Chapter 13

thirteen

He didn’t react at first, other than a single muscle jumping along the side of his jaw.

“No,” he said finally, and stepped away from the globe.

“No?”

“Absolutely not,” he clarified. “I have many kinks, but acrimonious regret isn’t one of them.”

I studied him. “Why would you regret it?”

He sighed, closing his eyes, and once again, I wondered how much he’d had to drink. This was the most expressive I’d ever seen him, and it was captivating to watch. Like watching the waters of a cold, deep lake recede to reveal a drowned village.

“I’m not talking about myself, Isolde.” He opened his eyes and met my stare with a hard, dangerous one of his own. “I mean you. You would regret it.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said—although even as I said it, I wondered.

Would I? Would there always be an invisible Isolde in my head, one untouched by her father and uncle’s schemes, who’d been able to choose differently?

But you can’t choose differently.I’d taken this road with my eyes wide open; I’d anticipated having sex with Mark eventually, had chosen it. My virginity would be just another offering laid down on the altar, ready to burn, and I’d finally accepted that I was eager to strike the match.

Mark clearly didn’t believe me, given the skeptical set of his mouth, and I stepped forward.

“I wouldn’t regret it,” I said again. “It’s something I assumed would happen eventually.”

“Eventually is very different from right now.”

“And,” I went on, “it doesn’t matter, does it? Virginity? I thought you of all people would feel that way.”

Mark gave me a look. “Do you want me to tell you that your hymen is just like tonsils or an appendix? That removing it together would be clinical and unremarkable?”

“Well, not unremarkable, necessarily, but the concept of—”

“I’m well aware of the bullshit premise of virginity, Isolde. It’s also permissible for it to matter to you, or to me.”

“Does it matter to you?” I asked. He’d never intimated that it did; he’d been explicit about fidelity after our wedding but had never mentioned if he expected me to wear white honestly on our wedding day.

Mark’s eyes flicked down to his glass and then back up to me. It was momentary, brief. I could almost convince myself that I’d imagined it.

“Divided loyalty matters to me,” he said. His voice was firm, convincing. “If you come to hate me later because of this, that is a problem. If this is the seed of some future discontent, that is also a problem. This arrangement only makes sense if I can count on us being united after our marriage.”

“No perceived gap between us, I remember.” I stepped closer again, near the globe now. “But I don’t think you answered the question I asked. Does me being a virgin—or staying a virgin—matter to you?”

“If you’re asking whether my estimation of you is contingent on you possessing a hymen, then the answer is no.”

“And if I’m asking something else?”

That muscle in his jaw jumped again, and then he lifted the scotch to his lips and took a long drink. He took his time before replying. “And what are you asking, sweetheart?”

I didn’t know what I was asking. I didn’t know what it was that I wanted him to say. I wanted my virginity not to matter to him, because then we could dampen the fires of my father’s suspicion in the most efficient way. I wanted my virginity to matter to him because I wanted it to matter to someone, this physical marker of my choices.

Maybe I wanted to matter to someone. Even if it was only through the lens of sex. I wanted to be something more than a tool, something more than a means to an end.

Or maybe you just want more of what Mark gave you at Lyonesse.

His flogger raining hellfire on my skin. His hand on my throat while the other searched between my legs. I could tell myself it was for my own purposes, for my long game of winning him over to me, but the truth was evident in the stiff ache of my nipples, the swollen pulse at the apex of my sex.

I wanted him beyond the wisdom of a seduction—a humiliating thing, especially given that he’d made no effort whatsoever to seduce me. In fact, he’d been enormously careful not to take advantage of the unusual nature of our meetings. It spoke to his twisted sense of morality, maybe, but it stung my pride too. I knew I wasn’t flirtatious or sultry—I knew that I

carried myself like a curled fist. That didn’t mean I didn’t want to be desired as I myself desired him.

And anyway, he wasn’t supposed to have any morality, twisted or not. He was supposed to be a devil.

Why wouldn’t he be my devil, then?

I lifted my chin. I couldn’t help my pride, but I could help my honesty.

“Do you want to deflower me, Mark?”

His jaw worked to the side as he looked down at his glass again. Then he set it down on the small shelf inside the globe.

Sensing that I was getting to him, I stepped closer. Closer again. “Is that a hard limit for you? Virgin brides?”

“Isolde.” He said my name like a warning.

“There’s no difference to me between it happening now or on our wedding night.”

“Stop,” he said sharply, but I didn’t stop. This close to him, I could see that his pupils were dilated, that there was the faintest flush to his cheeks.

From the scotch? Or something else?

I remembered how it had felt to hear his breathing change the first time I’d crawled to him; how his erection felt pressed against me. Even if it was only convenient or casual desire, he did desire me.

I asked for you.

I wanted you.

And despite the fourteen years between us, despite all his power and money and violence, I pushed.

“So let’s do it. There’s nothing to be negotiated, nothing to be discussed. I am willing, and unless you aren’t—”

“That is not the problem,” he said tightly.

“Then what is?” I stepped closer again, close enough that I could see the pulse in his throat, my reflection in his onyx eyes. “Why won’t you tell me? I’m being honest with you—”

And just like that, he moved. I was faster than I’d been two years ago, and so I almost evaded him, but he was still quicker, stronger. He had his hand around my jaw, tipping my face up to his, and his other hand wrapped tightly around my wrist. To control the hand that held the knife. I’d forgotten I was holding it.

“I promise that you do not want my honesty in return. Out of respect for the difference in our ages and the circumstances of our connection, I have kept a curtain between us,” he said. His voice held so much malice and anger in it that it was terrifying to hear, and his fingers were so tight on my jaw that they almost hurt. A thrill raced down my spine. “You don’t want to be on the other side of that curtain.”

“I think I do,” I whispered.

“You do not,” he said. “Because on the other side of the curtain is being mine. Belonging to me, and I do not mean the version of myself that I’ve allowed you to see. I do not mean the careful, thoughtful man that you believe that I am. I’ve fostered that belief—fed it as much as I could—because I do regret that your future had to be sacrificed for my gain, and it will make the next handful of years go easier for us both. But you do not want to test me on this, darling. Stay on the other side where it’s safe.”

“Or what?” The words came out tight, almost whispered, with his fingers holding my jaw like they were.

“Or you will learn why people whisper my name,” he said, the words as rough as his fingers on my skin. “Why I’ve never collared a submissive. What it looks like when I decide to have someone as my own.”

He lowered his mouth to my ear and murmured, “There would be no politeness, no mercy. Your only recourse would be your safe word. I’ve waited years to have someone belong to me, and I would make you feel every day, every hour, that I’ve abstained.”

He pulled back, his eyes boring into mine. There was only a thin ring of blue around the black. “Do you understand? You do not want this. Let’s go back to being polite accomplices in an arranged marriage, actors playing our parts, and we will find some other way around your father’s suspicions. You’ll thank me later.”

“No.” I tried to step forward into him, but couldn’t, not with the hands on my jaw and wrist. “I won’t. I want it. Don’t you want it? Don’t you want me?”

He leaned in, dragging his nose through my hair. I shivered.

“I am all want with you, Isolde. You think that I don’t think about you all the time? That I don’t want your scent all over my bed? You think that I don’t wish I had you under my desk with that serious little mouth available for my relief every morning? That I don’t want your snug cunt whenever I goddamn feel like it? Yes, I want you, and I want you collared, and I want you mine. That should be enough to terrify you, because I would hold nothing back until I’d eaten your very soul. I would hold nothing back until it was written on your skin and scratched into your bones how much I crave you.”

I couldn’t breathe for the thudding of my heart, the slick, needy heat throbbing in my sex. His words were something more than words, some kind of prayer or invocation, some kind of spell, conjuring between us what I had thought was only contained to my dreams. To my darkest and most secret fantasies.

And he wanted me. He wanted me with ferocity, with teeth and bruising greed, and he wanted me to be shockingly, perilously his.

Oh, how I yearned for that. To belong to this brutal devil, to surrender to him. I would never be lonely, never feel unwanted. Never wake up and feel like purpose or service was forever out of reach, because it would be as easy as breathing, as surrendering to him.

I stared up at him, dazed and hungry, my eyes caught by his own.

“And you think your virginity is a hard limit for me?” His laugh was carnivorous. “It wouldn’t have changed my fascination with you one bit if you weren’t a virgin, just so you’re aware. But you’d better believe I’ve thought about nothing else since you agreed to marry me. Nothing but that pretty little cunt, the one that comes just from being punished. How tight it would be, how swollen and slick I could make it before I wedged my way inside.” He bent his mouth to mine, hovering just above my lips, his breath tickling me. “Knowing I was the first person there, the first person to taste it and the first person to fill it. The first person to stretch you to take someone.”

“Then have it,” I whispered. “It’s yours.”

“I like that word on your tongue,” Mark murmured, his lips now ghosting over mine as he spoke. “Yours. I want to taste it there.”

“Then do it,” I begged. I was breathless, desperate. All my plans and strategies erased by the simmering lust crawling through my veins.

No. Not just lust. I didn’t know what to call it, but this was something else, something worse. It was like my soul needed to be fucked as much as my body did, and what that meant about me, about God, I didn’t know. I just knew that I wasn’t going to survive the next few minutes if Mark didn’t kiss me, didn’t take me.

I wanted to be on the other side of that curtain more than I’d wanted anything else ever in my life—and that was the most terrifying thing of all.

His tongue traced along my parted lips, dipping inside just enough to lick along the edges of my teeth.

“Please, sir,” I whimpered, not even recognizing my own voice, myself. The sir that spilled out as naturally as an exhale. “Make me yours. I’ll be so good for you; I’ll be yours as long as you want—”

His mouth sealed over mine and claimed it. His fingers held my jaw still as his tongue searched out mine and licked, as if he were truly trying to taste the word I’d spoken that he’d liked so much. Yours. Like he could lap it up like wine.

I moaned into the kiss, my skin tight and hot and my pulse kicking everywhere, like I was in a fight, and I needed more and more and more. He nipped at my lower lip, swallowing my gasp, as his other hand took the knife from me and set it next to his scotch.

“I’m glad you like your present, my deadly girl,” he said against my mouth. “Now tell me you remember your safe word.”

“Hyssop.” It sounded like a plea—not to stop, but to keep going. “I’ll say it if I need it, I promise.”

His hand found my hair and threaded through the tresses, and he pulled my head back so that he could look at my face.

“You,” he said, his other hand finding the hem of my respectable skirt and shoving it up to my waist, “are a terrible idea.”

He looked down at where my white cotton panties were exposed and let out a sharp, ragged exhale. “So maybe it’s fitting that I’m a terrible idea too.”

That felt more right than any endearment, any declaration. He was using me to build his empire, and I was using him to build God’s, and somewhere along the way, we’d both come to need whatever this was. However depraved, however wrong, however stupid. We needed it like fire needed oxygen, and now we were burning together.

He let go of my hair and then hauled me up into his arms, carrying me over to the desk and setting me down on the edge. He stepped back and began unbuttoning his suit jacket.

“Spread your legs,” he said, his voice brooking no argument. “And pull your skirt back up. I need to see it.”

There was no mistaking which it he meant—the object of his obsession. And when I obeyed, the breath that shuddered out of him was worth every agony leading up to this moment, worth every sin and every shame.

“Pull your panties to the side,” he ordered, now stripping off his jacket and tossing it carelessly over the back of a nearby chair. Without it, I could see the impressive tent in his suit trousers. “Hold them there until I’ve looked my fill.”

I quivered as my fingers dropped against my thigh, I was that worked up. And when I curled my fingers around the cotton, I could feel how damp I’d made everything down there. Given the first shiver of cool air over my cunt, I knew it was wet enough to look wet, and sure enough, Mark gave a punched breath at the sight.

“So pretty,” he said and pressed the heel of his palm to his erection. “So, so pretty.”

He came closer and then knelt on one knee, like a man preparing to propose. Except his ring was already on my finger, and he wasn’t giving any romantic speeches. Instead, he was using his thumbs to brush lightly over the softness of my vulva, using them to spread me apart so that he could look inside.

His nostrils flared, and his jaw was rigid. He almost looked furious: dilated eyes and the parted, hungry lips. “It’s a very good thing I didn’t see this until now,” he told me, not taking his eyes off my pussy. “A good thing for both of us.”

He bent in, and without warning, pressed a long, open kiss to it.

My thighs tried to shut; my hips squirmed. It was hot and ticklish and slick, and nothing like I’d ever felt before, ever, ever. Not with my fingers, not with the corner of my mattress, not even in my dreams, because I hadn’t known to dream about this. And when his tongue flicked over my clitoris, my head fell back as I panted.

“How does that feel?” he asked, not lifting his head from my cunt.

“So good,” I groaned. “Like you’re licking my heart.”

“I would if I could,” said Mark in a voice full of dark promise. He gave me another long kiss, sucking the swollen pearl between his lips before releasing it and swirling his tongue inside my opening, making noises of rough pleasure as he did.

He stood up and then kissed me, forcing me to sample myself on his lips. Sweet and strange, a taste unlike any other.

“I needed to taste it,” he said as he pulled back to look at my cunt again. “My brand-new toy. Now open for me.” He slid his first two fingers into my mouth, and instinctively, I closed my lips around them and sucked. His eyes darkened even more.

“Good girl,” he said, and a hot, fierce pleasure curled in my chest.

Then he dropped his fingers between my legs, his eyes back down to my pussy. To where he was slowly parting me, finding the tight entrance between my folds.

“Wait,” I said, and he shook his head.

“That’s not how it works between us,” he murmured, dropping his lips to my jaw and then my mouth. “My deadly girl, my little honeysuckle queen. Say hyssop to me, and I’ll stop the instant you say it. But I won’t break for wait, not for stop. Not even for no. Your safe word is all of those things, and more. It’s your freedom and your power too.”

“But don’t you—” His wet fingertips were still searching me out, and then one made a lazy circle just outside my entrance. “Don’t you want to put your cock there instead? Sir?”

He froze, and then shuddered out a exhale against my mouth.

“Yes, I want to put my cock there, Isolde. More than anything. But let’s not test my control too far yet, hmm?”

As he said it, he was already straightening up, his eyes dropping to his hand. “This will pinch,” he warned, and I fought to breathe as his finger pressed deeper.

His expression was avid, awed—gleeful—as he watched his thick finger penetrate me. Taking something that shouldn’t matter, that didn’t matter—and yet also did, because we’d decided together that it meant something. That it was his to have, even if it didn’t change anything about what came next.

And then the pain, a sharp, low agony that had me panting and squirming.

“That’s it,” Mark said, still in that voice full of dark promise. “Just a minute longer.” His free hand came to wrap around my hip and hold me still as he tore me between the legs. And just when I thought I couldn’t stand it for a second longer, he added a second finger.

I made a low, whining noise then, the pain clawing up to my chest and my throat, stealing my air. It was clean and gorgeous and awakening, like all the torment he gave me.

Not for a second did I think about saying my safe word.

“So tight, Isolde,” Mark praised. “So good to take what I give you, even when it hurts. Keep those legs spread for me. Let me see that pretty pussy getting filled for the first time.”

The pain was shimmering in me now, settling into my bones, and when I looked down, I saw blood, slick and red, covering his fingers.

He looked up and met my eyes, and a sadistic smile stretched that beautiful mouth of his. His eyes were large and black and fringed with gold lashes, and his muscled shoulder and bicep were moving under his shirt as he worked his big fingers in and out of my virgin hole, and how had I ever thought he wasn’t handsome? That his angular jaw and sculpted cheeks weren’t geometric perfection? That the bump in his nose and the scar near his temple weren’t dangerously beautiful?

That his smile wouldn’t put the devil’s to shame?

“You take me so gorgeously,” he murmured. “After we’re married and you come to live with me, you’ll take my cock every night. Every day. As often as I need, and I need it a lot, Isolde. I’ll need your mouth and cunt and eventually your ass too, and you’ll be my pet, my little wife, to give me relief.”

I moaned, the shimmering pain pulling at my lungs, my funny bones, but at my pussy too. His grin stretched even wider. “Oh, I felt that little quiver, sweetheart. Can you come with your blood all over my hand? Show me. Show me how much you like being mine.”

He pressed his thumb to the erect bud above my entrance and began working it, just as his fingers worked in and out of my channel, their entry made slick and wet by arousal and blood. I let out a choked groan as pleasure yanked abruptly between my legs, brought on by his expert touch, by the need evident in the hard cock straining his pants and in the hungry lines of his face.

“I want to come,” I mumbled, my head dropping forward into his shoulder. “I want to come, I want to come, I want—”

The pleasure detonated so fast that my breath stilled and my back bowed and my mouth parted in a silent, choked scream as the convulsions tore their way up my body, from my throbbing clitoris to my womb to my chest, robbing me of air and thought and anything that wasn’t filthy, mindless pleasure. I came around Mark’s fingers, squeezing them, using them, my hips bucking as if trying to fuck them deeper and harder into me.

He watched with undisguised enjoyment as I futilely tried to spear my cunt on his fingers, and then as I slowly, slowly went still, shivering and whimpering and limp.

He pressed his hand to my sternum and pushed me backward, so I was laying on my back lengthwise across the desk.

“What are you doing?” I said in a dizzy, sated voice, but I had my answer soon enough. After pulling my blood-spattered underwear from my hips—and then shoving them in his back pocket—he unzipped his pants and freed his stiff organ.

I’d never seen one in person before. It was circumcised and thick and straight, long enough that his hand had to travel some distance as he gave himself a few leisurely pumps. A thick vein meandered up the side, and the head was flared and swollen.

It was shiny and wet at the tip, like it had been leaking for some time in his pants.

Mark swiped his hand over my pussy, and I wondered for a moment what he was doing, until he returned the same hand to his cock and began masturbating with short, vicious strokes.

He was using the blood from my hymen and the slickness of my pleasure as lube.

With my panties gone and my skirt shoved up to my hips, there was nothing between him and my bare cunt. His eyes trailed over it as the muscles in his shoulder and arm flexed while he worked himself. My body stirred again just to see it.

His hand was tight, unrelenting on himself, and I saw something of his lust then, of how worked up he was, of how deep the need must claw at him, because he jerked himself like he would murder someone just to come. Just to feel relief from whatever lashed and bit at him in his thoughts.

The skin of his cock was stretched tight and slicked with red and his fist was huge and strong, and then with a satisfied noise that curled my toes, he gave himself a series of fast strokes and jetted thick stripes of semen onto my sex.

It was so much, hot and dripping, and he kept pumping himself with rough motions until he was done. When he let go of his cock, he was still half-hard, and he drew lazy fingers up the mess he’d made. He pressed the messy fingers to my mouth, and I opened automatically, sucking them clean.

“What a good wife you’ll make,” he rasped, bending over me to give me a long, possessive kiss. His scent—like the city after a storm—was all around me, now the air I breathed. “What a perfect queen, with her honeysuckle knife and her sweet cunt.”

My skin was tingling, my vision flickering with static. If I wasn’t already flat on my back, I would have fallen over. It was like the first time I’d crawled to him, the first time he’d cuffed me to his cross. Like the entire world was buzzing under my skin.

Like I’d float right up to the stars if he let me.

He straightened up, finding a handkerchief from somewhere and using it to wipe me clean of blood and semen. My pussy was inspected once again, this time with satisfaction stamped all over his face, and then I was up in his arms, being carried somewhere. My bedroom, I realized at the same time that I also realized my delirium was edging into sleepiness.

Mark knew where my bedroom was. The thought didn’t unnerve me the way it should have. The way it would have if I were thinking straight.

I was stripped of my clothes, given ibuprofen and water, and settled in bed. More water was set on my bedside table, and just when I thought he was going to leave, he sat on the edge of the bed and pushed my hair behind my ear. He didn’t speak, content to stroke my head while I closed my eyes and rested.

“How do you feel?” he asked. It was strange to hear his voice filled with heat, with naked interest.

I loved it.

“My pussy hurts,” I murmured honestly. “And I feel amazing. Are you going to leave?”

He didn’t speak for a moment, and when I opened my eyes to look up at him, I found his eyes fixed on my hair. On where he rubbed the silky tresses between his fingertips.

“I’d like to stay,” he said finally. “I don’t know how advisable it is, but I’d like to stay.”

“Thank you.” I closed my eyes again. “I wish I hurt more so that you’d have to do more aftercare.”

“Aftercare is more than pain management, Isolde,” he said. “What would you like?”

“I don’t know,” I said, still dizzy and tingling. Endorphins, maybe. I was high on them. “I just want you with me.”

I heard a soft thud, and then a second thud. His shoes being toed off. And then he crawled onto the mattress, coming to rest behind me with my back to his chest and my bottom tucked snugly against his lap. His clothes were the kind of expensive that felt amazing to rub and snuggle against.

He was huge in my bed, tall and wide and muscular, radiating heat. I turned in his arms and nuzzled my face against him, which seemed to surprise him. But then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer.

“What happens next?” I mumbled, sleep already pulling me under. “Sir?”

He let out a long exhale. He liked it when I said sir. “I figure out what to do with you, sweetheart. That’s what happens next.”

I couldn’t believe that Mark Trevena was here in my bed, holding me. But he was, and it felt perfect, even with my sore pussy throbbing between my legs. And I didn’t have a single regret about anything.

I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Tomorrow would begin a new chapter for us. I would be his in all the ways he’d tried to warn me away from, and maybe, just maybe, a tiny piece of this cold, deadly, hungry man would also be mine.