[THIS STORY WILL BECOME FREE ON THE 5th OCTOBER 2023]
Fara's husband, the Prince of Azura, is murdered and she's enslaved by his killer, Theodan, a warrior fighting a war he doesn't believe in - until her.
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She awoke alone, the mid-morning light milky and grey as it streamed in through the window. Then it was true. Azura's light never shone fully upon Leoth's realm. It was a memory only.
She could not remember having ever slept so deeply or so well, her bones soft and well-rested. As she sat up, she winced. Her body ached. Inside, between her thighs, across her breasts, her mouth worn and used from his.
Across the chamber, the fire burned soft and subtle in its hearth though it should have been long since dead. Had he kept it burning for her?
Theodan.
His name felt different to her now. It was changed. Heavy. Weighty with importance now.
Like a visitor in her mind she could not ignore the truth of it. From the Gods or from herself.
She had enjoyed him.
She had lain with a male and for the first time, had lost herself to the breathtaking pleasure of it.
She had lain with Galyn many times, of course, but never had she given herself to him so completely that she had forgotten all else. Had forgotten who she was or what she had been before it. For with Galyn, never had she been able to separate what she had done and what she had stolen from him in order to enjoy him as a woman should enjoy a man.
Always she had felt this ever-present, suffocating notion that he would find out all she had done and see her punished for it.
Always she felt this deep-rooted seed of guilt and shame whenever he touched her. She had oft thought it a remnant of Valdr's poison. That she might never be able to enjoy a male the way other women did.
But she had enjoyed Theodan. Had it been this contract of theirs that had allowed her such abandonment? She could perhaps believe it, if all thoughts of negotiation and obligation had not burned to cinders in the blaze of his fire.
Where was her guilt and shame now? Now that she had surrendered her body to Galyn's executioner?
His scent clung to the sheets around her, piney like a forest after rain and deeply male, and there below it: her own. Entwined with his like lovers in an embrace.
A beast of Leoth she had called him. But in his arms, she had become one herself. Panting and mewling his name as he brought her to the very edges of bliss and back, over and over as the sun rose from the horizon. Her cheeks burned and a sharp quiver of remembrance sang across the space between her thighs.
She sat upright and took in the empty chamber. So he had not wanted to be here when she woke.
Perhaps her scars had disgusted him in the daylight.
A noise at the chamber door caused her to start. How would he look at her now? She grabbed the sheet pulled it to her breast, her heart hammering in her chest as her mouth dried and flooded at the same time.
