Chapter 3: The Morning After
The morning light cut through the stained glass in jagged crimson and gold shards, painting stripes across Jen’s bare shoulder. She woke to the deep, familiar ache between her legs and the unfamiliar softness of a feathered mattress. Cedric’s chambers. She turned her head, her curls rustling against the linen pillowcase.
He was there, on the edge of the bed, a silhouette against the glowing window. Naked to the waist, his broad back was a landscape of old scars and tense muscle. His head was bowed, his long hair falling forward, hiding his face. But the posture screamed it: misery. A bottle of something strong sat on the floor beside his discarded boot, half-empty.
Last night’s victory felt cheap in this pale light.
Jen pushed herself up, the sheets pooling at her waist. She didn’t speak. She just moved behind him, pressing her naked body against the warm map of his back. She felt him stiffen.
“You’re thinking,” she murmured into his skin, her lips brushing a ridge of knotted scar tissue. “It’s too early for that.”
“You should go,” he said, his voice gravel.
“I will.” She didn’t move. Her hands slid over his shoulders, down the hard plane of his chest. His heart thudded under her palm, a trapped, frantic thing. “But I’m sore. You left me a mess last night. Those stone walls aren’t forgiving.”
A low sound escaped him. Shame. It was always shame afterward.
“I want you to do it again,” she whispered, her tone shifting from soothing to something harder, edged with heat. “But not in some filthy corridor. Here. In your lordly bed.”
“Jen—”
She nipped at his earlobe. “No. Listen. I want you to tie me up.”
He went utterly still. She felt the shock ripple through him. This was beyond the hair-pulling, beyond the rough urgency of the night before. This was deliberate. A line.
“What?” The word was barely air.
“You heard me. Use your belt. My wrists. I want you to take control completely. Since you seem so fond of losing yours.” She let her hands drift lower, over the taut cords of his abdomen, finding him already half-hard. Her fingers circled him, a slow, claiming stroke. “You liked it. Don’t lie to me. You liked the sound I made when you pulled. Liked how wet I got from it.”
He shuddered, his breath catching. His hand came up, gripping her wrist—not to stop her, but to feel her pulse against his palm. The conflict in him was a physical force. “That’s… not…”
“Not what you did with Kaylee?” Jen finished, the name a deliberate blade. She twisted her wrist free and crawled around to face him, kneeling on the mattress. The fractured light played over her breasts, her hips, the thatch of auburn curls at the junction of her thighs. She saw his eyes, stormy and wounded, drop to her body and then flinch away. “I’m not her. I don’t want whatever safe, gentle thing you gave her. I want what you are now. This.” She took his hand, still callused from sword grips, and placed it on her throat, not pressing, just holding it there. “All of it.”
His emerald eyes locked onto hers. The torment in them was almost beautiful. He was drowning, and she was offering him a different kind of deep.
Suddenly, he moved. It wasn’t passion; it was a decisive, almost grim resolution. He stood, pulling her off the bed with him. He unbuckled his thick leather sword belt with sharp, efficient tugs. The metal clasp clinked coldly.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice stripped raw. “Bend over the bed.”
A thrill, sharp and electric, shot through her. She obeyed, presenting herself, the cool dawn air brushing her skin. She heard the leather hiss as he drew it through the loops. Then his hands were on her, positioning her, his touch clinical. He wrapped the broad belt around her right wrist, then her left, pulling them together behind her back. He fumbled with the buckle, his fingers awkward. The leather was stiff, smelling of oil and him. It bit into her skin, not enough to chafe, but enough to remind her she was bound. Helpless.
“Good,” she breathed, pushing her ass back against him. “Now fuck your little whore, Cedric. Since you can’t fuck your wife.”
He made a sound like he’d been punched. Then his hand came down on her ass cheek—a hard, open-palmed slap that cracked through the quiet room. The sting was immediate, blooming into a deep, radiating heat. Jen cried out, her knees buckling, her cunt flooding with wetness.
“Say that again,” he growled, his palm resting on the punished flesh.
“I’m your whore,” she panted, the words slurred with need. “Your desperate, filthy whore.”
He didn’t wait. He guided himself into her from behind, one hand on her hip, the other fisting in her hair at the nape of her neck. He was thick and hard, and she was so wet he slid in with one brutal, deep stroke that punched the air from her lungs. He set a ruthless pace immediately, each snap of his hips driving her bound wrists further up her back, arching her spine.
“Is this…” he grunted, slamming into her, “…what you wanted?”
“Yes! Gods, yes!”
He fucked her with a single-minded intensity that erased the hesitant man from minutes before. The belt dug into her wrists, the bedframe rattled against the stone wall, his balls slapped against her with every drive. He pulled her hair, yanking her head back, controlling the angle, controlling her. The slap of skin on skin was a frantic, obscene drumbeat.
“You take it,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, his breath coming in ragged bursts. “You just… fucking take it.”
“I take it because it’s you,” she moaned, the admission slipping out in the haze of pleasure-pain. Her climax was building, a tight coil at the base of her spine, fed by the sheer dominance of his posture, the helplessness of her bound hands, the raw, grunting sounds he made.
He released her hair only to bring his hand down on her other ass cheek, another sharp, stinging blow. “Scream for me,” he commanded. “Scream my name.”
The combination of the slap and the deep, punishing thrusts sent her over. She shattered, her scream tearing through the chamber, muffled by the velvet drapes. “Cedric!”
Her body clenched around him in violent waves, and that finally broke him. With a final, hoarse shout that held more agony than ecstasy, he buried himself to the hilt and came, his hips jerking erratically, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades.
For a long moment, the only sounds were the crackle of dying embers and their shuddering breaths.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out of her. His hands, now gentle, went to the buckle at her wrists. The leather fell away, and she brought her arms forward, wincing at the stiffness, the vivid red marks left by the belt.
He didn’t embrace her. He didn’t collapse beside her. He stepped back, picking up his trousers from the floor.
Jen turned, sitting on the edge of the ravaged bed, watching him dress. The golden light now felt accusatory. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Cedric.”
“You should go,” he repeated, his voice flat. Final. He fastened his trousers and reached for his tunic, pulling it over his head, hiding the scars, hiding himself. “The garrison drills at midday. I have duties.”
It was a dismissal. More utter than any before. Jen stood, gathering her own clothes from where they were scattered like battle trophies. She dressed in silence, the soreness in her body a fresh, aching memory. As she laced her bodice, she looked at him. He was staring into the cold hearth, his profile sharp and closed.
She had gotten exactly what she asked for. She had pulled the darkness out of him and worn it. But as she slipped out of his chambers into the cold stone corridor, she understood the transaction. He had given her the raw act, and in return, he had taken another step away from her, and from the man he used to be. The door closed behind her with a soft, definitive click. This time, she knew he wouldn’t be the one to open it again.