Conquering the Queen (8 page)

A bright smile replaced her tears. “I can think of nothing I’d love more.”

It was his gift to her, this ride. Despite her tender nates, Avin kept a firm seat on her white mare as he rode beside her on his large gray gelding.

But what started as an outing to mend Avin’s spirits quickly evoked memories of past rides at Ravenscroft for Xander, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake in sleeping nightly in her bed or going out with her on a bright morning. Being with her felt the same as it once did. She was submitting now easily and freely. He knew she still bristled at the circumstances of her confinement, but also that she recognized with grace and a spirit of sacrifice why her situation had to play out.

What he could not see was a solution, not with the complication of his overbearing father whose political ties were important to Xander’s nascent reign. He longed to marry Avin, but could not tell her. At least not yet. He looked over. The warm spring wind was lifting her hair as she rode. The sun would be good for her. She was still too pale, and Xander decided that he’d expand her freedoms to strolls in the castle garden or carefully guarded rides. If his father protested, he would remind him again who was king.

“This grove of trees is where I gather herbs,” she said, guiding her horse to the edge of a path. Xander was pleased when she asked for permission to dismount, which he granted.

“Still about your wise woman ways?” he joked, and she looked back at him and smiled.

“My subjects—my former subjects—may be simple, but this has always been their way and mine, too.” She knelt at the food of a massive oak. “Do you remember this one?” She pointed at a plant with rough-edged triple leaves.

Xander studied it. “Rue?” he asked.

“Close.” She plucked it. “It’s a type of wort. It lifts the mood.”

“I remember this one.” To the left was a patch of nettles. Xander pointed to it. “Do you?”

Avin flushed prettily. He was pointing to nettle, the ingredient in the cream he used to punish her bottom.

“Displease the king and he may order you to make your own ointment, and then use it on you.”

“I will endeavor to please him, then,” Avin said quietly.

Xander walked over and picked her up. “You do please me,” he said, and laid her down on a bed of moss under the tree.

“My king…”

“No one will disturb us here,” he said. “No one will see us save for the birds in the trees, and who can they tell?”

“Do you remember when you took my virginity?” she asked.

He stretched out on her, his hand brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

“How can I forget the first sweet surrender?”

“Do you remember when you took the second?” she asked.

He swallowed hard. He did. It was less than a fortnight before they were supposed to be married. They’d planned to wait, but the trainers he’d used to stretch her bottom had readied her earlier than either expected.

“Yes.”

She took her face in his hands.

“Again?” she asked.

He looked down at her. “I’ve not stretched you. It may hurt.”

“I don’t care.” Her tone was urgent. “I
want
to feel the hurt. I want to feel everything that was lost.” Her eyes searched his. “Please don’t deny me, my king.”

How could he? Especially when she pushed him back and turned, rising up on her knees and hiking up the hem of her gown? She was bare underneath, just as he’d ordered, and when she bent over he could see that the soft fullness was returning to her hips, which were nicely rounded. The marks from the stripes had faded to a pink slightly lighter than the pink of the labia he now glanced between her parted legs. He reached down, fingering the slick petals of her pussy, trailing the glistening arousal up between her parted cheeks to rim the tight crinkle of her bottom hole.

His cock nudged uncomfortably against the panel of his breeches as he remembered how tight her bottom was the first time he’d taken her. She’d still be tight there, just as her pussy was still tight around his cock. Xander pushed his breeches down, freeing a cock that strained toward her like a divining rod.

She’d been hesitant the first time he’d taken her there. Now she pushed back against a cock lubricated by her own arousal as it nudged against the rosy pucker of her anus. Xander held her hips to keep Avin from pushing back too fast.

“Your king is in control,” he reminded her, giving his captive lover a slap to the bottom. She moaned, and he could smell the fresh pulse of arousal, the musk of it mingling with the smell of earth and flowers around them. He pushed forward, watching as the tip of his flared cock head breached this taboo portal she offered. Xander relaxed his grip, allowing her to push back. She whimpered with a combination of need and pain, but continued to envelop his cock, her bottom hole slowly stretching to accommodate his girth. He moaned as it slipped over the head of his cock, the fit so exquisitely tight. He reached underneath her, his fingers finding the sensitive button of her clit as he continued to enter her by small, sweet degrees.

He lost track of time; he could have been sliding into her for minutes or hours or days. All fell away around him save for her and her soft moans and little cries and then the louder, deeper moans when he became fully seated in her and began to move.

“Oh, my master… my king!” She was moving with him, lost in her submission to the man who controlled her life and—at the moment—her very body.

Xander felt the pressure in his loins building, the surge of it stronger than anything he’d ever experienced. He’d intended to hold back, but the sweetness of her passionate yielding pushed him to the point of no return. Pleasure came simultaneously for both of them at once, his bursts blending with waves he could feel through the walls of her bottom passage.

When it was over, he bathed her in a stream. They were riding home when a messenger met them with word that Lord Reginald and the Ravenscroft nobles would be arriving by nightfall. Xander looked over to see Avin staring down at the ground, trying not to cry. From there, they rode home in silence, and in silence they climbed the stairs to her chamber. Sal was waiting, a concerned look on her face.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I was worried!”

“She was with her king,” Xander said. “That is all you need to know.”

The maid pursed her lips but said nothing more.

“Leave us,” the king said, and inclined his head toward the maid’s chamber. Sal moved through the door into the other room, leaving them alone.

“I love you, Avin.”

She tried to suppress a sob, and he hugged her.

“The only thing that binds me to you is a chain,” she said. “We cannot be together… we cannot marry.”

“Then I will keep you, if you will be kept,” he said. “And while you live, I will love no other.” He paused. “Do you remember my mother’s necklace?”

She suppressed another sob at the mention of the adornment Xander had once showed her at Ravenscroft. He’d said on her deathbed, his mother had told him to give it to the woman he truly loved, and that he intended to give it to her on their wedding day.

“I’ve ordered the jewels be brought here from Ravenscroft,” he said. “It is time for me to keep my promise and give that necklace to my true love.”

He kissed her on top of the head.

“I will send my father away,” he said. “I’ll make him warden of the south. He can run Ravenscroft for me. It will keep him away from Windbourne. He will not live forever, Avin. We will be together. Just be patient.”

She nodded, winding her slim hands in his tunic.

The sound of distant hoof beats got their attention and both king and slave looked out the window to the king’s road. They’d arrived home just in time, for in the distance they could see a plume of dust and the banners held aloft. Lord Reginald and the nobles of Ravenscroft were returning.

“I will be kept busy by them,” he said.

“I know.”

“I will try to see you.”

“You don’t have to. I know you have your duty.”

He kissed her goodbye, the parting of their lips painful only second to seeing the sadness in her eyes.

Cynric met him on the stairs as he approached the Great Hall.

“We are about to be set upon,” he said. “Word is that the nobility of Ravenscroft is as eager to ogle your slave as the nobility of Windbourne were. They’ve not forgotten her rejection of you.”

“Then they will be disappointed,” Xander growled. “Avin will appear at the coronation, but beyond that she will not be put on display. I’ve already promised her that.”

Cynric nodded and smiled. “You’ve faced your fears, I see.”

Xander nodded. “Yes. I feared my feelings would make me weak, but I have found strength in her. She’s given me her submission, Cynric, and I find myself wanting to be the kind of man and king that deserves it. I only wish I could right the wrongs done to her by every man in her life.”

“There is yet time,” Cynric said. “But first you must run the gauntlet of this evening.”

That was an apt description. He knew the next few days would be important in strengthening alliances between north and south. As he took his place on the throne, the visiting nobility from Ravenscroft arrived. Familiar faces smiled at him, praising his victory, his reign and the splendor of the castle, which had been much repaired since Avin’s overthrow.

As guest after guest filed up to pledge their allegiance to the crown, Xander found himself looking for his father, who had not yet greeted him. When Lord Reginald did show up, it was in the company of a woman it took Xander a few moments to recognize.

Lady Fleur Breton had been a budding child when he’d last seen her. Now she was a young woman with glossy chestnut hair who, when she bowed, displayed a creamy swell of cleavage over the neckline of a gown that showed off the seductive curves of a very adult form. She curtseyed low to the new king, and then looked up, a sweet smile on her heart-shaped face.

“King Xander,” she said in the cultured voice that emphasized her good breeding and education. “I am so honored to be here to witness your coronation. My parents, Lady and Lord Breton of Ferngrove, send their warmest regards and congratulations.”

“Lady Breton.” Xander nodded to his pretty subject. “It is good to see you.”

“I’ve invited Lady Breton to sit with us tomorrow at the feast, Xander,” Lord Reginald said. “She is looking forward to it, and I know you must be looking forward to spending time with the daughter of one of our staunchest allies.”

Xander was silent for a moment. “Of course,” he replied, not knowing what else to say. He was still reeling from the unexpected arrival of this exquisite young woman, and instantly suspected his father had engineered her attendance for political reasons. The Bretons and the Gawen families had been close friends for generations. The only time that relationship had cooled was when Lord Reginald announced that his son would marry Princess Avin of Windbourne. The Bretons, Xander knew, had assumed that Xander would court and marry Fleur’s older sister, Rose. But the Bretons had gotten over the slight and Rose had gone on to marry a lord.

Xander was not blind, however. In the wake of Xander’s ill-fated betrothal, his father was now taking a safer route by pushing Lady Fleur firmly in his sites.

Lord Reginald ushered a servant over and instructed her to see Lady Breton and her entourage to the best suites in the castle. Then he turned to his son.

“I hope you will make her feel welcome.”

“Of course I will,” Xander said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Lord Reginald looked to the left. Through the window, on the other side of the courtyard, both father and son could see the light burning in Avin’s window.

“The kingdom is one and united under your reign, Xander,” his father said quietly. “It represents all I have worked for all my life. It was why I pushed you toward Avin, because I hoped you would one day succeed her father. That did not happen, but you are still king nonetheless. Now you need to take a wife and produce an heir to continue the Gawen name and secure the legacy of House Ravenscroft. Fleur Breton is the perfect choice. Her father holds land on the southern border. They can shore up our strength there was we secure this northern edge of the kingdom. We can…”

“I will marry, in time, Father,” Xander said, cutting him off. “But understand that when I do, I will marry a woman of my own choosing.”

His father fell silent. “You will marry an
acceptable
woman,” he said. “If you have any appreciation for what I’ve given you, what I’ve done, you will be wed to Fleur Breton by the summer. And that she-bitch will be gone, even if I have to do it myself.”

Xander leaned into his father. “You’ll not touch Avin,” he said. “And you’ll not give me orders. I am king, Father. Yes, your money and strategy were assets. And yes, those things are necessary. But so is an army, and my men are loyal. Force my hand and you stand to lose just as much as I do.”

Lord Reginald’s face was red with anger. Xander could see he was struggling to hold his tongue.

“I’ve raised a strong son,” the old lord finally said. “And you are right; I cannot force you to do my bidding. But I beg you, Xander. Give Lady Breton a chance. She’s expecting to sit with you at the feast. I believe you’ll find she has all the qualities to make a proper queen. One who will be true, obedient. One who will not betray you.”

“She will sit with us,” Xander said. “I will agree to that. But I’ll agree to nothing more.”

Xander parted from his father feeling more dread than expectation for the feast, but more grateful than ever that Avin would not be attending.

Chapter Eleven

Cynric wasn’t used to being taken off guard, and realized Lady Fleur’s unannounced arrival meant that Lord Reginald was no longer taking him into his confidence. This was a dire development, as it was decidedly easier to spy on one’s enemies than on one’s allies once those allies had grown suspicious.

After quietly witnessing the reintroduction of Lady Breton to the king, Cynric set about gathering information on the beautiful visitor. He knew the reputation of the Breton family, whose expansive lands bordered Ravenscroft. But he knew little of their children, and found the visiting nobility eager to gossip, especially once they saw her sitting with King Xander.