Olivia (84 page)

“What a rotten day,” she grumbled, with absolutely no idea of just how bad her day was about to get.  She crossed to the entry room, slipping the well-used grips of her claws over her hands.  She put her foot down the chute and promptly kicked Bodual in the head.  Retreating, she snagged the hem of her pants on his short horns and when he jerked back, managed to rip the seam clear up to her hip.  It split to expose a smooth expanse of hip that she obligingly flashed at him just as he poked his head worriedly up the chute to see if she was all right.

“What are you, Wurlgunn’s evil twin?” she asked sourly, scrambling to cover her thigh.

“Evil what?”  He rocked back, finally gleaning onto the reference to Wurlgunn.  “How fair is that?” he demanded, laughing.  “You kicked
me
, remember?”

“What do you want?”  She rolled onto her hip, tried to see how bad the damage to her pants was, discovered it was terminal, and threw up her hands in defeat. 

“I came to ask you if you would come to see Kodjunn’s beast,” he said affably.  “She’s been asking for you since yesterday.”

“Why?  Is she in pain?”  She noticed she was rubbing at her stomach; well, not rubbing, really, more like caressing, very slowly, in circles.  She frowned at her hand, forced it to her side.

“I wouldn’t know.  I never talk to her if I can help it and she sure doesn’t go out of her way to be sociable around me.”  His eyes dropped to her hand.  “Did I hurt your leg?”

She looked down, discovered she was now caressing her thigh, and crossed her arms over her chest.  Her nipples dug at her arms, radiating the most delicious shivers at the slightest friction of fabric.  She shifted her arms, caught herself, and said, “No, my leg’s fine.  How are yours?”

What a stupid thing to say.

“Fine.  It was my head you kicked.”  But his eyes lingered on the pale stripe of skin revealed to him where her pants had torn.  “Are you…Are you going to see the beast now?”

She was staring at his chest, did not immediately process the question.  He was smaller than Vorgullum; lean, but still athletic.  She wondered what that body would feel like moving against hers, wondered if she could bear his weight after he dropped atop her, spent.  She wondered—

She wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

He’d asked her about Cheyenne.  “Um, yes,” she said vaguely.  “Will you go with me?”

“Absolutely.  I won’t let you out of my arms.  Sight,” he corrected immediately and laughed a little nervously.

“Can you carry me down?”  Her claws were right there on her hip.

He didn’t notice them either.  “Sure.”  He gripped the lip of the chute, swung his legs down and hung there, waiting for her.

Olivia sat down between his outspread arms, slid forward and down, her hips brushing against the full length of his torso as she lowered herself to rest comfortably against him.  His chest, she thought, felt divine.  She imagined it bearing down on her as she undulated—

Good night!
she thought, appalled. 

“Hold on tight,” he murmured, just as if the chute dropped fifty feet instead of only ten.  He flattened his wings and slowly climbed down, pushing her flat against the wall, pushing himself hard against her.

He had plenty of room back there, she saw.  And she decided she could definitely take his weight after he was done and lay over her, with the musky scent of sex hanging delightfully in the air…

They were on the ground already and he wasn’t making any effort to back up.  She could feel a stiffening heat pressing against her belly.  That was interesting.  She shifted her hips experimentally.  Oh that was very nice.

He evidently thought so, too. 

She wondered if she could peel their clothes back without having to move apart.  She wondered if he’d have to take his loincloth all the way off.  That would take far too much time.  He felt wonderful.  She began to move her hips in tiny circles, just to feel him rubbing all over her.

What the hell am I doing
? she thought suddenly, and stopped.  “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he replied thickly.  “My fault.”

They stood there, neither one moving.

“Cheyenne,” she said.

“What?  Oh.  Right.”  He pried himself off her and backed up, slightly hunched over, as if something hurt.

Olivia took a step forward, resisted the urge to run her palm over the tight bulge in his loincloth, and kept going.  He followed her into the main tunnel.

“Are all of these lairs occupied?” she asked.

“Not all of them, no.  That one, for instance.  That one’s still empty.”

And very far away.  She glanced back at him.  He was staring straight ahead down the tunnel.  His eyes looked glazed.

“Totally empty,” she mused.

“Yes.”

She seized his hand and ran for it.

He grabbed her up under one arm and carried her there.  Up the chute, grinding hot against each other the whole way.  Tossing her over the stone in the entry and she rolling, bucking and scrambling to rip off her clothes while he bounded free of the chimney and yanked at his belt.  Cotton and leather flying through the air, and then the wonderful rapturous fantastic crush of his body on her bare breasts and his hot hardness pressed home and she screamed against his chest as he penetrated and she came with an explosion like thunder, all heat and sound and light and a bolt of something blazing bright and ruthless snapped out of her and he was trapped tight.

“
Ungh
!” he said, and that was all he said, although his mouth was still working.  His eyes snapped open, staring but not seeing, the eyes of a man in the first endless instant after death.  He shook once, violently, and then he began to thrust hard and fast, his body heaving urgently and his face slack and dead.  She felt him cum, as the Great Spirit had done, pouring something of himself inside her without diminishing his desperate lust in the slightest.  It was hot, whatever it was; it was hot and alive and seemed to stab all the way into her womb where she just…took it in, and as soon as she did, she was cumming too, cumming too ferociously to see or breathe or even feel him.

It felt good.  Not the way that sex feels good, not even the way that orgasm felt good, but the way, oh, the way a vampire’s first bite into a human throat must feel, or that first explosive burst when a volcano blows and all its heat goes flying, flying,
screaming
upwards and outwards forever.  It felt good and something inside her, the vampire, the volcano, drove itself forward out of Olivia’s very soul and bit deep, deep into Bodual’s.

They thrashed furiously on the stone floor, throwing off sweat and musk and madness, their two bodies fused into a single live wire of kinetic carnality.  She was not aware of him except as a dim shadow and searing heat, the source of this endless outpouring of whatever raw force she was stealing and transforming into climax, she only knew that it felt so good and she wanted him to keep giving it to her.  It was not until he began to groan that she realized he could not stop until she released him, no matter how often or savagely he climaxed.

And her first thought, when she did realize, was a selfish, hungry will to drive him on regardless, to take it all, every drop, to suck on the straw until his empty soul rattled—

Then horror crashed into her and she tried to push him off, but his gullan body worked on in a frenzy, immoveable. 

No.  She wasn’t holding him with her hands.  On instinct alone, Olivia withdrew inside herself to that dangerous place of sexual fission and tried to wrench them apart.

Bodual howled against her shoulder, scathing pleasure scarring across the hot core of him that she was somehow draining.  He pitched against her hard enough that she heard her hips creak in protest, and still he could not stop.

Olivia realized she could see him, even with her eyes closed.  She could see the damage she was doing to him, see his heart hammering in a blur of white within a soul gone red with pain, and knew that more of this really would kill him, and still she had no idea how to end it.

In desperation, she recoiled until she felt her mind’s eye detach from her physical senses and open on a much greater world.  With this new clarity, she saw only the brilliant glow of her spirit below her, the fading light of his, and the taut bond connecting them.  From here, it was a simple thing to reach out with her mind, unhook him and sent the shreds of his self snapping back to him like a broken rubber band.

Bodual roared in her ear and dropped over her, and yes, she could bear it easily and yes, it did feel fine.

Olivia settled back down out of that high place into her flesh.  Her eyes were closed, but she could still see him, see energies like golden light ebbing out of his body like sweat and settling inside her.  His strength.  His life, maybe.

Great Spirit
, thought Olivia, horrified. 
What have I done
?

“Olivia,” he moaned, half-unconscious.

She crooned to him softly, worriedly, and he opened his eyes again.

“What’s happening?” he asked groggily.

She started to ask what he meant and then realized she could smell it, too.  The scent of their passion was easing out of the air, being absorbed into her body.  His sweat, the oils of sexual heat, even the torrents of his semen, all fading into nothingness.  Taken. 
Translated
.

“Nothing.  Forget it,” she heard herself say, but it was a different voice, one that spoke directly to his mind.  She could almost see his thoughts realign themselves around her command, could feel the exact moment that they rooted, and then he dropped heavily onto his face beside her, so heavily that she thought he was dead right up until he began to snore.

What have I done
? she asked herself again, almost panicked. 
What am I still doing?

She didn’t want to know the answer.  Scrambling to fasten herself back into her clothes, Olivia left Bodual to his unnatural sleep and fled.

9

“Jesus, where were you?” Cheyenne asked crossly.  “I sent that idiot off ages ago.”

Olivia looked at her watch in alarm.  More than two hours had passed since Bodual had come to her cave.  Two hours spent writhing wildly in the entry room of an empty cave, and she could scarcely remember any of it.

Cheyenne had a preternatural ability to sense guilt.  She narrowed her eyes and smiled her hard, vicious smile.  “Getting some on the side, huh?”

“Give it a rest, for once.”  Olivia unslung her pack and went to wash her hands.  “What’s the matter?”

“Well, look, it’s like this.”  Cheyenne drummed her fingers restlessly on the side of the bench where she was seated.  “I know how you said I was weak and everything, but I don’t feel weak.”  She glared defiantly up at Olivia.  “I want to get up.  I’ll stick to the women’s tunnels if that makes everyone happy, I’ll even do a few chores, but I am getting up.  And as long as I’m asking for things, I want that wrinkled old bat to cart her ugly ass out of my room.”

“This isn’t your room,” Yawa said irritably from where she sat, scraping goat-hides.  “It is my room, and you are damned lucky I allow you to share it.”

Olivia looked at Cheyenne.  “She’s right.  You don’t get your own room, Cheyenne.  That’s the reality of living in the women’s tunnels.”

“Oh, it speaks,” snorted the redhead with dripping contempt.  “How many rooms of your own do you have?  Three?  Four?  Come on, count them up!  And what did you ever do for it but fuck the Big Bat?”  She started to stand.

Olivia surprised them both by putting her hand on Cheyenne’s shoulder and pushing her back down.  “Just in case you didn’t hear me the first five times I said so, you are bed-bound, lady.”

“Eat me raw, hon,” said Cheyenne, and gave her a shove. 

It wasn’t a hard shove.  Certainly she’d been shoved around worse and managed to keep her feet, but the business with Bodual was still high in her mind and she wasn’t expecting it.  So she was shoved, and she didn’t scramble back and find her balance and maybe lose her temper and give Cheyenne the smack she so richly deserved. 

She fell.

She went down hard, seeing with shocked clarity Cheyenne’s startled expression sweeping away from her, and then her head hit the raised lip of Yawa’s pit with a sound like an egg exploding right inside her skull.  She tasted peanut butter, very suddenly, very strong.  Her vision swam yellow, then grey, and then gradually bled true color back into the room.  She sat up, reached at her hair groggily and stared at the blood on her fingers.

She was dimly aware of commotion across the room.  After a few minutes she thought it might be important enough to bother looking at.

Yawa was wrestling Cheyenne violently to the ground.

“What goes on here?” bellowed Horumn, barreling through the doorway.  The Eldest took one look at Olivia, her unfocused gaze and her bloody hand, then turned and roared for Tina.

This is going to get rapidly out of hand
, thought Olivia.  She tried to stand up, toppled over on her face, and tasted oranges.  Bizarre.

“Don’t stand, be still,” Horumn growled, and pressed her hand firmly against her shoulders when Olivia tried to stand anyway. She had never seen Horumn look like this before, and it took an inordinately long time to recognize the expression that so completely filled her field of vision:  It was terror.

Tina showed up with Crugunn and Tobi, quickly took Olivia’s face in her hands and started shining lights at her.

Cheyenne was screaming and cursing. Yawa was snarling right back at her, and considerably better as far as obscene vocabulary was concerned.  Horumn was trying to shout over the whole noise, and Tina’s mouth was moving but there didn’t seem to be any sound there at all.

Then the clamor subsided, until only Cheyenne’s shrill expletives could be heard.

“What goes on here?” 

That was Vorgullum.  Olivia tried to turn towards him; her vision swam yellow again.  She’d never heard of that before.  Yellow.  Huh.

“There is blood on this floor.”  The low rasp of claws on stone.  Sniffing.  “This is the blood of my Olivia.”