Announcement - Thanks to my savvy, diligent and extraordinary beta-reader, Nancyjean – Both Lord Conqueror of the Realm and Queen of the Realm can now be found on an Ebook format as well. (epub, MOBI, PDF) on the
Xena Library web site. It is listed under the LORD CONQUEROR OF THE
REALM SERIES, so scroll down to the L's.
http://www.xenalibrary.com/ebooklibrary.htm
SPECIAL THANKS : My humble most ardent gratitude to the excellent, most brilliant Beta readers Nancyjean whom I can't thank enough.
Comments, thoughts, questions & feedback : MOST WELCOMED – The more you write me, the quicker I post – I mean it!
Part 25
The whip would have to be folded into two to better moderate the force of the lashes, Athena thought as she took the offered instrument from her wife's hands. With the whip still rolled in her hands, she began to undo her shirt and discarded the white silk garment to the floor. She watched Sieglinde stealthily throwing glances at her, attempting to clap her curious eyes on her nakedness, and the Heir reveled in it, making a spectacle out of it to impress her captivated audience. When she unbuckled her belt and pulled it from around her lean waist, she made the muscles of her arms and chest swell for Sieglinde's pleasure.
The bedchamber was hot, quiet and heavy with languor.
With a single, indolent motion she revealed her strong thighs and the corded muscles adorning them, deliberately hiding with her torso the device harnessed over her loins. She exposed a sculpted, robust back with twin shoulder blades sinking and emerging back up under packed flesh with the unhurried movement of her arms, drawing further her wife's escalating anticipation.
When out of her trousers and boots, she stretched back to her full stature, bare, dropping one end of the whip to fall to the ground, keeping the handle firmly in her grip, as well as her gaze intensely upon Sieglinde. She saw Sieglinde blush as her gaze lingered with keen interest at the large shaft swaying between her thighs, and her wife's complexion grew redder when she realized she was caught staring at it. The involuntary demonstration of innocence, excitement and bashfulness charmed and enchanted both the Heir and the beast that dwelled inside her.
Athena narrowed the distance between them and reached down to take a handful of that irresistible hair, which when she'd first clapped her eyes on it still in thick, healthy braids, it'd reminded her of the ropes on the battleship she'd commanded, which was the largest in the Realm's fleet. Her action was not forceful. She tested its texture between her fingers to find that it was the softest thing ever to touch her skin and she became distracted by imagining the feeling of that softness everywhere on her body. Absentmindedly, her hold on the strands of hair loosened and the strands poured down from beneath her fingers and clung back against Sieglinde's white flesh.
Unable to stop herself, she reached for the hair a second time, and when she leaned down and collected another sample, a low growl just above a whisper escaped her mouth. "It is so exquisite."
"Thank you, Min Herre," Sieglinde whispered above baited breath.
Under the blanket of gold, the increase in movement of Sieglinde's breasts caught Athena's attention.
"I see now why you hide your hair," Athena said and brought her wife's hair to her face, touching it against her cheek and closing her eyes in delight. "If it weren't for your cap it would distract and entice everyone you cross paths with."
When Athena opened her eyes she saw the blush spreading to Sieglinde's ears.
"My hair is for your eyes and for your pleasure alone, Min Herre," Sieglinde spoke with a small voice. She never imagined she would ever engage in such an intimate exchange. Her heart pounded so wildly in her chest that she could feel it slamming against her ribcage. Her mind was flooded with streams of something she could neither name nor recognize in her excited state.
"I am very pleased," Athena said then leaned down even lower, feeling the breaking of the fetters arresting the darkness inside her. " Are you ready?" she husked into her wife's ear.
Sieglinde's heartbeats quickened. "I am, Min Herre," she rasped, sounding more confident than she felt. She had been waiting for this day, for this moment since her father, King Olof, had told her in so many words that she was to marry the Lord Conqueror's Heir.
But the curiosity and anticipation for the Conqueror's successor grew into more while on the long journey to Corinth. “ The Conqueror's Heir is a lass, Princess," Jarl Albrich had told her with a grave tone of voice. He'd felt sorry for her, she could tell, not marrying a man, but she hadn't felt she needed to be pitied. "I was told she is more a lad than a lass, really," he'd added to comfort her, but that had only made her even more intrigued. At her request, the Jarl had told her all that he knew about the queer Greek Princess and her illustrious lineage – And when she had seen those cobalt eyes in Corinth, as blue as the sky, the body chiseled by arduous training and the most handsome face, she'd learnt what want was. And then the pinch of pain in her heart whenever she'd seen Athena with Cynna had taught her she'd been feeling more than a simple wanting.
No force in the world, not even the darkness, would compel her to stop it now.
"Are you frightened?" the Heir asked.
"I am, Min Herre," Sieglinde answered, then lowered her head just slightly and added, “But I am also happy, for now I shall truly be yours.”
The animalistic howl sounded near in the Heir's ears. It wasn't the proclamation of fear that made the blood course faster in her veins, but that of her wife's belonging to her, she knew. "I will do all that I can to contain it,” she promised then added almost tentatively as though she felt it was too much to ask, “ With your help?"
"With my help," Sieglinde confirmed with a shy smile.
And the beast was freed.
The Heir let Sieglinde's hair loose from her hand as she straightened back up.
"Go to the bed and rest your back against the pillows," Athena ordered.
Sieglinde rose to her feet and on quick legs went to the large bed in which she had spent all her night sleeping alone, all but one, and climbed up.
Athena seized the opportunity to feast her eyes on the slight sway of her wife's buttocks and licked her suddenly dry lips.
As ordered, Sieglinde seated herself on the bed, reclined backwards against the pillows, and rested her head against the carved wooden headboard.
"Lift up your hair and reveal your treasures to me," the Heir ordered as she folded the whip, closing her fist around both ends of it.
The tone of voice that Athena took with her made Sieglinde's blood simmer, and she prayed in her heart to her gods that she would not fail. As she gathered her long hair in both hands and lifted it up, holding it against her head, Sieglinde's focus shifted to the whip. She wondered what it would feel like.
The Heir watched her wife sitting on the bed with arms raised above her head making her body stretch in a most delightful manner – the small breasts rose with the motion of the arms and the ribs protruded beneath the tender flesh and their shape could be clearly seen above the taut stomach.
Athena sensed her sex becoming even harder, harder than she ever remembered it being her entire life – so hard, in fact, that she thought it could put a dent in a bronze-made shield, and she could barely walk towards the bed and join her wife for the aching need.
She stood on her knees between Siglinde's legs and looked down and into the grey eyes that revered her and her heart swelled so vastly that she felt it might burst out of her chest at any moment. Such sensation was a novelty. This wasn't simply the familiar battle-lust she'd been accustomed to, for the dark desire was not confined strictly to her lower parts but to her heart as well. The overwhelming craving to consume, the hunger that could not be denied extended far beyond anything she'd experienced before. Her heart was hungry, too, and demanded its release, a release, she realized, no other but Sieglinde could have given her.
The hand that held the folded whip delivered the lashes to Sieglinde's breasts and stomach. Athena dispensed the strength applied to the lashes as if through a fine-withes sieve, purposeful reducing it, straining the brutality from coming out, in essence making the lashes seem and feel more like firm caresses rather than strikes.
The other hand ran over Sieglinde's body in between each of the lashes, soothing the tingling, warm flesh.
Sieglinde was taken into a wondrous realm, unknown to her, in which everything was a blessed and welcomed discovery. The various sensations inhabiting her all but overloaded her senses. She was made to explore the thin line between pain and pleasure, for right after she felt the surprisingly gentle bite of the leather, she felt the instant pleasure as the warmth and exotic stimulation spread from the welts and throughout her body; and soon after that she felt the Heir's palm tenderly rubbing her breasts, making her nipples stand.
She recalled the Queen's words to her about battle-lust, as a peculiar pressure was building within the most private part of her anatomy: ”It is not just a need to conquer and dominate because of the war that birthed it," she had told her, "but also a need to cling on to life after weltering in the clutches of death, for sex is life and living.”
With each stroke Athena was introducing Sieglinde's own body to her, as if wordlessly saying, “touch here and your toes will curl" or “touch there and your skin will bristle.”
Athena lavished a few well-placed strokes worthy of a marksman to Sieglinde's white thighs, then kneaded the creamy, soft flesh with her free hand to assuage it. She listened keenly to her wife as the air caught in the latter's throat by a sharp gasp that quickly turned into a sensual moan of pleasure. She watched mesmerized as Sieglinde's grasp on her hair tightened soon after each and every time that the whip made contact with her flesh. It was the most enticing and provocative sight she had ever beheld. Sieglinde's innocence became that much sweeter.
"Is it too painful for you?" Athena asked to be sure as she studied the red loop-shaped welts she'd left on her wife's form. She knew that they would fade no later than the following day.
Sieglinde was pulled out of her ecstatic state by Athena's voice and noticed wetness seeping out of her womanhood, forming a wet spot on the sheets beneath her. She immediately tried to press her thighs together to keep her embarrassment from Athena's eyes, for at first she thought that she had been bleeding, or worse - that in her excitement she'd accidentally wetted herself. But she couldn't bring them together for Athena was standing on her knees between them.
"Not at all, Min Herre," the blushed Nordic Princess rasped, "I never knew one could feel this way." It was an excited utterance spoken without forethought.
And Athena reveled in it.
"Do you receive pleasure, then?" she asked with a sly twitch of her brow.
"Very much, Min Herre," Sieglinde replied.
Athena lowered inspecting eyes to look between her wife's legs. Closely and leisurely she examined the nook hidden beneath a trimmed gold patch. It seemed like a swan dipping in a pond created by the thawing of the snow. The irrefutable evidence of her wife's acute arousal sent tremors throughout Athena's form, and her heart was elated. Her wife clearly and undeniably desired her. Athena couldn't recall any event in her life that made her as happy and as satisfied as she was at that moment. The noble woman from the North reveled in and under her touch.
"So I see." Athena's lips became ornamented with a wide smile stretching from one ear to the other. She sent a single finger to the oozing flux and delved it between the swollen slick petal-like lips.
Sieglinde blushed again and winced, while her mind was racing after an explanation to give to the Heir in regards to the mysterious wetness mercilessly and uncontrollably pouring out of her still. Unable to produce a satisfactory explanation, she lowered her eyes and emitted a shy apology with a soft, quiet voice, "I'm so very sorry, Min Herre . "
At first the Heir did not comprehend what her wife was apologizing for. After a few short moments of bafflement, she looked at her finger coated in abundance with her wife's heady liquid arousal and then back at her wife, whose feature's shade of red grew hotter till reaching a beet's complexion, and realization finally hit her. The moment it did, Athena could not curb a hearty laughter.
She did not intend it, but seeing Sieglinde's distress grow tenfold in response to her laughter Athena stifled it and touched her wife's elbow, signaling her to lower her hands and let her hair down.
"My precious Sieglinde," Athena spoke in the most tender of voice. "You need not feel embarrassed," she said with a reassuring smile. "Don't you know what this is?" she asked and waved the glazed finger.
Sieglinde shook her head, still unable to look directly at the Heir but only glimpse at her from the corner of her eye.
"This is a most desirable sign of your passion for me," Athena explained.
Not entirely convinced, thinking it was merely an act of kindness designed to pacify her discomfiture, Sieglinde still wouldn't meet Athena's gaze.
"I shall prove it to you, then," Athena said determinedly and extended her other hand for her wife to take.
When Sieglinde hesitantly slipped her hand into Athena's offered one, Athena gently pulled her wife to rise from reclining against the pillows and headboard so she could be better positioned to see.
When Sieglinde was in an upright position, Athena said to her, "Look," accompanying her verbal request with a downcast of her eyes towards her crotch, "And see what you are doing to me."
Sieglinde followed the drop of Athena's gaze and beheld the sight she was asked to see, and sure enough, she saw cascades of wetness trickling down the Heir's inner thighs. Her heart leaped in joy at the knowledge that she was the object of the Heir's desire, that it was she and only she this time that held the Heir's attention.
Sieglinde finally mustered the confidence and the courage to gaze directly into the Heir's bright eyes.
Then Athena did something that stole Sieglinde's breath away and increased the pace of the pulses in her core. She brought the finger, glistening with her wife's essence, to her mouth. She could no longer resist tasting it.
Sieglinde was riveted by Athena's action, and puzzlement was written across her face.
Athena greedily sucked Sieglinde's nectar off her finger, occasionally releasing groans of pleasure. It was the most palatable confection she had ever tasted and it aggravated her hunger for her wife even more.
An "Oh," escaped Sieglinde's mouth, as she watched while Athena licked away the final drop off her finger. "I did not know…" she blurted out wide-eyed with a hint of a smile on her lips.
To Athena, her wife appeared as the model of virtue and wonder and it took another beat away from her heart.
"Lie back down and I will show you," Athena said. She meant to say it in an inciting manner to further stoke her wife's fire, but the way it came out of her mouth sounded very differently, more serious perhaps as if she intended to say something else.
Sieglinde leaned back to rest her body against the pile of pillows beneath her. She saw Athena discard the whip and lower herself down until her face was but a hair away from her womanhood.
Had she not been at the peak of her primal sexual awakening, Sieglinde might have had it in her to cross her legs and demonstrate her inherent modesty. With her overpowering need for something she had not yet been knowledgeable of or its nature, an altogether different form of urge rose in her to further broaden the spread of her legs, and she soon realized fighting that urge was a lost battle.
Unlike during the night of their sorry consummation where she had clogged her nostrils to keep from inhaling even a single whiff of her wife's scent, now it seemed Athena couldn't have enough of it, of that clear, simultaneously salty and sweet odor that reminded her of the North Sea.
With the flat of her tongue, Athena's first stroke to her wife's sex was a long, explorative and lingered one.
Sieglinde quivered with a sharp intake of breath. Her hands balled into tight fists desperately grasping at the linens. Not just her sopping region but her entire body convulsed. Her reaction to the unimaginable and unfamiliar pleasure her body sustained was a violent one. She felt as though she was unable to contain the heights to which her body was being taken to and she did not know the path, yet she had a distinct feeling that she was being guided towards some final destination.
Pleased with Sieglinde's reaction, Athena smiled against her labia and asked with a hoarse voice, "Is it pleasurable?"
Sieglinde's heart was beating so wildly and her breath was so short and shallow that she was unable to speak, so all she could offer as a reply was a vigorous nod of her head.
A second lash of Athena's moist tongue centered on Sieglinde's nub, making Sieglinde's head tilt backwards and her neck strain.
The Nordic Princess could not even begin to conceive of such practices, but she was too far gone to care or fret over her lack of experience and insecurities, for the pleasure that was wreaked upon her was too intense to mind anything else. All that existed was Athena and the feral, delicious ache that she caused to throb everywhere in her body.
"Like sailing in a Fjord," Athena's playful words were carried on a hot exhale of air.
Upon hearing Athena's jaunty remark, Sieglinde burst into laughter but a moment later she thought it inappropriate and stopped it.
Athena raised her head from between her wife's legs and nearly mourned its abrupt loss.
"You may laugh if you wish," Athena said and placed a small kiss on Sieglinde's thigh.
"I thought it might displease or irritate you," Sieglinde answered and covered half her mouth with her hand.
"I wish," Athena began to say then stopped to contemplate. What was it that she really wanted? "I wish for you to act freely with me and do as you please."
"Thank you, Min Herre. I will," Sieglinde said and felt lighter.
But before she had time to fully enjoy it, Athena's tongue licked her need and exorcized any other thoughts Sieglinde held to the wind. The slow, firm twirls against the stiffening bud made Sieglinde mad with unparalleled desire. She caught sight of Athena's head between her thighs just before her eyelids became too heavy to keep open. Contorting with pleasure, yet still not used to being free and familiars - out of the customary, comfortable control she had always been used to exercising - she smothered her cries of passion rather than let them out.
Athena understood that it would require more time before such liberties could be taken, before they could be a couple of any kind rather than two people who happened to be married. It had taken her parents years to achieve it and she and Cynna had never had it.
Sieglinde's thighs began to shake and Athena's own lust tainted by bleak darkness necessitated its own claims, and so she flicked her tongue one last time against Sieglinde's sex, not yet ready to carry the lass all the way to the precipice. Looking up as she rose to sit between Sieglinde's legs, she noticed two enlarged veins pumping in Sieglinde's blushed neck.
Sieglinde was now panting, her stunning hair was unkempt and her breasts were heaving and erect. An unspoken question could be seen, as loud as any scream could be heard. She wanted to know why the pleasure had stopped, and why she was feeling so wanting, still.
Athena did not answer these unspoken questions. Satisfied that her wife had been amply prepared by her, she slipped one finger inside her, and it glided right through with ease provided by the plentiful lubrication.
Through the heated, silken folds the Heir carefully pushed a second finger into her wife's feminine depth. She was immediately met by a quick bout of fluttering clamping around her fingers.
Their eyes met in an intense, near unbreakable gaze.
"You are too tight inside, as is your opening," Athena noted. She did not mean for it to sound like a complaint, but it was the beast that spoke out of her throat, using her voice before she had a chance to muzzle it.
"I'm sorry," Sieglinde was quick to ask for pardon. "There is no help for it," she tried to explain.
"The fault lies with me, Sieglinde," Athena was equally as quick to respond, not wishing to prolong her wife's anguish. "If I had taken you to bed more than once as I ought to have done, then you would have been more like a married woman rather than a lass still in her maidenhood."
Sieglinde kept her lips sealed. It reminded her of her shame though she knew it was not Athena's intention.
"This will cause you pain," Athena warned her, "but it will be pleasurable as it progresses."
Sieglinde nodded.
"I will do my best to be as gentle as I can," Athena promised and rested a tender hand on Sieglinde's shoulder. "Now lay your back on the pillows. It will hurt less this way," she said and nudging her shoulder she guided Sieglinde backwards until the latter was prone on her back in a half-sitting position as before.
A third finger was inserted to join the others already inside the succulent, velvet-like crevice. As she began to stroke the flesh from the inside, brushing her thumb over Sieglinde's hooded button, she thought it a marvel. She watched her wife as she writhed under her touch, completely enthralled by the sensation she was generating, and realized she had never seen such a perfect exhibition of eroticism. If she did not pace herself, she would surely burst. The pounding throbs in her loins were becoming increasingly unbearable. She wanted to have Sieglinde – Have her with every meaning of the word.
And in came a forth digit, not without difficulty.
Sieglinde strained against the intrusion and she felt the pain of being stretched to the limit enveloping her, blinding her, yet sending bursts of fire beneath her skin, everywhere. There was no denying the charging rising in her belly.
Athena splayed her free palm against Sieglinde's thigh and coaxed it to spread even wider.
Perspiration formed over Sieglinde's brow from the effort of sustaining both pain and pleasure and accommodating Athena's large hand's invasion.
Lastly, Athena's thumb left its previous task then pressed forcibly through the thin, narrow barrier and into Sieglinde's contracting center.
Sieglinde sensed her body rise, hover and fall. It felt like an assault, incapacitating and ensnaring her.
Athena halted all movement, allowing the initial shock to subside. She witnessed the air leaving Sieglinde's lungs and her mouth gaping, and nothing more. Her fist was pressed hard by clenching strong muscles.
It was as if they were suspended in time - Athena filling Sieglinde, silently requesting acceptance, and Sieglinde being filled, silently giving acceptance. Their eyes never left each other.
And when that long moment passed, Athena felt clenching around her fist, sucking her in.
A guttural moan released itself from the prison that was Sieglinde's mouth and the Heir thought she had never heard anything more sensual than that song of pleasure in all her life. That was not the whimpering of a wee mouse, Athena thought. Gently, she began to rotate her fist, entirely swollen by Sieglidne's womanhood, and her thrusts against the moist, fleshy binding were precise and opportune. Nothing, she thought, nothing in the world could feel as good as that.
Pain ebbed away and turned into pure pleasure that sent Sieglinde soaring on the path to her release. As the pressure further amassed in her sex, her eyes wandered to glean at Athena's biceps that bulged with every motion of her hands, the one inside her and the other still pry-opening her thighs.
Out of concern and care for her wife, Athena reined in her desire so as not to cause the sensitive organ any injury.
But Sieglinde could not stand that delicious torture any longer. She lifted herself upwards then sent a tentative hand and touched Athena's biceps. With each flex of the strong, toiling muscles under her fingertips, the stronger the throbbing in her womanhood got. She felt her need strangling her.
"More!" Sieglinde wasn't asking but demanding. Having Athena deep inside her so completely and so perfectly made the demure Nordic Princess violently erupt like a volcano that'd lain dormant for years.
Athena's eyes shot wide open with surprise. She was not aware that Sieglinde possessed such tone of voice, let alone such boldness and assertiveness.
Confused, she emitted a "What?!"
And there it was again. Sieglinde introduced the Conqueror's Heir's beast to a beast of her own.
"More!" Sieglinde repeated, even more assertively, not really sure what she needed more for, only that she did. At that point she was well beyond need. There was no word, nor several words to describe her overwhelming desire.
The Nordic Princess rose to stand on her knees and pushed the Heir to lie on her back.
The Heir's fist slipped out of the gloving cavern as the Nordic Princess straddled her just below the waist.
Impatiently, Sieglinde grabbed Athena's shaft in her hand, knowing what it was for, guiding it to her soaking slit and shoving it inside her, while lowering herself onto it so to take it in her, in whole.
The Heir couldn't believe her own eyes. Her wife indeed had a deceiving air about her, and if she had taken the time to get to know her rather than waste it on Cynna, she would have known all the shades of Sieglinde's soul.
Sieglinde began a feverish rocking of her hips over Athena's loins, causing Athena's device to stir inside her.
Mesmerized, almost distracted from the consistent and relentless pounding need, she watched the Nordic Goddess riding her, grounding her sex against hers, taking what she needed and wanted with that gorgeous gold hair dancing against her skin and smoldering grey eyes – blooming and blazing outside of her demure shell.
At that moment it hit Athena like a rock being thrown from the highest mountain hitting the floor of the valley: more than anything in the world, more even than her Sire's pride in her and approval of her, she yearned for the woman on top of her to love her, and she rued the fact that her past misdeeds had ruined any hope of it from ever happening.
This young woman, who was loyal, kind to a fault, generous beyond measure, virtuous to the brim and had dignity to spare… this woman could never love her after she'd ungraciously mocked her, coldheartedly humiliated her and egregiously took from her while giving nothing in return, nothing but grief.
Her Sire had been right all along. She did not deserve the outrageously modest and selfless Sieglinde and much less did she deserve her love. What she wouldn't give to have Sieglinde look at her in the same way that her mother looked at her Sire.
Athena had no doubt in her mind that in spite of all that had happened between them, Sieglinde would continue to be a devoted wife to her, bear her children one day to continue her line and carry on to perform her duties both as wife and as future queen, because such was her supreme and gentle nature. But by her own hands, she had corrupted and destroyed any chance of Sieglinde acting out of love for her.
Sieglinde's love would have been the finest thing that could ever have happened to her, a priceless possession more precious and more coveted than ruling the world and she would never have it. What a childish fool she had been. The loss was too great to bear and sadness such as she had never known before descended upon her and began eating at her and festering in her aching heart. If that bleak abyss of eviscerating pain was the worst side of love, she could only imagine the heights of happiness and pleasure that the best side of love must offer.
It was what her parents shared. How fortunate and blessed they were, she thought, for regardless of the few arguments and disagreements between them over the years – one thing, it seemed, they'd never doubted: They'd never doubted their love for one another.
Only then did she fully grasp it, and the fact that she would never have it with Sieglinde was so devastating she could hardly breathe. Mute, boiling and salty tears, as boiling and as salty as the waters of the river Styx, began their aimless journey down the plains of her features.
Seeing tears streaming down Athena's eyes, Sieglinde halted her motion and froze, worried beyond measure. "Did I hurt you, Min Herre? Forgive me." She collected a tear with her finger, as if she needed to touch it in order to believe it was real. "I got overexcited and didn't mind..."
"You did not," the Heir assured with a weak voice and even weaker smile like she had aged a century. "These are the bitter tears of regret, sweet Sieglinde."
"Regret over what?" Sieglinde asked, mystified, incapable of even guessing the source of the Heir's apparent upset.
Knowing she had absolutely no right, no standing and no claim to put any demands or even requests before her wife to consider, Athena let out a deep sigh that sounded like a cracking sound echoing in a vast hollow chipping away at her heart and eventually said, "It does not matter."
"Min Herre harbors regret in her heart when we are connected as one flesh and it does not matter?!"
"Please," Athena pleaded, fearing her will would betray her, "Let it be."
Sieglinde did as she was asked and did not inquire any further. However, she did not resume the copulation. She wasn't sure what she should do.
The Heir wiped the tears away with a crass gesture, and rose to sit while her wife was still straddling her, thinking she would rather have what she could get than nothing at all. She gripped Sieglinde's hips in both hands and renewed the rhythm that had been neglected. The feel of Sieglinde's delicate hands holding onto her shoulders, her nipples that grazed repeatedly up and down against her chest and her throaty moans made the Heir want to kiss Sieglinde's lips.
It wasn't enough. Athena wrapped her arms around her wife, lifted herself up to stand on her knees while her wife held on to her, then gently deposited Sieglinde onto the bed and covered her body with her own, still inside her.
Their bodies were entwined as were their gazes. Sieglinde's lips were so close that Athena could feel the sweet breeze of her wife's breath against her chin. Just a little lower and she could taste them again as she had before she had left for war, she thought, but being that she had gone to Cynna first, thus breaking the promise she had given to Sieglinde, she felt profoundly undeserving of such intimacy and unworthy of asking her wife to surrender such intimacy to her. She dallied a little while longer close to Sieglinde's mouth to see if Sieglinde would reach up and claim the kiss that hung between them.
What Athena did not know was that her wife was waiting for her to do the same.
Instead, Athena dipped her head lower and closed her lips around a nipple and suckled it, nipping it, licking it, causing Sieglinde beneath her to buck her hips upwards to deepen the connection between them.
The sensation of skin against skin, flesh against flesh was sweltering and with slow, roving motions Athena moved her member out to the rim of Sieglinde's sex and back into the depth of it again and again, engendering a tempest of wistful desire of bodies and souls.
Sieglinde delved her fingers into Athena's gilded, long main and pressed her harder against her body. She felt like she was uplifted by countless strings of inconceivable, intolerable pleasure so that she could nearly reach and touch the skies. She was pushed further up with each of Athena's plunges into her.
"Let go and release it," Athena grunted under labored breath, on the brink of her own rapture.
Sieglinde's grip on her tightened when Athena reached to grab a buttock and fiercely kneaded the firm mound.
"I shall be there with you, Sieglinde," Athena encouraged her wife.
"Do you promise, Min Herre?" Sieglinde asked with baited breath shivering when she sensed the enormous, ominous and foreign wave about to wash over her.
"I promise, my Lady," Athena said.
Their sensual embrace tightened and intensified. Sieglinde dug her heels into Athena's calves and her hips rose clean off the bed and Athena arched her back and rammed herself deeper till she felt Sieglinde's stiff bud being grinded against her. Climatic release such as Sieglinde had never imagined and Athena had never experienced claimed and reclaimed them over and over again, uniting them in acute, piercing pleasure, and eliciting from them loud grunts and moans.
When the final quiver and remnant of their climax left them they rested, still interlaced. Long moments passed. Both felt as if some cardinal event had happened between them yet neither spoke.
Sieglinde thought she'd never known better satisfaction, better contentment and better fulfillment, when Athena caressed away a few strands of hair away from her blushed face.
"How do you feel?" Athena softly asked.
Sieglinde was flooded with emotions she couldn't name. She felt too much without any particular order, without any particular rules.
"Very well," was all Sieglinde had to offer. She looked up and stared into the blue eyes seeking answers to questions she did not know how to ask from the one who was suppose to be the more experienced and knowledgeable in this matters.
Athena carefully detached herself from her wife's exhausted body and rolled over to lie prone on her back.
Sieglinde mourned the loss and moved to lie on her side. Yearning for closeness, she rested her head on Athena's shoulder, her hair blanketing the Heir's torso with golden strands of silk.
"Will it feel this way always?" she asked, needing to hear the Heir's voice.
Athena chuckled. "It will feel the same yet different every time," she answered and wrapped her arm around Sieglinde's form, pressing her closer to her like a warm welcome.
"Are there different ways to do it?" came another question.
Athena chuckled again. "Many," she answered, "which I hope we shall explore…?"
Sieglinde raised her head from the nook between Athena's neck and shoulder to adamantly nod her consent.
"Can we do it as often as we want?"
Sieglinde's brand of exuberance such as can only be born out of innocence charmed Athena and caused her to fall deeper in love with her. And it reminded her again that she would never have Sieglinde's love, and the sorrow plagued her soul again. She did not chuckle this time.
"Yes," she answered shortly and flatly. She disentangled herself from the woman she loved with every fiber of her being. Briskly, she sat on the edge of the bed and touched her bare feet to the floorboards. What sentiments she had had for Cynna, she realized, weren't love, for they did not compare for what she bore in her heart for her wife.
The sudden change in mood did not go unnoticed. Sieglinde touched hesitant fingertips to Athena's strong back. "Please sleep in my bed, tonight, Min Herre," she requested.
"Do you really want me to?" Athena asked, not turning her head to look at her wife.
"I do," Sieglinde answered and there was a touch of sadness in her voice, which Athena did not detect. If she had to ask her spouse to remain in bed with her after such glorious intimacy was shared between them at long last, then nothing had really changed between them, Sieglinde understood, and was left to wonder why – why Athena had come to her at all.
Athena heavily exhaled then returned to take her place next to Sieglinde. She turned her head away from her wife and looked outside the window only to discover that the sun had already set and it was dark.
She felt Sieglinde guiding her arm and wrapping it back around her, pressing herself against her.
"You look sad, Min Herre," Sieglinde dared to say.
"It will pass," Athena replied. "You needn't concern yourself with that."