by Nhys Glover
"Gods, you taste like nothing I have ever had before.... How is that possible?" He returned to licking me again, his tongue raspy against my too-sensitive inner flesh. Then, lifting his head from my mound he moaned, "I want inside you. I want nothing else."
His thick fingers slid inside me and I felt the invasion as a claiming. He worked me and lapped at me until I did not even know my name. Or I would not have, if I had known my own name in the first place.
When I came again around his two thick fingers as he lapped at my nub, I could not believe pleasure like this was possible. But it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough!
"Here..." he moaned, touching his rampant cock through his breeches. "Here. I need you. It will likely kill me, but I need... you."
I scrambled out from under him and went to work on the buttons of his breeches. Within seconds, I had them undone and his large cock out. It pulsed in my hand, and I wondered in fascinated horror if I could take something so large inside me. But I had birthed a babe, had I not? It had to be possible.
He arched his back so his cock slid through my fingers. Moaning, he lay back down. It had not been a moan of pleasure.
"I do not think..." I started to say, though I was craving this joining desperately.
"Do not think!" he croaked out, trying to pull me closer. "Just do it. Now."
His need was driving me higher. I could barely focus beyond the need to have his cock inside me. I slid my leg across his hips, trying to avoid the bandage, took his cock in my hand and slid it into me.
He threw his head back and groaned. This time it was pleasure. I knew that sound. I knew the feel of a cock inside me, filling me up like this. Gods, it felt so good. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but this man and this joining. The world could crash down around our heads in the next moment but, for this instant, we were one.
"So fragging good," he growled out through gritted teeth. "They were not wrong. What they said of you. They were not wrong."
I heard his words but they did not make sense. Nothing made sense. And it did not have to. With utmost slowness, I drew myself up − feeling the slide of him inside me. He made a choking sound and reach up to take my hips. He pushed me down. And again that incredible sensation of his huge cock sliding into me, pushing at my womb.
"More," he got out through clenched teeth. He tried to draw me up, but he cried out and let go of one hip so he could reach for the wound at his shoulder. Had it opened up. Gods' Balls, this was the wrong thing to do. He was undoing all the healing I had done.
"You are opening up your wounds," I complained, panting, caught between the need to do this thing and the consequences of it.
"More," he growled out, ignoring my words, and pulling at me to rise. I knew he wanted me to move faster. I did so. Letting my thighs do the work, I eased up and then down over and over again. Feeling him with every particle of my being. More. I needed more. Harder. It had to be harder. I pounded his cock against my womb. Pounded him into the very heart of me.
Over and over, harder and harder. More! And then he was crying out in agonised ecstasy and I felt him fill me, as I shot over the edge and spiralled out into the void.
I collapsed onto him, and the grunt of pain reminded me of his many injuries. What were we thinking? I should never have let him convince me to do this stupid, reckless thing. I had likely killed him.
I slid him out of me, reluctantly, and collapsed instead bedside him, still panting hard. My hair had fallen out of its knot and now fell like a shawl across his chest. He fingered it.
"I cannot decide if I feel worse or better. Everything hurts." He chuckled painfully. "Frag it, better it is. Better than better. Incredible. I thought it was myth. I thought it had to be..."
I pulled myself up so I could look into his satiated face. "What are you talking about?"
"You. Gods, you."
I frowned and shook my head in bemusement. "What about me?"
He closed his eyes. "Do not want to spoil it. Not yet. Too good. Lay with me, Goddess. Lay with me while I sleep."
For a long time after he drifted off, I lay awake, trying to make sense of his words. What had he said when I'd been riding him? 'They were not wrong about what they said of you.' Who said what about me? Did I have a reputation as a whore? Had that been the reason he volunteered for this job? If he had volunteered.
What had I done? I had given myself to a stranger who knew more about me than I knew about myself. Who had taken me on the recommendations of others. Who had devalued what we had done as some whore's cheap tricks. I shuddered.
Was that what I was? Was that why I so easily took my pleasure with a stranger when my husband's body was barely cold? Yet... Yet it had not felt like that to me. The act had come from a deep well of tenderness I had developed for this man. A man who had saved my life twice over, risking his own to do so. It had come from my need to give him what he needed, whether it was nourishment or pleasure from my body. Is that what a whore did?
I knew little of them. Only that they sold their bodies to any man with the coin to pay. And that some had no other choice but to do it. To feed their families. I knew some did it to feed their families.
Did any of them ever give themselves rather than sell themselves? Mayhap my definition of the word was too narrow. Mayhap it also extended to any woman who gave herself to many men, for the pleasure of it. Yet, was not that what men did? Give themselves to any woman who took their fancy? No, not give themselves. Take. They took from any woman who took their fancy.
But not all men. Some men chose to give as well as take pleasure.
How did I know that? Had some of the many men I had taken to my bed given as well as taken pleasure there? Is that how I could distinguish between the two?
Yet I was raised in a harem. Only after marrying did I leave it. Which meant I had taken men to my bed after marriage. I had been unfaithful. To a man I loved! The very idea was abhorrent to me. Surely, the me I could not remember could not be as different as all that from the me I was now? Surely, I did not cuckold my beloved every chance I got because I was so driven so fiercely by my own sexual needs?
The same sexual needs that had me close to climaxing as a stranger took nourishment from my body! That had me jumping onto his cock, while he was barely conscious and covered in wounds I had probably opened up by the act − risking his very life for the sake of a few moments of pleasure.
Had he not been the one who wanted it, though? Had he not been the one who was willing to deal with the pain and risk to his life for that same pleasure?
Shaking my head in disgust, at myself, at him, at whatever perverse destiny had brought me to this place, I snuggled in closer to his side for warmth and forced myself to sleep.
Chapter Eight
AIRSHA
Though I hated to do it, I fed Trace twice overnight. Luckily, he did no more than feed and fall immediately back to sleep. There were no more sexual advances, no more seductive flirting. Either he'd achieved his goal of bedding me, and was now over me, or our bed-play had set back his healing.
With morning's brave attempt to bring light into our world I awoke again, met my body's needs and tended the fire. It had served us well throughout the night, keeping us warm and the predators at bay. If the human predators spotted the light in the forest, I could not do much about it. We had more pressing matters to attend to.
And if I was honest, a little part of me wanted to be found and put to death. I was disgusted by the new aspects of myself I had discovered. Mayhap the rebels were right to want me ended.
While I chewed on tough cold meat and stared into the fire, I heard Trace shifting around not far from me. I looked over my shoulder to see him leaning on his elbow, his head tipped to the side as if trying to work me out.
"You are different this morning," he said after a few moments. His voice was gravelled with sleep and he cleared it. I knew he was likely thirsty and dry mouthed, but I would offer him water this morning. Now he was conscious, I couldn't risk him
becoming amorous again.
I lifted my brows but said nothing, continuing to gnaw on the meat with more focus.
"Did I dream it? Being inside you?" he asked after a full minute of being ignored. "No, you would not be behaving as you are now if that were so."
I looked at him with true surprise. "I am not behaving any way."
He gave a mirthless chuckle. "Lady, I have been at the sharp end of a woman's displeasure on more than one occasion. I know it well. And your sharp end is more lethal than most."
I looked back at the fire, not bothering to reply.
"I know you enjoyed what we did, so that is not it. It never is." His voice was smug and self-satisfied. It infuriated me. How could I have had so little discernment as to have shared pleasure with this... this... bastard.
"So I must have said something you have been gnawing over all night, the way you are gnawing on that meat. It looks appetising, by the way, but I will stay on liquids for a while longer, if I may."
"If water will sustain you, then aye, stay on liquids."
"Aye? That is not a word I expected to hear from a lady. Very lower class. So you would rather feed your milk to the earth than help me regain my strength, is that it?"
I ignored him.
Trace sighed loudly and tried to sit up. He failed. I felt a little niggle of satisfaction at his difficulties. It was wrong of me, but I could not help it. He'd hurt me.
Suddenly he stiffened. "You have not remembered, have you?"
That drew my interest. Why would he be afraid that I had remembered? What did he want me to continue to forget? I decided to let him fill in the silence with his own guilty fears. Mayhap I would discover something more about my escape.
"Look, Goddess, it was my job. I could no more refuse the Godling's direct orders as I could fly!" He sounded desperate. What had my father ordered him to do?
Not kill my husband and babe? Surely not! I suddenly felt sick, and the food I had so painstakingly chewed and swallowed threatened to come up again. But there had been no extra beastling at the waiting spot. If he expected to bring us all away, he would have had one more. So he must have known he was not bringing them. Which meant either they were dead before he made his move and he knew it, or he had killed them. Or he had left them there to be killed because my father had no use for them. Only for me.
"You never planned to bring my husband and babe with us, did you?" I accused.
He relaxed visibly, and lay back on the grass, staring up at the flecks of sunlight visible in the canopy above.
"What gave that away?"
"No extra mount."
"Ah, of course. You are an astute woman. No, I knew they were dead before I came for you. I was too late to save them."
I mulled this over. It fitted. But he couldn't have been very late. My aching breasts were indication enough that my babe had fed recently. It still did not make perfect sense.
"Is that the only reason you have turned against me so suddenly?" he asked, not looking my way.
Again I ignored him.
"Look," he snapped impatiently. "I do not play games. If you have something to say, say it. We are in this together, like it or not. Treating me like I am dirt beneath your feet will not serve either of us."
"Treating you like dirt beneath my feet?" I exclaimed in astonishment. "I am not the one who treated the person I shared pleasure with as a legendary and talented whore."
He lifted himself onto one elbow again so he could make his fury felt to best effect. "What in the gods' names are you talking about, woman? The word whore never passed my lips. If I am sure of anything that happened last night, it was that."
"You said you'd heard things about me. But that I was even better than the myths about me claimed. As we had just shared pleasure, actually were sharing pleasure when you first said some of it, I can only assume you meant that my sexual skills were legendary. And a dutiful wife and mother does not have such things said about her. Only a whore does."
He lay down again. I didn't know why. Mayhap my accusation had no answer because it was true. My heart broke a little more in my already mangled chest. It was all too much. I wanted to go home, curl up in my mother's arms, and forget every bad thing that had happened to me.
But wait, I had forgotten most of it. That was half the problem. At least if I knew who I'd been before, I would stop trying to guess at the truth from the words of the only person available to give me answers. A person who admitted to having never met me before.
"I will admit that there were rumours about you. I am sorry if that offends you. But my comments last night were only meant as admiration. I have never experienced anything like last night. And I am not lacking in experience."
I gritted my teeth at the insult buried in the compliment. So I was better than the whores he'd had in the past. Better than the best of them. What an accolade!
"You are suggesting that I was unfaithful to my husband. A man I cannot remember, but feel as if I loved," I got out through gritted teeth, though my jaw ached with the pressure I was putting on it.
"Not by choice..." he said hurriedly, still not meeting my eye. "You were kidnapped by the rebels and... used. The rumours came from them. When you were rescued your husband accepted you back without question. He loved you that much."
"Why would I go back into the rebel encampment if I had been kidnapped by them in the past? That makes no sense!" I argued in exasperation. He was lying to me, and not well.
"Because you wanted revenge and, as the ones who captured you were all dead, you could infiltrate the main rebel stronghold with no fear of your past being unearthed."
"But if they all died, how did you hear the rumours about my amazing skills in bed from the rebels?" I threw back furiously.
He groaned. "All right, that was a lie. I was trying to make you feel better. It back-fired. I wish I could rip out my tongue for saying what I did last night. I was talking with my little head at the time."
My heart turned over sickly once more. "Tell me the truth. I will know if you do not."
I steeled myself for the bad news that was coming. I knew it had to be. How was being raped by rebels a kinder alternative to what really happened.
"The rumours came from your husband. When he was in his cups he bragged about how talented you were in bed. How he had loaned you out to several of his friends and they agreed. A natural talent for bed-play he was heard to say on more than one occasion." He paused and studied my reaction before going on. "You may have loved him, Lady, but he did not love you. Or respect you. I would call him a bastard if he were any different to his peers. But he was just like all of them. Women are little more than property to the men of Godslund."
Hastily, I jumped to my feet and dashed away from the fire to lose all my hard-won sustenance. There was now no doubt in my mind that Trace was telling me the truth. I felt it at my core. Someone I loved dearly had betrayed me and treated me as a whore.
Gentle hands pulled my loose hair back from my face. There was a reason I wore it in a harem knot most of the time. Why had I not done so this morn? Because I wanted to tempt Trace with it? I shuddered.
"Go away," I mumbled miserably, not wanting him to see the mess I'd made on the moss-covered ground. "I want to be alone."
His arms came around me and pulled me against him. It must have been excruciating, but he gave no sign of it. All of his concern was for me. Though he said nothing more, he offered me what little strength he'd regained. I needed it more than I could say.
The tears started then, deep, wracking sobs that shook my body and my soul. I had loved him so much. Yet he'd betrayed me, treating me like slime on his boots and making awful, hurtful comments about my whorish ways. Over and over again he'd done it, until I was beaten down by it. By him.
And all the while I cried, Trace held me to him, lending me his strength. How much it cost him, I had no idea. He had been unable to sit up when he first awoke. Yet he had reached me quickly and stayed standing the whole ti
me I cried. What price must he have paid to do so? Must still be paying?
"You have a giving heart, Princess. There is no shame in having a giving heart," Trace murmured softly into my ear. "The shame is his for treating you so badly. The Godslunders are known throughout the kinglunds for treating their women poorly. And mayhap I am guilty of picking up some of their attitudes in the last ten suns. I would direct all the disrespect I felt for myself onto the easiest targets: women. And was rewarded for it by the men I called brothers. But if anyone had treated my mother and sisters the way the Godslunders treated their women, I would have killed them."
I nodded, sensing the truth in every word. Some of the awful agony eased.
In a cracked and croaky voice, I confided the truth to the man who had just shared his with me. "I would not have done what we did last night if... if it was out of lust alone. Or out of gratitude for what you have done for me. It was more than that. I care about you. Which is why it hurt so much to have you see me as my husband did. To have what we shared reduced to... nothing."
He kissed my neck tenderly. "What happened between us was as far from nothing as it is possible to be. I did not expect it. I have never felt like that before, and I wanted to... wanted to put it into a box I knew well. Into a box that said, 'great sex'. One that made sense to me. One that did not leave me feeling vulnerable and wrong. So... So wrong."
I placed my hands over his and pressed them. Men did not like to feel vulnerable. They feared it. The intensity of the feelings we both experienced last night had left us both vulnerable. The only difference was that I could accept that kind of vulnerability whereas he couldn't.
Turning in his arms, I lifted a hand to cup his roughened cheek. I must have looked terrible after all the crying I had done. And my breath would stink of vomit. But I looked into his dark eyes with all the compassion inside me.
"You are no abomination, Trace. Anyone who tells you that is the one who is wrong. Not you."
I saw guilt, pain and tenderness in his eyes. Then his legs suddenly gave way and I had to grab him before he collapsed. He'd used up the last of his strength being strong for me.