Mastered By Love (39 page)

She held onto him. Dario
breathed in her scent as she stroked his back. If he had his way,
he’d never let her go again.

“
We have to go back,” she
said. “You’re not safe here.”

He tilted her face up and
covered her with kisses. “Darling, no. I’m not taking you back
there. We’ll find another way.”

“
But your family
–”

“
And yours. They’ll survive
without us.” Shadow had intimated – no, stated outright – they’d be
welcome on Belleren. “We’ll go to Margelia, to the Bellerenic
embassy. Shadow will help us.”

“
Belleren?” she said
quizzically.

“
Would you be willing to
live among the Demon Kin? We have an invitation.”

She stared at him for a
moment before breaking out in a huge grin. “I would love to see
their world.”

“
I hear they have a lot of
horses in the back country. Maybe we can have a little ranch, raise
horses.”

Her eyes suddenly
glistened. “You’d really do that for me? Leave your native
world?”

“
I’d do anything for
you.”

The food came. Dario knelt
at Tariza’s feet while the servant – a slave – pushed the trolley
up to her table and pulled the covers off the food. The other male
gave him nervous glances as he went about his duties. Did he think
Dario would attack him?

The attitudes of these
people were becoming tiresome. Everyone here seemed to think he was
some kind of inhuman beast, a wild and dangerous creature that
could never be trusted. Before his capture, he’d taken some
amusement from the Concordian attitudes toward men. They didn’t
seem funny anymore.

The slave left. Tariza
smiled at him. “Come up here and sit next to me.”

“
You’re not going to feed
me from your hand?”

She frowned. “I wasn’t
planning on it.”

“
I’d like to take food from
your hand.”

“
Dario, you don’t have to
continue doing penance. I’ve forgiven you.”

“
I haven’t forgiven
myself,” he said, remaining on the floor.

She sighed. “All right.
Stay where you are, then.”

Tariza stuck her fork in a
piece of the fish they’d been served and put it in her mouth. He
waited for her to finish chewing, to select a bite for him. She
forked up a second piece and extended it to him. He pulled it off
the fork with his lips.

None of the other
Concordian women had fed him this way. He’d gotten his gruel and
watery soup while sitting alone in his stinking prison
cell.

Dario leaned against
Tariza’s knees. “You don’t know how much I wanted to see you. How I
dreamed of you.”

“
I wish I’d known where you
were.”

“
They didn’t want you to
know.”

“
I suppose they thought
they were protecting me.”

That was what the queen had
said. “They must have thought you’d be afraid if you knew I was
still alive.”

“
I guess so.”

“
I don’t want you to ever
be afraid of me.”

“
I’m not, love.” She petted
his hair. “Not even when you were my Master.”

***

After dinner,
Tariza stood, her stomach pleasantly full. Time to
get Dario into a bath so they could get all that dirt off his
beautiful skin and out of his hair. She held out a hand to him. He
gazed up at her for an instant before accepting the hand and rising
to his feet.

“
We don’t have showers
here, but I can offer you a hot bath,” she said.

He towered over her now.
“I’d like that.”

They walked hand in hand to the
bathroom, not speaking. At the moment, Tariza thought, words seemed
unnecessary. Superfluous. Their clasped hands said everything that
needed saying.

Tariza started the hot water. This was
one area where Argelians had made some concessions to modernity.
Indoor plumbing and proper sanitation had long ago been deemed more
important than adherence to anti-technology idealism.

While the tub filled, she
led him into her bedroom. She produced a key from a box on her
dresser and unlocked his chains. “These can come off in here.
Outside this room, they have to stay on until we can
escape.”

“
I understand.” He gathered
up the heavy chains and shackles, setting them in a pile at the
foot of the bathtub.

Dario removed the threadbare trousers
he wore and climbed into the steaming water with a sigh. She wet
and soaped a washcloth and gently rubbed it across his
forehead.

He caught her hand. “What
are you doing?”

“
Washing you.”

He kept his hand around her
wrist. “You don’t have to do that.”

“
It’s my pleasure to care
for you.” She continued to clean his face in spite of his shackling
hand.

“
Tariza –”

“
I want to do this for you.
It’s been weeks since I’ve touched you.”

“
Believe me, I know.” His
voice sounded strained.

She glanced down to see the
tip of his fully erect cock jutting out of the water. “I’ll get to
that.”

He put both hands over his sex. The
gesture startled Tariza. Was he ashamed of his desire? She studied
him, noting the downcast eyes, the flush on his cheekbones. It
seemed so unlike him.

She brushed her fingers
over the damp skin of his left cheek. “What have they done to
you?”

“
Nothing that wasn’t first
done to you,” he said without looking at her.

“
I don’t think that’s
true.”

Dario shook his head.

“
Can you tell me about
it?”

Another shake.

“
All right.” She re-soaped
the cloth and scrubbed his back. “I like that you want
me.”

He closed his eyes, turning his face
away from her.

“
Dario, I want you. I can
hardly wait until we can make love again. You know that, don’t
you?”

“
I don’t know anything
anymore.”

She dropped the washcloth,
cupped his face in her hands so she could turn him to her and kiss
his lips. “You’re scaring me.”

His eyes flew open.
“Scaring you?”

“
It feels like you’re
pulling away from me. And I don’t want that. Please don’t leave
me.”

He covered her hands with
his. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
I’m sure,” he said, his
gaze locked on hers. “This is more difficult than I thought, that’s
all. I don’t deserve –”

She shut him up with
another kiss. “Stop saying that. I feel like you don’t believe that
I really want you.”

“
No. It isn’t
that.”

“
Then what? Tell
me.”

He slowly raised his gaze
to hers. His dark eyes were troubled, kept trying to slide away
from hers, as if it pained him to meet her regard. He swallowed
heavily. “I want things, Tariza. Bad things.”

“
Like what?”

Dario shook his head,
turning away from her. “You know what.”

She puzzled over that. He
wanted bad things ... but nothing they’d done together had been
bad. It had all been gloriously, shockingly good. Did he imagine
all of it had somehow been wrong?

“
I liked what we had
together. No, that’s not true. I loved it.”

He shot a quick glance at
her. “You don’t mean that.”

“
Yes, I do.”

“
You loved being dominated?
Spanked? Led around on a leash?” he said bitterly,
scowling.

Tariza flushed. He was
going to make her say it and she’d rather not have to put her
strange feelings into words. They were embarrassing. Un-Concordian.
Yet, looking at him, she knew he needed to hear them.

“
Yes,” she said.

He frowned skeptically.
“You’re just saying that to spare my feelings.”

“
When have I ever spared
your feelings?”

He laughed. “There’s always
a first time.”

“
Well, this isn’t it.” She
stripped off her clothes, throwing them on the floor. When she was
naked, she knelt on the cold tile next to the tub, bowing her head
in the pose of a submissive slave.

“
What are you doing?” he
snapped.

“
How may I serve you,
Master?”

“
Tariza, don’t. Please
don’t.”

“
Why not?” She raised her
head to look at him.

Lines of strain had
appeared in his face. “I can’t bear it,” he whispered.

Pain crept through her at
the sight of his misery. He was so intent on punishing himself for
what he’d done to her. The complications of their relationship, the
injustices committed by both sides – she couldn’t allow them to
destroy what she and Dario had together.

She climbed into the tub with him,
straddled him in the hot water, put her arms around his neck.
Lowering her head, she nuzzled the side of his throat.

“
There’s something I
learned from all of this,” she said. “From my time with you in
Saturnios.”

He grunted but still
wouldn’t look at her.

“
Dario, are you
listening?”

His gaze slid toward hers.
“I’m listening, Mistress, but I don’t know what good you could have
gotten from me.”

She pressed her fingertip
to his lips, searching for the words that would help him
understand. “Our pasts make us see the world a certain way. Our
families, our countries, they give us certain ideas about things
that aren’t necessarily true, and all our choices arise from those
ideas.”

He frowned. “What are you
saying? That I’m blameless? Because that isn’t true.”

“
No. Neither of us is
blameless. I’m saying that we were blinded by faulty beliefs. And
now we’re not quite so blind as we were before, and it gives us
pain but it also allows us to make better choices.”

“
Tariza –”

“
The fact you feel so
guilty about what you did gives me a lot of hope that you’ll be
able to change. That you’ve already changed, the way I have. Even
before I knew you were still alive, I’d decided to give up my
position as crown princess. I don’t want to be the heir to the
throne, and I don’t want to keep slaves. I’ve been thinking about
going somewhere else, outside of Concordia.”

His eyes widened and his
lips parted. “You have?”

She nodded. “Anyway, you
were right.” She nipped his earlobe.

“
About what?”

“
Submissive men bore me.
When you dominated me ... it was exciting. Sexually exciting.” Her
confession made her sex begin to tingle.

“
Truly?” He sounded
doubtful.

“
Truly.”

His arms wrapped around her
waist. “I don’t want you enslaved.”

“
I’m not asking you to
enslave me. I don’t want to be a slave – not really.”

“
Then what are you doing?”
he said, pulling his head back to stare into her eyes.

“
We could switch roles in
the bedroom. I’ll be your mistress outside these walls and you’ll
be my master within them.”

He gave her a disbelieving
stare. “Is that what you really want?”

“
Isn’t that what I’ve been
saying?”

His head lifted, his face
changing subtly, taking on a sterner cast. “You need me to dominate
you.”

“
Yes.” Tariza squirmed on
his lap. Against her bare ass, his cock thickened, growing even
longer.

“
You wish to serve me, to
submit to me.”

She flushed as a rush of
moisture flooded her pussy. “Yes. I do.”

Dario reached up to take
her chin in his fingers. “Yes, what?”

Her eyes widened. “Yes,
Master.”

“
That’s better. If you
really want to serve me, you’ll have to remember your
manners.”

“
Does that mean
–”

He wrapped her hair around his hand,
using it as a handle to pull her head down. With his mouth, he
captured her in an all-consuming kiss. Tariza moaned. She opened
her mouth in surrender.

Instantly he plunged his
tongue inside, mastering her with long wet strokes that drove
shafts of pleasure all through her body. Dario pushed himself up
out of the water, grabbed her and hoisted her into his arms, their
mouths still clinging.

Stepping out of the tub, he carried
her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed. He pounced on her.
She reveled in the weight of his body pressing her into the
mattress, in the tight clasp of his hands on her wrists as he
imprisoned them above her head.

He released her wrists. His hands
rushed feverishly over her body, touching everywhere. She writhed
beneath him, buried her fingers in his damp hair, arched her
breasts into his suckling mouth.