This is... kind of a follow-up to this earlier story of mine, but can also just be read on its own just fine.
**
The fair queen suppressed a shiver.
Even once one of her handmaidens had removed her blindfold, the faint candlelight had stopped far short of reaching the corners of the dungeon room, the chamber far too deep below ground for natural light to penetrate. To anyone else, the rooms that still resided beneath the castle would have carried an air of foreboding, a warren of austere stone and ghostly shadows. But for the queen, it was her sanctuary. Her escape from the weight of absolute responsibility that followed her wherever she went above ground: of expectation, of duty, of always remaining absolutely composed and in control. Her guilty pleasure.
Footsteps from beyond her line of sight, and the queen caught her breath at the sudden sensation of fingers tracing through her hair, as a familiar, soft voice spoke in her ear, close enough to raise the hairs on the back of her neck. “Quite ready, Your Highness?”
Lily. Always so understanding. “I-”
The queen’s sentence ended in a muffled gasp at the sudden shock – could it really now be called a shock? – of a small, slightly jagged sliver of ice tracing over her bare skin. It moved, sleek and fluid, from the point just below her ear where she’d felt Lily’s warm breath, a sudden spike of cold that traced down her cheek, her collar, down her neck and grazed the top of her bare chest. “Take your time,” Lily murmured, the smile in her voice plain even from out of sight.
The queen breathed deeply. Strings of water droplets adorned her naked body like tiny jewels, each one a memory of how she’d been teased. “Yes. I’m ready.” For… what, exactly, she did not yet know, but she’d been tantalised plenty. She was never short of admiration for her maids’ creativity.
“It’s too hot.” The queen’s fan had been slack in her grip as she’d sighed, acutely aware of the sweat leaving her clothes clinging uncomfortably to her – why did she always even at moments like this have to remain presentable? – as she’d scanned through the mountain of documents before her with as much concentration as she could feign. “So much for a summer recess,” she’d muttered. “The Lords are bickering worse than ever.”
She’d accepted a glass from Lily with palpable relief. “And going through business slower than ever,” the other girl had pointed out. “I can’t imagine they’d be devastated if these weren’t back to them today.”
The queen had gazed at the copy piled up in front of her with a measure of guilt, though her mind had already been wandering to thoughts of slipping out of her dress and into a cool bath. Could she? No, she’d never be able to settle. It was a summer’s day made for doing a grand amount of nothing, but the familiar nervous energy that always came to the surface when she began a task wouldn’t leave her unless she was occupied with something.
Something like…
“Bess isn’t busy.” It would have been a casual, throwaway remark for most people, but the queen had heard the silent question in Lily’s voice. She’d felt a flush beginning to creep around her collar that had had nothing to do with the weather. “Is… is she now?” she’d said tentatively.
She could spare a couple of hours, couldn’t she? And she’d have to. Bess’s sessions, once they began, tended to take their time to conclude.
“I can promise you one thing,” Lily had added. “You would certainly be cool*.”*
She’d grinned at her, a smile that the queen hadn’t been able to help but return.
She was cool, alright. The palpable relief of escaping the scorching heat above had grown deeper with every step she’d descended into the stone rooms below ground. Before her maids had stripped her, had strapped her down to the table that now stood as a centrepiece to what had once been the main holding room. All made over, of course – the queen had taken great care with her quality of life improvements. The upholstered surface was soft beneath her back, the straps that crisscrossed her body and pinned her wrists and ankles down forgiving enough for her to pull on them with all her strength without hurting herself – but stern enough to not yield an inch.
Before the ice had come out – a solid block that the other girls had gleefully smashed smaller pieces from before they’d begun to work on her. The queen had lain for she knew not how long – helpless, squirming within the tiny sliver of space still afforded to her, as the contours of her body had been mapped and teased and tormented from all sides in a ticklish, skin-tingling bombardment of her senses. “Good girl.” Bess, who always took charge in these situations, had stroked her hair gently, even as her smile had promised infinitely more yet to come. “But you’re going to have to keep still for us…”
The queen had learned early on that Bess, a little older and with a certain shrewdness behind her kind eyes, had a wonderful knack for anticipating her wishes even before she’d quite found the means to articulate them. It made her an extremely helpful handmaid – and a formidably capable domme. “Because you do want what comes next, don’t you?”
Bess’s voice had been dangerously, delightfully soft, and it was as much the heat between her legs as the cold that bit into her limbs that had made the queen twitch once more under her touch. “Yes,” she’d breathed.
Bess had kissed her softly, and then had disappeared from her side, leaving her to the other girls’ ministrations, the nerve-tingling feeling of the ice beginning to melt against her flesh, and the racing of her imagination.
Now she had to imagine no longer. The girls had circled round her again, and Bess was approaching, another small, rounder piece of ice, slightly tapered at one end, held in her outstretched hand. “Let me explain,” Bess said slowly, deliberately. “You’re going to cum for us-”
Again, the queen felt herself practically throb.
“-but first, you’re going to show us how well you can control yourself.” The muscles of the queen’s stomach had clenched as Bess had traced the ice over the bare skin of her belly, hand coming to rest just over her navel. “I’m going to leave this resting here,” Bess had said. “And it’s going to stay here, until it melts. And then, and only then, will you be allowed to cum. Sound fair?”
“I-” The queen had raised her head as best she could, doing her best to size up the piece resting on her stomach. How long would she have to endure of whatever Bess had planned? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? More?
It had been several sessions ago, now, that her fondness for edging had been teased out by Bess. “Why do you suppose it is?” the queen had mused, grinning with that sense of utterly satiated serenity that came over her once the dust had settled. “That I get so much pleasure from being… denied pleasure?”
Bess had smirked and shrugged. “Pleasures can be opaque sometimes. But, well… everyone wants what they can’t have, Your Highness. And,” she’d added as an amused afterthought, “I suppose on that note… you’re not the most used to having someone say ‘no’ to you, are you?”
“What happens if it slips off?” the queen asked now cautiously.
Bess smiled. “Then we replace it with a fresh piece, and we start again. You won’t cum until one has completely melted on your body. Actions have to have consequences, after all, don’t they, Your Highness?”
There it was. That jumble of feelings, mingled excitement and trepidation and longing that only came alive in her down here. The queen didn’t know if she could do it. That would depend on her self-control. On how gentle – or cruel – her handmaids were with her.
But fuck, every part of her wanted to try.
Again, the queen managed a firm nod, and her voice was quite steady as she spoke again. “I’m ready.”
Again, Bess grinned. “I hope so.”
She straightened the ice where it dipped just slightly into the groove of her belly button, and stepped once more into the shadows.
Then it began.
The queen’s concentration was sharp. Her focus was occupied, as best as it could be, by the balance of the piece of ice on top of her, the set of her body, doing all that she could to compose herself. Even, though, had she had nothing else to occupy her thoughts, she suspected what came next – as it often did – would have become something of a blur. Of so many hands, soft palms and nimble fingers, fanning out over her body even as she did all that she could to stay limp and unmoved; of soft lips and tongues that grazed, warm and tender, over the same pathways that earlier had been marked by the sharp bite of the cold. The girls, of course, knew all of her weaknesses by now. They knew that kisses in the shallow hollow of her throat made her weak; knew the faint tug of the tresses at the base of her neck and soft graze of nails against her scalp brought something feral out of her. Knew the precise combination of loving praise and crude taunts that brought her to some hazy place in the middle of feeling safe and feeling dirty; calm, agitated, comfortable, desperate, wanting, yearning to-
“I need to-,” the queen’s gasped pleas were swallowed up in another kiss. A pair of mouths – whose, she neither knew nor cared – were at work sucking on each of her nipples: slow, measured movements that only left her aching more acutely for – fuck – for the slow circles of fingers between her legs, spreading her cunt, agonisingly conscious of her own wetness, at the urge to buck her hips into the movements against her clit that were so patently, so deliberately not enough. “I need to cum,” the queen managed.
“No,” Lily said gently, simply. “Not yet, Your Highness.”
The chill of the ice was still there against her belly. How much time had now passed? It would be melting faster as the minutes trickled by, but the skin of her belly was surely now slick in its wake and ready to dislodge at even the slightest of movements-
Fighting every instinct in her body – the instinct to push against her restraints and press herself further into the hands that were coaxing her apart – the queen kept herself still. Perhaps it was her competitive spirit, or something that sat on the edge between pleasure and discomfort, or the part of her that almost melted for itself internally as again, lips pressed affirmingly against her forehead – “good girl” – that kept her from exercising her safeword to bring proceedings to a halt. She wanted this. She wanted this side of herself that the rest of the world didn’t get to see.
And so she endured.
She endured when the ice returned, and the lips and tongues and fingers were suddenly joined by the ticklish chill that it took every ounce of restraint she had to keep from squirming beneath. She kept still as those same fingers pressed easily inside her; slow, gentle strokes soon giving way to deeper, firmer movements, knuckles curling, finding with practiced ease the spot that made her almost sob with pleasure at the pressure. But never enough. That, they knew now too – her tells, her edge, and the fingers slowed, the ministrations ceased, always, always early enough to deprive her of her release. How could the ice still not be gone when her skin felt as if it was burning? She needed it now. She needed it, she needed it, she-
“Mmpf.” A faint, choked whine escaped her, and the queen desperately held herself in check, as half a dozen hands once again came to a stop, frustrating her once more. God, she’d chosen them well.
“Poor thing,” Bess cooed, moving back into her line of sight. Her fingers stroked the queen’s cheek affirmingly. “But I think… you’re almost there.”
The queen glanced from her face down to her midriff, where she could just make out the faint translucent shape of what remained of the solitary ice chunk. “Think you can hang on?”
The queen nodded once more, the motion clipped, trying not to move herself too much. “Good girl,” Bess murmured.
Her fingers brushed the queen’s lips. She had produced another fragment of ice from somewhere, and its sleek surface brushed the same path against the queen’s mouth, the damp cold this time almost a relief. “That’s it…”
Bess moved the ice away for a moment, and as the queen watched brought it to her own lips, sucking on it thoughtfully. She was too distracted by the wonders being wrought across her body to pay it much thought, but suppressed another slight gasp as Bess kissed her again, mouth now suddenly, acutely cold against hers. Just one more rush to her senses, in the strange haze of warm flesh and cold water and sticky sweat that her time strapped to the table had brought. “Like it?” Bess asked softly.
The queen nodded tentatively once more. Bess grinned, slipped the melting ice now fully into her mouth, and nuzzled her way affectionately down the queen’s neck, the familiar path of kisses now suddenly layered with a whole new test for her senses. “Oh-” the queen almost purred. “That’s- fuck-”
Again, she was too distracted to pay it any great consideration. Bess’s lips, the two mouths still dutifully focused on her breasts, the sea of arms around her as she was rubbed and fingered and gloriously taken apart, as the edge of orgasm beckoned to her yet again-
And then it happened, too swiftly for her to prepare herself. The others retreated, enough for Bess to dip between her trembling thighs, and the queen was only conscious of fingers spreading her lips before she felt the sudden, icy kiss of Bess’s mouth against her clit.
The queen couldn’t help it. She squealed as her body jerked at the sudden sensation. The tiny shard of ice that had remained skittered off the wet surface of her belly and onto the table. “I- no-” the queen sputtered. The edge she’d been on was still there, tantalising, but agonisingly fading as her clit throbbed with sensitivity. “I didn’t- I wasn’t-”
“Pity.” Bess made an exaggerated pout of sympathy. “And you were so close.” She stroked the queen’s thigh gently. “Guess we’ll just have to start again, Your Highness.”
She grinned wickedly at her. The queen stared back at her, speechless. She couldn’t bear it. Every nerve in her body was shot. She’d been squirming and begging to cum before the next ice shard had so much as been placed on her body.
The thought practically made her tremble with excitement.
Bess had produced her next segment of ice. “Good luck,” she said, voice once again dangerously soft.
Summer evenings were long. The queen had never been more grateful for it, as she lay back again, and her maids began to break her once more.