Chapter Eight
The ache between his legs felt like it might kill him. His cock was straining, his sack heavy and swinging low between his legs as he walked.
But she had looked so sweet there, drifting off to sleep.
She had tasted sweet.
He didn’t quite understand what had drawn his mouth to her sex. Her scent, perhaps, though he’d never experienced anything quite like it with a Dranark female. He’d never been overcome by the almost desperate urge to taste her soft places and claim them with his tongue.
He tried to focus on his task, finding food for Royla before it got dark. But his mind kept wandering. Wandering back to her, to her beauty, to her smell, to the way she had smiled softly at him when he’d told her his name.
Imagine!
A Dranark tribesman telling a human female slave his name. Perhaps he’d deserved to be deposed by Dodlin. Perhaps the others had sensed softness in him and that’s why they’d fallen in line against him.
The thoughts darkened his mood, so he pushed them away. He wanted nothing to do with any of them. It was best to think of things that way, now that he was never going back.
Dusk was quickly turning into darkness when he found a patch of wippen mushrooms growing out of an old, dead log.
He plucked the three of them off and deeper in the log, as he’d expected he saw the bright red glimmer of fruit that often grew beneath the shadow of wippen.
He picked those, too, scooping up a handful carefully so as not to crush them.
He arrived back at the stream to find Royla still sleeping.
His cock throbbed at just the sight of her.
How he wanted, no, how he needed to take her.
The fever had started building in his body.
The cooling air made him shiver. But he wanted to let her sleep.
Just a little longer, then he would have to take her or risk becoming sick.
He placed the food he’d gathered next to a large tree and began collecting sticks. It was getting colder and he thought that Royla might make another fire like she had earlier that day. She seemed to enjoy the heat.
It was a pleasant distraction from the thoughts that plagued him. That he would never return, that he would never see the others again. That this forest would probably be his home until...
“Master?”
He startled and spun at the sound of her soft voice behind him.
She smiled shyly, covering her mouth with her hand.
His eyes raked over her body.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
He muttered something back at her. Something meant to sound like, “Of course you didn’t.”
When her eyes fell to his cock, the seed began churning in his sack. It seemed like her very gaze could inspire his arousal.
“Your...your cock,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering back up to his. “It is stiff,” she said, letting her lips linger against her teeth at the last word.
Thanred grunted, his attention suddenly drawn to the ache between his legs. He put a hand at the back of her neck and pushed her to her knees.
Her bright, wide eyes stared up at his. She reached up with both hands and encircled his girth with her fingers. “You crave release?” she whispered.
His body’s reaction betrayed the answer. His cock lurched in her hands. “Yes,” he grunted.
“May I service you with my mouth?” she asked quietly. Her hands twisted around his member.
Thanred seethed, excitement gripping him at the question. “Yes,” he growled.
Her mouth immediately fell open. Her tongue fell out and she leaned forward, taking him into the hot, wet bliss inside her cheeks. She didn’t break eye contact for a moment.
Pushing his shaft deeper, deeper into her mouth, so deep he felt the tip touch her throat, she held it there all the time staring up at him. Her fingers twisted circles around his shaft. One hand slipped between his legs to cup his heavy sack.
Thanred groaned at the burst of pleasure her touch sent up his spine.
Once her face had begun to turn red, she pulled away, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. She paused at the tip of his cock. As she caught her breath, her tongue flicked lazily from side to side along the underside of his cockhead.
Her gentle licks caused pulses of pleasure to shoot through the shaft and into his belly.
He grunted, the seed already churning at the base of his shaft.
Suddenly he could stand it no more. She was so beautiful kneeling there, serving him as if she were his mate.
Her breasts were pressed together between her arms, forming a most pleasant cleft of flesh.
Thanred grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back.
She sucked in a massive breath as she came off, mouth hanging open in a beautifully filthy way.
Grabbing his muscle, he began to pump. It took no time before he felt the first hot pulse of seed race through it. He let go of her hair.
Royla didn’t make to stand or try to run away. She must have noticed him staring at her chest because she brought her hands to the sides of her breasts and squeezed them against each other, making the flesh bulge.
A hot splash of his essence came flying out the head of his cock. It sailed in a long white arc through the air before splattering across her chest.
Royla gasped. Her eyes lit up, as if in delight at what he’d done. A smile flirted with the corners of her lips.
A second wave of climax gripped him. More seed came shooting from his cock, landing in thick white streaks across her breasts.
Royla kept her breasts pressed together and gazed up at him. She looked excited to be receiving his gift.
A third wave, then a fourth sent more of his emission onto her, until her breasts were coated with a thick white film.
Thanred grunted as his energy left him. The fever began to retreat now that he’d had a release. He looked at Royla.
She was still smiling, awaiting his next command.
Letting go of his cock, he sank to his knees. “Thank you,” he muttered. It seemed a strange thing to say but he wanted her to know he was grateful.
“You’re welcome...” she whispered, uncertain what to call him.
He looked at her with tired eyes. “Thanred. I am Thanred.”
She paused, mouth open in hesitation at speaking his name. “You’re welcome, Thanred,” she said, finally.
Nearly all the light was gone, and the air was getting chill. He showed her the pile of sticks he’d gathered and some grass next to it. Then he showed her the mushrooms and the fruit he’d found.
Her eyes lit up and her smile grew wider.
Seeing this gripped his heart like nothing ever had before. The softening, the same one he’d felt before, returned but this one had ten times the effect. It suddenly seemed so apparent that he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it before.
She looked puzzled by the way he was staring at her. “Is something wrong... Thanred?” she asked, pausing before speaking his name.
He shook his head. “No, Royla.” He offered her a hand. “Everything is right.”
She took it and let him help her stand. She looked even more beautiful in the silver moonlight filtering through the trees overhead. “Then what is it?” she asked.
He gazed into her eyes. “Make a fire,” he said, but his voice was far softer than it had been before. It sounded more like a request than a command.
She smiled again and nodded. Then she set about building a little tent of sticks.
Meanwhile Thanred walked through the brush, his eyes wandering through the undergrowth.
When he’d found what he was looking for he reached down, grasped the stalk of a massive branch with both hands, and broke it off like it was a twig.
He dragged it back to what was now a flickering fire, flames licking at the darkness.
“What is that?” she asked, crouching next to the tiny blaze.
“For us. For sleep. So you will not be cold.”
Her smile at his words gave him that funny sick but happy feeling.
Once the fire was properly burning, he offered her the mushroom and the fruit. She ate slowly, savoring each bite. “I never knew you could eat these,” she said, turning the red fruit over in her hand before taking another bite.
Once she was finished eating, she sidled up next to him.
Thanred stiffened at first, not because he didn’t like her there but because of how foreign it felt. She seemed his equal. That was as strange as it was wonderful.
When she leaned her head against his shoulder, his insides quaked.
They sat quietly in the darkness until it was pitch black. The only sounds came from the bubbling of the brook and the crackling logs in the fire.
Thanred thought she’d fallen asleep and was about to lower her to the ground when Royla spoke. “The Dranark have no tribes?” she said.
“They have,” he replied, confused as to how she had come to this.
“Then where is yours?”
His insides tightened at the question. The urge to close up, to move away from her and tell her to go to sleep gripped him. But her voice was so sweet, the question so innocent and earnest he couldn’t bring himself to push her away. “I...”
She didn’t press him. She let the single word linger in the air as he collected his thoughts.
“I was cast out. Like you were.”
His words were met with a soft gasp.
For some reason the response gave him courage to continue. “We are fickle creatures, we Dranark. Allegiances are easily swayed. Dodlin... someone I thought had been a friend, he...” His throat tightened, along with his stomach. Anger threatened to flare back up again.
He wanted to stoke it. A part of him wanted to feel the rage again, to unleash his fury on the forest and cast it out of himself. But something had changed.
Try as he might, he could barely bring himself to care about all that. There was only one thing he could think of that mattered now. There was only one thing that concerned him.
Royla. Sweet, smiling Royla who had somehow pressed her way into him, into the very depths of him and lodged herself there.
All of that business with Dodlin was far behind him. Far behind them. Now it was only Royla that mattered. “None of that matters now,” he said, lowering his eyes to the ground, then up to hers. “Not as long as I am with you.”
Hearing himself say it turned his insides to hot liquid.
The surprise in her expression caught him off guard. But after just a moment she tilted her head back and closed her eyes, her lips parted.
Thanred put a hand behind the back of her head. He bent lower and pressed his lips against hers in a kiss.
This time he didn’t plunge his tongue into her mouth, searching and hungry. He kissed her gently, savoring her taste the way she’d savored the taste of the fruit.
The world seemed to melt away.
When she pulled away, he let her. Though his cock was already hardening again, he let her go, opening his eyes to look at her again.
A funny smile played along her lips. “Thanred,” she said.
“Royla,” he answered.
“Can a human and a Dranark...”
He knew what word she’d left unspoken.
Mate?
He pulled the large leaf up to the fire, over his back and brought her to lie next to him. His cock was bothering him, but he didn’t want to take her again. Not yet. All he really wanted was to feel the heat of her body next to him as they slept.
Royla didn’t press. She shuffled back, pressing her back against his chest.
It wasn’t long before his eyes closed to the sound of her deep breaths.
Thanred drifted off to sleep.