The Scholomance (68 page)

He grunted,
still deep within himself.

“Thinking of
better days?” she asked, heading for the risers and the door.

He roused as one
from sleep. “Better? Nay, but of ages long past. My best days yet lie ahead.”

“How unusually optimistic
of you.”

“What knowest
thou of my character, child? I am Hope incarnate.” He watched her climb the
risers and when she reached the fifth, he said, “We all keep hidden a part of
ourselves. For some, a larger part than others. Thee, to make example. Hast
thou ever been wholly honest?”

“To Connie.”

“Ah.”

“And you?” She
turned around, but the dais was empty. She had enough time for a flare of
unpleasant surprise and then his breath was on the back of her neck, his hand
sliding around her waist. She threw an elbow uselessly into his ribs and
succeeded only in scraping herself against his hard skin.

“To thee,” he
murmured, nipping a trail down the side of her throat to her shoulder. “Ever
thee.”

“Let go of me.”

“Thou hast no
one to return to.”

“Is that what
you thought? That I’d throw myself at you just because I had no one else? I’ve
been alone most of my life! I’m not afraid of it or you! Get your hands off
me!” she snapped, shoving at them.

“Dost thou even
comprehend how much of chivalry I have shown thee? And ever dost thou ask for
more. Perhaps I am done with indulging thee.” Always, his grip remained gentle,
if unbreakable. His biting kisses stayed tender, his voice calm and playful.

“I don’t belong
to you, Kazuul.”

“Oh, but thou
art wrong upon that point.” He picked her up as easily as a doll and swung her
around, first slamming her against a pillar and then crushing his own weight
atop her. “Thou art mine,” he growled, nuzzling under her chin as she
struggled. “My pet and plaything. Mine own. My property. My bitter wine to sip.
Mine alone.”

He kissed her,
his mouth closing hard over hers and forcing it wide. His tongue invaded. She
bit and he withdrew with an exaggerated yelp, only to seize a fisthold on her
hair and wrench her head back. He kissed her again, savagely now, his breath
searing her so that she actually choked on it, and this time when he drove his
long, pointed tongue to the back of her throat, she didn’t fight. Back and
forth, miming the act of sex, he invaded her with his kiss before withdrawing
to lick roughly over the leaping vein in her neck. Finally he pulled back,
grinning, and she swung her arm and slapped him. The shock of the blow radiated
up to her shoulder, but had no effect on him. She slapped again, and cut her
palm on one of the short nubs of bone protruding from his jaw. He caught her
wrist then, licked the wound, and ground his hips aggressively into her at the
same time. He shuddered, sucking blood, then chuckled against her hand and
finally looked at her.

“If thou dost
escape me now in sleep, I swear thou shalt waken well-used,” he said. “I am no
gallant knight to come and go at mine unattainable lady’s urging. When met with
an enemy, I conquer. When met with flesh—” He lifted her thighs around him,
lunging in close to snap his teeth right before her face. “—I rend!”

“And when met
with a harmless idiot of a man, you threaten to eviscerate him and then throw
him out of the mountain! I haven’t forgotten that, I haven’t forgiven you,
Kazuul, and I’m not staying!”

He laughed at
her and kissed her again.

A mindslap hadn’t
done much when she’d used it before; a hand slap, even less. Mara reserved her
struggles, kicking when she thought it might do some good, as Kazuul slowly
settled atop her, but her mind was elsewhere, observing her posture from every
angle in the Panic Room, circling his mind for a crack in his defenses,
searching in furious futility for some sign of weakness.

But oh, his
hands were rough and sure and they kneaded her buttocks, moving her against the
solid bulge of his erection the way he wanted, the way he knew she wanted too. His
teeth were careful as they scored across her sensitive skin, teasing as much as
tasting. He knew he could make her want anything he did and this was precisely
what made it torture.

“Come to my bed,”
Kazuul rumbled, grazing his teeth across the shell of her ear. “Thou hast been
in every way save one mine own. Now I mean to mark thee, to fill thy sweet cunt
at last, again and again. I am thy Master. I will take a Master’s privilege.”

She tried to
scratch at his thick neck and felt a fingernail break painfully deep. She tried
kicking and could only drum her heels against the back of his legs. Kazuul
relished the gyrations insolently, growling his pleasure until she finally
stopped, and then giving her a little snap as if to get her going again. “Let
me go,” she said, only said.

“Thou hast my
permission to fight,” he replied, pulling her makeshift toga up around her
hips. “For all that thy fight is a lie. I smell the fragrance of thy woman’s
flower and thou art more than willing. Welcome me to thee, my Mara. Art thou
not wearied of half-satisfaction?”

“Half-satisfaction
is still damned generous where you’re concerned.”

“Liar,” he said,
unruffled, and swept her legs suddenly up, resting her ankles on his shoulders.
“I give thee greatest pleasure only, but greater still remains when I am at
rest within thy cradle and thou takest me as a woman must. Come, the mask of
thy outrage has been well-torn by days and nights of rapture. Give to me all
liberty or give it not, but I shall have thee and thou shalt howl with joy.”

“Why are you
even bothering to ask?” Mara snapped as he bent once again to cover her throat
with his biting kisses. “You don’t have to ask to use your whore!”

And after
everything she’d done to him, that at last struck home.

He recoiled,
shocked inside and out, to stare at her. Oh, he made a swift recovery, but when
it was there, it was sure for real. He shoved away from her, letting her half-fall
down the pillar to land heavily on her feet, and snarled, “How dare thee! If thou
didst lay beneath ten thousand men, still thou art no whore! And I have never
taken thee as such, nay, nor ever named thee so! Ever hast thou been my
precious and most favored, and I have taken nothing I was given and given
gladly!”

“I’m not giving
it to you now!”

His brows
lowered slowly, pulling the smaller of his horns out of place, cutting deep
lines of shadow across his face. She began to wonder if she’d pushed him too
far. And then she had to wonder exactly how.

“How many more
days dost thou believe thee canst bid me dance to thy tune?” he demanded. “Thou
sayest these things to stab at me and I am stabbed. Behold, I do bleed!” He
swept a claw across his heart, opening a short gash without any sign of pain,
only that thunderous stare. “Yet some things lie beyond endurance. I will not
always suffer thy fits of whimsy in good humor.”
 

“This is what
you call good humor?”

“Art thou broken?”
he inquired curtly as the lips of his self-inflicted wound silently closed. The
blood remained, rapidly drying to a dark crust on his thick hide. “Art thou
impaled screaming upon mine hungry cock? Or art thou whole and belligerent
before me in thy fragile mortal flesh? Dost thou not realize how readily I
could take what I desired?”

It was not the
first time he’d put the question to her in some form or another, dangling it
like a well-baited hook, daring her to bite.

For no
immediately apparent reason, Mara found herself thinking of vampires, those
pesky old vampires which an Irishman had so firmly rooted in Transylvanian
folklore to the ongoing contempt of its native cabdrivers. In particular, she
thought of that delicate point of vampire myth known as the invitation. A
vampire couldn’t simply enter his victim’s home, they said. He had to be
invited in. Once done, he could always return at his leisure, but first, by
trickery or seduction, he had to get that invitation. ‘I could take you anytime
I wanted,’ Kazuul kept saying, always to the most defiant Mara, all but daring her
to cry, ‘So do it! Take me and see what happens!’

Only she never
had.

Mara scooped up
the hanging swath of her improvised clothing and hiked it high over her waist. With
her hand, she parted the folds of her labia and gave herself a good rub, enough
to show him moisture on her fingers, enough to let him hear its greedy kiss as
well as see and smell. “Take a good look,” she told him. “Because a look is all
you get.”

He had, in fact,
been looking—a hot, hungry, perfectly frustrated stare—but his eyes snapped up
when she said that, blazing so as to stain his craggy cheeks the same sickly
green color as his eyes.

“I am going
right up those stairs and you can’t stop me,” she said. “I’m going to fuck
every man I see for, oh, at least a week. I’m going to work my way through
every demon in the mountain. I’m going to start with Horuseps. I’ll probably
finish with him too,” she added, letting her toga drop as she headed for the
stairs. “He was that good.”

“None shall have
thee!” he snarled—really snarled, spitting flecks of saliva and showing the
white spike of every fang. “My mark is on thee well!”

“I guess we’ll
see, but I’m betting I can make him forget that. I did once.”

He lunged past
her, slamming his fist down on the next stair hard enough to crack the stone. “Thou
art not above my law!” he bellowed.

“I don’t
recognize your law,” she replied. “You were nothing to me but a quick and easy
tumble before bed, and what did I tell you in the very beginning?”

Every breath
that came out of him was a snarl now, and it hurt her retinas to meet his eyes,
but she stared into them anyway and showed him no fear.

“When it stops
being fun,” she said, “I quit.”

“Dost thou think
thee can but walk away?” He caught her, not by the arm now but by the throat. The
power in those hands which had lifted her so lovingly and effortlessly only
moments ago was still there, scarcely constrained. “All backs bend to Kazuul.”

He’d taken her
voice. She made a thought—
Not mine
!—and drove it at him like a fist.

He roared, not
with pain but with anger, a pure white anger that lit up his mind from the
inside and illuminated in absolute detail every brick and mortar of the
Fortress that housed him, every shuttered window, every forgotten crack. Mara
was in before the battle-cry had finished. There wasn’t time for exploration,
but she made good use of what moments she had, sweeping across the alien
territory of this long-protected stronghold and out again with every access
point committed to memory. He never knew she was there.

“Thou didst tell
me once thee desired not a gentle hand,” Kazuul spat, and drove her to the
ground. “Thou wilt not have it!” He yanked his belt open, tore the plates and
leathers away, and freed the enormous brand of his cock to raise in his fist
above her.

Mara reached up
and closed her hand over his.

He hesitated,
but hardly enough to notice and surely not sufficient to defuse his wrath. Expelling
a snarl, he grabbed her hair and pulled her roughly to her knees.

She squeezed,
sliding her fist up to the grip just below the swollen head of him, where she
latched and lightly sucked. Kazuul hissed in a breath and hesitated again, but
his claws remained firmly knotted in her hair, easing only a little as she
licked a long, slow maze of whorls all down the underside of his shaft to
tongue playfully at his tight scrotum.

“Is this truce?”
he grumbled, while she hummed against him.

“No.” Her fist
moved slowly up and down the spit-slick length of him. He was hottest where his
skin was thinnest; his balls, swollen hard as stone and as heavy, burned her
mouth, forcing her to lick in tiny sips. “I’m still really mad at you.”

His claws
relaxed a little more. She pulled back, opening her jaws to the straining point
to take the entire head of him into her mouth, bobbing awkwardly as she tongued
him. She looked up into his slitted eyes, the feral snarl just beginning to
wane, and withdrew to massage her face. “Shall I Malleate myself and take it
all?” she asked.

“Never!” he said
sharply, and then pulled his claws entirely, as if to make up for his tone. He
rested his hand just so on her hair and closed his eyes, murmuring, “I’ll have
thy truth alone, Mara. Always.”

She went to
work, both hands on him and moving in opposing circles more appropriate to
grinding pepper, but gentle for all that, while she licked and sucked at his
glans. Now and then, she’d pause to knead and roll his swollen balls over her
palm, using her other hand to glove his cock and pump it fast, or lubricate the
hot shaft with complicated passes of her tongue, but he required little
variation. She could feel his muscles tensing. Soon, he was making the coarse,
bestial breaths that meant he was about to cum. He tried half-heartedly, once,
to pull her up, but didn’t fight her when she closed her lips around his slick
head and sucked the cum as it sprayed into her wet mouth. His claws dug at her
scalp as she licked up every drop. She swallowed and he swore, vehemently but
quietly, then gave her a little push away from him.

“Return to my
chambers,” he said, snatching up his loincloth.

“No.”

“Thou art not
here as a student of the Scholomance.” He threw her a black, somehow
reconciling sort of glare. “And thou art no longer bound to its laws. Thee
risks no expulsion under my protection, and no tribunal.”

“I’m not here as
your sex-slave either, and I don’t have any other pet goats for you to
threaten.”

He spat a curse,
then shook his head, his teeth bared in frustration. He dressed, cinching his
belt with curt, vicious-sounding jerks, glaring at the wall and thinking too
deeply for her to hear. Finally, he said, “Return then, when thy wanderings are
ended. Sleep out each day with me, and I shall make no more demands upon thy
nights.”