Chapter Three
According to Breccon, one of the most beautiful things about Rune-Yon was that it hardly ever rained. Well, to be more precise, it hardly ever poured. The forests were usually misty and occasionally the beaches got some clouds and rain, but torrential downpours were never the norm. They were the exception.
Today, as it turned out, was an exceptional day. Having abandoned the nest after their lovemaking and set up camp on the forest floor, they woke to skin-stinging rain. It pelted them, seeming to come from every direction, an all-out assault on their bodies. Breccon warned Katharine of enemies in the Trishnikaar forest, but she never expected one of those enemies to be something as simple as a rainstorm.
“How long do they usually last?” she shouted over the roar of thunder as they pressed on. The mud was deep. She dug her way through it. Not even thick mud or punishing rain could keep her from the Temple of Kaal-Nokt.
“A few hours, at least.”
They’d only been walking for an hour. Katharine’s enthusiasm and positivity plummeted. A few hours? She was miserable from the short time they’d been enduring this. It was easy to say nothing could stop her until she knew her misery wouldn’t end for a long while. Part of her considered begging him to stop. He would understand. They could find shade under some low-hanging tree or cave and continue their sexual escapades of the night before, even. It would surely be more fun than trotting around in the mud. She refrained. Breccon was a warrior. He saw her as one, too. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her as a weak thing who couldn’t hack it. She reminded herself that she’d endured much, much worse during the war, and she didn’t even have the promise of true love waiting for her at the end as she did now.
“Are you getting along?” Breccon asked.
“Yes,” Katharine nodded, wrapping her arms around her stomach for warmth, “but it’s hard.”
True love wasn’t easy, she reminded herself. True love was hard. It was work. If she couldn’t survive a rainy afternoon, how could she possibly hope to hack it with a life partner? Breccon, clearly used to the hardships of a storm such as this one, remained hearty.
“What if I tell you a story? It will take your mind off things,” he assured her.
“Not another battle tale, please, I can’t take any more stories where the happy ending is someone getting their guts ripped out with a sword.”
He cleared his throat, clearly caught with a war story on the tip of his tongue. For a moment he was silent with contemplation, then he offered another solution:
“A love story, then.”
At least a love story wouldn’t make her imagine blood pouring out of open wounds. But, knowing the Tallel as she did, Katharine wondered if even their love stories included viscera.
“Anything to distract from the rain,” she conceded.
Katharine struggled to keep her eyes open against the piercing, stinging rain. It didn’t matter. Breccon guided her, leading her forward with one hand on her back. It was the one warm spot on her entire body, the one place of contact where she didn’t feel as if she’d frozen over. How he managed to stay so warm during the storm, she couldn’t possibly imagine. Maybe, once she was given the chance to properly study the Rune-Yonian body scientifically, she’d understand how it worked. For now, she had only to be grateful for it.
“How do you humans start your stories again?”
“Once upon a time.”
“Ah. Yes. Once upon a time...”
The words sounded wooden in his throat. Had Katharine been in any kind of better mood, she might have laughed at it and appreciated the effort. For now, she pressed onward through the standing mud with attentive ears and tired everything else.
“There are wild plain lands between the tribes of the Yicardis and the Tallel...”
Thus began Breccon’s story. Story was the wrong word for it. Tale would have been more precise. Epic would have been more so. Unlike the story of Kaal-Nokt, this wasn’t a story that could be summed up as a bedtime story. It was full of intrigue and desire, passions and betrayal. When a warrior queen found one of the Yicardi soldiers dying near the Tallel border, she rescued him, taking him into her house. Only, neither the Tallel nor the Yicardi liked that, so the warrior and the Yicardi ran off into the woods together, which set off a lifetime of battles and keep-away, fighting and sex. Katharine struggled to keep up with the complex names and lands and houses that made up the intricate tale, but there was one thing that became increasingly clear:
“Why are you at war?” she asked, brow furrowed.
“Why were you?”
“That’s not an answer.”
Breccon stared ahead. From his stoic expression, it seemed this was not the first time he’d heard this question. Perhaps he’d even asked it himself when he was a boy.
“We have always been at war.”
“It’s just that your people seem to fall in love a lot. In the stories, anyway.”
“I want peace. That’s why I went to Earth to find you.”
“Then you can’t keep being at war.”
“It’s not that simple—”
Katharine held up an angry hand. Of all the women he might have picked up on Earth, she was the last one who would allow herself to be lectured on the horrors and intricacies of war. She knew them firsthand.
“I was at war too, Breccon. Don’t forget.”
“Yes. Of course. I apologize.”
They walked in silence for a while.
“So...” Katharine trailed off, rubbing raindrops out of her stinging eyes. “How does it end?”
“How do all love stories end?”
“Happy ever after.”
“Oh.” Breccon stopped in his tracks, shooting Katharine a confused look. “Is that how they are written on Earth? On Rune-Yon they always end in the lovers’ deaths.”
“What?”
“A joke, Katharine. A joke. And will you look at that? It stopped raining.”
For the last hour of the story, the drops had shrunk until they dissolved into a fine mist. Now, they were gone entirely, leaving them to walk in knee-high puddles.
“Here. Come this way.”
“Where are we going?”
Katharine didn’t need to ask. As she came up behind him, Breccon pulled back a curtain of vines, revealing a paradise hiding behind them. Katharine lost count of the number of times this planet had caused her to gasp. It seemed that every few steps there were new mysteries to uncover. Rune-Yon had a lush, untamable beauty; nothing she’d seen on Earth even compared, especially not the desert she came from. Here, tucked away in some corner of this vast jungle, was an oasis. Twin waterfalls on either side poured water into a spring—not much bigger than a swimming pool, but infinitely more beautiful, with the swirling steam and mysterious golden light within—and where there was not water, there was an abundance of plant life and flowers. If Katharine had an entire lifetime, she probably wouldn’t have enough time to catalogue the flora and fauna crammed along the exposed, rocky edges of the pool. The cloud cover overhead was gone, but an inky night sky with a dominating, watchful moon hung over them, lighting the way.
“Did you know this was here?” Katharine asked, breathless.
“I heard the waterfall. I thought we would follow it and find something acceptable.”
It was more than acceptable. With tentative feet, Katharine crossed over the patches of brightly colored petals and rich, green grass blades until she reached the edge of the water. She moved to put her feet in, but hesitated. Instead, she picked up a single flower and tossed it into the pool. When it floated and didn’t dissolve—after all, Katharine couldn’t just assume the water wouldn’t be harmful; for all she knew, it could have been clear acid instead of water—she placed herself on the nearest rock and dangled her dirty feet over the edge.
She adored making love with Breccon. His touch lit her on fire. Their passions drove them together. But as she rubbed the caked mud from her feet—she’d taken her shoes off once the rain started to save them from water and dirt—in the impossibly warm, calm water, she thought perhaps that was better than sex. All of the grime washed away. A part of her was, after hours of torturous trudging, finally clean. He joined her at the pool’s edge. Only, he didn’t touch the water. He touched her. He reached for the clasps of her robe, his fingers dirty.
“Breccon—”
“You have to wash these robes out. And you have to wash yourself. You’ll die if you keep shivering like that. Were you going to do those things clothed?”
She hated when he was right. Even worse, she couldn’t hate the way he unhooked the ties of her robes. Slowly. Sensually. Her stiff back relaxed as he brushed a tickling trail down the rapidly exposed column of skin he revealed. Her eyes closed and she leaned back against him. Her legs spread a breath apart, unconsciously hoping the juncture between them was his final destination.
Unfortunately, Breccon disappointed her. When the ties came undone and the robe fell fully open, Breccon placed a kiss on top of her head and withdrew the robe from her body. Standing too far away to touch, he similarly relieved himself of his clothes. Impolite and forward though it was, Katharine couldn’t help but stare at his growing erection. A scintillating pride ripped through her, zipping straight down to her dampening center. He is hard because of me. He wants me. My body did that to him. Her shivering hadn’t completely gone away, but the heat he produced when he looked at her was enough to light a fire between her legs. And I want him too. He’s making me as wet as I’m making him hard. She glanced between him and the water, and she knew where she had to have him.
A splash followed behind her as she tossed herself into the pool, submerging herself in its warm depths. For a moment, it was like being suspended in time, cut off from the cold world above. When she resurfaced, she didn’t immediately look to Breccon with come-hither eyes, though that’s what she wanted. Instead, she swam to the nearest waterfall.
“Where are you going?” Breccon called.
She was going to drive him wild. The water of the pool naturally came up to just above her breasts, covering her modestly. Their sex was usually exposed and unashamed; a bit of modesty would pique his interest. Katharine ducked her head under the waterfall, making a show of washing her hair and looking up at him from under her eyelashes. Water clung to her exposed skin, dragging his eyes down her chest until they hit the water’s edge instead of her breasts. There was no barrier of politeness in his eyes. He stared at her like something to be devoured, something to hold on to and never let out of his sight again. She wanted to be possessed by him; every part of her body begged for his touch. The warm water may have finally stopped her shivering, but Katharine’s knees shook.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Ress,” Breccon warned.
“First game I’ve ever wanted to lose.”
Her fingertip brushed against her own nipple, hidden beneath the waterline. Lightning bolts of want shuddered through her. Her eyes rolled back in her head and the signal of her desire proved too much for Breccon, who was in the water faster than Katharine had ever seen him move.
Something strange happened then. As Breccon came up for air and headed straight for Katharine, her amulet began to glow—hot and bright, and when he moved towards her, something stopped him dead in his tracks. He pulled back, then tried again, only for the same result.
“I can’t—”
Katharine furrowed her brow and tried to move towards him, only to be blocked by some invisible force. It kept them apart, holding them just out of one another’s reach. Katharine glanced down. It was the amulets. It had to be. They were going to face another task. The only problem was that Katharine’s pussy clenched around an invisible cock, wanting some sort of relief, wanting to come. Her nipples hardened without being touched. She didn’t believe in dramatics, but not touching him in that moment seemed like a worse fate than death.
“Breccon, I have to—”
He knew what she wanted before she finished. A single nod rewarded her, and she watched his hand reach down below the waterline. He focused intently on her, biting down on his bottom lip to keep the sound bottled inside. Without the ripples caused by his hand’s moving, she wouldn’t have ever known he was pleasuring himself.
Those ripples, the signal that he was stroking his long, thick shaft sent her into a flurry. Her fingers danced along her chest, teasing the wet skin, coaxing her pussy to slickness with flicks and brushes against her sensitive nerve endings. She struggled to keep her eyes open when all she wanted was to slide them closed and revel in playing with her own body. But she couldn’t stop staring at Breccon. Every twitch of his lips and shake of his shoulders corresponded to an equally physical response in her.
She slid her hand lower now, resting at her entrance. She hated the waiting, but she wanted to drag it out. She wanted to swoon at the pleasure she brought herself with only a finger. More than anything, she wanted Breccon to see what he was missing. Just as she longed for his cock to fill her now, she wanted him to desire her tight walls around his length. She ran her fingers along her lips once, then twice, and on the third pass, she found her clit.
“Fuck,” she cursed, slamming her eyes shut involuntarily.
Her finger danced on the hard bud, delighting in the slick she’d managed to accumulate through nothing more than her own touch.
The ripples Breccon created picked up speed. Katharine followed suit, rolling her clit under her fingers. She’d taught Breccon how she liked to be worshipped and he followed instructions brilliantly, but her own fingers knew just the spots, just the tempo, just the pressure to make her back arch and her toes curl. Her stomach clenched with each motion, tighter and tighter as her pussy begged for more.
“Mm,” Breccon groaned. A sure sign that his own climax was close. He was trying to hide it. He wanted to wait, she could tell. But she wanted to see him. She wanted to know that she’d been the cause of his pleasure, even if he hadn’t been able to touch her.
“Come for me,” she demanded.
He obeyed. His roar shook the trees. Breccon yelled her name in orgasm.
It was, all at once, too overwhelming. Spots filled Katharine’s vision, leaving her with a million sensations of touch and sound and tightening muscle. Water rained down from the fall. Her pussy clenched and her stomach curled. The tide ran over her nipples. It was all too good. Too good. She couldn’t wait any longer.
The orgasm tore her apart before stitching her back together again, rattling her bones and bringing her down again soft as clouds.
The amulets darkened. Breccon and Katharine locked gazes.
“That was it?” She glanced down at her own dull stone, her voice still uneasy from the power of her climax. Even trying to swim to Breccon proved impossible, given how weak her knees were. She waited for him to join her on her side of the pool before hitching herself up around his waist and taking his lips as her captive.
“Well,” Breccon chuckled, pulling away, “I do not know about you, but I thought it was fairly wonderful.”
It had been wonderful. He was right. But, Katharine thought as she took his lips once more, it would not be enough. The water would ripple all night with their lovemaking. She would make sure of that.