Episode Twenty-One Interlude

Z oron

The moment the door shut behind us, Eldar leaped on my back and I galloped south. I need to stretch my legs and clear my head.

Very few things in life feel as good as running with the wind in my hair and my lover on my back. It's as if we're one being when we do this.

He's got perfect balance and doesn't need to hold on, but he keeps his palms on my waist. It's just one more way to remind me how connected we are.

I follow the stream south, not bothering to muffle the sound of my hoofbeats in the mud. I'm having too much fun. There will be plenty of time for us to hunt later.

Finally, I slow to a rolling canter, then leap the stream to a field empty of trees. It's the way of nature. Trees grow over centuries, then lightning strikes, causing fire that fills the area with charred and blackened stumps. Years later, it looks like this until more trees grow.

I like it like this, a sunny meadow. In most seasons, it would be filled with green grass and dotted with white and yellow flowers. Since it's winter, the grasses are dead and brown. Because it's a warm day, there's no snow left on the ground.

I toss my head and run again, this time in circles, first one way, then another.

Finally, Eldar's calm voice cuts through the air. "Want to talk?"

Not really. I'm pissed. So pissed I want to hurt someone, but who would it be? I agreed to the mating because I knew it was the right thing to do. We saved their lives. I shouldn't regret it. But I do.

"There's nothing to say," I grumble.

"Stop, love. Let me jump down. Let's talk."

I speed up for a moment, galloping instead of cantering, then I stop. He slides off me so we can talk face-to-face, then presses his palms to my chest as he spears me with his gaze.

"We did the right thing." It's the last thing I expected to hear from him. I thought he was angrier about this than I was.

"Aye."

"What's done is done, Zoron."

"Aye," I say. "We're saddled with them."

"Saddled," he chortles. "Good one."

"We're pretty far away from them. Mayhap the medic was wrong. If the bites were permanent, if the Energy Transfer did something lasting, wouldn't we feel it by now?" I ask.

"Mayhap."

Though he's a tall male, I'm taller than him because of my centaurian form. It never deters him, though. He simply jumps to kiss me.

"It's not too cold or muddy to fuck your mate." He slashes me with a sly smile and a tip of his head, then he removes his hands from my chest. Before I know it, his slim body has slid between my front hooves, he's perched himself under my belly, and is stroking my cock.

It takes only a few pulls of his palm before I'm hard. Then he envelops me in his warm mouth. I'm lost in pleasure for long minutes as he sucks me, palming my heavy sac with one hand as he jacks me with the other.

My elven mate is a most generous lover, though I imagine he would say the same about me.

The pleasure is so intense I stomp my back hoof, taking care not to hurt him in the process. Right before I release, my tail swishes, I stomp again, and a muscle in my flank quivers.

I release into him with a nicker as my hips thrust my cock deeper into his throat. The first hundred times we did this I worried I would choke him. He's a beautiful humanoid male, wiry, though not slight or frail, but I have what he likes to call a horse cock, and it's long.

He learned to take me, opening his throat and welcoming me in. After a thousand reassurances, I don't worry about hurting him anymore. Because of his generosity, I don't hold back as I buck into him and shoot my load.

When he pulls off me, he kisses the head of my cock as he always does. It's as if what he just did for me isn't enough. He wants to show me one more expression of his love. The feeling is mutual.

"You're the best mate a male could have," I say as I kneel, then lie down. "Now come here and let me return the favor."

He tears off his pants and is lying in front of me within seconds. I suck him into my mouth, loving the taste of him, the feel of him inside my mouth, and especially loving being able to make him lose his composure within seconds of sliding into my mouth.

Eldar often carries an edge of anger. Today it's worse. He has every right to be more pissed than usual. But when I'm holding him in my mouth, he loses all his residual rage and becomes the soft Eldar that only I know. The sweet male whose ice-blue eyes melt with affection—for me.

His palms clutch my head as I take him deep, tighten my lips, and coax his release. He spurts into me, mostly down my throat, but I pull back in time to catch his last few pulses on my tongue.

"You taste so good, mate," I say when I lean to kiss his mouth, sharing his taste with him.

We press our foreheads together in a quiet testament of our affection.

When he recovers his strength, he stands and says, "Let's hunt."