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  Fleur said nothing, although at least now she knew exactly to whom she belonged. She certainly didn’t let on that she hadn’t really known who he was until this very moment. She didn’t acknowledge in any way what Marianne had said, and knowing that he had been punished in much the same way as he had punished her didn’t help one bit, although it was kind of Marianne to try to console her in a round about manner. She set about keeping herself busy all day, always asking for something else to do when she finished an assignment. Marianne decided she’d use her as much as she could while she had her, because if she didn’t miss her mark entirely, she would bet that this girl wasn’t going to be seeing much but the inside of the master’s bedroom for quite some time.

  She said a short prayer that the girl would get pregnant quickly—it would mean the saving of the family—married or not. By this time, she couldn’t be too choosey and she didn’t know any other inhabitant of the realm that would be, either.

  Fleur hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said she’d learned a little about how to work in a kitchen. Peeling potatoes was her best skill, apparently, although she was quite willing and eager to learn anything Marianne threw at her and that was a far sight better than what she was used to in the “assistants” the master found for her, so she did just that, showing her how to chop onions so that she could do the harder work of separating the eggs and whipping them up for the soufflé she was making for the master’s first night home, then making her stand and stir the gravy, which was an endless task if you wanted to avoid lumps, while she added a dram of this spice and a pinch of that.

  Later that day, when everything was close to being ready to serve, she set her to work on the washing up, catching several pans that didn’t meet her standards before she was allowed to dry them and having her wash them again. Fleur gave her no guff about that, only seemed unhappy that her efforts hadn’t met Marianne’s high standards. She’d apologized for each one and quickly brought them up to snuff with elbow grease.

  The master pushed his way through the swinging door that lead from the hall, and as soon as Marianne saw him she headed him off, forcing him to back up and back out of the room—something that she could tell he wasn’t too fond of doing by the way his face clouded up—not that he’d been wearing a sunny expression when he’d arrived, but it hadn’t been as annoyed looking as it was now.

  “Can I have a moment to speak with you, milord?” she asked rather belatedly, since she’d already corralled him here.

  Raiz sighed heavily and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, Marianne, what is it?”

  Marianne casually began to wander away from the door to the kitchen, forcing him to follow her until they were almost in the Great Hall and out of Fleur’s earshot.

  “Well, I wanted to thank you for bringing Fleur back here, Sir. She’s quite good in the kitchen and has been a big help to me today in preparing your homecoming meal.”

  He knew that Marianne enjoyed marking the occasion of his return—triumphal or not—with a more elaborate dinner than he usually preferred having. But he was all right with it; it let her stretch her culinary wings a bit more than she usually got to since he didn’t entertain much, and he knew she would use the inevitable leftovers to good end.

  “That’s not why I brought her back.”

  “I know, Sir, but I wanted you to know that, if you should find yourself … sick of her company at any time in the future that she has a good use in the kitchen with me.”

  “Sick of her?”

  The older woman gave him a knowing look. “In a manner of speaking, Sir. She’s a good girl, she is.”

  Raiz wasn’t in the mood to hear anyone singing Fleur’s praises, so he turned to leave.

  “Sir?”

  Frowning outright, he turned back to Marianne. “Yes?”

  “I just thought you should know that I didn’t know anything about the girl–”

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  “Yes, well, I wanted to explain to you how she came to be there. She came into the kitchen of her own accord about an hour before—well, before the ruckus and introduced herself, and the next words out of her mouth were ‘I wish to be of service to him’. Can you imagine that from a young lady of obvious breeding such as herself? I teased her a bit, you know in my way, and she insisted, saying that she had spent some time as a child in her family’s kitchen and that she thought she could be of some assistance to me and she was, milord. She most definitely was.”

  Her little speech didn’t have the desired effect at all that she could see. He looked even angrier now than when she’d started, so she played her most powerful card. “I don’t believe she meant to be running away at all, Raiz Arndt. If she’d wanted to, she could have avoided the kitchen entirely and just waltzed out the door. She just wanted to find a way to make herself useful to you as she’s probably been taught she should, and if you took it in your head to think she’d run from you, that’s not her fault.”

  Besides making so bold as to use his Christian name, she waggled her finger in front of his nose, too, like she used to when he was in short pants. She figured she might as well be hung for a wolf as a sheep and added, “Not all women lack a sense of honor, you know. The girls who left weren’t near worthy of you, worthy to bear the next Lord Arndt. This one takes her commitment seriously, even if she doesn’t know what it really is yet,” she added, alluding to the fact that she knew that Fleur had no idea that he intended to get her pregnant.

  But she wasn’t one to press her luck. This time it was Marianne who headed towards the kitchen ahead of him, saying, “And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

  Raiz rolled his eyes heavenward, asking the Almighty for patience in dealing with the women in his life, even though there really were only two of them, he was certain that either or both of them were going to drive him to drink!

  But he understood what Marianne was trying to do and was surprised that she had bothered to do it, frankly. He didn’t know anyone else in the household—except perhaps himself—that she would have bothered defending, and before he entered the kitchen again, he took a deep breath to calm himself.

  “It smells wonderful in here, as usual, Marianne.” He bent to kiss her withered cheek as she leaned over a batter of some sort.

  “Thank you, milord,” she beamed.

  Fleur was drying the dishes she’d just washed, stacking them on the table for Marianne to tell her where to put them when he came up to her and took the towel out of her hands, saying, “Thank you for your efforts here, but I have need of you elsewhere.”

  With that he took her hand and led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom, where he locked the door behind them before leaning back against it and watching her, feeling unusually and surprisingly awkward all of a sudden. “I’ll have some clothes made for you,” he said, but regretted the impulse immediately when he realized that he liked her wearing his old shirt. It wasn’t in the least fashionable, of course, but as far as he was concerned she could make a potato sack look good. It ended scandalously in the middle of her thigh, and the neck was so big that it gaped whenever she moved, affording him enticing views of her naked form beneath.

  Fleur didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept silent, standing by the window and looking out as the sun began to set and torches were being lit in courtyards and similar windows as far as the eye could see.

  Suddenly he was standing much too closely behind her, reaching past her to close the window as his other hand caught the hem of the shirt and brought it up, over her still throbbing, aching bottom. She flinched from his touch, but there was nowhere to go.

  He didn’t say a word as he insinuated himself between her parted legs, reaching down to arrange things so that he could free himself—finally, after a day spent trying to ignore his hard on and the visions of her in the throes of ecstasy that danced through his mind at the most inopportune times—his erection popping forward and nestling immediately right at
the entrance to where it most wanted to be, surrounded by her innermost warmth.

  “Hold onto the sill,” he whispered hoarsely, pulling her back away from the window so that she was bent a the waist, his hands grasping her hips tightly as he brought her onto himself with agonizing slowness.

  Fleur’s breath caught in her throat multiple times as her body was forced to stretch wide around him, and that fueled Raiz’s desire like little else could. The sounds of her trying to accommodate him had him wanting to give her more of himself until he filled her up, especially since he’d noticed that she was slippery all on her own. He hadn’t had to spit on his hand and yet she was taking him without the complaints he sometimes heard from women when he been very careful to lubricate himself before he’d fucked them—that he was too big or that he was hurting them. And she was almost a complete novice at this.

  She was made for him. Made to take him. Made to be his. He considered it to be yet another sign that he was doing the right thing.

  He loosened the belt she’d created at her waist and let the length of leather fall to the floor, which gave him access to her breasts as they bobbed from the power of his thrusts. Bending over her to take one in each hand, pinching the nipples as he fucked her had Fleur panting and occasionally moaning, but nowhere near as often as she had when he’d made love to her before.

  He wondered if she was trying to stifle her reactions to him for some reason? Embarrassment, perhaps at having been so wonderfully loud?

  Well, whatever it was, he wasn’t going to have any of it. He liked the way she sang so throatily—and involuntarily—as he took her, and he always wanted to hear it from her—unless he’d gagged her himself.

  “Why are you so quiet, little Fleur?” he asked against her ear, and by way of explanation he thrust particularly hard, causing her to yelp. “I want to hear every sound your body wants you to make while I have you. You are not allowed to keep them from me.” He cupped a warm cheek that still wore the brand from the discipline it had received earlier in the day to emphasize his point.

  That was apparently enough of a demonstration for her. The air was full of her cries from that point on, and the sounds she made threw him into an ecstasy that he wasn’t quite prepared for—and he knew that she hadn’t experienced anything of the sort, despite her enticing moans.

  Although he was thoroughly exhausted from a day spent trying to physically exorcize her from his memory and having absolutely no luck at it, he lifted her into his arms and brought her to the bed, laying her down with more gentleness than she would have given him credit for this afternoon while he was blistering her behind, then relieving her of his shirt so that she lay naked on his bed, panting heavily and awaiting him.

  It was almost enough to get him hard again, but not quite. He needed a few minutes to recover, and he intended to fill those minutes with her ecstasy.

  He lay atop her, between her legs but fully dressed, dipping his head to the tips of breasts that he encircled with his big, sun browned fingers and flicking just the very end of his tongue over nipples that grew before his eyes at his attentions. So much so that he couldn’t keep himself from taking one in his mouth and suckling hard, finding himself well rewarded by the way she arched her breast against his lips, blatantly offering herself to him. Raiz moved with deliberate slowness from one crowning peak to the other, back and forth, teasing her endlessly and grinding himself against that delicate part of her that his body was holding open.

  Her cry of protest when he began to move away, down her body, lips caressing the interesting parts between was like music to his ears, but her hands were also trying to bring him back up to where she wanted him, and he felt the need to remind her whose she was. Not harshly, but pointedly.

  “Put your hands above your head and don’t move them,” he whispered against the skin of her lowermost belly.

  She arched and growled in frustration, but she did as he said.

  Raiz licked his way to the top of her mons, then let his tongue split her until he found what he’d been searching for and began to devour it, eager fingers finding and filling her slowly, using just one bold digit at first, listening carefully to her cries of ecstasy, while his lips and tongue forced her to the threshold of the heights. But refused to throw her over the edge until his free hand had reached up to tweak alternating nipples, and the finger that had been inside her became two that stretched her new capacity. He hurtled her to the edge of sanity as his lips and tongue worried her into a screaming, bucking orgasm that had him worried that she was going to throw him onto the floor in the throes of her mindless arching and seeking.

  Experimentally, he literally had to hold her down to do it, but he covered her with his mouth again and slowly flicked at a clit that hadn’t receded in the least. He could feel it vibrating and pulsing with life against his tongue as he dragged the fullest length of it possible against the very tip of her.

  Fleur couldn’t believe what he was doing to her. She didn’t know if she should protest or not, but she felt like she was dying, and now she felt like she was beginning the climb to the cliff again, only it was happening ten times faster.

  Before she knew it, her body became stiff as a board and then began to spasm again with waves of pleasure that were different from what had happened before, but just as ecstatic, only in a slightly different way.

  Raiz had never been successful at doing that for a women before. He’d brought all of them to pleasure, but they’d begged him not to touch them any further, which he completely understood, because he wasn’t much for being touched after he’d cum, either. But he’d always heard that women had the capacity to experience more than one peak while making love, and he was quite proud of himself having been able to do that for her.

  He would have given her many more, but she beseeched him not to in a voice that was on the verge of tears, so he backed off.

  Instead, he found himself so aroused by what had happened to her that he mounted her again, taking her harder and longer than he had before, practically blacking out when he finally shot himself into her.

  They fell asleep in a tangle of arms and legs, until he awoke a few hours later and knew that it was very close to his usual nine o’clock dinner time. Generally, he wasn’t at all this formal, but he knew that Marianne had been working all day on this feast and he didn’t want to disappoint her.

  He let Fleur sleep a little longer, but eventually he leaned down and kissed her awake, saying, “Come down and have dinner with me.”

  She sat up, a gorgeous, disheveled mess, her hair strewn around her in glorious waves and curls. “But—I shouldn’t eat with you. Should I?” she asked softly.

  He produced from somewhere behind his back the outfit that she had been wearing when Master Cromwell presented her to the Empress. “I am the master of this house, and I say you should. And that you should wear this.”

  She colored prettily, not taking the outfit from him. “That? But it’s too–too–”

  “Beautiful on you? It makes you look too gorgeous for any mortal man?” he filled in extravagantly.

  “I was going to say revealing.”

  Raiz lifted her out of the bed and handed her the only clothing she owned, and she wasn’t sure she really owed it, either. “And there’s that advantage, too. How could I not have you wearing this all day, every day?” he asked no one in particular.

  He surprised her by even producing the jewels she was wearing that day, and helping her—unhelpfully—to dress.

  When she was finished, she had to look away from the way he was staring at her. Raiz took her hand and brought her close to him. “You are breathtaking, Fleur. I don’t know how I’m ever going to let you out of my sight.”

  He escorted her down the stairs to his private dining room, which was off the great hall, as if she was his queen rather than his erstwhile slave.

  Fleur was worried that his servants might resent her sitting at his right hand at the table as if she was someone of import to the ho
usehold, but she needn’t have worried. She was nothing but pleasant to her, and very well trained at their jobs, too. Her mother would have been proud to have any of them working for her, and she was a well known fussbudget about serving staff.

  She was reminded of some of the stiff, boring dinners she’d had with her parents and their guests, but despite the excellence of both the service and the food, there was none of that stuffiness here. He may have been the lord of the manor, but he spoke to everyone who served him by name and asked after their families, knowing when they were also taking care of their invalid parents or had a sick child at home and knowing them by name, too. He also made it a point to say “please” and “thank you” to the staff.

  And it was more than apparent that the entire staff, not just Marianne, doted on him and she got not a whiff of resentment from them about her in any way. Indeed, they seemed overjoyed that she was there, which confused her a bit, but she was just as happy not to have to be dealing with the resentment she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to feel from them.

  Chapter VIII

  Over the next week, though, she had little chance to see anyone besides him. Even though he knew from what Marianne had told him that she hadn’t tried to escape, Raiz still kept a sharp eye on her and kept her close to him. But he was a hands on man; he left after what had become their room early in the morning—usually after having been at her already—and sometimes didn’t return until late at night, at which time he stormed upstairs as if he hadn’t had a woman in years, had his way with her and fell asleep—not that he didn’t pleasure her in the process, he did. It was a matter of pride with him.

  In between, he left her locked in his room, with Marianne possessing the only key so that she could let the girl in to change the sheets and could bring Fleur lunch and usually dinner.