The Highlander's Harlot (Sword and Thistle Book 1) (8 page)

Then he turned to my pie, and I noted the way it flaked on his fork. Noted too that it didn’t drip when he raised it to his lips, for my filling was thick and velvety, with savory stew meat and a hint of berry. One bite and he nearly sang. “Och, aye.
This
is a pie.”

Brenna excitedly clapped her hands for me, earning her a scowl from the cook. But I beamed, delighted. “It’s mine.”

“Is it now?” the laird said, taking another bite. “Now it’s mine.”

We all laughed as he wolfed half of it down.

When he was finished, the cook slapped down her wooden spoon. “Let me taste that.” And when she did, her eyes fluttered closed as she savored the taste and texture. “Hmph,” she said. But when she opened her eyes again, she raised a brow at me. “It’s good. Very good. Might be the best meat pie I’ve ever tasted, which means you’ve missed your calling, girl.”

“My calling,” I said, defiantly, “Is to please the laird.”

“And please me, you did, Heather.”

With that, he placed a smooch on my cheek, then strode out of the kitchens to help prepare for battle. It was remarkable that he could maintain his cheerful confidence when a war might be coming. He projected the notion that he would defend us all, that there was no need for any of us to fear, and though I believed in his quiet confidence, I wished Davy and Malcolm had returned.

First, because I wanted my sister near.

But second, because I felt as if he needed his best and most loyal warriors near him. Even Ian wouldn’t be as strong at his side, having taken a wound to defend me. And I wished there was something—anything—that I could do to help.

Dressed in a simple shift, fastened with a blue bow, I found him before supper in his library, which he had turned into war room, with writings of defense strategies strewn across the tables. But he was sitting there alone, simply staring at nothing, so I dared to interrupt. “I want to give myself to you tonight,” I said.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Now isn’t the time.”

“It is. I remember what you said about how it makes you feel to take a woman the way you please You said it gives you strength. It makes you feel as if you have the power you need to protect this castle and this clan. That it gives you the confidence to fend off rivals and
be
the laird. It feeds something in you that’s always hungry without it. I think that’s why you asked me to cook for you. I think you are hungry. But it isn’t food that is going to sate you.”

“Heather!” he said, harshly. “We’ve discussed this.”

“No, we haven’t. You’ve told me that I should be afraid of you. You told me that how you would treat me if you were to let yourself loose. And you told me that I didn’t want it; that I shouldn’t want it. But you never asked for my consent, and I am giving it.”

“You don’t know—”

“I want to be your whore,” I said, the word echoing off the walls. “If that’s what I must be to touch you. To be on my knees for you, swallowing your seed. To enjoy your body. To be enjoyed. Then that’s what I want. I can be brave. I can be shameless. I can be anything you want me to be.”

“The last time you provoked me this way, you came away from it with welts upon your pretty ass!”

“Aye,” I said. “And then, just after waking, I looked at them in the mirror. Saw your mark upon my body. Felt within myself such a quivering, such a need, that I had to touch myself. Not that I knew how to give myself pleasure—I needed you for that. But you keep awakening this need in me, this hunger of my own, and then refusing to satisfy it! Which is why I’m not scared of you or your belt, only scared that you will never accept everything I want to give you. Even my shame. Especially that.”

He went red, as if I’d put a torch to him. And that torch was desire. Sexual hunger. He nearly leapt up from the table to grab me. But somehow he restrained himself, his fingers grasping the edge. His teeth clenching. “I’ll grab you roughly.”

I lifted my chin at the challenge. “And I’ll whimper with pleasure.”

“I’ll demand your complete obedience.”

“I’ll give it.”

“I’ll call you names,” he added, narrowing his eyes.

“I will treasure each one.”

Rising from the table, he put his palms flat on it. “I’ll let my men watch.”

I swallowed, remembering how it had been the first time, when he tore my dress to bare my breasts to his warriors. But this time, this time, it wouldn’t be for show. This time it would be real. But instead of revulsion, I felt a surge of aroused pride at the thought of anyone seeing me under my laird, where I longed to be. “Let them watch.”

His eyebrows went up. “And if I want to share you with them?”

My heart thumped dully in my chest as I considered that. I didn’t want anyone but him. But if I had to endure the hands of other men in order to have him, to strengthen him, to be for him what he was for me…a safe harbor…then I would do it. “I am yours to take, or to give away, my laird.”

~~~

Ian Macrae.

Why did it have to be the scowling, surly,
Ian
that the laird summoned to witness my surrender to him that night? My only consolation was that the wounded warrior seemed to wish he was just about
anywhere
but in his laird’s bedchambers. Holding his bandaged ribs, Ian lowered into a chair, as sour as I’d ever seen him.

“You think I’m the devil with women?” the laird asked, confronting his cousin while I stood there. “And aye, I might be, Ian. But you’re going to see for yourself how it is truly before you decide to blacken my name again.”

Ian shot me a look of accusation, as if I’d betrayed him. And I supposed that I had, telling the laird what he’d said. But now we both stood to be disciplined for it, didn’t we?

“Do you want to kneel for me, lass?” the laird asked.

And strangely, the question sent a thrill through me. I did want to kneel for him. Even with Ian watching. And it was so much sexier now than it had been the first time. I told myself that Ian simply didn’t matter. He was no more to me than if my laird had said he wanted to take me in nature so the birds could watch.

I knelt and the laird raised my arms up and lifted my shift over my body so that I was naked—completely naked—before the two men. Then he took a belt from his wardrobe, and I knew he would strike me. The leather came down with a crack on my bottom. Then another, and another. He wasn’t nearly as savage with it as the first time, but it made me cry out. And yet, I smothered my cries because I didn’t want Ian to think this was some manner of abuse. Because it wasn’t. I wanted these lashes. I wanted to take these lashes for my laird. And every bit of the sting brought the blood to my nether parts, arousing me beyond reason.

“Good,” the laird said with a hint of praise in his voice, though his hands stroked me softly as if I were a troubled animal—a mount that was coming under his control. And yet, I sensed his craving was for more than pain. He wanted my shame. “Now crawl to the bed and open your legs. Touch your cunt.”

Cunt
. I knew the vulgar word, and it struck me hard. But it also made me tingle between my legs to be spoken to this way. More than that, the thought of touching myself for him made me wet. Even wetter, somehow, that Ian was watching.

My stomach trembled with need as I crawled to the bed in obedience. I lay down on my stomach and spread my legs, reaching behind me to trace trembling fingers between my legs. As I lay there, my fingers feeling the slippery wetness of my arousal, the laird stopped me. “I’d thought to take you for the first time on your hands and knees with your ass whipped like this, though that would rob you of the memory of how you were first taken. And I want you to remember. I want you to
see
my features as I fuck your virgin pussy. So you will turn over, and you will keep your eyes open, and you will see me. You will look into my eyes when I do it, and you will never forget.”

Then he grabbed me by the nape of the neck, my hair twisted in his fist. “Understand what I’m saying, Heather. I’ll take your virginity this evening, but that’s not enough to sate me. I want you to be a whore. More, I want you to
earn
the title of whore. To crave it. To wear it proudly. To call yourself it. To make sure every other person in this castle knows you for it. My. Whore. I shall not be sated until you are that.”

His words battered down on me like cold rain. The word
whore
kept slapping against my face harder than the Donald’s had struck me. Harder than the belt he’d lashed me with. The shame danced on my skin and prickled like nothing I’d ever felt. That I should
earn
my fallen reputation? As if I were somehow beneath it now? I’d been a good respectable girl. And a bit ago, I’d been a good daughter who had offered herself for her family. But now, I only wanted to be his. I reddened but took it into myself. Glad to sacrifice it to him. Glad to feel so alive, so strangely freed. “I
want
to be your whore,” I said savagely. “But I don’t know how to earn it.”

“You’re not expected to know what you haven’t been taught. Tonight, my requirement for you is simple. If you want this, you will open your thighs and beg me to fuck you. I’ll tie you down if you’d like that better—but if you struggle, it won’t be pleasant. I’m used to breaking animals and I intend to break you the same way.”

I looked up at him wanting only to be broken. “I won't struggle.”

Beyond the intensity of the state he was working himself into, I could still see that he looked pleased, and feral, and proud. “I’m going to fuck you, and then I'm going to spill my seed onto you, and we'll see what bastard you may breed. Now, turn over for me.”

I quietly turned, my awareness of Ian’s stare now acute. I couldn't look at him. So I lay back, and spread my thighs, the dark curls damp on my mound bare for both men to see. Ian swallowed, looking away as if he didn’t want to feel the arousal that he plainly did.

But it was then that the laird’s eyes seemed to soften. Maybe it was my posture. Maybe it was the surrender in my eyes. Maybe it was my obedience. Whatever it was, he ran his finger gently down my cheek and tenderly caressed my side. “I know I've been hard on you . . . but sacrifices must be painful, otherwise, they are not sacrifices.”

I just shook my head with an impatient, aroused moan as his hands drifted down my body and plucked at my nipples. “Do you like that you’re being watched?”

“It shames me,” I admitted, not knowing whether I liked it or not. My body was responding, but my mind was reeling.

“And it should,” Ian said, fists clenched, as if he couldn’t decide whether he should stand up and go, or if he should beg leave to join us upon the bed.

My laird was untroubled. “That's what you offered me. Shame. That's what you have always offered me. We’ve always understood one another, you and I. Ian doesn’t understand, but we do. We didn't need words to say it. We understood what the currency was. And only a girl who understands shame, and its beauty and worth would have offered it.”

With that, he lifted his tunic and climbed between my legs. My body respond to the certain proximity of his cock with instant pleasure. My hips undulated under him, brushing his skin, feeling the length and strength of him on me.

“Heather, you obey me because you want to. But for tonight, for this moment, when I take your maidenhead, you can go ahead and hate me. Feel angry if you need to. Feel taken,” he said as his thick cockhead probed at my entrance.
 

My eyes lolled back slightly in ecstasy and anticipation as I reached out for him in sudden eagerness, wanting him to sink the length of him inside me. But he slammed my hands back onto the bed. “No. A skilled harlot gets paid to touch her laird, but you’re still a crofter’s girl. I haven’t taught you how to touch me yet, in the way that I most enjoy. And though you’ve a natural instinct for it, tonight is about only one thing.
Me
taking
you
. So, feel Ian’s eyes on you. He’s going to watch you lose your maidenhead and be able to tell the tale of how you begged for it.”

My insides seized. He was waiting for me to beg? He wouldn’t command it, but he’d wait for it. And he wouldn’t have to wait long, because I was desperate for him. The heat of his cockhead as it slid against my clit and thighs drove me mad. And Ian’s judgmental, but hungry gaze made me wanton. “Please take me. Please take me. Please!”

“Look at me,” the laird said, crushing down upon me with his wide chest and hovering above me with his strong arms.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t.”

“Look. At. Me.”

My eyes lifted and met his. I felt captured by his gaze, and then was rewarded by a sharp thrust up inside me. It was brutal, painful and quick. I saw the expression of triumph on his face. It was a crude mixture of emotion. A certain compassion for me, possession of me, tenderness and cruelty melded into an unmistakable expression of ownership. I was a slut and a whore in that moment, and his. And I would never forget it.
 

I let out a cry and let my fingers dig into the bed linens as the pain washed over me in waves. I was torn. But expertly. He’d done it quickly. And knowing that he’d known just how to do it made the pleasure seep over me and block out the pain.

Soon, I was being fucked. My breasts jiggled with every thrust, and I tried to hold them still, but he stopped me. He wanted me to lie still and do nothing but
get
fucked. He working inside me, pushing me. Stretching me.Giving me feelings I’d never known before. “Oh, god. Sweet Jesus!” I cried, wanting to curse profanely at the shocking relief and pleasure of it all.

I tried to hold it back, but found that I couldn’t. I was coming. Crying out and straining against the bed, my body reached its shuddering climax to be taken this way—the ultimate shame. They all saw it. They all knew it. I couldn’t even hide it. His cock was pinioning me. It was in me, filling me. Unrelenting and possessive. And I was climaxing, overcome with a rush of release that made me scream. Made to feel so much pleasure at the way his tool opened me that I would want to do it a thousand times again.
 

At my orgasmic screams, the laird growled, grunted, grasping me hard as he began to jerk his seed into my pussy. It was with such force, such intense pleasure that he pulled out for a moment, and splashed some across my belly and breasts before he finished inside me. He collapsed on me, his hands on my face. And he kissed me. Kissed me as if for the first time. With lust and release and a tenderness he hadn’t had before. His skin was hot and wet, and his lips full and affectionate. His breathing was hard and his satisfaction made him almost worshipful.