Page 32 of Her Viking Lord
Finally, Horakovsky returned. I heard him pour himself another drink, the clink of ice against glass absurdly civilized given the circumstances. He walked around me slowly, and I could feel his gaze traveling over my abused form.
“You may lower yourself now,” he said at last.
I collapsed onto my side with a sob of relief, my muscles screaming as I curled into myself, trying to cover my nakedness with my hands. Everything hurt—my whipped pussy still throbbed with residual agony, my bottom ached from his brutal use, and my dignity lay in tatters around me.
“I’m sending you home,” Horakovsky announced, settling into what sounded like a leather chair. “But this was just a taste, littlecunt. I want you and your husband as my guests next weekend. Somewhere special. Three days.”
My heart sank. Three days of this treatment? I didn’t know if I could survive it, even with Aksel’s training, even knowing it was necessary for the mission.
“There’s one more thing,” he continued, and I heard the smile in his voice. “Until then, you’re not permitted to wear panties. Nothing between your legs except air.”
I raised my head to stare at him in shock. “But I… I have official functions, meetings?—”
“I don’t care,” he cut me off. “Skirts, dresses, pants—wear whatever you want on the outside. But nothing underneath. I’ll be informing your husband of this rule, and I expect him to enforce it.” His scarred face split into that predatory grin. “I’ll know if you disobey. I have eyes everywhere, Lorna. Don’t test me.”
The thought of going through my daily life that way, constantly aware of my nakedness beneath my clothes, made fresh heat flood through me. Worse was knowing that I would have to obey that kind of order from a man who considered himself my master, when it was myHerra—my true master—whose commands I wanted to obey.
“Dmitri has your coat,” he said. “Get up and get that whorish ass out of my sight.”
CHAPTER 17
Aksel
I watched Lorna return from her encounter with Horakovsky. Takken was in his study as usual. His biometrics, analyzed through the remarkable algorithms the Pretorian Guard had shared with us, told me he wasn’t paying any attention to the report he pretended to read.
On my surveillance feeds Lorna entered the prime minister’s residence, her movements stiff and careful. The high-resolution imagery from the micro-drones I’d planted months ago showed every detail—the slight limp in her gait, the way she held her coat closed despite being alone in the hallway, the tremor in her hands as she reached for the door handle.
My jaw clenched as I saw the breakdown of her biometric readings. Elevated stress hormones, inflammation markers consistent with physical trauma, traces of foreign biological material that made my blood run hot. Even though I’d commanded her to submit to it, the strength of my angry response as Lorna’sHerratook me by surprise. The dataconfirmed what I’d expected, but now found almost intolerable—Horakovsky had been brutal with her, more so than even I would have predicted from the way Lorna had described her visions.
I forced myself to maintain clinical detachment as I documented everything for our intelligence files, but my hands betrayed me, curling into fists against the desk. My brave littlevolvahad endured exactly what I’d asked of her, and the weight of that knowledge sat like lead in my chest.
Through the audio feed, I heard her soft gasp as she lowered herself onto the sofa, followed by the whisper of fabric as she finally let the coat fall open. The apartment’s ambient temperature read twenty-two degrees Celsius, yet her skin showed clear signs of cold stress response—goosebumps, involuntary shivering. Shock, perhaps, or simply the psychological impact of what she’d endured.
I pulled up Takken’s feed on a secondary screen. The man hadn’t moved from his desk in over an hour, his whiskey glass refilled twice in that time. His pupils dilated slightly when Lorna’s footsteps echoed in the hallway, but he made no move to check on his wife. The biometric analysis suggested a complex emotional state—anxiety, anticipation, and a set of observations that the algorithm classified as arousal, though I suspected it had more to do with the power dynamics than any genuine desire for Lorna.
My fingers, on my keyboard, started a query, acting almost independently of my mind. A correlation of Takken’s current biometrics with past observations might tell me whether he would approach Lorna. Knowing whether he would demand details of her degradation or simply ignore what had happenedcould provide valuable intelligence about his psychological state and his relationship with Horakovsky.
Moreover, the icon for the app that connected me with Lorna’s burner phone seemed to stare at me from the corner of my screen. If Takken wasn’t going to come to see her, I might be able to send her a message that carried at least a little reassurance and affection.
I wanted desperately to contact Lorna, to offer her comfort or at least acknowledgment of what she’d sacrificed. But it felt too dangerous now. The Synergy Group had their own surveillance network, crude compared to ours but effective enough. Any unusual communication patterns could expose her.
Through the feed, I watched Lorna struggle to her feet and make her way toward the bathroom. Each step seemed to cost her, and when she reached for the doorframe to steady herself, I saw the bruises beginning to bloom on her wrist where someone—Horakovsky or one of his thugs, most likely—had gripped her too hard.
“I love you,” I murmured to her image, on my screen. “I hope yourvolva’s sight tells you that, little one.”
Lorna
As I stepped into the shower, I kept my eyes down on the clean white of the tile. I did everything in my power to avoid seeing myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to think about what I’d just been through. I didn’t want to think about the burner phone,and the possibility that myHerramight make contact. I didn’t want to do anything but let the water run over my body.
As soon as the shower’s flow began to warm my limbs, though, my hands developed a life of their own. My fingers traced down my belly, drawn by some terrible compulsion to examine what had been done to me. The first tentative touch against my bare mound made me gasp—the skin was still hot and swollen from Horakovsky’s whip, each nerve ending hypersensitive. I could feel the raised welts where the leather had struck most cruelly, and the lightest pressure sent jolts of pain mixed with something else through my core.
I shouldn’t have continued exploring, but my fingers moved lower, parting my tender folds. Everything was puffy and abraded, and when I brushed against my clit, the sensation was so intense I had to brace myself against the shower wall. The memory of the flogger striking there made me shudder, but beneath the soreness lay an unmistakable throb of arousal.
My other hand moved behind me, almost without conscious thought. My fingertips found the tender ring of muscle that Horakovsky had violated so brutally. It was sore, stretched, still slightly open from his use. As I pressed gently against it, testing the damage, a shock of pure need shot through me. The soreness itself seemed to trigger something primal—not just the physical sensation but the memory of complete helplessness, of being pinned and taken while the bodyguard watched and commented.
Before I could stop myself, I was rubbing my clit with desperate circular motions while my finger pressed into my aching bottom. The dual stimulation, the mingling of pain and pleasure, the shame of getting aroused by my own degradation—it allcombined into an overwhelming wave that had me climbing toward orgasm with shocking speed.
The moment I started to crest, the world shifted. The silver branches of Yggdrasil materialized around me with startling clarity, more vivid than ever before. But this time, I wasn’t being pulled helplessly upward—I could direct my ascent, choosing which branches to follow. The threads of possibility spread before me like a vast web, and I could see?—
