She stood a little straighter, determined to be much stronger than she’d been the previous evening. “I’m thankful my father raised me to respect myself, not to see myself as some man’s plaything.”
He blinked, again looking wearied by her. “Maven, it’s not as if I’m trying to subject you to some terrible fate no one else in the domain suffers. I just expect you to behave like a wife.”
“There is more than one kind of wife. My mother is a wonderful wife and my father treats her with the utmost respect. They are friends as well as lovers.”
He tilted his head, looking doubtful. “Don’t take this the wrong way, my bride, but though you and I are husband and wife, and definitely now lovers, I don’t see a warm friendship growing between us anytime soon.”
“So what am I to do?” She narrowed her gaze on him. “Simply warm your bed and do your bidding, all so you can rule Caralon someday?”
He widened his eyes as if to drive a point home. “It would be a pleasant start.” He patted the bed next to him. “Now come back to bed like a good wife.”
As incensed as ever, maybe more so after last night, she looked around the room, feeling out of sorts in numerous ways, finally asking him, “Where are we, anyway? This isn’t the chamber where I watched you bathe yesterday.”
“This is the fortress’ master chamber, where you and I shall reside together.”
“And…why didn’t you reside here before now?” she asked, her voice softening with curiosity.
“It once belonged to my parents. I thought it appropriate not to move into it myself until I took a wife.”
His parents. Odd, as much as she’d thought of her own parents lately—missing them, being angry with them, wishing her marriage to Dane could somehow mirror theirs—she’d never even thought of him having parents. Another way in which he seemed godlike to her—it was as if he’d always existed and always would. He was so much a man that it was difficult to believe he’d ever been a child. “Where are they, your parents?” she asked, taking a step closer to the bed.
“Dead.”
The word seemed to hang in the air with a hideous finality. Despite herself, she felt badly for him. “What happened to them?”
His eyes grew a bit distant as he spoke. “Virgs from the north attacked. My father was a peaceful man with a farming estate—he’d never bothered to protect it much. They were killed in the battle. I escaped.”
Without quite thinking, she lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, instantly caught up in the horrible drama. “What happened then?”
“The Virgs had control of the fortress for a few days, but I gathered men—some from the nearest village, eager to defend my good father’s estate, others to whom I promised employ after we regained the fortress. They were my first army. We recaptured the estate within a week, and it has been fortified, and my borders guarded, ever since.”
She hated caring, but she couldn’t help asking. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Ares, so young! Young to lose parents, young to lead an army. “How were you able to…to win, to take such control, to get men to follow you at the age of fifteen?”
He gave her a knowing look, peering directly into her eyes. “Fear, Maven. And respect. I made my friends respect me and my enemies fear me. Fear goes a long way toward keeping foes at a distance.”
His words brought to mind the many rumors she’d heard about him since her girlhood—how wicked he was, how frightening, to both women and men, albeit in different ways. Dane the Dreadful. “Is it…wrong for people to fear you?” she asked with a tilt of her head.
“Wrong?”
“Is it…apt? When people call you Dane the Dreadful, is it a name well-earned?”
“For anyone meaning to harm me or mine, it is wise to fear me—I can be a fearsome man, wife. But for those who are in my fold, no, they need not be afraid of me.” His voice softened. “You need not be afraid.”
Curse him, he was trying to get her to warm up to him again. She moved from the bed once more, pulling the coverlet a little higher on her breasts, then spoke with cold defiance. “Even if I don’t fear you, I can never make peace with the notion that I’m owned by you.”
“I keep telling you, I didn’t write the rules of our society, Maven.”
“But you enjoy them well enough.”
He shrugged. “What am I to do? Defy the laws of what is deemed natural and right?”
“Yes. Tell me I am your equal and treat me as such.”
He simply shook his head, looking aghast at the very suggestion and driving home for her that he would never give in and that she would, therefore, never be happy in this abominable marriage.
“That’s how it is between my father and mother,” she reminded him once more. “You saw where she was seated. At his side.”
“That’s your father’s prerogative, not mine.”
“So you choose to own me, is that it?”
He tilted his head. “Does it matter how I answer, Maven? I think you’re resigned to hating me anyway, for the very fact that you had no choice in our match. And if you examine it, you’ll see that you’re asking me to do the very thing you refuse to do in this union—submit to change.”
“You’re impossible!” she snapped, then turned to march away.
But in an instant, the coverlet was yanked away from her, leaving her as naked as he. She darted her head around to find her husband had risen from the bed to grab onto one corner of the large brocaded swath of silk.
“I hate you!” she shouted.
“You want me,” he said calmly and she couldn’t help letting the warmth of his voice seep into her skin as she noticed his cock—at some point the shaft had grown hard again, lengthening. Despite herself, the sight made her pussy spasm with need.
When she lifted her gaze back to his handsome, rugged face, a knowing smile quirked his mouth. And the heat of embarrassment ascended her cheeks.
Letting the cover drop to the floor, he started taking slow but confident steps toward her.
As her heart began pumping faster, she eased backward, away from him. She had the notion she could get away—would get away—even as their eyes stayed locked, even as her heart pounded mercilessly against her feeble chest.
Her breathing grew thready, labored, and as his steps increased in speed, she moved faster, too.
Yet within another second, he had backed her into a corner, bracing his arms on the smooth stone walls at either side of her.
She could hear her own breath and swore she could have drowned in the blue depths of his eyes. She bit her lip, her pulse still racing with fear but her cunt beating with a different sort of rhythm altogether—she suspected she was growing wet with desire.
He bent to sweep a kiss across her neck, the tip of his cock brushing against her stomach and sending a ripple of sensation racing through her from head to toe. “Ares,” she breathed. It was like a cold chill, only hot and ever so much more powerful. Her pussy wept.
His next kiss slanted across her mouth, warm and possessive and too delicious for her to even begin to resist. Against her own will, she kissed him back, crushing her lips passionately against his as the heat of his flesh drew close, so close, his entire body barely grazing hers from chest to knee.
His hands left the wall to close around her breasts—tender from all that had befallen them in the previous twenty-four hours. She cried out in a mix of pleasure and pain when he molded them in his palms. But the pleasure soon outweighed all else to leave her panting as she gazed down at the sight of his rough fingers kneading her pale skin.
He bent to shower more hot kisses on the soft flesh of her breasts, the taut peaks of her nipples, making her whimper and moan at the delights that stormed her body at his ministrations.
“Oh Ares, how I hate you,” she managed to murmur desperately into his hair.
“Your breasts betray you,” he breathed warm against the ridge of one.
“What?”
&
nbsp; He lifted his gaze to her and bestowed one last kiss on a hard, pink, oh-so-sensitive nipple, then smiled. “Because your breasts love me, Maven.”
She bit her lip, lost to the physical sensations that made it so impossible to remain true to herself. But she had little time for internal struggle as his hard kiss found her mouth again, even as his fingers sank between her thighs.
She moaned her pleasure as they kissed. She could smell the ripe scent of her pussy as he caressed her clit and the wet, hungry flesh below with warm, smooth petting motions. The scent assaulted her more fully when he lifted his fingers to his mouth and sucked them dry, all while pinning her in place with that lethal gaze.
Next his hands were on her ass and hers fell around his shoulders and he was lifting her and pressing against her and—dear Ares!—then his shaft was entering her, deep, deeper, as she cried out at the shock and pleasure.
She’d forgotten—just since last night—how tremendous and heavenly he felt inside her. And now she was clutching at him, wrapping her legs around him, and he was pulling her closer, closer—deeper, so much deeper. Oh, what strange and heady bliss!
She didn’t quite realize he was moving, carrying her as he fucked her, until he eased down into the same chair he’d sat in last night. Her knees became planted in the upholstery alongside his hips and suddenly being at such an angle—impaled on his cock—made him feel even more huge. At the moment, it was as if his rod was the biggest part of her.
“I hate you!” she said through clenched teeth.
“I know. Ride me,” he commanded her.
She didn’t have to wonder what he meant—the motions came naturally enough, as if from deep down inside her, some ancient knowledge she’d been born with but never realized up to now. Pushing herself against him in a rhythm that came instinctually, she couldn’t help but ride the man, her husband, her enemy. His cock demanded it, her pussy needed it—desperately.
She bit her lip again as she moved on him—this position seemed to bring her a deeper, more intense pleasure than she’d yet known. It stimulated her clit wildly even as she got to experience the feel of his huge cock pumping up into her.
His hands roamed her breasts, her hips, her ass. Her panting edged into a series of high-pitched moans she couldn’t have squelched if her life had depended on it. Everything about him felt too good—driving her onward and upward toward the climax she knew would strike soon.
It took her by force, jolting her body with its power, making her cry out as she tried to grab onto the pleasure and control it, absorb it, let it course through her. “Oh Ares,” she purred when the spasms of hot pleasure began to wane. “Oh Ares, that was…that was…”
He flashed his usual wicked smile. “Yes, wife, tell me what it was. I want to know exactly what you felt.”
Your power.
She would never admit that. Never.
But neither could she lie to him, for that would be stupid at a moment when her body clearly dripped with satiation, when she continued to ride the thrusts of his monstrous rod. “Ares help me,” she murmured, “but it was incredible.”
His eyes seemed to glow with sexual heat. “I love making you come, Maven. I love watching the hot joy wash over you, love watching you abandon yourself to it.”
Abandon. The word struck home. Indeed this man made her abandon herself. She didn’t answer—couldn’t, not while his hot cock still lifted her with its commanding drives upward, not while she continued to pant and moan and move on him.
“I love fucking you long and hard and deep,” he said, his voice now little more than a warm purr that nearly turned her inside out. “I love pushing my shaft up into you, filling you with it, making you moan.”
Despite herself, his words fueled her, actually made her tremble, made her grit her teeth as he thrust deeper, higher. She wanted to break away from his gaze, but she couldn’t—it was as if he held her captive. Fitting, she thought.
But such wry thoughts couldn’t compete for long with the power of his cock. And his eyes—those hot, horrible, beautiful, captivating eyes.
Then she felt it again—a familiar sort of pleasure beginning to rise inside her. “Ares,” she whispered, stunned. Could it happen again? Could she have another orgasm? Lavonia hadn’t addressed that, and the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. But now, now…she found herself riding him harder, felt the delicious sensations beginning to fill her up, fill her until she was brimming.
“Yes, Maven,” he whispered, low and deep. Their eyes still locked. “Yes, Maven, do it for me again. Come for me. Come even harder than last time.”
It’s not for you, she wanted to say, but passion prevented it. And besides, it would have been a lie. It was for him, like it or not. His erotic talk of wanting to watch the climax take her had given rise to this new heat.
She rode him harder, swiveled her hips in tight, hot circles that delivered just the right pressure to her clit. She bit her lip and clenched her teeth. Finally breaking from his gaze, she let her head fall backward, so lost in desire now that she couldn’t think, could only feel, could only let her body drive her onward.
“Yes,” she whispered, barely audible, and then the torrent of hot pleasure blasted over her, even harder than last time, making her buck and moan and sob with it, turning her inside out with the sensations that pummeled her body.
“Oh,” Dane murmured as her orgasm began to fade, pumping even harder into her now. “Oh Ares, yes. Me too, Maven. Me too.”
Planting his hands at her hips, his thrusts were the largest she’d felt so far, lifting her body, even lifting her knees from the chair as he fully impaled her on his rod.
She cried out with him as he moaned his release, and when it was done, they slumped against one another, his head resting on her breasts, her head atop his. Without realizing it, she was holding him to her, pressing him against her—and when she noticed the embrace, she didn’t extract herself from it. Couldn’t. Just too exhausted, she told herself in explanation. Nothing more. She felt nothing tender for this man.
“Your heart beats very hard, bride,” he murmured against her breast, his voice drained but still sensuous.
He knows. He can sense how I feel—how warm right now, how…oh Ares, she couldn’t deny it—how safe. The knowledge, and her abhorrence of such, hardened her heart further, took her back to that place of resistance and control, even as it pulsed against her chest. “Not for you,” she whispered.
He raised his head, met her gaze with one arched eyebrow, challenging her. “For whom then?”
“It’s only a reaction to sex. I may be new at this, but I learned enough in my Orientation to understand that.”
Ares, he was still inside her, even now. The realization weakened her a bit, making her feel liquid and limp, but she struggled not to let it show, to let him witness only the defiance that burned through her now.
She couldn’t read his expression as he continued to look at her. “Well, if nothing else, you seem to enjoy fucking well enough, so even if we can’t be happy in any other way, we can at least connect here in the bedchamber.” What he meant, she suspected, was that she enjoyed fucking him—he thought he was special to her. It was an accusation.
“A lapse after the titillation of last night’s rituals, I assure you. It won’t happen again.”
He quirked a doubtful, superior grin. “Is that so?”
She nodded. “That’s so.”
But he was still inside her, even now, and she couldn’t bear such a physical link with him for even a second longer, so she took the opportunity to lift herself off him, praying the instant loss she felt didn’t show on her face as she dashed across the room. She barely knew what she was doing, what her plan was, but she was getting away from him—now. “I can’t stand to be near you for another moment,” she spat at him, looking around for clothing—clothing that wasn’t in this room yet, she realized with a groan.
Desperate, she snatched up the silken bed cover and wrapped it around h
erself again, then bolted toward the door.
“Leaving already?”
It was the amusement in his voice that drew her gaze. And oh, but he was magnificent sitting there, relaxed, naked, his muscles shimmering with the light sheen of perspiration from their sex. As usual, he cast an annoying smile.
“Yes!” she snapped.
He tilted his head. “You’re not clothed, you know,” he said casually, as if perhaps she’d just forgotten this small fact.
Rather than summon a reply, she simply let out a light growl of disgust, then ripped open the wooden door and barreled through it without a care who saw her parading about in a bedcover.
Chapter Thirteen
After leaving Dane, Maven made her way down the wide stairs and sneaked back into the room she’d inhabited up until yesterday—all without being seen by anyone. There she found her trunk, from which she dug a silk nightgown. Dropping the lush coverlet from the upstairs bedchamber to the floor, she donned the familiar gown, then crawled into bed for more sleep.
Maybe by the time she woke up, she’d have recovered from the insanity that had overtaken her these last twenty-four hours. It was still difficult to fathom all that had happened, and the many pleasures she’d indulged in. Not to mention that she was married now. To Dane. And that fucking him had been…well, extraordinary, to say the least. She’d never dreamed of the unadulterated joy and satisfaction that had coursed through her veins when his big cock had been inside her, thrusting so deep.
Not that she could let that happen again. She simply couldn’t let herself succumb to his sexual charms. But as she’d told him, it was surely just the reaction to the Rituals of Passion, to the many men who had pleasured her last night before Dane had taken her virginity. Ares above, how could any woman not yearn for a man’s shaft after what she’d endured following the game of Maran tiles?
But when I next awaken, she promised herself, all that lust for him will be gone, vanished. She would not give herself to him again, would not be the possession he seemed determined to make her—even if, much as she was loathe to admit it—the sense of being possessed when he fucked her so hard was, in some sense, not so horrible.
Rituals of Passion (Brides of Caralon, Book One) Page 14