Homelands Pt. 08 Ch. 02

When his wife's body passed into recovery mode, she gave him a look that told him she'd have delivered a standing ovation if she could. Her limbs were still twitching, though, and the smile on her face was languid.

Nonetheless, he gave her an instant encore. Whether that was for her sake or his, though, he couldn't have said. There were few things Chris enjoyed as much as pleasuring his wife.

He'd thought she might fall asleep after that. Her second climax had been every bit as intense as the first, and it had left her speechless. Smiling and happy, but speechless. To say nothing of her heavy eyelids or how long it had taken her to roll onto her side.

But after a while, while they lay spooning, his wife started wiggling her bottom against him playfully. That led to some kissing and petting and the next thing he knew, he had Karen on her back with her legs in the air and his cock sliding in and out of her pussy.

In some ways, it felt like their first time together. He'd never wanted her so badly. Had never felt such a jolt of electricity with each and every touch. Yet, at the same time, their motions were those of experienced lovers. They didn't need to tell each other to speed up or slow down. Didn't have to guess at how things would be received. It was like they knew the combinations to one another's safes. Theirs was an intricate but well-choreographed dance, and not a step fell out of place.

The flames of desire were so intense, they almost consumed their bodies, turning them to ash and cinder. But Chris managed to resist his hunger enough to keep things to a controlled burn. His lovemaking was not tender, but it was still slow and methodical. He held Karen down, her two slender wrists trapped beneath one of his palms. And though the force of his thrusts left no doubt about the depth of his desire for her, he gave her plenty of time to recover between each of them. And when she begged him to go faster, he refused. When she started biting him, hard, she got no more reaction from him than she did with her words. He just kept slamming into her, slowly withdrawing, hesitating a moment or two, and then repeating. Slow and steady, he marched them towards simultaneous climax.

On the one hand, he wanted her to know that he was in control. That he was going to set the pace, and she had no choice but to enjoy the hell out of it. On the other, he found her warm embrace even more wonderful than usual. Almost like she was a completely different woman. One with supernatural powers, including the ability to amplify a man's sensitivity to tactile stimulation. He didn't think he'd have lasted a minute if he sped up even a little.

His plan didn't work though.

Soon enough, it became clear who was really in control. Yes, he guided his wife through a series of orgasms that made her seem like the one who'd surrendered to her lover, and yes he held her all but immobile, but he was the one caught in her thrall.

However lethargic she'd seemed before, she began giving everything she had once he was inside her. And she had a lot to give. Pinned down, but not passive, she pumped her hips and worked her inner muscles. It was like she was following his retreating cock, unwilling bear to part with so much as an inch of it. Her womb squeezed and massaged his manhood in ways that defied reason. Chris would have never thought it possible for a woman to have that level of control over her inner muscles if he'd never met his beautiful wife.

The look in her eyes, the mischievous grin she flashed every time he feared he was going to go over the cliff, made it clear that she wasn't under any delusions about where the power lay either. She didn't say anything. Didn't tease or mock him, as another woman might. But there was no need. They both knew that the partner on her back was the one in the driver's seat. And they were both perfectly okay with that.

So Chris admitted to himself that he had no choice but to enjoy the hell out of it. He stopped trying to resist her and surrendered to the ecstasy threatening to overwhelm him. And once he did, it only took a few more pumps before he blasted her womb with an inhuman load of cum. His body gave out and every bit of energy was redirected to his testicle so that they could serve up all the baby juice his wife demanded. And she demanded a lot.

What took place in their bedroom that night wasn't entirely natural. A new life took form inside Karen's belly, and in some sense that was the most natural thing in the world. But it wasn't human. Of course, neither were its mother and father.

He had no way of knowing that, yet he knew it all the same. Just as he knew that she'd only carry their child within her for three months, and that no one would bat an eye. Not even the doctors. No one ever did. For years, he and Karen had surrounded themselves with the impossible while everyone around them saw what they expected to see.

#

Chris was walking around the city with a shaggy black dog. But he wasn't walking the dog. It was walking him. A black leather collar encircled his throat, and the dog held the silver leash to which it was attached in its mouth.

Even stranger, the city wasn't a city at all. There were paved roads and elevated sidewalks, as there should have been. Streetlights compensated for the failures of dusk and dozens of other pedestrians shared the sidewalks with them. Sure, none of them had faces, but who didn't find cities a bit impersonal? Yet where he should have found apartment buildings and boutiques, coffee shops and bars, he found only trees. Oak and maple, mahogany and yew, ash and willow, all laid out in neat blocks.

Eerie music filled the air. None of the other pedestrians seemed to notice though. So far as Chris could tell, they couldn't hear a thing. Their mouths moved and they gestured to one another with their hands as if they were carrying on conversations, but none of them made a sound. Not so much as a peep.

The instruments changed every so often, yet the tune never changed or grew discordant. In twos and threes, Chris heard drums and mandolins and flutes, harps and fiddles, whistles and pipes and banjos. No voice sang the lyrics, but they came to Chris all the same.

Red was the color of my dear love's hair. Her skin soft, smooth and fair, The prettiest face and sweetest lips, I e'er touch'd with me fingertips.

He knew the song, but something was off about it. A lot, actually.

Now spring has pass'd, the leaves turned brown And the love we had lies in the ground, Three children had we, healthy and strong, But they too've gone, for our love was wrong.

That wasn't right. It wasn't even close to right. But he hadn't misheard the lyrics. Hadn't even heard them. They rang in his head like some eternal truth.

I walk the woods of Faery auld, Mourn and weep as me heart turns cold, Happy I'll ne'er again be, Nor I fear, will she, dear she. This bitter future we should have seen, Naught else awaits them as defy the Faerie queen.

"Gettin' the message, love?" the dog asked.

Yes, the dog.

Naturally, he recognized the voice. He had no idea why, but he had heard that sweet music before. Only, when last he'd heard it, it hadn't come from a dog's maw but a woman's mouth. A woman he'd known long ago, when he'd gone by a different name.

"What message?" he asked.

"Don't be daft," she replied.

The forest no longer bore even a passing resemblance to a city. Gone were the asphalt and concrete, the artificial light and the faceless strangers. They were alone with the trees. With nature. Where their kind belonged.

"What do you want?" Chris asked. "Who are you, anyway?"

No reply came. The dog looked at him with its head tilted, its eyes wide, and one ear standing straight up. Then it grew tired of him and wandered off to sniff at a bush.

Was he really having a conversation with a dog?

And where had his shirt and shoes gone? Why was he wandering through the woods barefoot like that? And why did it feel so right?

"Oh, I get it," he said. "I must be drea-"

#

He brushed aside a low-hanging branch and emerged into a clearing. Standing near the edge of it, bathed in the silvery light of dusk, was a black horse. A young one. A colt or a filly. It was short and lean, its eyes overlarge, and its coat impossibly lustrous.

As soon as Chris spotted it, the horse looked up. Their eyes locked for a few moments, a silky tail lashed, then the beast turned around and took off at a gallop.

He didn't know why, but he followed after it.

Gradually, he closed the distance. But he knew he shouldn't have been able to. No man could keep up with a horse, even one so young and small. Granted, the horse was not always a horse. Sometimes, it was a dog, or a rabbit, or even a raven. Whatever shape it took, its coat was always blacker than ink and impossible to miss. That shouldn't have helped him any, though. None of those creatures covered ground as slowly as a lumbering man.

The only conclusion to be drawn then was that the creature wasn't running away from him. It was leading him somewhere.

That became clear a while later, when Chris topped a hill. The horse had come to a stop, waiting for him. No sweat lathered its sleek body, despite their little workout.

It jerked its head forward, as if pointing at something.

With one hand held over his abdomen and lungs pumping like bellows, Chris followed its gaze. He found a bunch of sticks and twigs bound together in the shape of a busty woman. For hair, she had a tangle of red vines.

"Karen," he whispered.

The effigy was bound to a stake. Not a moment after Chris noticed that, a ring of fire burst forth. It encircled the woman, cutting him off from her.

The horse stared at him, as if demanding to know what he was going to do about that. Whether he was man enough to rescue his true love from the flames. Nevermind that it wasn't actually her, or that the circle was so broad that it didn't even come close to threatening her. There was a challenge in that gaze, plain and simple.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the horse said.

Chris rubbed at his eyes.

The horse, which was still very much a horse, stared expectantly at him.

"Are you trying to tell me to stay away from her?" he asked, suddenly remembering the song that had filled his head in the previous dream and the black dog that had accompanied him in it. "Or that she's in danger?" He scratched his head. "I don't get it."

"I should think not."

And then his companion changed shape once again, only this time it didn't become a dog or a rabbit or a raven. Or anything with fur or feathers. Suddenly, before him stood an incredibly sexy dark-skinned woman wearing a black dress.

He'd never seen a woman with a body like that. She had a tiny waist, broad hips, thickly muscled legs and an ass that was truly unbelievable. It was so big, so round, and so obviously firm, that he could feel his eyes telescoping so as to get a better look. There was no way that a woman with a lower body like that could have had anything but the flattest of chests, yet she had large breasts, if not quite as big as he liked. All of which was truly unfair, because her beautiful hair, teardrop face, perfect cheekbones, round nose, and overripe lips would have made her nearly irresistible no matter what kind of figure she had.

"You do remember me, don't ye?" she asked.

Her words didn't register. His mind was too busy processing visual stimuli.

Those obnoxiously full lips formed a grin. "Well, I suppose I can think of worse reasons for ye not to answer me question." She flipped her dark brown hair over a bare shoulder and crossed her arms beneath her big breasts. "Like what ye see, do yah?"

That was one way of putting it.

"This is where you say, `It's nice to see you, Liadan. I'd hoped our paths might cross again.' Should we back up and start again?"

Liadan. That was a name he'd heard before.

"You're...the Puck," he said.

"Aye," she replied. "Though were he still among the livin', Robin would beg to differ."

"Robin...Goodfellow?"

"Naturally," she said with a rising intonation. "Who else would I be meaning?"

Those were just stories, though. There were no magical tricksters from the land of Faery. If he'd ever met a Liadan, she didn't have the power to turn into a horse or a dog or anything else. No more than she did the ability to appear to him in his dreams. The woman with whom he now spoke existed only inside his mind. A figment of his imagination, forged from memories of past acquaintances and a child's love of myths and legends.

Only it didn't feel that way.

"But we're not here to talk about who I am, now are we?" she said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"What's your name, love?"

"Chr-" he started to say. But that was a lie.

There was no Chris or Karen. Only Cahill and Caronwyn.

So he told her his true name.

"I still don't get it," he said afterwards. "Do you want me to stay away from her?"

"Suppose'n I did, would ye be doin' so?" she asked, cocking an exquisite eyebrow at him.

"Not a chance," he said.

"Good," she replied.

The fire crackled, reminding him of its presence. It consumed grass and leaves, vines and brush, but it remained safely distant from the vine-haired woman.

"Good?" Cahill asked.

What was with the eerie music then? Why did it seem like she was trying to scare him off? To warn him that their love would end tragically?

Liadan took a few steps towards him. The movement was almost hypnotizing.

She didn't have Caronwyn's curves, but that body was still amazing. He couldn't wrap his head around how she appeared to be nice and soft in all the right places despite having legs that were sculpted from stone. Undeniably feminine as her form was, he didn't know who'd win if he were to challenge her to a leg press competition. And he liked that more than he might have expected, prior to meeting his lovely aunt.

"Only seems like I'm sending mixed messages cause I've no idea what it takes to get through to ye," she said. "Reckon a wee bit o' reverse psychology, questioning o' yer manhood, and beating ye o'er the head with the damned obvious ought to do the trick though."

"You want me to stick by her," Cahill said, a bit uncertainly. `What's in it for you?"

"Maybe nuttin. Amusing meself is all the motivation I need, don't yah know."

Of course.

But that didn't mean she didn't have an agenda. She hadn't actually said that her only motivation was to amuse herself either. Only implied it. That was an important distinction.

"Who's Kevin?" Cahill asked.

Liadan shrugged. "I do nah know anyone by tha' name."

There'd been a look of recognition in her eyes though.

"But you know him by another name," he said.

A slight grin. "P'rhaps."

Cahill placed a hand on the small of Liadan's back. Their skin didn't even touch, but he still felt a jolt of ecstasy. The part of him that almost believed her to be a real woman cried out for him to kiss her.

"Tell me."

"Ask nicely."

"Please."

She gave him a bemused grin. A slender fingertip tapped his bare chest. "If it's answers ye want, you're gonna have to do better than that."

Cahill snapped his fingers and the flames went out. The smoke lingered for a bit, but it cleared up before too long. Vegetation began regrowing instantly.

"Very nice," Liadan said. "But that wasn't quite what I had in mind either."

Abruptly, the forest vanished.

It was replaced by a cold, lifeless room, empty but for a white leather ottoman in the middle of the floor. The walls were white, the carpet silver. At least, the walls had been white. Still were, for that matter, where they were exposed. Which they largely weren't. An instant after the room materialized, dozens of identical picture frames appeared. They covered the walls and even the ceiling.

Actually, the frames weren't identical. Some were wood, some plastic, still others gold or silver. But each and every one of them held the same image. A profile of Caronwyn, in the nude, her hands held over a belly swollen with child.

"A flattering picture, wouldn't you say?" Liadan asked.

"Where did you get that?"

"Really?" the dark-skinned woman asked as she went and sat on the ottoman. "That's the question you want to ask?"

Cahill tried not to notice how good her legs looked when she crossed them. That was not the sort of dress that permitted one to sit that way. So too did he try to ignore how nice her feet looked in the peep-toe heels she hadn't been wearing a moment ago.

"Come," she said, tapping the ottoman. "Sit."

As if there was room for two on that thing.

Cahill drew a deep breath. "You're not going to tell me anything until I please you."

"By George, I think he's got it," she said.

"Does she have to watch?"

"This isn't Hogwarts, Kay," Liadan said. "Those are just pictures." She glanced over her shoulder at a solid wall of Caronwyn.

He did the same.

Damn, she was beautiful. All the more so when she was pregnant too.

"I can go fetch her if you want though," Liadan said. "But she's busy getting acquainted with your daughter. I don't think she'd appreciate the interruption."

The picture frames became television screens, and the static image of his pregnant wife gave way to a video feed of her speaking to a raven-haired girl who sometimes appeared as a toddler, sometimes an adolescent, and sometimes a young woman.

"That's...her dream?"

"Aye," Liadan said. "But you know that her dreams are more than dreams, don't ya?"

Of course he did.

That was ridiculous, sure. But no more so than the conversation he was having. Or the things he'd felt at the moment his wife conceived the daughter of whom she now dreamt. Cahill could almost feel his awareness of the truth ebbing and flowing. Currently, he was on an upswing. If only for the moment, he knew that the dreams Caronwyn had early in her pregnancy were prophetic. That she'd had similar dreams of Niall and Tynan.

"You're ah wonderin' how it works," she said.

"Remind me again which one of us struggles with the obvious," Cahill said.

Liadan smiled. "It's not because she's powerful," she said. "She is, of course. And that helps. But it has more to do with the child than the mother. This only happens with purebred children." She bobbed her head from one side to another, weighing competing arguments. "Well, for most women. I've heard tell of them whose dream-visions aren't restricted in that way. But that's neither here nor there."

Cahill frowned. He'd actually been wondering how Liadan knew what his wife was dreaming, not how his wife was dreaming it. But he was so confused about so many things that it almost didn't matter. Anything she accidentally let slip for free, he'd gladly take.

She must have caught his frown though. "Don't tell me you're still hung up on that."

"On what?"

A lovely brow furrowed at him. The disappointed look did nothing to detract from her beauty. "I have nah invaded yer mind, ye git. Nor hers."

Of course, the only way to be sure he could believe her was to assume that she really was of the fey. In which case, she shouldn't have been inside his head.

"We fey don't dream the way mortals do," she explained. Which might have been helpful, if Cahill thought that he and his wife were fey. "Bloody hell, he's got you good and lost hasn't he? I can feel you fighting it, but you keep slipping." In some world, that made sense. He was sure of it. Too bad it wasn't the world he was in. "Think of it this way. You and I have weird families. In lots of ways. One being that our dreams get broadcast to whole world. Most folks don't know where to find them, but it's there alright, in public domain."