TheKingsViper

by Janine Ashbless

  She would welcome it—that was the unbearable thing. He’d noted only too clearly the way she looked at him, with that frightened yet yielding eagerness. Hadn’t she said it herself? I wouldn’t be unwilling.

  He swallowed a lump of mutton half-chewed and felt it descend painfully the length of his chest. It was all fantasy, he told himself bitterly. She was no willing peasant girl. She was a lady of high blood and marked naïvety. And her glances were not always eagerness. Sometimes they were just plain fear. He had done horrible things to her, he knew. He had done them, without any expectation of forgiveness, because they were simply necessary. What he hadn’t anticipated was that it would make him feel so bad about himself.

  Severin was not a man used to the taste of guilt.

  This quiet, innocent, gray-eyed girl could somehow make him feel more alive than he had in years—or worse than he’d ever felt in his life. Sometimes at the same moment. When he’d seen that soldier grab her he’d felt quite sure that they were both facing death. The bastard who’d pinned him had picked the wrong wrist, not knowing he was sinister-handed. Not knowing about his knife. And what sort of fool uses a military poniard—made to jab through chinks in armor, and nearly all point and no edge—to threaten a throat cutting? Another wrong move and things would have got suddenly very bloody and unpleasant for those men. It would not have ended well, of course. But he would have done it for her. Without hesitation.

  He recalled their conversation by the milestone, dragging her words through his mind like bloody hooks. Would you have to kill me? For a moment he forgot both his food and his erection in a welter of pain. How could she have asked him that? How had she expected him to answer?

  No, he amended, she was innocent no longer. He’d seen that stripped from her. He’d done it himself, fiber by fiber. Her early, easy trust was worn away in tatters until only a thread was left, and now he had to haul her by that thread over the river and the border into Ystria. Whether that thread of trust would snap, or whether it would turn out to be cord twisted of something much tougher, he had no idea. He was not at all sure he had the strength to find out.

  She had set his soul to war with itself, he realized. Hope tore at despair, and delight struggled with terror over a black gulf of guilt. He could feel the raw edges abrading within him.

  She was destroying him.

  Yet there she was, sat on his leg, the warm firmness of her rump against his crotch—and every time she moved he wanted to grab hold of her.

  * * * * *

  “Your room.” The innkeeper’s wife threw open the door of the upstairs chamber. Eloise dodged in out of the way of the scullion with the buckets of hot water. There were heavy beams and a stone fireplace and a bed big enough for two—the first feather bed she’d been able to sleep in, she realized, since the shipwreck. The sound of clattering pans came up through the floorboards, but no sound of revelry; they were over the inn’s kitchens rather than the taproom.

  “Yes,” she said, happy suddenly. The combination of security and privacy was so luxurious after all they’d been through that she felt weak.

  “It’ll do,” nodded Severin.

  When the door had closed between them and the outside world she sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes. Severin went over to check the vistas beyond the shuttered windows.

  “You’d better use the water while it’s hot,” said he. “I’ll wait outside.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said a little too quickly.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You could sit by the fire,” she said. “I trust you.”

  His bleak glance was softened by a half-smile. “I know you do.” He walked to the door. “Throw your dirty clothes outside. I’ll find a laundress.”

  He left, and she stripped quickly and began to wash, rationing the water from the first bucket. Kneeling over the bucket, she dunked her hair and massaged the soap into her scalp, delighted to be free of the smell of cowsheds. When she’d finished sluicing herself she wrapped a long sheet around her several times, letting her hair hang down and soak the line of her back. Then she went over to the bed.

  There was something so uncompromising about a real bed with a carved headboard and proper pillows. She patted one, almost shyly, feeling the feathers within sink beneath the weight of her hand.

  He’d make an excuse not to share the bed with her, she realized. The room was warm and there was a high-backed settle by the fireplace. If he had the chance, he’d avoid her company tonight. And they were so near the border. Another day or so and they’d be safe.

  Or dead.

  This might be the last safe time they had together.

  What if she did do something rash—if she spoke about the yearning roiling inside her? How would he respond? She bit her lip, picturing the scene, but after the first rush of excitement the colder voice of experience broke through. He’d be appalled, of course. She could just picture his cold contempt. And if it were not contempt—if he were moved to temptation himself—then her best guess was that he’d be furious. He might strike her, she thought.

  The little cut on her breast throbbed.

  The feeling that this was it, that she was standing on the edge of a precipice and that the only way forward was to jump, was so overwhelming that she nearly lost her balance.

  * * * * *

  Severin stalked out onto the wooden balcony and leaned against the rail, glancing down at the other tavern-goers in the courtyard below. Smells of beer and warm food rose on the smoke from the fires. People were becoming louder as they relaxed. Severin, almost for the first time, envied them.

  “Ale, sir?” The speaker was a young woman with a wooden tray of tankards balanced on one hand. Severin turned to survey her properly and she grinned saucily at him, swinging her hips. She had a low-cut blouse and a bodice beneath that pushed her breasts up to pillowy mounds.

  He nodded, and she passed him a pitch-lined tankard of small ale.

  “You’re in the room there, aren’t you? First drink’s on the house. You wanting anything else, sir?”

  “You can launder and mend these and get them back dry by tomorrow morning.” He lifted the bundle of clothes that Eloise had passed out.

  “That’ll cost you thrupence.”

  “Two.” He counted out two of the bronze oblongs that Mendeans used for small change. “Two more in the morning, if they come back good and clean and dry.”

  That seemed perfectly acceptable. “That all, sir?” She swung her hips slightly and gave him a loaded look. “Care to join us downstairs?”

  She was only moderately pretty, he thought, but sufficient beer would take care of that. He knew the type; she was unlikely to be a straightforward whore but she’d be very willing as long as he was generous with money and drink. He was suddenly horribly tempted. It would draw the poison of his frustration for one night. It would leave him able to think straight for a change instead of obsessing over something he couldn’t have.

  God, but it would be glorious to have use of a woman for a change. With her face to the wall he wouldn’t have to look at that greasy complexion or those gappy teeth. He could just pull her skirts up and stuff himself between those ass cheeks, so much broader than Eloise’s. Wasn’t it what he needed, even if it wasn’t what he really wanted?

  Then revulsion stirred in him at the thought of the negotiations he’d have to make, the faked companionability, the stale beer-and-sweat smell of her that he was already aware of.

  He shook his head, miming his regret. “My wife’s waiting for me.”

  “Oh well then.” She turned away with a flick of her hip and a smirk over her shoulder, disappearing down the stairs.

  I did it for practical reasons, he told himself. We cannot afford to waste money on tavern floozies. I was just being careful.

  The argument did not convince even himself, he had to acknowledge with a sick lurch of his heart.

  He waited on the balcony, his drink almost untasted, until the moon’s ti
p showed over the rooftop, then knocked on the chamber door.

  “I’m done.”

  She hadn’t locked the door. Foolish, Severin thought to himself. What if he’d wandered away and another man had tried the latch? He slipped back into the room. Small oil-lamps had been lit and set at the head of the bed. Eloise was by the fire, wrapped in a sheet to dry. It covered all of her but her bare arms and shoulders and the graceful dip of her neck, as she knelt to let the fire’s warmth dry her long hair.

  Oh God, he thought, dizzy with the pleasure of that sight.

  “There’s hot water left if you want to wash. I didn’t use it all.”

  “Oh? Are you saying I smell bad?” He put the tankard down and hung his jerkin over a stool. He felt so much happier in here with the woman he could not swive, than outside with one he could, that he was almost jocular.

  “Like a whole pen of cattle,” she answered cheerfully.

  “And where will you wait while I bathe?”

  “I won’t look. I promise.” Her fingers stroked through her locks, picking out the tangles.

  “Can I trust you though?” he asked with a smile.

  She widened her eyes, pretending outrage. “Do you think I went to the trouble to wash, only to sleep next to something that stinks of cow?”

  “Your delicate sensibilities are my first priority, wife.” The moment the word was out of his mouth he regretted it, but Eloise laughed.

  “Then see you’re clean enough for me, husband.”

  He bit his lip. Getting naked in the same room as Eloise was a bad idea, even if she had sworn not to look. A very great part of him found it all too attractive—which was precisely why it was such a bad idea. He knew he shouldn’t. Yet the boundaries of propriety between them were so eroded now—by nights together, by fierce embraces, by exhaustion and cold and danger—that it was hard to see where the line was to be drawn any more. “Fair enough then,” he answered.

  He stripped to his waist and poured water into the basin to wash himself. The soap wasn’t of the quality they were used to in Court, but it worked well enough to strip off the gray scum of dirt from flesh and hair. He didn’t hurry. His shadow cast by the firelight danced on the wall. He managed an awkward scrubbing between his shoulder blades with the washcloth and wished there was someone to do his back for him.

  He cast a wary glance round at Eloise.

  She was still bent forward over the fire, running her fingers through her damp hair to clear the tats. The tresses were steaming a little. She was absolutely silent, her face averted from him.

  Of course she would keep her word.

  Carefully, he stripped off his boots and trousers, wrinkled his nose at the smell of his socks and kicked them away. He placed the bucket on the floor and stepped into it to wash his lower body. The water wasn’t much more than lukewarm, but the sensation of cleanliness was luxurious. He scrubbed his legs and soaped his genitals, sliding slippery hands through his pubic hair. His cock was turgid with the thrill of illicit exposure, with the proximity of Eloise. Ignoring it as best he could, he bent to scour his feet one at a time. When he was thoroughly clean he stepped out of the bucket and reached for the linen towel.

  He was busy buffing his wet hair dry when he felt the soft touch on the small of his back.

  Fingertips.

  A hot flash of shock ran across every inch of his skin, like the strike of lightning, and his spine arched. The fingertips shifted with his movement, an infinitesimal caress, and he felt the blood surge to his groin in response. He turned, and as he turned he forced himself to take a step back. Eloise clasped her hands to her throat. He met her eyes, and read in them shame and fear—and need.

  So, said the small cold part of his mind that stayed that way even when he was cutting a man’s throat, you were not imagining things. And how are you going to get out of this one, Severin?

  “My lady,” he croaked. He hadn’t called her that since the shipwreck.

  She had her lower lip trapped in her teeth. She took a wobbly step toward him. He opened his mouth to tell her No, and at that moment she dropped the arm holding the sheet about her, and let the fabric slip to the floor. And then she was naked, and he had no words anymore.

  The body he’d come to know by night and through clothing and by partial glimpses was every bit as sweet and slender as he’d sculpted it in his mind, but so very much paler, and scattered with flat brown moles like dark stars on a cream sky. Each mark invited the touch of a fingertip, the reverence of a kiss. Her pubic fluff was the color of sand, a shade lighter than her hair. She looked frighteningly vulnerable. His cock surged, filling with the blood that was draining from his head so fast he could hear the roar in his ears.

  All that had been so complicated was, suddenly, very very simple.

  Her eyes flicked to that heave of his flesh, widening. Scared but determined, he thought. That was how she’d been since the beginning. His heart was slamming against his breastbone. He hadn’t been this excited by a woman in years. And still he couldn’t speak, and could not move.

  She closed on him and laid the fingertips of one hand over his hip. She didn’t seem to know where to look; not at his face, not at his rising shaft. She focused somewhere about his chest, even as her fingers trailed blindly to the hot column of his flesh, their coolness soothing, their hesitant touch inflaming.

  No! He shaped the word in his head even as he reached out and pulled her against him.

  ”This is high treason,” he said raggedly. Then he kissed her.

  * * * * *

  She hadn’t meant to look. Ah yes, she had, if she was honest with herself. She had meant to sneak a glance, to catch a glimpse of his nakedness and so feed her burning curiosity—but not to stand silently while he was turned away from her, not to glide over the floorboards, not to reach out and touch him.

  And yet somehow it had happened. She’d seen the warm flicker of firelight upon his skin—the shadows made by muscles on a body that seemed half-familiar to her and half wildly, wonderfully strange; the strong easy shift of his frame as he moved—and it was as if she’d placed a ball upon a sloping board, and watched it run inevitably downhill. Could the ball have chosen to stay where it was, or to roll upward instead? Her fingers had moved to the small of his back as if drawn there. His skin had been damp and firm and almost incongruously smooth.

  When he turned to face her she hadn’t the courage to look boldly at his stiffening cock, but—without conscious instruction—her hand reached out to it. The ability to think abandoned her entirely then. Suddenly there was only need and sensation. Hot, hard, smooth flesh. Weight and thickness and a quiver against her fingers as if it was a living creature that she caressed. Hands clasping her waist and then, oh yes—his uncompromising kiss, all hunger. His lips rougher and harder than her own. The taste of bitter hops as his tongue slid over hers. The scrubby beard rasping her face, and his arms pulling her tight up against him. Her heart banging so wildly under her ribs that she thought she might faint. Her legs shaking beneath her, and a sense that all the strength was draining out of her body.

  Even the tilt of his body, leaning into hers, urged her surrender. It was all she could do to lift her arms about his neck and hold on.

  Then Severin plucked her from the floor and wrapped her bare legs around his hips. His cock was wedged between them, more like an iron bar than flesh. Carrying her over to the bed, he dropped her upon the sheets and stooped, straddling her, kissing her lips again, slow and deep—and then, with a groan, her throat and down to her breasts, touching her bloody scab tenderly but then rubbing his face in those soft orbs, his open mouth half-worshipping her, half-mauling her. When he caught and sucked at her nipples she felt jagged flashes streak through her body, as if she was a sky in a lightning storm. She could hear herself panting and whimpering.

  “Ella!” he gasped, running his tongue up her breastbone as his finger and thumb tugged at the point of her tit.

  He would eat her alive, she thought.
He would tear her into pieces. Her hands pushed his head down and her arched spine pushed her breast up to meet his hot mouth again. Questing blindly for something they’d never known before, her hips lifted in invitation, and when he nudged one leg between her thighs she opened to him eagerly.

  A shift of his weight brought him down upon her, or almost so, stretched out full length, half at her side and half on top, his erection like a wooden pole jammed against her. Suddenly everything went much slower, as Severin restrained his wild kisses and lifted his face over hers to search her expression. His left hand slipped between her thighs and hooked round the curve of her mons.

  “Oh!” she cried sharply as he found the wet of her sex. And she was really wet—as juicy and slippery and running with it as an olive press. Part of her quailed, afraid he’d be appalled at her shameless desire—though that didn’t stop her hips jerking, pressing her mound up into his hand. His face was as fierce as a hawk’s stooping over its prey. His fingers slithered through the hot folds of her flesh, exploring the shape and the readiness of her, and the touch drove her half-mad with pleasure. When a single fingertip delved into her tight maiden passage she pushed down upon it, trying to suck him inside her.

  “Want me?” he whispered, pressing her clit with his thumb.

  “Yes!” She’d never wanted anything more.

  His lips caught hers again, like he was eating her confession. So enraptured was she by his kisses that she almost didn’t notice the way his finger withdrew. But she could not miss the plowing of his hand, edge on, up and down her wet furrow and against the nub of her clit. She cried out into his mouth and in response he bit her lower lip gently, his hand pressing and stirring.

  “Oh please!” she cried, but he swallowed her words. Her fingers dug into his hips, a mute warning—though she could not have said what she was warning him about, only that it was soon, it was terrifying, it was unstoppable—and it was here now, now, now. The world flipped upside down. Her body felt like it was unfolding, like almond-blossom bursting into flower. She began to cry out sharply, over and over again, and he smothered her cries with his lips and pressed her into the bed, pinning her even as she jerked wildly up against him.