Chapter 8
Rohn put out his hand to Rose. “Are you all right?”
Rose tried to stand up, but her knees buckled underneath her. Rohn hitched his hands under her armpits and hauled her up. He supported her with his arms around her chest.
Rose drew a ragged breath. Every breath brought her closer to complete breakdown. The terror of the last moments caught up with her. She burst into tears. She threw her arms around his neck and held on for dear life. “Oh, thank you! Thank you.”
He tried to gently pry her arms away. “Never mind. It’s all over now.”
She didn’t hear. She covered his face and lips with kisses. She clawed at his skin with her fingernails. She tried to grab every inch of him while she could before he slipped away.
Maybe he never wanted her in the first place. Maybe that incident in her room, when she was supposed to be giving him a medical examination, was just a trivial dalliance. He stayed away from her afterwards, so he must not think much of her company.
She couldn’t let that happen again. He was here. She had to seize him. She had to take him into herself. She stroked his hair off his forehead and pressed her breasts against his chest. She pushed her tongue into his mouth. She had to show him how much she desired him.
Oh, how she desired him! She never desired anything in her life like she desired him. She ached for him. She wanted his flesh inside her, stroking her deepest tissues and making them shiver with new life.
He accepted her kisses, but he held back. He held her up with his arms around her waist, but he made no move to own her the way he did before. What was wrong with him? Was he waiting for a polite opportunity to disengage from her and take his leave? He was a dominant man. A woman taking what she wanted and throwing herself at him must disgust him.
With a monumental effort, she disentangled herself from his arms. She wiped the saliva off her lower lip and took her place on the ground on her own two feet. She straightened her clothes. “Sorry. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t come along just then.”
He glanced at the creature. “I’ll go get Damen and Callan to butcher this thing. We can’t let it go to waste.” He disappeared into the forest.
She sank down at the base of the tree in a miserable heap. Her hands and legs trembled with nervous terror. He didn’t want her. He had her once, and now he was finished with her. Butchering that animal for food concerned him a lot more than she did.
He took his time coming back, and she didn’t want to wait around to let him ignore her while he did the job. She supported herself against the tree trunk to get on her feet. Then she struck off through the trees after him, toward the Keep.
She met Damen and Callan coming the other way, but saw no sign of Rohn. She pressed on her way. She didn’t want to see him anyway. She had work to do back at the Keep. She should concentrate on her job, instead of selling herself to the first man to look at her sideways.
She walked and walked, but she never came in sight of the Keep. She adjusted her course more than once, but after more than an hour of fruitless trekking, she had to admit she was lost again. No paths marked that forest. How did the Krataks find their way through it? They seemed to travel by instinct alone.
A shadow crossed the sun, and Rose looked up to see the dragon passing overhead. It craned its neck to look down on the forest, but it couldn’t see her from so high up. She slowed down and stopped. She had to rest here.
She leaned her hand against a tree and let her head fall onto it when a voice startled her. “What are you doing here, Rose?”
She whipped around to confront Rohn. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s what I just asked you. You’re miles away from the Keep. You’re lucky I came to find you, or you would be out in these woods overnight.”
“Don’t you have work to do back there, butchering that thing with Damen and Callan?”
“They can do the job. You’re much more important than that.”
Her head shot up. “Really?”
“Why do you think I came back for you? Damen told me you were out in the forest alone, looking for your friend Moira. I’m glad I found you when I did, or the morlock would have killed you.”
She shuddered. “Thank you. You saved my life.”
He took a step closer to her. “Are you sure you’re all right? The morlock didn’t injure you, did it?”
“It didn’t injure me. It just scared me.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’ve never seen one of those things before. That’s why it scared me.”
“You had every right to be scared. I was scared, too.”
“You were?”
“Of course. Any man would be a fool not to be scared, facing one of those things alone. We never face them without at least five men attacking at once. That’s the only way we can bring them down.”
“You attacked it alone, and you killed it. You didn’t look scared to me.”
“I was. I only attacked it alone to save you, and then, I only did what I did because its horns were stuck in the tree. I never would have gotten close enough to kill it if it wasn’t.”
She turned away. “Well, thank you, anyway. If you just show me back to the Keep, you can get back to helping the others butcher.”
He frowned. “I didn’t come out here to help the others butcher. I came out here to find you.”
“Thank you. I couldn’t find my way back to the Keep. I don’t know the way as well as you do.”
He peered into her face. “Rose.”
“What?”
He cupped her chin in his hand. “Look at me.”
She lifted her face to meet his eyes. His skin shimmered in the pale light, and his pupils swelled to take in every detail of her face. “You have nothing to fear from me, Rose.”
“I... I don’t fear you.”
“Then why are you trying to get away from me? Did I frighten you?”
“When you killed that thing? Of course not. I’m eternally grateful. I told you that.”
He drew closer. His buckler brushed the tips of her breasts. “I meant in your room. You said you were scared. Maybe I was too forceful with you.”
“No, it was okay. I was scared, but also excited. What you did....”
“You wanted it, didn’t you?”
“I told you I wanted it.”
“Do you want it again now?”
She tore herself away from him. “What you did in that room...It was nice and everything, but it only happened once. I understand you probably don’t want to get serious about a woman like me. You’re used to submissive women, and I’m definitely not that.”
“What makes you think I want a submissive woman?”
She waved her hand in what she thought was the direction of the Keep. “Your whole society is based on dominant men and submissive women. I’ve seen that for myself.”
“The women of Kratak are not submissive. Whatever you’ve seen, you misunderstood. The women of Kratak stand up for themselves. In any case, I would not have chosen you if I wanted a submissive woman. I chose you because you speak your mind. You don’t let my father or any other man hold you down. I admire that about you.”
“You do?”
“Of course. You Allies seem to think someone has to be dominant and someone has to be submissive. In your case, the women are dominant so the men have to be submissive. That doesn’t work very well for you, does it? You would not have responded to me the way you did if you didn’t want a dominant man. All women do. It’s their nature.”
“I let you dominate me once, but I won’t do it again.”
“Oh? Why not, if you say you liked it and wanted it?”
“You think all women want a man to treat them the way you treated me? You think it’s our nature? That only proves how little you know about women.”
“I know all about women. I’ve lived with them all my life, and I’ve chosen mates at the gatherings. I know as much about women as anyone.”
“You know about Kratak women, but you don’t know about me. What we did isn’t in my nature at all. Men among the Allies respect women and treat them with deference.”
“I just said I admired you for standing up for yourself. Didn’t I treat you with deference when I asked if you wanted it? If you wanted it, if you enjoyed it, if it excited you and brought you pleasure, why wouldn’t you do it again?”
“Because it’s not right. No woman would want a man to treat her that way.”
He fixed her with his fierce eyes. “You want me to treat you that way. You loved it, and you want me to do it again.”
She tried to speak, but his eyes held her transfixed. An intolerable itch tormented her deep inside, somewhere down between her legs and running all the way up into the center of her being. She could think of no way to scratch that itch except with deep, penetrating strokes of some thick tool inserted to its limit. She had to ride that stick until she satisfied her agonizing need.
He read her thoughts. Even before he spoke, he understood. He knew the torment that drove her crazy, and only he had the cure for her madness. He stepped forward to bump his chest against her body. He pushed her back a step and shoved her against the tree.
“You want it. You want it more than anything. You want a man to take you, to give you what you want.”
She gasped for breath, but he crushed the air from her lungs with his weight.
“Does it hurt, baby? Does it burn down there between your legs? Does it make you wet to think about me bending you over and slamming into your tight ass?”
“Rohn...” she croaked.
“Say my name, baby. Say my name over and over again. Say you want me to take you right here and now. Say you want me.”
Before she could answer, his mouth covered hers and swallowed any sound she made. She couldn’t whine and sob his name out loud, but she thought it. Rohn...Oh, Rohn....Oh, yes, Rohn, please. Oh, yes, please, I want it so bad. Take me now. Oh, God, yes!
He grabbed her arms and lifted them over her head. He pinned them to the tree trunk and held them there while he ripped her shirt open. He cradled her pendulous breasts in his hand and teased the nipples to hard little nubs.
She seethed in a ferment of excitement and desire. Her nest of dewy wetness between her legs gave her no peace. She could rub her legs together as much as she liked. That only made the intolerable itch worse. She needed something in there, something to scratch her itch. She couldn’t imagine anything going deep enough to satisfy it, but she had to find something or explode in the attempt.
Rohn slid his knee up between her legs and jammed it into her crotch. She buckled down on it with all her might and ground her cunt against it. She pumped her hips forward in frantic thrusts to gain some relief. Her blood pounded in her veins. She yearned and reached, but her complete satisfaction hovered just beyond her sight.
Rohn grabbed her ass with his free hand and forced her down on his knee. She whimpered into his mouth. His tongue sought out hers, demanding its attention. He tore her pants down, and they drooped around her ankles. She kicked them away in desperate fury to get her crotch back on his knee.
He slid two fingers between her lower lips and glided them on her wet syrup along either side of her clitoris. She bucked and fought to torture her clit on his fingers, but even that didn’t fulfill her deepest desires. She needed something hard down there, something stabbing into her core and dislodging her ancient self from its moorings. She needed something solid to beat against, something to drive its way through her secret curtains and awaken the sleeping giant within.
Rohn put his hips behind his hand and used them to stroke his fingers on either side of her clit. He came up with a handful of slick sugar that spread down her thighs and wet his pants. His swollen crotch bumped against her mons. She tried to arch her hips to touch it, but she couldn’t get to it with her hands pinned above her head.
Rohn drew out his fingers and ripped open his pants. His heavy member sprang out at her, and she almost cried in relief. He strapped his arm around her waist and hefted her off the ground. He pulled one leg out of the way and guided his cock between her legs.
Oh, yes, she wanted it! She would do anything for this. Let him dominate her. Let him hold her down and have his way with her. Who was she fooling besides herself with all that talk about Allies men respecting women? What was it all worth without this?
She didn’t want to live without this anymore. She didn’t want to live with that nagging hunger eating away at her guts. She had distracted herself with her career, her friends and her advancement to disguise this bottomless need inside her that no man could fill. She’d had to live thirty years and raise a son almost to adulthood and travel to an alien planet to find it.
What good were the Allies, if they robbed their members, and even their leaders, of this most basic human function? What was sex among the Allies but a waking death and a tiresome chore? What was sex anywhere if it didn’t answer this most primal need lying hidden beneath the surface?
His cock found its way to the garden between her legs. He inched his hand down her ass and aimed his shaft into position. Rose hung at the pinnacle of anticipation and waited for the defining moment when it claimed her, body and soul, to belong to Rohn forever. Would he do it? Could she stand the sheer intensity?
Yes! A thousand times, yes! His tool slid home, and she sank down on it with a sigh of shattered joy. It touched that place in her primordial recesses, and the itch stretched forth to rub against it.
Rohn jammed his hips forward to strike into her channel, and his shaft stroked along her tortured ridges. She shivered to her bones. Another second, and he thrust again to her limit. He beat a steady rhythm against her hips. His cock pierced her veil and satisfied her hunger.
She let herself be lifted on his powerful up thrusts, and she fell back down when he withdrew. Her delicious box slammed down on his rising pubic bone and knocked her clitoris sideways. His prick massaged her tense muscles until they lengthened and relaxed in infinite bliss.
Rose let her instinct guide her. Her body knew what it most needed, and it cantered to its ultimate destination. Rohn held her hands together above her head, but beyond that, he didn’t touch her except for his pulsing shaft plowing into her aching fissure.
Oh, let him come! Let him in to occupy her being. Let him have as much of her as he could take. Let him leave nothing behind. Let him consume her with that refining fire. He would redeem her wasted years and the wrong-headed ideas she let rule her life.
If only he would keep pounding her to eternity, she would know eternal bliss. If only he would keep stroking her insides with his muscled lance, she would climax again and again, and rapturous joy would fill her life. It would drive away all the demons and sweep the cobwebs from her mind. She would give herself entirely to him and never go back to her old self.
How long he pumped before he satisfied that itch, she didn’t know. She knew only the blessed moment when the itch transformed into the sweetest golden sunset light she ever knew. It filled her with contentment. She stopped fighting and struggling and reaching, and let him bounce her on his powerful pulses.
The light spread over her body and made every sinew glow. When every corpuscle and molecule shone with inner radiance, the whole mass of her being exploded into stardust. The concussion knocked her back against the tree, but she was already too far gone to notice.
Her lips hung open in a naked scream under Rohn’s mouth. Her body hung limp as he still pounded upwards into her. A fireball of sparks and burning gas erupted from her eyes, her lips, her hair, her skin. The explosion extended all the way across the galaxy to the darkest corners of space. It left no stone or space rock unchanged in its holy crucible, and Rose would never dwell in the same world again as long as she lived.