by Mary Calmes
“Let go!” I yelled at him, trying to shove him off me, to no avail.
He grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back hard. I gasped because it hurt and reeled in his arms as everything spun. The hand loosened, and he nuzzled my hair, inhaling deeply before he pushed at my cheek with his nose, tilting my head sideways. I struggled when he licked up the side of my neck, but when he just held me tighter, I stopped. He was massive and powerful, and as the top of my head only came to his shoulder, there was no way I was going to win a battle of strength.
“Please,” I begged him.
And instantly, I was wrapped tight in his arms, held close, but tenderly, protectively.
“Simon!” Jess cried out.
I jerked in his arms, seeing a reptile creature grab her.
The barbarian roared and the creature froze, releasing her. And I understood: the man who had seemingly claimed me terrified the crap out of everyone else.
I moved slowly, wriggled free, and when I took a step back, he took one forward, wanting to stay close, his hand back to being fisted in my sweater. I stopped, smiled up at him, and reached a hand out to Jess. She moved fast, grabbing my hand, and he looked at her, his eyes narrowing.
I put a hand on the cuirass to show him that I wasn’t going anywhere and heard him exhale sharply. When Jess reached for Chale, there was a snarl low in his throat. I lifted a hand to the barbarian’s face and saw him lean into it and shudder.
“Jesus Christ, Simon, who the fuck is this guy?”
He dipped his head down so my hand ran up the back of his neck, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were back to being narrowed slits. He grabbed my wrist hard and dragged me after him. But I didn’t let go of Jess, and she had a death grip on Chale. No one stopped us as he led me and the others from the enclosure and toward the manor.
The stench, the screams—it was overwhelming. I couldn’t process all of it, and even when Chale was sick, he didn’t stop, just threw up and kept walking behind us.
We reached a large, heavy, metal gate, and the monster reached under his breastplate and withdrew a long chain that had a key on the end. He opened the gate, pulled us all through, and then locked it behind us. Instantly I noticed a change.
“The meat smell,” Chale said from behind me. “It’s not in here.”
“No one’s screaming,” Jess echoed him.
I looked around, and it was quiet. There were people dressed in togas, women and men, and they hurried forward to greet the man, bow low, and wait. The swordsman pulled Jess’s hand from mine and shoved her and Chale at some of the people.
Jess started crying, but one of the women put an arm around her and tucked her into her side, stroking her face at the same time. The woman was clean, and so were the others, I noticed as I glanced around. It was definitely different behind the locked gate; it felt like a sanctuary.
“I think it’ll be okay, Jess,” I told her as two women stepped around Chale, their hands on his face, checking him over with eyes full of concern.
One of the women put her fingers together, motioning toward her mouth.
“She wants to feed me,” Chale said, his voice cracking as he looked at me.
“Just go,” I told them as I was jerked forward sharply by the man who had claimed me, nearly falling, stumbling before I regained my balance.
“Ohmygod, Simon,” Jess moaned.
“Just be safe,” I told her. “Don’t leave here. It’s safer in here than out there.”
She nodded fast as I was pulled forward again, this time winding up in the dirt. The barbarian reached down and lifted me up, and I was thrown over his back, carried like a sack from the quad.
A door opened, and I heard a metal gate scrape the floor and the creak of the hinges that allowed it to swing open. It was dark, only torches on the walls lighting a long hallway that had empty, unlocked cells running the length of it. It looked like I was being walked into a jail from the courtyard that we had just left. I heard water a second before I was lifted and thrown.
I hit the warm water hard and was winded for a moment, disoriented, before I figured out what was happening. I had been hurled into some sort of enormous heated underground cistern. When I pushed off the bottom and rose to the surface, I realized that I was basically in the center of a giant bathtub with steps around it. I was not stupid. I knew what he wanted.
I stripped off my clothes, shoes, and socks and let them float free around me. When I was tossed a small cloth and a cake of soap, I washed myself clean. Apparently the swordsman liked his food smelling good before he ate it.
When I was done, I stayed there, in the water, and watched him. Slowly, his eyes never leaving me, he started to strip out of his armor. The armguards were discarded, the enormous breastplate that covered a chest that should have been bronzed, and the leather-stripped skirt. His boots were last, and when he was naked, gleaming in the low light, I exhaled slowly. The man was a mountain of hard, rippling muscle, from the washboard abdomen to his roped thighs and calves. He was powerfully built and absolutely, stunningly beautiful. My breath caught just looking at him.
He gestured me to him, and I saw that his shaft was rock solid, precome already leaking from the tip. The man wanted me bad, and though he was gorgeous, though I could appreciate the sight of him, there was only one man I hungered for.
“Is this inevitable?” I asked him. “Are you gonna rape me whether I come out or not?”
He whimpered in the back of his throat, and that was surprising. I saw him reach behind him and lift a small wooden bowl off a ledge carved into the wall. He dipped his fingers inside, and when he lifted them, I saw them glisten in the torchlight. It was oil.
“At least you’re not planning to dry-hump me,” I said breathlessly, terrified just looking at his enormous cock. I wondered how it was going to fit inside me. I had only ever bottomed for Leith; he was the only man that had brought out in me the desire to submit.
Staring at the man whom I would not be allowed to say no to, I shuddered.
He grunted low in his throat, and the sharp gesture, the way his brows furrowed, showed me that he was done waiting; he wanted me out of the water.
I glided close, and he turned and pulled a cloth off a peg in the wall behind him. As I climbed out, he stepped forward and wrapped me up, hugging me tight, crushing me against him. I was dried off roughly, and when he was done, he smoothed my hair back from my face and looked down at me.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I pleaded with him.
He took my hand gently, lifted it, and placed it over his heart before covering it with his bigger, stronger one.
I sighed deeply. “That guy out there, ax guy, little did he know you weren’t looking for a girl, huh?”
His eyes were dark pools of need, and when I lifted my hands to his face, he trembled under my touch. As I studied his face, his breath hitched, and he licked his lips. It was as if he knew what was going… to… happen. Like he knew what I would taste like because he knew me.
But how could he?
His eyes were all over my face, and the look was more than just lust. He reached out, cupped my face in his hand, and smoothed his large thumb across my lower lip slowly, seductively, his lips parting in anticipation.
I jolted in his arms, startling him, which made him clutch at me.
“It’s okay,” I soothed him, and I saw his eyes bleed from black to the deep, dark ocean-blue that I knew so well. “Oh shit,” I breathed out, because my guess was correct.
The giant standing in front of me was my warder.
I was looking at Leith.
Whatever happened in a siphon world had changed the love of my life from his normal lean, muscular self into a battle-ready barbarian. And he knew me but didn’t. He knew I belonged to him, but that was all.
“You need me, huh?”
Leith bent toward me, and I understood that what he wanted, what he had to have, what was hard-wired into him and primal, was to claim what was his. It
was my place to give myself to him the way he always willingly gave himself to me.
Lifting up, I wrapped my arms around his muscular neck and pulled him down into a kiss. If I had not figured it out before, I would have known the minute our lips met. No one ever kissed me the way Leith Haas did. It was gentle and possessive at the same time, his tongue slipping between my lips, tangling with mine, rubbing, coaxing, as I whimpered in the back of my throat, pressing my now hard, leaking shaft into his thigh.
The minute I knew it was him, my desire had flared to life. I felt the electrical current that ran through his massive frame. When he tore his mouth from mine, he kissed everywhere, moaning out his aching need. Finally, at the base of my throat, he licked and bit, ravenous to taste me.
I was shoved back, turned, and thrown up against the wall. I heard the scrape of the bowl on the rock before his hot, oil-slicked fingers wrapped around my cock. I arched forward into his fist, pumping my shaft in and out of his grip. When he bumped my legs apart, I planted my feet and felt the head of his oil slicked cock press against my entrance.
It had started out as something unknown and frightening but had become, just as quickly, that which I hungered for. And it wasn’t gentle—he wasn’t going to take his time, and that desperate, hungry, violent need sent heat rushing through me. I was going to be taken, and I shivered in expectation.
He pushed inside of me, past the tight ring of muscles, the pain overwhelming and white-hot as he thrust hard into my clenching channel. I breathed through the burn and willed my body to relax, open for him, take him in because this was Leith, the man I loved. Even as outwardly changed as he was, his need for me, his desire, his want, was absolute.
As my slippery hole swallowed him, I felt a hand on the small of my back, and then his engorged penis slid over my gland. He squeezed my cock tight at the same time, and I cried out in pain and ecstasy.
I heard a deep, rumbling moan from him as he eased out almost completely before pushing back in slowly, inch by inch. His hand moved, and as he withdrew again, I felt his thumb slide inside me with his cock.
It hurt and felt incredible at the same time. I whimpered in the back of my throat, wiggling on the shaft now buried inside me.
He hissed out words I didn’t understand, and I knew he was watching the length of him slide in and out of me, and it was driving him mad. He growled hungrily before he withdrew, hands clamping down on my hips before he rammed back into me, his balls against my ass as he began pumping in and out of me as hard as he could. The unrelenting pace brought on deep, shuddering tremors, the sizzling heat from my quickly building orgasm starting to fill me up.
He grabbed my ass, spread my cheeks, and plunged in deeper and deeper, each hammering thrust more jarring than the last. I was stretched and pounded, and when I could hold on no longer, I roared his name with abandon and came so hard I thought I would pass out.
Even as my legs buckled, he grabbed me and held me tight, driving in and out of me, pistoning inside as my muscles clamped down, squeezing him tight, my body collapsing around him in a velvet vise of heat.
He bit down into my shoulder, muffling his scream in my flesh as I felt hot come fill my ass and overflow. His hand cupped my face, and then he turned my neck sharply so that my lips could be claimed and ravaged. He bit, licked, suckled, and stroked my tongue with his own. The kiss was as brutal and devouring as his lovemaking, and I found that when he eased from my body, I was suddenly cold and shaking.
He turned me around and wrapped me in his arms, holding me gently, rubbing circles on my back. When he lifted me and walked me back down into the warm, caressing water, I didn’t protest. As he held me, I understood what it was to be cherished. All the words he could have ever said to me would never compare with the truth he had just shown me. No matter who he was or what he was, I was still his, and he loved me.
VII
HIS BEDROOM was huge, with animal pelts on the floor, a pallet for a bed, and an enormous fireplace. When the sun set, I was startled by the drop in temperature. Sitting in front of the fire on a thick fur, wrapped in another, I waited for him to return. He had led me to the room from the bath and carried me to the place I had not moved from. People—servants? I wasn’t sure; I had ever seen them before—brought me fruit and bread and a dark red meat that I didn’t touch. It could have been lizard man, for all I knew.
When the door opened, I was shocked to see a very ordinary-looking man walk into the room. His clothes stunned me because they were so completely out of place. He was wearing a three-piece cashmere Ralph Lauren suit. I had one very much like it back in the real world where I worked and lived and went to Starbucks. It would have made sense at home, in the office, but here… here he was completely out of place. In the hell dimension, perfectly coiffed and accessorized down to a pocket square and wingtips, he was an anomaly. My mouth opened, but no words came out.
He sneered at me. “I had no idea that the hearth of a warder could be a man. I knew the only reason he was here, trapped, was because he had followed his hearth, and so I’ve been looking, searching… I brought woman after woman before him, had others hold them, and if he had shown even the slightest interest, I would have had their handler kill them instantly. The only way to truly change a warder, turn him into a beast, is to kill the hearth. And of course, for the trespass of killing their hearth, the warder would have slaughtered the handler, but that was a price I was willing to pay.”
I just stared at him as I remembered who he was and where I had seen him before.
“I told my slaves that there had to be a hearth in among the filth somewhere, but never in my wildest dreams did I think to look for a man.”
“Why not?”
“Why not indeed. I will learn from my mistake.”
I pulled the soft fur cloak tight around me. “You’re Mr. Saudrian.”
“It is actually just Saudrian. No ‘mister’ needed.”
I nodded. “You’re a demon.”
“I am more than a demon. I am a demon lord.”
“What do you want?”
He shrugged. “I want power, land, all that any demon lord craves, as well as souls. Many, many souls.” He sighed deeply, his eyes glinting in the flickering flames. “I wish I could fill a bathtub with them and soak, but alas, I cannot, only breathe them in one at a time.”
It was an over-the-top declaration and somehow calmed me, annoyed me.
“I have done well, but unlike others, I have no warriors. I used to have them—I used to train them and beat them and watch them be slaughtered or slaughter others in the coliseum, but millennia come and go, and fortunes change. I have had no champion in ages until now.” He breathed out, and I almost shivered with the sound of sinister happiness in his voice. “When the warder toppled into my trap, I was astounded. How? It’s unheard of. No warder would ever allow himself to be trapped in a façade and fall into a siphon. It simply would not happen. But when I saw him, held down by ten of my slaves, his eyes just aglow with hatred, I was overcome. I turned him myself, bit into him, drank his blood, his essence, and even though he killed many of my slaves, in the end, he changed and was mine.”
I shivered thinking of Leith pinned down and attacked. His was such a gentle soul, even though he killed demons. It had to have been a horror for him.
“Along with looking for his hearth, I have been sending woman after woman to him,” he told me. “You need to feed and train your champion but you must also see to his sexual needs, make certain he’s sated in every way. I sent sirens and nymphs, and nothing. I even sent my own mate, the dark witch Moira, and she too was rebuffed. I have had to have her chained in her quarters since that day, her desire to bed him almost as great as her desire to drive her dagger into his heart.”
I watched him closely, waiting for the attack.
“I never thought to tempt him with beautiful men. I was shortsighted.”
But I knew better. No matter how pretty the guy, Leith only wanted me.
H
e made a sound in the back of his throat. “I gave him the old ludus––”
“What’s a ludus?”
“It’s where you are now, where a lord trains his gladiators for the ring, or his men for combat, it’s where you house them.”
“It’s a prison.”
“It’s an area in my home,” he said snidely, “where I used to lock my fighting men, yes, but I gave it to the warder for his own use as he is to be my champion.”
I nodded.
“But there are tunnels that he does not know of.”
Which explained his presence in the room.
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“I want you dead, hearth, but now that you are claimed, now that he knows you’re here, if you were to die within my walls, he would slaughter everyone here, including me.”
I saw the dread in his eyes for only a fleeting moment.
“So now you will play your part, or I will have your friends raped and dismembered limb from limb. The pain, I can promise you, will be horrific.”
I sucked in my breath and felt the rage welling up inside of me.
“You have no idea the torture I can inflict; I’ve had centuries to perfect my technique.”
He presumed that I would let that happen.
“And I don’t mean your friends who are now safe behind the locked gate; I mean your friend who now ruts like a stag in heat outside these walls, your man who is now a wolf. I mean your boss and more…. Do not think for a moment that I cannot leave here and travel to your pitiful human realm and bring people here or drop them lower into the pit. Your parents, your sweet sister—I can choose who I—”
“Fuck you,” I snarled at him, feeling the anger flood me as I got to my knees. “You think Jael, Leith’s sentinel, is just sitting there doing shit about finding him? You don’t think that he’s watching my friends and family?” I stood up fast, and when I did, he took a step back. “I’m not afraid of you, you asshole. You think we’re gonna be here forever—fuck you! I will figure out a way to get out, and I will take my warder with me, and if you ever, ever, threaten me again, I will have him rip out your fuckin’ lungs!”
