Olivia (96 page)

She had no idea how long she lay beneath him, his breath burning on her skin, her back rubbing back and forth over the stone, before she started crying again.

“
Your wounds are paining you
?”  He spoke without lifting his head.  His voice was a low roar in her ear.  He did not break rhythm.

Olivia turned her head, tears pouring into her hair, and looked dully at the blood-crusted slivers she’d carved into her shoulders.

“
I shall teach you a thing
,” said the Great Spirit.  “
Look at me
.”

She started to turn her face into his.

“
No, woman.  Close your eyes and look at me
.”

Oh.  She obeyed, feeling within her for the power and using it to slip out of her physical body to see them both.  The ease of this was very oddly not alarming, as natural as if she’d been doing it all her life.  Looking down, she thought that she looked completely miserable.

“
Behold the wounds of your body
.”

She had no idea what he was talking about.  Experimentally, she drifted further back from her body and the colors washed out of the air like paints in the rain.  The Great Spirit was an aura of raging flame; the seed he spent almost continuously inside her, a maelstrom of blinding white.  Then she realized she could see her body as a pale blur, and that there were faint bluish smudges on her hands and shoulders.  Her battered sex was a bruise of indigo, but that, she supposed, was beyond help as long as the Great Spirit moved inside her.

“
Take my essence
.”

How
?

“
In the manner with which it is done
,” he replied blithely.

Olivia groped at her body with her mind.  It had been so easy when she’d done this with Sudjummar, but—like the old joke about the centipede who stopped to wonder how he walked and could never walk again—thinking about it only complicated things.  Watching the blurs of light below, she saw the Great Spirit cum, his storm of white fading slightly and her own body glowing brighter.  This made the blue wounds stand out in stark relief.  Olivia tried to focus her mind on the torn places, tried to fit them together somehow.  Nothing happened.

With Sudjummar, she’d actually gathered the power up somehow.  That boggled her mind a little, now.  How had she done that without hands?

The Great Spirit laughed, even as he thrust steadily into her.  “
You are no longer bound to the constraints of flesh, Olivia Blake.  If you wish hands, form them
.”

Well, of course.  Olivia looked at herself (her floating self, as opposed to the real one, still pinned under the Great Spirit) and with a curious flexing sensation, pulled herself into shape.  It was ridiculously easy, and she felt much better just for being back in a body, even if it was a noncorporeal one. 

And now that she had hands, all she had to do was reach down into the churning light that was her and dip up a palmful of power.  It had no weight, no substance, but clung to her spirit-fingers in a thick, gummy mass. 
Now what
? she asked, wiping it from one hand onto the other. 

“
Will yourself whole
,” the Great Spirit told her. 

As simple as that, huh?  Well, all right.  She tried smearing the glowy stuff over the bruised points on her shoulders where she’d clawed herself, and to her astonishment, the dark crescents faded at once.  She floated closer, brought her physical self into focus, and saw only dried flakes of blood.

Olivia hovered a moment, in thought.  Then she retreated again, examined the seething mass of fiery light that was the Great Spirit, and nudged at it with her mind.

“
What is it?  Do you require further pleasure
?”  His hand moved to cover her belly.

She almost told him no, but curiosity compelled her. 
Yes
.

From this safe distance, she watched the flames of her body blaze briefly with climax, but she felt nothing.  She watched the pulsing knot of white increase as the god ejaculated twice in rapid succession.

She thought of Sudjummar in the cavern outside the baths; of forming a probe with her power and forcing him to orgasm. 

Olivia concentrated, reached into the raw energy collecting at the core of her physical body and formed a tendril of snapping power.  Cautiously, she pushed it out at the god.

“
Mm
.”

Clearly, that didn’t work.  She gathered a larger amount, did it again.

He lifted his head from her body’s shoulder and looked back and up at her, his brow furrowed in amused curiosity.  “
What are you trying to do
?”

Can you feel it?

“
Somewhat.  What is the intention
?”

She couldn’t think of an answer that didn’t run the risk of offending him.  She sent him the image instead of a cat batting at a ball of string.

“
Ah
.”  He ‘distracted’ her again with a series of brutal climaxes, ejaculated almost as an afterthought, and continued to thrust at her, as steady and emotionless as a piston in a car engine.

Olivia watched the god work at her.  Whenever the knot of white energies grew too intense, she would absorb a part of it until her spirit body was almost too bright to look directly at.

“
Enough
.”  The Great Spirit spent a final jet of semen, then withdrew from her and tipped his head back as if he could see her spirit floating in the air.  He probably could.  “
Return
.”

Just a second
.

Olivia gathered some of the raw power and pressed it into the center of her body, soothing the ugly bruise back to white.  When it had faded completely, she dropped until the physical world came into sharp focus and looked at herself critically.  She looked all right.  Sad, but all right.  Without thinking, she raised a spirit-hand to run through her spirit-hair and in astonishment, saw her physical body do the same.  She made herself scratch her nose next and then, without moving her spirit-self at all, concentrated until her body sat up.

While the Great Spirit watched, amused, she pulled her Olivia-body onto its feet and walked it up and down the room.  It wasn’t a graceful walk, but she thought it might be, with practice.  And she wanted to practice, which was a disturbing thought on some level, disturbing enough that she slipped her body back on and fell into the grip of weight, gravity, and dimension.  She took a few breaths, running her hands down her body to reassure herself of its reality.

Almost by reflex, as soon as she saw her hands she checked the time.  Three in the morning.  She should be exhausted.  Even if she hadn’t just spent the last seven hours having sex, she should be falling-down sleepy.  Instead, she felt keyed up and over-caffeinated.  “How come I’m not tired?”

“
And why should you be tired?  Have you not absorbed the very essence of my divine power
?”  He spoke patiently, as though to a slightly stupid child.  The Great Spirit straightened, since she was obviously done rubbing her hands all over herself.  “
I will leave you now to explore the limits of your new strength.  Swear now to summon me again tomorrow
.”

“Now wait a minute,” she heard herself say.

He turned slowly to face her, his face setting into an expression that prepared to be angry.

“There are things I have to do in this tribe,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and non-provocative.  “And I don’t have that much time.”

“
Time
,” he repeated, as if the concept were vaguely distasteful to him.

“Yes, time!  Time to spend teaching Tina everything this tribe will expect her to know when I am gone.  Time to spend with my friends, my son, who I will never see again after I leave this mountain to be with you!  I don’t want to take seven hours out of every damn day just to fuck you!  I want to be able to savor what little I have left.  Isn’t that all right?”

He crossed his arms and glowered at her.  “
I must build in you the power to take Bahgree’s essence and consume it.  This too shall take time
.”

“I just…look, isn’t there any way we could compromise?”

He lifted one brow coldly.  “
Compromise.  I
.”

“Please.”

It was the right word.  She could see him considering the idea, albeit with an air of great unwillingness. 

“
What do you propose
?”

“I’ll summon you when I can, if you leave me alone the rest of the time.”

“
How is this arrangement at all to my benefit
?”

He was preparing to refuse; she could see it in his eyes.  Frantically, she cast about for some idea of what she could offer him in exchange for a little peace.  Inspiration struck.

“I promise to summon you and stay with you when I am in season.”

His eyes blazed once with vibrant lust.  He smiled slowly.  “
Indeed.  Then I accept these terms.  This cavern will be our meeting place
.” 

“Fine.”

The Great Spirit’s mouth broadened in an unselfconscious leer.  “
Long has it been since I have possessed a female in the fullness of her season
.”

“Urga comes into season every single month!”

A shadow of frustration crossed his face.  “
It is different
,” he said.  Abruptly he released her and stepped away.  “
But I warn you now, Olivia Blake, hold to your bargain.  I do not require your cooperation to couple with you.  I do not require you to be conscious.  I give you this time in the spirit of compromise.  Fail to please me, and I will have it back again.
”

Without another word, he vanished, taking the light with him and leaving Olivia alone in blackness.

2

Olivia was having an absolutely creamy dream in which she was sleeping all alone in a great big bed filled with down comforters and big puffy pillows.  Just sleeping.  Ah, bliss.

She awakened to a finger poking her in the shoulder, and rolled over with a croaking, “Muzzit?”

Beside her, Sudjummar grumbled something under his breath and snuggled down deeper in the bedding.  Olivia stared at him until it sunk in all the way that the metal-maker was sound asleep and someone else was still poking her, not too hard, once a second, regular as the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

“Hell?” she inquired politely, rolling onto her other side.

Amy was seated cross-legged in the pit.  She dropped her pointing finger back in her lap and said, in English, very pleasantly, “Happy birthday.”

Olivia frowned and rubbed at her brow, as if she could massage the meaning of the words directly into her brain.  “What?”

“Happy birthday.”

“How the hell do you know it’s my birthday?”

“I don’t,” Amy said with a shrug.  “But I know it’s mine.”

Stunned silence.

“What?” she exclaimed again, loudly enough to wake Somurg.

“I made a calendar way back in the beginning, just to stay on top of things.  Today is August 14
.  Happy birthday to me.” 

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m telling everyone.”

Olivia rubbed a little more coherence into her head.  “What the hell happened to July?” she asked.  “When did Vorgullum and the others leave?”

“June 30
.”  Amy propped her chin on her hands and added, “Dunno what happened to July.  You’ve been gone a lot.”

“I have not,” Olivia said crossly.  “I just haven’t been too damn crazy about hanging out in the commons and watching stag-headed males swagger around.”  Which was not entirely true.  Ever since Vorung had challenged and lost so spectacularly, the other males had treated Olivia with polite, if watchful, deference.  And if there were some instances that could be called flirtatious, Olivia simply stonewalled them by ignoring them.

But Amy had a point.  Olivia had spent every fifth day letting the Great Spirit fuck her blind, and, it seemed, every other day doing the same thing to Sudjummar.  Although she did her best not to hurt him, she frequently left him unconscious when she went to the women’s tunnels, there to help Tina manage the clinic and to avoid any spark of lust that might set off her stupid power again.  When the day came that Sudjummar told her she was coming into season, Olivia had managed a tactful retreat, saying that she preferred her love play to have less of urgency and more of pleasure and she’d make it up to him later.

Then she had gone to the pre-arranged place and called the Great Spirit. 

He appeared at once, already facing her.  He stalked towards her, seized her by the waist and lifted her, thrust his face towards (but not touching) the V of her thighs and inhaled.  Slowly, he lowered her, still tasting her scent with an expression of great relish, until he fit her atop his massive organ and pulled her fast around him.  His eyes were half-closed cambers of dull flame. 

Then he plunged inside her, and that was as much as she dared to experience, fairly leaping from her physical self and flying out to the very tether of her spirit.  Looking down, she could see nothing of herself, only the blazing inferno of the god’s great lust.  She did not try to play with her power, not even to heal the damage he was almost certainly inflicting on her. 

There was no sense of time at this distance.  She only hovered still and silent far above and waited until the radiance of the Great Spirit began to dim in intensity.  She lowered herself then, but cautiously.  The lower half of her body was black with agony; her womb was a white furnace of raw power.

Olivia healed herself with a flex of mental effort, dipped a toe back into her husk, decided it was safe, and fell all the way inside.

She opened her eyes, aware of tremendous heat and pressure.