Chapter 2: Taking Control
Her hands on his bare skin were an anchor in the storm of his nerves. For a long moment, they just stood there, her palms warm against his ribs, his breath shuddering in and out. The air between them crackled, thick with the scent of her and the ozone-hum of the cottage.
Then her hands moved. One slid around to the small of his back, pulling him gently against her. The other drifted lower, her fingers hooking into the waistband of his work trousers. The coarse fabric was all that stood between her touch and his aching hardness.
He gasped, a short, sharp intake of breath. His hands, which had been hanging uselessly, finally found a purpose. He placed them tentatively on her hips, his fingers spanning the dramatic curve where her torso flared. Her skin was impossibly smooth, like living marble.
“These,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear, her breath warm, “are in the way.”
She didn’t ask. She applied a faint, insistent pressure, tugging the trousers and the simple linen shorts beneath them down over his hips. He helped, fumbling, lifting his feet one at a time as the fabric pooled around his ankles. He stepped out of them, kicking them aside, now as naked as she was above the waist.
The cooler air of the room hit his skin, but he was burning up. He was fully exposed to her, every flaw, every tremor. He wanted to cover himself, but her grip on his back held him in place. Her gaze traveled down his body again, and this time it lingered. Her glowing eyes widened just a fraction. A slow, deep smile touched her lips—not mischievous now, but one of genuine, appreciative surprise.
“Ah,” she said, the single syllable rich with meaning.
He couldn’t look down. He couldn’t look at her face. He stared at a point over her shoulder, at the swirling patterns on a violet curtain, humiliation and want warring in his gut.
Her hand left his back. He felt her fingers, feather-light, trail down the center of his stomach, through the dark trail of hair. He sucked his stomach in, muscles clenching. Her touch was clinical and searing all at once. Then her fingers closed around him.
The contact was electric. A jolt shot straight up his spine. He cried out, a strangled, unfamiliar sound. His eyes slammed shut.
She held him, her grip firm and knowing, measuring his length and girth with a gentle, stroking motion of her thumb. He was panting, his legs trembling. It was too much. It was everything. The sheer physical sensation, combined with the utter vulnerability of her hand on him, short-circuited every thought.
“Beautiful,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
Then she released him. The loss of contact was a shock. He opened his eyes, bewildered.
She took a single step back, putting a foot of space between them. Her expression was serene, but her eyes blazed with intent. Her hands went to the fastener of her own trousers. “Your turn,” she said.
He watched, mesmerized, as the laces came free. She pushed the dark linen down over the powerful muscles of her thighs, over the elegant taper of her lower legs, and stepped free. She stood before him, completely unclothed.
Alex’s brain simply stopped.
His eyes took in the powerful, alien beauty of her—the strong thighs, the cloven hooves, the elegant tail now swinging slowly behind her. But his gaze, inevitably, was dragged to the center of her, to what his mind had assumed would be a mirror of human anatomy.
It wasn’t.
His breath left his lungs in a silent rush. He stared, uncomprehending. Between her thighs, nestled in a thatch of silvery hair, was a thick, flaccid length of azure flesh. It was unmistakably a cock. It was far larger than his own even in its soft state, heavy-looking, with a smooth, pronounced head. The biology was all wrong, impossible, world-ending.
A high, thin ringing started in his ears. His dream of losing his virginity to a beautiful woman evaporated, replaced by a stark, terrifying reality he had no framework to understand. He took an involuntary step back, his heel hitting the discarded chair. The room tilted.
Velara watched the color drain from his face. She saw the shock, the dawning horror, the betrayal in his kind hazel eyes. She didn’t move. She let him look, let him process.
“You…” he choked out. “What… what are you?”
“I am Draenei,” she said, her voice calm, melodic. “This is what I am. All of me.”
“But… you’re a woman,” he protested, the words sounding childish even to him.
“I am.” She took a slow step forward. Her member twitched, beginning to swell and thicken with her arousal, the motion hypnotic and terrifying. “The females of my people are… blessed this way. It is not a curse. It is a gift of strength.” Her lips curved. “You seemed so eager for a gift.”
The ringing in his ears grew louder. He shook his head, a frantic, denial. This was a trick, a nightmare. The stunning woman from the tavern, the one who had filled his lonely thoughts for weeks, was… this. His body was still thrumming from her touch, even as his mind recoiled.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I didn’t… I don’t…”
“You do,” she said, her voice dropping, becoming persuasive, almost hypnotic. “Look at you.” Her gaze flicked down to his own arousal, which, traitorously, had not faded. It stood stark and eager against his stomach, a physical testament to a want his mind was now screaming to reject. “Your body knows what it wants. It knows what it needs.”
She took another step. He was backed against the edge of the massive, crescent-shaped bed. The glowing runes in the wood pulsed beneath his thighs.
“You came here wanting to be with me,” she continued, stopping just before him. Her scent, that vanilla and starlight, washed over him. Her fully erect cock now stood thick and proud, its head level with his chest. The size was staggering. “You asked me to continue. Your words, Alex. ‘Please.’ Do you remember?”
He did. The raw, desperate sound of his own voice echoed in his memory. He had begged. He had wanted her.
Trembling violently, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs, he did the only thing his shattered mind could grasp. He reached out.
His fingers, shaking so badly he could barely control them, brushed the very tip of her. The skin there was velvet-soft, shockingly smooth and giving. It was fever-warm.
Velara gasped. It was a sharp, surprised sound that sliced through the humming silence of the room. Her glowing eyes flared. Her tail lashed once, a whip-crack of motion.
He jerked his hand back as if burned.
But she caught his wrist. Her grip was firm, unyielding. “No,” she breathed, her composure cracking for the first time, revealing a raw, hungry need beneath. “Do not stop.”
She guided his hand back, wrapping his trembling fingers around her girth. He whimpered. The feeling was immense. She was thick, solid, throbbing with a slow, powerful pulse he could feel in his palm. She was so much more real than anything he had ever imagined.
“Like this,” she whispered, her voice rough now. She moved his hand for him, a slow, firm stroke from root to tip. His calloused palm dragged over her smoothness. Her head fell back, her silver hair cascading down her back. A deep, resonant sound vibrated from her chest.
He did it again, on his own. A tentative pull. Then another, gaining a fraction of confidence. He was stroking her. Her heat filled his hand. Her scent, now muskier, filled his head. The world narrowed to the motion of his arm, to the sounds she made, to the overwhelming, impossible reality of what he was holding.
“Good,” she rasped. “Yes. Just like that.”
But her patience was unraveling. She let him stroke her a few more times, her hips beginning to move in tiny increments against his fist. Then, with a low growl, she pulled his hand away.
Before he could process the movement, she turned him. Her hands were on his shoulders, powerful and insistent, spinning him to face the bed. She pushed, firmly. He stumbled forward, his hands catching himself on the silken covers. He was on his knees at the edge of the vast bed, his back to her, exposed.
He heard the shift of her weight, the soft clack of a hoof on the floorboards. Then he felt her behind him, her heat radiating against his skin. Her hands gripped his hips, her thumbs digging into the muscle. He felt the heavy, insistent pressure of her length, hot and solid, sliding between his thighs. The intimate contact made him cry out, a muffled sound against the blankets.
She leaned over him, her body covering his back. Her silver hair fell around his face, smelling of lightning and strange flowers. Her lips found the shell of his ear.
“You have never felt full,” she whispered, her voice a dark promise that coiled in his gut. “You have never been taken. You have never been claimed.”
He shuddered, a full-body convulsion. Fear and a dark, shocking thread of excitement twisted together inside him.
He felt the broad, smooth head of her press against him, against a place that had never been touched, not even by his own hand. He froze. A sound of pure panic escaped him.
“Shhh,” she soothed, but there was no mercy in her tone, only relentless intent. One of her hands left his hip, slid around his front, and took him in hand again. The dual sensation—her grasp on his cock, the insistent pressure at his rear—unmade him. He moaned, long and low, his body arching despite itself.
“I will be slow,” she breathed into his ear. “For you. Only for you.”
She pushed.
The pain was immediate, a sharp, tearing shock of violation. He shouted, the sound swallowed by the bedding. His fingers clawed at the silk. He tried to pull away, but her grip on his hip was iron, holding him fast.
“Breathe,” she commanded, her own voice strained. She pushed again, incrementally. The stretch was unbearable, a feeling of being split open. Tears sprang to his eyes. He gasped, sucking in ragged breaths as she had ordered.
She paused, buried just inside, letting his body convulse around her. The pain was a bright, white fire. But beneath it, buried deep, was the relentless, throbbing fullness she had promised. He was filled in a way that defied his understanding of his own body.
She began to move. A shallow withdrawal, then a deeper, slower push. Each stroke sandpapered the sharp edge of the pain, grinding it into a dull, aching burn. Her hand moved on him in time with her thrusts, a rough, distracting counter-rhythm.
“See?” she panted, her breath hot on his neck. “You can take it. You are taking it.”
He was. Against every instinct, through the blur of pain and shock, his body was accommodating her. The burning ache began to mutate, mixing with the intense pleasure radiating from her grip on his cock. The sensations crashed together, unbearable and irresistible.
Her thrusts lost their measured care. The need in her broke through. Her movements became harder, deeper, driving him forward into the mattress with each lunge. The bedframe, that ancient eldrithwood, creaked in a steady, rhythmic protest. Her sounds were guttural now, low grunts and growls that were more beast than language.
Alex was lost. The pain was still there, a baseline throb, but it was woven through with something else, a shocking, building coil of pleasure deep in his core, fed by every deep, claiming stroke. His own moans were continuous, muffled by the fabric in his mouth. He was crying, he realized. Tears soaked into the blanket beneath his cheek. He was being broken apart and remade, all at once.
Her pace became punishing, a relentless, driving rhythm that left no room for thought. Her hand on him tightened, stroking him in furious time. The coil inside him wound tighter, tighter, a spring of pure sensation threatening to snap.
“Now,” she snarled, the word a final command.
It shattered him. The orgysm ripped through him with violent, unexpected force, tearing a raw scream from his throat. His body locked, convulsing around her invading length as his own release spilled over her hand and onto the silken covers below.
His climax triggered hers. With a roar that seemed to shake the crystals in their niches, she drove into him one final, devastating time and held, her body shuddering against his back. He felt a deep, internal pulse, a flood of impossible heat as she found her own release deep inside him.
The world went grey at the edges.
She collapsed over him, her weight pinning him to the bed, both of them slick with sweat and spent. The only sounds were their ragged, gasping breaths and the slow, fading hum of the room. The smell of sex and ozone and vanilla was overpowering.
After an eternity, she slid out of him. The sensation was bizarre, a sudden, empty vulnerability. She rolled beside him onto the vast expanse of the bed, one arm thrown across his back.
Alex lay where he was, face down, unable to move. Every part of him felt used, rearranged, shattered. The pain was a deep, throbbing reminder between his legs. The wetness on his thighs was his and hers. The dream of a soft, gentle first time was ashes.
But beneath the shock and the ache, a single, traitorous ember glowed. A memory of that final, shocking coil of pleasure, woven seamlessly with the pain. A feeling of fullness she had promised, and delivered.
He had been claimed.
He turned his head slightly, his cheek sticking to the damp silk. He looked at her. Velara’s eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling steadily. A look of profound, satisfied peace was on her stunning features. One of her hands absently stroked the line of his spine.
He was a virgin no longer. The knowledge was nothing like he had imagined. It was darker, stranger, more terrifying, and more profound.
He closed his eyes. The runes beneath the bed pulsed softly, like a slowing heartbeat, casting their faint, alien light over the two entangled forms.
The runes beneath the bed pulsed softly, like a slowing heartbeat, casting their faint, alien light over the two entangled forms.
Time stretched, thin and sticky. Alex became aware of individual sensations cutting through the numbness. The ache was a deep, hot brand. The cooling wetness on his inner thighs. The heavy weight of her arm across the small of his back, possessively pinned. His own breath hitched irregularly against the rumpled silk.
Velara stirred first. She let out a long, contented sigh, the sound vibrating through his spine. Her hand slid from his back to his hip, her thumb stroking the bone there in idle, thoughtless circles.
“You are still trembling,” she observed, her voice husky with spent pleasure.
He couldn’t formulate a reply. His mind was a jumble of shattered glass—sharp fragments of pain, the searing image of her above him, the shocking, undeniable crest of pleasure that had torn through him at the end. He’d screamed. He’d cried. He’d come apart under her.
With a grunt, she shifted, rolling onto her side to face him. The mattress dipped. He kept his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, or unconscious, or anything but present.
Her finger hooked under his chin, turning his head toward her. The glow from her eyes was a soft radiance in the dimness. “Look at me, carpenter.”
He opened his eyes. Her expression was unreadable—a mix of satiation and keen interest. She studied his face, the tear tracks, the stunned emptiness in his hazel eyes.
“That,” she said quietly, “was your first time.”
It wasn’t a question. He gave a tiny, jerky nod.
A slow smile touched her lips. “Good.” She propped her head on her hand. “The chair is excellent craftsmanship. But this? This was a better delivery.”
A weak, confused sound escaped him. It was almost a laugh, choked by aftermath.
She leaned closer. Her scent, now intimately mingled with his own sweat, enveloped him. Her free hand drifted down his flank, over the curve of his buttock, making him flinch. She ignored his tension, her touch clinical, assessing the physical reality of what they’d done.
“It will hurt tomorrow,” she stated plainly. “The ache will be deep. You will feel it when you walk, when you sit to work on your next chair.” Her thumb pressed where she had entered him, and he gasped. “You will remember this feeling. You will remember who put it there.”
Her words were not cruel. They were simply true, and that truth was a yoke around his neck. He had asked for this. He had said ‘please.’
“Why?” The word scraped out of his dry throat.
“Why you?” She seemed genuinely to consider it. “You watched me with honest eyes. Not with the greed of the soldiers, or the frightened curiosity of the townsfolk. You looked at me as if I were a mystery you desperately wanted to understand.” She traced the shell of his ear. “I decided I wanted to be the one to show you. To be your first and deepest mystery.”
Her hand left his hip and traveled around front, slipping between his body and the mattress. He was soft, oversensitive, spent. Her fingers found him, cradling him with a startling gentleness.
“And you are so beautifully made,” she murmured, almost to herself. “All tight, coiled tension. A human knot. It was… satisfying, to unravel you.”
As she spoke, her gentle touch continued. Despite the throbbing pain elsewhere, despite the soul-deep exhaustion, he felt a faint, traitorous response. A twitch. A flush of heat that had no right to return so soon. His body, it seemed, was writing its own history, separate from his shocked mind.
He saw her notice. Her pearlescent eyes flicked down, then back to his, her smile deepening. “See?”
He was horrified. He was intrigued. The conflicting currents left him mute.
She shifted again, moving with that unsettling, powerful grace. She rose up on one elbow, looming over him, her silver hair a curtain that blocked out the rest of the room. The rune-light played over the slopes of her breasts, the powerful line of her shoulders.
The air between them changed, charged once more. The aftermath was receding, replaced by something else. A testing. A claiming, part two.
Her voice dropped to a liquid murmur, a secret for the shadows between them.
SHE WHISPERS AGAIN.
Her lips brushed the sweaty hollow behind his ear, and her whisper was a low, electric current in the dimness. “Your body isn’t finished with me yet.” Her hand, still gently cradling him, felt the truth of her words as he grew firmer against her palm. “It knows there’s more to learn.”
He shook his head, a weak denial. “I can’t.” His voice was cracked, ruined.
“You can.” She withdrew her touch and sat up, the silken covers sliding down her back. The glow from the runes beneath the bed etched her powerful silhouette in soft light. “Look at you. All that lovely tension is already creeping back in.” She nodded toward his traitorous arousal. “The first time was for claiming. For pain and surprise.” She leaned over, bracing a hand on the mattress beside his head, her face inches from his. “This time is for you.”
Alex searched her luminous eyes, finding no mockery, only a terrifying certainty. The deep ache in his core pulsed in time with his heartbeat. It was a reminder that felt like a brand. But a foreign, hungry part of him, the part that had gasped at that final, shocking coil of pleasure, was waking up. It was curious.
“For me?” he echoed, the words a dry rasp.
“To show you what the ache can become.” She moved then, with purpose. Her hands gripped his shoulders, turning him onto his back. The silken sheets were cool against his feverish skin. He stared up at her, at the arc of her horns against the shimmering violet canopy, utterly pliant.
She swung a powerful, blue thigh over his hips, settling her weight atop him. He gasped at the contact, the pressure, the sheer reality of her straddling him. Her warmth seeped into him. Her scent, muskier now, drowned out everything else.
She looked down, watching his face. Her own need was evident, her thickness already stirring again, resting heavy against his stomach. She reached between them, her fingers wrapping around him, guiding him. “You see?” she breathed, aligning him. “This is for you.”
Then she sank down.
The slide was different this time. There was no sharp tearing, only a slow, impossibly deep stretching, a fullness that stole the air from his lungs. His back arched off the bed, a silent cry shape on his lips. The ache from before was there, but it was molten now, merging with a sensation of being perfectly, completely filled.
She took him all, until he was fully sheathed within her. She held there, her internal muscles fluttering around him, making him shudder. Her head tipped back, her silver hair a cascade down her spine. “There,” she sighed, a sound of profound satisfaction.
She began to move. It was a rolling, deliberate rhythm, deep and slow. Every rise sent pleasure sparking along his nerves. Every descent made him groan, his hands flying up to grip her thick thighs. The heat was incredible. The friction was a sweet, building fire.
“This is what it can feel like,” she said, her voice riding the rhythm of her hips. “When the fear is gone. When all that’s left is the feeling.”
He was lost in it. The earlier shock was sanded away by this new, overwhelming reality. His hips began to move of their own accord, meeting her downward strokes with shallow thrusts of his own. The sounds he made were unabashed, raw.
“Yes,” she encouraged, her pace increasing. Her hands planted on his chest for leverage, her hooves digging into the mattress near his sides. The creak of the eldrithwood frame returned, a faster, more urgent song. “Just like that. Take what you need from me.”
He was. He was taking everything. The pleasure built, a towering wave with the molten ache at its core. He stared up at her, this stunning, impossible being who had shattered his world and was now rebuilding it into something stranger and brighter. Her glowing eyes were fixed on his, watching him come apart in an entirely new way.
“Velara,” he choked out, a prayer and a surrender.
Her answering smile was fierce. She leaned forward, her breasts brushing his chest, her lips against his ear as she drove down onto him with renewed force. “Now you understand,” she growled.
SHE MOUNTS AGAIN.