by Megan Crane
He pulled her tighter to him, so that his wide rock expanse of a chest was like an untended fire at her back. Then, more astonishing, she felt his mouth at the crook of her neck, tasting her. Testing her.
Driving her mad as he stopped moving her in that wicked rhythm, letting her settle there, her arms locked out against the dashboard and her head almost to heavy to keep upright.
Then he picked up his pace all over again.
He hammered into her, and this time he wasn’t moving her. He was doing the thrusting, redefining deep and hard and hot with every slick thrust. The hand on her hip moved beneath her skirts, and then he found it. That place where Matylda always ached. Where she was always so greedy, so unfulfilled. The place she tried, over and over again, to use in all her tithing sessions, but often failed when her partners didn’t seem to understand it was there. She’d long since accepted that only she seemed to know what a little touch and attention could do—sending her spinning off wildly into bliss.
But Zavier knew.
He found her unerringly. He pressed down in the same instant that he slammed himself into her, and it was too much.
She thought she screamed. She knew she shook. But Matylda didn’t care, because she was shattering.
Again and again and again.
He bent her forward, and he slammed himself into her, throwing her from one wild explosion to the next, and then one more, and then, when she thought she couldn’t take another moment of it, he threw her over the edge again.
And this time, he pumped himself into her one last time, and then, finally, followed.
4.
Sometime later, when she stopped spinning off into nothing, Matylda was surprised to find that she could still breathe.
And then, when it seemed she really could, that it wasn’t a fluke, she discovered that she was still bracing herself on the dashboard as if her straightened arms were what was keeping her from sliding into a boneless heap on the floorboards.
But the truth was, it was Zavier.
He was still so huge and lodged deep inside of her. His strong arm still held her fast against his chest, and she didn’t care that her corset was cutting off her ability to breathe deeply. She didn’t care that she should have been uncomfortable, splayed out on the lap of a man she hardly knew—her husband, of all things, which still seemed as impossible as it had earlier—trying to gather her wits about her again.
Because all she could really seem to care about was the way his head was bent to the crook of her neck. His lips rested there against her tender, oversensitive skin, making occasional goose bumps shiver to life every time he exhaled.
For a moment she felt caught somewhere between his mouth on her skin, the thick length of him still so deep inside of her, and the shocking blue sky before her, interrupted only by the rearing, snowcapped mountains. Caught and held.
Changed, something inside of her whispered.
Zavier shifted beneath her. He moved his mouth from the crook of her neck, and she had to bite back the involuntary sound of loss that welled up in her throat. He lifted her off of him in the same easy way he’d pulled her into this position in the first place, in case she might have forgotten all that superior strength he wore coiled up in that big, hard body of his.
She hadn’t.
And the slide of him out of her body, it turned out, made her feel as shivery as the other direction. And filled with an even sharper sense of loss.
Then she was on her side of the truck again with nothing to do but straighten her skirt and try to ignore the part of her that wanted to beg him to do that again. All of that and anything else, again. And again.
Because there was another part of her—the larger part—that felt something else entirely. Fragile, somehow, in a way she never had before. Not even way back when she’d gone to offer her initial tithe after she’d started bleeding and had felt so overwhelmed, at first. Unsure and hesitant in that beach shack where the sound of the waves drowned out the sound of her breath and made her feel safe, somehow. This was different.
This felt like shaken. Inside and out. And a little bit winded besides.
She folded her hands in her lap and crossed her ankles, the way her mother had told her the great and fancy ladies did, and tried not to stare while Zavier tucked his huge cock away, back into his trousers where she was a bit surprised it fit, and buttoned himself up.
On some level she supposed she should have been embarrassed that she was still breathing unevenly, because he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. He claimed he did exactly what he’d just done at least three times a day and worked his land in his downtime. She doubted he would breathe heavily if he ran up the steepest of the towering peaks looming there before her.
He shot her a glittering look from his side of the truck, with a hint of that smile that was no longer on his mouth. The mouth she could still feel against her neck, as if he’d left a red, hot mark there. The look he slid at her, too bright and much too blue, made that little spot on her neck throb and that ache between her legs grow, but Matylda had to sit there and pretend she didn’t feel either of them.
Because she had the odd, strong notion that if she didn’t figure out a way to protect herself, she’d be lost in this man. Lost and never, ever found, no matter what happened over these next few months.
“That’s a good start, Matylda,” Zavirt told her, his voice a low, approving rumble that worked in her like a new kind of heat. “That’s a very good start.”
She wanted to bask in that, but she couldn’t let herself. She had work to do here. She couldn’t rest on her laurels, such as they were. He fired up the ignition, threw the truck into gear, and drove them out of the tiny little mountain village—straight toward the towering mountains ahead of them.
“Tell me about your other wives,” she said, trying for a casual sort of tone even though she was still a little bit lightheaded and there was nothing in his closed-off expression that invited conversation of any kind.
Zavier made a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“I want to know their strengths and failures,” Matylda told him. She clenched her hands tighter together and made her voice even lighter. “I want to make sure I’m being the best wife to you I can possibly be.”
“That almost sounds like you mean it.”
“Of course I mean it.”
“No,” Zavier said flatly. “You don’t. You don’t know me. You have no idea what I need, or what a ‘best wife’ to me would look like, and you’re not going to know until it’s too late because you town girls never do. This isn’t one of those sleepy little walled cities down there, protected from the elements all winter, where the worst thing that might happen is a few extra puddles and a foot or two of snow. This is the frontier. It’s harsh and unforgiving and fucking lethal, and believe me when I tell you this, sweetheart—I’m worse.”
She believed him. Matylda hadn’t thought much of the little road that wound through the village, but she missed it now that Zavier had taken to the rutted track that wound up the side of the closest mountain, bouncing all the way. And she didn’t need him to tell her how harsh he was. She could still feel him deep inside her, as if he’d changed her forever just by taking her like that, so bold and sure.
“You must have a rating system of some kind,” Matylda said with a great calm she didn’t feel at all, keeping her eyes trained on the mountain in front of them. “You must have a way to determine if a wife is meeting your standards. Points for this, deductions for that. Or do you set us all up to fail before we start?”
Zavier let out another one of those humorless little laughs. “All you need to worry about is how you take me, Matylda. Deep and hard. Keep that little cunt juicy and sweet and we’ll get along fine.”
Which, it turned out, strained even Matylda’s ability to spin out light conversation.
They drove for hours, up one mountain and down the next. Through long, narrow, alpine valleys studded with th
e ruins of lost worlds. The remains of old houses and lodges, left in pieces after the Storms. Downed wires and grounded lifts that must once have gone straight to the tops of the mountains. Cold, clear lakes that gleamed against the backdrop of snow, green trees dusted in white, and the provocation of the blue sky above.
Zavier didn’t stop until twilight cast dark blue shadows all over the rough terrain, long and deep. He pulled up near yet another gleaming alpine lake that still sported swathes of ice here and there, next to a grove of some large, old trees still stark and bare for winter.
He didn’t give her any directions, but Matylda followed him when he climbed out of the truck. It was cold, but not unbearably so, though she could feel the sharp sweetness in the breeze that promised much lower temperatures once the sun went down. She was glad she’d worn her heaviest winter skirt, the one that was thick all the way to ground and kept the cold out. She pulled her coat tighter around her as Zavier set about building a fire, then propped a kind of metal cage around it. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t a cage, it was a makeshift grill. Making the fire more than simply a source of warmth. When he started to unload things from the back of his truck, she tried to help him, only to receive a level stare in return.
“Time to prove you can cook,” he told her. “Not haul shit.”
And then he left her next to the fire he’d made with a box of supplies and a single pot, as he set up a tent on the cold earth between the brace of trees and his truck.
Matylda hadn’t cooked since she’d lived on the coast. Life in the elevated cities of the Apennines didn’t allow for any cooking. She’d spent almost the whole of a decade eating her two meals a day that were prepared without any input from her whatsoever, and going without a midday meal altogether unless she had some extra scraps of fabric to barter for a rice ball or some salted fish.
Zavier was testing her. She knew that. But she didn’t mind. She fetched water from the lake and set it to boil on the little wire grill. Then she looked through the box of supplies he’d set out for her, pulling out things she thought might make a good, hearty dinner out here in all this cool, mountainous quiet. She found a sharp blade and a small, flat stone and began cutting things into smaller pieces. Cubes of dried meats. Root vegetables. Dried herbs and spices. She slid them all into the boiling pot and stirred, aware that there was a warmth inside her that had nothing to do with the heat of the fire.
Cooking reminded her of her childhood, she realized as the breeze kicked up and the sun dipped out of sight behind the western mountains. It made her feel the way she had when she was a little girl and both her parents were alive. When her father fished with the rest of the men in their seaside village and her mother sang as she cleaned, then let Matylda “help” with the evening meal. She half-expected to look up from stirring her pot to find Mama there with a smile, standing in the corner of the little kitchen in that windswept cottage they’d called home for so long.
But when she looked up, her mother was nothing but a memory. A happy sort of ghost. And Matylda was outside, kneeling before a campfire while dark crept into this isolated valley between solemn mountain ranges standing guard on all sides.
And Zavier was standing there in front of a tent that even she could tell, with her untutored eye, was well-constructed. He was watching her, but not the way her indulgent mother had. He wasn’t smiling, for one thing.
There was no reason at all the impact of his gaze should have made her shiver.
“What you making?” he asked.
And there was something in his tone that pricked at her. Something in that still way he held himself, his arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Soup,” Matylda said brightly, as if she hadn’t noticed a thing. “Unless it boils down a bit more than I intend it to, in which case, a hearty stew.”
Zavier’s blue eyes gleamed, and Matylda felt that like the praise he hadn’t offered. Or thanks, maybe. It made a different sort of heat move through her.
He moved closer to the fire, then sat down on the nearby rocks. He studied her for a moment, making that same prickling sort of sensation wash over her again.
“Why don’t girls from the Apennines wear panties?” he asked quietly, his gaze intent. “I assumed it was for easy access, but you strip down and shower for your rote fuckings, don’t you?”
Matylda blinked at the cascade of images that sent spinning around in her, but he was watching her so closely. She couldn’t let herself get lost in the outrageous things he said. She didn’t know why she had the strangest notion that he expected her to do exactly that.
“My mother always said it was a show of respect,” she said calmly instead.
“A bare cunt is a sign of respect? Really?”
This time she ignored his incredulous tone along with his crude words. Deliberately crude, if she had to guess.
“I don’t know what the great ladies do, off in their lavish estates. But my mother said all the rest of us live on the lands as the lords allow. And the law states that a lord can request his tithes directly whenever he pleases. So it’s custom to keep ourselves ready.”
“Ready?”
Matylda smiled and gave her pot another stir.
“Keeping myself ready is a sign of respect not only to a lord I’ll likely never meet, but to me. No one has any idea whether I wear panties or not, but I always know. And I know that when I’m ready to do what I could be called to do, without shame or hesitation, I’m the woman my mother raised me to be. That would make her proud. Since she’s no longer alive to know it one way or the other, it makes me proud.”
For a moment it was so quiet that Matylda thought she could hear the stars coming out, one by one, then in astonishingly bright clusters all at once, overhead.
“And it’s important to you to make your mother proud, dead or alive?” he asked.
“Of course.” She studied him, for a change. “Isn’t it important to you?”
His cruel mouth shifted into a kind of curve, but she wouldn’t call it a smile.
“I never knew my mother. My father, on the other hand, was a tyrant hated by anyone unfortunate enough to know him. The only way to make him proud would have been to be just like him. I declined.”
Matylda held his gaze. “I’m sorry. That can’t have been easy.”
Zavier shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. Then he crooked his finger, beckoning her to him.
It didn’t occur to her to do anything but obey him immediately. She didn’t even have to order herself to do it, and she thought maybe that should have worried her a little—she was here for a reason, after all, and surely that required constant vigilance on her part—but then she forgot to entertain her various anxieties.
Because when she stood before him, Zavier opened his rock hard thighs and indicated she should step between them.
Her heart careened off course, pounding so hard against her rib cage she was certain she might actually hurt herself. And she didn’t think she’d care, because he was touching her again. He traced the line of her corset down to where it covered the top of her skirt, and then rested his fingers on her hips.
“Up here, there’s nothing but weather and wolves,” Zavier told her, in a voice that seemed to ricochet off the wintry night around them, then back into Matylda, where it burrowed deep. “And me. You can consider me your lord, little girl.”
She opened her mouth to say something—to respond to that—but nothing came out.
Zavier’s mouth crooked a little bit, but his gaze was hard. Demanding. It sent that prickle winding down her spine again, almost like a warning.
He exerted a little pressure on her hips, just enough to tell her what he wanted. Matylda didn’t question it. She eased herself down to her knees, there between his outstretched legs, and looked up at him expectantly.
And she couldn’t have said why her breath kept catching in her throat.
She watched, fascinated, as he unbuttoned his trousers and pulled that massive cock of
his out again, hard and huge. This time, she could see it. This time, she could appreciate the smooth head, the strong shaft.
Her throat went dry. She could feel her own eyes go a little wide, as if she’d never seen a cock before. She felt as if she hadn’t, not really.
Zavier reached over and traced her mouth the way he had back in the village. The shape of her upper lip, then the shape of her lower in turn. Then a faint pressure along the seam between, back and forth.
He took his hand away, but she understood. He wanted her to kneel forward and take his cock the way she’d taken his thumb earlier. Something she’d heard whispers of, particularly from men in the bell towers who were something less than wholly sober, but had certainly never tried.
It would never have occurred to her to try.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry.” His gaze had gone a bit hooded, but no less intent on hers. “I’ll show you what I want.”
And suddenly she was as slippery and as shivery as if he had his hand between her legs again, rubbing at that secret place that he’d found so easily. Her mouth watered, and she leaned forward, bracing herself on his spread thighs. Her breath left her in a rush, she felt almost dizzy, and then she opened her mouth and took as much of his beautiful, gleaming white cock into her mouth as she could fit.
And then Zavier taught her a very hot, very thorough lesson.
He taught her about depth and rhythm. He taught her about teeth. He taught her to taste him, to run her tongue around the tip of him and over that part of him that felt like a ridge but was much softer. He let her try to take the length of him and what to do with her tongue while she did. He let her cup the heavy balls between his legs in her hands, and taste them, too.
He tasted of salt and a deeper, richer maleness.
He was intoxicating.
