Taking One for the Team (2 page)

Vest stayed on, and everything else came off.  Raven shivered in the cold, as the coach gave an encouraging slap on her ass.  "We won, though, which means you get to come."

They didn't come out to fuck her right away.  She could see the light of cook-fires shimmering at the other end of the field, and breathed in the smell of mud and grass, heard the katydids and crickets calling.  Home, only it wasn't anymore.  She was the visiting team now.

Then the lady tower came over to where Raven was chained.  She was huge; six feet tall, easy, and built like a wall.

She sat down on the stump, and held Raven's chin in her hand for a long time.  At first, Raven tried to say something to break the silence, but the tower gave an extra squeeze and she shut up.

"Yeah, maybe," said the tower, after a while.  "I'm Katy; I get first dibs, 'cause you were my catch—well, Born's catch, but I put the final chains on.  Could be I caught something worthwhile.  Could be not."

Another long pause, and then a shrug.  "Everyone else after, until you hit sixty percent of your tries.  Hell of a goal, but Coach knows what he's doing."

She took her pants off, her legs broad as columns, pale in the flickering light of the cook-fires, and she pulled Raven's face up to her cunt.

Raven had never been with a woman, not like that, but she licked, tasting the sweat and mud of the game on her.

"Mn," said Katy after a while.  The she stiffened, held her breath for three, four seconds, stepped back.  She gave Raven an affectionate pat on the cheek.  "Nice, though.  It'll be fine; we've all been through it.  And if you can't cut it, let me know.  I've got family in Drumlin and Apex, and know some folks in Man-o-War who'd take you in, if need be."

Need damn well wouldn't be.  Probably.  The whole team after?  But Raven nodded, and the tower went back to the cookfires.

The whole team after.  Runners, muscled like coursing hounds, pushing between her thighs, or grinding against her face, then the wings.

Before that night, she'd had sex with three boys.  None of them more serious than sex, none of them that often.  So it hurt with the bigger ones, and she didn't know exactly what they wanted from her, but she did her best.  None of them were cruel, not really, though one of the runners kept swatting her ass while he fucked her, and gold wing seemed kind of angry as he fucked her mouth.

And they'd won, so she was allowed to come.  She did twice.  Once when the left-side tower was pounding into her, hard, and the other time when one of the runners pushed her legs apart and then knelt between them, and cleaned off what the rest of the team had left behind— come, and probably a little blood, and sweat—first with a washcloth, and then with her tongue.

Raven had never felt anything like that before, and when the runner was done, and left with a sway in her hips and a lightness in her step, Raven felt dreamy, peaceful.  Then the blue wing, who had her suck him for a little while, then plunged into her ass, which hurt like anything, but which didn't take too long.

And then the center tower ambled out to where she'd been left.  Big in more ways than one.  He was patient, working into her cunt slowly, letting her adjust before he started to move in earnest, but it still hurt, how big he was.

When he was done he left, like the rest of them had, but he came back with a bowl of broiled rabbit and venison with sweetcorn and peppers, and he sat next to her, and fed it to her by hand.

"Thank you," she said, when he was done, and he gave a slow, grave nod.  "Born, is it?"

Another nod.  Then he pointed at his throat, shrugged, and then patted her on the head and headed back to the rest of the team.

Coach came out last, with one of those old-world nylon and aluminum folding chairs that they still made somewhere out on the coast.  He pulled it open, and sat down next to her.  "Coach Langdon made a hell of a start with you," he said.  "If you'd been born in Hold-Your-Cards, we'd have won our bet and kept on rolling.  But that doesn't mean you're ready to play for us just yet.  First off, start working on off-hand throws—every single goal you made was right-handed.  Tomorrow morning, before we go, I want to see you get a hundred goals lefty.  And every morning after that, until you can count on your left hand, when the angle needs it.  Born'll help with the practice; he can use the workout himself."

"Yessir," said Raven.

He walked around behind.  He was holding a hand-lamp, and there were sudden darting shadows as he played it over her.  "Holding up well, looks like."  There was the sound of a zipper, and then he pushed in to her bruised, sore pussy.

"Yessir," she said.

He wasn't as big as some of them—nowhere near as big as Born, but there were horses who weren't as big as Born—but he worked her harder than any of them, slowing down when he got close, then speeding up again, and again, and again, until finally he came, pulling out as he finished, so the last spurts landed across her ass, and the back of her vest, and her thighs.

"Good," he said when he was done.  Then he unhooked the prickle catch, unwound the chain, and let her get dressed as he headed back to the stormer camp.  There was a bedroll for her when she got there—Born had laid it out next to his tent, and put her helmet on it, and new gloves.  Raven tucked herself in, and was out like a light.

Next morning, she was up before just about everyone.  Went out on the pitch, and started working on left-handed tries.  Coach Langdon had wanted her to work on that too, but there was always something else that needed doing.  Five balls.  Grab, throw, grab, throw, and so on; dash to the nearest rebound, start it up again.  She'd planned to limber up a bit, wait for Born to get up before bugging him to help, but he started setting himself up on the center stump almost as soon as Raven caught the first rebound.

And he was a damn good tower.  Better than he'd been during the match.  Could be they'd been keeping things close on purpose.  Tradition was tradition, but stormers were still strangers, and if they'd shut Longacre down the way it seemed like Born could've, could be they wouldn't have slept so easy.

Made it hard to get the hundred goals Coach wanted, but it was worth it.  Coach Langdon had said, "a loss is better than a lecture" maybe ten thousand times, and he was right.  Raven learned a hell of a lot from the way Born anticipated her throws, the way the chains reached out and flicked the balls away.  By the time she'd scored a hundred lefty, everyone else was up, and she was a better wing than she'd been the day before.

She got herself some porridge and greens from the communal pot, and the rest of them took the field for practice.  Raven was damn worn out; match one day, hundred goals against Born the next, so she sat and watched.  No question, Born was the best tower.  The lady tower—Katy—was pretty good too.  Left side was strong, but committed too quickly.  Could be he was hitting a little light because it was practice against his own runners, and fair enough.

Then coach nodded Raven in for tackling work.   And it was damned hard work.  The runners weren't big, but they were all goddamn leaf-springs and concrete.  She'd hit, and she'd be the one who'd fall.  Before she'd gotten big enough to bowl over runners, Coach Langdon had worked on technique, so she had to fall back to that, trying to get leverage, hit the right place, pull them up and over.

She was dead, by the time they packed up and headed out for Hold-Your-Cards, so naturally Coach made her jog behind the wagons.  Not that the old guzzlers made great time, and there were still potholes and landslides to avoid in between the occasional stretch of well-maintained road.  But they were still combustion engines, and she was still a tired wing.

After a while, Born dropped out of the wagon he was on—Raven could hear the springs creak as he got off—and loped along beside her.   He didn't have a runner's build, not by a long shot, but he could still cover ground, eating up the miles with those long, heavy legs.  Even if Born could talk, Raven didn't have any wind for conversation.  But it was less lonely that way, just having him there with her.

They got into Hold-Your-Cards near dark, and the next day practice was more an exhibition than a practice.  Raven's role was to help the runners look good, and that was easy as hell; just try tackling without good form, and they'd bounce her like a loose ball.

And it Coach wanted her in as gold wing.  Ralf, the one she was filling in for, had taken a bad hit early in the season, and it hadn't healed right.  If they needed him, he was there, but he was going out in Drumlin—Katy'd got word from her cousins that they needed a coach, and she vouched for him.

So it was helmet on, vest on, game on.

Raven'd played against Hold-Your-Cards before.  Their runners and gold wing were a pack of quadruplets, and the way the ball moved between them was impossible to predict or stop.  When she told Coach about them, he'd nodded gravely, and set the bet so they had to win by forty because of that warning.  Seemed that someone in Miracle had warned them about Raven, and they'd thought her more of a threat than the quads, which put a little flush in her cheek, and spring in her step.

Till she got the first chain across her chest from the Hold-Your-Cards tower, which left her struggling for breath and playing a little safer.

But not much safer.  When she had an open chance, she took it.  Scored nineteen times on forty-one tries by the half, which was damn good.  Better than she'd ever done, mainly because of the team she was playing with.  A pass to a runner was almost as good as a score, so the towers had to keep watching them, not just the ball, and if she shouldered one of the Hold-Your-Cards runners into Born's range, or Katy's, or even Train's on left-side, damn good chance they'd get the ball loose with a well-aimed chain.  Which left Raven in a much better position to make a try than if she'd had to do a full tackle.

Score was 53-29 at the half, and Raven got friendly smiles as the helmets came off, and the stormers took their water and salt biscuit.

Coach didn't seem particularly impressed or disappointed.  Just kept marking things down in a little book.  Coach Langdon hadn't been one for speeches, and neither was the stormer coach—Coach Alvas.  Just, "Keep it clean, let 'em stay close, but not too close; doing fine."  And then, "Have to pick your tries if you want to make your target," to Raven, as she was getting her gear back on.

She did her best.  Passed a few times when she probably could've scored, positioned to take a loose ball on a miss, instead of setting herself up for the shot, only tried when she was sure she'd make it.  Got three out of three, but that wasn't going to get her numbers up fast enough, and since it'd be years before the stormers happened back that way, she wanted Hold-Your-Cards to remember her right.

She went seventeen for forty-three in the second half, for a personal best thirty-six.  Final score was 109-55.  Over 40% accuracy, twice as many assists as scores.  And since that was less than her target, they tied her to the center tower's stump after the game, and then each and every member of her team fucked her, one after the other.

Talked a little, too.  After making Raven stick her tongue all the way up into her cunt for what felt like hours, Katy let her know she'd been telegraphing tries—support hand always went forward when she was going to try for it, but she kept it close if she was going to fake or pass.  Raff, the wing who was quitting, had more to say.

He'd pushed her down to her hands and knees, and then tightened up the chains so she couldn't move even if she wanted to.  And then he fucked her ass, hard, thighs slapping against her with every thrust.

When he finished, he sat up on the stump and watched her for a bit.  It had been a hard game, and she'd been used by five of her teammates already.  She bowed her head, breathing slowly, trying not to collapse.

"It'd be easier," he said after a while, "if you were worse than me.  Fifteen years in the game, and . . . hell, I've had better games than that one; the quadruplets have enough of an advantage that the rest of the team was lazy.  I went twenty-two for forty against a coastal league team, Raven; beat that if you can.  But there were tries you made that I never could've.  Ever."

He got up, walked behind her, and started massaging her bruised and sore cunt.  Despite everything else, she started to move as he touched her.  "And you're fitting in pretty well."

Raff pulled his hand back, then slapped her pussy.  Not that hard, but hard enough to make her jump.

"Doesn't mean I have to like it, or you," he said.  "But hell.  You'll be fine.  And don't tackle with your arms so much; arms'll hold them, but use your hips and your shoulders to pull them down once they're held."

Then he pissed on her legs, the stream of urine hot and wet, playing across her thighs and her ass and her pussy, dripping down to the dirt.  He buttoned up and walked away as Raven gasped, tried to figure out how to breathe again.

Next was one of the runners, Rache, the team captain, who made Raven lick her out four times before she went back to the camp, then another runner, who didn't say anything, just pushed in to her ass, and fucked her like someone was holding up a stopwatch.

And when he was done, it was Born.

He'd brought her food again, and he sat next to her as she ate, one big hand on her shoulders, the other holding up the bowl of soup so she could drink it, keeping it perfectly steady.

When she was done eating, Born knelt between her legs, sniffed, and left.  He was huge—it had hurt so much the last time—but Raven was disappointed when he left, and at least a little happy when he came back, with a bucket of water and a rag.