Page 52 of With Wing And Claw

Stars exploded behind her eyelids as finally,finallythat taunting caress found the heart of her pleasure, relief and torment at once. There was no cautious exploration, no fumbling to learn the shape of her body. Naxi’s first strike was a ruthlessly perfect one, as if she, too, had spent that same century committing every detail to memory – a single slide of finger against flesh, igniting a thousand brand new hungers.

Thysandra cried out.

Another bruising kiss smothered the sound of her pleasure.

A second fingertip joined the first, slipped beneath the drenched linen of her underwear. She closed her eyes and allowed her knees to buckle at last, surrendering her body to the vines that bound her; she barely felt the bonds anymore, biting into skin and muscle. Not as Naxi plunged two digits inside her at once. Not as those fingers began tomove, a maddening rhythm both slow and relentless – reducing her to a gasping, writhing mess, pulling her closer and closer to the edge.

‘Look at you,’ Naxi murmured, her breath a heated whisper. The words barely even registered through the storm of sensations. ‘So pretty. So needy. Do you want more, Sashka?’

‘Please,’ she whimpered, trying in vain to tilt her hips towards that breathtaking friction. The last of her pride had become a distant memory. ‘I’ll do anything –anything—’

‘Oh, there’s no need for that.’ Sharp teeth nipped her bottom lip, making her gasp again. ‘I’ll happily fuck you for free every day of the week. Consider it my humble tribute to the crown, if you will.’

The crown.

Oh, gods, thecrown.

For half a moment, she jolted out of her pleasure-drunk haze … and then Naxi pressed a third finger into her without warning, and every thought of dignity and court intrigue shattered like glass against rocks. She bent away from the wall, wings flaring helplessly against the merciless vines. Deeper and deeper they filled her, those clever nymph fingers, pistoning back and forth, stretching her open wide …

Andthen theycurled.

In the same moment, Naxi’s thumb slid beneath her linens, swirling over the little bud between her lips – and Thysandra broke.

Fractured.

A thousand little pieces, each of them another shard of heartbreak, fright, bitterness … and for a single blissful moment she was no longer any of them, the little girl hiding beneath her blankets, the false queen glancing over her shoulder at every step. For a single instant, she was nothing but this raw, bare, empty vessel. No shields left to hide behind. No secrets left to keep. Just pleasure pulsing through her veins and vines lowering her gently to the floor as she trembled and shuddered, soft hands running tenderly through her tangled hair …

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Naxi muttered, and for once, Thysandra could do nothing but lean stupidly, hopefully, into that perfectly convincing note of tenderness. ‘You needed that, didn’t you?’

She had.

She’d needed it for decades.

The feeling stealing over her was a strange one, so rare its name only dawned on her after what felt like minutes – quiet, bonelesspeace. As if the court had ceased to exist entirely and taken all its murders and schemers with it. Which it hadn’t – sheknewit hadn’t – and yet sitting here on the floor of her overgrown living room, her muscles unclenched, her thighs slick with pleasure … she had trouble remembering why it had ever been such a problem.

‘There,’ Naxi murmured, disentangling the last vines from her slumping wings. ‘Now let’s get you something to eat, alright?’

That shook her awake with almost dizzying abruptness. ‘Don’t you want—'

‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, Sashka.’ There was nothing but wicked knowing in that shark’s grin. ‘I’m not going to let you think I’m doing this for my own pleasure. By the time you’re begging for it, there’ll be plenty of opportunities for me to sit on your face.’

Thysandra managed to scrape a hoarse scoff from the bottom of her heart. ‘Assuming no one kills me in the meantime.’

An obligatory jab, lacking the bite of true fear. Judging by Naxi’s blithe shrug, she’d noticed it, too. ‘No one’s going to kill you, silly.’

For once, it was strangely easy to believe it.

‘Here’s how we’ll keep you alive,’ Naxi merrily continued as she straightened and made for the kitchen corner, flitting through the room like a little sunbeam in the flesh. Around her, plants slid away from the windows, letting the light back in. ‘You’re going to continue your preparations for treaties and legal changes – we just won’t tell anyone about it yet. We’re going to figure out what happened to your father, too. And in the meantime, you’re going to blather about the grandness of the court whenever you need to show your face in public, alright? No one needs to know you’re not planning to start another war next week.’

Thysandra gave a feeble laugh. ‘You make it sound easy.’

‘Perhaps it is?’ Another grin, dazzling as spring mornings. ‘Oh, and one more thing, Sashka. You’re going to sleep in your own bed again.’

She stiffened.

‘No, we won’t tell anyone,’ Naxi added, pulling a face as she swatted the unspoken objection aside. ‘I promise I’ll complain about my sore spine and those horrible couch cushions to Nicanor whenever he shows his face. But you need your night’s rest, and what’s the worst that could happen? You get to come screaming a few more times?’

It didn’t matter how hard Thysandra tried to keep her face straight; her lips insisted on trembling all the same. ‘Some evil demon might sit on my face.’