Not long after, Pasco carried Ada up the stairs to their room for the night. Ada saw from a few lecherous grins that other patrons assumed that they were about to go have sex, and it was a great irony that they were not.

As they neared the room, Ada asked, “You’re, um, good with knots, right?” 

She’d never asked for anything like this before, but she’d seen something similar in one of her books (one on torture techniques, actually) and it was the only thing she could think of that might keep her from orgasming until morning.

“I’m a sailor,” Pasco said, opening the door with his elbow and pushing it open with his shoulder. “Of course I am.”

“Okay, then I’m going to need you to tie me spread eagle on the bed, please, as quickly as possible.”

“Face up for face down?” Pasco asked, without a moment’s hesitation.

Gods bless that man. “Face up, please.”

Their packs were already set in the room and Pasco withdrew a length of hempen rope, his hands strong yet gentle as he caught her wrists and ankles and looped the rope over the frame of the bed, stringing her out, each of her hands and each of her ankles stretched towards a corner.

“How’s the tension?” Pasco asked.

She tugged at the ropes, and there was enough give that she could still press her legs together. “More, please.”

Pasco obliged.

Ada checked the tension, tugging again. The ropes held tight. She twisted, and her loincloth pulled deliciously against her.

“Fuck, um, I’m gonna need to be naked.” Though it pained her to set herself up for torture like this, she was still lucid enough to recognize the necessity. Not for much longer, though.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Pasco said. He started undressing her, and though her loin cloth could be untied and pulled off, the rest of her clothes couldn’t come off over the ropes.

“I’ll have to untie you for a moment,” Pasco said.

“No!” The experience of being strung out like this for Pasco was deeply arousing and she did not feel confident in her self restraint. “As long as there’s nothing that I can… grind on or anything, it’s fine. So, this is fine.”

Her clothes were half-off, trousers pushed to her knees, shirt up over her arms. Pasco seemed to be more than happy with that arrangement. He grinned wolfishly. “Surely you can’t be that close… you just don’t want me to tease you.”

He reached towards her sex, where she was dripping on the bed. “No, wait!” His grin deepened and he continued. Gods, this was so hot. She had never thought she would want something like this, bound so helplessly and yet resisting his advances.

But it was absolutely going to make her come. She mustered up all the willpower she had left in her to gasp, “Red!”

Pasco stopped immediately. His expression fell from mischief to solemnity. “Understood. Is everything else okay? With the ropes and everything?”

She loved him so much, her heart screamed. He fretted so thoughtfully for her. She would have thrown herself into a whole army for that kind face and those grey eyes. Ada felt a swell of something deeper than arousal as she realized she could truly trust him with anything. 

“Yeah, everything else is perfect. It’s just that… if you touch me, I will come.”

Pasco considered this. “Well… I could tease you without touching you.” His smirk returned.

Ada gulped. She was eager because, well, she was horny as fuck. But, she also dreaded becoming any more torturously aroused.

“You look so lovely strung out here,” Pasco continued. “It’s really turning me on.”

He came to stand closer to her face and his erection pulsed against his trousers.

“Again so quickly?” Ada teased.

“Hm, yeah, I don’t think I’d be so cocky if I were in your position,” Pasco said.

The command in his voice made her shiver. He, too, seemed emboldened by her recent use of her safe word. He could be confident that she would tell him to stop if needed, and she could be confident that he would actually stop.

“Oh yeah, and why is that?” Ada said.

“Because I’m pretty sure,” Pasco moaned luxuriously as he slipped his trousers down and started to stroke himself, “that I can have you begging to come without laying a single finger on you.”

Ada’s body shuddered and she pulled against all four restraints with all of her strength, in earnest now. They held firm. She became quite certain that Pasco was right.

Pasco chuckled devilishly. “I can see it on your face… ‘uh oh’. Isn’t that right?”

Ada’s face flushed redder but she didn’t say anything, not wanting to give him any more ammunition, even though he was now doubly correct.

“This is nice…” He stroked himself, standing over her. “You all trussed up like this. No way to hurry me along. I can take my time… take it nice and slow… and since you so politely just made me come so much, I believe I’ll last quite a while this time.”

Ada’s mind was melting but that did not impede her understanding of Pasco’s words and all of the intent therein. “Pasco…” she whined. “You can’t do this to me… please…”

“Oh, I’m going to do whatever I want to you.”

Ada gasped and started panting. She had no idea she’d be this excited, this absolutely enthralled by the idea of Pasco having his way with her, this ecstatic at being so helpless. What made it so relaxing, so thoroughly arousing, was that she was not actually helpless. If it was ever too much, she would say ‘red’, and Pasco would stop.

The idea of how she looked to him was also delightful. Her clothes in disarray, her hair tangled around her head, her chest heaving, her breasts bouncing, her sex leaking a bigger and bigger puddle of wetness onto the bed, a puddle that begged him to fuck her. 

She marveled at his restraint. If he tried to, she wouldn’t stop him. She’d come, and burst through the ropes, and burn the whole city down.

That wasn’t just a fantasy. She really, truly meant it. Something truly fierce and desperate was building up inside of her.

“F-fuck the rules,” Ada stammered, “And f-fuck me!”

Pasco looked down at her cooly, still stroking slowly. “No. Then, you’d come. And you’d turn into a dragon. And that would cause so much trouble.”

“I don’t care,” Ada whined. “Please!”

“No.”

Ada struggled in earnest again, but the ropes held. She paused, panting, heart pounding.

Pasco looked down at her thoughtfully. 

She struggled again. “Why are you— ngh— so fucking good at knots!”

Pasco’s expression turned from observation to understanding. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

“Yes!”

“You would really let yourself turn right into a dragon and go on some sort of horny rampage, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she gasped. The fantasy flashed unbidden before her lust-addled mind. Spurting gout after gout of fire, setting the whole port ablaze. Glutting herself on all the sheep and goats in the harbor until she was pendulously full and satisfied. Grabbing some city clerk and holding them down until they changed their stupid rules, and then swallowing them whole.

She could feel the wetness running out of her as her sex clenched and she tried to pull her legs together, but could not.

“Wow,” Pasco chuckled, “Your mind really is totally gone, isn’t it? I got you strung up just in time, then.”

All Ada could do was moan, hating Pasco’s smugness while also deeply turned on by it, which only made her predicament even worse. She tried to pout, to make him feel guilty, or at least to feign coolness so he wouldn’t know just how much he was getting to her, but all of these attempts failed. Ada was just a panting, throbbing, soaked, strung-out mess.

There was some comfort, however. The more she fell apart, the more Pasco’s own composure cracked. His urgency was also building, the whole scenario turning him on just as much.

“This isn’t fair…” Ada whined. “You can’t do this to me!”

“Hmmm, sassy sassy,” Pasco crooned. “That’s not how you get what you want, little dragon.”

Ada humphed. But her resolve crumbled. “H-how do I g-get it?”

“By asking nicely, of course.”

“Please! Please, please touch me! I c-can’t take it, I n-need to come, I’m gonna— I’m gonna burn this whole place down!”

“Well, that’s exactly why I can’t let you come, you see,” Pasco said. “I’d really rather this place not get burned down.”

“F-fuck you! F-fuck me! Gah!” She was losing it, lashing out, swept under an ocean of heated need.

“I love to see you so desperate,” Pasco said.

Ada just shook against her bonds, whole body violently trembling, no idea how she could be this aroused without touching anything or being touched. She’d never been this worked up before, she’d never lasted this long, and it was so wonderful and she hated it so much.

“Please…” she whined. “Please… I’ll do anything…”

“So you’ll stay there, strung out, while I come on your face, and then go to sleep?”

“Yea— No! What?” 

“You said ‘anything’ and that’s included in ‘anything’, and it’s exactly what I want from you.”

“No… No, please… No, I need…”

“You don’t need anything,” Pasco said. “You’re going to stay just like that. Me, on the other hand… gods do I feel good. I’m so looking forward to release… relief… to coming all over your pretty face.”

His stroking quickened, to bring about that very outcome.

Ada’s mouth watered, she panted and trembled. She watched very closely, desperate for some form of vicarious relief, as Pasco started to come.

It was another powerful climax, the first few pulses spraying over Ada’s neck and face and hair, the rest dribbling down around Pasco’s hand and onto the floor.

Ada’s mind was filled with a rushing sound, perhaps her blood pounding through her, and though the sensation reached an incredible intensity, she didn’t come.

Pasco heaved a sigh, walking over to a water basin and dampening a cloth, which he used to clean himself and the floor, and then he set the cloth aside again.

“W-what about me?” Ada said. “I’m dirty!”

“I dare not touch you, my little dragon.” His tone had a bit of mischief, but mostly, he sounded sad about it too. Since Ada was fully occupying the bed, he went to his pack and unfurled his bed roll on the floor next to her. “Sleep well.” He put out the candle. Then he said, and she could hear his grin, “If you sleep at all.”

The room was quiet and dark and Ada was hazy and aching. Now that there was no active stimulus, she cooled down a bit. It was a good thing that Pasco’s willpower was much stronger than her own, because it had been a near thing.

Though, Ada realized something. Perhaps it hadn’t been willpower at all. Perhaps Pasco had wanted to see her like that. Maybe he had wanted to come on her desperate, pleading face far more than he wanted to fuck her.

She whimpered at the idea and her arousal ticked up again but she forced herself to take deep breaths. Fortunately, the effort of the day’s travels and the effects of the mead had taken their toll and she was exhausted.

Ada lay awake in trembling arousal for a few minutes longer until she finally fell asleep.