by Joey W. Hill
Inside the fortress his love built around her.
“You’re still shaking, my love. That tells me you gave me more than your body, for your climax is done.”
She said nothing, but he didn’t expect her to do so. After a climax that intense, she was a quiet submissive. He didn’t need to talk; just hold her.
He took his boot off the tether and turned her in his arms, the small bells on the wrist jesses making a pleasing muted chime. She latched onto the front of his shirt, pushing against it with the heels of her hands. She wasn’t trying to push him away. She was pushing upward, moving the fabric, an unspoken request. He took it off, and she put her palms flat on his chest, the side of her face against his heart.
The brown-feathered, tufted plume of the mask quivered, teasing his jaw. He felt the tiny bite of the decorative chains, scalloped along the bottom edge of the hood. Their drape over her cheek was interfering with what she wanted as she pressed that part of her to his heated flesh. But he would deny her wishes until he was certain he’d won her complete submission. A slave’s obedience and a queen’s heart. A falcon wasn’t freed until it was certain that she’d return to her Master’s hand.
Though he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her, he would care for her first.
“My falcon needs to eat and drink.” He touched the bell that would bring a slave girl. As she appeared at the opening to the tent, he sheltered Savannah in his arms. Though she couldn’t see, he didn’t want her to feel like anyone she didn’t know was staring at her, his proud queen.
“Food and drink,” he said. The woman bobbed her head and disappeared.
He rose, carrying his captive to the bed, and eased her onto the pillows. She was reviving, so he’d made a good call, leaving the hood upon her. As he put her on the bed, she tried to wriggle away from him, shrugging off his assistance in moving her.
“I obviously haven’t tired my slave out enough,” he observed coolly. “You’ll be put on a perch, to keep you from trying to leave the bed without my permission.”
There was a trunk at the end of the bed, and he left her on the mattress to go to it, keeping a sharp eye on her as he opened the chest and pulled out what he wanted.
When he closed his hand around her ankle, she tried to pull away, to kick, but he was putting up with none of that. He saw her lips part, a startled reaction at how quickly he overpowered her. Beneath the hood, he imagined her eyes might have widened, her pupils darkening.
“I’m bigger, my lady. In many ways. Save yourself the effort.”
Her lip curled in a new sneer, and she chose a different tactic. Her demeanor became haughty, her limbs rigid, as he positioned the spreader bar between her ankles and strapped the cuffs on either end of the bar around them. The bar was telescoping, so he slid it out another six inches and locked it there. He noted how the tip of her tongue touched her lips in anxious and intrigued reaction as he forced her legs open even wider.
Returning to the bed, he put his knee on it so he could curve his arms under her and lift her body into a more upright position against the pillows. He untangled the jesses so her wrists were free of one another. Then he bent her upper body toward her knees with a hand on her nape, a non-verbal command to stay folded forward that way.
But when he slid his hands down her arms and began to pull them behind her, she stiffened and tried to yank away. It didn’t alter his grip in the slightest, and he brought them behind her with a little more insistence, a reproving jerk.
“Are you looking for another beating, my lady?”
“Typical.” She sniffed. “A brute seeks capitulation with force and violence.”
“I see.” He released her wrists, putting his hands on her shoulders as he bent over her, spoke against her hair and the thin substance of the hood in a husky voice. “Should I do it like one of your pretty, fawning courtiers? Please put your arms behind you, my lady. I’m going to bind your wrists there.”
“You said you were going to give me food.”
“I am going to feed you. From my fingertips, same as I would my beloved falcon, to teach her who her Master is, who she can expect to care for her.”
“I’m not a child, incapable of feeding myself,” she said indignantly.
“You are most definitely not a child,” he observed, his eyes coursing down her back to her buttocks, pressed into the mattress. Her breasts hung full and tempting in her forward position. “Obey me and put your hands behind your back. Or you’ll earn another punishment. A worse one.”
Her mouth tightened mutinously. “Worse than taking my body against my will? I’m unimpressed. And owe you no obedience.”
“I would rethink that.” His tone laden with stern warning, he tightened his hands on her shoulders, bringing her up straight. Putting a firm hand to her chin, he brushed her lips, her jaw, with his thumb. “I have a device, a metal ring, that I’ll put inside your mouth. It will open your lips, stretch them wide, and keep me from the danger of your teeth. I’ll put you on your knees like a slave in truth and make you service my cock that way. Last time. Obey me. Give me your arms.”
Her jaw had tightened to the point of cracking. He wondered if she was going to test him that far, but then she tossed her head, a whatever, fuck you gesture that had him biting back a smile as she put her arms behind her back.
He ran his hands down her arms, indulging a squeeze over her wrists before he clipped the wrist cuffs to one another, wrapping the dangling jesses around them, under and over, to reinforce the binding.
He eased her back to the pillows, ensuring they supported her upper body and provided a yielding cushion for her cuffed wrists, so she wasn’t uncomfortable lying on them.
Rising from the bed, he stood at the end, studying his queen. With her legs spread wide on her “perch,” he had a perfect view of her still glistening pussy, the damp folds. Her arm bindings had the intended effect, lifting her breasts high before his appreciative gaze.
He returned to her side, stretching out on his hip next to her. As he stroked her breasts, she bit her lip again, her breath shortening in an absorbing way.
“Nothing to fear from being touched, my lady. Not by me. Especially when I’m touching something this magnificent.” He curved his fingers over them. Stroked, kneaded.
When he finally closed his fingers on the nipple and squeezed lightly, she arched up as if he’d bitten her in passion.
She’d climaxed not long ago, but he was pleased to see she was well on the path toward that cliff edge once more. He was still at the top himself, his aching cock ready for whatever he was going to do, and not being subtle about its frustration with his pace. He ignored it. He wanted to hear her begging again before he took her.
“When my child takes hold in your womb,” he observed, savoring how valiantly she struggled to stay quiet when he thumbed her nipples, “your breasts will get even fuller and heavier. I’ll suckle them, keep them bound in nothing but the lightest silks as you move around my palace, your ripe body mine to view as you swell with my child.”
“What if I get cold?” she managed.
His answer was simple. No need to use many words when a blunt, irrefutable statement would do.
“I’ll warm you.”
The slave returned with the food and drink, quietly left it on the side table, and disappeared again. Picking up the glass of honeyed mead, Matt brought it to Savannah’s lips. “Drink, fierce queen. Keep up your strength against your captor. You might gain the advantage yet.”
“You assume I don’t already have it.” She sipped. If her hands were free, would she have put them around his to steady the cup? Maybe.
“You have to sleep sometime,” she said. “I’ll gut you with your own dagger and escape.”
“I look forward to that attempt. I’ll disarm you and retaliate by piercing you with a different kind of weapon, over and over, until you have no strength in your limbs to run.”
She set her lips to a thin line when he brought food to them
, but he persisted, brushing it in a caress against her mouth until she relented.
He would never allow her to eat with her own hands again. Watching her mouth close over each morsel, sometimes over his fingers, as he gave her bits of bread, meat and cheese, spawned a wealth of different feelings. All good. The pleasure of having her take food from his hand was too intense to imagine denying himself the future indulgence.
But he was no fool. The way her tongue was occasionally brushing his skin was either unintentional, 0r his captive was trying to win his trust with deceptively innocent seduction tactics.
His cock had very strident opinions and desires about her, but it would never override his brain. When she at last shook her head, telling him she’d had enough, he tested his suspicion.
“You seem to be getting more relaxed with me, my lady.” Setting aside the plate, he slid his hand up her thigh. “Perhaps you’re more willing than you portray, your rebellion merely an act, meant to provoke me toward what we both want?”
Her backbone stiffened instantly, as he’d expected. “I am merely regaining strength. I’m immune to your touch, my lord, same as if I was covered in ice. Encased in it.”
“An interesting theory to test.” He brought a napkin to her lips. When he nearly got bitten for his trouble, he tsked.
“I don’t mind reddening your luscious backside again, my lady. Or introducing you to that ring gag I described.”
“I’m not afraid of your punishments.”
“No, I expect that’s not what you’re afraid of.”
The fears of a woman like her lay behind doors in her heart, rooms that held raw and vulnerable needs. Those needs had always been locked in the dark. A woman who shrank from nothing else could be paralyzed by the lights of love and trust. By the thought of someone who would care for her, not out of obligation, but because it was the most important damn thing he’d ever done or wanted in his entire life.
Get out of your head and into hers instead. “Let’s test this frosty theory of yours.”
Thank God they weren’t actually doing this in a tent centuries ago. It would have been devoid of amenities like a full ice bucket, discreetly placed on the side table. Propping it between two pillows within easy reach, Matt picked up one of the heaped, frosted chips. He glided it over the top of Savannah’s breast, to her nipple. He relished her writhing, the little gasp at the ice’s first contact, before he took it to her navel, and lower. “Your skin heats so much at my touch, it’s leaving a trail of glittering drops from your magnificent breasts to your gorgeous cunt.”
She shuddered as he let the ice graze over her upper thighs. He bent to breathe on her labia, brush his lips over her clit. His hands clamped over her thighs as she made a half-hearted attempt to struggle, mostly thwarted by the spreader bar. When he glanced up her body, he lingered on the slope of her abdomen, the rise of her breasts, the nipples tightened to tempting points. The quiver of her chin and arch of her throat with the gold collar still clasped around it.
“No chance of any ice surviving on your flesh, my love. There’s a furnace here, wet heat just throbbing.” He slipped the ice inside her and put his mouth over her sex fully, thrusting his tongue inside to play around the cube and over her silken walls.
She cried out, rocking her upper body, bowing up even further than having her wrists behind her caused. Her thighs trembled, unable to close, thanks to the spreader bar. Even with that, he held her thighs down, making the sensation build and become so intense she was fighting his hold. She wasn’t climaxing, but she was crying out as if she was. And her incoherent pleas told him he couldn’t deny himself another moment.
He rose and unlaced the trousers, freeing his cock. Because of his size, the relief was equal to barbed wire being unwrapped from his ready flesh. He wouldn’t be surprised if the lacings had left a crisscross impression up his length.
Gripping the spreader bar, he lifted her legs up straight, and then guided it over his head, down, so the bar crossed his shoulder blades, her heels resting to the outside of them.
He put his hands to her hips and pressed his cock to her opening which, as he suspected, was blissfully wet again.
“Tell me you want me. That I’m your Master and you’ll obey my will, now and always.”
She shook her head, so fiercely her upper body rocked, her breasts quivering. He wet his fingers in his mouth and dropped them lower, fingering the opening to her backside, caressing the rim. Her hips bucked, brushing her sex against his cock, and she jerked in reaction.
“I will fight you…every time,” she said breathlessly. “Until you give in and agree…that you’re my slave.”
He dropped to brace himself on one hand next to her shoulder, and brushed his lips over her mouth. “If you won’t beg me now, slave queen, you will soon. My cock will bring pleas for mercy from your lips.”
He could tell she was about to use some of that crude soldier talk to respond, but then she thought better of it and bit it back. He bared his teeth in a feral grin. “You’re learning, my lady.”
He pushed his cock just inside her opening, and nearly groaned from the bliss of it. But he stopped there, despite the involuntary twitches of her hips, a strong signal she wanted him to impale her further, no matter her protests. Instead, he captured her breasts again and indulged himself, squeezing, stroking, pinching, making her writhe, which moved her upon him. He locked his hips, not letting either of them go deeper, though he had to grit his teeth against the raging desire to do so. He knew his goal here, and he wouldn’t lose sight of it.
He loved her gorgeous breasts, the weight of them, the way the nipples grew even tighter under his ministrations. He would do exactly what he said he would, if she became pregnant. He would worship them, along with every inch of her.
“Stop,” she said. “Stop.”
Her skin was flushed, her throat working.
“No,” he said ruthlessly. “Call me what I am. Or I pull away, put that ring gag on you and I’ll climax in your mouth. I’ll keep you so hot and aroused, you won’t be able to think beyond needing release.”
He’d lost his mind, throwing down that gauntlet. He was so close to shoving into her like a damn battering ram…
Then she confirmed he was an idiot, with her strangled yet admirably resolute response.
“I’ll never call you Master,” she gritted.
Shit. He couldn’t allow her the advantage of calling his bluff. “Ring gag it is,” he said, with deep regret.
“No,” she protested, but he’d already pulled out. His cock had words for him that would make his soldiers blush. Fucking hell.
“You sealed your own fate, my lady,” he said roughly, lifting the spreader bar from his shoulders. He backed away, holding onto the bar to lower her legs to the bed. When she thrashed, he put his weight against the bar to hold her legs down, keep her from kicking him in the face.
“All you had to do was call me Master, my lady. Simple enough.”
“Not simple,” she shot back, her voice strained. “A full surrender.”
“Exactly.”
One handed, he pulled the straps out from either corner of the mattress that were conveniently here for just this purpose. He tied her ankles down using them. She rocked, struggling. She wasn’t going anywhere, but she was the most erotic woman staying in one place he’d ever fucking seen, her body twisting and writhing, quivering and flushed.
He retrieved the necessary item from the trunk, and put his thumb to the corner of her mouth, prepared to open it and slide the ring in place, hopefully without her biting him.
“Matt.” She said it in a whisper, her body stilling.
He immediately stopped. They had no safe word between them. They’d never needed it. He’d always known from watching her, from her tone of voice, the look in her eyes, when things changed, or she needed something different. Like in this second.
He bent to her, brushing his nose over her lips, then brought his mouth to hers, telling her he was th
ere, he was hers. A tremor went through her, and her lips moved against his, questing.
He cupped her head, lifting her enough to deepen the kiss. He left the ring gag on the mattress as he used the other hand to stroke her face, her neck and shoulder. No words. Just a deep, spiraling, tender kiss.
Were there any words for what she did to him? Whether waking up to see her face first thing in the morning, watching her frown over a memo in a meeting, or hearing her sigh her pleasure when he was inside her… Did she know how many times he looked at her and tried to figure out what the hell he’d done to deserve her?
They both knew that wishes and reality rarely matched as perfectly as this. It made one doubt one’s senses and created the need to confirm the intel, over and over again.
So he took a good, long time with that kiss. When he finally eased her back, she gave a little nod. She was all right. Which was good, because his own heart was tilting on its axis. She still didn’t understand how much it meant, allowing him to help her, ease her worries. He was fine with spending his life helping her realize it.
He returned to his role with that thought in the forefront. Not that it ever really left. “I think, to make the punishment worse, I’m going to take the hood off. Make you see yourself sucking my cock. Serving your Master.”
When she practically bared her teeth, he had his answer to that. He loosened the mask and slid it off, combing his fingers through her hair. It had left a couple creases on her soft skin, but nothing to offend her endearing female vanity. She had her lashes fanning her cheeks. Refusing to look at him.
“Good slave. Keeping your eyes lowered as you should, unless your Master orders otherwise.”
Blinds couldn’t snap up as fast as her blue eyes did. He bit back the grin at the sparks shooting at him. Because he decided to put the ring gag on her during that rebellious wave, he nearly lost a finger. He supposed he kept it only because Savannah was still hidden within that role, and she liked his fingers. But she was a damn good actress.