The Land of Dreams Ch. 03

Leo pre-empted my requests by taking my hand and saying, 'Dear heart, you want to know what was wrong with the Prince and Princess of Garak and what is my relationship with the Prince of Chembalom, don't you?'

I squeezed his hand and said simply, 'Yes'.

'Do you mind if I ask Jasmine to join us? She can be more objective about both situations than I.'

Of course, I agreed. My sister-in-law was with us in a moment and Leo explained the situation to her. I added that I should be interested in knowing more about the older man and his young wife. Leo and Jasmine smiled at this; they exchanged glances and Jasmine said to me, 'It is a most romantic story, full of charm, of early sorrow and, as you saw, present delight. When my brother has answered your other questions, I shall tell you about it.'

Leo opened by saying, 'Nothing you are about to hear means that I love you any less. You are my wife, the centre and lodestar of my being and, as far as I can tell, you always will be. I ask you to believe that.'

I feared for the revelations about to come but I nodded my agreement.

Leo took a deep breath and said, 'Rollo, Prince of Chembalom, is my dear friend and lover. He spent much of his boyhood in my father's court, then he and I transferred together for two years to the court of his father, the then Prince. We fell in love and have been lovers since our eighteenth birthday (we were born on the same day and our fathers knew that we were marked out by the stars for each other). Our love is deep and abiding, but we both knew that we should love, at least equally, a wife, when she should appear to each of us. Rollo met Ina here; she had been at the ladies' school in the palace, where she was a star pupil, and they met when Rollo visited me for my twenty-fifth birthday. Their love was instantaneous and (I won't pretend) I was searingly jealous at the start. I had no right to be; I had told him from the beginning of my love for you, that you were my wife to be, and that you are the most important thing in my life. Rollo also had a wife who bore him a son but died in childbirth.'

Leo was still holding my hand but I hardly felt it. A few hours ago I should have been so aware of his touch that nothing else but my longing for him to fuck me would have impinged on my senses. Suddenly he felt far away. He was no longer MY Leo, uniquely. He belonged to someone else as well as to me and I felt empty and as though I had been punched so hard that I could hardly breathe.

Jasmine stroked my arm to get my attention. 'Darling girl,' she said, 'I know it is hard. You are not yet used to our ways. But, believe me, Leo does not love you any the less because he loves Rollo also. I saw my brother when he brought you back from the desert. He was terrified that he had found you too late and that you would die. He sat with you day after day, night after night. He wanted to do everything for you no matter how menial or how distressing to him. Actions which would be thought degrading by others he felt honoured to perform. No woman is better loved than you are.'

A sort of calm started to come over me as Jasmine spoke and I managed to smile briefly at my husband.

'I am sorry,' I said. 'It was too much to hope that I should be loved alone. You are a man and have had nine more years of life than I. It is to be expected that you have formed other attachments in that time.'

I was trying so very hard to be sensible but a sob welled up in my throat and tears started to cascade down my cheeks. Leo took me in his arms; he let the worst of my weeping cease before he began to kiss away the tears from my face. He started to run his fingers over my breasts; he cupped my buttocks in his great hands. I heard him whisper something to Jasmine. She must have gone out. He returned to making love to me so gently, then with mounting passion, and my fears scattered as his fingers entered me before he laid me back on our bed; his mouth found mine and his tongue took mine captive at the same time as his cock found its way into its home in my cunt and I surrendered unconditionally to the throbbing life he rammed into me. He took my first defence and my second in one great thrust. We came together as we cried out our passion and our love.

As in our first night together Leo proved his devotion many times. I felt worn out but happy as he slipped out of me for the fifth time that night and he turned me over, almost lazily, to drink our combined juices from the cup of my cunt and then to share it with me, mouth to mouth, tongue to circling tongue.

My ladies came in as usual to bathe and prepare me for the day. I asked Jasmine to stay behind and share my and Leo's breakfast and to continue our conversation of the previous night.

As the three of us sat around the table Jasmine laughed and said to me, 'You look as though Leo has reassured you of his love during the night.' I blushed. Leo said, 'Don't try the privilege of a sister too much,' then I laughed and so did he.

Leo said to me, 'You asked about the Prince and Princess of Garak. That is a very different story and one of which I am ashamed.'

Jasmine broke in, 'You take too much responsibility as usual, brother. That woman was at fault far more than you. She tricked you when you were vulnerable.'

Leo said, 'You see why I wanted Jasmine here. She is a much better advocate for me than I could be for myself. But,' he said, turning towards his sister, 'you exonerate me too much. I am a man and a ruler. I have no excuse for what I did.'

'What did you do?' I asked.

Jasmine broke in again. 'That woman was the son, then the daughter, of one of the Garak nobles. As a girl, Senta attended the school here and got to know Leo when our father was alive. She was always sucking up to him. It wasn't love in her case; it was ambition.'

'You don't know that. Be fair to her.'

'I do know it. I could tell what she was from the first day she was here. She was a trouble-maker. She would pick up a girl and make much of her, then just drop her and pick up another for no reason other than to cause hurt and discord. Then she set her cap at you and you were too kind or too gullible to tell her you weren't interested. I did, though. I told her you were destined for a bride a thousand times better than her (you are my dear). She just tossed her head and didn't speak to me for a week, not that that bothered me. Then, of course, came the great shock when Leo saw you in a vision, making love to another man. It broke him, and when that evil woman crept into his bed he took her. She thought she had him and that she would be Princess and Queen here in Leonesse. At least you had the sense to disabuse her of that or, at least, you did after I had made it perfectly clear to her when she emerged, smug and triumphant from your bedroom the next morning, that she had prostituted herself for nothing, because you were already committed by the most sacred ties and oaths to Christabel.'

Jasmine wound down. She had been reliving her anger at Senta's machinations. All I really took in was that it was my fault and I said as much.

Jasmine cried out against that, 'I didn't mean that at all, little love. Of course, it wasn't your fault. You didn't know anything about us.'

'I had seen Leo and I knew I was his wife.'

I hung my head in shame.

Leo wrapped his arms around me and rocked me like a child. 'The only fault lies with me and her and whatever harm may come of it none of it is your responsibility. I pray that the harm fall only on my head and that you are not hurt.'

Now I became the comforter. 'Your hurt is mine, my love. I hope that if there is harm it falls on me and that I can deflect it from you. So my life will have served its purpose.'

Leo and Jasmine looked horrified. 'No,' they cried. 'Gods, if you hear those words, disregard them. She does not understand what she is saying.' The morning had been unusually still. Now a ripple of breeze stirred the light curtains at our window and we heard a great sigh, like a whisper from immense lungs. The brother and sister looked at each other in consternation.

Leo recovered first. 'Merely a vagrant breeze,' he said. 'Let's talk about an altogether happier topic than we have so far. Jasmine, will you tell her about the the fifty-four year old husband and his bride?'

Jasmine pulled herself together with an effort.

'First I'd better finish the story of Senta. Prince Odo of Garak came here on a visit. He came to discuss trouble on our borders with some of the tribes, stirred up by him, I'm sure.'

'You don't know that, sister,' interjected Leo.

Jasmine shrugged and went on regardless, 'Senta then tried to catch him and succeeded. I told Leo he should tell Odo that she had been in his bed already, but you were sorry for the girl, god knows why, and didn't want to queer her pitch. They married, and, if looks are anything to go by, they're as miserable as sin together and serve them both right.'

I don't know what was going through my husband's head during his sister's recital but I had an uncanny feeling that I was hearing something baleful and menacing for me.

Jasmine went on, after a pause to collect her thoughts, 'Let's go to the middle- aged man and his bride. You know the joy families here have when a son shows that he is a girl. The Fandills are a long-established and well-regarded merchant family in Leonesse. The head of the family and his wife had four children: two boys and two biological girls. They were sad that nether of their sons was girly but they were clever boys and the parents felt blessed with what they had. Some years later, when they had ceased to hope for more children, the wife became pregnant. It was a difficult birth and the wife died leaving a sorrowing husband, four children between the ages of eight and fourteen and a baby.

'From very early it became clear that the baby son was a girl. The whole family rejoiced, but then something unexpected happened. By the time Lalla, for that was the girl's name, was eleven years old and about to enter the palace school, the father realised that he loved her not only as his daughter but as a wife. He was horrified. It is not unknown for a father and son/daughter to marry in our society but it is highly unusual and the union is surrounded with many safeguards to ensure that the younger partner is entering marriage of her own free will and not through coercion. The situation was made all the more difficult for the father in that Lalla did not want to leave her father's house to go anywhere and she told her father she loved him and wanted to be his wife immediately. He was at once delighted and appalled. He wanted her desperately, but he could not help telling himself that she deserved a chance to meet boys of her own age and to have the chance to marry a man with more of life in front of him, but his heart and stomach revolted at the thought of any other man being her husband and so being licensed to enjoy those charms which ravished him whenever he was near her.

'The older children, now aged between nineteen and twenty-five, were less surprised than their father when their youngest sibling told them what she desired, since her love for her father had been apparent to them for years. They were more surprised when their father told them that this was his wish also, since he had never shown any sexual interest in men or in women of our sort. They, like their father, realised that the state would not sanction such a marriage for many years. Lalla was sent to the palace school. Constantly she maintained her unwavering love for her father as he did for her. Kept apart both of them fell sick; so much so that, when Lalla was sixteen, the other siblings made a deputation to Leo, asking that the rules be disregarded and that their father and sister be allowed to marry at once to save their lives. Leo sympathised with their plight but explained that he would not be willing to recommend to our assembly that they overturn a law which was there to protect the vulnerable. However, seeing Lalla's adoration of her father, he allowed them to spend time together unchaperoned so long as her father swore he would not take his daughter's virginity until they were married. They had to be satisfied with that and, no doubt, they managed to gain pleasure in other ways.

'On her eighteenth birthday Lalla and her father should have married. All was prepared when, the day before, Leo announced his hope that his people would observe their nuptials when he did. Having waited so long Lalla and her father were distraught at the idea of waiting longer before they could consummate their love. However, as loyal subjects and citizens they decided to obey.

'Lalla moved back into the family home as her father's fiancé and de facto wife. The father continued to abstain from taking his daughter's virginity until Leo yelled from the palace balcony his success in penetrating your pretty little pussy.' Jasmine smiled and kissed my cheek. 'And on the night you were deflowered, at last she experienced the joy of becoming fully the wife of the man she had longed for for ten years and more and he, at last, planted his seed where it should be.'

The three of us sat contentedly together, imagining the joy at present suffusing that merchant house in the city.

Leo was the first to speak. 'Shall we invite them to dinner, just the four of us?' he asked me.

'Yes, but let's include Jasmine in the group. Would you mind?' I asked her.

'Delighted, though whether Lalla will be delighted to spend time with her old teacher is another matter.'

'We'll risk it,' said Leo. Then he said to me, 'You're the hostess, darling; send them an invitation for one evening in about three or four months -time. That'll be after the manoeuvres.'

'What manoeuvres?' I asked.

'Nothing to worry about. Every year the army practices repelling an invasion, just in case. The action lasts for four days and is scheduled to begin at the end of next month. Now, Jasmine, will you excuse us? All the talk of connubial bliss makes me long to enjoy my wife.'

Giandomenico

(to be continued)