by Mima
“Is there something wrong? Is one of the men she fought asking for balance?”
“Of course not. I'm just puzzled. I watched nearly the entire thing. The way you tried to break those two younglings up. At times I would have thought you were a highly skilled warrior, and at others, an untrained person lost in an animal rage. I cannot forget that feeling I had when I looked down at you, seeing you as a woman, yet feeling you as a Trux.”
KarRa shifted uncomfortably, wondering at its significance. Rylan maintained his silence.
“I understand you are soulmates. Have you considered, Owl, that your Beastspirit is traveling to your mate?”
Rylan shook his head once. “I have not thought this to be the case. Her fighting style is from where we lived. Most of the humans were more animal than person, and those that chose to live like people had to learn to deal with them.”
Sto thoughtfully pulled on his lower lip as his eyes flicked back and forth between them. “Vyur.”
Vyur had been motionless, eyes ahead on the wall, silent. “Yes, Lizzeed.”
“You are very lucky in the friend of your woman.”
“Yes, Lizzeed.”
“It was an honor to meet you,” Sto said, looking at both Rylan and KarRa. “I am deeply impressed by your courage, and interested in Vyur’s professional opinion of your fighting skills. It’s always good to learn new moves.” Nodding his chin to each, he left, closing the door again behind him.
Vyur gazed steadily at KarRa. She looked back, her heart beating as her mind flashed to an image of facing him in battle. Rylan squeezed her hand and her heart steadied.
Vyur reached down, sliced his forearm with a short knife, and raised fingers coated with blood. She held herself utterly still. He reached out ever so slowly and wiped gently in a line from under her ear to the curve of where her shoulder met her neck. Blood-debt. She now had an ally for life.
His black eyes met her warm brown ones, and she noticed for the first time their depth. They reminded her suddenly of Merk’s. She tried to stiffen herself to still the shiver that crawled her skin at that warm thick wetness on her throat, but she knew both men noticed.
“That wasn't a bad shiver. It feels weird is all.” The quickness of her words told of her desire to keep Vyur from thinking his oath disgusted her. She thought a smile flitted past his tired eyes.
He nodded once at her and she returned it. “I’m honored to be in your debt.” He looked at Rylan. “She will not have to use her fighting skills among us often. You have my apologies for the role of our younglings. I am one of their trainers, and their behavior is my responsibility.”
Rylan responded, “Apology accepted.”
“Go take care of Freezha. Be well,” KarRa said, feeling sorry for him. He’d had a really bad day.
On the walk back to KarRa’s rooms, she told Rylan of her fear of fighting Vyur. “He’s their champion and they use him on women that are unskilled. Now that he knows that I am a skilled fighter, I’m afraid of how hard he’s going to come at me. Will you get a bodymage to come be nearby?”
Rylan stopped on the stairs and stared at her. He smoothed his hands over her hair in a way that made her heart melt. She leaned forward and laid her head on his shoulder. “KarRa, he will not hurt you.”
She pulled back and looked at him disbelieving.
“KarRa! Are you thinking this is going to be a real fight? As in the Dark? Oh KarRa, they use that word for arguments, for tests, for training here.” He took her face in his hands. “How can you even think that I would send you to a real fight with Vyur? Never! KarRa, all he wants to do is test you. Ghost some punches, block some of his, and step into him and flip him. That's it! Just like we used to play with our madefamily.”
KarRa was stunned. She slapped at Rylan’s shoulder. “Do you mean that I've been having nightmares of being shredded to pieces for days for nothing? If it's a test, why don't they call it that?! You mean it's a warm-up?!”
Rylan chewed his lips under, his eyes sparkling. “I’m so sorry you misunderstood!”
“Oh fine. Let it out.”
His belly laugh echoed off the stone walls. “Like you couldn’t take him anyway!”
His surprising confidence in her ability pleased her, but it still took her the entire walk back to settle her irritation.
KarRa looked at the bed longingly. Even though her body had no bruises or scrapes, her muscles had stiffened, and the familiar post-scrape lethargy crept through her blood. She was drained. Curling up in the shadows beneath some stairs after a fight. She wasn’t there anymore.
Rylan came back from the washing room. “The baths are empty.”
Rylan pulled the hangings closed behind them when she dragged herself into the room. She undressed with the slowness of the aged and slipped in. Warm water enveloped her to her neck. She groaned, blissful. Every time she sank in she marveled at the luxury of bathing this way. The rough drag of a barely damp cloth trying to smear caked blood off of her arm. The abundance and casual overuse of water was the second biggest difference between Vladaya and the Dark. Food’s abundance was the first. KarRa let herself go lax, trusting Rylan as he washed her hair and body tenderly. Her mind was curious about the kitchen she’d glimpsed. Running in the shadows, hunched, warclub gripped tight, waiting for the drunk with the bread to look the other way.
After he rinsed her, Rylan stood next to KarRa, supporting her listing body.
“Let me hold you.”
Bracing his back against the wall, he scooped her up under shoulders and knees, her head on his shoulder as if she were a child. She lay in bliss, the warm water swirling against her skin on one side and Rylan’s heat on the other. He held her effortlessly. The Dark was past, now. She was safe. She had water, and food.
Her deepest fear tumbled from her lips without thought. “Rylan, am I alone?”
The water lapped at her pert breasts, her large dark nipples puckered from the sensation. Swinging her up, her legs went around his waist, his hands beneath her, her arms on his shoulders.
His eyes captured hers. She could see her own warm brown reflected in his lighter ones, as if she was falling into herself, away from him.
“KarRa?” His voice was the merest whisper over the sound of trickling water in the room.
“I think we are all alone, Rylan. At first I didn’t want to believe it. Scuffle said that loving, fucking, is just an attempt by people to pretend they are not alone. Pleasure and pain are just choices on how we try to forget our utter isolation.
“I argued with him. I said that when I focused, I could see how the soulair around people who belonged together matched. And that with you and I, we had a magepath that our emotions traveled on, and that made us stronger. I told him that people were meant to be together. I believed it, and I argued. He loved it. It was a common conversation we carried over the years.”
KarRa trailed her fingers down the side of Rylan's face, her fingers thrilling at every dip and rasp. “After you left … after I left … because of Vili … he said to me one day, after someone had done something stupid and he was worried and furious, he said, “Tell me again how much stronger I am with these people around me.”“
She kept her eyes focused on the pulse of life beating in his neck. “I looked at him and said, “People are just shells. We're a meaningless piece of wet earth, and all the crying and laughing is just a shadowdance. We're alone, and we're small.”
“I said something like that, thinking he’d finally be pleased. I was agreeing with him after all that time. But he looked at me with such an expression, I can still see it, and he said, “Rylan is a fool.” I really feel like sometimes I am just utterly alone. Empty. A shell with no belonging to the spirit that sometimes dances through.”
KarRa laced her hands behind Rylan's rock hard neck, looking again into his fierce eyes. She tried to smile at him. Her lips were stiff from the terror of laying out her darkest thoughts.
“It's been a long time since we had a S
cuffle conversation.”
When his face stayed fierce, she dropped her eyes to a bead of water rolling down his neck to sit in the dip of his collarbone.
He jounced her up in his arms, his hands tightening on her ass, dipping his head to regain her eyes. “I don't have an answer for you, KarRa. Maybe you’re right.”
She blinked at his honesty.
“We will have to continue this conversation over many a long night. I know that out of all the women in the world, those I've known, and those I've never met, you are the woman who dances with the spirit inside me.
“I know that I can feel empty, and hollow, and small. I think that I am not a shell or a ghost. I am Rylan, an Owl. And if that is true, that I am unique, I am alone. You are alone. Grif is alone. I don't see why being alone makes loving other people mean less. I can be alone, and I can love, and those are not exclusive things.”
She stared at him in shock. His words resounded deep inside her. His words were a Truth that set her free. KarRa was Alone. KarRylan loved.
He dipped in and kissed her hard, his lips lingering against her skin so that she felt the pull of him when he leaned back. “I love you. I love the way our spirits touch, I love the way our thoughts connect out of habit and familiarity, I love knowing how you laugh so harshly, I love the way you feel under my hands, and I will love the way my key will fit your lock.” His eyes captured hers, and set her free. Time stopped, and he taught her how to fly.
Somehow, KarRa came full circle, landing inside herself despite falling into Rylan's eyes. She jerked in his arms. Suddenly, the rock wall pressed against her feet, which were locked at the ankles on the rise of Rylan's ass. His shoulders were tense and strong, his skin hot but dry under her fingers. Her core was spread wide open, pressed against his stomach, and his hands pulled her cheeks apart slightly as he held her to him, making her conscious of the water flowing across her crack.
She saw his pupils dilate, even though there was no change in the daytime setting of lights in the room, and felt his every fingertip flex into her softness, a subtle massage. She pressed her hips forward one breath tighter against his abdomen and his breath left him in a rush.
His head inclined just a whisper toward her and checked, watching her. She mimicked his hands on her ass, spreading her fingers wider on his shoulder blades, and flexing her fingertips.
Then, all the strength in her arms failed, her fingers slipped from their hooked hold, and his hands reflexively tightened as she allowed herself to fall backward, trusting his strength. She lay arched away from him in the water, her face just clearing the surface. It was as if hot coals were trapped at her center, and her hands drifted loose at her sides. Her body was floating so that her ears were underwater, encasing her in silence. Her hair drifted around her head.
She watched his gaze roam her breasts, whose nipples were tight and long, thrusting out of the water. His eyes circled the tips like a touch then eased down her ribs and her muscled belly, clenched against the lapping touch of the water.
His eyes stopped at her thick wiry puff pressed against the line of golden hair arrowing down from his chest. There was the hard bob and push of his blunt head pushing against her crack, trying to nestle between the globes. He grunted, but stayed locked in place, letting his golden eyes travel back up and down. She knew he saw it all—her scars, her wide, strong shoulders, his symbol etched in blue on her skin.
Every time his eyes paused, her awareness of that piece of flesh sent a throb of heat to her core. All she heard was her lone heartbeat. All around her was heat and soft slickness. All she saw was a man who was so dear, so beautiful, so precious. She loved the feeling of being suspended by nothing but his strength.
After the moment spun into eternity he adjusted his hands, dragging them hard to her hips, his fingers curling tight enough to bruise. He pushed out with his hands, and her body glided along the top of the water, her heartbeat changing to a running rhythm.
He closed his eyes, lowered his chin. When he opened his eyes, he was suddenly a predator. His face tightened, eyes going narrow, mouth grimacing. He pressed directly into the center of her hearth, the rounded head pushing, pushing, pushing as if he was trying to force a key. Closing his eyes again he threw back his head, his neck a series of straining lines that was the most beautiful image she'd ever seen.
His blunt tip popped into her entrance, and his chin snapped down, eyes pinning hers. He snarled at her, and even under water she could read his lips and feel the echo of his words. “Are you alone now?”
Holding her gaze he tunneled his hips forward at the same time he pulled her hips in with his great strength. Water sloshed over her face and she gasped, sputtering, at suddenly being full of Rylan. He drove up into her with a burrowing strength that folded her open. She took him completely, full in a way she’d never experienced. The inferno ignited, rushing down her legs and up her spine.
He reached out and grabbed her ribs, hauling her up to him again. The water cascaded off of her as she was lifted high, sounding loud to her freed ears. She laid her hands on his shoulders as he bent his knees, and slammed up into her. This new angle sent him deeper. Her heart jumped and she was sure he had touched it inside her.
“Look at me!”
Her eyes snapped open to see his glowing, green mist overlapping them like tears. He thrust again, withdrawing a few inches to drive hard and deep.
KarRa gasped. She loved the short jabs, feeling like he was trying to stuff his entire body up into her. KarRa curled her fingers into his muscles, as if she could send roots into him.
He sank out of her and slammed up two more times before he gritted out, “I see you KarRa. I’m in you. Hold me tight. Inside, tight. Rise with me.”
Completing these words with another drive of his hips, she felt something break inside her, as if he had cracked through a wall. Or a shell.
Keeping her eyes on his as long as she could, she convulsed, writhing on the hard flesh lodged inside her, a tearing moan welling from her throat as she clamped tight upon him. Behind the shock came a force of heat that washed over her, burning away every fear, every thought. She was spirit. She was pleasure.
When she was KarRa again, panting, clinging weakly, shaking, against his chest, she realized he had let go of her, his hands outstretched to either side, talon claws scrabbling at the rock. He was shaking too, his eyes full green. His head rested on the ledge of the pool, staring blindly at the ceiling, his teeth razors spilling from panting lips. His battleform was upon him.
Instantly she found the strength to tighten her legs as her heart thrilled to be so close to him in this form. She tightened her arms around his neck, and tightened her sheath around him below.
He snarled, and she tucked her face into the curve of his neck and began to kiss, lick, suck, and nip in time to her swirling hips. She didn't have the leverage to lift off him, even if he hadn’t swelled to a thickness that pulled and burned at her core. But she was able to tighten and release from the inside.
He began to snarl in a steady expanding crescendo until he opened his jaw to a silent scream, his head thrashing, claws scraping white furrows in stone. His cock so hard and huge inside her she whimpered and mewed as the pleasure twisted her gut.
She stayed tucked against his chest, hanging from his shoulders by virtue of arms that had locked in position, and when he softened, her feet lost the will to cling and her legs slid down the outside of his, the feel of their legs soft against the other in the water. His relaxed cock rubbed against her belly, causing her to shiver.
Finally their breathing steadied, and his hands came around her back to hold her gently. She felt cherished, as if she were some fine fragile carving. She sighed and stood, and he bent and kissed her. His lips met hers in a silky push, followed by the sweep of his tongue. They tangled, swirled, and drew on each other until her mouth felt as melted as her center.
Eventually, his kisses softened until they were sipping each other's breath, and one of his hands
wandered down her spine, over her hip, and pushed through her curls to cup her.
He pressed his fingertips into her softness and whispered, “I love you.”
KarRa thought she would die from the feeling that swelled from her chest, pulsed at his hand, tightened in her throat. The world dropped out from under them and rolled like a child's ball. She kissed his jaw softly and whispered back, “I love you.”
He whirled from the wall, his arms tightening around her, to spin in quick rushes around and around in the water. KarRa laughed with joy as her legs trailed in the wake, and laughed again to feel his furred chest rubbing against hers when he rumbled a laugh as well.
Rylan frowned in mock confusion. “How are we to get out?”
KarRa laughed again. She didn't know why, and didn't care. “What do you mean?”
“I can't possibly be expected to let go of you, so how are we going to get out?”
“Why do we have to? We'll eat here, and sleep here, and tomorrow the mages can stand around and we'll join here!”
Rylan tossed her playfully. KarRa shrieked at his strength and the water sloshed over the rim. “What a wonderful idea. We will become keepers of the bath, and never leave.” Holding her high, he took the opportunity to close his mouth around one of her nipples. She moaned, her stomach clutching inside.
They continued the joke, talking about how their children would be Watercoasters, and earthmages, who would make tunnels between the other three baths, so that the family would have more room. “And more privacy for fucking,” Rylan growled, gnawing on KarRa's shoulder.
Finally their words trailed off, and the water grew still as they stood resting against the other.
“Ready?” Rylan asked.
“I think I am,” she said softly, shyly.
He slowly let his arms open, and stepped back. She let hers fall to her sides. The pool was cool without his body against hers. They looked at each other, love flowing between them as surely as the water.
