Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“I would have preferred to bring you to our sanctuary, the one you found. Or even better to bring you North, to what is surely your homeland as it is mine. There I could break you in properly as a kneppetøj, on the bench and then on the bride saddle, with the longship and the fire and the proper rites.”
His fingers moved, exploring me with the same terrible patience with which he had done everything else since the moment he had entered my cell. I cried out, and my hips rocked forward against his hand in a way I couldn’t stop.
“I find, though, that I am not displeased with what your mistress has made of you with her very Roman preparation.”
“Please,” I whispered, even as my intellect raged at my body’s weakness.
“You are very wet,” he said, not as a reproach but as an observation, another thing to enter in his ledger. His fingers moved with a particular, knowing pressure that made my knees buckle so deeply that for a moment the cuffs at my wrists held my full weight. “Very ready. Very eager, even though I know your mind resists the idea.”
He withdrew his hand and I heard my whine… the small, humiliating sound of my body’s reluctance to do without even that light contact.
“That defiance of your own nature… it makes you extraordinary. And Bellatrix Hestiaea has enhanced that, just as I might have done in Rouen. She has readied you for your submission to your Herra.”
Again my mouth opened with a burning question, but the lingering handprints on my sore bottom stopped my speech. His words, though… Rouen and Herra. The Normans… the Norsemen…
And had he said our sanctuary? Was that in Rouen, of all places?
He crouched, and the sight of his powerful, naked body bending that way made my breathing speed up again. I watched him through wet lashes as he checked the ankle cuffs, ran his palms up the outsides of my calves, my thighs, as if satisfying himself about some structural question.
Then he rose again. I blinked, frowning, as he made his way to my right, where in a corner I hadn’t examined he found a small piece of furniture and picked it up. As he brought it back toward me, I understood it must be a very low stool of some kind, its top padded.
He set the thing down just in front of me. His gaze met mine as he rose, and I watched him evaluate my expression. I felt him assessing my curiosity, my acuity. The little crinkle that arose in the corners of his eyes, of unmistakable satisfaction, made a horribly unwelcome warmth rise in my chest.
How could that make me happy? I demanded of myself, and found no answer.
Then his hands went to the post on my right, adjusting something. He did the same thing on the left. As I blinked up at him, he moved those massive hands on my shoulders, and he pressed down.
“On your knees,” he said simply. With a hard swallow, I understood: a kneeling stool. The kind of thing found in religious places, where people worship.
You will worship him, here, won’t you? said the awful voice in my head. If you don’t, he will spank you, won’t he? Or he will use the mastix, as distasteful as he finds it…
Or does he have a Viking punishment strap with him?
I had no choice. The cuffs at my wrists slid down the posts as I descended, the iron rings to which Giovanna had clipped them free now, allowing the movement. I understood that the posts had been designed for this, as well as to keep a girl standing with her arms raised; for a columba to kneel between them with her wrists still secured to the iron at her side, her hands able to grip the posts at whatever height her position required. I knelt on the little stool and my fingers found the posts and gripped them.
I was eye level with his enormous, rigid penis. I refused to look at it. I looked up at his face instead. I tried to hold his gaze with every shred of dignity I still possessed, which I estimated at approximately none.
He looked down at me with an expression that I could only describe as satisfied. Not smug. Not cruel. The expression of a man who has arrived at a place he has been moving toward for some time, and finds it exactly as it should be.
Then he took his hardness in his right hand and began to use me.
The first contact was the blunt, warm head of him against my left cheekbone. I flinched at the obscene contact and my fingers tightened on the posts. He moved the big knob slowly, deliberately, as if mapping my face. Across my cheek. Along my jaw. The bridge of my nose. My forehead, tilting my face back slightly with the pressure of it. My other cheek. My closed eyelids, which fluttered at the warm weight of the touch.