"Let me do it," Cairon said as Isolde struggled with the laces at the back of her black silk gown.
His voice was calm and commanding. She turned her back to him without hesitation, her dark hair falling over one shoulder, exposing the pale line of her neck and shoulders. His fingers worked swiftly, untying knot after knot. The silk fell away with a sigh, sliding down her body like spilled ink.
He undressed her slowly, deliberately, like a man unwrapping something rare and precious. It was not just undressing. It was domination. Control. Each movement reinforced what they both knew. He was the one in power.
And then she stood before him, fully naked in the candlelight.
Cairon said nothing at first. He only stared.
For years, he had imagined this moment. In the cold stables. In the dark corners of the keep. After beatings. After cruel humiliations. He had dreamed of seeing her like this, exposed, vulnerable, naked. Not as the cruel lady of the keep, but as a woman laid bare. The reality was more perfect than any fantasy.
Isolde's body was magnificent.
Her breasts were full, high, and soft-looking, her nipples like dusky roses. Her stomach was flat and smooth despite having given birth four times. Her skin, pale as milk, glowed in the firelight. Her hips were generous, her thighs strong and shapely. She had the kind of beauty that came from womanhood, not girlhood. A beauty sharpened by childbirth, hunger, and lust.
Cairon stepped around her slowly, circling like a predator, appraising her unclothed body.
He studied her in silence. Her spine, straight and proud. The curve of her lower back. The flare of her hips. The shape of her legs. Every inch of her flesh was now burned into his memory.
"You are staring," Isolde said with a breathless laugh. She turned her head to glance at him. "Aren't you going to take off your scarf?"
She was smiling. She enjoyed the attention. The heat in her voice was unmistakable.
"And ruin the mystery?" Cairon replied, his voice low with amusement as he reached to touch her. "No, I don't think I will."
He had dreamed of this moment with maddening clarity. His beautiful, wicked, young stepmother completely naked in his arms, begging for him to fuck her. Now the dream had bled into the real.
His hand cupped her breast. Soft, full, round, and heavy. He squeezed slowly and firmly. She gasped. Cairon rubbed her dark nipples, using his thumb and index finger, identifying the most sensitive parts of her body. He was eager to tame his wicked stepmother.
He caressed her body not only like a lover, but like a man claiming what had been denied. His hands were sure and unhurried. He explored her hips, caressing and squeezing them to his heart's desire. Her waist, flat despite four childbirths, showed stretch marks on her belly that only added to her beauty. He focused particularly on her perfect navel, and the sight and feel of it ignited a fire of desire within him. He took his time, explored every inch of her body without shame or hesitation. His touch was thorough and assertive, and she welcomed it.
He was tall like his father had been before sickness had bent him. But Cairon was stronger. Harder. He was not a nobleman brittle with age. His body had been forged in blood and fire. Four years of conflict had shaped every muscle and tempered every instinct. He was far stronger than his lord father had ever been.
He lifted her easily.
She laughed as he did so, the sound rich with arousal and delight. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders. Her bare legs tightened around his waist. Her laughter was not that of a noble lady. It was the laughter of a woman who knew she was about to be taken. Taken by a strong and dominant man who would fuck her harder than her husband ever had.
Cairon carried her to the bed. The sheets were dark. The mattress was soft. He laid her down tenderly, with the delicacy of a lover. Isolde, unembarrassed by her nakedness in front of a man who wasn't her husband, awaited him with a smile. Then, he began to remove his own clothing.
The serpent-threaded silk of his tunic slid from his frame. His leather belt fell next. His breeches followed. He kept only the black scarf that masked his lower face.
Even naked, he kept his identity hidden from her. He would only reveal who he was after she was completely in his power.
The game of power, domination, and vengeance had reached its next stage.
Blackstone Keep would never be the same again after tonight.
"Ah!" Isolde gasped when Cairon entered her. Her back arched as she clutched at his arms, her voice a breathless moan. Her cunt was wet, warm, and welcoming. She murmured encouragements, fingers tracing the lines of his chest, her moans soft and high from carnal pleasure as his manhood filled her completely.
Time froze for Cairon. He was inside her. Inside Isolde. His arrogant stepmother. The woman who had cruelly tormented him when he was a child, broken him, humiliated him. The woman he hated the most in the world. Now she was under him. Her legs were wrapped around him, her breath caught in her throat, her lips parted in ecstasy.
Her expression changed, showing not cruelty but pure pleasure. Her eyes fluttered shut, overwhelmed by the sensation. Her lips curled into a smile, unconsciously enjoying the feeling of her husband's bastard son's throbbing cock within her.
"Do you feel me inside you?" Cairon asked, his voice firm and deliberate, dominant and sure. He thrust slowly as he spoke, his hips steady, each word marked by control, establishing his power over her, making her understand that he was the one in control.
"Yes!" Isolde moaned, her voice trembling, pitched high with lust and hunger. Her cunt gripped his long, thick, and hard cock, memorizing its shape. "I feel you inside me! Heavens above, I feel every inch of you!"
"Then beg me," Cairon said, lowering himself, speaking into her ear. His tone was a command, not a request. "Beg me to take you."
"Take me!" Isolde cried out, desperate and helpless beneath him. "I beg you! Please!"
Her words were raw and pleading. The arrogant noblewoman who had once sneered at him in disgust now opened her body to him, offered herself with no pride left. She was his now, not just in body but in will. She did not know the truth, who Lord Kael Viremont really was, but it no longer mattered. The mask he wore only sharpened his power over her.
"Fuck me!" she begged again.
That was all Cairon needed to hear. He began to move, slow at first, then harder. He drove into her again and again. His rhythm built like a tide, strong and unrelenting. He took her without mercy, without hesitation. He changed positions. Pushed her to her knees. Took her from behind. Pulled her hips back with both hands as she moaned into the pillows. Face down. Hips raised. Gasping and wild.
Isolde was beneath him, vulnerable yet begging for more. She offered her body like a temple, and he desecrated it with vengeance and lust.
"Who is bigger?" Cairon leaned forward, his breath hot in his stepmother's ear. "Me or Lord Vael?"
Isolde could barely speak. Her voice was hoarse, her mind reeling from the intensity. "You are!" she screamed. "Your manhood a lot bigger than his! He never took me like this! He never went so deep! He never claimed me this hard!"
A dark smile curled on Cairon's lips. The words fed something primal inside him. Something deep. Something old. His father, who had cast him out like a mistake, who had refused to even say his name at the table, was weak, impotent, forgotten. And Cairon was not only stronger, not only more endowed, but also better in every way. Now he had taken his father's wife. Had made her scream. Had filled her. Had left her gasping.
Lord Vael had sent him to die in the penal levy, acknowledged only four children, disowning his bastard as a mistake. It felt darkly satisfying to cuckold him.
Cairon kept thrusting into Isolde. "Yes, harder!" The arrogant noblewoman who had once called him filth now begged for more of him. The woman who once had him whipped now moaned under his weight. His manhood buried inside her, his hands on her pale flesh, her cries in his ears.
It was revenge. Intimate. Complete.
A dish best served cold. And tonight, it burned through them both.
He claimed her with an intensity born of years of suppressed lust. Isolde Vael cried out, moaned, and pleaded beneath him. The woman he loathed more than any other. United with him. He pushed into her deeper than his father ever had. She moaned, begged, confessed that she had never experienced such passion before. Her body clenched around his hard, throbbing length, wet and tight. Gripping him, flooding him with waves of pleasure.
Cairon reached his peak, his body shuddering with intense pleasure. Holding Isolde beneath him, he ensured that every drop of his seed was released within her. He wanted to mark her, to claim her, so that her body would recognize she was his.
"Can you feel my seed inside you, Isolde?" he whispered in her ear.
"Yes!" Isolde responded, breathless and satisfied, having reached her own peak for the first time in years. "Your seed is so warm and thick! I can feel it within me, every last drop flowing into my womb!"
"Good," Cairon murmured softly, his voice like velvet over a blade, watching the woman beneath him. Isolde lay spent, her face flushed with pleasure, her lips curved in a dreamy smile. He wondered how she would look if she knew the truth. That the man who had just claimed her, who had made her scream into the mattress, was the same boy she had once condemned to die in the Blightlands.
She would break.
But not yet.
It was only the beginning. That night, he took her again. And again. Until the moon was high and the candles had melted low. Until her voice turned hoarse from moaning his name, and her body ached with the memory of his hands, his weight, his heat.
At last, he snuffed the candlelight and removed his scarf. She never saw it in the dark.
He kissed her. Her mouth first, then her tongue, then lower, trailing fire across her throat, her breasts, her navel. He worshipped her flesh, not out of love, but out of vengeance soaked in lust. Every kiss was a punishment disguised as pleasure. Every caress was a reminder of who held the power now.
Isolde kissed him back with equal hunger, her tongue eager, her nails raking his back. There was no shame. No restraint. Only desire.
"How do I taste?" Cairon asked lightly, his voice teasing as he felt her mouth on his skin.
She licked her lips, still breathless, eyes glazed with satisfaction. "Much better than my husband ever did. You taste like fire. Like something alive. He tastes like sickness. Like something already buried."
Cairon smiled at that. A cruel, quiet satisfaction bloomed in his chest. She had no idea how true her words were.
He lost count of how many times he took her that night. How many times she arched her back and cried out his name. How many times she begged for more, her legs wrapped around him like chains. How many times his seed spilled inside her, hot and thick, filling the same womb that had once birthed his half-siblings.
By the end, her body trembled from exhaustion. Her thighs were sore and slick. Her moans had faded into slow, shallow breaths. Her eyes fluttered half-shut. Her lips hung open in silence. She clung to him as if touch itself might vanish if she let go.
"Clean me," he told her, his voice calm and sharp.
Isolde obeyed without hesitation.
She knelt between his legs, her hair tangled and wild. Her eyes heavy with sleep and lust. Her mouth opened, lips parting to receive him again. She took his cock into her mouth, cleaning him with her tongue, her lips. Slow, careful, devoted. Cairon smiled with dark delight as the lady of the keep worked like a servant, her face lowered in submission.
When she finished, she collapsed beside him, utterly spent.
She fell asleep in his arms.
Cairon held her in the quiet dark, listening to the rhythm of her breathing, soft and steady, almost childlike. Her skin was warm against his bare chest. Her cheek rested near his heart, unaware of the hatred that pulsed beneath it. She looked peaceful. She looked innocent.
Almost.
But Cairon had not forgotten.
This was the woman who once ordered him flogged until he bled. Who stood at the top of the stairwell, arms folded, while guards beat him for a spilled tray. Who smiled as he screamed. Who called him filth. A mistake. Something unworthy of food or love. Something lower than human.
Now she lay naked in his bed. Her thighs were slick with his seed. Her lips still glistened from the last time she had used her mouth to please him. Her body was marked by his hands. Her breath smelled of sweat and sex. She had given him everything.
And she had no idea who he was.
Isolde let out a long, broken gasp in her sleep and shifted beside him. Her body gleamed with sweat. Her hair lay tangled across the pillows. Her chest rose and fell in deep, uneven breaths. Her nipples remained stiff. Her skin glowed. Her legs quivered faintly from the pleasure she could still feel echoing through her.
Cairon studied her.
The woman who once forced him to clean chamber pots was now stretched out beneath him, limp with satisfaction. She had given herself over completely. Not to him. Not to Cairon Blackthorn, but the myth of Kael Viremont, the veiled nobleman cloaked in power and mystery. The serpent knight.
She did not know whose cock she had really begged for.
That was what made it perfect.
Cairon reached down and brushed her cheek with his fingers. The touch was slow. Possessive. She leaned into it even in sleep, chasing the comfort of his hand like a woman starved. She looked soft. Delicate. Almost kind.
And something flickered inside him. Something quiet and dangerous.
She looked so peaceful. So fragile. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who had once delighted in his suffering. The one who had made sure he had no cloak for winter. The one who had once kicked his food across the floor and made him eat it with his hands. The one who had laughed when he wept.
Yes. It was her.
The softness in her face now was a lie. A mask like his. The real Isolde lived behind it. Cold. Proud. Cruel. A monster in fine silk.
Cairon felt the warmth in his chest vanish.
She did not deserve peace.
She deserved to be broken.
She deserved to suffer.
He had claimed her tonight, but the game was not over. The plan was far from complete.
Just before dawn, Cairon rose from the bed.
He did not look back as he dressed. The black scarf slid over his face again, hiding the bastard she had once despised. The fire in the hearth had long since gone cold, but Isolde slept on, unaware.
Unaware that the man she had whispered for, moaned for, begged for, was the same boy she had tormented. The bastard she tried to erase.
Cairon left the room in silence.
The corridor outside was quiet. The stones beneath his boots cold and familiar.
The next stage had begun.
And before it ended, he would bury every one of his enemies beneath the snow.