SECRETS OF THE WIND (6 page)

Daval had dropped to his knees beside the fountain and had buried his beardless face in the wench’s lap, his actions leaving nothing to the imagination. The girl’s hands were in the young man’s hair, holding his head to the juncture of her thighs, and one of Daval’s hands was squeezing the girl’s breast as though testing a melon for ripeness.

“By the Goddess,” Ruan whispered and realized the girl—what the hell was her name again?—was staring straight up at him, a knowing smile stretched across her practiced mouth.

As he watched, the girl put one hand to her free breast and circled the nipple with her index finger. She plucked at the stiff nubbin then put the finger to her mouth to wet it before returning it to her breast.

Ruan felt his groin tighten and wasn’t even aware that he had put a hand to the thick bulge between his thighs.

Daval was showering kisses up and down the wench’s thighs and up her belly. His lips locked onto one dark nipple and seemed to stay there an inordinately long time as the girl lowered her hand to her cunt and played with herself there.

Ruan groaned. Her eyes were on him, but her hand was between her legs, her hips arched upward as Daval kept on suckling her breasts—first one, then the other.

Watching the wench lowering and raising her hips, catching his breath as Daval reached down a hand to place his fingers where hers had been, Ruan began to breathe so quickly, so shallowly, he began to feel light-headed. The pressure of his own hand against his cock had increased and at some point, he had wrapped his fingers around the throbbing head.

He stared into the brazen hussy’s eyes, yet he did not see the jaded, older-than-the-ages smirk that steamed from the wench’s gaze. Instead, he saw Chastain’s lovely green orbs looking back at him with hunger.

He increased the speed of his hand, tightening and relaxing only a little, tightening and relaxing even less as he pulled upon his shaft. The friction had brought sweat to his brow.

“Chastain,” he whispered, feeling the itch beginning deep inside his belly and spreading downward through his cock.

The wench opened her mouth and ran her tongue over her lips, wetting them as Daval flung himself over her and rammed his young shaft to the hilt inside her. Even from the distance from which he watched them, Ruan could hear the grunt of satisfaction from the girl and the moan of pleasure from Daval.

Rocking the wench back and forth as he strove for his climax, Daval was unaware his oldest brother was watching him rutting like a stag in heat. Nor was he aware that with every stroke he took, Ruan took one in harmony.

Shifting his gaze from the wench—what the hell
was
her name?—Ruan stared at his little brother’s ass. The muscles contracting and expanding as he pumped away at his midnight lover. He knew the exact moment Daval delivered his release for Ruan’s was close behind. So violent and so unsatisfying, it brought tears to the heir-apparent’s eyes.

For over an hour Ruan sat slumped at the window. Masturbation was frowned on by the priests, and though he had done it far too many times as a youth, he had not indulged that wickedness for several years. A warrior had no need to take matters into his own hand when there were numerous wenches about with greedy hands and even greedier lips.

It was Chastain
, he thought, as he finally pushed himself up and staggered to the bed. It was the thought of her luscious body that had driven him to such shamefulness and he knew—one way or another—he would have to satisfy the lust that roiled within him each time he thought of her.

Chapter Five

“He knows what you are about, Your Majesty,” Chas warned as she was being dressed by the queen’s ladies-in-waiting the next morning.

“Oh, he thinks he does, but when you slap him silly for attempting to seduce you this afternoon in Viridian, he will be beset with confusion,” the queen replied.

“Slap him?” Chas gasped. “Milady, I could not…”

“Oh, hell, yes you can! The boy is accustomed to having any woman with whom he comes into contact jump into his bed the moment he grins at them. They throw themselves at him whether he appears interested or not. To my knowledge, Ruan has never been turned down. He’s had more bed partners than his four brothers combined! Now a woman who makes him work for it will garner his interest quicker than one who simply splays herself down for his taking.”

Chas winced at the image. “So I am to push him away when he tries to…”

“No,” the queen drawled. “You are to slap him as hard as you can. Believe me when I tell you he will take that as a challenge and come after you with all his ammunition. It’s time he did the hunting instead of having the bird dropped in his lap!”

Long after the queen and her ladies-in-waiting had left her room, Chas stood at the window and stared down into the opulent courtyard of Sciath Keep. Danny Brock had told her the palace was magnificent, but his description paled in comparison to the reality.

“A copper for your thoughts.”

Chas turned at the sound of Ruan’s voice and smiled demurely at him. “I was thinking how lovely your home is,” she told him.

He came to stand beside her, looking past her. “My mother orders her gardens like she orders her children. One blade of grass, one twig or burgeoning shoot that does not conform to her sense of arrangement will be cut, or plucked or bent until it does.”

“Are her children so easily bent?” she asked softly.

Ruan turned to her and reached out to drag the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “This one isn’t,” he answered and lowered his head toward her, but Chas stepped back, putting space between them.

“Have you been outside today, Your Grace?” she asked, going to the bed to take up the shawl that had been left for her use. “Will I need this?”

The heir-apparent shrugged. “Viridian is on the coast so it might be wise to take it,” he answered. “My mother picked out your horse and the clothes you are to wear in Viridian.”

Chas swirled the shawl around her shoulders and reached for her reticule. “I am ready, then, Your Grace.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes slightly narrowed, then walked to the door. “I’ll meet you in the bailey,” he said. “You do ride?”

“Aye, Your Grace, I do,” she said. She wanted to ask why they would not be taking a shuttle, for Viridian was a good twenty miles from Sciath Keep, but he was already through the door, his boot heels ringing on the polished marble of the corridor.

Ruan shoved his hands into the pockets of his britches as he stomped down the hall.
So
, he thought, a muscle working in his jaw,
the chit was going to play hard to get
. Well, that was something new. But it certainly hadn’t been in his plans for the day. Just staring at her had given him a rock-hard erection that needed easing and he had no intention of riding all the way to Viridian in that condition.

Lucia, the Spáinneach maid who at that moment was cleaning his quarters, had offered herself earlier. If she was still there, he knew relief was but a fumble away.

And the dusky, doe-eyed beauty was still in his quarters, her shapely rump in prominent view as she bent over his bed, rearranging the coverlet. She glanced around as he came into the room, kicking the door shut behind him.

Ruan’s hands were already on the buttons of his fly, working through them with speed and purposefulness. Lucia smiled at him and turned her back, bracing her hands on the side of his bed as he stepped up to her, pushing her down over the edge of the bed with one hand as he continued to work his fly with the other.

Pushing the skirts of the servant’s gown up her back, Ruan freed his cock from the restraints of his britches even as he nudged Lucia’s feet farther apart with his booted feet.

With the Spáinneach beauty’s rounded ass in the air, Ruan shoved his cock into her cunt with more force than he intended, for she cried out. He mumbled an apology—which surprised him since such behavior was not normal for him—then slid one hand up her back to grip her shoulder as he began thrusting into her.

Closing his eyes to the ebony hair of the woman rocking beneath him, Ruan replaced it with the pale gold of Chastain Neff’s long braid. Instead of the scent of harsh soap and furniture polish that clung to the servant, he imagined the delicate scent of gardenia that he had smelled on Chastain. Instead of the guttural grunts coming from the body under him, he replayed the soft sighs that had issued from Chastain’s lips as she lay unconscious after he had brought her to Sciath.

Ramming himself into Lucia’s willing body had always satisfied him, but at the moment, he was straining to come and having a problem doing so. She was tight enough still to give him pleasure and accommodating enough that he had nothing more to do than smile at her for her to drop to her knees before him. Well-trained in the arts of a whore, Lucia’s lips were talented and her mouth was a wet, warm cavern that suckled better than any he’d ever known. Perhaps it was that muscle rather than the nether one he needed.

He pulled out of her and stepped back. “Suck me,” he ordered.

Lucia didn’t question his command but sank to her knees and turned around to face him. She reached for him and took him into her mouth. Wrapping her lips over the throbbing head of his cock, she looked up at him through her lashes as her experienced tongue lathed his straining flesh.

It was pale hair he wrapped the fingers of his hands into. He rocked his hips against questing lips that were not painted scarlet red but rather tinted a sweet shade of coral that needed no artifice to make them delectable. His hands moved through coarse strands of hair, but in his imagination that hair was silky soft.

The servant drew Ruan’s cock down her throat until the tip of him could feel the slight protrusion of her uvula scraping along the frenulum. His breathing was harsh, quick, but the satiation he sought seemed just out of his reach. He groaned, needing something he wasn’t getting and not understanding why.

Lucia reached between Ruan’s spread legs and cupped his balls, working them gently. Tugging lightly, cupping then releasing, she slid her middle finger to the slight indention at the base of his cock and pressed upward.

Ruan had started to sweat, beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead and upper lip. He felt overheated, in need of a bath, but he kept at it, striving for a release he’d never had trouble having before now.

It wasn’t until Lucia slipped her finger into his ass that he exploded in her mouth. But the satisfaction he normally felt was not there, and when he pulled away from her, he hung his head, drawing in shallow, unfulfilled breaths.

Lucia never seemed to mind not receiving her own satisfaction. She swallowed his cum and turned her head to wipe her lips on the shoulder of her gown. Remaining where she was, she looked up at the prince, awaiting his orders.

Ruan gazed into the servant’s black eyes and knew a moment of shame that was so unlike him he flinched. He could not stuff himself back into his britches quickly enough, his fingers flying over the buttons. Turning his back on the kneeling girl, he hurried to the door and yanked it open with enough force to wrench his right wrist. Cursing at the sharp pain, he nearly ran down the corridor, walking so quickly he stumbled a few times.

Chas looked up to see the Gaelach prince striding toward her. His eyes were cold, his jaw set, and when he passed her without a greeting, her eyebrows shot up. She knew rage when she saw it, and the man who grabbed the pommel of his saddle and vaulted atop the prancing stallion’s back was bristling with that raw emotion.

“Milady,” the head groomsman said, offering Chas a hand up.

Frowning, for she would be required to ride sidesaddle—a position she neither enjoyed nor looked forward to—she accepted the groomsman’s hand and put her foot in the stirrup, clumsily propelling herself up into the saddle and hooking her right leg between the pommels on either side of the seat and balancing herself, centering her weight through the right thigh.

“You don’t like riding sidesaddle,” Ruan snapped.

“I prefer not to,” Chas replied.

“You want to ride like a man,” the prince taunted, “but that’s rather hard to do in a frilly skirt like that, eh?”

Chas lifted her chin. “I’ll do well enough with the sidesaddle, Your Grace.”

“If you fall your ass off, don’t expect me to stop and pick you up,” he told her and kicked his mount into motion.

Chas sat where she was for a moment, and then looked across to where a horse awaited a rider. She pointed to the stallion. “Is that horse prepared for someone?”

The groomsman frowned. “It is one of Prince Ruan’s horses. We never know which one he will prefer to ride and…”

Before the groomsman completed his explanation, Chas was off her horse and striding purposefully toward the prince’s roan stallion.

“Milady!” the head groomsman complained as he watched in disbelief while Chas reached up, grasped the pommel and pulled herself into the saddle. Without giving the groomsman another look, she clucked to the stallion and set it racing after its master, who had a fair-size lead.

Ruan glanced to the side as the thundering hooves overtook him. He blinked—recognizing his own beast—then looked up into the steady eyes of the woman sitting astride it, the skirts of her gown tucked up so a goodly portion of her shapely legs were showing. He arched an eyebrow at her but said nothing, merely kicking his mount lightly in the ribs to make it go faster.