Making Amends - Sex Stories

Making Amends

... to face his visitor.

Once the diplomat's eyes finally fell on her, Sienna's already rosy cheeks darkened further at the way his gaze slowly swept down her body and back up again. Taking the chance to examine him in turn, the young knight realized for the first time that her victim was actually rather handsome himself. He looked to be in his thirties, or perhaps a little past forty, and was of average height and a slightly stocky build. While clearly no warrior, he had at least avoided the prodigious gut which many men in his position earned by dint of attending a few too many feasts. Above the shoulders his face looked naturally stern, the lower portion dominated by a thick but close-cropped beard of bristly, coal black hairs while the upper was home to a large pair of piercing green eyes. When her gaze inevitably drifted to the large bump visible above one of the man's ears, Sienna tried, and failed, to suppress a guilty shiver.

Eventually, the wounded ambassador addressed his visitor directly, but much to her surprise he did so with a voice as light and casual as if he were greeting a friend he encountered every day. “Lady Sienna, what a delight it is to see you once more. I had begun to wonder whether your father was mistaken in suggesting that you might come calling this eve.”

Tremendous effort was required for the disarmed knight to prevent herself from visibly flinching at the mention of whatever her father may or may not have discussed with the man standing ...

... before her. It had been several hours since her audience in the throne room, time enough and then some for Sienna to have mulled over that particular encounter in more detail than could be entirely healthy. She had no way of knowing which of the two men involved had first conceived of the ordeal which lay before her, whether her virtue had been a bargaining chip desperately offered up by her own father or a callous demand he had only reluctantly been pressured into complying with. Nor could she know just how overtly the matter had been discussed. In public her father could play the great game as well as any other lord, but in private he had always been a blunt man. The ambassador she knew little of, but unless her initial impressions proved wildly inaccurate she suspected he was much the same sort. In the end it mattered little, she supposed, but that knowledge had hardly stopped her from imagining a dozen ways or more in which the scene might have played out. Naturally, not one of those variations had involved herself as a party to the deal. When men haggled over a prize-winning mare, after all, they seldom sought the horse's input on what her price should be.

If the imperial emissary had any notion of just how severe the swirling tempest playing out between the ears of the young woman across from him really was he gave no indication of the fact, instead merely smiling cordially as he carried on. “I must say, you look utterly radiant, milady. Like a daughter of the stars ...