The Sword (28 page)

He breathed a quick sigh of relief when she swayed up his body again, then caught his breath when she tormented his other nipple. Abandoning his grip on her arms, he focused as hard as he could and unlaced the front of his trousers, removing them while he could without ripping off the silk garment. His manhood poked free of the opening, brushed against her waist and hip, and he tensed yet again as desire threatened to surge uncontrollably through him. She abandoned his other nipple, scrambling back down the bed, and quickly peeled off his trousers.

Just as he started to sit up, to retake control now that he was fully naked like her, she tossed his pants to the floor and gripped him. Boldly. In her hand. Saber jerked and flopped onto his back, his hips involuntarily thrusting up.

“Kelly!”

With her fingers firmly wrapped around the velvety-warm base of his shaft, she dipped her head and tasted his reddened, moistening tip. His own lower lip caught between his teeth, as he grimaced in a struggle for self-control. Proving herself no innocent indeed, Kelly deepened her contact with him, as she took in more of him. As her tongue swirled around him. And when she closed her mouth around as much of him as was possible, and then sucked—

“Jinga's Balls and Kata's Tits!” The oath ripped from him as he bolted upright and reversed their positions lightning swift, slamming her onto her back and coming down hard between her thighs. He pinned her to the bed with the whole of his body, his hands pinning her wrists, his manhood right
there
, at the hot, moist-weeping opening at the apex of her thighs.

Kelly would have giggled at the oath, if she wasn't caught on the verge of a major moan. Because she could
feel
him. Throbbing. Against her.
There.
Right where she wanted him to be, even more than he already was. Involuntarily, her muscles twitched, instinctively hungry for more. He shuddered as her flexing hips rubbed her core against his very tip.

“Do. Not. Move,” he growled in her ear, panting, desperate to regain some control of his raging need. This was nothing like touching himself and finding release. After this, such sparse pleasure would never be enough. If he could only survive long enough to gently—
gently
—breach her and get fully inside…he could have this for the rest of his life.

With his face buried in her hair, in the curve of her throat and shoulder, he breathed hard, mentally reciting the names of every one of his ennobled ancestors that he could remember. It helped, a tiny, tiny bit. So he pulled out the big sword, so to speak, and tried to picture his mother and father making love. The most instinctively repulsive thing any offspring could think of.

That helped. A lot. He even started to breathe easier, to relax against her…until he thought about how his parents had made nine children. That was a lot of children his parents had made, even if birthed in twins…and their no doubt untold numbers of tries in creating them. Which made his mind think of how he and his bride could make even half that many of their own, and the untold times
they
could try. Groaning, he lifted his head, sought her mouth, and kissed it in apology. He found her bottom lip caught in her teeth again, and he teased it free with his own, then groaned as she moaned and wriggled.

“I can't wait anymore—”

“Good!” Kelly panted, and hitched her hips up closer, impatiently. Pushing him against her willing, feminine flesh. “Now!”

Groaning at his bossy wife's demand, Saber kissed her hard and deep, then braced himself on one elbow, making certain he was in the best position against her with his free hand. Then, slowly—excruciatingly slowly—he pushed inside. Kelly forced herself to breathe, as he stretched her flesh painfully, then slipped back out a little. He came in a little bit more, then eased out.

Breathing hard but steadily, in rhythm with each indrawn and exhaled breath, he breached her slowly and gently, over and over, until he was finally all the way inside, as far as he could go. He rested inside her for a little while, the sweat from his effort turning his skin slick against the arms she had wrapped around his ribs, then he eased out and back in a little. And again. And a little sooner, a little faster each time. Each stroke a little longer and deeper than before.

His head dipped down to hers; his lips plucked and nibbled at hers. Her tongue swept up to taste him, and he moaned as she boldly imitated with her tongue what he was doing with his manhood. Determined to give her pleasure before he finally took his—which would hopefully not be long, with the feel of her sultry heat smothering his need—he freed a hand and slipped it down between them, tickling that budding pearl that had made her go wild when he had licked and suckled it before. She shuddered, her throat tightening on a keen. Her legs hitched up instinctively, hooking around his waist and allowing him greater access.

That allowed him to slide even deeper, gloriously deeper…and he gave up his control.

Bracing both arms, Saber surged into her, pleasuring her with perfect friction, invading her over and over as man was meant to know woman, as woman was meant to know man. Her hands slipped down to grip the flexing muscles guiding his hips. It built between them, their shuddering, striving pleasure. Head arching back, Kelly cried out, straining up into him, tightening around him; he gasped and bucked into her, flooding her as she milked him for his seed.

It took a long time for the convulsions to relax, for the trembling to ease. For him to stop pushing into her and just accept his home in her body. His sword in her sheath.

They rested together, until he finally found enough strength to twist to the side, taking her with him so that he didn't crush her any further. He had slipped out of her with the maneuver, but at her mumbled protest, Saber shifted a little and slid his still somewhat hardened flesh back into her depths. Grinning at her contented sigh, he cradled her close.

The quiet night air was filled with the scent of their musk, the heavy, rich scent of sex and sweat. Kelly buried her nose in his soft hair, breathing in the aroma of his soap, his sweat, their satisfaction. Every once in a while, her body would involuntarily contract around him, proof she had just had a really big orgasm. That thought made her smile. Feeling him jerk, hearing him suck in a sharp breath at each contraction, that made her laugh, though she tried to stifle it.

“What…what's so funny?” Saber managed somehow, since with each chuckle, her body convulsed like a little slice of the afterlife around him, making him tremble. With shock as well as pleasure, because he could have sworn he was dead; blissfully, satedly, wonderfully dead…but no, she had to prove he was still very much gloriously alive.

“It's a female thing.” She tightened deliberately around him, he moaned and shuddered, and Kelly giggled again.

“Oh, sweet Kata! Do that again,” Saber begged, feeling his body tighten and harden again. “Please!”

“Okay.” Kelly did it again, tightening her Kegel muscles, as they were called in her universe. He gasped, swore, and rolled her under him again.

Just that fast, he was gliding into her, a deep friction that made her catch her breath with each delving, exploring thrust. Concentrating, she tightened when he first entered, over and over. Then when he pulled out part of the way, again and again, then alternating the two somewhat randomly. His breath hissed against her temple, his chest reverberated against her breasts, and he groaned when she returned to the first rhythm again. He hitched into her, stayed deep and tight, while he arched his back a little and braced himself more solidly over her, then he thrust again, ducking his head and taking a hand-plumped breast into his mouth for a bit of suckling.

The double stimulation shattered Kelly. Arching her head back into the feather mattress, she cried out and clenched tight around him. He let loose an oath, releasing her breast, and thrust hard, once, twice, thrice into her depths. That was all it took for either of them, and it took all that both of them had.

As they both sagged in repletion, Saber slipped gently out of her and onto his side, cuddling her against him protectively. The last thing he heard after dousing the light was his name on her breath, the last thing he felt was her heartbeat thudding in time with his own.

 

T
he first thing he felt an untold while later was her mouth, warm and wet and completely unabashed, once again doing exactly what she had done earlier to him. Only this time, ambushed and on his back, Saber tensed even as he came fully awake, arched his back in sheer pleasure, and spasmed with a shout, thrusting up into the glorious suction of her mouth. Thankfully, she gentled her ministrations; otherwise, he might have grown too tender.

As it was, his wife kept licking him through all of it, keeping him hard. Saber reached for her in the darkness of the room, twisting to get himself properly over her. His attempt didn't work; she simply pushed him back down. She clambered up his body, hidden in the darkness of the lightglobes she must have extinguished at some point, and positioned herself over him. That allowed her to straddle his hips most indecently as she pushed his shoulders back into the bedding. Taking the initiative
very
boldly.

“Gods! You may have been a maiden,” Saber managed to gasp as she sank—sweet gods in heaven!—onto him, “but you are
no
innocent!”

Her laughter, rich, full, and feminine, tightened her flesh around him. His hands found her thighs, gripped her hips and buttocks as she moved on him, and he discovered the joys of guiding her in that position, of deliciously, deliriously enduring her leisurely, experimental rhythms. Of feeling her collapse on his chest when her pleasure swept over her in a swift-building wave, igniting his own ecstasy as she tightened around him, crying out.

Their heavy breathing meshed in the darkness. Stretching up, he felt for one of the garland-wrapped bedposts, found one of the protective pendants, then managed to reach the cool, glassy curve of the lightglobe in its bed-reading bracket. Saber flicked the smooth surface with his fingertip. The faint glow that sprang up illuminated just the two of them, and dimly at that, but it was enough for him to see her. He didn't want to stop looking at her, this amazing woman his youngest brother had brought into his life.

“I love you, Kelly,” he murmured, gazing at his sated wife.

Kelly roused from the temptation of another doze. She didn't know what to say. She cared for him, she lusted over him, she was more than content to marry him, but she honestly didn't know if she outright loved him yet. Not the true love he was Destined to feel for her. Guilt made her bury her face against his chest as he stroked her hair. She couldn't say the words without knowing for sure. She
felt
that she loved him, but…was she
in
love with him?

Her silence wasn't exactly reassuring, yet he knew she wasn't asleep. “Kelly?”

“My heart is yours,” she finally murmured. It certainly wasn't going to anyone else, so it was about as accurate as she could get, given her inner uncertainty. And she couldn't just let him say that he loved her, without giving him something truthful in return. She did care a great deal for him and couldn't imagine being with anyone else like this.

Perhaps that is the way her people say it,
Saber decided as she said nothing more. It wasn't as if he knew everything about her universe, her people's culture; certainly she had done several things that were as alien to his Katani-raised ways as a woman could get. Wearing trousers, for one. But he didn't really mind them, even the more incomprehensible things.

His thumb rubbed the plain gold band on his third finger, working it around a little. He could feel the beat of her heart against his, where her breasts were crushed by her own weight to his chest, see the pulse in her temple flicker a fraction after each beat against his chest. Still buried inside her intimately, his manhood was reluctant to finish diminishing with his release, reluctant to leave the sheath of her flesh.

Without his consent, he had fallen for her. In the face of the Curse and its Disaster, he had fallen hard for Kelly Doyle of Earth…wherever that was. Among all of his brothers, most of whom were less surly and less temperamental than he had been at the beginning, most of which surely would have been less awkward in their wooing…she had fallen for
him
.

“My heart is yours, too,” he murmured. She burrowed a little closer to him. The night felt warm, especially with the drapes and windows closed and the season now thoroughly into summer. At least, he felt perfectly warm with her draped over him, but she might not feel that way. “Are you cold?”

She shook her head against his chest and burrowed her fingers under his back, holding him closer.

Sighing, Saber wrapped his arms around her a little more comfortably and closed his eyes against the dim glow of the globe. He didn't care if the Disaster was the imminent collapse of the donjon roof supporting this aerie of a bedchamber; he was not about to dislodge her.

H
e was already inside her when he awoke—or, given that she was still draped over his chest with his arms still locked around her, he had likely never slipped out—so Saber didn't have to do very much to ease the deep, hard hunger that had awakened him every morning since first finding his release by himself. Before that moment, if he were honest with himself. It had started the time he had pinned her against the wall in Morganen's tower, since he had first reluctantly admitted he lusted for the woman still sleeping peacefully on his chest. Unlocking the hands clasped over her back, he slipped them down to her hips and pulled her gently down onto him just a little bit more, filling her fully instead of just partway.

She made an indistinct sound against his chest, wriggling a little against him, and he eased her up and tugged her back down, gliding into her slick core with moisture left over from the pleasures of their gloriously late night. Kelly mumbled again, digging her chin into his chest in the effort to bury her face there, as if he were a pillow. He hitched up in three demanding, upward thrusts…and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes jerk open in three ever-widening stages. When he relaxed his grip on her backside, her lids slid down again, as he slid part of the way out of her body, sliding back into the limpness of sleep.

That was interesting.

He did it again. She reacted the same, wide, wider, widening…and then drooping. Smiling, Saber arched his back, sliding himself out to the very tip, to the point just before he might fall out of her. She mumbled and sighed, a sound that was almost a whimper, and wriggled her hips, threatening to free him. Gripping her pelvis, he pulled her down firmly as he thrust up strong, burrowing into her hard and deep and full.

Instant orgasm. Kelly gasped and convulsed, coming awake in more ways than one. He jerked into her again, finding and spilling his pleasure in the tightening of her own as she writhed and gasped. Both of them slumped and breathed hard.

Looking up at the canopy over the bed, Saber felt his racing heart slow down as his eyes focused on a drifting, dancing dust mote. His brothers, in preparing the chamber for their wedding night, had tactfully drawn all of the curtains, though no other point in the castle was as high as their room above the donjon roof. Or rather, they had almost drawn all the curtains. A shaft of sunlight was streaming in from the northeast, from behind and to one side of their heads, proving that dawn had already come and gone. From the angle of the light, in fact, it was probably even several hours into midmorning.

The roof hadn't collapsed. No mekhadadaks had chewed on the furniture in their frustration at being unable to get past his brothers' amulets. No demonlings were buzzing around the rooms, looking for things to destroy. The donjon hadn't burned down around them.

Feeling good, Saber lifted his head a little, lazily following the trail of sunlit dust particles with mild curiosity, while his wife—blessed gods, his
wife
—mumbled and snuggled closer. No Disaster had occurred, now that Sword was sheathed in Maid. And most satisfactorily sheathed, at that. Beyond satisfactorily. He smirked to himself. In fact, he felt about as liquid gold as that shaft of light. Idly, Saber followed it with his gaze.

The sunlight, just a narrow little shaft worming its way through a gap in the curtains, terminated on her heel, making it glow pink and gold, with little pale brown freckles around the anklebones and tendon.

Her heel.

“Jinga,”
he swore, and rolled her off of him, pulling out of her with acute physical regret. She groused something under her breath as she dropped onto the bed, and woke up enough to brace herself on her arm, while he examined that patch of sunlight, careful to avoid getting caught in it. The ray of light was now on the bed, not on her foot, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. He caught her ankle, but the briefly sun-touched limb was no different than the other one, now that the sun was off of it.

“What are you doing?” Kelly grumped.

“Your
heel
,” he explained, but only that far.

That made her frown in confusion. “My what?”

The sunlight—it has to be the sunlight
,
or something about it.
Gingerly, he waved his fingers through the light. Nothing happened. It felt warm and glowed on his skin, like regular sunshine should. Climbing out of the bed, feeling muscles twinge that hadn't been exercised in more than three years before their glorious wedding night, Saber stepped around the end of the bed and swept aside the blue and green linen curtains that had replaced the old, grimy, red velvet ones.

Sunlight flooded the room in a broad shaft. Kelly grunted and buried her head under the nearest feather-stuffed pillow. Her body ached. She knew the only thing that would make it feel better was exercise; she even wanted to exercise it in the same way that made it ache, and exercise it some more. She just craved a little more sleep first to make up for her late-night adventures, and to give her enough strength to have some more marital fun. She didn't know what had gotten into Saber, but if he didn't come back to the bed and make love to her again, that was his loss. It was either sex or sleep, and if she didn't get one, she was going to claim the other.

Squinting into the sunlight at the window, Saber shaded his eyes with his hand. The sun still didn't seem to be the source of the Prophesied Disaster, so he blinked and lowered his gaze to the rest of the palace castle. The courtyards and gardens, the eastern wing and outer wall, all looked normal. The jungle beyond seemed ordinary, with the usual handful of birds flying among the treetops, the rippling canopy of green echoing the terraced hills hidden beneath, sloping out and down to the eastern bay in the distance.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary; not even the dark-and-white blot of a large sailing ship in the distance disturbed the tranquility of the morning-blue ocean—

“Ship!”

Kelly grunted.

“Ship!” Saber whirled, looked about for his clothes, then reached over the low headboard of the bed and grabbed the pillow from her head.
“Ship!”

So she was to be denied both sex
and
sleep. Propping herself up, Kelly glared at him. “What about the damned ship?”

“Kelly, it's the
quarter moon
! And it's coming from the east—the east! Get up!
Evanor!
” he sang out, crossing to the chest of drawers his brothers had brought up from the bedchamber he was abandoning in favor of this larger, better one his wife had already claimed.

“Good morning!”
his unseen, distant brother caroled back cheerfully, projecting to both of them, judging by the way Kelly grunted again and reburied her head under the pillows, clamping the nearest one over her ears.
“Shall I finally bring up a tray of breakfast for you two? It won't take a trice to reheat it, after all…”

“Shut up, Ev!” Saber ordered, yanking on trousers and a sleeveless tunic in shades of green, colors that would blend well with the forest. His brothers had already brought his wardrobe and chests up, arranging them to share space with Kelly's belongings. “There's a large ship on the horizon, heading for the
eastern
harbor…and it's the wrong time and direction for traders. And I noticed it only
after
I saw the sun on my wife's heel!”

Kelly blinked herself more fully awake at that, sliding out from under the pillow and off of the bed. “You mean that's my Disaster? My Disaster is a
ship
on the horizon?—What kind of a Disaster is
that
?” she demanded, tossing her head. “‘Hi, we've got scurvy, and if you don't give us all your lemons, we'll run you through'?”

Saber smacked her lightly on the nearest buttock as he passed her. “Get dressed—wear green, so you'll blend into the jungle. We may have to confront them, and I certainly don't want them making it all the way into the castle.”

Kelly wondered if he even realized he had assumed she would be coming with him and his brothers; it was a far cry from the overprotective demand that she remain behind she would have otherwise expected from him.
I'm going to have to reward him for that
, she decided, though she wasn't sure yet if she would tell him why. It was more fun keeping men on their toes, guessing what went on in a woman's mind.

“Everyone's assembling in the great hall, save Rydan, of course,”
Evanor announced on the heels of his order.
“I'll bring you your breakfast there; Morg's bringing his best scrying mirror, to try to see who and what our visitors are.”

“Good.” Saber finished tugging on his calf-length boots and cast about for his belt. A scrap of exotically sewn lace lay draped over the tooled leather; it reminded him with a rush of blood to his groin how she had looked while barely clad in it, last night. Straightening, his belt in one hand and the highly abbreviated undertrousers in the other, he looked around for its owner.

She was lacing herself into a half-length corset with efficient, quick yanks to tighten the undergarment. Given that it was all she was wearing at the moment, he felt his blood quicken at the sight of her mostly bared curves for one moment, proud that he had such a desirable, beautiful wife. Even if her heel had led him to discover their now looming, unknown, Prophesied Disaster.

Tossing the undergarment onto the bed, he buckled the belt around his hips then watched her pull on more normal, Katani-style undershorts after the corset had been knotted in place. Within another minute, she was clad in loose green trousers, a slightly darker, sleeveless tunic like his own, and one of the pairs of leather slippers his twin had made for her earlier, in a utilitarian light brown. Finding her belt, Saber tossed it at her. He remembered to rap twice on the lightglobe by the bed to conserve its energy, and hurried her out of their chamber.

 

K
elly wiped her mouth with her napkin and peered past Saber's arm. He had barely touched his food, so she pinched him, making him glance back and scowl at her. His eyes followed her imperiously pointing finger, and he shifted his dark look to the scrambled eggs on his plate. They had come from the fowl yard in one of the gardens, one of the only two sources of domesticated food on the island, the other being the chickens that had lain the eggs themselves. If he could demand that she eat more when needed, she could bully him about the same thing, too.

Sighing, Saber sat forward and picked up his fork, digging into the rest of his half-forgotten breakfast. Kelly arched back behind his shoulders and managed to catch a glimpse of the oval mirror braced at an angle in Morganen's hands, seated in Wolfer's usual chair so that the two newlyweds could eat on their shared seat and still view the goings-on. Which were finally beginning to get interesting. The ship had finally sailed all the way into the broad bay and had furled its sails, drifting forward under mere momentum.

“They're dropping anchor,” Morganen muttered a moment later.

“It's a very strange-looking ship…” Trevan murmured. He squinted and peered past Wolfer's shoulder, who was standing with him on that side of their youngest sibling. “By Kata! There's a naked woman bound in chains to the front of that ship! But…it can't be! I can see the people on the rigging, and they're very tiny in comparison, and that woman is
huge
.”

“Let me see,” Kelly asserted. She tried to lean past Saber's broad back, then elbowed him into picking up his plate and leaning back so she could lean over his lap while he ate. The ship looked something like a Spanish brigantine in the outline of its hull, to her…except the sails were more like the kind found on a Chinese junk, braced by thin lines that stuck out on either side every few yards, suggesting sail-stiffening poles. She lowered her gaze to the front, where the naked lady was chained to the ramming spar. And smiled. “Ah. That's a
figurehead
, nothing more.”

“A what?” Morganen asked, tapping the surface of the mirror that at the moment wasn't a mirror, somehow focusing the image in tighter on that part of the foreign ship.

“It's a special kind of carving; they're put on ships under the ramming spar partially to strengthen it, partially to decorate the ship, and partially—at least in my universe's past—to provide the idea of spiritual ‘eyes.' It's meant to represent whatever friendly spirits might have a vested interest in the ship and its crew, to protect it against less-friendly forces.

“We may not have actual magic like you do, but we do have superstition, and the faith of believing in it.” She studied the ship a little longer, then spoke again. “This ship looks like a mishmash of styles of ship building that are a couple centuries old, by my era's standards…but it's not exactly like any specific style from my world's history.”

“We mark our ship hulls with magic sigils to guard them against foundering on reefs and sandbars,” Saber stated, pushing her down slightly over his lap so he could put his emptied plate back on the table. He leaned over her, sipping on his mug of juice, and studied the image over the top of her still sleep-tousled head. “You say you're familiar with the different parts, or at least their styles?”