Arms, strong enough to wage war, wrapped around her waist, and both Adelais and Tate tumbled to the ground.Adelais turned, catching them on her back as they fell, although the fall was still abrupt enough to drive the breath from Tate’s chest.She tried to find it again, struggling against Adelais’s hold, and then, just as she drew a sharp inhale, Adelais flipped them over so that Tate was on her back looking up and Adelais was on top of her, braced on her calloused, battle-nicked hands.
“Now, look at us,” scolded Adelais.“On the ground like animals.”But the scolding was belied by the wicked smile on her face—visible only as the shine on the blunt edges of her teeth in the dark.She dipped her face to Tate’s and stamped a bruising kiss on Tate’s mouth, and then moved to Tate’s neck, where she sucked at the skin.It was hot, tickling, and then sharp when she bit at the tender skin above the collar of Tate’s mantle.Tate arched underneath her, needing—needing something.More pressure, more friction.
Just…more.
Adelais seemed to know, because she slipped a muscled thigh between Tate’s legs as she skated her teeth along Tate’s neck, and Tate couldn’t tell if she was squirming to get away or squirming to rub her herself against Adelais.
Adelais grabbed the hem of Tate’s habit and shoved it past Tate’s waist so that Tate was naked below.She hadn’t bothered to wear hose underneath; there hadn’t seemed much point when she was going to the Wolf’s tent.And now she was bare to the open air of the night, naked calves, naked thighs.Naked hips and cunt.
Adelais found Tate’s seam with her fingers and probed.Tate couldhearhow wet she was, and she let out a broken noise when Adelais swept those wet fingers over the pearl of her clit.“Don’t fight me, sweet nun.It’s easier if you don’t fight.”
The words were like a flame to a wick, or oil to fire.Tate couldn’t breathe for the fire roiling through her, and she couldn’t stop her hips from arching to the Wolf’s touch.Pleasure seared up from Adelais’s fingertips, all the way up into Tate’s belly and chest, but Tate wanted more than this, even, more than the dark and the road and Adelais’s vicious words.
She tried to roll away, bucking pointlessly under Adelais’s weight, and Adelais laughed again—gleeful, vicious.“We haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”Her free hand went all the way up Tate’s habit and squeezed her breast.Hard.
The touch was a wave of pleasure crested with a flash of pain.Adelais did it again, and again, squeezes and then hard cups, like Tate’s breasts were some sort of payment that Adelais had been too long denied.
“Let me go,” Tate gasped, loving how her protest made Adelais grin wider, made her touch harder and greedier.
“I’m not done with you, pretty thing,” Adelais-the-stranger informed her.“Hold still.”
“I won’t,” Tate breathed, twisting as hard as she could and managing to break Adelais’s hold on her.She flung herself to the side and got up to her knees, so close to getting to her feet, and if she did make it, if she did run, maybe Adelais would be even meaner, even rougher?—
She didn’t make it to her feet, though, not even close.Adelais was on top of her again, this time with her chest to Tate’s back, and she bore them both down to the hard dirt of the road, her thighs caging Tate’s legs and her hand snaked around Tate’s hip to hold her sex.To rub her.All their weight pressed Tate’s cunt into Adelais’s touch, adding more pressure, more force, and then Adelais reached her free hand under Tate’s chest to collar her throat from underneath, which meant Tate felt held, trapped, bound. Everywhere.The hand wrapped around her throat, the body on top of hers.The knees fencing her legs in, the hand moving hard and merciless between her legs.
“Make my hand wet when you come.”Adelais bit at her ear, her jaw, her neck, like a wolf in truth.“You can do it.I know you want to.”
“No,” Tate moaned.“You can’t make me.”
Adelais’s weight shifted a small amount—her hand between Tate’s legs went still.“No…orstop?”Her voice—still Adelais, but the blunter, slightly warmer cadence of her natural voice.
“Not stop,” whispered Tate.“Justnolike…like I want not to want it.”
Adelais nipped at her ear again, but gently this time.An acknowledgement.And there was another pang in Tate’s chest, something she only felt when she thought of her childhood home or stared out at the moors on a sweet summer’s day.
I play fair.
Adelais was playing fair.Even when the game was this.
Her hand moved once again between Tate’s legs, rubbing her stiff pearl with hard caresses, making Tate’s toes curl in her boots.The warm weight of her, the hand on her throat.The rough fucking with her habit shoved up to her waist…
“You’ll be my whore, won’t you?”the stranger whispered in her ear.“I’ve been looking for one to play with for so long.”
“I—” Whatever she was going to say turned into a moan.The climax was clawing at the base of her spine now, clawing all the way down her thighs.It felt better than sin and better than forgiveness; it felt like the knotted cord on her back and the whisper of God’s love at the same time.
“I’m going to keep you,” the stranger swore.The stranger was unstoppable, selfish, living hellfire.Tate’s entire body from her chest to her knees was rigid with the trammeled orgasm, and she was almost terrified of it, terrified of how it would wreck her if it was left to charge free.But Adelais gave her no choice.A monster in the dark, with even more monstrous words.“I’m going to keep you forever and fuck you whenever I want, and your God can come to England and fight me for you himself, because I’m not giving you up.”
Tate did as Adelais asked and soaked her hand as she came, screaming, bucking, wild.The orgasm almosthurt, clenches and contractions that took work to live through, like her entire body had become a vessel for this monster’s will, like she was being possessed by Adelais from the cunt up.
Adelais didn’t let up a single bit—not the grip on her throat, not the cruel stroking of her hand, not her weight pinning Tate to the cold ground.And Tate thought she could love Adelais for it, for giving her this thing that was a sword of shame and a cup of relief all at once.Like a creature out of a myth, Tate had to be torn open and reborn, and this was her rebirth, right here in the cold, dark night.With a Norman on top of her, with her country broken, with the never-ending wheel of hunger, sickness, and violence creaking over her life.
Butthis—this was hers.This was hers to have right now: the sharp, clean gasps of air into her lungs, the urgent shudders of her body, the earth beneath her face, and the branches of trees older than Wessex itself waving around her.
Yes, Tate could love Adelais for giving this to her.For giving it so easily and without judgment.
And that was something far more frightening than any footsteps in the dark.
Seven
