BONUS
Please enjoy a tease from the hot novelette,
by Annette Archer
Thanus wanted to wash some of the road dust off him before he went down for his dinner. Taking off his weapons belts he hung them off the foot of the bed. His feet protested as he took off his boots. His shirt and pants he folded and set on the floor next to his boots. His smallclothes came off next, and then he was naked in the room. The mirror on top of the washstand reflected his rippling muscles, his lean form.
“You’re dirty, Prince,” he said to his reflection. “Perhaps you’re trying too hard.”
Maybe. He didn’t have to take this trip to Rikketh. He could have delegated it to any number of his loyal subjects, but he had to see this through himself. The fate of his people meant that much to him. There was no one else he would trust to do it for him.
Picking up the sponge, he poured a generous amount of the tepid water into the bowl and soaked it up. Starting with his chest, he let the water roll down his body, down his abdomen, into the stiff short hairs of his crotch. It felt good to scrub the day off his skin. Not as good as a soak in a hot tub would have felt, but this would do.
He was just rubbing the sponge over his shoulders when the door rattled and then flew open.
He spun, naked body tense.
The woman from the street, the one who had bested Luciro, stood there, pushing the door closed with her back. Her quicksilver eyes flashed as they looked him up and down, starting at his toes and gradually making their way up, pausing at his exposed crotch.
She quirked an eyebrow at him when she finally found his face. “I feel like I should apologize.”
He relaxed, standing with a hand resting on his hip, not bothering to dress. She’d already seen everything he had. “Apologize for bursting in on a man while he’s bathing, or for using me as a distraction to escape a mob?”
“I suppose I could say either, although at this moment I’m not sorry for being in this room.”
“I’m afraid I’m at a loss, Madame…uh, I don’t have your name.”
A smile wisped over her lips and was gone again. “My name is Ethelia.”
He bowed to her, suddenly very aware of the air stirring between his legs as her eyes drifted there again. “A pretty name, Ethelia. I’m still at a loss to explain why you’re here in my room.”
She swallowed then, just a hint of uncertainty on her pretty heart-shaped face. He saw again the rips in the sleeves of her gown, the dirt and stains and tattered hem.
“I am in need of help,” she said in a low voice. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in this town willing to help…someone like me. No one. Except a stranger passing through.”
“Me, you mean.”
She looked at him with a tilt to her head that told him she was less than amused. “I am serious. I need your help.”
Thanus scrubbed at his face and neck with the sponge. “Well, perhaps if you told me how I could help you?”
“You might start by giving me your name in return for mine.”
Thanus tried to reach his upper back with the sponge, but couldn’t quite bend his arms that way. “My name is Thanus.”
He heard her gasp. Of course she’d know his name. He really would need to start using an alias while he was travelling. As he continued to wash himself, he heard her reach behind herself to turn the door’s lock.
Then she stepped over to him on quiet, bare feet, and took the sponge from him.
Standing behind him, she slowly washed his back, working her way down the line of his spine, while he stood there, hands braced against the washstand, luxuriating in the feel of her hands against his flesh. At the same time, he tried not to be aroused by this singular moment. His cock had a mind of its own, however, and it throbbed to life as Ethelia’s fingertips trailed along behind the sponge.
“You’re a prince,” she said to him, the sponge going lower now, to the curve of his ass.
“I am.” He’d already washed there. He didn’t tell her to stop.
“My need is great.”
The sponge went down the line of his buttocks, lower, between his legs, brushing against the sensitive area there, causing him to spread for her. She began rhythmically circling the sponge against his balls. His manhood responded by popping to attention.
“You have yet to tell me what this…need is,” he said, in a whisper.
“I’m sure that once m’Lord has heard what it is, you will not hesitate to help.”
“I won’t know until I hear—” He went to turn, and she pressed the sponge in her hand hard up into his sack, and at the same time dug her fingernails into his side. It was intensely erotic.
Leaning up on her tiptoes, her body pressing against his back, she breathed into his ear. “Allow me to render payment to m’Lord first.”
She slid down his back, her mouth trailing along his wet skin, her tongue flicking out gently to taste him. That tongue was warm, and longer than he thought possible, and he longed to watch her do these things to him. Although, he certainly wasn’t against just standing here and letting it happen.
The sponge dropped to the floor with a wet and heavy thud.
Her hands felt in between his legs now, her fingers gently grasping his balls and rolling them and squeezing them. Her mouth found the top of his right ass cheek, and her teeth bit into him. He gasped, and then moaned, as she brought him surprisingly close to a climax in such a short time.
Licking at him where she had bit into his flesh, she tickled her left hand around his hip, to reach around front, and when she found his cock and grasped it there was no doubting how close he was to going off. His body began to tense, and the familiar flutters in the pit of his stomach grew stronger.
He went to turn into her, again to have her grab him roughly and insist he stay where he was.
This time, he wasn’t having any of it.
Forcefully he turned into her, grabbing her hands, forcing her back toward the bed. It was then that he saw what she didn’t want him to see. Her eyes blazed, the color of lightning during a cold rain. Her skin had darkened to a rich honey gold. And her tongue…
Her tongue.
She leered up at him, desire and abandon clearly written across her face, and perhaps it was because she had forgotten herself so completely that she had let this secret slip. Her mouth hung open, and from it her long and gracefully tapered tongue lolled. When she finally realized he was staring at it, she pulled it back into her mouth and angrily fought against his grip.
“Let me go!” she demanded. “There. You’ve seen what I am. Are you happy? Will you throw me into the street again to be mocked by those idiots?”
She was spectacular, he thought to himself. Beautiful and strong and fire-tempered. She was also strange and exotic. How could such a woman exist?
“Well?” She prompted impatiently. “What will you do about me, prince of Sargenia?”
He knew exactly what he wanted to do with her. Holding to his grip on her wrists, he pushed her down onto the bed, falling on top of her, her legs wide around his hips, his cock buried into the folds of her dress.
“What I will do,” he said to her, talking with his lips buried into her neck and feeling her shiver from it, “is this. I will take from you what you have offered. Then we will discuss the rest of it.”
She struggled a few seconds longer, then she felt her body melt and mold to his and he knew that he had somehow ignited the fires in her, too.
She pushed up under him to bring her face close to his and nip at his ear. “Then perhaps m’Lord should strip this dress from me.”
To be continued....