D&D - Birthright 01

by The Iron Throne # Simon Hawke

  She is certainly old enough to feel romantic inclinations.

  And among the peasantry, it is not at all uncommon for girls to marry at her age and start having children soon afterward-“

  “Well, among the common folk, marrying young is often a necessity,” said Aedan. “They are poor and need more children to help them work the fields.

  Besides, they age quickly from their toil. It is hardly the same sort of thing. I am much too old for Ariel.”

  “I was only a year older than Ariel is now when I was promised to Lord Arwyn, and he is more than twice my age,” said Laera.

  “That is hardly the same thing,” Aedan replied.

  “You are of the royal house, and your betrothal was arranged to cement a political alliance. Besides, you did not marry at thirteen. You were merely promised. You shall be a grown woman when you take your wedding vows-“

  “I am already a grown woman, as you have surely noticed,” she replied with a mocking little smile.

  Aedan flushed with embarrassment and silently - She had caught him staring, after all.

  cursed himself

  “it will not be long before Ariel grows into a woman, too,’ Laera continued. “And there is much less of an age difference between the two of you than there is between Lord Arwyn and myself. in only a few years, she will not seem too young for you.” She sighed and looked off into the distance. “Whereas Lord Arwyn …. She sighed again. ‘I think I understand now how my mother must have felt when she was promised to my father.” “I was told that women find Lord Arwyn handsome,” Aedan said.

  Laera shrugged. -Perhaps, if they like that brutish sort. But he seems very coarse to me. He’s like a great big bear, with those large eyebrows and that great, thick, bushy beard. I’ll bet he’s hairy all over.”

  She grimaced with distaste. “The thought of him lying on top of me makes me shudder.”

  Aedan was dumbstruck at her remarks. He would never have imagined that a woman could talk that way, especially a princess of the royal house.

  He could not think how to respond.

  “Do I shock you?” she asked, seeing his dismayed expression.

  “I … uh … well … I have never heard women speak of such things before,” he said, feeling flustered.

  She cocked her head, curiously. “You think we are so very different?

  You think that only men think about such things? Would you wish to lie with a woman whom you found repulsive?”

  “We, uh … we really should not be speaking of such matters,” he said awkwardly.

  “Why not?”

  “It is … well, it … it is simply not proper!” he said with exasperation.

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “And you, Aedan, are so very proper in all things. I suppose that is why you have been stealing glances at my bosom every time you look at me before you so quickly and properly avert your gaze.”

  Aedan gasped and blushed deep crimson. “I never did any such thing!”

  “Liar,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  “I really should be going,” he said, and turned to leave, but she grasped him firmly by the arm.

  “I did not dismiss you.”

  He moistened his lips, took a deep breath, and turned back to face her.

  “Forgive me, Your Highness.

  Have I your leave to go?”

  “No, you do not,” she said. She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows- ‘So, you wanted to look?

  well, then … look.”

  She stood back from him and spread her arms out slightly from her sides.

  The lightning flashed overhead and, an instant later, was followed by a sharp crack of thunder. The wind picked up, blowing in off the sea, and it blew her nightgown back, pressing it close against her skin and outlining her figure clearly. As she turned slowly for his benefit, the lightning flashed again, the thunder boomed, and it began to rain, pelting down hard and fast. In a moment, they were both drenched, and as Laera’s nightgown became soaked, it clung wetly to her skin, revealing everything. She might as well have been standing before him naked.

  His breathing quickened. She stood there, facing against him now, her long, dark hair plastered to her forehead and the sides of her face, and he could see the goose bumps on her flesh and the way her nipples stood out. He was unable to look away. She was breathing heavily, and her lips were parted slightly, glistening as the rain ran down her face, like tear tracks. She licked at the moisture, holding him immobile with her intense gaze.

  “I shall be forced to marry a man I do not love,” she said as she approached him. “A man I do not want. That is my duty as a princess of the royal

  house. But is it so very wrong of me to have … just once … a man I can desire?”

  She stood very close, looking up at him as the rain poured down upon them, and Aedan trembled, though it was not from the chill. She placed her hands against his chest. “I saw you coming.up here,” she said, her voice low and husky. “I followed you. I knew that there might never be another chance….”

  Her face came closer.

  ‘I know you want me,” she said, trailing her fingers down his cheek.

  He knew that this was wrong. He knew that he should push her away, gently but firmly, and flee back down the tower stairs, back to his room, where he could bolt the door and catch his breath and try to convince himself this never happened. But instead, as her lips moved to his, so close he could feel her hot breath against his face, he put his arms around her and pulled her close, crushing his lips to hersHer tongue slipped between his lips and found his and his head swam with the overwhelming, new, and utterly intoxicating sensation. She rubbed up against him as her fingers trailed down his cheeks and his hands seemed to move down of their own volition, pressing her still closer as they kissed, hungrily, sinking to their knees into the water pooling on the parapet. She helped him pull her soaked nightgown over her head, and as he removed his shirt, she fumbled with the wet laces on his breeches, loosening them just enough to pull them down and, without waiting for him to remove them, she pulled him down on top of her.

  They made love in the pouring rain as the wind whistled through the battlements, and thunder rolled and lightning split the sky.

  **chapter Three**

  Aedan’s concerns about the emperor’s health soon paled in the face of new anxieties. He was racked with guilt over his affair with Princess Laera and filled with dread of being discovered, for contrary to what she had said that night, it was not enough for her to have, “just once,”

  a man she could desire. She had to have him again. And then again, and again, and again.

  Aedan felt helpless in the grip of conflicting new emotions. He knew it was madness to continue the affair, but at the same time, he just could not resist her. And he understood only too well that he was the one who had the most to lose. Laera was a princess of the royal house, and he doubted she would suffer very greatly if knowledge of their secret trysts came to light. The marriage with Lord Arwyn would surely be called off, but that would be just what she wanted. He, on the other hand, would take the full brunt of Lord Arwyn’s wrath, and under the circumstances, his father would be powerless to help him.

  He could be thrown into the dungeons, or else challenged by Lord Arwyn, and he did not think much of his chances in such an event. The Archduke of Boeruine was one of the most powerful knights in the empire, whereas, Aedan reminded himself painfully, he hadn’t even been able to stop little Ariel’s assault. True, he had not really been fighting or paying very close attention for that matter, but he knew his skills as a swordsman were nothing compared to Arwyn’s. He had been training for only a few years, while Arwyn had won countless tournaments in addition to proving himself many times in actual combat.

  But for that very reason, Arwyn might decide he was not worth challenging. He could simply have him tried and executed. It would certainly be his right. What if, in a careless moment, Laera allowed something to slip?

  What if
they were caught together? Or what if, anxious to escape the marriage, she were to reveal their affair on purpose?

  Every possible scenario for disaster went through Aedan’s fevered mind, but when Laera’s eyes met his during dinner in the great hall, and she gazed at him with that conspiratorial, knowing look, his knees went weak, his heart pounded, and he wanted her all over again, despite the guilt and fear. Sexual awakening had come to Aedan with a vengeance, and one smoldering glance from Laera was enough to bring him to immediate, acute, an able attention.

  They met several more times on the tower parapet where they had begun their affair, and then Laera accosted him in a castle corridor one evening and pulled him into a niche behind a tapestry, where they made love while, several times, people passed by in the corridor. The fear of being caught had added a dangerous excitement to their lovemaking, but afterward, Aedan never wanted to go through anything that nerve-racking again. Laera, on the other hand, had enjoyed it so much that she became emboldened to take still greater chances.

  The next time, she found him in the stables, putting up the horses after he and Michael had gone riding, and they coupled in an empty stall, with the grooms brushing down the horses only yards away. It had been necessary for Aedan to cover Laera’s mouth so that he could keep her cries of pleasure muffled, lest anyone should hear. She didn’t seem to care. The risks they took only seemed to excite her all the more. And she would not be put off. She seemed to delight in the control that she exerted over him, and kept finding new ways to tempt fate.

  She would tell him to meet her in the castle courtyard after dark, and they would make love in the shadows while the guards stood posted at the gate, less than a stone’s throw away. When a tournament was held in the fields below the castle, she took him underneath the stands, and they made love beneath the royal box, where the empress sat with all of Laera’s sisters and with Prince Michael and Lord Tieran at her side.

  It was as if Laera wanted to be caught, thought Aedan, and the worst part of it was that he seemed to have lost all sense of reason and self-control. It was as if she had some sort of strange power over him.

  Each time he resolved to end it, to insist that it was wrong and could not possibly go on, she would look at him or touch him or press her lips to his and his will would simply evaporate in the rush of hot blood through his veins.

  And then she started coming to his room at night.

  He was preparing for bed one night when Laera came in, dressed in nothing but her robe, which she opened as she entered. He stared with disbelief. She slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, and stood naked before him, like a beautiful sculpture unveiled, her creamy skin illuminated softly in the candlelight. His breath caught as he stared at her, drinking in her beauty. She had a way of looking at him that was at the same time seductive and possessive. And, as usual, he was unable to resist her.

  After that first time, she came to his room almost every night, sometimes staying nearly until dawn.

  Her appetite was insatiable, and Aedan felt worn out. On a number of occasions, he had tried bolting his door when he retired for the night, but no sooner had he thrown the bolt than a stab of anxiety went through him and he thought, what would happen if she found herself locked out?

  What would she do?

  He was afraid to find out. And at the same time, he wanted her to come.

  And so his door remained unbolted.

  He cursed himself for being weak, and for being afraid of refusing her, but on the nights she didn’t

  come, he found himself waiting for her with tense anticipation, feeling frustrated and disappointed when she failed to arrive. She neither told him that she would not be coming, nor did she offer any explanations or excuses. It was maddening, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. She enjoyed keeping him off balance. It was as if he were her plaything, to be used or disregarded subject to her whims.

  Aedan was certain disaster was at hand when one of the house guards winked at him as they passed in the corridor one day. With horror, Aedan thought, he knows! And of course he knew, for the guards stationed in the corridors could not have failed to notice when Laera left her room each night, dressed only in her robe, not to return until at least several hours later. The guards were supposed to remain at their posts, but in the middle of the night, with everyone else asleep, it would have been a simple matter for one of them to follow her discreetly and find out where she went. By now, thought Aedan, with a sinking feeling, the entire house guard must know!

  Fortunately, because they were the Royal House Guard and not the men-at-arms of the Archduke of Boeruine, their first loyalty was to the royal house, which meant the princess, and by extension Aedan as well.

  They found it quite amusing that the royal chamberlain’s son was not only having it off with a princess, but doing it right under the nose of her future husband, the proud and imperious archduke.

  It was just the sort of thing to strike a chord of manly empathy in any self-respecting guardsman’s heart.

  However, Aedan reasoned that if the house guard was aware of what was going on, it would only be a

  matter of time-and not much time at that-before all the servants knew, as well. He knew he simply had to break it off somehow before disaster struck, but he did not know how, or even if he could. Laera had initiated their relationship, and now Laera controlled it. Aedan was afraid that if he tried to end it first, she would take it as a rejection, and that might give her all the excuse she needed to reveal their affair.

  She was haughty, wilful, stubborn, and domineering, and the few times he had tried to tell her that what they were doing was wrong and dangerous, she had simply refused to listen. And even if, somehow, he could break it off, it really made no difference in the end, because the damage had already been done. Laera would not go to her wedding bed a virgin, and Lord Arwyn would thereby have the right to dissolve their marriage on the spot. It would disgrace the royal house and, after that, no self-respecting nobleman would want Laera for a wife, regardless of the political advantages.

  It was an intolerable, nerve-racking situation, and Aedan did not see how he could possibly get out of it. It was all that he could do just to get through each successive day. With the exuberant energy of youth, Michael kept him on the go all day, and then at night, Laera wore him out with an altogether different sort of exuberance. And what with the attacks of guilt and self-recrimination that he suffered every night after she left his room-though she drove all such thoughts out of his mind while she was therehe wasn’t getting enough sleep. The anxiety was beginning to take its toll.

  Worst of all was the thought of what this would 7?

  do to his father. In all his life, Aedan had never disobeyed him, and what he was doing now was much worse than disobedience. He would bring dishonor and disgrace down on his family, and the thought of it made him sick at heart. It might have been easier if he could have told himself he loved her, but he did not, and he was certain Laera did not truly care for him. No tender words of love had ever passed between them. It was physical desire, pure and simple, nothing more than wanton lust, and that made it absolutely indefensible.

  The trouble was, when she came creeping to his room at night and slipped her robe off her shoulders, and he would see her naked body gleaming in the candlelight, all reason simply left him. He could not control himself at all and, afterward, he would lie alone in bed, so overwhelmed with guilt that his chest would ache as if a huge weight were upon it.

  He had been raised to cultivate self-discipline and patience, yet he had become a slave to his own baser instincts. He could see no way around it. He was doomed.

  After several weeks had passed since their first tryst on the tower, Aedan was a nervous wreck. He would flinch if someone merely called his name, expecting that at any time his treachery would be revealed.

  For it was treachery: he was conducting an illicit affair with a princess of the royal house in her future husban
d’s home. It preyed on his mind to such an extent that he was beginning to feel as if he would welcome being caught.

  One morning, as he was saddling up the horses in the stables for himself and Michael to go hawking, he felt a light touch on his shoulder and practically

  jumped out of his skin. He spun around as he heard a throaty giggle and saw that Laera had sneaked up behind him in the stall.

  “Laera! By Haelyn, you scared me half out of my wits!”

  As he tried to catch his breath and make his heart stop hammering, she began to loosen the laces on her bodice. “I see the grooms have changed the straw,” she said, with a sultry little smile. “It’s nice and fresh.”

  “Are you mad?” he said. “Michael will be here any moment!”

  “He slept late this morning and is still getting dressed,” she replied as she slipped out of her gown.

  “We have time for a quick one.”

  “Laera, for pity’s sake, the grooms!”

  “Are all outside, exercising the horses,” she said, pulling him into an empty stall. “We are all alone. So hurry, get your clothes off. I want you.” She reached for his breeches.

  He somehow found the strength of will to back away. “Laera, please! I beg of you, listen to me! This cannot go on! It would be worth my life if we were caught!”

  “Then that should make it all the more exciting!”

  she said, reaching for him. “Besides, it is your duty to serve the emperor and his family. So … serve.”

  She put her arms around him and kissed him passionately.

  “Aedan?”

  It was Michael! Aedan quickly pulled Laera down inside the stall. She giggled and he pressed his lips to hers, desperately trying to silence her.

  “Aedan, where are you?”

  Laera loosened the drawstring of his breeches and started to pull them down. Her eyes were alight with excitement. Michael was but a few feet away, just outside the stall. The only thing separating them was a five-foot-high wood partition. Aedan stared at her with alarm, soundlessly mouthing, “Stop!” He tried to pull his breeches back up, but she grinned and fought him, pulling them back down. He was certain Michael would hear the rustling sounds they were making in the straw.