Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms Read online

  “Take your shoes off and relax,” said Alice. “I will be right back.”

  She disappeared into one of the cabin’s back rooms. I kicked off my wet slippers and unclasped my cloak, letting it fall to the floor. The fireplace beckoned, so I walked across a white fur rug, enjoying the tickle of it underfoot, before dropping down into a makeshift bed of fluffy cushions. The fire was so hot as to be almost uncomfortable and it made me aware of the damp clamminess of my clothing. I glanced across the room, but Alice still hadn’t returned, so I tugged off my blouse, and shimmied out of my outer skirt and tossed them to the side. I tugged a fur over the thin linen of my slip and settled back into the pillows. I closed my eyes and sighed.

  I woke to a gentle kiss pressed on my cheek. My eyes flared open to find Alice pressed up against me.

  “You were sleeping when I came out of the bathroom, so I made something to snack on,” she said, gesturing to a low table filled with small plates of sliced cheese, smoked fish, seeded crackers, and dried fruit.

  I stretched and realized I could use a bathroom myself. “Would you mind if I clean up a bit first?”

  “Go ahead.” She smiled. “I drew a bath for you. I hope you like lavender.”

  I sniffed her neck. “If that’s what you used, I’ll love it.”

  “It’s the second door to the right. I will build up the fire while you’re gone.”

  I shrugged off the fur and watched to see her reaction to my general state of undress, but she had already turned away and was sitting on her knees preparing to tend the fire. Frustrated, I walked to the bathroom and opened the door. A lovely copper tub steamed invitingly. Without shutting the door, I tugged off my remaining clothes and slipped into the water. It was heaven.

  I spent my time working soap through my hair and rinsing the straw and dirt from my dark curls. With a cloth she’d left draped over the edge of the tub, I soaped my body, spending extra time on my breasts and between my legs. I lingered on my clit, gently rubbing the nub with my forefinger, wishing Alice would come in to watch me bathe, but she never walked through the door and the water began to cool. Instead of finding relief, my touch only increased my need. I dried off with a towel and looked at my clothes, crumpled in a heap on the floor. The thought of putting them back on was unbearable. I wanted to feel fur covering my bare skin. With a boldness I’d thought lost years ago, I walked out of the bathroom naked except for the towel slung around my hips.

  Alice looked at me then. She lounged in the cushions and was nibbling on dried apricots when I entered the room. I stopped, standing on a black fur, as her eyes devoured me. She set the plate aside and rose to her feet. Her tits strained against a tightly laced red shirt. A short, matching skirt revealed strong legs, which flexed as she stalked me from across the room in those sexy black boots.

  I froze in place, thrilled with the feeling of being naked in front of her. Dampness began to seep between my legs when she stopped in front of me.

  “Drop the towel.”

  I complied. My nipples puckered like black cherries. She bent down and flicked her tongue across the ripe buds cresting my heavy breasts. I moaned and reached up to cradle her head. Alice pulled away and laughed wickedly.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  I shook my head and thrust my breasts toward her. Suck me, please. But I couldn’t say the words. I hadn’t been allowed to express my desires for years and I was afraid the darkness inside of me would frighten this blonde creature away.

  Her sapphire eyes darkened. “Get down on your knees.”

  I shuddered, but crouched down on all fours and stared at the black fur beneath me. I could smell her excitement seeping between her legs. My canines lengthened in my mouth. Alice knelt behind me and pressed up against the flesh of my bare ass. She reached around and began to massage my breasts, clever fingers milking my tits. With each stroke, she would flick the nipples with her thumbs until they ached with longing. I wanted her hot lush mouth pressed against my breasts, her sharp little teeth teasing the tender buds. Please.

  She stopped. I almost howled in disappointment. My head lifted in protest, but she pushed my chest into the floor with one strong hand and reached between my thighs with the other. Her fingers parted the dusky curls and stroked the heat hidden in my center. She stroked deep inside, followed by the slick curve of a finger reaching up to press against my clit. At the end of each caress, Alice flicked the sensitive tip, pinching it gently, before sliding back to stroke me again. The pleasure swelled and I pushed back into her hand, attempting to increase the pace. Harder. Faster. Please.

  Abruptly, Alice let go of me and moved away.

  “No,” I howled and turned to pounce on her, hold her down, ravage her. Alice watched me with a cool grace, her legs spread wide to reveal her golden down and the hint of pink promising to quench my hunger.

  With a speed that shocked me, I rushed forward and bent my head to smell her sex. Her desire glistened on the golden curls and I dipped my head to taste her. She tasted like a honey-drenched peach, and I sucked and licked every inch, seeking every drop of that golden nectar. Alice moaned and thrust against me, taking more of my tongue into her tight core. I pressed a finger into her ass, stroking every inch of her. When my teeth scraped against her clit, Alice arched her back and cried out with the orgasm ripping through her.

  I sat up and ripped her skirt away with sharp claws.

  Alice panted past a grin. “Tell me what you want.”

  I growled and tore at her bodice, eager to shred the red silk to expose her breasts. She reached down. Her fingernails shifted into clawed talons, which she used to cut through the laces. I leaned forward, my heavy breasts pressing against her stomach. I ached for release, but I stopped to suckle the little pink rosebuds cresting her small tits.

  She reached down to fondle my nipples in turn and I groaned. “Alice.”

  With an unnatural strength, she pushed me off of her and rolled to straddle my hips. Her leather boots rubbed against my thighs. “Tell me.”

  “Suck on me,” I begged. “Please.”

  Alice grinned, exposing her sharp little teeth as she dipped her head to do my bidding. She sucked and pinched and tugged on my nipples, her hands milking my heavy flesh. I groaned and writhed underneath her as an orgasm built in my center. “Oh yes, please,” I shouted, arching my back. She bit down. The intense pleasure peaked. I howled, hands clasped tight in the fur bunched under my back.

  I panted, attempting to catch my breath, but she decided to breathe for me, kissing me with the deep stroking of her tongue. She grasped my hair in her fists and plundered my mouth as she ground her pussy against mine. I bucked to meet her insistence and grabbed her waist to pull her closer, but Alice had other ideas. She slithered out of my grasp and twisted around, pushed my thighs apart, and nuzzled my sex, dipping her tongue past my curls to tease my clit.

  I groaned and dug my fingers into the firm flesh of her ass. She pushed down harder, sucking my swollen flesh with teasing tugs. I spread the cheeks of her ass and dipped my fingers into her pink wetness, matching her rhythm. Relentless, she sucked and probed every crest and valley between my legs before she settled back to tongue my clit as I fucked her pussy with my hand. The pressure built until I felt as though I couldn’t bear the pleasure another minute. Alice bucked against me, her tightness clamping down on the thrusting fingers. At the same time, she lightly nipped my clit and then tugged on it with her lips. Pleasure ripped through me. Alice’s orgasm dripped down my arm to pool on my breasts. She sighed and collapsed on top of me.

  For a few moments, we lay tangled together, spent. The fire crackled, its fuel nearly gone. The room was dim and filled with the musky scent of sex. Alice rolled to her back and then curled at my side. I tugged a fur over our legs and stroked her back. A purr rumbled deep in her chest.

  “Tell me you’ll stay,” Alice murmured.

  “I’ll stay.”

  She stretched out at my side, molding her body against my curv
es. “Tell me you won’t leave me behind when you go after Kay.”

  The wolf inside me grinned. “Who’s Kay?”

  THE PRINCESS’S PRINCESS

  Salome Wilde

  I do not often find opportunity to indulge in remembrance of my youth. I have lived long and held great power. I have been generous and mean, wise and foolhardy. Yet, I have loved only once. The pleasures of my first romance are the stuff of dreams, and they deserve a place among my memoirs. Alongside war diaries and the signing of monumental decrees, there must also be Jiin. When all else fades from my memory, there will be Jiin.

  Two days after the birthday that rendered me a full adult in the eyes of the kingdom, I was sitting in my ridiculously well-appointed chambers, avoiding my studies after having dismissed my tutor and lamenting the burdens my parents the king and queen placed upon me as heir to the throne. The Lord High Chamberlain interrupted my thoughts, announcing himself and requesting entrance. He said he had brought someone to meet me at the behest of my father. I bade him enter, welcoming the diversion. He produced a lovely young woman whose looks made it plain she was from a distant land. Her skin was rich with bronze shadows. Her gaze was soft. As he guided her into the room, I casually concluded she was to be my new servant. Surely she was a tribute to my family from some kingdom that needed our good will or our troops or some other favor that did not and need not concern me. I had experienced little else of nations other than my own.

  The girl was clad in lush silks and sparkling baubles. Golden bracelets ran from wrist nearly to elbow on each arm; tiny gilded mirrors glinted from a broad, midnight-blue silk sash over her shoulder. Her lowered eyelids glittered, and her ankles were painted with elaborate shining swirls. She even had a tiny gold crown atop her black, ornately wrapped hair. But I did not see a magnificent, royal-born creature before me: all I saw was a beautifully wrapped gift. I commanded the girl to sit on the rug at the foot of my bed, and she did so, while the Chamberlain gasped and gawped.

  “Your Majesty…” he stammered.

  Both Jiin and I replied, “Yes?” at the same instant, Jiin with the lilt of a sensuous foreign tongue. I looked down at her and she up at me. I can only imagine now the glare of immature fury that appeared on my face at that moment. Was the girl mocking me?

  He began again, “Forgive me, Majesties—I meant Princess Jiin.”

  “Princess?” I burst out, glaring at the Chamberlain. Why had he not told me the moment she entered? He had humiliated me! But no, I rashly decided, it was not he who had wronged me but she!

  I slowly returned my gaze to this “Princess” Jiin, who continued to look up at me from her lowly position on the floor. Her feet were neatly tucked beneath her, hands in her lap, like the most obedient and well trained of serving girls. I knew I would never sit so. Why had she done it? To make me feel the fool: there was no other explanation. “You are a princess?” I asked in a quietly threatening voice.

  “One is,” she replied with a nod, humble and soft-spoken as I myself never was.

  “Well, get up then! A princess should never abase herself so.” I thought that if I acted outraged enough, perhaps the Chamberlain would not tell everyone in the castle that I had made an ass of myself before visiting royalty.

  Jiin rose silently and nimbly. I envied every inch of her graceful, modest demeanor. And I hated her for it, and for the indirect way she referred to herself as “One.”

  “One has a gift for Your Highness,” she offered, adding insult to injury, removing a gold ring from a tiny pouch she wore at her waist.

  The item was ornately wrought, seeming to suggest the figure of a woman, twisted around in a perfect circle, hands reaching up between her legs. It seemed an odd gift to me, when surely the Princess’s land had some precious gem they might instead have fashioned atop the little band. They must be a poor country, I rashly concluded. I tried not to show my disappointment, knowing the Chamberlain was watching and that I already looked an idiot. (“Never wear your emotions in your eyes,” my father always told me. “Wear your power with ease not struggle.”)

  “I thank you, Princess—.” I stopped short, for I did not remember her name. Again, I was at a disadvantage, and, again, I did not like it a bit.

  “This is Princess Jiin of Dinzhan,” the Chamberlain chimed in. “His Majesty the King has invited Princess Jiin and her mother, Queen Yiin, to stay in the palace for a time. A great treaty between our kingdom and theirs will mean greater prosperity for…”

  I tuned out the words of the paunchy, pompous fool, focused as I was on regaining the upper hand in this situation. “I thank you, Princess Jiin,” I began again, clipping the end of the Chamberlain’s sentence, “for your generous gift. We are honored to have you within our humble walls.” That should fix her. Our castle was glorious, huge, and ornate, the grandest in our land or any other, I surmised with infinite arrogance and utter ignorance. She merely smiled and bowed.

  After that first meeting, my coldness toward the sneaky, too-humble Jiin kept us far apart except when necessary. I maintained what I thought of as an air of dignity and aloofness but no doubt appeared as petulance. She, by contrast, seemed always to have an indulgent smile on her face that made me feel immature and foolish. I disliked her immensely.

  A few weeks into their stay, Queen Yiin formally presented my father with a vast, elaborate wall-hanging that depicted a map of her kingdom—which turned out to be thrice the size of my father’s. I fumed but had to attend the ceremony. As I gaped at the tapestry, I felt my earlier condescension with an inward cringe that I could only hope would not show outwardly as the radiant Jiin smiled into my eyes and said, as if we were continuing a conversation from our first meeting, “And these are this one’s humble walls.”

  I muttered, “Humble indeed,” in response to her taunt in the guise of false modesty, and she murmured back, “That is just what this one was going to say.”

  “Twit,” I snapped.

  “Brat,” she hissed.

  “Idiot.”

  “Child.”

  With that, we suddenly found we had everyone’s attention in the room. My father’s stern glare was mirrored in the eyes of my mother and Jiin’s. We were in trouble. But Jiin spoke up immediately: “Please forgive these childish games, Your Highnesses. The Princess and this one are just like sisters; and thus, like sisters, we squabble. The outburst was this one’s fault entirely.” And she made a pretty little bow that had my father and the two queens beaming.

  My competitive streak had me wanting to outdo the princess in humility, of course, but I could not think of anything to say. I was too proud to fake it. So, I reached out and embraced her. At first she stood, stiff as a pike: not only had we never hugged, we had never so much as touched. But then she softened, wrapped her arms around me, and brought her lips to my cheek for a kiss. I felt a tingle and marveled at it. Before I could make more of the strange sensation, however, Jiin had moved her mouth to my ear and whispered, “You are no child to have such soft, lush lukshas.”

  I was entirely shocked as she released me, but there was no question that lukshas meant my bosom, which she had pressed against so warmly. The tingle quickly became a flush down my throat and out to the tips of my heretofore-unnoticed breasts. They were only of average size and I had never thought them special, but to Jiin they were apparently worthy of comment. I relished the praise more than I could say and for a reason I could not name. In fact, I cannot remember anything else that was said as we hung the tapestry in the Great Hall that day, and I retreated to my chambers as swiftly as I could when dismissed. I think my mother quipped something about my looking chilled, but I could not remember ever feeling more overheated.

  Back in my rooms, I began to rethink the matter in my barely adult way. What did Jiin mean by her remarks? Was she simply taunting me, increasing the stakes in our ridiculous rivalry? That did not ring true, and I did not want it to be true. That Jiin’s voice had been a soft, lusty purr unlike any voice ever addressed to me on
ly made me more confused. I decided the only way to resolve my feeling of discomfort was to confront her. I made my way down the long hallway to Jiin’s rooms, passing a chambermaid and a guard, both of whom I was sure could see the stirred fluster in my bearing, though neither did more than show the usual signs of deference to their princess.

  When I burst into Jiin’s room without so much as a pause to knock, she turned from her work with a gasp. She was painting a nude female, and her model, sitting on a small platform opposite her, seemed to be one of the palace chamber servants. The creature’s red-gold cloud of hair was done up with the kind of decoration Jiin wore, and her plump pale arms sported bracelets like Jiin’s. The servant quickly reached for a cloth to cover herself. Worse, I could tell there had been some light merriment in conversation that I had interrupted. The woman lowered her eyes, and asked Jiin quietly if she should go.

  “Forgive me for intruding, Princess,” I said, too loudly, feeling foolish and out of place. I turned to leave.

  “Please, do not go,” Jiin hastily replied. “It is time that one gives a break to one’s companion from the dull work of modeling. Thank you, Dani.” She smiled warmly and the servant smiled back through lowered lashes and bowed.

  I saw the friendship between them and was hotly envious. I would never have spoken with such affection to a servant, or even to others, like the Chamberlain, to whom I owed respect. And that Jiin even knew the creature’s name was mortifying. My father had taught me haughtiness—perhaps more than he meant to—and it had left me alone and standoffish. Yet, here was Princess Jiin, my equal in stature and my superior in maturity, gentility, beauty, and tact, and I had thrown away a chance at friendship with her. I flushed again and, again, felt my nipples tighten beneath my garments.

  The servant slipped out the door at the back of the room, bowing as she went. I stood, waiting for Jiin to speak again. As she fiddled with her paints, I took in the room around me, a room that I had perhaps ventured into a time or two in my life but to which I had paid little attention, save to note its similarity to so many guest chambers in the palace. Jiin had transformed it. With sheer draperies, a musky incense that lent a smoky warmth to the room, and tapestries like the one her mother had given to my parents but featuring unfamiliar landscapes and unfamiliar birds of bright plumage, Jiin had made this cold, high-ceilinged chamber her own. I turned back to note more closely her work area in the corner, full of paints, brushes, and canvases.