When first Aldora had actually seen the young thoheeks, she had felt almost repelled, for though handsome enough, his waist was thicker than she preferred and his hips were far wider than were those of the average man. It was not until she actually fought beside him against a desperate force of cornered Vawnee horsemen, saw the ease with which he managed that ten-pound axe, making of it both shield and fearsome weapon, that she came to appreciate his atypical build. The classic masculine form-wide shoulders tapering to a narrow waist and slim hips-would never have been able to develop or give purchase to the almost abnormal masculature of back, buttocks and belly which were requisite in a skilled and accomplished axe wielder.
But in the weeks since that first meeting, his hard, scarred body-so very fair where sun and wind had not browned it, the skin so soft and smooth where the puckered cicatrices of old wounds did not roughen it-and the fine young man that body housed had become very dear to her. Few men she could recall in nearly a hundred and fifty years had become so dear so soon.
As his deadly efficiency as a warrior impressed all who witnessed it, as his almost immediate grasp of problems of strategy, tactics, logistics and the proper marshaling of a large, heterogeneous force impressed his peers and the High Lord, so did his understanding of the theory and application of the skills of the bedly arts amaze and enrapture the High Lady Aldora. His beautiful blending of tenderness and fire, of fierce passion and gentle regard, never failed to leave her trembling and gasping, sometimes weeping her pure joy and gratitude. Then he would kiss the tears from her cheeks and eyelids, while their warm breaths mingled and the caressing hands did delightful things to the ultrasensitive parts of her blissfully tired body . . . and would continue doing those things until her tiredness was once more drowned in a surging flood of fresh desire.
So it was this night His lips left hers to first nuzzle at her soft throat, then kiss their way downward to end suckling one red-brown nipple, while a big hand crept from beneath her back to gently roll the other nipple between thumb and forefinger. When the uncommitted hand glided over her flat belly, she moaned, then softly gasped as his hard but tender fingers continued on into the damp tangle beyond. And even as that hand moved slowly, engulfing all of her being in joy-drenched agony, his lips forsook her nipple and returned to her throat But now it was his even white teeth which served, inflicting tiny, stinging bites from the hollow of that throat around to the nape, then back up the slender column of her neck to her ear.
And the palms which had caressed his back were short-nailed claws which dug deep into his shoulders, tore oozing scratches in that freckled skin. Long shudders racked Al-dora’s olive-tan body, her head lay thrown back, the eyelids tight closed and her lips skinned back from her teeth, while from her half-opened mouth issued an endless moan, interspersed with little whimpers of unbearable pleasure.
At last she began to gasp, “Oh, Bili . . . Bili … oh, Bili, love . . . Oh, please, please, Bili .. . oh, dear, sweet Bili, enter -now … I beg of you, Bili, as you love Sacred Sun . .. Please, Bili, please . . . Bili . . . Bili . . .”
And much, much later, as they lay side by side, his hand clasping hers, a balmy nightwind flickering the lamp flames and soothing their bodies, his mind touched her own.
“Aldora, I am ignorant of many things, but horses and riding I know well. It is ten days’ hard riding from Morguhn to the nearest of the Middle Kingdoms, so it is just not possible that any galloper could have covered that distance and let it be known that there was a market here for Freefighters in time for them to start arriving in Morguhn only two weeks after I remarked the need for them. What sorcery do you practice, Aldora?”