Kushiel's Chosen

swung his arm, and a crimson burst of pain slashed across my skin. I could not help it; I cried aloud in pleasure.
    "Asherat!" A curse or invocation, the word exploded from Severio's lips and the birch-rods cut the air again, flailing my back. "You ... D'Angeline ..." Again, and again, his voice, breathless; the pain, sublime. Locked behind my neck, my hands clutched each other, white-knuckled. "You ..." again, "will... acknowledge ... my ... sovereignty ..." Ah, Elua, Naamah, Kushiel! I drew breath, shaking, and heard myself plead for him to stop, meaning it and not meaning it. "You like this, don't you?" Severio taunted, flogging mercilessly. "You want it to end? Ask me again ..." Again, and again, lashings of pain, bursting exquisitely over my consciousness. My vision reeled, swimming in a red fog of pain, threaded by my pleading voice and the slashing sound of the birch-rods. "Again!" His voice, harsh and panting. "Tell me again ... how you want... to please me ..."
    What I said, I do not remember, only that I felt his hands on me then, shoving my knees apart as he thrust himself into me and I wept at the release of it, hanging my head until his fingers tangling in my long hair and drew my head back hard, so I was bent like a bow. "Show me," his voice grated at my ear, and I did, in a long, shuddering climax that milked the length of him as he pounded into me, my haunches thrust back hard against his loins.
    "Again." His voice was merciless, his hands relinquishing my hair, grasping now at my breasts, squeezing and pinching. He was tireless, I had taken too much from him with the languisement. "Again!"
    Despairing, I obliged.
    Thus was my first assignation since my rededication to the Service of Naamah concluded, and when it was done, I felt calm and languid, my mood as soft as the warm, moist air of a summer evening after a thunderstorm has passed. So it has ever been, since I was a child at Cereus House, whipped for disobedience, a delicious languor suffusing my aching flesh.
    For his part, Severio Stregazza was lamb-meek, purged of his youthful rage and full of wonder at what had transpired. Solicitous as a lover, he laid a silken robe across my shoulders, mindful of the fresh weals that marred my skin, and aided me to his couch, calling for wine.
    "It is true, then," he marveled, laying a hand upon my face and gazing at my eyes, the scarlet mote in the left. "That you are an, an anguissette."
    "Yes, my lord." I laughed softly. "It is true. Are you sorry to find it so?"
    "No!" His eyes widened, and he took a seat at the opposite end of the couch, laughing. "No, not hardly, my lady. Tell me, are there others?"
    "Not now." I shook my head. "There have been, in the past. Master Robert Tielhard, who inked my marque, heard stories from his grandfather."
    "What happened to them?"
    I arranged the folds of my robe about me in a more pleasing fashion. "The last living anguissette I know of was Iriel de Fiscarde of Azzalle, who went willingly into a marriage of servitude to the Kusheline Duc de Bonnel to avert war between their Houses. A matter of D'Angeline politics." I smiled at the servant who brought wine, ignoring his look askance at the deserted ivory chair and fasces bundle as he poured for us. 'Tell me, my lord," I said to Severio, sipping my wine as his servant departed. "Do you truly despise us so?"
    He sighed, running his hands through his hair and dislodging his laurel crown, which sat rather askew anyway. "Yes. No." Regarding the wreath, he tossed it on the floor. "Say rather that my hide, rough Serenissiman stuff as it is, has grown thin in this regard," he said wryly. "I have been too often reminded of my inadequacies in comparison to full-blooded D'Angelines."
    "I thought my lord acquitted himself rather well in comparison." I smiled, watching him flush with pleasure. Flattery is headier stuff than wine, to young men. "Who is it dares say otherwise?"
    "Not honest Serenissimans." He drank half his wine at a gulp, wiping his lips. "And not anyone here, in truth; it's all looks and glances. No, if it comes from anywhere, it comes from the Little Court, in La Serenissima." He caught my inquiring gaze. "That's what they call it, you know; my grandfather Benedicte's palazzo and the D'Angeline holdings in the district." Severio's mouth twisted. "It didn't used to be as bad when my grandmother was alive."
    "Your grandfather remarried, did he not?" I asked.
    He nodded absently. "Elaine de Tourais, she is called;