by Louisa Trent
He grabbed a fistful of her swinging hair. With a yank, he brought her to her knees.
“ ‘Tis not that you do not wish to leave me alone,” he snarled. “Say it for what it is! Do not try to justify this thing between us."
Did he think to rip her hair out at the root? Her scalp protested the ungentle treatment. Oh God, how would she ever withstand this?
“I am concerned for you,” she managed to say.
“Ha! Concern! You are a child!” he said in disgust. “You have an appetite for this, for what I would give you. You like the pain. Only you refuse to admit it! So be it! If you are not the woman I need you to be—go back to sleep.” He let go of her.
She fell to a feral crouch in the darkness. She wanted to be a woman. His woman. But how?
Only recently a virgin, a mature woman's carnal knowledge was not hers to draw upon. She only knew she would not be sent away. No matter what he did to her, she would not leave him.
And, there was something else too. Something shameful. For he was right—she was excited. Oddly, she found the hardness of his possession pleasurable. Even the pain was pleasurable. It was difficult to distinguish between pleasure and pain.
“Different men have different requirements,” she whispered, trying to fathom the extent of her own depravity. “Do not confuse skill on the furs with second sight! You need to tell me your specifications."
Leaning over her, he rasped the instructions in her ear.
The command was as courteous as it was specific. The explicitness of it left her no place to hide:
“Go to the furs,” he had said politely. “I would take you like an animal. Like a buck takes an ewe. Like a man takes a wholly receptive woman. Show me how much you desire it. Get down on all fours for me. Raise up your female body to receive my male body. Spread yourself open for my penetration. Legs wide. Hips raised high. Tail well up in the air. I would get it in you deep, as deep as my cock will go."
The bedding was not far in distance. But how far it seemed in her mind! It was difficult to leave innocence behind and embrace a mature woman's sensuality. Difficult to admit she wanted him without reservation, without compromise, even now when the veneer of romance was long since gone. This was mating stripped to its most fundamental elements. Raw. Primitive. Unsanctified.
Torn between desire and a reluctance to admit that desire, she hesitated.
But only for a heartbeat. Tossing her head, she returned to the furs, the tether guiding her way
Her master walked beside her as she crawled on hands and knees across the packed dirt floor. “You move like a cat,” he told her, his palm cupping her head. “Sleek and graceful. Part wild."
She felt part wild too. He made her feel that way. Those pious days spent behind a convent wall seemed like they had happened to another person, not to her.
Whilst he stood over her, fully clothed, and looked down upon her, fully naked, she positioned herself as he had instructed: Belly to fur. Elbows bent. Legs spread wide.
Nay, not good enough! He said she must splay her legs. Part them as wide as they would go.
She made the necessary split. Then raised her bottom. High. Higher. Higher still. Like a submissive female animal does in the wild, she gave him limitless entrée to her body. She felt unguarded ... vulnerable. And not at all like a lady. Her small teats bobbed and swayed. The tips were tight and hard, bruised from his mouth, pointed like spears. She was wide open. In front. In back. A woman totally exposed. She hung her head and her hair fell over her face. “Please?"
The captor traced her elevated spine with a finger. She blushed when his palm curved around her buttock. Nevertheless, she held herself still for his perusal.
A digit went into the crevice, investigated her back portal, rubbed there. Oh, God. Tried to enter there.
“Loosen your muscles,” he said. “Do not try to keep me out."
Relaxing every muscle in her body, she simply let him.
The tip of his finger entered her back portal. Just the tip.
“You are truly a sensual creature. You make me tremble like a babe,” he said, his finger pushing in further.
She made this huge warrior tremble?
Before she absorbed the captor's declaration of mutual weakness, he withdrew the trespass of that fingertip. Dropping down behind her, he mounted her. Entered her. Using her like an animal, he fed his cock into her. She felt it go in. Felt him fill her woman's passage. Would he come out her throat?
When his manhood kissed her womb, he began to thrust.
She groaned whilst he worked over her like a blacksmith works over the fire, his hot iron hammering her, melding her, burning her. The pressure was enormous, the heat an inferno. Would the flames engulf her?
“I was terrified when you tried to jump off my war-horse,” he rasped, ten fingers biting into her waist, holding her in place as he drove in and out. “Terrified as I have never been terrified before. Not even in battle have I been so frightened. I thought my horse would trample you. And then with the wolves too! How dare you frighten me like that! How dare you make me feel when I no longer wish to feel ... when I no longer wish to lust!"
The ground trembled. She thought the ceiling of the cave would collapse on their heads. He nipped her skin, tasted her skin, licked her skin, sniffed her skin. Animals did the same with their mates. He whispered to her in English. French too. Guttural words. Harsh sounding words. Words she neither knew nor understood. It mattered little that she ken not the meaning of the phrases. Just the intonation of his voice told her that he was talking about this, about mating, about what he was doing to her, about what he would do to her still before the night was through.
He kept at it. He kept at her. In the dim cave, bright splinters of radiance shattered inside her, and she swore she smelled the fresh scent of flower blossoms.
The climax was devastating. More powerful than before. More joyous too. Coherence fled. Flooded with her lover, inundated with him, tears rolling down her cheeks, her teats bobbing, perspiration dripping down her spine into the crack between her buttocks, hurting between the legs, he could only weep that she loved him, begging him, pleading with him, in the middle of her turmoil to...
What? Love her in return?
Nay, he did not love her. But her name was on his ruined lips when he came, his release a hoarse shout that echoed in the cave, his harsh rendition of Aeschine! a love poem to her ears.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At dawn, Aeschine lifted her head from the pillow of her arms.
She was no longer upright on all fours. Sometime during the course of the night, the captor had allowed her to change positions, for which she was most grateful, as her knees had begun to grow creaky. At first, he placed her on her side. Spooning her, he would come into her from the back, whilst her knee was bent and raised. In that manner, he could get at her opening and her teats, simultaneously. Next, he had placed her flat on her belly and on her belly she had remained for the rest of the evening, legs spread wide. In that prostrate position, he covered her, penetrating her body at his will. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but at closer and closer intervals as dawn approached. She no longer had difficulty accepting his length and breadth, though her woman's place burned bitterly sore from all the unaccustomed activity.
Not sore enough to ask him to stop, however. Indeed, she had provoked him to continue. At one point, she had begged him to go harder on her.
He did. He had gone much, much harder on her. He had pleasured her greatly.
Wiping the damp lank of hair from her eyes, she climbed weakly up onto her elbows. “Captor?” she called.
A scuttle of loosened rock brought him to her. “Again? So soon? Darling, you are insatiable..."
“I am. I admit it. But I also admit to a pressing need to seek the bushes,” she bashfully explained.
He dipped at the waist in a formal bow. “Forgive me. I should have inquired long before now. I shall take you at once."
She rose from belly to
knee.
“Stay,” he said, voice firm. “You were not given permission to rise."
She held herself still.
“Good lass,” he complimented and unhooked her tether from the stake pounded into the ground. “Go back now."
She slid back onto her haunches, arms behind her back as he had instructed, but kept her legs tightly together, as a lady should, for the sake of modesty. “Captor, I would go alone..."
“You will not!"
“But I thought that after we..."
“That after we rutted I would relent and give you more freedom?” He shook his head. “I came upon you racing through the bogs, alone. Wolves almost mauled you. Obviously, you have a wild streak. If encouraged, this willfulness will eventually cause you untold harm. ‘Tis my responsibility to make sure you are not endangered again."
He looked down at the closed apex of her body. “Even now, you are willful. By closing your thighs, you think to keep your female secrets from me."
She accepted the rebuke. The captor had made his requirements clear and she had accepted them. It was wrong to withhold herself from him. Wrong to go back on their bargain. Wrong to try to maintain even the illusion of modesty, when she no longer had the right to that illusion.
“I am sorry,” she whispered contritely. Like the lowliest of slatterns, she spread herself wide until the notch between her thighs was displayed.
“Wider,” he said, sternly. “All the way up on your heels and open it. Use your hand."
Digging her bare toes in for purchase, she lifted up on her heels. Making a vee with two fingers, as he had showed her in the wee hours of the long night, she held herself open, showing herself to him.
“Very nicely done,” he praised her, crouching down before her and staring into her opening. “The passage looks enflamed. You must burn there."
She nodded. She did burn, but when he slipped two fingers inside, she murmured no protest. Indeed her teats tingled, the ends hardening and pointing.
“I feel no rips. Which means we may continue. That is, if you would like to continue?” His lids lowered to her excited nipples.
Damn him! He knew the answer already. Why did he bother to ask?
She gave another bashful nod.
He smiled, regained his feet, and then offered her his hand to help her rise.
“Shall we be on our way, milady?” he asked when she had straightened, his hand once again on her bottom.
In that manner, his palm riding her buttock, they moved to the mouth of the cave, a most formal if unorthodox promenade. ‘Twas almost as though they were off to a royal banquet, not to the bushes for a tethered lady to pee.
Once outside the cave, her unkempt appearance made itself known to her. Her hair, her single pride, hardly stirred in the breeze for all the knots and dirt tangled in the strands. Her teats were swollen, the ends reddened and pointing. They bounced as she made her way across the rough terrain. The insides of her thighs were slippery with seed. Her fleece was matted with spent cum, darkened to the shade of a river otter's pelt with spent cum, as stiff as a beard with spent cum. Did he see the pearling on the inside of her leg as the seed spilled out of her? Did he hear the wet-squishy noises she made with each step? Did he think her ugly?
Her eyes dropped, her vanity as bruised as her body
“A man enjoys seeing the proof of his possession on his woman,” he said softly.
His woman...
By his words, she was made beautiful.
Smiling, she looked up and quipped, “Have you never before taken a stroll with a naked leman?"
“Nay. For that matter, neither have I strolled with a naked lady."
She was his woman. His leman. Not his lady...
The distinction hurt, but his was a truth she must learn to accept. The reality was, she was no longer a lady: she was a warlord's whore.
“During the Crusades, the campsites at night were boisterous places,” he volunteered. “The warriors were far from home, far from female companionship. After battle, a man's blood runs hot. Whores would come to the tents. Some evenings were a veritable orgy. Once the moon came out, the entertainment would begin. The festivities oft times continued until morning, naked females everywhere, there for the taking."
“Did you take?"
“I looked..."
“Only looked?"
“At the time, I was wed,” he said as though that explained everything, when Aeschine knew it did not; lords routinely cheated on their lady-wives.
Not her captor, evidently. The warlord kept to his vows, despite his insistence that pledges were meaningless. Which could mean only one thing...
“You must have loved your wife dearly to have remained faithful."
“A man who respects his wife does not cavort with whores."
They remained silent after that, until they came to a thin grove of low-growing mulberries.
“Here,” he said tersely.
She looked up at him from under the cover of her lashes. “Will you grant me privacy?"
He already kept her on a short leash. When he folded his arms over his chest, the length of the rein lessened considerably. “A leman may not expect privacy. A captive leman may expect less.” He cocked a brow. “Does your bargain begin to chafe?"
Her mouth twisted. Damn his arrogance!
The need really was pressing. But she could not bring herself to squat at his feet, spreading her legs like a bitch on a leash, while he watched. Nor could she go further off the path because of the leash's shortened length.
“Why do you wait?” he asked, head cocked.
“ ‘Tis undignified to piddle in full view,” she grumbled.
With a dry chuckle, he leaned down to her and unhooked the leather strap from the tether encircling her waist. “Go to the bushes, lass, and be quick about it. The air is chilly and I would not see you take ill."
She raced to a lovely full bush and squatted behind the leafy covering. With a barely suppressed sigh, she puddled onto the ground, a noisy splash. She giggled about what it meant to be a warrior's whore, cried a little about it too. This was certainly not the poetic love her mother spoke of.
Much relieved, she returned to her captor's side.
“Better?” he asked.
A scowl was her reply.
“No need for embarrassment. ‘Tis a human need."
“Why have you no such needs?"
“Ah ... well that is a question to ponder. I suppose the answer in part is that my humanity ended during the Crusades."
“I shall make you human again. I shall give you reason to live."
“You place a high value on yourself."
“Nay, I do not. But I know you enjoy my woman's opening. And I know we would have a good life at your keep. We would watch our people prosper. I would give you bairns..."
He shook his head. “'Tis not to be."
“Why? I feel desire for you. Even now I would like to...” She paused. Tried to put into words what she wished to say. How did one put it delicately?
She stood there like a complete ninny, her face warming with a maidenly blush, though she was a virginal maid no longer, and tried to piece together a polite phrase out of the limited and crude education she had received from an uncouth bunch of shepherd lads. The coarse words she knew, but not the sweet ones. She wished to say the sweet ones, because despite everything, despite the pain of her inexperienced body, mating with her captor was very sweet, indeed.
“I know what you need,” he interjected, saving her the word search. “I am not unenlightened. There are females who require release as much, if not more, than the male, sometimes with more frequency. You are such a female animal. Unfortunately, if I take you again, I might rip you. Such a rip will require me to stitch you up internally. Not a pleasant eventuality for either of us."
“You say you know what I wish. How do you know?"
“Your female body has few secrets from me. ‘Tis your mind that remains a mystery.” He hooked her back i
nto the tether.
That done, they returned to the cave. After her captor made her comfortable on the furs, he went back outside, leaving her alone and lonely without him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Where do you go when you leave me?” Aeschine asked upon his return late the next day.
“I walk. Hunt for food. Swim in the river,” he replied.
“May I go with you next time?” his captive asked.
She sat cross-legged amidst the furs rather than kneeling back on her heels, as he had instructed. He allowed the variation without comment, for he could still see her notch. “I will consider your request."
“I would dearly love to swim.” Her voice was wistful.
“Do you know how? The last I saw you in the water, you were almost drowned."
She dimpled. “I learned as a child. And I was fully clothed before, which is why I encountered some difficulty."
“English water is fierce cold,” he warned gruffly. Gruff, because she entranced him and he would dearly love her company. Gruff, because she was rapidly becoming a weakness, and he never allowed himself weakness.
“ ‘Tis the same in Scotland, and I swam there all the time."
Her irrepressible energy made him smile in bemusement. Where was the harm in a swim? Sage thought and took a drying cloth from his leather satchel. After unhooking her tether from the stake, he bowed, leash held in his hand. “After you, milady."
As it turned out, Aeschine swam like a veritable water sprite.
Knifing below the water's surface, she popped her head up in the stream far from where she first dove.
He chuckled to himself. What a little imp!
He let her play for a while, then clapped his hands: Aeschine was a fit female, but the river really was quite cold...
She treaded water. “Please, Captor, may I stay in longer?"
The secret of training a frisky animal—or a recalcitrant female—is to give an order once, and not repeat it again.
He stood there, staring straight ahead, saying nothing, making no argument.
“Oh, very well.” She climbed out of the river onto the grassy bank. “Behave like a vexed bear.” She offered him first her back, and then a bright smile over her shoulder as he fastened the length of strap onto the leather belt he had left in place around her waist.
