Rapture's Etesian (2 page)

Leksi felt the old woman’s eyes on him and he opened his own, turning his head a little so he could see her where she sat upon the tall, throne-like chair beside the hearth. The two of them were alone and all was still save the low moan of the wind beyond his prison’s walls.

“Why me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Galatea shrugged as she settled herself more comfortably in the chair. Her bare toes were stretched out to the warmth of the flames and she wiggled them to relieve the ache of advancing age. “You were handy,” she replied.

“I was riding along, minding my own business,” the warrior complained. “For once, I wasn’t looking for trouble.”

“Aye and such an enticing sight you made upon that big roan brute,” Galatea said then sighed as she thought of the warrior sitting so tall and straight in the saddle. She smiled. “A more befitting mount for you would have been a Rysalian black, perhaps.”

“Aye, well, a Rysalian would cost me two months’ salary,” Leksi snapped.

“But such a beast could easily have outdistanced us. That little roan of yours was barely any competition for our horses.”

“And that damned arrow you shot me with was no competition, either!” he threw at her.

Galatea glanced at the scratch that marred his left forearm. “Haidee needs to work on her aim. She was going for your thigh.”

“I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck when I fell,” the warrior stated.

“You didn’t feel a thing once the initial sting pierced your flesh,” the older woman admonished. “Like a drunken sailor, you tumbled off your horse and landed limp as a wet blanket on the sand—unconscious and unable to cause us any trouble.” She giggled. “Until the girls began mounting you!”

Her words drove deep into the warrior’s libido, and Leksi swallowed hard for the agony between his thighs made him want to sob with frustration.

“All you need do is ask and I will relieve you,” Galatea said gently.

“I’ve had enough cunts abrading me this eve!” he snarled.

Galatea cocked her head to one side. “There are other ways I can relieve you, sweet one.” She held up her hand, palm toward him then slowly closed her fingers until she had formed a loose fist. Slowly she raised and lowered her fist.

“You bitches like to torment men, don’t you?” he grated.

“I am a widow,” Galatea said in a conversational tone as she leaned her head along the back of the chair. “His name was Ocnus but he was anything but incompetent between the covers.” She sighed. “He was a very good teacher.”

“What did you do? Screw him to death?”

Galatea laughed, and lowered her head to look at him. “You are a marvel, warrior. Do you know that? Not only handsome but quick of wit.”

“Lucky me,” Leksi grumbled.

“We are all widows,” Galatea continued. “Well, all save Kynthia who has never married and Haidee.”

“And each of you murdered your menfolk or else sold them into slavery to the Amazeens,” he accused.

Galatea drew in a long breath then exhaled slowly. Pushing up from the chair, she came to sit on the bed beside him. Her eyes roamed over his heavily muscled chest. She put a hand on the sculpted ridges of his abdomen.

“Please, don’t,” he pleaded with her, ashamed of his weakness but the torment was now almost more than he could bear.

“Ocnus died at the battle of Nebul, the capitol of Pleiades. For that reason alone I despise the Pleiadesian king,” the older woman continued. “My beloved was killed along with his brothers Iorgas and Jirkar. Killed as well were the husbands of my nieces Erinyes and Celadina. It has made them both a bit mean, Erinyes more than her sister.”

“If you mean the blonde and the black-haired one, they are more than a bit mean,” Leksi disagreed.

As though she had not heard the warrior’s remark, Galatea traced the puckered crease of an old wound on her prisoner’s side. “Haidee was too young to have a man at that time but Ophelia was engaged to a wonderful boy named Phaon. He, too, fell beneath the savage blades of the Nebullian horde. Still one more reason to hate all things Pleiadesian.”

“Many Venturian warriors fell during that battle,” Leksi told her. “My oldest brother and my father were among the slain.”

Galatea looked up at him. The sweat poured from his face and his lower lip was bloody from where he had bitten it to keep quiet. “Were you there?” she asked.

He managed a quick nod then grunted as he felt his staff jerk at the older woman’s nearness.

She circled the scar on his side. “Is that where you received this?”

“A love tap from a Nebullian whore who tried to run me through,” he answered.

“Ah, yes,” Galatea drawled, and her gaze grew hard as flint. “Their women warriors are particularly cruel, I hear.”

“No crueler than the five of you,” Leksi muttered.

Glancing out the window where the night shadows had gathered in the courtyard, Galatea studied the darkness for a moment. “She might not come home tonight,” she said as though to herself. “Oft times, she camps out in the mountains, preferring the solitude of the soft winds and the trickling streams to her kinswomen.”

Leksi was not listening to the woman. He was suffering so greatly, he could not imagine red-hot pinchers and thumbscrews causing more pain. Tears slid slowly down his cheeks and he gave in to a sob that shamed him but was as unstoppable as the wind skirling through the palm fronds.

Turning her attention back to the warrior, she listened a moment to his harsh panting then calmly reached out to wrap her fingers around his straining staff.

“Oh, by the gods, lady, don’t!” Leksi begged.

“Ocnus reveled in the feel of my hand circling his cock,” she whispered.

“Please!”

“When I was still a virgin and he made the trek from Nauplius to my home in Geryon, we would steal off to the banks of the Celeus and lie there for hours on end. He would touch me—most honorably, I swear to you—but he taught me how to touch him to the best advantage.”

Aware of the gentle up and down motion as the older woman’s fingers slid softly along his cock, Leksi held his breath. The feeling was one of sheer pleasure and he ceased to wriggle about on the bed.

“He meant for me to go to our wedding bed with my maidenhead intact,” she continued as she increased the pressure on his turgid staff. “But that did not mean that he did not reciprocate as the months passed and our Joining day grew closer.”

His vital juices were seeping from the slit of his penis and made the friction of her hand upon his flesh even more enjoyable. He caught a whiff of his own muskiness and began to tremble.

“He had such strong hands,” Galatea remembered. “His fingers were long and tapered and could delve into spots that caused me to squirm like a speared fish on a branch.” She ran her thumb into the warrior’s slit and spread the sensitive lips.

“Ahhh…” Leksi moaned, and felt no shame at lifting his hips up from the damp mattress.

“The first time he slipped one of those glorious fingers inside me, I thought it was his cock for I had my back to him,” she said then laughed. “He nipped my neck and reminded me I was his virgin and I would remain so until he would seat himself fully within me.”

The sexual talk was enflaming Leksi’s body to such a degree he felt he would combust if his rod did not explode. He was quivering from head to toe, his legs shaking as he dug his heels into the mattress.

Galatea slipped off the bed and stood beside it though her tight hand was still wrapped around the warrior’s cock. “Oh, the wondrousness of his touch as he manipulated my clitoris!” she breathed. “I had never known such exquisite pleasure. When I came, it startled me at first, but then I felt the rapture of that itch subside to a very pleasant memory that I wished more than anything to repeat.”

She leaned over him and slipped her tongue into the slit of his cock.

Leksi Helios was not a novice to the art of lovemaking. He had known more than his share of women and broken many to saddle, but never had he experienced such a wild stab of desire grip him as he did as the older woman’s mouth replaced her hand upon his staff.

The pressure was a sweet agony that drew upon his flesh in such a way he could have stayed that way forever. His climax was a suckle or two away now, but he wished nothing more than to prolong it for the sensation was enveloping his entire world.

Galatea was pleasantly surprised at the taste of him for his essence was not particularly salty nor was it of a foul consistency. She knew from her years with Ocnus that a man’s seed often tasted of the last food of which he had partaken and taking that flavor into one’s mouth was not always enjoyable. This warrior’s juice was thick but it bore a bit of sweetness.

Her lips were drawing from him every last bit of strength, and his limbs felt boneless even though they strained against the building ardor within him. As her tongue slid down his rigid length and lapped hungrily at his balls, he groaned so loudly, he was surprised at the sound.

Chuckling deep in her throat, Galatea slid a finger beneath his ass and up into that puckered little hole even as her lips claimed his staff in a tight, deep suction that took her lips to the very root of his member to press hard against the wiry curls. She wiggled her finger, pressed her thumb hard against the indention of his male pleasure spot between the anal opening and his balls, and then felt the burst of his cum shoot like a cannonball coursing down the back of her throat. The jerk of his flesh within her mouth nearly gagged her but she swallowed quickly, her tongue pressing hard against the underside of his rod.

“God!” Leksi shouted.

The orgasm was more intense than any he’d ever experienced in his thirty-six years—and he’d had more than his share. It felt as though his climax would go on forever. When at last he was depleted, he sagged limply on the mattress, drained of energy as well as his life juice. Though he was aware the older woman still sucked gently upon his root, he was beyond reaction, past a lingering quiver of his muscles.

Galatea withdrew her lips and hands from his flesh and straightened up. She sat down beside him once more and placed a warm hand on his belly. “Think you can sleep now, warrior?” she asked. “The one we brought you here for will be arriving soon, I hope. Are you anxious to see her?”

Leksi Helios was so used up he couldn’t even grunt an answer to her. His eyes fluttered closed and within a matter of moments, he was sound asleep, his head tilted to one side.

It had been many years since she had performed such an intimate act, for she had never thought to again. In her three decades of marriage to Ocnus, not once had her hands or limbs, or tongue encircled another man. Since his death, she had slept alone, no male of her acquaintance worthy enough to share the bed Ocnus had made for them by hand. Her enjoyment of the sexual union had been laid to rest alongside her beloved husband.

“Sleep well, warrior,” she whispered, and kissed her fingertips before placing them lightly on the Venturian’s slack mouth.

Getting up, she looked about her until she spied a coverlet thrown across a chair. She fetched the light wool and spread it gently over the naked warrior’s muscular body. Lifting the coverlet, she took one last look at the large staff that now lay sleeping against the warrior’s thigh. A tender smile tugged at Galatea’s mouth then she lowered the coverlet. Going to her own bed, she stretched out across the mattress as the wind sang in the palm fronds beyond her room.

Chapter Two

Kynthia was bone-tired as she slipped into the common room of her aunt’s villa. All was dark, the inside servants already in their beds. Only the sentries at the gates had been awake to welcome her but she had refused the offer of a footman to light her way to the villa’s portico. She preferred doing things for herself.

The common room smelled of the mixed perfumes worn by her four sisters and it was not an unpleasant aroma that greeted her. Scant illumination shown from the dying embers in the hearth but there was enough sky-glow coming through the windows to light her way through the silent halls.

Trudging wearily up the long, curving stairs, the young woman stopped in mid-step and thought of going back downstairs to fetch a cool goblet of wine, but she was too dog-tired after a day of hunting in the high mountains beyond the villa. The goblet of wine would be heavenly but a warm bath and a clean, fresh set of sheets was more enticing. Gripping the banister more firmly, she pulled herself up the chairs, her footsteps slow.

Perhaps it was the sensation of a stranger present in the villa or a light snore that caught Kynthia’s attention as she moved past one of the guest rooms. Most likely, it was the opened door to a room kept closed off that halted her steps and drew her toward the darkened doorway. No candlelight glinted on the bedside table but then again none was needed for an errant beam of moonlight fell unerringly upon the bed and the man lying upon it.

Kynthia pursed her lips for she knew exactly why the man was there. Padding quietly to the bed so she would not wake him, the young woman paused at the foot and stared at the lengths of chains securing bare feet to the foot posts. Lifting her eyes to the headboard, she made out the glint of chain there, as well. Spread-eagled upon the mattress was a male who was—she knew without a shred of doubt—as naked as the day he had popped out of his mother’s womb.