by Evie North
His mouth curved into a smile and he gave an amazed laugh. He removed the cloak from her and she was there again, head tilted to the side, watching him, wondering what he would do now. He ran his hand over the cloth, frowning down at it, then shook his head in wonder.
“Magic indeed. How did the Sultan come by this thing?”
“No one knows but it is thought he brought it with him when he came from the east.” She explained what else she had seen in the locked room, the golden orb and the bones. “It is thought Aghar stole them from a prince.”
The English lion seemed interested, and while he listened to her he poured a goblet of wine from a jug and sipped. “And these things, they are all in the same room? With the cloak? Then how did you manage to get hold of the cloak, Batilda?”
When she explained about the guard he laughed and his eyes gleamed.
“You are very clever. And very beautiful,” he murmured, and then he brushed her lips with his. She tasted the wine, and when he pulled her against his body she felt the warm skin of his chest beneath her palms, and the hard bone and muscle against her softer curves.
“Why did you come here tonight?” he asked.
“To be with you,” she said, looking into his blue eyes.
He took her to his private rooms. He seemed fascinated with her beauty, stroking her face, and then kissing her until it was clear he was full of desire for her.
Their lips clung and she made a sound of need in her throat. She felt his tongue, wetting the seam of her lips, delving inside her mouth. He held her jaw, his thumbs stroking her soft skin, kissing her more firmly now.
Batilda felt his cock against her thigh and shifted slightly, shimmying until she had it where she wanted it, pressing to the apex of her thighs. The ache only grew worse, but as they kissed, she bumped her hips against him, rubbing herself on the hard bulge that pressed against his breeches.
Ah that was better!
The pleasure began to build now, and she could feel her female parts swelling and dripping the moisture of desire. He took hold of her buttocks, lifting her and settling her against his cock.
“This is what you came for?” he groaned. “When I saw you at the dancing I wanted you. I asked for you.”
“I know,” she whispered, and clung to him as he carried her toward the bed. “I wanted you too. That night I touched myself, thinking of you.”
Her words seemed to spark something wild in him, and he lay atop of her on the bed and she felt his fingers sliding between her thighs, stroking the aching flesh, finding her pearl and giving it a tweak. She whimpered, arching toward him, but he was pushing aside her flimsy clothing, his mouth closing on her and sucking hard.
Pleasure such as she had never known spiralled through her, raising her upwards, and then she shattered with the joy of it.
A moment later he was naked, his cock rearing up against his belly, his eyes glittering down at her from the candlelit shadows. “What will happen if I take you with my cock, Batilda? What will Aghar do to me?”
“He will kill you,” she replied, eyes half closed, her breasts heaving still from her climax.
“Then I will have to kill him. Because I must have you.”
And with that he pushed his cock into her, deeper and deeper, and her body struggled to accommodate him. But the fullness, the tingling in each inch of her channel, made her want to move against him. Wanting more, needing more.
He lay above her, his heavy thighs between hers, his buttocks tightening with each thrust as his cock stroked her inner flesh. And then she was climaxing again, quivering and crying out, and he roared above her like a lion indeed.
She was his and there was no going back.
“We are supposed to be guests here and yet we cannot leave and there is a guard at our door.”
“He is a greedy man.”
The lion eyed her with interest. His hand was fondling her breast, squeezing the firm flesh, fingering her thrusting nipple. She felt herself growing languid with desire again, but he seemed to want to talk. Batilda was not used to men wanting to talk to her after they had fucked her; the Sultan was always eager to send her back to the harem.
“Where do you come from?” he said, and bent his head to lap his tongue over her nipples, sucking them gently into his warm mouth, making her heart beat heavier. “Before the harem?”
She tangled her hands in his golden hair. “I don’t know the answer to that,” she said, breathless, her body melting from his touch. “The ship I was aboard hit the rocks and sank and then we were sold. My mother and father and I. We walked across the desert for many days. At the slave market people bought us for money. They took my family away and the Sultan bought me to be a slave, but later he took me into his harem.”
“And there you are one of many,” he murmured. “But still, I think he must value you. Any man would.”
She smiled, and reached to kiss his mouth again. Her fingers reached down to caress the muscles of his belly, before closing on his cock. It was long and hard and she could no longer resist the urge to lick him.
He rose up onto his knees and she knelt before him, her mouth covering him, her hands gently squeezing his balls. Her long hair hung about her face and he caught it back in his hands, so that he could see her lips about his hard rod, and the sight seemed to make him even harder.
“You learnt these things in the harem?” he said shakily.
She stopped and looked up at him, licked her lips wantonly. “Of course.”
It seemed too much for him. He sank back onto the bed and caught her to him, spreading her legs about his thighs so that they were locked together in a seated position, and then he pushed himself inside her with a groan. She locked her legs about his waist, her arms tight around his neck, and her mouth on his. She was already climaxing with a shuddering moan of ecstasy but then he too roared out his pleasure, and set her off again.
She lay in his arms, sprawled across him, and he thought she was so small and light in comparison to his brawn and strength. He wanted to protect her, to rescue her, to take her home and make her his forever. He noticed she said nothing of tomorrow or the day after that. She did not make plans or promises. It was as if she didn’t dare to believe there may be a tomorrow. That this moment must be enough for her.
He touched her belly lightly, following the curve down to her mound, plucked hairless as was the custom, and then slid a fingertip inside her lips there, stroking at her hard little bead. She was hot again, and moist from their couplings. He watched her eyelids flutter and listened to her quickened breathing.
“This is dangerous,” he said, and he sounded breathless too. He bent his head and let his tongue follow his fingertip, deep inside her plump, fleshy lips, sweeping along the slit that ran down to her core. She tasted as exotic as she looked.
“Very dangerous,” she gasped. “We risk death, both of us.”
The thought of the danger made him aroused. She could see that his cock was bigger even than before, rising up from his groin, the drip of salty cum on its tip. She opened her legs, wanting him inside her, but he used his tongue again, causing her to climax with a low cry. Only then did he take her again.
“My men and I are his guests. We rely on him for our safety here in this enemy land,” he said, and he rose up above her, the tip of his cock pressing to her channel, easing in further and further while she melted around him. He stretched her almost to pain, and yet it was more pleasure than the Sultan had ever given her, with his practised lovemaking that brought her to climax and yet left her heart cold.
“If he found out . . .” she whispered as he rode her, thrusting fully inside each time, his eyes boring into hers.
“I swear I will take you from him.”
“Will you? Will you take me from him?” she cried out as the pleasure grew almost too great.
“Yes!” He shouted and she felt his seed spill into her, the seed of the lion.
Much later, while he slept, Batilda rose and pulled the cloak
around her once more. She found it difficult to leave him and lingered a moment, drinking in the sight of his naked body on the bed, but she knew she must go back. She must return to the harem, and try not to believe too keenly in the promises he had made her.
For many years she had hoped for rescue or escape, and for many years she’d known nothing but disappointment. But this time, and she could not help but smile, this time it felt different.
***
“Would the Englishman really risk everything for a woman?” Garrick asked.
He was seated by the window today, and the cold wind and rain outside made her shiver. She sat closer to the fire, her fur-lined cloak around her, and still she was cold.
“He was a friend of King Richard, who was also a lion heart. He’d gone on Crusade thinking he knew what he must do and who was his enemy, but once away from the cold shores of England he found things were not so cut and dried as he’d thought. Those mystical lands wove their spell on him, and he found himself thinking thoughts and dreaming dreams that he had not imagined possible at home.”
“He wanted the woman more than he feared for his life,” Garrick said practically, with a nod of his head. “She had cast a spell on him.”
“And he on her.”
Garrick smiled and settled back against the cushions, listening to her voice as she began to tell him more of the story.
It was true. The English lion found himself wanting the girl Batilda, even though she was one of the Sultan’s wives, and his wanting grew more and more urgent. Whenever she was able to, she took the invisible cloak and slipped out to visit him, and they lay together in his bed and enjoyed each other’s bodies until dawn, when she crept away again.
But it wasn’t enough. He knew that he had to have her completely. And the thought of sharing her with the Sultan made him burn with fury.
In the usual way of the Sultan’s friendships, he soon fell out with his friend the English lion. Something to do with an imagined insult, although the lion may have caused the rift between them through his own unhappiness and jealousy, because he wanted Batilda for himself.
One day they were friends, guests in Aghar’s lands, and the next day they were sullen enemies.
“He has asked us to leave,” the lion said, as he lay with Batilda in his bed. She was running her finger over the scar on his eyebrow, as if she would remember it when he was gone.
She stopped and looked at him with wide eyes.
“I do not want to go without you,” he said.
“But if you take me with you then Aghar will follow you and kill you,” she said anxiously. “You should leave. The longer you stay here the more likely it is he will come in the night with his men and kill you all. Once you are the Sultan’s enemy you can never be safe.”
“Tell me the name of the guard who looks after the locked room where the cloak is kept,” he said. “I will speak with him. I have a plan.”
So she told him, and also told him where the man could be found when he was outside the palace. She did not ask him what he intended to do; she did not want to know in case the Sultan found out about their love for each other and tortured her into telling him what she knew.
And then everything went very wrong.
The Sultan sent for Batilda to spend the night with him and she refused. Now you may wonder why she refused, why she couldn’t have allowed him one more night if it meant she would then be free of him. Why she couldn’t have played her part just a little longer.
But the truth was that Batilda loved her English lion. When the Sultan sent for her she knew she could no longer pretend. She felt if he took her then she would be betraying her lover.
So she was locked away in a small room, a punishment room, away from the rest of the harem. Her back was bloodied and cut from the whip that had fallen upon her again and again, to make her compliant to the Sultan’s wishes.
She could not go to the lion and she could not tell him why she no longer visited him. Did he think she no longer loved him? That it had all been a game to her? She tormented herself with these thoughts as she lay in the dark little room, imagining she would never see him again and that this was all she had to look forward to. And as she lay there she knew that if she could not be with the lion then she truly would rather be dead.
In the meantime the English lion had found the guard and offered him threats and bribes to bring the cloak to him, and when he had the cloak in his hands, the lion had slipped by the men on duty at the Sultan’s palace and let his own Englishmen inside.
Taken by surprise, the Sultan’s men were at first overwhelmed, and the fighting rampaged through the palace, the men wild with bloodlust.
From her prison Batilda heard the shouting and sat up.
She could hear the women in the harem screaming as the door was smashed open and then the voice of her lion shouting for her. He ran through the harem, searching for Batilda, and then he heard her crying out to him and came to the door of her prison.
There were bars and she could see him, and for a moment they stared at each other in the gloom, as if they were each other’s heart and soul.
“The key,” she said urgently, pointing to where it hung.
He snatched it up and turned it in the lock and the door opened and she was in his arms. He held her and she refused to cry out at the pain in her back, and then he was running with her, back through the palace to the door into the courtyard.
His Englishmen joined them and they could hear shouts behind them, angry voices, but they ran on. He had horses waiting and, lifting her onto his own, he mounted behind her and they rode off, deep into the desert.
“What then?” Garrick asked. His eyes seemed brighter now, as if the story had pierced the fog of his sickness. “Did they get away?”
She smiled and placed her finger against his lips. “I will tell you tomorrow. Sleep now.”
He wanted to argue, she could see it, but with a sigh he closed his eyes. “He did save her though, didn’t he?” he whispered as he drifted into sleep. “The lion saved Batilda from the Sultan and the harem.”
“Yes, he saved her.” She kissed him gently and lay down to sleep herself, huddling closer to the fire.
She was cold. She was always cold. It was only in Garrick’s arms she was ever warm, and he was too ill to hold her as she wished. Would he ever be well again? A tear leaked out from her eye and ran down her cheek.
***
They found shelter in the desert, an abandoned mud brick building, where they stayed for the night. The sky was one wide arc of black velvet pierced with pinpoints of light. Stars, so many of them it was impossible to count them.
He’d discovered her injuries and bathed her with water they could not really spare, and when he had done she turned into his arms and kissed him.
It didn’t matter that she was hurt; the desire turned her bones to fire, and she could not be satisfied with anything less than him. But he was gentle, lifting the blanket that covered her and using his tongue on her pearl, nibbling and sucking, until she shuddered and cried out in her pleasure. And then he lay behind her, his chest to her back, his cock slipping through the slick outer lips and finding her channel. He filled her, rocking her gently, and then his hand slid over her belly to her mound and found her pearl again, already swollen from the last climax.
It didn’t matter. As soon as he touched her she forgot everything but being his, and as his cock swelled and filled her, she pushed back against him. His lips were warm against her neck, and then he turned her head so that he could find her mouth.
“You are mine now,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the starlight.
“Yes. And you are mine.”
She squeezed her muscles around him, pumping him of his seed, and he groaned as he came. A moment later she joined him, and their bodies lay slick and sated together.
The next day their escape took them deeper into the desert, and the sun made their skins burn, but they dared not turn back. The Sultan would be waiting;
he was probably following at their heels. He was a jealous and greedy man, and he would not give her up easily. So they rode on and eventually, when it almost felt as if they could go no further, they found the brilliant blue sea and a small fishing village clinging to the coast.
The villagers gave them food and drink, and they slept on one of the house roofs with the sky all around them. Batilda was in love, and oblivious to most things, but gradually she became aware that the other Englishmen were not happy with their lion. They thought he was a fool, risking all for a woman who wasn’t even one of their own. They gave her sideways looks and muttered that she had cast a spell on him.
The lion shrugged and pretended to laugh off their behaviour, but Batilda could tell he felt betrayed. He tried to jolly them out of their suspicion, reminding them that the villagers had said there were many ships along this shore, and one of them would surely take them across to France and from there to England.
“We will be home again,” he said to his men in a cheerful voice. And to Batilda he added, “And you will be safe.”
So they waited and waited, turning their heads to watch the desert in case their pursuers should find them, and then turning again to watch the sea for the ship that would take them to safety. And the days and weeks passed.
They thought they had outrun the Sultan but they hadn’t.
Aghar’s men came for them. They came in the dead of night, taking them by surprise, and there was a battle. The Englishmen all fought like lions, and for a time they drove the Sultan’s men back, but there were too many. The darkness was full of the clashing of blades, the cries of the wounded and the shouts of the victors. Soon the Englishmen were dying all around and the lion was the only one left.
He barricaded the two of them into a hut and Batilda saw he was hurt badly, blood streaming from his head. She knew then that they would both die, for she refused to be returned to the Sultan if her lion was no more.
But just as all seemed lost, Batilda remembered the invisible cloak, which they had brought with them, and she flung it over them both just as the door was smashed in. The Sultan’s men came roaring into the room and stopped, staring. They went to the window and peered out, and then they were running again, imagining that the lion and Batilda were out there somewhere, escaping toward the sea.