She let out a pleasing mewling sound and arched her back, tightening her thighs around his hand. He found himself wanting more. The clothing between them was an inconvenience he would not tolerate.
Archon stood and drew his sword. He wanted to see what lay beneath the furs and leathers which covered her body. He had not seen a naked human female before, but he wanted to see this one.
“Lie still,” he told her. “I don’t want to bleed you yet.”
She lay there, silent but furious as he cut the clothing from her body, revealing a beautiful soft hide and vulnerable pale curves. Between her thighs there was dark hair hiding a flash of pink.
Her sex.
Archon felt his lust inflaming as he beheld this female human, this woman who had led him on such a good chase for one of her size and strength. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to claim her.
Kneeling between her thighs, he freed his cock and guided it toward the tightness between her legs. Once he was inside that pink hole, there would be nothing left of her rebellion, of that much, he was certain. He would break her. Destroy her resistance. He would turn her into a toy for his use.
He could feel the heat of her body against the head of his cock, the softness of her human flesh, the delicate spreading of the petals of her sex. This was a female worthy of his cock. This…
A dull throb in his belly made him look down. He was surprised to see a knife sticking out of his midsection.
The shock made him cant to the side, away from the human female. She had stabbed him right in the gut. She had waited until the precise moment he thought he had triumphed over her and showed him that he had not.
“Well done,” he grunted in appreciation of her ruse.
It was too late. She was gone.
Chapter 6
Having stabbed the alien king, and rightly so, Iris ran until she couldn’t run anymore, until her lungs burned with every breath and her legs were weak.
Everything was gone. Everyone was gone. Her entire family had been obliterated by the fire, and with them, every object and heirloom they ever owned.
She didn’t dare cry. She didn’t dare feel any of the awful things which were swirling around her waiting to be felt. Her eyes were dry not because she wasn’t sad, but because her sadness was too immense to fit inside her.
Slumping down inside the hollow of an old oak tree, she tucked her feet up tight against her body and wrapped her arms round her knees. She was almost completely obscured from sight, which allowed her to relax just a little. She was certain she had been followed, or soon would be followed. They would not let her get away with stabbing the king, of that much she was certain.
It hadn’t been a killing blow. It had been an incapacitating one. If she’d wanted to kill him, she could have sliced his throat. She found herself wondering why she hadn’t.
When she closed her eyes, she saw the village on fire, and the king’s face superimposed over it. She saw those eyes, piercing blue and brimming with the promise of even more cruelty.
Iris had to think. She had never imagined she would find herself so completely alone. Her entire life had taken place in the village. Every single event, every moment, it was all gone. Every person. Every object.
Whatever she could not remember from her grandmother’s tomes on healing and herbs, magic and mushrooms was now lost forever. And that was only one small part of her heritage which had been destroyed by a thoughtless and brutal monarch.
Iris had been taught that the loss of people was inevitable, but the loss of their knowledge was a tragedy beyond all others. In one dragon’s breath, she had become the sole holder of her people’s knowledge.
She knew what was expected of her. She needed to get pregnant as soon as possible have a baby, and tell that baby everything she knew as soon as the baby was old enough to process information.
Being a virgin was going to make that difficult, but there were men all over the country. One of them could inseminate her.
It didn’t seem like a good plan, but it did seem like a plan, and some plan was better than none. A plan might be able to take the place of crushing misery long enough for her to survive.
After some time, it might have been minutes, but was probably hours, she emerged from her tree hiding place. She could not hear anybody giving chase. No hunters had come rushing past on steeds, though for all she knew a hunter of the king’s might very well come from the air and destroy her that way.