Percy's side of the bed is empty, again. The hour of the wolf has come and gone and the castle lies still and dark, it's moonlit corridors cold and empty. The stone tiles are cold beneath her bare feet, when she steps up to the corridor window. A million stars are blazing in the night sky above, below the watch fires on the walls are burning low. There is light in the kitchens, where the bakers have already begun their day, and in the top windows of the old keep.
Vex sighs quietly and pats down the halls to the old keep. Percy's office is on the top floor, above the old great hall, where two dozen clerks and engineers work on Whitestone's prosperity. The archives and offices are dark and still now, bureaus and writing desks and filing cabinets of black oak wood forming dark shapes in the twilight of her dark vision, but a glimmer of light is visible beneath Percy's door.
Vex slips in quietly and finds Percy bowed over the mechanical arithmetic engine with ledgers and letters piled high around him. His cloak hangs over the back of his heavy chair, his shirt sleeves are rolled up and bare feet are tapping a nervous rhythm on the heavy rugs on the floor.
"Still up, dear?"
Percy gives her a guilty smile and rubs his eyes beneath his glasses.
"The new sewerage system is behind schedule and if we want to head of the yearly bout of cholera, we need to be ready by the time the spring flood hits. We don't have enough copper sheeting and we are over budget as it is. I have turned Archibald loose on it, but I'm not entirely certain ..."
He isn't precisely lying to her but she knows his tells well enough by now to glean that he is also trying to hide something behind his wall of words. Something is bothering him.
No matter. She can wait him out until he is ready to talk and right now she has bigger fish to fry anyway.
She shushes him with a finger to his lips.
"Percival. None of that will be helped by you overworking yourself."
"I need to review the delivery schedule. The last snow storm has been playing merry hell with the road conditions and ..."
"And I'll help you in the morning. Right now you need a bath and some sleep."
She recognizes the obstinate set of his jaw. It's time to bring out the heavy ballistae.
"You will be able to server your people better, if you are not cross-eyed and drooling on your papers from sleep deprivation. Also, you promised Pike. Six hours of sleep a night. You promised."
She gently closes her hand around his throat and tilts his head back to stare him down, the specter of Pike's disapproval backing her up, until she sees the fight leave his eyes.
"Fine. If you are going to be a pest about it, we might as well get it done and over with." Percy huffs and starts extinguishing the gas lamps, lighting his office. She takes his hand and leads him to the private apartments of the royal family.
The enormous ovens in the kitchens and the castle smithy are stocked at all hours of the day and heat a large, copper water tank, providing hot water and heat to the baths, so the stone tiles surrounding the pool are warm and slick beneath her feet. She lights the gas lamps and collects soap, massage oil, shaving cream and razors, while Percy strips.
The warm golden glow of the lamp light paints his pale skin amber and Vex feels a rush of heat in her cheeks, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Blacksmithing and rapier and dagger play in the training yard have given him a thin layer of hard muscles but there are dark bags beneath his eyes and she can count his ribs and the knobs of his spine one by one.
His cock is heavy and pendulous between his legs and she feels the slow heat curling in her belly, the hitch in her breath, her nipples hard and hypersensitive against the silk of her dressing gown.
She is nude beneath the silk, apart from a fine gold chain around her ankle from Pike and an ivory bracelet wrapped around her biceps, which used to belong to her mother.
Years of living as a mercenary and hunter, longbow and quarterstaff and short-sword, have left her with wide shoulders and slim muscles in her arms, her belly flat and hard, her perfect bronze skin marred by a dozen faint marks of faded battle scars.
She moves with a dancer's easy grace, when she slides into the steaming water behind him, hooking her legs around his, spreading them and tilting his head back on her shoulder.
Her hand carefully massages his balls, feeling the prickly stubble on the baby smooth skin.
"Somebody needs a shave."
She can feel his muscles tense and sucks on his pulse point, making cooing noises. "Sussh, darling. No need to be nervous, I got you."
"Easy for you to say, you don't need to mess around with razors next to your delicate bits."
She brushes a hand over the mirror smooth swell of her prominent venus mons and dips two fingers into her liquid heat, rubbing her scent over his pink mouth.
"Advantages of being a half-elf. Don't pout, baby-boy. I'll take good care of you. Relax."
Her voice becomes throaty and deep, "When we are done, I'm going to please you with my mouth and throat. Would you like that, darling? I'm going to make you feel sooo good."
Using a soft red silk scarf she binds his hands above his head, to the leg of a stone bench at the edge of the pool; golden runes blaze on the red silk as the material tightens.
His body is stretched out before her, half submerged into water on the stone ledge, which forms the first step into the pool, beautiful and helpless. A surge of fierce tenderness and lust takes her breath away, as she brushes her hands over pale skin flushed pink by the water's heat.
"Relax, darling. I'm in charge now. It's no longer your responsibility or your fault."
Vex has never meet Percival the elder, knows only the empty sarcophagus down in the crypts, but she can't help but to hate and admire the man in equal measure. The unrelenting sense of responsibility, the uncompromising dedication to the well-being of his people above all else, which he installed in his son, drives Percy to lean against the world like a blade against the grindstone. It's a thorn buried in her flesh, but Percy wouldn't be the same man (brilliant and arrogant, proud and unforgiving against himself and others, cruel and compassionate, intensely, brutally pragmatic) without him.
Whitestone first. Everyone else, most certainly himself, second.
(She lives in dread of the day the interests of her new home and her found family will collide.)
Tying him up, bathing him and shaving his body hair might be an unsubtle way to make him let go of his burdens, to make him set down the cross of responsibility for tens of thousands of lives, if only for a few hours, but it works and, on the plus side, it also happens to make her sex slick and needy with want.
He shifts and twitches in his bonds when she works up a spice scented lather and teases the soft brush across his nipples until they are hard and pointy.
She drags her blunt fingernails over the sensitive skin of his triceps until he shivers under her caress before she lathers up his armpits. She works the razor with infinite patience and care; he still bears the scars that were inflicted on him in the Briarwood's torture chamber and she would rather cut her own throat then to add to them. She is acutely aware of the privilege, she has been afforded, the trust he is showing her by allowing her this power over him.
She works her way down his torso dusting kisses and light scratches all the way, while he shivers and squirms languidly in his bonds.
His penis is already swollen and wet at the tip when she gets there, rubbing her face along his hardening erection like a friendly cat. Her full lips close over the very head and suck, peeling back his foreskin from his glans.
"Vex ..."
