"Very well," he said, his voice clipped.
He did not help her rise. Instead, with a hand that was neither gentle nor brutal, he guided her from the floor and arranged her before him. She sank to her knees on the plush carpet, positioned so close to the bed that the brocade coverlet brushed her trembling arms. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his legs splayed wide in a posture of indolent sovereignty. She was caged between them, a supplicant in a space that was neither sanctuary nor court, but something far more intimate and terrible.
He looked down at her, a king upon a dais of silk and down. Her crying was the only sound—a raw, unguarded rhythm of hiccupping sobs that shook her slender frame. Tears traced clean paths through the residual dampness on her cheeks, falling silently onto the carpet beneath her knees. She did not look up; her gaze remained fixed on the intricate weave, as if its pattern could unravel the reality of her shame.
He watched, his expression unreadable, one hand resting lightly on his own thigh. The silence stretched, broken only by her distress. He was in no hurry. Here, in the space his power carved out, her tears were not an appeal for mercy. They were simply part of the decorum.
Then his hands went to the leather at his waist. The buckle gave way with a sharp, definitive click. He drew the belt free, letting it fall to the floor with a heavy, final thud.
She did not look. She could not. Her mind, already frayed, recoiled from the implication, skittering from the precipice of this new humiliation.
His fingers, cool and uncompromising, found her chin and lifted it. The motion was inexorable, forcing her gaze up to meet his. His eyes held hers, a burning hazel that offered no warmth, only a consuming intensity.
"Today," he began, his voice low and devoid of all tenderness, "you are going to please me."
He let the declaration hang, watching fresh confusion cloud her tear-brightened eyes.
"With your mouth," he added, the clarification delivered with cold, surgical precision.
The words landed not as clarification, but as a deeper plunge into bewilderment. For a fractured second, her mind scrambled—a frantic search for meaning within the bounds of decorum she knew. Was it to speak? To plead? To… apologize? The true, carnal implication, so obvious and degrading, was a darkness her reeling thoughts refused to fully breach, leaving her suspended in a void of dawning horror.
Gisela's gaze, heavy with dread, was dragged downward. It fixed upon the pronounced, straining bulge against the fine wool of his trousers—an unmistakable and brutal geometry. Understanding was not a dawn, but a sudden, total eclipse.
No. Not this. Anything but this. The plea was a silent shriek, trapped within the vault of her mind.
His hands moved with ritualistic slowness. The zipper's hiss was a serpentine whisper in the silence. Then he revealed himself.
It stood thick and rampant, a flesh-and-blood scepter of absolute dominion. Swollen veins corded its length like tributaries of raw power, pulsing with a vitality that mocked her fragility. In that grotesque, upright assertion, she saw not intimacy, but the purest form of conquest—the reduction of her being to a single, degrading function.
A mangled sound, part sob, part choke, rattled in her throat. "N-no—" She recoiled violently, scrambling backward in a spasmodic jerk, eyes squeezing shut as if sheer will could unmake the sight. But the image was already seared into her vision: a dark, unwavering truth.
"Come here."
Henry's command was a lash of sound, harsh and impregnated with icy disgust for her revulsion.
"No… please. I will do anything, perform any penance, but not… not this. I cannot." Her voice was a shattered whisper, her eyes pressed shut as if blindness offered sanctuary. The mere memory of what she had seen sent a violent tremor through her core.
"I said," he repeated, the words dropping like chips of winter frost, "come closer. You begged for a consequence. You sculpted this drama. Do not," he continued, his tone lowering into a dangerous register of finality, "make me command you again."
The unspoken promise of what would follow hung in the air, colder than any touch.
She crept forward, a slow, shuddering advance on her knees. Her eyes remained tightly closed, her cheeks stained with a scorching crimson.
"Proceed." His voice was flat, devoid of encouragement. He settled back, a portrait of cold expectation. "Open your eyes. And attend to me."
With a tremor that seemed to originate in her soul, her lashes fluttered open. Her amber eyes, glazed with a film of unshed tears, reflected the dim light and her own drowning shame.
"I… I do not know how," she confessed, the admission a mortified whisper. "I have never…"
"That," he interjected, his voice slicing through her hesitation, "is why I will instruct you. Now, place your hands. Let them begin their work." A chilling patience laced his next words, a paradox more threat than virtue. "You are aware I am not a patient man."
Her hands advanced in tremulous surrender. They settled around him, and the reality of his heat and rigid hardness seared her palms—an alien, terrifying solidity. Every instinct shrieked for her to recoil, but the greater terror of his will held her captive.
"Your mouth. Now." The order was glacial, severing the last filament of hope.
"My lord, I—" The protest, a fragile exhalation, was shattered by the swift, silencing press of his thumb against her lips.
"Quiet." The word was a soft, absolute verdict. His gaze pinned her, a cold fire burning down to the last ember of his restraint. "You are exhausting the final dregs of my patience."
The unspoken consequence thickened the air, denser than the lingering scent of rosewater and dread. The command hung, a naked blade. The next move—and the devastating price of refusal—was hers alone to choose.
She swallowed hard, the motion a convulsive effort against the dryness of dread. With a faltering hesitance that seemed to stretch the moment into an eternity, she lowered her head. Her lips, cold and trembling, first brushed against the swollen crest of him—a fleeting, terrible contact.
A sharp, involuntary gasp escaped her, warm against his skin. Then, with a shudder that wracked her entire frame, she parted her lips. Slowly, with excruciating reluctance, she allowed the rigid, broad tip to breach the seal of her mouth.
The intimate violation was absolute. A fresh, hot tear broke from the corner of her eye, tracing a swift path down her cheek. Then another. They fell in a silent, steady rain of salt and surrender, dripping onto the brocade below, the only testament to the quiet annihilation occurring within.