Hers to Command (5 page)

Opening her
eyes, she looked down her torso into amber eyes glowing with the animalistic intensity of an insane wolf.

“
Now you are where I want you,” he growled. “This is where I will keep you. Do you now understand why you are tied?”

She couldn’t contain her scream of
denial as she strained at the bonds which forced her to endure his erotic torture. Damn his talented fingers and tongue, he kept her there.

She lost sense of time as the hours passed.
She burned with a hollow emptiness that wrapped her in misery. “Ari, please, I ache so. Take me. Please, by the gods, I need you inside me.”

“
No. You are experiencing the effects of the
cinnagin
. The walls of your sheath are hypersensitive. You have no idea what you ask for.”

“
I cannot endure this. I need you inside me. As your princess, Warlord, I command you! Fuck me!”

She
didn’t like the sound of his drawled, “As you wish, Your Highness.” She was aware enough to feel him leave the bed. She heard a deep groan followed by a softly voiced curse. The bed dipped with his heavy weight as he rejoined her.

“
What?” She panted her question.

“
Cockrings. I must take them off eventually but I don’t need to tax my self-control now. I will give you what you ask for. You will regret it. I will enjoy it slightly more.”

He turned back to her.
Goddess, what a handsome man.
Her eyes dropped down his body and her pussy spasmed in reaction. His cock was substantial—thick, long and undiminished. Its length and weight caused it to hang at an angle to his groin.

As if in response to her avid stare, it pulsed, jerking toward his belly. He released a choking grunt and froze momentarily. A thick gold ring cruelly stretched his large
, swollen balls down, away from his shaft. A similar metal ring tightly cinched its base. Her eyes widened.
Cockrings. Painful.

Wincing slightly, he dropped a large hand to support himself and regulated his breathing.

Her wonderment must have shown on her face.

His eyes held her with sardonic mockery. “You are not alone in your suffering, Princess.”
And he lay between her legs.

His
firm, muscled thighs slid up between her legs, and Ari settled into the cradle of her groin , playing his iron-hard cock head in the slick, copious moisture escaping her. He centered its broad head at the opening of her feminine channel. Slowly, inexorably, he pulsed inward, tiny increments at a time.

She felt her
slippery inner lips, profusely swollen, stretch to the point of painful discomfort. With a sudden give, the flesh surrounding her opening accommodated his hot, rigid thickness. Waves of intense, sparkling pleasure lanced through her inner core. She grunted with the effort to contain her response. Her pussy convulsed spasmodically like a greedy little mouth sucking on his broad cock head.

Her hypersensitive inner walls
registered his slightest movement as acute pleasure. Her mental concentration fractured at his choked expletive when his shaft gained the difficult entrance to her body. He stopped with the fat head of his cock barely an inch inside her. “No! Don’t stop. By the gods, don’t stop!” she begged.

“
Lady,” he snarled as she growled in frustration, writhing in her bonds, his hard shaft jerking spasmodically, “be still. Do. Not. Move.”

By the Gods, I am going insane.
Why didn’t I listen to him? This is much worse.

Time lost meaning to her.
Ari’s every small movement sent indescribable pleasure cascading throughout her body as if a fiery plasma ball stroked her entire being. To deny herself climax was sexual suffering of the harshest kind. When he next pulled back, the sensations created by his hard cock inching out of her tightly stretched, ultra-sensitive, inner walls became too much. She sobbed, “No, oh gods, Ari, no more. I will come.”

She
fought the panic threatening to overwhelm her.
I can’t do this!

“
Stop struggling,” Ari commanded sternly. “You increase your torture.”

He
continued to withdraw, stopping at her outermost lips.

The insane
pleasure was too much. It was too much!

“
Stop!” she screamed. She burst into hysterical sobs, thrashing and straining against the ties that held her spread-eagled. “Stop! Stop!”

Once the tears started, it seemed they would drown her.
Her body convulsed on the precipice of orgasm. “Help me. Help me.”

Her bindings fe
ll away. With a grip bordering on painful, his hands trapped her against his warm, hard body. His deep voice growled in her ear. “Be still. Settle! Woman, control yourself.”

As she fought to be still, his painful grip relaxed.
His voice lost its anger.

“
Hush, little one. I have you. Shh. I have you.”

Ari’s
hands stroked her as she trembled and wept. Her body curled into his, seeking comfort. Her face pressed into the hard muscles of his chest as she sobbed. And always, always, Ari’s gentle hands stroked her, his quiet voice soothed her.

When
her tears and spasmodic jerking subsided, he reached for a linen cloth and used it to wipe her face and nose as tenderly as any lover would his beloved. Her eyes felt fat and gritty as she opened her swollen lids and looked up into Ari’s concerned hazel gaze.

“
Fleur, what level of training have you?”

“
I am a level five,
Magister
.”

“
A fifth-level,” he repeated flatly. “You are a dead man, Patricio.”

H
e viciously punched the bedding and she flinched.

“
Lady, you court a hideous death. You possess neither the training nor the discipline to complete this ritual without destroying your mind.” He braced himself above her, his fury scathing. “I will not be party to your destruction.”

She
couldn’t say when during these last hours Ari had become “her”
magister
, but she trusted him with her life. She had expected a cold, contained, unfeeling master of
magicks
. While there was no doubt of his supreme skill and inhuman self-discipline, his manner toward her spoke of a careful regard for her femininity and a tenderness she was at a loss to explain.

She swallowed her forlorn thoughts and looked up at
him, glowering less than a foot above her face.

“
Magister
. Ari. Is there no way you can assist me through this? I am the last
magistra
past the age of twelve. There is no other.”

She tried for composed dignity but feared her periodic trembling and sniffs sabotaged her efforts.

His eyes narrowed as he took in what she had said. “What of Felicity? Why is she not here?”

She didn't want to think about Felicity.
She watched the rapid pulse throbbing in his neck. “Felicity is insane.” She paused. “We must attempt this,” she continued rapidly. “I know I am untried. And yes, I am terrified. Ari, please. Please, my Lord. For Verdantia, I accept the risk.”

She could see
him reconsider his flat refusal to continue. Ari’s eyes swept her, examining her minutely.
He sees how I struggle with the arousal but I am containing it.

Rolling up to stand with his back to the bed,
he scrubbed his hands over his face. Cautiously stepping across the room to an ornately carved table, he paused. Picking up a crystal decanter, he filled a goblet, drank it down and then poured another.
He is not going to continue.

She propped hers
elf up on her elbows and looked at his fully naked form. Her warlord personified masculine beauty. His tightly defined muscles delineated a lean, spare body. His broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist above hard, round buttocks. A dimple on either side of his spine crowned each buttock cheek. Brown swirls of hair covered his heavily muscled thighs and strong calves. Auburn hair, streaked with multiple shades of gold, crowned this god-like masculinity, and fell in heavy waves well past his shoulders. There were several vicious scars running the length of his torso, one of them newly healed. She drank in the undeniable beauty of a body honed to its task, the body of a warrior.

He
carefully crossed back to her and with a tight smile handed her the goblet he had just filled.

“
Drink this.”

“
Please, Ari, I don’t think…”
No more aphrodisiac, please!
Her eyes strayed again to his thick member and she shivered with barely controlled lust.

“
It is watered wine, my Lady.”

Taking the cup from his outstretched hand, she drank
in thirsty gulps, closing her eyes to eliminate the temptation to drop the goblet and fall avidly on his erection with her mouth and hands.

She looked up at him again as
he took the goblet back. He placed it on the floor and stood gazing down at her. She wondered if he knew the stunning effect his magnificent nudity had on her libido. Concern clouded his beautiful face. Whatever his thoughts, they gave him no comfort.

“
Princess, we must create and sustain as much sexual arousal as bodies can endure to trigger the energies required to renew the tower
diamantorre
. If I continue, the erotic torture will only intensify.”

His eyes held hers.
“We have reached the point with the
diamantorre
where it will be perilous to stop. Can you feel it? The forces channeling through us? They are abnormally strong. I don’t think you can take it.” Ari grimaced. “
I
may not be able to control it.”

Two words escaped her
. “We must.”

He
exhaled slowly. All expression left his extraordinary face. All warmth left his hazel eyes and he held hers in an intimidating, heartless stare. “Indeed.”

“
All right. I will do as you ask. We shall resume and I will not stop no matter how you beg. But, Lady,” Ari grasped her jaw in his right hand while his eyes bored into hers, intense, commanding, “you will obey me without fail. Our lives rest on your obedience.” Ari released her jaw but continued to hold her gaze.

She swallowed hard.
I thought I was frightened before
.

Through endless hours,
he teased her to the edge, always bringing her back before she broke. True to his word, Ari no longer needed her to tell him when to stop. It was as if he had crawled into Fleur’s head and with ungodly precision driven her repeatedly to the brink of climax, then stopped.

At every apex of her arousal,
his baritone sternly ordered, “Not yet, Lady.” All the while, in the background, the sigil crystal glowed through a brilliant spectrum of colors, its humming vibrations increasing in volume and range.

In
ringing tones of supreme authority, he repeatedly demanded she respond to him verbally, “Yes, Ari.” By the strength of his unbending will, he forbade her the tempting retreat into insanity.

She dimly recognized her l
oss of rational thought. Her years of study in meditation, the centering mantras she had committed to memory were as dried leaves before the firestorm of arousal that was her warlord and
cinnagin
.

Lost inside herself, s
he could only cling, tenaciously, to one outside influence—DeTano. He forced her to.

She was distantly aware of a large, eight-sided, stone room with windows all around. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she identified it as the
Chambre Cristalle
, but then insatiable, monstrous lust clawed away at her mind, swamping awareness. Her whole body pleaded for respite. Between her legs knelt a man, but all she saw was his straining erection. She labored to move herself to it, writhing on the raised bed. Moaning, she tried to form the words to beg but only managed unintelligible grunts.

“
Fleur! Look at me. Fleur! Obey me. Open your eyes. Open your eyes!” the voice demanded. “Obey me, Fleur.” The voice broke as hips pounded hard between her thighs. She fought to look at him. Close above her, wildly feral eyes demanded her obedience. A man, his hair, forehead and shoulders dripping with sweat, tortured her.

“
Stay with me. Look at me,” he snarled.

She could scarce hear him! The
diamantorre
were near-deafening, the room full of glaring brilliant light. Screaming, keening wildly, she clung to the man who cruelly tormented her.

“
Fleur!” He shouted, throwing his head back and brutally slamming into her. “Fleur, now. Come now!”

* * * * *