Droit De Seigneur (6 page)

She looked absolutely appalled at the sight of both his finger and the implement she had so diligently been trying to avoid. “But no, I don’t want it – I can’t – it – no – please!” It was as close to begging as she would allow herself to get.

But he left and went around to the back of her again. She felt him put his finger between her legs again, and it rooted around there quite rudely while she whimpered and moaned, until he reached a little further forward, and he stroked a place she hadn’t known she owned, and Amber felt like she was going to come out of her own skin.

Piers merely chuckled at her reaction, and then she heard him pick up the implement again, and now she knew exactly what the implement he was using looked like. But she never knew, from then on, when it was going to land on her rump. Piers, for his part, was listening very carefully to the clues Amber’s body gave him – her breathing, the way her body writhed, the moans she couldn’t control – that didn’t have to do with the fact that he’d just brought that ruler like implement he’d had custom made down onto those gorgeous, red hillocks of hers.

He loved everything about her, especially about this delightful combination of disciplining and pleasuring her. She was entirely off balance, and that was one of the best things about it. Amber didn’t know whether she was coming or going; she was entirely out of control, from both the pain and the pleasure, and Piers had the feeling that she hadn’t experienced that much, even though she was a woman.

He intended that she was going to be experiencing it a lot more from now on. He continued to alternate, pleasure and pain, for quite some time, balancing her on that precarious edge, before allowing her to freefall into a blinding, searing orgasm that left her hoarse from screaming, partially in incredible pleasure and partially because she was incredibly afraid of what was happening to her.

She ended up in the corner of the room, quite wild eyed, clutching an old rusted buckle she found on the floor like a weapon.

Threatening him was getting to be a habit with her. Luckily, she was, especially in this situation, easily neutralized. He had her back on the bed with him in a trice, huddled against him.

He’d never seen anyone react to bed sport that way, but then he should have expected that Amber would do something different.

Piers sat back against the wall, with Amber between his legs, wrapped in all of the furs and surrounded by his not inconsiderable bulk, because she was shivering. “Amber, dearest, what’s the matter?”

“What’s wrong with me? What just happened? That’s never happened to me before in my life? Am I dying? I feel like I’m dying! I’m all weak kneed and weepy and my legs feel like jelly

– “

“Shh-shh-shh.” Piers found himself in the awkward, unusual position of comforter. But at least now he understood what the matter was, and he was annoyed with himself for not anticipating it. Amber was, after all, a sheltered, country girl. He knew she was a virgin, he’d discovered that delightful fact himself. Despite the fact that she liked to parade through the countryside dressed as a boy, she was still very innocent, and she had had absolutely no idea where he’d been guiding her, and what the culmination he’d lead her to was.

He was surprised to find himself indulging in what he’d always eschewed with other women, even Josette; the petting and cuddling and snuggling they all wanted but he abhorred. He tucked her in next to him, tight against his side, allowing his mere large presence to be a comfort, but also pressing kisses on the top of her head and stroking that gorgeous, unusually colored hair.

Her breathing regulated slowly as he spoke in a low, quiet voice. “I’m sorry, Amber. I didn’t do that very well.” She had no idea this was one of the rarest of apologies; he almost never apologized to anyone, certainly not to a peasant English girl. “I should have prepared you for what was going to happen. That was a gift to me, that explosion in your body. It was a very precious gift. It happens to a man more often, and a woman much more rarely. You are an exquisitely unique woman, Amber.”

She wasn’t sure whether she was going to allow his pretty speech to placate her or not.

“You mean I’m not dying?”

He chuckled softly. “No, you’re not. In fact, your woman’s body is so wondrous, that you can do that again at any time.” He reached down, as if to do it again to her, but she was out of the bed and across the room in a flash, looking as if she would throw herself out the window if he so much as touched her again.

Piers decided it was best not to push her right now. But he didn’t want her to think that she could simply run away from him, either. He stood, and commanded that she come back into his open arms.

Amber did as she was ordered to, but he knew she didn’t want to, and that she didn’t quite trust him not to throw her down on the bed and either begin either punishing or pleasuring her again, or some combination of the two.

And she was right not to trust him. He was her lord and master, and he could do anything he liked with her, at any time.

But right now, he didn’t want to push her too far. Overall, besides the fact that she had shown up his entire hunting party, she had done very well. He crossed the room to a concealed panel in the wall, then brought her down a hidden staircase that ended up in the room she had been given.

Piers again indulged himself and put her to bed like a baby, tucking her in and noticing the dark circles under her eyes. She looked absolutely exhausted. First orgasms were apparently quite the ordeal. She was already asleep before he even turned to leave. He pealed back the thin blanket and observed the handiwork he’d created on her lovely seat, before turning to sneak back up the stairs while she slept soundly.

He embroidered a story about the slim boy poacher he’d sent on his way, making sure no one suspected exactly who that boy was, despite the fact that everyone knew it was Amber’s screams that issued from his room so closely after.

Amber might have wanted to have been terribly embarrassed about everyone in the keep hearing her being punished last night, but she didn’t have a chance to – she was much too busy.

Mrs. Tulane keep her going all morning with the weeding and the fertilizing and the harvesting and the drying of all the various herbs, to say nothing of the potions she concocted, which she was eager to learn, with a few she was dying to teach the old woman, but then she also liked to go into the nearby village and do anything she could to help the sick and ailing there, taking the least of the herbs to the people and distributing them in the Count’s name, which gained him much favor with them. When he rode by on that big black charger, instead of the grumbles and groans he heard from the other provinces through which he traveled, in the villages where Amber visited, they chanted his name, and the children followed him through the streets.

Mrs. Tulane came running to fetch her one afternoon, saying that the master wanted her to accompany him into the village, that he had a question for her. She followed after him on foot, until they were well away from the castle, and he leaned down and put her up in front of him.

“You look pensive today, Mademoiselle,” he said in his native tongue. “What are you thinking about?”

“I was wondering what you wanted to ask me,” she replied in perfectly accented French.

Piers was quiet for a moment, then said, “It seems I am a hero in some towns, a heel in others. I wondered if you had any idea why.”

“Why would I know, Sir?”

“Because you often know of unusual things, as you are an unusual lady, my flower.” They turned a corner and rode down a small hill, into a tiny but generally prosperous village, and were immediately swamped by children. Piers thought they were all coming to see him, but then he realized that they weren’t anywhere near as thrilled to see him as they were to see Amber.

He allowed her to slip down, and she disappeared into a sea of grubby hands and smiling but generally toothless and somewhat grimey faces. He pulled Tygan to a halt, and just listened to her talking to them. She was as straightforward and no nonsense with them as she was with everyone else.

“Timmy, how goes your finger? Has it fallen off yet? Let me see it.” The lad in question extended his finger proudly. It had a dirty bandage on it, which he bravely allowed her to remove.

“Have you been keeping it clean and washing it like I showed you?” He nodded solemnly.

”Well, it looks like you have, and it’s healing beautifully. I guess you know what that gets you!” Like magic, a sweetmeat appeared in her hand, and just as quickly disappeared down Timmy’s gullet.

The other children were treated much the same, whether or not they had as grave an injury as Timmy’s.

Before she let them go, though, he heard her say quietly, “Remember, though, who is it that lets me come here, and gives me the medicines that helps your families and the sweetmeats that fills your bellies to overflowing?”

“Sir Piers!” They all screamed in unison. He was stunned.

“And who is our great king now?”

“King William!”

“Very good, children. Now run along. I have other things to do.” When they scattered, and she rose, Amber refused to look up at him, although she knew without him saying so that he wished it.

“I thought I was the enemy?”

“You are, to me. But they have to live in the future, in a world where we’ve lost the war, where we’re an occupied nation. It’s much easier for them to come to grips with it than it ever will be for me.” She met his eyes, of her own volition. “If you win over the hearts of the peasantry, you’ll win the hearts of the nation. They are England, Sir Piers.” As they made their way through the village, many more people came up to her than to him, which could well be attributed to his status and their reluctance to approach him. But some did come to him with flowers, bowing and scraping but thanking him most often for her, and her for saving this relative or that, or this limb or that.

“What are you using to save them, might I ask?”

Amber glanced up at him, wincing into the sun. “If you’re asking if your men are feeling the lack, you may rest assured that I would never do that. The villagers get what would have ended up on the compost pile, or as a forgotten ingredient in someone’s tea. It’s such a little thing, and it helps them so enormously, and I always make sure that they know that I’m doing it in your and the King’s good names.”

Beautiful, sensual, and politically adept. This woman was too good to be true.

By the time they left the village, he looked like a maid on May Day, and she’d filled his saddle bags with all sorts of homemade goodies from the grateful villagers.

He was gone for a time, to the site of the new castle. Amber found herself being extremely productive in his absence, not having to worry about whether or not she’d be summoned to his chambers and punished harshly for something she’d done. She felt free, and did very much as she pleased, almost as if she was at home again.

The only catch was that he had awakened her in a way that made her uncomfortable, especially at night, when her thoughts were wont to travel back to when his fingers were where they oughtn’t be, touching that spot that no one else knew about, making her feel that new and exciting way she’d never felt before. When it had happened that first time, she would have sworn she would never want to feel that way again. It was too . . . just too much. Too sensitive. Too raw. Too impossible to deal with.

She couldn’t remember a time when she’d been quite so frightened, except perhaps when he mother had died. But even then, she hadn’t been in fear for her own life. This had most definitely been a worry that she was going to expire, right then and there. Her heart was pounding, she was sweating and panting and her body was contracting in mysterious and she was sure dangerous ways . . . it was certain to be a sinful thing, this whatever it was that he had done to her, and Amber knew she was going to die from it. She just knew.

But she didn’t. And she would never forget just how surprisingly gentle he was with her.

He’d gathered her up like the frightened child she was, and taken her into his enormous bed –

which she was surprised to find later was still too small for him – and held her until she was more able to come to grips with what had happened.

She wished he had explained to her what was going to happen. It might have helped, although she wasn’t sure that she would have believed him. It was something so – so different that it had to be experienced, and even now, looking back at it, she almost thought it was some sort of dream, until her body reminded her, throbbed and ached and almost began to clench again, on its own, completely without his touch

She would never have thought that her body was capable of something that extraordinary.

No one had ever told her. Certainly not her father, and she doubt even her mother, if she had lived.

Amber hated to admit it as she turned and thrashed on her little bed, but she hoped he came home.

Soon.

When he did, it was with news that the King would be visiting soon, so everything needed to be spit shined and polished to within an inch of its life. He arrived with only a small entourage, most of his men having stayed behind to come home in a few days. Piers slid down from Tygan and crossed the courtyard to the gardens immediately, grabbing Amber from her duties and pulling her up the stairs to his chamber, consigning anyone who might gossip about them to the devil.

He charged his manservant, Archibald, with bringing him a tub full of fresh bathwater by the fire. Amber sat on the edge of the bed while he downed a glass of wine and watched her ravenously, as a stream of servants paraded in and out of the room with buckets full of water to fill the small, barely man sized tub with steaming water.

“Shall I stay and assist you with your bath, Sir?” Archie asked.

“No, thank you, you may go,” Piers dismissed him with a wave, and Archie left discreetly.

He descended into that water like he’d dipped into his first woman so many years ago, slowly, savoring it every inch of the way. He’d always adored water, any way he could get into it. He’d driven his mother crazy, swimming in lakes and ponds when she thought it would kill him dead. His entire family had a complete aversion to bathing, and their annual bath had to suffice. He bathed as often as he could, which wasn’t nearly as often as he liked, although he had no aversions whatsoever to taking dips in the clear, cold streams or lakes hereabouts. They were absolutely beautiful.