Chapter 187: I Said Sit

"Sit," Dove said, and the order landed in the room like a dropped blade.

Their clothes lay beside the washstand, and Dove had put Edrik in the wooden chair facing the bed. His jaw tightened. He was halfway out of it already, the way he always was, the way his body just moved toward hers without asking permission from his head first. He stopped when she said it again, sharper.

"I said sit."

Thorne laughed low in his throat, already dropping back onto the edge of the bed like this was the easiest thing in the world. Of course it was, for him. Thorne didn’t fight anything that felt good. He just let it happen and grinned while it did.

Edrik didn’t move for a second too long, and Dove watched the muscle in his jaw flex, watched him decide whether tonight was a night he wanted to test her. She let him see that she was watching him decide. She didn’t blink.

"You’re doing that thing," Thorne said, not quite able to hide the delight in his voice, "where you think about disobeying her and then remember what happened last time."

"Shut up," Edrik muttered, but he sat.

Dove felt something settle low in her stomach, hot and satisfied, as he lowered himself onto the chair across the room. She liked having his attention this completely.

She crossed to him first. Not because he had earned it, but because she wanted to see his face when she chose who to touch and when. His eyes tracked her the whole way, dark and wanting and furious at his own wanting, and she loved it, she loved every second of this slow unraveling.

"Hands on the armrests," she said. "Don’t move them."

"Dove, I..."

"Hands on the armrests, or you spend the night right there watching me enjoy myself with Thorne without you."

He put his hands on the armrests. His knuckles went white around the wood almost immediately, like he needed something to grip just to keep himself in the chair.

She knelt between his spread knees and felt the heat coming off him before she even touched his skin. He was already hard, had been since she gave the first order, and she dragged one finger up the length of him just to watch him shudder.

"You don’t get to come tonight," she said, conversational, like she was commenting on the weather. "Either of you. Not until I say so. And I might decide I don’t want to say so at all."

Thorne groaned from the bed, a long, low, delighted sound. "Gods, I love her."

"You’ll love me less in about twenty minutes," Dove said without looking away from Edrik’s face, watching the way his eyes had gone dark and strained, watching him war with himself.

"I don’t take orders," Edrik said, but it came out rough, unconvincing, more like a man reminding himself of a fact he was forgetting in real time.

"You do tonight." She leaned in and blew cool air along the underside of his cock, slow, deliberate, and watched his thighs tense, watched his hips twitch up involuntarily before he caught himself and forced them back down. "See? You already are." Each touch promised pleasure that she kept withholding. She coated his cock in her saliva.

"That doesn’t count."

"It counts." She licked a stripe up him, slow enough to be unbearable, and felt him shake under the touch of her tongue. "Everything counts. No, my pets. You stay dripping. You stay edging. You stay exactly where I want you: throbbing, leaking, desperate fucking cocksleeves. On the very edge... forever." She flicked her tongue out again, catching another bead from Edrik’s tip. "Now... beg some more. It amuses me."

"Please..." Edrik gasped, his voice ragged. "Fuck... Mistress... let me..." Thorne grunted from the bed.

"Let you what?" she asked sweetly, her thumb rubbing rough circles over Edrik’s leaking slit, making him whimper. "Let you cum? Let you fuck this tight cunt you can smell dripping?"

She squeezed Edrik’s cock, hard, at the root, making him cry out. "Begging to explode. Begging to pump your worthless seed. But you don’t get to cum. Not until I say."

She nuzzled Edrik’s balls with her cheek, breathing hotly on the stretched, hairless skin. She used the very tip of her tongue to trace the ridge beneath his cockhead, then flicked rapidly at the hypersensitive spot below it.

She didn’t give him more than that. She pulled back just as his breath caught, just as his hands flexed against the armrests like he wanted to grab her hair and pull her back down. She saw the want in his face, naked and furious, and she held his gaze while she stood, unhurried, and walked to Thorne instead.

"That’s not fair," Edrik said, and there was real heat in it now, real frustration, the voice of a man who was not used to being left wanting.

"Look at you," she purred, her voice a velvet whip. "Two big, dumb cocks on legs. Dripping like leaky faucets. Pathetic. Nothing about tonight is fair," Dove said. "That’s the point."

"Smell that?" she whispered, her tongue flicking out, almost touching the weeping tip. "Smell your own fucking desperation? You reek of it." She inhaled deeply, theatrically. "Mmm. Delicious."

"Such eager little fuck-puppets," she cooed, stepping back to admire her handiwork. Both men were panting, their cocks weeping freely now, thick streams of precum slicking their shafts and balls. The air crackled with unspent tension.

Thorne’s grin was all teeth when she turned to him, and he spread his knees without being told, already loose and easy with his own wanting in a way Edrik had never managed. She liked that about him. She liked that Edrik had to watch it.

She climbed onto the bed and settled between Thorne’s thighs, feeling the mattress dip, feeling his whole body go still and attentive in the particular way it did when he was trying very hard not to move before she told him to. She dragged her nails lightly down his stomach, felt the muscle jump beneath her palm, and leaned down to take one nipple between her teeth.

He made a sound like he had been struck, a raw, helpless noise, and his hand came up to tangle in her hair, not pulling, not directing, just holding on like he needed the anchor.

"You can touch," she said against his skin, "Edrik can’t."

From across the room came a noise that wasn’t quite a word, something caught between a growl and a groan, and she smiled without lifting her head.

She bit down again, harder, and felt Thorne’s whole body arch up off the bed, his cock brushing against her stomach, hot and insistent. She reached down and wrapped her hand around him, slow, deliberately mismatched to the urgency she could feel thrumming through him, and started to stroke.

"Dove." His voice had gone ragged already. "Dove, I’m not going to last if you..."

"You’ll last exactly as long as I decide you will." She tightened her grip, just enough, and felt him shudder. "That goes for both of you."

She glanced over her shoulder at Edrik and found him exactly where she left him, hands locked around the armrests, cock flushed dark and aching against his stomach, eyes fixed on her with an intensity that would frighten her if she didn’t know, absolutely, that she was the one in control of this room tonight.

"You can stroke yourself," she told him. "Slowly. If I see your hand move faster than I like, I stop touching Thorne completely and you watch me finish myself off instead."