#*vanrose

When Iphigenia first enters the chambers, all Beron can see is his collar around her slender neck. The gilded setting glints attractively against her pale skin when the firelight hits it, each individual ruby like its own small sun, burning bright with his claim to her. He bestowed it upon her like a coronet, and he fused the metal at its back with his own power until it joined together, seamless and final. She fawned with delight, beaming up at him as she dropped to her knees and took him appreciatively down her throat.

He expects much the same now, but instead, as he looks to her face while she is prepared for him, he is struck with the sense that she has been summoned here to endure her own funerary rites. Solemnity infuses her expression, her eyes glassy and round, her brows drawn up ever so at their inner corners. Once the attendants have finished with her, she drifts over to him listlessly, wraith more than warm-blooded female. Her mind remains far from him even as his fingers close around her wrist to pull her body into his lap, and though she is sat with her legs between his, facing him, she does not press her mouth to his neck as she is wont to do in greeting, nor does she stroke a hand down his chest or his arm.

"Is it so distressing to find yourself in my company again?" Beron inquires, equable, calm despite his mounting annoyance. "Just last night, you pleaded that I not send you away, yet now it seems to me you would rather be anywhere but here."

As though fluttered on a sudden wind, Iphigenia bats her lashes. She looks up at him like she is realizing for the first time where she is and who she is in the presence of.

"No, High Lord, not at all," she says hushedly, dotting a kiss to the corner of his mouth like that will distract him from the wobble of her lower lip. "You know that I spend our time apart wishing for it not to be so."

Beron cradles her jaw in his palm to better hold her in his sights, running his eyes along her face, which is mellowed with sorrow, and his collar, which fits irrevocably to her.

"Then why do you spoil our reunion with such sadness?"

"I beg your pardon, High Lord." Her eyes dew over. "Such is not my intention."

"That is no answer," he replies, stroking the pad of his thumb along her cheekbone.

The first tear spills like heartbreak down her face as she closes her eyes into his touch, pooling along the side of his thumb, slipping him hot and wet on her skin. Voice already wavering with emotion, she says, "I brought with me a locket gifted by my mother. It bore the likeness of our home so that I might not misremember it in my time away." A sniffle, one which stutters into her lungs as would that of a youngling hoping to seem brave after injury. "When I returned last night to my quarters, I found it smashed to pieces." Small and fragile here at the end: "I have not the means to repair it."

All of this over some homely trinket, while a fortune rests around her throat.

His irritation threatens to spark and catch—but as those round, helpless eyes open back to him, he reminds himself that this flower of his is young still, and delicate besides. There is an innocence rooted still in her heart, as there is left in those of so few. It would not do to pluck it from her.

Beron gathers her up against his chest. She collapses into his embrace like she has been waiting desperately for it since coming across her locket, burying her face into his neck and drawing his scent in deep. The stirring of her breath draws a pleasant sensation to his skin.

"Forgive me," Iphigenia cries, wrapping her arms about his neck. "Forgive me, High Lord."

He shushes her, sweeping a broad hand down the length of her spine, down over the prominent swell of her hip, then back up the narrow of her waist. The silken, sheer fabric on her body bunches where his fingertips brush the burgeoning curve of her breast. She is pressed so firmly against him, the whole of her body jostling with her sobs, that his cock begins to rouse beneath her thighs.

How can he be cross with her for needing his comfort?

Beron soothes her with his touch until her crying lessens, rocking her against him as a father might his babe, his cock swelling further with every bounce of her body onto it—more insistent a motion each time. By the time her breath has evened out to only the occassional sniffle, he has hardened to aching. He considers slipping inside of her now; it would be a simple matter with the scant fabric between them, and it would draw her mind at once back to him, away from this puerility.

But she would only look at him sadly after, bruised and heartsore, thinking still to her broken locket for days to come, if not longer.

Beron asks, "Which of them did it?"

Iphigenia goes silent. Then, "I could not say for certain, High Lord. I was not there to see it happen."

Sweet thing, gracious enough to spare those who hurt her—but now that she bears his undeniable claim, one that all the bed slaves would recognize, she must know he has to act.

"No," Beron accedes, "but you know who did it. This could not have been the first offense to have upset you so."

Another pause. "It would not be fair of me to accuse them wrongly, High Lord."

His grip tightens reflexively on her hip. "Then perhaps you care not for this locket after all."

Iphigenia adjusts in his lap as she pulls back to look at him, drawing her arms down to press her palms flat against his chest. As her weight shifts along his cock, pleasure licks out into his core. He finds himself captivated by the radiance her tears have made of her, cheeks flushed prettily, full lips drawn into an accentuating pout.

"It is only that I do not wish for them to be punished, High Lord," she murmurs.

Beron drags his thumb across her lower lip, watching it slide slowly back into place from where he displaces it with his touch. "That, petal, is the only way to ensure a lesson lasts." He pulls her in by the chin to capture her mouth, tasting her innocence on her tears—so very young, such gentle, feminine naivety. "But they will not be hurt, if that is what holds your tongue."

Iphigenia closes the small distance to kiss him again, and there, dancing now along his tastebuds: her gratitude. Onto his lips, she condemns first, "Margot," then, after another eager kiss, "and Aurore."

Beron does not recognize the names. Sweeping his tongue deeper into her mouth, he bids the Forest House summon the procuress, and the female arrives without delay, curtsying low in his periphery. She keeps her gaze properly averted as he instructs her who to send him between doting kisses.

The culpable whores appear in short order, their heads bowed and their hands clasped behind their backs as they wait for him to acknowledge them. He keeps his mouth busied with Iphigenia, but he looks them over as she suckles sweetly at his bottom lip, then trails down towards his neck.

Now that they are before him, he finds he can recognize them by face: both comely, their hair long and dark, their bodies curved nicely beneath their diaphanous garb. He made use of them both a moon ago, just before Iphigenia was procured—but he has not called on either since.

He understands now.

Drawing back and tucking a lock of Iphigenia's hair behind her pointed ear, Beron asks, "These are the whores who broke your locket?"

Iphigenia does not look to them, but they both glance sharply at her. She keeps her eyes fixed on him as the flush to her cheeks deepens. "Yes, High Lord."

"They must have forgotten themselves, to think they could disrespect a female of mine," Beron says, skimming his fingertips just above her collar. "We will have to remind them of their place."

Tilting her head to the side, Iphigenia says, "We, High Lord?"

Beron smiles at her, teeth glinting, his cock twitching against her ass. He takes her by the slim catch of her waist, turning her bodily until she sits with her back to his chest, looking out at the two whores with him.

"Do you know why they sought to hurt you?" he asks.

Iphigenia shakes her head, a small movement rolling against his clavicle.

"For the same reason any insect stings," Beron says, sweeping her hair to one shoulder and baring her neck. The whores track his mouth as it near her collar. "You are above them in all ways, and they hope to pain you enough to forget how easily you can crush them should you wish to."

Both females before them assume a gratifying, sickly shade of white.

Beron grazes his teeth above the metal setting, then takes his time running his lips up and along the corner of Iphigenia's jaw. At her ear, he asks lowly, "But you do not wish to, petal?"

Iphigenia shivers. "No, High Lord."

Flicking his gaze to the trembling whores, Beron commands, "Express your gratitude. Were it not for her, I'd have a hand from each of you. Not even the lowliest of brothels would take you then."

"Thank you," says the one on the left, the other a half-second behind.

The fire in the hearth roars as he loosens his hold on his magic, just enough to make them both startle. "Address her properly as your better."

Hurriedly, they amend, "Thank you, mistress."

Iphigenia stares at them, awed at being addressed so.

Beron sweeps his hands along her waist and hips. Her skin pebbles under his tending, a soft noise in her throat as he grinds his cock up against her ass. Brusquely, he orders the whores before them, "Undress."

He feels Iphigenia's pulse kick up beneath his mouth as they obey, sheer fabric slipping down their bodies and pooling at their feet, exposing their round tits and bare cunts.

Iphigenia turns her face up to him, brow dipped. "I don't understand, High Lord."

"The only thing you may not have them do is touch you," Beron tells her. His own heartbeat thuds mightily with the force of his arousal as the words pass his lips, to grant her a sliver of his power and watch her wield it. He satiates this swell of desire with her mouth for another long, indulgent moment, rocking up against her. "Otherwise," he says onto her tongue, "they are yours to command."

Beron waves a hand to rid himself of his clothing, freeing his cock to feel the curves of her ass directly on him. He pulls her flat against him with an arm around her abdomen so that her head rests against his shoulder, his cock pressed delightfully between their bodies.

"Anything you can think, Iphigenia," he encourages when she remains quiet.

Softly, she says to him, "I do not want to share you either, High Lord."

His breath heavies at this unexpected little display of territoriality from her, at her kittenish desire to make him hers the way he has made her his. "Tell them."

Iphigenia swallows. Near apologetically, she says to the whores, "Only I will serve the High Lord tonight. You will not touch him in any way."

In unison, they respond, "Yes, mistress."

Urging Iphigenia's face up to him, his other hand stroking along her thigh, Beron says, "See how readily they take to your command?"

Her pupils bloom as she nods, wending her arms up to loop them behind his neck, the position pushing her breasts up for his gaze to feast upon. He drifts his hands up her body to palm at them, rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers until her back arches for him to gain even better vantage—the stretch of her navel, the creases of her hips, the oil glistening at her pussy.

"If they cannot touch me," he coaxes, "would you have them touch each other?"

On a whine: "Yes, High Lord."

"Where?" Beron coos, easing away from her nipples to feel the weight of her breasts in his hold over again.

Her lids low, Iphigenia looks to the whores and says, "Between the legs."

She does not have the capacity for vulgarity in her, let alone the ferocity required for this punishment. He begins to find relief against her ass in earnest.

"Lie down and spread each other's cunts," he commands on her behalf.

Iphigenia, the heat of her face whispering against him, looks away as they arrange themselves on their backs. Beron takes hold of her face and keeps it righted as their legs fall away, each reaching a hand over to part the other, two fingers splaying their cunts wide.

"Look, petal," he says. "Ugly, used-up things. If you could catch full sight of your own, you'd know it to be only envy that drove them." With a knee, he pushes her legs apart, letting the covering of her garb fall aside so that her pretty little pussy is exposed. He holds her still when she tries to turn her face away again, then instructs her, "Have them tell you of your beauty."

Her voice breathy, her eyes fixed on the way the whores have instinctively begun to pet on each other, Iphigenia bids, "Tell me."

"You glisten ripely," says the one to the left, "like a just-bitten pome."

"It's true," says the other, her gaze rapt as she fixes it upon Iphigenia, a whetted edge cutting through her teeth. "Never before have I seen a cunt the likes of yours."

Iphigenia nearly flinches.

That one must be the ringleader, for this is how females like to fight: twisted words and all that is left unspoken in their empty spaces. He recalls her better to his mind, how she bucked back against him without any natural finesse, angrily, as though she could punish his cock with the squeeze of her cunt. It had enticed him then, to shove her face into the mattress and watch her rage against taking him—but such bullishness is unbecoming turned here on Iphigenia.

Beron releases his hold on Iphigenia’s jaw to rub his fingers along her pussy. He strokes her languidly, soothingly, finding that his fingertips slip already through the slick of her arousal when they dip low enough. With an appreciative mewl, she presses her forehead against the side of his neck as he crooks them inside of her.

His drupelet enjoys this more than she can let herself admit.

Of the whore, Beron demands, "Have you known a great many cunts?"

She blushes, as though her fingers are not even now pushing between the folds of one. "Some, lord."

"More than that, I'd wager," Beron sneers. He dips his mouth to Iphigenia's ear and says, "Seems it is a cock we need to best recall this whore to her place."

Iphigenia nods.

Beron lifts her by the waist with his free arm, just enough that his cock springs up between the garden of her thighs. He withdraws his fingers to slide the length of himself along her drenched pussy, which flutters at the contact like it wishes to draw him in already. She makes a soft, high noise that tightens immediately at his balls, so he urges her thighs closed with his own and begins to thrust slowly into them.

The way she drips is indeed like bitten fruit, and the feel of her around him is as slick as if he already were buried in her, succulent and fleshy.

Beron looks from the rhythmic jut of his cockhead through the press of her legs down to the performance at their feet. The arousal of the whores is on the air, their busy fingers wet and squelching, and each is making quiet noises of delight despite their palpable apprehension. He should not have been so quick to let Iphigenia limit him. It has been a time since he has had this many females at his disposal at once, focused as he has been on her.

"You don't wish to watch me put them in their place, petal? To see how filthy whores like these deserve to be handled?" He guides her by the hips as he draws his pleasure from between her thighs, staring down the elongated arch of her body, eyeing the way her thighs ripple with the force of him pressing up from beneath. "I would not take them kindly—not the way I take you." A kiss to her throat. "You would find more enjoyment in it than you think."

Hardly able to think at all past his touch, past the lewd slip of his cock along her pussy, Iphigenia can only make another of her honeyed sounds. Beron squeezes the ample flesh in his grip to spur a response.

"Is this not meant to be a punishment, High Lord?" She looks up at him through her lashes, then down to his cock, drawing an arm from behind him to position her hand so that his cockhead slides into her waiting hold. Overcome by the sight, his spend wells up at the tip. She thumbs at it when he next fucks into her hand, smearing it along the cleft of him, then she brings her fingerpad between her lips and laps him from her skin. "To have you at all would only reward them."

Beron groans. He glances to the whore on the left, though he is reticent to look away from Iphigenia. Through his teeth: "Go fetch a male."

The whore looks worriedly to her companion but rises to her feet without hesitation. “At once, High Lord.”

The other whore tracks her egress, pulse thundering where the turn of her head elongates her throat. Her fear melds more strongly with her arousal, musky where it fills his lungs.

Beron begins to thrust up more forcefully.

Iphigenia gasps, twining her fingers into the hair at the base of his neck, tightening her grip around his cockhead. Her breasts are heaving at this new angle, her nipples taut where they brush against the gossamer fabric doing nothing to cover them.

A distraction in his periphery, the whore turns bodily towards the exit, as if preparing herself to flee—as if she thinks him the sort of single-minded male to permit that just because his cock is busied with a female.

Without removing his gaze from Iphigenia, Beron burnishes bright ropes of fire into life around the whore's wrists, yanking them sharply between her legs and lashing them to a matching set of flaming restraints around her ankles. She cries out as she falls forth onto her face, her holes fluttering and her muscles spasming as the fire bites into her flesh, its heat of strength enough to mark but not leave any disfiguring injury.

Just as the whore surrenders to her fate, the dismissed female returns with a male just behind her. A broad buck, his body bare and his dick already primed.

"Mount this one," Beron bids the male, kicking his foot out in indication. "Give her no quarter."

Despite that he remains intact, it is obvious the male has been neutered in his training. He dips his golden head and says demurely, "It is a pleasure to serve, High Lord."

Iphigenia runs her eyes over him as he settles behind the prostrate whore.

"And you," Beron acknowledges the other female, "on your knees before her."

Though Iphigenia’s eye ought to be drawn by the settling of this whore just the same, she does not look away from the male slave. Her gaze drifts over him again as she pants and moans, lingering on the muscles of his chest, then on his cock as he notches it at the cunt he is to abuse.

The flame binding the whore flares up, a brief but effective warning not to move away as he separates her wrist restraints from her ankles. She scrambles up to her elbows and is met with the the cunt of the other whore positioned before her.

Beron says, "If your tongue parts from her ass for even a moment, she will tell me, and it will be taken from you. Do you understand?"

The whore's response is choked off by the cock slamming into her from behind, muffled then by the ass she is shoved into, her yelps caught up behind her slavering tongue and the sobs overcoming her.

Beron looks back to Iphigenia—to the trappings still on her body. He tears the flimsy fabric away so that there is no obstacle to his cock reinforcing what the collar around her neck means, and it falls to the ground in tatters. The grip he returns to her hips is fierce enough to bruise.

Iphigenia mewls, rolling her hips down against him. She nuzzles her nose into the side of his neck, laving her tongue against his pulse. Shyly, she murmurs there, "I have never seen another male before, High Lord."

Beron, who had been moments from slamming his cock into her, gives pause, his hold on her gentling. Nearly, he gives way to a laugh.

His virtuous flower, to have been regarding the male not with a female’s lust but with a youngling's curiosity.

"Now that you have?" he intones.

With the litheness of a dancer, Iphigenia twists in his lap so that she is straddling him, putting the sounds of slapping skin and slobbering tongue to her back. Her eyes shine as they alight on his cock, and she ghosts a hand down the side of the shaft reverently, as though in a trance. Settled between her thighs as it is, her dainty fingers dwarfed by its size, it does not seem possible he can fit in her body at all—yet she looks upon him only with awe, for she knows well as he that she has been carved out perfectly to the shape of him.

The beasts sullying themselves at his feet fall away with this fruit dropped from highest bow into his lap.

"I find myself all the gladder to belong to you, High Lord," Iphigenia says, the coy admission of a girl to her first lover, the oblation of a supplicant to her god. She tilts his cock so that it can be taken into her pussy, and he watches her folds part around the head of him, split pink and ripe, the cordial of her arousal dripping down his length. With a shudder, she lowers onto him, and he pushes in even deeper when she stutters to a halt. Her dulcet moan brings true music to the cacophony of the slaves at his feet. On a pant, she tells him, "Even if you were to take me unkindly, I know—you are right that I would—enjoy it."

"Fuck," Beron grits, snapping his hips up so that he is buried fully in the core of her, her pussy a peach and his the only seed she will ever have. Iphigenia bows forth into him, crying out, her arms sliding around his neck as he moves to spread her ass wide. He looks over her shoulder, down the split of her to the bodies conjoined on the floor, the base way they slide into and out of one another, their skin slick and their faces red. "Is that what you want, Iphigenia? You want me to treat you like a whore?"

Voice choked as she rides him, Iphigenia replies, "Is that not what I am, High Lord?"

Beron cannot help himself. He bites deeply into the flesh of her breast at his mouth, lapping his tongue against the treacle of her blood, swallowing her newness down. Then he eats of her whimper, too, the sound running down his throat in a gush.

"No, petal," he answers, teeth sharp at her fresh-bitten lips. He props a foot on the back of the whore in the middle of the pile below them to angle himself even deeper inside Iphigenia, where she has been emptied of herself and is full now only of him. "That is what they are."

Flicking her eyes between his, Beron watches the words whisk the sorrow from her gaze, and a thought strikes him. "I shouldn't have kept you with them, where their misery could infect you," he says. "How would you like your own chambers? Filled with all the adornments and finery you could want?"

Where he could have access to her always, without any need to wait on her arrival—no need to risk her displeasure when he samples from the new whores who are procured.

"Oh—High Lord," Iphigenia sighs, and nearly, Beron wishes to hear her call him by his given name and not his title, the way Amalia would in the privacy of their marriage bed, all those centuries past. Then, as Amalia never has, Iphigenia reaches behind her to take his balls into her palm and praises of him, "You take—such good care of me."

His loins tighten with the ferocity of his nearing release, and he takes her without restraint, balls slapping up against her ass, then back down into her hold.

Abruptly, Beron does not want the slaves here, their mere presence a taint on his enjoyment of this moment. He shoves at the whore his foot is on, forcing her cleanly off of the male grunting his way towards release and the female sniffling at the shame of her treatment.

Her mouth is wet with slobber, chin shining from the press of the other female's cunt against it, eyes dazed and glassy. She makes the mistake of meeting the gazes of her fellows, and all three hastily look away from one another, contrition and embarrassment and fetid pleasure staining their faces. There are angry burns around her limbs, as well as a faint crimson tint to the buck's still-swollen dick.

None will soon expunge this lesson from their memory.

Under his attention, the male slave glances up at him—at Iphigenia.

"Get out," Beron snarls, a white-hot, molten dominance lashing out such that all three on the floor cower back. Against his chest, Iphigenia curls into him, her pussy clenching tight. "I will not show such mercy to the next of you to forget yourselves."

They scramble for the exit without bothering to collect their clothes.

All the while, his Iphigenia parts for his cock like water, silken and smooth, her devotion to his balls coaxing forth a burning pleasure to twine with his anger. He erupts inside of her forcefully, a cry at her mouth as he grabs her by the throat and slams up to the hilt, his own head tipped back into the flood of his climax through his body.

Iphigenia pants small, breathy kisses onto his neck, nuzzling the bridge of her nose against the scruff at his jaw: a little fawn curled up against a dragon, glad for the sharp of his teeth and the flame of his breath.

"Thank you, High Lord," she murmurs, pleasure-softened and at ease.

Iphigenia enjoys the High Lord best in moments like these, when the gusts of his breath breeze against the sweat-damp nape of her neck and his satiation softens his arms around her waist. She can close her eyes into them, forget first the thick intrusion of him spent and flaccid inside her, then the painful throb of her own untended arousal. Here, in the dark, with the faceless heat of a body at her back, she is not a whore; she is the woman she once dreamed of being, held close by her lover as something cherished—something unspeakably precious. Sometimes he even treats her as such, if she is careful to stay still and keep his seed from spilling out past him. The thought brings the muscles deep in her belly to flutter involuntarily.

The High Lord groans, a deep, rumbling sound that reverberates against her spine. The mattress dips as he presses up on an elbow. He lowers his mouth to the exposed curve of her neck, licking and suckling at a spot she had not known could be so pleasurable before him.

A shiver runs the length of Iphigenia’s body as he sweeps a broad, callous-rough palm down her abdomen during his tending. He flattens it against the slope of her womb, pressing down as though seeking the impression of himself within. The pressure draws a soft moan past her lips.

Her eyes flutter open. At times, such sounds please him greatly to hear, and he will unspool them from her at his leisure, as might a feline playing after overwrought string; but just as often, they encourage a spiteful streak in him, and he will leave her on the precipice of release so many times over the hours he keeps her that she can scarcely walk after for how sensitized and swollen she is. She has not yet discerned any pattern in his choices, nor which she prefers herself.

At her throat, her pulse quickens. The High Lord chases it with his tongue, then his teeth, not bothering to smooth away the pricks of pain he leaves in his wake. He drifts his hand lower, running his fingers over her slick flesh, sliding two along their joining, then dipping them inside.

Iphigenia moans again.

It upset her at first, when she realized she did not have to feign them. It felt like something taken from her—that a male could make her feel pleasure even when she did not want to feel anything at all. But she has seen what becomes of whores whose callers have no care at all for their pleasure. The marks left on them are always darker than her own, more brutal, and there is more often blood than not. She learned quickly to be grateful that the High Lord has the capacity for graciousness.

He brings his fingers up where he can see them, and she looks, too. They glisten only with her arousal. His spend remains snugly inside of her.

“Do you think, my lord,” Iphigenia voices, her voice breathy and hesitant, “that there is any risk it will take?”

Never has she been bold enough to speak such words in these moments. It is certainly not that she has any aspirations of carrying his babe, nor any misgivings that he desires this of her. Contraceptive herbs are taken by all the whores in some form or another, and she is always especially mindful of consuming hers. But to remain in the High Lord’s favor, she must keep his interest—and he is never more interested than when his come is inside of her as it is now. A risk, to bring any attention to it. Then, everything in his company is a risk.

This is one that proves wise.

As soon as the words flutter petal-light from her tongue, the High Lord rouses inside of her. She is still sore from his taking of her, himself of such a size that even thorough preparation leaves her aching with him after, and he had not been feeling particularly generous when she first arrived. The discomfort, she does not bother disguising. To endure it on his behalf is another trick she has learned to hold his interest.