by R. Lee Smith
“Ah.” He contemplated her a few minutes more, his thoughts in unseeable motion behind his eyes, and then he smiled again and opened his arms just slightly. “Shall I disrobe?”
“I said that was why I came,” Mara told him in a voice that dripped ice. “But you thought it would be more fun to tease me. Well now you can laugh at me all the way out the door. Move.”
“Thou art over-sensitive.”
“I’m not sensitive, I’m unforgiving. Move.”
“Is that command?” he inquired, unbuckling his belt.
She glared at him, projecting heat and contempt like walls all around her. “You can make me,” she said. “And I’ll lie down for it, but I won’t be there and when it’s over, you will never see me again. Understand something, demon—”
His eyes flashed.
“—you are my toy on my terms for this game, not the other way around, or I don’t play.”
“Thy toy.” His foreclaw tapped idly at the metal framework of his belt, but did not unfasten it further. “Need I tell thee my thoughts on these terms?”
“You can if you want.”
“I think of tickbirds.”
Her eyelids fluttered, but she managed not to lose too much of her glare to puzzlement, she hoped. “Tickbirds.”
“For I have seen them in bygone days, flown down to the backs of dragons, to feed in safety on one who could as easily snap them up and end their lives. Thou knowest, I think, that thou art prey in this place and so thou wouldst seek out some great dragon to shelter thee, trading thy flesh for my protection.”
“Oh please. Protection from what? You are all the same in here, don’t you know that? I could have what I want out of anyone.”
“Then why seek me?”
“Because I stupidly thought you wouldn’t embarrass me. As you’re determined to, consider the offer resigned.”
“Offer?” His brows rose and this time, she didn’t think his surprise was feigned. “Offer, dost thou say? Thinkest thou that thee might dangle so sweet a prize before me and be safe from the snap of my jaws? Ha! Speak on, woman! Tell me the hook that lies beneath the luscious flesh thou wouldst offer.”
“If I’d known you were this suspicious—”
His hand stabbed out, his pointing claw stopping just short of her eye. “Do not play me for thy fool,” he said, very quietly. “We are neither one of us made for it.”
“Suit yourself. I’m still trying to leave.”
He waited, waited, and slowly began to frown. Suddenly, he straightened up, and there was nothing like that swift, powerful motion to accentuate his size, his breadth, his sheer inhumanity. Again he hooked her by the robe, but she wasn’t sure this time if he meant to steady her or just to snatch her. “Thou art in mine own lair, Mara, in my theater, in my school. In this place, there are only Masters and those who serve. There are no bargains here.”
“I’m not here to strike one, damn it! I have an itch that needs scratching, that’s all. Why are you so determined to see some insidious plot?”
Kazuul grunted and released her. “I wonder.”
“You’re far enough out of the way that I can come and go without attracting a lot of attention, and—” She shrugged one shoulder carelessly as she straightened out her robe. “—you’re not hard to look at.”
He bent his head in mocking acknowledgement. “High praise indeed, from heartless Mara.”
Her jaws clenched. “I’m not heartless.”
“Hm. Long it has been since last I took fleshly pleasure, and perhaps it is true that I have forgotten the ways of courting. Mine overtures could not lure thee in and so…” His green eyes sparked with humor. “And so in ceasing them, I have won thee. Whatever is there in this to suspect?”
“You could suspect that if you hadn’t been such a horndog in the first place, I might have been here sooner.”
He snorted through his nostrils like an animal, then smiled. “Thy offer does intrigue me, as was surely thy intent, yet it remains I do not trust thee.”
“Is that necessary? I’m not proposing marriage.”
“Truth.” His gaze wandered from her face and moved down over her body in a weirdly introspective way. A little lustful, a little appraising, but skeptical also—the look of a man who is promised a top-line sports car for a hundred bucks and a handshake. “And now I have offended thee beyond reconciliation. How very distressing. How shall I win thee back to me?”
“You can begin by stepping aside,” Mara said.
“What, release thee to lure thee back? Nay, that game is played. And won, or so thou wouldst have me believe.” He reached up to run his thumbclaw along her lower lip, gazing meditatively into her eyes. His smile broadened. “Should not we both be benefited by a sampling of delights, each one of the other? And my bed, I warrant, is comfort greater than thy accommodations below.”
“I think you’ve already forgotten whose game this is,” Mara told him.
His teeth flashed in a hard, white line, and were just as swiftly hidden again behind his easy smile. “Then I release thee, in a show of good faith that thou wilt not rashly dart away.” Kazuul backed into the classroom, where he stood to one side of the stairway. He raised his hands to the level of his heart as she came out, and bowed insolently low. “For the mountain is filled with male flesh also. I know I am not thine only potential plaything and I would hate to see the end of thee.”
“Would you?”
He raised his eyes without straightening from his teasingly servile crouch, his expression oddly grim. “More than thou knowest.”
“And so you propose…what? An audition?” she asked, striding towards him. She didn’t do sexy well and she knew it, but subtlety wasn’t Kazuul’s speed anyway. She just held his eyes, cocked her hip, and pulled the hem of her robe up about six inches.
His eyes flickered and finally dropped to stare hungrily at her naked ankle. His nostrils flared. “Thy scent is sweet indeed. One might almost be deceived into believing thou didst desire me.”
“Almost?” She slid the robe up a little more.
He sniffed the air again, growled, and met her eyes with a hard smile that showed the glint of fangs. “That is no perfume of idle allure. Didst thou pleasure thyself before making this approach?”
“Yes.”
“To tempt me?”
She laughed at him and hoped it sounded more genuine than it felt.
“Nay? Pray tell me thy intent. Thy dishonesty is adorable.”
“You make it sound so sinister. It only occurred to me as I was finishing that I’d just really rather have better than my own hand.” The edge of her robe drifted up to her thighs and paused again. “That’s as close as I’m going to get to begging for you, so I hope you were paying attention. Disrobe.”
He looked up sharply.
“You’ve asked me twice now. I’ve thought about it and yes, I want you to disrobe.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Now,” said Mara.
Kazuul straightened up. He took three slow, purposeful steps out of the doorway to center himself in the empty theater’s teaching platform. His hands moved to his metal belt and Mara watched them work the impressive buckle open. He pulled the whole thing off at once and gave it a toss into the nearest column, defiantly naked, defiantly male. His organ, thickened by arousal, was well in proportion to the rest of him, and thankfully did not have any of the spikes or pebbly patches that dotted so much of his skin. She’d been worried.
“Art satisfied?” he asked caustically.
“Not yet, but I’m more hopeful than I was.” Mara stepped up and touched him, first stroking his abdomen—such strange skin, hot and hard, but nowhere near as rough as other parts—then dropping to close around his shaft for a curious squeeze.
“I’ve not given thee leave to touch me.”
“You haven’t ordered me to let go, either. Stop pretending to be offended. The audition was your idea.” His cock twitched in her fist, hardening until she could feel
his pulse leaping through into her palm. “Do I get to say what I want?”
“Speak.” Kazuul’s voice stayed even, but not unaffected. “I may consider thy request.”
“I want you to bend me up against that pillar and fuck me hard from behind. I don’t want to see anything. I don’t want to have to move. I want to feel your cock like it’s the only thing left in the world. I want it to hurt when I cum because I wanted it so bad, and it was still even better than I thought.” A drop of clear pre-cum welled up at his glans. She caught it on her thumb and massaged it gently back into the head of him. “I don’t want to be your lover. Just your fist.”
“Pretty bird,” he murmured. “How thou singest.”
“If you’re going to say no, say it quick.”
“There again dost thou presume to command me.” His hand came up fast, nothing but a blur at the edge of her perception, to seize a fistful of her hair. He gazed thoughtfully into her wary face, ignoring her tightened grip on his cock, just smiling. “Yet I am Master here.”
She said nothing, only stroked him.
After a very long span of silent seconds, Kazuul’s eyes released hers to travel down her body and rest on her hand. “How many nights past, dost thou even know, did I come to thee and hear thee cast me out?”
“It was four, and I didn’t reject you, only your methods. Sneaking in to fondle me in my sleep and darting me in the back with subliminal sex-thoughts is not the way to any woman’s heart.”
“Perhaps, yet a gentler way than mine honest wooing.”
“Maybe I don’t want gentle.”
He grunted, then suddenly shoved her around and into a column. Her face struck stone with bruising force. Her vision swam, but her mind stayed clear. She put her hands up, bent boldly, and spread her legs for him. He didn’t undress her, merely pulled her robe up and left it bunched around her hips while he thrust his hand between her thighs and probed her naked folds with his finger.
“Thou art eager,” he murmured. The hand withdrew. She heard him sucking, then rumbling out a smoking purr, he said, “Thou art sincerely eager, else an adroit liar.”
“Why not both?”
“Ha!” He hesitated, and she could feel his breath stirring her hair, feel his thoughts armor themselves even tighter, until he was as blank and cold to her as the rock that surrounded them. “I would be clear on this, Mara. Have I thy will to fuck thee?”
“This once,” she said. “After that, we’ll see. That’s what an audition is.”
“Aye?” The faintest spark of irritation escaped his iron control. Claws dug at her hips, simultaneously pushing her down and yanking her back; she felt a tickle under his left thumb and knew that she was bleeding. “And wast thou so eager to only feel? Move not, give not, love not, but only take? So be it, Bitterness. Take!”
She thought she was ready, she honestly did, particularly since he was good enough to give her such perfect cues. But trying to brace against his penetration was like looking confidently up at a comet and thinking she could catch it in her fist. He tore into her, tore her as she had not been torn even as a virgin, and it felt good.
She must have flinched, must have, his heat was so unexpected and so much more intense driving at her from within. He snaked an arm around her waist, splayed his hand over her back, and held her absolutely immobile as he fucked her. Each battering thrust was a slap in the open air, a shudder in her aching arms, a grunt in her lungs, and heat, God, such heat, deep in her womb. She was tempted to stay and experience it honestly—it had always been easier for Mara to respond to friction than to foreplay—but time was short. She pulled herself away to the Panic Room, and tried to relax there while she dialed up her body’s responses from this unfeeling distance.
In a way, it was the best sex she’d ever had. Hard and fast and just the way she liked it. It skirted the edge of violence, but for all that, he was not trying to hurt her nor humiliate her. She was exactly as she’d asked to be: his fist, and he gave her exactly that consideration and no more. The purity of it—sex without come-ons, passion without poetry—made it easy for her to respond in kind. Soon, she was cumming, seizing on him and snarling her own hoarse harmony to the sounds he made.
Kazuul laughed in curt pants, driving at her even through her spasms. “Truly, thou dost commit thyself to the lie.” He grabbed her hair again, yanked her head back and nuzzled at her throat, fucking hard all the while. “Lie to me again. I savor thy deceptions.”
“More,” Mara gasped, tightening her grip on the column. “Don’t stop yet. Make me cum!”
“Indeed?” he murmured. His painful hold on her hair eased slightly. She heard him draw in a slow breath and let it out in another purr. “Thou art made so readily wanton.”
“Don’t…Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t all f-for you. Anyone…Anyone would do.” She teased herself into cumming again and made sure he could feel it. “You’re j-just…really damned good at it.”
He laughed, his rhythm beginning to splinter. “I’ll hear thee beg me yet. I’ll hear thy screams at mine every will of it. Now I cum, young one, and thou art mine!”
“You’ve forgotten something.”
Incapable now of speech, he only grunted.
“You forgot I set the rules.” Mara’s arms slid around the pillar in a bear hug; she yanked, simultaneously slapping back at him with every shred of mental will. She felt him stagger as she pulled free and then the hot rush of his semen struck her hip and began to trickle down her thigh. Mara dropped her robe over it and turned around, smiling. “You only get what I let you have.”
He had her by the throat in the next instant, shoving her back against the pillar and roaring into her calm face, but although there was rage radiating out of his mind, there was no murder. If anything interrupted the pure sheet of his wrath, it was the will not to do her harm, and interestingly enough, for so long as his rage lasted, it outlined beautifully the dimensions of his armored mind. So she endured the crush of his anger without complaint, inspecting him closely as he controlled his impulses and cloaked himself in darkness once more. Eventually, sullenly, he closed his mouth and covered his fangs again. “Thou wilt return to me,” he growled, and released her.
“You were good. I’m sure I will. Of course, I may have to hold a few more auditions—”
“This is not a game!” he spat, eyes blazing but body perfectly still.
“You’re wrong there,” she replied, holding that gaze without fear. “It’s just not one of yours.”
He snarled once, then pressed his lips together and stepped back, allowing her to pass him and watching as she walked away.
Mara reached the door and opened it with one hand and a flex of thought. She turned around to smile at him; he still stood by the pillar, his head bent and shadowed by horns, brazenly naked and already semi-erect as he seethed. “It has to be on my terms, Kazuul. If you don’t agree to that, well, the mountain’s full of demons, and one of them surely will.”
His lip curled. He said nothing.
“I’ll just let you think about it,” she said, heading out. “But as far as I’m concerned, it was a very promising beginning.”
She meant it to be a parting barb, but in the instant before the heavy door shut him away, she sensed the churning black of his emotions flare into grudging, but genuine humor. It was enough to stop her in the corridor, suddenly dissatisfied and unsure, but there was no good way to go back in and feel him out better, so in the end, she just went back to her own cell where she sat, replaying the memory and wondering what she could have possibly said that he found funny.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Where were you all day yesterday?”
There was no point in trying the ‘None of your business’ track with Devlin. Like all truly obnoxious people, he was impervious to insult. Like all truly lonely people, Mara didn’t try too hard. “Exploring,” she said, waving him aside on her way to the garderobe in the hopes that he would take the hint and leave her alone.
>
He didn’t.
“You’re starting to scare me,” said Devlin, trotting after her.
“I have that effect on people.”
“I mean it! You only get ten days without class each year!”
“What’s that to you?”
“Well…”
She stopped and gave him an incredulous stare. “What, you wasted the day looking for me?”
Devlin cringed into the neck of his robe, picking at his sleeve.
“That was dumb,” said Mara.
“I was worried about you.”
“That was dumber.” She went into one of the garderobe chambers. He followed her, hunched and dejected, like a lonely goat in the rain, until she stopped him with a rough shove to the chest. “Unless you have something to say to me, get out. I don’t like having an audience when I take a piss.”
He slunk out into the hall to wait, not even far enough down the tunnel to pass out of her sensory range, which was about twelve feet with all this rock in the way. Maybe it was that, not having complete seclusion while she used the crude privy, that set her inner alarms itching. She saw nothing ominous in the Mindstorm, sensed no watching eyes around her, but she didn’t feel safe. The sound of water splashing into the pit below seemed louder to her ears than it had on other mornings, uncomfortably like a beast thrashing in mire, and it was several minutes before her urine would come. In the meantime, there was Devlin, pacing in the crossroads and wanting to talk to her. That wouldn’t be so bad, if only he had something to say, but all he really wanted was someone to cling to and he would say anything to get that.
When she emerged, he was there, weakly bristling with determination. “I have an idea,” he began.
Mara tapped at him, and to her mild surprise, it was a pretty good one, as well as being one that was bound to make Horuseps happy. “Leave me alone,” she told Devlin, and started up for breakfast.
“But…But I think I can help you find your friend.”
