Chapter 2: Primal Claiming
The whisper of the forest returned, seeping into the silence they had filled with their own noise. Grulk remained draped over her, his weight a solid, comforting anchor. His breathing, ragged against her spine, slowly evened. He was still inside her, a thick, warm presence that made her feel utterly claimed.
He nuzzled the sweat-damp juncture of her neck and shoulder, his tusks a cool contrast. “You are bleeding,” he murmured, the words rough with something that sounded like regret.
Elara shifted slightly, feeling the tender ache between her legs, a slick warmth that was more than just their combined release. A little blood on the moss. “It’s nothing,” she whispered. “A scratch. I’ve had worse from thorns.”
“You should not bleed from me.” He began to withdraw, a slow, careful slide.
She clenched around him, stopping him. “Don’t.”
He froze. A shudder ran through him. “Elara…”
“It’s my body. And I say it’s a good ache.” She turned her head, trying to see his face. “A reminder.”
With a groan that was half surrender, half renewed hunger, he pushed back in, filling her completely once more. He rolled them onto their sides, keeping them joined, his front to her back. One massive arm curled under her head, the other wrapped possessively around her waist, his hand splayed over her lower belly as if to feel himself within her.
The sun was sinking, painting the glade in deep oranges and long, stretching shadows. The air grew cooler. They lay in quiet for a time, listening to the stream, to the distant call of an owl. Her fingers traced the scars on the arm that held her.
“The village will wonder where I am,” she said softly, not with worry, but as a statement of fact.
“Do you care?”
She thought about it. The narrow eyes, the muttered warnings about the ‘forest beast’. The endless, polite distance. “No. Not right now.”
“Good.” He kissed her shoulder. “Stay the night.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a hope, wrapped in the gravel of his voice. She nodded against his arm.
As darkness crept in, he finally, reluctantly, pulled away from her. The night air felt shockingly cold on her wet skin. He stood, a towering silhouette against the indigo sky, and moved with purpose. She heard the rustle of him gathering their discarded clothes. He returned, kneeling beside her. With a tenderness that belied his size, he used her own soft shift to gently clean the blood and spend from her thighs. The act was so intimate, so quietly devoted, that her throat tightened.
He then used his own tunic to pat dry his still-impressive cock before pulling his trousers back up. He helped her into her clothes, his big fingers surprisingly deft with the laces of her tunic. When she was dressed, he built a small, efficient fire near the stream’s bank, its light pushing back the deepening dark and painting his features in flickering relief.
He sat against the broad trunk of the ancient oak, the one that housed his fox carving. He opened his arms to her. She went without hesitation, settling between his legs, her back against his chest. He enveloped her, his warmth warding off the chill. They shared water from a hollow gourd he kept by the stream, ate strips of dried venison from a pouch at his belt.
“Tell me about your carvings,” she said, breaking the comfortable silence.
He was quiet for a moment. “There is not much to tell. I find a piece of wood. It speaks to me. It shows me what is hiding inside. I just… let it out.”
“The fox. The one by the tree. It looked alive.”
“It wanted to be.” He rested his chin on the top of her head. “I have a badger, nearby. A jay with a broken wing. They are… company.”
“You are lonely.” She said it plainly.
His arms tightened around her. “I was.”
The fire crackled. An ember spiraled up into the dark. She traced the veins on the back of his hand where it lay across her stomach. “What will happen tomorrow?” she asked, the future intruding on their perfect, stolen night.
His body stiffened. The peace shattered. “You will go back. To your stone nests and your people who fear the forest. And I will stay here.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“It does not matter what we want.” The old bitterness tinged his voice. “The world is what it is. You saw. I am not… gentle. Not for long. This…” He gestured to the glade, to their tangled bodies. “This is a dream. Daylight will wake us.”
She turned in his arms, scrambling to face him, kneeling between his thighs. The firelight danced in her fierce silver eyes. “You think this was just a dream? You think what I felt was some… some forest spell?” She took his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “I felt every inch of you, Grulk. I felt you come inside me. Twice. That’s no dream. That’s a choice. My choice.”
He searched her face, the defiance there, the same fire that had met him in the sunlight. The resignation in his eyes began to crack, replaced by a smoldering, desperate hope. It terrified him more than any battle.
His hands came up to cover hers, holding them against his rough cheeks. “What are you saying, healer?”
“I’m saying I’m not done.” The words were a challenge. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, then lower, to the growing bulge in his trousers. “And I don’t think you are either.”
A low growl started in his chest. The animal he had tried to cage for her sake rattled its bars. He saw no fear in her, only a mirror of his own limitless hunger. The caution, the gentle aftermath, was incinerated in a fresh blast of need.
He moved fast. He lay back, pulling her with him so she straddled his hips. His hands went to the laces of her tunic, yanking them open with a sharp tug that made the cord snap. He peeled the fabric from her shoulders, baring her to the waist. The firelight gilded her skin, her breasts.
“Then have what you want,” he snarled, his own laces giving way under his impatient hands. He freed his cock, which sprang out thick and already fully hard, the broad head nudging against her clothed core. “Take it.”
Elara didn’t hesitate. She shoved her own trousers and smallclothes down just enough, rose on her knees, and guided him to her entrance. She was still sore, swollen, tender from their earlier fucking. She sank down onto him anyway, a slow, gasping descent that stretched her exquisitely. He filled her, a burning, perfect fullness that made her eyes roll back.
She began to move, riding him with a determined rhythm, her hands braced on the solid wall of his chest. He watched her, his amber eyes glowing like coals, his hands gripping her hips, not guiding, just feeling the muscles work as she took him.
“You feel that?” she panted, rising and falling. “That’s me choosing you. Every fucking inch.”
His control snapped. With a roar, he surged up, rolling her beneath him again in the moss. He drove into her, deep and hard. The passionate rhythm of before was gone. This was raw, unadorned need. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, his hips a relentless piston. The firelight threw their writhing, joined shadows against the trees, a primal dance.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he grunted, thrusting into her hard and slowly, each word punctuated by a deep, penetrating drive. “I’m going to fuck you until you beg me to stop.”
She didn’t want him to ever stop. She wanted it rougher and harder. She wrapped her legs high around his back, locking her ankles, opening herself wider to take him deeper. “You’ll be waiting a long time!” she gasped, meeting his thrusts. “I’ll take everything you have! Give it to me! Fuck me like you mean it!”
Her words were a spark to tinder. He snarled, his hands sliding under her to grip the cheeks of her ass, lifting her, angling her so each pound of his body hit the deepest, most vulnerable part of her. The sound was lewd, wet, brutal. He was a force of nature, and she was the ground breaking beneath him.
“This cunt,” he rasped, sweat dripping from his brow onto her chest. “This perfect, tight little cunt. It’s mine. You understand? Say it.”
“It’s yours!” she cried out, her voice breaking as he hammered into a spot that sent blinding pleasure through her. “Only yours! Fuck!”
He lowered his mouth to her breast, sucking a nipple deep, biting just enough to make her scream. The dual sensation—the brutal penetration, the sharp sting—pushed her to the edge. Her body began to tighten, coiling like a spring.
“I’m gonna come,” she whimpered, her fingers scrabbling at his back. “Grulk, I’m gonna—”
“Come,” he commanded, his own rhythm fracturing, losing its punishing precision. “Come on my cock. Soak me. Let me feel you.”
His crude words tipped her over. Her climax ripped through her, a silent, seizing wave that clamped down on him with vicious strength. She saw stars behind her eyes.
She saw stars behind her eyes. Her body was a taut bowstring, vibrating with the force of her release, clenching around him in rhythmic, desperate pulses. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Her climax was a hot, liquid fist milking his cock, dragging a guttural roar from his chest as he drove into her even harder, chasing his own end.
“Such a good girl,” he growled, the words ragged against her mouth as his hand shot up to cup her jaw. His grip was firm, almost rough, tilting her face to his. He kissed her, deep and possessive, swallowing her cries as his hips kept hammering into her. He fucked her straight through the shattering waves of her pleasure, not letting up for a single, brutal stroke.
He fucked her straight through the shattering waves of her pleasure, not letting up for a single, brutal stroke. Her climax was a distant, receding tremor, a faint echo beneath the immediate, pounding reality of his need. He was chasing his own end now, his rhythm turning erratic, his breaths hot, ragged explosions against her neck.
“Need more,” he grunted, the words thick and slurry. “Need all of you.”
Before she could form a thought, his hands were under her arms. He hauled her up off the moss, her body limp and pliant in his grasp. He stood, his own legs powerfully braced, and held her suspended before him. The firelit glade spun in her vision, a carousel of dark trees and golden light.
His hands shifted to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there like vises. He lowered her, the thick, slick head of his cock finding her swollen, sensitive entrance once more. He didn’t ease her down. He let her weight fall, then stopped her, holding her impaled just an inch deep on that monstrous hardness.
He looked up at her, his face a mask of feral intensity. “This is what you wanted. All of it.”
He released his hold.
She sank, a sharp cry torn from her throat as she was stretched, filled, speared in one shocking, downward plunge. He caught her at the hips before she could bottom out fully, his strength halting her descent. Then, in one violent motion, he yanked her up, almost off him, the friction a bright, blinding streak.
He slammed her down again.
And again.
He stood her on his cock, using her body like a toy, a sheath for his own furious release. Her feet dangled, brushing his thighs. All control was his. He set a brutal, pistoning rhythm, hauling her up by her hips only to drive her back down onto his length, using her own gravity against her, fucking up into her falling weight. The slap of their bodies was a wet, rhythmic thunder in the quiet glade.
“Take it,” he snarled, each driving impact punching the air from her lungs. “This cock is yours. You wanted it. Now fucking take it.”
She could only moan, a stream of shattered syllables that might have been his name. Her arms flopped over his shoulders.
Her arms flopped over his shoulders, her body a boneless weight he controlled utterly. He used her, his hands manacles on her hips, driving her down onto his shaft with a force that jolted her teeth. His gaze was locked on the place where their bodies joined, on the obscene stretch of her around him, on the slick gleam of his own flesh disappearing into hers.
But then his eyes raked upward.
HE WATCHED HER BODY AS HE FUCKED HER ON HIS HUGE COCK. HE WATCHED HER LARGE PERFECT BREASTS BOUNCING TO THE RHYTHM OF HIS THRUSTS, a frantic, mesmerizing dance in the firelight. He watched her perfect face, eyes screwed shut, mouth gasping open, making dirty, slutty expressions of ecstasy she couldn’t possibly control. Each one—a wince, a slack-jawed moan, a brow furrowed in overwhelmed pleasure—poured fuel on the fire in his gut.
It made him want to fuck her harder and harder.
He wanted to break her pussy so only he could ever have her, so that every time she walked or sat or remembered this night, it would be his claim she felt. The thought was a dark, possessive chord thrumming through his veins. His rhythm became punishing, a steady, deep drilling that stole the breath from her lungs each time he impaled her.
“Look at you,” he growled, his voice shredded. “Look what you let me do to you.”
Her eyes fluttered open, glazed and unfocused. She managed a weak, defiant smile. “Let you?”
He snarled and changed his grip, one arm banding around her back to hold her tight against him, the other hand fisting in her silver hair. He took three staggering steps and pinned her against the rough bark of the great oak. The new position allowed him even deeper access, the angle ruthless. He hammered into her, the tree solid at her back, his body a cage at her front.
“You’re gonna remember this,” he promised, each word a hot puff against her ear. “When you’re back in your soft bed. You’re gonna feel me. You’re gonna ache for it.”
“I don’t need tomorrow to ache for it,” she choked out, her nails scoring down his back. “I ache for it now. More. Please.”
Her plea shattered the last of his reason. With a final, ragged roar, he buried himself to the hilt and held there, his body bowing as his release tore through hi