Masquerade
Title: Masquerade
Pairing: EW/OB
Rating: NC-17
Content/Warnings: Dark. Skirting the borders of non-con.
Disclaimer: This is a complete work of fiction, no disrespect intended.
Notes: #25, for impasto.
The Winter Solstice Masquerade had already begun when Elijah arrived, exactly as he’d planned, and he didn’t draw attention to himself with a grand entrance, just slipped in through the doors in the midst of a parade of fashionably-late nobility with a murmur to the guards and a discreet display of his gilt-printed invitation.
He’d waited until after the drinking had started, but well before the time when most of tonight’s celebrants would slip off with their chosen lovers, to continue the revelry in more private quarters. He needed time to hook one particular fish tonight, with himself as the bait.
Eyes scanning the throng in the ballroom, he picked out a half-dozen nobles he could recognize based on clothing and masked facial features. But they weren’t his targets tonight; he had a much bigger prize to catch.
The butterfly mask rested soft and supple against his skin, providing very little in the way of actual disguise in the way it revealed his lips, cheekbones and eyes, but his anonymity was in his profession, not his mask. The slim stiletto dagger resting against his ankle inside his leather boot was much better hidden.
He was wearing blue silk, chosen to catch attention and bring out his eyes, and leather breeches, so that no one present would mistake him for a child. Or an innocent. He slid across the room like a current of water, and nobles parted for him without thinking, their eyes trailing appreciatively over what his costume concealed.
The Prince Royale always wore white on this night, in honor of the sun rising after the longest night, and thus no one else would choose the color for their own finery. It made him a ridiculously easy target to find, and then the chase was on.
Elijah accepted a crystal goblet of cider from a passing servant, and moved in slowly, on the fringes of the Prince Royale’s group. Orlando’s face was decorated with the traditional sun-god mask of white and gold, the delicate inlay-work radiating out from his eyes. The lower half of his face was bared, free to laugh with his friends and sample the Solstice cider. Elijah hoped he sampled a lot of it, before the midnight chime. It would make things much simpler.
Elijah smiled at a young woman blushing in his direction, but he was aware the second that Orlando’s eyes drifted over him and caught, snagged. Elijah waited a half-second and then turned to face him, offering a secretive, teasing smile before turning away and melting back into the crowd.
He played the game for hours, showing up and disappearing again, each time holding Orlando’s attention a little longer, teasing him a little more. He knew he was hard to spot in the crowd, smaller and always moving, circling, with no one to hold him back. Orlando tried to come after him a few times, moving to intercept him, but was always stopped by those wanting his attention. Elijah was content to let them have him, for now. Elijah was the one he’d want later.
When Orlando caught him at ten minutes to eleven, it was by surprise, which was something Elijah didn’t experience very often. A strong arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him back against a man’s chest, and Elijah was already moving to jam his elbow into his attacker’s stomach and free himself when his intellect overcame his instincts and he melted back instead, turning his head to the side against gold-embroidered white cloth.
“You’ve been watching me all night,” Orlando murmured into his ear, low and rich. “It’s polite to introduce yourself, don’t you think?”
Elijah stretched, flexing his body against everything he could touch of Orlando’s. “You found me, didn’t you?” he purred, and Orlando’s arm tightened around his waist. Elijah allowed himself a smile, pleased and just a touch smug. There was no question about it, Orlando was his. The Prince Royale would never know what hit him tonight.
“You already know who I am,” Orlando pointed out, his free hand trailing the cool bulb of a cider goblet up and down Elijah’s arm. “I’m afraid the pleasure isn’t yet mutual.”
“Oh, it will be,” Elijah promised, and slid one of his hands down Orlando’s thigh, subtle enough to be hidden from view by all but the most determined voyeurs. Orlando shifted, grip tightening again, and Elijah let out an artful gasp. It was all Orlando seemed to need, thankfully, because he relaxed his grip and turned Elijah around to face him.
“Follow me,” Orlando said with the air of one whose commands are usually obeyed, and Elijah was only too happy to oblige, a discreet smile playing on his lips as they skirted the crowd and went through a set of latticed doors into the cooler air of the gardens.
They passed a set of guards at the doors, and another set at what appeared to be an innocuous break in the hedgerow. Elijah kept track of turns and distances, calculating how quickly he could make his escape and how likely it would be that anyone would find the body and sound the alarm before he was clear of the Masquerade. His chances were stunningly good, another stroke of luck on a night he hoped would bring only good fortune.
“The Royal Grotto,” Orlando murmured into his ear with a smirk, as they emerged into a carefully-maintained area surrounded by a neat spiral of shrubs, with a fountain and gazebo at the center. “There are certain advantages to being royalty.”
“I can see that,” Elijah murmured, and then gasped entirely unfeigned when Orlando abruptly picked him up and shoved him against one of the white pillars in the grotto, vines creeping twisted up the sides behind Elijah’s back.
“I’ve wanted to do this all night,” Orlando whispered, and his mouth came down over Elijah’s surprisingly hard, his tongue stroking Elijah’s lips until Elijah opened his mouth and let him in, and the intensity of Orlando’s kiss was more like an attack than a seduction, but Elijah found himself responding to it all the same.
Orlando wrapped his hand around the soft pit of Elijah’s knee and lifted, and Elijah went easily, jumping with the pillar against his back for leverage and wrapping both legs around Orlando’s waist. Orlando was hard against him, and Elijah rocked his hips in encouragement, dragging them against each other through the layers of fabric.
It was too soon yet, the guards would never believe that Elijah had sated Orlando in so little time and left him too completely exhausted to return to the Masquerade. He would bide his time, wait until Orlando was defenseless and unguarded, and then he would strike, swift and lethal. There were few times that a man was left so vulnerable as during sex, so open to an assassin’s knife.
Elijah moaned when Orlando finally pulled away and bent to maul his throat, savage little bites that made Elijah purr like a kitten and drop his head to the side to give Orlando better access. He felt Orlando’s hands skimming his legs, palms curved against the smooth leather, stroking his hips and thighs and the tender flesh behind his knee.
When Orlando kissed him again the fury hadn’t abated any, and Elijah was taken slightly off-guard by the display of passion, so strong for someone barely an acquaintance of a few moments. “I want you under me,” Orlando murmured, biting Elijah’s lower lip as he lifted him again, and Elijah agreed with a roll of his hips, clinging to Orlando’s tall frame as he was laid down on the grass and stripped of his tunic.
Orlando was a savagely attentive lover, and if Elijah hadn’t been so focused on his task he might have tarried for the sheer pleasure of it. Orlando sought out his sensitive spots and assaulted them ruthlessly, his fingers twisting Elijah’s nipples and his tongue laving the hollow behind Elijah’s earlobe.
Elijah was finding it difficult to subtly extricate his knife, but it was fine, he could allow Orlando to dally further, as long as his boots were left on. For all the hurry he’d been in to get Elijah’s shirt off, Orlando didn’t seem in any rush to remove his leather breeches and boots. He did unlace his own breeches with eager fingers, and guided Elijah’s mouth to his prick with the surety of experience.
It was easy to fall into the rhythm of advance-and-retreat, up-and-down that this act required, and Elijah moaned and licked with feigned enthusiasm while keeping careful track of Orlando’s hands. That was less easy; they seemed to want to be everywhere at once, touching every inch of Elijah’s bared skin, and when they ran out, seeking more.
Elijah tensed when Orlando’s hands busied themselves at his breeches, but Orlando seemed content to merely shove them down around his knees, and then his fingers teased beneath Elijah’s prick, warm and wet; another surprise, but Elijah had been too busy concentrating on Orlando’s hands to catch what his mouth had been doing.
He almost resisted, but Orlando thrust into his mouth and Elijah choked a little, and by the time he regained control of his breathing and the measured rocking of Orlando’s prick there was a slender finger inside of him, sliding in and out with increased ease as Elijah relaxed around the intrusion.
“Wait,” Orlando said suddenly, and pulled out of Elijah’s mouth abruptly, leaving him blinking and confused. Orlando’s hands wrapped around Elijah’s calves and he tensed, but Orlando only lifted his legs and pushed himself between them, leaving Elijah’s breeches shoved around his shins while his prick nudged between Elijah’s thighs.
It was time, and past time. Orlando’s mouth descended on his again in heated fury, and Elijah rocked his hips up to slide his hand into his boot, fingers closing around…nothing.
Shock froze him completely, and Orlando’s head lifted, lips wet and shiny, eyes bright. “Missing something?” he asked mildly. And thrust inside.
Elijah’s head snapped back against the hard ground, and he bit his tongue on the sharp cry of pain welling in his throat. Orlando had prepared him a little, but not enough, and he felt the ache all the way up his spine. That was nothing, however, compared to the chaos inside his skull.
Orlando knew. Orlando had known. Orlando had…what? Identified him? No, he couldn’t have. Suspected him, maybe, frisked him for weapons? When? His head spun, and he lost the thread of his thoughts completely when Orlando changed the angle, slamming in deep and sending sparks shooting through every nerve in Elijah’s body.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Orlando cut him off, his tongue sliding into Elijah’s mouth to choke him while one of his hands slid loosely around Elijah’s throat, threatening just tightly enough to keep Elijah from biting or clawing to escape. There was no way he could shake Orlando now anyway, his weight had Elijah pinned, and Elijah’s leather breeches kept him trapped just as securely as they held Orlando.
“Stupid,” Orlando murmured into his mouth, and once again Elijah’s attempt to reply was choked by Orlando’s savage kisses, and the squeeze of a long-fingered hand around his throat. Orlando’s prick drilled into him, moving almost easily now, his shaft slick with Elijah’s saliva.
Elijah drew breath to try again, but Orlando’s hand moved to close around his prick, tighter than could be considered truly pleasurable, and sharp angry teeth found his nipples, the bites no longer so gentle. Elijah groaned and gave up fighting, hips rocking into every thrust, riding the sensation of Orlando’s fist jerking him dry and rough.
He came before Orlando did, in a spectacular burst of color behind his eyelids, when Orlando’s hand closed around his throat and stopped his breath. His body spasmed, too stupid to realize it was being throttled and not aroused, and he fell back limply against the grass thinking, this is it, I’m dying.
He felt Orlando come, in a series of short staccato thrusts that made him whimper silently, and then to his shock Orlando’s grip eased, and Elijah gasped, lungs screaming for breath. He lost the air again when Orlando kissed him, hard enough to choke, and then drew himself up and yanked Elijah’s hair back forcefully enough to make his eyes sting and water.
“If you’re ever seen here again, the guards will kill you on sight,” Orlando said quietly, and Elijah tried to nod his understanding, the pain in his scalp causing his entire body to tense. “And if I ever see you here…” Orlando twisted Elijah’s nipple, and he bit his tongue on the scream. “I’ll do worse.”
He jerked Elijah’s head back and the world exploded in a white-spotted daze as he hit the ground, and when his vision cleared and he opened his eyes, Orlando was gone.
Pairing: EW/OB
Rating: NC-17
Content/Warnings: Dark. Skirting the borders of non-con.
Disclaimer: This is a complete work of fiction, no disrespect intended.
Notes: #25, for impasto.
The Winter Solstice Masquerade had already begun when Elijah arrived, exactly as he’d planned, and he didn’t draw attention to himself with a grand entrance, just slipped in through the doors in the midst of a parade of fashionably-late nobility with a murmur to the guards and a discreet display of his gilt-printed invitation.
He’d waited until after the drinking had started, but well before the time when most of tonight’s celebrants would slip off with their chosen lovers, to continue the revelry in more private quarters. He needed time to hook one particular fish tonight, with himself as the bait.
Eyes scanning the throng in the ballroom, he picked out a half-dozen nobles he could recognize based on clothing and masked facial features. But they weren’t his targets tonight; he had a much bigger prize to catch.
The butterfly mask rested soft and supple against his skin, providing very little in the way of actual disguise in the way it revealed his lips, cheekbones and eyes, but his anonymity was in his profession, not his mask. The slim stiletto dagger resting against his ankle inside his leather boot was much better hidden.
He was wearing blue silk, chosen to catch attention and bring out his eyes, and leather breeches, so that no one present would mistake him for a child. Or an innocent. He slid across the room like a current of water, and nobles parted for him without thinking, their eyes trailing appreciatively over what his costume concealed.
The Prince Royale always wore white on this night, in honor of the sun rising after the longest night, and thus no one else would choose the color for their own finery. It made him a ridiculously easy target to find, and then the chase was on.
Elijah accepted a crystal goblet of cider from a passing servant, and moved in slowly, on the fringes of the Prince Royale’s group. Orlando’s face was decorated with the traditional sun-god mask of white and gold, the delicate inlay-work radiating out from his eyes. The lower half of his face was bared, free to laugh with his friends and sample the Solstice cider. Elijah hoped he sampled a lot of it, before the midnight chime. It would make things much simpler.
Elijah smiled at a young woman blushing in his direction, but he was aware the second that Orlando’s eyes drifted over him and caught, snagged. Elijah waited a half-second and then turned to face him, offering a secretive, teasing smile before turning away and melting back into the crowd.
He played the game for hours, showing up and disappearing again, each time holding Orlando’s attention a little longer, teasing him a little more. He knew he was hard to spot in the crowd, smaller and always moving, circling, with no one to hold him back. Orlando tried to come after him a few times, moving to intercept him, but was always stopped by those wanting his attention. Elijah was content to let them have him, for now. Elijah was the one he’d want later.
When Orlando caught him at ten minutes to eleven, it was by surprise, which was something Elijah didn’t experience very often. A strong arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him back against a man’s chest, and Elijah was already moving to jam his elbow into his attacker’s stomach and free himself when his intellect overcame his instincts and he melted back instead, turning his head to the side against gold-embroidered white cloth.
“You’ve been watching me all night,” Orlando murmured into his ear, low and rich. “It’s polite to introduce yourself, don’t you think?”
Elijah stretched, flexing his body against everything he could touch of Orlando’s. “You found me, didn’t you?” he purred, and Orlando’s arm tightened around his waist. Elijah allowed himself a smile, pleased and just a touch smug. There was no question about it, Orlando was his. The Prince Royale would never know what hit him tonight.
“You already know who I am,” Orlando pointed out, his free hand trailing the cool bulb of a cider goblet up and down Elijah’s arm. “I’m afraid the pleasure isn’t yet mutual.”
“Oh, it will be,” Elijah promised, and slid one of his hands down Orlando’s thigh, subtle enough to be hidden from view by all but the most determined voyeurs. Orlando shifted, grip tightening again, and Elijah let out an artful gasp. It was all Orlando seemed to need, thankfully, because he relaxed his grip and turned Elijah around to face him.
“Follow me,” Orlando said with the air of one whose commands are usually obeyed, and Elijah was only too happy to oblige, a discreet smile playing on his lips as they skirted the crowd and went through a set of latticed doors into the cooler air of the gardens.
They passed a set of guards at the doors, and another set at what appeared to be an innocuous break in the hedgerow. Elijah kept track of turns and distances, calculating how quickly he could make his escape and how likely it would be that anyone would find the body and sound the alarm before he was clear of the Masquerade. His chances were stunningly good, another stroke of luck on a night he hoped would bring only good fortune.
“The Royal Grotto,” Orlando murmured into his ear with a smirk, as they emerged into a carefully-maintained area surrounded by a neat spiral of shrubs, with a fountain and gazebo at the center. “There are certain advantages to being royalty.”
“I can see that,” Elijah murmured, and then gasped entirely unfeigned when Orlando abruptly picked him up and shoved him against one of the white pillars in the grotto, vines creeping twisted up the sides behind Elijah’s back.
“I’ve wanted to do this all night,” Orlando whispered, and his mouth came down over Elijah’s surprisingly hard, his tongue stroking Elijah’s lips until Elijah opened his mouth and let him in, and the intensity of Orlando’s kiss was more like an attack than a seduction, but Elijah found himself responding to it all the same.
Orlando wrapped his hand around the soft pit of Elijah’s knee and lifted, and Elijah went easily, jumping with the pillar against his back for leverage and wrapping both legs around Orlando’s waist. Orlando was hard against him, and Elijah rocked his hips in encouragement, dragging them against each other through the layers of fabric.
It was too soon yet, the guards would never believe that Elijah had sated Orlando in so little time and left him too completely exhausted to return to the Masquerade. He would bide his time, wait until Orlando was defenseless and unguarded, and then he would strike, swift and lethal. There were few times that a man was left so vulnerable as during sex, so open to an assassin’s knife.
Elijah moaned when Orlando finally pulled away and bent to maul his throat, savage little bites that made Elijah purr like a kitten and drop his head to the side to give Orlando better access. He felt Orlando’s hands skimming his legs, palms curved against the smooth leather, stroking his hips and thighs and the tender flesh behind his knee.
When Orlando kissed him again the fury hadn’t abated any, and Elijah was taken slightly off-guard by the display of passion, so strong for someone barely an acquaintance of a few moments. “I want you under me,” Orlando murmured, biting Elijah’s lower lip as he lifted him again, and Elijah agreed with a roll of his hips, clinging to Orlando’s tall frame as he was laid down on the grass and stripped of his tunic.
Orlando was a savagely attentive lover, and if Elijah hadn’t been so focused on his task he might have tarried for the sheer pleasure of it. Orlando sought out his sensitive spots and assaulted them ruthlessly, his fingers twisting Elijah’s nipples and his tongue laving the hollow behind Elijah’s earlobe.
Elijah was finding it difficult to subtly extricate his knife, but it was fine, he could allow Orlando to dally further, as long as his boots were left on. For all the hurry he’d been in to get Elijah’s shirt off, Orlando didn’t seem in any rush to remove his leather breeches and boots. He did unlace his own breeches with eager fingers, and guided Elijah’s mouth to his prick with the surety of experience.
It was easy to fall into the rhythm of advance-and-retreat, up-and-down that this act required, and Elijah moaned and licked with feigned enthusiasm while keeping careful track of Orlando’s hands. That was less easy; they seemed to want to be everywhere at once, touching every inch of Elijah’s bared skin, and when they ran out, seeking more.
Elijah tensed when Orlando’s hands busied themselves at his breeches, but Orlando seemed content to merely shove them down around his knees, and then his fingers teased beneath Elijah’s prick, warm and wet; another surprise, but Elijah had been too busy concentrating on Orlando’s hands to catch what his mouth had been doing.
He almost resisted, but Orlando thrust into his mouth and Elijah choked a little, and by the time he regained control of his breathing and the measured rocking of Orlando’s prick there was a slender finger inside of him, sliding in and out with increased ease as Elijah relaxed around the intrusion.
“Wait,” Orlando said suddenly, and pulled out of Elijah’s mouth abruptly, leaving him blinking and confused. Orlando’s hands wrapped around Elijah’s calves and he tensed, but Orlando only lifted his legs and pushed himself between them, leaving Elijah’s breeches shoved around his shins while his prick nudged between Elijah’s thighs.
It was time, and past time. Orlando’s mouth descended on his again in heated fury, and Elijah rocked his hips up to slide his hand into his boot, fingers closing around…nothing.
Shock froze him completely, and Orlando’s head lifted, lips wet and shiny, eyes bright. “Missing something?” he asked mildly. And thrust inside.
Elijah’s head snapped back against the hard ground, and he bit his tongue on the sharp cry of pain welling in his throat. Orlando had prepared him a little, but not enough, and he felt the ache all the way up his spine. That was nothing, however, compared to the chaos inside his skull.
Orlando knew. Orlando had known. Orlando had…what? Identified him? No, he couldn’t have. Suspected him, maybe, frisked him for weapons? When? His head spun, and he lost the thread of his thoughts completely when Orlando changed the angle, slamming in deep and sending sparks shooting through every nerve in Elijah’s body.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Orlando cut him off, his tongue sliding into Elijah’s mouth to choke him while one of his hands slid loosely around Elijah’s throat, threatening just tightly enough to keep Elijah from biting or clawing to escape. There was no way he could shake Orlando now anyway, his weight had Elijah pinned, and Elijah’s leather breeches kept him trapped just as securely as they held Orlando.
“Stupid,” Orlando murmured into his mouth, and once again Elijah’s attempt to reply was choked by Orlando’s savage kisses, and the squeeze of a long-fingered hand around his throat. Orlando’s prick drilled into him, moving almost easily now, his shaft slick with Elijah’s saliva.
Elijah drew breath to try again, but Orlando’s hand moved to close around his prick, tighter than could be considered truly pleasurable, and sharp angry teeth found his nipples, the bites no longer so gentle. Elijah groaned and gave up fighting, hips rocking into every thrust, riding the sensation of Orlando’s fist jerking him dry and rough.
He came before Orlando did, in a spectacular burst of color behind his eyelids, when Orlando’s hand closed around his throat and stopped his breath. His body spasmed, too stupid to realize it was being throttled and not aroused, and he fell back limply against the grass thinking, this is it, I’m dying.
He felt Orlando come, in a series of short staccato thrusts that made him whimper silently, and then to his shock Orlando’s grip eased, and Elijah gasped, lungs screaming for breath. He lost the air again when Orlando kissed him, hard enough to choke, and then drew himself up and yanked Elijah’s hair back forcefully enough to make his eyes sting and water.
“If you’re ever seen here again, the guards will kill you on sight,” Orlando said quietly, and Elijah tried to nod his understanding, the pain in his scalp causing his entire body to tense. “And if I ever see you here…” Orlando twisted Elijah’s nipple, and he bit his tongue on the scream. “I’ll do worse.”
He jerked Elijah’s head back and the world exploded in a white-spotted daze as he hit the ground, and when his vision cleared and he opened his eyes, Orlando was gone.