August was out of bed in an instant. He switched on the little bedside lamp. Then he picked up her armchair and moved it next to the bed.
He started to sit. “Don’t you dare!” Lia said.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re naked. We do not put our balls on my dead grandmother’s favorite chair.”
“Prissiest madam in history,” August said to himself. He found his jeans and drew them on quickly, then pulled the cord from her bathrobe.
Lia couldn’t believe it when he tossed it to her, turned his back and said, “Tie me.”
“Are you really serious?”
He turned back around and sat on the edge of the bed. He crooked his finger at her, and she sat up to face him.
“David lied to you.” August took her chin in hand. “If I can make you come with my hands tied behind my back, that will prove you are completely capable of having an orgasm with someone, and David was the problem, not you. Will you let me do this? Please?”
Lia was strangely moved by his little speech. Enough that she said—and she could not believe she was saying it—“Give me the cord.”
He gave her the makeshift rope. He again turned his back to her and brought his wrists behind his back.
Lia had never tied up a man before and she had to admit—not aloud—she rather liked the process. August stood perfectly still with his hands at the base of his spine, putting up no fight whatsoever as she took the white silk cord of her bathrobe and looped it around and around his wrists. Lia found herself getting unexpectedly breathless. August looked incredibly erotic in that pose—back to her, jeans loose around his hips, shirtless and tied up. He stood in the perfect contrapposto pose, relaxed and loose as if it were the most natural thing in the world to him to be tied up by a girl.
She took her time with the cord, enjoying the view, enjoying the intimate contact with his skin.
“Too tight?” she asked as she ran her finger under the rope to make sure there was room to wiggle.
“Perfect,” he said. “Finished?”
“Um...almost.”
Lia checked the cord again, though it was perfectly in place, not too tight, not too loose. She just wanted to be near him like this...like he belonged to her, like he was her property she had tied up with a bow.
“You can touch me,” he said.
“I can, can I?”
He looked at her over his shoulder.
“I want you to,” he said. “I need it.”
She shivered at the soft plea she heard under his words. When he said things like that to her, things like “I need it,” she believed him. Stupid boys were always going on about how they “needed” it, but this wasn’t like that. When August said he needed it, he sounded like a runner needed pavement or a swimmer needed water or a priest needed prayer.
When her fingertips touched his back, in that vulnerable place just under the rib cage, he inhaled a quiet breath. She pressed her lips to the center of his back, where the spine met the neck.
August exhaled from the depths of his soul. He faced her and brought his mouth to hers. She felt no shyness at all as she put her hands on the sides of his neck and kissed him. His mouth opened to her immediately, letting her tongue inside. He held nothing back, nothing of himself. No fear. All freedom. He kissed like a man who’d never had his heart broken. He kissed like he was never afraid he would never be kissed back.
“August...” she said against his lips.
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, eyes closed, scared but excited. “I think so.” Slowly she opened her eyes.
August looked at her intently, a teacher to a student.
“You’ll do everything I tell you do?” he asked.
She nodded again.
“Good.” He sat on the chair. “Lie on your back with your hips at the edge of the bed, knickers off, feet on the chair arms. And trust me, your dead grandmother would approve.”
She felt awkward arranging herself for him, lying back on the sheets, perpendicular to the edge of the bed. She tried to keep her knees closed as she settled in but that didn’t last long.
“Open your legs,” August said.
After a pause to steel herself, Lia let her legs fall open like the wings of a butterfly.
“Beautiful,” he said. “Now open yourself for me.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
Well, if she had to she had to.
She slipped her hands between her legs and touched herself. Slowly and with extreme embarrassment, she pulled the lips of her vulva apart and let him see the wet red flesh of her labia and vagina.
August made a soft sound, a little inhalation, a little exhalation right after. A stunningly obscene noise; she would have killed to hear it again.
“Show me more,” he ordered.
“August, please.”
“Briseis did it for Achilles. You can do it for me. More.”
Lia pushed her hips forward, tilting them as hard as she could. A wave of desire hit her, washed through her.
“I want to see your clitoris,” he said.
She moved her fingers upward, spread her legs wider, thrust her hips out harder. She pulled at the tender flesh of her hood and lifted it.
The tip of his tongue darted out and touched it, just touched it, lightly, so lightly it couldn’t even be called a lick. It was electric.
“August,” she gasped.
“Now that is how a man wants to hear his name spoken by the girl he’s bedding,” he said, laughing softly. “The next word you speak will be my name and you won’t speak—you will scream it. Until then, moan and groan and pant and gasp all you want, but otherwise shut up, Lia. I’m working.”
Lia couldn’t believe what was happening to her even as it was happening to her. The tip of August’s tongue kneaded the sensitive flesh around her clitoris, lightly rubbing it and pressing it, drawing blood into it so that the knot, that tender aching knot, swelled and throbbed like a separate heart beat inside of it. He suckled that knot a thousand times more gently than he ever suckled her nipples. So gently it was maddening. She dug her hands into the back of his hair and pushed her hips into his mouth.
A lick. The tiniest most perfect lick ever, right on the quivering tip of a nerve. A muscle inside Lia coiled tight as a spring. She panted, head back, fingers twisting harder into August’s hair.
Another lick. A harder lick. The twirl of his tongue all around the edge. Then over it. A kiss. A long tender wet kiss onto it, kissing her like he kissed her mouth. He lowered his head and licked at the entrance of her body. He pushed his tongue against the hole and pushed again until the tip went inside it. Lia gasped, shocked by the pleasure and the intimacy so intense it almost felt like a violation. He turned his head slightly to the side and kissed her swollen labia again. To the other side and kissed her again. After that it seemed he wanted nothing more than to press his mouth into her. He pushed his tongue into her vagina again, and Lia lifted her hips in instinct and need.
“Wider,” he ordered, and she didn’t know if he meant she was supposed to open her legs wider or her labia wider. She did both. She spread her legs and her hands and August came at her with such determination she felt the chair shift under her feet. He licked the entrance of her body again, over and over a hundred times. Lia’s fingers grasped at the sheets as he went at her. Sounds escaped her lips she’d never heard herself make before, not in this world or any other. Animal grunts, deep from her throat, keening pleas. He was torturing her, focusing his attention on her labia and vagina instead of her clitoris. Lia moved her hips up and down and in little spirals in the hopes of getting him to give her what her body needed. Every time she lifted her body off the bed, she felt a fresh wave of desire. He wasn’t torturing her but tricking her into fucking his mouth.
The trick worked.
Finally, August licked his way up from the base of her vagina to her clitoris. He pulled the knot between his lips again and sucked; she let out a soft grateful moan. God bless the man. He should be knighted. She moaned again so he did it again. And again. Her clitoris pulsed against his hot mouth and the coil inside her tightened until it could twist and tighten no more. Every nerve seemed exposed and he found every exposed nerve and touched it with the tip of his tongue, touched and touched as she trembled and shook. Her inner muscles were clenched so hard it hurt and there was nothing left for her but release. Lia’s body pressed up, up, up, and she exploded against his mouth. The sensation was so strong, a bomb in her belly, that she bent almost double, shoulders off the bed, arms around his head.
She came so hard she smelled sounds and heard colors.
Lia lay panting, nearly comatose, on the bed until August stood up and entered her field of vision. He was smiling.
Of course he was.
Then he glanced at the clock on her bedside table.
“Four minutes, fifty-two seconds,” he said. “You needed that.”
Lia didn’t speak. She wasn’t entirely sure she could speak.
“Lia?”
She held up one finger, asking for a minute to compose herself.
“Take your time,” he said. “I’ll be crowing if you need me.”
“Crow?”
“First—I told you so. Second—there’s nothing wrong with you and there never was. Third—that orgasm was so strong you almost chipped my tooth, and if you had, I would never have gotten it fixed.”
Her stomach was still fluttering, her mouth was dry, her vagina wet.
“Fourth—your David’s a wanker. And he’s shite in bed. He probably kicks puppies, too, and is one of those bastards who creates anonymous Twitter accounts just to insult celebrities. My cock’s bigger, right?”
Lia nodded as hard as her exhausted body would let her.
“Knew it.”
In the background of her awareness, Lia saw August undressing again, felt the bed shift as he crawled in next to her. He gathered her in his arms and placed her back against the pillows again, pulled the covers over her shivering body. Lia managed a breathy “Thank you.”
“So,” he said. “Verdict?”
“Red sounds like trumpets,” she said. “Blue like rain on a tin roof.”
“Good. Your body did come about three feet off the bed. I measured. Did lightning strike your stomach?”
“I’m lucky to be alive.”
“What about the face of God?” August asked. “Did you touch it?”
Lia raised a tired hand to his face and stroked his cheek.
“Close enough,” she said. August turned his head and kissed her palm.
Then Lia tackled him. She had no idea why or where the urge came from, but it came from somewhere and it landed her on top of August. She threw herself full body into pinning him to the bed, easy enough as he put up no fight whatsoever.
She grabbed his wrists—when had he untied them?—and pinned them to the pillow on either side of his head.
“How did you do that?” she demanded.
“What? Make you come?”
“Yes.”
“I put my tongue on your clit and rubbed it there until—”
“How did you get untied?”
“I’ll never tell you. You can’t make me. Go on. More questions. Being interrogated by a beautiful angry spy is one of my fantasies. If you want to slap me, you can. You should.”
“Who are you, August Bowman?” she asked, lightly slamming his wrists into the bed. “If that is your real name.”
“It’s not my real name.”
“What?” Lia froze, stunned.
“It’s not my real name.”
“What is your real name?” she asked.
“Can’t tell you. Wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?” Lia let his wrists go and sat next to him on the bed. “Because you’re a pro?”
She knew loads of sex professionals who kept their real names secret, and she certainly understood why. But that didn’t seem to be August’s style.
“Long story,” he said. “Boring story.”
“There is no way that the story of how anyone becomes a sacred prostitute of Eros is a boring story. ‘How’d you save all those vampire wolves from that active volcano eruption?’ ‘Oh, boring story.’ ‘Where did all those jars of human eyeballs in your kitchen come from?’ ‘Total yawn of a tale. You wouldn’t want to know.’”
“I’m being mocked.”
“You think?” Lia said.
“Fine. If you must know...”
“I must.”
“My parents were going to force me to get married. I refused.”
“Force you to get married?” Lia asked, stunned. “You mean, an arranged marriage or just anyone as long as you got married and settled down?”
“Mother was going to pick someone for me. I refused and ran away. My mother caught up with me and told me I either came to heel or...said goodbye. I said goodbye. And there went my home, my inheritance and my name. If I want them back, I have to let my mother marry me off and settle down.”
“Are you going to?” Lia asked.
“Never,” he said. “I’ll die first before I bend to them.”
He sounded surprisingly serious.
“Die? Really?”
“I can’t do it. I can’t give up my freedom. It’s who I am. When I say I’d rather die than let my mother marry me off and settle me down, what I mean is...giving up this life I made for myself? It would kill me.”
Lia couldn’t imagine August married. She couldn’t fathom what he would be like “settled down.” He’d be like one of those exquisite blue-winged butterflies captured by a collector and pinned with a needle into the velvet of a shadow box—a beautiful tragedy.
“So you became a prostitute once you were kicked out of your house?”
“I was already in the Cult of Eros,” he said. “You could call it my ‘church’ if you want. But I went pro when I needed money for the first time in my life. It’s my dream job, really. I was doing it for free. Might as well get paid for it.”
“But...don’t you miss your family?” Lia asked. “A little? Miss home?”
Even in the darkness of her bedroom, she could see the outline of his handsome face—strong jaw, Greek nose—and the clouds forming and swarming in his gray eyes.
“It’s not so bad. And my mother still talks to me. Or...I wouldn’t call it talking so much. More like berating. Her two favorite words are ungrateful and child.”
“She should meet Daddy. They’d have plenty to talk about,” Lia said. “Your mother won’t even let you use your family name anymore?”
“Part of the punishment,” August said. “My family name is a bit, ah...recognizable. Comes with perks I’m no longer allowed access to.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Is your family famous?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Infamous, maybe.”
“Who are you?” she asked again. This time, not a joke. She wanted to know. No, she needed to know.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said. “But it’s for the best if I don’t.”
“One question—would I like you more or less if I knew who you really were?”
“Based on experience...less,” he said.
“All right,” Lia said. “Then don’t tell me. I’m starting to like liking you.”