by Lynn Red
“You know they’re talking about me,” she said as the crooked-nosed Englishman slid into her room. And that’s really what he did – he didn’t stride or walk; he slid like a shadow. This was the first time she’d noticed it, but no other word fit. It was like he was part of the wall, moving through it without any friction or resistance.
“I expect so,” was his reply. When she didn’t say anything to that, he finished. “Every movement needs a hero. And every hero needs a song to sing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve never heard the great heroic songs? The Iliad? The Odyssey? There’s always a mission. There’s always some cause greater than the hero. That’s what we’re doing. It’s just convenient that you stepped in when you did.”
She bristled. “I stepped in? What is that supposed to mean?” She prodded him in the chest with a stiffened finger. “You roped me into this. You came to me, if you remember how it actually went.”
Crane smiled. “We all have our own perspective. Regardless, this isn’t the time, nor the place. Take this, I have other business around the place that doesn’t involve a bunch of backbiting women. Here.”
He held the envelope out, and when Helena didn’t grab it immediately, he threw it at her with a flick of his wrist. “Either way,” he said. “We’re moving on. The whispers have done their job, and that means I’ve done mine too. Whatever you choose, there’s no turning back.”
With that, he spun on his heel and exited, much less smoothly than had he entered. When she was sure he was gone, Helena bent down and retrieved the envelope from the ground, and opened it with a trembling thumb.
“Dearest Helena,” it read. “We must meet, not because I want to make love to you, which I do, and not because I can’t live without touching you again, which I can’t.”
Already her heart was beating faster, and she wasn’t even finished with the letter.
“We need to meet because I’m making good on my promise. And things are moving faster than I thought. Tonight, after the palace sleeps. Meet me in our place. –A”
“Oh, no,” Helena said into her empty room. “Oh… oh no.”
-6-
“You came,” Arad said, grabbing Helena and pulling her toward his shirtless, hot-skinned body as she rounded the corner. He kissed her deeply, pushing her head backward against the smooth wall of the secret tunnel.
Helena opened her lips, tasting his breath, inhaling the prince’s scent as deeply as she could. She didn’t know why, but she was trembling as she did. He pressed her lips open, and swirled his tongue inside her mouth, running it along the inside of her lips and then hard into her.
Pressing her between his body and the wall, the prince made her feel every single curve and line of his body. She noticed that this time, there wasn’t any buckle holding up his trousers, only linen and silk separated their bodies. His heat burned against her belly and for a moment – just a fleeting, blissful moment – she felt him move against her, his thickness teasing her entire body to life.
“I can’t,” he whispered, huskily as he pulled away. “As much as I want to realize all my dreams, I can’t. Not tonight. Not like this. With you, I want it to be right. I don’t want to rush anything.”
With a smile on her bowed lips, Helena let her hand fall to the waist of Arad’s loose, linen trousers. The weight of her hand pushed them down just enough for the hair around him to brush against her knuckles. Just the thought of his body… in that way… sent a shock of excitement curling up Helena’s chest. Her nipples puckered and pebbled against the flimsy silk of the robe she’d worn. In the lantern light, she knew he could see her through the fabric, which is why she’d picked it in the first place.
A groan escaped the prince’s lips as he ground into her. His hips against hers, his face inches from hers. She felt him, she smelled and tasted him, and from what Crane said earlier, danger was on the horizon. It was now or never, she thought, afraid.
Sliding her fingers tentatively down around him, Helena blushed as she closed them around Arad’s girth and he let out another soft moan of pleasure. His hand found her, curling between her legs, cupping her sex. Every inch of her body ached for him, yearned to have him within herself. They stroked at one another gently, almost bashfully, for a moment, and then with a hiss, Arad pinned her against the wall, pressing her wrists against the wall high above her head. His thickness slid against her belly and when he adjusted his stance, went between her legs, parting her lips.
She felt him grind against her sweetest place and let out a quailing gasp of her own. “Touch… me,” she said. “I’ve never… never felt anyone like you, never wanted anyone so bad as I do you, right now. I don’t care if it’s right.”
He turned his hand and hooked his finger gently between Helena’s lips, testing her entrance and finding that she wasn’t wearing anything under her robe.
“Just for you,” she whispered. “Nothing to separate us.”
With his length nestled between her softest place, it was impossible for Helena to gasp again with pleasure. “I’ve never…” she stopped herself short, biting her lip as he pushed against her once again.
“Never what?” he asked, voice full of lust and desire. He kissed her again, hard on the neck, then the lips, pushing her teeth apart and swirling his tongue against hers. “What have you never done? Felt?”
“Never felt… anything like… you,” she moaned again, her voice a raspy whisper. “Never done anything like… this.”
His response was a scoff of laughter and another kiss, another taste, of Helena’s essence. Moments later, he slid his tongue down her chin and tickled the bare skin of her neck. “I just noticed,” he whispered. “No veil.”
“It’s dark,” she whispered. “You can’t see anyway.”
With a slow smile, the prince ran his tongue down to the hollow of Helena’s throat where he sucked another kiss, this one prickling the skin all the way down her chest and around her navel. “It’s a night of firsts then,” he said.
“Oh?” her question turned into a sweet moan of joy as her prince parted her robe and kissed between her breasts, along the line in her chest separating one from the other. With his hand still playing a soft crescendo between her thighs, it was hard enough for Helena to concentrate enough to keep herself standing, much less ask sexy questions.
The laugh Arad released vibrated against her nipple, the heat from his breath sliding around her in a slow circle. “I’ve never fallen in love. I know that now.”
If it was hard to keep on her feet before, when he said that, it was impossible. Helena’s knees buckled, she quailed and found herself sliding down the wall. Her robe stuck slightly to the stone, partly from the prickly texture of the mortar and partially from her sweat.
“You’re ready for me,” he said as he lowered himself to the ground and slid his finger in a slow circle around her entrance. “So wet,” he kissed her flavor off his fingertips, then pressed them against her once again. “Your nectar drips down my tongue, so sweet, so…”
Grabbing the back of his head, Helena forced the prince to kiss her, tasting herself on his lips. “Take me,” she whispered. “Take me now before the morning, before this stupid war you’ve decided on takes you away from me. Don’t let me die without knowing you inside me.”
“I want nothing more,” Arad whispered. “But I won’t. I won’t have it this way. I will come back to you – when I make promises, I keep them.”
His words were warming her almost as much as the patient, deep, throbbing pulses of his finger going deeper and deeper, taking Helena’s breath. As he pushed his finger in deeper, dragging the tip gently along the sweetest place on her inner wall, he kissed her again, drinking her breath as she exhaled her pleasure.
“I’m scared,” Helena whispered, in between the moans of her heightening pleasure. Her inner muscles were drawing tense, the tendons between her legs tightening until they were taut and pulled at her deepest places. “I don’t
want to lose… mmm… you…”
“You won’t,” Arad said. He felt the deep muscles inside Helena begin to convulse. A wave of goosebumps ran down her neck that he only noticed because they tickled his lips as he brushed his tongue down again. He swirled it slowly around her bared breast, in a spiral that ended with his teasing her stiffened, pink nib. “You won’t ever lose me.”
His voice was steel, hard and rigid against her soft, prickled skin. Her breathing was coming quicker and hotter and shorter. She felt tension mounting, and knew that in just a few seconds, his finger was going to milk her until she wouldn’t be able to not scream out in ecstasy. “Stick something in my mouth,” she said, giggling a little when she realized what she said.
But the prince took her meaning. He kissed the rest of the way down her belly and then when his tongue danced across the tuft of hair above her opening, he slid his fingers out and tasted her once more before letting her taste herself.
He curled his tongue around her button, then kissed and sucked his way around her sex, slowly at first, and then harder, faster, and deeper. “I can’t…” she groaned. “I can’t stop myself, I’m going to…”
“Bite,” he whispered. “You have to keep quiet or someone will hear.”
She bit down, much harder than he expected. It was the prince who cried out, and then laughed as he lashed her with his tongue. Her tongue looped around one of his thick, long fingers, sucking at him like she wished to suck at his manhood, like she wanted to taste his essence as he’d tasted hers.
In the next second, all that tension was released with a flick of Arad’s tongue.
Helena gasped, then bit down on his fingers again, moaning heavily and breathing hard.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “I can’t see you, but I can hear. Let me hear how good this feels. Let me hear how much you want your prince to take you away from all this, to make you his forever.”
She arched her back hard against the wall, and against the floor where she lay in a crooked heap. Another wave of tension took her, and then a pulse of warm relief flooded every sense. “Don’t… stop,” she hissed.
Adjusting himself, Arad kept thrumming at her with his tongue, but slid two fingers on the hand he’d been using to hold himself up, deep within. As soon as he did, a second crescendo of ecstatic pleasure gripped Helena’s entire body. She shuddered, she trembled, and somehow, she kept quiet.
“Come,” he said, climbing to his feet.
“I just did,” she said, blushing in the darkness and chuckling softly. “Twice, I think. Maybe three times.”
He laughed roundly and softly. “Even after that, you can make me somehow smile bigger. Take my hand,” he helped her to her feet and supported Helena as her knees shook slightly. “We have to talk. We’re already running behind schedule but I can’t say I regret that choice.”
“Me either,” Helena said as the cool tunnel air kissed her sweaty cheeks. “Do I need to be worried about Crane?”
“Worried for him? No.” Arad took her by the hand and led her instinctually through the tunnels, around so many twists and turns and corners that by the end of it, when they emerged into a carpeted great room she’d never seen before, Helena couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down. They rushed so quickly that she hardly had time to catch her breath from their rendezvous, much less ask any other questions. Never in her life had she been so turned around. Then again, she’d never had a man give her that sort of attention before, so her addled mind had more than one reason.
“What’s all this, then?” she asked as her feet stopped clomping over old concrete and instead squished down on deliciously thick rug. “Some kind of meet…ing… oh God, what have I walked into?”
Crane was stalking around the room with his arms crossed behind his back, there were nine other men sitting around a large conference table, and Arad was beaming. And Helena realized with a terrible shock that she’d just broken about the most important rule of the harem – not only had she been fraternizing with the prince…
She was in a room full of men, outside the harem, completely uncovered.
“My veil!” she said, covering her face with her hands. In honesty the whole veil business was fairly new for her, since living on a subsistence farm left very little time for all that sort of thing.
“What you just stepped into,” Arad said, taking Helena’s hands and lowering them. “Is a new world. Old things going away, new things taking their place. Or, I guess, new old things, as the case may be. These are my lieutenants.”
Crane nodded to her and touched his forehead with a couple of fingers in an almost mocking salute. The others seated around the table just grumbled. A couple of them looked at her for a moment and then went about their hushed chattering.
“All for you,” Arad said. “Well, mostly for you. A lot of it is for the people, and all of it has been a long time coming.”
“You’re… serious,” Helena said, suddenly feeling faint. “You’re starting a war.”
He nodded.
“You’re starting… a…”
“War, yes,” Crane finished. “And we need to know whether or not the harem backs the king. So, you’re going to find out for us.”
“I’m not a spy,” Helena said, her face sagging. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’m…”
“Gonna have to figure it out,” Arad said. “But you won’t be alone. Maret is already aware of the plans and—”
A chime sounded. A small clanging sound that drew the attention of everyone in the room. “Speaking of, there she is. Time for you to go, love,” Arad said, pulling her aside and sneering at everyone else until they looked away. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise. When this starts, I’ll take you to safety, but for now, go!”
The door opened and he pushed her through. A hand clasped hers, dry and papery. She immediately recognized the old woman’s touch. “Come on, dear,” she said. “Whatever my son said, he’ll do.”
-7-
The fires came before word did.
There were seven of them at first, seven lights in the distance that broke the blackness surrounding Salomana’s palace like flashlights erupting from the woods. When Helena saw the first of them, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Two days of whispers and sidelong glances preceded the fires, but no one really believed they’d come. Least of all Helena herself. Out of her window, she watched the second spring up and then the third. She recognized the locations – armories, sure to explode… that is, unless they’d already been looted. The girl tried to convince herself she had nothing to do with all of it, but she knew deep down what was happening. Arad had lit those fires to overthrow a tyrant. At least, that was the version he’d tell his supporters.
Really? He’d started the fires for her.
He’d promised that if a war with his father, a war against the old ways, was the only possibility for their being together, he’d do it. He must’ve talked to his father, and they must, Helena thought, not have come to a pleasing agreement.
Her stomach turned, and then seemed to knot up around a stone the size of a softball that had settled in the pit of her gut. “Why this way?” she asked the cold, night air of the desert. “Why did it come to this?”
“Love does stupid things, child,” Maret—who she hadn’t heard enter—said. “And I believe now that he loves you as he says he does. I never thought I’d hear myself say this about our prince, but… there it is. The man’s started a war for your heart, and you have to get the hell out of here before the king’s men come for you.
“But why?” Helena protested, rightly. “I’m a woman of the harem – a simple commoner at that. How could I possibly make a prince do my bidding? It’s ridiculous! I told him not to do this!”
“Like I said, child,” Maret said with a smile snaking across her lips. “Men in love do stupid things. And unfortunately, this one is in a position of incredible power. You mightn’t have said for him to do anything, but it do
esn’t matter. He did it, and you’re in the midst. But, listen to me,” Maret placed her hand on Helena’s shoulder, which was noticeably shaking.
“I’m afraid,” the girl admitted, her voice so low it was barely an audible whisper. “I’m afraid for myself and for him… and for my family and the kingdom.”
“Don’t worry about all that,” Maret said, squeezing her shoulder. “The king may be a drunkard, and he may be unpredictable, and slightly despotic, but he’s not going to go after your family. He’ll not even bother to go after you if you’re out of the palace.”
Helena swallowed hard, her throat clicking as she did. “I’m stuck here though. We can’t drive, we can’t even leave the grounds.”
“I’ve arranged something, come quickly. Leave your things. I have a feeling this is all going to blow over before it hits the point where we need to worry about the palace burning to the ground.”
Without a thought, Helena turned and cinched her robe closed. “But what about my veil and the outfit? What if—“
“Child, you’re running from the king in the middle of what seems to be a revolution. I think the last thing you need to concern yourself with are the trappings of the regime presently being burned to the ground.”
There was a wry smile on the old woman’s thin, dry lips. Helena spared a half-second to study her face, and thought it was almost like she’d been waiting for this moment to come. “You’re happy about this, aren’t you?” Helena dared to ask. When there was no immediate response, she apologized.
“No, no,” Maret said. “You’re right to ask. I remember a time before veils, before the strange whims of this king, or the one before him. You don’t, of course, and probably your parents don’t either. But there were times when women of the harem came and went as we pleased. We travelled with the king, we travelled alone if we wished. We could marry and have families… but that all changed when I was young.”
“That’s awful,” Helena said, not really understanding what all that meant. “It must have been very confusing.”
