Demon King Read online

  ELEVEN

  TRIAD

  Amiel came to her knees. She gently caressed my balls, took my cock in one hand, then leaned forward and kissed its tip. Her tongue darted across my foreskin, then ran down to its base.

  I knelt, kissed her lips, and slid my tongue into her mouth, moving it about as her tongue met mine. A thought touched me — how strange: This is the first woman I’ve kissed besides my wife in more than nine years. She made a deep sound in her throat, and her arms came around me. I laid her down on the moss, kissed her lips again, then the softness of her throat.

  Marán lay down on Amiel’s other side. “I’ve dreamed of this,” she said once more, then lifted herself on her elbows and kissed me. Her tongue swirled in my mouth, then was gone. She kissed Amiel as I had, kissed her throat as I had done, then her lips moved down again, over the flatness of her friend’s stomach, across her smooth sex.

  Amiel moaned, and her legs parted. Marán unstrapped Amiel’s sandals, moved between the woman’s legs, and parted Amiel’s sex with her fingers. Her tongue moved up and down, then slipped into Amiel. Amiel lifted her legs around Marán’s back and pulled her close as her hands went around my head, twined in my hair.

  I kissed her long, deeply, her kisses becoming more frantic as her body responded to Marán’s tongue and she began twisting. Her mouth was wet, open, gasping. I got up, touched the head of my cock to her eyelids, then moved it in and out of her mouth.

  “Now,” Marán gasped. “Now, my husband. Come love her.” She stood, holding Amiel’s legs far apart, lifting them by the ankles until her buttocks were off the ground.

  I slipped between her legs, and looked for a moment at the beautiful woman, her head moving back and forth on the pillow of her hair. Her eyes opened, held mine. I drove hard into Amiel. She shrieked, and her hands pulled at me.

  I took myself almost out of her, then hard in, again, and again, and I felt her body pulse against me, trying to turn, trying to twist, but Marán held her firmly. Her hands clawed at the moss. I jolted, spasmed inside Amiel, and a moment later she came, whimpering.

  Marán released her friend’s legs, letting them drop to the ground. I collapsed limply across Amiel, still draining into her.

  Marán lay beside us, dark eyes serious as she looked us up and down. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “And I love Amiel.”

  “Then I must learn to do the same,” I said.

  “Oh, Damastes, I hope so,” she said.

  “Now,” she said. “Come love me as I loved her.”

  Amiel protested wordlessly as I slid out of her. Marán’s legs parted and my tongue entered her wet softness. I tongued her clitoris as I put two fingers in her sex, another in her anus, and gently moved them in unison. Marán rolled under me, but I moved with her until I was lying on my back, and she lay atop me, rhythmically pushing her pelvis against me and crying aloud.

  • • •

  Amiel told me to look in the pocket of her cloak, and take out the tiny vial there. I unstoppered it, and the rich scent of strawberries filled the glade. The oil also tasted like strawberries.

  Marán lay beside her friend, limp from our love-making. I poured a bit of oil on my palm and began rubbing it on Marán’s ankles, then up her legs and on her inner thighs.

  The vial never emptied, and I guessed Amiel must have had a spell cast to make it bottomless. For a second the always-watchful soldier part of me wondered if it were possible for that incantation to be used on soldier’s canteens. I sneered, and let my fingers rule as they slid easily in and out of Marán’s body. Her breathing quickened once more.

  I massaged Amiel as well, and their bodies gleamed in the light from the gas flare. Marán rolled onto her stomach and began nibbling, then biting sharply, on Amiel’s nipples, and they were hard as tiny fingers. Amiel arched her back, pushing her breasts upward into Marán’s mouth. Marán slid two, then three fingers into her friend’s sex, curling them, caressing the inside of her body. Amiel moaned and gasped her friend’s name.

  I moved behind Marán, parted her legs, and pushed my cock into her.

  “Ahh,” Amiel gasped. “That hurt.”

  “S … sorry,” Marán managed to sputter. “Didn’t mean to bite. But you don’t know what he’s doing to me. Oh, Damastes!”

  Her fingers worked more swiftly as I ran the head of my cock in and out of her sex. Blood pounded harder and harder against my temples and I yanked myself free and spattered across Amiel’s stomach. Marán, breathing hard, got to her knees, her hair sweaty, pasted to her forehead. She touched a drop of come, and then drew a horned circle, the ancient symbol of union.

  “This,” she said, “will seal the three of us together.” She rubbed my come across Amiel’s stomach, then lay atop the other woman. Their lips met, and they moved together. Amiel lifted her legs around Marán’s hips and moved them up, down. Marán turned end for end, and lay across Amiel’s body as the woman writhed, legs wide. Marán’s tongue went deep into Amiel, as her friend loved her the same way.

  I was hard once more, found the vial, and oiled myself. I gently turned the two women onto their sides, and they reflexively lifted their upper legs, never stopping their movements.

  I held Amiel’s buttocks apart, oiled two fingers and slid them into her, moving them back and forth, lubricating her, and then her own body added to the slickness.

  I pushed the head of my cock against her rose, felt only an instant’s resistance, then entered her tight warmth. I moved slowly, steadily, each time going deeper into her, and she gasped at each stroke. Marán’s tongue caressed my balls as I moved, and my arms were around Amiel, pulling hard against her breasts, and then her body swallowed my soul and I remember no more.

  • • •

  It was false dawn when we limped back to our house beside the river, and I was very glad for Sinait’s spell of nonrecognition, since I did not particularly want the sentry to note our condition. We made our way upstairs, undressed, and washed, and then the three of us fell into the huge bed in our bedroom and were instantly asleep.

  • • •

  When I woke, it was almost noon. I’d expected to feel muzzy-headed, but my brain was perfectly clear, and I felt rested, peaceful, happy. The potion’s effects had vanished as quickly as they’d come.

  Marán’s head was on the pillow beside me, her hand curled around my balls. She had a tiny, private smile on her lips, the smile of a little girl the night of her birthday.

  Amiel slept on her other side, one hand around her friend’s waist. As I sat up, her eyes opened, she smiled at me, and then her eyes closed again.

  I slipped out of bed and stretched hugely. I thought about what had happened. I should have felt as if I’d committed some sort of sin, I suppose. Or that one or another of us had, at any rate. But I didn’t. I wasn’t sure what all this portended, what it would mean to our marriage, but decided that was for the future.

  I yawned and wandered into the bathroom. I’d determined to install a bath as lavish as the one in the Emperor’s Palace, but hadn’t had the time as yet. The bath, or baths, we had, though, were quite luxurious, two seven-foot-long tubs of green nephrite, shallowing at one end. Marán and I could each lie in one and talk, or, as often happened, share one. I brushed my teeth, tsked at my long hair, badly straggled from the night’s adventuring, and laboriously combed it smooth while both baths filled. I waded into one, soaped and rinsed myself, then drained it, intending to soak in the clean water of the second.

  Amiel walked into the bathroom, naked. She stretched, her breasts standing firm, and I felt my body respond a little.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “More likely afternoon.”

  “What of it?” she said. “Did you have any plans for this day?”

  I did not, knowing Numantia would either be sleeping off the excesses of Festival, still celebrating, or else in the various temples praying in apology, and this would las
t for the next two or three days.

  She brushed her teeth and rinsed with one of the washes we kept. “I suppose,” she said, making no move toward the door, “I should borrow one of Marán’s robes and go back to my own rooms to bathe.”

  “You could,” I said. My mouth was a bit dry. “But who would wash your back if you did?”

  “Ah. A definite problem.” She went to the open shelves where we kept a variety of soaps, sniffed at them and chose one.

  I reached over and turned on the tap of the second tub as Amiel stepped down into my bath. “First,” she said, “we should wash my front.” I obeyed, moving the soap in long, languorous circles around her chest, over her hard nipples, then across her stomach. I ran a finger in and out of her navel, and she smiled.

  “Now, why,” she wondered, “should that make a woman feel so good?”

  “Perhaps it’s a suggestion of things to come?”

  “So it’s Damastes the Wise now, not Damastes the Fair?”

  It was Amiel who’d given me that name, which somehow had been picked up by the broadsheets to my considerable embarrassment.

  “Things to come,” she said. “How interesting.”

  My fingers ran lower, and slipped into her for a moment. Her stomach muscles rippled as her body responded.

  “Now … Now it’s my turn,” she managed to say.

  “But I’ve already washed.”

  “I see a place you missed.”

  She soaped my chest and stomach, slowly, gently, then she lathered my cock. She ran a ring with thumb and forefinger down its length.

  “Just the right fit,” she said. “Perhaps a bit longer than some would prefer, but one capable of getting to the … bottom of things. Now, sir, you may wash my back and whatever else you wish.”

  She turned, and I began soaping. As I moved lower, she spread her legs and leaned forward over the edge of the tub, on her hands. Her behind was perfectly curved, sleek. I put a soapy finger in her, and she wriggled against it.

  “I see,” she whispered, “you are making sure I’m very clean.”

  “It’s my duty.”

  “And I know you always do your duty, don’t you, Count Agramónte?”

  I slid two fingers in her, and her muscles relaxed, then clenched tightly about them.

  “It is,” I said. “And I happen to have a specially built cleaner for this exact place.”

  “Perhaps you’d care to demonstrate it to me?”

  “I think I should,” I said, soaping my cock. I but touched her, and she relaxed her muscles, opening to me. I pushed into her, and she gasped, and moved back against me. We moved together, my hands caressing her breasts, she forcing me deep inside her, as she clenched and loosened her ring. Then she moaned, jerked twice, and sagged. I was still hard, and kept moving, gently, slowly, and once more she became aroused. She bent forward, until her stomach was flat on the deck around the tub, then reached back and pulled her buttocks far apart.

  “Now, Damastes,” she moaned. “Now, as hard as you can. Hard and fast. Tear me now.”

  I obeyed, cock steel-hard, driving into her to the root, and she let out a small shriek as we came together.

  Some time later our breathing quieted.

  “I like loving like that,” she whispered. “Sometimes it hurts a little … but it’s more intense. Sometimes I like it better than the other way.” She moved against me. “But that’s good, too. I don’t know a bad way to make love.”

  “Poor Marán,” she whispered almost inaudibly, and I knew she hadn’t intended me to hear her spoken thought. I pretended I hadn’t, slid out of her, and busied myself draining and filling the tub, remembering Marán’s first husband, the contemptuous way he’d treated her, and how little love there’d been in her life. But that was the past, and so I set it aside, and watched Amiel’s grace as she stepped out of the bath and slid into the other tub.

  We were lolling in the warm, scented water when Marán wandered in, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

  “You two make a lot of noise,” she said. “You woke me up.”

  “I didn’t know anything could,” Amiel said. “You were snoring like you were trying to swallow your nose.”

  “I don’t snore!”

  I laughed. Marán sat gracefully down on the edge of my tub, kicked water in my face, stuck out her tongue, then turned to Amiel.

  “Did you leave anything for me?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to see for yourself,” Amiel said. “If not, I’ll make suitable amends.”

  “Yes,” Marán said, her voice becoming husky. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  She reached out with a foot and caressed my limp cock. “There’s nothing here but a noodle,” she said, ignoring my response. “You’ll have to handle my problem.”

  She spread a towel and lay back on it. Amiel, oiled, sleek, lifted herself from her bath and began stroking my wife’s inner thighs. Both women’s eyes were on me, waiting for approval or shock now that the potion’s strange effects were gone.

  “You know,” Marán said, “Amiel and I have been lovers for some time. Not always. But when you’re gone …” She stopped and opened her thighs. Amiel caressed her clitoris with her thumb.

  “I wanted Marán the first time I saw her,” Amiel said. “Before she met you. But nothing ever happened.”

  “Nothing much, anyway,” Marán said. “I think I let Amiel kiss me once or twice, and pretended I was drunk and didn’t remember it. I was afraid. The first time we made love was after I lost … lost our baby. When you were at war.”

  I remembered well. For weeks after the miscarriage I’d heard nothing but two brief notes, then a sudden apology, and I remembered how she’d said she would “always be indebted to our dearest friend Amiel,” who’d given Marán “the greatest comfort since our son died.”

  Perhaps I should have been angry, should have felt threatened. I would have if it had been a man my wife had taken for a lover. But I felt nothing but gladness for Marán, and also for her friend.

  “You know,” Marán said, “Amiel was only the second person I’d ever fucked who could touch my soul, could make me come? Getting you in bed with both of us is something we’ve talked about, schemed really, since we’ve been lovers,” she went on. “To tell the truth, we hoped this is what would happen when we went to Seer Sinait for the potion. I felt like I was cheating on you every time I made love with Amiel and wanted to change that. The only way I could see to do that was to do what I did. I know I can’t give Amiel up.”

  “And I couldn’t stand to be without you, Marán,” Amiel said. She giggled. “Not to mention that we’ve only been able to make love three, maybe four times since then,” Amiel added. “Not nearly often enough for me.”

  “Oh yes,” Marán said. “It wasn’t enough. Now I know that. Oh, Amiel, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

  Amiel’s head lowered, and her tongue moved against Marán’s shaved sex, inside it. Marán clasped the back of her knees with her hands, lifted her legs, and spread them.

  “Let me do that,” I said. I stepped out of the bath, knelt over Marán’s head, and took her legs in my hands, holding them far apart, as Marán had done Amiel’s.

  Marán was twisting, moaning as Amiel loved her. My cock, stiffening, touched her lips. “Put it in my mouth,” Marán managed to say. “I want to drink you. Oh, put it in me, Damastes.”

  • • •

  We made love throughout the day, and had meals sent in. The servants bore completely bland expressions, as befitted professionals.

  At dusk, we were lying on the bed. There were pillows on the floor where we’d loved, sheets and covers were everywhere, and there were open vials of scent and unguent on the bedside tables. Amiel’s head was on my stomach, and Marán lay between her friend’s legs.

  “I could stay like this forever,” Amiel said.

  “Then you shall,” Marán declared.

  “No,” Amiel said. “I guess we shouldn’t arouse any greater scandal.�
��

  I chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Amiel wanted to know.

  “I just realized something,” I said. “No doubt everyone in the city knows you’ve come to live here.”

  “Of course,” Amiel said. “There have been stories about the end of my marriage, and I’ve seen mention that I’ve taken shelter in your company.”

  “Well then, what do you think everyone is thinking anyway?”

  “Ah,” Amiel said.

  “I’ve already got the reputation of a crazed goat,” I said. “So it matters not at all to me. Marán?”

  Marán sat up. “We can’t …” Then she broke off. “Who said? Why can’t we? I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks except maybe my family, and they don’t read the broadsheets anyway. Damastes is right. I guess we’ll have to maintain proprieties in public. More or less. But this is our home. Here we do what we want, when we want, as we want. Amiel, this bed is yours as well. Such as it is,” she said wryly, looking at the shambles.

  • • •

  Amiel’s things were moved from her bedroom into ours. Marán emptied one of her two dressing rooms out, and that was that. No one in the household said anything, ever. Once I noted Seer Sinait looking at me speculatively, a concerned expression on her face. I asked if she wanted something or had a question, and she said no.

  In spite of my resolution, I did wonder what the future would bring, what this meant and would mean to our marriage. But I had no answers.

  Amiel’s dark moods came to an end, and she was content in our mutual passion. I learned now why she was so prized as a lover — she acted as if love were her only concern, and those she loved the only reality.

  Another thing had changed: Marán was happy, smiling. I didn’t see that cold, apppraising expression any longer.

  So I was happy, too.

  But no idyll can last forever.

  TWELVE

  GAMES OF EMPIRE

  Our raptured time was steadily eaten away by my duties. Men were streaming into the army’s Nician depots, and being sent south to the new training grounds in Amur. Some were veterans, others new enlistees the recruiters felt had mettle. Naturally, some commanders had played that old army game and sent us their worst and most laggard, and these were quickly sorted out and booted back where they came.