“What is this? Orith, Eyuul, cease at once!”
Both males froze, panting heavily. Their tails were wrapped aggressively around each other, and even their crown coils were knotted to those of the other in attempt to use the leverage to pin their opponent. They loosened their hold and drew apart, their heads bowed yet shooting each other angry looks. Esfalee drew up to an impressive height, towering over the males.
“What is the meaning of fighting when we are supposed to be honoring this human among us?”
Orith prodded at his busted lip with a wince before doing his best to give his mother a beseeching smile.
“I was attempting to show my appreciation for the female by demonstrating my desirability as a mate. I think I was doing well too, until Eyuul interfered.”
“And I made it clear that I am not interested,” Jenn hissed in reply. The pale male had the grace to flush, although that didn’t stop him from darting a heated look in her direction.
“I was merely dancing. I was hopeful, but it hardly called for Eyuul attacking me.”
“He was protecting me!”
Now Jenn wanted to beat the hell out of Orith and even went so far as to take a step forward until she was stopped short by Reggie’s grip on her arm. Though she could have shaken off the smaller woman, it was enough to bring Jenn back from the edge. Jenn stepped closer to Eyuul, making her position clear.
Esfalee looked at her thoughtfully, her lips tugging up in a hint of a smile.
“Orith, please go assist the visiting females of the es’Meshee clan. I am sure you can be suitably entertaining and show them around our nesting grounds rather than tormenting Eyuul. Make sure they have all that they need.”
The younger male huffed indignantly but did as he was asked. Pretty soon, a number of females were cooing as they surrounded him. Eyuul’s eyes didn’t leave his brother until he disappeared among the females, only then did he look down at her.
“I am needed back at the head of the feast, but do enjoy the celebration, Jenn. All of my clan have been so happy to meet you.”
Jenn didn’t need any reminder of the good hour she spent being introduced to every member of the clan and visiting clan. It had felt like it was never going to end at the time, but she was glad to know that she’d been so well received. She wasn’t anywhere near the size of even the smallest young Vori female. As she was introduced, she wondered if they would look upon her and find her wanting.
“Thank you, Esfalee. It was my pleasure to meet them.”
The matriarch smiled in response before slipping away. As she watched her depart, Jenn acknowledged that sometimes all those good manners her mother had drilled into her really paid off. In no time, the music returned, and everyone seemed to forget that an altercation even took place. Just how often did fights occur? She glanced at Eyuul, who dabbed a bit of blood from his nose.
“Are you all right?”
He looked at her in genuine surprise. “Of course. It is not the first fight I’ve gotten into with one of my brothers, and I doubt it will be the last.”
“You mean this is normal?”
“Don’t look so dismayed. Vori are resilient. You will find that few in the clan balk at a bit of a tussle. Fights between equals are considered to be sporting, and rather than, say, a female disciplining one of her males. Such events are often cruel and unfair since a large female can easily kill one of her males if she takes it too far. It is terrible to watch. However, all the clan will gather when females fight for dominance, particularly in the rare case of matriarch challenges. They can get rather bloody. This is nothing in comparison.”
“Okay, I get that the females fight for dominance—this is a matriarchal culture—but why did you and your brother fight?”
Eyuul’s rich laughter surrounded her. “Jenn, males fight among each other as well. We live in nests where more than one male dwells with one female. You will often see nestmates in their early formation before they even find a female fight it out to determine the dominant male of their joining.”
“How do I fit in with this? Because I have a feeling you did for my sake.”
“Because, even though you are leaving, all of my being insists that you are mine and I can’t do any less but protect you. You were scared and angry, and I instinctively reacted. And it was rather gratifying.”
Jenn laughed out loud and wrapped her arms around Eyuul, hugging him close to her. Looking up at him, she pressed a kiss against his chest and enjoyed watching the slits of his pupils blow out into narrow ovals. Playfully, she pushed away and began to move with the music, her hips swaying to the rhythm. Eyuul’s eyes tracked her and he swallowed.
“Jenn, what are you doing?”
“Trying to attract a very specific male.” She spun around, grinning slyly over her shoulder, wondering if he would take the bait. Reggie gave her a thumbs up from where she stood surrounded by her three males.
Then Eyuul was there, his body twisting around her own. His frame far larger than Orith’s and more rugged, he slid through the air like the flash of a blade cutting through water. She approached and he parried as their dance moved back and forth like two cobras standing off against each other. His body lowered and twisted in a manner she could only describe as worshipful.
He leaned in, his body curling around her close enough so that his lips touched her ear. “I want you more than I recall ever wanting anything in my life.”
Jenn’s mouth went dry. She licked her parched lips. She should refuse him. It wouldn’t be fair to him. She tilted her head further back to meet his eye.
“Eyuul...”
He shook his head, the clawed tips of his fingers brushing against her mouth. “I know, Jenn. I just... I don’t want to miss out on what could be the single best thing of my life even if it only lasts a handful of days.”
Her eyes searched his face. “Are you sure? I don’t want either of us to have any regrets.”
“I am certain, if you are.”
She looked over his beloved face, the high angle of his cheekbones and wide contour of his lips and jaw. She couldn’t deny what she felt. She wanted him too. She didn’t know how they would work things out between them with everything going on, but she knew she wanted all that love he offered her for herself.
“We’ll figure something out. We have to, because you are all I can even imagine ever wanting.”
His eyes flared with happiness and he pulled her into his arms, his body never stopping in its movement. Instead, it seemed as if their bodies merged with his rhythm. He lifted a flower with the tip of his tail and transferred it to his hand so he could tuck it into the mass of her braids.
She lifted a hand, her fingertips trailing along the edges of the petals in wonder. Tucking her cheek against his neck, she whispered into his ear, “Let’s go.”
His body stilled for an instant and then they were moving through the crowd, Jenn tucked safely into his arms. She wasn’t surprised when he’d accessed his mother’s nest. He glanced down at her apologetically as they moved into the common room.
“I am sorry I can’t take you somewhere more private. I don’t have a nestmate and no prospects for being allowed to build a nest in our territory. I stay here when I am not in the mountains.”
Jenn placed a hand on his cheek so he would turn his head and look at her. He obliged reluctantly.
“Eyuul, it’s fine. I’m just happy to be here.”
She followed the direction of his gaze to the carved figures of the Vori deities. His brow was furrowed.
“I wish I’d waited. The first time should have been special. I wish this was that time. I would give anything to be able to give offerings to the Mother as is appropriate before I joined with you. You are worthy of it.”
Jenn searched his face and found genuine regret and sorrow there. She couldn’t pretend that she really understood his feelings on the matter, but she hurt for him that he felt so disappointed that he couldn’t make it more as his traditions paid reverence. S
he nudged him and smiled when he glanced back down at her.
“Then we’ll make it count. Past sexual experience aside, I think this moment between you and I is special enough to warrant an offering.”
Jenn pulled the flower from her hair and laid it before the statues. Eyuul’s eyes widened and then closed as he dropped to pray. When he straightened, there was something new in expression as he looked upon her. As if something momentous had been decided. He stretched a hand to her, waiting on her decision.
She threaded her fingers through his, bringing his hand up to kiss his knuckles. He returned the gesture, the red of his eyes softening.
“Lead on, my love,” she murmured. And he did. They went down a long corridor off the side of the common room until they arrived in a spacious room filled with jewel-toned pillows.
“Welcome, dream of my hearts,” he whispered seconds before he took her lips with his own.
Chapter 20
The kiss broke off too soon despite Jenn’s protests. It had been but another brief taste and she knew that she wanted—no, needed more. Her breath came out in harsh, ragged pants as she watched Eyuul slide away, back toward the door. A sense of dismay welled in her chest as she entertained the brief thought that he was leaving her. But he didn’t leave. He rested on his coils near the door and reached up to a tall shelf to remove something from a wooden box.
Jenn took the opportunity to look around. She turned in a slow circle in the center of a room which she could only call opulent. Everywhere she looked she saw swaths of fine, colorful fabric and the plush cushions woven with colorful designs. Eyuul was in one corner, dimming the overhead lights as he lit a couple of beautifully carved sconces with a thin metal tube that expelled a small controlled flame.
The oil of the lamp was unlike anything Jenn had ever experienced before. It didn’t burn with a rancid smell, but rather, a warm, musky scent filled the air. Breathing in deeply, Jenn decided that it almost smelled like the nag champa from the local Asian market, with a hint of something else undefinable and almond oil.
Jenn fidgeted as Eyuul flicked his wrist, extinguishing the flame before returning the tube to a wooden box on a shelf by the door. He turned toward her, and her breath caught as the dancing light from the lamps illuminated his bronze scales. With his shoulders squared, and his coils dancing in an ever-moving fall down his back, he looked like some sort of forgotten deity.
It was the heat in his gaze that grounded her and sent a surge of want straight through her core.
Jenn removed the belt from her borrowed dress, allowing the fabric to fall apart. With a roll of her shoulders, she shifted the fabric so that it slid off into a silky pool at her feet. Eyuul’s eyes widened at the sight and they roved the length of her body, coming to rest first at her breasts and then at the apex of her legs. Her thighs became slippery with her desire under his inspection. His tongue darted forward and he groaned, undoubtedly catching the scent of her arousal.
Eyuul didn’t waste time on pretty words. Moving with startling speed, he practically flew over the cushions to take his place before her. Jenn’s heart sped up at the flurry of movement, but then eased back into its regular rhythm as he tenderly cupped her jaw, tipping her face up to receive his kiss.
The taste of him exploded in her mouth as her lips parted for his invasion. His tongue dipped in, twining and dancing with her own, stroking the fires of her desire with every slick graze.
As if moving on their own accord, her arms wound around his neck, and were knotted by several coils greedily attaching to her. The majority of the thin crown coils slid through her hair, pulling their bodies together as he ravished her mouth, drinking from her like a parched man who’d found an oasis. Jenn returned every caress, pausing to suck his lip into her mouth or to nibble on the soft, plump flesh. That only served to increase his fervent adoration.
It couldn’t be called anything else. Not with the way his hands smoothed her skin and his claws teased the hollows of her body and the tips of her breasts with every stroke of his fingers.
A brush against her calf alerted her to the movement of his tail as he stroked the length of her leg. It swept up in an erotic glide from ankle to ass, over one cheek and then the other before dipping to slide down between the seam of her buttocks and glide between her thighs. The tip pulsated against her, knotting in on itself and extending in a repeated motion as he passed it back and forth against her cunt.
Breath releasing in shuddering gusts, Jenn clenched her hands around Eyuul’s shoulders, digging her fingers into his flesh. The utmost tip of his tail circled and pinched her clit. Jenn leaned against his chest and cried out as pleasure swept a trail of fire through her. Eyuul groaned again in response and she felt something hard, thick, and wet push out against her belly.
Glancing down between them, Jenn saw a pair of dark red tapered cocks push out from a slit in the bulge of flesh below his belly. They were streaked with a milky film of precum that was as slippery as grease beneath her hand as she experimentally gripped the pair. The cocks collapsed inward toward each other like one massive organ as she ran her hand up the length of one and then the other. Each one was hung with a plum-sized reproductive jewel. Eyuul hissed, his skin twitching and flushing with desire as she worked both hands up and down his lengths.
“Jenn, please. You tease, female.”
His words were barely audible around his groans and rasping sighs. Jenn felt immensely powerful in that moment. She was making a huge, dangerous male quiver and beg. He was trusting her with his wellbeing—just as she could trust him to take care of her. She met his passion-hazed eyes and felt a great sense of daring.
“Well then, let’s see what you got. I am yours, Eyuul.”
His breath shuddered through him, his tail twisting around them until something seemed to destroy his restraint and he swept her up against him. Jenn gasped as his mouth closed around her nipple. His fangs were a hard bracket teasing the tender flesh that he sucked deeply even as his forked tongue lashed at their tips. His tail never once pulled out from between her legs.
It mimicked his tongue, whipping through the plumped labia and plucking at her clit in a steadily increasing rhythm. Jenn’s entire inner thigh dripped with her arousal and the end of his tail was absolutely coated in it as it passed from clit to ass. Jenn choked on her sobs of pleasure against his lips, but still Eyuul didn’t yield, pushing her straight into her first shattering orgasm.
Her body was still shaking with her release, her inner muscles clenching on agonizing emptiness when she felt his tail slip, running through the crease of her ass. Eyuul’s voice in her ear sounded almost as pained as she felt and in desperate need.
“Jenn, I must anchor my barb.”
She shivered as she felt a pressure against her bottom, but it didn’t attempt to breach the sensitive opening.
“Will you permit me?”
Jenn licked her lips, recalling their conversation about the mating barbs. He had no other male with which to anchor. It seemed with her human body the options were pretty limited. She watched sweat roll down the hard muscles of his belly, making the dusting of scales shimmer in the low light. His tail twitched with distress but still he did not move as she made her decision.
She nipped his bottom lip and whispered against his mouth, “Yes.”
With a groan of relief, he pushed his tail forward and she felt a curved knob of flesh slide against her puckered flesh. There was a stretch as it breached the tight ring of muscles, making her gasp with pain and pleasure, and then it was in. The last foot or so of his tail wrapped tightly around her waist as an exotic perfume wafted into the air.
No, not a perfume. It was coming from Eyuul.
Jenn leaned forward and inhaled the spicy musk coming off him and felt herself clench in response. That was something else! Her eyes nearly rolled up in her head. He wasn’t kidding when he said that the pheromone release enhanced the pleasure of the females. She wondered just how much more potent it would be for a
Vori female, with their superior sense of smell. No doubt if she were a Vori, she would be almost maddened with lust. Jenn was close enough as it was!
She arched her back as his tail writhed around her, aligning their bodies in the perfect position. She felt the slick, hot nudge of his cocks as they collapsed together at the touch. He stroked once lightly and then on the second stroke their thick heads pushed into her body. The burn made her cry out in ecstasy as he burrowed slowly and deeply into her pussy. When she felt the brush of his scrotum, she knew he was as far in as he could go. He was all the way inside of her, as the fork of his cocks rubbed in an unfamiliar but highly enticing manner in her channel.
Eyuul pulled back, his cocks sliding almost free despite her clenching down in a desperate attempt to keep them inside of her. He hissed with a garbled sound and she whimpered in protest. The coil of his tail tightened he lifted his tail, shoving home in a hard stroke that jolted her forward and made her cry out.
“Again! Do that again,” she demanded.
He didn’t need any further encouragement. Teeth clenched with indescribable passion, his tail pistoned between her legs, writhing in a wild imitation of his earlier dance. Jenn almost felt like she was literally riding a wave of pleasure, every rock of his coils escalating her need. The double sensation of his plug in her ass and his cocks shuttling in and out sent her to new heights until she was gasping out his name with every pant, begging for the release she could feel tightening within her.
Beneath her hands, Eyuul’s muscles tightened and a desperation filled his eyes that she couldn’t even begin to guess at. His teeth flashed and for a moment she worried that he might bite her, but then he turned his head and pillowed it against her shoulder. His body trembled and he renewed his efforts, banishing every thought of a bite from her mind and a tingling pressure swept through her body.
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