A Knightly Respite

"What?" My eyes flood wide with reality. For a precious second, my lips grope towards the space hers once filled. "No"—I jab a finger at the split my own foolish teeth dug into my own foolish lip—"It hurt," I say, "b-but only for a moment. It's just—I've never—"

"Never?" she asks.

I pull myself away from her, but just an inch; it's as far as I can bear to retreat. Sparing myself Elyn's older, wiser, more confident gaze, I glance towards the cave opening, finding the darkness that lurks beyond somehow less daunting than looking this woman in the eyes. I swallow, and the mere motion of it sets my body to shaking.

Elyn uses her lithe fingers to pull her short hair behind her long ears. "Forgive me, Ort. It's..." she begins. "That's not a thing one does without asking. I only thought, when my fingers touched your arm, the look you gave me..."

On the floor sits the half-eaten roll, discarded, though I can't remember exactly when. I trace my fingers firmly against my wrist, where she graced me with her touch. I press firmly down, compressing the skin, muscle, and vein beneath. It feels only a simulacrum of her warmth.

"I'm so cold," I say.

Opening her arms, Elyn replies, "Then let me warm you."

***

She places more logs upon the fire. I wait, with my legs drawn up against my body, watching her unceremoniously drop each chunky, poorly-cut length of wood until the roar of fresh fuel overwhelms even the sound of the storm outside. Then, she sits beside me. Wordlessly, my head finds her shoulder. My ear fits perfectly against her, as if there were a notch in her body carved specifically for me to fill.

We sit like that for what could be a very short time or a very long time. Minutes or hours, I do not know. I could spend forever, I think, relishing the closeness of her body, and her firm, muscled arm supporting my weight. The fire sparkles and pops, my eyelids drawing down heavier by the moment. Above even the smell of smoke, the air of her fills my nose. With each deep breath, I pull in her scent, and, somehow, something about this feels complete.

Some time later her shifting body rouses me from my half-slumber. Unbidden, I sit away from her and watch as her smooth, long fingers—her gloves removed, the firelight traces deep shadows across each callus on her hands—undo each clasp of her doublet in turn. Opening her doublet, she shrugs it gently from her shoulders. Beneath, she wears only a sleeveless linen undershirt. Her skin's ochre color drinks in the light, her arms replete with small scars of past combats, hardly noticeable unless one closely looks.

And this one does.

Around her neck she wears a silver chain adorned with a sterling pendant of a proud unicorn, the symbol of her order. It twists with the movement of her body, the polished silver rippling like moonbeams in the firelight's glow.

Looking to me, her doublet caught at the crook of each elbow, Elyn asks, "Is it all right?"

I grind my knuckles slowly against my temple, urging my tired body to wake. In the face of her beauty I find myself bereft of speech. I can only nod.

She draws one arm, then the other, from the doublet. "You seem a lonely kind, Ort," Elyn says.

"Not lonely," I say, sleepily. "Just alone."

Turning to place the doublet among her things, Elyn seems to hold in thought.

"I suppose there's some difference there," she says. "For how long?"

"Always," I say.

"You said you never had a family," she says. "Not ever?"

"None by blood," I say. "Not for a long time."

"How do you make your living?"

I dip my fingers into my shirt, lifting the string of pearls into her view. Rolling them through my feeble fingers, I glance briefly into her eyes before I turn my gaze back to the fire.

She nods. "I understand."

"Will you turn me in to the constable?" I ask. "You've taken an oath, after all..."

She raises a hand to her face, scratching her cheek. "For a thief, you hardly seem a malicious one. I'm sure those that could afford such expensive jewelry can also afford to suffer the loss of it." She shrugs her broad shoulders and brings her eyes to the fire, matching mine. "Besides, you've some evidence of my wrongdoing too."

I touch my fingers to my face. My split lip is no longer painful, its soft buzzing has become almost pleasant—a tangible reminder of the feeling Elyn's lips placed into me. "I thought those of the court were permitted their... indiscretions."

"In some sense." Elyn rolls out her shoulders in a slow wave. The pop of her bones echoes through the small cave. "But only with those who can be discreetly indiscreet."

"Did you always know?" I ask. "That you've preferred—"

"From a time when I was very young," she says. "And you?"

I shake my head. "I'm different."

Faintly bemused, she says, "As am I."

The secret of my body sends bristles across my skin. "I am more so."

Her fingers draw downward through her hair. She is rapt in thought. "Still, you've never... is that how it is, with common folk?"

I look down at my hands, fingernails uneven. I think of my face, with its blunt nose and freckled cheeks. I can't help but compare it to Elyn's, proud even when consumed by thought, with high cheekbones, and a strong brow. This is the benefit of noble bloodlines, I suppose.

"No," I say. "But I was afraid."

She gives my knee a squeeze. "It is a fearsome thing."

***

I've hated my body for as long as it's been mine to hate. Small, ugly, unrefined. Weak arms and slight fingers—good for reaching into pockets and opening locks. I've the sort of face that vanishes into a crowd, nothing distinguishing me from any other peasant girl. Fine for thievery, little good for much else.

Even as I grew older, and those I knew became fulsome, still I was the same: unremarkable, perennially ungifted, never starting, never blooming, never becoming anything other than the small, stunted, runt of a thing that I am and remain, even at nineteen years—less three seasons.

This is the curse of all chijac; trapped in perennial stasis, watching those around you blossom into the woman you'll never truly become.

And yet, in her arms I find some value for my smallness. The weight of her breasts is heavy upon my back. So fine is the feeling, I don't resent her for the bodily gifts she's received that I haven't and never will. Her arm lies over my hip as if she were a great cat who could claim me at her leisure. So comfortable is it, I don't envy her obvious strength, even in the face of my frailty. It seems, in this moment, as it we are almost two obverse things, burrowed into one another to form a natural whole.

Her stomach presses into me and slowly retreats with each rise and fall of her breath. I think she is sleeping, and so I am brave enough to raise my hand and lightly touch the back of hers. She responds with quiet tension, cinching her muscles and drawing me into her with no possibility of escape—but who could ever imagine such thing, let alone be desirous of it?

Her breath comes as a slow rumble, the warm spill of it across my neck throwing a tremor through me worse than any chill or bitter ice ever has. I can't help but shut my eyes and clench my teeth, afraid that any motion might startle she that holds me so close.

I am the rabbit; she is the trap.

Her lips open and close against my neck, separated from my burning skin only by the curtain of my unruly hair.

"I would kiss you," she says.

I've no response but to urgently pull the hair away from my neck and grant her access. My hands, normally so careful and precise, the only truly valuable part of me, are now jerking and uncoordinated, helpless and seemingly with no mind to listen to my commands. Clearing the path for her lips, my fingers rebound against her face, my nails clip against her nose. I draw my breath and hold it, certain I've broken whatever spell has convinced her there is a girl of merit here, one that warrants holding, touching, and kissing.

My heart thrills when I find I'm wrong. Her lips trace my skin, kissing away whatever dampness remains. I tremble. They part and her tongue swabs across my heated skin. My hands scramble for purchase against her arm, which does not seem it will ever let me go. Her lips close around my neck. I feel the press of her teeth. My breath strangles in my throat, I moan, instantly, sharply, and the sound echoes around the cave. Behind me she startles, her head pulls away. A bead of her spit tickles against my skin as she breaks away.

"Please," I say. "Please..."

My head swims. The rain and exposure has given me a fever, that is why I'm quaking so.

Her deft fingers skim beneath my shirt and touch at the rise of my belly. Each place she graces responds with confusion and urgency. My breath quickens as her lips return to my neck, and her firm, fine fingers tighten and press down on my ribs, keeping me close, closer than I have ever been to anyone, closer than anyone to anything in any time. Her lips assault me, finding the crevice of my jaw, the lobe and curve of my ear. Anywhere there is to kiss, she does, and soon my only fear is not that my rapid, shallow breaths will deplete the air of this small cave and suffocate us, but that it will happen before this finishes. I could bear death; incompletion would be the greater crime.

My loose shirt becomes tight as her furrowing-forward wrist wedges it around my body. Close to my nipples, her fingers could touch them with barely a hint of stretch. Plaintively, I take her wrist, "No," I beg. "Not..."

"Then?" she asks, her hands already tracing downwards, slipping between my hips and trousers. Though the fit is tight, her hand only takes up the space my small hips never grew to fill. She clenches me there, at my hip, and the motion echoes with none of the complaints that buzz around my head—my insufficient form, my empty looks. Claiming me, she gives no indication that I am anything short of perfect.

And that is what throws my body into such wracking sobs.

"Ort?" she asks. Elyn's voice is softer than a down pillow. Her fingers relent, back to my stomach.

"I'm sorry," I say. The tears purge instantly from my eyes, drawing wet paths across my dirty cheeks that chill instantly in the damn night air. I try to swallow, but my throat has filled with sharp rocks, even breathing is a chore. "I want to," I say, "Badly, I do."

"It's natural," she says, her lips close enough to my ear that I could scream. "You're scared, but you don't have to be. There's nothing wrong."

"There is," I say.

Placing her hand against my cheek, Elyn turns my gaze to her. "Don't believe what they've said." Her lips part and close, hesitation stalls her for a breath. The world has slowed all around us. "They're not here, just you and I. There's nothing wrong with anything we've done."

Looking at her face above me, her beauty settled and natural, a worldly thing, my heart tears like a strip of old parchment. "No," I say. "Not this, not us, but me."

"You?" she asks.

"I'm..." My throat clenches once more, begging my to stop, telling me if I just don't say it, there may still be some way to hide myself, some way to distract her from the truth. But there is no distraction here, in this small cave, in my small body, pathetic and pale, weak and incorrect, next to hers. "Elyn, I'm chijac."

And there it is, the word I'd hoped to evade, foolishly believing there was some endpoint where she would never learn my truth. But here it is, plain as day beneath her searching hands: Ort is a chijac—woman trapped in boyish form, cursed half-breed, gutter waste.

Her breath blossoms against my side, that instant of her hesitation enough to set me to scrambling. I want to stand. I want to go. I'd take even the storm over this.

I'm trying to stand. However, yanking at her fingers, I find no way to remove them from my body. And, too tired to struggle, my heart orders my body to stop. I realize, soon after, that I am the one pulling away, not her.

Coming to my senses amid the wracking sobs that still plague my body, I find the warmth of her hand again atop the evident bones of my slender hip.

I use my body to lead her. Drawing her hand downwards, I guide her to my hips and back beneath the waist of my trousers.

Elyn has all but mounted me now, her weight leaned heavy upon me so she can press sparse kisses at the edges of my lips. I turn my head, desperate to meet her halfway, pursing my lips outward, compliant, to let her claim them, though I know I can't kiss as firmly or as expertly as the women of her court must. These visions of her illicit dalliances of a stately, royal kind glimmer behind my clenched eyelids. It must be there she learned how to kiss this thoroughly and how to grip my body and sense the sweltering heat beneath my skin, to elicit a quake from me with each touch, as her nails probe forward and catch in the unruly mass of wiry hair set between my legs.

I gasp. My eyes open, to find hers roving my face, eager, but somehow cautious. Her gaze turns to questioning, her fingers retreat, just a fraction, through the dense forest at my crotch. I can't take this—that, I mean—her going away, not when she's so close. Parting my lips, still there are no words to speak. With my breath choking into me in gauzy bits, I shake my head in shallow strokes, hoping, begging, she not stop.

She must be practiced, unthinkably so, to balance me on this knife's edge, where every touch of her—closer and closer to my center, closer and closer to that font of my heat—tears an indescribable fear from me, and yet I crave it more than I've craved either food or water, fire or sleep. I've no needs now, but those her claim she imbues in me.

I struggle to box away these thoughts, before they overpower me. I touch both hands upon her wrist, permitting her to stop this farce.

"This is enough," I say. "I'll not force you to—"

A chuckle of her mirth rumbles against me. I whimper, when her fingers escape my trousers. Her hand sneaks between our bodies. "You must have a low opinion of the royal knights, if you believe us so easily forced." Her knuckles rock against the small of my back, I know not why—not until that selfsame hand finds my face. "Here," she says. "Examine what you've spurred in me."

My nostrils flare, suddenly drowned in the scent of her essence. Underlying the musk of a long day's ride is the tinge of her arousal. My lips part, my nose slipping upon the wet creases of her fingers. I inhale sharp as I can, desperate to pull in every fraction of her heady aroma, wondering at the source of it.

Slick fingers press tenderly against my lips, breaching their willing barrier. "Taste me," she says, voice husky and low. Two enter me, gracing past my teeth and over the eager muscle of my tongue. I hollow my cheeks to suckle at her flavor. Fresh heat sets my head to spinning as I marvel in her taste, pungent and strong, dizzying and powerful as pure ambrosia. "It's you that's granted me this. You, and your beauty, here, in this moment, and no one else."

I drink of Elyn's body. My tongue laves between her fingers, swiping away the salt from her skin in my quest to secure every ounce of the bold, fragrant perfume of her sex. She mounts me, folding a leg over mine. Her fingers spear deeply. I groan, relishing in this particular, precious flavor she grants me—but relishing somehow more in my pride, in my value made evident by her need. Her body rocks, hips butting, humping slowly against me. Suffused with ardor, she remains patient, confident as a panther in the hunt. Closing my eyes, I imagine the contours of her hidden cunt. I sense my stiffness growing, my blazing erection sliding against the harsh material of my trousers. I shift my hips, urgent for even that chafing sensation, and enjoying the tremors that rumble through her muscular form when my grinding ass echoes the pressure of her questing hips. Her fingers spike inside me as a tremble runs through her, digging deep, all the way to my throat. My tongue scoops, providing a waiting bed. She thrusts further, taking me whole. My throat swells with an urgent gag. A wash of her breath spills across my neck. She retreats, and a tender moan fills my mouth in absence of her fingers.

Smiling wry, she asks, "Are you satisfied, then?"

I pierce forward, nibbling at her fingertips. "Never."

Her fingers paint their moistness over my cheeks, my lips, my nose. "I'd hoped you'd say that."

Taking her wrist, I guide her palm against my stomach—it is shallow beneath her fingers, my breath trapped deep inside my gut. I work her touch against my navel, then trail downward. Without hesitation, she slips beneath my trousers and through the forest of my pubic fur. I groan, bucking forward, cock begging for feeble friction, whatever it can get, its sensitive length well aware of the closeness of her fingers. Her leg cinches around me, preventing the escape of my surging hips.

Finally, achingly and finally, she wraps around the small root of my cock. It is as rigid as it as ever been. It is painfully stiff, eager, ready, though I think it knows not what for, never having been used for its anointed purpose...

Elyn shows no such hesitation, embracing me nimbly, stroking me from base to tip in gentle waves. Is she an archer, maybe? Or has she tumbled her share of locks, as many as I have and more, to become so dexterous? To play me as if I am her lute. I would sing at her touch, but this melody is foreign to me and, always, always, always my breath catches in my throat.

Pinned between us, the horn of her unicorn pendant digs a welt into my skin. I gasp, relishing in the pain—this, too, is a gift she gives me.

I twist my neck to look at her. One hand clenching around my shirt, the other cups her cheek, begging her closer. Elyn strokes me with passionate firmness, her rhythm mechanical, the ardor etched upon her face anything but. She draws my quaking lips into a kiss sweet as sugar drops. As she hurls my aching body towards crescendo my breath ekes out in short wheezes against her lips, and hers spill with want, warm and moist, against mine. Breasts molded to my back, her whole weight fit to crush me, Elyn urges my naïve soul onward towards this new thing, this unfamiliar place, this peculiar and terrifying feeling that, somehow, I crave more than anything I've ever known.

Pity this tawdry girl, who has only ever been a mop of red hair, a sack of bones, and two finely tuned hands—the latter her pride, but even now she's forgotten their use in their entirety, and so she's no idea what to do but grip them around the elbow of the strong, valiant arm that encircles her, yanks her closer and closer, closer and closer, to something she has never known, and yet every fiber of her threadbare body understands it completely.

Our deepening kiss spurs her onward. She hastens her use, the slap of flesh against flesh filling the cave as I teeter precariously at the edge of climax. She bears down as my body throws itself into flux. A flicker of tongue crosses my neck, brief warning before her teeth grind into my skin. I cry out. She squeezes, cosseting my steaming prick inside her powerful grip. I scream. The wave of my passion spills through the confines of my trousers, anointing her with my sticky spunk. Thunder peals out in the distance—though perhaps that's a bit of poetic license on my part. But I do scream, that's the honest truth. More than anything, do I scream.

***

In the long seconds before my breathing resumes, the wash of rain outside quiets to a hush and the fire slows. Having consumed its viable wood, it must subsist on hardly anything but embers, since it seems neither Elyn nor I have the capacity to stand and stoke it.

Elyn's breath rolls slowly over my ear. It is hoarse, some small proof that what we'd done required effort; and effort must mean desire, no? She caresses my softening prick, calloused fingers tenderly working my cooling spunk into my skin. I gasp beneath the overwhelming sensitivity of my passing passion. Her touch brings a quiver from me. My hips arch, my loins still burn. I beg my sleeping cock to rouse itself, drowsy and touch-sensitive as it may be, in the quiet hope that she might stir another wrenching climax from my body before I wake from this beautiful dream.