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  She reached her peak quickly and jumped over it. She came hard, her walls clutching at her fingers. She then lay back with a huge sigh, closing her eyes as she enjoyed the frissons of pleasure that echoed in the wake of her orgasm.

  Her eyes flew open when she heard him move. He laid the sword beside her on the bed, and then stood up to remove his clothing in a methodical fashion. When he was finally naked he paused so she could look her fill of him. He was so intimidating in his towering silence. He was hanging heavily aroused, making her smile to herself. So, despite his placid expression, he had been aroused by what he had seen. Good. She had wanted that. She had wanted it more than anything. Even more than feeling pleasure herself.

  He then bent at the waist and laid his hands upon the bed on either side of her hips, stretching forward to press his mouth to hers. He kissed her ferociously for a minute, and then eased back to look into her eyes. “Do you know you are the most fantastically beautiful thing I have ever seen?”

  She blushed with pleasure. “It is true I am beautiful, Sir, but only to you.”

  “I need to put you on display again for others to look at so you can see how beautiful you are in the eyes of others.”

  Her heart jumped in her chest at the thought of being put on display naked for others to see. At first she mistook it for discomfort, but then she realized she was excited. Her breathing quickened again.

  “So. You like the idea of others admiring you, do you?”

  “I like anything you ask of me, Sir.”

  “While I appreciate your obedience, I don’t want you to coddle me with fluffed-up answers when I ask you a direct question. Do you or do you not like the idea of being put on display?”

  “I like it, Sir,” she answered simply for him.

  “Good. I will remember that. If we were not packing up camp and traveling tomorrow I would have you spend the day naked. However, it is too cold to have you naked on horseback. Perhaps in the summer.”

  More excitement trilled through her. She marveled at his mind and how it was always working to concoct scenarios meant for their mutual pleasure. He seemed to know what she needed or wanted even before she did… and he imagined her pleasure in ways she couldn’t. Not yet anyway. Perhaps as time passed she would be better able to come up with ways to please them both.

  “Do you know how much it pleased me to see you initiate pleasure between us?” he said, as though he had just read her mind.

  “It pleased me most of all, Sir,” she said. “But now I wish to please you.”

  “You do please me. Tremendously. That is why you wear my collar. Never forget that. I know it is a lot to live up to, but continue to be yourself and I cannot ask more of you.”

  “That is an easy request because I don’t know how to be anything other than myself.”

  “What I mean is, do not lose your fire. I want your obedience, but I also want you to challenge me when you think I am in the wrong. I want you to speak your mind and give your wise opinion. I have come to count on these things.”

  “I will swear to always do so. I cannot help myself but to challenge you as you know. But I wish to obey as well.”

  “I know it sounds contradictory, but it really isn’t. I do not want a mindless lapdog. I want intelligence and wickedness and tempered fierceness. I want it all. I am selfish, and I want everything.”

  “I will give you everything. Everything that I am. Everything that I can.”

  “I know. That is why I love you, Melena. I could not love you otherwise.”

  She felt her heart clench in her chest when she thought of him not loving her. She couldn’t bear the idea. She craned her neck to kiss him, deepening and darkening the kiss with rampant fire. Her arms came up and wound around his neck, pulling him down toward her. He tensed his muscles, resisting her, daring her to pull harder, to fight for him. She did, dragging at him with all her weight suspended on him. He chuckled and took mastery of the kiss onto himself. She moaned as his tongue drove deep and his hard body crushed down on hers. She quickly wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him into contact with her.

  “Such a greedy Pet,” he said with a low growl. “Such a needy Pet. Tell me… tell me what you need.”

  “I need you,” she breathed. “Like the beat of my heart, I need you. I need you in my arms and in my body. I need you safe and protected. I need your strength and your love. Call me greedy… for that is what I am, but do not leave me. Do not stop loving me.”

  “Oh, Pet… I don’t think I can. But in the way you’ve made me strong I fear you’ve also made me weak.”

  “How can you say that?” she cried softly. “Please don’t say that!”

  “It is truth. If my enemies wanted to make me weak, all they have to do is hurt you or take you from me. I should send you away, hide you somewhere safe until this is all over.”

  “But that could take months! Years even! I know very well how long wars last. I couldn’t bear to be apart from you for so long.”

  “Nor I you,” he said with feeling as he bent his head and kissed her throat. He drew a line of kisses down the column of her throat, pausing at the spot where tendons connected her neck to her shoulder. He bit down on the yoke of her shoulder so hard it made her cry out. There was definitely going to be the marks of his teeth left behind. Then he dragged his teeth down over her skin to the rise of her breast and bit her there just as hard.

  When he reached her nipple she shivered hard in anticipation. He did not disappoint her. He sucked her into his mouth deeply, and then scored her with his teeth, snagging her nipple and pulling so tenaciously that her breast lifted toward him. She groaned in pleasure and pain. She cupped his ears as she held his head to her. She lifted her hips and caught his hard erection in the cradle of her wet pussy. She rubbed herself against him, stimulating herself until the combination of his mouth and his cock made her cream so heavily and had her panting in pleasure. All the while he bit at her tender flesh. Here. There. Everywhere. She returned the favor, biting down hard on his thick shoulder.

  “Ah!” he cried. He arrested her eyes with his. “Little savage. Let’s put that mouth to better uses.”

  He rolled them over so he was beneath her, then pushed her head down until she was eye level with his wet, glistening cock. It was her juices that coated him, and she could smell the heady aroma of both of their arousals. Without any further instruction from him, she took him in her hand and stroked him from root to tip and then back again within her tight fist. She did this several times before finally settling her mouth around the head of his cock and sucking him deeply into her mouth. His fingers threaded into her hair, his hands clenching her head tightly. Together they worked him deeper into her mouth and set up a hard rhythm. It took some time, but soon he began to make sounds of stimulation and pleasure. He began to thrust his hips up slightly to meet the downward push of her mouth. He sucked air in through his teeth and ejected it in a groan of pleasure.

  “Yes. Yes… that’s it. Suck me hard. My naughty little Pet. You want me to come down your throat, don’t you? Ah! God! You dirty little bitch. My bitch. I’m going to fuck you like a dog. I’m going to mount you and bite you and fuck you like a beast in the field!”

  His words enflamed them both. He spoke for them both, driving her onward until he shouted out and exploded into her mouth. Her mouth filled with warmth and wetness, and she swallowed it down. She took everything and then licked him clean until he had to pull her off of himself.

  “Enough,” he said hoarsely. “I need a moment before I can bear your touch again. God… you wring me out. You take everything… everything. It stabs me deep, a wound I take with joy.” He grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in the eyes. “Never betray me. I have let you in closer than any woman before you. Betray me and you will suffer my displeasure as equally as you bask now in my love. As it is I have to deal with Hassa and Daria. One of them has betrayed me, and I will find out who.”

  “How will you find out?” s
he asked, not bothering to reassure him she would never betray him. It wasn’t called for in this situation. He did not want assurance. He simply wanted to deliver the warning.

  “I have been monitoring their letters. I have been interviewing their servants. Next I will call each in to face me. I will do this before we leave tomorrow. But I think I know who it is already.”

  “Daria? She is vain enough and stupid enough,” Melena said with a frown.

  “She is the most likely. She could have her head turned easily by a rich enough offer. I have always known the way to keep her content is to lavish her with material goods.”

  “You should not be keeping her content. Rather the opposite,” Melena said with a frown.

  “And she did… in her time. But it has been a long time since I’ve had her in my bed. I found her avarice and vanity to be unattractive pretty quickly. But she is a senior shisha and deserves to be treated as such.

  “But,” he continued, “I would be remiss if I did not consider Hassa as well. Though she has always expressed resounding loyalty to me and has enjoyed my company the longest and most frequently of my women, there is always the chance she has grown discontented. Any woman can grow discontented. Especially when forced to share the affections of a single man.”

  “You should retire the women who no longer interest you,” Melena said. She was frowning deeply.

  “Why such a sour face?”

  She seemed to catch herself and erased the frown from her features, though he could see distaste in her eyes. “I merely dislike the idea of anyone betraying you,” she said.

  He contemplated her a long minute, and she hoped he didn’t see through her lie. What she was really thinking was that she resented having to share him with others. She wanted to keep him to herself. But she also understood that this was what it meant to be the shisha of such a powerful man. All she could hope for was to remain his favorite for as long as possible. She hoped she learned the skills to do so. He was a man of particular appetites. However she thought she had what it took to satisfy most of those appetites.

  Still, she was inexperienced. She needed to learn more. More ways to satisfy him. She wanted to keep her collar. She dreaded doing or not doing anything that might make him take it away.

  “You do not like the idea of sharing me,” he said knowingly.

  She sighed and looked away from him, resting her cheek down on his chest. “I know I don’t have the right to feel that way.”

  “You can feel it all you like, but don’t let jealousy overtake you. It is a black emotion and can only lead to bad things.”

  “I am sorry. I will try.”

  He took her chin in hand and made her look at him. “You will succeed,” he said sternly.

  “Yes, Sir,” she said softly, fighting back the sting of tears. It hurt that he might want someone else. It hurt that he was making her accept that. She had to be mature about it, she told herself sternly. But all the stern lectures in the world wouldn’t make the feelings go away. She would simply have to take the feelings as they came and work hard to get through them. There was no sense worrying about it, then. It would only taint their present relationship if she were to spend every minute looking to the end of their time together.

  He bent his head and kissed her lips. “There now, Pet. You will always be my only Pet. You will always wear this collar as long as you never give me cause to remove it. That means you will always be my most treasured woman.”

  “Always is a long time,” she said forlornly. “You may not feel this way in the future.”

  He frowned at her. “Do you think me so changeable? Do I look like a young boy whose fancy turns from one thing to the next so easily?”

  “No! I did not mean that!”

  “But that is what you said.”

  “Then I was wrong. Please forgive me. It’s just that… I fear displeasing you.”

  “You will not displease me unless you betray me,” he said to her. “Now, enough of this. There is something you must do for me tomorrow.”

  “What?” she asked, shaking off her fears.

  “You must go into the women’s tent and take a bath there.”

  She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You want me to take a bath?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “I will tell you after the bath. I don’t want to spoil the effect.”

  “All right,” she said a little dubiously.

  “Come now. Let’s rest. I have not slept in a long while, and you have wrung me out.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said, snuggling down against him as he pulled a soft fur up over their naked bodies.

  As she drifted off to sleep she wondered what the next day would bring.

  Tomorrow they would begin the trek toward war.

  Jacquelyn Frank

  Jacquelyn has lived in the Western North Carolina mountain area around Asheville. After a lifetime of striving to be good enough to be published, she has enjoyed the many blessings her fans have rained on her with their loyalty over the years. With four sisters and other family scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and a history of living all across the USA herself, she still always finds ways to give a nod to her native New York in her work.

  Jacquelyn lives with her three “children,” a trio of domestic shorthaired cats whose personalities have often inspired aspects of her characters. A former sign language interpreter and substitute teacher, she is a powerful advocate of reading and writing. She is known for her persistent gifts of books to her nieces and nephews, as well as all the other children in her life, in an effort to see them love both as much as she does. She believes there is nothing more rewarding than the imagination and all it inspires, and nothing more tragic than illiteracy.

  Feel free to contact her at [email protected] or visit her website at jacquelynfrank.com and follow her on facebook.com/authorjacquelynfrank and twitter.com/JacquelynFrank.

  Jackie’s Changeling Page: changelingpress.com/author.php?uid=206.