City Of Splendors

Lips against her ear, teeth biting into her lobe. Isabel winced, gasping. She knew Marius loved seeing a little pain on her face, the way her slender, black eyebrows drew taut and her lashes fluttered close, and her eyes squeezed shut. Isabel threw her head back. Her long, black hair sprayed in an arc across the bedsheets like a stroke of ink across paper. His hands found her hair. He wrapped his fists in her hair, pulled her back, rode her hard in his bed. It was always

his

bed, even if it was her bedroom, her curtains, her clothes on the ground, her candles guttering in the breeze of their breath, her hair in his hands and her thighs spread, back arched, shoulders up, taking every inch of him. Somehow Marius was always the center of his own world, around which Isabel orbited. Somehow, he always got what he wanted from her.

They'd been fucking for an hour. Isabel had come home after her evening's training to find him waiting for her in her bedroom. He didn't say a word. He never had to. She knew exactly what he wanted. She gave him a quick flicker of a smile, tucked her hair behind her ear and slipped to her knees, her fingers finding the buttons of his trousers, lifting free that formidable cock of his, wrapping her pink lips around it, and getting to work. That was how it'd started tonight. That was how he'd taken her the first time they'd met.

"Merciful Tyr," Isabel moaned, under her breath, barely audible beneath the clap and smack of his hips crushing up against her own pelvis, riding her like some unbroken mare, gripping the glossy black locks of her hair with one fist, the other arm looped around her waist, palm finding the curve of her hip-just there, just where the little angle of her hipbone moved and swayed like the grip of a saddle when she bucked against him, groaning, grunting. He held her as if he owned her, around her hips and by her hair, leveraging the sheer power of his body to beat against her cunt with every roll of his hips. He was savage. He was an animal. Isabel couldn't ever say no to him. Most of the time, she couldn't say a thing at all.

Marius pushed her down into her pillow without a warning, his palm spread around her skull, forcing her cheek down. His hand left her waist. He gripped her shoulder, pushed, pinned; he pulled himself free of her cunt, and her hips and thighs gave a shudder of relief in the brief respite of his bestial hammering, but not for long. His thumb pressed between the curves of her shapely ass, pushing insistently against her winking pink rosebud. It was all the warning he gave her, and some small comfort, for the momentary anticipation only made his entry all the more difficult.

"Wait, Marius," she moaned. She tried to look up from her pillow, but saw only his palm holding her face down, and the shadow of his eyes from beneath the tangle of blonde hair that hung before his face. He was beautiful when he was like this, but in a cruel way, the way a sword could be beautiful by the puissance of its edge. All the better to cut deep. He smiled at her by way of response, wrapping his hand around his cock to guide it against her ass. His lips spread in a grimace, white teeth clenched, set, pushing into her without a care for her readiness. Isabel wailed. She thrashed. Her cries came low and deep from some place inside her core, a throaty and hard moan that became a scream, lilting and melismatic, a long crescendo of mixed agony and pleasure.

It was exactly what he wanted out of her.

For Marius, there was always the predatory pleasure of sex with Isabel, this exquisite creature, six years his younger and infatuated with him. This was just another way of expressing ownership-sodomizing a lady knight, as if there were something unspeakably sinful about fucking a paladin up her ass. He was never particularly gentle about it, and tonight was no exception. His fingers gripped down into her shoulder. There was power there, and muscle, underneath the sweat-slick skin, when her shoulders fluttered and tensed, and the muscles in her body fluttered and flexed like the ripples in a pond, but it was not enough. Invariably, inviolably, he was always the stronger, and his dominance was sacred, and the bed an altar on which he claimed her.

Marius buried his cock inside Isabel's ass, hilting himself to his hips, savoring the dark sensation of her insides squeezing desperately around him, the slick and shuddering, trembling, wet little slaps when he fucked her in short, hard thrusts. And Isabel squeezed her eyes shut. A bead of sweat clung trembling on her forehead between the creases of her brow, and her lips hung open on the edge of a strangled scream that never came, and her legs were wet with her juices flowing for an orgasm that never came.

Marius grunted. He pushed. He stabbed with his hips, fucking her in short thrusts. She felt him shudder and tense. She felt his nails dig into her skin. She felt him release, hard, first with a long guttural groan that came from somewhere within his sculpted stomach and ended through clenched teeth-and then, at last, the familiar spray of his seed, thick ropes of his cum pumping forth in copious jets, overfilling her. She gave a pliant sob when he pulled out, her pink pucker winking and squeezing, pearlescent trails of his cum trickling down the curves of her ass to pool along the valleys of her inner thighs, smearing unpleasantly when she closed her thighs together, and lay there, panting, in the afterglow, like a serpent in the sun.

Eventually, he let her hair go. It fell into a thick tumble of black curls and tresses, settling into unkempt whorls around her face. Her body was still cooling, still glowing with sweat in the lamplight when she heard the rustle of bedsheets and clothes, the pop of a cork, the

tap-tap, tap tap tap

of a bottle being emptied. Isabel turned to see him out of bed and half-dressed, downing a tall glass of her best wine as if it were water. She was still dazed. Her breath came hard and labored, and Gods did her body ever complain. She could hardly move her thighs or lift her rump from the bed without a shock of soreness striking through her nerves like a bolt of pain.

She'd heard of the idea of a pleasurable ache, the good soreness that came after proper sex, but she'd never experienced it. Not with Marius. With Marius, it was always a soreness he inflicted on her, the claw marks of a rutting wolf, and it stung and glowed red underneath the euphoric pleasure of a fading orgasm that lay, like a blanket, over her senses.

"Marius? Are you leaving me so soon?" she asked.

He finished the wine and glanced at her, smiling as he turned the cup over to rest on the mantelpiece, as if he'd just finished a fine meal.

"Mmm," he said, reaching for his white shirt to draw over his shoulders, and then down his body. "It's been hours, darling. You need your rest."

"Don't patronize me," Isabel said, "I'm a knight. Not some scullery maid you've taken a fancy to." Then, as if to prove a point, she managed to sit up, drawing her legs back to rest, white thighs drawn together, her arms around her knees and her legs pressing her heavy breasts back.

Marius smiled at her. He had a mirthless smile. He was always a fine looking man, but he could never smile like he meant it, ever since Isabel had first met him. When she was still a student preparing for her knighthood, she remembered reading about animals for him grinning was a way of showing off the length of their fangs. Marius always reminded her of that lesson.

"Of course you're no scullery maid. Don't be ridiculous, Isabel." He buttoned his shirt.

"Stay then," she said.

"Can't. Haven't you duties to attend to in the morning? Won't the Order notice you were gone?"

"I could always tell them I was with you. What? Don't look at me like that. I'm allowed to take a day off from time to time."

"Another night, then. Listen, darling, I truly am sorry-"

"-you're not, but I'm sensing an incipient 'but' on its way."

"But there's a reception tonight at the palace for the emissaries from Calimshan."

"-and there it is," Isabel sighed. "Skip it. Stay with me tonight."

"What, skip it? For you?" It was the wrong thing to say, and Marius knew it, but he never quite stopped smiling. Isabel furrowed her brow, staring at him with a mix of disbelief and consternation on that expressive face of hers, with her big blue eyes and pillowy lips. "Isabel," he said, "If I stay with you tonight, I won't

be

an ambassador in the morning, understand? How do you think the Lords of Waterdeep will feel if they discover I ignored my duties to sleep with you?"

"Oh, jealous, I'd assume," she said, managing a faint smile. "Or at least they'd understand."

Marius eyed her. "It isn't that you're not the worth the occasional bad decision, but you're not worth losing a career over."

Isabel glared at her.

He leaned over, kissed her. Her lips were warm and sweet, and welcoming. "Fine, you're

almost

worth losing a career over. Another night. I promise."

And then he was gone.

The door clicked shut behind him. His footsteps sounded down the hallway. Isabel was alone with her silence, in her room that did not quite belong to her, even without Marius visiting. He did that, by his nature. He always got what he wanted, but he never returned what he took, not completely. Whenever he'd come to visit, Isabel felt herself lose something, in slivers and pieces, one night after another. A little dignity here, a little patience there, a little satisfaction, and occasionally, a little orgasm. Isabel lay in bed for a while, listening to the breeze sighing against her curtains, the sounds of Waterdeep rumbling in the distance like a storm that was always on the horizon.

She needed a bath.

***

Stone floor; stone basin; steel mirror; water under her bare feet; the smell of lilac soap and peppermint oil. Isabel washed her hair at a stone basin in a corner of her bath. It had become a ritual after Marius visited: first, a bath, and then she'd wash her hair. She lathered her hair with soap, rinsed warm water. Her hair hung in wet, black streams down her face, along her neck, clinging to her shoulders. She tried to wash out the memory of Marius's hands in her hair, but the memory always lingered, somehow. Even now she felt the tug of phantom hands, the memory of fingers coiling in her hair, pulling her head back like reins as he rode her, or pushing her head down between his thighs.

They'd met a year ago. Isabel was a young paladin, freshly inducted. She'd just sworn her oaths, received her sword and her armor, devoted her life to the service of Tyr. She'd dreamed of knighthood since she was a girl, imagining herself atop a white horse, dressed in the raiment of glory and wielding a bright lance. Isabel was always a romantic, and so when Marius appeared in her life, she was all too ready to receive him. She'd met gentlemen and nobles before, and Marius was neither. He introduced himself to her at her graduation ceremony, with a few glasses of wine and some words whispered in her ear. An hour later, they'd vanished together into some shadowy corner of the barracks, where Isabel bit down on her lip to keep from moaning, while his hand roamed her white thigh, and his hips rocked against her own.

A few hours later, he was gone. That was his way. He'd appear when he wanted something of her, and Isabel found herself unable to ever refuse him. Then he'd finish, and there were vague promises of another meeting and suggestions of his affection, but she was never truly gratified. Isabel was a romantic. She'd built high walls around her heart, yet she'd always thrown a rope for Marius to climb. He'd come, and he'd take something from her, but he'd never stay.

Isabel regarded herself in the gray reflection of her square, steel mirror. Her long, midnight hair fell down to her shoulders in wet curls that clung to her skin. She had pale and fine skin, not quite like porcelain, but soft enough to the touch. Finely sculpted shoulders, long and shapely limbs, with a good pair of legs made strong with her training, and full hips that supported a heart-shaped rear. Her eyes were soft and blue, but a little sadder than she was accustomed, shadowed a little darker, with a few more creases than she'd prefer. She was a fine enough looking woman, with curves to fill out any dress, if she bothered to wear something other than a suit of chain-mail and a steel breastplate.

Put your shoulders up, she told herself. She'd been too lenient with Marius, too welcoming. More and more, she found herself less and less satisfied at the end of their little trysts. He seemed to leave more often, in more of a hurry, and take more of her with him. She'd intended to confront him sooner or later, and rehearsed the encounter in her head again and again.

Marius

, she'd say,

we need to talk

. Or,

listen, darling, you can't keep coming and going as you please like this.

Or, simply,

no, I don't want you tonight; let me be

. These imaginary conversations never ended well in her mind; usually they never ended at all. Isabel knew that sooner or later, she'd have to behave like a big girl and confront him.

Her bedroom felt strangely empty, as if Marius were peculiar by his absence, but he'd made his decision. He had work to attend to, surely. The duties of an ambassador were no less urgent than the duties of a knight, somehow. He was off rubbing his elbows with Calishite emissaries, no doubt, and drinking Calishite wine, and trying to wheedle a Calishite signature on a treaty of some sort. Why did she even bother with him? He could have given her the dignity of an hour of her time, but as soon as he'd finished with her, he'd pulled out of her, into his pants, drank her wine, gave her that insufferable smile of his, and-

Isabel shut her door behind her. Her footsteps rang in the corridors. Night had fallen over Waterdeep when she wandered out into the streets for a little air, to clear her head and stretch her sore legs. She wore the only clothes she could afford, a simple linen tunic trimmed with red, cut broad and shallow to flatter her toned shoulders and the exquisite curves of her heavy cleavage; a plain blue skirt of linen that swished and sighed with her step.

She'd taken a day off her duties to spend with Marius, and her erstwhile paramour had all but disappeared on her after a quick romp in her sheets. Well, so be it, she thought. It was a perfectly good evening off, and she had no intention of wasting it on an absentee lover. A night at a good tavern, a few hours of music and a fine meal, perhaps a book to curl up with, and a good bottle of wine. Just so long as it wasn't Calishite wine.

Isabel hailed a passing carriage. The driver slowed to a halt, and she climbed inside.

"Are the roads to the palace busy?" she asked.

"Not especially," said the driver. "It's well past evening now. Palace's closed. No more audiences."

"What do you mean, closed? What about the reception?"

"Reception, miss?"

"The reception. There are visiting emissaries from Calimshan. At the palace of Waterdeep. Marius said-he said that he-"

And then she went quiet. The driver gave her a questioning look over his shoulder, awaiting instruction, but Isabel was just staring out the window of the carriage. A bullock cart rolled by. Someone was arguing with a merchant. How stupid she was.

"How absolutely stupid," she said. And then, because the driver was still looking at her. "There's no reception, then."

The driver shook his head.

"No emissaries from Calimshan."

The driver shrugged.

"No reason at all for that lying bastard to leave me in my own bed after he got what he wanted from me."

The driver gawked at her.

Just for a moment, just for a tiny fraction of a second, she was half-tempted to ask him to take her to Marius's home, until she realized she'd never been there. One way or another he'd always charmed an encounter out of her. The barracks, when no one was around. A room in some discreet inn on the edge of town. Her own home, when he knew she'd be there.

Isabel slipped him a silver sovereign. "Find me a good tavern. Some place decent that serves a hot meal and something hard to drink."

The driver snapped his reins, and the carriage rolled on. Outside her window, the city of Waterdeep passed her by. There were merchant stalls closing for the night, and bullock carts loaded with wooden crates; guardsmen clad in the livery of Waterdeep, red plumes and all; broad avenues that vanished into a tangle of brick houses and vegetable gardens; temples with tall steeples and iron doors; banners that hung from rooftops. And Isabel's thoughts, dark and heavy, following her all along.

Stupid of you, Isabel

, she thought.

Stupid, and naive. But you are done with him now. Move on. Get a drink. Get three.

***

Wineglass, half empty; the crackle of a fireplace; fingers on harpstrings; Isabel, at a table, beneath the light of a hanging chandelier, with a plate of dinner half-finished, downing the last of her wine. It was good and strong, and went down her throat like liquid fire.

She didn't know the name of the tavern. She didn't care. She paid the barkeep in a few sovereigns and asked for something to eat, something to forget, and some place she wouldn't be bothered. The barkeep obliged her. Isabel twirled a finger in her hair. The wine had been good to her; she was relaxing. She felt on the verge of some satisfying epiphany, something she knew she wanted, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it.

There was a young man seated by the fireplace with a harp on his lap, with which he occupied himself. No one seemed to notice him, which was all the better. He was concentrating on his music, and the music was fine indeed. Isabel listened for a while. The notes came tentatively at first, gentle and experimental, as if the musician were reaching for a song, trying to lift it out of the aether of his inspiration. Briefly his eyes met her own. He smiled, politely, returned to his harp, toyed with a chord, another, one note, another, until-yes. The note became a melody; the melody became a song.

Isabel listened. She couched her cheek against her palm and listened. It was a bright song, with a full and rich timbre; the musician's fingers began a conversation with the strings, and the strings replied in a stately language, notes weaving between the scales with its own poetic complexity. The music meant nothing at all. It existed purely for its own sake, and as she listened, she found herself engrossed in it. The turbulence of her mind began to settle.

The music drew to a close. Isabel stirred from her reverie. She rose from her seat, approached the musician, who was standing to leave. He was young-younger than her, perhaps, but surely not by much; dark haired, dark eyed, hints of copper in both; a pleasant smile, and cut a pleasant figure. He looked good. He played well. Besides, she'd invited worse men into her bedroom on a whim before.

"You play beautifully," Isabel said, "What's your name?"

"Elas," he said. "And I'm glad. I had a little inspiration."

"Isabel. Listen, Elas. If you promise not to ask me any questions about how my night's been, I'd love to invite you to my room for a private performance."

***

Tangled sheets, rustling; moans, tight and gasping; a soft, whispered 'yes,' and then, 'more;' the sound of a headboard against a wall, steady, in rhythm. Isabel pulled herself out from beneath the sheets as if she were rising from a pool of water, tossing her long, dark hair over her shoulders. Her hips swung around Elas's own. She pressed him down into the bed. He gave a small groan of surprise, and then pleasure. His hands found her hips, squeezed down, her skin soft above a layer of taut muscle, like silk over steel, and she rode him slow and hard. Her palms spread on his chest, nails dragged down. Her hips rose, fell, rode the crest and the trough of her own pleasure, the wave of it crashing against his hips. Elas lifted his hips to meet hers, the ridges and contours of his musculature flexed, straining, back arched to pound himself inside her.