With that, he pressed into her again while she groaned, trapped between the sting of his intrusion and the memory of the orgasm it had just wrung from her.
“You’re mad at me,” she moaned, fists clutching at the comforter.
“Yes.” Jude pulled out, then he worked his way in again, establishing a slow, steady rhythm. “This is the consequence of you wasting my seed night after night. But I’m not without mercy.” He lifted the hand pinning her to the mattress and slid it beneath her, where he began to carefully stroke her clit. “You’re going to enjoy this,” he grunted, as he began to thrust harder. “But it’s not going to be entirely comfortable.”
And he was right, on both counts.
Jude fucked her, hard and rough, bent over the side of the bed so that her legs couldn’t quite reach the floor. Leaving her at the mercy of each thrust. Each strum of her clit. Of the unrelenting feeling of fullness.
He whispered to her as he wrecked her body, reminding her with every gentle word and every rough stroke that she belonged to him, while he forced her relentlessly toward a climax made of equal parts pleasure and stinging pressure. And by the time she’d crested that hill, she could no longer separate the two.
Maari screamed as she came, clenching brutally around Jude’s cock, and an instant later he roared as he spilled into her ass for the second time.
He collapsed against her back, pinning her to the bed, his cock still twitching inside her, making her jerk with each unexpected jolt, even as aftershocks of her orgasm rolled over her
“Get off me,” she whispered, swiping moisture from her face before he could see it. Her ass was sore—more so with each passing second—but that wasn’t the source of her tears.
There was nothing left of her, now, that he hadn’t taken. No part he hadn’t claimed. No thought or secret he couldn’t read on her face, now that he knew about her gift. About her private rebellion.
After all these months under his thumb, finally, Jude’s claiming of her felt complete. And it left her feeling brutally, miserably empty.
Jude lifted himself with both arms, then dropped a kiss on her neck. “We’re going to have to talk about this gift of yours,” he said, pressing the words against her sweaty flesh. “And until you give me something better to do with my seed, this is where I’m going to put it. But if you ask me nicely, I may bite you next time.”
“I hate you,” she whispered.
“I know, princess. I believed you the first time.” He lifted himself from the bed, and she flinched when his movement set off yet another fresh burn. “I’m going to pull out now. Slowly. Do you need help getting to the bathroom?”
“Fuck you,” she swore through gritted teeth.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Jude carefully pulled out of her ass, making her feel every inch of his withdrawal while she sniffled, clutching the comforter beneath her. She held still while he pulled his clothes on, humiliated by the trickle of his release leaking from her ass. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. Then the door closed behind him.
Maari buried her face in the comforter and sobbed.
3
Maari
Maari drew her own bath, but in her distressed state, she could not for her life remember all the steps her handmaid usually took in that endeavor. By the time Annah returned to the room with a tray of chamomile tea and an assortment of little cakes, she’d been sitting in the tub for several minutes, squirting soap into the tepid water, to no avail.
Tears stood in Maari’s eyes. “There are no bubbles.”
To her credit, Annah did not laugh. “That’s because this is soap, not bubble bath. And you have to pour the bubble bath in while the water is running.”
“Of course.” Maari’s tears slid slowly down her cheeks. “I’ve seen you do this a million times. I knew that. I just…” She shrugged miserably.
“Would you like me to draw you a fresh bath?”
“Please.” She stood and wrapped herself in the robe Annah offered, then she stepped carefully out of the tub and sat on a stool in front of the vanity while her handmaid performed the ritual that had kept her sane over the past few months.
Minutes later, Maari sank into the water and exhaled slowly as the heat enveloped her. She rearranged the bubbles to cover herself, so that she wouldn’t have to see her own body and think of the betrayal it had become. But the hot water did nothing to soothe the burning ache in her ass. Which meant she could not forget Jude’s rough use of her.
No doubt that was what he’d intended.
“What happened?” Annah asked, and Maari opened her eyes to see the handmaid gathering up the used robe and the now-empty bottle of scented soap.
“Geneva told them about my ‘gift.’”
Annah sighed. “I’m sorry. But I do think that was inevitable. Eventually they would have realized there was a reason you weren’t getting pregnant.”
“Jude says that if I’m not going to make use of his sperm, he has no reason to aim it at my womb. So he took me…elsewhere. Twice.” She sniffled at the humiliating memory. “And his bite is wearing off.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted? The fading of the bites, I mean?”
“I thought it was. But without that, I’m afraid it’s going to be harder and harder to find pleasure in what he does to me.” The gods only knew that it had been embarrassingly easy to accept—to beg for—another bite from Malac.
“Did you find pleasure in it tonight?”
“Well, yes.” She’d certainly come, even after Malac and his lustful witchcraft had abandoned her. “But that in itself is a disgrace. A proper lady doesn’t enjoy things like that.”
“Princess, may I offer some advice?”
“Speak.”
Annah sat on the edge of the tub and trailed her fingers over the top of the bubbles. “Take pleasure where you can find it, and don’t waste a single second on shame. Feeling pleasure in a man’s touch is a mercy. No, it’s more than that. It’s a gift. Especially if he wasn’t manipulating your desire with a bite.”
Maari studied her handmaid’s earnest expression. “Annah, have you…? Have any of the men here…?”
“No. No one’s touched me, in Loborough.”
“And before that? In Bannon?” The capital of Stead Delayne, where they were both born.
Annah’s jaw tightened. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s all in the past, and it had nothing to do with you.”
“How—” She accepted the glass of water her maid set on the edge of the tub for her. “I know I don’t have any right to ask, but how old were you? The first time?”
“Um…” Annah closed her eyes, as if she were trying to remember, but Maari knew that look. That fierce grip on a handful of her skirts. The tight clench of her jaw. Annah wasn’t trying to remember. In fact, she was probably trying not to remember. “I was not quite sixteen.”
“And did you… Did you want it?”
“Princess, talking about these things doesn’t erase them. In fact, sometimes it’s quite the opposite.”
“I’m sorry. I just… I want to know what it was like for you. What it was really like for you.” She wanted to know what she hadn’t seen. What she’d closed her eyes to.
What abuse she’d unwittingly allowed her handmaid to endure.
“It was no worse for me than it was for any of the other maids. No better, either.”
“And what does that mean?”
Annah sighed as she picked up the used robe and the empty soap bottle. “That means that when you serve in the palace, you serve in any capacity required of you.”
“Was it… Was it my brother?” Maari asked, far from sure she wanted the answer. “Did Gareth hurt you?”
“The late king was a great man, princess. There’s no need for you to think of him as anything else.” Then Annah took the used robe and the empty soap bottle into the other room and shut the door behind her.
In the morning, Malac arrived as Maari was finishing her breakfast
. He paused in the doorway, holding a black garment bag, the hanger hooked around his first two fingers. His green eyes sparkling at her, and Maari noted again how different he looked from his brothers. She wondered if his mother, the late King Cedric’s concubine, was the source of his pale hair and emerald eyes.
If she were to have one of the princes’ babies, would the child’s eye or hair color give away its paternity?
Maari shook off that thought before it could take root.
“What is that?” Her heart thumped as she stood from the small table by the window, eyeing the garment bag, the last of her eggs forgotten.
“A new dress. But there’s a catch: you have to let me put it on you.”
“Of course.” Not that she could stop him, if she wanted to. But Maari knew, now, how important it was to keep Malac smiling.
Especially when he came to her room alone.
“May I see?” She folded her napkin in half and set it on the edge of the table, then she turned to him with her hands clasped in front of her robe. “Please?”
“If you ask me nicely.”
“Nicer than ‘please’?” She frowned up at him. Then he hung the garment bag on the hook on the back of her bathroom door and turned to reveal the long, thick outline of his erection. “Oh.” Maari sank into her knees in front of him and was already reaching up to unbuckle his belt, resigned to her task, when he took her hand and tugged her back up.
“That’s not what I want today.”
Maari’s heart dropped into her stomach. She looked up at him, doing her best not to look scared. “Okay. But please, please make it feel good. I’m still sore from what Jude did last night, and—”
Malac cut her off with a kiss, and she moaned when his scent washed over her. “Not that either,” he whispered against her throat as he worked his way down, dropping warm little kisses along the line of her jugular vein. Lingering on the neat, round puncture marks where he’d bit her the night before.
She exhaled, trying to disguise her relief as arousal. Which was much easier, knowing that her sore backside would be getting a reprieve. “I thought… I mean, Jude said that if I wasn’t going to make use of his…seed, then he had no reason to put it where it could be used.” She flushed at the memory of what he’d said, of the fact that he’d still been buried deep inside her when he’d said it. Then she buried her face in Malac’s shoulder, breathing his scent in to try and vanquish the humiliating memory.
“Well, I have more faith than Jude does that you will make use of what I give you,” Malac murmured into her hair.
Maari stiffened in his arms. That’s what this is. He was trying to seduce her. To make her fall in love with him, so she would lose control of her own ovulation.
“Malac—”
He cut her off with another kiss as he untied the sash at her waist. “It’s like Settlement Day, every time I undress you,” he whispered, running his hands over her bare hips, beneath the satin of her short robe. “Like unwrapping the best present in the world.”
Maari leaned down to nibble at his collarbone, inhaling deeply, relieved when an ache began deep inside her. When moisture started to gather between her thighs. Her hands itched to touch him. Her legs to wrap around him.
There was no sense telling Malac that she wasn’t going to fall for him. That she had no intention of having his babies. He would figure that out on his own, eventually. Until then, she would let him have his fun, and she would let him bring her along for the ride. Because that’s what the Camden bite was good for…
His hands glided around her backside, cupping and squeezing each cheek as he nibbled on her ear. Holding her against him. Then he slid the robe over her shoulders and down her arms to let it pool on the floor. “Lie on the bed and spread your legs for me.”
She could feel his gaze on her as she turned and walked toward the bed, and by the time she’d arranged herself on her back, with her heels on the edge of the mattress, he’d stripped down to his pants.
“Open.” His voice was gruff with lust, and just the sound of it made her ache deep inside, with the need to be filled. “Spread yourself for me, Maari. Use your fingers. I want to look at you.”
Maari’s face flamed as she let her legs fall open wide, then she squeezed her eyes shut as she reached down and pulled her outer lips apart.
“Gods below…” The whisper of his zipper opening made her groan with anticipation, but she couldn’t make herself look at him, while her hands were on her own private parts, so she had no idea he’d gone down on his knees until she felt his warm breath brush over her exposed inner lips.
Maari jerked, and her eyes flew open. Then Malac began to lick her, and she relaxed into the mattress.
His tongue stroked the length of her sex, moving from the bottom of her entrance to the little hood covering her clit so slowly that by the time he got there, her clit was swollen enough to peek out of its protective covering, without even being touched. Malac circled it with his tongue, and Maari moaned, arching toward him.
“Eager, today, aren’t we?”
Embarrassed, she went still beneath him.
“Answer me, princess…” Malac stroked two fingers inside her, finding that little rough patch already swollen and eager for attention. So he rubbed it, and she groaned.
“Yes, I need…”
“I know what you need. And you’re going to have it. But would you also like to go outside today? Would you like to put on your new dress and spend the whole day in the garden?”
“Yes!” She pushed herself up onto her elbows, so she could see him. “Oh, Malac, that would be lovely. It would be a perfect day.”
“Well, I’m going to give you a chance to earn that perfect day.” He stroked into her again. “Do you want to know how?”
“Yes. Please.” She tried not to think about a time when she’d been free to go into the garden without having to “earn” the privilege.
“Good girl. Remember how much fun we had at dinner last night?”
Maari’s hips stilled again at the memory of being mercilessly stimulated by Orlann’s toy, yet denied her orgasm. Of then being forced over the edge in front of all three brothers, right there in her dining room chair.
“Wasn’t that fun?” Malac repeated, and the hard edge to his question told her what her answer should be.
“Yes.”
“Good. Then you’ll like this game too. I’m going to have a little fun down here between these beautiful thighs, and you’re going to hold back your release until I tell you it’s okay to come. Do you understand?”
Maari groaned. She hated that game, because it was impossible to win. They made it impossible to win.
“You can do it. I know you can. Okay?”
She nodded, still staring up at the wooden beams stretching the length of the vaulted ceiling. Maybe he meant that. After all, Malac hadn’t brought any toys with him. Surely she could handle his tongue and his fingers. “Okay.”
Malac stepped out of his pants and settled onto his knees, then he wrapped his hands around her inner thighs, his thumbs tracing light circles in the hollows on either side of her sex. Just brushing the edges of her opening. Then he leaned down, and began to lick her in earnest, his tongue rasping over her in long, rough strokes, pausing to circle her clit at the end of each one.
As her pleasure built, Maari began to groan with each stroke, her hips rising to accommodate his tongue, moisture gathering to drip down from her opening. Her hands clutched at the bedclothes beneath her. When her mouth dropped open and her tongue came out to wet her lips, Malac slipped those two fingers inside her again, plunging and twisting them in time with the flicks of his tongue over her clit.
Need gripped her, the blissful tensing of her most intimate muscles driving her toward a familiar peak. Her body clutched at his fingers, and he groaned as he arched them up, brushing that sensitive spot with every plunge inside her. “How much longer do I have to wait?” she gasped.
“How close are you?” But
surely he already knew the answer. Surely he could feel it, in the way her passage gripped him.
“Close. I need it, Malac. Please.”
“Oh, you’re such a good girl,” he mumbled against her thigh. Then he leaned down again and nibbled on her thigh, just hard enough to draw a squeal from her, which made her clutch at his fingers again. “Ask me if you may come.”
“May I come?” she panted, arching her hips up again, as he continued to stroke into her.
“No.” He licked her again, then he sucked on her clit.
Maari nearly bucked off the bed. Her hands clutched the sheets as she fought panic at the thought of failing this challenge—again. Of another punishment, like last night. “Oh, gods. Why not?”
“Because when you come isn’t up to you. You need to learn to give that to us, too. To cede control to us, even over this. Your pleasure is ours, just as you are ours.”
“Malac I need to come. Please! I can’t stop it.”
He groaned. “That’s so fucking hot.” Another flick of his tongue over her clit, and she writhed on the bed beneath him, desperately trying to hold back her orgasm, as his fingers played her g-spot like a fucking fiddle. “Beg me.”
“Please let me come.” She was pleading now, every muscle in her body drawn tight in an effort to maintain control. To keep from disappointing him.
“No. Don’t you dare.” He closed his mouth over her clit and flicked his tongue rapidly over it.
“Oh…Oh… What happens if I can’t stop it?”
Malac growled at her without lifting his head. Without stopping his tongue.
Maari gasped, her hips bucking beneath him, her fists gone white around handfuls of the comforter. “Oh, gods, I can’t— Malac!”
“One more minute.” He pulled his fingers from her and dragged moisture up to lubricate her clit, then he began working it with his thumb, while he nibbled on her inner thigh. “One… more…” His fingers stroked into her again, plunging in and out while she moaned. She tossed her head back, her entire existence focused, in that moment, on holding back her pleasure.
Wicked Charming Cruel Page 4