“Annnnndddd. Fooled you,” she whispered into my ear, and her hand released my throat.
“What?” I gasped with surprise.
“Ha! You should see the look on your face!” Trel cackled loudly and flipped herself over so that she was straddling my waist again. “Your eyes were this big!” She brought the tips of her fingers together to make giant circles and then she held them up to her own black eyes.
“Wait. What?” I sat up, and Trel’s cackle turned into a roar of laughter.
“You… Thought… I’d… Kill… You… Ha!” Her body vibrated on top of me as she laughed, and her spider legs slapped the floor of the hut.
“That was a joke?” I asked as I touched my throat.
“Uhhh yeah, cool dude!” She had her arms wrapped around her lean stomach now, and she rocked back and forth on me. Somehow, I was still hard, and her movements pushed my tip against her lower back.
“Holy shit!” I shouted. “Trel, I thought you were going to kill me!”
“I know!” she screeched. “I wish I had a vid-camera. It was hilarious.”
“Uhh, no,” I growled. “That was fucking terrible. I can’t believe you’d do that.”
“Ha!” she laughed again and shook her head to make her hair bounce.
“No, for real. My heart is just calming down now. I seriously--”
Her lips pressed against mine suddenly, and I fell back against the floor mat. She growled into my mouth as she kissed me, and my tongue fought against hers.
“You think I’d kill you, Victor Shelby?” she growled as she pulled her lips from mine. “Trel-Idil-Iria keeps her word. I told you I’d be your lover without poisoning you. I told you I was yours forever. I’m furious that you did not believe me. I should kill you for your insolence.” I gasped as her fingers closed around my throat again. But then I saw the smile on her lips.
“You are in trouble, Trel.” I hissed.
“Oh?” she asked as she relaxed her grip on my neck.
“Yep. You need a spanking.” I brought the palm of my hand up and smacked her on her ass cheek.
“Oh!” she gasped when I hit her. Then she gasped again when I smacked her other ass cheek.
“And tickles,” I growled as I moved my fingers toward her stomach.
“Victor Shelby. Don’t you dare! I am a Duchess. I do not-- Eeeekkkk!” Trel screeched when my fingers poked into her skin on the sides of her tummy, and she leapt off my torso.
“Tickle, tickle, tickle,” I laughed as I rolled to my feet and walked toward her with my fingers wiggling.
“No! No! No! I take it all back! You are a terrible male! I’m going to kill you next time!” Trel laughed as she snatched up her silk clothes and dashed out the door.
I didn’t care that I was naked. Trel had to pay for tricking me, so I sprinted out the door after her. She hadn’t made it far, so I managed to grab her around the waist as I somehow avoided her thrashing spider legs. We both went down in a pile, and she screeched out laughter as my fingers poked every part of her smooth skin.
“No! Stop! Ekkk! Victor! Stop tickling me! This isn’t funny!” She almost couldn’t talk because she was giggling so much.
“Then why are you laughing!” I asked as I moved my fingers into her armpits.
“Nooo! Stop!” she laughed as she tried to pull my hands away from her.
“Ahhheeeemmm!” a voice shouted next to us.
Trel and I both stopped our naked wrestling and looked up at Kacerie. The pink-haired woman had her arms crossed over her chest and an unhappy scowl on her face.
“Are you two done in the hut? Some of us would like to eat dinner and work with the damn clay you were so interested in getting.”
“Uhh, yeah,” I said as I looked down at Trel. We were both covered with sweat and bits of grass from where we were rolling.
“We are done for tonight,” Trel huffed, “but I intend to have him tomorrow, and every afternoon moving forward, so maybe you should--”
“We are good,” I interrupted Trel as I ran my hand down her smooth inky hair. “You can use it now.”
“Fine,” Kacerie barked, and then she stormed into the hut. A moment later my boots, socks, pants, and two shirts flew out of the door and landed near us.
“I just can’t believe her attitude,” Trel sighed. “It’s like she doesn’t even understand all the things you do for her. How ungrateful.”
“Trel,” I chuckled as I thought about how she acted toward me for the last month. “You are something else.”
“I know,” the beautiful woman sighed as she moved her mouth toward mine. “I am all sorts of amazing and wonderful. And now I’m all yours. Just don’t let it go to your head, male. You have a problem with being a bit too cocky and arrogant.”
“Me?” I laughed. “I’m arrogant and cocky?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, and then we kissed again.
Chapter 9
That night was a bit of a celebration. We’d gone from a minor setback the day before when Sheela and I almost died and lost two clay jugs; to acquiring a shit ton of sinew for cordage, a good thirty pounds of clay, and Bob.
We feasted like a king and his queens that night, and everyone but Galmine ate a freshly barbequed orange bird. My gray-skinned lover chose to eat the last of our berries, and I told her we planned on getting more the next day.
When Kacerie left the hut to use our latrine bucket, I gestured for my three friends to lean in close over the fire. Sheela and I told them about the smoke that we had observed, and our worries about other hostile tribes. Galmine had trouble believing anyone would want to attack us, but Trel immediately suspected that they might already know our presence because of the various fires we lit over the last week when we cut through trees, and she began to puzzle through ways to mask our presence better.
We brainstormed a few ideas until Kacerie came back, and then we moved the conversation away from the topic, and to a discussion about keeping watch at night. The shifts were much easier to cover with five people, and I volunteered for the second one.
Other than a group of smaller raptor-like scavengers that came to eat at the corpse buffet, and the dancing green lightning bugs, the night passed without excitement. I slept nestled between Trel and Galmine and enjoyed kisses from both of them throughout the night. I knew Galmine was all into free love, and she’d often spoken about how her society just had massive orgies every night, but I thought Trel would have been way more possessive than she was. She didn’t seem to mind Galmine kissing me, other than to demand my lips after she saw me kissing the rock woman. She just wanted to be treated as an equal, and I had no problem with that, even if I kept asking myself how in the hell I had gotten so lucky.
We had to leave Bob outside of the wall, which worried me a bunch, but I could sense both his and Hope’s general attitude, and neither seemed distressed during the night. I figured that the giant parasaur was large enough to take care of himself against any of the green raptors, or anything a bit bigger than me. He’d probably have a problem with a carnotaurus, but I could always order him to run, and I knew he’d easily be able to get away.
I woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn to find both Galmine and Trel sleeping with smiles on their faces and their hands on my chest. I did my best to wiggle out of their embrace without waking them, and then I looked over to see Kacerie sleeping with her back to us on the other side of the fire. Sheela was not inside of the hut, but I found her outside of our gate cutting more sinew. She had a second basket almost full and didn’t notice me walk up behind her.
“Good morning,” I said, and she spun around to face me.
“Good morning, Victor,” she said as she gave me her usual nod.
“Need some help?” I asked. There was a bit of movement off to my left, and I turned to see more of small dino scavengers coming to eat from the piles of bodies.
“I am almost done here,” she said. “There is more sinew to gather, but I will have to walk out t
o the clearing near the cave, and I am worried that the orange birds will attack.”
“Alright,” I replied as I looked to where she pointed. Ten of the turkey-sized birds occupied the ramp, but another thirty were relaxing on the grass below the cave. There used to be hundreds around, and but their corpses were now decorating the clearing.
“I have moved most of the bodies we have already processed away to the outskirts,” Sheela continued. “But I did not know if you wished me to spend more of my time moving any more.”
“I think we need to get this group right here away,” I said as I gestured to the pile of ten bodies at her feet. They were starting to smell a bit now, and I guessed the whole clearing would reek by the end of the day.
Then we would really have a problem with all sorts of scavengers.
“I will get to work on it,” she said as she reached down to finish pulling the sinew from the last bird.
“I’m also worried about that pond of blood,” I said.
“It might soak into the grass,” Sheela said with her usual shrug. “I do not know what we could do about it besides just wait.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “We’ll also need to clear a working area for the lumber. That part of the grove over there has trees a few feet wider than what we used for our current wall. Let’s clear the bodies away from there and then get to chopping.
“Should we retrieve water first?” Sheela asked.
“We’ve got a pot left after last night,” I said. “It should last us till lunch. Then Trel will have a new saddle made for Bob, and Galmine will have taught Kacerie how to make more pots. I’ll make a run then.”
“It is a plan,” Sheela said with her usual stoic nod.
“But is it a good plan?” I asked her as I grinned.
“Victor, all of your plans are excellent,” she whispered. “It is why I obey you.”
“Is something else wrong?” I asked since I noticed she wasn’t looking up at me when she spoke. It could have just been that she was working on cutting the sinew, but Sheela normally looked at me when we discussed our plans.
“You continue to ask me that,” Sheela said.
“Yeah, and you then explain to me that there is a problem. Then we talk about it and you feel better.”
“My feelings hardly matter in this case,” she said as she cut the last sinew off the bird.
“They matter to me,” I replied. “Is this about Trel and me? Or Galmine and me?”
“I have finished this task,” Sheela said as she tossed the last strap of sinew in the basket. “I will work to remove the corpses from this area and the trees that you wish to process.”
“Okay,” I said as I considered what to say next. Her tone made it apparent that she didn’t want to talk any more about it, so I really had two choices: press Sheela more, or give her some space. “I’m going to do a quick loop around the valley on Bob. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Very well,” Sheela said as she turned away from me.
I walked around the wall to where Bob was resting. The big parasaurs raised his head when I approached him, and I rubbed my hands across his snout.
“Hey buddy, did you have a good night sleep?”
He let out a soft toot, and I moved to climb up on his back. As soon as I was on top, he rose up on all fours, stretched out his body like a dog, and then let out another series of low toots. These noises were a little louder than his first greeting, and I suspected that they woke Trel, Galmine, and Kacerie up.
I turned Bob away from our wall and urged him to the edges of our clearing. He was getting more used to carrying me on his back, and the acceleration wasn’t as bumpy as it had been yesterday. I did a quick lap around the edges of the redwood grove surrounding the clearing but avoided the orange birds’ cave.
I hadn’t expected to see anything unusual in the clearing, so I rode Bob deeper into the redwoods. Dawn seemed to have the least amount of dinosaur activity, but I still startled some smaller birds, lizards, and a few large mammals that looked like a cross between a squirrel and a monkey.
I hit the hill on the north side of our clearing and checked over the valley as I rode toward the lake. The lack of a saddle meant I really couldn’t push Bob up to his max speed, but then again, going any faster would make it hard because of the wind stinging my eyes. We were someday going to have to learn how to make riding goggles, but I didn’t even know where to begin that process. Couldn’t you make glass with heated sand? How did you shape it? How did you cool it?
There was way too much to do, and here I was going for a bit of a joy ride.
Well, it wasn’t quite a joy ride. Yeah, Bob was really awesome to ride, and I felt like I was in control of a super fast tank, but I also needed to check our territory out, and I wanted to double check on the fire that Sheela and I had seen yesterday. Thoughts of a potential enemy tribe filled some of my dreams last night, and I wanted another look at the smoke.
I descended the jungle so I could ford the river, then I pushed Bob back on the low slope of the hill. I was getting really used to the trails we frequented to get through the valley, but now I realized my habits might put me in danger. I’d played plenty of first-person shooting games where I’d just camped a popular spot with a sniper rifle. How soon would someone figure out that this was a path we frequently took and set up an ambush?
I pushed my fears aside and focused on the task at hand. It was good for me to be concerned about this new danger, but there wasn’t much I could do about it this instant. All I could do was make tiny adjustments to my plan and then stick to that plan the best I could. I didn’t know my enemy, but I knew there was a potential enemy out there. I was already way wiser than I was yesterday, and I was tweaking my plans a bit to account for the new danger.
I made it to the crest of the lake’s valley and stopped Bob’s run. There was still a bit of smoke outside in the distance, but it looked like most of the fire had died down. It was what I expected to find, and I let out a sigh of relief. Hopefully, whatever was going on over there kept going on so that no one bothered to come this way.
I tapped my heels on Bob’s flank and he walked closer to the crest of the hill. The hand shaped lake spread out below me, and I scanned my eyes over the beaches. There were three triceratops in the same spot I’d seen them yesterday, a smaller group of parasaurs bathing in the finger next to the three-horns, and a group of large Komodo dragon looking dinos lounging on the sand on the far side of the lake. I had never seen this later species of dino, and I opened my Eye-Q so that I could identify them. Unfortunately, they were too far away, and I didn’t really feel like riding down there to get a closer look. I’d probably have to come back for more water and clay later today anyway, so I figured I could catch them at that time.
Since my Eye-Q was open, I tabbed through my attributes.
Strength: 4
Stamina: 3
Movement: 3
Special Skill: TAME -- Level 2.
“Alright!” I whispered out loud when I saw that my Stamina had gone up to a 3. I wished the Eye-Q would have told me exactly when it happened, but I reasoned that it probably occurred when I was sleeping and recovering from the day’s activities.
I set my eyes on the Level 2 of my Tame skill. The smallest trike of the trio down below was about two or three times the bulk of Bob, and Bob was fucking huge. I didn’t know if weight or aggression had anything to do with taming the dinos, but it made a lot of sense to factor it in. I wasn’t going to try one of the triceratops until I got my skill up to a 3, so I was going to have to level it up by taming more parasaurs.
But that could wait until I came back here with Sheela again. I told the blonde woman I’d only be gone for a few minutes, so I needed to get back before she got worried.
I turned Bob away from the lake and tore down the side of the hill. As I felt his legs pump and his back sway beneath me, I wondered if I’d ever get bored with this feeling of power. I was in complete control of t
he beast, and he changed his speed, direction, and gait as soon as I thought that he should.
Sheela did look a bit relieved when I returned, and I realized that I’d forgotten to bring a spear with me. As soon as Trel made the saddle for Bob, I’d have to make sure I kept one or two on him at all times. Maybe we’d also keep a bow and some arrows.
Trel, Galmine, and Kacerie were standing together at the mouth of our propped up gate, and they turned toward me when I stopped Bob a few feet from our wall.
“Good morning, Victor!” Galmine called out as she raised her hand toward me.
“Good morning, ladies,” I said.
“We await your instructions,” the gray-skinned woman said happily. “I have breakfast cooking. What else should we do? More water pots with the clay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Please teach Kacerie and Trel what you are doing, and then work on converting the sinew to cordage. We are also going to need more plant cordage so either Sheela or I will have to get you more later today.”
“I can get some,” Trel said, and I actually blinked in amazement.
“You’d be okay to gather ferns?” I asked her.
“Well, I wouldn’t be ‘okay’ with it, since it is beneath my elevated position as your lover-queen of our tribe, but being queen means that I have to take upon myself jobs that my serfs cannot do by themselves.”
“But Trel, I am also Victor’s lover. Does that mean I am a queen as well?” Galmine asked.
“Hmmm,” Trel said as she studied the stone-woman. “I suppose so, but don’t let the title interfere with your duties.”
“I won’t,” Galmine said.
“Wait,” Kacerie said. “Does this mean I have to sleep with Victor if I want any sort of social standing in our tribe?”
“No,” I said at the same time as Trel said “Yes.”
“No!” I said again as the spider-woman shook her head and frowned at me. “Kacerie, I’m not expecting you to sleep with me. I just need you to help Galmine with the pots, and then I want you to help us with the cordage. You are really good at weaving, and your talents help us out a bunch.”
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