by Lucy Leven
And then he took her. Tumbled her. Nothing calm or calculated in his manner. Not in the rhythm he set or the strength in it, always caring of her comfort but hard and unforgiving in his relentlessness.
Pressure built within her, an echo to her pleasure. She shook with its breaking, bucked hard against it, hard against a grip that was harder still, spiralling ever upwards, a cacophony of sensation and feeling, until at last — completion. Nicolette cried out with it, so taken by her pleasure that for a moment she could hardly see, hardly hear, hardly think.
She clenched so tight around him, her release no gentle thing. But the aftershocks were gentler, her inner self fluttering to Willeme a harkening call.
And it was a call to which he listened, for suddenly he stilled within her. He had yet to find his release, so intent had he been on finding hers. But he found it then, long and hot and right.
Nicolette gentled him through it, her hands in his hair, cupping his cheeks, stroking the gleaming skin of his back, the bunched muscles of his arms. Let him rock up into her a final, shuddering time.
Let him spill within her, smoke and shadow.
A smile touched Nicolette’s lips. She felt so unfathomably fond, and it was a feeling she did nothing to fight, for it was a feeling that felt, also, entirely right. Smiling still, she reached up so that she might trail a touch across Willeme’s soft, freckled cheek — but when she did, her hand brushed nothing but empty air.
Willeme was smoke and shadow and a fading smile, and then Willeme was gone.
“Willeme…” she whispered, drawing back her hand so that she might press it to her own cheek instead, where a fevered heat burned. Then she pressed her palm to her breast, where a fevered beat yet thundered.
And it came to her, how silly she felt suddenly, how silly she must look, laid out on the grass, her legs wide, her bosom heaving, like some unrepentant trull waiting for a ruddling.
So she gathered herself in haste and scrabbled to her feet atop legs still weak-kneed from pleasure.
“I— I wish to dress,” she managed, and waited not-very patiently while the castle tied her laces and rearranged her skirts. But even dressed, she knew it was still clear what manner of dalliance she had been about. The skin of her décolletage was flushed a deep and rosy pink, the skin of her cheeks felt just the same.
She was a lass fresh off a glorious, confounding tumbling.
Nicolette found the gate’s latch by touch alone, hidden as it was amid the verdant darkness of the leaves, and she pulled the gate open, feeling at once both satisfied and painfully wanting. For the castle had given her the tumbling she desired, but it had given her a great deal else besides.
A heart’s desire….
With her own heart still beating strangely out of turn, Nicolette drew closed the garden gate behind her. The latch took, the sound muted, and it was thus that in the same moment, she heard footsteps coming her way, and then rounding the corner came—
“Willeme!” Nicolette gasped, her hand clasped to her breast as her still-heavy breathing made her bosom rise and fall.
Willeme stopped short at the sight of her. “My lady,” he said, on an equally short bow, his eyes fixed determinedly on her face. “I had been looking for you. It is time for your lessons.”
Nicolette could not answer him, could not for the moment perceive a separation between the real Willeme who stood before her and and his smoke-shadow twin of magic — the same twin who had just tumbled her as well as any man ever had, and only a few steps away, a few moments ago.
She could not look at Willeme and be ignorant of that memory, or of the memory of his broad, calloused hands against her soft skin, of the pleasure that still sang across her skin, and across her fevered nerves.
“Oh, the gods,” she whispered, her mouth dry, her throat parched.
A heart’s desire…
A frown creased a line between Willeme’s brows. He did not look away, as she wished that he might, even for just a moment while she collected herself. “Are you well, my lady?”
No, Nicolette was not well. Not well at all.
But what might she say to that? Your magical, smoke-shadow twin gave me the grandest tumbling but a heartbeat before, Willeme, so I find myself a touch out of sorts as a result.
Of course she could not.
So instead, “Of course I am well, Willeme!” she snapped, “and why ever would I not be? What do you want? Why do you bother me so?”
Willeme did not answer immediately. Instead, his mouth tipped open a touch, his eyes narrowing in their regard of her — all as if he were terribly puzzled by her behaviour, which even Nicolette knew to be odd. But, slowly, as if he imagined he spoke to some clot or the other, Willeme said, “It is time for your lessons, my lady. Your lessons. In the library.”
Nicolette drew breath to snap at him anew, but her breath left her just as quickly, on an odd little puff — for Willeme’s nose twitched as he spoke. Nicolette had never noticed that before. And suddenly, unfathomably, it was all she could notice. She could not, in fact, draw her eyes away.
For Willeme’s nose was not a handsome one, not straight nor aquiline nor snubbed, but it was the nose of a man who did not back down from a fight. His hands, when she glanced to them, were broad and blunt, but the flex of his wrists was strong. His nails — the ones not stained with ink — were clean and trimmed short, his hair neat in its queue. Perfumed too. She had often caught the scent of it, something fresh and invigorating, like pine on a chill morn, like the hint of—
“My lady?” Willeme said, his pale eyes growing wide with some sentiment that may have approached concern. “Your lessons—”
“Yes,” Nicolette cut in, “my lessons. I heard you the first time. And I shall be there momentarily. Go on without me.”
But Willeme did not go. In the spot he stood, he stayed, and his attempt at concern flickered over into something very real. And Nicolette could have that not at all.
“Go!” she commanded him.
Willeme went, startled, watching her over his shoulder for a moment, too perturbed by her behaviour to offer even one of his usual half-hearted bows. But when finally he turned and made his way back into the castle proper, Nicolette watched him leave. She watched those strong calves carry him, those strong thighs, the taut muscles of his buttocks, the compact strength of his shoulders, the neat darkness of his hair.
She watched him, and she found her pulse beating fast in her ears — and warmly, wetly, between her thighs.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
The Heat of the Water
The night was chill with a hard and sudden snowfall, but the castle was warm. The castle was always warm. And there was a place in the castle warmer than all others.
The huge, heavy door swung open before Nicolette even had thought to reach for it, and into the Beast’s lair she tread.
A great copper trough was set once more before the roaring fire. The Beast lay in the steaming water, his head tipped back, his eyes closed, and his arms stretched out along each turned rim, the firelight painting flickering shadows across his hewn muscle and warm skin.
It was that fine view Nicolette considered as she stood before him in her robe — a robe stitched of gauzy, pinked silks, so fine that she might as well have been bare. Though the airy nature of her dress did not matter. The chamber was so very warm, and she knew the water the Beast bathed in would be warm too. Scalding even. She might step in, slip beneath the surface, be overtaken by warmth and warm magic.
At the very thought of magic, an eye slit open and flared gold. “Lass?” the Beast said, as he watched her with that same golden, heavy-lidded eye.
“The thing of it is,” Nicolette told him, on pouted lip, “that winter has come, and I am awfully cold. And I find myself in sudden need of a steep, but I have no bath of my own in which to bathe.”
The Beast smiled, and the knowing in it made Nicolette shiver with want. “Ah,” he said, “then we must remedy that, must we not? But first
, I think, you are rather too clothed to bathe.”
“Too clothed?” Nicolette reached for the ribbon of her robe and pulled it loose. The silk fell from her shoulders, more like a breath than the slide of fine fabric. “Better?” she asked.
“Much,” the Beast said.
He held out a hand to help her step into the trough, and watched her all the while. Nicolette thrilled at the feel of his eyes upon her, that hot, sparking gaze which lingered on the lush, heavy curve of her breasts, the softness at her stomach and her hips, the weighty heft of her bottom — the same bottom she lowered towards him, teasingly, as she made to sit down.
The Beast obliged her, a stinging slap to her bottom that sent heat to her middle and a shock to her core. And it was that shock that made her jump but a little — but still enough. Her heel lost purchase on the smooth metal of the trough, and out it went from under her.
Nicolette slipped, fell, landed between the Beast’s legs with a splash and a less-than-coy squawk. She found it amusing not at all, but to judge from the huffing laugh that brushed against her ear, it well amused the Beast.
She huffed a moment in turn, awash in her annoyance — and awash with the steaming heat. “I wonder that you do not boil yourself like a chicken’s egg,” she said, “so hot is this water.”
“I enjoy the warmth,” the Beast whispered across her ear.
Nicolette tried hard to hide her shiver, to hide the way her nipples pebbled, hard and sudden, even in the steamy, lush heat. “Evidently,” she muttered.
Her woeful show of belligerence sparked another laugh. And it warmed her contrary heart, just as the warmth of the water pinked her skin to a deep flush, no doubt steamed her hair to a tighter curl.
“I enjoy other things too,” the Beast said, trailing a finger along the wing of her shoulder blade, slipping up and over her shoulder, to pull her gently to him, their bodies pressed more tightly together — and tight enough to feel his enjoyment, clear and plain
“Evidently,” Nicolette said again, her voice droll, and she felt the curve of the Beast’s smile wax against her shoulder.
And so she settled herself there, leaned back against the Beast’s broad, strong chest, felt the heat and the power of him behind her and around her. She ran her hands a time or two along the corded strength of the thighs that caged her in, luxuriating in the press of bare skin, the slight slickness given to it by the oils that swirled atop the sweetly-scented water.
The Beast, in turn, curved his hand around her middle and, starting at the softness of her stomach, dragged his touch upwards — deliciously, teasingly upwards — until he took both her breasts in hand, his grip soft and testing, as if taking their weight.
Then apparently satisfied, his grip firmed and he pressed the plushness of her breasts together, then rolled them away, a constant sweet and gentle press of pressure and pleasure that stoked fire deep within.
“Should you not like to put your big prick between and rut with them?” Nicolette asked, her voice heavy and honied. “Many a man in the village liked to do just that.”
The Beast’s voice was equally honied. “But I am not a man, lass.”
“But you have a man’s urges. His wishes and his wants.” She brought her hands to cover his, to echo his undulating, tempting touch. “Is it, Beast, that you do not wish to take a pressing from these beauties?”
“It is,” Beast said, his laughter hardly hidden, “that these beauties are not all I wish to press.”
Before she had time to reckon it, the Beast slipped his hands out from under hers, so that he might take her nipples, sharp and sudden, and roll them between finger and thumb.
Nicolette hissed at the wet flare of heat that sparked through her, straight to her core, the most wonderful of distractions. But she would not be distracted for long; instead, she dragged her nails up the length of the Beast’s thighs as a punishment for his cleverness — and his naughtiness.
She rolled her hips atop his just a little more firmly. She wanted more. She always wanted more.
“Please,” she whispered. “Oh please, Beast. Take me as you would.”
And take her he did.
The Beast wrapped an arm around her middle, hauled her tighter, impossibly closer. With his other hand he cupped her breast so that he could lift it but a little more, and then he put his mouth there, to tease at her nipple with his teeth, to suckle at it with his hot, wicked mouth.
Nicolette keened at the feel of it, at the sweet ache that shot straight to her core, that called forth a wetness in her hotter than the water all around. And the Beast, is his cunning wisdom, knew just what she yearned for — for he reached down between her legs, to cup that wet heat.
Nicolette sighed her sparking contentment. Yes, this was just what she needed. The steaming water and the Beast’s hot attentions. She might have him tumble her, rut with her, and she might not need to think again on all that had happened in the rose garden, of all she and seen and felt, of Willeme’s every—
“You said the castle would know my heart’s desire?”
The Beast let go her nipple with a thrilling little nip and a hum of affirmation. “Mmm. Of course.”
Nicolette gasped anew as the Beast’s attentions shifted, as the clever fingers which had cupped her curled inside her instead. “Is— is the castle ever wrong?” she managed.
“Never,” the Beast said, a smile shaping his words. “Such magic is beyond the world of man and cannot be fooled.”
“Never?” Nicolette gasped out. She arched her hips towards his teasing hand, searching for a firmer touch. “Not ever?”
The Beast, maddeningly, stilled in his attentions. “Did you not like what you found in the rose garden, lass?”
“I— I did like it,” Nicolette said, and found those words, oddly, suddenly, to be true. “I just did not expect to like it.”
“Nor to find it?”
“No.”
The Beast dipped his head towards her, so that he might press a kiss to her neck, to the hinge of her jaw, and from the corner of her gaze, Nicolette saw the sly turn to his lips. “Just as you did not expect to like Willeme.”
“I do not like Willeme,” she said, which was true also, and which — was also not true. “I did not come to your chamber to speak of my dour tutor, Beast,”
“Oh,” the Beast said, an astoundingly awful attempt at ignorance for a man whose fingers played inside her still, “then why did you come, lass?”
Nicolette reached behind herself and took his hot, heavy prick in hand, her hard grip at the edge of cruelly firm. “This,” she said, squeezing. “This is why I came.”
The Beast made a pleased hiss then, a sibilant little growl, a glimpse of the true beast lurking within, and Nicolette was well rewarded for that one small loss of control.
“Your thoughts are as loud as your actions, lass,” the Beast said, his tone thickened for a moment by an echo most primal. “But perhaps you should give them voice.”
Nicolette felt her mouth curve in a smile as sly as the Beast’s most cunning smirk. “Perhaps a good bathing is not all I find myself in need of.”
A warm chuckle, just as she expected. “Then what might your loyal servant provide?”
Nicolette lifted her hand from the Beast’s prick to the back of his neck. There, she gripped him hard, pulled him to her, so that her mouth was to his ear. She took his lobe between her teeth and worried it until he hissed again. “Your prick,” she whispered, low and hot against his ear. “And the tumbling your big prick shall provide.”
No laugh and no golden eyes. Just hot darkness. “As my lady commands.”
In one sure motion, the Beast lifted her into his lap and down onto his prick. Nicolette moaned as he pushed up into her, so thick, so full, so fast. But she was well ready for him. Had been ready for him from the moment she left her chamber dressed in nothing but silks, the heat between her legs already wet and luscious and growing.
The Beast lifted her, again and again he lifted he
r, with such a thrilling ease, as if she weighed all but nothing. And Nicolette made no move to help him. She simply let him use her for his pleasure, for in that moment, his pleasure was hers also, and hers his, both as one.
The startling, overcoming sensation of his full withdrawal was matched only by the equally thrilling sensation of his girth taking her again. And again. And again. She moaned her sweet, hot pleasure and heard her voice break with each and every powerful thrust.
Her mind seemed a boiling cauldron of want and need, of all the things she did not want that she wanted all the more: heart’s desires and her own hot desire, growing hotter with each thudding heartbeat, no matter how hard she tried to deny it.
Deny him.
Willeme.
Oh, dour, sweet Willeme.
Nicolette imagined he stood in the shadows, in the doorway perhaps, conjured by the Beast’s golden magic, watching as the Beast tumbled her like the most wanton trull — and how Nicolette liked that thought, and how it made her twist and writhe, sudden, so unexpected, atop and around the Beast’s prick as she shook through her equally sudden release, so long and shivering, so hot and so wet.
The Beast slowed then, gentling her through the aftershocks of her pleasure. But he had not yet found his own release, and sheathed deep within her still he remained, barely moving. But each bare movement tingled soft and growing sparks across Nicolette’s spent nerves. She wished the Beast to move almost as much as she wished for him never to do so. Simply just to hold her so, so full and taken, so pleasured, so sweetly treasured.
“What do you think on, lass?” the Beast asked, his mouth to her ear, his words for her alone.
“Heart’s desires, Beast,” she told him, and heard, distantly, the faraway tone to her own voice. “Heart’s desires, and what can be done to deny them.”
The Beast shook his head. She felt his movement more than she saw it. “Heart’s desires are strange things, lass. But powerful. We cannot control them, nor deny them.” His lips touched the column of her throat, and Nicolette’s shiver stole her breath. “Do not deny yours.”