Dark Mercy (4 page)

She screamed as it fell one more time, but there was a word in there.

Please
.

Cassandra’s knees gave out below her. She slumped and the manacles above her held her aloft.

Richard came up behind her. He wrapped his arm around her. Pressed her against his skin. The pressure of his body stung against her tender flesh, but she welcomed the mix of sensations.

“Please,” she repeated.

"Please what?"

He had stripped her of her pride. She felt truly naked now, and it gave her a sense of freedom she had never felt before.

"Please, fuck me."

He swiveled her around so she faced him. With both hands he ripped the side seam of her lace panties. The ruined material fell to the floor.

"Wrap your legs around my waist," he said.

Cassandra opened her thighs. The cold of the room was heightened by the wetness clinging to her legs. He was blessed heat as she wrapped them around his hips. He supported her weight with his arm.

Pain heightened every one of her senses. She could feel the friction of his crisp leg hairs against her smooth thighs. She could hear the pulse of her own heartbeat in her ears, and smell the dust in the air.

He was unbelievably strong. Her position was awkward, but he held her steady. She was totally dependent on him, completely at his mercy.

With one push, he surged inside of her. Her pussy strained to envelope all of him. Cassandra cried out at the feeling of fullness. She almost burst apart then and there.

He moaned. The sound filled the empty chamber. Richard raised his brows. His crystal blue eyes burned with more than lust. Something about this surprised him.

She longed to touch him, to spur him on, but he didn't dare fight too hard against her bonds. If she disobeyed him again, he might stop.

He slammed inside her, pulling his full length out, so that only the head remained within her, before plowing back inside.

Cassandra had never felt so full. Her clit rubbed against the hard plane of his abdomen, even as his shaft stroked against every nerve in her channel. She bucked her hips, and he let her. She rode against him. Cassandra closed her eyes and let her head fall back, ready to let her mind fly away.

Richard wrapped his hand around her ponytail and yanked her head up.

"Look me in the eyes. Stay right here. With me."

He didn’t blink as he pistoned his hips in and out of her. There was only the juncture where they touched. Nothing else existed.

The pleasure was nearly unbearable, and just when she thought that she couldn't take any more, he would slow, vary his rhythm so that she couldn't find release.

It was delicious torture.

The muscles in his arms tightened. His shoulders bulged. She could feel the power within him building. She thought for a moment that he might break the stare that he had demanded, but his gaze remained fixed.

He steadied his strokes, sawing in and out of her with an urgency that she had never experienced before.

The binds holding her tight inside shattered. Her legs clenched around his middle. Shaking uncontrollably, she cried out and let go. She came, hard. Higher and higher, she was swept, until she feared that she would never come down. His strong arm carried her through it.

Richard grasped onto the chain above Cassandra as her cunt clenched around his shaft.

She would drive him mad.

She’d had her pleasure. Even now, she was beginning her descent from that highest place. So why was he prolonging his torture by continuing to pound into her? He couldn’t stop. Every time he sunk into the tight warmth of her body, she pulled him closer to the promise of oblivion. A promise that he knew very well would never be fulfilled.

His balls tightened, a sensation he hadn’t felt since he had been buried in the body of a fallen goddess a dozen lifetimes ago. He didn’t dare hope. He’d given up on the notion centuries earlier. Now he was close to pleading.

Richard threw back his head.
Ashira. Just this once.

Every muscle clenched. The chain snapped and fell with a clatter to the floor.

He roared as bright, white heaven ripped through his body. His cock jerked hard with every shot of cum. He poured into her, filling her, until he was finally spent.

“What are you?” he asked, once he had caught his breath.

“A journalist.” There was nothing but honesty in her eyes. She was too broken down for anything else. “What else was I supposed to be?”

Richard shook his head. “Nothing.” She was perfect.

He unhooked her hands. Cassandra’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the broken chain piled in a heap on the floor, confusion barely registering through the haze of satisfied lust.

She giggled as Richard hoisted her up over his shoulder to pull up his pants.

“You can put me down while you dress, you know,” she said.

No chance. It had taken him a thousand years to find her. He wasn’t going to be letting go of her for a very long time.

He slid her back down into his arms before knocking once on the door. A few seconds later, it creaked open.

It was not Marcus on the other side, but Rhys. Had his cries been so loud that they had been heard by everyone in the dungeon?

His old second stepped forward, his face tense with expectation. “Richard, is all well?” he asked.

“It is.”

 Rhys’s brows arched wide. For the first time since the battlements of Antioch, Richard saw hope in his friend’s expression.

“Rhys, this is Cassandra Davis,” Richard said.

“Hello,” she said quickly before nuzzling her face back against him to hide her embarrassment. They would have plenty of time together to work on stripping her of these last remnants of shame.

“A pleasure,” Rhys said. “Richard has been waiting for you for a very long time.”

Richard tightened his grip on Cassandra’s naked body. Rhys, sharp-eyed as ever, caught the possessive gesture, and let them pass.

Richard carried Cassandra up the stairs to his room. He’d known that she was special from the second he’d spied her on the street under his window, but he’d had no idea how special. There hadn’t been many people in his long life that had dared to question him. Even when he used his influence on her, she had resisted. In the end she had submitted to him because it was what she most deeply wanted, not because of his seduction.

“Why did your friend say that you have been waiting for me for a long time?” Cassandra asked as he laid her down on his bed. He leaned down over her, just like in the picture he had seen in her mind before.

“I will explain everything in the morning,” he said.

“Is that your way of asking me to spend the night?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Then how could I possibly refuse?”

Ashira appeared in a darkened corner of the stone room. The lights of the sleeping city shone through the window, bathing the chamber in a pale amber light.

She walked toward the bed where two sleeping bodies laid entwined, smiling down at the woman in Richard’s arms.

He had been little more than a trained killer when she had first come to him, but it had been easy to see the potential in him. She knew he still cursed her name when frustration overcame him. But maybe now he would be able to see the worth in all the pleasure that he had brought to the world. See why his sacrifice had been necessary.

There would still be so much power in her former minion, even without her magic. Perhaps she would let him keep a measure of that strength as a gift from her. He had served her well.

All of her incubi all had.

It had been many millennia since she had been cast out by her male counterparts. The gods of shame still reigned, and some women still suffered without their own pleasure, but that was starting to change. And that meant that she must as well.

Ashira, caressed the woman's cheek.

Cassandra stirred, her sleepy eyes opened a slit.

"Hello, Cassandra," Ashira said in the woman’s mind.

The woman looked up at her quizzically through the fog of sleep.

"This is nothing but a dream. I just came to tell you that you were a good choice for my Richard. He needs an equal, someone unafraid to give him the gift of her strength.”

Cassandra smiled and nodded, before nestling back into the down pillow beneath her head. As she closed her eyes, Ashira felt a satisfaction she had not in a very long time.

And with that, Ashira cut the bind that held Richard to her and gave him to Cassandra.