The Barbarian's Pet

by Loki Renard

  The Barbarian’s Pet

  By

  Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2015 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2015 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Renard, Loki

  The Barbarian’s Pet

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by Period Images and Bigstock/123render

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Chapter One

  “Bring me the girl!”

  A naked female squirmed between two tall warriors, each three times her weight and near twice her height. She was lifted with ease, large hands wrapped around her upper arms swinging her through the air. They pushed her to her knees, but she scrambled to her feet immediately to face her foes standing up. The warriors made to push her back down to a submissive position, but stopped at a second gravelly command.

  “Leave her.”

  Sariah’s figure was lit by the light of a large fire. Dark hair cascaded down her back, lazy waves ending just above the dimples at the base of her spine. Her breasts were full, nipples erect with fear more than excitement. Her bottom was pleasingly round, her hips wide with feminine elegance. Her legs were smooth and toned, thick shapely thighs indicating an active life of work. Her face was half-hidden in the shadows cast by the fire, one wide eye under an arcing dark brow, a flaring but still delicate nostril, a full upper lip curled in derision. Her beauty was that of the wilds, an untamed appeal that made every man surrounding her look upon her with a hungry gaze.

  Ringed by their bulk and brawn, she seemed all the more vulnerable. She was no concubine, no slave girl traded at market, just a simple girl taken from the flock she had been tending on the steppes. At that moment she should have been under the warrior who had drawn the long straw at her capture, but instead she was standing before Griffen, the barbarian king. Griffen, the man whose name made warlords quake. The man who was slowly but surely sweeping across the land with ever-growing armies, turning barbarians to his will.

  She trembled, her eyes firmly on the sand beneath her bare toes as the king traced his finger over a patch of red on her left cheek and lifted it to the light. “The blood of my men,” he pronounced in a deep baritone. “And yet there is not a scratch on you.”

  She risked lifting her head and looking at his face. His eyes were amber in the leaping firelight, the same hot golden glow that lit the naked curves of her body. Sariah bowed her head and began silently mouthing a prayer to the god of the underworld, beseeching him to welcome her with open arms.

  The king put his finger underneath her chin and raised it so that he could look upon her with a searching gaze. She found herself looking back at him with the fixated stare of a cornered mouse. This was King Griffen, lion of the North who at three and thirty years of age was remaking the world in his image. He was a man she had never imagined she would see, let alone stand before him stripped bare. This was the face of the end, and she could not tear her eyes away.

  A broad forehead spoke to intellect, the hawkish rise of his nose and the slightly angled set of his eyes over high cheekbones gave him a keen expression that made her feel as though every part of her were being weighed. There was no stubble coating the angular, powerful jaw. He was freshly shaved, his long dark hair bound behind his head. He smelled like incense and brutality.

  To Sariah’s surprise, there was no anger in the hard lines of his features. He looked… curious.

  “Your people are sheepherders, aren’t they, my little lamb?” The question was purred softly, his voice like liquid honey trickling down her spine.

  “Yes.” She whispered the response, her mouth dry from fear.

  “How then, did you learn to use a blade that way? Three of my men and not a mark upon you…” He let the question hover between them.

  Sariah shook her head wordlessly. She did not know how she had done it. After being captured in a night raid, shackled in a cage, and chosen by a man who stank of meat and sweat, she had been at the very end of her thread of sanity. She had not known where she was. She had not known what had become of her family. She had not known anything but that she would not part her thighs for the warrior who had abducted her from the fields where she had been tending her flock and had taken her back to the outskirts of the king’s encampment. When he had drawn close with lust in his eyes and alcohol on his breath, it had been the work of a minute to take his dagger and unmake him. It had happened almost without her intention, as if she were the mere observer of an action she had never imagined she would take.

  “You have no answer for me?”

  “I…” She shook her head again, then closed her eyes and returned her gaze to the ground, her lips moving swiftly as she resumed her prayer.

  “No gods will save you from me,” Griffen said, flicking his fingers under her chin to make her look up again. “I will have my answer.” He ground the words out with a rumble that reverberated through her naked breast.

  “I have no answer to give,” Sariah said in a soft voice that trembled with adrenaline and fear. “My hand was guided.”

  “Guided,” Griffen laughed. He raised his voice to address his generals. “A shepherd girl takes the knife of a warrior and turns it upon him and two others who attempt to apprehend her, three men trained with blade and blood. She slays each and every one of them where they stand. What am I to make of this?” He lowered his eyes to her again. “Are you an assassin, lamb?”

  The trembling was becoming impossible to contain. She shook from her fingers to her toes. It was one thing to have courage in the heat of the moment, another to have it when standing alone before a man who had conquered thousands. King Griffen was far from his palace, expanding his holdings through war as was the way of kings. And she, she was nothing but a scrap of feminine resistance with no more ability to resist him than a spider’s web could resist being brushed away.

  “Answer me!”

  Her answer was a whimper, which did not impress the king in the slightest.

  “You play at fear now,” he said. “But I have seen fearful women many times before. They fall upon the floor and wail for mercy. You have asked for none.”

  “You are not known for mercy,” she said, finding her voice.

  “No,” he said, his finger tracing casually down her left breast. “I am not. And shepherd girls are not known for their skills in battle. I think, tonight, we will surprise one another.”

  His mouth suddenly descended upon hers, his arm slid around her waist, and he hauled her slight figure against the length of his hard body with a rough passion that disarmed her. His lips met hers with rough insistence, parting them for his tongue, which slid into her mouth and began lashing hers.

  Shocked to her core, Sariah felt a flash of fire in her loins. The king’s black silk robes made her legs slide easily apart, her clit pressing against the hard line of his thigh, instantly sparking a primal arousal that chased all thought from her mind.

  A cheer went up from the surrounding men as the king made free with her, his hand meeting her bottom in a thunderclap. She cried out as he pulled his mouth from hers and pronounced his judgment.

  “You will be punished, Sariah,” he said. “You will repay me in sons what
you have cost me in warriors. You were right to tremble, for you will meet a sword tonight, but one of flesh—not steel.”

  As he spoke, she felt the thick length of his manhood against her belly, impossibly long and hard underneath that black silk shroud.

  Sariah pulled away, not out of disgust as she had when the alcohol- and sweat-stained warrior had pressed his leering face to hers, but out of virginal fear. She had never known a man in the carnal sense; like most young women in her village she had preserved her virtue for the marriage bed. It was not worth risking an unplanned birth to an unnamed father in lands such as those her family tended.

  The thought of her family made rage rise again. The man standing before her might be a king, but he was not her king. He was the leader of bandits, powerful perhaps, but no real authority over her. Some stirring of courage made her lift her eyes to his handsome visage, pure defiance in her gaze.

  Griffen let out a laugh. “Look at you,” he said. “Such a thing I have not seen in all my travels. A shepherd girl who dares reject a king.”

  Sariah braced herself for a more vigorous response. Many men so slighted would become aggressive and beat a disobedient slave. Not Griffen. He released her squirming, trembling form and let her stand before him, her eyes locked on his in an attempt to understand what might happen next.

  “Always look predators in the eyes.” Her father’s warning came floating back to her. “And never, ever turn your back. A lion will respect courage, but devour prey. Look him in the eye. You may still die in his jaws, but you will die well.”

  Those words were emblazoned on her soul. If fate decreed that she was to die, she would die well. Honor above all, even to a simple shepherd girl.

  She stood alone before Griffen, smaller than he, weaker than he, and much more vulnerable. His men were ranged around them, but she sensed she would have felt just as vulnerable if it had only been the two of them in the middle of the grassed plain.

  She tried to gauge his intent, but Griffen was quite inscrutable. The hard plane of his cheek twitched as he looked at her.

  “You have taken my interest,” he declared. “What is your name?”

  Her name rose to her lips in a ragged whimper. “Sariah.”

  “I would see what you are capable of, Sariah,” he said. “I wish to know precisely how my men died, so I will make you a bargain. I will give you a knife and you will face me. If you can draw but one drop of blood, I will give you new clothes, a horse, and enough gold to buy a thousand sheep.”

  It was a bargain too good to be true. The rumble of laughter around her spoke to that. She gave him a wary look, expecting some kind of trap or lie.

  “I keep my word,” Griffen said, his eyes gleaming with dark amusement at her expense. “The terms are as stated. There will be no tricks. I wish to see firsthand what you did to my men. I wish to see how a little lamb bests a lion.”

  Sariah did not know how such a thing had happened. If he hoped for a demonstration of some secret prowess, he would be disappointed. The only training she had ever received was in how to dispatch a predator if one were bold enough to attack the sheep while she was watching them.

  “The throat and the belly,” her father had told her before his death. “All else is wasted effort.”

  Sariah was her parents’ only child. She had been raised much like a boy in order to perform the duties of a son. That meant looking after the sheep instead of learning the tasks of hearth and home. So many of her most precious memories were on star-filled nights when she and her father had tended the flock under an eternal sky.

  When she was seven she had been taken to the forest temple and dedicated to the huntress, the goddess in the western sky who danced in the heavens and watched over all those who spent their days in the wilds. It was then that she’d been given her dagger and her shepherd’s crook. A year later, her father had gone out with the sheep and not returned. The flock had been found wandering by one of the other villagers and herded home, but her father was nowhere to be found. Several years later, scraps of his clothing were found in a wolves’ den.

  It was then Sariah had renounced the goddess who had allowed her father to be taken. She had stood alone with her sheep, devoid of protection night after night, day after day, growing toward the stars for another decade.

  She would have lived on the plains peacefully forever, tending her sheep if not for the rough men who had crossed her path, scattered her sheep, and snatched her from her flock ten years to the day after her father had gone missing. Human wolves were no less terrifying to her than the beasts must have been to her father, but she had fought back and now she stood before the king who ruled those men and prepared to sell her life dearly. She did not particularly relish the notion of doing battle with a man many times her size, but it was her only possible escape and Sariah wanted her freedom in that moment more than she wanted her life.

  She held her hand out, palm up, waiting for the blade he had promised.

  Griffen nodded, respect in his eyes as he tossed a dagger into the air, caught it lightly by the meat of the blade and pressed the hilt into her waiting hand.

  Sariah closed her fingers more tightly around the hilt and felt the weight of the weapon. It was a small comfort, though she still shook from head to toe in contemplation of the task before her. If Griffen could be trusted, she was on the brink of heaven or hell. The notion of returning to her people with her virtue intact, her horse laboring under the king’s gold, was an alluring one.

  A flurry of black silk made her gasp at the same time as a roar of laughter erupted around her. The king had disrobed, leaving the length of his impressive frame bare. Sariah stared at his nakedness, her eyes becoming wider than they had ever been. She now understood why kings were revered as gods. Griffen’s body was nothing less than heavenly. He looked as though he had been sculpted by the hand of some divine being to be as elegantly powerful and regal as possible.

  Her eyes ran down from his broad shoulders to the chest devoid of hair, slabs of muscle giving way to the ripple of his abdominal plane, narrow but powerful hips, and then his cock, long and thick at the apex of his thighs. Sariah averted her eyes, a hot blush passing over every part of her. She felt her palm begin to sweat, little beads of liquid making the hilt of her blade slip in her hand.

  “Now we are both naked,” he said with a rakish wink. “It will never be said that I had the advantage of clothing where you did not.”

  One of his attendants bought a dagger forward. Griffen waved it away. “I have no need of weapons with this one,” he said, his gaze holding Sariah in thrall. “And I certainly would not want to mark that skin.”

  He extended his hand toward her and beckoned with one crooked finger. “Come, lamb,” he said. “Earn your freedom.”

  She hesitated. It was not in her nature to be the aggressor, even for all the gold in the land.

  “What is the matter, lamb? Have you lost your nerve?” Griffen chuckled. “Let me tell you the second part of our bargain. If you can draw blood, you will have the riches I have promised you. But if you do not…” His voice dropped to a lustful masculine growl. “I will have you as my personal pet. You will envy the freedom of a slave when I make you mine.”

  Sariah’s heart began to pound in her chest. She had assumed that if she failed her life was forfeit, but Griffen did not have death in mind for her. He had something she did not truly understand from the words he said, but understood perfectly in the way a trickle of excited fear slid down her spine in response to the tone and intent behind his words.

  Panic made blood rush away from her skin toward her muscles as her skin became pale, her body tense. Her future was to be decided at the tip of her blade—and yet she could not bring herself to raise it against King Griffen. After what his men had done, he would have deserved it if she had plunged the blade into his heart, but Sariah was not a bloodthirsty warrior. She had no taste for the business of battle.

  “Still you
refuse?” Griffen’s expression began to fade into something like disappointment. “Do you surrender, Sariah?”

  “I have never attacked a man,” Sariah said. “I would not like to harm you.”

  Her words bought a round of laughter from Griffen and his men. The notion of her being afraid to wound a king struck them all as most amusing.

  “So it is for my benefit you tremble with your blade pointing toward the dirt, I see. If you only act in defense I will give you something to defend against. Understand this, Sariah. If I catch you and subdue you, the wager is over. You will be my pet and your freedom will be forfeit.”

  He moved toward her, reaching for her quivering frame. She saw his large hand approaching as he tried to take hold of her. Somewhere in the last seconds, she found her courage.

  Men were stronger, bolder, larger, but Sariah had a few advantages on her side. She was naturally more nimble, more adept with finer motions. As Griffen’s bulk came toward her, she lashed out with the blade, a wild strike guided by instinct.

  Griffen fell back. She saw his eyes widen, shock spearing through his pupils, making them narrow. A hush had fallen on every man in the camp—and suddenly Sariah saw why. The blade had been impossibly close to cutting him. A thin line of white, a mere scratch had appeared on his chest. She had touched him, but no blood had been drawn. The terms of the agreement had not been met, but the king was shaken.

  A little smile played over her lips. Pride was not for women, but she could not help but feel a little twinge of it at rendering bold King Griffen and his men silent even for a brief second.

  “Well, little lamb,” he said in dangerously soft tones. “You truly do surprise. Were you aiming for my heart?”

  Sariah did not reply. She was focused. One more mistake on the king’s part and she would be riding away from his encampment, forever free. Griffen began circling her slowly, making her turn to follow him. If he managed to get behind her, there was no doubt he’d be able to disarm her. She found herself watching his eyes more than his body, reading his intent in every flicker of his lids and lashes.