Shadowheart

  "Do not move," she said. She struck him, the tip of leather like a nip across his ribs, his flinch like a brand to the torch lit inside her. It left a reddening mark on the pale skin under his arm.

  She stepped before him. He swallowed, blinking at her, with a glancing look down at the belt and back up again.

  She lifted her hand, and he took another step back. One pace behind him, dangling from the tapestry hooks, was the silk cord she had thrown there.

  "Stand still," she said softly. "I want you still."

  She reached toward him again, and she could see that he tried to keep his stance. But he took one more step back as she moved closer, his lips tight together, breathing like a winded animal. His fingers touched the wall behind and he stood stock straight, yanking his fists apart. He brought his hands up as if he would seize her and shove her back.

  Elayne used the belt on him, full across his chest. He froze; they both did, at the sound. He stood with his hands open.

  "If you will not be still, I will have my warrior bound."

  He made a sound deep in his throat as she grasped the cord. He must have known it was there—he would have noted anything, every small detail in the room, she was certain. And yet he looked as if the sight of it in her hand stunned him. She had never before seen so much of his feeling show in his face; he looked near to some encounter with the Devil himself. But his body was flushed; hard and ready for coupling, the red line of her strap glowing across his chest.

  "Your hands," she said firmly, before he could find his sense and refuse. "Cross them before you."

  "No," he said, his voice grating. "Elena!"

  It was a plea. She answered by touching his face, stroking him as she would a frightened beast. "For me," she said tenderly. "I want to use you, sweet warrior."

  All the breath seemed to leave him in a rush. He turned his head under her touch, as if she had struck him across the face. "Oh, God and Mary," he whispered.

  "Do it," she said gently.

  He put one hand across the other, breathing as if he might begin to weep.

  For a moment she looked down at his arms—his strong wrists crossed, the dark leather guards and gleaming metal, his hands working faintly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat. Inside the robe she felt as if her body thrummed some deep answering note of sensation, as if she were the very string upon a harp.

  She drew the cord about his wrists, holding it lightly. She could feel that he was nearly frantic, though he held himself rigid and did not break away. The twist of fine silken threads felt soft in her fingers, a luxury, the tassel a fan of creamy elegance against the hard-tanned leather and steel of the vambrace guards.

  She looped the cord twice around his wrists and tied it as she would have secured a horse’s lead, a knot that would not loosen, but draw tighter with any pull or struggle. He watched her work with a glazed look, as if he did not believe she did it.

  "Raise your arms," she said.

  For an instant he stood motionless. He blinked, and she could see the glitter of moisture in his eyes, that spontaneous wetness of fear and pleasure that she’d felt herself, imagining this moment with him bound before her.

  She lifted the belt and ran it over his shoulders, down his arms, up again beneath his throat. She snapped a cruel flick against the smooth silky skin beneath his ear, and then across his nipple. He sucked in his breath and closed his eyes, his body racked by faint shivers, his full member pumping. He lifted his hands above his head.

  Elayne drew the slack cord taut and leaned up and kissed his mouth, because he was so beautiful and helpless and exposed to her this way. He opened his lips, half-turning his head away from her, and then bowed down and sucked and strained against her mouth, his breath mingling with hers as she pulled his arms higher. It was a desperate kiss, like a battle in which she would lose if she released the hard tow on the cord in her hand.

  She broke away, feeling her grip on the silk slipping.

  She held it with both hands, searching out the anchoring cleat in the wall. With a quick loop, she made the cord secure and stood back, staring at him, her palms heated by the slide of the silk in her hold.

  He was trembling all over, standing with his legs spread and his head tilted back to the wall, his blackened eye like a painted design in the half-light. It was not a game now. She was not certain that it had been from the start. Her mischievous reverie of a warrior prince faded before the reality: dark murderous perfection bound before her, and he had let her do it.

  "Allegreto," she whispered, her voice filled with wonder at herself, at the sight of him. "God save, I love you."

  It was as if the words had come from someone else, some other place. He grew utterly still—for a long moment she could not even see him breathe. He squeezed his eyes hard shut and gave a tiny sound. He dragged his hands down so that the cord went tight and straining all along its length. The muscles in his arms swelled. His chest heaved with his sudden effort to break free. The silken cord drew taut, squealing against the hooks.

  He went abruptly still again, panting. "Kill me," he said in a broken voice. "I can’t bear it. I can’t—bear it."

  She stared at him. She hugged herself, shivering.

  "Please," he said, the one word an ache in the room, an echo of torment.

  She went to him and put her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. He jerked the bonds when she touched him, and then the tension in his body seemed to crumble; he swayed against the cord and pressed toward her, rubbing his cheek on her hair like a child seeking comfort.

  "Elena." He breathed a laugh. He put his head back and yanked at the cord that held him. "Christus, do you know how much I fear you? I’ll die like this."

  She let go, standing away as he hauled and fought the bonds. "I love you," she said again, as if some evil angel had her tongue.

  He gave a bestial groan and lowered his face, looking at her with his teeth bared. "I’d like to ride you until you can’t draw breath to beg or squeal."

  The sudden raw threat hung between them. Elayne felt it like the sting of the strap, the crude recovery of his power. But it brought something vital between them, an armor against what had been in his face and in her voice.

  She gathered herself, took refuge in the game. She paced slowly, observing him as if he were a piece of merchandise displayed for her pleasure, trying to drag her mind back into safe imagination.

  "But you cannot, can you?" she asked. Her words at least came out with something that resembled cold confidence. "My so-fierce enemy. You cannot."

  He was silent, watching her like a chained demon glowering from the shadows. Elayne stopped, facing him. He raked her with a look from head to toe, and she realized for the first time that her robe had come unbuttoned and fallen open. He meant to intimidate her with that devouring stare, but she tossed back her head and shoulders and let the gown slide from her body. She held it delicately, as if she were about to step into a bath. Guards and handmaids and a queen...she conjured them for courage and banished them in the same instant, leaving her alone in this chamber with him.

  "I have use for you, warrior," she murmured, pulling one pin at a time from her hair. The belt dangled from her hand as she did it, the kidskin soft on her cheek and shoulder. "I could give you to the guards, or have you enslaved—but I do not." She shook her head, feeling the weight of her braids tumble down her back and brush against her naked buttocks. She paused and let him look at her as she fingered the plait and worked her hair free, reveling in his hot dark stare. "I find you well-formed and favored. A worthy sire of princes."

  He pulled down slowly on the bonds, his arms flexing. "If you be a mare in heat," he said coarsely, "then set me loose, and I’ll service you without mercy."

  "Oh, no," she said demurely. "I need not set you loose."

  EIGHTEEN

  He was annihilated. Utter destruction. His reason was a void. He wanted to rip the anchor from the wall; panic and terror and fury and longing all at once, while she
went naked and sat down on the stool, turned a little away from him, with the rippling black fan of her hair all down around her like a swaying scarf.

  She looked back at him, her hair parting over her white shoulder, her blue eyes vivid beneath long black lashes, a face like a woman-child, like Heaven and Hell to him. Insults and rage and pleas for mercy were all the words he could form. He gritted his teeth together and swallowed shame, unable to find himself, lost off the brink and falling, falling; with no refuge but brute silence.

  She huddled on the stool and gazed at him as if he were some curious marvel that had caught her attention, holding her arms around her breasts, her fingertips resting lightly on her own bare shoulder as if she covered herself modestly. It was no expression he could fathom or predict, though he had spent a lifetime learning to read the hearts of men on their faces. He could not fathom it, he knew not what she would do next, only knew with awful certainty that it would cut him open to the bone.

  He had let her play this game; he had all but begged for it, giving himself away inch by inch, unheeding of the risk. But he had never known what it would be to find a woman who did not fear him. He could have laughed and wept to see himself eviscerated so utterly by a violet-eyed maid. He wanted her; he wanted this; he suffered it with a frenzy beyond any measure.

  She rose slowly. He backed himself against the stone wall, gripping the cord above his fists. He had seen men on the rack with more courage than he could summon.

  A faint smile touched her lips, as if she knew his thoughts. His guts went to liquid inside him. He tried to imagine her as a quarry, to find his cold shell, but she had taken it with his daggers and returned with his own strap to scourge him, to make him burn for her the way his skin blazed under the sting. All his shield obliterated, forfeited like a scrap of beggar’s cloth before he fully understood his jeopardy.

  She pulled her hair together and drew it forward in one shimmering midnight tail over her shoulder. It fell down between her breasts. He had seen her do that, over chess, and adored it like a smitten boy, like a calf-head, the way he adored every move and thought and feature and limb of her. But he had had charge of himself then; he could conceal the depth of what he felt. Now her hair slid apart around a full pink nipple, split in rivers of sable down to her belly, and he could not move of his own accord to touch her. He heard himself make a sound that had no humanity in it, a groan like a simple beast.

  He wished that she would raise the strap. He would have bowed down like a sinner at a whipping post; he had committed sins enough. He could bear that easy torture at her hand. But he realized what she intended too late to find any protection; he was raw skin and lost soul when she came to him, smoothing her palm down his chest to where the cloth pressed and chafed his erect rod.

  With gentle fingers she drew the laces. No dream or night-sent climax, no succubus or angel could have made him impassioned as she did. He could not move away from her; he refused to swing and twist on this gibbet for pride or humiliation; he stood frozen with his boots planted apart as her hair fell down between them.

  She was going to use him. She said so. He could hardly comprehend it. In her playing at queen, with him as her sport—in her game she said she loved him, a taunt that left him reeling with no defense against it.

  She lifted her face and looked up at him with such a strange innocence. Such eyes like the depths of sweet blue Hell. He thought of flinging her onto the floor and ramming himself in, thought of it just as she released him to her hands and he could do nothing to prevent her.

  She curled her fingers around him. White-hot bliss arced through his body; she held him between her open palms and he clung with both fists to the cord above his head, the only solid thing in existence beyond her.

  She leaned on him, kissing his chest. He did not think any whore in Christendom knew the things she seemed to know; she bit and pulled on his nipples, sweet painful tugs that brought him to the edge of extinction. He clenched his teeth, enduring it, half-dying with furious pleasure in it. And then she let him go.

  Shudders washed over him. He opened his eyes and looked down, panting, blinking at her bare feet and calves and her thighs. He did not dare lift his eyes any higher. The dark triangle between her legs was like some glorious secret, half-glimpsed, worth his life to reach. He would have slit the throat of the Pope himself only to see it, but her long hair swirled across it as she turned away. She left him hanging. Powerless. He made a silent moan, held inside himself, his eyes shut and his head resting back against the hard wall. His arms ached, but he was no more now than his sex, desperate to couple her even like this.

  Wood scraped and thumped near his feet. He lifted his lashes and found her before him, at his height, her wide eyes on a level with his.

  Without a word she kissed him hard, her mouth spread open. Her breasts pressed against him. Her hands searched and held his shaft. As he thrust his tongue in her mouth, she made a delicate feminine lift of her hips, pulling him in, sliding down on him hot and wet. The feel of it sent him almost to oblivion. She broke from the kiss and pushed back, her arms braced on the wall beside his head.

  He could not move, forced to the depth of her in blind sensation. She stared into his eyes, her lips parted, rocking her slit against him, softly at first, and then harder, taking her pleasure of him while he was utterly subjugated. He could feel his seed leaking into her. She tilted her head and shoulders back, her womb sucking at him with hot sweet greed.

  Her breasts rose before him. He lowered his head but he could not reach, he could only arch up into her as she kneaded his shoulders with soft cries, spreading her legs open and pushing her hips at him roughly. He surrendered to it wholly, lifting his head back to the wall, powerless while she clung to him and used him as any night imp would use a man; without reserve, her body pressing on him, careless of what pain or satisfaction she gave. Used him until she jerked and cried out wantonly, bursting around him.

  His mind exploded with her peak. He had no thought. He had white nothingness in his vision, like sun-dazzle. He dragged down on the bonds, ramming up into her, pure pleasure as everything he was blew apart and fell away, beyond any hope that he could find it again.

  She held tightly to him while he shuddered; her arms and body squeezing and throbbing around him. She rested her forehead on his bound and upraised arm, their bodies joined. Both of them panted for air. She kissed his skin, making small delighted noises. Then she lifted her face and looked up to his hands.

  He was completely broken; he did not care that his wrists burned within the cords, or his shoulders ached with strain if she would stay leaning against him so that he could feel every breath she took. He turned his face and kissed her ear and her cheek, searching for her lips.

  But she lowered her head and drew free, stepped down and away, leaving him. She released the cord with a suddenness that was bright pain. He rested his arms on his head, the only move he could yet make, letting blood flow into his joints.

  She hurried away to the far side of the chamber. He slowly let down his arms before him, his wrists still bound together. He stepped away from the wall, found the end of the knotted cord around his hands and freed it with one tug. His fingers burned with blood returning. He held his wrists and flexed his fingers, breathing through his teeth. He fumbled at his breeches and still felt stripped naked even after he’d laced himself.

  She came to him, her loose hair all about her like a veil. She held his belt, with his daggers sheathed on it again, and the stiletto in her hand.

  "Careful," he said, his voice cracked and harsh, a grasp at recovering himself.

  Bowing her head, she knelt at his feet. As if she were a pageboy, she lifted the waist-belt, her hair a black waterfall over her hands and arms. He looked down at her in amazement as she girded it around his waist, her moves graceful and lovely at the humble task. She buckled the leather and smoothed it with a reverent touch.

  He could not find words. In wonder he let her open his arm and sl
ide the dagger into the bracer’s sheath. She pressed her forehead to his wrist and his open palm and then kissed it.

  He sank to his knees before her. He took her face between his hands and lifted her chin and stared at her. Her lips were shell-pink and soft, a little reddened and swollen from violent kisses. She looked into his eyes steadily, that open marveling look she had, as if the world were as new and fresh as dawn to her; the blue-violet depths of lakes and oceans and infinity beneath her lashes.

  "You are my queen," he said roughly. "I have no other sovereign."

  She smiled a little, like a pleased child. She nestled her face against his hand and closed her eyes. He felt the mingled touch of their breath, the brush of her hair, the confiding press of her cheek in his hand.

  Conquered. Beyond the force of armies.

  * * *

  At tierce on their third day of waiting, she rolled over in the bed and lay against him, her hair in her eyes. The bells were faint; they had sounded each morn and None and Vespers every day since he had brought her here. He could see that she was listening, as if she had just heard them.

  "We should make confession," she whispered, staring at the canopy above.

  He understood her. The things they had done together must be mortal sin. Any priest on God’s earth would judge them acts against nature—for a man to submit to a woman, to take carnal pleasure in the pain and shame she gave him.

  He could not repent, but he did not want her to be in danger. He brushed the hair back from her face. "I’ll ask Gerolamo if he’ll take you in secret," he said, tracing her cheekbone with his finger. "I think it can be done."

  "And you," she said quickly.

  Her eyes slayed him yet, each time she looked into his. Immeasurable depth of blue and purple, gazing up at him with unguarded honesty. He shook his head with a faint smile. "I cannot, beloved."