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Aug 12, 2025

STIGMATA (1/2)

DUC VOLPE/READER

SUMMARY: You, a nondescript chambermaid, are exhausted by the tedious doldrum of castle life. You know everything about everyone in this damned keep, except, of course, for the man who owns it. One night, through a stroke of fortune, you get to know your lord very well.

WORD COUNT: 15k-ish

WARNINGS: 18+, explicit PWP, mildly dubcon. BDSM dynamics (and bad BDSM etiquette), thigh riding, humiliation, and power imbalance. Also heavy religious themes. Reader is fem and is referred to as a woman/girl/maid, but undescribed otherwise.

Things were lively in the keep whenever a raid was successful. Working in this castle for a few months had granted you that knowledge, at least. As a chambermaid — or, really, just a catch-all, do-everything maid — you learned the routines of the men you lived alongside. Dissected them when you could with your fellow servant staff, chittered about deviations from the norm with the other girls. Life was not particularly pleasant, but nights spent sharing swill wine and teasing each other over drunk watchmen making clumsy passes made it bearable.

You supposed it was better than the alternative. The upset of the king was sudden and brutal, done in a flash of steel and snarling teeth. Your village had been part of a swath of land taken by force by warring nobles, traded back and forth between gold-ringed hands until it was snatched by a silver-plated fist. Horsemen rode in, demanding tax in the form of money, food, and able bodies. While your parents were unconcerned with politics — no matter who the land belonged to, it still had to be farmed — they were considerate of your welfare, at least. Rather than have you marry a foreign soldier and bleed to death producing children, they instead pushed you to become a maid at the Duc’s castle. Not a glamorous existence, but perhaps it saved you in the end from a worse fate.

These were things you tried not to think about — those shadowy what-ifs, fleeting hypotheticals that made no sense and meant even less — but were still plagued with on occasion. Prayer didn’t help, gossip didn’t help, nothing seemed to help. There were simply times where your thoughts got away from you; confined to the doldrum of daily castle chores, you only had so much to occupy your hands with, and even less so your mind.

Ah, well. Thinking was unbecoming of a chambermaid, regardless. You kept your musings to yourself and engaged in frivolous chatter with your fellow servants, soothing yourself with the familiarity of routine. Mornings were early. Before the rooster even opened his eyes, you and the other girls would be awake, your breakfasts minimal and feet already bustling. Chores rotated. Occasionally you worked in the kitchen, occasionally you cleaned chambers… occasionally you had the unfortunate duty of cleaning the privy. All part of your duties. All part of your day-to-day formula, as unpleasant or unsanitary or simply difficult as it could be.

Most of the time, you saw other servants or guards. Less often, you saw higher-ranking knights and commanders, or occasionally messengers and doctors from elsewhere in the keep. And rarely, very rarely, you saw the Duc. Duc Volpe — the Wolf, as his enemies and allies alike ascribed him — was the iron fist that ended up conquering your village. He was the one who owned this stronghold… and every other stronghold in a fairly impressive radius. He was the one who incited the rebellion against the crown and seized much of the royal lands for himself.

To you, and the rest of the servant staff, he was more myth than man. With an infamous taste for blood and an even stronger taste for victory, the Wolf was often out of the castle, heading raids and sieges with his silver visor pulled low and sword raised high. You could count on one hand the amount of times you’d ever seen him in your several-month tenure here. It was always in passing, where you’d been bustling down the hall with arms full of linens or something similar and had rounded a corner and there he was, moving at a brisk clip with armored knights in tow. He barely acknowledged your presence, which was a blessing and a curse.

You’d heard tell of servant staff at other castles being treated as less than dirt. Expendable, usable, breakable. Just little background pieces that could be used for entertainment and then exiled from castle grounds once their usefulness had been fulfilled. Duc Volpe seemed to forget that the servant staff existed, instead delegating (or perhaps dumping) all of the duties related to managing you and your peers to the chamberlain, a sallow old man with a pinched face and flat voice. Like vermin, you all scattered when the Duc entered a room, pressed flat to the wall when he passed in hallways, and only spoke around him in hushed tones. More myth than man, you thought again, amused. More legend than flesh. But it was better this way.

If there was one thing the Wolf was known for, it was his cruelty. War was a sport to him — one he played extremely well. Victory was the only option, and he took joy in crushing the life out of his enemies beneath the heel of a steel-plated boot. This ruthlessness filtered into every aspect of his military campaigns; he executed his subordinates for falling a hair’s-breadth out of line, he studied battle strategy obsessively, and he never, ever lost. Duc Volpe’s campaigns could suffer bitter setbacks, yes, but in the time you had worked and lived in this stronghold, he had never actually been defeated in any of his military engagements. You were starting to doubt he was even physically capable of it.

Capacity for dying aside, you were mostly just grateful that his cruelty did not extend to the servant staff. Gladly, you would take indifference to your existence over targeted hostility. Better for his cold blue eyes to simply slide over you as if you were a tapestry on the wall than for them to seek you out as a target.

It could always be worse.

You spoke about your lord with the other maids on fleeting occasions, but could never quite shake the feeling that he always knew when you did. The Duc was not paranoid as much as he was observant, his eyes as sharp as the edge of his sword and always watching. Always thinking. He had some preternatural ability to appear right when you’d been gossiping about him; because you were not stupid, you stymied your talk of your betters to save your own skin. Of course, your tongue loosened in the relative safety of the maids’ quarters, but nobody above your station ever came down there anyway.

These thoughts and others plagued you — incessant and pushy — as you peeled vegetables, listening to the raucousness beyond the thick stone wall of the kitchen. The men would be loud tonight; clearly another of Duc Volpe’s campaigns had gone well (when did they not?) and there was celebration due. Music from hired courtesans leached into the humidity of the room, muffled by the walls keeping you and your fellow maids penned in. You took a moment to scrub the back of your hand across your sweat-damp forehead, rotating the carrot in your hand with a practiced twist of your wrist. This would be your post for the night; the Duc’s men had large appetites, especially after such exertion, and you would be stretched thin just trying to keep up with the demand of food. That wry thought from earlier crossed your mind as you set the skinned carrot down. Not glamorous work, but better than the alternative.

“Are those almost ready?” One of your workmates called across the kitchen from her post over the stew pot. You felt as though her face — half-obscured by roiling steam as it was — reflected yours; young but shadowed, a certain beleagueredness to her appearance that lingered like a dead weight.

“Nearly,” you replied, banishing the abstractions haunting you for the moment, focused on your task.

The night pressed on in usual fashion. You helped roast meat, chop vegetables, tend to the frankly astoundingly large stew pot, and serve mead, ignoring the ache of your upper back and the sweat beading intermittently on your nape in favor of keeping the commanders and infantry fed. With full stomachs and flagons, they were less tempted to bother the servant staff; while joking about their clumsy advances with the other maids was fun, experiencing said advances was not. Time was relative inside the castle walls; you could go hours without seeing the sun, lost in the twisting stonework bowels of the stronghold. Vaguely, you had a sense that the festivities started when the Duc’s forces had returned — perhaps in the early evening? — but beyond that, you had no idea how much time had passed since.

Some time in, you took a break, sipping at a squirreled-away cup of mead and eating a remarkably fast dinner. Your bothersome brain, registering the lack of work to keep itself occupied, instantly turned back to its relentless churning. One thought crawled to the forefront as you picked apart a hunk of roasted goose, singeing your fingers.

Where was the Duc?

You’d been out into the great hall countless times alongside the rest of your legion, linen skirt swishing around your ankles as you darted to and fro to keep plates and cups full. All sorts of faces had crossed your line of sight — young, old, smooth, scar-pocked, freshly shaven, fully bearded, and so on — and yet… none of them had been that of your lord. It was in line for his behavior. The man never graced post-siege festivities. Where he went, you weren’t sure, but it certainly wasn’t with his men. It was like he simply blinked out of existence, his purpose having been fulfilled by soaking battlefields in blood. Perhaps that was why he seemed more legend than flesh. You never saw him act like a man, more a figment of imagination. Actually, correction: you simply never saw him.

Your fingers paused on your plate in thought as the hasty strumming of a lute filtered into your ears. Strange. Your lord was strange.

“Oh, there you are,” came a voice from over your head, and you jumped, nearly spilling your food as you looked up. Just another maid; the line of your shoulders sagged an inch or so in relief. “I was wondering where you had gone off to.”

“Just a quick dinner, I’ll be back shortly—” you said as your excuse, feeling a twinge of remorse for stepping away from work. Studying her face, though, you realized that this was not one of the girls working in the kitchen with you. In fact, you recognized her. “Oh. Anna? I thought you weren’t on kitchen duty tonight?”

Her hand waved loosely. “‘s alright.” A quick incline of her head. “I’m not. I was actually coming to ask a favor…?”

A huff left your nose, the corner of your mouth turning up wryly. “Well, lay it out, then.”

“Duc Beauregard is here tonight,” Anna started, one of her hands twisting in her skirt. “I’m on chamber duty, but I, ah, wanted to see if you wanted to switch off with me…”

Silence.

“You know, the tavern in town is still hiring wenches,” you started, and Anna’s cheeks darkened, jaw dropping in an open-mouthed, indignant smile of disbelief.

“I am not a whore! Forgive me for wanting to enjoy myself in this miserable hole,” she scoffed in good humor, whacking your shoulder lightly with an open palm.

You held your hands up in mock concession, an amused grin still hanging on your face. “Alright, alright, I believe you! No need for violence!”

A scoff. “Don’t insult my honor, then.”

“What honor?”

“Hey!”

You laughed and ducked away from another whack of her hand, shielding your head with your arms. She pursued you for a few moments after, giggling herself, but eventually gave up and leaned against the wall above you for respite.

“So…?” Her voice was hopeful.

A sigh left you. You preferred kitchen duty to chamber duty — you could sneak bites of meat and pastries and sips of mead if you were quick enough, and you could gossip with the other maids more or less freely — but it was hot in there, and Anna looked so expectant…

“Alright,” you said with a huff, drawing yourself to your feet. “But you owe me.”

The grin that broke across her face could have blinded you. “Of course! Whatever you want, just, ah, just tell me, alright? Thank you!”

And just like that, she skipped off, skirts flouncing around her legs. You supposed you couldn’t blame her. Duc Beauregard was the most handsome and charismatic of Duc Volpe’s subordinates by a long shot. The fact that he flirted openly with the maids probably helped, too. Who were you to impede another girl’s happiness? Besides, you liked Anna. She was one of your closer friends here, one of the few maids you actually remembered the name of. Not that you could be blamed for that. The turnover rate was high.

The rest of your dinner was eaten standing, the meat no longer scorching hot, and you bravely snuck another cup of mead for good measure. The dishes were left in the kitchen — a reminder to Anna that she did, indeed, owe you — and you slipped out of the room, enjoying at least the reprieve from the stifling humidity.

Silence dogged your step as you moved further and further from the great hall. Festivities like the ones happening tonight tended to draw everyone from all over the keep, leaving many stations unmanned and many halls empty. Torches flickered as you passed, the map of the winding castle unfurling in your head. Ah, Christ, should have asked her which wing to start in, you thought with a twinge of annoyance, but shook your head and continued onward.

The fact that Duc Beauregard was in attendance stuck with you; it was something that came up again and again as you made your way to the east wing, the nicest portion of the stronghold. Today’s siege must have been important to require his presence, and the success must have been sufficient enough to draw him to celebrate here, in his superior’s keep, instead of in his own. Said superior, though, was still nowhere to be found. Proper courtesy dictated that Duc Volpe should have been hosting, as a noble’s duty was. He should have been among his men, sitting at the head of the extravagantly long table in the great hall, cheering and toasting with the rest.

But the Wolf was not cut from that cloth.

Many rumors around his past dogged him, blackened the edges of his grim reputation. It was a subject of gossip for you and the other maids, though as of late you’d kept your thoughts to yourself. Some thought him to be an exiled noble, returned for revenge against the King; others thought him to not be a noble at all, but a particularly ambitious commoner with a taste for strategy and sharpened steel. It would explain his lack of manners and refusal to appear at anything besides sieges. Both of his parents were dead, something you knew for a fact; some whispered that he had killed them himself, but you personally doubted it. Perhaps you shouldn’t have. He was ruthless enough to do it.

Some thought that he had gained control of his first army by slaughtering the previous man to lead it. Others thought that he had simply bought men with stolen gold. Despite it all, though, one thing was true — he was your lord, and that was the end of it. How, exactly, he ascended to power was not your business. It was fun to speculate, but creeping fear of retribution kept you from speaking too loud, lest you incur his particularly vicious ire and find your head separated from your neck in a quick, tidy fashion. That cold, vindictive fury was what really characterized him in your head; it was the aspect of his personality that kept him tethered to humanity. Legends and myths did not enjoy calculated cruelty the way that a man did — the way that that man did.

Your postulation got you nowhere, and did little more than keep you entertained on your hike to the eastern wing. Fine tapestries lined the walls, colors bright in the shadowy torchlight, and you began methodically checking the bedchambers to see where Anna had left off. Bitterness crept onto the back of your tongue; you did your best to stave it off, but it always soured your mouth seeing just how nice these chambers were compared to where you slept. Lavish beds — real beds — with fine blankets and pillows, hearths crackling invitingly, heavy tapestries to insulate the stone walls. So different from the maids’ quarters, a spartan arrangement of cots and a packed dirt floor.

In these private moments of resentment, you allowed yourself a sigh and a quiet moment inside one of the unoccupied chambers. Here, it was peaceful. Not that you didn’t enjoy the boisterous activity of the great hall, but this was a different kind of respite. Just you, the empty bed, and a dead fireplace. You could play at the life of someone with a better station than yours, pretend that your day-to-day had something of more substance than repetitive chores and mindless gossip.

Was this how everyone felt? Was this how Anna felt? Did she have this kind of lingering torment? Was this how Duc Beauregard felt when not deep in a cup of mead?

…Was this how Duc Volpe felt? Did he ever tire of his life of crossed swords and bloodstained steel? He seemed to be fueled by suffering, only appearing to collect his tax of violence and then dissipating again when he’d been sated. You wondered what kind of life he led. You knew routine. You knew the routines of just about everyone in this damned keep. Except, of course, for the man who owned it. What time did he wake? What did he eat? And when? Did he even enjoy things?

You laughed a little at your own spiraling thoughts, peeling off the stone wall and slipping out of the empty bedchamber. Onto the next. And the next. And the next.

Down the hall you went, poking your head into successive bedchambers. Christ. Anna had really handled most of these before she’d sought you out. What time was it? You blinked blearily, stepping out of another chamber. Everything felt as though it were blurring together in a mosaic of hewn stone and woven red fabric. You pushed open another heavy door, and stopped dead.

This bedchamber was not empty.

Your ever-elusive lord was occupying it, and at the groan of the heavy door, he straightened up like a bow with a snapped string. Instantly, the spit wicked from your mouth, and by the grace of God, you remembered your place as a chambermaid. Fingers pressed hard against the wood of the door, your eyes sank downwards, the feeling of being watched prickling over your skin.

Stupidly, you chanced a glance upward.

He was standing across the room, leaned on a desk near a plain bed, broad upper body held at an odd angle. He was stiff. He was silent.

He was hurt.

Duc Volpe’s eyes were already on yours when you felt brave enough to lock gazes with him. Fear — honest-to-God fear, cold and pressing — turned your stomach, threatening to overturn the contents of your spartan dinner. There was no saturation in those irises, no marker of life beyond the wet sheen that everyone had in their eye sockets; flinty gray-blue stared hard back at you, as if assessing every minute detail about your countenance. Never in your life had you felt so naked, and you were fully clothed.

Clearly, neither of you had expected each other. His chestplate was askew, the silver steel marred and spattered with dark stains. One of his hands held it up, looking for a moment all the part of a blushing maiden caught undressing, and the mental image nearly, nearly made you huff a laugh, until you realized just who exactly you would be laughing at. The low light of the bedchamber obscured any further detail, though.

“You… should not be here,” he growled in the vein of his namesake, lip drawn up into his characteristic sneer. The words were forced through the familiar gritted teeth of pain, though, and you recognized it quite well. “Get out, girl.”

He spat girl at you like it was poison, every ounce of his words dripping with defensive venom. It would have hurt, if not for the surprise currently bowling you over — he recognized your existence. The cornered beast that was the infamous Wolf knew who you were. Knew what you were.

Perhaps you were foolish, after all. What spurred you could have been stupidity, could have been adrenaline, could have been some unknown third thing — but all the same, you ignored your lord’s command. A first in your tenure here. Hopefully the last. Of their own accord, your feet moved forward, hand slipping off the safety of the door. Your fingertips scraped over rough-hewn grain.

There was a long beat of silence before you managed to wrestle back control of your voice. “You’re hurt, my lord.”

Each syllable carried you closer, until you stood within arms’ reach of a man whose presence you only seemed to ever feel the lack of. Wide eyes flicked over his form, assessing his condition the same way he had done to you.

The chainmail across his left shoulder was rended, and you could see dark blood blooming beneath his partially exposed gambeson lower on his ribs, staining the heavy fabric. He was standing on both legs fine, though, and his face, though dirtied, seemed also intact. Intact and so much closer than he had ever been to you; it felt as though you were staring into the sun. The thought did not come without a thread of irony. The sun would have been warm, at least. All you felt now was a sense of unflinching hostility, tinged with bitter embarrassment at being seen like this by someone of your station.

“Astute observation.” A flush of humiliation prickled at your skin. Too unnerved by his icy glare, your eyes trained on the dull glint of his slightly yellowed teeth as he bared them. “I said get out.”

Maybe those cups of mead you snuck while on kitchen duty were stronger than you thought. Or maybe adrenaline was giving you courage unbefitting of your station. Or maybe you were just foolish. Regardless of the cause, you held your ground, palms turned clammy as you fought the urge to twist them into your skirt.

“I’ve had some practice with healing, my lord,” you offered, surprised at how well you kept the tremble from your voice.

Why were you doing this? Why were you fighting his command so hard? Why weren’t you doing what every good, sensible chambermaid would have done and fleeing in the other direction? Something was driving you, pushing you forward — or more accurately pulling you, an invisible cord around your midsection that yanked you closer to the bulwark of steel and sadism. You bent to the will of that unseen string in your gut, lest it bisect you at the waist.

It felt like curiosity. Burning, insatiable, dangerous curiosity, the kind that led people over cliffs for wanting to know what clouds felt like. Your life was a slog, monotonous routine upon monotonous routine, and this man was one of the only remaining free variables. He was one of the last loose ends, his day-to-day a mystery, his background even more so. Perhaps that was what was keeping your feet so steady, planted on the floor as if mired in peat.

You prayed somewhat sardonically to be forgiven for the sin of simply wanting to know more about the interloper that had changed the course of your adulthood. He was such an unfailing mystery, a sinkhole of information; presented to you, encased in plate armor, was an opportunity to learn things about him that likely no other person on Earth knew. You may have been foolish, yes, but you were also opportunistic. Without the Wolf, you probably would have settled down with some bachelor from the village — hopefully a fine-looking one with decent property — and produced children to till the fields. Now, you at least could say you were trained in many disciplines (healing included!) and even very slightly schooled by the lessons you’d managed to eavesdrop on.

Not that that last part made you a good prospect for marriage.

Regardless, your eyes found his, tracking the little chips of slate with a bravery you did not particularly deserve. You made the mistake of reaching a hand out, toward the general direction of his torso.

Instantly, your wrist was caught in a literally iron grip, the metal joints of his gauntlet gently clinking as his fingers tightened around your forearm. It was immediate as it was crushing; you swore you felt old, congealed blood smearing over your exposed skin. Your pulse jumped immediately, heartbeat picking up a pace more suited for rabbits than humans. The gravity of your mistake sank your stomach like a stone. Silent prayers began to stream through your mind; to God, to Christ, to Mary, to anyone who would listen, you begged for their grace, begged for the chance to scramble out of this dim bedchamber with your wrist intact, if not your dignity.

Several painful seconds ticked by, Volpe’s expression stony. His lip was still curled into that infamous sneer, but the shadows on his face softened infinitesimally. His eyes flicked away from yours, jaw tightening, before he released your wrist with the rustle of metal, letting you draw your forearm back to your chest. “You will stay here,” he started, gravel rasping his words — though they were no less lucid, “and keep quiet of this ordeal.” With that, he stepped around you and shoved the door shut, letting it thud heavily into its frame before turning to face you.

Your thumb dragged absentmindedly over your skin. Yes, definitely congealed blood, dried tacky on your flesh. Still, the feeling was eclipsed massively by the strange elation that rushed over you — or perhaps mistaken relief — at his words. He was letting you stay, letting you dig fingers into his battle wounds rather than having you call a physician. Or, you know, anyone else. For a few beats, the sentence processed, and then you kicked yourself into action.

“Thank you, my lord.” The words were weighted with sincerity, something that went beyond a simple formality. Neither you nor him addressed it. “Ah, if you’ll… let me see your wounds. I— I can tend to them.” Not really a question, but not an order either.

He fixed you with that suspicious glare again before moving past you, armor clinking, to sit heavily on the bed. His bed. It struck you like a palm to the face — you were in Duc Volpe’s bedchamber, playing doctor to the scourge of England. He spoke as he moved, gruff and snappish.

“Fine,” he gritted out, obviously irritating a wound as he twisted. “But be quick about it.”

Right. Yes. You could be quick. Tamping down your disbelief, you searched the room as inoffensively as you could, seeking primarily water and bandages. They were on his desk — clearly he had been planning to treat his wounds on his own — and you collected the basin and strips of clean cloth readily. A minute tremble lanced down your limbs, but you ignored it in favor of steeling yourself.

It was lucky that you did that. When you turned around to bring the supplies to Duc Volpe, he had already unbuckled the straps of his chestplate and set it aside along with his gauntlets and helm. As you watched, his arm plating — pauldrons, vambraces— was soon stripped away, joining the heap of battered, bloody metal beside his form on the edge of the bed. And then it was just the gambeson with its garden of blotchy red flowers along his left side.

And then there was no more gambeson.

With a hiss of obvious pain, he worked the heavy armored shirt over his head and let it slump to the floor with a conspicuous thud.

Duc Volpe, the Wolf, the scourge of England, your lord — all of the titles collapsed upon one another — sat in front of you, stripped to the waist. He looked as mortified as you felt — perhaps not in the face, but his stiff body language suggested just how exposed this had made him feel. You stood there — like an idiot — clutching the basin of clean water and bandages to your chest, prickling heat settling over the apples of your cheeks. Something like pity twisted behind your sternum, alongside the warmth of your fluster — seeing such an infamous warlord stripped to such a state was… strange. Upsetting was not the right word… more disconcerting than anything else.

He sat, rigid, a tic in the square line of his jaw. Those flinty eyes bored holes through your skull as he waited for you to approach. A wounded wolf in a trap, anticipating the hunter and the accompanying swift end.

You didn’t quite want to reassure him as much as you wanted to keep him from taking your hand off for any potential missteps. Still, you drew on the depleting reserves of your foolish, mead-tinged courage, and drew near. The plain fabric of your skirt rustled gently as your knees brushed his armored ones.

“Where are your injuries, my lord?” The words cut the tense quiet; you kept them matter-of-fact to soothe yourself.

Slate irises and constricted pupils roamed your face; his gaze was beyond searching and instead penetrating, threaded with suspicion, like he assumed that even now you’d somehow be sent by the enemy, a dagger strapped to your thigh or some similar ridiculous implement meant for taking his life.

“…My arm," he growled after a beat, holding out the limb. Your eyes flick to the puncture wound — clearly from an arrow — and the flaking blood that has long since dried around it. "And my side," he added gruffly, and turned slightly to show the gashes running along his ribs.

They were ugly — from a wildly-swung sword or something similar — but the bleeding was sluggish. The wounds were vivid despite their distastefulness, a deep, rich red against his fair skin, the top layers of skin peeled back in a way that reminded you of the flagellants that sometimes paraded through the village square, on the rare occasion you were allowed to go. Iron’s distinctive taste hung in the back of your mouth, and you hurriedly moved your gaze away from the injuries on his ribs. Creation myths and Christ’s side wound dominated your thoughts against your will. You bit your tongue.

A few extra inches of space would serve you well. You straightened up, wet cloth in hand, and peered down at the puncture right above his left bicep. Certainly neater than the cuts raked down his ribs, but you had no way of telling how deep the hole went, or if any part of the arrow was still embedded. “The arm first,” you offered, feeling water seep down your fingers. “I’ll have to make sure none of the arrow is still inside.”

You leaned over a few inches. Gently, you pressed the wet cloth to the wound.

The reaction was instant; he hissed through gritted teeth, his body tensing and his fingers closing into fists. Well-honed restraint kept him from shoving you away or snatching your wrist again, but you still watched him in your periphery for your own safety.

Perhaps not only for your own safety.

Every twinge of pain had his muscles jumping beneath his skin. You caught the twitches, the way the solid flesh seemed to writhe as if alive, separate from its master. He had the build of a seasoned fighter; the line of his shoulders was broad, his arms and chest thick with muscle. Dark hair furred his chest and a solid line trailed down over the slight paunch of his stomach before disappearing beneath the waist of his armor and hose. Having no battlefield experience, you still understood immediately that your lord was not a scrappy young knight who barely knew how to swing a sword. Silvery scars, long gashes and punctures in various stages of healing and age, crisscrossed his skin everywhere you looked. His arms, his chest, even his face. Proof of battles well-fought and won.

There was mortification to be found in seeing such a warrior reduced to such a state, but you felt it doubly as a chambermaid seeing her lord in this… particular position of undress.

It was clear that he was unused to gentle touch. You wouldn’t be surprised if the only time other people made contact with him was when they were trying to kill him. But even now the meat of his shoulder was stiff beneath your fingertips, as inflexible as the rest of him.

“My apologies,” you said hastily, attempting to quell his snarl of pain. “It will hurt, my lord. I cannot change that.” Old blood flaked away as you gently scrubbed it from the wound site. Your fingertips palpated around the puncture, feeling for the telltale firmness of something lodged inside. Nothing. Just reddened flesh and the violent twitches of muscle and scar tissue. You let out a little sigh of relief. “…Seems like no stragglers.”

Volpe watched you with an intensity that far surpassed uncomfortable. Your skin prickled, mouth tasting dry and almost sour. He must have simply ripped the arrow straight out of his arm on the field, an arresting thought that had your fingers unintentionally squeezing the blood-flecked cloth. What a different life he led, compared to yours. It never ceased to amaze. How many times had you complained of sore knees and backaches? How many times had you wished for something different?

Perhaps your drab little post as a chambermaid was preferable to a life outside these walls.

“Good.” The word cut through your mind, and you realized you had been leaning over the now-clean puncture wound for longer than necessary. Instantly, you straightened up, eyes flicking to your lord’s face. “Now my side.”

With that, he twisted — the noise accompanied by a grunt — and raised his left arm, allowing you better access to the ruby gouged down his ribs. Automatically, you wanted to rebut — to say that you needed to wrap his bicep with clean bandages before you moved onto his ribs — but the rough grit in his voice and his incisive stare killed the words in your throat.

You wanted to ask. Curiosity, that persistent little bastard, nearly pushed the words from your mouth; self-preservation stayed your tongue. You could infer from the wounds what the siege might have looked like, could nearly smell the smoke of charred wood and the metallic odor of open-air gore if you focused hard enough. The men currently reveling downstairs had come back in decent condition; a few had called for a physician upon return, but overall they had been in good spirits. Why, then, was their lord so bloodied?

Many hypotheticals ran through your mind. Visions of the Wolf being the first to lead the charge, facing arrows and swords and maces as an example for his men, flickered through your mind. But Duc Volpe was not known for his recklessness. Quite the opposite, in fact — the strategy of war was his sweet spot, his calculations cold and ruthless just like the rest of him. If he had simply been caught unaware by an enemy soldier while deciding the next move for his forces, it would explain why he was so flustered and angry by your accidental interruption.

The thoughts went unvoiced. Self-preservation was, thankfully, still functional in your mind. He glared up at you expectantly, the strong planes of his face shadowed in the dim lighting.

Bloodied cloth was discarded. A fresh rag was picked up and wetted. The positioning of the wounds forced you to lean closer, close enough to feel the latent warmth radiating off his skin. That little tremor had returned to your hands; you hoped that the motion of wiping over the injuries masked it. Little by little, the blood was scrubbed away, revealing purpling bruising ringing the gashes. Wretched and beautiful. Healthy crimson flesh peeked up at you from beneath the torn skin. Alive. Duc Volpe was no longer a myth haunting the edges of your conscience, but a man, wounded and breathing under your care.

Your breath ghosted over his skin as you tried your best not to irritate his injuries further.

All it took was a second.

“Stop.”

His palm flicked up and wrapped around your wrist again, catching your forearm and forcing it to be still. In your chest cavity, your heart leapt like a shot rabbit, and a sharp inhale inflated your lungs out of reflex. The damp cloth remained pressed to his wounded ribs, the pressure forcing water to trickle down his side. Eyes widened, you stared at the negative space over his shoulder, fighting the urge to yank your hand away and flee; dread twisted your stomach.

The long fingers closed around your wrist felt strikingly similar to a bird of prey’s talons cinched around some poor, unfortunate rodent. His hand was big, weathered, mottled with veins and scars, smattered with hair across the back. Rough callouses scraped against the unmarred flesh of your forearm, much like the rough-hewn grain of the door from earlier.

You were certain that you had crossed some unspoken line. Pushed something too far. Breathed wrong. Something.

The stream of consciousness in your head was panicky, muddled. Oh God. I must have erred somewhere. Somewhere bad. Something bad. Did I hurt him? Dig too far into a wound? Was he simply tired of being fussed over by a chambermaid, of all things? Did he just then realize what state I was seeing him in? Tending to him in?

He watched you freeze, watched the way your eyes shot wide, watched the shaky way you took in breaths — as if you were trying to escape detection. A smile nearly ticked up the corner of his lips. Very nearly. It was amusing how easily frightened you were — how you treated him of all people as if he were fragile. Fragile not in the way where you worried for his breakability, but in the way where you worried about being cut by broken glass. The fear poured off you, visible in every inch of your frame, right down to the stiff tremors in your fingers still holding the cloth against the gashes in his side.

Stories of the Wolf’s vindictive cruelty dogged his every step. He was known to execute subordinates even a step out of line, and while he seemed largely unconcerned with the servant staff, this was different. Who would miss you? Anna? Would she befriend your replacement the same? Where would they dump your body? Would it be quick?

“Look at me.” A command more than a request. His thumb sought your pulse point, pressed against it. You did not register it, but delight flashed in his eyes at your rabbit-quick heartbeat.

You were a good chambermaid. Your eyes slid over. Caught that cordierite gaze. Whatever courage the mead had inspired in you earlier was long gone, replaced by a distinct sunken abyss where the pit of your stomach used to be. Only animal terror and the thought that if you obeyed him, he might not open your throat from ear to ear kept you in place.

His eyes lingered on your face, studied how you schooled your expression. A minor twitch of your cheek was the only thing that betrayed you.

Well, that and the way your pulse fluttered wildly beneath his thumb. Briefly, he entertained the fantasy of crushing that little throb as he did with his enemies’ skulls under his heel. It was a heady feeling, having you like this. Duc Volpe was not stupid, nor oblivious. He knew his reputation, he knew his tendencies, he knew exactly what he was. He knew the effect he had on you — someone so comparatively fragile — and it was making something ancient unfurl deep in his chest cavity. Some kind of bone-deep level of satisfaction, the kind only produced from seeing fear up close, from watching the whites of your eyes as they slid around in your skull, looking for the nearest exit.

He leaned marginally closer, the grip on your wrist firm. You were not going to be able to leave your post between his legs any time soon. That much was clear.

“You’re shaking,” he murmured, with no ounce of sympathy to his voice. More so detached amusement. “Are you afraid of me, little maid?” The words were spoken through a sneer, but the corner of his mouth finally broke and quirked up in a wolfish smile.

No. Yes. Of course I am. Of course I would never admit that to you. You fought the urge to shrink backward as he pulled at your arm. It wasn’t gentle. Just consistent and low-grade, as if your forearm had been tied to a tree. You gave in not because he was tentative, but you wanted to keep the bones of your wrist in their correct location. He still sat, perched, on the edge of the bed, with you standing between his knees — but he had successfully tugged you just a few inches down to his level and craned himself upwards. The positioning truly did not matter. He may as well have been looming over you from the ceiling with how utterly small that flinty blue gaze made you feel. Your words struggled to come out, dying in your throat before they even had a chance to hit your tongue.

Finally, you pried a usable sentence out. “No, my lord.” It didn’t sound convincing. It wasn’t true. You lied through your teeth to your lord, right to his face, with the evidence of your falsehood in your uncooperative limbs and facial tics.

It felt as wrong to lie then as it would have to do the same in a confessional booth. It seemed a silly comparison — no screen separated you, and Duc Volpe was as far from a man of the cloth as one could get — but made sense to you the longer you stood, trapped in your own terror. Was the Wolf not a connection to God in his own way? Merely a different way to reach the holy kingdom. Not peaceful nor pleasant, but the end was still the same. Whether he saw himself that way was irrelevant; he still cleaved souls from bodies with cruel delight, performing his duty as if it were divine retribution guiding his sword and not impetuous pleasure bordering on perverse. He wore no cross on his clavicle. No church symbolism was engraved on his armor. And yet, somehow, holy imposition felt heavy on your shoulders as you scrubbed at his battlefield stigmata with shaking hands.

Volpe’s grin widened slightly at your response, though there was, impressively, no warmth in it. The predatory way it sharpened, deepened the shadows of his face, made it clear he saw straight through your weak little attempt at deception.

"Liar," he said, his thumb now still, digging into your pulse point. The tendons of your wrist shifted somewhat to accommodate the pressure. One word. It came laced with that same distant amusement. You swore that you saw his eyes glint. He shifted slightly. One armored leg tilted to rest against yours, his metal-plated knee digging into the side of yours through your skirt.

Oops. Caught. Your stomach dropped even further — something that didn’t feel physically possible — and you shifted your weight on your heels. The knee joint of his armor rumpled your skirt, catching and pinching the linen. Insistent. Just like his thumb, just like his grip, just like his gaze.

“I’m— apologies, my lord, I don’t mean to offend,” you started, attempting valiantly to keep some wind in your sails (and to keep your voice from trembling). You cursed your stammering, finding it frustrating and unbecoming and so unlike you. “It’s just that— well, you, ah, you—”

“I what?” he prompted, cutting you off as you floundered, in the same manner one would put a dying animal out of its thrashing misery. One thick brow, slashed through with a small scar, cocked very slightly. His voice was low and amused, drawling as though he enjoyed having you hang on every syllable from his mouth.

Sharp eyes tracked the way your free hand tightened and twisted around the spare bandages you were holding, the way your eyes darted nervously between his face and the wound on his side. He knew precisely what you were trying to say — that he was beyond intimidating and instead terrifying, that he was scaring you, that you were afraid. And he was right. He was all those things. But right then, all he wanted was to hear you say it out loud. He craved that admission nearly more than… well, anything.

Duc Volpe had built his entire military career off of inspiring fear. That much was true. He was well-versed in violence for the sake of terror, all of it done as calculated moves in the ultimate vein of victory. This was… something different. Less planned, more impulsive. But he couldn’t deny the intense satisfaction he derived from the way that he made you — just a simple chambermaid, for Christ’s sake — tremble like he was swinging a sword at your neck. His eyes traced the column of your throat.

That predatory glint in his eyes, the wolfish, sneering smile on his face… he enjoyed your fear. That much was evident. You so desperately wanted to steel yourself, to not give him exactly the reaction he wanted, but you simply could not help it. You were a maid, the lowest of the low, a replaceable face in a roster of women just like you — young, poor, servile. Your lord was vindictive and cruel with a penchant for sadism, and had taken interest in you the way a cat took interest in a bird with a broken wing. Impending doom solidified in your stomach, cold and iron-tasting.

“You, ah, have a… reputation, my lord,” you managed to say, fidgeting with the strips of cloth in the hand he didn’t have trapped. Sweat from your palms leached into the bandages. In the back of your head, somewhere distant and lucid, you marveled at how he’d forced your hand to stay pressed against his side the entire time. Blood had started to seep through the bandage there, wetting and warming your palm. Your eyes slipped away from his face as you spoke, sheer mortification heating your cheeks.

"A reputation.” he echoed flatly. He watched your discomfort like it sustained him. He knew exactly what you meant. It was just more entertaining to pry it out of you like teeth from your jawbone. Volpe chuckled, the gravelly sound more menacing than humored. Your panic-born honesty was amusing. Watching you struggle to articulate your true thoughts of him in a way that presumably wouldn’t net you a swift execution was certainly the highest point of his night thus far.

The muscle of his arm bunched and flexed, and you felt a sharp yank on your wrist. A sharp noise of surprise left your lips — not a squeak, more of a yelp — and you stumbled forward, your other hand swinging to catch you. Beneath you, his leg slid over, and you sat down hard, hard enough that you felt an instant bite of sore pain at the very lowest point of your pelvis. His free arm slid around your waist to keep you from falling, pulling you upright. "And yet here you are, tending to my wounds.”

You straddled his armored thigh, the heat of mortification creeping down from your blazing cheeks to your neck and collarbones. Inappropriate. This was inappropriate. Your perch was uncertain, heart in your throat, and your eyes darted all over searching for somewhere to look that wouldn’t force your stomach to flip with nervousness. A twinge ran up your calves as you rested some of your weight on your toes. The swiftness shocked you. A quick look at Volpe’s form confirmed his strength, but you were no delicate waif — you were a salt-of-the-earth kind of creature, very tangible and weighty. And yet he moved you with a nearly irritated efficiency that had your head spinning from an altitude change of only a few inches.

If you were trapped before, you were dead now. You dropped your clean bandages in surprise, and they fluttered into Volpe’s lap in a shower of off-white fabric. You wanted to get up — ancient instinct was screaming at you to get up, panic and revulsion unfurling from deep in your gut, humiliation painting everything in a hot flush. You wanted to get up, but you… couldn’t. Physically, your lord kept your hand pinned to his side, his grip resituating only to get a better handle on your forearm. His other arm was slung around your waist, lax only for the moment. Should you have tried to rise off his leg, you had the impression that his arm would have constricted like a snake and forced you right back down.

Besides, even if your hands were free, something in your mind kept you still. Maybe it was instinct, telling you to keep still to avoid detection, but… it felt different. It was deep, it was dark, it was the kind of feeling that stayed buried and only managed to ooze out from the depths of your subconscious on particularly warm nights. Moved like a serpent over the branches of a tree, dripping into gaps, weighted with something heavy. It was, in short, mortifying, and you dared not confront it for fear of giving it a name. Recognizing it would make it a part of you, and you, despite all your foolish actions over the course of the last hour or so, were not stupid. You attended church, even slunk into the confessional when you could. Letting that sin have even a moment of recognition would embed it within you. Much like what you did with the rest of your thoughts on the daily, you just pushed it away.

And away.

But, Christ, it was hard to do that when what felt like the very personification of it had all your limbs entwined with his body. You saw it, just barely recognized it, reflected in the lifeless slate of his irises when you dared make eye contact with him. Something perverse, something written only as a punishable deviance — something that, to an honest woman, should have nauseated you to the core.

…Should have.

“I— it would not be right to leave my lord in such a state,” you replied after a long quiet, your fingers finding tentative purchase on the slope of his right shoulder. Just for balance, you bargained in your head. His skin seared your fingertips. The tremor in your voice was, by the grace of God, nearly undetectable. “You were— you are hurt.”

“Precisely,” he murmured. Condescension crept into his tone, as if you were a child stating something obvious. Around your waist, his elbow flexed reflexively, muscle pressed thick against your back. There was no denying how much he enjoyed how you were confined to him. The brush of your fingers on his shoulder sent a chain reaction down his arm, caused it to tighten slightly. He pulled you an inch closer, forced your soft belly to press against his hip. Even through the plate of his leg armor, the warmth of your body seeped through, hot with latent terror.

He watched the way your chest rose and fell rapidly with each breath. Small and scared and trapped — you were precisely how he wanted you; like this, to him, you were sumptuous. Still, the Wolf was nothing if not observant. And beyond the dull sheen of fear in your eyes, he saw something else.

The pressure on your wrist against his ribs lifted. This would be your chance. You could tear yourself off his lap, shove him away, scramble out of this dim pit of a bedchamber and shove this entire encounter down, away, somewhere safe where you would never think about it.

And yet, you didn’t move.

Duc Volpe was infamous for his cruelty, yes, but his battlefield strategy was renowned just as widely. He knew. Knew from that look in your eyes that even with a clear escape route, you would sit, stay, do whatever your lord asked of you. He knew that the fear would win over your bodily instinct, knew that your incessant curiosity would keep you right where you were. Right where he wanted you.

"Well?” he prompted with his characteristic sneer after a moment of your stunned silence. “Keep tending to me then.”

He spat the word tending with sardonic venom, as if care was poison. As if it were ridiculous to even say.

You were a good little chambermaid. You obeyed.

“Yes, my lord.” You acquiesced with only a slight tremble in your voice, thankfully managing to keep the stutter from your words.

In some case of vicious cosmic irony, straddling his thigh gave you a much better vantage point from which to clean his wounds. Despite the seemingly permanent heat in your cheeks, you dutifully tried your best to focus on your task. The wounds were ugly — a few awkwardly angled gashes — but seemed to look worse than they actually were. They would be unremarkable even as scars, simply joining the legion of their brethren once they had healed in a patchwork canvas of old pain. Dried blood came away easily enough, and your eyes flicked over the slashed skin, attempting to be as clinical as possible.

Which, admittedly, was difficult. Every nerve in your body was attuned and primed to fire, the feeling of his bare arm steadying your torso insistent even through your dress. Everywhere you looked was full of him, bare skin slashed with scars, stuffed with muscle and fat, dusted with hair. Proof of his survival through any means necessary. Revoltingly virile.

His eyes tracked every single motion. Even when you were staring right at the injuries on his ribs, even when your fingers were veritably digging into exposed flesh, his gaze weighed heavy on one of two things: your hands or your face. The gentle probe of your fingers seemed particularly fascinating to him, but the microexpressions of fear and focus twitching across your countenance were equally enthralling.

Never in your life had you felt so studied. Never had your existence been so interesting to another.

Bleeding mostly stymied, you discarded the dirtied rags. In the middle of reaching for a fresh one, a heavy hand settled on your hip. Your heartbeat, which had just begun to slowly descend, instantly scrambled back into your throat. Every semblance of moisture felt sucked out of your mouth. You jolted at the touch, but said nothing. Perhaps he was just resituating, or it was better to keep you balanced, or—

The hand tightened on the swell of your hip, long fingers pressing into your flesh.

And it pulled.

It was exactly the same as the rest of the times he had forcibly moved you. Not a request, not tentative, just handling your body with the expectation that you would give.

And you did.

His grip, firm enough to border on painful, pushed your hip back, toward his knee. Then pulled. Then pushed. Minute distances, barely inches. It was barely anything. It was, somehow, simultaneously, everything. He moved the mass of your hips with not ease but efficiency, movements supremely controlled, down to how hard he dug his fingers into your flesh.

“My lord?” you coughed out, too flustered to look at him, eyes instead trained on the relative safety of his side wound.

Volpe’s clutch on your hip constricted slightly, his fingers digging into the meat of your iliac crest as he tugged you towards himself again. He knew, precisely, what he was doing, though he did it with a predatory curiosity. Experimentation. Those cold, flinty eyes watched your face closely as he rocked the cradle of your pelvis back and forth — your tightly pressed lips, your wide eyes locked intently on his wound instead of looking at him. Every miniscule change of your expression, every twitch of your eyebrows and cheeks, every time your breath stuttered in your throat. “Did I say for you to stop?”

There was a tinge of annoyance in his words, as if he couldn’t believe you had the gall to question him. The movement of his hand slowed to a near-stop.

“Ah— no, my lord, right, of course,” you breathed. Shivers, one after the other, coursed down your spine at his snarled words. You didn’t dare to look at him, knowing exactly what kind of gaze was waiting for you. The strong planes of his face, the proud line of his nose, the square line of his jaw; all of it was relegated to a blur in your periphery. You swallowed spit that wasn’t there, and kept holding pressure on his side. That insistent push and pull of his grip returned, an unspoken reward; his strength still surprised you, evident in the way he dragged your hips forward with only one hand.

Burning ran up the back of your calves, muscles twinging from supporting your weight in such a strange position for so long. It may as well have been hellfire, because you shifted your body unconsciously for relief, and your thighs spread just a tad more, and suddenly, the next tug of your hips toward his own sparked something incredible from between your legs. It was not a feeling unknown to you, but it was an infrequent visitor, and it should not have been here of all places. Heartbeat skipping, you jolted and gasped; for a moment, it did not seem real. With any other person, you likely could have played it off as soreness in your muscles and excused yourself. But not here. Not with him.

If it had been pain, he would have enjoyed it just the same. But he was watching your face too closely for you to lie.

His eyes narrowed, sparking with interest as he felt your body tense atop his armored thigh. Whatever feeble line had been drawn in the proverbial sand before was crushed beneath his heel — just as everything in his life was, just as you would be — in favor of whatever this was fast becoming. Lords were not supposed to torture their servants in such a way, but the twitches of your flesh and the agonized noises you fought to keep from slipping from your lips were far more tempting than any code of honor he was supposed to obey. Volpe was no slave to his impulses; over the course of his life, he had sharpened his self-restraint and willpower into a weapon comparable to his longsword. You were the only thing seemingly able to test it. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from seeking out your strangled reactions, nearly drunk off your shame. Your obvious inexperience, the way you fought to maintain decorum… everything was an unknowing invitation for him to continue pressing you, just to see what would finally cause your fracture.

It was slower on the rebound. His darkened eyes watched your expressions with unbelievable intensity, that rapacious grin crawling across his scarred face. Heat scorched your cheeks and neck, diffusing all the way up to your ears. Every time he dragged your hips up and down the metal plate on his leg, delicious friction sparked between your thighs, the kind you had only grown familiar with on rare nights where you had a moment alone. It was not the way you should have been touched by your lord, and you certainly should not have been enjoying it the way that you were. It was bad. It was very bad. Superficial thoughts of that nature flooded your dizzied mind, accompanied by sweat beading on the nape of your neck. Every lecture from the castle priest, every teaching from your mother, every applicable excerpt from God’s word — all of them whirled together in some potent elixir of guilt. This was beyond bad, treading into the territory of unforgivable, a disgusting act of sin done in the dark because you knew it was wrong. If you had sense, if you had shame, you would have stood up and fled, would have prayed in the stronghold’s darkened church until your knees bled, would have sought the correct path of repentance and ultimately forgiveness.

But you didn’t. You were quickly finding that you were not a good Christian, but you were a good little chambermaid. Better suited to serving your lord than your God.

Your thighs twitched beneath your skirt. Still, you attempted to carry through with your task.

Volpe watched with amusement bordering on salacious as your face contorted with pleasure, moving you relentlessly along his leg; he’d grown bolder, pressing down with his hand, forcing more contact between your core and the plate armor beneath you. Your breath hastened. His grew heavier. That satisfaction he felt from seeing your fear earlier had only intensified and seeped downwards, below the band of his hose, and settled between his own thighs. Each little hitch in your inhales drew a twitch from beneath his codpiece. He could see the guilt on your face, warring with pleasure, and had never known anything sweeter.

“Duc— Duc Volpe,” you choked out, voice thready from pleasure. The formal moniker was an attempt at something — perhaps an appeal to his authority, perhaps a reminder of his place above you and why he shouldn’t be allowing this — that was lost in translation. His eyes flared at the recognition of his title, hand squeezing at your hip. Still that relentless push and pull.

You tried, really. Honestly. Your fading willpower was diverted to keeping your hips from bucking and grinding against the bulwark of steel and muscle beneath you, but it struggled beneath the weight of want that crushed your spirit. It was awful. It was mortifying. You had never wanted something so much. Your fingers nearly clawed into his bloody side as you steadied yourself, your other hand gripping his shoulder with sweat dampening your palm. That abyss in your gut from earlier returned, fearful and basal, and you felt as though you hung precariously over the edge of something you’d be unable to return from.

That barely-there grin, distorted by his perpetual sneer, betrayed his delight at your trembling, stifled reactions. The way you attempted to remain focused, the way you so desperately wanted to be obedient and failed miserably, was driving him mad with desire, long since dormant until now. The mere thought of it was unusual, almost repulsive; it made him feel out of his own control, driven by something primitive and below him. He rectified it by controlling you; it was difficult to exaggerate just how satisfying it was to discover exactly what kind of touch drew which kind of noise out of your lips.

His eyes dropped to where your hips jerked helplessly against his cuisse, his gaze so heavy you swore you felt it hit the metal. It flicked back up to your searing face after a moment of watching your pitiful moments, and then he leaned closer. Your stomach twisted with not-quite-dread; his voice sank to a low growl right in your ear.

“Do you want me to stop?” It was not a kind question, nor did you feel as though he were asking for permission. You doubted he cared for your answer; judging from the mocking lilt that crept into the last syllables, it was rhetorical.

That being said, you were never going to say yes.

“No,” you panted miserably, the admission doused in shame. You knew what you should have said, knew that it was probably safest for you to have said yes, knew that your self-preservation was failing you, and yet — it felt so good. The only time anything of this nature had felt so exquisite was on rare nights you had alone in the dingy dark of the maids’ quarters, hand slipped beneath your shift and lip bitten hard to keep stray noises from eking out. Lightning crackled down the inside of your thighs with each drag of your hips. “Please…” The word trailed off, lost to the few inches of negative space left between you both. Your hand slipped off his side, your dedication to your previous task finally failing you.

Jaw brushing your own, mouth still hovering near your ear, Volpe’s grin widened unseen at your immediate response. The tremulous way you fell apart, willpower slowly chipped away by him and only him, felt on par with a successful siege. It had been a long while since he had indulged in pleasures of the flesh. Months, maybe years. Time off the battlefield tended to blur together for him, long hours of sparring until his hands were bloody and re-reading battle strategy until his eyes could no longer focus. It was only now — and only luck — that you had stumbled into his purview, too selfless and obedient for your own good. Satisfied with the way you quivered, he leaned back and watched as your head fell forward, face and eyes downturned in embarrassment as you ground against his armor in staccato movements, as if you were unsure of what to do.

“Don’t whine, maid. Dress my wounds,” he ordered, the gruffness of his voice edged with something else. The glint in his eye suggested he knew full well that you were far, far too gone to actually continue with your task. He just liked watching you struggle. “And keep quiet.”

Indignation and arousal flared over your cheeks in a score of heat. You had a name, for Christ’s sake, but that didn’t matter here. All that mattered was the rustle of your skirt, the sound of your combined breaths, and the aching burn of your calves.

A soft noise spilled from your mouth that might have been an assent. Like the dog you were, you obeyed. Servile in every limb, even the ones that twitched from pleasure. Your hands scooped up the discarded bandages, clumsy in their movements, in order to bind his ribs. The other hand landed heavily on your opposing side. Both kneaded indulgently at the plushness of your flesh — both in tandem pushed and pulled your hips up and down the length of his thigh. Each luxurious drag of your cunt over the plate armor heated your face impossibly further; short, sharp noises — that you attempted to unsuccessfully stifle — fell from your treacherous mouth. Even then, you shakily pressed new gauze against his injuries and began to tremulously wrap the fresh bandages around the site.

If you hadn’t been so dedicated to maintaining the fast-disintegrating shreds of your decorum, you could have witnessed the morbid fascination with which he studied you. Those dull eyes had gained a cruel glint — one more commonly seen on the edge of a blade or in the sheen of fresh blood — and every time you choked back a noise or your hips stuttered on his leg, they would flare with interest. Unused to this specific brand of exertion, your hips began to ache, soreness settling into them with a vengeance. And yet, you didn’t stop. You couldn’t have stopped. Shaky breaths puffed from your lips as Volpe slowly, torturously, began to quicken his movement of your body.

The tremble in your fingers proved to be too much; you slipped, accidentally digging into his wounds, and a sharp hiss escaped his gritted teeth. Ah. So his defenses weren’t impenetrable. Even so, it only seemed to spur him; his hold on your hips bore down almost painfully, all but yanking you back and forth as an unspoken punishment for your mistake. Still, he didn’t tell you to stop. He couldn’t have, not when you were making such sweet noises and crumbling so beautifully under the invasive weight of his attention.

"Tighter," he growled. "Wrap it tighter around my side.” It took great effort for him not to smirk when he felt your thighs clench around his leg instead, like you’d misinterpreted his instruction.

Oh, Christ in Heaven, you blasphemed mentally, heresy coming easily under such scrutiny. He pushed the words through gritted teeth; his tone was glottal, strained despite its authority. The thought that you, of all people, affected Duc Volpe in such a way was enough to make your head spin — nevermind the fact he had you rocking on his thigh like some sinful imitation of horsemanship.

“Ye— nffh, yes, my lord, my— my apologies,” you breathed. If he was fighting the urge to grin, you were fighting the instinct to toss your head back and work your hips in the most primitive, reflexive way you knew how. The more excited he became, the more intense his ministrations — those long, scarred fingers tightened, the tug of his grip became more insistent.

A soft rustle. A flash of a hand. You blinked and looked down, and realized with a flush of heat — arousal blurred with humiliation — that he had yanked the spare fabric of your dress out from where it had bunched under you on his thigh. The thin shift you wore beneath followed suit. Your entire body jolted at the feeling of your cunt pressed flush to the barely-warm plate armor you sat astride. Much earlier on, that shamefully familiar drip of sin — like molten honey — had started down your spine and settled deep in your stomach, searing and saccharine. It felt primed, ready to ignite — your sex was unbearably hot and bordering on dripping. Just from… this. Utterly, utterly shameful, and yet…

Despite his order to stay quiet, a tortured yelp left your bitten lips — the pressure of your swollen clit ground down against the unforgiving smoothness of the plate sent sparks flying behind your eyelids whenever you blinked. Heat danced upward and outward from your core in time with your orchestrated movements. Your mind had long since melted into a dysfunctional slurry. With eyes that fought to stay open, you chanced a glance down, and saw it. Just a glimpse. A flash of wetness, a slick trail on the battle-beaten surface of the cuisse, left behind as visual proof of your shame.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name.

The prayer felt like a last bastion, although you weren’t particularly certain what you were praying for. Forgiveness, salvation, or maybe just not to give in to that steadily-tightening coil of heat in your gut so soon.

Something decidedly serpentine urged you to prolong the pleasure, and you listened.

Thy kingdom come.

The sound was wet. It was wet. It was audible. Beneath your struggling huffs and his own ragged breathing, you heard the sound of your yielding flesh against cold steel, and Christ alive, it was near-rapturous. Judging by the way Volpe’s eyes flared in their sockets, it was affecting him in much the same way. The satisfaction that coursed through him was familiar. It was the result — the reward — of victory. Of conquest. Watching you crumble, watching all your learned habits and training dissolve under such vulgar pleasure, pleased him like no other. Knowing he had such an effect on you, to the point where he could get you to grind on his grime-flecked armor and writhe in hapless pleasure, swelled not just his ego but his cock; the blood-hot flesh strained uncomfortably against the restriction of his hose and overlying codpiece.

He exercised restraint in every aspect of his life. Every facet, from his battle-won lands down to his daily routine, was tightly controlled, strangled by a fist of iron. Down to you. Although you attempted to follow his lead, he manipulated your movements, grip as sure and certain as anything. Scarred fingers dug into your flesh, a crude facsimile of teeth, and pushed down as they pulled. Your clit mashed down against the metal, so intense it crossed the border into pain, and a jagged shudder ran up your frame. But there it was — no matter how tightly he gripped your body, how many bruises he left in the wake of his marauding touch, your earnest, helpless reactions chipped at his composure relentlessly. He only came to understand temptation when you were displaying it so wantonly.

“There,” he growled when your quaking hands finally tightened the bandages suitably around his ribs. From the grit in his voice, you understood even through the haze in your mind that he was not talking only about the dressing of his wounds. It felt like a command, or perhaps permission, and regardless of his intent, you took it as such.

Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

Any further lines of the prayer faded from your mind as you scrabbled to brace your hands on his shoulders. Something had opened with his singular syllable, or, more likely, your body simply couldn’t focus on anything but filthy, stomach-sinking pleasure any longer. Beautiful, brilliant sparks flashed behind your screwed-shut eyelids as you really, really moved your hips in time with his manipulation, dragging your cunt against the cuisse in desperation. Sweat from your palms dampened his scarred shoulders as you clutched at him; that swelling pleasure radiated relentlessly from between your thighs. Each successive tug was easier than the last, aided by your steady seep of slickness. One hell of a way to polish armor, you thought dizzily, and the joke made you huff a laugh that melted instantaneously into a whine.

“Oh,” you panted. Nails kept short for practical purposes were pushed into well-worn muscle. Teeth, wet with saliva, glinted dully as they were gritted in pleasurable agony. He allowed your doling out of pain, too enthralled by the enormity of your reactions. “Ch— Christ, Duc— Duc Volpe…”

You used the only title you knew, and forgot all about his order to stay quiet.

Maybe it was a reaction to the formal name, or more simply to your speech, but the hands fell away from your aching hips. Before you could ask — or even gasp from surprise — one damp palm slid over your mouth. The other slid around your back, arm secured around your waist, and pressed you flush to his bare chest. Salt bloomed on your tongue, your own panting breath reflected back against your parted lips. He was so solid. The bulk of his chest was firm; it rose and fell with the serration of his breaths. The soft paunch of his stomach pressed against your own. Even like this, he felt your heartbeat — rapid, thready, nearly overwhelmed from the sensation and all its attached taboo.

You tried your best. You did, you always did. With weak little gasps, you attempted to continue tightening that coil of heat in your gut. Your hips jerked and ground fruitlessly against his thigh. It felt good — dull little shocks of pleasure lanced up your spine — but not enough. Not nearly enough. How pathetically comedic was that? When you attempted to work yourself to completion, it was barely adequate. But when your lord required it of you, it was incredible.

Frustration boiled beneath your skin, fanned by the guilt still heavy in your stomach. Drool slipped past your lips, leaked onto his palm as the barrier of flesh attempted to quiet you. It didn’t really work. Especially as your rapidly approaching peak began to slip away and panic heightened your voice into a pitiful whine.

“No, no, I— ah— nonono, please,” you huffed, and humiliatingly enough, a few errant tears pricked at your eyes. This felt like a new low, begging for assistance as if you were incapable of doing it yourself. “Please, my lord, please help me, please, I— I want to…”

You couldn’t bring yourself to say it. Volpe kept you restrained, letting the strong pound of his heart against his sternum speak for his sheer excitement. Every tremble of need against him seemed to push him further into intoxication. His hands tightened — his palm sealed further over your babbling mouth, and his grip solidified around your waist. Your hips still worked, mindlessly clawing towards a receding peak. Like an animal. And then, he— he laughed.

A chuckle, breathy and deep in his chest. Perverse pleasure, brought on by your feeble pleading and the ability to beg for everything except for what you truly wanted. Your ears burned as he laughed at your desperation. Your cunt throbbed, though, and your hips still writhed, slow and ineffectual, against his thigh. It wasn’t enough, not nearly, but it still stoked your desire in ways you dared not name. Dress feeling uncomfortably tight and far too hot, your eyes wrenched open.

“Please,” you started, and at your word, Volpe leaned backward to watch your face contort with frustration behind his palm. You had never seen delight so clearly expressed before, even though his lust-darkened eyes were still narrowed. “Please don’t do this, my lord, I can’t—”

I can’t finish if you don’t help me. Please don’t leave me like this. Your thoughts — much more lucid than your words — nauseated you.

“You can’t?” His voice pitched up with both amusement and mockery. “Can’t what, little maid?”

A strangled breath against his hand. “Please don’t make me say it.”

He tutted. You saw a flash of a sharp canine. “We’re far past shame. You’ve certainly proven that.”

Heat flushed all the way down to your toes as the condescension dripped from his snarled lips. Nerves steeled, you readied yourself to beg for pleasure, but somewhere, somehow, God must have heard your pleading. The armor-plated bulk your thighs straddled began to move, little sawing motions that instantly ripped a whine from your lips. The arm around your waist resituated. One hand sank back to your hip and nearly yanked you. Some sense of impending doom fell upon you, and that tightness in your gut returned with a vengeance. You were wrong, you realized numbly. No God heard your begging — but your lord certainly did.

Palm still firmly over your mouth, he dragged you right back to that precipice, watching every microexpression greedily with eyes that missed nothing. The swollen bead of your clit crushed against the shiny steel, cunt sliding over the sickeningly wet metal, and it was there, it was deep in your gut— the surface area, the pressure, the heat, the guilt, the pain, it was all too much, and the coil snapped under the tension.

Pleasure broke over you in waves. Your aching thigh muscles stiffened — limbs locked up by ecstasy — and the inner walls of your cunt spasmed around nothing as you trembled atop his leg. An effigy of debauchery, the noises that poured from your mouth were sinful. Weak gasps interspersed with choppy moans, all of them swallowed by the unyielding press of his sweat-damp palm. You gripped the solid slope of his shoulders so tightly that your knuckle bones felt as though they were going to burst through your skin. It was exquisite, and it was over far, far too soon; aftershocks lanced through you as you regained lucidity. Every single limb had gained a new muscle tremor.

Through it all, Volpe kept grinding your hips down against his leg — though each moan and whine had his fingers flexing into your flesh as if he were trying to control his reaction. When your eyes widened from their half-lidded state, his gaze sought yours immediately. Pinned to the spot by the weight of it, you attempted to quell the desperation of your breaths and failed. You sucked in gasps against his hand, nose flaring as your lungs clawed for air to return to some semblance of normalcy. He watched it all. Watched your eyes sharpen back to comprehension. Watched the slackness of your cheeks, signifying that your jaw hung open behind his palm. Watched, with a shadow of a grin, as horror crept into your gaze upon the realization of what you had just done.

Your eyes slid away from his. Shame crawled up your back, dug claws into your spine, made you unable to face the result of your display. What were you? It was like you’d been possessed, but you knew that wasn’t true. You’d done it all willingly — too willingly — and that was the thought that sickened you the most. You weren’t like this. Not some whore that begged for pleasure like an animal. You were a normal, pious young woman, who worked hard and stayed polite and was kind to others (more or less). You were a good servant.

That thought stuck with you.

You were a good servant, weren’t you?

Volpe watched mortification chase the haze of pleasure away from your expression with cruel satisfaction. He knew precisely what he’d done. Knew he’d pushed you this far — too far. Knew he’d manipulated you right into your state of desperation. Knew that you would go along with everything, because you were a good servant. It was fascinating to watch you lose control, though. He’d admit that readily enough. Slowly, he peeled his hand off your mouth, letting you regulate your breathing better. His other arm remained steady around your ribs.

Without your front more or less propped up, you slumped against the bulwark of his chest against your better judgment. He stiffened for a second, then relaxed, especially when he felt your chin nestle into the junction of his neck and shoulder. He liked this. He liked you. He liked how you fell apart beneath the weight of his attention, he liked the way your shame fought valiantly against your desire, and he really, really liked hearing you beg. Your instant acquiescence to his demands made his cock twitch and something swell deep in his chest.

Whether or not you still trembled was not of your concern. More so, you were worried with how mind-numbingly good it felt to have the Duc work your malleable body to completion. A sin of the highest order, for sure, and yet you would do it a thousand times over if you could. You weren’t virginal — you didn’t know a maid in this castle that was — but your only experience prior had been clumsy fumblings with stableboys and town guards, awkward fingers pushed inside of you and teeth clacked in attempts to kiss. Nothing like what had just happened.

Unbelievable. You hadn’t even kissed. Your lips were swollen from biting down to keep quiet rather than mouths slotted together desperately. And oh, yes, the Duc noticed. He noticed all of it, his gaze as heavy as a physical touch as it flicked over your pliant form and pleasure-wrecked face — noticed it down to how your thighs shivered around his leg, how quick your breathing remained. Like some stupid fawn, you remained curled against him, latent pleasure leadening your limbs; even if you wanted to take your leave, you doubted your legs could support your weight. No, you were a willing captive, presenting the column of your throat for the predator to bite in the hopes that his jaws wouldn’t close especially hard.

“You’re shaking.” Amusement laced his sneered drawl. A pause. The words hung in the air, and you took a breath as if to quell your tremors. It was unsuccessful. “You enjoyed yourself.” Not a question. “Is this how all of my servants act, or is it just you that’s this wanton?”

Heat flared back into your cheeks. Any defense you could have provided seemed to stick in your throat. A fist like a brick snarled in the bunched fabric of your skirts. Slowly — torturously slowly — he dragged the hemline up from where it covered the joining of your thighs. The linen teased up over your still-twitching flesh, and it was all you could do to peel your head off his shoulder in nervousness as it climbed higher, higher, higher…

“Answer me,” he murmured, voice thick and glottal with derisive desire. “I don’t hire whores to tend my keep. Must I curb this behavior for you?” The threat of punishment laced through his question. Your stomach swooped low in… fear, desire, the distinction didn’t matter anymore. All of it fueled the sadistic lilt in his words.

Your heart stuttered in your chest, the poor muscle beyond overworked. He wasn’t wrong. You didn’t know what came over you, but it had been shameless, a yawning abyss of nauseating desire that terrified you the longer you toed the edge of it. If it was wrong, though, why did it feel so good? Every experience of such… carnal nature you had indulged in before — stableboys, watchmen, your own hand on lonelier nights — paled in comparison to this flash of debauchery. Why? What was wrong with you? The urge to yank your skirts back down as they ghost upward was unbelievably strong — some way to have a shred of agency, modesty, decorum.

And yet you didn’t. You let him continue languidly pulling your dress up. “No!” you yelped, body leaned back a few inches from his solid, hair-furred chest to catch his gaze. As if that would somehow make your pitiful defense more credible. “No, my lord, I didn’t— I didn’t mean to, I know it was wrong, I don’t know what came over me, I just— it just—”

His hand leveled at your waist and stopped there. The hoist of the crumpled fabric exposed your swollen cunt to the stale air of the bedchamber, and your pathetic stammering died on your tongue. Nestled in a thatch of dark, glistening curls, your folds spread over the gentle slope of the gleaming cuisse, splayed open as damning evidence of your pleasure. The heady throb of your clit still pulsed errantly upwards, twitching faintly against the desire-slick metal. You couldn’t stop looking. Neither could Volpe. Evidence of your shamelessness, so bare and humiliating, laid out for both of you to witness.

Volpe’s eyes dragged over your core languidly — teeth scraping meat off the bone — before flicking back up to your face. The stare from beneath those heavy, scar-flecked brows pierced you down to the marrow.

The embarrassment that poured off you stoked the heady want in his gut; the slight hunch to your shoulders, the fixation of your gaze on your own sex, the tightness in your jaw — all of it screamed of your mortification. He was enthralled. Tearing apart your carefully composed, practical facade had pleased him immensely; watching you reckon with what you had become in the grip of your lust was all that much sweeter.

You were right where he wanted you.

You were right where you wanted to be.

That, though, was an admission so horrifying that you instantly buried it — deep in your gut, nestled among spools of intestine and velveteen offal — and willed yourself not to think of it again.

In the long and heavy quiet, Volpe slid the hand on your hip down and in, following the crease of your thigh until he brushed the side of your mound. All you did was stare. It was all you could have done, really, with limbs still lax from your climax. His thumb brushed through your curls as it pushed inward, until it hooked on the side of your folds and curled.

With another dizzying hot flush, you realized he had spread you even further open, eyes trailing over your core with simmering hunger. He leaned back, giving himself a better view. Almost mindlessly, his thumbpad massaged the slick flesh it held open — little rubs that would have been gentle from anyone other than the man that provided them. A brush near your clit made you jolt — a quick glance upward from him to watch your reaction confirmed it was intentional.

God, this was too much. You were exhausted by the monotony of your routine, yes, but this was such a sharp deviation that your heart felt as though it were going to give out. Some barely-functional animal instinct surged to life in your gut, and you squirmed atop that wicked metal plate, attempting to get twitching legs under you and pull your still-sensitive cunt away from the invasive touch.

It was, of course, in vain. His fingers tightened down on your flesh with a greedy fervor.

“Taking your leave?” he drawled, one brow raised at your pathetic writhing. Not a fleck of actual worry crossed the severe features of his face. He knew — and you knew — that you weren’t going anywhere.

“I can’t do this, my lord,” you gritted out, embarrassed and nauseated and unbearably aroused, even despite what had just transpired.

A dry laugh curled from his chest like smoke from ruined battlements. Another cursory rub of his thumbpad over your slick folds — that ended with a push over your clit and made you suck in a gasp — punctuated the heady sound.

“Oh, but you will, little maid,” he said with a wolfish grin, dead eyes flaring in their sockets. “After all, you must take care of your mess.”

And even though you didn’t want to understand, you knew precisely that he was referring to the smeared slickness of the cuisse that still shone beneath your exposed cunt. Mortification drained down your spine.

Christ alive. What had you gotten yourself into?

#can i be so serious #this only exists because oomf drew him so unbearably sexy #he is so chopped otherwise bruh #but thats ok. it’s CHOPPED HOE SUMMERRRR #doq.fic #unfinished #duc volpe #stronghold #stronghold crusader #there will prob eventually be a part 2 #but not now.#the wolf #duc volpe x reader #duc volpe/reader #the wolf x reader #the wolf/reader #nsfw////

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