Three Nights With the Princess

by Betina Krahn

  He was like the khamsin he had spoken of . . . hot and powerful and utterly irresistible. Whenever they came together, he swept her up like a searing desert wind, overwhelming her with his passion and his certainty. And as the desert tribes understood of their mighty wind, all she could do was yield to that force and pray that wherever he set her down would be the right place.

  “This night is yours, Saxxe Rouen,” she said softly, touching his face.

  Yours. The word resonated in his very blood and he burst into a huge grin and picked her up by the waist and whirled her around in the water. “Yea, the night is mine, Thera of Aric. And soon the Seven Pleasures of the World will be yours.” And he lifted her into his arms and carried her up the steps and out of the water.

  Standing her by the pool, he peeled the clinging silk from her shoulders, down her arms, and pushed it over her hips so that it fell into a puddle around her feet. Her thin, knee-length chemise came next, and soon she stood before him wearing nothing but a blush.

  With unhurried grace, he reached for one of the folded linens the women had brought for his bath and wrapped her in it, dragging his hands down her shoulders and sides to dry her. Then he reached for a bit of toweling himself and was surprised when she tugged it from his hands and began to ply it over his chest and shoulders and back.

  Her fingers strayed from the cloth to stroke his body, skimming his mounded muscles, tracing his tightly banded ribs and narrow waist. He watched patiently as she satisfied her curiosity . . . until both her attentions and his desires focused intently on his loins.

  “Now, my little cat:’ he said, pulling the toweling from her hands and shoulders. “It is time for your first lesson.” Lifting her, he strode to the veiled bed and settled her in the middle of it, on her knees. Then he climbed up opposite her, smiling in a way that caused her heart to skip beats.

  “There are seven pleasures. And the first of them is the kiss.” He brushed his lips over the ends of her fingers.

  “I believe you’ve already shown me that one,” she said, leaning forward to press a lush, open-mouthed kiss on his lips. She didn’t want lessons, her darting tongue said; she wanted pleasures. He couldn’t help rousing to her provocation, but when she sat back, gasping, he took a deep breath and reined in his response.

  “A very nice start, sweetest. But you still have a few things to learn.” He pressed her back onto the soft bed, spanning her body on braced arms. “Close your eyes.” She obeyed and he made a sound of approval and shifted to the bed beside her.

  “You love to count, eh? Then count for me the different kisses I give you . . . all the different ways a kiss can make you feel.” He kissed her forehead, then brushed his lips down the bridge of her nose to plant a kiss on its tip . . . one soft and parental, one teasing and squishy.

  “One . . . two,” she said with a hint of impatience. Then he covered her closed eyes and cheeks with a steady rain of soft kisses that made her skin glow and made her turn her head to offer him the rest of her face. “Ummm, three . . . perhaps four.” And when his kisses trailed back along her ear, they began to invade her sensitive skin in a subtle way. “Definitely four,” she murmured. After a number of gentle massaging kisses, he added a short, liquid stroke of his tongue. She shivered. “Five.”

  “Nay, keep your eyes closed.” He chuckled softly. “And concentrate. I’ll want you to remember someday.”

  And he trailed kisses down the side of her throat, leaving a damp trail that made her flesh quiver and brought an emphatic: “Six.”

  He kissed and licked his way down her shoulders, stopping her breath when he added small nibbles. By the time he reached her tightly contracted nipples and swirled them with his tongue, she grabbed handfuls of the silken bed cover and groaned, “Eleven. Nay—twelve.” Then he suckled her, flicked her with his tongue, and raked her with his teeth, setting her afire with need. “Fifteen . . . sixteen . . . ohhh, sweet saints in Heaven! Please . . . Saxxe . . . s-seventeen . . . ohhh—eighteen’”

  He drew back to watch her writhing in the throes of pleasures she had never known. She shuddered, stiffened, and bit her lip as he plied her with more kisses. Her legs shifted restlessly, her back arched, and her hips rolled in a sweet agony of desire. He knew that need; it was the very thing he was suppressing in his own loins even now. And as his own desires threatened to surge out of control, he took a deep breath and moved down her body.

  “Saxxe?” she said softly, then felt a passionate kiss dropped on her navel . . . a series of wet, extravagant kisses trailed down her abdomen. She gasped—“Twenty”—as he veered off to one side to nibble her hipbone and nuzzle the border of her thigh. She could tell that his face was hot, and when she felt his hands grasp her legs, she started. His kisses lowered to her knee, where nibbles made it “Twenty-one,” then begin to rise up the sensitive skin of her inner thigh as he nudged her legs apart. She tensed and her hands fluttered anxiously about his head.

  Then she felt a touch and a gentle pressure that she knew must be a kiss. Twenty-two. Then something brushed the curls over her woman’s mound, over and over, round and round, producing a gentle tickle that vibrated through her entire body. She moaned softly as the turgid heat collected around those sensations and grew into a burning need for release. Then suddenly she felt it . . . like a series of strokes across her very soul . . . that most intimate of kisses, soft and shimmering, building to a shattering intensity.

  She lost her breath, lost her count . . . and lost control.

  Pleasure crashed through her in huge waves, filling her loins, rising up her spine, curling through her chest, gripping her lungs.

  With a convulsive gasp, she threw her head back and arched . . . splintering into a thousand burning embers . . . flung into vast, color-drenched realms of pleasure. Her consciousness filled with brilliant, searing gold and fiery crimson swirling and blending in exotic patterns as tremors shuddered through her again and again. Then as that flash-fire of passion cooled, gentler hues appeared, purples and azure, topaz gold and lush sendal green.

  She returned slowly to her senses and found Saxxe holding her close. A calm sense of release permeated her, and she gave him a drowsy, potent smile that made him rustle against her.

  “That, sweetest, is the first of the Seven Pleasures . . . the kiss,” he said in a soft rumble, stroking her love-thickened lips. “Do you remember how many ways you counted?” When she shook her head, his eyes filled with mysterious promises of delights. “Twenty-three. And I believe, in time, you will discover quite a few more.”

  “How many more?” she said, shifting to look at him in complete wonder.

  “I have no idea.” His chuckle vibrated along her ribs and set her tingling anew. “I’ve never been especially good with numbers . . . and never had a reason to count. You count for me”—he waggled his brows—“and I’ll try not to repeat myself.”

  “And in what part of the world did you learn the wonderful secrets of the kiss? In a Saracen beauty’s arms?” The hint of jealousy in her question deepened the glint in his eye.

  “Nay, it was no Saracen. The Moslem women seldom kiss . . . they consider it a decadent western practice. I learned kissing from the buxom Norman serving girls of my home, then acquired a few refinements in the arms of accommodating Italian and Spanish ladies.” He kissed the edges of her frown and slid a hand up her hip, watching her shivery ripple of response with mild surprise. “So you see, I have traveled the world . . . collecting pleasures to spend on a stubborn princess.”

  “Then how lucky I am to be a stubborn princess,” she whispered, pressing her hip against his swollen male flesh and watching the flare of response in his eyes.

  “I see you are ready to begin again.” His smile was soft and knowing as he dragged his fingertips down her face, drawing her lashes over her eyes. “Close your eyes, Thera, and learn the ways of the Second Pleasure . . . the caress.”

  Willingly this time, she drifted into the darkness inside her own head and was slowly
overwhelmed by the sensations he produced for her. Her spending had given her release, but had left her on a plateau of lingering excitation. Within a mere few caresses, she was again flushed with rising passion. His fingers were surprisingly supple, and soon she had experienced five wholly different caresses; gentle pressure, stroking, kneading, nuzzling, and feathery brushes. She sighed raggedly as he paused to kiss her deeply, then to run his knuckles down her throat.

  “I never imagined touches could feel so different.” He cupped and massaged her breasts, gradually working his way toward her tightly contracted nipples. “Six . . . seven . . . ohhh, please . . .” She expelled a long breath that was part sigh, part groan. “Eight.”

  For all the delicious intimacy of his kisses, his caresses seemed somehow more personal and moving. They reached inside her, to places inaccessible to words and even to the flood of sensual passion. From the first moment they met, Saxxe had touched her often, and with masterful assurance. It was his nature to deal with the world physically, to touch in order to convey and command, and to express his feelings with his hands. And in his tactile nature she had discovered the key to the woman locked deep inside her.

  Now, as he focused the intensity of his need for her in his hands, she opened her senses to receive it. Each stroke took on a meaning of its own, and in her deepest heart she began to understand what they said to her. She recognized the awe in his delicate tracings, the possession in his firm caresses, and the playfulness in his tweaks and feathery brushes. There was a deep respect in the way he handled her, and a tenderness that spoke as much of caring as of skill. And as he settled tautly between her parting thighs, she felt his need and understood the restraint he exercised.

  They began to move together, body against body . . . his chest brushing the tips of her breasts, his swollen shaft tracing the cleft of her woman’s flesh, his heavy thighs rasping softly against hers. A familiar hunger grew within her, roused by the light, erotic contact. The core of her both swelled and tightened in preparation, and her heart pounded wildly as she felt herself propelled once more along that tight, explosive spiral toward climax.

  He drew back for a moment, then began the slow joining of their bodies . . . thrusting gently but insistently, again and again . . . invading her like a warm, relentless tide . . . taking her breath and the last of her self-possession. She met his thrusts with hunger . . . wrapping him with her legs, demanding more of him, straining toward the feel of him parting her untried flesh. Battling for control of his own soaring needs, he halted and stroked her face.

  “Slowly, Thera. I would not have this end too soon”—he said with a low groan—“for this is the third of the Seven Pleasures, the joining.”

  But their passions had been held at bay too long to be constrained by something as malleable as human will. She undulated provocatively against him, luxuriating in the fullness inside her and demanding the completion her body craved. “Nay, Saxxe . . . now . . . love me now,” she whispered, wrapping her arms tighter about his shoulders and taking him deeper inside.

  The heat and fullness and friction exploded in her senses and she cried out as she was caught up in searing winds of release and blown toward rare, bright peaks of sensation. He called her name and plunged into that pleasure storm after her, pouring a part of his very soul into her as he filled her with his seed.

  The boundaries between them melted, and as they drifted from summit to summit of response, it was impossible to say where one’s being ended and the other’s began. For the moment they were one flesh, one spirit, complete in a way that neither would ever be again, alone. And as their bodies and hearts were blended, so were their fortunes and their futures.

  It was some time before Thera’s senses returned to normal. They lay still joined, though he had slanted across her body and onto the bed to spare her some of his weight. His eyes were closed and she reached out to trace his features with her fingertips, just above his skin so that she wouldn’t disturb him.

  But he sensed the warmth near his face. His long black lashes fluttered open, and she found herself sinking into the luminous depths of his eyes. “What are you doing?” he asked in husky tones.

  She paused, then continued her explorations more directly, drawing her fingers up his temple, ruffling his eyebrow, then down the slope of his nose to his lips. “I just wanted to touch your face. I love looking at you. Without your beard, you look so very different, so . . .”

  “Civilized?” he supplied, watching her reaction keenly.

  “Well . . .” She lowered her lashes.

  “Fighting and warring are not particularly civilized pursuits,” he said softly, “despite all the grand pageantry of knighthood and the code of chivalry. It has been a long time since I’ve had a reason to shave my face and wear burghers’ clothes.”

  “And you have a reason now?” She held her breath.

  “I have,” he said softly. “You.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “I would go a long way, Thera, to have you look at me just as you are now.” He lifted her other hand, kissed it, and placed it on his chest. “To have you touch me like this.” He smiled and slid her hand toward his belly, then slowly, experimentally, to his hardening shaft. His eyes closed as her fingers curled around him. “And like that.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and rolled onto his back, carrying her with him, so that she lay half on top of him, her breasts pressed against his chest. She was caught deep in another of his toe-curling kisses when the sense of his words registered in her mind. She lifted her head and whispered, “When?”

  “When what?” he countered hoarsely between nibbles of her throat and shoulder.

  “When did you dress like a burgher and shave your face?” A visible barrier rose in the backs of his eyes and the sight caught her off guard.

  “I once fought for nobles and merchant guilds, remember? I have dined in great houses as well as on battlefields and in forests. And to dine at a great man’s table . . . you generally have to wear clothes.” He produced a beguiling smile and drew her head down to continue their kiss. She raised it again and frowned.

  “Saxxe, where did you learn to fight? Who was your lord when you rode on the Crusade?”

  “I learned to fight from a crusty, annoying old fellow who lived with my mother when I was a child. And I rode under King Louis. Who else? It was there I met Gasquar. We sailed the same galley on the way to Alexandria and spent most of the voyage hanging over the rails together.” He flashed a distractingly dazzling grin. “It was a wonder either of us could lift a sword by the time we arrived. I tell you, we were so sick that the fish following the ship stuck their heads out of the water and begged us—”

  “Saxxe!” She gave him a shove. “Be serious.” She pushed up onto her elbow beside him, searching his face. As always, he spoke easily of himself without revealing much. The need to know about him became as compelling as her physical need for him. “Tell me about your home. Tell me all about you. I want to know.” After a moment’s silence she added softly: “Prithee please, sir.”

  He raised onto an elbow and studied the intensity in her face, searching for something. “Why do you want to know?”

  It was the very question she had avoided asking her self. There were at least a hundred ways to answer . . . but only one truth. And it took every bit of her courage to say it.

  “Because every time we’re together you make my knees go weak and my skin ache for your touch. Because I just gave to you what I should have saved for my lord husband. And because I am coming to care a great deal for you, Saxxe Rouen.” Emotion tightened her throat, reducing her voice to a whisper. “And I can’t seem to stop it.”

  His face nearly split with a grin, and in an instant he kissed her breathless. Before she could recover, she found herself on her back, being showered with jubilant kisses and rousing caresses . . . which made it impossible to remember what she had just been so intent on knowing.

  Much later, they lay together with th
eir legs entwined, wrapped in the swirl of her hair and the cocoon of his warmth.

  “I love your pleasures, Saxxe,” she said drowsily, nuzzling the hand he brought up to stroke her cheek.

  “As much as you love me?” he said, watching her eyes close and feeling her sliding toward sleep.

  “Not quite that much,” she whispered, with a ghost of a smile. “More like . . . four score and six worth.”

  He felt her relax against him and realized she’d fallen asleep. His chest felt marvelously full as he gazed at her dewy skin and pleasure-softened features. She had just admitted for the first time that she cared for him, even if it had been in a roundabout way. His broad, joyful smile slid into a laugh.

  “Dieu. She counted.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gasquar opened his door the next morning, at sunrise, and found Lillith seated on a stool outside Saxxe’s door, her head against the wall and her eyes closed. He shook his head and gently scooped her into his arms and carried her back into his chamber. She wakened as he lifted her, but instinctively threw her arms around his neck to steady herself.

  “Where am—?” She glanced around in newly wakened confusion and, as Gasquar deposited her on his bed, she suddenly made sense of where she was. “J-just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, making straight for the far side of the bed. Gasquar was around the corner post in a flash, intercepting her.

  “You are tired, eh, from your long night’s vigil?” He planted himself before her so that his knees trapped hers against the bed. “I thought perhaps you would rest better here.”

  “Your bed, of course,” she said. “Stand aside. I have to be there when she comes out of his chamber.”

  “Still you poke your nose into others’ pleasures,” he said, wagging his head. Her mussed hair, sleep-heavy eyes, and cherry-red lips lent her a just-wakened allure that he found irresistible. “Very well, then . . . but hurry, ma chatte. When you have finished counting your princess’s pleasures, I would have you begin to count your own. Yours . . . and mine.”