by Martha Woods
He backed me up into the trunk of a tree, and I loved the firmness, the safety of being sandwiched between them, between so much solidity, with nowhere in the world that I would rather be– at that moment, or ever.
He ran his kisses down along my body. Making me gasp as he pulled back from my lips. Shiver as he sucked against my throat. Moan as he bit down on my nipples, and rolled his tongue hungrily around each breast. Brace myself as he rans slow kisses down along the course of my undulating belly, and the dripping insides of my thighs.
And then, I did all these things at once, as he bowed his head sacredly between my legs, kissed my lower lips, and slid his tongue up inside me.
“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” I cried, grateful for the tree behind me to steady me, for his beautiful brown head of hair to grab onto his he devoured me, and the steady, titillating brush of his beard against my inner thighs. He ate me with a kind of reverence, as though starved for me, but wishing to savor me. To taste me. To make me feel him, as directly, as perfectly as he could.
And Lord, did I feel him...
With every lick, every sweeping motion of that beautiful tongue through my folds, every tightening of his fingers against my soft flesh for support, I felt myself being whisked further and further away from my old life. From my past. From Mordeos, and the Dark Ones. From all of it.
He brought me up, and up, and up, onto a higher plane. A place where none of it affected me anymore. Where none of it could ever have affected me.
I held him close. Begging him further in. Desperately gripping his nodding head. Dripping wet with desire for him, and doubly so for his dedication to lapping up every last drop, savoring the act, almost every bit as much as I was savoring its effects.
I came before I even knew there was a risk of doing so. My eyes widened. I hiked my body upward, trying to close my thighs around his face. To draw him into me as close as possible, to never let him go. The fire burned through me. Deep inside me. Roaring through every inch of me. Incinerating me to my lowest, most basic foundations.
Making me want so much more.
I was gasping by the time it finished. Somehow, his lips were back on mine again. His arms back around me. His eyes staring deep into mine. I tasted myself on his tongue, craving it desperately as he slid it into my mouth, breathing me in, and letting me do likewise. His breath was hotter than I remembered it, making me sweat as I kissed him, and aided in this effort by the reemergence of the sun from behind a cloud overhead.
I reached down, and wrapped my fist around his rock-hard cock, somehow several degrees hotter to the touch than either of us, or the rest of the surroundings. I stroked him passionately, pushing the skin back, pulling it up, loving the way he spilled his desire all over me.
And then the next thing I knew his hands were flowing down between my legs. Opening them again, and lifting me slightly upward as he positioned himself beneath me. I held my breath, barely able to keep the air in my lungs. Then expelling it as I felt him slide up inside me, our mutual wetness making penetration effortless, so that he slid up deep inside me, and immediately slammed into my g-spot.
“Oh, fuck!” I screamed, my body tensing. My knees again pushing together around him, trying to hold him against me forever. Wanting never to be let go by him.
And as beautiful as it was, it was nothing at all compared to when he started moving in me. Through me. Deeper and deeper inside me.
I felt the precision of his muscles, shifting beneath my palms, drenched with sweat and leaving me struggling to maintain a hold on him. His breath, hotter than ever, burned against my neck as he pushed his wait, thrusting, breathing me in. I gripped his hair as he moved, filling me and emptying me, over and over and over again. I would pull his lips to mine every few moments, exchanging desperate, wet kisses through the mesmerizing depths of our pleasure. But then I would be forced to pull back again, too overwhelmed by sheer, carnal ecstasy to fully express my growing love for this man, and all he represented, and all that he had done for me. And yet I was sure he could tell, by the writhing of my flesh, the heaving of my breasts, and the tightening of my inner muscles around him, exactly how I felt for him at that moment.
Harder, and harder, and harder he pushed himself into me. Going deeper and deeper. The arrival of new depths only seeming to cause him to want more and more of me, to need so much more of me, his grunts and his roars and his animalistic movements leaving me no recourse but to surrender to him, to give him everything. To let myself be taken completely. To trust that he knew exactly what he was doing to me, with each thrust, each movement, each violent collision.
To trust that no matter what, no matter how deep we fell, no matter how hard we landed, he would carry me safely through to the other side in the end.
And then the other side came, in an explosion of light and sound and sensation, and it was like nothing in the world we could possibly have prepared ourselves for.
Violently he cried out, throwing his full weight up into me, pinning me to the tree, and burying me between so much weight, so much pressure, that I thought he might crush me. I desired nothing more in the world than for him to do so, and I grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him fiercely into me, sinking my nails so hard into his flesh that I nearly drew blood, wanting desperately to be absorbed into him.
I held my breath. My body became one with his own. His sweat dripped along the planes of my flesh, sweet and salty against the tip of my tongue. I felt the throb of his heartbeat, drumming faster and faster through every inch of his body, and extending into my own, my racing heart seeming to sync up perfectly with his.
The pressure grew. It burst. He cried out. He spilled over inside me, his cock leaping and pouring over, his hot ejaculate pulsing up inside me, filling me instantly, and rushing back down over him as it spilled from my body in its beautiful abundance. The muscles of my vagina tightened around him, then spasmed, and my eyes widened, as the intensity of his orgasm seemed to transfer to me– our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and souls all one.
It was pleasure unlike any I had ever known. Unlike any Mordeos had ever given me, or like any I had ever managed to discover on my own. It seemed at once to erupt up from between my legs, but also to begin at my very core, the deepest center of me, and to emanate rapidly outward. I grew short of breath, my nerve endings aflame with sensation, my arms and legs growing tighter and tighter around him, desperately needing his solidity, and thinking I would surely collapse without him.
The sun burst through a gap in the trees overhead, bathing me in a dazzling heat as the rush of orgasm poured through me, through us. And I was forced to close my eyes, just to regulate the intensity of it all. Our sweat pouring. Our heads and our hearts pounding. His body spilling into mine, and mine into his. Our souls entwined, entangled, knotted so fiercely together that we might never again separate. Driven onto a higher plane of reality– one we had each sought for so long, but which we now realized we might never have arrived at on our own.
It seemed to go on forever. The highs and lows. The plateaus of sensation, the rapid plummeting and skyrocketing, the sensations bursting towards infinity as we held each other close. Never letting go. Certain, now that we held one another, that we might never again relinquish our grip.
I don't even really know just how long it went on. Hours, it felt like. And maybe it was, because it was sundown by the time I became conscious of anything again– anything, at least, besides Iammarth's body, as well as my own.
He'd been holding me. Kissing me in the afterglow all that time. Holding me on the soft undergrowth. The two of us so absorbed in one another that the entire world around us may as well have ceased to exist.
“I feel better already,” I whispered to him, certain, after all this time, that I'd at last taken the first step into my new life, leaving the old one behind for good.
“Me too,” he whispered softly against the back of my neck, his warm breath soothing me. He leaned in and kissed me there, and I closed my eyes, thinking I mi
ght nod off at any moment. “I haven't felt this whole in a long, long time,” he said quietly, and then the two of us were silent. Both of us, I was sure, nodding off into the deep dark depths of sleep.
Chapter 9
9
Iammarth
I dreamt of her as she lay beside me, cradled in my arms, as close to my chest as I could bring her. The beating of her heart sounded like a drum inside my dreams. Guiding me on to a higher place. Through the clouds. Up to the moon, and beyond it.
I opened my eyes.
She remained, as soundly asleep as ever. Looking innocent and pure. Reborn. As though her entire past had been erased, and mine with it. And never again would either of us be forced to ruminate on it. To keep living in it as we had done, time and time again.
I leaned in softly, appreciatively. I placed my lips gently against the back of her neck, and kissed her. A very mild shudder seemed to run along her thin, delicate body, an automatic response to my touch. She remained asleep however, and I was glad.
I closed my eyes. I rolled onto my back, and breathed deep.
Everything had changed. Everything was different now. Everything felt new. Refreshed. Revitalized.
Was this all it had taken, the entire time?
Not that it was any small thing. Not by any means. Not that I should have known to expect it. Meeting a woman like this. Having her change my life so completely, and changing her own in the process.
I realized, now, that I could never have done it on my own. That no amount of repentance, of claiming to have changed my ways, would ever have been enough.
It was her. Her presence beside me. Her strength to guide me through it all, that I had needed.
I felt calmer. More at peace than I had felt in years.
I wanted to lie beside her forever, and never again let anything come between us.
Slowly, I opened my eyes again, lost in a kind of delighted stupor.
And the instant they were open, I saw a massive, raised foot hovering just above my head, poised, as though waiting for just the right moment, for me to get a proper view of it. Then, with a mighty force, it tore its leg downward, and I didn't even have time to think before it struck.
WHAM!
I cried out.
I thought my skull would collapse beneath the weight of the dragon's foot, that that would be the end of me. How I thought of anything at all in that moment was a miraculous feat in and of itself, my brain rattling in my skull as it now was. My vision blurring. The pain making me want to vomit.
I tried to look ahead, and thought I saw half a dozen men standing before me. No, a dozen. No, two dozen.
“Keya! Keya!” I yelled, tearing my head wildly around for her.
She was screaming.
Panic rising, but my brain still totally addled, I rushed toward the sound of her voice, leaping into the air, transforming. My golden body twisting drunkenly through the night, my tail and limbs all flailing out of control, each seeming to act of its own accord, like an octopus's arms, no single part of me able to assume command of the whole.
I tore my head around wildly, my vision refusing to settle itself down, but I thought I could vaguely make out the shape of someone grabbing at her, trying to seize control of her person. I charged in that direction, only to feel myself suddenly taken hold of, in a way I couldn't wholly explain. My body was shrinking rapidly, violently. My wings pushing back into my shoulders. My scales dissolving. I hit the ground swearing, fully human again, and caught sight of the Earthdragon cuffs in the undergrowth beside me, apparently affixed to my tail while I was in my dragon form.
I gritted my teeth, sprang up again, and before I could shift back a vicious red pain shot through my ankle, digging in so deep I thought it might tear my foot clean off. I was lifted into the air, thrashed around in the Dark One's jaw, and my confusion, mixed with the lingering concussion, preventing me from transformation.
I was flung loose, hurled through the air, and struggled desperately to transform before I hit the ground. I shifted at the last second, roaring as I struggled to flail my wings and stay aloft. I belched out a plume of golden fire, hoping this might dissuade any attackers who might have decided to follow along in my wake. But I was only in the air for a matter of seconds, and before I knew it, I was colliding with the trees, crashing through the woods with such an impact that I shifted back down again, no longer in control of myself.
“Fuck!” I raged as I hit the ground, and my fucking head just wouldn't stop spinning, my dizziness unrelenting no matter how desperately I concentrated. “Keya!” I cried, determined to get to her no matter what.
I rose shakily, hurrying toward the clearing, and no sooner had I made it to the spot than I heard her scream. I immediately felt the full body pain of a fireball now engulfing me, swallowing me whole, roasting me alive.
I cried out. My skin blistering, my lungs deprived of air. Thinking I should be able to transform, but too weak from the sudden onslaught of attack.
I was certain, suddenly, that this would be the end. That I would be burned alive, unable to save Keya from harm, no more redeemed than I had been before setting out on this mission to begin with.
But then the fire stopped. I was inundated, instead, with an icy cool blast of liquid, extinguishing me as immediately as I'd been set ablaze.
The blast knocked me off my feet, and I hit the ground so hard the air was pummeled out of me.
“Leave him alive! The bastard is mine to finish off! But first I want him to see what he's done!”
I couldn't tell how injured I was. My flesh was still smoking, but felt more or less intact. My temples thundered, my eyes shifted around, and gradually, I thought I could begin to make out what was happening.
But it was still too late for me to react.
I was seized by four strong hands, throwing me backwards, dragging me along. I kicked and struggled, snarling at them, “Let me go! Let me the fuck go!”
I was thrown against the trunk of a tree, my arms pulled viciously behind my back around the trunk. I strained to break free, kicking and thrashing, but they snapped the Earthdragon cuffs around my wrists, incapacitating me, rendering futile any effort at escape.
They laughed as they stepped away from me. One of them the Dark One I had fought in town several days ago, Evrun, and the other appearing to be an Earthdragon, the one that had used his water powers to extinguish me. I snarled at them, and they turned from me, sneering, to reveal Mordeos standing nearby, Keya's angelic face gripped viciously in his hand.
“Get your fucking hands off her!” I shouted, trying to pull against the cuffs, letting them dig into my wrists and the bark of the tree, but sure as I did so that there was no point in pretending I could escape.
Mordeos barked out a laugh.
“Surely, you don't expect me to take orders from a fucking Wrecker... This bitch is mine, you traitorous imbecile. You may aspire to take everything else away from me, but the fate of this one belongs to me, and me alone...”
“Don't talk to her like that!” I boomed, but he merely threw back his head and laughed, shaking his head. He returned his attention to Keya, his proximity to her making me sick.
“You have one, chance, my love... You've sinned. You've erred. You've strayed from the path of righteousness. Do not believe you can deny it. Do not believe that I shall let myself be fooled again... And yet I understand. I know how you must be feeling. I know how these Wreckers are. Putting ideas into the heads of even the most dedicated Dark Ones. Making you think you believe things you don't really believe. Causing you to do things...” He didn't finish this sentence, but stared down at Keya's naked body, letting this finish the thought for him.
She backed away tensely, her eyes affixed firmly to his visage.
“But I am nothing if not merciful,” he said. “It's redemption you seek. I know this. And its redemption I shall offer you. A single chance, an opportunity to come back from the abyss. All shall be forgiven. All shall be erased. If you do
only one thing. Kill this man.” He pointed to where I was chained up against the tree, and neither one of them bothered looking in my direction.
“Kill him where he stands. Execute him for his crimes against shifterdom. Mutilate his remains. Do this, and it shall be as if none of this ever happened. In this way, and this way alone, you may redeem yourself. But you must act now, my love. Otherwise, your fate shall be no different from his own. You shall go down in infamy. As a traitor to your people. As bad as the Wreckers who seek to overthrow us– and even worse, in so many regards...”
I watched her closely as Mordeos spoke to her. I willed her to listen to him. To do what he said. To end me and save herself, then escape the Dark Ones on her own at the first available opportunity.
Yet I knew, from the look on her face, that there wasn't a chance in hell to be found of her acquiescence to Mordeos's orders.
“I would sooner be killed than to bow to your wickedness a single moment further. I would proudly die a traitor, when what I've betrayed is a betrayal in itself, of our values, our identity. Of who we really are. Of what it means to be a shifter. You preach on and on about the ruthlessness of humankind, and the Protectors. Yet it is you who are the ruthless ones. The heartless, and vicious ones. You are my enemy. My greatest and most terrible enemy. And I would sooner die than to let myself be made the fool by you again.”
Mordeos gave her a tired look. Seeming thoroughly unsurprised, but disappointed all the same.
“Very well, then. Your wish is my command. Farwell, my love...”
And his body exploded into the air. His form grew to massive proportions. Huge black wings eclipsed the moonlight overhead. His eyes glowed red and furious, gleaming with murderous intent. He parted his huge midnight jaws, and instantly a pale green light was building from his chest, getting hotter and brighter, about to spill over at any given moment.
