The story so far: While a guest at an English nobleman's manor, author Simon Kettridge finds himself transported to the magical realm of Phaeland, where his heroine Juliette Ravendark nearly tramples him under the hooves of her horse. After a quick ride through pouring rain, they reach a nearby village, get a room, and have crazed sex like nothing in Simon's real world. In the morning, though, Juliette has gone, leaving a written message that makes him realize he's bumbled across he path at just the wrong time, and thrown the entire plot of the novel into ruins.
* * *
I read the note from Juliette again. I remembered her laughing and looming above me, dark skin bright with sweat, body a temple to glorious passion. I looked around the common room. My mind painted it over with fire and ash and blood, demons pulling the head off the big, grim-faced bartender, a gang of orcs holding sweet blonde Leyna down and –
Fuck! There
has
to be something I can do. I invented this whole fucking world. It's exactly like I imagined and wrote it. I –
Looking at the sleek, cobalt-and-gold pen in my hand, I stopped myself.
That's right ... I wrote it.
With a pounding heart and unsteady fingers, I leaned back over the page before me and scrawled,
"As fate would have it, under the mattress of the bed Simon had so recently left, there rested a magical ring of teleportation, hidden there by none other than Krezikren the Mileblinker."
Then I capped the pen, pocketed it, and jumped up to climb the stairs, note fluttering in my hand.
At the third room on the left, I threw open the door. There stood the still-rumpled bed on which Juliette and I had screwed and screwed and come and laughed the night before. With a tight chest, I yanked up the mattress – a heavy, floppy thing that didn't want to cooperate with my search. Heaving at it, moving a bit, heaving some more, leaning in, peering, squinting because the light wasn't the greatest, and gritting my teeth harder and harder, I went over every inch of the frame and the slats and the sheets that someone – Leyna the serving girl, I presumed – had carefully tucked under the lumpy, thick bedding.
Zilch. Absolutely nothing. Certainly no magical ring that would let me teleport ahead of Juliette and tell her that she
had
to get to Vandestre by lunchtime, or the legions of Necromanata would devour the empire and all the Western Reaches in two or three seasons' time.
"Fuck."
I sat heavily to the floorboards and stared at the bed with its sweat-and-sex stains from the marathon of heavenly fucking I'd had with Juliette Ravendark the night before.
Juliette Ravendark, skin like rich loam with lighter tracings of scars along her limbs powerful and commanding atop me, kissing, coaxing, rousing me from my first orgasm to the sound of light rain on the rooftop and the crackling of the fire.
Juliette Ravendark, feeling me stiffen and swell again inside her, pulling up from our kiss to show gleeful, pure white teeth and then flick her tongue against them.
"Is that a request for seconds I feel?" she'd asked, wiggling her hips to tease a moan from me.
"Uh-huh," was the best I could manage.
"Good. Let's roll over and let me see how you run things from the top side of the saddle."
Without waiting for an answer, she hooked an arm around beneath my back and an ankle in under my left thigh, then raised and flipped us both so I was on top.
Holy
shit
, this woman's strong,
I thought. Working up my courage, I tried to pull back for my first stroke as the one in control, only to find that her other leg had encircled me too, and her arm hadn't loosened by a millimeter, and I had all the freedom of a mouse in the coils of a python.
Juliette grinned up at me, lifting my stomach with her abs as she breathed, crushing the full swells of her breasts against my pectorals.
"Do you want the reins, Simon?" she asked mischievously. "Will you ply this filly's rump with your whip, bring her to a gallop until she's spent? Or would you rather let her take you where she likes and just enjoy the ride?"
If the squeeze of her vagina hadn't been just as tight as that of her legs and arm, my ego might have spent a few moments struggling with that challenge – take her dare and be the one in control trying to please her? Or surrender to her will and leave her in charge even though I was on top? But the power of those cunt muscles and the laughter in her eyes told me she had me where she wanted me no matter how I answered the question. So I answered it the only way that would truly pick up her dropped gauntlet.
"Let's not play games, Juliette," I said. "We both know it's up to you. Do you want me to be your partner in this, or your plaything? I'll enjoy it either way, so take your pick and let's get going."
Her grin went to an easier smile, and her eyes roamed my face a moment as though seeing something to respect there.
"Let's
do
play games, Simon," she replied quietly, her muscles melting from vice-tight to gossamer all around me. "Let's."
"Hmn," I said, not yet moving. The feel of Juliette Ravendark, gentle and waiting beneath me, made me burn with power like I'd never known before.
Leaning in, I brushed my lips to hers, felt her breath, watched her eyes close with sublime anticipation. When the kiss began, it was my mouth touching and inviting, hers responding and welcoming. I dipped my tongue beyond her lips, tipped my pelvis just enough to shift glossily within her, and got a subtle, throaty hum as my reward. The tip of her tongue danced with mine, beckoning it deeper. One foot tilted to run its arch and toes along the back of my thigh.
Paradise.
I rolled my lower spine. She made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sigh. A wave of pressure swept through the vaginal flesh around my shaft.
"Yes,"
she whispered.
"More."
Kissing her harder, I worked my hips to pull back for a long, slow stroke, push in for a firm, circling grind. Her mound pressed hungrily against me in reply, the mouth of her cunt suckling wetly at my root.
"Ahh, Juli," I breathed, moving my lips to the corner of her jaw where the hot pulse of life beat quick and passionate beneath the skin. Her hand went up to the nape of my neck, forearm deliciously gracing my spine between the shoulder blades. Her other hand appeared at my waist, slipped around to the small of my back, drove lower and tighter to glide the middle finger down the valley between my buttocks, then grabbed and squeezed my ass-cheek in wide-spread, powerful fingers. With urging heels and that clutching grasp, she asked me to fuck her for real, and I answered with a lunging thrust that made her coo.
I'd made this woman perfect – perfect at everything – and now that I probed fully into her depths, she was teaching me what perfection meant.
"Faster, Simon," she murmured, her hips speaking need with their rhythmic, questing twists.
"Aim higher and loose your bolt inside me."
"Uhhhh,"
I groaned, lost in wet pleasure, sharpening my pace, feeling her accelerate with me. "Juliette ..."
The slick, splendid tides of our lovemaking rose higher. We moved in waves, in resonant, fluid compressions and expanses. A hot wind drove us toward a distant, golden shore where we would inevitably crest and then crash into foam, but for now we rode a whole ocean of sex together.
"
Nnggg
