Chapter 10

Tymanon

He pushed me back, and I wanted to sob, wanted to plead with him not to leave me. I’d cracked open my heart and bled for him. I’d thought he felt the same way.

He stood, and I looked up at him, swallowing and biting my bottom lip so hard I felt the sting of teeth close to the point of breaking skin.

But Petra wasn’t walking away. He had his hands on his trousers, and looking at me for a long moment, he shoved them down. I gasped, unprepared for what I saw, for the way the moonlight played over his sun-darkened skin, kissing his flesh and adding shadows to hollows.

The first thing that caught my eye was his massive cock jutting out, thick, hard, and long from between a dark patch of neatly trimmed curls, tempting me to touch it. My fingertips tingled with the need to do so. The books had been so very right. He was large, very large. But I was a centaur, and our males were far from small.

What caught my attention more than anything else, though, was the alluring symmetry of his long, muscular legs. I’d expected Petra to be as furred in his hindquarters as I was, but he looked more human than I’d imagined. He did have a lot of hair for a human, but he was nowhere near as hairy as a goat.

His legs were dark, the muscles lean and toned, flexing as he stood before me, looking like a man awaiting sentencing. It was cute how nervous he suddenly appeared. He swallowed hard, causing his Adam’s apple to roll up and down as his hands curled and uncurled by his thighs.

I took my time studying his beautiful body, from his muscular arms to his powerful chest, and back down to those legs that caused a feather of heat to unfurl and wind through my belly like a coiling snake.

A shuddery breathed scissored out of me. How was it possible that I’d once believed this man ordinary? How was it possible that I’d ever looked at his face and thought him plain?

Slowly, I looked up toward said face and my heart filled to bursting with such a profundity of joy that I felt overwhelmed by it. He stared down at me with brilliant green eyes, so full of the depth of his own emotion. Petra looked raw, hopeful, but also terrified, feelings I could quite understand.

Now it was my turn to be nervous. I flattened a palm against my belly, trying in vain to stave off the manic flight of butterflies within.

“Say something,” Petra said after several long moments in a voice grown husky.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Long dark lashes fluttered against the tops of his cheekbones, and he visibly seemed to sway back and forth before me. I wasn’t sure where I found my courage, but suddenly I was on my feet and my hands were reaching up to unwind my leathers from my breasts.

My hands trembled as I did it, but he didn’t offer to help, and I was grateful that he let me do it on my own. I needed to feel there was a part of me, at least, still in control of this, though I knew it wasn’t true at all. I was a slave to my need for this satyr, and I thought that maybe he was for me as well.

When I was finally free of my covering, I let the leathers flutter from my fingertips to the ground. He sucked in a shuddery breath.

“You have a perfect body, my álogo.”

Joy blazed like a flame through my veins, making me feel hot and needy. “I do?”

His gaze was raking and slow as he looked me up and down. And when he wet his lips, my gods, I moaned long and low.

His eyes shot up, caressing the lines of my face. I trembled, feeling weak in the knees.

No centaur had ever made me feel this... alive before. Petra had not even touched me, and I burned for him. Without thought, I circled my left breast, running my fingertip over the hardened nub of my nipple, and it was his turn to groan, the sound raw and loud in the vast silence of the night, making my heart flutter.

His nostrils flared, and I swore his pupils suddenly looked bigger, wider. “Come to me, álogo.” He crooked his finger.

I moved. As though he had a string attached to my heart, he called and I came. There was no choice but to obey him. The night shivered with the faint prickling of magic. I blinked, body tingling all over like I’d just walked out into the center of a lightning storm.

He must have noticed my wonder because he grunted and said, “I’m sorry, Tymanon. It’s my power. I cannot control it.”

My lips twitched when I finally reached his side and placed my hands on his chest as though I meant to push him away, when in fact, it was just the opposite. I curled my fingers deep into his muscular flesh and he hissed.

“But I thought your powers only came alive with your nymphs.”

His chuckle sounded strangled. “I thought so too.”

I raised a brow.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Ty. I’ve never bedded anyone but a nymph. I never knew I would feel so... so...”

His hands began to knead down my spine, the fingertips applying just enough pressure to make me moan, make me tilt my head back and expose my neck to him. He began planting a row of wet kisses along its length, sucking and then biting, before languidly moving down, down, down, until he came to the hollow of my throat and whispered, “Alive.”

I trembled in his arms.

That book I’d read long ago, the one where I’d learned a little about the satyrs, had mentioned their sex magic. I’d scoffed back then, finding the idea of sex magic repugnant. But now...

“Do you think you could whistle?” I whispered, running my hands up his chest until I reached his hair and curled the short locks around my fingertips.

He went absolutely still, eyes wide on my face. My heart banged powerfully within me as I continued my upward glide until I found my prize—his nubby horns.

The second I touched them, he jerked so hard that he dropped to his knees, taking me with him. We tumbled down in a tangle of arms and legs, but neither of us let the other one go.

I kept a firm clasp on his horns, and somehow, he’d maneuvered me so that I was straddling his thighs, his jutting cock playing at the drenched opening between my legs.

Petra shook so forcefully that he had his eyes squeezed closed and was breathing in and out with deep, sucking breaths.

I smiled. Books could teach you a lot, for instance, that a male satyr’s horns were just as sensitive, if not more so, than his cock. I wet my lips.

“You... learn fast,” he rasped, and I laughed. Moss-green eyes opened, instantly killing my humor. Locked in his hypnotic gaze, I shook my head.

“Play for me, my gída. I wish to hear you play.”

The first strain of his song filled the night like the angelic choir of sylphs. The music was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful that I froze, lost to the sounds, to the notes tugging at my soul. Tears rolled down my face at the haunting beauty of it.

He murmured sweet words to me as he finally took the lead, gently prying my fingers off his horns before wrapping me tight in his embrace and laying me gently down upon the ground.

His warm body covered mine, and still I wept at the beauty surrounding me.

Petra tenderly kissed my tears away, whispering of his undying devotion to me, of his need, his desires. My body was languid, my muscles so weak I did not wish to move. I only wanted to be cradled by him, loved by him.

This music he played came not from his mouth but through his horns, lute-like but subtly different, wavering up and down in pitch and frequency. It created in me a sense of wonder and overwhelming desire, the desire for him to know me, to please me.

In the wrong hands, this kind of power could be so very, very dangerous. But this was my Petra, my lover, my world. It had not been he, but I who’d demanded he play for me.

I looked at him, studying the face I now saw as more beautiful than any other I’d ever known, and asked, “Do you do this to all your nymphs?”

He swallowed hard, kissing the pinky I had laid against the corner of his mouth before answering. “Only if they ask.”

“And do they?”

Still the music of my soul played on. Still I felt the euphoria of joy, of light, and peace flow through me, and I knew the answer. Who would not wish to know this type of contentment all the rest of their days?

“Yes,” he said simply.

Another tear spilled. I had never known myself to be a jealous sort, and I wasn’t angry now, but I was undeniably burning with jealousy at the thought that anyone else should have known this wonder before me, that anyone else had ever shared this type of intimacy with him.

Gently, tenderly, he brushed the tear away with his thumb and with a trembling moan, asked, “May I?”

I didn’t know what he was wanting, or even asking. Truth was, I didn’t care. I wanted to stay wrapped up in this moment forever, with only him, ever him. I nodded.

He kissed me.

And this time, he did not pull away. Petra devoured and worshipped my mouth, suckling, nibbling, laving his tongue over my seam, making me sigh and whimper as I begged without words for him to put out the fire he stoked in me.

But he was slow, and tender, his touch oh-so-soft. I heard the sounds we made floating on the breeze, mingling with his song.

This was the music of us, and it was a sound more lovely than any I’d ever known before.

His touch was hot, claiming, masterful. Good gods, no centaur male had ever elicited this type of response in me. I’d had one lover I’d thought better than the other two. He’d been passably good, but he was nothing compared to this.

I’d never felt so alive in my life, my body enflamed, my skin so sensitive. Every brush of his hands, his legs, his cock over my wet and aching center, felt like thousands of volts of electricity piercing right through me.

I gasped.

I cried out.

My back bowed when he finally plunged his tongue deep inside my mouth, demanding my tongue in return. I gave it to him. I gave him everything, every part of me. I raked my nails down his back sharply, causing him to hiss and kiss me even harder, hungrier. I gasped when his callused palm kneaded my left breast, stroking and gliding over my sensitive skin. I keened when his mouth broke from mine, missing the sweet taste of him until his warm mouth closed over my hard nipple and he tugged.

“Gods be merciful!” I sobbed. He’d not even penetrated me yet, and I felt the orgasm rising, felt myself drawing ever closer to the cliff’s edge of oblivion. The combination of his touch and his music drove me higher and higher to the peak of something dangerously alluring and terribly frightening.

“Oh, Tymanon. My Tymanon,” he murmured huskily, sweetly.

I hooked my legs tight around his middle, using the strength of my thighs to shove him down into that spot I so desperately needed him to touch.

The first brush of velvet and steel between the swollen wetness of my desire sent me toppling. I cried out, clinging to his neck, jerking and twitching as I rode the wave of an orgasm the likes of which I’d believed to be myth before.

Swallowing my cries with his kiss, Petra plunged deep inside me, drawing out my own pleasure even more. Blackness consumed my mind. Pleasure so full and overwhelming lit up my senses, and I felt scalded by it.

Sharp bursts of growls came from his chest, the sound rolling and terribly, terribly exciting. Shaking through my pleasure, I looked at him, astonished at the tight control he seemed to be keeping on himself. When he looked at me, I blinked. His eyes were no longer green, but now glowed with something that looked like flame.

“Petra?” I gasped, feeling hot and cold and scared but also dangerously thrilled by his sudden change.

“Kiss me, álogo,” he said in a guttural growl, and I was helpless to resist.

His kiss was hard, brutal, and darkly thrilling. Was he holding back from me? Was there more than this pleasure? But he was rocking hard within me, bringing me to the heights of pleasure once again, obliterating my thoughts. I was a creature of the now only.

Two more quick thrusts and Petra howled, joining me in that second little death.

~*~

We lay wrapped in one another’s arms for several hours after that, touching and gliding our hands over one another, but not having sex again. The sun was mere hours away from rising. Soon we’d be in Gnósi proper. We should be resting, but I couldn’t turn off my mind.

I loved him.

Gods, I loved a satyr. I was in deep, deep trouble, and yet I couldn’t muster up an ounce of care. I was happy, content in a way I’d never known before. I knew I’d pleased him, and yet a part of me couldn’t help but wonder whether I’d measured up to his nymphs or whether he found me lacking.

I’d read that satyrs made intense, passionate love verging nearly on the violent. None of what had happened last night had been violent. In fact, it had been soft, and gentle, and infinitely tender.

“You have gone stiff in my arms, álogo. Where have you gone, my lovely mare?”

I sighed as his warm fingers brushed a lock of hair off my shoulders. He kissed my neck right at the spot where it met my collarbone, causing me to break out in a wash of goosebumps.

“Mm.” I threaded my foot between his legs, using my toes to caress his strong calf, loving the feel of his downy hairs. I was becoming positively addicted to my goat.

Oh, who was I kidding? I was obsessed. I wanted more, all of him. I wanted everything, and that thought scared me senseless.

He poked my waist, causing me to giggle and slap at his hand. “Stop that.”

I felt his smirk on my neck. “Then answer me, or I’ll tickle you ruthlessly.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” I mock gasped.

“Just try me, Ty.” He bit down on the vein at the side of my neck, causing me to hiss. His bite wasn’t hard, but it had been enough to let me know he was there.

Grasping my right breast, he squeezed a couple of times before saying, “I love your body, the taste of you, the feel of you, and these gorgeous heart-shaped freckles of yours. You’ve ruined me, female.”

I giggled, feeling stupidly giddy. I was glad I wasn’t the only one. I hadn’t known what to think after making love to Petra. Would this madness suddenly wear off, and I’d realize I’d been lusting after a satyr and desperately needed my head checked? But it was just the opposite. My lust was consuming me.

Biting my bottom lip, I shook my head. “I was just thinking, beloved.”

“Mm. I like to hear you say that. Thinking about what?”

Not wanting to tell him just how far gone on him I was, I said, “Myra.” Which was true. I had been thinking about his sister in a very abstract kind of way.

He leaned back, and I glanced over my shoulder, giggling at the confused dip of his brow.

“My sister? Here I am, fondling your breast and admitting my undying devotion to you, and you think of my sister?” He snorted and rolled over, tossing a hand over his eyes in dramatic fashion. “I should be offended.”

Chuckling, I rolled over too, following him like iron shavings to his magnet, needing to touch him in someway. Plucking a dandelion that bloomed beside his head, I traced it down the smooth, tight lines of his chest, causing him to suck in his breath sharply.

I smiled at the prickling of his flesh. It was still dark out, but the night would soon give way to light. In no time, we’d be back on our journey, and though I wished desperately to live in this moment, I knew we had to take what few moments we could get.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I love your hands, your cock, your mouth, and all the wonderful things you did to me tonight. But soon, we arrive at Gnósi, and I cannot help but wonder about the woman for whom you sacrificed so much.”

The smile that had played about his eyes slowly faded with each word spoken, until finally he looked sad, haunted, and far away from me. I instantly regretted bringing her up. And yet, I would be a liar if I claimed I wasn’t also intensely curious.

I wanted to see my male happy again. I wanted to free his sister, and to do that, I needed to know more. I needed to know everything.

“What do you wish to know?”

I shrugged. “Why is she there?”

He twitched and looked over my shoulder, but his hand continued to stroke my collarbone. I sighed, relaxing into his delicious touch.

“She fell in love, Tymanon.”

“Oh.” I blinked. That had been the very last thing I’d expected to hear. “To another satyr?”

“No.” He looked back at me, eyes holding mine. “No. To a hybrid ogre. Tronos.” His lips thinned and his nose curled, and I knew that whoever this Tronos was, Petra did not like him at all.

I chewed on my bottom lip. “And... what happened?”

“Tronos took ill and died, poisoned. Myra was beyond herself with grief. I begged her not to do anything foolish, to let it be and learn to heal. In truth, I was relieved, I’m ashamed to say. I was relieved my sister would finally come back to me, finally break away from her silly fantasies of love and simply be the satyr she was meant to be. She promised me she would.”

He paused, and I knew the next part would be difficult for him.

“So she went to the Fates, to ask for him back?” I guessed, and he nodded.

Rubbing a curl of my hair between his thumb and finger, he didn’t look at me for several long seconds. Finally, he said, “Yes, she did. If I’d known what she was about, I would have stopped her. But she fled in the night, leaving behind only a note of farewell.”

I didn’t want to push, but I was intensely curious. How had Myra wound up a prisoner of the Fates? What had happened to her beloved Tronos?

He looked at me, giving me a grim smile. “I have never shared her story with another.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “you can... you don’t—”

“No.” He frowned. “No. You should know. I do not want there to be secrets between us, Tymanon.”

I kissed his cheek, a soft press of lips only, but enough, I hoped, to let him know I was here, and it was safe to tell me anything.

He trembled, tossing me a grateful smile. “I discovered my sister’s plight when I arrived at Gnósi and spoke with the Fates. Myra is quick and very bright. She passed all her challenges. But in truth, I do not believe they were her true challenges.”

I cocked my head. “Why not?”

“Because they were far too easy for her. The Fates wanted her to succeed, wanted to grant her request to bring Tronos back.”

“But that makes no sense. They aren’t known for their altruism.”

He thinned his lips. “No, they aren’t. They needed her, and I suspect they knew all along what the outcome would be. You see, Myra begged for Tronos’ life back, which they granted. But in order for Myra to live out her days with him as a free woman, they demanded a weighing of their hearts.”

“Weighing of hearts? But why?”

He sighed before slipping a curl of hair behind my ear and framing my face tenderly. “To see if their love was equal. Only true love would free them. Myra’s heart was full of love for Tronos.”

“Oh, I see,” I whispered, gliding my fingers over his lips to stop him from saying the rest. “And so she became their prisoner?”

A muscle in his cheek twitched visibly several times before he ground out, “Yes.”

Myra was punished for loving too much. No wonder Petra held no love for Tronos. Myra’s mate had walked free while she had paid dearly just for falling in love with the wrong man.

It was tragic, and just the sort of play I could see the Fates making. They were wily if you didn’t know you walked into their trap, and there was always a trap, just like there would be for us.

I wished I could say I knew what our future held, but I couldn’t. All I knew was I would do everything in my power to acquire Galeta’s answers and free my lover’s sister. The rest I’d leave in fate’s hands.

“There must be a way to free her,” I said.

He swallowed hard, looking at me for at least ten seconds without blinking. “There is. To free her, one must voluntarily take her place.”

My blood ran cold, and I curled my hand over his heart, shaking my head. “No. You will not even consider that, Petra. You will not free your sister in that manner. You cannot.”

“I must. It wasn’t fair what happened to her, Tymanon. She sacrificed herself for love and is now being tortured for it. I have failed my sister. I will not fail her again.”

Growing angry with him, my voice rose. “But if you do that, then you would still never see her again. She would be freed, and you the prisoner. It is a fool’s errand. Trust me, Petra, there is always another way.”

He scoffed, and his eyes filled with a shimmering wetness that broke my heart. My chin trembled as I fought the large lump now trapped in my throat.

“Tymanon.” His voice cracked. “I would not believe those words coming from any other, but I think that if anyone could find loophole, it would be you.”

With an inarticulate cry of gratitude, I kissed him sweetly, causing our tears to mingle and merge. Maybe Petra and I could never exchange the vows of Veritas, but I felt him move through my soul.

I would do anything I could to spare him this pain, but I would not lose him like that. There had to be another way. There was always more than one way to solve a puzzle. I simply needed time to think things through.

“We have less than an hour before we must leave. Sleep, Ty. Please. Even if it’s only a catnap. You’ll need your rest.” His words were tender, but full of sadness.

So I kissed him again, and one more time too, until he smiled for me, until that sadness lifted just a little. But deep down, I was very, very afraid that I might fail for the first time in my long life.

Petra must be free, Myra must be saved, and Kingdom needed its answers.

I was smart enough to figure this puzzle out.

I hoped.

Dear gods above, I hoped.