DEMONESS

by Misty Vixen

DISCLAIMER

If you have never read Demoness before, then you can safely disregard this disclaimer and move onto the novel. In fact, you should disregard it, as there are a few spoilers in the text below.

However, if you have read this book before, and are for any reason here again, I need to let you know that this is the new, updated version of Demoness. When I first wrote this story back in mid-2017, I thought it would be a simple novella. Even though it ballooned into a 31,000 word story, the longest thing I’d ever written at the time, I still had no idea that Demoness would become A) a series, B) my flagship franchise, and C) my favorite stories I’ve ever written.

With this in mind, I thought I should go back and make the initial entry into my biggest series a bit stronger. So, I have since gone back in and added in roughly 15,000 words of brand new content. There’s some more sex scenes and conversations between John and Yelena, and mainly the sub-plot of them going after a rogue necromancer has been expanded a lot into a larger thread with a greater danger. I really hope the new material is enjoyable.

Important note: you do not need to repurchase this title. In fact, you shouldn’t. I’ve found out the hard way that Amazon will actually send you the original version, even if you delete all traces of the book and repurchase it. Instead, here are simple instructions to get the updated version of the book:

On Amazon, go to Your Content and Devices, which is in the drop-down menu under Account & Lists.

It should bring you to the list of your Kindle books. Find Demoness on this list.

Directly under the title of the novel, on the left side of the screen, should be an orange box that reads Update Available. Click it and then say yes to the update.

And that should be it.

Thank you for reading!

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

OTHER TITLES

ABOUT ME

CHAPTER I

John Greenfield woke up drunk and for several minutes, couldn’t remember why.

He also couldn’t place where he actually was, because although the ceiling looked familiar and the bed felt familiar, it almost certainly was not his home. After a little bit, he decided that it didn’t actually matter at the moment, because his throat was so dry that he felt if he didn’t get a drink of water in the immediate future, he was going to die. It probably wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter either because that’s what his body was telling him.

John groaned thickly and sat up. Stumbling out of bed, he forced his eyes open, squinting painfully in the early morning light. Where was the water, anyway? His eye fell on his pack, discarded haphazardly at the foot of the bed, lying on its side. He took a few lurching steps towards it and dropped slowly into a crouch. His head was aching fiercely, and he was worried he might vomit. His stomach felt violent enough for it right now.

Fumbling with his pack, he got it up and reached inside. After rooting around for a moment, his hand finally wrapped around a bottle. He pulled it out and studied it briefly. Confirming it was water, he tore the cork out with his teeth, spat it onto the bed, and began drinking. He drained the entire bottle in one go.

He almost threw it all back up, but he sat down on the floor, eyes closed, breathing slowly and heavily, concentrating on not vomiting, and managed to keep it down. Slowly, he took a deep breath and let it out.

“Okay...where am I?” he muttered.

Opening his eyes, he found that the sun wasn’t quite so bright as he’d initially thought. It had that grayness to it that indicated storm clouds. It often stormed near his village. It was part of the appeal, to him at least. No rain yet, though. He surveyed the room he was in and it finally came to him: he was in his cabin.

Why was he here?

He decided he should probably try to eat something while he pulled together his memories from last night. It wasn’t like him to get blind drunk. He’d done it before, sure, but it was a very rare occurrence. Usually there was a reason behind it. Maybe not a good one, but a reason nonetheless. He wasn’t much of a drinker, honestly.

John moved across the small cabin towards the kitchen area and then stopped. Even the sight of food-related items, let alone food itself, made his stomach rumble dangerously, threatening sickness. He sighed and turned away, moving over to the washbasin instead. He crouched down to the chest on the floor beside the basin and opened it up, where several bottles of water resided. They were at least a month old, but whatever, water didn’t really go bad. He opened and drained four of them into the basin, not really feeling like going out to the well at the moment, or outside at all, and then used some of the basic magic he knew to heat the water.

After locating a washrag and a bar of soap, he stripped down naked, he’d gone to sleep fully clothed, apparently, boots and all, and began washing up. He remembered last night. He remembered...being furious. So angry it felt like his blood was boiling. No, he realized. Not just last night, but the whole day.

A lot had happened.

He remembered...a felis. A beautiful felis. He wasn’t sure of her name, it started with an H though. She had a nice tail and beautiful red-orange fur and her cat-ears were quite fetching. She was a merchant, traveling through town, and they had met at an inn he liked to eat lunch at. He’d been having lunch when it had happened.

They’d started chatting. She had been cautious, and he didn’t blame her, because this part of the country wasn’t really known for its progressive attitude towards felis and beryl. Okay, most of the country wasn’t known for that, but they had gotten on really well. John was hoping for a roll in the hay, and from the way she was smiling at him, brushing against him with her tail, he thought that maybe she was hoping for the same thing.

He loved having sex with felis. They were often extremely enthusiastic lovers.

And then one of his fellow citizens had wandered over, drunk, and started causing shit, asking the felis why the fuck didn’t she just go back to where she belonged? Asking if she was going to rob him when he wasn’t looking like all the “lying, lowlife felis fucks”? It was insanely rude even by the standards John had gotten used to among the idiot locals. So, he’d politely told the guy to fuck off. He recognized him, vaguely, as a local butcher.

Well, it had kind of just snowballed from there.

A couple of the butcher’s friends came over, and a beryl and another felis who also happened to be nearby and overheard what could hardly be called a conversation, came over as well. It wasn’t long before a fight broke out. By the time the guard got there, the butcher and his friends were on the floor, two of them passed out, and the butcher with a broken nose. Although it ended up working heavily against the felis and the beryl, the fact that the guards were pretty racist themselves actually ended up working for him. While they did arrest the two felis and the beryl, they didn’t arrest the asshole and his friends. They also didn’t arrest John.

He’d followed them to the local garrison, where they were locking the three up, intent on doling out sentences and fines to them, and John had done his best to talk them out of it, trying to explain the situation. Thankfully, the captain of the guard wasn’t a complete and utter moron, although he was kind of shitty, so after close to two hours of going back and forth, hammering all the details out, and trying to get the situation sorted out, (all of that time, of course, the three out-of-towners had been put in the local prison), he’d finally gotten the man to drop the charges and let them out on the condition that someone paid a hundred and fifty gold and they left immediately.

Frustrated, just wanting to be out of there and for them to be free, because this was fucking ridiculous, he’d paid the money himself and gotten them out of the prison as fast as he could. From there, he’d explained the situation to them, and they agreed they had no problem leaving. He ended up going with them back to the inn, (all three of them had actually been renting rooms there, and that’s where their stuff was).

Thankfully, the asshole butcher and his friends were gone.

The innkeeper hadn’t been all that happy to see them, but John had told him that they were leaving, and he’d quieted down. John kept apologizing as he helped them get their things together. That hadn’t taken too long, and the beryl, who had been a hunter, had left promptly, thanking John stiffly and heading right for the edge of town. The second felis, also a merchant, had needed a healing potion, which he’d neglected to mention until just then, and since he didn’t want to fuck around with finding one, John just given him one of the two he happened to have on him. They’d headed to the city’s edge then, but the woman he’d been talking to lingered.

She’d explained that she was desperately low on money, and kind of needed to sell some of her wares in this town, as she’d spent the last of her money on the inn. John helped her out best he could, basically buying some of her wares. She sold furs, mainly, and he knew he could resell them. After that, she’d thanked him. Then, after a bit of consideration, she’d leaned forward and given him a long, lingering kiss on the lips.

“I live up north, in Redwood,” she’d said, smiling. “If you’re ever there, come find me. And I can thank you more...personally.”

That had brought a genuine smile to his face, and he’d said that he would definitely look forward to that, and he’d watched her walk away, towards the setting sun, unable to keep from checking out her ass just a little.

It was really nice. She was in great shape.

And then he had realized that the sun was setting, and hadn’t it just been lunchtime? Frustrated, hungry, and tired, he’d gone back to the inn for a drink. He’d just wanted to get drunk, because this whole thing had him so pissed he could spit. He’d grown up in this town, had left it a few times, but always wound up coming back for one reason or another. He’d always been more attracted to other species than his own, and that was something that was hard to live with in a small town, which was what drove him away.

After heading back to the inn and grabbing a drink with what money he had left, John had half-expected to run into the butcher or his friends. But he didn’t. Instead, he ran into another idiot. By then, news of what had happened had spread across the town. Gossip often did. The guy had come in and sat next to John at the bar, asking if he’d heard about how old Rick had given some no-good, thieving fucking felis a good ass-kicking after they tried to rob him, and John had bought a bottle of heavy booze and walked out.

He’d do something stupid otherwise.

He hadn’t wanted to go home. No, he wanted to be out of this town, isolated, somewhere in the woods, and the cabin he owned was perfect.

Which took him to right now.

He’d apparently gone here on an empty stomach and drank the whole bottle. Which was why he was still kind of drunk, and on the way to a bad hangover. When he was done washing up, John shoved his worn clothes into the basin to soak for a bit. He dried off, grabbed a new outfit, and dressed. Once he had his boots laced up again, he felt a bit better. Not good, but at least on the road to decent. He grabbed another bottle of water and drank only half of it in one go this time. He still didn’t want to eat. Instead, he washed his clothes, then wrung them out and walked outside.

The clothes line was still up at least.

It was a couple hours past sunrise, and there was indeed a cloud cover overhead. The sun was peeking through, but he thought it might rain soon. That’d be nice. After hanging up his clothes, not caring if they got wetter if it did rain, John went back into the cabin and decided it was time to get some food in him.

His stomach didn’t turn over at the thought of it, at least.

He considered using his remaining healing potion, because that would actually help with the hangover that was slowly coming on, but something told him not to. His instincts. They were usually right, so he held off on it and instead began hunting through the kitchen. It had been about a month, maybe a bit longer, since he’d been here. Several of his food stuffs were bad now, and he threw them out. When he looked at what was left, nothing was particularly appealing. With a sigh, he realized he was going to have to go catch and kill something. It would take effort, but he suddenly wanted to be out of the cabin.

Yearning the fresh air, John hunted around for a bit, finding his bow and quiver, made sure it was filled with arrows, and pulled on his pack. Sufficiently ready, he headed out the back door and struck off into the forest surrounding his cabin.

…

John began to feel better as he moved out into the forest.

There was a pleasant chill to the air and he could feel the forest around him, a living thing. Peaceful and serene, for the most part. At least around here. Nothing like the Emerald Wild, far over on the east coast of the land, full of magic and monsters and chaos. He’d been there more than once, and it had certainly been fun, but he preferred his peaceful forest. For the first stretch of time, he didn’t even try to stalk anything, he just wanted to let his thoughts settle, because last night had upset him more than he’d realized.

The last few months hadn’t really been going too well for him.

It wasn’t until now that he actually realized why that was, what it was that was bothering him. His life. It was just...boring. He was thirty years old now. He’d spent the majority of those three decades in Falling Rock, for better or for worse. He’d been born here. His parents had raised him here and been a constant part of his life, until they’d died, unexpectedly, one day out on the road. It had been ten years ago. He’d stayed home to watch their house while they took a trip to the next village over. His father had been looking for a new buyer for furs and pelts, and apparently there was someone offering a good deal over there.

They’d been attacked by a pack of wolves and killed.

A traveling merchant had found their remains. It took two days for them to figure out who they were and report the situation to John. He’d gone a little numb there for awhile, having the remains brought back and burying them in the local graveyard. He still visited them, once a year. For a little while, he’d been too busy to really think. His father had been in debt, it turned out, and they had been in danger of losing the house.

Naturally, the debt fell on John’s shoulders. Whereas before he’d been one of three people with an income, paying the bills, now he was just one, and burdened with debt to boot. It had been a hectic few months after that. He remembered frantically searching both the home and the family cabin for anything of value, because he had to pay at least some portion of the debt within the next few days or they were going to boot his ass out.

He’d managed to find some gold stashed out at the cabin, and he’d been hanging onto a handful of precious gems he’d been collecting for years, and he managed to find enough odds and ends, stuff that wasn’t going to see any use anymore, and had managed to sell all that at the local market. He’d scraped together enough coin to buy himself another month. From there, he’d hunted as much as he could, and took any job that was on offer. He was at the town board every day, taking up any job, from basic roof repair to hauling trash to gardening. Within a month, he got the debt taken care of, the various coffers paid off.

Apparently, his father had something of a gambling problem.

The next month was spent getting enough coin together to pay off the past few months’ bills, which apparently hadn’t been paid either. And from there, finally, his life began to stabilize. He’d just...kept working.

John didn’t think about leaving until five years later.

He left town for three months, traveling abroad, deciding to see if he had what it took to be an adventurer. He’d plundered a few ruins, earned some good gold selling off loot he got from there and from a few bandits he’d managed to surprise on the road. Then there was the coin he’d earned protecting merchants traveling between cities.

That was where things began to get...interesting, sexually.

He’d done okay with the local women, or he thought so at least. He’d had a few longer relationships since he’d become old enough to date, and the sex ranged from boring to pretty good. But he’d always wondered what it might be like to make love with a felis, or a beryl, or an elf. And he had found out, on the road.

A beautiful felis with stunning blue eyes and the most vibrant red-orange fur he’d ever seen asked him if he’d be willing to help her clear out a cave of spiders. She was willing to split the reward. He’d agreed and afterwards, they’d collected and decided to stick together, and move on to another town. They’d stopped to make camp that night and she’d basically jumped him, and he’d learned that all his hopes were true: sex with a felis was simply stunning. And so, he’d gone on to try and pursue casual sexual relationships with a lot of women after that, felis and elves and beryl. And...a few others, during his travels.

He didn’t really talk about those. No one would understand.

But he’d come back, after that first time, because he’d made enough to pay off his house and the cabin. And he had, and had lived in a bit of luxury for a time. But the call of the wild came back to him within a year, and he left once more, for two months this time, heading north, to the Frost Mountains. And this became his life, heading out about once a year and then coming back. The only problem was...he didn’t know why he was coming back.

And that simple problem had become a big one lately.

Because he realized, all at once, that he hated Falling Rock.

He hated the small-minded idiots, the racism, the corruption among the guard, the local lord who didn’t give two shits about any of them.

So why did he come back?

Why stick around at all?

As he was contemplating this, John’s trained eyes fell across something that didn’t fit at all. He saw blood on a tree, but it wasn’t normal blood. It was very, very dark, almost black. He wasn’t sure he knew of anything that bled almost-black blood. Moving quickly and quietly, suddenly in hunter mode, his bow drawn, arrow notched, John followed the trail. Something had been injured, and judging by what his senses were telling him, it was not an animal, but something like a human or an elf. But what? He had his answer a moment later.

Stepping into a clearing, John’s eyes fell immediately onto an unconscious figure wearing a tattered gray traveling robe. He could see three arrows sticking out of the figure’s back. The feet were covered in boots, the hands gloved, and a hood hid the face. He put the arrow back and instead took out his dagger, wary. Something was weird about the hood, something poking up into the top of it, almost like...mini-antlers or something. Crouching, using the tip of the dagger, he slowly pulled the large gray hood back. He gasped, stumbling backwards.

The figure was a demon.

She was injured, being hunted. John heard a shout come from somewhere not too far away. They were looking for her.

“Shit,” John muttered after a few seconds, coming to a decision.

He sheathed the knife, knelt, carefully scooped her up, and trying to mind the arrows, he started heading back to his cabin.

The shouts seemed to be getting louder.

CHAPTER II

“What the fuck am I doing?” John whispered to himself.

He felt sick again, but this one was a totally different sickness. This was the illness born of anxiety. His head still hurt though. Looking down, John stared at the unconscious face of the demon. She wasn’t evil, and that was the only reason he was even doing this. Although just because she wasn’t flat out evil didn’t mean she might not straight-up murder his ass if she woke up now. She’d certainly passed out under less than ideal circumstances. And that also didn’t mean she didn’t have some possible hatred for humans.

He had a vague idea of the demon types and hierarchies. It had been taught to him by a succubus he’d encountered once, two years ago. An absolutely beautiful succubus named Lexi. There were, in fact, evil demons, who wanted nothing more than to murder and torture those of this realm. But they weren’t all like that. Not even succubi, who, if you believed the myths, would seduce and murder you at the drop of a hat.

Lexi hadn’t been like that at all.

She hadn’t even asked for anything in exchange for sex. She’d just liked him, she’d said, when he’d asked why she was doing this for him.

And nothing bad had come of it, so he was inclined to believe her.

What he was seeing with this demon, (or demoness, he supposed), what with the vaguely human appearance, what he now saw as horns coming out of the top of her head, the darker skin tone, the deeply black hair, all of these pointed to the fact that she was...not exactly good, per say, but her species should have no specific problem with those of this realm, and could probably be reasoned with. Unless he was mis-remembering.

Well, here’s to hoping she was reasonable.

John managed to get back to his cabin in record time. He got the front door opened and closed without putting her down. For the moment, he laid her on his bed, staring unhappily at the arrows still sticking out of her. Had to get those out of there. As he reached for the first one, he heard another shout, distant, but not distant enough. Shit! They were getting closer. He was convinced now that they were hunting the demoness.

She’d at least stopped bleeding while he’d been carrying her, so they wouldn’t have much of a trail to follow.

After a moment’s indecision, he finally moved around his bed to the other side, where he hauled open a hatch. The cabin had a basement that had once served as his parent’s bedroom. It was small and sparsely furnished, and he’d often wondered why they had their bedroom down there. As an adult, he now knew: to fuck in private. Although when he fucked the occasional felis huntress or beryl merchant here, he hadn’t had to do it in private. Actually, he hadn’t been down here in awhile, months at least. It was dark down there.

With no time to waste, he gently set her at the edge of the opening. Crawling down, he then pulled her carefully through. She was heavier than she looked. He used magic to light a candle sitting on a nearby table, then he laid her out on a dusty bed. Working fast, making sure there was nothing in the room that shouldn’t be, he snuffed out the candle, scrambled up the ladder, and closed the hatch. He pushed his bed partway over it, then quickly began stripping down until he was completely naked. The voices were definitely getting closer.

John managed to rub his eyes until they were red and grab the almost empty bottle of booze he’d brought with him before there was a heavy knock at the door. Acting miserable and hungover, (not much of an acting job right now), John cursed and made a few noises, praying to whatever God or Goddess was listening that the demoness wouldn’t wake up, and hauled the door open. He stood there, squinting in the light, butt-ass naked.

Three men in armor, not guards but hunters or mercenaries maybe, stood holding swords outside. They looked invigorated by their hunt, but upon seeing him, became at once both bewildered and distinctly uncomfortable.

“Yeah?” John grunted.

“Uh...sir...um...” The leader cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Have you, by chance, seen a demon around here just lately?”

“Demon?” John replied, squinting at him. He drained what was left of the booze, belched, wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, spat. “No. Been asleep. Haven’t seen anything.”

“Okay. Well, perhaps it’s best if you stay inside. There is a demon around. If you see anything, please, let the city guard know. They’re patrolling the area.”

“Uh-huh,” John replied.

With that, they left. Quickly.

Sighing with relief after he closed and locked the door, John waited until they were far out of sight, then quickly re-dressed. Double-checking to make sure his doors and windows were locked, and that no one else was around, he grabbed the healing potion, and then moved back over to the hatch. Pulling his bed aside, he lifted the hatch, then paused.

“Hello?” he asked, waiting.

No sound. Okay, she was probably still out. Either that or waiting for him down there. He poked his head down through the hole and scrutinized what he could see. She was still breathing regularly, and she seemed unconscious. Okay. John moved down the ladder and lit the candle once more. By its flickering light, he sat down carefully on the bed. He wanted to get the arrows out. Setting the healing potion far away on the floor, just in case, (he didn’t want it to break, it was his only one), he grabbed onto the first arrow shaft.

Better to do this while she was out.

As he pulled, her eyes suddenly snapped open and bright, flickering eyes of flame zeroed in on him. She let out a snarl and punched him in the face, sending him sprawling.

“Wait! Wait! I’m trying to help!” he cried.

She was on him in a blur, a knife to his throat.

“Where am I?” she growled, her voice rough.

He laid there frozen, looking up at her, his eyes wide. “You’re in my basement. My name is John. I found you unconscious in the forest less than an hour ago and men were hunting you. I brought you here and hid you, then sent them away. They don’t know you’re here. They think you’re still out there in the forest somewhere,” he said as quickly and calmly as he could, making sure to enunciate everything he said carefully.

The demoness stared at him intently, seconds ticking uncomfortably by. The blade was against his throat, but she held it with such precision that it wasn’t actually digging in. The metal was warm and sharp.

“Fine,” she said, pulling it back and sheathing the blade. She straightened up slowly, then winced, looking down at the arrows.

“I was just going to take those out. Um...I have a healing potion over there,” he said, pointing to the bottle on the floor. “...can I get up now?”

“Fine,” she repeated, and sat down heavily on the bed.

He got up slowly, carefully, and grabbed the healing potion. He turned to look at her. “The arrows. You want me to-”

She grabbed one of the arrows and yanked it out, wincing but otherwise remaining silent. “Okay then,” he murmured.

She ripped the other two out and tossed them aside, her face unreadable. He pulled the cork out of the potion and offered it to her. The demoness took it, studying him closely, then scrutinized the potion. She smelled it, then threw it back without pause. The demoness drained the entire bottle in one go, then set it back down on the floor.

“Where are we?” she asked after a bit.

“In my cabin. Um...not far from where you collapsed,” he replied.

“Is there anyone else here?”

He shook his head. “Just me. And there shouldn’t be anyone else. I mean, I’m not expecting anyone else. It’s rare, but sometimes people come knocking.”

She grunted and stared at the floor. The blood that had begun flowing from the reopened wounds was beginning to slow, but not as fast as he would have liked. Health potions were supposed to work faster than that. Maybe it was because she was a demoness. He moved slowly over and sat down in the only chair in the room.

Neither of them spoke.

“Um...would you...like anything?” he asked cautiously.

The demoness sighed. “I require food,” she replied quietly.

“Okay. I can do that. Can you eat food from this, uh, realm?”

“Yes. Meat, preferably.”

“Okay, perfect. I’m a hunter, so I can make that happen without too much trouble.” He stood up and she tensed slightly. “Uh...I’m perfectly okay with you staying here, but if you want or need to, I mean, I won’t stop you from leaving.”

“I am injured and weak,” she replied. “This is the most logical place for me right now.”

“Okay, fair enough. Would you like to come upstairs?”

“It will be safer if I stay out of sight.”

“That makes sense. All right. I’ll...I’m going to close the hatch, but it won’t be locked or blocked, so if you have to, you can come up.” He moved over to the ladder, then hesitated. He turned to look at her. She stared back inscrutably. “My name’s John.” Had he told her his name already? He suddenly couldn’t remember.

This was all happening so fast.

She stared at him a moment longer. “Yelena,” she said finally.

“It’s, um, good to meet you.”

“And you,” she replied, not quite meeting his eyes. He decided it would be less awkward if he left, so he climbed the ladder.

…

This was pretty insane.

John had no idea what he was doing, but as he began stalking once more through the forest, (rain was definitely on the way), he noticed that he wasn’t upset anymore. He was nervous and excited and a little afraid, but he wasn’t pissed off or depressed any longer. He felt like he was doing something now, like his life, however temporary, had shape.

He was also realizing that yes, he could, in fact, be attracted to demons.

Being sexually attracted to elves and felis and beryl wasn’t really that weird, at least he didn’t think so. It was taboo, but most people didn’t actually freak out about it. Sleeping with dryads and mermaids and harpies, on the other hand, was...not technically forbidden, but certainly a damn sight more dangerous than the ‘civilized’ species in terms of letting someone know. Telling the story about that one time you met a pretty dryad lady on a solo hunting trip deep in the woods and ended up making passionate love with her, (not once but four times), was liable to get you thrown out and reviled by your neighbors.

Having sex with a literal demon, on the other hand?

They might actually kill him for that.

But did he care? And did it even matter? Although he thought Yelena was quite striking, he very seriously doubted she felt the same way about him. Even if she hated him, (he didn’t think she did, she just seemed wary of him, which was perfectly understandable), he didn’t have a problem with letting her stay in his cabin while she healed up. He didn’t even mind spending coin on her to help her. As crazy as it sounded, she’d given his directionless life a direction. And that just felt fucking good, not just to have a purpose but also to help someone.

Even if that someone was a demoness.

John spied a rabbit, froze, aimed, waited, then fired. The arrow sailed true and killed the rabbit instantly. A good, clean kill.

As he grabbed the rabbit and moved on, he spied another, not too far away.

He hoped Yelena liked rabbit.

…

He ended up catching four rabbits and by that point was too hungry to keep going.

After getting back to the cabin, he skinned and cleaned them, then started a fire in the backyard in the pit and skewered them, then set the skewer slowly spinning with a simple spell he’d learned awhile ago, and then he headed inside.

“It’s John!” he called as he closed the door. That’s all he needed, for her to freak out and hit him again. Or worse.

He moved over to the hatch and opened it up. “You okay down there?”

“Fine,” Yelena replied.

He’d half expected her to be gone, actually. “I’m cooking up the meat right now. It shouldn’t be too long. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” she repeated. She seemed to like that word. She was lying on the bed. He wasn’t sure, but it seemed like she might have been sleeping.

“Did your wounds stop bleeding?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“Sorry. Just...trying to be helpful,” he said. He thought for a moment if he was forgetting anything. A thought occurred to him. “Do you want to wash up?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

It took a little bit, but he drew a bucket of water from the well, heated it up, then carefully lowered it in through the hole and onto the bare stone floor of the basement. He then got her a washrag and a bar of soap.

“I’ll be up here,” he said.

“Fine,” she replied.

He closed the hatch, then moved back outside and checked on the rabbits. They seemed to be coming along nicely. John looked up at the sky, staring at the gray clouds that were moving in. A chilled wind blew through the area. A layer of uncertainty fell across him. There was a demon woman in his basement washing up, and he was making them both breakfast. He had lied to cover for her before he’d even exchanged a single sentence with her. And yet...he didn’t regret it. He wasn’t very nervous, either.

John supposed this was one of those situations where you just had to let it play out and deal with it as it happened.

After a little while, the meal was finished. He doused the flame and brought the rabbits inside. He looked through his selection of drinks and finally just settled on a pair of bottles of water. He then set the small table, two rabbits for each of them. As he finished up, he heard the hatch opening up and turned to face her.

Yelena came up out of the basement completely naked.

Judging from the absolute lack of attempting to cover herself in any way, it was apparent that she had done this intentionally. He tried very hard not to look at her, to check her out, but for a few seconds he couldn’t help it.

She had a very nice body.

It was trim and spare, the muscles well defined and wiry, though her thighs had a pleasant thickness to them, her hips a nice roundness. Her breasts, topped by dark nipples, were somewhere between small and medium.

He also noted two other distinct features about her.

She had a thin, black, prehensile tail, and she had polished black hooves for feet.

“Um, hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she replied, standing up fully now that she was free of the hatch and the basement. She momentarily studied her wounds. They had stopped bleeding, though they didn’t look closed entirely. He was surprised to see that she was actually taller than him, maybe six-foot two or three. “It’s colder up here,” she said, looking at him.

“I...um, let me get you some bandages for those wounds, and some clothes,” he said.

“I would appreciate it.” She didn’t seem so...hostile wasn’t the right word, standoffish, maybe, or wary. She’d been a bit stiff and terse before, but she seemed marginally more relaxed now, a bit more casual. And apparently very casual if she was okay with walking around completely naked. As he gathered up the supplies, he was unable to keep from noting that demon women apparently did not have any pubic hair.

Or maybe she just kept it shaved.

“I could bandage those for you,” he said as he got his rarely used medicine bag out. Healing potions normally did the trick for almost everything.

“If you wish,” she replied. Even calmer, her voice still sounded rough and kind of dangerous. She laid down on her side on his bed and he came to sit beside her. It felt very strange. He cleaned and bandaged her wounds as quickly and proficiently as he could. To her credit, she didn’t wince or make a noise. Once that was done, he gave her a pair of his pants and a long-sleeved shirt. They just about fit her, he saw after she’d pulled them on.

The pair of them then sat down at the table and began to eat.

Neither of them spoke through most of the meal, but eventually, John’s curiosity got the better of him and he asked her the question he’d been thinking about for awhile now.

“So...Yelena. How did you, uh...end up in this situation?”

She looked up at him, and her expression suggested she’d been expecting this. “I came to this realm the previous night,” she replied. “I was looking for something. I ran afoul of one of your awful bear creatures. It...surprised me. Clawed me. I ran and ended up hiding in a small cave. I healed myself, but it took most of my magical reserves. When the morning came, I continued looking for...what I was looking for in the first place, and again ran afoul of something. Men. I believe they might have been hunters. They tried to kill me. I ran, they gave chase. I was still weak from the bear attack, so they managed to shoot me with their arrows.”

“I’m sorry,” John murmured.

She shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“What...were you looking for?”

“Something personal,” she replied sharply.

Okay, so, they weren’t going to talk about that.

“I have a question for you now,” she said after a moment of silence.

“Yes?”

“Why did you save me?”

He had been considering that. He was sure she would ask, and he’d been piecing together an explanation. Even he wasn’t entirely sure. “Well, a few practical reasons, I guess. The first is that I’m decent at identifying demons and which ones are outright violent towards humans and which ones only might be. You fell into the second category. The second was that I’m...not too fond of my fellow humans at the moment. And, I mean, I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“How did you know I would not simply attack you when I woke up?”

“You did attack me when you woke up.”

“That was reflexive.”

“I know. And I know what you’re asking. The short answer is: I didn’t. I just...had a good feeling about you, I guess. Or at least not a bad feeling.”

Yelena scrutinized him silently for several moments. “Fine,” she said, apparently accepting this answer. “I...require something from you.”

“What?”

“I need a safe place to stay. The combined efforts of traveling to this realm and healing myself, and dealing with those hunters, has left me magically drained. I will need time, and a safe place to stay, to reclaim the magic naturally, enough to get back to my own realm.”

“How long?” he asked.

She paused for just barely longer than she should have if it had been a natural answer, and he thought she might be lying. “One week.”

Well, even if she was lying, what difference did it make right now?

“I’m okay with that. You can stay here. I’ll help you out however I can,” he replied.

“Thank you,” she said flatly, as though saying it was a difficulty. She looked away for a moment. “As you are offering me a service, I am honor-bound to offer something in return.”

“You don’t have to,” he replied.

Now she stared at him intently. “I am honor-bound.”

Well, this seemed important to her. One part of him, a deeper, darker part of him, whispered that he should ask for sex. He’d be lying if he claimed it wasn’t very tempting. But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. He’d never tried to trap or trick someone into having sex with him. If he was going to be making love, he wanted it to be with an enthusiastic and consenting partner. Besides, he doubted she’d react well to it.

“I, uh...can’t really think of anything. How about you let me think on it today, and I’ll let you know what I come up with?” he suggested.

“Very well,” she replied.

They kept eating.

CHAPTER III

The rest of the day passed with relative speed.

After breakfast, John had started feeling embarrassed about the state of his cabin. Since Yelena seemed intent on doing something to help out, he asked if she would sharpen his dagger, which she began doing immediately. He started cleaning up his cabin, disposing of the refuse, putting things where they belonged, he even made his bed. When Yelena finished with the sharpening and all but demanded something else to do, he gave her her cloak and gloves back and had her draw water from the well to refill some empty bottles.

It felt weird, assigning her tasks, (although really he was just asking her to do stuff), but he also understood where she was coming from. He’d hate to be in the care of someone else and not be pulling his own weight. He hated feeling useless, not having anything to do. While she did that, he ended up going down into the basement and cleaning it up, since she was going to be down there. Though there wasn’t much to do besides a little organization and dusting, he did decide to wash the blanket and sheets.

Besides having a little bit of her blood on them, they hadn’t been washed in probably a year or so. After he washed them and hung them out to dry, the two of them went out into the backyard and spent awhile pulling up weeds.

They slowly got to know each other as they worked.

He mostly told her about his own life, such as it was, because she seemed more liable to ask questions than answer them. But she did answer some. He learned that her original name was something that couldn’t be pronounced by anyone in this realm, and that she was fairly old, though clearly she didn’t look it. He learned that most of her time was spent defending her realm from invaders, as two demon clans were at war, but that the rival clan had finally, after several decades, yielded, after sustaining heavy losses at a large-scale battle recently.

She also said that, in the wake of nearly constant combat, (the war ended about nine months ago), she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself, and had been trying to indulge herself recently. Though when he probed a little further on that, she wouldn’t say what she was indulging in. He also learned that she was a fairly frequent visitor to his realm. In that she visited, in some capacity, about once a year.

Which was pretty frequent compared to most demons, she explained, who often went centuries or their entire lives without ever coming here. Most saw no reason to. And so, they chatted, pulling up weeds, until it was well past noon and there were no more weeds to pull from the backyard. So, the two of them went back inside.

“Are you an obligate carnivore?” he asked. She just stared at him. “Do you have to eat meat?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Okay. I don’t have anything left, so I’ll have to get to hunting. Do you want to come with me?” he asked.

“I do not think that would be wise,” she replied.

“No, I guess not. Okay, I’m going to go hunting. I’ll try not to be too long.”

“What should be done in your absence?”

“Um...well, I never got a chance to organize the kitchen. Would you be willing to do that?” She seemed both amused and annoyed that he posed everything as a question.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Okay. I’ll be back.”

He grabbed his bow and quiver of arrows and left.

…

Part of the reason he needed to leave, and he was grateful that she didn’t want to come with him, was that he was actually becoming more attracted to her. It was strange, but not unprecedented. Yes, she was a demoness, but she was beautiful, and very interesting. Obviously intelligent. He met women who he was attracted to and would like to make love with often. But every now and then, there were those who captivated him, who almost drove him crazy with desire. There was something about Yelena that called to him in a deep and primal way. Maybe because she was a demoness. He was almost intoxicated by her presence.

He wanted to make love with her so badly.

Of course, he had no idea if she felt anything similar for him, or if she found him barely tolerable, or even just unattractive. Or if she was even into sex with anyone outside her own species. Or sex at all. She seemed to be warming to him, a little, but she was also very difficult to read. Another thing he was noticing, seemingly unrelated, was that it was definitely getting a lot colder. That storm was drawing ever closer.

He relished it. Relished the rain, the wind, the comfort of being indoors during heavy rainfall.

John spotted a deer.

He set to work.

…

He killed two deer and three rabbits, and spent a little while hauling them back to the cabin. No easy task, but he managed it. By the time he was done skinning, cleaning, preparing, and then storing the meat in a sealed container he put a cold spell on, (one he’d have to remember to renew once a week or the meat would eventually go bad), it was past dinnertime. He skewered and cooked one of the rabbits and some of the deer meat, then washed up and prepared the table. He was surprised to find the kitchen extremely well organized.

It wasn’t necessarily that he thought the task was beyond her, it was more than he wasn’t sure it was something that would translate too well from human-to-demon. What he found logical and organized might not necessarily be the same as what she found logical and organized. But no, the kitchen was cleaned and squared away.

At this point, he felt bad that he only had menial tasks for her. He wished he could give her something more substantial, and it was only going to get worse, for both of them really, because there wouldn’t be a whole lot to do after today, since they’d both worked so hard and gotten a lot of the immediate, basic stuff out of the way.

As they ate dinner, he noticed that Yelena seemed suddenly quiet and, if he didn’t know any better, awkward. Could demons be awkward? They didn’t really talk much, and he wondered if he’d done or said something to upset her. Or if maybe something had happened while he’d been away hunting.

A little bit after dinner, he found out why she was so awkward.

“I have another request,” she said.

“What is it?” he replied.

Night was coming on a little prematurely. The rain was almost upon them and the storm clouds blocked out what sun there was left. He’d lit some candles.

“I think it would be safest if I slept downstairs. It is colder in your realm than it is in mine. Noticeably. And while I am able to ward it off for the most part while I am awake and active, this is not so when I sleep. Body heat will help with this. Would you be willing to share a bed with me?” she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.

He said yes almost immediately. He could have told her a couple different logical counter-arguments. That the basement was naturally very warm. That an extra blanket or two would help. But he didn’t want to, because he thought the argument was kind of flimsy, and more so, he thought that she thought the argument was flimsy, and she wanted to share a bed with him, but needed a pretense to do so, and in fact gave him a way to say no by offering her extra blankets. He was glad. Maybe this would lead somewhere.

Or maybe he was totally reading way too much into this and she had her own reasons for asking this that had nothing to do with intimacy and sex.

He hoped that wasn’t true, though.

He really wanted to make love with her.

“Thank you,” she said, still not quite meeting his eyes.

After they finished dinner, he washed the dishes and put them out to dry, then took a moment to straighten up the cabin just a little bit more, including bringing in the laundry from outside. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning flared occasionally, seen as white flashes against the windows in the cabin. No rain though, not yet. He felt like he was stalling a little bit, even though he was really tired at this point. It had been a really long day, longer than he’d anticipated. But he could almost sense that Yelena wanted to go down there. She didn’t actually say anything, or even give him any specific looks. She just sat at the table, waiting. But he could feel it.

He yawned unexpectedly. “I guess we should go to sleep,” he said. “Are you tired?”

“Yes,” she replied simply, standing up.

“Okay. Why don’t you head down, and I’ll be there in a moment? I want to make sure the cabin is secure,” he said.

“A good idea.”

She headed for the hatch and began to crawl down into the basement area. John moved through the cabin, checking that the windows and doors were secured and locked firmly, and looking out into the darkness that surrounded them.

Nothing seemed to be out there.

He put out the candles, and now all he could see was a mellow glow coming from the hatch. Well...now it was time to do this. To go down into the basement of his cabin and lay in bed with an actual demoness and sleep. He swallowed, nervous suddenly, and then moved down the ladder. Pulling the hatch closed behind him, he hesitated, then locked it. Having her here made him paranoid. Not of her, he wasn’t nervous because he thought she was going to hurt him, (probably), but because men were looking for her.

As he stepped off the ladder, he saw that she was already beneath the blankets, looking at him with her flickering eyes.

“I am not going to hurt you,” she said, when she saw him staring back at her.

“I didn’t think you were going to,” he replied awkwardly. He sat down on the bed and pulled his boots off.

“You are different from most in this realm. Most from the ‘civilized’ areas, anyway. The settlements. My kind are not nearly so reviled among the natural kind,” Yelena said.

“Well...I try,” he murmured, then reached out and put out the candle.

There was still a sullen, faintly flickering glow in the room. It was her eyes.

“You are succeeding,” she said.

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply got beneath the blankets and put his head on the pillows. The bed was not a large one.

“John?”

“Yes?”

“How did you get this cabin?”

He considered her question for a moment, wondering if she wanted to keep talking because she was interested, or maybe because she was nervous, and realized he didn’t mind talking some more either. Although he was quite tired.

He rolled over, laid on his back, stared up at the wood-cut ceiling. “It was my parent’s originally,” he replied. “And before them, my grandparent’s. We each inherited it.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

“I am sorry.”

“So am I, but it was a long time ago...what about your parents?”

“It is...complicated.”

“Fair enough.”

They laid there in silence for a bit longer, until Yelena spoke up again. This time, she sounded cautious again. “Are you...mated?” she asked.

“Mated?”

“With someone else...uh, romantically?”

“Oh. No. I’m not. I haven’t been for a little while now.”

“I did not think so. I imagine having someone like me in your cabin would prove difficult to explain to a lover...why have you remained alone?”

“I guess it’s because of a few reasons,” he replied, thinking it over. He realized that the glow of her eyes had softened a bit. Or maybe he’d just adjusted to the light. “A lot of women in town are married, uh, mated. Those that are single...I dunno, I don’t really get along with. We tend to have conflicting ideals,” he explained.

“Oh. Then, do you...what is the phrase your people use? Hmm. Ah, yes. Do you sleep around, then?” she asked.

He glanced over at her. “That’s kind of a personal question,” he replied. He wasn’t offended, more surprised than anything else.

“If you do not want to answer, just say so,” she replied in much the same tone.

He issued a small laugh. “Fair enough. Yes, I do. We get travelers through town, and some of them are women, and those who travel around a great deal tend to enjoy one-night stands or casual sex. And so do I...I guess that’s another thing I have trouble with. Almost everyone who lives in my town is of my own race.”

“You are attracted to other races?”

“Yes. Most definitely,” he replied.

They laid there in silence once more. He was beginning to fall asleep, his eyelids heavy. John drifted, hearing only his own breathing and the soft respiration of the demoness beside him. He wasn’t sure how long he laid like that, perched at the precipice of sleep, waiting for her to say the next thing. She didn’t say anything though.

She did something.

He felt something on his chest and came slowly awake, out of the gray half-sleep he’d been in. It was very warm, and a little rough.

It was Yelena’s hand, she’d reached up under his shirt and was caressing his bare chest. His heart skittered in excitement.

“John?” she whispered.

“Yes?” he replied very softly.

“Is this what you want?” she asked, and she moved closer to him, then she pulled her hand out of his shirt and instead slipped it into his pants. He gasped in surprised as she wrapped her long fingers around his cock, which was already fully on its way to hard. Her skin wasn’t just warm, it was hot. “Do you wish for me to pleasure you?” she whispered.

Her face was close to his now.

“I want to make love with you, Yelena, yes,” he replied, trying to get a grip on himself. His lust was almost overwhelming now, his desire to be within her, to her feel her moving against him, to hear her voice moaning in sexual gratification so powerful. “But only if you want to. I don’t want you to do this if you don’t want to do it. I don’t want you to feel like you have to, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied, and now he was looking at her, looking into those flaming eyes. “I want it,” she said simply.

And then he was kissing her. He had never kissed a demoness before. A succubus, yes. He didn’t really classify them as the same thing. Here, he was kissing a real demoness, a warrior woman. She moved against him in the near darkness of the basement bedroom. He put his hand up beneath the loose shirt he’d given her to wear, remembering seeing her breasts. He’d wondered how they would feel, how well his hand would fit around them.

Now he knew.

They were firm, a little rough, (her skin wasn’t as rough as he thought it might be), and they fit very nicely into his grasp. Her nipple was hard against his palm. He squeezed gently. Yelena pushed her tongue into his mouth.

It was forked and narrower than he was familiar with, and that just made the kiss in the dark that much more exciting and intoxicating. He was kissing a demoness. Her lips felt good against his and as he began to pull her shirt, (his shirt), up and off her, they broke the kiss for the second it took to get the thing off of her. She tossed it aside and resumed kissing him, pulling him closer to her, and then they paused once more as he took off his own shirt.

Now there was skin on skin contact and it was wonderful.

And she was massaging his cock slowly, skillfully, with her wonderful fingers.

She was hot, very hot, hotter than any woman he’d been with. So being cold really must be a problem with her.

The kissing became more heated as he wrapped his arms around her, feeling her breasts against his bare skin, and her hands on his back. She was breathing more heavily now, panting almost. Acting on some unspoken agreement, they stopped kissing and each quickly got their pants off. Once they were both completely naked, she growled and pulled him on top of her. “Mount me, human!” she almost snarled.

Her eyes were brighter now, much brighter, no doubt fueled by lust.

“Is there anything we have to worry about?” he asked as she spread her legs. “I mean, I think I have protection around here somewhere.”

“There is no need for protection,” she replied, and reached down between them. She gripped his cock, hard as tempered steel now, and placed it at the entrance of her demoness vagina, then wrapped her long legs around him and squeezed.

They both moaned as he penetrated her.

This was really happening, he thought as he pushed deeper into her. He was actually inside a demoness.

He was inside of her.

He’d expected her, for some reason, not to be too wet. But this was not the case. She was very wet, and if she was hot on the outside, then holy shit was she hot on the inside. He had never felt so much heat inside of a woman before.

“Oh, Yelena!” he moaned as he buried his entire length into her.

“Yes,” she growled, staring up at him, her eyes flaring in the darkness. “Fuck me. Do not hold anything back!”

Her voice was almost a harsh rasp and he could sense that she was as lust-ridden and horny as he was just then.

John didn’t hold back.

He began to furiously fuck her, sliding rapidly in and out of her demon pussy, feeling that raw heat, that incredibly wetness, that insane taut tightness to her vagina as he did. The drag of her bare skin against his own was pleasure that was out of this world. He wasn’t tired anymore, he was fully awake and aware and alive.

And he was kind of catching vibes from Yelena, who seemed to like her sex rough, almost animalistic, primal. She was grunting and growling, her legs still wrapped tightly around him as he fucked her. He grunted along with her, kissing her roughly.

“Give me your seed,” she groaned. “Give it to me. I want it. I want it inside of me.”

“Oh, fuck...” he gasped. That was one of those things that just triggered him, that didn’t just push him over the edge, but threw him. He wanted to make her come, too, though. Even as he was thinking it, she let out a guttural growling scream as he felt hot sex juices begin to spray out of her vagina, coating his balls and inner thighs.

He let go.

He gave her his seed.

Groaning loudly, crying out and giving voice to his own pleasure, he felt that first hard contraction of the orgasm come to him, hitting him like a hammer striking an anvil. Sparks of pure bliss flared within him, an eruption, like a lightning strike, and began to overwhelm him. The orgasm was powerful, intense, far more so than any he’d had in recent memory. He cried out her name in the darkness, feeling her begin to twist and writhe against him, in the throes of her own climax. Her vaginal muscles were trembling and squeezing as she continued to come. Those muscles were massaging his cock, clenching around it, forcing him to orgasm even harder. The pleasure robbed him of his other senses to a certain degree.

Faintly, he could hear her, and he loved the sound her rough voice made as she growled and yelled in ecstasy.

The orgasm continued, transporting him to a realm of pure bliss, of rapture. It felt too good. Waves upon waves of pleasure pulsed through his body, a new wave sent out with each fresh violent jerk of his cock, spitting out another thick spray of his seed into her. They each reacted to the other, their orgasms a primal dance of sexual gratification and intense pleasure, bathing them both in bliss and ecstatic release.

John didn’t know how long he came, but it felt like a long time.

When it was over, he came back down from the orgasm slowly. He found himself gasping for breath, hot and sweaty all over, Yelena holding him tightly, wrapped around him. She was in an equal state and for several minutes, the two of them simply laid there together in the darkness, entwined with each other.

“That was amazing,” he whispered, finally breaking the silence. His softening cock was still inside of her. He liked it in there.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Truly amazing.”

He yawned, suddenly, and felt a wave of exhaustion come crashing down on him. Carefully, he pulled out of her, and she released him.

“Do you want to wash up?” he asked, yawning again.

“No. I do not want to move. I wish to sleep,” she replied quietly.

“Me too.”

She laid on her side, facing away from him, and he immediately pressed himself up against her, placing an arm almost protectively over her and holding her against him. Yelena settled more firmly against him, her somewhat rough skin hot and comfortable.

He realized, as he began to drift off, that it had finally begun to rain. He could hear the raindrops tapping faintly overhead.

And that was how they fell asleep.

CHAPTER IV

John opened his eyes.

For a moment, he didn’t have the faintest idea of where he was. He remembered waking up in a similar predicament not all that long ago...yesterday, in fact. Gods, that had only been yesterday. So where was he this morning?

In the basement. Yes.

Right after he’d made love with-

He realized that he was alone in the bed. Where was Yelena? Had she decided to leave? Had something happened to her? He heard a floorboard creak overhead and pulled the blankets back. No weapons down here, why hadn’t he thought to bring something down? Moving as silently as he could, he slipped up the ladder and through the hatch.

All the tension went out of him when he saw Yelena’s naked backside, (wow, she really did have an amazing ass), and he relaxed.

“Hey,” he said, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her. Once intimacy had been experienced, and the woman who he had been intimate with was still around, he tended to get affectionate with them, and for the most part this was well received. He felt her tense briefly. “Are you okay? Should I...not hug you?” he asked.

“No, it is fine,” she replied, and laid a hand over the back of his, as if to prove it. “I am just not used to...affection. Typically, my relationships, such as they are, are brief and passionate, furious sex and nothing more.”

“Do you like affection?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “I have not experienced much of it.”

“Well, I’m very affectionate,” he said, and hugged her, then kissed along the back of her neck. She shuddered briefly.

“That is...very nice,” she whispered.

“What are you doing?” he asked. She was standing in front of the basin. He let go of her and readjusted his grip, beginning to massage her shoulders.

“Oh...that feels nice,” she murmured, stopping what she was doing for a moment. He felt her tail drifting back and forth, brushing his thighs. “I woke up earlier and you seemed very...content to continue sleeping. And I did not wish to wake you. I was restless, so I decided to wash my cloak, and our clothes from last night.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate that,” he replied.

They fell silent for a little bit. He stopped massaging her, and then she turned slowly around, staring at him with her glowing eyes. She looked a little...grave. Sure enough, she asked a heavy question. “Do you regret last night?”

“What? No, of course not,” he replied. “...why, do you?”

“No, not at all,” she answered. “I just...I have not, traditionally, had much success when fornicating with beings of this realm.”

“Have you tried a lot?”

“I have tried several times.” She turned back around suddenly. “I have finishing washing these. Perhaps we should hang them out to dry.”

“That sounds like a good idea, provided it isn’t still raining outside. And then we can make ourselves some breakfast.”

“That sounds like a great idea. I am quite hungry,” Yelena replied.

John pulled on some boxers and traveling pants, then gave Yelena another set of his clothes. He poked his head out and saw that although it wasn’t raining, the sky was still gray and overcast. He decided to risk it, because worst case scenario, they’d just get...wetter. Or, he supposed, they could get tossed off the line by the wind and thrown into the dirt, but then they’d just wash them again. Not really a big deal.

As soon as they’d wrung the clothes and cloak out and hung them up, they pulled several cuts of venison and rabbit out of the cold storage. This time, he decided to fire up the wood stove in the kitchen and he laid them to cook in two skillets.

“I’m going to have to make a trip to town at some point. I’m craving bacon and eggs. And milk. And maybe I should get you some clothes of your own.”

“You do not have to, I can keep wearing my own,” she replied.

“I don’t mind. The only thing left I have to spend coin on is paying taxes on the land I own, and that’s not overwhelming or anything. I do everything else myself.”

“Do you now?” she asked.

He glanced back at her. “Yeah. Why?”

She had a small smile. “It is an attractive quality.”

“Oh...” he couldn’t help but return the smile. “Well, thanks. You’ve got several attractive qualities of your own.”

“I am pleased to hear that.”

They finished making breakfast after that, then sat down across from each other at the table, eating their meals silently. He noticed that she was a lot less tense, far more relaxed, today. He was glad. She seemed very nice.

“I would like to talk about why I was here now,” Yelena said suddenly.

He looked up. She’d finished her meal. “Okay. I’m ready to listen,” he replied.

“I have always had a keen interest in fornicating with beings from this realm. Elves. Felis. Beryl. Dryads and werewolves, too. But humans have always been my favorite. I do not know why. Perhaps because they are the most elusive, the most difficult to bed.”

He snorted. “Was I disappointing because I was so easy?”

She smirked. “No. Last night was not disappointing. But that is why I was here. Since the war is over and we find ourselves with more time, I have decided to indulge in my more deviant desires. So yes, I was here looking to get fucked.”

“Well...big success then,” he replied.

She nodded. “Yes. I agree. I think...” She hesitated.

“You think?”

“It is tempting to believe that Bliss was watching out for me. Given the way events played out yesterday...and last night.”

“I could see it,” he replied.

“I just want to confirm, though, that you are okay with continuing this...sexual relationship, such as it is,” she said.

“I’m thrilled to continue this relationship. I really want to keep having sex with you,” he replied, and she grinned at him.

“And you have not even seen what I can do with my mouth,” she said.

“And you haven’t seen what I can do with mine,” he replied, and she raised an eyebrow.

“Shall we find out?” she asked.

“Yes. But we should wash up first.”

“That is a good point.”

The two of them quickly stripped back down and moved over to the washbasin. He could feel his whole body awakening in response to this new sexual experience he was going to be engaging in. He was kind of dating a demon now, or really just being friends with benefits. This was really happening. And she was amazing in bed. The sex session last night had been one of the most pleasurable, invigorating sessions he’d had in years.

Possibly his entire life.

As soon as they were clean, the two of them hurried back downstairs, getting down the ladder as fast as they could. They all but dove into the bed, both of them clearly eager for the engagement. They were kissing again, and it was wonderful, even better than before. Last night, he’d been exhausted and in an almost dreamlike state and it had been dark. But now it was better lit, and he was awake and aware and so turned on.

He ran his hands over her body as they made out and she slowly began to slide her long, forked tongue into his mouth, seeking his own and, upon finding it, twining together with it. Her body was a little rough and very fit. She clearly worked out a great deal, though her body was built more for speed rather than strength.

She was wonderful to touch, to kiss.

He never thought it would be like this with a demoness, not that he’d ever actually thought he would get to do this with a demoness.

Almost without thinking about it, he pushed her onto her back, a little roughly. He wasn’t sure why he’d done that. There was something about her that brought out his rough side. He wasn’t a stranger to getting rough in bed.

“Sorry,” he said, breathing heavily now.

“Do not be. Be rough with me,” she replied, her voice almost a growl now, as it had been last night, her eyes wide and flickering.

“All right,” he replied. “Spread your fucking legs.”

She spread her long legs for him. He got down in between them, now getting to see her pussy up close for the first time. It looked basically like other vaginas he’d seen, it was just a different color, much more dark pink he saw as he carefully spread the lips with his thumbs. And her lips were smooth and very taut.

Her clit was a pale pink color.

Time to see what it took to make a demoness come.

He stuck his tongue out and touched the tip of it to her clit. She groaned, a low sound that was almost a growl, and he felt her body shudder in response. Good. She seemed sensitive. He began to massage it slowly, gently, with the tip of his tongue and she moaned again, louder this time. He slowly began to increase the pressure and speed with which he tongued her clit. Before long, he had her panting and moaning loudly.

“John,” she gasped, reaching down and laying a hand across the back of his head. “You are very skilled with your tongue.”

He continued pleasuring her orally, stimulating her as best he could, going faster and faster, using more of his tongue. Soon he was licking rapidly at her clit, and then he was using his lower lip, getting more of her sensitive skin.

Then he slipped a finger into her tight, wet opening.

“Oh yes!” she shrieked as he began pushing up, and he was glad to find that her sensitive areas were the same as other women he’d been with. He pressed up rapidly into it, fucking her with his finger, pleasuring her intensely.

“I am orgasming!” she screamed.

And he pulled back, continuing to finger her as she came. He felt her muscles begin to clench around his finger, as though trying to suck it into her pussy. And then there was the release, as she screamed in pleasure, her rough voice filling the basement, (fuck, he hoped no one was nearby, she was being really loud), and a very hot spray of demoness sex juices escaped her, getting all over the bed and his wrist and forearm.

She orgasmed for a good half a minute, her whole body convulsing and clenching and twitching in absolute release, total bliss.

When it was over, she fell back against the bed, gasping for breath.

“That was amazing,” she whispered between gasps. “John, you are amazing.”

“Thank you,” he replied.

She sat up. “I have to pleasure you now. I want to give you as good an orgasm as you just gave me,” she said.

“I’d love that,” he replied.

They switched places, him laying down where she just had. He could feel a wet spot where her pussy had been and figured he’d have to wash the blanket again. Whatever, he didn’t care. He loved making women orgasm. Yelena got down in between his legs, grinning up at him, her flaming eyes flickering powerfully now. He’d become familiar with that grin, that almost feral, primal grin of lust and ‘I’m going to so fucking make you come and you belong to me right now’. That grin. Yelena was definitely the best at getting that feeling of almost primal lust across, like she was precariously balanced between desire and craziness.

She opened her mouth and her long, forked tongue snaked out. She wrapped it around the head of his cock, and he gasped slightly at the heat he felt now encasing it. And then she began to move her tongue, which was now longer than any human woman’s could possibly get, and more prehensile, around the head of his dick, massaging it with small but powerful motions, stimulating the whole thing all at once.

“Oh my-holy fuck, Yelena!” he moaned as the pleasure slammed into him like a drug, like a lightning bolt, like a gale force gust of wind.

He’d never felt anything like this before, except maybe in his dreams and fantasies. Yelena had a deeply satisfied look on her face, her eyes locking with his as she continued to massage just the head of his dick, all the most sensitive parts of it, with her tongue. There was a certain look in her gaze, something that said, ‘Right now, I fucking own you, I lay claim to you, I alone control your pleasure’, and that look was so true because right now, he felt like hers, and she felt like his. They belonged to each other, in this tiny basement bedroom, hidden away from a world that would condemn, violently condemn, their coupling.

And then she took it up to the next level.

Still massaging his cock with her long tongue, she opened her mouth a little wider and then took his whole dick into it. Her lips wrapped firmly around the shaft, she began to bob her head, and still she was using that impossible tongue of hers. He groaned loudly as she did this, and then she reached up and took his balls in her hand. Her skin was hot, really hot, and she began to gently massage his balls in her grasp, slow and sensual and very deliberate. This was getting insane. This was, easily, the best blowjob he’d ever had.

John liked to think that he’d built up some sexual endurance in his time. He was no stranger to sex, or long sessions, but also knew that there were some things that just blew through your endurance and the tricks you could use to keep yourself from getting off. One of the most powerful and potent of these was making love with a brand new woman. There was a deep, intense excitement in making love with someone for the very first time.

And Yelena was new to him, not just because they’d met just yesterday, but also because she was a literal fucking demon from an infernal plane.

And oh Gods she could suck dick like the divine Goddess of Love and Sex, Bliss, Herself.

“I’m going to come!” he cried.

Before he could even finish the sentence, his orgasm exploded within him. He cried out, yelling hoarsely in raw pleasure as the first of his seed began to leave him in one, hard contraction, shooting right into her willing, waiting demoness mouth. And fuck, she was still sucking! And still massaging his balls! It was too much for him. He was panting and moaning in desperate pleasure as his cock kicked over and over and over again, each time releasing a fresh, powerful spurt of his seed. And each convulsion sent out a fresh wave of blissful ecstasy, filling him like a pink light, like some kind of magic.

John didn’t know how long he laid there moaning and coming. He only knew that Yelena continued sucking the entire time.

She sucked his cock dry, and swallowed everything.

She even kept sucking after he was done, and then she slowly pulled her pressed together lips along the still rigid length of his dick, sucking as she did, getting every last drop out. “There,” she said, sitting up, grinning broadly at him.

“Yes. There,” he gasped. “I mean, just...holy shit.”

“Was I good?” she asked.

“Yelena, that was the single best blowjob I’ve ever had in my entire life. Like...by several magnitudes,” he replied.

“You are not just saying this, are you?”

“No. Gods no. I mean it. I really mean it,” he replied, sweaty and almost shaking now, trying to get his breath back.

“You are still hard,” she said, reaching out and brushing his cock with her fingertips.

He nodded. “Uh-huh.” He was still fucking horny.

“Would you like to put your penis inside of me again?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” he replied, feeling stupefied by his desire just then.

“Then do it. Take me. Mount me, human,” she said, her voice a growl.

This time, he didn’t hesitate. He got up, grabbed her, and forced her onto her hands and knees. She growled again in response. Moving fast, he got behind her, working on instinct now, delirious with lust for this beautiful, growling demoness with wild black hair and horns and fire for eyes and a tail. He was on his knees now, behind her, looking at her ass. She had a very well-maintained ass. And her pussy, a glistening, dark pink slit between her thighs, was beautiful and inviting.

“What are you waiting for!?” she snapped.

“Shut up, demon slut,” he growled in response, smacking her ass hard, and she moaned. He got up against her and shoved his cock into her.

It was like paradise.

Her vagina was so fucking tight. And the heat! It was even more intense than last night, easily the hottest, wettest, and tightest pussy he’d ever been inside of. Gripping her trim hips firmly, he started pounding the fuck out of her. Yelena seemed to like, no, to demand rough sex. He supposed it fit with her character.

She growled and moaned and almost howled as he drove into her, burying his entire length into her perfect demonic pussy over and over again. He reached forward and grabbed her hair by the roots, then yanked it, and she screamed in pleasure.

“Yes!” she cried. “You know how to do it right!”

“That’s right bitch,” he replied, and slapped her ass hard again, causing her to moan louder.

They fucked like rabbits for another few minutes, and he managed to make her come twice more. He loved feeling her orgasm when he was inside of her, when he continued fucking her orgasming vagina and felt that release, that hot spray of feminine sex juices all over his balls and lower stomach and hips and thighs. Felt those inner muscles clenching and twitching and squeezing around his length. And the noises she made when she came!

And then he was coming too, coming inside of her, filling her with his seed.

“Ah!...Yelena!” he screamed as his seed began leaving him again, spraying from him, pumping her full of it, and she moaned loudly.

“Oh yes! Give me your seed! Fill me with it! Claim me!” she screamed, pushing back against him, her hot ass grinding against his hips.

She emptied him out entirely, or that’s what it felt like, as he drained his cock into her one, hard contraction at a time, the pleasure washing through him, blasting through him really, like bursts of pure blissful magic.

He almost passed out.

Instead, he pulled out of her and collapsed, gasping, onto the bed, and she did as well. For a moment, they said nothing, the two of them simply laying there, gasping for breath, covered in sweat, entangled in each other and basking in the post-orgasm bliss. There didn’t seem to be words, so they just laid there, holding each other.

CHAPTER V

“Wait...” Yelena hissed, and John froze.

He waited, looking around, and then he sensed it: a creature, nearby. How had he missed that? Damn, she had good senses. He prepared to draw his bow and notch an arrow, but Yelena beat him to it. It was crazy, watching the fluid and utterly perfect way she did that. Then she took aim and let fly the arrow without hesitation.

There was a brief, startled sound and then the thump of a body falling to the ground.

“It is one of the brown four-legged ones, with horns,” she said as she began walking forward, through the trees and underbrush.

“A deer,” he said.

“Yes. A deer.”

He was teaching her whatever she didn’t yet know. She knew rabbits, and bears, and wolves. And more, he imagined.

He joined her, moving forward towards the kill.

After their oral swapping and furious, frantic fuck session in the basement, they had laid together for nearly two hours in that bed. Nude, sweaty, adrift in that wonderfully serene, blissfully post-orgasmic sea of calm emotions and an almost drug-like pleasure, they had held each other and drifted in and out of sleep during that time. Occasionally she would ask a question, or he would, something simple about the other’s realm or life, and they would answer, and then fall back into happy, satisfied, companionable silence.

Eventually, the need to do something, to work, got the best of them. Her before him though. He had an idea that Yelena was a very driven woman whose mind and body would not allow her to be idle for too long. Even after sex. He knew what it was like. Work could be its own reward. And so, they had gotten up, and washed themselves off, and dried and dressed. From there, he’d checked outside and saw that the rain had let up, though the clouds were still gray and heavy. He decided to risk doing another load of laundry.

He and Yelena had washed all the blankets and sheets, then hung them out to dry. While that was happening, John’s mind finally turned towards the immediate future. He was basically out of coin. He’d spent practically his last gold piece helping out those three people from before, and although he had zero regrets, he knew that he’d need more coin in the near future. And the best way to get it was to hunt.

Plus, it was the best way to get food, which he and Yelena would need.

And so, he’d decided to go hunting, and after a bit of consideration, she had decided it would be worth the risk to join him. He almost tried to convince her to stay behind, fearing for her safety, but he didn’t for a number of reasons. The first was that he hated the idea of, in any capacity, being the guy who tried to keep his...girlfriend? Lover? His female companion, ‘busy at the house’, as a lot of husbands put it. He knew this more than likely wouldn’t be misconstrued that way, that Yelena would more than likely see the logic of his request if he did ask her to stay behind.

But the thought of it just made him very uncomfortable and unhappy.

Beyond that, he was having a really hard time with the notion of separating himself from her. He wanted her around. He was intoxicated by her mere presence. And he also didn’t want her to feel frustrated at not being able to help, to work, to do something.

He wanted her to be happy.

And so, he had agreed, glad that she would join him.

She’d donned the clothing he’d given her, as well as her cloak, boots, and gloves, had accepted his spare bow and quiver of arrows, and they’d gone out hunting. So far, it had been a fruitful day. They’d been at it for close to four hours now. They’d managed to catch half a dozen rabbit and a deer. Well, now two deer.

“You are an amazing shot, Yelena,” he said as they came to stand over the deer.

“Thank you. I have had a tremendous amount of practice.”

She’d nailed it expertly, a perfect kill-shot.

She bent to retrieve the arrow and almost without thinking about it, he settled his hand against her ass. She stopped halfway down, and then began to straighten back up. John swallowed, feeling a pulse of lust shoot through him.

Gods, he wanted her so bad.

He hadn’t even realized just how powerful, how bad his lust had gotten as they’d been working over the past several hours together.

“You desire to be within me,” she said as she straightened up. It was not a question.

“I do,” he replied, then looked around, the reality of their situation coming down on him like a bucket of cold water. They were in the woods, exposed. This was already dangerous enough as it was. There could be hunters out, or guards or others still looking for her. Or even just a traveling merchant or wandering local…

“Then make love to me,” Yelena said, her voice surprisingly seductive.

He was learning that Yelena knew a lot about being sexy, and sexy in a way that he responded very powerfully to.

“We shouldn’t,” he replied, then cleared his throat. Fuck, he was so turned on, his cock now a throbbing erection, straining against his pants. He was breathing heavily, his face flushed. It was hard to think.

“That will make it more pleasurable,” Yelena said, and she stepped closer to him. He felt her hand lay against his crotch. “You are aroused,” she whispered, staring directly into his eyes with her own flaming ones, “you desire me greatly.”

“I do,” he managed, his voice thick with raw desire.

“Do not worry, John. I have keen senses. I will let you know if someone is coming. But otherwise...I want you to be coming.”

She kissed him then, and he absolutely could not refuse her. He had to have her. She slipped her forked, elongated tongue into his mouth, immediately seeking out and finding his own, twisting and twining with it, dancing the joyous dance of lust and desperate need. She was breathing heavily as well. He opened up the cloak she wore and pulled up the shirt, freeing her breasts and laying his hands against them, squeezing and groping them. He could feel her nipples pressing against his skin. She was hot to the touch, almost buzzing with lust.

He hugged her to him and then shoved his hands down the back of her pants, past her tail, which was twitching rapidly against the cloak. Getting her extremely fit, nicely padded ass in his hands, he groped it as well, loving the feel of her. Her body was almost like an exemplification of a fit, female form, a toned, tight ideal.

She pulled away from him with a huff and then dropped to her knees. He watched as she dug his throbbing cock from his pants and began to suck on it, bobbing her head rapidly, coating it in her hot saliva.

He groaned, slipping his hand into the big, gray hood and settling it in between her horns.

“Oh fuck, Yelena,” he whispered. “That’s right you little demon slut,” he growled, and heard her moan in response.

He always felt a little afraid saying stuff like that to her, but she’d said that she liked it, and always responded well to it. She kept going until she’d coated his cock completely in her saliva, then took it from her mouth and turned around. She fell to her hands and knees.

“Do it,” she said. “Fast.”

How could he say no to that? How could he possibly hope to resist her?

He looked around again, making sure that there was no one around, and hoping that someone wasn’t just hiding nearby, and he dropped to his knees as well. He pulled up and pushed aside the cloak, pulling down the pants she was wearing, and exposing her marvelously fit demoness ass. Her tail was twitching back and forth excitedly. Fuck, that tail of hers was so sexy. She was wet and ready to be fucked. He quickly got up against her and laid his stiff dick at the entrance of her pussy. She gasped softly as contact was made.

John slid into her.

They both groaned quietly in sexual unity. As he gripped her firm thighs and began sliding in and out of her, making love to her, he thought that the sex felt better than it had before. And he immediately realized why as he kept tossing glances back over his shoulder. This was really risky and probably really stupid. But he’d fully admit that right now he was thinking with his dick. He’d done it more than once and so far it had worked out, for the most part. Right now, he just wanted to pound that sweet demon pussy.

That wonderful, forbidden demon pussy.

She was so incredibly wet inside, and he still marveled at how hot she was. Her vagina was the hottest he’d ever fucked, and he’d been with a succubus before.

“Oh, Yelena...” he moaned, grunting as he humped her, pounded her.

“Keep going,” she whispered, “keep going hard, John.”

He did, fucking her hard and fast, knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to last long. This was going to be a quickie.

“John,” she whispered after another minute or so.

“Yeah?” he replied, looking around again, worried she’d sensed someone coming.

“Do not come inside of me, I have no way to easily clean up. I will let you come in my mouth, okay?”

“That sounds great, thank you,” he replied.

“You are welcome.”

He kept going for another bout of time, just enjoying feeling her against him, seeing her tail twitch as she reveled in their sex, listening to the sounds she was making, and just the purely rapturous feeling of having bareback sex with a demoness.

“Gonna come!” he grunted harshly as he pulled out of her.

Yelena was no stranger to this, as she expertly whirled around and took his cock into her mouth in one smooth motion.

“Oh fuuuuck...” he moaned loudly as he began to orgasm into her mouth. She sucked him, milking his cock with her thumb and first two fingers. They were wrapped around his shaft, working it expertly, as she continued to suck him off. He spilled his seed into her willing, hot mouth and she pumped him dry, draining everything he had to give and swallowing it all. He had his hand on her head again, once more between those sexy black horns of hers.

“Thank you,” he whispered, trying to get his breath back as she pulled his cock slowly from between her luscious lips.

“You are welcome,” she replied.

“When we get home, I am going to pleasure you until you orgasm twice,” he said, tucking his cock away and fixing his clothes.

“That would be greatly appreciated,” Yelena replied as she stood and fixed her own clothes. Once they were about back to where they had been before, he looked down at the nearby deer carcass that he’d pretty much forgotten about.

“Well, let’s carry it back,” he said, crouching to grab it.

Yelena helped him and the pair started to return to the cabin.

…

After bringing the deer home, they’d taken the time to skin, clean, and cut its meat away, then put it into storage. He’d have to prepare the hide for sale, but that could wait. The pair instead decided it was time to wash up.

And John knew how he wanted to do that.

“Where are we going?” Yelena asked as they walked away from his cabin, each holding a towel, a bar of soap, and a washrag.

“I had pretty much completely forgotten about the fact that I have a natural hot spring in my backyard,” he replied.

“I have heard of such things,” Yelena murmured.

“They are wonderful,” he replied.

The hot spring in question was actually in the woods behind his cabin, maybe a hundred paces away. It was partially hidden from view by trees, and by a collection of large rocks he’d rolled into place, forming a very rudimentary barrier around the hole in the ground. As they came in between two of the rocks, he saw that the hot spring was as he’d left it: bubbling, steaming, crystal clear water in a rock hole in the ground that was, thankfully, largely worn smooth by the constantly churning water. He set his supplies down and began undressing.

“We can bathe here,” he said, then added, “and have sex.”

“Very good,” Yelena replied, and began to strip as well.

Soon, both of them were nude and slipped into the water. It was a wonderful, welcome feeling. And when Yelena dipped her head below the water, then came back up, pushing her now wet hair away from her face, he found his eyes drawn to her more than usual. For some reason, women just looked way sexier with wet hair.

“John...” she said, sounding vaguely uncomfortable as she squeezed water from her dark hair.

“Yeah?”

“Are you truly attracted to me?”

He resisted the urge to let out a short laugh. “What? Of course I am. Why would you even ask that? Isn’t it obvious?”

“I...” she hesitated, and it was strange seeing her hesitant. She was normally so self-assured, so firm, so certain. “I find it hard to believe, is all.”

“You’re extremely attractive Yelena.”

She twisted her lips. “I have been able to determine that I am quite attractive among my own kind,” she said, “but like you, I greatly enjoy the company of those not of my species. It is very difficult to tell if I am considered attractive in this land.”

“Rest assured that at the very least, I think you are extremely attractive. All of my enthusiasm is genuine. I am positively thrilled to have sex with you, Yelena. And I think there are a lot of people in my realm who would feel the same way.”

“Hmm. I do find that hard to believe...but it does not matter right now. In this moment, I have you, and you have me.”

“Yes,” he said, grabbing a bar of soap and a rag, “and in this moment, I will give you pleasure, as I promised you. We’ll start simple.”

“How simple?” she asked.

“Turn around, Yelena,” he replied.

She did, showing him her back, and he lathered up the soap and rag, then began to run it across her back. She took in a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh. “That is very pleasurable,” she murmured softly.

“Good. I’m glad. I want you to feel good, Yelena.”

He continued washing her back, then slipped around to her front, gently washing her stomach, her sides, then, because he really couldn’t help himself, her breasts. He set aside the rag and bar of soap and began to massage them slowly, then leaned in and kissed the side of her neck. She gasped quietly as he did this and leaned against him.

Then she moaned as he began to caress her nipples.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“Tremendously,” she whispered, then moaned again.

John let one hand slide down her smooth, fit body until it disappeared in between her toned thighs. He gently led her backwards, then sat down on a natural shelf that was the perfect height, leaving just their heads above water, and pulled her into his lap. She spread her legs for him and he found her clit, then began to massage it.

“Oh, yes...” she moaned, her voice low and deeply satisfied.

He switched to the other side of her neck, kissing up and down it as well, across its back, as she seemed very sensitive there and to enjoy the kissing greatly. He rubbed her clit more, gradually applying more pressure, doing it faster, making her cry out and then whispering for her not to be too loud.

“It is-ah!-difficult,” she moaned.

“I know,” he replied, grinning, and then he slipped a finger into her.

“Oh yes! Mmm...place your hand over my mouth. Silence me,” she whispered.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He stopped playing with her nipple and instead slipped his hand firmly over her mouth. She moaned loudly as he did this, shuddering, and he suddenly had the impression that maybe she was into a specific kind of sex.

Well...maybe he could ask her about that at some point.

Holding her firmly in place, he fucked her with his finger, pressing into her most sensitive spot, pleasuring her immensely. He loved feeling her writhe and twist against him, hearing her moan and cry out, her voice muffled.

And then she orgasmed.

It was a wonderful, beautiful, sensual, full-body orgasm. She kept it at for almost half a minute, and he rubbed her clit throughout the whole thing, keeping his hand firmly over her mouth. And she was screaming, too.

She loved it.

When she was finished, she laid against him, breathing heavily, and he removed his hand from over her mouth.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked, his mouth very close to her ear. She shuddered.

“Yes,” she whispered, still getting her breath back, “oh yes. So much.”

“Good. That was the first orgasm. I believe I promised you two.”

“Oh my,” she murmured.

“Let me know when you’re ready.”

They relaxed for a bit longer, then finished cleaning themselves off with the soap and rag, and then he had her sit up on the side of the hot spring. She did, pulling herself out of the water with an easy grace. Once properly seated, she spread her legs for him. He settled in between those trim, athletic thighs of hers and got right back to work.

Eating Yelena out was a pleasure all its own.

She had a very strange taste to her. It was kind of strong, but he quite liked it. And the sounds she made as he pleasured her clit, massaging it with the tip of his tongue, were a fantastic delight. Now she had to keep her own hand pressed over her mouth, to keep from getting too loud. And loud she was getting.

He kept going, licking her clit over and over, going faster and harder, sending waves upon waves of pleasure into her tight, fit body. She was twisting and writhing, like she was having a really hard time sitting still, and finally he got her to pop a second time. Now she pressed both hands over her mouth, crying out and trembling violently as she orgasmed. A hot spray of her demoness sex juices escaped her pussy and got onto his jaw, chin, shoulders, and chest.

Yelena was definitely a squirter.

He reached out, settling his hands on the sides of her stomach to keep her stable, looking up at her. She was like a vision of dark beauty and lust. When the orgasm was over, he helped her slide back down into the water, then washed himself off.

“You are truly gifted in the art of orally pleasuring women,” she whispered.

“I think maybe you’re just really turned on cause I’m a human,” he replied. “I don’t know if I’d call myself gifted per say...”

“You are gifted,” Yelena replied firmly. “Now, what would you like to do with me?”

“I’d really like it if you rode my cock until I came in you,” he replied.

“I will gladly do that,” she said, and she pushed him back onto the natural shelf. As soon as he was sitting, she mounted him, staring down at him, smiling. Her eyes were beautiful and seductive, her face exotic and alluring. He felt a bolt of pure excitement run through him as she took his cock, which was as hard as tempered steel now, and slipped it skillfully into her hot, wet pussy. That perfect demoness vagina encased him in a pocket of absolute pleasure. She growled as she took him all the way inside of her.

“Oh fuck, Yelena!” he cried as she began to ride him furiously.

“Yes,” she whispered, moaning as she bounced on his cock, fucking herself with it hard, the water splashing around them, “you need this? Tell me you need this...”

“Yes,” he groaned. “Fuck, Yelena, I need it so badly...”

“Good boy,” she growled, and continued fucking him.

He was so keyed up from pleasuring her, it didn’t matter that he’d fucked her hard and blew a huge load in her mouth barely an hour and a half ago. Her pussy felt so fucking good and he felt so connected with her, so in tune with her, staring into her exotic, glowing eyes, that she had him coming quickly.

He groaned, gasping as his cock kicked hard inside of her, and she moaned as she felt him orgasm into her.

“Yes,” she said, grinning a smug grin, “give it to me, John. Give me your seed.”

“Oh...Yelena...” he moaned, coming hard inside of her, filling her pussy up with his seed, spraying thick spurts of it out one, furious contraction at a time. She held him close to her, staring into his eyes the entire time, and kissed him halfway through, a long, firm kiss on the mouth that he responded to in kind, making out with her passionately as he finished coming.

And then he was done, and he fell back, gasping. She stayed on top of him and he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her to him. Yelena rested her head on his shoulder, and he on hers, and they stayed there, embracing, him still inside of her.

“Yelena, are you happy?” he asked softly after a bit.

She remained silent for a long moment. “Yes,” she said finally, “yes John, I am very happy right now.”

“So am I.”

They stayed there like that for awhile longer. He found thoughts drifting through his mind. What he had with Yelena...what was it? It was more than deviant desire or even lust. He liked her. A lot. And not just because she was a demoness that was screwing him, nor because she was incredibly sexy and good at pleasuring dick.

He actually really liked her, personally.

Was it…

He was afraid to even think the word love because good Gods, they had just met! And she was a demoness! Was love between humans and demons even possible? Sex was, clearly, as they both enjoyed similar things, but love?

Then again...wasn’t a favored saying of the followers of Bliss, ‘love is blind’?

He didn’t want to think about it. This was a passionate tryst, nothing more. She was staying with him until her magic recharged, and then she would leave his world, and he would probably never see her again.

He didn’t want to think about that, either…

…

The rest of that day and the next one passed slowly, but pleasantly.

They hunted a lot more, catching several more rabbit, a few deer, a few wolves, and even a bear, which Yelena seemed to take a personal vindictive interest in. Was this the same bear that had assaulted her? There was no way to tell, and if she knew either way, she wasn’t saying, but the whole experience of killing, hauling, and skinning the bear seemed very cathartic to her.

On the dawn of his fourth day with Yelena the Demoness, John decided it was time to walk into town. He did so with a backpack and two bags, one in each hand, all three of these items packed almost to bursting with meat, skins, claws, teeth, and whatever else he thought he could sell to people. He’d be happy to be rid of it all.

As he walked, he found himself thinking, as this was the first time he’d been alone in over two days. Not that he minded the company. He actually wished there was some way Yelena could have come with him, but it just wasn’t possible. At least not without a lot of magic. But it did get him thinking. Primarily that he had accepted Yelena into his life really fast. He thought it was the sex, at first. She was exotic and wild and absolutely crazy in bed. She was, literally, a demon in the sack. But he’d realized it was more than that.

John had gotten good at identifying what went into his relationships. He’d say that most of them stemmed from a common desire to fuck. And that was fine with him. There were things he liked about the women he messed around with, things he didn’t like, and ultimately it always amounted to the same thing: a fling that lasted anywhere from a single night to an entire week. But there was something different about Yelena.

And it wasn’t just that she was a demoness.

There was something basic there, something between them, that just...sparked.

He didn’t know how else to describe it. But it made him wonder about a few things. What did it mean? More importantly, where could it possibly go? She was going to stay with him for perhaps four more days, and then disappear out of his life forever. Normally, he would be okay with that. He wasn’t necessarily glad to be free of the women he hooked up with, he tended to like their company, but he’d found it simply easier when they parted ways before too long. And, consequently, so did the women he tended to sleep with.

They were on the move, or from other villages, merchants, hunters, adventuresses. In a few cases, any kind of extended relationship was impossible, just because their lives were simply too different. How was he supposed to have a long-term, daily relationship with a dryad? He wasn’t against seeing her again, making love with her, talking and taking long walks through the woods with her, but living together? It just wasn’t going to happen for either of them. So how could he possibly make it work with a demoness from another realm of existence?

Why was he even thinking about this?

It didn’t matter because while Yelena seemed to be a very enthusiastic lover who had a fetish for human guys, she didn’t seem like the ‘settle down’ type. Then again, having a long-lasting relationship didn’t actually have to mean settling down. He knew plenty of couples who just traveled the land together, adventuring. They seemed to have a lot of fun. They also seemed to die easily, but maybe all that fun was worth it.

But Yelena was a literal demon, most people would kill her on sight. Or try to, anyway. Was there some way around that?

He thought there might be, but now he could see the main gates to Falling Rock. As he came up to it, the one guard on duty grinned as he saw him. “Godsdamn, John. You look like you’ve been busy,” he said.

“Extremely,” he replied, hefting the bags. “Hoping to make a bundle today.”

“I imagine you will.”

“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” he asked, trying to keep it amicable. The guard, Thomas, was genial enough, and apparently word of his deed, paying out of his own pocket for some out-of-towners, let alone non-human out-of-towners, either hadn’t gotten around that much, or had got around and then flamed out, with some new, more interesting piece of news eclipsing it. Which was fine by him.

“Yeah, actually. Some hunters came through town, said they saw a demon. They’ve been looking for it ever since and there’s a bounty,” Thomas replied merrily.

John felt his stomach go cold but kept his face carefully neutral. “A demon? Here?”

“Yeah. They shot it, but apparently it got away. Crazy, huh?”

“Indeed. Crazy. A demon...well, I hope they catch it. If I see it, I’m gonna be sure to put it down and collect the bounty. How much is it?”

“Five hundred gold,” Thomas said.

John began to feel a little sick, but let out an appreciative whistle. Five hundred gold was a lot for a small town like Falling Rock. Fuck, they must really want Yelena. He said his farewell to Thomas and walked into town, heading towards the market, thinking furiously. She would probably be okay. Probably. There were some half-decent hunters and trackers living here and nearby, but most of them hadn’t really had much reason to hone their skills since the wildlife in this region wasn’t all that hard to hunt down.

They were probably going to be fine. He doubted anyone would honestly think that he was harboring a demon in his cabin.

And fucking her.

Damn, he wanted to get back to the cabin and have sex with her again. Yelena was phenomenal in bed. John tried to keep focused as he hit the marketplace. The next two hours passed by in something of a blur. He’d gotten good at selling his wares. He knew who to go to, who to avoid, who to manipulate and how. He never outright ripped anyone off, but he wasn’t above making a bit of profit. Slowly, bit by bit, he sold off all the things he’d gathered over the past few days from the forest. By the end of it, he had nearly three hundred gold.

Not a bad haul.

When that was finished, he began buying supplies. He didn’t need food, but he did buy several bottles of juice, strawberry and blueberry and blackberry, as well as a bottle of wine. He didn’t know if Yelena might want to get drunk, or even if she could, but hey, getting a little drunk and making love sounded good. Or staying sober and making love sounded good, too. He bought a few healing potions, and a fair amount of arrows to replace all the ones he’d used up, and some clothing for Yelena. He ended up buying better fitting menswear, since buying women’s clothing might tip his hand, even a little, since everyone knew he was single.

Plus, to be honest, he just didn’t see Yelena in a dress.

She actually looked pretty good in his clothes.

By the time he’d finished up his rounds at the marketplace, he’d mostly depleted the gold he’d made, but he was feeling pretty good about the whole situation. He was looking forward to several more days of hot sex with a hot demoness, good food, and some soaks in the hot spring out back. And that’s when he noticed the strange man.

He was tall, middle-aged, thin. His hair was long and white. He wore a robe and carried a staff. Shit. A mage.

“Who’s that?” he asked as casually as he could. He was just finishing up buying the healing potions from Susan’s stall. The mage was walking slowly through the marketplace, paying attention to none of it, apparently.

“Who? Oh, him. He’s a mage,” Susan replied. She was the closest thing they had to a mage in town, though she was more of an herbalist than a mage.

“I know he’s a mage, why’s he here?” John replied.

“For that bounty. Surely you’ve heard there’s a demon running around in the woods. Gods knows why. But he’s going to divine the beastly thing’s presence and take it down. Collect on that bounty, I imagine,” Susan replied.

John felt cold all over again.

“Huh,” he said. “Thanks for the potions.”

“Anytime,” she replied, counting the gold he’d given her.

Crap.

For a moment, John was utterly stymied. This man was going to find Yelena, and kill her, and possibly him. Or they’d kill him in self-defense. Harboring a demoness was one thing, killing a probably innocent man was a totally different thing. He stood off to one side of the main thoroughfare, staring at the ground, thinking furiously.

Then an idea came to him.

John struck off hurriedly towards his house in town. It would work.

Probably.

…

John glanced down his shirt one more time at the small green crystal he now wore as a necklace, hidden away. It was glowing, very faintly. That gave him reassurance. It meant she was still somewhere within a reasonable distance, somewhere within these woods that he knew so well. And she might be able to help him.

His pack was just as heavy as it had been went he’d been walking into town, but now he at least didn’t have the two full bags as well. They were tucked into the pack with everything else. He kept his pace relatively calm as he left Falling Rock, but it grew brisker the farther away from the settlement he got. When he was out of view entirely, he started running. They were going to have to act fast. Damn, that mage might even suspect him. He’d been extremely intimate with Yelena several times, did that leave some kind of...magical residue on him, maybe? Like a magical scent? Well, worst case scenario, he’d pack up and just leave.

Yelena could probably hide herself fairly well with that cloak and those gloves. His cabin was coming up. Good.

He slowed, getting his breath back, as he approached the front door. He didn’t sense anything out of place. Better still. John unlocked and opened the door, stepped in, then firmly closed and locked it against the world.

“Yelena?” he called, setting down his pack.

“Down here,” she replied, her voice coming up to him from the basement. Okay, good. He wished she didn’t have to spend so much time down there, but even with the windows closed and shuttered, it was still too easy for someone to sneak a glance in. There were open spaces between the edge of the window and the edge of the curtains in some places. He’d have to fix it, but how, without making it look suspicious?

“We have a problem, Yelena,” he said as he began taking all the extraneous stuff out of his backpack. They’d have to travel light.

Yelena poked her head out of the basement. “What problem?”

“There’s a bounty in town, on you. People are looking for you,” he replied.

She frowned. “Maybe I should leave...” she said hesitantly.

He shook his head. “No, Yelena. I mean, I won’t keep you if you really want to go, but I don’t want you to go. And besides, while I’m not worried about the guys around here, they more than likely won’t find you, I am worried about a mage that has showed up. They have ways of tracking someone like you magically.”

“They do,” she murmured, coming up out of the basement entirely. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Packing. Here. Put these on.” He passed her the clothes he’d bought her. She was presently naked, and it was a genuine effort not to take a break and have a quick fuck session. She had such a fantastically fit body.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she started dressing.

“I have a friend in the forest who should be able to help us. If we get to her fast enough, we should be able to get her help before the mage finds us.”

“I see,” Yelena replied.

He glanced over at her. Something had changed subtly about her. “Something wrong?” he asked hesitantly.

She stared at him a moment longer, then looked away. “I am fine,” she said, finishing dressing and then pulling on some heavy boots. “Just worried. I would rather not be found.”

“Agreed,” he replied.

He finished taking out all the extra stuff, then checked the pack over one more time. There was some food, drink, health potions, a spare change of clothes. Nothing else. He made sure the knife was in its sheath, on his hip, double-checked that his quiver was full of arrows, then grabbed his bow. He looked over at Yelena. He’d given her his spare bow and a quiver of her own earlier, when they’d gone hunting together. She had on her large gray cloak and gloves now.

“I am ready,” she said.

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

He led her out of the cabin, locking up behind them.

CHAPTER VI

John fell into conversation with Yelena as they walked through the woods, talking quietly, trying to clear his mind, not to worry too much.

He told her about his past, growing up here, a few of the more interesting adventures he’d had during the rare occasions when he actually left his hometown. She told him mostly about the battles she’d fought in her own realm. She was a seriously badass warrior. She had over a thousand kills under her belt, though she’d been fighting for decades at least. Whatever escapades he’d gone on paled in comparison to hers.

They had fallen into a bit of silence when Yelena asked a question. “Why did you save me?” she asked.

He glanced over at her. “How many reasons are there?” he replied.

“You are avoiding the question.”

He sighed. “I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“You said that earlier. Most would. Actually, most would have just finished the job.”

“I know,” he replied quietly.

“But you did not do this.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because...” He thought about, pausing to check the crystal. It was glowing a much brighter green now. They were headed in the right direction. “Because, I’ve seen too much hate. My whole life, it’s always been about not trusting outsiders, about the ‘lesser’ species, about taboos and hypocrisy and so much bullshit. Always been about the stereotypes. The felis are going to rob you, the beryl rip you off, the elves are going seduce you and you’ll wake up naked in the woods with a lump on your skull. I just...I’m sick of it. I hate it.” He laughed bitterly. “I hate the hate.”

“I understand,” Yelena said.

“Do you?” he asked.

“Of course I do!” she snapped. He paused, turned fully to look at her. “Why do you think I was fighting for decades? I was fighting my own kind, except they look a little different and they worship a different deity, and is that enough for murder? For attempted genocide? Apparently. It is nothing but luck that we managed to stop before we wiped them all out. I think they had just had their fill of murder. But how long before we find another excuse?” She stalked off into the forest, and he followed her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She sighed heavily, slowed her pace. “It is not your fault. I am just...upset. It is fine.”

“Yelena,” he said, reaching out, placing a hand on her shoulder. She stopped. He thought she might shrug it off, but she didn’t. He turned her around. She looked out at him with her flickering eyes from beneath the big gray hood. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

“I know. It is fine. I forgive you,” she said. He leaned in and hugged her, and she hugged him back, fiercely. When they parted, he realized there was a green flashing coming from his shirt. They both looked down at it.

“She’s very close,” he said.

“She can see you,” a new voice said from behind him.

He turned around and for a second, couldn’t see anything. Then a buxom figure, wreathed in nature and greenery, seemed to appear out of the trees and foliage.

Yelena growled and raised her bow, notching an arrow almost faster than he could follow. “Wait!” he said. “She’s a friend.”

“It would not be a good idea to attack me here,” the dryad said, and all around them, plants rustled and twitched, as if in response to her words.

“Hello, Lily,” John said.

“John, it’s so good to see you. You never come to visit me,” she replied, favoring him with a genuine smile.

“I know. I try not to bother you too much. You said you were busy,” he replied, feeling himself flush slightly.

“That is true. I’m one of only a few maintaining this forest,” Lily said. “But I’ve missed you all the same. I see you are keeping stranger company than usual.”

“Lily, this is Yelena. She’s my...friend. Yelena, this is Lily. She’s...also my friend,” he replied awkwardly.

“I can smell you on each other. I think you’re more than friends,” she said with a smirk. “Intimacy with a demoness, you’re very brave.”

“We do not have time for this,” Yelena growled. Man, she was in a bad mood today.

“I know. Listen, Lily. I’m sorry to show up like this needing something, but...well, we really need something.”

“What is it?” she asked, becoming more serious.

He tried not to get distracted by her fantastic body. Damn, dryads were curvy. And naked. He really missed those amazing thighs of hers, and her fantastically beautiful, large, perky breasts. She was exceptionally skilled at pleasure.

“Yelena is being hunted. By a mage. I was hoping you could use some of your magic to conceal her,” he explained.

Lily frowned, considering it, then slowly nodded. “Yes, I could do this. I will do it, but I’m going to need something from you in return. It’s...dangerous.”

“Fair enough,” John replied, feeling relief. “What is it?”

“There is a cave not far from here, I can imbue you with the knowledge of where it’s at. It has become corrupted with a unique kind of evil that repels my sisters and I. We cannot enter it, and it is tainting the land around it. Go there, cleanse the evil however you see fit, and find me again. In the meantime,” she looked at Yelena, “I must touch you.”

“Why?” Yelena replied.

“To give you temporary cloaking from those who seek you.”

“Very well.”

Lily came forward, fluid and graceful, and he saw that the plants near where her feet touched gently swayed and moved with each step. She came to stand before them, then reached out and into the gray hood. She settled her hands on Yelena’s cheeks, closed her eyes, and bowed her head in concentration. There was a small burst of green light. She opened her eyes and stepped back. “It is done. You have one day before it wears off,” she said.

“We’ll be back soon. Thanks, Lily,” John replied.

“You’re welcome.” She reached out and placed a hand on his head. There was a small burst of green energy and suddenly he knew where to go. She didn’t pull her hand away immediately, instead she pulled it lovingly down along the side of his face, caressing his cheek. “Be careful, John. Okay?” she asked, losing a little bit of her bravado.

“I’ll be fine,” he replied.

She slowly pulled her hand back. He realized that he had missed her touch immensely. “Come on, Yelena. Let’s do this.”

They set off.

…

“So, what’s wrong?” he asked.

They’d been walking for about fifteen minutes and Yelena hadn’t said anything to him. She seemed upset.

“Nothing,” she replied.

“Obviously something is wrong. Is it what we were talking about earlier?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He sighed. “Come on, Yelena. I’ve been nothing but nice to you. If you really want me to, I’ll leave you be, but I think this is something we should talk about.”

She was silent for a moment longer, and he thought she was going to tell him to leave her be, but she responded with something else. “The dryad, I do not trust her.”

“What? Why? Lily’s a very good friend of mine. You can trust her as much as you can trust me,” he replied.

“A very good friend,” she repeated.

He stopped, and after taking a few steps, she realized he’d stopped and did so as well, turning around quickly.

He tried hard not to smile, but couldn’t help it, just a little. “Are you...are you jealous, Yelena? Of Lily?” he asked.

“No,” she snapped, then she looked away from him and growled. “Deities be damned, yes! There, I said it. Yes.”

“Yelena, don’t be,” he said.

“You have been intimate with her,” she replied.

“I’ve been intimate with a lot of women, Yelena. I mean, you found that out about me the first day. And I imagine you’ve been intimate with a lot of guys.”

“I have,” she murmured.

“So, what’s the problem?”

She looked at him for a moment, then huffed in annoyance, spun around and stalked off. “I do not know. Nothing. Do not worry about it,” she replied.

He followed her. “Hey, come on. Don’t be like that.” She stopped again, and he nearly ran into her.

She turned around. “I am not being rational,” she said. “You are exactly right, there is no reason. I am glad you find it amusing.”

“I’m sorry, Yelena. I’m not trying to tease you. I just...hadn’t realized that you’d gotten so attached to me.” She opened her mouth to start to say something, and he tried to smooth it over. “Listen, if it makes you feel any better, I’d probably be really jealous too if I saw you getting touchy-feely with a former lover.”

“You would?” she asked, now smirking just a little.

“Yeah. I...um, I’ve gotten pretty attached to you too, you know.”

“I was not sure,” she said, a little more serious now. She reached out, began to touch his face, then sighed in frustration and yanked off the glove. She caressed his skin with her dark, rough hand. “It is hard to tell with you.”

He smiled, placed his hand over the back of hers. “Is it? And here I thought I was being pretty obvious about it. What with all the awesome sex.”

She snorted. “Sex for pleasure is one thing, John. You can fornicate with someone you do not really care for.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he replied. Then he leaned in suddenly and kissed her. It was a long, lingering, deep kiss. “But I really, really like you, Yelena. I’m very attached to you.”

“Truly?” she asked, quietly.

“Truly,” he replied.

They resumed walking, and neither of them spoke for a little bit.

“We should take care of this,” Yelena finally said. There was an expression on her face he’d never quite seen before, or perhaps had never seen pushed to such an extent. It made him feel...good. Really good.

Was he crazy?

“We should,” he agreed, making himself focus again. “And then we can talk about...this, when we get back to the cabin.”

She smirked again and stopped, then ran one finger down his cheek. “Yes. Talk.”

John resisted the urge to take her right then and there, made himself focus and started walking again. They walked for another ten minutes before John stopped in front of a large, long-dead tree with a hollowed-out trunk.

“Why are we stopping?” Yelena asked.

“I left something here. In case of emergencies. I’m not sure bows and arrows are the best inside of a cave. How are you with a sword?” he asked as he ducked into the trunk.

“Exceptional,” she replied.

“Oh. Good.”

He found his stash buried beneath a bunch of dirt and dead leaves, grateful that no one had found it. He’d gotten good at hiding things out here. He tried not to do it too much, he didn’t want to disrespect the forest, for obvious reasons and less obvious reasons, but he was sure Lily and her friends wouldn’t begrudge him an emergency cache here or there. He took two good, sturdy silver swords, still wrapped tightly in their leather sheaths, and came back out.

“Here,” he said, tossing Yelena one. She caught it easily.

“Silver,” she said as she pulled the blade out and inspected it. “Nice. Good craftsmanship.”

“It should be, I sure paid enough for it,” he replied, inspecting his own blade. It looked good. They attached the sheaths to their belts and then hurried off once more. Judging by the strange sense of location now in John’s head, he figured that they were getting fairly close to the cave by now. Silver was good, if you were fighting evil things.

They rarely reacted well to silver, and barring even that, most things died when you stabbed or chopped them enough times.

He wondered what awaited them in the cave.

As they neared it, he began to sense what Lily had been talking about. The vegetation started to thin out, and there was a chill on the air that grew colder and more powerful the closer they got. John could feel fear begin to well within him. This was definitely a bad place, a tainted place. He wondered what it was that had gotten into the cave, which he could see now, a dark opening in the earth, descending into a deeper darkness.

“Can you see in the dark?” he asked.

“Yes,” Yelena replied.

“Good, because I can’t.”

“Hold on.” She raised her hand and cast a light spell, throwing back the darkness.

“Perfect,” he said.

They set off towards the entrance, swords out now. The cold was getting worse. As they began to descend into the cave, John could see his breath on the air.

“I hate the cold,” Yelena whispered.

“Same,” he replied.

They followed the sloping tunnel to its end. It terminated in a small cavern with a handful more tunnels leading away from it. Immediately, John could tell that the place was lived in. He saw a table stained with blood and scattered with tools, a bookshelf that had a lot of books on it, a few chairs, and another table, this one bare.

Most of the furniture was overturned.

“Necromancer, gotta be,” he muttered.

“What is that?” Yelena asked.

“A mage who specializes in the dead and undead. They do good work, and are often good people, but sometimes, one of them gets crazy one way or another and attempts to do something really awful. They take magic and turn it evil. Something bad has happened here. Likely there’s going to be zombies around, and a necromancer. Be careful, they can be quite powerful.”

“I am ready,” Yelena growled.

John waited and listened, but after a moment realized he didn’t have to. There was a trail of blood leading into one of the tunnels, off to the right. He indicated it silently and began to take the lead, but Yelena beat him to it. Well, she did have more experience. They began to hear sounds as they pushed deeper into the rock tunnel, and there was a lot more blood. What had happened? They kept going until they reached the end of it.

John began to hear stomping footsteps, getting closer.

“Yelena, what-” He broke off as something charged them and batted her aside, sending her flying. “Yelena! Oh shit!” he cried.

An abomination was right in front of him.

It was a tall, stitched-together horror. He saw antlers, and bear claws, and leathery flesh, and then he was stabbing his blade into it. The beast shrieked with the muzzle of what might have been a wolf, and backhanded him. Pain burst in him as he was picked up and thrown back down the hallway. John cried out as he landed and bounced a few times, then struggled to his feet. Right as he did, he saw the huge thing coming directly for him.

He tried to raise his sword, but there wasn’t enough time.

Then he saw Yelena’s blade explode outward through its neck. The monster issued a gurgling roar as it stopped and stumbled. She ripped out, to the right, and half-decapitated it. That seemed to do the trick. The monster fell heavily to the ground.

“What is this?” she asked, disgust plain on her face as she poked it with her sword.

“Monster,” John groaned.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Just fine...just need a potion,” he replied, shrugging carefully out of his pack. “What about you?”

“Split one?” she asked.

He nodded. Honestly, he didn’t need a full healing potion. Nothing was broken, he wasn’t losing blood. He was just in a shitload of pain. He pulled one of the glowing blue bottles out, tore the cork free with his teeth, and drank half of it, then passed it to Yelena, who finished it off. She passed it back and he put the cork back in, replaced it, and pulled his pack back on. Now that it wasn’t moving so much, he had a chance to really study the thing.

John began to get an idea of what must have happened, and immediately hated it.

“Ugh, Gods,” he groaned, staring at the hideous monstrosity. “We need to find the bastard that made this thing.”

“I think I saw him in there. Not moving,” Yelena replied.

They moved back into the room where they’d originally encountered the monster and sure enough, there was a dead body. A pale man with half his face ripped off and most of his limbs broken. John stared contemptuously at the body.

“He built that monster out of woodland creatures,” he said. “And then it turned on him. Killed him. I have to admit, I haven’t heard of anyone trying to build a monster out of creatures. At least not like, regular creatures.”

“He is the monster,” Yelena muttered.

“Yes. He is. Do you know fire magic?”

“I do.”

“Then we should burn the bodies, and see if we can find his notes, and burn them, too. Then we’ll case the joint, see if he had anything worth taking, or any coin tucked away. I doubt it, though. Rogue necromancers aren’t traditionally well-off.”

They set to work.

There were four tunnels that led off of the main cavern, each leading to their own cave. It wasn’t a particularly large underground section. The pair of them worked quickly but proficiently, searching over every area, poking into every crevice and nook they could find. Yelena was exceptionally dedicated and seemed to have a near endless endurance for this kind of thing. She didn’t take a break the entire two-hour period they were there, and she found a decent number of things. Two of the caves were basically empty, although in one of them Yelena discovered a very old, dirty dagger that had probably been there for decades.

The third offshoot led to a disgusting, grisly pile of remains. John quickly surmised that this must be where the bastard had tossed all the spare parts he ended up not using for one reason or another. The reek was awful and only partially contained by a small wooden wall that had been erected over the mouth of the tunnel. Back in the room where they’d encountered the main horror, as they were picking over the remains, Yelena made a discovery. The necromancer who’d been engineering this nightmare had not been alone.

They found a second corpse tucked up into a little shadowy niche. He’d probably crawled in there to escape the creature when they had lost control of it, but it was obvious that it had injured him, and he’d died of his wounds, as he now lay in a pool of dried blood. John spent a moment patting him down, searching his pockets. He found a dagger, a few gems, and a leather-bound book. He almost wrote it off, prepared to toss it into the flames that they were going to use to burn all the remains, but then he reconsidered.

What if there was important information in here?

He was deeply, deeply glad that he’d had that thought.

After finishing their search and coming across a meager sackful of gold, a pair of emeralds, and a sword that obviously hadn’t done the pair of men much good, they burned everything. They burned the two corpses of the necromancers, they burned the pile of bones and meat. The abomination that the men had created, as well as the research papers, were all set ablaze. Then they hurried out of the cave system as it began to fill with smoke.

“What is that?” Yelena asked as they stepped back out into the light and he pulled out the journal, suddenly eager to read it.

“I think it was a journal of theirs,” he replied, opening it up and glancing over the pages of scribbled ink. “I think I need to read it.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, honestly. Maybe there’s some kind of information in here identifying them. Maybe someone will want to know they’re dead. Even monsters have family. Though their family may be dead as well...”

“We should return to your dryad.”

“She isn’t my dryad.”

“I suppose not. You seem more her human.” He glanced at her. She had a small smile on her face. “Or am I wrong?”

“I mean...I don’t know. We don’t really belong to each other...”

“I more mean that you are very attracted to strong women, John. But I am teasing. You have been intimate with her, have you not?” she asked.

They began walking. “Yes. Many times. She is...I like her a lot.”

“More than you like me?”

John considered it. His reflexive answer was to say that he didn’t know, or that he liked them in different ways. But...no, he had his answer. In fact, he knew immediately. “No, not more than you. I think...I like you more than I’ve liked any woman I’ve ever been with.” He immediately regretted saying that because wow was that a heavy statement for a fling.

“Do you now?” Yelena asked. She didn’t seem worried or angry or embarrassed. She seemed...was that relief? Happiness? He honestly couldn’t tell. She looked away, facing forward, before he could get a good read on her expression. “We should track her down.”

“I suppose so,” he murmured, and looked back down at the book.

They began walking.

…

“We have a problem,” John said as they came into another clearing.

Yelena stopped abruptly and looked around. “What?”

It had been difficult, but not impossible, to read and walk. Most of the journal was just rambling nonsense about attempting to perfect the idea of making a new creature for war and combat, combining the deadliest elements of nature’s savage beasts. But what he’d managed to divine was one simple fact: these two sadistic madmen had not been working alone. There was apparently a whole operation in progress.

He didn’t know where it was, but he at least knew one of the places they’d been using as a temporary outpost: an isolated cabin.

He relayed this to Yelena, and before she could respond, a voice came to him from the right.
“That is a problem indeed.”

Both Yelena and John whirled around, before John sighed heavily. “You really need to stop doing that, Lily,” he said, vaguely irritated.

He hated being snuck up on.

Lily seemed to materialize out of the trees and greenery and foliage. “I’m sorry,” she replied, though her little smile seemed to indicate otherwise. He could feel Yelena tense at his side and imagined it must be practically an insult to sneak up on her. “It is...very tempting, when you have the ability. But I overheard your conversation. Who are these people?”

“Necromancers,” he replied. “They’re doing something with the animals. I’d...rather spare you the specifics. It’s ugly.”

A look of sadness passed across her beautiful features. “I imagine it is,” she murmured. “You know where this cabin in question is, then?”

“Yes.”

“You are willing to pursue this situation? Technically speaking, our arrangement was for you to clear the corruption in the cave...”

“I’m willing to pursue this. This is an abomination. Yelena?”

“I will pursue this to its end,” she replied firmly.

“Thank you so much,” Lily said, genuine gratitude in her voice. “We dryad number so few in this forest. We could, probably, handle the situation, but we are particularly vulnerable to death magic and necromancers.”

“We’ll handle it, Lily.”

“I really appreciate it. I’ll try to stay within a decent range of you. I can track the pair of you well enough, especially with that crystal, but I’m afraid I have several things that need tending to that really can’t wait.”

“It’s okay. We’ll take care of this, Lily. This isn’t right.”

She thanked them again and gave John a kiss, though she shot a quick look at Yelena and suddenly seemed uncomfortable.

Yelena just smiled at her.

Then Lily left quickly.

“Let us go,” Yelena said.

He hesitated, then began walking towards where he thought the cabin in question was. At least she wasn’t angry anymore.

CHAPTER VII

“Where are we going now?” Yelena asked.

“Another cache I’ve hidden. I tucked away some silver-tipped arrows with a little bit of magic on them so that they hurt anything evil a little bit extra,” he replied as they walked through the forest.

“Hmm. We are hunting evil,” Yelena murmured.

“So...just curious, you still aren’t, uh, mad about Lily, are you?”

“No, John.”

“Okay, good. I saw that look on her face before she left. She kissed me, then looked like she was worried she’d pissed you off or maybe that it might have been really impolite to do. Dryads aren’t exactly known for their...restraint, or social etiquette.”

“She should be worried about pissing me off,” Yelena said, then offered a small laugh. “But no, I am not angry. Honestly, I find her...very pleasing to look at.”

“Me too,” John murmured, then hesitated. They were close to the cache. He turned to look at Yelena. “You said that with significance...are you attracted to her?”

“Of course, who would not be attracted to Lily?” she replied.

“Well, a lot of people. Or at least a lot of people would lie about it. I just didn’t know if you were also into girls or not,” he said.

“Bisexuality is common in my realm,” Yelena replied.

“I see,” he murmured, then turned and moved over to a nearby trunk and squatted close to the ground. Already, thoughts of having a threesome with Yelena and Lily were coursing through his mind, making it difficult to focus.

“Why do you...” She trailed off. “John,” she said, and he looked over his shoulder at her. She had that smug smile on. “You wish to make love with both of us simultaneously.”

“I mean...who wouldn’t?” he replied.

She laughed. “Many, I believe, considering I am a factor in this sexual encounter, but I see your point. Have you had two women at once before?”

“Yes,” he replied, a touch defensively, though he wasn’t sure why he was feeling defensive. He resumed his search for the cache, hidden in the tree trunk. “Have you?”

Yelena laughed. “I am no stranger to orgies, John.”

“Oh...all right then.” He fell silent again, kept looking, pushing aside dead leaves and other stuff that had ended up in there from wind and whatever animals used this place as their home. “So...you’d be interested in a threesome between us?” he asked.

“I might be,” Yelena replied.

“That would be truly something spectacular,” he replied. “Ah! Here it is.” He pulled out the leather-wrapped bundle and laid it out on the ground. Rolling it open, he studied the pair of arrow-stuffed quivers and the bow. It was a good one, solidly built, though it hadn’t seen much use. “Want to use this one instead?” he asked, holding it up.

Yelena took the bow and studied it, then handed him the one he’d supplied her with earlier. “This is a much more efficient model,” she murmured, looking it over.

“Yep,” he agreed. Transferring several of the arrows to their quivers, he wrapped it all back up. Making sure it was secure, he stuffed the bundle back into the trunk. After double-checking it was hidden away from prying eyes and opportunistic hands, he stood up. “All right, now we can get to the cabin. It isn’t all that far from here.”

…

If he didn’t know any better, John would say that Yelena was in a great mood. Her stride was steady, her stature firm, she even had a grin on her face, from what he could see of it huddled within the big, gray hood. That made him feel bad and he hated that she had to wear it, that she was risking her life simply by taking a walk with him in the woods. But that was the state of the world. Hating it didn’t change it.

Maybe Yelena was just thrilled at the chance to fight, or kill something, or someone, evil. He could understand that. John didn’t really think of himself as a fighter, in that he didn’t really like fighting...for the most part. He’d fight if he had to and he did like fighting against assholes for the most part, but he wouldn’t say he lived for the thrill of combat. Yelena seemed a bit closer to that. He wouldn’t necessarily call her bloodthirsty, but...she clearly loved to fight. She looked more eager the closer they got.

John thought about the cabin they were walking to. He’d come across it sometime about two years ago when he was out, sort of hunting but really, he was just wandering. When he had checked it out, it looked like it belonged to someone, much like his own cabin, but there didn’t seem to be anyone home, so he’d left it alone. But occasionally, he would come back this way every few months, and after awhile, it seemed obvious that no one was living there any longer. The last time he’d been up this way, maybe three months ago, he’d finally gone inside. Several of the windows had been broken out and the door had been hanging open.

Inside, it was obvious that the place had been ransacked.

He still wondered who had built it, who it had belonged to.

Now, he was coming up on it again. John carefully laid his hand on the hilt of his sword, resting on his hip in its leather sheath, and saw Yelena do the same. They reached the edge of the clearing that the cabin was built in. That clearing was a lot smaller than it had once been, with the plant life growing right up to the small rock-and-mortar wall that surrounded the simple structure. John studied it quietly, frowning as he considered it.

“There’s a door in the back,” he whispered softly, “we’re going to go up to the wall and slip into the yard. I’ll go to the front door, you go to the back. We go inside and clear the place out. If at all possible, try not to kill anyone you find inside.”

“Why?”

“I want information from a live subject. Plus, you know, there might just be some innocent traveler in there, looking for a place to sleep for the night,” he replied.

“Very well. Let us go.”

And so they went. John moved stealthily, but Yelena was like a ghost. They reached the low stone wall and stepped carefully over it, each checking the area constantly, hunting for any clues that someone or something was around. But, as far as he could tell, they remained alone. The cabin was in worse shape than ever. Every window was broken out and a lot of weather damage had been done to the front wall. The yard was overgrown. It looked like someone had been here recently, though, so that was a good sign.

Hopefully.

Yelena split off and disappeared around the edge of the cabin, crouching low to avoid being seen through the windows as much as possible. He did the same, getting to the front door and pressing his back to the wall beside it, waiting, listening. Still nothing. If they were in there, they were being dead silent right now.

He crouched and peered inside, through the space between the edge of the partially open front door and the frame. Nothing moved within. All he saw was some debris scattered across a largely bare floor and a time-rotted chair. He slipped carefully inside, securing the front room. It was a dead zone. There were boot prints in the dust, but they didn’t look all that fresh. He moved slowly across the room and into the kitchen, where he found Yelena checking the area. They finished searching the cabin, their movements slow and deliberate.

But the place was a bust.

It was obvious no one had been here in a little while.

“So now what?” Yelena asked, sounding frustrated.

“I guess we search again for clues this time,” John replied.

“I suppose that is a logical next step.”

“Don’t worry, Yelena. We’ll find them.”

“I hope so.”

They spent another half an hour checking over the cabin, although it wasn’t like there was a great deal to search. In fact, as they finished going over the whole structure bit by bit, John almost began to give up hope that there was anything to find. Until he stepped over into the far-right corner of the main room and felt the floor give just a little. The corner was thrown into shadow, which was why he’d missed the fact that a section of it was actually cut away from the rest of it. He called for Yelena as he crouched, pulled out a dagger, and began to work it up.

She came to stand behind him, no doubt towering over him. Her presence was very comforting. He finally got the loose floorboards pulled up and away, it came up in a whole section instead of several different pieces, and they stared into the darkness below.

“Hold on,” Yelena murmured, and he felt a soft rush of magic, before the whole area was lit up very nicely.

“Thanks,” he said, peering into the hole.

There was a box there, as well as a discarded parchment beside it. He opened the box and found it empty, then grabbed the parchment and read it.

“What is it?” Yelena asked as he finished reading, pocketed the paper, and stood.

“Instructions. Basically, in the event of emergency, there’s a supply cache here. There’s two other locations on this paper and a rough map, though I’m not sure precisely which location is what. One of them is an old mansion on the far side of the forest, maybe an hour’s walk from here, the other is a waterfall on the way, about twenty minutes from here.”

“So, we investigate both of them,” Yelena said resolutely.

“Yes,” John agreed, “we investigate both.”

The pair hurried out of the cabin.

…

As they continued making their way through the forest, John realized that he was feeling pretty good, and not just for the fact that Yelena was with him, nor that they were hunting down evil rogue necromancers.

He realized, finally, that it was simply the fact that he was actually doing something with a bit more importance in his life now. Helping Yelena had given him a great sense of purpose, but in a different way. Hanging around, talking with, and fucking a demoness in his cabin didn’t have the same feeling as grabbing some weapons and marching through the landscape, on the hunt for some malicious bastards.

That was a purpose, and he liked having purpose.

Plus, he really did want to help Lily and her few friends out. From what he understood, the dryads really were overworked in this area. John came out of his thoughts as he realized that he could hear the waterfall they were searching for.

“What do you know about this waterfall?” Yelena asked.

“Not much, really. I’ve seen it a few times. Nothing super remarkable about it that I can think of. But I guess that makes it a good place to hide something shady,” he replied.

“It does indeed,” Yelena agreed.

He listened to the sounds of nature around them, the growing sound of the waterfall, hoping to hear some warning, some sign of something wrong. But there was nothing, save for a growing sense of unease as they drew closer.

Finally, they broke through a treeline into a fairly beautiful glade. The waterfall in question was directly ahead of them. Though there were no signs of disturbance, there were also no creatures around, which seemed to be at least somewhat improbable.

Maybe they sensed the evil in the area, if there was any.

“Let’s do this,” John said quietly as he drew his blade.

Yelena did the same and followed as he approached the waterfall from the right. After a moment, he saw that there was indeed a cave behind the waterfall. Navigating carefully around the wet rocks, he slipped in quietly and studied the rocky opening beyond. The sunlight extended only so far, and from what he could see for now, it just looked like a normal cave.

“We’ll need light,” he said quietly as Yelena joined him. She responded by raising her hand and producing another sphere of light that hovered over them. On the one hand it would make them pretty visible, but on the other hand, they needed to see. And if he was going to have to use a light source, he’d rather use a more reliable one than a simple torch. They set off down the tunnel, pressing deeper into the cave, each sticking to one side of it as not to present an easier target, their swords drawn and ready.

The pair were silent as they stalked down the passageway, battle senses on top alert. John kept a sharp eye out for any possible sign, and saw his first one only a few moments later. A blood splash on the rocky ground. They stopped to examine it.

“It’s at least a day old,” he murmured.

“Let us keep going,” Yelena replied.

They did, and eventually came to a cavern at the end of the tunnel. As they stepped into it, the smell of the dead and old blood hit him. His grip tightened on the sword. This was very reminiscent of the previous cave they’d visited, only now they had the pounding echo of the waterfall at their backs. The light pushed back the darkness, revealing the walls of the cavern...and the slaughter. There were at least a dozen corpses spread out across the area. He counted four men in dark outfits who’d died fighting more than twice their number in abominations.

Some of them were simply zombies, but some of them had things grafted onto them. He saw one man whose right arm had been chopped off and replaced with what looked like the arm of a bear, complete with huge claws. It only got more disturbing from there. One person’s limbs had been cut completely away and replaced with the legs of a wolf. Looking at the corpse turned John’s stomach. Another had been beheaded and a godsdamned elk head had been attached to the neck. John felt like he might lose his breakfast.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“This is rather disturbing,” Yelena said quietly.

“Deeply,” he agreed. “Let’s just...get this over with.”

The search was miserable and disgusting. Another cavern was adjacent to the primary one, with a tunnel that descended even deeper into the earth. They cleared the second cavern, finding what seemed to be a combination bedroom and dining area that had been thoroughly trashed. After making sure it was safe, they moved down the tunnel. There were a lot of bloodstains on the floor and there was more smeared across the earthen walls.

John thought he heard something shift up ahead, and from the way Yelena tensed, he knew she had definitely heard it. He kept going, silver sword at ready, and finally came to the end of the tunnel. The way ahead was dark.

“Here,” Yelena whispered, and sent her ball of light ahead of them, into the room, banishing the darkness once more.

A visage of horror was revealed.

He saw a dozen flat, wooden tables spread across the room, each with their own side-table scattered with tools and pieces of people. Some of the tables were still occupied by the corpses that the rogue necromancers had been experimenting upon. The smell of blood and death was almost overwhelming.

“We should burn-” John began, and then one of the corpses moved.

He let out a small shout of surprise and fear as it sat up. He found himself looking at what had once been a felis man, a fit one, maybe a hunter or adventurer, who had been decapitated, his head replaced with that of a wolf. Behind this horrible abomination, another one began stumbling to its feet. It was missing an arm, had once been a human woman, and had its head replaced with a horse’s. “Oh Gods,” John whispered, his voice ragged.

“We must end their suffering,” Yelena said.

He nodded and moved forward as they began stumbling towards them. This was a real nightmare, and he knew he was going to have to work hard at forgetting this, or at least not thinking about it. He went to meet the first creature, the one sporting the wolf head, and brought the blade around swiftly in a tight arc. It cut cleanly through the neck, near to where the stitching that kept the head and body together was, and send the head flying off.

He expected the body to fall.

It didn’t.

Instead, whatever dark magic still lingered in this place, in this corpse, drove it to attack him, even headless. It jumped at him, bashing his sword aside and wrapping one shockingly strong hand around his throat. He gagged, dropping his sword, and began to beat at the thing’s wrist with his fists. He heard Yelena growling as she fought off her own attacker, and what might have been a third. This thing was fucking strong!

Knowing that he had to get out of this situation, and fast, John ended up jerking his entire body backwards. It worked. The sudden motion caught the dark horror by surprise and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Although it kept a firm grip on him, his own groping hand finally found the handle of his sword. He grabbed it, raised it, and brought it down as hard as he could manage onto the thing’s arm, near its shoulder.

There was a sickening sound and the blade shook in his grasp as it struck bone.

The grip began to loosen. It got back to its feet, stilling holding him. John chopped again, and a third time, and on the fourth, finally managed to cut the arm off completely. Its grip loosened more, but the arm still held onto him as he stumbled away. John pulled it off with some difficulty and gasped, coughing violently as he got his breath back. The undead thing was now reaching for him with its other hand.

He didn’t give it the chance. Bringing his sword around, he chopped down as hard as he could, and now that he had a better angle and more strength, he cut completely through the second arm. Stabbing it twice more through the chest finally finished off the corpse. Turning, ready to help Yelena, he saw that she had already dealt with not only the horse-headed horror, but another decaying corpse that had gotten up as well.

She was a damn good fighter.

They locked eyes and she began walking quickly towards him. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I am sorry I could not get to you...”

“I’m fine,” he replied, rubbing his throat and grimacing. “Just need a little bit to catch my breath.”

“Okay, good. I believe that is all of them,” she said, coming to stand before him and looking around the room. “This is an awful place.”

“Yeah. Let’s perform a search for information, and then burn all the bodies.”

“A gruesome task.”

John nodded unhappily. They got to work.

CHAPTER VIII

“Why do you keep looking at me, John?” Yelena asked, amusement in her voice.

John was finding that thinking about Yelena, and looking at her, was helping keep his mind from the horror of the cave. She was wonderfully distracting. They hadn’t found anything all that useful after searching the place, save for a bit of gold and a few more gems. With no new information, they’d set a fire to burn the cave out, and left, heading toward the mansion.

“You’re, um...you’re really good at fighting,” he replied.

She gave a small laugh. “Am I now?”

“Yeah.”

“This surprises you?”

“No, not at all. I just didn’t realize, you know, how good you were at fighting.”

“Am I to understand that you find this an attractive, or even an arousing quality?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Interesting.”

They kept pushing through the foliage and underbrush. The path to this mansion was seriously overgrown.

“Why’s that?”

“I admittedly do not have much knowledge of your realm, but from what I have gathered, is it not normal for that to be an unattractive quality in your women? Is it not abnormal to be attracted to such a feature?”

“I’m not a normal human,” John replied.

“No. You are not,” she agreed happily.

He reached out and took her hand, stopping her. “Are you aroused?” he asked.

“Quite.”

“We should fuck. Right here. Just real fast,” he said.

“Right here?” she asked, amused, turning to face him.

“Yes. Do you want to?”

“I do, in fact.”

He looked around quickly. The foliage was pretty dense, and he didn’t think anyone was around. Yelena didn’t seem to either. He pressed himself against her, pushing her up against a nearby tree, kissed her deeply. Moaning, she kissed him back, hugging him fiercely. He felt her shove her long, forked tongue into his mouth and that only made him fucking hornier. He wanted to be inside of her so bad, wanted it more than anything in the whole world right then. He reached down and began messing with her pants.

She growled, her hands coming down and moving his aside, then she grabbed the cloth and ripped it open at the crouch.

“Fuck me,” she snarled.

They moved together. As soon as his cock was out of his pants, she hopped up a little, wrapping her legs around him, and he held her, grabbing her ass and slipping his cock inside of her. Gasping at the sensation, he started fucking her up against the tree as she moaned loudly. She still had her hood on and he pressed his face to hers, kissing her again, feeling an immensely powerful concoction of lust and connection with her as he made love with her.

She groaned and grunted, pressing against him with her powerful hips and squeezing him against her with her legs, and he thought about how those legs ended in hooves, and that just made him even more turned on somehow. Inhuman women just did it for him so fucking much and Yelena had to be the most badass, toughest woman he’d ever been with, and she seemed to want him just as badly as he wanted her.

His mind was an incoherent mess of lust and desire and desperate need and blissful pleasure and rapturous unity. He made passionate, furious love with her, driving into her, pounding her, and she was staring directly into his eyes, growling and groaning, panting.

“Yelena,” he gasped, “I’m going...fuck...I’m going to go...”

“Do not pull out,” she growled.

“I thought-”

“Do not dare pull out of me,” she said, grinning fiercely, and hugging him tightly to her with her legs. “I will not let you.”

“Oh fuck!” he gasped and started coming inside of her.

She moaned and kissed him hard on the mouth, passion obvious in her body language as she held him firmly against her. He groaned, lost in her, as he filled her with his seed, coming into her perfect, hot demoness pussy.

When he was done, he carefully pulled out of her and then tucked his cock away. Now that he’d orgasmed, he was again paranoid that they might be watched.

“That was a lot,” she murmured, looking down at herself.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” he replied.

She looked back up at him and smirked. “I wanted it. Stand watch,” she said, and got out of her backpack. He stood watch, occasionally checking to see what she was doing. She got out of the pants she’d ripped open and used them to clean herself up, then prepared to toss them away.

“Wait,” he said, and she looked up. “The dryads may not, uh, appreciate that.”

“A fair point,” Yelena replied, and instead set them down. She pulled out a fresh pair of pants, pulled them on, then balled up the ruined pants and shoved them into her pack. Once that was done, she pulled it back on and stood.

“Okay, I am ready to go.”

“Sorry I didn’t get you off,” he said as they set off again.

“You can make it up to me when this is over,” she said.

“I definitely can,” he agreed.

She took off her glove and held his hand, and they walked on.

It took another ten minutes to track down the isolated mansion. The pair came to stand at the edge of the huge clearing it was built into, although it was obvious that time had taken its toll on the place and the once rigidly uniform lines of the clearing cut into the forest were now ill-defined, nature pushing back, reclaiming what it had lost to whatever rich family bought this land, chopped away the trees, and thrown up their mansion.

He and Yelena studied it from afar. Several of the windows were broken out, and there were holes in the walls in some places. The wraparound porch had partially collapsed from what might have been a particularly bad storm one day, after months and months of no maintenance. He hunted for signs of life, of anyone having passed through recently, but it was honestly too hard to tell. He looked over at Yelena.

“What do you think we should do?” he asked softly.

“Circle the area, look for activity, mark all the potential entrances. Then figure out how best to proceed,” she replied succinctly.

“Good plan,” he agreed. She glanced at him and there was a sudden wariness on her face. She studied him for a few seconds, and the wariness faded away. Instead, she just nodded and set off. Did she think he was mocking her? He hoped not, but, well...he imagined that maybe she didn’t have the best environment where she came from, in terms of people being nice. Demons weren’t exactly known for their kindness.

Although clearly Yelena knew how to be kind. Was that a stereotype on his part, or was she the exception to the rule?

Right now, it didn’t matter.

They set off, moving slowly along the perimeter.

It was slow going, and ultimately it didn’t really yield much. They didn’t see anyone else or any signs of life, and all they found was a back entrance and a side entrance. Done scouting, they met back together to discuss how to move forward.

“We should go in through the side entrance,” he said. “I think it’s the least obvious place. I mean, theoretically. They could have all three trapped or watched.”

“The side entrance it is, then,” Yelena replied.

Quietly, they set off. He hated leaving the relative safety of the treeline, but honestly, a good eye would have spotted them already. It was possible that they were being watched this very minute, someone lining up a shot from one of the darkened, broken-out windows or some other shadowy niche they couldn’t see. Although, thinking it through, he doubted it. His senses were good, and Yelena’s were clearly better than his. It was certainly possible, but it was also possible that they were alone, and that this place was abandoned. It could either be a dead end, or the simple fact that the necromancers had moved on. Well, whatever the case, he at least felt confident they could handle it.

He felt like he could handle a lot with Yelena watching his back.

They crossed the overgrown yard and made it up to the wraparound porch. Moving as quietly as they could, the pair stepped onto it and up to the side entrance. John tried the handle. It was unlocked. Good start. Probably. He opened it. The door squeaked as it opened, making him wince, but otherwise nothing happened.

Swords drawn, the pair slipped inside.

They’d come to an empty hallway. “We clear this floor, then move up until we hit the top, searching as we go.”

“Understood,” Yelena replied.

As they began their hunt through the mansion, John thought about those they were hunting. Necromancers were typically good people. Men and women dedicated to the art of death magic. They offered cures for the rarer illnesses, put down the undead, laid hauntings to rest, and did a lot of other things that John could only guess at. They were often dark and gloomy and difficult to approach socially, but he knew they weren’t really all that different. He’d had a relationship with a necromancer once, a tall, whipcord lean woman with very short blonde, almost white, hair. They’d worked together when she’d wanted some backup taking on a haunted house not all that dissimilar from the one he and Yelena were now searching.

Although she’d been a bit severe and unapproachable at first, they’d gotten to talk during the adventure, and by the time it was over, she seemed much more at ease around him. Then she’d basically jumped him and they’d had fantastic sex three times that night in a camp he’d made out in the woods. She’d explained later, in between the sessions, that it was extremely difficult to get laid by anyone outside of the necromancy circles, and trust was hard to come by. And she was very grateful about his open-minded attitude.

They’d traveled together for nearly two weeks, having a joyously sex and fun filled time during their travels.

But he knew it wasn’t all good with the necromancers. They were a little more prone than most magic users to going bad. He wasn’t entirely sure why, and neither were the few necromancers he’d spoken to on what was, reasonably, a sensitive topic. The best theory was that it happened because they were working with death magic, which gave you a sense of power greater than most other magics. Basically, it went to their head more easily. If you had control over death itself, then it felt like you were almost a god.

It was a false feeling, though, he’d been told more than once.

In the end, there didn’t seem to be a way to permanently cheat death. Not without ascending to godhood, which was basically impossible. And hey, if you dedicated yourself to a God or Goddess and were a good person, it wasn’t all that difficult to at least get into a decent afterlife. At least, that’s what a lot of people believed. Not so much in his own land. People mostly tried to keep out of the eyes of the pantheon.

It was hard to tell for sure. Not a lot of people spoke to deities, and some could just be lying.

Religion was a thing he didn’t really like to think about.

The pair moved slowly through the mansion’s first floor. It was about what he’d expected from his imaginings after seeing the place every now and then when he went this far out hunting or exploring over the years. There was a receiving room, a dining room, a kitchen, a pantry, two bedrooms, a few closets, and a way upstairs and a way into the basement. They left the basement alone for now, since the door was closed, and they wanted to secure the upstairs first. Most of the furniture they found was old and dust-covered, though there were definitely signs of a recent disturbance, though not many. He imagined they’d been trying to hide their presence.

It seemed as though whoever had owned the place had taken anything of any real value when they’d abandoned it, given that although there wasn’t much evidence of ransacking commonly associated with prospective thieves and adventurers, there wasn’t really anything of any real significance left beyond the basic furniture. The second floor didn’t exactly yield a great deal of useful items or information either.

Some bedrooms, a giant closet, a sun room, a lounge, they’d found more derelict furniture, and even fewer signs of a possible recent disturbance. He felt tension beginning to well within him. The longer nothing happened, the more it felt like something was going to happen. From the way Yelena was moving, he could tell she felt it too. The attic, though creepy, was just more of the same. Finally, the pair of them came back downstairs to the basement door and opened it up. A long, dark stairwell descending into the earth awaited them.

“I will go first,” Yelena said. “I have better vision in the dark.”

“All right,” he replied, and followed her down, closing the door behind him, trying to will his eyes to get used to the darkness faster.

For now, he trusted Yelena to be his eyes.

As they got to the bottom of the stairs, he waited by the entrance to the room beyond, trying to detect any light at all. He heard the faintest hints of Yelena searching the basement and grew frustrated that he couldn’t help her, but before too long, he finally began to detect some light in the room. He joined her and tracked the source. It was coming from a very thin outline in one of the walls. “I am going to make some light, be ready,” she whispered.

“Ready,” he confirmed, blade held tightly in hand.

She created a very dim source of light, but after the darkness, it was just the right level for him to be able to see basically everything. The basement largely resembled the rest of the house. They took a moment to quickly clear it out, finding what might have been a room to sit around and chat or play cards, a storage area, and a wine cellar that had long since been cleared out. All that remained was to investigate the outline.

It was clearly a false door, not too terribly well-hidden. Though there was no obvious way of opening it from this side. They were in the process of attempting to hunt down whatever mechanism was necessary to open it when they began to hear sounds.

“Someone’s coming,” Yelena whispered, her voice barely audible. “I’ll handle it.”

He slipped away as she extinguished her magical light and waited. Footsteps drew closer. They waited in rapt silence until finally there was a grinding sound and the door slowly swung open. A shadow fell across the square of flickering torchlight. The second he stepped out, there was a solid thwacking sound, followed by a very brief cry, and then the thump of a body hitting the floor. They waited for any kind of retaliation or even acknowledgment of the attack, but apparently he had been alone.

Crouching over the man, John determined he was unconscious.

“Is he one of the ones we are looking for?” Yelena asked.

“Yeah,” John murmured, recognizing the same clothing as the others. He patted the man down, checking his pockets for anything useful, and came up with even more proof: a small text on the undead arts.

And if that wasn’t enough, he could smell a strong whiff of undead, decaying flesh blowing up at him from the tunnel the man had come from.

“I wanted to be sure. Should we kill him?” she asked.

“Yeah,” John replied after a moment. It would probably be too much trouble to try and wake him back up and get information out of him. Rogue necromancers were quite stubborn. So, Yelena quickly slipped a dagger through his eye and then pulled his body out of sight. The pair of them stepped into the tunnel and, after a moment of deliberation, left the way behind them open, just in case they needed to retreat somewhere quickly.

They kept going, moving deeper and deeper, following the rough stone tunnel down. It was lit by torches attached to the right wall, and for several minutes, there was just tense silence as they progressed further. Finally, the tunnel came to an end, opening into a simple stone chamber. There was no one around, but it was obvious that this was used as some kind of training area. There were large mats on the ground, and racks of swords on the walls, and stands for armor, with two separate tunnels leading off elsewhere.

There were a lot of bones scattered around, and blood.

“What is this?” John whispered. It didn’t make any sense. Necromancers didn’t bother with swordplay, or armor, typically. They had others do it for them…

“A training area for their undead creations,” Yelena said, right as he figured it out.

“Shit,” he muttered. “This is a bigger operation than we thought.”

“We must end this,” Yelena replied.

Grimly, John pointed to one of the two openings. “Let’s start there.”

They headed into the tunnel, swords drawn. John thought he could hear someone, or something, moving up ahead. He froze as soon as the sound came to him, Yelena pausing a little before he did, and ears straining, they listened. The sound didn’t come again. Moving on, he saw that there was a break in the tunnel up ahead to the left. He stopped again as he got to it and peered down it. The passageway led to a room only a few feet away.

The sound came again, from further down the hallway.

“Wait here, watch my back,” he whispered.

Yelena sheathed her sword and drew her bow. As he stepped in, she hid herself just within the entrance to the side tunnel, arrow notched. “Understood.”

He hated splitting up, but this seemed like the best option right now. John slipped into the room, picking up the pace, and looked around it. More torches on the walls, and against the far rock wall, there were a series of simple wooden tables lined up. On them, corpses. He spied two dead human men and a dead beryl woman and felt his skin crawl. Other than that, all he found was a lever built into one of the walls.

He hurried over to it and opened it up. A section of rock began sliding up into the wall. Good craftsmanship, he surmised, as it hardly made any noise. He looked down into the tunnel that slanted even deeper into the earth. Thinking he saw something further down there, John took a few steps into the tunnel’s entrance.

“Yelena,” he began, turning back around when he didn’t see anything, “there’s a tunnel here and-”

Someone shouted, then someone else shouted: two different voices, and neither of them Yelena’s. John spun around as he suddenly heard a grinding sound. “No, no! Shit!” he screamed as he scrambled to get back through the door, which was closing quickly. He slammed into it as he heard Yelena shout. The muffled sounds of swords clashing came to him and he frantically began to look around for another lever on this side.

But before he could make any significant progress in his hunt, a huge explosion erupted on the other side of the rock door, and immediately the ceiling overhead began to collapse. John turned and began sprinting away. He was not going to die in a damned cave-in. He ran off into the darkness, trying to stay alive, praying to anyone that might listen that Yelena would be okay.

…

It was darker where he was now, and it smelled worse than before.

John had run for almost a solid minute before finally coming to a halt. The ceiling wasn’t caved in where he was, and the bits of rock that had fallen in and started chasing him down the slanted tunnel had finally ceased. After that, he’d walked for another several minutes. Anxiety was a palpable thing now, as he couldn’t stop thinking about Yelena. Was she okay? Was she injured? Trapped? Dead? He tried to shake off these despairing thoughts as he finally came to the end of the tunnel. It opened into a small cave where water dripped.

There were a few torches along the walls, but not many. It was a good sign, though: it meant people came through here at least semi-regularly. Although with magic, it was hard to tell how long a torch had been burning. He knew there were ways to keep them burning for days, if not longer, if you were powerful enough. And most necromancers were powerful enough. John studied the cave in the dim light afforded to him.

The only real thing of interest besides the torches was a small pool of stagnant water, fed by dripping stalactites. He could just barely make out another opening across the way and immediate set off towards it, moving around the small pool. As he did, however, something shifted inside that tunnel, just out of his sight. Gripping his blade more tightly, he prepared himself for whatever it was, because then he heard footsteps. They were slow, and one of them seemed to drag a little bit. Zombie, had to be. Well, he could deal with those.

Sure enough, a former human lumbered out of the tunnel and began coming for him. John met it head-on and cut straight through its neck. That both decapitated and stopped it. He studied it as it hit the ground. It looked to be in pretty bad shape, the clothes ripped and torn, barely hanging onto the thing’s frame, which was gaunt, its skin badly decayed. This one seemed a lot weaker and older. A rear guard? Or maybe a reject?

Maybe they’d just lost track of it.

Whatever, it didn’t matter. It was dead, he wasn’t, and he needed to find Yelena, put an end to this cavern of horrors, and get out of here. Gods, did he already miss sunshine. And sex. Weird to be thinking of it at a time like this, but his mind often turned to sex in stressful situations. Sex was something to look forward to.

John entered the tunnel and moved down it. Almost immediately he began to hear the occasional groan and something shuffle. So, there were more zombies around. John sighed and tightened his grip again on his silver blade. As he kept moving, he wondered about where he actually was. Why had that mansion connected to this series of caves? He’d seen setups similar to this before on some of his adventures. There could probably be a few reasons. One: escape route. Rich people were always looking to have escape routes for one reason or another. Two: something dark and dirty. If you were going to do something illegal or ‘shameful’, like maybe have orgies or something, well...a dark, damp cave wasn’t exactly the best place to do it, but if you threw down enough rugs and beds, he supposed it could work.

He’d fucked in the forest more than once now.

John also didn’t discount the notion that it was because they could.

People with too much coin often did things because they could, because they had enough gold to do it. He didn’t really understand it, but then again, he clearly didn’t have a mindset for being rich. Anytime he had an abundance of gold, which granted hadn’t been that often in his life, he tended to spend it on his friends or any woman he happened to be sleeping with at the time. He loved buying people stuff, making them happy.

John checked down a handful of small tunnels he came across as he continued his journey. Almost all of them were empty. One held another zombie in similar condition to the first he’d fought. He cut its head off and kept searching. Another held some old, empty crates. He was getting closer to the awful reeking smell of death and old blood, though. His footsteps sounded too loud to him. And lonely. It was weird: John was used to being alone. After his parents had died, he’d had a kind of trial by fire in loneliness. He hadn’t really known it, but people in the town didn’t really regard his parents, and by extension him, very well.

A lot of people knew about his father’s debts.

It was one of those open secrets.

John wished someone had warned him. But they’d all kind of pulled back. Oh sure, they’d made the appropriate comments when they passed him in the market, how sorry they were about what happened. But no one actually helped him, for the most part. So, he’d spent a lot of nights alone in his parent’s house. He’d cried himself to sleep a lot, because it had felt like the end of the world. Honestly though, he’d been kind of lucky, because he’d been so desperately working his ass off hunting and gathering coin that for the most part, he didn’t have time to grieve. By the time he’d been able to really take a breath, the worst of the grief seemed to have passed. It still hurt, a lot, but he no longer quite felt like he might completely lose his mind to despair.

Consequently, he’d gotten used to spending a great deal of time alone. Sometimes it got bad, but mostly he enjoyed it. The peace. The quiet. The solitude. And although he did tend to not want to be alone after hooking up with another woman, typically another adventuress, it didn’t take all that long to get used to being alone again. But it felt different right now. At least some of it was probably the fact that this was a really stressful situation and he was very concerned for Yelena’s safety. He knew she could kick ass with the best of them, but all it took was one slip-up, one bit of bad luck, for even the greatest warrior to die.

But he thought that he was especially desperate right now because there was something special about his relationship with Yelena. Again, down there in the near-darkness of the tunnels, slicing up the occasional zombie, John pondered that. Was he falling in love? Was that possible? It had to be, he supposed. What was stopping them from falling for each other? Was a life together even possible? He didn’t think so, but maybe…

Maybe.

The network of tunnels was finally coming to an end. John set his thoughts aside for now. It was more than likely about to get more dangerous, and he was no good to Yelena dead. This tunnel opened up into a much larger cavern, and the reek of death was nearly overwhelming. He saw why: near the center was a pile of corpses. He couldn’t count them for sure, but there had to be several dozen, many of them from different races.

A half dozen or so of those things shambled about.

John set to work. He moved forward as the nearest one took notice of him and began coming. Its skin was yellowing and ripped in several places, covered in old, long-dried blood. It was in pretty bad shape, with graveyard dirt still clinging to it in a few places. He realized, as he struck it down, that they must’ve been digging up corpses to help supplement their experiments. It was horrible and disgusting, but in some small way, he was at least glad for every already-dead body they took, instead of an alive person.

Being captured for experimentation by necromancers was one of people’s biggest, darkest fears, and he didn’t blame them at all. This group had been operating under his nose for awhile now. This operation looked extensive. As he cut down a second, then a third zombie, both humans, he realized why Lily and her other allies hadn’t been able to sense this mess: it was too deep underground. It wouldn’t have kept up forever, because eventually the evil would seep up into the earth like poison, and then they’d know about it.

He wondered what Lily would have done if he and Yelena weren’t around. Probably ask for help from another forest. Like Yelena, he knew Lily was straight up badass and knew all sorts of magical abilities to help her fight, but he knew this would be a pretty bad environment for her to fight in. Not much in the way of nature, and she’d be fighting necromancers to boot. The last zombie fell, another one of those disgusting stitched-together monstrosities. This one was a man with a wolf’s head, jaw snapping occasionally, one eye rotted out. John killed it gladly. There was another pool in this place and although the water certainly wasn’t anywhere near clean, he took the opportunity to rinse the decayed gore off his blade.

The way out was obvious, at least.

There was a big, very crudely hammered out stone stairwell leading up. This was progress. Hopefully. John headed up it. He tried to keep quiet, but his boots sounded too loud to him. It seemed to take ages to climb those stairs. Finally, he reached the top and found himself staring through a large, open archway into another big room, this one a lot more developed. The awful stench of death hadn’t dissipated.

“Shit,” he whispered.

It was the motherlode. It was a giant version of the other room they’d found earlier, with the bodies on the tables, only disgustingly upgraded. This place looked like a damned torture chamber assembled from a madman’s fever dream. The walls were covered in things meant to cut and restrain and torment. There was also a tremendous amount of magic in the area. He could feel it on the air, and he wasn’t all that magical of a person.

Someone was coming. He heard voices.

He hurried over across the room, fast as he could, and just barely managed to make it to the wall right next to the other entryway, where the voices were coming from. He began listening, crouched down, sword ready.

“...would be perfect! Just perfect! We’ve never had a demon before.”

“I know, but we’ve got to find her first. She’s somewhere on this level, she has to be. She’s already killed Paul and Wesley...”

“We’ll get her. We can use her. She’ll have a lot of potential power...”

That was all John needed to hear. Yelena was alive! And kicking their asses! As soon as they walked into the room, he drove his blade through the neck of the one nearest to him. He issued a strangled wail as blood sprayed the second man, who screamed in surprise. He began backing away and hurled a fireball at John. Well, since he already had this guy on his sword, he just turned a little and let the dying necromancer take the fireball. As soon as the fireball hit, he ripped his sword free and hurried forward, trying to take the second man out.

But he was fast, and very agile.

The man was preparing for another fireball. John was too far away. Doing the only thing he could think of, he hurled his blade as hard as he could. The necromancer tried to dodge but couldn’t. His fireball discharged into the ceiling as the blade sank into his guts. He fell screaming to the ground. John drew his bow, notched an arrow, and let it fly. It sank halfway into the necromancer’s eye, and the man stopped screaming instantly.

He flopped back onto the stone ground and grew still.

“Damn,” John whispered. He replaced his bow, and moving forward, drew his blade free from the dead man. As he looked around to see if anyone else had heard the combat, he heard something else instead.

Sounds of conflict drifted to him, and the voice of someone shouting, nearby.

It had to be Yelena. Another noise, this one a shout of pain and surprise. He hurried down the tunnel the two necromancers had just come out of. He could hear some kind of scuffling going on up ahead, to the left. Another passageway, he took it eagerly and almost called out to Yelena, but that might cause problems, he didn’t know exactly what her situation was. It had gone silent by now. He hurried, hoping that she wouldn’t move on before he could get to her. John finally hit the end of the passageway and looked around the large cavern he’d come into.

“Yelena?” he asked softly.

There was no one here. Although he saw a lot of very fresh blood near the center of the cave. He looked around again. There were no other ways out, as far as he could tell. “What the fuck?” he whispered, moving forward, cautious now. Where was Yelena? Was there someone else down here murdering people? Well, there were a lot of experiments around here, maybe one of them had gotten loose and started doing some damage to the bastards who had made it. But if that were the case, then where was it?

Where was the person it had killed?

This much blood, there had to be a corpse. And he didn’t see any blood trail leading away. What was happening?!

John heard dripping coming from somewhere behind him. A cold fear gripped him as he turned around. He saw blood dripping down from above…

Above.

He looked up.

“Oh, fuck me!”

A huge spider was dropping down from the ceiling, holding the corpse of a necromancer in its awful mouth. It landed right in front of the only exit. John swallowed, frozen in indecision for a few heartbeats, staring at it, as it stared back at him. And then, his survival instincts kicked in and he sheathed his sword. Drawing his bow decisively, he notched an arrow, aimed, and let it fly. It sailed through the air and struck true, right in one of the spider’s eight huge eyes. This thing had to be the size of a damned horse! Bigger even!

It let out a horribly loud shriek, dropped the corpse, and began scrabbling towards him. John screamed in fear and shot another arrow, and one more, as he moved backwards. They both landed in the thing’s awful, enormous black body. It didn’t slow it down, though. If anything, it seemed to make the creature speed up, enraging it. John fired off one more arrow, which missed, and then screamed as he tried to dive out of the way.

But he was too slow, and got backhanded by one of its huge limbs.

Feeling like he’d been hit with a log, John flew through the air, and cried out miserably as he slammed into a rock wall, then again when he hit the ground.

Well, he thought, this is it. Apparently, this is how I die. To a giant fucking spider.

This is bullshit.

The ground vibrated as the spider came for him. Groaning in sick pain, he rolled over, grabbing blindly for his sword, having no idea where it had gone, when he saw the monstrous long legs scuttling towards him.

Then, suddenly there was a flash of light, and the spider came to a halt. It issued a wild shriek of rage and spun around. Another flash of light, and John recognized it for what it was: a fireball. And then he heard her.

“John!? Where are you!?”

“Yelena! Kill it!” he screamed as he began struggling to his feet. There was his godsdamned sword, ten feet away to his left.

He hissed in pain but clamped down on it, refusing to make too much noise. He didn’t want to distract Yelena. From what he could see, she was taking the thing on alone, and she was fast. As he witnessed her combating the giant spider, John began to truly get a feel for just how skilled she was at combat. She dodged one swipe of its massive leg and brought her silver blade down hard, cutting cleanly through the leg. The spider shrieked wildly as it leaped at her, mad with pain and rage. She dodged it, tucking into a smooth roll and then coming back up.

Spinning around, she aimed and loosed another fireball that nailed it right in its cluster of eyes, effectively blinding it. Pressing the advantage, Yelena rushed forward, leaped up, and brought the tip of the blade directly down into its head. The spider went rigid, then collapsed into a pile of twitching limbs, before it began to grow still.

Breathing heavily, Yelena yanked her sword from its head before allowing her eyes to sweep the room. Her fiery gaze centered on John and she went from badass warrior to concerned lover in a second, hurrying over to him.

“John! Are you injured?” she asked.

“Think I cracked a rib maybe,” he replied. Now that the thrill of battle was no longer crashing down on him, he was really beginning to feel his injuries.

He couldn’t stand any longer and instead sat back down heavily against the wall.

“Here, hold still,” she said, dropping to her knees and placing her hands gently against his chest. He winced in pain, but otherwise held still and stayed quiet. After a few seconds, a wondrous warmth began to flow into him as her hands glowed a gentle white. It didn’t take long for the wound to heal and the pain to subside.

“Thank you,” he murmured as she helped him to his feet.

“You are welcome,” she said, and then immediately wrapped him in a tight hug. He hugged her back firmly. “I was so afraid for you. I thought you had died.”

“I had similar fears about you,” he replied. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

“We should finish what we started,” she said after a moment, collecting herself and releasing him.

He nodded. “We should. Now that we’re back together, and you’ve killed this big bastard, it hopefully shouldn’t be too hard.”

“I have managed to kill nearly a dozen of them so far, and I found this.” She pulled a folded-up piece of parchment from her pocket. He accepted it, opened it, and studied it closely. A map, he realized after a moment. A map of the whole underground area, hopefully.

“Well...let’s get started then.”

CHAPTER IX

It didn’t take as long as John worried it might to clear out the cave system, as it wasn’t nearly as large as he had initially thought. Several passageways were collapsed, and clearly had been for months or even years at this point. There were only two more necromancers still alive, hiding out, and about a dozen undead still lingering among the caves and caverns. Between the two of them, they managed to put them all down without too much trouble.

This time, they decided to leave the cleanup to someone else, given the extent of it. And at this point, he thought that it really needed to be shown to the proper authorities, also known as the necromancer’s guild. He imagined they would enjoy the opportunity to get in there and clean it all up without too many people knowing about another group of necromancers gone rogue. After they finished climbing back out of the cave network, they decided they were going to find Lily, fill her in, then go straight home.

It had been a long day.

As it turned out, they didn’t even need to hunt down Lily again. She was waiting for them maybe a hundred feet from the mansion.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Necromancers were under the mansion, in some caves, doing really fucked up things. We killed them all, and all their creations. This needs to be reported to the guild,” John replied tiredly. He wasn’t looking forward to the walk home.

But he was looking forward to being home with Yelena.

“Thank you so much. Both of you. I had no idea it had gotten this bad...Vivian’s tits,” she cursed, shaking her head angrily, “this is what happens when there just aren’t enough of us.”

“Do you need us to track down the guild?” John asked.

“No, no, I can handle that. I have my own means of getting in touch with them.” She stepped forward suddenly and hugged him fiercely, then she hugged Yelena as well. His demoness companion seemed not to know what to do at first, and then tentatively hugged her back. Dryads were naturally very loving and, at least in his experience, very touchy-feely.

“Really, thank you both so much. This was...this is a big deal. You risked your lives for the safety of the forest, and those traveling through it.”

“I’m always happy to help you, Lily,” John replied.

As she released Yelena, he noticed that Lily had a green gem hanging between her breasts. Her large, beautiful breasts. With a sidelong glance, he realized that Yelena was actually checking the dryad out as well.

Lily glanced down and, mistaking heir gazes, said, “Oh! Yes! Here, this is what I promised,” taking the gem, with its necklace of magically twisted and reinforced stems, from around her neck. She gave it to Yelena.

“What is it? What does it do?” Yelena asked, accepting it.

“It’s a gift from the forest, a gift of the forest. Wearing it will mark you as an ally of the dryads, an ally of nature and the Goddess Vivian. When you are in this forest, you will be protected.” She paused. “This is not a gift given lightly, Yelena. Do not abuse it, or there will be consequences. This is not a threat, just a warning given out of compassion.”

“I...thank you, Lily,” Yelena said after a little bit. He wondered if she was uncomfortable, being marked as the ally of a Goddess. Could it even work that way? Well, he supposed if Vivian had a problem with it, She would do something. Did Lily even know if it was awkward? Surely, she must, or maybe not.

“This seems like so much. Not that I am complaining. I am just a little...confused. And very appreciative,” she said, putting on the necklace.

“You have done a great service to us. We were beginning to worry about the problem, and you managed to nip it in the bud before it truly spiraled out of control. But John is special to us...to me. He has earned my trust, and the trust of the forest, more than once. If he claims you as an ally to be trusted, then we extend that trust to you,” Lily explained.

“Thank you very much, Lily,” Yelena said.

“You’re welcome.” She shifted slightly, and somehow, in some way that he was unsure of, in that small gesture she had become much more alluring, much sexier. She favored them with an almost erotic smile. “I wouldn’t mind your...company again John. I miss you. And...” she looked at Yelena. “I also would very much like to get to know you on a more personal level, Yelena. Just know that I’ll be in the area, should you feel the need for my company.”

“Uh...okay, Lily,” John said, trying hard not to flush and grin like an idiot. But damn, Lily could turn it on and way up when she wanted to.

The beautiful dryad disappeared back into the trees and plants, just like that.

“So that was, um, interesting,” John said as they began the long walk back to the cabin.

“Yes. Very,” Yelena agreed. “Lily is very...beautiful,” she murmured.

“Yes, she is...having a change of heart about her?” John asked.

“Maybe. I feel much better after, uh, earlier. After our talk. It helped me focus. And Lily is definitely very beautiful.”

“Are you attracted to her?”

“Of course,” Yelena replied.

“I don’t suppose you’ve given anymore thought to, you know...a threesome?” he asked.

“I am still considering it,” she replied. “She has such large, beautiful breasts. But for right now, all I want to do is go back to the cabin, strip down naked, soak in that hot spring you have out back, and then have multiple, long bouts of sexual intercourse with you.”

“I’d like that very much, too,” he replied.

“Then let us hurry.”

They hurried.

…

It was getting to be prematurely dark again by the time they finally got back to the cabin. The clouds were thickening, and thunder was crashing distantly. As soon as they got into the cabin, Yelena pushed him up against a wall, kissing him fiercely.

“You are mine tonight, John,” she growled, staring at him intently with those flaming, flickering eyes of hers. He stared back, his heart pounding in his chest, his erection a powerful, pulsing thing between his legs. “I claim you tonight.”

“Do you now?” he asked, breathing heavily.

“Yes. You are mine,” she growled again, and kissed him deeply.

He pushed back against her suddenly, realizing that there was no way he was going to be able to wait for the hot spring. He shoved her towards his bed and she landed on it with a grunt. “And you are mine tonight, Yelena,” he said, taking off his shirt and tossing it aside.

“Claim me if you can,” she replied, hastily getting out of her own clothes.

He almost leaped onto her, grabbing her wrists and holding her down against the bed, staring into her strange, exotic face that spoke of danger and dark lust. There was something about Yelena that called to darker desires in him he’d only occasionally explored. And she seemed to know that...and encourage it.

He kissed her roughly, running his hands across her body, feeling the hot, firm weight of her breasts, her hard nipple against his palm. She wrapped her legs around him, holding him to her, grabbing his shoulders.

“Enter me!” she cried.

He didn’t even have to reach down and adjust himself, he was right there, at the entrance to her pussy, and he could feel the heat coming off her like an open flame. Her body was alive and almost thrumming with lust and desire, and his own body responded in kind, wanting nothing more in the world than to be inside of her.

She let out a shout of satisfaction as he pushed his way into her.

“Oh, fuck!” he groaned as he slid his length inside of her, feeling all the hot wetness there. Her vagina constricted around his cock, clenching hard.

“Fuck me!” she demanded, her voice a throaty growl.

He started to fuck her, the bed rocking violently in response. She began growling and moaning, holding him close to her as he drove into her over and over again. This was different. Whatever sex they had had before, whatever fucking they’d done or love they’d made...this was somehow different. More violent, more furious, but also far more passionate, closer. He stared intently into her eyes, his face inches from hers, and she stared back. Her eyes were flaming more brightly now, and whereas before they’d been orange or yellow, they were now red.

Deep red.

“Your eyes...” he groaned.

“What about them?” she gasped, then cried out as he pushed deeper into her with a particular thrust.

“They’re red. I’ve never seen them like that before.”

“Red?” she asked, startled.

“Yes...are you okay?”

“Do not stop!” she moaned. “I am fine, do not dare stop!”

He didn’t really want to stop, wasn’t even sure he could at this point. The passion for her was burning through him, consuming him. It wasn’t just the sex, he didn’t know what it was, but he loved it. It felt amazing.

John kissed her deeply and she moaned in response, her hips pressing against him, grinding against his own, and each time he thrust into her she would respond in kind. She broke the kiss, panting and moaning, her voice getting higher as the pleasure mounted, and he could sense that she was going to come soon. He wanted to make her come, wanted to give her that rapturous release and experience it with her at the same time.

When she came, she howled in pleasure.

John moaned, feeling her vagina tighten around his cock, feeling her hot feminine sex juices spraying out of her, and he began to come into her demonic pussy, began to fill her with his seed, pump her full of it one hard contraction at a time. Explosions of pleasure blasted through him, rushing through his entire body with each fresh pulse of his dick as it filled her with his seed. He could feel her orgasming pussy, could feel the physical manifestation of her pleasure as he came in her, could feel the passion rising from her.

Slowly, gradually, their orgasms wore off.

Neither spoke for a long time, simply laying there together, him still inside of her, their foreheads resting together, staring into each other’s eyes without speaking. Her eyes had changed to a more sullen glow, but they were still red.

“What does it mean?” he asked softly. “Your eyes?”

“It is...complicated,” she replied. “I...prefer not to speak of it right now. Not yet.”

“Okay,” he said, and that only made him more curious.

He kissed her and then decided it was time to bathe. He was sticky and sweaty and filthy and imagined she was in much the same condition. A long soak in the hot, clear waters would do them well. He gently pulled out of her, his softening cock very sensitive, and stood up slowly, groaning as several of his joints popped.

“It’s been a long day,” he groaned.

“It has,” she agreed, getting up. He stared at her, up at her, a little bit, and smiled. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“You. You’re so tall,” he replied.

“Am I? I am about average height in my realm,” she replied.

He took her hand and laced their fingers together, then led her out back, pausing to grab a pair of towels. “You are definitely tall. I’m a little tall for my race, and gender. Human women tend to be shorter than I am by about half a foot.”

“Oh. I suppose I am very tall. Do you...prefer that? My study of this realm, cursory though it may be, seemed to indicate that human men preferred women who were smaller than them. I believe it may have something to do with fitting...traditional roles? Is that the right phrase? The right way to put it?” she asked.

“Traditional roles?” he replied.

They were approaching the hot spring now. It was almost full dark, and the cloud cover was thick. Rain seemed to be on the way again. The water was clear and steaming. They began to slide down into it. “Yes. As I understand it, men typically take on tasks that are more dangerous and physically laborious to provide for the women, who typically take on more...uh, maternal and homestead tasks.”

“I know a few women who would disagree with you on that,” he replied. “Oh wow, this water is fantastic.” She laid down against him. “But...well, around here at least, I suppose you’re right. There’s no rules saying that it has to happen like that, but it sure does end up that way often. And I guess it’s kind of expected in a small village like this. Gender-defined rules start to blur when you get out in the wilderness, and the larger cities, like Mist. Honestly, in my times of travel, I’ve met more capable women adventurers than men.”

“So, what do you prefer? Do you mind that I am taller than you are?”

“No. I like it. A lot actually,” he replied.

“Oh. Good. I am glad.”

After sitting together and just soaking for awhile, they spent a little bit cleaning up after their hard day’s work and their harder night’s sex.

“Yelena...” John said.

“Yes?” she replied.

“Why do you like humans?” he asked.

She was silent for a long while. “I am not sure I could give you an adequate answer, because I have never had one myself,” she replied.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“A long time. I first visited this realm when I was young, perhaps seventy or eighty of your years ago. I was tracking someone, another of my kind that had betrayed us. He came here, thinking he could hide. It was not in this land, but one far away, I believe. The indigenous people, I think you call them the far elves,” she replied.

“Oh, yes. That is quite a ways away.”

“I was wounded, much as I was when you found me, though it was because I had found the traitor, and engaged him in combat. I had intended to take him back alive, but he forced me to kill him. But he nearly killed me in the process. A far elf found me. He was very handsome, and young, like you,” she said.

“I’m not that young,” John replied.

She smiled and patted his hand. “You are to me. I thought he would finish the job, but he did not. He healed me, and then talked with me, and then took me to his camp, which was inside of a cave nearby. He was an alchemist. While I rested and healed, we talked more. I was very cautious, and nervous, and just wanted to get home. But traveling between realms takes magic. A lot of it. On the third night, he propositioned me. I was so surprised. I did not think anyone from this realm would ever be interested in me in any capacity, let alone sexually. When I first met him, I did not think he was handsome. I thought he was funny looking, weird, alien. But over those few days, I began to realize that he was quite attractive, and that I was attracted to him, and I had begun to entertain the possibility of sleeping with him, trying to seduce him...”

She smiled, looked away briefly. “I am considered quite attractive among my own people. I was no stranger to sex, even then. But I had never considered having sex here, in this realm. I was not even sure you did it the same way we did...of course, that was stupid. And I found that out that night. The sex was very, very good. I did not want to leave, honestly, and I stayed with him for several more days, making love, until he had to go home. After that, I was intensely curious. I knew there were many species in your realm.

“So, I used every excuse I could think of to come back here. It was rare, but on each occasion, I did manage to snag a lover or two. I have made love with both male and female beryl and felis, and female elves, they are very...open, I’ve found. And only male humans, and only twice. Well...” She looked over at him and smiled, kissed him briefly on the lips. “Three times now.”

“Which ones are the best?” he asked.

“Humans. Beryl and especially felis are more...passionate lovers, though you are, by far, the most passionate lover I have ever had, even among my own kind. Or maybe that is just my mind tipping bias in your favor. But there is something about human men...I do not know. Of course, it is not as though I have a huge list to pull from. Although you...you are my favorite lover,” she said.

“And you’re mine,” he replied, wrapping his arms around her.

They rested there for a bit longer, and John had things he wanted to ask her. About her eyes, about her feelings for him, to talk about his own feelings for her, because he thought this was more in-depth than just a fling, but where could they possibly go from here? They couldn’t live in this cabin forever.

But before any of that could happen, she was kissing him again, and he felt the tip of her tail dragging along his stiffening cock, teasing it. Then she gripped it, wrapped her hand around it, making a firm fist, and began to jack him off slowly.

“You want me again,” she murmured.

“Mmm-hmm,” he replied, kissing her and touching her.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“I want you, Yelena.”

She smiled and straddled him. “Do you need me?” she asked, her voice thick and husky.

“Yes.”

“Then tell me, John. I want to hear you say it.”

“I need you, Yelena,” he replied, staring up at her. Her eyes were still that deep, deep shade of flickering red.

“Then you shall have me,” she said, and lowered her body, taking him smoothly into herself once more. He moaned as he slid into that tight, perfect demoness pussy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this sexually active. Reaching back, he grabbed her perfect, fit, thick ass and pulled her down while pushing up, causing her to cry out in pleasure.

“Do you need my body? My sex? My pleasure?” she gasped.

“Yes, Yelena,” he groaned, grabbing her hips and helping her begin to ride his cock. “I need it all. I need you,” he said, as she began to ride him faster and harder.

“Fill me with your seed,” she whispered harshly, and kissed him. Her lips were hot and full, and she tasted of something dark but rich, intoxicating. She slipped her long, forked tongue into his mouth and that was when he began to do as she desired: he filled her with his seed one more time. He wasn’t sure how much he had left in him after that last time, but his cock started kicking hard inside of her nonetheless.

And from the way she began moaning, and how much hotter she got, she was orgasming as well. She seemed to orgasm easily, which was really nice for both of them. The two of them came together, writhing against each other in the water, lost in their own worlds of pleasure, but together, linked physically and emotionally.

As before, when they finished, they sat together, entwined with each other, breathing heavily, him still inside of her.

He loved being inside of her.

“Are you happy?” he asked after several moments of silence.

“Very,” she whispered in his ear.

“I am too.”

“Good. I want you to be.”

They continued sitting there until he felt the first frigid raindrop fall and hit his cheek. He looked up. “It’s starting to rain,” he murmured.

“We should go inside. I do not want to be cold,” Yelena replied.

“I’ll keep you warm,” he promised, and they got out of the water.

The two grabbed their towels and quickly moved across the backyard as the rain began to pick up. Getting inside, they dried off and then hung the towels up to dry. “What should we do now?” Yelena asked.

“We should sleep,” he replied, and yawned. “I’m exhausted.”

“Then we shall sleep,” she said. After he made sure that the cabin was secure and locked, they headed for the basement.

They crawled into bed together after he closed and locked the hatch, and put out the candle, and he curled up against her back with an arm over her beneath the blankets. She settled more comfortably against him.

And he fell asleep almost immediately to the sound of the rain and her steady breathing.

CHAPTER X

John awoke to heavy breathing.

He opened his eyes and saw only a dim, red, flickering light. It was moving. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and studied the movement, confused, but quickly realized he was seeing Yelena’s eyes. She was doing sit-ups.

“I am sorry I woke you,” she said as he shifted.

“It’s fine,” he replied. His inner timetable told him that it was early morning, though it was harder to tell without the sun. “Would you mind opening the trapdoor?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she replied. She did a few more sit-ups, then got up, climbed the ladder, and unlocked the hatch, before pushing it up and open. Dim sunlight spilled weakly into the room. Given that he’d been sleeping in almost utter darkness, it was enough to see by. And he could see Yelena clearly now as she began to do stretches.

“I haven’t seen you do this before,” he murmured.

“I was too sore,” she replied. “From the wounds. And all the...activity I have been getting. Honestly, I was getting enough work in with the morning sex.”

“You could’ve woken me up if you wanted that,” he said.

She grinned. “I know. I missed doing this, though. And you looked so cute sleeping, I did not want to disturb you.”

He just grinned back at her, staring at her wonderful, beautiful naked body as she continued stretching. She was extremely fit. And limber.

“What are you looking at?” she asked after a moment.

“You. You’re so beautiful, Yelena,” he replied.

“You really think so?” she asked, stopping, staring back at him.

“Of course I do. Do you really doubt that?”

She came over and sat down beside him on the bed. “I know that you are sexually attracted to me. But...thinking someone is attractive and thinking someone is beautiful are two different things. I did not know if you could...if you thought I was actually beautiful,” she said quietly.

He reached up and ran his fingers along one of her horns. “You’re beautiful, Yelena,” he said quietly. “You’re pretty and gorgeous. And I love your horns.”

She smiled, and it almost seemed like a shy smile. It looked strange on her otherwise confident face. “Thank you,” she said softly. “The people I have been with, in this realm...they never touch them. It is...” she hesitated.

“It’s what?” he asked, pausing.

“It is very intimate, in my realm,” she replied. “To touch the horns of another.”

“Oh...I...I think I might’ve grabbed them when you were giving me head once. Is that...I mean, is that okay?” he asked.

“Oh yes, definitely. Do not worry. There are different levels of intimacy. I like that, but...I like this, too. I like it more,” she said, and bowed her head slightly towards him.

He sat up and reached out with both hands, running his fingertips along the hard material. She shuddered as he did this. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes. It is not as sensitive as most other parts of my body, but...yes. Yes, I can feel that, John,” she whispered.

He loved it when she said his name.

After a little while, she reached up and took his hands, bringing them down and holding them. “I need to tell you something,” she said, “but...over breakfast. I am very hungry.”

“Okay,” he replied. “Also, I was thinking about something we could do today,” he said, getting out of bed. The two of them crawled up out of the basement. He looked outside. Well, the rain had cleared up again during the night. “Come on, let’s wash up, then we can eat,” he said, grabbing the towels again.

“What should we do today?” she asked, following him outside.

“There’s some places in the forest I want to show you. Pretty places. I’ve discovered them over the years, and I don’t think many other people have.”

“I would love to see them, and to spend the day walking with you. I have always loved your realm. My own is...stark, by comparison,” she said.

They washed up in the hot spring and, unable to resist the urge, had a quick but passionate fuck in it, going until they each had orgasmed. Far more awake now, they got out, dried off, and headed back inside. Hanging up the towels, they pulled some clothes on.

“Thank you for these,” Yelena said, gesturing to the clothes he had purchased for her in the local market. “They fit better. And they are softer.”

“I’m glad you like them,” he replied. “You wear them well.”

They made a stew for breakfast, cooking and chopping up some rabbit, venison, potatoes, and vegetables, and some bacon and eggs. He poured them each a glass of strawberry juice. He kept thinking about what it was she wanted to tell him, and she actually seemed a little nervous about it. Which was making him nervous, too.

But finally, breakfast was prepared, and they soon sat across from each other at the table, eating. “So...” he said.

“So...” Yelena replied, looking sheepishly up at him. “I have a confession to make.” She must have read his expression immediately. “Do not worry, it is not a bad one. I mean, I think.” She sighed. “I guess I should just come out with it. I have enough magic to make the journey safely back to my realm,” she said. “I have had enough since yesterday.”

“Oh,” he said. “And...”

“And...I do not want to go back yet. I want to spend more time here, with you,” she replied. “And I am apologizing for the deception.”

“It’s fine, Yelena. I want to spend more time with you, too.”

“How much more?”

“Well...I’m not sure. How much more do you want to spend together?” he asked. “It’s not like I have any pressing engagements, and I’m not too keen on seeing anyone from town for awhile. I don’t have any family left, and all my friends are spread out across the land, doing their own thing. So, I have some time,” he replied.

“Good. I am, uh, not sure. How long I want to stay, I mean.”

“Do you have anything you need to tend to? Responsibilities?”

“No, not precisely,” she replied. “I have the time.”

“Then stay with me.”

She smiled broadly. “I will. I will stay here with you for awhile longer.”

“Good. Now I have a question. I already asked it once, though I’m very curious. But if you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t make you. Your eyes...they’re still red,” he said. “They used to be orange or yellow, and sometimes it seemed like they were going towards red, but now they’re full-on red. Does that mean something?”

“It does,” she replied, sounding a little reluctant. “Our eyes...if we are not careful, they can show our emotions. The orange and the yellow, that’s what we show to those we do not know, or do not trust, or are on a casual basis with.”

“So you...trust me,” he stated, with a hint of questioning in his tone.

“Yes. I do. I trust you.”

“I trust you, too, Yelena,” he replied.

She smiled. “I am glad. I have had lovers in your realm, but I do not think any of them actually trusted me. Not like you do. You rescued me. You let me into your home. You sleep next to me, against me. I am very grateful.”

“So, what does red signify beyond trust?” he asked.

“It signifies...a deep connection with a lover. A deep intimacy,” she replied. He thought she might be holding something back, but if she was, then it was her own business. And he didn’t think it was bad. And what she’d said so far was good.

“If my eyes changed color, they’d be red,” he said to her. And that made her smile again, a more genuine, less nervous smile.

They finished up breakfast, then grabbed their bows and quivers and cloaks, and headed out into the forest.

…

The forest surrounding Falling Rock, even in gray sunlight, was beautiful.

Even in the dead of winter it was a thing of awe-inspiring beauty. John had an idea that he was never quite as happy as when he was outside, among the trees, the wildlife, among nature and all its vast, limitless beauty.

Okay, well, he was happiest when he was fucking a really hot woman, (preferably not of his own species), but that wasn’t really a fair comparison.

It was what made him leave about once a year to go adventuring, usually when spring hit, but sometimes he’d wait for summer. Never winter, though. The land was miserable during the winter. It was honestly best during the spring. Right now he was wishing that Yelena had arrived just about three months ago, as presently it was approaching the end of summer.

He first took Yelena to the waterfall. Not the one they’d visited already.

There was a beautiful waterfall maybe a half mile from his cabin. Not particularly large, but stunning nonetheless.

“I love your realm, your land, so much,” Yelena said as they stared at the waterfall, watching rainbows appear in the mist, and the greenery, the brilliant, many-colored flowers all around them. “It is so...amazing.”

“I know. I love it, too,” he replied, holding her hand. She was resting her head against his own. “I’m so glad I’m getting this chance to share it with you.”

“So am I,” she replied.

After the waterfall, he took her to the tallest tree in the forest. Only it wasn’t just that. There was something special about it, and he knew that he could only find it because Lily allowed him to. It was very strange. When she had first shown it to him, (after they’d met and made love several times over the course of their first month together), he was positive he’d walked past this place more than once, but he’d never seen this tree before. And he should have, not only was it very tall, shooting up into the sky over several others, but it was broad, and a brilliant shade of green that was unlike anything around it, and it sat in its own clearing.

“What is it?” Yelena whispered, as they stood in the clearing, staring up at it. “It looks...different. Unique from all the other trees.”

“Lily calls it the heart of the forest, but she won’t actually tell me what it is or what it does,” he replied.

Yelena smirked. “And that annoys you.”

“Yeah, a little. She likes being coy about it. One time she told me that it was the very first tree in the forest. Then she told me it was a tree planted by Vivian herself. Then she told me a myth about a great dryad huntress that fought valiantly for the safety of the land, thousands of years ago, and though she saved the land from a great evil, she died, and this is where they buried her, and this tree was what grew. Funny thing is, there’s another tree a lot like this over in another, much bigger forest, to the west, and a dryad I met there told me similar things. I’m not sure.” He shrugged.

“How did you meet Lily?” Yelena asked.

He was glad to see that he didn’t detect any jealousy in her voice. “Kind of like how I met you, actually, although the roles were reversed. It was three years ago. I was chasing some bandits through the woods. They’d just robbed a merchant. They got the better of me and were going to kill me, they’d wounded me, and that’s when Lily showed up. She killed them. She later told me they were evil, damned, and no use to anyone alive. I don’t suppose she was wrong, but sometimes I wonder...not that I haven’t killed before. But she healed me and began talking with me. She was interested in me, she said. She’d never actually spoken directly to a human before, and she had always been curious. And I was...” he hesitated.

“You were mesmerized by her large, bare breasts, no doubt,” Yelena replied.

He sighed. “Yeah, kinda. I mean, you saw them, they’re fucking amazing. But I was also very interested in her. I’d never spoken with a dryad before, or even seen one. She walked with me all the way back to my cabin, which took almost an hour. We talked the whole way there. I invited her inside. She said she’d prefer to stay outside, but wouldn’t mind my continued company. We got into the hot spring, since I was filthy and needed a wash, and she enjoyed soaking as well. And...well, one thing kinda led to another.”

“And you fornicated with a dryad,” she said.

“I did.”

“What was it like?”

“It was amazing. Dryad are very sexual, very intimate, and very familiar with the ways of pleasure,” he replied.

She was silent for a moment. “Perhaps...I would like to see her again.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, nudging him as they began walking away from the tree. “We should find her and proposition her. I bet I can show her a thing or two about pleasure. I was not only interested in the men in my realm. As I said earlier, I have had much experience with pussy.”

“That sounds so fucking awesome. We’re definitely finding her. But later. I want to show you more,” he said.

“Show me more,” she replied, and they walked on.

…

They’d packed a basic lunch of cooked rabbit that he’d placed in a simple metal box that he’d imbued the interior of with a very low-level heat spell. He’d been a little concerned that it might make his backpack catch fire, but the chances of that were slim, and as it turned out, it was worth it. The meat was still warm and fresh.

The two of them sat together on a fallen tree, ate rabbit, and drank blueberry juice.

He found himself taking sidelong glances at her, and wondering how long they would spend together. He didn’t want her to leave. But how long could it last? How long could they stay like this? Living in his cabin, in this forest? They were safe now, or safer, at least. Having the forest on your side didn’t exactly make you immune, but it sure helped. And they were both careful, for the most part. And smart.

Well, she was obviously smart, he didn’t know how smart he was.

But what more was there for them? If they left this place, if they decided to travel, (something that was looking more and more tantalizing with each passing day), then how could they deal with the problems that would arise? Yelena was a demon. Even if they hid her well, (and what kind of way was that to live?), mages could still tell. All it would take was one slip-up and most people would try to kill her on sight.

How could this possibly work?

But he thought he might be getting ahead of himself, or even just seeing something where there was nothing. Yelena was obviously very infatuated with him, but infatuation faded. And would she really leave her realm, her life, just to do some adventuring with him? Could he even bring himself to ask her to do such a thing? It didn’t seem right. So, John did what he always did when faced with something unhappy yet inevitable: try not to think about it and just enjoy what was happening. He was determined to enjoy his time with Yelena.

After lunch, they continued walking through the forest.

He showed her a few more sights: a particularly beautiful patch of land that a creek ran through, a small pond where they managed to catch sight of a pair of deer drinking at the water’s edge, a long-abandoned shack that he had never learned the history of. By the time it was beginning to head for evening, the pair decided to finally track down Lily and see if she was still interested in her earlier proposition.

John pulled the crystal he’d been keeping in his pocket out and was surprised to see that it was glowing powerfully, pulsing almost.

“What-” he muttered, looking up and then around. He turned around. “Lily! How long have you been there?” he asked.

She was standing right behind them, in between a pair of trees.

“Right here? As long as you have,” she replied.

Yelena seemed startled, turning around as well. “Have you been following us?”

“All day,” Lily admitted.

“How?” Yelena asked.

“The forest keeps me hidden, if I desire it. It is my domain,” Lily replied.

“Why?” John asked.

She looked away briefly. “I just...wanted to see what you two were like, when you were alone together. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it, I was just-I mean, I was curious. I never thought I’d see you with a demoness. Not that I have a problem with that, it’s just that traditionally your kind doesn’t do too well in this realm,” Lily said.

He wasn’t sure he’d seen her embarrassed before.

“And?” Yelena asked.

Lily seemed startled. “And what?” she replied cautiously.

“How do we measure up, as a couple?” she asked, her arms across her chest, a small smirk on her face.

“You’re so cute together,” Lily replied.

“Cute isn’t the word I was hoping for,” John murmured.

“Well, you are. You two are very cute together.” She seemed to lose some of her uncertainty and embarrassment, instead adopting a coy smile. She fixed Yelena with her sharp green gaze. “And I believe I overheard you making certain claims that you know your way quite well around a pussy, and could show me a thing or two about pleasure.”

“I did say as much,” Yelena replied, almost challenging her.

“Prove it,” Lily replied, just as challenging.

“Take us somewhere private,” Yelena almost growled back at her.

“Follow me.”

“Come on, John,” Yelena said, marching off after the dryad, who disappeared back into the woods. John thought that this was one of the hottest things he’d ever seen. He’d honestly not expected it to go this well.

They hurried through the woods, but they didn’t have to travel for very long.

Lily led them into a clearing.

“This is what you call private?” Yelena asked, looking around.

“No one will see us,” Lily assured them. “As I’ve said before, I and my sisters have dominion over this land. We will be safe and unseen here.”

“Very well then,” Yelena said.

She shrugged out of her cloak, letting it fall to the soft, grassy ground. John noted, as he took off his boots and began to disrobe along with her, that it was warmer in the clearing. Comfortably warm, actually, whereas it had been a little chilly for most of the day. As he started to undress, John really looked at Lily.

It had been awhile since they’d had sex.

She was tall, almost as tall as Yelena was. And she was so beautiful. Almost painfully so. Her dryad nature lent her an alien, exotic, almost ethereal beauty. She was truly curvaceous, with a very full figure. Her hips were broad, thighs pleasantly padded, her ass nice and thick. Her breasts were distinct and large, almost unnaturally perky. He loved how full and round and perfect they looked. Her skin was dark green, the same color as most of the plants in the forest, and had a faint design that resembled tree bark. She had branches that stuck out of the top of her head that looked kind of like antlers, and her hair was made of leaves, patterned to resemble a short haircut. He didn’t know if she did that on purpose or if it just naturally came in like that.

And her eyes. They were the most beautiful, vivid green.

They always made him think of the lushest landscapes on the brightest, most glorious spring day, when the world was bursting with new life.

There was this air about her, some hidden feature to her, that had driven him crazy when they’d first started making love, in a good way. It was still there, though not quite as powerful, and he had identified it, after a lot of thought. Everything about Lily, about her dryad nature, spoke of fertility. She was a manifestation of nature and fertile ground and renewal, and something about that called to something deep in him, some deep-seated part of his brain that desperately, senselessly wanted him to reproduce.

He had no interest in having children, but he happily allowed himself to respond fully to her beautiful, fertile body, secure in the knowledge that there were going to be no children as a result of their coupling. It was impossible.

“Are you just going to stare?” Lily asked.

“It’s hard not to,” he replied, quickly finishing up as he realized he’d stopped in the middle of undressing.

Yelena was already nude, and wow did she look fantastic.

“You are so beautiful, Yelena,” Lily murmured. “Such a wonderful, exotic body.”

“I have something special, as well,” she said.

“Oh?” Lily asked.

Yelena opened her mouth and let her forked tongue snake out. Lily’s eyes widened. “Oh my...that...that’s going to feel really good...” she murmured.

“It sure will,” Yelena replied smugly. “Think you can keep up?”

“We’ll see,” Lily replied. She raised her arms. “Come to me, both of you, and we shall make passionate, happy love together.”

This was really happening, John thought as he and Yelena went to Lily. He was really going to have a threesome with a dryad and a demoness.

They came to stand together in the center of the clearing, and Lily took him and kissed him firmly on the lips. She tasted of honeysuckle and tree sap and crystal clear springwater, of clean sunshine and berries. He felt her large, bare breasts pushing against his chest as he hugged her to him, then reached down and got a wonderful handful of her thick, huge ass. She moaned softly as she slipped her tongue into his mouth, her taste becoming almost overwhelming, intoxicating him, making him want her desperately.

She broke the kiss, suddenly, and moved over to Yelena, and John watched, enraptured, as the two tall, beautiful, inhuman women began to make out. They locked lips, both of them tilting their heads slightly, really starting to get into it. Each woman closed her eyes and Yelena began to grope Lily’s large, beautiful breasts as Lily slipped one hand over the back of her neck, deepening the kiss, and slid the other down her back, coming to rest on the smooth swell of her awesomely fit ass. He was probably wrong, but he thought that this might be the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. And the sounds they were making…

Both women were moaning softly, their voices so sexy, and they seemed so into it, into each other, their bodies responding to each other’s touch. Yelena slipped her tongue smoothly into Lily’s mouth and he saw her eyes open in something like surprise, then she closed them again contentedly. The two ladies went on making out and groping each other for quite awhile, and John didn’t even consider asking for another turn.

After maybe five minutes, Yelena broke the kiss and looked over at him. “I think we should get back to John,” she murmured.

“Oh my,” Lily said, looking over at him as well. “We should. Sorry, handsome.”

“It’s fine,” he replied.

“Come. Lay down,” Lily said, motioning to him.

He thought the ground would be more uncomfortable but, as the three of them laid together in the middle of the clearing, he found it very soft and warm, just as comfortable as his own bed at the cabin or even at home.

The women seemed intent on making him the center of attention for now. They each took turns kissing him, caressing his body, running their warm hands across his skin, sending little bursts of pleasure into him.

Then the two of them began kissing down his body, and came to rest near his crotch. Yelena reached out and gripped his cock firmly in one long-fingered hand, her skin hot against his. Both women leaned in, tongues out, and began to lick the head. John groaned and found himself panting as both inhuman ladies pleasured him with their amazing tongues. He had been in threesomes before, and they had ranged from okay to just stunning.

But this…

It was something else entirely. Next to Yelena, he thought that Lily might be the woman he’d felt the most for. And now both of them were orally pleasuring him, putting their exceptionally skilled mouths to use. Yelena let go of his cock and took its full length into her mouth while still pleasuring him with her demoness tongue. She stared directly into his eyes and her eyes were pulsing, flashing red now, a deep red.

He groaned loudly in ecstasy, the sexual bliss rolling through him in waves. After a bit, she took his cock out of her mouth and passed it to Lily, who started sucking his dick herself. He felt Yelena begin to massage his balls. The sexy dryad bobbed her head rapidly, coating his dick in her saliva, then took it out and licked the head several times, then passed it back to Yelena. They did this until he had to make them stop, because he didn’t want to come yet. He wanted to come inside of both of them, to fill each of their inhuman pussies with his seed.

But first came more pleasure of the oral kind.

“Lay down, dryad, and I will introduce you to a world of pleasure,” Yelena said.

“Yes ma’am,” Lily murmured, pausing to kiss her once, then laying down where John had been laying.

Yelena didn’t start eating her out, not right away. Instead, she joined John in kissing her, before they both began to kiss down her face, her neck, to her breasts, where they each took one large, firm breast and began to lick across it. Lily moaned loudly, gasping as they pleasured her. John slipped a finger down in between the lips of her pussy and began to gently rub her clit, making her moan louder. Soon, they were both sucking on her huge tits.

“Yes, that’s it...” she moaned. “That’s so good...”

Yelena then moved down, settling between her thick thighs, and opened her mouth. Her tongue slowly came out and John watched as she began to lick at Lily’s clit. The dryad let out a sharp gasp, followed immediately by a loud groan.

“Oh yes, that’s fucking amazing,” she whispered, her voice thick with lust. “I can immediately tell why you are so into her.”

“There’s a bit more to it than that, but that tongue is fucking amazing,” John replied.

Yelena continued to pleasure Lily, starting out slow at first, applying more and more pressure as she went, then beginning to build the speed, until she was licking rapidly at her clit, and Lily was trembling all over now, jerking in response to the intense waves of pleasure bursting through her, and she was panting and yelling, her voice getting higher and higher in pitch until, within about two minutes, Yelena had her coming.

John always liked watching her come.

Her orgasm was full bodied, her thighs bunching as she clenched them, and she let out a gasp that became an almost gagging moan, her eyes squeezed shut, her whole body jerking in response as her clearish-green tree sap sex stuff began to come out of her pussy.

“Wow,” Yelena whispered, staring.

“Yes. She comes differently,” John murmured, joining her now, watching the beautiful, full-bodied dryad orgasm.

The climax lasted for awhile, and when it tapered off, Lily let her breath out in one harsh, explosive gasp and went slack against the ground, gasping.

“I’m in love with your tongue,” she murmured.

“I am glad,” Yelena replied. “Now...show me your own skills, dryad.”

“Oh, I will, demoness,” Lily replied, and she sat up suddenly, full of intent and determination.

She got in between Yelena’s firm thighs and set to work, pleasuring her just as she had been pleasured by Yelena. Although Yelena seemed to enjoy herself tremendously, he thought that maybe Lily didn’t quite have the skill to match the demoness. Nonetheless, Lily licked and licked and licked, and slipped a finger into her tight, wet opening, stimulating her and pleasuring her until Yelena let out a growling cry and orgasmed.

When she was finished, she sat up.

“Now, I wish to fuck,” she said. “John, lay down, now,” she growled, getting up.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, quickly laying down.

“She’s kind of bossy, isn’t she?” Lily asked.

“Shut up,” Yelena replied, then grabbed and kissed Lily, before letting go of her and mounting John. She took his rock-hard cock into her insanely hot, tight opening, and he slipped easily into her, the saliva still on his cock and her sex juices from the orgasm more than enough. John groaned loudly and reached out, grabbing her trim, beautiful hips, thrusting up into her as she rode his cock, enjoying her sex, her blissful ecstasy, her wonderful body. She grunted and growled as she furiously rode his dick, fucking herself with it, pleasuring herself, and when Lily got closer, Yelena began kissing her once more with a fiery passion.

Yelena’s pussy felt like pure, uncut rapture as she kept bouncing on him, taking his dick into her over and over again. She fucked him until the pleasure built to a climax. Staring down at him, her red eyes wide and flaming, she grinned. “Fill me, lover,” she whispered harshly. “Give me your seed, John. Fill me with it.”

He groaned, his orgasm finally coming, as he was letting it come. It overwhelmed him briefly and then he was spilling his human seed in her demoness pussy, groaning and crying out loudly as the pleasure pulsed through him.

She took everything he had, grinning down at him with a look that conveyed both satisfaction and maybe a little bit of smugness.

Maybe because she had gotten him to come first?

There seemed to be some kind of subtle rivalry between the two women.

Or maybe it wasn’t so subtle, he was just distracted.

“Your turn,” Yelena said after he had finished spraying his seed into her and she got up off of him. Lily grinned down at him, only she, apparently, had one more trick up her sleeve. And it was a good one. She straddled him, but facing the other way, and he found himself staring at her pussy and her huge, thick ass as she took his cock into her.

“That’s it, John!” she cried, pushing herself down along his semi-hard length, accepting it into her fantastic dryad pussy. “Oh, yes!”

She rode his cock with her slicked-up vagina, moaning loudly. He was often amazed at how different some women felt. Each species seemed to have their own texture, their own unique feeling. Dryad pussy felt a little like moss. Demon pussy felt like...he didn’t know what it felt like, beyond amazingly good.

He’d missed Lily, missed everything about her.

She continued riding him like that, pussy bare to his view as she went up and down, her phenomenal ass jiggling from the power of her thrusts, until he was fully hard again. Unable to look away, he kept his eyes on her huge ass, thinking that she’d ride him until he came. But she didn’t. Instead, she pulled forward, making him slip out of her, then looked back at him.

“Put it in my ass,” she said.

“Oh, with fucking pleasure,” he replied, and once he’d aimed his cock properly, she began pushing back against him, sliding it up her fat ass. “Your ass is amazing, Lily,” he groaned as she started riding his dick with it.

“Your cock is quite nice, John,” she murmured in reply, then moaned in sexual pleasure.

In spite of having orgasmed just barely a few minutes ago, he could feel another one coming on, though he imagined Lily wouldn’t mind. She seemed to be trying to make it feel as good as possible. He reached up and grabbed her thick, well-formed ass and pulled it down against him while thrusting up, causing her to yell in pleasure.

Then, Yelena caught his eye. She grinned at him and motioned for him to lean back and take Lily with him. Curious, but willing to see what she was planning, he repositioned himself, following her instructions. Making sure to keep himself inside Lily, he kept thrusting, short and shallow bursts into her jiggling ass as he adjusted them both. Yelena stalked forward, smug and confident and smiling down at the two of them. Getting down on her hands and knees, she opened Lily’s legs even wider so that she had access to the entirety of her.

“Now, I’m going to introduce you to a new world of pleasure,” she said, and lowered to head to Lily’s dripping pussy.

Starting at the top, Yelena decided to do something different from before. Circling Lily’s clit, she then ran her tongue down the length of Lily’s pussy, pushing shallowly into her vagina with her tongue, before sliding her tongue all the way back up to circle her clit again. Slow and steady, she kept up her meticulous torture, repeatedly swiping up and down, circling and probing over and over again, as Lily moaned and quaked under her efforts. John looked down at Yelena in something like awe, as her oral skills were causing Lily to come apart at the seams. Impaled from behind, an oral assault on her front, he could see that Yelena clearly knew what she was talking about when she told Lily she had a thing or two to show her.

Holding off on his own orgasm, he deliberately joined Yelena’s steady pace, wanting to see Lily come. It didn’t take long, as Lily quaked under them even faster than before. Yelena kept up as Lily’s entire body erupted beneath her assistance, leaking sap and soaking her front. Lily’s thighs shook with sensation, and she babbled and moaned between them as she came. The noise didn’t let up for over a full minute, and none of it was intelligible, and still Yelena kept up her steady up and down. Thrust in, up to circle the clit and back down, she kept going, prolonging Lily’s orgasm with her efforts. John looked down at Lily as she came, once again enjoying the unique view of watching a dryad come. Fucking her wonderful dryad ass, he enjoyed watching her come. Holding off on his own orgasm was definitely worth it.

Breasts heaving, John’s eyes followed them as they swayed, while her eyes were squeezed shut. It was clear that Lily was enjoying herself. When at long last Lily stopped shaking, she gasped out, “Gods, I am really in love with your tongue. Oh, by Vivian.”

Pausing, Yelena raised her head and stopped her teasing. “I am not finished with you yet.”

Lowering her head once more, Yelena returned to Lily’s sap-soaked vagina, and once again began her measured pace. Switching things up yet again, she added a hand into the mix. Up and down and probing went her tongue, but she put two fingers into Lily’s wet hole and started gently pumping in time with the thrusts that John was making into Lily’s ass. They seesawed into her, one after the other, all the while Yelena’s tongue did not stop the up and down.

Looking at the two women, John admired the erotic sight. Reaching around to grab Lily’s breasts, he fondled them and started to truly pound into Lily’s ass. Knowing that she could take it, after the multiple orgasms, he held nothing back. Yelena picked up her finger thrusting in time with John’s fucking, and Lily started coming yet again. Shivering, quaking, her whole body seized as she rode out her orgasm, babbling and shrieking in turns.

Feeling Lily’s muscles bear down on him as she came yet again, John let out his own yell of rapturous release as he began to come again, shooting his seed into her, pumping her full of it one hard contraction at a time. He held her there against him until he had finished coming.

When he was done, she got off of him.

The three of them sat there together for several moments in silence, in the warmth and comfort of the clearing.

“That was fun,” Yelena said.

“It was,” Lily agreed. “I’ve never had a sexual encounter with a demoness before.”

“I have never had one with a dryad.”

“Did you find it satisfactory?” John asked.

“Yes,” they both said.

“Good. So did I. Can we find a hot spring?” he asked.

“Yes. Follow me,” Lily replied.

The three of them got up, and John took Yelena’s hand as they began to follow the dryad deeper into the forest.

…

After soaking and talking for awhile longer, John and Yelena dressed and returned to the cabin. They had dinner and then took another short walk in the woods around his cabin. John began to get a little worried, as Yelena was becoming quieter, more reserved. He could tell she was thinking about something, but what?

She must have been considering returning home, and how best to break that news to him.

But she didn’t say anything through dinner, or the walk, or the soak in the hot spring out back. She didn’t speak up when they went back into the house and made passionate love on the bed he’d come to think of as theirs.

She spoke up, though, when they were laying together in the darkness, drifting off to sleep, awash in their post-orgasm glow.

“John?” she asked softly in the darkness, her voice strangely gentle.

“Yes, Yelena?” he replied.

“I have something to ask you, but...I am anxious about what your answer might be.”

“Yelena. In the short time that I’ve known you, I’ve come to understand that you’re very brave. And you don’t let fear or anxiety hold you back.”

She was silent for a moment. “I suppose you are right, though this is far different than the dangers I have had to face in my life.” She paused once more. “John...I do not want to go back,” she said. “I do not want to go back to my realm. Back to the genocide and the war and the misery and the whims of a lunatic despot. I want to stay here...but I want to stay here with you,” she said. “And...I lied, earlier. A lie of omission. About my eyes.”

“What about them?” John asked. A tremendous relief and happiness flowed through him. She wanted to stay as much as he wanted her to stay.

“When our eyes turn red like this, it is...it does mean that we feel very close to someone, but the depth of that intimacy, that closeness, is very extreme. We become joined, linked together...should we choose to be. There is a word for it here, in this realm, I am not sure...”

“Love, Yelena,” he said, and he reached out beneath the blankets and touched her, pulling her closer to him. “The word is love.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Love. I...love you,” she said quietly.

“I love you too, Yelena,” he replied gently.

And she kissed him then, and held him so tightly that it hurt, but he didn’t stop her, just kissed and hugged her back fiercely.

“But how can it work?” she asked, pulling back. “How can it possibly work? I am a pariah here, in your land. In your realm. Your people, they will try to kill me on sight...”

“I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot,” John replied. “And I think I have a way. It will be difficult, and dangerous, but I think it might work. But...I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. For now, I just want to lay here with you, and hold you, until we sleep.”

“I want nothing more,” she whispered.

And they stayed that way until they fell asleep together.

CHAPTER XI

“We’re going to need a magical amulet,” John said.

It was the next morning, and they’d cooked up a large breakfast. Both of them seemed to be bursting with good cheer, and couldn’t stop touching each other, or kissing each other. They’d made love three times before even getting out of bed, seemingly unable to let the other go without one more lovemaking session.

“What kind?” Yelena asked, more serious now.

“It is similar to the kind of magic Lily used to protect you. But even more powerful. I’ll have to do some more research, but I know there exist spells of illusion. I think that, perhaps, we can get some kind of combination amulet, something that both makes people not pay much attention to you and also one that will make you appear human. That should make this doable. I think. But obtaining such an amulet will be extremely difficult and expensive. And I’m not even entirely sure where we would go to find it...but I think I know where to start.”

“How will we get there? Where will we find currency?” Yelena asked.

“For starters, I’m going to sell my house in town and pretty much everything I own,” he replied.

“What? John, I cannot ask you to make a sacrifice like that for me.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Yelena. It’s not a sacrifice. I don’t want to live in this town any longer.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been trying to leave for years. Once a year, I’ll strike off into the wilderness, live out there, have adventures...but something always brings me back here. But now I think I’m ready, I’m really ready to leave this behind. I’m going to keep this cabin, though,” he said, looking around the small interior. “It feels...lucky now. And it makes me think of you more than anything or anyone else.”

She smiled. “I can see why.”

“Yep. The place we must go to is far from here. There’s a long stretch of forest, it’s very dangerous, called the Emerald Wild. We must get there. It will, ironically, be safer for us to travel there. Not many people in the Wild, just monsters and creatures. But we’ll need to buy a lot for the journey. Arrows, better weapons, supplies. And I’ll finally need to buy that damned camp-in-a-bag I’ve been thinking about for ages.”

“Camp-in-a-bag?” Yelena asked.

“Magical item. A bag that’s larger on the inside than the outside, contains a whole camp. You’ll love it. Hmm...” he fell silent, his mind racing, thinking about all the various ways he could get coin quickly. He felt invigorated. “I’ll have to make a list of all the things I own and have access to, everything I can sell.” He grinned at her. “This should be fun.”

…

It was fun, and it didn’t take as long as he thought it would.

It took three days.

The first thing he got done was something he thought would actually be the hardest. But he’d held out hope, because he’d spent the previous year enduring frequent requests to purchase his house by his neighbor, a middle aged man who’d come into some coin and was apparently looking to expand his house, instead of buying a new one. The last request he’d gotten was about two months ago. He’d gone to see the man and his wife, and asked if they were still interested. Apparently, they were indeed interested and the deal worked out best for both of them: John wasn’t willing to take coin in installments, and they didn’t have nearly enough gold to buy the whole house, all the furniture, and the land it was on.

So, they agreed to give him three thousand gold up front.

He could have gotten a lot more for the house, but honestly, he didn’t care. John knew that he was fully capable of making gold on his own, on the road. Especially now that he had Yelena with him. She was exceptionally skilled at survival, and obviously at things like killing monsters and plundering old ruins and exploring caves. And she’d probably be thrilled to. This was literally a whole new world for her. Well, basically. He’d have to figure out how much actual time she’d spent here in her travels at some point.

After going through the house and taking out the most valuable things, and a few personal items he wanted, John went back to the cabin and made passionate love with Yelena. They ate a meal and then went out into the woods. He decided it was time to go and grab his caches. Not all of them, but most of them, since he wasn’t going to come back here for a long time. Maybe forever. (Though he wanted to keep the cabin, just in case he needed a place to hide out for a little while. Or just to relax in an isolated location.)

He had some more swords, a few quivers’ worth of arrows, a shield, a basic suit of leather armor, a bag of gold and gems, and a few healing potions buried or otherwise hidden across the forest. He left the potions and gold and gems, and he and Yelena took everything else back to the cabin and spent the rest of the day sorting through it and everything else in the cabin, seeing what they could sell off. When night fell, they made love and slept.

John spent almost all of the second day going all over the market, selling off everything. He came away with close to another thousand gold, but ended up having to pay fifteen hundred for the only camp-in-a-bag in town, since they were very rare out where he was. He spent another fifteen hundred on brand new swords, quivers, bows, arrows, clothes, healing potions, and all the other various things he thought they might need.

It was going to be a long, dangerous walk.

When night fell on the second day, he returned back to the cabin and spent time with Yelena. He couldn’t get enough of her, and she seemed to be of a similar mind. And they were in love. There was a part of him that was still reeling from this idea. He was in love with a demoness. That was crazy, right? But as the Goddess of Love and Sexuality was supposed to have once said, love was blind. And he thought that maybe Bliss was smiling on the two of them. It wasn’t unheard of. Although it was rare, rarer still, given that Yelena was a demoness.

But there was no denying it: he was in love.

John had never been in love before. He realized that when he’d realized that he loved Yelena. If he had thought he was in love previous to this, he’d clearly been mistaken.

Since he was so tired from hauling stuff all over the place, John and Yelena opted to take the third and final day off, to just relax, and eat, and bathe, and fuck. And he spent most of that trying to figure out his relationship with Yelena, because if you approached it from the outside, if you somehow could look at all the available evidence, even removing any bias...it seemed kind of weird. They’d known each other for about a week, and they were literally from different worlds, and hadn’t exactly met under the best circumstances.

And somehow, in their time together, they’d fallen in love.

As he drifted off to sleep during their last night in that cabin, he found himself coming to one conclusion.

There were some events, some relationships, that went beyond understanding. It seemed like a lazy thing to think, but what had happened between them, why they had fallen for each other as fast and as hard as they did...it was beyond words, beyond explanations, it just…

It just was.

It simply was the way it was, and there was nothing that could explain it any further than that. At least, not in his mind.

Not that he wouldn’t try over the coming weeks and months and, hopefully, years.

John fell asleep staring at her, and hoped that he should be so lucky as to see her last thing before he went to sleep, and wake up to her first thing in the morning, every day.

…

“Are you completely sure about this?” Yelena asked suddenly.

They were standing behind his cabin, (their cabin), staring into the forest ahead of them, packs on their backs, swords at their hips, bows slung over their shoulders.

“What?” he asked, looking over at her.

“I just...wanted to ask, one more time,” she replied, turning to face him fully. “I wanted to make sure, absolutely sure, that we’re both committed to this. Because we are not just...this is not just some task, some adventure, some job. This is...we are committing to a life together, John. We are committing to each other, wholly.”

He turned to face her fully as well, then reached out and took her hands in his. They were both wearing gray cloaks.

“Yelena,” he said, “I’m completely sure about this. I want this. I want you. I’m not having any doubts or reservations. Are you?”

“No. Not at all,” she replied, and he could feel the certainty in her voice, in her grasp. He had an idea that Yelena was fully capable of lying, (and she’d, well, not really lied to him, but had hid some small truths from him over the past few days), but she rarely bothered with it. Yelena was an up-front, blunt woman. “I want this, too. Completely.”

“Good.” He kissed her, fully and deeply, on the lips. “I love you, Yelena,” he said as he pulled back, staring into those flaming red eyes of hers.

“I love you too, John,” she replied.

He turned to face the forest again, and so did she.

Hands together, fingers laced, they walked away from the cabin, towards their new life. It was going to be hard, but it didn’t matter.

It would be a life lived together.

Hello, Misty Vixen here!

If you’ve made it this far, then thank

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I’m here to ask you if you wouldn’t mind

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OTHER TITLES

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THE MISTY VIXEN STARTER PACK

Get ready to experience over 100,000 words of hot, filthy fucking. This starter pack features four original novellas, each from one of my primary erotica universes, and a whole lot of human-on-inhuman sex.

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SCI-FI EROTICA SHARED UNIVERSE

HELLCATS

Ryan is a socially awkward, young technician who takes a leap of faith and joins up with a mercenary crew called the Hellcats. What he finds is a squad of alien or otherwise inhuman women who are looking for a boytoy to live on their ship with them and fuck them hard. Ryan fits the bill perfectly.

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ALIEN HAREM

James is a failing author who is friends with Aria, a beautiful alien woman who is also a failing author. She happens to live with three other attractive alien women who are creative types of varying degrees of success. Everything changes when they invite James to live with them and help them shoot human-on-alien porn to help pay the rent.

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VALKYRIES

When Veronica, a badass, seven foot, mercenary babe, and Saf, a tough, unique, and beautiful alien happen to run into Jared, a down-and-out technician and former merc who decided to try the civilian life after almost getting killed, it feels a little like fate. They want to start their own merc squad, and Jared wants back into the mercenary lifestyle. As they team up and start building a crew of badass and hot alien beauties, Jared is happy to find that they’re all quite interested in sleeping with him.

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DESIRE

Derek is a technician fresh out of college. Unsure of what to do with his life, he feels adrift as he stares down the barrel of adulthood. But all that changes when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime: he is invited to come live and work on Desire, a city-sized space station that caters to every sexual fetish imaginable.

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FANTASY EROTICA SHARED UNIVERSE

WOMEN OF THE WILD

Seth is a frustrated young man who lives in a magical world of beautiful landscapes, abandoned ruins, ferocious monsters, and untold adventures to be had. He’s been stuck in his boring, tiny village for his entire life. But that’s all about to change. When he finally works up the courage to tell his parents that he’s leaving and saves up enough to buy himself some survival gear, he strikes out on his own, into the wilderness. Although he expected to find many things on this adventure, he had no idea that he would be getting to know the inhuman monster women that populate the wild on such an intimate level.

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WANDERLUST

Owyn Fisher has just come of age and decides to leave his small village and start adventuring out into the world at large. But instead of danger or riches, he finds that his greatest adventure is all the beautiful monster women he encounters that wish to experience the taboo thrill of sex with a human.

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LUST & ADVENTURE

When Alan Wilde, a magical healer living a quiet life in a small village, begins having a personal crisis, wondering if he’s missing out on leading such a life, he meets Layla, a beautiful, cat-woman felis adventuress. She and her friends are on a dangerous journey and need a healer. The chance meeting feels like fate, and so Alan begins his journey of adventuring and, he is happy to learn, sleeping with several attractive adventuresses…

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PARANORMAL EROTICA SHARED UNIVERSE

PARANORMAL PASSIONS

Jason is a regular, twenty-something human who feels adrift. After trying to radically alter his life, all that really changes is that he now lives next door to an incredibly hot redheaded vampire. When they hook up, she leads him into a world of hot sex with inhuman women.

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PARASEXUAL

Alex considers himself a failure. After losing his job, losing his roommate, and coming close to losing his mind all in the same day, he goes to hang out with his best friend, who happens to be a particularly attractive werewolf woman. In an attempt to help him out and also to alleviate her own growing wanderlust (and regular lust), she has sex with him and then decides to take him on a road trip to Thorne: a giant coastal city that is home to a huge concentration of paranormals. And on the way, she begins hooking back up with several of her old girlfriends, who are apparently interested in hopping in bed with her and Alex.

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POST APOCALYPTIC EROTICA SHARED UNIVERSE

SEX & SURVIVAL

Welcome to a post-apocalyptic world where a virus, once meant to be a scientific revolution, has ravaged the planet and turned most of the population into inhuman creatures. Some have become mindless zombies, others have morphed into new species. Some can fly. Some can breathe underwater. Some exhibit animal characteristics. Enter Mike Walker, a survivor and adventurer. In this brave new world, Mike often finds himself in the company (and beds) of beautiful, inhuman women.

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HAVEN

David is a young, terrified adventurer who is trying to survive in the wake of a new version of the virus that turns inhumans into extremely dangerous zombies. After the collapse of the colony he was staying in, he and his only friend, Evelyn, a beautiful, tough, eight-foot goliath, flee to an isolated location, and inadvertently become a beacon of hope by providing a safe haven for other survivors.

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ABOUT ME

Hello, I’m the author! There isn’t too much to me personally. I live somewhere in the United States and I like to write stories about people having sex and people having adventures!

So what makes me special? What sets me apart from most of the other thousands of erotica authors out there?

Well, a few things that I can think of.

I write about younger, often more innocent twenty-something guys. I’m honestly sick of all the billionaires and NAVY Seals and cowboys and firefighters. Most of all, I’m fucking sick and tired of all these BS ‘Alpha Male’ types. I don’t really want to bring down anyone who is writing or reading that, but I thought it was high time we started hearing about guys who are more realistic and down-to-earth.

Another big focus of mine is human guy on inhuman lady sex. There are certainly tons of stories about hot chicks getting laid by werewolves and dinosaurs and even Bigfoot! But there’s not enough out there, in my opinion, about regular guys fucking hot alien or monster or otherwise inhuman ladies. I love writing about human guys getting laid by mermaids and dryads and sexy aliens and genetically engineered female super soldiers and robots.

Finally, I like emphasizing sexual encounters, casual and longer engagements, that focus on consent, communication, trust, and respect. I like both parties involved getting what they want out of the sex. (Or I should say all parties, given how many people are fucking at once!)

If you want access to extra content, to get news about my progress on upcoming stories, or pictures of hot naked monster girls, then here’s some places you can check out.

This is my WEBSITE, (www.mistyvixen.com). Here, you can find free short stories that are related to my works or stand on their own, a monthly newsletter, alternate versions of my cover art where the ladies are naked, and more!

This is my TWITTER, (www.twitter.com/Misty_Vixen). I’ll post updates and pictures of hot naked alien, monster, or otherwise inhuman ladies I find on the internet. Also, I respond to pretty much everyone, so feel free to say something!

This is my PATREON, (www.patreon.com/MistyVixen). There, you can get early access to the first chapters of my in-progress works, and early access to alternate versions of my cover art where the ladies are naked! They will be released to my website after one month.

Finally, if you want to talk to me directly, you can send me an e-mail at my address:

mistyvixen@outlook.com

And that’s it! Once again, thank you very much for reading my work. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

-Misty

DEMONESS. Copyright © by Misty Vixen. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entire coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.