by Naomi Lucas
Rolling my tongue, plunging in and out of the tiny indent on her belly, I rut it with my tongue the way I want to thrust between her legs.
Gemma trembles and I ram my tongue into her navel harder.
“Oh!” Her shocked cry drives me to a frenzy, shunting my pelvis hard against the floor as she grips my head and writhes. “Lower, please, lower.” She squeezes her legs closed, trapping my head between them.
I tear them open and bend her up, holding her legs prone until her sex is spread and bare to my view. I press my face into it. Slick, warm arousal dampens my mouth, nose, and cheeks as I nuzzle her sex. “Female,” I rasp.
“What are you doing!?” she whimpers.
I spill a little as she tries to pull her legs from my grip. I hold them tighter and keep them where I want them. Spread wide.
“Worshiping you,” I rumble, breathing in her arousal. She squeaks cutely when I plunge my tongue inside her. Stars blanket my vision as her taste explodes in my mouth. A dark fervor grips me, and I rut her little, quivering hole as hard as I ravaged her navel. My member scrapes across the floor.
She dances wildly, her cries higher, louder, with each rough flick. I push my tongue as deep, licking everywhere. I’ve bathed her every day, but I never got to clean her here, inside her, the place that, when I think about it, makes me little more than an animal. I wanted to slip my fingers in and feel her here. My aching member dreamed about burying deep as she slept, only to wake her to mindless bliss.
If she woke to bliss, then she wouldn’t wake to pain.
But I stayed away, not wanting to hurt her further.
She’s close. Her nails dig into the scales on my shoulders, and I curl my tongue to lick the rough spot of flesh that makes her scream. Truly scream. She tenses, her thighs gripping my head hard, and I thrust my member frantically.
“I’m going to—I’m going to come!” she shrieks.
I coil the tip of my tail around the middle of her body and squeeze her—simultaneously, I reach between us and pinch her nub.
Her whole body strains, her sex constricts.
And then she pierces my den with her beautiful scream.
Yesss!
I jerk back to watch her come undone. Gemma writhes, limbs tense, and cries out, grabs me, and tries to bring me back between her legs.
“Don’t leave me,” she begs, arching up and slumping, only to arch her back again. Seeing her like this excites me. Seeing her sex tremble makes me spill across my floor.
She begs me some more to return, riding out her bliss. When she begins to come down, I sink two fingers into her, stretching her brutally once they're seated in her quivering sex. She flails, and I quickly catch her wrapped feet with my tail. I hold them in the air, lifting her lower back off the floor. Her makeshift dress comes apart and falls off her body.
“What are you doing?” she squeaks again, her arms now above her head as she tries to free her legs from my tail. She fails.
“Preparing you,” I grunt.
I plunge my fingers in and out of her as I grab my member and position it, lowering.
Her wide eyes meet mine, and sweat sheens her brow. Her shocked expression stokes me into a frenzy. I want to sink my entire soul into her and remember this image of her so caught and trapped and open before me. Her legs are straight in the air, her knees locked and trapped in my tail holding her prone. Her head lifts to stare at me as I thrust my fingers deep into her.
I thought I wanted her to use her tongue all over me, but I like this far more. I prepare her with my hand, guiding my member to her as I do. I slip my fingers out of her swollen hole and start pushing my shaft into her.
I loosen my hold on her legs so her knees bend to the sides, opening her up as far as I can so she can take me easier. I sink in to my bulge.
My nostrils flare as she clenches me, pulling me closer.
“Mine,” I hiss, cupping her thighs and slamming my large bulge into her, pushing through muscle that fights to keep me out, stretching her more than my fingers ever could.
I roar as she takes it all, as her head drops back, and she cries out for me. My name echoes through the bunker. I sway my hips side to side working the rest of the way into her.
Heaven hails me as she takes everything I give her. It’s my own shock that stops me as she constricts around my bulge, putting painful pressure there. I snarl.
“Female, you take risks,” my voice is guttural, rough.
“Thank you,” she gasps in response, confusing me, clenching again.
“What?”
“For saving my life.”
I release her legs, dropping down atop her, forcing her back to the floor. “Don’t thank me,” I snap. I don’t like it.
But she squeezes around me again, and I forget her words. My head drops beside hers, and I roll my hips hard. She moans, and I do it again.
I lose myself.
Jerking out, thrusting back in, snapping my hips. She takes my bulge with each hard shunt, and I make her do it again and again. Each time, a mewl leaves her parted lips, addicting me. I speed up as her body adjusts to accept me. She works our rhythm too, squeezing and releasing.
Before long, I’m rutting her in a craze, unable to keep control. Her noises excite me, her accepting body tormenting me, and all I want is to possess it.
If I’m inside her, then there’s no place she can go that I won’t be there with her.
My member surges and grows.
“Gemma,” I moan, coiling further around her body, bending painfully. “Gemma,” I repeat her name with each hard thrust.
She claws at my back, and I erupt.
Spill drains out. The intensity drowns out everything else. Her limbs grip me as I grip her back, and I shake, filling her with everything I have. More and more spill drains from my member, shooting pleasure up and down my spine. I sag into her, unable to hold myself up, as the last of it leaves me.
My loins produce more seed as my orgasm slowly fades, never fully allowing the pressure in my bulge to end.
I turn my face and nuzzle the hair plastered against her neck. I lick her throat.
She shudders, pushes her chin down, and slides her hand between her throat and my tongue. “Tickles,” she breathes.
I lick her fingers instead.
“Stooop,” she wails weakly. I rise over her.
Her brows are wrinkled, and she’s hiding her neck with her hands. I snap forward to try and taste her neck again, but she squirms away. “Nooo!”
I slip out from between her legs as she tries to flee, and I grab her, dragging her back under me. “Stay.”
“No more licking my neck!”
I tug out the pelt from under us, pulling it around her, curling her up in my tail and against my chest. The tension in her limbs eases as she settles into me. I reach up and streak my fingers through her hair.
She nuzzles my chest the same way I nuzzled her sex. A smile twitches my lips. She knows what I can give her. She knows that my world isn’t just dangerous but pleasurable too. We can make a life here, she and I, and it will be good.
No, there’s no other male for her, not here on Earth or above in the stars.
When she falls asleep, I carry her back to my nest, where I finally allow myself the honor of sleeping next to her.
Twenty-One
Questioning the Past
Vruksha
Over the next several days, I leave, hunt for fresh meat, and bring back fresh water for Gemma’s baths. I won’t let her topside, and she knows not to fight me about it. At least, for now.
She spends her time making clothes out of pelts, first by ripping the old ones into strips. Then she uses those strips to tie other, thinner pelts into place. I help when I can, but my knowledge is limited, never needing clothes to cover me.
We fall into a pleasant routine.
Since our rutting, she looks at me differently, and I don’t know why. Her expression seems distant sometimes yet always focused, and I can only imagine t
he thoughts running through her head. I try not to worry about it.
When the silence lingers a little too long between us for my liking, I pull her close with my tail and make her moan.
So when she stops trying to make clothes and starts wobbling her way around the bunker, examining my treasures and trying to figure them out, I can’t help but stop cleaning my gutting knife and follow her, catching her every time her legs give out, curious as to what she’s doing.
What she is learning.
“What’s in this?” she asks, moving to yet another large crate pushed up against the wall of my den. They’ve been here forever, filled with supplies from when I first discovered this place. Half the crates had been open and looted when I first arrived, and there were bones of humans who died down here, preserved after the destruction, but I don’t tell her that.
It was long ago that I cleaned this place out. A long, long time ago. Those ghosts are gone.
“Medical supplies,” I tell her. “This one has syringes, radios, and flashlights.”
She cocks her head, and a strange expression crosses her face at my response. I wait for her to say more, but she glances around the bunker like she’s trying to figure something out. It’s the same expression that eludes me.
“Vruksha, how do you know the common tongue? It’s been bothering me, all of this.” She waves her hand at the bunker. “We were told there were animals, ruins, and a broken world awaiting us... We were never told of you. How are you here? Where did you come from? Are you… a Lurker?”
Her questions surprise me. “I’ve always been here. I’m a naga, not a Lurker.”
Doesn’t she know what a Lurker looks like?
“But what’s a naga? That doesn’t make any sense to me. A thousand years ago, trees and vegetation were just returning to Earth, and you, well, you’re half-human, half-serpent, and sentient. You say all your females are gone… How is that possible?”
“They left, together, those that remained.”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did they leave? Should I… should I be worried?” She looks at me.
“No, female, you shouldn’t be worried,” I say, going to her. “They left because they were dying when they mated. All of them. My sisters… All the nagas of my generation came of age around the same time.” Now that I say it, the timing is a little strange. “Our mothers died giving birth to their litters, but we were not communicating much then, and so this travesty wasn’t known until after they were all gone. To lose a mate… to outlive your female… It shamed my father, and so I assume it shamed the other older males as well, so they never spoke of it. It wasn’t until my generation came of age that we realized what was going on. Our females were dying during birth, all of them.”
“Oh,” Gemma whispers.
“After it was known, we couldn’t save those who were already gestating, and tensions rose. Females stopped taking mates, and we had to fight every day to keep those that remained alive. There were males who… did not care. And mates who tempted death just to lay with a female. And it was those males who valued rutting over the lives of females who destroyed us. The clans tore apart and those, like me and Azsote, who forsook females, embraced the strife it caused because we knew that death would inevitably follow. The remaining female nagas decided to leave. They left their mates, their families, and have not returned. They went west, and no one has seen them since.”
“And the males who drove them away?”
“Hunted down and killed.”
She exhales. “Have you or anyone else ever tried finding them?”
“Some have. Most who make the pilgrimage return alone, and the rest never return at all. I never wanted to find them.”
“Why?”
“After growing up with a father who missed his mate every single day, I did not want the burden of a female.”
Her face falls but then it’s gone, still there’s a wrinkle in her brow left behind.
“Where is he now?” she asks quietly.
“He left. My sisters were gone. My mother, gone. I like to think he found my remaining sisters and is with them now, wherever they are.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
Gemma sits back. “Vruksha…”
I trap her in a circle of my limbs. “Female,” I say gravely. “Do not get any ideas. I will not let anyone else leave me.” I know what I’m saying to her, I know what she intends to do, but I need to make it clear that I cannot accept it.
Her face shutters. She turns from me.
“So, you were born here,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And your parents?”
“What about them?”
“They were born here too?” Her curiosity has already returned.
“Where else would they be born, if not here?”
“Your grandparents?”
I stare at her, confused. Grandparents? “I don’t have any.”
“Your father never spoke of his parents? Ever?”
Now that I think of it, no. “Those questions angered him.”
Gemma’s brow wrinkles. “Hmm.”
“Do not worry about my past. It is the past. It is unchangeable.”
I see thoughts running through her head and the confusion in her eyes, and it bothers me. She asks questions I haven’t thought of since I was a young naga trying to understand my world. With Gemma here, there’s something not entirely right about it.
I’ve always known something was off but never dwelled on it. Where was I going to find answers anyway? The screens never helped. The orbs never understood. My father and other nagas only ever gave vague answers, if they answered at all. Did they even know? Did they wonder too?
Someone must know… right?
An idea forms.
“Let me show you something,” I rasp, changing the subject, moving my mind from where it wanders. I want to hear her laugh again. I pull my tail to me and rise, scooping her into my arms.
Though what I want to show her might not make her laugh, it might do the opposite. Still, it is something I think she needs to see.
“Where are you taking me? I can try walking there if it isn’t far.”
“You’ll see,” I tell her, heading for another door. It’s hidden behind several large crates that I push away.
She wiggles in my arms. “We’re leaving the bunker?” There’s excitement in her voice.
I open the door with my tail. “Yes, but we are not going above.”
Darkness meets us on the other side, and I carry her into it.
Twenty-Two
Origins
Gemma
Vruksha carries me into a dark hallway, through a door I didn’t even know was there because it was blocked by crates. There are so many crates, so many old things. I’ve learned Vruksha is a collector. Of random odds and ends.
Old human kitchenware, furniture, and even little knickknacks that have no meaning. Things that have survived the last fifteen hundred years and a planetary apocalypse. Some things he doesn’t even have a name for, and when we asked the orb, it didn’t know either.
I’m coming to understand how Vruksha knows the common tongue, finding my answers on my own. The orbs speak it. And some of the ‘better maintained’ orbs can even project a screen.
The longer I’m in it, the more his world makes more sense to me. There’s so much more potential here than I think the rest of humanity realizes. I’m a little surprised it’s taken humans so long to coordinate an official expedition, but then I remember the pictures and stories of the previous times humans returned to Earth. Extra limbs, growths…
Tails?
I chew on my lip and push the thought away.
Even if Vruksha might be a descendant of humans who may have broken space law and returned to Earth long ago, I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure. I don’t see records lying around. And it’s obvious a history like that wasn’t handed dow
n or talked about with Vruksha.
The way he speaks of me going to the stars, though...
The darkness closes in as he takes me deeper. This isn’t just another side room like the one with the generator. It’s a tunnel, and as a chill breezes my skin, I snuggle into Vruksha for warmth.
I can walk later, I decide. I’m getting better every day. The pain in my body has dulled to a throbbing ache.
And now that I ache between my legs as well, I spend less time thinking about my torn-up feet. The tea he gives me helps too. He’s taught me how to make it—with something called Willow Bark—that he collects and brings back from above.
A blush rises to my cheeks as my mind wanders to the near-rabid way he gets when he knows I’ll accept him. His eyes darken and glint with hunger. When he pushes his cock’s bulge into me, forcing me each time to take it, he loses his mind.
I woke this morning to his tailtip pushing inside me, his fangs grazing my backside. He said he wanted me to wake up to pleasure rather than pain.
It’s why I ache between my legs right now. I’ve accepted this thing between us. Curiously, maybe eagerly.
At first, I thought it was animal magnetism and my own lack of connection for so long. Only for me to be thrust into Vruksha’s arms—literally—at my worst moment. I could explain away these feelings as a result of being vulnerable and afraid, but now… I don’t feel so vulnerable anymore, and I still want him.
I like how he makes me feel. Safe, cared for, cherished… All things my job on The Dreadnaut used to make me feel. Although, I know now it was all an illusion.
I wiggle in his embrace, knowing he’ll grip me harder when I do.
His fingers tense around my limbs, and I smile.
I like Vruksha. A lot. He is straightforward, honest to a fault, and headstrong.