Can’t be stolen.
Not that it shouldn’t be; not that it would be wrong to steal it.Butcan’t.
Interesting.
“How about a little game, then?”Adelais said, leaning over her axe once more.“A bet, if you will.”
“A bet,” Tate repeated.
“You fuck me for the next three nights, and I give you three days of peace.And if I cannot learn what I want by then, I will leave.”
Tate’s eyebrow lifted the slightest amount.“That’s it?Three nights and you will leave?”
“IfI don’t learn the secrets of this place.”
“You would only learn them from me, and you must know that I will never tell you,” Tate said plainly.“This seems like a step back in your negotiations.”
Adelais shrugged.It would hardly help her agenda to explain to Tate why it wasn’t.
Tate seemed to suspect a trap, searching Adelais’s face with an intensity that pleased Adelais.She liked having Tate’s attention.She wanted more of it.
All of it.
Tate looked down at her hands as if thinking, and then finally nodded.“Yes.Yes, we have an agreement.Three nights in your bed, and if you cannot learn what you want to know, then you’ll leave.”
“And if I do learn…” Adelais smiled again.“Then I’m taking it.”
Tate’s mouth flickered with something that could have been a smile.“You could try.”
Adelais laughed.“I’ll teach you not to doubt me, sweet thing.Now,” she said, placing her axe on the floor behind her and reaching for the ties at her waist.She needed that strange, pretty mouth between her legs like she needed to draw breath.“Let’s get started, shall we?”
Four
TATE
SHE MISSEDEdwin 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 evenwhatthat 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.
Forcedwas 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 donethis, 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.”
