Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2)

by Kait Jagger

Luna frowned and Stefan nodded, ‘Yes, he didn’t tell you that, did he? And Dagmar…’ He made a dismissive face. ‘He puts you here with someone like her and expects you to move mountains.’

  Seeing the anxiety on her face, Stefan took her hand again and said, ‘I think you have done very well, Luna, and I’m not just saying that because I love you. Honestly, there isn’t much I’d have done differently, in your position.’

  She smiled at him, raising the side of her hand to her mouth. And then it was Stefan’s turn to frown. ‘Why do you keep doing that, flicka?’ he asked, reaching his hand up to hers and drawing it away from her lips. ‘It’s like you’re afraid someone might see you smiling.’

  Luna cringed inwardly. She hadn’t been aware she was doing it, but she knew the reason why. ‘I think the house likes me better when I’m sad.’

  ‘You… what?’

  She tried, then, to explain about her rules, how she’d allowed herself to be unhappy here in the cottage, and how she’d started to get the impression that the cottage approved, Dagmar too, and how Liv thought the place was haunted and… the more she talked the crazier it sounded, so eventually she petered out, giving him a guilty, shamefaced look.

  At which point Stefan drained his wine glass and stood, taking her by the hands and drawing her to her feet. ‘It’s good,’ he said as he led her out of the kitchen into the hallway, ‘these little reminders of how irrational you can be.’ Luna made a noise of dissent and he tightened his grip on her hand, pulling her along in his wake as he climbed the stairs. ‘Every time I start thinking you’re too clever for me, I discover that you’re afraid of your bathroom, or you think a house wants you to be miserable.’

  Floodgates still wide open, Luna continued talking as Stefan undressed them both, and backed her onto the bed. She was still talking sometime later, when he was nestled between her legs, his hands gripping her buttocks, his cock buried deep within her.

  ‘And then Liv gave me this look, like, “He’s an absolute stallion, Luna, do you really think you can cope with that much man?” and I swear I was about to say something to her…’ She paused. ‘Am I putting you off your stride?’

  ‘Does it feel like you’re putting me off my stride?’ he asked, biting her ear and pushing so far into her she could feel the tip of him just touching her cervix. ‘No, you carry on, Miss Gregory. I’m enjoying this.’

  ‘But anyway, I decided to let it pass, keep my powder dry for now, ha is i magen,’ she said. And then he did break stride, stilling inside her, removing his hands from her ass and placing them on the pillow beside her head. Looking down at her.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Ha is i magen,’ she repeated, translating, ‘Like I had ice in my stomach.’ Stefan stared at her and Luna added shyly, ‘I’ve been learning Swedish. Just a little, so I can talk to Dagmar. Mostly basic stuff, like Ha en bra dag and Jag ar törstig.’

  Stefan shifted inside her and said, rather emotionally, ‘This… pleases me very much, Luna.’

  ‘I also know a lot of sheep terms, like svarta får and vita lamm.’

  Stefan withdrew from her, then plunged back in, exhorting, ‘That’s right, älskling, talk wool to me.’ He slid his hands back down to her ass and she laughed as her Swedish boyfriend commenced to shag her in earnest.

  ‘Right,’ she said sometime later, propping herself up on her elbow beside him in bed. ‘What’s the situation between you and Dagmar?’

  Stefan rolled his eyes and exhaled noisily. ‘I knew you would ask this.’

  ‘Well, she’s my boss, Stefan. And she lives here three days a week.’

  He made a slight huffing noise as if to say this wouldn’t be the case if he had anything to do with it. Luna continued to stare at him and he finally said, ‘First, I should tell you that regardless of any past issues Dagmar and I have had, I owe her a debt. It was only because of her that I found out you were here.

  ‘Not,’ he added swiftly, ‘that she did it for my benefit. I saw her at my friend Astrid’s restaurant in Stockholm several weeks ago and she couldn’t wait to tell me what a bounder I was, for the way I’d treated her lovely new PA.’

  Luna smiled and said, ‘Awww,’ and Stefan rolled his eyes again. ‘If she’d known how pathetically grateful I was to hear about her new PA, she’d have kept her mouth shut, believe me.’

  ‘But,’ Luna said, ‘you two have known each other for a while, right? And disliked each other from the start?’

  Realising she wasn’t going to let this go, Stefan said, ‘Okay, well, before I tell you this, let me just say that I was a young man when it happened.’

  Luna arched an eyebrow. ‘You’re not exactly old now, farfar.’

  With that, Stefan rolled toward her on the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Look, you are going to have to stop speaking Swedish if you want me to concentrate on this.’ He pressed the evidence of his distraction into her hip and Luna immediately sat up, clasping her hands around her knees like a schoolgirl and drawing her fingers across her mouth in a zipper motion.

  ‘As I was saying,’ Stefan went on, ‘I was very young and it was an experimental time in my life. This is not something I would ever repeat now.’ Luna kept her mouth shut, dying, now, to hear what he was going to say.

  ‘My friend Astrid,’ he began. ‘Have I told you that she and I used to date?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s very pretty.’

  ‘Yes, well, we used to date and at some point in our relationship she—’ he cleared his throat, ‘expressed an interest in exploring other aspects of her sexuality. She and Dagmar met at the party my father gave and there was a mutual attraction.’

  ‘Ah, right,’ Luna said. ‘And you were okay with Astrid and Dagmar…?’ She looked at him, then realised what he was getting at. ‘Oh my God, you’re not saying… you had a threesome with Astrid and Dagmar?!’

  ‘You make it sound very sordid,’ he said peevishly. ‘Try to look at it from my perspective.’

  ‘I am,’ she said, starting to laugh.

  He forged on, ‘I was a young man, not as sexually experienced as I am today, and I was presented with a unique learning opportunity.’

  ‘Oh, is that what we’re calling it?’

  ‘A learning opportunity,’ he insisted, adding, ‘Dagmar made it clear from the start where her interests lay and they weren’t with me. And Astrid, well, to be honest our relationship had pretty much run its course by this point anyway, so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone.’

  ‘So learning and dumping.’

  He scowled at her, then shrugged in tacit admission. ‘Anyway, it only happened a few times before they became a couple and I walked away an enlightened man.’

  ‘A win-win,’ she opined drily.

  ‘Well, it would have been. But Astrid had second thoughts a few months later and tried to get back together with me. It was all very messy and Dagmar has never forgiven me.’ His story completed, Stefan shifted in the bed, giving her an apprehensive look. Like he was worried he’d over-shared.

  ‘Hmm…’ Luna wriggled her toes on the bedspread. ‘It doesn’t seem very fair,’ she ventured, ‘Dagmar blaming you.’

  ‘I know, right?’ Stefan complained. ‘After all, it’s not my fault if she can’t hold on to her woman, is it?’ Shrugging again, he concluded, ‘As I say, it’s not something I’d repeat…’

  ‘För allt smör i Småland?’ Luna suggested. And that did it. Clearly having had enough of her hilarity at his expense, Stefan hauled her down against him and slid his hand to her sex.

  ‘Shall I show you some of what I learned, min arg flicka?’ he said dangerously, inserting one finger into her vagina. Luna twisted away from him, laughing, but he sat up and put his free hand onto her chest, pushing her down onto the mattress. ‘I had always assumed,’ he said conversationally, inserting another finger into her, ‘that lesbian sex was mostly about external things. The clitoris, for example,’ he said, rubbing his thumb along h
ers, causing it to tremble in anticipation. ‘Or the breasts,’ he added, running his palm over first one, then her other breast, immediately rewarded with the sight of her nipples tightening.

  ‘But lesbians enjoy penetration too,’ he murmured, inserting a third finger and moving his thumb in a circular motion against her. Luna’s eyelids fluttered shut and she made a purring noise. Stefan bent down to her and placed his other hand on her mons whilst the fingers of his first moved within her. ‘They like to fuck,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘They just do it differently. Shall I fuck you, Luna?’

  She nodded.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Say it.’

  ‘Please,’ she said obediently.

  ‘Please what?’

  ‘Please fuck me.’

  In response, Stefan withdrew, then thrust back into her, pressing his other fingers hard into the flesh around her clitoris.

  ‘Fuck me back,’ he instructed, at which Luna’s eyes flew open. He looked like a dark god against the purple glow of the Shetland sky in the skylight, and his eyes were rapt upon her. Hesitantly, not really knowing what he expected of her, she lifted her hips up off the mattress. She saw his head nod in the demi-light.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, rewarding her by rubbing her clitoris in a circular motion. Luna lowered and raised her hips again, feeling his fingers slide out of her and plunge back in. ‘Good girl, good girl. Come on, fuck me,’ he exhorted.

  She raised her knees on the bed and arched her pelvis again, and again. And carried on doing it as his fingers moved on and in her, the pressure increasing each time she lifted her hips. She closed her eyes again and threw her head back on the pillow, really fucking him now, her thighs straining as the pace of her hips quickened.

  ‘Put your hands on me,’ he said. ‘Feel me. Feel me fucking you.’

  Blindly, Luna reached her hands down, one meeting his fingers on her vulva and the other his wrist as it pumped down into her. She felt his muscles working, and a shimmer of sensitivity dancing along her clitoris, spreading and building, aching and growing.

  It overtook her in a staggering climax, her stomach muscles clenching as her head rocketed off the pillow into his chest. It was… ah, too… her muscles released and she fell back on the bed, arching upwards, feeling his hands fucking her, her orgasm going on and on until she was literally crying out, helpless beneath him, begging him not to stop.

  *

  It was easy to assume that all was mended between them, given the sheer force of their sexual rapport. That and Stefan’s easy-going nature; the way, over the course of the following day as they took a quick hike and then went for lunch in Lerwick, he slotted right in as her wingman, charming the locals whilst allowing her to take the lead. Luna could tell he’d been paying attention the night before when she’d revealed her insecurities about her work, and was trying to respond to what he’d heard.

  But all was not mended.

  The next night they lay in bed together, Stefan’s hand idly twining her braid. He’d just revealed that her ass had come sixth on his list of Luna body parts he’d missed, ‘though after I discovered it had been immortalised in Remainers, I seriously considered moving it up the rankings.’

  Lifting the tail of her braid to his mouth, he noted, ‘I admit, there is one mental picture of your bottom that has loomed large in my fantasy life. Those sandals you were wearing, when I found you in that club in Miami.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘my “fuck me” sandals.’

  ‘Is that what you call them?’ he chuckled. ‘Well, yes…’ He stretched against her, planting his hand on her hip bone. ‘Suffice it to say that I have thought of the way your ass looked when you were wearing them more than once over the past few months.’

  Luna smiled and he said softly, almost hopefully, ‘And you, Luna? Did you ever think of me, when you touched yourself here in your bed in Shetland?’

  The question took her completely by surprise. ‘I—’ She broke off as, to her horror, her eyes began to fill. She swallowed, her voice deepening to the point of vehemence. ‘I tried never to think of you here.’ A pained noise escaped her. ‘I didn’t have your faith that we’d get back together.’ And then her chest heaved.

  ‘Luna!’ he cried. He reached for her but Luna pulled away. She sat up and put her palms over her eyes, willing herself to stop crying, but the harder she tried the faster her tears flowed. Stefan knelt next to her and drew her hands away from her face, kissing her hair and her brow and her lips.

  ‘I am going to make you so happy,’ he promised fiercely. ‘The next time I make you cry it will be from joy, or laughter… or the incredibleness of my lovemaking.’

  Luna snorted, then coughed as a stream of snot and tears clogged her throat. She drew her palms over her eyes and laughed weakly, ‘Just ignore me. I never used to cry and now I seem to do it all the time.’

  In response, he pulled her over onto his lap, cuddling her to him.

  She woke two hours later. Something had disturbed her, but at first she couldn’t tell what. The bedroom was silent and the skylight was still purple above her. Rolling toward Stefan, she saw that he was on his side facing her, twitching in his sleep. Another bad dream, she thought sleepily, reaching her gloved hand to his chest. As her fingers came to rest on him, suddenly his own hand shot out, grabbing her by the wrist. Startled, Luna opened her mouth to tell him off for scaring her, but then realised he was still asleep.

  She tried to pull her arm away, then to gently prise his fingers off her wrist, but his grip only tightened on her, to the point of pain. Half-remembering some dire injunction she’d heard about sleepwalkers, she was reluctant to wake him. So she took the counterintuitive approach, shifting closer to him and kissing his chest, relaxing her wrist.

  It worked. After some seconds, Stefan’s eyelids stopped flickering and he sighed, loosening her hand. Luna stayed where she was, however, wide awake now. Awake and troubled.

  *

  Late on Monday night, Luna had a text from Stefan reading simply: Check your email. Grabbing her tablet from the bedside table, she found an email from him waiting for her – from a personal account she’d never seen before, all their previous communications having been via work email.

  To: luna.gregory@worldmail.co.uk

  From: stefanl2305@hoppa.se

  Subject: Kräftskiva

  Sötnos, Jag har varit glad hela dagen…

  Dear God. He’d written her an email entirely in Swedish! Laughing, Luna ran downstairs to retrieve her Swedish–English dictionary from the living room. She spent a laborious half-hour painstakingly translating his message, coming up with:

  Sweetnose (hmm, this must be a Swedish thing, Luna thought),

  I have been happy all day, thinking of you learning to speak my language. By coincidence, my Uncle Karl has just sent me an invitation to his annual Crayfish Party in August. The Crayfish Party is a big thing in Sweden. Lots of hat rolling, and singing and drinking. Uncle Karl, who is very funny and doesn’t spit in the glass, plans his party all year. All my family attends. Would you like to come with me this year?

  My family has a summer house in Visby on Gotland, and Uncle Karl hosts the party on the beach there. It is very beautiful, Visby. I would like to show you it, take you coffee breaking in the town, and hiking in the cliffs and swimming in the ocean (Be warned: the water is very cold! But being Swedish we have a sauna you can run to).

  I am smiling now, picturing you there with me. You are the finest thing I know, Stellaluna.

  To the bottom of his email, he had pasted his uncle’s invitation, headed by a child’s drawing of a crayfish and a bottle of schnapps on its side with a little puddle beside it. Luna liked Stefan’s Uncle Karl already.

  Luna had absolutely no faith in her ability to write a coherent response in Swedish, so she kept her response short and sweet, limiting it to the very first question that popped into her head as she was translating Stefan’s email.

  To: stefanl2305@hoppa.se

 
From: luna.gregory@worldmail.co.uk

  Subject: Re: Kräftskiva

  Min din pappa?

  But your dad?

  Her phone rang seconds later.

  ‘You mustn’t worry about my father,’ Stefan said, before she could think of an appropriate greeting in Swedish. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that he forbade me to see you. He will understand. I will make him understand.’

  ‘You haven’t said anything to him yet, though,’ Luna enquired hastily.

  ‘And have him accuse me of distracting you from your work?’ Stefan laughed. ‘Or worse, you accusing me?’

  ‘Well, then, in that case, I accept your invitation,’ she said in a mildly astringent tone, adding softly, ‘Mellan fyra ögon.’ Between four eyes: just between us.

  There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, followed by a sigh. ‘I am going to have to get used to hearing you speak Swedish without becoming aroused.’

  Smiling widely, Luna said, ‘Would it help if I told you Dagmar taught me that one?’

  ‘It does, absolute it does, Miss Gregory.’

  Chapter Ten

  Luna was squatting in a straw-filled enclosure, where a tiny black lamb lay prone on the ground next to its mother. As instructed, she quickly inserted her fingers into its nostrils, clearing them of fluid.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Malcolm, standing above her. ‘Now give it a bit of a rub, like I showed you.’

  Picking up some straw, Luna rubbed it into the lamb’s sides, also covered in amniotic fluid. She was just starting to worry when its little ribs heaved into action. Its mother nudged her head down to the new arrival and began licking it. Luna looked up at Malcolm and smiled broadly.

  Her cheeks were starting to ache from how much she’d been smiling over the past seventy-two hours, since the first of Malcolm’s ewes gave birth. From then on it had been like popcorn in a pan; a few lambs the first day followed by a sudden rush of births.

  They were in Malcolm’s lambing shed, a new wooden barn set apart from the house. Although Shetland sheep were hardy and, according to Malcolm, ‘the easiest lambers in the world’, he didn’t want to take any chances with his flock lambing out in the fields. Having them in the lambing shed made it easier to segregate new mothers and their babies from those yet to give birth. Apparently the mothering instinct was so strong in this breed that pregnant ewes were known to try to steal lambs from their birth mothers.