Chapter Thirty
Loreleivnna
Cider flows over my fingers, my horn overfull. I let go of the spigot and rush the rim to my lips, processing Pikr’s words.
His foals. Plural.
“You want saplings?” I stutter. Pikr reaches around me, ignoring the impatient grumble of the creature behind us in line. “With me?”
“If you don’t want to bear saplings, I will respect your choice, of course,” he says.
When his horn is full, he draws us aside, his steady hand between my shoulder blades the only thing keeping me upright.
“But I cannot dispel the sight of you, belly swollen with my foal, breasts like fallen moons, full of milk that will nourish our young.”
My insides are warm all over. The erotic centaur texts did not prepare me for this.
In retrospect, it certainly makes some scenes more clear.
When the men and women depicted as the centaurs’ lovers drink from their beastly cock, they are always pleased with the taste.
I’ve always enjoyed those scenes, but never did I suspect the seed was altering their biology.
“Ahh, here is the root-paint you were searching for.” Pikr brings me out of my lusty fog with his voice, both rough and smooth, like a stream of molten lava as it glides down the mountain to form a new layer.
I am inexperienced, and Pikr is not. I wonder if I’ll eventually learn the skill of slipping in and out of lust-drunkness as smoothly as he does.
I feel as though I must not look at him, lest my undergarments grow wetter and my mind become impervious to what’s in front of me.
It’s a much different feeling than the invasive emotions of Halor’s enchantment.
With Pikr, it’s a deep, ancient knowing, which fills my heart and my loins whenever our joining comes to mind.
A smile splits the gray clover-shaped face of the Dryadlior vendor as we enter their tapestry-walled space.
I run my fingertips along the cool glass containers to stay present.
Wide salt-mouth jars line tiered wooden shelves.
Made with thick, clear glass and sealed with decorative stoppers sculpted to resemble the crescent stalks of lunaplume succulents, each holds varying levels of finely ground lunaplume root and spiritvine dust in every shade of pink, purple, red, and earthen brown known to elven kind.
“Greetings, Princess Loreleivnna. Greetings, Vir Pikquarrys,” the Dryadlior welcomes us. “Is there a specific blessing you’re after this harvest? Protection during travels, or perhaps fortification of fertility for the newlymates?”
I avert my gaze to hide the warmth spreading across my cheeks, but I’m grateful for their prompt.
In recent years, I’ve favored soft peach root-paint.
The comforting color, a blend of golden-orange and calm yellow so sweet it’s almost pink, reminds me that the sun rises on every horizon, even those I’ve never visited yet long to behold.
I paint my feet and calves with it for the Lunaplume Ball so that each step on the dancefloor relays my prayer for serenity, hoping the Wise Ones will finally ease the yearning in my heart so I may be content with the life I’ve been planted and stop searching for those faraway sunrises.
“Would it help if I tell you about our mixtures, and each color’s significance?” the shopkeep adds discreetly, and I grow warmer knowing my hesitance was noticed.
“No need.” I don my royal persona and meet their gaze. I know every color of the root powder and their prayer. “I require twelve grams of your deepest amaranth.”
“Ahh,” the Dryadlior hums, rolling back on their long, willowwisp bark-like claws.
With a sly smile, their darkened gaze hops between Pikr and me.
“Evoking the Nocturn Aevumdivuss’ will with the long, enduring love of crimson, balanced by the wisdom of violet root.
Raw passion meets maternal instinct.” They wink.
“A woman with intention behind her choices. How refreshing.”
They turn, disappearing behind a tapestry draped at the back of the stand. I chance a peek at Pikr and instantly look away, afraid I’ll flood the whole square in my slick and everyone will have to swim home.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I hiss.
“Like what?”
I glance at him again and groan. The raging heat in his gaze practically turns his white iris as orange as the flames of his forge. “Like you’re trying to impregnate me with your mind.”
The centaur rumbles something between a groan and a nicker. The Dryadlior returns, and I plaster on a sweet, innocent smile.
~~~
The sun teases over the treetops, the silence charged with a sensual tension that tingles over my skin. Pikr and I drop our things at his cottage, then set out on our path to the grove, every furtive glance filled with a heat I can hardly bear.
On the outskirts of Svitaeyrl, Pikr slows, circling me with a piaffe. He reaches out a hand, and my heart pitter-patters like rain against a giant fiddle leaf fig, dripping down my spine to pool in my core as liquid heat.
I take his hand and let him help me onto his back. Instantly, my body recalls the world-rocking orgasm that altered my brain chemistry last time I had his soft, strong body between my thighs, and I shiver.
Pikr surges forward. I wrap my arms around his torso and dig my nails into his sculpted abdomen, feeling his back muscles tense and release against my cheek.
He smells like iron and fire, the woods and rain, everything good about spending time outside.
I picture us eating spit-roasted crested noxwing at a campfire somewhere between Ashfall Valley and my childhood home.
It’s such an endearing image, I bite my lip against a swell of tears.
“Your scent changes,” Pikr comments over his shoulder. “What troubles you?”
“Nothing,” I respond too quickly. He peers at me with his piercing obsidian eye, and I fear he’ll get the wrong impression unless I tell him something. “I was picturing the future.”
“Ah.” He affixes his gaze forward, but not before I catch a glimpse of his cheek rising. “Many orgasms ahead, my sweet Blossom.”
I giggle and grab hold of his braid, wrapping it around my wrist. “Yes, but that’s not what I was thinking of.”
Pikr makes a deep whinnying noise. After a moment, he says, “Our future might be hard-won, but I will fight for it every day. You were my prize, after all. I’ll defend my victory with every breath, so you never doubt that I’m worthy to apricate in your light.”
“I’m blessed to be your prize,” I say, shifting my legs around him to feel some friction.
“Let us show our gratitude to the Wise Ones,” he rumbles as he comes to a halt and twists at the waist to look at me. “May I have this frolic, Princess Loreleivnna?”
I sit back, spine tall, and meet the two-toned gaze of my fated love, the promise of illicit thrills whirling in his dark iris.
His ebony hair is already speckled with glowing pink dots.
The Aevumoon Iris trunks glow in the moonlight behind him, specks of pollen floating in the air like shooting stars.
Pikr smirks, his lush brows quirked in a dare.
It’s a portrait of everything I’ve ever wanted.
I close my eyes and inhale, deep and slow, letting the lusty air fill my lungs. The hair on my arms tickles. My core tightens, my thighs clenching involuntarily, and I smile, accidentally letting out a giggle that sounds more like a moan.
Pikr chuckles. I open my eyes to find him watching me with unabashed wantonness.
“Yes,” I reply. “You may.”