At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle Book 3) (3 page)

Chastened, I murmured, “Soft and pliant, my laird, but—”

“Soft and pliant,” he repeated, prying my cheeks apart so that I felt a cool rush of air across my puckered entrance. “I’m going to fuck you here, lass. Right up your
arse
.” It sounded not only impossible, but debased and profane. And yet, before I could form any objection even in my mind, his thumb pressed against the opening and slipped shallowly inside. “I’m going to do it to you. What’s more, I’m going to teach you to like it. If I’m feeling particularly wicked, I’m going to teach you to love it. To crave it. To beg me to fuck this pretty pink pucker.”

No, that could never happen
, I thought. I was quite sure. Especially since the sensation of his thumb moving slowly in and out was uncomfortable. Not painful, not precisely, but so strange as I clenched upon him, that I couldn’t imagine liking this, much less loving it.
 

Still, the laird had told me what he wanted.

Soft and pliant
, I repeated to myself silently. But at my silence, the laird unstopped the vial again and trickled a line of oil between my crack. Then he used both thumbs to massage and slip and slide in and out, oiling the passage well. The feeling of vulnerability began to sink into me, overwhelm me, put my mind into a bit of a fog. It went on and on, until both of the laird’s thumbs eased in, and he said, “You’re gorgeous, front to back. I love the shape of your mouth. The shape of your cunt. The quiver of your arse. Every part of you arouses me. I’m enjoying this, lass. And you’re going to enjoy it too. Touch yourself, and aim to bring yourself to the brink…”

Lazily I slid my hand beneath me, finding myself to be even wetter than I thought. And the nub of my clitoris was so swollen and sensitive that it jumped at the touch of my fingers. Then the laird knelt behind me and lifted me by the hips, forcing my body to roar awake again. I felt the hard pulsing head of his cock nudge between my cheeks as he said, “No man has taken you here before…it’s another maidenhead I intend to claim.”

I groaned, remembering how it had excited us both for him to claim my virginity. I flushed, wondering if this would feel the same. He pulled his thumb out, leaving an emptiness that was swiftly replaced by the pressure of his erection—or the crown of it anyway. He didn’t stroke deep into me, as he would in my cunt. Instead, he stroked very shallowly, while I gasped. “Oh, god!”

“Soft and
pliant
,” the laird growled in reminder.
 

I tried, truly I tried, as the intensity of the sensation threatened to undo me. I couldn’t take it. It was too much. I rubbed myself harder because the pleasure of it battled the discomfort. It would be a race, I thought, to find my climax before I broke. He stroked a little deeper, forcing a more guttural groan from me. And then it became more as the laird popped past some ring of resistance, then pushed all the way in, his hips pressing tightly to my reddened backside.

But the sound he made when he bottomed out made it all worth it; a cross between an animal growl of satisfaction with a panting breath of desperation. That’s when I realized how he was straining to hold himself back. Straining not to do me harm. He would discipline me, my laird. Even until I cried. But he would never
harm
me.
 

“How does it feel to be taken this way?” the laird asked. “Tell me.”

“I feel…low, and obscene, and full, so full.”

He rewarded me by grinding his hips in a circle that made me moan with the sensation of it, which had somehow turned wonderful. He moved over me then, his muscular chest pressing tight against my back. His weight deliciously pressing down on me. His breath warmed the back of my neck as he continued to grind into me. “Aye, what I’m doing to you
is
obscene lass,” he said, his deeply aroused voice sending a shiver up my spine. “This is dirty. Filthy. Sinful. Wicked. And it’s going to make you come so hard you see stars.”

My heart began to race, my breath stuttering, because much as I might have denied it to myself, the discomfort was now a memory, replaced by raw animal need. I lifted my hips to urge him on, and he grunted his approval. “That’s a good little whore. You like it, don’t you?”

“I don’t—I—I’m not certain,” I babbled.

He pressed deeply, but didn’t pull back out again. “You want more, don’t you?”

Oh, he taunted me like the devil himself!

“I asked a question, lass,” he said, his iron erection throbbing inside me. “Do you want more?”

“Yes!” I cried, as my fingers danced over my clitoris, bringing me closer.

“I’ll give you more,” the laird promised. “But you’re going to ask for it.”

No, no, I couldn’t do that
, my mind insisted.

But my body screamed otherwise.
 

“Just as you begged me when I took your maidenhead.”

The reminder loosened my tongue, for I remembered that I had no shame. Not with him. Or at least, whatever shame I had belonged to him. And he would feast upon it. “Please…my laird…”

His hand gripped my hip hard. “Please,
what
?”

“Please fuck me.”

“Where?”
 

On this very bed
, I almost said, just to be contrary. But the thought of the paddling I would get for it made me hold my tongue.
 

His hand went from my hip to my hair, and wrapping it in his fist, he jerked my head back. “Say it if you want it. Don’t lie to me if you don’t, but if you want it, you owe it to me to say so.”

God’s blood
, I did want it. I did! “Please fuck my arse,” I finally whispered. And once the vulgar words came out, it was like the burst of a dam. A torrent of pleas burst from my lips that I couldn’t hold back. “Please do it! Please fuck me. I want you to fuck me hard. I want to feel you spurting up inside me. Please take me. Please take me and
make
me yours.”

He grunted with satisfaction. “You’ll come to bed naked and with this passage oiled from now on, in case I wish to use it,” he said, with a feral snarl.
 

A command, or perhaps a condition.

“Yes!” I said, willing to promise anything. A sob escaped me, and my pleas became nearly hysterical. “Please do it. I need to feel invaded and plundered and … please, please, I’ll do anything. I need it. I need it. Please!”

The laird unleashed a string of curses as if I’d pressed against his flesh a hot poker of desire. I felt his skin flame hot against mine, as if he hadn’t expected me to beg so desperately. “Aye, I need it too, and you were made for fucking, lass,” he whispered just before his mouth fastened upon the side of my neck, kissing me there, sucking me there, even as his hips began to thrust in earnest.

Oh, it was happening. He pushed deep, deep, inside my back passage. Then withdrew, and did it again. He was fucking me as easily in the arse as he’d fucked my mouth or my cunny. And I—well, the begging had put a fever into me. Our bodies slid against each other, lubricated with sex and sweat and oil. And I knew I was going to climax the moment he did.

I also knew he was straining, holding back, waiting for me to get closer. The noises I made were scarcely recognizable. Something animal in nature. He knew them for a sign and so did I. What I didn’t know is that he would need to come first.
 

Fortunately, he knew it.
 

With an animal howl of his own, he plunged deep, his cock jerking and driving a warm flood of seed into my bowels. And the release—the force of it, drove me to the edge. How could I have anticipated the shattering climax that worked its way through me from between my legs, through my whole pelvis, then my belly until even my toes curled?
 

I groaned, quaking, my mind slipping into pure ecstasy. It was an orgasm unlike any he’d given me before. Such pleasure I hadn’t known existed, mixed as it was with a feeling of violation. But as he’d taken me, now my body took him.
 

My orgasm forced me to clamp down so tight that he hissed at the grip.

Beneath him, I could do nothing but whimper and writhe, and as he collapsed upon me, our hands tangled at the top of the bed. His breath came in heavy pants, and mine matched his in tempo.
 

In the aftermath, I was lost in a sea of happiness. Not only for the lingering waves of pleasure that ebbed and flowed through my throbbing body, but also because of the laird’s rumble of contentment.
 

As he softened inside me, he said, “Now I have had you in every way a man can take a woman. Or nearly so.”

“Nearly?” I asked.

“There are variations on the theme,” he said, with a husky voice. “And ways that involve the mind more than the body.”

“I want to know them all,” I said, marveling anew at what he did to me.

At how much pleasure he gave me.

At how I felt a glow from within that seemed the very opposite of sin.

He drew me closer, squeezing me into his arms, kissing me again and again, as if he were the one marveling at me. “How do you know to do that?”

“Do what?” I asked, brushing softly at his lips with mine.

“How to draw all the poisons from me,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “…you are more of a healer than my physicker.”

A healer? I had never thought of myself as such beyond tending to the little cuts and scrapes my siblings took in their days upon my father’s croft. “Perhaps you think of me that way because you were wounded the day we met and I tended to a cut above your eye.”

His next words were spoken so softly I wondered if I imagined them. “The wounds you heal are on the inside, lass.”

I stroked his face so tenderly then, he seemed not to be able to bear it. He rolled away to fetch a wet cloth from the basin. He liked to be clean before he slept; before the siege he sometimes indulged in the luxury of having water hauled in for a bath instead of swimming in the loch. And though I didn’t think I could make my knees hold me upright, I murmured, “I can do it, laird.”

“You’ve done enough,” he said, bringing the basin over to wipe me clean—the cool water soothing upon sticky, sore flesh. And for a moment, I felt like a small, cherished child. He washed me gently, then washed himself, then slipped back into the bed beside me and pulled the covers atop us both.
 

“Will you be able to sleep better now, my laird?”

“Oh, aye,” he said, at once. “I must thank you for that, lass. The way I feel now, I could conquer a whole army with one arm. I am certain to be rested and clear-headed, better able to command my men.”

I had done that to him.
For
him. The thought that I—a woman in disgrace—could have such influence over a powerful man. Have influence over him and the whole clan, just by surrendering him in this way…what a heady feeling!
 

I quite nearly sang to think it. Meanwhile, the laird gently caressed my bare bottom with his strong palm, which was calloused from where it so often gripped his sword. Though I was sore where the paddle had landed, there was a deep pleasure under the rubbing. The soreness was a badge of honor, a reminder that I treasured of the experience that we’d just shared together, and I purred a bit to be touched this way.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” the laird murmured. “The whole truth.”

“I would never lie to you.”

His eyes narrowed. “When you gifted me this paddle, did you hope I’d use it on you tonight?”

“No, my laird.”
It shouldn’t be this hard to admit
, I thought. A harlot would admit it and that was what I wanted to be for him. A woman with whom he could find his relief and give him succor without making demands. He wanted to know about
my
hopes, for which he shouldn’t have concerned himself at all. And yet, I shamelessly confessed, “In truth, I hoped you would use it on me every night.”

He blinked. Then his hand drifted to my chin, forcing it up, making me look him in the eye. “Every night? I don’t think you could take it.”

“I could take
anything
for you,” I said, savagely.

And I meant it. I meant it with all my heart.

THE LAIRD

John Macrae nearly wept with amazement at the woman in his arms. A woman so delicate, so soft, and yet so strong. Because it took strength to accept all that he did to her in bed. Not just the spankings and paddlings, but the vulgar words that spilled from his mouth. The ways in which he had humiliated her…

She’d drawn it out of him this time.
 

He’d known perfectly well what she was doing, taunting him about her nightclothes. Working him into a state. And he’d let her do it because he’d needed her to do it.
He
should have been the one to reassure
her
that those things he said and did in the heat of passion were forms of love play. That they did not speak to a lack of feeling on his part, but rather, a kind of surrender of his own. She was the sexually inexperienced one, and yet, she seemed to know, without needing to be taught, how to make him feel safe expressing parts of himself for which others would deem him a monster.
 

How was that she did such a miraculous thing?

If he ever doubted that he loved her, all doubts fled. He loved her more than anything or anyone he had ever loved. And how would he ever bear to part with her when the time came? “I will treasure this paddle, my sweet,” he told her. “No one has ever given me a gift I like better. Excepting, of course, the give you gave me when you surrendered yourself to me.”

“But the paddle was a gift for
me
too, my laird,” she said, her eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. “I can never seem to tell you enough how happy it makes me to please you. But I will keep trying to tell you until you believe it. Until you really
do
believe it.”

He was starting to, but he had to understand. “Does it make you happy because you are a good girl who likes to sacrifice for her laird, or because it feeds something in you to obey me just as it feeds something in me to command you?”

“What difference does it make?”