Chapter 4
Mox
The strange female I held clutched in my tail was making all the glyphs on my body glow.
I knew what that meant, I just really couldn’t wrap my head around it.
A female without any scales? She was so soft all over, so curvy, and round…
Okay, that could be nice, she felt good clutched in my coils, all soft and warm.
I eyed her muddy form as she stood on the swamp’s uneven ground, covered in mud, getting it all over my scales.
Normally they stayed muck free pretty well, and I always made sure to move along the small water channels, it hid my tracks and kept me clean.
This female was a mess, with bad balance on her two little legs, muck in her hair, and smeared across her face.
“Stay put, while I care for my kill,” I told her, but I still didn’t let go of her with my tail as I moved to divest this second Rakworm of its fangs and the coveted scales.
At least this hunting trip was a good one when it came to spoils, though I wasn’t sure if showing up with this strange female at the Copper Tooth camp would be a good idea.
She was so small and defenseless, the females would tear her to shreds, and that thought made something clench uncomfortably hard in my chest.
I never let her out of my sight as I worked, but she didn’t move, just kept on watching me.
Then, when that was clearly becoming a struggle for her, she started petting my tail, stroking long delicate fingers over my scales.
She had no clue just what kind of taboo rules she was breaking by touching me like this, but then, so was I, for holding her in my coils.
“So, I’m Charlie, what about you? Do you have a name?
” she said, her voice all bright and cheerful, her deep brown eyes wide as she pointed them straight at my face.
I was starting to think the Rakworms were seriously messed up for not responding to those eyes as I did, how could anyone not want to protect her when she looked at you like that?
“I am Mox, First Hunter of the Copper Tooth Clan,” I said to her, and I indicated the copper blade of my spear.
She didn’t look all that impressed with it, although my tribe was the only one who knew how to work with the material.
When I puffed up my chest, her eyes tracked along my shoulders and she nibbled the soft pillowy bottom lip.
It was pink and full, and now that she’d drawn my attention to it, I wanted to lick it, or maybe nibble it too.
My cock swelled again, eager to extrude, and I forced my attention away from the female.
A few more strikes of my red-light blade and I’d freed the last of the scales that I wanted.
Now, where did that rattle go? I knew the female had struck at the Rakworms tail, but it was only now that I realized that she’d struck the rattle clean off.
Maybe she was not as helpless as she looked.
I eyed the short blunt claws on her fingers, how had she done it?
I spotted the sharp piece of metal from a skyship just as I picked the rattle from the muck.
Ah, so that’s how. That was clever. So she’d tried to arm herself, but the metal piece looked sharp on all sides, and worry struck me.
I pulled her small hands off my tail before I’d even contemplated what I was doing, inspecting the soft, scaleless palms for damage.
Just like I thought, one hand was cut up pretty badly.
“Charlie,” I said, testing out her name on my tongue and finding that the two syllables worked well enough, I liked it.
Her large brown eyes met mine and I felt that look like a punch to the gut, they were so imploring, so wide.
As if I could see straight down to her soul through those portals.
“What is it Mox?” she asked, and then her pale cheeks suddenly colored pink that brightened to red and spread all the way down her neck.
“I mean, if it’s okay to just call you Mox.
Or should I say First Hunter?” she added.
She was talking at a fast pace that made it hard for me to follow her words, even with the spirit-connection our touch was evoking.
“Mox is fine,” I told her, while I looked back at her damaged palm. I tucked the piece of metal into my bag so I could fashion it into a better blade for her later. Then I pulled a copper knife from my belt and handed it to the female, “Here, this will not hurt you when you use it.”
She took the blade while her big eyes went even wider, tucking the small weapon against her ample chest. “Thank you Mox, and thank you for saving me. Do you need uh… help to butcher that thing?” She gestured at the corpse of the Rakworm, her question indicating that she thought we could eat the meat.
“No, Rakworms are not good for eating,” I said.
Curling my tail, I hauled her closer. Though she was covered with muck, and soaked to the bone, I didn’t pause as I freed her from my coil and lifted her into my arms instead.
She made a startled sound that she quickly swallowed as she tried to be quiet, at last. She didn’t protest my handling of her as I hurried from the scene and in the direction of the hot springs.
I was much faster as I slithered along the small channels, making sure to keep my small burden well out of reach of the cool streams. Soon, we’d left the area where we’d encountered the two worms, but I couldn’t be sure more were still around.
The report from the hunters that had declared this area unfit for hunting had indicated half a dozen of them.
The spring I was headed for was hidden in a hilly portion of this wet landscape.
It was a place hunters sometimes camped at when we stayed out for longer hunts, there were supplies there.
As the ground dried up with the mild elevation, I felt a little less worried about another Rakworm attack.
They generally didn’t like to leave the wetlands, where they were well camouflaged.
“Are we almost there?” Charlie asked me.
She had pitched her voice into a soft whisper, and I was pleased that she was trying to be quiet as we traveled, maybe she had more survival instincts than I’d given her credit for.
She was only a slight weight in my arms and I almost didn’t want to put her down.
“Almost,” I told her and slid her down my body to the ground.
I felt the brush of her full teats, singeing me with heat down to the bone.
Those were soft. Now I was really starting to think I’d been missing out.
The few times a Naga female had let me coil with her had all been about dominance, fighting her until she submitted.
There was never anything soft or warm about a Naga female and I was quickly realizing just how glad I was that Charlie was so different.
Though she wanted to put distance between us, I kept hold of her hand when I set her down on the ground.
Using that connection, I started leading her up onto the stretch of more solid earth, soft pink grass brushing against my scales.
In the distance, a pile of rocks lay tumbled together, the massive blocks too angular to be anything but crafted.
Whatever building they had belonged to, it had collapsed a long time ago, and I and other hunters had taken great pain to move them until they looked like they’d piled together haphazardly.
The cache and nest inside those boulders were well-hidden, a precaution in case the Bitter Storm Clan descended from their mountains.
They hadn’t so far, but we couldn’t take that risk, they were a hostile, fanatic clan.
Charlie stumbled on her long, slender legs, hopping on the foot that was still wearing a covering while she clutched at her tiny toes with her free hand.
“Damn it, who’s hiding all these sharp rocks under that soft grass?
” she muttered. I eyed the foot covering I had tied to my bag, it was still filthy despite my best efforts, but so was her other one…
“I should keep carrying you,” I told her, she was much slower than me, even on this more solid terrain.
She tilted her head to look at me, a sunny smile on her face that took my breath away.
Here I thought those soft brown eyes could make me do anything, but it was that smile that made me want to give her the world.
“You just want an excuse to have me in your arms again, don’t you?
” she teased. My scales clacked together over my chest in surprise, a shiver running down my spine to rattle the tip of my tail.
She was right, I could just give her her other foot wrapping, but I did want her back in my arms. I thought her teasing meant she was going to object to that, but she stepped a little closer and pressed her free hand to my chest. “Okay, go ahead, I really want to get clean.”
I swung her up against my chest and sped up to cross the final distance to the hunter’s hideout with the water spring.
I tried hard not to imagine what she would look like once she stripped off her clothing and washed away the mud drying on her pale skin.
My cock flushed, hardening painfully in my pouch, it was difficult to keep it from extruding, but I wasn’t a youth, I could control myself.
“There,” I told her, “We’ve arrived,” and I ducked with her beneath the cleverly piled rocks into the shaft that led down into the ground.