My limbs felt heavy, numb, along with my nerves. I was past the point of feeling hurt.
“You forget your place, sir. We are nothing but property, aren’t we?”
I walked toward him, began to push past him.
“You are right, but goddamn it, you answer me,” he said, whipping around and slamming the door with all his might. The force of it shook the whole wall, and I thought it might crack.
“No. I will never be his,” I said, my voice just above a whisper, my body and spirit worn out. “There are no dresses or jewels or freedom or anything in this world that could buy me.”
His shoulders slumped as he breathed out, his body appearing as defeated as I felt, but he looked into my eyes with something different entirely – relief.
“I’ve been locked in here, and even if I weren’t, I don’t think I could’ve escaped without you,” I said, my voice beginning to quiver. I paused.
“I wish I were new again, Matthias.”
The words poured out of me. Everything I had wanted to say was bubbling to the surface.
“I wish it were your hands that I first felt on my body, your lips on my skin.”
Before I could say more, he wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me close.
“I wish I could take it all back. I do. I would give anything to,” I said, and his grip tightened around me, cocooning me with the strength in his arms. “Why didn’t you take me for your own? Why?”
“I should have,” he replied, and the warmth of his breath grazed my ear. “I should have escaped with you that night you cried in my arms.”
I looked up at him, surprised to find a soft smile forming on his lips.
“Ask me.” He reached to the back of my dress. His expression was serious. My fingers brushed against the back of his hands as he worked to loosen my laces, sending my heart pounding against my chest.
“Ask you what?” I pulled my arms free of the sleeves, and the fabric tumbled to the floor, leaving my body covered only by a thin, sheer shift. He grasped it, clenched it against my back, pulling it tight to my curves until each one could be seen, until the pink of my nipples showed through.
“The question you asked me that night while you stood in front of the mirror. Ask it again,” he said, his tongue wetting his bottom lip.
“Do you like what you see?” I breathed out, my body tingling with the anticipation of his touch.
“Every bit,” he said, his voice dripping with the desire that ruled his expression and quickened his breath. “You do not perceive how breathtaking you are, Ia, do you?”
“Perhaps you could help me understand,” I said, reaching up, lightly running the tips of my quivering fingers along his bottom lip.
His nostrils flared with a slow, deep breath, and then he lowered his face to mine, pressing his lips, soft and moist, against mine, grazing his tongue across my lips with each deepening kiss.
Devouring me, he dug his fingers into the material at my back, and then plunged his tongue into my mouth, finding me ripe and willing.
My whole being trembled as he explored me with his strong, masculine hands. He slid them down my waist, and then he moved his palms around to my back and down to my bottom, where he lingered lightly above before filling his hands with my rounded flesh as he covered the rise of my breasts with kisses and moans.
Intoxicated by him, I reached for the bottom of my shift and peeled it over my head, almost losing my balance. He caught me in his arms, sweeping my legs out from under me, and he carried me to the bed. Quick yet careful was his movement as he lowered me upon the cushions.
With a knee placed on the edge of the bed to steady himself, he took off his shirt, maneuvering with a slower pace as he studied every inch of me. My skin flushed, and I felt the heat flood my body beneath his appraisal.
He reached for my foot, and it jolted me. Instinctively, I pulled away, conscious of my misshapen limb. Smiling, he lifted it and placed a gentle, soothing kiss. He did the same for the other, too, his hands caressing my flesh as he moved from my ankle to my knee. My heart fluttered as I watched him go farther up the length of my leg, my breath catching as his lips grazed my inner thigh. I clenched the bed beneath me, unsure of what to do, moving fast into uncharted territory, and reeling from the unfamiliar, exciting stirrings.
Releasing my leg, he took my hand and pressed his lips to it, watching my reaction. The light in his eyes melted me. I smiled, and he placed my hand on top of his head. I weaved my fingers through his locks, delighting in the short waves that I had longed to run my hands through since I had first met him. Holding my touch there, he lowered himself back to the smooth skin of my inner thigh.
My face grew hot as he kissed up to the bend where my leg met my body, so close to the most intimate part of me. I so longed for his hands, even his lips, to touch me there. He paused, studying my face as he raised an eyebrow and ran his fingertips up the inside of my other leg. I shivered, unable to breathe as his fingers hovered above my core.
Slowly, he lowered his hand, skimming my flesh. A small, quick moan escaped me, and he grinned as he his pressed his fingers against me and rubbed, moving up until they reached the spot they had been searching for.
My mouth fell open, and my breath turned shallow and quick as lust and hunger overcame me, yearning for him to slide into me, to take me as I so desperately needed…. as we both so desperately deserved. I closed my eyes, consumed by the vibrations his gifted touch was shooting through me, when I felt something soft and wet take the place of his agile fingers. His mouth, his tongue worked against me, sucking and tormenting me.
A groan ripped from my throat, and I tightened my hold on his hair, clenching it as my hips lifted, grinding. His hands searched until they found the part of me that yearned for him most as I shuddered with mounting pleasure. Ever so carefully, he slid them in and out, making me aware of the abundant wetness he had provoked.
I cried out, laboring to breathe, and my chest heaved, as he worked faster and faster, pulsing in and out, consuming me voraciously with his mouth. The world around me slowed, and the depths of me lighted in flame as my mind silenced, yielding to the waves of pleasure that rolled through me, my form clenching and relaxing all at once. All control was gone, and I floated in a delirious paradise.
Sensing my wash of euphoria, he relented, and his gaze found mine. His eyes were less mischievous, less playful now. His countenance was darker, more serious. He was straining for control. He licked his bottom lip, tasting me.
“I want you, Ia,” he said.
“I am yours, Matthias,” I replied, my voice hoarse.
I sat upright and leaned into him, eager. I reached out, my hands searching and seeking, and was surprised when I found his hardness arousing. His desire for me rekindled the carnal fire I thought had exploded just a moment before.
My appetite to please him as he had done so readily to me grew ravenous as I reached for the top of his pants. With shaking fingers, I released the buttons until his cock, bulging beneath the fabric, pushed free.
The sight of him, erect and eager, urged me on. I traced a finger along his flesh, and his breath caught in his throat as I closed my hand around him, sliding up and down his length. He dropped his head back, and I leaned forward, dragging my tongue across his skin until I reached the tip.
A moan escaped him as I wrapped my lips around him and slid down, taking him fully into my mouth. He balled up his hands in my hair as he pressed into me. I caressed his thighs, and I felt the tension in him I explored his body. He was holding back.
Building momentum, I slid my tongue around him, taking him in as deep as I could bear. A low, guttural growl rumbled out of him, and he pulled himself free of me.
Confused, I began to ask him what I had done wrong, but his mouth silenced mine. He nipped voraciously at my lips, and slipped his tongue between them as his hands eased down to my bottom and to my thighs.
I could taste, smell the remnants of me on him. He laid me back on the bed and
lowered himself over me, pressing his cock against my wetness. Steadying himself with an extended arm, the tip of him pushed in, and I arched my back, caught in limbo between the pain and pleasure of his girth.
“I, I can’t,” he said, breathless. “I can’t hold back anymore. I’m sorry.”
With my heartbeat drumming in my chest, I opened my legs wider, my palms roamed the length of his abdomen, feeling the taut ridges. He plunged in, the whole of him, and a cry of pleasure escaped me. My hips lifted to meet his and moved with him as his pace quickened.
Mad with desire, I bit the lobe of his ear, extracting unintelligible mutterings from him. Without warning, he leaned back – the length of him inside me – and lifted my feet, resting them against his shoulders. He reached for me, and his fingers found the spot that had awakened such fervor and began rubbing quickly as he tilted into me, the weight of him pushing my legs toward my body, tightening me around his shaft.
Waves of exhilaration rolled over me again, pulling me out to a sea of ecstasy, and I soared to heights I hadn’t known existed. I cried out as he thrust into me, his fingers keeping to their rhythm as I writhed, the rapturous currents dragging me under once more. He groaned and trembled as his wetness spilled inside me, and he quivered with what I knew to be the same pleasurable release I was experiencing.
Collapsing onto me, he buried his face into my neck as he fought for breath. I cradled him next to me and kissed him as we lay entwined, satisfied and euphoric.
There we stayed, enveloped in our own paradise for a while.
* * *
Sleep was light, and what felt to be a short time had passed when a knock jolted me. Matthias launched out of the bed without a word or care for clothing. Opening the door, he found Asa there, motioning, his eyes wide and stressed.
“Hurry, Ia, he is returning earlier than expected,” Matthias said, grabbing clothes and pulling them on as quick as he could, helping me to do the same. “We have little time. He’s coming from the estate to the immediate north of us.”
After pulling me through the halls, he soon gave up and swept me up in his arms, using a kick to open the door where Asa waited with a wagon. Matthias laid me gently in the back, and then jumped up onto the bench, grabbed the reins, and spurred the horse on. Two bags sat next to me, too full to be tied shut. They were filled with items that Matthias would use to barter for our passage: fabric, jewelry, a gilded candlestick.
“Matthias – your mother,” I called out, half-whispering.
“She is to meet us at the docks with my aunt and niece,” he said.
My heart and spirit lifted as we neared the town. I could make out the masts of the giants that sailed the seas, and an uneasy tremble flowed down my body as I saw my sister, Lili, disappear motionless into the darkness of the deep.
We found a tavern, rat-ridden and sailor-inhabited near the ship that Matthias had a mind to sail on. Zatia met us after securing Jiba and Nattie in a room upstairs, guiding us to where we would hide until night fell. Matthias bribed the captain to leave a day early and under the cover of night, using most of the items and gold he had carried in the bags. He even had the foresight to forge a Certificate of Freedom for Asa using Lord Malcom’s seal.
The stench of alcohol and urine battered my senses. While the tavern keeper, with his greasy beard and black-toothed grin, eased my anxiety with his friendly demeanor, his buxom red-haired daughter ogled me with pouted lips and an evil eye. She swaggered to the corner that Matthias had stationed us and smiled as she leaned over to fill his cup with ale, her breasts nearly spilling out of the top of her ratted bodice. She winked to him as she stood up, and then cast glances his way over her shoulder as she attended other tables.
Under the brim of his hat, Matthias watched me stiffen, and heat rose to the surface of my skin at the gall of her. He waved her away, placed coinage on the table, and took me by the hand, leading me up the rickety stairwell toward the chambers.
“We need to leave,” I whispered. “Now.”
He shook his head, pressed a finger to his lips, and he tapped against a wall. Wood planks pulled back to reveal a hidden door, and behind it stood Zatia, Jiba, and little Nattie. I gave each a quick embrace as Asa sealed the entrance behind us.
“We must wait for nightfall,” Matthias said in hushed tones.
“I do not like the look of that woman downstairs,” I said. “I do not trust her.”
“Her father is a good man, and I have paid them both adequately to conceal us here for the time being,” Matthias said, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Try to leave your worries with me. Think instead of the life we will have together.”
He placed a kiss on my forehead and pulled me tight against him. “God, you free me.”
A soft knock interrupted us, and Matthias pushed himself out of our embrace as the tavern keeper poked his head in through the door, motioning for Matthias to follow. “I must attend to further arrangements. I shall be back soon.”
I nodded, releasing his hand as he backed into the hallway.
“You have saved him, you know.” Zatia moved over to allow me to sit next to her. “He has a will again, thanks to you.”
When night fell, we left our sanctuary, making our way to the ship that would carry all of us to our freedom. The sky was black, moonless, with only a smattering of stars to guide us. Asa took a torch from the tavern keeper who wished us well as we crept out the back of his establishment.
Excitement built and spread throughout our small group, and our pace quickened until I found myself struggling to keep up. Matthias halted, swept me up in his arms, and carried me as we wound through the filthy back passages.
We reached the docks, which were empty, save for our ship on the end. The crew bustled about, finishing the final load of cargo.
A collective sigh of relief was breathed among us, and even in the weak light of the torch, we made out joy in each other’s expressions. We were close, almost able to make out faces of the crew when men stepped out of the shadow between us and our freedom.
The overseers.
Lord Malcom lit a torch, holding it out to view us.
“Seize them,” he ordered, and before Matthias could sit me down to fight them, Jasper struck him upside his head with a short, heavy wooden stick. Matthias lost his balance, and we both fell to the ground.
My head struck the stone path, and then the world slipped into nothingness.
Chapter 14
He had been true to his word, at least when it came to me. My body was broken, my spirit more so, and as I hung from the wooden poles he erected for me, my wounds pouring out my life, all I could think about was Matthias.
What would become of him?
Although my ears rang, muffling most of the sounds, I could hear wails. Asa dangled by a rope in a large tree to my left, lifeless. I shivered as much from the breeze cooling the blood on my skin as from the tears I wept when I watched them string him up.
I thought to plea, beg, scream, anything to spare him, this gentle giant and beautiful soul that showed me – showed everyone - such kindness. No words came, barred by the reality that there was nothing I could say to sway this vindictive man. I could only close my eyes and grieve, sometimes straying into vindictive thoughts myself.
There was no guarantee I’d be spared Asa’s fate. No promise that I’d live to make it to the water, and little hope that I could lure that evil shell of a man there to tear him limb from limb.
Rose, the only brave one from the house servants who bore witness to my torture, brought me water when she felt it was safe, waiting for when the nearest overseer had his attention on those in the field. Our conversation was brief. She told me she knew Matthias had received a similar lashing to mine but in the house, in front of the overseers.
His blood splattered on the walls, the floor, the furniture with each crack of the whip, then when the master was satisfied, “He made him clean it up, all of it, every drop,” Rose sighed.
“His way of s
howing him the life he was giving up by choosing you, I suppose.”
She shrugged when I asked what else would be done to him.
“He’s let him go to his mother’s house for the moment, but that’s only out of his perverted sympathy for Zatia.”
We both held to the hope that the lashing would be all the punishment he would receive and would be granted more grace than Asa had been given.
As the sun set, I could no longer feel my limbs, and my breath strained to sustain me. The wooden poles were rough and full of splinters, and the ‘X’ they were formed into bit into me as much as the rope that held me to it. My arms and legs were spread out along the shape, my nakedness on display for all to see as I hung there, a few inches from the ground.
I had held hope that I would be freed, but the truth that I might spend the night like this weakened me further. A light shone from the direction of the sleeping quarters and grew near. The sound of footsteps followed, and it was but a short time before I found Jasper looking at me, the torch illuminating his features.
“Thank you,” I said, my words coming out in short puffs of strained air.
His severe expression dropped, eyes widened, and the blue in them shined in the darkness.
“I’m not here to free you.”
He looked to his hand, clutching the handle of a small brown jug. The lip of its opening was chipped near the handle, and I could see the outline of its missing piece. I knew the jug immediately. It contained lamp oil. It was the very same vessel that Abel would use to refill in the lanterns in the stables.
Large flames burst up not too far from us, and I turned to find Asa’s body engulfed in fire. It flowed up, licking at the rope and tree that supported him.
I understood then what I had refused to a moment ago.
“Please. Please, don’t.”
He shook his head with a heavy sigh.
“If I don’t, I’ll be right there burning with you.”
“Then kill me first,” I said. “Surely you can do that.”
Falling in Deep Collection Box Set Page 24
