The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) (16 page)

She pulled back from the kiss. “My lord?”

“This tantalizing inlet is mine next,” he told her without equivocation.

Her lashes fell, and Mitri went still.

“Buggery?” she asked.

“Second only to abstinence, ’tis the best method of preventing a conception that neither of us wants.”

“I lust after you, my lord,” she said softly, apologetically. “I know the church forbids unnatural relations, but what can I do? My desire for you is too strong to refuse. Even now, I tremble in longing to have you inside me again.”

“Just tell yourself the devil tempted you from the righteous path.”

“I wish I could blame the devil, but alas ’twould not be true. ’Tis you, the man, I find unable to resist. I only wish things were different…”

Dropping his hands from her body, he pulled away. “I never lied to you, Mitri,” he said briskly. “Never tricked you. Never pretended to be anything I am not. This is commerce, naught more than payment for service rendered.”

“And what will you do, my lord, if I refuse you this commerce?”

“Mourn your loss forever and a day.”

Her lashes fell. “Then I agree.”

He picked up her fallen chin. “To go forward, you must understand what a man expects from a woman of your calling.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “I do. But only for you. I will only ever whore for you.”

Unlike males, women tended to be squeamish about anything that strayed from the natural. And so too the church disapproved of any act that would not beget a child, calling it a sin. Although she had accepted mouth pleasuring with relative ease, this next variety of sodomy was evidently her sticking point.

Smiling at her fastidiousness, he smoothed a hand up and down her arm. He allowed his thumb to graze the side of her pert bosom with each swipe. “What say you?”

She trembled convulsively. “I say, my only other choice is to leave you and I cannot leave you.”

“Then prepare to be taken as a whore is taken.” Although the comment might be construed as cruel in the short run, allowing her to think she could be anything more to him than a prostitute would do her no favor in the long run.

“Aye, my lord,” she softly replied and turned her blushing face away.

Chapter Seventeen

“Tell me what to do, my lord,” Mitri said, her gaze on the far wall.

“Not here on the floor,” her owner apprised her and released the restraints.

His untying did not free her. More than leather straps held her in bondage to the overlord.

“Go to my bed,” he said and drew her to her feet.

“Aye, my lord,” she replied, her gaze cast meekly downward, unable to meet his eyes. Her lust for him was apparent enough already without flying it like a banner. Her lust shamed her, more than the dreadful sin she was about to commit.

Naked save for the harness she still wore, she moved toward the nobleman’s bed. A fine bed ’twas too. Piled high with fat pillows and luxuriant furs, and so wide it could sleep an army. That bed told the tale of the differences in their stations. All her life, she had slept on the floor, atop a straw mat drawn up to the hearth for warmth in winter, to the cracked portal in summer. The four oak posts of her master’s bed bedazzled her.

“Knee the edge,” he said.

Awed at the bed’s majesty, she lifted a knee.

“Hold,” he said hoarsely. “Like so. Just like so.”

She did, she held like so, one leg raised to the bed, the other foot anchored on the floor, balancing herself so that not a muscle twitched.

The rushes crackled, as did the air itself, as he moved in behind her. His body heat burned her before ever he did touch her.

And she longed for him to touch her. Could not wait for him to touch her. After all that he had already done to her, she still yearned for more. It took all her will not to reach back and bring his hand to her.

Finally, when she could take no more of the apartness, a hot palm swept over the round contours of her bottom. Another snaked around and captured her uptilted breast.

She sighed in partial appeasement.

Her breasts were not large, and she had never thought much of them…until this nobleman owned them with his caresses. Now she took great pride in the pleasure they brought him. Her nipples in particular seemed to intrigue him. He certainly paid them ample attention.

“You resemble a bruised Madonna,” he offered. “If I live to be five score and ten, I will never forget this moment. I will remember you just as you are now, so anxious to please me.”

“I
am
anxious to please you, my lord.”

“I am anxious to please you too,” he said, and his confession turned her heart upside down. Why could they not mean more to one another than only their agreement?

But he had made himself clear. This—carnality—was all they would ever have.

Seeking to make the most of the physical connection they did have, she said, “Tell me what to do. I would gladden you.”

After a brief hesitation, he said, “I should like to put something inside you.”

“Aye. Yourself.” She giggled.

“Aye, that too. But these are devices, one for your buttocks, an anal plug, and one for your front inlet, a dildo. Smaller than a phallus, these devices will stimulate you.”

“I agree to everything. No need to ask.”

“Then I shan’t ask from now on. All fours, on the bed now.”

After pulling up her other leg, she went to hands and knees. As her small breasts toppled and swung, she splayed herself for him, her thighs widely parted.

He was looking at her still. Staring at her. Intently. His focus all for her. Never had any man gazed at her the way this man gazed at her.

Only their heavy breaths disturbed the silence in the solar. Until her gasp did, as he slid something inside her front passage. Something foreign. Not the wooden ax handle, something else, something longer and wider than that, something that tingled and made her squirm for completion.

No longer able to hold still, she wiggled atop the bed, uncaring of how she might look in her desperation to have him.

“Please?” she begged.

“Tuck into a ball,” he ordered.

She scrambled to do his bidding, the
tingling thing
inside her making her wild as she rolled up tight, her bottom extended over the edge of the opulent bed.

And still he looked.

In an agony of arousal, she clawed the bed furs. “Do it! Sodomize me.” With a heave, she pushed out her posterior, pumping it madly, a demeaning and unflattering pose.

She no longer cared about trivialities like shame or humiliation, nor did she care about damning her soul to hell with a forbidden fornication. In an abandoned dance, her hair fell over her face.

“You have such wondrous tresses,” he whispered and parted her hair into two separate hanks, depositing one over each of her shoulders.

“There!” he exclaimed. “Now I can better appreciate your body’s curves. Of all acts a man might perform on a woman, you were made for this one. But first you require oils.”

He anointed her with the same, a tincture taken from who knew where.

She wanted this, she did, but as a thumb ingratiated itself into the deep demarcation between her buttocks, she shivered, regret catching up with her.

He would never hold her in high esteem now, not as a devout woman wishes for a man to hold her. He would never view her as a potential mother for his children. She would slake his dark urges, and that would be all.

As testimony to this, he screwed a finger into her back opening.

Her pumping grew more bestial, more untamed, much more impatiently eager. Damn him, anyway! He had pinned both her inlets but still kept himself apart from her.

She would never be his wife. But would his wife give him this?

“Doitdoitdoit,” she cried.

“You are a tasty morsel,” he rasped, “and I can no longer put off my treat.”

His hardened flesh replaced his probing finger then, the crown sinking deep as he made the breach.

“Christ, but you are ready for this,” he moaned and penetrated more fully until he was there, inside the egress, claiming her very soul as she rocked and screamed and sobbed out her release.

* * *

In the days following her initiation into the forbidden, try as he would, Spur could not keep away from Mitri for more than a few hours at a time. And even those separations wore on him. For the most part, between his performances of duty, they remained sequestered in his solar, just the two of them, eating together, laughing together, sleeping together. Their episodes of intimacy were frequent and lengthy. In each one, he would keep at her until she reached her pinnacle, all penetrations anal. And deep. Oh, so satisfyingly deep. His cock sinking into arse was a wondrous thing to behold and so he would pull out, only to engage her again, just so he might watch himself slip into her back opening. Just so he might feel her body’s shudder of acceptance. Keen and absolute acceptance. Unqualified acceptance.

Mitri took to sodomy as if she were born to it. His lambkin did so love being cocked the forbidden way. Her purrs told him so, as did the way she would push back against his thrusts, as if she could not get enough. His throat arched, his hands roaming her as he would, he would sometimes position her up on her knees so that he might fondle her small breasts as he rutted on her. Their jiggling maddened him as she gyrated. Other times, he would press her into the furs and lay full-out on top of her, his palm atop her head so she could not move at all. But whatever method he employed, always, she would urge him on with her mewing moans.

After every occasion, he swore he would quit. He told himself he would walk away and leave her. Go for a ride, hunt…find himself some other whore. But he could not seem to depart. The portal seemed too far away. And her delectable arse so close at hand.

And her arse was always close to his hand.

At one point, when he had succeeded in reaching the threshold, she jumped from the rumpled, cum-scented bed and chased after him.

“Master,” she pleaded. “Please stay.”

“I have better things to do than stay here every day,” he replied, edginess making him cruel. What could he do but try to push her away? He had to escape before she realized she owned him.

And he almost had escaped, but besotted fool that he was, he made a tactical error—he turned away from the portal and faced her.

She was the very picture of temptation, her flesh soft and flushed from her brief nap, her brown hair a tangle around her face. Her pert breasts were bruised and swollen; her belly wore the imprint of his fingers. Even in the leather harness she wore with a phallus protruding from her cunt, she resembled an angel.

She raised her big brown eyes to him. “How might I convince you to stay?”

He was naked, and there was no place to hide his captivation with her, not with his cock rising and bludgeoning the air. His defenselessness angered him.

“Bend over,” he said hoarsely.

When her fingers touched the rush-covered floor, he inched behind her, still trying to leave but unable to go.

He grabbed hold of her hair like a steed’s reins and bucked into her rounded buttocks for what he promised would be his last time that eve, his ejaculate released in a hot stream that went on and on.

What good fortune had been his to stumble upon her at Lord Harold’s that day. The first time he had ever been alone with a partner and he had found himself a dream come true in her. Christ, but she was an amazing little mare. Well trained and sweet-natured and willing. Oh so willing. Willing to do anything. He had never had a better ride.

He deeply hated to end their carnal marathon, but a man must recover…

From somewhere, Spur found the necessary strength to pull out. But deprivation clutched at his stones even as his seed streamed out of her arse and dribbled down her legs.

Mitri said naught, and neither did he. Content to massage her perspiration-dotted rump, as he would with a mare, he petted her whilst she recovered. After a time, when her tremors ceased, he helped her to a stand and then installed the anal plug.

He would leave. This time, he would be able to depart. A man must have
some
time alone. Restoring a semblance of sanity between them was all for the good.

Despite the best of intentions, he heard himself say, “Come with me to the bathing pool.”

He’d have her again, sodomize her, if he did not find a means to break her hold on him. What was worse, he might spout some sentimental dross about how he could not live without her. Even if he said naught, she might still read devotion in his eyes.

Nevertheless, needing to see her face, he swiveled her around.

Her gaze was downcast. She was shamed, most likely, by her uninhibited response to him.

“The hour is late,” he said matter-of-factly and climbed into his braies for the trip downstairs. “No one patrols these halls save my personal guards. They will not even blink to see us together,”

“Easy for you to say. You are clad.”

“’Twould be unseemly if I were not. You, on the other hand, are…”

“A whore, and so I have no significance.”

She did to him, and that was a dire problem. Nevertheless, her downcast expression did him in, and he admitted, “You mean a great deal to me. I have never had a woman all to myself. You are the first.”

“Should I feel honored?”

“Feel as you will. I am merely telling you the truth. And I was about to say, you are lovely as you are, naked and with my seed telling one and all that you belong to me. But I do understand your indignation—”

“You cannot because you are not a woman.”

“Mitri—you are not without power here.”

“My only power lies in self-denial.”

“What mean you?”

“My leaving you is my only power. And leaving you denies me.”

“Of what, pray? I have told you time and time again that you will not leave here empty-handed.”

“Nay, only empty-hearted for I leave here without you.
You
are what is denied me. Think me so shallow as to not suffer your loss? No amount of gold will fill the hole your absence bores in my chest.”

“Then, by all means, stay.”

“At times, you make the staying past difficult into impossible.”

“Since our return to my keep, I have done naught to hold you in disdain, naught by word or deed have I shown you contempt or scorn. Quite the opposite, I have told you repeatedly how much your body delights me.”

“My body delighting you is not enough.”

“’Tis all I have and more than I have ever given anyone else.”

She looked up at him shyly, from under the sweep of her lashes. “Forgive my petulance, my lord. Verily, you have given me much. You have believed in me and in my innocence in the crime of treason where others might not have done so.” She shook her head. “And this is how I repay you! Like a fishwife, I castigate you. You cannot help who you are any more than I can change myself to suit you. I am so grateful that, despite all appearances and with no evidence to the contrary, you accepted my telling of what happened at Lord Harold’s estate on faith.”

Not quite. He’d had good reason to believe she was telling the truth. But he owed her no explanation there. He’d done what he’d had to do to assure his people remained safe. And he never divulged his methods. Not to her. Not to anyone. This was warfare, and spies lurked everywhere. Even in the beguiling form of this tempting seductress, who would leave him and go on to make her fortune on the cocks of who knew how many other men. He was her first, but most assuredly, he would not be her last.

“Furthermore,” she continued, “you have not done anything I have not allowed.”

“Nor will I,” he said stoutly. “On that, you have my solemn word. I prize the time we have had together, and I would have it continue. I would like to think you have enjoyed your days with me as well.”

“I have, my lord. Very much so. That last bout was extremely invigorating.”

“You have the aphrodisiac with which I soaked the dildo to thank there.”

After giving her good cause for doing so with his high-handedness, he thought for sure she would take him to task. But nay. She looked down at the Cantonese groin plant unmistakably protruding from her cunt, and exclaimed, “An aphrodisiac, my lord? I had no idea. How wonderfully decadent!”

“Well, then. As we appear to be in accord about the nature of our play, what are we discussing here? The hot baths await us. After your strenuous activity, your bones could surely use a lengthy soak.” He placed a hand atop the small of her back. “Shall we away?”