Kerris #2
I was going to be stripped to skeleton like the creatures whose remains made up this territory. Going to become part of the bone field, another set of calcium formations for some future engineer to study.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, something bitter and broken laughed inside my chest.
At least no one was pretending it was love. At least this death was honest. At least the storm wasn't asking me to co-sign anything.
Something massive blocked the wind.
I slammed into it before I registered it was there. Hard surface, warm despite the screaming air, shaped like armor plates and dense muscle. Hands gripped my arms, steadied me, pulled me against a body that could shelter me from the storm.
Him.
I couldn't see his face through the dust. I could only feel the solidity of him, the protection of his bulk, the way his body curved around mine to block the flying bone. His arms wrapped around me, one across my back, one behind my head, pressing my face into his chest.
Safe. For this moment, I was safe.
"You're hurt."
His voice cut through the wind somehow. That grinding stone sound, right against my ear, vibrating through my skull.
"I'm fine." I wasn't fine. Blood was running down my face, my arms, my legs, dripping onto his armor and washing away in the wind. "I need to get to shelter."
"Yes."
He didn't let go. Didn't explain. Just started moving, carrying me more than guiding me, his body taking the impacts that would have shredded my skin. Bone shards hit his armor and shattered. The wind howled around us but couldn't reach me.
I pressed my face against his chest and let him take me.
The tonic was screaming through me. Having him this close, pressed against his body, smelling his scent concentrated and overwhelming, my whole system ignited.
My pussy clenched so hard I gasped. Wetness flooded between my legs, mixing with the blood from my wounds, my body responding to his proximity even while the storm tried to kill us.
I was dying and horny. Bleeding and desperate. Terrified and aroused.
My body didn't care about survival. My body only cared about him.
"Almost there."
I felt the change in the air before I saw it. The wind dropped. The bone stopped flying. We were inside something, surrounded by walls that blocked the storm's fury.
The Keep. His Keep. Twenty cycles of building, and now I was inside it.
He set me on my feet but didn't step back. His hands stayed on my shoulders, steadying me while my legs shook. I looked up at him through blood-streaked vision.
"You came for me."
"You were dying."
"You could have let me."
Those amber eyes studied me for a long moment. Then he made a sound that might have been a laugh, grinding and deep.
"I've been waiting twenty cycles for a female who thinks like a builder. I'm not going to let a storm take you before you've seen what I've built."
I looked around the chamber for the first time.
The engineer in me wanted to weep.
The ceiling arched fifteen feet overhead, carved from the interior of what must have been a massive skull.
But carved was the wrong word. Sculpted.
Shaped with a precision that rivaled anything I'd seen in professional construction.
The walls were reinforced with interlocking bone panels, the joints so perfect I couldn't see the seams. Ventilation channels ran along the upper edges, creating air flow without compromising structural integrity.
He'd built this. One creature with nothing but claws and patience.
There were other chambers visible through carefully positioned archways. Seven, he'd said at the spring. Seven chambers of construction that put my entire career to shame.
"You're bleeding," he said, pulling me back to the present.
I looked down at myself. Blood was running from cuts on my arms, my legs, my face. My clothes were shredded, ruined beyond salvage. Through the torn fabric, I could see wounds that would need attention.
His hands slid down my arms, finding the wounds. Gentle. Clinical. Assessing damage with the same precision he used for construction.
"You need tending," he said. "Sit."
I sat. Not because he ordered me to, but because my legs were failing anyway. The adrenaline from the storm was fading, replaced by exhaustion and blood loss and the ever-present ache of arousal that hadn't paused even while I was dying.
He knelt before me, and I realized I was about to be very close to him for a very long time.
The storm screamed outside the walls, howling through the bone formations, throwing debris against the Keep that didn't so much as shudder. His construction held. His construction would always hold.
Inside, his scent was everywhere. Saturating the air, sinking into my pores, triggering the tonic response that never stopped.
My pussy clenched at his proximity. My nipples tightened despite the pain of my wounds.
My body was already responding, already preparing, already begging for what he'd denied me at the spring.
"Three days," he said, as if reading my thoughts. "Minimum. Until the storm passes."
Three days trapped in here with him. Three days of his scent in every breath. Three days of his hands on my wounds, his voice in my ears, his body within reach.
Three days of wanting something I refused to ask for properly.
I was going to break. I could feel it already, the cracks spreading through the walls I'd built around myself.
He'd engineered this as precisely as he'd engineered everything else.
The maze to herd me here. The storm to trap me.
The edging to prime my body until it couldn't accept any relief except him.
I had a feeling I wouldn't last three.
"Let me see your wounds," he said.
I let him.