by S. J. Lewis
He picked her up in his arms and kissed her as he carried her to the bed. She was a pleasant armful, and she kissed back hungrily, wriggling ever so slowly and seductively and yet innocently, as if she was unaware of what her body was doing. He laid her down gently and stepped back to undress. He wanted to feel her warm and willing flesh against his. She awaited him, writhing and panting, staring up at him, her slim hands clutching at the bedcovers. Her movements quickened and her eyes widened as he shed his breeches and she saw how much he desired her. As he came to her she reached up and clutched at him, trying to pull him down onto her.
“My lord…” she moaned. He put his hand across her mouth.
“Amalie,” he began. Given what was to follow, it seemed fitting to call her by her name now. “I do not think you will be able to remain quiet, and quiet is essential here.”
“My lord?” She frowned, confused and perhaps fearful that he would not make love to her. “I will be quiet! I promise! Now, please…” She clutched at him again.
“Wait,” he held up a hand. “I have yet to have a woman remain quiet, no matter what she may promise beforehand. If we are to do this, I think I must gag you first.”
“Ah!” She smiled brightly. “I understand! Please, gag me, my lord. I will submit willingly.” She got onto her knees and turned her back to him, then lifted her hair up in her hands. He had prepared the gag ahead of time and now he drew it from his discarded doublet. It was of white linen, with a large knot in the middle of it to fit into and fill her sweet mouth. She held still for him as he pushed it between her lips and waited as he knotted it securely. When he had finished, she held her pose until he slid his arms around her and took her small, firm breasts in his hands. She shivered at his touch. The gag muffled her moan as effectively as he had hoped it would, and then she had turned and clasped him close and was pulling him down with a sudden, desperate strength. She did not seem uncertain or nervous any longer, only anxious and eager. Above the gag, her eyes were bright.
He had it on good authority that she had been a virgin when she was married off to the ancient baron. She had not cared for the match at all, but as the daughter of a minor noble she had had no choice in the matter. Whether his information was accurate or not, it was doubtful that her doddering old husband had taught her much about the ways of a man and a maid in bed. She seemed very eager to learn all those things at his hands, and he was just as eager to teach her. He kissed her neck and shoulders as his hands caressed her body. Her flesh seemed hot now, and she kept trying to push or pull him into position to mount her. She was more avid than skilled, so there were a few awkward moments. He continued kissing, stroking and caressing her, trying to find what gave her the most pleasure. He did not have to go to all that trouble. He could do what was necessary in only a few moments, but that seemed to be a poor way to treat a lonely and worried young woman who was willing to place all her trust in him.
After a little while, she appeared to understand what he was doing, and she began stroking and caressing his big, scarred body with her soft, white hands, trying to give him pleasure as well. She could not kiss him, so long as she was gagged, but she pressed her mouth to his body when and where she could nonetheless.
It was finally time. He gently pushed her down onto her back. He did not have to part her legs. She did that herself. Her breathing was labored now, her eyes pleading. She held very still for him as he mounted her, but her whole body trembled as he began to thrust himself into her. She was ready, beyond a doubt, and as tight as she felt, his cock penetrated her easily. The further in he went, the more her eyes rolled up and the tighter she gripped him with her arms. He held still himself until her eyes resumed their proper places, and then he gave one last, quick, hard thrust. She threw her head back, hissing through the gag. He felt her nails digging into his back, and he began thrusting, slowly at first, gradually quickening his pace. She shuddered and shook and trembled under him, moaning and groaning, her eyes closed. He wondered if she was imagining some other man holding her, perhaps some lost love. It did not matter. He was here, and she was here, and all that mattered was what they did together. He had gained some skills over the years, and he used them now to give her as much pleasure as he could. She responded to him like a desert blooming after a life-giving rain, and he was touched. When she came, she clung to him desperately, her lovely body quivering and shaking. He was glad for the gag, for she was not only moaning now but shrieking at the intensity of what she was feeling. For his own part, he was too close himself to hold back now, so he continued thrusting. Then he came as well. As he groaned with each violent emission, he thought he heard her sobbing, her face buried against his chest.
***
“Thank you, my lord,” she breathed. She caressed his beard with her hand as he lay next to her. Her eyes were still bright with tears, but she was no longer crying.
“Thank you, milady,” he smiled back. He took her hand in his and kissed it.
“Is that what it is supposed to be like?” she whispered. “All thunder and lightning and earthquake?”
“Yes,” he replied, and kissed her hand again. She laughed quietly. “Ah, I feel free! I feel as if I could fly!”
“Quiet, milady,” he put a finger to her lips. “Not so loudly.”
“Yes.” She whispered, snuggling closer to him. He held her gently. She felt small and young and fragile in his arms. For a time, they were silent, except when she murmured contentedly. She ran her fingertips through his beard, through the hairs on his chest, and then through his beard again. It felt good when she did that.
“You have been wounded, my lord,” she said as she traced a white scar on his arm.
“Many times, milady,” he said, kissing her forehead. “And yet I am still here. War is a chancy business. I have been fortunate so far.”
Must you leave soon?” she asked, sounding suddenly anxious. “Can you yet stay for a little while?”
“I must leave, but not soon, milady,” he replied. “I will stay for as long as it is safe. Would you like some more wine?”
“Yes, please,” she murmured happily.
He rose from the bed and went to the side table again. When he turned back to the bed he saw that she was no longer lying in it. Instead, she stood alongside it, still naked, still lovely, especially with her long hair in such appealing disarray. She smiled at him and raised and spread her arms. Once more, she turned slowly so that he could see all of her.
“I feel wanton,” she almost giggled as he came back to her. “Is that wicked of me?”
“Is it wicked for a starving man to crave food?” he responded. He handed her a goblet, and they drank. Then he put the goblets aside and took her in his arms. She sighed contentedly.
“But I must be honest with you, Amelie,” he said. “After this night, we may never see each other again, and it would not be safe, or wise, for us to share a bed again.”
“I know,” she said. “I knew that from the beginning. But that is for the future. For now, we have the rest of the night, or as much of it as you can safely spare. Come back to the bed with me, my very dear general, and show me more of how it is supposed to be. Gag me again, and I will do whatever you desire, and gladly.”
He picked her up once more and laid her on the bed. An impulse of caution prompted him to go and check the door bolt and the sleeping handmaid. She seemed all right. She was even snoring softly now. When he returned to the bed, Amelie pressed herself against him, sighing.
“I think you are a sorcerer,” she whispered. “You have cast a spell upon me. I shall hate to leave your Andallene.”
“There was no spell, Amelie, truly. I will hate to see you leave.”
She kissed him again, softly and passionately. Then she handed him the gag, smiling as he took it from her hand, and opened her mouth for it.
***
The night was almost spent, and so was he. Amelie was asleep, a winsome smile playing about her lips. He stroked her hair gently, and she stir
red and murmured in her sleep. He hoped he had given her what she needed so badly, an heir to the barony. No matter what the baron’s sister might do or say, and she was likely to do and say plenty, the Emperor would uphold the rights of that heir and give the widowed baroness full right and title to act as that heir’s guardian. There was still much that could go wrong with the plan, but as a soldier he understood that. You did your duty, nonetheless.
The bed was in wild disarray. To leave it in that state would arouse more than suspicions. He rose and donned his clothes, then went to the secret door and opened it. Two trusted chambermaids entered the room, ready to put it in order. He preceded them and picked the sleeping Amelie up after wrapping her naked body in a sheet. He carried her over to a couch and sat there, cradling her, while the maids went silently about their work. He paid them no attention, contenting himself with watching Amelie as she slept. She seemed too young for the heavy charges that would be laid upon her, but he thought she understood her duty as well as he understood his. He would send spies to her barony from time to time to keep watch over her, and if the threats against her seemed to great, he could send other agents to attend to them.
The chambermaids finished their work and left. He carried Amelie to the bed one last time, and laid her down upon it for one last time, carefully removing the sheet. For one last time, he gazed upon her unadorned beauty before he pulled the bedcovers up over her. Then he kissed her, one last time, and quietly left, closing and securing the secret door behind him.
Questions Asked And Answered
“So,” she smiled as she sat down gracefully on the big, comfortable armchair in her living room. “What did you think of the play?” She smiled at him over the rim of her glass as she took a sip of her drink. She crossed her legs and the hem of her skirt slid a little further up her thigh. She acted as if she didn’t notice that, and tilted her head to one side as she waited for his answer.
Already seated on her couch, he took a sip from his own drink, heavy on the orange juice and light on the rum, frowning slightly as if he was trying to choose his words. The fact was that he had a lot more to think about tonight than the play they’d seen. He’d known her for several years now, and he’d always regarded her as a good friend, but no more than a friend. They had similar tastes, and similar backgrounds, and they liked each other well enough, but there had never been any sexual chemistry between them. Those certainties had melted away over the course of the evening. She had been flirtatious and teasing right from the start, when she had opened her door to him and done a slow pirouette in the front hallway to show off her new dress and ask him if he liked it.
He had liked it very much indeed. The dark red color suited her very well. The silk like material clung here and draped there quite attractively. The thin spaghetti straps that held it all up left her creamy shoulders bare, and the flaring skirt ended just a few inches above her knees. Low-heeled sandals a shade or two darker than the dress completed the ensemble. But…it was an ensemble designed for seduction, and seeing her in it had left him off-balance throughout the evening. Her actions had only contributed to his confusion. All through dinner, she had toyed with her food, making small productions out of each dainty bite. She also kept smiling at them in a way that suggested they shared some intimate secret. She had laughed at even his weakest jokes, tossing her thick mane of chestnut hair, flashing her pearly white teeth and her expressive green eyes at him.
Had she been any other woman, he’d have been sure what was going on. He’d known her for so long, though, that his old, comfortable habit of seeing her as a friend was still so strong that he kept wondering if he was really seeing what he was seeing or just imagining it. On top of everything, there was that play they had gone to see. The theater was small and dark and old. From what he’d seen of the audience, it was also very popular with people who liked to think of themselves as ‘artists’. He’d been one of he few men there actually wearing a suit, and she had been one of the few women not sporting tattoos or piercings. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have gone to such a place, but she had told him that she wanted to see the play because a friend of hers had written it.
The first act had been all right in spots, but overall very forgettable, with way too much talking that seemed to start from nowhere and finish up in the same place. The second act, though…that was actually kind of interesting at first, even though, or maybe because, it seemed to have nothing at all to do with the first act. The curtain had gone up on a very spare and dimly lit set. All he’d been able to make out was that there was someone sitting in a chair at center stage. Then a spotlight clicked on, directly above the seated figure, and a gasp went up from the audience. Many leaned forward in their narrow, uncomfortable seats. He almost did himself.
There was a woman in the chair, a pretty young blonde. He had a vague recollection of her as being one of the minor characters from the first act, one with few lines but a sexy, purring voice. The chair appeared to be heavily and solidly built of dark wood, and she was tied to it. Ropes lashed her ankles to the front legs, and it looked like her hands were bound behind her as well, with her arms pulled back and over the back of the chair. She was barefoot. When she lifted her head to look around, he could see that she was gagged, with a wad of white cloth stuffed into her mouth and held in place with rope. He barely noticed the figure approaching her from stage left at first, until the actor got close enough to throw the contents of a glass of water in the blonde’s face.
After that unexpected bit of action, though, the play reverted to lots and lots of dialogue. Actually, since the actress was gagged, it was more of a windy monologue on the part of the actor, punctuated now and again by whatever noises the actress was able to make through her gag. She did a creditable job. He could easily tell when she was agreeing and when she was disagreeing, and her delivery had a lot more emotion behind it than the actor’s did. Then, just as he was becoming bored with all the yakking the actor had abruptly, and without warning, ripped open the actress’ blouse and his interest was renewed.
From that point on, the play followed a pattern. The actor would rant, and occasionally rave, walking back and forth across the stage until the audience started to nod off again, and then he would rip off another bit of the actress’ clothing. Her skirt had been the second thing to go, and it took a lot of tugging for him to get it off of her. The flimsy, frilly brassiere the actress wore had been much easier to tear away, revealing small, but attractively perky pink-nippled breasts. By then, most of the male part of the audience, and some of the female part, seemed willing to put up with any amount of windy oratory just to see what would happen next, and how far it would go. When the actress finally lost her panties, the actor blocked the audience’s view at first. When he stepped away the audience had all of half a second to look before the lights cut out and the play ended.
“Well,” she prompted as she ran her fingertip around the rim of her glass. “Tell me. What did you think of the play?” She smiled without showing her teeth.
Now he was certain that she had set out to seduce him, but he couldn’t imagine why, after all these years. She was a very attractive woman, and the primitive part of his brain was already imagining what she would look like naked and how she would be in bed, but at the same her one-sided attempt to change the nature of their relationship annoyed him somehow. He decided to answer her question rather than asking the one he wanted to.
“Except for the gratuitous nudity, which I didn’t mind, it was pretty ordinary and forgettable. Still, I think your friend’s play will have a respectable run, but only because of that gratuitous nudity.”
“Oh, come on!” She laughed throatily, lounging back in her chair. “The nudity wasn’t gratuitous at all! It was an important part of the scene.”
“It was important because without it most of the audience would have gotten up and left before it was over. Given that, maybe it wasn’t gratuitous after all. But what was that character thinking? The male character, I mean? Here
he has this pretty young woman tied up and helpless and he seems to want to try to talk her to death. I had the impression that he ripped off her clothes from time to time to keep her from falling asleep out of sheer boredom.”
“Oh?” She took a long drink from her glass, looking at him over the rim again. She had a teasing, taunting attitude. “And what would you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she went on, her voice a little husky, “What would you do if you had a pretty woman all tied up and helpless?”
“That depends,” he countered. He guessed from her attitude that she had some idea, though he couldn’t figure out where or how she’d come by it. “Is she willing, or unwilling?”
“Does that really matter?”
“To me it does.”
“Well, then,” she smiled. “Let’s say that she’s willing, because she wants to satisfy her curiosity…” Her voice trailed off and she raised one perfect eyebrow as she tilted her head slightly to one side.
It became very, very quiet and still there in her living room. He couldn’t even hear any traffic passing by in the street outside. It was very clear to him that a woman like that asking a question in that provocative way was expecting something more than a really good description. He felt challenged, and aroused enough by that challenge to feel simultaneously lightheaded and focused. He needed just a little time to think and to steel himself before taking the next step. He bought that time by carefully and deliberately placing his glass down on its coaster on the end table. That done, he turned all of his attention on her.
“Stand up,” he ordered as he leaned back and put his arms up on the back of the couch.
That perfect eyebrow inched fractionally higher. Her smile wavered a little, but didn’t go away. She set her own glass down on its own coaster on another end table and rose to her feet in one fluid, graceful motion. He let her stand there for a moment, wondering what to expect from him next even as he wondered what he could expect from her.
