by R. Lee Smith
Hruuzk grunted when she limped past him for the second time to give the table a last rinse and finally put his belt back on. “You’d be best served to give her over to me for proper training if you really want to keep her. She’s just clever enough to give you real trouble.”
“Is that what I need to do, Eshiqi?” Zhuqa inquired.
“No,” she said, tried to say, but there were so many variations of that word and she couldn’t be sure which she’d used. To make it clearer, she limped over to him and knelt to put her hand beside his boot.
Hruuzk uttered a low, whistling grunt through the crack in his snout. “I want one,” he muttered, eyeing her.
Zhuqa’s hand came down to rest on her bent head. “I have men out looking for more of them, now that I’ve tendered up apologies to Ghelip and can trust him not to hunt us down.”
“You can, eh?”
Amber’s arms began to shake, but Zhuqa hadn’t told her to stand or given her a tap or anything. She crouched lower, trying to take the strain off her shoulders only to put it on her knees, and all the while, her back was screaming. How long did he expect her to kneel here?
“Salahkthu’s enthusiasm aside,” Hruuzk was saying, “those three fools may not have been a raiding party, but it’s my belief they were scouts. I think Ghelip spied you on your way to Praxas and sent his men slinking in to see how weakened we might be by your absence.”
“I think you’re right,” Zhuqa said mildly.
“Do you? Then you’ve done Salahkthu a sorry turn, haven’t you?”
“Sheul instructs with a burning hand, they say, but there is no greater honor than to be the instrument of His teachings,” Zhuqa replied. “Today, Salahkthu teaches Ghelip the quality of my mercy and I am grateful to him for his service. If he had a son, I would honor him in his father’s memory.” He shrugged his spines, adding, “He doesn’t, so you can have his dips and whatever else he left behind.”
Hruuzk took the square key Zhuqa passed over with an expression of lizardish amusement. “Are you giving me gifts or ordering me to clean out his room?”
“The brightest light casts a shadow.” Zhuqa finally reached down and tapped Amber’s head, giving her permission to struggle to her feet. “God and Gann, Hruuzk. They come together out here. Hold, Eshiqi. Turn around and bend over.”
She obeyed, biting on a groan as she braced herself on her thighs and tried to hold still. Zhuqa held her shift up. The air was cool on her burning back for a moment before his hand came down to rake dull coals into fresh flame in one light caress. She managed not to cry out, but she knew she flinched and both of them laughed at her for it.
“I wasn’t half-swinging,” she heard Hruuzk say.
“I know. Your Sheulek has been too tender with you,” Zhuqa told her, letting the shift drop over her again. “There are children in this camp no higher than your hip who would have been embarrassed to make half the noise you made for that little whipping.”
Damn him, she blushed.
He touched her cheek curiously, then pinched her chin and put his face close to hers. He was still smiling, but now his humor had teeth. “You looked to me for help. You looked to your man—” He gave her a shake to make her meet his eyes again after she tried to drop them. “—to take you away from the workpit and let you rest. Yes, you did.”
“I was tired.”
He acknowledged her human words with a grunt as he nuzzled under her jaw, scraping the tip of his snout lightly up and down along the full length of her throat before nipping at her shoulder. “If Hruuzk had not,” he murmured, licking at her scars, “I would have whipped you for that devious little trick myself. And that would be a terrible hardship for us both to endure. In the future, you will do the work you are given and do it gladly, Eshiqi.”
She raised her fist in the kind of salute she had seen the other raiders show him.
“Apologize to Master Hruuzk for disrupting his workpit.”
Wanting nothing more than to just get out of here, Amber turned obediently to Hruuzk and said, “Sorry.”
“You can do better than that,” Zhuqa said.
“Sorry I made you whip the shit out of me for looking sideways at Zhuqa when I should have been scrubbing your table, you giant whore-mongering dick,” she amended.
Hruuzk smiled at her. “I don’t know the words in your mouth,” he told her gently, “but I know the look in your eye. And if you were under my hand tonight, I’d whip you bloody from your neck to your knees.”
“Once more,” said Zhuqa.
She looked at him, then at Hruuzk. She couldn’t begin to perform the necessary vocal aerobics to apologize in dumaqi. What the hell did they want from her? “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling frustration in her stomach almost as hot as the throb and sting in her back. “Whatever you want me to say, I’ll say it. Just let me get out of here, for God’s sake. I’m sorry. I don’t care anymore. I’m sorry. Let me go!”
Her voice cracked.
Hruuzk and Zhuqa exchanged a maddeningly knowing glance.
“Very good,” Zhuqa said. He tapped her shoulder with two knuckles and turned around. “Come, Eshiqi. I’ll take you home.”
They walked back to his room together. He kept silent, acknowledging neither her presence at his side nor the salutes of the many guards they passed in their descent through the ruins. When he unlocked his door, she saw a lamp already burning on the table, which had acquired a plain metal cup and, more importantly, a wide-mouthed clay bowl generously heaped with roasted meat and charred roots.
The smell of the food struck her almost at the same instant as the sight of it. Her mouth flooded even as her back continued to throb and sting. She knew better than to take even one step toward it, but could not help staring.
Zhuqa followed the direction of her eyes as he unbuckled his harness. He did not remark, only smiled and undressed. When he was naked except for his loin-plate and the knives strapped to his biceps, he gestured at her.
She started to take her shift off, wincing as the coarse fabric pulled taut across her back, but he stopped her.
“In a moment. First, I want you to look there and see the plate I have set for us to share.”
She looked. Her stomach growled.
“I know that you are very hungry,” Zhuqa said behind her. “I see that you are tired. And hurt.” His hand slipped like slow hell down her spine. “But Hruuzk tells me you have been obedient and hard-working…most of the day. And I am inclined to forgive your foolishness there at the end, because it so warmed me to see my Eshiqi seeking her man’s aid. So. Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” she said, and said it again as best she could in dumaqi.
“I’m glad.” He took her arms and raised them over her head, taking the opportunity to nuzzle at her from behind. There, with his snout close to her ear and his hands like shackles around her wrists, he softly said, “Because if I find a weapon hidden on you, Eshiqi, I’m going to make you eat it.”
She started to look at him. He released one hand to catch a fisthold in her hair and yank her head back, so that she suddenly found herself looking into his face. Viewed this way, upside-down and from below, his eyes caught the light in a strange new way, almost seeming to glow.
“If you took something out of the workpit, bring it out. I’ll beat you,” he said calmly, “but I won’t kill you if you confess it now and beg my forgiveness.”
“I don’t have anything,” she said, truthfully enough. It wasn’t as if the thought had never crossed her mind, but the only knife she’d seen in the workpit had been strapped to the side of Dkorm’s left boot and he’d been staring at her most of the day anyway.
“Please yourself. But remember that I gave you this chance.” Zhuqa let go of her hair and pulled her shift off. He felt it out carefully, gave her a long appraising stare, then tossed it aside and resumed his impersonal search, this time on her body. He made thorough work of it: finger-combing through her hair, lifting her breasts, even thumbing at her be
lly-button. Unsatisfied, he then knelt to check between her toes, run his hands up her legs all the way to the crack of her ass, and once there of course, felt inside her pussy. “Take that look off your face, little liar,” he remarked. “You’ve opened for me.”
“Not open enough to hide a knife. Seriously, what are you thinking?”
He grunted and released her, his spines now flexed all the way forward, broadly smiling. “No weapons. Not even a splinter of wood to sharpen. Am I to believe my dangerous Eshiqi has been tamed?”
“Only long enough for Meoraq to get here.”
His spines came forward at once. “Was that a name?”
Amber shut her stupid mouth.
“No answer? So be it. You’re Zhuqa’s woman now.” He rose and walked over to seat himself at the table. “And Zhuqa feeds his loyal woman well.”
She didn’t let herself get carried away by relief at these words; he was altogether too pleased with himself. And sure enough, at her first cautious step forward, he patted his thigh.
She looked at his hand, then at his face.
He grimaced at her playfully (first saw that look on meoraq yeah the morning after we first made love he probably has no idea how freaky it makes him look but at least he tries o god where is he) and patted again. “I have only the one chair.”
“I don’t suppose sitting on the floor is an option.”
“You will sit to eat—” Pat pat. “—or you will not eat tonight, Eshiqi.”
She sat on his lap. He bumped his knee a few times, grimacing as she winced at the rough scour of his scales, then he pinched off a chunk of meat and held it up.
Her mouth snapped shut on a sudden river of saliva.
“This,” said Zhuqa, placing the morsel against her lips without any further torment, “is for sitting so immediately and so well upon your man’s knee.”
And oh but it tasted good. Tachuqi meat, she knew that at once, but the best damn tachuqi in the world. They’d actually braised it in something; the taste was richer and more tangy than mere hunger’s spicing. It was, in all honesty, the best thing she’d eaten since leaving Earth. Better than quite a few things she’d eaten on Earth.
He had a bite of his own while he enjoyed the sight of her trying (and failing) not to wolf it down in one swallow. Then it was gone and her hunger was fully awakened and clawing up her guts, and the real torture began.
“Put your hand on me, Eshiqi,” he said. “You know the way.”
Amber gave the bowl of food a pointed look and unbuckled his loin-plate. She cupped his groin impersonally and waited.
He tore off another chunk of meat. “That was neither immediate nor well done,” he said and ate it himself.
“Sadist.”
“Mm. It isn’t bad for camp food, is it?” He licked his fingers.
“Fucking sadist!” Her eyes fixed infuriatingly on his mouth.
He took more meat and must have felt her hand on him tense in expectation because he glanced down before snorting laughter at her. “No, Eshiqi. One bite for you, one for me. That is how we share our meals. And you forfeited your last bite. This one is mine. But keep moving your hand. When I give you an order, I mean you to go until I tell you to stop.”
She kneaded at him mechanically as he sucked the juice from the meat, pinched it off into smaller and smaller bites, and finally ate it. He started to reach for another, then paused, pretending not to notice her hungry stare, then held out his hand invitingly. “Taste?” he offered.
No way. No fucking way was she going to—
And then she grabbed his hand and sucked not just greedily, not just that…but gratefully.
Zhuqa rocked back hard, banging his head sharply against the back of his chair. Now his eyes were fixed and staring.
That’s right. They didn’t have lips. They could lick…they couldn’t suck.
“Well, damn,” mumbled Amber disgustedly, but she couldn’t let go of his hand.
And as long as she was sucking on it, he was in no hurry to take it back. But the taste of meat was finite, and the taste of lizard could not provoke the same gusto. “Enough,” he said, once her enthusiasm began to flag. He looked at his hand when she released it, flexing his wet fingers, and then at her.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re going to be coming back to that, aren’t we?”
He picked up one of the roots—not a piece, but the whole thing—and held it up where she had to look at it. “I want your hand on my cock.”
His cock wasn’t out. Amber stroked his slit, which, despite his obvious effort to keep it tight against her, was already oozing beadlets of oil.
“You are such a slut,” said Amber, pushing her finger in to stroke his sa’ad. “Honest to God, that’s what you are. Big, tough Zhuqa. You’re just a dirty girl.”
He hissed through clenched teeth, then groaned, then finally gave up with a hoarse laugh and let himself extrude. As soon as she closed her fist on his shaft, he gave her the root. “Remember, you obey until I tell you to stop. Keep your hand busy.”
She did, although it wasn’t easy to fight open the thick, burnt husk of the root with one hand while gently rubbing a man’s dick with the other. Beneath the peel, the pulp of the root was grey and unappetizing, with a taste that was mostly that of the ashes it had been baked in. She ate it anyway, bolting it down in just a few half-chewed swallows, until she had nothing to do but work her fist and watch him slowly eat.
“You are good,” he remarked between lazy bites. “Your Sheulek trained you well, but this is Zhuqa’s House. Get up, Eshiqi. Put my cock inside you just how we are.”
He looked so sly and serious about it, like sex in a chair with the woman on top was the absolute limit of unthinkable depravity, that she laughed at him. Then she got up, still shaking her head (very much aware of how closely he was watching her now) and straddled him. “Such a dirty girl,” she said, milking at the base of his shaft until she’d worked the thick head of it inside her.
“Just so,” he murmured, reaching up to stroke his thumb along her throat.
She bore down, rocking a little to let his oils make the entry easier, and then sat, eye to eye, waiting for further instructions.
“Make me cum,” he said, not moving.
It took a few false starts; she didn’t want to put her arms around him for balance and she hated having his face right in front of her while she bounced on his cock, having to watch him study the juddering of her breasts and smirking. So she leaned back, bracing her hands behind her on his knees and raising herself up on her toes to pump her hips at him while she looked at the ceiling instead. It put a lot of strain on her aching shoulders, but it wouldn’t last long, she knew. It never did.
Or at least, it never had.
“It was a sick mind that taught you this,” said Zhuqa in a mildly marveling tone. Apart from a minute clenching of his thighs now and then, he managed not to move at all. His breath remained slow and even. His hands stayed at his sides. His cock, ticking hard inside of her with the urgent hammer of his pulse, gave neither of them release.
Her shoulders couldn’t take this much longer. “Hurry up and finish, motherfucker,” Amber muttered, bucking faster.
He only chuckled. “Fierce little thing. A Sheulek is a master of his flesh. Just because I choose so often to revel does not mean I do not know restraint.”
Which meant he was willing to go all night, for no other reason than to piss her off. Irritation became the spark of an idea. Amber caught his wrist, brought it to her mouth, and sucked at his finger, bobbing up and down its small length to the rhythm of her pumping hips.
“Fuck Gann!” he spat, yanking back his hand, but it was all over. His cock jerked; she felt the heat of his cum spitting over and over, like fireworks blooming in some internal sky, until he shuddered out the last of it.
He glared at her, close enough that she could feel the hot grunts of his breath puffing on her throat and stirring through her hair. His neck had lit up at some point dur
ing the sex, but the color wasn’t fading now that it was done. If anything, it was getting brighter.
All sense of victory slowly died, leaving her nothing but Zhuqa’s eyes burning into hers and the sting of the belt still crawling like coals over her back.
“That was stupid,” said Zhuqa, scarcely audible even with his face right in front of hers.
Should she agree? Apologize? Stay quiet? Amber hesitated and lost the choice.
“You want me to finish with you, is that it? You have somewhere else to be tonight? Eh?”
“No,” Amber said, tried to say.
“No! You don’t decide when I’m done!” Zhuqa picked her up only to thump her down with ass-bruising force on the table and shove her flat. Her head hit the bowl, upending it. He swiped burnt roots and greasy meat out of his way, hauled her hips to the table’s edge, and stabbed himself back inside her, snarling, “I’ll fuck you until you bleed if that’s my pleasure!” His empty hand splayed open and heavy across her chest, pinning her in place for his rapid, unfeeling thrusts. The table rubbing at her from behind might as well have been wrapped in razor wire. “I’ll fuck you until we both bleed and you…” His back arched, bucking almost in convulsions, every cord of his throat pushing out through vibrant shades of black and yellow. “…and you…fuck…” His eyes were glazing even as he glared at her. “You,” he said, but the rest was an animal hiss.
Amber didn’t move.
Zhuqa closed his eyes. He began to breathe. “One,” she heard him mutter. “One for the Prophet…”
Someone knocked at the door.
Zhuqa roared. Not like an angry man, or even an angry lizard. It was the roar of a dragon, wordless, tearing through the air and her bones together at decibels no mortal voice should even be capable of achieving. His hips pumped spastically, brutally, without seeming to be aware of her at all.