She moaned in frustration when he turned his attention toward the smudge of dirt on her chin. He worked his way down, cleaning her shoulders and her back. He bade her to stand then to give him access to her shins, her knees, and the backs of her slender legs. As he cleaned, he sought out any damage to the delicate flesh.
He snapped his fingers and pointed at the pillows beneath them. She knelt, looking at him with expectation.
I hope that expectation is more torment, Freya. I promise you, I will not disappoint.
She bit her lip when the cool cloth met the hot expanse of her ass. Her eyes grew wide, and Siegfried took his sweet time, enjoying her uneven breathing, the struggle to remain still. He slipped the cloth between her legs, pushing into her pussy. She sighed, gyrating against it as much as her position would permit. All too quickly, her face flushed. He moved the cloth away before she could achieve satisfaction, slipping it back between her ass cheeks.
He massaged that little orifice before tossing the cloth aside. “I want you face down, like you were in the wood.” She nodded and scrambled to obey, clumsy still with arms bound behind her. She was so eager and so lusty. “Raise that striped ass, Freya. Show me sweet pussy.”
She howled in frustration and did as he commanded. Her face was in the pillows. He rested his hand lightly on her ass again, just because he enjoyed the way she shuddered when he touched the red flesh.
Her pussy was soaked as he slid two fingers inside her sex. She worked herself against him only to receive a reproving pinch. He withdrew his fingers and replaced them with those of his right hand. He carefully eased the slick fingers of his right hand into her rectum. She cried out at the invasion, but pressed herself more firmly onto his fingers. She was skewered, completely helpless.
****
Freya was lost in sensation. The tight pleasure-pain of the fingers probing her ass, his other fingers buried deep in her pussy. All she could do was pant. The ends of his hair ignited hot flares of sensation in her bottom.
Impaled like this, she could do naught a thing as he lifted her ass higher.
“Such an insistent, hungry little pussy, Freya.” He removed his fingers to pinch her sex before reinserting them. His face was right
there,
wasn’t it? That was right. She could still feel his hair against her. She squeaked in humiliation mingled with desire.
He worked his fingers swift and hard, building the thrumming need within her. She moaned, wept against the soft pillows. She was nearing that end again, that inevitable explosion. Oh, she needed him, needed his touch so badly.
“Insist all you want. It doesn’t mean you get gratification, slave.” He removed the fingers from her pussy, and she heard the click of metal. Then the other fingers were gone, too. He’d reinserted the damned lock?
She looked at him over her shoulder in disbelief.
He chuckled, amused with her plight. “Oh, we shall both sleep in torment tonight, little one. Rest assured, your hands will stay bound until morning.”
“Master, Master, please.” He couldn’t. He wouldn’t! But he was already undressing, still watching her with a smug grin. The sight of him, of his scars and vivid tattoos only made her desire him more.
He sprawled out, naked, his cock at attention. He pulled her tight against him, his erection nudging her ass. A kiss brushed her temple. “Sweet dreams, little slave.”
****
Siegfried had slept fitfully, nodding off for only a few moments at a time. But as the light filtered through the fabric of the tent, clearing the shadows, so, too, did Siegfried’s thoughts clear. Thoughts had turned from lust to disgust. He remembered every moment of his time with Freya, every whimper, every pleading look. She had done all he’d asked. Her desire had been more than evident, no matter the indignities to which he’d subjected her.
He took a deep breath and lifted the blanket from them, exposing Freya’s red behind to the questing fingers of dawn. Shame filled him. He recalled Julia’s sneers and her disgust with his dark desires. This was how Freya should feel. He was corrupting this woman, this woman who had entrusted herself to him.
She stirred, mumbling incoherent nothings as she reached for the thick blanket.
“It’s time to wake, little one.” He tenderly stroked her mussed hair from her face, internally cursing the fact that he was still painfully hard.
“Already?” She tried to sit up, but her arms were still tied behind her. “I hardly slept.”
Siegfried reached for the dagger he kept under the pillow on which he laid his head. He freed her from the bindings and cast aside the rope. He wished the other evidence of his misdeeds could be so easily discarded.
“We make for our allies today.”
She held out her arms, rubbing them. She twisted and squirmed. She was
still
wanting? It would be cruel to leave her like this.
“Stay right where you are, little one.”
As if knowing his intentions, she smiled, closing her eyes and spreading her legs. The moment his fingers were inside her, she spread her legs, grinding furiously against him. A sob caught on her lips and a few breaths later, she screamed her release. He kissed the cries from her lips, lest Enbarr was near.
He tried not to look at her as she dressed and reminded himself this could not continue. It would also make him more uncomfortable; he had to speak with the Sea Witch and get some kind of antidote for this persistent problem. It felt as if he’d been teased all the night instead of having had release four times.
Freya was in no such pain. She opened the tent flap just a hair and extended a hand. Small droplets of water—
dew?—
floated through the air to gather around her. They clung to her flesh, more and more, then melded into silver streams before coalescing into a shimmering gown that ended mid-thigh.
She smirked when she noted his gaze on her bare legs. “I do not want to trip if we have to run.” She shook her hips, and he groaned before she pranced out of the tent. Enbarr was waiting.
****
Enbarr slowed and stopped when a shadow moved among the trees and the Sea Witch emerged, blocking their path.
“Hedwig isn’t blocking the path,”
Enbarr said.
“Rest assured, I could leap over her head. My speed is superior to hers, as well. I stop because I choose to stop.”
“Freya, don’t worry about people knowing you are a dragon,” Hedwig said. “Forgot to tell you about that. Me and an old friend took care of it. And, Siegfried, your men are all healed and your boat’s clean. Let’s have a drink and catch up.”
“Not so fast.” Siegfried dismounted from the unicorn, looking only too relieved to have both feet planted on the ground.
Freya stifled a giggle. Siegfried carried his cape in front of him, and she knew exactly why. He stalked toward the Sea Witch. “A reasonable person would have antidotes to potions. The question is, do you?”
Freya’s brows shot up. She slid from Enbarr’s back, ready to intervene if necessary.
Hedwig turned a glare on Freya. “Why would you ever tell him about the potion? I go out of my way to do something nice for you and you tell
him
about it?”
“He looked like he was getting sick. He thought I poisoned him. Of course, I told him.” Freya didn’t regret telling him the truth in the least.
“Just how much did you give him?”
Hedwig and Siegfried both looked to Freya expectantly. In a tiny voice, she confessed, “The whole bottle. He is really stubborn, and you didn’t tell me how much to give him, Hedwig.”
Siegfried pressed a palm to his brow, mouthing,
“The whole bottle?”
“You should have given him a drop, or at most a quarter of the bottle, because he
is
so stubborn. Siegfried, you’ll need to tell me all your reactions, so I can adjust the potion, considering it’s still in the experimental phase.”
Upon the words “experimental phase” Siegfried shook his head, glaring at Freya.
“Guess there’s some stupid side effects even I can’t fix. Oh, wait. I’m the Sea Bitch. I can.” Hedwig tossed a small bottle of brownish-orange liquid in Siegfried’s direction. “There’s your antidote.”
****
The outlaw camp was hardly a camp. A large, green tent, the same color as the trees, sat back from the ledge of the gigantic rock. The rock was almost a small mountain. The pines loomed over the tent, blocking the rising smoke. The tent itself was circular and divided with cloth walls. The floors were filled with pillows and thick blankets. Freya grabbed one, wrapping it around her shoulders.
In the center of the great tent was a small outdoor clearing where they were shielded from view. This was where the fire blazed, logs set up around it. Faramund sat with Siegfried’s men, sharing ale. Hartwin was on his feet the instant he saw Freya, his ale tumbling from his hand.
“Gods, Freya, your face. He took you as his slave? That’s what I heard.” He shook his head. “Did you agree to that?”
“I am the sex slave of Siegfried. Alliteration,” Freya said, forcing a laugh. Her back was to Siegfried, and he wondered at her expression. “What do you think?” She still didn’t seem upset by her position, even after last night.
“This isn’t right, Freya. You don’t know him.”
Faramund frowned at Hartwin. “She may as well. That’s probably fixed by now.”
He waited for one of the two to challenge him. No one did. Faramund went back to his ale and Hartwin just glared. This was odd. They couldn’t realize so quickly that Freya had accepted her position. She’d been the one to ask for it.
“Why did none of you come to help me with the Druids?” Freya asked. “I had to rely on strangers and Siegfried.” He supposed when one knew as much useless information about someone as Freya did, that someone wasn’t a stranger. And they now were intimately acquainted.
“Freya, I don’t know what Morrigan told you,” Faramund said, rising. “You may want to sit down. Balder told us what happened with the Vercingetorix, some of it at least.” He looked at the collar on Freya’s neck. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this.”
“No, Faramund,” Hedwig said. “You’re going to upset her more. I’ll tell her what she needs to know.” She looked to Freya. “We haven’t been able to find Berengar yet. We’ve been looking. But there are more guards now. I don’t think he’s dead, because Hartwin looked through the piles of bodies.”
Freya almost dropped her stew in her lap, but Siegfried grabbed it. It was steaming and the last thing she needed was more burns.
“If he does die,” Hecate said, gliding into the tent, “you can rest assured he will go to your mother. If Odilia is keeping him, she is probably using him in some elaborate sacrificial ritual.”
“That really doesn’t make it any better.” Freya glumly turned the wooden spoon in the thick stew. “He’s some prisoner or slave, probably in a castle made of black stone, surrounded by things with batty wings, underneath some sort of purplish black sky with lightning bolts raining down upon the scorched earth.”
“No.” Hecate shook her head. “Your mother doesn’t live in a place like that. Why would anyone? Hecate lives on a very pretty island with white sand and lots of sun and naked men playing on the beach. There are flowers, lots of bright flowers and birds, and monkeys. And did you not hear the part about the naked men?”
“Why is Odilia sacrificing to Hecate?” Siegfried asked, feeling odd to ask Hecate about herself in the third person. Obviously, she wasn’t ready to reveal herself to Freya.
Hedwig rolled her eyes. “That Odilia bitch is trying to get Hecate’s attention and has been for decades. She’s tried every ritual and even invented some.”
“She has Hecate’s attention now,” Morrigan said from behind them, arms spread to hold back the tent flaps. “But it is not the attention she wants. Before you ask, there is a lot of human metal in that palace. Hecate cannot just appear and squash her. Hecate would have to do things she would regret…or would she? The magic to do something like that is…messy. Hecate was not blessed with the wide-ranged magic her daughter has. Lightning can be wielded from a distance. Hecate’s magic is more personal. It requires close quarters. Hecate’s daughter should, if at all possible, stick to her pretty ranged magic and avoid the messy kind.”
“Were my parents, my human ones, sacrificed to Hecate?” Freya asked.
“No, dear,” Morrigan said. “I’m sorry. It would have looked odd for Odilia to perform one of her rituals in a dining hall.”
“Here is a blueberry ale,” Hartwin said, thrusting a wineskin at Freya. The way he looked at her… Had he forgotten all about Hilde? Siegfried had not forgotten about that double-ended phallus Freya had retrieved for Hartwin’s fictitious lover.
“You never told me why you all decided to forsake me,” Freya said, snatching the ale. Again, she almost dropped her stew.
“We didn’t know who was doing what.” It was Faramund who answered. “We saw your parents die. If Siegfried was the one behind it, we wanted him locked up.”
Freya was going to spill the stew eventually. Might was well get it over with. She chucked the bowl at Faramund’s head. He dodged it, and it shattered on the split log where he had been sitting. She was growling again, teeth bared. “Siegfried? Really?” Her voice was loud again, confident. “Why would he do that? Don’t you listen to anything? What about the fact that I was still alive and being pursued by Druids intent on changing that?”
“It was the wings that jarred us,” Faramund said. “We saw them when you were on the balcony. I’m embarrassed now, but I wondered if you were possessed by some demon. You didn’t tell any of us about having powers. If you had any kind of powers, I thought you would have used them on Odilia and her friends long before. I didn’t know you’d just gotten them. Still, there’s no good excuse for not coming after you.”
Siegfried rested a hand at the small of her back. “You’re right. There wasn’t an excuse. Freya never left me, her enemy. It is disgusting that her friends would leave one so loyal.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Hartwin said. “I should have been there. But I’m here now. If you need anything, let me know.” He knelt at her feet, looking at her with huge brown eyes. If the man had ears and a tail, he’d look like a puppy begging for scraps. “I did bring you an ‘I’m sorry’ gift. Well, a few ‘sorry’ gifts.”