his fingers. Sylvie smelled overwhelmingly of leather, with hints of aniseed and marzipan. Nothing like Imena.
If she’d only given him another chance, it might be Imena’s mouth on him now, her full lips grasping and pulling at his cock’s head, her soft tongue swirling beneath his foreskin. She’d liked it when he’d caressed her scalp. He would do that for her, caress her with palms and hard fingertips and the gentlest of scratches.
Sylvie. This was Sylvie, not Imena. He was letting Sylvie suck his cock because it was less lonely than bringing himself off, alone in his rooms. He needed to tell her how much he appreciated this, but she was so skilled it was difficult for him to form words. A groan fell from his lips, and she rubbed his hip approvingly.
“Sylvie—” he said.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
She nibbled at his foreskin, fondling him with both hands. This wasn’t as encompassing as her steady suction, and he breathed easier. He said, “I’ll never be able to watch you eat anything again without remembering this.”
“I know.” She reached around and slapped his buttock. “I think you would like this to be fast and hard.”
“I would prefer that, yes.” Fast and hard would blank his mind, stop him yearning for the woman he could not have.
Sylvie let go of his erection and dug her fingers into his buttocks. “You are pathetically in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Just get on with it, Sylvie. Are you going to swallow that or not?”
Sylvie pinched him sharply, an exquisite thrill down the length of his cock, and sucked him into her mouth, unmercifully torturing his tenderest spots. Seconds later, all his thoughts were gone, whited out with rapidly climbing, painful need.
He came hard, his spine unkinking with each spasm. Gasping for breath, he threw out a hand and caught himself on the desk. Warmth shuddered over his skin, leaving relaxation in its wake, but also burgeoning despair. “Thank you,” he said to Sylvie, who still crouched on the carpet. She was smirking with arrogant satisfaction. At least she had enjoyed herself. “And you?” he asked.
Sylvie rose to her feet, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “You’re already wishing you hadn’t let me, aren’t you?”
“Of course not!” Maxime said. “You’re amazing, Sylvie. What would you like from me? The same? Or would you like to take your pleasure with me otherwise?”
She laughed. “Pah! I can see it in your eyes. Guilt. You don’t want me right now. The captain hasn’t given you anything, and still you feel loyalty to her.” She dug a handkerchief from the pocket of her jacket and wiped Maxime’s softened cock, a little more roughly than he would have liked. “You are like a girl in the first throes of infatuation.” She tugged him down to her and kissed his mouth, quick and hard. “I already had to endure endless sighs of longing from Henri and Madame as they discovered romance. From you, it is even more pitiful.”
Wonderful. He couldn’t even manage an uncomplicated fuck to console himself. “I see. I’m dismissed, am I?”
“You are, Your Grace,” Sylvie said. She patted his hip. “If you will excuse me, a pair of your largest footmen await me in my chambers. And the little one, too, Volker. The one who does the thing with his tongue.”
Maxime winced. “I’d prefer not to know what you’re doing to my staff.”
Sylvie poked out her tongue at him. “You may come to me again when the delicious captain abandons you barefoot on the docks of a foreign port, and I will consider—consider only—tying you to a bed for my pleasure.”
CHAPTER FOUR
IMENA WASN’T ABLE TO ENJOY HER SOAK IN THE baths. As soon as she was sure Maxime had truly departed, she dried herself, dressed and returned to Seaflower, heaving a sigh of relief as soon as she felt the deck shifting beneath her feet. Chetri was gone, as was half of her crew, all of them no doubt carousing throughout the town’s shops, brothels and bathhouses, having perfectly licentious shore leave. She would do the same. She stormed into her cabin and swiftly divested herself of her turquoise finery, tossing it onto her wide bunk.
“No, sir! You’ll crush it!”
Imena’s cabin girl, Norris, darted into the cabin, hands outthrust as if to prevent wrinkles by force of will. She darted beneath Imena’s arm and seized the jacket and trousers to her flat chest. Small and slim-hipped, she wore her long ginger hair pinned up with myriad lacquered clips, and her face made up with a careful selection of cosmetics. Though she was, in fact, male, she had dressed as a girl since a young age, and as a result was usually better turned out than her captain. Her tailored green jacket and loose trousers were considerably more elegant and stylish than most of Imena’s garments. Also, she was very skilled at making the most of Imena’s minimal bosom.
Imena scooped up a faded linen singlet and yanked it over her head. “Fine. Pack it away. I won’t need it for a while.”
Norris took the silk garments to the wide table Imena used for charts and spread them carefully atop the glass surface. “I’ve packed a trunk for you, to take to the castle.”
“I’m not going back to the castle.”
“But Chetri said—”
“I’ve already seen His Grace. I’m going to visit Sanji.” Imena snatched a pair of linen trousers from atop a trunk and yanked them on over her knee-length drawers. “Where’s my jacket?”
“Hanging in the wardrobe,” Norris said. “I pressed it. You can’t go ashore all crumpled. You’re the captain.”
Imena slid open the wardrobe’s bamboo door and found her plain black jacket, now crisply tidy and scented with lavender. She grabbed a brimmed cap from the top shelf and crammed it onto her head to shade her eyes. “His Grace did not hire me for my sartorial elegance,” she said wryly.
“No, I don’t think he did,” Norris said, winking. Imena threw her discarded undershirt at her.
A few minutes later, Imena ventured back into the streets of the town. Past the dock area, she was much more conspicuous, and as usual, she steeled herself against stares, most of them curious, a few hostile, and all of them wary. As soon as she could, she hailed a pony-cab and gave Sanji’s address. She leaned back in the padded seat and closed her eyes, forcing herself to replace Maxime’s image in her mind with Sanji’s. It was more difficult than she’d thought. She’d seen Sanji’s body dozens of times, Maxime’s rarely, but she had recent sense memory of Maxime’s heavy muscularity and the scent and texture of his hair and skin. Remembering how his hands had felt on her body made her belly melt. If only he was not the duke. If only.
Sanji’s home adjoined his chandler’s shop. For once, his two young sons were not playing in the grassy back garden where Sanji kept a milch goat; with a twinge, she remembered this was their week to visit with their aunt who lived inland. She had been looking forward to playing with the boys. Imena went into the shop, saw Sanji’s assistant minding the counter and ducked outside again.
She found Sanji in his workshop, mounting a compass into a new protective casing crafted from slender strips of varicolored woods. The navigator in her appreciated his craftsmanship; as apprentice to a starmaster in her teens and
