Darkness Captured (13 page)

Gradually, Marduk’s man applied more force, gauging the increasing violence of his strokes by a careful inspection of her face, still expressionless, and the telltale thickening of her labia as she grew more and more aroused. He touched her with his fingers, impersonally plucking at her cunt, before sighing and applying another round of stinging lashes.

Gabriella noted the color flushing his cheeks, the erection pulsing beneath his clothing. When her gaze lifted to his face, although he didn’t meet her eyes, she noted one corner of his mouth curved. There was arrogance in this slave. Her belly tightened, and she bit her lips to still a tremble.

“Stripe her,” Marduk said softly.

Just the sharp, precise delivery of those two words was enough to make her wet.

Then the flanges landed in several sharp strokes in succession, crisscrossing her inner thighs and belly. When a flick grazed one nipple, she cried out. Her eyelids dipped as a dreamy euphoria captured her at last.

The man halted, pulling her back again, and sent a sideways glance to Marduk, who nodded, and then he continued.

Gabriella’s body began to quake as her skin turned pink and small welts rose on her skin. Every inch was covered, her nipples receiving more than their share of attention, but the tips were completely aroused, elongated, her breasts quivering.

How she wished he’d apply a flick or two to her pussy, but she guessed Marduk would save that for last, because he knew that was all it would take to make her come.

Marduk gave the man another nod.

The flogger fell on the bed and the servant bent from the side over Gabriella’s pussy and tongued her open sex.

Shock held her still, arresting the orgasm he’d so carefully built. His tongue and lips licked and sucked, every fold and crevice cleaned. She glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of his arousal tenting the thin linen.

Her gaze came back to Marduk.

The dragon lord smiled like a cat.

Gabriella blew shallow breaths between pursed lips and jutted her chin upward, pretending the mouth lapping over her sex wasn’t making her pulse leap.

All the while the slave whipped her and ministered to her sex with his mouth, he’d kept his gaze from meeting hers directly.

But she caught a fleeting glance. His brown eyes softened. And then he straightened, cupped his hand and slapped the center of her spread thighs.

The sound was lush and wet—succulent. He did it again, and Gabriella groaned, straining again at her bonds, wishing she had the leverage to undulate her hips because her arousal had spiked hard and was constricting her channel, rippling up and down as her sex clasped and relaxed.

She missed the cue from Marduk, but knew one must have passed among the three watching her, because the servant bent over a breast and began to suckle while he parted her folds with his fingers and Xalia slid her long fingers inside Gabriella’s entrance. Three fingers at first that curved toward the ceiling and scraped the inner pleasure center, making her belly leap and quiver.

Xalia laughed softly, and pulled out her fingers, cupped all four together and slowly pushed them back inside, pausing to curve her thumb toward her palm and then shoving inward, her slender fist working its way inside Gabriella, who gasped at the sudden stretching.

The sounds Gabriella’s body made embarrassed her as Xalia began to pump in and out of her moist, greedy cunt-mouth. But Gabriella soon didn’t care. Her groans intensified as her body shuddered and jerked, nearing the edge of her climax. She feared she’d burst into tears when it happened because they had her body and nerves stretched beyond their limits.

Her eyelids slid closed, and she gulped for air. Then the ties around her ankles loosened, and the ones around her wrists, but she was too far gone to move. Not until the hand and mouth pulled away and she was hauled against Marduk’s solid chest did she open her eyes. Marduk lay back and urged her over him.

Then the servant crawled behind her and pressed her down atop Marduk’s chest. His hands parted her buttocks, and his cock pushed against her back entrance.

She groaned, but again couldn’t form a word of protest, because her mind was blown, her body quaking with need.

The slave’s cock slid up her ass and she was grateful for the burning that had her pussy tightening hard around Marduk’s cock. When her face was pressed against Marduk’s neck, Xalia straddled their bodies. Gabriella could only guess what was happening above her by the moist sounds of a mouth sucking on wet pussy.

The four of them writhed together and apart, moving slowly, inexorably into a dark pleasurable rhythm.

The scents of their arousal and the thick fluids the men summoned from the women, the smell of sweat and musk, was aphrodisiac enough. Gabriella was completely overwhelmed, whimpering against Marduk’s chest until he lifted her face. “Come for me, darling,” he whispered, his gaze dark and gleaming.

Gabriella’s mouth opened wide and a keening cry tore from it in a long, shrill wail. The arousal coiled tightly around her core unraveled in an instant.

The servant plunged hard into her ass; Marduk’s hands shoved her forward and back on his cock until the lusty heat was too much and she began to sob.

The cock in her ass slowly withdrew. Xalia and the servant left the bed and padded toward the door. Marduk rolled Gabriella beneath him and continued to stroke his massive cock inside her in slow, drugging thrusts that soothed and excited until she felt another orgasm tremble through her body.

When it eased, she was clinging to him, her arms and legs wrapped tightly around his torso. His fingers wiped the tears from her cheeks. He bent to kiss her, and then he, too, withdrew from her.

He left her on the bed, her legs sprawled open, too weak to worry about her modesty or self-respect. He’d plundered both.

When his strong arms lifted her from the bed and carried her to the pool, she was barely awake. She lay across his lap as he bathed her.

“What do you think of my protection now?” he said softly.

Her eyelids fluttered open, her gaze locking with his. For the first time, she saw the man inside the demon. Her lips trembled and her eyes filled. Warm approval and acceptance, even a little affection gleamed in his golden gaze.

“I’m undone,” she said, surprised to find her voice so hoarse.

“I will give you everything you desire.”

“But not the one thing I crave most.”

His jaw tightened. “You are mine. I won’t ever let you go.”

Guntram awoke at the soft scrape of Ninshubur’s feet across the tiled floor as he scuffed toward the outer chamber. Without windows, Guntram guessed it must be morning. He was in no hurry to move. The affects of the mead had worn off long ago, and he’d been lying in the dark, thinking about Gabriella and getting hard. Again.

What was it about her that made him as uncontrolled as a boy? Other women, other wolves had pranced around him, trying to tempt the
raven,
but he’d never succumbed.

And Gabriella knew. Her eyes would gleam with amusement at the females’ efforts to draw him into sex, and especially at their inevitable disappointment.

Once, when he’d accompanied her on a trade mission in North Carolina, their small band had taken to the forests to shake out their fur and run.

The moon had called them, full, bright, hypnotic. They’d run until their chests heaved, then collapsed next to a river, lying on a bed of fallen leaves while their heartbeats slowed and their breaths deepened.

Gabriella had shifted, pulling the others into their humanksin, her female musk a heady perfume that called to their heated bodies. While the others laughed, not nearly as sharply aroused because they never denied themselves a willing partner, he’d felt the familiar tightening in his loins at her easy sensuality. She seemed to mock his celibacy, tempting him to act on the primal impulses that compelled them to seek a willing mate.

Gabriella bent to cup water in her hands and drink, as immodest in her current form as she was in wolfskin, offering a view that had him gritting his teeth. His gaze flicked over her bottom, over her slick sex.

She glanced over her shoulder, her golden brown eyes twinkling, and laughed.

And why wouldn’t she? He’d grown hard. Lying still, he tried to tamp down the sudden lust that gripped him.

“I don’t mind, you know … if you want to ease yourself.”

For just a moment, his heart skipped a beat. Was she offering herself to him?

“I like to watch. It’s only fair, since you’ve watched me so many times.”

He tightened his lips and looked away, into the intersecting branches blotting out the ripening moon above them. Her teasing could sometimes feel like a cruel barb.

“Guntram,” she said softly. “Please.” She reached out to him, her fingers sliding along his cock.

He clamped his hand around her wrist and pushed her away.

She bit her lower lip, and her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry.”

Guntram lay there, aching, his cock burning where her fingers had glided along his length, and he couldn’t fight the impulse a moment longer. He clasped his cock inside his fist and stroked himself, watching her expression.

Her gaze was greedy, sparkling with excitement as his strokes quickened. Urgency built in his loins, cramping his balls, and he pumped harder, not trying to quiet the slapping sounds he made as he worked himself.

When his cock burst and semen spurted in thick, white stripes, he lay trembling.

Gabriella’s shortened breaths made her large breasts quiver. She licked her lips, then reached over and dipped her fingertip into one glistening stripe and brought it to her mouth.

Sharing that moment had been the closest he’d ever come to having sex with his goddess. The memory haunted his dreams, engendering visions of what it would have been like to take her in that bed of leaves with the rest of their small pack watching.

Ruthlessly, he gripped his cock and stroked himself to orgasm, not caring that Simon had to hear every moment of his anguish. When he was done and lay gasping in damp sheets, he covered his eyes with his forearm, trying to blot the memory from his mind. Today, he needed focus, needed to be strong and vigilant.

Scuffling footsteps reentered the room. Light crept beneath his arm and he pulled it from his eyes to find Ninshubur carrying a candle.

“We should go out for a while,” Simon said from his pallet, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. “Find our bearings.” When his gaze met Guntram’s there was compassion in his face.

Guntram sat up, turned on his pallet, and wrapped an arm around one bent knee to hide his wet belly. “I’m tired of following you and waiting for you to cue me what to do. How about you just tell me what to expect today?”

Simon raked a hand through his hair, then gave Guntram a nod. “All right. We’re going to find a way into the palace, in particular, Irkalla’s chambers. She hosts nightly feasts.”

Guntram’s lips curled in disgust. Understanding the nature of vampires, he didn’t have to think hard to figure out the nature of the feasts.

“We’ll find Gabriella in the middle of it all. Tonight won’t be a rescue, but you will let her know that one is under way. Your job is to get close enough to pass along the message.”

Tonight, he’d see Gabriella, and discover for himself whether she’d been harmed. “What will you be doing?”

“Distracting anyone who’s watching you.”

“How will we get inside?”

Simon grinned. “Why, we’re walking through the front door.”

Bright light streamed into the Master’s chamber, softened only by the mesh curtains closed against the morning sunlight.

Gabriella cracked open her eyes and listened, but heard no footsteps, no breaths or faint heartbeats. She inhaled through her nose, but found only the stale aroma of sex and Marduk’s fading musk.

She was alone.

Gingerly, she sat up, grimacing at the small intimate aches. Her head spun with the images that flitted through her mind of all the nasty things she’d done. Her hand smoothed over her skin, feeling raised welts still hot to the touch. A glance downward assured her they weren’t all that visible—were no longer red—just shallow stripes of raised flesh. She pinched one and groaned, loving the way the pain induced a heady arousal that rushed beneath her skin, flushing her, heating her sex.

“I’m such a slut,” she whispered.

And she was no closer to finding a means to escape. Already, her master’s attentions were beginning to fill her head with thoughts of what a life here with him would be like.

However, she wasn’t a bird like Simon’s kestrel, which could be forever happy inside her golden cage. She was a wolf. Her innate pride and independence would eventually rise up to nip her in the ass. As attractive as the demon was, she couldn’t forget what he was or where they were. Reaffirming her goal, she dropped her hands away from her hot skin and rose from the sumptuous bed.