Read Online Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey - Free Book Online Page B

meeting her eyes and beckoned her toward the left-hand entrance. She giggled and went with him.
    The veiled woman ushered us into the right-hand entrance. I felt at once uneasy and aroused. She led us into a private salon. With a shy gesture, she drew back her veil to bare a lovely face, though her gaze remained averted.
    “Be welcome, my lords,” she murmured. “I am Agnés Ramel, the Second of Alyssum House.” A light flush touched her cheek. “We have all manner of adepts to serve you. You may whisper your desires to me.”
    I felt a fool when my turn came, bending to whisper into her delicate ear.
I seek a woman
. Surely there was naught out of the ordinary in it, and yet her flush deepened and her eyelids trembled.
    Amid hushed apologies, her steward brought the contracts. We all signed them and paid our patron-fees, and one would have thought there was somewhat unnatural in the transaction for all the embarrassment it caused.
    “This way,” she whispered.
    I had been to only two Houses of the Night Court, and they were very different. Here, there was no easy commingling. What Mavros and Julien had chosen, I couldn’t say, but I had to await my turn before I was ushered into a room filled with female adepts, standing in a line. All of them were robed and veiled, but the robes they wore were of sheer linen, almost transparent in the lamplight. I could make out the shapes of their bodies; tall, slender, plump, short, firm. At a word from Agnés, they unveiled and stood with eyes downcast.
    The remembered odor of stagnant water haunted me. It was too much like the Mahrkagir’s zenana, the women awaiting his summons in dread. I did not like the way it stirred me. “I’m sorry,” I said thickly. “I fear this is not for me.”
    Agnés Ramel twisted her hands together in an agony of embarrassment. “My lord, please! Do not be cruel.”
    Near the end of the line, one of the adepts glanced up at me. A quick glance, swift and darting, and then her gaze was lowered once more.
    “All right,” I said recklessly, pointing. “Her.”
    Her name was Mignon, and once I had chosen, she led me to a private chamber. There, I gazed at her. Her limbs beneath the sheer linen were soft and rounded, and she made me think of a dove. She looked away.
    “Will you put out the lamps, my lord?” she whispered.
    “No,” I said. “Mignon, this is a game, is it not?”
    “Would you have it be so?” She did look at me then, her eyes full of soft wonder. “No, my lord. There are those among us who believe that Naamah trembled at what she did when first she lay with a mortal man—at the audacity of it, at the shame of it, at the glory of it.”
    “Shame,” I murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed.
    “Shame is a spice, my lord,” Mignon said softly. “Why have you come here if you do not understand this?”
    “Because,” I said, “Alyssum starts with an ‘A.’ ”
    “Then I will have to show you.”
    It was not, I think, the way assignations usually went in Alyssum House; or mayhap it was common. I do not know. Mignon sat on my lap and stroked my face, her fingers quivering. She rained soft kisses on me, her breath quickening, and pressed herself against me. Her body trembled in truth, and yet she radiated heat and the tips of her rounded breasts were taut with desire as they rubbed against my chest. She whispered in my ear, telling me in a broken voice all the things she wished me to do to her, until I groaned aloud.
    I understood.
    There was pleasure in it, and it was a pleasure akin to the violent ones I had known in Valerian House, though it was different, too. I did all that she wished, and all that I wished, too. And yet I could not relish the shame. For her, it was purging. For me, it was not.
    When we were finished, she wrapped herself once more in her linen robes. “I’m sorry, my lord. I wish I could have pleased you better.”
    “Don’t be.” I leaned down to kiss her, but she turned her head away.