Best Fantastic Erotica

by Cecilia Tan

  “Those are just the baby stuff,” came a voice behind her. Therese whirled, cursing herself; how had she missed hearing the woman come in? “I don’t let the serious books sit out on shelves,” said the dark-clad figure who stood across the room. The door was still closed; Therese could have sworn that no one had passed through it.

  They stood there for a moment, facing each other in silence. Therese had expected someone like Liana, the stunningly beautiful and cruel enchantress that they had defeated two years ago, or perhaps an old hag, such as in the stories. Someone with flowing robes, a thousand pendants glinting in the shape of bats or dragons. This woman was nothing like that; tall and lean, clad in black and dark green as simple and severe as Therese’s blues and whites. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a tail as long as a horse’s, and the shadows made her angular face seem almost craggy. The soldier knew instinctively, in spite of her lack of magical talent, that there was no glamour here, that she was looking at the true face of the sorceress Harrow MacBridie.

  “Have a seat,” the woman said quietly, gesturing at one of the chairs by the polished table. “We need to talk.”

  She wanted to stand, to rebel tall and proudly, but what had seemed honorable in the presence of cruel, petty Liana was practically boorish when faced with this quiet courtesy, so she sat stiffly in the ornately carved chair. “What have you done with him?” she asked bluntly.

  The sorceress’s eyebrows went up, but her bland, neutral expression did not change. “The Prince? He’s safe, for now. I thank you for coming alone, as I instructed.” As she turned her head, Therese could see her only adornment; from the peak to the lobe of her left ear hung a dozen piercings that glinted with black-and-green jewels. One prop to vanity, Therese wondered? Or perhaps a repository of magic, a center of power?

  “I had no choice,” she said sharply. “How much gold are you asking for? The throne is not rich, you know. The war two years ago nearly emptied the treasury, and the crops have not been good these past few years.”

  “No money,” Harrow said. “This is between you and I alone.” She cocked her head a little to one side and the cool green light reflected in the cascade of earrings. Therese still could not read anything in her dark almond eyes with their slight epicanthic fold. “You serve Harn, am I right?” she asked.

  Her quiet tone made Therese fidget in spite of herself. “I do,” she flung back. “Harn, Lord of warriors and honor. You know that. All the King’s guard serve Harn. It’s tradition, no secret.”

  “And when he speaks to you, when he gives you an order, you obey it?”

  “Of course,” Therese retorted, head high.

  “And if he were to tell you to do something you could not understand—such as take a life you valued, or turn away from a sworn duty, would you do it?”

  Therese glared at the sorceress. “I did not come here to waste time being questioned about catechism! Why will you not name your ransom and be done with it?”

  One corner of Harrow’s mouth turned up slightly, mirthlessly. “Humor me,” she said, and Therese remembered the message of last night, that Harrow held the beautiful young Prince Tamwind a prisoner. Her gut contracted at the thought, but she took a deep breath and tried to answer the question.

  “Lord Harn has only spoken to me thrice in my life,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “but each time he spoke true and what he asked of me was right and honorable, even when I did not understand it. I obey him.”

  The sorceress nodded, looking indefinably pleased. “Then you will understand when I tell you that I, too, am under divine orders?”

  Therese’s jaw tightened. “You serve Daguez?” Harn’s warriors had fought against the evil influence of Daguez for millenia. It had been brigands sworn to Daguez who had captured her last year and raped her, taken her virginity. She had, through Harn’s blessing, survived, but her hands trembled at the thought.

  Harrow gave an unladylike snort. “Daguez is a child. Daguez is a spoiled brat. I have no use for foolish deities who divide everything up into good and evil. As if that matters to the universe! No, I serve Skulde.”

  Therese frowned, relieved that Tamwind was not enduring what she had gone through, but still suspicious. Skulde was an old deity, mostly forgotten, spoken of only at funerals and christenings. Offerings were left for her next to infants’ cradles so she would not take them in their sleep, but little else was said of her. She was a Death, one of the many Deaths, but one did not serve Deaths. One placated them occasionally and then forgot them until it was time for one’s own. “And she told you to kidnap Prince Tamwind?”

  “The price for his release is four days and nights as my slave,” Harrow said, looking directly at her. The sorceress’s manner had gone from oblique to brusque. “That is my offer, and I will agree to nothing else. No one need know, and in four days and nights I shall return Tamwind to you unharmed and unscathed.”

  The young guard felt as if she was going to faint. Flashes of the rape, the torture she had undergone at the hands of Daguez’s priest/brigands flew through her mind, leaving her weak and shaking. She had been months healing from it, and now this? Then she thought of Prince Tamwind, of the lump that came into her throat when she saw him, fine and tall with flowing gilt hair and eyes like a summer sky, easy manner and ready smile. She had promised to die for him, and this was, at least, less than death.

  “Why me?” she whispered hoarsely, willing herself not to waver in the face of the enemy.

  “I have my orders.” Harrow’s face was blank again, deadpan. Therese would have liked to be able to cultivate an expression that calm and opaque.

  She gritted her teeth. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  The eyebrows went up again. “I’ll swear, if you like. By Skulde, and the kami of my mother’s resting place, and the clear white blood of my father. Is that enough?”

  “No.” Therese shook her head and then forced herself to look into Harrow’s dark eyes. “Swear by Harn. I’ll trust you then.”

  The dark-haired sorceress seemed to hesitate, and then gave a brief nod. “Very well. I swear by your foolish god Harn that if you spend four days and nights fulfilling my every whim, I will at the end of that time send Prince Tamwind home with you unharmed.” She paused. “I also swear that I will not do you any permanent physical injury. You will walk out of here unmarked, in body at any rate.”

  Therese stared at her. “You think to break me? To bend me to your will? I’ve done you no harm, damn it! What do you despise so about me that you must go out of your way to torment me?”

  “I have my orders,” the sorceress repeated, not giving an inch. Therese glared at her in stony silence for a moment, and then jerked her gaze away. This was for Tamwind, her Prince, her secret love. She held her breath for a long moment, willing Harn to speak to her, to advise, her to save her, but nothing came. “Let’s get on with it then, woman,” she sneered contemptuously.

  Harrow MacBridie stood, a lithe black androgynous figure. “There’s no need to take such a tone with me,” she said mildly. “I’ll require your sworn word as well, but you may as well be polite about it.”

  Therese ground her teeth together. “The word of Harn’s guards is always good,” she said grudgingly. “I will do your bidding for four days and nights, madam.” The last word crawled nastily out of the corner of her mouth.

  “That’s a little better.” Harrow was taking two jewel-faceted goblets and a filigree decanter from a sideboard. “But I’d prefer Milady, if you don’t mind. We’ll drink on it.” She began to pour red wine into the glasses, and then caught Therese’s eye. “It’s not poisoned,” she said. “If I killed you or made you ill, I’d be breaking my oath.” She held out the glass. “You are going to obey your word, aren’t you?”

  Therese looked at the light glinting off the green goblet. “Is that an order?”

  “If I speak it, it is an order, yes,” the dark-haired woman said. Therese took the glass hesitantly and looked into
it. “But if it will make you feel better, I’ll drink first,” her captor continued, pouring herself a second goblet and tossing it off.

  I swore an oath, Therese said to herself, and drank. Almost immediately, a strange tingling filled her limbs, and she felt dizzy and weak. “Bitch!” she cried out. “It was drugged after all!”

  “Of course it was,” the sorceress said conversationally. “But it won’t kill you, or make you ill. It’s a special drug only used by Skulde’s followers.” She tapped the side of her goblet and it rang brightly underneath her fingernail. “I, of course, am immune.”

  Fire was growing between Therese’s thighs; fire and swelling and hot wetness. She flushed in shame and then called on her anger to sustain her. It’s only a drug, she told herself. I can ignore it. “I don’t care what you put into me. My life, my path, my honor, my heart are all sworn to Harn. That will never change.”

  Harrow looked unimpressed. “Harn may have all those things,” she said. “Skulde merely wants a part of you that you haven’t been using. Now get up and come with me.” She gestured curtly and moved toward the door.

  Therese staggered to her feet and tried to follow, but the burning in her crotch made her cry out. Her breasts chafed somehow against the tightly bound breastplate and her skin seemed to crawl. Harrow paused and regarded her with a faint wry smile. “Take your clothes off,” she said. “You’ll feel much better.”

  “No!” cried Therese, clutching vainly between her thighs, but she met the even dark gaze of the sorceress and gave in to her oath. Her clothes and armor fell to the floor, but she paused with her sheathed sword in both hands, the white-and-blue guard’s belt dangling. This was a piece of her honor; she would die before she let it be plundered by strangers.

  “Stand it in the corner,” Harrow said as if reading her mind. “No one shall touch it until you come out in four days to reclaim it, I promise.”

  Therese limped across the floor and did as she was told, giving her sword one last glance as she turned away. It seemed stiff and forlorn, like a soldier whose watch has been forgotten. Tears bit at her eyes and she resolutely squeezed them back, clenching her fists. The ache in her crotch seemed unbearable as she followed the slim black figure of Harrow MacBridie through the doorway and into the next room.

  It was no dungeon, just a comfortable bedroom with a great luxurious four-poster bed piled with cushions. A tall cupboard in one corner overflowed books, clothing, and other items onto the floor. “Stand at the foot of the bed,” Harrow ordered her. “Yes, that’s right. Now lift your arms to shoulder height, there.” Metal manacles she had not noticed before clamped down on her wrists by some magic and she grimaced. Harn, let me not faint and shame myself, she prayed silently. Let me survive this as you helped me to survive what came before. “Now spread your legs,” said the sorceress. “Wider. No, as wide as you can. There.” She felt the cold touch of iron on her ankles and knew she was held fast.

  The sorceress uncoiled the narrow braided belt around her waist, and Therese realized that it was a whip. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her breath hissed through her teeth. “You can beat me if you want, but you’ll never break me,” she snarled. “I’ve been beaten before. It’s not as if I don’t know what to expect.”

  For the first time Harrow gave her a real smile, running the fine braided leather through her fingers. “Oh, I’ll beat you,” she said, her voice low and intimate. “But only when you beg me to.”

  “Rot!” Therese gritted out. In spite of her conviction that the bonds were probably unbreakable, she yanked on them anyway. They held, but it felt somehow good to pull on them, so she did it again. Looking up, she saw Harrow very close to her, almost touching her, and still smiling knowingly.

  “My next order,” the dark-haired woman said softly, “is that you will speak only when spoken to, and then you will tell me anything I ask, holding nothing back.”

  “If you’re interested in state secrets, you’re holding the wrong person prisoner,” Therese said sardonically. “They don’t tell me anything. I’m just a guard.”

  Harrow made a dismissive gesture. “That does not interest me. Tell me about when you were captured by Daguez’s men.”

  The young soldier caught her breath. “Why—”

  “Because I told you to,” Harrow cut her off. “And you are speaking out of turn. Answer me. They raped you, did they not?”

  Therese turned her head away, sickened by the memory. “Yes.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Seven.”

  The sorceress put her hand on Therese’s breast. The nipple was swollen hard and tight, almost painful; she toyed with it. Therese moaned. It hurt. “Did they bind you, as I have done?” Harrow was asking.

  “Yes—no, they used rope, tied my arms behind me, spread my legs with a broomstick.” The words were like bile in her mouth and she spat them out, and then gasped. Harrow’s fingers on her nipple had become an iron grip and instead of being painful, intense pleasure ran through her body. “Stop,” she moaned. “Please. Please... Milady. Don’t do that.”

  Harrow watched her carefully, but did not stop. “The drug that is in your body,” she said calmly, “is known as tihirin. It convinces your body that pain is pleasure, and vice versa. You would be surprised how useful such a thing is for interrogations.” She twisted Therese’s nipple hard, abruptly, and the woman screamed as orgasm shook her body.

  “Damn you,” she gasped, hanging limply from the bedposts. “Don’t do this. It isn’t... right.”

  Harrow laughed this time, a real laugh. “You’d prefer the pain? Very well, then, we can do that as well.” And she put her hand between her captive’s spread legs and found the sensitive place just below her clitoris. Therese cried out and tried to pull away, but there was nowhere for her to go. “As I told you before,” Harrow said in her quiet dangerous voice, “you will beg me to beat you. But we were talking about what happened last year, weren’t we? Tell me what they did to you.”

  Oh, Harn, no, not this again, she moaned to herself. “They beat me,” she choked out. “With a belt, and a chain. They stuffed my mouth with rags so I couldn’t scream, and one of them burned me, there, with a hot andiron.” She didn’t look down; Harrow could easily see the scar across her lower left breast, just under the areola.

  “And then you agreed,” Harrow said in her soft voice, “to do whatever they wanted.”

  Tears rolled down Therese’s cheeks, and this time she couldn’t stop them. “I was weak,” she whispered. “It is my shame forever.”

  “No,” the sorceress said, and Therese was surprised at the forcefulness of her tone. “You are alive today to tell about it. It was the wisest thing you could have done.” She looked up just in time to catch a flicker of—was it compassion?—in the dark tilted eyes, but then it vanished and the craggy face was as expressionless as before. “What did they make you do, then?” she asked, raking her nails down Therese’s belly. Ripples of pleasure ran through her and wetness trickled down her spread thighs.

  “They—they—” oh, please no, don’t make me remember—“The leader forced his cock into my mouth, he ordered me to suck on it, but he was thrusting so hard I just choked—” she gasped as the nails traced their way to her inner thigh—“and then they all did it, and I had to swallow it, and their cocks tasted foul... then they put me on my knees—” Therese’s tongue froze in her mouth and she tensed with pain; Harrow was touching her clitoris again.

  “They fucked you,” the sorceress said.

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  “In your cunt or in your ass?”

  “Both.” The fingers moved away, and she sagged in relief.

  “And then?”

  There was silence. The sorceress waited a moment, and then slapped Therese’s face, hard. The woman screamed at the unexpected sensation and nearly came again. “Don’t disobey me,” Harrow said.

  Her breath came in long ragged gasps. “One of them—one of them held my head, f
orced my mouth open with—with tongs, the rest—the rest pissed in my mouth.” Hot wetness streamed down her face to match what ran down her legs. “Then they put a rope around my neck, told me they were going to kill me.”

  “But they didn’t,” said Harrow, watching her closely.

  “No, they stood me on a fencepost on my toes, hanging from a tree. If I had fallen, I would have been killed, but I was found and rescued an hour later. That’s all,” she said wearily.

  “Is it,” said the sorceress musingly. “Is it indeed.” She slid the whip through her fingers thoughtfully. “Did you come?” she asked.

  Rage engulfed Therese, momentarily drowning out her fear. “Rot in hell!” she screamed, straining against the manacles. Harrow only raised an eyebrow and twisted both her swollen nipples viciously, and Therese choked and bucked her hips, sobbing as orgasm took her again.

  “That was for lying,” the dark-haired woman said sweetly. “How long has it been since you climaxed? Before today, that is? I suggest you answer me,” she added with a suggestive darkness to her tone that made Therese’s knees tremble.

  “More than a year.”

  “Not since the rape?”

  “No.” Her head drooped in defeat.

  “You pleasured youself before then?”

  “Yes.” There was no point in lying. Therese had no idea why Harrow was doing any of this. It made no sense.

  “And you’ve lain with no one else?”

  “I’m one of the Royal Guard,” Therese said dully. “A servant of Harn. My life is sworn duty. I don’t need... rutting.”

  “I wasn’t aware Harn required celibacy.” The sorceress’s voice seemed amused. Therese did not look up.

  “I don’t need it,” she repeated stubbornly. “I don’t want it.”