by R. Lee Smith
“You have agreed,” he said.
“I agreed to take Bahgree, I didn’t agree to you!”
“If you do not know me through such unions as this, the infusion of Bahgree’s immortal power will destroy you,” he said patiently. “I have explained this.”
She shook her head, trembling.
“Olivia,” he said, very calmly, “I required only your willing oath to serve me. All else, I may seize at my whim.”
Her eyes burned with angry tears. She started to reach for his hand, and then looked down at her body. “Should I get undressed?” she asked, feeling stupid and very small.
“If it pleases you to do so. I require only your sex to be uncovered.”
Olivia began to cry.
She heard a very male sigh of annoyance and then his hands closed around her belt, stripping her of her leathers as if he were peeling the skin off an orange. They caught on the thick tops of her boots, so he left them there, tangled around her ankles, and plucked her up by the waist.
She clawed at his arms once, involuntarily, her weeping rising out in a strengthless wail as he placed her over the head of his huge erection and shoved at her. The pain was immediate, silver-bright, splitting her so that she thought her pelvis must surely be broken, and yet when she looked wildly down, she was whole and he had wedged himself inside perhaps an inch and no more.
“Hm,” he said. “This will require some effort.”
“No no! No more! Please, stop!” she babbled, but he simply adjusted his grip on her and shoved again, actually twisting her hips as he pushed her down to sheath him, just as a man might twist a cork he is attempting to put back in a bottle. Olivia shrieked, kicking and slapping in the mindless grip of pain, and the Great Spirit ignored her and continued wrestling her down around him until she was fully seated. He came at once in a hot gush and smiled, pleased with himself.
“Let me go now,” she moaned, limp and helpless in her impalement.
“Go?” He seemed sincerely surprised, sincerely amused. “Human, we have just begun. You may hold onto my horns if you wish.” He ejaculated twice more in rapid succession, then got a better grip on her hips and began to slide her swiftly up and down on his monstrous cock.
Olivia pinwheeled her arms in a desperate bid to remain upright, then heaved herself forward to grab the lower of his horns and hold herself as still as she could while he used her in a fashion that was almost entirely masturbatory. She hung on him helplessly, gulping and gasping in an effort to quell her sobs until she was quiet, timing her breaths to match his quick, curt movements. She closed her eyes and held on, aware only of the rough ridges of bone beneath her palms, the thick brand splitting her up the middle, the regular “uh-uh-uh” of the breath beaten out of her body, and the irregular jet of cum he put inside her.
The shock of his callous use ebbed away to a dull, distant misery. He was not breathing; he made no sound at all. He neither increased nor slowed his rhythm in any way, but moved her on him as relentless and efficient as a machine. The friction numbed her; she listened in darkness to the slow crawl of time. She tried to rest her head on her arm, but she was bouncing steadily and hard. She opened her eyes and saw the sun sinking red over the trees. How long had he been at this? She tried to shift in his grip and steal a glance at her watch.
He stopped, half-imbedded in her body, and eyed her with suspicion. “What is it?”
Olivia squirmed vainly for relief around the massive organ. “This is… uncomfortable.”
He considered that, looking thoughtfully into her contorted tear-stained face. Then he lifted her off him and set her on her feet.
Olivia’s hand went at once to massage the ache out of her bruised sex, only to find her vaginal opening tender but dry. She probed herself, wincing, knowing the god had spent torrents inside her but found nothing. “Where did it go?” she asked numbly, still cupping her wounded sex as if to protect it.
“You are translating its essence.” He indicated the snow-covered ground. “Lie down for me, if you are weary.”
She stared at the muddy snow, then back at him incredulously.
He read her face, growled impatiently, and stretched out his hand. The snow melted at once down to bare, dry earth. After a brief, clinical study of her expression, he motioned again and a thick bed of grass sprang up, green and deep. “Lie down,” he commanded again.
Olivia lowered herself unhappily, pulling off her boots and tangled breeches, then drawing her knees up protectively to her chest. “Is this…” She felt strangely rude to be asking. “Is this going to take long?”
“Yes.” He didn’t seem to find it a curious question at all. “You may sleep if you wish.” He knelt, removed her hand from its shielding position, spread her labia impersonally and fit the glans of his thick cock against her. He pushed, pumped a few floods of cum in hot succession, and heaved himself down on her until their hips met. Settled snug, he braced his weight against the ground and proceeded to thrust at her.
Olivia crossed her arms over her breasts, turning away from the sight of his vast chest filling her field of vision. Her fingernails dug half-moons into the meat of her upper arms. She jerked with the force of his movements, pressing as far back into the new grass as she could. She closed her eyes, concentrated on breathing, and wished the earth would open up and swallow her.
“You are not sleeping,” he observed.
“How am I supposed to sleep?” she moaned, and started again to cry.
For answer, he tapped one claw hard against her smooth brow and stars exploded behind her eyes. The last thing she knew as she fell away in blackness was the feel of him tilting her hips to thrust at her more effectively.
7
Olivia opened her eyes to see his black hand recede from her. The great gold eyes of the god peered down at her, saw her blink, and narrowed in something that might be called satisfaction. The Great Spirit pushed back, tearing a groan from her as his undiminished girth pulled free of her.
“Enough for now,” he said. His hand closed around her arm, drew her up with unexpected consideration and held her until she found her balance.
Olivia dressed clumsily, reduced to childish fumblings by the overwhelming ache of her badly-used body. The Great Spirit watched her for a moment, then bent, holding her against his shoulder, and easily pulled her pants up and over her hips, gently chasing her fingers out of the way to fasten her belt.
“Are we done?” she whispered.
“For now,” he said again. “I have made the essential corrections to your mortal form to allow you to carry the spark of my power, but you alone must learn how to use it. I warn you, these will not be easy lessons. For now, my seed germinates inside you, but when you have succeeded in translating its essence, it will become your own power and it will demand release. I leave that to you,” he added vaguely, and raked his eyes across a sky made black with moonless night. “And now, your mate comes. I will leave you, and you—” He turned back to her and tapped his claw meaningfully on the hollow of her throat. “You must summon me again, as soon as you are able, to strengthen what we have begun.”
“I’m hurt!” she wailed.
“You’ll heal.” He considered her with a strange blend of unemotional interest and powerful lust. “Remember your oath, Olivia. Do not force me to seek you out.”
She shook her head hurriedly, rubbing at her sex beneath the thin leather of her clothes and crying. “I’ll do it,” she whispered. Then, raggedly, “Is it going to hurt like this every time?”
“Probably.” He moved past her to hunker besides Somurg, smiling at the sleeping infant with real warmth. “So fine a son I have not seen in many years.” He looked back at her over one shoulder. “Do not allow him to die.”
The Great Spirit blazed once with light, blinding her, and when it faded, he was gone.
Olivia sank down on the flattened bed of grass, put her head in her hands and sobbed. Long past the moment when she ran out of tears, long past the moment when
her voice broke into cracked rasps of empty sound, long past her awareness of time or place. She was still weeping when Vorgullum landed before her.
“Olivia?”
She raised her throbbing head, looked at him miserably, and dropped again in tears.
Vorgullum paced towards her hesitantly, touched the crown of her dark hair. He seemed to be searching for something to say, but eventually moved past her to take up the swaddled whelp.
Somurg woke up long enough to spit up on Vorgullum’s chest irritably and go back to sleep. As miserable as she was, Olivia found that funny. She giggled a little, cried some more, and finally reached past the grass and gathered a handful of snow to rub on her hot face. It helped, a little.
“You are still grieving,” Vorgullum was saying, looking concerned and slightly sheepish. “If you are not ready, I will leave you a while longer.”
“I want to go home,” she said, speaking in English without thinking.
He hesitated, obviously trying to translate, then carefully asked, “Does that…are you angry with me?”
“No. I’m sorry. It was to ask if we could leave now.”
He came towards her immediately and lifted her with one arm as easily as if she were Somurg. He nestled them both against his warm chest and she listened to the beating of his heart. “You met with a power in this place.”
She pressed her face into the hollow of his throat, breathed in the rich, earthy scent of him. “I did what I came to do,” she said at last. “And now I want to go home.” She sensed that he wished very much to question her, but knew him well enough by now to know that he wouldn’t.
And eventually he gathered them both close and jumped from the nearest ridge, his wings churning at the air until he caught flight. Vorgullum’s silence as he carried them over the icy peaks was a brutal weight on her; and after hours in the burning grasp of the Great Spirit, it was more than she could bear. She began to weep softly against his chest.
He banked abruptly, landed on the aerie and set her on her feet, folding his wings around them and searching her eyes with real hurt. “This is more than grief for your teacher,” he said. “What is tearing at you, my mate? Will you not share your pain with me?”
Olivia worked her mouth mutely, without the words even to begin to tell him. At last, in a kind of desperate anguish, she said, “Do you remember what Kodjunn said, the day at the gathering when—”
Vorgullum’s face tightened. “He spoke of a path for you,” he said quietly. “A path that leads away from the mountain, away from me.” He looked out over the tangle of wood and stone and sky. “So soon,” he murmured.
“I think so,” she said, and her voice cracked a little. “I don’t know when exactly, but I think it’s going to be soon. I’m sorry.”
“This is not your apology to make, my mate,” he told her, and while his voice was soft and comforting, his face as he searched the sky was hard.
“I want to come home. Can I come to your lair tonight?” she asked, almost pleading.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “Now, if you desire.”
“Yes. Now.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and released it with an unhappy sigh. “Right now.”
“Hold on to me, my Olivia. Hold our son.” He carried them gently down the cavern wall until the mountain surrounded them. When they reached the bottom, he led her, not to the tunnels, but to the commons. There, he took Somurg and handed the baby to Kurlun, who looked surprised but not displeased. Still without speaking, Vorgullum gathered Olivia into his arms like a child and bore her gently down the tunnels to his chambers.
The pit was soft with down and furs and the heat of the fire burning cleanly in the hearth. His body was warm and hard with muscle, gentle as he gathered her close against him. He tucked his chin atop her hair and hummed to her, holding her. She clenched her hands in his pelt, so overwhelmed by grief that her chest ached, as if she were physically choking on it, drowning in it. “Vorgullum?”
He stroked her hair, her back.
“Vorgullum, when you leave…when you go to find more humans…”
“Hush,” he said.
Doggedly, she pressed on. “You have to take one for yourself.”
He was silent, but his hand kept moving, soft as suede.
“I’m not coming back.”
Nothing.
“Vorgullum?”
“I hear you, my Olivia,” he said. His voice was low and even. “But I will not think on this tonight. I will not speak of it. I will do nothing until the hour is upon me. Until then, you are my mate.”
She pressed herself against him and cried some more, and these were the magic tears that finally unlocked her muscles and let her sleep. He stroked her throughout, as steady as the tide washing in and out, but it was a long time before he spoke again and he surely only did so because he thought she was asleep.
“Damn you,” he said, his breath barely stirring her hair. His hands were gentle, his arms secure. “I curse you, Great Spirit. Vorgullum curses you.”
8
It germinates inside you, he’d said, and it will demand release.
Olivia woke alone in the pit and lay there for a while feeling sorry for herself. Her breasts ached and she supposed that was a reminder that she had a son and that son would be demanding something on tap right about now. Climbing into her clothes, she also remembered the herbs which would need immediate attention, and that further reminded her of Carla, with whom she intended to have some chat with a barrenroot on hand.
“What a rotten day,” she grumbled, with absolutely no idea of just how bad her day was about to get. She crossed to the entry room, slipping the well-used grips of her claws over her hands. She put her foot down the chute and promptly kicked Bodual in the head. Retreating, she snagged the hem of her pants on his short horns and when he jerked back, managed to rip the seam clear up to her hip. It split to expose a smooth expanse of hip that she obligingly flashed at him just as he poked his head worriedly up the chute to see if she was all right.
“What are you, Wurlgunn’s evil twin?” she asked sourly, scrambling to cover her thigh.
“Evil what?” He rocked back, finally gleaning onto the reference to Wurlgunn. “How fair is that?” he demanded, laughing. “You kicked me, remember?”
“What do you want?” She rolled onto her hip, tried to see how bad the damage to her pants was, discovered it was terminal, and threw up her hands in defeat.
“I came to ask you if you would come to see Kodjunn’s beast,” he said affably. “She’s been asking for you since yesterday.”
“Why? Is she in pain?” She noticed she was rubbing at her stomach; well, not rubbing, really, more like caressing, very slowly, in circles. She frowned at her hand, forced it to her side.
“I wouldn’t know. I never talk to her if I can help it and she sure doesn’t go out of her way to be sociable around me.” His eyes dropped to her hand. “Did I hurt your leg?”
She looked down, discovered she was now caressing her thigh, and crossed her arms over her chest. Her nipples dug at her arms, radiating the most delicious shivers at the slightest friction of fabric. She shifted her arms, caught herself, and said, “No, my leg’s fine. How are yours?”
What a stupid thing to say.
“Fine. It was my head you kicked.” But his eyes lingered on the pale stripe of skin revealed to him where her pants had torn. “Are you…Are you going to see the beast now?”
She was staring at his chest, did not immediately process the question. He was smaller than Vorgullum; lean, but still athletic. She wondered what that body would feel like moving against hers, wondered if she could bear his weight after he dropped atop her, spent. She wondered—
She wondered what the hell was wrong with her.
He’d asked her about Cheyenne. “Um, yes,” she said vaguely. “Will you go with me?”
“Absolutely. I won’t let you out of my arms. Sight,” he corrected immediately and laughed a little nervously.
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“Can you carry me down?” Her claws were right there on her hip.
He didn’t notice them either. “Sure.” He gripped the lip of the chute, swung his legs down and hung there, waiting for her.
Olivia sat down between his outspread arms, slid forward and down, her hips brushing against the full length of his torso as she lowered herself to rest comfortably against him. His chest, she thought, felt divine. She imagined it bearing down on her as she undulated—
Good night! she thought, appalled.
“Hold on tight,” he murmured, just as if the chute dropped fifty feet instead of only ten. He flattened his wings and slowly climbed down, pushing her flat against the wall, pushing himself hard against her.
He had plenty of room back there, she saw. And she decided she could definitely take his weight after he was done and lay over her, with the musky scent of sex hanging delightfully in the air…
They were on the ground already and he wasn’t making any effort to back up. She could feel a stiffening heat pressing against her belly. That was interesting. She shifted her hips experimentally. Oh that was very nice.
He evidently thought so, too.
She wondered if she could peel their clothes back without having to move apart. She wondered if he’d have to take his loincloth all the way off. That would take far too much time. He felt wonderful. She began to move her hips in tiny circles, just to feel him rubbing all over her.
What the hell am I doing? she thought suddenly, and stopped. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he replied thickly. “My fault.”
They stood there, neither one moving.
“Cheyenne,” she said.
“What? Oh. Right.” He pried himself off her and backed up, slightly hunched over, as if something hurt.
Olivia took a step forward, resisted the urge to run her palm over the tight bulge in his loincloth, and kept going. He followed her into the main tunnel.
“Are all of these lairs occupied?” she asked.
“Not all of them, no. That one, for instance. That one’s still empty.”