Chapter One Part 1: "You're buttoning that wrong."
The two women on his bed were doing exactly what he'd told them to do.
He had that effect on people.
It had started with three of them in his quarters, which was not unusual. Women on Ironwake did not turn down an invitation from Voss. Some came because they wanted him. Some came because being wanted by him meant something in a city where everything was currency. Most came because once you had been in his bed you came back, and they knew it before they arrived, and they came anyway. He had sent word earlier in the evening through the usual channels, a quiet word to the right person, and by the time he'd finished his third drink all three had appeared at his door with the particular expression of women who understood exactly what they were there for and had no complaints about it.
He was not a pretty man, or not only that. He was broad through the shoulders and scarred in the particular way of someone who had been in enough violence that his body had simply incorporated it, the marks running across his chest and arms like a record of every decision that had mattered. His eyes were wrong in a way that most people noticed once and then spent considerable effort not looking at directly again, pale and lit from somewhere inside them that had nothing to do with the light in the room. He had been told, more than once, that looking at him was like looking at something that had come up from the bottom of the ocean and decided to wear a man's shape for convenience.
He had never found this discouraging. Neither, apparently, had anyone else.
They had all three come to him already knowing what the evening was, which meant they had come prepared for it. By the time the door closed behind them the undressing had been quick and practical, the way it was when everyone in the room understood the purpose of the gathering and had no interest in pretending otherwise. He'd sat in the chair by the window with his drink and watched them for a while first, the three of them on his bed, learning each other's shapes in the amber light, which he had found over the years was an efficient use of the time it took him to finish a glass of whiskey.
Then he'd set the glass down and gotten to work.
The first had come to him on her knees at the edge of the bed, which he appreciated as an opening position. It suggested she understood how the evening was going to be organized and had no objections to her place in it. She'd taken him in her mouth with the focused attention of someone who intended to do this well, and he'd let her, his hand in her hair, watching her work through the particular adjustment a woman made when she'd underestimated what she was dealing with. She hadn't complained. None of them ever did, once they'd made their peace with the reality of it. She'd taken what she could and worked the rest with her hand and he'd watched her figure out the rhythm of it with the unhurried attention of a man who had time and intended to use it. When he'd had enough of that he'd put her on her back and pushed her thighs apart and settled between them, and she'd been so wound up by then that the first thrust made her gasp loud enough that the second woman had looked over from where she'd been occupying herself.
He'd taken his time with the first one. He always took his time. She'd gotten louder as he worked her, her sounds going from controlled to not, her hands pulling at him with increasing desperation, saying please against his throat in the particular register of someone who had given up managing their own composure entirely. He hadn't given her what she wanted until he was ready to give it, until her whole body was tight and shaking under him, and when she finally came apart he'd watched her face with the same precise attention he gave everything worth knowing. Then he'd pulled out and finished elsewhere, which was how he always did it, a rule he kept without explaining it to anyone and had never been asked to explain.
The second had watched all of it from the bed, which meant by the time he turned to her she was already half undone before he'd touched her. She'd gotten to her knees for him the same way the first had, eager and thorough, and he'd let her work until his patience for it ran out and then he'd pulled her up and turned her onto her stomach and taken her from behind, his hand fisting in her hair, her sounds muffled against the sheets. She was already close from watching and it didn't take long before she was clutching the mattress and swearing at him in the particular breathless way of someone who had completely lost track of what they meant to say, and he found that equally satisfying. He pulled out before the end the same way he always did. She made a sound of protest that he paid no attention to.
When he was finished with them he'd told them to keep each other occupied and turned his full attention to the third.
That had been some time ago.
Now the two moved together in the low amber light at his direction, entirely absorbed in each other and in the quiet commands he issued without raising his voice or turning his head. One was on her back, the other between her thighs with her mouth working slow and deliberate, both of them exactly where he'd told them to be. Touch her there, he'd said. Slower. He barely had to look at them. They responded to the sound of his voice the way everything on Ironwake did, immediately and without argument, which he found satisfying in its own right. The one on her back had her fingers twisted in the other's hair, holding her in place, her head tipped back and her lips parted, the sounds she made low and rhythmic and entirely genuine. They had forgotten he was watching. That was fine. He preferred it.
The third was beneath him and had entirely stopped noticing the other two existed.
She was on her stomach across the wide expanse of his bed, her dark hair pushed to one side, her body flushed and trembling under his hands with the particular desperation of a woman who had been kept waiting well past the point of patience. He had kept her waiting deliberately. He kept everyone waiting deliberately. It was, he had found, the most efficient way to ensure that whatever he finally gave them felt like exactly enough.
He gripped her hips firmly, his calloused fingers digging into the soft flesh as he pulled her back toward him. He looked down at her for a moment before he moved. He ran his palm slowly down the curve of her spine, felt the shiver ripple through her skin, watched the muscles of her back tighten in anticipation. Then he brought his hand down hard across her ass, the sharp crack of it filling the room. She gasped into the rumpled sheets, her body jerking forward before her hips bucked back toward him, seeking more.
He did it again, unhurried, watching the red bloom rise across her skin, the heat of it spreading under his palm.
She said his name into the pillow. Not Evander, nobody called him that. Voss, she said, muffled and desperate, and he felt the satisfaction settle through him the way the first drink of the evening always did, low and spreading and entirely worth the wait.
He slid one knee between her thighs and forced them wider, exposing her completely. She was slick and swollen and ready and he ran the length of himself along her folds, coating the head of his c**k in her wetness, feeling her try to push back and holding her still with a firm hand on her lower back. She whimpered. He kept moving against her, unhurried, until she made a sound that had abandoned all pretense of dignity.
Then he pressed forward, slow and deliberate, pushing inside her inch by inch. She was tight around him and there was a lot of him to take, and he felt her breath stutter as her body stretched to accommodate the girth of it, felt the tension run through her spine as he worked deeper, unhurried, watching her grip on the sheets go white-knuckled. She made a broken sound, not quite a word. He stayed still once he was fully seated, letting her feel the full weight of it, watching her back arch and her hips make small involuntary circles that were not quite begging and were not quite not begging either.
He leaned over her and reached around to cup her breast, his rough palm squeezing the soft weight of it before his thumb found her n****e. He rolled it slowly at first, then pinched, then rolled again with increasing pressure until she cried out, louder than she'd intended, her body fluttering around his unmoving c**k. He felt the slick heat of her arousal against his thighs and still didn't move, just kept working her n****e between his fingers, letting her feel every second of the wait.
Her back bowed higher, pressing her ass against him, and he felt her shaking.
"Quieter," he said, without turning his head. Behind him on the bed one of the others made a soft noise of compliance. The woman beneath him made a completely different kind of noise, the frustrated kind, directed at him specifically.
He started to move.
He pulled out almost all the way and drove back in, deep and unyielding, setting a rhythm that was deliberate rather than urgent, each thrust measured to drag against the right places inside her. One hand clamped onto her hip, fingers bruising as he pulled her back to meet him, the slap of skin filling the air. His other hand ran up her spine and pressed down to arch her perfectly, then slid lower to grip her ass, spreading her wider, changing the angle until the head of his c**k found that sensitive ridge inside her that made her breath hitch and stutter into sharp ragged gasps. He stayed there, working her at exactly that angle, feeling her walls spasm and clench harder with each stroke.
She was soaking wet, gripping him like a vice, and she tried to match his pace, pushing back frantically, her sounds turning into full-throated cries. Voss, please, harder, she said, and he controlled it completely, slowing just enough to pull her back from the edge, then driving in faster to rebuild it, sweat slicking their skin, her breasts swaying with every impact. He leaned down and bit the nape of her neck lightly, his mouth hot against her ear.
She tried to speed him up. He let her try.
He brought his hand down across her ass again, sharper this time, and she clenched around him in response and swore into the sheets, and he kept the same unhurried pace because that was the point, because she could have what she wanted when he decided to give it and not before, because patience was a discipline and he applied it everywhere.
Behind him the other two had grown louder, and he glanced back once. They had switched, the one who'd been working now on her back with the other riding her face, one hand braced on the headboard and the other pressed flat against her own stomach, chasing her own pleasure at the same time. He caught the heavy-lidded gaze of the one watching, a smirk crossing her face, and he looked back at the woman beneath him and forgot about the others entirely.
He gripped her hips harder and changed the pace, pounding into her until her body tensed completely, right at the edge, and then he drove her over it, feeling her shatter around him, her sounds going incoherent, and he kept moving through every tremor, wringing her out completely before he finally slowed.
He was in no hurry. He was never in a hurry. Impatience was a weakness he had burned out of himself years ago along with several other things that had no place in the life he'd built. He worked her slowly and thoroughly and watched her come undone beneath him, piece by piece, on his timeline and no one else's.
He was close himself, finally, building toward it with the same deliberate attention he'd given the rest of the evening, when the knock came.
Three sharp raps. No hesitation. He knew the knock.
