“And yet the spell was broken. Half broken, at least. If not by the Seer’s magic, and not by yours, then what accounts for it?”
“I don’t know.”
Akraz gazed down at her for a long time. She noticed that he held both his hands in both of hers, as a bridegroom would hold a bride during the handfasting of the marriage ceremony. The simple, unconscious gesture warmed her.
“It would still be best for me to leave you,” he said.
“I thought you intended to help my people counter Zathstragomal’s plan to conquer Sylvindell.”
“Ah, that.” His gaze shifted away from hers. “Yes. Of course. Will your people listen to me, though?”
“They think you are an elf. If your plan seems sound, they will listen.”
“In that case,” he said, “Would you rather I show my true face during the day, to hide that I am a goblin while we are before the eyes of men and elves? Or would you rather I showed my true face by night, when I am alone with you, but admit my goblin nature to the others?”
Laya trembled at the thought of what her own people might do to him if they knew he was the Goblin General, Akraz the Terrible. She might not be able to save his life. Even if she could, she would certainly not be allowed to be with him. How much simpler it would be if no one else knew the truth! Passing him off as an elf from a distant tribe had fallen into their laps like an ideal solution.
“You mustn’t let them suspect what you are,” Laya said. “Oh—gods—did you tell Hunter your name?”
“He didn’t ask. He was more concerned about you. He called you by your battle name, Nemesis.”
“Oh thank the gods. We must think of a proper Elven name for you. Something close to your real name, but not so obviously, uh…”
“Goblin?”
“Guttural. Goblins always sound as though they are spitting their names at one another. Elven names should roll off the tongue, like music. How about Acariel? Could you answer to that?”
His expression was strangely bleak. “Yes, Nemesis.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Isn’t that the name you would have given in Zathstragomal’s dungeon, if I had not already known your true name?”
“Yes,” she admitted. Indeed, the wizard had never learned or cared to learn her true name. All he’d wanted from her were the passwords to Sylvindell. “I see what you mean.”
For some reason, though, it bothered her. It doesn’t matter, she told herself. When he next holds me in his arms and drives his cock into me, he will call out my true name as he comes. She shivered in anticipation. Already, she hungered to feel him inside her again.
Hunter procured horses for the three of them. Laya would have preferred to do without her friend’s company. She wanted Akraz all to herself. However, she hadn’t the heart to tell Hunter to leave, and doubted he would have heeded her in any case. Not even the information she had imparted, that Lathaniel would, with any grace from the gods of Light, be joining them soon, could deter Hunter from escorting Laya to Sylvindell as soon as possible.
They did not press the horses as remorselessly as Zathstragomal had on Laya’s trip to Mount Murk, but they did ride well into the night. Akraz had borrowed chain mail and a helmet from Hunter, so if sunset brought a transformation to his features, Laya did not see it. They made a fireless camp and quickly fell to sleep. The next day began before dawn and continued as long into the night. The forth sunset saw them into the skirts of Sylvina Forest, where Elven magicks grew strong. Here they slowed their pace and made camp early and with a fire.
On this night, Laya waited on her sleeping roll, awake, until she heard Hunter’s telltale snores. Then she crept over to the ground roll where Akraz slept.
He had given some macho excuse to Hunter about always remaining battle ready to justify sleeping in his helmet. Laya lifted the visor. A monster’s mug slumbered within. She let the visor close again, but she did not leave. She hid herself under Akraz’s blanket. He slept with no top and his britches unlaced. Laya smoothed her hands over his broad chest. A sculptor in bronze could not have created a landscape of pectorals and abs any more adamantine, yet his skin felt as sleek as heated satin. She loved the sensuality of her skin on his skin as she palmed circles around his flat nipples.
It titillated her to remember how she had sucked his cock the last time he’d been in a somnolent state. She wondered how far she could go without awakening him now.
She slipped one hand down his breeches and found his cock. Like its master, the member slept, a soft roll slanted across his groin. Laya let her fingers brush over it. Careful to keep her fondling ghostly light, she petted the organ.
“Wake up, my lazy little soldier,” Laya urged it in a voiceless purr.
Akraz moaned in his sleep, but his eyes remained closed. However, his rod reared in Laya’s hand. She closed her fingers around it more firmly, and increased the vigor of her strokes. Within short order, the little soldier stood at attention. She smiled into Akraz’s chest. Her pussy creamed with eagerness to give the soldier a hero’s welcome. Laya released him long enough to sweep her hand through her wet cleft and drench it in her quim. With her hand motioned by her own arousal, she re-clutched his cock and worked it with slick, brisk yanks.
The anointed staff now lifted itself to her in full salute. Akraz began to thrash. His eyes still did not open, but his breathing changed, and his hands groped for her breasts. Though as far as she could tell, he was still half asleep, Akraz took over control of the interaction. Powerful arms clinched her and rolled her on top of him under the blanket. His hands guided her hips up and down to massage the length of his cock with her wet slit. At the same time he managed to capture one of her teats between his teeth. He tugged the nipple left and right, nipping it enough to cause her a frisson of half-pain, half-pleasure. Sucking the nipple further into his mouth, he drew it up against the upper side of his mouth and wagged the entire breast. The electric jolt from the nipple shot through her entire body and pooled in her clit. Excited, she rubbed her clit harder against the ridge of his cock, shuddering to orgasm.
Abruptly, he pushed her off him. She did not register his action as a rejection immediately; she was still too afloat on her climax to feel anything but a lingering haze of contentment. She only realized something was wrong when she reached again to caress his cock, and he pushed her away.
“Go back to your bed, Laya,” he said tightly. “I don’t think you would want your human friend to see you fucking a goblin.”
“No one knows what you are,” she tried to reassure him. “Hunter knows you as Acariel. Why shouldn’t I proclaim Acariel as my lover and my beloved and my betrothed to all the world?”
“Because, damn you, I know who I am,” he snarled. He sat up and ripped the helmet from his face. His gargoyle face leered at her. “This is what I am, Laya. Not the pretty elf boy Acariel we’ve spun from sugar to deceive your friends, but this. It doesn’t matter what my true face looks like, this is the face I grew up with, and grew up into. A creature of the night. The monster under the bed. A big-cocked beast who can fuck you in the nastiest fantasies of your most perverse nightmares, but not a beloved or a betrothed. Do you want me to fuck you? Is that what you want? I will, but only if you want me to fuck you wearing this face, displayed like a whore in front of all your friends, the way I fucked you in the Hall of the Dark God. Is that what you want?”
Tears streaked down her cheeks. “It doesn’t have to be like that, Akraz.”
“Call me Acariel, Nemesis,” he said in his cruelest, most mocking tone. “And go back to your own damn mat.”