by R. Lee Smith
“Twenty-seven days I have waited with yearning for him, and when at last my eyes behold him, the first words he spoke were of you.” Softly, meditatively, still without any hint of emotion.
“I’m a novelty,” Olivia said.
“Indeed. But perhaps you are a novel threat.”
“Just because I can get an orgasm out of him? If that’s all it is, I could tell you what to do.”
“I should not need to concern myself with trivialities. He has always taken pleasure enough from me in the past. It will be enough in the future.”
“What about your pleasure?” Olivia asked, and felt the cool appraisal of the heavens.
“I am satisfied by the fulfillment of my purpose.”
“You can’t feel anything else?”
“I can feel vengeance.”
Olivia swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “Vengeance is more of an act, not an emotion.”
“Even so.”
“I help him cum because he bothers me less often if he gets more out of our time together and because it’s good practice for this power I’m supposed to be strengthening. I’ll stop if it’s upsetting for you.”
“…”
“I mean it.”
“…Yes…I believe you do…”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Die.”
Olivia drew back, just as if recoiling another four inches made any difference in the distance between her and the moon. Urga’s voice still carried no weight of emotion, no inflection of interest.
“But since my mate has commanded this should not be, you may do as you will. Give him your human pleasures if it amuses you. At the end of time, he remains my own, my mate, my master. And you remain yet another of Bahgree’s enticing offspring, easily disregarded, easily destroyed.”
“I don’t want to be your enemy.”
“No, mortal. You do not.”
“I don’t mean it like that. I mean I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
Silence.
“If there were a way to lift the curse and save my son without taking Bahgree’s power, I’d do it. I wasn’t given a choice in any of this!”
The goats bumped each other and grumbled.
“Urga?”
The clouds thinned out and the moon reappeared, broken, but whole and shining.
“Nice talking to you,” she murmured.
There was a rush of wind and the sound of wings. Doru landed beside her, skidding several feet on the slanted stone. He looked around, saw only goats, and gave her a curious look. “Who were you speaking to?”
Olivia shook her head. “Nobody, I guess. How’s the hunting?”
“Could be worse, I suppose. With the females tending traps, the hunters are at least spending more time in the air. Damark and Borumn couldn’t manage the strain tonight, but Hodrub took three rabbits back to his Liz. Wurlgunn and Augurr were going to see if they could kill a rua. Mudmar took the others out on wide patrols. Sarahjay and Sutung have made three raids on hives already and I think they mean to strike a fourth as soon as they’ve unloaded. Oh, and I have this for you.”
Doru opened his belt pouch and fanned out a handful of Hershey’s bars.
Olivia made some wordless exclamation and seized them. “You didn’t go all the way to town, did you?”
“Ha, not even for you. Sarahjay gave them to me.” He watched with detached interest as Olivia unwrapped one of the chocolate bars and broke off a square. “I had one. Not bad. Not bam good, but not bad.”
“Bam,” purred Olivia, dissolving the chocolate on her tongue. “Fucking bam, to quote the vernacular.” She peered at him, smiling. “What did you give Sarah J. in exchange?”
“Who says I had to give her anything? I am tovorak. She is tribe. I demanded and she provided.”
“Sure.” She savored another square. “No, really, what did you give her?”
“I told her I’d get her a set of bear claws at the next opportunity. She wants to edge her hunting vest with them. Savage little beasts, are humans.” He watched her devour the rest of her first chocolate bar and pocket the rest. “Of course, there is the little matter of what you intend to give me,” he murmured, fanning his wings covertly.
Olivia reached out and scratched down the center of his broad chest. “It bears thinking on. I’ll let you know.” She hopped up and prepared to descend the steep slope to the game trail below.
He caught her, as she’d known he would, hooking her by the back of her shirt and then sweeping it up and over her head before she had time to defend herself. When she came back, jumping for it like a child being bullied on the playground, he caught her up and let her tumble them both carefully to the stony ground. Then he only lay there, hands clasped around her back, which greatly complicated the simple act of pulling her shirt back on.
“Is this going to hurt your wings?” she asked, propping her elbows up on his chest. “Sharp rocks and all?”
“I could be gravely injured,” he said solemnly. “Never fly again.”
“Have to get lots of pit rest,” she suggested. “As Bodual would say.”
“Mm.” He lifted his head towards her, and she clapped her hand down over his mouth. “Mm?”
“Not in front of the goats.”
He glanced at the captive beasts, rolled his eyes, and stood up, lifting her with him. “Name the place,” he invited, catching the wind and cutting high out over the mountainside.
She wrapped her legs around his hips. “How about right here?”
That caught him by surprise; he faltered on the wing, dropping several feet before righting himself. “You’re joking, right? This is a human joke?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Where’s your sense of self-preservation?” he countered.
She nuzzled against his chest, rolling her hips against his groin and humming in her human imitation of a gulla’s thrumm of arousal. Despite the broad expression of shock on his face, she could feel him hardening against her. Any second, he was going to land and rip his loincloth off.
“Hm.” Doru banked again, then abruptly changed course and shot almost straight up in a wide spiral.
“What are you doing?” she asked, startled.
“If we’re going to do this, I’d feel better if we had some distance between us and the ground.” He moved one hand from her waist to cup her bottom, rocking her slowly against his hardness as he pulled her patchworked skirt up, up, and over her hips. “We are going to do this, right?”
Olivia didn’t dare risk a glance behind them. Instead, she stretched one arm over his shoulder to scratch at the sensitive patch between his wings.
He jerked in the air, then leveled out into a glide, slipping two thick fingers between her thighs to probe expertly at her sex. Now it was her turn to gasp, thrusting back at his hand and then forward against his hips and the straining of his stiffened cock. She could feel his fingers penetrating her, rubbing slowly together as they moved in and out of her.
Doru laughed in the back of his throat. “I guess you weren’t joking after all. Well, don’t I feel like a fool.”
“Oh,” she panted, her hips working harder against his fingers. “Was I supposed to scream and demand you put me back down?”
His voice took on a distinctly ragged edge. “Something…something like that.” He clenched his jaws, pulled her closer, pumped his hand faster. “Last…last chance to start screaming,” he warned. His hips were shoving at her in swift, involuntary movements.
“Are you saying you want to stop?” she countered.
“Ha! Get…Get me ready,” Doru managed. His wings were shaking.
Olivia’s hands tugged wildly at the taut folds of leather tied through his belt until she had enough slack to work his cock free. Trapped between their bodies, she could only grind her naked folds against his shaft, feeling his heat the hammer of his racing pulse throbbing up into her womb. She rubbed her palm against his glans, slick with the oils of his ant
icipation, until, with a snarl, he yanked her up, fit her fast against him and buried himself inside her.
Olivia let out a scream for the wind of their wake to swallow as he drove into her, then wrapped her arms around his neck, hooked his legs with hers, and met his thrusts with inexpert vigor in the emptiness of the sky. He moved her with both hands, sliding her rapidly along the length of his shaft, thrumming and growling and grunting as he flew, and growing ever more ragged in his movements until he let out a roar of his own. His hips bucked ferociously, and then his wings folded and he broke and fell out of the sky.
They screamed as they fell, the wind howling through their braided voices and lashing them like whips. She felt him start to cum, the ignition for her own explosive release, and for a few seconds, she knew nothing but the pure carnal bliss of biting, bucking, and clawing at him. He came again as she came dazedly back to her senses, hammering a second jet of hot cum against her womb, took two fast breaths, and came a third time with a deafening howl.
Then his eyes flew open, his wings slapped out like sails, and they tacked hard against the pull of the earth. Olivia clung to him, shivering, until he landed with a heavy whump against the sheer face of the chasm entry, his hard body crushing a final, fantastic orgasm out of her with the force of their impact.
They hung, still joined, both of them shaking slightly.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“That was—”
“Intense,” he finished.
They shivered together, pressed flat against the stone.
Doru laughed, a trifle shakily. “Let’s not do that again anytime soon.”
“Why not? That was incredible!”
“Yes, it was very nice, but I think we’re looking at the experience from two different perspectives. Specifically, mine was the looking-down perspective. You do not want to know how close we came to the trees.” He eased back, glanced behind him, and jumped to the aerie.
While Doru made adjustments to his loincloth, Olivia dropped her skirt and smoothed it down, then opened her belt-pouch and quested inside.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I melted my Hershey bars.”
He burst out laughing.
“There you are!” Bodual swooped in low and landed beside them. “I had just about decided you’d both gone in for the night. Where have you been?”
“Flying.”
“Yeah, but…” Bodual trailed off, his nostrils flaring as he took in their mingled scents. “Well, damn,” he said, hurt. “Here I’ve been hunting.”
“Did you get anything?” Doru shot Olivia a look of apology. “Anything at all?”
“Last I saw of Mudmar and his patrol, they were all flying empty, but Hodrub went by not long ago with a young deer. Sutung and Sarahjay are back at the hive, and Wurlgunn crashed into the side of a cattle den chasing rua ages ago and went home.”
“Is he all right?” Olivia asked, alarmed.
“Is he ever? He didn’t get the rua, but no one saw him, so I count that a victory. He ought to be impressing his Beth with the harrowing tale even as we speak. I assumed Olivia was looking after the goats,” he added with a pointed glare. “But it seems she was only looking after one goat-head.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to be there,” Doru said, and Olivia favored him with an amused look. “It was scary.”
Bodual’s ears pricked forward. “Scary?” he echoed.
Doru started to say something and gave a bone-cracking yawn instead. He looked mildly surprised at himself, and then shrugged his wings. “Heh. Scary and tiring. I feel the way the sky smells after lightning cuts through it.” He clapped Olivia on the shoulder, bent to kiss the curve of her jaw. “Thank you, beloved mate, for a truly unique experience. I am never doing that again.”
“Good night, Doru.” She watched him make his descent, and turned to give Bodual what she hoped was an innocent smile.
His ears were still cocked at her and his expression was one of guarded interest. “What did you do?”
“We were flying.”
“No, I mean, what did you do after that?”
“There was no after. We were flying.”
“You were—” His eyes widened to show the whites. “Are you serious? You did it in the sky?”
Olivia yawned, bit her knuckles, and nodded sleepily. “And I’m never doing it again, either. I feel the way a tree looks after lightning strikes it.” She thought about this, amended, “I feel the way a tree looks while lightning is striking it.” She smiled broadly. “Good night, Bodual.”
She drew her claws and turned her back on his incredulous expression.
He caught up to her on the chasm wall, keeping easy pace as she descended and staring at her until all light was shut away. “Seriously,” he said.
She laughed. “Seriously, Bodual. Do I have to draw you a picture?”
“You could have been killed!”
“But what a way to go. And don’t look so shocked,” she said. “You’d have been up there in an instant, if I’d offered.”
“The hell you say,” he replied, and he sounded sincere. “I can’t count the number of times mating with you has knocked me unconscious, and that’s right here in the safety of my own lair. You couldn’t get me in the air for it if you tied me to the shaft of a giant spear and threw me.”
She started to giggle, shaking on the wall. “Okay, now you have to carry me,” she commanded.
His hands found her in the darkness and lifted her easily against him. She wrapped him in her arms and legs and leaned her head on his shoulder. He was small, for a gulla, and he fit her just right. She hummed sleepily.
“Oh stop that,” he said, beginning to climb again. “You and I both know you don’t mean it.”
She hummed louder.
“You humans think you can get away with anything just because you couple like demons.”
“We can.”
She dozed as they dropped down the length of the great chasm, sleepily content, glowing with the heat and rush of her airborne exertions. She knew she could charge herself again with vitality simply by reaching out her power and trapping Bodual against her, but the thought of honest sleep in a warm pit beside Doru’s hot, solid body was overwhelmingly attractive to her. She sighed.
“I didn’t hear my name in that,” Bodual remarked.
“In what?” she mumbled, wondering if she’d spoken any of her errant thoughts aloud.
“That sigh of sensual completion. That was all Doru. Big jerk,” he added affably. “‘Come on, Bodual, time to hunt. New mothers need meat if babies want milk. I’ll go check on Olivia, you stand here and look for deer.’”
She snickered.
“Yeah, you laugh at me. Go on, I can take it.”
“You can take lots of things. Bodual Athagarr.” Bodual the Enduring.
He swelled his chest immediately. “Ha. Damn right.” He struck the ground and leapt back from the wall, setting her before him and taking her hand in the darkness. “Olivia Issugul, Bodual Athagarr, and let’s see…Doru ya’a Ibnal.” Doru the Damn-Fine Cuddler, roughly.
“He’ll hate that.”
“Aw, he just wants you to think he hates that. He loves it, really. You should see him when I’m teasing him. ‘Such a fine cuddler,’ I say. ‘Cuddles like a baby bear. Big and warm and soft and cuddly.’” He lowered his voice in a fair imitation of Doru. “‘Enough of that, curse you.’ But then he struts.”
They could see the light from the common cave ahead, and Bodual released her hand. He said loudly, “It must be gratifying to know that he’s good at something, since he’s turned into such an unreliable hunter.”
“That’s right, snap ‘em, you whelp.” Doru’s cheerful voice emanated from within the commons. “Jealousy makes your fur fall out, you know.”
Bodual and Olivia entered the commons to see Doru relaxing on a bench with a can of Coors.
“What happened to bone-weary exhaustion?”
Olivia teased, falling beside him. “I feel like I could sleep for ages.”
“Me, too, but I wanted to brag about it first. Unfortunately, I don’t see Damark here and no one else would ever believe me. So then I was going to head off to sleep, but there was only one can of my favorite thumperjuice left, and I didn’t want anyone who didn’t appreciate it to drink it.”
“I see.”
Bodual took the can out of Doru’s hand and took an experimental sip. “I don’t taste any difference,” he observed.
“You are precisely the kind of inexperienced fool I am attempting to save this thumperjuice from,” Doru replied, taking his can back with an impressive swipe of his huge hand.
“Well, I don’t.” Bodual shrugged. “It all tastes the same to me.”
Doru opened his mouth to expound upon the virtues of the various brands of beer, and there came a sudden volley of shouts rolling down the corridor. He sprang to his feet, his wings snapping out and hackles raised as Yawa burst through the doorway, her eyes white with fear and panic.
“The Beast!” she screamed, pointing back down the tunnel. “Hurry! The Beast has killed Wurlgunn!”
3
Olivia had not managed so much as one running step before Doru seized her by the arm and swung her behind him. Then he was running, spear in hand, shoving Yawa bodily into the wall as he passed her. Olivia raced after him, dodging Yawa’s grasping hands as the gulla tried shrilly to explain.
She could hear Cheyenne’s defiant screams long before they reached the hide flap that separated the mountain. The acoustics of the caverns were misleading; she knew Doru would take the wrong path towards the point he believed the sounds emanated. She darted down the correct passage as he disappeared into the darkness, and ran to Cheyenne’s room.
The first thing she saw within the small cave was not Cheyenne at all, but Tina. Olivia seized the doorway and stopped rigid as her horror-stricken mind underwent the queer defense of blocking out perception of the color red—for a long, frozen moment, she believed Tina was covered with milk.
Slowly, her senses melted back to normal, and Tina struggled with a writhing, gasping male, both of them painted with blood. Olivia could still hear Cheyenne screaming, but the sound was distant, as if it came from a closed room at the end of a long hall. She stepped stiltedly towards Tina, craning her head to see the face of the male. She saw his opened throat first, the edges ragged with matted fur; she could see the meat of his body pulsing beneath a steady rush of blood. When she could move her eyes again, it was to see the face of Wurlgunn, almost unrecognizable with contortions of pain. He had chewed his lips to shreds. His claws were sunk into the rock of the ground in a vain effort to be still, but he could not stop bucking.