Official Reckoning Read online

  She wouldn’t have the opportunity, I decided as I gripped my shaft, guided it up between her firm thighs and pressed it to her warm, already-wet pussy. Her moan grew more intense as I pushed forward, feeling her warm, drenched walls wrapping tightly around my thick shaft. She decided that I moved too slowly, and pushed back to drive me into her the rest of the way.

  Her moan ended in a pleased little gasp as she reached back to grip my hips, pulling me as close as I could be. I reached for her and greedily ran my fingers over her body again, gripping her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, and smacking her ass again before I wrapped my hands over her hips and pinned her against the table as I pulled back then roughly drove in again. I didn’t allow her to push back into me, forcing her to stay where she was and take me into her over and over again.

  “Fuck me, Grant,” Norel gasped as she reached back around and tried to pull me in. “Fuck me harder. Please, oh gods… please…”

  I followed her instruction and pumped into her harder and faster than before, hard enough that I worried about whether the table would be able to take much more of this punishment. My already-tired muscles burned, but our lovemaking was replenishing my almost-exhausted power supply.

  I pulled her up from the table and against my chest as my hands ran freely over her front, enjoying the delicious feel of her body against mine as my left hand started to gently burn. I stimulated her body with the pleasure that rushed through mine.

  “That’s not fair,” she hissed through gritted teeth. Her nails dug into my shoulders as her pussy tightened around my cock, coating it in her cum as her cries reverberated through the small room that we were in.

  I kept pumping her full of cock as her orgasm slowly wound down and then stopped, as unnatural as that felt. I withdrew, turned her to face me, lifted her to sit on the edge of the table and spread her thighs around my hips as I buried myself inside her again.

  She gasped, wrapped her arms around my hips, and pulled me closer while raking her nails over my bare skin. The mix of pleasure and pain sent goosebumps up and down my body, but I didn’t mind. The marks she left would be there for days to come. I still didn’t care. I thrust harder, faster, pushing myself to the edge of my climax as I bent and kissed her at the instant both of us hit the edge and eagerly jumped over.

  My hips bucked hard enough between her thighs that the sounds of them slapping together mixed in with the sounds of our sex, her moans, and my roars as I thrust deeper inside her, my cock twitching as my cum mixed with hers.

  I kept my hips moving for a few long moments before eventually grinding to a slow halt, buried to the hilt between her thighs.

  She remained where she was, holding herself against me, nails digging into my hips for a few long, delicious seconds before her body relaxed around mine. She sighed happily and scattered light kisses over my sweat-touched chest before she laid back on the table, then reached out to grab my hand and pull it to her breasts, letting me feel her beautiful chest rise and fall with each deep breath.

  “Fuck, I needed that,” she gasped, then closed her eyes and squeezed her breast using my hand.

  “I think we both did,” I whispered as I leaned down to kiss her neck. “You know, Aliana and Braire both probably felt that. They’ll look for reprisals and revenge before too long.”

  “I don’t think I mind their reprisals,” Norel said, looking relaxed enough to almost fall asleep. The wounds from the day before were healed, and aside from a couple of bruises and small cuts, she looked as healthy as ever. I smiled and kissed her lips.

  “Of course, you don’t mind them,” I grumbled. “They’re probably going to be directed at me.”

  “I don’t think you’ll mind them either,” Norel pointed out. “Not too much, anyway.”

  23

  Norel and I took a moment to dress once we’d gathered our senses. I’d been careful enough with Norel’s clothes, but she hadn’t been as careful with mine. It was a good thing that we’d just been through a battle, since the tears in my clothes would be less noticeable.

  People filled the streets of the town again. They looked around, not quite sure what had happened, and seemed utterly confused by our presence. There were elves among them, though, who looked like they had been through a rough couple of days.

  “Faye put them all in the same dungeons we were in,” Norel said. “Chained up for Abarat’s arrival, same as us. From what I’ve been able to establish, Abarat’s orders to Faye were to gather as many elves as possible, since he was coming here.”

  “I’m guessing that his plans will change, now,” I grumbled under my breath.

  “How would he know what happened here?” Norel asked and looked at me with that suspicious expression on her face again.

  Luckily, I had an answer for her this time. “Some of the Lancers survived, and they’ll rush off in as straight a line as possible to tell the Emperor about what happened here. If we assume that the Emperor is under Abarat’s thumb, we also need to assume that he will know about today’s events before the week is out.”

  Norel smiled and kissed my cheek as we made our way back toward the mayor’s manse, where Aliana and Braire caught sight of us. The latter looked the more annoyed of the two as she marched over to us ahead of her djinn sister and punched my shoulder.

  “Ow!” I complained and stepped back.

  “Asshole,” Braire growled while pointing first at me, and then Norel, who beamed innocently. “Both of you are assholes.”

  “She has a point,” Aliana agreed and scowled at us.

  “Then why am I the only one who gets punched?” I asked as I rubbed some feeling back into my injured arm.

  “Stop whining, you big wuss,” Braire grumbled, although she quickly regretted it and lightly brushed her fingers over my shoulder in apology, which drew a smile from me.

  “We’ve just finished locking up the Official,” Aliana said as she looked across the courtyard. “Would you care to join us in asking her a few questions?”

  I bowed. “Lead the way, m’ladies.”

  Braire and Norel grinned, but Aliana just rolled her eyes with a chuckle as she did, in fact, lead the way back to the same dungeons where we’d spent the night. I had to say that the night before wasn’t the worst night I’d ever had, but it was high on the list. My wrists still ached from where the ropes had kept them bound behind my back.

  It was a distinctively different place than when we were prisoners, even though the ladies locked her into one of the same cells. The same rope bound her as well, although she wasn’t yet gagged.

  “This is pointless!” Faye called when she saw us and shook her head. There was still dried blood from where I’d struck her on the temple, but there was no sign of the cut or even any swelling in the area, which told me that someone had taken the time to heal her wound. “You’ve imprisoned an Official of the Emperor. Do you lot have any idea just how fucked you all are? You’re going to die very slow deaths.”

  “Between you and me, I’d say that the Emperor isn’t at the top of our list of worries, Faye,” I said and stepped into the cell, carefully keeping my hand on my sheathed blade. I realized that I still had her spear tucked into my belt and drew it, inspecting the weapon closely, as she stared at me malevolently. “It is Faye that I’m talking to right now, yes?”

  “Let me out of these ropes and find out,” she spat back while struggling to release herself, although she would find, as I had the night before, that the more you struggled against them, the tighter the ropes became.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Norel said. She tugged me back out of the cell and spoke softly. “If our suspicions are correct and Abarat has brainwashed the Emperor the way he’s done to Faye, we have to find a solution for it.”

  “You mean there isn’t one already?” I asked and narrowed my eyes.

  “Well, nothing as such, but… There are some paths we can follow,” Norel said, sounding less optimistic than she’d intended, I thought.


  “Well, for one thing, I can still hear you lot,” Faye called from inside the cell. “And I can say for certain that the Emperor serves Abarat at the moment, which means that none of you are welcome anywhere near the Empire. Finding a way around Abarat’s work while being hunted by every Lancer in the Empire will be a right trick.”

  “You might want to think about a way to help us, then,” I softly replied as I shut the cell door and locked it. “Because I don’t know much about Abarat, but he does seem like the kind of person who punishes those who fail him most severely. How do you think he’ll greet you when he knows just how royally you fucked up this whole situation?” I tapped lightly at the bars with her spear. “Food for thought!”

  With that, the four of us headed back outside. Even with the new spirit the town had, it was still unpleasant, and I couldn’t wait to put it behind me.

  “That was rather mean of you, wasn’t it?” Aliana said softly as she walked over and leaned her head against my shoulder.

  “I spared the woman’s life, which is more than can be said for a lot of her Lancers,” I said, keeping my voice low as we stepped out into the courtyard. “I am all out of goodwill, I’m afraid.”

  As we stepped outside, I was met with a rather curious sight. I hadn’t seen much of Frarris since we’d escaped the underworld. She’d grown and expanded since then, and Norel thought she needed some space.

  As of right now, though, she stood about the height of a work horse at the shoulder and had a massive wingspan. I was interested to see if she would grow any more.

  She seemed to like Norel, Aliana, Braire, and me well enough, but there was a sense of aloofness about her. No, not aloofness. Frarris saw herself as equal to or better than humans and elves alike. While she enjoyed our company, we were still below her, somehow.

  Which confused me further when I saw her lying on the ground, her muzzle against Lyth’s thigh. The turquoise-haired elf didn’t see anything odd about the dragon’s behaviour and even seemed to expect it. She dropped to her haunches, scratching the thick scales and speaking to her in elvish, although it sounded different from what the three sisters spoke.

  “So,” I said, breaking the silence. Some of the elves we’d liberated paused to watch the scene unfold as well. “When we were in the middle of the fight, you said that there was something special about summoning a dragon, Norel?”

  She turned to look at me and nodded. “Dragons are higher beings, impossible to tame and difficult to befriend. There were a select few who could bind them to a runed stone the way she did, and they were members of the Elven Royal families. Families that have been extinct for centuries, now.”

  “Apparently not,” I pointed out. “Although… if she’s some kind of royalty, that would explain why she’s able to do the astral projection so easily. And could explain why Abarat was willing to set a trap for her, using us as bait. He might want to use someone like her for whatever he has planned.”

  A moment of silence stretched between us we remembered that this was just one battle in a much larger war.

  “There is a way,” Norel said softly. “A way to break Abarat’s binds on people like Faye, and the Emperor. After the war, I dedicated most of my time to studying what he did to people and how to break it. You should know that it will be difficult. Some might even say impossible. We could try it on Faye, and if it works, we could bring it to the Emperor. What say you?”

  I looked around at our little group, then watched Lyth tickle Frarris’ nostril, which caused the dragon to snort and sneeze loudly, to the laughter of everyone present.

  “Well,” I said, feeling my confidence grow with each word, “we have two powerful elf mages, a djinn, a member of the Elven Royal families, a rogue mage, and a big fucking dragon. How hard can it be?”

  About the Author

  Mark Albany is fan of epic fantasy and living life to its fullest. He hopes to embrace such story telling as Game of Thrones and Venom in this tale, and add one more spot of fun in your life.

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