Lords of Darkness and Shadow (41 page)

When he finally released himself into her sweet body, he couldn’t remember ever having experienced such pleasure. It was enough to cause him to bite his lip, drawing blood. He could feel her release also, an orgasm that shuddered through her entire body. And then he fell atop her, kissing her, tasting her, licking up the salt from her tears and listening to her groan and hiss with disgust. He had released her wrists at some point and her little hands slapped at him, eventually falling still on the mattress as if disgusted by the very feel of him. His hands were all over her, his mouth on her breasts, her neck, her lips. When he tried to force his tongue into her mouth, she bit him.

He actually laughed. Withdrawing from her sweet body, he pushed himself off of her, taking a moment to gaze down at her completely delectable nude form. Although the room was dark, he could still see her body in the faint illumination. She was truly perfect. The longer he gazed at her, the more wisps of remorse and confusion he began to feel when he should have been feeling nothing but complete victory. Frustration and anger swamped him.

“For years, the English have practiced the immoral act of
prima nocta
,” he said hoarsely. “An English lord is permitted the first right with a bride on her wedding night if she hails from his lands. Many English bastards have been born in Ireland and Scotland because of this deviant law. Mayhap… mayhap tonight, your brother will come to know what it is like to have someone he loves bear the bastard of the hated enemy. If God is merciful, then I will have attained two victories this night.”

Emllyn’s eyes rolled open, the sea-blue orbs gazing at him as tears streamed down her temples. She lay with her legs closed and curled, rolled up on herself as if to hide from the world. She wished the earth would open up and swallow her.

“If that was your intention, you will be sorely disappointed,” she whispered. “He will not care. You believe you have punished him by harming me but the truth is that you have only done him a great favor. He will laugh at you for it.”

Devlin left her lying on the mattress without another word.

∾

CHAPTER TWO

Emllyn awoke to a surprisingly bright room. After the storm and madness of the night before, all she could feel was a sense of hollowness. She was cursed now, a used commodity no better than the whores that followed the armies. She felt so incredibly dirty.

She lay there for quite some time before realizing she was alone. Facing the wall as she was, she hadn’t been sure. Slowly, she sat up in the big rope bed with the dirty straw mattress, seeing evidence of her virginity on the mattress cover and thinking on the Irish offensive in the bed the night before. Devlin was such a big man, powerful and overwhelming, and she had felt so helpless against him. She couldn’t even think about the fact that her body had betrayed her; she knew, even with the humiliation and lust, that her body had responded in a way she had not expected. She wanted very much not to like any aspect of what he did to her but her young and nubile senses said otherwise. She tried not to hate herself for it.

Reconciling herself to the events of the previous night, the next order of business was to cover her naked state. The room was cold and she was shivering; however, what was left of her surcoat was on the dirty stone floor, all bunched up. Climbing out of the bed, Emllyn picked the garment up off the floor, realizing parts of it were still wet. There was sand in it, too, but it was all she had. Her shift, beneath it, was a total loss.

Gingerly, Emllyn stepped into the surcoat and pulled it up over her trembling body. As she struggled to fasten the ties at her back with freezing fingers, she lifted her head to the sounds of noisy gulls, screaming outside of her window. They were riding the sea breezes outside and for a moment, a brief flash of a second, she was no longer the trembling captive of a brutish Irish lord. She watched the birds and their graceful flight, taking simple pleasure in it. There was something innately soothing about their cry, comforting even. It was something familiar in this horrid alien land. But her comfort was swiftly dashed as the door to the chamber suddenly jolted open.

Emllyn shrieked with fright, arms around her body protectively as she stumbled back against the cold stone wall behind her. Her eyes widened at the sight of Devlin standing in the doorway.

He looked every inch the conquering hero; her impression of him the previous night had been that of darkness and cruelty, but even as she pondered that impression, she also remembered his warm, soft, pale skin against hers. God, he had been so overwhelming and powerful, everything about the man filling her brittle senses. 

Now, in the light of a new day, she could see just how large the man truly was; he was wearing leather breeches and a tunic that strained against his broad chest and muscled arms. His hands, those warm and rough things that had stroked her into madness, were as big as her head. His dark red hair had brilliant golden highlights in the sunlight and the deep blue eyes regarded her.

Emllyn stared back. She had no idea what to say to him but she was very fearful he was going to throw her on the bed again and have his way with her. For a moment, they did nothing more than stare at each other as each one reappraised the other.  There was re-evaluation in the air. There was curiosity. Devlin finally broke the spell.

“So you are awake,” he said with his rolling Irish brogue. “I would assume you are hungry.”

He started to motion to someone standing outside of the door but she stopped him. “I would rather have dry clothing,” she said, sounding as if he owed it to her since it was his fault her clothes were ruined. “I am cold and my clothing is still wet from last night.”

He looked at her, and at her state of dress, as a big, ugly Irishman entered the room with a hunk of bread in one hand and a rough wooden cup of something in the other. Emllyn eyed the man fearfully and backed away, ending up over near the lancet window as the Irishman set the bread and cup down on the end of the bed. When the man quit the room, Devlin finally spoke.

“I will see what I can find for you,” he said.

He was starting to close the door but she stopped him. “Wait,” she said, coming away from the wall. Her manner was anxious, uncertain, but there was boldness there. “And… and I would like a bath if it is not too much trouble. I have sand everywhere and I would like to clean it off.”

His gaze moved over her; in fact, it seemed that all he could do was stare at her as if remembering the night before and the delectable taste of her upon his tongue. Something about the woman was addicting, infiltrating his senses like a fog. Since the moment he’d touched her last night he’d not been able to shake her. This morning, the sensation had only grown worse. It unnerved and distracted him, translating into a brusque manner.

“We have no bath here,” he told her, watching her face fall. He realized he didn’t like that expression on her face, not one bit. “But… I will see what I can do. Mayhap there is something you can use for bathing.”

“Thank you,” Emllyn said. She meant it. He turned to leave but she stopped him once more with a rushed and breathless question. “What… what do you intend to do with me?”

Devlin paused at the door, his gaze penetrating. “I already did it last night.”

Emllyn flushed deeply and looked at her feet. “I… I did not mean...,” she stammered, now struggling not to weep. “What I mean to ask is if you intend to send me home in disgrace or if you intend to keep me here… with you.”

He came back into the room and shut the door. “I am
not
sending you home,” he said with finality. “You stowed away on a fleet you had no business sailing upon. You knew that. You knew there were risks. Now you belong to me. You, lady, are the spoils of war.”

Her head snapped up, torn between anger and tears. “But you no longer have use for me after… after what you did,” she said. “Why would you keep me here? You have already damaged me beyond repair. I fail to see why you would keep me here unless it is to make me a daily campaign of humiliation and degradation.”

Devlin had to admit that he rather liked it when she stood up to him. She had spirit for an Englishwoman, which was surprising to him. He’d always thought the English female to be a weak and foolish thing. In fact, her spirit fed his lust, a flaming thing that apparently ignited at the slightest provocation where she was concerned, and he was upon her in three big strides, his big hands digging into the tender flesh of her upper arms. She squealed as he pulled her against his broad chest.

“It is not humiliation and degradation,” he breathed. Then, he tossed her onto the bed and leapt on top of her before she could get away. His big body pinned her to the rough straw mattress as his hand began to yank the sandy surcoat from her body. “It is domination, pure and simple. It is my punishment to your brother and to every damnable English who has ever set foot upon the green fields of Eire. I will dominate you day and night, and any other time that strikes my fancy, and I will pump you full of my seed until I beget you with child. Even then, I will continue to join my body with yours until the child is born and when I gaze upon my Irish son of an English mother, I will bed you again until you deliver unto me another son and still another. I will breed an army of sons from your body, sons that will sail upon England and wreak havoc. You, my lady, will be the mother of an army of Irish rebels that will kill your countrymen just as they have killed mine. You will be my brood mare.”

With that, his mouth clamped down over hers, kissing her so forcefully that Emllyn could scarcely breathe. His heated hands had stripped off her surcoat and she could feel him fumbling with his breeches. She knew what was coming; God help her, she knew, and she began to twist and fight, pushing at him and trying to avoid his seeking mouth. But somewhere in the tears and gasps, she began to feel a heat blooming in her belly, something odd and fluid, something that made her want to succumb to all of his male roughness.

It was an odd urge, really. When his seeking mouth moved to her tender breasts and began to suckle, she beat at his head with her forearms but there wasn’t much force behind it. It was hard to beat him when his mouth was doing such wicked and exciting things to her. As he suckled, her angry screams gradually turned to moans and the more he drew at her nipples, the deeper the moans. 

His mouth moved to the under swell of her breasts, suckling and lapping at them. The hands that had been beating at his head now gripped his hair and his actions turned from brutal to lustful, infused with a heated passion that took Emllyn’s breath away. She was struggling very hard to keep her mind on–task, to fight him as he did this atrocious thing, but something was happening to her. She couldn’t quite find the will to battle to the death. Something about his heated mouth and warm, moist tongue drew the fight right out of her. When he finally lifted himself up and thrust into her warm, wet body, she cried out with both passion and pain, raw from the previous night’s activities but somehow finding pleasure in his dominance. When he began to thrust into her, it was with long, powerful strokes.

Emllyn had no idea how to respond. She wasn’t fighting him, but she wasn’t responding, either. She lay beneath him, legs spread open, knees slightly raised, and arms out to her sides as he pounded into her. Devlin began to suckle on her neck, her shoulder, tenderly biting her and causing her to shudder with newly awakening passion. His fingers toyed with her nipples as he nibbled her neck and Emllyn could feel a fireball blooming within her loins. She had no idea what it was, or what her body was responding to, but she knew that the fire seemed to increase with each successive thrust. 

It was a feeling that intensified when he grasped her buttocks and ground his hips against her, grinding his body against her most private core and impaling her as deeply as he could with his enormous phallus. He was buried fully in her slick body and yet still he tried to go deeper. When he shifted his body and pulled her pelvis tightly against his, the fireball in Emllyn’s loins erupted with the iridescent burst of an exploding star. Sparks flew as her body convulsed with ripples of pleasure.

Devlin felt her release, the strong pull on his manhood demanding that he release his seed. It wasn’t difficult to answer the task; she had him so highly aroused that he spilled himself deep within her, feeling the greatest satisfaction he had ever known. It was a long and powerful climax and when it died down, he realized that he was holding her tightly, kissing her shoulder and arm because they happened to be next to his head. They were tender kisses when they should not have been. He was overwhelmed with the feel and taste of her like nothing he had ever known. Withdrawing his manhood from her tight body, he thrust two of his fingers up into her still-convulsing body.

“Feel me?” he whispered, his lips against her cheek. “Do you feel my seed as it settles into your womb? I am all about you, and within you, and you belong to me. Never ask me again what I intend to do with you; I intend to do just as I am now, until I die.”

Still gasping from her release, Emllyn heard his words. She could feel his fingers inside of her, foreign but not unpleasant. In fact, above her haze of passion and embarrassment, of shock and desire, she realized she rather liked his fingers inside of her. He was stroking them in and out of her, dragging them along her thigh, before plunging back into her body again. On the third such plunge, she groaned and trembled because she could feel the fireball starting again. Devlin laughed low in his throat.