a truly formidable sight.’
Caitrin stepped closer. Her fingers stretched out toward one of the three goblets. ‘I’ve heard that it heightens the pleasure of the flesh to a degree that makes every other pleasure seem as false and as flat as week-old beggar bread.’
‘And I’ve heard that none of this is true,’ Tavia sniffed.
Robert and Caitrin studied her in silence.
Caitrin’s fingers fell away from the goblet she had been about to take.
‘I’ve heard that these rumours are nothing more than the lies of rogues and fairy-wing traders,’ Tavia said tartly. ‘I’ve heard that the effects of dragon horn are only the self-fulfilling prophecies of idiots and the wilfully deluded.’
Caitrin looked set to respond, but Robert silenced her by raising his hand.
Instead of arguing with Tavia he nodded agreement. ‘If that’s the case, would you care to take a sip?’
She stepped boldly up to him and snatched a goblet from the ceremonial tray.
Caitrin gasped.
‘I’ll take more than a sip,’ Tavia said. She swallowed the contents in one mouthful. Hurling the goblet to a corner of the room she said, ‘And I’ll now go and report to my father, the castellan, that you were trying to seduce his daughters with an outlawed drink.’
Robert of Moon Valley said nothing.
Caitrin reached out to grab her sister’s arm but Tavia was too quick for her. She was storming toward the doorway of the tower room with a determined stride.
‘Tavia,’ her sister called. ‘Please don’t be so hasty. Please wait.’
‘The castellan is not known for his leniency toward lawbreakers,’ Tavia said over her shoulder. ‘Branding? Imprisonment? Banishment? Hanging? Which do you think he will suggest for a man who tries to tempt his chaste daughters with the dubious promise of outlawed dragon horn?’
‘Tavia,’ Caitrin pleaded. ‘Don’t tell father. Please. For our sake. For the sake of the fiefdom and the Riding. This could ruin our reputations. It could ruin everything.’
Tavia stopped.
She stopped as though the will to leave the room had suddenly been snatched from her body. She turned slowly to study Robert and Caitrin. There was an expression on her face that Caitrin had never seen before. Tavia studied Robert with a gaze that lingered between loathing and lust.
His wry smile broadened into something made smug with secret knowledge.
‘Did you enjoy your drink?’
She rushed at him.
Pushing him backward toward the padding of the cushions on the four-poster, Tavia devoured Robert’s face with kisses that looked as carnal and avaricious as anything that could be witnessed in the North Riding’s bedrooms, brothels, or barnyards. She looked as though she was trying to drink the scent of sandalwood from his pores.
She tore at his clothes.
Her painted nails clawed to reach his manliness.
His dark-grey travelling tunic was rent from his shoulders exposing a broad, manly chest. Tavia straddled him as he lay on the bed. She writhed her groin against his loins. Raising her face briefly from his, tossing her head back so that her long blonde curls were no longer covering her features, she murmured, ‘Take me.’ There was a deep and desperate longing in her voice as she insisted, ‘Take me and then take me again.’
She slid a fist around his shaft and groaned as though what she had found there was sadly pleasing. The sound of her heat-fuelled longing echoed from the walls of the tower room.
Robert pushed her to one side. Calmly, he stepped from the bed. A small and roguish smile played at the corners of his lips.
Tavia glared at him from where she lay on the tapestry-covered blankets. She had lifted her skirts to expose her woman parts. Her fingers delved into the wet flesh there and she rubbed at herself with furious determination whilst she fixed his back with a look of venomous fury.
Robert had left his torn tunic on the bed. He stepped out of his hosen and braies revealing an impressive hardness. His length swayed provocatively from between his legs. The end was swollen and ripe, like a plum tomato. He walked over to the ceremonial tray and lifted both the remaining goblets. Swigging the contents from one, he held out the final goblet for Caitrin.
‘Will you be joining us, Caitrin of Blackheath?’
There was a taunting challenge in his voice.
Responding with characteristic defiance, she snatched the goblet from his hand and drank.
A week later, when morning sunrise touched the room, it found the three of them in a bed of naked flesh. They were wrapped in sex-damp sheets and ensconced in the stink of delicious satisfaction. Robert remained hard and ready for either sister, although only Caitrin was greedily stroking and sucking at his length. Her sister sat up in the bed examining the carafe.
It lay on its side.
The contents had been drained during the course of their final night together.
She lifted the crystal carafe and sniffed the neck. Her nostrils were touched by the sharp memory of alcohol. Her exposed nipples hardened. A tremor of raw need shivered through her bare flesh. Upturning the bottle she allowed a final single droplet to fall from the rim and touch the pout of her lower lip.
It was only a droplet but it was enough to make her moan with soft urgency.
‘Where did this come from?’ Tavia asked.
He was called Robert of Moon Valley, but she knew the barren lands of that dark shire could never yield so rich a harvest as dragon horn.
‘This dragon horn,’ she urged. ‘Where did it come from?’
Robert shook his head. Caitrin was trying to kiss him whilst her hand worked swiftly up and down his engorged length. He clutched a clump of her black curls and guided her head back toward the thrust of his erection. Obligingly, she encircled him with her mouth. The sounds of her greedy slurping echoed wetly around the room.
‘The source of the dragon horn is a secret,’ Robert told Tavia.
But she noticed that his gaze had flitted toward the window.
Nestled on the horizon, across the Last Sea, she could see the lowering shape of Gatekeeper Island. The black specks of a pair of broad-winged dragons circled the temple that sat atop the island’s southernmost peak. She had a small fear of dragons. It was a justifiable fear, she thought, considering the creatures had a reputation for burning and killing. But Tavia knew; if there was likely to be a source of dragon horn anywhere in any of the Ridings, it would come from Gatekeeper Island.
The
