Tales of the Huntsman

by M Palmeri

  He took a pitcher and filled it from the tub, and then poured the warm water down her arms and over her breasts. He repeated this until she was well wet. Then he applied warm, soapy cloths that smelled of flower petals to her body, starting with her arms and working down to her shoulders, her neck, her flanks, and her hips, then came back up and began massaging her breasts with the lather. She closed her eyes as he worked down her belly, and she felt him kneel to scrub her legs, starting from her ankles.

  “Razor, my lord?” she heard one of the maids inquire, and this snapped her eyes open. The maid had a tray of various shaving razors and scissors.

  “Not yet,” he told the maid, just as his lathered cloth slipped up between Marie’s legs and began to massage her pubic mound. Then his hand replaced the cloth and worked the slick foam between her labia with a gentler but similar rhythm to the one he had so recently assaulted her with. Marie bit her lip. “Scissors, though.”

  This made Marie jerk involuntarily. Richard smiled and stood up, using the pitcher to rinse her. Then he took up a small pair of scissors.

  “Just a trim,” he assured her (though it was in no way reassuring). He knelt back down and prodded her thighs apart, combed her wet pubic hair down with his fingers, then started trimming it short around her labia. Another pitcher rinsed the trimmings down the drain. She felt his fingers stroke her labia again, and felt all the more vulnerable this time. “This little grooming ritual serves several purposes,” he explained matter-of-factly. “It does make you more accessible in some ways. Many girls say they feel even more naked, especially if they are shaved as well. It is certainly easier now to get to you with my tongue, for instance. But you will also find it can be more comfortable, as sometimes long hair will snag during the acts of lovemaking. Short hair can also make you easier to clean. And there is certainly no need to hide yourself behind a veil of hair. You are very beautiful down here, girl, no matter what you may have been taught. In time, I hope I can convince you of this. Now turn around.”

  Marie did as she was told with a gentle guidance from his hands. Richard repeated the lathering on her back, working down her buttocks, and then again she felt soap-slick fingers, slipping into the valley of her ass, stroking all the way to the opening of her sex before withdrawing just far enough for a fingertip to massage her anus. She rose up on her toes at this.

  “This is one of the most sensitive places on your body,” he continued. “For some, it can be the most intensely pleasurable, given time to acquire the taste for it.” His fingertip entered her ever so slightly, having to follow as her body convulsed. Then he withdrew. “You will have plenty of time to decide.”

  He rinsed her again, then drenched her hair. The maids brought something that also smelled of flowers to wash it with, and then he rinsed it and combed it out.

  Finally, he untied her and helped her into the tub. Her body melted gratefully in the steaming water (for even with the fire and the warm-water rinses she had been on the edge of shivering). The maids applied themselves to washing and rinsing Richard while she watched. And she was somewhat surprised with herself that she did watch, becoming rapidly comfortable with the casual nudity, only flinching a bit when it seemed the maids were taking too much enthusiasm in the work of soaping his now very erect member. He whispered something to them and they finished quickly, leaving with apparent reluctance. Then Richard slipped into the tub with her. Submerged to the chest, it was easier to be naked with him.

  “I thought I was supposed to stay bound,” she asked, speaking to him for the first time since their arrival. He took her by the wrists and massaged where the ropes had been.

  “A brief respite,” he replied soothingly. “You’ve so far fulfilled your vow quite admirably. But what comes next… So far it’s just been play. Physically, you are still as you were. What comes next cannot be undone.”

  Under the water, he pulled her knees wide apart and held them pinned back to the sides of the tub. She felt herself open to the hot water, and more urgently open to him, only inches away from her. Still, she did not move her hands from where she was gripping the tub. But he did nothing more than hold her there. She started to tremble.

  “You’re nervous,” he said with a warm smile. “You know what awaits you, and you know what it will mean. But you don’t know what it will be like, to have a man inside you for the first time.” He laughed softly. “We have that in common. But my ladies assure me that the pain is very transitory. And I will take the time to prepare you for it as best I can.”

  His right hand slid up her thigh and disappeared for an instant. Then she felt the feather-light touch of his finger between her labia, carefully probing her maidenhead.

  “I will tell you a secret. It is one of the great secrets of mankind, and I hope you will find it as helpful as I have: Lovemaking is the most pleasurable, unifying and life-creating thing that we have as human beings. Yet every culture in history has developed taboos against it, taboos that few ever question because we, ourselves, are equally uncomfortable with the act. Why is this?”

  His finger had retreated just far enough to ever-so-lightly brush her inner labia. She bit her lip to keep silent and hold still. She couldn’t even begin to concentrate on his question. He answered it for her.

  “There are three reasons. The first is that we are taught to be civilized, to deny that we are animals, to worship cold reason and externally-mandated morality and resist our passions. Sex breaks all of these boundaries, just as I have begun breaking down yours. Could you imagine two days ago that you would so willingly open yourself to a man you had just met, let yourself be naked with him, much less let him put his mouth on your sex? Could you imagine that a man could so thoroughly enjoy devouring you so intimately, that he could find so much exquisite beauty in what you have been taught to be ashamed of?”

  Suddenly and swiftly, he took her hips in his hands and raised her pelvis up out of the water, holding her sex just inches from his mouth. She gasped but did not try to close her legs. In fact, when he eased her down a bit, he revealed that she was willingly supporting herself in position. Smiling, he licked her lightly and slowly.

  “The second reason,” he continued, pausing from his work, “is that this reminds us of how much we need another person to fulfill our desires, someone who wants us as much as we want them, someone who finds you beautiful and desirable just as you are, someone who is willing to do anything for your pleasure.”

  He returned to licking her, deeper and stronger now, and his hands guided her hips into a rhythm to complement his tongue. He released her, but she continued the rhythm herself, and he hummed his appreciation into her. Then just as her body began to catch fire with the passion of it, he stopped. She whimpered in frustration.

  “The third reason comes from the second,” he told her firmly. “Because of how greatly we need, we can be rejected and denied in the most horribly personal way, and it can crush us to the very core of our souls. So we fear. We hate. We hurt. We hide.”

  She felt his breath hot on her sex then, his mouth not an inch from her, waiting, denying. She wanted to scream, to grab him by the hair and force him to continue. She looked down at him, and saw in his eyes that he knew it.

  “I swear to you,” he breathed, “that I will never reject you if you want me. Tell me you want me.”

  She nodded, voiceless.

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” he demanded patiently. “Tell me to lick you.”

  She pushed her hips at him, but he pulled back.

  “Tell me. Break your bonds. Tell me. I won’t deny you.”

  Her entire body straining, hips arched up to him, gripping the edges of the tub for dear life, Marie’s voice growled out of her like something savage. She didn’t even recognize it as her own.

  “Lick me…”

  His mouth dove into her more hungrily than ever. She thought her maidenhead would tear under his tongue, but she ground herself hard into him anyway. Between breaths he whispered that she w
as beautiful, that she tasted wonderful, and that he wanted to be inside of her. She bucked harder into him and begged—no, demanded—that he not stop. His fingers pulled her further apart and she felt his tongue visit her anus. She squirmed away slightly and freed a hand to take him by the head and guide his mouth back to seal around her secret treasure (which she had heard her sisters in private vulgarly referring to as a “clitty”) in a devouring kiss, while his tongue worked a frantic rhythm over it.

  “Yes…” she gasped. “Just there… Just there… Don’t….”

  She never managed to say “stop”. Her body convulsed as she exploded again, roaring through clenched teeth. Her ecstasy spiked into something agonizing and delirious, and she was once more sure she would either faint or die, and tried to pull away from his tongue, but he kept at her for several unbearable moments before letting her go, and she fell limply back into the water, reflexively trying to close her legs. But before she knew it, he was standing, pulling her up and out of the tub, kissing her deeply.

  She swayed as if intoxicated. He toweled her off quickly, then himself. She found she had no more shame of being naked with him. She felt natural, free. She didn’t even hesitate when he took her hand and placed it on the hard shaft of his sex, sliding it up and down slightly, slowly, so she could feel the soft skin slide over the solid tissues underneath. Then he held her close and pressed it against her belly, letting her imagine how far it would penetrate her. She looked up into his eyes.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her. She closed her eyes and nodded.

  He lifted her onto the bed and laid her on her back in the middle of the plush mattress. Ropes appeared from the headboard and tied her wrists up. Then he guided her knees apart and tied ropes that ran from the side frame to hold them.

  “You don’t need to…” Marie started to protest, opening herself wider than the ropes demanded.

  “A demonstration of what you’ve learned,” he told her, caressing her body. “By binding you so helplessly, we both break our bonds. This vulnerability should be unbearably shaming, and would have been only hours ago, yet see how eagerly you welcome it. And you know how eagerly I desire you. There are no games, no pretenses. What I intend is clear to both of us, as is your willingness for it. And though bound, you know what power you have: power over me. I spoke of rejection. Yet here you are, proving to me that you will not reject me. And in your own vulnerability, how much greater is the thrill in knowing that I will certainly not reject you?”

  He knelt between her legs then, and began to stroke her sex with his, making them both wet. And she rubbed back against him, gripping her ropes for leverage. She felt the soft head of his cock settle against the membrane of her virginity, and he bent forward over her, bringing his mouth close to hers. She continued to rub against him, slowly, carefully, but hungrily.

  “When you are ready, Marie, kiss me.”

  She took a breath and threw her mouth against his, and he pushed into her, first gently, then more forcefully. Marie kept her mouth locked to his, pushed into his thrust and felt herself tear. A flash of searing pain that took her breath away. And then in an instant, the pain was replaced by the profound awareness that he was buried deep inside of her, and she started breathing again.

  He held her there, impaled, and let her catch her breath. There were tears in her eyes. She pushed back against him, rubbing herself against his pubic bone, but realized she was now beginning to get sensations of pleasure from other places, and she began contracting her inner muscles around his hardness. Then, with a smile, he began to slowly pump in and out of her. She went limp as he worked, kissing her mouth and neck, then bending to take her breast into his mouth, sucking while his tongue tormented her nipple as it had her sex. It still hurt, but she didn’t want it to stop, because it also felt so good in ways she had never imagined. She didn’t care at all about the pain.

  He began to thrust faster, harder, and she tried to match his rhythm but found her body would not respond to her will any longer. He raised up off of her so that he was back on his knees, which pressed his cock harder up under her pubic bone and seemed to free him to thrust more quickly, his hands pulling her hips into him. Dizzy, she strained to raise her head to try to see him going in and out of her, but she collapsed a moment later. She writhed and thrust her breasts at him, and he took them in his hands and massaged them, but it broke his stride. He leaned back over her, supported himself on his hands and began to hammer the breath out of her. And Marie thought she would die again but still did not want it to stop, and wasn’t surprised to find herself telling him so.

  He did not disappoint. His attack seemed to go on for an hour or more, tirelessly, as her pleasure spiked through her in new ways, over and over, but never quite to the peak it had hit in the tub with his tongue so mercilessly torturing her. And just as she was beginning to feel raw and more sore than pleasured, he slowed and pulled himself out of her, apparently without spilling his seed. She felt somewhat defeated by this, but he untied her and held her close to him, kissed her, and covered them both with blankets, and she was asleep in his arms in moments.

  But before she slipped into exhausted oblivion, she thought she saw the shape of someone cloaked, someone crouching, in the flickering shadows next to the dying hearth, though no one could have possibly entered the room without her seeing or hearing…

  Chapter Six: The Witch Queen

  Marie woke the next morning in Richard’s bed, naked and alone again.

  The sun was—also again—high in the sky, and a platter of fruit and bread had been left for her.

  She felt sore and swollen between her legs when she tried to move—more so when she tried to walk—but found herself unwilling to touch herself down there to explore the potential (and expected) damage. Still, she could tell she had been fundamentally, permanently changed, and not just physically. But more surprising, she found she did not feel at all ashamed or degraded by it. Instead, she felt something almost like pride.

  Starving, she wrapped herself in a blanket and dug into the breakfast left for her. Then she found a chamber pot for her other needs (and was a bit unsettled by how her raw flesh burned from its abuse). She used the now-cool water of the tub and a handy cloth to carefully clean herself, then left the cool compress sit for a moment to sooth her as she further investigated her surroundings.

  Left with nothing to wear—her dress and cloak had not been seen since her entrance into the Great Hall—and with no sign that anyone seemed to be attending to her presence, Marie soon found that she couldn’t bear to just sit and wait alone. She left the washing cloth on the edge of the tub, gently toweled herself dry, and went naked to the aged oak door of the bedchamber and listened for some sign of activity outside. There were voices far away, and other sounds that she could not distinguish—almost like animal sounds—coming from somewhere below, distorted into hollow echoes by the stone halls of the Keep.

  The door was not locked when Marie tried the latch. She opened it just enough to peek out and determine that there was no sign of life visible on the stone and oak gallery just outside the room, nor down on the stairway that she had apparently been carried up the night before, at least not as far as she could see.

  So, pulling the blanket tight around her shoulders like a cloak, she quietly and cautiously slipped through the door, across the gallery, and down the stairs the way she had been brought.

  Marie moved as silently as she could, her bare feet chilled by each of the stone steps as she went, while the shifting and slipping of her makeshift garment over her bare skin kept reminding her of her vulnerability in these strange and unfamiliar surroundings. It also made her aware of how uncomfortably far she was getting from the relative security of the Count’s bedchamber, should anyone come upon her. Thankfully, no one met her on the stairs, and her little exploration seemed to go unnoticed.

  But when she finally got to the tapestry that curtained off the corridor below from the Great Hall, she froze. The unidentified sou
nd (at least one of them) that she had been hearing had grown suddenly closer and louder: It was an animal growling, coming from within the hall, punctuated with what sounded like fists pounding wood. Steeling her spirit (vividly remembering the spectacle she had beheld the last time she had spied through a doorway) and doubly insuring that no one was about to discover her, Marie peered discreetly and cautiously through the curtain.

  Richard was there, sitting in his apparently usual seat at the main table. But is was what was on the table that almost made Marie break her stealth and cry out: the redhead Claire—Richard’s “bodyguard”—was on her back on the solid oak tabletop in front of him, the skirts of her red dress pulled up to her breasts, her pale legs splayed out wide. Richard was bent over her, his face buried into the patch of fur over her sex that matched her mane, devouring her with a far greater violence than he had done Marie.

  Claire bucked against the table like a thrashing animal, pounding it with her fists and the back of her head, growling savagely through her teeth, spitting words Marie could barely decipher.

  “Eat me!” she was demanding. “Eat my cunt, Wolf! Eat me up! Fuck me with your animal mouth until you gnaw me in half!”

  And Richard was doing just that, digging into her so roughly he looked like he might tear the flesh from her sex with his teeth, growling like a raging wolf himself (that’s what she had called him, wasn’t it?) . And she kept demanding more, roaring at him with the same shameless language, shouting at him to bite her and suck her and shove himself harder and deeper into her. Then suddenly Claire whipped her head back and looked right at Marie, locking her with her pale eyes, grinning cruelly, as if she would laugh if she had the breath left to. Marie recoiled, shaking, and fell back into a pair of strong arms.