Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3) (5 page)

Steffania
snorted softly. {The woman’s position or the seat cushions?} When Ramsey didn’t answer she stretched out on the huge bed and ran her fingers across the headboard. “How lovely,
Dominus
. I’m sure you will be comfortable here.” {There are two listening devices in the headboard and a vidcorder hidden in the statue of the poor unfortunate taking it in the ass.}

{
So that makes twenty-four devices in eight rooms. They aren’t going to miss much.} “Yes, I’ll expect you to share the bed with me. There seems to be ample space. No need to sleep in a separate room.” Ram lay down next to Steffania and outlined her lips with a gentle finger. “Thank you.” Steffania bared her teeth in a smile. Her eyes damned him to hell.

Laughing, Ram rolled to his feet and walked to the end of the bed, examining the
sturdy posts that rose from each corner of the sleeping platform. With a devilish look her way, he hefted the rings that hung off each post. Bed hangings ran through them. Steffania suspected Ramsey would put them to a different purpose. The thought of being bound, helpless, for whatever Ramsey DeKieran wished to do to her body started a burn in her feminine places. She hated herself for the aching want the man continued to awaken in her. 

“Run a bath for us, Steffania. Training starts early tomorrow and I’m tired.”

“As you wish.” {Us? Run a bath for
us
?}

His head turned to her slowly.
{You heard me. Us.}

Steffania made sure she was in the bathroom with the water thundering into the small pool they called a tub before she let her tongue loose
in a softly scathing tirade excoriating a certain Ramsey Melborn DeKieran.

Ram sauntered in some minutes later, nude. Steffania watched surreptitiously. She
shook her head to clear the vision a bare Ramsey left seared on her retinas. She had thought the man sexy when fully clothed but the erotic reality of his bare form made her fight to conceal her reaction. Her hands longed to trace the fine line of dark hair in the center of his abdomen arrowing down to the thick, male organ nested between the hard muscles of his thighs. She imagined the weighty fullness of his testicles rolling and filling her palm as she drew his scrotum away from the base of his cock. The palms of her hands itched to touch him, caress him – bring that organ to full hardness and see the fulfillment of what it promised quiescent. She rubbed her hands up and down her upper thighs to dilute the phantom sensations and took a deep breath to steady herself.

Sitting on the side of the tub, Ram swung his feet over and sank slowly into the warm water, leaning against the side with his eyes closed. “By the gods, that’s good. Come, Steffania. I need my back washed.”

Twisting her hair up on the top of her head and securing it with a tie, she daintily stepped into the water and slid toward Ram. “
Dominus
,” she whispered, swallowing the hard lump in her throat. If he made any move toward her, she’d surrender to whatever he wanted – for Verdantia.
Right, Rickard, lie to yourself some more.
“Lean forward.”

She poured liquid soap onto a soft sponge and began at the nape of his neck, smoot
hing the foaming soap over rock-hard trapezius, deltoid and rhomboid muscles – really the man could be an anatomy lesson if she could remember all the different muscle groups.

“How does someone get muscles like these?” Steffania wasn’t aware she had voiced her thoughts aloud.

“By continually getting out of tight places,” Ram muttered. He reached back and stilled her hand, then turned to face her, removing the sponge from her hand. “Turn.” He made a circling gesture.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she turned her back to him. A gentle hand smoothed the foaming soap up her neck and across her shoulders then down between
her shoulder blades in a firm massaging motion. Steffania sank further and further into a world that contained only sensation.

“Lean back.”

She relaxed into Ramsey’s hard chest. Her head fell back on his shoulder. His hand spread the slippery foam across the top of her collarbones then down to where the waterline met her breasts. Without conscious volition, she arched into his touch, inviting his hand to explore further. A gentle caress answered her body’s invitation; Ram’s hand cupped her breast, thumbing her nipple. The sensation streaking to her clit shattered her reverie. She sat up abruptly. Her buttocks slid back into the vee made by his thighs and cradled a rock hard erection. She scooted forward with a soft gasp, but an iron arm wrapped her waist.

“Not so fast, sweetheart.”

Steffania tried desperately to contain her trembling, to slow her racing heart. “What do you want?”

Ram’s low,
throaty laugh did nothing to soothe her apprehension. Releasing her, he stood in a small cascade of water. “Wash the rest of me.”

Steffania closed her eyes
.
Verdantia, remember, Rickard – Verdantia.
She composed herself, then stood and turned to face him. Trying to avoid his mesmerizing gaze, she picked up the sponge and washed the rest of him, starting at his broad collarbones and ending where the water lapped his heavily muscled thighs. Then she addressed what hung between his thighs. Ram stood in place and watched her in a silence broken only by his breathing. His deep, even breaths grew faster and heavier as her soapy hand dwelt on the most glorious cock she’d ever seen. Thrusting up from a nest of dark, curling hair, the rose-pink flesh taunted her with its heft and weight. The slide of it through her soapy fist made her lower parts weep with envy. The petals of flesh between her legs swelled in readiness.

“Stop.”

Steffania glanced up into half-lidded eyes that held banked fire. Muscles worked in his tightly clenched jaw. A strong hand cupped the back of her head and pulled her toward his groin.

“Use your mouth.”

With hands that shook from pure want, she clasped his upright shaft and rinsed him. She held his cock steady as she rimmed its fat head, lubricating it with her saliva. As she sucked him into her mouth, his abdomen contracted and he grunted a softly murmured expletive that she did not
quite
catch. His large hand tightened in her hair, but he didn’t force her down onto his cock, as she had feared. Rather, his tight grip on her hair stabilized her head and set a rhythm to her sucking pulls. His flesh tasted clean. His satin skin filled her mouth completely, pressing her lips against her teeth. There was no way she could take the whole length of him and she added her hands to her stroking. His hand held her firmly down and with a choked off moan, he came, flooding her mouth. She swallowed convulsively. He tasted bitter and salty and...delicious.

He held her there for a few moments,
and then ran his fingers through her hair in a gentle caress, pulling her away from his receding organ and pressing her head to his thigh. Finally, he released her entirely. He sat back into the warm water and closed his eyes. “Go to bed, Steffania. It’s been a hard day. I’ll join you shortly.”

Water ran down her legs onto the floor as she climbed out of the tub, dried her body and walked nude to their bedroom. She removed the remains of her makeup and the comm-disc. She climbed into the luxury of the huge bed and waited for him, frustrated and resentful. Her body ached with a firestorm of unreleased arousal but she could do nothing about it. Ram could walk into the bedroom at any moment
, and she didn’t want to reveal her anguished need for the release only he could give her; no mere hand or tool could replace what she had seen but a moment before. But it
had
been a long day and fatigue finally claimed her.

Steffania awoke to a soft grey morning. Ram’s hand gently played with her left nipple ring, sliding the dainty gryphon charm back and forth on the delicate circlet of precious metal. The previous night’s arousal returned with vicious heat when his fingers gently rolled and pinched the hard pink bud of her nipple. She lay on her back with Ram’s weight pinning her right side, his heavy thigh swung across her pubic bone and his torso, weighing down her right shoulder. A hot, hard erection branded her abdomen.
The sensation of being held down and controlled just fucking does it for me.
The comm-disc gleamed on the low table near the bed.
Good. Don’t want to share that thought.

She closed her eyes again and surrendered to the want building between her thighs. If she could have moved Ram’s heavy weight
pinning her thighs together in the deep down of the featherbed, she would have opened her legs in wanton invitation. Desperation tinted her need for Ramsey. Honesty forced her to admit that the sense of obligation and duty to Verdantia and Ari DeTano that figured so prominently in her decision to participate in this charade played no part in her physical response to this man. She was doing this for her own gratification.
God help me.

His right hand abandoned its play at her breast and drew delicate circles on her ab
domen then meandered in a slow, taunting slide down to her groin. Ram’s knee opened her thighs to make room for sure fingers that ran lightly along the swollen, slick flesh between her legs. One delved gently between the hypersensitive tissues, capturing her moisture, bringing it up to circle her pulsing clit. With a soft moan, Steffania opened wider. Ram’s face nestled into the crux of her neck. He began to place soft kisses up the side of her neck to her ear.

“You will accompany me to the training ground and socialize with the other
slaaf
. Find out anything you can about Veacon Narr and Lady DeAlbero. When was the last time anyone saw her with him? We need any rumor.” The harsh reality of his whispered words stripped the sexual haze from her mind but did nothing to quiet the clamor of her body.

“What?” She tried to sit up. His strong hand wrapped her neck and he shoved her back down and then covered her wi
th his body. His hard cock slid into the warm crevice of her slick folds and teased her with the promise of its thickness.

“
Vidcorders, remember,” he whispered against her lips. “Submit, woman.” Then his mouth closed on hers, biting and sucking at her lips, claiming her air, stealing the thoughts from her mind. She rose up, welcoming his kiss, wrapping her arms around him, pressing him to her with hands that clawed at the muscles of his back.
Fuck duty. I want this man.
She didn’t resurface from submersion in his kiss until cold air washed her front. Her eyes blinked open. Kneeling between her legs, Ramsey grinned down at her, rubbing a hand up and down his fierce arousal.

“Up with you, wench. We have a busy day ahead.”

“But, but,” she stammered. “Aren’t you going to – aren’t we going to –” Steffania didn’t care how needy she sounded.
Damn it all, man. You can’t leave me like this!

“I fight better when I’m a little ‘on edge’, sweetheart. Frustration makes me mean.”

Well, it sure as hell doesn’t improve my disposition.
Steffania tried to wipe her angry dissatisfaction from her face but she was sure her attitude slipped out.

Ramsey lifted a lip in a humorless smile. “Get dressed and find me something to eat. Oh, and Steffania, don’t forget to wear all your jewels.” He leaned forward as i
f to kiss her jaw and whispered, “I’d hate to miss anything going on in that lovely mind of yours.”

A chauffeured air-car took them the short, ten-minute trip to the training center.
The gladiatorial training grounds adjoined the Dominion Games’ coliseum and consisted of multiple, sand-floored, rings. Hallways of raw stone columns still carrying the mark of the stonecutter circled the entire complex. The halls’ deep shadows and ornate wall fountains offered the gladiators and the visitors the only respite from the glare of light and oppressive heat on the ground level. Steffania’s eyes wandered, absorbing another expensive, expansive version of ancient, old-Earth Rome.
Someone is caught up in their fantasy
.

Shaded by a gaudy red canopy, s
he sat apart from the other
slaaf
in the second-level visitors’ gallery and looked down on the entire scene. A steady breeze billowed the canopy’s stiff, opaque material, making a soft
whoomp, whoomp
, but otherwise the only sounds were the clashing ring of steel and the animal grunts of effort from fighters below. In spite of the breeze, Steffania could feel perspiration pool between her breasts.
Why doesn’t this place have environmental control?
But she supposed the lack of modern amenities was all part of the attempted ‘realism’.
Figures. My first time off Verdantia in years and I’m stuck in a flawlessly accurate rendition of ancient Earth.