Thrones of Desire

by Mitzi Szereto

  Lydia laughed, the sound sharp. As she straightened, her bodice began to fall away. There were no fastenings to speak of. The threads that made up its center simply unraveled, revealing her breasts, her abdomen, the hair that framed her cunt, her thighs. It slithered down her and finally settled on the floor in a black shadow. Whether he wished to or not, Hann found himself staring at her. She tossed her head back to make her tangle of dark hair spill over her shoulders and plumped her breasts for her own enjoyment.

  “I can make you want me, but do not despair too deeply—I will not have you inside of me. I have no wish for it. Your humiliation is enough for me. Turn around, on your stomach,” Lydia commanded.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She pushed herself standing on the pallet and raised her hand above him. He flipped around abruptly, cock digging into the pallet at an awkward angle that made him cry out.

  “Now, executioner, you may continue with what you were doing before I arrived,” Lydia said, kneeling beside Hann and stroking the muscles of his exposed back before sliding her palm over the swell of his buttocks. She slapped it none too gently, making him quiver.

  Bruin looked at her, then at Hann, then back at her.

  “I can make you do it,” Lydia said to him. “You may have only done the thankless task for which you are paid, but you are not blameless in my persecution. I could take it upon myself to seek retribution from you as well. But in doing this, I ask nothing from you than what you already want.”

  He pushed her hand away from Hann then and squeezed the firm muscle of Hann’s ass, watching dimples form under his great, thick fingers. Lydia ran her nails admiringly over them.

  To Lydia’s heated gaze, Bruin muttered, “I will not put my cock in you.”

  “I would not dream of it,” Lydia said, looking up at him with irises almost all dark, glittering caves. “Mind if I borrow these wonderful things?” She brought his hand up to her mouth and took two large fingers into her mouth, moaning as she coated them with her saliva.

  Bruin shrugged. “As long as it is not my cock, witch.” His lip curled in distaste at the thought of it.

  “Enchantress,” Lydia said, releasing his fingers with a cold smile. “I am no mere witch.” The rumble of thunder, still distant when she first entered, was now quite close, and at the end of her words, rain pounded violently on the sides of the house.

  As Bruin worked saliva-slicked fingers into Hann, the poor man beneath him bit his forearm to muffle his groans. He was helpless, lost to the fervor of his lusts. Lydia’s scent and pleasure-filled fingers and the familiar intimacy of his lover made Hann feel light-headed and stupid, able to do nothing except succumb to the demands of his weak body. Thunder’s vibrations thrummed through him.

  He could no longer hold himself back when Bruin pressed the head of his cock against him and pushed in. He yelled, fists clutching the sheet.

  “Yes, take him,” Lydia commanded as Bruin sheathed himself completely. “Take him!”

  Bruin grunted as he pulled out and shoved himself back into Hann. “Yes,” Hann said, lost as always to the sensation. His other hand reached beneath him to stroke himself.

  Lydia crawled over Hann to straddle his waist again and trap him underneath her, facing Bruin and watching him quicken his pace. Hann’s ass rippled now with each firm thrust, and Lydia leaned back until her head rested between Hann’s shoulder blades.

  “Good god, Bruin!” Hann shouted as the repeated pounding against his prostate became too much to bear. “Need you to…”

  “No,” Lydia said. “Not until I am finished.” An orange glow independent of the fire dipped under Hann’s body and seeped into him to restrain him from coming. He gave a frustrated shriek, bucking beneath her, and she laughed. Her laughter mingled with the sharp, deep thunder as lightning struck not too far from the cottage and made the earth tremble.

  Lydia arched and reveled atop the body of her desperate former lover. She curled her tongue in the air and moaned, moving with Hann to the rhythm of Bruin’s thrusts, riding him. Finally, the taste of their frustration and need was too sweet in the warm perfume of the cottage, and she brought her hands between her legs, taking herself in wild abandon, shrieking to rival the banshee cry of the wind outside. The Oculum slid down her breastbone and rested in the hollow of her throat from the angle of her arched back. It was only when she slid down onto the bed that she ended the enchantments on Hann, letting loose a flood of orgasm over him that wracked him with the most exquisite, too brief pleasure. Holding Hann’s hips in a bruising grip, Bruin grunted and slumped over Hann, overcome with his own release. Firelight glistened with an amber glow over the contours of their tangled bodies.

  Lydia wiped her hands on the sheet, stretching like a wildcat. The two men were replete, but she felt energized, as though charged with the lightning that still rocked the cottage with its thunder. She climbed over them. Bruin flinched when her breasts dragged over his back, but she just patted his shoulder and stepped onto the floor. She summoned her dress, which vined up her body and sewed itself tightly against her, as though it had never been removed at all.

  “Dally with whom you will,” Lydia said. Her voice cut into the postcoital fog shared by the two men—Hann’s eyes flew open. His pupils were still large from arousal, his face flushed and shining, but Lydia latched onto his reflexive guilt, taking it in as though it were bitter wine. “As long as you serve me.”

  Rain soaked half the room as she walked into the storm. When Bruin ran out with his ax, a perfunctory defense, she was gone. Rain pummeled his naked body, but although he knew Hann would be impossible for a while—from the fear of being caught and of never being with Bruin again—he thought that Lydia would not return for them. And she was no worse a master than Micah.

  Lightning struck both sides of the road as the worst of the storm followed Lydia into the heart of Adal. Her hair was soaked now and rain dripped down her chest and dipped between her breasts, but her gown continued to repel all efforts to destroy it. She could have stopped the rain from soaking the rest of her, but it honestly felt good to feel at all—the cold, the wind, the water, the ozone, her heated skin pebbling into gooseflesh—after waiting in that in-between place.

  With the king newly dead—how tragic to die as he did, not from the blade of an enemy, but struggling for speech like an infant as something in his head abruptly failed to function during his nightly ablutions—Micah was having more trouble than he anticipated turning Queen Lilac’s ear with his silver tongue. He thought her more delicate and malleable than she was, but Lydia knew better. With enough care, she could be nurtured into a formidable monarch…with Lydia Eyekeeper at her right hand, of course. The only thing left was to eliminate Micah from meddling. She could do as he did to her—charge him for a crime punishable by death. After all, she had a warden and an executioner in her pocket.

  However, her last prophecy was set to pass. Micah would be sleeping in his luxury of a sorcerer’s high tower. She could See it so clearly through her Oculum now, as she had seen it before her burning. All it would take was the shock of seeing her alive… and one good push.

  THE WIDOW’S MAN

  Nyla Nox

  My Lady Widow,

  The light is fading fast, and I don’t know if there will be a morning for me.

  I only know that I was the one who chose this path. Every step I took through our illustrious city, I took for you, my Lady, from the first to the last. Although I may die as a traitor, I ever was and ever will be the Widow’s Man.

  Would I try to flee if I could? Life is sweet. Maybe I would, but no one has made an offer.

  Would I try to trade my life? Yes, absolutely. I would trade anyone and anything, my friends, my loyalty, whatever little is left of my dignity, and whatever little is left of my material possessions. But not my love for you.

  You own my love, my Lady Widow, but I wish with all my heart that you would let me live for it, not die.

  When the guards came to tak
e me from my cell, I was afraid.

  So far, the interrogation had been very moderate compared to what I know is possible from my long association with the royal household. What if that changed?

  But instead they allowed me to clean up. I even got to wash my hair. After so many days in the cells, I didn’t mind the rough prison soap. And they gave me clean clothes, almost decent, almost my size. I will admit that hope stirred in me. I will admit that I was, by then, also afraid of hope.

  Possibilities crossed my mind as they took me through the tunnels.

  Was I going to see you? Or had our queen perhaps been able to turn things around? What chance would I have to persuade her again of my loyalty? Or had something gone disastrously wrong and an intimidating duke or a stern minister was waiting for me in the royal offices? I felt the lack of information like an acute hunger.

  The guards took me up the stairs and into the private palace.

  What a pleasure to see daylight again. It drew intricate patterns on the old stone floor.

  I remembered the last time I walked down this passage, on my way to the royal bedchamber.

  Our queen was in a lighthearted mood that night.

  She joked and laughed as she asked for my help in taking off her elaborate dress. She had sent her maids home early, “so we would have more time.”

  The dress had many layers of white and cream, decorated with stylishly exaggerated flowers that looked a little menacing to me but that I was told were the envy of all the ladies at court. Our queen was thinking of taking the designer under her wing.

  Perhaps, she said, there would be a need for a larger dress, particularly in a certain area…

  I could not help getting confused with the hooks and eyelets when I heard that. For a moment I started to put them back together again by mistake, until my queen turned around and playfully slapped my hand.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Is this how you are going to serve me?”

  My turn to laugh now, lightheartedly. “Maybe I was caught up in a dream,” I said.

  I was indeed. At this very moment the assassins were watching the shift change of the royal guard from the vantage points I had revealed to them.

  The queen put her arms lovingly around my shoulders.

  “Is it your dream, too?” she said.

  Experienced as she was with the daily deceits of the royal court, she couldn’t hide her sudden joy. I suppose she always felt, deep down, that something was missing in me, in spite of my imaginative attention to the details of our frequent celebrations in her bedchambers. I never had any trouble showing my admiration and respect, in every way. You taught me superb control, my Lady Widow. And I know I never said anything that could give her the slightest clue to my real passion. I never talked about it to anyone. Not even to you.

  No sounds from outside. Your assassins were true experts. Or else they had been discovered and our plans destroyed. I had no way of knowing.

  The queen gripped my buttocks with her strong, workmanlike hands. She is no ethereal beauty like you, my Lady Widow, her body bears witness to her descent from a long line of provincial farm wives. She pulled me in as deep as she could. Had she chosen this night of all nights to make me come inside her?

  In all the time I served in her bedchamber, she never replaced me with another lover, although of course, as our queen, she always had a few men on the side, a well-designed cross section of our population who kept her in touch with current thought and fashions as well as current lovemaking. She had no reason to assume that I would be anything but delighted to share even more of her life and contribute to the history of our illustrious city. What man would not love to father the queen’s child?

  Well, perhaps the man who, while embracing her, reassuring her with soothing words and making love to her with her precious gown still half hooked up, flowers all crumpled and sticking out in awkward places, exposing only her magnificent breasts and, if pushed up far enough, her smooth strong thighs, feeling the softness of the silk against his belly and the softness of her inner body tightly around him, knows that he has already betrayed her to her enemy and expects the assassins to enter the bedchambers any moment now using the key that he himself supplied.

  In spite of all that, I obeyed.

  Our queen is strong and athletic, and she likes her men to make their presence felt with a considerable amount of thrust. So I pushed my cock in as assertively as I dared. She gripped it with her well-developed muscles. After a short, fierce contest she rode me to her rhythm, laughing with delight. Then she made a more serious face, sucked me in as deep as she could, and told me to take control. I took her at her word. I could see the surprise in her red-cheeked face as I built up to a furious pace. Still on top, she was the one shaken around now, trying to keep up her response.

  Then she told me to come. Inside her. She looked so vulnerable with her hopeless, groundless love on her farm-wife’s face. I had to suppress my natural inclination to pull out and instead allow my body to pass the point of no return. My cock pulsated with life inside our queen’s vagina. I felt sadness, but no hesitation as I took a breath, then rammed myself in all the way to the top of her cervix, letting myself swell until I felt that the pressure must tear her apart, and shot my sperm from the hot, wet head of my cock into her royal womb.

  I am well aware of the irony of the situation, my Lady Widow.

  You own my passion and my soul. While I vigorously and dutifully fucked our queen, I was dreaming about welcoming you to the palace in victory, perhaps to these very private quarters. (I was confident that your assassins would keep everything nice and clean up here.)

  But instead I was arrested for treason.

  At the door of the inner office, your own private guards took over.

  You had changed nothing in the room. That surprised me. I thought you would make it look more like a reflection of yourself, or perhaps I remembered the dark rooms and passages where we used to meet in secret and always in danger of being discovered. But now I saw nothing darker than the afternoon light on the highly polished furniture and the rich, muted colors of the wall hangings.

  Your guards sat me down on a hard chair in front of the big desk, a desk that no one would ever change, since it is said to date from the time of our First King, your direct ancestor of course. I would expect you to wipe the queen’s dirty little fingerprints from it, though, if necessary with her own blood. Or my blood?

  Before today I had seen this desk only from the other side, standing behind our queen in a small circle of special advisors. But now I sat where others used to sit in fear, strangers, petitioners, enemies.

  And now I was the enemy, as your guards confirmed by binding my hands together behind the chair’s high wooden backrest. The bond was firm and impossible to break, but not painful. Then they stepped away.

  I watched the afternoon light reach deeper into the room. It was still eerily quiet outside. Someone, perhaps you, my Lady Widow, yourself, had made sure this was a scene unwitnessed by anyone except your guards.

  I drank the light in. It streamed like water through the windows, drenching every object in its path. I managed to turn my head until I could see a small slice of sky.

  The door to the private offices is hidden in the paneled wall behind the desk, but I know where it is. I heard its slight squeak and I saw your long thin fingers push the frame aside.

  I wanted to get up to greet you but I couldn’t. So I bowed deeply. I caught a glimpse of your dress and that made me look up again. You no longer wear your mourning black, so I suppose those who say that the husband you grieve is the city, and the power that you lost with him, are at least partly right. This dress of night-sky purple with the faintest hint of rose around the wrists and neckline showed me that in your mind a new day has dawned. A day that I may not see.

  You stood there for a while and let me look at you.

  Maybe this is the longest time I have ever been allowed to look at you undisturbed and unhurried, my Lady
Widow. I never saw your face at all in the first year of our clandestine meetings. You were either touching me from behind in some dark corner, kissing my neck and using my body any way you wanted while I drank in your scent, or your head was covered by your thick widow’s veil.

  But now your face looked radiant. Your dark brown eyes shone. Your hair fell freely in long black curls. You didn’t smile.

  Then you walked over to our queen’s chair. I could hear the hem of your skirt slide across the polished floor. You took your rightful place, sitting where our queen and her deplorable father before her had sat so wrongfully, taking the power that should have been your husband’s and now is yours again, my Lady Widow.

  Again, you gave me a mouthful of silence. I wished that time could expand sideways, that I could be embedded in it like a fly in amber. But, as I could see, my wishes were fast becoming irrelevant.

  “So here we are,” you finally said.

  “My Lady Widow,” I answered, lowering my head again.

  “You have been the Widow’s Man for a long time,” you said, coming straight to the point as always. “When did you stop?”

  “I never stopped,” I said. “I am the Widow’s Man today.”

  That brought a brief sarcastic smile to your lips.

  “But not when it counted the most,” you said. “Not when we had our enemy’s life in our grasp. Not when you helped her to escape.”

  “I only serve you,” I said. It was painful to contradict you when all I wanted to do was to declare my devotion.

  You looked at your guards who came forward, standing just within my line of vision.

  They nodded.

  You leaned back into the huge carved chair on the other side of the desk.

  “I believe you have been asked this question before,” you said, “downstairs in the cells, and in more ways than one.”