Blade drew his knife slowly out from under the pillow and held it ready. The door continued to open, until there was a gap wide enough for a man to slip through. In the next moment a dimly seen figure darted through the gap on soundless feet. As it approached the bed, Blade recognized it. It was the same one he had seen slipping away down the corridor into the shadows, the day of his meeting with Isgon. The spy, now turned assassin? Perhaps.
The figure moved silently toward the bed until it was just outside Blade's striking range. Through half-closed eyes he watched it. It was small and slim. Blade wrinkled his nostrils slightly as he caught a new odor in the air. Perfume, cutting through the heavy air of the underground warren. Perfume?
As his brain completed the thought, he moved. A tremendous jerk of thigh and stomach muscles snapped him into a sitting position. At the same time his powerful hands closed on the blanket, whipping it into the air and letting it drop down over the figure. A squeal of dismay came from inside the dark hood as the blanket settled down over it, enveloping it. As the stranger raised futile arms to ward off the blanket, Blade rolled hard out of the bed, landing on the floor with a thud. He kept on rolling, sweeping the figure off its feet. It let out another squeal of dismay and pain as it landed, and still another squeal as Blade's massive body slammed down on it, pinning it to the floor.
Blade jerked the blanket away with one hand while he held his knife to the stranger's throat with the other. «Now, my friend, who are you? And what are you doing slipping into my chamber by night?»
«You're hurting me,» was the whimpered reply.
«Yes, and I'll hurt you a damned sight more if you don't tell me who you are.»
«What kind of bully are you, anyway?» An aggressive protest.
That question was so unexpected that for a moment Blade couldn't come up with a proper answer. Then he said, «Not a bully. Just a warrior who has lived a long life by being short with people who invade his chambers by night. Now-are you going to answer my questions?»
Silence. Blade sighed wearily and began slitting through the cloth of the hood with his knife. Soon enough the face under the hood was revealed. And then Blade stopped cutting, and stared hard at it.
His visitor was a young woman. The heavy cosmetics worn by Gonsaran women made her seem older. But they did not disguise the firm, smooth curves of cheek and neck. And there were other firm, smooth curves, which Blade's searching fingers detected under the robes. A young woman. Not the likeliest of betrayers or assassins, but a possible one. Blade did not relax his alertness.
«What are you doing?» said the woman. Her voice was sharp now. She had recovered her confidence.
«Finding out if you're armed,» replied Blade. His fingers continued their search, slipping down under the neck of the robe. He felt the woman stiffen as his searching fingers brushed across a breast-and he also felt the nipple of the breast stiffen. He looked at her face. Her eyes were wider now, and a small pink tongue crept out to moisten her lips.
«All I have are women's weapons,» she said. Her voice was lighter now as she added, «And with those I think I am well equipped.»
Blade was well on the way to finding that out for himself. His hands moved on down the woman's body inside the robe. She wore nothing under it, and the satiny skin was smooth and soft under Blade's fingers. They drifted down past the breasts, which were small, almost girlish, but as firm as perfectly ripened fruit. Both nipples were fully erect before Blade left off stroking them.
A slim waist, firm muscles under the skin, with a small navel set neatly in the middle. The woman giggled and wriggled like a happy baby as Blade's fingers probed there. Then he kept on moving. As he did so, the robe began to loosen from the woman's body, and his hands found more room to do their work. As her slim neck and bare shoulders came into view, dark as old honey in the dimness, his hands reached her thighs. She gave a little whimper as he softly worked around from the satiny skin over her hipbone, down to her knee, then bit by bit up the insides of her thighs.
He moved upward inch by inch, and with each inch his fingers moved the woman moved also. At times she writhed back and forth with small moans and gasps, at other times she stiffened and her eyes went blank and hard. In her mind there was obviously something drawing her toward what her body wanted, and something else pulling her back. Perhaps she was a virgin? Perhaps, but she would not be one for long. The call of her body was too insistent for her to deny it, and it was sounding loudly in Blade as well.
But he took his time, gradually stripping the robe off her with one hand while his other roamed up and down her body. Several times she gave little sobs as his moving hand closed on her mound, playing in the thicket of wiry hair that covered it. Twice she tried to clamp her thighs together, to trap the hand that was working at the seat of her passion. Once Blade snatched his hand away just in time, and she clenched her fists and writhed her hips toward him in search of that maddeningly desirable hand. The second time, he let the solid warm flesh of her inner thighs trap his hand, because he felt the hairs between them already dripping wet with her mounting arousal. There was no holding back in her mind any more, only the urgent call of her body to go ahead.
Blade decided it was time for him also to listen to that same call. With his free hand he stripped the robe entirely away. For a moment he let his eyes rove over the naked body on the floor before him, gleaming darkly. Her breasts were as small and perfectly formed and firm as his hands had suggested. Her waist would have been narrow but for a neat little belly-roll, and her thighs were plumply well formed. She made him think of a small but perfectly matured little bird, with just the right amount of flesh in just the right places. As his swollen phallus plunged between her legs, she moaned and heaved her hips upward, spreading her thighs apart. Blade drew his hand free and lifted her onto the bed. She did not move, did not speak a word, made no sounds except more little whimpers.
For Blade there was no reason at all to wait, and every reason imaginable to go on. But he was slow and careful in his movements as he raised himself above her. And he was even slower and more careful as he let himself down into her.
She was indeed a virgin, but would not be for long. There was little resistance as Blade slipped inside her wet vagina, no cries, only a little quivering of the fleshy thighs as he entered. But as he plunged deeper, her legs came up steadily, as though they were attached to balloons, and locked around his back. Her hips began to wriggle and twist back and forth as she tried to lock Blade as deeply as possible inside her.
It was often a chancy business, trying to satisfy a virgin. But not this time. The woman was ready to be satisfied — spectacularly ready. And spectacular, also, in her climaxes. She sobbed and moaned and howled so loudly when the first one tore through her body that Blade nearly lost his erection on the spot, fearing they would be heard all over the temple mound.
But solid stone walls will block even the sounds of a woman half-mad with passion. Blade's instincts told him that the woman was not remotely satisfied. But the sensations tearing through his own groin told him that he was terribly close to his own release. The combination of her tightness and wetness around his large, swollen, fast-stroking member was becoming rapidly more and more unbearable.