by Zeke Biddle
“No, no, no. Not that at all. You’re almost too gorgeous.”
I hesitate as I try to figure out what else to say. I don’t have much experience at all with women. The little I have has convinced me I’m no good at wooing them.
“Look at you with the silver tongue,” Eulalia says with a wicked grin. “How am I ever supposed to keep my hands off you?”
Sweat forms on my forehead.
Don’t screw this up.
“Why would I ever want you to keep your hands off me?” I finally manage to ask, in what I hope is a confident tone.
I want to reach out and cup her breasts, but movies have taught me that women don’t like a man who moves in straight for the groping while ignoring the more romantic stuff. Instead, I wrap my hands around her back and pull her in close for a kiss.
She melts against me with a whimper and places her hands on my shoulders. When I look down at her face, her eyes are closed. This isn’t some kind of trick or scam. For some reason, the sexy woman in front of me wants to be with me.
I close my eyes, relax, and enjoy the moment.
When we finally break apart to catch our breath, Eulalia brushes her hand down my chest to my ribs. I just barely manage not to flinch away from her light, ticklish touch.
She leans back a few inches, pulling our bodies apart, and whispers, “You can touch me, too, if you want.”
I tentatively cup her breasts with my hands and give them a squeeze.
“That feels nice, but I like it better when you do this.” She nudges one of my hands away and pinches her nipple between her thumb and index finger. “And it’s even better when you do this.” She gives it a twist and then a tug. “That’s what gets me wet the fastest. You try.”
She pulls her hand away and nods down at her breast.
The nipple hardening when I roll it between my fingers is the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced. At least until she rolls her head back and moans.
“Yeah, Marcus. Like that.”
Deciding to throw caution to the wind and make things up on the fly, I lean down and take her other nipple in my mouth. I flick my tongue against it while firmly sucking.
Eulalia pulls my head tightly against her body as if making sure I won’t ever leave her.
Eventually, she pushes me away and looks down at my crotch.
My thin robe does nothing to hide my excitement.
“Get in the bed,” Eulalia orders while pulling off her skirt and panties.
Someday I’ll want to make her slow down and make a show of it, but I’m in the heat of the moment; anything that slows me from getting inside her will have to wait until after I’ve lost my virginity.
I slide out of my robe easily enough but almost fall over while stepping out of my underwear.
Eulalia steadies me and gives me a kiss. She squeezes my ass and points to the bed. “Now.”
Naked, we fall onto the matress, me on my back and Eulalia straddling my chest. She reaches her hands down between our bodies, grabs my dick, and pulls it against her while grinding against me.
“Oh, Marcus. What a special magic wand you have.” She nibbles seductively on her lip and adds, “We’re going to make such beautiful magic together. Just wait until your harem is full. All the things we’ll be able to do.”
Eulalia raises her hips and then lowers herself onto me.
I’m in heaven as she bounces on my lap. Nothing I’ve ever done comes even close to comparing to the sensation as she slides along the length of me and leans in for occasional kisses.
For the first time since the game started, I have no desire to return back to the real world. The VR one is all I’ll ever need.
She moans against my lips. “Oh, Marcus. You’re so good.”
I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing. She seems to be doing all the work, but her words stroke my soul all the same.
“You, too, Eulalia. You’re…so…”
I trail off. I’m not going to last much longer. I try thinking of baseball and taxes, but even they don’t have the power to calm my runaway train of lust.
“Shut up, dear,” Eulalia whispers in my ear. “Just focus on the feelings.”
She bounces a few more times and then stops.
Her body tenses. My hands are on her stomach, and it clenches hard beneath my fingers. But that’s nothing compared to what her pussy does to my dick as it tightens in waves.
The torrent unleashes within me. I hear myself grunting words that don’t even exist as I pray this moment never ends.
But, like all good things, it eventually does.
I explode like a firework and know that I’ll never be the same again.
Eulalia climbs off me and lies down next to my chest with her leg draped over my lap. “That was fun. We’ll do it again when you recover. As part of being in a harem, we’ll each get stronger when we have sex. We’ll earn new skills and need to fuck more to keep them charged. That means it’ll be in our best interest to make time for sex every day without me needing to come up with an excuse or beg for it.”
Beg for it? From me?
I puff up my chest, but it just makes me feel silly.
But she’s the one who said it.
When she yawns, it drags a yawn out of me, too. No matter how much I might want to go another round, the weight of the crazy day that started in the normal world is dragging me off to dreamland.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be much calmer. Just some simple walking through the forest without any trouble.
I’m curious about the details of special skills she said we get when we have sex, but I don’t ask any questions. There will be time to figure that all out later.
Already half asleep, I ask the dumbest question I’ve ever asked. “How many men have you slept with?”
“Just one,” she mumbles.
Of course. I’m not special, I’m just all she’s ever known.
Her fingers run lightly through my chest hair. “Until I met you, I’d only ever slept with women. Which reminds me, we need to work on getting Alexandra to join the harem. More power-ups for everyone.”
How can I sleep after hearing that? With my eyes wide open, I spend the rest of the night fantasizing about watching the two gorgeous women making love and me joining in on the action.
I’m still wide awake and hard when the sun creeps in through the crack in the curtains.
Eulalia finally stirs against me. With a giggle, she strokes my erection. “My, oh my, don’t you wake up frisky in the morning.” I don’t bother to tell her I’ve been in this state the whole night. “No time for that right now, unfortunately,” she adds. “We need to wake Alexandra and decide what to do next.”
I slide into my robes and hope my erection will go away before Alexandra wakes.
“Who even needs a house if he’s going to be walking around with that tent,” Alexandra says as soon as Eulalia drags me out of the bedroom.
I blush.
“Speaking of one-eyed monsters,” she adds with a smirk and a nod at my crotch, “just because you have one doesn’t mean you can challenge the real one. And who’s that Kip you were shouting for during the battle last night?”
I ignore the Kip question. “I have to kill the One-Eyed Monster or I’ll never be allowed to leave.”
“Leave what?” Eulalia asks, reminding me that as far as they’re concerned, they aren’t trapped in a game.
“It’s complicated.” Hoping to change the subject, I ask, “What do you know about him?”
“Enough to know he’ll kill you in a heartbeat. Let’s see if there’s any food to eat here and I’ll tell you just how easy it’ll be for him or any of dozens of the real monsters of this kingdom to kill you in a heartbeat.”
Eulalia agrees. “Listen to her, wizard.”
“The more I know, the better I can plan,” I agree.
“If you want to go after him all you really need to plan is how big to make the box that will hold your body, and how deep to dig the hole.”
We all freeze in place when the window shatters.
“Run,” I whisper before shoving them toward the front door.
10
When I open the door, several large flying creatures force us back into the house. Someone is screaming like a girl, but when I cover my mouth with my hands, the sound goes away.
“No fire in the house!” Alexandra shouts at me before charging into the fray.
I back away from the chaos, wondering how I used to be so bold when I played as a warrior.
For one thing, dying in those games didn’t actually kill me.
By the time I notice the flying monsters are epically-sized bats, there are at least a dozen of them flapping around the room, knocking over all the shit inside. Whoever owns the cottage is going to be pissed when they get home and there’s not going to be some cute little blonde girl covered with porridge, sleeping in one of their beds to blame it all on.
Alexandra keeps trying to stab at one, but before she can, another makes a noise behind her, forcing her to spin around and defend against it.
Eulalia stands firmly between the two of us, ready to rush to aid either of us. She’s the only one of us that doesn’t look ready to shit a brick.
The surprise attack is doing a real number with my head and my confidence.
Alexandra’s sword finally connects with one, severing its head clean from its neck. The body falls to the floor and bounces against the door, pushing it closed.
The only way out is through the windows.
Or in a body bag. Do they have those in this game?
I point my staff toward a group of the bats.
“No fire!” Eulalia shouts. “Find something else useful to do.”
I growl in frustration, wishing for a big-ass ax or sword or even a nice stout club.
Useful. Useful. How can I be useful?
I suddenly remember a documentary I watched as a kid. “Hey, relax. Bats eat mostly fruit and bugs. They’re probably just as afraid of us as we are them. Try standing still.”
“Fuck you, wizard,” Alexandra suggests.
I cross to Alexandra and wrap my arms around her body, pinning her arms to her side.
The bats do seem to calm.
One lands on the ground next to me.
It’s a creepy fucker. Its face looks way too much like a horse for my comfort. I never really liked those, either.
I do my best to calm it, though. “Hey there, buddy. Aren’t you a good fellow?”
I reach out to pet its head. Dogs always love that.
Bats apparently don’t.
It bites my hand.
As I scream, Alexandra breaks away from my other arm, spins, and stabs the bat straight through the chin up through its brain.
“Monsters, wizard. Not pets.”
“I know that now!” I squeeze my throbbing hand against my chest. “Why can’t I just blast them with fire?”
“You’ll end up burning us all,” Eulalia says as she places her hand on mine. She whispers something I don’t understand. A jolt of coldness courses through my body for a split second. Afterward, my hand is as good as new.
“Thanks,” I say when she gives me a quick kiss.
The door bangs open, sending the bats into a renewed frenzy.
Standing in the doorway is a real, honest to god witch. Black clothes, green skin, a wart on her nose, and all that. She even has a broom strapped to her back.
“Found you, you filthy beasts!”
I point to my chest before realizing she’s talking to the bats.
She points a slender, crooked twig at one of them.
An arc of lightning shoots across the room.
The bat convulses and falls to the ground. It twitches for a second before it dies.
The lightning bolt arcs off at an angle and zaps the next bat.
It feels like much longer, but it can’t be more than a few seconds before the last bat is dead.
“Jesus Christ, that was awesome,” I say. I offer her my hand, “Marcus. I’m a wizard, too.”
She spits on my hand. “Wizards are bitches.” She turns her attention to the carnage in the room. “Are you and your friends harboring Jargot?”
“Who?” I ask.
“If you don’t know who he is, you can’t be harboring him, can you?”
Annoyed at her attitude, I snap back, “Unless he gave us a fake name.” I point my staff at her, ready to see how she likes the feel of my fireballs. “Speaking of which, who the hell are you?”
She rolls her eyes at my staff. “You’re going to magic your eye out, wizard. You make a fair point about a fake name, though. I’m the Great Witch Esmeralda. Jargot is causing trouble in these Cursed Woods.”
He must be the one making the monsters Dasandra mentioned.
“Well, we haven’t seen another human since entering the woods, and you’re looking at our entire party.”
“If you kill him, I have a special surprise for you. Also, I use these bats for one of my spells. If you kill any others, bring them to me, and I’ll reward you.”
She waggles her twig.
All the carcasses in the room float over to a pack she pulls out a fold of her robe. Impossibly, all of the giant beasts fit in the pouch that’s no bigger than a backpack, which disappears when she shoves it back into her robe.
“Amazing,” I say.
“Yes, I am,” Esmeralda says. “You would do well to remember that.”
She waggles her twig one last time and disappears in a cloud of smoke.
“That was weird,” I say. “At least we have the name of the guy making the monsters Dasandra asked us to kill. That might make it a little easier to track him down.”
Eulalia nods in agreement.
“Are we done gawking here?” Alexandra asks.
We follow her out the door.
Despite the sun being bright in the sky, the forest is dark. The shadows are even more ominous after the bat attack.
Alexandra has us marching at a quick pace.
When I question her, she replies, “How many nights do you want to spend in the Cursed Woods, wizard?”
The thought of spending much more time in the creepy forest makes me quicken my steps.
After an hour at that pace, though, even Alexandra starts to slow when there is no sign of the far edge of the forest.
I trudge onward, hoping the forest isn’t nearly as wide as it feels, and completely determined to skip Dasandra’s quest of destroying whatever might be creating monsters within the creepy depths of the trees. Eulalia and I can settle down somewhere on the other side of the forest, with or without Alexandra.
The forest does not prove to be smaller than expected. We march for hours at the slower pace, ever leery of being surprised by something wanting to eat us, and see no signs that we’re any closer to reaching the other side than when we’d started.
Eventually, the forest falls eerily silent.
“Shouldn’t there be, like, birds chirping and insects buzzing?” I ask.
“Must mean we’re getting close to a really nasty monster,” Alexandra says, her eyes constantly scanning the low-hanging branches ahead of us.
“Maybe not a monster. Maybe we’re just getting close to the place where those monsters Dasandra mentioned are spawning from,” I say, hoping it’s just some unprotected monster-generator thing we have to destroy to stop the spawning rather than a well-protected enemy camp we need to infiltrate. “No sane creature would probably want to mess with whatever’s happening there.”
“Could be,” Alexandra agrees with a whisper. “Now will you shut up? We’re supposed to be sneaking.”
I manage to stay silent a little longer before nervous energy forces me to ask, “How do you think those monsters Dasandra wants us to kill are made?” I try to think back on specific ones I’ve beaten in games before, but my mind draws a blank as my heart pounds away in my chest. “It’s gotta be some kind of machine if we’re supposed to destroy it, right? Isn’t that
what Dasandra said?”
Alexandra shushes me again. “I wasn’t even there when she told you,” she whispers.
I barely notice. “I bet it’s like some kind of temple, and we’ll have to fight through the monsters and a boss or two to get to it. Then there will be some kind of lever or button we’ll have to activate…and then, boom!”
Talking about the mission like I’m playing any old video game helps me keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Eulalia covers my mouth with her hand and whispers into my ear, “Alexandra might be right about the need for silence. Especially if all those monsters you predict really are out there.”
I nod against her hand. I match her nearly silent whisper. “Sorry. Nerves, I guess. Listen. Hear that water up ahead?” I’ve watched enough nature shows to know that predators frequently find prey near rivers. “Stay alert.”
Alexandra turns with her hand on her hip to warn against me talking again, but her words are cut short when human hands reach down from the branches right above her head and pull her up into their dark depths.
11
“What the hell was that?” I shout. “Were those human hands attached to monkey arms?”
“Gorillas aren’t monkeys, asshole,” a gruff voice says from above me.
“Sorry about that,” I say, squinting up into the branches, trying to find the source of the voice. I can’t fight something I can’t see. I’ll apologize to anything if it will keep Alexandra safe until I can come up with a plan. “Of course you aren’t a monkey. I’m just worried about my friend. You’re the one who kidnapped her, right?”
“I was. A good sneaky trick, don’t you think?”
I bite down on my tongue to temper my reply. “Oh yeah. Very clever. I don’t suppose we could have her back? She’s very important to our family.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” The gorilla sounds bored. “But, no. Don’t worry about her safety, though. She’ll be a very important part of our family from now on. Our hybrid-family has the best protection you could possibly imagine, for we are mighty as individuals, and unstoppable when united.”
