The clan chiefs and principal warriors would be the worst problem. Too many of them were jealous of Blade's arrival, his new influence, his marriage to Neena. Now they would have a plausible cause. Now they would turn their jealousy into action, and that action against Blade. If he refused Queen Sanaya, he might be dead within a week, and all that he might have done for Draad dead along with him.

What the devil! It was a dilemma he had met before. He had survived and even conquered in spite of the worst wiles of lustful and treacherous women. He would see if he could do the same here again in Draad.

«So be it,» he said quietly. «My lady queen, I think your hopes are good ones. Let us step into the but and talk further of them.»

Sanaya's eyes seemed to light up from within with a phosphorescent glow. She swallowed again. «Yes, Blade, let us step into the hut.» She turned her back on him and pulled her robe back up to her shoulders with one hand. With the other she pushed aside the curtain across the entrance to the hut. Blade followed her.

Sanaya's robe did not stay on her body very long after the curtain closed behind them. In the mold-scented dark chill of the but she faced Blade, then let her robe fall again. This time she let it fall all the way to the floor, until it made a crumpled shimmering blue pool around her ankles. Lifting her superb legs, she stepped out of the pool and stood in front of Blade. Except for a small triangle of linen no larger than a handkerchief, she was naked.

Blade was already stripping off his tunic. Sanaya knelt to help him unlace his boots. Her breasts did not sag, but quivered and flowed into new and enticing shapes as she knelt.

Blade kicked off his boots and threw his tunic into a corner of the hut. Before he could do anything else the queen crawled forward on her knees and threw her arms around his waist. Her hair and her lips both brushed lightly, tantalizingly, exquisitely against Blade's skin. He bent slightly and buried his hands in Sanaya's long hair, stroking her temples and the back of her neck as he did so. She nuzzled him harder and moved her lips down his body, to the waist of his trousers.

Then swiftly her hands were at work, unbuckling his belt and unlacing the thongs of the trousers. She pushed the trousers down to his knees and ripped off the breechclout he wore under them. Blade's aroused and erect maleness greeted her. In turn, she greeted it, her mouth opening wide to take it in, then closing to wrap it in warm, supple lips.

Blade fought back a groan as the warmth and the wetness and the skilled, subtle movements surrounded him. The first moment told him that Sanaya was an unmatched expert at fellatio. The next moment told him that she was determined to match her skill against his endurance, to try driving him to the edge and right over it if she could. He made up his mind that he would use all his own skill and strength to hold back, until Sanaya gave up the struggle and admitted defeat.

So Richard Blade and Sanaya Queen of Draad fought their duel in the dim, damp, chill but in the forests of Gleor. Sanaya worked her mouth up and down, closed her lips and opened them, licked with her long supple tongue, blew little puffs of air, brought her hands up to stroke and caress what her mouth could not reach. After a while Blade could no longer separate the places where Sanaya was touching him from the places where she wasn't. All his senses seemed focused in his groin, that groin was turning into a white-hot pool, and every nerve in his body seemed to vibrate in time to Sanaya's stroking and sucking.

Yet somehow Blade's mind mastered the body that Sanaya was torturing so exquisitely. Somehow he shut away what Sanaya was doing to him in one corner of his awareness. Somehow he held on, until Sanaya's lips began to twist more in a grimace of frustration than anything else. Somehow he held on, until he noticed that Sanaya herself was beginning to sigh and twist from side to side. Her efforts to work Blade up to the point of an erotic explosion were working nearly as well on her.

Blade let Sanaya's mouth take him in once more, deeper than ever, then clamped his hands in her hair again. He held her face against his groin for a moment, then slowly pulled her head back until her eyes were raised to meet his. They did not speak. Blade's throat was too dry and his breath was coming too fast for him to have found words. Sanaya was in much the same shape.

Sanaya nodded, clamped both arms around Blade's waist again, and pulled herself to her feet. Blade pulled his trousers off. Sanaya ripped the small triangle of linen from her body. The hair nestling between her thighs formed a perfect dark triangle, already glistening. She put both hands on Blade's shoulders, and let his hands on her hips draw her hard against him.

They stood pressed hard together for a moment. Blade felt that sweat had already made Sanaya's skin as slick as his own. He could feel the hard solid points of her nipples pressed against his chest as Sanaya's quick breathing thrust her breasts forward.

Then Sanaya let herself sag backward, still holding onto Blade's shoulders with a viselike grip. He had to bend forward to let her keep his grip upon him. She sagged and he bent until she lay back against the floor and he lay down on top of her. She twisted herself into position, raised her legs, bent them double, then clamped one hand in his hair and the other on the back of his neck as he entered her.

In that position she could take him in even more deeply than Blade could have expected. Once again there was warmth and wetness all around him, moving around him, taking him in and sending flames soaring up in his groin. This time he knew he would not be able to last, but it didn't matter now because neither would Sanaya. The duel was over. What they were doing now was more of a duet.

He sensed that the queen felt the same way. At each of Blade's thrusts she would twist and heave herself against him, pressing hard. Less often she would groan, her mouth now open and slack. There was not much tenderness between Blade and Sanaya as they joined. But there was a great deal of passion, and both sensed that passion was rising steadily higher and higher, like water in a well.

It overflowed first in the queen. She gave a terrible cry, as though she were being impaled on something much sharper and more deadly than Blade's erection. The cry seemed loud enough to shake the flimsy but down on the heads of the couple inside.

Sanaya cried out again, even louder. Her nails dug into Blade's back just below the shoulders and her legs flailed wildly in the air. He could feel her feet slamming against his hips and buttocks as he in turn slammed himself against her writhing body. Her arms locked about him tightly enough to make him gasp, and he felt an explosion of liquid warmth deep inside her and around him.

Somehow Blade came through Sanaya's climax and kept on thrusting. Now, though, he felt himself rising steadily toward his own peak, and he did not hold himself back. He swept upward, feeling like a bird borne upward by the wind. He swept upward toward his peak, and reached it.

Again a terrible cry filled the hut. Blade pressed downward, burying his face between Sanaya's breasts, clamping his hands tightly on her hips. He felt like sinking into her, dissolving away in the hot release of desire. He clung to her and she clung to him for a long moment. In that single moment there was almost tenderness.

Blade raised himself on his hands and kissed each of Sanaya's swollen nipples. Then he looked into her face, its frame of hair damp and straggly with sweat and matted with leaves from the floor. The queen's eyes were closed and her nostrils were wide as her starved lungs tried desperately to suck in air. But her lips were moving, repeating a pattern as she murmured the same words over and over again.