The Tournament (8 page)

"Oh, no," Ruby whispered. She began to writhe and twist. "Don't touch me, please don't, I don't want to!"
 

The hand still around her neck tightened. Just a bit.

"I hate you!" Ruby cried. "Go away!"
 

"You hate me?" The groom released his cock so he could force two fingers inside her sopping cunt. "You're begging me to fuck you!"

"Don't touch me!" Ruby slapped at him. "I didn't mean it!"
 

"I think you did," the groom snarled. He yanked her legs apart and pushed them so wide the muscles of Ruby's thighs stretched and burned. "I think you want it bad."
 

"You're hurting me," she whimpered, scrambling away. "I hate you!"
 

"Keep telling yourself that." He crawled up her body, dragged his rock-hard cock through her wet pussy. "But you're going to lie here and take my cock, aren't you?"
 

Ruby flailed when he entered her, twisting and squirming until he took a tight hold on her throat again. It was exciting, the pressure and the danger. She panted through it, pinned on his cock, subject to his violence. He took her.
 

"Stop fighting," he snarled. "You know you want it."
 

"Stop," said Ruby. She squeezed out a tear, and felt a trickle of real fear as it tracked down her cheek. "Please, just stop."
 

"Tell me how much you love it." He slammed into her, deeper and deeper at every thrust. "Say '
thank you'
."
 

"No! I won't!" Ruby whined as he drove deep. "You can't make me."

"I'm going to shoot my cum so deep inside you, you'll never be able to clean it out." He flexed inside of her and rotated his hips, buried to the hilt.
 

"No," wailed Ruby. "Don't do that. Anything else. On my breasts, on my belly, I'll suck you off—"

"I'm coming," he hissed, pumping into her. "I'm coming inside of you right now."
 

He rolled away after he came, with a wheeze that faded into a sound of anguish. Ruby picked the straw out of her hair and washed herself quickly with the cooling water, then knelt at his side.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"What's wrong with me?" asked the groom, meeting her eyes. "I deserve to die, don't I?"
 

Ruby frowned. She stroked the groom's forehead. "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought it might ease you to act out a forbidden fantasy, but perhaps I have caused a deeper anguish. That was not my wish."
 

"I don't want to want
that
," he said. "I don't. I don't want it."
 

"You do," said Ruby. She touched his flaccid cock and watched it twitch. Not natural. Not something she could have done before, in her old life. She had pushed him. "But I forgive you. I accept you as you are."
 

The groom began to cry again. "How?"
 

"How?" Ruby repeated. "Because I was willing, and I think you knew that." She smiled faintly. "I have done harder things, and liked them less, since I put on my bracelet."

"Aspirant." The groom took her hand and squeezed it. "I don't know what to say."
 

"Be good to your lovers," said Ruby. "You have a fine cock, and you knew just how to make me come."

"I will." The aspirant tried to sit up, looked around the stable. "I can't go back to the celebration. And I can't say I'm glad for what just happened. But—"
 

Ruby waited. When he couldn't finish the sentence, she tried. "Have I done you a service, today?"
 

"You have."

"Then something has been accomplished." Ruby fetched him the bucket and a clean cloth. "Can I leave you?"
 

The groom nodded. "I hope you win many beads."

"I do, too," said Ruby.

The next day, after the doctor had finished his examination and begun rubbing a fresh coat of blessed ointment into her aching cunt, he said, "The last Trial was hard on you."

"It was," Ruby agreed. "And something strange happened."
 

The doctor massaged more blessed ointment into her ass, then unhooked her feet from the stirrups and let her sit up. "Why don't you tell me about it?"
 

"One of the Palace grooms fucked me three times in a row. He grew hard in my cunt, with his cum still hot inside of me."
 

"That's not strange," said the doctor. "You are beautiful and you have a hot cunt."
 

"You are the only other man I have ever known to fuck like that," said Ruby. "Again and again without pause. I thought it was magework."
 

The doctor nodded. "It is."

"The groom wasn't a mage." Ruby hesitated. "I think could have made him hard again, a fourth time. And again after that. I would have, if he'd wanted to."

"Ah," said the doctor. "I see."
 

"He couldn't control his urges," said Ruby. "He used me so hard that he wept afterwards."

"So hard that—" the doctor couldn't say the word. "He will be executed."

"No. Let me explain—"
 

"If you will not name him,
all
of the grooms will be executed," interrupted the doctor, his voice like ice. "An aspirant has the right to leave the Tournament at any time. Her choice is sacred. Our laws are
sacred
."

"
You
fucked me on this table, while I was not at Trial, in a spirit of vengeance," snapped Ruby. "Is the King's brother not subject to the King's law?"
 

The doctor paled. "If you wish, I will confess my crime and accept the punishment."

"No," Ruby said impatiently. "That was the best fuck of my life. You may have me whenever you want, as long as the desire lasts."
 

"When you say things like that," said the doctor, "I get hard."
 

"Then you should take me right now," said Ruby. "How do you want me?"
 

"You're so eager." The doctor touched himself through his robe, outlining the shape of his erection.

"Mmm," said Ruby. "Show it to me."

The doctor paused. He stroked himself, slow and firm, and his voice turned sly. "What about the groom? What did he look like?"
 

Ruby licked her lips. The doctor touched himself with pride, like a showman. She loved it.
 

"I'm not telling you," she said. "But I think you should take off your robe and let me see that beautiful cock of yours."

The doctor took off his robe and tossed it aside. His cock stood high, skimming his flat stomach, hard and ready. "I won't forget," he said. "But I'll fuck you before I hunt him down. And after, too. I'll fuck you on his grave, and I won't feel sorry at all."
 

"I love having sex with you," said Ruby. "You've got a gorgeous cock, and you know how to use it. But I'd like to see you lose control, for once."
 

The doctor smiled, bemused. "And you're the one to push me over the edge?"
 

Ruby scooted until her hips just cleared the edge of the examination table. She spread her legs. "I think you're going to stick that big, hard cock in me right now and fuck me as hard as you can," said Ruby, touching the tip of her index finger to his cock as she spoke. "I think you're going to be selfish and greedy and rough."
 

"Is that what you think?" The doctor smiled, taunting her, but he took hold of his cock and steered it toward her cunt. He was standing, she sitting, but the height of the table was—of course—perfect. He'd planned for situations such as this one, for this exact position.
 

He entered her in one deep thrust.
 

"Now fuck me," Ruby crooned. "As hard as you can."
 

He slammed into her so hard that Ruby cried out in pain.

"That's right," Ruby whispered. "Don't stop."

"I won't." He fucked her hard and fast, urgently.
 

"Don't fight it," Ruby said. She wrapped her legs around the doctor's hips, her arms around his back.
 

The doctor barked out a laugh, hammering her. Sweat beaded on his brow but he didn't falter, or even pause. He churned into her like a statue brought to life, hard and unfeeling.
 

"You could go all night, couldn't you?" Ruby marveled.
 

"Don't make me." The doctor closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. "Let me come, Ruby."

"I'm not done," said Ruby.
 

The doctor groaned, jolting her with each brutal thrust. His upper lip curled.
 

"Let me come," he said again. "Please."
 

"I want your cum in me." Ruby moaned. "Right now. Squeeze it all out. That's right."
 

He held her tight as he pumped his seed into her, and let go slowly, his eyes on his pink, raw cock as it emerged from her cunt, glistening and trailing ropes of milky fluid.
 

"That was magic," said Ruby, as the doctor collapsed onto a tent stool.

"Strong magic," the doctor panted.

"That's what happened to the groom," said Ruby. "I drew it out of him.
He
couldn't say no."

The doctor winced. "What a terrible thing."
 

"Terrible?" Ruby asked. "Was it so bad as that?"

The doctor smiled up at her. "No," he said, a spark in his eye. "It was hot."
 

"But the groom," said Ruby. "Doctor, how did you heal my cunt?"
 

"How do you think?" He waved his hand and left a trail of sparks in the air. "You had been torn apart, Ruby. I had to remake your cunt from nothing. From your blood, and from my memories."
 

"From nothing?" Ruby shuddered.

"That's not the important part," said the doctor. He trailed a finger through her sore, sticky pussy. "There's magic in Morrow, but outside of the Tournament it's too diffuse to access. Pulling power from a stone or a tree would spend more magic than it would yield. But the magic of Morrow rises for the aspirants, concentrates inside of them. So long as you reside in the Pavilion, you carry more magic than any mage."
 

"And it's in our fluids," said Ruby, remembering the mage and her jar, the aspirants who'd been bled. The handsome young man. "It's in the oils of my sex, and in my blood."

"That's right. And normally, the moment you quit the Tournament, the magic would flee. It would return to the land, richer and stronger than before, amplified by your fucking. That's why our women are fertile and our grandparents hale."

"But not me," Ruby guessed.

"The magic is sealed inside of you," confirmed the doctor. He sat back again. "Strong magic. The flesh of your cunt, made of your blood, knit by a man who had fucked you. You're dangerous now, Ruby."

"I must leave the Tournament." Ruby fingered her bracelet. Earlier that morning, the Steward had given her a bead of milky opal, full of hidden fire. She'd passed the Fourth Trial, and would be summoned to a Fifth, if she didn't quit. "It's not fair to stay."

"No, Ruby. You can't leave," said the doctor. "You must win."
 

For the Fifth Trial, the Steward escorted Ruby and two other aspirants to a sumptuous chamber where, he explained, the King's courtiers often gathered of an evening.
 

"A queen serves high and low alike," said the Steward. "She is equal to all."
 

The courtiers ranged widely in age and attractiveness, but all of them were bored. And they were not alone: for the first time, Ruby saw the royal concubines. They moved among the courtiers with languid grace, beautiful and sensual and proud.

"There are more of the concubines than there are of us," said Ruby to the other two aspirants.

"And they are more beautiful than we," said Petal, a curvaceous blonde.

"But I suck better cock," said Onyx, a dark-skinned beauty.
 

Though Ruby counted a half-dozen concubines, that left many men unattended. She approached those, hoping they'd accept her attentions, but three in a row pretended not to see her. A fourth offered her a pill, which she refused.
 

When Petal received the same offer, she was quick to swallow it.

"Do I please you?" Petal asked. Her pupils dilated, swallowing her pale irises, and she stroked her bare breasts, round and ripe. "Do you want me now?"
 

"I want you to imagine that a stallion has mounted you," said the courtier, a slim, sharp-chinned man with a thin mustache on his upper lip. He reclined in a comfortable armchair. "The stallion thinks that you are a mare, but you are not. You are only a woman, forced to bear his rutting."
 

Petal flushed, and then began to scream. "No! It hurts!" She clutched her pussy. "Make it stop! I'll die!"
 

"Now it is a dragon inside of you," said the courtier, "and his cock is like a spiked mace."

Ruby froze.
 

"Imagine those spikes tearing you apart," said the courtier. "The dragon is lusty, and holds you tight with sharp talons."

The dragon had not been lusty. He had been cold. And he'd held her with elegant hands the color of dried blood, not talons. But Ruby held her tongue. She would not give this foul courtier her knowledge.
 

Petal fell to the floor, clutching her pussy with both hands. She wept, her face turning an ugly red, and curled into a ball.
 

Nobody came to her aid. Even Ruby hesitated. If she walked the girl back to the Pavilion, or even to a servant, she might fail the Trial.
 

"See something you like?" said the courtier, fingering the lacing of his breeches.

Ruby dropped down on her knees next to Petal. "You are lying on the floor," she whispered. "You feel calm and peaceful. You are unhurt, and nobody is touching you."