Princess of Perchhold Ch. 01

"Pull off my boot, girl," he commanded. His gestures were strangely expansive, his voice too loud. Caryn remembered what Nate had said, that she was a princess in her own right and deserved to be treated well, and she grew angry.

"Call me by my name, my lord," she said, making no move help him in his struggle to free his foot.

Aric squinted up at her, his face hard. "Come here and pull off my boot, Caaari," he said, dragging her name out in a sing-song imitation of Nate's voice. Caryn stiffened at the harsh, mocking sound of it. "That's Nathan's nickname for you, isn't it? Caaari? You like it when he calls you that?"

Her brother leaned forward, putting his face scant inches from hers, and spoke more loudly, biting off his words. "Help me with my boot." His breath was heavy with the spoiled smell of wine.

"Aric—are you drunk?"

There was a false levity in his voice, a dangerous lilt that did nothing to hide the dark mood her brother was in. "I don't think it's any of your business, one way or another, Caaari. Tell me, how long has it been since Nathan first stuck you?"

"What!?"

"I've seen the way he looks at you, Caaari. The two of you are like peas in a gods-damned pod. How long has he had his cock up your skirt?"

Caryn was stunned and increasingly angry. "How dare you? Nathan has never touched me!"

Ignoring her, Aric continued, "Not that I blame him. I've been waiting for this day for a long time, sister dear, watching you grow out of your skinned knees and into a body that could make a blind man hard. I've thought about it, what I would do when I got this chance to claim your — well, not your virginity, I suppose, since Nate has that—"

Caryn slapped him with her full strength, rocking his head back on his neck. For a moment, she felt vindicated, but her satisfaction melted into uneasiness, and then to terror as Aric fixed cold eyes on her.

"You would strike me? Your brother?" he asked. He spoke so softly she barely heard him over the pounding of her heart. She knew that face; she had seen him rage against a man who had insulted him, seen him beat that man almost to death with his fists.

"Aric, I—" His hand closed around her throat as she struggled to make an excuse, lifting her off her feet. She hung there for a moment before he released her and let her collapse backward against his pillows. He clambered up onto the bed, standing atop the springy surface and towering over her. For a moment, he only stared at her as she trembled on his blanket, then he pulled back his booted foot and kicked her squarely in the ribs.

She cried out, clutching at her side and curling away from him, and he dropped to his knees next to her. "Should have helped me with my boot, Caaari," he jeered. "Now, pull it off."

Taking sobbing, staccato breaths, she turned back to his proffered boot and yanked at it until it came free of his foot. She tossed it onto the floor next to the bed. "Aric, you've been drinking. Let me—" He slapped her hard across the face.

"Now my belt," he said calmly, and with shaking fingers, she complied. "Take off my shirt. Carefully!" She loosened the ties at his neck and pulled it over his head, dropping it on the bed. Dread gnawed at her chest like a hungry beast. "Stand by the bed."

Caryn crawled off his mattress, scrambling to her feet. Aric's hand rubbed against the bulge in his trousers as he watched her. "Now...off with the dress."

Whimpering, Caryn demurred. "Aric, please! Not like this. You're angry!"

With a growl, Aric reached into the drawer of his night table, where he kept the knife he had been given on his own eighteenth name day. He seized it by the handle and, ignoring his sister's increasingly desperate protests, jerked it through the fabric of her dress, neck to navel. His hands were not as steady as usual; he had scratched her along her sternum, and a thin line of blood ran between her breasts.

Aric dropped the knife and ripped the remainder of the dress away from Caryn's body, leaving her exposed to the chilly air as it fell to the floor. Her pale skin was studded with gooseflesh, and her nipples had tightened to pink nubs. There was a nasty bruise forming along her ribs where he had kicked her, but below that was only her milky smooth skin, curving deliciously at the hip, disappearing into the dark curls between her thighs, running taut down the length of her long, tapered legs.

Her attempts to cover herself with her hands were all the more titillating for Aric; the image of her pale hand against the backdrop of dark hair made his cock jerk, imagining the times she must have buried her fingers in that nest, seeking warm, wet release.

"Turn around. Let me see all of you."

She shook her head frantically, trying to form the words that would make him stop, but unable to find her voice. Aric gave her no time for protests. He stood and pushed her down onto her stomach on the bed, reveling in the smallness of her, the suppleness of her skin. She wriggled and clawed at the sheets, trying to crawl away, but he clung to her shoulder and waist and held her in place.

Caryn fought to turn herself over and succeeded in twisting onto her side, giving herself a view of him throwing off his trousers. A frantic noise, a keening half-scream escaped her mouth as he released his penis, and she kicked at him, connecting with his thigh and pushing herself off the other side of the bed. When her hands hit the floor, she began to drag herself away from him.

"Where are you going, Caaari?" The sing-song voice was back. Aric grabbed her ankle and jerked her back onto the bed, where he was now kneeling, one fist pumping up and down along his shaft. He seized both of her wrists in one hand and stared down at her, pleasuring himself. Her struggles were making her breasts toss and joggle in the most appealing way. He knelt on her legs so the she could not kick him.

"Aric, I beg you, let me go. This is not the way! Tomorrow, when you're sober..." Caryn trailed off, unable to continue.

"Would you like to know a secret, sister?" Aric asked, stroking himself more rapidly. "I am not drunk. I only drank the single glass of wine I intended to give to you. I thought it might make things easier for you. But I watched you dancing with Nathan, I saw the way you pressed your body against his. And I knew then that his cock had been inside you before, probably many times, and you didn't need the wine to dull a virgin's pain."

"I have never had a man, Aric, I swear!"

She seemed in earnest, but Aric had heard whores swear as much, and as vehemently. "Then let's see, shall we?"

He let go of his member and took his weight off his sister's legs. She immediately began to kick at him again, and he fought her one-handed for several minutes before he grew too irritated. Taking hold of one wrist in each hand, Aric slid off the bed and stood, hauling Caryn off after him. She groaned when her lower body hit the floor, and hissed as she was dragged across the ground to his wardrobe.

Inside was Aric's collection of tools and toys, the things he was forced to use when his ladies did not submit as they ought. From it, he drew a rope, with which he bound his sister's wrists.

"Aric," Caryn said breathlessly. "Aric, no!"

Years ago, he had had an iron hook put into his ceiling just over his bed. He carried Caryn back to it, lifting her bound wrists over it so that she hung from the hook by the rope that connected them. She began to make a most pathetic noise; the pain in her shoulders in that position was intense, and she could not take the pressure off of them with her toes just brushing the surface of the bed.

When Aric stood before her, his erection was level with her mound, and he seized her hips, crushing her sex against his.

"A virgin, she says," he muttered to himself, staring down at her breasts as they jounced with each movement Caryn made. "We'll see about that. We will see."

With his fingers digging into her waist, he began to lift her. A blessing at first for the relief it gave her burning shoulders, the movement almost immediately filled Caryn with horror. He would lift her up and drop her down onto himself. "No, Aric!" she screamed. His cock was rubbing between her nether lips with unbearable friction. She imagined the way she would tear open when he penetrated her and began to wail, bawling uncontrollably, her eyes scrunched shut and hot tears salting her face.

This, it seemed, got through to her brother at last. Still holding her by the waist, he put his forehead against hers. She opened her swampy eyes.

"You want me to let you down?" he asked. She eyed him for a moment, then nodded warily. "Would you lay down like a good girl and do what I ask if I let you down?" She began to cry again in earnest, and he shook her. "Listen to me! The alternative is hanging here while I impale you. Is that what you want?" Caryn shook her head. "Then you're going to behave?" Sucking in a shuddering breath, Caryn nodded.

Aric lifted her off the hook and lay her down on the bed. His anger was spent; all that was left was the lust for his sister's young body. Caryn curled into a fetal ball, wrapping her arms across her face and sobbing into the crooks of her elbows.

"Caaari," he whispered. He ran his hand over his shoulder and down her side, careful of the dark bruise there. His fingertips dragged back up, trailing along her stomach and tracing the curve of the bottom of her breast. Caryn shuddered under his touch.

"Caaari," he called quietly again. "I am going to make you want me. Your wet cunt is going to beg for me."

Sobbing harder, Caryn curled up more tightly, but there was no defense for her naked body against her brother's featherlight caresses. He cupped her breast, testing its weight in his hand. His thumb rubbed against her nipple and found it still pinched hard against the cold, so he rolled it gently between his thumb and forefinger. He knew how to be gentle.

"Don't be scared, sister," Aric murmured. "You just made me angry, that's all. I won't hurt you now. I'll make you feel good."

He lay down behind her and stroked her back with both hands, sliding one hand down to her rear and massaging her cheeks, bringing the other around her waist to press her body back against his. He was still erect, pressed now along the crevice of her pert rump.

Caryn quieted as his fingertips stroked her body, beginning to warm her flesh. She could feel every inch of his skin against her back, and he burned feverishly hot against her. It occurred to her that her brother was quite mad; she wondered if Nathan knew how wild their brother's mood swings could make him.

No, he could not, or he would not have left her with him. She shuddered as she thought of Aric as king, his word law.

Aric breathed heavily against her neck and ear. "Caaari," he called again, breathily and mockingly. "I need to bury myself in you. How does Nate make you wet?"

Caryn fought the urge to tell him again that Nate had never touched her, knowing it would only infuriate him again. She had learned her lesson, and she wanted no more fits of fury from him. Instead, she conjured up the fantasy she had used when she touched herself in her own bed, the image of a lover moving slowly between her thighs. There was no escaping this night with Aric, no avoiding the fucking he was nearly shaking with the need to give her. It would be best, she knew, if she could find a way to enjoy it.

"He...he touches me," Caryn began, closing her eyes. "He places his hands on my breasts and he squeezes them gently. He kisses my neck, and—" She gasped, for a moment losing her train of thought as Aric began to follow her instructions, grasping her breasts and pressing his lips lightly to the place where her pulse beat in her throat. "H-he kisses his way down my neck and farther until his lips are on my nipple. He flicks it with his tongue, and sucks."

Never let it be said that Aric could not take direction. Obediently, he began to suck her breast, his fingers running up and down the outside of her thigh. Caryn shivered, and not in revulsion.

"Then he kisses a trail down my belly," she whispered, pausing so that Aric could begin, "and when he reaches my lips, he kisses them as well."

Aric carried out her whispered fantasy, until his tongue slid roughly between her lips and down her slit. She yelped as he tightened it and speared her with the slippery tip. She felt a warmth begin to slick between her lips that had nothing to do with Aric's saliva. It seemed Caryn's body was more forgiving of Aric's recent roughness than she was.

Her brother savored the juices that began to seep from her sex; it tasted like surrender. He ran low on patience, and this wetness was consent enough for him.

Aric spread out so that his body hovered over his sister's. There was a heat, a tension in the slim space of air between them that made him drip with anticipation. He pressed her thighs farther apart with his knees, lowering himself to her pussy. Caryn's eyes were shut, her face scrunched in concentration. She was so lovely that way.

When he shoved into her, he knew he had not given her enough time to be saturated. The friction was still too great, and her cries were evidence that his penetration was not pleasurable, but he had already waited too long. She was his and he wanted her.

Something obstructed his entrance, and for a moment he was confused. He had truly believed that Nathan had broken her already, but it seemed his sister was honest after all. It pleased him immeasurably to know she had not lied to him, that he was the brother that would tear her open and make her a woman in every sense. He leaned into her, breaking through, and smiled as she shrieked in pain beneath him. Her eyes were pricked with tears. She was loveliest like this: crying, panting, broken.

"You are mine," he whispered in her ear, forcing himself into her as deeply as he could go. "Your body, your virginity, your honor...they all belong to me. Tell me." When she did not answer, he grabbed her by the hair and shook. "Tell me!"

"Yes," she gasped, her eyes shutting tightly and her mouth opening wide as he pulled back and thrust into her again.

"No, tell me. Say it."

"I am yours, my lord," she panted. "My brother has claimed my maidenhood and made me his completely."

"And are you glad? Does it bring you pleasure to know that you belong to your brother?"

Her eyes opened and narrowed at him. No, her face said. No no no no no.

"Yes, my lord," she murmured dully. "I would give my body to you a thousand times over."

"And you shall, Cari," he promised her.

She eyed his knife where he had dropped it on the floor, and she made her own silent promise.

***

Caryn did not return to her own chambers until nearly noon the next day. Wrapped in Aric's dressing gown, she plodded, limping and exhausted, into her bedroom and collapsed face down in her bed. Here in the safety of her room, she wanted to cry, but she had spent her tears.

"Long night?" Asked a male voice from the corner of her room, and Caryn gasped and jerked. She was sitting up against her headboard, curled into a ball before she realized who had spoken, and from where.

"Nate." Her voice cracked on his name. He rose from where he had been sitting at her small breakfast table, moving to seat himself instead on the edge of her bed.

He reached out to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear, but she flinched away from him, so he returned his hand to his lap and did not move toward her again. "How are you?" he asked in the same tone he used to calm a spooked horse.

She did not answer.

"I hope you'll forgive the intrusion...I couldn't sleep last night, and I thought I'd wait for you here."

Caryn responded with a one-shouldered shrug that told him nothing.

"Cari, talk to me" he said, dragging her name out over several syllables. Her head jerked up and her eyes burned for a moment.

"Don't call me that."

That startled Nathan. He had called her Cari for as long as he could remember. It was his nickname for her, the one only he used. "Oh...okay. Are you angry with me?"

"No," she said, shaking her head and sighing. Then, "Yes."

"Yes? Why?"

She glared into the middle distance, refusing to look at him, and did not respond. Nathan wanted to touch her, but he had hated the way she jerked away from him.

"Caryn? Why are you angry?"

"What good are you?" she hissed at him suddenly.

"What?" Nathan reeled back as if slapped.

"What good are you to me? As a brother or a friend! First, you refuse me, then you give me the stupidest advice. 'Don't let him hurt you'? What good could that have done me?" Caryn was still not looking at him, spitting her words instead toward the wall.

"Did Aric hurt you?" Nate began to feel the cold roar of adrenaline in his blood. "Did he..."

"Did he what, Nathan? Go ahead, ask. The answer is yes, whatever it is." Caryn levered herself up off the bed and turned back to her brother. "Would you like to see what he's done to me? It's not pretty. It might make you sick to your queasy little stomach; I know you have no stomach for this whole affair." All the poison she could not unleash on Aric, Caryn poured out on Nathan. Nathan who had done nothing — nothing to hurt her, and nothing to help her either.

She dropped Aric's robe from her shoulders. She was naked underneath, and the dark bruises were easily visible against her fair skin: the fist-sized purple bruise along her side from his boot, and the matching sets on her hips, her upper arms, and her inner thighs where Aric had dug his fingers in. The shallow red cut between her breasts was visible too, flaked with dried blood. The half-moons of bite marks decorated her neck and shoulders, her breasts, her thighs. Her wrists were circled in chafe marks from the rope that had bound her.

"Gods' mercy," Nathan whispered. "Gods' mercy on me, I'll kill him. I'll cut his throat." He lifted the robe back over her and wrapped her in it, hugging her to him. "I'm so sorry."

For a moment, Caryn stiffened in his arms, wanting to escape, but he smelled just as he always had, and his arms around her were warm and comforting, and she collapsed against him, shaking with the force of the tears she thought she'd cried out. She clutched at him, the fabric of his shirt wadded in her fists.

Slowly he sat and lifted her onto his lap, one arm behind her back and the other under her legs, like she was a little girl again. He rested his cheek against the top of her head and tried to fight down that rage that boiled through him.

Caryn nuzzled against him, her face pressed to the skin just below his collarbone. His heart was pounding, the heat of it radiating out against her. She made herself unclench her fists, flattening her hands against his chest. She slid them up to his neck, wrapping her arms around him and tucking her head into the warm space between his neck and shoulder. Her tears were slowing; everything about him comforted her, relaxed her.

Her breath was hot against his neck. Nathan tried to think of anything but how warm and soft she was against him. This was not the time. Her lips were moving against his neck. At first he thought she was speaking quietly, but then he realized the sound coming from her was just a deep sigh, and her lips were pressing light, soft kisses along his skin. He cleared his throat and shifted, trying to move her back without noticeably pushing her away.

Instead, Caryn moved closer, drawing her inside leg toward her chest and turning deftly so that Nathan found himself quite suddenly straddled by his little sister. The dressing gown that had been simply draped over her was slipping to the floor, revealing her trim body. Nathan realized he was staring down at what he could see of her and averted his eyes. Silently, he mouthed a prayer to the gods for strength.