The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) (4 page)

This situation called for precaution. This female was a diabolical schemer, a murderess once removed.

Or perchance, not removed at all.

For all he knew, she might have participated in the actual torching of this settlement. She might have herded those innocents into the Great Hall with a promise of amnesty for their cooperation.

He would show her the same sort of amnesty those lost souls received.

“Bare. Your. Cunt,” he snarled. “Do it and you live. Refuse and you die.”

Again the threat worked. She raised her kirtle belly-high, revealing her loins, a delta ablossom with riotous sable curls.

An intense scrutiny told him she carried no weaponry, but maddened, he rasped, “Loosen your thighs.”

She tossed her head, and her streaming brown hair spiraled over her creamy shoulders like a thousand vipers coiled on white sands. “I told you, my lord, away from here.”

Astonished by her gall, he slipped his dagger briefly between his tight lips for safekeeping whilst yanking off a gauntlet. Then, barehanded, he spread her open.

Wide open. Splitting her legs like a white chicken he intended to stuff. “Place no demands on me.” After sheathing his weapon altogether—the blade got in his way—he cradled her loins, smoothing a thumb back and forth over the stretched slit. “Bring this forward.”

When she once again did naught, he pulled the other glove off too, stowing the pair on his belt before placing his bare palm against her exposed buttocks. With more force than was necessary, he tilted her hips, which raised the entrance to her passage.

He was all set to probe her, to finger her channel deep, when she whispered, “Oh aye. Aye. What you do feels so good. But please, my lord, I beseech you, not here. As you can see, I am willing. I shall give you whatever is your pleasure, only not here. Wait, I pray you. You will not be disappointed for the delay.”

“And the mercenary who is your lover—you will give up his name?”

“Afterward. Away from here, I shall do all, tell all.”

Why not grant her request?

Choking the information out of her here, at the scene of her crime, would gain him naught but lies, deceptions, and mayhap her snapped neck when he lost patience with those lies and deception. Whereas threats held in abeyance might intimidate her into a truth-telling confession, which he would later use to apprehend the cur. His steed was swift, and the mercenary was on foot—other than those of his own destrier, no other fresh hoofprints were in sight. The bastard could not have gotten far.

“Agreed.” Spur released her hem, and her skirts fell back to the ground, a soiled and frayed drapery around her ankles.

Like a queen, she smiled regally, a smile that lit up her warm brown eyes even more. “My thanks.”

Her gratitude was out of place. A short reprieve from her eventual sentencing was the most he would grant her.

Wanting her smile gone, he shoved his hand up under her fallen skirts and drove his middle finger between her pubic lips.
Wet
pubic lips. Her cry of violation warmed his heart.

“Henceforth, do not presume to bargain with me.” Hooking his free hand in the tattered remains of her kirtle, he rent the garb from her.

The length of his middle finger pinning her in place, she leaned into him, her chin slightly dipped, gaze lowered, arms hanging aimlessly at her sides. No attempt to cover her breasts and loins advised him she had lost all maidenly modesty long ago.

“Oh aye,” she said and squirmed in heated acceptance.

He pushed another digit into her clasp and surveyed her up and down, a slow assessing look, repelled at the sight whilst at the same time aroused at the sight. Her hot, squirming body burned his two fingers as he thrust them inside her.

To apprise her of whose authority she must now submit to, he reached out to her breast and fondled the inconsequential weight before cupping the dainty mound, across the outrageously lavish nipple. No need to rush her lesson, he smoothed his fingers lazily over her, petting her as he would a bitch in the kennel, but without the accompanying fondness. If given the opportunity, this she-beast would bite.

But for all that, she was very young. Little better than a child. At seven and thirty, he reckoned he was more than twice her age. Most likely she had been whoring since before her first bleed. Village females began the prostitution trade early. These peasant sluts were a breed apart, a common lot all around, used to brutal usage.

She would not be used to the brutal likes of him. He had a tremendous anger on him this day.

Though long of leg, the whore’s hips were narrow, her waist a sharp indentation below diminutive teats. In short, she was woefully tiny. But huge in her treachery. Despite her assent to intercourse, this reed-thin waif would never stand up against the vengeance boiling inside him. As the leader’s doxy, this slender female was complicit in treason whether she, herself, set any blazes here or not, and treason was punishable by death.

By Christ’s cross, she would give up names!

“I shan’t go easy on you,” he said brusquely, and advanced his two fingers.

“You need not go easy, my lord.”

“But if you name the nobleman who paid the mercenary leader to do this deed, I shall see you are treated fairly.”

His prisoner looked up at him, her brown eyes too bright, lit from within by what looked to him like a righteous flame. How dare she? He was the one who had righteousness on his side, not she.

“Fairly?” she mocked. “What know royals of fairness? The outcome is always the same to the likes of you. Whether we support King Stephen or the Empress Matilda, serfs always end up dead.”

There was an element of truth in her accusation. Peasants such as she were starving by the droves. Unable to make her a denial, he dropped his hands from her body and growled, “Start walking.”

She had yet to give him a clear view of her bottom. Because of her loosened hair, the curled ends falling to the backs of her knees, she still denied him the pleasure. His inability to see her buttocks frustrated him. He
had
to see her back portal. By Christ’s stones, he wagered ’twas as puckered as a monastery-grown plum, the fruit just as tender and sweet. Delicious!

His jaw tightened. The night ahead portended to be long and hard.

Or, was that rather—him?

Chapter Three

A draft tickled along Mitri’s spine.

The lord had gathered up her hair and then pulled the hank tight, a tautness that bit into her scalp most bitterly and brought stinging tears to her eyes.

She wished they would fall, those bitter and stinging tears. She wished she would cry as she had never wept before. Mayhap then the tight knot of sadness and fear inside her would loosen and give way.

She had to do something, for she could not go on as she had done.

But what?

Tension had already prompted her to deliberately provoke him with caustic words about royal fairness. Never before had she done anything so daring, so unlike her normally retiring self. Unfortunately, her boldness had failed to produce the desired results. She needed something more, something harsher than a yank on her hair.

Pain.

She needed pain.

And so she would try to annoy him again.

Without his telling her she might, she came to a stop on the trail. A complete standstill. Her back to him, she shouted, “Did you hear me? You, nobleman, are no better than the mercenary leader who burned Lord Harold’s settlement.” There! That should do it.

“I am not one of Matilda’s men. I support our present king. To do otherwise is treason. Regardless of the strife over who is the true heir, Stephen is our sovereign and I stand by his right to rule.”

“The king’s men are just as capable as Matilda’s of burning a village to the ground. There is no ‘right’ in this debate over the throne, no moral imperative, no heroes,” she hissed. “Save for a difference in the quality of garb, there is not a whit of difference between the lot of you. Regardless of which side of the political debate you defend, you all plunder and rape and kill the same. You can all go to hell.”

Not the most diplomatic position to take. But so what?

She needed pain.

“Anyone going to hell this day will be you, wench.”

“Not likely. I have something you want. You have something I want too. And so I offer you the same bargain I offered the mercenary men-at-arms. Take me. Have me. In whatever manner you so desire. But away from this place.”

“Why not here?” he questioned, jumping at that last stipulation.

“I have my reasons.”

She would agree to anything, admit to any crime, to make sure her sister stayed free and well and whole. She would not have Ysenda set upon by any of these barbarians, and she included this royal in that group. Though not of a political nature, Mitri was not oblivious to the current affairs of the monarchy. She knew this nobleman looked to lay blame for the treachery done this day on someone.
Anyone
. She would not have him find Ysenda, for if he did, this nobleman would question where her allegiance lay.

Her sister, a rabid supporter of Matilda in a village of political indifference, would not keep her mouth sealed over who had claimed her allegiance. The very fearless outspokenness that lent Ysenda a lust for life would doom her to certain death with this fierce supporter of King Stephen.

“Just so,” he replied. “You have your bloody reasons. I suspect all whores do.”

He thought her a whore, had called her a whore. What matter if she became a whore in truth? She would do whatever it took to achieve her ends.

A rough tug on her hair and she fell on the ground at his boots. Naked—half reclining, half sitting, and facing away—she stayed still, the unbearable heat of his closeness scorching her almost as badly as throwing herself into the bonfires would have done.

When would he make his move?

His grip on her hair relaxed, and the heavy strands dropped over her right shoulder.

“Get up,” her abductor ordered.

Her plan was twofold: save her sister and use him to release the knot of tension inside her. Her plan was
not
to have him strike her dead on the spot, and so she tried to obey his order. Blessed Virgin, she did. But he was too close. He had given her no room to rise. The toes of his boots butted her backside. After she wiggled and squirmed in fruitless effort for what seemed like forever, he finally brought her up, forcibly up, his metal armor abrading the cheeks of her rear. She stood there, chin lowered, shivering convulsively. Though her abraded cheeks smarted, the pain was insufficient to bring on her tears.

Strike me!

Why did he not cuff her and have done with it?

Even a single blow from his mighty fist would go a long way toward releasing the knot of tension inside her.

But nay. The hand she needed to strike her played sensually down her spine. That same hand next cupped her backside. Lewdly, not hurtfully. She groaned as a finger—perchance ’twas his thumb—sank into the demarcation between the two cheeks, the invasion debauched, mayhap depraved, most definitely demeaning, but not painful in any way.

Until this day, no man had ever touched her. Not there. Not anywhere. She had always been too shy of the opposite gender to seek out a maiden’s sweet initiation to romance. The stolen kisses and furtive embraces and hot whispers other virgins enjoyed—all those preludes to coupling—had never been hers. And now this royal would violate her.

How?

Had he been a wax candle she could guide as she pleased, she would have known what to expect. But a man?

A man could not be guided by a woman. And she had no idea what to expect.

With that said, she refused to race away from the unknown like a frightened rabbit. She would meet whatever happened head-on. And she would learn. Knowledge was power; wielding that knowledge, a woman’s only strength.

Bending her over his arm, he fingered her.

In back.

She arched against that probing finger, her action driving the digit deeper.

The pressure against the inlet increased her trembling. But not in fear. Her mind might not know what to expect, but her body had no such problem. The tips of her breasts hardened painfully as his digit circled the hole.

His probing never intruded inside.

She encouraged him to take a bite from the apple. “Have to, my lord, but be quick about it,” she moaned. “I would be gone from here.”

Of a sudden, he straightened her up and pinched her right nipple, and not gently.

She mewed.

’Twas the pain. The pain beckoned to her. ’Twas just what she needed, his pinching, only she needed it done rougher.

“Is that the best you can do, my lord?” she taunted.

He scratched a fingernail across the turgid tip, back and forth, back and forth, always taking the same route. The deliberateness of his scraping stirred her, and as he raised a sore welt on the sensitive skin, she started to pant. And, heaven help her, not in fear of the act.

Or of him.

The noble had a violent streak. She could feel it. Sense it. The butterflies in her belly knew ’twas there. Force—savagery even—was part of his nature. But rather than retreat from it, she accepted his roughness. In fact, his roughness provoked within her a yearning to give herself over to him. In him, she would find the release she sought.

But what did this fierce warrior seek from a woman? From
her
? What were his requirements?

She was not ignorant of the ways of self-pleasuring, but she had no experience with a flesh-and-blood partner. Her lack of exposure to men placed her at a severe disadvantage. She could not make any mistakes, not if she wished to live.

And she did wish to live. After almost ending it all, after thinking a bonfire was the only solution, she had changed her mind about taking her own life.

Mayhap, just like her sister, she would learn how to be a survivor. Not as the burden she had feared becoming, but as an independent woman who charted her own destiny. She had thought honor lay in death, but honor also lay in remaining unvanquished despite the circumstances. Only a coward surrendered. Only a coward would not grasp at every means available to stay alive. For a woman, that always came down to exchanging the use of her body for a strong man’s protection.

“You enjoy a hard handling,” this strong man said, his voice gruff and low.

Why pretend otherwise when the truth was there to see? ’Twas plain her body had reacted to the harshness of his touch. Her raging desire was as apparent as the flames of a burning bonfire.

“Aye,” she admitted, “I do like a hard handling.”

So much for honesty. Her answer must have disgusted him, for he removed his hand from her breast.

At the loss, needy sounds escaped her throat. Try as she would, she could not prevent them. And to make her capitulation worse, she wantonly ground her bottom to his chain mail-covered loins as she took her raw nipple in hand and whimpered, “Please?”

Instead of pleasing her, he looped a leather noose over her head and buckled it at her throat. The strap encircled her neck like a collar. ’Twas rigid, that collar, as rigid as the nobleman holding the free end.

“Consider yourself my prisoner,” he said.

“Prisoner?” She bucked and flailed about like a woman crazed. One thing to
allow
oneself to be abducted for carnal purposes, quite another to stand accused of a crime. Had he taken over her ownership, made her work his fields as his serf, even that would have been tolerable. But this! This situation was not to be borne. “W-w-why? What have I d-d-done?”

“The least of your transgressions is impeding my investigation of a massacre. I believe you have information about the mercenary who slaughtered an entire village, information you are purposefully withholding.”

“Only until we leave this region, my lord. When we arrive at your keep, I will tell you everything I know.”

She thought the horrendous circumstances of this day had broken her, but she had been woefully mistaken. She was not broken. The events of the day had only given her new resolve to live despite all odds. A length of leather around her neck might restrain her body, but no collar would dampen her will to go on.

“I shan’t refuse you anything, my lord. Neither my sex nor the information I know. I told you so already. I only asked you to take me away from this place. And yet we remain, still here in this same region.”

“Impertinent female. You are a peasant whore, I a royal nobleman. How dare you think to take me to task?”

She took a deep breath, a hitherto unknown fighting spirit compelling her to speak up for herself. “I dare because I thought we had an agreement. You mentioned fair treatment. Well, fair is fair, and an agreement is an agreement, for peasants and royals alike.”

Would he do the fair thing and keep to his word?

Thinking to gauge his thoughts, she looked over her shoulder at his face, only to find that his helm’s nasal guard obscured his features. Unable to read his expression, she used the only means available to her to make sure he kept his end of the bargain. “You will enjoy using me, my lord. The slit between my thighs, the egress within my buttocks, my willingness to do as you bid me. You will enjoy all those traits—”

Whack!

He slapped her bottom, a vicious sting, and then gave her a hard push between the shoulder blades.

“Walk,” he growled. “And if you stop again, my displeasure over your disobedience will merit more than a spank.”

“My lord, your displeasure is my pleasure,” she answered sultrily and did as he bade her, moving barefoot and naked toward who knew where.

In a loose sense, this arrogant, noble warrior was responsible for saving her life. If not for his intervention, she would have let the flames have her. Indeed he had rescued her from certain death. And now she dared to hope.

Mayhap, one day—if she stayed alive—she might see her sister again.

That was the future. Here on out, she would neither look forward nor back, but dwell in the uncertain and immediate present. And in the uncertain and immediate now, she would need to become a new person, someone completely changed from her former timid self, a person unafraid to twist whatever the circumstances to suit herself.

If she did not, the warrior
hypocrite
might not only renege on their agreement but take from her that which he had rescued.

Her life.

The commodity that she had once thought to discard had become surprisingly worthwhile again.