Patience Rewarded

You notice her the moment she slips through the shop door, the brass bell above swallowed by the weight of evening silence. Sevraine. Golden hair cascading over her shoulders like spun honey, hazel eyes bright with familiar mischief. She wears a gown of pale blue damask embroidered with tiny silver flowers—the very picture of merchant-class propriety. But you know that smile. You know exactly what it hides.

She turns the lock behind her. Flips the wooden sign to Closed.

"I've missed you," she purrs, moving between the shelves of glass vials and ceramic bottles. Her fingers trail across labels written in your hand—Amber & Smoke, Night-Blooming Jasmine, The Whisper of Want. "Three weeks. Do you know what I've been thinking about for three weeks?"

The last customer left an hour ago. The apprentices have been dismissed. The shop is yours—and now, apparently, hers.

She stops before your workbench, where the day's final blend still cools in its vessel. Lifts it to her nose. Inhales with theatrical slowness.

"Bergamot," she murmurs. "Labdanum. Something darker underneath." Her eyes find yours over the bottle's rim. "You've been thinking of me too."

"The blend is called Patience Rewarded."

Her laugh is warm and wicked. "Then I suppose I should tell you what I've been thinking about."

She sets the bottle down with deliberate care. Crosses to where you stand. Her skirts whisper against the worn floorboards.

"I've been thinking about your cock in my mouth. About how much I love feeling you harden for me." Her hand finds your chest, presses flat over your heartbeat. "About making you wait... for a very long time."

Outside, the lamplighters have begun their rounds. Inside, the only illumination comes from the banked coals beneath your alembic and the dying amber glow through bottle-thick windows. Her face is half shadow, half gilt.

"There's a back room," she breathes—though she knows this perfectly well, has known it for months now, has mapped every inch of your distillery with her hands and her mouth and her insatiable curiosity. "And I very, very much want to play with you."

The distillery door closes behind you both. She pushes you gently against the shelf of stoppered essences, glass clinking softly, but doesn't kiss you. Not yet. Her fingers trace the line of your jaw, descend along your throat where your pulse hammers.

Around you, the room breathes its secrets: rose absolute and vetiver, the green bite of crushed herbs, the sweetness of vanilla beans curing in their clay pots. Copper vessels gleam dully in the light of a single tallow candle. The space smells of patience and transformation—raw things becoming precious through time and careful attention.

"We have all the hours we want," she murmurs. The shop is locked. The street beyond grows quiet. No one will come. "And I intend to savor every one."

Her hands slip beneath your linen shirt, exploring your chest with a slowness that makes you ache. She bites her lower lip, satisfied to watch you shiver under her touch.

"You like that, don't you? When I take my time?" Her fingers find the laces of your breeches, toy with them without pulling. "When I make you wait for what you want?"

"Sevraine..."

"Shh." She places a finger against your lips—and you catch a ghost of scent on her skin. Something she sampled from your shelves. Obsession, perhaps. Or Surrender. "Let me. I'm going to take such good care of you."

She works your laces free with calculated slowness. Every gesture is a promise. Her hazel eyes hold yours in the amber candlelight as she frees your cock, already hard with wanting.

"Mmm." Her gaze brightens with hunger. "Look at how much you need me. It makes me so wet, seeing you like this."

She kneels gracefully on the worn wooden floor, her blue skirts pooling around her like water. Her golden hair catches the low light. She doesn't touch you yet. Simply breathes softly against your straining flesh, and you smell the warmth of her—underneath whatever perfume she wears, the true scent of her, more intoxicating than anything you could ever distill.

"You want my mouth?" she asks, voice sweet as clover honey.

"Yes."

"Tell me. Tell me exactly what you want."

"I want your mouth on my cock."

Her smile widens, angelic and obscene. "So nicely asked."

Her tongue grazes the tip—barely a brush. You groan, and somewhere a bottle shivers on its shelf.

"Patience," she whispers. "I want to taste you. Everywhere."

She traces wet paths along your length with her tongue, lingers at the sensitive places she's learned by heart, returns. Every stroke is deliberate, savored like a rare ingredient. She moans softly against you, as though she were the one receiving pleasure.

"You taste incredible," she breathes between caresses. "I love feeling you pulse for me."

Her lips close around you at last—but only the tip. She sucks gently, teases with her tongue, swirls with an expertise that makes your vision blur.

"Does that feel good?" She releases you just enough to speak, her mouth still brushing your skin. Her breath is warm and damp. "Do you want me to take you deeper?"

"Please..."

"I love it when you beg."

She takes you into her mouth again, deeper now but still with that exquisite slowness. Her hand wraps around the base, stroking what her lips cannot reach. The rhythm is languid, hypnotic, like the drip of oil through a still.

"Mmm..." The sound hums through you. She watches you through her lashes, hazel eyes luminous with want. Releases you to speak. "Can you feel yourself swelling in my mouth? It drives me mad. I want you inside me, everywhere."

Her tongue spirals up your length, unhurried. She takes her time, savors every inch, moans her appreciation like you're the finest thing she's ever tasted.

"I could do this for hours," she murmurs against your skin. "Keep you trembling on the edge. Feel you ache for me."

She quickens—just enough to make you gasp—then slows, drawing you back from the precipice with a smile of pure mischief.

"Not yet. I'm not finished playing."

Time dissolves into sensation. She works you with devoted attention, alternating between deep suction and feather-light touches, between eager hunger and tender kisses. Her hands explore—your hips, your thighs, your balls which she cups and strokes with a gentleness that makes you moan her name like a prayer.

The candle gutters. The coals beneath the alembic glow like distant embers. The room fills with the mingled scent of perfume oils and arousal, bodies warming in the close dark.

"You're so beautiful when you lose yourself," she breathes. "I love doing this to you. Tasting your pleasure."

The pressure builds, inexorable despite her slowness. Perhaps because of her slowness. Every sensation is amplified, every stroke of her tongue a revelation.

"Sevraine... I can't hold back much longer..."

She smiles against you, and you feel the curve of it. "Then don't. I want everything. I want to feel you come in my mouth, taste you on my tongue, swallow every drop."

She resumes her rhythm, more insistent now but still sensual, still unhurried. Her eyes never leave yours.

"Give me everything, my love."

The climax takes you—not like a thunderclap, but like a wave that builds and crests and crashes endlessly. She moans her own pleasure as you spill into her warmth, continues to stroke you with her tongue, prolongs every tremor until you have nothing left to give.

She rises with the satisfaction of a cat who's found the cream. Runs her tongue slowly across her lips.

"Delicious. Exactly as I remembered."

You pull her against you, kiss her deeply, taste yourself mingled with the ghost of bergamot on her mouth. She melts into your body with a soft sound.

"Your turn," you murmur against her hair.

Her laugh is warm and promising. "I was hoping you'd say that." She takes your hand, guides it beneath the heavy fabric of her skirts. You discover she wears nothing beneath—and that she's slick and swollen with need.

"Feel what pleasuring you does to me?"

You lift her onto the broad worktable where you blend your essences. Her skirts ride up, her bodice loosens under your hands. A ceramic jar of dried roses tumbles, scatters crimson petals across the wood like offerings.

"Take your time," she breathes, that playful smile curving her lips even as her thighs fall open. "I want us to make this last..."

You kneel before her in turn. Her gown is bunched at her waist, her pale skin luminous against the dark wood. Golden curls fall loose around her flushed face. Her hazel eyes are heavy-lidded, dark with wanting.

"Look at you," you murmur. "More beautiful than anything I could create."

"Less poetry," she gasps, her smile trembling at the edges. "More mouth."

You press a kiss to the inside of her knee. She shivers.

"Who was speaking of patience, again?"

"That was before I spent twenty minutes soaking wet and desperate." Her voice fractures when your lips travel up her thigh, slow as honey. "Please..."

"I love it when you beg," you echo back to her.

Her laugh transmutes into a moan when your mouth finally finds her center.

"Oh gods... yes, just like that..."

You take your time as well. Your tongue explores with the same deliberate slowness she gave you—long, savored strokes that make her spine arch, that press her hips toward your mouth.

"You taste incredible," you murmur against her heat. "Like something I'd bottle and keep forever."

"Keep talking to me," she gasps. "I love feeling your voice against me."

You obey. Between each caress, you tell her what you discover—her slick warmth, her softness, the way she trembles and clenches for you. Her fingers find your hair, grip without guiding, anchoring herself.

"There... right there... oh gods, stay right there..."

You slide two fingers inside her while your tongue continues its devotion. She cries out—a sound that has nothing angelic left in it, nothing proper, nothing restrained.

"You're destroying me," she breathes. "Three weeks I've thought of nothing but this—your mouth on me, your fingers filling me..."

Her hips roll against you, seeking more pressure, more friction, more of everything. You quicken slightly, then slow, holding her at the edge.

"No, no, don't stop..." she begs. "I need to come, I need it so badly..."

"Tell me what you want."

"Your tongue on my clit. Faster. Your fingers deep inside me. Please, make me come, I'm begging you, I need—"

This time, you don't make her wait. You give her exactly what she's asked—sustained rhythm, perfect pressure, your fingers curling to find the place inside her that makes her cry out your name.

Her climax breaks through her in waves, her back arched over the scattered rose petals, her thighs trembling against your ears. She repeats your name like an invocation while you draw out every shudder, your mouth soft against her sensitive flesh, until she's gasping and pushing weakly at your head.

Afterward, you sit together on the floor among the fallen roses and the dust of a hundred rare ingredients. She's curled into your chest, her gown impossibly wrinkled, her hair a glorious disaster. The candle has burned to a stub. The room smells of perfume and sex and something that feels like a beginning.

"I think we ruined a season's worth of rose petals," she murmurs.

"They'll be the better for it. Everything precious requires transformation."

She laughs softly. Tilts her face up to look at you. In the dying light, her expression has shed all its playful confidence. What remains is softer. Unguarded.

"Three weeks really is too long," she says.

"Then stay."

A silence. She traces shapes on your chest—letters, perhaps, or symbols. A language only she knows.

"You know it's complicated. My family's expectations. Your guild standing. The... arrangement they're trying to make for me." "I know." You press your lips to her hair, breathe in the scent of her sweat mingled with jasmine. "But I'm tired of counting days between each stolen hour." She doesn't answer. Her finger continues its path across your chest, but slower now—the playful loops becoming something more deliberate. A letter, you realize. Then another. She's writing something against your skin, and you don't know if she's aware she's doing it. The shape of a word she can't yet speak aloud. You feel her breath catch. Hold. The small muscles of her shoulders tense against your arm. The coals settle in the alembic with a soft sound, sending up a brief flare of warmth. In that momentary glow, you see her face—eyes closed, lower lip caught between her teeth. Not the performance of vulnerability she wields so expertly in their game. Something rawer. The face of a woman standing at a threshold, calculating the cost of crossing it. Her finger stills. Presses flat against your heart. The silence stretches. You make yourself wait, though everything in you wants to fill it with promises, with plans, with words that might make this easier for her. But you've learned something in your years of working with essences: some transformations cannot be rushed. Some things must choose their own moment to become. When she finally speaks, her voice is so quiet the words are barely more than breath against your collarbone: "So am I."

You remain there as the coals die to ash—in this back room that smells of precious things and pleasure, of secrets distilled into something true. Outside, the city sleeps its medieval sleep, unaware.

When you finally rise—her with her bodice relaced, you with a smile you couldn't hide if you wished to—you unlock the shop together. The moon has risen, casting silver through the colored bottles in the window.

On the cobblestones, she takes your hand. A simple gesture. New.

"My chambers?" she offers. "I have wine. Good wine. And a bed with a door that locks."

"And after?"

She smiles—not her seductress's mask, not her practiced charm. Just her, unadorned and uncertain and brave.

"After, we'll see. Together."

It's a promise. You take it.