TheKingsViper (15 page)

She rolled from his body, sliding her feet down onto the rag
rug and giggling in shock when her legs threatened momentarily to fold beneath
her. Picking her way with a tipsy wiggle over to the chest, she picked up the
leather tankard, which was more than half full. “Do you want some?” she asked,
remembering her manners.

He’d propped himself up on one elbow to watch her. “You
drink what you like.”

She took several swallows of the weak, yeasty beer.
Strangely, despite what they had just done together, she was struck by how
intimate this simple thing was, drinking from a man’s cup. Walking back, she
sat on the edge of the bed. Severin lifted a heavy hank of her damp hair,
stroking it from her face and then winding her curls in his fingers before
lifting them to his lips, a sight that made Eloise’s heart leap. Only when he’d
kissed her tresses did he accept the cup from her and sip.

Eloise let her gaze drift down from the cusp of his working
throat to the sculpted flat of his belly, and below. “May I touch?”

He lifted an eyebrow and nodded.

The lie of the dark hair on his torso fascinated her. It had
a definite grain, she found, bristly when she stroked it upward, smooth as she
followed its flow down to the glossy curls at his crotch. His cock lay against
his thigh, still thick with arousal but not so stiff and straight now, and
definitely more decorous now that its helm was hooded once more. Eloise thought
it looked proud and a little smug. She stroked it with one finger while Severin
watched her, his eyes crinkling with amusement over the rim of his tankard.

His balls, she thought, felt like two ripe damson plums in a
fine calfskin pouch. Even as she explored its texture with her fingers, the
skin wrinkled and tightened.

“Always gently with those,” Severin murmured. “You can be
firmer with the other, especially as it hardens.”

She had so much to learn, she thought. “That thing you did
to me—with your mouth?”

“What of it?”

“I liked that.”

“Mm. I thought you might.”

“What’s it called?”

He uttered a tiny grunt of amusement. “Hh. Coney-hunting.”
The glint in his eye as he took another drink suggested to her that there were
other, and probably rather coarser, names.

“Am I allowed to do it to you?”

Some ale went down the wrong way and Severin snorted.
“Allowed?” he said, clearing his throat. “Certainly, if you like.”

She bit her lip in a quick, nervous grin and wriggled slowly
down the bed so that she could tuck her head low enough. “How…?” she asked,
hesitating.

“Just remember—no teeth.” He dropped the empty tankard on
the mattress and stroked the hair back from her forehead. As she inclined her
head over his crotch he gathered her hair lock by lock, holding it up in a bunch
out of the way of her face. Whether it was courtesy or the desire to watch,
Eloise didn’t know; her attention was on the task before her. His cock lay like
a sleeping lion. Cautiously she reached out to lick it.

It stirred, jerking more erect. Not sleeping then, watchful.
Catching it in her fingers, she guided it to her lips and took it into her
mouth.

Oh that was strange. Strange and wonderful—new tastes, new
textures, a whole geography of flesh beneath the tip of her tongue. She had the
feeling she was supposed to find this shameful, but it made her feel strangely
excited, as if this was the only way she could be big enough to embrace
Severin, and not the other way round for once. He didn’t react vocally in the
way she had—nothing louder than a hitch in his breath—but to make up for that
slight disappointment the response of his body was unequivocal. His cock filled
out, thickening in surges, pushing against the roof of her mouth. She had to
adjust her angle to suck him deeper in, but soon found that the more she tried
to take the more there seemed to be. He was all the way to the back of her
throat and still there was more.

Then he pulled out, using his grip in her hair to unsheathe
himself from her open lips. “Ella—just stop.”

“Have I—?” she started.

“Lie down.” His eyes were dark pools again, and full of
private intent.

“Did I do it wrong?”

“Wrong?” He touched his straining erection. “Does it look
like that to you? If I died while you were doing that to me, I’d find Heaven a
sore disappointment.” He shook his head. “I want you to lie down.” Not waiting
for her response, he lifted her into the center of the bed. “On your side,
there.”

But as she obeyed he turned away from her, kneeling up and
groping around at the head of the bed. Eloise craned her neck, confused. He was
examining the small pottery lamps that had been set on the board there,
checking the contents of the unlit ones by removing the rag wicks and tipping
the olive oil over his fingers and rubbing them together, turning his hand this
way and that as he frowned. Eventually he found an oil that seemed to satisfy
his requirements, and he moved back down to kneel behind her. Fresh
yellow-green droplets hung from his fingertips.

“Oh—you are just perfect, Ella,” he said under his breath,
his left hand slippery on her hip. Now she could smell the sharp new olive oil.
“Now, raise this leg.” He pushed her uppermost thigh up the mattress toward her
chest, opening up the split of her sex and bottom.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“I’m going to do what you asked me to.” His breath was warm
on her ear, his lips a feathery caress, his voice black as ink. “I’m going to
put my cock in you, Ella. Deep and sweet and hard, in your perfect ass. And
you’re going to fall, impaled on my cock, full of my spend.” His thumb,
slippery with oil, found the secret pucker of her anus. “Do you trust me?”

Her mouth formed an O as round as her wide eyes. “Severin!”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” she whimpered. “I trust you. Please.”

“We’re going to take this as slow as is necessary. I’m going
to be gentle. We have the whole night if we need it. But I am going to fuck
you—just as you begged me to.” His fingers were firm over her sex, soothing in
their weight, but his thumb was a kiss, a caress, a tickling tease on her
sensitive rosette. “You only need to relax. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Let your body open to me.”

“I don’t know how…”

“Shush. Let it go. Close your eyes. Just feel.”

It was so easy to surrender to him when he spoke like that.
Every part of her already longed to yield to him, but when he spoke in that
tone—hushed and tender and implacable—she felt as if her whole body were
melting. While his left hand played with her most intimate flesh, his right
moved to rub her back, sliding up and down her lower spine, both firm and
soothing. It was easy to let him. Easy to yield even when the delicate and
almost playful probing of his thumb became more insistent, and he slid in
through her unguarded portal to the hot tight chamber within.

A long shiver rippled through her—shame at the breaking of
such a taboo, more than anything. Her rear entrance, she’d discovered to her
shock, was just as sensitive to the touch as her clit. She squirmed and
clutched at the bedding, aware that her palms were damp.

“Patience,” Severin murmured. “Take a moment to get used to
it. How does it feel?”

“Scary,” she confessed. “What if I…?”

“You won’t, don’t worry. I’d be able to tell. Does it hurt
at all?”

“Not hurt. It’s just so strange.”

“Put your hand down and touch yourself. Keep doing that.
It’ll counter the discomfort. Just don’t let yourself go all the way and fall,
because if you do then you’ll clench up on me again.”

He was right about the touching herself. As her hand found
her clit the physical panic eased almost to nothing and her spasming ring of
muscle relaxed. The feeling that she was under invasion became the sensation
that she was being caressed inside as well as out. As he’d promised, there was
no hurry. His movements were slow and gentle. Eloise let her eyes lose focus,
staring into the firelit shadows as the waves of sensation ebbed and flowed
through her, building and falling away, her breathing becoming deeper and
louder.

When he withdrew his hand she missed it horribly—but only
for a second. The thumb was replaced with a finger, no thicker but longer and
more flexible. She let a tiny moan slip from her throat, acknowledging it as he
reclaimed old ground and sought out new.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

The room was golden-orange with wavering firelight, the shadows
blurred. Nothing had sharp boundaries any more. There was no hard distinction
between inside and outside, discomfort and pleasure, dread and delight.
Sometimes Severin stopped rubbing her back in order to tip a little more oil
over his hand. Sometimes he murmured encouragement. “You’re doing so well,
Ella. Is it good, little mouse?”

Her reply was one long exhalation, “
Yes
.”

She began to lose all track of the division between her and
the oil, between the oil and his hand.

Then, “That’s two fingers.”

“Oh,” she moaned. Her own efforts with her clit were raising
her in slow, sweeping spirals of arousal. Her head was full of dancing
lamplight and her bodily sensations seemed both her whole world and also
infinitely far away.

“That’s three.”

There was no resistance left in her. She welcomed every push
of his wrist, every twist of his knuckles. She murmured wordlessly when he
slipped his hand slowly out to the tips of his fingers, until he’d almost
withdrawn from her—then repositioned himself, kneeling up, a rough thigh close
up against hers. He bent to brush her left ear with his lips.

“Let me have you, Ella.” Then he was pushing in again, still
slick with oil but blunter and broader. Cock not fingers. She rediscovered then
how tight and strong was the muscled iris of her rear, but he was
patient—extraordinarily patient—and unstoppable. She gasped and whimpered just
to vent the pressure, each little cry like the giving up of a gift.

Then she felt something new inside her, an inner gate fallen
perhaps. A change, a shift, a surrender. The threat of pain was quite suddenly
gone. Severin stilled against her rear. His right hand slid up the bed to
tangle in her hair and caress the nape of her neck and the back of her head.

“I’m inside you now, little mouse. You can feel it, can’t
you?”

“More,” she gasped.

He laughed in his throat. “I thought you’d say that. You’re
incredible—you know that, don’t you? My wanton little virgin. You want so much.
And I want to give you it all.”

He pushed his hips, sliding deeper into her.

“Oh!” she squealed, no longer caring for dignity or
propriety. “Yes!” He was inside her, and she was round him, and they were so
close, so meshed, that it felt to her that they were becoming a single body.
“Pull my hair!” she gasped, the words flying from her lips before she had time
to think better of them.

“Hm?” Severin grunted, but he had heard because his fingers
tightened in her curls, pulling her neck back. She was lying on her side but
her upper body was twisted round enough that she could look up at him. She saw
his saturnine grin. “You like having your hair pulled, do you?” he asked,
rocking her with each surge of his hips.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever told anyone else?”

“No. Oh God.”

His eyes narrowed, almost feral, and his fingers tightened.
Each thrust, each tug, perfectly in time. Eloise was struggling to keep up, her
numb fingers slipping over her clit. But that didn’t seem to matter now,
because there was a peal of sensation gathering in her scalp and her ass,
something familiar yet entirely new. Her head rolled back, exposing her throat
to the man laboring above her, and a noise issued from that stretched throat
that sounded like the wild harsh cry of a seabird riding before a storm. She
had no control over her voice, or of the things happening to her body. She felt
as if her skin were sewn with tiny silver bells and that with each stroke of
his cock in her ass their chimes were rippling out in circles from her
stretched hole. She began to mew frantically.

“You’re
mine
,” Severin growled as he thrust home.
“Mine first—mine always.” And she didn’t mind now that he was plowing her hard
and steady, with all his strength. She needed it, in fact. Her climax started,
not at her clit in familiar fashion, but at the plugged ring of her anus. It
pealed through her whole body, striking white fire from her cunt, her clit, her
breasts, her head. Falling, she screamed, and then Severin fell after her like
a great dark wave that rolled over her, filling her with salt spume.

It seemed hours later that the tide ebbed and cast her up
exhausted, breathless and shocked that she was still alive.

She opened her eyes and looked up into Severin’s dark gaze.
His hair hung in rats’ tails and sweat was pooling in the cups of his
collar-bones. Eloise thought she could not bear such a strange and hard-fought
beauty, and she shook her head helplessly.

Bracing himself on his left arm, he touched her face gently
with the tips of his fingers, a line forming between his black brows.

“Oh,” she whispered, wrapping her hand around his larger one.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No!”

“You’re crying.”

“Am I?” She was genuinely surprised. “I’m happy.”

The line faded away. He smiled, and it was a soft, sad,
wondering smile that she had never seen on him before. “Happy?” he whispered.
“If it were that easy, Ella…”

She caressed his cheek. His sooty lashes, like the wings of
black moths, fluttered down upon his lower lids. In the dancing lamplight his
eyelids looked dark and sheened with exhaustion. “Lie down,” she whispered.
“Hold me.”

“Yes.”

Easing gently from her grasp, he curled up behind her,
nesting her in the warm embrace of his arms and body. She’d woken in this
position on many nights, she reminded herself, but this was the first time
she’d lain down with Severin in this way. The first time they’d sleep naked
together.