Pleasure and Purpose

  "Cillian," Honesty murmured, and watched how his gaze flared at the sound of his name on her tongue. She said no more, gave him no words to resist. Only the sight of her. Cillian watched her, and at last his hand went to his cock to squeeze just behind the head. His lips thinned, but his throat worked to hold back the moan she heard anyway. It urged one in response from her, and Honesty made no pretense at holding it back.

  "I might believe you want me," he said.

  "Come and let me show you that I do."

  It was a courtship as coy and stifled as any she'd ever witnessed, made ridiculous by the fact they were both naked. Yet if either of them felt the fool, Honesty couldn't tell it. They might have been sitting in a garden full of roses, her invitation made from behind a fan and his love-gift to her a posy, not his prick.

  And at last he moved toward her, step by step, until the bed dipped under his weight. Behind the blaze of lust, Honesty glimpsed a slew of other emotions, fleeting, in his eyes. Cillian licked his mouth again and ran a hand along her calf. He stopped at her knee, fingers curled lightly over her skin.

  He kissed it.

  She twitched at the soft, unexpected press of his lips to flesh unused to caresses. His name slipped out of her unbidden this time. Cillian nuzzled the fine hairs on her thigh and moved higher as Honesty's legs opened wider to accept him.

  On hands and knees he crouched between her legs, his mouth a scant breath from touching her. She tensed, waiting for him to kiss her again. Or to lick her. Even to touch her with more than the gust of air seeping from his lips.

  Her last lover had been a worker from the fields outside the Motherhouse. She'd seen him from her window, bare-backed and sweating in the last summer sunshine as he pulled the weeds from a crop of joba melons. He'd worn his hair too short for fashion, and it had stuck up crazily when he swept dirty hands through it. She'd gone down to watch him work, and he'd handed her a melon fresh off the vine, tart enough to pucker her mouth. He'd taken her hand and gone behind the toolshed where they'd lain on a bed of seed sacks. He'd been the last man to put his mouth on her cunt, and he'd tongued her only long enough to make her wet enough to fuck.

  Cillian took his time. His hands slid beneath her bottom to hold her to his mouth when at last he touched his lips to her clit. She cried out at the flicker of his tongue. He smoothed the flat of it over her, and her hips bucked until he held her still.

  "Please," she said.

  He looked up at her, even the lust in his eyes dimmed behind a veil of inscrutability. Slowly, deliberately, he slid his tongue over her heated flesh and down to press inside. Then again, the same motion in reverse, while Honesty arched and writhed as best she could against the bonds of his grip.

  Time slowed for her beneath his touch, and Honesty gave herself up to it, utterly. Pleasure washed over her in slow, rolling waves. She found the softness of his hair with her fingers and twined them deep in the silken depths as her climax burst through her. Trembling, she fell back onto the pillows with a low cry. It took her some moments to realize he'd moved away from her, but when she opened her eyes to find him, Cillian was staring at her. He didn't move away from her when she sat and drew him close for a kiss. She was the one who hesitated this time, and he the one who captured her mouth. The taste of her pleasure on his tongue sent another surge of desire through her. Still kissing him, Honesty lay back again and Cillian followed. He braced himself to keep from putting all his weight down, but Honesty would have none of that. One orgasm was not enough to sate her. She needed more, and one from him, as well. Somewhere along the way she'd lost sight of her reasons for this, whether her selfish heart thought only of itself or if woman she began and ended. All she knew was that his mouth was too sweet to deny, and the heat of his prick on her belly parted her legs. She wanted him on top of her, inside her, no matter if it was for her comfort or for his.

  "Make love to me," she murmured into his ear, and Cillian shuddered against her neck. His cock nudged her gate and she opened for him. She wrapped her legs around his waist to draw him closer. Her fingernails raked his back when he thrust deep with a groan. When he nipped at her neck, she cried out and lifted her hips.

  Cillian was as skilled with lovemaking as he'd been with cunnilingus. In moments she surged to the edge again. Honesty cried out her ecstasy and drove him harder with her heels and fingernails. Her body convulsed around him and Cillian thrust again, voicing his ecstasy in a hoarse shout.

  They clung to each other for the span of a heartbeat or two, a few breaths, and then he rolled off her. His hair spilled out over her shoulder, his head on the same pillow. Still languid in the aftermath, Honesty turned on her side to face him and stroked a hand over it.

  "You have such lovely hair."

  He laughed, a sound as unexpected as the kiss to her knee had been. He didn't look at her, but he laughed. Then he covered his eyes with a hand and his laugh faded into something more like a sob.

  Words were not always the best choice. Honesty reached to draw the blankets over both of them, for although touching him earlier had been like caressing flames, now they were both chilled. Yawning, she tucked herself up beside him and waited for him to push her away and get out of bed. Moment by moment, he softened beneath her until the hushed sound of his breathing told her he slept.

  It took her a very long time to join him.

  Chapter 12

  "This fountain is lovely." Honesty pointed with the hand not nestled in Cillian's. She'd taken his hand as they walked and noted how he'd tensed at the touch before relaxing.

  "What is the statuary representing?"

  "I don't know. I never asked."

  Though he wasn't much taller, his stride was longer. He'd shortened it to accommodate her. In the sunshine, his hair shone like flames. She'd tied it down his back with a dark green ribbon interwoven in the braid, but the sedate hairstyle couldn't hide its beauty. She wanted to touch his hair, and so she did.

  Cillian shot her a glance at the touch. "I could find out for you.

  "It's not important." She didn't really care. Once she was gone she'd never come back here to marvel at the carved stone angels with water shooting from their mouths. "Let's go into the hedge maze."

  Cillian grimaced. "That place? Why?"

  How much had changed since she'd taken him to bed, she mused with a small smile and a tug of his hand. He was still not the smoothest tempered of men, but seemed less inclined to instant rage or contempt. If modesty had been one of the five principles she'd surely have failed at maintaining it, because Honesty took no small amount of pride in how he'd changed in just the past few days because of her.

  For a moment, unease twitched in her gut. She'd made a marked difference in him without even trying. She could ease him into great changes, should she make an effort. . . but no. It didn't matter that his hands and mouth brought her such fierce pleasure. She ought to have told him the truth. She was no longer of a heart sufficient to serve. She might bring him some small comfort, but solace would be out of reach if he relied upon her to lead him to it. She ought to have left already, except she still hadn't gathered the courage to make that choice.

  "Because it would be most merry to see how long it takes us to find the center, and because I fancy finding out how private such a place might be." Forcing away her dark thoughts, she grinned at him, then dropped a slow wink.

  Cillian, for all his swaggering and his private room full of naked women, blushed. The color rose high on his cheeks and sent heat swirling throughout her body at the sight. This man . . . oh, this man was not at all what she'd expected.

  "I haven't been to the center," Cillian said, but followed. Like lovers, they strolled through the gate of woven vines laced with bits of ribbon and beads. Honesty paused to set one strand to swinging. "What are these?" He laughed. "They're called braggart's laces."

  Honesty stroked along another length of satin with a glass bead dangling from the end.

  "And what do they do?"

  "Th
ey're left by those who've visited the maze. If a couple has been . . . intimate . . . whilst inside, the gentleman begs a bit of lace or ribbon and a bead from the lady, and they string it there."

  "How unfortunate I don't have any extra beads with me, then." She watched him, curious at how he reacted to her gentle teasing, and when he hesitated under the gate, she stopped to tip her face to his. "At home, we had a gate much like this leading into my father's orchards. But nobody hung beads and ribbon. We called it the kissing gate, though. Because every time you passed beneath, you were supposed to kiss your fingertips and press them to the vines. For luck. And if you happened beneath the gate at the same time as another ..."

  "You kissed them?" Cillian laughed.

  Honesty tipped her face farther, lips pursed. He didn't bend to kiss her. He looked around as though checking to see if they would be seen, and Honesty tucked this observation away the way she'd done with everything else over the past few days. He was a puzzle she couldn't stop herself from wishing to solve.

  "You kissed them," she said. "For luck."

  "Let it never be said I've too much luck to throw away the chance for more." Cillian angled his mouth above hers.

  The kiss was brief and almost chaste, but it was enough to satisfy her for the moment. She tugged his hand and drew him into the maze, which was well plotted, with dead ends aplenty and many alcoves perfectly suited for intimacies. She took advantage of the ones they discovered, finding that each time she kissed him or urged him to kiss her, the prince softened a bit more until by the time they discovered the maze's center, they both were breathing fast and grinning. She moved to the low stone bench set in front of a small ornamental pond.

  Cillian didn't follow at first, even when Honesty leaned back to give him room beside her. He swiped a hand across the back of his mouth and then over his hair, which had begun to come loose from the braid she'd tied in it earlier. He went to the pond and knelt to peer into the water.

  "It's lovely here," he said.

  "It is. You've never been?" Honesty watched as Cillian dipped his fingertips in the water and then wiped them without concern on his trouser leg. She'd not have imagined him to ever be so careless with his clothes.

  He shook his head. "No. This is a place for lovers."

  "But you've had—" His expression stilled her tongue. "You've had lovers, Cillian." He shrugged and looked away. "No. Not the sort one brings to a garden maze."

  "I find that difficult to believe."

  He shrugged again. "Do you, truly? When you know all about me? She'd yet to read the documents about him, her reluctance ridiculous now as well as shameful. She couldn't tell him she hadn't thought him worth the effort at first. "You've brought me here, now."

  He laughed and shook his head. "I believe you've brought me, Honesty. Not the other way 'round."

  "Very well. So I've brought you here to the center of this maze. Shall you have your wicked way with me?" She gestured again for him to sit beside her, and this time, he did. She stroked a tendril of hair from his cheek. "Cillian. I have no ribbons or beads, but I think I'd like to give you something to brag upon."

  "Is that what I need? To make love to you on the grass in front of that pond?" He turned his head to kiss the hand stroking his hair. "How do you know me, Honesty, that you might decide what my soul needs, truly?"

  He wasn't the first to ask her, and she answered him as she did everyone else. "Not everything I do is based on some grand cosmic scheme."

  He kissed her hand again and captured it between his. "I thought everything you did was designed to send me toward solace. I thought you did nothing else but work toward that goal. So you could leave."

  "I . . ." Words failed her, for to speak anything but agreement would be a lie.

  "I know it's the truth. I was a fool to believe there could be anything different about a Handmaiden than any other woman. I was . . . well, I was a madman." Cillian pressed the flat of her hand to his cheek. "But I thank you for staying. I do feel more at peace with you at my side."

  A blithe reply rose to her lips and hovered there without leaping free. The first time she'd seen him he'd been flogging a woman tied to an ironwood cross with a group of naked women waiting for his attentions, and she'd assumed he'd be easy to put aside. Honesty swallowed guilt, the taste bitter on her tongue. She'd set out to fail him, and she'd nearly managed.

  She couldn't do it.

  Honesty swallowed the pretty speech that would do everything to make him happy and yet would still be false. "I wanted to fail you."

  He didn't even give her a curious look. "Of course you did. You arrived to find me in my playroom . . . and my temper ... I am impossible, as I've been so often told. I'm more than you should have been given. I understand."

  Honesty shook her head. "No, Cillian. You don't understand.

  My desire to leave had nothing to do with you. I didn't even know you. She shifted closer, and he put their hands, fingers tangled, into his lap. When he didn't answer, Honesty took a deep breath and gave him the truth. "I've long felt I was no longer suited to this vocation. Each time I helped a patron toward solace I was left a bit emptier. My last patron . . . she was very ill. I thought it would be a few weeks before she passed into the Land Above, yet she lingered for months. Nothing I did could possibly bring her any comfort, other than the most basic of physical, and I'm a Handmaiden, not a medicus. I could do nothing for her, but leaving meant being assigned a new patron. One who'd demand rather more of me than I'd grown accustomed to providing."

  "A patron such as I."

  "Yes. Just like you." She leaned to kiss his mouth, but tenderly. "One who truly needed me."

  Cillian said nothing.

  Honesty sat back but didn't let go of his hands. "I knew I couldn't possibly provide you with what you needed any more than I could have done it for my last patron. Only unlike her, the failure to serve would have come from inside me, not circumstances I couldn't control. And for the first time since joining the Order, I didn't care. I plead your mercy. I shouldn't have taken this assignment."

  "But you did. And you stayed."

  She ducked her head and chuckled. "I haven't had a bed partner in a long time. I . . . was weak."

  Cillian made a soft noise. "I thought they would send me someone who would change everything."

  Honesty didn't let go of his hands, a decision rising from inside her. "You've not found it to be so. I plead your mercy. There's still time."

  Cillian's laugh had little humor to it. "One always imagines it would be so, yes?"

  "I would make it so." She watched him while he pulled his hands gently from hers and got off the bench to stare again at the pond.

  "I've never courted a woman, Honesty. Nor a man, for that matter. I have never pinned a posy on anyone during the Feast of Sinder, and I haven't ever walked hand-in-hand or whispered love poetry. I had ever thought when I was a lad there would be time for me to do such things, that I would, one day, wed and have children and take the throne from my father."

  "And why should you not expect that to happen now?" Curious, she watched him pace, his fine boots scuffing the neatly trimmed grass.

  "With whom? With you?"

  Honesty watched him in silence for a few minutes before replying. "Perhaps not from me. But after me. If I do the work I was sent to do."

  He laughed, low. "I shouldn't have sent for you. I should send you away, but I find myself unable."

  Her heart stuttered at his words. She reached for his hand. "Then I shall find myself unable to go."

  Cillian had long known he was a coward. If he were not, he'd have put Lord Devain in his place some time ago. Instead he'd watched the son-of-a-bastard seek to replace him in the king's affections. It hadn't been difficult. King Allwyn had ever looked at his son and seen his dead wife's face, and while any amount of prancing ponies and sweets had convinced the king he loved his boy, it had never done much to convince Cillian. Now he watched Devain whisper into the king's ear. Somet
hing snide, by the way Gillian's father chortled and gestured for another platter of pastries to be brought from the long buffet table set for the court to enjoy.

  He had his own plate of food brought to him by Honesty, who'd filled it with all his favorites without asking what he liked. He didn't know if she'd guessed or if she'd remembered a list from something he'd filled out and sent to the Order, but it didn't matter. She'd brought it to him without him having to ask.

  Now she sat with a book in the chair behind him. Not at his side, for that would be inappropriate, but nor was she hidden away. Nobody had commented when they arrived, though her presence on his arm had earned a few curious looks. He hadn't presented her to his father. She wasn't his betrothed.

  But she was special, he thought, watching her flip through the pages of a text he'd found so deadly dull he'd never read past the first few chapters. She glanced up and saw him looking and gave him a smile he returned. She did know what he needed. Only a few days had passed since the conversation in the garden maze, but everything had changed for the better since then. He wasn't foolish enough to believe sex had caused the difference, but what it was, exactly, Cillian didn't know. She'd warmed to him, somehow, and he'd . . . well. . .

  He trusted her.

  The Order had sent her because she was best suited to him. She would do her best for him, and not only because it was her purpose. He believed it would be her pleasure, too. She was no Stillness, not what his dear Edward had found, but then he wasn't Edward and would never be.

  He'd asked her to come with him today because he found with Honesty at his side, nothing seemed to urge him into a temper the way most everything did without her. Though she hadn't taken over his every whim—the tea had gone unboiled and the tidying had been left to the maid she'd reinstated, but more often than not it was the simple, quiet touch of her hand or her smile that led him toward peace when he felt himself leaning toward rage. She walked with him in the gardens and listened to him talk as though every word he said made utter sense, and she urged him to laughter with her gentle jests. She slept beside him and rose beside him, and the day only truly began at the moment he first saw her smile.