Megan Hart - Naughty Bits

He pulls back finally, watches her face quietly for a moment. Then he says, “I’m leaving today, heading down to Cozumel to do some diving.”

“I hear it’s very beautiful there.”

“It is.” He pauses. “Come with me.”

She smiles, shakes her head. “I can’t. I need to go home. Need to get back to…my life. Deal with some things.” She only realizes as she says it that it’s true.

He nods. “Do you even want to know my name?”

“No. I’m sorry but…”

“It’s all right.”

“You’re not angry?”

“What about this time with you is there to be angry about?” He reaches out, runs a finger down her cheek. “You’re like something out of a dream. Maybe it’s meant to be this way. Dream time.”

“Yes.”

That’s it exactly. He understands.

A wave crests, splashes against them. She blinks the water from her eyes, looks up at him. He leans in and licks the salty water from her lower lip, smiling. His eyes have a languid cast to them, but they are still dark, bottomless. And still seem to see right through her, into her soul. She shivers again, but this time it is not physical pleasure but something deeper.

He knows her; she is sure of it. And it is both comforting and terrifying at the same time. It is why they are here together, as though a force that is far beyond them both has determined that this moment should be.

She won’t question it further. Whatever else may happen doesn’t matter. She is satisfied with knowing this much.

YESTERDAY AND LONG AGO, IN A KINGDOM FAR FROM here but right next door, there lived a handsome young man and his equally beautiful young wife. She had hair the color of sunshine, eyes like a summer sky and skin like rich cream. Her name was Ilina, and the young man loved her more than anything else in the world.

Ilina, for her part, loved her handsome young husband. Pitor was strong, with muscled arms and legs that had no trouble chopping wood or building fences. His hair, the color of the forest’s deepest shadows, hung to his shoulders in ripples like silk, and his eyes shone like the night sky littered with stars.

If Ilina had one small wish, it was that Pitor could be as satisfied with their humble cottage and plot of land as she was, but though her husband worked long and hard, he hated the labor that brought them their food and the roof above their heads. No matter how Ilina tried to soften the small rooms with her handwoven tapestries or delicately embroidered pillows, night after night Pitor looked around their home with dissatisfaction on his face.

“I love you,” she told him. “No matter if we eat on gold and silver or on wooden trenchers, Pitor, I love you.”

But Pitor would not be satisfied, no matter what Ilina did. And each day when he came home from chopping wood in the forest, he grew angrier and more sullen. Nothing Ilina did could move him to smile.

A time of drought and misfortune came upon the land. Pitor had to travel farther and farther into the woods to find trees he could chop for profit, until at last one day he’d traveled so far he couldn’t make it home before dark. Though he ached to return to his beloved Ilina and knew she would worry for his safety, he knew how foolish traveling in the dark would be. He made himself a small camp and prepared to spend the night. He dared not even burn one small portion of the wood he’d gathered, for not only would it be taking food from Ilina’s mouth to use the wood he intended to sell, but the risk of deadly fire in the dry forest was too great. Instead, he pulled his cloak around himself and hunkered down, unable even to sleep lest a beast attack him in the night.

Nevertheless, weariness overtook him, and Pitor’s eyes closed. He dreamed of his love, of her touch and of her kiss, and woke with his cock straining the front of his trousers.

“Ah, sweet,” said a voice from the shadows. “What a prize you hold between your legs. How I long for a man to fill me up with what you’ve got.”

Convinced he was dreaming, Pitor sat up with a shake of his head. Laughter curled like smoke from the darkness. A woman stepped from behind a tree. The sight of her sent fear and desire coursing through him in equal amounts, and Pitor sprang to his feet, his hatchet ready to defend against her.

“You know me?” The woman’s dark hair swirled around her face.

Pitor’s breath heaved. The closer she stepped the more aroused he became, until all he could think of was satisfying the carnal urges flooding him.

The woman was upon him, astride him, before he knew how to object.

“Who are you?” he cried, stricken, for he’d never been unfaithful to his wife before.

“You don’t need to know.”

He turned and was on her before she could escape, the blade of his ax to her throat, but she only laughed. To his shame, his cock twitched and rose at the sound of it. She reached between them to grab and stroke him fully erect.

“You should be better satisfied with what you have, woodsman, else you lose it all. Let me show you what you could have.”

Pitor jerked away from her and lowered the ax.“I love my wife.”

The woman stood, her eyes flashing in a face still covered with shadows. “Come with me and be my love, and we will walk the forest as monarchs.”

He shook his head. “No!”

She tilted her head. “No? Then fuck me once with that sweet prick, and I’ll reward you for your efforts.”

Pitor’s hand trembled. “No reward you could offer me would be enough for me to betray my wife.”

“Not even the life of your child?”

Pitor gasped aloud. “I have no children!”

Ilina had lost several pregnancies at great harm to her health. He knew she still longed for a babe, but he hoped for her sake she wouldn’t catch again. The woman in front of him clucked her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

“Fuck me, and your child will never know hunger, nor poverty. How is that for a reward, and for so simple a task? One your body craves already?”

“You can promise me that?”

“That and more,” promised the woman, and Pitor was lost.

As he sank into her warm, slick flesh, Pitor groaned, “Ilina!”

“Ah, yes,” said the woman atop him, the woman who smelled and felt so familiar now.

Pitor groaned again as ecstasy swept him. “Ilina!”

The woman slowed her movements, rocking against him. She bent to whisper in his ear. “I am your Ilina, if you so desire.”

Pitor’s hands gripped her hips as he thrust inside her, over and over, until his seed boiled out of him and he fell back, spent. The woman laughed and withdrew, leaving him cold in the night air. Pitor blinked, stunned at how she’d once again become a stranger.

“Don’t travel so far from home, next time,” she advised, and was gone, leaving Pitor to return to his wife.

She had meant to keep it secret from him until she knew for sure the babe grew inside her without difficulty, but Ilina didn’t regret telling Pitor about the child their love had planted, because the moment she did, the gloom and anger Pitor had allowed to overtake him vanished.

For months, Pitor returned each night to his Ilina with a smile as bright as diamonds. He made sure to bring her the finest fruits they could afford, even forsaking his own hunger to provide his wife with the best delicacies to tempt her failing appetite. Still, as Ilina’s belly swelled, the rest of her withered. She kept a smile on her face, though, while the babe inside her wriggled and squirmed.

The midwife was not pleased with the way the babe had stolen so much of Ilina’s strength. “It’s not right,” she told Pitor when Ilina had fallen into an exhausted, feverish sleep. “The labor has begun, but it’s not progressing. They’re killing her.”