Chapter 1: The Giant's Caress
The world tore.
One moment Kathryn was gripping her husband’s hand on a rain-slicked trail, the next she was falling through cold silence, the shout ripped from her throat. She landed not on rock, but on something spongy and damp that sighed under her weight. The air left her lungs in a shocked gasp.
It was wrong. All of it.
The sky was a bruised purple, streaked with veins of ochre where a sun should be. The trees weren’t trees at all, but twisted pillars of smoky crystal that chimled softly in a wind that carried the scent of ozone and wet stone. And the sound—a low, sub-aural thrum that vibrated in her molars, in the marrow of her bones. It was the heartbeat of the earth itself.
“Michael?” Her voice was a papery scrape. Only the alien forest answered.
Fear was a cold spike. Then, beneath it, a warm, unruly curl of something else. Awe. The sheer otherness of it seeped into her, quieting the panic. She was here. Wherever here was.
She moved because staying still meant crumbling. The ground trembled at irregular intervals, each tremor preceded by a deep, percussive crunch from somewhere in the mist-shrouded distance. Giants. The word surfaced from childhood stories, now horribly, thrillingly plausible.
The forest gave way to a cliff edge. Below, a valley lay like a wound, jagged with obsidian spires. Through its center roared a river, wide and black, its noise a constant physical pressure. And there, in a calmer eddy near the bank, was a man.
No. Not a man.
He was a monument of flesh and muscle, standing chest-deep in the ink-dark water. He had to be nine feet tall if he was an inch, his shoulders broad enough to block the strange light, his skin the warm, uniform color of terra cotta. Long, dark hair, woven into thick braids, lay sleek against his massive back. He was washing, the motion of his hands over his corded arms deliberate, slow.
Kathryn’s breath hitched. She should hide. Run. Every sane instinct shrieked it.
She didn’t move.
She watched the water sluice over the landscape of his body, over the powerful taper of his waist. A strange, heavy heat pooled low in her own belly, a sensation so immediate and divorced from her fear it left her dizzy. It had been years since she’d felt a flicker of anything so raw, so separate from the comfortable, familiar love she had for Michael. This was different. Primal. A key turning in a lock she didn’t know she possessed.
His head turned. Not a sudden jerk, but a slow, tectonic shift. Amber eyes found her across the distance. They held no malice, only a deep, patient curiosity.
He didn’t speak. He simply looked at her, waiting.
The message was clear. The choice was hers.
Her legs carried her forward before her mind could form a protest, picking a shaky path down the steep scree to the valley floor. The humid air thickened, tasting of minerals and decay. The thrumming was louder here, the tremors stronger. She stopped at the water’s edge, the obsidian sand cool under her boots.
He watched her approach, still as one of the crystal trees. Up close, his size was breath-stealing. She felt like a sapling before a redwood.
“Hello,” she said, and her voice didn’t waver.
A rumble came from his chest. It wasn’t language. It was acknowledgment.
“I’m… lost,” she offered, feeling the absurdity of the understatement.
He tilted his head. One enormous hand lifted from the water, palm up, fingers curled in a slow, deliberate gesture. Come.
It wasn’t a question. It was an invitation to a different kind of unknown. The heat in her belly flared, warming the chill of displacement. Michael was a thought, a love tied to a different world. Here, there was only the vibration in the ground, the black water, and this colossal being whose gaze felt more like a touch.
Her fingers went to the zipper of her hiking jacket. She shrugged it off, let it fall. Her sweater followed, then her boots and socks. The valley air kissed her skin, raising goosebumps. She stood in her practical bra and pants, feeling utterly, terrifyingly exposed. His eyes followed every movement, but still he waited.
She waded in. The water was shockingly warm, like blood-heat, and thick, more like oil than water. It clung to her thighs as she pushed deeper. The current tugged at her, but his presence was an anchor.
She stopped an arm’s length away, the water lapping at her ribs. The top of her head didn’t reach his shoulders. He smelled of sun-warmed stone and clean sweat.
His hand, when it came toward her, moved with impossible delicacy. The back of one finger, broad as her own wrist, stroked from her temple down her cheek to the line of her jaw. The touch was electrifying. A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with cold.
“Kathryn,” she breathed, leaning into the contact.
“Kath-ryn,” he repeated, his voice a landslide of gravel and honey. The sound vibrated through her.
His fingers traced the strap of her bra, then dipped beneath it, following the curve of her shoulder. With a subtle pressure, he eased the strap down. He didn’t rip or demand. He unveiled. She helped him, shrugging the garment away, letting it float on the dark current. His amber eyes darkened, his gaze a tangible weight on her breasts. His thumb, rough with calluses, brushed over one nipple. She gasped, the sound swallowed by the river’s roar. The peak tightened painfully under his touch.
He read her body like a language. A soft moan? His touch grew more specific, circling, plucking. A sharp intake of breath? He slowed, applying a lush, steady pressure that made her knees liquid. He was mapping her, learning what made her tremble.
His other hand went to the waistband of her pants, undoing the button, sliding the zipper down. He pushed them, and her underwear, over her hips in one smooth motion. They sank into the depths. Now she was just flesh and nerve-ending before him, the warm, viscous water caressing every newly bared inch.
His hands were everywhere, but they were never greedy. They cupped her rear, lifting her slightly, kneading the flesh with a strength that could have shattered her but was held in perfect check. His fingers slid between her legs, exploring the slick heat he found there. She cried out, her head falling back, her hands braced against the unyielding wall of his chest.
He made that low, rumbling sound again, a satisfied echo of the valley’s pulse. One arm hooked behind her knees, the other supported her back. He lifted her from the water as if she weighed nothing.
Her world tilted, then stabilized. She was cradled against him, her back resting on his forearm, her legs dangling. Water streamed from their bodies. He was fully erect now, his size rendering her utterly breathless. He was immense, a thick, proud length of flesh that looked less like an anatomical part and more like a force of nature.
He held her there, positioned, his eyes locked on hers. The question was final.
She reached down, her hand barely able to curve around him. She guided him to her. “Yes,” she said, and it was a vow to this place, to this moment, to the terrifying woman she was becoming here.
He sank her down onto him.
The stretch was profound, a sweet, burning fullness that stole the air from her lungs. She gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders. He didn’t move, allowing her body to shudder and adjust around the incredible intrusion, his own breath a hot gust against her forehead.
When the initial shock melted into a deep, radiating ache of pleasure, she nodded, a tiny, desperate movement.
He began to move.
He lifted her almost completely off, then lowered her again, a slow, devastating rhythm that was entirely controlled by the rise and fall of his arms. There was no frantic pounding, only this deliberate, deep claiming. Each descent speared her more thoroughly than the last, hitting places inside her that had never been touched. Her cries became fragmented, nonsense words lost in the humid air.
She clutched at him, her legs wrapping around his waist for anchor, meeting each slow, powerful thrust. The world narrowed to the slap of water, the creak of his braids, the smell of their joining. The distant, giant footsteps seemed to sync with their rhythm, the very valley pulsing around them.
Her climax built not as a spike, but as a tidal wave, rising from the depths he was plumbing. It broke over her with a silence more deafening than the river, a convulsing, endless unraveling that pulled a raw, sobbing shout from her throat.
He held her through it, his rhythm faltering only as his own release followed. He didn’t roar. He shuddered, a massive tectonic event, and a hot rush filled her, sealing the connection. He kept moving, gently, until the last tremors subsided in both of them.
For a long time, he simply held her there, impaled and spent, her face buried in the column of his neck. The water curled around them. The valley thrummed.
Finally, he eased her off, setting her back on unsteady feet in the water. He brushed the wet auburn hair from her face, his touch impossibly tender.
She looked up at him, her emerald eyes wide, not with regret, but with dazed, satiated wonder. A slow, wild smile touched her lips.
He nodded toward the far bank, where the obsidian teeth of the valley gave way to a deeper, greener gloom. Another path.