The Standup Boys' Fall

"What?" The hunk looked down at her work. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Painting you," said Yissa, as she coated her other thumb in red and drew a diamond on the point where his lowest ribs almost met each other. "This is magic paint. It changes what kind of child I'll get from you. The purple around your juice-rod will make it a girl, and this will make her fearless." She added one more design, this one in green. "And this will give her good luck."

"Painting me?" Indignation crossed his face. "You're painting me? Like some fresco? You think I have no bearing on how my own children turn out? You think you can simply paint me and have what you want?"

He sat up, and Yissa was so shocked that she didn't push him back down.

Pulling his legs out from under her, he planted his right heel on Yissa's stomach and pushed, and finally Yissa dug in her feet, brought her hands down and forced down his knee, breaking the push. She shoved on his shoulders, but he resisted with his hands on the ground behind him. Forming her hand into a wedge, she jabbed into his stomach, making him flinch, then put her palms on his collarbone and threw him into his back.

She leaned over him, putting her weight on him, and he bucked with his hips, slamming into her groin and lifting her off him for a moment.

"Ha!" Yissa giggled, "do that again!"

He did, this time bringing up his left knee to try to knock her away, but she was ready, and with one hand, she easily stopped it. Her other hand caught him between his legs, fingers curling around his balls, ready to squeeze.

Instantly, he stopped. He looked up at her, eyes wide.

"You have some fire after all." Yissa bit her lip and shivered as her fingers wrapped around his juice-rod. She pumped his skin, delighting as he tried and failed to keep his face neutral. "Fighting's over, hunk. Now it's time for the real fun."

There was no stopping her now. As his ready rod squelched between her fingers, the pleasure sapped his strength, and he could do nothing but lie there and groan as she positioned herself over him, then let herself down.

He was ready for her. The firm bulb of his head pushed up between her walls, scattering her thoughts. She shuddered, moaning incoherently, and bucked. The second thrust split her, and she went faster, her tense thighs slapping onto his soft, clean skin.

His male voice moaned in unison with hers. With every lift, she pulled the air into his lungs, and as she came back down, she squeezed it out of him. Under her hands, his stomach pulsed to the rhythm she set.

The hunk tried to form words. "I... I... I..." His breathing became labored, his voice rose and finally silenced.

Then Yissa felt it. Spasms rolled up his juice-rod, he tightened, and his thick juice burst up into her. She moaned with every squirt, slowing her hips to a stop, and when finally he was finished, her breathing was hard and deep. She looked down at him, seeing him fighting to catch his breath. She shifted her weight away from her hands, letting him breathe.

"You popped," said Yissa, a little saliva falling from her mouth as she spoke. "You popped before I did."

He gathered himself, but made no response.

"Get your juice-rod back up, or I'll make you lick me out."

His eyes bulged. "Lick you?"

"Didn't your father teach you how?"

He stared back at her in baffled silence.

Shifting herself back, she let his juice-rod out and watched it flop onto his body, dripping with juice. Licking her lips, she seized it, ready to pump it.

"Don't!" he blathered. "It needs time!"

"Hurry up, hunk. Get it hard, or I use your tongue."

He closed his eyes and fell to panting, his bare, sweaty chest rising and falling, the sparse hairs on his pecs glistening. For minutes, his breathing slowed, and Yissa's patience ran out. She brought her palm up to his face. "Lick my hand."

Tentatively, he touched his tongue to her palm.

"Lick it!" she demanded. "Don't just touch me! Lick me!"

He tried again, passing the tip of his tongue up her skin, leaving a wet streak from the heel of her palm to her first knuckle.

"Good," she said. "Now pretend it's my hand. Lick me until I pop." Horror crossed his face as she shifted forward on his body, holding her womanhood over his face. When he did nothing, she reached back and griped his juice-rod. "Lick me or get hard!"

That got him started. His tip reached her walls, then swiped up toward her clitoris, giving a little spark of pleasure. She moaned to encourage him, and he tried again, his tip tracing the same path up her flesh.

"More!" she growled. "More!" With her free hand, she pressed his nose shut, then lowered her sex onto his lips. He heaved, then sucked on her, his tongue lashing against her thin, juicy skin. She lifted, letting him breathe for a moment, then came back down, loving his desperation as he threw his tongue at her. Up and down, up and back down, she gave him just enough air to stay agitated, then forced him to give her everything he had. A few times, she reached down to grab his cock, scaring even more effort out of him.

Finally, he found her clitoris, and his tongue brought little waves of pleasure from her button. The next time he sucked, it was right on her pleasure spot, and she erupted. She leapt and squealed, her legs crushed the sides of his head, and her release gushed out.

When her senses were sharp again, she rocked her hips back to free the hunk's mouth, and when she looked into his eyes, he stared uneasily back up at her. With a contented smile, she scooted back, then sprawled herself face-down on his hot, moist body, feeling his vitality in his hard breaths and his still-tense muscles.

"Steam," said Yissa. "I'll call you Steam."

He brought his head up to look her in the eye. "Did you just name me?"

"There is an outland volcano, Myanganse. It's pretty. It looks docile. But from the cracks, steam rises. Because underneath..." she made a rumbling noise in her throat. "...it burns with vicious fire. Just like you do."

"Yissa, I have a name. I am-"

"I changed your name." She smiled. "Your name was from Izaz. It was an other-clan name. I gave you a clan name."

"Raping me does not make me part of your clan."

"There's no rape. And of course it doesn't. I do." She kissed his chest, tasting salt. "And soon, I'll have a tattoo. And you'll be a clan-hunk with me."

* * *

'Vicious fire,' Yissa had said. She had said it as a complement, as if Riman was meant to be flattered. But with poorly made rope like this, clearly, she didn't respect his Standup spirit.

It was tiresome work, undoing the rope. His nails undid the threads two or three at a time, slowly fraying the incoherent braid. As the hours wore on, the rope became less and less secure, until eventually he decided that it was worthwhile to try and pull on it.

It tore like paper.

Quickly, Riman pulled his arms free, undoing the knots on his wrist. After stretching out his arms the way he hadn't been able to since the last time Yissa had used him nearly half a day ago, he bent down and freed his knees from each other with barely more than a few tugs of his fingers.

He stepped away from the tree, bouncing on his feet. He started to brush off the scent cream Yissa had coated him with after having sex with him, then decided against it. Yissa hadn't been lying about monster girls in the jungle, and so far, none had bothered him. Perhaps the cream really worked.

Eagerly, he checked the burrow under the tree, hoping to find his shirt, but only found the jar of scent cream. He cursed. Yissa must have taken his outfit away.

The way back to Standup was a mystery to Riman, but he had seen the path she took to her home village, and that could help him gain his bearings. He set off.

For the first time, he tried to imagine where Yissa lived. The women lived in mud huts, he decided, or else caves—something that didn't require good rope-work. They would have men collared and tied up, or maybe displayed grotesquely on walls. He shuddered to think it.

He watched the shadows and the sun. He kept his ears sharp for footsteps. He kept his fists ready to fight. He had never been in a true fight before, and he had no weapons, but fear lit a fire in him. If that woman wanted him back, then he'd show her just how fiery he could be.

Finally, he heard noises ahead that rose above the hissing and singing of the jungle birds; bustling and shuffling and shouts reminded him of that glorious day he and the other men had left Izaz.

Then a woman stepped in front of him, her back turned to him and seemingly oblivious even though he was close enough to touch her. A moment later, Riman realized that it was worse than a woman. She was tall, a whole head taller even than most men, and what little she wore was in tatters. A great, meaty tail flowed behind her. She scuttled on through the jungle, following the same noise that had attracted him.

Farther up, the trees ended. The sun poured in. The ground dipped, a dried-up riverbed running through the jungle. Instead of water, women filled the riverbed, and it was close to bursting its banks. Women dressed like Yissa dominated the pit, but others held staves and walked on bare feet, still others were covered in bags and water skins, bristling with spikes and sling stones, and a few slim women hid their faces under hoods. One even carried a musket. Most shockingly of all, not all were human. The big monster girl with the tail stood freely among them, and another woman had leather wings folded behind her. Two others were covered in black fur. The more Riman looked, the more monster girls he spotted among the crowd.

Riman's mind turned in circles. In the stories he heard from Izazi jungle rangers, monster girls either killed women or ran away from them. For them to cooperate with women, even savage women, was simply unheard of.

Still wrestling with this, Riman stalked through the brush, trying to find who this mysterious mass seemed to be facing. At the head of the crowd, a few boulders had been pushed together, and atop the cluster, a woman in great, flowing robes stood at a wooden shrine, carefully carving something with a knife. Others, dressed similarly, danced in a circle around her, silent but twisting and capering exuberantly.

Suddenly, the woman in the center stood up, and the dancers stopped and prostrated themselves. "The raid will be a success!" the leader cried out, holding up her carving.

Cheers rang out.

One of the dancers stood up. "There will be great bounty!"

Another one heaved to her feet as if yanked up by an invisible puppet string. "Tribes will grow!"

A third one drove the point home, "The tribe of many males will shoot once, then they will lie on their backs!"

Riman sat back. 'A war party,' he thought grimly. The women had assembled a war party to attack Standup, and already its size rivaled the entire Standup population, bristling with spears and bows. The robed woman's prediction was depressingly believable. The Standup guards would indeed shoot back, and they would kill a few human women, but it would be nothing to the monster girls, who were nearly impervious to rifle balls. Then the attackers would close in, and the fighting would descend into chaos. From there on, Standup would have no chance.

Riman clutched his head. 'What to do?' he thought miserably. But there was nothing. Standup could not move, and even if it could, the war party would find it. The Standup men could dig trenches and erect spikes, but they would only delay the inevitable. Nothing could change the harsh truth that these women knew the jungle far, far better than the Riman and his brethren did.

People began to move, and Riman feared that the attack was at hand, but women only spread out, putting up impermanent tents, laying out cots or simply curling up on soft spots in the ground.

Something soft brushed against his back. He froze for a moment, stifling the urge to scream, and whipped around.

A woman stood behind him with a mischievous smile, dressed in a hide skirt and a grass top. "You're a boy," she murmured sweetly. "You're a boy. You don't smell like it, but you're a boy."

Riman covered his manhood, feeling embarrassed for the first time since Yissa had stripped him. "I'm a man!" he snapped, "not a boy!"

The woman licked her lips. "Close enough." As she prowled towards him, he noticed that she had two triangular, fuzzy ears poking up through her hair.

Riman realized just how reckless he had been.

With a snarl, the cat girl leaped on him, her hands hitting his shoulders and bringing him painfully to the ground. Instantly, her knees had his pinned, and her face was inches above his. She opened her mouth, showing him a set of thin, needle-sharp teeth. Her long tail twitched and curled behind her as she crawled down his body. She freed up his arms, but the next moment, her teeth menaced his cock as she pumped it to erection. He dared not move.

"Mm," the cat girl purred. "Funny-smelling boy. I wonder if your cock tastes the same?"

'Fellatio.' He had heard of the concept whispered between Izazi boys. Wives who did this for their husbands became quietly famous. But Riman had never believed that he might know what it felt like. Now he kept studiously, fearfully still as the cat girl got her flesh-rending teeth around his shaft, her lips making a seal with his clean-shaven base, and sucked.

The first pull made his spine bend like a whip. The second one drew a moan out of him. His fingers clutched the ground, tearing up grass. He looked down at her, fighting to hold still for fear of those gleaming, curved teeth, and her eyes stared evilly back at him.

Her head crawled up and down his shaft only a finger-width every pull, but each one increased the pressure in his cock. He breathed hard, trying to resist, but he knew no man could ever stop himself when a woman was on him.

But maybe he could stop her. "My... my wife..." he huffed.

Her eyes flicked up to his.

"My wife is in that crowd. Do you want me to shout and..." he gasped, shivering as his toes curled and tore up grass. "Do you want me to let her know? What do you think she'll do when she sees you?" Riman glared at her, doing his level best to keep a straight face.

The cat girl released his cock, giving one more terrifying glimpse of her saw-teeth. Covered in saliva and smeared scent-cream, his cock stood straight up for a few seconds, then wavered and went limp, splotching wetly against his thigh.

The cat girl backed up, twitching her tail, still staring at him and his exposed meat through her slit-pupils. Then she turned and stalked away.

Riman realized how hard he was breathing. With an angry hand, he pushed his cock down between his legs, then crawled hurriedly back and crouched behind a fern. He covered himself, feeling suddenly very naked.

But he was no less safe than all of Standup.

* * *

Yissa snuck away. A day was coming that women would sing about for generations. The shamanesses had done it. The gods only knew how, but they had managed to find monster girls who would cooperate with them. The sand tribe and the hill tribe had agreed to work with her own jungle tribe, and even a few fishing-women and climbers and bee-trappers had trickled into the alliance as well. The womanhood of the world had banded together to capture the great prize that was the tribe of many males.

But before they took their next step, Yissa wanted Steam again. She wanted to feel his weight and strength underneath her, his lively cock pushing into her. She even wanted him to fight back so she could subdue him again. It all helped her relax.

"Yissa!" hissed a voice, above and off to the side. "Yissa, up here."

Yissa looked up, whipping out her spear, but there was no monster. Instead, a hunk perched on a thick branch, his arms and legs wrapped tightly around the trunk. A moment later, Yissa recognized the hunk, and her mouth fell open. "Steam?" she called softly. "Steam, what are you doing up there? You got out of the ropes!"

"I did." Placing his limbs carefully, he crawled down the trunk, then leaped to the ground in front of her. To her horror, his juice-rod was wiped almost clean of scent cream. "Yissa," he began, "that war part-"

"Your juice-rod! What happened?"

"I... what?"

"Your cream is smeared. What did you do?"

For a moment, Steam looked baffled, then looked down and realized what she had seen. He sighed. "There was a cat girl. While I was watching the war party in the riverbed, she saw me and tried to suck on me."

"Tried?"

"While she did it, I threatened to call my wife, and the cat girl let me go. I guess she didn't want trouble." His eyes told her that he was as shocked by this as she was.

Kneeling in front of him, Yissa examined his juice-rod closely. Squeezing it, she rolled his head between her thumb and forefinger, then gently pumped him. Precum oozed out from beneath his foreskin. She stood up. "You're right. You haven't come since I was with you."

"Now will you listen to me?" he demanded. "The war party, are they really going to attack Standup? The tribe of many males?"

"Yes." She put her hands on his shoulders. "It's good you're not there. You might get snatched by a monster girl."

"Yissa, there's going to be bloodshed. You know the men are going to fight back."

"They'll lose."

"I know they'll lose." He said grimly. "But my brothers will die before they're subdued. There is a better way, Yissa. Let me go back to Standup. I'll throw open the gates."

"The hunks don't have gates."

"I mean metaphorically! I'll pour water in the pans of all the guns so they don't shoot when they're meant to. I'll soak all the crossbows so the strings go slack. I'll make it so the fight is short."

"Why would you do that?"

"I marched out of Izaz with those men. I don't want them to die." He looked hesitantly at her. "And I don't want your people to die either." Again, he wore that strange, fierce, desperate look.

Yissa leaned in close. "How do I know you won't warn them? Won't help them fight us?"

His eyes cast about fearfully. "I... don't know. You just have to trust me."

Yissa rolled this around in her mind. Even if he was telling the truth, this was a plan that no ordinary male could carry out.

But Steam was not ordinary. "I trust you," Yissa said at last. "Go in there. Break all their weapons. Then when the invasion comes, hide. I'll be there. When you see me, call out to me. For being in the battle, they'll give me my tattoo, and then I can marry you. Then we won't have to hide."

"You'll stop tying me up?"

"You look good tied up. No promises."

He winced with frustration. "Fine."

On an impulse, Yissa grabbed him and kissed him, a quick smack on his lips, and said, "May the stars help you."

He managed a weak smile. "Thank you."

* * *

With Yissa's directions, finding Standup had been easy.

As he approached the Standup clearing, Riman heard something. At first, he dismissed it as his imagination, then he heard more of it: gunfire. Someone was shooting in Standup.

Riman's mind raced, and his feet raced with it. 'What are they shooting at?' he asked himself desperately. 'Yissa said they wouldn't attack for another day! How did they pass me? Why?'

But when he reached the clearing, he saw that Standup was not under attack. Not from outside, anyway. The walls were barely manned, with only a handful of men guarding the entire perimeter. Uphill, in the center of town, a circular wall surrounded the water well and the supply hut. Musket barrels peeked out from the inner wall and fired, filling the air with obscuring white smoke. The uphill district fired back, and as Riman watched, horrified, a team of men rolled a great boulder downhill at the circular wall, but the irregular boulder veered and missed it, plowing instead into a pair of wooden houses.