by R. Lee Smith
The others laughed. All in all, a much better crowd than that of the previous day, Olivia thought, and introduced herself.
“Yeah, we know,” said the blonde woman opposite Beth. “I’m Amy Evans, and this is Beth. Here we go, Bethie, Moon Gone Dark. Pull your thumbs. That’s Judy—”
“We’ve met,” Judith said without looking up. “Hi, Olivia.”
“And this is Sarah J.”
“Sarah J.?” Olivia echoed.
“I haven’t met her yet, but there’s apparently a Sarah B. around here somewhere,” said Sarah, and stuck out her hand.
Olivia shook it.
“So what shall we talk about?” Amy asked, deftly plucking the string from Beth’s fingers onto her own. “I’m not really good in social situations. I’m something of a geek.”
“You bite the heads off chickens?” Sarah J. asked, startled.
“The other kind of geek—Navajo jump, Bethie! Back into African Sun—the kind with pocket protectors.”
“Computers?” Beth asked, concentrating on the string figure she constructed under Amy’s watchful eye.
“Nothing so glamorous. Plain old math. Statistics engineering. That sort of thing. For example, twenty-six percent of all households in America are owned by single people. Forty-three percent of all single people are women. Fifteen percent of all single women are aged sixty-five or older, but we can flub with that number because the average age of people who live in apartments in our neck of the woods was about thirty-two and there’s an even more significant flexibility where our income bracket is concerned. High Hills had one hundred and twenty-eight single-occupancy rooms—”
“Where in the heck are you getting those numbers?” Sarah J. asked admiringly.
“Eidetic memory. Keep up. Statistically speaking, our intrepid bat-men should only have found eight women worth the pluckin’, and yet I have personally seen eleven of us and I believe there’s more. Keep in mind that, according to the Big Boys Who Know, an unexplained deviation of statistics of sixteen percent or more proves the work of an unknown agent.”
“Unknown agent?” Sarah J. echoed.
Amy glanced up even as she wove new patterns in the string between Beth’s fingers. “You religious?”
“Extremely lapsed,” Sarah said, clearly amused. “Are you saying God brought us to High Hills so we could be abducted by bat-people?”
“I’m saying numbers don’t lie. Jacob’s Ladder, Bethie. I’d be curious to know how many of us were new tenants. I know I’d only been there six weeks.”
“Four months,” Olivia said, sitting down.
“Two and a half,” said Beth, “but that’s about average for me.”
“Six years,” said Sarah J. “I guess that blows that little theory.”
Amy shrugged. “Just means you were one of the original intended eight.”
Sarah J.’s smile faded.
The string had time to pass from Beth’s hands to Amy’s and back again before anyone spoke, and when someone finally broke the heavy silence, it was Amy, saying, “I told you I was bad at social stuff. Someone else talk. Olivia, tell us about your man.”
“Yeah.” Sarah J. turned toward her at once. “You can start with his name!”
The other woman’s naked eagerness made her first hesitate, and then lie. “He hasn’t told me yet.”
“Mine has,” Beth remarked, plucking at the string. “If you all promise not to tell Maria, I’ll tell you what it is.”
“Do you think she’ll put it in a candle?” Judith asked, a little listlessly, but at least she was including herself in the conversation.
“I just don’t want to give her ideas, okay?” When she got nods and promises from all of them, Beth lowered her voice and said, “Wurlgunn,” and immediately blushed. “It means Leaf Storm, like, leaves falling? Or the way they fly around and blow into stuff, probably, knowing him.”
And Vorgullum meant something like Watches People. Watched over them, maybe. It made her wonder if he’d had another name before he became leader.
“I think it’s neat how their names mean something,” Beth continued.
“What does Nogruth mean?” Sarah J. asked.
Olivia and Amy both blanched in unison. “Long tooth,” Olivia said.
“Yeah, but it’s a pun,” Amy corrected, looking dubious. “It’s not his tooth that’s long.”
“That liar,” Sarah J. said. “I knew it wasn’t his real name.”
A moment of startled silence ended in snickers and sly suggestions for new names for each of their mates. In addition to her skill with numbers, Amy proved the most talented at this game, as well. Although Olivia knew the language marginally better, Amy was utterly fearless when it came to stringing words together.
“Heap Big Boulders,” Amy said in gullan, straight-faced.
Beth, already bright red and gasping for air, collapsed again in giggles. Sarah J. took a moment to work out the translation, then she, too, erupted in peals of bawdy laughter.
“Heap of what?”
Olivia turned and saw Vorgullum in the middle of the common caves, looking at Amy in a wary, puzzled manner. She climbed to her feet, leaning on the wall and shaking out her leg, which had gone to sleep.
“Heap Big Boulders,” Amy said again, without the subtle inflection that made it a pun.
Vorgullum stood there, looking confused, while Olivia limped over to him, snickering. He slipped an arm around her waist, fanned a wing out protectively, and whispered, “What was she talking about?”
“Well, she and the others decided to rename all of their mates who wouldn’t tell them their real names,” she began.
“Heap Big…” He burst out laughing.
She had to stop while he sagged against the doorway, clutching his middle and howling. Olivia looked over her shoulder and saw the clutch of women huddled together, blushing as a unit, but unable to keep themselves from laughing. Even Judith had a hand over her mouth. Vorgullum’s hysterics were contagious; Olivia felt herself first smiling, then giggling along with him.
He slowed to snorts and gasps and wiped his eyes with the flat of his palms. “That was pretty good,” he wheezed. “Who was that?”
“That was Amy.”
“Amy,” he echoed, and sniggered. “She’s clever, too.”
“I thought so,” Olivia agreed as he slipped his arm around her again and continued down the tunnel. “And maybe, if you are good to me, I’ll tell you the name I picked for you.”
He managed to look scandalized, amused, and cautious all at once. “I’m your rutting elk, of course.”
She tossed her hair in an impertinent flip. “That was yesterday. Today, you may just be my lazy turtle.”
He growled and pounced at her and she took off running down the tunnel to their chambers. The bulk of his wings slowed him down, which was good because it gave her enough of a head start to climb up the chimney before he caught her.
As soon as he stuck his head up into the entry room she dropped to her stomach on the floor, seized him and introduced him to the kiss.
He froze, his claws contracting and relaxing, digging little furrows in the floor. She felt him begin to respond in a hesitant, clumsy fashion, and then pulled away.
“Come, my mate,” she coaxed, rising to her knees as he crawled a little further up the chimney. “We humans know better things to do with a mouth than chew our food.”
He came all the way out of the narrow passage and stood tensely, eyes closed and wings fanned out, as Olivia explored his alien mouth with hers. She kissed a path down to the hollow of his throat, nibbling here and there for emphasis as she reached down to rub the heel of her hand against the straining leather that contained him.
“Olivia!”
“Quiet, please. Determining turtles from elk requires intensive study.” She slipped her hand beneath his loincloth.
“Not here,” he whispered, trying desperately to call her attention to the chimney just behind them.
�
��Don’t tell me what to do,” she said sternly, closing him in her fist.
He swiftly slapped a hand over his mouth and muffled a groan. “Not here, for pity’s sake!” he hissed. “Someone could hear us!”
“Oh, all right.” She released him and stepped back. “If you are going to be such a baby about it, we can finish this later.”
She laughed when she saw the thunderstruck expression on his face. Then he ripped the loincloth from his body and threw it blindly behind him. “All right, here,” he said, and advanced on her.
Olivia put up her hand and he froze mid-step. “Are you going to obey me?” she inquired, managing to sound at once severe and cheerful.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“Come here.”
He went at once, and she backed up before him until she felt cold stone at her back and the heat of him was before her.
“Now, I am going to touch you,” she whispered. “And you are going to be very quiet.”
He shivered as she found a good nibbling place at the hollow of his throat. She lingered there, caressing the thin skin at the base of one horn as she did, and using her free hand to resume the slow, steady strokes of his cock.
“I’m ready,” he whispered.
“You can wait,” she replied. “First, I think you need a little lesson in human mouths. Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you to.”
He frowned, but closed them, and she turned him around with his back to the wall and stepped in front of him.
“No peeking.”
“I won’t.” He sounded very slightly offended.
“If you peek, I stop,” she warned him, kneeling.
“Stop wh—”
She licked him, the very tip of her tongue drawing a thin line right across the middle of his glans.
“...what,” he finished shakily. One hand rose, groped before him, then swept up and covered his eyes. “What was that?”
She licked him again, back and forth in tiny sips, until the entire head of him was slick and shiny. The taste of him was earthy and strong, but not unpleasant. It made this easier; she had done it only once before, with Bobby and his hands shoving at her head the whole time as he grunted what she was doing right and wrong, mostly wrong. This was better, maybe only just because she was in control, but it felt good. She pressed her lips firmly to his glans, letting her tongue steal out to flick at him, and hummed against his cock.
“Great Spirit,” she heard him breathe. It sounded like a prayer.
Milking him slowly in her fist, Olivia began to lick down the underside of his shaft, attuned to every flinch and leap of his muscles. Now and then, she drew back to suck at the tip of his cock, and also to look up and see if he were peeking. He wasn’t. He now had both hands over his eyes. But mostly she stayed busy, tonguing and lapping beneath his cock around the steady passes of her thumb, until she reached the hard-swollen sac of his balls.
“Don’t!” he hissed as she tongued him there.
“You’re telling me what to do again.”
“Don’t!” Louder. His thighs clenched as she slowly sucked what she could manage into her mouth and out again. She could feel his cock heavy on her hair, twitching like a living thing. “Don’t! Stop! Stop it now!”
She hummed again, with him hot in her mouth.
His balls clenched on her tongue and suddenly she felt the little patter of semen falling over her back. Laughter was perhaps not the appropriate response, but it came tumbling out of her anyway. She leaned back, wiping clumsily behind her as Vorgullum sagged against the wall, still hiding in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he groaned.
“I was warned. Sorry. I didn’t realize you really meant it. You can look now, if you want.”
He shook his head.
She laughed again. “You don’t want to look at me?”
“I’d rather have you finish.”
“Look at me, Vorgullum.”
Very slowly, he lowered his hands. She waited until his reluctant eyes met hers, then smiled at him, took his softened cock in her hand, and kissed it.
“You’re killing me,” he said seriously.
Her lips parted. She pulled him in over her tongue, drew back while softly sucking, and took him in again, gazing up at him all the while.
“Killing me,” he breathed. It was the last thing he said for a long time. After that, he only watched, breathing in hoarse, rapid pants without moving, rarely even blinking. She was able to take less and less as he hardened, but he wasn’t Bobby, trying to drive himself in to the back of her throat and pulling on her hair when she struggled. He was Vorgullum and this was all new.
At last, with a dull ache in her jaws and another, brighter, throbbing through her womb, Olivia gave the full length of his cock one last, long lick—from hip to tip, all along his sensitive underside—and pointed at a bench.
He looked at it, his eyes somewhat wild, and at her, pained. “Not here,” he whispered.
She waited.
“They’ll hear us!”
“I don’t care if they watch us,” she replied, and never mind that she very much would care. She pointed at the bench.
He went. His first step was a little uneven, but he went. She sat him down, and then pushed him slowly back until he fit his wings into the indentations and lay prone. Olivia pulled her skirt up around her hips and straddled his thighs, keeping one hand moving on his cock while she kissed him, teasing at his lips until he finally responded with clumsy kisses of his own.
“See, isn’t this nice?” she murmured into his mouth.
“Not the word I would have chosen,” he grunted, and arched back hard as she bit once more at the sensitive hollow of his throat. “Don’t!”
She laughed at him. “Don’t bite or don’t do this?” She squeezed.
He seized her, yanked her forward by her hips and onto the impale of his cock, groaning hugely as he drove into her, pulling even after their hips met. Olivia laughed again, sank her flimsy human claws into his chest, and began to ride him. She could hear his strained cries growing steadily louder, and her own beginning to wind through them in high harmony; her hands dug and clawed at him, trying to pull him closer, deeper, and then she came at last, tossing and bucking and driving herself down on him with abandon even as he roared and spent himself inside her.
She hunched over his chest, breathing hard, deeply pleased with herself. His eyes were shut tight, as if in pain. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “Rutting elk go twelve times, is that what you said?”
“No one believes me when I talk about you,” he muttered thickly, and shook his head. “I have to hunt, Olivia.”
“What if I decide not to let you go?” she teased, bracing her hands against his chest.
He looked genuinely unnerved by this possibility. Olivia laughed and got off him.
Vorgullum struggled into a sitting position and looked around for his loincloth. She fetched it for him, and he tied it on. He stood to go, limped towards the chimney, then paused and looked back at her. There was a distinct glint of uncertainty in his eyes.
“You need to hunt,” she reminded him, smiling. “Be careful out there.”
His lips twitched. “My mate, I think I am in more danger in here.” He dipped his head—his way, perhaps, of bumping brows from across the room—and then left.
Oh, what the hell. Olivia waited to give him a good head start before climbing down the passage and following him. She kept a careful distance, well back so that he would not realize he was being tailed, carefully marking which twists and turns were taken so she’d be able to find her way back out. Perhaps in deference to the humans meeting in the Commons, the main passageway had been set with candles; Vorgullum moved in and out of their light, his head bent and deep in thought.
After an eternity, the passage began to narrow, and then to roughen, and finally the sound of voices and coarse laughter came to Olivia’s ears. Vorgu
llum disappeared around a turn and presently she heard his name called. She stopped, found a shadowed place to hide her, and listened.
At first, the talk was all business: tracking herds of deer and goats, the risks of taking more cattle from the foothills, the crop growing in the human fields. Then Vorgullum must have done something, either yawned or simply let his attention wander too overtly, because someone laughed and said in a cheerful baritone, “You’re going to be useless to us again, aren’t you? Curse it, I need strong spears on this hunt!”
“There’s nothing wrong with his spear,” another voice said dryly. “Did you hear them? Great Spirit, I thought someone was throttling a rua in his lair!”
Rude laughter.
Vorgullum said, “That one I have is Bahgree’s own daughter. She has lured me into a fishing net and pulled me to the river. She is drowning me with pleasures.”
“Poor Vorgullum,” someone said mournfully, and all the others, a dozen at least, took up the refrain: “Poor Vorgullum!”
“Ah, you laugh,” Vorgullum said irritably. “I stand before you half-killed, and you laugh at me! Go on! I am like the mountain, I am above your petty words.” Olivia heard scuffling sounds of a wrestling match and Vorgullum’s words were distorted as though he struggled while he spoke. “I am ice upon my surface and fire in my heart. I am hard—” An explosion of laughter to accompany whatever gesture he was making. “—like the rock, for ages and ages.”
“So we should all envy you, and snap our teeth.” Olivia recognized this voice as well, that of Cheyenne’s captor. “Because your little wingless woman will lie quiet for you.”
“Quiet? Lie quiet? Ha! The things she did to me!” Vorgullum groaned. “It was more than my mere body, she took my mind away. I tell you, for a moment, I could see through time!”
Respectful silence. Olivia could hear every word.
“She has looked on me these last few days with eagerness and longing. She praises me. ‘My handsome mate,’ she says. ‘My fierce, my brave, my noble mate!’ Touch on touch she places on my body, and she climbs my mountain like a wild goat!”
Another wave of manly laughter.