by David Wood
Him.
The man reached one arm around her waist slowly, gliding the hand along her back like the dusk settling over the land of her spine. When his hand reached fully around behind her and to her side, he tugged on her, launching her body up against the front of his. She gasped at the surprise. She could feel his manhood, stiff and pulsing and he pressed up against her stomach. She was looking up at the smooth skin of his chin—not a single hair on his white face. His eyes were looking down at her, and when her eyes climbed up his face to his lower eyelashes, she was trapped once again in those swirling pools of ebony. But somewhere deep in the murky depths of those holes into night, she saw a twinkling illumination. A kindling fire that spread up the sides of the blackness, reaching out for her.
Now she grew frightened, and she wanted to look away, but his other hand was roaming around her body, while he still forcefully held her body close to him. His eyes still kept hers prisoner. She watched the fires in his mind grow. She understood that this man was going to indulge her every fantasy and leave her exhausted. She wanted that fiercely, but she was frightened as well. Her voice made a small squeaking noise, and his lips were on hers, his tongue probing her mouth with urgent need.
She kissed him back, now with a growing need of her own. His arm holding her released from around her waist, freeing the hand to caress her breasts. When his hand found the neckline of her nightgown, he began to tug on it. To her surprise, her own hand was on the other side, helping him to tear the fabric from her body. The gown came away in a loud shredding rip, but she kissed him harder, and threw her arms around his neck, as the tattered garment fell away to the floor.
Suddenly his arms were under her, and she was being carried to the bed. She pulled at his shirt and waistcoat. Then she was on the bed, his eyes capturing her completely, yet again. The coal black was gone. It had ignited into a fiery swirling red of blood and flame. She found herself reaching forward with her head, and her lips kissed his eye, the eyelid fluttering closed a second before the skin of her lower lip touched the shining orb.
His clothes were gone, and the candles in the room were all nearly extinguished. One lone flame spit and hissed in the corner of the room, on a tiny wooden three-legged table. She reached for his lower back and pulled him toward her. Shadows danced around the bed like living things, wrapping themselves around this man like streaming silk lovers.
She had a tiny flickering thought that what she was doing was wrong. It slipped into her consciousness and slid around her mind, like a slippery bar of soap. Then she caught it. She had it. She needed her voice. To use her voice. She needed it. She focused on the idea and pushed. And then it was there in her mouth.
Not a scream or the protest she had expected. Her mouth betrayed her. Her lips broke away from his, and she drew in a deep breath.
“Yes,” she said.
Then he was in her, and she was floating in a cloud-filled paradise of pleasure and yearning. She wrapped her legs and arms around him tightly, pulling him in and breathing in rhythm with him. The shadows began to envelop her as they did him. The light in the room was fading. She was soaring, and every part of her was screaming in delight and ecstasy.
She felt him lunge deeper into her, and the candle in the corner finally gave up its last dying light. The blackness took them, and she whispered again and again.
“Yes.”
The pleasure was all. The room, the blackness, the scent of the burnt-out candle, the tickle of his coarse hair as it draped along her face, and eventually even the pain.
It was all a part of the pleasure.
Chapter 17
The following day the men went out to work directly after breakfast. Wagner had mentioned the Count’s extensive library while they ate and Gretchen, distracted through most of the meal, vowed that the women would explore it immediately. Almost as if she had been waiting for a moment to get Anneli alone.
Wagner gave Fritz a brief tour of the castle to examine areas he thought they might work on in the coming weeks. Fritz offered a few ideas, but mostly nodded and agreed with Wagner. When they had completed the tour, he suggested they start with the courtyard where Wagner had nearly been crushed.
“Actually, I thought we’d use that opening in the wall to dump debris. Let’s save it for later. But you are right—with the winter coming on, we should get the outdoor work done first.”
They settled on shoring up the small stone walls that lined the entrance to the natural bridge to the castle from the nearby cliffs. They would be outdoors in the good weather and would get to examine the castle from across the chasm, looking for any additional exterior areas Wagner had not yet noted.
The gloomy day passed uneventfully, as the men worked with pick and shovel, and then with stone and trowel. The sky continually threatened rain, but none came from the leaden clouds. They came back to the castle for lunch with the women. Gretchen, wearing an emerald green gown with lace and frills, dominated the conversation with gushing adoration for the Count’s library. Anneli, now wearing a bright sky-blue dress with a modest neckline, nodded and smiled at all the right times, but Wagner could tell she was bored with the books and with Gretchen. More than once he saw her look at him with a tiny gleam in her eye. He could tell she was recalling their passionate reunion lovemaking the previous night. Toward the end of the lunch, Wagner determined to call a halt to the day’s efforts with Fritz earlier than normal, so that he might find his way to his lovely wife’s bed with energy remaining for the night ahead.
Fritz had been a lively conversationalist throughout the morning, but after they returned across the natural stone pathway to the other side of the cavern to appraise the castle and resume work on the wall, the large man fell silent. Wagner wondered if his friend was just feeling the post-meal bloat and needed a nap, or whether something was bothering him. They had been friends for years and could joke with each other about most aspects of their lives, but when it came to serious talk about what was bothering them, both men would usually clam up. Instead of simply asking, Wagner analyzed what he had seen from his friend in the last day.
Fritz had been merry and his typical outgoing self, even taking the incident with the bat in stride. But he had said little to Gretchen, Wagner realized. Then again, Gretchen usually did most of the talking. The two made a pretty good couple, Wagner thought, because they both enjoyed the same kind of carefree life, eating out at fine restaurants in the city one week, then launching off on a months-long journey to the far reaches of Hungary the next to help a friend with a construction project. After they were done here, they had talked of making a visit to America.
Gretchen was fun, even if she talked a bit too much, and she was quite pretty. She and Fritz had been an item for most of a year now. With her being Anneli’s friend, and Fritz being his, those two had naturally gravitated toward each other. She appeared happy enough to be here…so what is the problem, Wagner wondered.
And then he knew.
“She wants to get married, doesn’t she?” he asked his friend.
Fritz didn’t turn to Wagner, but continued to walk further along the narrow raised strip of land that formed a winding bridge to the castle. “She says we’ve been together long enough. She thinks that our time here will make me see that I don’t need the nightlife of Munich. She wants us to marry and move to the countryside. Maybe somewhere in the Black Forest.” Fritz kicked at a loose stone on the walkway, and it sailed out into the void. The drop down to the valley floor was hundreds of yards, possibly a mile down. The edge of the ribbon of land was steep, but a few scraggly trees grew from the sides of it, before the land sloped outward to a more gradual hill. It then dropped away, hundreds of feet lower to the river far below the castle. Fritz stood staring at his kicked rock, watching it for what felt to Wagner like forever.
Wagner understood his friend and needed no further information. Fritz was a social creature. The notion of being locked away on a small farm with only Gretchen for conversation would destroy hi
m. Fritz was always the popular man in the tavern—not only because he freely bought drink for strangers, but because he loved to meet new people and hear their stories. He told some of the tallest tales, and was always the life of a party. Although Wagner could see himself settling down with Anneli in some remote part of Germany someday, he knew that to remove Fritz from the life of the city for too long would remove the essence of who Fritz was. After a few months here at the castle working on rock, the man would be ready to flee back to Vienna or Budapest. Wagner had always known that Fritz’s help, while valuable and fun, would probably not last for the duration of the restoration project. He had planned for that, and he knew to get any work that required two sets of hands done quickly, so Fritz could be free to depart when he felt ready.
Wagner frowned at the thought that Gretchen could have been with Fritz for a year and not known the man well enough to see he could never be happy with that kind of life. Maybe she’s so busy talking all the time, she never takes the time to hear what Fritz has to say. Or maybe he just doesn’t say it. The latter was more likely, the more Wagner thought about it.
“You’ll have to tell her. You’ll have to—” Wagner began.
But Fritz cried out. A startled shout.
Wagner spun around to look for his friend on the bridge, but the man was gone. He raced several yards to where Fritz had been standing. When he looked over the edge of the wall, he saw his friend. Twenty feet down the wall, Fritz hung from one arm on a jagged brown tree branch that jutted out from the soil on the side of the wall.
“I need to run to the castle to get rope, Fritz. Try to hold on.”
“Go, I’ll be fine. But Andreas?”
Wagner had started to go, but stopped and looked over the edge of the precipitous fall again. “Yes?”
“Hurry.” Fritz smiled, but the smile was grim and suggested he was in pain.
Wagner sprinted down the twisting ribbon of rock and soil toward the castle. He had a large coil of rope in his new wheelbarrow, just inside the outer courtyard. He made a wide turn inside and snatched it up on his way back out again, not having slowed his run at all. When he reached the edge of the wall where Fritz had fallen, he could see that Fritz had raised and hooked a leg over the jutting twisted tree, to ease the strain on his shoulder, but the man still looked intensely uncomfortable.
Wagner quickly wrapped the rope around himself and made a rescue loop on the other end, with a one-handed bowline. He lowered the makeshift lasso to his friend and then kept his eyes on the man until he saw the rope secured. Fritz outweighed him, so he sat back away from the edge, with one foot braced on a natural boulder embedded in the ground atop the road, which had been incorporated into the man-made wall, probably because removing it would have been too much work. Fritz would have to climb—there was no way Wagner could pull him up. Both men knew that, and no communication would be necessary. But Wagner had examined the wall and soil along the twenty-foot drop to the gnarled tree. Fritz would have no easy time of it, so Wagner would need to keep him on tight tension for most of the climb, and he might even need to take all of Fritz’s 200 pounds of weight if the man fell.
He braced himself against the boulder, and pulled in slack on the rope whenever he felt it. The rope tugged a few times and Wagner knew Fritz was in danger, but he struggled against the pull and held fast to the line. After a moment, the rope would slacken again. Fritz would know he couldn’t leave his weight on the rope for long. Covered in sweat now, Wagner leaned back away from the boulder on which he had placed both feet. He was nearly lying down on the road of the natural bridge, his eyes staring at the heavy clouds in the sky, as he strained.
Finally, he heard a grunt at the edge of the road and glanced down by his legs to see Fritz’s arm outstretched and scrabbling for purchase.
“To your right. A crack.” Wagner offered.
Fritz’s hand slid to the side like a crab, and his fingers slid into a rock opening in the floor of the road. Next came Fritz’s leg, and then he pulled himself up onto the road. Wagner felt the rope go completely slack. Only then did he move from his stance and roll over to grab his friend by the arm. Fritz winced briefly, and Wagner knew the shoulder had been damaged in the fall. He released his grasp and rolled over onto his back, breathing equally as heavily as Fritz.
“You need to watch your step around here.”
“Nothing wrong with my step. I was pushed.” Fritz said through heavy gasps.
Wagner sat up and looked at his friend.
“Not you,” Fritz assured. “You were far too far away. But trust me, I felt something shove me hard in the back before I went over.”
Both men looked along the winding road toward the castle.
“But there was no one else here on the road with us,” Wagner said.
“That might be, but I’ll be able to show you the bruise from where I got hit. Maybe another angry beast?”
Wagner thought about it, then looked over the other side of the bridge, away from where Fritz had fallen. He wondered if there might be a secret passage under the road. Another massive bat was a long shot. His money was on the arrogant Petran.
Chapter 18
Back in his unfamiliar room in the castle that evening, Fritz set his broken fob watch down on a writing desk, and removed his waistcoat. He replayed the events of the day that had led to his sore shoulder. Sore? Wrenched out of the socket is more like it, he thought. He mentally ran through the situation again and again. Andreas had been much too far away along the stone road—almost at the cliff. There had been no secret stairs. The men had checked. No nearby trees, where a falling branch might have hit Fritz in the lower spine, sending him reeling off the side of the road. It hadn’t even been particularly windy.
Nonetheless, Fritz was certain someone or something had pushed him. He had felt the shove in his lower back before he had sailed out over the void. Only the sheer luck of the placement of the tree and his quick grasp of its limb had saved his life. That, and his friend’s reaction time. Andreas had mentioned the strange behavior of the coach driver, Petran, but Fritz could not believe a man could move so quickly—and in so exposed an area—as to not be seen at all.
His own theory was that the giant bat from the night before had returned.
In any case, he was lucky to be alive, as Gretchen had told them all repeatedly at dinner that night. He had excused himself immediately after eating so he could retire to his bed. He wanted to rest his shoulder, but he also wanted no more of Gretchen’s endless yammering.
He reclined on the bed, having managed only to take off his shirt before giving up on removing the trousers. The shoulder was throbbing and he needed to close his eyes, just for a few minutes. He laid back and listened to the sound of his steady breathing. He could tell he would be asleep in moments.
Or he should have been.
The loud clatch noise startled him in the silent room.
Exhausted as he was, he felt disoriented, and couldn’t place the source of the sound. Then he heard another noise that put the first into perspective. The slow groaning creak of his room’s door being opened stealthily. The first noise had been the door’s latch mechanism. He groaned, thinking that Gretchen was attempting to slip into his room for some nocturnal entertainment. Normally, he welcomed her to his bed, but tonight he just needed to sleep.
He would just pretend he was already asleep. Perhaps she would go away, disappointed.
She took so long in moving to the bed that he had begun to doze again anyway. When he felt her hand brush lightly along his lower leg, he woke slightly and remembered she had come in. Not tonight, Gretchen. Tonight you find only a man that sleeps like a log. He kept his breathing steady and was nearly back to sleep, when her hand lightly grazed his naked chest.
The slow seduction was unlike Gretchen. Normally she would have leapt giddy into his bed and announced her presence, then verbally invited him to take her. The gentle touches were new, and he thought that perhaps she wasn’t really interes
ted. Maybe she was just feeling motherly over his injury and near-death experience.
Her fingers were gone now. She must have left, he thought.
When her lips softly kissed his injured shoulder, he could only moan from his half-slumber. As her hand slid down his chest to the waistline of his trousers, her lips nibbled across his collarbone to the base of his throat. He felt good, but he also felt himself drifting.
Her hands were soft and magic, like they were on both sides of his chest, gently soothing and caressing his pain away. His trousers were coming away. When had he removed his boots? The soft kisses on his neck were making him forget. His arousal was beginning, but despite that sensation, he slipped deeper into blessed sleep.
Still the gentle fingers caressed him. Still the tiny lips nipped and pecked around his upper chest and his neck. He was tempted to open his eyes, and come to full wakefulness. Their lovemaking was always spirited and passionate, fun and fulfilling. But the gentle lure of rest and the temptation of lying back and allowing her to explore him was too strong.
He fell back into the sleepy drift, soaking up the soothing sensations.
Then he felt a tiny stabbing in his upper leg. Did she just dig her fingernail into my flesh? He nearly opened his eyes, but the playful and reassuring caresses had returned, and he had no desire for them end. The hands worked their way slowly down his legs to his ankles, rubbing his feet, molding his flesh between constantly moving fingers. Then she was back at his upper chest and neck. Then his arms. Then his—
Fritz’s mind came fully awake. His eyes were closed, but the incongruity of what he had felt had shocked him into full awareness. Somehow, Gretchen was touching his feet and kissing his neck at the same time. Now fully focused, he felt her hand on his foot, while the lips nibbled at his throat. But, that’s not possible! Then he was filled with dread, his arousal leaving him instantly. Was it somehow both Gretchen and Anneli? His friend’s wife? Fritz was a man of good humor, and he loved a party and to be a ladies man, but the one line he would never cross was to bed the woman of a close friend.