Wicked Charming Cruel

by Emmy Chandler

  “Please,” she begged again, and he was amused to hear the change in her tone. She’d decided on a new tactic of avoidance. “I need to come.”

  “You may, whenever you like. But you will come with me paddling you.”

  “No,” she moaned. “I can’t. It hurts. Please, it really hurts.”

  “Channel the pain. Use it.” Orlann swatted her again, and she yelped, her entire body tensing, the globes of her ass rounding beautifully. “Stop fighting it and let it in. Let it all go. And I promise you will come like never before.”

  Another swat, and Maari shrieked. She flinched, her body clenching around the toy, which drew another groan from her, and an answering groan from Orlann. He reached down and stroked it into her again. “How does that feel?” he murmured, caressing her scarlet backside. “Does that feel good?”

  “Yes and no,” she moaned.

  “Perfect. You’re doing really well. I think we’re almost there.”

  “Please…”

  “You have to decide to trust me. You have you put yourself in my hands and know that I won’t hurt you. That I understand your body. That I know just what you need. What you can take. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she moaned, and he tapped the remote to turn up the vibration. Maari’s groan deepened into a complex, guttural appeal for so much more than release. For more than an end to the pain.

  Orlann’s pulse raced and his paddle flew, striking in a steady, fast rhythm. He clamped one hand around her hip to keep her in place when she began to thrash in earnest, her cries melting into deep moans as the line between pain and pleasure began to thin. As one fed the other. She tensed after every blow, heaving delicate little sobs that made his cock strain against his zipper as he moved faster and faster, building toward a crest he knew she couldn’t keep up with. Couldn’t squirm away from. Couldn’t mitigate with tensing muscles and whispered pleas.

  Then…Maari gasped and gave into body-quaking sobs. To the pain.

  She gave in to Orlann. She surrendered herself. Her frustration and anger. She gave him her rage and accepted the pain, and it was glorious. Beautiful.

  It was a fucking gift.

  He exhaled and let euphoria wash over him.

  “Oh, gods,” she cried, as his paddle landed again. “Oh, I’m going to come.”

  Orlann spanked her one more time, then he dropped the paddle and grabbed the end of the toy, working it gently back and forth inside her. Against her clit.

  Maari came with an ear-splitting scream, thrusting back at him as he massaged her ravaged backside, and he helped her ride it out, his heart pounding with exhilaration as she sobbed.

  When she went limp beneath him, Orlann sighed. He leaned over and kissed the center of her spine as he slowly pulled the toy free from her body and set it aside. Then he unfastened his pants and pulled out his cock as he hiked her higher onto her knees. “Sweetness, this is going to hurt your ripe little backside.”

  He slid inside her from behind, glorying in her moan as his hips made contact with her scalding ass, keeping an echo of the pain—of the catharsis—alive as he moved inside her.

  He was very nearly there already, just from watching her release. From bringing it to her. From crafting it out of her pain, and rage, and frustration. But the feel of her clamping around him, still swollen and wet from her orgasm, pushed him rapidly toward the crest.

  He pumped into her, squeezing her sore ass with one hand, working her beleaguered clit from beneath with the other, and in seconds she was moaning again. Pushing back against him, in spite of what had to be a fiercely stinging pain. Hungry for everything he had to give her. Eager to give what he needed to take.

  “Fucking hell, you’re magnificent,” he swore as his cock jerked inside her, shooting his release deep.

  Her inarticulate cry of ecstasy echoed off the bedroom walls and condensed like rain to pour over him. Washing away his own anger. His frustration. Filling him with a satisfaction—a sense of peace—like he’d never felt in his entire life.

  Spent, they collapsed on the damp sheets, his body an echo of hers. Tracing it. His cock still buried inside her. “Fuck Valemont,” he whispered, brushing hair back from her neck so he could drop a kiss there. “I never want to leave this bed again.”

  13

  Maari

  Afterward, Orlann curled around her, running his hands all over her body gently. Slowly. Not as if he were trying to seduce her, but as if he couldn't stop touching her. As if he needed her.

  Maari sobbed softly, confused. Stunned. She wasn't sure what had just happened, but it had gone well beyond sex. Well beyond physical release. Beyond pain. There was a moment at the end when everything just seemed to…slide. To shrink, kind of, until the entire universe existed only in the brief moments between blows. When pain had become a language. A code. A method of understanding her own existence that was akin to looking at a cell through a microscope. It opened up a world of detail she hadn’t known was there before.

  And suddenly, everything had made sense.

  The feeling was already beginning to fade, along with the adrenaline, or dopamine, or whatever Orlann had coaxed from her overburdened nervous system. But it was real, fleeting though it may have been.

  “How do you feel?” Orlann whispered as he slowly pulled out of her, his chest pressed against her back, his left hand still running over the curve of her hip and into the dip of her waist, over and over. She found the motion soothing.

  “Strange.” Maari used both hands to wipe tears from her eyes. She wasn’t even sure, anymore, why she’d been crying. Yes, her ass hurt—and it likely would for a while—but that wasn’t it. Not entirely, anyway. “Tired.” Spent.

  “Roll onto your stomach.” Orlann stood and leaned over the side of the bed to grab the bag he’d brought.

  “No, please—” Maari started to crawl away, but he grabbed her arm.

  “It’s just cream. You were wonderful tonight, princess. The hard part’s over. Everything else is just to make you feel better. To help you wind down from the high. Would you like something to drink? Or eat? Malac says you like ice cream?”

  “Wine, please. And water.”

  “And some fruit, I think. I’ll have it sent up.” Orlann tapped on his com device for a moment, while she arranged herself on her stomach, as requested. Then he set his device on the nightstand and pulled a tube of ointment from his bag.

  He massaged the cooling cream into her backside with a firm touch, murmuring soothing condolences every time she winced. “You have such a beautiful ass,” he whispered, palming both cheeks in his hands, as he worked the thick cream in. “And right now, it looks like a fucking work of art.”

  Maari huffed. “Are you going to hang me in a gallery?”

  Orlann actually laughed. “If you’re not careful, I’ll hang you in my bedroom.”

  “So you can look at my ass whenever you want?”

  “I’ll do much more than look at it.”

  The upper entrance to her suite opened as Orlann was massaging her thighs, and the sound startled her. She’d nearly fallen asleep beneath his firm but gentle touch.

  He had nearly let her.

  “Stay put,” he ordered as he crawled off the bed. Maari heard him speaking briefly to whoever had come into the second-floor sitting area, then he returned carrying a tray, which he set on the bed next to her. She rolled onto her side and was delighted to find two glasses of red wine, accompanied by an assortment of chocolate-dipped fruit. As well as two glistening glasses of ice water.

  “What’s happening?” She couldn’t quite purge suspicion from her voice. Orlann had never been this nice to her before. He’d rarely even stayed to soothe her, after he was done hurting her, preferring, usually, to leave the aftercare to Malac, who was happy to oblige. But tonight…

  “You were a very, very good girl tonight.” Orlann stretched out on the opposite side of the tray, still nude, and plucked a chocolate-covered strawberry from the arrange
ment. He reached across the tray and tapped her lower lip with it until she opened for a bite.

  “Mmmm…” she said around the confection. There were also orange sections, kiwi slices, and thin apple wedges, all dipped in either dark, white, or milk chocolate and drizzled with caramel or sprinkled with colorful little balls. “What did I do differently tonight?” she asked as she selected one of the kiwi pieces.

  “You let me in.”

  Maari grinned at him from across the tray. “You’ve been ‘in’ more times than I can count.”

  “Not in here.” Orlann reached out to slide one hand between her thighs. “In here.” He removed his hand, then used his index finger to tap on her temple. “That’s where I want to be. But I couldn’t get in until you let me through your shell.”

  “You kind of beat your way in,” she said around another juicy bite.

  “That was a spanking, not a beating. There’s a huge difference, to which my father—may his soul rot for all of eternity—could attest. But that’s sometimes how it goes. We build up mental armor, and no one can really know us without getting through that. Sometimes breaking through that armor requires earning someone’s complete surrender, even if just for one moment.”

  “So…you’re not going to hurt me anymore?”

  Orlann’s brows rose. “How would you feel, if that were the case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He frowned. “Don’t lie to me. What happens if you lie to me, sweetness?”

  She grinned. “You’re not going to stop.”

  “And you don’t want me to.”

  Maari let his assumption stand. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She didn’t like the pain. Not the same way she liked pleasure, anyway. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fun, in the same sense. But she’d never felt euphoria in her life like she had that night, when the pleasure and pain finally had become one. When she’d survived it. When she’d done it well.

  When he’d looked so damn proud of her.

  It wasn’t something she wanted to do every night. It wasn’t something she could do every night. But if it would be followed by this? Not just by the cream, and the massage, and the cuddles, and the chocolate-dipped fruit and wine, but by the way he was looking at her? As if he’d never in his entire life seen anything more fascinating…

  That, she could get used to. As long as her backside had a chance to heal.

  “So, what happened tonight?” Maari asked as she sat up and lifted her wine glass. “Why did you come in here looking like you were ready to tear down the whole planet? Why do you still smell like whiskey?”

  “I had an uncomfortable encounter tonight. Infuriating, actually.”

  “With whom? Jude?”

  Orlann cocked his head to the side as he studied her. “Why would you assume that?”

  “I don’t know. But I take it back. It was Malac, wasn’t it? You two don’t always get along, do you?”

  “No two brothers always get along. But no, it wasn’t with either Jude or Malac.”

  “So, who then?”

  Orlann lifted his glass and took a long sip. “As I said, it’s personal.”

  “And what? You don’t know me well enough to share personal information with me? Didn’t we just have a breakthrough? Or was that one-sided? You get to know me, but I don’t get to know you?”

  “You’re feisty tonight. Do I need to get the paddle back out?”

  “Only if you feel like bending over,” she countered, and Orlann laughed out loud. Again. Maari found that she quite liked the sound. And the way the corners of his eyes crinkled.

  “I tell you what,” he said at last, after he’d stared at her for a couple of minutes and had sipped most of his glass of wine. “You tell me why you’re in here all alone, when Jude has flown in a pair of special guests—political…antagonists—just to see you. And I’ll tell you who my infuriating encounter was with.”

  “That seems fair,” Maari said. But then she was quiet for several minutes, slowly munching on chocolate-dipped fruit while she thought about her response. “I’m not one of them anymore.”

  “One of what? A Delayne?”

  “No, I’m more a Delayne than ever. If I weren’t, it wouldn’t do anyone any good for me to be here. If I weren’t a Delayne, Jude wouldn’t have demanded that the council give me to the three of you. And since I’m not allowed to marry, I will be a Delayne—not just in my heart, but in name—forever. What I’m not, anymore, is…respectable.”

  “You’re not respectable? As in, you’re not worthy of respect?”

  “I’m not capable of commanding it. Not anymore.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Maari blinked at him, surprised by the question. “You just bent me over the bed and beat my ass until I can’t stand to sit on it.”

  He frowned. “Again, that was a spanking. Not a beating.”

  “And yet it compromised my dignity.”

  “To break down your walls. To command your surrender. So that you would let me in.”

  “Those reasons don’t negate my point. One cannot command respect while one is bent naked over the edge of a bed, stuffed with a toy, forced to orgasm while she is paddled to the point of real tears.”

  “I must disagree. I’ve never respected you more than I do right now.”

  Maari rolled her eyes. “You are not like most people. How can I look Clare and Jaarod in the face, knowing that they know exactly what I am now? What I’ve been reduced to? How can I eat with them? How can I hope to have a serious conversation with them? What would we even talk about? They’re concerned with protecting Stead Delayne and seeing it flourish, and my biggest worry, these days, is keeping my ass moisturized and making sure that my breath doesn’t smell like semen. I’m a whore, Orlann—”

  “Semantics.”

  “—and whores don’t attend social events with kings and queens.”

  “Maari, you are the most important person in the world to Stead Delayne right now. You hold their fate in your hands.”

  “Jude holds their fate in his hands.”

  “And he’s wrapped around your little finger. Or, he could be.”

  Maari took a long sip from her glass. “You’re the second person to say that to me.” But she hadn’t expected to hear it from Orlann. Or from any of the Camden princes.

  “I take it the first wasn’t Jude. Because he genuinely has no idea.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “So, you think you're inherently worth less than your brother and your sister-in-law, because we all three get to fuck you? Didn't your oldest brother get to fuck Clare?"

  "Of course he did. They have four children, all born in rapid succession. Including a set of twins. But that was her choice. She chose to be with Gareth.”

  Orlann lifted one brow at her. “Did she, though?”

  “I mean, in as much as any woman of royal birth chooses her spouse.”

  “That’s my point. And men in that position rarely have much more choice in the matter than the women do.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You think Jude wanted to marry Geneva?”

  “I think he had a whole list of women to choose from, just like Gareth did when he chose Clare.”

  “So, he got to pick his poison. But he was going to get poisoned either way.”

  “You’re saying that being handed a list of beautiful women to choose from is analogous to being poisoned?”

  “Framed in terms of an intimate personal relationship? Yes.”

  “At least he had a list to choose from. Clare didn’t get a list. Neither did Geneva. Neither did I, for that matter, when I was engaged to Elan Edgar. I didn’t get to pick my poison, when the council gave me to you, either. It was just, ‘here, swallow this poison—fed to you by three different men—or everyone you’ve ever known and loved will die.’” She waited for him to insist that he and his brothers could not be considered “poisonous” entities in her life, but he eviden
tly had no plans to insult her with such a suggestion. “You’re not going to convince me that men have as few choices as women do.”

  “I’m not going to try.” Orlann smiled as he took the last chocolate-dipped orange slice. “You’ve just made my point for me.”

  “I—” Maari frowned as she replayed the conversation in her head. She’d started off insisting that she’d been denied a choice that Clare got to make for herself, and she’d wound up insisting that women in Clare’s position never get to truly choose who they marry. Which was, in fact, Orlann’s original point. “How the hell did you do that? How did you make me change my position?”

  “Why do you sound so surprised? That’s what every single planetary council meeting is like, only there are twelve of us each trying to manipulate the others into saying what they want to hear, while the Chancellor sits there and watches with his hands folded beneath his chin.”

  “That sounds like hell.”

  “It’s exhilarating,” Orlann said, and Maari noticed that his eyes lit up with the declaration.

  “You miss it.”

  “I do. I feel worthless, sitting on my hands here at Loborough. I hate missing the current session.”

  “Why are you missing it?”

  “Because Jude won’t let me go back to Valemont until you’re pregnant.”

  “Oh.” Maari arched one brow at him. “Shouldn’t you be able to manipulate him into changing his position, like you men do in your meetings?”

  Orlann snorted. “The planetary council exists to find compromise between steads, in every possible situation. A king, on the other hand…” He shrugged. “Most kings believe they are entitled to turn their nose up at compromise—and often advice—in order to impose their will upon their subjects.”

  “Yes, I believe you’re right about that.”

  “But back to my original point. You seem to think you are worth less than Clare and Jaarod, because my brothers and I get to take you whenever we want—”

  “And however you want.”