"Miss Merris." His voice at my ear, low, with that particular amused patience that I have been finding insufferable for over a month.Clara's name. He's using Clara's name."You seem distressed."
Here is the trap inside the trap: if I fight him properly—if I sayI'm not Clara, I'm Claire Whitmore, intelligence operative, and I'll have you reported—the cover is gone and everything I came here for is gone with it. So I'm fighting him as Clara, which means I'm fighting him as a merchant's assistant in a lord's court, which means I have nothing. I have propriety and indignation and my body is not assisting either of them.
"This is—you can't —"
"I am the Lord of this court," he says, against my ear. Quiet. Absolute. "I can."
His hand pushes my skirts up.
The cold morning air hits the soaked fabric of my underthings and I hear him exhale—slow, deliberate, deep—and the sound of it alone does something to the pre-heat I cannot defend against. A wave of want so immediate it's almost pain. My clit pulses hard with it, desperate and throbbing, and I make a sound—small and humiliating and entirely involuntary, a whimper I didn't decide on—and he goes very still for just a moment before he moves again.
He unfastens his breeches.
Both cocks press against the backs of my bare thighs—the upper curved and thick, the lower straight and heavier beneath it, their heat shocking against my cold skin—and I try to pull forward, to get purchase, to get my feet under me and move, and his arm keeps me in place like I weigh nothing. He pushes forward.
Both cocks slide through the slick between my thighs in one stroke—the lower one thick and straight along my left thigh, the upper curved and dragging directly through my pussy, catching against my entrance without pushing in—and the sensation takes every thought I have and obliterates it completely.
Not inside. Between. I register this at the back of my mind where I can still form words:not inside, between, this is specific and deliberate—and then his hips roll forward and the vibration in the upper shaft kicks on, low and involuntary, spreading outward through my thighs and into my belly and directly through my clit, and the back of my mind stops forming words.
My hands stop trying to pry his arm away. They grip it instead. My knuckles go white.
He thrusts—long and deliberate, both cocks dragging through the soaked heat of me, the upper shaft pressing hard against my entrance on the return—and my knees buckle. His arm is all that keeps me upright. I'm shaking. I can feel myself shaking against him and I can't stop it, my whole body reduced to the sensation of both his cocks moving between my thighs and the slick running freely down them now and the vibration and the clit-aching need for more friction, more pressure, more—and I moan. A broken sound that echoes off the tree in front of me. I hate it. I cannot stop it.
"Please—"
"Please what?" His hips roll forward, slow, both cocks dragging the full length through my slick. His voice at my ear, amused and merciless. "Please more? Please stop?" A thrust,deliberate, the upper cock pressing hard against my entrance. "Pleasefuck you?"
I don't know. I genuinely don't know which one I'm asking for, and not knowing is possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to me professionally, which is a real list.
He thrusts once more—both cocks sliding through me slow and full, the vibration catching my clit on the drag—and then he lets me go.
I catch the tree with both hands, barely. My skirts fall. I'm breathing in ragged pulls, my thighs soaked and trembling, the ache between my legs worse now than before—close, stranded, my body furious at me for reasons I am entirely responsible for. Everything in me wants to turn around. To press myself against him and let the pre-heat have what it wants and stop making professional decisions in situations that have left professional decisions far behind.
I keep my hands on the tree.
He laughs.
Quiet and private, the laugh of a male who has just demonstrated something he already knew and found the demonstration satisfying in a way that is specifically designed to make me want to throw something at him. I turn around because I need to see his face and I immediately regret it—he's fastening his breeches, unhurried, and both shafts are still visibly hard against the cloth even now, and he looks at me with that patient, total, deeply pleased expression that I have wanted to wipe off his face since day three.
My body surges toward him. I hate it. I stand at the tree and don't move.
He steps toward me and puts his hand on the back of my neck.
Not rough. Firm. His thumb against my nape, fingers curling around the side of my throat, the cold of his palm against myskin. The pre-heat responds to it like a key in a lock—immediate, total, a wave of something I'm not naming rolling through me from my throat down to my thighs. I go still. Every piece of training I have saysmove, break this, this is a control hold—and my body simply doesn't. The clit-ache sharpens and stills all at once, waiting, and I stand there and let him hold my neck and hate how much I don't hate it.
"Conditions," he says. That tone. Still amused. "Tell me when you know what they are."
He walks.
His hand on my neck steers me beside him—not roughly, just present and certain, the grip of a male who has never once questioned whether the person beside him will come. We cross back through the mist toward the manor and I walk with my jaw tight and my thighs soaked and the cold of his hand on my nape doing something to my spine that I am absolutely not examining. Two of his court staff appear from a side path. Their eyes go to his hand on my neck, to the state of me, to the outline still visible against his breeches, and he doesn't break stride. Doesn't acknowledge them. Entirely unconcerned with whether anyone in his court can see exactly what this is.
I stare straight ahead.
I know what this is.
I know what I said anyway.
Conditions. I need them to be real before anything else is.