Instructing the Novice Read online

  “Yes, at once, my Lady.” The guard bowed and motioned to two more guards behind him. “Move the bench and bring in a chair—now,” he ordered.

  They saluted hastily and while one of them moved the strange wooden bench out of the way, another brought what appeared to be the frame of a large rocking chair. But only the frame, Lizabeth noticed, frowning. There was no back and no seat—how the hell was she supposed to sit in that?

  “Here you are Mistress,” the first guard said to her respectfully. “If your Novice will just come forward, we can get him fitted so you can have your meal.”

  “What does my Novice have to do with it?” Lizabeth protested but another guard was already leading Lone to the rocking chair frame.

  “Have you ever been in a service chair before?” he asked Lone, who shook his head. “Well, it’s not too difficult and it’ll help you please your lady all night—provided you can hold out that long,” the guard told him. “You just get settled right in here…”

  He sat Lone down in the frame—which was padded at least—and positioned a small, molded seat under him which attached to both sides of the chair frame and had a strange wheel and cog kind of mechanism attached to the bottom of it. Before Lizabeth could protest, he had strapped Lone in place.

  The big Kindred was a little large for the chair, but he fit well enough that she could see the point—Lone himself was the seat and back of the chair. He was placed at such an angle that she would be sitting directly on his lap when she sat on the chair.

  The guard stood back to admire his handiwork.

  “Looks good,” he said, nodding. “Try rocking some,” he told Lone.

  Lone shifted and the mechanism beneath the small molded seat he was sitting on made a whirring sound. When the chair rocked, his pelvis also moved, his mesh-covered shaft thrusting up erotically and then back down again when the chair moved back to its starting position.

  Oh my God, Lizabeth thought blankly. That’s not a rocking chair—it’s a fucking chair! What the hell?

  “There you go, Mistress,” the first guard said, nodding. “You can have a seat and get started with dinner.”

  “Um…thank you,” Lizabeth muttered. She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she really sit on Lone’s lap in such a suggestive position? Both of them only had thin mesh covering their private areas. Even if she tried to be careful, there was bound to be some intimate rubbing going on.

  As she stood there, indecisive, the Mistress Superior’s voice rang out.

  “Well, Mistress Paige? Is there a problem?”

  Lizabeth’s head jerked up and she saw that Mistress Verlandah was watching her narrowly from across the circle, where she sat on a very throne-like queening bench. Karx was beneath her, his bushy beard thrust up as he lapped her pussy vigorously. She was holding a long-handled instrument with short leather fronds attached to the end and every once in a while she leaned back and swatted Karx’s mesh-covered manhood with it. Whether this was meant as a punishment or a reward, Lizabeth couldn't tell.

  “I…no, nothing, Mistress Superior,” she said quickly. “I just…have not used this kind of, uh, seat before.”

  “Well if you prefer to try the rocker rather than the queening bench, that’s your affair.” Mistress Verlandah sniffed. “Personally, I prefer being licked during dinner. I find getting fucked a bit too distracting when one is eating Yandaloo hotpot. But maybe you’re better at multitasking than the rest of us.” She laughed and some of the other Mistresses tittered as well.

  “I…um…” Lizabeth told her brain to think of a proper reply and came up blank. She had been in many courtroom situations where the case was won or lost on the quickness of her wits and the sharpness of her arguments and she rarely lost. But now, in this bizarre situation, she found she had nothing to say for herself. It was maddening.

  “I can only assume that your choice of the rocker over the queening bench means that your Novice isn’t much good with his tongue,” Mistress Verlandah remarked disapprovingly.

  “That’s not true,” Lizabeth said, finding her voice at last. “Lone is…is excellent with his tongue.” Abruptly she remembered the soft, reverent way he had kissed her during the oath-taking ceremony—kissing her pussy as he would have kissed her mouth. The way he had pressed forward to taste her…the gentle brush of his tongue against her throbbing clit…

  God, she had to stop thinking like this! The memory made her pussy ache, the needing inside her growing exponentially.

  “We’ll see about that later,” the Mistress Superior, said frowning. “But since you’ve chosen his cock over his tongue, you’d better get seated. It’s very distracting for the rest of us to have someone standing around in the middle of the dining circle while we’re trying to enjoy our meal.” She frowned at Lizabeth. “Unless there’s some reason why you don’t want to enjoy intimate contact with your Novice while you eat?”

  “Um, no. No, of course not,” Lizabeth said quickly. “I just…I’m about to get seated.”

  Feeling trapped, she looked back at Lone who shrugged his shoulders. He was strapped into the chair with broad leather bands around his calves and thighs and she couldn’t immediately see how to get them unfastened. If she could have, she would have released him and made some kind of excuse about being too tired and needing to rest.

  But Mistress Verlandah was still watching her with narrowed eyes, clearly wondering what was going on and why Lizabeth was hesitating. She remembered what a big deal both the Mistress Superior and Mistress Anarrah had made about she and Lone being a “love match” and how they had intimated that Mistresses and Novices who weren’t so well matched were summarily dismissed from the Tower.

  An unhappy realization came to her—God, I don’t think there’s any way out of this. Not if we don’t want to get kicked out.

  She took a step closer to Lone, looking down at him uncertainly. There was no denying that the shaft that was barely contained in the black mesh pouch in his trousers was extremely large, and he was more than half hard already. Was she really going to sit on that? Her pussy tightened hungrily at the thought as the needing twisted inside her but Lizabeth pushed the intense desire away from her. She wasn’t going to go there—she couldn’t.

  Lone seemed to sense her uncertainty and indecision.

  “It’s all right, Mistress,” he murmured, pitching his voice low so that only she could hear him. “Remember my promise to you.”

  Lizabeth knew he was talking about the oath he had sworn that his shaft wouldn’t enter her unless she asked for it.

  And really, there’s no actual danger of that happening—not even by accident, she told herself. The mesh might be thin but it was still in the way. So it might be embarrassingly intimate but there was no chance of any actual penetration.

  Feeling somewhat reassured, Lizabeth lowered herself cautiously onto the big Kindred’s lap. At first she tried to balance on his knees but that nearly tipped the chair over. With a little gasp, she was forced to throw herself backward to stabilize the weird rocking chair.

  “Are you all right, Mistress?” Lone asked in her ear. He wrapped his arms around her, bracing her comfortingly against him.

  “Fine, I think.” Lizabeth’s heart was still pounding from the near upset. She leaned back against Lone, one hand pressed to her chest. “Are you all right, though?"” she asked him in a low voice. “I feel like I’m, er, crushing you.”

  His laughter was a deep rumble that seemed to vibrate her entire body.

  “I’m not quite as delicate as the human males you may be used to, Lizabeth,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m much bigger than you—how do you think you could crush me with your sweet, curvy body?”

  “I’m just not…as thin as I used to be,” Lizabeth muttered.

  “I’m glad. Didn’t I tell you, you’re an Elite?” Lone returned. “I honestly don’t understand the human obsession with females being stick-thin, but it must be deeply ingrained by your society to bother you so much.”