The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 03

Sparrow leaned over the globe, eyes round. "So, that's where we are?"

"That's where we are."

"Lord..." He bit his lip and glanced at her. "Will you point to where you were born?"

She smiled, spun the globe a little, and pointed to a country shaped like a boot, laying her finger near the coast, just above where the buckle would be.

"Which one is that?"

"Italy."

He looked at where they were and then where she was born. His heart bobbed lower. He laid his hand over hers, warm on cool, and looked earnestly into her face, drawing her eyes up to his. "You're so far from home."

"Oh, Passer, my darling." She stepped briskly around the sphere and cupped his face. "Don't look sad for me. In a long life, there are many homes. You come to learn how easy it is to make one." She brought him to the window, the starlight now sprinkled over the vast sky, reflected on the houthouses, so the luscious plant life stirred under a net of diamond light. "Cyrus told me what you said about the hothouses, about them keeping things alive." She ran her fingers through his loose hair, a trickling sensation going from his scalp to his tailbone. "I thought it was beautiful. It put into words exactly how I feel. Think of me like those plants. Build them the right environment, and they can thrive anywhere." Her hand crept from his hair to his cheek and turned him towards her. "So only ever look at me with pleasure. Look at me thriving here, in my own happy hothouse." She beamed reassuringly.

He stroked his hand over hers on his cheek and tucked his face in gently to kiss her palm. For three days, his body had rolled between aching for Vestalia and the sweet, drunken relief of her closeness. Now, a new ache burrowed into him: he wanted more than her pleasure, he wanted her joy, her peace.

You want me to be happy, truly happy, don't you, Carissime?

He kissed her palm with more fervour. She lured him closer, into her perfume. His free hand drifted to her waist, stroking over the patterning in her gown.

"You know what you are?" she murmured sweetly.

"Hmm?"

She coiled a lock of his fair hair around her finger. "You're my butterfly. I brought you into my hothouse to keep me bright and alive. You're the new life this little environment needed."

"Oh, Mistress..."

They fell against the carved frame of the window, Vestalia sinking her back to the cool stone. Sparrow moved like snow as rocks shift beneath it, tumbling onto her. His lips dropped helplessly to her throat. He began to lavish kisses over her bare neck and shoulders and the tempting rise of her breasts. His mouth watered for her flavour, his writhing tongue leaving a scalding glisten on her skin. Her breath quickened, her breasts quivering in her tight corsetry, making his lips tingle. Her hands stole to his ass and clutched, bringing him close in a hard grind that stiffened his cock to pine.

"Mistress..." Sparrow mewed into the hollow of her jaw, fingers scrabbling needily and uselessly on the lacing of her gown. "I want to be that for you."

She stretched her neck for him and held him firmly in place by his ass, low hums of pleasure buzzing through her and sending shivers down his spine. "I know you do, Passer. It's so beautiful of you. My beautiful boy."

He swelled with pride and want. He pressed himself closer, sucking gluttonously on her shoulder. She lifted one hand to tenderly stroke his hair. She turned to whisper into his ear. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Little One. Let me show you more."

Sparrow snaked on her body. His zeal for the wonders of the library warred with his zeal for Vestalia. He cuddled her and nuzzled into her neck, peppering her with kisses and nibbles. She giggled like the sound of the brooks from his home, piercing him with longing. She peeled him from her, eyes sparkling at his mussed hair and pink nose.

"Come on," she whispered secretively. "You have as long as you want to explore here, but I must show you one thing while the stars are out. Might as well put my insomnia to use."

She pulled him to a table facing the window, upon which was a chart in gold on dark sapphire paper, and a peculiar, brass device that appeared to be a series of tubes slotted together on a tripod. Sparrow squinted at the device.

"It's a telescope," Vestalia said, her teeth glinting in a broad grin. "Look in there." She pointed to the tapered end.

Sparrow raised his eyebrows quizzically, but obeyed. He bent and peeped into the end of the telescope. The stars hurtled towards him, blazing huge and startling in a round bubble. He gasped and shot backwards, staring at Vestalia. She looked like a fey queen who'd just tricked a mortal.

"How... How..." Sparrow stammered.

She clapped her hands. "I knew you'd do this!" She spun the telescope around on the tripod. "This end has a curved lens that magnifies anything you look at. So, if you look at the stars, they look close enough to touch. Isn't it clever?" She spun it back into position and patted it proudly.

Sparrow was speechless. He broke into laughter and peeked through the telescope again. Once more, his vision flooded with stars the size of berries, as if he could harvest them and hold them in his hands. As if he could thread them on a chain and braid them into Vestalia's sunset-into-night hair. He gazed for the longest moment, gliding through the cosmos, Vestalia keeping him grounded with a rhythmic, affectionate stroke on his back. When he turned back to her, he'd looked so eagerly that there was a little, crescent imprint under his eye.

Vestalia chuckled and kissed it, heating his face again. "Now, when's your birthday?"

Sparrow shrank back a touch. "I don't know when it actually is, I don't remember." He perked up. "But my guardian always celebrated it on the day he found me. March 13th."

Vestalia tapped his chest. "Only a couple of weeks ago, I'm sorry I missed it."

Sparrow tucked his hair behind his ear. "You've given me plenty."

She licked her teeth and tickled a button of his waistcoat, then turned to the gilded chart. "Well, I think that day was as good as a birth, so that makes you born under Pisces. Where I'm from, we believed the constellation you were born under would determine some things about you." She pointed to a spot on the sapphire paper, what Sparrow now realised was a map of the heavens, showing two gilded crescents facing away from each other, connected by a bar through their middles. Two fish sketched in silver circled the symbol. "This is it."

"Pisces?"

"Pisces."

Sparrow looked at the two fish and thought again of the brooks that he tripped across on the mountain paths. He nudged Vestalia's thick, perfumed hair with his nose and murmured into her ear with a teasing smile. "What have the stars told you about me, Mistress?"

She caught his smile, a taut cord of electricity spinning between them. She maneuvered him to perch on the table edge and slipped between his spread knees, looming over him in striking black and red. His heart somersaulted. She snared the front of his waistcoat and nipped the end of his nose, then his chin, the sharp stings tugging pretty gasps from his lips. She began to undo the buttons, his waistcoat peeling open to reveal the low cut of his shirt and his smooth, tawny chest.

"The stars tell me, Carissime," she said in a prowling voice that set him ablaze. "That you are all heart," she stroked his chest, "over head," she stroked his temple. She went back to his buttons, stealing soft pecks of his puckered lower lip. "You are romantic beyond all else. You want to love more than you want to do anything. You want to give and to feel. Oh, Sparrow, you feel so, so deeply. Every tiny inkling has potential to drown you in feeling."

The waistcoat fluttered away, her touch on his skin like gunpowder trails. His breath caught, his lips pouting towards hers, his eyes hazing.

"Does that sound right, Passer?"

"Yes." Sparrow agreed without thought. He didn't need to question it. Everything had been a sea of feeling and desire since he'd come here. How long ago was that? He felt he'd lived his whole life in this consuming emotion. He ran his hands up and down the curve of her waist. "If not before, you made it true."

She curled her long fingers around his neck and brushed her lips over his, unspooling a moan from him.

"I adore how deeply you feel, Sparrow." Her voice was embroidered with yearning.

The hundred fascinating masks of his mistress flickered behind Sparrow's eyes. One glittered and made him smile like a pixie, sucking on his tongue. "Mistress, you said you spent time as a courtesan?"

Her mouth twisted mockingly. "So, that's the story that stuck."

He laughed and sucked a kiss from her lips. "I think I'd like to be a courtesan."

She tickled the nape of his neck, ribbons of pleasure whirling down his body. "Oh?"

"Teach me?"

She purred and ran her tongue along his jaw. Heat spiralled in his nerves.

"Make yourself hard for me," she whispered.

He scurried to obey, his cock already aching and pressing to his britches. He tugged them open and released himself, catching his shaft in his fist and stroking in a hasty rhythm. His breath snagged and came rough.

Vestalia kept her hands wandering around his body. She began to murmur deliciously. "A courtesan is there solely for the pleasure of his mistress. He spends all his days making himself enjoyable for her, thinking how he can give her pleasure, being beautiful and graceful and witty. Pleasure is an art for him. His mouth and his fingers and his cock are the tools of that art."

She laid her hand over his on his cock and slowed his pace. The sharp aches shooting through his body rolled into one continuous note of need. Glistening dew bloomed from his reddening tip and dripped onto her hand. She lifted it to his mouth. He kissed it clean with a sigh. She took her hands from him, washing him cool. He coursed hot again instantly, as she drew her skirts up over her round thighs, shining in a shaft of moonlight. Saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth. He almost rocked off balance, gripping the edge of the table, grasping his cock harder and fighting with all his strength not to stroke too fast.

"A courtesan must always make his mistress feel desired. She can come to him any time she feels that stirring within herself and she must be able to feel his want for her, to indulge in his lust as hers calls to it."

She pressed herself to his body, flooding his senses, her skirts gushing around him, one strong thigh rising onto the table and grazing his hip. Her scorching heat kissed his cock. He slipped his hand from his shaft and cupped her vulva. He shuddered desperately. She was dripping wet and swollen like ripe fruit. A growl tore from her chest, she tossed her wild hair. He cursed under his breath in wonder and stirred his fingers in her folds. She rode his hand, rocking into the heel, talons closing on his shoulders, eyes burning.

"Oh... Oh, yes, Sparrow..."

"Am I doing it right?" he whispered. "Am I being a good courtesan, Mistress?"

She moaned long and low, pricking his flesh with her fingernails. "You are doing very well, Carissime. But you need to understand, a courtesan is not just a lover. He's also a servant. He's barely more than property. Cherished property. But property, nonetheless."

Sparrow swallowed. His cock thumped with his rapid pulse. Her cunt was so brutally close. "Tell me more."

"A courtesan may be spoiled by his mistress, but in return, he has to be ready to be taken."

Sparrow shivered, his fingers sliding in her hot flesh. "Yes..."

Vestalia made a hungry noise in her throat. Her fingernails teased his collar. "Sometimes, your mistress burns without warning. Sometimes she just has to tear into you. And, as a courtesan, you mustn't resist. More than that. You must moan for it. You must match her want and surpass it. You must wilt open for her and let her fuck you senseless then and there."

"Christ... Yes... Oh, Mistress, please..." Sparrow could barely breathe. His arousal had been tip-toeing just under his skin since she'd pressed the library key into his palm, now it rocketed up until it almost hurt. He rang with want, her words turning his muscles to honey. "Please, fuck me senseless..."

She lunged forward. He gasped and toppled backwards, catching himself on his hands thrust out behind him. She clutched the back of his neck. Her cunt consumed his cock. He let loose a ragged cry, throwing his head back and whirling in the chandelier and the dreamy clouds above it. The horde of gods smiled down at him, as he was wrapped in stormy pleasure.

Vestalia sank onto him with a musical, tormentingly seductive moan. She twisted and writhed, settling herself, torturing his pounding cock with her motions. Her mouth sank to his neck, then to his cheek, then to his ear, whispering lethally, "A courtesan exists to be fucked."

Sparrow keened.

"Tell me it's the entire purpose of your body."

"Fuck me, it's all my body was made for."

"Tell me you serve me. That your cock is my object."

"Yes. Yes." His head dropped back further, revelling in the dizziness. "I serve you. I'm an object. Use my cock. Play with me like a doll."

She thrust hard.

"AH!"

"Beg for more."

"Please! More!"

She thrust harder, his cock seized with harsh pleasure.

"Keep begging, keep moaning. That's what a courtesan does. Make a show for me. Whine and squeal and let me hear your lust in every breath."

Sparrow hardly had the need for these instructions, he couldn't hold in the clamour in his flesh. She thrust again, and again, and again, galloping into a rhythm that slapped her flesh to his and squeezed and pumped his cock, until the pleasure ripped his insides. He scrunched the paper under his hands, bucked beneath her, and wailed and gasped, panting like a sled dog on his tenth mile. They moved at a rattling rate. The table scraped on the floor. The telescope tripod squeaked. Their lips locked, Sparrow groaned wildly into her mouth. He flailed his tongue on hers, until it ached, then cast his head back and closed his eyes and surrendered utterly to the slamming of her body and the tight, pulsing embrace on his cock. He leaned back, splayed on the chart, the vast windows soaring behind him. He was flying through midnight blue. Stars beneath him, stars behind him, darkness sweeping over his body and a blood red river pooled around his waist - he might have been the object of some end of the world prophecy.

Vestalia moaned breathlessly in her galloping ride, sparks striking between them. She slicked with the ease of ice, but burned with the heat of the sun. She ground him into the hard, wooden table, his hips smarting with the demand of her ferocious thrusts. His cock slid in and out of her with smouldering, soaking friction. Pleasure erupted over and over on his body, his voice fleeing from him in a string of pleas. "Please, please, please. You are my mistress, make me serve you."

Her cunt clenched, wringing the pleasure from him. His cries scored his larynx. His ass banged onto the table, bruising, but the pain only made his body more alive, more desperate. "Yes! Yes! Don't stop! More!"

"Squeal for me," she teased.

He released a deafening, piglet screech. She cackled and it tumbled into a moan. She kissed him fiercely, her mouth hard and commanding, her teeth grazing his, her hands crushing his jaw. She was still kissing him, as he felt the first pulsing grips of her orgasm. He moaned into her mouth and bucked wildly, bruising his ass harder, jarring his elbows on his outstretched arms.

They panted heavily together, moaning jaggedly and staring with heat into each other's eyes, her expression mesmerising and predatory, his bewildered and greedy and blushing like a rose garden.

"Oh, Sparrow!"

He jolted with delight at the sound of his name in her shaking gasp. She seized him, like a python, and convulsed against his body, her face falling into his neck. Her cunt squeezed him tight. With a final, shocking pulse, his pleasure peaked and jetted through his body in a purging fire. Their spasms thrummed together, their gulping breaths echoing off the books and the panes of glass.

They slowed. Vestalia clutched Sparrow and hummed into the hollow of his jaw, tickling his over-sensitised skin.

He went limp in her arms, trembling with tickling aftershocks and soft laughter. She giggled and carefully released him. He collapsed with a ruined smile to sprawl across the painted heavens, his mind clear of everything but stars.

*

A torch flared in the darkness.

Sandu closed her hand over her heart, where her crucifix lay, and stepped deeper into the cave. It was a small space, slightly more than an alcove in the mountainside. The last of the snow dusted the entrance. Scattered twigs cracked under her boots. The torch whoosed, as she moved it in an arc around the creviced walls and down to the floor. The men had built a fire in the centre, a pile of twigs and branches surrounded by stones. It was now a pile of cold ash, some of the kindling and pebbles kicked about the cave from the commotion. The air smelled of frost and moss and, underneath, blood, imperceptible but to the trained, to those for whom the smell of blood was never really gone from their bodies. Sandu could always smell when blood had been spilled.

She took another step in and began to methodically trace the torch around the walls. The flickering glow illuminated the rock face in spidery stains of firelight, drawing out inky shadows and throwing details into stark relief.

She noted each sign of violence systematically in her ordered mind.

Dried streaks and splatters of dark blood on the ground. She crouched to inspect them. One had a few strands of long, black, curling hair gummed into a small, ruddy puddle. She peered at them, lifting them on her fingertips. She brought the torch close, flaring in her pupils and scratching her cold face with heat. One hair seemed to pale at the end, almost red, but that might be the fire.

Tatters of a cloak strewn in one corner, and a dropped hunting knife, glimmering with the touch of flame. She picked up the knife. The blade was clean, the handle was bloodied. She ground her teeth and slid it into her belt.

Pale scars of claw marks on the walls. She raised her hand and matched her fingertips to them, the exact spread of a human woman's hand.

"I heard a woman's voice."

She swept the cave once more with the torch. It caught something twinkling in another smear of blood. She bent to it. It was a small, metal horseshoe looped on a red and white entwined cord tied in a neat bow. Her heart squeezed. Sorin's beau had given him this at the festival to mark the beginning of spring. He hadn't shut up about it for a full day, Mihail said. She closed the martisor softly in her hand and tucked it into an inside pocket of her coat. She set her jaw and straightened up, her shoulders squared.

She marched out of the cave into the fresh, clean smell of the crowding pine forest. Her heart sank at the renewed sight of Brutus lying slaughtered at the entrance. He was once a great thug of a horse, stronger than an ox and belligerent as a blizzard. Now he looked deflated, crooked. The firelight fell on the deep, yawning gash in his muscular throat, the spill of blood caking into his sullied mane and soaking into the ragged grass. His powerful legs were limp and tangled. His head was thrown back at an unnatural angle, his eyes wide and white and goggling, his block teeth protruding. Sandu looked grimply at the grotesque, miserable sight.

She thrust the torch into a heap of thawing snow and doused it, plunging herself into cold moonlight with a bitter hiss.

She crouched to Brutus and stroked his soft ear, holding her breath against the stench of days-old viscera. She huffed and unbuckled his saddle and reins, hefting them up and hooking them over a low, sturdy branch to dry. That was good leather. If she came back, she should take it home.