The Clever Fox: Part One (The Pleasure Hound Series) (9 page)

“Don’t struggle,” he said.

Alyss blinked. It dawned on her that he no longer held her. With the simple knots he’d tied, the ropes supported her entire body.

“By the Goddess, you’re breath taking.”

He’d hooked her bound hands on one of the metal links leaving Alyss weightless. She felt as though she were floating. With slow steps, Adom retreated from her, taking a seat at the easel.
She watched him lean back in his chair, his eyes never leaving her form. Alyss no longer saw his pupils. His hands took his eyes place in capturing her form on the parchment. Alyss was used to men and women staring at her, admiring her form. But the way Adom looked at her, he saw more.

The sound of the
scritch scritch
of his pencil assaulted her ears. She ached to see how he formed her. After a moment, the
scritch scratch
of his pencil lulled her eyes closed.
 

And then there was the feel of the ropes against her skin. Alyss didn’t struggle, she floated. She leaned into the ropes, giving over her every burden to the twine. She felt her features soften. Her breath slowed, deepened. Her eyes refused to open. The fingers of each hand dropped onto the other’s wrist. The pads of her fingers lightly caressed the ropes that bound her.

Alyss felt a warming sensation begin at her core. She pressed her thighs together, but the sensation spread up to her belly. It ensnared her spine. Her head lolled to the side as the warmth spread across her cheeks and she floated.

Her senses hyper aware. Her eyes blinked open when she thought she heard a noise that wasn’t the pencil on parchment. A noise from overhead.

But it was just Adom standing before her, untying the ropes. Alyss almost protested as the tension released from the ropes and slowly settled back into her hands, her shoulders, her legs. Too soon, she stood on her own two feet once more.

With the ropes off, Adom massaged her wrists.

Her eyes darted behind him, to his easel. “Can I see?”

He nodded, leading her over to the canvas.
 

There she was. Her body outlined in pencil. She saw the elegance of her hands above her head, but without the rope. Her eyes were closed. Her face blissful, turned up to the sun. But it looked as though the sun greeted her. He’d filled in the background with purple and accents of yellow rays rising from her person, which created the sun.

“But you’re not finished?”

“I couldn’t leave you up there for much longer. You would go numb.”

“So you’ll need me to come back?”

He swallowed. His hand went to the back of his neck as he looked at the door.

Alyss’ heart sank. She had to come back. She had to see how this painting turned out.
She looked down at her wrists. She ran her fingertips over the marks left by the ropes and sighed. Even the pattern puckering at her skin was beautiful.

When she looked up, Adom’s eyes were on her. She was close enough to see his pupils reading her. Finally, he nodded.
 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “It has to be in the morning or afternoon. Can you get away?”

Something niggled the back of her mind. Something important that she must do. But she couldn’t fathom what could be more important than seeing this picture come to fruition. She would get away. Nothing would keep her from this experience.

Chapter Ten

Emet paused in the doorway.
 

Both of them were so absorbed that they didn’t notice him.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. Lady Alyss dangled from the rig in Adom’s studio. Adom sat before an easel capturing every one of her lines. Lady Alyss closed her eyes in rope bliss, a condition Emet frequently indulged in. Rope bliss was that space in time when the suspension, combined with the tension of the ropes, relieved all pressures and the bound one went inward to a place were all things were calm.
 

Adom was a master at the craft of rope binding and suspension, making the ropes both artfully tied for his renditions and a pleasurable experience for the one bound.
 

But it hadn’t always been that way. Years ago when they were both still Pleasure Hounds, Adom tied up a young lady under his tutelage. The young woman had not given into the ropes. She’d become frightened and panicked. The situation escalated and her Mother had been called in. The older woman was more afraid of a scandal involving her daughter than she was irate, and luckily Emet had been on hand when Adom called. He came in and, using his gift of logic and persuasion, quashed the situation. Adom never touched another woman after that experience. He kept his hands and his ropes solely on Emet’s body.

Until now.

Emet couldn’t fathom why this was happening? How this was happening?

Lady Alyss had shown up in that dress today. She’d gotten it from Adom. Emet hadn’t thought she’d lower herself to come to a shop owned and operated by males, but perhaps she had. And if she had, she had to know that Adom was Emet’s bond mate.
 

But Adom knew who she was too. Emet told him her name last night.

Emet wanted answers immediately as he looked between the two. But he couldn’t get his mouth to work. His heart was having trouble beating in his chest. He’d nearly lost his friend to a similar situation as the one on display before him. He’d walked beside his lover when they both left the Pleasure Temples. He’d supported his husband as he pursued his dream of becoming a respected artist. Emet had thought Adom supported him too, but…

Emet’s feet carried him away, down the hall and into their shared bedroom.

Emet sat on the bed. His mind awhirl, not holding on to anyone thought.

“Em?”

Emet looked up to see Adom standing in the doorway. Adom’s face turned from the artist high he always had after leaving his studio and into concern and finally guilt.

“You saw?”

Emet couldn’t respond. He didn’t need to. He and Adom had had wordless conversations since they were young boys. He just couldn’t comprehend why they hadn’t had a conversation about what he just saw before it got this far.

“She’s gone.” Adom came into the room. He had a rag in his hands. The rag had gotten much of the paint off his hands, but now Adom worried the rag between his fingers, scrubbing away the evidence trapped under his nails.

“Its not what you think,” Adom said.

“Tell me what I’m thinking?” Emet’s voice was breathless more than angry. “Because I can’t seem to form a single thought.”

“She agreed to it. She begged me to. She wanted it.”

So Adom thought Emet worried about the lady’s consent. He wasn’t. “She’s my adversary.”

Adom blinked. “Right. I know.”

“You bound and suspended my adversary. One of the most powerful ladies in the city who is intent on taking me down along with the rights of men. A lady that can easily have you thrown in prison, and likely will because she’s playing some kind of game-“

“She’s not,” Adom insisted. “I can’t explain to you how I know, but she’s not playing a game, Emet.”

Emet blinked rapidly. He struggled to bring the man he loved into focus.

“When she saw the dress she…” Adom paused, searching for words. “If you could’ve just seen the look on her face you’d-”

“Oh, I saw the look on her face when she flounced into the Chambers. I only wish you had seen the look on her face when she couldn’t puzzle out why I didn’t succumb to her girlish charms or that I knew how to use big words. She thinks men are mindless creatures whose only desires are to be led about by women.”

Adom sighed. “I don’t think that’s what’s truly in her heart.”

“But you know for certain what’s in my heart,” Emet said to the man whom he’d stood by through thick and thin. “You know what’s important to me, why I fight. And you kept this from me. How long has this been going on?”

“She’s the girl in the red painting.”

The red painting? The painting of the Goddess laying on the earth. He’d painted that months ago. Emet’s fingers tightened on the quilt spread across their bed. Adom had made it from their monk robes as a bonding gift. They’d taken vows as monks together in their youth, and then they took vows to each other as men. “You’ve been lying to me for three months.”
 

“No.” Adom knelt before him, eyes pleading. “I saw her three months ago when I went to Jian’s to give Lady Chanyn her present. I didn’t know who she was, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. So I painted her. The gallery patroness loved the pieces. She wanted more. And then like magic, Alyss turned up to buy the dress. It all happened so fast.”

“Like magic? The women of her family are treacherous. They’ll do anything to get this bill passed.”

“Not Alyss-"

“She’s blinded you. Just like she does all men to get her way.”

Adom hung his head. Emet almost reached out to him. He couldn’t stand to see Adom upset. But Adom wasn’t looking at the upset he’d caused Emet. In pursuit of his own agenda, he’d likely dashed Emet’s dreams. What had Lady Alyss gleaned from Adom about how Emet planned to defeat the Insemination Bill?

“I’ll put a stop to it,” Adom said. “I’m sorry that I hurt you. For what it's worth, even if she harbored some secret plan, I think she’s a closet artist. She knows more about color than I do. And she’s aroused by the ropes. I thought she might orgasm from the sound of the pencil on the canvas.”
Adom smiled. But wiped it away when he saw Emet’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Adom said again. “I was going to tell you. I wasn’t going to let her in this afternoon, but I got carried away. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.”

Adom reached for him, but Emet pulled away. They rarely fought, and when they did they made up almost instantly. But this? This Emet couldn’t let go of immediately.

“I think you’re only sorry you got caught.”

“Em-“

“When you get in that painting mode, you don’t think about anyone but the canvas. So don’t let me interrupt your thoughts. Why don’t you spend the night in your studio near your paintings.”

Adom opened his mouth to protest, but then turned and went out of the room.

Emet slumped back onto the mattress. Even flat on his back the world still spun around him. He could barely grasp onto any thought save one. Lady Alyss bound in Adom’s knotted dress, suspended from a bondage rig with her eyes closed in rope bliss.

He didn’t know what kind of game was she playing at, but she’d just raised the stakes.

Chapter One

Alyss didn’t need to open her eyes to see the sun had risen. She felt the rays press into her face, her shoulders, her legs. The weight of the light cracked open the surface of her being. The bright tendrils reached into the chrysalis of her self. It wrapped around her soul and pulled.

Alyss opened her eyes. Her hands went to her shoulders, her thighs, her heart. There was an itch on her skin though she’d bathed and oiled herself before going to bed last night. She’d had to wash to scrub away the evidence of the paint.

She sat up now. She scratched at the itch at her elbow, then on down to her wrist. She stopped there, feeling the indentations in her skin from the previous night; the marks left by Adom’s ropes.
 

When she came home last night, she couldn’t sleep for all the energy running through her body. After Adom freed her from the ropes and massaged the kinks from her wrists, Alyss had expected all her worries and weights to resettle. They hadn’t. The sense of weightlessness, of freedom, remained. On her way home she’d gotten a burst of creative energy as though the ropes had freed her. She’d picked up a box of colored pencils and paints from a store. She snuck them into the house as though she were sneaking in a lover. She closed and locked her bedroom door and then lay on the floor all night wrapped up in her artwork. Before dawn, she shoved all the drawings into a dress bag in her closet. The servants weren’t allowed to touch her garments without her express permission. Her Mother and Grand Mother had no care for clothes outside of their basic functionality of covering their modesty. Her drawings were safe. No one would go in there.

Alyss went into her closet now and grabbed a dress of orange solid lines outlined in black. The dress fluttered over her head and came to rest on top of her curves. She went to her dresser to accent the dress with hair clips that resembled a butterflies wings.
 

Outside her window, a field of green stared back at her. Her Grand Mother’s gardens were once filled with an array of colorful blooms that people came far and wide to see. Alyss had loved waking to the sight when she was a girl. The best view had been from the nursery she’d shared with her sister. One of her male nannies had said that the garden had been designed by one of the girls’ fathers as a tribute to the Goddess. Neither Merlyn nor Alyss had ever met either of their fathers. Her Mother had sent both males away shortly after Alyss’ conception. Angyla had had two girl offsprings, a feat most women did not achieve in their society. Having no plans to conceive more, Angyla no longer had use for her husbands and sent them away. When both girls made it safely into their teen years without illness or incident, their Grand Mother had the flower garden tribute mowed down, replacing it with practical produce.