Enchantress (2 page)

Her skin was the color of dark, rich
honey, her hair black as a moonless midnight. She was clearly born
of an eastern land, but her accent had already told him that. Where
would her loyalties lay, he wondered, his mind wary. He had been
assured he could trust her, but could any female creature ever
truly be trusted? "Where are you from, woman?"

She smiled, baring a flash of even
white teeth. "My mother."

He glared.

"Although it is said I came not from
her womb," she added, "but from her magic."

"Magic is the art of the
devil."

Again another sudden gust of icy cold
air hit him— this time his other cheek, as if it were possible for
the wind within a room to change direction. Still his candle flame
stretched tall, unwavering.

"It is fortunate for you then, monk,
that you have no qualm about putting the devil's arts to your use,
when necessary."

He pulled up the collar of his robes.
"One must fight fire with fire. The d'Anzeray are dangerous, unholy
beasts."

"And they cannot be beaten by your
God's wrath? Surely good must triumph over evil, monk."

Herallt decided then that he did not
like this slippery creature. Sadly he needed her. The sooner she
was about her business the better.

"Shall I tell
your
destiny with the
cards?" she asked softly, eyes wide and ringed with kohl, staring
through him again with that peculiar intensity.

"No. Save your demon's tricks for
them. I am told you have plenty."

"I do."

"And if you see so much of the future
you will know already the way inside their castellany."

"Of course." She tilted her head,
still watching him, reading something that was marked upon his very
bones it seemed. "They are, after all, men. There is nothing
challenging about men. They are all the same— be they murderer or
monk. Or both."

Taking umbrage at her tone and that
disdainful, knowing gleam in her eye, he growled, "Then I hope, for
your sake, that you do not fail."

"How can I?" She opened her cloak,
showing her costume of little more than beads and string, her
breasts flowing out of it. Her navel was exposed, decorated with
little jewels that were somehow attached to her sun-darkened skin.
Below her waist she was swathed in colorful rags of material, thin
as gossamer. A slight sway of her hips could reveal or hide the
treasure beneath. Her legs were long and slender. Around her ankles
she wore bells that tinkled with every movement, and when she
laughed the bells accompanied her. "Even you look at my body with
eager lust, saintly monk."

Furious, he growled at her and
clutched the wooden crucifix he wore in the folds of his robe. "Do
not think to use your temptress tricks upon me."

"I would not want to." She closed her
cloak again. "But tonight when you lie with your yellow-haired
mistress you will think of my body and for the first time in many
weeks your cock will crow. You will fuck her with more vitality
than you have ever managed before. She will be grateful and may
decide to stay with you after all."

He glowered, sweat
breaking upon his brow.
How did she know
about his mistress and her sulky threats of late to leave
him
?

"And then you will
know,
monk
, that
my powers are indeed everything you've been told."

In the next moment she had replaced
her hood and swept out, the door closing silently behind her
without her hand upon it. The creak with which it had earlier
opened to admit her was apparently cured. Only then did Herallt's
candle go out, suddenly plunging him into shadowy dusk. Under his
robes he was hot, and the quickening in his loins proved her
prediction was correct.

Herallt was not a man known for
smiling, but now he did— although when he saw his reflection in the
water basin it was more of a grimace, pained and
reluctant.

Well, he might not like the witch, but
she would do the job. And she was dispensable. Once her task was
complete he would be rid of her, ensuring there was no trace back
to him when the king found out. For despite their wicked deeds,
King William never raised a finger against the d'Anzeray. They
were, it seemed, important to him for some reason, and so he had
let this latest slight against Herallt's family go
unpunished.

But
he
could not.

The d'Anzeray, it was known, had many
sins but only one true weakness. Lust.

It would finally be their
undoing.

Chapter Two

As Nino d'Anzeray buried his face in
that fine, golden-haired pussy, slid his lips over her labia in an
open-mouthed kiss and stabbed his tongue inside her moistened
valley, he was not thinking of much beyond sexual gratification. He
was not the sort of man to dwell with tenderness on any woman. They
were there for rutting with him and birthing babes. And this
delicious one— his brother's wife— was currently coming in his
mouth. Her sticky juice trickled onto his tongue, and he laughed
huskily, flicking the tip of it deeper inside her cunny so that she
squealed and bucked her hips, an aftershock quivering through her
just when she must have thought her climax was over.

"When you're done down there, Nino,"
his brother, Dom, grumbled somewhere above him. "The rest of us
would like a turn today. Must you drink her dry?"

He ran his tongue over her pussy lips,
gathering more nectar, ignoring the complaints of how much time
he'd taken.

She drew her knees up, still panting
hard, and he planted a kiss to her vulva. Cedney had one of the
prettiest, tastiest quims he'd ever fucked, and it always
fascinated him that she'd spent twenty-one years disguised as a
man. He could only conclude the people where she'd lived must be
blind and stupid. Fortunately for them all, Dom had come along,
seen her and then, instantly realizing the truth, had swept her up
on his horse and brought her home with him to join their collection
of wives.

"Nino," another brother exclaimed,
"move aside and make room for someone else. You've had long enough
with the new wife. You must be exhausting her."

So he finally got up, wiping his mouth
on his sleeve. Cedney didn't look too tired, he mused, watching as
she welcomed Dom down on her, his big cock impaling her wet pussy
while it probably still trembled from Nino's expert
tongue.

Yes, he knew it was expert. This was
not merely false pride. He'd been trained by some of the best
whores his father could buy, and he happened to love the taste of
pussy juice. Never could get enough of it. He glanced across the
hall and saw another wife, Aelfa, kneeling between his eldest
brother's legs and sucking his cock heartily. He strode over and
got down behind her. Sometimes, being one of the youngest, he had
to push in or lose out of the feeding, he mused.

Hands gripping her hips, he tugged
them upward and back slightly, then tossed up her gown to reveal
that lovely smooth backside. She did not halt her cock sucking as
he fingered her anus, then licked her glistening labia. Aelfa, who
always enjoyed a good spanking, wriggled her arse, teasing him, so
he gave her what she desired a few times with the flat of his hand
and looked up at his brother's face. Salvador was a keen spanker
himself, and his eyes gleamed hotly to see what Nino
did.

"Again," his eldest brother mouthed as
he caressed Aelfa's beautiful auburn hair.

So Nino spanked her bottom until it
blushed. It must have increased the greedy speed and tugging of her
mouth on Sal's shaft, for his brother groaned, tipping his head
back, ready to spill. Quickly Nino mounted the wife from behind,
filling her moist pussy with a swift penetration. Only a few
strokes later and he spilled, joining his brother in that pleasure,
spending deeply inside their wife.

* * * *

Antonino was one of the youngest
bastard sons of the notorious warrior Guillaume d'Anzeray.
Sometimes even Guillaume forgot the order of birth and would say
"Nino" was the very youngest. When the others argued that he was
wrong about that, their father would reply, "Well, he acts
it!"

Nino had grown up being teased and
tormented by his brothers, and loved and spoiled by their mother.
All of it in equal shares. He got away with a great deal, and any
punishments he suffered rolled easily off his back, but he was
constantly in a competition to win his father's approval and his
brothers' respect. By the age of one and twenty he was a young man
of merry wit, hot temper and a reckless impulse. Nothing he did, as
his father would observe, was half done.

One by one Nino had watched his
brothers find wives for the d'Anzeray harem until there was only
himself and the eldest brother Salvador left who had not
contributed. But he did not mind being one of the last to wed. The
brothers shared their bounty and so he was not left out. Besides,
he was not shy about taking what he wanted, when he wanted
it.

Of course, having so many wives to
share amongst them, all the brothers thought they would be immune
to the pangs of love. Their father had assured them this was the
best way— by sharing their brides they would never be envious of
each other, or possessive of their women. For Guillaume d'Anzeray
believed that when a man fell in love with one woman he became her
fool and a danger to himself. After all, look what happened to him,
as he would remind his sons.

He had taken a mistress purely to
satisfy the sexual needs that his icy, pedigree Norman wife would
not, but then that mistress turned out to be so much more than a
simple bed mate. She was a hot-tempered, passionate wench, who
quarreled and fought and insulted him through the birth of seven
bastard sons. Always she had blamed him for yet another babe in her
belly— as if she had no part in it. But somehow they could not keep
away from one another. He always returned to her arms and she
always welcomed him, even when she'd previously thrown half the
contents of her cottage in his wake.

Whenever he talked of their mother,
Guillaume would say that they had remained together as if tied by
chains that cut into their skin. Only her death had separated them
and Guillaume was just as angry about that as he was about the way
she had made him fall into that hapless, heedless, unmanly state of
love with her.

"Your mother," he would mutter, "was a
mouthy, obstinate, beautiful, frustrating bitch. She forced me to
love her against my best interests and then she died.
Ingrate!"

So Guillaume had assured his sons that
by taking seven wives to share they would never suffer the pain
that he had known. No resentment, he said, could flourish between
them, and there would be no fighting to endanger the unity of the
family. The children born of these unions could belong to any
brother and thus they were all fathers at the same time. All seven
brothers protected the women and the children, so that if one or
two of them had to be away, the others were there to be father and
husband.

In the beginning it had
seemed like a very good plan.
In the
beginning
.

But Nino had seen his brothers'
fondness developing for certain brides. He knew which woman was the
favorite of which brother, although they all virulently denied it
and insisted they shared their attentions equally. Annoyed by their
foolishness in succumbing to love, Nino was determined that when
his time came to bring home a bride he would not fall foul to the
same mistake, but would share without qualm, without favoring. His
father, he had decided, was right. Love was a game for fools. It
sapped a man's strength, made him vulnerable, and distracted him
from his own survival.

Well, it wouldn't happen to
Nino.

* * * *

She entered the tavern late in the
evening, when the crowd was rowdy and drunk. Of course the cards
had told her a d'Anzeray would be there— a young fledgling. He
would be her weak link, her way into their fortress.

Jesamyn had traveled a long way to
serve her vengeance on the brothers who once ransacked the village
in which she had lived, killing her mother and twin sister. At last
she was about to succeed.

Occasionally she wondered what she
would do once her task was complete. There would be an emptiness in
her life without this purpose, but so be it. When those seven
thorns were plucked from her breast, she could rest at last. She
might learn how to sleep as other folk did, and not feel any longer
this pain of grief and a duty unfulfilled.

She smiled when she thought of that
monk with his rotting insides. Well, he was one she would not need
to bring to his end, as it was coming for him soon enough. In the
meantime she had amused herself by conjuring an erection for his
manhood— an erection that would not recede. The evil monk would
know the discomfort of a wooden shaft for days, until she felt
inclined to relieve it with another spell. If only she could make
those appendages fall off altogether. Alas, she had never yet
succeeded in that.