He replaced the helmet on his head, and deliberately lay back down with his back to her.
Chapter Eleven
They entered the fabled Elven sanctuary of Sylvindell just as dawn broke the next morning. The rising sun speckled a shower of pale gold light through the leaf tops. Akraz had been reared in squalid darkness. Most of his subsequent years, he had spent knee deep in gore-soaked mud with the points of swords seeking to add his guts to the mire. He had been lucky, at times, to encounter kindness where generally cruelty alone held sway, but of beauty he had little experience. Nothing prepared him for the meld of Nature’s delights and artisan’s loving craft that was the citadel of Sylvindell.
Towering trees stood sentinel around and amidst a city of spires and balustrades. Branch and building intertwined, with towers and balconies built in spirals around massive trunks. In other places, aging trees leaned into the caring buttresses of adjacent buildings. To Akraz’s stunned stare, every house in Sylvindell resembled a castle, complete with its own spires, balconies, courtyards, fountains and gardens abundant with flowers.
And the wealth on casual display astounded him. Every man and maid in the street wore garments of flowing pastel silk, with flowers in their hair and baubles sparkling round their necks and wrists. He saw no beggars huddled in the corners, no cripples who had been cast out of their caves to die alone in the dark, no drunken, used-up veterans shouting abuse at whores. Throngs of elves strolled along broad sunny boulevards arm in arm and paused to laugh and chat with friends. They bustled in markets that flowed with fruits and wine, pottery and brass platters, bolts of silk and necklaces of platinum and pearl.
The trio of travelers reined in their horses before a handsome manor cradled by a brook and shaded with willows. As with many of the Elven houses, a tree formed part of the house, supplying the support for a parapet that twisted up the north tower of the keep.
“This is one of the houses where Nemesis grew up. Lathaniel, his sister Taniya and I often came over to play here as children,” said Hunter. “Though we are not blood kin, in many ways we are as close as siblings.”
A cozy stable awaited the horses. Inside the house itself, morning light dappled a series of comfortable rooms of polished wooden floors, tapestries and hand-carved furniture. Living flowers grew around the balustrades of the staircases winding from level to level, and fountains flowed perpetually in porcelain basins set into nooks in the walls. The design aimed for solace and harmony, not the ostentatious display of wealth, but the richness of the surroundings struck one all the more for their effortless elegance.
Akraz remembered how he had shown off the paltry, stolen gewgaws in his den to Laya. How she must have sniggered at him behind the back of her hand. His jaw clenched at the thought. He counted it as good fortune that he wore a concealing helmet, even during the day when his true face showed. He was just as glad, as well, that Laya had not spoken a word to him this morning, nor deigned to look at him. He did not want to speak to her either.
Any fantasy that he might insinuate himself into her world shattered. He had never felt more an imposter than standing in her childhood home.
Several days later, Akraz’s war proposal had been approved by the ruling council of Sylvindell. He explained that he had told Zathstragomal a false location of the Elven city. At that decoy location, the human and elven armies of Chavana should set a trap. When Zathstragomal’s goblins arrived, thinking to beset the city by surprise, instead they would burst in on a vigilant armed camp.
Akraz would ride to war with the elves. Laya had been avoiding him for the past several days, but now her concern over his life outweighed her wounded pride. She would not allow him to leave her and ride into battle, possibly to his death, with this coldness still between them.
He had been given a guest chamber on the third floor of the manor. The organically shaped room opened onto a balcony overlooking the willows and the brook. It also sported a fountain and a bathing pool in a rounded niche sheltered by a carved wooden screen from the bed and the rest of the room.
Daylight flooded the room, and Akraz looked more handsome than ever totally nude, standing in the pool bathing himself. His black hair curled into damp tendrils about his face. His violet eyes glittered like two amethyst geodes. Ah, and when he sponged the water across the divinely defined muscles of his chest with the bristled end of the scrub brush, the water coursed in rivulets that traced every contour of his bulging pecs and tight abs.
Laya stalked her prey with all her skill as a warrior. Thus he did not hear her enter or cross the room, and did not notice her until she stood a step above him at the edge of the pool.
He froze. “What are you doing here?”
In answer, she dropped her single garment from her shoulders to stand before him totally nude. He swallowed, and his cock nodded up at her. He also scowled.
“Leave me alone,” he said.
“My room has no bathing pool. I too must prepare for battle, even though the council has asked me to remain as part of the small garrison force that will stay behind in the citadel.”
“You can wait until I finish.”
“The call to arms will sound soon. This is no time to be petty.”
“Do as you wish then,” he snarled. He turned his back on her.
Laya pretended not to care. She stepped down into the water, languidly crossed the pool, and pressed herself under the spout of water flowing from a flower shaped spigot in the wall. A spray of water cascaded over her. She shut her eyes, arched her back and thrust her breasts forward under the gushing droplets. Her hair slicked against her back. Two tiny streams of water coursed off her stiff nipples.
When she opened her eyes, she caught Akraz staring at her.
“Damn you, vixen,” said Akraz. Desire roughed his voice. “Do you think you can flaunt yourself before me and get away with it?”
“Can you hand me the scrub brush?” she asked. She lifted her arms and gathered her hair up behind her, aware that this was the same position in which he had led her, leashed, around the Hall of the Dark God. The memory of how he had both mastered her and protected her that night made her nipples tighten and her cunt juice up.
“Is this what you want?” He hefted the long-handled ivory brush in his hand. “You shall have it!”
He surged across the pool in two steps. His left hand darted out to twist itself into a grip in her hair, while his right hand smacked the flat of the brush against her bottom. She squealed. Instinctively, she squirmed to safeguard her pink derrière from the second blow, but it found her regardless, causing her nether cheeks to jiggle under the impact. No matter how she writhed, he found her ass with the brush. The smacks reverberated wetly, as each caught her buttocks under the cascade. Soon her butt cheeks glowed pink and hot. She felt washed in the delicious combination of helplessness and total trust that she always experienced in his hands.
He forced her face against the wall, butt out, breasts smashed.
“I am still your master,” he said into her ear. “Even here, in your own home, I own you. Say it, slave.”
“You are my master. I am your slave.”
“You belong to me. You will always belong to me.”
“I will always belong to you, Akraz.”
He kicked apart her legs. He performed some complicated action she could not see because her face rubbed the wall. Something parted the folds of her labia. The handle of the brush, she knew it, lathered in soap to make it slippery. He drove it into her slit. She cried out like a wild animal. That didn’t stop him, he only pummeled her harder with the handle, until he had jogged it all the way in and the bristles of the brush tickled her clit.
Without removing the brush, Akraz forced her around and down on all fours in the shallow pool.
“Don’t move,” he said. She heard him splash about in search of something. What other toys could he possibly have here, given that he had already fucked her with the scrub brush?