Chapter 1: The Familiar's Release
The fire had burned down to a low orange bed by the time Kaelen tipped the last of the dried venison into the pot. Steam curled up and caught the light. He stirred with the flat of his knife, frowning at how thin the broth had gone. Lyra sat cross-legged on a fallen log, drawing a whetstone down the edge of a thin dagger in slow, lazy strokes.
Melara kept to herself, close enough to feel the warmth, far enough that her shadow fell on no one. She had her knees drawn up and her cloak wrapped tight. The thing between her legs had been restless all day. It stirred now, pressed hard against the inside of her thigh, like something trying to get comfortable and failing.
She bit her lip and watched the coals.
It happened the way it always happened when she was tired. Her concentration slipped, and the familiar took that as permission. A warm pulse ran down her thigh. Then the weight shifted, and detached. Melara's breath caught. She felt the separation as a deep, strange pull, like a tooth loosening without pain.
It slid out from under her cloak and dropped into the grass, glistening faintly in the firelight. It had no legs. It didn't need them. It rippled forward like a caterpillar, or a slug, or something that had learned motion by watching other things do it. The firelight traced the pale curve of it, and the veins along its length pulsed with a faint blue glow.
Kaelen looked up first. He didn't flinch, because Kaelen had stopped flinching years ago, but he set the knife across the rim of the pot. "Is it supposed to do that?"
"Yes," Melara said. Her voice came out higher than she wanted. "It gets restless. It's fine."
Lyra watched it crawl past her boot with polite interest.
The familiar reached Kaelen's shin and bumped against the leather of his greave, then stretched up it. It left a wet shine on the metal. Melara felt every point of contact as if it were her own skin, because it was. The hard ridge of his knee. The rough grain of the leather. A low, hot tug deep in her belly that had nothing to do with the fire.
Kaelen reached down and scratched the underside of it once, the way you'd scratch a hound behind the ear.
The jolt went through Melara like a spear of lightning. She bit the inside of her cheek and covered the sound with a cough.
"It likes that," Kaelen observed. He sounded entirely neutral, which was somehow worse than laughter.
Melara's fingers dug into her cloak.
The familiar lost interest in him quickly, the way a cat does, and turned toward the log. It climbed Lyra's boot and settled into the crook of her crossed legs, laying itself across her lap like something waiting to be attended to. She set the dagger down. She looked at the pale length in her lap, then across the fire at Melara, whose face had gone the color of the coals.
"Am I doing it wrong," Lyra asked, "or does it always twitch like this?"
"It's not twitching. It's breathing."
"It doesn't have lungs."
Melara had no answer for that, and Lyra knew it. She smoothed one hand down the shaft, an absent, curious stroke, thumb dragging over the head. Melara's hips lifted an inch off the ground before she caught herself. Her hands fisted in the grass. The wet sound carried across the fire, and she wanted, badly, to be swallowed by the earth.
Lyra stroked it again. Slower. She was watching Melara now, not the thing in her lap, reading her face the way she read a lock before she picked it. The green of her eyes had gone dark.
"Lyra," Melara managed.
"Mm?"
"Don't."
Lyra's hand went still. "You want me to stop?"
Melara didn't answer. Her thighs pressed together hard enough to ache. Her whole body had drawn tight as a bowstring, and the worst of it was that Lyra could see it, that Kaelen could see it, that there was nowhere to put her face.
The familiar, meantime, was not confused at all. It pulsed against Lyra's palm, thick and hot, its glow brightening in time with Melara's heartbeat. It nudged at her wrist like a horse asking for the saddle.
Lyra tilted her head. Then she wrapped her hand around it properly and began to work it, long even strokes from root to tip, the way you'd milk a goat.
The sound Melara made was not a word. She clapped a hand over her mouth too late. Her back arched, her heels skidded in the dirt, and pressure built behind her eyes and low in her belly where nothing but emptiness waited. Kaelen studied the fire with enormous courtesy.
"You're not going to waste it?" Lyra asked. She reached for her bowl, the stew going cold in it, and held it under the head. Still stroking. Steady as a heartbeat. "It's not every night I get fresh cream for my supper."
Melara would have said something clever if any part of her brain still belonged to her. Instead she came with a strangled gasp, hips rolling up into nothing, and the familiar spent itself in three thick pulses that landed in the stew with soft wet sounds.
Lyra didn't stop. She kept stroking until the last tremble ran out of it, easing Melara down through it the way you'd gentle a spooked mare. The glow faded from blue to a dim pearlescent shimmer. Melara lay flat on her back in the grass, chest heaving, staring up at the moon through the branches and wishing the moon would look away too.
The familiar detached from Lyra's hand and crawled back across the clearing. It climbed into Melara's lap and settled, warm and satisfied, already sinking back toward her, already belonging to her again. She felt it reattach, and she hated how much she had missed it.
Lyra picked up her spoon. She stirred the milky streaks through the broth, unhurried, then lifted the spoon and ate. A small sound of genuine pleasure escaped her. "That's better. Kaelen, you should have tasted it before the salt."
Kaelen picked his knife back up. "I'll pass."
"Your loss."
Melara dragged her cloak over herself, though there was nothing left to hide. Her legs still shook. She could feel wetness cooling on her stomach under her tunic, and the taste of copper in her mouth where she'd bitten her cheek.
Lyra licked the spoon clean and set it down. She looked across the coals at Melara, and for a moment the teasing dropped out of her face. What was left was quieter, harder to name, and it stayed a beat too long before she looked away.
"Get some sleep," she said. "I'll take first watch. Something tells me you're tired."
Melara got up and gathered her bedroll, and she turned the wobble in her legs into a stretch, as though she had chosen it. The fire had burned to ash and orange cracks. She carried the roll past the last of the light and laid it flat in the tall dry grass, well beyond the warmth.
"Sleep well," Lyra said.
Melara didn't answer. She lay down with her back to the fire, drew her cloak over her head, and shut her eyes.
The stew was still behind her. She could hear the spoon scrape the bowl. She could see, without meaning to, the slow even strokes across Lyra's lap, the bowl held underneath like a thing that had always belonged there, and the small honest sound Lyra made at the first taste.
Her cock thickened against her stomach before the memory finished playing. She pressed both hands over it and held it down, and it did not care.
It slid off her hip, warm and slick, and dropped into the crease of her thighs. She clamped her legs together, which made it worse, because it liked the squeeze, and it pushed through the squeeze anyway, unhurried, like it had all night.
It found her. Slick seam, a single slow press, and then an inch of her opened around it and her whole body went tight as a fist.
Across the fire, Lyra's voice came low. "Cold?"
Melara went rigid. She said nothing. She slowed her breathing the way you fake sleep, and the familiar pushed another inch into her while she lay still, and her heels dug shallow trenches in the dirt. A pause stretched out. Then the soft whisk of the whetstone started up again, slow, unhurried.
The familiar drew back to the crown. It waited. It drove in again, and stopped just under the place she needed, and the emptiness after it was worse than the first push. She rolled her hips to follow it. It stopped. She stopped. It moved again, shallow and patient, and sweat broke across her scalp.
She reached for the finish and it slipped out of reach. She bit down on the wool of her bedroll and tasted dust. The glow under her cloak pulsed blue, once, twice, bright enough that she pulled the fabric tighter over her hips.
Three times it climbed her and let her fall. Four. Five. Each time it stopped a hair short, and each time she arched into the air after it with a sound she had to swallow. The grass under the bedroll went damp in a slow spreading patch. Something small and luminous blinked in the moss beside her head and went dark.
Her eyes opened on the fire. Kaelen lay flat on his back on the far side of the embers, one arm thrown out, his breath deep and even. His bedroll had slipped down to his waist and his tunic had ridden up, and the laces of his breeches were loose from the day's riding.
She was moving before she decided to. Elbow, knee, elbow, dragging the bedroll with her, quiet as a cat on a ledge.
She knelt at his shoulder and listened. Deep breath in. Long breath out. She eased the laces open with two fingers and drew him out of the cloth.
He was heavy even soft, warm against her palm, and when she took him in her mouth he swelled against her tongue. Salt and leather and old sweat. She closed her eyes.
The familiar chose that moment to bury itself to the root.
Her whole body bowed. She moaned around him and the sound vibrated up his shaft, and Kaelen shifted in his sleep, brows drawing together, one hand opening and closing in the grass. He didn't wake. He didn't need to. His hips lifted a fraction, a slow animal answer, and she took him deeper until her throat closed on him and pulled back, and did it again.
The familiar began to move in her, long and full and even, and the two rhythms lined up without her meaning them to. Every stroke in her mouth pulled an answer from between her legs. She was soaked down her thighs and shaking over his body, and her hands were fisted in his bedroll on either side of his ribs.
He came without waking. A shudder ran up through his stomach and his breath caught once, and then he pulsed into her mouth, slow and hot and thick, and she swallowed it down and kept sucking for the next pulse and the next. Her own climax hit her mid-throat and she nearly cried out around him. She pressed her forehead into his hip and rode it out, hips grinding down onto the buried cock, mouth working him gently until the last of him spent and softened on her tongue.
Kaelen's hand settled back into the grass. His breathing evened out, deep and slow, and his face was peaceful again, as if none of it had happened at all, which for him was true.
Melara lifted her head. She wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist and tucked him away and tied the laces as best she could with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling. She crawled back to her bedroll. The familiar stayed where it was, still inside her, warm and content, its glow dimming to a faint pearl.
She lay down, and she looked across the coals.
Lyra was watching her. She hadn't moved from the log. The whetstone lay idle in her lap and the bowl sat at her knee, and she lifted it and drank what was left of the broth without looking away, and set it down empty.