ChoiceofMasters Read online

  He had to put such thoughts aside for now. You must pretend you are a surgeon in the battle field, Helene had said. You must amputate and bleed the patient without letting your emotions interfere. He wondered how a surgeon would feel if the one coming under the knife was his lady, his heart and soul.

  Thomas settled down beside her thigh and stroked the curve of her waist. “You are beautiful in every way, Lilith,” he said, his voice a rumble against the muted pop and crackle of the fire.

  She swallowed, fighting visibly for some control over the roar of her body. God knew she must have enough practice doing so.

  “I am not, my lord. My beauty is only in my skin. My heart and soul are far too black for the purity of yours.”

  Thomas glanced sharply at her. Up until now, her voice had held frustration and not a little anger. This was resigned despair. She believed her words.

  “Zorac is an evil man who enjoys having a woman with your beauty under his thrall.”

  “You do not believe that.”

  Thomas lifted a brow. “He has done you harm, Lilith. For that alone, I would take his life.”

  “You have seen Elias, the stable boy. Cullen, Asneth. They are here as the acts of a man who desires to save and preserve innocence that has been lost, and protect the wounded. Why would Zorac punish me, if there was not a blackness in my soul deserving of punishment? You would do better to leave here and—”

  He laid his fingers on her lips. They parted beneath his touch and he stroked them, one at a time. Her tongue came out and kissed his skin, just a slight curl of the wet tip against the sensitive skin between his knuckles.

  Thomas turned from her, and brought the amulet he had left by the fire. The disk was now heated by the flame.

  “This is a coin I found at Camlann. It is from Arthur’s time, from that battle.”

  Lilith’s face revealed the effort it took her to focus on his words.

  “You were lucky to find it, my lord. So much has been looted from that place, or carried away as relics.”

  “Indeed.” He held it up to the light, a simple dented piece of silver strung on a much more expensive chain of beaten silver. A cross was still faintly visible in the center of the coin. “I look at it and think it perhaps fell out of some man’s pouch or pocket while he fought. Perhaps he would have used the money for an ale, or to buy a lady a trinket. I kept it, to remind myself how close death and life are to one another, and how the quiet of peace is only a breath away from the rage of battle. Love and hate are the two sides to this coin. Light and dark are in us all, Lady Lilith, and they are both necessary to make us complete.”

  He stroked the heated metal over the blood-filled petals of her sex, eliciting a soft cry from his lady’s throat. He dipped the amulet in the basin of water and lifted it, allowing the water from it to drip into his palm.

  Thomas moved his wet hand over her hips, turning his fingers downward. A single drop slid from his palm to hang on the tip of his middle finger, centered so she stared down the length of her body at it as it hovered there, clinging to his skin. It grew fatter, as more water from his palm trickled down and joined it.

  “This shall fall right on that tiny spot above your weeping cunt, my lady,” Thomas said. “It shall feel like the press of a lover’s tongue there. Watch it glisten, think of its impact as it—” the drop loosed from his finger, “…falls.”

  Lilith’s thighs strained up against the manacles holding her legs open as the drop plunked against her, where he said it would.

  “You will not argue with me, lady,” Thomas said, continuing to hold his hand above her. Another drop gathered at the tip of his finger, gained size, sparkled in the firelight. “Or hide your thoughts from me. Will you?”

  “No, my lord,” she gasped as another fell, then another. Her hips thrust upward.

  “Good. You must trust me, Lilith. Why does Zorac punish you?”

  “I cannot…” Lilith’s words caught in her throat as another drop hit. Thomas watched it melt on her hot folds. He watched the way the curve of her arse cheeks, visible between her open legs, flattened as she pushed her hips down into the pallet. He shifted, straddling her spread thighs with his own muscular ones, settling so he held her thighs down, immobilizing her hips. He dipped his amulet, let another drop fall. She made a strangled cry.

  “My lord, you cannot…please do not torture me so,…I cannot…”

  He cupped the water now in the shallow basin of his palm, and the drops falling off his fingers became a rapid tattoo of rainfall on her. Lilith moaned, her breasts swelling impossibly rounder before his eyes, the nipples turgid points. Her thighs were tight beneath his own as he kept her still, forcing all sensation to come from that one still point of her body. He was aware of the arched column of her throat, her gasping breaths, her pleas, the clench of her hands at her sides. Yet his eyes never left that small area of flesh, and he hit it every time, his aim unerring.

  “Fire is first, because fire is, of all the elements, the most transitory,” he murmured. “The sun may or may not shine down upon you from one day to the next, but you anticipate, you shiver, and the sun comes forth.

  “Fire heats water, but water touches fire, and fire is vanquished. Fire and water, the east coming to vanquish the south, a circle turning backwards, ending what has been done. We will travel from the most mutable elements to the most immutable, and when you are one with that most immutable fifth element, which is the Spirit, you will decide for yourself whether to accept and choose.”

  He had thought when he began the ritual, the words he had been taught would be stilted on his tongue, but he looked upon his lady and felt the heat she generated, the sweat of her thighs trapped beneath him. The words came as natural to him as a battle cry.

  “Let your waters vanquish the fire, lady,” he urged, his voice a husky caress, affected by his own arousal. He felt no shame for it now. He would create a sacred place for the two of them in this wretched castle, and there would be no sin of lust. Lust was only a sin if it was a physical response with no spiritual basis, like eating too much meat or sweets and then having the desire to vomit, to cleanse oneself of the taint of excess. He could never have an excess of Lilith.

  The priestess’s words were in his mind, her wise, beautiful eyes. His lips moved, repeating the invocation to fire and water again. The air grew even warmer around them. Lilith’s gaze rested on his cock, straining hard and prominent against his hose, over her eager opening.

  “Not time for that yet,” he said. “Not until you choose, lady. Then, if you choose rightly, I will bring you so many pleasures. I will bring you a comb for your hair. I will feed you tender meats from my own fingers. I will give you a hard ride on an early morning when you first wake. My stiff cock will penetrate your tight, slippery channel and remind you each day which Master you embrace.”

  “I have no such choice to make, my lord. Zorac—”

  He was perspiring, and a drop from his forehead fell. The sweat of his brow struck at the same moment as the water from amulet to palm. Lilith’s back bowed up against her restraints, and her face showed her shock.

  Thomas watched, suspended in an agony of male arousal, his dripping fingers over her sex as the flesh quivered, rippled and then spasmed, a flush rushing outward across her hips and pale belly. As the drips slowed from one palm, he poured a full trickle of water upon her from the other, keeping the tattoo of sensation unrelenting, dragging her release from her body with grim force of will and the overwhelming power of water itself.

  Lilith screamed, her fingers digging into her thighs, her heels thrusting into the bed. She strained hard beneath him, a rhythmic, primitive dance. The tidal wave came, and she was on it, riding it so powerfully that she choked on her own saliva and began to cough, her distress no deterrent to the strangled groans that the climax ripped from her throat.

  “Sshh, sshh, easy, lady,” Thomas leaned forward, as the first wave passed. He set the amulet aside, careful not to touch her soaked c
unt with any part of his body. It was still contracting with the aftershocks of her hard orgasm. He soothed her brow with one hand, letting her suck on the fingertips of the other one by one, not like an aroused woman, but a nursing child seeking comfort. She suckled fervently.

  “It will not last long, my lady,” Thomas told her, stroking her working jawline. “Zorac’s spell still holds sway over you, and the desire will come back quickly, but be comforted in the knowledge I will bring you pleasure at least one more time this night.”

  “How did you,…what did you…”

  “It is not easy to explain, my lady, but I will bring forth your pleasure, using each of the four elements. It circumvents Zorac’s spell, for he only thought to think of a man sating his lust for you with his body. Cock, hands or mouth. Though he had enough forethought to make sure he prevented you from taking your pleasure with your own hands.”

  She flushed.

  “You must not have any shame with me,” he admonished her with a stern look, and indulged his own pleasure, covering her still pulsing sex with his hand to let her know his touch, before Zorac’s spell returned to her in full force. She was silk and velvet both, and he was hard pressed not to dip into her heat. He felt the folds of skin shiver beneath his fingers. “I will, once we are free of here, command you to make yourself come with your own touch while I watch. It is a true pleasure most men have not discovered, nor most women. Zorac’s spell prevents such an act from doing anything now but inflaming you.

  “The elements, however, are not from men. Once all four elements have served you, the circle will be closed around you, and there is a final test, one that neither Zorac nor I can fight. You must open that place you are so unwilling to open, let me in and accept me for what I truly am to you. You will be stubborn,” he smiled at her confused face, “because you are, and because you are frightened. But I am here, Lilith. I will not leave you.”

  “It comes again, my lord,” she said, and the desolation in her voice pained him. He knew, despite his words, she had hoped the moment of respite had heralded the end to her torture. He forced his voice to remain even.

  “So it does. I must lift you out of the bed now and take off this damp coverlet, before it wets the covers beneath you.”

  He unfastened the manacles at her ankles and lifted her body in his arms. His erection pressed against her hip and he nearly groaned at the pleasure of the soft flesh against the hard.

  “You may take me, my lord,” she said quietly. “Ease your frustration.”

  It cost her much to say it, he was sure. He could feel Zorac’s hold stealing back over her body, parting her lips, transforming her features with that hunger.

  This woman is mine, he raged, the anger surging up in him, tightening his grip. It was the aggression of a dominant, responding to the infringement of another into his rightful territory.

  It came to him then, that a sexual purge to his own tension would aid them both. It would steady his focus, release some of his anger. And it would give him an additional opportunity to undermine Zorac’s hold on her. Not by magic, not by machinations of wizards or priestesses, but by an act of will. He removed the cover, set her on her feet and pressed her to her knees on the floor. He took a seat in the carved chair in front of her, by the fire.

  “Zorac has made you into a dog in heat, seeking your own pleasure.” At her pained flush, he reached forward, cupped her face in a gentle hand. “But you have a will that stands separate from any magic I do or he does.

  “I want you to accept my seed into your mouth, my lady, to give me pleasure, seeking none for yourself.”

  “I have not done this for any man,” she said, her tone resentful, suspicious.

  “It pleases me to see your spirit, lady. It is not an act of humiliation,” he said. “You offer me a gift, as great an act of fealty as that of a knight who kneels to his liege lord. That fealty is a promise to serve the lord, as long as he lives by the principles in which the knight believes, and treats the knight honorably. Will you offer me that, my lady?”

  “This ritual you are undertaking to free me, it will not work unless I do this?”

  “It may work without it. This is a step, but not one that is required.”

  Her brow lowered, her eyes on the space between his booted feet.

  “What do you prefer, lady, mutton or fowl?”

  Her gaze snapped back to him. “Pardon, my lord?”

  Thomas smiled, shook his head. “What does it feel like, his spell?” he asked, to distract her from the decision she faced. “Tell me true, lady. There need be no formality between us.”

  She hesitated, her glance shifting to the fire. “I will tell you, my lord, but you must do something to help me.”

  “Anything, my lady.”

  “Please put your hand over my eyes so I do not have to see you when I say the words.”

  He nodded, and cupped his hands over her eyes, pressing his callused palm against the soft skin of her cheeks and forehead, the brush of her lashes.

  “It is as if a man’s lance is always there, stroking,” she said, in an embarrassed whisper. “I feel it there and in my other opening,…my arse, at the same time. There are mouths on my nipples, biting and sucking every moment. Hands stroke my hips, my stomach, my neck, and yet there is no one, as if this wall of pleasure separates me from all else. To walk, to eat, requires so much concentration. I sleep little, and when I do, my dreams are decadent, horrible pleasures.”

  Her mouth tightened, and Thomas brushed the side of his smallest finger over her top lip. “He sends me perverse dreams. I am with animals, with women, with two men at once who care naught for me, who hurt me, and I do not care…” her voice faltered. “Even…with children.”

  Thomas laid his other hand on her twitching shoulder and her head bowed, pressing into his palm. “Then you came into my dream. I knew it did not come from him, and for a time I could bear the other dreams, knowing you might be there, somewhere.”

  He took his hand from her face, leaned forward and gripped her hand down at her hip. Her palm sweated with her growing need. “You gave me some peace,” she said, looking up at him, so close to her. “Though in my dream of you, I always became a monster at the end. Was it not so in your dream?”

  “You succumbed to the spell at the end,” he said. “But it was a dream, lady. Just a dream.”

  Her face crumpled. “Perhaps I am where I should be, my lord. You must at least consider that.”

  “You are a young woman, Lilith,” Thomas said. “Barely out of childhood. How much evil can you have spread in the world?”

  “Once, a young man betrayed his friend for silver…” her voice trembled. “One unforgivable act.”

  “And yet he was forgiven,” Thomas reminded her.

  She laid her head down against him and he fondled her hair, his hand under it at her neck, soothing, though he regretted his touch would also incite her to a greater degree of arousal.

  “You know, we met once, my lady,” he said. “When I came back from a campaign, and delivered a message to your uncle’s home.” He looked down and saw she was listening, her eyes on the fire, perspiration beading on her top lip. “I passed you on the gallery. You wrinkled your nose, pointed, and said to your friends that knights who stunk like the pigs should stay in the stable area.”

  “And what did you do?” she managed, her cheek soft against his hand, her bosom lifting and falling quickly against his calf.

  “I kept walking, and smiled at a spoiled child’s ignorance. I thought how pretty she was, and how lovely a woman she would make, when time and experience had softened her edges.”

  “There is nothing soft about me now.”

  “I beg to differ, lady. You have many soft spaces, but you are strong. I cannot begin to imagine how you have kept from madness through five years of such torment.”

  She shook her head against his muscled thigh. “It was just survival, my lord. A coward’s fear of death more than hell’s torment. If I ca
n bear this moment, I can survive the next moment, then the next, and then the day is done. That is all. Sometime, I just, became…apart.”

  “Like you were there, but not?”

  She nodded, looking up at him with the question in her eyes.

  “On the battlefield,” he explained, “the horror and death, like men, stack up around you. Taking it moment by moment, not thinking back or forward from it, is one way to survive. As you hack into the flesh of another man and he screams and dies at your feet, you become something separate from yourself, in order that you can go to the next man and do the same thing.”

  He heard his voice become dispassionate, but knew the shadows of the horrors lay in his amber eyes for her to see. “You are much stronger than you realize, Lady Lilith.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment. “This thing you ask me to do, with my mouth. It will bring you pleasure, my lord?”

  “It will, all the more because it will bring it to you.”

  She turned, bracing her shoulder on the inside of his thigh so she could be square in between his spread legs. “Then, my lord,” she said, “let me attend to you.”

  Thomas nodded. He drew his tunic up so the curve of his groin in the snug hose was revealed. He pushed the cloth aside, along with the folds of his braies beneath.

  His cock came free, hard and attentive, and her eyes widened.

  “I have…I have never done this, my lord.”

  “Put your mouth on it, as far down as you can reach, and then you slide your lips and tongue up and down. If your hand was free,” he took his own and wrapped his grip at the base, stifling a deep grunt at the sensation, “it would be here, and move the same way.”

  “And I…stay on my knees.”

  “Yes,” he looked down at her, her uncertain mouth only a breath away from his aroused organ. “When I come, you will swallow my seed, taking it within your belly.” He passed a thumb along her cheek, a caress and a sensual command. “Do not spill a drop.”