Tribute Page 6

  The towns people all revered him for the way he saw to their most basic needs much better than any of the other surrounding kings—protecting them when they were threatened, providing generous alms for the poor and those who were displaced or otherwise negatively affected by natural disasters and such, as well as for his strong law and order stance. He wouldn’t tolerate injustice, and harsh sentences were meted out to those who would take advantage of the weakest amongst them, or who sought to steal from or otherwise defraud their neighbors.

  As he road through, he knew they would want to call to him and perhaps come up to ask how his time was with the empress or perhaps ask him to settle a dispute before someone else got to him, so he road through town with his fingers to his lip so that they would not disturb the limp bundle in his lap. She was drowning even more so than she had been in his coat, so they really couldn’t see what it was that he was carrying, beyond the long fall of her hair. He got knowing looks from the women, as if they thought he was bringing home his true love, and winks from the men, who he knew where hoping for his sake that he was just bringing home a good fuck.

  Even his servants got the idea and remained as quiet as they could. He handed her down to the head of his stables only long enough to dismount and then took the burden back, striding into the hall and up the stairs to his room—the first one on the left and one of the biggest rooms in the whole castle complex.

  His bed was enormous—it had to be to hold him—and strewn with furs as well as fine linen sheets and warm woolen blankets. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace and he saw that Marianne, his cook and housekeeper, as he had no wife, had laid out a simple morning meal for him of generous slices of gammon, cider, cheese, fruit, bread and butter.

  Raiz pulled found a spot on the bed where he could easily slip her under the covers and did so, and she hardly stirred a whit. Suddenly finding himself ravenous, he devoured the meal, and then, seeing that she was still dead asleep, left the room—after carefully locking her in it lest she get the idea that she was free to roam wherever she pleased, which she most definitely was not.

  He caught a stable boy, Bart, scrounging for something to eat in the kitchen and sent him instead to stand guard at his bedroom door to come get him when he heard anyone stirring within. Then he told Helga, his cook, to make up another breakfast tray that was about a third of the size of the one she’d put together for him.

  And lastly, he sent one of his pages back to where he’d just come from to collect some fine breeding stock of horseflesh he’d bought while he was there.

  Then he went to the stables and began to polish his sword and its ornate scabbard and rub down his charger’s bridle and saddle. He had people who would have done that for him without him asking, but Lord Arndt liked to do things like that himself. They were his prized possessions, both responsible for saving his life in different ways at different times, and he liked to see for himself that they were well taken care of. He’d had to do it for his older brother as well as himself while he was growing up, and it had become a matter of happy habit. As a result, he was quite particular about how it was done and no one else’s efforts could quite measure up.

  Eventually, some time near early afternoon, Bart came running into the stables.

  “Milord, Milord, I can hear something in your room!”

  He said it as if he thought he’d locked a dragon in there or something. He grinned at the boy’s enthusiasm, but he found himself trotting back into the hall himself, and he knew there wasn’t a dragon in his bedroom, but something much, much better.

  “Marianne, have my tub and bathwater sent up to my room, and tell cook to send up that tray I ordered.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  As he brought the key to the lock he could understand why young Bart might have thought it was a dragon—she was stumbling around as if she was ransacking the place. He knew he didn’t keep anything in his bedroom that was of any value, but still, he wouldn’t be at all happy if the place looked like a hurricane had hit it when she’d only been there for less than a day.

  When he opened the door, those purple eyes lit on him as if he was a lifeline. “Chamber pot—please!”

  It wasn’t under the bed, where most people put it—she’d already looked. It wasn’t across the room. There wasn’t even a bowl and pitcher if she—in dire desperation—absolutely had to. Where the heck did he hide it?

  He strode to the corner of the room where there was a huge armoire, opened one of the big bottom drawers and handed it to her.

  As desperate as she was to use it, she stood still and looked at him expectantly, standing there holding the thing as if she wasn’t at all sure how to use it.

  “Well? I thought you had an all fired need of the chamber pot, girl?”

  Fleur opened her mouth to protest; it was on the tip of her tongue to give him a scathing rebuke about his manners, but then her mother’s words drifted through her brain and she realized what a disadvantage she was at, and knowing that she was expected to be submissive.

  But to have to relieve herself in front of him? It was barbaric! It was unthinkable! It was . . .

  Something she had to do right now or she’d end up doing that which was even more embarrassing and piss right down her leg.

  She put the pot on the floor and squatted over it—facing deliberately away from him while she did so. He could punish her for doing so if he wanted to, but she’d die of shame if he made her face him while she voided her bladder.

  Although she waited to hear the dreaded words, they didn’t come. Indeed, when she finished, she found that he had put a damp rag next to her to clean herself with, which surprised her. She hadn’t expected to find such niceties afforded a tribute.

  Once she’d stood, she bent over to retrieve the pot and its contents, heading for the window to empty it out into the courtyard below. But he waylaid her by opening a door she hadn’t noticed near the far corner of the room and crooked his finger so that she would come to him.

  She did so, however reluctantly.

  He surprised he by taking the bowl from her and stepping to one side as he drained it into what looked like a chair with a hole in the middle that was carved into the wall. He then dropped the soiled rag she had used down another hole, closed the door and put the pot outside the door of the room, locking it again.

  “It empties into the drainage ditch for the castle and the hole for the rag goes down to the laundry room. There are more rags in the armoire and more pots in the place I got this one.”

  Fleur had never seen the like! It was ingenious, and something she hoped she could tuck away until she could suggest it to her father, who was always looking for ways to innovate, and her mother who always wanted everything neat and tidy.

  She started at the knock on the door, but he went to answer it as she huddled under the furs, having been robbed some time while she was asleep of the relative safety of his huge coat. A tub was brought in by two men, followed by a line of maids carrying buckets of what looked like steaming hot water. She would have given everything she had to take a bath at that moment—alone, of course, although she doubt she’d be granted that luxury.

  The last person through the door, who arrived when everyone else was leaving, was a portly woman carrying a tray of food that had Fleur’s mouth watering even though it looked to be very plain fare. She didn’t care! She was starving, having expended so much energy while she was running that even just the sight of the food made her feel faint from hunger.

  When the older woman had left, Lord Arndt took a seat at the small table by the window. “Come and have something to eat.”

  He made up a plate for her with a half an apple, a good-sized portion of ham, a slab of cheese and a small portion of bread, liberally slathered with butter. Although he could easily have finished what was left—despite how much he’d already eaten only a few hours before—he wouldn’t because he wanted to make sure that she had enough to sate herself fully.

  Fleur did as
she was told, reaching for a napkin from the tray and using it to cover her lap before taking a dainty bite out of the apple while trying to remain as hunched as she could, showing him as little of herself as possible—not that he hadn’t already seen everything; he most certainly had.

  But that situation was very different from being naked and sitting less than two feet away from the man. Granted, he had been kind to her so far, but she knew that this wasn’t necessarily the measure of a man who would hunt a naked woman through a forest at night. Whatever kind of person he was, though, she would have to make the best of her situation for the next twenty-four months.

  The thought made her shiver.

  “Cold?” he growled, although she didn’t sense any animosity from him. His tone seemed naturally low.

  “Thank you, no, Sir,” she whispered, not looking up from her food.

  When she stopped eating, he moved her plate and the tray away, and then held out his hand to her. Fleur put her fingers into his hesitantly, trying to still the way her hand shook, feeling those big, rough fingers close tightly around hers as she stood. Seconds later, he had lifted her into his arms and was lowering her into the wonderfully warm bathwater.

  Her sigh of pure pleasure almost brought a smile to his lips, but he squelched it. At first, he intended to be quite stern with her, in order to make an impression. He did the same with the raw recruits until he got to know them and they came to realize that he meant business first. Later, if he kept them on and they survived, they would learn that he was stern but fair.

  It was always better to start out severe rather than to start out soft and try to become severe later, when control had already been ceded to the controlee.

  She reached for the rag to wash herself, but he held it away from her, watching her settle back uneasily, unused, he bet, to having to bend much to anyone’s will.

  “What’s your name, girl?” he asked as he wet then soaped the rag, finally bringing it to her hand and washing it thoroughly, then moving up her arm.

  Part of her wanted to correct him and proclaim that she was a woman, but she held her tongue. “Fleur.”

  What he was doing felt much better than she wanted it to. Whether he knew it or not, he was massaging as he was washing her, and her tired, aching muscles responded to his firm touch by surrendering completely. Her hair hung over the end of the tub, her head braced against the back as he washed her collar bone and shoulders, then moved across the top of her chest to work on the other arm, from top to bottom this time, then to her face.

  He was gentler than she would have given him credit for being, based on his size. He was like a mountain, and yet he was light enough on his feet that he’d been able to carry her in here and not wake her once. She could see the muscles rippling beneath his shirt, which was rapidly becoming more and more damp, and when he reached in front of her, he completely blocked her field of vision, filling it with himself.

  Fleur took a deep breath and was glad to realize that he didn’t smell of anything but the same soap he was using on her and horse, and she didn’t mind the scent of either. His hypnotic touch and the relaxing heat of the bathwater lulled her into an almost sleep. That was until he brought the cloth down on her breast, and she started violently, already almost halfway out of the tub.

  “Sit down.” His tone hadn’t changed much, but then it didn’t have to. Commands came naturally to him. All he had to do was add a bit of emphasis and he had her wanting to obey him.

  But she hung there, not having moved a muscle to comply.

  He didn’t give her any chance to rethink her decision whatsoever, and yet he also didn’t do what she expected he would. When he stood, she tried to cringe back into the water, but he hauled her out so that she was bent over the end of the well-balanced tub, her bottom upturned and exposed due to her position, and he brought his hand crashing down onto what he had made readily available to himself.

  And Fleur learned one quick, stark lesson: don’t get spanked while you’re wet. It hurts a thousand times worse.

  Or maybe it hurt worse because it was him, but she knew that he was doing something that made this spanking exponentially worse than the one she’d gotten from Master Cromwell. And he didn’t show any signs of stopping, even when she could no longer prevent herself from crying and each wet splat of his palm against her cheeks resulted in a yelp that she knew everyone in the place could probably hear, which had both sets of cheeks bushing furiously.

  Chapter VI

  To her horror, before he stopped, she was literally bawling, kicking her feet in the water, which got the both of them soaked, but she just couldn’t stop herself. He had long since grabbed a hold of her wrists to keep her from thinking about reaching back, but he couldn’t do much about her feet at the moment, especially when he wasn’t finished bathing her.

  When he finally stopped, he didn’t let her up but rather positioned her right back in the hot water of the tub, sitting on her very, very sore behind that seemed to become even more excruciating the longer she had it in that hot water. Fleur didn’t think she could stand it, but what choice did she have? She fidgeted and fussed until he caught her chin in his hand and forced her to look up at him.

  “Stay still or I’ll get my belt.”

  Not knowing how she was going to manage to comply with that order, but afraid to countermand it, Fleur simply said, “Yes, Sir,” and did her best not to move.

  It helped that he eventually wanted her to move so that he could get to certain parts of her—parts she really didn’t want him to touch, frankly, but she had to endure the humiliation of him putting her on her hand and knees and having him force her legs as far apart as they would go in the narrow tub, which, fortunately for her wasn’t far.

  He washed her back thoroughly, then her behind just as assiduously, so much so that he had her yelping frequently and trying to shift away from his hand although there was nowhere to go. He did the backs of her legs all the way down to her ankles, making her balance on first one leg and then the other, even doing every bit of her feet and toes.

  Fleur realized that, despite how challenging being a tribute could be, she was cleaner now than she’d probably ever been in her life! It felt at once embarrassing and wonderful, and the area that Master Cromwell had awakened between her legs had long since taken note of her lord’s actions, so much so that she ached there almost as badly as her behind did.

  When her last little toe was sparkling clean, he let her take her leg back. Then he repositioned her knees apart again and his warm, soapy hand—without the rag in it that he’d used elsewhere on her—slid down from the small of her back, down the natural part in her cheeks to the juncture at the bottom of that crevasse. His fingers pressed up between them, parting lips that weren’t all that open because of the confines of the tub and pushed firmly against her opening.

  Raiz quickly found that he didn’t need as much soap as he’d gathered; she was practically dripping wet there and it wasn’t from water. The erection he’d been sporting since he’d met her was straining at the confines of his breeches, and he wasn’t at all sure he was going to be able to resist the temptation to take her right there in the tub.

  But, short of bending her over the edge again, which he knew he would find unsatisfactory in the extreme, there wasn’t a satisfactory way to fuck her. So he set his steely resolve again and gritted his teeth and continued examining her intimately, as a test of the control he was holding onto by the skin of his teeth.

  Even more so when he found that her clit wasn’t hiding from his treatment of her—even though she’d been most thoroughly spanked. It was downright enormous, and he practically crowed with the discovery. Cromwell was right. This girl responded best when handled most strictly. He was glad to have positive proof of his own tendency towards a stern beginning.

  It was likely for her that he was going to be stern throughout if this was her response.

  He didn’t linger there. He could see how she melted as his fingers rubbe
d gently over her. She was trying to squelch the humiliating sounds he was drawing from her against her will, he could tell, and was losing that battle almost completely. Her groan would begin with her teeth clenched defiantly against it, but end in a full-throated cry of longing and unfulfilled desire that nearly had him practically soiling his pants where he sat.

  Raiz decided abruptly that she was clean enough—and she really was—and turned to stoke the fire a bit more before lifting her out of the tub and setting her down on her own two feet, although she nearly fell because her knees were so weak from what he’d been doing to her. She had no defenses against it and it seemed as if all of the blood in her body was concentrated between her legs rather than in her appendages.

  He steadied her and proceeded to wrap her in a huge bath sheet, rubbing her briskly to dry her. He wished he could have taken the time to wash her hair, but it already looked gorgeous regardless and he knew he couldn’t take much more of this.

  She was still a bit damp when he brought her to his bed. Lifting the sheets and blankets and furs and slipping her under them, he paused only to divest himself of his boots, shirt and breeches. The he crawled into the bed after her to fit himself between legs that he spread wide open as he settled over her.

  Her nipples were still taut and begging for his attentions, which he was only too happy to oblige.

  Fleur cried out when she first felt the cool skin of her nipple surrounded by the wet warmth of his mouth. Then he began to tug with the strong suction of his mouth and she threw her head back, arching her neck and back, lifting her hips up to his by pure instinct, not really knowing what she was asking him to do, he was sure.

  But he couldn’t deny the invitation. The broad head of his cock found her entrance and pressed against it. On instinct alone, he found himself buried within her.

  Raiz wasn’t used to losing control of his body like this, so he exerted the only control that he could and managed to slow himself down as he took possession of her, so that it was much more drawn out than it might have been, even if he risked the possibility of spilling his seed sooner than he should have. How would she—a virgin—know that anything was amiss?