The Soldier's Lotus (5 page)

Darien rolled over slightly, pulling Saerileth toward him.
She willingly succumbed, and she slipped her arms around him. Her hands played
over his massive shoulders, sliding down his back. It was just as she felt
broad scars beneath her fingers that Kamen spoke.

“
Captain, you can’t
mean you’re going to retire.”

Darien did not look at Kamen, instead fixing his eyes on
Saerileth’s face as he replied. “Oh yes, I am. We are due in Arinport tomorrow
anyway, and I won’t go back out again.”

Saerileth opened her eyes wide and fixed them on Darien’s
face. He smiled at her, and the whiteness of his teeth in his dark face sent
dampness to her aching pussy. “You live in Arinport, Master?” she asked.

“
You don’t need to
call me that,” he said. “My name is Darien.”

“
But you are my
master.” Saerileth glanced at Kamen, and that Darien apparently understood her
meaning pleased her.

“
Kamen—”

“
You’re not really
retiring?” Kamen said it again. “Captain, this girl is just a concubine—”

Darien sat up, and the tension in his muscles brought the
scars across his back into sharp relief. The scars were, Saerileth realized,
quite severe.
 
“Kamen, step outside. We
will speak there.” Darien rose from the divan then and slid on the loose
breeches that he had so recently removed. She watched him go, and the moment
the door closed behind him, she brought her breathing under control.

She did not scold herself too severely for the loss of
control, however. It had been nearly two years since she had last climaxed. To
bring oneself to climax was a weakness in any Lotus, but having been trained in
sex by the most skillful men in the
Dimadan
, Lotuses
were spoilt for other lovers. But Darien, he had made her come. She shifted on
the divan, pulling down her skirt. Her undergarments were lost, and her shirt
was ripped. Saerileth picked up her
pallav
and began
to wind it back around herself, covering her bare breasts with it. And she
listened. Though the conversation was being held in low tones and a thick oaken
door separated her from the speakers, still she could make out the words Darien
and Kamen exchanged.

“
Captain, you can’t be
serious.” Kamen’s words held a desperation Saerileth perfectly understood. “You
just said yourself that you had no intention of retiring!”

“
That was before I
found a Red Lotus. Saerileth is reason enough to stay in Arinport.” Darien’s
deep voice carried easily to Saerileth’s ears.

“
Well, of course,
you’d want some shore leave, but after a fortnight or so, surely you’d come
back to sea. You’re only thirty-six, Captain. You’re strong, in your prime.”

Saerileth smiled. Darien was indeed strong. Though Kamen
had the lithe grace of a hunting cat and, she suspected, something of a
jaguar’s strength, Darien was different. He was raw power in a massive frame,
larger and greater than any other man she had ever seen. Sometimes she had
wondered if, in her dreams, he had seemed so large only because she had herself
been a child, but now that she saw him again, she knew better. He was as large
as she remembered. A twinge of pain in her pussy reminded her that he was
larger than she had realized, and pleasure filled her again.

“
I have served the
Sunjaa
nation for twenty years,” said Darien. “I was sixteen
when I came aboard my first ship, twenty-eight when I got a command of my own.
I would say that the King has had enough of my life. I want the rest for
myself.”

Kamen’s reply was strained. “Well, hunting pirates won’t be
the same without you, Captain.”

“
You’ll have this
ship, though.” Saerileth heard the sound of Darien’s hand clapping against
Kamen’s shoulder. “I’ll see to it that you take command after me.”

“
No, Captain, there’s
no need. As I said, the sport’s not the same without you. I might as well
leave, too.”

Darien laughed, a sound large and free as the man himself,
and Saerileth smiled again, for no reason she could determine. “And you were so
anxious to avoid settling? It looks like you just didn’t see the way clear to
catching a good mate! Well, don’t worry. Red Lotuses know how to do everything.
I’m sure that, with her help, I will be able to hold parties even you could
attend – and we’ll find you a nice little noblewoman to marry.”

“
I’d be glad to come
to your house, Captain.”

“
Then it’s settled.
I’ll have a retirement party three days after we get back.” Darien’s voice
altered slightly, as though he were walking around.
“Retirement?
I’d never thought I would, but after seeing that sweet little Lotus, I don’t
want to go back to sea again.”

“
Should I tell the men
that you’re leaving?” Saerileth heard the pain in Kamen’s voice, pain to which
Darien seemed oblivious.

“
No, I’ll tell them
myself when we go ashore. No need to make this last day’s sailing depressing. I
suspect the men are still at common quarters, so you go on.”

“
Won’t you come, too,
Captain? It’ll be your last time.” Kamen’s voice held more hope in it than
Saerileth had expected, and she resolved to ask about “common quarters” as soon
as Darien came back to her.

“
No, Kamen!” Darien
laughed again. “I have a
Red Lotus
waiting in my cabin. I have a Red
Lotus for a concubine!”

Saerileth felt some of Darien’s obvious wonder as she
thought on her situation. Red Lotuses, though always property, whether of the
guild or of a fortunate private purchaser, were never mere concubines. They
were considered far too valuable for that, and even a private purchaser had to
woo her to his bed. A concubine, however, served at her master’s pleasure. It
was not a circumstance Saerileth had ever thought would befall her.

The door opened, and Darien stepped in again, closing it
behind him. He smiled at the sight of her, and she felt her lips curve in
response. She certainly had intended to smile at him, to begin her seduction of
him, the establishment of her power over him, but she had not smiled in that
way. She had not done as she had intended. Rather, the sight of his pleasure
had naturally brought out pleasure in her.

“
Master—”

“
No.” Darien seemed to
fill the cabin, which had seemed spacious while she was listening to him speak
with Kamen outside, and he was at her side more quickly than she had expected.
“I’m Darien to you, Saerileth.”

“
I’m your concubine,”
she said. “I am your property. It’s not right that I should use your name.”

Darien cradled her cheek in his hand. “I didn’t save you to
be my property.”

Saerileth’s eyes widened. Darien had not known she was a
Lotus, of course, but she had expected that he was saving her in order to have
her, to keep her. “Are you dismissing me then?” She could not have explained
why that thought stung so much.

“
Of
course not.”
Darien’s hand
wandered up to caress her hair. “It’s just that’s not why I saved you. I saved
you because you were worth saving.”

Saerileth had to call upon all her training to keep her
breath even. She wanted to melt beneath his hand. “But it is not right that
others should hear me call you by your name.”

“
I’m not a nobleman,”
said Darien. “I don’t know much protocol. I’ll take your word for it on that,
and if you ought to call me ‘Master’ around other people, then do that. But for
Abrexa’s
sake call me ‘Darien’ when we’re alone!”

“
Yes,
Darien.”
She paused. “What
is ‘common quarters’?”

Darien shook his head. “Why do you ask?”

“
Because
you sent the men to common quarters when you brought me here.”
Saerileth leaned her head against his hand as
he continued to play with her hair.

“
I don’t suppose you
know anything about the way the
Sunjaa
run their
navy, but we don’t like to let the sailors get too wild.”

Saerileth furrowed her brow. Darien was not making sense.

“
When a man’s been too
long at sea, he needs to fuck someone.” Darien’s mouth curved upward. “There
aren’t any women aboard, so in common quarters the men fuck one another.
Besides, it builds camaraderie. A man will fight for a lover even harder than
for a companion-in-arms.”

Saerileth glanced over Darien’s body. His cock was the
largest she had ever seen, and she doubted that anyone could take it entirely
in his ass, at least not without two or three weeks’ preparation. “And you
enjoy common quarters?” She did not think that, as Kamen clearly did, Darien
liked both sexes equally.

“
It’s what sailors do.
It keeps them from being too interested in rape.”

Saerileth raised her eyebrows.
“Really?”

Darien shrugged. “I hadn’t called common quarters in a while.”

She understood then. Darien liked women, and fucking his
fellow sailors did not satisfy him. Doubtless he did it well – he had made
her
come – but it was not what he wanted. And he was a man of sufficient control
not to let his desire for sex interfere with his work. “In a
very
long
while, I suspect.”

“
Perhaps too long,”
said Darien.

Saerileth looked up into his eyes. They were a brown so
dark as to be nearly black, a brown even darker than his skin, and their lashes
were ridiculously long. Darien’s hair was close-cropped, and his chest was bare
of hair. Why should his eyelashes be so long?

“
How long is your
hair?” asked Darien.

Saerileth blinked. His thoughts had closely mirrored her
own. “When I let it all the way loose, it falls almost to my knees.”

“
You move like a
warrior,” said Darien. “Don’t you find that your hair gets in the way if it is
so long?”

“
Do you dislike it?”

“
Gods
no!”
Darien twined a lock
around his fingers. “I mean, yes, I do like it. I can’t imagine anything more
beautiful.”

Saerileth smiled. “Keeping it twisted up as I do, it rarely
hangs much below my shoulders. And Red Lotuses do not cut their hair.”

“
Never?”
Darien’s fingers were busy among her tresses,
seeking out the leather ties that held it in place.

“
Never.
We do, on occasion, cut off a single lock to
give as a favor to an honored client.” Saerileth felt strange. No one, no
client, no guild-member, not even the
guildmaster
himself, had ever touched her without her express permission, and yet here was
Darien making utterly free of her person. She told herself she ought to be
offended; she told herself that as a concubine, this was only right. But she
did not listen to herself. She felt Darien’s touch, and she was satisfied.

“
And have you ever
given away a lock of your hair?” asked Darien.

“
No.” Saerileth was
glad she had not. The
guildmaster
had wanted her to
send a lock to Ulen
Ahnok
, the one who had purchased
her, but she had refused, saying that he had not earned such a favor.

Darien did not respond verbally to Saerileth, but he found
the last of the black leather ties in her hair. He loosed it, and her hair
tumbled down about her in a curtain of black silk.

“
Glorious,” said
Darien. He clutched her to him, letting her hair run through his fingers.
“You’re
mine
now, you know. It doesn’t matter who
bought you before, you understand?”

Saerileth nodded. There was an almost anxious note in
Darien’s voice, and she understood. “I have no attachment to the one who had
bought me. He saw me only once, and I never saw him at all. I will not try to
run away to him.”

Darien kissed her mouth, and his tongue forced its way
between her lips. Never before had anyone kissed her without
permission,
and while earlier she had been too overcome with a combination of gratitude,
relief, and primal desire, now she was able to appreciate the sensation. Darien
was taking from her, not receiving from her.

Saerileth slipped her arms around his neck and let her
hands run freely over Darien’s shoulders. The scars there would, she thought,
usually be considered flaws on a body otherwise flawless.
But
not to her mind.
To her, those scars signified the rough and dangerous
life that this rough and dangerous man had led.

When at last Darien released her lips, he pulled her to sit
beside him on the divan. “Are you hungry?
Thirsty?”