Teasing

You weigh your options. This lad seems to be highly placed, and as a mercenary his loyalty is fluid by nature. You might be able to convince him to help you escape if things turn ugly.

But at the same time, even if you want to, you can't give him everything he wants straight out of the gate. So you don't pull away from his grasp, but neither do you return his kiss or start touching his manhood through his sackcloth breeches. You endure his pawing your nubile body as a proper lady should.

To his credit Ross doesn't move to unsheathe the sword he was speaking of or slip his hands into your dress. Rather, he pushes his tongue into your mouth and tenderly cradles the small of your back in his hands, holding you close.

A long, awkward moment passes when he opens his eyes again and looks deeply into yours. You think better of telling him how unromantic the situation is - him putting his hands on a captive noblewoman after watching her pee, all under the specter of the unspoken threat you would get hurt if you didn't play along. And yet... As you thought about it more closely, you couldnt help but get a little physically excited yourself. Most often in the past you had been called upon to practically throw yourself at important men, brushing past their modesty and convincing them they were entitled to your body. Now things were trending the other way...

His hand starts getting more adventurous, daring the fringe of your skirt. You let out a faint gasp and stare at him as if to ask him to stop, but such a sign is far too subtle, and his fingers trace along the edge of your inner thigh, eventually poking at your nether lips...

Ross smirks but finally shows a hint of worry. "I scarce feel any hair but a wee little tuft... Surely you have come of woman, if you be a countess...?" You have to swallow the urge to slap him - what, he thinks you're a young adolescent now? Is he blind?

"Nnnh... Well, its rather indelicate of you to ask..." you begin slowly, "But do not the ladies have honed razors where you come from? The... gentlemen who visit Undrek seem to like it." Of course, the real reason that women of your county (whose livelihood consisted, in whole or in part, of pleasing men) shaved most of the hair away from their nether regions was for sanitary purposes... Preventing lice as well as avoiding any crustiness if multiple men 'called on' one in a single evening.

Ross seems excited by this new feature though. His fingers trace your delicate, smooth cunny lovingly. "Please... Since you are, heheh, at a loss here lady Orban... Might you not hold it against me too much if I let myself be king for a day and, well..." by way of elaboration he pushes his crotch up against your side, jabbing you with something hard that you are quite certain isn't a sword pommel.

You bite your lip and rub your hand over that bulge just firmly enough to placate him, but not so aggressively that he feels at liberty to strip down. Clearly he isn't feeling any particular shame about the barbarity of the situation. Despite his innocent-looking face, Ross has the most perverse possible outcomes on his mind. It was just as well that you weren't very good at playing the part of the innocent, distressed ingénue - were you truly such a girl, he would only be encouraged to take advantage all the more ruthlessly.

In truth, you realize that you probably have **** but to feed his animal lusts - but you need time to come around to the idea, and you need to give him time to stew in his desire... You swallow and give him a nervous smile, his eyes still gazing deeply into yours. "The other soldiers will be coming out here to check on us, soon," you whisper, reaching up to gently stroke your fingers along his cheek. "If my dress were torn or rumpled, they might be very upset with you, I imagine..."

Ross opens his mouth to protest but you get out in front of his objections again, fluttering your eyes at him more condescendingly, and letting your smile harden into a smirk.

"And besides... as the saying oft goes in my county... 'the customer pays first'." You say, pursing your lips sternly. "I NEED you to convince Cadh to make a detour back to Undrek... or at least, to release my advisor Marzena." you plead with him. "I would be simply devastated if your fellows were to harm her, to deliver her to Aldergrove where she would surely suffer a terrible fate. If you can do that for me, then... we shall rendezvous beneath the moonlight once the day's march is done... and you may look upon my... my maidenhood more closely, if that is what you truly want."

Though Ross can't seem to think of quite the right thing to say, the last part of your promise gets his attention, and he swallows excitedly, eyes tracing down your waist and over your legs, hands flexing in anticipation. "I had my eyes one or two lasses from me hometown," he says, eyes glazing over dreamily, "but the one I din it with only let me rub myself between her thighs, not let me do it proper."

As the young long-haired man speaks his voice grows more confident and aggressive. "Didn't ken that there was a rare, beautiful one like yourself awaiting me on this campaign but damn'd if I'm not pleased. A couple of the lads... talking 'round the campfire, you know.. they said that the lasses from the Itherian Southlands here know some fancy ways to fuck."

You are unable to resist letting out a soft squeal of concerned anticipation at his tactless ways. You had planned on offering Ross something a bit less... dramatic than that. The way you had been brought up was to... what was the phrase the senior advisor had used? 'Guard thy virtue selectively, Zoe' was the phrase he had sternly admonished you with. A noblewoman of your stature, despite being legally available to certain individuals, was expected to refrain from any conduct that might make you look like a 'slut', as indelicate tongues might put it.

Of course, having been captured in battle, it was the expected outcome that you'd be hauled into someone's bed. And if he was determined to make this a session of bawdy talk, there was little point in continuing to brush off his comments.

"Ah-hem... well... there is some truth to that. You are familiar with the Corpus order? Ah... the ones that most refer to as 'necromancers'? Their philosophers have long been influential here... and one of the ways Undrek's views differ from other parts of Itheria," you say, averting your eyes from his gaze and blushing despite holding your words to a steady meter, "is the common notion that it is demeaning for a man to lay atop a woman while bedding her."

"Aye, aye... Well. I don't think I'd find it too hard on my pride as a man if you were to push me down tae the grass and mount me. Would these, hehh, philosophers o' yours look **** upon that?"

Realizing that this is the best you will do, you nod wordlessly. "Like I said before," you say in a voice smaller than before, "convince him to-"

"Ach," he interrupts you, coming over to you again. "I'll die if I wait too long - I'll go off and have a quick word with the captain now, I will, and mid-day during the break my squad is having... I'll be havin' you. In whatever way you prefer." As if to emphasize his words Ross reaches forwards and cups both of your small breasts in his hands, mashing your nipples roughly under his palms and drawing a gasp of sensation from you.

Mercifully a couple of the mercenaries come out from the treeline to shout irately at Ross for delaying them so long, and you are led back to the motley vanguard/hostage escort the sell-swords are organizing. Luckily, it seems like the other ones are too cowed by your status, even while you are a captive, to be making sexual demands of you themselves... at least not yet.

They were leaving you fairly **** like this, escorted by only a dozen soldiers... but you certainly aren't planning on trying to fight your way to freedom and you have some sincere doubts that the Undrek Militia is going to be springing any dramatic rescue attempts, so the observation is mostly academic.

The journey would normally be boring, but you're still quite nervous during the first few hours of the march - both wondering if there is any way out of letting such a lowborn cur as Ross get at you, and still worrying what is becoming of Marzena. Your friend is certainly no delicate maiden, but the leader of a group of mercenaries was bound to be a particularly callous and brutal individual. If all he wanted was to screw her, Marzena would probably take it fine... but what if he wanted something darker, more violent?

Trying to take your mind off these worries you eventually hop up into the rickety wagon alongside Ross and ply him with questions about what campaigns and battles he has been in... with luck you might get a clue of a particular strategic (or moral) weakness that you might use against the Gaelican highlanders if you had to eventually overcome them in straight combat. For all you knew, these 100 only represented a tenth of those that the Count of Aldergrove had been gathering into his treacherous army of conquest.

Eventually the march comes to an unexpected halt, and in their coarse, guttural voices, the mercenaries begin pointing back the way that you all had come. They laughed and cheered as if trying to make themselves heard to some who were further back. Standing up on the highest spot of the wagon, you shade your eyes with your hand and focus on the barely-visible leading edge of Cadh's marching column.

There are two moving dots, one flesh-colored and one blue... as your unpracticed eyes slowly focus, you felt a blush rise in your cheeks. Well, your question has been answered; you can see that the entire column back there has made an unscheduled halt while Marzena bends over and rests her hands up against a tree. Her skirt has been flipped up, and a naked long-haired man who can only be Cadh is thrusting furiously at her from behind... in front of what must be near 100 onlookers. You'd had sex one in public before, but never THAT public.

"Do your best, Marzena," you say softly to yourself, clutching your hands. "Bend that... that ogre to your will, and conquer his body with yours. It's all for the sake of our homeland..." You watch for the entire ten minutes it takes until the mercenary captain gains his satisfaction and leaves the exhausted Marzena to drop to her knees. Mercifully, he doesn't then let any of his soldiers have a go at her, but rather resumes the march.

From that point onward Ross insists on riding in the wagon next to you. Encouraged thus by his lecherous commander's example he starts making public displays of what could charitably be called 'affection' towards you. First he puts his arm over your shoulder and leans against you. Then he slides it down and wraps it around your waist, starting to squeeze your stomach with the palm of his hand. When he rests his head near yours, he takes deep sniffs of your hair like a hunting dog getting the scent of its quarry. Being shown so much attention means that you can't help but start to feel a bit stimulated and excited. Indeed - the fact that the wiry, athletic young man is... Is an illiterate, unwashed, foreign mercenary and thug - the kind of person you have always been taught to despise - actually starts to excite you. How might it be different to be held and tossed about in the rough grip of these sword-swinging arms, compared to the pampered noblemen you'd had up until now? What had seemed like a grim necessity at first came to be something you guiltily looked forward to.

True to his word, Ross briefly jogged back to the main troop column and conferred with Cadh off in the distance. When he came back, the irrepressible, hungry grin on his face told you all you needed to know, but he confirmed the change in plans for you anyway, blurting it out before he even came to a halt in front of you.

"Captain says that he's been having a wee earful from the rest of the men. They were getting excited carrying those wicked girls around on their shoulders to begin with... and now, that Cadh helped himself to some of that fine sorcerous cunny, he realized the men wouldnae stand for being dragged all the way back to Aldergrove where there's nary a bordello to be found. We'll be returnin' by Undrek, to negotiate terms of safe passage in return for your continued safety as our guest, Zoe. And to let the lads get their beaks wet, so long as the girls of that town dinnae mind coming out from behind their fortified walls to do their duty."

Smiling and nodding, you open your mouth but before you can congratulate him he's turned his back on you and shouts at the rest of his squad that they're taking an early halt. Then, brazenly, Ross strolls over and suddenly sweeps you up into his arms, wrapping one of his arms around your thighs and supporting your shoulders with the other one. Rather humorously, even a strong young lad like him stumbles and struggles a bit with the added weight of 130 pounds of woman - but even with his missteps, you can't deny that your heart is beginning to pound with excitement.

"Go lay a bedroll down behind that hedge there, and make sure there's no biting flies or the like." he barks authoritatively at a couple of the soldiers. "The Lady Orban here has a matter she were wanting to discuss wi' me in private and we'll need a comfortable place to sit."

Of course... as he leads you off into the woods once again, beginning to plant kisses on your neck and teasing your earlobe with his tongue, you realize that pesky bugs and snakes are not the only things you need to worry about. Allowing a man to do as his instinct dictated always carried risks. In fact, you suspected that part of the reason your mother had abdicated her position so early and gone to the capital was because one of the distinguished noblemen she was always 'entertaining' had managed to beget a child with her, and that part of the trip would be discretely handing off your new brother or sister to the father's family. That was normal, by the reckoning of the house of Orban... and though you weren't exactly looking forward to it, you knew that it was your duty to eventually produce a daughter who could continue the family line. But a rank commoner was an unacceptable addition to the family tree...

"Ross," you say to him softly, and he looks down at you lustily before setting you down on the bedroll. "You were asking about some of the ways of my county, before, and though you guessed one, there are others... May I show you one of the other ways that I've learned to please a man? I'm sure I can come up with something better than that commoner woman you spoke of..."

Ross looks skeptical, already being halfway through unbuckling his belt. Perhaps you'll need to show him by example...