Spellbreakers (32 page)

Daria nodded, looking slightly faint.

“And you trust me not to harm you?”

She nodded.

He breathed deeply. “Your confidence is an offering I
value. I may give you pain, since you seek it, but I will do nothing that can
harm you. Because you know this, you will take the gift of pain that I give you
with trust and grace. This is our deal.”

****

Something in his voice reminded her of the formal
words of welcome that Ingri had spoken before leaving them alone in the house.
She guessed that these words were a ceremony of sorts, a ritual, and she
wondered why such a ritual existed among the elvren customs. She suddenly
longed to know more about it, but not now.

She nodded again, and her head felt light on her
shoulders.

She had just relinquished control on her most intimate
parts, and most potent sensations. She felt a sort of fatalistic resignation
come over her as Ljung’s palmed her breast and twisted her nipples hard between
thumb and fingers. It already hurt. She sighed and threw her head back, blissful
tears escaping from her tightly closed eyes.

Then Ljung stood up, looking absurdly tall and
daunting in the flickering orange light coming from the deeply-dug fire place
and started rearranging things around the room as if he meant to invite guests.
He made order all over, sorted some things out of their scattered dinner
remains, put everything else out of sight in a corner, and then pushed one of
the low tables that furnished the room close to the fire.

 
He built up the
fire to a fine blaze, and even lit a few candles.

The table was carved hard-wood, rather heavy, perhaps
a yard long and wide, and half as
much high
. Ljung
arranged a thick heavy layer of pelts on it. Then he beckoned to her to come
close. She went to him in silence, with her eyes down.

He sat her on the table and kissed her neck and
shoulders with enormous tenderness, so much so that Daria began to wonder if
there had been a misunderstanding, and right when she was almost on the point
of uttering a clarification on her request, he sank his teeth into her neck.
She yelped and reached a hand out, startled, and stopped just short of pushing
him away. Slowly she laid her hand back on the surface of the table and took a
deep breath. He looked at her and nodded.

“Quick thinking.
Good. I
don’t need to tie you, then, do I?”

Daria hesitated then shook her head. She had tied
Leal, and enjoyed every minute of it, but now after all a slight shyness came
over her, and what was worse, the thought of how long it would take was almost
unbearable.

But, as it turned out, Ljung settled her uncertainty
by gently tickling the very tip of her clitoris. It had not been touched yet,
not really, and the contact, so unexpected and direct, was unbearable. She
snapped her legs shut, gasping.

“Mh,” he said, with a stern expression. “I see.”

He went away and took one of the several coils of rope
that the elvers had brought for them to use on the glaciers.

He pushed her down until she lay with her back on the
table, and tied her wrists together over her head. Then she heard small sounds
as he pulled on the rope and moved it around, but she could not see what he was
doing. Not knowing was delightfully disquieting. He went round the table and
kneeled between her legs, and the rope tugged at her wrists, pulling her hands
down over her head and the edge of the table. When she gave a small whimper the
pulling stopped, but the tension did not abate. There were more sounds, and
then the rope imprisoned first her left ankle, tying it to the nearest table
leg with several turns, and then her right ankle.

Finally, he stood up and looked down on her, with some
satisfaction.

“Well, it must be said that it was worth the trouble
if only for this view,” he whispered.

She didn’t answer. She was caught in a rage of
contradicting emotions, excitement at the wantonness of it all, fear that she
might do something utterly silly and inelegant and disgrace herself in his
eyes, fear that she might not be able to take whatever was coming her way with
dignity, and would end up sniveling like a babe, and begging him to stop.

She had never realized how brave Leal was in bed until
that very moment.
 

“If I had known you fancied this kind of thing, I
would have visited our worthy cook and begged for a whole root of this,” said
Ljung thoughtfully, gingerly rummaging in a bowl of spices and herbs that had
come with their dinner. He picked up a thin slice of a yellow fibrous root that
Daria had noticed earlier for its completely unknown strange piquant taste. She
wondered what he meant to do with it, and became mildly amazed when he came to
kneel between her legs.

“It is a fine thing for playing
here
,” he said
quietly, touching her anus, and Daria jerked in her bonds. “But this is too
small of course.” Daria almost relaxed, and right then he carefully lay the thin
slice on her engorged, exposed clitoris.

Nothing happened, and she began to wonder what that
was all about. “You will not move,” said Ljung, evenly, without any particular
emphasis. “I will be seriously disappointed if you do. I am sure you will
command yourself.”

He stood up and moved back somewhat, out of her field
of vision.

After perhaps one minute, a glowing heat began
spreading in her clitoris, pleasant at first, like washing herself in very warm
water, and then suddenly and ruthlessly agonizing. She whined urgently and
jerked again, hard. Even tied she had enough latitude of movement for a fair
sideways lurch. The little slice was dislodged. She panted heavily with relief.
Ljung came back and looked at her with reproach and something that Daria, in
her befuddled state, could only imagine was contempt. She shrank in her bonds,
whimpering.

“I thought you were tougher than that, girl. I was
wrong, I suppose. Oh well.”

Daria seethed with anger and shame. The dart had gone
right home. She was not so naive as not to perceive his game, but she was too
proud to let it go. She shook her head fiercely from side to side and spread
her knees wider, inviting.

 
“Again?” asked
Ljung.

She nodded frantically. “Please,” she wanted to say,
but the word stuck in her throat.

He will do nothing that can harm
, she thought wildly.
That is the deal
.

That is the deal, and I do believe him. I do trust
him.

And right there and then something inside Daria gave
way, a kernel of impenetrable diffidence that had always kept her
apart
,
even from Leal. She realized that she had never wholly trusted anyone before,
and for that reason she had never allowed anyone to be in control of her, not
even Leal. She had always been afraid, deep down, of ending up wounded and
brokenhearted. And in that very moment a frail germ of trust blossomed inside
her like a strange new flower, as if a wintry spell of wariness and
circumspection had finally broken.

She looked into his dark eyes and nodded. “Please,”
she whispered.

Ljung put the slice back in place, and the heat
quickly spread in her flesh again, biting hard and deep. She closed her eyes
and choked down a grating sob as her flesh burned. Not moving was one of the
hardest things she had ever done, a labor of pride, pride in the completeness
of her abject submission, pride in her own strength, pride in his approval. She
could not think this through. It was too twisted. She endured doggedly. Minutes
passed. Ljung caressed her thighs and watched her for a while, then fingered
her slit deep, pushing the burning sliver of flame on her clitoris with his
thumb. She strained on her bonds, trembling, but she uttered no sound, and she
did not move away. She did not move an inch.

****

She had never been more beautiful. She was a strong
woman. Not heavy like a man, of course, but in the strain her legs and arms
were corded and sculpted like a boy’s. Even her belly was taut and carved with
muscle lines. The fading shadows of her bruises hardly marred the purity of her
skin.

When she settled somewhat in the pain, he let go of
her and collected a thin scarf from his open back-pack. He bound her eyes, and
walked back to the table. There was still a bowl of snow and cream, slowly
melting, but still freezing cold. He picked it up, walked quietly back to her
as she lay, panting slightly, still straining, still unmoving. He bent down to
kiss those gorgeous thighs, and felt her shudder at the unexpected contact.
Then he flicked the root slice off her clitoris. He saw her beginning to relax,
her belly heaving in a deep breath, but before she could breathe again, he
poured a trickle of creamy snow on her sex.

****

Daria cried out,
then
strove
to bite the cry back down. She could not tell if the freezing cold was water,
ice or even steel. She whimpered
,
overwhelmed by the
sharpness of the feeling, which was even harsher in her blindness. She felt her
slit opened with two cold fingers, gently, and more of the fiery cold stuff
trickled right inside her. She shuddered hard, striving to stay still. The cold
was making her sex almost numb. She felt it trickling down her more secret
folds and valleys. The cold was almost painful now.

She trembled. She endured. And she was compensated by
the sublime gift of his kiss, lips, and tongue when he came to claim the cold
stuff back with his mouth. He licked deep inside her, drinking the melting
coldness and her juices. No burning, it was as if the fiery heat of a minute
earlier had never been. No paralyzing cold, just the perfection of his licking
tongue. She whimpered again, in pleasure this time, spreading her legs wide to
open herself to him entirely. Then with a yelp, she felt the cold touch again,
nudging her labia and making its way in, right inside her. Not a trickle of
pouring cold but a butting, solid freezing sensation. She realized it was one
of her very own wooden dildos, chilled. She breathed fast and let it slide
deeper into her vagina. She had never felt its size so sharply. In a way she
had never perceived so intensely that something alien was inside of her, mating
to her most intimate flesh, grinding in it, thrusting and seeking, seeking,
seeking the place where her pleasure would brim over. She moaned deeply,
searching for deeper thrusts.
 
And then
cold touched her anus, too. She almost cried again. She thought it’d be too
much, to be so taken both ways. A deep desperate whimper tore her throat as the
second dildo made its way inside her relentlessly. Her anus heaved and gaped,
frantic to be rid of the freezing intrusion and finally settled around the
swiftly warming shaft. She stayed absolutely put, breathing quick shallow
breaths. She felt completely stretched and completely full, and she was
helplessly bound, immobilized.

This is it
, she
thought vaguely.
This is what I needed.

She felt tears wetting her blindfold. Not tears of
pain, just emotion. She felt his mouth on her clitoris, his tongue touching
gently the tortured skin, and the pleasure took her entirely, wave after wave,
until it was too much, too much, and she jerked and cried out. Then he pinned
her thighs against the heavy table, and pleasured her again and again until she
begged in earnest, sobbing like a child.

****

He let go of her when he heard her voice breaking.
One
day, if we are spared, I will take her beyond this,
he thought, full of
dark bliss at her struggling helplessness,
but not yet.

He slowly pulled the wooden phallus from her vagina,
careful not to hurt the delicate flesh between the two hard dildos, and
finally, finally gave in to his own need and took her. Her flesh was still cool
from the snow, its muscular embrace more perceivable than ever. He sank in her
slick softness and felt her stirring and clasping. The hardness of the dildo in
her anus butted against the underside of his shaft; its outside end touched his
balls. Her body was wholly changed from earlier, cool and warm, hard and yet
liquid, soft and all-embracing. He thrust inside her, pounding harder and
harder until she cried again and again, pleading for respite or for more he
could not tell, and with that thought his climax came over him, drowning his
senses for one long, perfect moment.

****

Much later, she lay in his arms by the fire, on a bed
of strewn pelts. They were both spent, as if they had run a long way. Daria
thought vaguely that it would be better to move to the big bed in the other
room, where Leal was sleeping alone.

She didn’t want her waking up on her own and feel
betrayed. But she was so tired and so comfortable, and she just fell asleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Leal lay in bed next morning staring at a beam of
early sunshine that crossed the room, tinged yellow, blue and green by the
stained glass of the window. Dust motes danced in the light, changing color as
they traversed the different rays. Leal stared at them wising she could
disappear in the light. Fade.