WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Selena Kitt
Snowball’s Chancer © 2008 habu
eXcessica publishing
All rights reserved
Snowball’s Chance
by habu
eXcessica gratis * free fiction
Liesl tumbled recklessly down the stone stairs from the highest turret of Schloss Runeberg. She had to outrun the plaintive cries of her mother. There was nothing she could do for her mother except get beyond the range of the vocal expression of her torment. That’s what her mother had told her she wanted Liesl to do—to escape. But there was no escape. He was an animal. But all of the control was on his side. There wasn’t the smallest chance Liesl could save her mother—or herself.
She reeled out of the arched doorway to the tower and stumbled down the stairs and lay in a heap in the falling snow on the cold stone paving of the castle keep. Her handmaid, Lutgard swept out of the scullery door and folded her body over the lithe figure of her beloved Liesl. She rocked the young woman in her arms and hummed a soothing tune. But still Liesl could hear the cries of her mother. Liesl could only imagine what her stepfather was doing to her mother up there. But she knew her mother was sick and exhausted and should not be lying with any man, let alone that big brute who was her stepfather, The Burgermeister—the mayor—of Runeburg, a man who not only was the law of the land in Freidenschaft now that Liesl’s father, the Burggraf von Freidenschaft was cold in his grave, but who also was the most mammoth and cruelest man of the region.
Liesl’s mother, the Burggrafin Kathe, hadn’t stood even the slightest chance in the face of the ambition and scheming of such a man. He had overwhelmed her and taken her as if by right the moment Liesl’s father had died under suspicious circumstances. And now the man of insatiable appetites, unbounded cruelty, and inhuman physique was driving Liesl’s mother to her own grave with his constant demands and assaults—in their private chamber at the top of the tower.
Liesl was sobbing and Lutgard was giving her what comfort she could.
“Come, child, we must get you off these cold stones. Come inside.”
“No, Lutgard, no. I can still hear her from there. Isn’t there anything—?”
“No, I’m afraid not. At least not now,” Lutgard whispered. “Someday one of us will gain the courage and have the opportunity to stop him, but not now. There’s nothing we can do for her in this man’s world. But, I swear, if he lays a hand on you—”
“Is there no where that I can’t hear?” Liesl cried out.
“Come, get your cloak,” Lutgard said as she raised the young woman up. “We will go down in the stadt. We will go to the Christmas market. We’ll find some gold hair clips for that beautiful raven-black hair of yours. I swear that you have inherited all of your mother’s beauty. Gold clips. Just the thing.”
Lutgard tried to sound like they were going on a jolly adventure as she bundled up her precious treasure and pushed her through the guard tower, under the portcullis, and over the wooden bridge spanning the moat. But it was all a sham. Kathe was past worrying about now. She would be mercifully delivered in the next month or so, withered away from her wasting illness and spilt asunder by the demands of that monster of a man. But Liesl. Liesl had grown into a beautiful woman, fair of face and figure both, ripe as a peach. How were they to keep Liesl out of the clutches of that cruel Gerhardt when he had done with the Burggrafin? All that Lutgard knew for sure was that she would kill him herself ere he touched her Liesl. Bold talk, she knew. Much harder to do in fact.
* * * *
Marketplatz was all abuzz with the news—so much so that they barely noticed that the daughter of the Burggrafin had come down from the castle in a rare appearance in the town. The pride of her deceased father, she had led a highly sheltered life almost to the point that her beauty and mystery had become a stadt mystique, a legendary figure of purity and unattainable grace that had spun out beyond the borders of Freidenschaft.
What had the busy market all aflutter was the contingent of the emperor’s men that had galloped into the square from the western mountains and had frozen the entire Christmas market in place as they split a twain, with half of the maroon-bedecked cavaliers surrounding a black silk-caped Ritter—knight—jangling their silver spurs against the heaving withers of their magnificent steeds as they flanked their black knight in a dash up the steep cobbled stoned streets into the upper ward of the city en route to the castle. The other half of the contingent veered off at the sight of the Scarlet Unicorn beer garden, boisterously taking up their defensive position in the most comfortable and inviting vantage point they could spy.
In the flurry of activity, Lutgard and Liesl became separated. Lutgard was frantic, but Liesl hardly noticed, so interested was she in all of the sparkling baubles on offer at the Christmas market. She had led such a sheltered life that she seemed more a five-year-old child than a ripe young woman at the threshold of adulthood. She had made her purchase of gold hair clips in no time at all and had moved on to admiring the other delights offered by the seasonal vendors.
Not all of the emperor’s men had stumbled, saddle sore and dusty of throat, into the Scarlet Unicorn. One comely young swashbuckler had separated from his comrades and had ventured into the line of wooden booths in the Christmas market, mesmerized by the vision of beauty he had spied as the cavaliers had thundered into the square. He knew it must be she, the one they sought. No one else could be that fair.
Lutgard waddled around the maze of booths in panic, her heart beating wildly and her eyes trying to see everything and focus on her precious ward, but, in her panic, not really seeing anything clearly. Liesl wandered the booths, each exhibiting more wonders than the last. She was completely oblivious to the absence of her protector, trained to trail unobtrusively in the wake of nobility, albeit minor nobility. Stephan, the comely emperor’s man circled in the market, his eyes never leaving the luscious young Liesl, his approach ever closer.
At the opening of the dimly lit Hochallee, running off the square at the rear of the shops of Hochstrasse, the main thoroughfare rising through the high city toward the crouching walls of the Schloss Runeberg, the booth of the straw nativity Christmas figurine had established its place, as it had done for the previous 150 years. Liesl had received such a figurine for every one of her eighteen Christmases of memory, but she’d never seen so many on display at one time. She was delighted. She was overwhelmed. She was completely open and defenseless.
As she circled to the side of the booth to see the new delights to be seen there, she was pulled into the shadows of the Hochallee. She was pushed up against the stuccoed rear wall of a glazier’s shop. She was shocked and winded into silence by being pressed against a wall, completely encircled in the strong, possessing arms of . . . a man. She had never been in this position before. She had never been touched by a man, let alone pressed against the wall along her full length by a strong, muscled, rubbing, possessing man, enclosed, throbbing heart to heart, with this overpowering stranger against the falling snow by his heavy maroon cloak.
She had the sensation of hazel eyes in a young, handsome face. Blond hair, chiseled features, wondrous smile, full, searching lips. Lips on her throat and then on her own lips, forcing her lips open, possessing her fully. She had never been kissed like this before. She, in fact, had never been kissed at all. But she had imagined being kissed and it had been nothing like this. Nothing had ever been like this. Heat. Electricity. Ears ringing. Sensations running through her body that she’d never felt before.
She felt faint. As she was blacking out, she heard her name, her name being called frantically. Lutgard calling out in a panicked voice. And Liesl wasn’t the only one who heard the voice and felt the flash of recognition moving through her body. She had swum back out of her faint, now alone in the alley, before Lutgard found her. She met Lutgard at the side of the straw figurine booth and managed to shield her terrifyingly arousing brief experience—her exhilarating terrifying brief experience—from her protector by waving a delicate hand at the wonders on display in the booth, deftly sweeping Lutgard’s attention from her flushed face and languorous demeanor. Lutgard couldn’t know. No one could know. What had happened was enough to besmirch her reputation forever, to close the door on any hope she had of escaping the hearth now so cruelly and threatening controlled by her stepfather, the rapacious Burgermeister.
* * * *
With trembling lips, Lutgard was standing over a nightgowned Liesl, seated at her mirror in the dark hour before withdrawal behind the heavy brocade drapes of her bed. Liesl was only half listening, in rising anger, to Lutgard burbling out the stepfather’s summons to his study. Lutgard couldn’t meet her mistress’s eyes. Liesl assumed, in her panic, that Lutgard had seen the surprise assault by the strong, young stranger within the shadows of the Hochallee and had reported Liesl’s shame. And the disloyalty rocked Liesl to her core. She would never have believed Lutgard capable of this, even though convention required precisely this denunciation of the besmirching of Liesl’s virtue. Not her Lutgard.
And, in fact, she completely misunderstood Lutgard’s discombobulation. Lutgard was terrified of the summons by the stepfather. Was he not even to wait until the Burggrafin’s demise? Was he intent of forcing himself on Liesl already? If that was what this was about, Lutgard was ready, a well-sharpened kitchen knife hidden in the folds of her robes. But her fears and panic were fighting with her determination. Was this where it would all end—for her and for others? They were defenseless before the law. They were mere women.
“Come, little one,” Lutgard managed to say through her fears. “Wrap yourself in this thick robe. The castle is freezing. And come, we cannot deny the summons. But I will be there. Fear not. You will not see me, but I will be within steps of you all the time.”
“That robe?” Liesl said. “I’ll be lost in that. Give me a moment. I’ll dress.”
“No, this robe is perfect, Precious,” Lutgard wheedled. “Against the cold, of course. The heavier and bulkier the better.”
Both Liesl and Lutgard took an involuntary step backward as they entered the presence of the Burgermeister in the shadow-clad study with its blackened-oak walls and leaded-glass bay window overlooking the twinkling lights of the lower town. A fire roared in a fireplace that brightly lit the back of the massive, blue-velvet wrapped body of the lord of the manor while throwing everything but his blazing eyes and lascivious smile into dark relief. Neither had seen their cruel master with such a malevolent and pleased-with-himself countenance.
He beckoned to Liesl, who moved toward him but was held back a good four paces from the front of the ornately carved wood desk by the trembling, yet determined grasp of Lutgard. Gerhardt waved the servant away, and Lutgard shrank back out of the light, but only as far as the shadows just beyond the open study door. She fingered the knife in the folds of her robe, wondering if this was the day of resolution or dissolution.
Liesl steeled herself, trying to form an explanation that would save her the justified wrath of her master for her transgression in Hochallee, but knowing that no explanation would suffice. She was damaged goods now. Her future was even bleaker now that it had been before she had descended through the high city into the Christmas market. This morning she had assumed that her life could hardly be bleaker, but now she knew she had been wrong. Now, after her stepfather had voiced the reality of the Christmas market incident, there would be no chance for her in life, not the least chance.
“We were visited by emissaries of the emperor today, Liesl,” Gerhardt said.
Here it comes, Liesl thought bitterly. I am undone. I have been compromised by someone from the emperor’s delegation. The maroon cape. The emperor’s colors.
“You know that the empress—yet another of Wilhelm Josef’s empresses—has died, do you not?” the Burgermeister said.
What was this, Liesl thought? How was this a lead in to uncloaking her shame?
“Yes . . . Father,” Liesl answered in a small, breathless voice.
“And do you know how he chooses a new empress?” Gerhardt asked. But they he caught himself. “But of course you do not know. No one would dare talk to you of such things.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know about this afternoon. Liesl’s heart raced and her spirits lifted. He could not know of that and now be talking to her as if her virtue was unassailed. She, in fact, had heard how the syphilitic old bag of lard of an emperor chose his consorts—four of them so far, three within the last ten years. She’d never been told directly, of course, but she’d heard the servants speak of it when they didn’t realize she was nearby. She knew that the emperor was equipped to be the death of a woman, just as her stepfather was, and that he was deceased as well. That he mated his wives to death—just as her stepfather was mating her mother to death. But she could not voice her knowledge to her stepfather. She must remain pristine and chaste with him. He held her future in his hands. Her only hope was escape him by marriage. And, as ambitious as he was, her one hope was that he would use her to rise on the ladder of minor nobility, just as he had bettered himself by wedding a Burggrafin.
“No, Father,” she said with downcast eyes. “Is there something of that I need know?”
“No, I think not,” Gerhardt said, with a little laugh cut off by a snort. “All you need know is that he is searching for a new wife and that, your reputation for beauty and purity having been broadcast beyond our borders, you have been placed on the list of his prospective brides.”
“I am . . . honored, Father . . . but—” Panic was setting in again. Liesl wasn’t the least bit honored. This would be a death sentence. The man was old and diseased and an exhausting, splitting torture for any woman, if what she had heard was true. Her life would be at an end—before she’d have had a moment to live a life. All those people in the village. All of them looking up at the castle, envious of the life those in the castle family lived. She would willingly trade lives with any one of them at this moment.
“There is no delicate way of saying this, Liesl, so I will come right out with it, and you will say nothing in opposition, or I will strip you and whip you where you stand. This is a high honor. This could be the making of our family.”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Liesl stammered out. But she wished she hadn’t said it as soon as the words escaped her lips. She didn’t want to understand. Something told her she didn’t want to hear any more.
“The emperor chooses his wives by trial, Liesl. Tomorrow night, as the sun creeps away over the horizon, the emperor’s carriage will arrive at the castle. You will be prepared to go to the emperor for at least the night. If he wishes, you will stay longer. If he is not pleased, you will be returned here and he will move on down the list of his prospects. If you please him—and I and your mother expect you to do everything in your power to please him—you will become empress, and our family will rise in the ranks.”
“But, but . . . I will be ruined if he doesn’t—”
“Shut up, you ungrateful child. You act as if you have no concept of the opportunity we are being given here. You won’t be ruined. The emperor provides one of his minor knights, his Ritters, as a husband of the young women he casts off. The rise in rank would only be minor for us, but the need for a dowry would be waved. Even this would be advantageous for us—for this whole region. And if no substitute husband is forthcoming from the emperor, I have no objection to taking you back into the family. Should anything happen to your mother, I wouldn’t mind myself—”
Liesl heard nothing further. She swooned toward the floor, prevented from injury in her fall only by the strong arms of her protector, Lutgard, sweeping back into the room to gather her precious burden into the safety of her arms, if only for one more night.
Lutgard briefly entertained the possibility of staving off the certain suffering facing her young mistress by using the knife still tucked in the folds of her robe. But she struggled with what to do with the knife—to use it to propel Liesl into eternal purity or to use it to cut out the filthy cancer that was the Burgermeister. In the end, her own uncertainty of her capabilities forced her into nonaction. Her “place” in this medieval, master-dominated world lay too heavily upon her. She had always known that something of this sort lay in Liesl’s future—but Lutgard couldn’t begin to grasp of the horror of the reality of these choices for her precious one.
* * * *
Liesl was numb and unresponsive through the preparation phase that took most of the next day. The bathing and powdering and rouging went more calmly than Lutgard had thought possible, mainly because Liesl moved languidly as if she were in a trance, so far had she withdrawn into herself, into a protective shell of disbelief and separation from reality. There was a brief flash in the eyes of both Liesl and Lutgard—but for differing reasons for the two—when the gold hair clips bought the previous day in the Christmas market were affixed in Liesl’s glossy, much stroked raven-black hair. And the only twinge of panic that could be discerned flowing through the young lady’s perfectly formed and lovingly prepared body came when the only article of clothing brought out for her journey was a thick, white ermine cape robe.
As the sun set across the valley of the land of Freidenschaft and the lights began to twinkle on in the town below, a massive gilded sleigh on runners and pulled by six gray Clydesdales pulled up at the end of the drawbridge. it had snowed all day, and the city was a fairy wonderland that Liesl only barely saw through the fog of the heavy breath of the horses as she was bundled out the castle and buried as deeply as Lutgard could manage into the many layers of fur blankets in the sleigh. Liesl was still numb and unresponsive. Lutgard was smiling and clucking, trying to will courage into her child who was being torn out of her arms, and quite possibly out of her life. But the tears streaming down the old woman’s cheeks belied her emotions of grief and the terror that lay ahead in all directions.
The maroon-uniformed footman slapped the stairs into the open sleigh up and fastened them, creating a door separating Liesl from her family and her life, and he was barely back up onto the driver’s bench before the sleigh’s equally maroon-uniformed driver had flicked his whip and set the Clydesdales into motion down the steep snowy street between the deceptively silent and unseeing hulking shops and residences of the Hochstrasse winding its way down to the market square, the residents of the high city all unseen but their eyes glued to the corners of their windows to take in every aspect of the momentous occasion of the emperor summoning the pride of their city for trial. This would not be just Liesl’s trial—this would have a lasting effect, one way or the other, on all of their lives and fortunes.
Down through the Hochstrasse flew the sleigh; whipping past the boarded and sleeping booths of the Christmas market in the Marketplatz; down, down, through Runeburg’s lower town on the Ausstrasse; through the market gate in the massive city wall, open at this time of day only for the convenience of the emperor’s sleigh; sliding out into the cold, snow-clad night of the Freidenschaft countryside; ever faster, homing onto the track toward the high alps; gliding through the eerily silent night toward Konigstein; the high mountain fastness of the emperor’s winter castle and the bed of an old, diseased, wife-splitting man.
Liesl’s lethargy had not all been natural. Lutgard had dosed her with brandy—several times—in the past twenty-four hours, doing what she could to stave off the young woman’s terror for as long as possible. The cold night air whipping past her in the open sleigh caused Liesl to sober up, however. Chills were running through her ermine swathed naked body, chills that were not only the result of the cold, snow-flaked air. She was also sobering to the realization that this was what she had been bred for. She was just an object, an pawn in the game of furthering not only her family’s position and fortune but the future and livelihood of Runeburg and the entire Freidenschaft region as a whole. There was no chance for her personally. This was her fate. It was her duty to please the old emperor no matter how repulsive or overpossessing he might be.
But she had also been taught that the Germanic emperors approached divinity. What if he could read into her soul? What if he could see that she had already been defiled, there in the Hochallee just the previous day. Would he have her killed on the spot? Or worse, would he return her to her stepfather? Liesl had no illusions what the intentions of her stepfather were. And her mother hadn’t been able to keep the truth of her stepfather and his fetishes from her. His whippings and beatings and the size of him and his relentless taking and taking and taking.
Liesl whimpered in spite of her resolve and burrowed deeper into the mound of furs inside the sleigh, trying to escape from the cold, trying to escape from the inevitable, trying to disappear altogether from her fate.
It took Liesl several moments—as the sleigh glided on through the night with only the sound of the scrapping of the runners sliding along the snowy roadbed—to realize that the furs were moving of their own volition. She was burrowing down into them, but they also were moving, rising around her, swallowing her. And her ermine robe was sliding up along her back. She was being lifted up, away from the soft fur of the robe, and something cool and hard was coming between her and the fur.
She screamed with the realization that she was feeling flesh, hard bulging flesh against her back and her buttocks and her thighs. But her screams were being carried away from the wind. She called to the driver and footman for help, for deliverance from this terrifying realization that she wasn’t alone in the sleigh. But the driver and footman didn’t flinch. If they heard her at all, they paid no heed to her cries. They leaned into the wind, pressing the Clydesdales on in an every quicker rhythm. The alps now clearly in sight. The Clydesdales sensing that they were homeward bound, and willingly increasing their pace.
Strong corded, naked arms encircled Liesl, and she was drawn into the chest and loins of a young, virile man, his desire and need and intent unmistakable even to the virginal Liesl, pressed into the small of her back. His face was buried into the hollow of her neck from behind, and while one arm held her to him, its hand encasing and squeezing one of her breasts, his other hand went to her secret crease. Long, slender, powerful fingers found her there and entered her, searching and finding a nub, sending streaks of sensation through her body that she had never felt before, setting her on fire. Fire and ice. He was kissing her neck and nipping at her there, as his hands worked in concert. Her breasts rose and fell to the rhythm of his touch, her nipples engorging and setting off fireworks at the slightest flick of his thumb. Below she was melting to his attentions. She was flowing, and moaning, and sighing, and groaning. She felt his need stabbing at her back, rubbing up and down.
The tone of her cries were changing. She had no idea she could make sounds such as this. She was no longer calling for help. She was crying for this never to end, for the Clydesdales to streak toward the alps in a life-long, slow-motion journey into the snow-flaked night in a flight to ecstasy that would never end. And now, for the first time, she caught the footman turning his face surreptitiously toward her, smiling a leery smile, knowing what was happening. No relief from that source.
She was moving with the rhythm. This was her lover, she knew that now. She accepted that now. This wasn’t an old man—neither emperor nor stepfather. This was a young, virile, strong lover. Either of those would kill her for what was happening now, what was being denied them. Her virginity being stolen. The disgrace she was bringing onto her family and her mother’s fiefdom. Her first taking. But just now she didn’t care. Even if this was the last time she would be made love to in this way, whatever befell her was worth it.
Her mysterious lover felt the change in her. Her giving in. Her giving over. She was flowing for him. She was ready. Lisle felt her hips being raised and being lifted away from his huge manhood. And then she was descending. He was holding her open with the fingers of his hand, and she felt the bulbous hugeness at her entrance. She was being gently lowered onto him as he rose up, throbbingly inside her. A flashing moment of pain, a feeling of release and flow. Crying out and gulping for air. Catching the footman taking another stolen look at her. Seeing only her face, but knowing. Knowing this was the moment, the opening of a door that never again could be sealed. Nudging the driver, who looked around, the same leering, knowing smile on his lips. Licking his lips. Both vicariously sharing in her deflowering.
Undone completely. No secret. The emperor would know all as soon as they arrived.
Deeper, deeper inside her, opening her up, stretching her, moving deeper inside her. Making her moan and writhe. Held tightly to a heaving, virile chest by strong, possessing arms. Turning her head toward his face as he lifted it from the hollow of her neck. Dancing hazel eyes, handsome, chiseled blondness. Full lips. Possessing lips. He took possession of her lips as, an arm under her rib cage, he began to move her up and down on his deeply embedded manhood.
His possession of her lips kept her from crying out again as her world exploded orgasmically with churning of thighs and flopping of arms within her ermine prison.
He was still hard as she recovered from collapse and began stroking herself up and down on him of her own volition. This time it was his turn to cry out in ecstasy as he released his seed deep inside her.
The sleigh was ascending now, winding its way around the proud alpine Konigsberg, up, up toward the emperor in his winter den at Konigstein castle. The lights of the castle started to provide a homing target, and the Clydesdales picked up the pace as they smelled home and their food bags. Liesl and her mysterious lover drifted off into an exhausted sleep.
The loud voices of a crowd and the flashes of torchlight bouncing off the stone walls of the castle woke Liesl. She was alone in the sleigh. She had a moment of regret, followed by a flash of anger that the man who had taken her virginity had now left her to face the wrath of the emperor alone. This, though, was immediately replaced by the rejoicing of having been so fully and magnificently loved at least once in her life—an experience that she had grown to accept would never happen. Then for a brief moment, she wondered if it were only a dream. But her well-loved body told her otherwise. That had been no dream.
The cacophony of sound being produced by the voices around the sleigh began to sort themselves out, and Liesl realized that she was being bid to dismount and enter the castle.
The time of reckoning was at hand.
A delegation of elegantly clad nobles, with the color maroon predominating, escorted her through the guard house and across the inner castle courtyard and up an impressive flight of stone stairs. Through tall windows, she could see that a large hall opened straight ahead beyond the double doors at the top of the stairs that was blazing with light and bursting with convivial banqueting.
Was she to be put on display in front of the entire court? Were what the driver and footman knew to be passed to the emperor even there, so that a hall full of nobles could watch his building wrath and his public denunciation and humiliation of her? Would she be tossed back at her stepfather to be forced to open her legs to him and suffer that splitting club of his besmirching the loving taking she had just experienced?
Liesl willed herself to be numb again. Not to care. This was disaster for her and for her family and her city and region, but it was not of her doing. The society of the empire could hold her accountable, but they could not touch her own sense of rightness and justice. The kiss had been stolen from her yesterday. Her maidenhood had been stolen from her just now. The fact that she had enjoyed both of the takings was completely immaterial. She would steal her inner self, do what they would to her.
She lifted her head into the regal position her noble status had bred into her, straightened her backbone, and, upon reaching the top of the stone staircase, prepared to enter straight into the hall.
But there was a murmur at her ear.
“Nein, your grace,” the herald was whispering. “Not there. The emperor is entertaining there. Turn this way, please. Through this door.”
Confused, Liesl did as he asked, she turned to her right and saw that the stone steps had led to a balcony of sorts and that there was another door set at an angle that was opening as she approached it. While the others in the welcoming party passed into the hall, a single escort whisked her silently through ornately gilded and lavishly draped galleries and then up a sweeping staircase and into a large bed chamber.
The chamber was undoubtedly imperial in appointment. A large canopied bed, draped in heavy maroon silk occupied the center of the room. Lush oriental carpets covered the floor. Two white Italian marble-faced mantles set against rose-colored marble walls at least twenty feet high faced each other. Both were set with roaring fires, fighting hard to heat the large room against the snowy winter night.
At least I have this, Liesl thought as her escort poured a glass of sherry from a decanter set on a delicate cherry tea table into one of two crystal glasses, set it down, and backed out of the room with a genuflection in her direction. My confrontation with the emperor or his representative will be in private, at least. And at least not everyone knows of my shame, she let run through her brain as the door clicked shut.
She picked up the glass of sherry and turned to face the bed. It looked divinely comfortable, and she was exhausted, having been through the full range of emotions that a young woman could experience in two days. She let her free hand run over the silken sheets.
Regrettable, she thought. She could become accustomed to such splendor and comfort. She lifted her eyes to stare through the window into the night. The snow was coming down harder now, pelting against the window, on the verge of turning into ice. The world outside was frozen. Her world also was about to become frozen. The short, sensational flash of fire and now the freeze. Would the emperor turn her out into the snow naked? Would her punishment be to disappear under the snow on this alpine peak?
She heard the click of the door. She dared not turn around. When she turned around, her world would come crashing down. Every second of suspension was a blessing now.
But she saw him in reflection in one of the windows. Not the emperor. Not an old, syphilitic man. But young, strong, virile. Hazel eyes and chisel-featured blondness, and a wondrous smile.
She turned to him.
“You,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything better to say. The presumptuous, swashbuckling emperor’s man from the market day in her village. And she knew in a flash that the same man had deflowered her in the sleigh.
“Yes, me. I can’t stay away from you. Will you have me? I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. You stole my heart.”
This was madness. The emperor or his representative would be arriving at any moment. She had thought that the emperor knowing what they had done was the worst scenario. But him seeing them together would be far worse. This was disastrous.
Liesl held out her glass of sherry to the young man. He took it, turned and placed it on the cherry tea table, and then turned back to her.
In that moment, she had opened her ermine fur wide and stood there, naked. Offering herself to him. At the same time, her brain was screaming, “Disaster, disaster, disaster.”
His clothes, a diaphanous and billowy white linen shirt over tight maroon velvet leggings, seemed to flow gracefully off his strong, hard body in one, rapid movement, and he moved to her in three long strides.
When he reached her, he wrapped one arm around her waist and lifted and tipped her back onto the high-mattressed bed. Liesl spread her legs wide for him and he, already rock hard, glided inside her and took her in long, deep thrusts that would be taken as the long-practiced fucking of two experienced lovers.
Afterward he found that she was crying.
“What’s wrong, my love?” he asked in gentle tones. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, no. But you must go. The emperor must not find you here like this. I am lost, but you needn’t be. Go, please go. For me. One of us must be free.”
“But didn’t you hear me ask if you would have me?” Stephan murmured.
“Yes, so?” Liesl responded. “You had me. And now my purpose for coming here has been defeated. I’m lost.”
“No, dear one,” Stephan said. He gave a low laugh and then went on, “You are not lost; you are found. The emperor isn’t coming. This is my room. We can do this all night if you wish, and the emperor will not come. The emperor has no idea you are here, or, in truth, that you exist. I caused you to be brought here.”
“But, but, I don’t understand.” Liesl said. “I’m ruined anyway, No one will have me.”
“I will have you. When I asked if you would have me, I was offering a crown.”
“A crown?”
“Yes. You came here on the off chance of being what would probably be a short-term empress. Would you settle for being lifelong queen of Lower Hansa? The emperor is my father. my older brother will likely rise to his crown, but I think I have a very nice crown of my own to set on your pretty head.”
Liesl arched her back and gasped through the laughter that Stephan’s revelation and the realization of his scheming to get her here had brought up. Stephan, too enamored to wait for her answer, had thrust inside her again and was moving rapidly in and out, setting her ablaze once more.
“Yes, yes, my love,” Liesl cried through clinched teeth, feeling him move ever deeper inside her. “Oh, God, yes. Again, again! Yes!”
The End
ABOUT HABU
habu, a bisexual former supersonic spy jet pilot, intelligence agent, and diplomat, is a published mainstream novelist and short story writer under another name and in another dimension of his life.
If you enjoyed SNOWBALL’S CHANCE, you might also enjoy:
By Varian Krylov
Long ago and far away, Lord Melchior ruled over his lands and his serfs with an iron hand. Taken from their homes at the cusp of adolescence and brought up in strict segregation, the boys and girls of his realm learned total obedience and rigid chastity. But when naïve Zaccheus and Rasha were chosen to serve their master in his castle, they soon discovered that one of Lord Melchior’s greatest pleasures was forcing his innocent young servants to violate the very laws he himself has imposed on them all their lives.
Warnings: This title contains elements of nonconsensual sex, anal and group sex.
Excerpt From LORD MELCHIOR:
At a small gesture from Lord Melchior the guards gently set Rasha on her feet. The master stared possessively into her eyes, capturing and holding her gaze, and began undoing his breeches. When he unfastened them his prick sprang up, tall and hard. Poor Rasha looked suddenly terrified, and tried to back away but the guards still flanking her caught her arms and held her still. No doubt she had never seen the sex of a man before, and now that I know how soft and small a thing women have between their legs I cannot imagine what she could have thought, seeing that pole of flesh rising high above the master’s groin. Once more he was enjoying her terror and embarrassment, and his hand went to the root of his shaft, gripping it like a weapon, seeming to enjoy the heavy girth of it in his fist. Then, as she looked on, he drew his hand slowly up his cock, letting the hard cylinder of flesh glide through his grip, until he reached the underside of the flared tip. He cuffed himself there, squeezing, making the head flare and darken above his fist, then brought his grip down to the root once more.
“Now, Rasha, on your knees.”
The flush of her ecstasy had faded and Rasha was ghostly white once more as she tread reluctantly forward and dropped to her knees. The master cradled her pale face in his large hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.
“Poor Rasha. How fierce and monstrous my manhood must look to your eyes. But you’ll see, the skin is soft and delicate, and once it is in your mouth, sweet, you’ll find it’s warm and full of life. And there is pleasure to be had, Rasha, in giving pleasure. Now, take the root of it in your hand. Gently.”
Tentatively she curved her delicate fingers around the thick base.
“Now, sweet Rasha, open that pretty mouth and taste me.”
Her lips parted and she bent her head, taking the plump crown into her mouth. The master’s body shuddered and he sighed, seeming to love the heat and the wet of her mouth on him. He stroked and petted her beautiful auburn hair as her lips closed around his shaft, and she drew back, pulling the fleshy dome from her mouth with a little slurp that made the master moan. He watched her as she took him in her mouth once more, and with words taught her how to please him, telling her to use her tongue to caress the sensitive head, to tease the little joint of flesh just under the ridge, to slide the length of him into her and draw it out against the sucking of her hungry mouth. She seemed to have lost her fear and was learning her task with endearing enthusiasm.
“Neron,” the master said softly with a slight quaver in his voice.
Neron dropped to his knees behind Rasha, and taking gentle hold of her ankles, guided her knees back on the pillow until her torso was a horizontal bridge over the floor and her thighs were vertical columns a foot or so apart.
Startled Rasha raised her head from her task.
“Shhh, Rasha,” the master soothed her, “You know that Neron knows how to please you. Trust him to touch you gently now.”
BUY THIS AND MORE TITLES AT
www.eXcessica.com
eXcessica’s BLOG
www.excessica.com/blog
eXcessica’s YAHOO GROUP
groups.yahoo.com/group/eXcessica/
Check out both for updates about eXcessica books, as well as chances to win free E-Books!
And look for these other titles from habu:
By habu
What gay male can ever forget his first full-blown sexual experience—a particularly memorable first time, given the conventions of society? The first time can be the culmination of long-held frustration, or completely casual and come as a complete surprise. It can be traumatic or sought; imprisoning or releasing, disappointing or far beyond the wildest dream. First times can be prearranged or ritualistic; spontaneous or unexpected by both parties. The first time could have been instigated by a predator, a new lover, or a savior, or even by the first timer himself. The situation and venue can be sordid or off-the-cuff convenient, or might involve silken sheets, candles, champagne, prolonged seduction and foreplay.
But for most men, the one thing it cannot be is forgotten.
This anthology provides a treasure trove of thirty-five short stories of separate, varied “first time” gay male experiences, from the stalked to long anticipated, from the romantic to the brutal, for the young or not so young. The one central theme of all of these stories, however, is the experiences depicted all result in the beginning of a new lifestyle, not the ending of a world.
Warnings: This title contains graphic language and m/m sex.
by habu
When his partner and lover is murdered in an investigation of an international crime syndicate, New York police detective Clint Folsom takes leave from his job and flies to Europe in pursuit of the killer. Folsom finds his quarry on the Rhine River gay male-oriented cruise ship, the MS River God, murdered in the same sadomasochistic manner his partner had been killed. As the cruise glides down the Rhine toward Amsterdam, stopping at German cities along the way to add flavor and twists to the increasingly complex plot, Folsom is thwarted at every turn in his inquiries. He slowly unravels not only what is at stake but also who is involved while finding sexual release among the crew and passengers of the River God. When the German police inspector Sigmund Frist enters the scene, Folsom himself becomes the pursued in more ways than one. A traditional “who done it?” detective murder novel chockablock with intriguing gay male characters and encounters.
Warnings: This title contains graphic language, m/m sex and violence.
RAINBOW REVIEW FOR DEATH ON THE RHINE BY FROST’S FANCY: 4/5
An astonishing opening rockets the reader straight into the heart of this very intense novel…Death on the Rhine is a truly nonstop rocket of a story with sexual adventures that never end and murder, sadism, and sociopathic evil determined to carve its wedge out of society…Not for the faint of heart, Death on the Rhine is still a fascinating, explicit, suspense-laden mystery which will keep the reader flipping the pages with caught breath.
by habu
Warning: This title contains graphic language and m/m sex.
Flying High provides a three-decade memoir of the gay portion of a male bisexual’s awakening to, nearly unfettered enjoyment of, and sometimes bittersweet reflections on the active gay lifestyle on the international scene in the latter third of the twentieth century. The author was a male model and film actor who turned to international intelligence service during the Vietnam War era, a career that started off in the stratosphere as an SR71 photo-reconnaissance jet pilot and moved on to more earth-hugging intelligence and diplomatic service in Asia and the Middle East
Although coming late in his late twenties to the gay scene, the author’s sexual encounters and experience as a willing bottom blossomed quickly in the exotic, sexually free, risk taking, and pre-AIDs environment of Bangkok, Thailand. Flying High covers the high points of the author’s sexual experiences in twenty-three short stories that are chronologically laid out.
These stories take the reader from the author’s male-male initiation in Bangkok in the mid 70’s through sexual encounters during stints in Japan and the Middle East to the concluding years of the last decade of the twentieth century as he thought his gay life activity was waning, only to be joyfully reawakened. The author provides a no-holds-barred, insightful, never shirking from bittersweet remembrances series of snapshots that move from the free, sensual, “anything goes” international gay scene through the realities of the horror of AIDs to appreciation for the deep, lasting relationships that arise from the world of men loving men.
SECOND COMING: EMILE LACOUR UNLEASHED
by habu
Emile LaCour, scourge of the finest young male flesh of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the plantation area of the Louisiana delta region, has been freed from his tomb to sustain himself once more by loving the young men of New Orleans to death. He does so by draining them of their blood and vitality which then rejuvenates LaCour.
Lamont Breaux, who is responsible for freeing LaCour in an effort to uncover the vast fortune LaCour’s family hid before LaCour was entombed, oversteps his greed and falls victim to LaCour’s wrath. Needing a new financial manager and now wanting a companion as well, LaCour seduces Gage Angle, a blond giant member of a motorcycle gang.
LaCour’s experiment to find the balance between making love to Gage and loving him to death goes awry when the curse of LaCour’s never-ending life and the extreme requirements to sustain that lifestyle are transferred to Angle. Angle, however, is not the self-possessed moral decadent LaCour is, and his struggle with what LaCour is and what he himself has become leads to a fiery conclusion.
Review for Second Coming by Frost’s Fancy, Rainbow Reviews:
Emile LaCour is a tantalizingly subtle novel of the paranormal and a neat interweaving of historical and contemporary settings. Settle back in your favorite armchair and curl up for an enjoyable read of characters, plotting, and vivid imagery… Prepare to be tantalized and scintillated by Emile’s upfront eroticism…he is like a force of nature. Caution: kicker ending!
Warnings: This title contains graphic language m/m sex.
by habu
Raven Possession is the saga of six decades of a remarkable woman’s life and of a strong man’s vendetta of possession and control over that woman’s family. Ada Raven, born in poverty and religious fundamentalism, wanted “it all” out of life and strove successfully to get it, but at a high cost, torn between an acclaimed novelist of enormous ego and determination and the man who patiently waited in the wings for decades to provide her refuge. J. H. Kincaid, a larger-than-life novelist of men’s adventure stories and of “bonding” and sweeping appetites wanted not only Ada but her sons to the third generation as well. Ada wanted to experience and escape the world at the same time. And she wanted to be loved by men, powerful men, and her ravenous beauty guaranteed that she was. This saga of the Raven family takes the reader on a journey through the highlights of six decades of American history from the homesteading of the West to the false interlude of peace in the 1960s. It follows Ada from the small town Midwest, the St. Louis World’s, Fair, and the Spanish flu epidemic to a celebrity dude ranch in Colorado and ultimately to the halls of government in Washington, D.C., and the exotic Southeast Asia. But everywhere she turns, there is the brooding presence of J. H. Kincaid, manipulating and subjugating her family, until it all ends in smoke and explosion.
Warnings: This title contains graphic language and f/m/m threesome sex.
DARK ANGEL REVIEW FOR RAVEN POSSESSION BY FROST
habu demonstrates a particular gift for winning the reader’s attention immediately while weaving a complicated plot with numerous main and secondary characters swimming in a sea of erotic stimulation and suspense buildup… Caution, reader: once you open the first page, you’re hooked!
By habu
The aging Conte, Luciano, in an autumn glow of romance, takes the stranger, Dakota, as his long-lost lover, whom Luciano had foresaken to take up his traditional role as the head of the family. Dakota quickly begins to act as a catalyst throughout the moldering Italian noble family, already too overly burdened by a quickly disappearing traditional order of society in the vineyard-clad hills of Tuscany.
The Conte’s grandson, Paulo, training by family tradition for the priesthood, latches onto the American stranger as his deliverance into another lifestyle altogether, while the Conte’s granddaughter, Gabriella, thoroughly disgusted with the paternalistic order she is bound to, seeks any avenue of escape. Rosella the maid—and Conte’s mistress—a woman society designated to serve the noble family, and the local villager portraitist, Giovanni, besmitten with Gabriella but unable to break the barriers of social status to claim her, are both also caught up in the winds of change unleashed by the appearance of the American stranger.
This is the story of five men and women, all thrown toward disintegration and release by the appearance of one young, blonde American stranger, the fiery spark who sets the sun on an ancient Tuscan order.
RAINBOW REVIEW FOR TUSCAN TWILIGHT BY FROST’S FANCY: 5/5
Author habu once again captivates with his winning lyrical prose style, and immediately catapults the willing reader into entrancement… Even when setting his fiction in an exotic locale ~ in this case Tuscany ~ habu is a wizard of enchantment and entices readers into his cave of magic with a few well-chosen phrases, then introduces us to characters who come to seem as close as our family, friends, and neighbors…Again habu serves up a don’t miss, steaming, character-driven story that deserves reading and rereading. Tuscan Twilight is very special.
By habu
Young, naïve and enticing, Kevin is driven by curiosity in alternate lifestyles and finds himself smitten by hunky Doug—and more, is willing to be taken by him. But what Kevin doesn’t know is Doug has only seduced Kevin to provide a virgin for the satanic “rejuvenation” ritual of a coven mastered by the rich and hugely endowed Donatien. Still driven by his attraction to Doug, Kevin schemes time and again, in a spiraling vortex down toward despair, to pull Doug from the clutches of the coven and to escape Donatien’s obsession with possessing him. Will both Kevin and Doug be sucked into hell on earth, or will they eventually find a way out of the whirlpool together?
Warning: This title contains graphic language, bdsm, nonconsent, m/m sex.
By habu
A young man’s personal experience cautionary tale of falling ever deeper under the sway of a practitioner of one the most dangerous and invasive and least discussed and written of male sexual practices—sounding—in his pursuit of being totally and fully dominated and possessed. How fully can he be taken? Will he succumb to the satanic magician or escape the wand of control invading his very being?
Warnings: This title contains graphic language, elements of bdsm, fetish, sex toys as well as m/m, anal and group sex.
37