Page 39

CHAPTER 39

M ary

I froze, my fingers still buried inside me, my body trembling on the edge of release. The shock of hearing Marmareus address me directly sent ice through my veins, momentarily dousing the flames of my arousal. How had he known what I was doing? Were there cameras in my cell too? Of course there were.

For a heartbeat, I considered obeying him. The part of me that had been trained to submit, to please, to follow orders, urged me to withdraw my hand, to deny myself the pleasure that hovered so tantalizingly close.

But something else rose within me—a fierce, sudden defiance that burned through the fog of submission. Who was this man to command my pleasure? What right did he have to control my body, my sensations, my release? He wasn’t Sven. He wasn’t like Sven, even.

“No,” I whispered, the word barely audible even to my own ears. “No.”

With deliberate slowness, I resumed the circular motion of my fingers, pressing harder against my clit, driving my other fingers deeper inside my slick channel. My eyes remained fixed on the screen, on Marmareus using Camille’s mouth, on the leather restraints that bound her body.

The pleasure rebuilt rapidly, a tidal wave gathering force. I could feel it cresting, ready to crash over me. My breath came in short, sharp gasps, my muscles tensing as I approached the precipice.

“I said stop, Mary,” Marmareus growled, his voice harder now, even as he continued to thrust into Camille’s mouth. A chill went down my spine as I understood how closely he could follow my lewd, forbidden actions.

His command only fueled my determination, though. With a defiant whimper, I pressed harder, moved faster, driving myself toward the peak with single-minded intensity.

The orgasm hit me with stunning force, tearing a strangled cry from my throat. My body convulsed, inner walls clenching rhythmically around my fingers as waves of ecstasy radiated outward from my core. My vision blurred, the cell around me fading as pleasure overwhelmed my senses.

And then, as the physical sensations reached their zenith, I got the vision I had craved. The familiar rushing sound filled my ears, and I felt myself being pulled away, up and out of my body, into the branches of Yggdrasil.

I floated there again, among the ancient boughs, my consciousness traveling beyond the confines of the cell, exploding the physical boundaries of my body. Below me, I saw the nine worlds connected by the immense trunk and branches of Yggdrasil. Above, the sky stretched endlessly, stars wheeling rapidly in patterns both familiar and utterly alien.

My vision adjusted to this ethereal realm, and I felt myself rushing out from the trunk, along one of the branches, until I saw a scene unfolding, as if through the opening of a jeweled egg, in the now-familiar frozen seascape of the ice-covered bay, gleaming silver-blue in the pale winter sunlight.

I hovered above it, a scene of breathtaking beauty and—my volva sense told me—terrible significance. The air seemed alive with suspended particles of frost, tiny diamonds hanging in the atmosphere, surrounding the two figures who stood facing each other on the frozen plain.

My heart lurched painfully as I recognized them both. Sven, my true master, stood tall and proud, his golden hair catching the sunlight, his broad shoulders wrapped in a fur-lined cloak that rippled slightly in the gentle wind. Across from him, Leo Marmareus stood equally tall, equally proud, though darker in coloring and dress. Between them lay an expanse of perhaps fifty feet, a no-man’s-land of pristine ice.

Behind Sven, in the distance, I could make out the sleek, deadly lines of the longship, its dragon-headed prow rising proudly from the ice where it seemed nature had overtaken it. Sons of Odin moved about it, their forms blurred at this distance, but their purpose clear—they were preparing for something, something important.

Behind Marmareus, the soaring spires of the steel cathedral reached toward the pale sky, its brutal architecture both beautiful and foreboding. Men in dark clothing—Pretorian Guardsmen, I realized—stood at its perimeter, watchful and ready.

The two men began walking toward each other, their strides purposeful, but not aggressive. They met in the center of that expanse of ice, and to my astonishment, they clasped forearms in the ancient gesture of warriors who respect each other despite their differences.

“Hallstrom,” Marmareus said, his voice carrying clearly to me even at that distance. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Marmareus,” Sven replied. “I am glad to know you at last.”

The vision dissipated, crumbling like frost under the morning sun. I blinked, disoriented by the abrupt transition from the vast, cosmic landscape of Yggdrasil to the confines of my cell. The view screen still glowed across from me, and what I saw there made my breath catch in my throat.

Marmareus had withdrawn his glistening cock from Camille’s mouth. Her lips were red and swollen, tears tracking down her flushed cheeks. With deft, practiced movements, he unclipped the leashes from her collar, his expression a mask of controlled desire.

“Turn around,” he commanded, his voice low and rough with arousal. “Present yourself properly.”

I watched, transfixed, as Camille awkwardly maneuvered her body, hampered by the restraints that still bound her wrists to her belt. Marmareus helped her, his large hands guiding her movements with firm authority until she was positioned on her knees, her face pressed against the cushion, her bottom raised high in offering.

With swift efficiency, Marmareus unclipped her wrists from her belt, only to reconfigure her bonds. He pulled her arms back, forcing her to bend even more deeply, then clipped her wrist cuffs together behind her thighs. The position was terribly obscene in the revelation it forced on Camille—her pussy and anus completely exposed, available for whatever use he might choose.

“Beautiful,” Marmareus murmured, running a hand over the curve of her still-pink bottom. “This is how a Columba must learn to present herself to her master.”

I should have looked away. I wanted to look away. But my eyes remained fixed on the screen, drinking in every detail of Camille’s subjugation. The way her body trembled under Marmareus’ touch. The soft, helpless whimper that escaped her lips when his fingers trailed down to explore her exposed sex. The way her hips instinctively pushed back against his hand, betraying her arousal amid her humiliation.

Marmareus crouched over her, his powerful body dwarfing hers. He reached beneath her to cup one breast, pinching the nipple between his fingers as his other hand positioned his cock at the entrance to her pussy. Camille made a sound—half protest, half plea—as the thick head pressed against her opening.

To my dismay, I felt my hand drifting back between my legs, drawn there by some primal force I couldn’t resist. My fingers found my clit, still sensitive from my recent orgasm, and began to circle the little bud once again, a whimper escaping my throat at the jolt of ecstasy that shot through my system.

“Mary O’Toole,” Marmareus said, looking directly at the camera, at me, “you’re a very naughty girl, aren’t you? When I’m done with you, you’ll wish you only got a spanking and a fucking like your friend here.”

I heard Camille moan, as if in response to the idea that I could see what the enemy agent was doing to her. Then I watched him reach into his pocket and take out his handheld. Blinking, my heart skipping several beats, I understood that the device must have been the thing monitoring me—giving Marmareus some sort of alerts about what I had done, was doing, here in my cell.

He looked from the device into the camera, a tiny, dismaying smile on his face. Then he tapped something on the handheld, and the screen in front of me turned back into a stone wall.

“No,” I whispered. “Oh… God. Please…”

Then I felt a hot blush fill my face and scald my scalp. I wanted to see what Marmareus did to Camille, but not for the right reasons. I should want to make certain he didn’t harm my friend… and, yes, I did want that, but…

But really, to my mortification, I wanted to watch him fuck her.

“Sven,” I breathed. “Oh, God… I… I can’t…”

I bit my lip and choked back a sob as I returned to the bed and sat, looking down at my hands, clenched into little fists atop my naked thighs. I had said my Herra ’s name. I prayed I had said it so softly it wouldn’t be picked up on.

There’s nothing I can do about it now , I told myself, swallowing hard. I returned in my mind to the strange vision of my master and my captor meeting there on the frozen bay. I tried to remember what we had figured out about the symbolism of the vision’s elements: the longship for the Sons of Odin, the metal cathedral for whatever the Pretorian Guard had begun to build in the Arctic.

If Sven and Leo Marmareus could be friends in my vision, what did it mean in the real world? I smiled at the thought of calling my current insane circumstances the real world, but the question remained: was the vision I’d received true, or did it just represent my unconscious mind’s wishful thinking?

* * *

I had no idea how much time had gone by when the door to my cell finally opened again. I’d spent what felt like hours curled on the narrow bed, my mind oscillating between despair and defiance, my thoughts circling endlessly around the vision I’d received. The frozen bay, Sven and Marmareus meeting as equals, perhaps even as allies… what could it mean?

The sound of the door sliding open jolted me from my reverie. My heart leapt into my throat as I saw Leo Marmareus standing in the entrance, his tall frame silhouetted against the corridor lights. His expression was thunderous, his dark eyes glittering with controlled fury. I knew immediately that he had come to punish me for my disobedience.

“Mary O’Toole,” he said, his voice deceptively soft. “Time for you to learn what happens to naughty little Columbae who disobey direct orders.”

Terror gripped me, primal and overwhelming. Without conscious thought, I scrambled off the bed and retreated to the corner of the cell, pressing my naked body against the cold stone as if I could somehow melt into it. My hands rose instinctively in front of me, a futile attempt to ward him off.

“Please,” I whispered, my voice barely audible even to my own ears. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to?—”

“Silence,” Marmareus snapped, cutting off my pathetic attempt at apology. “You deliberately defied me. You touched yourself when I expressly forbade it. You brought yourself to orgasm while watching me use your friend.”

He advanced into the cell with the measured tread of a predator, each step deliberate, unhurried. He knew I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The cell suddenly seemed much smaller, the air thicker, harder to breathe.

“I… I couldn’t help it,” I stammered, pressing myself harder against the wall. “It just… happened.”

Marmareus’ laugh was cold, humorless. “Nothing ‘just happens’ in the Mithraeum, Mary. Every action has purpose. Every disobedience has consequences.”

He moved to the section of wall that I knew now must conceal a cabinet similar to the one in Camille’s cell. With a press of his palm against the seemingly solid stone, the panel slid open, revealing the compartment within. My breath caught in my throat as he withdrew the familiar leather items—a collar, a belt, wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs, and thigh cuffs. The same restraints I had watched him place on Camille.

The leather gleamed in the cell’s soft lighting, the metal fittings catching the light and throwing it back in glittering pinpoints. Despite my fear—or rather, to my horror, because of it—I felt my body responding to the sight, the unwelcome warmth building between my thighs.

I let out a little cry of fear when I saw him also take out a whip of a kind I’d never seen before. It was unlike anything in Sven’s collection, or anything Beaumont had used on me. The handle was polished dark wood, perhaps eighteen inches long, wrapped in braided leather at the grip. From its end extended multiple thin leather tails, each about two feet in length, knotted at intervals. The implement looked both beautiful and terrifying.

“This,” Marmareus said, holding the whip in front of me so I could see it clearly, “is called a mastix .” He ran his fingers through the leather tails, separating them, letting me see how they moved like living things. “It is the ancient implement of discipline that represents the civilization brought by my organization, the Pretorian Guard.”

The word ‘civilization’ again, linked to punishment and domination. I swallowed hard, my eyes fixed on the mastix as Marmareus continued to stroke its tails almost lovingly.

“I am going to punish you, Mary,” he said, his voice soft yet implacable. “Not just for your disobedience, but for your lies. You’ve been less than forthcoming about many things, I think.”