Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

Her expression had not changed, but this time I noticed how her seated posture drew the rough, grey fabric of her plain smock into tension against her thigh, outlining the sweep of it, and my loins gave an involuntary twitch, which did not go unnoticed by my two friends, who redoubled their efforts and found life where none had been. The reaction, unwilled and unexpected, surprised me, so that I looked more closely at this strange young woman. She had none of the attributes that I normally found attractive. In fact, I decided, she was almost ugly. And she was definitely not right in the head.

Uther and his rider had collapsed, and I could feel my own resurgence progressing. I left Cassandra to her vacant observations and returned to what was going on below my waist. |

I lost track of the time that elapsed between then and when Uther called my name, but when he did I was preoccupied. My companions and I had achieved a happy state of closeness that allowed me to move from one to the other with great ease and speed, and so I ignored him and concentrated upon not concentrating too much on anything. But he was not to be ignored, and his insistence finally distracted me.

"What is it, Uther? What do you want?"

"Come here! Come over here and look at this."

"I'm busy! Look at what?"

"Come and see. Look what I have!"

I tried again to ignore him, snuggling my face into a plenitude of flesh, but he became even more insistent and I finally had to respond to him, merely to quiet him. "I don't care what you have," I told him, "I have things of my own to see to here."

"You can finish that later. Come and look at this."

I rose with a sigh and crossed the room to where he lay, aware of the cool night air on the moist parts of my body. "What?"

"Look at this. Have you ever seen the like?" I had, but I was looking at the wrong thing. One of his two companions was working at his erect phallus with her mouth, enjoying in her turn the mouth of her companion who suckled noisily between her lazily spread thighs. "Not that! This, this, this!" Uther drew my attention to Cassandra's face, which he held in his right hand, pinching her cheeks between finger and thumb so that her lips were pouted out of shape into a formless mass of soft flesh. Above her puckered lips, her eyes still gazed at him with that same, almost mindless docility. "Look at that mouth, Caius. Does it remind you of anything?" I looked. It did.

"I think so," I said, "but I don't know what. Let go of it."

He released her and her mouth went back to normal. It was an astonishing mouth, taking up more than half the width of her face, with full, fleshy lips. The mouth, and those eyes which never strayed from his, eclipsed the rest of her entirely. I found myself wishing she would look at me.

"That's quite a mouth," I said, as he squeezed it again from both sides, not enough to hurt the girl, but just to crush the lips back into the shape they had been in before. "What does it look like to you, Uther?"

He gave a great shout of laughter and released the girl, twisting his body around to grasp the hips of the wench who was being tongued by her friend. "This!" he shouted, pulling her body towards him with one hand and slapping her worshipper away with the other. Ignoring the disgruntled protests of both of them, he pulled and hauled at the one he wanted, twisting her around and lifting her legs over in front of him until she lay face down, diagonally across him, her nakedness turned up towards his face and her head down by his feet. "Come round here and look at this!"

Grinning, I moved around to his right shoulder. The girl on his lap began to squirm in protest and he slapped her a stinging blow on the buttocks. "Lie still, woman, and spread your legs!" He reached with his left hand and pinched the lips of her vulva between his thumb and forefinger, hard enough and with enough downward pressure to pout them open. "There! You see? It's wetter, but it's the same."

"Hairier, too," I agreed, smiling, "but there is a resemblance."

He reached out again with his right hand and pinched Cassandra's mouth once more, his eyes going from those lips to the ones he held pinched in his other hand.

"Uther! You're hurting me!" This came from the region of his feet.

He slapped her again. "Then get your great wet arse out of my face, woman!" Finding herself released, the woman scrambled away from him, pouting reproachfully over her shoulder at him, but he was oblivious to her. Her friend, on the other hand, leaned towards her and pulled her lazily over to where she could resume her interrupted activity. Uther, in the meantime, continued to stare at Cassandra's mouth. Slowly, without relinquishing his hold on her chin, he got to his feet and stood in front of her, the tip of his phallus poised about an inch from her pouted lips. Her eyes had moved upwards, following him as he rose, so that her head was now tilted back to see his face. He twined the fingers of his left hand, gently enough, in her hair, and pulled her face downward.

"Now," he said, pushing himself gently forward, finding the space between those lips and inserting himself minutely. She did not respond in any way and he withdrew and did it again, a little more firmly. Still no response, although it was obvious that her teeth were together, barring his entrance. My own tumescence had shrunk to a bud and my two bed- mates were watching the proceedings with bored interest. I began- to feel some misgivings at what he was doing, although I could not have said why. She was here of her own free will and he was not harming her in any way. Nevertheless, I felt ill at ease.

"Uther—"

"Sssh, Caius! Watch! Come on, beauty, open it." He pinched harder, forcing her teeth apart. "That's better. That's good..." I watched him penetrate her mouth, sliding in slowly and then withdrawing, then sliding again as he released her chin and placed his hand on her head, and then she bit down on him. I knew she was going to do it a full second before she did it, for I was watching her eyes.

He roared like a wounded bull and jerked himself away from her, his hands flying to cradle his injury. In the instant that I had to look, I saw no sign of blood or of tooth marks on him, but any injury would have been too new to have had time to bleed. Cassandra jumped to her feet, her great grey eyes gleaming, but whether in fear, anger or in satisfaction I have no idea. Uther roared again and went for her, his big arm raised to smash her to the ground. One blow he landed, hurling her across the room before I could stop him, and then I hooked an elbow behind one of his and threw my other arm around his neck and wrestled him to the floor. It was all I could do to bring him down. He was in a monstrous anger and I knew him to be capable of killing her there and then. I got my chest across him, pinning him, and exerted all my strength to keep him there. He bucked and thrashed beneath me like a demented thing and then quite suddenly stopped and lay passive. I took that for a ruse and continued to press down on him, but when he spoke, I knew the danger was past.

"It's all right, Cay. You can let me go. I won't harm her. Get up."

I heard the truth in his voice and let him up. I looked for the girl, but she was gone. The other four sat staring wide- eyed at the two of us.

"Where did she go?"

The one with the long tongue shrugged her big shoulders. "Don't know, she just ran."

I rose and went to the door and looked out into the night- filled courtyard. There was no sign of Cassandra. I heard the approaching pacing of a guard and realized I was naked, so I turned back into the room and closed the door.

"The bitch. I'll find her later and teach her a lesson she won't soon forget." Uther was sitting hunched over, examining the shrunken thing he cradled in his fingers. "She almost bit me in two! I'll kill the bitch."