by Georgia Fox
The seven bastard sons of Guillaume d'Anzeray are on a mission to find wives -- women to breed the next generation of a dark dynasty that many wish to see extinct.
It won't be easy to find brides from among the powerful Norman nobility, for the d'Anzeray are upstarts, men of war, their family's fortunes raised through bloodshed and violence. As one holy man and chronicler of their times has written, "From the devil they came and to the devil they will return".
But these brothers don't care much for holy men or for what is written about them. Now, with the future of their bloodline at stake these mercenary warriors need wives and they have no scruples when it comes to claiming the women they desire. Nothing and no one stands in their way. Not even a few difficult, quarrelsome wenches who think they can resist capture once these powerful hunters have them in their sights.
It's a good thing the d'Anzeray don't mind sharing the spoils of victory with their brothers. It just might take all seven of them to bring this harem to submission.
Bondslave
Seven Brides for Seven Bastards, 1
by
Georgia Fox
M/F/M/M/M/M, GANGBANG, ANAL, SPANKING, CREAMPIE,
PUBLIC EXHIBITION, SHAVING, AND BRANDING
Twisted Erotica Publishing, Inc.
A TWISTED EROTICA PUBLISHING BOOK
Bondslave
Seven Brides for Seven Bastards, 1
Copyright © 2013 by Georgia Fox
Edited by Marie Medina
First E-book Publication: August 2013
Cover design by K Designs
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013, Twisted Erotica Publishing.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
DEDICATION
To: Savannah
"From the devil they came and to the devil they will return"
- Herallt, a medieval chronicler, describes the house of d'Anzeray.
Yes, he bore a grudge.
But this is how things were.
Prologue
England, 1071 A.D.
Guillaume d'Anzeray sat up in his bed, watching the old woman fussing and chanting with her powders and her incense. So far her prayers and her medicine had done naught but give him a headache and a knotted bowel. Resentful of anything that stood between him and his pleasures, he didn't hold much with nuns at the best of times, but to have one at his death bed seemed preposterous hypocrisy, and he grew annoyed that he'd ever allowed it. Who sent her here anyway? He couldn't remember.
At times like these he missed his favorite whore, but he'd be seeing her again soon. In the fiery pits of hell, if this muttering old baggage had anything to say about it.
With long, callused fingers, he groped for a wooden bowl beside his bed and threw it at the elderly nun. Since it was his usual way of getting her attention she barely flinched, but finally paused her mumbling prayers and turned slowly to face him.
He licked his dry lips. "Bring them in to me then. 'Tis feeding time at the old man's trough."
Without a word, she stepped over the bowl that spun at her feet, took a candle to the door of his chamber and lifted the iron latch with a clank.
Guillaume eased himself higher against the bolster and watched impatiently as his sons entered, bringing a cooling burst of fresh air with them— as well as quite a bit of mud on their boots, and a bristling vitality that he could almost taste. Surprisingly all seven were there, he noted. They tore themselves away from whoring, drinking, gambling and fighting long enough to visit their bothersome father tonight. Even the eldest, Salvador, with whom he most often butted heads, had put aside his grudges to attend the sick bed. Perhaps the arrogant bastard did have a conscience after all.
He hoped not. A conscience never did any man much good.
Following the eldest came Dominigo, a great strapping beast who barely fit through the door and instantly tripped over that wooden bowl on the floor; Raul, with his bright, inquisitive, clever eyes; Alonso, who should be told to cut his long black hair before someone mistook him for an ugly woman, and with him came Sebastien, still retelling his part in the hunt that day and enlarging it, naturally. Then came the two youngest, Ram and Nino, who must have managed to find something to quarrel over even as they mounted the tower steps to his private chamber, for now they scrambled to get one another in a head lock, cursing wildly, bumping into the open door. They paused their sport only when the nun cleared her throat loudly and swung a large, smoking vessel of incense at their heads. Coughing, they broke apart, throwing her sideways glances.
All the boys regarded the nun warily and kept their distance, but not out of respect for her religion, which in their eyes was no different to witchcraft. It was simply that they did not know how else to deal with her. She was an oddity in their world, a curiosity—a woman who had devoted herself to chastity. And a woman who put up with their father's rages and insults with barely a blink.
Guillaume was amused to see that his sons had even brought him a cup of wine and a plate of roasted pheasant, all placed reverently on his bedside table. Thus the cubs fed the wounded elder. Interesting.
They must really think this was the end, he thought, impressed.
But he'd been dying, off and on, for several years. Especially when he suspected it might get things done the way he wanted them.
In the wavering glow of candlelight he studied each of his tall sons. Illegitimate, every one of them. He would have married their mother if he didn't already have a wife, and he'd told her so many times, but that simple, perfectly reasonable truth never stopped her trying to beat her little fists into his belly whenever she was in one of her peevish moods, or had just discovered that she was once again with child. Guillaume never could understand why she got herself into a temper over it. She was a penniless whore, for pity's sake. Of course he had to marry a rich nobleman's daughter, didn't he? A man of ambition, looking to rise up in the world, had to take any opportunity that came along. That was simply the way things were.
That was the trouble with women— they never thought practically.
And she was a Spaniard, which was even worse. Andalusian to be precise, as she'd often remind him with a flare of her dark eyes. As if that might make her superior to a Norman. Ha!
Damn woman would be proud of a wart on her finger if it were larger than anyone else's.
Good Lord, he mused, remembering, she had a kick like a thorn-stuck mule. Still, he must admit, she did most things with that same over-heated, tempestuous emotion. Including the fucking. Which is why he'd enjoyed her for so long.
He sighed, rubbing fingers over his rough, unshaven cheek. It was sad, he supposed, that she'd been gone long enough for his memory of her face to fade. At least her sons all bore some resemblance and she lived on through them. She had given Guillaume a valuable commodity in those seven strong, tough sons. Fighters, just like her. For that he forgave her all those womanly—and regrettably Spanish—failings.
His noble, pedigree wife, on the other hand, had lost two sons at birth and produced only one living daughter who despised her father so much that she took it into her head to enter a nunnery. No doubt she thought that would be her ultimate vengeance upon him, but she was really only cutting off her nose to spite her face.
Funny things, women.
So now, as he faced his end, all he had to continue his name were seven bastard
sons. They were rowdy, wild, unprincipled, and strangers to scruples. Yes, they took after their father, as well as their hot-tempered mother. However, he thought wearily, looking into their faces as they gathered around his bed, it was time they grew up and took their lives in hand.
King William had made good use of d'Anzeray and his sons. They had served their sovereign lord well in battle, here and at home in Normandy, but Guillaume knew the way to respectability and further riches for his sons would be through marriage and the acquisition of property in this newly conquered land. The king wanted not only knights he could trust to lay down their lives for him, but men who could settle here, plant roots in the soil, make this lawless, savage Saxon land their home and bring it to order. His sons must establish themselves here in this rain-sodden, foggy country and start a strong dynasty to follow on the d'Anzeray name.
"Why haven't any one of you got yourself a bride?" he exclaimed abruptly.
There was a short, startled silence, broken only by the spit and sputter of candle flames and the occasional billowing flutter of his bed drapes. This was evidently not the subject they'd expected.
Finally, the eldest son spoke. "We've been busy conquering."
Guillaume exhaled a snort. "In my day we conquered and we made time for women. Somehow we managed both."
"We make time for women."
"But what you need are wives! Rich wives with fathers to give out land and favor. Here you stand before me, heads bent and thumbs up your arses, instead of going out there and bringing home wives, giving me grandsons! Are you, or are you not, seven healthy, vital young bucks with more than enough cock among you, and not one grandson for me to hold as I lay dying? Other men your age creep and slither their way into King William's good graces by forming alliances, but all you seem to know is how to shed blood. What will you do in times of peace, not war?"
"There will always be war, and we were made for it."
"Perhaps, and you could all be killed tomorrow, with no sons left to carry on the line." He paused, caught his breath. "The King wants this land settled, and he gives generously to those he favors. You make a mistake to think only by the sword. Others will by-pass you in honors and gifts if you cannot move beyond the battlefield and advance in peacetime as well as war."
"King William gives to his barons and the highborn—"
"But he, just like all of you, is bastard-born! He is proof of how far you can go. Your birth should not hold you back. You have cunning and wit among you to make up for it."
"Noblemen give their daughters to their cousins and others of their kind, not to upstarts like us. You know, father, what is said about us."
He croaked out a quick laugh. "That the d'Anzeray are descended from the daughters of Satan? In that case, I wonder at the sniveling, sorry-arsed bunch I see before me. If you have the devil on your side, why do you not ride out there," he thrust a finger toward the narrow window, which was not much wider than an arrow slit, "and get your own brides? Take matters in hand instead of standing here at my death bed, whining and complaining. Prize cunny is traded away every day, and you let it go, slip through your fingers."
"What do you suggest we do, father? Kidnap our own brides?"
His eyes narrowed. "If you were true sons of mine you wouldn't have to ask. These walls would be ringing with the noise of your unruly cubs by now. And I'd have pretty daughters-in-law to tend me in extremis, not that wizened, spiteful old crone with her foul potions and prune face."
The young men around his bed exchanged wry glances, and the nun made a loud "huff".
"Ah, youth is wasted on the young," he muttered. "If I could get out of this bed now, I'd show you how 'tis done. I'd be rodgering a ton of wives, on the hour every hour to populate this manor with d'Anzerays. Aye, I'd have an entire harem, like they do in the east." With that very pleasant image in mind, he almost forgot for a moment that he was dying.
Remembering, in the knick of time, he resumed his scowl. "You're a thankless, unworthy bunch," he grumbled, falling back to his bolster, clutching his chest with one hand. "Now be gone. You're taking up all the air. Leave me in peace as I suffer my last breath."
Slowly they bowed and left, one by one. Before the last had closed the door however, Guillaume recovered enough to shout, "And get them with big hips for easy birthing and big titties for easy feeding. The scrawny ones never do last."
He heard them laughing as they descended the stairs to the main hall and then he too chuckled a little. Damn the bastards, but he was very fond of them. Despite their faults and occasional skirmishes, they were close, loyal to one another, shared everything. Against the enemy they were a solid, united front and for that he was glad. Yes, he was proud of them.
Hastily he shook off such tender thoughts before anyone might catch him at it.
He supposed he was missing the days when they were boys, running about under his feet. Boys he taught to ride and hunt and fish. Apparently he was still teaching them. Would the job never be done?
Funny things, sons.
Glancing over at the nun to be sure she was not watching—no, she had turned away in disgust to mix more of her medicine—he slyly grabbed a leg of pheasant from the platter by his bed and ripped several quick, hearty bites with his teeth. Then swigged the wine in one gulp.
By the time she turned toward him again, he had just slipped his greasy fingers out of sight beneath the coverlet. "Sons," he muttered, pausing for a contented burp. "I gave them life and they shall be the death of me."
"I always thought the same about you, my boy," she replied dourly, eyeing the clean bone on the platter. "But here I am, undead. And you're still throwing dishes and tantrums after forty-five years."
Ah yes, he mused, that's why she was there. Now he remembered.
Funny things, mothers.
Chapter One
Six months later
She came with the horse.
Whenever he was asked how he found her, that would be his reply, he decided, looking at the small child wrapped in a sackcloth gown, her hands blue with cold and clutching a tattered bundle of rags. For Raul d'Anzeray, the hard-hearted, ruthless mercenary Commander whose name chilled the spine and wet the chausses of many a soul from Spain to Normandy and now here too in the newly conquered land, would never want it to be known that he once fell prey to such a thing as pity.
His six brothers would never let him forget it. He could imagine their laughter already.
Neither would he want it to be common knowledge that he once let down his guard, lost his fine warhorse and his boots to a thief in the night, and was so desperate for a mount on that cold, wet winter morning that he agreed to the terms of this stubborn, scant-toothed old beggar.
"Want my horse, soldier?" the wrinkled fellow demanded, "Then you must take this girl too."
Annoyed and impatient, needing the horse, Raul turned his head to scowl again at the scrawny figure by the old crook's side. The woolen scarf wound about her head and face obscured all apart from a freckled nose and a pair of bottomless, muddy wells that stared back, examining him with equal animosity and distrust.
"Que serais je faire?" he snapped. "Que iba a hacer con ella?" Then he remembered he was far from home and stuck here in this abominable place with the ceaseless rain and colorless sky. These ignorant people would not understand either tongue with which he had grown up, not the French of his father or the Spanish of his mother.
The old man stared stupidly. "You want the horse," he repeated, "you take the girl."
Raul cursed and looked up at the menacing sky that hung low with thick, grey, rain-filled clouds. As much as he longed for the clear, bright blue of his native skies, today this sight suited his own dark, angry mood. With the sour taste of last night's bad wine still drying on his tongue, he considered ending the argument there and then by taking his knife to the old man's throat. But as his long fingers flexed around the hilt that protruded from his belt, he happened to glance at the girl again and caught her eyes, saw
them narrow and then flare wide.
It gave him pause. Whatever his sins — and they were plenty — he had never killed in front of a child. He realized his hand was shaking against the knife hilt.
Observing this, the old Saxon chuckled. "You should keep your head when you drink wine. Bad memories can only be lost in the juice of the grape for a few hours, soldier. They always come back. Sometimes worse than before."
"I need that horse," he growled.
"And yet you have no coin to pay me."
No, for his purse was stolen too, along with his boots and his horse. In Raul's mind his brothers' laughter grew even louder and wilder. Oh, he would never live this down.
The only thing of value the thief had not taken was his knife and the item he had in a blood-stained sack at his side. "I'll get it all back," he muttered, thinking of what he would do to the thief when he caught up with him. When, of course, not if. Nothing eluded a d'Anzeray when he gave chase.
"Then these are my terms of sale. Take this girl off my hands and I shall let you have the horse. Take both or none."
At that moment, having watched and listened in almost complete stillness for so long, the girl moved, raising her hands to the scarf around her head and slowly unwinding it. "I would rather stay with you, grandpapa," she spoke softly, wearily. "This man is ill-suited. Besides, you need me to take care of you."
A bright slash of spun gold fell over her shoulder in a long, thick braid, the brilliant shine even more luminous and striking against the mud and dirt of her dreary surroundings. Raul had never seen hair that color. He stared and became conscious of a disjointed beat to his heart as her face was fully revealed. She was no child. Those high cheekbones, elegant brows and softly curved lips belonged to a young woman. And her eyes were not both the same shade of brown as he'd previously thought. One was green. Or was it? He blinked, confused. No. Both were brown again.
