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)
“No.” He cupped my jaw, not roughly but with complete finality. “You are not going on the bride saddle like that.” His hand slid from my face to my belly. “Not now.”
I let out a breath through my nose. There was no arguing with the calm certainty in his voice, and in truth some part of me had known he would refuse. Pregnancy had not made him less dominant. It had made his protectiveness another instrument of command.
Still, I looked at him with what must have been a plainly pleading expression, because his thumb passed once over my lower lip and his tone softened.
“I’ll give you what you need,” he said. “In the bridal chamber. On the furs I brought for you.”
My whole body answered that. It was so immediate and so complete that I felt heat rise into my face.
“Yes, Herra.”
He rose and helped me to my feet. The ship creaked slightly under our movement, though it did not move at all. The old irrationality of the place pleased me. He kept his hand in mine as we went into the narrower chamber, carrying the bag in his other hand. The bridal room felt smaller than I remembered, and more intimate. Perhaps that was because I knew more now. Perhaps it was because my body had already begun to anticipate the exact route by which shame would become sight.
He spread the furs with care, making a layered softness over the old stone. Then he turned to me and undressed me almost ceremonially. My dress went over my head. My bra unclasped. My panties slid down my thighs. He helped me step free of them one foot at a time because of my altered balance.
The difference from the way he had ripped my clothes off the last time we had been in this sanctuary could not have been starker, but my Herra’s ownership of me felt no less complete for the care he took. I stood before him with my belly rounded, my breasts heavier than they had once been, my sex already slick and my bottom destined for him if he chose.
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Beautiful,” he said.
No elaborate praise could have moved me more. Beautiful in this state. Beautiful because of it, perhaps. I touched my pendant and then let my hand fall.
“How do you want me?” I asked, feeling my brow furrow in the familiar way it always did when the time to receive my master’s huge, hard reðr had arrived again.
“On your side.”
He eased me down to the furs himself, arranging me with pillows from the bag I hadn’t even noticed he’d packed. One supported my head. Another tucked partly under my belly, another between my knees until the whole posture felt surprisingly stable and safe. The care of it made my throat tighten. Then he bent my upper leg a little and settled it where he wanted it. The position opened me enough that I felt exposure immediately.
“You’re comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll tell me if that changes.”
“Yes, Herra.”
He kissed my shoulder. Then I heard the small practical sounds of his preparation: a zipper, fabric moving, a cap unscrewed. The scent of the lubricant was faint and clean. My body recognized it with absurd submissive gratitude.
His hand moved first over my hip, then to the curve of my backside. He parted the cheeks, and stroked there idly for a few moments, calming me or exciting me further, I couldn’t quite tell which. Then his fingers found the little place that still retained all its power to humiliate me. Even accustomed as I had become to this use, I could never feel that first slick pressure at my anus without a rush of acute self-consciousness. It was too intimate, too naughty, and too tender all at once.
I made a tiny sound.
“Relax,” he murmured.
I obeyed as best I could. His fingers worked patiently, opening and soothing, and with each gentle intrusion I felt the old contradiction intensify. I was used to this. My body knew how to yield. The ring of muscle softened under his hand far more readily than it once had.
None of that diminished the thrill of degradation.
If anything, the familiarity made it more psychologically naked. I could no longer tell myself this was purely force, purely education, purely something done to me from outside. I had learned to welcome the act. I knew what it did to me, and I wanted it anyway. That knowledge turned the shame from accident into medium. It made the blood roar in my ears and the tree stir almost at once, just under my consciousness.
“Good girl,” Henrik said quietly when my body opened for his fingers.
Then the broad, slick head of his cock replaced them.
I drew in a breath and let it out carefully. The pressure there, no matter how often I submitted to it, always felt impossibly specific. It felt like the male world laying claim to the most hidden and embarrassing point in me and making me discover, to my disgrace, that I became more myself under that claim.