Kingdom of Yute: Tor's Betrayal Read online

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  But to return to the wall. We were a small company of six out recruiting. It was dusk when we were spotted by a unit of nobguards. Immediately we split up, but there were so many guards—there were always so many guards. Before we knew it, five of us were trapped together, with the highwall behind us.

  The highwall stood a good eight feet tall and was thick enough at the top for a man to easily stand on. Built out of huge stone blocks seamlessly locked together, the wall ran for miles, enclosing the fine homes and fine world of the nobheads within. The huge blocks of dark stone had been put together long before our time and we couldn’t begin to guess how that feat might have been accomplished. We only knew that the wall was meant to keep riffraff like us out of the nobhead world.

  With our backs to the wall, and facing dismal odds, we pulled our steel. There was always a chance in fighting and, even if there wasn’t, death was always preferable to capture, at least in our case. We’d all broken enough nob laws to be put to death several times over, and we were certain the nobguard would make it feel that way, should they ever get their hands on us.

  And there we were, backs to the wall.

  When, out of nowhere, Tor came clattering toward us, mounted on a horse.

  Riding a horse!

  If you are from the south, you may not understand the significance of this fact. Because, at that time—on the Yute Peninsula—only nobheads were permitted to own, ride, or even touch a horse. It was probably the most aggravating of all their insufferable rules and discriminations, and punishable by death! No big deal—as I said before, we were all in for it anyway.

  What was remarkable was the fact that Tor could ride! None of us had ever been on a horse’s back, and wouldn’t know what to do if we were—yet there was Tor Harnesson careering toward us, but obviously in control of the tall, leggy creature. He pulled up right in front of us and leapt for the rim of the wall, vaulting to crouch at its top.

  Reaching down, he pulled Thane up beside him as the nobguards were closing on us. Thank Ishtar, they carried no bows! As I stretched for Thane’s arm, I was surprised when Tor’s big hand reached me first, closing around my wrist as he snatched me from the ground. My foot touched the top of the wall for an instant before he pushed me over the other side—the nobhead side. “Run!” he commanded.

  I rolled as I hit the ground and came up on my feet running—running through a perfectly groomed garden that had to have been tortured in order to produce such unnatural results. On my left was a lighted mansion, and I kept close to the highwall, dodging the hedges and benches, almost dying when a man loomed suddenly before me. In the same heart-stopping moment, I realized that the entirely naked man was very white and very marble…and very virile, I noted as I whipped past.

  Pounding footsteps followed, but I assumed it was one of my companions and continued without looking back. Then I was in a maze of streets. Screeching to a halt at the end of an empty lane, I realized that the road it emptied onto was populated with clusters of finely dressed nobheads. Only I was a bit late in this observation—as I had drawn the attention of the people in the street.

  They stared at me.

  In my worn clothing I must have looked like a mistake. An ugly blot in their perfectly planned, carefully preserved world. But before I had a chance to backpedal out of there, I was grabbed from behind and propelled down a narrow chasm between tall palatial homes. Several twists and turns later, I was smashed up against hard stone inside the shadowed recess of an unexplained notch in the wall, the purpose of which may have been to house a small god at one time.

  And there we stood, crushed together and sucking air—Tor Harnesson and I.

  I couldn’t have chosen a better way to die, I thought, though some air would have been nice. But there wasn’t much to be had with Tor’s hard chest and hard body crammed against mine.

  Waiting for his breathing to return to normal, I grew concerned when his chest was still heaving long after I’d gotten back to baseline breathing. Well, relatively baseline. I was still feeling a bit breathless, but that had more to do with Tor’s warm proximity than the dash we’d just made.

  Because of our difference in height, his chin rested on the top of my head. I felt a few hairs on my head lift and realized they must be…stuck to his lips…or something. He said something in Rhyssian, a low, deep rumble. Then he eased away, gave me a fraction of an inch—just a fraction—and bent his mouth to my ear. “Thor’s Slagbit, I love you,” he said.

  Those were his first words to me.

  It was—unequivocally—the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. I mean! The Tor Harnesson. In love with me!

  I didn’t even care if it was true or not. It was enough that he had said it. It would carry me for the rest of my life. And, as well as being romantic, he was also practical, as he used that fraction of an inch to press his knee between my legs.

  And I knew what that meant. Or at least I hoped I knew.

  His hand slid behind my neck and I felt each one of his hard, blunt fingers as he gripped the back of my skull. I looked up at his face, but got no further than his lips. They were hard and curved, parted with serious intent.

  I held my breath, waiting for him to kiss me.

  His other hand came up and the rough pad of his thumb tugged down on my chin but I had no idea what he was about. He must have been aggravated when my mouth remained closed. Frowning, his eyes cut to mine for an instant as though reassessing me and then, with his thumb on my bottom lip, he parted my lips and skipped his thumb along the wet surface of my bottom lip. The hand clutching my skull tilted my head back and—finally—he opened his mouth onto mine.

  The kiss was hard and soft at the same time, a meaningful brushing of the bottom lip, a clinging withdrawal followed by consuming heat and pressure. A consuming heat directly at odds with everything I’d observed about this cool, indifferent man. The hard length of his body that I’d never so much as brushed in passing, was now smashed against mine, flattening me against the wall, touching and heating the skin beneath my clothing at every point of contact. His thick, iron thigh was wedged between my legs and pressed against the cushion of my mound, and I was more aware of that hard, masculine leg and its insinuating position than anything else.

  His lips broke suddenly from mine as his chest crushed my hammering heart. His breath rushed against my mouth in a wash of heat and I felt every separate cell inside my recently crushed lips expand and explode in tiny, tingling bursts, my mouth aching to be crushed again. The hard hand on my skull angled my head sideways and back, and he returned his lips to twist against mine with a stark, new passion that eclipsed the earlier portion of his kiss.

  Hunger and fear have always evoked my ardor. That is to say—hunger and fear make me horny—and I must have been both that night. My breasts tingled as though fireworks smoldered at their tips. My legs—if they were there at all—had no strength, and my whole being seemed centered around a hollow place just beneath my belly. A place that cried to be filled. Tor’s hard, male touch precipitated a waterfall of response that started at my breast tips, poured across my belly, heating my loins as it washed into that empty slot that longed for Tor Harnesson.

  He broke away again, his breathing hard and rough, his open mouth smearing into the skin at the corner of my lips. Automatically, my lips followed his, trying to reunite with his mouth, but he pulled back. “I want more than this,” he said harshly.

  I nodded without thinking. With his body pressed against mine, I felt his erection surge against my belly as his mouth returned to mine with eager male violence. I wasn’t expecting his tongue. It embarrasses me now to think how naïve I must have seemed.

  The tongue was a stunner as he forced it between my lips and came up hard against my clenched teeth. He pulled away again. “Open up,” he growled. As his tongue breached my mouth, a grating sound of masculine satisfaction rumbled from his chest. Without disconnecting the kiss, he pulled away en
ough to slip his hand between our bodies—to loosen his ties.

  I thought I would melt. Honest to Mithra, I thought I would melt into a puddle at his feet. His light touch as he fumbled with his ties—the thought alone, of what would follow—warmed that empty void inside me—warmed it to melting. His other hand still clamped my skull, possessively, and his lips continued to manipulate mine to the point of distraction. As he reached for the hem of my kilt, his fingers flicked my thigh and I shivered with anticipation as well as fear.

  I wasn’t completely ignorant. I had heard enough from the other girls to be afraid it would hurt the first time—not that I feared the pain, only that I was afraid I’d cry, or whimper, or do something equally gauche and put him right off.

  I felt his warm, moist tip drag along the inside of my leg as he worked his way into the opening of the loose silk shorts I wore beneath my kilt. Then he nudged into my slot, looking for my entrance. Suddenly, he was lifting me and opening my legs to spread for his hips. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. His hand pulled the tip of his cock the length of my slot several times before settling into the notch, and easing into me.

  The slow penetration of his cock head was strange and foreign, but my body welcomed his invasion with open gates and a rush of liquid heat—for the first inch or so. At that point, my narrow channel started to choke on him and my uncooperative body had second thoughts about invasion in general and Tor’s thick, pressing intrusion in particular.

  Despite my body’s obvious reluctance, I was still game. As a token of my goodwill, I stifled a complaint that fought its way up my throat before it could surface into sound.

  “What’s that?” he said with alarm and pulled back to stare at me.

  I stared back. Tor’s Witch, he was a fabulous man, and I was determined to have him. Biting my bottom lip, I ground back a whimper of discomfort.

  He shook his head and groaned. “No. Spark. No. Tell me you’re not a virgin.”

  “I’m not,” I gasped, eager to cooperate.

  He frowned at me with a strained expression. “This can’t be your first time,” he insisted as he stared at my face. “No. Never mind.” He almost dropped me in his rush to get out of me.

  The void beneath my belly gave a lurch of distress. “Please, Tor.”

  When he shook his head, I had the feeling it was for himself as much as me. “Not tonight,” he grunted, as he pulled his ties closed and I witnessed my shot at paradise disappearing behind his drawstrings. The head of his cock crested the top of his doeskins and he hitched at the top of the leggings in an attempt to cover himself. Sliding his thumb down one side of his shaft, he angled his cock downward and toward his hip. He looked uncomfortable, and I wondered if he felt as uncomfortable as I—burning up from the inside out with an unnamed need and an aching emptiness. “Not your first time. Not up against a wall in a dark alley. Not with a—not tonight.”

  I’d seen a man’s cock before—Jet and Ayden’s, anyhow. Some of the others as well. I didn’t make a habit of looking for it, but we were thrown together all the time. I’d never seen anything like that before. I’d seen a man stiff in the morning but I’d never seen a man hard and full and dark and wanting a woman. And if size was any indication of need, Tor needed a woman badly. The idea that he both wanted and needed me, encouraged me to argue.

  “But Tor,” I’m sure I was breathless, “I’m not likely to get a better offer…and…and…I could be dead tomorrow. I could be dead before we get another opportunity to—”

  “You’ll be alive tomorrow, and you’ll be a virgin,” he said, going all fatherly on me.

  “Is it only that I’m a virgin?” I asked. “Because, if it is, I can have Thane take care of that tomorrow and we can start again—”

  Aye, in retrospect it sounded dumb, but at the time I was desperate.

  “You wouldn’t,” he growled.

  “I would,” I told him, and I think I meant it. “If it meant I could have you in the end. Only I’d rather have you in the beginning.”

  The look he gave me next had me wanting those words back. If looks could burn, his scorching gaze would have fused metal. “I’ll have you in the beginning,” he both warned and promised, his face dark and threatening. “And in the end.” Then his lips curled with evil mischief. “And in the front, as well, eventually. Shall I go on?” he queried.

  Breathlessly, I nodded, my eyes fixed on his and I heard a groan rumble from deep within his chest, as he carefully pulled me toward him again.

  As he rested his forehead on the top of my head and leaned into me, I could feel his rigid length against my stomach—hard evidence of his arousal—and my own body responded with an agonized whimper of female craving that, as yet, I didn’t quite understand. But I was sure I’d start to figure it out once I got Tor inside me.

  “Mithra,” he complained, “I’d never have guessed that you hadn’t had a man. Why do you have to be…like this?”

  Well. He might have told me I was beautiful and I would have preferred it. But it was better than nothing, and besides, I figured I’d already done well by him. He’d already told me he loved me. I raised my lips to his in gratitude and everything started all over again, as I very nearly lost my virginity for the second time that night.

  Chapter Two

  Tor

  I figured the girl was my in, my key to acceptance among the little gang of rebels. They had no particular leader, but Thane, Jet and Ayden especially seemed to dominate the group. There were about twelve of them and at first it seemed they would never accept me.

  And I was looking for total acceptance.

  But Spark was the fourth member of that circle and—fortunately for me—didn’t appear to belong to any of them. I knew she was related to Ayden in some way, second cousins, I believe. But she was always hanging with them, always joking with them. They were—all three of them—mad idiots, and they kept the girl laughing, which was something I couldn’t do.

  Finding myself inside the walls with her, I dragged her between two buildings and pushed her along, knowing there was a place up ahead where we’d stop. A place we’d be alone. I’d used it before…without interruption.

  I slammed her up against the wall and pinned her against the stone. She felt good beneath me. She was small. I liked that, liked the feel of her small body crushed beneath mine. It had been a while since I’d had a woman and, immediately, my cock struggled between our bodies to assert itself.

  I’d been a long time waiting for this. And it hadn’t been easy, waiting. Especially with Sinda, and the other girls for that matter, constantly coming on to me. Sinda was especially troublesome, always up against me, it seemed. I might have given in to her under other circumstances. She was round and warm and not without appeal. And I’d seen what she could do.

  I’d walked in on her, once, when she was servicing both Jet and Ayden. She was on her hands and knees between them, while they were on their knees on either end of her. Jet’s cock was in her mouth and Ayden’s groin was sealed against her ass—Ayden apparently getting the better end of the bargain. I don’t think they saw me. They were all pretty into it.

  Sinda’s long black hair hung in thick, knotted strands to hide most of her face while Jet’s eyes were on Ayden, on the damp ginger hair that curled at the top of his crotch. At the same time, Ayden’s eyes were on the root of his own cock.

  The girl’s legs were spread as Ayden clutched her rounded ass, pulling her cheeks apart so he could watch his own thick entry, stretching her wide as he crammed himself into her. As she rocked back to meet Ayden’s penetration, Jet’s cock slid almost out of her mouth. Leaning forward, Jet grasped her chin with one hand and his root with the other, as he struggled to keep his cock between her lips. Then her heavy breasts were swinging slowly and she was rocking on both men.

  Ayden grunted a curse and his eyes closed as he approached arrival. Watching his friend with glassy-eyed fascination, Jet picked up the pace of his own action as he held Sinda’s chin and thr
ust his hips at her face.

  I backed out of there as smoothly as I could. I felt bad bursting in on them. There was little enough opportunity to tend to even the most basic needs—things like this—and never any time for privacy. Seeing the two guys with their dicks out, wet and flushed with success, reminded me how long it had been since I’d had the basics.

  She ambushed me once in the tiny stone house. Sinda. The others had gone on ahead. I was wrapping my arms and was a bit slow getting out. Somehow, she managed to get entirely naked before I realized what she was about. My mind was on…other things. Normally, I would respond to round, warm breasts shoved in my face and I won’t say I was completely repulsed. I was probably hard before I got her back into her clothes and got myself out of there. The problem was—I wasn’t hard for her. I wanted a woman, all right, and if the right woman had been standing outside the door, she would have been in for a hard time.

  Spark.

  She was a provoking little creature and a temptress of the first order, although I’m not certain she realized it. Her eyes were always on me, pulling me, her gaze huge and seductive, the small kiss of her mouth pouting and sultry. She had a way of pushing her fingers through the wild tangle of her hair, dragging it away from her face as she gave me a look heavy with bold interest. Every long, lingering, knowing gaze she sent my way was an open invitation.

  Her hair was every color of gold you can imagine, running the gamut from dark and rich to flashing and bright and it was in a constant state of disarray, spilling over her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes were a heart-stopping shade of blue. But it was her mouth that drove me crazy, pulled up in a seductive little bow that begged to be ravaged in every way imaginable.

  It was all I could do to keep my eyes off her. It was all I could do to keep my hands off her.

  Ayden caught me staring once. We were in the hut. She’d leaned over to feed the fire and I watched her lissome body bent almost in half, my eyes fixed on the curves of her bottom scant feet away from where I sat. Mentally, I placed myself behind her, grinding my hips against the small cushion of her ass. Her actions might have been innocent but I doubt it. Placing herself in such a provoking position, how could a woman not know the effect her actions would have on a man? Ayden warned me off with a glare and I deflected it with a shrug and a grin as I dragged my eyes from her bottom. I didn’t see how he could fault me for staring. I was a man, after all.