A Gorean Storean

He likes the way she laughs to herself, as if at a joking, merry voice that only she can hear. She tries to disguise it, but he can see her eyes dancing and the twitching of her lips as thoughts cross her mind, thoughts that for him will remain forever a mystery.

She likes that the one thing he can't control is getting an erection whenever he looks at her. He tries to disguise it, but it makes her bite back laughter. She's naked, she's way smaller and weaker than him, he keeps her tied up a lot of the time; he can strike her or whip her whenever he likes (and does) but-

But I turn him on. When he looks at me, he feels something he can't deal with by throwing a spear or hefting a sword, or even just by fucking me. But that doesn't stop him trying.

She smiles. This one thing, in her opinion, goes a great deal of the way towards evening the score.

She's kneeling by the remains of last night's campfire, scouring a pot with ashes, and even if she weren't wrapped up in her thoughts and private laughter, she wouldn't hear him approaching from behind.

The ashes spill out of the cooking pot as he takes hold of her nipples, and she holds to it desperately as the pinch deepens into pain as loud and bright as Studio 54, clutches it as he twists and pulls; her whimper elicits a satisfied grunt, and before she knows it she's on her back, lifted and flung in a single dizzy confusion of sky and grass, and ashes are streaking her thighs in alternately dark and light streaks like a thunderstorm and dissolving as drops of sweat rain down and wash them away.

As his breathing roughens and accelerates, she tightens around him, squeezes him, and he gives a loud bellow and jerks still, and she smiles up at him and thinks, That's another one for me, then.

Lying back in the grass, regaining his breath, feeling that the squirming little she-sleen has sucked him dry, throbbing and tender, Vol of Thentis has occasion to reflect upon the consolation gift awarded to women after the Great War of the Sexes. It had always seemed a bit of a joke up to now, but he's currently feeling inclined to reconsider his religious doubt. She did something to him, by the Priest Kings; kajirae are, of course, by definition, passionate, but this one?

His balls ache as if she'd pulled them inside out. He had spent his seed into her until he was in debt.

What have you done to me, girl?

But it is with his accustomed arrogance that he slings her over the saddle as they prepare to fly, and he prevents himself from smiling just in time when she struggles (as she always does) when he ties her to the saddle rings; she knows it won't do her any good, and even if it did, where would she go? But he thinks she knows he likes subduing her. He thinks she likes it, too. She gives him a little smile, and he kisses her before vaulting up behind her. He takes up the straps that he uses to direct Thunderbolt , and the world drops away.

As the great wings spread and they gyre, weightless, ever upwards, brothers of the wind, Vol of Thentis thinks he could die at this moment and be content. Not that he normally feels otherwise; he's simply not aware of the thought- making the other man die, that's what he thinks of and it' s served him well. It is only at times like this, rising, feeling the wind and watching the trees and rivers fall away below him, that he consciously thinks of death, now, rising, rising into the sky, rising forever.

At night, he sometimes tosses and breaks a sweat, speaking in a hoarse dreaming voice to people only he can see; ever since she woke to find a sword point at her throat, she's tactfully withdrawn from him when these dreams rack and contort him in a violent cradle of suppressed memory.

However, he more often sleeps like a stone, and at those times, when he rolls away from her, she slides her arms around him and regards the strangely shaped scars that dot his back like islands in the firelight.

The feelings and motives of warriors are difficult to ascertain. Vol of Thentis is a hard man- neither friend nor foe would disagree- and romance is most certainly not a feature in a relationship between a warrior and his slave girl- so it must be simple miscommunication, the way she feels when he (already drunk, holding her between his legs and almost crushing her in his absentminded caresses, squeezing her breasts and stroking her hair) pulls out a skin bottle of ka-la-na wine and passes it to her, and drinking together he notices her eyes upon his scars (he's wearing nothing but a blanket around his shoulders) and takes her finger, tracing the pink raised flesh where a blade missed his descending aorta by inches; he is a vivid story teller, and although she understands few of his words she finds herself able to follow his story by his gesture and inflection. It makes her gasp and shudder, and he laughs when she leans down to kiss the healed wound, but his heart rises when she does so-

It must be pure coincidence that she thinks- This is the most romantic night of my life. Especially when he shows her, with a remarkable economy of gesture, exactly what he did to the man who stabbed him.

And then there are times when he draws away altogether- he won't be touched, or spoken to. He gags her, ties her hand and foot- then looks away at battles that play over and over inside his eyes, watches the procession of the dead that pass before him, friend and foe alike, marching with muffled feet towards the cities of dust; hears inside his head the screams of Tarns and of men- the pure joy and the pure terror, the moments when thought was fled and all was blood and the taste of the enemy's terror keen on the tongue. Now thoughts swarm and gnaw at him like battlefield Urts feeding on the fallen, and he reaches for the bota of paga in the saddlebag.