Gar couldn’t imagine a world without time. Nonetheless, he was held captive in one now, and if he wasn’t very careful, very clever, he would find himself a prisoner in the Otherworld forever.
He laughed. “And you, I fear could never become accustomed to the restrictions of time were you in my world, my lady,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But then, I will never have to.”
Of course she wouldn’t. There was no entity powerful enough in the mortal realm to bind her there against her will as she was going to attempt to do to him in her world.
“And yet, time must exist here for you to have stopped it,” he served.
“All here is illusion, knight of the realm.”
“Even you, my lady?”
“Ask that there between your legs if I am ‘illusion.’”
Gar was about to reply, when the whiz and twang of an arrow finding its mark struck the cloth beneath him dangerously close to his left thigh, where his erect cock rested. He felt the breeze it made and vaulted to his feet, searching the drifting mist for some sign of the bowman who had launched it. But all was still, and he seized the arrow, broke it over his knee, and tossed the pieces aside. No sooner had he done so and begun to resume his seat, when another arrow whizzed past him, coming to ground exactly where he would have reclined.
Analee laughed as Gar disposed of the second arrow as he had done the first one. “Yan is anxious for the dawn as well, I think,” she tittered, rocking back on her heels where she knelt on the cloth.
A third arrow sailed through the air. This time it struck close to Analee, and her demeanor darkened. All trace of her levity had disappeared as she surged to her feet, tossing the grapes down with force enough to squash them.
“Perhaps he is the one in need of tethers,” Gar said, as the centaur pranced out of the mist, his dark glower menacing them both.
“I will deal with this,” the goddess said. Swirling her transparent cloak about her, she strode toward the creature, who had reloaded his bow.
“Put that down!” she commanded the centaur.
“You mean to keep him!” the creature said, waving his arm toward the sky. “This is not like the other times. I saw you in the woods.” He thumped his chest with a scathing fist. “I am your consort. Him, never! He will taste my arrow if you detain him here.”
“You overstep your bounds,” she warned him, stroking his sleek destrier body. “In due time, things will be as they were between us. You must be patient, Yan.”
“And meanwhile I am trapped thus!” the centaur said, rearing out of her reach. “I am denied you in the body of this beast, while you lie with that…that human!”
She had tampered with time—his time, at any rate. Gar had his answer now. His worst fears were realized. She did not mean to let him go, she never did. She had tricked him—bewitched him—beguiled him with her fay glamour, and he was at her mercy. Cold chills riveted him to the spot where he stood. That was the other thing he should have remembered: The fay could never be trusted. They were tricksters and pranksters, and no matter how sweetly they seduced a man, he was doomed if he were to succumb to their wiles.
“You do not rule here, Yan!” the goddess shrilled. “Remember yourself, else you learn to love your present incarnation.”
“Keep him, and I will kill him, Analee. You were right when you told him my aim was true, that if I wanted to hit him I would have done.”
“You heard that, then?”
The centaur nodded. “You forget that I hear everything! You go too far. Keep in mind that I can redeem myself with the gods exposing you. Mother Annis would not take kindly to the way you have abused your office were she to learn of it. She has dominion over all the wells—and you, my sweet!”
“You wouldn’t dare!” she shrilled
“Oh, wouldn’t I? Do not think to put me to the test! And as to your human, I do not want to kill him. He is just as much your victim as I am, but take no comfort in it, for I will if needs must. I will not be made the laughingstock—no longer!”
Unconsciously, Gar reached for the sword missing from his hip and cursed under his breath. He felt doubly naked without the two-edged weapon of Toledo steel he’d sacrificed to the sea during the shipwreck, for it weighted him down in the water. How he wished he had it now, safe in its leather scabbard at his side.
“You make too much of this,” the goddess murmured, attempting to stroke the irate centaur again, and again the creature pranced and reared and sidled out of her reach. “It is Samhain!” she went on. “Let me have my bit of fun. All will be as it was between us come the dawn. You have done as I bade you, haven’t you?”
The centaur nodded. “And that’s another thing! I do not hold with cages, I—”
“Silence!” she snapped. “Come away. He will hear!”
“Promise me no harm will come to—”
“Be still, I said!” the goddess demanded, leading him away.
Though they spoke still, they were out of earshot, and Gar sank back down against the pillow. Supporting himself upon one elbow, he strained his ears and searched the mist that had swallowed them, but he could neither see nor hear them now except for the buzz of incoherent mumblings. Analee was definitely up to something. The quirk of fate that had pitched him into the Otherworld had left him ill prepared to deal with whatever that might be. He would have to rely upon his wits to outwit the goddess, and what faery myths he’d been fed at his mother’s knee. So far, the latter had served him well enough. He knew enough not to trust any entity, or accept food in the Otherworld. The trouble was most of his Otherworldly edification came in the form of prevention, rather than cure. He knew what to do to avoid captivity, but not how to escape from it, if there even was a way to escape. It did not bode well.
Presently, Analee parted the mist, returning. Gar knew she would not leave him long unattended. He watched her approach, raking her with eyes hooded with desire. He could not help himself. She had bewitched him. Torn between a passion she commanded and the last shreds of his humanity, he gritted his teeth and held his breath, waiting for her to speak.
“He will bother us no more,” she said, kneeling down beside him.
“I cannot say as I blame him much,” Gar said, reclining full length, his hands beneath his head in as casual a pose as he could muster. “If the situation was reversed and you were my permanent consort, I would be feeling jealousy myself.”
“He will get over it.”
“Does he really mean to kill me if you keep me here?” It was a risk, but he needed her to know he’d overheard at least that much of her conversation with the centaur.
“You do not understand him as I do,” she said. “He will not harm you. Once the dawn has come and gone—”
Gar waved his hand toward the sky. “The moon has not yet moved, my lady. That tends to make his assessment of the situation somewhat trustworthy.”
“Forget him,” Analee warbled, reaching to stroke his cock. “He means nothing to us. This is the place I spoke of, where we wait for the dawn, where I award you the last of my favors. Put Yan and his jealous nonsense out of your mind, and submit to me this one last time before we part.”
Her cool hand riding up and down his shaft had made him harder than before. She knew just where to touch, just how to stroke to bring him to the brink of ecstasy, coming near, but only teasing those erogenous points that set him afire from the inside out. Right now, it was his testicles she teased, her skilled fingers flitting over them with the lightest touch, like that of a butterfly’s wing. He shut his eyes and groaned. There was no help for it.
“You have a very persuasive touch, my lady of the well,” he murmured.
“You have a very willing member, knight of the realm. But you must keep up your strength. Did you have something to eat while I was gone?”
“My hunger is only for you,” Gar said, his voice a seduction. Two could play at her dubious game.
“But it is such a pity to waste all
this,” she said, pouting. She plucked a grape from the bunch she’d discarded earlier and slid it between her teeth. Bending over him, she lowered the fruit to his lips. “Take it from me,” she murmured. “Quench your thirst in the sweet juice of this fruit of the vine, and I will give you pleasures you cannot possibly imagine.”
Gar turned his head aside. “I am not fond of grapes, my lady,” he hedged. He dared not let a single drop of the grape juice into his mouth, for to taste it would damn him.
The goddess sucked the grape between her teeth and bit down, releasing its juice while she swallowed the rest, then lowered her dripping mouth to his. “Kiss me,” she whispered only inches from his lips.
“I told you,” he replied. “I do not like the taste of grapes.”
“A nut, then?” she coerced him, slipping one between her teeth.
“Thank you, no,” he said. “As I said, I have an appetite only for you.”
The goddess frowned, and her hand tightened upon his cock. “Do you know how rude it is to refuse my hospitality, a goddess of the Celtic Otherworld?”
“I did not ask for such a feast, and you did not promise it,” Gar said steadily. “It is more than enough that I feast upon you for what little time I have left.”
“Then I must insist that you take the tiniest morsel out of respect for the many hands that have prepared it especially for you. We fay are easily insulted. You would not wish to be the cause of any such insult, would you?”
There was no way out now. He looked her long in the eyes, and had the good sense to take back his cock from her before speaking. “My lady, any fool knows not to take food from the fay,” he said. “And there is no use to try to trick me, for such tricks have no power. As tempting as the prospect is of lying in your arms for the rest of my days, I wouldn’t last long with your Yan stalking me. His arrow came a little too close to my cock just now for me to put any trust in him if we were to consort on a permanent basis.” He gestured toward the heavens. “So you may as well unbind the moon, and let dawn break.”
The goddess shrieked like a banshee, crushing two bunches of grapes in her white-knuckled fists to pulp and rivulets of sticky juice. Surging to her feet, she kicked the bowls and trenchers, scattering the rest of the food in all directions. Nuts sailing through the air quickly became the prize of scurrying squirrels and chipmunks. Larger woodland creatures made off with the fruit, and field mice gobbled up the crumbs of cheese, while birds flew down from the trees at the edge of the wood to fight over the bread.
A burst of deep masculine laughter erupted from the mist. Yan, no doubt, Gar surmised. The triumphant sound only angered the goddess more, and she dropped to her knees, smearing the crushed grape pulp none too gently over Gar’s face and chest, over his engorged penis and swollen testicles.
Gar vaulted upright and seized her upper arms, shaking her. His hand grazed the coiled gold serpent bracelet he’d given her as tribute what seemed an eternity ago, and very well could have been, considering her command of time.
“Have you forgotten this so soon?” he said, flicking the bracelet with his thumb.
The goddess laughed. “You have received favors that far surpass the value of that trinket, knight of the realm,” she chided.
“Whose fault is that, then?” he retorted. “You made the rules, gave your favors, enchanted me with libidinous lust to have your way with me. I have been your slave, woman! How is such as that my fault, eh?”
Analee relaxed in his grip. “Very well,” she said. “Perhaps I have been hasty. I do not often get so skilled a lover. You are a lion, Gar Trivelyan, a rampant lion, like the device upon the crest of your people. Can you blame me for wanting to tame you to my will? Look at what you have made of me.”
Gar clamped his teeth over his tongue for fear of saying, you, my lady, are like a puff adder, and I had naught to do with your making.
“But let us part friends,” she went on, her voice dripping honey. “Let me love you just once more before the dawn.”
The whole erotic episode had hardened him like steel. The tactile feel of crushed fruit ground into his skin, into his cock and the taut skin of his testicles filled him with an insatiable longing that she lick him clean of it.
But the moon hadn’t moved overhead, and again he nodded toward it. “Once I see that you are in earnest,” he said, waiting.
Analee waved her hand, and the aura around the full Samhain moon flared. “Done,” she said. “Watch, and you will see it move among the stars if you do not believe me.”
The centaur’s laughter had ceased echoing from beyond the mist. Acutely aware of the danger of arrows, Gar could only hope that the creature would also see the moon’s descent and leave his longbow unloaded.
His eyes hooded with desire, Gar watched the goddess kneel beside him, and groaned as she began to lave the grape pulp from his chest. He shut his eyes altogether as she licked the sweet, sticky juice from his face. She was very thorough, and seemed to be rubbing her genitals at the same time. Her soft, warm tongue was fulfilling his fantasy as if she’d read his mind, but then, who was it that had put the thought in his mind to begin with? It had to be her doing, just as everything she had done to him since he tossed the bracelet into the well had been her doing. A captive of her seduction, he did not open his eyes again until she’d begun to concentrate upon his middle.
The first thing he looked toward was the moon. Yes, she had kept her word. It had begun its descent, and he began to relax as she straddled him and inched lower along his torso, laving his cock from root to tip. How he longed for her to suck him hard until he came, but she did not. Moving lower still, she laved the pulp and juice from his testicles, until she’d cleaned away every trace, before returning to his cock.
Gar threaded his fingers though her hair as she took his penis in her mouth and began to suck in long, spiraling plunges, meanwhile flicking the tender skin of his shaft with her tongue. Again and again, she traced the distended veins as she took him deeper into her throat, avoiding the sensitive head of his cock until he begged for her to lave it, his hips raised for her to take him deeper still.
As her plunges grew more rapid, her hardened nipples scraped against his corded thighs until he could bear no more. As if they possessed a will of their own, his hips jerked forward as what felt like white-hot tongues of liquid fire rushed through his loins. The pumping, pulsating climax drained him of every drop.
His lungs gave up his breath in one long shuddering exhalation. It was a moment before he opened the eyes he’d screwed shut, and her image came clear. Something triumphant in her gaze trained upon him flagged caution and his eyes flashed toward the indigo vault above. He breathed another sigh, this time in relief. All was as it should be. The moon was still descending. Could he have misjudged her? Had she finally met her match and yielded to his will?
Rolling her over, he straddled her, intending to plunge into her while his cock was still hard, and pleasure her in kind, but she stopped him with a gentle hand.
“No,” she purred. “Do to me as I have done to you, knight of the realm. I want to feel your tongue inside me…deep inside me. We have not done it thus as yet.”
Gar did not speak. It seemed a reasonable enough request, since it was their last time together, and he spread her legs and moved between them, running his tongue first over her belly and pubic mound. Inching lower, he spread her petal-like nether lips and found the hard bud of her clitoris with his tongue. Erect, the distended nub looked purple in the moonlight. He laved it slowly at first, his tongue sketching little whorls around it, making it harder still. He could feel the pulse in it through the sensitive tip of his tongue, as laving became sucking and sucking became nipping.
She fisted her hands in his damp hair. “Enough,” she panted, “…before I come without my fantasy fulfilled. Take me with your tongue, knight of the realm. Take me deeply!”
Gar spread her open wide and thrust his tongue inside the musky mysterious darkness of her nether lips glid
ing on her sweet juices, her sweet familiar juices. What was he tasting? His whole body stiffened as she held his head firmly against her slit, against the first layer of the petals of her sex he longed to peel away. But he could penetrate her no deeper. Beyond that point, she was closed to him. Something round and hard blocking her entrance pressed up against his unsuspecting tongue.
“Take it!” she cried, as her pelvic muscles forced the grape she had inserted there against his mouth. “Swallow, and be mine forever!”
Gar scrambled back from her and spat out the fruit, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bitch!” he seethed. “You would attempt to trick me anyway?” He surged to his feet, both hands fisted at his sides. The mist had begun to thin. He saw the centaur before he heard its laughter, where he stood close by at the edge of the thicket. He had obviously been watching them.
“Well done, my fellow consort!” the creature trumpeted between rousing spurts of guttural chuckles that boomed through the quiet. “Well done, indeed!”
Gar glanced toward the sky. The moon was still descending, but the Goddess of the Dream Well, on her feet now, let lose an earsplitting shriek as she spun in a cyclonic whirl, raising severed wildflower heads into the air like a scythe had decapitated them. The dew-drenched blooms rained down over them as she slowly spun to a stop. Then waving her hand, she pointed, parting the mist to reveal a sight that all but stopped Gar’s heart. A wailing sound so mournful and forlorn pierced the predawn darkness, and Gar swayed as if he’d been struck. Before him stood a cage fitted with a large, heart-shaped padlock. Trapped inside was the little seal, her flipper reaching toward him through the bars.
Blinding pinpoints of white-hot light starred Gar’s vision. The poor creature was begging him for her freedom. Her cries pierced his heart, and he ran to the cage, but to his horror, he ran right through it. It wasn’t real, but a ghostly illusion, and the little selkie had no corporeal substance. The image vanished into the mist as he spun and whirled about in the decapitated wildflowers trying in vain to make the vision reappear, but all that remained was the melancholy echo of the little seal’s mournful wail.
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