At Her Service (Swords of Passion) (4 page)

He shifted to the foot of the bed—and with his move, he detected she gave a shiver of expectation. He had fine plans in store.

With one giant hand to her left foot, he wrapped his hand around her arch and bent to suck her little toe. She jerked in surprise, but he was ready for her and held her to the ticking. She froze. He smiled in triumph and set his tongue along the ridge of her other toes. In objection or delight or mayhap both, she rolled to her back. The glory of the Countess Atherton was spread before him once more, and this time, he had the patience and the presence of mind to absorb the sight of her perfection. Fingering her big toe on one foot, he grasped the other ankle and held her to the bed. For conquest’s sake, for his own delight, he forced her feet apart to view at his leisure now that most vital place that was solely his to lick and suck, to savour and to claim.

Her cheeks grew pink. She grunted and tried to loose her feet from him, but years of training in the lists and scores of battles in the East, had built strength his delicate Elise could never match. Still, she tried to kick him off. To no avail. She sat up to pummel him. He yanked her ankles with such force, she fell back on the mattress with a yelp, the bedclothes and her glorious breasts bouncing in the effort.

He slid his hands up her calves. The skin was so soft he almost wept. Her knees so rounded, he kissed their flawlessness. Her thighs, so plump but firmly muscled, he squeezed the indentations in admiration for the way she must have held her horse as she rode the beast. The way she would now ride the beast in him.

His hands reached her bush. The wealth of hair that had covered her mount of Venus when he’d glimpsed her in the pond years ago as they’d swum together had blossomed like a forest in these twelve years. Her cunny hair was a whiter hue than the gilding of the hair on her head. But this—he splayed one set of fingers into her froth of curls—this was his to tease and please, to part and claim.

He fingered her labia apart. She moaned but did not thrash, her duty to let him have her converging with her old and new desires for him. Her glistening cunny lips were drenched in rosy colour that made him narrow his eyes. The smell of her—the meld of her liquid spice and her delicate soap—flared his nostrils. And he bent to spread her fruit and feast on the meal spread before him. He had always enjoyed eating a woman, but Elise was his one true love. The brew she created intoxicated him better than the finest wine. He could feast on her forever and never grow tired of her sugary fare.

In one long swath, his tongue laved her from her cream-covered core to her tiny pearl of love. His fingers holding her open for him, he kissed her jewel, and with the tip of his tongue, he circled her and gave her tiny little licks of love that drove her to a mute keen. She arched in delight, but he ran one hand up to her stomach to gentle her.

“I give you more than any man, Elise,” he soothed and caressed her skin down to her groin then plunged a finger inside her liquid walls. “I always have.” He pulled her heavy lips open with one hand while he stroked inside her with the other. But he could tell one finger was not enough to abrade her and so he shot another inside her. And in approval, she growled deep in her throat. He returned to her rosy, hard button to kiss it, lick it and press loud little sucks against it and make her whimper with delight.

He grinned as she ground out, “Have me, Simon. End this torture.”

But for the desolate years that he had dreamed of this, her plea coupled with these two brief bouts of love was small recompense. Torture, she called it, torture, she deigned it. She had not one inkling of the meaning. He would show her. He would make her acknowledge him. He’d make her talk to him sweetly. He’d make her linger with him for hours. Before he lifted a finger from her fabulous form, he’d make her sing in mad delight and beg to keep him inside her cunt forever.

So he ran his hands up to her ass cheeks, nuzzled her curly little mound once more, licked her navel and with one swift move, lifted her and flipped her over in the bed. The air left her lungs as she fell face down. She moaned in protest, but he hovered over her, giving her no time to rise, as he scooped her up under her waist, pressed her buttocks to his groin and reached down to invade her thick lips once more with determined and demanding fingers.

“You think you know torture? This is it, Elise.” He swirled his fingers over her tight, dew-soaked nub and swept down into her flesh to gather more of her love liquid and bathe her lips and cunny hair with it. “This is what torture is, my countess. To want. To need. To need one special one, but to have none. To be caressed.” He demonstrated with deft fingerings. “To be rolled and petted into a frenzy and to yearn for the only hand that can give it you—but to find no relief.” He pulled away his hand.

“No! Simon!” She panted, trying to grab his retreating hand.

He eluded her.

Instead, he forced her hips back against him while he inserted his rod between her ass cheeks and shifted to get himself up higher near her flowing molten core. Then, as he had her where he wished, he stroked her slit with his long, aching member.

He groaned. The need to have her hot little walls surround him and squeeze him dry made him shudder. The night was long, was it not? And he was just beginning.

But to seize her face-to-face again when her mind was still so far from him roiled him. And he growled in his own frustration and ran a hand up her back to press her down. He bent and licked the perfect plump ass cheek that rose to greet him then claimed the other with a wet lashing of his tongue. She gave a small cry and tried to turn. But he wrapped a hand around one thigh, hoisted her higher and, with one open palm, tapped her slit. The yelp she made died into a cry of delight. Smiling at her joy in his wicked ways of love, he promised himself to spank her harder and longer another time. For now, he sent two fingers inside her channel to draw forth a thick coating of her white cream. She moaned, likely thinking he would further caress her there. Instead, he withdrew and slid one finger inside her tiny nether hole. And she froze.

“There is more to a night of love than you’ve learnt, my lady.” He began to massage her little asshole with tender swirls.

She hummed in lewd approval then threw back her head in her pleasure.

He preened. With one lift of her hips, he pressed his mouth again to one curvaceous ass cheek and bit her there where he gambled no man had ever claimed her, marked her or tamed her.

“Mine,” he growled and bit the other cheek. “This beauty,” he whispered, thrusting his finger in and out of her tight little ass, “is mine.” And to prove his largesse, he kissed her atop his love bite.

“Simon, Simon,” she crooned as her hips pulsed in helpless tiny moves against his groin. “More, oh do give me more.”

He could have screamed down the castle in joy. “Aye, my lady. There is even more than this. For your big nipples and your juicy cunt and tight ass. But for tonight, I have stretched you wide enough. And for reward, I give us both this.” At that, he hauled her up, tilted her hips so that he revelled in the sight of her taut little asshole exposed to him and below it, her pouting lips, red and glistening in the candlelight, weeping for him and welcoming him. He fingered her succulent folds. “Pretty and sweet and all for me.” Then he rose to his knees once more and in one ram, he possessed her hot, creamy core.

She shot forward, but he caught her. Forced her back to him as he twisted up inside her, braced himself with two hands to her hips and gave her the pounding fury of twelve years of want. With long, deft strokes that hit the top of her womb, he stroked her and primed her, plundered and seized her with a precision that gratified him for its force and deft execution. And this time, as he spurted freely into her lush flesh, he felt his seed give her what she needed and what he craved. He jerked her back against him, as her relentless muscles milked him dry. He smiled, his lips resting on her nape. His hands melding to her hips, he cupped himself over her perspiring body and clutched her close as the two of them shuddered in completion.

Surely, odds said, they could have already made a child tonight. If not, tomorrow. The next day. As long as Alphonse still breathed and sanctioned this unholy mating.

Simon prayed now, once more fervently as he held this woman impaled on his shaft, that her husband lived long enough that Simon might avail himself of every sensual talent he’d learned in the Orient. Seven years as Richard’s loyal man, three years as a Templar’s mercenary, plus one for the Order of St. John meant Simon knew sexual tricks and had objects to incite this woman to beg him for his iron rod and finally, for his love.

He fell sideways to the bed and took Elise down with him, both of them panting and sweating, wrapped together still in their ardour. He stroked her hair, kissed her shoulder, knowing he had the skills and the fortitude to make her cry and plead for him. Knowing he could make her ache for him, even abandon reason for him. He prayed her husband remained alive for days, weeks, aye months, so that he had the lee to make Elise his devoted slave of love. And for the granting of that wish, he would rot in hell.

Then whenever his job was done and he left these cursed walls and left her to mother their child, he would know that each time she looked at their offspring, she would remember the hours of passion in his arms. And for her solace, he would teach her to love herself. He would teach her to fondle her ripe nipples and plunder her succulent cunt as she pined for the loss of the lover whom she adored and who had been sent back to the world once more without her, for the price of retaining her silk, her wool and her gold.

Chapter Three

Just as Elise would have fallen to sleep, pounding at her door shook her from her doze. She stretched and halted. Her body ached, her muscles crying from the exertion of coupling with the man whose massive arms and hands had wound around her like iron chains.

The pounding grew louder and more insistent.

“Simon,” she whispered, trying to lift one of his arms, “let me answer the door.”

Compliant, he released her suddenly with arms and fingers opening wide, as if she had contracted the plague. The gesture stung, and she stumbled as she rose on shaking limbs.

“A moment, please,” she told her caller, walked to her wardrobe and pulled a heavy night rail from the neat stack. Tying the neck sash, she glanced at Simon who now sat up, the copious covers of the bed dishevelled in heaps about his naked body. He reached up and pulled a hanging between him and the alcove doorway then laid a finger atop his lips. His silence might help, but in truth, if anyone besides her trusted maid or Cleve knew that he had come here, if anyone suspected what they had done here, his life and hers might ultimately be forfeit, no matter what her husband had ordered.

She stepped through to her husband’s bedroom towards the massive wooden door. Alphonse still slept, and that made her breathe more easily. She shook back her waist-length locks and swung the heavy oak wide. Boldness was the mode to keep her castle’s serfs well away from the truth.

Cleve Faulk stood there—and at his feet, rising no higher than his waist, stood Simon’s rainbow-clad little man.
 
No taller than her waist, he stared up at her rolling stones in one hand and twirling a tiny sling in the other.

He grinned at Elise, and she stared at the bright line of his white teeth. Simon had posted him here as protection most likely. Elise wondered if the tall Oriental stood at Simon’s door downstairs. That man seemed a stronger guard. This smaller one gave her pause. For at his size, what he could do with that sling to waylay someone?

Cleve must have him insignificant, too, because he glanced down at the tiny creature, disgust curling his lip. “I told you go away!”

But the dwarf gazed up serenely and silently shook his head.

“Cleve,” Elise brought his attention to her. “What will you?”

His gigantic rounded eyes examined the room behind her before he focused on her. “My lady, we heard a cry and sought to learn if you are distressed. Or ill?”

And what game do you play, Cleve, when you know who is here?
“Neither, Cleve. I stubbed my toes and yelped.”

Simon’s little man folded his arms in satisfaction and shot a daring look up at Cleve.

“You may return to the hall, Cleve,” Elise grumbled, “and take your pleasure as you wish.”
Heaven knows, I did.

“Your cheeks are red. Is your fire too high?”

She would have laughed but choked it back, knowing the price of that insulting mirth might be her undoing at this man’s hands. “Very high. I like it well.”

The small man nodded in agreement.

Elise scowled at both of them. “Good night, Cleve, and to you, too, little man.”

She closed the door in their faces.

She turned towards her husband who had taught Cleve such boldness. Alphonse slept, like a child, deep in his dreams, but she noticed his face seemed more pale than before, his snoring more shallow. She stepped to him and felt his forehead. Cool. Ah, so then, healthy as he could be. And so it was time again to deal with this other man in her chambers.

She strode through the room towards her alcove and her rumpled bed. Simon lay there, head propped up against her many pillows, the splendour of his brawny, bronzed nakedness making her mouth water and drop open in frank admiration.

His lips, so full, so sure, so wicked on her most secret parts, now curved in a devilish taunt. “You have never seen such a big man.” It was no question. “I am gratified.”

He swept a hand down his furry chest, broad from battles, browned in foreign sunlight. His arms, great cords of sinew, rippled as he gestured downward. His loins were lean, his legs, hard lines of sculpture. And between them lay the part of him that lengthened at her perusal. The part of him she now had a right to, if only for tonight. A great, smooth, blue-veined rod that felt like molten iron in her cunt.

“My memory,” she told him on a small breath of awe, “is very bad, I see. Your body has much changed since last we met and swam in the pond by the river.”

“As has yours, my sweet.”

At his compliment, she tore her eyes from his shaft to lock on his silver gaze. His words bore tender tones that could seduce her more, were she not careful and dedicated to her quest to remain independent of his charm. Yet she stepped closer, her fingers—unbidden—reaching to touch his forearm, where a long, pale slash bisected his darker skin. “This wound?”

He drew in air at her fingers on him. “A Saracen’s scimitar.”

“And this?” She traced a hollow in his lower chest above his ribs.

“A part of me festered there from the wound of an arrow. The Templar cut the flesh from me lest I absorb the poison on the tip which could turn my blood to dung.”

She could not stop the pity from showing in her eyes. “Yet, for all your trials, you have grown so large, so healthy that—”

“That you love how I take you.”

She gulped back shame, modesty and pride all at once. And she would have turned away, but he caught her wrist.

“Admit it.”

She had her back to him, her arm still captive, as was she. “I would love it better if you took me with more affection. As we once were.”

He tugged at her. “Look at me, then. There.” His own eyes held sweet compassion now. “Shall I woo you with pretty words and recount, like a travelling minstrel, the glories of your golden hair and sky-blue eyes?”

He did not sound dedicated or convinced of the rightness of that, yet she answered him with a nod and an admission. “Aye, I deserve it.”
Because I have not had it since you left me—and I expect it from no man, save you.
“I know your years of service in Ottoman lands must have allowed you to bed who you wished any way you wished. And you must have had great pleasure.”

He snorted and dragged her to sit on the bed beside him. “How would you know what brings me pleasure?”

“I did once,” she gave him back in angry kind. “Your devotion to make me smile was your highest goal.”

“Bah! Tell me that you did not like what we did here.” He dragged her closer still and sent a hand through her tresses to cup her head and bring her mouth a breath from his. “I felt your creamy cunt on my lips and on my tongue. Have a taste.”

He kissed her with lips and tongue, and she fell into his arms, enchanted.

“You wanted me. Still do.” He spoke on her mouth. “Admit that.”

She stared up at him as her body betrayed her by giving down the wealth of her cream and his seed to coat her thighs. She clenched her legs and pulled to leave him.

Foiled, he shot a hand out to bunch up the night rail and press his hand to her curly mound. His fingers threaded into her wealth and tugged, eliciting the succulent sounds of their comingled juices. “Ah, there is proof of how well we loved!”

Her head lolled on her shoulders. “Aye,” she cried out, “I wanted you! Wanted what you could give me.”
Wanted what I was denied for sake of family, lands and country.
“Want you now again.”

“To bear a son.”

To hold you close inside me!
“A boy, a girl, two, I care not!” She wrenched herself away from him to stand and wobble near the bed, spitting out her ire at her piteous lot, as their sweet love juice began to trickle down her thighs. “I come from female stock that bears fine boys who grow to strapping men. That’s why Alphonse married me—and you well know it. After he had two young and sterile wives, he buried both, not a hint of a baby from either. But I have done my duty here by him. I have lain with him at his command, regularly and often, and I say this barrenness is not my fault. Alphonse knows this to be true. Try as I might to tempt him or stroke him, I cannot help that his poor rod is short and limp. A puny thing no bigger than a thimble! A rod I could raise with my nakedness, but he could never keep hard inside me for longer than a few minutes. Whereas, you—” She almost cried out at the heat and the jumping pulse of his penis in her hand as she leaned over and cupped him. “You,” she whispered, “are the loving husband God should have given me, and now, instead, I am given the opportunity to lie abed with you and bring forth a son that my feeble, dying husband cannot ever give me.”

“Elise,” Simon’s earth-deep voice permeated her despair as he gathered her to him on the bed. “Come, my lovely girl,” he crooned and enfolded her in the massive cocoon of his care. “Do not cry.”

She was crying? What outrage. She swiped her tears from her cheeks and pushed at him to leave.

He held her fast. “Elise, I did not know about Alphonse. His failure to pleasure you.” Simon’s huge hand fell to cup one breast and lift it up to meet the homage of his mouth. She writhed as he sucked her to a ripe point. “Ah, my heart, I rejoice at how you respond to me. How you need my mouth and my fingers and my shaft. In truth, I have spent my years in exile from your sweetness imagining how often and in what ways your husband would have you in his bed.” He kissed her other nipple and titillated her with his hot, wet tongue. “With ripe jealousy, I have eaten my heart out and my guts. If I can now give you pleasure and my seed, I welcome the chance.”

“Really?” She shrank from him and clawed her way beyond him on the mattress to stand and glare at him. “How kind of you.”

“Elise, there is no need to insult me.”

“
Me?
Insult
you?
My lord, be not so bold.” She swept out a hand, seething fire at his affront to her
.
“What of how you gain from this?”

His brows flew high in alarm.

Would Simon believe her so naïve that she would fail to suspect some exchange for the favour he bestowed on the house of Atherton?

She whirled away and clenched her hands. For all her prodding of her husband on this matter, Alphonse would not reveal the benefits he would give to Simon. She’d screamed at her husband, scolded him, but he refused to tell her any details. Yet, what else could lure a fabled knight to a rich woman’s dangerous bed, but one asset? “How much?”

“One hundred silver talents to bed you.” Simon was quiet, lax in body. Was he therefore, wary at her new knowledge?

He should be.

Her eyes ran up to the roof beams. “How instructive to learn my true worth. I wonder what a harlot costs.”

“Elise…” He rose up in an attempt to embrace her.

But she was faster and escaped him to stand out of his grasp. “One hundred for the bedding?”

He inhaled, resigned to her pursuit of the topic. “Aye.”

Hands on her hips, she tapped her foot. To lie abed with him would not be the proof of the goods, however. So she asked, “And what for a baby in my belly? More?”

“Aye.” He met her wrath with soft, silver-eyed empathy. “Two hundred more.”

She blinked and licked her lips. “And for a birth?”

“Double the total.”

Her knees buckled. She could not look at him, but she rallied and asked, “A girl?”

“Five hundred, should she live past five years.”

“I see. And the son, the heir, the prize?”

“Double again if he lives to fourteen.”

If she could flee the room, the castle, her life, her doom, she would have torn herself free though her hands go raw. “And who pays you? Alphonse will be dead and buried. Who will he give the silver to that we may all agree is honest enough to part with it when the time comes? King John will not. He’ll steal the funds and call it his right. So who is the banker?”

“John’s daughter.”

“Joanna?” In a way, the knowledge that her dear young friend with whom she’d once lodged for a summer would offer to pay this wicked purse did not surprise Elise. “The one person in the world who loves John best.”

“And you as well,” Simon added. “She will not have you suffer.”

“Joanna has a noble husband in her Prince of Wales who lies in her bed and gives her a child every year.”
And thus she understands my peril to produce no heirs.

Elise cursed and strode to her trestle table and picked up her jug of wine. This mating was well planned. But the deal still stung. “A drink, my lord de la Poer? I fear I need a large draught.” She poured, sloshing the red liquid over the rims of two cups. She perceived his warmth behind her, and she spun against his chest, one cup in her hand. “Your drink. Take it. We shall both hail the child we shall make and the money you shall.”

He replaced his cup on her table. His arms enclosed her. “Not I.”

“Of course, you will. This way you will earn what you have needed from your birth. A fortune, eh?” she taunted him.

He captured her face between his hands. “What I have needed from the day I walked into your father’s counting room and saw the smiling six-year-old who laughed and smiled at me is you.”

“Yet you made this filthy bargain? To have me for lucre?”