Steel and Promise Read online

  “Do you think I should be outdoing someone?”

  “I—no, my lady.”

  Teran said nothing. She led Cailyn to a cross and busied herself binding Cailyn’s arms.

  She stepped behind Cailyn and whispered into her ear. Cailyn expected words of seduction.

  Instead Teran only said, “Last I heard, Lord Iridian had six rooms.”

  “Six rooms, my lady?”

  “Each with a different theme. The dungeon, the harem, the examination room. I don’t remember them all.”

  She ran a hand over Cailyn’s back. “It makes my eighty thousand seem distinctly insignificant. And it means that to live up to the rumors, I’d need at least ten.” She laughed.

  Cailyn turned her head. Teran smiled again. Unlike the controlled smile she’d seen before, this one lit Teran’s eyes.

  Cailyn took some solace in it as she watched Teran take down a flogger from the wall. Cailyn had never served the nobles on the dark channels, and her few forays into mild pain had pleased her clients far more than they had her.

  And Teran Nivrai, despite the many ways she’d defied the rumors, still frightened her. A moment of laughter helped.

  Extended now, the claws traced patterns over her flesh gently, not breaking the skin. Their dance felt good, a little dangerous. She couldn’t stop thinking of what wasn’t happening, but so easily could.

  The hands withdrew. Something draped over Cailyn’s back. She recognized the tails of the flogger. Was that braided? Her muscles tensed as she realized it was.

  Just when I started to think the rumors were exaggerated.

  She felt Teran’s hand on her again, gathering up her hair and setting it out of the way. “If you use that, do you really think I’ll stay put enough to keep my hair out of your way, my lady?”

  “Maybe not.” Cailyn heard the smile. “Then again I could cut it,” Teran went on. Her claw sliced through a lock of Cailyn’s hair. She held the blond curl in front of Cailyn’s face.

  For a wild moment, Cailyn wondered if Teran might really do it, steel-tipped fingers shearing curl after curl. She wondered how much money she should ask for in compensation.

  Teran moved back. Cailyn expelled a ragged breath. Was she really thinking she’d rather Teran pay for the privilege of cutting off her hair when she could just give her stop word and walk away instead?

  She heard the swish of the braided tails moving through the air behind her and tensed again.

  “Your back is already bleeding and your front has taken worse. You’re more afraid of me using this than you should be,” Teran said.

  The first blow struck. Fire exploded across Cailyn’s back. Any retort she might give became a shapeless, open-throated scream as the thin leather seared her back again and again.

  Long years of training had taught her how to listen for the noble’s pleasure. But now, she heard no sounds but the ones Teran tore from her. Her own din drowned out the breath she should have listened for, the whispers that would tell her whether the noblewoman was pleased, angry, sated.

  She might have known from the rhythm of it, if she could think enough to discern it. But her body burned in every part and carried her mind along with it. Her shoulders. The places on her back where the claws had pricked her. The line cut between her breasts. Even the places Teran had touched gently. Even her lips, where Teran had kissed her. Even her vulva, where Teran had touched her before.

  When it ended, she slumped. Teran freed her from her bonds and wrapped one hand around her welted back. Her other hand curled around Cailyn’s chin and drew her into a kiss. Cailyn’s mouth parted. Warmth spread between her thighs. This she could offer. This she could give.

  She hadn’t known how to endure the beating. She did know how to give herself up to someone’s touch, to relax into her embrace.

  She laughed. Teran’s tongue darted in her mouth and cut off her laughter. Hands toyed with her breasts, those strange claws familiar now as they ran lightly over her nipples. It felt like sex, like relief. She made a small sound.

  The claws retracted with a click. Teran’s hand slipped between her thighs again.

  Cailyn thanked her patron goddess for small mercies as Teran’s fingers moved. Her hips twitched.

  “See?” Teran kissed and nibbled at her neck. “Not as frightened as you thought you’d be.”

  Cailyn didn’t answer. She tilted her head back and offered more of her neck to Teran’s lips and teeth.

  “You did very well,” Teran said.

  “Why me?” Cailyn’s words anchored her. They drew her back to herself. She knew now that these moments of gentleness came with a price.

  The dancing fingers slowed. She wasn’t sure whether to curse them or thank the gods. The mouth against her neck moved. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” Cailyn struggled to speak. She could feel Teran’s smile. “My lady, there are people who would beg for this, or something like it. There are courtesans who sell themselves on how much pain they take.”

  The fingers thrilled on her skin again. She gasped and closed her eyes.

  “I’m sure you…” She flushed. “I’m sure you know who they are.”

  Laughter, like glass. “Yes, little one. I know who they are. I know who will come to me and who will not.”

  “Then why choose me? I never…I don’t…well I have, once or twice, but…”

  “But.”

  “Not like this!”

  “Do you want all my secrets?”

  “My lady, I only—”

  “Maybe it’s because you haven’t. Maybe I don’t want one who has. Maybe it’s more interesting to me that way.”

  Cailyn frowned. “Is that all?”

  “No.” The voice, thick with desire before, went cold. “It isn’t.”

  Damn. Just when she’d thought she might learn something. She bowed her head and, opened her mouth to offer some flowery apology.

  Teran had said “I won’t punish you.” Apologizing might make things worse. She closed her mouth and lifted her head.

  “Come here,” Teran said. She led Cailyn over to a bench in the same small room.

  “You want more of this, my lady?” Cailyn stammered, open-mouthed.

  Teran went back to the implements on the wall and took down another. She laughed. “Look at it.”

  Cailyn looked. Teran was holding another flogger, this one made of soft, wide strips of leather and not braided. “That other was for me. This is for you.”

  Chapter Two

  Cailyn sighed. She knew how to offer herself up to things she would never choose. She enjoyed them, sometimes, seeing the others’ enjoyment. But how much of this could she endure? She thought of the stories about Teran. When would a helldemon be finished?

  It can’t be worse than what just happened, she told herself. And if she hadn’t complained at that, how much worse would it be to take issue with this? It seemed Teran meant to be kind—whatever she thought kindness was.

  Stifling a sigh, Cailyn bent over the bench and allowed Teran to cuff her hands.

  The tails of the flogger danced against her skin. She felt no pain, only her body awakening to its rhythm. She drifted with it, and her fear fell away. She closed her eyes and tried to envision Teran’s eyes, her smile, the gleam of light on her claws.

  But she could only remember herself, her mouth opening to Teran’s lips and tongue, the thrill that tingled through her as the claws ran down her skin, light and delicate, a sharper version of a lover’s caress.

  She cried out. Her body moved to meet the flogger. She moaned again, a long, low sound.

  Why didn’t you do this in the beginning?

  The welts on her back, the line between her breasts…she could hardly feel any of them now. The sting of her cuts, faint now, left her energized, alive.

  Teran must know, know from the way she moved, from the smell of her excitement. That thought unnerved Cailyn, but under her disquiet she felt something like relief. This gentleness came so much
closer to her usual, uncomplicated desire. The old familiar need to give herself overflowed through her, soothed and calmed her.

  She’d wandered into the lair of someone others called a helldemon. Now she was home.

  She drifted. Teran’s hands called her back. They moved on the skin they’d warmed and reddened, the tips of the claws tracing patterns over it. Teran reached down to touch her vulva. Cailyn shuddered with a minor climax.

  She whispered some formal expression of gratitude as her body pulsed with aftershock and her racing heart slowed. Teran led her to the bed, bidding her to lie beside her. She obeyed, eager to show her gratitude with hands and lips and tongue.

  Five pricks of metal at her neck stopped her cold. She looked up.

  “You brought something to me tonight,” Teran told her, one claw still resting at her throat, keeping her motionless more effectively than any bondage. “I would take it.”

  Teran’s fingers entered her, hard.

  She shivered, wanting to respond but too frightened to move. Had Teran retracted the claws on her neck? She still felt pressure there. Was it just Teran’s fingertips? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t think, didn’t want to look. Her body ached to move, and she wasn’t sure if she could still it.

  The face above her curled into a smile, tight and pointed. She could hear, under her own wordless pleas, the low hum of Teran’s own sounds, steady growls with short gasps between them.

  She didn’t even bother to rub Cailyn’s clitoris with her thumb. This was use, plain and simple.

  Cailyn gave up. Her hips moved and the rest of her body writhed with them. Any moment now, she might feel the pricks at her neck, might freeze in fear. Might feel herself bleed and wonder how deeply she’d been cut.

  Long minutes later, she realized that it hadn’t happened, and her sigh of relief turned into a cry of pleasure. Teran laughed and kept going.

  When Cailyn finally felt the slight prick, she swam through the beat of her own heart and willed her body to stillness. She looked down at Teran’s hand to see the fingers still inside her and her thumb, claw extended, digging, just barely, into the skin above her clitoris.

  Cailyn opened her mouth to say her stop word. No sound came out.

  She stared at the claw and stammered. “Your hand—you don’t—it—”

  She tried not to shudder but couldn’t stop herself.

  “Was that fear, or an aftershock?” Teran asked, grinning.

  The only answer Cailyn’s mouth could form was, “I don’t know, my lady.”

  Teran turned her thumb so the claw pointed away, and withdrew her other fingers. They were clawless.

  “Gods!” Cailyn cried, the words bursting out of her now that she knew Teran hadn’t hurt her. “You scared the hell out of me…My lady,” she added, after an awkward pause.

  Laughing, Teran moved her hand away, and Cailyn sat up. Her back stung. So did the space between her breasts. Her body twitched with pleasure and fear.

  She heard Teran stir behind her and turned. Teran leaned over the nightstand, looking into a videoscreen. She said something to the image glowing there—a servant of the house, Cailyn reasoned, from the dress and the fact that calling anyone else would make no sense and probably break several laws.

  The door slid open, and a servant dressed in the same gray Cailyn saw everywhere brought ointment and cloths to clean Cailyn’s wounds.

  She turned, expecting the young man to tend to her. He passed the stuff to Teran and walked out without a word.

  I should be serving you.

  She buried the thought. Teran wasn’t the one who needed mending right now. “You do this yourself?”

  Teran brought the damp cloth to the cut between Cailyn’s breasts. “For others, no. For you, yes.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  Cailyn tensed, expecting the ointment to sting. Instead, it numbed the burn of the cut. Plain though it looked, it must have been expensive.

  And good for healing, Cailyn guessed. Teran had been nothing if not thorough.

  She turned so that Teran could tend the welts on her back. “Why do this for me? Why choose me at all?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t tell you that, little one.” Teran brushed her hair away and kissed her neck. She shivered with the pleasure of it.

  “No, not that. I mean the claws. You spent eighty thousand on them. But you also told me that you don’t care much for flashy things or flashy people. So why spend so much on implants? Couldn’t you do all that with a good knife?”

  She wondered at herself. How could she talk so breezily about knives, like she knew how they might feel? Like they were nothing. While she sat here on a bed whose sheets had her blood on them.

  Teran rested her chin on Cailyn’s shoulder. “His name was Mariel.”

  “His name? You did this for someone?”

  “He was one of the gladiators of House Nivrai,” Teran said.

  Cailyn’s eyes widened. Of course some nobles took lovers beneath their station. But if Teran had, why would people bother to spread rumors about modifications when perfectly good gossip would suffice?

  Mariel. She tried to place the name but couldn’t. She’d never been one for fights, and Nivrai was a backward little planet, hidden at the edge of a system few bothered to visit.

  With a demon for a ruler.

  “Was, my lady?” she asked at last.

  The claws flexed, extending, retracting, and extending again.

  “Mariel has been dead five years,” Teran said, her voice soft.

  “My lady,” Cailyn said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It is not your concern.”

  Cailyn shook her head. “I understand.”

  She didn’t like saying it. She was supposed to bring comfort.

  But that didn’t mean foisting it on people who’d asked her not to press the point. She looked down at Teran’s hand again, unable to keep herself from staring.

  “Go ahead and ask,” Teran said. “It’s obvious you want to.”

  “They—you got them for him?”

  Teran extended them again. “Yes. They were his idea.”

  “His idea, my lady? Not yours?”

  Teran grinned. “No. Not mine.”

  Cailyn shivered. What kind of world had she wandered into? “Then he—”

  “He liked the idea of weapons that were a part of my body.” She smirked. “So did I.”

  It made sense, Cailyn supposed. If anything here in Nivrai made sense, anyway.

  Teran laughed again. “It was also the perfect way to convince the people who had already started to whisper about me that I’d completely lost my reason.”

  I’m not convinced you haven’t, Cailyn thought but didn’t say.

  “In the end, everyone left me alone, even—” Teran stopped, biting off the words.

  “Even who?”

  “The rumors got gruesome enough that for anyone to admit desire for me became unseemly. And Mariel was already mine.” After a moment, she added, “You have no idea what a relief that was.”

  For a long moment, Cailyn didn’t speak. Then she turned.

  “My lady,” she said, “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what he was to you. But if you’re carrying a memory like that, on your own body, it must weigh on you.”

  The ice-gray gaze fixed on her.

  “I’m not him. I’m nothing like him, from what you’ve said. But please…let me touch you.”

  Teran lay down and closed her eyes. Cailyn knelt over her. Her hands traced patterns along Teran’s skin. She parted her lips with reverence and lowered her mouth to Teran’s flesh. Her nostrils filled with the spice of Teran’s smell.

  A courtesan didn’t have to enjoy giving pleasure. Not as long as she gave it well. But the best courtesans did, feeling the stir in their own bodies when the ones they served moaned and bucked.

  Cailyn felt it now. A thrill of heat rushed through her as her lips and tongue tasted Teran’s wetness. The claws kneaded her back a
gain, piercing her already welted shoulders. In the middle of this, the blossom of pain felt right somehow.

  Cailyn traced the folds of Teran’s flesh, seeking out the memories buried there. She offered pleasure as a balm, like the salve Teran had spread on her own welts, cool and refreshing. There was so much here. So much life, neglected and left cold.

  Under her mouth, Teran tensed. She shook like someone letting loose tears.

  Cailyn smiled and touched her breast. A clawed hand reached to cover hers, fierce and possessive like the talon of a hawk.

  “I’ll go,” Cailyn whispered. She pulled her hand out from under Teran’s.

  The slim hand caught hers. Teran smiled. “This bed has been cold and empty five years. You could stay and warm it.”

  The hand moved. So did Cailyn, lying down beside Teran.

  Teran settled against her. She tapped at a console on the nightstand and the light dimmed to black. Then she wrapped an arm around Cailyn and clutched tight. Her other hand reached to pull up the sheet and blanket.

  *

  Light streamed in from the big window. The wall-door of the other room had closed. Cailyn was alone.

  “Lady Nivrai?” She blinked, sitting up. “Teran?”

  No answer.

  Cailyn found her garments, neatly folded, at the foot of the bed. A small tablet with a videoscreen glowed on top of them.

  She picked it up. A receipt, she realized, for the transaction. Three thousand credits, transferred into her account.

  She turned the tablet around in her hands.

  “So no one’s going to see me off,” she said, her voice a whisper in the quiet room.

  She wondered where the bathroom was. Someone as precise as Teran Nivrai would permit her to bathe before leaving. A servant of the house would show her the way if she called.

  She decided against it. Better to slip out now. Better to leave this place sooner than later, she thought, turning the tablet over and over in her hands.

  Chapter Three

  Cailyn gasped. She’d known immediately where the call came from, of course. But she hadn’t quite believed it until a familiar face filled her videoscreen and she stared into larger-than-life gray eyes.