Pleasure and Purpose Read online

  He hummed again on her belly and slid a hand up her leg. Alaric nuzzled into her as though he couldn't bear to have one measure of his skin not pressed to hers. She liked it, Mina thought as her fingers stroke-stroked along his scalp. This closeness.

  "Why did you want it so desperately?"

  "Because nobody believed a girl of ten-and-three could possibly know her own mind. I could be betrothed, even wed should my parents will it. I could bear a child. But command myself? Never." Mina shifted and her voice lowered as her fingers twisted.

  "And command another? Unthinkable."

  He stretched against her, not pulling from the tug on his hair but leaning into the embrace. "You knew, so young?"

  "Oh, my sweetheart, I have ever known I was meant to control, not be controlled. I knew it from behind my mothers skirts, I knew it when my body changed and first drew the hungry glances of my father's friends. I knew it before the first time I had a man on his knees before me."

  She didn't miss Alaric's small groan. She smiled and pushed his head lower. He obliged at once, sliding on the sheets to move between her legs. She parted her thighs for him, already arching her back to press herself into his hot, wet mouth.

  "But at ten-and-three, nobody would believe I could know this. So, I left my house and went to the Order, and I. . ." She sighed as his tongue found her clitoris. Her words expanded, melted, dripped from her lips without making sense.

  With Alaric's mouth on her, working her flesh to ecstasy, Mina's mind opened to the first time she'd been so pleasured. The Mothers-in-Service who'd accepted her into the Order hadn't pressed her for her age, but they'd kept her in training long enough it didn't matter if she wasn't of consent when she joined. Years had passed while she studied. More years than most of her Sisters had to face, but then her natural inclinations had led her down some more . . . strenuous . . . paths.

  Stephan, the man brought from the fields to the house, had been the one they chose for her, the first man to act the part of patron. Mina had never asked him how many young women he helped to initiate into the role of Handmaiden, but she knew without question she'd been the first to take him instead of the other way 'round.

  Alaric shifted and added the stroke of his fingers inside her. Mina moaned his name, urging him on. His mouth worked in time with his hand, bringing her fast to the edge but holding off at the last moment, keeping her burning.

  "I learned how to make people give me what I wanted in a way that satisfied us both." She drew in a breath and ran her tongue over her lips, tasting salt. They rocked together. She let him take her away with his touch. She let him bring her back with it as well. She cried his name when climax shook her, and it tasted right as though she couldn't have said anything else.

  When he moved up her body to slide inside her, his kisses tasted of her desire. It sent another surge through her. Her hands found the hard muscles of his back and buttocks, urging him deeper. Harder.

  Alaric gave her what she wanted. He pushed up on his arms, angling so deep inside her sweet pain mingled with the pleasure. She cried out again as her body clenched in the onset of another climax. It rippled through her. Mina wrapped her legs around Alaric's waist, holding him to her until he lowered himself to hold her just as tight. They kissed. They breathed. He shuddered and bent his face against her throat, and she felt the pulse of him inside her.

  They lay, quiet, for some moments until he moved off her to rest by her side. "I always knew, too."

  Mina, drowsy and sated, turned to press her lips to his temple. "Did you?"

  "Yes."

  "Then we were well matched, yes?"

  He tilted his head to look up at her, his hair stuck to his forehead with the sweat of his efforts. "I think so."

  Mina thought so, too.

  "You know, what I said before," Alaric said after a few more quiet moments. "That first day . . ."

  "Yes?" Mina, drowsing, didn't care to think too much upon it.

  "I didn't mean it."

  "Oh, sweetheart, if I believed you meant it, I'd have walked out that day. There are words men say when they are sore in need of solace, or deep in their grief. You didn't even know me, then. And many men think Handmaidens are equivalent to whores." He shifted and got upon his elbow to look into her eyes. "I shouldn't have said that, either, but that's not what I meant, now."

  Ice bloomed in her belly, and Mina sat, too. She drew away from him, just barely, aware more than ever of how selfish her heart was being. "Hush, Alaric."

  "When I said I would never—"

  "I said hush!" She shook her head, and he obeyed.

  She settled down into the pillows again and he followed after a few minutes. The rise and fall of his breath told her he slept, and once again Mina crept from the bed. This time not to sit at the window but to creep to the bath chamber where she ran the water as hot as she could stand and scrubbed herself clean of anything to remind her of his touch. His taste.

  She got into the tub, overbrimming, and sank down until the water covered everything but her mouth and tip of her nose. She could hear her heart beat, slow and steady in her ears. She could hear each breath as it sighed through her nose, down her throat, and into her lungs. She closed her eyes and floated.

  Not dreaming.

  Before creating the world, Sinder had walked the Void alone. The texts didn't say for how long, and priests and scholars had argued over the number of years for as long as the texts had been a matter of study and not pure belief. He walked the Void, created the world and came across Kedalya in the forest—-nobody had ever explained to Mina's satisfaction how she came to be there, if Sinder was the Allcreator, but that's what the Book said happened, so she believed it was true. Sinder saw Kedalya and fell in love with her, and they bore a son together. The Holy Family.

  And then the versions of the story diverged, some claiming Kedalya sinned with their child, others blaming Sinder for abandoning his wife and son. No matter what the reason, the Holy Family had been broken, on that they all agreed. They'd gone away and wouldn't return until Sinder's Quiver contained enough arrows to fill it.

  Mina's entire faith was based on love and the loss of it.

  She ducked entirely beneath the water, holding her breath, and wondered how long she could stay there before she had to come up for air. Heat soothed her, as did the water's cradling embrace. She wasn't afraid of drowning. She'd never been afraid of anything in her whole life, but she was afraid now, her heart squeezing in her chest, her fingertips and toes numb despite the water's heat.

  Mina fully believed in the principles of the Order. She understood them so deeply she needn't think on the meaning; she simply lived them. She knew how to find beauty in imperfection and how to think first of what another needed to bring the best pleasure to them both. She believed without question she'd begun and would end as a woman, and that utter solace was not only attainable but should be the goal of every person in the Land Below. She had spent her entire adult life doing her best to provide it, and now, here, for the first time she feared she would be unable to finish her task. Her failures had been few before, and not of her making, but Alaric was different than any patron or man she'd ever known. If Mina couldn't bring him to solace it wouldn't be his fault, but hers. Love had ever seemed weak to her. So many had claimed it, held it out like a prize in which she had no interest. That she was worthy of love she had no doubts, for Mina had ever lived above reproach. She was fair of face and form. All that men claimed to love about her, she couldn't disagree with. But to love another based on his features had seemed ridiculous. To love him for his bended knee equally as silly, for of all the men of her acquaintance, even those who claimed to serve her had done so out of hope she would serve them, in the end.

  How could she be expected to love anyone when even the All-creator and the Invisible Mother couldn't manage to maintain the emotion?

  It had been easier when he'd claimed he would never love her. When she'd believed he meant it. Now something stretched be