Chapter 27: Bath

A rush of noise and motion shattered her final rest. She felt hands gripping her unresisting body. Water rushing past her face. Humid air filling her unwilling lungs.

Do they now defile my lifeless body?

“Do not do that again!”

In her deathly sleep she registered both the words and the voice that authored them. They’d been spoken out loud. She’d heard them. So ... I’m not dead after all? With great reluctance she opened her eyes. Her blurred vision rendered him an indistinct silhouette, yet an unmistakable one nonetheless.

Khamûl.

“I know what it is you wish for. Once, a very long time ago, I thought the same. I have to warn you that there is no escape that way. You will not be allowed to die.”

He was holding her half-immersed, effortlessly supporting her weight with one mighty arm. Éowyn attempted to respond, but her ravaged throat was mute, her bruised lips too sore even for whispers.

“Drink this. It will help.” He produced a slender ewer filled with a thick, cream-colored liquid. A flood of horrible memories came rushing back and she turned her head away.

“It is not what you think. It is the extract of a plant ... I do not know which one ... and it will ease your suffering. Drink it!”

He poured a few drops at a time into her cracked and battered mouth, waiting patiently for her to summon enough strength to swallow. He was right — the elixir cooled, soothed, and refreshed — but it tasted awful. Though given what it replaced the taste was of little consequence.

Khamûl smeared a dense, greasy substance across her lips, and she found she could move them without feeling like their skin was splitting open. Gaining a bit more strength, she took hold of the ewer and drank until it was empty. Her throat felt immeasurably better.

“Water?” she rasped.

He reached for another vessel, and she consumed her fill and more. She wasn’t hungry, and thinking about the current contents of her stomach disgusted her beyond measure, but little by little life returned to her limbs and she was able to look her rescuer in the eyes.

“Why?” It was still only a faint whisper; a mouthing and shaping of breath rather than a word.

“I know what you have endured. This is the only remedy I can offer.”

She shook her head. “No.” Pointing at the herself, then the water, she repeated her question. “Why?”

“I told you: you will not be allowed to die.”

Again she shook her head, struggling to form a complete sentence. “But ... why ... didn’t ... you... ?”

He looked away. “If not me, it would have been someone else. They know. They always know. And ... they have ways of bringing you back.” He let the thought bloom as her eyes widened in horror.

Into the void of Éowyn’s soul flowed a small trickle of gratitude. Even affection. Emotions out of place in these terrible circumstances, perhaps, but they were feelings ... and in the absence of any other reason to sustain a flickering spark of hope, they were welcome. She reached up to touch Khamûl’s cheek.

“Thank you,” she rasped.

His eyes burned with sudden fire. “I will not let you die, either.” Releasing her from his control and letting her steady herself against the benches, he exited the pool to collect oils, soap, and washcloths. She was compelled by his body, even in her weakened and damaged state, and when he turned to face her she couldn’t arrest the temptation to stare at his manhood. It hung limp, but even in that state it was of a length and girth scarcely to be believed. “I know you have been damaged and abused in many places. Show me.”

She hesitated, then shook her head. He scowled with displeasure.

“There is no purpose in modesty.”

“I’m not...” she croaked through vocal chords slowly relearning the craft of speech. “It’s...” She realized she didn’t want to tell him.

“We might not have much time. Stop being foolish and I will see to your injuries.” His words and the promise of his touch sent a frisson of excitement through her, amplified as he reached down to lift her from the water as easily as a troll might lift a butterfly. She felt unaccountably ashamed at her nudity, and more so at the stark reminders of what had been done to her as he appraised her with a critical eye. Her still-swollen clit throbbed as blood flowed and nerve endings came back to life.

“Most of this is not permanent.” She wondered at his careful employment of the word “most,” but jumped and sighed as he dipped his fingers into the same ointment he’d applied to her lips and gently massaged it into her brutalized nipples. At first pain was preeminent, but soon his soothing caresses led to tingles of arousal. When he dropped to one knee and peered between her legs, she willingly widened her thighs, and his ministrations — this time with a scented oil — were, for her, lightning bolts of unexpected pleasure. Her clitoris, extended far outside its usual semi-protective sheath by long confinement, was a lightning rod for sensation, and every contact (accidental or otherwise) caused her to gasp with arousal.

“Hold still,” he admonished, though what he was doing made motionlessness impossible. She was halfway to a premature climax when he stopped, and she moaned at the loss of contact, shifting uncomfortably. He was also, she noted with anticipation and growing hunger, close to fully erect, and his phallus repeatedly bumped and prodded her legs as he worked.

Eventually, Khamûl rose to his feet, boldly enveloping her heaving breasts in his hands as his tumescence bored into her stomach. “Is there aught else?” It was a demand rather than question, and her denial died on her lips. She let her head drop as she nodded, but with a finger he lifted her chin, studying her eyes for a moment. With a grimace and a sigh, he broke their intimate contact and reached his hands around her buttocks, probing between them. She whimpered at the feeling of the thick plug moving around inside her ass, but it was no longer pure discomfort; that it now moved under his control was, instead, unaccountably stimulating.

“I can remove this, but,” he looked down at her, “it will hurt. It will be easier if you are distracted.” Without waiting for her permission, he squeezed one tender breast with his left hand and circled her swollen labia with the other, teasingly stroking the length of her clitoris as if it was a miniature phallus. Éowyn exploded with pleasure, grasping his wrist and attempting to pull a thick finger inside her greedy channel. But she wasn’t strong enough to counter his resistance, and he stubbornly refused to give her the penetration she begged for.

Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back ... lost to ecstasy, surrendering to his manipulations. His hand left her chest, spreading her buttocks and applying oil to her tight ring. He began tugging at the plug, and she undulated her hips back and forth in response. After the application of more oil the pulling sensation grew stronger, and as the pressure in her anus wavered on the precipice between pain and pleasure he acquiesced to her desire and slipped a finger a few inches into her pussy, trapping her throbbing clit between it and his caressing thumb. She squealed, very near the orgasm she so desperately wanted, and at that exact moment he dragged the plug through her resisting sphincter and out of her body. At the same time he yanked his finger out of her sex to set the plug aside. Éowyn mewled with frustration, clawing at his fingers. “Please, finish me. Make me come. I need you to make me come. Please, Khamûl...”

“First things first.” Khamûl applied more oil to her stretched nether hole, rubbing it around the entrance and then pushing a finger inside, massaging the soothing liquid into her sore rectum, slowly moving it in and out of her channel. She gasped, gripping his penetrating digit with her internal muscles and reveling in his easy mastery of her body, but before she could settle into a rhythm he again broke the contact.

Éowyn gaped at him in desperation, silently pleading for a climax that would not only bring her fully back to life but bind them together against the horrors that awaited. She straddled his hip and rubbed her wide-open sex against his muscled thigh. Pressing her lips into his bulging chest she dropped a hand to encircle his scalding manhood, rubbing it against her body as she kissed and licked her way down his stomach.

“Khamûl,” she whispered as sultrily as she could manage, moving her head ever lower. “Please, I need it. I need you.” Her other hand had already joined the first, enveloping the prick that now pointed directly at her face. She stared at it, mesmerized, as it quivered between her palms, then leaned forward and kissed his mighty weapon, delicately rolling her tongue around and across his slit to gather the gift of his first emissions. If all went according to her plan, there would soon be much more to consume.

Aside from a sharply indrawn breath, he didn’t otherwise respond. She looked up at him, stroking his cock back and forth, pressing her lips against the throbbing purple head in what she hoped was an irresistibly alluring manner, and whispered her plea. “I need you to help me. Will you?” Before he could answer, she dipped her head to the enormous purse of his dangling balls and, widening her aching jaw, took one of them between her lips, lovingly caressing the wrinkled surface with an agile tongue. One of his hands took its place on the back of her head ... not yet pulling nor restraining, but holding her close. She paid lavish and noisy oral tribute to the other testicle, then ran her tongue slowly up the endless length of his rod, tracing the intricate path of a swollen vein. When she reached the tip, she deftly lapped up another dollop of his sweet fluid and returned to his root, noisily kissing, licking, and sucking her way back to his glans. Poised over his pulsing head, she looked directly into his eyes as she enveloped it between her widely stretched lips, fluttering her tongue against the cream that seeped from its opening, making a dramatic show of swallowing what he’d offered.