She lusted after his engorged manhood, wanted it inside her as much as she now wanted to stay alive.
“You defied me,” he continued, his voice quivering, his chest working like bellows fanning a flame. “Worse still, you almost destroyed my property, an ownership I value.”
He considered her his possession and he valued her? Is that what he meant?
Comprehending his words proved difficult, as his virile countenance had set her mind to stuttering.
Here was her first glimpse of the warrior’s face without his helm. And without her fear distracting her. Funny, how a life-and-death struggle negated the impact of a handsome man’s countenance. For now that she had escaped assault, the powerful persuasion of his masculinity hit her full on. This man was everything she knew naught about.
But she did know about pride. Her pride fought back against his wrong opinion of her.
She looked up into his odd metallic eyes, eyes akin to chain mail, silvery eyes chilling her with their icy rage. “Aye, I disobeyed you, my lord. B-b-but I did not try to take my own life. Not then. Then I was merely trying to cleanse myself.”
“What mean you not then? Merde!” he exploded, his black hair, straight and coarse, brushing against his high cheekbones with the fierceness of his expelled vulgarity. “Is that what you were about to do when I came upon you in Lord Harold’s courtyard—take your own life? I interrupted before you could fling yourself into the bonfire?”
A sting of leather against her wet flank stole Mitri’s breath away before she could answer.
Explain, her thoughts screamed, before he beats his valued property to death.
Before she could, he raged at her again.
“Hearken you to this, wench. Any attempt you make on your own life, you make on my life.”
What?
Then she understood. Her warden needed the name of the mercenary leader to protect himself and his keep from future attack. If she killed herself before revealing his identity, she endangered the nobleman’s holdings.
“Roll over, wench.”
Not wishing to die now that she wished to live, she scurried to do his bidding. In the muddy grass, she flopped over onto her front, her small breasts smashed into the wet earth, her legs straight.
“Too low. Raise up,” he ordered.
Coveting the release that the leather strap offered, she was only too anxious to oblige—so long as her pained bliss did not come with a shroud.
Up on her knees, she crossed her arms protectively over her chest.
“Clasp your hands behind your head, wench,” he said from where he now stood, over to one side.
When she did, the move brought her nipples up and out in bold relief, the ends sticking into the air. He could see her arousal from his positioning. Deeply shamed by the involuntary reaction of her body, she dropped her chin in dire humiliation.
At least he was not so cruel as to keep her waiting. The leather came down, a fiery bite into the tender flesh of her backside. The pain cleansed her more than the river. Purified her more than the gritty sand she had scrubbed into her flesh in atonement. In anticipation of the next fall of the lash, she bit back her throaty purr.
Like the clover-scented candles she had once sold at market, her enjoyment was another perverse secret she must hide, another unnatural longing that set her part from all other women. Yet, casting shame and humiliation aside, she could not keep from arching her throat in longing for the next fiery stroke.
To lengthen the pained pleasure, she angled her body to the biting kiss of the leather. Just as he let the whip fly.
The strap did more than flick her breast. The strap snaked around and caught the end of her nipple.
She cried out. In ecstasy.
For a big man, he moved lightly on his feet. Her abandoned cry still hung in the air when he was there at her front, reaching for her lashed breast, cupping the round mound in his calloused warrior’s hand. Not gently. Not tenderly. He touched that private part of her as if she were a thing. An object. His possession. Something he looked after because he owned her.
Turning the throbbing tip this way and that, he finally grunted, “No lasting harm done. The skin is not broken. The nipple is not split. You will wear a bruise but carry no scar.”
With seeming reluctance, he dropped his hand from her flesh. “But I will not tolerate another accident like that happening again, an accident, I might add, that was caused by your own willfulness.”
Seeing that her nipple had sustained an injury, she thought for sure he would call a halt to the punishment. To her, that would have been a far worse punishment than the strapping itself.
But nay. She need not have feared that the uncompromising warrior would change his mind. Instead of quitting, he said solemnly, “You are to hold still and receive your just punishment. Make no further attempts to avoid it.”
“I was not seeking to avoid it, my lord,” she said, defending herself. “Rather, I thought to yield to the punishment by turning toward it in acceptance of the pain.”
“Be that the case, go to all fours. You will have pain aplenty to accept in that pose.”
Before the inflexible overlord, she went to elbows and knees, her back leveled out at a slant, her loins remaining stuck in the mud.
The middling high grass was sharp and abraded the hardened tips of her breasts. Despite its soft texture, the mossy vegetation aligned to her mons irritated the sensitive folds of her cunny.
Wiggling, she courted this additional punishment…for all that ’twas unjustly earned.
An excellent swimmer since childhood, she could not have drowned herself in that river even if she tried—which she had not. Wearing the outlaw’s splattered blood had been intolerable. Her only thought had been to rid herself of the stain, not to end it all. Never again would she do such a thing.
She owed her mind change to the royal. The rough warrior had given her a rekindled appreciation of life.
The next two leather strokes caught her lower, on her buttocks, and she rocked in place, then wildly convulsed, no longer caring that he could see her arousal, no longer trying to hide her excitement. She spread her legs wide, wider still, hoping the strap would land between her open thighs. The knot inside her belly had begun to unfurl like a flower in the sun, all thanks to him.
“Oh aye,” she cooed. “Oh aye.”
And then, ’twas done. Finished. The punishment was over. The lashing ceased. Too soon. Much too soon to do her any good.
Her belly hollowed out. Bereft at the loss of his discipline, she could easily have wept. In frustration. His strapping had not lasted long enough to tip her into release.
But she took heart. All was not lost. All was not hopeless. Heat rising off his body informed her that he had drawn near. If only she could find some way to provoke him again…
A rough hand fisted her hair and forced her back up onto her knees.
He was staring at her. His gaze burned her backside, blistered her skin worse than the whipping.
“You liked it,” he accused. “The strapping—you liked it.”
Tired of the lies, she nodded her head in eager agreement.
“Corporal discipline makes you come apart.”
A statement, not a question, and one that irritated her to no end, for if he understood her perverse need, why had he stopped her discipline before it could benefit her?
To deprive her of pleasure?
Or mayhap he was simply thoughtless. Many men were dolts about female carnality, which explained why her erotic candles had found such winning success with women. Frustration was a horrible thing, and she would know all about that.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, she hinted at what pleasured her. “I have always preferred a firm hand.” All she had ever experienced was her own firm hand, but she could hardly admit that to him.
“The whip assuaged you?”
“Nay,” she said and dropped her chin again, not in shamed humiliation this time. In the torment of
an unappeased craving. “You stopped too soon.”
Telling her deep, dark secret freed her. What else remained for him to do to her now that he had stripped both her body and her soul?
“I see.” A large calloused palm smoothed over her buttock, first one and then the other. “You have some fiery stripes here. Sleeping on your back tonight will be out of the question.”
She shrugged. “No matter. In my trade,” she said without thinking, “I oft lie on my belly.” Candle making played havoc with her back, and that position eased the achiness.
A groan came from behind her.
That she must have prompted that groan stroked her vanity, and she preened. A new experience, as always before she had run from men.
Smiling to herself, she daringly slid her thighs apart.
That should provoke him…
His moan was like music to her ears. “Your arse is so tight. Unusual for a woman to have such a muscled physique and yet be soft and round too in all the right places.” He grunted. “You have a fine, healthy body. From those flirtatious teats, to the sable curls at your cunt, to your long legs and narrow hips, you make for a savory little piece.”
“My thanks,” she murmured, not knowing what else to say. No man had ever complimented her before; no man had ever seen her naked before. Never had she told anyone about her unwholesome desires before, either. And rather than meet her perversity with disgust, her admission seemed to have provoked him, the very result she sought to achieve. All of this was so new and unexpected, she hardly knew what to think.
Save—“Just now…you took enjoyment in the dispensation of my discipline,” she blurted, female intuition filling in the blanks in her knowledge.
“’Tis not a question of my enjoyment, wench, but your punishment.”
From the side where he stood, he must have noted her elongated nipples, distended with her arousal, for he instructed, “Fondle the ends of your breasts; then dig in your fingernails.”
“The hurt breast too?”
She heard him swallow. “Aye. The hurt breast too.”
As if of their own volition, her hands fluttered to her chest. Just as she always did when self-pleasuring, she stroked her fingers across the light rose centers.
Ahhhh…
Her body tightened like a bow with an unreleased arrow, and…and…
Naught happened.
He came closer, brushed her hands away, and thumbed her erect and gnawing nipples himself. As his thumbing grew rougher, she grew more agitated. She could scarcely hold still for all her excited trembling. Her hips rolling, her naked breasts shifting under his hands, she performed a little jig on her knees, completely unselfconscious about how she must appear.
Regrettably, a moment later, his hand lifted away.
She must have made a sound, some indication of her distress, for he said, “I know what will help.”
He came around to her front and wrapped the leather whip around her chest. High, where her nipples stuck out an embarrassing amount. He tightened the restraint, forcing the mounds together. She nearly swooned when he clamped the buckle at her mounded cleavage, the metal gouging her flesh.
“Better?” he asked softly.
“Nay! More,” she demanded. How was it she was able to express her longing to him, a complete stranger?
Mayhap that was why. ’Twas because they were strangers that she was able to voice her need, that she hungered for the unorthodox as other maidens hungered for the usual. Pain was her bouquet of posies.
The honey of her perverse desire dribbled down the inside of her legs. He must have seen the wetness, for, after tightening the strap around her straining breasts some more, he fingered the cream, tasted the cream. From his sculptured lips came an enthusiastic, “Mmm.”
His murmur delighted her, but still her release refused to come.
“Give over,” he crooned.
At his encouragement, which certainly must signify his acceptance of her perverse need, she no longer resisted that which she wanted. A hum started deep within her belly. From the vibrations burst forth a glowing ember, a spark of rapture unlike she had ever before experienced. She ignited, and a high-pitched scream ripped from her throat.
“Ayeayeaye…”
Drained, awash in her unorthodox pleasure, she went limp. If not for a sinewy arm, his sinewy arm, holding her upright, she would have fallen face-first into the muddy earth’s sharp grass and abrading moss.
“You came,” he said. “You broke apart.”
“Aye,” she replied. For the second time, she admitted her horrible secret. To him, a royal, of all people. “And the sight of my coming stimulated you, my lord.”
“Never you mind what stimulates me, wench.”
“But ’tis a mutual weakness. Cruel to have me show you my weakness without you revealing yours.”
“I am cruel, and never forget it. Name names, wench! With your cooperation will come certain rewards. One such reward is my granting you a pardon.”
She furrowed her brow. “A pardon for what, pray?”
“High treason. You whored for a traitor. The mercenary who destroyed Lord Harold’s holdings and killed his people is an enemy of the crown. As his consort, you are his accomplice. Treason is punishable by execution. My pardon will spare you the loss of your head.”
She gasped but said naught to defend herself. Her lie had trapped her in a spider’s web of her own making. She had led him to believe the very thing of which he now accused her. Telling him the truth might mitigate her guilt in his eyes, but then again it might not. One thing was certain—she would lose all credibility with him. Here on out, he would not believe anything she said. Worse, he might leave her here and go charging into the woods after the mercenary. For all she knew, her sister was still in those woods. If this royal found Ysenda, everything she had endured thus far to keep her sister safe would have been undertaken in vain.
“I require those names, wench.” He stepped away from her.
She did have a name—Axehand. But ’twas too soon to speak it. He had yet to take her away from here.
Evasion. He demanded information, and she must put him off until they were far from here, preferably at his keep. But how?
By offering him something else instead of the information.
Unfortunately, all she had was herself.
Like a petitioner at prayer, she crawled after him on her knees, her head meekly lowered. When she drew near, she looked up, only slightly, and fixed her gaze on the massive ridge bulging out his loincloth.
She released that bulge, though gingerly, and his man part made a savage arc for her face, a wild, disjointed swing, as though the rod operated entirely of its own volition. It amazed her, that jutting club, so much harder and thicker than her erotic candle phalluses.
She reached for him, no compunction over what the church deemed a mortal sin, for what she had a mind to do was sodomy, a forbidden act. Then again, so too was self-pleasuring with a candle. Had that been the first step on her slippery slope to hell?
Or had it been when she had nearly ended her life?
Giving in to despair was a grievous sin too.
But before she could take her own life, this stern warrior had interceded. And now she would grasp at life with both hands, even if that meant grasping him the same.
This ruthless nobleman had saved her life, not out of altruism, but for his own self-serving purposes. Regardless of his motivation, she breathed only because of him. In these perilous times, he would keep her safe, even offering her a pardon for a crime she had not committed.
Without further hesitation or useless pangs of guilt, she first examined his shaft, which rooted for the sky, its erect stature nearly touching a cloud.
A slight exaggeration, though he was of towering proportions.
After looking, as any inquisitive person would, she touched him. Gliding a hand over him, she allowed her fingers to do some tentative exploring. Kneading. Squeezing, as she would with a bladder of
mead to free the last drop. Next she cupped his stones, the sac weighty and furred, then nuzzled the bulbous crown with her nose. Then with her tongue. Her mouth. Her teeth.
“Christ,” he shouted. “Have a care where you chew.”
She had not thought to bite him…
Until he put the grand idea in her head.
Alas, she teased him instead. Bending to the task, her passion rising along with her confidence, she licked the underside of his sac and continued from the root up the stem. Using just the tip of her tongue, she tickled the top, a top that had grown by leaps and bounds.
Somehow, despite her apprehensions, she knew what to do. At least her tongue did. That which had only tasted food before, now tasted him. Savored him, actually. And when a drop of something milky beaded the blunt head, she sampled it too.
That creamy droplet tasted of man. Not of overlord. Not of warrior killer. Not of her revenge-seeking warden. It tasted simply of man. Or, at least, of how she had envisioned a man would taste.
Going back for seconds, she flicked her tongue around the slightly raised ring under the crown. She grated her teeth over the flesh there; silky flesh ’twas too, despite his hard masculinity.
He stiffened. And not only his male member. All of him went rigid.
“If you think to continue in this same vein, I will soon gush blood,” the nobleman rasped.
Though wounding him had its appeal, ’twas probably not the best outcome here. The object of this exercise was to please him, not maim him.
Changing maneuvers, she blew across the area she had only just moistened.
He gasped, “Take me into your mouth and begin.”
Begin what, pray?
She lacked the wherewithal to imagine but trustingly parted her lips anyway.
“Your mouth feels fine on my cock.”
But for her mouth being well occupied, she might have giggled.
Blessed Virgin. He called his phallus a cock! Like a rooster, only this strutting bird had no feathers. Which gladdened her. Feathers in one’s throat would itch.
“I can take no more,” he groaned. “Suck me off.”
She would try, but first she would settle him more comfortably atop her tongue.
The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) Page 6
