Dye’s lips drew together in shrewd consideration. “In your hand,” he answered.
Pall nodded. “You’ve a keen eye, My Lord. So does the girl. She accused me of cheating in a tavern full of…losers.” Pall shrugged. “I had my honor to defend…as well as my life,” he muttered. “I threw my ale in her face.”
The king blinked as Pall nodded wryly. “What did she do?”
“‘You’ll pay for that’, she told me. Then she picked up my shells and beat me at my own game, though her sleight-of-hand was atrocious. Won back all the money I’d…” Pall coughed, “won. And bought the tavern a round, thereby saving my ass.”
“The imp.” The king shook his head in admiring wonder. “After she’d put your ass to risk, in the first place.”
“Aye,” Pall laughed. “And the thing of it is…the most amazing thing of it is…I don’t know how she did it. I still don’t know!”
The king’s eyes were keen on his soldier as the sergeant pushed back his chair and stood. He raised his chin to the young officer. “She wants to wed you.”
Pall grinned just before he swaggered toward the door then turned back to face the king. “Write her a note and don your armor, My Lord. That would be my suggestion. And do it soon. Because—I’m warning you, sir—if she asks me to wed her, I’m not turning her down.”
* * * * *
A meeting with Greegor and the Khallic Princes kept Dye busy for most of the afternoon and, for the time being, he put aside the confession that would have to be made at the end of the day.
After catching up on correspondence, he laid out a few examples of earlier requisitions and ate lastmeal at his table, glancing at the tent’s opening and wondering about Martigay while he formulated his next approach…to the truth. When he’d finished his meal, he changed clothing and pulled a comb through his hair, still wondering where Martigay was, before finally heading toward the tent’s exit—where he was almost bowled over by one of his guards rushing in with an announcement.
“My Lord. It’s two of your captains,” the man wheezed out in an apprehensive rush of words.
With a dread feeling of premonition, the king hurried after his guard.
Elbowing his way through the rough circle of onlookers, Dye found his two captains scuffling in the dust. From the sounds of things, the man on top appeared to be choking back laughter. The woman beneath him, however, was not.
Martigay.
Destri rolled on top of her, straddling her on his knees, leaning forward to pin her wrists to the ground, laughing outright as he did so. In a scorching burst of fury that blindsided him, he had Captain Destri by the collar. “Get off her!” he snarled in a violent hiss of fury.
The man left the ground on his way to land four feet distant. Immediately, the two combatants scrambled to their feet and Dye watched Martigay launch herself at Destri again. Hooking her above the elbows from behind, Dye dragged her off Destri. Still she kicked and struggled to free herself and resume the conflict. Shoving her behind him, Dye spread a hand in the middle of her chest to restrain her. “Captain Martigay! Get a grip, soldier!”
Chest heaving, the girl panted beneath his hand. Dye looked to Destri then back at her. “What is this about?”
There were several instants of hard-bitten silence. “It’s private,” she finally gritted out, her eyes still looking daggers at Destri while Destri returned his cool amusement.
“Destri?”
The man offered nothing but a keen, taunting smile.
“How private could it be!?” Dye demanded as he glared around the circle of men who ringed the clearing. When he caught Dunn’s eye, he lifted his chin at the man, and the old soldier cleared his throat as his eyes shuttered, looking for a way out. “Dunn!”
“Sir. Captain Destri called Martigay…” Dunn eyed Destri uncomfortably, “the ‘King’s little captain’.”
An instant’s silence followed, as the king shook his head—and shook it again in frustration. “Is that it? Is that all?”
“Sir. Captain Destri intimated that Captain Martigay’s rank might be due to the fact that she’s…bedding the king.”
At this, Dye had to hold Martigay back as she attempted to make a new break for Destri. “Destri?” the king inquired coldly.
Though a sheen of nervous perspiration dampened his upper lip, Destri responded with a sneer of contempt. That look of scorn was for the girl, Dye realized, wanting to kill Destri before the man could take another breath, knowing this was nobody’s fault but his.
“Destri!”
“I said nothing that wasn’t true. The girl was offended that I would bring up the small matter that she was…that you and her were—everyone knows it,” he argued. “More than one man saw you enter her tent last night.”
Dye felt her stiffen beneath his outstretched hand. Everyone but Martigay, he thought, a sick knot cramping his stomach. “So you accused the captain of fucking her way to success.
“You owe Captain Martigay an apology,” he said in a voice like scraping steel. “Her advancement in my army has been a result of her performance in the field. Not in my bed.” He didn’t look at her as she elbowed her way out of his hold. “Apologize!”
Destri’s eyes flicked angrily. “I apologize, Captain Martigay,” he delivered, but only grudgingly.
“You’re dismissed,” the king hissed, then more loudly, “all of you.”
Every muscle bunched for assault, he turned to face her. For a long time she stood staring off into the distance, her fingers twisting at the bottom of the braid that held her ribbon of rank. Finally she undid the knot, pulled out the ribbon, and dropped it on the ground.
“Martigay. Where are you going?” He trailed her to her tent, along with the two Thralls shadowing him. “Where are you going?” he repeated as she pulled an axe from her kit and used it to hook her tent pegs out of the ground. Violently, she yanked at each peg as he watched. He turned on his guards. “Leave us!” he rasped. Then, “Get back or lose your lives.” His Thralls moved off a few paces as, turning back to her, he wiped his damp palms on his thighs. “Martigay,” he said softly, “was it so bad?”
She nodded once, sharply, before she stopped and looked up to finally meet his eyes. “I thought it was Pall.” Folding the tent on the ground, she began to roll it. “You must have known that.”
“I didn’t think you’d be adverse to the idea. You’ve certainly shown enough interest…in me…in the past.”
“That was before I spent thirty-odd hours in that fucking mine, courtesy of My Lord, the King,” she scraped out. “That sort of thing can put a real damper on a girl’s enthusiasm.
“And if I were bedding the king,” she continued with accelerating fury, “I’d be a great deal more discreet about it. For that reason” she nodded back toward the clearing where the fight had taken place, “for starters!
“Everyone knew,” she muttered to herself in tight, high tones. “Everyone but me. And I,” she exploded, “tried to deny it all. Deny I was bedding the king when everyone knew I was. You’ve made me look like a liar at Mithra’s very fucking best, and a complete idiot at worst.”
“I only came to your tent in case you woke in the darkness,” he said quietly, glancing behind him as he did so. “I wasn’t going to touch you.” Retreating a few steps, he dropped to sit on a rock. “I wasn’t going to touch you,” he repeated, “but I…couldn’t keep my hands off you. You have a body…that would drive a saint to rape.”
“That doesn’t excuse you! You may be a king, but you fall well short of being a saint.” Her voice grated at him as she fought to regain some semblance of self-control. “You took advantage of me at a moment of weakness,” she said, without looking at him. “You took me while I still shivered with fear. You took me knowing I thought you were Pall, and without bothering to set me straight before you entered me. You took me knowing I was angry at you for putting me in the mine. Knowing I would have refused you.
“Then! Then!” she screeched. “You let me sit in you
r tent and make an ass of myself going on about how wonderful you were on the mat! Me—thinking I was talking about Pall. You sat there and let me feed your insufferable, undeserving ego.” Her voice cracked a bit. “You took me at a moment of weakness,” she repeated, her voice crumpling completely.
He watched her tie her tent in a roll, feeling breathless, feeling sick, knowing she was right and had a right to be angry with him. Knowing that in a few minutes she’d be on her horse and gone.
“I took you at a moment of weakness,” he admitted to her—to himself. “I’m not going to let you go.” The words hung in the air, strangely alone, surprising him as much as they probably surprised her.
She stared at him, apparently as stunned by the statement as he was. “You’re not going to stop me!” she asserted.
He said nothing as she replaced the axe in her kit then threw tent and kit toward her pony. Turning away from him, she reached for her saddle.
Behind her, Martigay heard him start away from her camp, followed by his voice as he commanded his guards. “Bring Captain Martigay to my tent, immediately.” Her head came up in anger as he turned to catch her eye. “Use whatever means necessary to restrain her,” he told his men without looking at them. “But see to it that she’s not harmed.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dye kicked back in his chair as his first guard broke into the tent. The second followed. Trussed hand and foot, the girl was inelegantly slung over the shoulder of the second Thrall. “Sir,” the first man wheezed, “where would you have her?”
With a flick of his wrist, Dye indicated the thick pole supporting the tent’s roof. With one knee bent and his foot against the table’s leg, he pushed himself back to rock on the chair’s back legs.
Only after a great deal of scuffling, the two guards managed to wrestle Martigay to the pole, get her hands untied and retied again behind her. Saluting their captain, the Thralls strode from the tent.
Sliding her back up the pole, Martigay yanked silently at her bonds. From across the tent, Dye watched her struggle.
Finally, she glared at him, her lips set in a wordless straight line.
Although darkness was only just closing in, Dye’s attendant had lit several lamps to fill the tent with a warm, flickering glow. For several moments, he watched her standing in the warm wash of light as his eyes swept her body and his gaze slowed to linger at those places that most held his interest.
With a shove, his chair scraped backward. He moved to stand before her and stopped when a scant foot separated their bodies. Pulling off his vest, he threw it behind him on the desk. Crossing his arms, he reached for the bottom of his linen jerkin and ripped it over his head. “What are you doing?” she gritted out at him.
Without answering, he tugged at his ties and Martigay watched the gap widen beneath the loosely crossing strings, the thick ridge of his cock encouraging the gap to part. “I don’t want clothing to be an issue,” he explained brusquely.
His hand was under her jerkin and on her waist before she realized it. She gasped at the strong, rough touch of hard, male fingers. She opened her mouth to complain but only gasped again when his other hand cupped her breast, his body came up hard against hers, and his lips took the words right out of her mouth.
She was still trying to get a breath when he groaned into her mouth, the sound a wordless male demand for more, while at the same time a stated admission of vulnerability, aching with a need that rocked her right to her foundation. Again she was robbed of breath as her head tilted back beneath his and his mouth was forced restlessly against hers, the edge of a tooth snagging her upper lip and bruising it against her own teeth.
Against her own will, her rebel body responded with a flash flood of erotic warmth that seeped through her system and spilled into her vagina to dampen her pussy. Body straining, she began to reach for everything he put in her mouth with a hungry voracity that only encouraged his ruthless advance and accelerated the intensity of his actions.
He got his hands beneath her jerkin and fought upward in the tight space inside her chemise to find her breasts, and feel the naked, damp skin against his rough palms. Finding his access restricted, he pulled his hands out to fumble impatiently at the ties across her breasts at the same time that she sobbed into his mouth. “Dye,” she rasped in a whisper, as his lips smeared into hers. “Mithra, Dye.”
With the ties only just unknotted, the jerkin only just opened, his fingers tried to find a way to her breasts again. Desperate for the feel of her, he forced his hand down into the top of her chemise. When the frail cotton shredded, he broke away from her lips to watch his hand round her breast, his thumb catch at her tight nipple. Her head arched back and her back bowed to feed her breast into his hand, into his rough touch as his finger joined his thumb to tug at the rumpled peach flesh caught in the trembling pinch of his grip.
Her voice caught back a strangled cry—a cry for more—and he lowered his head to her breast, lifting its full weight with his hand to meet his mouth. Mouth open, he scraped his teeth over the roughly textured surface of her nipple then sucked in as much breast as would fit in his mouth—hard. When he let her go, he put a gentle sucking kiss on her upright nipple. Her cry was a helpless, wanton demand for more.
“Hadi’s Saints.” His curse was a harsh whisper as he straightened. Automatically, his groin was crushing into hers, as his hips rocked to slide the ridge of his cock against her lower body. “Mithra,” he gasped. “Martigay, I’ve got to get these leggings off you.”
Her hips were reaching for him as he pulled at her ties and rucked the doeskins down past her sex. Pressed up against her, he pushed a hand between her legs to dip his fingers into her pussy. Together they moaned as his fingers moved through the thick, wet folds.
“Mithra Fucking Andarta On Her Knees,” he cursed, his lips hot against hers as he spoke into her mouth. “Don’t tell me you don’t want me, girl. You’re creaming into my hand. Your sweet little piece is cock-hungry and begging for a man.”
With the bud of her clitoris trapped between his fingers, he watched her face as he scissored his fingers in rhythm to the pulse filling his hand.
“Dye,” she whimpered with every ragged intake of breath, the sound a whispered litany of desire.
Swiftly, he fell to his knees and kissed the top of her pussy, brushing his lips against the thick, warm fullness of her labia, working his lips into her soft, full sex, using the tip of his tongue to part her cleft. Exploring her hidden folds with his tongue, he pushed into the flesh as it gave around his entry and felt her body tremble as he shot his tongue as deeply into her as he could with her legs tied together.
“No!” she cried suddenly.
Roughly, he dragged his flattened tongue up inside the entire line of her sex. “Don’t tell me to stop,” he growled. “You’re streaming into my mouth, girl. You want this as badly as I do.”
“No. Not yet.” Martigay struggled to reclaim her lower body and, wrenching her hips, tried to pull her pussy away from his face. Relentlessly, he followed, his mouth open and sucking at her felted lips. “No. Dye. Not yet. I want you inside.”
She groaned as his tongue moved in and out more rapidly, more ruthlessly, stabbing roughly through the front of her cleft, his tongue pushing and pulling her clitoris toward climax.
Her body shuddered beneath his mouth and her skin was damp where he held her sweating hips. Stopping to gaze up the length of her straining body, Dye ran a hand between her legs to find the inside of her thighs running with the result of her lust. With his hand, he followed the stream of moisture up to her opening, testing the waters carefully as they seeped from her vulva in preparation for his penetration. Leaning forward, he slid his tongue into her again, slowly, at the same time his thumb pressed to take her vagina and the grip of his forefinger moved up into her crease to cover the tight crimp of her ass.
“Untie me,” she moaned. “Mithra and Donar Both. Untie my legs, Dye.” Holding her sex firmly in his grip, he ignored h
er as he played his tongue through her folds again. “Don’t make me come like this.”
He pulled his head back far enough to look up at her. “You don’t want to come like this? How do you want to come, Martigay?”
“With you. With you inside me.”
“With my cock inside you?”
Helplessly, she nodded.
“With your legs spread, wide and open, while I fuck you?”
“Dye, please.”
“All right,” rasped roughly. “Show me, sweetheart. Open your legs for me.”
Pulling his knife from the sheath on his hip, he slid the blade through the rope at her ankles and got rid of her leggings and shorts. Pushing her legs open, he hesitated long enough to put a long, sucking kiss on her puffy little clit. As he suckled, his hand rubbed restlessly over his erection, sweeping down to smooth over his testes and up his length again. Spreading his knees, he pulled his cock out of his leggings and pumped himself slowly in rhythm to the tongue working in Martigay’s swollen sex. Her legs relaxed to widen and her hips rocked as she fed her warm, wet pussy into his mouth. Barely moving his mouth, he let her work herself against his face. Until she stopped.
“Look at you,” he breathed, “your pussy open—your cunt wet and hot and hungry.” He rose before her. “You’re ready for my cock and the rest of the fuck. Aren’t you?” he whispered, nipping the delicate shell of her ear between his teeth. With a hand underneath her thigh, he pulled her leg high as he positioned the wide head of his dick at the mouth of her opening. Then, in one long, even thrust, he entered the throat of her sex, forcing his cock head to the back of her sheath while the length of her slim channel struggled to accommodate his width.
Relinquishing his grip on her leg to hold her head in both hands, he forced her mouth to accept his tongue’s intrusion while giving her vagina a scant moment to acclimate to his presence. Then his hands slid down to her hips and he held her on his cock while he crushed into her—one unforgiving thrust at a time, watching her face as she approached arrival, then watching their bodies where they were joined—where he rode into her.
Dye's Kingdom: Wanting It Forever Page 13