Chapter 2
There was a Veshtan temple for healing as there were in most villages on the coast, a large one in Caska. The temple was perched at the top of the hill at one of the highest points in the city. It was a building surrounding a stone square with a courtyard and gardens in the center, tall peaked red roofs.
The temples were the closest thing the wandering thesals had to a home, providing shelter and Veshtan hospitality. When they had first taken on the Secrat, Veshtans had built a huge underground city for the thesals in the catacombs outside of Nesra, the Veshtan city.
But they had misunderstood the nature of thesals, the Secrat and their hosts restless, unwilling to stay in a single place, and generations later the underground city remained empty and echoing.
Dmitri walked up the path to the temple, away from the noisy streets of Caska, a gentle rise. He reached the arched stone entrance, the Veshtan sign for healing displayed there. Slipping under it, he wound his way soundlessly through the healer’s herb garden and then into the courtyard. He stopped, waiting.
Time passed. He realized nobody was going to notice him. He was too still sometimes. He forgot how reliant on motion they were to sense someone else. It was astonishing how close he could get to people without them knowing.
Dmitri finally moved around a little aimlessly, having lost the knack, a man seeing him, startled, going inside quickly. In a moment, an acolyte came.
“Fortend ausi lamine, duvehin?” the acolyte asked him in the language spoken in Caska.
It was nothing Dmitri understood, the acolyte peering into the darkness. The acolyte couldn’t see in the dark like Dmitri could. Dmitri took a step forward, into the torchlight. The man saw his thesal cloak, the crimson flash of the lining. He bowed.
“Your pardon, thesal,” the acolyte said in Romini, the Veshtan language. “Do you require comfort?”
The acolyte offered him the comfort of the dama, the Veshtan priestess housed here who would give him blood if he wanted it, allow him to bed her, a part of their rituals, the religion arcane.
But the Caskian woman Dmitri had fed from had sated him and he wouldn’t require blood for another few nights.
“I am grateful, but no,” Dmitri said the ritual words, refusing. “A place to rest.”
“Dmitri,” he heard, turning his head.
Vlad, the master acolye at Caska, came into the courtyard, a man nearing his rite, the time when a secrat would judge him worthy or not. The master acolyte had wavy brown hair and warm eyes, large expressive hands.
“Vlad,” Dmitri greeted him, pulling a vial from the pocket of his robes as the master acolye bowed. “I have brought bark from the Quixol tree to add to the temple’s supplies. The Dyosis arranged it. I retrieved it from the Southron lands. It will draw the parasite.”
Veshtans were healers, and those Veshtans who chose to become thesals often served as messengers or couriers for the Veshtan Dyosis, a thesal being a fast traveler and the last person from whom anyone would try to steal. Vlad nodded, holding up the vial and looking at it.
“We have had many cases of the fever in Caska and several deaths,” Vlad said, putting the vial in his pocket. “I will tell the healers when they wake. The temple is grateful, thesal. Excuse me.”
Vlad gestured at the younger acolyte, who led Dmitri into the main hall, a kitchen and tables at which to eat. There was a fireplace with chairs gathered around it. From the hall, there were several halls branching off, books of medicine lining the walls. The acolyte led him through the opening to the right of the fireplace.
Glancing left, Dmitri saw a room with long rows of drying plants hanging in bunches from the ceiling. There were pleasant smells, autumn herbs, vials and beakers carefully arranged. Mortars and pestles. Holding jars, solvents and oils.
There was a corridor, all stone, and then they were going down a flight of stairs to a landing, and to another flight of stairs that curved in the same direction. At the bottom of the stairs, Dmitri was led down a hall and into a large private room, no windows. The acolyte left, closing the door quietly behind himself.
Dmitri set his pack down on the floor, shrugging off his cloak and setting it aside. There was a bed, although Dmitri didn’t lie down to rest. The room was decorated like a Veshtan bedchamber, fine art and tapestries, a woven rug, the bedspread made of Luterian wool, freshly laundered sheets lightly scented with lavender. A fire was burning, the place warm, vented through the roof.
Dmitri didn’t need it, but it felt pleasant. Despite being relatively impervious to weather, all thesals complained of a nagging sense of being perpetually chilled.
Dmitri sat on the bed and removed his boots and then went and poured water from the pitcher into a basin, cleaning his hands. Water was another need that was served by blood, but he still had to wash. A scratch came at the door.
“Enter,” he said, taking up a cloth and drying his hands.
The same acolyte came in. Dmitri looked at him.
“What are you called?” Dmitri said as the man set a towel and a bar of soap on a small ornate table by the door, the acolyte’s eyes making a sweep of the room to make sure things were as they should be.
“Mircea, Thesal. There are baths down the hall. It’s a natural spring, hot. It has everything you will need.”
Dimitri knew that. He’d been here many times. Still, he hadn’t really spoken to anyone in a long time. He’d been traveling, months of it. He and Vlad had spent time together last time Dmitri had been here, but the master acolye had indicated he was busy. Dmitri eyed the acolyte. “When is your rite?” Dmitri asked him, seeing if he would talk.
The man paused, his hand on the door handle. “I still have eight more years, thesal,” he answered, “before I will be judged.”
“It’s not so long,” Dmitri said. “Twelve behind you.”
“I hope to be worthy, thesal,” Mircea said.
The acolyte didn’t ask his name. Some in the temples just wouldn’t. Dmitri unbuttoned and drew off his shirt as the man turned to leave. He would put his clothing in the basket in the hall. The acolytes would wash his clothing and return them the next evening after Dmitri had rested.
Dmitri glanced up. The acolyte was still standing in the doorway, staring at Dmitri’s wrist where the beginnings of the color began. It marked the secrat’s entry point, winding around his arm and over his shoulder, the secrat’s path to Dmitri’s brain forever scarred into his body.
The Veshtan priestesses had placed the patterns of colorful ink there after the ritual, following the secrat line. The bond was irreversible, the secrat burrowing deep. Trying to remove the secrat would kill him now.
“Dithstal,” the man said, excited, looking at the mark.
Dmitri sighed, walking and squatting by his pack. “Ornthir,” he corrected, pulling out clean clothing.
Older than Dithstal, certainly, Dmitri’s secrat irritable at the error, the acolyte chagrined but still interested.
“The Ornthir? Truly?”
“Yes,” Dmitri confirmed, looking up at him.
The acolyte remembered himself, dragging his eyes from the ink, leaving. The dama would be disappointed when she learned Dmitri didn’t require her. Dmitri wasn’t just any thesal. His secrat was an Ornthir, the only Ornthir left, the last of its line, the most ancient and powerful of the secrat, Dmitri’s not the first body it had ridden.
The dama would want his venom, would want what it would do to her body, a part of her rituals. His venom was potent. Powder made from thesal venom went out all over the world in salves and tonics, healing.
The Secrat were long-lived beings, symbiotic, moving into a host for the host’s lifetime and then going to another when the host’s natural span–about three hundred years for a Veshtan–was done, the priestesses at the Veshtan temple at Nesra overseeing the transfer. But no being was immortal. For all it was ancient, Dmitri’s Ornthir would die eventually.
Nobody knew how they had once reproduced, but there were no young secrats now. Veshtan speculated that the Secrat were dying out. The secrats confirmed this when they were asked. But they couldn’t say why.
They couldn’t say anything. They didn’t talk.
Dmitri would return to Caska, regardless. He might still take comfort from the dama before he went home. He would go inland to Shapir, a small village there, his last stop, delivering the Quixol root before he returned to the Veshtan city, Nesra, far in the north.
When the acolyte was gone–off to tell everyone in the temple the Ornthir had come, Dmitri imagined–he stretched, feeling good to be off the ship, good to be fed and sated. His fingertips almost touched the ceiling, his shoulders alternating, tensing and relaxing. He opened the door and made his way to the baths.
#
Dmitri lifted his pack, dusk, leaving the Veshtan temple in Caska. It was a few days’ travel by foot to the small village of Shapir, although he would get there in two nights, his stride long and tireless. He sometimes ran to places if he wanted to get there faster, but he was in no hurry.
He didn’t ride. He and horses had an uneasy relationship, since he was nocturnal and they went by the diurnal rhythms that had been so familiar to him long ago. And they were shy of him, uneasy, didn’t tolerate him well, sensing his secrat.
All animals were.
It was early evening. Dmitri walked easily. The village to which he was traveling barely qualified as such it was so small, and the crude road, little more than a path, leading to it, was mostly empty at night. A couple of time he heard the steady lub of hearts. Sometimes they were pounding, excitement or desire, the lure of the night that most people only tasted lightly, on its coming edge, experiencing the rest of it dreaming.
As the night wore on, the woods around him were full of only the stirring of nocturnal creatures like himself, their higher, faster heart rhythms as familiar to him. Dmitri walked through the night, quiet, his secrat a background noise in his mind, similarly content to move across the landscape. Slowly the sky filled with the beginnings of color. It was
Dmitri’s favorite time, the light seeming so bright, although he knew it would be dim to others, pre-dawn. It would blind him if he lingered, would burn his skin if the sunlight fell directly.
He didn’t really remember the feeling of sunlight on his skin, although he remembered fearing he would miss it.
When it was time, Dmitri went into the deep woods, staying near the river for the sound of it. He found a hollow tree. He took his pack off, burying it in dead leaves. He had his thesal cloak, thick, made for this purpose. When he had been a young thesal, he had once survived a whole anxious day under it, exposed on a dusty plain, just inattention and bad luck, the agony of sunlight a breath away.
He swept the huge dead center of the tree out. The clearing was dim in front of him, covered by canopy. He got in, squatting, his knees up. He drew the deep hood over his head, drew the sleeves down over his hands and waited, the second lids in his eyes slowly closing, the world dimming, protecting the sensitive irises.
Dmitri didn’t exactly sleep. The changes the secrat had made to his body meant that he required very little of it. He drowsed, a twilight state, sometimes dreaming or remembering, sometimes aware of what happened around him.
Hours later, a hotazine stopped at the river to drink, her brown rump in dappled sunlight, her form delicate, coarse fur. Dmitri roused to the scent of her blood, watching her. The wind shifted, sending his scent to her and she bolted, her mouth opening in terror, panting. His eyes shifted, following her path, and then his attention wandered, going down again.
Animals always reacted like this. Other people were more likely to eat her. He hated animal blood, all thesals did. Dmitri drifted, his thoughts becoming abstract. He dreamed.
#
Lawhen ran through the forest. The tall black wood gates were ahead, safety.
She had left Tia behind, just left her, one of the two men catching her and throwing Tia to the ground. Tears blurred Lawhen’s vision as she tried to go faster. She looked behind her and cried out.
She wasn’t going to make it.
She could hear him. He was too fast. She realized she was still carrying the basket. They had been in the forest collecting roots. She and Tia had run and Tia had been behind her–.
Lawhen dropped the basket, trying to run faster, so frightened, knowing she couldn’t escape.
Her hand went to her knife and she cried out as he slammed into her from behind. She cried out again as they hit the dirt of the forest floor together, rolling, coming to a stop with his body on top of her. She pulled her knife and he slapped it from her hand where it went flying, using the return to strike her face, a heavy, open-handed blow.
Lawhen lost time, becoming aware when she felt her shirt ripping, felt his hands on her breasts, the man reeking, filthy. She felt his mouth on them, felt him pulling her pants down. His face was cruel, his yellow hair in braids wrapped with red ribbon, his eyes crazed. His hands were everywhere, Lawhen struggling and then pain, so much pain.
She cried out again and heard him laugh, felt him thrusting into her body–
Dmitri abruptly became aware, breathing fast, snarling, his mouth open and his secrat teeth bared entirely, venom dripping onto the forest floor with small fast taps. He panted, the images slow to leave him.
He realized his hands were shaking. He slowly managed to stop growling, his teeth clashing once, loud, getting himself under control, his secrat as upset. The Ornthir was beside itself, waves of hatred directed at the male figure in the dream. It was an effect of taking the secrat, these dreams. His Ornthir didn’t sleep, but it shared them when Dmitri did.
Dmitri breathed, closing his eyes, waiting for his secrat to calm.
Nobody knew why the thesals had these dreams about the women in front of the black wooden gates, the walls of black stacked stone, but all of them did. Dmitri shuddered, trying to move past the horror of it, unable to separate it from the outrage his secrat felt.
His secrat offered him the image it often did, a woman, long dark hair, beautiful. She was laughing, happy, her eyes so light gray they almost looked white, so like thesal eyes. The Ornthir’s feelings followed as they always did, a wave of keen longing and grief. Dmitri endured it.
It was almost as painful as the dream, the secrat’s loneliness always pulling at him.
All the thesals dreamed of these women, some kind of transfer from the Secrat to their hosts. From these visions and dreams, Veshtan speculated that these women had once hosted the Secrat long ago. Dmitri felt a wave of impatience from his Ornthir, his secrat more alert than others. His Ornthir was always impatient when this idea was raised.
Dmitri had to say that it was difficult for him to imagine thesals who were women, a secrat in their heads. His secrat had always seemed male to him, although he knew the tiny creature had no sex.
Lawhen. Tia. Dmitri rolled the names of the two women in his mind. They had seemed so real. He didn’t know why his secrat would name the figures in his dream. His secrat didn’t have a name. The answer was lost to the history of the Secrat, the womens’ faces the only thing left.
By the next night, Dmitri was done with Shapir and ready to return to Caska. Shapir had been depressing and small, the temple tiny, the few people there panicking a little to give shelter to his Ornthir. The master acolyte had apologized repeatedly for having no dama to give him comfort. The woman had left the order and gone home, her replacement not arrived yet.
Dmitri was untroubled by it. He would return tomorrow night and go to the Dama in Casksa. He
left the temple, eyeing the vast swath of forest that surrounded it, places people didn’t go. It must be strange to live on the edge of all that unknown.
From Caska, Dmitri would make the long walk northwest to Nesra, inland, the land curving, the Veshtan city deep in the mountains. He would move from temple to temple, including the temple closest to Nesra, the place where Dmitri had spent twenty years being trained before taking on his secrat.
But when he was ready, passing through the courtyard and out of the arch, dusk and his feet on the road, Dmitri found his Ornthir stirring, its attention entirely in the opposite direction. Dmitri stopped, looking the other way, where the wide path into Shapir ended and a small path into the deep forest began.
#
Dmitri was walking. He stopped, looking around. He was in a forest, no memory of coming there. He turned around. He could see torchlight. He realized Shapir was behind him, down a small path. He could just see the roof of the temple through a break in the trees. Dmitri frowned and turned around, beginning to walk toward it.
#
Dmitri was walking. He stopped, looking at the forest all around him. He turned around, seeing the roof of the temple through a break in the trees.
He closed his eyes. His secrat couldn’t control his actions, not outright, at least not for long. But
it could make very strong suggestions. The Ornthir wanted him to go this way, northeast, straight into the thickest nowhere of the uncharted jungle.
Dmitri didn’t understand, peering deeper into the forest. This was the vast Northern Wilderness. It didn’t have another name. There were no people there, no settlements. It was just what it was. Animals and trees, rivers and mountains. Nobody went into the forested area in this part of the world, huge, predatory animals and quicksand, danger everywhere and no reason to be there. Why would they?
The Ornthir sent him a vision of the woman, the pale woman with dark hair and light gray eyes. Dmitri dwelled a little on her stark beauty, always so startling.
The dream again. Dmitri made a light sound of impatience. He could find a woman in any village to satisfy his hunger, and he had absolutely no desire to go wandering aimlessly in the thick of a jungle that in every map was simply described by a huge and uninhabited swath of green, no details.
He turned and strode back toward the temple.
#
Dmitri stopped, looking at the forest all around him. He turned, seeing the roof of the temple behind him through a break in the trees.
His secrat was quiet. Dmitri sensed that if he turned back to the temple now, the Ornthir would let him, that it wouldn’t try to stop him, maybe even couldn’t. But in the near forty years he had carried the secrat, it had never made this kind of demand, had never attempted to interfere so directly. They benefited from helping each other, and if one wanted something, the other–.
Dmitri felt a jolt of irritation, recognizing the secrat’s influence on his thoughts, something the Ornthir hadn’t attempted in over three decades. The secrat was quiet again. Dmitri looked into the jungle, feeling a wave of reluctance.
There were no temples in there. There were no cities in there, no villages, no people. No people meant Dmitri would have to subsist on animals. People were their food source, he reminded the Ornthir. Dmitri’s nose wrinkled, but the secrat was still curiously quiet at the prospect, something that should have upset it, something it should have fought. His Ornthir really wanted this.
Dmitri sighed and stepped toward the path, shouldering his pack, his secrat emanating contentment.
#
Eighteen nights later, Dmitri was angry, hungry, and disgusted.
He was free from many of the dangers that a typical traveler alone in the jungle would face. He didn’t get lost. He was relatively impervious to weather, didn’t get diseases, healed if he was hurt. There weren’t many predators here as dangerous as Dmitri was. The biggest of the cats, maybe. The huge forest tocsa, its thick brown coat and muzzle, crushing strength, making its marks on the trees to indicate its territory that Dmitri avoided.
But he hated animal blood and he had seen absolutely nothing in this forest that would lead him to believe that his secrat had brought him here for anything except to torment him, urging him farther, wheedling and persuading.
Dmitri dropped the hotazine, the animal’s body hitting the forest floor with a thud. Dmitri’s mouth opened and closed with distaste, the blood bitter, awful. Wrong, thin. Unsatisfying.
He felt a wave of frustration. He was still hungry even sloshing with the stuff. He couldn’t subsist on animals for too long. It would bring its own sickness, not to mention it was, again, completely disgusting.
He turned his head, looking back the way he had come. He still had to walk to Shapir, the way back the same distance he had already traveled, that being the law of distances.
Dmitri growled, a deep stuttering noise. That wasn’t his secrat. That was entirely him.
His Ornthir was being entirely too complacent about their diet, had been quiet about that through the whole miserable journey, having gotten what it wanted in the first place.
He would turn back tomorrow night, Dmitri decided, feeling the first stirrings of predictable protest from his secrat, the same that had kept him going far past when he should have turned his nose toward Shapir. Dmitri voiced a furious, short sound, echoing a little, sonorous, the forest going even more silent around him, his secrat going as quiet.
Dmitri picked up his pack and began to walk, the same direction he had been going, pine needles yielding under his boots. The secrat offered more surety that there was something here somewhere that they absolutely needed to see. A thesal could move fast, and Dmitri didn’t tire.
By the time the sounds of the birds signaled day, he had covered far more territory than a typical Veshtan could. And all of it was the same.
Tomorrow night, he decided, ignoring his secrat’s objections. He found a place, uncomfortable. Hungry and irritable.
#
Lawhen ran through the forest. The tall black walls of the village gates were ahead, safety.
She had left Tia behind, just left her, one of the two men catching her, throwing Tia to the ground. Tears blurred Lawhen’s vision as the tried to go faster. She looked behind her and cried out.
She wasn’t going to make it.
#
Dmitri became aware, snarling, silence in the jungle as he voiced it, the woman’s cries in his mind. He breathed, the dream staying with him, his skin crawling, rage flowing through him from his secrat. Dmitri waited for control, his secrat teeth slowly retracting.
He was in the deep old forest of the unexplored north, huge trees ten men could link hands around to circle. The canopy was so dense here that he didn’t have to search hard for cover when the sun rose, the place dim regardless, only certain small areas breaking through with sunlight.
His eyes roamed. He would need to eat, what little the animal blood gave him requiring more frequent feeding. He was supposed to go back tonight, and he had thought the idea would bring relief. But he had opened his eyes to a scene so directly out of his secrat’s dream that he was momentarily uneasy, as if he had woken to find himself within it. He almost expected to see a woman running up the natural forest path toward a tall black gates, a man with yellow hair in braids pursuing.
There were the same plants, large leaves, the same trees. Not exactly the same, of course, but so similar. So strangely familiar, like that feeling you got–enukal, Veshtan called it, that strange feeling that you’ve been somewhere you haven’t.
He hesitated. His secrat became alert, feeling Dmitri wavering. One more night wouldn’t hurt, Dmitri decided, first checking to make sure he was the one making that decision, not trusting his Ornthir.
The secrat tugged at him, sending him an image of the forest, a sense of urgency.
One more night, no more dreams, and then they would return where they belonged. His Ornthir was quiet. But first Dmitri had to hunt. His nose wrinkled.
Six hours later, Dmitri was standing on the edge of a cliff looking into a hole, the steep way down not far to his left. But it wasn’t just any hole. It was huge, a well, a deep cavity in the craggy rocks of a mountain so high its top was in the clouds, a formidable steep incline that went almost straight up.
And in its side, the vast hole peered out like the iris of an eye, gradients that turned black in its center, deep. Twenty Veshtan temples could have fit side-by-side in its entrance.
And his Ornthir wanted him to go in there.
He paced the cliff, his Ornthir nagging at him, both of them irritable. Dmitri didn’t know if that hole had another end or if it was just a cave, and for as long as it took him to find out, he’d go hungry, twice that if it simply ended and he had to turn around and make his way back.
Darkness itself didn’t bother him. He saw well in the dark, his eyes using any ambient light. The forest at night was as clear to him as it was in daylight to others. It would have to be truly dark to blind him.
But it could be truly dark down there, and as unlikely as it was, he wasn’t impervious to accident. He could become trapped. His mind conjured the vision of himself at the bottom of some deep decline he had fallen into, one he couldn’t scale even with a thesal’s strength. Slowly starving over weeks and weeks, he and his Ornthir going insane with hunger, an agonizing death.
Dmitri made a noise of impatience and turned, beginning to scale his way down.
It took him three nights to get through to the other side of what turned out to be a very long tunnel. He sensed immense weight above him, and it was truly dark for a portion of it, slowing him. He could go faster on the return journey now that he knew there was nothing for him to fall into.
He spent the last of the way through in the mouth of the smaller end of the tunnel, in a twilight state, the sun still strong, waiting to move. He smelled water. He was very hungry now. He needed to feed, but animal blood didn’t tempt him at all.
That wasn’t good. His body was beginning to refuse it.
When it was dusk, Dmitri became aware. He walked out of the mouth of the tunnel and into jungle, looking very similar to the one he had left. But he did smell water. A great deal of water. Fresh water, tangy with minerals. In only a few hours, he was standing on a beach, the body of water huge.
He got lost in the beauty of it for a moment. It was hushed, primal, the lapping of the water rhythmic, cool fog slowly roiling across its surface. One of the diving water birds sounded, a haunting cry, its echo coming back, always sounding like a woman crying.
The shore was painted in the night colors his eyes saw now, deep purples and reds, mystic blues, living green, the moon reflected on the surface of the water, smelling of the plant life at its edges.
He thought he was on an island in the huge lake, the land curving on either side of him.
No map he’d ever seen had represented such a large body of water deep in the forest. But water tended to go from high places to lower, and it pooled along the way. And who would map it?
There weren’t many people who would wander this far into such wild territory, nothing here that anybody wanted.
The tunnel must have gone into the mountain and under the water. He could see the dim shadows of land on an opposite shore. He really was alone here in a vast wilderness.
And for no particular reason, Dmitri remembered, feeling a jolt of irritation. To recall just how truly awful real hunger was, maybe. His eyes turned to look inland. Forest and more forest. His secrat was sending him a sense of urgency again. Dmitri walked.
All night, he explored the island. His Ornthir wasn’t helping him at all. Dmitri hunted, and that sealed it, the meal messy and he was still hungry after. He would sleep on the island and in the morning, he didn’t care if his secrat howled, they were going home.
He found a tall thicket by the river for the busy, chattering sound it made, soothing. He decided to stand, the cover reliable. He waited, his body quiet, a statue of a man just past the deepening shadows. It grew warmer and his second eyelid closed. Dmitri stared into nothing.
#
Dmitri became alert fast, his eyes focusing and then darting, his secrat agitated. Venom flooded his mouth. His internal time sense told him he was well into his wake cycle. His diet of animal blood was slowing him, lengthening his rest. If he didn’t feed soon, in time he would find it more and more difficult to come awake, to stay awake.
He was going to be even more hungry by the time he returned to Shapir, if he made it at all. He would have to run. Starvation by animal blood ended in permanent sleep for a thesal and then death. Dmitri wasn’t pleased to know it was beginning. He needed to get back to people and by the fastest route.
But something had alerted his secrat. There was some kind of disturbance close, possibly danger. Dmitri breathed in. Nothing. He was puzzled. He turned his head, searching delicately, sorting the scents.
There was the faintest trail, like nothing he’d ever smelled before. He couldn’t identify it, compelling, his head turning again. That was what had woken him. It was gone. Dmitri felt a surge. That wasn’t an animal.
His secrat thrummed in his head as the scent came again, a surge of recognition from the Ornthir, a wave of excitement, longing that was practically a need. Absolute urgency. The feelings were so sharp they were almost painful. The secrat was fighting to come to the surface, trumpeting, loud and demanding. In almost forty years, he’d never heard it so excited.
Dmitri’s head turned, searching. He stood, facing in the direction from which the scent came, walking forward and then breaking into a run.
The scent got stronger as he ran, his Ornthir eager. Not an animal. That was a woman, but like no woman Dimitri had ever smelled before, the scent so rich it made his head spin.
He wanted to know what would give off a smell like that, his cock tightening, a sense of pressure. He realized he was panting lightly. It wasn’t from running. He didn’t get tired. His eyes roamed as the scent got stronger, a breeze bringing it, telling him his direction.
Dmitri slowed to a fast walk, nearer the source of the scent, and then went carefully, silent. He crouched, hunting, his instincts raised. He smelled fast water. He heard it, near the river, and then he heard a voice.
A woman’s voice to go with that scent.
Dmitri stopped, cocking his head, listening. Singing, yes. He moved toward it, struggling with disbelief. A woman in the middle of the Northern Wilderness, the big nothing of it. And it was night, dark, even darker under the trees, too dark for anyone but a thesal to see.
But her scent was pulling at him, his secrat thrumming loudly. Dmitri moved forward silently, stopping and then moving again.
He listened, staying where he was, falling into the song a little, fascinated. He felt himself relax, the unrelenting hunger that tormented him fading for a moment, his restlessness. She was singing in a language he didn’t know but that he could almost make out. It was like everything else on this journey, strange and not-strange, familiar as home and completely new.
His Ornthir was impatient with his musings.
Dmitri rose, circling around to where he knew she would be. He didn’t have to worry about staying downwind. He wasn’t hunting an animal. He found cover, crouching, looking out.
The source of that scent was kneeling at the river. She had a basket beside her and was washing something in her hands. Dmitri blinked, for a moment surprised she even existed, as if a part of him had expected that the evidence of his other senses would fail to appear in the flesh, would simply dissipate with a shift in the breeze. Some memory of the Ornthir that had him chasing shadows in the deep wilderness until he starved on animal blood and slept both of them to death.
From this angle, he could only see the long dark wavy fall of her hair, thick and silky, deep black, and her hands, skin pale as milk, setting an object into the basket and taking up another, scrubbing. Her efforts followed the tempo of what she was singing as people had been doing since the beginning of everything, making a tedious task lighter. Dmitri was still struggling to believe it, wondering briefly if he’d gone mad out here without noticing.
His secrat practically shoved him, a wave of impatience.
Dmitri found a better angle, the curve of the river helping. Her scent was strong now, hazing his mind, his hunger roaring through him. Her scent. The breeze blew steadily. It was all around him now, bringing a keen feeling somewhere exactly between desire and hunger, teetering exquisitely. Dmitri’s body tensed, his eyes never leaving her.
He’d never had such a strong reaction to a woman’s scent, and it wasn’t just because he’d subsisted on animal blood for weeks. His thesal instincts were taking over, his Veshtan side submerging. He moved slowly, reaching a place almost directly across from her, crouching.
Her head was still down. On her knees, she was looking at her hands, singing the song, the line of her cheek soft and round. The woman was small and neat, her back straight, dressed lightly for how cool it was, appearing untroubled by it.
She was wearing loose crude pants ending at the knee in a soft material, a long shirt with ties that went over them. Slippers. She turned and reached for something and he looked at her hands and realized she was holding taro root, edible.
His eyes went to the basket beside her, seeing palm tips, papaya and wild yams. Wild asparagus, the leaves from lamb quarters. She had been foraging. She was washing what she had found. He saw a knife at her waist, a small belt to hold it there.
Where had he seen a knife like that before? The memory flashed briefly, unattached, vague. Dmitri was distracted. She looked up and almost straight at him, still singing the song.
Her coloring was dramatic, dark hair and pale skin, but her cheeks were lightly flushed, the color close to the surface, her lips even redder. Then he saw her eyes, large and uptilted, the color shining, a gray so light it almost looked white. Dmitri froze.
There wasn’t any thesal who wouldn’t recognize those eyes.
She looked down again, long black lashes. Dmitri opened his mouth, almost soundless, his secrat teeth dropping, venom filling his mouth, unable to stop it. It was a response to her scent, to the beauty of her. To the outline of her full breast in the cloth when she turned to set the root down in the basket, to the pulse beating at her throat, his second teeth slowly retracting.
He couldn’t control that any more than he could control his cock hardening.
The wind shifted and the woman stopped singing, looking up sharply, her eyes reflecting the moonlight on the water of the river for a moment like thesal eyes did, a momentary flash in which they shone. She went still and then began looking around herself carefully. Her eyes stopped, gazing in his direction.
Dmitri drew back soundlessly, although he was sure of his cover. She couldn’t see him. Then Dmitri recognized the motion she was making, her chin raising again. He moved away quickly. She had scented him. She had scented him, he knew she had. And her glance into the darkness hadn’t been blind. What was she? Dmitri moved downwind, finding a new vantage point.
She was gone.
She had abandoned the basket, overturned, the food spilled out. Dmitri stood, going still, listening, his head turning slightly. She was moving due north, leaving the river, and she was running fast. Fleeing. He could hear her breathing, fast light steps, could smell her easily. Her scent had a flavor of fear. He could hear her heart.
He could track her with his eyes closed. She wasn’t going anywhere. He broke into a run.
Dmitri was much faster, although he was surprised at how quickly she went, how silently. She was a little thing, but she ran through the dark night of the forest like she belonged to it, weaving under things, graceful, no difficulty seeing. She was obviously nocturnal, and there was nobody nocturnal except a thesal.
His secrat hadn’t scented another secrat. It would have alerted him.
She must have spotted him shadowing her through the trees because her fear markers suddenly got much stronger, sharpening, his instincts answering. He was hunting her, had been hunting her since he had first scented her. She was running for cover. She had somewhere ahead she thought was safer than here.
Dmitri went faster, going around and getting ahead of her, seeing the path toward which she was heading. He followed it, approaching, and slowed. He stopped.
At the end of the path, he saw tall gates, black wood inset in stacked stone walls as dark. His eyes stayed on it for a delayed moment, something familiar about it. It must be her village. That’s where she was heading. He looked back down the path and then turned and looked at the gates again, going still. He realized, all of it coming together in a moment.
Tall black gates. From his dream. Her knife, the way she looked, her desperate break for the gates all came together for him. He was in his dream, but this was happening. That wasn’t possible. Dmitri turned around and planted himself in her path, waiting.
She came running lightly up the incline and saw him, getting herself stopped. She was panting. She backed away, her eyes wide, staring at him. Her cheeks were deeply flushed now, her dark
hair settling all around her. He felt a jolt of lust. Her eyes darted past his shoulder to the gates. Dmitri began to walk toward her slowly.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
He doubted she spoke his language, very much he doubted that. She cried out, despair in her voice. She turned, fleeing the way she’d come, back down the path to the river.
Dmitri pursued immediately, instinctive. He reached where she should be and she wasn’t. He stopped, looking around, scenting. He wasn’t breathing fast. He didn’t tire. Dmitri looked up. He realized she was in the tree. He couldn’t see her, but that’s where she was. He grinned, walking to its base and looking up.
“Fall down, little fruit, so I can taste you,” Dmitri said, enjoying the foreplay.
He jumped far and easily, catching a larger branch, lifting himself onto it and walking its thin breadth in the same motion, no difficulty balancing. He jumped from the first and caught another, making his way up.
He heard her move and then saw her hang from the branch above him, holding on. She let go and dropped, landing lightly, and then she was up and running again. His boots landed in her tracks.
She heard him, making a small fear sound, increasing her speed. She crested an incline, slowing
her.
She was trapped.
Dmitri came up the incline behind her. As she ran, the river was to her left, wide here, too wide to cross. The water was moving fast over sharp rocks. It would sweep her away and cut her up, drown her. To her right there was a slope that went down sharply and then very sharply, a potentially lethal drop to the next ledge. In front of her were tall pale blocks of stone, ruins of some kind, huge, jumbled and scattered, too steep to clamber over before he caught her.
She was looking all around herself and then she turned, facing him. Her cheeks were the prettiest color, bright eyes, her dark hair moving. Her scent was like musk and flowers, the sweetest lure, singing to him, her blood smelling rich and thick and so good. His instincts surged. She glanced at the river. He moved that way, cutting her off, her eyes darting to the hole he made to his right.
She could try to go past him, but he’d catch her and she knew it.
Her heart was pounding. He could hear it, sending a wave of need through him. She backed away as he advanced. She pulled out her knife, holding it in front of her. He stopped a small way from her, looking at her curiously.
She growled at him, a light feminine sound, a delicate rumble.
Dmitri’s eyebrows went high and he released a short, incredulous laugh, surprised. Delighted, his Ornthir as pleased. The secrat was excited, very excited, giving him impatience and anticipation. Hunger.
“Come here,” Dmitri said in Romini, his language, holding his hand out, walking to her.
He needed to get the knife from her first. She lunged, swiping, and he took it from her easily, letting the knife fall. She cried out, backing away. Her back hit the rock. She was crying, the smell of her fear strong.
Dmitri approached her, his eyes on her face. She had a small break in her eyebrow, a cut that had healed there. Her lips were full, a remarkable red, her features so pleasing. Her scent was everywhere this close to her. He could smell her blood, smell between her legs.
He got closer and she gave up, flattened herself with her back against the rock, shutting her eyes and turned her face away.
When he was almost touching her with his body, Dmitri stopped. He studied her. Her chest was rising and falling with her panting. He reached out and took up her silky hair, lifting a strand to his nose, scenting it. He bent, moving lower, scenting near her throat, a deep inhale. Dmitri felt it coming, couldn’t stop it, his secrat sounding, a deep ripping snarl, aroused, loud even to him.
The little female startled badly, crying out in terror. Her hands went to her ears. She squatting, making herself small. Dmitri followed her down as fast, fluid and effortless, his eyes glaring into hers. She froze, staring back at him, and then she shifted her eyes down to stare at nothing, going still.
Dmitri voiced a low crackling rumble, a warning not to move. He leaned in, pleased to know she was trapped, that he had her cornered. He scented her again. His cock was so hard it throbbed, his heart practically racing for him, venom in his mouth.
Dmitri went as still as she was. He waited, his eyes on her face, a breath away from her, not moving.
The silence lengthened. Dmitri was untroubled by it. He could stay this way forever, her scent bringing erotic images and smells, or the Ornthir offering them, he wasn’t sure. Biting her breasts. Licking her pussy, that scent on his tongue, pushing his cock in her little cunt, his teeth hooked deep in her throat. Her blood, so deep red it was almost black, her blood in his mouth. He didn’t move.
She slowly raised her head. Their faces were close, her breath warm. She didn’t startle. She had known he was there.
“Donda est fa, enthuil, nat emurl,” she told him miserably, her voice hopeless.
His eyes moved, the only thing, roaming her face, the shining thesal color fringed with dark lashes, dropping to her mouth parted with her light panting. She had a slight overbite, her top lip fuller. He could feel the heat of her skin, that fragile barrier.
She didn’t have a secrat, but she was something. He held her eyes. She began to breathe fast. She looked down and his head dipped, capturing them again. She flinched, looking away.
Dmitri leaned back a little and considered her. He reached and touched her flushed cheek, fascinated, almost not feeling it at first she was so soft. She leaned away and then let him.
His thumb brushed at the wetness on her cheek. Her tongue came out quickly and flicked over her lips, Dmitri tensing at the movement. His eyes flashed to hers, and then the erotics of it drew his eyes to her mouth. His thumb moved, pressed there. Her skin was warm under his fingers, not cool like his.
Not a thesal, but so like one.
He could feel her breath on his thumb. His hand moved, running a long strand of her hair through his fingers slowly, lifting and smelling it again, his senses alert to all of it. His hand moved to circle behind her neck, holding his thumb against the thrumming of her pulse, soft skin, looking at her throat. He lost time a little, fascinated.
She shivered. Dmitri rumbling again in warning, his eyes meeting hers, a flush of heat through his belly. She was still so frightened.
“Dmitri,” he said, his voice thesal-deep.
Her eyes shifted and she stared back at him blankly.
“Dmitri,” he repeated, touching his chest with his other hand.
He touched her chest in the same place. He waited. She was staring at him. Her hand was shaking when she moved slowly, touching her own chest.
“Ah-ree-uh,” she said, her voice faint.
“Aria,” he echoed.
His eyes dropped to her hand on her chest. He reached, moving her hand aside gently, his fingers tracing around her breast, finding its shape, sweet and high and firm under the cloth. She didn’t move but she was breathing fast, her body shaking. She turned her face away, closing her eyes tightly.
Dmitri’s hand left her breast. He put his arm around her back, under her legs. He lifted her, hardly noticing her weight, walking back into the forest, carrying her. He found a place and set her down on her back, careful not to startle her.
She didn’t move, her body rigid. He joined her, lying down next to her on his side, leaning over her, looking at her. He began to undo her shirt, moving from one tie to the next. She didn’t stop him.
He slowly opened the flap of cloth covering her belly, tracing the pale curve of it with his fingers, such remarkable milky skin, silky and shining in the low light. He was having difficulty going slow, parting the cloth above it, one side and then the other, baring her breasts. He couldn’t move for a moment, looking at her, the red flush in her lips also there in her nipples, striking, the swells full, high and perfect.
She looked away, still shaking. Dmitri leaned down and scented all around her breasts, firm and heated flesh, that softness, breathing her in. She looked down at him, his hair falling by his cheek to touch her belly.
He opened his mouth, gathering venom on his tongue, licking her nipple. He felt a shock go through him at the taste of her skin. He laved all around the soft bud, returning to suck gently.
His venom took a moment. Her nipple rose in his mouth, hardening. He went to the other as she became sensitive. She jerked with the sensation, her belly getting tight. She made a small sound.
Dmitri lifted his head, looking at her face.
She pulled away from him as far as she could, still on her back, her hands moving to cover her breasts, staring at him. He took one of her hands and lifting it off her breast effortlessly, his mouth returning to her nipple, jutting and a darker red now. She squirmed and bit her lip.
Dmitri found himself staring at her small sharp canine, a wave of delight taking him, so sweet, everything about her pleasing him. He returned to her breast, sucking on the tender, swollen nipple. She made an uncertain noise that turned into a soft cry of pleasure she cut short.
He moved to her other breast, still covered by her hand. He licked her fingers. “Aria,” he said, nuzzling her hand, looking up into her eyes.
He waited. She slowly moved her hand a little, exposing her nipple, her eyes on his face. His mouth came down and he took it up, sucking, his fingers going to her other nipple, rolling it gently. Her eyes unfocused a little, her lids getting heavy. She liked it. She gave another soft cry of pleasure, and then she was offering her nipples, arching lightly.
At the sound, Dmitri felt a wave of lust so deep that he grunted. His head came up as the first scent of her arousal hit him, burning through him. He felt it coming and couldn’t fight it, his secrat teeth dropping. His mouth opened, venom dripping onto her breast, nothing he could stop.
He never showed them his teeth if he could help it, but he couldn’t control this.
She had the typical response. She cried out, her scent turning sharp with fear, her eyes fixed on his mouth. She was scrambling backward. She cried out again. She suddenly froze. “Asmados,” she said, horrified.
Dmitri’s teeth retracted. Sometimes the younger races has stories about thesals, ridiculous tales of creatures that rose from the dead, animated corpses, vicious and mindless. She obviously thought she recognized what he was and definitely thought she was in mortal danger.
She broke her stillness, her voice starting low and getting higher with terror, trying to get away again. He came up on his knees and reached, getting hold of her pants, pulling them down, off of her. She was helping him, wriggling away, still making fear sounds.
He wrapping his hand around her ankle. She shrieked, her little butt rising as she flipped–she had the sweetest little round ass he had ever seen, he wanted to bite that–and he pulled, turning her back over. She kicked out, striking his shoulder, Dmitri not even feeling it. Then she was under him again, her hands pushing on his chest, squirming.
“Donda m’telu,” she was keening. “Donda m’telu.”
“Don’t eat me,” would be his guess.
She was still trying to get away. He came up on his knees, leaning forward, holding her still, his hands at her waist, no weight on her at all. Her knees were up and tucked in front of him, her skin soft under his fingers.
He looked at her body. He didn’t get tired, could hold her like this as long as he wanted. She was a curvy little thing, erotic, her skin milky-pale, warming under the forest canopy. The red in her nipples, in her lips and her cheeks was all the more startling, the small triangle of dark hair between her legs sweet, round hips and pretty knees. Her hands were pushing at his arms now, her eyes huge. She was terrified.
“Aria,” he said.
She was still struggling to free herself, fluttering against him, her heart a panicked pounding.
“Nah, nah, Aria,” he breathed, moving slowly, trying to calm her.
She was full of fear. Nothing he said at this point was going to soothe her and he didn’t know her language anyway. He moved his hands from her waist, slowly bringing them down, savoring it, over her rounded hips, bringing his hands up to her knees, around them. He looked at her face as he pushed her knees more firmly against her chest, barely noticing her efforts to resist, gentle with her.
He leaned back, still holding her eyes, and slowly spread her legs wide. She cried out sharply. Dmitri held her still, watching her face, his cock aching. His eyes shifted, looking down at her pussy, a little secret pouch he exposed, dark rosy flesh getting even softer and sweeter in its center. Between her legs was a beautiful and delicate complexity of silky flesh with a scent rising up that was making him crazy.
He got down where he wanted, her cries getting higher with terror. He wrapped his arms around her thighs. She was thinking about his teeth, he imagined. He brought his thumbs down, spreading her outer lips, getting to the center of her, so aroused he could barely think.
She was struggling wildly now. He hardly noticed it, looking at her more. Dmitri leaned in and she went rigid in anticipation, trembling all over.
He scented her thighs, her folds, smelling the inner lips, fragile and unbelievably soft, the silkiest flesh, her clitoris jutting sweetly, still in its home, and then down to her channel, the source of that scent filling his mind.
Venom filled Dmitri’s mouth. His tongue came out and touched her entrance, the trace of her liquid scent sending his cock jumping and throbbing, so much like her blood, tasting of her. She startled hard when his tongue touched her, stopping the other sounds she was making to give a sharp cry of fear.
He gathered venom on his tongue and explored up, coating her delicate folds, moving back to her entrance and then higher, exploring all around her clitoris. Soft, she was so soft under his tongue, her taste pure pleasure, his cock surging.
He glanced at her face. She had gone still, staring up at the sky, her eyes getting huge. She was tracking the sensations as he drew his tongue over her clitoris again slowly, coating it in more venom, returning for another taste at her entrance.
It would only take a moment. She began to pant lightly, the tiny glands at her passage yielding slick, preparing herself for him. She squirmed. He drew back and began to lick her clitoris delicately, teasing the small nub, passing his tongue repeatedly around the base as it swelled, stiffening. He touched the tip, settling over it. She cried out low and pulsed on his tongue, flowering open.
He went back to her passage to savor the slick coming from her now and then returned to roll his tongue around her clit again. She cried out sharply with pleasure, his venom making her sensitive.
She pulsed again as he laved her gently, her clitoris entirely engorged now, her knees trying to get higher in his arms, spreading for him. He pulled back and looked, her clit full and red, blood right there under the surface, the skin thin and delicate, sweet and slippery.
He put his mouth over the erect bud, sucking gently, her cries high and loud in the forest.
He stopped when her thighs began to shake, her slick entirely running into her ass, straining against his mouth. He brought her right to the edge of pleasure and then stopped. He did it again, and then again, pleased, in no hurry for this. He was enjoying the note of desperation in her cries, hearing it get worse. Her smell was even more delicious.
She was going to be sweet. He needed to taste other things now.
He released her thighs and came up, his hand going to his pants, unbuttoning them, freeing himself, sensitive and stiff, hard. He couldn’t undress, couldn’t wait that long. He’d never been this aroused, never. She whimpered, her head tilting back, her eyes half-closed and unfocused, her hips moving, her legs still spread under him.
He slipped his hand behind her head and into that silky hair, savoring it. He drew her head back, exposing her delicate throat, the pale arch. Her eyes shifted to his, blinking a little, her face still flushed.
The anticipation was sharp. Dmitri made a sound of deep need he couldn’t stop, his cock settling between her thighs, guiding himself to her slippery entrance as he nuzzled her. His secrat teeth dropped, nothing she could see. Warm, so warm, her blood right there.
Haze covered his vision. He was desperately hungry.
For the first time, Dmitri remembered his Ornthir, their intentions and desires so deeply in alignment he hadn’t even noticed the secrat. Dmitri’s thesal instincts were overwhelming him, his secrat exerting control. Dmitri closed his eyes, slowing himself, concentrating.
The smell of her pussy and her blood mingled in his head, equal draws, a keen, delicious conflict, either one pleasure and ultimately the same to him anyway. He was trying to swim up from the lust raging through him, trying to remember himself, his body taking over, his venom sacs filling, his cock throbbing. He was so close to her, so close to being inside her in all the ways he wanted.
He summoned all his control. His teeth were sharp, made to cut cleanly. He didn’t chew into his lovers. He broke through, his eyes rolling back and closing with the intense pleasure of it, sliding them into her, exquisite. It was a deep bite, firmly hooking in her. Her blood filled the delicate channels that took it.
He pressed into her passage at the same moment, nudging her repeatedly, the head of his cock slipping in slowly.
The taste of her.
When he bit her, she voiced a sharp cry of fear and pain. She was writhing under him, her pussy lightly impaled on his cock, her throat under his teeth. Dmitri shuddered. His muscles locked, his teeth in her. Her body was struggling like a bird against his, fluttering, erotic.
Her blood. He wanted to gorge himself, to fill himself with her liquid scent, the intense perfume of it. He didn’t move, couldn’t or he’d hurt her. He didn’t have control. He could drain her in moments. He stayed carefully still. She was crying, in pain. There was nothing he could do. He felt his mating venom finally release.
She hitched twice and began to come, arching against him, her whole body going rigid, driving herself further onto his cock. Her softness yielded on his sensitive head, her knees coming up, her flesh pulling at him. She spread herself as Dmitri buried his cock as deep in her heat as he could get in one thrust. He growled behind his teeth still in her, stabbing into her slick tightness, opening her.
She strained against his cock as he thrust into her sharply, that sensation blending with what was happening as he pulled her blood for the first time, pausing to give her more venom.
Pleasure. Dmitri forgot everything but the pleasure of it, her blood like nothing he’d tasted before, like something else entirely. It was blood but not the thin stuff he was used to. This was rich and fragrant and thick, heady, making him drunk with it. He never could have imagined any woman could taste like this or feel like this, her pussy tight, spasming on his cock as she came, milking him, her walls rippling.
Dmitri shuddered with need, thrusting, pulling more, biting her deep, fucking her deep. He gave her more venom. He could feel her body jerking under him. She would come as long as he wanted, over and over. Her cries filled the forest, high and needy, making him crazy as he drew more blood, and then more. He had to stop, had to stop now. He curled, his body clenching.
His Ornthir sent him a sharp stab of warning, jerking Dmitri out of it. He opened his jaws and released her, his head coming up, an act of will. He hadn’t lost control like that since he was a young thesal and his secrat’s desire for blood had ridden him. The taste of the little dark-haired beauty’s blood was in his mouth, in the channels that took it.
Dmitri’s head dropped back, his eyes still closed, his mouth opening, running his tongue over his teeth and lips for just a little more of the taste of her, jolting with it over and over, going straight to his cock still stabbing into her. His pleasure was rising fast.
His head tilted forward, his teeth retracting, looking at her face. She was coming down from her climax, staring at him, panting hard, her lips looking swollen. Her eyes were returning to awareness. She began to wince and then she cried out in pain, his thrusts rough and urgent.
Dmitri concentrated, trying to hold off his own pleasure. He was only going to get to fuck this little beauty once and he wanted it to last. He would have drawn it out much longer if he hadn’t been so hungry. Her little pussy was tight around him. He could smell the blood from tearing her barrier, sending another wave of lust through him. He didn’t want this to stop.
He propped himself on his hands, looking down at her, her face full of pain, as difficult not to bite her again as it had been since he had first taken his secrat and fucked a woman. Her blood was incredible, the taste making him dizzy with lust. He wasn’t hungry and he wanted more. If he were younger, he’d kill her.
She was crying now, pushing at him, his thrusts deep, her body tense. Her little pussy was tight and hot. Good, so good. He couldn’t slow it enough. His pleasure was building fast. He yielded and went with it, attentive to it, alert to the sensations in his body.
Nothing had ever felt this good, not in his long life. His tongue was roaming his mouth, his teeth and lips, savoring her taste, his eyes closing again. His Ornthir was thrumming, sharing its version of a kind of ecstasy, but far, far stronger than he had ever felt from the secrat before.
He lost the thought. Dmitri’s climax was coming, starting deep in his spine. He grunted, the sensations so keen that he shuddered, crying out. He couldn’t hold on to it. He lost control entirely, jerking her head to the side, burying his face in her throat, biting her again, the little beauty crying out high.
He gave her more venom as he began to come so hard. He released her throat a moment later, just able to do it, pulling back and crying out again as he never did, against his instincts.
She went still, rigid, clamping on him, climaxing again, long and deep. Dmitri grinned at her fiercely and then he was spilling in her as she began to pulse on his cock, finally releasing. More, he needed more, burying his cock deep in her again, flexing, another forgotten time of pleasure. The release was huge, his body straining with it.
The pleasure finally began to withdraw in waves. He shuddered. Dmitri went still as his cock flexed a final time. Wellbeing flowed through his body, her blood like nothing else. He felt it in his spine, a deep warmth that thawed a coldness he hadn’t even known was there, his cock throbbing and sensitive in her, sated.
He was licking his lips, relaxing. He heard himself voice a long, deep growl, his secrat sounding, fiercely satisfied. Dmitri looked down at the little beauty.
She was staring at him, her breathing fast. Her hand went to her throat, feeling all around. She kept feeling for it in disbelief, like the wound might have moved.
Dmitri leaned down and nuzzled her, her hand dropping, the bite already healed, unable not to. It was instinctive. He smelled her, smelling his venom in her, his cum. A surge of hot satisfaction went through him when she tilted her chin, relaxing under him, baring her throat, probably not even realizing it, submitting to him.
He drew back, voicing another deep growl, pleased. “Not Asmados,” he said, his voice rumbling as it did, deep. “Thesal.”
His eyes went to her throat, and then he looked more closely. He frowned lightly, reaching out with his hand and touching her there. He had never left a mark on a woman. There was a small white diamond-shaped scar on her throat where her blood ran closest to the skin, raised.His Ornthir surged, fiercely pleased about it.