This week's post is sort of inevitable, after my spotlight on poor old Saint George. The Scent of Hawthorn, which appears in my second collection of shorts, Dark Enchantment, is set in Italy during the Dark Ages. Herrick is a disillusioned heretic knight who fights monsters in order to save people, but has lost his own way in life - until a vicious battle with a dryad in the mountains finds him thrown down and bound with thorns.
The dryad jumped up onto the rocks and straddled his hips. He couldn’t even raise his head to look down at those naked thighs.
‘So - Does the guest-bed suit you?’
He groaned.
‘A little hard on the back? What a pity.’ She bent and licked the blood streaks on his chest; he was surprised to learn that her mouth was warm. ‘Still, you did arrive at very short notice, without invitation. You must make allowances.’
His heart was racing; she must be able to feel its thud against her lips as she sipped from him. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he said through gritted teeth, as the world spun around him.
She chuckled, surprised. ‘Do you enjoy this, man of iron?’
‘Herrick.’
‘What?’
‘That’s my name.’ It seemed important to him that she should know it. He did not want to go nameless to death.
She mouthed the foreign word with distaste. ‘Is this how you expected it all to end, Herrick?’
‘One day.’ And he was horrified to find that his strongest emotion was relief.
‘You’ve fought my kind before?’
‘No. No dryad.’
She circled his nipple with the tip of her tongue, making it harden. ‘Monsters…’
‘Yes.’
‘The last children of Rhea. So that the children of the stones may inherit the earth.’ Her teeth closed cruelly over his left nipple and he groaned from deep in his chest. Then she released the crushed nubbin of flesh and crept forward up his chest, breathing the smell of his sweat and his fear until her lips were against his ear. ‘Do you wish to hear the good news?’
He managed to swallow, and she took that for assent.
‘This isn’t the end, Herrick. Not yet. You are not going to die until I tire of hurting you. And in this place I can take to the brink of death and bring you back again, over and over, for my pleasure. Until your pain has brought me ease.’
Fresh damp sprang from every pore. His insides seemed to turn liquid. She raked claws down his chest and stomach, testing every patch of skin between the criss-crossed bonds. He rolled his eyes back and tried to call upon the mercy of God, but it came out sounding completely wrong somehow.
‘What’s this?’ Her voice was low with surprise. He strained to look down at her and found she’d reached his lower garments, had been sliding about on his crotch, had found something that should not have been there at all: his massive, stony erection, pushing up against the cloth, the swollen head seeping with such eagerness that it was making a damp patch. Herrick was washed by a crimson tide of shame.
Dear God give me strength to resist her, he begged.
She ripped his clothing to shreds. His cock thrust out blasphemously through the rent fabric, and jerked with eagerness as she traced the veins with the tips of her deadly claws - Like a dog rising to greet its mistress, he thought, sick with humiliation.
‘Oh Herrick. Now I know.’
‘No,’ he groaned.
‘This is a gift, isn’t it? A phallus like this, and a man like you, in my power?’
‘You’re wrong…’
‘Wrong? No. Men may lie, but this does not. It makes plain what it wants, Herrick.’ She slapped his prick with first one hand then the other, like a cat playing with a mouse. He burned with shame. ‘Slattern,’ she mocked.
He twisted in his bonds uselessly, driving each pin-point of pain deeper.
‘Lick me, ’ she ordered, looming right over him, lowering her breasts to his mouth. He put out his tongue to her nipple but she snatched it away, giggling, before he could touch her. He groaned, scoured by her glee and his weakness. Then she wriggled back down and crouched over his prick, laying her lips to the underside of the shaft and nipping her way delicately right down to the root, never quite hurting him but threatening all the way. She took his balls one after the other into her mouth, rolling them between her teeth until sweat ran down his temples. Spitting out his slippery ball-sac she then found the silken skin stretched between his soaring cock and his scrotum, and took a fold delicately between two eyeteeth. She held it for a moment, letting him realise what she was going to do.
Herrick quivered, choking out incoherent prayers.
She bit down. Two sharp teeth met through a thin fold of skin and he opened his mouth in a soundless roar. His cock jerked twice - and clear fluid bulged at the slit and, welling out under its own volume, ran down his hard length, testament to his need.
‘Herrick,’ she chided. ‘Look at you.’
‘Oh God – No!’
‘Shh. Stop pretending.’
With her tongue she traced the path of his overspill back up from his balls to the head of his cock, where she lapped his ooze. He groaned again and shook like a man with the ague. His world was in flames. Could there be any defeat more shameful than this – to be beaten in combat then abused as a whore, his body a treacherous accomplice? And her mouth was exquisite comfort now after the hurt she’d inflicted, as tender as a mother hugging her child after smacking it. The pleasure was overwhelming; he knew he needed more. More hurt. More solace.
Her lips, wet from painting his glans, left it bereft and straining. ‘Pain,’ she whispered, straightening and kneeling up astride him again. ‘Your pain is my pleasure, I thought. But your pleasure
too. Don’t worry, Herrick; I will give you what you need.’ She guided his erect cock between her thighs, into her tight slick grip, her eyes rolling back with the effort of taking his girth. Then she refocused on his face. For the first time she sounded a little breathless.
‘You will not spend, Herrick. You will hold it back. Because if you let spill before me I will walk away and leave you here and never return. You understand that?’
‘Yes.’ Oh my God yes.
‘But if you give me my heart’s desire, I will give you yours.’ She reached behind her, down between his thighs, and sank her nails into his scrotum. He gasped and nodded, water running from the corners of his eyes. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’ Her voice was cold, her eyes green fire. ‘I’m going to hurt you badly and there is nothing you can do about it. You are mine to play with. Your strength will not save you. Your God will not save you. Your life is mine now, and it is over.’
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble
This was a scary one!
ReplyDelete[SPOILER]
ReplyDeleteIt has a HEA ending :-)