It is entirely my fault, which I will freely admit before any tribunal, that I have to grab that trim waist above that extraordinarily fine Royal and Imperial ass in an unavailing effort to keep my balance. It is only my poor physical coordination that causes my hands to slide downward, and squeeze those muscled cheeks as my knees gently touch down. Poor physical coordination is a failing well-known to be common among bards and others with the Gift of music, of course—and didn’t I display that same lack of coordination just a short while ago, also ending on my knees?
Not the on-my-knees scenario I want, that we want, but it will do for now.
A warrior as experienced as he in responding to unexpected touches, physical or magical, particularly in battle—and he is doing his very best to make this a battle just now—could easily have detected my imminent touch, or the barest initial contact, and simply stepped forward, leaving me to flop ungracefully on my face. Instead, he stops for just the length of my ass-squeeze, before stepping inside, without looking back.
I was hoping for a small look back, and perhaps even a glint of appreciation for the possibilities inherent in having a man whose mouth is so very talented at sucking cock on his knees in front of you. But wildly improvisational plans such as this rarely go as hoped.
Still, that pause, that tiny acceptance of my touch, means I have not totally fucked things up, though they are far from being made right. But still....
I do not smile as I smoothly stand up. I carefully continue not visibly smiling, in a way to ensure that when he looks at me he will understand I am not smiling, but I could an’ I would, and follow him in. What he felt at my ass groping, which is, considered properly, just giving the back equal time with the front, is behind the Warlord mask. I sit in the chair opposite his. He says nothing.
I do.
I tell him everything about Irik, including the aftermath. Then, “When you told me about the prophecy, I thought that what I had done was being done to me. That, well, I was being forced by....”
I hesitate, not really wanting to say “the Goddess” out loud, planning on using the customary and quite stupid looking and gesturing upward to indicate Her. Which is absurd, since She isn’t up, She is...all around.
My hesitations around this man are going to be the death of me.
Literally.
He has no Rage. No magic. No access to Power. No way to use a Land-Road to accelerate his speed into near-invisibility. Yet in the time it takes for that tiny hesitation and an inhalation before the look and gesture, he is out of his chair, across to me, my chair is on its back, and I am up and out of it, slammed against the wall, held up by his hand tightly around my neck, barely able to touch the floor with my toes. And his hand is squeezing.
There may be no Rage, but his fury is incandescent. All the flame and heat of a sun, even a hidden sun like the one beyond the silver-white clouds above, brought down and compressed inside him. “After all I told you—” a squeeze—“after all I humiliated myself by telling you—” another squeeze that begins to crush my throat, “you think I am capable of forcing you—”
“I wun tak crappinz.”
When you are being choked, and death appears imminent as a result of your own fuck-up after fuck-up after fuck-up, desperation and lack of air don’t lead to clear speech.
He releases his hand, lets it drop, steps just the tiniest bit away, and with a look of utter disbelief, asks, “You want me to stop for a moment, so you can take a crap?”
He doesn’t notice the small shake of my head as I slide down the wall. But he does notice the slide, steps in, bends over, puts his hands in my armpits and hauls me upright, still against the wall. Only this time I’m being held in place with his hand flat against my chest. He could, an he would, spread his hand wide, so that his thumb could glide through the red fur to caress my right nipple, while his little finger does the same to my left. But he will not. Selfish bastard.
I lick my lips...repeatedly...just to get enough moisture to let me speak. They are in fact as dry as the Fourth Hell. So there is no other reason to lick them. Certainly not to see if his eyes will follow, as they do, and then pretend not to have done so, as they also do.
I stretch the moment out as long as I can, and just a bit longer, though not letting it turn into an actual pause. “Not...that’s not what I said. I said I wanted to talk to the Crown Prince.”
There is nothing at all humorous in his bark of rude laughter. “You are.” There is a nearly bardic subtext of extensive insults following those two words, but I am too shaken to figure them out.
I shake my head so that he can clearly see it. “No. I’m not. I have been talking, am still talking to the Warlord. You know, the big, bad warrior type who sees instant violence and widespread mayhem as the best solution to all problems?”
I have to take the risk that the teasing mockery will not set him off again. Have to take the chance he will listen. He doesn’t move his hand to my throat. Lifts an eyebrow to tell me to go on.
# Thank you, Goddess. #
# For what? I haven’t done a Me-blessed thing. #
She’s here. But She said she wouldn’t be watching....
# And I haven’t been. Not even a peek. But you did call Me just now, and responding is only a polite, Me-like thing to do. #
# Uh...thanks? #
#You’re welcome, of course. But, idiot child, you do realize you are pausing, don’t you? Yet. Again. #
She is gone, and I scramble to recover the several battlefield-lengths I have just lost.
Or perhaps not. Or, not entirely.
There is a sliver of military-style, restrained humor at the expense of a subordinate—a very, very inferior subordinate, perhaps even at the bottom of the chain of command—as he says, “I hope that whatever you do to earn a living, when you are not groping and dancing and singing and causing Summer Ball disturbances, does not require you to think on your feet, or to respond immediately to something said to you, and do so with wit and style. You would be abysmal at it.”
I almost lash out at him, protesting that I do have wit and style, that those are talents required of bards in general and the Empire’s High Bard in particular; that it is only with him that I seem to lose control over both. But I don’t.
Yet another occasion where lying is the only sensible thing to do. “You’re right.”
The “Of course I am” is in his smirk.
He drops his hand. Steps back.
I don’t rub my very sore neck. But I can’t just let it go.
“So. Do I get to talk to the Crown Prince and just the Crown Prince?”
“Just the Crown Prince?” So very innocent, and confused-sounding. He doesn’t do either well.
“You know as well as I do that you switch personas when and as you please, putting them on and off like cloaks or costumes. Sometimes you put on the major three at once. If I’m talking to the Warlord, it is fairly clear my life is at risk every time I pause too long for a paranoid warrior’s instincts. Talking to the Speaker is even more risky, as I’m not confident that the Sword couldn’t be brought here if you get angry enough to call it. The Heir Presumptive is probably stuffy, something you use for formal government events. The Crown Prince will be, I believe, more relaxed. You use him for informal occasions and ceremonies where you have little choice except to be friendly, or as friendly as you are capable of being.”
He looks stunned.
“No one has ever caught on? Or dared say anything?”
He shakes his head.
Another nudge should do it. I smile at him. “I wun tak crappinz.”
His face cracks in the first genuine smile I have seen. I wonder how long it’s been since the last one.
“Speaking.”
He is more relaxed. He actually lets me explain, without untoward pauses on my part, no interruptions on his, that I thought it was the Goddess who was forcing me to go through whatever steps are needed to fulfill the prophecy. Although I have no idea what the prop
hecy is, having never heard of it before now, and certainly not knowing anything about it, other than the seven-time repetition of “My...DarkFire.”
His voice turns bitter.
“Nothing so precise as that. It wouldn’t be a fucking prophecy if it made any fucking sense. Seven times said. Seven times heard. Touches three. One. Then the other. Then two as one. Then One. Then two. And love. Does that sound like anything rational? And where would the fun be for the Bitch-Goddess who set it all up, set me up for what happened, if the fucking prophecy made sense? If there even is a fucking Goddess—” And he does the looking up, gesture thing.
Surprisingly, there is no lightning strike. I know She said She wasn’t listening, but surely She is aware when someone blasphemes with this kind of disbelief. She must really want the prophecy fulfilled if She is willing to overlook that.
“You...don’t believe?”
He shrugs. “I did...once upon a long ago time. But after that day, there was no reason to continue. She has ignored me every day since then, as She ignored me that day. I pay Her the lip service required of me by my titles, swear by Her, in theory pray to Her. But believe in Her? I’d rather tour the Nine Hells for eternity, without hope of rebirth.”
“But.... The seven times I said....”
“Coincidence. A series of words and numbers strung together in an order designed to make the listener believe it has meaning, some vast significance in, or about, or to my life. It was probably crafted by a drunk abbot looking for some reward from the dar Andrae with a false prophecy about me, just because it includes the word ‘love.’”
But the Goddess is real. I have the mental earache from Her displeasure, the boot bruise on my ass from her encouragement as proof. Yet looking at his face, listening to his voice, I know I can’t tell him any of that.
“Only...love is not precisely what has happened as a result of those fucking words. Either that day or today. Two prophecy...attempts, I suppose, in a single day.”
“What?”
“Did you see the man in the howling red back there?”
I nodded.
“He was my latest...fuck toy? father infuriating fuck? He was persuaded to fake love for me, by telling me so seven times. At least what you did was unintentional.”
Unintentional on my part, but not precisely so on Hers. How in the Hells do I make this right?
DarkFire
The dar Andrae never apologize. It is not at all a Royal or Imperial thing to do. But considering all the Royal and Imperial “never done” things that have been done so far tonight, I do anyway.
“I apologize.”
He blinks in obvious surprise. My reputation has, of course, preceded me. “Ah, thank you.”
A change of subject is in order. “Can you link with anyone...back there?”
He pauses, his face going slightly blank, his mind turned inward. Then he shakes his head.
“I haven’t been able to, either.” I walk over to the bed, sit down. Oddly enough, he does, too. Not close enough for our sides to touch, but not beyond a stretched out hand. I want to do precisely that. But I don’t.
“Does your bardic Gift rely on Power?”
He flushes, and I remember his admission about the man he wanted to love him. “Not usually, if you mean Power in general, as opposed to the Power within.”
“Can you sense any Power here?”
Again he concentrates, again he shakes his head.
“Neither can I, which I don’t understand. Power is. It permeates the universe; the only way there is no Power somewhere is if it has been exhausted by use. And even then, Power flows down, like water, to refill the emptiness. Here, it’s as if there was never any Power...ever.” I pause to make my point. “Without Power, none of the spells I know or might craft to get us back will work.”
“So we’re stuck here, in a room with a bed?” He does not sound totally displeased.
I smile my best smug smile at him. “Don’t forget the bowl of lubricant.”
His smile is smug right back. “I haven’t. I won’t. So doesn’t this mean that being here has something to do with the prophecy?”
I shrug. “Probably so.” I glare at him when he opens his mouth, undoubtedly to suggest all this as proof of Her existence, or benevolence, or whatever the fuck his faith compels him to believe. He shuts his mouth. “If She did exist, it might be Her. It could also be a spell worked by a mage or group of mages with talent of a range and depth I’ve never heard of.”
He ticks his points off on his fingers. “So. A. We’re here because of an evil conspiracy by unknown adversaries who want us forever confined to a room with a comfortable bed, lots of lube, plenty of space, and chillers that probably contain a supply a supply of food and drink. Which means we just eat, drink and fuck until we’re bored or dead.”
He raises a second finger. “Or B. We’re here to do something to fulfill the prophecy. And unless, no, until we do we don’t go home. But once we do get it right, we go back. Or, perhaps, if we seriously try, but we can’t, or won’t, or don’t get it right, we still go back. Eventually.”
He sighs. Damn, but that is an impressive red-furred sigh. He smiles just a little. “Did you notice how carefully I avoided any mention of the Goddess in option B?”
I nod.
“So which assumption do we go with?”
“An eternity of sex with no hope of return, or a near-eternity of sex with a possibility of return? Let’s agree on the second possibility.
“Fine. Then I think getting back has something to do with those three touches.”
“Why?”
“A feeling? Or, let’s just say there’s no reason at all. It’s just somewhere to start.”
I start.
I reach out with my right hand. Caress his cheek with my palm; stroke those thin lips with my thumb, wondering how they might swell from being wrapped around my cock. Lift my hand and slide it under his shirt to nip his nipple with my fingertips. He arches into my touch. Not much, but I can’t miss it. I like my man...what? No. I like men who respond to how I choose to touch them.
“That didn’t work,” he says.
“Better.”
“What?”
“You must have been having a very off day, and night, earlier, when I justifiably pointed out your lamentable lack of rapid responses based on wit and style.”
He slaps my chest with his palm! No one touch.... No. I will not go there. By touching him I gave him permission to touch me. He watches me for just a second and then punches my shoulder with his fist. Not gently, but not seriously; he is grinning far too broadly. I smile back, bracing myself in a mostly Crown Prince mode, but with a little Warlord warrior thrown in, for the third blow. I am not expecting the quick forward lean, and the strong hand that darts between my legs and squeezes-releases my cock and balls. Then he sits back and smiles.
“That didn’t work, either,” he says.
“I could grab you, put you over my knee, and spank you three times. Or perhaps more if that doesn’t send us back?”
He shakes his head, but looks thoughtful, in a very arousing way. He focuses back on me. “Perhaps the prophecy does not require us to touch each other, but...ourselves?”
Crown Princes—also Warlords, battle mages, Sword Speakers and Heirs Presumptive—do not lick their lips at the thought of watching this glorious man...touch himself. It is a close call, but I manage. The bastard sitting untouchingly close smirks. Apparently I do not conceal things readily from him.
He proceeds to touch himself. He puts his index and second fingers deep into his mouth and throat, and then slowly slides them out, licking all the way. The next touch began with sliding his jacket off, dropping it on the bed, all with his fingertips never touching his body. Then he slides his crossed hands inside his shirt, where I cannot see, but where I know he is twisting his nipples. He moans just a little. Then he reaches between his legs, adjusting his cock so it runs down his left leg, while stroking himself once. Just once
.
The Hells with it. I lick my lips.
His arched eyebrow asks, “Well?”
Well, indeed.
I duplicate his touches and the middle one completely shocks me. A few men who have been under me, legs over my shoulders as I pound their holes, have reached up to caress or twist my nipples. I have never felt anything and told them not to bother. I feel something now, and I let loose my own moan. No. If I am to be as ruthlessly honest as I pride myself on being—except, of course, when the exigencies of the Kingdom and Empire require me to lie, as they so often do—I whimper. And my cock spurts when I do my own adjustment and stroke.
We are both breathing more heavily than we were when we started our efforts to return. I am not quite so anxious anymore about succeeding. At least not quickly. What possible harm can there be in a little delay? Especially if we are devoting the delay to experimentation to various methods and means that might send us back?
“I, ah....” He pants a little and pauses a little. “Kissing. Kissing should be next. Three from me, and if that doesn’t work, three from you.”
He pauses again. “Uh, well, we’ve already had one each. Earlier. So that would be two from me, and then two from you.
My voice doesn’t precisely shift to warrior-Speaker-battle mage tones, but my words are clear, incisively decisive, with no room for misunderstanding, or any possibility of changing my mind. “I don’t kiss.”
“You don’t kiss?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
My voice slides just a bit toward glacial. “No.”
“Then what was all that earlier?”
“A mistake.” A momentary aberration because I was temporarily out of my head with lust.
“So, other than earlier, that’s it with you and kissing.”
Winter sets in, with seers predicting it will be the coldest, longest winter in the history of the Kingdom and Empire. “Yes.”
Jerril waves off winter, and his voice is spring. “You need to learn, then.”
The Warlord and the Bard Page 13