by Lena Austin
He waited only for her nod of agreement before continuing. “The third one is yellow, and heals physical ailments of a mild nature. The fourth is green, and restores the spirit. While it has never happened here that I am aware of, it is good for treating true madness.”
Kella started with surprise and sat back in her chair for a moment. “Not like the madness caused by being in heat?”
Tanne shook his head. “No. That is a physical malady.” He patted her hand. “It’s very rare, but upon occasion, the spirit of a being loses touch with what is real and what is not.”
“I will have to think on such a possibility. And what of the other pools? I know there are more.”
He grinned. “There are only three left. The blue pool cures most ills, even the most serious. The orange pool is the one I use the most. It is for birthings. It eases pain and makes a mother relax. It is large and deep enough even to accommodate a Dragon, if necessary.”
“That’s two. And the last?” Her voice held a hint of impatience she could no longer hide.
“The last is a white spring. Technically, it is nothing more than a hot spring where one might soak and indulge to be alone with the gods.”
Kella jumped up. “Aha! That one I know. And it is a pitiful excuse to have sex in the wild.”
Not that any place in the Valley was wild, but it was the illusion that mattered. The thought was that the extra stimulus of being “exposed,” that anyone might see, would assist some people to procreate.
She tossed her head and looked disdainful. “I cannot imagine that a particular location would make any difference in our ardor toward one another, but a soak in a hot spring sounds like a marvelous idea for afterwards.”
She found herself snatched up into his arms. “Upon occasion, the setting can make all the difference in the world. I will show you.” He teleported before she could say another word.
The pools were not in use at such an hour, not even the hot spring. Tanne put her down on the springy grass and ripped off his tunic. Kella watched, puzzled, while he laid it conspicuously over a shrub near the entrance.
Admiring his half-naked state, Kella sighed. “I still say, who needs beautiful scenery when I can look at you?”
The place was stunning. A lush, grassy verge surrounded each pool. Boulders and foliage separated each to form private spaces. From their position at the highest point, Kella could see the pools shimmer silver in the moonlight.
Tanne stripped out of his pants and stepped into the bubbling spring with a quiet splash.
Kella divested herself of her clothes and got in more sedately before wading over to him. The pool could easily hold several people, and was deep enough that when she stood upright, the water lapped at her navel. Moving behind Tanne, she began to rub his shoulders. He crouched further until he nearly knelt, using a convenient underwater bench.
When she felt the tension knots dissolve beneath her fingers, she leaned over and brushed his shoulder blades with her nipples. Tanne shuddered, and she could feel the desire rising in him. “I just have one question, my love,” she breathed in his ear.
“What’s that?” he asked thickly. With her hands on his wet skin, she could feel and see his lust.
“Is this water safe to drink?” Without waiting for an answer, she moved around to nibble on a smooth pectoral.
The muscle beneath his nipples hardened to iron under her lips. Her tongue traveled over firm skin to lick and nibble on a nipple that crinkled to a bare nubbin.
“Yesss,” he moaned as she moved to make sure the other nipple was just as tasty. “I think so.”
“Good,” she mumbled against a brown nipple. “Because it tastes good, and there’s something in the water that makes me tingle.”
The feeling of a woman’s true power soared in Kella. Here, at her mercy, was a man stimulated to near madness by the simple use of soft, small lips and a tiny, busy tongue. Somehow, it fueled her own lust much more than the setting.
He gasped softly as she checked his erect manhood with gentle fingers, and moaned more loudly, “Kella, what you are doing to me, no female has done. You can arouse me with a mere touch. I have always been the aggressor.” Kella grasped him more firmly.
Kella could feel through her weak shields that the need ached within him. She inserted a tendril of shared thoughts, to know what felt good to him. The taut feeling of warmth where she should feel none was not from her own body, but it was pleasant, nonetheless, to feel his erection. There was a deep primal need to sheathe his ache in the warmth of her body. But Kella had plans to delay his final pleasure a few moments longer.
With her lips trailing down below his ribs, she shoved gently at his shoulders until he stood. Further nibbles and licks enticed Tanne as she pushed him back until he half-leaned and half-sat on the stones that rimmed the pool. “Up!” she commanded against his navel, her tongue darting in to shock him out of his entranced state.
“Kella,” he protested half-heartedly, “I am already…oh, gods.” The sensation of moist warmth covering his most sensitive area brought him up short.
Kella’s lips wrapped around the head of his cock, and she heard his conscious mind turn off with the speed of a lamp in a high wind. His legs spread, offering her full access as he lay back like a virgin sacrifice. And a sacrifice he would be, to the gods of love and lust.
The pool edge was nearly a perfect height, but Kella climbed up on the seat Tanne had used earlier, in order to gain complete control over all she intended to do. Since her lips were still firmly attached around the tip, Tanne moaned at her increased suction to stay in place.
A flick of her tongue sent him into a quick jerk, and his entire shaft filled her mouth. Kella smiled internally and scraped her teeth and tongue gently up the big vein until she was back holding to the tip with just her lips.
One hand crept carefully out of the water and stroked his sac of skin. Her hum set Tanne to groaning, and she watched his hands clench.
The aching hot pleasure he was feeling echoed in Kella’s mind. She could feel it as if she, too, possessed a cock and balls fully stimulated. “Want” took on a whole new meaning, as she understood completely what made a male thrust deeply into a female, sheathing himself completely in hopes of easing that aching heat. Tanne held himself under rigid control, fighting that desperate need.
But Kella had plans of her own. She wished to strip that control from Tanne, pleasuring him for hours, if need be, until his body overrode his mind and the stallion in him roared to life.
The hand that had been lightly stroking his balls moved lower, creeping toward that secret place between balls and ass. The small strip of skin there was reputed to be so sensitive that princes would whimper for mercy with the lightest of touches.
Tanne’s mind, so full of what Kella’s mouth was doing, did not notice her fingers until they had reached their target and begun to lightly play, rubbing gently from balls to ass and back. The pulsing echo of want increased, and nearly peaked.
His hands clenched futilely at the rocks. “Kella,” he pled, “I am near to bursting. Stop, I beg you.”
With a little giggle that caused him to give a small buck, she released him. Tanne sat up, his eyes glazed, and his breathing as labored as if he’d just run a race. He winced as the rocks cooled his ardor.
“Well, then,” she smiled. “You can return the favor.” Kella stood in front of him and let him get a good, long look at her voluptuous body, enhanced breathing, and erect nipples.
Kella, too, was ready for the pleasures of the flesh. She knew what Tanne was capable of doing, and knew from the ransacking of his mind that he was determined to pleasure her to a peak with the same fervor she had bestowed.
When Tanne’s arms moved seemingly with a will of their own to encircle her, she moved with them to bring her breasts to his hot mouth. He slid back into the water and lapped eagerly. All males hungered to touch and hold the soft mounds of flesh he cupped to bring more fully to his mouth. She heard the ec
hoes of his craving to touch and taste the flesh he, himself, did not possess. The warm mounds yielded in his hard hands.
Bringing them together with both hands, he nibbled hungrily, giving equal attention to both at once. “Such delicacies as these are worth everything to me,” he mumbled against the softness in his hands.
He buried his face like a starved child, heightening her pleasure with every tug. Kella felt his hard lips and teeth use her tender flesh in a manner that had her digging her fingers into his shoulders and panting.
Releasing her breasts to slide his tongue to that sensitive area beneath each, he nibbled just as eagerly there. As he did so, Kella took the opportunity to straddle his lap and push him back onto one of the many seats beneath the water.
When finally he did notice, it was because one hand slid beneath the water, intending to find her round, firm buttock to caress. What he found instead was hotter than the water and infinitely more pleasant to touch.
A gasp and squirm from Kella worried him only for a moment until her feelings worked their way past the fog of his own lust. “By all the gods,” he exclaimed softly. “You are, indeed, eager.”
Her wriggle had put the tiny bud of her clitoris firmly at his fingertips, and it only took a caress or two for her mind to focus on what he was doing to her before she exploded, both physically and mentally.
Tanne joined Kella’s mind as she quivered in waves with only the tiniest movement of his fingers. He felt with fingers and mind the contractions of pleasure that came near to pain, but remained in the realms of the gods. He buried his face in a breast, and suckled eagerly to continue her pleasure for as long as possible while mind joined with mind. And his mind filled with wonder when it felt as if she suckled at his breast again.
But Kella was not done. Without hesitation, she impaled herself upon him while he was in her thrall and she in his. Her shriek of continued orgasm rang out, heedless of the possibility of others nearby. Kella surrounded him, he filled her, and both shared equally the pleasures of the other in a perfect meld that made one body of two. Tanne was positive the heat of their bodies would surely boil the waters of the pool, but he was helpless to resist. With Kella bouncing willingly, he thrust upward again and again, while their minds wove together.
He let his control slip, knowing Kella’s fell away, as well. Holding Kella to him, still impaled, he carried her out of the water. Telepathically, they agreed to the bed of grass, and moved as one.
Tanne, marginally in control, sat on the grass with Kella still wrapped around him. Somehow, with neither being conscious of how it was done, Kella was mounted on top while Tanne lay back and allowed her the ride. That small part of Tanne that remained separate allowed him a brief moment of wonder that he, normally the one who felt he had to do everything, found himself in the position of being submissive.
Kella heard the wonderment and laughed, “You are mine now, as much as I am yours!”
Tanne moaned, and desperately forced himself to regain a measure of control. “Agreed, then. We share!” With that, he gave up the last shreds of himself. He rolled, taking her with him to press her into the ground, and began to thrust deeply within her.
There was no separate being anymore, but one ecstatic meld, both taking and giving at the same instant with every thrust and pull. Both entwined, mind and body felt the flight of their spirits rise as mated birds on the wing. The mated pair of hawks flew up to the sun and plunged into the heat. With that act of their hearts mating, their bodies warned of the culmination upon them.
And when the binding was complete, Tanne’s body wrenched his soul inside out as he buried his face in her shoulder and let go of his seed, wrapping his arms as tightly about her as his mind was wrapped in hers. Kella felt the letting go of his seed as if it were her own, and Tanne felt the reception of it like tiny hot arrows. Her shrieks were his, as well, with both uncaring who heard.
Kella snuggled up to Tanne, spent. For a time, they would rest. A purr in his ear told Tanne his mate was pleased. She stretched, eyes closed, radiating self-satisfaction.
“MMMM…thank you, Tanne,” she murmured.
“No, thank you,” he muttered, caressing her side. How he found the energy to move, he couldn’t say.
Kella cracked one green eye, and smiled. “Good. And when will your body renew itself?” She stroked what she could reach with a languid hand.
Tanne couldn’t help it. He chuckled and returned the caresses. “My love, you will be the death of me.”
“No, but I intend to be your life.” She put her face up for another kiss.
“That, you already are.”
* * * * *
As dawn came, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Kella awoke later and walked around the pools, waiting for Tanne to wake so they could go home together. She found herself sitting at the orange pool and put her feet in. She daydreamed about the thousands of births that had taken place there.
Vampire bitches often chose not to bear offspring at all. There was a population problem of more females than males among Vampires, always. Not having offspring was an option many took, since it was rare to mate for life. This was an unpleasant fact she had accepted since her childhood.
She had seen for herself many births, and for all the trouble, the joy in the mothers’ eyes always seemed to cancel out those few hours of pain. She sighed, knowing such joy would never be hers to share with Tanne. She did not mind admitting to herself that she would like the experience and the joy of offspring.
She was so engrossed in these thoughts, and wishing that she could bear a child, that she didn’t notice Tanne approaching from behind until the fronts of his legs brushed against her back and his cock brushed her hair.
His sharp intake of breath and his touch caused her to jerk back in surprise, and he took quite a blow to his sensitive crotch. Kella turned to apologize.
Instead of dropping to the ground, he merely grunted and turned white. When he’d regained his breath, his face was sad. “Let’s go home now.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Tanne had always been a silent individual, not given to many words when one or two would serve. He was even more so after their time at the colored pools. He was distracted, and even though he made an effort to hide his preoccupation, it showed. Kella would chatter away, and find his eyes glazed and his mind elsewhere.
After a week of this steady behavior, it began to wear on Kella’s nerves. On that particular night, he brooded into his wineglass before the hearth. The days of silence and the nights of nervous tension had made Kella feel as if all her nerve endings were on the outside of her skin.
She watched from the kitchen, rattling and banging pots, as Tanne poured himself a fourth glass of wine. She resolved to bring whatever troubled him into the open. What were lovers for if they could not share ills as well as pleasures?
She put the last clean pot away, wiped her hands on her apron, and squared her shoulders. Fearful of another rebuff, but determined to get an answer, she marched into the room. He did not even look up. “Tanne, something is bothering you. Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
He took an uncharacteristically large gulp of wine and stared at the wall past her shoulders. He ground out, “You must go away.”
The shock forced her to utter stillness. “You want me to…leave?”
“Yes. Wasn’t I clear?”
In the back of her mind, even after five years, the niggling doubts had remained that she was little more than a plaything. “So, you finally tire of me.” Her voice shook, but she kept her chin high. “I’ll go pack.” It was as the other Vampires had predicted, after all. She had been just a toy. It hurt more than she could say.
“Kella, please understand, I…”
She held up a hand to interrupt, and prayed he could not hear the sound of her heart breaking. “Oh, but I do. You don’t love me. I was a pleasant diversion. Thank you for your time and lessons. I’ll always cherish the memories.”
She slamm
ed up a mage barrier that did not permit sound or thoughts to penetrate from either direction, and ran to the bedroom.
A pillow covering served to stuff a few cherished items within for easy carrying. She swept them into the bag, then teleported out to the crystalline grotto where Tanne had first taken her.
She was amazed that she remembered those long-ago lessons, with Tanne’s soft, coaxing voice telling her that the grotto prevented prying eyes and ears. It was a perfect place to hide, cry, and when tears were gone, think things through. There would be no rash, temperamental decisions. She cried until she was spent, and her head splitting. She rubbed reddened eyes.
“Silly girl, to think yourself loved. Outcast you have always been, and outcast you remain.” She washed her face in the cold stream until her eyes were no longer gritty and she could see again. The idea of vocalizing her thoughts appealed to her, so she continued. She felt better to hear someone, even if it was herself, scolding her.
“You are no longer an impulsive youngster with nothing to recommend you. What is more, you have your pride.” She sighed. “Though pride makes for a cold meat to eat, it is better than starving in an emotional desert.”
Feeling better for having been scolded properly, Kella decided that perhaps the emotional purge had done her good. She moved away from the water, found a comfortable place in the sand to sit, and made herself a mage fire. A mug of peppermint tea cleared the last of her snuffles.
“Look at yourself, Kella. You have just made yourself at home in a rather nice spot. Now think about plans that are more permanent for your future. An easy decision to make is not returning to the Vampire village. You have no need to be treated as a heroine by some, and a heretic by others. Just put that thought right out of your head.”
She refilled her mug and got up to pace. “Very well, then. Another option would be to make my own home, perhaps a small house in the forests near pack lands. Since I have a lupine form, I would not be offensive to the Werewolves.”
