Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  The slack look of pleasure on his face intensifies when he sees me looking up at him. He laughs when he sees my lips curl, sees me smiling around his cock even as my lips press tight to his shaft. It is funny, in a way. My whole body shakes with a silent giggle and I bob my head, his hot shaft sliding between my lips until my jaw aches, rolling over my tongue.

  I taste salt and bittersweet in my mouth and realize he’s close. I’m not sure what to do, then I decide what I want and stroke him furiously until he bucks, thrusts into my mouth, and explodes. In that moment as he comes it’s like I own him, and he fills my mouth with his hot seed. As he settles I stroke his shaft hard, squeezing him dry.

  I make sure I catch his eye before I rise up on my knees, my hands resting on his legs. I swallow hard, a thrill shooting through my body. He saw my throat work, he knows I just gulped down his load. I barely have time to flick my tongue around my lips and get a stray sticky drop before he seizes me almost painfully by the arms and pulls me down into a rough kiss that spills onto my throat and chest.

  It’s like he didn’t come at all, he’s ready to fuck me. Overcome, I wriggle loose of his grip—partway, he won’t let go of me—and straddle him. My pussy aches to be filled, like my own body is pulling me down onto his shaft. I want him to see. I grip him with my hand and kneel, and stroke the thick head of his enormous cock back and forth, wetting it with my arousal, spreading my lips with his cock head. He leans up and watches, mouth open, his entire body tightening in anticipation, little thrusts jerking in my hand as he tries to reach inside me.

  He finally has enough and grabs my hips and pushes down. I resist ever so slightly, my legs shaking as I savor the lust that drives him. He sits up and I tap his lips with my finger.

  “Watch.”

  He watches. I can feel myself spread around him, and then as he begins to fill me I struggle to keep my eyes open even as they un-focus and the world becomes a blur. The outside, the chill air of the castle and the silky sheets bunched under my knees, all of it disappears. The world is his hands on my hips, the throbbing hugeness that’s gradually filling me, a pleasure I never imagined shot through with a pinching pain that only makes me want it more.

  I sink down until I’m sitting in his lap, impaled, his big cock speared into my body. I fall forward and lie on his chest, my back rounded by the big rod in my body, and gasp.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  I shake my head, because I don’t want him to hold back. He pushes on my hips, guiding me as I rock forward and back on top of him, every inch a new sensation. Oh God, this feels so good, how did I wait so long?

  I rise up, sitting in his lap, and it becomes a slow but urgent dance, the rolling and popping of of my hips gradual but not gentle, his thrusts from below a little harder. He can’t keep his hand from my breasts, and I take his finger in my mouth, sucking and biting as he lifts my entire body with forceful thrusts that almost hurt.

  All at once he’s on top of me and I’m splayed out on my back. He slows, lying on me as his he buries himself to the root, and pushes my wrists back, over my head, trapping them under one hand so he can slip the other under the back of my head and knot his fingers in my hair, pulling just to the edge of pain as he drives inside me with his cock and kisses me, swallowing my shuddering cries and whimpers.

  My feet are free and I urge him on with my heels in his thighs, pushing him until he jerks and thrusts harder, grinding against me. I can’t tell the difference between pain and pleasure anymore, it all jumbles up into a hazy warmth that floods through my body, growing to uncomfortable heat between my legs, only to spread further. I can’t believe I was cold. I can’t believe I’m not on fire. The heat and warmth are seeping out through my skin.

  He lets go of my wrists and wraps his arms around me. I do the same, looping mine around his neck as he buries his face in my shoulder. As he gets close to the edge he bites me and I yelp and squirm under him, driving him to fuck me even harder.

  I try to hold myself back but my body rebels, clenches him, and he cries out, loud and guttural, as he releases inside me, explodes, and it drives me over the edge. I buck and writhe under him as a climax rips through my body, stealing my limbs and voice away as I moan and thrash, carried away on a current of pleasure that tightens the whole world to a tiny, cold point that bursts out in a fiery explosion that rips out through my whole body, only to contract down and do it again.

  When I finally go limp under him, my body still gripping him inside me, he lies on top of me, his head resting on my shoulder. There are bites on his shoulders and scratch marks on his back in hot red lines, and he left his share of marks on me, too. All that energy just exploded out and now I lie with him on me like a blanket, his arms around me, his manhood inside me, growing hard again.

  “Does my princess need to rest?” he murmurs, stroking sweat-heavy locks of hair from my eyes.

  I grin. “No. Your princess needs another hard fucking, my prince.”

  9

  If you told me that one day I would be here, I never would have believed you. I’m sitting at a table in the great hall. Kristoff’s chair is only slightly bigger than mine, and I sit at his right hand, in a place of authority. It makes me nervous. My new dress fits better and leaves my arms bare, so it’s cooler during the heat of the day when sunlight pours through the enormous windows until the stones under my feet bake.

  The really weird part is that this my meeting. Mostly.

  “Your grace, this is most sudden…”

  Kristoff silences the speaker with a look. A tall, graying man, he’s been introduced to me as the minister of education. I’ve already given them all a list of my ideas, though now that I’m pressed to actually present them to people who might be able to make the changes I’m pushing for, I feel stupid for getting myself into this.

  I didn’t even finish my degree and they’re asking me how to reform their education system. The prince doesn’t say a word unless he detects a hint of disrespect from a member of his cabinet; then he silences them with a sharp word and turns to me.

  Though it is not easy, I do my best not to slump my shoulders and whisper my ideas. I keep my chin up and sit straight, hands folded on my lap, and lay out my plans, such as they are. It’s all basic stuff, but from the looks on the faces of the men and women sitting around me, you’d think I was suggesting they start speaking Greek and have the teachers wear boxer shorts on their heads.

  My starting suggestion is making all that day-care stuff voluntary, and though it sparks a huge argument that only ends when the prince roars enough and commands them to carry out my orders, I make the whole clinic-care-for-sick-kids optional, too. Kids with the sniffles can stay home with their mom now. Before I can say anything about it, Kristoff cuts off a question by decreeing—he can do that, he decrees things—that mothers or fathers who take a day from work to care for their children will be given full compensation.

  Most of what I ask for is simple—art supplies, music, more computers.

  “If you stay,” Kristoff tells me quietly, “I will place the education minister under your direct authority. The schools will be yours to operate.”

  I shake a little when he tells me that. “I’m not ready for that kind of responsibility. You need experts…”

  “Then find them and bring them here. I do not ask you to teach the classes, I ask you to set a direction. Leadership is not about doing, it is about finding those who can do and guiding them to your desired results.”

  I swallow, hard. I’ve seen what power can do to a person, more intimately than I ever thought possible. It scares me.

  So, I tell him.

  “I don’t know if I can handle that kind of authority. I don’t know if I want it.”

  “That is why you should have it,” he says, giving me a curt nod of respect.

  The meeting drags on through the day. Some of the things I want to do will take time and require massive changes. No more assigning people jobs, they can choose. They’ll still
take the tests but the results will inform, not command. Art teachers will be hired from abroad and until they arrive the kids will have freeform art and playtime, even the older ones. I like the apprenticeship idea so we’ll keep that.

  The sun is low by the time we finish. Kristoff dismisses them all and sags back in his seat once we’re alone in the hall. He runs his fingers through his hair.

  I reach over and tug on one of the heavy black locks.

  He takes my wrist delicately in his hand.

  “You understand that when we are married—”

  “If. If we are married.”

  “When we are in public we will have to comport ourselves a certain way. We cannot act like smitten children in front of government ministers and foreign dignitaries.”

  “What happens if I do?”

  “I’ll have to punish you,” he says, running the back of his hand up my arm.

  Instead of a pang of fear I feel a little quiver of excitement and grin at him.

  “You will learn. They will harry you the way they have harried me. Come.”

  He stands and offers me his hand. The prince walks me along the parapet. That’s what it’s called, a parapet. Balconies are for scrubs. This is a castle. This side faces the west, and the setting sun dipping below the mountains. It looks like something out of a cheesy Hammer horror movie; Christopher Lee should come shambling out of the dark as Frankenstein’s vampire mummy or something.

  I can’t help but stare. The colors are gorgeous. It’s the end of our first day. It’s Monday, and Thursday afternoon we leave for New York. I have to decide.

  This morning Kristoff gave me leave, as he puts it, to call home if I want, and to talk to my parents. I haven’t yet. Instead, before the meeting, I called for a car to take me down to the hospital and sat with Melissa until eleven o’clock.

  She was happier and in higher spirits. Her parents weren’t there, but they’re staying at the hotel for foreign dignitaries at the foot of the mountain. I felt an urge to point out to Kristoff how hypocritical it is to keep this nice artsy hotel for foreigners in this drab, dreary place.

  “Tomorrow I am giving you a gift,” he says, resting his hands on my hips as he stands behind me.

  “What is it?”

  He touches his lips to my head. “I cannot spoil the surprise. Come, we must rise early. There is much to do.”

  Dinner comes to us in the room he calls his solar, and then it’s time for bed.

  For some reason, I feel more nervous stripping down tonight than I did last night, before we had sex. I’m not sure what he expects now. I believe him about it being customary to sleep naked. As he paces around the room bare-assed and lights a big fire in the hearth, I feel more at ease. Shivering against the nighttime chill, I throw myself into the bed and bundle up in blankets and furs until he joins me.

  Sleeping on a big featherbed naturally dumps us on top of each other. I relax as I get used to lying with him. I’ve slept with a man before, my fiancé. I don’t mean in the biblical sense, I mean actually slept in the same bed. This is different. Kristoff lights a lamp next to the bed and reads a book propped on his chest.

  “Can you read my tongue?”

  “Sort of. Street signs, things like that.”

  After a while, despite the softness of his skin against mine as I lie curled up against his side, I almost forget that I’m unclothed as he gives me a reading lesson. It seems to amuse him when I struggle over a difficult word. It takes what seems like all night to read one page, and by then I’m yawning and dozing off, my head pillowed on his chest.

  When I wake up the next morning from a dreamless sleep, I’m lying on my side, his arms around me, his face buried in my hair.

  He’s hard when he wakes up. I can tell when his breathing changes and his hands go from gently resting to caressing, one dipping down under me, between my legs. I hold the other hand as he strokes my pussy, my arousal clashing with the lazy relaxation I feel. Like a cat sunning myself on a windowsill, I don’t want to move. The warmth and softness of the bed and his breath on my neck are too much.

  When I feel ready I pull my legs up and bend my knees, and he pulls me down just enough and enters me slowly, his hands shaking as my body envelops his cock. I tense under his hands and rub my cheek against his palm.

  We fuck like this for what feels like hours, slowly, not changing positions, using the motion of the bed and the slow movement of each other’s hips to ride to a slow but profound pleasure that leaves me throbbing all over, a dull, pleasurable ache rippling through my body.

  No words are exchanged. I tug on his hands and start to roll on my stomach. He follows and pushes me over the rest of the way, lying on top of me with his legs splayed, and picks up the pace until he grunts and buries himself deep in hard, uncontrolled thrusts as my gentle climax pulses my body, pleasure surging through me at last as I quiver under him.

  When he rolls on his back I flop, still sleepy, on his chest and lie there, rubbing his stomach with my hand, feeling the tight muscles of his belly with my fingernails.

  I yawn and curl up in the layers and layers of blankets and furs while he showers. Finally I get sick of waiting, pad barefoot over to the bathroom, open the shower door, and step inside with him. It’s even bigger than the one in my old room, and I’m immediately doused in scalding hot water. I yelp and cling to him, as if he can make the heat go away.

  He spins me around and douses my head with shampoo. I pinch my eyes shut and make soft, pleased little sounds as he kneads my scalp with his rough fingers and runs my hair between them, squeezing out the soap. He washes my back too, and I do the same. There’s a bamboo bench; he sits down and I wash his hair, my breasts resting on his head as I scrape his scalp with my nails. I scrub his back and shoulders, lift the water wand off the wall, and rinse him down.

  I like the way his wet skin feels against mine. I like how big his shoulders are, how the muscles feel under my hands. I like the way he sits up straighter when I lean over him, push my boobs into the back of his head, and run my hands down his chest.

  After we dry each other off with big fluffy towels, he helps me dress, gently and carefully lacing up the sides of my dress. I didn’t pick the one I will wear today, he did; it seems simpler and less ornate than the ones I’ve been wearing, more traditional with big poofy sleeves, heavy skirts, and a high collar. The blouse I wear is creamy white and the skirts and bodice of the dress a hunter green that he says brings out my eyes.

  Once I’m dressed, I help him. I tug his trousers up and give his cock a little squeeze before I button them up. He forgoes the black jacket he always wears for a creamy shirt, halfway unbuttoned. God, he’s gorgeous. He looks absolutely magnificent, almost mouthwatering. The only attention he gives his hair is to run his fingers through it, and it’s all it needs. I could do that all day.

  I stop myself, lest we end up playing with each other’s hair all afternoon.

  I start to put mine up, and he stops me, gingerly grasping my wrists. “Leave it down.”

  I brush it out and let it hang loose. It starts to curl as it dries, as it does.

  My present has not yet been revealed to me, and I don’t dare ask, even as he lifts me into the car for a ride down the mountainside.

  When I see what he’s arranged for me, I gasp.

  Color. The city is a riot of color, color everywhere. There are people on the streets, and not a shade of gray in sight. The car stops abruptly and we step out. As soon as I hit the warm air I’m assaulted by a cascade of flowery fragrances so intense I let out a little chirping sneeze and have to wipe my nose with the prince’s handkerchief.

  Wooden arbors stand over the streets, adorned with flowers. Children run up and down roads. I didn’t even know this many people lived here. I can hear music in the distance; it sounds almost like polka but not quite.

  “What is this?”

  “A festival. I declared this week a holiday.”

  “For what?”

  “F
or you, to honor you and the light that you bring to this place.”

  He offers me his hand, and we walk together.

  There is still a nervous edge in the presence of the prince.

  “This is beautiful,” I tell him, “but I want more. These children you’ve taken away from their families…”

  “Come,” he says.

  We walk through town, the prince and his lady. The looks they give me make me feel self-conscious, and I can’t stop blushing.

  “Do you remember that first morning? When we talked about Hades and Persephone?”

  “Yes.”

  It feels like a million years ago. Like last year.

  “You never finished the story.”

  “That’s how it ends,” I shrug. “It’s a folktale to explain the seasons.”

  “It’s more than that. Persephone changed her husband. She brought some of her mother’s light and life to his court. Such was her beauty that Sisyphus was relieved of eternally rolling the great boulder up the hill, and the thirst of Tantalus was slaked. Not every hour was bitter, and not every day was cruel.”

  We walk to an open square, all decorated for the festival. There are a bunch of people sitting in chairs, all couples, many holding hands. They look sullen and sad, and many very scared, unable to bring themselves to even pretend to be happy for their terrifying leader’s benefit.

  “When my father showed me what lies under our mountain he told me, ‘If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change. The devil changes you.’”

  I frown.

  “You have changed me, though. Look.”

  Vans. Big vans…like school busses. They roll into the square and stop, and I swear the entire world goes dead silent, like everything has frozen, as quiet as the grave. The air is no longer so warm, the sun no longer so strong. It’s like an invisible shadow has fallen over the world.