Satisfaction Guaranteed

by Samantha M. Derr

  Surrounded by the quiet night and the familiarity of horse and straw, Nic fell into the allure of Ember's deep, warm brown eyes. She wanted to know him, so he would show her.

  He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers. They were soft and full against his thin, and they moved when he froze in shock at his own actions. They pressed harder, and, when he pulled away in surprise, they followed.

  She gripped his shoulders, holding him in place. Her eyes fell partly closed as she moved nearer, shifting on the blankets and straw.

  He gingerly laid his palms on her upper arms. The leather felt as warm as skin, interrupted by the cool hardness of small weapons imbedded in the armour. Muscles flexed under his hands as she pulled him in.

  He could count on one hand how many people he had kissed. Twice he had been unwilling, squirming in the grasp of laughing boys. Twice he had fumbled through the puzzle of a peasant girl's skirts, only to discover his own inadequacy. None had made him feel the way Ember made him feel. She held him only firmly enough to clearly communicate that she wanted him. But he felt she would release him if he so desired.

  Nic did not so desire.

  The longer she kissed him, the stronger his heart beat and the bigger, more confident, he felt. He dared to stroke down her arms, trace the edge of her sleeve over her wrist, then skim back up to her shoulders, her neck, and to the back of her head. Her hair fell in a silken curtain around her shoulders. He ran his fingers through it. She might not have been a princess, but she felt like luxury and moved like fantasy.

  He pulled her closer until she knelt over his lap. His hungry palms found her thighs and the leather and weapons sheathing their powerful lengths. He shook with urgency, but didn't know what to do. He didn't know where to go or how to ease the growing pressure low in his belly. Nothing had prepared him. Nothing could have prepared him. Peasant skirts did not compare to tight armour. He could not fumble the buckles open. He wasn't sure he wanted to. His body wanted—there was no question—but his heart and mind quailed at the thought that he might do something wrong and ruin the magic building between them.

  That fear made him freeze.

  "Nic?" Ember whispered, her breath sweet and hot against his cheek. "Is something wrong?"

  He licked his lips and ducked his face into the crook of her neck. When her arms went around him, he slowly relaxed. "I don't want to ruin anything," he rasped. "Any minute... you'll see the body. You'll feel it. It's not me, Ember. It's not my body. I hate it. And I'm afraid that you'll hate it, too."

  She laughed softly and kissed a trail from his jaw and down his neck. "Nic," she whispered against his prickling skin. "I love the heart and spirit, and the body is quite pleasant. Let me show you..." She rose onto her knees, and her nimble fingers went to the ties of his vest. He stiffened in discomfort, knowing what she would find, but could not resist her.

  She unlaced it slowly, then pushed it off his shoulders. She stroked the loose linen tunic beneath, ghosting over the skin it shielded and making Nic shiver. Goosebumps rose on his arms and stomach, electrifying the two nubs of flesh on his bound breasts.

  "I like the feel of you," she murmured into his ear and nipped the lobe. "You are strong. You are... you." She tugged the bottom of his tunic out of his trouser waistband.

  He forgot his nervousness with his own body and let himself enjoy hers. Tentatively at first, but with growing confidence, he found the buckles on her armour and pried each of them open. A flap on the front fell open, revealing black silk and the swell of flesh beneath. Before he lost his nerve, he ducked his head and put his mouth against her clavicle and worked down to the silk covering her breasts, breathing in her perfume. Beneath his lower lip, her nipple hardened. He thumbed the undersides of her breasts and worked her armour lower to expose more of her silk shirt.

  She leaned back, tugging him with her and stripping away his tunic. He arched over her, steadfastly ignoring what he could glimpse of his own slender figure and concentrating on the buckles of her armour. With each one he became more familiar, until he peeled away the entire stiff and surprisingly heavy leather garment and set it aside.

  With the movement, he glanced up and met a large equine eye and remembered that Ash was still lying at the end of the stall. "Um," he began haltingly. "Perhaps we should—should move elsewhere?" He envisioned Ash scrambling to his hooves and kicking Nic in the face for daring to touch his sister.

  "Nonsense," Ember chuckled. "He and I have never hidden anything from each other. And he likes you. Why not give him a moment's happiness?"

  Nic stared a moment longer, trying to read the intelligence buried in Ash's deep pupil, then Ember pulled him down again.

  Bit by bit, their clothing found its way to the straw and the night lapped at more of their hot skin. Nic discovered the ways to touch Ember's long legs to draw sighs and moans from her parted lips. He discovered, too, that his own flesh could sing with pleasure at her caress. Her fingertips left goosebumps in their wake as they crossed his belly and thighs.

  New sensations built in his body. He felt hot. Wet. Swollen with need. Fascinated by Ember. Beneath her leather trousers she wore thin linen smallclothes. When they were exposed, a spicy, earthen scent rose and snared him. His hand stole up her inner thigh and he pressed the damp fabric between her legs. She sighed and her hips rocked, rubbing herself against his fingers. Fascinated, he watched the muscles of her stomach ripple, the heave of her breast, the tendons in her neck go taut as her head fell back against Ash's velvet black hide.

  Nic's fingers slid into her smallclothes and he brushed soft, moist fuzz. Deeper he ventured, finding wet satin, slick and soft as butter, and the pearl of Ember's interest. She twitched and gasped when he caressed it, and his own flesh responded, tingling between his legs and hungry for touch. With his free hand he tugged on the ties of Ember's smallclothes and pulled them away, revealing the area he had been exploring. Her scent collected in his throat, as though each breath was a taste.

  He had seen enough in his family's cottage, surrounded by a dozen sibs, to know what to do next. He crouched down and his tongue darted out to taste her, filling his mouth with salty sweetness. With greater boldness, he let his fingers work, stroking her slippery folds as he continued to suck on her clit. Ember moaned throatily and her thighs tightened around his shoulders. She angled her hips up to meet him and he delved in, his fingers hooking, finding her hot and welcoming and oh so soft. He wished, with a painful poignancy, that he could bury himself within her body.

  "Oh," she gasped, stiffening beneath him, clawing the blankets and the crackling straw beneath. Her hips jerked. He grabbed them to hold in her place and let his tongue replace his fingers, dipping past her lips and tasting the salt of her release. Saliva dripped down his chin and mixed with her juices as his mouth watered.

  When she settled into the blankets, he finished lapping at her and allowed her to fall. She leaned against Ash's side, head back and eyes closed, her pale breasts rising and falling with her quick breath. Nic sat on his heels, content to watch. I did this. More than a little smug, he followed the shaking of her shoulders and belly, memorized the inelegant sprawl of limbs that Ember had become.

  She gradually straightened and pulled herself together. She met Nic's stare with a smile. "Who would have thought a stableboy to have such a clever tongue?"

  Nic warmed at the praise. "Years of convincing animals much larger than myself to let me lock them in boxes and wear their saddles and bridles."

  "No doubt," Ember purred. She rose to her knees in a strangely reserved posture. "But I cannot have all the fun. Come here, my darling stableboy." She gestured him closer.

  Nic resisted at first, nervousness over his traitorous body returning, but Ember insisted, pulling first on his arm and then on his shoulder and the back of his neck.

  "Look at me," she murmured. "And only me."

  He met her dark eyes and closed the space between them until her face and skin filled his vision. She pulled him down atop
the length of her body and he could have wept in frustration. He had no way to enter her, no way to find release in her strong and willing flesh.

  Her hands went to his trousers. He went still.

  "Easy, frightened rabbit," she chided gently. "Look at me. Touch me."

  He buried his face in her shoulder and stroked her smooth flank up to the reassuring roundness of her breast. She filled his senses, and he could nearly ignore the sensation of his trousers sliding down his backside and the chill air on his quivering thighs. He flinched when her touch replaced the roughness of burlap, and nipped the side of her neck.

  "Careful," she crooned. "Yrhardt can be a terribly suspicious man. He does not need tooth marks to help those suspicions." Nic started to pull away, flustered, but Ember grabbed his hips and held him in place, her grip almost painful. When he settled down, she rewarded him by sliding her hands to the front of his smallclothes. By all rights, there should have been thick, hard desire awaiting her. Nic closed his eyes tightly and nuzzled her hair and ear, squirming inwardly with awareness of what the gods had put between his legs instead of what should have been there. His shame. His curse.

  Then Ember did something, cupping him, and he forgot his shame. Pleasure and heat blossomed, making him stiffen in surprise and moan into her shoulder. His voice emerged, both husky and pitched higher than normal, embarrassingly feminine, but Ember didn't give him an opportunity to feel more than a flash of shame before she triggered another wave. It gathered low in his gut and spread to his thighs in strands of shivering need. He ground into Ember's palm and fingers as she guided him to her own nethers. The warmth of her body opened to him, her hips rocked against his own frantic thrusts, and his mind lit up with visions of joining with her.

  Gasping and moaning, he tumbled on a wave of liquid sensation and tipped over. From neck to loins, he felt a fire burn in his veins. Then his arms and legs gave out, and he collapsed on Ember's naked body.

  They panted together for some minutes, Nic blinking away the sparks behind his eyelids and relearning how to focus. When he could see properly, he met Ash's quiet stare and smirked. "How did I do?" he rasped.

  Ash blinked and turned away, presenting only the graceful curve of his neck and a large shoulder.

  "Very well," Ember answered. She shifted beneath him, so Nic peeled away and let her roll onto her side. Facing her, Nic let his gaze drift slowly down her body. "My eyes are up here," she teased, tilting his chin and tearing his attention away from the dark triangle between her thighs. He could smell himself on her hand, a sweet scent like the grasses he so often chewed, and for the first time he did not mind it.

  "You're beautiful," he said, catching her wrist.

  She smiled. "Thank you, my handsome stableboy."

  He coloured with pleasure and embarrassment, wondering how someone so amazing could seemingly see him for his true self.

  Her arm twisted in his loose grip and she captured his arm. "Now," she purred, squirming closer. "How is your endurance? You may think the gods cursed you, but I can show you some advantages..."

  *~*~*

  Nic stroked Ember's loose hair, picking the individual strands away from her sweat sticky shoulders and neck. Ember lay with her head on Nic's chest, her clever fingers tracing paths on his belly, circling his navel and delving lower. Nic averted his eyes, allowing himself the fantasy of a proper man's body. He felt good when she touched him. Good. Big. Fulfilled and fulfilling.

  "Why do you sigh?" Ember murmured.

  Nic regarded the top of her sleek head, startled. He hadn't meant to sigh.

  "I've never felt this way before," he admitted. "Almost like I could be happy in my skin."

  "I like your skin." Ember followed the line of Nic's hip. "If you truly want to change it, though, I know of those who can."

  Ash heaved a horsey sigh.

  "We know of those who can. That is who we search for now, Ash and I. Yrhardt fought to prevent it; he believes Ash will challenge him if he returns to his true form."

  Nic's heart thudded loudly at the thought—at the mere possibility—of changing his body into the shape it was meant to be. "Who?" he asked, his voice strained.

  "A wizard in the east, an expert in transmutation."

  "The one who changed Ash in the first place?"

  Ember snorted. "No. That wizard could fumble Ash into the one shape, but he cannot undo it. Or if he can, he will not dare. He fears Yrhardt's displeasure. We seek another." Ember's head tilted up and her dark eyes found his. "Will you come with us?"

  He froze, his fingers tangled in her hair. "You want me to join you?"

  She nodded.

  "But I... I'm nothing more than a stableboy. I'm no warrior, wizard, or rogue. I'm not even a merchant or a bard. I can't fight. I'm nothing."

  "I disagree." Ember rose up on her elbows. "You are braver than any warrior. You are kind. You are just. In here you are more hero than Yrhardt himself." She tapped the left side of his chest, directly above the wrappings around his breasts. "For the rest of it, I can teach you."

  He laughed, shaking his head. "One day I'll wield a pitchfork into battle, right? Or perhaps I'll whisper sweetly to the enemy's mounts and convince them to throw their riders?"

  "Do not think so little of yourself, stableboy." She straightened and her eyes flashed. "It is not a blessing that makes a hero. Nor is it steel or magic. It is the spirit. And you have that in full. Most men fight enemies they can see and touch, but your enemy has been your own body for all these years, and you have not been beaten."

  He flinched from her heated words, dropping his eyes and picking at straw.

  Softly, she continued, "I can help you, Nic. I want to help you. And I want you. Come with us."

  "But... what of Yrhardt?"

  She sighed. "I will deal with him. Somehow. Once I have, we will seek out the wizard." She shook back her long hair and jerked her fingers through it. "It would be so much easier if I could just stick a knife in him or drop a bit of poison in his goblet."

  "You've tried?"

  "Oh, yes. Not after we were married, mind you, but when we were still in the thrall of the Dark Lord. Blades will not pierce him. Poisons have no effect. Fire does not burn. Ropes do not strangle him. There is only one way to kill him."

  Nic asked, for no other reason than curiosity, "What is it?"

  "The gods said that he would die under the hooves of a white bull." She quirked a sardonic smile. "You may have noticed a dearth of white bulls in your kingdom. Since Yrhardt was born they have been declared anathem, and sacrificed immediately. So, no white bulls, no way to destroy the Champion of Light." She paused, as though expecting a response, then prompted, "Nic?"

  Nic stared at a spot beyond Ember's shoulder, blood roaring in his ears and drowning out her voice. A white bull. The thought raced around his mind. I know a white bull. Not a true bull, but a war mare with a nasty temperament and a tendency for trampling and biting. A mare he fondly referred to as Bull. A white mare.

  But no. He pressed fingertips into his forehead, trying to force the idea out. That's insane. A mare isn't a bull just because a stableboy thinks of her as one.

  The gods were known to have twisted senses of humour, though. He had only to look down at himself to know the truth of that. They might find such an irony as an invincible hero trampled to death by his own horse... amusing.

  I think myself a man, and so I am. He reached out and stroked the backs of his fingernails down Ember's arm. She said as much. The spirit is stronger than the body. And so if I believe a mare is a white bull... ?

  "You would really take me with you?" he asked softly. "You want me in your party?"

  "I do."

  Without meeting her curious stare, he added, "Should Yrhardt die, would you return to me and take me to the east, to find the wizard?"

  "Why not come with me? Yrhardt would agree; his beast has injured more stable hands than I can count, but you and she seem to have an agreement."

  Of course w
e do. Nic usually was not one for seeing omens or signs. He led a quiet life, holding his own quiet misery to his quiet heart. But there, in the darkness, in the company of two trapped assassins, feeling the strength of his own heart, he felt the connection between himself and Bull. That she, as much as one of Ember's daggers, was a tool of death that fit comfortably into his palm.

  "I can't," he replied slowly, a plan forming in his mind. "There's too much to settle here." Seeing her dismay, he met her gaze and took her hand in his own. "You'll return for me, though?"

  "Yrhardt will not simply drop dead merely because you wish it." Her mouth twisted. "I should know. I have tried often enough."

  "Promise me."

  Her dark brows drew together, but she nodded. "I promise."

  He relaxed, tension oozing out of his shoulders. "Thank you." He pushed up on his arms and leaned into her warmth, and sealed her promise with a lingering kiss. "I'll wait for you."

  As much as Nic wanted to spend the rest of the night in the novel, exciting, and gratifying embrace of a lover, he had too much work to do. A new need energized him, driving him out of their straw bower and into the stable proper. He must act, for a future, for Ember and Ash, and for the possibility of finding his own true body.

  He padded down the aisle to Bull's stall and stole her tack off the racks outside. Then, in the light of the lantern by the door, with one ear turned toward the inn and the other toward Ash and Ember, he set to his fatal task. Not once did his hand falter, though he continually asked himself if Ember's, Ash's, and his own fate were worth the price of a hero.

  But what hero? He scoffed, a huff of breath against oiled and scarred leather. The marks of battle reminded him of the marks on Ash's hide and Ember's skin. No. If the gods wish to sacrifice their chosen warrior, then who am I to argue?

  *~*~*

  He finished when the night tasted young again and the eastern horizon was considering the possibility of donning a new robe. Nic collapsed onto a stool by the door, hugging himself against the chill and contemplating his handiwork, hung once again by Bull's stall. He didn't think he would sleep, but then he roused at the clamour of voices and dishes floating across the courtyard from the inn. The bright white-gold disc of the sun peeked over the eastern forest and burned away the damp of night. Nic started and sat up; a blanket, one of his own, slid off of him.