Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Riley
For about an hour, I sit and watch the waterfall, questioning what this realm would have been like before Death destroyed it… before the person who I once was… took it all away.
I hear Quill before I see him, recognizing the sound his hooves make as they flatten petrified plant life…
all taken because of me. Kit’s napping on my lap, but the noise must wake her because she pokes her head up and looks around me at Quill.
Torin slides off his back and walks over to me.
He doesn’t say anything, he just sits down behind me and wraps me up in his arms, and all the loneliness I’d felt is immediately washed away.
How can such a simple touch be all it takes to change my entire world?
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You don’t need to be sorry. I know you were just teasing.” His voice is so gentle as I tuck myself into his arms.
“It wasn’t right of me to make light of something like that,” I say.
He squeezes me and sets his head on my shoulder while I close my eyes.
“I never had family. I never really had anyone… I had friends, of course, but I’ve never had anyone like you. But it’s like I can’t even let myself feel happy before I’m overcome with guilt,” I confess.
Torin kisses my neck, his lips gently running over it. “Nothing I say can help?”
“You say all the right things.”
His fingers slide through my hair, drawing it back as he kisses my neck again. “Let’s go through the Door together. We might not make it out, but I’m willing to take that risk for you.”
And that’s what worries me. “You risk so much for me.”
“You’re worth risking everything for,” he says as he reaches around me and takes my chin.
He gently pulls it toward him and kisses the side of my lips.
“Please do one thing for me, Riley, and stop letting this guilt eat at you. Just care about what I have to say, and I’m telling you that it wasn’t your fault. Please?”
I force myself to nod.
“Promise?”
“I already agreed.”
“Grudgingly.”
My lips quirk. “Maybe. But I promise.”
“Now, do you want to go skinny-dipping?”
“I don’t want to climb back up this cliff when we’re done.”
“Quill will climb it.”
“That’s even worse,” I say as I look at the mischievous mount.
“You’re going to have to prepare for your own pony. You’re going to be such a cute horseman.”
I grimace at the mere thought of having to interact with a horse.
“Come on,” Torin says as he dips his hand under my shirt and trails the pads of his fingers up, pulling my shirt with it. “Oh nooooo, your shirt doesn’t like touching your flesh. Whatever will we do?”
“Weird. My shirt was perfectly happy touching my skin mere seconds ago. I wonder what happened,” I sarcastically retort while my shirt inches up higher and higher.
“How promiscuous, putting your nipples on display,” he says as he pokes one.
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh yes, I definitely was the one putting them on display.”
He proceeds to pull my shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it. “So scandalous,” he comments while his fingers venture downward.
“There seems to be a single culprit,” I say as he flicks the button of my pants open. His fingers don’t stop there. They dip down, teasing my cock before slipping back out. Then he shimmies my pants and underwear down so I’m sitting naked on his lap.
“I wish you’d just walk around naked all the time. You could be the naked horseman of the apocalypse. It would set you apart from the others.” Torin seems to be thrilled by this idea for some odd reason.
“It’ll set me apart as the pervert of the group?”
“Exactly,” he says with a grin.
I shake my head, wondering what exactly this man is going on about.
“Why didn’t we get naked down there? Like am I supposed to scale down the side of this cliff in the nude?
What if I fall and scrape my nuts on the rocks?
And if you say that we’re going to ride Quill down, the idea of riding him butt naked sounds less than pleasing. ”
“No, we’re jumping.”
That makes me arch an eyebrow. “Oh hell no.”
“You’re going to love it,” he says as he stands up and whips his clothes off in record time. I assume that’s why clothes here are designed differently. They’re hard to put on but sure easy to whip off… just the way Torin likes it.
He ushers me over to the edge, and Kit and I look down at the drop that leads to the water below.
“Nope.”
“This is nothing like those things you made me ride yesterday.”
“Those were safe! We had little safety bars and they’re checked regularly by inspectors.”
“Well, I inspected this myself and I’m a god. We’ll jump together.”
“This looks ridiculous… I can see it now: ‘The god and the horseman destined to save the world tragically died while skinny-dipping.’ And Mickey would be the one to find our bodies… if he thought to look for us, so who knows what story he’d come up with.
He’d probably bring us back to life to make us tell our own story. ”
“It’s really not that far of a drop,” Torin assures me. “We’d have teens jumping off here all the time and I don’t think anyone ever even got hurt. There’s nothing to fall on. No rocks. It’s very safe. Come on.”
I eye the water below. It really might not be that far, but it’s plenty far for me. “I’ll walk.”
“Okay. Quill will take you down,” he says as he tries to pick me up to stuff me on his evil mount.
The creature with a dragon-like head and equine body glances over at us, like he knows we’re talking about him.
Last time I rode him alone, he bucked me off and then tried sharpening his antlers on me. So I decide I’ll just walk myself.
“Nope. Not going to happen. He has it out for me every time you turn your back.”
Torin, looking shocked that I would dare say something about his precious creature, cups the beast’s ears. “Don’t listen to him, sweetie pie. He’s just jealous.”
“The last thing I am is jealous of that creature,” I say.
“Fine, fine, walk down with no help. Just… meet me down there,” Torin says as he pulls me in for a quick kiss and then dives right off.
Kit and I watch him jump as Quill starts rubbing his antlers on me now that Torin’s not here to fend him off.
Either that or his plan is to do away with me by pushing me over the edge.
Torin pops out of the water laughing and looks up at me. “The water is beautiful. Come.”
“Kit… what do you want to do?” I ask, but Kit’s already ready to dive off. That creature is fearless. So when she sees me contemplating my choices, she leaps onto my bare shoulder and begins excitedly dancing. “I’m going to regret this so much.”
And then I run and jump, plugging my nose and questioning how I got suckered into this.
There’s a brief instant of “What the fuck am I doing” as the wind whips through my hair a moment before I land in the water and discover that the jump honestly wasn’t that high or traumatic. It was actually… kind of fun.
Which I will never tell Torin.
Kit left me at some point, but it’s pretty easy to figure out which way is up. And when I break through the water, arms wrap around me.
“This water really is very pleasant,” I say as Kit floats over to the shore where Quill is working his way down. She seems to like the beast for some reason.
Torin’s hands travel down my back before one cups my ass cheek, pulling me up so my dick presses against his. “It is. The black rock and ore here absorb the warmth from the sunlight, and they in turn warm the water.”
“Ooh, tell me more,” I tease.
“First the sun dances its little rays down,” he says as he kisses my neck while one finger brushes between my ass cheeks. “Just like it’s heating your buns up.”
“I think your hands are doing that.”
“Oh?” His finger slides over my hole.
“If you think you’re going to stick that dick in this ass while we’re floating in this water, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I brought lube,” he says, frantically turning his head from side to side.
Because of his exaggerated movements, Kit is also interested in what he’s looking for, so she curiously watches as he notices the bottle floating along and grabs it.
Then he turns and flings his hair back, causing water to spray out, before presenting the lube like I’m going to be ultra impressed.
“Where the hell did that come from? Do you just have random bottles of lube floating around?”
“No, I tossed it over the edge when I found you and realized you weren’t like over there getting ready for sexy time and were instead wanting me to comfort you. It was a blunder on my part for sure.”
It takes far too long for this information to make sense in my mind.
“Are you talking about when you walked up and found me sitting up there on the ledge? You thought I was off just… preparing for sex? You were mad at me, so I rushed off to apologize, and I couldn’t find you!
I thought maybe you came out here! And you thought I was just like… waiting to get fucked?”
Torin contemplates this. I think Kit is also so confused that she’s continuing to watch our interaction.
“I can see how you thought that… however, I want you to remember that I don’t know how to stay mad at you for more than like five seconds, but I do know how to stay horny for a very long time.
I’d already forgiven your foolish remarks.
There is something about you that makes me forget everything but how delectable you are. ”
“That’s… kind of romantic and sweet, but also… you don’t have to forgive me so easily. What I said was shitty. I was just trying to push off all the bad stuff and it caused me to say some pretty foolish things. It was wrong of me,” I admit.
“Am I not the king of pushing things off?” he asks. “I feel quite confident that we both excel at this.”
I ponder this before nodding approvingly. “Oddly enough… I feel like you’re right. You’re rarely right, but this time, I think you are.”