Winded

by Sherri L. King

  Vetiver giggled and snuggled closer to him, pressing her breasts to his warm, muscled chest. “The decision is mine. Made before I even knew the options.” She sighed. “I will love you, Boreas of the Shikar. I will birth your children. I will be your Shikar wife. But you have to say the words first.”

  He frowned, the question plain on his face.

  “Say you love me,” she prompted. “Say it, let me hear it sing through your voice.”

  His handsome features smoothed out. He leaned in, kissed her mouth, parting her lips with his tongue and wrapping the words around hers, using his language to seal his vow. She felt the words slide around her mouth, knotting gently around her tongue, tasting of tender daisy blossoms.

  She worked the words around her lips before returning them, first in his strange language then in her own. “I love you too.” It was the most powerful spell she’d spoken in all her life.

  The result was the magic that trumps all others; true, destined love and a passion never ending.

  Chapter Nine

  “Come lie among my clouds.” Boreas swept his arms wide and silvery white wisps gathered closer. Like a bubble bath in the sky. “Rest your head.” He gathered for her a pillow of downy mist.

  He spread her dark waves of hair across the iridescent vespers. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her exotic eyes, like no other human’s, flickered from gray to silver and then to a whisper of dark lapis. Her lashes were long and spiky, damp and thick. Black around her wide gaze.

  It was his wish now to prove to her how deeply she moved him. How she had reached down into his proud heart and torn away all but the wish to spend the rest of his existence with her. Learning all there was to know about her. Being surprised by her, as he had been when he’d seen her face down a force of monsters with the courage of a hundred battle-hardened soldiers. More than anything, he wanted her to know what her love meant to him.

  How it transformed him.

  Made him a greater person.

  How it unmade him, and reforged him into something more than he could ever hope to be without her in his life and his heart.

  Face to face. Heart to heart. He lifted her leg and draped her calf over his hip. His fingers found her wet, hot and slick. Ready for him. But he wanted more than to just bring her physical joy. He wanted to show her, prove to her that he was worth all she was sacrificing.

  He employed his breezes to kiss and caress every inch of her body. He breathed warmth into those breezes, let them massage her love-stretched muscles. They even moved gently between her toes. Because this was his element. He was master of every atom, and he used them all to tease and knead and tempt her flesh to quivering need.

  The breeze worked like fingers against her scalp and she moaned. He liked the sound of her pleasure, so breathy, so husky, from deep in her abdomen. Her gasps told him better than words that he was doing his job well.

  He wanted her to crave him. To require him. To be unable to live without him touching her like this.

  If she craved him half as much as he needed her, then they would be well met.

  He rolled them in a coverlet of clouds. When she was atop him, he entered her, sliding inside with a long, low sigh from her lips. She wrapped around him like the tightest, hottest sleeve of silk. The juices of her desire were like hot wax melting down over him. He rolled until they were once more on their sides, knowing this position would tease her pussy in ways she’d never dreamed possible.

  Her body shivered, her sheath moved over him like an earthquake, and he nearly came inside her.

  But he knew the risk and knew his restraint now would pay off later. He wanted to come inside her so much it made his teeth hurt, but he flexed every muscle in his body to hold back the tide of his release. It would be worth this agony, to wait, to hold himself steady.

  She sighed into his kiss. Her raspberry mouth swollen and wet from so many kisses, but each one felt new and undiscovered. Each one a treasure and a gift. He sipped her breath, careful not to be too greedy, not one to make the same mistake twice and frighten her with his ardor.

  He breathed into her, whispering every endearment he knew, in every language he knew. He rocked into her, slowly at first, holding her with his arms around her shoulders and lower back. But when she undulated her curvaceous behind, he couldn’t help but move faster between her quivering thighs.

  The scent of their sweat mingled with the clean ozone scent of rain. The herbal-rich perfume of her skin and hair and breath intoxicated him. The floral scent of her cunt made him dizzy when it reached him and the soft, wet sounds their bodies made pushed him to the edge of his self-control.

  She sang a chorus of moans. Sighs. Whispers and cries.

  Her nipples were like plump, firm berries sliding over his chest. Her throat was a soft, tender offering to his lips and tongue. She was a feast.

  Her skin was soft and smooth. Her hair was liquid silk, wrapping around him like a gossamer web of darkness in the breeze. Her fingers roamed over him, squeezing his buttocks, kneading his shoulders, clutching him like tendrils of a vine that sought the sun.

  He pulled her closer still. They were one solid being. Two souls made one.

  He cried out, unable to hold back any longer his need, his joy, his exquisite pain. Throwing himself into her depths, he rode her hard and fast. When she was keening high in her throat like a songbird, he knew she was close. He pressed his pubic bone into hers, and felt the first deep, tight tremors in her pussy begin to rain down through her.

  He roared with triumph as she screamed her joy to the heavens around them.

  It was a close thing, but as the last pulsations of her body squeezed his length hungrily, greedily, he pulled free and spurted his seed on the sweet curve of her belly. His cream drizzled over her pale skin, like icing on a delicious cake.

  Afraid that it might shock her, he only just barely refrained from licking it off her sweet skin.

  His witch was panting.

  He was panting. For the first time ever, he knew what it was to be winded.

  He kissed her red lips, licked them, played with them as her glazed eyes slowly regained their focus and clarity.

  He tucked her head beneath his chin and held her as the world flooded below.

  * * * * *

  A distant crash drew her from the edge of rosy pleasure. With a gasp, Vetiver leaned over the edge of her cloud and saw the outer swell of the hurricane as it swallowed up the border of her island.

  “Ball is still down there!” she exclaimed.

  “He will be fine.” Boreas soothed her, rubbing his palms over her rear, which was conveniently tilted up while she leaned over. “Think you he cannot travel through the portal to my world to escape the gale? Think you he has not already done so?”

  Vetiver still fretted.

  “Shh,” he comforted, kneeling behind her to lick her pink slit with his long, agile tongue. He grasped her buttock in his hands and squeezed, sipping her labia between his lips, flicking his tongue in and out of her sticky sheath.

  Vetiver moaned, forgetting everything but the raw lust that gripped her tightly. She pressed her tits into the soft dampness of the cloud and lifted her hips even higher to give him a better taste. He rewarded her with long, languorous kisses, carnal kisses, devious strokes with his tongue from her clit to her anus.

  When she was sobbing with need he rose up behind her, a god of the sky, and impaled her with his long, thick cock. The friction burned. His girth stretched her thin. His length penetrated so deeply she gave a little scream that was half fear, half exhilaration.

  Where before he had fucked her then passionately claimed her, he now made sweet, slow love to her.

  His mighty phallus slid in long, sure strokes. Whenever he withdrew, it was only until the very tip of him was left inside her, and he waited until her body squeezed him greedily, begging for his thrust, before sliding back in to the hilt.

  It was gentle. It was wet and sticky and messy and it wa
s lovely.

  But Vetiver wanted more. She begged for more.

  And Boreas chuckled, moving in that slow, tormenting rhythm, in no hurry to end this sweet interlude as his storm slammed into the earth below.

  His hands roved up and down her back, over the curve of her ass, the sides of her thighs. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and oh so carefully, masterfully, turned her head to meet his lips again and again. The pressure of him moving deeper inside her was maddening. His restraint made her crazed. She tried to wriggle her hips, determined to force him to pick up the pace and ride her harder.

  He slapped her ass, leaving a delicious sting where his palm met flesh, and she cried out, her body clamping down on his. Her entire body shuddered. And when she found release, it was the sweetest experience of her lifetime.

  She pulsed around him, feeling him still inside her while she found her pleasure. The muscles of her womb thirsted for his cum, but he held it from her, for her safety. For now. When she moved, pumping her hips like a mindless animal, he kept her safe from harm and let her work herself higher, let her pussy slide around him like a hungry mouth until she was sated, falling limp into the cushion of their cloud.

  Boreas slid out of her, straddled her rear and wrapped his fingers around his shaft. He pumped his hips over the dip of her spine, and she glanced with dazed eyes over her shoulder to witness his carnal pleasure wash over her in a pearly spray as hot as lava. He groaned, his eyes shut tight, his jaw clenched, his lips parted around gritted teeth. His creamy ejaculation glistened on her skin, pale and beautiful in the silvery light.

  She arched her back like a cat when he rubbed his cream into her skin. It tingled where it touched her, reminding her in no uncertain terms how it would someday feel when he spent himself inside her.

  Vetiver wanted to drink his cum. There would come a day, and that day would be soon—she vowed it silently—that she would suck him dry with her thirsty lips. And then she would ride him until his sac was tight and drained of all he had to give.

  Below, the eye of the hurricane moved over Merrymint.

  “Come, dearest,” Boreas said, still catching his breath with some effort. Eyes still alight with the ecstasy of his release. “The doorway lies open. We will pass through now, before the hurricane and the ocean closes it against us.”

  He lifted her in his arms and flew them down to earth. The eerie silence over the land held long enough for Boreas to carry her through the opening in the ground beneath the stone that had seen his entry into her world. As the darkness closed over her, the roar of the cyclone resumed, consuming the island and the threat it presented to all mankind.

  “Goodbye,” Vetiver whispered, crying already as Boreas swiftly took them deeper into the caverns that led to his home.

  She didn’t stop crying until he had laid her in his warm bed—a real bed, not clouds as she’d half expected, but an incredibly plush mattress and thickly piled blankets—and Ball shoved his nose in her face, licking away her tears. He was back in the familiar doggie shape she knew best. He harrumphed and sat on the bed, nearly unseating her.

  And that quickly, her sorrow abated.

  Nothing mattered so long as she had her family with her.

  Boreas and Ball, they were her family. Her world. They loved her, witch that she was. And she loved them, her Shikar warrior and her shape-shifting, immortal guard dog.

  The tears dried, forgotten, and Ball smiled at her as if to say, I told you everything would be all right.

  And everything was all right. It was better than all right.

  Everything was perfect.

  Epilogue

  Vetiver handed the case to Boreas, watching him closely to gauge his reaction. He opened it and whispered the words she had taught him before lifting the gun. “It feels…” He shuddered and dropped it as the gun suffused with a vibrant emerald glow in response to the magical words that had awakened it.

  “Sorry.” Vetiver grabbed the gun just before it struck the ground. Her agile reflexes still astonished her. She whispered the words to dim it. “I did warn you.”

  “It still surprised me,” he admitted, eyes wide on the weapon that, by her command, no longer glowed. “It was warm, almost hot, but there was no pain.”

  “It took some time, but I made certain it was Shikar safe. Now if any of the others who use these weapons run out of ammo, they can rely on its light to protect them. It will burn any Daemon it touches. The gun itself can be used to cut like one of your Foils when it’s lit up against an enemy.”

  Vetiver was now a Shikar, transformed by Boreas’ semen mere days after they had arrived here. Ushered through the death of her human form with the aid of Emily—another former human turned Shikar, a Traveler who had shown her the way back from oblivion, to awaken in her husband’s loving arms. Reborn, Vetiver Device was still a child of nature, able to walk in full sunlight—so few other Shikars could claim the same ability—and she used that to fuel her other natural abilities that had only grown stronger with her transformation.

  Imbuing weapons with the power to burn Daemons to ashes had quickly become a passion of hers. After coming here with Boreas, Vetiver had become determined to prove her worth to his people. She’d cast wards on every border of their underground city. Attended births, acting as midwife in most cases, crafting protection charms to hang over the newborns’ cribs, whispering spells over their innocent heads to help them sleep and dream sweetly.

  In secret, she’d spent almost all her free time in the armory, casting spells on every weapon to protect its wielder from harm. This gun was the culmination of many experiments to create the perfect magical weapon. It was, essentially, portable sunlight.

  So much had changed. And yet so much still remained the same. Blessedly so. She still guarded against the Unnamed. But now she protected more than an island. She helped protect the world. Vetiver’s personal Grimoire bulged with newfound knowledge, recipes and incantations to aid her and her fellow warriors in battle. She’d already rewritten most of the spell books lost to her house fire. She had ensured the legacy of the Device bloodline would live on. Here. In the world of the Shikar.

  And now it was time to prepare the way for a new witch to come.

  The firstborn of her union with this amazing warrior slumbered now deep in her womb. Soon Vetiver would ripen with the growth of her daughter. And as expected, Ball, in his way, had already begun to transfer his allegiance to Vetiver’s child, a warrior-witch he would one day guide and protect as he had guarded so many others over the centuries. Vetiver didn’t mind this defection. It was supposed to be this way, she knew.

  Boreas and her Familiar were fast friends. And the Shikar people hadn’t batted an eye to the presence of a dog that was not a dog, but so much more than words could explain. The Shikar children especially adored Ball, and he them, letting them pet him, coo at him and call him “Baw” in their innocent tongues. He roamed the city at his leisure, though he never strayed far from Vetiver’s side. While she carried his future mistress, he was still her best friend. Still her treasured companion. He would never really leave her, even when Vetiver’s daughter became woman enough for him to serve. Ball was as constant as the turning of the world.

  And Boreas, too, was never far from her—he was, in a word, insatiable.

  But then, so was she.

  They were equal in their endless passion for one another.

  “Can you do this with other weapons?” Boreas asked, clearly eager to see more like the gun.

  Vetiver smiled, pleased with herself now that she saw how his eyes were alight with this new invention. “Oh yeah.”

  Boreas grinned and drew her into his arms. This time the gun hit the floor, but Vetiver was too distracted to be relieved that it wasn’t loaded. Her mate’s lips commanded her full attention now. His hands wove a spell over her body that no magic could ever rival.

  This time when he took her breath, she let him. It was not a theft, but a loan. And when he gave his breath in return
, she filled her lungs with it, drawing him inside her, fueling her cells with his essence.

  When he filled her with his flesh, it was as if they were discovering sex for the first time, every time. He filled her now, stretching her pussy tight around the urgency of his cock.

  He took her standing. He took her lying down beneath him on the floor of their sitting room. He fucked her from behind, bending her over the foot of their bed. He made love to her with Vetiver on top, guiding her hips in a gentle, slow rhythm.

  When she came, he came too, filling her with the scalding-hot wash of his seed. His cum. So silky and creamy. They climaxed too many times to count, until his cum dripped down her thighs like honey.

  Their sighs traveled on the air, a slight breeze playing through the rooms of their underground home. Miles above, the world moved on, growing smaller every moment. But Vetiver was happy. Her world had grown, expanded to enormous wonders that surprised her every day.

  She was a witch. But she was not a lone witch anymore. Boreas was with her. Ball never far. Their child slumbered inside her, weaving spells with her tiny, barely formed fingertips along the walls of Vetiver’s womb. And though the world was fraught with danger, Vetiver Device was where she belonged. Safe and loved by the lord of wind and storm, who had swept into her life on a hurricane wind.

  About the Author

  Sherri King lives in the American Midwest with her husband, artist and illustrator Darrell King. Hailed by industry officials as an e-pub phenomenon, Sherri is the author of critically acclaimed series The Horde Wars and Sterling Files, as well as the horror lit-erotica, Venereus. She is currently at work on Traveler’s Kiss, book six in The Horde Wars.

  Sherri welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

  Tell Us What You Think

  We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email us at Comments@EllorasCave.com.