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His face was uncertain. His wrists were bound with
twine and he wore the clothes he'd come in with. He looked like wild
things do after too long wandering out on the scalding sand plains. His
thick brown hair was too long where he had once kept it trim. His
form-fitting leggings, black, were dust-coated, but in every nuance his
form showed absolute perfection. Strong, adequately muscled legs and arms,
but not overmuch. I gazed at his backside, noting its firmness, the fine
legs going into hard leather boots. The eyes that had captured me and
brought him to this moment were vast in their depth, sable, intelligent.
He had the audacity to smile at me in his cocky way, as though
understanding that he was about to be awarded a rare treat, and merely for
his beauty. I wanted his lips pressed hard upon my own although they were
touched with sand. His white shirt was ripped from the jealousy of the
jailers. The mural, lurid, vivid, still held part of his attention,
although his eyes betrayed his interest when I rose from my seat in the
court. Around us, my hand-chosen guardians, all male, began to shift
uncomfortably. They, too, suffered from their own form of anticipation,
though I restrained myself from reaching out to caress them as I passed.
They would not be permitted to touch nor taste of woman until I allowed
it. The last allowance had been quite some time in the past. Kyle, too,
noticed their discomfort, and I wondered idly if he had heard local tales
of the training and discipline I insisted upon in my royal guard. Gossip
be damned, but this was my court and my estate, and I would share no man.
He watched me approach in spite of himself, licking slowly at his lower
lip as a man does who longs for water. At a glance from me, the guards
that held him released his chain, and Artak Kyle stood before me, defiance
and desire battling in his eyes for purchase. On my head rested a circlet
of jade. I wore a silk sash in that same hue about my loins, encrusted
with diamonds and again catching the jad. My breasts, which ached that his
hands might find them, were held low with this material. The silk, clearly
not meant to conceal my desire for him, displayed my nipples to the man,
who did not miss them with his gaze.
He would be defiant. He would not be owned. His eyes would own what they
saw. A guard captain behind him, who was called Jaim, sliced at the bounds
on the prisoner's wrists. It was then that I came to stand face to face
with Kyle, and the scent of him was raw and sudden on me in the sunlight.
He should have stank like most of the residents of this land, for the sun
blazed stern and unkind among us. I realized that he understood the
question in my face when the arrogance returned to those sable eyes. For
two days in the desert court he had been my guest and prisoner, and he had
managed not to drink of the waters brought to him. My mind searched his in
the tradition of my ancestors. I saw him, bent in his cell, throwing water
over his back, crouched in the dust that never ceased to pass through the
courts. He bathed. Though his lips perhaps longed to taste of the waters
brought daily to him, I saw that he did not.
I admired him for this subtle arrogance, and yet I saw the thirst in his
eyes when he watched me lift the cup to his lips. He hesitated, pondering
whether I planned to give him drink or to poison him. The animal in him
rose in his expression. Then, roughly, he seized the cup, drinking
greedily. As the cup fell from his hands empty to the dirt below, he had
locked me with his eyes as no man dares.
I held forth my arm, palm upward, to the guards around us, who shamelessly
watched the rising and falling of my bosom soaked with spilled waters.
Jaim grunted, angry at my dismissal and perhaps half-fearful for my
safety. He and the others began to hurry out of the courtyard. My guard
captain had not been pleased that this prisoner should be granted such
honors. He and the others knew well that I needed no weapon in my defense
while carrying in my blood the traditions of the mind. They did well to
fear me. There was much that I could do without aid, yet this night, I sat
aside the tradition and feared to touch it.
Kyle yet regarded me with those still, constant eyes. After a moment, we
stood alone in the courtyard. The torches about us sent smoke heavenward
but were our only companions. I waited for him to ask why he had been
brought to me, but at the first he did not speak. His gaze fell lower in
one small movement of his head.
"My Lady does me great honor," he said formally. He knew it galled me.
"How can one such as myself give service?"
I quickly removed my sandals, and with bare feet stood on the tips of his
boots. Although he was taller than me by a foot, I was easily able to
reach my goal. He did not move, merely watched me as I looped my arm
behind him for leverage. His eyes remained steady, only closing slightly
when my lips parted and I probed his mouth with the tip of my tongue. He
tasted wild, hungry, with the sharp tang of man that quickly began to
overcome my composure. As if in a fog, that which I knew of thought or
design failed me. His body tensed against me. Kyle allowed me to explore
his mouth with my lips and tongue. I drew the flavor of him out until my
senses were saturated with want of him. Then, very slowly, his arms moved,
muscle and sinew, to accept the nearness of my flesh. Because he did not
know what he was allowed, he hesitated briefly, his sun-browned hands
finally resting on the swell of my hips. How obscene, I thought, how
divine a simple kiss! Already that pulsing of my warm core, already the
brief madness that comes with the nearness of a man. His lips, the lower
fuller than the upper, began to join with my own in its own frenzied
dance. The press of my flesh on his betrayed the frantic beating of his
heart when I moved my hands over his backside to caress him. It was at
this instant that I knew his resolve could not long hold. From this point
it was clear to me that he desired me, and that anything I did would still
find me the victor. His eyes went wide with disbelief as I went suddenly
to my knees. The fever, as the traditions say, had come upon me, and I
longed all at once for his pleasure. That I might draw such sensations
with the power of my touch had long intrigued and thrilled me. I was the
lady of the court, and yet at the moment I wanted only to bring ecstasy to
those wide brown eyes.
Still, the vision of a princess on her knees before him seemed to take
away his very breath and composure, and in spite of his defiance, his
features glazed over with need. I could hear his breathing speed and
deepen even as the fullness of him suddenly filled the space between us. I
savored the sensation of his hardness there against my body, not nearly
concealed by his laced breeches. He reached down toward me as if to lift
me, but instead I kissed the red markings on his wrists where he had been
bound.
"My Lady...." he breathed tremulously. "Please..." At these words the
strength went out of him, bringing him down to one knee in the soft sand.
"You may touch me, Artak Kyle."
He needed no further invitation. His took my face into his hands and began
to kiss me in earnest. The smooth strokes of his tongue inside of my mouth
had the burn of some alien ambrosia. It was the taste of attraction,
flowing freely mouth to mouth. I wanted it to go on endlessly. Still,
though, I would have him, and so forcibly I reached up to pull his hands
out of my hair. That certain knowledge filled his eyes, the knowledge of
what I willed, and he did not know how to keep me from what I asked. He
could not have known that what I needed was to wring from his body that
most complete of passions, the arching of the back, the low moan from the
depths of his throat, the sheen of his body's exertions defining his every
feature. He would learn how to please me- on this I would not be denied.
As if he had at last understood what it was that I meant to have from him,
he simply watched, entranced while I unlaced his black breeches and held
him prisoner firmly in the palm of my hand. I was rewarded with a soft
moan when I took him into my mouth. My mind became seized by that
undefined sea of red that was passion. The scent of his body roused my own
while I teased him and held him there in an unrelenting ebb and flow of
grip and release. My attentions drew long, steady groans from him until
his knees could not support him and he lay back in the sand trembling
against my hold on him. How long had it been since the fugitive lay with
woman? I did not know.
As I drew each ember of pleasure from him, I was amazed at his fortitude.
I was determined to bring him to passion, and yet he managed to keep his
release at bay. Although I could have searched his mind, it was his
separateness, his "otherness" that challenged me, and to invade him in
such a manner would have stripped from me the joy of experiencing him. At
once I knew that I would not draw release from him in this manner, not
this day. I would give him what he asked- that brief ownership of flesh to
flesh that is the giving and taking of union. My own body responded at the
promise of such things to come. He rose to meet my eyes, slicked with
perspiration as I had imagined. I took in his nudity with the appreciative
eye of one who has tasted and known ownership. I drew my tongue up his
chest, needing to sample the salt of him from the thin line of hair that
travelled from his nether regions upward. Then, unexpectedly, Artak Kyle
smiled at me.
His hands reached out for mine, gathering them up in their largeness,
fingers folding over my own posessively and intimately. I crawled into his
lap, wrapping my legs around his hips. Never removing his gaze from my
own, he drew his hands up the sides of my arms to the start of my
shoulders where he could unclasp the bindings of my garment. It fell
around us in one piece, having disconnected with a ring at the center. My
breasts freed, he brushed the tips with the roughness of his thumbs, and I
sighed in spite of myself. He was well pleased with the reactions he drew
from me, and, unwilling to end the torment, nibbled and gently bit at me
until I quivered and leaned against him for support. I knew the traditions
of the ages, and yet he alone commanded me. Kyle's fingers searched and
explored me while I hovered above him in some state of suspended bliss and
torture. It would have been one easy movement to enter me, but he did not,
wanting me to feel the same desperate ache that he had when he lay at the
mercy of my mouth. His lips went to my own with as much vigor as I had
dreamed, but the power was his and all too soon his expert thumbs brought
me to moaning against his shoulder. I thought of that smile that he alone
had granted me, knew that he gave not because he feared me, but because he
wanted me. I struggled to lower myself so that he would fill me, but his
strength kept me above and unable to move. He would have his way though I
had brought him to me a prisoner this day. At last I could stand the sweet
ache building within me no more, and my lips parted with the words I
thought never to speak.
"Please," I said. "Artak, please. " My voice was small, quiet. I captured
his eyes, shaken by my desire for him. He gripped my face with his hands,
teasing me again with his tongue, and then slowly, gradually eased himself
inside of me.
I leaned my weight on the balls of my feet for leverage, still struggling
for some modicum of control, but he would yet have none of my feeble
protestations. Clearly, he had a full understanding of how to please a
woman, how to manipulate her body to his own ends. I could not have
expressed the tension that built inside of me, longing to draw him in to
completion, to experience him, to feel the warmth and fullness of him.
Still he taunted me, even as his breathing intensified to a pant.
His head was tilted backward, body moving with exact precision. Solid arms
held me in check as he entered me partially, slipping out teasingly only
to cross the precipice of my pleasure with increasing speed at each
breach. When he eased his body back to fall into sweet fullness at the
back of my hot core at last, I cried out, dropping my head in relief to
his chest where my tongue played at his erect nipples. I could feel
Artak's body begin a violent trembling in tune with my own. There was
nothing in all of the world but our flesh and the glorious flush of warmth
he built inside of me with each thrust. At last in defeat I clung to him
with my arms braced around him. I raked at his back with my nails, bit
softly at his muscular shoulder. I heard a distant cry that was my own
voice as he shuddered violently. His heat pulsed inside of me with flashes
of sweet aching ecstasy. "Artak!" I shouted, my body crashing into waves
of liquid release. His low groan as he reached his passion took me by
surprise, touching the innermost part of me until I felt the light,
feathery touch of another crest of pleasure building there. I tasted his
lips then, drinking him in, soul meeting soul. He had bested me as no one
had before. Even as I longed to own him, I now knew that it was his very
wildness that drew me to him. We lay naked in the sands of my homeland,
tongues still in love play, watching the last of the sun's descent.
"Artak," I said, "You are free."
"My Lady," he answered. "You are mine." |
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