by Nia Farrell
She exhaled softly and offered him a smile. “Thank you, Sire.”
“It’s Master now,” Gunnar corrected her gently. “Sire is the proper address for the other Doms. You have bound yourself to me, even if it’s only for your scene next week. From now until then, while we are in this room, you will address me as Master, or Milord.”
She lowered her eyes and meekly bowed her head. “Yes, Milord.”
Gunnar lifted her chin until her gaze met his. So full of questions, so naturally curious. And brave, to think of doing this. For the first time since coming here, he wondered if she was the one—the permanent sub he’d denied himself, choosing an existence of perfect control rather than risk the pain of another loss.
“For now,” he said, “you may look at me without permission and respectfully ask any questions you might have. Considering the circumstances, you won’t be surprised if I have a few of my own.”
She blinked those incredible whiskey eyes, and he wondered if she could truly be as guileless as she seemed.
“Circumstances?”
He nearly smiled. “A twenty-two-year-old virgin? You are a rare treasure, Breanna. Your beauty, your artistry, your willingness to do this for your sister—and yes, Sir Piers knows that she’s the only reason you agreed to do a scene. Although he’s been hopeful, from the first.”
Breanna caught her lower lip and her face grew flush. “He’s mentioned it, more than once,” she admitted, her husky voice even lower than normal.
Piers had hoped the twin sisters would really “play” together, but Breanna had made it clear. She wasn’t there to fulfill nearly every man’s fantasy in a ménage with her sister. She was a musician. She was at Replay to perform period music. When she had finally agreed to do a scene, she’d told Piers that she would rather not know what her sister was doing on the other side of the room. Breanna had confessed that it was all she could do to perform a very private act in a semi-public setting.
Fortunately, what Rowena had planned should keep everyone’s attention focused on her, leaving Gunnar to concentrate on Breanna.
He smiled softly, looking forward to the challenge she presented. “You can’t blame him for trying. You have an air of innocence about you, and your sister has a spirit of adventure. Here, that’s a heady combination.”
Breanna watched the Dom’s smile disappear. His incredible blue eyes studied her with an intensity that was unnerving.
Exhaling softly, he brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers and put his hand on her shoulder. She inhaled sharply, feeling its weight and warmth and trying not to think of where she wished he would touch her.
He angled his head, considering. “I need you to tell me something. What is it,” he said, “that you truly want? What do you hope to see? To experience? You understand that your soft list is pretty limited?”
“Yes.” Breanna refused to sound apologetic. She’d been too busy getting an education to have time for more than an occasional, casual date. Now that she’d decided to lose her virginity, she was willing to allow this man to be her first, to give her one night to experience more than some women did in a lifetime.
She thought of the contract they’d signed, the compact they had made, listing the liberties she would allow him to take with her body. Thinking of the Viking raid she’d seen, how he had stroked himself while the scene went on around him, she remembered the sheer size of him and wondered how it would feel, invading her, claiming her.
“Breanna,” he said when she trembled beneath his touch. Breanna. Not wench or girl or pet. He’d said her name, as if he knew she wanted to be more than just one more nameless woman among the many that she was certain he’d had. She wanted to be his, if only for the night.
“You’re about to portray a nun, a religieuse. Before you bare your body, I would have you bare your soul. Come, little one,” he murmured. “Let me hear your confession. Tell me something. Tell me everything.”
Embarrassment pinked her face. Rather than speak, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and stepped back, breaking the contact between them and feeling a sense of loss when he chose to let her go.
She placed a hand on one of the narrow tables and skimmed her fingers along the distressed surface, imagining herself there, at his mercy. How much he would show…well, that depended on how the scene played out. She slanted a glance up at him and just as quickly looked away from his curious half smile and penetrating gaze.
He wanted to know everything. How could she begin to tell him that she dreamed of him? He was the stuff of fantasies. Telling him would require baring her soul—something she wasn’t quite prepared to do. Not yet.
Gunnar might have the patience of Job, but Breanna knew better than to test it. Unable to confess what she really wanted, she settled for the next best thing. “I want,” she said, clearing her throat. “I want to keep it true to the times, as far as it goes.”
“True to the times?” he scoffed, as if she had no idea what could happen. But she did. She did. And so did the Dom.
He stepped close enough that she smelled musk and heat and man as he towered over her, displeasure radiating from him in waves. If he was training her as his sub, she’d be bent over his knee right now, or down on all fours or on her stomach or her back, taking her punishment for hiding the truth from him.
She steeled herself and turned towards him. Lifting her face, she searched his hard blue eyes. His jaw clenched, revealing his growing impatience.
She swallowed hard and whispered her confession. “The truth is, I can’t stop dreaming about it. I want you to make it real.”
A second later, Gunnar ripped the coif from her head, freeing her thick waist-length tresses to tumble down her back. He shoved his fingers in her hair, gripped her scalp, and made her look at him. For the first time, she felt a frisson of fear down her spine, and she shivered, unable to help herself.
His narrowed eyes had the look of a falcon studying its prey. “Real?” he grated. “You can’t imagine, if I stormed your nunnery, that I wouldn’t take you by the hair and spread you out on this table like a banquet, hmm? Your limits, wench, won’t let me.”
She swallowed hard and forced the words, stammering. “We can’t, not with the wigs. They’re short, like a boy’s. We’re playing nuns,” she reminded him, her breath catching in her throat when she saw the heat flare in his blue eyes.
“Hair pins,” he gritted. “Done right, I could drag you across the floor.”
She thought for a moment that he might just do it. Instead, Gunnar fisted her hair, holding it but not quite pulling. She had thought wearing a wig would be a good idea. Now it was a source of his displeasure. Why, oh why hadn’t she thought of pins?
He put his other hand on her breast, testing the ripe, firm swell of flesh. When her nipple pebbled beneath his palm, one side of his mouth curved in a half smile. He looked like a predator, toying with his next meal, as if he knew that he could have her right here, right now, if he wanted.
Her body threatened to go boneless beneath his touch. She bit her lip to keep from moaning.
Was she really ready for this?
Chapter Three
Breanna thought of their agreement, lines of soft limits flowing like mantras in her mind. She had the power, but power was an illusion when beneath it, her will was quickly eroding. She was tempted—oh, so tempted—to yield to the Dom’s greater strength. She was beginning to fear that she just might surrender, if she didn’t find a way to break the hold he had on her.
“The contract,” she whispered. “Gunnar, it’s—”
He raised a brow and pinched her nipple as punishment.
Breanna gasped as pain bloomed into pleasure. “Milord, I beg you,” she whispered. “Please, it’s too soon.”
She was stalling. Gunnar recognized her ploy and smiled. The paper wall she’d thrown up in self-defense would not stop him, let alone slow him down.
“Tell me,” he coaxed her, his ruthless hold on her hair at odds with hi
s touch, now gently stroking, fondling, making her body sing. “Your dream,” he said. “What happens in it? What do you see us doing here?”
She felt a sudden burst of moisture between her legs and clamped her thighs together.
“Rowena, uh, my sister Rowena will be a flagellate. I’ll be doing aftercare on her over there.” Unable to move her head, she used her eyes, looking from Gunnar toward the far table, built sturdy enough for the most vigorous use. “When you find us, she’ll be mostly disrobed. I’ll shrink back while the others surround her, and you and I…I think…here. We might be here.”
Breanna felt the hand on her breast move, sliding down her rib cage, her stomach. Long, strong fingers reached the juncture of her thighs. Diving deep, they found moisture enough to soak her smock.
“You’re wet,” he said roughly. She couldn’t tell if it was an accusation or admiration. “What are you thinking?”
“The scene,” she whispered, closing her eyes, afraid of what he would see in them. “What you’ll do. How you’ll do it.”
She remembered the other time, how he had ripped the clothes from his captive, bound her hands, and forced her to kneel before him. Draping her body over a bench, he had wielded the lash, striking her flesh, raising pink stripes with each measured stroke. When he had finally turned her over to his men, there was no hiding his massive erection. He’d watched the scene play out and had stroked himself in time with the thrust of hips, above and below.
Another reason she’d asked for him. He was the man everyone wanted but nobody had had. She didn’t know of any scene he’d done at Replay in the six months they’d been open where he’d had sex with the participants. He either gratified himself or denied what he so easily could have. She had hoped, with what she was offering Gunnar, that she would prove the exception to his rule, and she’d been right.
Be careful what you wish for.
“Hands behind your back,” he grated. “Believe that they’re tied. Keep them there until I say otherwise.” She did as he commanded, grasping her wrists and hanging on as if her life depended on it.
Gunnar, still gripping her hair, curved his lips in a curious half smile and began to stroke her pussy. Oh, God. Oh. Dear. God. “Ahh,” she squeaked when he plumbed her depths, testing her, exploring just how far he could go. “It’s…it’s…”
“A kitchen,” he observed mildly, ignoring the moan she tried—and failed—to stifle, “and we’re fighting men. There’ll be things to use. Vegetables, maybe. Pestles for certain. They’ll be gentler than wooden handles, but they’re smaller. Shorter. Not nearly as satisfying. We’ll have candles of different thicknesses and lengths. Oil. And butter.”
Butter. Remembering how they used it before, she felt her backside tighten around the plug.
“And the whip,” she added, hardly recognizing the sound of her own voice. He was a Dom and a scholar. He would know its history. The discipline was a cat tail whip used for self-flagellation, when monks and nuns sought purity through the mortification of the flesh.
Breanna swallowed to clear the sudden tightness in her throat. “When you have me…take me…a nun would be ashamed to find any pleasure. She would want to be punished. I. Will. Need. To. Be. Punished.”
There. She’d said it.
Breanna caught her lower lip between her teeth and felt the blush spread from her face to her neck to her chest. Above her head, Gunnar blew out harshly. When she raised her chin to meet his enigmatic gaze, she knew she would ponder the expression on his face for days. Fire and ice, passion and control, want and need, warring with each other.
He let go of her hair. With both hands free, he lifted her hem, baring her calves, her legs, her thighs, watching her face, waiting to see what she would let him do.
Breanna was historically accurate, down to her undergarments—or lack thereof. But she refused to beg him to stop. She wanted to be the exception to his rule, even if her silence came at a cost.
She bit her lip and followed the line of his lowering gaze, heard his breath grow harsh when he saw the short blonde curls that crowned where his fingers had been.
“Safe word,” he growled. “Now.”
“Sanctuary,” she gasped as he fisted her gown in his left hand and parted her curls with the other, sliding his middle finger back along her creamy inner folds, wetting it, stroking her weeping flesh. When he hit the silicone, breath hissed between his teeth. Backing her against the table, he shoved the length of his hard, muscled body against hers, pinning her hem between them. He grabbed her chin with his left hand and slid the other behind her, beneath her, down between her cheeks until he reached the plug.
Pressing it, he took hold of her face and forced her to look at him. “How long?” He asked with a tap that sent shockwaves ratcheting up her rectum.
“A week,” she whispered, her face flushed scarlet. “It’s the third size in the set. I, uh, I want to be ready. In case, after the whipping…”
His nostrils flared. His hand moved, cupping her left buttocks and squeezing it, a silent promise in his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat when, seconds later, she felt his hand on her pussy’s swollen lips, parting them to stroke her inner folds, tempting, teasing, making her flesh weep for want of him. He bent his middle finger and pushed it inside her. Just the tip, curling, penetrating her defenses. Her body gushed—enough that she expected to feel it run down her legs and pool on the floor. The way her knees felt, she’d be lucky if she didn’t end up there herself.
“A week,” he repeated. “Have you worn it all the time?” Another inch deeper.
“Yes.”
Heat lightning flashed in those pale blue eyes. The falcon was gone. In its place was a wolf, with a hunger that simply took her breath away. A split second later, he’d managed to hide it, but she knew it was there, simmering beneath the surface.
She wondered what it would take to unleash it.
He angled his head, considering. “And when was it the worst? Where were you when you thought you couldn’t function, that you’d have to take it out to go on?”
“Yesterday. My Tuesday class,” she breathed, melting against his hand. “During the week, I teach—I teach music history. I was presenting the works of Barbara Strozzi. She—she had four children out of wedlock. I felt the plug and wondered if she’d ever worn one, and I couldn’t stop feeling it.”
“What did your students think?” he asked her, burying his finger inside her pussy up to the knuckle and twisting it. When her eyelids drifted closed, he released her chin and grabbed her hair again, forcing her to focus on him. His nostrils were flared, his lips pressed tightly together, his clean shaven jaw dangerously clenched.
“I don’t know,” she gasped when he pulled his right hand back a bit then shoved his finger inside her again. And again. “I don’t know. But my department head asked me if I was all right when he noticed that my gait was off and I had to ease myself into a chair.”
The Viking Dom smiled darkly and worked in a second finger, impossible though it seemed. “Your ass is mine,” he told her, scissoring his fingers, making her breath catch in her chest. “Your ass.” He thrust. “And your pussy.” Thrust again. “And your mouth.” Forged deeper. “Are mine.”
Oh, God.
“You gave them to me when you signed that bottom line.”
Had she? Yes. No. Yes.
“And you will swallow.” She gasped when he buried his fingers inside her, a dark promise in his voice. “Anything that you ‘considered’ in our contract will happen. Count on it.”
He stroked her, then, harder, faster, fingers twisting, curling, finding a spot that made her breath catch and her knees buckle. “Please, Milord,” she begged him, trembling uncontrollably. “Please. Oh, please…”
Gunnar bent his head and touched his forehead to hers, sharing each precious breath that she managed. “God, you’re tight. So tight.”
She knew she was small, even without the plug.
And he was so very large…
<
br /> Forsaking the silk of her hair, he stroked her neck and slid his left hand lower, catching her nipple and rolling it, feeling her juices drench his other hand. Her breath became staccato, sharp notes inhaled between soft, shallow pants. Her eyes glazed, and she looked at him, hurting, knowing he could ease the pain and bring her pleasure.
“Come for me,” he ordered, pinching above and pushing below. Pressing her clit with his thumb, he shoved in deep and sent her over the edge.
She inhaled sharply and shuddered as she flooded his hand. The walls of her pussy spasmed and tightened, clamping down on him, milking his fingers. But he didn’t stop there. He kept pumping, kept stroking her, continued drawing out her body’s wet response until the tension took hold and she stiffened, crying out with the power of her second release.
Breanna was grateful for his support when her legs threatened to buckle. Once she could breathe again, he slid his fingers from her and let her gown drop down.
“Release,” he said. “Relax your arms.”
She let go of her wrists and dropped her hands to her side, rounding and rotating her shoulders to ease the tension. Gunnar brought his right hand, still wet with her juices, to her mouth. His eyes told her what he wanted, even before the command was given.
She obediently parted her lips, licked and suckled his fingers, tasting herself on him, thrilling to the hitch in his breath when she took them deep in her throat, thinking of what else she’d swallow one week from today. His cock. His cum. He’d promised her that much, and more.
Chapter Four
Breanna taught only one morning class on Friday, allowing plenty of time to prepare for the evening’s work. When they had heard about the chance to play period music at an indoor, year-round venue instead of driving miles to perform at Renaissance fairs in sweltering heat and torrential rain while mosquitoes threatened anemia and drunken patrons got too fresh, Breanna thought it was an answer to their prayers.