The Love of a Huntsman

Screams coursed their way up the stairs like baleful ghosts rising up from the fen. They always did, as men and a goodly number of women were tortured in the bowels of the queen's castle. It was a sick duty to assist in these wretches' torments, and the Huntsman was pleased that at least it wasn't his duty today.

It had been in the past, to flay the skin from men's backs and ravish the women to punish them for their crimes against the Queen, regardless of how slight they may be. In his time he had made many men bleed and not too few women, albeit in different ways. He didn't relish his duty as jailor, and cried inside as much as they screamed without, and thank goodness his duty today was more swift and less agonizing: Taking the condemned to the block was always easier than torture and rape.

The Huntsman, a name the Queen used more in jest than in deference, strode to the door he sought, third on the left. He looked over the warn keys on the ring thoughtfully, and then selected the one he needed. He unlocked and opened the door and stopped, seeing the woman, and barely that if she was not a girl yesterday. It was not the first woman he had held in this dank tomb and not the youngest he had led to the axeman's final decision, but he stood in the doorway anyway, marveling at her.

She was chained to the far wall, every scrap of clothing stripped from her body and lying in fragments at her feet. Her very feet, tender and delicate, were propped almost on tiptoe as they had shackled her high on the wall, her arms straining against her weight. Her face was haggard, but he could see the beauty in her face, the shape of her chin and cheek, the piercing clearness of her eyes, fiery defiance gleaming from them despite her precarious position. His eye passed lazily over the fullness of her breasts, the curve of her hip, the roll of her thighs, the pinkness of her sex. She had not the energy to struggle, but she squirmed nonetheless under his gaze, as if it were a slimy hand caressing her form.

They had violated her. The guards in their clumsy way had taken what was hers to give, leaving her with nothing but their noisome seed and the angry red gash that had been their goal. It was not the first he had seen; he had seen worse of his own handiwork, but he suddenly wished with silent fervor that it was the last. He saw that her eyes were puffy and red with tears, tears he had seen but ignored in the past. On this woman, he could do no such thing.

"It's you're time to go," he said, barely managing the words from his cramped throat. He expected his words to summon fear in her eyes, but they widen. They almost looked…relieved. His secret was out and she knew his intentions, or at least hoped on them.

"I'm ready," she said, simply. He walked forward, drinking in her beatific figure, but his eyes dwelled on her ravaged lips. An urge welled up inside of him, an almost hysterical desire to fall to his knees and cure her gaping wound, to kiss the gash they had widened and thus soothe her aching torment. Perhaps she would even come to love him for such tenderness, gentility that would eventually yield to wanton lust and a sharing of passions.

No, he told himself, it isn't for me alone. It is only my duty to let such beauty be freed, instead of letting it be destroyed. He reached up to unshackle her and she read his thoughts.

"I can repay you for your kindness. I am still wet from the others, and I have no strength to fight you."

"I don't need that from you, girl." She was unrelenting.

"I am spread wide from their rods, sir. You will find easy into which to dip." The Huntsman licked his lips. He was wide of girth and had split many women under the veil of their screams in the past, but he did not wish to accept her offer.

"You are, free," he managed, stiffening between his legs despite his generosity. His eyes fixed on her creamy skin as it flexed beneath him, and the matted but vibrant shock of chestnut hair that graced her crown and flowed over the curves of her shoulders, just shy of her heaving breasts.

"I don't want to die today, Huntsman," she pleaded, his plans obviously not clear to her but her desperation was clear to him. She looked up into his eyes, her still rimmed with red and moist from sorrow. "I ask you again, if you'll partake of me, to slide up into my loving womb, perhaps I can trade my honor for my freedom."

To accent her plea, her freed hand slipped down her breast, grazing the nipple, caressed her belly and slid a slender finger between her thighs, bringing it up wet. Blessedly, it was not red, but clear, and she traced a line of slick desire on her belly. Her scent reached out to him, a cringing odor of the ruffians who had come before her, but beneath it was her raw, but fresh aroma, like roasted meat. In a way she was, yet in his intoxication she was so much more.

The Huntsman merely shook his head and finished removing the iron shackles from her wrists. She rubbed them absently, looking at him with genuine puzzlement and gratitude.

"Do you know what I've done to be condemned here?" I was the Queen's handmaiden and committed to her every whim. Every one except for her request to kneel before her and when she placed her soft hands upon my head, to lean forward and kiss her here," she gestured with both hands to her sex, her fingertips mere hairs away from her pleasurable softness, "I myself never having touched a man let alone my queen, denied her, and she cast me down here. If she knows you have freed me, it will mean your head tumbling from the executioner's blade."

"If it means freeing a thing of beauty such as you, my head is a small loss in exchange." He was gasping for air now, unable to breathe in the presence of this creature, so close to her porcelain skin, so near her exposed wonders, the miraculous firm softness she had moments before offered to him so easily. "Come, we must get you away before others come looking for us. I can dress you and show you the way out, then…"

Then what? He could not go with her, even if his heart ached to do so.

"…then you are on your own."

"You are a good man, Huntsman," She looked at him, realizing how his old title hurt him, intuiting some bit of shame from his past. ",and perhaps someday you will be that again."

"Good?" he fished, wetness welling up in his eyes.

"You know what I mean." He thought he did.

"Come, we have to flee now." He removed his cape with a flourish and covered her body in gray flannel, hiding her delectable features so that only her tired face and bare feet were visible. From there they hurried from the dungeon and away into the blazing daylight, moving quickly but carefully to the cottage that was the Huntsman's home. There he offered a dress of his wife who had passed in the year behind, a ragged old green frock. She turned away from him to don the garment, achingly late to muster such modesty. He watched in awe as the soft material devoured her feet in a puddle, then slithered up her legs, covered her curvy thighs and swept over the delicious roundness of her buttocks. Once dressed she turned around and he nodded approval.

Although seeing her covered upset his raging desire, a new energy crept into his loins and pounded through his member as he saw her silhouetted in green silk. It wasn't too late to plunder her treasures, to throw her to his bed, to pull the soft fabric up from her struggling body and take her fully and unabashedly, or perhaps tear it from her body and feed hungrily from her teats while he split her front and back, mixing his seed with that of the Queen's minions. He would have her until the Queen's men came for them both, led by her anguished cries, and cut them down, him quivering his last in her resisting but embracing nest as he died.

No, he thought, looking at the sea of green as she floated across the room. I would not have treated my wife this way, and I cannot do it to this woman, as much as she calls out to me. I cannot free her from one hell to be abandoned in another. He strode to the door.

"Follow me. I'll take you to safety." She followed him out the door and across grassy plains up to where the forest rose thick and dense before them. "Go south," he said, "until you reach the hamlet at the other side of the forest. You will be safe there if you tell no one who you were and from whence you came." And then with gathered insincerity, "Go now, before I change my mind."

Instead of running off into the woods as he expected, she raised up on her toes, much as she had when he first found her, bare and captivating in that first moment, the moment he knew he had to free her, as if to kiss him upon the lips. He closed his eyes, allowing her this measure of gratitude, and was surprised to feel her fingertip against his lips, slick and carrying her pungent aroma.

She had brought her fingers down to her slit again and given him the gift he really wanted, a taste of perfection. His lips parted and she slipped her flavor over his tongue, her scent teetering him at the brink of madness. He trembled and she pulled away from him gently. He reached down, unseeing, hoping to find her dress parted, to slip his fingers into her silken glove and pleasure her, then pull her to the ground, gently now. He ached to slide her dress up her legs, to pull her to him until the backs of her thighs rested on the tops of his so he could stroke her with his throbbing fullness, to lay her on the green meadow, her hair splayed out behind her on the cool grass and have her coo him the Huntsman, as he labored above her in deliberate penetration.

But she was no longer there. It was moments later that he realized she had left him, her nectar still on his lips, and the only sign that she had been there was the swaying foliage at the edge of the dark glade.

He could have followed her, would have found her, but reluctantly he turned back to the town. His task was finished, and yet now he had to answer for his dereliction of duty. He walked back to town, to wait for the Queen's response.