Page 4

Four

Tate

She missed Edwin more than ever now. Because one day she was going to have to confess something deeply ugly, and it was this: She was burning alive at the sight of Adelais’s hands deftly working open the knots of her braies.

Tate had seen plenty of nakedness in her life and was no stranger to it at Far Hope, but the revelation of the Wolf’s creamy hips and thighs, the seam of her pussy clothed with silky red curls…they stole the thoughts from Tate’s mind. She suddenly couldn’t remember why she was here, what she’d left behind Far Hope’s walls, why she should do this only as an exchange, only for Far Hope’s benefit.

All she could think of was the Wolf. Adelais.

All she could think of was the wet warmth pulling at her own sex, begging for her to rub it, please it.

With her braies and woolen chausses off, Adelais pushed her tunic up to her waist and once again spread her legs. Her cunt awaited, glistening in the brazier light. She was wet already.

“Come here,” she ordered with arrogance of someone who was rarely refused, and Tate slid off the cot to her knees, crawled the few feet over to her abbey’s would-be invader, and knelt between Adelais’s planted feet. This close, she could see a few lone freckles on Adelais’s muscled thighs, a faded scar on the outside of her hip. She smelled like grass, metal, and sweat, but it wasn’t unpleasant at all. It was intoxicating, almost. The smell of a soldier.

Adelais impatiently stripped the wimple and veil from Tate’s hair, and then her right hand molded tight to the shape of Tate’s head after the fabric was tossed aside. Tate could feel the restrained strength in that hand as it pushed her closer to where she was wanted, and a strange happiness swam in her veins. She couldn’t say why—or even what that happiness was—only that it was a ticklish, burning sort of joy as Adelais held Tate by the hair and forced her to her cunt.

Forced was the wrong word, maybe, because Tate had offered and agreed. She’d chosen to do it.

But after having chosen, the feeling of being made to do this was…overwhelming. Breathtaking. Tate could hardly think as she kissed the soft split between Adelais’s thighs, and her body keened for sex as she’d never felt it keen before. She’d done so much at Far Hope, and yet she’d never done this , whatever this was. This wicked bargaining, this near-coercion.

Adelais seemed to like it too, forcing Tate’s mouth even harder against her until Tate parted her lips and gave Adelais her tongue, which made the warrior grunt and push her hips into Tate’s mouth.

“More,” ordered Adelais, using the hand on Tate’s head to move her up and down. Tate flattened her tongue and allowed Adelais to fuck her swollen clitoris against it for a long moment, Adelais’s breaths coming deep and steady as she did.

Tate fluttered her tongue, pushing back against Adelais’s hold to flick the tip of her tongue against the stiff bud, and Adelais groaned and pushed Tate’s head back in again. “You’re good at this. So goddamn good.”

Tate knew it; she’d had enough practice at Far Hope, after all.

“Suck it,” the Wolf said roughly now. “I want to come.”

Tate panted against Adelais’s wet, sweet skin, a bolt of lust arrowing through her body straight to her own pussy, and she nearly couldn’t exist for it, she couldn’t imagine anything other than this, and she never wanted to. She sealed her lips around the tight bud and sucked and was rewarded with another buck of Adelais’s hips. The warrior hissed with pleasure, her hand even tighter in Tate’s hair.

“That’s it,” muttered Adelais. “Just like that.” But then she leaned forward and tore impatiently at Tate’s mantle and then her habit. “Show me,” she said. “I want to see your pretty tits.”

Tate helped her pull off the habit, straightening up and sitting back on her heels while she pulled it over her head, and the first thing she saw once the fabric was free was the wild glow of Adelais’s golden eyes.

“A nun has no business having a body like that,” the Wolf said throatily, and then reached down to palm Tate’s breasts, to weigh and squeeze them like fruit she wanted to buy. The peaks were tight and hard against the warrior’s palms. “Show me your cunt now too.”

Tate’s entire being was fire and hunger as she obeyed, spreading her knees and leaning back so that her sex would be visible to Adelais’s hot stare. What compelled her to do it, she couldn’t say, but she slid her hand down the rise of her pubic bone and used two fingers to spread her labia apart so that Adelais could see her opening, so that Adelais could see how wet she was there.

Adelais went suddenly still, a predator scenting prey, her eyes on Tate’s open pussy. “Put your fingers in,” Adelais said. “Show me what you look like filled up.”

Tate was breathing so hard now that she could hardly hear anything over the rush of blood in her ears. The entire camp could have been marching around the tent in chain mail for all she knew, and yet she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything except Adelais’s rough words and doing something, anything, to ease this heavy ache between her legs.

She pushed two fingers into her hole, wet enough that she could glide right in. She pressed against her front walls until pleasure began thrumming through her stomach, but it wasn’t satisfying. She needed more.

Adelais was watching her hungrily, and then without warning, she reached forward and seized Tate again, hauling her back to Adelais’s waiting sex. Tate had to brace both her hands on Adelais’s thighs for balance as Adelais speared her fingers into Tate’s hair and crushed her mouth against Adelais’s skin.

“I want your tongue in my hole,” demanded Adelais. “Let me feel it.”

Tate dutifully gave her tongue, finding Adelais’s entrance and licking at its rim before pushing inside. Adelais was beyond wet now, and she tasted like honey and salt, like summer and the sea. Tate moaned faintly at the taste as Adelais fucked herself against her tongue and moaned again as Adelais reached down and roughly palmed one of Tate’s naked breasts.

An image flitted through Tate’s mind then. Of Adelais moving through the abbey at night, finding Tate alone in bed. Of a hand clapping over Tate’s mouth while Adelais shoved up her skirts. Of a hard, unyielding hand between her legs.

Here in the tent, Tate’s cunt pulsed. Her toes were curling in her boots.

In all the time she’d been at Far Hope, she’d never thought herself capable of wanting…that.

Someone finding her in the dark and holding her down.

Tate was squirming as Adelais dragged Tate’s mouth back up to her clit and held her there, wishing she could reach down and push a hand between her legs. As it was, she was balanced with her hands on Adelais’s thighs, and then Adelais took the hand that Tate had penetrated herself with and brought it up to her mouth. Tate had to fight not to fall forward.

She gasped as Adelais’s tongue moved over the pads of her fingers, over the first knuckle and then under to the thin creases there. It was silky, tickling, soft. Tate felt every slide of it through her hand and up her arm, and down into her chest.

Adelais licked and sucked Tate’s taste off her fingers like it was only thing she’d ever wanted, the only thing that could keep her alive. It was delicious and wonderful and so unexpectedly arousing to have her fingers sucked, that Tate nearly lost the rhythm of pleasuring the cunt in front of her. But Adelais made it easier, canting her hips up and keeping Tate’s mouth exactly where she wanted it. And Tate sucked Adelais’s clit exactly the same way she would a cock, with long, hollow-cheeked pulls and then dances of her tongue over the tiny tip that made Adelais’s firm thighs tense around her.

“That’s a very wicked mouth for such a pious woman,” Adelais growled, dropping Tate’s hand in order to grab a breast and squeeze. “Maybe that’s what the kings visit for, hmm? A chance to feel that devout tongue all hot and pretty against their cocks?”

It was close enough to the truth that alarm skated through Tate’s mind, but thankfully, Adelais was too busy fucking to connect the dots. She let go of Tate’s breast, pushed both hands into Tate’s now thoroughly mussed hair, and then climaxed with a loud grunt that the whole camp must have heard.

Adelais’s hands were tight, her thighs locked, her breath coming in one hard rush after another as her pussy clenched and loosened against Tate’s mouth. Tate’s chin was wet now, her scalp stinging, and she closed her eyes and wished it would never end. That Adelais would keep her here for days and fuck her mouth for every minute of it and eventually carry Tate off over her shoulder like she’d threatened earlier. As a captive, a spoil.

The thought was like a match to tinder, and Tate had the sudden terror that she would never, ever stop burning.

Adelais’s pussy eventually stilled, but she held Tate there the entire time, as if to make sure she got every moment’s use out of her. Finally, she slid her hands from Tate’s hair, but as Tate straightened up and wiped her wet mouth with her forearm, Adelais made it clear they weren’t done yet.

“Turn around,” the Wolf ordered. “Hands and knees. Ass up.”

Tate obeyed, entire body trembling, quivering. Naked, she could acutely feel where the air in the tent was warmed by the brazier and where it was cool from the night air seeping in from the cracks. She turned the way Adelais had indicated, with her back to the warrior, and then leaned over and rested her head on the thin carpet making the floor of the tent.

“Knees apart, abbess. I want to see you.”

Tate moved her knees apart, cool air stroking her wet sex and moving over her exposed secret hole. Adelais grunted behind her, a satisfied noise.

“Make yourself come,” she said. “Show me if those hands are as wicked as that mouth.”

Tate whimpered into the carpet, already reaching back to rub her clit, shivering as she brushed against it with her fingers. It felt like it would burst if she touched it for real, but she couldn’t not touch it, because if she didn’t come, she’d die, her heart would stop and she’d die, the first person ever to die from not having an orgasm.

Tate grazed her clit once more and then she couldn’t stop herself. Her hips were chasing her own touch, her hand couldn’t move fast enough, hard enough, and it was beyond degrading to be like this, her legs spread and all her holes available to this warrior’s gaze, bucking against her own hand like an animal because she’d been completely torn apart by lust.

But there was no other way, there was nothing else. There was only fucking and the memory of Adelais’s hand in her hair and the image of that hand over her mouth in the dark, and then she came, wet and hard, her stomach cinching and her back arching and her thighs slamming together around her hand as she rode it for everything she was worth. The pleasure burned through her even faster than the lust had, searing up from her pussy to her chest, neck, face, scorching down her thighs to her calves and toes. She felt tight everywhere, tight as a drum, and she was grunting and moaning against the carpet like someone possessed.

Never, ever , had she climaxed like this. Not with a lover, not with several lovers, and not on her own. And Adelais had hardly even touched her. What would happen if it was Adelais’s hand between her legs? Adelais’s mouth ?

Tate didn’t know if she’d survive it. She’d only barely survived this.

Once Tate had reached adulthood at Far Hope, she’d been initiated into its secret life, and she’d gradually learned how to serve as the sisters here served, how to officiate the ceremonies that were the true heart of Far Hope. And so in the name of delivering sacred pleasure to the abbey’s pilgrims, she knew much and had done much. Had thought she understood her own desire as thoroughly as a swordmaster knew their own sword.

But this was like drawing her sword to find it had turned into a glowing brand instead; this was her desire wrought into a shape she’d never before seen. And the force of it terrified her.

Tate rolled over onto her side, feeling as wrung out as a rag, her hand still between her legs and her sides heaving.

When she finally managed the strength to look at Adelais, the warrior was sitting with her legs spread, her flushed sex barely visible under the shadow of her tunic. She was licking her own fingers now, and Tate wondered if she’d brought herself to a second culmination watching Tate fuck herself.

The thought sent a shudder through her, followed by a fresh wave of heat.

“You are a surprising thing, little mouse,” Adelais said, nudging at Tate’s limp leg with her foot. She finished cleaning her hand and looked at Tate for a long minute. “What were you thinking about? When you came?”

That Tate could be embarrassed after what she’d just done was ludicrous, but she was. Her face burned and she rolled it into the carpet, too exhausted and sex-drunk to summon up her usual reserve, her mask of dispassion.

Adelais pounced. There was no other word for it—one moment she was on the stool, and the next she was over Tate, her body covering hers and her mouth near Tate’s ear. “Oh, you have my attention now, abbess. Tell me. Were you thinking of someone licking your cunt? Maybe several someones? Were you half hoping I’d drag you back to Normandy and lock you in my castle?” It sounded like she meant the last part as a jest, but Tate still pressed her face into the carpet even farther. The humiliation and still-simmering lust were mingling together now, impossible to decant separately. They felt almost exactly the same.

The Wolf had gone motionless on top of her, and then lifted herself up enough to roll Tate onto her back. “Dragged off and kept,” she said. “I wouldn’t have guessed. What else?”

Tate closed her eyes. It was unbearable that someone else was seeing this about her in the same moment she was learning it about herself.

“Forced, maybe?” the Wolf said softly, leaning close and biting Tate’s jaw. “Taken on the road or perhaps in your own bed. Pinned and used. Someone’s plaything to fuck rough and mean until they’re done with you.”

Tate couldn’t make herself confirm it, but then Adelais bit her jaw even harder. Tate found herself whispering, “Yes. Yes.”

Adelais sat up abruptly, wearing a grin that was half glee, half anticipation. All danger.

“Get dressed, my wicked nun. Go back to your sisters. I enjoyed tonight, and I enjoyed it far too much to consider clemency now. You should be here tomorrow night at dusk if you want another day of peace.”

Shame washed through Tate, but it knotted with something dark and urgent too, making her all tight and needy and miserable as she stood and found her clothes.

“I keep my word,” Tate said after she’d dressed. Adelais was back lounging at her stool, her linen braies on but her chausses still scattered on the floor. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I keep my word too,” Adelais said, but it sounded more like a warning than a promise. “Good night, abbess.”