Balaedras looked around at the guards. “Leave us.” The other guards left, gathering up the dead guard’s body before closing the massive wooden door behind them. Balaedras gave Gaeldos a passive glance. “I entered into a deal with them to find Draedon and Theoch. I figured one of us should continue the search, since you’ve lost your focus.”
Gaeldos sat down in one of the chairs surrounding the marble table. His gray hair looked to be messed from either his royal hissy fit after seeing the glaon fairies leave the conference room, or he’d recently left one of his concubines. He was wearing a stark white dress shirt, unbuttoned to reveal the top part of his sixty-six-year-old chest, and a pair of black leather pants. Balaedras knew he’d more than likely been with some woman.
“Still, Balaedras?” said Gaeldos. “Draedon and Theoch haven’t been seen in all of Ai in over seven months. They’re dead. Yet you’re wasting money we don’t have to enlist the help of glaon fairies? I had to fuckin’ wait for them to leave before coming in here out of fear I’d catch their attention and be entranced.”
“Damn,” Balaedras said sarcastically. “That could have been very interesting. I’ve also enlisted the wind witches to look for them.”
“Even more money we don’t have, Balaedras.”
“I’m not paying them or the fairies in money, Gaeldos.” She glanced up to see him staring at her. “I…um…I’m paying the fairies in men.”
“You’re sick. You’re going to feed them Morhais men?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “That’s something I haven’t thought about. They really don’t have to be Morhais men, do they?”
“And the witches?”
“I expanded their territorial hunting area.”
“You’re treading on a very dangerous area, Balaedras. Fairies and witches? What next? The yaorg? For what? For nothing. Draedon and Theoch are dead. More than likely eaten by vaem wolves, along with that Mocmoran woman. They’re all dead, yet you’re allowing fairies into the palace. I’ll have to post more guards around Morhais now. You know they’ll return. You’ve opened a very dangerous door. Very dangerous.”
“And what was I supposed to do, Gaeldos? Sit around here like you, fucking myself into a coma until those two turn up someplace and start spilling their guts to whoever will listen? What if they are alive, Gaeldos? Are you willing to wait until they turn up in Balknae? Zinvia? Or worse than that, Yaeltaran? Because if King Lavaerion of Yaeltaran gives them sanctuary, all bets are off.”
“You worry too much,” Gaeldos said, standing up from the chair. He ran a hand through his hair, smiling placidly at her. “I still have many allies in Ai. If King Lavaerion tries to start any kind of squirmish, my allies will come to my aid.”
“Will you take your fuckin’ head out of the sand?” she yelled. “Your allies are made up of Ja’Kahl, Tulor, and Jroan. Weak kingdoms and weaker rulers. You haven’t the military you once had because you’ve sent them to fight in stupid territorial disputes on the borders. There is no money. You can’t touch any of the money in Draedon’s account that was left to him by that insipid Losmaeron. You need proof of death for that to happen by Morhais law.”
“He could have been killed and all of this matter done with if you hadn’t sent that bitch Falindamaer to do it.”
“Let’s not start pointing fingers, Gaeldos. The point is, we need to know if they’re dead. And if they aren’t,” she said, staring at him intensely. “We need to make sure they are.”
Gaeldos sighed heavily. “Glaon fairies and wind witches.” He nodded. “Fine. But hear this, Balaedras. If they dare to come into the city intent on feeding and hunting for their sport, I won’t hesitate to point the finger at who started it all.”
Gaeldos quickly left the room, leaving Balaedras alone. “And neither will I, my love. I mean, accidents do happen.”
* * * *
Gaeldos made his way up to the penthouse floor and his apartment. Fairies, he thought. It sent a shudder of fear through his body. That and the fact that Draedon and Theoch may still be alive.
Once inside his apartment, he went to his bar and poured a large amount of one-hundred-proof onan into his glass, gulping it down within seconds. He’d assumed Draedon and Theoch were dead. There had been no sign of them wherever he sent his guards to look. He’d taken a collective sigh of relief, knowing they were gone and his secrets with them. But now Balaedras had given new life to that fear.
He’d sent a decree to reopen the borders with Valwithia and Yaeltaran. But what if they were alive? What if he’d just given them an avenue for which to enter into safety? “Guards!”
The door opened, and two tall, menacingly, large guards walked over to stand at attention in front of him. “Your highness.”
“On the borders of Valwithia and Yaeltaran, triple the guards on each post, and send two detachments to patrol the towns of Yaesdrah and Tuslathoran. They are to be on a constant watch for Draedon, son of Gaeldos, and Theoch, son of Baeod.”
The guards frowned, looking curiously at Gaeldos. “But aren’t they dead, your highness?”
“Yes,” Gaeldos said, taking a seat on one of his comfortable chairs by the floor to ceiling windows. “I believe they are, but it’s only a precaution. You have your orders.”
After the guards left, Gaeldos sat looking out on the city of Morhais. His city. And he would do whatever it took to keep it his city. His kingdom. He’d fought long and hard for what he had. The power he had. Only a few knew about his past. Who he was. Goag, the man he once was, was dead and he would remain dead. He would kill any and all threats to his throne. But if Draedon and Theoch made it to Yaeltaran with what Draedon knew, it would be easy to investigate a man called Goag, and whoever his father was. It would be easy to find out where he was born in the small rural village of Gindisial, in the kingdom of Valwithia. With that information, there was no telling what they could do. Of course, he could deny everything. He’d removed any and all of those that knew of his past identity. All but Draedon and Theoch.
He sat, shaking his head. They were dead, he thought. No trace of them has been found in all of Ai. He’d sent guards to Balknae, to the furthest western and eastern kingdoms in Ai. He’d even sent guards to the farming kingdom of Drisa, threatening the tenuous treaty he had with King Noesmaneon. Most of Ai needed Drisa for crops and meat. But his guards had found nothing. They had to be dead. They had to be.
Chapter Five
Faeswyn walked along the perimeter of the fence in her red rubber boots. She noticed how Naihr stared down at her feet. “I like them,” she said.
“What?” Naihr said questioningly.
“My boots. You were looking at them. I like them. That’s why I wear them. Plus,” she said, glancing at him. “I hate stepping in shit.”
“I wasn’t looking at your boots exactly. I was looking at your…” He smiled and took a deep breath as they stopped beside a short fence. “Your legs. I was wondering why you didn’t wear pants or denims around the farm?”
“I tried to wear them a while ago. When my husband was alive,” she said as she leaned against the fence. “I’m Mocmoran. Growing up, I never wore pants. It wasn’t like it wasn’t allowed in our culture, but it is a cultural thing. Mocmoran women wear dresses. These cotton, old-timey dresses,” she said, holding out the sides of her dress to him. “It’s just something I’m used to. I have denims. But they feel so weird on my legs. I hate the way they feel all itchy. So even though I work on this farm, I wear dresses and my boots,” she said as she stuck her leg out proudly.
Naihr nodded. He looked over the fence with a frown. “There’s nothing in here.”
Faeswyn turned to look over the fence. “You’d think, huh. Watch,” she said, and went over to retrieve a long pole on the side of the fence. She put the pole over the fence, and with a gentle touch, poked at the ground. The ground began to move.
“What the hell?” said Naihr.
“Bolsh slugs,” Faeswyn said with a wide grin.
�
��Bolsh slugs? In here? I thought they would be in some kind of aquarium. Please tell me why in the hell you would raise something as putrid and rancid-tasting as bolsh slugs? Why would people eat them?” Naihr was grimacing as if he were tasting them as he spoke.
“Because they’re delicious,” she said, and smiled up at him. “You apparently ate them wrong, as do a lot of people. I find that it’s those people that never had to scratch out a living from the land. You have to remove the vein under them. It’s hard to see, unless you know what you’re looking for. But once the vein is removed, bolsh slugs taste like lobster dipped in butter. Only you don’t have to set traps in the sea for them and hope they crawl into the crate. You can raise them. They don’t eat much. Just some grass and mud. They seem to like the mud a lot. They don’t take up much room. How many do you think I have in this paddock?”
Naihr looked down at the mud moving as if on its own within the paddock. It was only about a thirty feet wide and fifty feet long. He shrugged. “Maybe around twenty, twenty-five.”
Faeswyn smiled, but shook her head. “I have over a hundred in there.”
“Damn!”
“Yeah, I know. They reproduce every three weeks. I have a man that comes to buy up my surplus at the end of the month. This is a lucrative crop. I don’t get rich from them, but they allow me the money to take care of the other animals and grow my crops.”
“You sell them? For real drokols? Unbelievable.” Naihr said, still looking down at the slugs.
“Yep. Twenty-eight drokols a pound,” she said, staring at him proudly. “Most of the larger ones in there, the ones that I sell to Oast, are more than eight pounds apiece.”
“You get 224 drokols for a slug?”
“I get almost 7,000 drokols a month from what I sell. I keep four males and four females for breeding. By the time Oast comes around the next month, I already have about thirty to sell to him. Sometimes more.”
“You make that much from slugs? How is it you aren’t living in some mansion in Drisa?”
She started to walk away from the slug paddock. “Because feed cost drokols. Oats cost drokols. Power for the house cost drokols. I need drokols for octal for my tractor and harvester.”
Faeswyn opened the door to the barn, leading the way inside. “I have two milk cows, and two dozen chickens,” she said before turning around to face him. “I trade the chickens with some of the people around Quith when some of the chicks are old enough to breed. That’s what most of us do around here. Quith is a small community. Most of the commercial production farms are toward the center of the kingdom, near Daenisnae. But the smaller communities around here subsist on local businesses, local trade, and friendship.”
She leaned against a stall as Naihr took his time walking around the small barn. “I like it,” he said to her. “It suits you.”
“Thank you. I like it, too. It’s peaceful. And if I have to admit it, I like driving my tractor and harvester. I like working my farm.”
He walked a little closer to where she was standing and braced his large frame against the stall with his shoulder. He smiled slyly with a shake of his head. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“If I say what I was thinking, you’ll hit me,” he said, looking at her shyly.
Faeswyn smiled slyly back at him. “Try me.”
Naihr took a deep breath. “I was thinking about how lucky that tractor is to have you riding it.”
Faeswyn continued to smile at him. “And how much you’d like me to ride you?”
Naihr gazed seductively at her as she closed the distance between them, and kissed him deeply. He kissed her back, his chest quickly rising and falling with his breathing. “Yes,” he whispered. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Imagine that,” Faeswyn said, licking along his neck. “So was I.”
They attacked each other with their mouths, full of carnal hunger, while they pulled at each other with their hands in a frenzied need to touch and feel. Faeswyn pushed his leather jacket off of his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor as she bent her head to lick and tease his taut nipples. She would admit to bating him into the barn. Each time she was near them, both Naihr and Draeis, all she could think about was having them inside of her body. Thrusting and pushing their thick, hard, cocks into her pussy as she cried out to them. She wanted their mouths on her skin. Her breasts. Her body. She wasn’t about to deny what she wanted any longer.
She gently nipped at his nipple with her teeth, making him moan out loud. But then he was pulling hurriedly at the front of her dress, and she quickly unbuttoned it for him. Her large breasts beckoned to him from the confines of her bra as he stood, looking mesmerized and kind of shell-shocked at what he was seeing.
Faeswyn took his hand and put it on her right breast. “Believe me,” she said with a seductive whisper. “They feel nice, too.”
He licked his lips, but still only stood gazing down at her breast in his hand. “I can’t believe how beautiful you are. How good you feel,” he said caressing her breast in his hand.
Faeswyn let out a small laugh. “There’s a whole lot more of me, Naihr.” Their eyes met. “Why don’t you just explore at your leisure, and, um…I’ll do the same.” She nodded to him as she quickly unhooked the three snaps in the front of her bra.
“By the goddesses,” he said as he bent his head and began to suck hungrily on her swollen nipple. “I’ve never known a woman like you.”
She smiled, sighing softly at feeling him engulf her nipples with his mouth. First one, and then the other. “That’s because there’s only one me,” she said, forcefully unfastening the front of his pants.
She dropped to her knees, unzipping his pants, impatient to see with her own eyes what she’d only been imagining and dreaming about since she’d met him. She pulled his cock out of his pants, gasping at his length and thickness. His penis throbbed in her hand as she gazed up at him in appreciation. Then she took him into her mouth, savoring for the first time in years the pure strength of a man’s dick. He felt so good in her mouth. She massaged her hand along his shaft, sucking and licking on his engorged head before swallowing him into her throat.
Naihr moaned and cursed out loud as his body shuddered from what she was doing to him. She wanted to taste him. She wanted to feel his warm semen in her mouth, down her throat, but more than that, she wanted to feel him fill her body with his pulsing cock.
She stood, taking him by the hand, and led him into the stall. She’d put one of her old quilts on some of the hay in the corner earlier that morning. She had hopes of luring Naihr out there for that specific purpose. She’d never been the type of woman to flirt without purpose. She knew what she wanted, and dammit, she wasn’t about to deny herself any longer. They would more than likely leave when Draeis was completely healed. If she had to be content with only memories of them, she was going to make damn sure those memories were good ones.
She lay down on the quilt as Naihr stood, removing his pants, gazing down at her with heat in his eyes. She unbuttoned the rest of her dress, letting it fall to the side, revealing her body. She quickly removed her panties while Naihr lay next to her. They explored each other with their hands and mouths in a rush to pleasure.
“Tell me, Naihr,” she said while he kissed and nipped along her neck. “How do you like to pleasure a woman?”
“It’s been so long, Faeswyn. Just tell me what you want me to do,” he asked her. Even as she felt his impatience to be inside of her, he wanted to please her.
“I would love nothing more than to feel everything that I know you can give to me with your body”—she kissed him deeply—“your touch”—she ran her hands along his hard, muscled body—“and your…tongue,” she said with a teasing smile. “But for now, I want to feel your cock inside of me. Fuck me, Naihr.”
He grinned and nodded to her, and she gasped into his shoulder at feeling his hard strength push inside of her. How long, she asked herself? How long had she gone without feeling
the sensual, carnal pleasure of a man’s cock? How long had she gone without knowing the pleasure and desire her body craved? Naihr gave it all to her, thrusting his hips between her thighs with expertise as he drove his stiff dick deep inside of her. She wrapped her legs around him, wanting nothing more than to keep him tethered to her body. He was so thick, that with each thrust, his cock rubbed against her clit, making her body respond deep inside of her pussy.
She could feel Naihr’s pleasure as he moaned and hissed between his teeth. She knew he was holding back, trying to prolong their pleasure for as long as he could. But she wanted him. She wanted all that he had. She felt her aura begin to build deep inside of her, pushing, and forcing its way to envelope them both in a web of intense pleasure and carnal need.
He kissed her passionately as he began to thrust harder and faster into her pussy. Their bodies slapped together in a wet and erotic dance of uninhibited need. Faeswyn felt it then. It wasn’t just because he was making her feel something she’d never felt in her life. Not with her husband, and not with Nosved. His touch, his kiss, his body was sending her to a place her heart had only dreamt of. Her aura connected them, and told her to let go, and so she did. She released her aura over them as Naihr moaned aloud. His eyes widened and she felt him cum inside of her, filling her with everything he had. She grabbed hold of him, letting her vaedra take control. She heard a scream a second later, realizing it was her own. And when Naihr gazed down into her eyes, she knew what had happened. Their souls had been joined. It was love. Not lust. Not need. Love.
Naihr collapsed on top of her. Their breathing was erratic as their bodies remained connected. She knew he wouldn’t be able to move immediately. A vaedra’s aura drained a man of his strength for several minutes, if not more. She rolled him to the side, using her body as the fulcrum. Otherwise, she would have remained under his weight until he recovered. But when he opened his eyes to gaze at her as she lay beside him, it wasn’t just a look of satisfaction. He stared at her with intensity and emotion.
Faeswyn [The Maidens of Mocmoran 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 6
