by R. Lee Smith
Amber closed her eyes against the sight of her hands splayed over the rough rock wall, letting the moan that wanted to happen just happen—a tribute to his overwhelming sensuality. Hearing it, the steady rhythm of his breaths broke in a dry laugh. “Try not to move.”
“I won’t.”
“You always say that.”
“I always start out meaning it.”
But she tried. Taking a few stabilizing breaths of her own, she squared her shoulders and pushed her ass back at him, doing her best to pretend she was an inanimate object while he set her on fire one stroke at a time. She forgot all about the mountains and the road and Scott and Nicci and the mimuts on the fire and just fell deeper and deeper into that moment.
Concentrate. His breath tickling the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. The scour of his rough hands chafing steadily at her hips. The slow, insistent press of his flat stomach against her upturned buttocks. The cold rock under her hands and feet. She held onto these things as long as she could, because when they fell out of focus, it was over. Without these little discomforts, she was nothing but how he filled her, how he moved in her, how he made her part of him.
She could feel herself shivering with strain already, and much as she tried not to, the effort of holding so still and being so good was making her tighten up. Everywhere.
“Woman,” he warned her hoarsely.
“Don’t distract me, lizardman, I’m right on the edge.”
He burst out laughing against her back, which did such unexpected things that she broke and began bucking wildly on his impaling shaft. This was usually his cue to hold still and let her finish or hurry up and finish himself so they could both wind down together. Tonight, in his playful, unpredictable mood, the sex became war.
Meoraq’s fondness for rough play was no secret. It was one of those things—like sex standing up—that just felt more natural to him, but it wasn’t without its risks. Never let him fight when you can’t see him; that was Secret Rule Number Two, and Amber wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t remember why the rules were so important.
But it felt so good…and she was so close…and he was always careful with her, always. He’d never really hurt her.
Amber grappled with it as he encouraged her with hisses and nips, but in the end, it wasn’t a decision as much as surrender. She hissed back at him, scratching and slapping at his thighs in a sure signal that no in this case definitely meant go faster.
“Ha!” He seized her and the sex became fucking, driving her up onto her toes, crushing her against the wall, knocking her full-on into the orgasm she’d been a hair away from reaching anyway.
Amber rode it out, pushing at the wall, at him. He pinned her arms, battled her carefully to the floor (but not as carefully as he had the last time; she knocked her knee a pretty good one), and straddled her again, resuming his steady, forceful thrusts as she writhed and yowled like a common alley cat. Sometimes a little extra noise was enough to give him what he wanted without giving too much up herself.
Sometimes.
“Fight,” he panted and, perhaps sensing her misgivings, gave her a playful head-butt between her shoulderblades. “Like you fought the first time. So I feel it when you surrender.”
Climbing fast to her second climax was the very worst time to expect a girl to show some self-restraint. Amber managed a token hesitation and then gave up and fought. Bucking and thrashing, she broke free, forcing him to grapple her back into his embrace and under his control. She could hear him laughing as he struggled to hold her, but it was a struggle and she was proud of that. She knew she shouldn’t be. Secret Rule Number Two…
The change was subtle, at first. His laughter faded gradually to hisses. His grip tightened. His love-bites at her neck and shoulder began to sting. Just when he broke his hard yet steady rhythm, she wasn’t sure, but even through her body’s frenetic sensory overload, she could tell that what had once been purely pleasure was now shot through with silvery threads of pain.
Her first instinct was the very worst response: She stopped play-fighting and tried to really stop him, then to get away from him. Whatever thin restraint he’d held onto all this time snapped at once. His roar blasted hot on her back as he shoved her down and pinned her under his weight. She knew it when he came by the hard, coughing sound he made, but something was wrong. This was where he usually stopped moving (in spite of the fact that she sometimes actually begged him not to), but tonight he kept at her. Like the bawdy punchline to a bad joke—harder, faster, deeper—and Amber couldn’t do anything about it because she was cumming again. She managed only half his name before his powerful jaws clamped down on the back of her neck, actually shaking her like a dog with a doll to shut her up. He hissed into her hair like an animal and this was wrong, this was really, dangerously wrong.
Amber tensed, alarm putting real strength into her body, but that was the wrong way to win and she knew it. Every nerve was hot and alive, every sensation heightened. She used it as best she could—a moment’s clarity, there at the razor’s edge of yet another climax—and then she heaved herself, not backwards, but flat to the floor.
She lay limp and still, giving him nothing to fight against as she took deep breaths and tried to bring her racing heart under some kind of control. He’d never hurt her, no he never would, but he wasn’t always him, was he?
Meoraq stopped, but he did not immediately back off. If anything, he leaned on her a little harder. She felt, with the perfect awareness of her tingling skin, the minute flexing of his fingers. He uttered a hard, snuffling grunt, but only one. She felt him rear back, shake himself. A second pause, longer than the first, and then he finally spoke: “Are you awake?”
His voice wasn’t quite his own either. Breathless, which was to be expected, but also…thick. As if speech were something new to him and not particularly pleasant.
Amber waited, listening. ‘Breathe,’ she thought at him. ‘Six breaths, Meoraq. Count them off.’
He did breathe, but only once. She felt it, hot on her back; he was hissing through his teeth in that silent, pissed-off way he had. Suddenly he let go of her aching wrists and put his hand between her shoulderblades, leaning over to pry unexpectedly at her eyelid. She flinched back, blinking, and he hiss/grunted. “You are awake,” he said accusingly. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I need to stop.”
“Stop? Are you hurt?” he asked. It should have sounded concerned, but it didn’t and he might have realized it because his next attempt was better. “Are you all right?”
“Please.”
“Damn it, woman, I just…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The hand resting on her back drummed once, then patted her. He was still hard; the sensation as he withdrew was enough to give her one final shivery, painful bloom, and then he was out. “A short rest,” he warned her. “I’m not finished.”
She rolled onto her side and put her hand behind her neck, feeling at the place where he’d bit her. Her fingers came away lightly smeared with blood. She glanced at him, watched him gaze at that blood with a shocking lack of expression, and said, carefully, “You were a little rough with me.”
He grunted and stood up. “Your flesh tears too easily.”
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“If you know, why are you talking about it?” he snapped. His hand drifted down, paused, and rubbed in a brittle fashion at his stomach, which was clearly not what he wanted to rub. His cock still jutted, wet and urgent. This was the worst she’d ever seen him, the worst she’d ever let him get, but he was talking.
“I need a little time, okay?” Amber wiped her neck again—it had already stopped bleeding, but she made sure he saw the marks of his teeth there—and curled up a little, making herself look small. Helpless. Fragile. “Okay?”
Meoraq paced around the cave, watching her. He checked on dinner, picked up their discarded clothes, drank some of the lukewarm tea from the pot on the hearth, and finally went over to si
t on the edge of their bed. “How much time do you need?”
“Feel free to start without me.”
“You know I can’t.”
Right. Because it was a sin for a guy to masturbate on this planet, while sexing a woman into a coma was apparently just fine. “I need a little more time,” she said.
He hissed at her, caught himself by the end of the snout, and then suddenly leapt up and came at her. “You do it,” he ordered, beckoning tersely at her with one hand and himself with the other. It wasn’t a sin if it was her hand, as he’d explained before. Ah, the fine points of Lizard Law. “Until you’re ready, eh?”
She closed her eyes, pretending to be a woman on the edge of exhaustion, like her heart wasn’t going like an engine and her stomach wasn’t tying itself in knots. ‘Breathe,’ she thought at him, so hard she was giving herself a headache. ‘Please, just start breathing.’ Aloud, she said, “I need another min—”
“Now!”
She dragged her eyes back open to see how serious this was.
It looked pretty serious. Those patches on his throat were still out and brilliantly yellow, his spines were flat and his eyes were glazed and staring. It made her think (as she had thought so often this long winter closed in with him) of the mummies at the bottom of that old laboratory, and those three terrible little words—he’s still sick—which had never quite left her mind.
She sat up and rubbed once more at her neck. His eyes tapped at her hand, lingered, and flicked away. He grimaced at her, badly disguising his impatience, and went back to sit on the bed. He fidgeted now and then, most often checking the tightness of a belt he wasn’t even wearing, but at last those yellow stripes began to darken.
They watched each other.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” he asked suddenly.
“No, you’re fine.” She got up, stiff from huddling on the floor, and joined him.
“Fine, eh?” He grimaced again, trying to be playful, but his jaws were a little too wide. Like the thuoch, it was a see-how-hard-I-can-bite look, whether he knew it or not.
“Better than fine,” she amended, reaching up to rub briefly at his brow-ridges. He put his arm around her, pulling her onto his lap so he could scrape his chin along her neck. The danger appeared to be past, but she thought she’d better be sure.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Ready,” he replied at once, catching her hand and pulling it downwards.
She made a fist on the empty air before he had her where he wanted her. “Because I’m starving.”
“Oh.” He glanced over at the mimuts, which were nowhere near done cooking, then sighed and set her aside, reaching for his loin-plate. Putting himself away wasn’t easy for him, clearly, but he did it and he didn’t even look that upset anymore. His neck was black, his spines were up; he never had done his slow-count of six, but he seemed to be all the way back in his own head.
Relief hit her almost as hard as the fear she had refused to face all this while. She reached out impulsively and caught his wrist as he was tightening his belt. “Thank you,” she said. For letting himself be put off or just for being himself again, she didn’t know, but the gratitude was real.
He smiled and tapped his knuckles along her brow, then swept her hair away from the back of her neck and bent down to lick the place where he’d bit her. “I should have been gentler,” he murmured, nuzzling her. “I lose myself sometimes.”
She knew.
If he noticed the strain in her smile, he did not comment, but he did finish dressing. All the way. Right down to his boots.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked tentatively, meaning, ‘Are you mad?’
“Just a short walk.”
It was a terrific way to get him completely cooled off, but it still unnerved her.
“Right now? It’s getting dark.”
“I’m restless.” He fetched his coat and shrugged into it. “While I’m gone, you can start to pack. We leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” She looked over at the fire, as if the Meoraq of ten minutes ago could still be found there, waiting to tell her how dangerous the road still was and how much safer it would be to hold off for a few more days, and then a few more and a few more. “Are you sure?”
“I’m very restless. Besides.” He came back to the bed and pulled her up (roughly, far too roughly) for one of his clumsy, unfeeling lizard-kisses. “I want to get you home before the baby comes.”
Of everything he’d said and done, ever, that was easily the most shocking.
“You what?” she stammered, following him stupidly to the mouth of the cave stone-naked. “The what?”
“It was different tonight,” he mused, looking her over. And grinned again, with predatory suddenness and unmistakable pride. “Maybe I felt it happen, eh? I need to pray…but yes. I think I just gave you my first son.”
He beamed while she gaped, incapable of speech, and then he was out through the flap and away.
* * *
It was a good night, dry and not too cold, with a smudge of moon to light his way and the scent of new growth in every breath—a perfect night for a man to be alone with thoughts of impending fatherhood.
He didn’t think about it often, but after twelve years as Sheulek, Meoraq knew he had sired children. Certainly, he had been summoned to acknowledge several over the years, but with the exception of that bad business with Lord Saluuk in Tothax, it had only been the last step before marrying off their mothers. Oh, there were Houses whose lords might be keeping their daughters free in the hopes of the highest possible marriage—Lord Arug came immediately to mind—yet there probably weren’t many. Proof of fertility was a far more valuable asset than pretty looks or even virginity, and there was never any guarantee that a Sheulek would live to retire and marry. With three Swords in active service (Salkith counted, even if he was only a Sheulteb), House Uyane might be supporting a hundred sons somewhere in the world, but if so, Rasozul had never deemed the matter important enough to mention. Meoraq had never put a bastard in the belly of some servant, which was more than Nduman could say (or Rasozul, come to think of it), so whatever children he’d sired, they were honorably got. If one of them were to come to his gate, Meoraq would welcome him as kin, but this was not the same as being a father.
Odd. He’d never given the idea of fatherhood much thought beyond the same vague sense of anchoring resentment that went with all a steward’s responsibilities, but being married was certainly turning out much better than he’d ever thought possible. Maybe having children would be the same way.
Such were his thoughts as he traveled the well-worn path between the cave and the fall where they drew their water, diverting now and then when the urge took him. There, the pock-marked tree that bordered the edge of their training grounds; Amber’s aim with the spear was as miserable as it had ever been, but she’d really taken to the sword. Here, the remains of the short wall she’d made, where she’d attempted to shield herself while pelting him with packed snow; she still insisted she’d won that battle. And there, the grass-cushioned patch where she’d coaxed him to lie with her on the first day after a long stretch snowed in. He lingered there, thinking how fresh and clean everything had smelled that day, how even the sounds seemed clearer, especially her ear-piercing yelp when that blot of snow slipped from the branches overhead and dropped down the back of her loosened britches.
He did not realize right away that what he was feeling was nostalgia. Strange feeling to have. But if he was nostalgic, that meant a part of him was already leaving and so he supposed it must be time, in spite of all his misgivings.
So be it. They could be in Xi’Matezh in half a brace and home by the turning of the year, and if he was right about putting his child in Amber’s belly tonight, and if humans carried the same as dumaqs, it would be born around the Day of Redemption.
To be in Xeqor in the greening of the springtime…
His mother’s rooftop garden would be in bloom. Amber c
ould sit there, doing domestic things as she grew his son (he had only the vaguest notion of what these things might be). Some days, he would visit and prove he was not the mannerless brunt that life in the wildlands so often made him seem by reading with her or teaching her to play Towers or Crown-Me. And some days, he would visit and prove he was exactly that bruntish by having sex with her right there on the rooftop, spilling Crown-Me pieces simply everywhere.
It stabbed him, in some hot, unexpected way. Stabbed and twisted, not with lust, but with a kind of ferocious joy that lingered on in echoes after the vision itself faded away. Meoraq turned around and strode, not back along his wandering trail, but through stale snow and over iced rock directly to his cave. Amber tried to chat at him when he arrived, but the only thing Meoraq wanted to know was whether she’d eaten. As soon as he’d determined that she had, he took his wife to bed and it was there, after far too short a sleep, that Meoraq was awakened by Amber’s hand firmly gripping his shoulder.
“Start without me,” he mumbled.
“I think we need to talk.”
Nothing good ever came of a conversation that began that way.
“I am agreed that we shall begin our preparations to leave,” he told her, still not bothering to open his eyes. “But I am not doing anything more tonight.”
“No, we need to talk about…um…babies.”
“Oh.” With effort, Meoraq woke himself all the way and rolled onto his back so he could at least attempt to look at her. “As near as any man can make a promise in Gann’s land, I promise you we’ll be home before you carry heavy. Eh?” He patted her thigh. “Now go to sleep.”
“I really want to talk about this,” she said quietly.