When the third turned to face me, the way his expression dropped said everything. Sure, with his buddies against an unarmed and untrained opponent he was probably tough as old leather. But face to face against me, he was shitting his goddamned pants.
“Please!” He said, dropping his knife to the floor with a clatter. “I was just following orders!”
I shrugged. “Any last words?”
“Please, let me go. I don’t want to—”
My blade turned his voice into a bubbling sound as his eyes went wide, blood trickling from his mouth.
As he slumped to the ground, I rushed to get myself below Iris and opened my arms.
“I’ve got you,” I said to her. It was a hell of a drop, but it didn’t fucking matter. I’d have caught her if she had to fall three feet or a thousand. I would always be there to catch her. No matter fucking what.
“I won’t let you get hurt. Never again. I promise.”
She was fucking petrified, covered in shit, half-clothed, and shaking. The wound on her head looked bad, but she was still conscious. A damned good sign.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice trembling with the shaking of her muscles. “I can’t let go.”
I looked her in the eye and took a deep breath. She followed my lead and the trembling slowed a bit. “You can. You have to,” I told her.
She was starting to lose her grip, but she was still locked in a loop of terror. “They came, I don’t know where they came from. I don’t know who they are—were, but they came and they…and then Nellie, and…” She trailed off, looking down at the older man on the floor, and also at the cow, who stood in a pool of blood, milk, and shards of glass.
I had understood the situation at first glance. She didn’t need to explain it. Queen Patara sent her guards. The guards killed her father. They scared her up the post. Bottles broke around the cow. I was up to fucking speed. And yet, I knew that her telling me was as much about her making sense of it as anything.
“I know,” I told her, keeping my voice firm and steady. “It’s okay. I just need you to fall into my arms. And then we can get out of here.”
Her chin trembled now, and tears made her eyes glisten. “It isn’t okay, Randal. It…”
Iris’s eyes fluttered shut as she lost consciousness and let go of the beam. I was ready. She fell hard but I had her, and I broke her fall easily and softly. Even given the shitty circumstances, it felt so good to have her back in my arms again.
The head wound wasn’t as bad as I had feared, but she’d sure-as-shit had her bell rung. She’d be feeling that one for a while. The rest of her was unharmed, but she’d need some caring for. As well as some cleaning up. But then, I’d planned on that no matter what. Especially after I claimed her as mine.
I knew now, more than ever, that the situation between us was fucking complicated. I might not be able to marry her, but there was no way—no fucking way—that I was going to let her go ever again. She was mine. And I was going to fucking keep her. Forever.
I carried her out to the stables and loaded her gently over the back of my horse. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving. Instinctively, I drew my blade, but it was only the young girl I’d met on the road already headed for the farm, begging for someone to come help her mistress. The poor thing couldn’t be more than nine or ten, but she’d come back to check on Iris when I had expected her to flee home. I sheathed my dagger and went over to her, crouching beside her so that I didn’t scare the shit out of her with my size.
“Did you see anymore of them?” I asked.
She shook her head. Her eyes were wide and alarmed. Those fuckers—they’d terrified not only Iris but also this equally innocent young girl. If I’d had time, I’d have tortured the guards until they begged for mercy and then killed them. But as it was, I had to get Iris back to the castle and fast; the Queen would send more guards when the three I’d killed failed to return.
Cockroaches love to fill a void.
“There’s some men who are dead in there,” I told her, cocking my head toward the shed. “Ignore the soldiers; I’ll send someone to get their bodies later today. As for Iris’s father,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a gold coin, “arrange to have him buried. Whatever you think Iris would want. Do you think you can do that?”
Taking the coin from me, she nodded quickly.
“Yes, sir. Of course. I know where the gravedigger lives. Thank you.” She finally smiled a little, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked at me. “And thank you for coming to help. They’d have killed her. I know it.”
The very fucking thought made me feel like I was going to explode. But I stifled my rage and pretended to be busy with my horse’s throat latch.
“Get out of here, girl. Go straight to the gravedigger,” I told her. “Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and took off running for the towpath behind the barn.
Finally, Iris and I were alone. She was still out of it, but her breathing was steady and the injury to her head had stopped bleeding.
Using a bucket of fresh water, I took a minute to clean her up, savoring the opportunity to finally—fucking finally—run my hands over her body as I’d been fucking aching to do.
I cleaned her perfect skin, running my fingers over her scrapes and bruises. Those sons of bitches. They’d dirtied my most prized possession, and they were fucking lucky I didn’t feed their bodies to the hogs.
But all that was done. It was time to focus on her…and what I needed to do to her. I made sure she was as comfortable as possible, then I mounted my horse with her safe behind me and rode for the palace under a darkening sky.
A storm was coming. I could feel it.
Lightning lit my way through the dark passages into my private dungeon. It was deep beneath the Ruined Tower, and like the rest of that forgotten corner of Ironhaven Castle, it was all fucking mine, to use however the fuck I wanted, whenever the fuck I wanted.
All those years, all those nights, thinking about her body, her cunt, her being, all led up to now. To this. At long fucking last, I had her here where she was always meant to be.
She began to wake as I hoisted her over my shoulder to open the last of the locked and bolted doors. We were four stories down, far enough underground that nobody would ever see us or find us. No matter how hard she screamed when she came, no matter how hard she cried when I pounded her senseless, nobody could hear a fucking thing. It was my very own vault for my most prized possession.
I had my arm hooked over her ass so I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her twist slightly to try to figure out where she was. “Randal?” She said groggily.
“I’m here, baby,” I replied, with a firm grab of her ass. Her cunt was right fucking there, so fucking close, but I resisted the urge to slip my fingers inside her as I carried her. I’d waited long enough, I wasn’t about to balk at waiting a few minutes more until everything was how I’d imagined it. To rush this would be a fucking tragedy.
“Where… Where are we?” She asked.
“Somewhere safe,” I told her, slipping the key into the lock. I kicked open the door and carried her across the threshold and through the dungeon. I set her down on a wooden table fitted with black leather restraints on the far side of the room. “Somewhere I can keep you in my sights.”
The dungeon was decent sized, and I’d made sure it was just right. A thick oak post ran vertically down the center, and attached to that was a breeding pole, bolted to the floor with six-inch iron bolts. A sawhorse was fitted with a black leather saddle, with restrains for her arms, legs, and neck. On the walls were chains and irons for restraining her in any way I wanted—by the wrists, the ankles, the waist, the neck.
There were ropes, whips, switches. Bridles, bits, reins. A fuck stick, paddles, every kind of device for pinching her nipples and her pussy lips to hold them open while I ate my fill of her—before filling her cunt with my seed.
Everything was organized according to material
— leather, fabric, metal, even a row of glass cocks for double-penetrating her. I’d been preparing it for her for nearly two years now, and every time I felt like I’d thought of everything, I discovered a new plan for fucking her raw and took my time gathering all the necessary gear to do so. All my preparation meeting a lifetime of fantasies. The place was fucking stocked.
I’d jacked off so many times in there, thinking about her. Hundreds of times. Thousands. But never did I dream that she would want this as much as I did, not until she talked about relinquishing control to another. Not until she told me with her eyes that she felt the very same draw I did.
As soon as I set her down, she understood what was happening. Or she thought she did, anyway. Sweet thing had no fucking clue what I had in store for her. But she got the general idea, and that was enough to scare the shit out of her.
She scampered towards the door, falling to her knees and clawing at the stones. I took a few strides and caught up to her, scooping her up over my shoulder.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful when you’re afraid,” I told her. “But you will submit to me, Iris. It’s what you need, and you know it. You said as much yourself.”
She beat my back with her fists, and it made my balls throb—the feel of her fighting me? Goddamn.
But there was time for all that—there was time for us to go to battle. She had to learn the rules first. She had to learn to fear me but not be afraid of me. There was a big fucking difference. From me, she’d learn the beauty of fear that intensifies pleasure. I wanted all of her orgasms right there on the border between good and bad, between yes and no, between exactly right and too much.
That was where we would exist in this dungeon. That was where we would lock horns: where fear stokes the flames. Where destruction meets rebirth.
I carried her back to where I had the chains and irons. I grabbed her arm and pinned it against the stone wall, restraining her left wrist first. She tried to fight her way free. She scratched the shit out of me—snarling as she left three long angry marks up my forearm that made me instantly hard.
Fight all you want, baby. Let me feel your power. Show me what I’m up against.
The iron cuff was exactly the right size; she couldn’t slip her wrist through, but it wasn’t so tight as to make her hand go numb. As soon as I had the left cuff secured, she instinctively began to submit; she might not have even known it, but a little of the fight drained out of her and she started to relax.
To reward her, I gently shifted her hair to one side so that it was over her left breast, not against the stone behind her. I used my tenderest touch, even letting myself brush her cheek with my own.
Fuck, how I adored her. And goddamn, how I needed to be inside her.
She studied me as I secured her other wrist. I looked into her eyes once the shackle was closed, telling her—without saying a goddamned word—that I would always take care of her. She was my possession, more important than the fucking kingdom itself.
“What you and I are going to do here, it’s a process. It’s about boundaries and fear. It’s about you and me. Light and dark. Submission and domination. It will be us.”
Her eyes flashed a little, and a crimson flush crept from her tits to her neck to her cheeks. I turned away from her, heading across the room to get a basin of water. But as I did, she thrashed against her bindings.
“Please, Randal. Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone. Please!”
I spun around to face her.
“You think I’d ever fucking leave you?” In her eyes, I saw genuine terror at being left there, and it broke my heart. I never wanted to see that kind of fear. She had no fucking clue what this was all about, I knew that. She had no idea the pleasures of denial and suffering. No idea that only through pain can we find real pleasure.
But she was damned well going to learn it.
All she knew was that she was somewhere cold, and dark, with chains on the walls and weapons of torture everywhere, with a beast of man who’d just killed three men without blinking an eye. But the line between pain and pleasure was fucking razor thin. I had to teach her how to walk that tightrope.
I stood close to her, close enough to let her feel my hard cock against her belly. I ran my knuckle down her cheek.
“I’ve waited over a year and a half to get my hands on you, Iris. The last thing I’d ever do is leave you. You are safe here. I promise. You need this, you know that. You need to let someone else take it all for you, and that’s my purpose in life. I can help you forget.”
She searched my face, like she didn’t quite believe me. “What do you mean? More than a year and a half?”
It was my job to make her believe it. Now and always.
“The harvest festival before last, that was when I first saw you. I couldn’t believe it then that you might actually want me as much as I wanted you, but here we are and all you need to know is you’re mine. And I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want to this perfect body. I will protect it and care for it. It’s the most valuable thing I fucking own.”
I pressed her up against the wall, making her chains clatter. What I needed her to understand was that everything—every conversation, every movement, was up to me. So I took hold of her dress, right above her tits, and with three ferocious yanks I ripped the fabric right down the middle, revealing first her bare breasts, then her creamy belly, and finally her pussy and those ball-busting, child-bearing hips. I let the fabric drop at her feet and then took a few steps back. Her shit covered common dress had no place on her perfection.
She was every inch the goddess I had imagined—better, even. So much better than the fantasy I’d jacked off to for all that time. And she made me so hard, I wanted to burn the castle to the ground.
But as I had so many times for her sake, I denied my basest instinct. Before I had my way with her, I needed to clean her up. I grabbed the basin from the table as well as a clean white cloth. And then, inch by inch, limb by limb, I bathed her.
She responded to my touch with moans and writhes. I checked every inch of her perfect body for injury from those fucking assholes that had been at the farm. I cleaned her scrapes and her wounds, and then dried her with a fresh towel.
Once I was through bathing her body, I stepped back to admire her perfect shape. The only thing that would’ve made her more beautiful then was milk for my baby dripping from her tits. Her belly full and round with our next child.
I placed my hand to her throat, hard enough to make her feel my power. Her eyes widened as she stared up at me, unblinking.
“I promise you two things. I will never leave you. And I will always protect you. But beyond that…” I parted her folds with my fingers. “You’re at my motherfucking mercy.”
Her wetness ran out of her like a fucking flood. I felt her moan against my palm at the same time as I heard it. Her nipples were hard, her pussy was wet. She was both turned on and afraid. “Now we’re talking.”
“Are you…” Her breath caught in her throat. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“Yes, sweetheart, I’m gonna hurt you. But I will never harm you.”
I penetrated her sweet cunt with my finger. She was goddamned tight and only opened up far enough to take one of my fingers, even though I wanted to give her three. Her hymen was pushing me out and it made me fucking insane.
Iris moaned out a sigh of pleasure as I pressed my palm against her clit. But as I began to finger her harder, she looked up at me. Afraid, yet again.
Fuck yeah.
“I’m... Don’t forget, Randal. I’ve never done this before.”
“As if this tight little pussy could belong to anyone but a virgin. You think I’d fucking forget that?” I said, compressing both her clit and throat harder, letting her feel my rage. “You think I forget anything you ever say to me?”
Iris shook her head. She bit her lip so hard it made a white welt cut through the perfect pink.
“No.”
“No, Sir,” I corrected
her.
“No, Sir,” she said in return.
“Good girl.” I pulled my fingers from her and held my palm up to her mouth. “But look at the mess you made.”
Without my asking, she shut her eyes and licked my palm clean. She was learning fast. Fuck, this was going to be good. She was fucking dirty about it—nasty long greedy licks. That tongue was going to look perfect on my cock.
I made her suck my fingers as I kneaded my palm against her clit. When she sucked my thumb clean, I pulled it from her tight lips with a pop. She was breathing hard; the sharp line of her collarbone rose and fell with each pant.
“Tell me who you are, please. Tell me where we are.”
I huffed, not liking her demands and unwilling to reveal the whole truth just yet. I didn’t want her to look at me differently, knowing who I really was. But I knew that things would take time. She needed to know she was safe, that she could relax with me.
“I’m not a carpenter,” I told her, and watched her eyes traverse my face. “I’m a little further up the pecking order than that. I’m sorry I lied to you, it was to keep you from questioning why I kept coming back to your farm. That day I helped you with Nellie, I’d just chased two muggers from the city, hoping to get a poor man’s coins back for him.”
“So you’re a guard?”
“Something like that,” I agreed. After all, I was going to be protector of the realm once the crown was handed to me.
“And…?” She glanced around the room.
“An old building that belongs to my family. The only people likely to disturb us here are those that I trust. Now, if you have no more questions, there’s something you should know.”
Her eyes darted to my chest, then further south, before jumping back to my face. “What?”
“You’ve about to be fucked, Iris,” I said, licking a line up her throat. “You’re gonna have to pay me back for the year and a half I’ve wanted you.”
Her body quivered and she purred out a nnnnnnn, her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
Masked Prince (Fated Royals Book 2) Page 7
