Fierce Enchantments Page 13

  That night, alone in her room, she prepared with some nervousness for her paramour. First she stripped off her night robe, shivering a little in the cool air. Her bed had four great oaken pillars, and the heavy curtains hung from iron hooks on the crossbeams. She partly unhooked one of the drapes, from next to a pillar at the foot of the bed. Then she carefully measured the length of her woven belt, knotted it about both her wrists with a long loop between them, and caught it on one of the hooks. When she stepped down from the mattress to the floor, she had only enough length on her bonds to stand flat-footed, her hands held above the height of her head. She could feel her nipples rising and hardening with the exposure. Servants had left her with a fire in the hearth, but it was still cool enough to raise a prickle of gooseflesh across her pampered skin. She was not used to any hardship in her life, except for that dealt her by her lover.

  She thought of the sacrificial virgin left out for the wyrm, awaiting her death in abject terror and then—at the last moment—seeing a Knight of the Round Table riding to her rescue. How heroic he must have seemed then, like an angel of deliverance—like St. Michael casting the Dragon himself into the pit of Hell.

  She heard the bell toll for Compline. The watch on the walls would change now. Father Aldous would be reciting the office in the Chapel. Lancelot would be on his way. A draft caressed her skin. Her nipples were so stiff now that they seemed like pebbles of pink quartz. She had bathed and perfumed herself, but she could smell the warm tang of her sex rising in anticipation. She closed her eyes, imagining herself exposed upon a barren hillside. Had all the ealdormen of the town brought her there? Had they stripped her at the last moment, or walked her there naked? Had they looked at their scapegoat victim with lust as well as pity? Guinevere imagined freckles scattered across her shoulders and breastbone like tiny constellations. She imagined herself with copper-colored hair instead of gold. She imagined Lancelot looking upon her in fascination, his lust goaded not just by her nakedness but by the novelty.

  The door creaked. She opened her eyes, surprised how deeply she had fallen into her reverie. There stood the Queen’s Champion, already divested of his robe and boots, down to shirt and hose. No one seeing him in the corridor could have mistaken his intent. His expression was dark.

  Guinevere squirmed in delicious shame.

  “The offering awaits,” he mused, closing on her. “So fair. So vulnerable.” He ran his hand, feather-light, over her body, evoking shivers, testing the quiver of her flesh and the resilience of her jutting nipples. “Her flesh is succulent and juicy. But am I the rescuer or the serpent?” His blue eyes looked black in the dancing firelight. He scratched a nail down her underarm, making her spasm in ticklish terror. “Perhaps I am both.”

  “Please,” she breathed.

  “Please? For what do you beg?”

  “Save me.”

  “From the Great Wyrm? He feasts only upon the most innocent and unsullied of virgins. Yet I sense sin here.” Lancelot trailed his hand up between her thighs, as he had done that first day in the rose garden—and just like on that day, he found the parted lips of her sex dewy with moisture. But this time she bucked her hips toward him.

  “Oh!” she moaned, closing her eyes as he stirred her secret flesh. “Oh yes!”

  “Is this concupiscence, fair maid? Is this lust? You told me you were without stain. Yet it seems to me you need no rescuing.”

  “Oh, I do! Please! Sir knight!”

  “Are you innocent?” he breathed, brushing her lips with his own. She turned blindly to his face like a flower following the sun.

  “I am!”

  “Perhaps you are, at that.” His finger circled her clit. “Do you know what happens to innocence, fair maid—every time?”

  “No?”

  He stepped back. “It is broken.” And through the open door into her chamber walked Arthur.

  Guinevere convulsed as shock tore through her. “No!” she squealed—first at her husband, and then, incredulous, at Lancelot. She didn’t understand, but it was clear that he had arranged this: the whole display. She yanked wildly at her bonds but the belt just cut into her wrists. She wanted to cover herself: her face, her breasts, her sex. She was Eve discovered naked in the Garden. She realized she had to climb back on the bed to unhook her hands, but when she turned Lancelot grabbed her shoulder and whirled her back again, pushing her against the bed pillar and pinning her there. The breath left her lungs.

  “Guinevere,” said Arthur, sorrowfully.

  “Please!” She looked from face to face as they stood there side by side, the cuckold and the cuckolder. She could not read either expression—there was something dark and complex there in both, but she couldn’t read it. “Why?” she squealed at Lancelot. “Why did you tell him?”

  He shrugged. “We have been close friends, my love, for a long time. We met on campaign in France, after all, long before I came here.”

  She was aghast. She wanted to scream that he was insane—that adultery with the King’s wife was high treason and they both faced execution. But he knew that. He knew that.

  “My wife, with my closest friend and sworn liegeman,” said Arthur. He looked grim.

  “Please! My lord!”

  “Your lord? You call me that, and yet betray me and set your flesh on display like meat, for another man’s appetite?”

  “Have mercy!”

  “I thought you loved me, Guinevere.”

  Something cracked in her throat and when she cried, “I do love you!” It came out as a sob, tears running down her cheeks. “You are my husband! My King!”

  “But you love him too, do you?”

  She glanced wildly at Lancelot, whose face was a dark and heavy mask, whose hand between her breasts still pinned her in place. She felt like she did not know him. “I …” she started, and then fell silent. Anything else she might say would only condemn her further.

  “It is not love she comes to me for,” said Lancelot. “Something more bestial, I fear.”

  Arthur shook his head slowly. “Perhaps the fault lies with me too. If I had given her all she desired …”

  Guinevere met his eyes, and her guilt felt like it would choke her. Amidst the betrayal and outrage, she saw the gleam of understanding—a hurting pity. Her heart twisted and tore within her breast.

  “Be not so certain about that,” said Lancelot. “There are depths to her appetite that even I have not sounded.”

  “So does love turn to sin, if unshriven.” Arthur put out his hand and cupped her cheek. “You must be punished—you understand that, Guinevere? Both of you. You have broken the laws of the realm, and even the Queen is not above the law. You betrayed me, both of you. There must be justice, or I am no King of Britain, only a tyrant.”

  She tried to swallow her sobs, and failed. He let her gasp.

  “But not in public. There will be no execution block for him, no stake or flames for you. We will not shame Camelot and destroy all we worked for, for so long.” He wiped away a tear from her lashes with his thumb. “There will be punishment, but it will be meted out in private, here.”

  She stared, not sure what to think. No stake? Her heart hammered under her breastbone.

  Slowly, Arthur untied his belt. It was no fancy accoutrement for state occasions, but a plain leather strap, wide as two fingers. He doubled it over in his fist. The hiss of her breath sounded loud in the suddenly silent room. “Lancelot tells me that often you provoke him to strike you upon the buttocks and breasts, and that it brings you release. In your heart of hearts there must be a great need for contrition, my Guinevere.”

  Her jaw wobbled. It was true. Sometimes Lancelot used her roughly, slapping her hams as if she were a stubborn mule, pulling her hair and smacking her tits. And she loved that, in a dark and vertiginous fashion. Once he had held her nipples in an agonizing pinch and fingered her snatch until she came
, sobbing.

  “Do not worry.” Arthur stroked her face again, his fingers lingering. “I will not harm you. But you must be punished. You do understand?”

  Gulping, she nodded. She deserved punishment, she knew that. Her guilt at betraying her husband was like a great stone carried inside her. She deserved punishment—and she wanted it.

  “Hold her still.”

  Without questioning his liege-lord, Lancelot climbed up onto the corner of the bed, and from behind grasped Guinevere’s throat in his big hand. It did not constrict her breath much, but it did constrain her view, keeping her head up. She caught the briefest of glimpses as Arthur brandished about a foot-length of doubled-over strap, showing her the instrument of her torture as was proper. And then he struck her smartly upon her right breast, and she gave up worrying about anything else. The red-hot strike seemed to boil up through her skull and down through her body. She cried out, and Lancelot’s other hand muffled her mouth.

  Six strokes in all, Arthur laid upon her breasts—three to each orb. He took it slowly, with great deliberation, pausing between each blow to examine her, drawing his fingers tenderly over the marks. Guinevere did not remember any time previously when he had paid such attention to her breasts—or indeed, touched them much at all. In moments she could feel the sweat running down her skin, greasing his fingertips. Her breasts felt like they were swelling up like inflated bladders, burning hot.

  After the first six, he whipped her twice across the tops of her thighs, which made her struggle and writhe even more, but he lost interest there quickly. “Turn her,” he instructed. Lancelot swung her in her bonds to face the pillar. He kissed her tear-streaked cheek. She could feel the panting strain of his breath.

  That was when Guinevere realized that the punishment meted out to her breasts had been very restrained indeed, because when it came to her rear, the blows Arthur rained down on her were far harder. Perhaps because they were somehow easier to take there—they hurt, certainly, with the same fiery agony, but the pain did not terrify. Perhaps because he realized that Lancelot had mitigated her suffering by plunging his hand between her thighs and taking a tight grip on her clit, grinding the nubbin of flesh. That helped take the edge off the pain certainly, even if it was a weak mercy in the long run. It just made Arthur hit harder and longer, as she danced on Lancelot’s hand and ground her body against the wooden post and shrieked, forgetting all discretion.

  “Too loud,” said Arthur abruptly, stopping. “Get her down.”

  Lancelot knelt up on the mattress, lifted her bodily and unhooked her from the overhead beam. She sagged into his arms, sobbing.

  “Bring her here.”

  Guinevere found herself being half-carried across the room to the fireplace. There, on the stool before the flames, sat Arthur. He’d stripped off all clothes except his hose, which were unlaced, and though her sweat-bedraggled hair she saw the effect the exertion had had upon him. The King loved justice so much, she realized, that the meting out of her punishment had charged his member to full erection.

  She’d had no idea it could get so big.

  “Over my knees,” he ordered. There was a sheen of sweat on his shoulders and chest, as if he were oiled slick, but in contrast his voice sounded hoarse.

  She whined in protest, briefly—it was a posture of utter shamefulness that she thought she’d long outgrown—but Lancelot was unmerciful this time. He forced her face down over Arthur’s lap as if she were somehow that brattish child all over again, caught stealing candied figs from her mother’s comfit box. The sheer disgrace distracted her momentarily from anticipation of further pain.

  Momentarily.

  Thank the Lord and all His angels, Arthur had given up on the belt by this point. He intended to use a more intimate instrument of justice: his open hand. He ran it all over her inflamed, swollen buttock cheeks first, mingling the most intense pleasure with the burn of her recent pains. She couldn’t help whimpering and lifting her ass to his palm.

  “Such unseemly wetness,” he complained.

  “A sign she’s prepared to receive the rod of your justice,” said Lancelot with relish. “Punish her further. You’ll see.”

  Arthur’s hand descended on her rump with an almighty slap and Guinevere shrieked.

  “Keep her quiet, Lancelot,” the King grunted.

  The knight scrambled to obey. He came in to view suddenly at Guinevere’s head, where she hung face-down over the bearskin rug. Kneeling, he pulled his cock from his hose and shoved it into her mouth. It was hard as wood already, and its implacable bulk was strangely comforting—strange because she could hardly breathe, and Arthur was pinning her thighs and walloping her backside, and though it didn’t hurt as much as the belt it certainly hurt enough—but that thick length surging down her throat, and the familiar taste of his musk, and the grip of his hands … it somehow felt as if she were being held tight, inside and out, and that she could let go and take the pain and surrender to the panic. She could thrash and struggle as much as she wanted because there was no fear of escape, not now that they both had her.

  So she fought and she spasmed, over and over, pain and pleasure crashing into and through each over like red and black waves, indistinguishable in the end. Until the black won at last and she went limp, shriven and sinless.

  Then they tumbled her gently to the bearskin rug.

  She opened her eyes to see Arthur standing in silhouette against the glow of the fire. Sir Lancelot knelt before him with head bowed as if at his knighting ceremony—except that the King’s weapon did not descend upon his shoulder; it was instead sheathed to the hilt in the knight’s mouth.

  Guinevere blinked the last tears from her eyes, astonished. She had thought Lancelot was rough with her, but that was nothing to the vigor and brutality with which Arthur fucked the knight’s throat, his hips pumping in a savage rhythm. Lancelot’s hands gripped his lord’s thighs, but only pulled him closer. There was no fumbling uncertainty here; she realized with wonder that the knight must have done this before. Many times.

  Lancelot’s eyes rolled sideways at her. He pulled free, gasping, and held out his hand. “Come and kiss the King’s scepter,” he said with a grin.

  She crawled in, but then hesitated. Her skin burned and stung, and her limbs ached.

  “Thus Queen Esther obtained the mercy of Ahasuerus,” said Arthur with a growling laugh. She remembered the Bible lesson preached from the pulpit only that week: to approach the Persian King unbidden was death, but when Esther dared he extended his scepter to touch her, in show of forgiveness.

  Guinevere found herself tugged in to kneel with her lover at her husband’s feet. To kiss and lick and mouth that spit-slick rod, and fight with her lover’s lips for the honor of swallowing the crowned head. She could feel the heat and sweat of Arthur’s groin, and guessed he must be on the edge of eruption. She had never tasted his seed, but now she desperately craved that completion, and absolution, and rest at last.

  “Wait,” groaned Arthur, pulling away. He wrapped his hand in Guinevere’s long hair and eased her to her feet—not cruel, but not kindly. “Has he spent his seed inside you, my Judas?” he asked her.

  “Never.”

  “Then now.” He pushed her toward the bed. He sounded drunk with arousal. “Fuck the girl. Fuck her for me. Get her with child. What does it matter? Camelot needs an heir. Do it for me.”

  He shoved her on her back across the bottom of the bed, and she saw Lancelot rising, stripping off the last of his clothes. As he loomed in over her and Arthur backed away, she saw too, for the first time, the welts all across the knight’s body—chest and thighs and arms. He’d taken his punishment already, and Arthur had not held back on him or shown him the mercy he’d shown Guinevere. But he showed no sign that he felt pain anymore; his lean face was lit with a wild and hungry light. Pushing Guinevere’s thighs up, he mounted her in a few swift, clean moveme
nts, bearing down on her with all his weight.

  She groaned. Her sex was swollen and throbbing still, sore from the sly smacks her husband had landed on her undefended placket at the end. The new stimulation burned through her flesh. Lancelot felt like a hot iron impaling her. She shut her eyes, gathering her strength.

  Then Lancelot groaned from the depths of his chest, and she looked again. Behind her paramour she saw Arthur, straddling the knight’s hindquarters, gripping his hips. Hands—she didn’t know whose—pushed her legs up and out of the way. The breath was pressed out of her body by the sudden crush.

  “You took what’s mine,” whispered Arthur in Lancelot’s ear, grinding into him. “I take what is yours. That is justice, my love. Now fuck her.”

  Grunting with effort, teeth bared, sweat running down the curls of his black locks and dripping upon her below, Lancelot did just that, while Arthur rutted upon him. Guinevere—a man’s hard length inside her, a man filling her and splitting her and stirring her—could still hardly imagine, could barely picture what her lover must be feeling: fucked and fucker at the same moment; master and servant; ravished himself even as he despoiled her. As for her, she thought if she let her breath out she would never fill her lungs again. Both men were grinding upon her, both men pinning her to the sodden counterpane. She looked into Arthur’s face and saw the lust in there, for the first time. She heard Lancelot’s groans, noises he’d never made for her. His eyes were narrowed to slits, his head pulled back to stretch his neck. Arthur was ramming harder and harder, his thrusts hammering through Lancelot into the woman at the bottom of the heap.

  Arthur is fucking me at last, she thought, as she ignited into flames.

  She was not sure what happened after that. There were groans and barking rasps of crisis, curses and panting, but she was tumbling over in a great dark sea, only half-awake and not even half herself. Something … something else had risen from the depths of her soul to claim her. Something dark and unknown and far stronger than her waking psyche. Something that reveled in her pain and shock. She thought it must be like a great wyrm that lived in the depths of her need, down there where there was no light, rising to the surface when she was with Lancelot, to devour her innocence. And now Arthur had called it forth too, and fought with it, and won.