The Long Betrothal Ch. 04

Maxen was going mad, desperately clinging to his last shred of sanity as he tried to remember his manners. She was writhing against him like a dervish, but he wanted her ecstasy as well as his own, and he'd have to pull away soon to maintain any semblance of control. He straightened, but Kerin caught him before he stepped back, tugging his mouth down to hers. Her kisses had become nearly as aggressive as Maxen's own, and the tiny forays of her tongue whipped his fever ever higher.

He pried his mouth away for long enough to strip his tunic off and bent to her again. When he suckled her nipples, she responded wildly, rocking her hips to feel the friction of his cock prodding at her most sensitive flesh. With the pale flesh of her breasts taut beneath his palms, and nothing but his leggins between them, Maxen's willpower finally crumbled. The fluid seeping from her folds had soaked the fabric, wetting the skin of his cock, stretched tight over the blood-engorged tissue beneath. Maxen stopped worrying about arousing her. Kerin was aroused already.

She twisted, dragging her nipples across his heaving ribcage, and whimpered a constant song against his lips, punctuated by the passionate pleas of every lover at such times – his name chief among them.

Branded by the fiery sensation of Kerin's every touch, Maxen heard few individual words until he rose above her, stripping his leggins down without bothering to remove his boots. Gripping Kerin behind her knees, Maxen he pulled her to the edge of the table, lining her up for his penetration. With his cock in hand, nudging against her slippery gate, Maxen's eyes rose to meet her. In his mind, he froze, pinned in place by the wonder of her expression and the sound of the single word she murmured to him then: "Caradoc." Her beloved. And this time, she was looking right at him!

Maxen had no doubt that the emotion written so clearly across her delicate features was for him alone.

Kerin loved him!

Unfortunately, his body didn't get the message. His body was driven by the all-consuming need to have her, a compulsion so strong Maxen couldn't deny it. With one swift plunge, he buried his aching cock in his wife's hot, tight cunt... and she screamed, agony supplanting the affection in her eyes.

Shock hit him like an icy hammer to the head – a wordless epiphany nearly as painful as the look on Kerin's face, and Maxen recoiled, withdrawing quickly from the ecstasy of her body's untried embrace.

But Maxen's own body remained an unruly pit of warring reactions.

Day in and day out, he'd been desperate to have Kerin since he rode up the hill and saw her so gracefully awaiting him, and the clenching heat of even that one thrust was too much when it was wrapped in the realization that Kerin loved him. Even as he pulled free of her body, Maxen came, spewing his seed in violent ribbons of pearly white, decorating her silky skin and pooling on the smoke-stained wooden table. It was the most pleasurable moment of his life, swallowed immediately by the most appalling.

Tears running unheeded into her hairline, Kerin curled around the pain as Maxen grimaced above her, ropelike tendons outlining his neck and shoulders as his cock convulsed between her thighs, wetting her even as she bled. And she was bleeding. With her shoulders and torso drawn helplessly inward, she could see everything: the strings of semen pulsing from her husband's still-hard member and its uneven coating of shiny red blood.

Slumping onto her elbows, Kerin tried to shimmy backwards on the table, unconsciously retreating from the source of all her torment – physical and otherwise. Too shocked for coherent thought, she nonetheless knew that everything was wrong. Her behavior, Maxen's lewd pursuit of his pleasure, her wanton acceptance of his goal, even his reaction to her chastity. It was all just wrong, and the rending pain was merely an unpleasant reminder.

He was horrified by what he'd done, but alcohol made him slow and stupid. When Maxen gathered her up, it was too late for anything but recriminations. Lifting her into his arms, he paused. With the back of one hand, Maxen tipped a jug of wine onto its side, and a river of dark liquid flowed forth, obscuring the evidence he'd left behind.

What had he done? Maxen shook his head, no less wounded than Kerin.

– o –

Aware of the likely end to Maxen and Kerin's wedding feast, the housekeeper had left two buckets of heated water on the hearth in their chamber. The water in the covered buckets was still surprisingly warm when Maxen tested it after setting Kerin's feet on the bedside rug. He sloshed some of the warm water into the ewer and gathered together a handful of supplies, while Kerin waited silently.

Maxen kept an eye on her while he prepared, but Kerin's head hung forward, her shoulders slumped, and she neither moved nor spoke. She let him strip her gown off and move her to stand on the warm hearth, where Maxen gently washed away the evidence of their passion – and his cruelty. He grimaced as he worked around the iron collar, noticing the pink, irritated skin beneath.

Why had she not told him the collar was hurting her?

The answer occurred to him as quickly as his question: she'd assumed he wouldn't care.

Kerin's tears continued unabated, silent except for the occasional soft hiccup. After he'd soaped and rinsed her body, Maxen washed her face with fresh water from the bucket by the hearth. When she was dry, dressed, and tucked beneath the covers, he stripped and used the rest of the water to bathe himself.

He left everything on the landing outside their chamber and ran easily downstairs to collect the few items of clothing they'd shed in the hall. Maybe it wouldn't be possible, but Maxen intended to keep the events of that evening as quiet as he could.

He hesitated with his tunic in hand, staring at the table where Kerin had lain. That, right there was where he'd thrown away his last chance at happiness, Maxen thought. Torchlight cast a dull sheen across the cloudy black puddle which covered his sins, and he fought back a wave of nausea.

He'd wanted her for his wife since the day they met, and this is what he'd done with the gift she'd given him; he'd sacrificed his greatest unspoken prayer to his own stupidity. Milot had been telling the truth, as had all Kerin's people, but he'd been too stubborn to see it. If he hadn't spent so much effort on hating her, he would have seen the truth. Instead, he'd taken her virginity on a table in a public hall. If he was honest with himself, it was only Edon's actions which prevented the brutal act from taking place in the presence of his men. And even the agonized tears of his newly deflowered wife hadn't been enough to overcome his barbarity; he'd reached his completion while she lay weeping before him.

What kind of man was he?

Maxen fought an overwhelming urge to wake the priest and climbed the stairs much more slowly than he'd descended, hoping for inspiration he neither expected nor deserved.

Kerin lay curled on her side where he'd left her. She'd stopped crying, but she hadn't gone to sleep. Maxen stood silently by the bed. There were no words that could possibly express his regret, but something had to be said. He knelt in supplication before speaking.

"I am sorry, my lady, for all I have done to wrong you in these past few weeks, and for the pain I have caused you this night."

Kerin closed her eyes without acknowledging his presence. After an endless minute of laden silence, Maxen left the room.

When he returned this time, he was accompanied by the same smith who'd originally bedecked Kerin in her collar. Silently, the weathered old man struck it off and departed, carrying the pieces. Maxen closed the door and returned to bathe Kerin's neck again with a soft, cool cloth.

When he finished and climbed in beside her, Kerin jerked away in a panicked flurry of normally graceful limbs, throwing the covers back and hastening crablike to the end of the bed. Startled, Maxen said nothing as she collapsed onto the pallet where she'd been sleeping since his arrival, another piercing blow to his heart.

He rolled to his feet and went to squat by her side. "Kerin, please come back to bed."

"Why?" she asked quietly, still not looking at him. "Have you more? Will you beat me? Rape me? Invite the remainder of your men to witness my humiliation? There is nothing left of me to conquer."

"My lord" hung unsaid in the air between them. Maxen's shoulders sank. Her words were harsh, but it was her tone which wounded him most deeply – the heart-broken apathy which so plainly conveyed her opinion: she'd be surprised by none of those actions, if they came from him.

He lingered at her side for a moment more, studying her face in the firelight, but she wouldn't open her eyes.

Maxen returned to bed alone, thinking that Kerin would probably never forgive him, and she'd be right. It took him a very long time to fall asleep.

–

Kerin didn't sleep at all. Neither did she cry. After Maxen went to bed, she watched the fire die while her mind toiled over everything that had happened since their wedding. She'd been anxious but resigned to her fate when the priest arrived, since she'd given up any hope of escaping by then. Even if she could have gotten away from Maxen and his men, how would she have explained the iron collar around her neck? She had no coin, nor the tools needed to remove it.

No one in her circumstances had any right to expect a love match, especially at her age, but she'd found Maxen's attitude after the wedding especially difficult to bear. His affection tonight had been in such startling contrast to his earlier disdain that Kerin had been unwittingly disarmed, and a surfeit of wine had done the rest. The searing stroke of her maidenhead being torn asunder had sobered her instantly, though, clearing the cushioning mist from the connotations of their location and all that had gone before.

Now, she was wed and her virginity gone.

Maxen said he was sorry, but Kerin couldn't depend on kind words to protect Milot and Geralt.

Her husband might temporarily regret his actions, but these past weeks together told the true tale: Maxen would never forgive Kerin for sending him away, and he'd never love her the way that she loved him. His regret probably wouldn't last the week. He'd no doubt use her body again to seal their legal bond, but he'd sworn repeatedly not to give her a child, and she saw no reason to believe that decision would change. Without hope of children – or even companionship – there was nothing left for Kerin at Penrhyn Tywyll.

In any event, she couldn't wake tomorrow morning and walk about the keep as though nothing had happened, after his soldiers had seen... had seen the way her husband treated her. Kerin flinched in the firelight, forcing her thoughts from the memory of her disgrace.

Perhaps, after tonight, she'd even be able forget Maxen ap Dyfed.

And her collar was gone.

The capricious hand of fate had clad Kerin's doomed wedding feast in one other small blessing – the empty landing Maxen had carried her across. Two of the drunken soldiers downstairs had been the teulu destined to guard them overnight. There was no one at their door, and the keep was quiet. Kerin gazed past greying gold coals into an unknown future. She'd be forced to leave her ladies behind, but she couldn't imagine Edon allowing them to be hurt. Her husband would no doubt be enraged to find her gone, but she didn't think he'd take it out on her women, either, and she'd let their families know to send for them as soon as she was able.

Half an hour after Maxen's first snore rumbled across the room, Kerin rose and collected the few items she'd take with her. With a sorrowful fingertip to the edge of the Sir Furball's basket, and one last glance at the man slumbering on what should have been her marriage bed, Kerin swallowed her final tears and crept from her husband's chamber.

– o –

See you in two weeks for the last chapter!

Please keep up the comments – I love them all! So far, this year had been a discouraging one for me, and your interest has made a big difference in keeping me motivated. Thank you again for your kind words.