Begrudgingly, I do so. I’ve long learned that just shutting up and letting him do his thing, within reason, is the fastest way to get off this damn dais.
“Nando, suit jacket.” He snaps his fingers, and a young man walking with a cane strides over with a “pearl” –“not white, you heathen”– jacket. It’s the same colour as the trousers he made me put on. But white or pearl, neither are favourable colours.
I like black.
And colours dark enough to pass for it.
But at least the inside of the jacket is black.
Black and silver thorns are also embroidered half-way down the jacket’s left side and half-way up the right. A single line of them runs down both sides of my trousers too, much to my annoyance. Wordlessly, I shrug the jacket on.
“How is he treating you?” I ask Nando as his boss starts to walk around me, his hand still raised to his chin.
This is Nando’s first civilian job, having served for six years in the Vylian war. He’s just spent two years in rehab, learning how to walk again after the intensive damage he suffered to his wings and spine.
“Well enough, my lord.”
“Well enough?” Ajax scoffs. “You’re fucking spoiled working here.” He cocks his head to the side, studying my attire. “The jacket fits. It’s the trousers that need bringing in.” Leaning in with a piece of chalk, he marks the parts he wants to change. Then he straightens and holds out his hand. “Take them off.”
I do as he says, keen to see my queen before we’re expected downstairs. Stepping out into the hall in just my boxers, I head for the other room.
“Out,” I ordered Ella, Ajax’s daughter, as soon as I enter.
She’s bent over the skirt of my wife’s dress. Arienna has her back to me, facing a trio of mirrors, and as she turns, I stop mid-stride. Her lips stretch into a smile, radiating with happiness and hunger as her eyes dip down my body.
But despite having come in here for exactly what she’s thinking about, my mind is a complete blank of utter awe.This gorgeous woman is my queen.
Movement passes me, and I’m vaguely aware of the door shutting behind me, but the world is still sluggish and slow outside of the pinpoint radiance that is my wife.
Arienna lifts up her skirts –pearlwith black and silver embroidered thorns crawling up the hem. Tiny feathers hug her waistline and flare up to her breasts. No straps hang from her shoulders, and I know one tug will bare her to me, naked and perfect.
Pearl, I decide, is my new favourite colour.
“What do you think?” she asks, lifting her eyes up to mine.
I blink, and the world starts moving again at the right speed. Finding us alone, I stride over to her and offer a hand.
“I think,” I say as she steps off the dais, “that I can do this” –I reach for the top of her bodice and start to pull it down– “and then suck –”
“Hey!” She swats at my hand. “Don’t mess the feathers up. Ella spent ages getting them just right.”
“Then she can redo –”
“No.” Her eyes narrow. “I am not standing on that dais for another hour because you can’t keep your hands to yourself.”
“It won’t just be my hands that I –”
“No. And don’t think you’re ripping this off me later either. It’s too gorgeous for that.”
Pearl, I suddenly decide, is a horrible colour. The worst fucking colour, and come tomorrow, I’m banning it in Raza.
Laughing, she grabs my hands as she lifts herself up on her tippy toes. She kisses the tight line of my lips. “But just because you can’t touch me right now does not mean I can’t touch you,” she teases as she slides down my body to kneel in front of me.
“Eyes on me,” she murmurs as she trailed her lips across my bare thigh and then across the bulge of my boxers.
My fingers tighten on hers. I keep my gaze where she wants it despite the urge to peek down her bodice, where her breasts are pushed up delectably.
Her lips have just brushed my cock when some fuckingassholeknocks on the door.
