“You know I wouldn’t do that,” he replied. “You saved my life more than once. I couldn’t leave you behind, and I won’t leave you behind now. Come with me to Lycaon territory.”
“I don’t want to see my father,” she told him. “I don’t want anybody weeping over me and saying poor Lilith.”
He tried not to smile, but his mouth twisted upwards at the corners anyway. “No one will say poor Lilith. If you don’t want to see your father, you don’t have to.”
“Then what’s the point of me going to Lycaon territory?” she asked. “He’s my only family there.”
Taig cocked his head to one side. Then he took a step toward her and lowered his voice to a murmur. “What about me? I’m your family now, Lilith. Forget your father and your mother and the Outliers and all the rest of your past and come with me.”
Her head shot up, and for a fraction of an instant, a glimmer of hope sparkled in her eyes. Then the overwhelming despair clouded over it again. “That’s a nice idea, but you don’t want me—not really. I saw the way you mooned around Reina. You’re asking me to come with you because she stood you up for Ari. I won’t play second fiddle to anybody.”
She intended her words to cut him and drive him away, but he didn’t even flinch. “You weren’t with us at the beginning, or you would understand. Reina’s heart always belonged to Ari and no one else.”
Lilith sneered at him. “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you? Are you going to stand there and tell me there was nothing between you two?”
Taig shrugged. “There was something between us, but it could never be anything serious or permanent, especially since we found Ari again. I knew that from the first moment when we found Ari alive here. Whatever existed between me and Reina on the trail vanished into thin air as soon as she got Ari back.”
Lilith snorted and turned her back on him, but said nothing.
He came up behind her. “You don’t have to go alone anymore, Lilith. You’ve been alone long enough. Come with me. Come home.”
“I don’t have a home.” Her voice trailed off into nothing.
“I know why you did what you did back there,” he went on. “I know why you cut yourself off from everybody and wouldn’t even look at us.”
She didn’t turn around. “If you understand that, you know I’m not someone you want to take back with you to meet your mother.”
Taig bit back a smile, but it vanished before it formed. “Do you think I’ve forgotten what you did to me the first time we got mixed up with the Outliers?”
She winced and tried to laugh, but it came out as a croak.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he told her.
“Then don’t come begging for more,” she snapped.
He didn’t move from his place behind her. “There won’t be any more, with me or anybody else. You’re not the same person you were then.”
She whirled around to face him. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t know any better then,” he replied. “You were a child. You followed Old Ponchy and the other adults around you. You changed after you let us go.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How many times did you do it?” he asked.
She tried to snort, but she wound up catching her breath instead. “Do what?”
“Touch somebody the way you touched me,” he replied. “How many times did you touch someone the way you touched me to get them ready for the sacrifice?”
She forced a laugh. “Did you like that?”
“I didn’t like it,” he murmured. “You made sure of that.”
She snapped at him over her shoulder without turning around. “I never did it before you. I told you that. That was the first time Old Ponchy let me prepare the sacrifice.”
He took another step toward her. “I’m sacrificing you, Lilith.
Her jaw dropped. “What?”
“I came here to sacrifice you,” he repeated. “I’m going to do to you what you did to me. I bought and paid for you when I went back to save your life. You’re mine now.”
She swallowed hard, but even then, a terrible weight dragged her down into a bottomless abyss. The words became true in the very act of falling from his lips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He drew himself up. “You can’t go back to the way you were before. You can’t do to anybody else what you did to me or to the other people you sacrificed before we met. You’ll never again be the person Old Ponchy wanted you to be. That person is dead.”
Chapter 4
Lilith walked away, but she didn’t leave the grove. She stopped where the path dropped. The expanse of uncharted territory beckoned her onwards, but she couldn’t take another step. Taig came up behind her again. He hung so close to her his breath brushed the back of her neck.
“You can’t do this,” she whispered.
He placed his hands on her hips, and a shiver ran through her. “I already did it.”
She summoned all her courage. “I don’t have to put up with this.”
“You’re right. You don’t.” His hands tightened on her hip bones. He took a firm grip of them. He wasn’t going away. “You can walk away any time you want to.”
How she wished she could walk away. How she wished she could run with the wind like the Lycaon. She would leave him far behind her and disappear into the ground. He massaged her hips, and she might as well have been tied between two trees for all the power she possessed to get away from him.
He ran his hands up and down her hips. Her insides melted, and she rocked back and forth on her feet. He crossed the last scrap of distance between them, and his breath burned against her ear. “Did you like it?”
“What?” she panted.
He growled in her ear. “Did you like doing that to me? Did you like touching me and making me want you?”
She gasped for breath, but no words came to answer him. He slipped his hands around her bare belly. He scratched his fingertips across her navel and clasped his arms around her. She let her weight sink back against him. He’d changed, too, after that night when she played with him. The young boy she could toy with and make respond to her gross manipulations no longer existed in this world or any other. The man behind her could send explosions of desire and excitement through her with a puff of his breath on her skin.
He brought his hands back to her sides and circled her slender waist. He stroked her back with his thumbs and brushed his lips against her neck. He pulled her back against him, and his crotch dug into the furrow between her buttocks. She’d played with him so easily and laughed in his face when she brought him to arousal. She wasn’t laughing now, though, when his powerful cock rubbed against her raw flesh. He could do what he wanted with her, and she couldn’t stop him. She wouldn’t stop him for all the wide world.
He wedged her against his chest while he squirreled his hands under her bra to cradle her breasts in his palms. He squeezed one nipple hard enough to elicit a squeak of surprise from her. Then one hand slithered down her abdomen to the rough skin tied around her waist. He stuck one finger under it, and she almost collapsed in his arms. Her legs hung like so much dead weight down there at the far end of her body. Her vulva ached with an unbearable hunger nothing could satisfy.
She shifted her feet just an inch apart to relieve her craven need, and her lower lips blinked apart. Drops of dew spattered her thighs. She didn’t know it, but her butt arched back against him, and her body rippled in his hands.
He nestled his hand deeper under her waistband and laid his warm palm across her belly. His other hand lifted her breast higher, and she twisted to accommodate him. His fingers ran down the golden path from her navel to the rim of forest between her legs. Lilith mewed in agony.
He scratched his coarse fur across her neck and sank his teeth into her shoulder. Her head fell back on his shoulder. She couldn’t resist his presence
. He left her breast alone and groped both hands farther down to trace the delicate hairs bordering her blazing glory hole.
She couldn’t help herself. She had to spread her legs for him. If she’d been tied up, she’d have done the same thing. If only she had been tied up, she would dissolve into his hands. Her slit dripped precious juice and screamed for his fingers, his tongue, his rock hard cock.
He didn’t venture farther down, though. He played with her hair for ages. He stroked his cock against her ass to make it harder. The bulge in his pants pushed her loin cloth aside so her bare butt cheeks raked against his growing point. He held her in the palms of his hands and enjoyed his power. Every twist of his wrist moved her whichever way he desired. He could turn her around to kiss her. He could bend her over. He manipulated her pliant flesh in his hands according to his will.
At long last, he inched one hand the rest of the way down and dabbled with her engorged clitoris. Slippery jelly covered it, and it stood to attention when he grazed it with a finger. Lilith cried out in shock, but he only circled it again and again with a delicate touch, until she writhed and moaned and spread her legs wider to make room for his hand.
His other hand remained on her belly and held her against him so she couldn’t move. He beat around her clitoris in a steady rhythm. He brought the honeydew from her fountain up to lubricate it. The slippery film gave him more freedom to titillate her harder and faster.
Vibrations of desire spread down her legs and up to her ass. She pushed her butt cheeks harder against his cock to spur him onward. Oh, why did he torture her like this? Why couldn’t he bend her over and slide his shaft into her? She put her own hand behind him to free his cock from his pants, but in a flash, he grabbed her wrist and tossed it away. She dared not try to touch him again.
He left off rubbing her clit. He plunged his finger deep into her smoking glory hole, and she cried out loud. He planted the flat meat of his thumb against her clit and stirred the erotic juices gushing up from her inner font.
Now she didn’t know which way to turn. She tried to ride both his palm and his finger at the same time, but nothing satisfied her. She longed above all else to bend over and take his cock inside her, but he still held back. Was she too tainted for him? She wouldn’t blame him. Maybe he only wanted to drive her to the brink of insanity to remind her what she’d done to him. That would be more than she deserved.
He pushed against her from behind until she took a step forward. He tore his hands away from her body long enough to guide her arms away from her sides. He set them against a tree trunk in front of her. She rested her weight against it and gave herself over to his hands.
He stroked her sides again. He loosened her loin cloth so it dropped off, down her legs, to the ground. He stood back, and her rear end stuck out in mid-air for him to admire. He let her steam there while he surveyed his conquest from above.
Anticipation pricked every inch of her skin, and she seethed in agony. If only she could entice him to possess her, she would wave her body in front of him forever. He wouldn’t make a move before he was ready, though. Nothing could induce him to act sooner, and he would hold himself back longer to dangle her on tenterhooks a little longer. He would wait until he knew for certain she wanted him more than her own life. Only then would he release her.
He breathed heavily through his nostrils, and the harsh grating noise set her tingling all over. He wanted her, too. The anticipation tortured him, too. He denied himself to prolong the agony, to drive his own desire higher. Would he ever give in?
He touched her ass with the weight of a feather. His fingers danced over her skin and into her dark furrow, where he tickled her hot wet slit. She tried to push against his hand, but he withdrew it until she settled down and accepted his touch. When she relaxed and let him touch her in his own way, he delved into her hole and drenched his hand in her sticky elixir.
He pumped his fingers in and out of her. She bucked against his hand, but he established his own rhythm. She kept still and let him bump his palm against her ass and his fingers plow through her channel. Stroke after stroke sent shock waves through her until she yelped with every stroke. She craned her head back, her lips parted, and she let her voice rise through the trees.
In one swift motion, he scooped her up with his arm around her waist and lifted her off the ground. His bicep dug into her breasts, and he lowered her down onto his bare shaft. Where it came from, she never knew, but it slid into the place his fingers left open and ready. Her precious opening spread to receive it, and her delicious nectar coated it with a protective film to ease its passage. It found its way into its bed with no resistance, but its girth and power overwhelmed her. She would have swooned in his arms if he hadn’t kept her upright.
He didn’t leave the rest up to her, either. He lifted her and lowered her down, again and again, with the same sure motion of his arm. He sheathed his weapon to the hilt in her tender orifice, withdrew it, and hammered it in again before she fully recovered from the last wicked penetration. She never fully regained her breath from one overpowering thrust before the next sent her catapulting into the stratosphere all over again.
Only once did she dare glance back at him over her shoulder, and what she saw made her turn around again in a heartbeat. His eyes flashed, and his mouth grimaced in a hard, cruel line. His hands gouged into her flesh and drove her down on his shaft with dangerous precision.
Thrust on thrust, smack on smack of sweat-wet skin against her ass, stab on stab of his smoking cock in her dripping cunt ripped the brittle shell of her old identity from her. The tenuous gossamer of a new self lay exposed to the rare air. It danced across her skin still shimmering with glistening wetness. It racked her nerves and left her gasping.
He glared at her from behind. She couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She couldn’t see anything anymore, anyway, so she let them close. The shock waves breaking through her being demanded all her attention now. She sensed him behind her, dark, massive, all-powerful. He held her life in his hands, both past and present. His cruel grip clawed at the outer husk of the past he sought to destroy with single-minded determination. At the same time, he handled her fragile future, her unformed self, with a butterfly touch. He protected it and nurtured it even when her soul quailed at the feet of his massive presence.
The wings unfurled from her back, and the breeze dried them. Her skin swelled, and her old dead shell dropped to the ground. Taig pumped the life force into her, and her limbs straightened after long disuse. The creaks and cracks worked out of them, and she flexed them to test her new strength.
He noticed the change. Her flesh pulsated in his hands. He beat his body against her harder, stronger, pushing her along. How could he know? How could he see something in her she couldn’t see herself? How could he heal her so certainly, when she couldn’t heal herself?
She lifted her voice higher, louder. No one in these woods would hear her. Her spirit rose with her voice until her feet no longer touched the ground. A bubble of light expanded inside her and floated her into the treetops. She heard her own voice crying out with every slap of Taig’s hips against her voluptuous ass. He growled through his teeth behind her, and his cock made wet sucking sounds when he stroked it in and out of her ripe cunt. The pain of his fingers digging in faded the farther away she drifted. Only the gorgeous bubble of light inside her, pumped to bursting by his magic wand, eclipsed everything else but its own brilliant ecstasy.
The first sparkle of starlight oozed from his cock and mixed with her hot juice. She hugged him tighter with the muscles inside her. She urged him on with quick, unconscious spasms. If only he would go faster and harder, if only he would blow her full of liquid star luster, she would never come back to earth again. She would become something never seen in heaven or on land. She would become perfect.
All of sudden, Taig hammered his cock home and held it buried inside her. Her spattered juice wet his wiry hair against her ass. He choked for brea
th—once. He withdrew from her and hovered at the very limit of his cock, with only the raw head still nestled in her folds. He swayed from side to side. If she had been able to open her eyes and look back, she would have seen his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his lips curled away from his teeth. What did he see behind his closed eyelids? Did he see her hovering there in mid-air? Did he see the glow of her soul blown up in an illuminated balloon inside her? Did he see the dead skin he left lying at her feet?
Then he struck again, harder this time, and stayed again buried to his hips in her glorious wetness. Something like a sob, or maybe a sigh, tore out of his mouth. Then he let the torrent of burning fire rage. It flooded her inner cavity and scorched a path to her brain, where it ruptured the iridescent bubble holding her aloft. Her being exploded, and with one tortured shriek, she collapsed in his arms.
Taig’s legs buckled under him at the same moment. He barely held Lilith up long enough to set her down on the ground before he fell back against the tree trunk. His head lolled to one side, and his breathing slowed.
The cold, hard ground brought Lilith to her senses. She shivered and sat up. Her head swam, but she steeled herself against an irresistible urge to fall asleep. She straightened her clothes and set her feet under her to stand up.
When she flexed her legs, he snapped alert and caught her by the wrist. “Where are you going?”
She feigned a smile and leaned over to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. “That was nice. Thanks, but you better be going if you want to catch up to Tara and the others. You don’t want to be late getting home.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
She stood up. “I guess I’ll see you around sometime. Have a nice run back, and give my regards to the others when you get there.” She started walking.
He jumped in front of her so fast he startled her. “You’re not leaving, Lilith. I told you. You’re coming back with me.”
The New Angondra Complete Series Page 34
