SurrendersMischief (6 page)

“You never know when to quit, do you, slave?” He had to
regain control. Somehow, someway, Riana had wrested it from him, became the one
who teased the other past endurance. His back teeth clenched at her
unmistakable disdain. Fury rushed through his veins. In the back of his mind,
he knew that he shouldn’t be feeling fury. He shouldn’t be feeling anything.

He was past caring. One way or the other, she needed to
learn her lesson. He allowed a grim smile to curve his lips as he closed the
distance between them. He didn’t stop until the rough weave of his tunic
brushed the tips of her breasts.

“But you will.” His voice was a barely audible growl.

He gripped her waist and lifted her effortlessly onto the
curved seat of the stone. He pushed against her shoulders, the careful, gentle
touch not hiding his relentless intent, until she was in a reclining position.
The malleable stone allowed him to position her arms and legs into any position
he desired.

He fastened her left wrist in the padded cuff beside her
head. He leaned across her, deliberately brushing his chest against her breasts
as he fastened her right wrist in a similar position.

He placed her feet in the stirrups and fastened the padded
cuffs around her ankles, ignoring the faint tremor of desire in his hands. He
paused before fastening slender cuffs up high around her thighs. He didn’t want
Riana to lift up more than a few centimeters from the stone while he was
punishing her.

Darias stepped back from his handiwork. She was spread out
before him, her knees raised and splayed wide.

She ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip, her eyes
gleaming with a brazen dare.

He relished that look, knowing before the night was over she
would be screaming for satisfaction. A satisfaction that only he could grant
her.

One that he would not.

By morning, Riana would have learned her lesson.

Darias leaned over her, touching her navel with the tip of
his tongue.

A soft shudder ran through her.

Gods. She was so damn responsive. And it wasn’t completely
due to punishment. He’d barely touched her. The soft, feminine fragrance of her
arousal teased his senses. What would it be like to have her respond willingly?
A tingle of warning lifted the hair on the back of his neck. He squelched it,
licking a line up her rib cage to just below her right breast. He sucked the
skin where her breast joined her torso between his lips, worried it gently with
his teeth. He could control this.

Her heartbeat sped up.

He smiled then moved to the other breast, lavishing it with
the same treatment.

He lifted his head slightly and blew on her wet skin,
tracing the outline of each breast with gentle puffs of air.

Her nipples tightened and she arched her back, offering them
to him.

He moved away.

Her eyes shot open, her pupils large and unfocused.

“I can smell how much you want me,” he crooned. “Call out
for me to suck your breasts. For me to put my mouth on your nipples and pull
them inside to my heat. Yell for me, my little slave.”

Her gaze sharpened abruptly. “No,” she said with a betraying
quiver in her voice.

He touched one finger in the wetness between her legs, a
fleeting, almost-there touch and smiled. “You will.”

He licked and placed small, stinging kisses starting at her
wrists, trailing to the soft inner skin of each elbow, and then to the
vulnerable flesh where arm met shoulder. He followed the line of her neck and
circled her ear with the tip of his tongue before darting inside for a fleeting
taste. He felt more than heard the moan that vibrated in her throat.

The light flowery scent of her wove into his very being,
calling to him, teasing him. Darias shook his head to clear it. He had to keep
his attention on the point he was making. He was her master. She must obey him
in all things.

He skimmed his hand down her side, his work- and
war-roughened fingertips barely grazing her skin, then back up, circling her
darkened areolas.

Chill bumps followed the faint trail his fingers had left on
her skin. She tried to lift, again, tried to coax him into taking her into his
mouth.

He moved away and looked down at her, waiting for her to
open her eyes.

She turned her head away, avoiding his gaze.

He gripped her chin and brought her face back to his. “Ask
me.”

“No.”

Zedpher’s balls. The woman had more will than most of his
warriors.

“I won’t take your breasts into my mouth until you scream to
the stars for me to taste you.”

“I’ll survive.”

But will I?
Darias slammed his mind shut on the
insidious question. Perhaps his warriors were right. Perhaps she held too much
sway over him. His jaw tightened. He would crush this weakness. Riana would
learn her place.

Once more he moved to stand between her legs.

She was wet. Feminine juices flowed out of her, seeping into
the crack that separated the plump globes of her ass, and glistening on the
illuminated rock.

Satisfaction speared through him, he would prove who was
master here tonight. He spread the lips of her labia wide, running one finger
from one end of her weeping opening to her clit. His wet finger circled her
clit, the roughened skin of his finger teasing it. He dipped his finger inside
her body.

The hot, wet tissues of her inner muscles clamped down on
him, trying to pull him farther inside.

What would it feel like if she closed around his cock like
that?

The unthinkable nature of the question shocked him to his
senses. Detachment settled over him like a mantle and, instead of working his
finger in and out as he’d hungered to do mere moments before, he held it
perfectly still against the pull.

“Nooo,” she moaned before she caught her bottom lip between
her teeth.

Light glistened on the flushed and swollen petals of her
labia, on the engorged clit fully out of its hood.

That fast, a tangle of lust and need stormed through the
aloofness that finally, thankfully coated his reactions. A part of him stood
aside, infuriated at his lack of control, knowing exactly where the blame was
to be placed. The other part cared naught. It craved nothing more than he bury
his face between her legs, taste the salty sweetness of the flood of wetness
from her opening. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and toss her onto his
mattress, bury his cock to the hilt so that his balls slapped her ass with each
hard thrust.

If she learned of his weakness, she’d rule him.

As much as that thought bothered him, it was another that
let him overrule his lust, coat it in a layer of ice that gave him a semblance
of his normal control.

Nexar, the one thing he lived for, and would die for, would
tumble into chaos if he were to give in.

And if that control was shaky? No one must ever know.

No one.

He leaned down and nipped the inside of her thigh.

Her inner muscles began to quiver around his finger. The
line of her slender body stretched taut, and she shook.

He withdrew from her.

“Zethra, no!” Her shout echoed into the night. “Darias,
don’t stop now,” she panted. “I’m so close to coming!”

He placed his hand over her stomach. “You will not come
because I forbid it.” Beneath his palm he felt tiny shudders and waited until
they subsided.

Not giving her time to catch her breath, Darias lowered his
face between her legs, nipping the curve of her ass before lapping at her
juices. With the methodical thoroughness that was an intrinsically part of his
nature, he tasted every part of her sex. He took the swollen fullness of one
fold of her labia between his teeth and tugged with the utmost gentleness.

Her hips jerked. She tugged at her restraints. “Damn you,
Darias, don’t do this to me. Don’t make me burn like this without giving me
some relief.”

Her labia still between his teeth, he flicked his tongue
back and forth against her captured flesh. He plunged two fingers deep inside,
not pausing in his sensual torture, curving them and raking them gently against
the walls of her vagina.

Shivers ran continuously through her, getting stronger and
stronger with each stroke of his fingers.

Only when he felt her orgasm inexorably building toward
culmination, did he stop.

Darias lost count of the number of times he had her on the
edge of an orgasm, only to halt before she flew over. Lost in her taste, in the
power he had over her, he exulted in the way her hips would strain toward his
mouth, the way her thighs quivered and tensed, the way she tossed her head back
and forth.

But even as caught up in her taste, the scent of her, as he
was, he never let the reins of self-control fully slip. Secure in the knowledge
he could touch her as much as he wanted, in any way he wanted, and no one would
be the wiser as long as he stayed the one in command, he covered her clit with
his mouth, worrying it with his teeth then soothing it with his tongue. He
plucked at her nipples, taking the hard nubs between the tips of his fingers
and rolling and pinching them.

Her body arched as much as her restraints would allow her.
Incoherent pleas and threats for him to let her come poured forth from lips
swollen and red from her own teeth.

The sun was partway above the horizon when it slowly
penetrated the fog in Darias’ head that the time for punishment was already
past. Straightening, he looked down at Riana. Sometime during the night, he had
stretched her arms above her head and maneuvered the stirrups so that her legs
were up in the air, her feet behind his head.

Her labia was flushed darkly red with arousal. Her scent was
on his hands and on his face. In the cool, fresh air of the new day, all he
could smell was the extremely female smell of Riana.

She stirred. Her lashes lifted to reveal passion-dilated
eyes. She wet her lips. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse. “One day you will
regret taking me as your slave.”

He stood there another moment, looking at her, then he
touched the tips of his fingers to that mass of flaming hair. Before he left,
he loosened her bindings.

It wasn’t until he reached the door to their quarters that
he realized she had never asked him to suckle her breasts.

* * * * *

Darias tightened the girth on Shagra with a savage tug. The
chelan
snorted his displeasure over the inconsiderate treatment. A pang of guilt smote
Darias and he patted the heavily muscled neck of his mount. “Sorry,” he
muttered. The surprisingly delicate head nudged him in acceptance of his
apology.

It wasn’t his old friend’s fault that he was in such a foul
mood. No, that fault lay directly on the slender, seductive shoulders of his
slave. Less than an hour ago he had left her too exhausted and too sensitized
to even close her widely splayed legs.

Darias shifted uneasily. He couldn’t escape the feeling that
he was the one who had lost that battle, even though Riana’s pleas had echoed
throughout the center courtyard of the keep. Several of his warriors had given
him approving smiles as he made his way to the stables, despite the fact he did
not have Riana on display in the Great Hall as was custom. Darias had ignored
them all, intent upon escape.

He grimaced. Like a defeated warrior, he was slinking away
from the scene of battle, escaping to lick his wounds and regroup.

He needed time to think, time away from Riana before he gave
in to the overpowering urge to fuck her until they were both too tired to
continue their private war.

He needed time away from her to regain full control.

Not even to Gaith could he admit just how wrong punishment
had gone last night. A warrior was supposed to remain aloof while punishing his
woman, distant from the very arousal he was forcing on his woman. Several times
he had almost brought Riana to culmination. Even now he was not certain how he
had had the presence of mind to refrain.

It had been too damn close.

He bent and scooped up the saddlebag, slinging it over
Shagra’s broad back. The aircycle was faster, but this morning for some reason
the rhythmic gait of his
chelan
appealed. He secured the saddlebag.
Several days in the mountains ought to clear his mind and allow him the
distance necessary to understand just what Riana did to him. Understand and
control his mad impulse to lose himself in her heat and her scent.

Gathering the reins, he swiftly mounted and turned the
animal’s head toward the huge gate. The sun had not even cleared the walls of
the compound. The day was still cool, with the moistness of night lingering.
Darias knew that within a couple of hours, every sign of coolness would be
burned away, leaving the scorching heat of the drought, and he didn’t want to
be caught in its furnace blast.

They had gone no more than three steps when he heard Gaith
shouting. He sighed, reining in Shagra and waited for his first-in-command to
catch up with him.

“Darias.” Gaith ran down the steps of the keep. “My lord.
Hold.” The warrior caught up with Darias and slid to a halt, putting one hand
on the
chelan
’s shoulder.

“What is it?” Hard impatience laced his voice. He didn’t
care. He wanted to be gone before Riana had chance to recover enough to taunt
him with her body.

“Trade strike,” Gaith answered succinctly.

“Shit.”

Gaith turned and started toward the stable without looking
to see if Darias followed. “The builders’ guild refuses to start any new work
or complete any work in progress. The shopkeepers’ guild says that the
agriculture guild has been taking advantage of the drought and eating into
their profit. The artisans’ guild is vowing they will—”

“Do they understand the magnitude of a strike during a
drought?” Darias interrupted. The long legs of the
chelan
outpaced
Gaith, and Darias reached the stables several strides ahead of his warrior.
“The economic repercussions for everyone?” He swung down from his mount, anger
simmering just beneath the surface.