The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 03

"Those borders were drawn to lessen the inconvenience of clashes with your order." Vestalia said, her tone turning a little warning in a way that tickled Sparrow's abdomen. "Don't think I give them importance. If I wanted to take more territory, I would take it. I wouldn't need hostages."

Sparrow frowned. Hunting grounds? Order? Hostages? What were they talking about?

"Then you aren't keeping them hostage." The stranger sounded like her words were coming through her teeth. "You're keeping them for some sick sport, drawing out their pain for your twisted pleasure."

A cool, low chuckle. "I'll admit, that does sound like me."

"Enough, Devil!" The stranger snapped, her voice slamming against the door, kicking up Sparrow's heartbeat. "I've played your games for too long! I want my men! Name your price or so help me God!"

Sparrow swallowed a gasp, his heart sprang into the back of his mouth, his hands trembled. Was she going to attack? Did she still have her pistol?

"God doesn't lend aid under this roof," Vestalia replied with icy smoothness.

"No, just not to you!"

Sparrow heard the scrape of chairs. Another thump of his heart threw him forward. He grabbed the door handle and flung himself inside, yelping wordlessly to stop whatever was happening. He halted over the threshold, as the two women whipped to face him and batted him with two harsh, blazing stares, ruby and onyx filled with flame. The stranger stood alarmingly tall on the side of the coffee table nearest the door, her hat and coat missing, but her stature barely diminished by it. Vestalia also stood, haloed by the hearth. The blade sharpness of her gaze softened instantly, as she recognised him.

"Sparrow?" she ventured.

Sparrow eyed the look of leonine rage glimmering behind the fixed, stony stare of the stranger. He shifted his glance to Vestalia and spoke cautiously. "I heard raised voices, is everything alright?"

Vestalia gave him a gentle smile, the stranger glancing between them, wide-eyed. "Everything's fine, Carissime. But, I need to have this meeting in private."

Sparrow opened his mouth to plead with her, but the stranger cut him off with an incredulous bark. "See? You're holding a mortal boy! A direct violation of the agreement!"

Vestalia tossed her a tired look. "He's my guest. He's recovering here from becoming sick in the mountains."

"You must think I'm an idiot."

"You said it, not me."

"What the mistress says is true," Sparrow hurried to say, stepping forward. "She found me close to death three days ago, when I was lost from my village."

The stranger rounded again on Vestalia. "He's been herethree days?"

Vestalia's response was snipped with thinning patience. "He's here as long as he needs."

"As long as you have the right sort of appetites to keep him alive, you mean." The stranger put her fists on her hips. "Or half alive."

Sparrow could feel Vestalia's anger, as if he was a spindle it was spinning round. She pressed her lips together. "He is fully alive, thank you."

The stranger turned to Sparrow and regarded him with a creased upper lip. "I'd like to confirm that."

Sparrow shrank back. Her eyes were like flint-headed spears.

Vestalia swept around the coffee table and stood between Sparrow and her. "No," she said firmly. "It's one thing that you come here and stomp your great boots all over my business, but Sparrow is not part of anything between us."

The stranger bared her blunt teeth. "Every mortal is part of the things between us." She stepped sideways to put Sparrow back in her line of sight and jerked her head at him, fists still on hips, tendrils of hedgerow brown hair flicking on her brow. "Boy, come here."

Sparrow folded his arm over his middle defensively. He glanced uneasily at Vestalia.

Her mouth was still tight, but it spread burgundy, as she met his worried eyes. "It's alright, Passer."

Sparrow's tension slackened a little. He walked slowly towards them, until he was level with Vestalia, and what felt like the last of the safe distance from the stranger's glare.

The stranger raised her chin and looked down at him dispassionately. "Strip."

Sparrow's pulse skipped. His mouth went dry and his ears went hot. He looked again at Vestalia. Was this other woman allowed to see his body?

Vestalia looked at him earnestly, hands rested in front of her, one now gloved. "You don't have to," she murmured, just for him.

"Will it help if I do?" he asked softly, just for her.

The stranger scoffed. "Been working your charms, I see."

"You don't have to," Vestalia repeated gently. "But, it may allay some of our visitor's concerns."

Sparrow looked a moment longer into her eyes, drawing strength, making sure of her permission. He nodded. He kept his eyes downcast, as he removed his clothes. He could feel the two gazes on him, Vestalia's like velvet and the stranger's like iron filings. They almost made him feel still clothed, draped in the layers of their scrutiny. As the garments slid off him, one by one, the tea-scented air of the room stroked deeper into his skin, lifting the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, brushing between his thighs. The stranger's breathing was audible and steady, the sound also stroking him. His heart drummed, the blood thudded into his cock.

His cheeks flared hibiscus pink. He looked with alarm at Vestalia. Her eyes flicked down, then up, the slightest tug of amusement in the corner of her mouth. Her playful expression only encouraged his sudden, humiliating arousal. His cock tingled and thickened, raising its head.

The stranger glanced along the thread between Sparrow and Vestalia, then looked down. She made a sound of disgust under her breath, her nose wrinkling deridingly. "Good God. Slut."

The word pinched Sparrow and flooded him with sensation. His cock jumped. He swallowed a gasp and bit his tongue. He moved to conceal his erection, but another glance at Vestalia discouraged him. He flexed his hands and kept them determinedly at his sides, pushing himself into the scalding shower of gazes.

The stranger began to slowly circle him, the thud of her boots sending shivers down his spine. She regarded him with a stern, clinical expression, her eyes in every nook and cranny of his body. He felt disarranged into nothing but flesh and muscle and bone. He lost touch with his personhood. Between the cold inspection of the stranger and the warm watchfulness of his mistress, he transformed into one of the artefacts in the glass cases, pretty and strange and prized. He thought about the hothouses, about the life that thrives in a cage, gazed at and admired. He tried to clear his mind, to keep alert to whatever standards the stranger might be measuring. But she kept brushing too close, wafting him with her outdoors scent, tapping him to shift his weight, breathing on his neck. Every touch zinged into his cock and brought with it a new image. Vestalia observing him being observed, watching him be good and still, seeing him pass inspection. Vestalia gazing as he was touched, and taken. He already knew she liked to hear his sounds of desire. How much better could she enjoy them when he was in full view? What kind of show could he put on for her then? How he could writhe. How he could buck and wriggle. How he could flamboyantly fill his slut mouth and drool from it over his bare throat and chest. His cock twitched. His hands and his breath trembled.

A rap on his knee shocked him out of his wandering thoughts. He swallowed a puddle of saliva under his lolling tongue and snapped his mouth shut, standing straight.

"Roll it outwards," the stranger instructed blandly, gesturing at his knee.

Sparrow obeyed, pointing his toe and rotating his leg to open out his thigh, exposing his cock, hard and more than half mast. The stranger hunched her shoulders and peered at the paler skin on the inside of his thigh. She nodded and gestured for him to do the same on the other side. He obeyed. She peered again.

"See?" Vestalia cut in with a note of exasperation. "Clean as a whistle, not a mark on him."

Sparrow frowned.

The stranger broke her gaze, ripping off him like a wax seal. "Yes, but how long for?"

"Like I said, as long as he needs," Vestalia replied steadily.

"He shouldn't be here."

"It's his choice."

"Your kind has no respect for choice."

"And yours does?"

The stranger snarled. They had been speaking across Sparrow, increasing his confusingly pleasing sense of being an artefact. But now the stranger levelled her stare back on him, pins driving into a butterfly. Her hand shot out and snared his hair. She heaped it on top of his head and wrenched his face down, stinging his scalp. He let out a short whimper and felt Vestalia flinch. The stranger held him, like a cat holds a kitten by the scruff, and leaned so close to him that her breath singed his skin. She looked hard at the back and sides of his neck. She grunted and released him, his hair jostling around his shoulders. He swallowed. Her beefy fingers clamped his jaw and pushed his chin up to inspect his throat. His Adam's apple bounced under the vulnerable skin. His heart sped like a hare's. His cock thrummed.

"Lerae, be gentle," Vestalia tutted.

The stranger huffed and tugged his chin down. But she didn't release his jaw. He saw her face flicker, as something caught her eye. She tightened her grip, making him ache in several different ways. She pulled his face close to hers, lifting him tautly straight and onto the springy balls of his feet, narrowing his airways. She fixed her eyes on his, but it wasn't with the connection of eye contact. She looked into him in the way he had looked into the telescope. The firelight glimmered on the proud bridge of her once-broken nose. Her eyes went jet black and pierced his, drilling into him until his head hurt. His breath came short. He fluttered his fingers, as if to catch Vestalia's hand, but she was a pace too far away.

"What's that?" The stranger murmured in a distant voice.

Vestalia sighed tersely. "What's what?"

"There's something in his eyes," the stranger replied curiously. "He's... Is he human?"

Vestalia tossed her hair, the red tips flashing in the corner of Sparrow's eye. "Of course he is."

"Answer, Boy."

Sparrow's heart jumped and plugged his throat. His eyes went round and the whites gleamed pearly. He scrabbled for evasion. "Answer what?"

She gripped him harder and leaned even closer, their lips almost brushing. Her breath tasted of small beer and lingonberry jam. "What can I see in your eyes? Something... strange. Some... energy."

"He's a demon! He's possessed!"

Sparrow lost his breath completely, his pulse pounding behind his eyes, his vision consumed with the stranger's black pupils. "I... I don't know," he stammered.

"You're lying."

"I'm not!"

He started to struggle, flailing in her unbreakable grip, like a goat in the jaws of a mountain lion. He wanted to push her away, but he was terrified to touch her. Her brow furrowed and she glared. His blood careened through his veins. His nakedness stung. He screwed his eyes shut, so she couldn't look any longer.

"Lerae, that's enough!" Vestalia's voice chopped through the air, followed by the swish of her dress. She darted her hand forward and grasped the stranger's wrist and wrenched it away, leaving Sparrow's jaw red.

The stranger snapped her hard stare to her. She frowned deeper. "You can't tell either. You don't know what it is about him, but you know something's there." She tilted her head. "Is that why you're keeping him unspoiled?"

Vestalia painted over the suspicion with a mocking smirk. "Hardly unspoiled, Lerae. Look at him, even my flesh has weaknesses."

The stranger gruffed and tried to pull free. Vestalia closed her grasp tighter. The stranger winced. Vestalia lowered her voice dangerously, the sound of it coursing through Sparrow and pouring balm over his raw nerves. "Sparrow is not what you came for. You've seen he is unharmed, you should be satisfied."

"I am far from satisfied," the stranger growled.

Vestalia arched her eyebrow. "Then get your own pretty boy, it'll do wonders for you. But this one'smine."

Sparrow rushed with pleasure. He shivered deliciously, fright and elation colliding in his core.

The stranger and Vestalia glared into each other's eyes, the silence of their battle ringing louder than the shattering of swords on shields. Sparrow flicked his glance frantically between them, half afraid they would look at him again, half afraid they wouldn't. He was thrilled and haunted by the intensity of their gaze.

Vestalia spoke without moving her eyes. "Sparrow, might you give us some time to finish our conversation?"

The order chimed in the pit of Sparrow's stomach. He warred with it, but as Vestalia's fingers twisted tighter around the stranger's wrist, a new chill rose in him. He surrendered. He hastily pulled his clothes back on, fumbling with them, his cheeks flushing again.

He gave his mistress one final, longing, wary look.

He turned on his heel and fled.

*

Enfolded once more in the rainbow walls of the library, Sparrow dragged an armchair to the table with the telescope, settled deep into the cushions, and drew his knees up to his chest. His body still echoed with arousal, anticipation, shame, fear, and parched curiosity. He tried to distract himself from the stranger's cutting questions and searching eyes, but the thwarted ache in his cock moored his mind in the drawing room. He chewed over what had just happened in tangled spaghetti strings. Who was that woman? Vestalia seemed to know her. Were they enemies? She had the air of a soldier, was Vestalia involved in some conflict? In a house like this, Vestalia must be a noble woman, perhaps it was court business. But what was that about hostages? About the stranger's men? He'd walked this manor for three days and not heard another voice, surely he'd know if someone was being held here. And besides, his mistress wouldn't do that. She'd taken such good care of him, been so attentive to his wellbeing, given him so much freedom in her home. She wasn't the sort of person who would keep prisoners.

Was she?

No. No, there must have been a misunderstanding. Court matters were very complicated, it made sense that someone could be wrongly accused. His mind filled with those sharp, onyx eyes again. What had the stranger been looking for on him? Vestalia had said he was unmarked. What kind of mark? He thought of their gazes on his body. Only half aware he was doing so, he sneaked his hand to the mound in his britches and caressed it. It only sharpened the memories. When she'd looked into his eyes, had she seen... God, he hoped not.

He shook out his hand and clenched his abdomen against the nagging need in his cock. He unravelled his long legs and slid to the edge of the chair to look at the star chart. He traced his fingertips over the symbol Vestalia had shown him.

Pisces. All heart.

He peered down at the symbol and saw it was traced over a pearly white series of pinpricks showing the shape of the constellation, two loops of stars with long, conjoined tails. He pressed his lips together and frowned in concentration, memorising the shape. He looked up out of the window to the diamond spray cloaking the mountains. His eyes travelled the heavens, the mess of light shifting like a kaleidoscope into a series of distinct, interlocking patterns, until he spotted it. Pisces. Two celestial fish rushing through the sky, as if carried by a river current. He touched the telescope tentatively, and swivelled it to point at the constellation. He dipped forward and peeked through it. The fish burst bright and sparkled, leaping in the indigo water.

"A fish swims in the river. The river is all it knows. The river is its world. Can you imagine if you told a fish that there's a whole other world on land? One it can never be a part of, but swims through everyday? One it can only visit by being caught and killed and eaten, or else kept in a glass prison?"

Sparrow gazed for a long time, swimming with Pisces in a stream of cold stars.

The squeak of iron and the thud of hooves shook him from his waking dream. He scurried from the chair to the window and pressed his palms to the glass. The stranger was again encased in her leather hat and coat, face concealed. Her black steed stamped on the grass restlessly just outside of the gate, which Cyrus was pushing closed and barring with a resolute clang. They regarded each other a moment, but Sparrow was too high up to tell if they were speaking. Then she pulled on the reins and the horse whinnied and tossed its tail. She coursed into a canter over the tumbling terrain and out of sight.

A hard knot in Sparrow's gut untied, but seeing her imposing figure again, even at a distance, kicked his heart faster, in time with the fading hooves.

The library door clunked. Sparrow spun around. Vestalia was already half way between the door and him, and closing in fast. Her gown and black curls flared and rippled with the rush of her gait. Her usual, opulent pout had been replaced with a bud-hard tightness to her lips. Her eyes had crystallised. Her fists were clenched, one hand still gloved.

Sparrow's heart leaped. The anger in her charged the air, buzzing on the ends of the hairs on his arms, but she was unharmed and it consoled him deeply. "Mistress!" he called out in relief. "Are you alright? What happened? Who was that woman? Is something wrong? Is your hand alright? Is there something you have to do? Is there something you need me to-"

She whisked to his body, seized his lapels, and slammed him against the window in a kiss that caught him in a whirlwind. His mind was ripped from his body and hurtled in the churn of her tongue and the possessive ferocity of her grasp. He sighed weakly into her mouth and pawed at her hips, his fingers skidding clumsily on silk. She released his mouth, leaving his lips and jaw prickling, but kept him pressed to the glass, the cold seeping through his waistcoat back.

"Mistress," he panted, curiosity and worry still glimmering in the aftermath. "Please, tell..."

"Strip," she interrupted.

He swallowed, the back of his neck heating. "What?"

Her fingers curled on his chest, the dagger-like nails poking through his clothes. She lined her body to his, his blood rushing to the surface. She ran her tongue along his lower lip. "From now on, only I get to tell you to strip, only I get to force your nakedness. I'm taking you back." She nipped his lip. "Do it."

Her irresistible murmur unleashed his ache, running rampant around his body and gobbling up all his questions and hesitations. He nodded, lips parted and chest fluttering with quickened breath. She inched back to give him room, and watched him - yet more wonderful watching - as he shed his clothes.

The cold of the pane of glass at his back stroked over him, stiffening his nipples and pricking his skin tortuously tender. She cocked her head and slowly looked him up and down, taking in every detail, showing him that she could make him stand there naked and hard for as long as she wished. Sparrow hunched his shoulders a little, his torso going concave, feeling as if a hot torch was being hovered around his body. He became unsettlingly aware of his cock, protruding from his narrow frame and jabbing for attention, totally ruining his effort to appear obedient and calm.

His fingers wormed towards her, desperate for the feel of her to quell the noise under his skin. "Mistress..."

She reached behind her and gave the lacing of her dress a sharp tug. It loosened and dropped from her body. Sparrow's voice turned to steam. He stared, his heart galloping, his cock springing up thick.

Her hair cascaded over the bare swell of her breasts, the red tips kissing her dark nipples. Standing dropped her weight to the base of her curves, the hang of her belly and roundness of her hips, combined with her ethereal elegance, reminiscent of a pendulum. A black harness caged her pelvis, wrapped in scarlet lace like capillaries. Extending from it, levelled like the stranger's pistol, was a rounded column of black quartz, carved into the smooth shape of an erect cock. It was large, it looked unrelenting, so dark it appeared as a severance in reality, letting him stare into void. She tilted her hips. Candlelight licked it and winked on the dense, glassy surface and a slick of clear oil coating it. It was completely unblemished, a pure rod of polished stone pointing towards him, ready to impale. It transformed Vestalia, while keeping her exactly as he knew. She took everything he'd ever called masculinity and warped it, made it hers, imbued it with a new, thrilling, almost supernatural power.