Book 3: The Queen's Musketeers, #3

by R. A. Steffan

  “You do realize,” he said, “that I cannot possibly get any wetter than I already am, whereas you most assuredly... can!” The last word coincided with the powerful splash of his own counterattack.

  Constance squealed as water soaked her face and hair, shrieking and laughing in equal measure as he continued to press his assault. To escape, she dove under the surface. A moment later, d’Artagnan felt a slim hand close around his ankle, ducking him underwater on a surprised half-gasp. She climbed up his back, arms and legs tangled around his body as she tried to keep him down. He threw her off after a moment of struggling and stroked upward to catch his breath.

  Constance surfaced a moment later, sleek as an otter. The two of them stared at each other across the short distance separating them for a beat, eyes sparkling, before she lunged at him again. The pair wrestled in the water, laughing like children. Plumes of bubbles burst to the surface when one or the other of them momentarily gained the upper hand. Constance was attempting to hold d’Artagnan under by means of a bear hug when her thigh slipped between his, sliding against his achingly stiff prick.

  He choked on water at the powerful, unexpected surge of pleasure and flailed away from her, surfacing clumsily and coughing to clear his lungs. When he managed to blink his streaming eyes open, Constance was watching him from several feet away, her face a mask of pale, horrified embarrassment.

  “D’Artagnan, I am so sorry,” she said, one hand coming up to cover her mouth. “I didn’t mean to... well, I did mean to... but certainly not like that!”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” d’Artagnan rasped when he could breathe properly again. “I know you meant your touches innocently. I apologize for not controlling my reactions.”

  Constance shivered briefly, though d’Artagnan didn’t think it was from the cool water. “What if... I didn’t mean it all to be completely innocent?”

  He blinked. “Then I’d... think that was... good?” he ventured. He cleared his throat, his voice finally approaching normality. “Maybe it would be best if we talked about it first.”

  To his relief, Constance laughed, though it was a dismayed little sound. “Of course. You’re absolutely right. Oh, my goodness—I am appallingly incompetent at this.”

  “If that was incompetence, I hope you never become skilled,” d’Artagnan said, leading the way back to the shallows where they could sit comfortably without having to tread water. “I think it would kill me on the spot.”

  “As opposed to merely half-drowning you?” Constance said, a shame-faced little smile tugging at one side of her mouth.

  “Just so,” he agreed, smiling at her in return. “Now, tell me about your evil plan, since this was evidently not it.”

  Constance gnawed at the inside of her cheek for a moment, before blurting, “I’ve been taking Milady’s advice about... some things... and I thought it would be better to try it outside because the surroundings are so different than when it was with my husband, at night in the dark in our bedroom.”

  D’Artagnan’s heart sped up to a staccato beat of excitement and nervousness. “All right,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I think I can understand that. But, surely you don’t want to, well, have relations with me? Now, I mean. Here... just like that?”

  Constance’s face was bright red and she couldn’t look at him directly. “I don’t know. Probably not. But I though that maybe, with what Milady taught me...”

  She trailed off, and d’Artagnan let the silence hang until it became apparent that she didn’t know how to continue. Finally, he said, “You said that you’d been taking her advice about something?”

  Constance nodded. “I know it sounds wicked, but she said I should try to learn about my own body before trying to be with a man again. So... I’ve been doing that.”

  D’Artagnan frowned, unsure if he was understanding her correctly. “Do you mean...”

  “By touching myself,” she blurted in a rush, and his arousal, which had faded after accidentally choking on water earlier, surged back with a vengeance.

  “That sounds amazing,” d’Artagnan said without a single moment’s thought.

  She looked up at him in surprise, brows furrowed. “You don’t think it makes me... dirty? Sinful?”

  “I think it makes you the bravest person I know,” d’Artagnan said with utter sincerity, and Constance’s eyes grew wet.

  “I don’t feel brave,” she said, and bit her lower lip, worrying it with her teeth.

  “I don’t think anyone feels brave when they’re in the middle of doing brave things.”

  He took her hand in his own as had become his custom, and kissed it before relinquishing it once more. “Tell me about it. Did you enjoy it?”

  “At first it was just... odd,” Constance said. “Awkward, I suppose. But Milady said to keep trying, and try different things. When I started to relax, it felt different. Good. I could start to see how, if someone else could make you feel like that, and you could make them feel like that, you’d want to do it.”

  “I want to make you feel like that, Constance, and more,” d’Artagnan said, tenderness warring with desire in his breast. “But maybe not today.”

  Constance’s frown deepened. “You don’t want to—?”

  “I do want to,” he said immediately. “But I want to make sure it’s good for you. Today, will you show me how you’ve been touching yourself, instead? I want to see.”

  Constance gasped and swallowed. “I never thought about anybody watching,” she said. “It really doesn’t bother you?”

  D’Artagnan’s huff of laughter had a faintly desperate edge to it. “Quite the opposite, Constance, I assure you,” he said, lifting his hips out of the water just far enough for her to be able to see the wet linen of his braies tenting over his erection.

  Constance flushed, and let out her own breath of laughter. “I suppose a man’s body doesn’t lie,” she said.

  “Not about something like that,” d’Artagnan agreed. “I promise I won’t touch you. I just want to see.”

  “No,” Constance said, looking thoughtful. “I think I want you to hold me. Come here.”

  She took his hand and led him forward to sit at the very edge of the deeper water, where the river lapped over his chest. He carefully wrapped an arm around Constance, and she leaned into him, letting her legs hang out over the swimming hole.

  “Like this?” he asked, and she nodded. He adjusted their bodies slightly so that her head rested in the crook of his shoulder, her damp tresses tickling his chest where they floated around her in a halo. “Lean back,” he urged. “Let yourself float.”

  Constance allowed the water to take her weight, tethered at the edge of the dark depths by d’Artagnan’s gentle hold around her shoulders. She took a deep breath, her breasts rising out of the water, pointed nipples visible through the light linen of her underdress. D’Artagnan felt the moment when she exhaled and relaxed into him, trusting him to hold her safe and steady; felt the catch in his own throat in response.

  She moaned as the tension flowed out of her body. “Oh... that feels nice.”

  “You feel amazing,” d’Artagnan whispered, his eyes following the curves of her body through the nearly transparent linen dress. “I could hold you like this forever.”

  Constance released a little huff of air at his words, and her right hand slid up the length of her body. Rather than reaching directly for her breasts as d’Artagnan might have, she traced her fingers up and down the column of her own neck, letting her head fall back to expose her throat until the water lapped at the shells of her ears. D’Artagnan’s need throbbed between his legs at the sight, slowly settling deeper into his bones as Constance traced one collarbone and along the outer edge of her engorged breast through the wet material of her shift, circling in gradually toward the nipple.

  He wondered if she was particularly sensitive there since she had stopped nursing the Queen’s son the previous day. Deciding there was no particular reason to shut up unles
s she told him to, he asked, “How does it feel?”

  She gasped and tweaked the erect point. “It almost hurts,” she said breathlessly, “but in a good way. It’s different than when a baby suckles... it makes me want more.”

  D’Artagnan moaned and swallowed convulsively. “Then give yourself more,” he said. “Give yourself everything.”

  Constance writhed restlessly in the water, her free hand hitching the skirt of her underdress slowly up toward her waist. “I can feel the fabric brushing against my skin,” she panted, “wrapping around my legs. I’m pretending it’s your fingers.”

  “Someday I will worship your legs with my lips and hands for hours,” d’Artagnan vowed, and Constance arched in his hold, her right hand leaving her breast to delve beneath the ruched material and disappear between her legs.

  She settled a bit deeper in his arms, seemingly wanting to feel the river lapping up around her face as she teased her own flesh in a steady rhythm. He supported her, carefully keeping her nose and mouth out of the water as she started to twitch and jerk against her own fingers, huffing a little sound like, “Oh... oh... oh...” against his collarbone on every damp exhale.

  D’Artagnan’s prick jerked in time with the soft noises, fluid leaking out into the water in tiny spurts whenever she bucked or cried out unexpectedly, breaking the rhythm. He could imagine no sweeter torture, and would happily have gone to Hell if it meant an eternity spent exactly like this.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned eventually, and his cock twitched hard at the blasphemy. “Kiss me... d’Artagnan, please! Kiss me...”

  D’Artagnan’s breath escaped in a rough groan as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He curled over her, sealing their lips together just above the water’s surface. She returned the kiss, straining up to meet him, her body undulating in the primal rhythm of approaching ecstasy. He swallowed her startled exhale as her release washed over her, and his strong arms kept it from dragging her under. They both gasped when he broke the kiss, lifting her to rest against his chest as she shuddered through the aftershocks.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she breathed as she fell back against him, utterly limp. “That was... that was—“

  “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.

  She turned in his arms and kissed him again. He moaned his desperation into the kiss; the ache in his cock and balls felt as though it had become as much a part of him as bone and sinew. Constance pulled away, seeming to come back to herself to some degree.

  “D’Artagnan,” she said, looking at him with pupils blown wide, “do men... do that, as well? Touch themselves? Do you?”

  “Since I met you... oh, God, Constance—yes. So many times,” he said.

  “I want to watch. I want to see you. I’ve never gotten to see anything properly, before. It was always nighttime.”

  D’Artagnan could have sobbed with the stab of want that pierced him. “Everything,” he panted. “You can have everything you want of me.”

  She took his hand and they stumbled back to the shore, where a sun-warmed rock jutted out of the bank and into the water. Constance urged d’Artagnan up to sprawl on the flat stone, and curled herself comfortably in the water next to it with her arms folded on the edge of the outcrop, chin resting on top to watch. D’Artagnan fumbled with the laces of his braies, cursing the way the water had swelled the knots. Fortunately, they gave way to his clumsy fingers before desperation moved him to tear them out by force.

  He shoved the clinging fabric over his hips, moaning in relief as his cock slipped free. The head was an angry purple, and the feeling of his hand closing around the shaft was the most delicious agony. Constance watched with wide eyes, hitching herself closer. It was too much; he let his head fall back against the unforgiving stone with a thud and thrust into his closed fist without thought for finesse or how it must look. Blood roared in his ears, and within seconds he was spilling, the convulsions seemingly coming from somewhere in the vicinity of his toes and shuddering their way up his body as ropes of sticky white slapped across his chest and stomach.

  “Merde,” he cursed hoarsely when the tremors had stopped and the gray blotches had mostly cleared from his vision. “I think you’ve just killed me.”

  Constance collapsed into helpless giggles, burying her face in her arms.

  “No, seriously,” he said, “I may have burst something important.”

  Constance laughed harder for a moment before getting control of herself and looking up. “Well, at least you seemed to enjoy it—not a bad way to go, apparently. Come on, now, up with you. You’ll roast like a fish in a pan if you stay on that rock in the sun.” She grabbed him by the arm and tugged him up into a sitting position as he let out a theatrical groan. “Clean yourself up and we’ll rest in the shade until everything’s dry. We’ll be late to Éparnon this evening as it is.”

  “We can camp if need be,” d’Artagnan said, pausing to yawn, “and make up the distance tomorrow.”

  He laced up his braies and re-entered the river long enough to scrub away the evidence of his release. When he climbed back onto the bank, Constance was resting against the base of a large tree trunk in her wet camisole, her earlier modesty apparently forgotten.

  “May I hold you?” he asked.

  She smiled up at him. “Please,” she said, reaching a hand up to guide him down next to her. They settled hip to hip, his arm around her shoulders and her head resting on his chest. She craned up to look at him. “I’ve thought of a name for your horse, by the way.”

  “I’m half afraid to ask,” he said around a drowsy yawn.

  “Rivière,” said Constance. “It’s a good name for a horse.”

  D’Artagnan mulled it over for a moment. “Well, it’s definitely better than Buttercup,” he said eventually. “And it will remind me of this day, which can only be a good thing.”

  Constance nuzzled into his neck as he yawned again. “You should rest for a bit. I’ll wake you if I hear anything unusual.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked, eyes already drooping.

  “Mm-hmm,” she replied. “I’m not tired. In fact, I’m rather the opposite of tired right now. It feels like my blood is buzzing underneath my skin.”

  “Hmm, if you’re sure,” he said, his eyes already closing. Within moments, he was asleep, Constance a soft, warm weight against his side.

  * * *

  He awoke an hour or so later with Constance still pressed against the length of his body, feeling as though he could achieve anything. The two of them did, in fact, reach Éparnon that evening just as the sun was disappearing behind the horizon. Unfortunately, the inn at the center of the run-down little town was in a bad enough state to make them wonder if they’d have been better off camping after all. However, there was wine and ale, along with food—of a sort.

  D’Artagnan looked askance at the unidentified lumps of... something... floating in a sickly, gray broth, and then looked askance at Constance when she tucked into her own bowl without hesitation.

  “What?” she asked, pausing with the spoon halfway to her mouth when she noticed him staring. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

  He was so he took a deep breath and started eating. It didn’t taste quite as bad as it looked, which was something, he supposed.

  Their room was small and smelled of sweat and mildew. Constance looked at the narrow bed and dubiously offered, “We could try to share...”

  D’Artagnan shook his head immediately. “I’ll take the floor,” he said. “Not only is this a dark bedroom at night; I’m afraid one of us would fall off the edge in the first five minutes... or the thing would collapse under our combined weight.”

  Constance’s smile was tremulous in the flickering light of the single, smoky candle they’d been given.

  “Besides, this way you get the bedbugs,” he added, relieved when her smile grew a bit wider and stronger.

  “Is it still considered chivalry when it’s secretly self-serving?” she wonde
red aloud.

  “I’ve no idea,” he replied with an answering smile.

  They navigated the tiny room with only a slight degree of awkwardness as they readied themselves for sleep—Constance under the threadbare blanket on the bed, and d’Artagnan in his bedroll on the rough wooden floor.

  “Goodnight, Constance,” he said when she snuffed out the stub of a candle, plunging the room into darkness.

  “Goodnight, d’Artagnan,” she replied.

  Despite his earlier nap, d’Artagnan was tired and a little bit sore from his unexpected foray into the new sport of mounted river-diving that afternoon. Nonetheless, he lay awake for some time listening as Constance’s breathing evened out into sleep, smiling to himself when she began to emit soft snoring noises. Eventually, the sound lulled him into his own slumber.

  In the recent weeks since his humiliating surrender to grief in his friends’ arms, d’Artagnan’s nightmares of death and loss had subsided for the most part, giving way instead to strange, half-remembered dreams. He awoke from one such odd vision that involved his old pony and his new gelding drinking wine together from a trough and laughing at him with wheezing snorts. He blinked his eyes open in the darkness, wondering what had awakened him, disoriented for a moment until he remembered Éparnon, the inn, and Constance. The question was answered a moment later when a low noise of distress came from the darkness above him.

  The noise came again, louder this time. “Constance, are you awake?” d’Artagnan said into the blackness, and carefully felt his way toward the table with the candle and flint striker.

  It took several tries to get the benighted candle wick to catch, during which time the moans from the bed gave way to soft sobbing and mumbled words.

  “Mm... no, please...” The faint light from the candle stub flared up and illuminated the tear tracks on Constance’s cheeks. “Please, God.... not her, too...”