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It was, by Camilla’s watch, two hours and thirty-one minutes before Palamedes became aware of the sign.
When they’d come back to Palamedes’ office after dinner, there had been only the usual signs. The person (or persons) who had put up this one had apparently been too naïve to expect that Palamedes was actually in his office, continuing his work, which was never finished, or something. In their defence, there was no one else around. This was how Camilla liked it.
“Well, that doesn’t sound right,” Palamedes had said upon leaving the office, two hours and thirty-one minutes after they’d entered it. The sign comprised a single sheet of flimsy, affixed to a pillar with thumbtacks. It said: “NO DICK SUCKING IN THE LIBRARY !!!!!”
Camilla said, “Of course it’s not right. The exclamation marks alone are non-compliant with the Style Manual for Publicly Displayed Materials, section ninety-four.”
Palamedes stopped frowning at the sign to frown at her instead. “Thank you, Camilla. Do I bother finding out who put this up?” He had done a cursory survey of the surroundings, but seemed not to have noticed anything suspicious, and he probably felt that exercising psychometry on miscellaneous blowjob-prohibiting signs was beneath him.
“Does it matter?”
“No,” Palamedes said. “Not to me, because I don’t care who its intended target is—and I don’t really want to find out, if I’m quite honest—and because, necessarily, of my station.”
Camilla waited for him to finish.
“If you don’t get your dick sucked in the Library,” Palamedes said, “are you even Master Warden?”
Evidence pointed to yes. Camilla said so.
“It’s a revered tradition,” Palamedes said.
Cam raised an eyebrow and asked, “Who sucked your dick in the Library?”
There was a pause. Palamedes cleared his throat. “Well—to date—no one. I have been sadly derelict in my sacred duty.”
Camilla had thought so. If it’d been someone other than her, he wouldn’t have been able to help telling her about it immediately. Cam herself wasn’t opposed to it; in fact, she would go so far as to say that she was into it, unless anyone asked. It had just never been the right moment.
“You sound like a Ninth, or worse,” Cam said. “Try not to have an existential crisis about it, because that sign says I can’t suck your dick to help you get over it. I do have an idea though.”
“What, ignore that sign, which is not a legitimate piece of Library regulation? If you hypothetically wanted to suck my dick?”
Cam said, “If you go down on me, technically that’s not against the rule.”
“The rule.”
“Yes, the rule.”
“Camilla,” Palamedes said. “I’m the goddamn Master Warden.”
Camilla said, “Did you, as the Master Warden, sign off on the posting saying I can’t suck you off in the stacks? Because you weren’t paying attention to whatever forms crossed your desk?”
“It is vanishingly unlikely that this crossed my desk,” Palamedes sniffed. “Someone is having a laugh. What was the point?”
“To discourage dick-sucking in the Library, obviously.”
“I wasn’t aware there was a problem,” Palamedes said. “It’s the way of things, if you’re polite about it. Maybe there’ve been people who aren’t being polite about it, but you’d think I’d have heard.”
Cam would have heard, too. This was generally enough to discourage all kinds of behaviour among the populace.
“Naturally this is a going concern of yours, in amongst running the whole place.”
“Naturally,” Palamedes agreed.
“And, naturally, the sign is having the opposite effect on you,” Cam said. “You now want your dick sucked in the Library, and you’re going to ignore any genuine or false rule about it, because you’re the Master Warden.”
“I knew you’d understand,” Palamedes said.
Camilla took him by the shoulder, guided him towards the nearest shelf, and pressed him back into it with her body. Palamedes looked at her, somehow immediately tousled. He had the beginnings of the absolute worst, most smug look on his face.
“I do understand, Warden,” Cam said, using her other hand to open his outermost robe and just barely pressing one thigh between his. “And you know that I swore to serve you.”
“I do know,” said Palamedes, who was already a little breathless. This was why Camilla didn’t sleep with necromancers unless it was for a really good reason. (Palamedes, for the record, did count as a good reason.) Cam leaned up to mouth at his neck and his hands came up to her waist.
They were not actually in the habit of translating necromancer-cavalier issues into fucking, because that wasn’t what it was about, and also because their tastes happened to run in completely the opposite direction. Hence, Palamedes was not just content but gratified for Cam to direct, and this suited Cam just as well. She teased open the first few buttons of Palamedes’ shirt and followed the warm stretch of revealed skin with her tongue, sliding her other hand down to palm at the front of his trousers as she did. He was already noticeably hard, because he was nineteen and terminally horny.
“You know,” Palamedes said as Cam began to undo his belt, “this does raise some semantic concerns.”
Camilla was so giving and so kind, and, so, largely ignored him. She pushed his shirt out of the way and got his cock out. None of this was exactly a trial for her, because Palamedes’ dick was, objectively, very nice. It was just unfortunate that he knew it. Cam could play this game, but didn’t: he’d have enjoyed it too much if she’d got her tits out.
Palamedes exhaled slowly when Cam wrapped one hand around his cock and started to stroke. Then he went on: “For example, the definitions aren’t clear.”
Cam looked up and met his glittering eyes. “The definitions,” she said, with a pointed squeeze of her hand.
“Mm,” Palamedes said, and shifted slightly. His cheeks were flushed now. Cam herself was getting just a little hot under her gear. “Firstly, how do you define ‘dick’? Does it apply metaphorically?”
“Are you offering to not suck mine?”
“I’d rather suck it.”
“I hope so.”
This was what got Palamedes fully hard, but he hadn’t been far away, to be fair. Cam was enthusiastically in favour (unless, again, someone asked). She could wait; she set her teeth on Palamedes’ collarbone and listened to his barely repressed gasp. She was a bit surprised that he wasn’t more nervous about the possibility of someone walking in on them.
“Not to mention,” Palamedes continued with a stupid grin, “how exactly should we take ‘dick sucking’?”
“As a noun and a gerund, Warden,” Camilla said, and dropped to her knees.
Palamedes looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses about this alleged rule.”
Cam said, “It says I can’t suck it. It doesn’t say I can’t do anything else.”
Palamedes said, “Oh, God.”
A small detail, but Cam knew very well that sucking was what Palamedes liked most. Put simply, he especially enjoyed having his brain cells extracted via his dick, and Cam was no less than expert at it. Just the other week she had taken his cockhead into her mouth and sucked until he’d come so hard he’d slept for eight full hours.
No such pleasures today, just other ones; Cam kept one hand wrapped around the base of Palamedes’ cock and leaned in to run her tongue around the head. It was going to take some thinking to stop herself from sucking on it out of instinct.
“Well—oh—anyway,” Palamedes said. He had started to run his fingers through Camilla’s hair, which was not helping much with her own horny situation. “God. Does ‘dick sucking in the Library’ mean the act in the location, as you are very literally interpreting it?”
Cam took as much as she could into her mouth and hummed her response.
“Fuck,” Palamedes said. “You’re not helping.”
This Camilla had to reply to. She let his cock slip out of her mouth and said, “Would you like me to help with the definition, or with that?”
“If I take the sign down, will you change tactics?”
“No.”
Palamedes sighed. It came out more pleasured than anything. “Carry on, if you will. I’ll talk through it myself.”
“Very good, Warden,” Camilla said, and went back to his cock with both hands. She took her time sucking any other skin she could reach: Palamedes’ hips, his lower abdomen, the upper reaches of his thighs; then she licked and kissed up one side of his cock and back down the other.
While she was doing this, Palamedes said, haltingly, “Or: is ‘sucking’ here participial—and, appended to ‘dick’, meaning that the dick in the Library must be good, because then I really do not have any problems—oh, God, Cam.” This was because Cam had flicked her tongue right over the tip and pressed her thumb up under it. Her other hand was stroking steadily the whole time, because she was very co-ordinated.
This was, actually, at least as difficult as Cam had expected. Good thing she liked a challenge. She kept all this up for the next while, until Palamedes’ cock was practically dripping with precome and his fingers were moving gently but unpredictably in her hair. Cam herself was quite wet at this point.
“Cam,” Palamedes said after a time, really breathing hard now, “soon—”
Camilla had no intentions of delaying it any more than the technique already had. If someone had walked in she’d probably have had to kill them. She did her very best with her tongue on the head of Palamedes’ cock, stroked the rest, and whatever her mouth did as she swallowed was purely incidental.
Palamedes groaned as he came, his hips stuttering towards Cam’s mouth. She briefly wondered if she was going to have to stop him from falling over. Cam kept stroking until he was good and done, licking her lips and pressing her thighs together for any relief she could get.
“God,” Palamedes said pleasantly, tipping his head back into the shelf. “Alright.”
Cam stood up to put all his clothing back how she’d found it, and then beheld him: flushed and stupid, as always.
“You know, Cam,” he said, “I’m going to take that sign down, and then maybe one day you might see fit to oblige me and suck my dick in the Library.”
Camilla punched him.
“Ow,” he said, pouting and rubbing his arm. “Fine. You’ll have to let me return the favour now at least, because I’m very nice, if you haven’t noticed.”
Cam could hardly have wanted anything more. Maybe another time she’d have to examine the effect that the particular circumstances had had on her. Cam said, “In bed. I’m not risking your neck like that.” This was a bold statement, seeing as Palamedes had once strained something from having Cam sit on his face.
Palamedes raised an eyebrow.
“And anyway,” Cam said, stepping back and combing her fingers through her hair to tidy it, “it’s a statement.”
Palamedes said, “What?”
“The sign’s a statement, not an imperative. A very sad result of the latest survey. They looked everywhere and couldn’t find any.”
Every single moment of this, had it not already been worth it for sex reasons, would have been worth it just for the look on Palamedes’ face. Cam almost didn’t need him to get her off any more, having seen it.
“Are you saying—”
Cam shrugged. “I heard a few of the Scholars talking about it. You were right. Someone was having a laugh.”
“You, most of all,” Palamedes said, still with some incredulity, but the humorous kind.
“Maybe so.”
Camilla would be paying for this for weeks, probably, in subtle and irritating ways, but Palamedes was just like that anyway.
“Well,” said Palamedes. “You did all that on purpose, just to get one over on me. Which you barely did, by the way, but I’ll give it to you for sheer commitment. And now,” he continued, “having got one over on me…” Here he did a stupid thing with his eyebrows.
“I don’t know what you mean, Warden,” Camilla said.
Palamedes said, “Bedroom, or office?”
Camilla envisioned getting waylaid on their way through to the Master Warden’s quarters and said, “Office.”
The insufferable look on Palamedes’ face was his only reply. Cam turned and went back into the office; Palamedes locked the door behind them as Cam yanked off everything below the waist and perched on the edge of his desk. Then he came to stand between her legs and took off his glasses to set them aside; he kissed her briefly on the mouth and then went to his knees.
“No sign in here,” Cam said.
“No,” Palamedes agreed, smoothing one hand up Camilla’s calf. “However.”
Of course.
Palamedes spent a while sucking a trail up the inside of Cam’s thigh, just as Cam herself would have done. She couldn’t begrudge him his fun. The thing was, with Palamedes, that he was so sweet and so eager to please, and would have made eating pussy his full-time job if he could have, so Cam had to wonder how much he could really bring himself to torture her.
The answer was: not much. The first press of his tongue to Cam’s clit was firm and perfect. He didn’t suck anything, because he was the worst, but he used his fingers as well as his tongue, and slipped two fingers from the other hand inside her. Cam laced her own fingers into his hair and pulled; for him this was a reward. He didn’t need her to tell him how well he was doing, as much as he would have liked it.
Cam had been so hot when he’d started that it didn’t take her long to get close, not with this much attention. Palamedes could hassle her about it later. She braced her free hand on the edge of the desk, fingers digging into the plex and one of her heels digging into his back, and said, “Do not fucking stop—”
Palamedes kept to the formula, and it worked, and just at the last moment he closed his lips around Cam’s clit and sucked.
Cam came stupidly hard, unable to help her exclamation, nor the convulsion of her thighs that almost broke Palamedes’ fucking neck. She was helpless until it was over, and when she pulled Palamedes’ head back she could have killed him. She rubbed her thumb over his brow instead.
“As I said,” Palamedes told her. “I’m the Master Warden. I can do whatever I want.”
Camilla sighed and let him kiss her a little more, as if this was so terrible. He eventually stood up, kissed her mouth again, and eased her off the desk as if he was helping.
“What if I put up some official signs?” he said, as Cam was doing up her trousers. “I could throw my signature on anything.”
Cam said, “Signs about what, Warden?”
“Come back to my room with me and we’ll brainstorm,” Palamedes said.