Bound by Love: A Carolyn Faulkner Trilogy

Including: Angel of sudden hill, The centurion and sold!

Angel of Sudden Hill

by Carolyn Faulkner

Chapter One

Irina came to beneath a pile of furs that was so heavy it nearly prevented her from moving; then she realized that her hands were bound in front of her, making it doubly hard to maneuver. Try as she might, no amount of pulling loosened the stiff leather bonds. Naked and vulnerable, she tried to hurry; deep, male voices drifted into the tent from just outside and she knew she didn’t have long before . . . before . . . Struggling frantically, she could not complete that thought. That ending was just too unbearable to think about.

Oh, why hadn’t she listened to her mother when she said not to stray to far from the Keep? That there were dangerous marauders in the area who would think nothing of kidnapping her and selling her into slavery? She always lost her head when she was in the forest, gathering the herbs she used in many of the healing potions she was famous for. Her reputation as a healer was known all over the Southern Province, and it was well deserved – some of her successes still sent annual tributes that contributed to the family coffers that had dwindled alarmingly since Papa’s death.

But no healing powers were going to help her to escape. And it was too late to lament her pitiful lack of attention while her brother Brian was trying to show her the finer points of swordsmanship he’d learned while training to be a knight.

She’d just rolled onto her stomach, trying to shinny out from under the primitive covers, when the tent flap opened.

He’d waited all day for this – knowing she’d be helpless in his tent when he got to her. Even if she’d recovered and somehow managed to get as far as the door, the guards he’d posted there would have made sure she stayed put. He’d wanted her for longer than he’d ever wanted any woman; females were ripe for the pickin’ and he took them whenever he felt the urge – which was frequently - but not this one. This one was special for her extraordinary medicinal abilities.

Bryce de Keive wasted no time in divesting himself of his leather jerkin, swordbelt, and breeches as his eyes settled on the makeshift bed. He couldn’t see “the angel of Sudden Hill” under the furs, but he knew she was there, every softly rounded inch of her. Six-foot-three and gloriously naked, his heavily muscled body still glistening with sweat from the recent raid, Bryce watched avidly as the pile writhed, and soon one pink toe peeked out into the cold air. He smiled to himself. She was obviously trying to get up. This would be fun.

Her back to him, she levered herself off the bed, standing unsteadily, then hunching over when she realized that she was naked for all to see. There was no one but him to notice and he was nothing but appreciative of the site of her creamy white skin, sleek, slim back, and amply rounded bottom. When Irina turned to try to make her way out of the tent, she walked right into his bare, broad chest and found herself trapped not only by her bound arms but against the immovable mountain of huge, naked male.

Before she knew it, she was flat on her back beneath him on the bed, her wrists held above her head, out of the way, useless. A hot, wet mouth descended on hers before she could utter her first plea for mercy, his tongue violating her mouth boldly as his hands helped themselves to her high, full breasts. Shrieking, Irina rocked herself back and forth, trying in vain to avoid that rough hand, but there was nowhere to go. His grip on her wrists left no doubt that his strength was triple hers, and she could see the play of muscles beneath his skin as his bicep flexed and strangely tender fingers cupped a virginal breast, squeezing gently but firmly.

When he left her mouth to kiss wetly down the side of her neck, Irina breathed, “Please, please don’t – I’ll do anything you like – I have healing powers – I’ll cook for you – cleeeeeaaahhhhhh!” His mouth had captured a ripe pink berry of a nipple, taut and proud in the cool night air, suckling it strongly into his mouth, flicking it relentlessly with his strong tongue.

“Please- no!” Although she knew her struggles were useless, she couldn’t seem to stop, not that he was paying any attention to her at all. That dark black head moved from swollen tip to swollen tip, leaving a trail of wet kisses between, strong fingers plumping each breast in turn so that it presented itself to him as if she was begging for his sensual attentions rather than desperately trying to avoid them. To her deep, eternal shame, Irina felt her body blush pink from his ministrations, then flush hot and prickly at the strong tugging. He wasn’t hurting her, but her body pulsed with an unfamiliar ache that built with every brush of his lips over those tender bits of flesh, and it added to her fear of being manhandled by this behemoth of a man, a man whose name she didn’t even know.

Two huge, tree-trunk sized legs worked their way between hers, forcing her to spread beneath him, his swollen maleness pressed intimately against her feminine secrets. He let go of her hands and, despite the deep confusion within her body, Irina was going to take advantage of every possible opportunity to escape. She was a good girl, and this man seemed bent on doing exactly what her mother had warned her about. With every bit of strength she possessed, she brought her wrists down on his head, but her action had the opposite effect from what she’d intended. The giant wasn’t even phased by her attempt to hurt him. He merely reached under the bed a little, barely shifting his embarrassing position at all, collected her wrists again in a humiliatingly easy move, and tied them with a leather thong to the top of the bed. Irina was well and truly bound, her hands secured well above her head, entirely at the mercy of a man she was sure didn’t possess any of that noble intent.

And she was right.

Once he had her pesky hands and arms out of his way, she watched in terror as an evil smile spread over his face. Those platter-sized hands, rough with calluses, teased their way down the insides of her arms and down her sides till his palms covered her breasts, then began to squeeze firmly, making her arch and struggle to get away from his deliberately painful grip. Fingertips found swollen, almost sore nipples – “Ahhhh – aiiiieeee – noooo!” and pinched, at first almost carefully, then harder, pulling at the same time, lifting her breasts away from her body using just her tenderized teats, rolling them slightly back and forth between the pads of his index fingers and thumbs. “Noooo – plleeeaassee – that hurrrrrrrrts meeeeee!”

As he held her hefty globes up by their most sensitive points, Bryce leaned forward and licked around them, gently nipping at the vulnerable undersides that rarely received any attention at all. “Do as I say, woman, or it’ll go a lot harder than this for you.”

“P-please don’t hurt me!” Irina fairly sobbed, pulling uselessly at her bonds, feeing ashamed and afraid, but strangely achy at the same time.

Her nipples were beginning to burn from the weight of her breast pulling them down as he held them aloft, wiggling and jiggling his captives occasionally. Every once in a while, Bryce pinched a little tighter, or shifted his fingers a bit, making the pain take a fresh bite out of her, enjoying the way she caught her breath and moaned each time, arching to try to find some sort of relief.

But he didn’t allow that. He controlled the pain, and the pleasure. He controlled his women, until he decided whether or not to let them go, or, more often than not, pass them on to one or more of his men as a reward for their loyalty and bravery.

“Quiet, wench,” he whispered, the threat of retaliation should she disobey inherent in the soft command. Bryce enjoyed watching her struggling to suppress her natural need to vent her pain and frustration at him. “I like to see you like this. You’re naked and bound, as you were meant to be to keep you out of trouble, and beneath a man who will be your master, learning both pleasure and pain at his hands. What could be more natural for a woman of childbearing years? Soon you will find yourself spread wide and full of me, pleasuring me as woman has been meant to pleasure a man since the dawn of time. You’ll take all of me, every inch deep into your body, and what’s more, you’ll like it, too. I’ll haul your legs over my arms to get into every part of you before I spew myself deep inside you. I’ll do that to you any time I want, any way I want, and you’ll learn to crave it, I promise you.”

When he let go of her titties all at once, the blood flowing back into what had been tightly compressed areas brought her sobbing to a renewed level of pain, while he was free to do explore other interesting areas. Bryce scrunched a little down the bed, his lips level with her belly button. Irina saw another opportunity – however dismal – at escape, and tried for it, bringing her legs up quickly to twist over onto her stomach. But she still couldn’t get anywhere with her wrists tied to the bed. Bryce took advantage of her position, though, to give her a lesson she would never forget, laying a big arm across the small of her back.

He emphasized each word with a powerful smack to her upturned bottom, making her yelp with each one. “Naughty, naughty. I didn’t tell you to turn over. Disobedience, you’ll find, will always be swiftly punished.” Irina’s father was the only person who had ever spanked her, until now. This man’s hand was making her father’s belt feel like a feather in comparison. He reduced her to tears within the first three swats, and never acknowledged either her tears or her screams of pain. He stopped only when he thought she had learned her lesson, and not before. If she hadn’t been crying so hard, Irina would have been surprised at the unusual gentleness with which he positioned her on her back again.

But that instant of tenderness didn’t last. Bryce watched her yelp and hitch her hips up in the air when her roasted bottom touched the rough skins, then he settled himself low on her, forcing the issue, enjoying her futile attempts to buck him off, letting her exhaust herself against him, rubbing her prickly private hair against him. “Pleaseletmego! Pleaseletmego!” she chanted.

Bryce reached up and pinched a bruised nipple tightly, warning, “Be quiet, or I’ll strap your bottom well and truly, little girl, instead of those little love pats I just gave you.”

If those were lovepats, Irina didn’t want to think what he’d do to her with a strap – she knew she wouldn’t survive it. It was hard, but she closed her mouth, her eyes wide with fright as they pleaded with him silently.

Since her hands were out of the way, he leaned a little to the side, keeping those milky white thighs apart by the breadth of his body, but Irina kept her legs as tightly together as she could, despite him. Bryce touched her knee. “Open.”

She defied him, remaining still. His palm cracked rhythmically against her upper thigh, snapping down as hard as he could against her soft flesh. “By God, you will learn to do as you are told, woman – “

Sobbing, defeated and humiliated, Irina’s left thigh inched its way outward slowly. Still his punishing hand fell, until her leg was so far spread she thought she would come apart from it. Her privates were on lewd display for his eager eyes, and Irina thought she would die of shame. She had been raised gently, modestly, and nothing in her young life had prepared her for this degredation.

Bryce drew in a deep breath of her woman’s scent, reveling in it. A thought struck him – had she been aroused by his rough handling of her? Some women were, he knew. She’d been found wandering the forest all alone, unescorted, and the men he’d sent to kidnap her said she was known by some in the village as a witch because of her unique abilities. That scent was unmistakable – he knew a hot, wanton filly when he saw one, and this one was practically begging to be mounted and ridden – fast and hard, just the way he liked it and she needed it.

His sword hand traveled possessively down her body, squeezing here, pinching there, deliberately making her squeal, then reminding her to be quiet or feel his belt across her backside. He was only too eager to see that tempting bottom reddened further as she danced to his painful tune. His hand was so big he could measure the width of her hipbones between his thumb and the tip of his smallest finger. When his fingers descended below her bellybutton she began to keen wildly behind a clenched jaw, bucking and writhing with renewed strength when he cupped her hair covered mound. Bryce let her tire herself out, just as he’d let a wild mare expend all of her energies trying to avoid the saddle, only to find herself bridled and mounted and following the commands of her master’s hands and knees perfectly hours later, when she realized there was no choice. It was much the same with a recalcitrant woman.

This little one was no different – he’d break her to his hand just as easily. She was no match for him. To add to her shame and because he knew he could do it, he would make sure she thoroughly enjoyed it, every painful, pleasurable step of the way. She would learn to do exactly as she was told, or suffer the consequences.

His middle finger delved boldly between those exposed lips to the very heart of her, grinning broadly when he found himself baptized in her juices. “Ah, wench, your words lie but your body speaks the truth.” Bryce dragged his finger up, just a little ways, to discover an extremely swollen, fleshy button. That teasing finger rubbed with excruciating slowness up the side of that throbbing bundle of nerves, making her whimper and cry out unintelligibly, too tired anymore to struggle much, even as a second digit joined the fray on the other side, both sliding up and down and up again –

“God in Heaven have mercy on me please nooooooo!” Irina didn’t think she could survive the feelings that were building inside her. Every thought in her head, every nerve in her body seemed to be concentrated right where his hand was, right where his breath drifted hotly over the area that he was deliberately agitating.

Instantly, his hand was removed, only to smack down hard against the heart of her desire. Pain exploded where only pleasure had existed before, then again and again. Bryce spanked her pussy five times total, not going easy on her despite the loud screams each slap elicited. “When I say quiet, girl,” he whispered, his mouth near the top of her bruised delta, “I mean quiet.” In direct contrast to the now throbbing pain between her legs, his mouth was soft and gentle, the warm wetness soothing her well-punished flesh. As she was trying to recover from the horrifying feeling of being spanked in a place no one had ever touched in her life, he slid his lips and hands between her legs, his broad-as-a-barn shoulders naturally keeping her spread wide for him. Mouth opened as far as possible, he settled it over that puffy nubbin, holding her down as she arched up violently, a mindless moaning cry springing from her lips at the explosive pleasure.

Bryce brought his right hand to join his mouth at the juncture of her thighs, pressing an eager finger to the entrance of her womanhood, circling round and round, watching his captive grow more and more frantic – but carefully quiet except for the occasional whimper of frustration. Slowly, he advanced his fingertip into her moist cavern, watching her response avidly . . . watching her mouth form a rounded “o” of surprise . . . seeing her breath catch . . .

Then his fingers met an entirely unexpected, fleshy barrier.

He pressed again, a little harder. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Bryce added a finger, probing and pressing up into his little witch’s pussy, but the barrier held.

His mind could barely wrap itself around the thought, but there was no denying it: his little witch-healer was a virgin.

The Centurion

by Carolyn Faulkner

The acrid smell of dung and feces filled Brietta Driscoll’s nose when she awoke slowly, the back of her head pounding fit to burst. She couldn’t reach back to feel the size of the lump, but she knew it was there. Her worst fear had been realized: she’d been captured. Her heart began to try to hammer its way out of her chest. The only things that were a certainty in her life now were repeated rape and death.

She had to get out of here.

At first her eyes wouldn’t focus in the pitch black, and she wasn’t sure that that wasn’t a good thing, considering where she was – the temporary jail the Centurion had had erected when he marched into her small town to suppress their puny rebellion. Once she’d oriented herself a little, and waited for the atrocious pounding in her head to abate some, Brietta pulled experimentally against the bonds that held her hands behind her back. There was no give. None at all. It was as if she, herself, had tied them, dammit. She could hear her brother, Dirce, cackling at her dilemma in that annoying manner of his. Of course, if he knew of her situation he would have already mounted a rescue attempt, however foolhardy. Dirce was the bravest warrior in the region – too bad he didn’t quite have the brains to back up all that brawn and bravado.

That was where Brietta had always come in. Although her father certainly wished she hadn’t been encouraged in such things, she could glance at a battle map and not only recall it immediately in intimate detail within her mind, but she could also see potential enemy weaknesses and make intelligent suggestions about how to exploit them, all thanks to a meddling grandfather who had ignored his son’s wishes and educated his granddaughter right along with his grandson in most things. Unfortunately, she was too small to do much of the physical stuff, although her grandfather had insisted that she learn to defend herself in the best manner possible, so she learned – because Cedric the Hearty didn’t believe in using snubbed swords in training – to be quick on her feet. She had several serious scars as reminders when she’d lost her concentration and forgotten to duck and dodge.

Luckily, though, her training – such as it was - hadn’t really had to be done in secret, either, because Camlin was always gone on one campaign or another against the neighboring tribes. There was always some sort of rebellion to put down, and Camlin was never happier then when he was away from home – and away from his annoying children who always seemed to get into one scrape after another from dawn to dusk, most of them designed specifically to shame him and their name, he was quite sure.

Despite the fact that her head throbbed with even the smallest of movements, Brietta nonetheless began to pull against her bonds, and explore the small cell she was in as best she could. It was nothing but a hole – badly dug at that – with a heavy grate over the top. She struggled to her feet – falling several times in the process until she found her footing on the sloping floor – but she was much too short to reach the grate even if she managed to get her hands freed, somehow.

Settling back onto the floor in what must have been a more orderly fashion than she had arrived there originally, Brietta set her mind to concentrating on two things: regaining the use of her hands and remembering as much as she could about how she had gotten into this position.

Working her wrists and hands within the tight ropes rubbed her tender flesh raw in spots, but it would be more than worth it if she could manage to escape. It took her a long while but she was patient and eventually the already fraying ropes gave way. The first thing she did when her hands were free was to capture the long, lush fall of her hair in one of the remains of the rope, hiding her femininity – unsuccessfully, it had turned out – under her rough boy’s cap. In the dense darkness, she got on all fours and felt around, gaining a physical knowledge of her surroundings. Her jail was less than three feet in circumference and probably seven feet deep and . . . was apparently quite a busy place: her fingers encountered spongy, rotting flesh covered bones just under her nose.

Unable to control the reflex – not knowing whether she was desecrating the resting place of a man or an animal – Brietta turned and wretched. She didn’t try to fight it, just live through it and go on. Her only real hope was to get out of this place and back to Hallobert Keep. When the spasms were over, she steeled herself and put her hands right back into the mess they had been in, rooting around for anything that could assist her escape.

After many long moments and several more instances doubled over, she had what she wanted: two long, strong bones. Leg bones, her mind wandered and imagined, and her gorge rose again but she fought it back. She had to keep a cool head, and ignore her weak stomach as much as was possible. Besides her puny stature – she barely reached most men’s shoulders – it was her one true weakness, although usually it assailed her afterwards. She was a skilled healer – her garden at Hallobert Keep flourished with herbs and flowers meant to heal warriors after battle and assist women in childbirth. Brietta could keep a cool, calm head during the heart of the crisis – she’d sawed off bones and stitched up holes in chests and heads that made the stomachs of the huge men who had carried the poor victim in empty right in front of her.

But afterwards she could always be found hunched over her chamber pot, or letting fly out the nearest window.

But this was the here and now.

It took her what was probably several hours, but she managed to claw her way to the top of the hole using the bones to lift herself. The grate at the top – which weighed more than she did - was another obstacle she tackled patiently, inching it further and further to one side until, on her final attempt, she could shinny her way out of that blasted hole. But she didn’t spend time resting on her laurels – she tucked herself into a dark corner behind a tent and let her eyes adjust to the torchlight, clutching the remnants of her ragged shift as close to closed as she could get. No sense tempting fate any more than she had to – she’d already narrowly escaped rape before being thrown into the pit.

And five seconds later, a big, hard hand clamped down onto her shoulder. “What have we here?” boomed a loud, baritone voice.

Caught. She’d been caught not more than three minutes after she’d escaped. Brietta was terrified – not wanting to be thrown back into that dank hole in the ground – but more so she was mortified. Had all of her grandfather’s training gone for naught with her? Was she, as a woman, somehow inherently stupid, like everyone else – besides her grandfather and her brother – thought?

She found herself roughly turned to face her captor – an optio, judging by his uniform and the way he carried himself. The centurion’s second in command. Brietta cursed her small size. This man was huge – as all of the Romans seemed, and she had no real defense against such brawn. Grandfather had taught her to recognize opportunities for escape, to be cunning and smart against her enemy, but there was little he could do about the fact that she took after her delicate mother in regards to her size.

But that could be turned to her advantage, also, because men never expected a woman to think much.

They just wanted them to cook, bear children, and keep quiet. At least, that was what her father wanted of a woman, anyway.

“Well, what have we here?” He was speaking Latin and obviously had no idea that she understood him. Cedric had always said that one of the best ways to defeat an enemy was to know him inside and out – and that included learning their language. It was one of the areas Brietta had excelled at, much to the embarrassment of her less learned brother. She could speak most of the tribal dialects from the regions around them, as well as that of the Franks and even quite a bit of the more guttural musings of the Jutes.

He frowned down at her. “Why, you’re the one we threw into the pit, aren’t you? The daughter of the local chieftain?” He didn’t wait for her response; not that Brie would have deigned to give him one anyway, but began to drag her away, past the richly decorated tent of the tribune with its colorful flags flying, across the camp to a modest tent with no flags of rank whatsoever.

Brietta steeled herself, knowing what was likely to happen next – he was probably throwing her into a tent full of lustful soldiers who would sate themselves with her before tearing her limb from limb. Her grandfather hadn’t been able to speak to her of this, but Ula, the old housekeeper who had been her maid and surrogate mother, had told her in a perversely gleeful tone, of the horrors she could expect to endure before she died in captivity, hoping it would convince her not to continue to go on raids with the band of rebels she led. Since she was still a virgin, and despite her unusual upbringing still sheltered from some things, she didn’t understand a lot of what she’d been told, but whatever it meant, it didn’t sound good. Not that it had had its desired effect and stopped her from risking her life.

But she knew that this tent was that of someone important, not by banners of rank, but rather those of heralds and crests. One of them looked very familiar and heralded the Dionisius family . . . there was something about that family and one of its warriors that stood out from all of the lectures her Grandfather had droned on about, but she was too addled by her current situation to recall it.

Still, just as she was tucked under the flap and shoved into the tent, Brie straightened her back. Whatever her fate, she would meet it head on, as honorable as she – a mere woman – could.

The inside was dimly lit, and as simple as the outside. There was a long table with a few crude chairs, a pile of furs over a bedraggled couch in one corner that must’ve been used as a bed for the occupant, and a fire in a brazier that barely managed to take the chill off the damp evening air. Most of his armor was hung carefully from a wooden rack in one corner, the mark of his rank – his helmet – resting atop it. A centurion commanded eighty men within a legion, and during the heat of battle he needed to be easily recognizable. Unlike the rest of the men, the pale horsehair crest on his helmet went side to side instead of front to back. This was a man who had probably been fighting so-called barbarians for the Romans for more than fifteen years. He would have been pulled from the ranks and elevated to his lofty status because of his success and bravery in many battles. His staff – almost as thick around as a man’s wrist and nearly as tall, with what looked to be a gold phinial at the top – was propped next to the ensemble. She shuddered, having recently seen many such vine sticks in use – all in exceedingly unpleasant ways.

For the first time since she’d awakened, Brietta became aware that she was cold. Very cold. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and her nipples peaked painfully against the rough fabric of her tunic. At first she thought she was alone, but then a deep masculine voice rumbled into her ear from a point to her right that was almost close enough to touch her. “What’s this?” before the owner of the voice moved around in front of her, giving her a good look at the man who held her life in his hands.

If she hadn’t been alert prior to being shepherded into this place, she was now. Just looking at the man with the booming voice made every inch of her body, from her hair to her toes tingle. The nipples that were already pinched tight rose just that much more, as if blatantly trying to attract his attention, offering their hard, fleshy selves to him. He was a huge man. Bigger than anyone she’d ever seen before. Dirce was the largest of their warriors, the largest one she’d ever seen . . . until now. The Romans completely dwarfed the Anglo-Saxon warriors. This man had to be at least a head taller than Dirce, and almost twice as wide at the shoulders. His bare arms were tanned and massively muscled, rippling with veins and criss-crossing scars from previous battles. He was a walking, breathing testament to the strength and success of the Roman war machine.

Brietta had never reacted to any man this way before, and she certainly didn’t want to react to this one. Especially now that she was in a severely disadvantaged position. She wanted to present him with a strong front. Brietta was quite alarmed to realize that that was the least of what she wanted at this point. She wanted to kiss him - to run just her fingertips over that broad chest and watch his eyes eagerly for any sign of reaction . . .

Startled and dismayed at her own thoughts, Brie consciously reined herself in, ducking her head immediately and trying to appear as meek as possible.

But apparently she was too late. The giant’s curiosity was already caught, and to her complete and utter horror, he stepped even closer, coming into the dim light of the brazier, shadows falling on tanned flesh and carelessly highlighting the jet black locks and his sheer, masculine width.

It was all she could do to keep her eyes on those huge, leather booted feet as severe disappointment in herself flooded her stomach. She had always considered that she was nearly as good as Dirce. She would never hope to match his raw strength, of course, but she could – and did whenever challenged – meet or exceed it sometimes - always with intelligence and cunning.

Although it was unlikely, she’d learned as she’d grown up, her grandfather had filled her head with tales of past Celtic Queens and embellishing on the accomplishments of current, regional female rulers, hinting broadly that if she worked hard enough she might just join their exalted ranks . . . and Brietta had believed, foolishly, it seemed, as one by one those she’d held in high esteem had fallen, overcome – usually, and even more humiliatingly by her own father - either by use of brute force or out and out seduction. Far be it for her Father to do more work than was necessary when he could manage to accomplish his goal by tipping some wench onto her back – queen or no.

Brietta had seen the violence with which Camlin often took his women – granted, they were usually slaves or household help, but still. The sounds of the helpless girls’ screams had often drifted into her chamber on any given night – and even sometimes during the day . . . it confused her if she thought about it too much, because those niggling sounds often resembled moans of pleasure rather than screams of pain. But she’d also accidentally walked into her father’s chamber and that scene – two naked bodies writhing, her father groping the serving girl’s ample, rounded breasts hard as he worked his hips back and forth from where he lay between her outspread legs.

A small shudder ran through Brietta at the thought. She had resolved long ago that she would never let any man do anything like that to her, and had confessed her feelings of disgust to her maid, Ula, who had merely cackled at her.

“Aye, you’ll do it – once you’re married it’ll be your husband’s right to crawl between your legs any time he likes. And if you’re a good wife, you’ll not say nay to him.”

Brietta, who was all of eleven at the time, and not yet betrothed due to her grandfather’s machinations, had squared her shoulders and shook her head vehemently. “Then I shan’t get married.”

Ula, who was busily trying to dry her charge’s long mane of hair at the time, yanked the impudent girl’s head back sharply as she rubbed at the wet scalp with a rough cloth fit to leave the girl bald in patches. “You’ll marry who your father chooses, girl – old, young, fat, slim – you’re your father’s to give away to any man who’ll make him a good allegiance.”

“Marcus – our guest here is cold.” That sharp, humiliatingly suggestive tone snapped her rudely out of her reverie as his blatantly insulting gaze swept down her body, and suddenly Brietta was reminded that most of her body was exposed . . . and that she really was cold. “ – stoke the fire.”

“This is the girl that was captured with that rag-tag band of Anglos. She’s been enjoying the unique hospitality of the pit. I just happened to have the pleasure of running into her just as she was trying to make her escape.” The eager optio did exactly as he was told as he spoke, a knowing smirk on his face that disappeared as soon as the bigger man began to speak again.

“Who were the guards that should have been watching her?” The question was asked in a deceptively off-hand manner, as he was crossing the room to gather a rough blanket.

A shiver ran down Brietta’s spine, and she was suddenly extremely glad that she wasn’t one of those men.

“Gaius and Antonio,” came the snapped back information. “Lucius, they – “

“Deal with them.”

Unconsciously, Brietta’s eyebrow rose at the absolute command in his voice. This was a man who was used to being obeyed and would never tolerate either being questioned or – Gods forbid, being out and out disobeyed. And he and the smaller man obviously had a fairly close relationship of long standing, or he would have had to explain himself further. They knew each other well enough that few words were necessary.

She had studied the constructs of the Roman army at her grand father’s behest – as well as Latin - and knew that the chances were that these two men had seen a lot of hard battles together, and that as a centurion – the undisputed commander of eighty Roman soldiers who would live and die by his word – he would have been given the right to choose his own second-hand-man – his optio.

She filed away the part of his name she had learned, struggling to recall why that name sounded

Having been an assignment, Marcus departed through the tent flap, leaving Brietta with a big smirk, as if he knew what awaited her in the clutches of this giant of a man.

But what he did then amazed and surprised him when she found the blanket wrapped around her shaking shoulders. It was a gallant gesture that almost made her smile, until he moved in front of her to pull the flaps around her, reaching under the blanket to cup a taut breast, lightly pinching the already peaked nipple.

When her fist hit his shoulder, she automatically shifted a little to bring her leg around behind his while he was off balance from the blow so that she would have the leverage she would need to push him onto the floor – and from there, hopefully, flee this forsaken place with her hide – and her virginity – still firmly intact.

But he was bigger and stronger than any other man she’d ever encountered, and for a moment, when she realized that what had been a full-force, total-body punch to her was barely noticeable to him, her mouth hung open carelessly. He wasn’t knocked off balance in the least.

In fact, the bastard was grinning down at her, his huge paw still cupping her intimately, his fingers pinching a little harder until she could barely subdue a squeal. “Well, it seems we have a fighter on our hands. Perhaps I should take you to Rome and see how you’d do in the arena.”

Every ounce of blood left her face at his words. Until then, she had been living in her own little fantasy world, where she inevitably fight her way out of the huge Roman encampment and back safely to her home – to Dirce and Ula and Grandfather and her menagerie of pets, where her Grandfather would scold her for getting captured in the first place and drill her from morning till evening until she nearly dropped from exhaustion.

The man in front of her, touching her in a place where no other man had ever dared, and doing it as if he had every right and expectation of doing so, was the true reality of her situation. She was his – and, considering some of the other possible options, he was the lesser of any evils.

It was impossible, however, considering his sheer size, to think of him as the lesser of anything. Especially when his second hand came up to claim her other breast and squeeze it as he kneaded it, not unlike how Siobhan, the cook, kneaded the day’s bread.

He was being deliberately hurtful, watching her eyes and her face closely for every nuance of her reaction to what he was doing. Brietta drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly, closing her eyes and trying to divorce herself from what he was doing, but he wasn’t about to have any of that. Her eyes flew open and she stared right into his as he wrapped the long length of her hair along his thick forearm and grasped it close to her skull with his fist, prying back her head, but keeping her eyes as he bent towards her breast. Brietta hadn’t given up, but nothing she did – none of the attempted kicks or quick moves was met with anything other than an annoyingly amused chuckle. His mouth descended lower and lower until his lips encircled her still upright nipple.

It was a flash that lasted only seconds, but he bared his teeth just slightly before they sank into that tender flesh.

She could no more control the guttural scream that erupted from her throat than she could stop him from doing whatever he wanted to her. Pain was only part of its impetus, however – the rest of it was pure unadulterated anger. Brietta had never been forced to submit to much of anyone. Oh, her Father when he bothered to pay attention to her, she supposed, but not often enough that she couldn’t slough it off. She did submit to her Grandfather, but then she wanted to do that – she wanted to learn anything the old man could teach her. Even though he was older than she was, she’d never really bowed to her brother – even though he could overpower her easily once he grew up, and she was often on the receiving end of a cuff from him when her mouth ran amok with her, she always found a way to get even for anything she considered to be a slight.

But this – she had no idea how to deal with this. She was entirely at her enemy’s mercy. And he was thoroughly enjoying every second of it. To think she had wondered what it would be like to kiss this monster! Although his teeth were clamped so tightly on that bud that she thought it might come off entirely, his lips were drawn back into a grimacing grin – and not just to show the horror of what he was doing. Their eyes were as locked together as his teeth and her nipple, and, once she’d come down from the scream and was trying desperately to remain as still as possible so as not to jostle herself in his mouth, he gave her a slow, deliberate wink.

Brietta’s teeth – which were one of her crowning glories since they were all healthy and fairly white - were grinding together so violently that if she had been in her right mind she would have worried about breaking them. But all of her attention was focused on this horror of a man, just as he intended, she was sure. She could no more look away from what he was doing to her – from the pain he was causing her – than she could have defeated him in the Arena.

Finally, she couldn’t stand still and take it one second longer – Brietta tried to wrench away from him, from the source of her pain, but thought better of it when she began to think her nipple was being torn off.

Still keeping that tidbit between his teeth, he managed to growl, “Stand still, little bird. All of your frantic movement is just making it worse.”

She hated that he was right, and that she had already decided in her own mind to do as he was commanding, but now it would look like she was obeying him, and Brietta couldn’t have that, so she did exactly the opposite and began to fight him for all she was worth. He ended up letting go of his precious captive, but only long enough to get a better hold on her. As hard as Brietta tried – and she knew her life as she knew it was on the line here, that if this man was able to overpower her, which seemed depressingly inevitable, that nothing she knew would ever be the same – and despite all of her training, she ended up being defeated by the basest of methods – brute force. With those arms wrapped around her there was no place she could go – certainly not towards the barbarian, and not backwards, either. As he tightened his embrace, moving became less of a concern and breathing replaced it. The man was atrociously strong, and he kept her bound against him, waiting with apparent infinite patience while she struggled futilely, reduced, really to only being able to move her feet, and that just the barest of bits.

At one point, he lifted her entirely off her feet, so that she had no choice but to lean against him for support. She kicked at his shins almost dutifully, because she knew that was what she should be doing, but with no real heart in it.

She was well and truly caught, and chances were that she wasn’t going anywhere until he decided to let her.

If he didn’t kill her first, or sell or give her to someone else.

Like his men.

All eighty of them.

Sold!

by Carolyn Faulkner

Chapter One

Carolyn tugged against the rough, dirty bonds that held her wrists together. Despite the fact that the rope was also only loosely looped around the saddle horn, but there was no give in them at all. They were leaving angry, scratchy red marks in her formerly pristine skin.

They’d been riding for what had seemed like forever for her – and she fancied herself somewhat of a horsewoman. Of course, it didn’t help that he was forcing her to ride astride like some hoyden, the stiff leather rubbing obscenely between her legs. She’d tried to loop her leg over the horn to approximate the proper sidesaddle position as closely as she could on this barbaric Western saddle, but he’d pushed her leg back over every time, the last time slapping his palm down hard onto her thigh, even reaching beneath the skirt of the dress she’d insisted on wearing over these scandalous breeches he’d forced her into so that he she had less protection against the sharp sting of his hand as it cracked down onto her leg.

“Stop wiggling,” he growled against her ear.

It was abominable how close this gauche, dirty fur trader was to her. He didn’t deserve the honor of being ground under her heels, much less hoisting himself up behind her on his horse, his thighs cradling hers, his crotch pressing shamelessly up against her buttocks, because he’d insisted on bunching her skirt up between them. She could feel the animal warmth of him plastered against her back – and she knew it literally was animal warmth, since his entire ensemble seemed to be comprised of various furs of various animals.

If it wasn’t so blasted cold – already, and it was only September – she wouldn’t have been wearing the coat he’d given her that was made of much the same materials. He’d discarded the gorgeously fashionable one her father had presented her with two years ago, and slapped it out of her hands when she’d tried to rescue it from the pile that was obviously going to be left behind.

She was still trying to deal with her stepfather’s betrayal. She’d known that the business hadn’t been doing as well as it should have – it was hard to miss, considering that since her mother had died he’d spent the majority of his time either drunk or sleeping. Carolyn had done as much as she could, but since her mother hadn’t allowed her to learn anything about Kenneth’s business, she was pretty much at a loss.

But she’d never thought he’d sell her into slavery! And at such a shamefully low price! When he’d asked her to accompany him to the town square – such as it was – last night, she was surprised. No woman interested in retaining her virtue ventured outside in Shepherdstown at night, especially not during their pale equivalent of the Rendezvous that happened further east. Once a year, the town was even more overrun with insolent and ill mannered but armed to the teeth traders, drunk on the riches of their labors and unbelievable quantities of alcohol.

But she had assumed that Kenneth would protect her, and he had. Right up to the time he finished squabbling with who she now knew was the slave trader that was going to be conducting the auction that concluded the town’s Founder’s Day festivities. Carolyn had assumed that he was bargaining for some sort of goods the man had that the store needed.

She had rapidly learn to stop assuming when the smelly man grabbed a hold of her arms, bound them together behind her and threw her into a rickety wagon to await her fate. No amount of calling after Kenneth brought him back to her – in fact, she watched through tears as he walked directly into the saloon to drink away the tidy profit he’d just made.

The slave trader was barely understandable and paid even less attention to her ranting than Kenneth had. Finally, swollen eyed and hoarse to the point of whispering from screaming, Carolyn quieted, huddling in on herself and eventually caving in and using one of the disgusting blankets she found there.

The next day, not a lot past the crack of dawn, which she had never seen before in her life, the auction began, and she had to wait through the whole thing. Apparently, the auctioneer/owner had some small amount of business savvy, because saved the best for last. All of the other women – and the few men – had trudged up the steps and onto the makeshift stage – which also doubled as a gallows, when necessary – without much fuss. But Carolyn threw such a fit she had to be carried on, and all the crowd did was laugh. She knew most of the people there, and wished she could have melted into the floor or at least dropped dead on the spot, but instead her wrists, that were bound behind her, were anchored by a long tether to a bolt in the wooden floor made just for that purpose, and her legs were fitted into the rusty iron shackles that were used for every slave presented there.

Unfortunately, instead of dying outright or at least fainting out of the most mortifying situation of her life, Carolyn blushed so hard she thought she was going to faint and then she realized, to her horror, that she wasn’t going to, and the situation just kept getting worse. The owner was doing his little almost unintelligible patter, as he did about every poor wretch he put on the block. “Female. Nineteen.” He squeezed her arms, just below the shoulder. “Do a good day’s work for ya’.” Then laid a hand on each hip. “Got breeders’ hips.” He paused for emphasis and grinned lasciviously at the crowd. “Virgin, too, her Poppa said.” He put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but apparently everyone knew what he’d was saying by the murmur that rippled through the crowd.

Before she could say or do anything, he had taken out a wicked looking knife and slit the seams of her dress and chemise together, letting the front of it fall to her waist, completely exposing her breasts to the crowd. Then he’d reached over and hefted one of them, squeezing tightly until she cried out. Carolyn was fighting her bonds with everything in her, until she realized that all that did was incite the rabble by making her firm breasts dance before them.

So she stood stock still, but refused to look down at her feet, as the others had. She kept her head high, and, while her cheeks burned with shame, she stared daggers through every man who dared place a bid, constantly trying the strength of the knots at her wrists. She had fed some of them in her own – well, her mother’s and Kenneth’s – fine parlor. Why, Bud Smith, who was old enough to be her father, put in one bid, and so did Lance Gautier, who was only a few years older than she was and had been her suitor until Kenneth had begun losing money, and she’d begun losing status in the community, despite the fact that they still inhabited the largest house in the community.

Carolyn might have sunk as low she could at this point, but her glare could still set some men back on their heels. The auctioneer wasn’t at all happy – he wasn’t getting anywhere near the price for her that he wanted – just barely above what he’d paid the old sot for her. She was worth a lot more than that. Thinking the men in the crowd might like a little more of a show, he pinched her nipples sharply, hard enough to make her scream and lean over to sink her teeth into him, drawing an outraged yell from him as well as a quick, ruthless backhand that caught the side of her cheek, leaving both a smudge and an ugly bruise there for all to see.

“That’ll learn ya’ for bitin’ me, girl, and ‘ere’s more whir that came from.”

Dizzy now, her head buzzing strangely in a way it never had before, she thought he was a mirage of sorts at first, until the crowd began to part as he made his way through it, hefting a small leather purse in his hand that jingled with coins.

“Fifty silver dollars,” the man said, throwing the bag onto the stage at her feet, quite confident that he’d bought and paid for her several times over.

And he had.

“Sold!” cried the auctioneer, still rubbing the spot where she’d nipped him. He couldn’t wait to be rid of the bitch, and untied her wrists from the bolt to hand the rope over to the obviously wealthy man, who immediately used a fur to cover the young woman’s nakedness. Her former owner cracked a black toothed smile, cackling to himself that he wouldn’t want anyone else getting a good look at her either, if he’d bought the baggage himself.

Carolyn found herself tugged along behind a man who was near big enough to blot out the sun, especially from her. She only topped five feet by an inch or two, and barely weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds – she’d used the big grain scale in the mercantile to weigh herself once, when she was wondering. This man was at least three times her size – maybe more. He was broad as a barn and so muscled that she could see them rippling beneath his shirt and coat, both of which he wore completely open, as if it was the middle of July instead of coming on to what promised to be a very nasty winter. And that didn’t take into consideration how indecent it was that every time he turned to her, she saw a flash of light chest hair covering a very muscular, tanned chest.

She’d never so much as seen a man’s ankle, much less his chest hair! It was downright shocking, and she’d had enough shocks for one lifetime in the past two days.

“Would you please button your shirt?” she asked as he dragged her along behind him; his strides covered three of hers, especially in her skirt.

He did not deign to reply to her query, no matter how often she repeated it; apparently he was too busy trying to run her into the ground getting to what must have been his horse and mule that were tethered outside the saloon. Carolyn’s head was down just because she was trying to make sure she didn’t trip and kill herself being force marched across the muddy, rutted street, and all of a sudden she came up short against the back of him, and felt as if she’d run into a brick wall. No wonder none all of her struggles had gotten her nowhere, except almost face down in the mud on occasion when she stumbled. But he’d always caught her, wrenching her shoulders none too gently until she was upright again and fit to drag some more.

Until he’d stopped dead in his tracks nearly in the middle of the street. It wasn’t until she peeped around his broad back, and spying someone she’d never expected to see again. Kenneth, shoving one of her bags at him. “Here. They’re hers. Or they were.” He didn’t so much as look in her direction, as if she was beneath him now, when he was the one who’d married up by marrying her mother.

The man gave Kenneth, who was small and slight, a curt once over and an even more curt response. “Merci.”

Kenneth turned and left without a second glance.

She didn’t know why that exact moment struck her so, but Carolyn burst into tears, which were, of course, completely ignored by her captor, who rummaged through her things, leaving most of them in the bag. She spied the small, silver framed picture of her mother that had graced her nightstand in the only home she’d ever known, and cried even harder, especially when she realized that he intended to leave anything he hadn’t selected behind for whoever wanted them.

“Please – please – could I have the picture?” she asked, never having heard herself sound so cowed in her life. How the mighty had fallen. She knew she wasn’t going to get it – he hadn’t so much as spoken to her or acknowledge her or any of her requests, but was delighted when, after physically lifting her up into the saddle and retying her hands in front of her, he did find the picture and tuck it into one of his already bulging saddle bags. She couldn’t help but repeat her thanks hoarsely over and over. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

It was one of the few things she’d have to remind her of who she had been at one time, along with a very few of her dresses.

But now, after riding in front of him for so long, she thought her legs were going to fall off. “Can’t we stop?” she whined for the thousandth time.

He didn’t answer, as usual.

She had to admit she was somewhat surprised by him, though. The few mountain men she’d had the misfortune to run into in town announced themselves loudly by royally offending the noses of anyone within a five mile radius. But he didn’t – thankfully. And she was looking for reasons to hate him. She’d always thought that it was only the lowest of the low who would pay for a human being. Carolyn had kept her mother from contracting for an indentured servant from Ireland, in favor of just hiring someone in town because she thought the practice totally barbaric.

Now here she was.

Because of his refusal to stop some time later, her right thigh began to cramp, and she found herself literally screaming in pain. He still didn’t slow the horse one iota, but he did reach under her billowing skirts to rub her leg, which felt at once horrid and wonderful – more shamefully wonderful than anything. She liked the way his strong, sure fingers massaged away the pain. But she didn’t like the way they then proceeded to find their way up her flanks to her bare right breast, which bobbed gently against his palm from the movement, as if it was pressing into it then back out again.

He stopped that movement by cupping first one, then the other of them from behind, holding them tightly but not painfully.

Carolyn twisted one way, and then the other, almost falling off the horse several times, but never accomplishing her goal of dislodging those hard, possessive hands. Until this morning, no one had ever seen so much as her ankle in all her life, and now, within the space of less than a day, she’d been stripped to the waist and had her nipples pinched, and now this man – who probably thought he owned her but from whom she was going to run at the first opportunity – was making free with his hands, and there was literally nothing she could do about it.

In fact, because of the way her wrists were bound in front of her, she was actually forced to present her breasts to him, her arms framing the two generous mounds and squeezing them into greater prominence. She supposed that she should be thankful that at least he wasn’t hurting her, but that seemed like small consolation. She almost wished he would hurt her – it would be another invection she could heap upon his head as she screamed at him for taking such liberties with her body.

“Get your hands off of me, or I shall scream!”

She craned her head around and leaned over enough that she could see the nasty grin that settled over his face. “Please do.”

Although the fact that he was so eager for her to do it should have given her a hint, Carolyn did, only she had little voice left from screaming all night in her jail at the auctioneer’s. Try as she might, she couldn’t even come up with a decent croak, and all she accomplished for her troubles was to give him a good belly laugh. And he continued to hold her breasts in his callused palms as if he owned them.

Try as she might – and she exhausted herself trying – she could neither get away from nor dislodge his big paws.

Only when he’d felt her relax back against him – all the fight gone out of her and limp with the exertion – did his fingers reach for her nipples and begin rolling them with excruciating gentleness.

“No – No! You mustn’t!” she whispered raggedly, putting her hands over his to try one last time to pry them off.

“That’s right,” he whispered in his lilting French accent, “cup your hands over mine so I’ll hold you that much tighter, cheri . . .”

His suggestion had the expected – and opposite – response, of course, as Carolyn’s hands dropped to her lap as if she’d been scalded, and he chuckled softly into her ear, his lips making lazy trails up and down her slender neck. “That’s it. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re mine, and I will have you in whatever way I please. And it pleases me – some times – to please you.” His fingers plucked her nipples somewhat less than gently, tugging them with just the right pressure, making them feel horribly good as he hurt them just a bit.

He’d lied. It didn’t please him only sometimes. He’d known from the moment he’d seen her, standing straight and proud on the block, rather than cowed and cowering like the others – that he had to have her. He spent more than he should on her, but then, he intended to get more than his money’s worth from her, if only by indulging his every sexual whim. He had been too long without a woman. It had been at least two of their Founders’ Days since he’d been willing to part with enough money to buy a whore. He had more important things to spend his hard earned silver on.

But he could no more ignore her than he could the raging hard on he’d gotten a soon as he’d seen her – and the glimpse at her breasts had more than clinched it. He would have paid four times the amount the old geezer was asking to have full ownership of this one, despite the grubby face, and the bruise the man had lain on her cheek, which had darkened rapidly into a purple blotch on an otherwise pristine face. Her hair was still up, and her dress was immaculate, and he had a good idea that she was a patrician who was down on her luck, and that was confirmed when that older man brought her a box of her things.

He’d seen the man in the saloon last night, drinking himself into oblivion quietly in the corner, and he knew that whatever money he’d gotten selling this young woman into slavery was going to be spent the same way.

But none of that was his problem. In fact, he considered himself extremely lucky to have found such a rare gem among the usual rubbish, squeezing her breasts along with her nipples, as if proving to himself that she really was there, really was his, and wasn’t just a product of his feverish need.

“Ow! Stop that immediately!”

He could tell, though, that she was starting to like it. Her nipples stayed hard between his fingers, despite the way his calluses rasped across and around them as he twisted and pulled. Her breathing was very erratic, and he knew he’d caught the beginnings of moans she’d managed to stifle.

If she was truly a virgin – and he tended to think she was – then she wouldn’t have any idea of what was happening to her. Or what was going to happen to her. Or any of the things wonderfully degrading things he could do to her body. But he intended on enlightening her. Slowly, so that he could enjoy more than just her body’s helpless reactions, but could enjoy the true and complete satisfaction of awakening her, and, of course, training her to his own, personal tastes.

“I’m going to make you do more than just scream,” he whispered. “When we get back to my cabin, I’m going to take away your clothes, and keep you naked so that I can sate myself on your beautiful body any time I want to. I’m going to lick and touch every inch of your body, and I’m going to suckle at these beautiful titties until they’re ruby red and raw. I’m going to spank you until you think you’re going to faint, then I’m going to revive you and do it all again. And I’m going to fuck you, here,” he grabbed her between the legs with both hands, groping and squeezing while she tried to jump up and away, but couldn’t get any purchase with which to raise herself, so she kept settling that very private part of herself back down into those eager hands.

Carolyn gulped hard. “No, you don’t have to do this. I – I have cousins – my mother’s cousins – they’ll pay money. They’ll pay a ransom, I promise. A big one. Lots of gold. Just for you, for my s-safe return. Untouched.”

He laughed cruelly, dashing her hopes for the idea that had flitted into her brain in desperation. She wasn’t at all sure her Mother’s cousins would pay anything for her, but it sounded good. “I don’t need their money. I bought what I want. And you’re not going to be untouched for long, that I can promise you, woman.”