Shared Between Them

by Korey Mae Johnson

  He frowned, but maintained his patience. “Ready for food, then? When was the last time you ate?”

  She found it difficult to keep her eyes held up from the bedspread. She raised her shoulders until they hitched near her ears. What had happened before she'd lost consciousness had finally hit her. These were the same men she'd tried to rob, who'd stripped and spanked her before apparently killing the giant of Blue Forest. They were the ones who had shoved their fingers up her virgin entrance and kissed her deeply, saying that she cried prettily.

  And they were now her husbands.

  “Don't keep us in suspense,” Taric said patiently.

  “I don't know. Wednesday, maybe.” It was Sunday, now. When she told them, Draevan swore and then stood up to pace the room. For reasons unknown to her, she felt pleased by his furious response.

  Taric left to go get something and then returned. “Draevan, relax,” Taric told him, since there seemed to be a cloud of anger fuming out of him. He came and sat down on the bed next to her hip, peeling the skin from a strange, orange piece of fruit.

  She blinked at it. It was an orange—she'd never had one of those before. Hell, they were nearly impossible to get this far north; they must have cost a fortune.

  “You, little girl, have been the cause of a lot of strife,” he told her, but he didn't sound unhappy. “We've been searching for you the last month complete. Luckily, we gave up and came back just before you were able to depart from this place entirely.”

  “Are you looking for an apology?” Because they weren't going to get one. “Or are you looking for my thanks?” They weren't going to get that, either! They only saved her life to pursue their own dark purposes.

  There was a warning behind Taric's dark green eyes, but he merely handed her a juicy slice of orange. “Eat that.” She did, mostly because out of the corner of her eye she could see Draevan look at her, and she didn't like his expression. It seemed foreboding, as if he was waiting for her to throw a tantrum.

  She was so agitated by her current situation that she nearly forgot to enjoy the delicious juice of the orange slice sliding down her throat. She’d seen them before, but she’d never had the opportunity to steal one and thus hadn’t ever tried one. It was astounding how savory the flavor was; her mouth was almost pained by the overwhelming gratification it felt.

  Taric continued in a patient tone, but his brow was scrunched with frustration. “I don't know where this aggression from you is coming from, Kyra. You stole from us. We didn't come looking for you; we were merely in the position to catch you red-handed. And as for your crimes: we had nothing to do with them, your capture, your trial, or your sentencing. I can promise you that being our wife is better than being hung for the entertainment of ten thousand people. If you only do as you're told, you will feel quite spoiled.”

  ‘Spoiled’ was quite a word for it. It sounded like she was going to be forced to do whatever they willed under threat of a beating. “If I don't, you'll spank me!” she accused, trying to make him feel guilty for what he'd done.

  “Of course we will! What else do you expect us to do with a bull-headed little elfling?” he returned, furrowing his eyebrows at her. He handed her another slice of orange. “You no longer have to lie, cheat, poach, or steal any longer. You will be given everything you desire; you only have to be obedient, respectful, and bear us sons.”

  “You can't just breed me like some filly!” she snapped, red-faced. It was impossible, anyway. She’d never heard of a cross between the two species. They were too different to imagine such a thing.

  Taric merely shrugged at that. “We can, actually. Your acceptance of all this is really not required. Whether you enjoy it or not is up to you.” He handed her another slice. “But I think you will.”

  She clenched her teeth, feeling like her whole body was shaking with fury. She seemed to have come across the path of men who were interested in protecting her from everything except themselves!

  The worst of it was that she didn’t have any other choice. They were her husbands—she was merely a slave to their wishes, and she already knew not to try their tempers. They were larger than her, faster than her, stronger than her, and they would soon be taking what was theirs, which was her body.

  She swallowed. “You bathed me, didn't you?” she asked flatly, feeling churlish.

  “Draevan and I did, yes,” he replied unapologetically. “We wanted to inspect you, anyway, to look for injuries, parasites, and rat bites. You were in a dungeon for a month.”

  “Romantic,” she snorted, embarrassed by the act and by his clinical tone.

  He smirked. “I thought it was incredibly romantic of us. We're your white knights, my dear, right out of a fairy story.”

  “I’ve never heard a fairy story that ends with rape,” she sneered.

  “Well, normally those stories don't have women who are as stubborn as you are.”

  “Talk about stubborn! Why were you so interested in keeping me, anyway? There's a kingdom full of elves here, you know. You could have had your pick. Why me?”

  “You appealed to us.”

  “Why do you even care? You could have just killed me. That's normally what people do with thieves. Thieves make poor slaves, you know.” She crossed her arms, refusing to take any more orange from him.

  “Apparently,” he agreed, rolling his eyes. “But we weren't going to kill you. Never had such a thing ever crossed our minds. Draevan has a sixth sense, you know. He can quite read what's in a person's heart.”

  “That's ridiculous!” she said, aghast. “You're humans! You have no magical ability whatsoever!”

  “He's never failed. Gets it from his mother. She was a well-known soothsayer,” he told her, his tone resolute. He truly did believe in Draevan's ability… As strange as it sounded. It figured; these men were from the North… The most superstitious realm in creation. Every village there had its own seers, legends, myths, and foretellings. “She knew we'd both come together to slay the giant of the Blue Forest.” Well, that explained their confidence in themselves…

  “And,” Taric added casually, “we chose you because you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” He put down the orange peel on the side table. “And we've met many.”

  Her cheeks felt hot when he said that. She had never ever been known as pretty, particularly by anyone who had seen another elf. Her brothers, although they loved her, used to tease that she was so ugly that she could break their looking glass.

  Nothing about her was beautiful! Her cheeks were too pink, her eyes were too gold, her lips too red, and her teeth her were too white. She had freckles, which were disgusting, and because she was untouchable and out-casted, she could never find anyone who would touch her long enough to give her a piercing. Tattoos? She only had the ones that showed up on her fingers magically after her family died off one by one. She had nothing about her to attract any sort of a mate!

  For a moment, she was sure that he was teasing her, but the more she looked at him, the more she decided that he was being sincere. They did, for whatever strange reason, think she was pretty.

  “Besides, you're appearing like the type of girl who needs two husbands just to keep an eye on you,” he added off-handedly, causing the beginnings of her smile to stop in motion. He wasn't noticing; his attention was on Draevan now, who was still stomping around and muttering to himself on the other side of the room. “You okay over there, Drae?”

  “Three days without food or water? What's wrong with these people?” was the response received. “That's it. I'm getting my war hammer. What I'll do with it, I don't know, but—!” his voice drained out as he stomped into an adjoining room.

  Taric sighed and put a hand across her knee and squeezed it lightly. “Drink another cup of water,” he told her, handing her the mug she had refused earlier. “And we'll see how well you keep down the bit of orange. I want you to continue to rest and build up your strength for the journey home. I'll be back to watch over you as soon as I get D
raevan to calm himself down.”

  She gave a nod, and he turned his back on her to follow Draevan out to the adjoining room.

  Years from now, she would still wonder what she was thinking when she pushed the covers down, tightened the belt around the robe the men had dressed her in, and looked for an escape route.

  After all, if she didn’t escape, she was looking at a fate far worse than getting her clothes stripped off.

  If she could only make it into the woods, she could be safe. Whether or not she could use her magic to hide herself away from them now that they were wed didn’t matter—she had grown up in those woods, and she felt she could evade anyone in the maze-like forest. It was astounding that the humans hadn’t landed themselves in the ample amounts of quicksand outside of the kingdom yet! But the problem was getting to the forest, and for that, she needed an escape route, and there didn’t seem to be any good ones that were readily available, save one. The window.

  She grabbed at the nearest window and ran her fingers along it. She had seen other people open windows before, but she had never actually done it herself… She’d never had a window to open. Presently, she pulled up on the window pane until it creaked open from the bottom.

  A flurry of wet, cold wind carrying a heavy mist blew into the room, and she poked her head outside and looked down. The stone seemed easy enough to scale down, especially after her experiences at rock and tree climbing, but she had never climbed anything that was this high from the ground. The height was enough to make anyone dizzy.

  She turned and listened closely to make sure the men were still in deep conversation, yapping back and forth in their strange language. She took a deep breath then and, checking the security of her robe, she carefully reached her legs out the window and began the lengthy climb to the bottom. Not only had she decided that she’d do this, but she’d also decided she’d be on the ground before her husbands realized she was gone.

  After she was a good twenty feet below her room’s window, she nearly slipped and fell to her death, because the tower was far more slippery than she’d thought it’d be, and her urgency to climb down in a hurry had made her movements jerky and clumsy. She looked down, recognized she still had over a hundred feet left to scale, and promptly felt like a fool. Hugging herself to the wall until her fingers turned white, she was beginning to grumble about how stupid she was. “Really stupid!” She took another step, and her foot couldn’t find another solid holding. She looked down and decided that, if she fell, she might actually go ‘splat!’ “I can’t do this!” she gasped to herself, trying to keep her body from shuddering. She could feel fear radiating from her body, chilling her even more than the air.

  Sex with a couple of human men, she was deciding, on a nice cushy bed, in a nice warm room, for the rest of their lives, surely couldn’t be worse than death. Plus, she was an immortal and might even outlive them. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t after being bound together in the marriage ceremony—there was also a good probability that they now had the ability to live forever just like any other elf-kin; that’s why an elf-wife was such a good catch for a human in the first place!

  But it didn’t matter. A thousand years as a slave was better than going ‘splat’ anywhere.

  Was it disgusting to lower herself in such a manner to a race below her own, even though she was what the elves called 'untouchable'? Well, yes, of course it was. Still, shame was something she could live with, just as long as it came without the… well, going ‘splat’.

  “Help me…” she whispered to nobody in particular. She knew her husbands were too far away to hear her and come to her aid, but somehow she found herself too frightened to even make too much noise, as if a scream’s vibration would shatter the very stone she was gripping onto for dear life.

  “Kyra!”

  She closed her eyes, not daring to look up. It was hard enough to claw her fingers into the stone. It didn’t change that she was intensely grateful that the men had looked out the window and seen her about thirty feet down and frozen there. Possibly, if they weren't too angry with her, they might even help.

  “I'm coming for you. Hold on!” she soon heard Taric’s voice promise from somewhere above her. She tried to look up but was rewarded by small rocks and dust falling into her eyes, making her look down again.

  Before she could believe it, Taric was next to her with a rope tied around his waist. He moved in a way so that his body covered hers and he slowly helped her peel away from the wall. “This was a poorly planned idea, wasn't it?” he lectured darkly when she turned and latched her arms and legs tightly around him until he was nearly gasping for breath. He looked up, “Alright, Draevan! I've got her!”

  The rope pulled them both up, which was surprising. Together, they must have been quite a weight for Draevan, since Taric couldn’t have been too much lighter than him, even by himself!

  “You could have probably gone right out the front door,” Taric grumbled curtly in her ear. “But no. No, you're too clever for that. You had to scale down the building. Oh, gods. You are in so much trouble; you can’t even comprehend how much.”

  He was half right. She didn't comprehend it right then, perhaps, since she was feeling quite relieved at not having fallen to her death. However, comprehension seeped in as soon as Draevan pulled them through the window. When she saw the dark and animalistic look in his eyes, she actually did grasp how much trouble she was in:

  She was in more trouble than she could handle.

  * * *

  With a final heave, Draevan watched as Taric pushed Kyra up through the tall window where she crawled back into the room. Kyra, her fingers gripping the floor desperately, reminded him of a half-drowned kitten with the way the heavy mist had wetted down her robe and white hair. He nearly forgot about Taric; all Draevan could think about was how much Kyra looked like someone who needed a man’s arms around her.

  He and Taric had been discussing the proper care of Kyra now that she was awake. She was already surly-tongued with them, but neither of them thought she was in a well enough state to accept any sort of discipline. She hadn't even seemed ready to be made love to!

  They had been eager to punish her for running away from them when she’d promised to stay that one day in the forest, but now that they had her for their own, utterly and legally, they didn’t feel the urge. Instead of discipline, they had decided that their new wife needed understanding and patience until she could assume her role as their wife. After the ordeal she’d just been through, they figured she needed some tender loving care more so than a firm-handed pair of husbands.

  It was so quiet in the next room where they thought Kyra had still been that they'd assumed she was sleeping. They might have talked even longer if Draevan hadn't felt a strange feeling inside his stomach, as if his insides had been doused with ice water. It was a horrible feeling, and when he glanced up from his own abdomen, he saw Taric press his hand against his own stomach, uncannily feeling the same way at the same time.

  It had been right then that they looked at each other and knew Kyra was in trouble. How they knew, Draevan couldn't be sure, but the feeling of dread was undeniable. Then they searched through an empty room only to finally recognize a chill coming from an open window that Draevan couldn't even get his shoulders through. Even Taric had barely been able to fit himself outside.

  Now, he looked at her, and he felt a warm feeling come into his chest once again. As soon as Taric was half-way through the window, Draevan dropped the rope and rushed to grab ahold of Kyra. Her body was cold from the winter night air and the misty rain, and she was shaking as he held her to him.

  Taric closed the window after he'd climbed in and looked at them, flipped some of his dark hair out of his eyes, then crossed his arms over his chest.

  As soon as Draevan was assured she was uninjured, anger finally emerged and spread quickly through him. He pulled away from her, and she looked up at him with shiny, fearful eyes. Damn right they were fearful! She had been spanked befo
re by him, and he knew that she wasn't stupid. She had to have known that he was going to make that last spanking look like patty-cake!

  Draevan grabbed the fluffy belt around her robe and unknotted it with frustrated movements. She began to try to pull away from him, but he tugged her robe forward until she stood still enough that he could peel the robe off of her slender, pale shoulders,

  To say she didn’t like being stripped was an understatement. Though they had already seen her naked, even as recently as an hour ago, she fought to keep the hem of her robe closed between her breasts. He quickly lost patience with her struggling and spun her around to land a firm, resounding slap on her round little bottom.

  “Behave!” he warned her in a bark that was loud enough to startle her still for a moment, long enough for him to grab her robe and pull it straight off her body until she was standing naked in front of the fire, trying to cover her body as much as possible with her two small hands.

  He was upset with her, but even so her beauty in the room’s firelight wasn’t at all lost on him. She was absolutely gorgeous naked, and he could feel his animalistic urges blister within him, but he ignored them. He would take her soon, but for now, she needed someone to lay down the law. Women needed structure and discipline; it was like his grandfather had always said. So, instead of pulling to the floor and rutting over her until both of them were sweaty and exhausted with satisfaction, Draevan grabbed her wrist and dragged her over to the bed.

  Taric didn't say anything, merely trudged behind them supportively. When Draevan forced her up on the bed, she immediately tried to scurry to the far side, closing her hands around her bare, milky white breasts. “Please!” she cried. “I'm sorry! I really am! It was stupid, but I'm sorry!”

  “Bend over the bed,” he growled, grabbing for his belt. “I am going to beat your ass until it glows!”

  Her eyes rounded. “No, no!” she cried, putting up her hands. “P-please. I'll be good.”