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)
The rest of him—I tried to look at his face first, I genuinely tried, and I managed it for perhaps two seconds before the sheer bodily fact of him overwhelmed my intentions. Broad-shouldered like the warriors in the limestone carvings, as if their artist had worked from life to depict a direct ancestor of the man before me.
Close-cropped blond hair. A neatly trimmed beard. A scar above his right eyebrow that gave his face a quality the carved warriors had also possessed: not cruelty exactly, but the absolute absence of any pretense about what kind of man he was.
His cock.
I had gotten too good a look at the vibrator Giovanna had used on me, and I had understood it as a preparation, a training tool, an introduction to scale. I understood now that it had been merely a shadow of my new master’s endowment.
My mouth went dry. My eyes went wide. Something happened in the very center of my body that was equal parts terror and a helpless, shameful, liquefying want that had no relationship to any decision I had ever consciously made.
I flicked my eyes upward and saw that he was studying my face as I looked at him. I saw in his expression something that wasn’t cruelty or amusement, but rather the knowing confidence of a man who had seen this exact expression before and found it entirely appropriate.
I thought of the carvings. The women kneeling. The women on the saddles. The women’s faces with their expressions I had refused to name.
I thought of one of the warriors carved in the limestone opposite the longship chamber’s entrance, his shoulders exactly as broad as this man’s shoulders, his hand extended in the gesture of claiming. I had stood before that carving with my phone raised and my academic detachment firmly in place and told myself I was documenting an artifact.
I felt like the artifact now. I understood it with a clarity so absolute it seemed to ring in the stone around me like a struck bell.
He stepped forward. He raised his right hand and with two fingers he brushed the tears from my left cheek, a gesture so unexpectedly gentle that fresh tears immediately replaced the ones he had cleared immediately.
“There,” he said softly. “There you are. My new bed thrall. My kneppetøj.”
I wasn’t completely sure of my Danish, but the context told me I had it correct. Kneppetøj… fuck toy.
CHAPTER 15
Ilsa
My jaw slackened, and my lips parted. No sound emerged.
He didn’t wait for sound. His hands came to my face first, cradling it as if he meant to measure it for something. My breath sped up until I felt certain I would hyperventilate. He either didn’t notice or more likely didn’t care; his thumbs traced the lines of my cheekbones with a quality of attention I could only have described as proprietary. Taking inventory. Learning the dimensions of what belonged to him now.
Then, to my dismay, his hands moved downward.
He cupped my breasts with both palms, and a terribly humiliating sound emerged from me. He weighed the little mounds, lifting them slightly. His thumbs passed over my nipples with a slow, circular pressure that made my arms pull against the cuffs at my wrists and my fingers curl around the iron posts for something more substantial to grip.
“Beautiful,” he said, and the word carried the same quality it had when he had spoken it behind me, assessing and appreciative at once. He wasn’t flattering me. He was making a record. “These are just as I like them.” His thumbs moved again and I made the sound again, shorter and more helpless. “Responsive. Perfect.”
I swallowed hard and stared at the curved stone wall above his shoulder. I tried to quiet my breathing.
He spent a long time on my breasts. Long enough that I began to understand that patience can be cruel, that a man who has decided to know every part of what he owns before he proceeds can use that decision as a form of harsh discipline. The gorgeous blond man’s hands shaped and reshaped me, his fingers learning the weight and the sensitivity of me with a thoroughness that made my eyes fill again, not from pain but from the sheer, concentrated intimacy of being so entirely examined.
“You understand,” he said softly, his thumbs still moving, “that I am very pleased. That I consider myself fortunate.”
My fingers tightened on the posts.
“True, I would rather not initiate a new bed thrall here,” he continued. His right hand left my breast and traveled down the center of my stomach, and my muscles contracted involuntarily under his palm. “In a Roman cell, with Roman implements.”
His fingers found the newly bare skin of the little hill above the tender cleft of me, and I made a sound against my closed lips that escaped anyway.