Floral Arrangements – Two

The door shut with a click behind them, and Maxim turned his back on it once he’d been assured it was secured. ‘Gerbera’ was inspecting the room that Gregory had given him for the duration of his trial, her countenance one of innocent curiosity. Her features were warmed and softened by the light in the smaller room, the yellow cast bringing out the red tones in her hair as she looked up at him. Her blue eyes were still smiling as Maxim slowly crossed the distance to join her by the bed.

“You travel lightly for a guest of the house,” she said, her eyes glancing back to him from his barely unpacked belongings, a polite, if slightly invasive assumption, though her face spoke plainly of the fact that holding her tongue on questions was taking a considerable amount of effort.  

“Colonel Samson was kind enough to put me up while I resolve my business,” he said, to answer at least as to why he’d taken her past the guest rooms that had been made available to the other partygoers.

“I see. Are you serving together?” she asked, turning a little so that he could loosen the ties on her dress.

“That is the question of the hour,” he mused out loud, carefully untying the lower knot and moving to her neckline.

She hummed, not pushing the question of his place in the military any further thankfully. “May I ask your name, sir?” she said instead, before glancing back over her shoulder, expression taking on a shade of mischief. “Or do you prefer to be called something else in the bed chamber?”

Maxim caught her chin with curled forefinger and thumb, smiling a little himself. “Just my name, thank you,” he said, colouring his tone with the same humour in hers and receiving another be-dimpled flash of teeth and lips in return. “Maxim.”

“Of course,” she said, her eyes flicking to his lips and then back up to his eyes. “Maxim.”

“Now that we are ever so properly introduced,” he drawled, getting another one of those startled laughs, “I do believe you have some terribly unladylike skills you might wish to demonstrate?”

“Ah!” she said, tone delighted as she clasped his hand at her chin and brought it to her lips, giving his fingers a soft kiss. “If that is to be the case then I must ask that you refer to me as ‘My Lady’ for the duration of our time together.”

Maxim stomped his heels together in a mockery of a military stance. “Of course, my Lady,” he said, relishing in the anticipatory heat gathering in his belly at the words. “And where would you have me?”

Her smile widened, chin tilting up with a challenging set to her jaw. “Sit on the bed for me, Maxim, my dear, clasp your hands behind your back, and keep still for me.”

Maxim bowed his head and stepped away obligingly, sitting in the middle of the bedside, feet set squarely on the floor, knees bent at a right angle, clasping his own wrist behind his back. Posture perfect; like any good soldier following an order. He looked at her, schooling his expression to one of cool expectation.

“Very good,” she said, tone coloured with approval, and she stepped toward his bedside table, setting the small painting of the gerbera on the surface next to his water jug. Once that was done she came to stand in front of him, placing herself just between his knees, and she reached forward, deft fingers loosening his cravat. “If you need me to stop at any point, tell me to stop.”

“Of course, my Lady,” he said again, tilting his chin up for her as she tugged the fabric from around his neck.

She laughed softly, stepping in a little to lean around him and get at his hands. “Such obedience must be rewarded,” she said, manipulating his hands to wrap around the cravat in fists next to each other. She tied it off over the top of his fingers—a sturdy enough knot that if his hands stayed in their fists he could pull against it without movement, though if he just let go it would fall straight off.

He flexed his fingers in the fabric, the resistance sending a ping of heat straight to his prick, and he looked up at her as she straightened once more. Her next step was to unpin her hair and it fell down around her face to just past her shoulders in soft waves, softening her face in shadows, an intimate gesture that was rarely shared with him. She set her hair pins into the neckline of her dress, a practicality that made him smile, before she pulled it over her head.

The dress disappeared behind her, Maxim not sparing a glance for where it ended up, taking in her slender form in her shift and stays. She smiled at his attention, a wide, smug thing no lady of a higher class would deign to express with her lips, and she leant in, lifting a knee onto the bed between his thighs. Her thigh pressed into his crotch, his prick firming at the contact through his trousers.

He swallowed, tilting his head back again and closing his eyes to keep his composure as her fingers returned to his neck and chest, slowly unbuttoning his shirt and dropping to do the same to his waistcoat. He tried to focus on that instead of the feeling of her thigh where it was slowly rubbing against him, taking him from half-hard to very ready with the slow, repeating pressure. She pushed his coat and waistcoat off his shoulders to hang loose around his elbows, freeing some of the weight and warmth on his chest. Her fingers stroked his neck and jaw lightly with a soft chuckle, before both they and the thigh on his prick vanished entirely.

When he opened his eyes with a soft puff of breath and looked down, she was kneeling between his knees. He bit back a soft sound at the sight, prompting her to glance up with those pretty blue eyes meeting his. She looked down again without saying anything and continued unbuttoning the flap on his trousers.

He wasn’t quite able to stifle himself when she drew his cock out with her hands, and she gave him an appreciative stroke, making it twitch. “Handsome all over,” she said, smiling up at him, before resting his length in the palm of her hand and placing one of those soft kisses on his shaft.

He swallowed again, shifting and tensing the muscles in his thighs. She’d asked him to sit still after all. “Thank you, my Lady.”

She smiled as she stood again, her hand wrapped loosely around his cock, and she gave the head a rub with the pad of her thumb, pulling back the foreskin, before she shifted to perch herself on his knee. Maxim took a deep breath, and she pushed her other hand around the back of his head and into the hair at the nape of his neck. He watched her, eyes glittering as she looked down at his face, her lips close enough to kiss.

Her grip was firm but measured as she curled her fingers tightly in his hair and jerked his head back, making him grunt. She chuckled again and squeezed his cock as she laid a kiss on his bared throat. “You are a sight for sore eyes,” she crooned, holding him in place at his head and his prick, her teeth scraping against his jugular. “A handsome man like you, and then so obedient? So endowed? You aren’t someone who disappoints a lady, now are you?”

Maxim smiled around his ragged laugh, flexing his fingers on the cravat again. Her grip tightened around the head of his cock as her lips flexed on his skin, and he could feel her collecting the dampness from his tip, pushing it down his shaft with his foreskin, making him moan. Her lips travelled up his neck and jaw, leaving moisture and gentle scrapes of teeth on the skin. “Very good,” she praised, repeating the firmer stroke with her hand. “Is this what you need?”

She squeezed the base of his cock and bit him as he opened his mouth to answer and he was cut off with a gasping moan, his hips jerking up into her hand. She increased the pressure, and arousal tightened in his groin like a spring, making him choke. “None of that, now,” she chided, her lips flirting with his ear, her disapproval making his head spin. “I asked you to sit still for me, can you do that, Maxim? Can you sit still for me?”

He swallowed, taking a heaving breath and willing himself to stillness again. “Yes, my Lady,” he croaked, and her grip in his hair tightened.

“Very good, Maxim,” she said, giving his prick a long pull with her hand that made his back arch. “Now can you answer my question for me? Is this what you need, Maxim?”

He moaned, eyes blinking wildly before he could answer. “Yes, my Lady,” he said again. His control of the situation had slipped wildly, quickly, and his arousal was both uncomplicated and entirely in her hands. This was exactly what he needed.

Her teeth tugged on his ear as she kept pulling at his cock, his chest heaving up against her. “You make such a pretty picture for me, Maxim,” she teased. “Oh, I’d paint you like this, tie your hands and keep you just for me.”

He laughed raggedly again, tilting his head to the side in her grip to try and see her, but she jerked on his hair again to put him back in place, making him jerk. “No, Maxim,” she said with patient humour, her hand on his cock like so much fire with every stroke, slick and warm and soft with the precursor to his spill. “I just got you right where I want you, I need you to hold it for me, you’re so pretty like this, can you hold it for me for just a little longer?”

She paused in her strokes to rub her thumb under the head of his cock, small, focused circles right where it was most sensitive, making him lose all of his ability to speak in a drawn-out moan. His head throbbed with the heat of it, leaving him bleary and panting.

She chuckled in his ear, her breath wet and hot as she picked up her pace. “That’s what I like to hear,” she murmured, taking it for an answer instead of demanding his voice again. He shuddered in her grip as she wrapped his cock in her fist again, pumping with short, strong motions around the head, and he couldn’t quite stop the jerking in his hips, like she was pulling him towards her with just her fingers.

Instead of scolding him this time she pressed close, perhaps sensing he didn’t have much left in him. “That’s it, Maxim,” she murmured. “So beautiful for me, so hot in my hand for me, you’re so strong, you’re being so good, oh, I could keep doing this forever, would you like that? Me, here on your lap just making you spill all—”

He jerked in her grip with a curse, head tossing back and eyes clenching shut as he did just that, overflowing in her fingers. He moaned at the pulsing sensation in his cock, feeling the pressure in his groin unwind so fast it was disorienting.

Gerbera’s fingers in his hair had turned to stroking gently as he came back down, and she was pressed close, smiling indulgently at him, just holding his prick steady in her warm, slick hand as he finished. “Beautiful,” she said approvingly, kissing his cheek.

He grunted, flexing his fingers and releasing the cravat. They were unnaturally stiff from having clutched it so tight for so long, and it felt like he’d clenched too tightly when he’d come. His thigh muscles were also sore, unused to the tension he’d been holding in that position, or the unnatural jerking motions he’d made towards the end there.

“Flex yourself out a little,” advised Gerbera, climbing to her feet and stretching her arms above her head, flexing her neck to one side. “Do you have a handkerchief? And writing tools?”

Maxim nodded blearily, rubbing at his neck before gesturing at the drawer in the bedside table. She gave him a grateful smile and opened the drawer (with her clean hand, thankfully) while he massaged his wrists out. She wet the ‘kerchief in his water jug before wiping her hand off, balling it up so that his spill was inside with a practised motion, and he took it from her to place with his soiled pants while she collected a pen and ink.

It took but a few moments to divest himself of his clothes, carefully figuring out which would need laundering (he possibly should have insisted on getting naked), and when he turned back Gerbera was standing over the bedside table, writing on the back of the flower painting. She turned her head, the hair falling around her face like a curtain. “Can you sign this for me, please?”

Maxim nodded, tugging his night shift over his head and pacing across to her, accepting the pen. His lip twitched to see the list of their activities laid out in whorehouse shorthand, amusing to read such a thing in her neat lettering. “You have uncommonly fine handwriting,” he commented, placing a small signature next to hers.

“Is it as fine as my painting?” she asked with merry humour.

“You painted this?” he asked, flipping it back over to inspect the flower with a closer eye, before looking back over to where she was tugging her dress into place, and he stepped to her once more. “Here, let me.”

“Yes,” she said, turning with a grateful smile so he could knot her ties once more. “My thanks. I make sloppy knots.”

“They do the job,” said Maxim, handing her back her card of custom. When she took it, he caught her hand and lifted it, kissing her knuckles. “Thank you for the fine evening, my Lady.”

“You’re very welcome, sir,” she said, smiling at him with those dimples. “Rest well.”

She was still wearing the dimples as she went back down the hall, and if Maxim had a smile of his own when he took himself to sleep, he was the only one who had to know.

< Prev * Next >