The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) (8 page)

Astounded at her words, at her self-pleasuring activity, he shook his head in consternation. “Do you mean to say you started this day a virgin?” He sought clarification for her confession of innocence. The ramifications of her prior statement, given under the prompting of the elixir, shed new light on this maiden’s character.

“Apart from a candle, aye, I was and remain a virgin. Though I would end the day differently,” she added on a wistful note.

The tincture he had given her brought out truth on the tongue, and so he took her admission on face value. “Comely of face, warm and sweet of disposition, with an amenable and seductive body—you should be wed. Peasant maidens like you are mothers three and four times over by your age. Why are you not?”

Her wide shoulders lifted, the action shifting her pert breasts. “Too timid to couple with any of the village lads.”

That had not been his experience of her. This wench was far from timid.

Yet he knew she could tell him no lie, not under the elixir’s influence.

“Damnation,” he roared and detached his hand from its entwining with her fingers. Until that very moment, he had not realized he held her unoccupied hand.

How could he have been so grossly mistaken about her? How could he have misjudged her? And why had she done the things she had?

Such as—her evasion of the truth when they first met.

True, he had been harsh with her, but she could have mitigated his actions by telling him her purpose for being at the settlement. And her bargaining to be taken away—what was that all about? And something else. Something that, in light of her admission, made no sense.

“You serviced me in the woods—was that a calculated design to get me to bring you away?”

“Aye, my lord.”

Chapter Seven

“Why?” he exploded. “Tell me why!”

“My sister was in the woods, and I did not wish either you or the mercenaries to find her. You fight for different sides, but to my mind, you are cut from the same cloth, killers and destroyers in the name of a cause. I would have sold my very soul to ensure Ysenda’s survival.”

“And you did, to me.”

“Aye, my lord, I did.” Raising her free hand—the other was still lodged between her split thighs—she brushed her fingertips over his warrior’s hardened face. “Though ’twas not quite the sacrifice I envisioned. I would couple with you, my lord. I should like to see how it feels before you sentence me to death for a crime I did not commit.”

As she would recall none of this come morn—not his surprising softness for her, not his sudden yearning for romance in a treacherous world—he pressed his lips to the palm hovering near his mouth, too close to resist, and kissed the hollow at the lifeline.

“No death sentence for you, my sweet maiden. Instead, a punishment of a different type.” Spur cleared the lust from his throat so he could speak. “I am not an easy man, nor will I make you an easy master. I mean to keep you in chains, routinely whip you too, share you as well. I shall do this only because doing so pleases me. What say you to that sort of punishment?”

“I say ’tis not a punishment at all. Pleasing you pleases me.”

“We shall see about that.”

Bending his head to her unfettered breast, he took the hardened nipple between his teeth and bit into the delicate flesh.

She bucked but made no attempt to push him off. As she offered him no rebuke, he bit into the other nipple also.

“Oh aye,” she sobbed. “Only do it harder, my lord.”

He pulled back. “Not now. Later. When you can remember everything we do. For now, there is this.” He kissed her lips softly, as a courting lover would do, and she purred and returned his kiss with an engaging and untutored force, her tongue sliding into his mouth, demanding he deepen what he had meant to keep shallow.

He broke the joining of their mouths with a scold. “Not tonight.”

Her gaze intent on his face, she slid lower on the pillow until she reclined on the narrow cot. She reached out to him. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she brought him down, cast him low. And in more ways than one.

“Nay, my lord,” she insisted. “This very night!”

He resisted, pulled away, removed himself forcefully from her velvet clutches.

Lids lowered, she thrashed her head on the pillow. “You touched me once already this day. Touch me again!” the little vixen demanded.

He understood. His prisoner needed relief from the distressing sights and sounds of her recent ordeal, and he could give that to her—save she was under the influence of a powerful elixir, a tincture that acted as a carnal stimulant. Open the floodgates of her heightened sensuality, and shutting them again might…might…

Turn this eve into a night to remember.

“Open your eyes,” he ordered.

She fixed her gaze on him.

“Keep your sights on me. Never waver your attention from my face.”

“Aye, my lord.”

Leaning over her, he found her pinnacle of pleasure and applied a knowing stroke.

“Oh aye,” she murmured.

With a smile, she bent up a knee so he could better get at her.

“Lovely,” she cooed.

He stopped his caresses.

As she protested—a high-pitched squawk—he moved lower on the cot to smooth along her straightened leg, from high-arched foot to well-turned ankle, and then up her athletically muscled calf. He then feathered his fingers across her raised knee. “You have one leg up already. Draw up this one too, my sweet maiden. Show me you want me.”

“How, my lord? You have only to tell me.”

“Make this—” he placed his palm possessively over her pubic curls—“more readily available. I would have your cunt split wide. No holding back. No maidenly modesty. No virgin blushes. Not to anything I would have you do. I have no interest in chaste females.”

With a sinuous stretch of her supple body, she did everything he directed her to do. Her leg went up, and she opened herself wide to him, not a modest blush to be seen anywhere.

Save mayhap between her splayed thighs. Her rosebud wore a fetching blush, but not of chastity. Of pure excitement.

He touched her. Just the wet pubic lips. And her purred welcome was too much temptation to resist.

Whilst she squirmed, her bottom pumping, her buttocks clenching and unclenching, he made the trespass. One finger, then two went inside her channel.

Tight. No room for three fingers inside her unless he pushed.

He withdrew instead. Ignoring her petulant cry, he concentrated on her pleasure bud again, wooing it as a suitor might do.

He was not her suitor, nor would he ever answer to that romantic description. He was her harsh owner, her uncompromising warden, her cruel lord and dominant master. Yet why make this bad for her when, with a few strokes, he could make this good?

As he had done by the stream, he experimented. After determining which amount of pressure suited her best, he coolly applied it until her hips jerked with need and her moans turned to sobs.

She was about to find her release.

“Come into me, my lord,” she begged and grabbed at his shoulders again.

Spur considered her demand.

Verily, in his pursuit of carnality, he encountered no virgins. When Talon and he sported in bed, they concentrated on widows, sophisticated ladies who gravitated toward the same sorts of games he and his brother favored. Even with those partners, though, the play was dismally circumspect. And now this maiden, an imprudent young female, had landed in his lap. He had never known sexually adventurous maidens like her existed. After all, maidens guarded their innocence. Loss of a hymen meant loss of marital prospects, which ultimately meant a loss of protection and wealth. This held equally true for royal ladies as it did for peasant wenches. But this virgin rocked the bed with her enthusiasm, feverishly offering herself to him, with naught expected in return. Not even a bauble.

Discounting gossip and rumors, most fueled by him, few people had any legitimate knowledge of him. This was both an intentional shield and an intrinsic part of his temperament. It seemed reasonable to him that he could not protect others unless he first protected himself.

True intimacy was a powerful weapon. When employed against an adversary, intimacy could cut a man off at the knees. When employed against a friend, intimacy could crush a man on the spot. How would that serve anyone?

Better to be feared than beloved was his credo. He lived by those words. Save for his brother, he allowed no one into the tight and closed circle of his life.

His people called him a devil, but Spur understood himself to be an ordinary man, a sinner worse than some and better than most. The face he presented to the world was mostly facade, the rest fabrication, done to keep his fortress and populace safe. And thus far his brusque demeanor had succeeded.

Whilst other settlements crumbled to ash, his keep remained inviolate, the thorns surrounding him and his property protecting them both from the fate that had befallen Lord Harold. The baron had been a gregarious sort, a benign ruler respected by his people, and now those peasants he owned lay dead, their charred bones already feeding the dirt, his manor home gone the way of a pleasant dream, a lost relic of sleep.

As Spur took his prisoner’s agitated sobs into his mouth, he vowed that would not happen to him or his property.

This virgin who tugged at him to do her bidding was a part of that property, a recent acquisition, a female who seemed oblivious to his thorns, who feared him naught. Or at least not in the way he was accustomed to being feared.

By right, he should have provoked terror in her, and here he was the one in grave peril. And Christ help him, though everything inside him told him to keep away from her, that this young female presented a substantial threat to him, he had not the strength to withstand her pull. Though he promoted himself to others as an uncompromising, even brutal warrior, to her he was bending like a blade of grass.

Naturally, knowing she would recall none of this come morn greatly helped in his capitulation. Her lack of recollection saved his pride. His reputation. And most probably, his royal arse. Regardless of her innocence in treachery, she was still guilty of being female, and he trusted that gender not at all.

Still, his capitulation came humiliatingly easy. There was no jaw gritting. No grinding of teeth. No agonizing over his spinelessness. He simply conceded to her. Virtually held up a white flag of defeat and surrendered.

Allowing her to assume the lead, he went to her without protest. When she drew him more closely to her, cradling his hard body in the soft hollow of hers, he poured himself over her, conforming his large man’s proportions to the dainty shape of hers. Right from the onset, she had aroused his passions. Anger first, a need to possess second, and now this.

What was this?

Refusing to put a name to this madness, he touched his forehead to hers and asked, “Are you entirely sure?”

“Aye, my lord. Very sure. Greedily sure.” She reached for his cock, and he trembled. She brought him to her inlet, and he shook. She led him inside, only that first little bit, the head barely delving, and he convulsed, very nearly climaxed.

He held still. Torture! Still—he was used to physical discomfort, and he made no move, gave no twitch, pleasured by the snug fit of her passage surrounding him, enclosing him, yielding.

Ha! He was the one yielding here—to her.

“Kiss me again, my lord, only harder this time. Bruise my mouth with your force.”

She insisted, demanded, and he complied, bearing down on her lips like a man crazed.

No matter, he reminded himself once again, there was no loss of face here. On the morrow, she would recall none of what had transpired here tonight. She could pull him about by a ring in his nose, and she would remember none of it. For once, he could be at his ease, completely himself, without fear of reprisal. Show a soft side, just once, only once, and he would leave himself open to future attack. All rumors, both founded and unfounded, must start somewhere—a friend, a confidante…a lover.

Her.

The risk was too great to take a chance. Too many lives were at stake to allow her to see inside him, to know the man behind the warrior’s helm.

But that risk applied only to the morrow. Tonight, no risk existed.

When her body impelled him on, her cunt contracting, pulsating around the head of his cock, he slipped deeper into her clasp, still kissing her.

And groaned, low and hoarse, in his throat.

So bloody good.

The Devil was about to sink into paradise, a fertile and welcoming Eden made just for him. Seemingly preordained to always come in second, he was about to come in first place here.

With her.

Whilst she would have no recollection of her virgin time with him.

He pulled up short. Before he thrust, before he made the first upward stroke, indeed, before he had engaged her completely, he withdrew.

She cried out to him, bitter disappointment written on her face. “Nay, my lord, do not forsake me.”

“I have not,” he replied, seeking to reassure her.

But there was no persuading her otherwise. As he took his cock in hand and began the familiar milking, her bereft sobs filled the chamber.

Chapter Eight

Sometime
later Mitri awakened
somewhere.

A storage chamber of some sort was the best she could do to pinpoint her present location. Sunlight streamed through the corner arrow loop and bounced off the lime-washed rocks, telling her dawn had broken. Was it the next day, the day following her narrow avoidance of rape, the day after her whole world had turned upside down?

She had no way of knowing. The last memory to float across her foggy mind was of a gruff voice telling her to close her eyes and sleep.

Unbelievably, she must have done so.

How she had gotten a wink of rest whilst seated half-naked on a ferocious warhorse, with an equally ferocious warrior at her back, his muscled arm clamped around her middle, was beyond her. But she had, and here she was now, alive and seemingly well rested—

But where?

She came up on her elbows and looked around her environs.

Evidently the nobleman had kept his word and taken her back with him to his keep.

The chamber was small, but larger than her whole cottage had been…before mercenaries burned the only home she had ever known to the ground.

With a determined toss of her head, she shook the sadness away.

That was enough of that. No giving in, no feeling defeated. No surrender! She refused to dwell on her loss.

Or the past.

The past was in the past and best forgotten. Or at least put away for a time. Someday, mayhap, when she regained her strength, she would allow herself to recall the good memories. All that mattered now was her sister’s safety.

And moving forward with her own life.

Free from the familial bonds of loyalty and love that had kept them together like two peas in a pod, her sister and she would strike out on their own to each make their individual ways in the world.

A frightening thought.

And one she swiftly culled.

The truth she had to face was this: Ysenda had never needed her; ’twas always the other way round. From now on, Mitri would look after herself. No more dependence on her elder sister. The first step was to look to the future.

The warrior who had taken her here was her future.

Removed from all reminders of her former placid existence, Mitri would have to begin anew.

With him.

What other choice did she have but to start all over again?

Blessed Virgin, life only moved in one direction; that direction led ahead. In the space of one day, her life had irreparably altered. For now, she must stay here, a prisoner, under the nobleman’s custody. The trick was to convince him of her innocence in treason
before
he had her beheaded.

Some trick. More like magic.

The warrior was suspicious of everything she said and did. And why would he not, after leading him to believe she knew the mercenary leader in the biblical sense of the word?

Now she must undo the damage she had done herself. But how?

A spate of restlessness had her shifting on the mattress. In her disquiet, she swallowed convulsively.

Ack! That hurt! Upon recalling why, she bit her lip.

Ack! That hurt too! And this time, she had no recollection as to why.

Nonplussed, she tentatively stroked a finger along the seam of her mouth.

Her brow puckered. What was this? Her lips were tender. Bruised. Swollen! As if from the hard, possessive pressure of a man’s kiss.

Had the liege lord plied his mouth to hers whilst she slept?

Rather than become indignant over a kiss stolen during her slumber—no less than a breach of her privacy when she was at her most vulnerable—her lack of awareness filled her with remorse.

She had missed it!

If the achy, bruised, and swollen tenderness told her true, the kiss was no light feathering, either. No inconsequential brushing of his mouth on hers. The kiss had to have been a passionate one to hurt so now.

The implications were far-reaching and boded well for her future. A stolen kiss meant the nobleman was taken with her. Absolutely smitten. Head over heels in lust.

She grinned.

For all of a heartbeat. Then, her smile collapsed in on itself under the weight of improbability.

Her ponderings could be no more than wishful thinking. Fanciful daydreaming at best. Difficult to fathom the same emotionless warrior who had searched her body cavities for weaponry, the one who had threatened to turn her over to the next group of outlaws who besieged them, being smitten. Lust might compel him to rape her, but kiss her?

Unlikely.

Though—after she had pleasured him with her mouth, he had kissed her then.

True. But once sampled, why kiss her lips a second time?

Laughable to believe he would. The warrior was all about force, all about conquering, all about victory…all about mastery. He was not about romantic kisses stolen from her whilst she slept.

Whereas she was all about the practical matter of staying alive and mayhap finding some fleeting happiness along the way.

She no longer gave any credence to the forever after sort of happiness, the sort of glowing contentment her parents had enjoyed throughout their days. The anarchy had smashed such naive daydreams. And not only for her—for most people in the land.

But like a starving street urchin who expects no invitation to a feast, she would grab at whatever morsels remained on the trestle table after the banquet was done. Could the brutal warrior be her crumb of
temporary
happiness?

Mayhap. So long as she first changed his mind about her complicity in treason.

Time would tell the tale, she mused, tracing the contours of her body over her fur covering.

Ack! That hurt!

Obviously more than her mouth had received a bruising during her slumber.

Beneath the fox pelt, she wiggled her hips.

My, but her bottom smarted.

Without question, she was woozy. But despite her dimwittedness, she pieced together the cause of her complaining bottom. Her warden had taken a strap to her, beaten her soundly with the leather, five lashes across the fullness of her buttocks.

His tyranny had not surprised her in the least. What shocked her to her core was her reaction to his high-handedness. Rather than send her retreating into her usual timidity, his punishment had provoked within her a gnawing, an emptiness, a neediness pleading to be filled. She had yearned for more of the same sort of treatment.

Gnawing, empty, needy still, she parted her thighs.

And grimaced.

What was that
twinge
, a particularly distinctive female throbbing?

Had he rutted on her?

Up until yesterday, she had lived a pious life—apart from her foray into self-pleasuring—and now anarchy in the country had catapulted her into a situation over which she had no control.

Control now was naught but a mirage. She had no control over what the lord decided to believe her guilty of, and she knew of no way to convince him of her innocence. She might just as well try to talk the devil into performing a good deed as talk him into freeing her from imprisonment.

In a fit of nerves, she dropped her feet to the rush-covered floor. Holding the fur pelt about her for modesty sake, she raced for the portal. Escape was the only solution.

When the portal refused to open, despite her determined efforts, she cried, “A pig’s arse!”

After uttering the profanity, she gasped, then covered her mouth.

What had come over her? Never did she succumb to irreverence!

Then again, no one had ever locked her inside a chamber before, with the entrance barred and most likely with a guard posted outside.

Wherever she was, this place was her prison cell, the nobleman her warden. If she did not prove her innocence, she would be sentenced for treason.

She looked around for another means of escape, any means of escape.

Mayhap she could fling herself out the arrow loop, the corner one, the one with the light streaming through. The opening in the stone wall was long and narrow, a good fit as she was long and narrow too. ’Twas worth a broken bone or two to avoid execution.

Her warden had destroyed her garb, and that left her naught else to wear. Draped in her fur cover, she set out for the arrow loop. Two steps later, a tug at her throat brought her flight to a standstill.

The leather collar.

So accustomed had she become to the choker, she had forgotten ’twas even there.

She remembered the abomination now—though the chain was a new addition and most likely installed during her slumber. The leather leash had been so much softer. Now that she was conscious of it, every jarring strike of metal against the stone floor set her teeth on edge; every clink of the interlocked loops chafed her bare flesh.

She supposed she should be grateful the overlord had not thrown her into the dungeon with the rats, a damp domain where darkness ruled. What would she ever do if he sent her down there?

A shudder racked her from head to foot. Everyone knew the dungeon was a place of no return, a death sentence to be avoided at all costs.

But how?

She touched her bruised lips again, spanned her fingers over her hurting bottom beneath the fur, swallowed her fear as she had swallowed the warrior’s seed down her throat.

She would avoid the dungeon by doing whatever it took, including doing her warden’s bidding, a bidding that, up until this very moment, had excited her rather than frightened her, carnally provoked her rather than terrified her.

Regardless of how justified, the first step was to let go of her fear. A sniffling female made for a woeful seductress. The second step called for tidying her appearance. A slattern repulsed, not attracted. Her swim in the stream had bathed all the soot and ash away, but lying in the mud at the nobleman’s boots had soiled her all over again. How filthy was she?

She parted the edges of the fur. For the first time since awakening, she glanced down at her naked body.

Her pubic hair looked sticky. The same sort of dried stickiness coated her breasts too. She touched a hand behind her.

Saints have mercy! Her bottom carried evidence of the same stickiness.

Seed?

Seed!

Someone had indeed penetrated her. Penetrated and ejaculated! How else to explain the telltale signs of a man’s slaked lust? Who had coupled on her whilst she slept?

Who else?

Him
. Her warden.

Fury raged inside her. There was no containing her anger. She fair burst with wounded indignation.

The royal devil had taken advantage of her in the most callous of ways. He had misused, then discarded her like a scrap of sullied linen, in a strange bed, in a strange chamber, in a strange place.

Humiliation, violation—rage—flashed through her like a wildfire.

Just as the portal slowly opened and a familiar boot crossed the stone threshold.

Not a good time for
him
to visit. Not a good time at all. As the royal swine would soon find out.

Caring not about the future or her need to impress him with her innocence in treason, she held the fur closed around her with one hand and used her free hand to pick up the first object she could find—a horn comb lying on a nearby chest, one of many such trinkets strewn on top.

She flung it at the devil’s handsome head as he entered her cell.

Never, not in all her born days, had she ever done such a thing.

What she had been missing! Venting her spleen felt splendid.

For all of a heartbeat.

Curses! The first time she ever let loose and what happens? Her free arm wobbles, and her pitch misses her intended target.

Mitri straightened her slumped shoulders. So she had missed the object of her fury the first time. No matter. There were more objects to throw where that horn comb came from.

“Take that, you rotter,” she screamed and let another trinket fly. And then another. Then another after that. Each one bouncing off the far wall.

She had been unable to cry when her little cottage burned to the ground, but she could easily flood the chamber with her tears now. Damn faulty aim!

Now, Ysenda was an altogether different story. Her aim had always been true. At thirty paces, she could hit a moving target with a stone. With a quiver strapped to her back, she was a terror with a bow and arrow. Many a time, they might have starved if not for her skill as a hunter. Oh, to be more like her sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, courageous older sister.

Knowing she had not a chance of hitting her warden, Mitri listlessly picked the next object up off the chest, a shiny shell-like trinket, and flung it willy-nilly.