If Mir-Kasa's words had not been clear, the look on her face would certainly have been so. To judge from the hunger Blade could see there, the about-to-become-ex-Steward Nris-Pol could have been a eunuch. He doubted whether that was really the case. It was more likely that Her Splendor Mir-Kasa, Queen of the Tower of the Serpent, had rather extensive appetites.
He climbed out of the bath and strode dripping and naked across the carpet, leaving a damp trail behind him. For a moment his eyes fell on the girl's body. If Mir-Kasa was going to insist on making love with that gruesome reminder of the way of life in the towers lying on the rug only feet away …
She was. Blade shrugged mentally as she came toward him, eyes half-closed, mouth open. He had made love under less agreeable circumstances, and to far less attractive women. Mir-Kasa's age might be showing in her hair, but Blade could not see it showing anywhere else. The high full breasts thrust out the material of the tunic in solid, firm, unsagging shapes, and the skin of her neck showed only the faintest lining and wrinkling.
Then she was in his arms, her lips clinging hot and wet to his, and Blade knew that both the maturity and the madness in this woman extended deep into her. All by itself, the kiss was an almost frighteningly powerful erotic poem. For a moment Blade had the unnerving sensation that this woman was going to physically suck him in, every inch of his body, and mix herself with him. His arousal almost cooled for a moment at the image. Then he felt her hands moving down his body, not waiting for any subtle caresses. They went straight to his up jutting maleness and went to work on it with the same fierce intensity. A momentary thought flashed through Blade's mind, that his maleness was going to be up-jetting before too much longer with this kind of handwork. And then where would he be? Not Queen's Steward of the Tower of the Serpent, that was certain.
As her hands flickered around him, his own were searching up and down her body, squeezing, caressing as best he could through the clothes. He was also looking for ways of taking those clothes off, for there was a rutting madness boiling up in him. He wanted her as bare to him and his hands as he was to her.
Her garments seemed to be made without buttons, hooks, zippers, fasteners, or openings of any sort. For a moment doubt flickered through his mind. Was he supposed to tear the clothes off the back of a queen? Then another thought came into his mind and stayed there. If he did not get her clothes off soon, he could hardly count on giving her what she so obviously wanted. His hands went up to the neck of her tunic, and clutched the fabric.
As they did, her eyes rolled toward him with an unmistakable assent in them. His grip tightened on the fabric, and he tore downward, with all his strength. The fabric was tough, but not tough enough to resist Blade's muscles. The tunic split open halfway down Mir-Kasa's back. As Blade let go, it slipped down off her shoulders and halfway down her arms. And as it slipped, her breasts sprang into view, free and fully exposed.
They were magnificent-there was no other word Blade could think of. There was no other word he could have thought of, even if he had been able to consider them and contemplate them unaroused and at his leisure. But he had no leisure, he was thoroughly aroused, and his merely contemplating any part of Mir-Kasa's body was the last thing in either of their minds.
Blade's hands followed his eyes downward in a single swift lunge, cupping the full ripe curves of both breasts. The nipples were already flushed with blood and hardened into solid little points. He felt them stiffen still further as his hands cupped and caressed and stroked. Mir-Kasa's head went back again, and her mouth opened to let out her breath in a great tearing, gasping sob.
It seemed that she was letting out all the breath in her body, and all her strength was going with it. She sagged down into Blade's arms so suddenly that he nearly let her fall. But he caught her in time, bending at the knees and bringing his lips down to meet hers. Another devouring kiss, and she was dragging him down on the floor, rolling back and forth so that the solid masses of her breasts swung gently to and fro.
Her head was back on the floor now, and her dark hair spreading out fan-like around it, making a dark frame for her passion-twisted face. She whimpered now, deep in her throat, like a wounded animal, and closed her fingers once again on Blade. He bit back a groan at the effort it took to control himself under the work of those superbly competent fingers. He sank to his knees, and reached down for her skirt. He reached down for it, reached up under it, ran his hands up bare legs on to bare thighs and on still higher. She wore nothing under the skirt, nothing at all. Blade's moving hands encountered a mat of curly hair already dripping like dewy grass with the queen's fierce arousal. As his fingers thrust and clutched and probed in and around that hair, Mir-Kasa's lips curled back from her teeth. Her passion was making her almost ugly, but it would have taken more than that now to repel Blade. Nothing short of a stunning blow on the head could have kept him away from the woman writhing on the floor before him. The woman, not the queen.
She had wanted to be treated as a woman, seen as a woman. As far as Blade was concerned, she would have her wish. And she would have one more experience as a woman instead of as a queen. He would take her as a woman, without deference or delicacy, responding to nothing except the urge in his groin and the pounding in his ears.
His fingers plucked and tore at the waistband of her skirt. It did not give way, but it was elastic. Inch by inch he dragged the skirt down. A stomach still flat as a board and showing only a few stretch marks came into view, with a surprisingly small navel set neatly in it. In a whimsical moment, Blade lowered his lips to that navel, and kissed it. Mir-Kasa paid no attention. He pulled the skirt farther down, exposing the beginnings of her pubic hair curly and dripping-damp as he had felt it, dark and shot here and there with gray as he had imagined it. Then suddenly the waistband gave way entirely. In a single jerk the skirt flew down over perfectly rounded and swelling hips. Blade flung it away with almost hysterical strength.
As he did so, Mir-Kasa heaved herself into a sitting position. A quick tear and a quick flick of the wrist, and the remains of her tunic went flying away to join the skirt. She sat before Blade, legs open, mouth open, eyes closed, now as bare as he was. Her arms rose blindly to thrust her hands into his as he knelt down in front of her. She hoisted herself higher up still, until she was half-standing. Kneeling on the rug there, with his arms locked around her middle, Blade took the Queen of the Tower of the Serpent.
She made neither sound nor motion nor gesture as his fearsomely stiff and swollen member burrowed its way up into her wetness. She was not tight at the moment he entered, but then her skilled pelvic muscles began to writhe and twist in a pattern as terribly skilled as the rhythm of her hands. This time Blade did groan out loud with the effort required not to release at once. But he only groaned. His effort to hold back succeeded.
Mir-Kasa beat him to their common goal. Suddenly her eyes rolled up in her head and her arms locked around Blade like the tentacles of an octopus. Her body sagged down onto his, shaking and twisting and writhing as a whole series of massive spasms tore through her. Her body jolted and bumped against Blade, driving him down on to his back on the rug, with her on top of him. As they sank down, he drove still deeper into her, and her wetness poured down around him.
One small, lingering, rational part of his mind told him that he should hold on, keep going, try to satisfy her still more. But the rest of his mind was either no longer working or it was listening only to the uproar of his body. And that uproar finally rose beyond Blade's endurance. He arched his hips upward, and all his breath went out of him in the same moment that all his semen went out of him.