by Ava Sinclair
“Yes, he was.” The advisor’s eyes darted back and forth. “But that changes nothing. You are king, but make no mistake; your father still holds enormous power, and has great influence. He loves you, sire, but he loves power more.” He looked at Avin. “And you, my proud beauty, he hates. Beware of what he baits you to reveal. In such an unstable situation, a glance, a gesture—anything hinting at an unwanted alliance—can be enough to invoke consequences neither of you desire.”
Others were emerging from the hall, and as Cynric drifted away, Avin marveled at how his face morphed from intensity to indifference as soon as he noticed people approaching. He was a chameleon, and although she realized Cynric had likely played architect to her ruin, she also realized he was just the type of man a king needed on his side.
“He’s right, you know,” she said to Xander once they were back in her room. “It would have been better if you’d been cold to me. I think we made a mistake.”
“He’ll get over it,” Xander said.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Your advisor suggested your father was baiting us.” She sighed, sinking down on a chair. “You should heed his advice.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “You saw what you did as standing up to your father. But your father saw you siding with a despised enemy.”
Xander shook his head. “He was in the wrong, Avin. And it would not have mattered if it had been you or a squire he berated. I’d not have stood for it in my hall.”
“That’s all well and good,” she said. “But he does not seem the type of man who simply lets things go.”
Xander walked over, took her hands, and lifted Avin to her feet.
“Then perhaps we should practice how to make you appear more submissive.”
Avin smiled and seductively lowered herself to kneeling, her hands gliding down the king’s slim hips and sturdy thighs as she went. She looked up at him almost reverently as she moved her hands to the bulge under his tunic. In her eyes was an unspoken request: May I? Her master and king nodded, swallowing hard as her slim fingers danced over the fabric of his breeches, freeing his cock.
It was still as impressive as she remembered. He’d been her only lover, but she’d not needed to be with any other man to know that Xander was exceptionally well-endowed. Now one slim hand cupped his heavy balls while the other grasped the top of the huge cock that jutted from a nest of dark curls. She pushed the foreskin back, exposing the flared, ruddy head crowned with a drop of pre-cum. Avin leaned forward, her tongue snaking out to lap away the fluid pearl. She swallowed and looked up at him through hooded eyes before turning back to the focus of her pleasure, and his.
Xander had taught her well back in those early days at Ravenscroft, had instructed her on how to fondle his balls while sliding the foreskin up and down his shaft with just the right amount of exquisite pressure. She’d not forgotten, and the king groaned, as helpless now as any slave in her warm hands. His groan grew deeper when her mouth joined her hands, the wet warmth gliding up and down. Avin relaxed her throat, feeling the sides of his huge cock sliding over her tongue that mapped the ridges, feeling the head bump the back of her throat.
She was still in tune with him, even now. She bobbed her blond head along with his slow thrusts as his balls tightened in her hands. She could feel his cock swelling with each oral stroke. He moaned when she moved back to run her tongue around the head before teasing the sensitive glans. She kissed him there, sweetly, and then took him in her mouth almost greedily, working him faster and faster, her hands reaching around to grasp his hard, muscular bottom as his huge hands fisted themselves in her hair. He held her, but did not direct her head. She was controlling the action now, and he was letting her. Allowing it. Avin loved the feeling of knowing that Xander could retake control, could turn the tables, but was choosing to remain lost in the pleasure she was giving him.
She could feel him about to spend, and relaxed her throat to receive his tribute. When it came, she swallowed the salty spurts rhythmically and then lapped him clean.
“Avin…” There was an ache in his voice, and when she looked up she saw a man satisfied but also pained, and felt the same agony he did. They should be enjoying this moment as man and wife. They should not have to hide their love. Pride and anger on both their parts had separated them, and he could not bring her back without fracturing a kingdom just starting to heal.
He lifted Avin to her feet, carried her to the bed. He sat down on the edge and held her. She put her ear against his broad chest, listening to the reassuring pump of his heart.
He could not stay; it would not do for the king to spend the night with the woman he’d made his slave.
Xander turned, placing her on the bed.
Neither said a word as he tucked his cock back into his pants. Before he left, he leaned down, tipped up her chin, and kissed her on the forehead. Avin waited until he left the room to cry.
Chapter Ten
On a particularly beautiful morning, Avin began her training by kneeling on the floor, her back to the king, her hands on the collar behind her neck, her elbows out to the side. She’d been like that for nearly an hour. It was part of the king’s punishment for her particularly disagreeable mood. The other part was visible on her bright red bottom. Xander had used the strap, and the angry red stripes it left had yet to fade.
The coronation was just days away now, and Xander had sent his father to escort the procession to Windbourne with the primary motive of getting him out of the castle and away from Avin.
They’d had a week together, and Xander knew the root cause of her disobedience was the frustration of knowing that this was their last day together before Lord Reginald returned with the visiting nobility from Ravenscroft. The guests would keep the king too occupied to see her.
He did not tell her that he dreaded his father’s homecoming as much as she did.
As he suspected, the old lord had not taken Avin’s improved circumstances well, and his animosity against the former queen had only increased after Xander had defended her in the dining hall. Tension between father and son had heightened when Lord Reginald sought to force his son’s hand where Avin was concerned.
“I want her banished as soon as the coronation is over!” he’d railed at Xander, pacing angrily back and forth before his son’s throne. “Once she appears at your feet at your official crowning, I’m having her sent away to a family in the south where she can be put to proper use. Perhaps she could empty the chamber pots for Lord Umbry, or serve as a governess for Lady Halston?” He chuckled. “That would be fitting for that haughty little bitch, caring for the children of others as her womb shrivels inside of her. Refuse to marry my son, will she? I’ll see it that she marries no man, not while I draw breath.”
“Avin’s future is not yours to decide.” Xander’s thunderous expression had gone ignored by his father, but his tone could not be so easily dismissed.
Cynric had interrupted before tensions could escalate further. The matter of Avin, he said, could be discussed after the coronation. It would bring no comfort to the nobility of Ravenscroft to see father and son at odds when both had worked to secure the alliance.
Later, Cynric had been the one to suggest that Lord Reginald serve as the king’s representative to bring the Ravenscroft lords back to Windbourne. To the relief of both men, Xander’s father had agreed without a fight. But any suspicion Xander may have had with his father’s compliance vanished in the satisfaction of knowing he had Avin to himself until his father’s return. Now, that time was coming to an end.
Avin sniffled, and Xander felt a stab of pity he could not show. Her disappointment did not excuse her disrespect, after all. And he knew deep down she’d have been disappointed in him if he’d borne her rudeness without consequence.
Walking over, he hooked his finger in her collar and lifted Avin to her feet.
“I am your king,” he said. “And you belong to me. I’ll not tolerate disobedience. Understand?”
She d
ropped her eyes. “Yes,” she said.
“How sore is your bottom?” He reached behind her, palming a cheek. She flinched.
“Very.”
“Too sore to sit on a horse?”
She looked up at him, surprised. “A horse?”
“I thought we’d end the time we’ve had together on a good note. I’m not familiar with the kingswood around Windbourne. Could you show it to me?”
A bright smile replaced her tears. “I can think of nothing I’d love more.”
It was his gift to her, this ride. Despite her tender nates, Avin kept a firm seat on her white mare as he rode beside her on his large gray gelding.
But what started as an outing to mend Avin’s spirits quickly evoked memories of past rides at Ravenscroft for Xander, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake in sleeping nightly in her bed or going out with her on a bright morning. Being with her felt the same as it once did. She was submitting now easily and freely. He knew she still bristled at the circumstances of her confinement, but also that she recognized with grace and a spirit of sacrifice why her situation had to play out.
What he could not see was a solution, not with the complication of his overbearing father whose political ties were important to Xander’s nascent reign. He longed to marry Avin, but could not tell her. At least not yet. He looked over. The warm spring wind was lifting her hair as she rode. The sun would be good for her. She was still too pale, and Xander decided that he’d expand her freedoms to strolls in the castle garden or carefully guarded rides. If his father protested, he would remind him again who was king.
“This grove of trees is where I gather herbs,” she said, guiding her horse to the edge of a path. Xander was pleased when she asked for permission to dismount, which he granted.
“Still about your wise woman ways?” he joked, and she looked back at him and smiled.
“My subjects—my former subjects—may be simple, but this has always been their way and mine, too.” She knelt at the food of a massive oak. “Do you remember this one?” She pointed at a plant with rough-edged triple leaves.
Xander studied it. “Rue?” he asked.
“Close.” She plucked it. “It’s a type of wort. It lifts the mood.”
“I remember this one.” To the left was a patch of nettles. Xander pointed to it. “Do you?”
Avin flushed prettily. He was pointing to nettle, the ingredient in the cream he used to punish her bottom.
“Displease the king and he may order you to make your own ointment, and then use it on you.”
“I will endeavor to please him, then,” Avin said quietly.
Xander walked over and picked her up. “You do please me,” he said, and laid her down on a bed of moss under the tree.
“My king…”
“No one will disturb us here,” he said. “No one will see us save for the birds in the trees, and who can they tell?”
“Do you remember when you took my virginity?” she asked.
He stretched out on her, his hand brushing a strand of hair away from her face.
“How can I forget the first sweet surrender?”
“Do you remember when you took the second?” she asked.
He swallowed hard. He did. It was less than a fortnight before they were supposed to be married. They’d planned to wait, but the trainers he’d used to stretch her bottom had readied her earlier than either expected.
“Yes.”
She took her face in his hands.
“Again?” she asked.
He looked down at her. “I’ve not stretched you. It may hurt.”
“I don’t care.” Her tone was urgent. “I want to feel the hurt. I want to feel everything that was lost.” Her eyes searched his. “Please don’t deny me, my king.”
How could he? Especially when she pushed him back and turned, rising up on her knees and hiking up the hem of her gown? She was bare underneath, just as he’d ordered, and when she bent over he could see that the soft fullness was returning to her hips, which were nicely rounded. The marks from the stripes had faded to a pink slightly lighter than the pink of the labia he now glanced between her parted legs. He reached down, fingering the slick petals of her pussy, trailing the glistening arousal up between her parted cheeks to rim the tight crinkle of her bottom hole.
His cock nudged uncomfortably against the panel of his breeches as he remembered how tight her bottom was the first time he’d taken her. She’d still be tight there, just as her pussy was still tight around his cock. Xander pushed his breeches down, freeing a cock that strained toward her like a divining rod.
She’d been hesitant the first time he’d taken her there. Now she pushed back against a cock lubricated by her own arousal as it nudged against the rosy pucker of her anus. Xander held her hips to keep Avin from pushing back too fast.
“Your king is in control,” he reminded her, giving his captive lover a slap to the bottom. She moaned, and he could smell the fresh pulse of arousal, the musk of it mingling with the smell of earth and flowers around them. He pushed forward, watching as the tip of his flared cock head breached this taboo portal she offered. Xander relaxed his grip, allowing her to push back. She whimpered with a combination of need and pain, but continued to envelop his cock, her bottom hole slowly stretching to accommodate his girth. He moaned as it slipped over the head of his cock, the fit so exquisitely tight. He reached underneath her, his fingers finding the sensitive button of her clit as he continued to enter her by small, sweet degrees.
He lost track of time; he could have been sliding into her for minutes or hours or days. All fell away around him save for her and her soft moans and little cries and then the louder, deeper moans when he became fully seated in her and began to move.
“Oh, my master… my king!” She was moving with him, lost in her submission to the man who controlled her life and—at the moment—her very body.
Xander felt the pressure in his loins building, the surge of it stronger than anything he’d ever experienced. He’d intended to hold back, but the sweetness of her passionate yielding pushed him to the point of no return. Pleasure came simultaneously for both of them at once, his bursts blending with waves he could feel through the walls of her bottom passage.
When it was over, he bathed her in a stream. They were riding home when a messenger met them with word that Lord Reginald and the Ravenscroft nobles would be arriving by nightfall. Xander looked over to see Avin staring down at the ground, trying not to cry. From there, they rode home in silence, and in silence they climbed the stairs to her chamber. Sal was waiting, a concerned look on her face.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “I was worried!”
“She was with her king,” Xander said. “That is all you need to know.”
The maid pursed her lips but said nothing more.
“Leave us,” the king said, and inclined his head toward the maid’s chamber. Sal moved through the door into the other room, leaving them alone.
“I love you, Avin.”
She tried to suppress a sob, and he hugged her.
“The only thing that binds me to you is a chain,” she said. “We cannot be together… we cannot marry.”
“Then I will keep you, if you will be kept,” he said. “And while you live, I will love no other.” He paused. “Do you remember my mother’s necklace?”
She suppressed another sob at the mention of the adornment Xander had once showed her at Ravenscroft. He’d said on her deathbed, his mother had told him to give it to the woman he truly loved, and that he intended to give it to her on their wedding day.
“I’ve ordered the jewels be brought here from Ravenscroft,” he said. “It is time for me to keep my promise and give that necklace to my true love.”
He kissed her on top of the head.
“I will send my father away,” he said. “I’ll make him warden of the south. He can run Ravenscroft for me. It will keep him away from Windbourne. He will not live forever, Avin. We will be together. Jus
t be patient.”
She nodded, winding her slim hands in his tunic.
The sound of distant hoof beats got their attention and both king and slave looked out the window to the king’s road. They’d arrived home just in time, for in the distance they could see a plume of dust and the banners held aloft. Lord Reginald and the nobles of Ravenscroft were returning.
“I will be kept busy by them,” he said.
“I know.”
“I will try to see you.”
“You don’t have to. I know you have your duty.”
He kissed her goodbye, the parting of their lips painful only second to seeing the sadness in her eyes.
Cynric met him on the stairs as he approached the Great Hall.
“We are about to be set upon,” he said. “Word is that the nobility of Ravenscroft is as eager to ogle your slave as the nobility of Windbourne were. They’ve not forgotten her rejection of you.”
“Then they will be disappointed,” Xander growled. “Avin will appear at the coronation, but beyond that she will not be put on display. I’ve already promised her that.”
Cynric nodded and smiled. “You’ve faced your fears, I see.”
Xander nodded. “Yes. I feared my feelings would make me weak, but I have found strength in her. She’s given me her submission, Cynric, and I find myself wanting to be the kind of man and king that deserves it. I only wish I could right the wrongs done to her by every man in her life.”
“There is yet time,” Cynric said. “But first you must run the gauntlet of this evening.”
That was an apt description. He knew the next few days would be important in strengthening alliances between north and south. As he took his place on the throne, the visiting nobility from Ravenscroft arrived. Familiar faces smiled at him, praising his victory, his reign and the splendor of the castle, which had been much repaired since Avin’s overthrow.
As guest after guest filed up to pledge their allegiance to the crown, Xander found himself looking for his father, who had not yet greeted him. When Lord Reginald did show up, it was in the company of a woman it took Xander a few moments to recognize.
