ChoiceofMasters

  Choice of Masters

  Joey W. Hill

  Thomas has led his life according to the tenets of chivalry laid out by King Arthur. Now his deepest desires and his unshakable honor have joined in single purpose. His soul mate, Lilith, whom he has met only in dreams, is bespelled by a wizard. For five years she has been forced to exist as Lord Zorac’s prisoner in a state of high arousal, unable to gain fulfillment.

  To free her from her torment, Thomas must perform the sensual Rite of Awakening and convince Lilith to accept his word and hand as that of her true Master. But Lilith’s punishment is more than the capricious act of an evil wizard, and all is not as it seems…

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Choice of Masters

  ISBN 9781419932472

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Choice of Masters Copyright © 2003 Joey W. Hill

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication 2003

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Choice of Masters

  Joey W. Hill

  Chapter One

  “By the Holy Mother—”

  “For shame, Sir Thomas,” the priestess chuckled, her voice as seductive a pull on his cock as the acolyte kneeling before him, sucking on it. “Blaspheming the Virgin’s name.”

  He jerked, his powerful muscles flexing as his grip tightened on the arms of the wooden chair. The rough surface digging into his palms was no distraction from the warm, relentless heat and wetness of the mouth serving him.

  The young woman kneeling before his feet was all he could desire. Small, elegant, pure. The priestess had told him she was a virgin, and she was sucking a man’s rod for the very first time, those dainty lips never before stretched by a man’s brutal need. Her blue eyes lifted to his, reflecting joy in each groan she wrung out of him. Innocence and carnal seduction. The priestess had found his every weakness.

  “My lord, you have taken your eyes from her again.”

  He grunted. Sweat ran down his broad back as he fought for control. He lowered his gaze to the sprite. She balanced herself with a graceful hand gripping his thigh. He started to tremble, gritting his teeth.

  “Watch her soft, moist lips pull on your shaft. You have a thick and powerful staff, my lord. It tickles the back of her delicate throat, and stretches her lips so wide she will never smile again without thinking of you. See how she sucks you in, so slow. Hear the noises she makes, feel the glide of her tongue on the underside of your cock.”

  He moaned, a plea or threat, and his fingers clenched into fists, pulling against the chair. That was the wrong thing to do, because it created a resistance the girl was not expecting. Her tiny mouth slithered down his cock like a thin velvet glove pulling away.

  “Celeste, slide your gown up to your waist, and fasten the train so our visitor is able to see the outline of your pretty round bottom. Sir Thomas, don’t make me tell you again to keep your eyes on her.”

  The priestess’s fingers grazed his back, using her nails. Thomas’s testicles tightened in pleasure at her touch. He looked down as Celeste braced one hand on the floor, and gathered up the train of her gown in the other. She kept on his cock, working it in her mouth, her tongue performing slow, tiny licks, head and body rocking like a lamb suckling its mother’s teat. The gown was adjusted and he saw the shape of a perfect white arse, and the fragile bumps of her spinal column. Sweet Christ, the girl didn’t even have any scars to mar her perfect skin. Her soft buttocks quivered as she renewed her pumping motion on his organ.

  He could do this. He would not go over. He tried to find the sharp edge of that cliff in the passionate haze of his subconscious. He needed to achieve stasis there, give himself more time to understand what thoughts and emotions assaulted a person on the verge of cataclysmic sensation. The High Priestess Helene had dedicated herself to teaching him that control, for nearly thirty days now.

  He was far from the man he had been when he entered the doors of this temple. Followers of the Old Way, these priestesses drew their considerable powers from carnal pleasures. No Christian priest or monk dared come near the place, for fear of being ensnared by the sensual delights that were promised behind these walls.

  Thomas had thought he understood the sins of the flesh. He had come here for help, but a detached help was what he had wanted. A set of simple instructions that answered his questions and would allow him to be on his way, his contempt toward willfully unchaste women, masked as self-righteous courtesy, intact.

  * * * * *

  He had been brought to Helene’s chamber, the High Priestess of Ashteroth. She sat in a chair, regal as a queen, wearing a sheer tunic that showed him her full breasts through its fine sheen. Her nipples were rouged to a dark red, and the down between her legs was as raven black as her hair.

  “You seek to free Lilith,” she said, in soft tones that slid down his spine, arousing and soothing, evoking a peculiar image of whore and mother at once.

  He snapped his spine straight inside his armor, shoving the thought away with anger for his weakness.

  He made a bow. “Yes, m’lady. You know the nature of the spell laid upon her, as do we all. I am pledged to rescue her, but I must know how it can be done. It has come to me, through fasting and penance, that you have the information I seek.”

  “I dreamed of you, too, beautiful man,” she said, “and knew you would be coming to ask this of me. But why do you pledge yourself to this quest? Do you seek the glory of defeating a mighty wizard, and earning your spot at an imaginary Round Table that has not existed for centuries, if it ever did?”

  Thomas flushed. “You know nothing of my mind.”

  “To know your mind, I need only watch your cock. It points to her. It is her you want. You want her to call you Master, and yet you want to cherish her with your soul and body. You lie to yourself about your own reasons. I will not help you.”

  She rose and the woman who had escorted him moved forward to lead him from the temple.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  Helene stepped down from her throne, and passed him, her expression indifferent. The diaphanous cloth of her robe slid along the calf of his armor. It did not catch on the joints, as he would have expected it to do. It moved over him like the wind, like her. Able to touch him with a welcome cool breeze in the cruelest heat, or blast him without mercy. His desperation rose in him, and he spun around as she reached the stone archway.

  “No!”

  Helene stopped, looked back at him, and said nothing. She gazed at him out of violet gray eyes, so pale he thought of clouds on a day when the sun and ra
in warred for dominance.

  “I dream of her. Nearly every night now, she is there.” Thomas took a deep breath, assuaging the pain in his chest. “I pray for your mercy, Lady. You must help me.”

  * * * * *

  His dreams of Lilith were vivid, and seemed longer than the night itself, as if time stopped while he was with her. He yearned for his nightly plunge into unconsciousness.

  It would start in darkness. He would first be aware of her perfume. She was the flower with an elusive scent, that bud or blossom unseen by a knight traveling through the deep forest. It touched his nose with a haunting fragrance meant to be experienced only a moment, and remembered forever.

  Her hair would brush his arm. He would realize that he was standing in this world of darkness in nothing but the flesh God had given him. Her hair was so long that, as she passed, the strands slid over his forearm, feathered across his ribcage, caressed his hip.

  He reached out, closed his hand on it. It was like the mane of a steed in a king’s stable, so lustrous in weight and health he could feel its beauty through his fingertips. He curled his fist in it and tightened his grip, capturing her. He felt how much stronger he was, how delicate and female she was. She turned into him, rolled herself up against his body in a motion like a languorous summer afternoon. There was a meeting of bare skin. Her slender feet stood on his, her toes stretching to give her extra height. Her hands settled on his shoulders for balance.

  Hours of practice had made his shoulders broad and strong, and battle had given them scars. No woman’s hand had ever felt this good upon him, not his first tumble, not even the gentle touch of his mother. It was a touch that held everything he wanted, everything he wanted to prove, everything that made him who he was. It almost brought him to tears, and surely the taste of salt on one’s lips was not usual in a dream.

  Her thighs slid down either side of his erect lance, her heat anointing him with a dew as rich as honey. She was ready for a man, ready for him.

  She trembled, and he felt the quiver of her breasts, nipples swollen and tight against the coarse brown hair of his chest. His cock had hardened to an impossible rigidity, rivaling the steel of his sword. His staff bumped up between her legs, the length pressed against her cunt, the ridged head rubbing in the sensitive channel of her arse just beyond the seam of her thighs. Her breathing was rapid, her fingers clutched on his shoulders. He put his hand up and spread his fingers so he covered the side of her neck and cheek, pressing her head to his chest. The pose was as intimate as it was carnal, and he longed to possess her in ways that went far beyond the couplings of flesh.

  “Protect me,” she whispered into his heart. “Help me. Come to me, my lord. Make me yours.”

  Moonlight filtered into the dream, bringing light. He looked down at the auburn silk wrapped around his hand, his tether holding her to him. He wanted to see her face. He tugged her head back and the spiral of sensation in his gut tightened in pain and lust at once.

  Looking upon her countenance brought him the humility and stillness of a sacred moment, and yet he was harder than he had ever been in his life. He ached to have his hands on her breasts, to bend her over and thrust his cock into the slippery mystery of her womb, making her his, and his alone. He wanted to be all things to her, lover, husband, lord, God to her Goddess. Protector, comforter, seducer.

  God help him, he should throw himself to the cold floor of a church to beg forgiveness for the unforgivable sacrilege of such thoughts.

  Instead his hands were on her bare waist, his fingers spreading and sliding forward to take hold of her arse. He squeezed the two halves, one in each palm.

  “I will always protect you, cherish you, love you,” he muttered. “Always.”

  Her lips parted, lips he wanted to kiss, bite and suck, and from which he wished to bring helpless moans, just as he wished to bring forth a helpless gushing from between her legs.

  “Tell me you will be my lady,” he demanded.

  “I am,” she said. “Why else would I be in your dreams?”

  The long hair waved around a face as fragile and strokable as the newly opened petals of a white rose. Lips, soft and pink, a bit moist, so that he could not help but think of that other place, just as inviting to kiss with its musky mysteries.

  Her eyes were a dark liquid brown like a forest animal. He thought if he lost himself in those eyes, wrapped himself in that auburn hair, it would be like being in the earth, surrounded by her, cradled by her, her child and consort all at once. It was a dream, and he could not stop such pagan thoughts.

  Her hands rose to his face, and he kissed her palm, kissed both her palms, kissed every tear from her face.

  “Make me yours, my lord,” she whispered, her hands sliding to his neck, her body closing in on his.

  He lifted her and she gasped as she sunk to the hilt of his jutting cock. It was like being swallowed by velvet and heat, those lips parting to let him in. He felt her contract as she slid down, accommodating his size with shuddering ripples.

  Suddenly, instead of being naked, he wore full battle armor, scarred and nicked. His loins were bare, his cock free and erect, and buried in her as before.

  She was sweet oil inside, and his rod thickened and lengthened inside her as she rode him. The pump of her hips upon him was as relentless as the stride of his stallion beneath his weight.

  “You must bring me, my lord,” she rasped, her fingers tightening on his neck, cutting herself on the collar of his armor. “You want to, you have never wanted anything so much as to bugger me.”

  Thomas reared back to see her face. Her eyes were wild and teeth bared. Her hair came forward in snarled tangles with each stroke to hide her face from him, as if her hair curtained her soul from his scrutiny.

  “Lilith, stop.” Each upward stroke smacked the vulnerable curve of her stomach against the base of his armor, wounding her flesh.

  “No, my lady, do not—” he cried. He tried to stop her motions by banding his arms around her, but she squirmed and her slick cunt milked him, driving him higher. Blood, her blood, was running down his testicles and his thighs. She was screaming in anguish, but she would not stop, and he could not stop her, or himself.

  His seed exploded into her body as she wailed in pain, her face a horrifying mixture of lust lost to the madness of suffering, each emotion struggling for dominance. He could not get her to release him. Her legs bound tight around him, her hands gripping his armor as she stared at him with feral eyes. A drop of blood slid from her bitten lip and splashed on the top of her breast.

  He awoke, shuddering, covered in cold sweat and his own semen.

  * * * * *

  “The priest recommended prayer vigils, fasting, flagellation, hairshirt, penance in all shapes and forms.” Thomas managed to bring his voice back to an even pitch. The priestess stood, still expressionless, her attendant a shadow at her elbow.

  “All of this I tried, because he said she was a demon to be cast out. But it makes her so sad. She cries in my dreams when I try to shut her out, when I treat her this way. I know I will do anything to make her smile, to make her mine. It is not what I have known chivalry to be, this wish to possess her, and yet it is. I want to be her Master, yet I also want to be her protector. My soul is torn between lust and devotion and I am going mad.”

  Helene remained silent. Thomas bared his soul further, casting aside his earlier strategy to hold himself aloof.

  “No knight has undertaken the quest to rescue her. They wish the glory of taking from the wizard what is his, but they care naught for her. They see her as his minion and so the prize is not great enough to tempt them. I must help her. I cannot fail, or I shall die at the thought of failing her. Will you help me or not?”

  This last, more belligerent than he intended, but he was angry that she had drawn it from him, with her steady stare and calm acceptance of his story that he could not match.

  “You do not know if the girl prefers mutton to fowl, if she worries more about our border
s or the ribbons she will wear from day to day in her hair. If she is educated, or a simpering fool.” Helene raised a brow. “These are important things, my lord.”

  “It does not matter. In my dream, I know her. She is part of me. I will love her, no matter what she is, or what she is not.”

  “A man of great discipline, torn between his doubt and what he knows in his heart.” Helene pursed her lips. “Yes. I will help you. You are not a true liar.” A corner of her mouth twitched. “You were just lying to me, not to yourself. You must stay with me a month to know the way to go about it. Longer, if you can.”

  “I cannot stay a month.”

  “It must be a month, or nothing. You obey me in all things for that month, and learn the control you must possess to save her. You will need every moment. You have much armor to shed, Sir Thomas.”

  * * * * *

  So here he was, while an innocent licked him with the flames of hell in her tongue. He was stripped of all his clothes, as well as his armor. He had not worn clothes for most of these four weeks. He had walked among the dressed priestesses this way, open to their admiring glances and caresses, as they tested his resolve and his flesh in ways he could not have imagined.

  He kept his attention upon Celeste as the priestess had commanded, knowing it would finish him to see the small head bobbing, the soft line of her cheek, the tender wrinkle of her lips as she handled his cock. Still he hoped. He fought it. He tried to think of the cold flagstones of a church in the dead of winter, the scourge taking flesh off his back.

  Thomas snarled as Celeste’s teeth lightly scored his engorged head. She started making wet, slurping noises of enjoyment, underscoring every lash of her tongue and slide of her lips on him, as if his nerve endings needed the additional help of his hearing to increase his agony.

  Her tongue flicked, once, twice, three times along the slender vein that pulsed from scrotum to head, and the vision of scourge and flagstones was consumed by a purifying fire that roared over and through him.