I decide to keep us off the roads. While the small amount of leaves I’ve saved are not nearly enough to repay my clan’s debt to the Emperor Clan, they are still worth a fortune to desperate bandits. If I were traveling alone, I might be able to fend off anyone who would try to attack me, but there’s a reason Kannakus normally uses a whole band of mercenaries to transport his leaves.

More valuable than the leaves are Alice. There are no ratskunks this far in, and we’ve run out of blood. More than anything I must stay off the roads, because the simple act of passing another traveler could give them a whiff of her scent. Smelling her, even the most upstanding citizen could be sent into a frenzy, and be driven to do something he normally never would.

I lie Alice down beneath a tree. Her body feels limp, and it seems no matter how I moved or shook her, she would not wake. I wrap her in her mantle and make her as comfortable as I can, using strips of torn canvas to keep the wet grass from her body.

I lean against the tree and close my eyes, resolving to store as much sleep as I can.

I awake with Alice’s head resting on my thigh, her feminine scent hitting my nose and rousing every part of me awake and to full attention. Especially my spear. I can feel it pulsing with life as I reach up beneath Alice’s mantle and grip the warmth of her hips.

Her mouth opens, and a heavy breath escapes her.

I throw her down onto the bed of canvas, and I bury my face in her supple neck. I inhale her scent, and it washes over me like a drug. Her moans tell me she is awake, even if her eyes are still closed. I kiss her all up her neck, and I bite her ear gently, until her back arches up.

She pulls at her mantle, and I help it off her.

“It’s cold,” she whispers, and she pulls the mantle over my shoulders as I lie on top of her.

“I will warm you,” I whisper in a low growl.

I peel her suit off, until only the exotic whiteness of her skin shines in the faint bit of red sunlight that penetrates the cover of the mantle.

I press my body against her, pulling my loincloth and skullspear off and throwing them aside. Her full breasts press into my torso, and I can feel her hard nipples press into me. I reach up and grab one of her breasts, while my other hand squeezes the full flesh of her backside. My thumb rubs across her nipple, and as she squeals, her feminine scent intensifies. I focus on that nipple with fingers and tongue. Each time the smell of the wetness between her legs hits my nose stronger, I know I’m touching her in the right way. Soon the scent becomes too much, and touching her breasts isn’t enough to make it any stronger, so I work down past her belly and between her legs.

My body escapes the mantle as I kiss down between her legs, but I reach up and make sure she is still wrapped tight and warm, and then–keeping to my promise–I lick across her swollen and wet lips to make her warm as can be. Her body shudders as I touch her most sensitive place, and the taste of it makes my spear hard as the most ancient of metals.

As good as it would feel to spear into her right now, I crave her scent. Only if I worship her femininity with my tongue will her scent reach its full bloom. And so I lick her, until that small point hardens and swells, and then I lick it with the utmost care, barely touching it at first. New smells emerge, as do wonderful sounds of ecstasy.

I growl in contentment as I lick her harder and with greater pressure. She starts to squeal and whine and writhe. Knowing that I alone can make my bonded female feel this good fills me with complete pride and satisfaction. I grip her body with burning possessiveness–as if anyone could dare to take her from me in this moment.

Her hips shoot skyward, and I pull her back down with my hands. I suck on her swollen nub, and press my tongue up against her as she seems to all but vibrate against me. I squeeze her ass so hard–as pure instinct and reflex–that I worry I’ve hurt her. Just as I’m about to let go in shame at having hurt her, she grunts, and the smell of 1,000 flowers in bloom fills me. She likes the pain, I realize, and I squeeze her even harder.

She starts to climax, and I drink down all of her juices as she cums for me and me alone. I squeeze her nipples harder than I thought I should, and the pain sends her even further over the edge.

Even as she cums and thrashes and screams, my mind races for new ways to hurt her–if only to make her feel good. I pull away from her. What could hurt more than denying her pleasure?

“Proximus,” she says, panting for air. “I was...how can you stop now?”

I can’t help but grin as I look up at her. Her breasts are heaving as she gasps for air, and she’s covered in beads of sweat from her exertions. Her eyes are gleaming wet like freshly formed amber, and every part of her body language says she wants me more than anything. Her scent begs me above all else, begs me to finish what I’ve started.

Her hand moves between her legs, but I grab her wrist and stop her from touching herself.

“Proximus,” she whines, “please.”

“Please what?” I say.

Among my race, sex is no time for words. We simply feel an animalistic need to spill our seed, and then we do it in the way it is done between males and females of our kind. I feel revulsion at the image of it, of being with a female of my own people. I push the image away so as not to lose the hardness of my spear.

Never would I have thought that the simple act of talking, of communicating wants and desires could do to my spear what it is now doing. Hearing her voice aloud what she wants is all I want right now. I want to hear her desire almost more than I want to do what I know she will ask of me.

“I wanted you to finish,” she says, still breathless, “With your tongue...but it’s too late for that now.”

She reaches for my spear, which is pressed hard against my abs. The veins are popped out and throbbing, and it’s hard as it’s ever been.

“No,” I say, grabbing her wrist and holding it hard enough to hurt her.

Her eyes widen, but the smell tells me she likes it. She likes being hurt in this way.

“Tell me,” I say. “Do not show me.”

Her eyes go down to my spear, and she licks her lips. “I want that inside me.”

“What?” I ask.

“Your big spear,” she whispers. “You’re a master of both kinds of spear, Proximus. The skullspear, and the…”

“This is simply the spear,” I say. “The most primal spear we wield.”

“Yes,” she says. “Primal. But Proximus, I want you to look me in the eyes this time. I want you to see your violet eyes as you cum inside me.”

Inside. It’s something I never could have thought of. Something that only a God could have invented. To cum inside.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I whisper, so thankful I must never again cum without my spear deep inside of her.

And then I pull her legs back, and I press my spear deep into her wetness. I feel that impossible warmth wrap around me, and my eyes roll back into my head, but then I remember what Alice wanted. I look down at her, into her deep green eyes.

I buck my hips and slide out, then back in, and I watch her eyes as I do so. Tears form at the corners of her eyes, and I know from the way she winces that they are tears of pain.

“You like pain sometimes,” I whisper. “You’re stronger than I thought.”

“Pain can be good,” she whispers as I move slowly in and out of her tight channel.

But I can tell the pain all but fades away. Her wetness becomes more than the river that nearly swallowed us, and I move faster and faster within her. Her legs wrap around me, and her heels dig into my back. Her body moves in rhythm with my thrusts.

I look into her eyes, and even when they close or roll back, I do not look away. Seeing her joy painted on her face makes me want to bring it out even more, and I soon find the perfect angle to do so. My thrusts bring my swollen spear across a special place inside her, which makes her more wet and in more fragrant bloom than any other spot within her. I do all I can to stimulate her here, and soon her eyes stay closed through the sheer ecstasy of our union.

I struggle to keep my own eyes open, but I want to meet her gaze when she reaches climax, and I keep my eyes fixed on her eyelids as they flutter and tremble beneath my raw force and power.

I feel her walls clench around my spear, and only then does my own need to release begin to grow. Her eyes open, and their brilliant deep green brings me in toward her. I press my face against her until our foreheads touch, and all I can see is the perfect depth of her eyes, her pupils fully dilated as if she had ingested a whole bundle of dream leaves.

Then they close again, and I too close my eyes. My balls clench against my spear, and I explode with fury deep within her. I feel my seed filling her to the brim, and her body shudders beautifully as I pump her so full she can hold no more.

Only when her body fully falls limp do I stop my in-and-out movements. I pull out of her and fall down beside her. She throws the mantle away, her body now soaked in sweat.

She wraps her arms around me, and I do the same to her. We entangle together, her legs pulling back around me, and I hold her like that until the cold begins to set in again, and she reaches for her mantle.