While Kyrie thought of Isaac in the Kingdom, Isaac thought of Kyrie in the Dominion.
He would so much rather be out in the garden with Kyrie while she worked on her art, and the more that he thought that the worse his loneliness became. Sometimes, Isaac wished that Renard was the stablemaster and he was the groundskeeper: it would work well in the sense that Renard was way more sociable than Isaac was, but it wouldn't work well in terms of their actual jobs. Renard had always had a more creative mind for the plants, and Isaac had more of the gentle patience needed to work with the horses. Even still, it was nights like these that he really missed being back at the manor.
Staring up at the ceiling of the dark room he was in, he could hear the sound of snoring from all around him. Lady Jiera Deveris had a much bigger staff than Mae did: Jiera's lifestyle quite frankly demanded it. Jiera was the wife of a councilman, after all, and being a member of the council here was like being a member of the royal family in the Terra Kingdom. Instead of one King making all the decisions though, the Dominion had a group of nine people working together to make all the laws and govern. This was all done to keep the Dominion's reputation as a bastion for trade and mercantile business up and running; it was the kind of place that thrived because of all the goods and people running through it on any given day. Jiera—instead of just being eye candy for her husband's arm—decided that she would be active in politics as well in a more subtle way. She does a lot to draw attention towards her husband and give the family a good reputation, and that's why on most days she could be found either at social functions or hosting one. She would never be able to get away with the small staff that Mae got by with in her household with such an active life. As a result of all that demand the house had adapted to be a well oiled and ceaselessly functioning machine.
Isaac hated every second of being here.
He was an unknown variable, and so it was much easier to just have Isaac be by the wayside while Jiera's household went about their daily chores. He offered what help where he could, but his offers were usually met with dismissal; he was in charge of Lady Dandridge's carriage and her carriage only. They didn't want to have to worry about him having different habits for getting things done and they certainly didn't have the time to make sure he was doing everything right. To add on to that, the slaves here seemed to have an air of being just a little bit better than Isaac. Normally, this would be perfectly true: the Terra Kingdom easily treated their slaves the worst compared to their neighbors. In the Kingdom slaves were seen as little more than livestock that could be worked to death and easily replaced. Slaves in the Dominion were treated much better: the more well off a noble family was, the more that wealth was expected to be displayed in all aspects of their lives, including their slaves. It was seen as bad form to have slaves that were tired or didn't look in peak physical condition since it would bring down the overall appearance of the house. The Dominion was a place that placed a premium on putting your best foot forward, no matter what your circumstances may be. The society of the Dominion was saccharinely sweet, with advanced political games being played under their smiles.
Since Mae didn't actually fit the mold of what a Terra noble should be though, it felt more than a little unjustified how the workers of the Dominion treated him. Especially because Mae arguably treated them better than even the Dominion treated their slaves! What Mae did made them feel more like humans and a lot less like property. Human beings who worked for her, certainly, but humans nonetheless. Yet the people in Jiera's house had typed Isaac as a 'lesser' slave: he was someone to be pitied, but also someone who would need to be heavily supervised if he was to be given anything to do. And so they didn't provide him with any additional things to occupy his time.
For many slaves, this might be seen as a vacation, but to Isaac it was so much worse than usual. He didn't have anything to keep his mind busy and there wasn't anyone that he really knew here. These slaves didn't care about or know him; they were perfectly polite, and took his offers to help with graciousness, but they were understandably distant. They had their friendships in the house and Isaac was just a temporary visitor. Jiera's house got a lot of those; it was pointless getting attached to someone they likely wouldn't see again.
Isaac ran his hands up his face to dig his fingers into his scalp. If only Renard was here to talk to, though honestly, he was so rarely in their room back at Mae's manor that he wasn't exactly great company in the evenings anyway. Instead Isaac was usually left alone with his thoughts, staring at the blank ceiling and trying to fall asleep in the gloom. It was particularly bad nights like these that had driven him into Dessi's arms. She'd never asked any questions, she hadn't even really expressed that much surprise, all she'd done was give him one of her usual warm smiles before ushering him in to join her.
When usually Isaac's mind would sink towards Dessi, it instead rose to Kyrie.
He'd never wanted the casual sex that Renard so often practiced, what he wanted was a partner; someone to share his joys and sorrows, someone who would warm his bed at night, but most of all, someone that would be there for him. He wanted to have someone who considered him to be worth striving for and worth spending time with. If he could find a woman that would give him that then he was sure that the nights wouldn't be nearly as long for him.
Kyrie would be the answer to this night time darkness.
Everything about her flit through his mind, and even though they'd been separated for close to a month now, he could still envision her clearly. If he was back at Mae's manor, he would be sitting out in the garden with Kyrie, holding her in his lap as she drew and occasionally distracting her with kisses. She never seemed to mind the distractions though, in fact she'd rather eagerly welcomed them.
It was true that Kyrie was a soft spoken person that was incredibly shy, but there was a delightful muted curiosity to her. He could feel an equal longing for him in her every action, and it drove her to lean into his touches and seek them out on her own. This was a woman who didn't want to just have sex, she wanted to have sex with him. Not Renard, not some other man in her life, but him.
How Isaac longed to hold her in his arms again. Every inch of him ached for her, including the rising hardness in his pants.
At first he tried to ignore it, but as images of Kyrie kept spinning through his brain, his mind started dwelling more and more on the sultry ones. Her tentative approach as she leaned in for a kiss, the soft sounds he could coax from her with rougher kisses, the red on her cheeks as he brushed his lips against the side of her face. She wasn't a particularly seductive creature, she wasn't making any of these motions or sounds to attract him on purpose, but her naivety combined with Isaac's bias toward her made her seem both cuter and even sexier than Dessi.
His hand soon found its way down.
The initial touch to that sensitive flesh at first caused him to flinch. He hadn't quite been aware that this was what he was doing, but now that he was here he was done trying to resist the urge. Gripping his hand firmly around himself, he shivered a little as he imagined Kyrie doing this. There would no doubt be a shyness to her as her much smaller hand than his own wrapped around his erection, and he could just imagine the blush on her face as she awkwardly tried to move.
Stifling a groan, he began a slow pace for himself while in his mind he pushed Kyrie down onto a bed. Her body was bare for him, and while he hadn't seen it actually, in his mind's eye he had envisioned her naked more than once; he had watched her and touched her enough times to be able to imagine what she'd look like unclothed.
He was free to imagine this all he wanted, but when he was actually sitting with Kyrie he was hesitant to go much further than kissing. Isaac may have had sex before, but he still wouldn't call himself that experienced: he was certainly nothing like Renard, and he couldn't even judge how good he was at the act because Dessi really wasn't picky. He did know at least enough about sex to want to be careful with Kyrie: he would have to go slow and be very gentle with her because unlike Dessi, this would be completely new territory for her. His time with Kyrie should be the complete opposite of how he'd first been with Dessi. Someday maybe he'd be able to have Kyrie with that kind of ferocity, but certainly not the first time.
The slow pace on his sex continued as his brain saw him kissing all over Kyrie's body, eliciting the sweetest of sounds from her as he did this. He imagined pleasuring her, the sounds she would make, the way her body would move, her own touch on his skin...
Finding this slowness to be incredibly agonizing, Isaac sped up his movements on his erection. He would be sure to treat Kyrie with the slowness she deserved when they finally did have sex (even if he had to physically restrain his own urges), but he couldn't keep dragging this out in his mind, he wanted her too badly.
Biting at his bottom lip to keep from making too much noise, his motions got faster and faster until he couldn't quite stifle a louder grunt. His body seized up as he felt his hand get sticky with his own cum, and he gave himself a couple more massaging strokes, twitching as the action sent spikes of pleasure through his body. It was so sensitive right now, and yet, he almost wished he was ready to go again: Kyrie being in his mind was so much better than the alternative.
As he came down from the high of his release, the dull color of reality began to set in once more. Not only were his hand and underwear a mess now, but he was also still alone in a house full of strangers. Slowly pulling his hand out of his pants, he stared at it almost with a look of disdain before just letting it flop over the side of his bed. He needed to go and rinse himself off, but he just couldn't bring himself to move.
It was a good thing that Mae didn't do long trips very often: she didn't like to be away from her own affairs for very long. Isaac was positive that this was because she was intimately aware of how the rest of the Dandridge family would try to muscle their way in on her assets if she ever did. He would never fault the lady for having a child, but a part of him really hoped that she would never have one again. If Isaac had to keep being away from the manor for long periods of time like he was now, he was sure that he would lose his mind.
In the end, Isaac simply wiped himself off with a mixture of his underclothes and the sheets before rolling over to try and get some sleep. Even though thinking about Kyrie was agonizing because of how far he was from her right now, it was her that helped him get to sleep: the thought of her nestled up against his chest, breathing softly in sleep was what finally coaxed him into unconsciousness.