by Lily Thomas
“Oh!” Andrea gasped. “I’d rather have you inside me, though.” Raising up, she reached between them, gripped his cock, and then she sank down onto his length, easing herself slowly down. “Yes.” She purred.
His mate’s eyes sank closed as she seated herself fully on his shaft. Then she worked her hips back and forth, and his mind went blank as he watched her breasts bounce.
Rokki groaned. Pressure grew in the base of his cock. He wouldn’t be able to hold on for long. Her sweet center held him perfectly.
“I want to see you fondle your breasts.” His voice went raspy.
Andrea’s eyes slid open again as she used her legs to pump herself on his cock while her hands cupped each alabaster orb. Her fingers pinched the nipples, and Rokki’s nostrils flared as he caught the scent of her desire drifting between them.
His mate was close.
Latching onto her hips, he thrust her faster and deeper.
Andrea moaned. The sound filled the night air and his ears.
Rokki’s jaw clenched as he gnashed his teeth. The pleasure! Her tight sheesh began to pulse around him, pulling him deeper, readying itself for his seed.
“I’m… I’m about to give you…” His hips bucked in jerky movements as the tightness in his balls grew too intense, and then he came. His seed pumped into her, and Andrea moaned as her sheath pulsed around him, squeezing him and pulling his seed deeper into her body.
Her hands abandoned her nipples and landed on his pecs. She dug her fingernails into his skin as her body took control, pumping and pumping his cock as she sought her blissful release.
Then she collapsed on top of him. Their sweat-soaked skin cooling in the air now that they’d ceased moving.
As they laid there, howls carried through the night air. Other mates had found their release, and later he would shift into his dire wolf and announce to the pack that he too had claimed his mate.
“It’s so strange,” Andrea murmured, “but I feel so comfortable here like I was meant to be here with you.”
Hope soared into his heart. Maybe, just maybe, he could convince her that his clan was the clan for her.
Chapter 19
Andrea stared up at the blue sky above her and watched the fluffy white clouds drift silently above her. They went where ever the wind took them. Placing her hands behind her head, she sighed as she searched the sky for any sign of something black flying her way.
“What are you doing lying on the ground?”
Turning her head to the side, Andrea found Ode standing beside her. “Waiting.”
“For?” Ode folded her legs as she plopped down on the grass beside Andrea.
“When I first arrived here, Rokki took me to a seer in a cave.”
“Yes, I have heard of her, but I have never seen her before.” Ode nodded her head. “I hear she is wise… and scary.”
“Her name is Elvira, and she isn’t as scary as you might think. She is supposed to send her raven to me when she finishes…” Andrea took a second to find her words since she wasn’t sure what all she wanted to tell Ode, “a wooden bracelet.”
Ode cocked her head to the side, her brown braided hair tipping past one shoulder. “Why would she make you a bracelet? I’m sure Rokki could carve a bracelet for you.”
“I need the seer to create it with her magic.”
“A magic bracelet?” Ode’s blue eyes danced with excitement as she perked up. “What will you do with a magic bracelet?”
“It’s a long story, but I found a wooden bracelet near my clan, and it brought me here. Then Rokki found me, and when he realized the bracelet might take me home, away from him, he snapped it.” Andrea gritted her jaw at the memory. He hadn’t been wrong. She would have left him, but still, he broke her way home like an ass.
“He broke your magic bracelet?” Ode asked, sounding horrified that her brother could do such a thing.
“Yes.” Andrea heaved a sigh as she focused back on the fluffy clouds above her.
“You want to leave us?” Ode sounded puzzled. “You are a part of our clan now. If the seer finishes your bracelet, would you leave? Would you leave my brother? Your mate?”
Gosh, Andrea wasn’t so certain what she would do when the bracelet was finished, which was why she was out here laying in the grass. She needed time to think and process. It’d been at least two weeks since the moonlit jaunt in the woods with Rokki, and she’d fallen in love.
Head over heels.
Rokki had charmed the socks off of her. The man was thoughtful, always catering to her every need, whether it was carnal need or something as simple as hunger in the middle of the night.
“If I don’t go home, I won’t see my mother or friends again. My clan will be lost to me.” She turned her head and looked over at Ode.
Ode nodded her head. “It would sadden me to leave my clan. I fear that someday I will find my mate, and he will want me to leave.”
“You don’t think you could find a mate here?” Andrea asked, happy with the distraction from her own troubles.
“If I had a mate here, he would have claimed me by now.”
“Are mates instant? Or can something form years after a meeting?”
“My mate isn’t in this clan.” Ode said matter of fact. “We would have known.”
“I’m sorry to hear that your mate isn’t here. If I do stay, I’d hate to see you leave.” And Andrea meant it. Ode and Zuri felt like sisters. They’d welcomed her with no questions and shown her the ways of the clan with patience and few criticisms.
“Will you leave us?” Ode asked again.
Andrea sighed. “I love Rokki, and I would hate to leave him.” She confessed out loud, “But I also can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
Andrea widened her eyes as she rolled her head a bit on her hands, which were still behind her head. She had no idea what to say as a response, so she asked a question herself, “Shouldn’t I want to return to my family?”
“You should want to, but why would you have to return? Would your mother and clan not want you to be happy with your mate? He is a man who will love you always and see to your safety.”
That was true. Rokki always saw to her happiness and safety. And he was the perfect man for her. Tall, strong, handsome, and nice. He was also her mate, which meant she never had to worry about his eye straying, which was kind of nice if she were honest. She wasn’t the jealous kind, but it did relieve some fears.
“My mother would want me to find love, but if I don’t go back, she might think I’m dead.”
“I’m not a mother myself, but I’ve been taught by many in the clan that mothers have an instinct of when their babes are in trouble,” Ode shrugged, “would it not be the same when their babes are happy?”
“Maybe.” Andrea couldn’t make this decision. It wasn’t easy, but no hard decision was simple. Her mother would want her to be happy. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Either way, she would hurt someone, and either way, she would have to live with her decision.
She had thought about going back in forth, but what if the magic ran out and she was stuck in a time she didn’t want? And how was she going to explain to people in the future why she kept disappearing? She wasn’t even sure if she would arrive back at the same time she left or not. It could get tricky.
Sighing, Andrea looked over at Ode, who leaned back on her hands, her head thrown back so she could also watch the clouds shifting high above them. “Is Rokki still out hunting?”
“He is,” Ode confirmed. “He and the hunting party should be back soon.”
That would be nice. He had only been gone a few days, but the hut seemed so empty without him beside her in the furs.
When he’d announced that he and some hunters would go out to hunt woolly rhinoceros, Andrea had been eager to join, but Rokki had shot that idea down quickly. Once she was more familiar with hunting, and he was sure she would seek safety if needed, he would let her join. So, with a promise of joining in the futur
e, she’d let him go with a kiss to seal the deal.
The wind shifted, blowing the scent of the woolly rhinoceroses towards the hunting party, which slowly prowled closer to the herd. It was a small herd, consisting of no more than five of the large beasts. Their shaggy coats waved in the cool wind, and the beasts snorted, sensing danger, but unable to detect where the threat came from.
Rokki crouched low to the ground, still in his human form. His dire wolf grumbled in the back of his mind. It wanted to be free, and a part of this hunt, but Darc was here, and in his dire wolf form. They couldn’t both be in their dire wolf forms, or their beasts would just fight for dominance and ruin the entire hunt.
Lifting his nose into the air, he scented the rhinoceroses. With a simple sniff, he knew exactly which one to target. One of them was old, and it was time for its end.
When Rokki glanced across the large meadow, he spotted the shifting dots in the tall grass. His brother’s side of the hunting party was in position. He glanced around him at the men from his pack who were still in their human forms.
They were ready.
Staying crouched, Rokki waited for Darc to make his move.
The tall grass that hid him from sight waved in front of Rokki as time slowly ticked by.
Then a howl went up, and Rokki spotted his brother and several other dire wolves from the pack running straight towards the rhinoceroses. The herd panicked. It stampeded in the opposite direction, and like Rokki thought, the older woolly rhinoceroses dropped behind.
As the herd galloped past, Rokki and the other men drew back their arms, readying their spears, and then they let loose when the older rhinoceros sprinted past.
Some of the spears bounced off the thick hide harmlessly, but most of them sank deep into the animal’s flesh. It went down with a thud, and a sense of accomplishment soared through Rokki.
His clan would eat well tonight!
As Rokki and his men left the tall grass, the woolly rhinoceros struggled back onto his feet. He might be old, but he wasn’t ready for death yet.
Grabbing another spear, Rokki pointed the tip at the rhinoceros’s face, keeping the beast’s back to the dire wolves. Then his brother and a couple of their pack jumped onto the beast’s back. They dug their long claws and canines into the beast’s skin.
It snorted in pain and charge.
Leaping to the side, Rokki barely dodged the large horns on the front of the beast’s face.
Then something seared through his middle. Lurching forward, Rokki dropped to his knees as his mind tried to figure out what was happening. Raising his hands to his abdomen, he felt something wet and sticky, and what felt like the shaft of a spear.
Glancing down, his eyes widened as he realized he’d been speared through. He collapsed onto his side at the same time that the woolly rhinoceros went down, shaking the ground around him.
Then a war cry went up, and right before he blacked out, he caught sight of Neanderthals attacking their hunting party.
“Andrea! Ode!” A female voice called out with urgency, breaking the peaceful silence of nature.
Flipping around and onto her butt, Andrea turned towards the voice and saw Zuri rushing towards them, her arms pumping at her sides as she rushed towards them. Her cheeks were flushed a light pink with her exertion, and her eyes darted around frantically.
“Is something wrong?” Andrea called out as she pushed herself to her feet when Ode stood.
Huffing and puffing, Zuri pulled up in front of them and rested her hands on her hips as she sucked in some desperate gasps of air. “The hunting party is back.” She sucked in some more air as her eyes turned to Andrea. “And Rokki has been injured.”
“Injured?” Andrea’s heart plummeted to the ground at her feet as her knees suddenly felt weak like her bones were constructed of nothing but jelly. “How injured?”
Zuri shook her head as her lips pulled back in a grimace. “The shaman doesn’t think he will live. You must come now.”
Andrea leaped into action, her arms and legs pumping as she sprinted back to the village. Rokki couldn’t die. Fate was not allowed to do this to her. First, it dragged her through time to meet the man of her life, and now it thought it could kill him? Hell to the no.
She left the other women to run after her. If Rokki died, then she wanted to be by his side, holding his hand, letting him know he was loved.
As she crested a small hill, she saw the village laid out in front of her. From the outside looking in, everything was calm and peaceful. The moment she raced down the hill and broke into the village though, she could hear a clamoring of voices. Following the noise, she ran through the huts until she found a crowd standing outside of one hut.
“Move!” Andrea barked as she dashed through them all. The clan parted like a herd of startled animals. She didn’t even bother asking for permission to enter the hut and just barged inside.
“Rokki?” Ode’s voice was right behind Andrea.
Andrea’s eyes searched the semi-dark inside of the hut, and when she saw the shaman leaning over a prone frame, her heart dumped to the ground again, but she straightened her back and marched over. Whatever she saw, she could handle. She had to be here for him.
“What happened? Zuri asked, panic rising in her voice.
Darc melted out of the shadows of the hut. “Half us hunted in our dire wolf forms while Rokki and the others stayed in their human forms and used spears.”
Andrea approached Rokki and raised a hand over her mouth so no one would hear her gasp of despair. Blood coated everything. Was he even alive with that much blood loss? Maybe she was too late to say her goodbyes.
Despair welled up in Andrea’s chest, and she did her best to hold back a sob. She never realized how much she loved Rokki until now.
“We took down a rhinoceros, but then Neanderthals attacked us. Rokki was speared while we took down the rhinoceros, and no one noticed until we finished with the Neanderthals.” Darc sounded pained, and for one second, Andrea realized that despite all his anger and snapping, he loved his brother.
“Andrea?” Rokki croaked as blood trickled out from one corner of his mouth.
“Rokki?!” Andrea cried as she unfroze her feet and flew to his side, where she dropped onto her knees beside the shaman.
Clasping one of his bloody hands, she rose it to her cheek as she tried to smile at him, but the attempt failed as the smile wobbled off her lips. It was hard to smile when Rokki died in front of her. Because die he was. As much as she prayed to the gods above, she knew the shaman couldn’t save Rokki. She wasn’t even sure a twenty-first century surgeon could save him.
“Darc… will see after… you.” Rokki promised as he sputtered blood with every word he uttered.
“I will, brother.” Darc pledged from behind her.
“I will not stop healing you until your last breath.” The shaman grumped from beside Andrea. “Do not give up your life so easily, Rokki.”
Andrea rubbed Rokki’s hand against her cheek, finding some comfort in the touch, despite the blood. She glanced over to where the shaman mashed some leaves between a stone and a wooden bowl. “Can you stop the bleeding?” She asked with hope.
“I don’t know.” The shaman said as he continued at his task. The grizzled man had a long white beard and mustache that almost hid his lips from view. Her eyes skimmed over the tattoos on his face, which moved with his loose skin as he worked the leaves.
Rokki coughed, and Andrea turned her eyes back to him, only to have her throat close up in terror. She couldn’t do anything for him. She knew nothing about medicine. Her only hope was that the shaman would succeed in staunching the flow of blood, then she could help with preventing infection. She’d seen plenty of movies and tv shows, so she knew the jist. Prevent infection with clean towels and hot water. She could get those… well, she could get clean furs, which would have to suffice.
Rokki’s coughing turned into sputtering as more blood showered out of his mouth.
�
�Hold on, Rokki. Please stay with us.” Andrea begged as she heard horrified gasps from behind her from his sisters. They found this sight just as horrible as Andrea did, which didn’t instill a whole lot of hope.
Andrea had never seen a wound like this before, and she’d hoped she never would again. It was one thing to see ghastly wounds on the television, and a whole other thing to see it right in front of her.
The scent of blood, a metallic sweet scent, filled the hut and had Andrea scrunching up her nose. Her mind screamed at her to run from the sight of torn flesh and blood, but she remained where she kneeled. If Rokki died, she would be here with him until he end. He was her mate after all, and he deserved her attention.
Rokki’s coughing ceased, and the sudden silence caused her to panic.
“Is he alive?” Andrea leaned in, her eyes searching for the signs of a chest moving under his fur shirt, but she didn’t see it rising or falling. “Is he alive?!” She screamed.
The shaman, calm under all the crying and hysteria of three women in the hut, held a hand above Rokki’s mouth and right under his nose. Then he pulled his hand away. Turning ever so slightly, he addressed the hut, “Rokki has joined the gods in the Eternal Hunting Grounds.”
Ode and Zuri let out wails that would have been howls of pain had they been in their dire wolf forms.
“No!” Andrea screamed at the top of her voice. “You may not leave me!” She slammed her eyes shut and gripped his hand harder. “You may not leave me.” She commanded. “Not now. Not ever.”
“Come, Andrea. He is with our ancestors and gods.” Darc’s hands landed on her shoulders as he tried to lift her to her feet.
Andrea shook him off as she focused on Rokki in front of her. She wouldn’t leave. She wouldn’t leave until he stood up and kissed her again.
She felt something… pull inside her, and then it gave way. With a scream of pain, Andrea collapsed on top of Rokki’s body.
Chapter 20
“Andrea?” A light voice asked with concern. “Are you awake?”