Rituals of Passion (Brides of Caralon, Book One)

by Alexander, Lacey

  Maven drew in her breath. “Has it always been like this?” she asked, feeling lost, desperate for answers. “Have royal girls always been treated this way? Was it like this in the Before Times?”

  Lavonia gave her head a chiding shake. “Why are you girls so obsessed with the Before Times? You’d do well to concentrate on now, Maven.”

  “How can we not be? The artifacts are so beautiful. The glass. The shining metals. They must have led lavish lives—lives, I suspect, where women were not treated poorly, especially royal ones.”

  “Lavish, maybe, but they all died. Their whole culture perished. How wonderful could it have been?”

  Maven bit her lip and asked a question she’d always wondered about. “How did it happen? How did they die?” Certain things about the Before Times were discussed only in the most intimate of circumstances—and Maven thought this was intimate enough to qualify.

  Lavonia lowered her chin, clearly taken aback. But then she answered, speaking softly. “Only the island city in Yorkland to the north bore the signs of ancient attack. The other cities seem to have crumbled from decay, neglect. So it’s believed they were killed by disease.”

  “That could happen in any society,” Maven argued, anxious not to have her fantasies of the Before Times quashed.

  “No,” Lavonia said. “It was a vast society—vaster than we know even now—and all of them died. All of them, except for those few who must have escaped underground, later giving rise to our society. Most believe it was a disease spread by man, purposely.”

  Maven swallowed. “So men in the Before Times were given to battle, too.”

  Lavonia nodded somberly.

  “And I’m being given to prevent battle.” She couldn’t help sighing. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it wasn’t so grand then. Perhaps not much has changed.”

  Slowly, another smile spread across her maid’s face.

  “Why are you smiling at something so grim?”

  “Because I choose not to think of it anymore. This is no time for sadness—it’s time for you to learn the secrets you want to know so very badly. And don’t deny it—I know you’re curious, Maven. I’ve seen it in your eyes. So push away your worries and let me enlighten you.”

  Maven took a deep breath and attempted to do as Lavonia instructed. It was hard to rekindle her interest in the ways of marriage without suffering the dread of who she’d be married to, but she tried. She looked Lavonia squarely in the eye.

  “Tell me something, Lavonia. How is it for the rest of society? How do they marry?” It was embarrassing to admit she didn’t know, but life for a royal girl was too sheltered—she knew little about how others lived.

  “Well, only for the royal—and sometimes the wealthy—is a girl’s virginity such a sacred thing. The lower classes have no need of a bride price.”

  “Go on.”

  “And in the lower classes some marry, but many do not,” Lavonia said. “Although those who do generally live long, happy lives together—those who find real love make it last.”

  “And the rest?”

  Lavonia chuckled. “We just do as we feel and enjoy it.”

  Maven pursed her lips, trying to piece together the little bits of life she’d witnessed outside the fortress walls. “And those who marry have children, but those who do not have none? How does that work?”

  “Very carefully,” Lavonia said in a teasing tone, then grew more serious. “Occasionally, an unmarried woman will have a child, and that child is generally raised with help from the father, but more often, the child ends up feeling as if he’s been reared by the entire village or community where he lives. All of which is to say, such children are usually accidents, but not ill-treated because of it.”

  Maven barely knew how to decipher Lavonia’s explanation. “Um, accidents?” She couldn’t help feeling her own ignorance.

  “Well, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, but…women can take steps to prevent children from being born. There are special salves—I’ve used them myself, since I was a young girl. However, you need not concern yourselves with that aspect of things, dear girl, for you are to be a married woman, with no need to prevent children.”

  Maven let out a long sigh, almost sorry she’d begun the line of questioning. She hadn’t even yet thought about the prospect of having children with Dane! Suppressing a shiver, she decided it was best to keep a stiff upper lip and move on.

  “How do we begin?”

  “Ah, now that’s the strong Maven I know and love,” Lavonia said, lounging back on Maven’s bed a bit more. “First, sweet Maven, I will teach you about your body.”

  The very suggestion made the region between her legs tighten, and she bit her lip. “Go on. Teach me.”

  Lavonia laughed. “Suddenly impatient, are we? Very well, then.” Without warning she placed her hand between her thighs, cupping herself through her thin leather dress. “This is called your pussy.”

  “Pussy,” Maven repeated, trying out the word. “Why is it called that?”

  Lavonia let out a tired sigh. “Why is anything called anything? Who can say? I believe it’s an archaic term from the Before Times.” She warmed to her subject then. “We live very different lives than those who went before us, but I feel confident one thing hasn’t changed. Sex.”

  Sex. A word Maven had heard whispered about the fortress, and spoken louder in the village—until, of course, the speaker realized a royal daughter was listening. “And what is sex?”

  Her maid laughed, almost sympathetically, then shook her head. “Poor me. I suppose I hadn’t realized just how difficult this job would be.”

  “Sex,” Maven snapped. “What is it?”

  “Sex is what a man and woman do together. Sometimes, in marriage, to make babies, like we just discussed. But more often for sheer pleasure. Once you have sex, you are no longer a virgin.”

  Her mind flashed back to Senya and the gardener in the kitchen. “Is sex ever…well, both a pleasure and a pain?”

  Lavonia raised her eyebrows, looking impressed. “As a matter of fact, it sometimes is. A most delicious pain.” When Maven scrunched her nose in confusion, Lavonia waved a hand through the air. “But again, we’re getting far, far ahead of ourselves. What you need to know right now, my dear, are the basics. Another archaic term for the pussy is ‘cunt’. There is an opening there, between your legs, where the man inserts his cock.”

  Maven drew back slightly, her confusion escalating. “He puts his rooster between your legs?”

  Lavonia broke into wild peals of laughter that succeeded in making Maven feel like a dolt. Her face warmed with embarrassment as she waited for her maid to go on.

  “A ‘cock’ is the name used for the lovely, long, hard rod that juts from between his legs.”

  Maven’s first inclination was to say she’d never noticed any such rod jutting from between any man’s legs, but then she remembered odd occasions when she had witnessed something beneath men’s leather pants. A bulge of sorts. A bulge which she’d sometimes felt oddly drawn to. She bit her lip.

  “When a man is excited and wants to have sex, his cock gets very big and hard. It’s a sight to behold.”

  Maven could barely imagine.

  “When you’re being fucked, you will feel the most glorious sensation—a sensation of…being well-filled by your man.”

  “Fucked?”

  Lavonia waved her arms absently downward. “Another archaic term. It means to have sex.”

  Maven drew in her breath, daring to ask another question. “Is sex the reason I sometimes feel all tingly and wet in my pussy? The reason my nipples get hard?”

  Lavonia smiled. “Exactly. That’s your body’s way of telling you it’s ready for sex.”

  “It’s been…nearly unbearable.”

  The maid lifted a hand to stroke the drawn-back hair at Maven’s temple. “I don’t envy you that, dear. Must be torture having to wait and wonder about it all.”

  Maven nodded.


  “But your wait is nearly over.”

  She swallowed, again remembering her fate. “I wish I could look forward to it, Lavonia, but how can I, knowing the one man I’m destined to fuck is Dane the Dreadful?”

  “Look, he’s said to be a brute, yes. But it’s as I told you before. You, more than any other royal girl, must pay close attention to all you hear and see during this, your Orientation. You must learn to please him and please him well. I’m convinced this is the way to an amicable marriage with him.”

  “Hear and see?” she asked.

  Lavonia tilted her head at a coquettish angle and grinned. “Yes. Since discovering I would be your Orienter, I have thought about how best to teach you the ways of sex, and I’ve decided the easiest method is to simply demonstrate.”

  So Lavonia was going to have sex with a man while Maven watched? An unbidden but familiar pulse of excitement began to beat in her pussy, just as when she’d witnessed Senya and Arleck in the kitchen.

  Without another word, Lavonia rose from the bed and walked to the door of the chamber. Opening it, she admitted three boys Maven knew from the fortress, all handsome young men around her own age, although considerably younger than Lavonia.

  Maven’s jaw dropped in surprise. “You need three?”

  Her maid’s mouth curved into a coy smile. “It’s going to be a very long and arduous lesson, my dear.”

  Chapter Three

  A forbidden thrill raced through Maven’s body. She wasn’t sure why—this was her Orientation, after all, so there was hardly anything forbidden about it. Everyone knew the Orienter could use whatever means she deemed suitable to prepare a royal daughter for her marriage bed. Even so, the pulse of excitement throbbing in Maven’s cunt increased wildly as she looked at the three strapping young men and began anticipating what was about to happen.

  “You know Anglen, Ragan and Donnell,” Lavonia said.

  Certainly she did. She’d just never before realized how attractive she found them. Anglen sported sandy blond hair and a rugged look—he worked in her father’s stables. Ragan was darker in both hair and complexion, with a lean but muscular build, and Donnell possessed a long brown mane, lengthier than the hair of most men, pulled back in a tail at his nape. The first two boys were among the ranks of her father’s army, being trained to lead his forces should Caralon ever come under attack—the latter served as a fortress guard.

  Without planning, Maven let her eyes drop from the young men’s faces to their crotches, where she spied the bulges she remembered seeing on men before. Her pussy spasmed with fresh curiosity.

  “Should you wish to touch yourself in any fashion while we demonstrate—” Lavonia said, drawing Maven’s gaze back to her, “—feel free. Although you’ve been taught to suppress your urges, the time for that is nearly past. It’s important that you learn to embrace those urges now.”

  Maven only nodded, beginning to feel a bit entranced, as if she’d been transported to some other place and time. In one sense, it was all happening too fast—her betrothal to a barbarian and now this, her maid preparing to…what was the word? Fuck, yes, that was it. Her maid was preparing to fuck three of her father’s young men right here in her room while she watched! On the other hand, though, it felt as if a new energy, a raw power unlike any sensation she’d ever known, was gathering in her middle—as if Lavonia was right and the time for innocence was done. Despite herself, she burned to see the boys’ cocks, burned to see every intimate part of this act between man and woman.

  As if reading her mind, Lavonia dropped to her knees before the broad-shouldered Anglen and began working at the lacing of his pants. A moment later, she parted the leather and the crisscrossed cording to reveal—oh my! What a peculiar-looking appendage!

  Maven bit her lip, studying it. Lavonia had described it as a rod, and that it was, but still… Maven couldn’t have envisioned the odd feelings of hunger she experienced at the sight. Anglen’s shaft seemed to grow even longer as the maid’s hand closed around it. The whole length looked flushed with heat as Anglen drew in his breath, his expression instantly reminding Maven of the strange pleasure-pain she’d discussed with Lavonia.

  “This is a cock,” Lavonia said, turning to Maven while running her fingertips gingerly down the front of the pole-like protrusion. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

  Oddly, Maven agreed, although she couldn’t understand quite why. She moved on to something that suddenly seemed more important than its appearance. “This is to go inside me?”

  Lavonia let out a cackling laugh. “No, my dear, this is to go inside me.” She shifted her gaze upward to Anglen, her voice going low and husky. “Very soon, my handsome boy. Very soon.”

  “But I mean—” Maven persisted, “—my husband’s cock…” She grimaced then, remembering Dane of Rawley, and concluded with a profound sigh.

  “Yes, your husband’s cock will enter your pussy.”

  “But…how? It’s so large.”

  Lavonia chuckled. “If the rumors are true, Dane’s cock is even larger and more majestic than this.” She glanced upward again. “No offense, dear boy.” Then she looked back to Maven. “But as you will soon see, the female body has a way of accepting a big, beautiful cock.”

  Maven glanced downward toward her tingling cunt, feeling bereft. “It seems impossible, Lavonia.” Even given the blatant desire that hummed there.

  Still, her maid just laughed. “Trust me, dear, by the time Dane sinks his cock into you, you will love it, and you will crave it when it’s gone.”

  The very idea was shocking. Maven didn’t believe a word of it, but she could see arguing was worthless, so didn’t bother replying.

  “Now,” Lavonia said, turning her ravenous gaze on the hard flesh in her grip, “you will watch and learn one of the best ways to pleasure your man.” Starting at the bottom, the maid dragged her tongue up Anglen’s cock in a long, languid lick that made him shiver in response. Maven’s pussy trembled as well. What on earth was Lavonia doing?

  Next, she licked the very tip of the cock, raising her passion-filled gaze to Anglen’s as she swirled her tongue around the knob on the end. Maven bit her lip, stunned.

  “When you bring your mouth to your man’s cock,” Lavonia said, clearly addressing her even though her gaze stayed on the boy, “think of it as the most delicious feast you’ve ever had.”

  With that, she lowered her entire mouth over Anglen’s shaft. It was all Maven could do not to gasp. She watched, dumbfounded, and prepared to ask questions—but just as quickly, she realized Lavonia’s full attention focused on Anglen now as she worked on him, moving up and down, up and down, until Anglen began moaning, thrusting his hips lightly toward Lavonia’s receptive mouth.

  Should you wish to touch yourself, feel free. Lavonia’s words came back to Maven as she realized her aching pussy begged for her caress while she watched her maid toiling away. But she felt too shy with the three boys in the room—despite that their collective attention seemed centered on Lavonia’s mouth.

  Anglen’s groans grew deeper, more agonized. Strange, this pleasure-pain, Maven thought. Although the more she witnessed of it, the more she understood it was an exquisite sort of pain, inextricably tied to the same deep satisfaction her own deprived body sought.

  “Mmm, suck me,” Anglen rasped. “That’s so good. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” Anglen now held Lavonia’s head, curling his fingers into her thick red hair, pushing into her mouth.

  Maven already knew she did not wish to do this with Dane of Rawley or any other man, for that matter, yet still…watching the act was even more exciting than what she’d witnessed in the kitchen. The cock was so incredibly…prominent. Commanding. At once frightening and thrilling.

  To Maven’s surprise, Lavonia seemed not to mind Anglen’s growing thrusts between her lips, nor his hands, now pulling her head down onto his pole-like tool. Instead, she looked at him with fire in her eyes, making him so wet that it could be heard amid their moans.

  Maven s
ensed the tension in the room rising, rising—just as when she’d begun rubbing her pussy the other day only to be interrupted—until finally Anglen said, “Now! Now!”

  His plunges into Lavonia’s mouth were wild, uncontained, his face wrenching as his deep, throaty groans filled the air. Even as she kept her mouth over him, Lavonia looked replete with pleasure.

  A few seconds later, Anglen’s body went still and silence returned, and as Lavonia finally withdrew her mouth from his cock, Maven was struck at once by how slick and shiny the rod looked, how deeply pleased Lavonia appeared, and how shimmery-wet her lips remained. The maid gave her head a light shake, as if coming back to herself from someplace far away. “I should have pulled back, let her see him come,” she murmured to herself. Then she sighed happily. “Ah well, time enough for that still.”

  Anglen nearly collapsed into a nearby chair as Lavonia turned to Maven, still on her knees. “That,” she said, “is how you properly suck a man’s cock.”

  “You were sucking?”

  Another of Lavonia’s chuckles bit into the air. “Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Either way, the man is excessively pleased to be in your mouth—trust me on this. There are three keys to successful cocksucking,” she went on, holding up three fingers. “The first is inventiveness. You want to lick him up, down, around, any way you can think of. The second is enthusiasm. You want your man to see you’re eager to take his rod in your mouth. And the last is submission. When the time comes that he wants to thrust his cock between your lips, same as he would if it were your pussy, you meet his thrusts and take him as deep as you can.”

  Maven tried to gather her thoughts, but one overrode them all. “What if I don’t wish to do this at all?”

  Lavonia tilted her head, as if in disbelief. “My dear, cocksucking is a pure joy. Intimidating the first time, perhaps, but trust me, you’ll relish the opportunity to take your man’s shaft in your mouth.”

  Maven remained unconvinced. “And if I don’t?”

  Her maid looked unrepentant, scolding her. “You must. If you want to keep your man happy.”