Joel Shepherd - Petrodor

Errollyn didn't go crazy. He watched her, in turns curious, affectionate and intense. She tried desperately to match him, to be as cool, as controlled as he, but it wasn't working. Worse, he drew her out, as though he was pulling back on his bowstring. Finally, at her moment of greatest pleasure, he gave her a great, athletic burst that fairly set the bed to shaking. What followed was indescribable.

“Good?” he asked her when she had recovered a little, gasping and swearing against his shoulder. Cocky, arrogant serrin. It wasn't fair. He read her well enough, and grinned, nuzzling her hair.

“I'd…” she managed, when she could get a functioning word out. “I'd thought it would hurt, or…or something.”

“Doesn't always.” He kissed her ear, and progressed down her neck. “Would you like some more?”

“I…I don't know that I can. Can you?”

“Always.”

She tried to give him a hard look but it turned into a laugh, and then they were kissing again. He did some things to her that she'd only heard described, and those by disreputable sources. Worse, she loved it. Perhaps her critics were right, and she was depraved. It was nothing she hadn't imagined doing, if only she could have found the right man. Or, as seemed more likely the case with Errollyn, the wrong man in the right circumstances. This time, when she climaxed, Errollyn came with her.

After they'd lain together for a while, warm and a little sweaty, Sasha remembered something else. “Damn, I have to take my powder.”

“There's no rush. It works even after a few days.”

The powder was a habit with Sasha. She did not know if she would have the opportunity to swallow the stuff if she were captured again, certainly not all captors would be as considerate of her dignity as the Archbishop of Torovan. But she'd always considered it worth carrying, just in case. This was the first time she'd considered taking it for amorous reasons.

“You seem to know a lot about this,” she remarked.

Errollyn shrugged. “Serrin are educated young.”

“How young?”

Errollyn smiled, a dazzling blaze of green eyes. It sent a thrill up her spine…and through her loins. “I was taken aside by a nice girl in my fourteenth year. She had sixteen years, and she decided my time had come.”

Sasha shrugged. “That's not so young. In some parts of Lenayin, girls marry and bear children younger than that.”

“Serrin women cannot conceive younger than yourself. Sometimes not until twenty-five.”

Sasha blinked up at him. “Truly?” Errollyn nodded. Sasha had known that serrin women had few children compared to humans, but that was all. Another thought occurred to her. “How do you know it isn't the male seed that's weak?” she challenged.

Errollyn shook his head playfully, so that his thick grey hair fell on her face. “Serrin women have the same difficulties with human men.”

“And human females conceive quickly when mounted by the virile young men of Saalshen?” It was by far the oddest conversation she'd ever had-naked on her back with a man between her legs. Something about it was wonderful, beyond the simple eroticism. All her life, she'd been the crazy tomboy who wore pants, rode horses and broke things. She'd rarely had the chance to be a woman, in truth, and she hated all of the things that in the eyes of most Lenays, would have made her one. All except this…but she'd never had the chance to do this before. Not safely, with someone she'd have trusted with far more than just her virginity. Now, she felt…womanly. She flexed her legs more tightly about Errollyn's waist, and liked the way that felt.

“Virile old men too.” Errollyn ground himself against her, sensuously. Sasha winced, biting her lip, but trying to look defiant. That didn't work either. “It's instantaneous.”

“I'd better take my powder then.”

“No. Stay.” He kissed her, gently. “There's no rush. Two days after is fine.”

Sasha sighed and reached for a blanket that had come loose in their lovemaking. She drew it over them both. The air had a chill, most unlike the warmth of recent weeks. “I have to go soon,” she told him. “There's work to be done.”

Errollyn studied her, one hand toying with her hair. “You're sad.”

Sasha smiled, and wrapped her arms around his middle. “Only out there,” she said.

“Kessligh will be fine,” Errollyn assured her. “He'll be a better swordsman on one good leg than most people manage on two.”

“I know.” She shook her head against the pillow. “It's not just Kessligh. It's…all this suffering. Is…is this my life? Do you think?”

“Do you think?”

Sasha rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I…damn, I shouldn't be thinking about this now. I don't want to spoil it.”

“I'd like to think I mean more to you than just a good fuck,” Errollyn remarked. Sasha blinked at him. They'd been speaking Lenay, of course. It astonished her how that was just an unconscious habit with people she trusted.

“I didn't mean that ,” Sasha retorted.

“I know,” Errollyn said mildly. “I'm just saying that if I wanted to bed some girl who was pretty and said nothing of substance, I'd pay some midslopes whore for a night.”

Sasha smiled. “Oh, I doubt you'd have to pay.” She brushed shaggy hair from his face. “It just struck me today…walking past these piles of burning corpses.” Errollyn stroked her hair. She took a deep breath. “I've always had this…very simple equation. Every time Kessligh's training became too painful, every time I hurt myself in sparring, or fell off a horse, or awoke one morning feeling just so stiff and awful that I couldn't possibly rise from my bed, I told myself that if this weren't my life, then it would have to be Baen-Tar, and Alythia's life, all pretty dresses and gossip and marriage. And suddenly, my present situation wouldn't seem so bad.

“Today on the docks, I thought about that equation once more, and…and suddenly pretty dresses and awful gossiping twits didn't seem like such a bad life after all. You know?”

“I know.” Errollyn nodded. “I was raised in the foothills of the Telesil Mountains. My uman was Dahlren.” Sasha gazed up at him wonderingly. Errollyn did not speak of his childhood often. “She was an old thing, and unimpressed with people, human or serrin. The world of wild things was her world. She was too old to take an uma, but she took me nonetheless. I grew up mostly alone, save for Dahlren, and she wasn't much for conversation. I learned the ways of animals, I learned the herbs of healing lore and I learned to hunt. Sometimes I look around in this city, and wonder what I'm doing here. I dream of greenery when I sleep. I dream of trees, Sasha. Do you dream of trees?”

“There's an old vertyn tree,” Sasha murmured sadly. “It grew at the back of our house on the hillside. I climbed it many times when I was younger, and later, Andreyis climbed it with me. It always amazed me that I could be so high, and yet the mountains were so much higher. It made me think about the scale of things, and about the Goeren-yai saying, that one could never trust a human judgment of size and power, and how all the greatest warriors of history were as nothing compared to the mountains. I dream of that tree sometimes.”

“Dahlren died when I had just thirteen summers,” Errollyn continued. He looked sad and thoughtful. Sasha took the hand in her hair and entwined her fingers with his. “That was terrible. We lived mostly alone, there was just a little village down from the shoulder of the hill where we had our small farm. I had help with the va'eth aln , the funeral rites, but not much else. I insisted on staying on after that, on my own…I was stubborn, you would say. I continued my own learnings, as Dahlren had done. I think it changed me. I sometimes wonder what my life might have been like had I taken a different uman. But I am who I am, and wonderings will achieve nothing.”