Chapter 3 #3
Silence slammed back down onto the terrace, heavy and suffocating.
The only sound left in the evening air was the ragged, whistling intake of Nartab’s breath and the faint rustle of the dry canyon wind.
He stood near the edge of the parapet, his back turned to my dark corner.
The last fading embers of the sunset cast a blood-orange glow across his shoulders, illuminating the fresh scratches on his forearms and the thick beads of sweat tracing the groove of his spine.
His muscles remained coiled, his broad chest rising and falling in rapid, heavy strokes that made his ribcage expand like a blacksmith’s bellows.
I leaned my head against the cold stone behind me, my fingers digging into the fabric of my thin linen tunic.
My body felt feverish, burning from the inside out.
The wetness between my thighs had soaked through my undergarments, slick and undeniable.
During the brutal exchange of blows, a strange clarity had settled over my panicked mind: there was no shame in reacting to him.
Watching a male of his size and power destroy an enemy for my sake was a biological force older than reason.
I was a human female in a world ruled by territorial beasts, and my body had recognized its protector.
I pushed myself away from the sandstone alcove, my legs shaking so violently that I had to place my palm against the wall to keep upright.
My knees felt like melted wax, barely capable of supporting my weight.
I took a slow, unsteady step toward the center of the terrace, the cool flagstones shocking my bare soles.
Nartab did not move. His head remained lowered, his massive horns casting long, jagged shadows across the floor.
"Are you okay?" I asked. My voice came out thin and raspy, barely louder than the evening breeze, yet the sound made his broad shoulders flinch.
He did not answer. His breathing grew faster, deeper, his chest heaving with a harsh, rasping rattle that sounded less like fatigue and more like hunger.
I took another step closer, the heat radiating from his massive frame and the scent of wild musk filling my nostrils. "What's wrong?"
Nartab turned his head slowly over his shoulder.
The breath caught in my throat. His amber eyes were no longer calm or controlled.
The horizontal pupils had dilated until they swallowed almost the entire iris, glowing in the twilight with a feverish, feral yellow fire.
His nostrils flared wide, drinking in the air, tasting the scent of the terrace.
A fine tremor ran through the thick muscles of his neck and arms.
"Run," he rasped.
The word was barely human - a low, gravelly vibration that scraped across his teeth like grinding stones. In that single heartbeat, the truth crashed over me.
The blood-bond that protected Lesta and Miri from his summer rut fever did not exist between us.
He was not my brother by blood, we were stepsiblings.
He was a warlord’s son, a monster entering the height of his rut, and I was an unrelated female standing in his territory.
More than that - my own rising arousal had flooded the terrace with the scent of human heat.
A bighorn male possessed a sense of smell sharper than a hunting dog, and I was practically screaming my attraction into the mountain air.
I spun on my bare heel and bolted across the flagstones.
My feet slapped hard against the cool stone as I raced toward the arched entryway that led back to the upper battlements.
Behind me, the sharp, heavy clatter of hooves struck the terrace floor.
He was moving. Panic lent speed to my limbs, but the sound of his pursuit did not chill my blood - it set my skin on fire.
Every rhythmic crash of his hooves against the stone vibrated through the soles of my feet, traveling up my shins and settling deep between my thighs.
The heavy, predatory cadence of his stride told me he could close the distance whenever he chose, letting me run only to fuel the chase.
I rounded the corner of the archway, my shoulder scraping against the masonry, and took the spiral staircase three steps at a time.
My lungs burned for air, my breath tearing from my throat in ragged gasps.
I climbed blindly, pulling myself upward by the rough stone center-post, desperate to find an unlocked door or a chamber where I could barricade myself until his mind cleared.
The clatter of his hooves echoed up the stairwell beneath me, loud and inevitable, bouncing off the curved stone walls like rolling thunder.
He was effortlessly keeping pace, his heavy animal legs built for vertical ascents that left my human muscles cramping and desperate.
I reached the top landing and burst through the open archway, only to freeze as the cool evening breeze hit my face.
I had run the wrong way.
There were no hallways here, no heavy timber doors to bolt behind me.
I had climbed back onto the highest watchtower - the open stone battlement where I had watched the sunset only minutes before.
The round platform was surrounded by nothing save a waist-high sandstone parapet and empty sky.
I stumbled across the stone floor, my chest heaving, and ran to the far edge of the battlement.
I leaned over the carved railing, my eyes searching frantically across the exterior wall for a lower ledge, a wooden scaffolding, or even a drainage I could use to climb down.
There was nothing. The red sandstone dropped sixty feet sheer to the lower ramparts, smooth and unforgiving in the purple twilight.
I was trapped.
Before I could turn around to face the open archway, the sound of hooves ceased on the stone floor behind me.
A shadow swallowed the lingering light around me.
Two massive, calloused palms slammed down onto the stone parapet on either side of my shoulders, trapping me between muscular forearms thick as tree limbs.
At the same instant, a broad, heat-radiating chest pressed against my shoulder blades, and his heavy, fleece-covered groin collided hard against the curve of my rear.
A sharp gasp escaped my parted lips. Through the thin linen of my tunic, I felt the unmistakable, rigid weight of his erection pressing firmly between the cheeks of my bottom.
He was thick, hard as iron, and radiating a furnace-like heat that burned through the layers of cloth separating our skin.
He held me pinned effortlessly against the stone railing, his heavy torso caging me from behind while his calloused fingers gripped the parapet with enough force to whiten his knuckles.
Nartab lowered his head, his muzzle grazing the curve of my neck.
He inhaled deeply, his flared nostrils dragging across my pulse point with a wet, shuddering breath that sent a violent shudder down my spine.
"You smell like heat," he growled against my ear, his voice dropping into a territorial rumble that vibrated through my ribs. "You smell like mine."
I tried to pull my hips forward to break the contact, but the parapet pressed hard against my stomach, leaving zero room for retreat.
His lower body shifted against me, his fleece-covered thighs locking around the backs of my legs, forcing my stance wider.
He ground his hips forward with a slow, deliberate pressure, letting me feel the full, intimidating length of his shaft as it slid upward along the cleft of my buttocks.
My fingers curled into the rough stone of the railing.
My knees trembled so violently that I would have collapsed onto the flagstones if his heavy frame were not holding me upright.
The scent of him - musk, pine, and hot male dominance - filled my breath, drowning out the mountain air.
I was caught in the center of his territory, pinned to the edge of the sky by a beast who had stopped fighting his nature.
The fever of the rut radiated from his skin, a furnace heat that seeped through my thin linen tunic and made the air between us heavy with the scent of wild pine, crushed cedar, and aggressive animal musk.
I twisted my wrists against the stone, trying to carve out an inch of breathing room between his chest and my shoulders.
My pulse hammered in my throat, rapid and sharp, as I fought to steady my voice against the low, rhythmic vibration of his breathing.
"Nartab, stop," I gasped, lifting my chin to speak over my shoulder.
"You have your mind. Use it. Let me go."
He did not step back. Instead, his heavy forearms tightened around me, his calloused palms pressing down onto the parapet on either side of my elbows, caging me completely.
"We are family now," I pleaded, my voice cracking as the dry mountain wind whipped my hair across my cheek. "You are my stepbrother. Your father left you here to guard us. You are supposed to protect me from the beasts in the valley, not hunt me across the ramparts."
The reminder of his duty produced a ragged, shuddering intake of breath from deep within his chest. His ribs expanded against my shoulder blades, the sheer size of his lungs pushing the breath from my own.
For a fraction of a second, his grip on the sandstone faltered, his knuckles losing their tension.
Yet the biological tide of the season refused to release him.
He pressed his torso harder against my spine, trapping me so firmly against his front that every rise and fall of his chest dictated my own inhalation.