The Wolf

by Jean Johnson

  Wolfer! Wolfer! Wolfer! Wolfer!—”

  Jinga, I love that voice! Especially chanting his name in rhythm like this, matching the thrusts of his body into hers, sobbing with the power of their passion. Wolfer wanted it to go on forever, but he was made only of weak, male flesh, not fervid wishes and erotic dreams. “Alyyyysss . . .”

  The groan ended on a shout that drove him into her one last, hard-shuddered time, making her groan out his name. “Wol-ferrr! Oh, sweet Jinga!”

  Even in the midst of blinding pleasure, that made Wolfer laugh. He pushed into her again, then nipped at her mouth, reveling in the ebbing pleasure coursing through him. “You’re welcome!”

  Alys blinked, coming back from her dive over the precipice. It took her a moment to actually register his words, and then another few moments puzzling out what he meant. The moment she realized he was twitting her about her “Kata says you’re welcome” jest, she bapped his shoulder and mock-glared at him. “Wolfer!”

  “I much prefer the other way you say my name, Alys,” he teased her, kissing her quickly as he pulled out. Then frowned. “Are you all right? Are you sore?”

  She blushed, but smiled. “A little. Are you sore?”

  “Not yet, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll try to be,” he murmured with a wicked grin. And got bapped again lightly with the edge of her hand. Grinning fiercely, he nipped and nuzzled and growled at her throat, making her giggle and struggle to get free of his attack. Though it was in general much like the playful way he used to attack her when they were kids, this time around it was a sensual, erotic act. One that ended with her panting and arching her back, pressing her breasts up into his face, pushing them into his mouth as he alternated suckling on each tip. Wolfer obliged her by mouthing as much of her flesh as he could, laving her budded peaks with his tongue.

  She couldn’t take much more of it, and finally struggled in earnest. He fell back after she shoved hard at his shoulders a third time, slumping onto his back as she panted next to him.

  “You don’t want . . . ?”

  With a feminine growl of her own, Alys flipped over from her back to her stomach. Or rather, onto his stomach. Her hair, released in full from the futile containment of its braid at some point during their joinings, cascaded down around her shoulders. It pooled on his chest in a tangle of dark gold ringlets. Her smile made his heart thump under her forearms.

  “Oh, I want,” she agreed, drawling the words with the occasional bout of self-assurance that always got to him, contrasted with her hesitancies. “But I want, this time around.”

  He thought of her mouth on his chest, her hand on his rod, and knew Jinga was rewarding him for every single piece of good he had ever done in his life. Or maybe it’s Kata rewarding me . . . Golden eyes, already hot, heated even more. He closed them with a little smile and relaxed back into the bedding. “Mmm . . . Have your wicked way with me, woman!”

  Already, Alys felt as if she knew his body well. And not nearly well enough. As she hesitated, wondering where to start first, he cracked open one wolf-gold eye.

  “You can start anywhere you like, you know.” Closing his eye again, he let out a martyr’s sigh. “I’ll just lie here and suffer the horrible devastation of your wicked, feminine wiles . . .”

  Slipping her legs to either side of his hips, she sat up. Right on top of his semi-limp groin. Which responded by heating and thickening once again as his eyes snapped open.

  On seeing the triumphant little smile she wore, Wolfer decided challenging her was both a good and bad idea. Or maybe handing over the reins wasn’t such a good idea after all. That smile suggested he was in for a lot of sensual torture.

  Alys, on the other hand, had just discovered how powerful it felt to be on top. Cari had mentioned it might be fun—not for her very first time, but later, when she was accustomed to lovemaking—but the insightful wench had failed to mention how heady it would be to be the one on top and in control of the lovemaking. She stayed right where she was, savoring the feel of him throbbing against that place between her thighs, feeling herself growing moist and hot and insatiable for another round.

  It got to her, this position. With a lift of her thighs, she freed him from the pressure of her groin. Which allowed him to spring up and finish engorging, until the tip of him emerged from its cowl of foreskin and brushed her intimate folds, which were thoroughly slick with their lovemaking. The reddened shaft jerked slightly with each beat of his heart. His eyes closed as his manhood touched her, his features strained a little with control whenever he brushed her . . . but he didn’t take over. Apparently Wolfer was determined to let her have her way with him. So long as she didn’t take too long about it.

  It was a little awkward, but she gripped him, positioned him just right . . . and sank down, removing her hand. Brown lashes flicked open, and gold, pleasure-dilated eyes met her gray, pleasure-shuttered gaze.

  He had to clear his throat to speak. “This is what you . . . ?”

  Alys smiled. A slow, wolfish—or rather, she-wolfish—smile as she finished sheathing him. He was thick and full and filled her like nothing ever had before. It was exactly where she wanted to be, and what she wanted to do with him. She stayed like that for several long, appreciative moments. Then tried tightening the inner muscles Cari had told her about.

  “Sweet Kata!” The shout bucked his hips up into hers, then levered him up, his knees and torso pulling straight up. Grabbing her hips, Wolfer stared wide-eyed at Alys—his not-so-sweet, no-way-by-Jinga-was-she- innocent Alys!

  Smiling, she did it again. The ecstatic constriction dropped him back on the feather-stuffed mattress with a thump . . . where he dangled right on the edge of an orgasm.

  Alys giggled at his hilarious reaction. She did it a third time, squeezing internally . . . and lost all urge to laugh, for he grasped her hips, straining up into her with rolling thrusts of his groin. Alys felt each distinct eruption from his manhood buried deep and tight within her flesh. Felt each pulsing ejaculation as he groaned in pleasure, grinding her against him.

  The sudden intensity in her lover struck a sympathetic, almost empathetic fire inside of her, tilting Alys’ head back on a satisfied moan of her own. Enhancing it was the way he pressed against that spot inside of her, the blissful one she hadn’t known existed until now. Of course, the way he rubbed his pubic bone up into her didn’t hurt, either.

  When the pleasure faded, his hands helped her slump down onto his chest, both of them wrung out by this third mutual expression of their desire. Panting, Alys closed her eyes and breathed in more of the heady scent the two of them had just created. From the rising and falling of the chest playing mattress under her, she could tell he was content to just lie there and breathe deeply as well.

  Finally, Wolfer found enough energy to speak, though he had to drag his voice out of his chest in a bass rumble before coalescing into actual words. “Nnnhhh . . . next time you want to play with me, woman . . . please, go ahead and do that again!”

  She laughed at that, a short set of exhausted chuckles that puffed against the hairs on his sparsely dusted chest. “You’re welcome, Jinga.”

  Wolfer’s shout of laughter filled the room.

  No, this isn’t going to be enough silk,” Kelly murmured, measuring out the gray material by the old sewer’s trick she had learned: At her height, by pinching the cloth in one hand and extending her arm, where her bra strap would be located on her far shoulder was exactly one yard. To make two sets of clothing, they needed at least another five yards. “Tell Saber to pick up that silk if he can get it; if they didn’t bring any gray, we can dye a lighter shade for contrast. Or maybe use white, or black.”

  Evanor sang the request under his breath, as she checked the next chest, just to see if there was anything in there worth salvaging. There would have been enough of the gray, if bugs hadn’t had a small feast here and there in the lengths of silk. After a moment, the blond-haired, brown-eyed man shook his head. “No silk at all.”
>
  Kelly held up lengths of creamy, undyed silk. “Maybe this’ll work? Redyed a lighter shade of gray, for the tunics and the overskirt?”

  “You have strange taste in clothing, ‘Queen’ Kelly,” Evanor teased her. “What makes you think Alys will want to wear your strange styles?”

  “Because she likes trousers, and the overskirt is a good compromise for someone who’s used to wearing a skirt, but still wants the freedom to move.” She dabbed at the sweat on her face with the back of her wrist. “Though with the increasing heat of summer, I’m tempted to make shorts and start wearing those instead.”

  “ ‘Shorts’?” the fourth brother asked her.

  She tapped the edge of her hand on the middle of her thighs. “Pants that reach only to here—you would call them under-trousers, and use them for undergarments—well, only if they don’t have the gusset seam down the center—but we put in a seam and use them as a logical and highly practical summer garment for both men and women.”

  “I think my eldest brother would have something rather strident to say, if you tried that,” Evanor replied lightly in his smooth, fluid tenor.

  Kelly snorted as she rose, bundling and taking the cream silk with her. “Just wait until I make myself a bikini to wear down on the beach—that’ll give him an outright heart attack!”

  Evanor swept up the gray silk and followed her out of the storage room. They reached the stairwell and started down. Through one of the open windows drifted a masculine shout from another of the wings, followed by a feminine cry. There was no need to guess the reason why. Not with that tone in both distant but vocal throats.

  Evanor blushed a little. “Well. At least two of us are getting lucky, these days . . .”

  Kelly gaped at him. Then burst into a hearty laugh that ended with her wiping at the edges of her eyes. “Oh, my . . . I really should be a little more sympathetic toward you and the others,” she finally apologized as they reached the next floor down and headed for the sewing hall, “but all I feel is the urge to laugh!”

  “Saber’s verse did come true with the disaster of the Mandarites and the stealing of my twin,” Evanor agreed, his smile wavering a little on that last part. “But Wolfer’s verse seems a lot easier to bear.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Kelly agreed as they entered the sewing hall and carried their burdens to one of the worktables. She shook her head. “Alys only showed up yesterday—how could he have made up his mind so quickly? I mean, Saber took forever to come around to me, by comparison!”

  “Wolfer’s always been like that. Quick to anger, quick to decision.” Ev smiled with the memories of a younger brother. “Of course, that always got him into plenty of trouble when we were young, but he did pick up a knack for controlling his temper and making better decisions. Eventually.”

  Kelly picked up the embroidery-marked ribbon that she had made for a measuring tape, measuring in the inches she was used to instead of the smaller measurements the Katani-style measuring ribbon used, which was somewhere between an inch and a centimeter. She fetched the charcoal-sketched measurements she had taken only that morning and started measuring out the yards that Alys’ clothing would need. “Then again, I guess they did know each other for a long time before you all were exiled. I think Alys has always been in love with him. Some women are like that: One look, one moment, and they know forever.”

  “Or in your case, one growl, and you knew forever . . .”

  “Oh, ha, ha, very funny. Besides,” Kelly added coyly, dropping her sarcasm, “Saber grunts; he doesn’t really growl. Not like Wolfer does, but then my husband hasn’t got that ‘James Earl Jones’ deep voice going.”

  “ ‘James, Earl of Jones’?” Evanor repeated. “I do not remember an earldom ruled by any Jones family—”

  Kelly burst out laughing again. “No, no . . . I see I still have a few things to explain to you, Ev! James Earl Jones, Barry White, Brian Blessed . . . Maybe, if Morganen’s up to it, we can try and find someone listening to or watching any of those three on a CD or a videotape somewhere in my old realm through his scrying mirror, so you’ll know exactly what I mean. But let’s get these wedding clothes started; I’ll start work on the trousers; you measure out ten yards of the cream and start the dyeing.”

  “As Your Majesty commands me,” Evanor jested, sweeping her a mock-gallant bow.

  Ah, so you do exist!” Trevan teased as Wolfer and Alys entered the dining chamber together.

  Alys blushed. Wolfer sent his younger brother a warning look. He escorted her over to her seat, placed to the right of his chair. When they were both seated, Wolfer’s twin shook his dark blond head and sighed.

  “Evanor has informed me that you have asked Alys to wed you, Wolfer,” Saber stated. “I just wish you’d stayed long enough to help the rest of us with the trading.”

  “How did that go, anyway?” Kelly asked her husband from his other side. “Did you sell the salt?”

  “No. We did sell the algae-blocks, though,” Saber admitted. “Fertilizer is in high demand in the far north, and the green blocks make some of the best fertilizer available. The northlands aren’t as lush as the mid and southern regions, since it doesn’t rain as much in the warmer climates,” Saber added. “The locals up there have to be careful about over-farming the soil.”

  “Two hundred years ago,” Morganen added, “they farmed too much and turned the soil to barren dust. It took them years of careful enspelling and fertilizing to restore the soil to fertility once more, if you can imagine.”

  “Not only can I imagine it, my world did the same thing, though less than a hundred years ago,” Kelly added candidly. “Some of those areas are still rather bad, ecologically. You didn’t have any trouble keeping the salt, did you?”

  “None.” Saber glanced at his twin. “Thanks to you, Wolfer, they weren’t going to get any of us mad. You created a problem with your attack on Donnock of Devries, of course . . . but you did solve one at the same time, making the sailors wary of turning us into enemies.

  “Just . . . try to think ahead a little about the consequences of your actions next time, though. Morganen’s forget-it spell will eventually wear off, and he’ll probably still be mad when he does remember what happened. We can only guess how he’d react, then,” Saber stated, sighing roughly. “I say we change the look of the cove and the quay immediately, just in case he thinks of teleporting in a little revenge for you breaking his wrist like that.”

  Alys, listening to this piece of logical truth, sent Morganen a nervous, questioning look. At the slight shake of his head, she relaxed; she trusted the youngest of the brothers to know when the best time for her many confessions should be. He had helped counsel her during her years with Broger, after all, and she had survived those years by following his advice. Now was not the time to inform the others that she could guess with great accuracy what probable courses of action her two uncles might take.

  Next to her, Wolfer saw the tiny exchange between his youngest sibling and his mate, and frowned slightly. I know she’s in love with me, he thought as the conversation moved on to the items traded and bought. But what hold does Morganen dare to have on her? Why does she look at him, instead of at me?

  He didn’t think he had anything to be jealous of—Alys had fled to him, after all—but still, she had exchanged a tiny look of communication with his youngest sibling, something that said they knew what each other was thinking at that moment. Suggesting a tie of some kind between them. Jinga, what could it be?

  He didn’t want to feel jealous of his youngest brother, but Wolfer did, just a little. He didn’t like the feeling, and he didn’t like whatever it was that caused this instinctive feeling within him. One that said something deeper was going on than what he could see on the surface of things.

  “I think the demand for salt will go up as autumn approaches,” Koranen pointed out. “People without enough magic to preserve their food with spells will need it for their meat and their fish. I think we should leave all the f
ountains running, stack up the salt, and send out word at the end of summer that Nightfall is willing to sell its high-quality salt to anyone interested in coming to the island to pick it up and pay our price.”

  “And the algae?” Morganen asked his slightly older twin. “You want to leave it in the storage shed all winter long, until spring arrives? That stuff starts to reek after a few months, you know. It only stops smelling when it’s been mixed into the soil.”

  “We sell that now, while we still can, to places like the northlands,” his twin returned reasonably. “Then we store it. There aren’t any permanent spells in the warehouse that we know of to keep it from smelling, but that’s an easy enough spell to maintain on a temporary cycle.”

  Rydan entered the hall. He came late to the table, but with a fresh keg of stout hefted on his black-clad shoulder, their evening drink of choice. A simple arch of his black brow asked his younger, strawberry-haired twin to explain the tag end of the statement he had just heard.

  “We were just talking about how to store the algae blocks over the winter without them smelling, so we could sell them come the spring for fertilizer,” Trevan summarized.

  A slight dip of the other man’s head was all the answer he gave, acknowledging the current topic of conversation.

  Alys eyed him a little uncertainly, for the sixth brother had turned even stranger in the handful of intervening years than she last remembered. She focused on the conversation at hand, venturing a tentative suggestion. “I think you could break up the blocks and mix them with vegetation, say the bushes from the pastureland we’d need to create for cattle. There’s lots of dead brown leaves coating the jungle floor, I’ve noticed. I’ve done something similar with green and brown vegetation back home, and the resulting compost was good. With the algae-blocks, I think it will be even better.”

  “You know, I think she’s right,” Kelly agreed, backing her up quickly. “I saw this show—well, never mind how I learned it; that would take too long to explain—but I heard that if you mix green stuff with brown stuff, you know, grass clippings with dead leaves, plus a little leftover food, like fruit peels and the like, you get a perfect compost mixture for fertilizing your garden.