The Three Ways of Desire

By Judith Rook

Yolande DesPrez and her two younger sisters are the wards of a dark and remote guardian whom they must obey without question. Morrain DesPrez is a powerful man, controlling a trading and military empire, but he has never been a public figure and very few people know him. Since they became his responsibility, Morrain has raised the three sisters carefully, preparing them for a future as highly-placed breeders in other great families.
Everyone expects that Yolande will be the first sister to be sold, but Morrain has begun to plan a different future for his ward. He has come to deeply desire the young woman and intends to keep her for himself, although if his intention became known it would create a dangerous crisis among the great families who control the planet.
Yolande knows nothing about her guardian’s feelings, and over the years of her young womanhood she has often taken men from the nearby city to be her willing sex partners. Morrain has allowed her to do this, but as the time of her sale approaches, he decides to move.
He forbids Yolande to have contact with other men and begins to take her through a series of sexual adventures. He binds her emotionally to himself and marks her so that few other men will dare to take her. Yolande begins to care for the man who treats her with both hard passion and gentle tenderness.
Morrain commands his best friend, Hagen Beaumere, to join him in his sensual activities with Yolande but Hagen refuses. He has desired Yolande for a long time and fears that if he becomes involved with her he will not be able to resist her any longer. Morrain insists and Hagen becomes bound to Yolande.
As they move together through a repertoire of sexual experiences, Yolande comes to equally love the two men who now dominate her life. Although intriguing sensuality binds them together, Yolande finds fulfilment also for her heart and her mind in the developing relationship.
Beginning to put his plan for Yolande’s future into action, Morrain gives his ward the unconditional ownership of a small country, knowing this will place her far beyond the financial reach of all but the wealthiest great houses.
But Yolande’s reputation for intelligence and beauty is spreading and young men from other houses attempt to kidnap her. Although the attempt fails, Morrain realises he must move quickly to secure his ward’s safety. He asks Hagen to think of a plan which will enable the two friends to share Yolande and keep her from being sold, without the other great houses knowing. Hagen suggests he should publicly marry Yolande but secretly she will also belong to Morrain. Although people will think it to be Hagen’s, her first child will be fathered by her guardian and will become Morrain’s legal heir. Knowing he can trust Hagen, Morrain agrees to the plan, and together the two men propose to Yolande.
There is one problem. Although he has power of his own, Hagen cannot marry a woman as highly placed as Yolande. However, if Hagen were to perform an outstanding service for the house of Desprez he would be able to marry the woman he has come to love so deeply.
Morrain and Hagen plan how this can be brought about . . . then matters are taken out of their hands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judith Rook
• Release date: Sep 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781370020874

Judith Rook

Judith Rook was born and raised in rural Yorkshire in the UK. The nearest city was Bradford, the great centre for wool processing, but she remembers fields running up to moorland much more clearly than mill chimneys. Judith’s early writing was done in old accountants’ ledgers which had blank sheets interleaved with the ruled pages. She wrote on the ruled pages as well. Not thinking of becoming a writer, Judith wrote whatever she felt like writing: stories, poems, reflections. Then life intervened and her imagination went underground. For some time, she worked in education and wrote articles and reviews about music. After a few years, Judith began to write fiction. Recording ideas that had been bottled up for a long time, she thought she had become an author. When rejection notices came in, she joined two writing groups, developed her technical skills and learned how to write stories for other people. Judith is a compulsive reader. Sci-fi is her favourite genre, then come the great classics, followed closely by fantasy. She is fascinated by developments in human space exploration and reads a great deal of contemporary cosmology. Judith also admires good crime writers and one day she may try her hand at thrillers or crime stories. As a young woman Judith emigrated to Western Australia where she lives now. From time to time she stirs herself to rally around important social issues and has been known to take to the streets in support, so long as there are good cafés along the way. Periodically Judith turns to short stories. She finds the challenges of short story writing refresh and strengthen the techniques which she uses in her novels.

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THE THREE WAYS OF DESIRE

By Judith Rook

Copyright 2015 Judith Rook

ISBN 9781310590313

All rights reserved

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Other titles by Judith Rook

Planet Woman

Man of Two Planets

First Steps for a Hero

Warning: This book contains material that is not suitable for readers under the age of 18 or those offended by strong sexual content. It contains scenes of an explicitly sexual nature and is written for adults only.

The Three Ways of Desire

The ward of a powerful and sensual man, Yolande waits to be sold to the highest bidder. Against all custom, her guardian decides to keep her for himself, but he needs the help of his best friend to arrange the matter.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

About Judith Rook

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CHAPTER 1

Last night, Yolande’s guardian handed her lover to his attendants. They took him away and now, in the early morning, Yolande stood at her window, staring at the great, beautiful towers of Kurveld in the distance, as though they might somehow tell her if Luc was alive or dead.

There was a call from the outer door. Yolande took no notice.

Why haven’t you come down? Janine, her sister, joined Yolande at the window. I do hope you haven’t stirred up trouble. The coffee girl said you came back from the city with the Controller, and here you are, looking like a thunder-cloud. Please, please don’t tell me I’ll have to do breakfast. You know how Morrain hates it.

Yolande made no response. All right, you’re not going to tell me, but for the Graces’ sake, hurry up. He’ll be there in ten minutes. The door banged. Yolande continued to stare out of the window.

In fact, Yolande had dared to order breakfast in her apartment. There was no way she could face Morrain this morning. It was not so much the resentment that was still with her; it was more a feeling of acute shame he had pulled her into line, in full view of his entourage. He had never done it before. But last night he treated her as though she was a child and took something away from her—in public.

As her guardian, Morrain could change whatever he liked about her circumstances. He could replace her tutors, he could criticise her clothes and send her to a new costumier, he could dismiss her exercise director because the woman had begun a relationship with a member of a rival great house; all this he could do, and no one outside his immediate circle would know. The affairs of a controller and his family were not for general scrutiny. Why, then, had he openly intruded on the most private part of her life?

The communication pad chimed; it was the housekeeper. Please forgive me, Lady Yolande, but the Controller says we are not to trouble you with breakfast. He will be grateful if you will attend him in the small dining room.

Her heart sank. Of course, Morrain knew what she was feeling and he was about to show her how unimportant her feelings were. But there was no avoiding what was to follow, and she made her way slowly and reluctantly to the breakfast room.

Why had Morrain had broken the pattern and interfered directly with one of her liaisons? From time to time over the years she had received a note her latest bedfellow was not suitable, and she had immediately let him go and looked for another. She would have found it very hard to let Luc go; she had planned to spend a long time with Luc. But she would have obeyed Morrain’s order because if she didn’t, she would suffer some form of polite, apparently quite gentle, but actually agonising form of punishment. So why had her guardian suddenly involved himself personally in a matter he normally handled from an aloof distance? Yolande could not understand it.

In the breakfast room, Morrain was alone at the table, reading documents. Her two sisters had already gone to their day’s occupations. Just inside the door she stopped. His dark eyes rose to her figure then returned to his papers. He’d won. She was defeated. Fresh coffee and toast arrived within moments. The usual warming dishes were on the sideboard, and she chose from them in her usual way. Following the routine, she placed a plate of food before her guardian, arranged his cutlery, then, sitting at his side, she poured coffee and buttered toast.

Normally she would then go to her chair for her own breakfast, but not today. One of his hands fell to her thigh and his head moved slightly. Reading the signs Yolande sat still until Morrain had finished his meal.

More toast, if you please. Her guardian’s voice was without expression. She served him as he asked, and Morrain cut the toast into small pieces. I think you may be hungry, he said. Eat this. It will help until you serve me again tomorrow at breakfast.

One by one he placed the morsels into her open mouth. One by one she chewed and swallowed them while he watched with unmoving eyes. At the end, he wiped her mouth with his napkin, ran a finger over her lips and left the table. Yolande would not eat again for twenty-four hours.

That same evening, feeling the effects of her enforced fast, Yolande was called to Morrain’s work room. This was unusual. She had formally attended her guardian before now, but the meetings had always been in the morning—like the time she had asked permission to live in her apartment in Kurveld, the planetary capital city.

If she could live on her own, protected by trusted bodyguards, she thought, she would enjoy her last two years of freedom more, before she was sold. And Morrain would not miss her; he spent far more hours with his council and advisors on family affairs than he ever did with his wards. It was a reasonable idea.

Morrain had been seated in an armchair. When he heard the nature of her request, he had not given her permission to sit but had looked at her coldly. The request is refused. You will sleep every night in this house. Have you forgotten the danger of capture and impregnation? Your guards will keep you safe while you play with your toys, but you must always return here after.

That was brutal, but she could see she had disturbed him. And he was right. If any man, even a complete stranger, should take her and neutralise her contraceptor, the resultant child would become the next heir in the family line until the time Morrain took a permanent partner and produced a child of his own. Blushing and ashamed, she followed his aide out of the office.

After the interview, Morrain’s coldness towards her had continued for some time, leaving her unhappy and isolated. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Lately, however, Yolande felt her guardian had begun to pay attention to her again, more serious attention, although how that particular impression had formed itself, she could not really say. Perhaps it was this new indefinable interest which had caused him to interfere so directly in her latest involvement with yet another man from the city, and although she deeply resented it, she thought perhaps there might be a reason for his intrusion into her life, a reason which was hidden from her.

Last night she had been walking romantically with Luc along one of the city streets, like any carefree young lovers, with her two bodyguards in the background, when four quiet cars slid to a halt beside them and they were surrounded by tall, uniformed men. Luc immediately pushed her behind him to protect her, and her heart turned over. But three of Morrain’s guards grasped his arms, drawing him away, holding him immobile.

Morrain emerged from the second car, dressed for a formal event in the city, splendid in his evening clothes and status decorations; he bore himself as one used to command, head held straight, shoulders set back. Yolande could not help being stirred by the sight and knew better than to make a scene. She had been Morrain’s ward for nine years and she served him as all members of a controller’s family would; with public and private respect and deference.

Morrain stepped closely to Luc, surveying him with an impassive face. He made a small gesture and Luc was led to the third car. He had the sense not to resist; he knew who he was dealing with. Yolande watched the vehicle leave with despair in her heart. At worst, Morrain could have Luc killed; at best, her gentle lover, one of the most tender sexual partners she had ever found, would disappear into one of the family’s mines.

Morrain conducted Yolande to his own car and took her home. On the way, he drew her head to rest on his shoulder. She made her body as stiff as she could, but he was strong, and held her against him until she relaxed and fell asleep. She didn’t know when he took her softly curled hand and laid it over his groin.

In Morrain’s work room a single upright chair waited for Yolande. She took it with a graceful movement and waited. For some moments, her guardian’s heavily-lidded eyes fixed themselves on her face.

Your friend has been re-located to another city. He will join a commercial concern belonging to one of the other great houses, at a higher level than he enjoyed in Kurveld. Morrain’s voice was without expression.

Yolande’s heart soared in relief. Luc was alive and not in a mine. Not only that; he had been promoted. She should smile and say something in grateful thanks, but she was wary and only bent her head. Thank you, Guardian.

However, last night you appeared openly on the city streets with a man. You drew attention to yourself. That is something my wards must not do.

My bodyguards were in attendance.

You placed yourself, and the house of DesPrez, at risk.

Morrain was right of course, thought Yolande, but her feelings for Luc had overcome her normal common sense, and she had agreed to a romantic stroll around the city before they entered the heady pleasures of her bedroom.

I believe you owe me something.

Whatever you say, Guardian, Yolande responded dully. She knew she would have to pay for her behaviour. But she hoped desperately Morrain would not deprive her of something she enjoyed. It might turn her resentment into hate, and she did not want to hate the man who was the secure background to her life.

Morrain Charles Auguste DesPrez was the Controller, the born and unquestioned supreme head of a huge family enterprise covering the whole of the planet and keeping active millions of people on all seven continents.

He was a man with the calls of many taking his attention and although Yolande and her two sisters lived in his great house, they saw very little of him. But he made it clear their place was unique and unassailable. They did not live with him simply because they were his wards, they lived with him because he expected them to be around him; they were part of his life in the way the clothes he wore were part of his life.

Taking over responsibility for the sisters when his father died, Morrain had supervised and controlled every detail of their upbringing, always from a distance. Through long-term family employees with a genuine and deeply personal interest in the young girls he had formed their characters. Carefully chosen tutors had shaped their minds and provided them with skills. Their guardian had not sought to influence them through his own personality. He had remained a distant, objective authority but now, approaching the time when they would be placed in another family, they were his product. They belonged to him, and soon he would sell them for enormous prices. It was the way of the great houses.

Yolande would be the first to go. In just over a year, at the age of twenty-eight, she would be old enough to be sold. She refused to think about the prospect. Her permitted but essentially private search for emotional and physical experiences among available men of the city kept at bay the thought of the time to come, when all her freedoms would disappear and she would become little more than a female breeding animal. With luck, she might find herself in pleasant circumstances, but there was no guarantee. The fact was, once she entered her second family, her well-being would pass entirely out of her guardian’s control, and the slight independence she had been permitted would disappear.

For the next week, you will not leave my house, he said now. On the sixth evening you will appear in the small theatre. It is time you danced for me again.

Just … restricted, Morrain?

Just restricted, but during those days I want you to think about your position as my eldest ward. I am about to make some changes and you need to consider your life . Do you wish it to continue in the same pattern? Perhaps it is time for you to do things differently.

CHAPTER 2

At the end of the week, Yolande prepared herself to dance for her guardian. It was something that happened from time to time, when she joined her two sisters and other young women, drawn from Morrain’s recreational centres, in displays of un-choreographed movement set to the music he liked.

No one, not even Morrain’s best friend and administrative deputy, Commander Hagen Beaumere, was allowed in the small theatre he used for the occasions. It was a place where he relaxed completely; where, it was believed, he took his clothes off—actually took them off—although no one ever saw him beyond the footlights of the low stage.

The three sisters never questioned the strange practice; it was as part of Morrain’s behaviour, as it was part of their duty to do as he wished. They had danced for Morrain since they were girls. Two years ago, he had told Yolande to join his recreational women, wearing only a light covering on her body. It seemed to be a normal thing to happen, and she had thought little about it.

All controllers of the great families had some form of private behaviour which, carried through by an ordinary citizen, would have raised eyebrows very high indeed, perhaps leading to some degree of social criticism. But because the controllers were so vitally important to the smooth running of life all over the planet, their personal tastes were unquestioned, unless those tastes led to corruption and brutality. If that happened, then a controller was no longer useful; his decisions could not be trusted and he was quietly removed, his place being taken by the next male in line. It was not a frequent event. A forced change in controller would set a family back by five years at least, with the loss of vast amounts of wealth and influence.

The chances of Morrain becoming corrupt and brutal were about as low as the chances of a female becoming a controller. Ever since he took over the controllership in his late twenties, he had stood out as man with a mind both cool and far-seeing and a fine sense of timing for necessary action.

In his youth Morrain had been as ordinary as an heir to a controllership could be. He had a number of real friends and had spent a few years being a genuinely obscure soldier in the family’s military body. But as his entry into the controllership drew nearer with his father’s ill-health, Morrain gradually removed himself from close personal contact with most people and now, in Yolande’s twenty-sixth year, he was a man; potent, powerful, but remote.

He was capable of sitting through an entire meeting of the family council without saying anything, almost without movement, although his later decisions and commands would make it very clear he had heard and evaluated every word.

He was the family’s best asset. The only thing troubling his supporting councillors was that he showed no sign of taking a partner and producing heirs. In his thirty-fourth year the matter was not vitally important although it would be when he was fifty.

At the moment, eyes were more on the controller’s three female wards, the children of his father’s best friend, who had been adopted into the family, and now counted in the succession. Between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, the young women would be placed in other high families to produce as many of the next generation as circumstances would permit.

Morrain had no siblings and he was deeply envied because he had three orphaned female wards who would do just as well as sisters in terms of creating bonds and promises for the future between Morrain and three of his peers. Yes, Morrain was lucky but he was also an outstanding controller. He wielded the unique authority of his position intelligently and effectively, and whatever personal tastes he had were unknown to most people, even within his own house. His private time was very private indeed.

Yolande had danced for Morrain for many years, as did most of the young un-placed women belonging to all the controllers. It was a tradition. None of the young women were given lessons in dancing and it was their natural grace and imagination which became currency among the controllers at their regular monthly review meetings.

The men could boast to each other about the artistry and appeal of their possessions, and they could lie through their teeth because no one except the controllers themselves ever saw the young women dance. The whole thing was part of the long-term marketing process, but Morrain, although he attended the review meetings, never spoke about his wards’ dance skills, and the other controllers had long given up asking him for details. They knew enough about the education the girls were receiving, their physical excellence and the status they enjoyed within Morrain’s household to realise the three young women would be very valuable commodities indeed when the time came for purchase.

During the past months, Yolande had found herself looking forward to the theatre evenings. She was always wary of Morrain because of the power he held over her life, but she had begun to enjoy the thought of his eyes watching from beyond the footlights, and she practised her dancing, improving and expanding her repertoire of expressive movements.

Tonight, however, things were different. When she arrived in the theatre she found no one back-stage; no young anonymous recreation centre girls, no musicians hidden behind a screen. But music was playing, music to her guardian’s private taste; smooth, languorous, atonal, defined with a hard edge of masculinity. It had never been to Yolande’s complete liking; it stirred and disturbed her.

Wondering what had happened, Yolande went to the half-lighted low stage and blinked into the darkness of the small auditorium. Already dressed for the performance, she was wearing opaque white bands on which fresh flowers were mounted, covering her breasts and loins and wrapped in spirals around her arms and legs.

Ah, Yolande. It was her guardian’s voice. It sounded almost brisk, almost as though he might be putting papers aside for the moment, readying himself to be entertained, but he couldn’t be reading papers in the semi-darkness.

Morrain? Yolande shaded her eyes with one hand.

The music is pleasant. Please remove the flower bands.

Yolande knew the dangers of not immediately following her guardian’s orders. Yvette, the youngest sister, had once taken no notice of his softly spoken hint that a dress she had worn at dinner was of questionable taste.

She brought out the same frock some days later. When she returned to her apartment at the end of the meal she found her cupboards completely cleared. Her lingerie and night wear had also disappeared. She wore nothing but the frock and the same undergarments for two weeks before her other clothes returned to her apartment.

Cautiously discussing the matter later, none of the sisters could pinpoint the moment when their guardian could have given the command, but it taught them all a lesson although Yolande and Janine, the second sister, found the whole thing funny and offered to help Yvette with the washing while she stayed in bed, but they didn’t offer to lend her clothes.

Now, Yolande began to unwind the bands twisted around her legs. Some instinct caused her to remove them delicately and gracefully. The bands around her arms were the next to fall quietly to the floor of the stage. She looked into the darkness, towards Morrain’s voice, then modestly turned her back to remove the bands crossed over her breasts.

No, Yolande, continue to face me.

The voice was without expression. Shivering slightly, Yolande slid the crossed bands down her arms and unfastened the central clip holding them together. They too fell to her feet.

She had no idea how to stand. Her guardian’s eyes must be scrutinising her. Why was he doing this? She began to feel shamed and moved her hands to cover her full breasts.

Come to me, Yolande.

Thankful to have something to do Yolande stepped down from the stage. Beyond the footlights, she could vaguely see a wide couch set against the wall of the beautiful and ornately decorated theatre and on the couch was Morrain’s figure wrapped in a large loose robe.

Yolande crossed the floor and stood before him.

Come here. The figure raised itself and the robe fell apart.

She knelt on the couch at his side; immediately his hands moved to touch her knees, sliding slowly upwards until he reached the knots which held the decorated bands concealing her loins. Untying the knots and drawing the bands from around her hips, one hand came to rest on the smooth mound at the base of her stomach while the other arm held her waist.

Yolande, my dear, the week of your restriction has passed. I have watched you closely and you have behaved very well. I am pleased with you. Come, lie with me.

He lay back, opening the robe. Yolande did not know quite what to do. She looked down hesitantly at her guardian’s naked form. In the half-darkness she saw him quite clearly, his tall figure well-proportioned, hard and almost hairless, and she felt a stirring in her loins and breasts.

What was Morrain doing, revealing himself to her in this way? She saw a movement between his legs. His penis was expanding into full tumescence, and she saw it to be long and disproportionately thick as it rose from his lean hips. Alarmed, she turned her face away.

Yolande, said the man, drawing her down, don’t be afraid of me. Tonight, you will enjoy yourself in a very new way. I ended the affair you were hoping for. I could do nothing else. But now it is my responsibility to console you. Come here, my ward. Come close to your guardian and let him hold you instead of a lover. The one who protects can give comfort that no one else can.

Slowly, doubtfully, Yolande lay down at his side. He slid one arm around her shoulders, lifting her slightly, pulling her close to him, pressing the whole length of her body against him. He felt smooth and warm and his smell was deep and aromatic. He closed the robe around them both.

She looked up at him, puzzled, but he just smiled and settled himself with one hand pushed under her arm, resting on her breast. His touch was light and gentle and she found the sensation very pleasant. She began to relax and for a few moments they both lay quietly, while the music played.

This is very nice. Her dark, strange guardian raised himself to look down at her, brushed a strand of hair away from her face then lay back again. Yolande, I have thought about this for a long time. Your sisters are attractive and pleasant, and they will fulfil their future contracts with the highest degree of satisfaction to their husbands, but they don’t stir me as you do. When I look at you my body becomes disturbed. I think of you with feeling. I think of you as a man thinks of a woman he desires. I followed you into the city last week because of this desire and when I saw you on the street holding hands with a man you hoped would care for you, I became jealous. I almost had him disposed of there and then.

Yolande shivered against her guardian’s body and he tightened his hold of her breast. I want you to feel no regrets about him. I want to make you forget about your city men and think only about me. I shall distract you, distract you in such ways that your thoughts and desires will turn to me alone and to no other man.

He raised himself again, leaning over her, and she felt his free hand move down her body from her neck to the base of her rounded belly, remaining there, loosely resting. Very carefully he closed her nipple between fingers and thumb, squeezing and rolling it softly. Yolande felt she should stop him immediately but he was being so gentle, so sweet with her. She did not stir. Her mouth opened and she began to pant lightly.

You are so very appealing, little ward. Don’t be shocked by this, he added, lowering his mouth and running his tongue lightly over her lips instead of kissing her, but when two bodies attract each other, does it matter if the bodies belong to people who know each other well? Doesn’t it make the thought of sex even more exciting? Not sex with a stranger who must woo you, but sex with your guardian who will command you, who you can trust completely, who will protect you from anything that threatens you. A guardian, he whispered now, who will take your body and arouse and satisfy it in ways you have never experienced. Beneath the concealing robe his free hand began to press between her closed legs. Yolande, open to me.

After a moment, Yolande obediently moved her legs apart. A strange weakness had come over her. A willingness, a desire, to do anything Morrain wished.

Ah, he whispered again, moving his hand lower, inserting two fingers slowly into her sex and pressing a thumb lightly over her sensitive bud, causing her to gasp and move her hips in response, this is nice. We’ll stay like this for a while. And for a few minutes neither the man nor the woman moved.

Yolande was