His words couldn’t touch her now. She sat on the platform with her children, but she couldn’t stop smiling. As far as she was concerned, the young man in the next room was as much her child as Rami climbing into her lap. “How are we going to find out who he is?”
“Do you want to find out who he is?” Leflin asked. “I thought you’d be happy to keep him to yourself for the rest of your life.”
Leroni only smiled. “You can joke all you want. I’ll take care of him until he gets better, and we’ll find out who he is and who his people are. Then he can go home.”
Leflin stretched out on the platform, and Mila jumped on top of him until he bellowed. He wrestled her onto her back and tickled her until she screamed and struggled to get away. “There’s no way we can find out who he is if he can’t tell us. It’s a hopeless case.”
Leroni shook her head. “There must be a way.”
Chapter 4
Leroni gazed down at her children sleeping in a row on the platform in the other sleeping chamber. The aurora’s light glowed on Rami’s little cheeks and Mala’s high forehead. Leroni smiled down at them. She wanted to kiss them, but she tiptoed away and shut the door.
Then she opened the door of the other sleeping chamber and looked down at the sleeping form under the shaggy robe. He lay still with his eyes closed, and his breath rising and falling moved the robe’s fur. The aurora shone on his cheekbones, too, and on his pointed ears. Anybody who could sleep like that must not be too far gone. Maybe in the morning he would be more coherent.
She shut the door softly and returned to the main room. One lamp burned on a shelf next to the platform, and Leflin lay stretched out on his back with his head propped up on pillows. His eyebrows went up when she appeared. “Are all your babies tucked into their beds?”
She only smiled at him. “Yes, they are. Thank you for asking.” She sat down on the platform next to his legs.
“What do you hope to accomplish with this charity mission you’re on?” he asked.
“I don’t hope to accomplish anything with it,” she replied, “other than to help a young man in need. Once he gets better, or we find out who his people are, he can go.”
Leflin cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure about that?”
“What do you mean?” she returned. “Why would I say it if I wasn’t sure of it?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep him?” Leflin asked. “Are you sure you don’t want to incorporate him into your brood?”
Leroni smacked him on the side of the leg. Leflin shot up from the platform with a yowl and grabbed his leg. “What was that for?”
“You’re deliberately baiting me,” she grumbled. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Leflin settled back on the platform and adjusted the pillows under his head. “I was not. Anyway, you have to admit your taking him in like that was odd, to say the least.”
“It was not odd,” she shot back. “All I did was help a person who needed help. You would have left him out on the riverbank to freeze or starve. You haven’t got a decent bone in your body.”
He gasped. “What’s gotten into you?”
Leroni crossed her arms and turned away. “You think I’ve got some kind of designs on that young man, but I don’t. I just couldn’t turn my back on him. Maybe you would leave him out there to die, but I wouldn’t. What would Renier say, or what would the Lycaon Alpha....what’s his name?”
“Caleb,” Leflin replied.
“What would Caleb say,” she went on, “if he found out we left one of his people to die alone in sight of our city? You could kiss our peace effort good-bye.”
Leflin sighed and lay down flat. “You’re right. You’re always right. It just knocked me off balance that he wound up staying in our apartment, in the next room to our children, and now you’re treating him like one of our children.”
“Leflin!” she exclaimed.
He raised his head. “It’s true. Admit it.”
“I’m treating him the same way I would treat anyone else we found in the same situation,” she argued. “Would you be so upset about it if I took in Anna if she was stranded and sick on the riverbank?”
“Of course not,” he shot back. “That’s different.”
“It’s different,” she returned, “because she’s a woman. Is that it?”
“Now just hold on there....” he began.
“You think I have some attraction to him,” Leroni told him. “You think I’m hot for him.”
Leflin arched his head back and howled. “Hot for him! Listen to her!”
Leroni smacked him again. “Be quiet. You’ll wake the children.”
He chuckled and shook his big head. His mane swished back and forth on the pillow. “I never thought any such thing.”
Leroni kicked him and turned her back on him, but she stayed sitting next to him on the platform. “I’m not talking to you anymore.”
Leflin laughed. Then he leaned forward and tried to grab her arm. “Come here.”
She yanked her arm out of his grasp and humphed. Leflin sat up and laid his hand on her back. “Come here.”
She snapped over her shoulder. “Go away.”
He smiled at the back of her head, but he didn’t lay down. He rubbed her back with his big warm hand. Then he took hold of both her shoulders and, in one motion, he turned her around and pulled her down next to him on the platform.
She tipped over and lay down next to him with her head on his chest. He sighed and settled back into his place with one arm around her shoulder. He rubbed her back and stroked her head. Then he kissed her on the head.
They lay in silence for a while. Then Leflin kissed her again and grinned to himself. “Are you hot for him?”
Leroni reared up with a snort, but he held her down. Mischievous laughter bubbled out of his barrel chest. Leroni fought his embrace and beat his chest with her fists. “You clod!”
He laughed and held her against him. “I was just joking.”
She gave him one last vicious swat and collapsed again on his chest. “It’s not funny.”
He caught his breath again. “You’re right, dear. It’s not.”
Leroni lay still and seethed. “Why do you have to be such a beast?”
“Because I love you,” he murmured.
She lifted her head and kissed him, and he pressed her down on his wide chest. They kissed, longer, and longer, until they didn’t stop. Leflin turned partially on his side to face her, and Leroni rose on her elbow to bring her face closer to his.
He drew her closer until he pulled her right up on top of his chest, and still they kissed and kissed. Leroni’s body draped over him, and his arms enclosed her. He rubbed her back through her linen shift, over her hips and back up to the small place at the back of her neck. If she hesitated and started to retreat, he stroked her head and held her close. If he hesitated and broke his lips away from her, she kissed him harder and ran her fingers through his mane.
Each time she brought him back, he stroked her back and his hands cupped her hips. He pulled her down into him. Leroni sighed, and her flesh draped over him. He bucked his bulging crotch against her, and the shift rode up her legs. Her bare knees sprang free and slid down either side of his legs.
Their breath came faster. Leroni kept her eyes closed, but Leflin watched her hovering over him. An angelic glow shone around her eyes, and the lines of care vanished from her forehead. He saw the young Leroni he mated with so long ago and held her in his arms as he hadn’t done in years.
A low rumble rolled out of Leroni’s throat. Her hips rocked back and forth over his and her spine undulated with her own internal rhythm. Leflin’s blood boiled, and he struggled to control himself, but he held himself in check. He would hold back and let her work herself to the pitch of frenzy. Then she would explode with her own passion.
Leroni passed from that self-conscious state of communion with Leflin into an ethereal
out-of-body state. She left the planet and drifted in her own desire. Nothing remained of her body but a mirage for Leflin to touch, a vision of the heart she let him love all these years.
He massaged her buttocks through her dress, and her knees parted further. Her forehead furrowed in concentration, and she rubbed her petal-soft lips against his crotch. He pushed her hips down harder, and she moaned under her breath.
All of a sudden, her eyes popped open and met his. Her accusing consciousness saw right through him and reduced him to insignificance, but her flesh didn’t turn hard the way it was before. It remained pliable, open, and hungry.
“Sit up,” he croaked. “Sit up high.”
Wild abandon flickered in her eyes. In an instant, raging passion set her body and soul on fire, and nothing could hold her back. Leflin pulled her dress the rest of the way up over her hips and buttocks. She sat up straight and straddled him. Her nostrils flared, and her teeth showed through her parted lips.
Leflin lay back on his pillow and gazed up at her in awe. He never loved her half so much as when she was like this—unchained, unstoppable. She gritted her teeth in animal desire and balled up his shirt in her fists. With one yank, she ripped his shirt open and tossed the two cloth fragments aside. She ran her fingers through the shaggy hair on his chest and growled through her clenched teeth.
She closed her fingers around two handfuls of his chest hair and dug her verdant flesh into his bulging cock. She ground her hips against him and drove him wild. He bucked up against her and gripped her thighs on either side of his hips. Her eyes blazed with insane fire. She would pounce on him and devour him as a predator devours its prey, and he would die in ecstasy, torn to pieces in her teeth.
She set to work on his pants. She clawed them open and pushed them down to reveal the nest of coarse hair between his legs. He kicked his legs free and spread his knees to make a flat place for her to sit. Every kick of her hips opened them wider, and the slick juice soaked through her dress and into his hair.
His cock jumped up to meet her as soon as she freed it. She leaned forward to kiss Leflin, and it eyed her gaping fissure with its one all-seeing eye. In a flash, she mounted it, and it disappeared inside her. Squeaks of excitement mingled with the rumbling in her throat. She didn’t need to kiss him anymore, and she reared back to sit upright.
Leflin gasped, and his hips bucked upwards into her spine. She moaned and writhed on his spike, but her bones and sinews only softened more and more with every beat. She rocked her hips forward and back, and every stroke sent a gush of hot juice down his shaft and dripping through his hair. Her wet thighs slapped against his hips, and the juice lubricated his buttocks to kick against her harder.
Leroni passed once more into that unearthly state where her body detached itself from him. Her head lolled back, her mouth fell open, and her eyes closed. Leflin no longer touched and held a living female. Pure light ran through his fingers where they dug into her thighs. Radiant energy poured out of her to baptize him in her glorious essence. Some of her angelic power transformed him and changed the hot syrup dripping from the end of his cock into liquid gold, liquid starlight, which jetted through her into the heavens and returned to its origins in the sky.
Leroni rode him faster, harder. The harder he bucked her around, the faster she rode. Her fingers untwined from his chest hair, and she leaned back to rest her hands on his knees. She rammed her hips down against him with unimaginable power. How could any female contain desire that strong and live to tell the tale? But she did. She always did. Every time she let him release her from her mortal confinement, she astonished him with her power to unleash herself. She let loose a torrent of passion on him and the world so strong he had to close his eyes against it.
That’s where she got the strength and power to mother her children through difficulties and hardships that would devastate a man. She drew on her bottomless well of energy to spread that love to the whole world around her and bring joy to everyone she could, and still enough love and power remained within her to anoint him with her magical elixir and make him whole.
He stared up at her. She didn’t even know what she was doing to him. The few times he tried to explain it to her, she closed her eyes and turned away. She only said, “Stop it.” So he did, but in his heart, he still worshiped the goddess of passion and wisdom who marked his wretched flesh with her balm and showed him her slice of heaven.
He couldn’t contain much longer the surges of electric power charging up his thighs and out through his cock. Every time she rocked her hips against him, he arched his back and pushed that power up into her, but she didn’t need any help from him. Her flesh stroked his throbbing member until he groaned in agony. He set his teeth and swore to himself he wouldn’t let himself go until she did.
But she was already too far gone for him to worry about that. She leaned another inch backwards so his cock jammed into her at a dangerous angle. She set her feet on the platform and pushed against him. Her pelvis tortured him, but that exquisite pain only sent him into a dizzying spiral to orgasmic heights. He tried to buck deeper into her, but Leroni kept her own rhythm. She pumped him in and out of her steaming fissure.
Leflin recognized the signs of impending climax, but she managed to keep her voice down. Not even her own passionate release could override her maternal instincts. Instead of raising the rafters with screams and cries of ecstasy, she only gasped and panted and whined. Her body swayed above him in liquid light, carrying Leflin with her to the clouds of glory, until she collapsed onto his chest.
Chapter 5
Leroni led the young Lycaon man out of his sleeping chamber to the platform in the main room. She observed him out of the corner of her eye. He kept the shaggy robe wrapped around his shoulders and he didn’t look at the children running around his feet, but his shuffling step more closely resembled a regular walking step now. She barely had to guide him where she wanted him to go.
He slumped onto the platform and folded his legs up under him. The robe covered him from the neck down like a small tent. Rami kicked his brother away and ran to the platform. He put his face up close to the young man’s and stuck out his tongue. He blew his breath out and spat a long spitting noise into the young man’s face. Saliva spattered the young man’s cheeks.
Leroni grabbed Rami by the shirt and hauled him away. “What’s the matter with you? Leave him alone.”
Rami and the others went back to wrestling across the floor. Leroni bustled around the room. She took a folded cloth from a cupboard under the platform and tucked it under her arm. “I’m taking the kids down to Marmi’s. You can stay here and carry on with your work, Mala, if you want to.”
Mala glanced up from the other side of the room. She sat cross-legged on the floor with a stone pestle between her knees. She pounded something in the pestle with the mortar. “What about him?”
Leroni waved her hand. “He won’t bother you?”
“When will you be back?” Mala asked. “What if he needs something?”
“If he needs something,” Leroni replied, “give it to him. You can handle that, can’t you?”
Mala snorted. “How am I supposed to know if he needs something when he can’t tell me?”
Leroni chuckled. “If he needs something, you’ll know. If he doesn’t say anything and he just sits there, then leave him there. He won’t bother you.”
Mala pursed her lips and went back to her pounding. Leroni rounded up her three younger children and herded them out of the apartment. Mala glared at the door over her pestle. The last youthful shouts rang down the stairs and disappeared.
The young man didn’t move. He sat and stared straight in front of him the same way he did yesterday. Twice she lowered her eyes to her work and twice she stole another glance at him. All he ever did was sit there. How could a person sit in the same room with someone else and act as though they weren’t there?
Well, she couldn’t do that. He wasn’t dead yet. “Ar
e you hungry?”
He didn’t answer. She pounded her pestle harder than ever until the floor vibrated with the steady drumming, but he didn’t look up or even blink.
Mala started rambling to herself. She couldn’t sit silently in front of another person. “I always liked being by myself when Mother takes the kids out, but I guess you’re here now, so I won’t be. What would you like to talk about? I suppose you can’t tell me anything about your homeland. I never knew anything about the Lycaon, except what Renier told us. He’s the one who’s gotten out of the city the most, and he knows the Lycaon Alpha personally.”
Her eyes darted sideways toward the platform. The young man blinked in wonder. Was he listening?
“Do you know who Renier is?” she asked. “He’s Alpha of our faction, and he’s traveled to meet the other Alphas. Maybe you’ve seen him when he came to Lycaon territory. Then again, maybe you don’t live anywhere near the Lycaon Alpha, so you wouldn’t have seen him.”
When she stopped talking, no sound disturbed the room but her own pounding.
“He doesn’t look much different from my father,” she went on. “He might be a little taller, but you probably think all Felsite look the same. Renier’s hair is darker red, though. Some people think they’re related, but they aren’t. My mother is Renier’s sister. That’s how my father got chosen as Lieutenant Alpha to stand it Renier’s place until he gets back. He went to your territory to negotiate with your Alpha.”
She stopped pounding and cocked her head to one side. “It’s too bad you can’t tell us anything about your homeland. Maybe you could tell us why Renier hasn’t come back yet. It would be nice to know if he made it as far as your territory at all, or if something happened to him before he got there. He went with his mate, Carmen, and his daughter, my cousin, Reina.”
She regarded him, but he didn’t look up.
She set her pestle aside. “I might as well put this away. I can’t concentrate with you sitting there like a log.” She got up and crossed the room. She took a towel from the hook by the door and wiped her hands.
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