Spellbreakers (46 page)

A hundred years.

I hope I still remember where everything goes,
he thought, and smiled.

“What?” she asked softly.

“Nothing,” he said, and looked into her face. He
pulled the last turn of her corset’s lacing, and he felt her breathing easier.
He gently tugged on the edge of the corset, and she stood up to let the whole
thing, bodice, skirts, petticoats,
a
ludicrous amount
of clothing for such a warm night, slip down around her hips.

She pulled off her corset, then drawers and stockings
from under a silken shift, pulled the shift off over her head and stood in
front of him naked.

“I’d have less trouble taking your castle by storm
than undressing you, princess,” he said, smiling, relieved that the unwieldy
gown was out of the way.

She laughed. She obviously shared the relief.

He looked at her, as if for the first time. On the
road, all bundled up in their winter travelling clothes, they had all been
shapeless. His only vague memory of her form was from the spell-time they had
spent together in Dalarna, and he did not relish that memory.

She was tall for a human girl, whip thin and muscular.
Her hair was ruffled, like a boy’s. She was not at all the same girl as before,
caged inside her gown and her royal status. She was entrancing. Tousled, wild
and free like a
dísir,
a beautiful land spirit of the northern forests.
He wished he could see her naked and free on his native moors, under the
starlight.

Once, in a different world it seemed, he had seen
her
at the edge of a battlefield, as beautiful and cold as the dawn.
White in the white snows.
The only color about her was the
blood of the slain soaking the hem of her white dress.

He shook his head to chase that image away.

“What?” asked Leal
again.

“Nothing,” he said, again. He pulled her close to kiss
her breasts, one by one. The nipples were taut on his tongue, the areola soft,
like honey and velvet. He sucked on the taut-tipped softness and let his hands wander
down her back towards her buttocks. He palmed their roundness and moaned. His
whole body was stirring, which had not stirred in so long.

When
she
had taken him, he had not been able to
deny her. His body had been out of his control. Perhaps it was her black magic.
She had claimed him there and then, among the mangled corpses of his slain
companions, with her fell creatures watching. There had been blood on his skin,
and hers, blood of friends and foes, red and black in the whiteness. He
remembered the deadly cold of the snow under his back. And yet, his body had
answered to hers.

He sank his face in the warmth of Leal’s skin. Perhaps
he’d never be wholly free from
her.
But Leal was here
now
,
smiling and full of life. He’d need no black magic to make love to Leal.

She was panting in his embrace, responding to his
hunger. Her fingers were deep in his hair while she kissed his forehead, his
eyes,
his
cheekbones. He could feel the hot dampness
of her sex through the silk of his trousers. He opened his mouth wide to engulf
her small left breast, breathing hard, kneading her buttocks until she
whimpered. Lust was rushing through him like a flooding river, throwing open
doors inside his soul that had been shut for a hundred years. He was alive, and
awake, and victorious, and hungry.

He was back.

He gathered her up in his arms, turned her over, and
laid her on his tousled bed. She watched him, smiling and held out her arms to
him.

****

He stood there the briefest moment, watching her,
still dressed, still strangely aloof. Perhaps it was just his coloring that
made him look so remote, even now.
The paleness of his skin,
eyes, and hair.
Then he smiled, and his handsome cold features came to
life. She held her arms out to him, inviting. He undid the clasps of his vest,
and shrugged out it in a single graceful movement. The heavy, silver studded
leather fell heavily around his ankles, and he unbuckled his belt, unlaced his
trousers and undressed completely.

Leal had never even imagined a man could be so
beautiful. Even before being enchanted he had been older than Ljung was now,
yet he looked younger. Less rangy, less way-worn, less scarred. He was built
like the marble statue of a god, wide shoulders and narrow waist, every muscle
flowing just under the skin, like a race horse. He was also as white as marble.
That’s why
she
loved him. He would have been a dazzling King of
Winter.

He kneeled between her legs and rubbed her thighs with
his palms, slowly, dreamily; then he plunged his face in her sex, breathing the
scent of it, lapping its dampness greedily, almost roughly. She whimpered in
painful pleasure, but she wanted him already. She realized now that she had
wanted him since that first night, in the spell-world under the ice. She tugged
at his shoulders until he crawled up along her body and came to kiss her mouth
with the same fire with which he had licked her sex. His long hair fell all
round her face, pale and smooth, light as a moth wing. She closed her legs
around his waist, locking their bodies together while the tip of his member
found its way into her longing flesh. He filled her up entirely, painfully,
beautifully. Every thrust brought a moan to her lips as pleasure and ache
mingled. Then her flesh eased around his length, and it was just pleasure. She
rocked into his rhythm, meeting every thrust.

****

They say one never forgets how to ride a horse, but
that is a lie. In a very few years, one can lose all feel for the delicate
interconnected balance holding a rider and his mount together.

But one could never forget how to ride a sweet,
spirited woman. It’s homecoming. It’s where I belonged all along. All my life I
have been coming here, to this, to these thighs, to these lips.

He climaxed inside her with a low rough moaning growl.
He almost wept with the bliss of it, but by a miracle of will and luck he
managed not to spill his seed.

Not yet. No, not yet. The night is young. Our first
and last night together, I fear. Would that I could bring her home with me,
free her from this stone cage.
Would that she were free.
The north would be a good home for this
disìr. She had braved the ice waste and its deadly
queen to save his life
. If she were my woman, I’d
never close her away in a stone tower. She would ride and hunt and hawk and
fight at my side, like a young she-wolf.

He lay panting on top of her. She held him fiercely,
still rocking him, back and forth, back and forth. His member was still hard
inside her, and she was still taking her pleasure from it. He smiled, but he
pulled out of her slit and of her embrace. She moaned in protest.

“You will come on my tongue, honey, not like this. I
want to taste you,” he said, low in her ear.

She moaned again, but he turned her on her belly and
pulled her to the edge of the bed.

“Kneel,” he whispered.

She didn’t protest. She didn’t hesitate. She kneeled,
on all fours, with her beautiful pale butt turned up to him and her head low.

She is used to obeying, this princess,
he thought.
How curious. How sweet.

There was nothing missish or submissive about her
outside a bedchamber, and that made her meekness here especially zesty.

He kneeled right beside the bed, and pulled her to
him, reveling in the sight of her long thighs and her shapely butt framing the
delicate folds of her sex. Her slit and clitoris were engorged with the
friction of his first pounding, delightfully puffy and hot, red in the candlelight.
He spread her knees wider, let his palms run up her thighs and opened her up
with his thumbs to plunge his tongue in her slit and lick deep inside it, until
her juices ran lush in his mouth. Then he licked down to her clitoris, and felt
her quaking with the directness of the touch. He licked harder, chasing her
liveliest responses, pushing her towards her limit, and then pulling back until
she began to beg for more, in earnest, desperate for climax.

Just before giving it to her, he plunged a thumb in
her slit, bathing it in her wetness. Then, while licking her clitoris in
circles, he pushed it in the rose of her anus, and she spasmed all over,
suddenly overwhelmed.

“Oh, oh,” she moaned, sinking her face deeper in the
blankets. The next moans came muffled, but her body spoke clearly enough. She
took all she could as long as she could, and then she jolted away, shaking all
over, moaning and moaning.

This is the prize,
he
thought smiling,
for the Champion of Escarra
.

When she had quieted down, he pulled her to her knees
again—she had collapsed in a heap, shaking—and stood up behind her. She moaned
wildly when he pushed his member in her dripping, turgid slit. It was like
summer fruit, like the astonishingly sweet figs one could pick in the orchards
of the Val’d’Eran, juicy and rich, warm with the sun, and it welcomed him home
again and again.

****

When he took her from behind, his member seemed
suddenly even longer. She wailed with pain again as its head butted against her
walls like a ram, but she didn’t try to escape from the battering. His hands
were warm now, and held her hips firmly, pulling her down along his length.
Their bodies came together with a meaty thump every time. She could feel his
lust mounting, and his control ebbing, and she smiled with her face in the
blankets, even as the pain of his hard thrusting made her grimace and cry.

He claimed his pleasure mercilessly this time, and she
screamed in the blankets, full of sweet agony and wild glee.
The spell is
broken,
she thought as he climaxed again, with a spurt of hot wetness this
time.
A
nd you are truly awake, now.

Afterwards, she lay down beside his supine body. They
were both panting. A warm sea breeze puffed in from the window. The candle had
long died down, but a moonshine beam shone in the window, picking the contours
of his body in silvery blue. Even this far up over the valley, the crickets’
song was like a summer lullaby.

Leal slowly climbed on top him, belly to belly, chest
to chest, like she had in the ice vault where she had found him. But he was
warm, now, warm and alive.

He caressed her hair lazily, smiling.

She kissed his lips one last time, and she caressed
his face, pulling a stray lock away from his pale eyes.

“If ever you feel like marrying a princess...” she
whispered, half in jest, half in hope.

“If ever you feel like leaving this high dry rock…” he
said, half jesting, half hoping, perhaps. It was hard to guess. He smiled, a
mellow, tender smile, but sad.

“You know that I must go back north, honey. I
promised. And if you were free, I’d take you with me. And if we lived to see
the end of this war ... who knows? We might go and see if any of the old elvren
harbours still guard our own longships…” He kissed the top of her head again
and again, punctuating the sentences with soft pecks, and Leal’s heart bled
honey and tears. “Carvel built elvren longships fit for a king and queen … there
are crags of black rock on the shores of the northern ocean where the sea birds
flock by the thousands … and I know the island where the wandering albatross
nests … and I’d take you there one day, if you were mine.”

****

Later that night, after putting on her dress as well
as she could without a maid, she made her way quietly back to her room. She
walked slowly, out of caution, heartbreak, and a certain delicious soreness.

There was no way to go and say farewell to Ljung,
after all. It seemed impossible now, with Hawkeneye’s scent all over her skin.
She had no idea how Ljung would take it. Suddenly everything was so
complicated, so many rooms and corridors and conventions and sensibilities to
negotiate, and Ljung was leaving tomorrow. There would never be time to figure
out if they would have ever had a chance to love each other, in a different
world, one without kings and queens and wars and dark magic. There was no time
for anything anymore. Starting tomorrow, it would be only Daria and her, like
they had always been.

To her surprise, she saw a light when she opened the
door of her room. Daria was already back. Leal had half expected her to spend
the night with Ljung.

“Hey,” said Leal.

“Hey,” said Daria, without turning. She was rummaging
in her trunk.

“Did you say your farewells?” asked Leal, somewhat
shyly.

“Not yet. Did you say yours?”

“I ... saw Hawkeneye.
Just now.”

“Oh. Is he any good?”

Leal blushed. “Yes. He is.”

“I
knew
it! There had to be a reason for all
the fuss. I saw the way that Gerdrun lady looked at him!” said Daria
cheerfully. But the cheerfulness was forced. When she turned away from her
disheveled trunk she held a bundle of clothes in her arms. That’s when Leal
spotted the pack on Daria’s cot.