Pleasure and Purpose Read online

  Now he raked a hand through his hair and studied the sheaf of documents scattered across his desk. He tallied the numbers, and they all made sense. He worked them again, a list of shipments of fabrics and laces, and again the amounts matched in both columns.

  "By the Arrow," he said. "I've done it."

  "Of course you've done it." Mina looked up from the small square of her embroidery. It was a lady's task, and her delicate fingers had created a pretty picture of threaded flowers on the background of white linen. She'd been at it for hours, he realized, noting how close she seemed to finishing.

  Which meant he'd been working for hours, as well.

  "It's no great task. Minister of Fashion." Alaric looked again at the papers, expecting the figures to swim and blur as they so often had when he'd been in school. They stayed firm. The subjects even made sense, a peck of this, a barrel of that.

  "The king held the title before his father died, did he not?"

  "How did you know?" He put down his quill to smile at her. Mina gave him a small, secretive smile and a shrug. "My goodness, Alaric, you'd think I knew nothing of this place before I came here."

  "Did you?" He tidied the stack and stretched, noting the ink stains on his fingers, and reached in the drawer for a box of sand to scrub them clean.

  "It's my task to make myself aware of anything I might need to know before I attend a patron. Aside from the information provided to the Order, I have my own resources." He found it difficult to believe he'd known her but a week, so familiar had the curves of her face and sound of her voice become. She bent back to her embroidery, and he watched the steady, sure in-out thrust of her needle into the fabric. He looked to his work again. She'd done naught but encourage him gently in a tone that brooked no arguments to take up the task, but he had no doubt that somehow Mina was the reason he'd been able to get through it.

  Alaric's mother had raised him to serve the lady in the room before himself, and it had ever been his nature to do so. If asked to list what Mina had required of him this past sevenday, he'd have been unable to put it into a format the way he'd added and subtracted the columns of goods and services his position required him to track. Every day she eased his service from him.

  "Thank you," he said aloud.

  She looked up, her needle clutched in slim fingers. "You're welcome." He liked that she didn't play coy with him. She knew her place and made it easy for him to know his. As he watched, she pricked her finger on the needle and let out a small gasp. He was on his feet before she even had time to tuck the finger into her mouth to suck away the crimson drop welling on the end. He took her hand and drew the wound to his own lips to kiss away the copper-tang taste of it. He'd moved without thinking beyond the moment, but as always when on his knees in front of her, his cock began to fill. He'd not forgotten her touch and how she'd stroked him that first night. He'd dreamed of it, in fact, waking with his cock rigid and aching for release. But Mina had not offered it, and Alaric hadn't asked permission for it. He'd contented himself with pleasuring her, spending hours licking her to climax, making love to her with every part of him but his cock. He'd never thought he'd rise to another woman's touch again, but all she had to do was look at him and he got hard.

  Now he sucked gently on her fingertip and withdrew it. Mina's eyes gleamed. Her breath quickened. She murmured his name.

  "Have you finished your work?" she asked next when he didn't release her hand.

  "Yes."

  She made a show of looking round the room. "And look how nice and tidy this room has become."

  He laughed. "For my lady's pleasure."

  Her gaze flared brighter at the words he spoke, and Alaric let go of her hand. He'd called her by the title he'd used for Larissa; it had slipped out before he could think. Had he overstepped?

  "Go into the bedchamber," Mina said.

  A cold fist clutched his throat for a moment. "I plead your mercy."

  "Alaric. I said for you to go into the bedchamber. Take off your clothes, and wait for me. Now."

  He might well have refused. She couldn't make him. But he got to his feet at once and nodded, his prick thickening in his trousers despite the flush of guilt heating its way up his throat to his cheeks. He didn't want to disobey her, even if she meant to punish him. In the bedchamber he stripped out of his trousers and hung them carefully, mindful of Mina's insistence on neatness.

  Alaric had long known he was different than his friends. When his friends cringed at the stern demeanor of their teachers, he'd squirmed in his seat and fantasized about being naughty solely to risk punishment. It was not the pain that twitched his prick, but the idea of pleasing someone and being held accountable for providing that pleasure. Later, when the three of them had taken to the sorts of escapades only young men with privilege and money can afford, they'd gone to the whore. With coin in hand and unused to anything but being given what they wanted, they must have amused her, but she took them anyway.

  She'd ordered them to strip and when they stood in front of her, pricks at attention, she'd spanked them all until their buttocks turned red. Cillian and Edward had suffered beneath her touch . . . but for Alaric it had been as though the heavens had sent a bolt of lightning just for him. Even when his friends had moved on to other whores, other pursuits, he'd spent many joyous hours under the tutelage of that first mistress. It had gone bad for his friends, one who'd forgone that which aroused him and the other fanning his desires to flames high enough to consume him. Only Alaric had walked the same path, never regretting or trying too hard to lose himself in it. Until Larissa, he thought now. From outside the door he heard Minas soft tread and he tensed, waiting for her to come in. She didn't. He heard her tug the bell cord. He heard the door open and a maid's voice, but not what was being said.

  Alaric had long loved Edward, even though Cillian had always outranked him in Edward's affections. When they'd fallen out, with Cillian gone mad and Edward locked deep within the self-made prison of his guilt, it had been Alaric to whom he'd turned. And Alaric, fool he was, had allowed himself to imagine . . . well, it hardly mattered now. There had been Larissa to ease the sting. And later, there had been oblivion. And now, Mina.

  He heard again the sound of the maid and Minas low murmur. The sound of the outer door closing. And at last, the swish of her gown in the doorway.

  "Get on the bed. On your hands and knees, facing the wall." He dared not look at her, for fear his cock might spill from the vast and overwhelming surge of excitement flooding him. It had been days, nay, weeks since he'd had release, so long he couldn't recall the last time. He did as she said, aware as always when he submitted of how ridiculous he might look in his submission. Aware as well any who might think so didn't matter.

  The rustle of cloth alerted him that she might be undressing, but even so when her bare belly pressed to his buttocks, Alaric couldn't hold back a moan. When Mina tugged free the ribbon holding his hair and it fell around his face, another low sound slipped from his lips. His cock could have drilled through brick.

  "I adore the sounds you make," Mina murmured, getting into place behind him on her knees. Her belly pressed his ass again. Her hands settled onto his hips. "Tell me, sweet, are you afraid?"

  "I'm afraid of many things," he admitted, holding himself still even when he longed to thrust his cock into even the bare relief the air would bring.

  Her low, slow chuckle trickled over his skin and sent another surge of arousal through him. "I do adore your honesty."

  "I'm afraid you won't be able to ... do ... for me. What you're meant to do." The words scratched at his throat but came out anyway.

  "Hush," she said, not a mother chastising a wayward child, but a lover easing an inconsequential fear.

  "It's been a week."

  Her hands clutched his hips harder, and her belly pressed harder, and his cock got harder. He let his forehead press into the bedclothes, his elbows bent. Again, he thought of how ridiculous he must appear, ass in the air and a woman standin