Page 22 of The Fae Queen's Captive
She settles the question by settling back against the tub, arching her long neck as she rests her head against the edge and closes her eyes. “You may continue,” she says, in a regal, used-to-being-obeyed manner. And so I do, soaping her neck and chest and breasts—high handfuls with tips that grow taut and stiff as I massage the cloth over them. The front of her is not translucent like her back, at least as far as I can see, but there is a faint flush on her chest from the warmth of the water. Maybe from something else.
I clean my way down her stomach, and then her thighs part under the water, as if in unconscious response.
“Have you ever been someone’s pet before?” she asks. Her eyes are still closed.
I’m glad of it, because I don’t want her to see whatever’s on my face right now.
Lust, shame. Longing.
“Not for lack of trying,” I say. I try to make it light, but it comes out the way it feels. Which is lonely.
“Humans don’t often want to be pets,” she remarks.
“I used to want nothing more,” I say, breathing out as I feel the tight divot of her navel beneath my fingers. “But no one wanted me. So I told myself to stop wanting it altogether because it hurt less that way. Because then it felt like a choice.”
I can’t believe I just admitted that out loud.Shit. The last thing I want is for the queen to know what a needy, lonely mess I am.
“I find it hard to believe no one wanted you,” the queen says.
I try to explain in a way that doesn’t make me sound too pathetic. “Do you remember when I told you that I always want more?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not—an easy thing. For a lover. Even a”—I’m not sure if they know these words in Faerie, but I go on anyway—“even a Dominant has limits on how much they want to give. Even the people who say they want a twenty-four-seven submissive find themselves sick of me. Because I want to be pushed further and longer. Because I want more and more and more. It’s greed. It’s too much. I’m too much.”
I break off, pissed at myself. I should not have said all that. I didn’t evenwantto say all that, not out loud, not to her, and I’m hot with embarrassment. I don’t want to be needy or grasping or pitiable. I’ve spent so much time trying to corral myself into a respectable archaeologist precisely so Iwouldn’tbe those things.
But the queen seems unfazed by it. There is no distaste in her expression, no pity. Her eyes are open but hooded, and she stares at me.
“There is not so much difference between those with the greed to take and the greed to make,” she murmurs. “Both are hard ways to be. Both are lonely.”
I duck my head, unable to take her gaze right now. Not that looking at where I’m washing her stomach is helping my composure. Between the drifting petals, I see the delta of her sex: a delicate triangle of curls, a glimpse of dark pink under the ripples of the water.
“Janneth,” says the queen. Her voice is quiet. “Take care of me as a pet should.”
There can be no question of what she means, and I’m surprised at the relief I feel at the command. Like maybe part of me was worried I was too much to have even as a bargain consort-pet. Even for an immortal fairy who smiles when her enemies bleed at her feet.
I drop the cloth under the water and then splay my hand directly on the warm skin of the queen’s stomach. I feel the muscles underneath, taut and still, and then she exhales as I push my hand lower.
Her curls are shockingly soft, and when I trail my fingers to where her body opens, I find her slick even in the water. Slick enough to make everything slippery. Slick enough that she must have been ready for this for quite some time.
She closes her eyes, a faint shiver going through her as I graze her clitoris, stiff and needy at the apex of her. “Yes,” she says. Only that.
“You…you should tell me what you like,” I say, sliding the pad of my finger over her swollen clit again.
The queen opens her eyes to blink at me, as if this is the most surprising thing I’ve done all night. Not march up to an orgy to prove a point, not come into her rooms at night unannounced. But the small, almost-pedestrian question about how she likes her cunt touched.
“It pleases me to have you as my pet,” she says finally and then closes her eyes. “And so whatever you do, I shall find pleasing, because you are mine.”
“Oh,” I say, without meaning to have made a noise at all. But somehow she said the one thing I’ve been needing to hear for years.
I am pleasing.I am hers.
Even abducted, scared—even with a bloodstained dress still crumpled up in my room—the words thrill me.
I lower my head again so she can’t see me swallow, fight back a giddy smile, blink back tears. I’m a fucking mess.
“And trust that I will not be shy about taking what I want regardless,” she says, her tone casual and unbothered, like she hasn’t just spoken aloud one of my most secret appetites, like she hasn’t just given me a promise I wish for all the world she will keep.
