Spellbreakers (31 page)

It would not do. She had always been glad enough to
pleasure herself on lonely nights, when Leal was busy at court, or fast asleep,
but tonight it was no good. She wished she could lie back, abandoned, let go of
all and let Ljung take her as he had taken Leal in the forest. She wished she
did not have to do all the work, for once, always taking charge, being
responsible and reassuring, always inventing and exploring new ways to give and
take pleasure.

She felt almost angry with Leal for being asleep.
But
even if she were awake, it would be no use. She would be sweet and compliant
and let me have my way, and yet...
In fact, she felt angry also for Leal’s
submissive
acquiescence,
even if she knew very well
that she would never let Leal take charge in bed. The bed was the one place
where Daria was wholly in command of Leal.

But Ljung, now, well Ljung was a different story.

He was not in any way an authoritarian male bastard
like many men whom Daria had known, but he had a quiet mysterious magnetism
that called out. Daria felt that call in every nerve of her being.

She yearned for his strength, his rough chin, his
silent, unfussy self-assurance as much as she had ever yearned for Leal’s soft
thighs and tender embraces.
Yeah, me and half the women of
Elverhjem, apparently.

Daria imagined the elver hunter taking her hard and
fast, but invariably the image of one or the other of the girls who had dropped
by to talk to him that day came to the surface of her mind, and a pained
whimper rose in her throat. She bit it back, swallowing to keep from crying.
There were tears in her tightly shut eyes, tears of sheer, desperate longing.

Eventually she slipped out of bed, checked that Leal
was still asleep, and padded softly out of the room and down the corridor,
quietly shutting all doors behind her.

In the main room of the house embers still glowed in
the fireplace.

Ljung had not come back.

Probably gone to see his sweetheart.
Or sweethearts.
I am so
silly. To think that I believed we had something going on out there in the
forest. Just teaches me to get the flurries for a damn boy.

Daria choked a sob in her throat. Naked, she felt the
chill in the night’s air and added more wood to the fire until the embers
blazed up, spitting and chattering in the darkness of the night. She sat for a
while staring at the flames. She felt something like the same blaze glowering
inside her, anger, lust, and heartache all raging in her mind, out of control.
She closed her eyes. His lips and his strange smile filled her vision,
inescapably.

She breathed deep, deep, searching for relief from her
longing. There came none.

Finally, she went to her pack and angrily emptied it
out to reach for the wooden dildos wrapped in two clean socks at the bottom.

There will be no sleeping else.

She piled some furs close to the fire and lay back to
pleasure herself, the dildos at hand between her spread legs.

****

Ljung had gone off with Leif and ended up dining with
two more hunters of the northern watch who had often been on the outskirts of
the glaciers.

He had gone out in the drizzling night very thoughtful
indeed, wondering over and over again if it was wise to venture up there at
all. Surely there must be an easier way for Leal to win the Challenge and
escape the ruin of her kingdom and that hateful marriage. He had never known
any human archer who could beat a picked elver marksman. Surely there must be
somebody in Elverhjem good enough to go south and help Escarra out?
And as for a Warlord, why, Hawkeneye had not been born a lord.
He had been picked among many and had grown into his role. Surely there must be
someone in the Elverlaen who could fill his shoes? Elvers had always been able
to name a suitable Warlord in times of need after all. They were not in the
habit of deep-freezing their Warlords for reuse a century later.

But, but, but.

If trouble was stirring again in the east, they would
need the best man they had. This was not an ordinary enemy. And why would the
elvers send someone south to help Leal? Elvers cared very little about the
affairs of humans, least of all humans far off in the south where no elvers had
ever lived. It would have to be himself, and he was not vain enough to place
himself among the best archers in Elverhjem. He could shoot well enough to
bring down dinner and defend the borders, sure...

No, however foolhardy this quest might seem
,
he could not really see a good alternative. They would
have to go, and get it done, or perish in the attempt.

So Ljung walked towards home deep in somber thoughts.
Which is why, when he opened the front door to see Daria’s beautiful naked body
spread wide in the red glow of the fire, her hands between her legs, her head
thrown back, it was, for the briefest moment, almost shocking.

****

Daria sat up abruptly with a squeal and stared at him
in something halfway between ecstasy and horror. She blushed, but the glow of
the fire might hide that, luckily.

“Ljung!
You are
back!”

She almost bit her tongue off.
Yes, he knows he’s
back, you dolt. He’s standing there.

Hell, it was hard to talk to someone and make sense
when you had the flurries.

“Why, yes. I am back.
Lucky me.”

He smiled and came to kneel on the floor by her.

Happiness filled her from top to toe. She thought she
might as well die now, and be done with all this madness. This was a good
moment. He was kneeling there, looking at her. There was a strange almost
pained tenderness in his eyes, and desire, and fondness. It was almost too
beautiful to be true.

No sweetheart
, she
thought.
He’s here with me, for me.
All for me.

She put her hands on his cheeks. She could almost feel
her heart cracking with love and desire. For the briefest moment she held his
face, staring into his eyes, and then she kissed him.

Their lips met not with the tenderness of the moment
just past, but with fierce hunger. She felt their teeth butting and opened her
mouth wider so he could fit deeper in. A half strangled moan came out of her as
if from a stranger’s throat. His tongue was deep in her mouth, searching,
lapping,
reaching
out and down. She welcomed him
deeper, yielding all to him until the furious kiss slowly abated and he drew
back a bit.

She opened her eyes to look at him. They both smiled
uncertainly, as if surprised by the passion that had just flared between them,
and they kissed again, slowly this time. She felt his gorgeous lips with the
tip of her tongue and moaned again. She had longed for his lips so hard. There
had been no time to savor this when they had made love in the forest. Now he
was hers alone to love, for one night. She had no intention of cutting Leal out
of their triangle, but tonight he was hers alone. She felt with her tongue the
strangeness and the sharpness of his teeth and moaned again.

“Please, please,” she said, pleading helplessly,
tugging at his damp clothing.

He laughed softly and slowly disengaged himself to
stand up and undress. Daria remained kneeling on the floor, looking up at him.
She knew she must look like a supplicant of sorts, but that was not out of
place. She would beg a thousand times if she had to. She felt the almost
physical weight of the desire growing inside her. She closed her eyes for a
moment, to let the yearning inside her well up and brim over, lest it choke
her. When she opened her eyes again he was naked and he was kneeling down in
front of her.

They embraced again, skin to skin. The rain-damp,
chilly clothes he had been wearing gone, he was warm, wonderfully warm. The
scatter of bristly dark hair on his chest brushed on her straining nipples, his
hands ran hot and strong on her back, her sides, her neck.

“Oh my love, my gorgeous,” she said, and he held her
tighter, sinking his fingers in the hair at the back of her head, kissing and
biting in the soft curve of her neck. She shuddered at the touch of those sharp
teeth, and then bent her head to let him bite deeper. She breathed in the smell
of cold damp night in his hair, and the warmer scent of his skin.

He drew her on his lap, and she opened her thighs
around his waist. She could feel his hard member brushing the hungry cusp of
her legs, and she bore down on it, rubbing her wet slit on its head while his
mouth closed on her left nipple. His glans parted her labia, silky soft yet,
oh, so hard. He pulled her down along his shaft, and was deep inside her. There
was no resistance. She had been wet for him all along.

“Ooh,” she said, and again and again her voice welled
up, unbidden, in time with his hands as he guided her in a growing rhythm, up
and down, her body filled and voided entirely, or so it felt to her, as his
length sank into her and ebbed out again.

“Harder, oh harder, please,” she whispered, because
she wanted to feel him charging even deeper. She wanted to hurt all over with
him.

He smiled his sharp, pointy smile and sighed, gently
pushing her off.

He laid her down on the piled furs, still kneeling
between her legs, and then he leaned forward and lay on top of her. His member
had slipped out of her wet slit, and he guided it back in with his fingers. She
sighed, feeling his searching fingertip stroking her flesh, then his glans
nudging a way in, and filling her again and again deeper than before, faster.
They found their rhythm once more, for a brief instant, and then it broke into
a growing wild ride, skin, muscles and breath all thrown into one earnest rush,
a chasing race that ended in Ljung’s quiet growling moan. He pinned her down,
body and throbbing cock holding her down where she lay.Daria held on to him,
wishing he’d never move away, but in a minute or so, he slowly breathed out and
gently let go. They looked into each other eyes, rubbing noses.

They smiled, relaxing.

“Sorry,” he said. His voice had never been deeper.
When he talked with a smile still lingering on his lips there was a mellow,
purring quality to it that Daria adored. “I sort of barged in and out, didn’t
I? The next time will be longer. And sweeter, I promise.”

He slowly rolled off her body and kissed her eyes, her
cheeks, her lips and chin. There was a ravenous hunger in his kisses still, but
the urgency had gone. It was as if he had suddenly discovered that they had all
their life to kiss and every kiss might as well last an age. Daria sighed and
held him close. She could feel a gush of wetness dribbling between her thighs,
his and her wetness, mixed.
For some reason that tipped her
over the edge of endurance.

“I don’t want it sweet, Ljung. I am not a delicate
flower,” she whispered in his ear. “I want to hurt all over. I want to die for
your touch and know I must wait for it until it pleases you to touch me. I want
you to take me any way you damn well please, and know what it is to be unable
to escape the pleasure or the pain however much I try. Please.”

He blinked, startled, taken aback.

“Please. I do this to Leal all the time. I want to
know
how it feels for her. I want to feel it all myself. And I might die of
frostbite or heaven knows what else in a few days, so it’s now or never. And
there aren’t many people I can ask, are there?”

Ljung pulled away a little to look into her face and
regarded her with a thoughtful expression.

“Can you do this?” asked Daria doubtfully.

Too much, too fast,
she
thought in alarm.
What was I thinking? That’s bound to freak him out. He’ll
think I am sick, and he will run screaming out of that door, and I’ll never see
him again. There goes our guide to Dalarna. There goes our plan-b champion.
There goes my night of lovemaking. There goes the most sensual man I’ll ever
see.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Oh, yes.
I
can,” he said, grinning.

****

Ljung briefly considered that surprising request.

It was nothing unusual in Elverhjem. A race of people
who lived for almost two hundred years on average, maturing early and usually
remaining reasonably active until the very last, tended to develop rather
colorful fancies. It was that, or dying of utter tedium at the age of fifty.
That and a generalized contempt for the idea of strict monogamy, and one could
well imagine how lovers in this town could be presented with some pretty quaint
requests, on occasions.

Still, he had not expected it from Daria or Leal. They
could not possibly be bored already.
I suppose they are just naturally
mischievous. And to think that they looked so deliciously innocent just a week
ago. Oh what a sweet fruit to bite.
All these fantasies, and
so artless.

“Oh yes,
I
can,” he said, smiling. “But are
you
sure that you want it?
To be pleasured until you hurt and
then again, and again with no escape?”