The Queen's Bastard (28 page)

Hope flared in his eyes, so bright it made her laugh again, breathless. She shifted her shoulders, letting her dressing robe fall loose, so that only her arms, pressed to mound her breasts as she drew Marius with her, kept it in place. His gaze dropped to the soft flesh she displayed, arrested by it. “Lady Beatrice.” His voice was thick, tongue clumsy with desire. “I would not have imagined you so…” He swallowed, unable to find the word.

Belinda wet her lips, walking carefully up the stairs, each step taken backward so Marius kept his eyes on her body. “So wanton, my lord?” Her own voice was hoarse, more artifice than desire, hiding laughter instead of showing need. “I said my husband was old, not well suited for pleasing a young woman. I did not say he was…unimaginative. He had a young wife, and certain…desires to play out.” Laying the blame on a man who’d never existed, making him cruel and hard and creative, made it too easy to blur the line between herself and the role she played. Too easy, but necessary: Beatrice should never have Belinda’s expertise, not without an excuse that a young man, half in love with the idea of rescuing a lonely widow, could accept. “Let me show you how I can ease your need.”

She knocked her bedroom door open with her hip as she spoke, Marius fixated on her until Nina’s shrill scream broke through the gag as a pathetic, high sound. She twisted on the bed, hands knotted, hips raised as she struggled against her bonds and only tightened them with her efforts. A blush scarred Marius’s cheeks, his gaze torn between Belinda and the writhing, bound girl on the bed. “You have admired her, have you not?” Belinda whispered. “She has known a man’s touch before. Take your pleasure from her, and think of me.”

Nina screamed again, bucking and flinging herself against the bed. Marius flinched, his colour still high, and spoke with no conviction: “She does not want me.”

Belinda released his hands, letting her robe flutter around her as she went to the bed. “She will,” she promised, confidence burning inside her. More than confidence: a drive to prove herself, to explore, to control; all things lying outside Belinda’s sense of self, lying beyond her long-imposed stillness. There were reasons to draw back, reasons that seemed far away and faded behind a wall of golden fire. It was without hesitation that Belinda sat at Nina’s side, stroking her hand down the younger woman’s belly as she repeated, “She will.”

Nina shrieked again, spitting a curse that spilled new tears from her eyes and turned to dry sobs inside a breath. Belinda leaned down, kissing tears away and touching Nina’s breasts. She could taste her servant’s thoughts if she wanted to, helpless repetitions of resignation struggling with the need to defend her own honour, discomfort at the erotic potential of her mistress’s touch, a horrifying acquiescence that hungered for more. “Nina.” Belinda whispered the name, taking her hands away and shifting to sit at the head of the bed, lifting Nina’s head into her lap. “Are you afraid, Nina?”

The girl nodded, dying hope coming into her eyes, into her thoughts. Perhaps her mistress would let her go from the nightmare she’d been brought into in the dark hours, if she admitted to her fear. Belinda’s soft smile made that hope blossom and Nina twisted, not in rebellion this time, but in supplication.
Love me, protect me, save me, I’ll do anything
spun through the desperate action and Belinda’s own body tightened with desire. “Do you want him to fuck you, Nina?”

Belinda felt hot tears spill along her own temples, felt the tension in Nina’s neck as the girl shook her head frantically. Another smile curved Belinda’s lips, offering another shard of cruel hope to her serving girl. Power sang through her, encouraging, dominating, and Belinda leaned closer to whisper against Nina’s ear. “Do you feel any desire now, Nina?”

Nina shook her head again, coldness in her body and thoughts telling Belinda the answer was true. The witchpower needed no gathering: it was there, golden and heavy, exploring the nuances of Nina’s emotions. It heated and shot a throb of need into Nina along thin tendrils of connection, so sharp and unexpected that even Belinda gasped with it, uncertain if it had been her own choice to fill Nina with aching want. Belinda knew that aspect of desire all too well, memories of a lifetime’s training at learned arousal in a submissive position rising, then spilling into Nina. Caught by her own lust and the witchpower’s strength, Belinda focused on the ache in her own body and the heat of need climbing in her.

Nina gasped, eyes unfocused. Her hips relaxed, then lifted in a different way. Her nipples hardened under the onslaught of desires chosen for her, and triumph blossomed in Belinda’s breast. Hungry with the ability to do so, she sent shame through the witchpower, and watched tears fill Nina’s eyes again, even as she whimpered behind her gag and pressed her knees apart. Emotion washed back to Belinda, need rising until it hurt coupled with Nina’s humiliation at her body’s sudden betrayal. Belinda let the shame go, replacing it with rage. Nina vaulted upward as best she could, straining and twisting, cords standing in her neck as she screamed deep, raw sounds of fury against her gag. Belinda fed that, her own breathing growing ragged, until Nina’s eyes were shot with blood from the force of her protests and sweat soaked her body. Belinda sensed, more than saw, Marius hovering a few feet away, too taken with the sights to retreat and utterly uncertain of his place there. Nina’s diametric changes in emotion excited him beyond his comprehension, as did the girl’s dark head in Belinda’s lap.

“Is that better?” Belinda whispered the question over Nina’s hair as she released the rage. “Have you fought enough, love? Do you think we believe your anger?” Sensuality bred from exhaustion slipped in with the words, slow need throbbing again. Nina turned her head, whimpering as her body betrayed her again, and finally her gaze came to Marius. He took a rough step forward and she moaned behind her gag, lifting her hips. “Touch her,” Belinda commanded, and he put his hand between the girl’s legs as if Belinda manipulated his desires as well. Nina sobbed and Belinda flooded her with the impulse to submit and offer herself to the merchant youth. She accepted it, spreading her already-wide legs and pleading with her captured voice and eyes. A curve slipped over Belinda’s mouth: she had no sense of Nina believing her emotions and needs were anything but her own, betraying as they might be. A servant girl was an easy target, bearing nothing like the will of a prince or queen, but it could be done. Her gift extended that far.

Belinda looked up, a smile still playing her lips. Marius was trembling, his hand sealing the heat between Nina’s thighs. “Do you wish to be cruel to her, m’sieur? As I was to you?”

A flash of heat scored off him, then faded as he shook his head, uncertain of which woman to look at. Without touching him, Belinda couldn’t know his thoughts, but the emotion that poured from him said despite the momentary impulse, his better nature was true. That he wanted the helpless servant was unquestionable, but he had no need to do her brutally. Belinda pulled her lower lip into her teeth, watching the youth with dark eyes, and sought out that instant of spitefulness that had sparked through him.

It was there, buried beneath an overwhelming eroticism at the strength Belinda had shown the night before. He was a man; he did not think of himself as submissive, and yet he’d given her his throat and, mortifyingly, his arse, and liked it all. Belinda grasped that moment of humiliation and played it forward, making it larger than it had been; making him think on and remember it, when he preferred to put it away.

There was a woman here who could not resist him, Belinda whispered into that sliver of embarrassment. A woman who could not use him the way he’d been used. A woman to regain his manhood through, a woman to dominate and show his strength to. She would not dare laugh at him as Beatrice had seemed to, or would she? Was that amusement in her wide eyes now, recognizing that he’d been taken by a woman? Was she gagged to stop her laughter, those sounds in her throat not need or fear or desire, but mocking?

Marius curled his lip, hand twisting at Nina’s crotch to slam soaking fingers inside her. She cried out behind her gag and Marius’s eyes darkened further, free hand fumbling at his leggings to loosen them. Belinda’s heart raced, lip caught in her teeth as she leaned in, unable to stop herself from encouraging his building outrage with her own body language. Her breasts spilled forward, close to Nina’s face, and she felt a spike surge through the man, as his imagination had the servant suckle the mistress.

Belinda nearly laughed with split concentration, feeding enough of her own raw want to Nina to keep the girl on the agonizing edge of fear and desire. At the same time she drew on Marius’s barely acknowledged desire for domination, turning it and feeding it into anger that it had happened. He closed his hand over Nina’s throat and replaced his fingers within her with his cock, a hard claiming that pulled a raw gasp of pleasure from Belinda. Nina cried out in bewildered pain and Marius tightened his hand at her throat, every struggle she made pushing him deeper into the violence Belinda had called up in him. She laughed, rocking her own hips forward with enthusiasm, floating on physical and emotional links to the two she had made unwilling lovers.

It was
easy.
Too easy, perhaps; sex and passion were easily built upon, the mortal weakness for pleasure. So easy she’d become lost in it, letting newfound power stretch and explore even beyond what she would have thought to be her own limits.

Beneath lust, beneath desire brought to the boiling point, the thought that the witchpower was controlling her made a cool angry place inside her. Whether it did, whether it could, she would not allow it to happen freely. Belinda licked a hungry tongue over her lips, rolling with the need that built between Nina and Marius until it lay so close to completion it seemed nothing could stop it.

She threw her head back and with all deliberate cruelty, as much to herself as to the bespelled pair beneath her, called the stillness. Proving to herself that she
could
. The witchpower was second to the stillness. It had to be, even if it could burn away that recollection with passion. It had controlled her. Now she must control it.

Stillness swept over her, a lifetime’s practise stronger than any desire she had ever known. She distanced herself from the passion that wet her thighs, slowed her heartbeat and ignored the pain nipping at her breasts until it was gone.

Marius, unprepared for sudden flaccidity, croaked in disbelief, all his desire for violence, for sensuality, drowned as thoroughly in Belinda’s calm as it had been built by her witchpower. Nina cried out again, dismay at the cessation of emotion; Belinda had not even left her her own dismay and fear at what she’d been brought in to. There was nothing left for either of them, no climax, no pleasure, so cold and wrapped in the survival trait Belinda had developed for herself were they.

Passion was easy. Cutting its throat was power, and that power lay in the stillness, not the witch-magic itself. Relief trembled deep inside her, that even lost in pounding want, she could bring herself back under rein. Belinda rose from the bed a paragon of tranquility, dressing gown gathered around her breasts and leaving her shoulders bared. Marius lifted his head, face twisted with befuddlement, and she touched his cheek, heartbeat slow through years of training. “Finish her while I dress, my love.”

Not quite trusting her now-silent witchpower, Belinda released her hold on the lovers, leaving them nothing but their own emotions, Nina’s fear and Marius’s bewilderment. The young man scrambled away from the servant girl as Belinda left the bedroom, wrapped in carefully held stillness.

“I’m doing this for Jav.” Eliza thrust her jaw out with the words, laying them flat between herself and Belinda. Belinda dropped her eyes, letting Beatrice’s easy smile quirk her lips.

“So am I.” She lifted her gaze, meeting Eliza’s evenly. “With that in mind, we might make the best of it.” Marius, flushed and flustered, had left before the noon bells had tolled. Belinda had climbed the stairs, skirts gathered and curiosity high in her mind, to investigate what he had left behind.

Nina, exhausted, confused, blushing to the tops of her breasts, had been left curled on her side, bindings released to let the girl huddle around herself, small and afraid. Surprise had wrinkled Belinda’s forehead. She would have taken the order brutally, the finish she demanded was one the pretty serving girl would never wake from. But that was her training, her expectation, and her cold way of facing the world. Marius was, at his core, a kind man; if Belinda had doubted it before, she no longer did. Left with a living, breathing, blushing girl, she’d bathed Nina herself, finding herself unaccustomed to the gentleness she felt at doing so. She liked the girl, and if Nina were to live, then best to do right by her, as much as could be done.

Nina had been calm when the bath ended, able to meet her mistress’s eyes. Whether a need to survive overcame humiliation or whether Belinda’s careful attempts to alter the girl’s memories were successful, Belinda was unsure. If her ministrations had worked, Nina’s night had been spent in Beatrice’s bed, indeed, against the cold and a fire that had burned out without new wood to feed it. Belinda told herself there was nothing of soft-heartedness in trying to rebuild the girl’s thoughts, only a test to see whether she was able, but a thread of unusual guilt ran beneath the experiment. She had been roughly used often enough to wish the edge could be blunted, and she’d been trained for it. Nina had found herself caught in a web she had no chance of understanding, and it brooked unexpected sympathy within Belinda’s heart.

She’d offered Nina a length of cloth to dry herself with, deliberately brushing her hand over the girl’s naked breast. Nina had squeaked, a small sound of startlement that flooded Belinda with the same innocent confusion and desire that a similar touch had once brought, and Belinda had been satisfied with her investigation. Nina had been set to airing a room for Eliza, putting out bedding and wall hangings of equal quality to the ones in Belinda’s rooms, and Belinda had gone to await her new housemate.