by Wilde, Kati
No rise from Prince Wanieer? Perhaps that was yet another reason why her father had been so unbothered by what Aruk claimed to have done to her. The prince couldn’t have bred her, anyway.
And despite the advisor’s hope, she had no fear that her father would let Fin Ketles touch her. For the king had but one purpose: to get strong sorcerers from her. As horrible as that purpose was, at least it protected her from his advisor, who had no magic at all.
Head high, she entered the ceremonial chambers. Her step faltered. A dozen soldiers from the palace guard stood near the bedchamber. There was no sign of Prince Wanieer. Only the magistrate in his dark robes, and her father—who was in consultation with the master of the guard.
The trail end of the guard’s assurance she heard. “…these new chains are twice as thick. He will not break them so easily.”
Aruk. Chained with arms and legs outspread, naked on the enormous bed. His bruised left eye was half closed, his jaw swollen and lips split.
Yet as her eyes met his, he grinned.
“So my daughter is here,” her father said abruptly. “Now we must find a way to get a rise out of him.”
“Slyworm powder?” Fin Ketles suggested.
Her father nodded, turning to look at Aruk. “We’ll force it down his throat if we must…” He paused, for Aruk’s cock no longer lay heavily against his thigh. “Or perhaps my daughter’s beauty is all that was needed. Go to him then, Jalisa, and put your hand to his. We will not use the altar this night.”
To marry them. To marry Jalisa…to Aruk.
Just as her father had married her mother, simply to legitimize the heir. And then he’d enslaved his unacknowledged queen with chains made from her love for Jalisa.
So, too, could Jalisa see the same happening to Aruk. His love for her would bind him stronger than any iron chain. That he would be trapped, as she had been, in the role that her father had decided for him. With no freedom, and no choice. And soon drugged so that other women could be bred on him.
None of it would Jalisa ever allow.
Heart thundering, she approached the bed. His gaze devoured her, as if he’d been as starved for the sight of her as she had been for him. His arms were outspread, chained to the corner posts. Thick iron cuffs circled his wrists, the skin beneath raw. Pain lodged in her throat as she climbed onto the bed, kneeling beside him, and placed her hand against his.
And how was she supposed to act now? As if he were a barbarian who’d forced her?
She supposed it didn’t really matter anymore. Yet she spoke quietly enough that her voice would not carry to her father and his advisor, observing from near the bedchamber’s entrance.
“You are bare again, warrior,” she said softly.
His grin didn’t spread as she expected it to. Instead his smile faded and his voice was hoarse as he told her, “You don’t want to be a bride. I will refuse the vow.”
And be beaten again? No.
“I said that I would like to choose,” she reminded him. “And to marry a man that I love. So I will happily be your bride, Aruk.”
His eyes blazed. “Then where is that magistrate?”
Approaching warily with crimson ribbon in hand. Jalisa took a moment to look at the chains that held Aruk to the bed. Truly thick they were.
“Did you break your chains in attempt to escape?”
“And come for you. I was near to it before the guards rushed me. And like a fool, in that small cell I swung the broken chain at them instead of lashing it like a whip.” A dull flush climbed his cheeks, as if in embarrassment and shame. “It matters not. A full night we will be bound together in this bed. I will break them again—or the bones in my hands. One way or another, Jalisa, this night you will be free.”
A full night—because the ribbon that the magistrate weaved through their fingers now could not be untied until dawn, or their marriage would also be undone.
The magistrate looked across the chamber to her father, who called out, “Begin!”
To Jalisa, the magistrate spoke her string of royal names before asking, “Do you pledge yourself to this man and swear to be his faithful wife?”
So very fast and dizzying her pulse was, rushing the blood through her veins. “I will.”
“And you, barbarian—”
“Aruk of the Dead Lands, son of the Fang Clan, Keeper of the Sacred Oath,” Aruk said in a raw voice. “And ‘warrior’ to this woman who will be my wife.”
“Do you pledge yourself to this woman and swear to be her faithful husband?”
Fiercely he vowed, “Always I will.”
“Then upon a kiss that seals your vows, you shall be wife and husband.”
So swiftly Jalisa claimed him, bending over to capture his mouth beneath hers. So sweetly he kissed her in return, silently echoing the vow he’d just spoken, his love heating and sweetening every tender caress of his lips.
“Now shed the wedding gown, daughter, and mount him.”
Jalisa froze. Dread and sickness coiled beneath her heart—where moments before, only joy and love had resided.
“Wife.” Aruk’s low, rough voice brought her gaze to his. “There is only me.”
Only Aruk. Her husband. With trembling fingers she unlaced the ties at the top of her shoulders. Bound hands meant that everyday gowns could not be so easily removed—and the observers could not have fabric concealing the consummation. So her wedding gown had been designed for simple removal, and included a gossamer undergown that allowed her to stay covered while not truly hiding anything beneath.
Aruk groaned as she revealed her breasts, her taut nipples beaded beneath the glimmering fabric. “No taste have I had yet, wife.”
Right arm outstretched to his, she braced her left beside his head and bent over him. Hungrily he latched on to her nipple through the gossamer, sucking at that taut peak.
Pleasure shuddered through her. So hot his mouth was. Every flick of his tongue and pull upon her breast filled her entire body with liquid fire.
“With their hands bound,” her father said, “more slack is needed in that chain. She is not tall enough to stretch over him.”
Pleasure fled.
“Only me, wife,” Aruk rumbled softly against her breast. “Only me. Now bring your sweet cunt to my mouth, or never will your virgin sheath stretch easily for my cock.”
Only with more slack in the chain could this be done. But those guards were not here. With heat and tongue, she kissed her husband as one guard placed the point of his sword against Aruk’s throat and two others carefully unfastened the chain from the bed post. They doled out more length before swiftly locking it again.
“Now mount him, daughter.” Impatience hardened her father’s voice.
“I am not ready!” she snapped back over her shoulder. “Look at the size of him! He will tear me apart.”
“I will find oil to rub on her cunt,” Fin Ketles suggested.
“Rub it instead on your cock and then set it afire,” Jalisa hissed. “You will never touch me, you rotting codpiece.”
“To my mouth, wife,” Aruk growled. “Now.”
She did, lifting the gossamer hem so she might see his face. His gaze locked upon hers as his mouth locked over her cunt. His tongue slicked and teased and there was pleasure here again, swimming through her in hot waves. But there was rage, too. Rage that he was chained. Rage that she was forced to do this.
Softly he kissed her clit. “Only me, wife.”
Only him. Only the love she had for him, pressing away all the rage and fear. She let that sweet emotion fill her, until there was nothing else but Aruk and how much she loved him. Wet lust slicked her inner thighs as she moved down to straddle his stomach, yet it was only love that Jalisa tasted when she kissed his mouth, glistening with her arousal.
Only love on her lips as she said to him again those words. “I love you, Aruk.” And that love was on her lips when Jalisa rose over his cock and spoke different words, but they still had the same meaning. That she
loved him.
And she would free him.
His big body tensed as she fitted the broad head of his cock to her virgin entrance. Realization flared over his battered face. “No, Jalisa—!”
With his name on her lips, she took the full length of his shaft into her cunt with one hard downward stroke. Pain speared through her, a hot flare at her entrance as her maidenhead tore and spilled her virgin’s blood, a burning pressure where his thickness wedged deep inside her.
So deep inside her.
With a ragged cry, she fell forward, bracing her hands on his chest. His heart thundered under her palms.
“Jalisa!” Hoarsely he called her name. “My wife, my princess. Tell me you are well.”
Chest heaving, she looked up at him. “So very well.”
His gaze searched hers, then down the length of her body, and she read the question he did not ask.
“I cannot tell if it scaled,” she whispered huskily. All she could feel was his cock inside her sheath. Her head rolled back and unable to help herself, she swiveled her hips, stirring his heavy shaft deep within. “Oh, my husband. You feel so good.”
“Then use me for your pleasure, wife,” he said in a low and urgent voice. “And tell to me the spell.”
“To weaken a link in each chain,” she gasped, rising and falling. “You’re so deep inside me, Aruk.”
“And there I will stay, for this crimson ribbon I will not unbind. But you must hold tight.”
So she would. Rising the length of his cock, she kissed him before sliding back down, her inner muscles clinging to the thick shaft spearing the full depth of her cunt.
Aruk groaned beneath her, and it was but the rumble of a deeper roar that built within him, vibrating through his chest. With a mighty heave, he snapped the chains holding his arms and legs.
Then her father got a true rise from him, as Aruk arose from the bed with death in his eyes. Jalisa clung to him with her left arm circling his neck, her legs wrapped around his hips, and his cock buried deep. With their hands bound together, she knew he would not be wielding a weapon with it. Instead he locked his forearm over the small of her back, and though that made Jalisa hold her own arm at an awkward angle, it was not a painful one.
“Watch none of what happens next,” he commanded harshly, as brusque orders from her father joined the frantic shouts of the guards.
Jalisa buried her face in his shoulder and closed her eyes. The powerful surge of his body shoved his cock deeper. She moaned against his neck, then gasped when a sudden pivot swung her around with him and her clit rubbed against him where they were pressed so tightly together. Screams she heard, yet none of it louder than the pounding of her blood, her heaving breaths. Only once she looked up, to see a soldier’s face wiped from the front of his skull by the whip of the heavy chain as Aruk fought for their freedom.
A sharp lunge was a deep, hard stroke inside her. Jalisa began to shake, frantically tasting his skin, showering his neck with hot openmouthed kisses. Suddenly all became still and quiet, except for a nearby wheezing.
“Where did the weasel go?” Aruk demanded. “The one who thought he might rub my wife’s cunt.”
“Don’t…know…”
That wheezing answer was her father’s. Jalisa lifted her head to see that Aruk had the bloodied chain wrapped around his throat.
To her, Aruk said, “Are you certain?”
She buried her face against his neck again. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Then come for me, wife.” His forearm tightened, holding her in place for a strong upward thrust. “Come for me as I fulfill this vow I made to you.”
Sinking into her, again and again. The drenched slide of his cock driving her higher and higher, tighter and tighter. Barely did she hear the thud of a body to the floor, then Aruk’s hand was buried in her hair and he was kissing her, fucking her, and it was more sweet pleasure than she could bear. Hard she came, her sheath clasping him so tight, his name a scream from her lips. Then he slowed, and held her close, breath mingling.
With his seed not within her, but splashed hotly over her belly. Because Aruk would not spend inside her unless he could stay.
Heart aching, she searched his dark eyes. “You have wife and kingdom now, Aruk.” Two things her warrior had said that he could not have. “But will it only be for one night?”
No answer he gave, except to kiss her and to carry her to bed.
9
Aruk the Unbound
Savadon
As dawn crept across the sky, Aruk knew that he would not leave his wife.
But he had known it before—on bloodied sands and in chains. Perhaps he had known longer than that, from the long days when she’d still recovering from the wound in her side, and she’d told him of Savadon’s war-torn history.
Now his fingers lightly skimmed over the scar that wound had left as Jalisa lay sleepily atop his chest. Their hands were still bound, but although dawn had come, he was in no hurry to unwind their marriage ribbon.
After the second time he’d had her, she’d called for the bodies and his chains to be taken away. In the ceremonial chamber they’d remained, with its balcony that seemed to open up to the sky…and look down into the bay that was the heart of Savadon.
“Might I set up a watch up along the docks?” he asked softly.
“You are king,” she murmured against his throat. “You can do anything you like. Who would you be looking for?”
“Tournament contestants returning to Aremond.” For they would have to pass through Savadon to reach that kingdom. As all trade to the realms south of the Illwind Sea did. “Little sense it makes now to go chasing after them. Our paths might too easily cross—especially if they sail south as I sail north. But I know the names and faces of all the warriors who entered the tournament. Their descriptions I could give to the watch. So if my brother has failed…then it would be I who makes certain the gauntlet never reaches Solegius’s hands.”
“And so you would still fulfill your duty.” Her voice sounded thick. “But also you would stay?”
“Yes.” Though he must tell her, “If I ever hear again that the gauntlet might fall into unworthy hands, I would have to go. Though it does not happen often. This is the first time in six generations that warriors of the Fang Clan were called to our sacred duty.”
“If you go, then I would, too. We would leave Savadon in a good advisor’s hands, and an adventure I would have. And so you are staying?”
Her voice broke. And that was the second time she had asked—as if she had not believed the first. Rolling her onto her back, he saw the tears on her lashes.
“Did you think I might not? You are my heart, Jalisa.”
“I knew not if you would have a choice. And you did not spend inside me.”
He brushed away her tears. “Because you said not to.”
She blinked. “I did?”
“You asked me not to when you hired me. And said you wanted to choose when you would have children, to wait until you were ready.” Which Aruk had no argument with. This was the freedom his wife needed. So he would give it to her.
“Oh.” She softly bit her full bottom lip. “With you, all is different. I am ready now.”
Never had his cock hardened so fast. And she laughed at him as he spread her legs and pushed inside her, but on the next thrust her laugh turned to a pleasured gasp. Then she joined him, racing to the end with her cunt clutching his pumping shaft, coming helplessly beneath him as he endlessly filled her with his hot seed.
For a longer time he kissed her, but the day could not be delayed much longer. Savadon was waking up to a new queen—and king—and so much would need to be done.
Aruk untied the ribbon, then tied it again around his wrist. To the balcony he walked to relieve himself over the railing, while Jalisa groaned and moaned her way to the privy cupboard. A clever design that was, with a waste shaft that emptied over the cliff—though she had told him that when the wind blew strong enough, it might b
low the piss right back up the shaft and onto the person seated there.
So when she gave a short scream, he briefly wondered if that was what had happened. Yet there was not even a breeze. Frowning, he turned as she burst out of the privy—where the weasel advisor was climbing out of the shaft, knife in hand. All night he must have hidden in that waste shaft, because Aruk had himself looked into the privy cupboard in search of him.
Blood thundering, he surged toward her—but not before the weasel caught her by the hair and jerked her back against him, knife at her throat.
“She was mine!” the weasel wailed. “And if I cannot have her, no one will!”
To his knees, Aruk fell, meeting Jalisa’s panicked gaze. “Anything you wish,” he begged hoarsely. “Anything—”
Heart rending in two, Aruk watched the blade slash across her throat. A primal scream ripped from his chest and in the next moment he was on his feet and—
Jalisa still stood, unbleeding. Looking as stunned as he.
The weasel slashed again and the sound was like steel scraping over iron.
“The scaling,” Aruk told her, beginning to grin. “You weakened the iron chain by stealing weakness from yourself—and gained iron’s strength.”
“Scaling?” the weasel exclaimed. “What scal—”
That was as far as he got before Jalisa whipped around and punched him in the throat. Gasping, he fell back. With a scream of rage, she struck with her knee between his legs, sending him reeling out onto the balcony. Then her dainty foot she shoved into his ass and sent him flailing over the railing.
Chest heaving, she looked to Aruk. “I have wanted to do that for so long.”
Laughing, he went to her, cupping her cheeks—and feeling in amazement the warm suppleness of her skin. No different it seemed. Yet when she picked up the dagger and drew the blade over her flesh, nowhere could she cut. Not even her tongue, when she tried that.
“No more blood magic,” she whispered.
Aruk could not be sorry. No longer would she silently bleed herself to death while giving all that she had to others. Yet he knew that, in Jalisa’s eyes, blood magic had been her way of helping—and of not being helpless. “You are queen,” he reminded her softly. “With iron skin, so no one might do you harm. You will not need that magic. Other options you will have…and a husband who will always fight for and protect you.”