“You’re generous with your compliments, my lord.”
A scatter of down floated from her shoulders and hair as he stroked her. “And you’re beautiful in your scowls and feathers, mistress.”
They stared at each other for several moments before Louvaen dropped her arms and heaved herself out of his embrace. Ballard’s heart sank into his stomach, only to slam into his throat when she slid onto his lap once more, this time astride, her knees and thighs gripping his hips in a tight clench. His arms automatically rose to wrap around her back and help her balance.
“Louvaen?”
Graceful hands, with their calloused fingertips, cradled his face. Her thumbs slid across his high cheekbones, avoiding the bruises and smoothing the pale skin and dark scars etched down to the bone. Her eyes dwelt on every line and angle. He almost turned away, wishing for one moment he possessed his son’s handsomeness instead of the ruined visage he wore. Yet Louvaen looked upon him with those smoky eyes that grew dark with desire. It defied reason, but she wanted him in all his broken glory.
One thumb slid lower, pressing into the soft flesh of his lower lip. Louvaen leaned into him, face so close to his, she almost spoke into his mouth. “I’m glad it was Gavin who bit his tongue and not you.”
Ballard’s eyes lowered to half mast. He held her hips, massaging her upper thighs through her heavy skirts. “Why is that?” he murmured.
“Because then I couldn’t do this.” She caught his lip between hers and suckled.
Ballard moaned and almost heaved them both off the bench. Louvaen’s low, seductive laugh fluttered along his teeth. He opened his mouth; her tongue swept in and filled him. She kissed him deeply, exploring every curve and hollow, the edges of his teeth and smooth sides of his cheeks. Ballard’s lungs burned with the need for air, but he refused to pull away, content to suffocate as long as Louvaen worked her magic and fucked his mouth for all she was worth.
She halted, small breasts swelling above her bodice with her shallow pants. Her pupils had dilated until her eyes looked black in the rush light. High color painted her cheeks and reddened her swollen lips to the shade of a summer plum. Ballard’s cock swelled harder against his breeches. She was so beautiful he could come just from looking at her. She leaned forward, and his fingers dug into her legs, anticipation of her plundering his mouth again making him shiver beneath her.
Louvaen surprised him with the gentlest kiss. She smiled and stared into his eyes, her hands still holding his face. “Do you know when I’m alone in my bed, I pleasure myself by imagining your mouth, the touch of it on mine. Your taste. The slide of your tongue against mine.”
“’Ods’ teeth, Louvaen!” Ballard swore. He bucked, grinding his erection into her skirts in a futile bid to reach the sweet spot between her legs. Instead, he shoved against yards of bunched wool and the barrier of his own breeches. He was a blink away from ripping the dress off her and taking her until she screamed his name. “Witch, you would torture me.”
She silenced him with another kiss, this one like the first—deep, thrusting, reducing him to a mindless creature begging for mercy. He literally mewled when she broke the kiss once more. “No.” She breathed almost as hard as he did. “I would please you.” One hand left his face to glide down his neck and pluck the lacings at his throat. She scooted back until she perched precariously on his knees. “Take off your bliaud.”
She didn’t need to ask twice. Ballard whipped the shirt over his head and tossed it to the side. The buttery’s chilly air drafted across his overheated skin, and his nipples tightened—tightened even more at Louvaen’s avid gaze. His hands settling back on her hips to anchor her more securely into his lap. “I don’t suppose you’ll be doing the same?” The delicate skin below her collarbones beckoned. He bent to swipe his tongue across the pale expanse of flesh, pausing to nuzzle the rounded curve of one breast above the edge of her bodice.
Louvaen’s chest rose and fell with her quick breaths. She curved out of reach of his mouth, and he growled in protest, trying to draw her back. She tugged his hair. “Stop,” she scolded in a thin voice. I can’t think when you’re doing that.”
He smirked. Good. The gods knew whatever coherency remained in his thoughts had been boiled away by the hot blood coursing through his veins. “What are you thinking?” he asked. The trailing tail of one of her bodice laces dangled in front of him. He caught it in his teeth and jerked in the hopes of unraveling the knot. He bit through the lace when she dragged both of her thumbs across his nipples.
Her tongue sliding between his lips cut off his guttural cries. He groaned into her mouth, his tongue battling hers as her fingers joined her thumbs, rubbing and lightly pinching until his nipples throbbed and his cock pulsed in time to the hard pounding of his heart. Some distant part of his mind thanked Louvaen’s foresight in clipping his claws short, otherwise he would have shredded her skirts and raked bloody furrows into her thighs by now.
His gasps bounced off the stone walls as she abandoned his mouth for his cheek, lips lingering on each scar and runemark until she reached the edge of his jaw and the soft skin beneath. At her wordless coaxing Ballard tilted his head. Louvaen nuzzled him, the sound of her slow inhalation tickling his ear. “Mmm, I like the scent of witch hazel,” she whispered. She rubbed her nose into his hair before slipping lower. Ballard’s eyes slid shut, and he sucked in a breath as she licked and nipped her way down his neck, pausing to swirl her tongue in the hollow of his throat.
Louvaen wiggled back, resting her weight across his upper thighs instead of his groin. He gripped her hips to steady her. Her busy hands drifted over his ribs and down his abdomen, played with the narrow trail of hair bisecting his torso, and finally halted at the ties holding his breeches closed. Ballard’s breathing quickened to shallow pants. Nimble fingers made short work of the ties. Both sighed—one in relief, the other in approval—when Louvaen slipped her hand inside and freed him from the garment’s confines.
Ballard opened his eyes and caught her staring at him as if he were a dessert she’d devour in one gulp. The salacious smile curving her lips promised he’d enjoy being consumed. He grumbled a weak protest when she slid off his lap to kneel between his legs. His back arched as her fingers curved around him, stroking lightly over the taut skin of his shaft. The hot cravings pooling low in his belly rippled throughout the rest of his body. He tried to talk, to ask her what further torment she planned for him, but he’d lost the ability to do more than gasp her name in staccato breaths. He forgot how to breathe and speak when her head lowered. He watched her open her lips and take him inside her mouth: first the swollen head of his cock, then the upper part of his shaft. Her cheeks hollowed, and she sucked, hard.
The buttery’s stone walls were thick enough to withstand lengthy sieges and rough storms, its door a slab of wood so dense it had taken six men to hoist it into position for attaching to the walls. Sound didn’t escape such formidable buffers, and a good thing too as Ballard’s hoarse cries resounded in the chamber itself. He buried his hands in Louvaen’s silky hair, loosening strands from her braid so they drifted over his knuckles. Her head slipped back and forth against his palms as she took up a rhythm that had him struggling not to buck himself off the bench. He wanted to gaze at this erotic tableau, of her pleasuring him with lips and tongue, one hand curled firmly around the base of his cock to control his involuntary thrusts, but his eyelids refused to cooperate. He closed his eyes, lost to the sensations that sent fire coursing through his limbs.
Louvaen’s hand resumed its play across his chest, teasing his tight nipples between her fingertips. Ballard whimpered and massaged her scalp with restless fingers in wordless approval. He’d not indulged in this particular delight in centuries. Isabeau would have bitten clean through if he’d tried such a thing with her—not that he’d ever been tempted by the idea, even without the imminent threat of dismemberment. There had been the court prostitutes, women of impressive stamina and talent who offered any service for the right price. A few had done this for him in the shadowed corners of a castle corridor and once in the king’s armory. Efficient and skilled, they’d brought him to orgasm in a matter of moments, his cock barely out of their mouths before they were gone, hands stretched out to take coin from another knight for the same service.
This was different, so very different. The same act, similar position, less skill, and Louvaen was no prostitute with the goal of turning profit. What she did to him pleased her as well. He heard it in her soft murmurs, felt it in the way her hand slid over his ribs to rub and press as if she enjoyed the texture of his scarred flesh beneath her caress. She made love to him with her mouth, leisurely savoring him. All the sensation washing through his muscles swelled in his groin until he tugged on her braid to make her stop. He slipped out of her mouth with a soft pop.
Her gray eyes glittered black, her breath warm as it gusted over his glistening cock. She stared at him, flushed and puzzled. “Am I doing something wrong?” Her question held more challenge than concern, as if she dared him to answer in the affirmative.
Ballard managed a thin laugh. “No, my beauty. What you’re doing goes beyond right. Too right.” He ran trembling fingers over her hot cheek. “If you don’t stop soon, you’ll be catching the mettle in your mouth.”
The wry look she leveled on him suggested he was a trifle lack-witted. “Foolish creature,” she admonished and lowered her head to nip at the inside of his thigh. He jumped. “That’s the best part.”
She took a breath and sheathed him in her mouth again, taking him deep until his tip touched the back of her throat. Ballard fully surrendered to her, groaning her name, his hips twitching with the need to thrust as she drew down and then up along his shaft. His eyes rolled back and his knees lifted as he held her head. “Can’t hold,” he said through teeth clenched tight together. “Gods, Louvaen. Now!”
He came hard, his back arching away from the wall until his spine audibly cracked and his seed pumped out of him in quick spurts to fill her mouth. Her cheeks and tongue flexed as she swallowed. His fingers twisted elfknots into the loose strands of her hair and held on until she’d emptied him.
Louvaen slowly pulled away, pausing to kiss the flushed head of his softening cock. Her lips, swollen with her efforts, curved up into a small, satisfied smile. Reduced to a wreck of leaden muscle and melted bones, Ballard fought to catch his breath. “You’ve finished me.” He slurred the words.
She rose to her feet, her grin as unapologetic as her smile had been lascivious. “I believe that was the idea, my lord.” She leaned closer to kiss him, sucking on his bottom lip.
