by Bertina Mars
“This place is amazing,” she said, still staring round in wonder. “How did you find it?”
“I told you that to question the power of the Blood God is forbidden, but from an early age I questioned the dogma. When I became Chief of Security I obtained access to forbidden texts from the Archive. I learnt about Raja-kell’s hidden past and the worship of the far kinder and gentle Moon Lady.
I became an adherent and discovered this shrine, finding it to be a self-contained environment that could provide for my needs. It was then that I decided that if I ever needed to I would come here to live out the rest of my days if life in the palace became too unbearable. It will make a suitable base of operations while I make arrangements to get you back to Earth.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go back to Earth,” Maya said, looking at his chiselled face. Her desire for him was overwhelming and now they had reached the safety of the shrine she could contain herself no longer.
He frowned. “What do you mean? You have to get back to Earth. This is no place for you.”
She didn’t answer straight away. She stretched and looked over at the pool. “That water sure looks inviting.”
“Oh, of course, you must want to bathe,” Vron said, standing up quickly. “The water is clean and fresh and self-regulating. Just go right in, I will go to the kitchen and prepare some food. I bought some suitable clothing when I visited that village, so I’ll leave it for you when you’re done. Just call when you are ready for food.”
“You don’t have to run off, you don’t want to,” Maya said airily. She pulled off her walking boots and padded to the side of the pool. Without missing a beat, she pulled off the ragged, dirty robe that she’d worn for travelling and tossed it onto the floor.
She now stood naked before Vron, showing him all her glory. No longer self-conscious or nervous, she felt empowered by her sexuality. She wanted Vron so badly; she would quite gladly throw caution to the wind.
She glanced behind her and saw him standing rooted to the spot, his silver eyes glued to her. She gave him an enticing smile and then stepped into the pool.
The waters were refreshingly cool and invigorated her straight away. She dipped her head under to clean her hair and when she surfaced again, Vron was still watching her. She moved over to the edge of the pool and outstretched her arms, showing him her ripe, ample breasts.
With agonising slowness, he padded closer to the pool, and keeping his sultry gaze fixed on her, slowly undressed. Maya drank in the smooth, chiselled contours of his body as he stood naked before her, and his thick manhood swung free.
Wetness gathered between Maya’s legs and her ache for him intensified. His eyes never leaving her, he slipped into the pool and moved closer.
Her lips parted and a shudder ran down her spine as she breathed in his musky scent, which mingled with the scented water. For long moments, they watched each other in silence before he sharked forward and their lips locked in their first deep, passionate kiss.
She opened her mouth to him, the sense of relief and desire flooding through her. Her hands wrapped round him and she ran her fingers down his sleek back and iron hard buttocks.
His tongue danced with hers as his own hands began exploring her, caressing her thighs before running up her sides to her plump breasts. His erection pressed like a steel bar into her groin.
“Vron,” she sighed as they eventually parted from the kiss. “I’ve waited so long for this.”
“I too,” he whispered, his deep voice thrumming through her. He planted small, teasing kisses along the corner of her mouth before moving down the nape of her neck, giving her shoulder a playful nip.
His hands worshipped her swelling breasts and his fingers stimulating her tightening nipples. Maya moaned helplessly beneath his expert touch and squeezed his buttocks tighter, squashing his throbbing dick against the succulent morass of her pussy.
After a while, he moved down and grabbed her hips and pulled her up until she was sitting on the side of the pool. Water cascaded along her legs and he put his hands on her thighs and spread them wider.
Maya let out a throaty moan as he buried his face between her legs and flicked his tongue along her. His mouth suckled her wet lips, applying just enough to pressure to drive her crazy but not send her over the edge.
She arched her back as his tongue went deeper, and wrapped round her. She bit her lip and squeezed and fondled her breasts, losing herself in the moment.
He devoured every inch of her, desperate to bring her absolute pleasure. The mounting pressure of orgasm gripped her and she finally climaxed with a long, ragged scream. Her mind was fractured by the intensity of her release and she panted hard as she slowly regained her wits.
Vron left her silky folds and made to hug her, but she grabbed his shoulders and urged him to sit up on the side of the pool. In a few moments, the roles were reversed, and she was back in the water with her head between his strong legs.
Her mouth slipped over his magnificent manhood and she ran her tongue along his shaft before pushing down to the root. He grunted with pleasure and brought his hand down to bunch up her wet hair.
As she continued feasting on him, he signalled her to stop, and they shifted position again. This time, both of them were standing in the water. He crushed her to him and she pressed her breasts against his finely toned pectoral. She planted kisses along his neck and nipped his ear as he guided his thick manhood into her.
“Oh Vron!” she moaned. “Yes! Oh yes!”
He squeezed her thighs as he entered her and slowly began thrusting. She wrapped her legs around his waist and hugged him for dear life. No other man, she’d been with felt as amazing as this, and she wanted to posses every inch of him. He was her master and she willingly submitted to him.
He swayed his hips, making figure of eight motions as he fucked her, driving her over the edge. She clutched the back of his neck and pressed her burning lips to his mouth. “Harder!” she begged between frantic kisses. “Harder! Harder!”
He picked up speed, making her moan louder and she clawed his back and butt losing herself in sweet oblivion. His hands squeezed her breasts hard and he let out a low groan as he exploded inside her.
For long moments afterwards, they clung to each other, and then very tenderly, Vron pulled out of her. With reverential motions, he washed her glistening body and then they both walked naked to a smaller chamber set off to the side of the central room.
Vron had converted this into a makeshift bedroom when he first came here. He told her to lie face down on the bed and putting the pillow under her pelvis so that her bottom was slightly raised, he used a jar of ayuliop sap, and started to massage her. Maya luxuriated in his touch, sighing softly as his nimble fingers worked out the aches in her body. She tingled as he started slowing kissing the length of her spine, moving down to her peachy butt.
He flicked his tongue along her moist ass crack and she didn’t stop him when he eased his lubricated finger inside her. Using more of the sap, he made her ready for him again and pressing his weight down on her willing body, he pushed into her from behind.
Maya gripped the woollen blanket, her breath taken away by his magnificent beast. He moved slowly getting her used to it, and his hand moved under her and found her swollen clit again.
Maya bit into the fabric of the blanket as he rubbed and circled her pleasure point and started thrusting harder inside her. Sweat crested her milk-white flesh and she became dizzy with sensation.
His hot mouth nipped and licked her ear and his fingers playing with her took her to the highest level of heaven, before he released a second sticky load inside her quivering body.
Finally sated, they lay in each other’s arms and dripped into deep, oblivious sleep.
Chapter 6: A New Life And A Final Choice
For a month, they lived a blissful existence in the hidden shrine of the Moon Lady. Living off the fruit that grew around them and enjoying the facilities of the once advanced civilisation it beca
me a kind of dream for Maya.
She had never felt as complete and as happy as she did with Vron, and any thoughts of returning to Earth faded away. Unfortunately, reality was soon to intrude and change everything.
They were sitting together outside the shrine one night, staring up at the stars and the bright ice white moon, when they heard the distant muffled sounds of explosions.
Lying in Vron’s arms, Maya sat up suddenly and look out at the darkness beyond the lake. She caught glimpses of red light and the smell of burning stained the air.
“Vron!” she exclaimed. “What’s happening?”
Vron remained silent, his face closed and emotionless in the moonlight. “We’d best get inside,” he said at last.
“But what’s happening?”
“Inside,” Vron repeated, guiding her to her feet. She could tell he was in one of his moods again, and there was no point arguing. But she wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t happen. Something ominous was going on and she was certain that it was linked to her and Vron.
They made love later that night, and though it was amazing as usual, Vron seemed distracted and mechanical. Afterwards, she slipped into a few hours of uneasy sleep haunted by dreams of burning and destruction and woke suddenly to catch Vron slipping out of bed and getting dressed.
“You’re going out to investigate what happened, aren’t you?” she asked, sitting up in bed.
“Go back to sleep,” he said as he pulled on his toga. “I will be back soon.”
Ignoring him, Maya got out of bed and started dressing in the light yellow tunic and shorts that he’d got for her to wear, instead of the scratchy robe. He stopped dressing and frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I’m coming with you,” she stated. “Anything could be out there.”
“You will stay here,” Vron ordered his voice dark with thunder.
She looked up and defiantly met his gaze. “Don’t act the chauvinistic pig with me,” she said in an equally menacing voice. “I’m not some little woman who stays in the kitchen. We face everything together, as equals. I’m coming with you.”
Vron pursed his lips and then a defeated look crossed his face. “I suppose arguing with you isn’t going to help,” he conceded. “Has anyone ever told you that you are as stubborn as hell?”
“I’m my father’s daughter,” she said, with a disarming grin.
* * *
The rosy glow of dawn was beginning to break as they set out across the countryside to where they had witnessed the commotion from the night before. It took several hours to climb down to the lake and then find a suitable crossing, and then a few more miles of hiking through the undergrowth until they finally came to the scene of carnage that Maya had known they’d find.
Even though she had been expecting the worse, looking round at the devastation was still like a punch to the gut. The charred remains of what had once been a village stretched out before the couple, the ground blackened and mangled heaps of charcoal the only remains of the villagers. The stench of death leaked into her pores and she choked back the tears.
“What happened here?” she said roughly, when she could manage to speak.
Vron, blank-faced, pointed to the blood red banner sticking out of the ground in the middle of the ruined settlement. “The Prince Consort,” he said in a hollow voice. “He must still be sending out Blood Sharks to look for us.”
“The bastard!” Maya raged. “The fucking bastard! Why kill all these innocent people?”
“As a warning to others not to help us and to report anything they might see,” Vron replied, lowering his eyes. “It is standard practice.”
“The bastard!” Maya sobbed again. Vron reached out to her but she pushed him away.
Her eyes blinded with tears she turned away from the village and started running, wanting desperately to be as far away from his nightmare as she could.
Wanting to be as far away from this brutal world as possible, but through her tears she knew that was not possible.
She had wanted to stay with Vron and had paid a terrible price for her selfishness. Nothing could ever be the same again.
***
“He wasn’t always like this,” Vron said thoughtfully, gazing up at the statue of the Moon Lady.
“Who?” Maya asked. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. After the scene at the village they had returned numb and exhausted back to the shrine and had sat for many hours in silence holding each other, lost in their own brooding thoughts.
“The Prince Consort, Ghamak,” Vron clarified. “He was a good man. He was a good friend once.”
“You’ve never really told me about your relationship,” Maya said. “You were close?”
“We grew up in the same village, we were like brothers,” Vron said with feeling. “We were happy then. Raja-kell was a different place. We were ruled by the Peacock Feathered Emperor in those days, and unlike the rulers before him he was progressive and compassionate.
He wanted to put an end to the constant stream of sacrifices demanded by the Blood God and restore Raja-kell to its former glory. He even tried to re-introduce the worship of the Moon Lady. In those times the Blood Shark Society was a force for good, and Ghamak and I wanted to join them. It was our life’s wish.”
Maya looked up at him, now interested in his story. He rarely spoke about the past, and more specifically his own past. “What happened?”
“Not everyone wanted to change. The Emperor’s chief vizier was the head of a rival power group, the Onyx Tiger Society. He claimed that he’d received visions from the Blood God that the Emperor was a heretic and had to be overthrown.
Raja-kell was plunged into a brutal civil war and many of the common people sided with the Emperor. Me and Ghamak wanted to go and fight, but our parents forbade it. We went anyway,” Vron added a sardonic smile on his lips.
“We joined the Blood Sharks and were eager to train in the arts of battle. The Onyx Tiger Society though managed to assassinate the Emperor and take control of the capital. They launched a terrible purge of the land and our village was destroyed, our family and friends massacred. I was eleven years old when this happened.”
Maya listened in appalled silence, her heart crying out to him. “What happened then?”
“We became guerrilla fighters,” Vron said darkly. “The Blood Sharks took to the jungle and waged a brutal campaign against the Onyx Tigers, and they responded with equal savagery. Those were terrible times.” He fell silent, lost in his dark memories. Maya reached out and stroked his face.
“But you won through,” she said gently. “You defeated the Onyx Tigers.”
“That was down to the Blood God,” Vron replied. “The Blood Sharks were at their lowest ebb and Ghamak and I were captured along with the last of the Blood Shark commanders. We were going to be sacrificed in public in the courtyard of the palace as a final show of victory for the Onyx Tigers. Everything seemed hopeless, and then the Blood God’s head turned to face us and shone a ray of scarlet light directly onto Ghamak.
The people took it as a sign that Ghamak was the chosen one and that he’d been selected by the Blood God Himself to lead our people. There was a massive uprising and the Onyx Tiger Society was destroyed. Ghamak and I formed the new government as a consequence.”
“But I thought the Blood God was on the side of these Onyx Tiger guys? Why would He suddenly send a sign to Ghamak?”
Vron shrugged his shoulders. “No one understands the motivations of the Blood God,” he said bitterly. “I suspect it chose to speak to the vizier when the Emperor tried to turn away from Him, and then after all the slaughter and chaos caused by the civil war He saw in Ghamak the opportunity to wreak more havoc.”
“You don’t believe the Blood God is a real deity to do?” Maya said.
“I don’t know what the Blood God is,” Vron replied grimly. “There is an ancient text that says that a glowing red meteorite fell from the sky during the chaos in the final days of the First Civilisat
ion and spoke to the shamans and mystics telepathically. The first of the Blood God’s worshippers carved its face and built the palace where it could exert its dark influence, and it has dominated my people ever since.”
“Is that what happened with Ghamak? Did the Blood God corrupt him?”
“Maybe,” Vron said in a quiet voice. “I’m sure the God helped him along the road of depravity, but it was Seema’s death that first put his feet upon it.”
Maya sat up and stared at him. “Who is Seema?”
“She was Ghamak’s sister,” Vron said, his silver eyes looking into the middle distance, misty and unfocused, “and my wife.”
Maya gawped at him, taken aback from the bombshell. “You . . . you had a wife? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know how to,” Vron replied, the pain in his voice raw and bleeding. “I told you I grew up with Ghamak, well I grew up with Seema too. She was my one true love and she came along with us to join the Blood Sharks. Women were allowed to in those days.
We fought together during the civil war and she was my world. She got me through those dark times, and when she died my whole world collapsed. I’ve been living amongst the ruins ever since, until I met you.”
Maya saw the misery etched in his proud face and squeezed his hand. “What happened to her?”
“Shortly after Ghamak was installed as Prince Consort, a terrible plague engulfed the land. After the trials and tragedies of war we now had to contend with a sickness that had no cure. Thousands died, and I thought all hope was lost. Then Seema received a dream from the Blood God. She believed that if she sacrificed herself, the plague would end.”
“Oh my God,” Maya whispered. “What happened?”
“I tried to stop her but it was no good. She was a stubborn woman. We found her body, but it was too late. She had taken poison and, true to His word, the plague ended.”
