Maari unclenched her fist and slapped him across the face so hard that his head rocked to the side.
Orlann snarled, his deep-sea eyes flashing as his grip on her chin tightened until it bruised.
“I’m sorry!” Maari cried, her eyes wide and suddenly scared as he released her face and spun her around. “Wait, I’m so sorry! Please—” Her cry was cut off when he bent her face-down over the bed and kicked her ankles wide apart. Maari twisted her head to the side and sucked in a breath as his hand landed on the center of her back, effortlessly holding her in place, and before she could demand to be released, his other hand came down so hard on her backside that she choked on a cry of protest.
“Lucky for you, I like pain too. But I give as good as I get, little girl.” He gripped the end of the toy still nestled in the crack of her ass and gave it a sharp tug. Maari cried out as the widest portion of the object opened her again, suddenly and brutally. Then she went still, convinced that he was finally going to remove the uncomfortable burden.
Instead, he fucked her with it in short strokes designed to stretch her each time the toy plunged into her without ever coming all the way out or sinking in past the widest point.
“If you move, I will beat your ass black and blue,” Orlann promised, pressing her into the bed with the hand at her back. Then that hand disappeared, only to reappear between her legs. Stroking her clit as he fucked her ass with the toy. In seconds she was dripping again, moisture trailing down her thighs as she gritted her teeth against a groan.
“Please,” she begged, as that erotic pressure began to coil tight inside her again, melding seamlessly with the sensation of being stretched and filled repeatedly by the toy.
“Please what?” Orlann demanded.
“Stop. Please stop,” she whispered, fists clenched in the comforter.
His hands went still between her legs, and Maari groaned. “Is that really what you want?” he asked, almost gently.
“No,” she panted, and her hips arched back at him, all on their own, seeking more friction against her swollen, needy clit. “Finish it. Please,” she begged. “Just finish it, and go away.”
The toy began to move again, his finger lightly circling her clit, and Maari’s eyes fell closed. “Say my name,” Orlann demanded. “Tell me who makes you feel this good.”
But she was too close to orgasm to think straight. Too caught up in chasing the release that would make the stretching okay. That would give the pain meaning. She was close. So cl—
“Maari.” Orlann’s hands went still again, and she groaned her frustration into the comforter. “Say it, and I’ll let you come. Again.”
“Orlann!” she shouted, and those two syllables carried enough pain, frustration, and arousal to make his dick hard all over again. “Please. Orlann. Finish it.”
So he strummed her clit and plunged the toy in and out of her, faster and faster, until she shoved her face down into the bed clothes and screamed her release, as she thrust her hips back at him.
And finally, as she lay face down on the bed, limp with exhaustion and humiliation, he slid the toy free from her body and left her to recover.
The air felt cold in his absence. Her ass throbbed, as did her abused clit, now that her orgasm had ebbed.
“On your back,” Orlann said as a box clicked closed behind her, presumably hiding the toy. “Keep whatever’s left of my release where it belongs. At least until Malac gets here.”
Her legs like noodles, Maari climbed onto the bed and curled up on her side. Her gaze found the box tucked beneath his arm, and she shuddered over the memory of what it held. Of what he’d done to her.
Of how her body had responded.
“I hate you,” she said, without bothering to lift her cheek from the bed.
“Oh, little girl.” Orlann turned back from the door to give her a pitying look. “I’m not the one you hate right now. If you want to see who you’re really mad at, take a look in the mirror. What you’ll find there is what I saw when you were screaming my name, with my toy up your ass: one very dirty princess.”
He opened the door, and just like the night before, Annah was in the hall, waiting.
Maari closed her eyes and fought back tears, wondering if her handmaid had been out there the whole time. Listening.
“Dinner will be here in an hour,” Orlann said, as the maid stepped carefully past him into the room. “Keep her on the bed until then.”
8
Maari
“Go away,” Maari snapped when Annah laid one cool hand on the princess’s overheated shoulder. Maari jerked free of her touch and flipped up the corner of the soiled comforter to cover herself. “Just go back to wherever they send you when they kick you out.” She hoped Annah would tell her where that was. So she could believe that her companion—her only remaining friend in the world—hadn’t really been standing outside the door. Listening.
Annah backed off of the bed and stood with her hands folded in front of her skirt. “May I get you anything?”
“Go away,” Maari repeated, rolling over to turn her back to Annah. Wondering if she knew what was in the box, and what it had done to her.
“I’m not allowed to leave you right now,” Annah said. “Did he…” She cleared her throat and started over. “Did he hurt you?”
Maari only pulled the edge of the comforter over her head.
“Did he injure you, I mean?”
The princess sobbed at the confirmation that Annah had heard enough to know that she’d been hurt. And that there was a difference, during sex, between being hurt and being injured.
“Do I need to call for a doctor?” Annah pressed, concern thick in her voice. “I will gladly pound on the door until someone answers.”
“No! I’m fine,” Maari said, humiliated all over again by the thought of telling a doctor where she hurt, and why. “Just please shut up and let me sleep.”
So Annah retreated to a seat in front of the window, where she pretended, for the next hour, that she couldn’t hear the princess softly sobbing into the bed clothes.
When dinner came, Maari refused to eat. To even get out of bed. So the tray of food remained untouched, still covered by the silver dome, because her companion would not eat without her.
The first sun slipped beneath the horizon, followed a short time later by the second sun, but Maari missed the brilliant display of colors streaking the sky, casting strange shadows in the garden visible from the window. She kept the comforter pulled over her head, even when two servants came with fresh bedding. The women were forced to retreat from the room without ever touching the bed.
Three hours after Orlann had left, the door opened again, and a single set of heavy, boot-clad feet stomped into the room. “What’s this?” Malac asked, and inside her cocoon of bedding, Maari tensed, squeezing her eyes shut.
“She’s not well, sir,” Annah said.
“Then why haven’t you called for a doctor?”
“It’s not a physical ailment, as far as I can tell,” the handmaid told him. “Your brother was…here.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to narrow that down. They’ve both been known to make women cry. But for completely different reasons.”
“It was your middle brother, sir,” Annah replied.
“Orlann. Fuck. Well, let’s see what kind of damage he’s done.” Then he whispered something to Annah that Maari couldn’t make out, from beneath the covers.
A moment later, water began to run in the bathroom.
Weight settled onto the mattress, jostling it beneath Maari, and she froze as a hand landed softly on the curve of her hip, through the comforter. For a moment, Malac only ran his hand lightly down her leg and back up, petting her like a skittish cat in need of comfort.
When her breathing began to even out and her frame started to relax, he tried to fold back the comforter for a look at her.
Maari’s hand shot out and snatched the material from him, tucking it tighter around herself. “Please, p
lease don’t,” she whispered. “I just want to be left alone.”
“It doesn’t sound like that’s what you need right now. Come out of there and let me see what we’re working with.” He tugged on the comforter more insistently, and she reluctantly let it slip from her grip. Malac uncovered her slowly, and though she must have looked like a day-old animal carcass, curled up naked in her cocoon with her tangled hair, tear-streaked face, and sticky-crusted thighs, he smiled down at her as if she were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Hi,” Malac said, stroking messy hair back from her face. “It’s nice to see you again.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek, and when his scent washed over her, her lower parts clenched involuntarily, as that dreadful emptiness seemed to yawn within her, demanding to be filled. Again. Moisture gathered between her thighs, and she pressed her legs together as tears formed in her eyes.
Damn the Camdens and their erotic witchcraft.
“No. Please. I’m not ready. I don’t want—”
“Shhh. I’m not going to hurt you. No pain. I promise.” Malac stroked one finger down her jaw, from her ear to the point of her chin. “For now, let’s just get you cleaned up.” He stood and lifted her in both arms, and Maari clung to his neck as her balance shifted beyond her control. Then, she found that she didn’t want to let him go.
Malac carried her into the bathroom, where Annah stood next to a tub filling with fragrant water, but no bubbles. “I’ll take it from here,” Malac said as he lowered Maari into the warm bath, heedless of the water soaking into his sleeves.
Annah gave him a skeptical look—the most blatant evidence of her disapproval that Maari had ever seen—and he waved her from the room with a smile.
The maid closed the bathroom door as she left, and a moment later, the bedroom door closed behind her with an echoing click. Maari tucked her knees up to her chest to cover her nudity as Malac stood and pulled off his soggy shirt. Then he knelt next to her and slid his hand down her back.
“Is the water too hot?”
“It’s fine. Thank you.” She clasped her arms around her shins and rested her chin on her knees.
Malac turned off the faucet and draped her hair over her left shoulder, then he dipped his hand into the water behind her and trailed a handful of it over her back. Something clicked behind Maari, and she didn’t need to turn to know that he’d opened a bottle of lilac-scented soap.
Ignoring the sponge hanging from the faucet, he washed her back with his bare hands in slow, soft circles.
“I can bathe myself, you know,” she whispered, making no effort to pull away from his touch or to take the soap from him.
“I want to make you feel good.”
“That’s what Orlann said.”
Malac snorted. “That doesn’t sound much like Orlann.”
“It wasn’t an exact quote,” Maari admitted as she took a hair tie from the edge of the tub and pulled her damp, tangled hair into a messy topknot, to keep it out of the water.
“Are you in pain?” Malac asked as he applied gentle pressure on her shoulder, urging her to lean back.
After a moment of hesitation, Maari nodded. Then she reclined against the back of the tub, crossing her arms over her breasts to hide them.
“Where does it hurt?”
She pressed her lips together, refusing to answer.
“I can help, if you show me.”
Maari closed her eyes and maintained her silence.
“Okay, we’ll work up to that.” Malac bathed her slowly, gently soaping her shoulders and her neck, then working his way down both arms, obviously pleased when she let him extend them, exposing her breasts. Though she tensed, until she was sure his efforts would remain chaste. For the moment.
He lifted her legs from the water one at a time to wash them, and his hands wandered no higher than mid-thigh. Though he did take the chance to run the back of his finger lightly over the sole of her left foot, drawing a small smile from her as her toes twitched in response.
Finally, Malac set the bottle of scented soap on the edge of the tub next to her. “May I do the rest, or would you prefer to finish washing yourself?”
Maari squirted soap into her palm and quickly lathered her torso and nether regions while he bent to search for something beneath the counter. As she tucked her knees back up to her slickly soaped chest, Malac reappeared at her side with the small pitcher Annah had used the night before. He flipped the lever behind her to empty the tub, and as the water swirled down the drain, he turned on the faucet and filled the pitcher at her back. Though the tub faucet would easily have extended, allowing him to spray the suds from her, he used the pitcher, pouring warm, clean water over her slowly, watching as droplets slid down her shoulders and hung from the peaks of her breasts.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful,” he whispered as she tilted her head back, elongating her neck and giving him access to rinse it.
“Would it matter if I were ugly?” Maari asked, her eyes squeezed shut, her thighs pressed firmly together in denial of the ache still throbbing there in response to his scent. To his nearness. “You’ve been ordered to breed me either way, haven’t you?”
“Would it matter to me?” He truly seemed to consider his answer. “No. But if you weren’t the stunning creature you are, I suspect Jude would have been content to take one of your lovely handmaids.”
“And would she have been treated like this? Starved and isolated? Threatened?”
“No,” Malac admitted. “Because no handmaid would have refused, when Jude told her to strip. No handmaid over the age of fifteen would have needed to be guided through a blowjob or seduced through the tearing of virgin tissue.”
Her eyes opened, her gaze drawn to his for the first time since he’d lifted her from the bed. “That can’t be true.”
Malac laughed softly. “Ask your handmaid how old she was when she was torn.” Maari pressed her lips together again, and he gave her an indulgent smile. “As a royal hostage, you’ve presented a unique set of challenges, princess. And you’ve been indulged as no commoner would have been.”
“You would not have bathed Annah, if she’d come here in my place?”
Again, Malac truly seemed to consider his answer. “I would have, if she’d needed to be cared for. She’s a beautiful woman, and if she’d been given to me, I would have taken any opportunity to touch her. But she wouldn’t have needed this kind of attention, because she wouldn’t have fought Orlann. She would have just spread her legs and let him play until he got bored.”
“And would he have gotten bored?”
Malac shrugged as he poured more warm water over her bent legs, rinsing her where the receding bathwater left suds on her skin. “Eventually.”
“And if I bore him, will he finish faster?”
Malac huffed. “You could never bore him. Everything is too new for you. Too shocking. Your reactions amuse and arouse him.” He seemed sure of that, though he hadn’t even been in the room.
Maari began to shiver, now that the water was nearly gone, leaving her wet skin exposed to the air.
“And now, I’m going to have to insist that you show me where you’re in pain. So I can help.”
She shook her head, her face warming. “I’m fine.”
“Princess.” Malac’s tone was firm. “I’m not going to hurt you. Bend over the edge of the tub.”
“Please,” she begged as he pulled her to her knees with a firm but gentle grip on her arm. “I’m fine. You don’t need to see.”
“It’ll be fast.” He turned her away from him and pressed firmly on her back until she bent at the hip, clutching the edge of the tub in a white-knuckled grip. “Are you aware that there are handprints on your ass?”
Maari groaned. “No, but I’m not surprised to hear it.”
“Is that the extent of the pain?”
She considered lying. But Malac had never hurt her. In fact, he’d only ever seemed to want to help her, even if helping her ar
oused him. So she shook her head.
“Arch your back and push your hips out, please.”
She obeyed, humiliated tears in her eyes as the new position spread her lower cheeks, exposing her shame to his inspection.
“Yes, that looks a little raw. Hold still for just a minute.”
Maari lowered her forehead to rest on the backs of her hands, struggling to maintain her composure, when she just wanted to curl up in the tub and cry. Behind her, she heard cabinets opening, then suddenly Malac’s hand touched her lower back, and she jumped.
“Sorry. I just wanted to let you know I was here again. I have some cream that’s going to help, but obviously I have to apply it to the source of the pain. Just so you’re prepared.”
Maari clenched her jaw against a humiliated sob as she heard the soft scrape of a jar opening behind her.
“It’s a little cold.” Malac’s warm left hand steadied her hip, reminding her of his presence, but she still jerked when she felt the touch at her abused rear entrance, gently spreading a thick cream that was, indeed, very cold. “Steady,” he said, as his grip on her hip tightened. Then he pressed into her, and Maari flinched. “Sorry. This’ll only take a second,” Malac said as he slowly rotated his finger, applying the cream just inside her. “Looks like Orlann was pretty rough. That bastard. He’s made you hate what should have been a very erotic experience.”
But that wasn’t true. The truth, in fact, was the opposite. He’d made her like it. And that was the problem.
It was the very same problem she was facing again, despite the uncomfortable throbbing in her back channel. Malac’s scent and his nearness, as well as his gentle touch, made her ache for him. Made her hips want to press toward him, even if that would have deepened a penetration he didn’t intend to be sexual in nature.
Dirty Lovely Broken Page 9
