He will first check if that is a bad idea

The last of Iphthime’s whisper still lingered between them when Winston’s thoughts abruptly outran the rest of him. However distracting her closeness had become, years spent reading old histories supplied an objection he could not quite ignore.

“Isn’t this dangerous?” His voice came rougher than the scholarship behind the question. “For your office, I mean. Delphi kept the Pythia apart from men. There were ideas about purity, pollution, keeping the vessel fit for the god. You just gave me the only warning we have about something that might threaten this island and everyone beyond it.” Concern finally managed to overcome some of the heat in his face. “I would rather not discover afterward that I damaged the one person who can see it coming.”

For a moment Iphthime stayed close enough that he felt her breathing and said nothing. Then a startled laugh broke from her, warmer and far less ceremonial than the voice that had filled the chamber only minutes before, and the laugh went through her hips as she rolled them once against him, slow and exact, dragging the cleft of her along the hard line of his cock until the thin gown was all that kept her from seating him properly.

“Delphi,” she murmured, still moving on him. “You are borrowing Apollo’s rules for a sanctuary that was never his.”

The answer landed against his mouth. She kissed him there, unhurried, and her tongue found his before he had finished taking the point, playing along it in the same patient rhythm her hips were using below. Wet cloth slid over the head of him while her hands stayed light at the base of his throat and the blindfold held him as if she could see exactly what she was doing.

Iphthime broke the kiss only enough to speak. “The Pythia served according to the compact of her own god. Apollo required a vessel reserved for him, so his priests built custom and law around that requirement.” She lifted just enough that the gown slipped aside. The next roll of her hips put her bare against him, wet lower lips kissing the crown of his cock and holding there, so close that the smallest sink would have taken him.

“The sanctuary of Themyscira grew from different obligations. Gaea. The sisterhood. The sacred order of the island. The authority by which Amazons govern themselves. Those have shaped this office far more deeply than anything practiced beneath Apollo’s tripod.” A smaller tilt put Iphthime’s clit on that same ridge and rubbed it there while she kept Winston waiting at the mouth of her.

“We do not preserve the Voice by keeping her untouched. Her discipline lies in honour, duty, and fidelity to the sanctuary. What matters is whether she betrays the office entrusted to her.” The next kiss stole the rest of the thought from her and gave it back a moment later, her tongue stroking his until he followed it. “Desire does not silence prophecy simply because desire exists.”

Winston tried to keep the next fragment of history in his mouth. Iphthime made that difficult by letting the head of him slip just between her lips and holding him there, not seated, only caught.

“There was still the story about the Pythia whose attacker changed the rules afterward.”

“Because something was taken from her.” The warmth in her expression quieted without disappearing. “That story concerns violation and the laws people built after it. It does not make every willing intimacy the same thing.”

“The warning has been delivered,” Iphthime said against his lips. “You heard it. My sight remains mine, and the sanctuary remains what it was when I entered this tent. Nothing about that changes because I choose closeness afterward.”

Winston’s mouth was still close enough to hers that the next words came out half into the kiss she had not quite finished.

“I am trying not to walk into a neo-Greek tragedy,” Winston stated. “The kind where the man who should have left the Voice alone becomes the reason the sight fails.”

The laugh that took Iphthime then was startled and warm and far too pleased with him. Winston felt it shake through her hips as she sank, slow and certain, and the mouth of her that had only been kissing the crown of him opened and took the rest. Inch by inch she seated herself down the length of his cock until her weight settled in his lap and he was buried in her to the hilt.

“That care of yours,” Iphthime informed him, already breathless from the stretch of it, “arouses me more than anything, my king.”

Then she forced the kiss onto him, mouth opening over his, tongue claiming his with the same unhurried certainty with which she had just taken him inside her. She did not break it to begin moving. She only rolled her hips in a slow circle that kept him buried and let her feel every inch of him where she was fullest, the kiss deepening as she learned him from the inside.

When she did lift, it was by degrees, the cling of her drawing along his cock as if she meant to measure the length of him by leaving it. She stopped with the head of him still caught inside her, held that thin stretch until Winston’s breath went ragged against her mouth, then sank again in one long slide that seated her to the hilt and drew a sound from her throat that never quite became a cry.

Iphthime at the laugh and the line. Winston at the sinking, which is the first moment the excerpt is his to feel, and again when the held stretch is measured by his breath. He is no longer only a lap.

The rhythm that followed refused to hurry. Each rise was a long drag, wet and close. Each descent took him back in a single unhurried stroke that ended with her weight settled in his lap and her clit pressed to the root of him. She stayed there longer than the stroke required, grinding in small circles that smeared that swollen bud against him before she lifted again. The tent was quiet enough that he could hear how wet she had become, and the catch in her breathing whenever she bottomed out.

The same tempo lived in her mouth. When she rose, her tongue retreated just enough to make him follow. When she sank, she kissed him deeper and kept his tongue while her cunt took the rest of him. The blindfold never slipped. The edge of it brushed his cheek each time she came down, a dry kiss of cloth against the heat of her mouth.

There was nowhere else for his hands to go. They found her waist and stayed. She allowed that. She did not allow speed. When his grip tightened and his hips tried to lift into her, one hand left his throat and pinned his hip to the pallet, easy and absolute, and Iphthime kept the pace she had chosen.

“Hold,” she murmured against his lips, and kissed the word into him as she took him to the root again. “Let me have the whole of it.”

Sweat had gathered between her breasts and in the hollow of her throat. The thin gown, rucked around her waist, clung there and nowhere that mattered. Heat was already climbing Winston’s spine too fast. He tried to warn her and only managed a broken sound against her mouth. She felt it anyway.

Iphthime lifted until he was almost free of her. The head of him stayed caught, kissed by the wet mouth of her and held there until the peak receded to a raw, aching edge. Then she took him again in one long slide, all the way to the root, and put her mouth to his ear instead of his lips. Her breath shook against him as she started the climb over.

The downstroke made her tremble and still she would not quicken. The kiss that found him after that had lost its ceremony. Her forehead rested to his. The blindfold’s cloth caught his skin with every grind she could no longer keep smooth. Inside, she fluttered around the thickest part of him in small, helpless pulls. She stayed low, working him in tight wet circles, her clit trapped against his root, her cunt slick and clenched and unwilling to let him slip even half an inch.

“Now,” Iphthime whispered, and the word came out almost a plea she refused to make sound like one. “Give it to me now, my king.”

She sank to the hilt and locked him there. Winston broke with a groan he could not keep behind his teeth. The first pulse hit him hard enough that his hips jerked up into her. The next followed helpless, then another, long spurts emptying into the heat that had held him at the edge for so long. She took every one of them. Her hips kept grinding through it, small and greedy, milking him while he spent.

The orgasm that caught Iphthime came on the back of his. A sound tore out of her into Winston’s mouth, raw and startled. Her back arched. Her cunt seized around him in trembling waves, fluttering and clamping as she spent herself on the cock she had refused to hurry, clinging to his mouth while the shudder ran up from her thighs through her belly and left her shaking in his lap.

Neither of them moved to part. Iphthime stayed joined to Winstone until the last of the trembling left her thighs. When she finally lifted off, the wet heat of her louns slipped from him in one slow unseating, and a run of his sperm followed down the inside of her leg. The Oracle paid it no more mind than she had paid the blindfold. Her fingers found the knot at the back of his head, worked it loose, and drew the cloth away.

Light returned in a dull wash. Winston blinked against it. The Voice of the sanctuary was already settling her gown back over her hips, the thin linen clinging where the sex had left her marked. Colour still stood in her face. The composure underneath it had begun to return, not as denial of what she had just taken, but as the same unhurried certainty she had used to take it.

“Eat,” she stated. The word was quiet, almost fond. “You have given the sanctuary what it asked of you, my king. Give your body something in return. A good meal will serve you better than sitting there trying to decide whether you have committed a tragedy.”

She bent and kissed his mouth once more, brief this time, then stepped aside as the tent flap stirred.

Saruka came in with a folded cloth steaming faintly in her hands and stopped just inside the flap. One look at Winston on the pallet was enough. The towel stayed unused a moment longer than it should have.

“The Voice left you in a state,” she stated, already crossing to him. “And you sat here thinking about it instead of calling for me. Typical.”

She knelt at the edge of the bedding, set the cloth aside, and put her hands on him first. There was nothing careful about the way Saruka touched him. Her palms mapped his stomach, then the inside of his thighs, then closed around his spent cock as if the towel had only ever been the excuse she brought for Hippolyta’s sake.

“Still warm,” Saruka murmured, her thumb stroking once along the slick length of him. A small, pleased sound escaped her. “She did not leave much for me to guess.”

Winston drew a breath to answer and lost it when she bent.

Her mouth took the work the towel had been meant for. Warm and wet, Saruka cleaned him with her tongue, long slow strokes from root to crown that gathered what Iphthime had left on him and swallowed it without fuss. She was thorough in the way of someone enjoying the task too much to hurry it.

When Winston twitched under her, oversensitive, Saruka only made a softer noise around him and kept going, sucking gently at the head until he was clean enough for her liking. She drew back just far enough to speak, lips still close to him.

“Better,” she said, the same satisfied note she had used on his shoulders. “You tighten when you think, my king. You also twitch when I do this. I am keeping both.”

Only then did Saruka reach for the towel. The heat of it settled on his stomach, then his thighs, wiping away what her mouth had not taken. She lingered even there, the cloth an afterthought compared to the hand that stayed curled at the base of him.

“The Lady Regent will want you presentable before she feeds you,” she added, glancing toward Hippolyta without removing her grip. “I wanted you first.”

Beyond Saruka’s shoulder, Hippolyta had not bothered to pretend she had been doing anything else.

She stood near the low table where the meal had been laid. Flush stood high in her face. Her mouth was parted. The white of her gown was creased where her hand had been beneath it. When she drew that hand free, her fingers shone, and she let Winston see them.

“You filled the tent,” Hippolyta stated, crossing to him. “So did she. I took what the sound offered me.”

No apology followed it. She sank to one knee beside the pallet as Saruka finished and withdrew, the dish already in her other hand: dark figs split to their seeds, olives glistening in oil, bread torn small enough that he would have to take it from her. Hippolyta chose a fig first and held it just short of his mouth, watching him look at it, then at the wet shine still on her fingers.

“Open, my lord husband.”

The pad of her thumb brushed his lower lip when he did. She set the fruit on his tongue and left her thumb there a moment longer than the feeding required, pressing lightly until he closed around both. Sweetness filled his mouth. She watched him chew with the same settled hunger she had worn while listening to him take the Voice.

Bread came next. She touched it to the oil first, then to her shining fingers, and offered it that way, so that what she had done to herself while he was blind came to him with the meal. An olive followed, held between two fingers until his lips had to part around them to claim it. Each piece required him to take her hand as much as the food.

“Good,” she murmured, already selecting another fig. This one she dragged once along his lower lip before letting him have it, slow enough that the juice ran. “You have had the Voice. Now you will have this. I mean to feed you until you remember there is a body attached to all that thinking.”

The flush had not left her cheeks. When the next fig reached his mouth, her wet fingers lingered, tracing the corner of his lips, then slipping in just far enough that he tasted her as well as the fruit. Hippolyta smiled at the look that earned her, fond and unashamed, and kept the dish close.

The next fig never went straight to his mouth. Hippolyta lifted it first to her own. She kissed the split fruit, slow enough that Winston saw the press of her lips against the dark skin and the wet seam of seeds. Then her tongue followed, a single unhurried lick that gathered juice and left the fig shining.

Only after that did she offer it to him.

“Open.”

He did. The fruit came to him warm from her mouth, sweet and marked by her. Colour deepened along her throat as she watched him take it. Her knees shifted on the pallet. The white gown pulled tight across her breasts as her breathing lost the last of its court composure.

“I did not expect this to take me so thoroughly,” Hippolyta said, quieter now, and far less even. “A meal. My hand. Your mouth. I thought I was tending you. I find I am enjoying it more than the tending required.”

She reached for another fig, kissed that one too, and licked it with the same idle care before setting it on his tongue. Her fingers stayed after he closed around it, tracing the wet line of his lip.

“You should make this a reward,” Hippolyta stated. The fondness in it had gone low and certain. “Not for you. For them. For the women who serve you. Let feeding you from their hands be something they earn. A privilege granted when they have pleased you, not a chore handed out because you happened to be hungry.”

Heat had gathered under the gown. When she shifted again, the motion gave her away: a small, seeking press of her thighs, the same hunger she had not hidden while he was with Iphthime, now aimed at the ordinary act of putting food in his mouth after her tongue had already claimed it.

“Yes,” Hippolyta murmured, almost to herself. “A reward. They would look forward to it far too much. I already do.

The goblet sat where he had left it. Hippolyta took it up and drank without hurry, watching him over the rim while the wine filled her mouth. She did not swallow. A bead of it threatened the corner of her lip and she caught that too, then set the cup aside and came down to him.

Her mouth opened over his and the wine came with it, warm and dark, spilling across his tongue before he could do more than part his lips. She kept it there, sealed him in, and used her tongue to push the rest of it deeper, stroking along his, curling, teasing him into following the taste back into her. Each slow pass mixed the wine with her until there was no telling which he was drinking. When he tried to swallow, she chased the motion, licking into him again, playing with the wet heat of his tongue as if the goblet had only been an excuse to keep his mouth occupied.

She broke for air only long enough to let him catch a breath. Then she kissed him again, emptier of wine now and hungrier for him, tongue still working his in the same idle, claiming rhythm she had used on the fig. A dark shine stayed on both their mouths when she finally eased back.

“Another,” Hippolyta murmured against his lips, already reaching for the cup. “I am still not finished with you.”