Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Hector?” She looked up. "Are you okay?"

  "I just came back here to drop off some stuff," I said stiffly, throwing my pack on the bed. "And then I'm going to go and beat the shit out of Soma and throw him off the top of the Wall."

  "Uhh." Suri finished her press and knelt up. The rope and chest both creaked. She unequipped them, and they vanished from her body. "Do you need a hand? What did he do?"

  "I just watched him give my emotionally vulnerable, hormonal, frustrated dragon a really fancy gift, then immediately creep on her." I took up the Spear and checked the edge on it, then my armor. The Raven Suit had taken a beating on the battlefield, and was at 63% durability. If I didn't fix it now, I'd have to take it to an armorer.

  Suri stood up and padded over to me as I furiously ransacked my pack for the Armor Repair Kit I needed. She sat down beside me, and lay a hot, calloused hand on my now-bare shoulder. "Hector."

  "What?" I turned on her, teeth bared.

  Suri gently pulled my head forward, and pressed a dry kiss to my brow. “Let her handle him."

  "Handle him? Suri, she can barely handle herself.'" I brushed her off, took the kit and the first piece of armor, and began to fix the seams and scuffs. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely follow the minigame directions. "She was already worked up after the meeting-"

  "I know. We talked."

  I glanced up at her sharply. "You and Karalti?"

  "Yeah. Came in here to find her sobbing her eyes out on the bed." Suri was flushed from exercise, her muscles pumped, her cheeks carrying a soft rosy glow. “We worked through some of her feelings. I got her up and moving, exercising... it helps. You’re right. Since you and I got involved, she’s been hormonal and pent-up, and she didn’t know how to do anything about it."

  Heat rose in my face. "What do you mean, she didn’t know how to ‘do anything about it’?"

  Suri uttered a testy sigh. “She didn’t know how to jerk it, Hector. So I taught her.”

  I nearly stabbed myself in the back of my hand with the very sharp [Awl] I was holding with the other. "You... what?"

  Suri squeezed my shoulder. "She was horny as shit, Hector, and feeling a whole lot of guilt about not being able to suppress her jealousy. The problem is, whenever you’re horny, so is she. She never felt comfortable talking about it, so instead, she’d bottle the frustration and the guilt and explode.”

  “So, you’re saying… she isn’t actually jealous of us?” I tilted my head, confused.

  “She is. But not because she wants you to fuck her. You just happen to be her favorite person in the whole wide world, the source of her safety and comfort and the only pleasure she’s known. She knows you’re not into her that way, but she’s full of piss and vinegar and hormones, and was too embarrassed to tell you.”

  "She never tried reaching down and fiddling around? I mean, isn't it like... obvious?" The little holographic mini-game directions flashed, waiting for me to make the right gestures to suture new leather through the holes punched in the armor.

  "No. She didn’t. Turns out no-one ever talked to her about the feelings she's having, other than to tell her she shouldn’t be feeling them.” She fixed me with a bemused glare, crossing her arms.

  “Look, the last time she went into a jealous rage, she nearly killed me. Besides, I never thought my character class would entail walking my polymorphed dragon through the ins and outs of her ins and outs, okay?” I bent back down to the crafting game, trying to erase the visuals from my mind. “…Did it help?”

  “Dunno. I just gave her some pointers. She was planning to go give it a try by herself tonight."

  “I always knew I’d be a shitty parent.” Fighting the urge to stab my own eyes out, I laid the needle down and rubbed my face. "Fuck, I had no idea. I never got a birds and bees talk."

  “You didn’t?” Suri gave me a curious look.

  "My parents were… uhhh… let’s just say ‘conservative’." I shrugged. "They wanted me and Steve to focus on our studies. We weren't supposed to date. Any questions about sex we had were shut down. Beating off was a fast track to hell and sex was something we weren’t supposed to have until we found a nice Korean girl and settled down. Anything we wanted to know, we had to figure out ourselves. Guess where we learned?”

  “No idea.”

  “Porn. Where else?” I spread my hands. “I was a virgin until about two months ago. I have no idea what Steve did, but I know he wasn’t married. Dealing with Karalti is like… I literally have no framework to cope with her like this.”

  “Then roll with it. Special-K is just having to grow up fast. All you have to do is reassure her that everything she’s going through is normal, and that she can make mistakes and learn from them. She made it pretty clear to me tonight that she wants to get a handle on herself and her feelings and get over them. And seriously, you don't have anything to worry about with Soma."

  The anger crawled back in. "But if he creeps on her..."

  "If he creeps on her, let her handle it and back her up when she does. Support her choices and let her lead the fight. That’s how she’s gonna build confidence, but you have to let her do the work.”

  I fumed in silence.

  “If Soma is a smug ass to you about this, that’s one thing,” Suri said. “But if you got up right this very moment and went and thrashed him, she’d never forgive you. And you’d set her back, maturity-wise."

  "And what if he hurts her?" I clenched my jaws together, stabbing the awl down with hard, angry motions of my hand. "What if he tries to..."

  I trailed off, realizing exactly how dumb that thought sounded. "Wait. No. She's a fucking dragon. Never mind."

  Suri's lips quirked at the corner. "Yeah. She's a fuckin' dragon, and she'll have his balls on toast if he pushes her too hard. And then we’ll thrash whatever she leaves behind."

  I chuckled. "It just occurred to me that when I said I was going to throw him off the wall, the first thing you asked me was do I need a hand. And then you asked me why. Now I know I love you."

  "That's like the definition of love, isn't it?" A sly grin spread over Suri's mouth.

  I finished stitching up the last piece of armor and focused on it for a second to verify it was back to 100% durability, then put it back into my inventory. Then I anxiously reached out to Karalti. She wasn't at the Fort, but had gone somewhere up high not too far from the Prezyemi Line. That meant she was back to her normal scaly self. The noise coming in over the line was no longer black with grief. In fact... quite the opposite.

  "Well... ah... it seems Karalti's taken your advice on board." I tried to cut the link and got to my feet, cheeks flushing with heat. I turned back to look at Suri. She was leaning back on her hands with her knees drawn up onto the edge of the bed, her skin still gleaming like burnished copper from her workout. “I… uhh…”

  “You might need to do some touching of your own.” She gazed up at me from behind a lock of brilliant red hair.

  Hunger slid up through my body. I froze like a snake, drinking in the sight of her. The way the soft doeskin leather hugged her legs, the lean, corded muscle in her arms, the soft, heavy swell of her breasts against the stiff fabric of her halter top. “Is the lady suggesting something?”

  "She might be." Suri shifted her knees, loosening her stance on the bed. “I’ve been working through some shit. And I liked what I saw at that meeting.”

  "Liked what you saw?"

  She sucked on one of her teeth, her eyes dark with promise. “Watching you shut down Soma was pretty hot.”

  Somewhere not far from here, my dragon gasped as she was surprised by pleasure: a thrill of discovery that passed through the Bond like a note of music along my nerves.

  I stalked toward Suri. She shifted back along the covers, gasping when I darted forward and caught her by the knees. She was strong, but I was fast. I slid my hands down the insides of her thighs, gripping them all the way up. Slowly. There was an energy between us, a very different energy t
o the last time we’d tried this. “My… self-control is not fantastic right now. Karalti’s ...um... doing her thing. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Maybe I want you to.” A swallow rippled down the front of Suri's long throat.

  Fixing her gaze with mine, I massaged my thumbs up along her thighs until they were almost at her groin, waiting there. “How do you want this to go?”

  She was unable to tear her eyes away from mine. "I want to say rough. As rough as you're willing to do it. Maybe more than what you're willing to do."

  "But?"

  "I don't know if I can deal with it being as rough as I want it to be." A tremble passed through her legs, vibrating against my palms.

  The smell of her was in my nose, part perfume, part arousal. Even as my instincts bayed at me to tear her clothes off and hold her to the bed, I stopped squeezing and let my hands rest on the inside of her thighs. " Tell you what. Pick a word. And if you say that word, it stops. Make it something dumb, something you normally wouldn't say."

  She laughed, briefly, and finally looked down and away. "Okay. 'Eggplant'. That's a pretty dumb word."

  "Right. If you say eggplant, that's the stop button. If you feel like you can't handle it, you tell me, and we slow down."

  Another nervous laugh. "That works."

  She nodded. My mouth began to water as the frustration and the lust of the last month reached critical mass. Whatever she saw in my face made her gasp, then again, louder, as I knocked her knees apart, thrust a hand up through her hair, and pulled her head back against the bed with it.

  "Yeah. I’m okay." She writhed underneath me, her breath coming in short pants.

  I pinned one of her wrists down with the other hand, breathing hard. Her neck was exposed, the pulse jumping rapidly under the skin. "You sure?"

  Suri glanced at me, lips parted. Her eyes were as wild as a pinned deer's. "...Yes."

  "Good. I’m gonna keep asking you." I murmured the word against her skin, just before my teeth clamped down on the side of her throat.

  Suri cried out in surprise, pleasure, and a little pain. I held her with my jaws, roughly unlacing her halter top. Her breasts spilled out against my palm, smooth and hot. I left off her neck to bite my way down over her collarbone, her chest, then her nipple. She bucked up into my mouth with a sharp cry, clutching the sheets with her one free hand. I had to let go of her to strip her, and she lifted her hips as I rolled her pants down and off. I started on mine before I once more remembered that I could just unequip them.

  A warm, sweet rush flowed through my body. The empathic rush of Karalti's pleasure. I groaned and roughly pushed between Suri's thighs. She arched her head back, gasping.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  Her lips were hot against my ear. “Please.”

  She was wet to her knees. There was no warmup, no foreplay... I bucked all the way into her, shivering at her cry of mingled pleasure and pain.

  “Yes.” She breathed the word before I could ask. “Yes… harder.”

  The predatory pressure behind my eyes was back. I growled, drowning in the taste of her skin, the press of her body struggling against mine, and the echoes of the Bond. Karalti shuddered with ecstasy not far away, leaving me hot and trembling with lust I felt behind my eyes, in my teeth and fingers and cock.

  "FUCK!" I snarled against Suri's shoulder with a low, guttural sound, hooked her legs around my arms, and let instinct take over. Suri pushed her throat into my jaws, her breasts against my chest, and pulled me deeper with her ankles. Harder, faster, until she tightened around me with a whimpering cry and I collapsed over her, shuddering through the orgasm, the adrenaline, the thrill of the hunt.

  Shaking, I buried my face against Suri's shoulder and clutched her hair in my fist, fighting to catch my breath. The empathic resonance between Karalti and me ebbed away like the waters of a tsunami, sucking the feral strength from my body and leaving me strangely still and calm. Clear, like glass.

  For several minutes, neither of us spoke. We lay together, still joined, until I slowly picked myself up and gazed down at her. There was a line of deep, dark bruises from neck to sternum. I searched her face for signs of distress, for... disgust, maybe. There was none. Suri's eyes were dark and molten, her lips flushed a deep cinnamon red. Her red wavy curls were tousled, spread out around her like a second corona. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

  "I meant what I said before, just so you know." I brushed her cheek with the back of my hand, tracing the curve back to her ear. "I love you."

  Suri struggled with her reply, her breath catching. “I… love you too. Heaps."

  "Heaps?" I bent down to catch her mouth with mine in a gentle kiss.

  "Yeah." Her voice was a cracked whisper. She wrapped her legs around me and held me close. "Heaps."

  I cracked up with helpless laughter, and so did she. Just like that, the spell was broken.

  “What are you bloody laughing at?” Suri swatted at me, which only made me laugh harder.

  “Heaps, as in ‘heaps of laundry’?” I grinned back at her.

  “Ugh. That’s right, you’re a fuckin’ Yank.” She lolled her head back in surrender.

  Still chuckling, I gathered her into the crook of one arm. Suri balled in against my side with a soft sigh.

  "You know..." I said, eyes closed. "If anything bad ever happens to you. Like, if you die or something... I will drop everything here to go and get you. Fuck the quest. Fuck Myszno. I’m bailing you out."

  "Don’t." Suri stretched contentedly, her hand resting on my chest. "Finish the quest and become the Lord High Vo-Vo of Racsa first, so that we never have to do it again."

  "But-"

  She cracked her eyes open. "Promise me, Hector. I want to come back to a home. A real home, where I know I'll be safe. Finish the damn quest."

  I took a deep breath. Let it out. "Okay. I promise."

  "Thanks. I’ll believe you." She closed her eyes, and nestled down into my armpit. "What d'you think it'll be like?"

  "Hmm?"

  "To have a great big castle to ourselves? I never really had a place I’d call ‘home’."

  "Me either.” I gazed up at the rough stone ceiling overhead. “The closest thing to home for me was the bar where I worked. It was a good place… a lot of civil war vets, a lot of outcasts. They had an upstairs room where they let me crash if I needed it. I knew all the regulars, I loved the staff, they loved me. We'd share a drink after work. Called ourselves a family. I met all my stunt and racing contacts there and was building a career out of that networking, so... yeah. That was home for me, I guess."

  Suri nodded. " I wonder what living in a castle will be like?"

  "Drafty. And if you make noises like that every time we bang, you're going to scandalize all the maids-”

  “Hector.”

  “-and the butler will gossip with all the other Voivodes about our unbelievable, mind-blowing, comet-smashing-into-the-surface of the sun epic-level sex."

  Suri whapped me with a pillow to the face. “There won’t be any more of it if you don’t shut your trap.”

  “Hey now, if you’re going to threaten me, you better be able to back it up.” Grinning, I rolled her over onto her back. “Because I’m pretty sure someone’s up for round two.”

  “I’m pretty sure we are.” Suri pressed her lips to mine, and drew me in.

  Chapter 29

  I woke up to the sound of my dragon crashing into the side of the tower wall.

  "Karalti?" I shot up out of bed as she yelped, her flailing wings driving huge gusts of wind against the windows. I rushed over to see her circling back to touch down on the roof next door, then quickly launch off again as the ancient structure groaned beneath her weight. Tiles scattered everywhere.

  "Eek!" She soared out of sight, heading around the tower this time. "Hectorrrr! I'm too big to land anywhere! And my spell still has like six hours to go before I can use it again!"

  It was barely after four in
the morning. The assembly wasn’t for another two hours. I groaned, scrubbing the sleep from my eyes. "I'll meet you downstairs. See if you can find somewhere to land."

  Suri murmured sleepily, pulling the covers up over her face. She was always a late sleeper. I tiptoed over, planted a kiss on her forehead, and resigned myself to an earlier start than usual.

  "I've gotten so used to being able to go into buildings again." In stark contrast to the night before, Karalti's telepathic voice was bright and chipper. She chattered as I locked the door behind me and padded down the cold, damp corridor. "I thought there was a rampart like the one back at Vulkan Keep, but ugh."

  "Human buildings aren't really made for dragons." I yawned.

  "Some of them are! I wish there was still dragons in Vlachia, but Soma told me that the last time dragons lived here was about a thousand years ago. Egbolt Castle should be big enough for me to land where I want, though... he said it's really old, but maybe not as old as Vulkan Keep."

  I emerged out of the gatehouse to find Karalti in the parade ground. Her night-time camouflage caused her body to flex in and out of sight. At Level 10, my dragon was a slender, regal creature, light and graceful for her size, but still not even half as big as the monstrous dragons that had descended on Taltos. I couldn't help but notice that she was still wearing the necklace - it was wrapped around one of her horns, like a ring.

  "You've been talking to Soma, huh?" I went over to her and stopped, fighting the urge to cross my arms and glare at it. "How did that go?"

  Karalti lowered her head to sniff over me. Each nostril was now the size of my palm when I held up my hand. "He's... I dunno. He's okay. He likes me a lot, and he knows a lot about dragons, but he also doesn't know anything about dragons, if you know what I mean."

  "I don't." I reached out to lay a hand on her snout, unable to suppress a shudder of relief. Karalti's breath smelled like hot metal and ozone, as hot as a furnace against the skin of my face. By contrast, her emotions were cool and steady, washing over me like a balm… she was calmer than she’d ever felt.