Chapter 27: The Discovery of Appetite
The sun was well past its noon peak when Blair finally surfaced from sleep, and the first thing she noticed was the smell. Roasted fowl, warm bread, stewed pears in wine, and underneath it all the copper-sweet thread of blood. The second thing she noticed was Vespera, seated in a high-backed chair drawn up beside the bed, dressed in a robe of deep plum silk, watching her with the patient expression of a cat outside a mousehole.
"You slept until midday," the Queen said.
"I am a week old," Blair said, her voice thick with sleep. "Week-old things sleep."
"You slept until midday, and you missed breakfast, and so I have brought lunch." Vespera gestured, and Blair followed the gesture to the side table by the window. Four silver trays stood there in a line, each covered with a domed lid, and beside them a crystal goblet the size of Blair's forearm, filled nearly to the brim with warmed blood that caught the light like garnet wine. "Four courses. Sit up, wife of the blood. Your lessons resume."
Blair pushed herself up against the pillows, the sheet pooling at her waist, and frowned at the fourth tray. The domed lids were identical, but the fourth sat slightly apart from the others, and it was longer, and heavier somehow, in a way her new senses could read without lifting it.
"What is on the last tray?"
"That," Vespera said, rising and carrying the trays to the bed one by one, arranging them across a wide board laid over Blair's legs, "is your final course. But we begin at the beginning." She lifted the first lid. Roasted quail, glistening, glazed with honey and black pepper, the smell of it rolling out rich and hot. "Lucien is in council with the Arch-Duke and will be furious to miss this. I told him it was a lesson he could not attend. He sulked. A king, sulking. You have ruined him."
"Good," Blair said, and reached for the quail, and Vespera caught her wrist.
"No. Hands behind your back."
Blair's brows rose. "I am Made now. A princess. You wrote it in blood."
"Exactly so." Vespera pulled a chair to the bedside and sat, and her burgundy eyes had that glitter in them, the one that meant a lesson was coming. "Which is why the rules change. A princess is not a maid who earns her supper. A princess is fed. A princess's job is to be pretty, to be spoiled, and to be over-indulgent past all sense. You have been hungry your whole mortal life, Blair Veil Ravenwood. Today we unlearn it. Today I feed you until you cannot hold another bite, and while I do, I ruin you, and you will take both without counting anything. No swallows. No permission. No begging unless you feel like begging. That is what eternity means."
"Vespera." Blair's voice had gone lower. Her slow heart ticked once against her ribs. "What is on the fourth tray?"
The Queen lifted the last lid.
The crystal caught the afternoon light and threw it across the canopy. The dildo was sculpted full and heavy, fluted along the shaft, as long and thick as Lucien's cock; Blair knew his cock now with a scholar's precision, and this was it, grown in glass, with a broad base for keeping. Beside it lay the plug, ribbed from tip to stem, each ridge a little wider than the last, its base flared and smooth.
Blair's mouth went dry in a way that had nothing to do with thirst. "You are going to feed me lunch with those inside me."
"I am going to feed you lunch, plate by plate, while those sit inside you and I decide how they move." Vespera's smile was silk over teeth. "And I am going to wring every orgasm out of you that your new body can hold, and you are going to eat through every one of them, because over-indulgence, little rose, is a discipline. Any glutton can eat when she is comfortable. A princess of this house eats while she is being destroyed."
Blair lay back against the pillows without being told and let her knees fall open. The blush she would have drowned in a month ago rose warm along her throat, and she let that stay too. "Then get on with it. I am starving, both ways, and you taught me to want things."
"Insufferable," Vespera murmured, with such open pride that it sounded almost like a confession.
She warmed the crystal pieces between her palms first, an unnecessary tenderness that made Blair's chest ache, and slicked them both from a small pot of honeyed oil that smelled of amber and something older. The dildo went first. Vespera pressed the head against Blair's entrance and paused there, letting her feel the cool breadth of it, then pushed in slow and steady, inch after fluted inch, the ridges dragging through her folds and against her walls until it bottomed out deep and Blair's back arched off the mattress with a sound that was half gasp and half growl.
"Breathe," Vespera said. "You are Made. You can take it."
"I know I can take it." Blair panted, her cunt clenching around the fullness, the flutes catching inside her with every small shift. "That is not the problem. The problem is I want to move."
"Do not move. Hands behind your back, as I said." Vespera drew Blair's wrists together at the small of her back and wrapped a length of black silk ribbon around them, once, twice, loose enough to slip, present enough to hold. Then she lifted Blair's hips and worked the plug in, and this was slower, the ribs one after another, each ridge stretching her ass wider than the last, Blair moaning low and continuous by the fourth, cursing Vespera's name by the sixth, until the wide base settled snug against her and the whole wicked architecture of glass sat inside her, both holes filled and full and faintly cool.
"Oh," Blair said, when she could speak. "Oh, that is filthy. I love it. Why do I love it?"
"Because I made you." Vespera settled back in her chair, lifted the first plate onto the board across Blair's bound lap, and picked up the knife and fork. "Now. Legs open. Do not close them. Quail first."
She fed her by hand, as she had fed her through two months of mortal hunger, one cut of honey-glazed meat at a time, holding each morsel to Blair's lips and waiting for her to take it from the fork with her mouth. And the toys moved. Not much. Vespera kept one cool fingertip against the base of the dildo, and between bites she pressed it, a half-inch of drag, the flutes ratcheting through Blair's soaked cunt, in and out, in and out, never enough rhythm to build anything, only enough to keep her clenching and dripping and frantic around the fullness.
"Vespera." Blair's voice cracked on the second bite. "Either fuck me properly or leave it alone. This is torture."
"This is lunch." Another morsel. Blair took it, chewed, swallowed, and the Queen pressed the dildo deep and held it there, the fluted head grinding against the front wall of her cunt until Blair's thighs trembled. "Twelve-second heart, and you are already shaking. Marvelous. More quail?"
"You are a monster."
"I am your Queen, and you are eating it, so the monster is winning." Vespera fed her another piece, then another, tilting the wine-dark juices to Blair's lips to drink, and under the rhythm of the feeding her finger never stopped its slow obscene work, dragging the glass out until the flutes caught at her entrance and pushing it back in, and Blair's breath was coming in ragged pulls, her bound hands fisting, the plug's ribs shifting inside her with every helpless squirm until she was panting around a mouthful of quail.
The first orgasm took her halfway through the first plate.
It built without warning, the slow grind suddenly enough, all at once, and Blair heard herself cry out and her back her spine, and Vespera's hand did not stop, did not quicken, did not grant anything. The Queen simply kept dragging the dildo through the clench of her cunt while Blair came around it, wave after wave, her juice running down to soak the base and the silk beneath her, moaning through it with her mouth still full because Vespera had put the next bite between her lips at the exact moment the peak broke.
"Chew," the Queen said, mild as morning. "Good girl. Swallow."
Blair swallowed, shaking, and glared at her through the wreck of it. "You fed me a bite while I came."
"I did. You ate it. Which proves my entire thesis." Vespera wiped the corner of Blair's mouth with her thumb and licked the thumb clean, unhurried. "Over-indulgence is a discipline, and you are going to be excellent at it. Pears next."
The second plate was stewed pears in red wine, cool from the cellar, and Vespera spooned them in slowly, letting the syrup run, catching the drips with her fingertip. The toys had not stopped. She had added her other hand now, one finger circling Blair's clit in lazy spirals while the dildo kept its brutal patience, and by the fourth spoonful Blair was rolling her hips against everything inside her, chasing the motion she was forbidden to make.
"Please." The word fell out of her without her deciding it, and it felt, for the first time, like a decoration rather than a surrender. "Please, my Queen. Please make me come again."
"As you wish. But you are still eating."
Vespera put two fingers inside her on top of the dildo, hooking into her alongside the glass, stretching her around both, and curled them hard against the spot that made Blair's vision white out. The orgasm slammed through her before the second bite of pear had gone down, and Blair screamed with her mouth full, sweet syrup and wine smeared across her lips, her whole body clamping down on crystal and fingers and the ribbed plug, the ridges of it dragging against the thin wall inside her with every spasm until she was shrieking from the double fullness, from being stuffed in both holes at once, from Vespera's fingers working her ruthlessly through the whole long crest while the Queen held a spoon of pear to her mouth and said, "Another bite, wife. Do not waste the cellar's work."
Blair ate it. Blair ate the entire plate of pears while Vespera wrung a second peak out of her on the heels of the first, her mind dissolving into a white blur of sweetness and stretch and the Queen's cool voice counting nothing at all.
The goblet came third.
Vespera warmed the blood to the temperature of a bath and held the crystal goblet to Blair's lips herself, tilting it with both hands, and Blair drank, and drinking finally full and unhurried after a lifetime of counted swallows was its own kind of ecstasy. The blood bloomed through her, warm as brandy, and beneath it Vespera's fingers kept moving, and the Queen leaned close and murmured against her ear while she drank.
"You no longer need our blood to live. Do you understand what that means? You drink it now only because you love us. Every swallow is a choice, not a debt. That is the whole of the Making, little rose. We did not take your hunger. We freed it."
Blair pulled off the goblet, blood-dark on her lips, and looked at her maker with her red-ringed amber eyes, and for a moment neither of them spoke, and the toys sat still inside her, and the room was very quiet.
"I do love you," Blair said. "Which is why I am going to be a complete glutton about everything you just said, forever. Feed me the rest."
Vespera's composure flickered, that famous flicker, and then she laughed and tipped the goblet back to Blair's mouth. "Greed is the family virtue. Your father the King will be proud."
The third orgasm arrived while Blair was still drinking, and she came moaning around the rim of the goblet, blood slopping over her chin and down her throat, both holes clamped tight around crystal, and Vespera drank the spill from her chin with her tongue and did not stop moving her hands for anything.
The fourth plate waited until Blair was limp, glazed, blood-drunk and pear-drunk, wrists still bound, both toys lodged deep and shining at their bases with her spend. Vespera lifted the final lid fully and set it aside, and the two glass instruments lay on the silver tray like crown jewels, and Blair stared at them and then at the Queen.
"You are not putting those back."
"I am putting those back." Vespera rose onto the bed, silk whispering, and knelt between Blair's spread thighs. "But not as they were. You have earned a change of lesson." She drew the dildo out slowly, and Blair wailed at every flute that dragged free, and then the Queen reversed it and fed it into her soaked cunt again in one long relentless push that buried it deeper than before, and then her slick fingers went to Blair's ass, already stretched around the plug's base.
"Vespera, what are you doing."
"What four hundred years of depravity does for a Queen." She gripped the ribbed stem. "Deep breath, princess."
She drew the plug out through its own ribs, one stretching ridge after another, and Blair bucked and howled at the drag of it, and before the emptiness could even register Vespera pressed the tip back in and pushed, and pushed, rib after rib after rib, deeper than it had sat before, until the flare seated hard against her and the doubled fullness had Blair seeing stars, cunt and ass stuffed together, the thin wall between them stretched around both.
"Oh gods." Blair's voice was gone to ruins. "Oh gods, I cannot, it is too much, I am so full."
"You are exactly full enough. This is what over-indulgent means." Vespera bent and pressed her mouth to Blair's soaked folds, tongue flicking once against her swollen clit above the glass buried in her, and Blair convulsed. "A princess eats until she aches, is filled until she aches, and comes as often as her body pleases, and no one counts anything, ever again. Not swallows. Not orgasms. Not hours. That is your inheritance, Blair Ravenwood. I am merely delivering it."
Her mouth settled over Blair's clit and sucked, and her hands worked both toys in contrary rhythm, the dildo dragging out as the plug pushed in, the plug dragging out as the dildo pushed in, the ribs of one and the flutes of the other churning through her, and Blair came so hard she forgot her own name, screaming at the canopy, her bound hands straining, her spend gushing around the glass while Vespera licked and drank and fucked her through it and past it and into another one, back to back, until Blair was sobbing and laughing at once, mindless, full past all sense, eating nothing now and spoiled past all measure.
At last the Queen drew back, licked her lips, and unwound the silk from Blair's wrists. Her arms fell loose at her sides. Every inch of her was flushed and glistening, blood at her lips, syrup on her breasts, both toys still seated deep, and Vespera looked at her the way collectors look at the one piece they will never sell.
"There," the Queen said softly. "Lesson concluded. You ate three plates, a goblet, and four orgasms, and you complained through all seven courses. I have never been prouder of anything I made."
"Seven?" Blair managed, blinking slowly. "I counted four."
"I was counting for both of us, wife." Vespera lay down beside her and gathered her in, one cool hand resting flat and proprietary on Blair's lower belly, right above the buried fullness. "Lucien returns at moonrise. He will want to inspect the lesson, and he will want to hear you say what you learned."
Blair smiled against the Queen's throat, slow and sulky and thoroughly ruined, and shifted her hips just enough to feel every rib and flute inside her move.
"I learned that a princess does not choose," she said. "She takes. And I intend to take everything this house owns, starting with both of you."
Vespera's laugh was low and startled and real. "God help the court, they gave you the writ."