Mage guardian 1, p.9
Mage Guardian 1, page 9
She stared at him with the sort of gaze that could slice through a stone fruit. Hastily, he patted himself down, until he found the tiny balls of Valor he’d purchased from Mog’s prostitutes early that morning. It had cost all of his remaining money and quite a lot of shameless flirtation, but they had given him the Valor eventually, since it was illegal for a non-Covenant to sell it anyway. Only Guardians and Adepts were supposed to trade in the stuff.
“Where did you get those?” the woman asked as he held out a hand. The Valor pieces were like marbles, glowing with a variety of intensities. Eighteen of them in total.
“Last night, you asked me if I had any,” Rune said, speaking fast. “Well, now I have some. It’s all yours, for just one carriage ride.”
Her gaze cut from the rocks back to his face. “You are a criminal. I could be hanged for helping you.”
“Yes, and you could also trade me for a bounty, too. But if you try that, I’ll let them know that your Guardian has been illegally trading Valor to commoners.” The prostitutes had taught him that this was severely looked down upon. Not a hanging offense, but something close.
He suspected, in fact, that Mog had already been caught in the act before. It’d explain why such a talented Artificer was running a carriage. Her Guardian’s indiscretion had cost her, and now she had no choice but to chase the Valor she needed, to earn back whatever rank she’d lost.
All the same, he expected more argument, but the Adept merely sighed. Under her breath, she muttered, “Ria, you fuckin’ idiot.” To Rune she snapped, “Fine. Get in. Quickly.”
He didn’t wait for her to change her mind. Rune practically flung himself into the carriage, and Lenore was fast on his heels. She slammed the door, and they started rolling away, the clop of wooden unicorn’s feet reverberating through the floorboards.
Most of the crowd’s screams had thankfully faded, but he was starting to hear a different sort of shouting. The Guardians and Adepts were spreading out to find him. And, unfortunately, his body was done fighting.
Lenore settled on the opposite bench and fanned herself with one hand. “My, my, wasn’t that just exhilarating?”
“You’re telling me.”
She breathed out and deftly unbuttoned the top of her white outfit to give her breasts a little more breathing room. He didn’t even try to avert his eyes. He was too tired to try or care.
“Like what you see?” she purred.
“You used us,” he replied, continuing to stare at the exposed flesh. “You weren’t playing lookout for Narcissa. You were using us as a distraction to help you steal—” he waved vaguely at her satchel and the green leaves sticking out of it “—whatever that is. She could have died.”
“With you around? Unlikely.” She danced a finger along the inside edge of her low-cut neckline, tantalizingly parting the fabric from the skin of her breasts. A little lower, and he’d be seeing a lot more than shadows.
“Come on. Don’t be angry, big boy,” she purred. “Let me make it up to you?”
He closed his eyes. Great, he thought, as one particular part of his body promptly declared that it, for one, was not exhausted. Now I’m horny. Could this day get any worse?
Outside, a male voice shouted, “Halt!”
The carriage stopped.
Yes. Yes, it can definitely get worse. Across from him, even Lenore went tense, the flirtatious smile dropping off her face.
“What is the meaning of this?” Ria asked. Rune could hear her clearly through the closed window leading onto the driving bench.
“Mistress, my apologies,” the male voice went on, “but we need to check your occupants. There’s a dangerous criminal on the loose, and he was last seen close to the area.”
His voice low, Rune hissed to Lenore, “Take off those clothes. They’ll recognize you.”
Her gray eyes flashed understanding, and she hurriedly began to strip off the white clothing she had used to camouflage herself among the roots of the Tree. As she stripped rapidly down to her shift, Rune threw off his own coat, and then his shirt for good measure.
All the while, Ria was speaking. “My clients are not criminals,” she said smoothly. “I would never take on such a fare.”
“All the same, Mistress—”
“That said,” Ria interrupted, speaking a bit louder now, “I do take on the occasional... private fare. If you catch my meaning. Sir.”
The man seemed to process this, which gave Rune enough time to catch Ria’s drift, and to get an idea. An awful, terrible, horrendously ill-advised idea, but one that should work all the same.
He threw off his shirt. “Kneel on the floor,” he told Lenore.
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Just do it. Trust me.”
Raising an incredulous eyebrow, she slipped to the floor in front of her bench. Rune unbuckled his trousers and let them fall a few inches down his thighs.
“Now, I’m asking this with the deepest respect,” he whispered, “but you need to pretend to be—”
“Oh,” the man outside the carriage said, finally realizing. “Well, be that as it may, Mistress, I still have to check.”
There was another pause where Ria probably shrugged. “If you want to be a voyeur, have at it. But don’t come whining to me when someone punches your lights out for interrupting.”
“I’ll, um, keep that in mind.”
Rune stepped up to Lenore, towering over her, and leaned his weight against the wall behind her bench. She shuddered, her attention on his crotch, her nose a breath away from it. He fought down a shiver of embarrassment, knowing that—although his breeches were still intact—this position was more than suggestive.
Which was the entire point.
“Just... pretend,” he said to Lenore. “Until he leaves. That’s all.”
She looked up at him. On her knees and with the tops of her breasts exposed in that tiny shift, the sight of her was nothing less than erotic and only made the situation in his briefs worse.
Her eyes narrowed, and mischievous amusement twinkled within as she cocked a brow. “Some first date,” she mumbled, before her hands encircled his legs and ran up the back of his thighs. “You’re a damn tease, you know that?”
Then she pulled.
Her face came against him, soft lips separated from his erection by strained fabric, just as the Covenant man opened the door. Rune clutched handholds in the ceiling, his head dropping, and his breaths grew heavier, becoming almost groans.
Lenore bobbed her head and made damnably wet and hot ‘mmphs’ and ‘ahngs’ with her mouth.
Slender fingers massaged the back of his thighs, squeezing hungrily into his ass. Her head kept bobbing, pressing lips and cheeks against him, still held off by fabric.
And the sounds. Those damn sounds. If he closed his eyes, the only thing he could see was her lips, round against his base as she suckled on his entire length. Trees, what would that feel like?
“Oh,” the guard blurted, “my apologies,” he stammered and slammed the door shut.
Lenore froze. Rune froze. They remained perfectly still in their strange tableau.
Hot breath washed over his hard-on. He knew she could feel his pulse through it.
“You know,” Rune said, clearing his suddenly hoarse throat. “He might come back.”
Lenore looked up at him, raising that eyebrow again.
Rune swallowed. “And we might get stopped again.”
At the front of the cart, Ria spoke with the guard once more, and the carriage started moving, rumbling off toward the Gilded Lotus. The vibrations of the road didn’t help things in the slightest, as his hips kept swaying and bumping against her face.
He waited, suddenly desperate for her to catch his drift and agree to it. Lenore had seemed like a hopeless flirt at first, but after today, at the Tree….
There was something more to her. She could nail a bolt between a man’s eyes from a hundred feet, she could escape a small army of Guardians, and she could sneak into one of the highest-security places in the world, albeit with a bit of distraction. And she had helped him and Narcissa, even saved his life. He was attracted to her, he admired her abilities, and could even admit to liking other parts of her, though he wasn’t entirely sure of her intentions yet.
Flirty, empty-brained women were one thing. But Lenore wasn’t that.
“Yes…” Lenore drawled, her hands sliding up his rear, to the upper edge of his breeches. “You’re right. We just might get stopped again.” She tugged on his underwear experimentally. “We’d better keep up the charade, then, don’t you think?”
Rune had stopped breathing. “Yeah,” he rasped. Then he gathered himself. “I don’t know. You think you can handle it?”
“Oh, I’m not sure,” she said playfully, her fingers riding his waistline, tickling his hips before coming to rest at the front of his breeches. Lightly, she toyed with one of the strings. “See, I’m not very good at pretending. They’ll see right through me, next time.”
Rune found himself smiling. He was liking this game. “Well, then I guess you’ll have to do the real thing.”
“Mmm.” She shrugged. “We could. Purely platonically, of course. After all, you can’t trust me. I’m just a double-crossing thief.” She licked her lips. “I might pick your pockets, if you aren’t careful....”
“Don’t worry. I can take you,” he said. If she wanted to see him squirm, then she had a surprise coming. He took one hand off the wall and reached into his breeches.
It had been a long day. He could use the release. And she was offering, wasn’t she? She’d been offering since they’d first met.
He released his cock from the fabric and let it loom above her face, a whisper away from her nose.
“The question is,” he said, “can you take me?”
“Uh.” She swallowed, and Rune was pleased to find he’d thrown off her game. He wasn’t about to be toyed with, and she hadn’t expected that. She must be used to toying with people.
“Well,” he said, “maybe I’ll have to teach you. You can continue by touching.”
Lenore licked her lips, collecting herself. “Like this?” she said, back to her old persona. She ran a finger up his length, sending shivers of electric pleasure through him. Rune fought the urge to groan. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, not yet.
And in that instant, his mind flashed back to Narcissa, to her kiss. He felt a sudden need to be loyal. Wasn’t she waiting for him, back at the inn?
But why did that matter? asked the logical part of him. He barely knew the girl. There was nothing declared between them. Weren’t they just allies of circumstance?
Lenore traced a finger along his hardness again, and the burning pleasure of Narcissa’s lips haunted his mind. Big mistake... that flicker re-ignited a ravenous need within him. He couldn’t deny that any longer—he was hungry. He had so much lust to burn that if he didn’t let it out, it might hollow him from the inside.
Besides, he couldn’t return to Narcissa with his thoughts lost in lust. He really had to get rid of them first.
“I think I hear some guards coming,” he murmured.
Grinning, Lenore tugged his clothing down further. His dick fell out to rest over her sultry expression.
“Well,” she said, “then we’d better get started.”
She leaned in, and the carriage rumbled on.
Chapter 10
Rune had made a lot of plans for today.
He’d visited a glassblower to make a vial to hold his and Narcissa’s blood.
He’d thrown that vial onto the Tree of Life, so that it would shatter and trigger the upgrade to Narcissa’s magic.
And then he’d fought his way free of the onslaught of Guardians and Adepts that had tried to keep him and Narcissa from escaping. There had been a few hiccups, of course, the main one being his fall into the sacred site itself, and his new ability to increase his muscle strength (courtesy of his Adept), oh, and let’s not forget how he found Lenore stealing from the Tree of Life, all while he did her the favor of being a gigantic distraction.
So, yes, some things had gone awry, some plans had shifted a little.
But perhaps the most surprising thing about the entire madcap day was the fact that, almost directly after escaping, Rune found himself on the receiving end of a blow job in a rose-shaped carriage called—aptly—the Sex Machine.
He had been exhausted up until this point, but now all his faculties were acutely aware of what was happening, and as the Sex Machine trundled casually back to the Gilded Lotus Inn—where Narcissa was waiting for him—Rune let himself enjoy the trip in every possible way.
“Ungh,” he sighed as Lenore parted her lips and took him into her mouth.
It was slow, languorous, and as much as he liked to watch her, he closed his eyes to savor the pleasure. Her tongue washing back and forth across the underside of his member... The slight, expert brush of her teeth at the bump of flesh where his head met his shaft... The warm give at the back of her throat, the pause, the faint vibration of her moan, and the unexpected push even further down her throat, all the way down her throat, until her lips kissed the wisps of hair at the base of him.
She murmured again, and he opened his eyes to see her frowning, not in an unhappy way, but the way a person’s brow drew low when they tasted the best meal of their life.
He realized he wasn’t breathing as her tongue pulsed against him, savoring the taste of his sweat and desire.
His fingers combed through her thick hair, coaxing her to continue. Then her throat tightened, rejecting him, and she pulled away with a throaty moan that made him want to grab the back of her head and shove her back into place.
He wanted to hear that noise from her, over and over, to make her gag reflex go wild until he broke into the back of her throat.
At least, he thought he wanted that, until Lenore took him into her hands, both of them.
Fingers ran up his shaft as she drank in the sight of him, her fingertips admiring every bump and fold and expanse of skin.
“Mmm, so this is what you look like,” she murmured, her voice thick with heat. “I’d been wondering....”
She kissed him, softly, on his head. He exhaled a ragged breath. He’d experienced blow jobs before, but never like this. Never like the woman wanted to taste him, to treasure him, to touch every part of his cock, to explore him, to—
Hold him. He groaned as one of her questing hands became a fist, while the other dragged his clothing all the way to his ankles, then reached around to grip the top of his thigh.
Her tight hand began to stroke, controlled movements, up and down. She kissed him again, further down this time, enveloping his head until her lips just barely brushed the shaft. When she pulled back, she let her tongue drag from her mouth, and slurped up.
“You taste incredible,” she said, the words pleasure to his ears.
Not that the sight of her was any less sexy. In that tight skimpy shift, she let him drink in the sight of her curves, the shape of her ass, the size of her heavy breasts about to spill out, and the sheer arousal and want on her face.
His grip tightened on her hair. The intoxicating smell of a woman and nutty shampoo hit him, driving a pulse of almost painful need through his cock.
Eyes roaming the sexy thief kneeling beneath him, Rune’s thoughts fell into the rhythm of her hands. While one rode his manhood, base-to-head, base-to-head, the other massaged the tender skin where his leg met his ass. He had to blink from the intensity of it. He’d never had a hand job be so simple, and yet so madly erotic.
Rune couldn’t help himself. “Oh, you’re very good.”
She looked up at him, gray eyes hooded. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Keep it up.”
While holding his gaze, she stopped stroking and licked up the entire left side of his shaft. Seeing her tongue meet his flesh made him shudder.
“How about this?” she asked.
He exhaled his pent breath as she took him into her mouth, against the back of her throat, kissing her own fist at his base, where she squeezed him. He inhaled as she drew off him, slowly, carefully—
She sucked down again. Hard.
And didn’t stop.
The fierceness of her speed made his knees give out, and they both cracked against the bench to either side of her shoulders. For a few seconds, he watched her reddened lips drive up and down his shaft, sucking in as she went down, puffing out as she pulled back.
Then he couldn’t keep his eyes open—he slung an arm against the carriage wall and leaned his weight against it, his forehead meeting his forearm. Her pace made a rhythm, perfectly timed and precise, up-down, up-down, a heartbeat of raw, unadulterated desire.
Rune groaned, struggling to focus, to keep from coming too soon. He could hold out, he knew he could, but it was supposed to be a short trip, wasn’t it? He should climax now, right? It would give him time to get Lenore there—
In the end, though, she made the decision for him by reaching between his legs with the hand massaging his thigh. Her fingertips prodded his testicles, a playful, painless flick, and then she took one of them and squeezed it, just a little.
Just enough.
“Oh, fuck,” he swore. His grip tightened on her hair as he felt the orgasm coming, a quiver starting in his balls and streaking up to the soft bits where her tongue was. She must have felt it, because she tried to cry out, her moan muffled by his cock in her throat —
She dropped her fist off him, gripped his ass with both hands, and gulped him down all the way to his hair.
He grunted, his hips kicking as the climax shot through him, drowning all thoughts in pure release, sapping with it what remained of his energy. He felt his own heat spread down her throat, then smear across her tongue and her teeth as she slowly drew his softening manhood out between her swollen lips.
With a wet moan, she laid her hands on her thick, chestnut-colored thighs and craned her head back, mouth open, tongue peeking out, eyes half-lidded with lust. The ecstasy on her face should have looked fake, it had to be fake, coming from a woman like her—but he could see no farce there. Her nipples stood hard against the shift, and there was a heat smoldering against the foot he had between her legs. His cock jumped.
