The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales)

by Trent, Louisa

  The overlord was solid in body and taller than most men in stature. He had lived a warrior’s life, and it showed in every rippled muscle and bulky sinew. His substantial weight flattened her beneath him, his enormous arms held her there. But his size did not intimidate her. His force did not threaten her. For he had given her the gift of freedom. Her ability to stay or go as she saw fit lent her power here.

  Apart from all that, why would he purposefully suffocate her?

  Killing her seemed hardly worth the effort. She was just a whore to him, a common prostitute, expendable and replaceable.

  Nay, he would not intentionally squeeze her to death, but as he covered her body with his, his hands clasped to her skull like a vise, her hair held taut by his thick fingers, it became abundantly clear that his approach to coupling was not solicitous, not in any way.

  Nor had she expected it to be.

  By her own doing, she had made herself his willing vessel, agreeable to any and all carnal acts. Far from finding any of this repugnant, she responded to his dominance as a plant too long kept in the shadows responds to the light.

  He was her sun.

  With some effort, she turned her face up to his heat, wordlessly inviting a kiss.

  And kiss her he did. No struggle for power accompanied the meeting of their mouths. There was no winning here, no losing. She simply surrendered to the hard press of his lips, the rough possession of his tongue. In return, he gave her his passion.

  He was the one to break them apart to look deeply into her face again, done as he dropped his hold on her skull and hiked her arms above her head, the thick fingers of one hand now encircling her wrists like a bracelet. Or more aptly, like a prisoner’s manacle. Some guest of his she was!

  “Ready?” he asked.

  What a remarkable question. ’Twas just a single word, yet it spoke volumes. About them both. For she assumed he would simply dive in and plunder. After all, he thought her experienced. Yet he inquired over her preparedness. Surprise, surprise! The extent of his brutality was not nearly as great as he would have her believe. Or what she had anticipated.

  “Ready!” she said with gusto.

  Without further preliminaries, he eased himself into her slick passage.

  Easing was a bit of a challenge as he was wider than one of her erotic candles and just as long. Though she strove to accommodate his size, the task proved daunting.

  “Try taking a breath.”

  She blinked, shallowly panted, “Pardon?”

  “You are holding your breath. Let it go. In and out slowly, and I shall do the same.”

  She concentrated, but like ridding oneself of the hiccups, her starts and gasps refused to depart.

  “You feel good. Wet but tight,” he muttered.

  Good to know, she supposed.

  More carefully than she would have thought possible for such a large man, he made the penetration complete in small increments. Then he held still. Glancing down into her pain-widened eyes, he said softly, “My size is an adjustment.”

  “Evidently,” she whispered and shifted her position.

  The slight alteration had him groaning, “Do not wiggle like that. Another one will end this before you are pleasured.”

  Seeking a more comfortable housing of him, she tightened the interior muscles of her loins and then forced them to relax, a milking motion.

  ’Twas no use. There was no comfortable positioning to be found.

  She winced. “In this instance, methinks pleasure is too much to ask.”

  “Your opinion differs greatly from mine.” His face contorted. “Either I move or I withdraw.”

  “Move!” she ordered.

  He began a slow thrusting, followed by a quickened thrusting, followed by, merciful heavens, swift thrusts that seemed like jabs. After a few grunts into her neck, the moistness of his humid breathing collecting in the hollow, he ground himself into her and his cock expanded.

  To the girth of a tree trunk. Or what seemed nearly so.

  The pressure inside her proved almost unbearable. When she thought she could take no more, he went rigid and shouted “Ah” and exploded. A hot spray flooded her passage, and he pulled out of her as if an arrow had pierced his backside.

  He reared back onto his haunches. “Damnation. I lost control. Never should I have allowed that mistake to happen.”

  “Coupling with me was a mistake, my lord?”

  “Nay. Not the coupling. The spewing inside you. From such mistakes babes are born.”

  “A babe,” she cried, disregarding her hurt in wonderment.

  “I never needed to concern myself with a partner’s fertility before as my bedmates were older, well past the likelihood of conception. ’Tis different with you. ’Tis my responsibility to make sure you do not quicken, a responsibility I take seriously. You must understand I cannot make a babe with you, a common peasant.”

  Slamming her legs closed, she turned on her side and drew her knees to her chest. “I quite understand.”

  “Your huff tells me you do not. Listen well. We must both be reasonable here. You cannot raise a child on your own. And I am a royal with a duty to ensure his noble bloodline. Next time, I withdraw or we do things differently.” He smoothed his palm over her buttock.

  “My body is yours, my lord, to do with as you will. Take me any way you have a mind to, a method that will best avoid conception. A babe should have parents who love one another, as my parents loved one another.”

  “Sensible attitude.” He kissed her shoulder. “Sleep now.”

  And hearkening to his authority, she closed her eyes and did.

  Only to awaken later in a misery of sadness and fear. And loneliness. The loneliness closed in on her, smothered her. She missed her home. Her life!

  And to add insult to injury, ’twas dark. No candles glowed in mellow halos, no torches burned bright from sconces on the walls. Unable to help herself, she cried out, “My lord?”

  She knew she sounded pathetic, like a terrified child afeared of the dark, but she could no more help herself than she could wish herself to be strong and brave like her sister. She missed Ysenda so!

  As hot tears cascaded down her face in burning streams, she burrowed like a small animal under the pelts and shook with grief and longing, and fear too, for in the dark night, all those empty tomorrows stretched out formlessly before her. What did the future hold for her?

  Of a sudden, as she shook in wretched despair under the coverings, two large hands scooped her up and cuddled her next to blessed warmth.

  “My lord, is that you?”

  “Aye. Who else did you expect?”

  “I no longer know what to expect,” she blubbered. “I miss my former life, my little cottage. Everything. What will happen to me after you grow weary of me? Where will I go? I have never been anywhere.”

  “Hush.” He patted her shoulder in commiseration and then brushed her hair from her wet face. “Learn to please a man, and you will find someone to look after you, a new owner. Mayhap someday a wealthy merchant might even overlook your promiscuous past and wed you. Anything is possible.”

  “Even you seeing me as a woman first, not as a rank, not as a bloodline?” Sniffing hard, she shook her head woefully. “Nay, make me no response. Do not attempt to answer. Your position is abundantly clear.” She paused. “May I speak from the heart, my lord?”

  “You have my permission. And please do, always, and without fear of reprisal,” he said gallantly.

  Strangely, she believed him and so spoke freely, though what she had to say was not at all complimentary. “I grieve for your inflexibility and intolerance, for you limit yourself most cruelly with your narrow point of view of serfs. I do, however, thank you for your honesty. I shall return the favor by being honest in kind. I have no interest in wealthy merchants. Putting aside my own inflexibility and intolerance toward nobility, I find I want only you.”

  Heedless of her nudity, all pride forsaken, she shook off her fur pelt cover and ca
me up onto her knees. Wrapping her arms around him, she kissed him. As the embrace lengthened and deepened, she deliberately rubbed her elongated nipples, hard and achy, against the wall of his bare chest.

  He put her away from him, held her away from him. The intensity of his scrutiny heated her flesh.

  “What is this?” he said.

  “You came to my side in my distress. You comforted me. I thought only to repay you in kind.”

  “Fine. If this is about payment, then I will take more than a kiss.”

  The ropes under the cot squeaked as he left the tick. She called achingly after him, “Please stay.”

  In the darkness, a single taper flared. “Make the staying worth my while.”

  The fur had been a lump on her lap. She removed the pelt entirely and spread her thighs.

  He wore braies, but his arousal was readily apparent even in the dimly lit chamber.

  “You desire me again,” she whispered. Her tears had fled and dried, but she was still wet.

  Down below.

  Could he see the evidence of her shameful lust?

  He approached the bed. His gaze on the uptilted crowns of her breasts, he reached for the slit between her thighs and fingered her.

  She bolted up, her spine straightening. “Ah aye. Your touch sets me afire.”

  “But this is about me. About your making my stay worthwhile.”

  “How?” she asked on a sigh.

  “A back to front entry,” he said coolly. “Be my fleecy ewe.”

  This time, ’twas her own blush that set her afire. “’Tis bestial.”

  “Aye.”

  “Need I baa and bleat too?”

  “Not necessarily, though you may if you like.”

  “Baa, baa. I like everything about being with you.”

  “Seeing is believing. Show me.”

  He expected her to perform like a whore?

  Evidently. And so she would. Rubbing her nipples across his chest had worked, and she would just need to be creative. She wanted him to stay! If behaving like a whore was what his staying required, she would behave like a whore.

  When he removed his hand from between her splayed thighs, she shook out her hair until the disordered strands fell forward to cover her face. Then she turned around and went to all fours on the bed…and wiggled her bottom.

  “Fill me, my lord. Take me like a sheep. Rut on me until it pleases you to stop. I shan’t ever tell you to quit.”

  The tick sagged as he took a position behind her. His big, hot palms moved all over her naked flesh, smoothing along her sides, the long and thick fingers reaching under her arms to flick across her tight nipples.

  “You madden me,” he growled into her ear. “Madden me as I have never been maddened before, for all that you are using a whore’s tricks.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed so no new salty seepage leaked out.

  ’Twas not what a recent maiden longs to hear falling from the lips of her first and only lover, but in the dead of night, when she was alone and uncertain, his gruff voice, his calloused hands allayed her fears. He clasped her firmly around the waist, his grip on her tight, so tight that had she changed her mind about the bestial engagement, she would not have been able to slip his hold.

  This was use. Hard use. She knew it to be so and tried neither to defend it nor pretty it with romance. In fact, she said what this was as baldly as any sailor might: “Master me. Make the fuck last.”

  Even so, she was no whore, far from it, and the rough back-to-front entry took some getting used to.

  As did his eagerness. She had not expected the depth of his hunger for a woman.

  Not her. He could not possibly want her. Any woman. His eagerness coated the sting of his penetration with honey, making the hard breach less a violation, less a trespass.

  What was it?

  Aye, ’twas a fuck, and a randy one at that, though she had little experience with which to judge between a randy one and one that was not. Whatever ’twas, of this she was certain.

  ’Twas not love. Certainly not love. But as he hammered up into her passage, her pliant body responded to the pain in a way it never would have done to kindness.

  She lost sight of how long it went on, but the single candle burned out, and it—the fuck—went on in the darkness until she was screaming out one release after another.

  The hurt was so good. The hurt reminded her that she would do what she must, whatever she must, to survive.

  When he finally pulled out to spend his seed, a shallow penetration between her buttocks where the ejaculate would produce no babe, his withdrawal left her alone and empty.

  *

  To prove to himself he still could, that his obsession with her had not gone entirely out of bounds, Spur allowed Mitri to sleep for a time before awakening her for more of the same. She was all tuckered out, his sweet consort.

  Consort.

  As he skimmed her hip with a light touch, his fingers softly gliding to her pubic bone, he pondered the meaning of how readily he had grown accustomed to the idea of having a consort. A startling turnabout for him to have a mistress when a single night was as long as he ever stayed in any one woman’s bed. And yet in this ugly, narrow cot with her seemed like an agreeable place for him to remain.

  Not forever. Certainly not so long as all that. But for a time of unspecified duration. He would place no boundaries on their relationship, but let events unfold naturally, as they would.

  He grinned as a new thought drifted into his mind.

  Talon would be shocked to hear he had found himself a mistress, a female not of their peerage. Keeping her defied every rule he had ever set for himself. Yet keep her he would, for he could not bring himself to let her go.

  Yet.

  Before dawn, his gentle strokes turned feverish, his cock grew uncomfortably hard, his stones heavy and tight. In a fit of passion, he lifted her hair and nuzzled the back of her bared neck. When that failed to rouse her, his need grew more urgent. He would not be thwarted!

  She was lying on her side before him, stretching languidly. He cupped her breast, his fingers biting into the silken flesh, and the disconcertingly hard nipple stabbed his palm.

  “My lord, what is your pleasure?” she asked sleepily.

  “You. Again. Just as you are, warm and pliable and drowsy with sleep.”

  “How? You have only to tell me…”

  His hand did his speaking. He hiked up her knee and led his cock to her from the rear.

  She giggled. “Am I never to see your face again during moments of intimacy, my lord?”

  He nibbled her shoulder. “I ’spect not. This approach makes a timely withdrawal easier. And more certain. As another incentive, I can delve you deeper,” he said and did.

  She strained back against him. “Oh my—”

  “See?” he countered and thrust full-on.

  At her pleasured gasp, he went into her hard and fast, the intercourse unprotested by her.

  Not then.

  Not later. And not later again, when he rolled her to her belly.

  He had her multiple times. And why not? After all, had she not told him: “Fill me, my lord. Take me like a sheep. Rut on me until it pleases you to stop. I shan’t ever tell you to quit.”

  He took her at her word.

  As she never once told him she could take no more, he filled her until duties forced him away.

  Chapter Twelve

  The following afternoon, Spur paced the outer courtyard but a few short steps removed from a private gate cut into the high stone wall that surrounded his keep.

  Not planning to venture far, he had dispensed with his metal helm and nose guard as well as his heavy chain mail in favor of lightweight leather armor. As always, his sword and dagger remained within easy reach sheathed at his side. As he stomped back and forth in the dirt, he raked a hand through his recently shorn hair, the bowl cut compliments of Nym, as were his newly cleaned and buffed boots. Unfortunately the latter now sported a
film of gritty dust from his impatient back and forth strides.

  Belatedly he realized ’twas impolitic to chance having others observe his harried state—devils were not subject to distress—and his circling came to an abrupt end. His pose a pretense of nonchalance, he narrowed his far-reaching warrior’s gaze to the Great Hall, the egress through which a certain tardy consort would travel to meet him.

  Where, by Christ’s bones, is she? And knowing her arrival was late, would she even hurry?

  Unlike himself, who had arrived humiliatingly early, she most probably would take her time.

  Since leaving her on the bed, he had been a tight ball of anticipation. All the day long, he had counted off the moments until he saw her again. Now he kicked himself for setting such a late hour for their tryst, an hour that arrived too slowly for his peace of mind.

  His own damnable fault. A prideful unwillingness to bend caused him to arrange their meeting to take place directly before the bell rang for vespers.

  Not wishing to appear anxious to see her again, which he most assuredly was, he had purposefully not stopped by to visit with her earlier, a deliberate avoidance on his part. Instead he had spent the day as cross as a wolf with a lance shoved up its arse, hissing and snarling at anyone who dared draw nigh. Now, fidgeting, unable to stand still longer than a trice, he awaited the attendance of his lady.

  Wait! She was not a lady. And certainly she was not his lady. That such an absurdity had gained a toehold in his thoughts hit him like a battering ram.

  His consort was a peasant. A common serf. A whore, for all that she looked as far removed from that lowly status as dirt did from the stars as she walked briskly to meet him.

  She wore one of the bliauts he’d had Nym deliver—after she had broken her fast. In light of what he had demanded of her the previous eve, sustenance took precedence over wardrobe. The magenta gown’s sleeves fit snuggly from shoulder to elbow, and then belled out from there to the ground. Unlike a serf’s wool kirtle, this garb was made of the finest silk.

  Better she make use of the garb than have it take up room in a storage chest as it had done for the last ten years. The bliauts had been made for his affianced, a lady who had killed herself rather than go through with their wedding vows. His thorny reputation, he presumed, had frightened her to death.