Shattered (13 page)

Robin
worked herself up on her elbows. “Come here,” she said, and slipped a hand beneath his chin to guide him up. Nathan crawled up the length of her body until he hovered over her.

She
leaned up and licked across his lower lip, tasting herself before slipping her tongue into his mouth. Her hand went to the waistband of his pants and she gave it a tug.  “Take them off, prince.  I’m not done with your cock.”

Nathan stripped away the remainder of his clothes without question, without his lips leaving hers for more than a moment.  And when he was free of them Robin
squirmed her lower body down, until his cock pressed against her wet slit, her knees to both sides of his hips.  She breathed in the moan that escaped from his mouth.

Nathan remained
still above her and that took all his willpower.  It was so hard not to plunge into her and she seemed to be testing him now in her delay.  Robin ran her hand through his hair and across his cheek as she drew his face close to her own, as she sunk back into the pillows.

“
It seems right that you should be my first,” she said, at last.  “After I took so many firsts from you.”

It took him a second to realize what she was saying, though when he did her hesitation suddenly made sense.  He pulled back from her just enough that his lower body no longer pressed so threateningly against her own.

“I didn’t know,” he said quietly.  “I shouldn’t…”

“I want this Nathan,”
she said, and her voice halted his retreat.  She left no room to question.

Nathan cradled her face in his hand as he lowered himself back down against her.  He perched up on his elbows, one to both sides of her head
and her hand on his neck pulled his mouth over hers.  Robin spread her legs to accommodate him.  He pushed in slowly and she drew in a sharp breath in response, and again he froze.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled and Robin’s
brows furrowed together.

“Get off
me.”  She sat up and pushed him back.  “I swear Prince Dorthorial, if I didn’t know better I would think you were the virgin, not I.”

Nathan scampered back, legs bent beneath him.  “I
just don’t want to hurt you…”

“Thirty minutes ago you did.  Now t
he sentiment is appreciated prince, but neither of us will get off if you treat me like I might break.”

Robin crawled over him and straddled his lap.  Her hands astride his shoulders supported her and Nathan’s arms around her waist kept her close. 
It was strange how much more at ease he could be, now that she was in control of this again.

She
buried her face into his neck as she lowered herself onto his cock.  Nathan lost his breath as the wet warmth of her sex slid down his shaft. He tangled his fingers around her hair and breathed out a gasp into her mass of black curls.  He felt her flex around him as she worked down the full length, until she sat with her bottom against his thighs.  Just being inside her nearly made him cum and he had to focus all of his attention to restraint.  It had been too long since he had release.

Rob
in arched her back as she sought to get acclimated with that fullness.  Her muscles were stiff and rigid, her breathing a little sharp.  She was tight.  Nathan slowly ran his hands across her back and after a few long passes she relaxed into him.  When she began to rise again his hands slid down to her ass, supporting her there and lifting her gently from him.

By the height of the third thrust Robin found a rhythm.  She uncoiled herself from around his neck and cupped his face, drawing out h
ungry kisses from his lips as she grinded against his cock.  Her voice against his mouth, the hot, needy little moans, made it so difficult to control himself.  Soon he was pushing back, using his hands to lift her off him and go deeper.

Robin looped her arm behind his neck and pulled him forward as she leaned back.  Before he knew it Nathan found himself atop her again, his legs between her, hers wrapped behind his ass.  Her calves pressed into the bruises upon his welt-streaked thighs and he shut his eyes, drinking in the pain as he thrust into her.

She moaned e
very time he slammed into her.  It didn’t take long for those sounds to plateau.  Her palms pressed into his shoulders, her eyes clenched shut, and her whole body shuddered.

Nathan followed soon after.  There was
no way for him to prevent it.  The rapid spasms of her body around his cock milked release from him.  He buried his face into the pillow beside her head as he chased out that orgasm with a shout.  Then he collapsed, pinning her beneath him and holding her close.

Robin was still.  The involuntary pulse of her muscles around him and the rise and fall of her chest against his were her only movements
for a long time.

Nathan
fought the urge to sleep, though release left him drained.  He suddenly didn’t want morning, and maybe if he never slept it would never come.

“I never would have guessed you were a virgin,” Nathan mumbled.

Robin chuckled and he felt her laughter against his chest.  “It’s relative I suppose.  I have Lily, and she does for me what I can’t do myself.  Sometimes I like to forget she’s being paid for her services.”

“Denrick
has never..?”  Nathan began, and just as quickly tried to bite back the words.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Robin snorted quietly.  “
No, you shouldn’t have.”  Yet as she shook her head she smirked into his hair, despite herself.  “My relationship with Denrick is… complicated. He might demands certain things from me, but not that.”  Even as she said it her expression faded away into a frown.  “He finds me quite repulsive actually.  He’s very free with that.”

“Is that why you don’t believe me when I tell you
that you’re beautiful?” Nathan asked.  His face was still nestled beside hers, this conversation only possible so long as they didn’t look at one another.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Robin shook her head
again but said nothing more, for a long time, until her stillness was interrupted by a long yawn.  Her hand wandered up his back , over his neck to caress him through his hair.  “I’ll see to it you go home tomorrow.  Thank you, for tonight.”

Nathan could hear the sleep in her voice, and not more than ten seconds later she was snoring softly beneath him.  He lay there, tangled up in her, and only now that she slept was he able to draw his face back and look at her.

**

Robin was gone from bed when Nathan awoke.  He had stayed up half the night watching her sleep, how smooth and gentle her face was in dream.  She smelled different too – warm and strong, and the smell wrapped around her sleeping body like the blankets and himself.

Nathan ran a hand
over her spot on the bed and felt the cold of morning in the sheets already.

His things were laid out on the table.  The clothing he wore on the day of his abduction had been washed and folded. 
All evidence of his traumatic journey here had been scrubbed clean from the threads, as though it had never happened.  His rings lay atop and his sword beside it.

Nathan got dressed.  She
was returning everything to him, but nothing was the same.  His shirt he had to pull over the thin lines her whip left.  They no longer hurt and eventually they would fade forever.  He traced the one that peeked out from the open neck of his tunic.

His scabbard sat again
st welts that still hurt.  Even after a week of rest some of the harder ones remained as deep bruises that still felt tender.  Above them and without any order at all were the disorganized crisscross tears her whip carved out in anger.

He
knew those would scar.  Many of them had split the skin and he felt the scabbed ridges now as he slipped his hand around his side.  Robin hadn’t let him touch there, but she had touched him. Plenty of times.  He followed the path her hand must have traveled and sighed.

When he lifted his coat from the table a folded piece of paper tumbled out and fluttered to the floor.  Nathan bent and retrieved it, but he knew before opening i
t that she was gone.

Scribbled in the center of the page was a single line, written by Robin and nearly illegible:

Don’t trust your brother. Protect your sisters.  Goodbye prince.

Nathan stood staring at the words for a long time. 
A cramp grabbed at his chest and he swallowed against it.  Being alive again, after weeks of being dead, was more terrifying than dying had been the first time around.  He didn’t know how to start living again, but he knew the first step.  Carefully he refolded her note and set the corner to the candle’s flame.  He dropped it to the stone floor and watched as it burned to ash.  Only then did he turn towards the door.

The area beyond her room was foreign to him
without the blindfold, but the way had been laid out.  The hallways were empty, abandoned.  Candles lit one tunnel to the next, until Nathan found himself staring at sunlight instead.

He
had to shield his eyes from so much light and even then he was hesitant to step from the crevice in the rock face and out into forest.  It didn’t feel real.

At his back was a high rise of rock, ten or more feet up and impossible to
scale.  Spread out before him, in one long sweeping panoramic, was a sea of green.  He was surrounded by trees, some sloping up towards a hill on one side, down towards a valley on the other.

He was just about to pick a direction and go when
he heard the sound of horses out in the woods.  A minute later half a dozen riders came into view over the top of the hill, pouring out through the trees as they descended down towards him.  Men and beast both were adorned with his family’s colors, black on red, and only when they got closer could he see the sigil of his eldest brother, the King.

Robin’s warning came to mind
and Nathan watched the soldiers approach, not once taking his eyes from them as they fanned out before him.

The lead man dismounted and dropped to a hasty bow, snapping up just as quickly.  “It’s good to see you alive Sire,” he said.

Nathan nodded once in acknowledgement.  It was clear he should respond, somehow, it was so strange to see another.  Robin still had half a hold on his mind.

When he didn’t speak the man turned and took the reins tethered to his saddle, offering out the rider-less horse to Nathan.  “
Are you well enough to ride?”  He asked, though nothing in Nathan’s appearance would suggest he wasn’t.  Only his hesitation left the men unsure.

“
We really weren’t sure if you’d be out here,” he continued on.  “There’s been so many false sightings already, so many people trying to claim the King’s reward.”

Nathan
just stared blankly at the man.  To have been dead yesterday and alive today was too much.  He needed to clear his head.  And when he didn’t take the reins offered to him that awkwardness rippled outward.  The rider dropped his hand back to his side and shifted from one foot to another, unsure what else he should do.

“How far is it to the castle?” Nathan asked
finally.

“Took us two hours to get out here this morning
Sire.  We had a bit of a time finding the place once we came off the main road, but getting back should be easy.  You can see the city from atop that hill and the road sits on its opposite slope.”

Nathan’s eyes followed the man’s finger
east, to the hill, and then swept south, towards the gypsy lands and the city of Verill.  “Then I would like to walk, I think.  Go on ahead without me.”

“But Sire…,”
he protested, but Nathan gave no ground with his silence.

That
man exchange glances with the others and a few errant shrugs were all the response he got.  “We’ll see you back at the castle tonight then Sire.”  With that they remounted, turned their mounts, and galloped off the way they came.

Nathan looked once more down the valley and up again, to the sun just settling atop the hill.  To the castle that would be beyond that and
to his old life.  To privilege, to squandered lives, to family. And he looked south, past the thick trunks of the ancient forest, to the drylands, and further, towards Verill and all the other border towns.  He touched at the hilt of his sword and winced, as the extra weight of his hand dug the scabbard’s belt into one of his welts.  He took a deep breath and stepped towards home.

**********************************

Part Two

There would have been no point at all in running, Robin knew that.  She had nowhere to go, she wanted this to be over, she was tired.

That morning she sent out two letters.  The first went to the palace, to the King himself.  She gave details few others would have.  Trent would send men and Nathan would go home.

The second went to Lord Denrick at his residence in the city.  He stayed on after she left and he’d still be there now.  Manipulating another deal, another alliance, pulling the political puppet strings he held a little tighter.  She owed him a warning at least, to flee the city before Nathan returned.