by R. Lee Smith
“Oh, all right,” she said, standing. “But this time, you lie down.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”
“Because you’ve already scraped my back up once tonight,” she said crossly. “And once is all you get. If you want to do this, then you lie down.”
He regarded her suspiciously, not moving. “You,” he said, “are trying to trick me.”
She blinked at him, pulling her skirt up. “What are you talking about?”
“Males do not lie down,” he stated. “It cannot be done that way.”
She stared at him. “Are you serious?” she asked at last.
His only answer was a silent, furious snarl.
To distract him, she undressed rather than simply lift her skirt. “It can,” she said, standing naked before him. “Would I lie to you?”
He flicked his gaze up from his open appraisal of her flesh and glared at her. “Yes.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and coaxed him around, then pushed him back on the bench. It took quite a bit of pushing, and all the while, he glared reproachfully up at her. “I warn you now that if you think you can incapacitate me here and then flee, I shall run you down and oh,” he finished, as she swung one leg over him and eased slowly over his jutting member. He frowned, obviously flustered, pushing himself up just slightly on his elbows to watch her fit them together. “Just so.”
Olivia bit her lip and bore down, using her power to assuage the pain of his entry, but gaining little ground. “Help me,” she said at last, and rushed to add, “Slowly!” as he immediately seized her.
He eyed her with mild puzzlement, then lifted his head to study the join of their bodies. He lifted her, shot a hot rush of semen between them, and levered her down again, pulling on her hips like handles. “This is…different,” he remarked.
In exasperation, Olivia combed through the pelt of his chest, discovered a nipple, and tongued it while simultaneously stabbing at him with a knife of her power.
“Unnngh!” The Great Spirit’s head flew back to crack on the bench and his hips thrust fiercely upwards as his hands clenched, slamming their bodies together with a brutal slap. He thrummed once, then noticed where her mouth was at and curiosity briefly replaced the look of lust on his face. He reached up to hunt out his other nipple with one claw. “I have these?” he marveled. “Why would I have done that?”
Olivia slipped her hand beneath his and rolled the hard nub between her fingers, catching the one in her mouth between her teeth and blowing on it lightly.
The Great Spirit shuddered, clenched his hand on hers. “Perhaps this is not entirely unpleasant,” he said. “I will indulge you in this.”
All in all, not a very impressive reaction, considering what it had done to other gullan. Olivia studied him from the corner of her eyes as she lashed at him with her tongue, and then decided to try something different. She pulled back from her body, but remained where she could see herself. Honing all the power at her command, she began to manipulate herself and him: undulating and gripping him with her body, running her hands across every exposed part of him, applying her teeth and tongue to all the places most sensitive to touch. She raked her nails across his thick hide, then caressed him tenderly, arched and rocked and circled and ground, and all the while she used her power to amplify the sensations she inflicted on him.
Her mind floated, surveying her puppet body with a certain smugness as she worked. Although she did not concern herself with so menial a concept as time, she was vaguely aware that she was siphoning energy out of him in a constant stream, using it to soothe the damage he inevitably did to her physical body as the minutes ticked by into hours.
She came to herself abruptly at the onset of a strange, unfamiliar sensation—a relentless coiling of white-hot power, emanating, not from her, but from the Great Spirit. After a moment of worried confusion, she recognized the signs of strain and realized he was rising towards the cusp of an orgasm. She sensed that she could push him higher, but that his cumming was going to be an ordeal for them both, and this was the limit of her mortal body.
She satisfied herself with that, overlapping their sexual wavelengths, and bringing them to a sudden, violent joining. Sensation slammed into her, trailing raw power behind, a fiery comet with a tail of ice. She cried out, but the sound was lost in his deafening roar.
Olivia’s mind scrambled back from the black tide of his climax, her spirit self working desperately to keep her physical husk alive in the grip of the god. From this frightened distance, she could sense herself undergoing the single most painful moment of her existence; she knew instinctively that it could have killed her to be wholly there, and would have surely made her insane.
Olivia saw herself rise smoothly into the air as he arched off the bench, still roaring. He came for what felt like an eternity, and then dropped back onto the stone with a jarring thud. Her puppet fell limply atop him while her spirit remained hovering out of mental range, watching.
He put a hand on the small of her back, panting. His eyes were closed. His pelt was spiky with sweat. He was done. For the first time in his timeless existence, he was done.
Olivia’s consciousness stuck a toe into her body, decided it was safe, and dove back in. She jerked, groaned, and tried to crawl deeper into his flesh.
He put the other arm around her.
The little heat she’d begun this enterprise with was now a roaring bonfire, and even so, it was having difficulty consuming the deluge of energy she’d stolen from the Great Spirit. She could feel it throbbing inside her, feel a kind of burning itch all over her body as though she were sweating it out from her pores in an invisible aura.
Olivia shuddered, eliciting a sleepy-sounding murmur from the male beneath her. She sympathized; she had been keyed-up before, but she was exhausted now. “I have to go to sleep now,” she mumbled.
“Then do so,” he replied, and yawned. His hands were still clasped around her.
She could feel herself dozing off at his suggestion, but roused herself with some effort. “I have to go home to sleep,” she clarified, pushing herself into a sitting position.
His locked hands slid to her hips. He watched her lazily through pleasure-slitted eyes as she stretched and yawned and tried to keep her own eyes open. “Sleep here,” he offered generously. “I will hold watch over y—” He broke off, his eyes widening by slow degrees until he was gaping outright at her.
Instinctively, she checked the doorway, but found it empty. Puzzled, she returned his stare. “What?”
He seized her hips and lifted her into the air, sitting up in the same fluid movement to stare at his flaccid penis. He made a sound, one just a little too tight and strangled to be a true scream.
Olivia, her hands resting over his and her toes dangling over the ground, finally realized what he was fussing over. “That happens, you know,” she said mildly.
“This is normal?” He prodded at himself, dumbstruck.
Olivia disguised her sigh as another yawn. “When a male orgasms, he ceases to be hard. It’s totally natural.”
“But—”
“Relax. If I gave you ten minutes, you’d be on me again.” She broke off when she saw the gleam in his eye. “But I’m not going to give you ten minutes,” she said sternly. “I know you don’t care or anything, but I’m tired. I want to go home and go to sleep.”
He didn’t look as disappointed as she expected. He set her down on her feet and watched her dress. “Strangely, I find that I do care,” he said after several minutes, when Olivia no longer remembered what had prompted the ambiguous comment. “More now than ever. Tell me, did you help me to arrive only because I never had before?”
“Arrive?”
He furrowed his brow in thought. “Is that not what you called it?”
“Oh,” she said, bewildered. Then, as she realized what he meant, “Oh! Actually, I didn’t expect you to cum at all, I was just trying to…see how far I could push you,” she finished, after a b
rief pause in which she decided that, ‘make you hurry up and get off me,’ wasn’t the most considerate way to end the conversation.
He acknowledged this with a grunt and stood up, resuming his towering posture over her and lowering his impressive horns. “You mean to leave me now, then. This is not wise. Unless you stand before me, I am no longer able to hear your calls. It would be better that you remain with me until it is time to begin our journey.” He paused to study the dismay that surely flooded her face, then grunted again. “Far better. And yet I am pleased by your service to me this night. We shall hold to our bargain, Olivia Blake. You shall return to me often to strengthen your power, and I shall await you.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. The risk of being trapped here with him, never to see any face but his until he carried her off to fight Bahgree hadn’t even occurred to her. “I’ll be certain to come back when I’m in season.”
“Yes. And you will bring me to arrival during our coupling. A compromise,” he concluded triumphantly, and sat down on the bench to wait.
CHAPTER SIX
LAST DAYS
1
Olivia went to the women’s tunnels and stayed there. She helped out in the clinic as much as she could, and when there wasn’t enough to do, spent her days hard at work with the gullan females. If the tribe needed directing, she sent Horumn to deliver her orders. Now and then, Doru dropped by in his role as chief hunter either to bring meat or ask—for diplomacy’s sake alone—her permission to fly a night hunt. She didn’t try to see Sudjummar even when he came to bring the odd tool, but sometimes Amy slipped in with Somurg and let her hold her son. It didn’t help the way she’d thought it would; when she looked down into his scowling face, a part of her already seemed to be leaving him.
She slept very little, but tried to put her insomnia to use fulfilling her obligations with the Great Spirit. It was on one such night as she was wearily making her way back from his embrace that she stepped out into the women’s tunnels and promptly crashed full-length into Thurga.
They went down in a tangle of arms, legs, wings, and blankets and Olivia began to apologize ceaselessly in both languages as she tried to sort out whose limbs belonged to whom. At last, Thurga picked Olivia up by the shoulders and sat her bodily back at arm’s reach so the gulla could roll onto her knees and find her feet.
“No harm, Urgarna! No harm, for the spirit’s sake. You’d think you’d ripped both wings free and fed them to me, the way you act.”
Olivia picked up one soiled blanket, then another, and then a third before their meaning set in. “What is this?” she asked, somewhat alarmed. The only reasons gullan ever replaced so much bedding at once were due to either a birth or a death.
But Thurga only shrugged. “Washing the Beast. She’s taken to pissing in the pit rather than ask for a basin.” Thurga grunted sourly. “Nuisance.”
Olivia experienced the same blend of pity and anger and sorrow she always felt whenever Cheyenne was mentioned, and as usual, she said nothing.
Thurga, having successfully bundled her clean bedding back into an easily managed armload, took two steps further towards the women’s tunnels, then turned slowly back. “There is…another matter. Can you come?”
“Of course.” Olivia bit back a yawn. “What’s wrong?”
“It is Sarabee. She hasn’t been well for many days. Tina says there is nothing wrong with her or the baby…” Thurga trailed off, looking at once anxious. Tina’s expertise with the healing arts had surely been proven a hundred times over, but to many gullan, the only true healer would always be Olivia.
Olivia reached out to give Thurga a consoling pat on the arm. “It’s probably nothing serious, you know. It’s just being pregnant. I cried a lot, too.”
Thurga nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “Poor Sarabee. She’s never liked it here, and now that her time is nearing, she does nothing but weep. So many of your humans have resisted the idea of taking another mate,” she ventured. “Perhaps Sarabee fears to be taken by a male other than Burgelbun.” She seemed to study her own words as they hung in the air, openly perplexed. “But I didn’t think she cared so much for Burgelbun.”
“Humans are funny that way, I’m afraid.”
Thurga shrugged her wings, stealing a glance at Olivia from the corners of her dark eyes. “We would help her if we could, but she has never spoken to us, you know. Some of us fear that she may hurt the baby.”
Olivia stopped walking and put a hand on Thurga’s arm to halt her. “Do you really think so?”
“Well…” Thurga scratched at her throat, shifting her load of bedding awkwardly. “Not to hurt with malice. I don’t think she’d strike the baby or smother it. But I don’t think she’ll love it either. She has a name for it already, and I don’t think it’s very pleasant.”
“What name?”
Thurga frowned and spoke the word as though she feared Olivia would slap her on hearing it. “Tumor.” She watched Olivia’s face intently. “Was I wrong? Is it a good name after all?”
“Not…really.”
Thurga’s shoulders slumped. “I feared that. Sarabee says to Tina, ‘When will the Tumor come? When will I be rid of the Tumor?’” She shrugged her wings again, now openly uncomfortable. “And I know it upsets you to hear such things, but what male will want her, weeping all the time?”
“Someone surely will,” Olivia said, and could not quite keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“Yes,” said Thurga softly. “Someone will. But no good man will be eager to take a female who despises him, and who will that leave?”
“She’ll stay in the women’s tunnels. I’m sure that’s what she wants anyway.”
“With a baby? She will not be allowed to do so. A unmated female such as Sarahjay is one thing. A female with a baby must be provided for. She must have a mate!” Thurga hesitated, then said, “If we offer to take the child when it is born, will she be offended or relieved? Will she refuse even to give suck if this is all we ask of her?”
“I…” Olivia realized she had no idea what Sarah B. would think of such an arrangement. “I’ll talk to her,” she finished lamely.
Thurga sighed and nodded. “And tell her, since she will not speak to us, tell her that we mean her no harm. After all this time, it should be evident, but tell her anyway.” She shifted her load of bedding and began to walk again.
Olivia let her go to do the washing and went alone to Tina’s clinic. Amy was already there, rubbing Liz’s legs and humming the theme from Have Gun Will Travel. She didn’t look around when Olivia asked her where Sarah B. was being kept, but she pointed the direction with her chin.
“Hang on a sec, though,” Amy said, when Olivia turned to go. “I know you wanted to wait for Tina to come back, but I think Peanut here wants out.”
Olivia turned back reluctantly and bit her lip. “Well, you’re right about one thing: I did want to wait. She’s still early, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, by about six weeks, but for all we know, Tina might not be back for months.” Amy shook her head, her hands working calmly on Liz’s swollen ankles as she spoke. “The drugs aren’t working like they used to. Liz is going into labor practically every morning. I mean, what do we do, double up on her dose? And what happens when we run out, send you to another hospital?”
“I say go for it,” Liz announced.
Olivia frowned. “Honey, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying I’m about to have a premature baby,” Liz replied, and her smile faltered, showing the true face of her worry beneath. “Tina’s talked to me about the risks, you know. I think…I think it’s maybe a better thing to do it now and save the rest of the levonal for someone else, someone where one shot might be all they need, rather than use it all up on me and still have to give birth early. I mean, I know that every day improves my chances and all, but…there’s always going to be a risk because this is not a normal situation. Not even as normal as, you know, whatever normal is for
a gulla-human baby. So I say go for it.”
“And I second the motion,” Amy added. “In these enlightened days, a lot of doctors are actually inducing early on purpose. Supposed to be less stressful for mama if she can pick the date and time and so forth. And who are we to argue with the logic of obstetric science?”
It behooved no one to observe that in these enlightened days, doctors induced from the emergency rooms of the maternity wings in some very enlightened hospitals, and seldom as early as this.
Olivia nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll send someone in to sit with you and I’ll be back as soon as I…clear a few things up.”
“You heard the woman,” Amy said, “You’ve had your last shot, kiddo.”
“Yee-haw.”
“Okay then, that’s one down.” Amy stood up, slapping her hands briskly, and faced off with Olivia. “Now what’s your problem?”
Olivia made a futile gesture in the air with one hand. “Thurga wants me to talk to Sarah B. Do you know what the problem is with her?”
Amy’s expression had become a mask as soon as Sarah’s name was mentioned. Now she considered the question as seriously as if it were a mathematical one. “Maybe. But I don’t want to discuss it in front of the baby.”
“Hey!” Liz looked up, wounded.
“Hey yourself. Can I help it if you keep bringing the little tyke within earshot? Step into my parlor, o fearless leader.” Amy took Olivia firmly by the arm and led her out of the clinic and a short distance down the tunnel.
For a long time, Amy only stood with her arms crossed, glaring at Olivia’s left shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was low and angry. “There are some things we just don’t want you to know. I hate having to be so blunt, but there it is. You do a really good job being leader, and honestly, there’s nobody here I’d rather see with the job and I’m pretty sure that opinion’s unanimous, but you…you still put Carla in here and you still cut a man’s balls off.”