And then a huge peal of thunder made the audience gasp. Rain began to fall in earnest, dampening the powdery soil. For a moment, it appeared to refresh Chiron, washing away his sweat and the nicks of blood. But Lycurgus’s ill-gained strength was telling, draining away Chiron’s ability.
I could see the moment real exhaustion took hold. As Lycurgus harried him, pushing him farther and farther down the long end of the arena, I could see the tip of Chiron’s sword sinking lower and lower. His hooves weren’t so quick; he didn’t lift his knees so high.
The rain began to turn the dust to mud, and Chiron was scrambling to his feet; Lycurgus had knocked him to his knees. A new wheal on his chest oozed bright blood. As Chiron regained his footing, Lycurgus struck again, mercilessly raising another wheal just under the first.
“Oh, Mother,” I gasped, but it was Earth Shaker who had hold of me. A sudden vision of Lycurgus’s hand squeezing my breast with cruel detachment assaulted me. I could smell his breath as his mouth latched onto my neck, his actions claiming my body even as my mind resisted. “No,” I groaned. I couldn’t sit here and watch.
That thought rang through my mind again: I couldn’t sit here and watch. But why was this required of me? I’d broken tradition to include centaurs in the Mother Rite. I’d break tradition again—I’d make this Mother Rite a true choosing.
Ripping the flounces of my skirt to my knees, I pulled my daggers from my ankle straps and leaped into the arena.
Another clap of thunder ripped through the sky as I ran toward Lycurgus, overwhelming any sound from the crowd.
As I slipped in the mud toward the combatants, I watched in horror as Lycurgus sliced another wheal into Chiron’s chest, and with dread I realized that Lycurgus merely toyed with the Centaur King.
Rain fell cold on my face, dripping into my eyes, but I still had surprise on my side. Ten paces behind Lycurgus I stopped and aimed for the spot between his shoulder blade and spine. I pulled back my dagger hand then let my blade fly.
But the wind whipped my blade, or maybe the rain made my aim untrue. The dagger merely pierced the fleshy muscle of the Lapith’s bicep.
With a bull-like bellow, Lycurgus turned toward me. What I saw in his eye wasn’t human, wasn’t sane.
As Lycurgus stalked me, Chiron found an opportunity and swung his sword at Lycurgus’s neck with all of his strength.
It should have decapitated him, but the blow didn’t stop the Lapith. Lycurgus remained standing in the pelting rain.
Undeterred, Chiron moved in and swung again, catching the crossbar of Lycurgus’s sword with the tip of his own. Rain poured down on us so hard, I could barely see, but I saw Lycurgus’s blade fall to the ground, useless.
With a deft step, Chiron hooked his hoof behind Lycurgus’s heel and shoved hard with his elbow.
My hair was matted across my face, but I didn’t wipe it away. Instead I sent a prayer to the Mother Goddess and let my second—and last—dagger fly.
Disarmed and off balance, Lycurgus fell as a third clap of thunder reverberated across the sky.
Chiron slammed a knee on his opponent’s chest, his bronze sword at the other man’s throat. But my dagger had already buried itself there, and Lycurgus was dead.
9
I didn’t need to inspect the corpse to verify the demise of Lycurgus and Earth Shaker—all of the Lapith soldiers had vanished. Along the arena fence, on the dais, my folk looked around in wonder for the missing men. I wished Thessaly much enjoyment of them.
The pelting rain was gone, too. The sky was achingly blue, and only large puddles around the arena confirmed the storm’s existence.
“Akantha,” Chiron said, letting his voice roll over the syllables like he had when we first met. It grabbed my heart, my core. We looked at each other, blood and mud smeared over our faces—and we grinned.
As if we’d lost our minds.
And the crowd started cheering: “Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!”
Chiron gave a jaunty bow to the crowd and closed the two strides between us. A dangerous gleam lit his eye, and I knew it lit mine, too. He looked the way I felt…feral.
“Akantha,” he said, stopping before me. “The crowd expects a kiss.”
“And you, my lord?” I asked. “Do you?”
“It seems you’ve left me little choice.”
“Don’t let it be too much of a hardship, King Centaur.”
“You know nothing of hardship,” he said.
“Then show me,” I taunted. “I’ve a great wish to experience something…hard.”
“As you wish, your Highness.” He bowed.
His words were innocuous, but his gaze…Chiron looked at me, and my heart nearly stopped. A searing intensity filled his gaze.
If that wasn’t desire, I was a squirming octopus yanked fresh from the Aegean.
“You want me,” I said. “You love me.”
“Yes,” he said, but he walked close to me, so close his body heat poured over me. He pulled me toward him. “I’ve come to make you queen, Akantha, and to do that I must kiss you.”
A ragged breath escaped him as he claimed me with a demanding kiss. His lips covered mine with a deliberate slowness, and he crushed me to him as if could pull me into his own body.
His hand slid behind my neck, and he pulled my face even closer to his. It hurt, oh Mother, it did. But the pain was exquisite as he worked his free hand into my hair. He forced me to yield completely.
But I’d yielded already, in the fields and glades as we uncovered the Mother’s secrets hidden in birdsong and the whisper of the breeze in the leaves. I’d yielded when I leaped from the dais to help spare his life.
And I yielded now.
His salty lips parted mine, moved over mine with a searing hunger I’d only dreamed in the Mother’s visions. My shallow, quick breaths mingled with his.
“That should please them,” he said pulling away. I staggered on my weakened legs; my hands and lips and tongue ached for him. Chiron turned to the hooting crowd, whom I’d forgotten completely, and waved. “I present to you, Queen Akantha,” he shouted. “Ruler of Palace Knossos and all of Crete!”
The crowd cheered wildly, but I looked at them blindly.
“Wave,” he said at me. “Or blow them a kiss.”
He’d earned his right to rule beside me for the next seven years, but he hadn’t earned the right to order me around like a kitchen maid.
“No,” I said.
I erased his incredulous expression, kissing him as possessively as he’d kissed me. Just as Chiron’s sword had tangled with Lycurgus’s, my tongue twisted over his. I bit his lips, almost too hard, and I sucked.
I heard the crowd calling around me, but I didn’t care. I took his face between my hands and took his lips in mine. “You are mine, Centaur King,” I breathed into his mouth. “At least for the next seven years.”
Then, and only then, did I blow my kiss to the waiting throng.
“And after that?” His lips spread into a wide smile, flashing his white teeth. “For eternity.” Then he flashed me that wicked grin that made my heart pound. “Let’s not waste a moment of it.”
THE DREAM WELL
Dawn Thompson
1
W as he the only one aboard who heard the siren’s song before the galley struck the Land’s End shoals? Something nudged him hard, buoying him toward shore, and Gar Trivelyan, Knight of the Realm, hauled himself up out of the creaming surf and collapsed on the strand, coughing up what seemed like gallons of seawater. Drifting mist caressed him, like hundreds of probing fingers, groping, stroking—covering him like a blanket. He struggled to his feet and staggered like a blind man into the wraithlike whiteness that all but hid the full Samhain moon from view.
He was aroused. Had he come that close to death? He’d heard such things occurred when a man was dying. Raising his codpiece, he soothed his burgeoning cock as he blundered into the mist. It seemed to be leading him inland. Until that moment, the urgency in his loin
s had canceled the pain in his arm. He noticed it now, for it bled profusely, running in rivulets over the hammered gold bracelet coiled like a snake just below his elbow.
Tearing a piece of homespun from the hem of his tunic, he cinched it tightly above the wound with the aid of his teeth, and staggered on, his good arm carving circles in the air ahead of him. The mist had become a thick, meandering wall impenetrable by the eye. It was as though he’d stepped off the planet. Where had the storm gone that ran the ship aground? Why was it warm here, not bitter cold as it had been when the cruel November sea had spat him out upon these shores? Could he have crossed over into the Celtic Otherworld? He’d heard of seafarers doing just that after shipwreck in Cornish waters.
He didn’t see the well until he’d run right into it, a low round affair. A gurgling spring edged with stacked stones, rising from a whitethorn grove, the trees’ branches aflutter with bits of colored cloth. A Celtic dream well?
According to myth, if one in need of a dream fulfilled dipped a bit of cloth into the water of such a well and tied it to one of the trees that guarded it with proper tribute and incantation, the dream or wish or petition requested would be granted. He had never believed in such nonsense before, but his arm was nearly severed, and it couldn’t hurt to try. There seemed no other help in the offing, and he tore another strip from his tunic, dunked it in the satiny black water, and tied it to a whitethorn branch among the other bits of cloth hanging there. Then, slipping the hammered-gold bracelet from his wounded arm, he groaned and prayed, and tossed it into the well.
No sooner had he done, when the water began to roil and bubble up, spitting over the edge as the perfect form of a naked woman broke the surface, his hammered-gold snake bracelet coiled about her upper arm. She was without blemish, her skin like alabaster, her hair teasing her buttocks with a long cascade of silken waves the color of copper burnished by the sun. It was surprisingly dry for having come from the depths of the well, and none covered her pubic mound. It was hairless, her entrance beneath resembling not the sexual organ of a woman, but the column of a rare and costly orchid whose flushed lips and purple bud beckoned irresistibly in the eerie half-light. His wound forgotten, Gar could not take his eyes from it as she stepped from the well and floated toward him, rubbing her nipples to tall hardness between her thumbs and forefingers.
What sorcery was this? And what sort of fool would he be if he didn’t take advantage of it? Ripping off his codpiece, he exposed his thick, hard cock to her gaze, and groaned as she took it in her hands. Sucking in his breath, he made a strangled sound as she ran her cool fingers along the blue-veined surface in a spiraling motion from its bulky root to the ridge of its mushroom tip. His mind was speaking to her then, screaming what he dared not speak aloud—not even to ask her name—for fear she’d evaporate before his very eyes: the tip…touch the tip! Run those cool, soft fingers over the head of my cock and make it live, my beauty….
As if she’d heard, the woman did just that, sliding the tip of her finger over the rim of his sex, moistening the sensitive head with the drops of pearly pre-come leaking from it, her forefinger lingering on the puckered opening, inviting more pearls to form.
“Your wish is granted,” she murmured. “Your wound is healed.”
So it was! Gar hadn’t even noticed until now. That cool hand riding his hot, hard shaft had canceled all thought except plunging into the petals of that exquisite orchid between her thighs until he’d filled her.
Lifting the globe of one breast, she offered her nipple. “You may have me for a little if you wish,” she said. “Every year when the moon waxes full at the Samhain feast, I am allowed to rise from the well and take a lover…if the tribute is well to pass.” She nodded toward the bracelet on her arm. “’Tis a fine trinket, this.”
It had to be a dream. He had died in the wreck, and this was his torment. He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her closer. No, this was no dream; this was real flesh he was feeling, as smooth as satin and as fragrant as the night lilies blooming in the water.
“Have I died, then?” he finally said. “Which are you, angel or demon?” Not that it mattered. He was enthralled.
The woman smiled. There was a provocative little beauty spot above the right corner of her lip. “I am neither, Gar Trivelyan,” she said. “I am called Analee, handmaiden of Annis, Goddess of the Wells. This well is mine.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know much, knight of the realm,” she returned. “Will you drink…or not?”
Gar cupped the offered breast and took the nipple in his mouth. It was hot and hard, the areola puckering taut as he laved the tawny bud with his tongue until she purred like a contented cat.
Overhead, the Samhain moon peeked down through drifting clouds like a voyeur as he nipped and sucked and drank her essence. She tasted golden, of the sun, of honey and bee pollen. Could this be happening? His mind said no, but his cock said yes as she let it go and stripped him of his tunic and breeches. He’d lost his cloak, sword, and sandals in the sea.
“Come,” she said, leading him into the mist.
She led him through lush fields burgeoning with all manner of wildflowers, across streams and brooks swathed in the ghostly mist that seemed alive the way it followed them, weaving in and out among the trunks of ancient hawthorns and young saplings that seemed to sigh and sway and carry on hushed conversations with each other.
All at once, a red-and-white-striped canopy came into view; a tournament tent of the kind used by revelers at routs and feasts and festivals was nestled deep in a little clearing in the whitethorn grove, where it gave way to oak and ash. The flap was turned back, and a bed made with petal-strewn quilts of satin and down beckoned. Once inside, the goddess of the well drew Gar to her, her hands flitting over his moist skin as they explored his naked body until, unable to help himself, he drove her down beneath him in the bed.
Nothing seemed real, and yet it was. Otherworldly visits were hazardous at best. Dangers lurked in wait at every turn for mortals sojourning in the parallel dimension—dangers that could trap a man forever, or devour him body and soul. Had he fallen into a trap? Was he about to lose his immortal soul? These were natural concerns. But then, in the arms of the captivating Analee, while her deft fingers were exploring his body, touching him in places no woman had ever touched him before, while her sweet essence nourished him as he suckled at those perfect breasts, nothing mattered but the moment, and the beautiful Goddess of the Well.
Straddling him, she knelt there, her hands flitting over his body, exploring the rock-hard muscles that had tensed in his biceps, in his broad chest and roped torso. Inching lower, she gripped his cock in both her tiny hands, for one hand could not do it justice, and began pumping it in a spiraling motion like she had done before. Slow, deep revolutions along his shaft made him harder still, as she teased the mushroom tip just enough to drive him mad. Meanwhile, his fingers found her nipples, pinching, tweaking, until she writhed against him, grinding the parted lips of her slit into his bulging testicles, into the base of his cock as she played with it.
Gar groaned. He felt her release as she rubbed up against him, felt her juices flow, moistening his genitals, and the throbbing, shuddering palpitations of her climax. Her pleasure moans were throaty and deep, as she threw her head back until her long coppery hair rippled over her buttocks and grazed his thighs beneath her. It was more than he could bear. His cock was bursting. Profoundly grateful that she had come, he rolled her over on her back and in one motion thrust into her, parting her orchid-like nether lips, gliding on her wetness until he’d filled her.
“You said that I could have you for…a little,” he panted, undulating gently, for to drive himself into her now would bring him to climax in a heartbeat. As it was, he’d begun to pray to forestall the inevitable; a tactic that had always given him more staying power in the past. But that was before Analee, Goddess of the Dream Well. She had bewitched him.
“For a little,
yes,” she purred. How beautiful she was, with her hooded eyes dilated with desire, her full lips parted to receive his kiss, her fair skin rouged with the fiery blush of sex. She was like a rare orchid, indeed, and Gar longed to open her petals one by one.
“How little is…‘a little’?” he asked, for that would depend upon what happened next. If she were to evaporate like the mist at any moment, he would make the most of it, but if there was time, he could address his immediate need and then love her properly. How strange that the word love had formed in his mind. He was a seasoned warrior, and he had bedded many, but love had nothing to do with it. He was of the firm belief that a warrior should have no truck with love. Thus far, he’d managed to dodge Cupid’s darts, but that, too, was before the magical goddess of the well. Though it was plain that her advances toward him were pure lust, she had reminded him that there was such a thing as love, and that it was missing from his mundane existence.
“Until the dawn,” she murmured.
Wrapping her legs around his waist, Analee wound her arms about his neck and threaded her fingers through his dark, wavy hair. He wore it long, below his ears. Her touch was like a lightning strike, the grip of those skilled fingers sending shock waves through his loins. Gritting his teeth, he shut his eyes and groaned, and she fisted her fingers tightly in the locks at the back of his neck, and arched her back, drawing him closer.
“Pleasure yourself, Gar Trivelyan,” she said, her voice throaty and soft, “even as I have done. I am yours till the sun chases the moon…”
Gar could feel her womb. There was barely room for his cock in the tight confines of her sexual seat. She felt like hot silk, her juices laving him as he pistoned into her again and again until he cried out as the petal soft lips of her vagina gripped his shaft, milking him dry of every drop
The orgasm was like no other. He filled her to overflowing, as his heartbeat matched the pumping, throbbing, shuddering rhythm that drove his cock relentlessly inside her. The pulse beat in his sexual stream was so acute he feared it would drive his heart right through his heaving ribcage.
Eros Island Page 7
