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Paradisa and Rome, unknown and 1500
She's back.
Ezio is used to these little changes by now. There was a time where he knew Lucrezia as a girl, fourteen and naive to the world of men and sex but eager to learn, but then she was spirited away by the castle and replaced by a temperamental but lost young woman. That young woman fought with him and argued with him from arm's length but endlessly baited him back. And now, here she is, a woman grown, married once more and perhaps more wild than ever.
Wild, he thinks, even while looking at her prim and manicured self. She moves like a Queen with the body of a courtesan, exuding power and danger while still beckoning men in to try their luck, and he can't help but he drawn to her, to try and figure her out. His life has always been a quest for answers to his many questions, and Lucrezia Borgia poses precisely one to him these days:
Why her?
He despises her family, and in a way, even despises her, for all she enables and aggravates. She's catty. She is relentless and isn't afraid to embrace every bit of power her station and reputation has granted her, and she uses it to abuse others, even in the guise of love and friendship.
And so, Ezio is a tangle of conflicting emotions. He has forgotten what it is like to live a life where she isn't pursuing the Borgia, and in a world where he cannot even reach, feel or see the effects of their tyranny over Italia, all he has is Lucrezia Borgia. For that reason more than any other, he must pursue her and find a reason to interact with her to ease his desperation to have the Borgia in his life. She wants to destroy him, and he'll let her fuel the fires of his hatred for her family. It's the unhealthiest thing in his life, and he is reminded of it daily.
There are a million healthier options, Stephanie informs him, annoyed and exasperated all at once. You're just hurting yourself. Molotov, on the other hand, is more blunt: You are fucking insane, Ezio Auditore. Lana doesn't say anything, their relationship long over by that point yet sorely missed.
But in a way, fucking Lucrezia Borgia –– or getting fucked by her –– is all he has.
-----
At dinner one night, Lucrezia produces a length of leather and chain from a drawer, holding it up to show him. Noticing a buckle and two metal rings, Ezio recognizes it as a dog collar, and one built for a sturdy dog at that.
"Does that not belong to Ace?" Ezio asks.
Lucrezia smiles almost mysteriously as she approaches him, and she holds it out for him to take. He accepts it to give it closer inspection. The tag on the ring does, indeed, say "Ace."
"She replaced the dog's collar recently," Lucrezia says, noticing. "I kept the old one, so it is mine now… or yours."
Ezio chuckles.
"Thought you'd try your hand at whips and chains, did you?"
Lucrezia stands slightly behind him, one hand on the back of his neck, and he feels a tingle run down his spine when her manicured nails gently traces his nape. When he has nothing more to say about the collar, he hands it back to her, and she accepts it with her free hand.
"I did," she says. "I had hoped to try them with you. I wanted someone… familiar."
Ezio looks up at her, and his throat feels exposed the moment he lifts his chin. He imagines she's joking, even if her tone is serious, if not a touch sly.
"Should a novice not learn from a mistress, not the mistress' subject?"
"As you know, I am unfamiliar with these matters," Lucrezia replies. She traces the nape of his neck again, and regardless of his opinion, she lowers the collar around his neck. When she buckles it around his neck, nimble fingers threading the worn leather strapping through the steel buckle, Ezio feels his heart-rate jump. He's not sure where she is going with this… but he does know he likes it.
He's smirking until she slides her fingers around the collar and grips it tight, much like how one might grip an actual dog. Ezio's suddenly not sure how serious she is about this, yet just like that, Lucrezia has him collared.
"My brother's manservant does not obey certain demands I make of him," she tells him, pacing around. He wants to look at her, to judge whatever expression might accompany that silky tone, but her fingers are tight on the collar and directing him to face forward.
"Dare I ask which–––?"
Her fingers tighten, pulling the chained portion of the collar just slightly, so that the leather draws together and tightens. He immediately feels the pressure on his throat, on his trachea, and she holds him like that while he holds his breath.
"No, not yet," she tells him, and then when he says nothing, she loosens it.
He breathes, tentatively.
"You see," Lucrezia continues, coming around to his right side, and he looks up at her. She's the cat who got the cream. "I prefer dogs with a certain visual appeal. Good breeding. Dogs meant to serve woman, rather than man."
Ezio dares smirk.
"I can serve."
She reaches down to grip his chin between her fingers, almost roughly tipping his chin back to inspect his face.
"Even if you'd rather bite?"
Ezio reaches forward to take the hem of her dress and lift it, and in doing so, he gets a hand to her leg and slides his palm up her thigh. She shifts forward so that she is almost straddling his knee, and when his hand moves up further, he feels her sex grow wet against his fingers. Her fingers, on the other hand, trace over his lips.
"I'd never bite the hand that feeds," he says. "Only the hand that takes."
Her returning smile is deadly, lips wine red and cheeks a touch flushed, but there isn't a single trace of warmth in the look she gives him.
-----
In another time and place, Ezio drags Lucrezia through the halls of the Castel Sant'Angelo as she screams and thrashes. It's slow to get upstairs, with a grown woman bucking in his arms and trying to scratch and kick her way free, but the tangle of her skirts and his arms clamping her arms to her sides keeps her under control.
"Bastard!" she shrieks, narrowly missing his knee with her foot, and Ezio has to take a moment to press her against the wall and adjust his grip on her. "Guards! GUARDS!"
"Hold your tongue or I will cut it out," Ezio snaps, but Lucrezia could not care less.
"You would not dare harm a woman," she hisses, cheek against the stone as he tightens his grip on her waist and then hauls her away with him again. Her feet are only inches off the ground as they go. "I remember that even in your anger, you would never raise a hand."
He doesn't reply, instead focusing on carrying her up the stairs. She doesn't submit to him for an instant, so different from the yielding young woman who had once let him -- even encouraged him -- seduce her on a couch behind a curtain. His mind has to be on Caterina right now, and on rescuing her, and then finding Cesare and slaughtering him.
"I loved you once," she snarls, finally, and he's had enough.
"You loved having a man who would submit to you without question," Ezio replies.
"You're in for a surprise with the Bitch of Forlì," Lucrezia snaps back. "Do you think she'll love you like I did in Paradisa? Do you think she'll want you?"
Sensitive nerves struck, Ezio almost flings her towards the dungeon door. He imagines he can hear Caterina breathing within, stuck behind bars, even when he really can only hear Lucrezia's enraged and ragged breaths as she catches herself against the wall, refusing to be knocked to the ground.
"You're angry that Cesare has no interest in devoting himself to you anymore," Ezio growls. "Your family has no love for you, Lucrezia."
"Cesare loves me," Lucrezia seethes. They both know there is less love between the Borgia siblings these days, and perhaps the love is flowing in only one direction. She continues, harshly: "At least I have family –– you're nothing but a stray dog, Ezio Auditore, biting others for having what you do not have."
Ezio doesn't say anything. He just shoves her towards the door and inside.
Later that night, when he finally returns to the Headquarters and climbs into his bed, he reaches to trace Caterina's side. He knows she isn't sleeping even though she has her back to him. When he caresses her, she does not respond to his touch, staying as stiff and unyielding. After a moment of silence, he accepts that there is no love there for him, and he rolls over to sleep. Two bodies alone in a bed.
He dreams of being ridden by Lucrezia that night, and neither of them feel joy or comfort from it.
-----
Back in Paradisa, her grip on the collar is tight, tight enough that he can barely catch breath between the leather and his own physical exertion. He thrusts into her hard so that she slides back and forth on the bed with each thrust. Even in the throes of ecstasy she manages to keep her grip on that collar tight, and after a short moment, Ezio feels his sight starting to slip away from him, and a tightness in his chest. He has to fight the urge to wrest her hand away if only to catch his breath, but instead he thrusts harder so that she might release him and allow him breath for pleasing her, but it doesn't happen –– the world begins to slide away from him and the scream of his lungs starts to overpower his ability to push on any longer. And still, her grip remains strong, until he is almost slumped over her, struggling to keep going but finding it impossible, and only then does she release his throat.
Ezio takes a big gasp, desperate for air, and all at once the blood surging to both to his face and to his cock feels all that much harder. Lucrezia, however, leaves him no quarter for recovery: she shoves his weakened body over, and when he is flopped on his back, she climbs atop his cock and keeps going, riding him hard and under her own momentum.
He's not sure which is more incredible in that moment –– the taste of air in his lungs and the swell of his own chest with every ragged breath, or her sex stretched around his cock, tense and tight and milking him for all he has. He drags in a desperate breath even as he comes, Lucrezia moaning atop him, her hands on his chest. When he tumbles into the shock of orgasm and oxygen deprivation and can only lay there with his eyes rolling back into his head, she keeps going, her pelvis ramming his with seemingly boundless excitement, and Ezio's not sure if he wants her to stop or keep going forever.
And eventually she satisfies herself, riding him and rubbing her own clit as she does so, eventually coming to fruition with a delighted sort-of wail and then a laugh. She's positively giddy when she slumps over him, not even bothering to withdraw his cock from her cunt, and he finds the strength to reach up to hold her. They both shudder together, and she has one hand on the collar again, gently fingering the metal ring that would tighten it.
Cheek against his, she whispers to his ear: "Good dog."
She strokes his face and eases herself from him, and she lays up against him as he still struggles to regulate his breath. There is much they don't want to know about or shouldn't know about each other, but this much she does know: this whole relationship was born out of tangled conflicts and emotions and a desperate need for comfort, and she does indeed comfort him.
"Good, good dog," he hears, as he passes out.
-----
When he wakes hours later, he finds he has been covered with a fine blanket, and there is a pillow under his head. The collar is off, not but far –– it sits on the table beside the bed, curled up beside a teapot of steaming lemonade and a glass with honey at the bottom. When he turns his neck to look around, his sore throat burns.
Lucrezia isn't far either. He hears her before he sees her, a lovely voice singing some song to the morning sunshine. She is no less lovely when he sees her, fair hair drawn up in curls behind her head, and dressed in a blue silk day gown. He watches her for a moment, watches her as she spreads little seeds on the windowsill for the spring birds and lovingly waters the flowers in the box. She seems so gentle and loving, so unlike the night before.
But when her eyes turn to him, and when she sees him awake, she seems to become sad. An instant of silence hovers between them, and she sits down in her chair by the window with a sigh.
"Ah," she says, bitterly. "I almost hoped you were dead. It would have been a simple end to the feud between our families."
-----
In another time and place, he helps her from the floor as she sobs, tears rolling even through anger. Her throat is already purpling from Cesare's grip, but Ezio cannot stay to help her. He can only give her brief words and a look of acknowledgement before he has to run away, after Cesare's fleeing back.
There's no time to catch his breath, and as he runs, he wonders if there ever will be.
She's back.
Ezio is used to these little changes by now. There was a time where he knew Lucrezia as a girl, fourteen and naive to the world of men and sex but eager to learn, but then she was spirited away by the castle and replaced by a temperamental but lost young woman. That young woman fought with him and argued with him from arm's length but endlessly baited him back. And now, here she is, a woman grown, married once more and perhaps more wild than ever.
Wild, he thinks, even while looking at her prim and manicured self. She moves like a Queen with the body of a courtesan, exuding power and danger while still beckoning men in to try their luck, and he can't help but he drawn to her, to try and figure her out. His life has always been a quest for answers to his many questions, and Lucrezia Borgia poses precisely one to him these days:
Why her?
He despises her family, and in a way, even despises her, for all she enables and aggravates. She's catty. She is relentless and isn't afraid to embrace every bit of power her station and reputation has granted her, and she uses it to abuse others, even in the guise of love and friendship.
And so, Ezio is a tangle of conflicting emotions. He has forgotten what it is like to live a life where she isn't pursuing the Borgia, and in a world where he cannot even reach, feel or see the effects of their tyranny over Italia, all he has is Lucrezia Borgia. For that reason more than any other, he must pursue her and find a reason to interact with her to ease his desperation to have the Borgia in his life. She wants to destroy him, and he'll let her fuel the fires of his hatred for her family. It's the unhealthiest thing in his life, and he is reminded of it daily.
There are a million healthier options, Stephanie informs him, annoyed and exasperated all at once. You're just hurting yourself. Molotov, on the other hand, is more blunt: You are fucking insane, Ezio Auditore. Lana doesn't say anything, their relationship long over by that point yet sorely missed.
But in a way, fucking Lucrezia Borgia –– or getting fucked by her –– is all he has.
At dinner one night, Lucrezia produces a length of leather and chain from a drawer, holding it up to show him. Noticing a buckle and two metal rings, Ezio recognizes it as a dog collar, and one built for a sturdy dog at that.
"Does that not belong to Ace?" Ezio asks.
Lucrezia smiles almost mysteriously as she approaches him, and she holds it out for him to take. He accepts it to give it closer inspection. The tag on the ring does, indeed, say "Ace."
"She replaced the dog's collar recently," Lucrezia says, noticing. "I kept the old one, so it is mine now… or yours."
Ezio chuckles.
"Thought you'd try your hand at whips and chains, did you?"
Lucrezia stands slightly behind him, one hand on the back of his neck, and he feels a tingle run down his spine when her manicured nails gently traces his nape. When he has nothing more to say about the collar, he hands it back to her, and she accepts it with her free hand.
"I did," she says. "I had hoped to try them with you. I wanted someone… familiar."
Ezio looks up at her, and his throat feels exposed the moment he lifts his chin. He imagines she's joking, even if her tone is serious, if not a touch sly.
"Should a novice not learn from a mistress, not the mistress' subject?"
"As you know, I am unfamiliar with these matters," Lucrezia replies. She traces the nape of his neck again, and regardless of his opinion, she lowers the collar around his neck. When she buckles it around his neck, nimble fingers threading the worn leather strapping through the steel buckle, Ezio feels his heart-rate jump. He's not sure where she is going with this… but he does know he likes it.
He's smirking until she slides her fingers around the collar and grips it tight, much like how one might grip an actual dog. Ezio's suddenly not sure how serious she is about this, yet just like that, Lucrezia has him collared.
"My brother's manservant does not obey certain demands I make of him," she tells him, pacing around. He wants to look at her, to judge whatever expression might accompany that silky tone, but her fingers are tight on the collar and directing him to face forward.
"Dare I ask which–––?"
Her fingers tighten, pulling the chained portion of the collar just slightly, so that the leather draws together and tightens. He immediately feels the pressure on his throat, on his trachea, and she holds him like that while he holds his breath.
"No, not yet," she tells him, and then when he says nothing, she loosens it.
He breathes, tentatively.
"You see," Lucrezia continues, coming around to his right side, and he looks up at her. She's the cat who got the cream. "I prefer dogs with a certain visual appeal. Good breeding. Dogs meant to serve woman, rather than man."
Ezio dares smirk.
"I can serve."
She reaches down to grip his chin between her fingers, almost roughly tipping his chin back to inspect his face.
"Even if you'd rather bite?"
Ezio reaches forward to take the hem of her dress and lift it, and in doing so, he gets a hand to her leg and slides his palm up her thigh. She shifts forward so that she is almost straddling his knee, and when his hand moves up further, he feels her sex grow wet against his fingers. Her fingers, on the other hand, trace over his lips.
"I'd never bite the hand that feeds," he says. "Only the hand that takes."
Her returning smile is deadly, lips wine red and cheeks a touch flushed, but there isn't a single trace of warmth in the look she gives him.
In another time and place, Ezio drags Lucrezia through the halls of the Castel Sant'Angelo as she screams and thrashes. It's slow to get upstairs, with a grown woman bucking in his arms and trying to scratch and kick her way free, but the tangle of her skirts and his arms clamping her arms to her sides keeps her under control.
"Bastard!" she shrieks, narrowly missing his knee with her foot, and Ezio has to take a moment to press her against the wall and adjust his grip on her. "Guards! GUARDS!"
"Hold your tongue or I will cut it out," Ezio snaps, but Lucrezia could not care less.
"You would not dare harm a woman," she hisses, cheek against the stone as he tightens his grip on her waist and then hauls her away with him again. Her feet are only inches off the ground as they go. "I remember that even in your anger, you would never raise a hand."
He doesn't reply, instead focusing on carrying her up the stairs. She doesn't submit to him for an instant, so different from the yielding young woman who had once let him -- even encouraged him -- seduce her on a couch behind a curtain. His mind has to be on Caterina right now, and on rescuing her, and then finding Cesare and slaughtering him.
"I loved you once," she snarls, finally, and he's had enough.
"You loved having a man who would submit to you without question," Ezio replies.
"You're in for a surprise with the Bitch of Forlì," Lucrezia snaps back. "Do you think she'll love you like I did in Paradisa? Do you think she'll want you?"
Sensitive nerves struck, Ezio almost flings her towards the dungeon door. He imagines he can hear Caterina breathing within, stuck behind bars, even when he really can only hear Lucrezia's enraged and ragged breaths as she catches herself against the wall, refusing to be knocked to the ground.
"You're angry that Cesare has no interest in devoting himself to you anymore," Ezio growls. "Your family has no love for you, Lucrezia."
"Cesare loves me," Lucrezia seethes. They both know there is less love between the Borgia siblings these days, and perhaps the love is flowing in only one direction. She continues, harshly: "At least I have family –– you're nothing but a stray dog, Ezio Auditore, biting others for having what you do not have."
Ezio doesn't say anything. He just shoves her towards the door and inside.
Later that night, when he finally returns to the Headquarters and climbs into his bed, he reaches to trace Caterina's side. He knows she isn't sleeping even though she has her back to him. When he caresses her, she does not respond to his touch, staying as stiff and unyielding. After a moment of silence, he accepts that there is no love there for him, and he rolls over to sleep. Two bodies alone in a bed.
He dreams of being ridden by Lucrezia that night, and neither of them feel joy or comfort from it.
Back in Paradisa, her grip on the collar is tight, tight enough that he can barely catch breath between the leather and his own physical exertion. He thrusts into her hard so that she slides back and forth on the bed with each thrust. Even in the throes of ecstasy she manages to keep her grip on that collar tight, and after a short moment, Ezio feels his sight starting to slip away from him, and a tightness in his chest. He has to fight the urge to wrest her hand away if only to catch his breath, but instead he thrusts harder so that she might release him and allow him breath for pleasing her, but it doesn't happen –– the world begins to slide away from him and the scream of his lungs starts to overpower his ability to push on any longer. And still, her grip remains strong, until he is almost slumped over her, struggling to keep going but finding it impossible, and only then does she release his throat.
Ezio takes a big gasp, desperate for air, and all at once the blood surging to both to his face and to his cock feels all that much harder. Lucrezia, however, leaves him no quarter for recovery: she shoves his weakened body over, and when he is flopped on his back, she climbs atop his cock and keeps going, riding him hard and under her own momentum.
He's not sure which is more incredible in that moment –– the taste of air in his lungs and the swell of his own chest with every ragged breath, or her sex stretched around his cock, tense and tight and milking him for all he has. He drags in a desperate breath even as he comes, Lucrezia moaning atop him, her hands on his chest. When he tumbles into the shock of orgasm and oxygen deprivation and can only lay there with his eyes rolling back into his head, she keeps going, her pelvis ramming his with seemingly boundless excitement, and Ezio's not sure if he wants her to stop or keep going forever.
And eventually she satisfies herself, riding him and rubbing her own clit as she does so, eventually coming to fruition with a delighted sort-of wail and then a laugh. She's positively giddy when she slumps over him, not even bothering to withdraw his cock from her cunt, and he finds the strength to reach up to hold her. They both shudder together, and she has one hand on the collar again, gently fingering the metal ring that would tighten it.
Cheek against his, she whispers to his ear: "Good dog."
She strokes his face and eases herself from him, and she lays up against him as he still struggles to regulate his breath. There is much they don't want to know about or shouldn't know about each other, but this much she does know: this whole relationship was born out of tangled conflicts and emotions and a desperate need for comfort, and she does indeed comfort him.
"Good, good dog," he hears, as he passes out.
When he wakes hours later, he finds he has been covered with a fine blanket, and there is a pillow under his head. The collar is off, not but far –– it sits on the table beside the bed, curled up beside a teapot of steaming lemonade and a glass with honey at the bottom. When he turns his neck to look around, his sore throat burns.
Lucrezia isn't far either. He hears her before he sees her, a lovely voice singing some song to the morning sunshine. She is no less lovely when he sees her, fair hair drawn up in curls behind her head, and dressed in a blue silk day gown. He watches her for a moment, watches her as she spreads little seeds on the windowsill for the spring birds and lovingly waters the flowers in the box. She seems so gentle and loving, so unlike the night before.
But when her eyes turn to him, and when she sees him awake, she seems to become sad. An instant of silence hovers between them, and she sits down in her chair by the window with a sigh.
"Ah," she says, bitterly. "I almost hoped you were dead. It would have been a simple end to the feud between our families."
In another time and place, he helps her from the floor as she sobs, tears rolling even through anger. Her throat is already purpling from Cesare's grip, but Ezio cannot stay to help her. He can only give her brief words and a look of acknowledgement before he has to run away, after Cesare's fleeing back.
There's no time to catch his breath, and as he runs, he wonders if there ever will be.