by Lisa Cach
He looked up and saw her, and a wild, half-crazed grin lit his face. Water slicked black streaks of hair down the sides of his cheeks, and his thin shirt was a ghost against his skin, warm tones and muscles visible through the fabric.
The mist swirled behind him.
“George!” She stretched out an arm, pointing.
He glanced over his shoulder, and when he looked back up at her the grin had gotten harder. He pulled himself up the rock wall by fingerholds, but not fast enough.
Belch flung himself from the water. George pressed himself into a depression in the wall just as the beast slammed across it. For a moment he was concealed beneath the dragon’s body; then Belch fell back, claws dragging at the rocks then slipping off, his body hitting the water with a boom followed by a deep, swallowing splash.
George climbed again, this time with fresh, frantic speed, his toes in their silver boots gripping at tiny ledges too small for Alizon to see from her vantage. Five feet from the supporting struts of the feeding platform he stopped, his hands searching for new holds that were not there, his body held slightly away from the wall as he balanced on precarious toeholds.
The mist swirled below, a splash echoing off the walls as Belch swam and circled—preparing to leap again.
George met Alizon’s eyes, his own filled with intensity and a hint of desperation.
She could not bear to watch him snatched off the wall like a tidbit of fresh flesh. Instead, she pulled back and yanked the lever that opened the trapdoor. She tore off her concealing robe, there being no time to consider the consequences of being now clad in only her burgundy gown. She twisted her robe diagonally into a bulky, awkward rope, cursing beneath her breath at there being no abandoned sheep tether to use.
She leaned down through the trapdoor and wrapped her doffed garment in a single hitch around the nearest strut, its beam a triangle between wall and platform floor. There was not enough length to tie off the robe, so she held tight to her end and, lying on her side, pulled her knees up against a post of the stall to brace herself as she bent down through the trapdoor. The other end of her improvised rope dangled three feet beneath the strut.
“You won’t be able to hold me!” George shouted.
“I’ll have to!”
“I can find another way!” He looked over his shoulder, down at the water, and she had a sudden vision of him falling and being snapped out of the air like one of the sacrificial sheep.
“Don’t do it!” she screamed.
She could see him changing his posture, loosening his grip to allow himself to fall into the water, and then the mist below swept away for a moment, showing Belch’s nose and eyes above the water, plowing toward the wall like a ship before a storm.
“Shit!” George shouted. Then, with a quick look back at the dangling robe, he made his decision. Even as Belch left the water, George released the wall, springing up the two feet between his outstretched arms and the end of the robe.
Belch’s jaws clapped shut over empty space, and George’s feet kicked at the dragon’s snout as his hands found and seized the end of the robe.
As the lizard fell back, George’s weight came down on Alizon’s robe. Her knees banged once, hard, against the post, and then the world was awhirl as the garment yanked her through the trapdoor, swung her around and dropped her next to George. Her body slammed into his and rose quickly above it, the two of them hanging suspended at either end of her rolled-up robe, which was now wrapped around the beam.
Her slide stopped with a jerk as George found purchase and took some of his weight off the robe. She dangled against him, her lower belly against his face, her arms stretched above her as she held tight. If the man was to let go of his end, she would plummet to the steaming water below. She looked down, trying and failing to see his face past her breasts and the thick braid hanging down over her green gown.
“Hot damn, red hair!” she heard, and felt the words as his warm breath came through the wool over her belly. “I didn’t imagine red hair!”
“Devil in your eye! This is no time to speak of hair! We’re about to be devoured!”
“I’ll show you devouring.” He chewed lightly at her belly, through the layers of cloth. “Hot damn!”
She kneed him in the shoulder, then used him as a foothold as she tried to climb up the robe to the supporting beam just beyond her reach. He did not protest, but instead pressed a kiss against her loins as they rose past his mouth. She grabbed the beam, and in a delayed reaction to his touch felt a muscle-weakening wave go through her. She closed her eyes against it, and her grip slipped.
“No you don’t,” George said, his arm going around her waist. He was suddenly up beside her. “No falling into the soup.”
She opened her eyes, and for the first time since the night he had come to the mount, Alizon saw him without the intervening screen of wool and the confines of her hood. Her strength slipped again.
He gave her a shake. “Come on, no going faint with terror now.”
She stiffened. “I am not frightened, you lack-wit. My arms are not as strong as yours, is all.”
Belch bellowed down below and thrashed his tail in the water like an angry cat.
“Are they strong enough for you to hang on to my back?” He didn’t wait for an answer, using his mass to press and hold her against the cavern wall as he turned around, his back against her chest. “Hold tight.”
She wrapped her arms about his neck, her legs of their own will going around his waist. Her skirt hiked up her thighs as she did.
“Oh, baby,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Ger-on-i-mo!”
“What? What?” she screeched, clinging with all her strength to his strong neck and waist as he leapt upward, catching the edge of the trapdoor and then pulling them both up by brute strength. “Jesu save me!” she cried, hanging from his back, nothing between her and the long drop down.
Again Belch lunged from the water, and this time it was her own flesh that felt the wind of his snapping jaws. George was not fast enough to keep her hanging gown from catching in Belch’s teeth. As the dragon fell back, he jerked her with him, she in turn pulling George down. Her legs came free of George’s waist, her hands breaking their hold around his neck.
In a flash, George flipped back to catch a beam and the scruff of her gown both. The skirt of the gown gave way, ripping at the tears Belch’s teeth had rent, and then all at once Alizon was yanked upward. She found herself lying on George across the floor of the wooden platform, her bum naked to the cavern air.
Before she could move to conceal herself, George was up and had her stowed under one arm, leaping with his light grace into the safety of the tunnel. He set her down and with her hand firmly in his own dragged her at a run all down the tunnel, up the stairs, and into the kitchen.
They burst into the empty room, Alizon struggling both to catch her breath and to pull her torn gown and chemise over her backside. She reached for a hood that was not there, knowing it was too late but trying to hide herself anyway.
“Kee-rist!” George exclaimed, letting her go and digging both hands through his hair. It bunched in a wild, wet mess, most of it still held by the leather band at the back of his neck. “Damn! I don’t know whether to laugh or to faint!”
His eyes lit on her, and whatever confusion he felt burned away under an intensity that made her take a step back, her hands gripping her skirt behind her back.
“And you! Hot damn!”
Then he had her face between his hands, and without so much as a by-your-leave, he lowered his mouth to hers.
Chapter Sixteen
Alizon was too stunned to move, her heart still racing from the near escape and the run up the tunnel. Her breath was coming hard, but George seemed not to notice, his lips taking hers despite how they parted to suck in air. She raised one hand to his chest, laying it lightly there as if to push him away, only something strange was happening to her, and she could not do so.
; She was dizzy from lack of air. Her senses were being overwhelmed by his closeness: by his damp warmth; by the shadow of his size, which blocked out vision of all else; by the feel of his lips on her own, pressing and tugging, and then the tip of his tongue sliding within to touch briefly against her own.
She should be concerned that he knew she was not a crone; she should be thinking of explanations to give him; but her breath grew shorter, her mind dizzier still as without thought she pressed her mouth harder against his. George’s arms came around her, and one hand slid down to the rent in her gown, reaching in and cupping her buttock.
The touch was shocking, and it startled a muffled “Umph!” out of her against his lips. She started to pull away, but he only held her tighter, his lips parting hers and his tongue stroking gently within, even as his hand squeezed and explored her. Each motion of his fingers pulled against her sex, and she was torn between embarrassment and the tingling, seductive warmth he was building.
She felt his erection hard against her belly.
God’s breath, this was what she should have had all those years ago, in the shed with Osbert. It was what she had been longing for, alone in her castle chamber.
She no longer knew if her heart raced from receding fear, the run, or arousal, or all three coming together to weaken her legs and send a warm wash of desire to her loins. This should not be happening, not here, not with him, not now. She had eleven women and girls to protect, wards who needed her clear thinking.
His fingertip brushed over her sex, and she could not care about anything else.
She did not care that his hand was where it should not be, or that he handled her as if expecting her easy acquiescence. Such considerations were of the mind, and it was the body she listened to now. It was the body whose hungers had been roused, and whose decade-long famine was so suddenly near to surcease.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pushing her fingers into his hair and pressing herself hard up against him. The tip of his finger slid again across the opening to her, and she moaned deep in her throat, the sound new to her, one she had never made. She did not care.
His hurried hunger gave her no chance to pause, his hands and mouth pushing her to go faster and farther than she might have chosen on her own, but she let him set the pace. Each unexpected, demanding touch set off a new flush of excitement, and she wanted to let him do as he would and lead her into this long yearned-for new world.
George lowered her to the floor, trapping her beneath him, the uneven slates cold and hard and strangely arousing against her exposed skin. The stubble on his cheeks burned rough against her as he kissed his way down her neck.
He yanked at the neck of her gown, baring one breast, and took the erect nipple into his hot mouth. Pleasure shot from it to her loins, bolts of sensation making her feel heavy and tensing the muscles of her legs, as if with effort she could steal more and yet more of the feeling he was creating. His tongue went around the pebble of her nipple, then he sucked at her, rubbing the pulled peak with the roughness of his tongue, his chin scraping lightly at her even as his hand went down and found her slickness.
Alizon arched her hips against his hand and the fingertip that rested against her opening. She wanted him inside her, wanted him to stroke her. She wanted everything at once, now, hard and fast and without question.
He moved his attentions to her other breast, leaving the first to tingle in the cold, and she was absurdly aroused by the bite of the air, and by her half-nakedness. His fingers began to stroke her, using her own moisture to slide over her folds and circle upon that hard nub of arousal that she had herself found in her private explorations.
His mouth came back to hers, and she allowed him entrance, sucking his tongue into her mouth, taking him in there as her body wanted to take him in below. He took his hand away from her for a moment, and she felt him yanking down his hose. Suddenly the hard heat of him was against her, the length of his manhood pressing into the soft flesh of her femininity. She arched and stroked herself against it. He guided it with his hand, its tip slick as it circled the heart of her sensation, then he lodged that tip against her entrance.
Alizon remembered how Osbert’s fumblings had hurt her, and how he had been unable to gain passage. George’s erection began to part her tender flesh, smooth and large and promising to stretch her beyond bearing.
She wanted it. Alizon did not care how it hurt or how it rent her; she wanted him inside her. She wanted the length of him thrust within her, filling her, stroking her with the power of his muscled hips and buttocks.
He caught her hands within one of his own and raised them above her head, pinning them to the ground, forcing her breasts to arch upward to his waiting mouth. She slid her thigh against the back of his, urging him forward, but he would not be rushed, the tip of him still paused at the entrance to her core.
He raised his mouth from her breast. “Tell me your name.”
She stared dumbly at him and pulled at him again with her thigh. He dipped inside her a bare fraction of an inch, then out again, taunting her.
“Your name.”
“I—” To reveal it would be too much.
He dipped again, slowly, deliciously stretching her, and her hips followed his retreat.
She should lie. She should use another’s name. But she could not think. She knew nothing but that she was being denied the one thing she wanted at this moment more than life itself.
“Alizon.”
He smiled, his green eyes looking deeply into her own, then he lowered his head to—
Suddenly he collapsed atop her, his weight knocking the wind from her.
“Mistress, are you all right?” Greta asked. The girl had appeared over George’s shoulder, a piece of firewood in her hand. Braya, Ysmay, and Joye were right behind.
Alizon wanted to scream.
“We saw he had you pinned,” Greta said. “We did right, didn’t we?”
She would flay them with her tongue, scold them from the room, only she could not gasp the air to do so. She took a moment to recoup.
The floor was suddenly no longer arousing beneath her bare flesh, George’s inert form an embarrassment lying between her legs. The virgins would never trust her dealings with him if they knew how eager a partner she had so briefly been to his lust.
“Get him off me,” she at last managed to gasp, her voice hoarse with frustrated desire, but the sound of it misled the girls into believing the worst, and they pulled him rudely from her.
“He is bleeding, mistress,” Joye called as they rolled him to the side. Alizon sat up, pulling her dress over her exposed limbs. The other virgins were drifting in from the great hall, drawn to the commotion.
“From Greta’s blow?”
Joye examined his head. “A bit. But it is his body I speak of.”
Alizon’s eyes widened. George was lying on his side, his sex helplessly exposed to the staring eyes of the virgins, but it was his back she needed to see. She and Joye rolled him onto his stomach, and she pulled up his bloodstained, torn shirt to find on his back a smattering of shallow cuts. She remembered Belch slamming against him as he clung to the wall, and imagined what it must have felt like to have the scales of Belch belly scraping down his back. There were also red weals all over George’s body, tokens of the abuse he had taken, that by the morrow would turn black and purple.
“He gave me no notion …” she said under her breath. How could he have been so battered and yet so eager to take her?
“Let’s leave the barbarian to suffer his wounds,” Braya said.
“He fought the dragon as he said he would?” Joye asked.
“He did, and narrowly escaped with his life,” she admitted.
“Better he should be eaten,” Braya said. “He attacked you. We are none of us safe with him here.”
There was an uncomfortable, excited murmur through the virgins gathered around George’s prone form.
Alizon’s first impulse was to defend him, but she bit dow
n on her lip. She and the virgins would be better served if they feared him and wanted him gone as quickly as possible. They would not be sneaking into his room if they thought him a danger, might keep themselves as well hidden as they should have all along.
And she could not admit to them how eagerly she had parted her thighs and invited his touch!
“We’ll wash his wounds and put a clean shirt upon him, but that is all the care he deserves. Greta, put on a cloak and fetch Milo. He will help to carry our guest”—she sneered the word—“to the garrison room.” She looked up at the others gathered white-faced around her and George on the floor. “There will be no doors left unlocked this night if you value the honor and safety of your persons.”
“Aye,” they mumbled. Their expressions were appropriately uneasy, but in more than one pair of eyes she saw a hint of the light of speculation at that mention of a threat to their honor.
“Flur, Pippa, Malkyn, go find a clean shirt. Reyne, Sisse, Ysmay, water and cloths to wash him. Braya, Lavena, one of my gowns and a chemise.”
“Did he tear your dress?” Braya asked in surprise, taking her eyes from George’s exposed flesh long enough to notice the state of her mistress’s garb. The others turned their eyes from George and truly saw her for the first time as well.
“It was Belch.”
A gasp went through them, and those who had begun to leave on their tasks froze and turned. “Belch!” they hissed.
“Tell us what happened, all of it,” Greta said.
“I will, but later, when he is safely locked away.” She and George had saved each other’s lives, and she told herself they were even. She owed him nothing.
“But Belch was so close?” little Flur asked.
“Close, but not close enough,” she said, trying to smile through the wave of delayed fright that washed over her. She felt her smile falter, and coughed to cover the need to sniff back threatening tears of emotional strain. She pushed to her feet. “Belch will never get the better of me.” She looked down at George with deliberate contempt, pulling her skirt away from where it brushed his leg. “What happens with ‘Saint George’ is another matter altogether.”
