Kushiel's Chosen

voice steady. "I did not know there was a term for it." I did not need it explained. Every patron knew my signale.
    "Oh, yes." She smiled again, lazy and dangerous. "And no one has plucked one yet, I am told. Tell me, if I made you a proposal, would you accept it?"
    Something happened at the gaming table; a good-natured cheer arose. Fortun had won. I stared at Nicola's violet eyes-so like her cousins', Duc and Queen-and weighed the risks, making my decision in spite of them. "Yes," I said, calculating. What was it worth, to Barquiel L'Envers? "If it was fitting."
    The proposal came the next day by courier.

TWENTY
    A long white cord sturdily-wrought of silken threads hung around my neck.
    "I knew a man in Aragon," Nicola mused aloud, drawing the ends of the cord beneath my arms and crossing them at my back, "who had travelled the spice routes to the uttermost east; the Empire of the Sun, they call it. They have arts of the bed-chamber as would interest even Naamah, he said." She wrapped the cord about my waist and moved behind me, using it to secure my wrists together. "Of course, I'd not time to learn them all. But what I did was most interesting. Ah, yes, that's nice."
    Stepping back, she regarded her handiwork. I stood, docile, half-bound and naked as she took up another length of cord and set about securing it, from nape to waist and through my thighs, binding it to my wrists. I shifted my shoulders experimentally, feeling the friction of the cord between my legs.
    "I'm not done," Nicola L'Envers y Argon said mildly, taking hold of the back of my neck. "On your knees, if you please."
    I knelt, bowing my head automatically; the tension on the cord caused the silken length working its way between my nether lips to tighten, making me gasp. I raised my head, forced to kneel with back arched and breasts out-thrust.
    "Now," she said, satisfied, "you begin to understand."
    And then she set about finishing her work, binding my ankles tight together, and running the cord to knot it at my wrists. No matter how I moved, the cord grew taut between my legs, slipping back and forth. Lest I mistake it for chance, she had cunningly tied a knot there, a small, hard protuberance in the soft cord that taunted me, rubbing against Naamah's Pearl every time I shifted, causing me to bite my lip.
    It pleased her; it pleased her a great deal. I could not help but gaze at her, on my knees, my chin upraised by virtue of the cord's necessity. Nicola prowled around me, smiling, violet eyes alit with pleasure, a finely-made deerskin flogger in her hand. There were steel tips at the ends of it.
    "Do you like this?" she asked, almost tenderly. "Hmm?"
    "No."
    Her arm moved in a swinging, sidelong gesture, and streaks of pain burst across my buttocks, my lower back, and my tied hands. I cried out and jerked against my bonds, causing the cord to saw into me, making my breathing ragged.
    "You lie, don't you?" Nicola brought the flogger across me in a backhanded blow, raking across my breasts; the pain was so vivid I saw stars, and Kushiel's red haze. "Don't you!" She struck me again. I tossed my head involuntarily to avoid the blow, and the cord tautened against my efforts, tightening at the wrists, the knot between my thighs riding up and down against the sensitive node of flesh there. Nicola laughed, and trailed the flogger over my flesh; like an idiot, I struggled, bound tighter each time I writhed. The cords bit into my flesh everywhere, and a throbbing tide of pleasure rose in me. "Fight it, then, and see if you may free yourself," she taunted, striking me again. "Fight it!"
    Half-obedient, half-defiant, I did, until the cord drew so tight my hands were numb, and that knot, that little knot, rode up and down, up and down against Naamah's Pearl, slick with moisture against my swollen flesh, pleasure mounting higher the harder I struggled against it, until I surrendered and cried out at the waves of pleasure that overwhelmed me.
    When I opened my eyes-for I had closed them involuntarily-I saw the rich weave of Nicola's woolen carpet inches from me, and felt it scratch against my cheek. I'd not known, till then, that I'd fallen on my side.
    "You may struggle all you like, but the result will never change," Nicola's voice said far above me, rich with amusement. "What I learned, I learned well. What will you give for your release, Phèdre nó Delaunay?"
    "Anything you want," I whispered, trying not to move. The least gesture set off fresh ripples