by R. Lee Smith
Olivia looked at the prong in his hand, then reached out and took it to look at it more closely. “I’m supposed to eat this?” she inquired coolly.
There was laughter.
Thugg had brightened considerably when she took the prong, but didn’t seem to know how to react to either her sarcasm or the mockery from the crowd. Flustered, he fanned his wings out to hide her from the others and leaned in close to hiss, “No, you’re not supposed to eat it, you’re supposed to be impressed. That’s a trophy from a black-tail, damn it.”
“I’m not impressed.” She put the bit of antler back into his hand. “Now leave me be.”
“Leave you…?” Thugg swept his eyes across the loose crowd. “I’m not leaving you anywhere! You…Where is Sudjummar?”
“Working.”
Thugg threw her a look of hotly mingled frustration, discomfort, and exasperation. “May I speak with you for a moment in private?”
Olivia glanced at the other humans, who all stared back without a great deal of sympathy, then at the gullan females, who watched raptly, and finally, warily, at the men, who looked either envious or curious. Something was happening, all right. She supposed she’d better find out exactly what. Olivia stood up, shrugging, and stepped into an alcove with Thugg, in full view of the others, but where their voices couldn’t carry as far. “What is it?”
He scratched nervously at the side of his throat. “How much has Sudjummar told you about challenges?”
“Just what I need to know to understand what I’ve already seen.”
He nodded, looking annoyed. “Let me tell you what’s just happened,” he said. “I gave you the trophy of my kill and you took it!”
“I gave it back,” Olivia said, her heart beginning to beat a little harder.
“That doesn’t matter, you still took it! In front of everyone! I don’t even have to fight for you now. In the eyes of the tribe, you accepted me!”
She stared, horrified. She wanted to disbelieve him, and if he had gloated over the information even a little, she would have. Unfortunately, he looked just as uncertain as she and that left her no choice but to believe him.
“You are my mate now,” Thugg was saying. “We need to go back before the others so that I can claim you. Sudjummar should challenge me—”
“You mate-stealing dick!” she yelled, and made sure she yelled it loud enough for everyone to hear. By the second wave of laughter, everyone had.
“How was I supposed to know he wouldn’t be here? You’ve got no business wandering around in the commons without your mate!” He watched her nervously, then added, “Look, I know you’re not happy with me, but you need to come with me for now. Just to my lair. I’ll go tell Sudjummar and see how he wants to handle things.” Thugg winced. “Probably with his fist in my face, but this isn’t my fault. I won’t take you to my pit until he’s had the chance to challenge me for your return.”
“How very understanding.”
“This is not what I had planned!”
“Well, you didn’t plan things very well, did you?”
He looked guilty, but couldn’t argue. Taking her by the arm, he brought her back out into the common cavern. “You are all my witness!” Thugg announced. “I claim this female as my mate. I claim her son as my own. Do you refuse me, Olivia?”
“No,” she said crossly.
“Good,” he said, dropping his voice. “Good enough, let’s g—” He broke off abruptly and shoved her back. Olivia stumbled and swung around, ready to start yelling again, when she saw what he had seen.
A large male had shouldered his way to the front of the crowd and was coming towards Thugg, one that Olivia knew, although she had never seen him in the commons before. He wasn’t really tribe, after all.
Thugg raised his hackles and spread his wings guardedly. It was a pathetic display. Logarr had six inches and maybe fifty pounds on him. “What do you want?”
“To challenge for your mate,” Logarr replied, and sprang, a motion unexpected and strangely beautiful, his feet thudding into Thugg’s shoulders. Logarr hopped gracefully over his opponent’s head as Thugg flailed. Thugg managed to tuck his wings under him before his fall to the stone floor could snap them, but a gulla on his back was frighteningly vulnerable.
Logarr crouched, watching closely as Thugg flipped himself onto his side, got one knee beneath him, then brought himself to his feet. At any moment in this defenseless time, Logarr could have easily knocked him down. He chose to wait until Thugg was standing before striking out again.
Then he pounced, driving one shoulder into Thugg’s midsection and slamming him up against the wall. Logarr backed up a step, then cracked his knee into Thugg’s stomach. He allowed Thugg to drop, then brought his joined hands down between Thugg’s shoulder blades.
Thugg made a horrible sound—a belching, amphibious croak—and fell on his face, gasping.
Logarr stood over him. All were silent, even Olivia.
Thugg reached up shakily and wiped blood from the corners of his mouth. He tried to push himself up.
Logarr took a step back, giving him room enough to stand.
Instead, Thugg made a clumsy lunge for Logarr’s knees.
Logarr dodged easily and stomped hard on Thugg’s back, slamming him down flat again. Then he waited, a man at peace with himself and the world.
Thugg spat something, but it wasn’t surrender.
Logarr scooped him off the ground, punched him the stomach, and threw him against the wall. He held him there with a few more punches, and then let him slide back onto his face on the floor. He stood. He waited. Then he picked Thugg up and slashed him open from his left shoulder to his right rib.
Thugg screamed, and hidden in the agonized sound was a single word: “Concede!”
Logarr glanced at Olivia.
She stared at him, unable to decide what she was feeling. It had all happened so quickly and now she was faced with the thing she had feared the most. There was a storm of emotion inside her, but none of it could be identified. There was no fear, no dread, only a kind of numb anticipation.
Logarr looked down at Thugg. “You may not touch that female,” he said. “You may not challenge for that female. Your word on it.”
“My word,” Thugg said hoarsely.
“Break it ever, and I will hunt you out.” Logarr led him over to a bench and sat him down. “Whether she is mine or not. My mark is on you.”
“I know the law.”
Logarr turned back to Olivia. His gaze was steady and speculative. “Will you come to my lair?” he asked, absurdly gentle.
She shook her head.
He nodded as if this were the answer he had expected. “Then you will yield to me.” It was not a question, but he watched her as carefully as if he expected rebuttal.
Time stood still while Olivia considered her options. She could refuse, at which point Logarr would almost certainly march down the tunnel, haul Sudjummar out of the forge and beat him half to death. Or she could yield, as Sudjummar had explained, as far as the victor’s alcove, and there refuse him, which might still cause Sudjummar no end of trouble, but was at least a painless way out of this mess. She felt herself nodding.
He put out his hand and her own slipped into his grip.
Logarr led her out of the cavern, through a labyrinth of short passages and alcoves, to a very small room. She could see nothing, but she could sense its smallness. He felt his way cautiously ahead of her, found the bench she had known would be there, and put her on it.
“Do you intend to refuse me?” he asked.
“You’re damn right I do.”
“I see.” The back of his hand brushed against her cheek; she twisted away. He was quiet for a moment or two, and then he said, “I am sorry for what I am about to do, Olivia. I wish that it had been anyone but you.”
Before she could move, before she could scream, he seized her. Her back slammed down on the stone bench. He levered her legs apart, pushing his way between her thighs
where her kicking feet could do no harm. Her skirt pooled up around her waist. His hand came down over her mouth. She clutched at his immoveable arm and heard him say quite calmly, “I am very sorry for what I am about to do. This excuses nothing, but I want you to know it anyway. I am very sorry.”
He parted her labia with two fingers and slid his hand down to lay his palm flat against her pussy.
Olivia tried once, futilely, to buck him off before he could finish whatever bizarre examination he was performing and then a bolt of something hot and white as lightning cracked from the center of his palm and up through her womb to explode in the core of her body. She screamed against his hand as heat like acid unfurled out from her middle, burning into every tissue, scathing and licking through her with flames of agony. She screamed and screamed and screamed, and finally her voice broke and she could make only a harsh rasp of terror and at that, he released her and stood up.
Olivia threw herself to one side, crashed into the hard ground, and scrambled blindly away from him. He caught her again, hauled her up by the back of her belt and put her flat on the bench again. He held her there with one hand, unfastened and removed his loincloth with the other. He caught her kicking legs effortlessly and pried them apart, coming between her thighs to straddle the bench.
She felt the hot brand of his member press on her from behind and that heat inside her exploded again with white-hot blistering force. His hands gripped her hips, lifted and tilted her, but for a long time he only rocked, not penetrating but only rubbing the hard length of him against her throbbing pussy in slow, even strokes. She was aware of a wet, sucking sound as he moved, realized further that she was having a massive, closely-locked series of orgasms, each coming so fast and hard on the other that they melted together into a streak of intense, seething pain.
Desperate, Olivia slashed out with both hands and caught the thin fur on his face. He hissed, released her, caught her again and yanked her off the bench only to turn her around and push her flat again, belly-down. Her breasts pressed painfully against the cold stone. The lip of the bench dug into her belly when he lifted her from behind and this time he pierced her with the head of his engorged member and shoved hard. She clawed vainly at the stone, believing in her terror that she could hear steam hissing from their bodies as he sank himself by painstaking degrees deep inside her. At last the hard plane of his flanks slammed home against her bottom and he crouched, breathing hard, perfectly motionless for exactly ten beats of her pounding heart.
Then he reared back and slammed into her again. Her cry was crushed against the stone. He yanked her hips back, shifted her slightly to an angle and began to pump his hips in ruthless rhythm, grinding her against the bench and slapping their bodies together with brutal force.
And with every thrust, she came in agony. Every slight movement of the thick organ driving at her intensified the scathing sensation that wracked her from within and it seemed she had no outlet for it. Orgasm after orgasm battered her, but there was no sense of release. There was nothing of pleasure, nothing even of physical sexual response, only this great, churning, burning, battering, thrashing chain of explosions and the silent shrieking of her fear.
Logarr’s breath was coming hot and ragged, burning her back like the steam from a vent. The hammering action of his hips increased until he was throwing himself at her in a frenzy, splitting her in half along the great wedge of hot iron he fucked her with. Without warning, he threw back his head, wrenched her hard against him, arched rigid and fast inside her and drove a torrent of something acid-hot into her. For one terrified instant, she thought the battering force of his seed had punctured the wall of her womb; the heat of his cum struck and slashed through her until it seemed to suffuse her entire body. A jet of it, gallons of it, thick and hot and horrible with animal pain. It emptied into the core of her for eternities and he was immobile throughout, not even breathing, until it was done.
Logarr made a sound of tight agony and fell atop her. He was shaking. His chest ground against her as he gasped in swooping lungfuls of air, but gradually, his breath evened out. His thighs unlocked. He slid back, stood up.
Olivia lay stunned. She could not move, could not speak, was conscious of drool snaking out the corners of her mouth. The sensation of unrelieved climax was mingling with the heat of Logarr’s strange seed, and receding back into her womb. She heard rustling as he fastened his loincloth.
“Are you awake?” he asked. His voice was steady, but tired.
She made a sound.
“Good, because there is something I mean to say to you, and I want to be certain you understand.” He paused. “Do you understand?”
“…yes,” she managed.
“You are weak. That will pass. I have put a power into you and in order to translate it, you must get it out of you in the same way it got in. Soon. Or else you may die of it.”
“What have you done…to me?” she whispered helplessly.
“I’ve made it difficult,” he replied, and that weariness was back in his voice. “I can’t make it impossible, I don’t think anyone can do that, but I have made it more complicated.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I will tell you everything, but not tonight. I am done with you for now.” He came back to help her to sit up. “But I am commanded to couple with you again,” he said.
“Why me?”
“You will know the answer another time. What is important for you to understand is that I will fight your mate to claim you if you do not come willingly. Thugg was convenient. I knew you didn’t want him. But I will fight Sudjummar if I must, and I may have to kill him to defeat him.”
The strength was seeping back into her bones but she held onto him while he smoothed down her skirt with his claws. “Who?” she gasped. “Who commands you?”
“I have told you all I intend to tell you for now. You will learn a little more each time I am with you.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you can do it in secret. What we do in the grip of this power carries no scent. No one will know, tonight, that I have been inside you. In fact, they will think they know that I have not.”
“What if I don’t want to know any more?”
“Then I won’t tell you,” he answered. “But I will still have you. There is a hand upon me, Olivia. I am not allowed to refuse, but I am sorry it was you. Please believe me. I would have given my last breath if only it had been anyone…but you.” He put his hand on her arm and led her out again, down the maze of narrow passages and thick walls, to the common cave.
Thugg was sitting down while Thurga ministered to him. He looked uneasy and depressed, but his injuries, while ugly and doubtless painful, were not serious. Next to him, holding Somurg and exchanging a few tense words with some of the other males, stood Sudjummar. He looked around at the first whisper of Olivia’s name, his hackles raised and a growl in his throat, but Logarr did not acknowledge the threat in either the sight or sound. He walked Olivia over to the smith and released her arm. “Your mate,” he said simply, and left.
Sudjummar watched until Logarr was gone, then gave her a pained glance and looked away. “I should have been here.”
The words had no immediate meaning for her. She could scarcely believe it, but she was beginning to be very aroused. “Is that what you think?” she said at last. “Look at Thugg. That could have been you! I don’t care about Logarr, I care about you!”
“You don’t…blame me?”
Blame you, I’m going to destroy you, she thought desperately. “It doesn’t even matter to me,” she assured him, and drew him down for a private embrace. She had to stop herself from fidgeting. She could not believe how horny she was. “But if you require a show of proof, I can provide some.”
He drew back and looked at her in frank astonishment.
“I had to yield,” she said, for his ears only. “But only as far as the other room.” Louder, as much for the benefit of the crowd as for him, she added, “But
you, my mate, you I will yield to gladly, passionately, and as often as you demand. In fact, I eagerly await your demand.”
Every second that Sudjummar spent just looking at her was its own hell of crumbling willpower, but at the end of it, he smiled his crooked smile. And while she fought not to leap at him or thrust her hand up her own skirt, he finally shifted Somurg to the crook of his arm so he could put his hand around her hip. “Far be it for me to deny a female in such obvious pain,” he said. “Come to my pit, my mate.”
He had no idea how much pain she was in.
Sudjummar led her away from the commons towards the forge, murmuring something she could not bring herself to hear about how he was sorry and what to do if it happened again. Olivia tried to keep pace at his side, but they hadn’t walked more than a few minutes before she started having hot flashes and twinges of knife-bright pain, a hundred times worse than anything she had felt trying to control the Great Spirit’s spark. Logarr had said something about getting this power out before it killed her; she realized all at once that he meant exactly what he’d said. Caught on the edge between lust and panic, Olivia pulled him with her into the first dark tunnel she saw.
“Are you insane?” he asked.
“Yes!” She took Somurg out of his arms and set the baby down. He fussed, but she was beyond caring. “I need you right now!”
“Anyone could walk by,” he protested.
She tugged blindly at his belt, not bothering to remove his coverings but only to loosen them. He wasn’t hard yet and he was still trying to reason with her, but one bolt of the Great Spirit’s spark solved both problems. He shoved her up against the wall with a mindless snarl as Olivia yanked her skirt up, and then he was inside her and whatever it was Logarr had poisoned her with flared out and emptied into him. Sudjummar roared in her face and tried to flinch back, but the power had him and drove him on in a fever of sexual action.
There was some pleasure, and there was much lust, but most of what Olivia felt was simple relief. She held onto him as he bucked and thrashed against her, her eyes closed and her teeth bared, and just let her body achieve its own fulfillment as her power achieved release.
