by Georgia Fox
Jesamyn's gaze narrowed on the card in her hand as she thought quickly. "A troublesome woman enters your life."
"Well, that's an easy one," he scoffed. "Most wenches are troublesome, and there is always at least one around."
She moved on to the next card. "The ten of Swords..." She paused. Had she dealt the cards wrong? This could not be. The ten of Swords was a powerful good luck card and often meant a misfortune averted. It should have been the four of Swords, as it was when she looked before — a warning to be wary of friends who are not all that they seem, a danger card. Somehow, overnight, he had gone from danger to good fortune. Something was amiss.
She flipped another card. This time it was from the Major Arcana.
The Lovers.
He looked at it and grinned. "I know what that one means."
The illustration, of course, was plain, even to a layman.
"The cards are difficult this night," she muttered. "Sometimes they like to lead me astray, or they have hidden meaning. The moon is full tonight, and this influences the cards. I— my head hurts and I am out of sorts with my monthly flux soon upon me. This too can adversely affect the reading of a destiny." All lies, but what would he know?
He laughed. "You seem disappointed to find my fortune favorable."
Saying nothing, she quickly gathered up her cards and slid them back inside the leather purse along with her hard-earned coins.
"Why don't you read one for yourself?" he demanded.
"I cannot," she muttered, sullen. "It is not possible to read for oneself." Another lie. She simply never wanted to know her own future. What was the point?
Suddenly he grabbed her hand and pulled her down into the straw, rolling over to secure her body beneath his. "Then I shall tell you your fortune, wench."
"The name is Jesamyn," she reminded him.
"Jesamyn." He let the sound slide off his tongue like a sensuous snake and then his grin broadened cockily. "I like the way it sounds. The same way you dance. To twist and tie an honest man in knots."
"Honest man? Do show me where he is, for it is surely a rarity. An oddity." She rolled her eyes, still peeved at the cards being so mischievous. And at him for being more handsome than she expected, not to mention better humored.
He closed his eyes and ran a fingertip over the lines of her palm. "I see that you have traveled a great distance, fair one. But that you have another journey still to come."
"How clever you are," she exclaimed scornfully, trying not to laugh as he tickled her hand. Oh, why was he talking to her. She did not care to befriend him.
Nino tightened his hold on her fingers and drew them to his lips for a kiss. "You will soon have a journey with me."
"To where?" She couldn't seem to catch her breath, the sight of those changed cards and his altered destiny had knocked the beat of her usually steady pulse, scattering it just as she had longed to throw those cards asunder.
"To ecstasy."
* * * *
Something had upset her. He saw that in her face as she turned the last Tarot card. The Lovers. But even if he had not looked at her expression, he would have known it from the sudden improvement in her speech. Quite suddenly she went from disjointed sentences to long, flowing, angry explanations for why the cards might be wrong tonight. Not to mention a bitter tirade against men in general.
She had deceived him. No doubt it was all part of her performance.
Yet whatever she saw in those cards had shocked her enough to make her forget that she was supposed to have a poor command of the language.
To him it was no surprise to see that card— The Lovers. This woman was an addictive treat, and they would indeed be lovers all night long. Didn't she know that too? Or did the card mean something more than that.
He did not believe in the mysticism of the cards, but she did, obviously. It was not just a performer's trick to her, but something with deeper, ominous meaning.
She had trusted him completely already, enough to let him use his entire hand in her cunt. And she said it was because the cards had told her that he would not harm her.
Evidently she was confident in what the Tarot cards revealed and felt powerful with them on her side, for this was a woman who entered taverns alone and used her sexual appeal to enchant the men within. She did not appear at all afraid of what might happen to her in those situations. He'd seen such performers before, but they always traveled with large, strong men to protect them from unwanted attention.
She had only her cards and what they told her.
"Do you remember me, Jesamyn?" he asked softly. Turned away from him and staring into the distance, lantern light kissing her fine profile like a basting of melted butter, she seemed deep in thought. Worried. She was no longer calm as she had been before. He considered reaching for her hand again, to pull her back to him, but a sudden cold chill scraped his cheek like defensive fingernails. Or claws.
Where had that come from? There were no doors open. Perhaps the cold wind had crept through a knothole or a crack in the roof.
Slowly her head turned toward him. "Remember you?"
"Your cards should have told you that we met once before."
The color lightened in her eyes. Sparks spun about, pulling him down in a vortex until he felt as if he was falling down a well, drowning in a luminous ocean of gold and silver. "I have never met you in my life, d'Anzeray. I was fetching water when you and your brothers..." She let the sentence fade into nothing.
"Fetching water when what?"
She shook her head, lush black hair shining in the lantern light as if it was polished. "I got the words wrong. This is not my native tongue. Often I am confused."
He didn't believe that excuse at all anymore. She might be confused about something, but it wasn't language. "Were you fetching water in the market place that day when the fight broke out?"
Finally she looked at him again, frowning hard. "What marketplace?"
Nino grinned. "You do remember! I know you do. You pretend that you never kissed me. And then slapped my face. And then kissed me again."
"You are a madman. This never happened."
"Indeed it did, Jesamyn. I was there."
"You are addled, cub."
The grin faded from his lips. "I remember the scars upon your back. That is how I know it was you at the souk in Marrakech. That and the color of your eyes, which I have never seen anywhere else in my life."
* * * *
Jesamyn stared at the fool in the straw. Marrakech. The very word sent a flame-tipped arrow through her heart and soul.
Yes, she too remembered Marrakech, but not because of him. For a moment she could not speak, waiting for her body to heal with yet another scar after that plunging, fiery arrowhead had seared her flesh and her spirit.
She thought now of The Master, a cruel man who whipped Jesamyn and her twin sister whenever their mother did not perform well or came home with too little coin. Only when he began talking of sending the girls out to work, of selling them to a rich man who required virgins for his bed, did their mother finally find the courage to run away with her daughters, to build a life elsewhere, out of his clutches. That was how they came to live in the small village that was later razed to the ground by the wicked marauders otherwise known as the d'Anzeray. Rumor had it that the warrior brothers were hired as mercenaries by an enemy of the Almoravid king— that there had been some disagreement between the sovereign and one of his cousins, which flared into bloodshed and caused each side to take and lose territory. Jesamyn's mother and sister were casualties of the "disagreement".
She survived only because she had been sent to collect water that morning early and had become distracted by daydreams on her way home.
As the memories came to her again, scraping off the old scabs of time, she smelled anew the acrid smoke— the odor of burning houses. And flesh.
Later, among the ruins of her mother's hut, Jesamyn had recovered a silver cuff and on it was marked the crest she would soon come
to recognize as that of the d'Anzeray. From that moment on they were her sworn enemies. If she died in the effort of dispatching every last one of them back to their maker, so be it.
Marrakech was where it all began.
She was glad now of the reminder, for she'd begun to think this cub harmless, even likeable.
"The souk?" she asked quietly, making her voice calm again.
"When the brawl broke out, you were hiding behind a pot and that's where I found you." The arrogant murderer had the gall to smile. "Is it not strange fate indeed that we should meet again?"
"How old were you then?"
"Eleven. Almost twelve."
He was talking of something that happened ten years ago then.
Yes, that would have been a short time before her mother took them away from Marrakech. Two years before the slaughter in which he and his brothers participated. She felt sick.
"And all your brothers were there?"
"Of course." He laughed. "They started the brawl."
Naturally. She swallowed hard and turned her face away again. The idea of letting this man touch her, fuck her again, made her blood curdle with a renewed surge of hatred and despair. But she must go through with it, snare his trust, lure him in, so he would take her home with him to where this nest of killers lived. Intimacy with the enemy was a sacrifice she must make in her mother and sister's memory. Their spirits had surely driven her this far.
Vengeance was now within her reach.
"I tire of this talk," she said briskly. "Shall I suck your cock until it is erect again? Then it will be ready to fuck my pussy, as you said was your desire."
He chuckled. "I do love the way you get directly to the point, Jesamyn. Whether this is your native tongue or not, you have mastered it with expertise." He leaned over to kiss her. "Yes. Thank you," he whispered.
* * * *
Her mouth was indeed expert, he soon found. On his back in the straw, he enjoyed the sensation of her warm, wet tongue and throat, massaging his shaft and crest until it was ready to crow again. Her lips made a tight ring around the very base of his cock as she swallowed his entire length and worked his staff with the muscles of her throat. His balls could not hold their load for long under this assault. He squirmed, panting, lifting and lowering his groin as the suction intensified.
Finally, seed surging up his shaft, he grabbed her by the hair to pull her off. "Time to fuck," he growled.
She climbed astride his hips and lowered herself onto him, taking control, moving her body up and down, letting him watch as his long cock disappeared inside her and then reappeared slowly, inch by inch. He held her around the waist, trying to adjust the speed, but she would have none of it. The woman pushed his hands away and continued riding his manhood at her own pace.
Her long, glossy locks tumbled forward over her breasts, and Nino felt as if all that black hair surrounded him in a mysterious cloud of softness and darkness. He sank into it, helpless to resist the grasping tendrils.
For the first time in his life he was at the mercy of a woman.
It wasn't at all bad, he discovered.
She lifted up slightly to readjust her legs, placing the soles of her feet flat on either side of his hips, and now she fucked him in a squat position. His penetration was even deeper. He could see her juices gleaming on his thick shaft, could enjoy the sight of her pussy lips swallowing him as eagerly as her mouth had done earlier. In, out. Up, down.
Unable to stand it a moment longer, he gripped her thighs and held them hard to thwart her escape as he thrust his cock to her womb and spilled, crying out in the agony of delight. His body flexed and arched, his seed flooding into her, his fingers digging into her flesh, pinning her down.
She cursed at him for spending inside her, but the physical strength, ultimately, was his. And he wanted his seed in her. When he won her game, she had promised to give him whatever he desired that night, had she not?
Yes, and this was what he desired— to fill her up with cum and to watch it dripping out of her. Time and time again.
That night he discovered just how much he enjoyed witnessing the steady, sticky drops of his semen marking a wet path along her lean brown thighs, across her pretty breasts, over her stomach. To watch it trickle from her pussy lips onto his own muscular thigh as she rested astride his leg.
Nino had never spent so much of it in one night or in one woman. He concluded drowsily that she must have used some sort of magic upon his manhood. Nothing else could account for the heightened sexual arousal that raced through his bones, made him feel superhuman with the tireless need to fuck until she could take no more.
Chapter Five
He did not sleep, but lay in the straw with his arms around her while she dozed. At least, he thought she dozed. She was quiet but for gentle breaths blowing against the side of his neck, and she was still, her body warm beside him. By dawn's light he would wake her and then they could ride to his home. Nino's mind was made up to take her with him. She was too fine a purchase to leave behind.
But the sudden creak of the stable door warned him that this peaceful night would not continue. They were about to have company. Sitting up, he let her slide to the straw and he reached for his sword where it hung with his belt from the lantern hook.
"Hand her over, d'Anzeray," came a loud, slurred voice. "It's our turn to fuck the whore. We all spent our coin in her pussy, so we should all get a piece of it."
Nino stood in the entrance of the stall to face them. He wore only his boots and re-fastened breeches, but with sword in hand he was ready to fight if need be. "She sleeps. I wore her out."
"So what?" came a different voice through the dark shadows. "I'll have her while she's sleeping."
Another added with a terse laugh, "The whore will soon wake with the three of us using her at once. This time you can watch d'Anzeray."
Three figures finally emerged before him, their faces ugly and grimacing in the lantern light. One of them already unlaced his breeches, fat fingers fumbling for his flaccid dick. "Maybe I'll beat her awake, eh? Stand aside and let us at it. I can smell her sweet cunt from here."
Nino stood his ground. They argued, accusing him of being selfish, of conspiring with her to steal their coin. And thus a fight broke out, because he wasn't going to let them lay a finger on her.
* * * *
Jesamyn had not been asleep at all and when she heard the men enter she prepared herself with her own weapon— her mind.
She did not need Nino d'Anzeray to fight for her. If she was a woman without extraordinary skills, she would have been dead long before.
Jesamyn lay in the straw and listened to the argument, heard d'Anzeray refuse to turn her over to the other men. She'd seen in his face already that he did not mean to share her with strangers. Apparently it was different when it was family, she mused, thinking of what he'd said about his brothers sharing their wives.
She closed her eyes and reached through the night with her senses. The other men smelled strongly of bad hops and stewed beef. One of them had eaten an apple that day for there was a seed stuck in a wide gap between his rotting teeth. He knew it was there for his tongue kept running over it, trying to loosen the unfamiliar object. One of the others had a spleen that was swollen— the result of a blow at some point in his recent history. The vessels were bloated and tangled. It was not hard to see. Finally the third man, the youngest of their group, was so drunk that his eyesight was blurred, his feet staggering.
Oh, this would be an easy one for her.
Their most pressing thorns revealed to her questing thoughts, she simply slid her mind's artful fingers over them and, like an invisible hand on a dagger hilt, forced them deeper.
* * * *
Nino spread his feet for balance and held his sword in readiness as the three would-be assailants approached the stall and the woman sleeping in the straw behind him.
Suddenly, before they reached him, the largest man fell to one side, clutching his stomach, color drai
ning from his face. In seconds his heavy form had crumpled to the ground, groaning in agony. Another man tripped over him and stumbled against a wooden beam, knocking himself into apparent unconsciousness. He tipped over backwards, straight as a plank, all the way down to horizontal.
The third man still advanced, not caring about his companions. His mouth flapped open, drooling and leering. He ran a thick tongue over his teeth. Suddenly, just as he reached Nino, his lips closed and a surprised look widened his bloodshot eyes. His head jerked back and he raised both hands to his throat, clutching at it. A harsh wheeze gushed out of him, but he seemed incapable of drawing air back in. His face reddened.
As Nino watched the man choking and spinning in circles, he suddenly felt a hand on his arm. Jesamyn was awake and standing at his side.
"Quickly," she exclaimed, "the apple seed is a good size but will not hold forever and he will cease to choke. Make haste."
Although confused he instinctively acted on her command. Her voice was so calm and steady, he did not think twice.
Only when they were both astride his horse and riding at speed through the forest did he think to say, "Apple seed? What made you think that? A man cannot choke on an apple seed."
The woman riding with her arms around him did not reply. Her long black hair wove thick tendrils around him again, and it soon became unimportant whatever that man had choked upon. Or how she could have known it.
* * * *
"Where are we going, d'Anzeray?"
"I'm taking you home with me. To entertain my brothers."
"You did not ask my permit."
He snorted. "Why should I? You're a woman and I'm a man. I say how it will be."
She let her mind explore inside his thoughts and found that he had no ulterior motive in bringing her to his family. He spoke the truth of his intentions to let her entertain them. But she also knew he was greatly fascinated by her— more so than he had been by any other woman. Because he thought they had met before, in his mind this meant they had a connection beyond sex.
