The King's Pleasure (8 page)

Each time the whip struck her flesh, Abigail cried out, but she didn’t beg or plead. She didn’t form any words that might indicate she’d take the king’s insane offer. Although his behavior toward her was abysmal, it still couldn’t kill the gratitude she felt for all he’d given her.

“Ready for mercy yet?” the king taunted.

“No, Master.” The words sounded weaker than they did in her head. Somehow the defiant tone hadn’t translated when she’d said it aloud.

The whip came down again and again and she wondered when it would stop, if it would ever stop. She wondered if the king would let John whip her to death if she didn’t cave. She felt like a witch in an inquisition.
Confess! Confess! Confess, and I’ll pardon you.
But she hadn’t done anything to confess, and she wouldn’t dishonor her name with a lie to soothe the troubled king.

As the whip struck her again, she glanced up in time to see Niall flinch.

Abigail met his gaze as she let out another cry. If he was going to do this to her, she’d make him truly see what he was doing. The king’s eyes were haunted, but he quickly forced the expression off his face. She must be bleeding by now. The pain had numbed out a little, and that scared her even more, almost enough to beg.

“Stop,” he said. “She’s had enough.”

The tears fell harder, more relief than anything. She rested her cheek against the table as she listened to the whip being rolled back into a coil and returned to the guard’s belt. Then the footsteps started to recede.

“Aren’t you forgetting something, John?” the king said.

Niall had composed himself and was now set on giving the court a show: a show of what happened to a woman who thought to manipulate him to get her way. The would-be harem was in attendance, one or two of them looking smug, but most of them terrified. Abigail bet none of them envied her any longer.

“Will you beg mercy now, Abby?” the king asked. No one else could detect it, but she knew him well enough to hear the edge of emotion in his voice, the tiny bit of pleading that she would ask for his mercy so it could all stop.

“No, Master. I don’t wish to go live with my family. I want to stay with you, and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove that.”

Niall shook his head. “This won’t end like you imagine. I’ve made up my mind.”

As much as she should hate the king and want to rip out his organs right now, she didn’t. She pitied him. He’d inherited a kingdom with subjects who only respected kings they could fear, because they didn’t know any better way. So the cycle of abuse continued. And now she was caught in the middle of it, more a victim of circumstance than of Niall.

Abigail closed her eyes while John fucked her, her body limp and loose and unresisting as he entered her over and over. She’d become the king’s receptive vessel, gratefully accepting any and all penetration, and this was no different.

Niall may have wanted to break her, to be proven right, that no one could make a fool of him, but he was the broken one. She’d seen it on his face. Strangely, the more he did to her, the stronger she became, the less she allowed it to touch her, and the more she knew it hurt him.

“If you like all this so much, perhaps you should give us a nice, long orgasm,” Niall said. “Maybe I’ll have you whipped again if you don’t.”

It was the final nail in the coffin meant to undo her, but he’d already twisted her mind so deeply and so far that even the perverse suggestion had a twitch starting between her legs, followed by a low throb that built stronger the longer the guard rode her.

Suddenly the idea of the court finally shocked by watching something sexual made her fight to have the orgasm the king had suggested, just for spite. She’d faced greater hardships than this just getting by day to day before Niall had entered her life. She’d die before she gave him the satisfaction of breaking her for crimes she’d never committed against him.

The guard seemed shocked when her orgasm rippled through her and she let out a low, satisfied moan. While others in the court might think she’d faked it, John must have felt the pulses as her cunt gripped him hard, as if she were the aggressor. The guard, however, hadn’t found his own completion. He pulled out of her without finishing.

“Shameless slut,” Niall said, but there was no malice in the pronouncement, only pride.

She looked up at him. “Like you trained me to be.”

A small smile played at the corner of his mouth, but then it was gone, not even leaving the ghost of amusement behind. She’d thought in that small moment that it was over, that he’d come to his senses. He’d never apologize to her. He was the king. Kings didn’t apologize; they couldn’t afford to. But she didn’t require his apology. It was only important that he knew she’d never betrayed him nor tried to hurt him. As long as things went back somehow to the way they’d been before the festival she’d forgive him anything.

But it wasn’t to be. “Strip her of her finery and take her to the dungeon,” he said. “If she won’t take the gifts and pardon I offer her, then she’ll be treated like a criminal.”

Could this really be happening? Was he really abandoning her like this? Surely his wrath and ego had been appeased. It didn’t seem possible it was ending this way.

Rather than drag her roughly off, John untied her and carried her to the dungeon. He stripped her only once she was out of sight of others. By that point she was crying harder than she had when he’d whipped her.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, once he had her in a cell. It was damp and too cold, the kind of place she could easily imagine dying in.

“Not yet,” Abigail said. “I had a big breakfast.” She knew her attempt at bravery was falling flat.

“That’s the last of that, I’m afraid. I don’t know what you did to piss him off, but I’ve never seen him like this. Even in battle he never behaved this way.”

“I didn’t do anything. He’s wrong.”

“Kings can’t be wrong,” John replied.

Maybe Niall couldn’t have even been wrong in private if it had only been the two of them. She should hate him. She knew it would be the normal reaction, but she couldn’t help feeling hurt for him. How must it feel to let no one in, ever? To not be able to? Even through her darkest times, she’d had her family to lean on and confide in, at least until she’d become the king’s slave. Now she had no one.

When her father discovered her fall from grace, she wondered if he’d think it was what she deserved for being such a whore, that this was what came of selling yourself, even though she’d done no such thing. Niall had never given her any indication her wishes would have any bearing on his choice to keep her. Given the circumstances, he’d shown her mercy. Until today.

There was a leak somewhere off in the distance, a maddening
drip, drip, drip
. How would she exist with that as her life’s background track? She allowed her fingers to trail over a cold, damp algae growing on the stone wall. She’d catch her death here.

Abigail curled into a ball on the dirt floor. She shivered in the draft without clothing or blankets, her own body the only thing she could try to derive warmth from. Somehow, in spite of the conditions, she drifted into an exhausted sleep.

She jumped suddenly at the feel of strong hands on her back. Warm water sluiced down, causing pain as it flowed over tender flesh. Her eyes drifted open as memories slowly seeped through the fog of her awareness. She twisted her body, expecting to discover the king tending to her wounds, but it was a dungeon guard.

“Why...?”

“I’m just following orders,” the stranger said, drying her with a clean towel. He worked quickly and carefully as he applied bandages to her back.

She tried unsuccessfully not to cry. How stupid to think it was the king. Why would the king ever lower himself to entering the dungeon? The idea that he would sit in this filth and actually clean and dress her wounds was wishful thinking of the highest order. She had to let that life go, no matter how difficult it was.

When the guard finished tending to her, he gathered the supplies and started to leave. He paused at the door. “I’ve brought you food and blankets, just over there in the corner.” He pointed.

She hadn’t noticed them in the dim lighting. “Thank you.” The food was only bread and water, but at least it was fresh on both counts. She’d had worse.

A few days passed like this, and Abigail sank further into hopelessness. The only small reprieve was when a guard came—a different one each time—to change her bandages and bathe her. Each time, she closed her eyes and imagined it was the king.

Why couldn’t he have just executed her? Keeping her in a dark little cell forever was heartless. There was no life or hope to look forward to. No hope of freedom or ever seeing Niall again.

She startled when heavy footsteps moved toward her, expecting another guard. But it was the king who unlocked the door and stepped inside. Instinctively she moved toward him, kneeling at his feet, her cheek resting against his boot. She didn’t know why he’d come, but she had to be close to him.

“Well, Abby, are you ready to admit it now?”

She wanted to tell him anything he wanted to hear, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the lie that would free her. Her honor was all she had left. “I have nothing to admit, Master.”

He sighed. “This is your final chance. You can go quietly now to live with your family, or you can stay in the dungeon for the rest of your life. I won’t offer you any more opportunities. Surely you’ve had time to think this through.”

“My answer is still the same.” She wouldn’t admit defeat now. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of pretending she’d ever been anything but his loyal slave. If she was to die down here, then she would. If he was too stubborn to admit he was wrong, then her death would be on his hands.

“Very well, if that’s your answer.”

“It is.”

She expected him to turn and leave her there to rot, but he scooped her up and carried her, wrapped in the dirty blankets, back upstairs. He deposited her gently on the tile of his bathroom and turned on the water for the bath. He was silent as he began to drop the rose petals and pour in the fragrant oils.

“Go. Shower the dirt off,” he said, pointing as if time had rewound itself and it was their first night together. Only this time, bizarrely, she didn’t fear him or what he might do to her, even though he’d given her plenty of valid reasons to.

She went to the shower. The wounds on her back were still tender, though they’d closed now and were healing. She’d been healthy enough at the time of the whipping that her body had mended itself even on the lower quality food in her cell.

She breathed in the scent of the delicate lavender and oat soap as she scrubbed off the grime from the dungeon, hardly believing this could be real. She took the towel from the peg and dried off, then moved tentatively toward the tub.

“Abigail…” The king’s voice was threaded with more emotion than she’d ever heard from him.

“Yes, Master?”

He seemed as if he were preparing to say something important, but instead he said, “Get in the tub.”

She got in and leaned back, closing her eyes. A little moan left her as she sank into the water, letting the soothing warmth take the remaining pain from the whip marks.

“How can you relax like that?” he asked after a minute. “How can you be anything but terrified of me after what I did?”

She opened her eyes, shocked to find tears rolling down his cheeks. “Am I going back to the dungeon?”

“No. Never,” he said fiercely.

“So you believe me? You know I didn’t set this up?”

He nodded, his arms crossed over his chest. “It was a test. I had myself half convinced you’d scammed me, that you were making a mockery of me, maybe getting some strange revenge for my father’s behavior. But I let it get out of control. I’d expected you’d beg for mercy—even if you were innocent—and that I’d give you a slap on the wrist and take you back after a time. But when you didn’t break, with all those witnesses...”

“Did you kill them?” Abigail asked, her voice oddly light.

“God, no! What kind of monster…”

“I was kidding.” It was the first time they’d spoken like this. Real. Honest. A slight edge of disrespect. She didn’t know where it came from, but she wanted to lighten things, let him know she was really okay.

“How can you be so casual about this? How can you even want to belong to me after this? I shamed you and violated your trust.” His features were open. He was finally letting her in. Being let into his confidence was worth all that had transpired, but she knew he’d never see it that way.

“I was here at your pleasure. I was in the dungeon at your pleasure. You’re the king, and you can do what you want with me. I’m completely at your command. If you didn’t know it before, I hope you do now.”

His hand was on the edge of the tub, and Abigail threaded her fingers through his and squeezed. She felt odd being the one offering comfort, but knew how tentative his sanity was at the moment. His guilt oozed out of him, so heavy it almost crushed her with its weight.

There was a long pause, and then he said, “It won’t happen again. I realize you have no reason to trust me, but in time, I hope you’ll be able to.”

Niall helped her out of the tub and to their bed. She didn’t tell him she already trusted him and that she’d already forgiven him.

Two years later, Abigail gave birth to the future king. He had a dark complexion, raven hair, and brilliant green eyes. Just like his mother.

If you enjoyed The King’s Pleasure, please consider the other two novellas in this collection: Awakening, and The Aucion.

About the Author

Kitty Thomas writes dark literary erotica. Her stories explore the psychology of ownership. This work is fiction and meant for an adult audience. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior carried out by characters in her stories.

Inspiration for Kitty’s work comes from many sources including Story of O, Nine and a Half Weeks, and the work of Claudia D. Christian.

For updates on new releases, please subscribe to Kitty's newsletter via the contact form at her site: www.kittythomas.com