He tried it on his thigh a few times and, satisfied by the feeling and even the sound itself, he jumped back down from the wagon.
Susanna was holding her skirts in front of her naked body, looking at him with wide-eyed innocence as she shivered in the cold air. He wasn’t sure if she clung to her skirts for warmth or because she was embarrassed.
Lord above, he still thought she looked like a goddess. He walked up to her and held his hand out before carefully grabbing the bundle of cloth in his hands. He put it on a nearby stump, not paying attention to the clothes that were taken off but rather what those clothes had covered.
She was pressing her thighs together now, nervous, unsure, and probably chilled by the cold air, and had her arms wrapped around her bare breasts, keeping them from his gaze. He made sure that he wore a serious expression and that he didn’t look as lecherous as he wanted to.
He grabbed her hand and then led her over to the wagon where he sat down on the edge and pulled her body between his parted legs. He reached up, and after he looped a lock of her hair around his finger, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head toward his so that he could kiss her mouth.
She kissed him back, and her kiss felt forgiving. He hoped his did as well. After this, a new chapter of their lives would begin.
He ended the kiss and then guided her body over his knees. He smoothed his hand across her thighs and bottom, drinking in his fill of the beautiful sight. He had been in the company of many females before Susanna, but at the moment he couldn’t remember what any of them looked like. He was more certain than he’d ever been about anything that she had the finest ass in Christendom.
“What is my beautiful sweeting going to do from now on when I tell her to do something?” he asked her, squeezing one of her still-pale globes.
After a moment of silence during which she hummed and searched for an answer, he prompted, “Are you going to obey me?”
“Yes,” she murmured submissively.
“Do you know why?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“Because I would never order you to do something without it being important to your safety, my love. Never. You are my best treasure; I wouldn’t break you. I like you stubborn and wild as you are.” He found himself grinning for a moment, but then he remembered that the reason they were in this position was because she had been almost eaten by wolves. Recalling that was beyond sobering.
“But when I tell you to do something,” he began to lecture, bringing the leather up above her bottom and then bringing it down with a loud, deafening crack. Her whole body flinched. “Then you—” he struck again, “will,” and again and again, “obey me!”
She kicked her legs out, but she hadn’t wailed. It sounded from her grunting like she was trying to grit her teeth to keep from crying. Unfortunately, her crying was the entire point. He began to slap the leather down across her tender flanks in earnest, not leaving an inch of flesh untouched from the middle of her milky thighs to the top of the cleft of her ass. She began to try to fight him and the pain, but he easily subdued her, clamping her knees behind one of his own and then hoisting her bottom up even higher.
He didn’t have much space to swing the strap in this position, but he wanted to be able to aim without worry of hurting the exposed, puffy lips of her sex, and he wanted the intimacy of having her close to his body through this. In any case, her backside was quickly turning a delicious shade of red.
Finally, she yelped in pain and once she did, she began to cry out loudly and often, trying to kick even more violently than before. As she tried desperately to squirm off of his lap, she sobbed dryly, “Please stop. I’m sorry, I am! Please. Please!” Her shout of ‘please’ became a refrain.
“I want you to stay safe!” he gritted out, slapping the strop down hard on her bare cheeks over and over, hard and fast.
It wasn’t a minute later that he heard her dry sobs turn to full tears. Her struggling began to change from desperate and clawing to more submissive. She was still squirming, and was certainly miserable, but she was also much more subdued that she had been before. He let his hand rest across her naked bottom, which was hot to the touch, and then gave her a few more smacks. “Are you going to behave for me?”
“Yes,” she cried miserably.
“Why?” he demanded.
“B-because,” she sobbed, “b-because I love you.”
He stopped spanking then and immediately pulled her up to him. Although she was still crying, he put his hands on the bottom of her face, tilting her gaze up until her blue eyes met his. “You love me?” he asked, breathily. He had wanted to hear that, had dreamed of saying it to her. They hadn’t known each other long, though, and he’d thought that the fervor of his affections for her had to have been one-sided. His heart felt light suddenly and he was filled with relief.
She nodded and blinked, letting a stream of tears release. Whimpering and looking almost ashamed, she explained, “Nobody had ever looked at me the way you did that first night… I thought… my heart broke when I thought you hated me.” Her bottom lip quivered, and he pulled her up into his arms until she was straddling him.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he told her, then kissed her wet cheeks one by one before he kissed her mouth.
Her mouth was hot heaven to him. He pulled her up and carried her clumsily over to the pallet he had stretched in the middle of the boxes of cloth and jewels and laid her out like a sacrifice. He kissed her mouth, then chin, then neck, slowly lapping at her warm skin until his lips met with her puffy pink nipple, which he sucked into his mouth.
She gasped and curled upwards, stretching her arms out and threading her fingers through his hair. He teased her nipples with his teeth, groaning as her body writhed under him, feeling strengthened by her pleasure alone. “I need you inside me,” she whined, spreading her legs apart for him wantonly and moving her hand down to part his trews.
“I could never deny you anything,” he told her, reaching down to help her free his member from its linen confines and then pressing it firmly up against her entrance. “Do you want this deep inside of you?” he murmured hotly.
She nodded and bucked her hips up toward him. He pressed himself slowly into her. “Susanna, you’re so wet for me,” he hissed with pleasure.
He thrust deep inside of her, hard. She screamed, and he froze, but then she lifted her body and pressed her lips upon his and he realized that she was screaming with pleasure. With a curl of his lips, he pressed her shoulders against the pallet and began to buck his hips in earnest, fucking her body with long, hard thrusts, filling her deeply with his own flesh. “I love you, Susanna,” he panted, and he meant it. Nothing could feel more like heaven than this moment. It felt so good he nearly wanted to scream himself!
“My goddess,” he said, combing his fingers through her hair as he pounded into her with desperation. She was groaning, loudly.
He wanted to be there forever, but the pressure inside of his cock was building to levels he could barely contain. He was gritting his teeth, trying to hold on to this moment, but as her muscles began to flex with her climax, he emptied himself into her with a roar.
She cried out with him, her sheath gripping him over and over until he felt like he had no more essence left. She had emptied all the energy from him.
Panting, he laid down beside her and pulled her close to him so that he could stroke her hair and look into those captivating eyes of hers. For the longest time they didn’t say anything at all and instead just lay together.
“Princess, I want you to marry me. Say you’d choose to, even if I wasn’t forcing you?” he asked her, although he couldn’t help but grin at her, since the sultry curve of her lips was contagious.
She kissed him. “I’m only Susanna, remember?” she chided against his lips. “I suppose you’ll do,” she teased. “But only because you’re so good in bed.”
The pig squealed outside and Gerhard lifted his head, glared in
the direction of the back of the wagon, and then dropped his head wearily. “You know he probably just ate our breakfast,” he grumbled. He added as she giggled, “I should make him into breakfast…” He nibbled her lip.
“Do we plan on leaving this bed this morning anyway?” she asked him, fluttering her long eyelashes at him seductively.
He grinned. “Absolutely not.”
Epilogue
“I knew it,” Rennio groaned as he sat on a bench outside an inn on the path to Tyrol, holding a half-drunk mug of ale in his beefy hand. It was supposed to be their rendezvous point, and was toward the end of their journey after nearly three weeks on the road. “You kept the damn pig.”
“How was the emperor?” replied Gerhard as he carefully placed the piglet on the ground. It ran right up to Rennio and rooted around his boot.
“In an extremely good mood,” Rennio replied, looking down at the piglet as if he didn’t appreciate its cuteness and then looking up at Gerhard judgmentally before taking a swig of ale.
“…and?” Gerhard couldn’t believe that was all, but Rennio did like building up suspense.
“Lord Eberhard was caught. I don’t know if you realized that, since you were busy sinfully fornicating off in some distant keep somewhere,” Rennio replied, flicking a crumb off his table.
Susanna, standing next to Gerhard, squeaked with surprise. She quickly settled, her lips pulling down at the sides into a frown. “I can’t imagine that boding well,” she grumbled.
Gerhard, who was also shocked by the news, asked, “Why not? We didn’t want him to get away.”
“He’s a liar and a cheat who can spin a good tale, though. Nobody’s better at saving his own skin,” she replied, shaking her head back and forth.
“Yes, and he did. I found him along the way to Vienna. He told a very interesting story. Something about the princess being to blame and that he was forced to send the knights pillaging neighboring lands, and so forth. I was quite entertained. By the time we made it to Vienna, however, he told a different tale. He admitted to everything—keeping power over Susanna’s army, threatening her with death if she challenged him, ruling the kingdom as a tyrant… Gerhard, my friend, you would have been astounded by how truthful he was. It was a godly sight.”
It was hard to be certain who was more surprised by this, Gerhard or Susanna. They both just stood there for a moment in open-mouthed astonishment.
“How is that possible?” Susanna demanded. “Why would he ever tell the truth? He’d be killed for it!”
“I can be very persuasive, my lady,” Rennio replied innocently, and then sent Gerhard a look full of meaning.
He knew Rennio quite well, and though he had a lack of manners and any sort of patience, virtue, or sobriety, he did have a passion for justice. Enough of a passion that he would take it at the edge of a blade, or worse. He didn’t want to say anything in front of Susanna, for the idea of torture, even of one of her enemies, would probably make her go pale.
Susanna plopped down in the seat across from Rennio, looking stunned by this news. “He told the truth…” she said under her breath. She was apparently having trouble believing this.
“Yes, and I’m given to believe that you would’ve been allowed to live as well, which might please you, had you not lost your life during that terrible tragedy in the river. It pains me to think of it, but at least memories of you live on in our hearts…”
Gerhard laughed out loud at this, though Susanna looked somewhat less amused. “In our hearts indeed,” he said with a grin.
“So tell me, friend,” Rennio began, eyeing Gerhard with amusement, “does your love for this woman extend beyond the grave? Will you still see fit to marry her despite her untimely demise?”
Gerhard walked over and sat next to Susanna so that he could pull her up into his lap. “Yes, I mean to marry this goddess,” he answered Rennio even while looking into Susanna’s eyes and putting his hand on her cheek.
The piglet squealed with annoyance as Rennio batted him away lightly with his boot, and Susanna looked over at Rennio and took a deep breath. “And I thought all this time that you were horrible,” she told Rennio. A crease appeared between Rennio’s brows as if he wasn’t sure whether he was insulted. “I am very pleased to be wrong.”
“See, what did I tell you, love? He’s only horrible half the time.” Gerhard looked across the table and asked, “Are you going to stay not-horrible enough to marry us?”
Rennio rolled his eyes. “Weddings are a little below my pay-grade,” he said loftily. “Wait until you get home to that nice little estate you’ve had waiting for you in Bavaria all these years, then have a big to-do with your local priest and your neighbors and such.” He took another swig of his ale and added casually, “And let me know how it goes.”
“I’m afraid it’s important that we marry before I bring her home as my bride…”
Rennio rolled his eyes. “Why?” Then he suddenly answered his own question and his eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. “Don’t say you’ve bred her already?”
On any other day, it might have been Gerhard’s turn to roll his eyes. But he’d been feeling quite pleased indeed since Susanna admitted to him that she’d missed her monthly flow and had even been feeling ill the last couple of days. Nothing sounded better to him right now than the idea of settling down and starting a family with her on his quiet little estate.
Susanna blushed. “Don’t call it breeding like I’m some filly!” she demanded of Rennio.
“Well, excuse me,” Rennio replied sarcastically. He nodded toward her but eyed Gerhard. “And if anyone should ask, how did you come by this new wife of yours? She does look suspiciously like a particular princess who recently met an unfortunate end.”
“I doubt that many of my humble neighbors will have had cause to be in the presence of a princess, so I suspect that the resemblance will go unnoticed. If anyone should remark on it, however, I’m sure that my bride would consider it a great compliment to be thought similar in appearance to one so beautiful as the late Princess Susanna of Hohenzollern.”
Gerhard paused long enough to kiss Susanna deeply, finally breaking off only when Rennio cleared his throat as loudly and obnoxiously as possible.
“As for how I came by her,” he continued, “she’s just a pretty girl I carried off from a castle I conquered, of course. She fought me at first, but I think she’s finally starting to like me. She might even learn to love me one day,” he finished with a smile, before kissing her again, even more passionately.
Rennio and the piglet both grunted in disgust.
The End
The Knight’s Seduction
By
Renee Rose
Chapter One
Daisy gripped her sword, staggering under the weight of the chainmail. Her intent had been to join the fight to hold Hohenzollern but now Princess Susanna had run a white flag up after Lord Eberhard abandoned them. The sounds of splintering wood and the screams of the dying had stopped, for the moment.
Daisy struggled under the heavy war gear she’d just taken from the armory and donned over squire’s clothing as she climbed to the top of the turret to watch her lady negotiate with the sacking army. Below, in the bailey, Lady Natalia herded children, including the lady’s small stepdaughter, into the chapel.
Panic coiled in her belly, slithered up her spine and strangled her. Not again.
She knew too well the fate that befell women when a castle is sacked by mercenaries. She’d lost her two sisters and her own innocence because of what had happened the last time. It was the reason she’d disavowed men forever. She wished the fighting had not stopped. She’d rather go out there and die as a soldier than give those monsters one moment of lewd pleasure with her body.
The portcullis opened wide and soldiers streamed into the bailey and then through the castle doors, whooping and calling with the excitement of plunder. She set down the heavy sword and fit an arrow to her bow, but she couldn’t make her fingers
release it. It was one thing to be willing to die to save Hohenzollern. It was quite another to take someone’s life in her name. And shooting a man was far different from hunting a buck in the woods.
Kill or be killed, she schooled herself. Do it. She sighted down the length of the arrow at the melee below.
A large burly knight caught sight of her from down below and boomed, “Stand down, squire! Your lady has surrendered.”
She bristled. Her lady may have surrendered, but she had not. She aimed the arrow at the knight. His armor would protect him. She let it fly, just for the satisfaction of defying him and his orders. It struck his chest plate, glancing off.
He did not roar or shake his fist. He levelled a stare at her that made her shift on her feet, somehow calmly conveying she had made a grave mistake. Fear tightened in her gut, but she held firm. He continued looking at her as he headed inside, presumably to come after her. Let him. Maybe she’d get lucky and he’d kill her before he realized she was female.
In just a few short minutes, the door behind her opened and the enormous knight stalked through. His helmet dangled from one hand and he made walking in heavy armor look easy. “I told you to stand down,” he said. “The princess has surrendered. Hohenzollern is ours.”
Daisy didn’t speak, because she didn’t want to give away the fact that she was female. Her helmet and chainmail should disguise her well enough. She gripped her sword with both hands and charged at the knight.
The Conquered Brides Collection Page 9
