Sleeping Beast Ch. 11

REMINDER-- I write long stories; some parts don't have naughty bits, but the parts that do will make more sense if you read the non-naughty bits, too. This chapter is a little slower at the beginning, but it's the last bit before the action heats up... y'know . . . car chases, bank robbers, naked babes with Uzis . . . See my bio for a longer update & ETA, if you're curious about upcoming chapters.

PS-- "Ataj" is a phonetic representation of the Bashkir word for Father, ie-- Troi's way of saying "Dad."

--o----O----o--

Through the looming black shadows of the moonlit taiga, the beast ran, his unwieldy body made graceful by vision, stealth, and smell. The pack kept pace, though most of the wolves were spread over the hillside, out of sight and hearing, leaving Nivid with a sense of solitude, though he was not alone. He ran at the head of a small cluster of younger wolves who always followed closely behind him when they hunted, like they'd been tasked with his protection. He'd occasionally imagined them as a pack of snarling nannies and laughed at the fanciful image, but perhaps he hadn't been so far off the mark.

The cool night air brushed the wiry mane from his face even as it gifted him with a teasing hint of prey. From away to the south, Nivid heard the yips of hungry wolves in eager pursuit. His nostrils twitched and his spine curled until his torso rode nearly parallel to the sloping ground. With his head up and his shoulders down, Nivid appeared even more beastly, and like the animal he was, his mind was dominated by the need to eat. He responded to the urgings of his nature and ran without thought. At the base of his skull, in the far reaches of consciousness, he was relieved. It was easier to run than to think, because this morning, for the first time, he'd felt no desire to linger in Troi's presence.

Nivid wasn't so far distanced from his humanity that he couldn't sympathize with her plight: she'd been beaten and imprisoned for years. Controlling her rage and grief had helped Troi keep her sanity, and letting them loose wouldn't have been easy even if she'd done it deliberately. He even understood the erroneous relationship she'd seen between them and the men who'd killed her family. She'd apologized a dozen times in the handful of hours since he returned, and he'd scented genuine remorse beneath every word she uttered.

Nonetheless, horrible memories of lying lost and broken in his wet limestone shelter persisted, and Nivid didn't know how to rid himself of pain left behind by the disgust he'd felt rolling over him in bitter, blinding waves.

Through the bond kept carefully open, Argus reassured him, although he recognized the irony: usually Vesa was the one to worry, and Veli the one to soothe. Now he was sleeping, his dying body exhausted by a week of worry and hunger. While Vesa's appetite was weak, it was present, and Nivid hadn't been eating well, either. Waking with the memory of the small meals Argus and Talgut had prepared in his absence, Nivid had gratefully taken the excuse to flee. Leaving Troi sleeping in his bed, he slipped into the forest to hunt.

-- o --

With her new supplies and Nivid's fresh venison, Troi concocted a feast. Although they'd already eaten twice as much as Troi and Argus, Talgut and Nivid were still working on it, but even their desperate enthusiasm had waned. Frustrated appetites at long last sated, the clinking of pewter on stoneware plates slowed, and tranquility returned to the castle kitchen. Troi sagged against Nivid's side, yawning, as Argus groaned. The rustles of homespun clothing and the collapse of dying coals hissed softly below the rough gastronomic grumbles and susurrations of men unfamiliar with social graces. Finally, Talgut put down his fork, drained his tea, and belched.

Troi opened one eye. Talgut was resting heavily on his elbows. They'd been planning a foray into the neglected garden, but Troi couldn't imagine anyone attempting the trek before noon, at the earliest. She closed her eye again. Sure enough, her men cleared the table in tired silence and trudged off toward their rooms for some well-fed slumber. Troi stayed behind to clean up, and to give Nivid a little more time alone.

She didn't need his preternatural senses to recognize the pain he was in, or a mental bond to know she was the one who'd caused it. On the surface, he wasn't treating her so very differently: after his bath last night, he'd taken her to bed and sheltered her body with his own, just as he usually did. They hadn't made love, but they were both exhausted from the emotional day, so that was understandable. Fatigue could also explain why Nivid hadn't indulged in the usual nips and snuffles around her neck and ears before he fell asleep, but Troi didn't think that was the case.

She'd sensed his sadness, and she'd hoped rest and the return of physical closeness would soothe his hurt, but this morning he'd rolled out of their bed long before the birds began to sing. At the table later, he'd responded to her small, intimate touches, and when she smiled at him, he'd replied with his own laborious version, but there was a heart-breaking distance between them which hadn't been there before.

Troi opened the window closest to the stove and tossed out all the scraps she'd normally save for stew or pie. With summer on the way and most of Nivid's kill waiting to be smoked, they were blessed with a surfeit of supplies. Troi had more angst than energy at the moment, and a pair of hungry young wolves lollygagged in the sunlit field outside; she could afford to be lazy today.

She laughed and leaned out to let Ofsa lick the grease from her fingers, but lifted her chin when he tried to clean her face, too. "Nyet! No kisses! You'll have to get your own girl, handsome!"

Ofsa chuffed happily and tumbled Ozu away from the hock he'd claimed. Troi latched the window and turned, her amusement fading quickly. She could hardly blame Nivid for being less than ardent: she'd all but accused him-- accused them-- of being murderers. She sighed and reached for a broom.

As she swept, she tried fruitlessly to frame an apology he might understand, but none of her awkward phrases could pretend to describe what she'd experienced in the past few days. Eventually, she gave up. After all, she couldn't expect to explain her state of mind to Nivid when she herself didn't completely comprehend it.

She'd been swimming in a cauldron of heartache and confusion ever since she made the connection between the wolves and the women. She was shocked to see how many doubts she'd ignored since arriving at Zamok Denova and terrified by the implications of her small epiphany. Even before she realized the wolves were fetching women for the beast to mate, Troi was worried about her place in Nivid's life. She was an uneducated, ethnic slave, sullied by years of use. Freeing his body and soul from the curse would surely free Nivid's heart, as well, and her deepest fear was that he would then find someone more worthy to love.

That night, Troi had been forced to face the truth: she was one of a hundred other women brought here for his pleasure. Academically she'd known-- no one had tried to hide the fact-- but that night, she'd been struck by a vivid picture of Nivid cradling another woman in his arms as he climbed through the Russian night to his home. He'd been dreaming of burying himself in all those other women's bodies, too.

Troi was even less special than she'd imagined.

Focusing on the present had been nearly impossible in the days to come. Crushed by the weight of memories and finally allowing herself to miss her family, Troi's mind had skipped ineffectually from topic to topic.

Six days of crying rid her of some of her accumulated grief and anger, and a tiny shard of reason managed to slither in through the cracks in Troi's lurid, inconsistent imaginings.

It didn't matter how many women had come before her.

None of them had known Nivid the way she did. None of those women had even seen his face. Troi had looked into his eyes while they made love, she could make him hard just by running the tip of her tongue across his wide, mobile mouth, and she'd felt his body tremble when she told him she loved him. None of those other women had loved him, and none of them had been part of his strange, solitary family the way Troi was. Talgut had even said something similar to her once: she wasn't "like all the others." And yesterday, Argus had elaborated, adding still more to Troi's understanding of her complicated, cursed, beloved man/ beast.

Troi spent far more time sweeping the big flagstones than the miniscule collection of dirt in the cracks required.

Briefly, she considered waking Nivid with sex, using the joining of their bodies to force the reconnection of their hearts, but not only was she discomfited by the idea, she suspected such machinations would be unsuccessful. Though his need for her was often frantic and nigh-on irresistible, Nivid was also largely immune to the kind of demands human beings placed on one another.

-- o --

She was still thinking about it when she tiptoed into the tower room. She rounded the bed, climbed into its billowing goose-down confines, and crept as close to Nivid as she dared. Normally she would have wound her limbs around his, or clambered up to lie full-length atop his warm, solid body, but not today.

Her mind sifted slowly through her increasingly muddled thoughts. She might have dozed. Either that, Troi thought later, or her reverie was deeper than she'd known, because consciousness returned with the miasma of confusion she'd only occasionally experienced upon waking, and never without sleep.

A prickle, then two, of thought without sensation.

Darkness without the knowledge of light.

In those first foggy moments, she barely saw herself as a being apart from the darkness.

A breath without the realization of breathing.

Another prickle of thought, and the kiss of cool of air in her nostrils.

Troi's heart beat easily, unaware of its existence.

Through the solemn silence, a soft vibrato knocking, rousing memory's cruel fist.

Troi fought her leaden eyelids, but her returning sight was no less puzzling.

There was the conical roof of the family yurt in the dim reaches above . . . but the sound-- snoring, she realized-- was too close to be from her father's blankets beside the door, or her brother's on the opposite side.

Suddenly awkward, Troi's lungs stuttered, and the violent rush of returning air cleared her mind.

The sonorous rumbles were Nivid's.

Awareness followed quickly on the heels of recollection, and Troi's mind rebelled, sliding sideways away from the pain of returning memories.

Her next breath hitched and halted altogether, the oxygen she needed trapped by a harsh and startling recognition.

For the past seven days, she'd been blinded by memories: images of her brother and parents splayed in lifeless, bleeding heaps outside the felt-covered entrance of their yurt; the screams of her younger sisters and the terrifying silence when the hard-eyed soldier stepped back into Troi's line of sight, the vibrant streaks of red from his knife staining a scrap of yellow the exact same color as the fabric of little Yoma's head-scarf; ten-year-old Näžibä's ghostly face knotted in agony as a sweaty, blue-clad soldier ripped her maidenhead asunder, beginning the violence which would end her life. All of those and more, a litany of horror filling Troi's head, hour after hour, as she wandered the edges of the taiga, keeping company with the wolves.

But in the security of Nivid's bed, in the warmth of Nivid's presence, other events began to trickle in, displacing the terror that Troi had come to see as all that remained of her childhood.

Her mother murmuring in frustration when her father's thunderous snoring began to shake the walls, waking Troi's sisters, who'd lie giggling while Asa elbowed Ataj, calling him a fat, hibernating ox. The affection in her father's voice when he answered, catching his mate's fingers to stop her from poking at his ribcage. Often, midnight grumbles ended with Ataj rolling to tuck their still-sputtering mother beneath him. Troi remembered how she and the younger girls would sink back into sleep, the low rhythmic moans of their parents blending with Rišat's unbroken snores and the quiet snuffles of the boys, curled into a single ball beneath sheepskin and fur.

She'd forgotten how sometimes the small, human sounds were overtaken by howling winds or the drumming of torrential rainstorms outside the yurt. Still, in the winter's iciest, most harrowing night, the warmth of summer lived within the family's felt walls.

She'd forgotten.

A solitary tear welled and spilled, creeping wetly between Troi's nose and cheek.

She'd forgotten the pleasure of a smoky, early-morning fire and the smell of summer threading its way up through the dull, dead grasses of last year as their horses pawed at the melting snow.

She'd deliberately forgotten the excitement of rolling and packing the yurts, and the endless, eager wiggles of siblings before the herd began to move.

Scores of forgotten moments pressed on the fragile barrier of Troi's temples. She wrenched her eyelids down, her olive skin crumpling to contain the pressure.

She had chosen to forget, never realizing that pushing painful memories aside meant burying all the others, too, and Troi's avoidance had stripped away the comfort of a thousand heart-felt embraces, hundreds of giggles and laughs and outright shrieks as Rišat chased the girls, roaring in simulated wrath when they interrupted his work-- all of them lost to the horror of a single day.

Seven-year-old Yoma trying to be grown-up while the three younger children urged her to silliness, tumbling around her knees until, giggling, she sank into the tangle of bony brown elbows and dusty bare feet; Näžibä's eyes shining up at her-- the worship of a younger sister wrapping Troi in contentment. She'd sacrificed all those things in an effort not to be reminded how the story had ended.

In captivity, she couldn't have survived the grief. She'd segregated the rage and hatred which would have sent her screaming past madness into the terminal solace of a hangman's noose.

Freed, she could remember; she could reclaim her history.

Pursing her lips tightly and wiggling her nose as the rest of her face relaxed, Troi sniffled softly. A wavy layer of tears still burned and tingled against her lower lids, and she blinked repeatedly, trying to clear her sight, and hoping to clear her mind.

Not that thinking clearly would necessarily help. After shedding some of the soul-wrenching grief which had so clouded her judgment, she'd seen that Nivid's other women didn't matter. She wasn't like them, nor was Nivid anything like the men who'd taken her from her family. Her belated epiphany didn't mean Nivid would stay with her when the curse was broken.

But now . . . now Troi could see that she'd been wrong, but she'd been wrong for many good reasons. She was a decent, hard-working woman who'd needed to get past grief in order to find herself again. She was strong and loving, and whether or not her Russian beast chose to keep his Bashkir woman when the curse was broken, Troi was free to look to the future. She wanted to share her love and strength with a family, to create happy memories for children who had none of their own. She deserved a family.

Heaving a huge, relieved sigh with no concern for the noise it made, Troi let her attention return to the sonorous, slumbering beast in bed with her.

Confidence had returned with comprehension, and Troi felt sure Nivid would forgive her-- as she'd forgiven herself-- for behavior motivated by grief and ignorance, rather than cruelty or lack of caring. She loved him now more than ever, and she desired him every bit as fervently as she had during all those hours she spent planning her escape from the bench.

Carefully shifting her weight, Troi rolled partway to her back. Nivid slept on, and for half a second she hesitated, feeling guilty for disturbing his rest. Quickly, she dismissed the thought. He could snooze the day away after they cleared the air between them, when she'd eased his aching uncertainty and reassured him of her love.

Her eyes traced the lines of Nivid's body as her breathing slowed and deepened. While Troi's hand wended it's way through her skirts to the tapes securing her loose Bashkir trousers, Troi's eyes ran from the broad bovine nose down over the hard plains of Nivid's chest, to the stripe of dark reddish fur below his navel. He was still wearing his loincloth, but even the heavy, practical garment couldn't disguise the bulge at the apex of Nivid's sturdy, horse-like thighs.

Her fingers slid southward over the silky roundness of her belly into the fluffy triangle of curls over her womanhood.

Her heartbeat thumping loudly on the inner surface of her ears, Troi recalled the first time she'd seen him, the night she'd stolen away from the bench. She'd been seated on a couch in the guardroom, a spot carefully chosen for the firelight's ability to render her thin shift transparent.

When Nivid turned his head and saw her, he'd frozen in shock.

Troi swallowed, the pressure of blood beating at her eardrums nearly blocking the sound of air rushing through her nostrils as her seeking fingers parted her lower lips, finding her flesh already tumescent and damp with the first hints of her need.

When he saw her in the firelight that night, Nivid's loincloth had tented, and his shock had spread to Troi. She was sure she'd gasped aloud when she saw how easily his arousal moved the heavy leather -- making his size plain to see.

With two fingers, she pressed and rubbed her puffy inner lips, making small circles as her clit began to harden. Her lips parted, air hissing softly between them as Troi breathed more heavily.

Nivid had taken her many times before that night. She had intimate knowledge of the size of his cock, but still . . . seeing the sturdy leather drapery effortlessly lifted by the hardening shaft beneath it-- if Troi hadn't been so aroused, she would have been intimidated.

Her budding clit poked insistently from its sensitive surroundings, and Troi let her fingers slip lower. Dipping first one finger, then two into her creaming cunt, she smoothed the moisture upward, slicking it over the aching folds of her pussy. Breathing shallowly, she pressed the flat of all four fingers to the springy nest of curls while she wrestled her lust under control. A tiny smile graced her lips. Gaining the ability to pleasure herself hadn't lessened her desire for Nivid's attentions. Cautiously, she curled her fingers into her palm and drew her hand back through the maze of her clothing, rolling gently to her side without bothering to straighten her skirts or tie her trousers.

Nivid's chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths, the occasional snore fluttering his velvety black nostrils.

Slowly, carefully, Troi lifted her hand. She didn't pause to consider her actions this time. He'd no doubt realize what she'd done, but setting aside the uncertain nature of their future, Troi believed in the love between them. Right now, Nivid loved her. She needed to repair their relationship, which would be far easier without this awkward barrier between them. Once it was gone, she could explain her actions again, and apologize more thoroughly.

With one swift, sure, barely-there swipe, Troi feathered her slick fingers across the end of Nivid's broad black nose. Tucking her hand beneath her body, she waited.