He had stacked the fucking deck.
14
Malac
“Jude broke her.” Glass clinked as Malac set the decanter back on the liquor cart and replaced the stopper.
“I broke her?” The king leaned forward on the leather couch in his private office, his own nearly empty glass hovering in front of his mouth. “You've seen what Orlann puts her through, yet you think I'm responsible for this...malaise?”
“She fell into this state after you put her on the com with her brother. After you got Jaarod to tell her she couldn’t come home.”
“You mean, after I brought her face-to-face with reality?”
“Exactly.” Malac took a sip from his glass. “Don’t you think that was a little extreme? How hard would it have been to let her believe she had a ripcord to pull, if she ever really needed it?”
Orlann’s brows rose. “And when she eventually pulled it?”
“‘Eventually’ would have given us time to win her over. Or to at least knock her up, first.” Because a baby was like an anchor—once she’d dropped one, she’d know she was in Loborough to stay. “But Jude had to go fuck with her head within a week of bringing her here. And now she never smiles at me anymore.”
Worse, she no longer cared if Malac smiled at her. Not when it was just the two of them, anyway.
Sure, she orgasmed when he wanted her to. And she’d gotten good at swallowing his cock—the whole damn thing. But the only time she really seemed to care what he was saying or doing to her was when Orlann was between her legs. When she needed Malac to talk her through the pain.
“Who the fuck cares if she smiles?” Orlann said. “The problem isn't that she isn't happy. It's that she isn’t pregnant. It’s been three months. How long does it take to get a woman pregnant?”
The king replied by draining his glass.
Orlann frowned. “The clock is ticking.”
“I am aware,” Jude said. “But she is not. And we’re going to keep it that way.”
“What did the doctor say?” Malac prodded.
Jude shrugged, but the glare he was aiming at the entire room seemed to be a better indicator of the king’s mood. “She’s fine. Perfectly functional.”
“When will she ovulate?” Malac asked. “We should make plans to all take her in the same night, when she’s ripe.”
“The doctor doesn’t know that yet. He’s going to go back through the infrared data from the feeds in her room and look for patterns in the variation of her body temperature. He said that’ll be faster than monitoring her temperature and the quality of her cervical mucous for the next month. Whatever the hell cervical mucous is.”
“No idea,” Malac said. “But I volunteer to take the sample.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Jude stood to refill his glass, and Malac’s worried gaze followed him.
“Is it possible that this depression, or whatever’s wrong with her could be preventing conception?”
Orlann snorted. “I think it’s much more likely that Geneva got to her.”
Malac’s eyes narrowed. “You think Maari has been pregnant, and she ended it because of what Geneva said to her?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I meant that maybe Geneva has been sneaking her contraceptives, in some form.” Orlann shrugged. “I mean, neither of them wants her to get pregnant.”
“Well, if she’s had contraceptives, they aren’t chemical in nature.” Jude didn’t bother stoppering the decanter, because the half-glass he’d poured himself had drained it. “The obstetrician said there’s no sign in her blood work that she’s on anything chemical or hormonal. Nor is there any sign that she’s ever been pregnant. Not that he can tell that for sure, for a pregnancy that ended as early as this would have had to.”
“So, basically, we don’t know what’s wrong,” Malac concluded.
“We don’t know that there’s anything wrong,” Jude said. “Three months isn’t very long.”
Orlann huffed. “It is when you’re working remotely, through a representative, because you’re not allowed back in Valemont until your fucking concubine is pregnant.”
Malac shrugged. “And considering the pure volume of sperm we’ve been seeding her with…?”
“That’s why I brought in a doctor. For now, let’s just relax and let him do his job. He said he’d be back to us with an estimated date of ovulation in a couple of days. Until then…” Jude glanced at Orlann. “I believe you’ve requested our lovely concubine’s company tonight?”
Orlann nodded. “If I’m stuck here, I may as well have some fun.” He turned to Malac. “Care to join me?”
Malac shrugged. “I’m always game. What I don’t understand is what you get out of having me there.” Malac was possessive of his time with Maari and loathe to have either of his brothers in the room when he was with her. When she came, he wanted her eyes on him. He wanted to keep her little sighs and groans for himself. Even if she hadn’t truly come alive in his arms since that afternoon in the garden. When Jude broke their goddamn concubine.
“One hour.” Orlann rose, leaving his empty glass on the end table. As he left the room, he paused next to the long conference table to ruffle Gareth Delayne’s hair. “I’m gonna make your sister cry tonight.”
The preserved head, of course, had no reply.
“Does she know you still have that?” Malac asked, staring at the decapitated head, as Orlann closed the door at his back.
“Not unless one of you has told her.” Jude took another long sip and studied his youngest brother. “Do you really not know why he likes you there when he plays with Maari?”
“Because he wants me to see her get off on what he does to her? He thinks she likes him better, and he wants me to know that.”
Jude shook his head. “It’s because she’s figured out how to play his game and win. But she can’t do that when you’re there.”
Malac sank onto the couch cushion Orlann had just abandoned and sipped from his glass while he thought that through. Finally, he frowned at his brother. His king. “I don’t doubt you’re right.” Because Jude, he knew, watched Maari all the time. All the damn time. He carried an extra com device now, dedicated solely to watching the feeds from Maari’s room, even though she did nothing, when she wasn’t being fucked, but sit by the window and stare out at the garden. “But I have no idea what you mean.”
“What does Orlann want from Maari?”
“Other than a pregnancy, so he can go back to Valemont?” Malac guessed.
“Yes. Other than that.”
“I don’t know. He wants to do weird shit to her, and watch her get off on it.”
“He wants to see how much she can take,” Jude said. “On an academic level. He’s experimenting, to see if her pain threshold increases. To see what kind of pain she finds more bearable. To see what kind turns her on the most.”
“What does that have to do with me being there?”
“He only stops hurting her when he gets so turned on that he has to fuck her. So when she’s alone with him, she turns him on as fast as she can, so that the game ends early. So that he fucks her before he’s satisfied his curiosity.”
“Shit.” Malac whistled, impressed with his little princess. “When I’m there to talk her through the pain, she can take more of it.”
Jude nodded.
“She’s clever, isn’t she?”
“A little too clever.”
“You think she’s doing something, don’t you?” Malac asked. “To prevent pregnancy.”
“I’m starting to suspect that, though I don’t see how. I go back to look at the footage after every single time one of us takes her. She’s playing by the rules. She stays on her back for an hour, every damn time. And she doesn’t have access to any kind of obstructive birth control. But here’s the thing.” Jude leaned forward, and his direct eye contact and unusually loose tongue both told Malac that he’d had too much to drink. “She insists she’s not going to get pregnant. She’s so dam
n sure of it.” Jude shook his head, his eyes closing as he leaned back and rested his skull on the back of the chair. “We’re missing something.”
“Well, maybe you’ll figure it out when you watch tonight’s footage. Or do you want to see the show in person? I gotta give Orlann credit; she’s fucking gorgeous when she cries.”
Jude shook his head, his eyes still closed. “I’ll leave you two to it tonight.”
Malac leaned back on the couch, studying his brother and king. “I don’t think Maari’s the only one you broke.”
Finally, Jude sat up and looked at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t think you’ve been the same since that day in the garden either. I think breaking her broke you.”
The king growled. “I am perfectly intact.” He picked up his glass as he stood. “Oh. I know the bites are starting to wear off, but I don’t want either of you to bite Maari again until the doctor can tell me for sure that having us in her blood isn’t messing with her fertility.”
Malac frowned. “Is that possible?”
“Who fucking knows? Go on, now. I have work to do.”
“Is that ‘work’ staring at Maari’s feed? Because you know there’s little in the world sadder than watching you stare at her while she stares out the damn window. If you’re bored with her, why don’t you—”
“I’m not bored with her.” Jude sank into the chair behind his desk. “But the council wants a report, and I doubt they’re going to be happy with a list of all the different ways we’ve failed to get her pregnant.”
“Right. This is about the council.” Malac stood and headed for the door. “I’m sure your mood has nothing to do with the fact that the only time Maari truly comes alive anymore is when Orlann’s hurting her. And that that’s your fault.” He closed the door on his way out.
Two seconds later, it shook with a thud, followed by the tinkle of shattering glass.
The king had thrown his drink at the door.
Maari’s sharp gasp sent a tingle through Malac’s cock, hardening the already stiff length until it ached. “That’s it,” he whispered. “You’re doing such a great job. Really beautiful.”
She nodded too quickly, too many times, staring up at him with her long, dark hair splayed across the pillow, her mouth slightly open, wet lips begging for a kiss.
It wasn’t just her mouth that called to him. It was her eyes.
Malac felt no guilt if his pleasure caused her a little pain. She knew, when that happened, that he would make it up to her. That he would worship her body with his hands, and mouth, and cock. That he would whisper obscene admiration for her patience so rousing that she would grow wet for him from words alone.
What Orlann wanted from her was different. Any pain she felt from Malac’s attention was incidental—a side effect of the pleasure he was taking. Coming from Orlann, the pain was the whole point. The main course of his feast upon their princess.
Malac wasn’t entirely sure that his middle brother—the academic, who’d never once wielded a weapon in battle—could even get hard without a symphony of pained sounds stoking his lust. Sounds like their beautiful little princess was making right now.
To be fair, those sounds tugged at Malac too. They kept his dick hard and slowly leaking precum, but not because they meant she was in pain. Because those sounds meant she needed him.
None of the women he’d been with before had ever needed Malac. Sure, they’d been thrilled for attention from the bastard prince, a young man who’d always had the king’s ear, if not his surname. And after his father had died, when Malac rose to one of the most powerful positions in the kingdom, the steady flow of pussy had become a deluge. Those women all wanted something from him. But not one of them needed him, like Maari did. Not one of them looked at him as if he held the key not just to their pleasure, but to their very survival.
“She really hates the nipple clamps,” Orlann groaned, his erection bulging against the crotch of his pants as he placed the second one on Maari’s left nipple. She hissed, arms still stretched over her head to clutch the bedpost, as she’d been instructed.
“Then why are you using the nipple clamps?”
Orlann rolled his eyes at his younger brother. “Because I love how badly she hates them.”
Maari writhed on the bed, trying to ease her discomfort by arching her back. Thrusting her breasts toward Malac. Silently appealing to him with huge golden-brown eyes. But she didn’t say a word, nor did she let go of the post, even once.
Because Orlann’s game had rules, and Maari was a very good girl.
“What’s the point of this again?” Malac broke eye contact with his princess to watch his brother pet her.
“She’s learning to associate pain with pleasure.” Orlann’s hands wandered over Maari’s belly, stroking softly. Sensitizing her skin with constant light caresses. Loving pats and pinches.
“Don’t you think you’re going a little light on the pleasure side of the equation?” Malac frowned at the nipple clamps mercilessly squeezing his princess’s tender flesh. “Those look like they really hurt.”
“I have an extra set, if you want to try them.” Orlann’s hands wandered up again, and Maari gasped, jerking when he tugged lightly on the small chain connecting the clamps.
Malac scowled at him. “No thanks.”
Orlann gently squeezed her breasts, and the princess’s groan settled into Malac’s balls, drawing them tighter. Orlann might be a sick fuck—to which any woman and half the men in Valemont could attest—but he was onto something. Maari had never looked more beautiful than she did now, stretched out long and tense on the bed, clutching the post in one corner. Breathing shallowly, to keep from jostling the clamps and the thin chain, her adrenaline-fueled heartbeat visibly bouncing her breasts, despite her best effort to hold still.
“I’m just saying, if you’re giving her more pain than pleasure, doesn’t that throw the equation off?”
Orlann worked his way down Maari’s torso again, stroking over her hips to her knees. Then he gently spread her bare legs, exposing her sex. “I’d say my equation is pretty well balanced.” He nodded for Malac to take a look.
She was already soaked and dripping.
“The real pain comes when you take the clamps off. So that needs to be when the real pleasure comes, as well. She knows that. She’s wet in anticipation. Like a good girl.” Orlann petted her thighs over and over, letting his fingers come a little closer to her core with each stroke, so that she arched into his touch. Begging for more. “Her skin is alive right now. Her nerve endings so sensitized that every touch has an exaggerated effect. You can draw the most amazing sounds out of her without going near her clit. Without sliding one finger inside her.”
Orlann said that like it was a miracle, but Malac had his doubts. Maari rolled her eyes to keep him in sight, silently appealing to him. She really seemed to need that finger he refused to put inside her. At the very least.
“She may look sweet and helpless, staring up at you like you can rescue her. But our princess is a dirty girl.” Orlann moved between her thighs, and she arched her hips at him desperately. “Awww.” He gave her hip a brief pat, and she groaned when the touch went no further. “Do you want me to make it feel good?”
Maari moaned, nodding frantically, her hair catching on the pillow beneath her.
“Ask me nicely,” Orlann ordered.
“Please,” Maari begged, the sound half caught in her throat. “Please, please make it feel good. Please.”
“That’s a good girl.” Orlann rewarded her by lightly circling her clit with one finger.
Maari groaned. Her hips snapped off the bed, reaching for him. Begging for a more substantial touch. For more friction to ease the ache clearly plaguing her.
Orlann rubbed her a little harder, and she moaned. Her eyes fell closed and her frame started to relax, her grip on the bedpost going slack as she melted into his touch. Then he pulled his hand away.
Tears
filled Maari’s eyes and she groaned again, her neglected clit engorged with unmet desire. She looked up at Malac, need swimming in her expression, and he couldn’t resist anymore. He leaned down and kissed her.
Maari groaned into his mouth, grateful for the distraction, and his cock grew so hard it almost hurt. But the moment he swept his tongue between her lips, Orlann snarled and shoved him away from her, breaking their kiss with another agonized groan from the princess.
“You know better,” Orlann growled. Because his game had rules for Malac, too. One rule, anyway.
Don’t touch the princess without permission.
“You want to put that tongue to use?” Orlann stroked one hand over the side of Maari’s right breast, addressing her without waiting for Malac’s answer. “You want him to lick you?” He gave the thin chain a little tug, and her whole body jerked again. “You want him to make you feel good?”
Maari nodded frantically again, turning to Malac to beg wordlessly.
“Where should I let him lick you? Here?” Orlann ran one finger slowly down her neck, and Maari closed her eyes and threw her head back, elongating the path for him. Moaning beneath even such a light touch. “Or here?” Orlann circled her abused nipple, then he leaned in to flick his tongue over it, and her groan hit obscene new depths of pleasure twisted with pain.
“Or maybe here?” He let his fingers trail lightly across her stomach, then over the point of her hip while she squirmed. “Or here.” He brushed three fingers over her spread-open sex, pausing to plunge one finger inside her, and her eyes flew open again. She lost control, for just a second, and uttered a forbidden open-mouthed cry of torment.
Moans, groans, gasps, and hisses were all she was allowed without specific permission. Nothing vocal at all. Which was why her cry earned a quick tug on the chain connecting her clamped nipples.
Maari hissed again, gasping as she tried to breathe through the pain, and when Orlann stroked her thigh again, that gasp became another low moan.
“I think she’s ready.” Orlann raised one brow at Malac. “You wanna lick her?”
Dirty Lovely Broken Page 18