Imogen traveled the bedchamber’s perimeter. “This room alone is twice the size of the cottage I shared with Niamh.” Her gaze settled on him for a moment. “Was it yours?”
She shone pale and regal in the flickering light, her dark hair cascading down her back in red-tinted waves. Cededa considered telling her the truth. Before the Waters effects leached away both his needs and his desires, Cededa the Fair had a reputation known far and wide as a man of lusty appetites and the stamina to match them. His bedchamber had seen many women spend hours in its confines. By the time Tineroth’s mages discovered a way to trap and imprison him, it was nothing more than a place where Cededa brooded alone, enraged, impotent, and immortal.
He had lost the carnal appetites that once consumed him only to discover them reawakened by her lethal touch.
The curse flowing black and powerful beneath her skin was killing him and bringing him back to life at the same time. Each day, they engaged in an odd courtship of profound intimacy and innocence, one that left him clawing for control and wondering if his heart would pound out of his chest.
He needed no one to tell him she was untried. Cededa had never cared for virgins. They were too much trouble for his debauched tastes, like high strung horses unbroken to the saddle. Imogen displayed none of those nervous traits, even when she discovered the brothel scroll tucked away in the library. Niamh had done a fine job raising a young woman grounded in practicality. Cededa, however, had no doubt Imogen was innocent in body and unfamiliar with the subtle signals of desire.
Cededa had lost count of the women he’d seduced and who had seduced him before the Waters made a mockery of his humanity. Practiced in the art of sensuality, his wives and concubines had been raised to capture the eye and passions of an emperor. Imogen seduced him with her nothing more than her graceful, lethal hands and a steady faith in his ability to break the hold of her curse.
“Sire?”
The single word pulled him out of his musings. He dipped his chin. “My apologies for the inattention. I’ve something to show you.”
He crooked a finger. She crossed the room to stand beside him, listening as he uttered another soft word in a forgotten tongue. The torches brightened, their flames leaping higher to better illuminate the frescoes painted on the whitewashed walls. Not as bright as the illustrations on the scroll, they still glowed, their details highlighted in rich colors painted by a far more skilled artist than the one who painted the scroll.
These were neither landscapes nor portraits, unless one considered scenes of mating configurations of the land. A wide-eyed Imogen abandoned Cededa for the corner of the wall and a closer look at the first painting in the series that bordered the entire room.
Meant to arouse and excite the king and his chosen companion, the frescoes were as graphic in their depiction of sexual acts as the scroll had been.
The first painting showed a man covering a woman, his hips resting within the cradle of her thighs, the curve of his naked flank partially covered by her hand. He lay in profile to the viewer, and bent to suckle the woman’s breast. The woman’s painted eyes were heavy-lidded with pleasure. Cededa watched, fascinated, as a rosy blush crawled up Imogen’s neck and into her cheeks. A reciprocal heat that had nothing to do with Tineroth’s warm temperatures, pooled in his stomach before spilling downward. He stood still and enjoyed the once forgotten sensation of an erection.
Imogen moved on to the next painting. Here, the same man knelt behind a different woman, his cock half buried between her buttocks. In the next, the same woman knelt before him, sucking his cock into her mouth. A fourth had them switching places and partners. A different man and woman stretched out along the wall, his face hidden by her bent leg, her expression one of ecstasy as she arched her back and buried her fingers in his hair.
Imogen stepped back for another perspective of the painting, then turned to Cededa. High color washed her cheekbones. Innocent she was but far from immune to the frescoes’ effects.
“What is he doing to her?”
He did smile then. “Have you ever pleasured yourself, Imogen?”
She didn’t shrink away from the question or avoid his gaze. “Yes,” she said simply.
Cededa silently applauded Niamh for not teaching her daughter shame of her own body. Imogen answered him with no more chagrin than if he asked her if she wanted a drink of water.
He closed the distance between them and studied the painting with her. “He is using his tongue in the same way you use your fingers.”
Her eyebrows drew together in puzzlement, and she tilted her head as if considering a greater question. “And this is pleasurable for her?”
He gestured at the fresco. “Look at her face. What do you think?”
She bent for a closer look, then turned to gaze at him over her shoulder. “Have you done this?”
This girl didn’t possess a speck of coyness. He found it refreshing. “I have.”
“Did you enjoy it as well?”
“Very much so.”
This was likely the strangest, most fascinating discussion he’d ever had with a woman, or any person for that matter. Imogen delighted him, enchanted him and if he dwelt on it too long, terrified him. Part of him wished he’d met her before his world crumbled around him. The greater part was thankful he hadn’t.
She straightened and moved past him, her eyes traveling over the remaining frescoes. All depicted scenes progressively more lurid than the ones before it. “Why did you have these painted in your chambers?”
Cededa had no intention of detailing the debauched atmosphere of his court during his long reign. “They seemed appropriate at the time.”
She didn’t press him for more but moved on to another question that made him grin. “Have you tried all of these?”
“I have. Several times.”
