Masked (Royally Hot 2)

On her back, in my bed, with my dick deep inside her.

On her knees, arms bound behind her back, feeding her every inch of my cock until she learned to take it all.

Or, standing with her arms and legs chained and secured wide, helpless as I gave her orgasm after orgasm with my mouth until her knees faltered and she lost all sense of herself separate from me.

And more, showing her that pain didn’t always have to be opposed to pleasure, of calming my heart and soothing my mind.

That side of me would be ours alone if I could ever let her into my secret.

When the milking was done, she reluctantly admitted that the stalls needed to be mucked out, so I scooped her up in my arms and off we went to the stables. She was full and lush and I wanted to carry her next to my chest into our future. There was a strength to her as well. A sturdiness that surely came from a lifetime of too much work and not enough pleasure.

Goddamn it, how I wanted to give it to her, pleasure and a bit of pain, right there over the saddles that lined one side of the stables.

But I held my base nature in check as I mucked out, swept and scattered bedding. As I worked, we talked. I learned about all the work she had to do and all the responsibilities she had. It was way too much for one person.

“Do you have time for anything besides work? What do you love to do? What do you want for your life?”

She looked at me like I’d grown another head. “This is what I do. What I will always do.”

“There has to be more.” I nearly begged. There had to be more for her, dreams, pleasures, joy of some sort.

She shrugged a shoulder looking down. “I have little time outside of my duties, but when I do, I usually spend it with the animals. I found an old apothecary book in the stables and I enjoy tending to them. The medical book fascinates me. I do what I can to care of the stock and learn how to keep them healthy. I also like to fish. There’s a deep pond a fair walk from the back of the far stables. I always have luck there. It’s silly, a girl fishing…”

“It’s not silly. It’s wonderful.” I imagined her delicate fingers baiting a hook, pulling in a catch.

“Really? My father tells me I’m strange. Although, he never turns down the meals I cook with my catch.”

“You are strange in the most fabulous way Iris.” Her soft smile made my heart ache.

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Thank you.”

“Do you have any help here?” I asked, scooping some hay into a wheelbarrow.

“Umm,” she said, with an awkward laugh, “sometimes. There’s a girl from Aramoor City that helps occasionally. Bonny. She’s an angel, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what I’d do without her. My father isn’t always here, but he’s sometimes usually pretty helpful when he is.”

Sometimes. Usually. Pretty helpful.

Fucking bullshit.

A woman like her deserved round-the-clock servants, not some absent father who made her life one endless stream of chores. Asshole.

“Sometimes I wish I had someone to just tell me what to do. To take away the responsibility. But the farm won’t run itself.”

Her words spoke to me, and I tried to compose myself as I asked the first banal question that came to my mind. “You don’t want to be your own boss?”

She shook her head on a shrug. “I guess I do…” She hesitated and I could see the tension in her jaw. “I just wish I could let someone else take control sometimes.”

Take control. I’ll control your very breath before long, sweet Iris.

“I understand,” I muttered, and the words didn’t seem enough.

This connection between us ran deep, and I didn’t fully understand how that was possible. Was there really a person made to fit with me so perfectly? Was she real or just a dream?

Forcing myself to work, I emptied the water buckets, scrubbed them out, and refilled them with cold water from the pump. Iris instructed me how to pick out the horses’ hoofs and clean the tack.

Aside from one of the horses nearly kicking me square in the balls, I enjoyed all of it—it was work I’d never gotten a chance to do, and I reveled in the opportunity to live a normal life, even for one afternoon. Even with the duke, my duties had never involved animals. I’d fetched and carried, been whipped by the guards for not keeping up, scrubbed fireplaces and set traps for rats in the cellars beneath his fort.

And when I returned to the capital a week before my fifteenth birthday, my life of shadows and silent stares continued.