The Toll
Page 3
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Papa was quiet all throughout breakfast the following morning, and Mamma was jittering, skittering about nervously as she kept eyeing Papa, wringing her hands repeatedly as she fidgeted around the room fitfully.
She waited until Papa had finished picking at his food before she sat down in her chair, the frilly white cap she liked to wear flapping about haphazardly atop her messy mop of hair as she leaned forward and bobbed her noggin encouragingly, asking Papa for the third time that day, “Well, Nathem? What of the search? What must we do?”
“We are coming up with a plan, heart,” was all he would say, his eyes straying towards me like he wanted to say more, but wasn’t willing to in my presence.
Had they done something horrible to her and he didn’t want me to know? Or was this another one of those ‘women and delicate sensibilities’ things again, and it’s a ‘man-thing’, and women shouldn’t be getting involved? Who knows... Obviously, from the glances I’m getting, I won’t.
Did they make demands? I had to wonder. Were they really horrible demands, like children to enslave? Or willing human sacrifices or something? Is that why? I’d heard horrible stories of the things trolls had done to people in the past, the strange demands they’d make when someone crossed them, my imagination running away with me.
Whatever the reason for secrecy, I wasn’t to know.
The rest of the day passed quietly, too quietly, and I eventually wandered off to meet Trystan, opting to meet him underneath the large willow tree that met our property.
I’d had all day to come up with a plan, and I was determined to figure something out, and yet... I was still coming up blank. What am I to do? What could I do?
“Daphie-girl?” Trystan called, and I turned at his voice.
The grass grew much higher over here, I noticed as he got closer, the warm colors of the browning weeds mixed in with the lush greens of the reed thin grass a pretty, startling contrast.
He ambled up to me wearing dark blue trousers and a dark tan shirt, his favorite black vest buttoned up over his impressive shoulders.
Upon first sight of me he smiled warmly in greeting as he approached, opening his arms and pulling me into his chest.
Hugging him back just as eagerly, I smiled softly as he buried his face in my hair.
“Mmm, I’ve missed you. How are you faring? Are you holding up alright?”
I hugged him tighter at the concern in his voice. No one had ever cared so much for me. No one ever will.
“I don’t really know much of anything and I have no idea how I’m feeling.” I went with the truth because there would never be any lies between us. Only truth—that was our way.
Breathing in his scent, I felt him nod over the top of my head.
“I know it’s not good, that much I can tell you. Serious business, what your sister did, crossing up a troll.”
Surprised but hopeful for more information, I pulled back to peer up at him. “So you know, then? What happened?”
“Mmm. Aye,” he nodded, “your Pa met up with him. We all did.”
My mouth slowly opened and hung that way. They did? They actually saw?
“The trolls?” I managed to squeeze out of my tight throat, remembering to breathe. Trolls eat people! They’re mean and ugly, vicious and brutish! They’re… they’re … well, they’re trolls!
Face solemn, he nodded. “Yes, but it was just the one.”
“One?” I repeated dumbly. “Just a one?” That’s good, right?
Trystan saw the question in my eyes as he gazed down at me steadily. “Yes, and he was a right ugly devil, he was. One was plenty, he was so thick and wide—his body, his shoulders and neck thick and strong, too strong. His arms were too long for his body, and his skin was a sickly grey, eyes a bright orange like they were wrought from the fires of hell and the devil himself. I’ve never seen the likes of it, Daphie-girl. And his voice was off,” he shuddered a little at the memory, making me shiver along too, “like stones grinding against one another. Too deep.” Trystan’s skin pebbled, gooseflesh popping up everywhere.
Clutching him tight, I felt my own skin bumping up. “And Otvla? What of my sister?” Pulling back, I watched Trystan’s reaction closely, searching out his face.
Though he tried to hide it, I didn’t miss the grimace he’d quickly wiped away.
“She… she’s…” He hesitated as he paced away a few steps, finally settling on a drier looking patch of earth, and sat down. With a toss of his head, he held out a hand, motioning for me to join him.
Rushing over, I did, meeting his gaze head on. “Just tell me, Trystan,” I pleaded. “There are no walls between us we can’t climb.”
He gripped my knee and nodded slightly, swallowing hard. “She was in a cage, dangling from a hook in the ceiling.” Pausing, he stared down at the ground for a moment before he continued, plucking at a stray piece of grass. “She seemed frightened and dirty, but otherwise unharmed.”
Sitting there, wanting to press him further, I waited as I digested that for a minute.
“Well, that’s good, then, right?” It sounds promising, I thought hopefully, wondering at the odd look that crossed Trystan’s face. “That means we have time, then. That he’s not going to hurt her, necessarily, doesn’t it?”
“It could be… yes…” he murmured vaguely. I could hear the big old but tacked on to that, and I pressed him for more.
“I need to know,” I practically begged, gripping his fingers tight as I took his hand in mine. “Trystan, please!”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and a lump formed in my gut. Whatever he was going to tell me, I wouldn’t want to hear it.
“He seemed to take a perverse amount of pleasure in making her, uh, afraid.”
My brows pulled down, face pinching tight. “In making her scared? That’s it? He finds fun in making her scared of him?” That sounded unpleasant, but not like I’d thought he was leading up to. “He isn’t doing it by harming her, is he? Physically, I mean?” I blurted, before I’d thought better of it. It would make more sense, if that’s what he was dancing around telling me.
Trystan let out a deep breath and cut the shit. “Your sister is very beautiful. Not the brightest, but very beautiful, Daphedaenya,” he said not unkindly.
I winced at the reminder, and the dual reminder that I, myself, was not the most graceful of swans in the pond, and that he’d obviously acknowledged her beauty himself. It stung just a wee bit.
Glancing up at me, gauging my reaction, he gave me a quick once over, and I glared at him. Seeing he’d been caught comparing us, if my guess was right, he quickly looked away, choosing to stare off over the field instead, his face reddening in what I perceived as his embarrassment.
“I know how pretty she is,” I gritted out, “but what’s-” I stopped and the words died in my throat. No. No. that’s just... Not willing to even think it, I shook my head. I didn’t want to believe... No. My shoulders slumped and I pulled my knees up to my chest. “Oh, Trystan! No! A troll?” The idea revolted me instantly. “He wouldn’t!”
“I don’t… I don’t know. But that’s what Pa thinks he might have in mind, especially when he said he wouldn’t take any coin in exchange. He said only a trade of the flesh would do.”
Bile rising in my throat, I mouthed the words out loud. “A trade of the flesh?”
“Aye,” he mumbled awkwardly, “he said a body for a body, or nothing and he keeps his slave.”
“Slave!” I squawked. “Slave?”
Trystan pulled me into his lap as my eyes welled up. Squeezing them shut, I wrapped my arms around him tight, sniffling softly into his shirt front. His strong, reassuring touch calmed me immeasurably as his large hands rubbed up and down my back in gentle, soothing motions.
Trembling, I buried my face in his neck as I held him to me tight.
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you, love. I knew it would upset you.”
“But I needed to know,” I choked out.
“Don’t worry, Daphie, we’ll all figure something out. You’ll see.”
“Like what?” I laughed, somewhat hysterically, because I was beyond crying for the moment, and that’s all I had left in me—biting laughter. “Are they going to find some flesh to trade for her? A person willing to take her place?”
“Well… no,” he murmured slowly.
“Then you’re going to defeat him?” Eyes sliding open, still glistening wetly with tears, I stared up at him. “Kill the vile troll and rescue Otvla?”
He stiffened at the snipe in my voice, bristling briefly at my clipped, snappish tones. “We’re going to go back tonight and try to negotiate with it, with him,” he corrected. “Try and see if he’ll bend if we offer cattle and horses and animals, on top of what your Pa has managed to pull together. That’s flesh too, right?”
I could hear the uncertainty in his voice and it bothered me, the lump in my gut twisting into a large ball.
“But that’s not the kind of flesh you really think he’s meaning to take in exchange, is it?” I whispered. “And you don’t think it will actually work. He wants a human for a human.”
Trystan pulled back, his hands on the tops of my shoulders, lips parting as nothing came out. Trying to figure out how or what to say next, he opened his mouth again, as if to speak, but stopped.
“Honesty, my love,” I reminded him, and he pursed his lips, stopped, then finally nodded.
“No, I’m sorry, Daphie, my girl. I don’t think it will work. I think he means to make use of Otvla and, uh, make use of her body, unless someone else takes her place and lets him make use of them instead.”
My heart sank and my skin felt chilled. Closing my eyes, the tears spilled forth. Tipping my chin, Trystan leaned forward to kiss them all away. Between hiccupping sobs, I heard him whispering to me sweetly, promising me everything would be alright. Eventually his lips trailed down, over my nose, near my cheeks, and as they soon reached mine, he took them, slanting his mouth over mine.
“I’m sorry, Daphie, I really am,” he whispered between searching kisses.
“Just kiss, me, Tryst,” I whispered back, gripping his shirt tightly in my fists as he moaned against my lips and his tongue slid into my mouth. He’d never kissed me like that before, and it took me by surprise, but I welcomed the pleasant distraction. My tongued tentatively tangled with his, absorbing the new sensation, the feelings.
We fell to our sides in the field, exploring each other eagerly, and he soon rolled himself on top of me, his hands everywhere as he learned and worshipped every inch of my body.
“Oh, love,” he groaned, his hands running underneath my thick woolen gown, brushing my bloomers as he made his way straight to the juncture of my thighs.
“Trystan,” I mumbled against his lips uncertainly, pausing as things grew too serious.
“Let me make you feel better,” he murmured huskily as his fingers dug their way through the slit in the cotton fabric, finding the opening. “Oh, Daph, are you wet for me?”
Was I wet? Where? There? No. I shook my head, but I didn’t think he’d noticed. And as for myself, I was too busy being scared and uncertain, and about a million other things, all at once, to be ‘wet’, as he put it.
This was not at all like my friends had told me. Were they lying? There was no tingling, warm feeling in my woman’s place, only the sensation of his sandpaper rough fingers running across my clit searchingly, roughly. Frankly, it hurt.
Two thick, long fingers clumsily found my opening and pushed at the entrance to my sex.
Shocked at the sudden, abrupt entry of his overlarge digits, I cried out.
“Yes, just like that,” he muttered, shoving his thick, chafing fingers in farther.
“Ah! Trystan, wait,” I pressed, but he had his face smashed up against my neck and his groaning was louder than my soft, unsure, whimpered pleas.
As my voice grew louder he smothered my next cry with his mouth, and I winced as he shoved his fingers in punishingly, all the way in, tunneling deep and hard.
Something deep inside me hurt at his invasion, a sharp, harsh pain that had me digging my nails into his back, biting my lip to keep from crying out again, lest he gag me with his tongue and lips a second time.
“It hurts,” I managed to gasp between his frantic pecks and nips at my lips.
His kisses were getting sloppier and sloppier as he pressed his hard length into my thigh and thrust himself lustily against me.
“It won’t for long, Daph, and then it will feel really good.” He didn’t pause as he mumbled reassurances into my now tangled hair.
Wanting so much to believe him, I let him keep up his quick stabbing motions with his sausage like fingers into my womanhood, assured that what he said was right. He’d never been wrong before, but I was beginning to doubt him as his ministrations just seemed to irritate my sensitive flesh further.
In, out, in, out, wince, grimace, wince, grimace.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
It didn’t feel good at all, and I was on the verge of telling him so, my sensitive lady tissues aching and swollen, pained, as if that area were on par with raw, ground up meat.
His humping at the crook where my thigh meets my pelvis wasn’t faring all that well either, his eager thrusting into it like being stabbed with the blunt end of a shovel handle. Only difference was, I was certain the shovel end would have broken off by now, he was ramming so hard.
“Are you going to soon? I can’t hold out much longer.” His thrusts grew shorter and his fingers slowed as they pounded into me. Going to what? Hurt any less, like you’d promised? No.
His hands left my sex suddenly, and I was grateful, relieved even.
Groaning, I let out a sharp breath as he pulled them from my depths, the wet sucking sound of them leaving my body making me both curious and afraid to have a peek down there.
“Hold out for what?” I mumbled faintly as he sat up, wiping his hand off on my ruined bloomers. Without acknowledging me with even a cursory response, he pulled the placket of his pants open, shoving his trousers and drawers down his thickly muscled thighs as he exposed himself to me.
At the sight of it, I shot up, eyes going wide as saucers as I got a good eyeful of him—him-him—and I scrambled quickly, crab-walking backwards.
“Trystan…” I stuttered, “Uh, love... I don’t...”
Eagerly, he palmed himself, running his fingers over his foreskin as he pulled it back, exposing the angry, reddened head of his cock to me.
“I want you so badly, Daph, can’t you tell?” Clear fluid leaked from the tip as he swallowed hard, his hand running up and down his length in his big fist as he watched me intently, hungrily.
My eyes bulged and my throat felt tight. That won’t fit! I almost shouted. It won’t!
Warnings like: Run! Kept shooting off in my head, but I couldn’t. He’d surely catch me. It just wasn’t possible.
Releasing himself, he got on his hands and knees and crawled towards me, cock bobbing along in his wake, his pants dangling around his ankles, hobbling him as his eyes locked on the ‘v’ of my thighs.
He must have ripped my pantaloons at some point, and they were gaping open, the stitches having been torn, exposing my naked flesh to his eager eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he admonished on a chuckle, his eyes shooting up to mine as I slowly closed my thighs, clenching them tight as I squawked in protest. “It will fit. I’ll make it.”
My faith in him thoroughly shaken, I swallowed hard and tried to quell my pounding heart, trying to beat right out of my chest.
“What, uh,” I cleared my throat nervously, “what are you planning on doing, then?”
“I’m going to make us one,” was all he said, the predatory gleam in his eyes letting me know he was going to do exactly what I thought he was. And all I could come up with at
that moment was—he’s going to fuck me in half. With… I glanced down. With... that.
“But we can’t, we aren’t married yet.” I stumbled suddenly and flopped back, hitting a hole in the ground under my wrist.
Sprawled on the hard, packed dirt, flat on my back, he was already over my legs, opening them wide to wedge his thick thighs between.
“We will be,” he glanced down at my sex, “soon.”
My elbow buckled as I struggled to get back up, but once again I went toppling backwards. Trystan came tumbling after.
“We have to wait! Trystan!” I squeaked as I felt him settle himself down over me.
His hot, hard length bobbed against my thigh, heavy and thick, wanting, and I panicked. I’d managed to shove my hand between us and gripped him tight when he would have stuck his penis inside me. My fingers couldn’t even completely curl around it, he was so engorged.
It was huge!
Either unwilling to take note of it, or uncaring altogether of the gravity of the situation, he groaned appreciatively and thrust into my fingers, which were angling him over my stomach, fingers curved around him to hold him out and away from my poor, abused lady parts.
He didn’t seem bothered at all by the barrier I’d put up, maybe even pleased with it.
“Just like that. Oh, god. So good,” he moaned, shuddering in ecstasy, his eyes shut tight. “I love when you touch me. Yes, like that.”
Uhm, I’m going with the latter. He definitely likes it.
His hand reached up and he pawed at my breast through my dress, more of a mauling than anything, gripping my breast and squeezing a little too hard, too wound up in his own moment to realize those were groans and whimpers of pain I was making, not pleasure.
Grimacing, I shifted underneath him a little as he grew rather boisterous in his attentions into my hand, hoping to move my sex farther away from his battering ram of a cock—of which was bucking wildly, determinedly into my fingers.
Just a few moments later, his body shuddered over mine and he choked out my name. Blinking up at him, wondering what exactly had just happened—though, really, I already knew—I soon found a warm, sticky liquid covering my closed fist, still stubbornly wrapped around his shaft, bathing my fingers and wrist with his release.