by Renard, Loki
“You are my guardian too,” she whimpered.
Something in her voice seemed to reach him. He did not stop touching her though. He held her there in place, keeping her on display. Her elegance was renowned, but what elegance was left in the writhing wretch who panted, begging for the most carnal of release?
Out of the corner of her eyes, Aya saw that she had a new audience. The nobles had come to gather on the other side of the market, not just the men, who reacted much the same way the peasants did, but the noble ladies too. Some of them covered their eyes and shied away, some cowering at the notion it might be their bodies bared for the public gaze, their secrets stolen, their vulnerabilities made utterly, devastatingly known to anyone who might look. But some of them turned back and sneaked little glances, some even brimmed with something like jealousy.
“I am your guardian,” Kazriel murmured, pulling his finger from her all too willing sex.
The shame did not come from what he had done to her; it came from the knowledge that she would have allowed it, spread herself for it. If he had chosen to mount her like a bitch there in the square, she would have welcomed him.
He did not. He released her hands and he pulled her over his shoulder, carrying her red-bottomed, wet pussy on display all the way back to her chambers.
Chapter Five
When Kazriel woke from his long slumber, he had found a world in disarray, a people deep in suffering, a corrupt king reigning over them all—and one small spark of hope in a very spoiled princess who had much growing to do, and much to atone for first.
She likely thought him cruel, but nothing Kazriel did was for his amusement, or out of desire for revenge. He loved her, more than she could know, more than it was possible for her to understand. Aya had been sheltered from the consequences of her life, from the lack of her choices, her abdication of simple royal responsibility.
Teaching her the necessary lessons was not going to be easy. The king was beyond help, and Kazriel wondered if Aya might be too. Royal blood made for men and women of strong character and spirit.
He returned her to her chambers and let her scurry for the safety of her bed. It was her habit to hide, and he allowed it. It suited the next stage of his plans quite nicely. All this was a great burden for a young woman to bear.
“Are you still there?”
Her voice came through silk sheets pulled over her head.
“I am.”
The bed sighed. “If I go to sleep, will you be gone when I wake up? Will this all have been a dream?”
“You could try it.”
“I’m going to.”
“Goodnight, Princess.”
It was only a few minutes before she had made good on her promise. Kazriel understood her slumber as a last ditch attempt at escape; unfortunately for the princess, even her dreams were not private from his eyes.
She slept fitfully and he sat beside her, watching her dreams as they flitted through her unconscious mind. The human subconscious was a powerful thing. Even Kazriel was in awe of its power. If it could be made material, it would be the greatest force in creation.
While she slept, he reflected on the truth of her arguments. It was not strictly fair that she should pay for the sins of an entire lineage. Many of her arguments held merit. It was not her choice to be born into the role she had to play, and it was not her fault that the guidance she should have received was entirely absent.
And yet, the lessons must be learned, and now was as good a time as any to begin teaching her.
* * *
“Get up, girl!”
Aya woke up to a sharp jab to her ribs.
The shock jolted her into awareness of both the pain in her side and a stench, which she quickly realized was coming from her own filthy body. She looked down at herself and found that her fine dress was gone, replaced with rags, so short she may as well have been naked as far as she was concerned.
A sense of shame washed over her and left her flushing hot. She clambered to her feet and discovered that the coverings barely came up over her knees.
There was a faint memory of something, but she could not recall what had come before this moment. She could not remember who she was. She barely remembered her own name.
“W-what am I doing?”
“You’re to serve Noble Fife. He asked for you specifically.”
“I should wash.” She was disgusted and horrified by the state she found herself in. Her elbows and knees were caked in filth. It was as though she had never bathed in her life. Her skin was marbled with smears of dirt and dreck.
“He said to send you as you were. Now take that tray and don’t keep the lord waiting. He wants his dinner, he does.”
A tray full of delicious food was shoved into her hands, and suddenly Aya was aware just how hungry she was. Her stomach growled with a ferocity she had never experienced before—it felt as though she had never experienced anything before.
“Don’t you take so much as a leaf from the salad,” the gruff woman insisted. “I’ll know if you do, and I’ll box your ears for you.”
Aya did not know what the threat meant, but she was sure it sounded painful.
“Go! Go! The master is waiting!”
She was hurried out of the kitchen and into a servant’s passage. Doing as she had been ordered, Aya made her way to the noble’s chambers, the way unfolding itself before her as if she had walked it myriad times before, though she did not recognize it. More concerning was the fact that she did not recognize herself. She caught sight of herself in a mirror as she passed, and saw a pale face with wide blue eyes. Some part of her mind rebelled. I don’t have blue eyes.
And yet she did. She stood and stared at the face that was not hers, and yet she felt herself inhabiting every part of this body.
It’s not me. I’m someone else! The thoughts were nonsensical. How could she be someone else? She had to be herself. People couldn’t be other people at the same time as they were themselves. It must be the hunger making her lightheaded and forgetful. She would remember soon.
The tray was heavy between her hands. The food was covered, but she knew it by scent. Meat. Something delicious and roasted. And vegetables, lightly spiced. There was wine too and she was sure that it would be rich and delicious. It took all the fear put into her to stop her from setting the tray down and pushing the contents into her face.
Suddenly she was standing in front of an ornately carved wooden door. It took a great effort to juggle the tray enough to knock upon it, and it turned out it was a wasted effort because the moment her filthy knuckles touched the door, it swung open.
She found herself in the presence of a very tall man. He was pushing the limits of seven feet, and somehow he seemed even taller than that. He had a dark beard that hid the lower part of his face, his hair thick and bushy and raven dark.
The nobleman wore the finest clothes, and was clearly recently bathed. Even his fingernails were clean. Aya’s shame intensified manyfold as the lord looked down at her with his crystalline green gaze.
“Come in.”
Why should he ask her in? Surely he should take the tray from her and send her back to the corner of the kitchen from where she came. She deserved to be back among the scraps and the mice and whatever else might lurk in the cobwebbed shadows.
But he drew her in, with his eyes and his cultured words, though they were few. He ushered her into the room in which she did not belong and he took the tray from her, setting it on a nearby table.
Aya did not take her surroundings in. She was captivated by the noble. He was so foreign to her, so beautifully masculine. The way he moved his powerful body drew her eye, even with the most pedestrian of motions.
He caught her staring at him and she cast her eyes down. It was not her place to look at him. She was surprised he had answered the door without his mask at all—then she remembered that she was but a lowly slave. It did not matter what she saw, for she barely existed in any sense.
“What is your
name?”
“Aya...”
“And where are you from?”
“I...” She searched for the answer to his question, but she could not recall the answer. “I am sorry, my lord, I do not know. My mind is feeble.”
“You spilled my soup upon the tray,” he said. “That is not the act of a careful servant, is it?”
“Oh, no, my lord. I am sorry, my lord.”
“I am not your lord,” he replied haughtily, his eye gleaming with a dark intent and perhaps a kind of mischief. Aya was too mortified to begin to attempt to discern it. She had made several mistakes. She had angered a noble, and she knew punishment must surely ensue.
“I am sorry,” she whimpered.
“I should report you to the regent of discipline,” the nobleman said. “You should be brought to justice for your sins.”
“Please, forgive me.”
“It is not to me to forgive you. You must atone.”
With that, the nobleman laid hands on her, his big fingers wrapping about her slim wrist. He strode from the receiving room where they had met, dragging her after him into a bathing chamber.
“You are filthy,” he said, his lip curled with disdain. “I will bathe you before I take my cane to you. You must suffer, slave. You must learn never to commit these careless crimes you have inflicted upon me.”
Beside herself with fear, Aya did not argue as the man began to pull her clothing from her. Some of the seams tore, other parts of the garment hung so limply from her frame that all it took was a tug to make them slide free.
The bath was already drawn. Perhaps he had intended to take one himself. Or perhaps it was part of the strangeness that suffused this experience. Aya felt as though she were struggling to orient herself, as if she did not truly know who she was, or why any of this was happening. There was an amnesia separating her from the truth of the thing, and it didn’t matter anymore because a large male hand was squeezing the soft curves of her cheeks.
She was swung off her feet entirely by muscular arms and deposited in the bath. The noble reached out, put his hand on her left breast and dunked her beneath the water three times before letting her rise for a gasped breath.
Bedraggled, with the fine blonde hair that still seemed so foreign to her, Aya gasped precious air into her lungs as the terror of being drowned made her fingers clench white at the sides of the tub.
“Mercy, sir! Mercy!”
“And what have you done to deserve mercy?” The noble’s voice was arrogant and cruel. When he looked down at her, she saw no measure of humanity in his gaze. She was not a woman to him. She was a flesh toy, something to be used. She saw only one promise in that cruel gaze: that of pain.
When she looked down at her naked body, she saw marks upon it. Marks she did not remember receiving, but which were reminiscent of past punishment.
How many times had she made mistakes like these? And how often had her body borne the brunt of the nobleman’s pique? She could not remember, but there was enough evidence to show that this was not the first time, not in the past, and certainly not recently.
“You never learn, do you.”
She could not remember if she ever learned, but there was some feeling in her belly that told her there was no amount of learning that could ever satisfy this cruelly handsome man who remained fully clothed while she wallowed naked and pathetic in her own filth.
“You are to come to me clean, girl. There is no excuse for your sorry appearance. Or is it because you like how I bathe you?” He went down on one knee next to the bath and plunged his arm into the water without so much as bothering to roll up his sleeve.
She felt his hand on her inner thigh, a few desperate inches from her sex. Twin feelings ripped through her body. Fear. And need. She knew he was cruel. She could see it in his eyes, and she had felt it in his rough treatment. He handled her like meat, dunking and now briskly washing the various parts of her with a dispassionate touch with a cloth that was too rough to feel good, scrubbing under her breasts and over the peaks of her nipples.
One hand remained on her thigh, fingers close to the most secret part of her. She did not feel innocent there. She felt as though she had been ravaged many times before, as if the sensitive little channel had been stretched for those who wished to take their pleasure with her.
There was a splash as the cloth went from her breasts down to her pussy, the soaked fabric rubbing back and forth between her legs with rough but careful strokes, making sure that no part of her sex went unattended. Every fold was spread and cleaned—and then the cloth descended lower still and found the tight aperture where her most shameful acts were perpetrated. He rubbed her there too, the cloth circling her bottom hole with an intensity that made little sounds she did not recognize escape her mouth.
“Oh, yes, you are a filthy little thing, even when clean,” he growled. “Such a dirty little bitchling, ready for the punishing, aren’t you.”
She made more of those sounds, words that were not words, and her body began to respond in a most strange way. Her thighs parted as if to encourage the touch and her hips lifted to offer the orifices to him. Had she been trained this way? It felt as though perhaps she might have been.
The nobleman made his guttural noises in return, and then quite unexpectedly captured her mouth in a kiss. She had never been kissed, and yet, she felt as though she had been caught in this affectionate locking of lips more than once.
Nothing made sense. Her mind was intensely addled, and there was nothing but pleasure now in this terrible situation; in the midst of real trouble, the threat of vicious punishment, she found herself bucking against the lord’s hand, begging him with her lips and tongue for what was to come.
His hand left the soft spot between her thighs where a kind of pleasure she had not ever experienced before, and yet seemed to have indulged in a thousand times, was beginning to swirl mysteriously, and reached up to take her blonde hair in his grasp.
He used that grasp to draw her up from the swirling water and pull her halfway out of the tub, her hips finding the curved edge firm beneath them. Her legs remained in the water, but to catch herself from falling out, her hands ended up splayed next to the bath on the mat, her wet, gleaming hindquarters held almost majestically high.
“Stay there,” the noble said. “It is time you paid for your sins, and time that you felt the consequences of your actions. You will color up nicely for me today, slave. From pale to red, I will mark the shades of your atonement.”
She chanced looking up and saw that he had reached for a long, thin piece of wood; as round and thick as her little finger, it flexed as he picked it up. Though she had never seen it before, she quivered at the sight of it.
The memory of pain she had not experienced rose in her body and made her whimper.
He took the cruel cane and bent it lightly between his fingers, drawing the moment out.
“I like the way you look at me, slave,” he purred softly, those green eyes sinking into hers. “You have such a pretty gaze, it holds so much apprehension, and yet you do not move, do you. Because you know however much pain I am about to visit on you, it can always be worse if you resist.”
A plea for mercy rose to her lips, but she bit it back before it could escape. This man would not give her mercy. He glowed with punitive desire. He was going to make her feel the pain of her sins... and some part of her believed that she deserved it. Not for spilling the soup, but for some other greater thing she could not bring forth from the depths of her memory. Whatever it was, it spoke to her from the shadows of her mind, and it told her that she deserved this; somehow, she had this coming.
“You will learn to be more careful,” the noble instructed. “You will learn that even though you may be small and wretched, that which falls under your limited control must be tended to. You cannot use the excuse of being merely a slave to avoid responsibility.”
He lifted the cane and she lowered her head, not wishing to see it before it came down across h
er flesh. She heard it though, a soft whistling through the air, and then it landed across her cheeks with a snapping sound that echoed around the room. For a brief moment, there was no pain. She took a breath, and then it fled from her in a great yowl as the line seemed to blaze and burn into her skin. It was as though she felt the effects of it all the way to her soul.
“Thank me.”
“Wha?”
She could not form the question entirely. The water around her legs rippled with the quivering of her thighs. She was stuck in this position, feeling the effects of the cane race through her body, a constant ignition of her senses.
“Thank me for each stroke,” he insisted.
“T-th-thank you?”
“Good girl.”
With that, another stroke landed. It was a fraction lower than the first. It was hot and painful, and yet there was something more to it too, a sensation that tickled between her thighs and made her feel hot in places where heat usually did not reside. The pain of the cane was spreading, turning her flesh into a stranger she did not know. Confused and writhing, she wailed her complaints as the cane lashed her bottom more times than she could count.
She felt relief at hearing the cane drop, but the next order sent fresh anxiety charging through her.
“Spread your legs. I will have that cunt of yours too.”
She felt his fingers swipe along the slit of her cunt and then the cool mocking laughter of the man who had wielded the cane so brutally.
“You like this, slave. This cock is reward for you, encouragement for you to no doubt continue your misbehavior.”
He pulled her from the bath completely, handling her like a wild thing. Aya felt his cock push inside her, the thick head of him allowed access to her body by the traitorous wetness slicking her lower lips. The caning should have made her revile this man, but for reasons she could not understand, her body welcomed him, her sex gripping his cock, caressing it with muscular ripples of her inner walls as he slid deep with one powerful stroke, seating himself inside her sex and claiming her tender body for his own.
