Simple Missteps
Chapter Three
Lillian K. Rockmore

Tiara whimpered a little when she heard the latch scrape against the wooden door. Her body felt used and abused. Yet he was again, coming to rid her of her dignity. She shut her eyes, clutching the bed sheet to her tightly, willing herself away from this place.

To her surprise, a gentle feminine voice wafted to her ears.

"Sir Scott asked me to you help you with your bath, miss," the young girl said, her eyes lowered shyly.

Tiara uncurled herself from the tiny ball that she'd morphed into and looked at the pretty girl standing next to two buckets of hot water. She could have cried at the sight of clean water to bathe in after days of dust and grime, but as it was, she just beckoned the maid closer.

"What is your name?" Tiara queried as she stood, the sheet falling away, revealing her willowy, flawless body. She noticed that the maid's blush deepened at the sight of her nakedness.

"Emily, miss," she said, lifting a thick wooden tub that had been pushed up against one wall. Noticing her struggles, Tiara stepped forward to help the woman. Together, they got the tub down and poured streams after streams of heated water into it.

Tiara didn't wait; she couldn't. As soon as the last drop of water hit the tub, she was in it, sighing as the delicious heat enveloped her body. She ignored the stinging of her nether regions, brutally squelching the urge to cringe. Raising her knees, she laid her head on them, rocking back and forth, enjoying the gentle swaying of the water around her.

She jolted when hesitant fingers skimmed her shoulders. Looking up, she saw Emily slathering her back with vanilla-scented soap. The sweet essence drifted around her, soothing her.

"Is this your first time as a maid?" Tiara asked, her voice heavy-laden with pleasure.

"Yes, miss," the girl replied, settling Tiara's shoulders against the back of the tub so that she could soap the fiery locks of her hair.

Ten minutes later, Tiara still lingered in the tub, not wanting to give up the uncalled-for warmth just yet. Emily had dried her hair and now, it sat in a loose bun fashioned on the top of her head. She heard the maid flitting about the room - righting the bed, perhaps - and gasped when strong hands closed about her middle.

She should've known that he'd come. Tiara twisted in his grasp, squirming to get away from him. She already knew that whenever he came to her, he came only for one thing.

"Enjoying your bath, princess?" he asked, settling her securely against the solid muscle of his chest.

"I was, until I was so rudely interrupted," she berated him, her eyes shooting sparks of anger.

Her hands were caught behind her back and she could do nothing as his lips lowered to hers. The wetness of her skin from the bath seeped into his shirt and she felt the intense heat that emanated from him. His lips caressed hers, his tongue swirling over the moist pink folds and she was helpless as it slipped into her mouth to tease her own tongue.

He tasted her with steady purpose, stealing her senses and making her swallow her words of retaliation. One of his hands was roaming her back while the other held her hands still. Tiara didn't react until she felt something going around her wrists. She jerked away from him, tearing her mouth from his just as he secured the thin strip of leather around her.

"What are you doing?" she demanded as she struggled against the tough bindings.

"We're going to try something new today, princess," he returned, nuzzling her ear, nibbling on the sensitive skin of her neck until she whimpered softly.  "I promise that you'll love it."

"Love it?" she echoed, albeit weakly for she was starting to lose her ability to speak. "How would I be able to love it when I positively hate you?"

The declaration lacked heat and they both knew it. She loved all the delicious things that he did to her unwilling body, no matter how vile it was. Even now, she melted beneath his touch, a slick wetness gathering between her thighs.

He said nothing as he moved towards the bed, roughly settling her onto it before moving to cover her body with his. Her light brown nipples had already hardened and Scott groaned as he felt the hardness of them brushing against his chest. He watched, fixated, as a rush of goose bumps covered her body. Her bound hands came up to his shoulder, pushing at him, feebly willing him to get off her.

Delighted, Scott laughed, knowing that she would never be rid of him.

"So, my little love slave wants to fight me?" he breathed silkily into her ear. She gasped.

"I am not your love slave! I am not your anything!" she retorted, her eyes burning orbs of golden fire.

"Ahh, princess. You will soon learn that you are mine and mine alone. Nothing you do can ever stop me from taking you. You belong to me. Go ahead and deny it. Go ahead and lie," he challenged and kissed her fiercely, possessively. Tiara wanted to scream 'No!' but her entire being had quickened at his words, at the mere image of belonging solely to him. It was wicked; it was sinful. And yet, not even a fiber in her being protested his advancements.

He adjusted their positions so that she lay on top of him, her legs spread wide over his thickly-honed chest. She let out a moan as her sore cunt pressed against him, his heat causing her to melt. Tiara blushed hotly when she realized that her juices were actually leaking onto his skin. Embarrassed beyond belief, she tried to move away, but he held her fast, his fingers digging into her scalp as he dragged her down for a fevered kiss.

Her hands were trapped between their sweaty bodies, the leather bindings cutting into her skin. Tiara noticed not the pain, but the pleasure of his thumb and forefinger twisting her nipples, tugging and pulling at them. She was lost, she knew, and she couldn't have cared less.

His breathing was harsh and erratic when he tore his mouth away from hers. Her dignity had been exorcised to nothing but need. Inquisitively, she dropped her head to his shoulder, sampling his golden flesh as she bit him hard. His hold on her hips became brutal, bruising and most definitely arousing.

"Princess, listen to me," Scott ground out through his teeth, her sucking and nibbling on his flesh driving him insane with need for her.

Tiara was deaf and blind to everything but the pleasure humming through her. She moved lower, her pussy now clenched around his bare thigh. Her tongue darted out to lave one of his flat, male nipples and to her astute fascination, he growled deep in his throat.

Her fingers were more lethal when bound, Scott thought to himself as he felt her fingers clawing his waist. Her wet cunt was nestled against his thigh and he could feel her getting wetter by the second. To increase her pleasure, he tantalizingly rubbed the topped of his thigh against her, feeling her gasp against his skin.

Tiara arched her back, moving herself against him, sliding up and down the muscled flesh. She was only allowed to do that for a few times, though, for Scott dragged her back up to straddle his abdomen yet again. Her breasts jiggled before him, the rounded, heavy peaks tempting him to take a bite.

"Listen to me, princess," he repeated, pulling her head down by the roots of her hair so that her mouth was positioned right above his. "I want you to straddle me and fuck yourself on my cock. Do you understand?"

His words shocked her out of her haze of pleasure. Familiar humiliation bubbled inside her. She had let him use her again. How could her resistance have been so weak? Shame and self-hatred filled her being and she attempted to slip away from him, limp and pliant. Scott, however, had other ideas. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pulled her up to him again, his eyes conveying his arduous anger.

"You will do as I say, princess. It is easy. Either you get up and seat yourself on me like a good girl or I take you by force. One will give you pleasure, the other will not. It does not matter to me which option you choose," he spat. He had expected her anger, her rebuttals but certainly not the defeated look that she had in her eyes. As he watched, those beautiful golden spheres filled with tears and one of them dripped off her thick red lashes and fell on the side of his cheek.

Ruthlessly discarding the emotion that welled up in him, he swiped the tear away.

"What's it going to be, princess?" he coached, his voice hoarse.

Tiara looked at him, pleading him with her eyes to stop his cruel words. Could he not understand her need to feel whole? Why must he always strip her of her pride and leave her bereft? Her spirit felt as though it had been broken, and the shards of it scraped painfully against her heart. A pain unlike any other overwhelmed her as she crawled on top of him, her bound hands digging into his skin. As efficiently as possible, she lowered herself on top of his shaft, tears flowing silently onto the smooth skin of her cheek.

Scott felt as if he was riding a block of ice. Her body was moving on top of him but her eyes were glazed with tears and her features were dull and lifeless. And at that moment, he felt more like an ogre than he had in all his time in the army. For he knew that he'd broken her, broken her spirit.

"Hell," he cussed as he drew her off him. She didn't respond as he laid her beside him and untied her wrists, throwing the string of leather to a distant corner of the room.

"Tiara, princess, are you all right?" he asked when she just stared into space, no emotions flickering in her expressive eyes. It was as though she had withdrawn into herself so that she didn't need to face him, face his demands. Had he been that cruel to her?

Tiara felt herself falling helplessly into a black void. She had nothing left in her, neither her dignity nor her pride. The world faded away, leaving her nothing but a hollow shell. She watched as his lips lowered to hers and braced herself for the worst.

Pain lanced through his heart as he kissed her, a mere brushing of lips, a caress as light as one from a butterfly's wing, trying to warm her suddenly cold body. He had used her, robbed her of her virginity with no honeyed words, no spiced wine. If she was indeed who she claimed to be, she deserved someone much better than him to teach her the art of loving. He'd been a selfish bastard all this while, only thinking of his pleasure and not hers. So he kissed her, his thumbs running over her jaw as he held her still for his mouth. If I do anything for her tonight, he vowed, it would be rekindling the fire in her eyes.

His lips traveled over her cheeks, her jaw, to rest upon the dimple near her shoulder. The tiny beat of her pulse was evident and he bit and sucked on the spot, leaving a tiny red indentation of his exploits. His large frame trembled when he felt her shiver.

He was touching her differently, Tiara realized, his hands were almost reverent when they touched her body. Her mind fought to get used to this new man, and yet her body did not seem to have the same trouble.  Tiara’s back arched when the heat of his mouth neared her aching breasts, teasing it with soft puffs of breath. Instinctively, she coiled her fingers into his hair, stunned by the sudden change of pace. Her eyes flickered open to watch as Scott's lips closed over her breasts, coaxing it deep into the haven of his mouth.

An inferno licked through her body, arousing in her a different kind of heat. The ice in her thawed away, leaving only a very needy wanton in its wake. Whenever he had taken her before, the tension in her had been a fierce one. Now, however, the coil of pleasure twisted low in her belly in sensual, soft waves. And the desire in her was more potent, more alive than it had been in any other ruses he had used to take her.

His lips caressed one breast while his fingers worked on the other. The pebbly crests were so hard, waiting for some kind of release. Scott's lips trailed over her breasts, to the valley between them before charting a path to her navel. The act was so intimate and so arousing, that Tiara writhed under him, her head flung to one side, avoiding the scene of her wickedness.

She gasped as his tongue snaked down to her secret bed of curls. Surprised and awfully shy, she tried to push him away with her newly-freed hands. Instead, she found her fingers curling into his dark, lustrous hair as his tongue lashed out to sample her wet flesh. Beneath the fiery locks he delved, flicking at her delta with his wet tongue. The sensation was ticklish at first and Tiara tried to close her thighs around him. She found the task to be impossible, however, for his shoulders had spread her thighs wide for his captivity.

"Oh God," she breathed as his tongue laved her dripping pussy. It delved over the sides of her puckered, pink lips to the sensitive bud nestled in her. Her fingers clutched the sheets in abandon as he began to suck on her, his thumbs coming up to tweak the pebbles of her nipples.

Her hips were rotating, she realized, undulating over his sorcerer mouth. His tongue was flicking faster over her pussy, his fingers moving faster over her nipples. The pleasure was exquisite as it burned in her, a flame that was inextinguishable in its intensity. Tiara burned beneath its flames as Scott inserted three fingers into her roughly, insisting with his body that she come for him.

She came. A low, keening sound escaped her throat as the first wave of pleasure washed over her, stealing her breath. There was sinfulness in this pleasure, she thought as another coil built and snapped low in her belly. The tremors shook her as she felt him sucking the tender flesh that was nestled in her curls, biting it until everything around her vanished in a blaze of gold.

"Scott." She hadn't realized that she'd breathed his name in her climax, but he had. He settled himself beside her, kissing her eyes open. The relief that ran through him was almost painful when he saw that her eyes were, now, the familiar sparkling gold.

She smiled at him, a gentle, beautiful smile that stirred a longing in his soul. And he realized that in the few days that he'd known her, she had never once smiled at him. She deserves to remain happy, he thought, and wished he could see her smile more often.

"Princess, I have to leave for the grounds today," he said fiddling with a curl of her abundant hair.

"I'll be back in a week. While I'm gone, I have seen to it that a messenger goes to your family's home. Will you promise me that you’ll be here when I get back?"

A gush of warmth flooded her body when she realized that he had trusted her enough to call upon her father. Her smile turned beatific and she leaned over to give him a peck of gratitude on his lips.

"Thank you," she laughed with childish delight. She would be going home soon! "And yes, I promise."

Scott was amazed at the play of emotions across her face. She was so beautiful. Had he ever thought her plain?

"I'll be back in a week, I promise," he said as he made to crawl out of bed.

Wait! Tiara's mind screamed. A week? Had he said he’d be leaving her for a week! Something peculiar tightened inside her at the thought of his absence. She didn't think she could ever be without...

Grabbing him by the shoulders, she hauled him down onto the bed, kissing him soundly. She could feel his unquenched arousal pressing against her thigh. A need empowered her, drizzling through her body. She needed to feel him inside her, moving within her. She wanted him to find release in her body. Scooting lower, she straddled him, telling him with her body everything that he ever needed to know.

It was quite a while later when Scott got out of bed, kissing a sleeping Tiara on the forehead before he slipped through the door. Maybe it was his sex-numbed state or his jumbled thoughts, but as he left the room, the thought of locking it didn't enter his mind.

Author's Note: Would you prefer a fiery heroine or a passive one? Even if your answers don't contribute directly to this story, it would help me craft the next ones that I write (: