Mercenaries

THE next morning Zaria rose before the sun and rolled from her warm, comfortable bed. In the dark of her room she dressed quickly in her Domina’s leathers, hands shaking with eagerness and furtive shame.

She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. She should get back in her bed and go to sleep while Dom Searle disciplined his lover in whatever way pleased them both.

Instead, she lit a candle and padded out into the corridor in the wavering circle of its light. The echoing marble halls of the palace were silent this early, though she thought she could hear the faint sound of voices from the kitchens. The Thralls were already at work.

Hurrying toward the dungeon entrance, she found the massive wooden door she sought and swung it open. It creaked loudly as it revealed the stone steps leading down into the darkness. Lifting her candle, her heart pounding hard, she descended.

When she finally reached the echoing chamber far beneath the palace, Zaria could hear Searle’s voice rumbling somewhere in the darkness. She threw a glance in that direction as she stepped behind the decorative screen that stood across the back of the room.

“Such pretty nipples,” the guardsman said, stroking big, blunt fingers over Gemma’s small breasts. He was naked, his brawny body gleaming in the torchlight as he stood over his helpless lover.

The Thralline, equally nude, was draped on her back over a punishment bench that held her torso arched and her legs spread wide. He’d chained her down until she could barely move, but judging by her expression, she didn’t mind at all.

“So pink and hard,” Searle purred, “so delicately responsive.” His voice dropped to a suggestive rumble. “I think they need to be punished.”

Zaria licked her dry lips as she took her accustomed place behind the screen. It was designed for the Dominess’s use, for those times when she wanted to watch a Thrall’s punishment without taking a direct role. In reality, however, Zaria used the screen far more often than her mother ever had, especially since Gemma and Searle had become lovers.

As she settled into a thickly padded chair behind the grate, the guard’s gaze flicked toward her, tracking the movement of her candle. Searle knew she watched them, of course, just as she’d done so many times before. Yet he had never given her away to the Dominess.

Zaria was grateful. Her mother would have been outraged, not because Zaria loved to watch the guard take Gemma, but because her need to do so hinted she hungered for a man to dominate her the same way.

It wasn’t only the couple’s passion she envied, though she yearned to experience that kind of heat for herself. No, what she envied most was their acceptance of the roles they’d been born to—Searle as dominant, Gemma as submissive. Neither longed to be anything else.

Behind her screen Zaria shivered with a combination of need and self-disgust. Not for the first time a thought ran through her mind: I should have been born a Thralline.

But she hadn’t been. She’d been born a Domina of the house of Orva, and this hunger she felt was wrong. She should take as much joy in dominating a man as her mother did. She should yearn to watch Searle writhe under her boot and beg to serve her pleasure.

The Thralline whimpered, a long, voluptuous sound of mingled pleasure and pain, as he flicked and twisted and tormented her stiff nipples. His delicious ruthlessness had Zaria squirming in her chair, her fingers slipping under her armored bodice to tease her own tight peaks. By the time he rasped, “Are you ready to suck my cock?” she was shamelessly wet.

Gemma twisted in the wooden rack that held her body arched in a graceful bow, her clamp-adorned nipples pointing stiffly at the ceiling. “Yes,” she groaned. “Oh, now! Take my mouth, Master—pump your cock down my throat!”

Searle strolled around to the head of the rack, where Gemma’s head hung exactly at the height of a man’s groin. She opened her mouth eagerly, and the warrior slid his thick erection between her lips. He let his head fall back with a groan of pleasure, dark hair swirling down his broad back. As he slowly began to thrust, Gemma suckled him eagerly.

Zaria opened her mouth in a soundless moan. Of all the sex acts, this was one she was utterly forbidden to indulge in. No royal Domina would ever willingly suck a man’s cock.

Yet watching Searle stroke his width in and out of Gemma’s lips, she ached. One hand slid between her thighs as the other teased her nipple. Shuddering, she imagined herself bound and helpless in just such a rack, feeling the velvet heat of a warrior’s erection sliding seductively over her tongue. She could almost hear his rough commands as he ordered her to suck him, almost smell the masculine musk of his scent as she obeyed.

Letting her head fall back, Zaria imagined herself utterly at the mercy of her handsome dominant—secure in the knowledge he loved her, as Searle loved his Thralline. Gasping, she tightened her grip on her nipple, pulling and tugging as she stroked between her thighs. “Oh, Gods.”

Her need growing, she closed her eyes and pretended the fingers caressing her belonged to the dark erotic conqueror of her dreams. The one who took her a willing captive, who stripped and bound her and made rough, tender love to her while she begged him for a mercy she didn’t want.

“Enough,” Searle said at last. Looking up, Zaria saw his grin flash in the darkness, very male, very knowing. “It’s not your mouth I want to spill my seed into this morn.” He pulled his ruddy cock tenderly from Gemma’s lips and stepped between her splayed thighs. Zaria stood on her toes for a better view as he parted Gemma’s nether lips and began working the thick shaft inside. His low groan of pleasure blended with the Thralline’s whimper of delight.

Zaria slipped her fingers under her leather loinband. She was very wet, very ready. Resting her forehead against the grate, she stroked herself deeply as the guard rode Gemma in hard, grinding lunges.

At last he bellowed out his climax, his cry blending with the Thralline’s scream of pleasure. Zaria, hidden behind her grate, allowed herself no more than a gasp as she came in a flood of forbidden sweetness.

Zaria knew she dishonored her house every time she indulged her unnatural desires. And yet, she could not stay away, though she regularly swore to herself she’d never return to the dungeon again.

Well, she simply wouldn’t let them find out. She’d go on hiding her dreams of handsome dominants, just as she’d always done. Her family would never discover the truth.

And maybe someday she could resign herself to her proper place. Maybe someday she would finally discover the joy in forcing a man to bend to her will. All she needed was the right man.

Zaria blinked and looked around. One of the Thralls stood in the corridor, wearing only the scrap of silk wrapped around his hips that was all her mother allowed her submissives. His body was muscled and beautiful, and Zaria thought instantly of painting him. “The Dominess requests your attendance, Domina,” he said. “The Thralldealer is here.”

She contained a sigh. Her mother never lost hope some handsome submissive would finally move her to truly dominate him. Apparently Ila found Zaria’s mechanical efforts in that direction less than convincing.

Fired by that hope—and more than a little guilt over her foray into the dungeon—Zaria strode off down the corridor toward her mother’s audience chamber.

But even as she walked along the palace’s winding corridors, her mind drifted back to the scene she’d just witnessed. She’d love to sketch Searle with Gemma, but she didn’t dare leave a record of her wicked obsession. If Marcelle ever got her hands on such a thing, she’d use it at the most humiliating possible moment to discredit Zaria as publicly as she could.

But if she dared sketch the couple anyway . . . for a moment Zaria let herself dream of capturing the lines of Searle’s strong, muscled body rising over Gemma’s slim, soft one . . .

She was still imagining the pleasure of that sketch when a guard opened the doorway to her mother’s chamber. With an acknowledging nod, Zaria stepped inside.

He stood naked in the audience chamber, his head raised in a pose of unconscious male arrogance despite the silver shackles he wore on corded wrists. His hair was a long, silken waterfall of gold down his back, matching the neatly trimmed beard that framed his sternly beautiful mouth. His face was made for the fall of light and shadow, elegant planes and angles forming cheekbones, chin, and broad, high forehead. His deep-set eyes were a color she’d never seen before, a vivid shade of dark green, as pure and sharp as gemstones. Looking at him, Zaria felt her chest ache with the need to capture the amazing color of those defiant eyes.

His body was a powerful match for his face, all chiseled muscle lying in great slabs across his broad chest, bulging arms, and thick, powerful thighs. The only soft thing about him was the cock hanging impressively between those brawny thighs.

I’ll paint him as a warrior, Zaria thought, half-hypnotized. He met her eyes with a curl of amusement in the line of his lips. She realized suddenly that she had crossed the room without being aware of it, drawn irresistibly to his arrogant beauty.

Perhaps he’d sensed her fascination. Perhaps that was why he met her stare with a boldness she’d never seen in a Thrall facing those who would buy him. Usually such men kept their eyes submissively lowered, but not this one. Indeed, his gaze flicked down from her face to brazenly focus on the cleavage revealed by her armored top.