He strode towards her and offered his arm as he said gallantly, “Come, my Lady. I wish to show you around the place.”
Ellen reluctantly slipped her arm through his. When they touched, she instantly felt an electric current pass quickly between them.
Looking at her, he muttered, “Oh, I could just take you again, right now,” but shaking his head, they were soon astride a chariot drawn by two snow-white unicorns.
And then the wind was whipping through her hair and filling up her lungs as they thundered across plains of sparkling turquoise grass. Magnificent mountains with snow-jagged peaks vied for attention against a crystal-clear blue sky. Set against the scenic distance was a forest of the darkest green hue.
Ellen’s sight quickly caught all of this before the rampaging wind nearly knocked her off the chariot. She managed to make a desperate grab for one of Michael’s rock-hard arms and instinctively hugged him close. His glance down at her was prideful and possessive. It twinkled with the promise that many wicked things lay in store for her.
Like slow-coming memories that belonged to someone else, she remembered Eric’s charming grin and his lightening eyes—the playful look he would give her as he pounced on her. She remembered that as he was entering her from behind, doggy-style, the unusual desire to be shagged hard raged through her blood, forcing her to plead, “Fuck me, Eric. And fuck me hard.”
There was an awkward pause and she was suddenly afraid that she might have been too offensive this time. Then, still inside her, he leaned down to tenderly kiss her neck and back, crooning soothingly, “I love you, Ellen. I love your body. I just want to make love to you.”
And it had been good, it was always good with Eric. Wasn’t it?
She had no time to make sense of the perturbing clash between memories of her sweet, tender love with Eric and the carnal sensations that Michael was constantly arousing within her. Every time she was near him, her middle churned, her body tensed and her mind reeled as she was inevitably reduced into a ball of hot, panting, moaning desire. She was beginning to feel itchingly hot now.
Michael masterfully pulled the mighty steeds to a sharp halt within about twenty meters of the woods.
“Look,” he ordered.
Breathless, she threw her sight at the tree line. The tall, imposing pine trees were dark and brooding.
“Look at what?” she asked, peering intently into the undulating shadows.
“The trees sometimes sing. Today they are quiet,” Michael observed distantly as he shifted beside her.
Was that unease that she could sense in him?
Perhaps. If it was, it was quickly quashed as he said teasingly, “Look harder, my Heart.”
Ellen squinted. The leaves swayed and whispered.
“I can’t see—” she began, then stopped. Her sight was suddenly transfixed like in that captivating moment when catching the hidden picture in a kaleidoscopic hologram.
Almost camouflaged in the fracturing rays of light and the contorting lines of leaves, stood an enormous company of fantastical beasts. There were centaurs, satyrs and dire-wolves—all as deathly still as stone and all staring unblinkingly at them from the gloom of the forest.
Most of their stares at her were blank and rigidly closed. A few could not disguise momentary expressions of stark desire and acute hunger. For Michael, they reserved a glare of utmost hostility. One of the dire-wolves bared his teeth antagonistically, but made no sound.
“How many are there?” Ellen wondered aloud, feeling a chill up her spine.
“Two hundred and three” came the prompt reply.
“Who are they?”
Michael flicked his gaze from the beasts to look at her with a clamped expression, saying, “That is not a question for you to ask.”
Tightening the reins again, he urged their horned steeds to trot alongside the tree line, keeping equal distance from it in the light.
“I have a place to show you.”
In a few moments, they alighted from the chariot. Chivalrously, he held out his hand and escorted her towards a spangle-branched tree that had no leaves. He settled her down onto the cushion-like bed of grass that faced away from the sinister forest.
Seated, she saw in front of them a gigantic lake, which was a mirror to the empty sky above and the mountains around.
“It’s so quiet, like nothing else is alive out here,” she commented but as soon as those words left her lips, she heard the bubbly trill of birds and lulling hum of bees.
Ellen glanced suspiciously at Michael who was beaming at her as he un-slung the harp from his shoulders. Turning away from her, he placed it against the tree. His fingers lingered on the strings for a while.
“I will play for you another day, my Muse,” he announced.
Turning back to her with an elegant flourish, he suddenly snatched her gaze and she literally could not tear her gaze away from the heated intensity in his face.
“I want to give you the most exquisite pleasure you have ever known,” he breathed. Never taking his gaze off hers, he moved down so he was by her bare feet. His slightest touch was fire to her ankle that crawled insidiously upwards to set alight her loins. He lifted one foot to slowly suck her toes, one at a time. When he finished setting aflame the nerves in every toe, he sensually massaged the sole and then the ball of each foot, moving his fingers together to press her instep.
Every bit of pressure caused her leg muscle to spasm, a different muscle each time. She could barely breathe. His strong hands moved up her calf, caressing, kneading, massaging in circular motions. He pushed away the folds of her shift to reach her thigh and then to the folds of her secret place to open them like a delicate flower.
With a fluid motion, his face was between her spread thighs. He cupped both hands on the cheeks of her bum, holding her still. At first he tentatively licked her leaking nectar—then flicked his tongue inside her. Then he gently and repeatedly sucked her pearl, sending her into a squirming frenzy. The sight of him eating her snatch was intensely arousing. Her hips bucked hard against his face as she cried out and made nonsensical pleas. He drew her almost to a pinnacle before withdrawing.
Disappointment flooded her. The crushed look on her face drew a chuckle from him as he said softly, “Oh I’m not done with you yet, my Sweet.”
He flung away his tunic and, putting his hands at the neck of her shift, he tore it with a jerk of his wrists right down the middle. He peeled it from her skin like he was peeling a succulent fruit. He closed his mouth on her breast like it was a cupcake. Then, pulling away, he ran his turbulent-blue eyed gaze ravenously down her body and without warning, flipped her around so that she was lying on her belly.
Ellen heard herself moan.
He began pushing and kneading each cheek of her curvaceous derrière, drawing out her tension and transmitting pleasure quivers up her lower back. Her loins were raging. She wanted him inside her, she wanted him now. She felt him lean over her and felt his hard cock rub between the crack of her bottom, sizzling.
“Please,” she begged.
Upon her word, he parted her legs and pushed his tip into her engorged blossom.
More, please more.
She felt his ripped torso rub feverishly against her back as he plunged fully in and out of her—at first slowly, excruciatingly drawing out the exquisite torture, then increasing in speed. She moved her pelvis in rhythm with his earnest thrusting as she moaned and gasped. With one smooth motion, while still inside her, he lifted her body to switch positions so that he was lying on his back and she was lying with her back on top of him. The variant angle of his upward penetration was driving her wild.
As she looked up at the sky, she uttered something mundane in between pants, “It’s so strange that it’s never night here.”
Upon her voiced observation, the sky became a blanket of the darkest blue with pin-pricks of stars and a silver sliver of a moon holding it up.
“Does that satisfy you, my Love?” he asked as he pumped persiste
ntly into her from below.
Ohhh yeeesss.
And then they were lying side-by-side, his strong arms holding her tightly to his chest as he tenderly kissed her neck. He had slowed down his tempo now as he ploughed determinedly into her furrowed anatomy.
During the seemingly eternal night, they made love in many positions—standing, sitting, lying. They went through various paces—sometimes he tenderly navigated her with exploratory penetration and at other times, he fervently hammered into her like a steaming locomotive. Through it all, he maintained his erection and she her never-ending wet arousal.
She did not question it. She was not of the right mind to question anything. Pleasure subsumed all.
Then, to the periphery of her vision, she saw the lightening of dawn in the night sky. He had brought her to a peak, then pulled her back, brought her back to another one and then pulled her back, countless times the entire night. And now she felt her body reaching up, up and upwards to the highest point yet.
His final thrust was ferocious and with a gasp, he came buried deep inside her. His violent throbs within her triggered—there was no other word for it—a pure, unadulterated explosion. It was the culmination of wild, frenzied tension that sent waves of extreme delight crashing through her entire body.
He collapsed beside her with an arm flung across her belly. Even he was spent. She gazed up at the brightening sky, feeling particularly her toes and fingers tingling on the grass. Her middle was all warm and sated. If she had a mirror, she would see herself smiling quite contentedly.
Turning her head slightly, she saw those eyes staring at them from the forest and realized that two hundred and three pairs of them had been watching them all night.
Chapter Six
Ravages
Ellen’s body was shuddering uncontrollably like a puppet’s as it went through the residual throes of passion. She was utterly exhausted. She ended up like this after every time he so astoundingly ravaged her. She had lost count of the times. As her mind began to drift into sleep, something inside her surged against it. She bit down on her lip hard and the metallic sting of blood trickled onto her tongue.
Trying to shake the muffled feeling from her head, she rolled over, registering that she was on an enormous four-poster bed. It was artistically perched on a promontory with waterfalls cascading down to the gorges below. A filmy white canopy ballooned above her with aromatic candles floating all around.
He was already off the bed, his naked back to her as he flexed his shoulders. The writhing play of muscles across his upper back was mesmerizing. But she mustn’t be distracted by that now. Everything with him so far had been too recklessly and sinfully good. It was time to face reality, time to stop being selfish. How long could this hedonism last? It was extremely difficult to gather enough will power to assert herself.
“Am I your prisoner?”
Her question hung in the air edged with plaintive uncertainty. It froze Michael.
Slowly, he turned around to face her, his face emblazoned with shock.
“Darling,” he eventually breathed, “of course you’re not.”
“Then, what am I? Your slave?”
Her tone was becoming more accusatory.
He shook his head, losing his voice to confusion as he mouthed, “No.”
“Then—I want to go,” Ellen declared with false bravado.
“Go? Go where?” he was bewildered now, as if he couldn’t imagine that she ever wished to do anything else than to stay here with him.
“I want to leave. I want to go home.”
“But, Beloved, this is your home,” he said reassuringly as he moved back towards her, “You belong to me.”
Ellen drew her knees up to hug them tightly to her chest, saying sharply, “No! I don’t belong to you. This is not my home,” her voice rose jaggedly, “And I am not your Beloved!”
Without warning, she burst into tears.
Michael had again frozen in his spot, as if not being able to fathom how to deal with this.
“I want Eric,” she sobbed, “Let me go. Please, just let me go.”
Something horrific twisted across Michael’s handsome face. The voices he used were contorted with rising fury.
One said, “Why do you want Eric? You can’t still love him. Do you?”
The other, “How dare you? I who have loved you like no other daughter of man has been loved.”
Jealousy raged like poison as he convulsively knotted the sheets between his strong hands and where he touched them, they turned ink-black. He spluttered, his voices in synch, “I am going to kill him.”
“No!” she cried, “Don’t touch him!”
He rounded furiously on her. His eyes were pupilless, the roiling blue of impenetrable seawater as it drowned its victim. He grabbed her wrists, his touch searing.
She cried out.
“Tell me you don’t love him,” he raged, “Tell me—tell me—tell me—” for the briefest moment, he paused as if there was a dam to his anger. It seemed like he was going to say something else before the wall broke through, and he shouted again, “Tell me you don’t love him.”
“I can’t! I don’t love you!”
With an audible snap, he pulled her up and with a roar, two enormous wings sprouted from his upper back. They were ivy-green tipped with shining gold. The bed, the promontory and the waterfalls fell away from them as he launched into the air, shaking her like a rag-doll.
“If you don’t love me, I’ll show you—I don’t love you either!” he shouted those words as if they were ripped out from him as he soared into the sky, slashed with the red, purple and yellow of a near-bursting boil.
Below her terrified gaze, she saw the dark green of the forest approaching them. This time he did not stop at its fringes. She spotted a small clearing in the otherwise dense trees. He was heading there. With a sudden stomach-lurching swoop, he dropped down to about five meters of the ground and—
released her.
Her body fell into a bruising heap onto the grass.
Grey spots flitted across her vision as she fought to breathe, winded.
She heard his voice trailing up into the sky, “You want to leave me? I’ll leave you first!”
A chill wind swept through the clearing, bending the grass, blowing apart the powdery pollen of the dandelions and drawing up goose bumps all over her naked body.
As her dizziness passed, Ellen looked up to see with a start those creatures she had seen so many sleeps ago. They were staring desirously at her from the trees. A sense of terrible danger scythed acutely through her slender frame.
“Michael,” her call came out as a tremulous squeak. The first time.
One of the midnight black dire-wolves loped towards her, tongue lolling out as he panted with excitement. With a vicious snarl and a blur of hackles, another one leapt at his throat. And then, they were all fighting amongst themselves in their haste to get her. A satyr gave a mighty kick at one of the dire-wolves and was pulled down by another.
One of the centaurs reared out from the melee, flung aside the scuffling satyrs in his path and kicked away the growling dire-wolves. He galloped at Ellen’s huddled form and before she knew it, his perilously sharp hooves were trampling the earth around her body.
She instinctively curled into a tighter fetal position.
As if it could save her.
With shamelessly effortless ease, the centaur grabbed her two arms and, holding them tightly to her sides, hoisted her up so that he could peer into her face. His stately features were sharply chiseled. A magnificent mane of ginger hair crowned his head, flowing in unruly waves down his muscled neck and broad back. His granite chest could be seen under an untamed layer of short curly hair. His half-beast scent was pungent with virile intent. What she saw in his eyes was initial blankness, followed by confused recognition.
“Diana, is it you?”
His deep voice, raspy with disuse, heightened with incredulity as he crushed her to his chest, nuzzling
his nose affectionately through her unbound hair.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Light of my life,” his voice was quavering as if something deep inside him needed to erupt, “I didn’t want to leave you. I was given a choice…it was so hard, I never wanted to leave you…”
Then, without warning, Ellen felt his chest rumble sonorously and he pulled her away from his upper body. She saw tears in his twinkling green eyes and realized that he was now laughing with unblemished joy.
“Come,” he invited, “It will be as it was before. We will roam the earth, you and I together, wild and free.”
And with that, he leveraged her onto his bareback and it was all she could do to hold onto his mane as he pounded straight into a gallop. The rush through her senses was euphorically consuming. She could feel the raw power of his body course through hers like she was his conduit. Reckless, unbounded freedom could be swallowed in gulps as they thundered through the forest of shattering light.
They stopped under a giant, wizened oak tree with leaves that crackled knowingly in the still air. Glowing insects tinkled shyly around the cracks of the aged bark. An owl hooted softly from above. The centaur set her back on the ground and she felt the warm fertile soil clinging to her bare feet. He genuflected nobly before her so that the man-half of his body could be at the same level as hers.
“I laid my heart at your feet so long ago, my Sweet Song,” he said as he blew gently over her face—his lips held within a hair’s breadth of her skin as he moved over her. His moist breath, smelling of wood and ferns, tickled her neck, stroked delicately over her throat, to pool down to her chest and swirl around her erect nipples. His lips never touched her, but the warm air that he so skillfully blew out to caress the surface of her skin, the biggest organ of a human body, filled her with prickling arousal.
“My Diana,” he whispered.
She could not tell him to stop nor could she tell him the truth that she was not Diana.
Daughter of Man Page 3