Jacqueline Carey Quote

So it began. It ended as it always does, with such things; he had a full pleasure-chamber and flagellary, the Duc de Morhban, and he took me there, in the cool depths of the earth beneath his castle at the outermost edge of Terre d’Ange, setting the torches ablaze until it might as well have been Kushiel’s domain, wringing me limp with blood and sweat, his face distorted behind the lash, and the sound of my own voice, begging, pleading, as he rode me at the end, bestriding me like a colossus. He used flechettes, too. I hadn’t counted on that. A thousand deaths, of agony and pleasure, I died there in Quincel de Morhban’s chamber. He was good, better almost than any patron I had known, when at last he laid civility aside for violent pleasure, the mask of lust obscuring his features. He was a Kusheline, it was in his blood. He wanted—oh, Elua, he wanted!—to hear me give the signale. If he gave up his questions, it was for that, waiting. And if I had given it, I would have answered. But I had given the signale to one patron only, who had sundered me from myself. Quincel de Morhban could command me, shuddering, to give up my very flesh, quivering in abject climax. He could, and he did, snarling with victory. Not my signale. And in the end, his exhaustion defeated us both.