by Jade London
Oh god. Oh god. He’s so deep, his fingers digging into my hipbones, pulling me back against him, pushing his cock deeper. I need movement. I don’t care about the messenger, I don’t care if he’s watching, or what he sees.
“Conrad—” I breathe. “Please.”
“Greedy girl, aren’t you, Hannah?” he whispers. Then, to the messenger. “Did he provide location or terms? For the duel.”
“Yes, sire. I—he—um—”
“Spit it out, man. Have you never seen a naked woman before?”
“Not one I wasn’t—um…not like this, sire. My deepest apologies.”
“I’d rather have facts than apologies.”
“Sire, yes, of course, my apol—um. He’s only a few leagues behind me. He leads the head of a troop of his best cavalry, sire. I barely out-rode them, and only then because I ran my poor horse into the ground. The terms, he said, were obvious.”
He nods. “Fine, then. Leave us.”
“But…sire. I—he bade me return with the Lady Hannah.”
“That won’t be happening,” Conrad says. “As you can very well see. Return, and tell him that.”
The messenger pales. “Sire? Tell him…what?”
He rocks against me, driving deeper, sending my tits to bouncing and swaying, and the poor messenger is unable to tear his gaze away. “This. What you’re seeing. I don’t care how you phrase it, but make it clear to Charles that the Lady Hannah remains with me.” He smooths a hand over my ass. “Of her own volition, isn’t that right, Hannah?” He slides out, then, and pushes back in, giving me exactly what I need.
“Yes!” I can’t help but cry out. It’s an answer, but it’s also an involuntary response to the drive of his cock. “Oh god, yes.”
“Sire, I can’t—I don’t know what I’m…what am I supposed to say, sire?”
Conrad doesn’t answer. Just slides deep, withdraws, and then begins fucking me. Right in front of the messenger, who is frozen in place, staring, eyes wide. I brace my hands against the arm of the throne and push back into him, moaning, mewling, gasping. Taking his cock and loving it, feeling him fill me, stretch me, fuck me. He slams deep, hips slapping against my ass.
“Yes, god, yes, fuck me, Conrad. Fuck me hard, just like that—” I hear myself saying, but I have no control over my mouth, or the words coming out of it.
Nor of the sounds I’m making, breathy whimpers, groans so deep and needy they almost sound agonized, but it’s agony so perfect I can’t stand it, can only roll my hips and slam my ass back into him and rejoice in the way my tits slap and bounce. I’m being rocked forward now as Conrad fucks me, not holding back, giving me everything he has, every inch of his massive cock over and over again, and I’m begging for more, begging him to not stop fucking me, and the messenger is just stuck watching, frozen, unable to look away as his king fucks me.
“Leave,” Conrad snarls, pausing in his thrusts.
The messenger starts, pivots smartly on his heel, and nearly topples down the stairs, barely catching himself.
“Now,” Conrad breathes, caressing my ass cheeks, “where was I?”
“Fucking me,” I answer. “Hard.”
“Ah, yes.”
Conrad resumes, beginning slowly all over again, giving me his cock in slow, long, gliding thrusts, until I’m driving back into him desperately, unable to find release unless he’s fucking me the way I want it, the way I need it, hard and wild and uncontrolled.
“Conrad…” I whimper, “harder, please, Conrad…sire…harder!”
“Sire, again, is it?” He teases. Then, without warning, he fucks me hard, once. “Like that?”
“Yes, god, yes please. Just like that.”
He does it again. “This, Hannah?” Another hard thrust, our bodies crashing together with a loud slap of flesh on flesh. “You like it when I fuck you hard?”
“Yes, oh….oh—” I break off with a groan as he begins driving into me hard and fast. “I can’t come unless you’re fucking me just like that—yes, yes, just—oh, fuck—just like that, Conrad…”
“Touch your cunt, Hannah. Put your fingers on your clit. Make yourself come for me.”
I brace myself with one hand on the far arm of the throne and stuff the other between my thighs, find my clit throbbing and sensitive, aching. It doesn’t take long. A few finger-trembling circles around my clit in synchronization with Conrad’s powerful thrusts, and then I’m coming, screaming loud enough to make the walls echo and the stained glass dome overhead reflect my shuddering ululations of orgasm.
He joins me as I come, his voice merging and mingling with mine, his feral and deep, gasping grunts as he slams into me, and I feel him unleash his cum, feel it splash inside me, filling me, and he comes and comes and comes, grunting through it, growling my name as he spurts his cum deep inside my cunt.
Finished, he bends over me, palms cupping my ass, his breathing harsh and rasping, his chest heaving against my spine, and his breath on my neck. “Better than I dared fantasize, Hannah. Being inside you, feeling your pussy squeeze around me…” his words are hot, drowsy whispers in my ear. “I’m going to need it again, and soon.”
“When?” I ask, breathing the question, hoping to hide my eagerness, my desperation for more. He’s still inside me, softening, his cum hot and wet and dripping out of me, and I already want more.
“Soon as possible,” he murmurs. “But first we go meet Charles for the duel.”
“We?”
He straightens, withdrawing. “You and me, and my guards.”
“Why me?”
“To throw him off his focus.” Conrad grins as I stand up and my dress falls into place around my ankles. “If he sees you, especially if he sees you with me, having received my message, it’ll drive him mad. He’ll be a crazed bastard with his blade, but he’ll be manic enough that he’ll make a mistake.”
“It is a risk you’re running, I think.”
He tugs tight the laces of his breeches. “A risk well worth taking, with you as the prize,” Conrad says, pulling me close, touching his forehead to mine. “Now that I’ve felt you, known the reality of your body, tasted the truth of heaven between your thighs, Hannah…no risk is too great.”
I melt, a little, and my heart hammers at the proximity of his mouth, the heat of his breath, the strength of his hand at the small of my back.
His breath huffs warm and damp on my lips, his mouth closer, closer…
He’s going to kiss me.
Hope blossoms.
I need his kiss. Need it.
More than mere desire, more than the desperation for the pleasure he gives me, more than the wild passion his body incites.
His lips brush mine, feather-soft, questing, exquisitely gentle…
Doors bang open somewhere. “SIRE!” a voice shouts, urgent. “Charles approaches!”
Conrad pulls away with a reluctant sigh. “Soon, Hannah. I swear it.”
I let him go, then. He snatches his sword and descends the ziggurat at a trot, calling out instructions. I descend more slowly, watching him. His broad back ripples with muscle, his hair loose and tangled and wild. He grips his sword in one hand, wielding the instrument of death as if it is an extension of his arm. He wears nothing but breeches, bare-chested and bare foot, yet he looks ready to step into battle as he is, and I have no doubt he will emerge victorious.
When I reach the base of the pyramid, an armored guard is waiting. “This way.”
I nod, and follow the guard out of the throne room, back down the main staircase circling the tower itself, and through a small, narrow, heavily fortified doorway leading across the center of the tower’s footprint. A journey through a low hallway, torches flickering to light the way. Then out into the sunlight, blinking, and I find myself in a vast courtyard.
The tower is behind me and above me, walls to either side, and the main gate before me. The portcullis is down, the drawbridge lifted. Within the courtyard, all is chaos. Horses whicker and whinny, stomping their
shod hooves on cobblestones to send sparks flashing, harnesses jingle, manes whip in the wind. Chain mail glints in the sunlight, lance heads flash, sheaths rattle, shields shift. Hundreds of men in full armor, helms on, visors down, sitting astride massive chargers wearing armor of their own. They are arranged in a V formation, and a white charger awaits at the front, the horse the largest I’ve ever seen, powerful yet quick-looking, stomping a hoof impatiently, head bobbing, tossing.
The guard leads me to this horse then he kneels down and bows his head. “Mount, if you please.”
I reach for the pommel, struggle to reach the stirrup with my bare foot, but the guard has other ideas. He delicately guides my foot to his upraised knee, his gauntleted hand gentle on my ankle. I step on his knee and climb astride the horse, and feel the soreness between my thighs, and the faint sticky dampness of Conrad’s seed—as promised—still leaking out of me, reminding me of him, a potent physical marker of his presence.
Conrad was not gentle, not at all, and the soreness I feel is a delicious echo of his power.
Moments of waiting follow, no sound but the impatient horses, and then a door opens somewhere and footsteps echo on the cobblestones.
Conrad appears, dressed in the armor I’d seen in his chambers. He wears the heavy metal suit as if it were made of the most finely woven silk, weightless. His step is light, eager. He carries his helm under one arm, and his sword is sheathed at his waist, the scabbard wrought of black metal scales and inlaid with rubies.
He sees me astride his horse, and allows a small, brief smile meant solely for me to grace his lips, and then he’s serious once more.
He approaches, taking the reins from the attendant groom; he glances up at me, and then around at the gathered troop.
“Are you ready, men?” Conrad calls out.
….
A moment of silence, and then, as one sound, hundreds of lances smash against shields in a slow, pounding rhythm, once, twice, three times, four and then I lose count…each thunderous crash of metal on metal louder than the last until the air is rent by the noise, until it is so loud I can feel the vibrations in my gut and in my bones. Without cue, without command, abruptly, the warriors cease pounding lance against shield, and the silence is deafening, thick and fierce.
Conrad places a foot in the stirrup, swings up behind me, and slams his helm onto his head. This seems to be an understood cue, for the moment his helm is on, the portcullis raises and the bridge lowers.
As soon as the way is clear, every horse bolts forward, leaping into a jolting trot, which becomes a canter, and then a gallop. Conrad is behind me, the metal of his armor cold through the thin fabric of my dress. He grips the reins in one gauntleted fist, and the other rests against my belly and across my thighs. Hooves beat a staccato rhythm on the wood of the bridge, and then on the paving stones of the road. I turn in the saddle and peer around Conrad, seeing the mountainous bulk of the castle, the spire of the tower piercing the sky, impossibly vast, and the rest of the castle sprawling around it like voluminous skirts.
We gallop in formation, the warriors ahead and on either side. Gray stone and green forest blanket a mountain visible to my left. Falling away, to my right, is a precipitous cliff, the road following the gorge separating the landmass from the island upon which Conrad’s castle is built.
The road curves away from the edge, eventually, angling toward the mountain itself, ascending. A forest rises ahead of us, thick and dark, all shadows and plucking branches. The road vanishes into the forest, narrowing as it goes. The troop rearranges as we approach the forest, extending into a single file line except for Conrad and I. Warriors ride to either side of us, two ahead, and two behind. So narrow is the road here that there is scarcely room for that many riders abreast.
We move through the forest, without slowing our pace.
We emerge on the other side of the wood, reform the V formation as the road broadens once more and leads toward a rise. As we reach the zenith of the hill, the troop slows and then stops, and I immediately see why: the hill banks downward steeply, and at the foot is a gathered force much like our own, hundreds of horses and men, armor glinting brightly in the sun, weapons drawn, arranged in a box formation around a single rider.
“Marius, Argan, Dorian, with me. The rest of you remain here.” Conrad’s voice is hard, loud.
Lances crash against shields once, deafeningly, and the formation parts to allow us through. The three warriors join us, forming a miniature version of the V formation, one ahead and two behind us. We proceed down the hill, at a trot, unhurried.
My heart hammers as we approach the box formation of mounted warriors. Charles’s cavalry is armored in bright silver mail, so blindingly polished it seems white in the light of the sun.
Three of Charles’s warriors take a step forward and aside, creating a gap their formation. Conrad and I enter the square, and Conrad’s three men fill the space left in the line, our three black armored men alone in a line of silver.
Charles waits in the center, helm removed and tucked under one arm, sword out and resting across his knees. His beauty is blinding. His armor is of the brightest silver, catching and reflecting every ray of sunlight. His hair is golden as the sun itself, falling around his shoulders in cascading waves, and his eyes are pale blue, ice cold, haughty. An arrogant smile touches his lips.
“Return to me what is mine, Conrad, and all will be forgiven,” Charles says, by way of greeting.
“Forgiven?” Conrad sounds truly puzzled, his words muffled behind his visor. “I spared your life, last we met. An act of mercy I have since come to regret.”
Rage crosses Charles’s face briefly, but he regains himself, “Give her back, Conrad. Last warning.”
Conrad removes his helmet, then. He leans close to me, burying his nose in my hair, and he inhales audibly. I cannot help nuzzling against him. “I do not believe she wishes to return to you, Charles.”
Another flash of that rage. “It isn’t her choice.” He eyes me, his gaze cruel and vicious. “Dismount, Hannah. Now.”
I cringe back against Conrad, and then find my spine. “No,” I say, putting as much steel into my voice as I can muster. “I was never yours to claim.”
Charles spurs his mount forward, hate and madness in his eyes. “Enough of this!” He snarls. “You challenged me to single combat. Come at me, then, and have done. I’ll run my steel through your throat, and defile her innocence in front of you as you die.”
Conrad is unfazed by the threat. “Pretty words for a man who’s never once bested me blade to blade, even as untrained youths.” A pause, then. “Besides which, you can’t defile an innocence she no longer possesses, Charles. She gave that to me, just an hour past. Did you not receive my message?”
A gesture from Charles, then, and a warrior hurls something small and dark and heavy toward us; a dismembered head, dripping gore; the messenger, or what remains of him, at least. My stomach turns and I look away.
Charles smirks. “He never got a chance to deliver it.” The smile turns sour, becomes that arrogant, hateful scowl. “Enough of bandying words and insults.”
Conrad hands me the reins, swings a leg over his horse’s head, and leaps to the ground, all in one smooth motion, then glances at me. “Join my men, Hannah, if you would.”
I tug the reins to one side and nudge the horse’s flank with one heel, and the great beast swings around into a trot, carrying me across the open square to the three warriors of Conrad’s escort. One of the guards takes the reins from me, impassive behind his helmet.
Charles dismounts his horse slowly, leisurely. A snap of his fingers brings a warrior to take the mount, and then the two kings are face to face.
One king in bright silver armor faces his opponent, also a king, wearing the darkest of black. Haughty blonde exquisite male beauty faces off against rugged power, masculinity embodied.
Charles gives a few test swings of his sword, which is a long, heavy, wide-bladed thing, polished to a sheen.
It is a thing of beauty, with a massive emerald the size of my fist serving as a pommel, and filigreed, gold-inlaid, braided strands of platinum for cross-guards. Running along the center of the blade, along each flat, are words in gold and silver filigreed lettering, though I am too far distant to read what they say.
Conrad, by contrast, merely draws his own blade and waits, no ceremony, no bluster. His blade is the simpler and plainer of the two, but despite this his blade looks the more deadly. It draws the eye, Conrad’s sword. The shimmer of the blade, the twinkling of the razor edge, the ethereal glitter…it almost seems alive.
Charles circles, crabwise, sword held in both hands, tip pointed at the sky. Conrad merely stands in place, pivoting on his heel to track his opponent’s movement, his sword held in his right hand with the flat of the blade resting on his shoulder, left hand loose at his side. Casual, at ease, confident, yet there is no mistaking his readiness. He is tensed, coiled, a viper poised to strike.
My heart leaps in my throat when Charles swings. It is vicious flat arc of his blade, sudden and swift. Should it meet its intended target, even Conrad’s armor won’t be enough to stop its force. Seemingly without effort, without forethought, Conrad steps backward and his blade descends at a downward angle, slowly almost, his left hand rising to grip the hilt and impart yet more force, and then the two blades meet with a resounding crash, Conrad’s sword smashing down to blast Charles’s aside, knocking the golden-haired king off-balance and he stumbles, the added momentum from Conrad’s swing too much by half.
As Charles stumbles, Conrad charges forward, a single leap carrying him several feet, his mail-clad shoulder bashing into Charles with tectonic force. The stumble becomes a fall, and silver mail meets knee-high grass, flattening it as he crashes to the ground. He turns the fall into a roll and finds his feet lithely, only to have to stumble backward yet again as Conrad attacks, sword sweeping downward, forcing Charles to defend while retreating.