Shared Between Them

by Korey Mae Johnson

  The hulking Draevan gave a loud snore just as she was reaching out to his saddle. The sudden sound nearly made her jump backwards. Wearily, she took a relaxing breath and bent down closer to Draevan's saddle, pulling coins out of a purse secured around the horn. She smirked and then turned towards the other one.

  There was a sudden tightening around her ankle. She paused. All she was able to do was mutter “Damn!” wearily, just before a rope yanked her violently from the ground and then up a tree, until she found herself swaying back and forth and upside down by a thick, low-hanging oak branch.

  She recognized the full indignity of being caught in the same manner as one might catch a rabbit and was suitably furious. “Son of a bitch!” she cried, then looked at the upside down image of the two men climbing easily to their feet.

  They didn't even look drunk now! They had stumbled to their make-shift beds not thirty minutes before… This didn’t make any sense.

  She had been tricked! And they added insult to injury when Draevan crowed with laughter. “Eenie, meanie, minie, moe. Catch a she-elf by her toe…”

  “Get me down!” she cried, realizing that she had let herself go back to her visible state during the shock of being captured. She pulled her shirt down—or up, rather—over her belly-button, since it seemed to want to expose her breasts with the help of gravity. “Put me down right now!” She tried to bend in a way that would free the rope lasso from around her boot, but she didn't even come close to completing the maneuver before her muscles trembled from the strain and then straightened with defeat. She let herself hang and sway, grumbling. “When did you even find time to do this? I was watching you all afternoon!” she cried.

  “You were watching us, but not carefully enough. We've done this before. Enemies are easily distracted,” said Taric as he brushed his black hair back out of his eyes. “Got any weapons on you?” he asked.

  “No,” she lied, pressing her lips together stubbornly.

  She was searched anyway. Draevan came up to her and patted his ridiculously large hands up and down her squirming body. “Ogre,” she grumbled as he found a slingshot in her pocket and a dagger strapped to her upper arm.

  “You are quite a different sort of elf,” Taric grumbled. His tone sounded like he was trying to be angry but still only coming up as amused. He must have been referring to elves not being creatures known to carry weapons… And he would have been right if he hadn’t been talking to the last descendant of a long, tragic line of outcasts. Her family had to make-do to survive.

  “The only thing I hate worse than violence,” she defended tersely in defense, “is when it’s being done to me!”

  He pulled her coat completely off of her, and yet another knife hit the ground. “Careful!” she snapped. “You're gonna cut me that way!”

  “You could have told us the truth, dove,” Draevan replied firmly. “No weapons, indeed! If I find one more—just one more—I'm stripping you naked. Even an idiot knows to throw down his arms when he has no other choice.”

  “Well, I'm a special kind of idiot,” she replied, although his threat was alarming enough. She wasn’t about to come clean about what was hidden in her boots; she was hoping for the best, and they were her last defense. Without weapons, she wouldn’t have a prayer in fighting either of these two behemoths off. They were massive, hard-bodied men.

  He gave a wry laugh. “I guess so.” Even though she struggled, he had no problem binding her hands together with a piece of leather. He looked at Taric and said, “Cut her down. We need to get her boots off. If they’re a dead man's, she's probably using them for storage.”

  Her brow ruffled. “How'd you know they're not my boots?” she asked, quite astonished.

  “Your foot ends about here.” He squeezed her toe, which ended halfway through her boot. “Don't you know it's unlucky to wear a dead man's boots?”

  She pursed her lips, but was quickly feeling unease as blood continued to rush to her face. She wondered how much longer it would be before her face turned purple. “That would explain a lot…”

  Draevan scooped his massive arm around her body, and when Taric cut the rope tied to her feet, he neatly adjusted her body so that she was cradled in his arms. She looked down at the ground beneath her. Damn, he was tall… She had never been this close to either of them and hadn’t really considered how tall they’d be up close. He would have dwarfed even her brothers in comparison.

  She kicked her feet, struggling to get out of his grasp, but Taric jumped forward to aid him and pulled her boots off. They came off easily, being so large for her, and he quickly upheld one, pulled out the inside sole, and several knives, coins, and small trinkets fell out. They had apparently run into those sorts of boots long before they met her, and often enough that it was apparently something they expected from a thief.

  Still, Taric looked at her and lifted an eyebrow, silently accusing her of, once again, lying about not being armed.

  “Alright, so you caught me,” she growled. “I don't have a pot of gold or anything, so I fail to see what you gain by this.”

  “What’s not to be gained by this?” Draevan replied curtly, dropping her bare feet onto the grass. She tried to run, but got stopped mid-step as Draevan grabbed at her tunic.

  Her eyes went wide. “No!” she growled as she fought against him. With a loud tearing noise, Draevan had ripped her shirt into two pieces at the seam. “Stop!”

  He didn’t; he merely continued to tear the rest of the fabric completely from her bound arms and threw it onto the ground in tatters.

  She shot a terrified glance towards the leaner, and seemingly more cultured, Taric. “Please,” she begged him.

  She immediately lost hope in gaining his assistance when she saw that his eyes weren’t on hers. They were looking at her bare, exposed breasts. She wanted to get swallowed up by the earth and die; never before had her breasts been seen by a male. Her throat tightened, a cry getting stuck in her throat, unable to contemplate her current modification or fear.

  Massive arms reached around her from behind and unlatched the clasp at her belt. Her pants, pulled from a body far larger than her own, fell off her hips and right onto the ground around her. Her thin underwear came down moments after that, and she sunk down low, bending herself in a way that she hoped would hide some of her nudity.

  Taric merely gazed hungrily at her with those icy-blue eyes of his, a curt smile curling at his lips. She looked at his boots to avoid the leering gaze.

  “Now,” Taric said as Draevan came along beside her, leering down at all of her skin and holding her by her elbow, “I think she’s unarmed.”

  “You can’t treat me like this!” she gasped, feeling out of breath from the shock of her miserable situation and her treatment. She knew she wasn’t attractive enough for them to be actually aroused, thank the gods, but the humiliation stabbed at her like a blade in her heart. “What have I done to you?” She meant to raise his eyes and pierce him with a hurt look, but she couldn’t do it. In fact, she squinted her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to look at anything at all.

  “You tried to steal from us, for one. And I warned you to come clean about the weapons, didn’t I?” lectured Draevan pedantically.

  She began to shiver violently from the cold on her skin and curled her toes into the cold, moist ground under her feet, unable to find warmth. Noticing her misery, Draevan grumbled and swooped her up into his arms.

  She took a deep breath, surprised by the way her body clung comfortably to the heat he emitted. At least she wasn’t knee-deep in cold grass any longer. Draevan shifted her weight in his arms and said to Taric, “I say we fuck the daylights out of her. She's a ripe little thing.” She felt a wave of nausea when he said this, but upon his expression, she found herself relaxing. There was only mischief in Draevan’s eyes, and far too much of it for his words to be believed. “Besides, it's never been done before—a human-elf coupling. I say we practice up for when we claim our elf-bride.”

  Tari
c smirked. “Why would we reward her for trying to rob us blind?” he replied, squaring his shoulders suavely. He looked at her as if to say, 'What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?'

  She didn't answer that look. “Robbing is a dark way to look at this little visit!” she defended sharply, after he glared in her direction long enough. “Besides, I’m not the one manhandling a harmless female!”

  She sniffed the air indignantly, and was surprised. Draevan smelt surprisingly good; not like food, but strangely like the rain after a storm—earthy, yet fresh.

  She squirmed to get more comfortable, adding, “I like to think of this like I was a neighbor, simply borrowing a cup of sugar from some friendly-looking folks. One that I don't plan to return since you'll both be dead by tomorrow evening. Don't forget that—you being dead in the morning is very important to looking at this situation the proper way. Anyway, I don’t know what it’s like in the Northern Lands, but around here we don’t strip people who come about borrowing things!”

  Taric continued to look at her like she should be ashamed of herself. She sighed with resignation. “Fine,” she huffed. “I was a very naughty girl. Is that what you want me to say? I still don’t deserve this treatment!”

  “You’re a thief! Do you feel shame?” Taric asked her, looking both amused and exasperated, which was a mixture of emotion she'd only seen on her brothers.

  “Let me think…” she replied, looking up at the tree canopy above. “No! You’re the ones that should be shamed! Me, on the other hand… I can't afford shame. I'm too poor.”

  “Well, I think we can spare you some,” Draevan replied, stepping backwards towards a log resting on the ground nearby. “Consider this helping of shame on the house, our death not even required in this transaction!” He sat down on the old, hallowed log and flipped her body over his lap as if she were merely an oversized pancake. She kicked her bare feet, but she only stubbed her toe for all her trouble.

  She had no idea what he was doing, and her attention was too wrapped up in her hurting toe, before Draevan’s rough, overly large hand smacked down heavily on her bare bottom.

  “Nyah!” she squeaked, aghast. “You can't—” She stopped the sentence there. She couldn't even mouth the word, 'spank'. It would have been embarrassing enough if she was a four-year-old child heading over her father's knee for some discipline.

  But she didn't have one of those fathers. In fact, she had no parents at all that she could remember. Her brothers were her world since she was a babe, and they were… well, they weren’t disciplinarians. They were jesters and jokers and thieves. Lying, stealing, or cheating and getting away with it was rewarded, not repressed.

  Strangely, the embarrassment wasn't the worst part, although humiliation here was in no small measure. The most awful part was certainly the pain produced by the punishing palm that came down on her flesh again and again, echoing the sounds of her punishment through the trees. “You're being ridiculous! Stop it! Stop it!”

  Draevan’s hand had the ability to nearly cover the entire span of her flesh. Now that it was in pain, her bottom felt so sensitive that she believed she could feel his hand even when it only hovered over her skin.

  “Let me know if you need me to take off my belt, Draevan,” Taric said encouragingly to Draevan over the noise of her growling and angry chirps. She felt a surge of hate fly through her body.

  “Go fuck yourselves, both of you!” she hissed, unable to imagine this torture getting any worse.

  There was a whistle above her head. “Hear that sort of language coming out of such a pretty little thing? Damn shame,” Draevan said reproachfully. “On second thought, that belt might come in handy, Cousin.”

  “Coming right up.” She heard the horrible sound of his belt whooshing through his trousers’ loops. While she was following them for the last three days, she had decided that Draevan was the brutish one and that Taric was more the soft and intellectual type, mostly because Taric was more skeptical by far and had a leaner, yet taller, build than Draevan had.

  Still, even though Taric wasn’t the one punishing her directly, she hated them equally.

  She felt Draevan’s body shift as he reached for the belt. She couldn’t do much to protect her bottom because of how her hands were tied to the small of her back, but she found herself willing to stretch herself backwards as much as she could to try to make covering the tender flesh back there possible. Draevan simply shoved her back down, so she responded by bucking on his lap like a mad horse. “Don't. You. Dare!” He dared indeed, because the belt slapped down firmly across both of her cheeks, leaving a white stripe of pain in its wake. “Fuck!” she cried angrily.

  She felt her status as an elf rapidly declining. It was unheard of for one of her people to be in such a position—stripped, bare-assed, and unwed, over a human man's knee. She forced herself as best she could not to think about how much of her most private anatomy they could see, which was surely more than she’d seen of herself.

  “Genuine elf-bottom,” Draevan said approvingly, ignoring her agitation. “Good thing we’ll be given one of these soon enough! Hopefully we’d get to see her in this position as well.” Just as she was busy not appreciating how casual he was about spanking her, Draevan brought the belt down again with a loud CRACK! that was so loud, she felt her heart skip a beat from the shock.

  “Ouch!” she cried. Damn it all, that hurt! Why would anyone even spank a child this way? It was torture! She felt she was losing her composure—fast. Her heart began to race as the stinging pain increased with every slap. “Okay, you've had your fun. Stop! Stop now!” Each word she spoke betrayed her agony and desperation. “Stop it! Stop it, please!”

  She was more than certain that she was the first elf in history to have said 'please' to a human. She was exploring all sorts of taboo behavior today! She was nearly thankful her brothers were dead; if they knew about this, they'd never let her live it down.

  “All joking aside, little elf, you've earned yourself a good solid hiding. Now be a good girl and take your medicine,” Draevan replied unsympathetically, somehow even firming his grip on her, making it so she could barely buck or squirm around on his lap.

  That was probably for the best since her kicks and squirms, it came to mind, probably made her look like she was a naughty three-year-old being taken in hand. “I'm nineteen years old! You can't do this!” she tried, openly frustrated by all this.

  By now, it felt like a million fire-ants were biting her.

  “Oh, come now. A woman's never too old for a well-needed spanking,” Taric replied above her. “Drae, you missed a spot.”

  “I hate you! I hate you both! I can't wait until you're eaten, and you will be!” She was quickly beginning to wish that the giant wasn't deaf, because her cries would lead the creature right to these men.

  “Nnnooo!” she cried. Then, at last, she felt the leather bindings slipping away. Her hands were free! She grasped at Draevan’s leg, trying to heave herself off, but he wasn’t having any of her escape attempts, and held her tighter, pressing her chest to his thigh.

  “No need to be so angry at us just because you're a bad thief,” Draevan clucked. “Taric, can you hold her hands down? She’s getting a little dramatic, and I’m not near done,” he asked Taric with the sort of casualness that was reserved for ordering a beer at a tavern.

  “Okay, okay!” she cried, as if she had completely succumb to this inquisition.

  Only it wasn't an inquisition, so even though she actually said, “I'm sorry! Is that what you want? An apology?” it didn't help her a jot.

  “I want you to stop making a racket, so we can teach you not to steal without our ears bleeding.” Draevan didn't sound very sympathetic at all, which meant Taric wouldn't be, either. After all, only Draevan knew how hard he was hitting her.

  He stopped spanking only long enough to adjust her on his lap so she wasn’t half-way falling onto the ground like she was now. Lord, it hurt still even though he wasn't currently sma
cking her! Her skin burned heatedly and stung, and she wanted so much just to reach back and rub the pain away…

  SMACK. And the pain returned. Somehow, thinking for a moment that it might be all over after all and then it not being over was too much to bear. Her lip trembled as she felt her eyes begin to prick with tears. She had to get out of this!

  “Aaah!” she jerked, out of necessity for survival, in such a way that her hands were now free, and all she could think to do was struggle all the more, her arms cartwheeling, as she tried to escape this new pain. The leather felt like it was slicing into her! “No, no, no!” she yelped. “No, no…”

  Taric was suddenly crouched in front of her, gathering her hands into his own. His expression was oddly patient, and he watched her expression change. In turn, his face began to look not sympathetic, really, but warm. It was quite an odd contrast.

  SMACK! “Please, please…” she whimpered at him. “Help…” Her throat was already sore from yelping. She could feel that any second the dam would break, and she would start crying. There wasn't any stopping it.

  SMACK! The leather came down right between her bottom and her thighs. Her whole body flinched violently and, just as she expected, tears began to fall.

  Looking straight into the face of the handsome, dark-featured human, she began, smack after smack, to blubber like an infant.

  She stopped struggling since it was only wearying her, and low and behold, that's when Draevan finally stopped. He passed Taric's belt back to him, but Taric merely took it, set it across his knee, and then pressed his fingers against her tear-stained cheeks. “You have such a pretty cry,” Taric told her in an affectionate, enlightened way, like he was watching a sunset rather than a naked girl who’d gotten her tail blistered.

  Draevan hadn't yet released her or let her up, but he rubbed his large palm over her skin before gently tracing a couple of the thick welts on her bottom with his finger.