long.
She knew this line of thought would drive her crazy if she stayed with it. By the time she walked into her room she was ready for any distraction, and two greeted her eyes in short order.
The first thing she saw was an arrangement of crystal lilies in the center of the lacquered black table. Transparent stems, delicate petals like sheets of sculpted mica refracted the light, all frozen in a wild array that glittered and trembled gently with the movement of air in the room. As she approached them, her eye was drawn from alien flowers to the naked figure of a woman in the chamber beyond. It was Desta, her assigned house slave, who was tidying up the sleep area, stowing Kes’s bedding for the day.
House slaves were a common enough domestic occurrence, not only in the Between-World of the shigasue, but in the households of the aristocracy and the well-to-do and many other places throughout the Empire. Desta’s nakedness while serving was a different matter. That was not a common state for slaves—most tasks required some degree of clothing for warmth, if nothing else—but in the body-casual and sexually charged atmosphere of erotic houses, nakedness was often the order of the day, as it was at Tryst.
Though Desta was a woman grown, like all sentient property, she was referred to in the diminutive. The girl’s willowy figure was lithe, and Kes let her eye be drawn by her seductive grace.
Her motions were economical, the curves of her body and neck accentuated by the black scrolling lines of the property mark tattooed around her neck. Her upswept hair showed off slender sprays up each side of her neck nearly to her ears. The symbolic collar was a traditional symbol of slave status, the design unique to the owning house. Some slaves were oblivious to their markings, or resentful of them; some, shamed by them. Yet others wore the mark like a piece of fine jewelry. Desta was one such, a born slave whose parents were also House Palumara property. The marks were not only part of her person; they were part of her identity, one she seemed quite comfortable in.
Not for the first time, Kes wondered what transpired in the mind of a slave, how she embraced her place in the household and the clan she was attached to. Kes had tried to find that mindset with the Icechromers for all of ten seconds, and succeeded at it not even half that long.
Desta felt Kes’s gaze upon her and glanced up to see if her owner needed her attention.
Kes gave her a half smile. She liked to watch her girl work; she had the poise of a dancer and that hint of innocence that appealed to the predator in Kes. But for all the distraction Desta offered, the slave’s presence was expected here, picking up the room at noon—what counted for early morning in a shigasue household. Not so, the flowers. They were the real curiosity of the moment, and Kes’s eye traveled back to them.
The domina reached beneath blossoms that looked like spun sugar to remove the note affixed to the vase. She read it quickly, smiling to herself. Janus. She had remarked once that she liked unusual flowers. Since then, her favorite client had sent her something monthly, something alien and expensive and lasting. Never the same thing twice. And this, a remembrance until he returned. Good. It was good to know he was coming back. You never knew with clients; they could be so transient. But not Janus.
She dropped the card on the tabletop and turned to Desta, who was just sliding the pithpaper door shut on the last folded blanket. “Is my bath ready?” she asked, already disrobing, dropping indigo tunic, trousers, and sandals in a heap for the slave to deal with later.
“Yes, Domna, it is.” She plucked a robe from the screen, held it open for her mistress to slip into. Without further conversation, Kes went to the door and left the room, conscious of the girl following behind. She turned left in the hall, went two doors down to the semi-private bath she shared with two other shigasu. A gust of warm steamy air welcomed her as she stepped inside.
The floor was water-resistant red talus wood, the tub black brae stone, large enough for three. A sheen of bath oils glistened atop the water, and the relaxing, energizing scent of bayim herb filled the air. Without looking behind her, Kes shrugged the robe off her shoulders and felt the slave’s waiting hands take the garment before it could hit the floor. She stepped into the tub, the water just this side of too hot, and breathed out a sigh as she sat and stretched her long legs out completely. Her hair trailed in the water as she entirely submerged. When she surfaced, Desta was kneeling by the tub, soaps and shampoo and brushes to hand, ready to tend to Kes’s needs.
There was an ordinary fresher in her own room that served for toiletry and quick showers, but Kes had fallen into this weekly ritual bath after seeing Morya. A time of relaxation and pampering, and the welcome distraction of the slave if the sexual tension was too much to tolerate. That was the problem with seeing her girl weekly, but not seeing her, really. The lust. The desire to take her, right there on the grass of the meditation square. The need—sometimes urgent need—to hurt her, hear her cry out in pain and pleasure and see her beauty transform into something exquisite with the intensity of sensation shared between them. Knowing that Morya craved her touch, that they both wanted more.
And why not? she asked herself as Desta’s sure hands rubbed soap into her hair. We were so good together, while I was there at the Salon. And we will be again. If I can only find the right way to tell her.…
Kes frowned. The slave came around the side of the tub, pulling the rinse line out of the wall to cleanse the soap from Kes’s hair. She reached out idly as Desta leaned over her, grasped Desta’s nipple between her long nails, and pinched, hard. The slave gasped, but knew better than to interrupt what she was doing. She ran water and pulled a hand through Kes’s hair while the domina tightened her pincer grip even further. The girl moaned but continued her work, her body squirming sensuously with the effort to stay still, to keep herself available to her owner’s touch.
Desta finished the rinse. Kes smiled to herself and released her grip. It was a sure thing the slave was aroused. If Kes was going to languish with the slow burn of lust, by the gods she would not be doing it alone. When the girl reached for a sea sponge, Kes grabbed her wrist and drew her closer. “Come in,” she said, pulling the slave into the tub with her.
Desta did as she was bid, the surprise on her face giving her a charming expression. She had rarely been in the tub with her owner before, but she knew what was coming.
Kes stretched out her arms to either side of the brae-stone basin, leaned against the cushioned backrest, spread her legs so they were straddling the slave’s thighs. “Do me,” she commanded. Water would complicate things, but make them that much more sensual as well. Slick skin against slick skin, the probing touch of fingers and hands … why languish, after all, when there was a slave to do your bidding? Desta knew how to serve her mistress well.
The slave’s hands slid up Kes’s thighs, her lips caressed Kes’s breast just beneath the surface of the water. The domina closed her eyes and lost herself in the sensations of heat and flesh and the rising flush of orgasm.
The image of Morya pleasing her did not intrude until the very end.