Author of SF and Fantasy erotica

Eventually, they found the right key. Will marvelled at the tiny, silver prong turning in the grand, iron lock. It was no wonder they hadn’t tried it earlier. Such a small key for such a large keyhole…

The padlock fell to the stone with a clang of metal. Lady Hope reattached the cluttered keyring to her belt, then tugged the door’s latch bar off its bearings. She handed it to Will, who set it down beside him. Then they opened the way together.

The chamber beyond was pitch dark, which was no surprise. They were a good twenty feet below the earth. Sunlight from the stairs at their backs spilled between the doors and into the dusty room, burning away a tall strip of shadow and bisecting the chamber. The sunbeam alighted along a ragged, red carpet of Persian design, the edge of a wooden lectern, and a grand set of thick, grey curtains obscuring the darkest depths of the room.

Will covered his nose and mouth with one sleeve of his corduroy jacket. The scent of dust and moth was prevalent in this subterranean lair, but another smell fought its way through. A salty tang, sharp and spiteful. Will was taken back to a memory from his childhood, a family visit to London Zoo. The lion enclosure… Why should this underground room, locked away long enough to be forgotten, remind him of a predator’s den?

“And there is no record of this room on the estate’s plans?” asked Lady Hope, herself covering her mouth with the lacey sleeve of her yellow dress. Will liked the way the saffron cloth highlighted the richer gold of her hair.

“Indeed, and I must wonder how your grandfather acquired planning permission,” Will replied. His voice produced a cold echo from the stone walls beyond the open door. “Especially with the custodian’s abode now directly above us, and the Lea tributary running… well, presumably on the far side of the eastern wall here. This can’t have been an easy build. And to do so entirely unrecorded…?”

“How does this secret room affect the inheritance?”

“This is still Skuld Hall’s land – still your land, my lady. Even if hidden outside planning documentation, the contents of this room are fixed to the estate unless proven otherwise.”

“Well then, it is a good thing I hired an accountant to audit the grounds.” Lady Hope beamed a smug smile, her hazel eyes glittering, and Will chuckled as her mirth became his own.

“Quite right, my lady.”

Hope continued to hold him silently in her lovely gaze, and he stared right back, even as the seconds passed and the moment became awkward. When a stray, chestnut hair brushed across his nose, Will smoothed himself back to order with a touch more force than necessary.

Eventually, the young Lady of Skuld Hall nodded towards the dark room. Her ivory hairpin bounced in the big knot of her locks.

“Off you go, then,” she said. “You will be anxious to get underway.”

“O-Oh, right. Yes…” Will faced the dark, and he swallowed his brimming nerves. “Yes, of course.”

The oil lantern was woefully primitive in this new age of electricity. It was cumbersome, and its iron handle clattered when Will raised it up to his head. When he took a step into the shadows, the humble flame made angry, uneven images on the walls and along the ceiling. But the custodian’s abode wasn’t connected to Skuld Hall’s power supply, so natural flame was all that would avail him here in its secret cellar.

Will’s memory returned to him an earthen bunker in the north of France where he had worked as a signal engineer during the war. Violence had always felt close during those long nights in the dark station. A scent of blood on the very edge of possibility, a rumble of artillery just about to sound. When the shells had finally arrived, taking three of Will’s fingers in their hellish blasts, it had almost been a relief.

Creeping into Lord Ronald’s secret chamber felt like a new beginning to the waiting. Violence to come, but when? Now? Or… now? Shaking this unhelpful thought free of his skull as best he could, Will advanced into the unknown.

The hidden room was lined with fat bricks of chalky stone; no measure had been taken to cover the grey slabs with homier décor. Will’s lantern revealed an unvarnished table and a pair of chairs beside the lectern, and a tall, oak bookcase in the western corner. Dusty tomes and bound sheafs of parchment had been crammed into each of the shelves, and a few stray pages were scattered below like a patchwork carpet. Closer to the curtained-off end of the room stood an empty barrel, dark with waterlogging. The Persian rug was stained in a brackish ring where it touched the base of the barrel.

“A reading room,” he said over his shoulder for Lady Hope, though he kept his voice obediently quiet for the mausoleum atmosphere.

“Skuld Hall already has a library,” Hope called back in the same secretive hush. “What manner of book would Grandfather store in a secret place like this?”

Will chuckled. “Nothing suitable for a lady’s eyes, I am sure.”

He swung his lantern back and forth, advancing slowly towards the curtains. He could hear the windy rush of Hope’s thoughtful breathing at his back.

Then, “Does classical pornography sell for so much, Mister George?”

He almost tripped. “D-Does it, indeed! That really isn’t my area of expertise, my lady.”

“Then how are you intending to audit my late grandfather’s possessions if such is stored in those bookshelves? How much would you spend on a particularly saucy tome from his generation?”

“M-Me myself?”

“You yourself, yes.”

“I… I suppose I would make some enquiries,” he said, answering her first question and ignoring the second. “There will be collectors and the like with more of an understanding, and they will advise me.”

“Hmm.” Lady Hope didn’t sound satisfied with that response, but at least she had relented.

Arriving before the great curtains, Will placed his lantern on the rug and dusted off his hands. The flesh of his left slapped against the wood prostheses on his right, which were hidden under a single glove of leather. He hadn’t dressed for this sort of skulduggery, and he was loathe to mar his shirt or jacket with filth, or damage the joints of his three wooden fingers. Especially since, for all her eccentricities, he did so want the fair Lady Hope Edda-Stephen’s eyes to remain on him. Because of those eccentricities, you might even say.

She was an awfully clever young woman, a bright spark with a tongue of fire when impassioned or incensed. And if her lines of conversation often veered into queer territory, as they had just done, then surely that was hope for Will George. Hope that she might choose a future husband in a maimed, low-born chartered accountant from London over the high society cockerels she was no doubt used to.

A thick pullcord hung from the ceiling. The fibres were coarse under Will’s left palm, but he took the rope in both hands. If the sight of three fingers on his right hand sticking out and not taking part in the endeavour was odd, he was well used to it by now. Will turned over his shoulder and met the eyes of Lady Hope, her slim, feminine silhouette in the open doorway. She waved her hands at him to continue, and the keyring on her belt jingled with pleasing, metallic music. So, grinning with faux bravado, Will turned back to the curtains and pulled the rope hard.

When he came to, Will was sitting on the rug. His heart was a rattling motor engine in his chest. Shining stars burst in the periphery of his vision. And at his back, the taut gasp of Lady Hope.

“Lord in Heaven!”

Behind the curtain was a wrought-iron cell with bars that stretched from floor to ceiling. Beyond the barrier was bare stone, and a jagged wall of raw rock abruptly concluded the chamber. And before Will, separated from him by the bars, was a pile of frayed quilting and clothing. A woman was lying upon it.

She must have been at least nine feet tall. Will’s mad eyes roved across the thick, black knots of her long hair, the alien blue-white of her skin. Oily tattoos marked the flesh of the prisoner’s broad torso – looping, snake-like paths shining in the lamplight like flat cords of tar. They curled and swooped around her heavy, muscular body, a pattern with no discernible start nor end. Some horrid, demonic roadmap.

Demon. Yes, that was the word that sprung immediately to the forefront of Will’s mind, rising from his Protestant upbringing with a clamour of sacrosanct alarm. Demon! This giant woman was a demon! There was no more sensible answer, as if the one he had was in any way sensible.

Will opened his mouth to say something, anything at all to break the horrid silence, but he yelped with fright instead as the demon woman stirred. Her thick limbs creaked with tectonic stiffness, as if she was rising from the earth itself. She rolled over to face Will and Hope, and her tree-trunk arms pushed her up to a seat. She sat cross-legged on her makeshift bed like an Oriental monk and peeked down at him through her thick curtain of tangled hair.

The shimmering light of an eye in the shadow of her brow, and another. And a third. And while Will was reeling from his acknowledgement of the titanic woman’s third eye in the centre of her forehead, she smiled. Her teeth were sharp as blades, a nest of swords for tearing meat from bone. Her tongue was a long, leathery whip, fat as an anaconda and sharp as its fangs. And the mirth painting her lips was uncanny, otherworldly, as if she was laughing at a joke that had not yet been said. Or which had been said long ago, at the world’s creation.

“You come.”

The creaking of rent bark, the groaning of a sarcophagus’ opening. No human voice would resonate with the chill stone like that. No human tone would so suit the accompaniment of the earth’s funereal silence. And yet, there was something so very human about her accent. Will’s mind conjured images of icy plains and midnight suns, of dark clouds and rocky fjords.

All that quelled the shaking of Will’s outstretched legs was the acknowledgement of another grand padlock on the cell’s door. The metal was old, and if it had stood guard for this long, then surely it would continue to do so. He stared up at the sitting giant, and she grinned down at him from behind her hair. The lights in her triad eyes shone like some eldritch constellation. When a moment of dizziness overcame him and Will’s head tipped onto one shoulder, she mimicked him.

The jingle of keys at his back preceded the approach of Lady Hope. Will silently cried out for his limbs to obey him, that he might sweep her up and carry her away from this predatory threat. Instead, he saw her slender frame illuminated in the lantern’s glow as she came to stand beside him. One hand was pressed against her chest, and her eyes sparkled with a mix of fear and wonder.

“Look at you,” she whispered, and Will finally found the courage to stand.

“My lady, we must away!” he hissed, taking her arm.

But Hope shook him off. “Please, um, Miss?” she called to the giant. “What manner of creature are you? I profess that I have never seen anything quite like you in my life!”

The giant intoned, “I have no name.”

“Th-Then where do you hail from? Surely you’re not a Hertfordshire local,” Hope added with a manic giggle.

The woman shook her three-eyed head, a stiff back and forth of her thick neck. “I am far away. Kebnekaise, I hear him say.”

“Kebne-… Do you mean the mountain in Sweden? My grandfather took many a visit to Scandinavia on business. Are you to say that he met you…? That he took you from…?”

She reached out towards the iron bars of the cage, but Will snatched her hand back.

“Careful, my lady!”

“Are you well, Miss?” Hope persisted. “You poor thing. You must have been sealed away down here for… for decades!”

“My lady, she has clearly been put here for a reason!” Will snapped. “This is not how a sane man treats a business partner o-o-or willing collaborator! This creature must be-…”

“Norn.”

Will blinked at the seated giant. “I beg your pardon?”

“The grandfather calls me ‘Norn’.” A widening of her lips, an arming of the trap. “He finds the name in old books, and he presses it to me. You use it too.”

“Norn…” breathed Hope with a wondrous smile. “Like the Norse deities from the stories!”

“Why did he feel the need to name you?” Will asked with a snarl. “And why did Lord Ronald Edda-Stephen keep you locked down here, away from the eyes of the public?”

“And how are you still alive?” asked Hope. “Surely none have been feeding you all this time!”

Norn lifted one great hand and tapped a long fingernail on each of the bars of the cage in turn, counting them off. “The grandfather takes me here because I am ‘oddity’ to his people,” she said. “I eat what he gives me, which is not much. I wake from slumber and share my visions with him. Then I return to the stone stillness of rest to keep my strength.”

“Visions?”

“I can see!” said Norn with an alarming, shivering moan, fluttering her eyelids and curling her fingers around the bars. “I see his glory. I see his risk, his questing. I see his king’s shadow on this land, and the shadows of other kings and queens also!”

Will and Hope shared a wide-eyed look. Will licked his lips. “Are you aware… that Lord Ronald is dead?” he asked.

Norn chuckled, the sound of a grave’s unearthing. “Yes. I see that he is dead. He is… very upset to hear it!”

Hope’s hand gripped Will’s tight. “You can see the future!”

Will shook his head, but this only made his mind reel all the more. The future? Visions of what was yet to come? The stuff of fantasy!

“Prove it!” he said. “Tell us the future!”

Hope bounced on her heels. “Ooh, yes! Tell us something! Tell us… Tell us how much money my grandfather’s estate will be worth! That will make your job a lot easier, won’t it Mister George?”

Norn breathed out a hot, swampish sigh through her teeth. “I see my vision always. No ‘first’ nor ‘next’ nor ‘last’, always now. But I do not see yours. Not without the price.”

Will pulled Hope half a step away from the bars. “What price?”

“A bond twixt present and future!” said Norn with a fiendish smirk. “You bind me to your future, and I see it! The price is…”

She opened out her palms and bowed at her round belly. “…your unrealised child.”

Will convulsed. He tightened his body around his hips in protection of his nethers. A confusing alchemical blend of disgust and fascination bubbled in his gut.

“What is she talking about, Mister George?” asked Hope, tucking some golden hair behind one ear.

Will swallowed. With great effort, he said, “You mean… semen?”

“I mean semen,” Norn replied with a throaty laugh.

“God have mercy…!”

Will’s eyes roved down Norn’s grand body. Under the long tangles of her hair, he could see the hidden treasure of her naked chest. Fat, bulging breasts with dark areolas drew his eye and excited confusing feels of lust in his blood. And between her crossed legs, a jungle of jet-black pubic hair. Norn’s braided tattoos wound sensually around her voluptuous body and pronounced her curves, her softness. They teased at the recesses hidden out of sight. Following the inky trails along the firmer flesh of her muscles, Will struggled to be intimidated by her strength as he had been on first seeing her. Her might was appealing. Reassuring. Will licked his lips again.

“You and Grandfather…” whispered Hope, eyes wide and cheeks pale. “You had… marital relations?”

“I take the price of the grandfather often,” confirmed Norn. “And of his squire when the grandfather’s question is for after he is dead. No man’s vision extends beyond their death.”

“Goodness.” Hope pressed her fingertips to her lips, stunned stiff by what was surely a reprehensible mental image. Her hand in Will’s squeezed, her fingertips tapping a pattern on the back of his palm. Then she looked to him with a silent question.

“M-My lady?” Will asked.

Hope nodded, but it wasn’t for him. “You had better undress.”

“My lady!” Will pulled out of Hope’s grip and staggered back. He bounced against the lectern and produced a wooden clatter. “Y-You cannot be serious!”

“How else are we to ascertain the truth of her words?” Hope asked with her hands on her hips. Her lips pouted, adorable in any other situation. “Or would you pass this incredible opportunity by, Mister George? Norn, do you have any objections?”

Norn shrugged her mountainous shoulders. “I enjoy the taking of the price,” she declared with a feline smile.

“And as a woman, I cannot pay this price with her, is that not so?” Hope continued. Her cheeks flushed red in the light of the lantern. “It must be you, Mister George! Will! I paid for your services, Will, so serve me, I beg!”

Will’s eyes darted back and forth between the two women. One slight, pretty and charmingly stubborn. How he would love to ‘pay the price’ with her instead. The other, a creature from outside the purview of civilised mortals, grinning with undisguised lust. Feminine, certainly, with the heavy, primal gravity of an ancient tribe’s depictions of fertility.

“I cannot.”

“Will!”

“Her cell is locked!” he snapped. “I… I cannot fathom how I might…! Sh-She is a prisoner, Lady Hope! And I wouldn’t dream of… with a captive woman…! I would forever revoke my status as gentleman.”

Hope sighed. Her eyes fell to her soft shoes. “Well said. You are right, this situation is improper.”

“Thank you,” Will said with a great huff of relief.

“Norn, you deserve to be fed and cleaned, not locked away like this,” Hope continued with a smile for the giant. “Allow me to fetch some water and a cloth. That barrel ought to do, and the abode upstairs draws from the tributary. Will?”

Hope detached the ring of keys from around her belt and pushed them into his hands. The soft warmth of her fingers on his wrists, coupled with the spiritual closeness of her casual naming, soothed his roiling stomach a great deal.

“Test these keys and set her free,” his lady said. “Set her free, please.”

The ring was heavy indeed. Will’s heart sank, and he said nothing.

* * *

Long minutes later, Will examined the ring of possible keys in his hands again with indifference. He took the silver key used to open the entrance to the secret chamber and ran it over the glove-covered wood of his false fingers. A small key for a large keyhole… It wouldn’t be so simple, would it?

Looking up from his seat in the chair beside the dusty table, Will turned his eyes to the light of the open doorway. Hope was still upstairs, and a metallic groaning above the ceiling suggested her use of the plumbing to draw water for Norn. Will allowed himself a secret sigh. In truth, he didn’t want to find the key that would free the giant from her cage. Not when they knew so little about her. Not when thoughts of her were so confusing.

Will slowly glanced over his shoulder and once again met her three-eyed stare. Norn was grinning at him from her own seat on her makeshift bed. She had been content with their shared silence for a while. Content just to leer.

“You speak English well for a foreigner,” Will said to her, hoping to dispel some of her menacing mastery of their situation.

“I learn,” Norn replied in a gravelly chuckle.

“Did Lord Ronald teach you?”

Norn shook her head. “I learn.”

“What do you mean by that? Oh, hold on.” Will rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “You will learn English, is that right? And concepts like past and future are irrelevant in your perception, so it is as if you’ve already learned it?”

The giant laughed. Her grand shoulders rocked with mirth. “You are clever!”

“This is lunacy.” Will turned back to his keys with a shake of his head. The mysteries of time whirled about his crown and made him dizzy. Then a thought struck him, and he turned back to the prisoner. “If you’re going to have a vision of my future at some time in the days to come, can’t you see it now?”

“No.”

“Whyever not? You can see your own future just fine. Your witnessing of a vision of my future should be just as clear.”

Norn’s smile was entirely self-satisfied. “It is obscured. I see your asking, but the vision is hidden. If I see it all, every vision of my every partner all at once, my mind breaks, no?”

Will narrowed his eyes. “But… you do see me asking for a vision?”

“Yes.”

“You see me… p-paying the price?”

Norn gripped her bars tight. “Yes.”

A clatter from the doorway spun him around and into the eyes of Hope, who was hefting a full pail of water towards the barrel beside Norn’s cage. She beamed a smile at Will, and he smiled right back as his hammering heart slowed. When Hope was done adding her water to the container, pausing to wipe her brow with her sleeve, she nodded down at the keys in Will’s hands. Will shook his head. And content to trust that his search for Norn’s freedom was ongoing, Hope took her pail back up the stairs for more water.

“I would not get my hopes up, I were you,” he whispered over his shoulder at Norn, toying with the ring of keys in a facsimile of work. “I am a gentleman. I do not lay with just any woman. And I fully intend to keep your cage shut until you have come clean with us. Ergo, there is no way for me to pay your lascivious price.”

“The grandfather pays the price through the bars.”

Will flinched as the image assailed him. “I hadn’t thought the old man so flexible.”

“It is not difficult,” Norn retorted with a sultry growl. “You handle your manhood, I open my mouth…”

Will’s hands stilled around the keys. “You mean, I don’t have to… put anything inside you?”

“The grandfather does it often. He thinks it more convenient. He does not lie with me as a lover would after he learns my visions are no different. I see the same future however I take the price.”

This was a much more charitable mental image, and Will allowed it to play out in his mind. He was no stranger to his own body, and he knew he could bring himself to climax quickly and cleanly. He and Norn wouldn’t have to touch, and he would keep most of his clothes on. He’d still get his prophecy…

“But I prefer when we lie together,” said Norn, and Will could hear a pout on her lips without looking back. “I revel in the sensation of the visions, and I enjoy the taste of the price. But I prefer when we are as lovers.”

“You and the late Lord Ronald, you mean?”

Norn chuckled. “No.”

Will’s finger toyed with the mounting pressure beneath his trousers. His loins had been seeking his attention often during this weekend in the relatively private company of Lady Hope Edda-Stephen. She was so very fair, so prim and cultured. But also fiery, so willing to draw their conversations to the edge of propriety. While he had performed his inspections of Skuld Hall’s many bedrooms, Hope had lingered with him as if awaiting a proposition. Entertaining her was a delight and an endless surprise. She would be a remarkable bedroom partner, Will had no doubt. He saw her now in his lusty mind’s eye, creamy skin bare, golden locks tumbling down soft shoulders to tickle the rise of her naked chest…

Then Will turned to face Norn. She was as much a woman as Hope, or perhaps more so. Not human, but still a woman. Lying with her was very much an anatomical possibility, if he wished it. She clearly did.

Drinking in his attention and favouring him with a broad smile, Norn sat herself tall and brushed her tangled locks around her shoulders. She bared her heaving breasts for him and squeezed them with her long fingers. Her nails traced the black tattoos looping around her nipples, then sought the dark beneath her pubic hair. She purred as she handled herself, and she stuck out her tongue at him, fat and red and hungry. Her three eyes stared into his spirit, and Will didn’t look away.

And he did have questions. To know the future, in his world of finance especially, would make him rich. As rich as the late Ronald Edda-Stephen, in fact.

Will cast another look over his shoulder, but Hope was still upstairs. Based on her previous trips to fetch water, she would return in another ten minutes or so. It was plenty of time.

Norn flashed her teeth as Will stood to his feet, approached the bars and handled the buckle of his trousers. He was hard when he exposed himself to the giant woman. His skin was electric as he gripped his shaft with his intact left hand. His partner bent forward and pressed her face against the bars of her cage. She closed her triad eyes and opened her mouth wide.

Will got underway. He didn’t bother with building his momentum, since time was of the essence. He pumped for all he was worth, and it was easy. It was good. Handling himself with his left hand had only been a struggle for a short while after his injury. He’d learned fast.

Will had to hold his legs wide, his gloved right hand on his lower back, to keep from stumbling. It was clumsy, but it was fun. A strangled moan escaped his lips as he pleasured himself before the seated giant, and Norn laughed.

“Good,” she whispered. “Good.”

Will closed his eyes and allowed his mind to wander as waves of pleasure erupted from his loins. He entertained the fantasy of Hope, his fair fellow adventurer, bent forward before him. She could pull her long skirt over her hips and bare herself to him. She could hold to the bars to strengthen herself against his pounding. And pound her he would! Will would rut into her tight sex and finish himself inside her. He would claim her as his woman. He would hold her and keep her. He would celebrate the shivers of orgasm with her.

“O-Ohh,” he groaned. “Oh… yes!”

“Ahh,” sighed Norn, and her hot, desirous breath wafted against his naked flesh.

And Will’s mind wandered again. Norn, the giant woman. Inhuman, but that was no concern. She was a suitable partner in the ways that mattered. And she had already made her willingness known.

Will’s lips twisted into a grimace of pleasure as he imagined the scene behind his closed eyelids. Walking the permafrost and dolerite of northern Sweden, he would seek shelter from a sudden squall. A hidden cave in Kebnekaise’s ancient rock. And in the dark, a playful voice. She would warm him while the blizzard roared overhead. She would lie back in a campfire’s light and open her legs for him, and he would mount her. His hands would trace the black lines of her tattoos. The points of her nipples, the great excess of her breasts. Holding tight to the strength of her wide hips. Rutting. Thrusting. She was large enough and grand enough to take everything Will George could offer.

And how sweet her embrace when they were done. Big and strong, arms enveloping his naked body. Her predatory hunger quelled by her ethereal wisdom and compassion. Her sharp teeth hidden behind her lips. She would stroke his hair and lull him to sleep. Norn would protect him faithfully. She would keep him safe.

The question of what this unfamiliar, novel perversion meant for him went unanswered, as something wet stroked across the head of Will’s erection and broke his focus. He opened his eyes with a gasp of shock. Norn’s tongue was out, and it was long enough to reach across the gap between them. The rough muscle lapped at his swollen head with teasing flicks. It painted him with her thick saliva. And though the texture was as coarse as hemp, Norn’s tongue was slick, and it was practiced. It was good.

“A-Ahh,” sighed Will as he pumped his shaft. He stared down at the giant’s tonguing, utterly unwilling to pull out of her reach. “O-Oh my…”

“Ah,” agreed Norn with a curve at the edges of her gaping mouth. “Ah-ah-ah…”

Will reached out his free hand and braced himself against the bars of Norn’s cage, just as Hope had done in his fantasy. He thrust his rod into the curl of Norn’s tongue and let her taste him. He gave himself away to her support of his pleasure.

A rattle of iron against stone preceded a lunge from his partner. Squeezing against her bars, Norn lashed out with her tongue and wrapped it around his erection. She pulled her slick grip taut. Then she tugged. Will was yanked against the bars of the cage. His rod left the safety of the outside and penetrated her cell. His mind went white with fear as her lips fully encircled him. As the prison of her mouth pressed around him.

And then, sweet pleasure. Norn’s sharp teeth were absent from the warm, wet enclosure of her mouth, thank the Lord. She sucked his rod and moaned with joy, slurping and bobbing with rhythmic pace. She coated the full length of him with her saliva. And she was deep enough that Will didn’t think twice before thrusting as far into her throat as he could go.

“O-O-Oh yes!” he grunted. “Yes!”

Will held himself against the bars with both hands as Norn sucked his cock. She really was an expert. She knew when to be fast and when to slow down. Where to be firm and where to be tender. As if she was a lover of many years and not a stranger. She drew the orgasm out of the depths of him with precision and compassion. And before he knew it, his giant lover was pressing her nose into his pubic hair. Will’s rod pushed against the back of her throat. And he came.

“Yes!!”

Will convulsed against Norn’s lips. A thick load of semen, his ‘unrealised child’, drained down her throat. He shivered as Norn’s prehensile tongue massaged the seed out of his shaft, and her lips smacked with satisfaction around his wet flesh. She unsheathed from him with a gasp for air. Her eyes were shut, her smile beatific.

Then, a snap. Norn stiffened in her seat. Two of her eyes remained closed tight, but her third, central eye was wide open. Will stared. Gone were the primordial dark of her iris and the milky white of her sclera. In their place, the starlight shimmer of the cosmos. Black and purple and indigo like a night sky, and the twinkling of stars roaring through space. It made him dizzy. In the distance, a rumble of stone.

And when she spoke, Norn’s voice was sharp as an oiled blade. The primitive clumsiness of an elder creature pretending at human speech was no more. In its place, the voice of the universe itself, speaking clearly through Norn. But the universe, it transpired, still had Norn’s Swedish accent.

“Ask.”

Will’s hands shook as he slipped his wet rod back into his clothing. “M-My question for the future, you mean?”

“Yes, Son of Adam, and hurry. Time is short.”

Pushing off from the bars, Will took a deep breath to dispel the afterglow from his heart. “I… I am considering asking for a promotion in my firm, Trollope and Nall-Cain in London,” he said. “Will I receive this promotion if I ask?”

“You shall, but not at once,” intoned the cosmos through Norn. “Your employers shall demand of you a demonstration of mercantile skill to prove your worthiness.”

“And I will meet their standards?”

“Yes. You shall accomplish your trial through a profitable investment in the British automotive industry.”

Will blinked. He hadn’t expected the vision to be so specific. “I already have active investments,” he said. “Fishing, coal…”

Norn shook her head, but her infinitely fractal eye remained locked on him. “You shall reap of your coal investments this year and offer those funds instead to Ford of Britain. Coal shall soon become a contentious and political product. You shall be relieved when that burden is gone.”

“O-Oh. You don’t say.”

“Hark, Son of Adam! The time of automotives as a privilege for the rich is gone! Now begins the time of motors for all. Trollope and Nall-Cain shall see you at the forefront of this industry, and they shall be well pleased. As it is said in your Christian scripture, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.’”

Will laughed. His sceptic’s mind insisted that this eloquent voice from beyond the material could be lying to him. This could still be a ploy of Norn’s to win her freedom.

And yet, her words inspired new visions in Will’s mind. Not of his past, but of his future. He could see himself shaking the hands of Walter Trollope and Arthur Nall-Cain. He could see his fortunes increasing. Norn’s words pierced the veil between present and possibility.

“What are you laughing about?”

Hope’s voice sent a spike of alarm up Will’s spine. He spun, backing foolishly against Norn’s cell. Norn chuckled at his fear, her voice restored to its former, growling timbre, and Will felt a fat finger stroking playfully at his rear through the bars.

Hope was scowling as she hefted her pail of water to the barrel. “I see poor Norn is still a prisoner,” she said as she tipped the contents in. “Have you really not found the right key, Will? There can’t have been that many to try.”

“O-Oh, no,” he replied, tugging himself away from the cell and out of reach of his giant lover. “I’m sorry, my lady. It yet eludes me.”

Dusting off her hands, Hope strode towards him. She grabbed the ring of keys from the table where Will had abandoned it, then cast him a narrow, suspicious glower. Then the young lady bent to look around him at the smiling Norn. The giant’s great breasts and forested crotch were fully on show.

“I think something else was distracting you from your duty,” she said. “Trust a man to do a simple thing like find a key when there is perversion to attend to. Honestly, I was told you were a dedicated sort.”

A protest alighted on Will’s lips. But before he could realise it into the air, he stopped. He stared. Hope was smirking. She was meeting his gaze through her eyelashes, and even as she named him a lecher and a pervert, she smiled.

“Go, attend yourself to more fitting work.” Hope pointed to the bookcase in the corner of the lair. “Find us some much-needed context. I shall help poor Norn.”

“Yes, my lady.” Will swallowed, then turned to eye the seated giant, who was still grinning with undisguised satisfaction. “But if you find the key, do not let her out without consulting me first.”

“You still do not trust her?”

It was hard not to share Norn’s cat-with-the-cream smile. Especially with the warmth of her mouth still fresh around his rod.

“No…” he said. “But… perhaps I can yet be persuaded.”

* * *

The parchment crinkled like autumn leaves as Will turned the page on Lord Ronald’s ledger. His eyes drank up the faded ink.

1922. Anglo-Irish war end, new business in Dublin. Austin 7 changes de facto automobile design. BBC??

On the surface, the book was an abridged record of pivotal events across Britain in the listed year, the kind you would read in any layman’s encyclopaedia. But knowing Norn’s prophetic insight, Will recognised the tome for the marvel it was. Lord Ronald had known that the Austin Motor Company would rise to prominence last year, the same year as the founding of the British Broadcasting Company. And he had known decades ago! Will thumbed the pages in the ledger and counted the great span of years yet to read. His mind whirled.

Turning over his shoulder, Will took in the sight of Hope and Norn. Hope hadn’t found the right key for the cell yet, and the young heiress was taking respite by attending to Norn’s impoverished appearance. The giant was sat facing away, and Hope was on Will’s chair, combing Norn’s tangled hair through the bars with her fingers. Now and then, Hope would shake out her wrist and drop a cloud of oily locks onto the stone beside her, then dip her hands in the barrel of water to clean herself.

Norn, meanwhile, was mopping her flesh with a wet bedsheet. Will’s crotch twitched with familiar interest as he imagined the giant running the wet fabric under her blue-white breasts. They would be dripping with moisture, jiggling with the touch of her fingers. Norn held the cloth out to one side and wrang it dry with both hands, then passed it over her shoulder and through the bars. Hope wet the cloth in the barrel and handed it back.

The two women were talking together in hushed tones as they worked. Will had heard Hope laughing often during their conversation. It was a pretty and musical sound. The pair appeared to be getting along famously. He watched as Hope’s hand came to rest on Norn’s bare shoulder, and the giant reached up to stroke her fingers. Hope’s cheeks matched the incandescence of the oil lantern’s red flame.

Will smiled, even as his heart shuddered with anxious dread. Yes, Norn was charming. Yes, she was clever. She was a practiced and charitable fellator. But was that enough reason to cast doubt to the wind and set her free? Those teeth were made to rend flesh from bone; there was no mistaking that. A freed Norn might reveal a true nature hidden beneath the affable flirtation and summarily turn on them, either out of hunger or vengeance. And Hope, so sweet and kind, might let her good heart lead her to mortal peril. If only he could hear what they were talking about.

Hope chose that moment to turn over her shoulder and regard him across the chamber. Her hazel eyes widened and her cheeks flushed on seeing his attention. She tugged her hand free of Norn’s, then cast him a shy smile.

Will’s curiosity was an ache in his belly. But he couldn’t well snoop on Hope when he still had the most interesting years of Lord Ronald’s recorded future left to read. He turned from Hope and then turned the fragile page. For the first time in the record, the penmanship changed from smooth, professional curls to angular scratch marks, the hand of a furious old man instead of his loyal valet.

1923. Demise by heartache. Clara’s girl takes the Hall, FREES THE BEAST. Dennis to Edinburgh. Baldwin (sick).

Well then, that was that. A burden receded from Will’s shoulders on seeing his own future written out in unimpeachable handwriting. He and Hope would release Norn, and Lord Ronald’s incensed lettering made it clear what the dead, old man thought of that. Still, there was nothing written here to suggest society would break down on learning that an immortal, soothsaying giant lived among humanity, so perhaps the damage would be minimal. Or Norn would eat the pair of them, leaving no trace, and then disappear from human eyes entirely. That was also possible.

‘Dennis’ would have to be Dennis Forsythe, Lord Ronald’s valet, who had indeed abandoned his employers and boarded a train to Scotland just that morning. Since this ledger contained records from after Ronald’s death, Norn would have to have slept with Dennis to fill those pages, as she herself had claimed. But Will had no clue at all who this ‘Baldwin’ chap was. Maybe it would become obvious later in the year.

His consideration of Lord Ronald’s death tickled the splinter of an unanswered question in Will’s mind: Could Norn’s visions be prevented? Ronald had clearly known the date of his death for some considerable time, and he’d died all the same. Not that there was much he could have done about acute heart failure. But Norn’s vision also said she would be freed today by Ronald’s granddaughter. What if Will was instead to grab Hope by the wrist and drag her away, lock the doors behind them and sink the giant’s prison beneath the earth? Or, Heaven forfend, if he killed Hope before she could unlock the cell? Would that alter destiny?

Will chuckled to himself at the thought. No, he couldn’t alter destiny. He couldn’t fathom forcing Hope away from anything she had set her mind to. Just as he couldn’t change the amour for her blossoming in his heart. Destiny and desire were immutable, eternal. And he was just a man.

Feeling suddenly bold, Will took a fat ream of pages and leapt forward in time to a random year. And his foolish, love-addled grin died on his lips.

“Oh, my God!” he breathed, then called over his shoulder at the two women. “My lady, I am loathe to have to tell you this, but there is going to be a Second World War! Your grandfather’s ledger claims it will be a sorry affair. At least we have fifteen years before…”

He turned at the sound of a click and a clatter, and he almost dropped the prophetic ledger. Hope had unlocked Norn’s cage with a familiar, silver key, and the giant woman, yet damp with water, was now bending to step from her prison with a satisfied smile on her lips. She kissed Hope on the crown as she stood to her full height. God in Heaven, she really was tall.

“My lady! You promised to wait!”

Hope’s smile was stubborn and lovely. “I made an executive decision. She had already been in there far too long.”

Will eyed Norn with open distrust, and she stared back with all three of her eyes. The giant rolled her shoulders in their sockets and stretched her arms towards the ceiling, even pushing onto tiptoe to exaggerate her already impressive height. When she dropped back onto her heels, her breasts bounced.

“She is a living, thinking creature, Will,” Hope said, planting her hands on her hips. “She doesn’t deserve to be treated like an animal.”

“And if she is dangerous?”

“I don’t believe that. And I knew Grandfather for the cantankerous old man that he was. He was an avid hunter, a shrewd financier, a ruthless businessman. He was not the sort to contain a threat to humanity out of a sense of philanthropy, but he would trap an innocent creature for the sake of his own profit. Sealing away the gentle Norn for her visions is exactly in his character, I am afraid to say.”

Will stared Norn down, daring her to pounce. There was nothing stopping the giant from devouring them both now. But Norn’s grin was peaceful, her stance slack and comfortable. And Will had to wonder at the change a little washing and combing had created in her. The giant’s black hair was still thick and long like a natural cloak, but it framed her face and chest like a flowing, obsidian waterfall. Her bluish skin was clear, and the black tattoos marking her heavy torso drew the eye to all the right places. Will hesitated to call her ‘lovely’ in his heart for fear of what it would mean for him. But it was a struggle.

Norn nodded to the book in Will’s hands with a gleam in her three eyes. “You see,” she intoned. “It is fixed. It is not different.”

She was right. The future had come to pass. And Will couldn’t do a thing about it. He let his shoulders sag with a huff of resignation.

“As you say. As you both say. Welcome to the free world, Norn.”

The giant laughed, and Will’s lips crept into a matching grin of their own volition. Beside the huge woman, Hope was smiling too.

“We should talk about what we are to do next,” Will said. “Are we to keep her here, or take her back to Sweden? I suppose you have an opinion, Norn. Or rather, you already know what’s going to happen.”

Norn nodded her great head. Her teeth shone in the lamplight. “I live here,” she declared.

“Here in the custodian’s house?” asked Hope, tapping her lip. “I suppose that could work. We would have to call off the maid who comes to clean; imagine her shock! Oh, but we would still need to arrange regular meals for you.”

“Norn, you already know all these answers,” Will said with a laugh. “Enlighten us, please.”

“You lie with me, and I see,” she replied.

“Nice try. Once was eno-…” Will spluttered out a cough to hide the damning words. “Oh my, so much dust.”

But Hope’s eyes were shining. “What was that?”

“So much dust, my lady. We must clean this place if we are to have Norn-…”

“Not that.” She narrowed her eyes. “Will? Did you… pay the price for Norn’s prophecy while I was away?”

His eyes darted about the shadows of the lair. There wasn’t anywhere to hide from Hope’s brilliant gleam, nor Norn’s mischievous mirth.

“I… I believed… that we had to test her claims.”

“My word! Of all the…!” Hope threw up her hands with a great roll of her lovely eyes. “Did you at least enjoy yourself?”

“That really isn’t important.”

“Not you. Norn, darling, how was he?” Hands on hips, Hope glared up at the towering woman. “Was he satisfactory?”

Norn licked her lips. “Will is a canny lover. He is good.”

“I am glad to hear it.” Hope looked down at her feet. She fiddled with a stray curl of her hair with her fingers and, on seeing this, Norn reached out a hand and stroked her golden locks for her. Hope closed her eyes. “Yes, I am actually glad to hear it,” she said. “This makes all things simpler.”

“How do you mean, my lady?” asked Will with anxiety bubbling in his belly.

“If you have lain with her once already, you cannot have complaints about doing so again. And then I can hear my own future and right the imbalance between us. That is fair, is it not?”

“B-B-But surely Norn can only see my future,” Will protested. He placed the ledger back on the shelf and raised his hands in front of him. “I’m the only one that can pay the price, so my future is all she can see!”

“That can be remedied by my hiring your services in a permanent, residential contract after today,” Hope declared. Then she blushed, lighting up like a spark. “If I keep you close… our futures become one and the same. D-Do they not?”

Will stared at Norn. “But my promotion!”

“That is what you asked about?” Hope scoffed. “How unambitious. We can arrange the details of your contract once we have seen it for ourselves, surely. Will!” She drew his eye back to her with a swooping point of her finger. “I order you as your employer. Lie with Norn and acquire for me a prophecy. And for her sake, make sure she enjoys herself!”

Hope’s burning eyes, Norn’s eager grin. And Will’s own curiosity for a future spent together with the two of them. When Norn began idly tracing a fingertip along the soft skin of Hope’s neck, eliciting a flutter of the lady’s eyelids, the last of his resolve fell away.

“V-Very well, my lady,” he said. “Norn, if you would have me… how are we to do this?”

They arranged themselves on the Persian rug. Will lay himself down with his trousers and jacket cast aside, and Norn straddled him with her tree-trunk thighs. Her bush of pubic hair rubbed against the cloth of his underwear, but her weight was gentle. She wasn’t laying fully on top of him, and Will was grateful. He didn’t care what state the future looked like if he was only to see it with a smashed pelvis.

Norn smiled down at him, cupping his cheek with one great hand and then running her fingers through his hair. Her triad eyes sparkled. “I prefer like this,” she whispered.

Will smiled back and rested a hand on her arm. He traced the line of her sleeve tattoo with his fingertips. His other hand found its way to her thigh, where the leather of his glove and the wood of his fingers met the unrelenting firm of dense muscle. So solid, so reliable. Losing himself in her would not be so bad.

But with a flick of his eyes, Will acknowledged their audience. Hope was seated at the table with one leg crossed over her other under her skirt. She was tapping her nails on the tabletop, and her raised foot was bobbing in impatient rhythm.

“Must you regard us so closely, my lady?” Will asked.

“I must be close to provide my questions,” she replied.

“But perhaps you could… look away? There is no need to stare, surely.”

“As a fellow woman, I must ensure that dear Norn is treated well. And I must also ensure,” she added, colouring at her cheeks, “that she does not annihilate you with her lovemaking. Sex is oft akin to violence… I-I am told. I do not believe our existing work contract refers to this manner of injury sustained on the job, but still. You are welcome.”

She glared down at him, and he stared back, transfixed by the firelight hazel of her eyes. Here was another reliable soul in whom he could take comfort.

“Yes, my lady,” he sighed. Then he looked away, and he tucked his hands into his shorts.

“Oh…!”

The gasp of Hope was sweet and flattering as he removed his erection from containment. Will’s cock was a rigid pole sticking straight up. Norn’s hair tickled his sensitive flesh. Then her fingertip joined it, running from base to head with a sultry crawl of contact.

“Good,” she growled. Her sharp teeth did not intimidate him the way they had done earlier. Not now that Will knew her mouth to be so sweet. “You are… good.”

With a creak of her ancient bones, Norn raised herself up. Will grabbed his rod with a thumb and forefinger and held it steady as his partner rolled her hips forward and brushed him with the secret slit of her sex. She was wet indeed, and her lips engulfed him at once, painting his erection with slick fluid. Will could acutely feel the contours of her hidden flesh as he slid across her, and it felt magnificent.

“Nnngh.” Norn’s snarl was the growl of a caged beast aching to be freed. She planted one hand beside his head for balance, and Will wondered at how the stone beneath the rug didn’t crack under her weight. Then, her huge body stable over his smaller frame, Norn lowered herself onto his cock. “Ahh!”

Will hissed through his teeth as he penetrated Norn. Naturally, he had been expecting her sex to be wide and loose to match her stature. A big keyhole for a small key. But in fact, she held his cock tight. Will slipped inside right up to the hilt, and he marvelled at the primordial warmth that suffused him.

Norn got underway. Her shadow engulfed Will over and over as she rode his body with gentle rolls of her bounteous hips. Her vagina accommodated him time after time, and the press of her crotch against his was the tender kiss of a lover.

When Will’s finger and thumb tightened on the fat of her thigh, he could feel the giant’s raw strength untapped beneath the surface. He could see the glint of her sharp fangs when she moaned her ecstasy, pearlescent in the failing sunlight coming down the stairs. She could devour him, could destroy him. She chose not to. She chose to be soft. And Will laughed as Norn’s restraint aroused him.

“Oh, Norn!” he groaned. “You needn’t be quite so gentle! I can take it.”

“Y-Yes, do not go easy on him, for your sake,” agreed Hope from her seat. She sounded out of breath.

Norn’s three eyes stared down at him. Her full lips twisted.

“Come, now!” Will insisted. He braced himself with a tight grip on her body, then thrust his cock up and into her with force. Norn’s lips parted with a grunt of pleasure. “Come, Norn! Have your way with me!”

Will began to pummel his lover with quick, sharp, upward humps of his hips. The motion strained his muscles, but it was worth it. And she could take it. Norn was large enough and grand enough to take anything Will George could offer.

Norn leaned her body back and sat upright on Will’s cock. Her hand trailed down his chest, then ran up her own body. She teased her nipples with her fingertips and brushed her long, black hair over her shoulder.

“Yes,” she growled. “I see.”

Norn bounced. It was enough to wind Will and force him back down onto the rug, but he laughed as the giant gorged on him. She slapped her body onto his cock again, and again and again. In time, she was rutting. Norn bared her teeth and snarled with bestial hunger as she took him with vigour. As her wet vagina devoured him between tight lips.

Will’s hips protested this rough treatment, but it was easy to ignore their pleas amidst the storm of lightning pleasure filling his blood and singing in his brain. He let himself drown in the heat of Norn’s ancient body. He let his eyes travel the paths of her thick tattoos. Were they shifting on her skin, or was that just a trick of his mad mind? He could not tell.

Norn, eternal and incredible. Lovely; he dared to think it now. Her body was lovely. She was lovely. Will reached up to try and cup her bouncing breasts, but he couldn’t reach. Norn grabbed his hands and squeezed him instead. Norn’s grip was tight around his maimed right hand, but she already knew not to crush the prostheses. She knew he was disfigured without having to see the long scar on his hand and forearm under his shirtsleeve, without him having to say anything at all! And still, she desired him! It was well indeed.

And in the resolute, unending rhythm of their lovemaking, Will’s mind began to drift. Norn’s tattoos guided his mortal senses away from the physical realm, where he was weak meat and soft muscle, into the unknowable and the arcane. As she consumed him with her titanic body, Will touched at the heart of her with his rod. He embraced the world beyond his own, the world of Norn and creatures like her. Where time was a fixed constant and everything fit together. Even a chartered accountant from London and a heaving, primal ogre of a woman. Everything was steady, reliable and unending.

They rolled and rocked together in the unreality of their mixed existence. Gasping and grunting, heaving and thrusting. Will basked in it. Her heat, radiating from her. Her breath, bathing him in her lifeforce. Her voice, deep and rumbling like the magma of the planet. How uncanny that her voice accompanied his own flimsy cries so well.

And another voice joined them in concert, the shy, breathy sighs of the lovely Lady Hope.

“H-How is it?” she sang, seated out of sight. “How does it feel? Is… Is it good?”

Will grinned, and his giant lover grinned right back through the fervour of her lust. “Which of us are you… t-talking to?” he grunted.

“You, of course!” Hope said. “I only have to look at Norn to see that she’s… That she’s… O-Oh my!”

“Are you well, my lady?” Will wriggled on his shoulders so he could catch a glimpse of her. And his roaring heart shuddered at what he saw.

Hope was sitting on her chair with legs apart and dress balled up in her lap, and she was touching herself. Her slender fingers vanished between her creamy thighs, up the leg of her puffy underwear, and her arm juddered with frantic motion. Just like Norn, her jaw was set with effort, and her eyes were sparkling with faraway, primitive exaltation. She glowered down at him.

“I-Is something the matter, Will?”

“Um,” said Will. “No, my lady.”

“Because you ought to be thanking me!” she said with a lusty groan and a manic grin between flushed cheeks. She never let up her stroking. “You ought to be grateful that I am debasing myself just as you are. I wouldn’t dream of leaving you to make a fool of yourself alone. Not a f-f-friend like you!”

“My lady is too kind,” Will groaned between gritted teeth.

Her beaming smile, beaded with sweat, was beautiful.

“And to answer your question…” He turned his eyes back on the bucking Norn. “…she feels spectacular.”

“Yes?”

“I shall… r-reach my limit… soon!”

“Good,” Hope moaned. “Oh, good! Will! So good!”

“Would my lady like to join?”

She stared, and Norn’s rolling hips slowed atop him as the giant watched their interplay with fond, familiar interest.

“My manhood is presently occupied,” Will said, “but I have other ways of supporting you. My mouth, for example?”

Hope’s body shuddered from her shoulders down to her twitching fingers. “Are you…? Are you serious?”

“My lady, I would welcome it. I would welcome your inclusion in our iniquity.”

Sitting atop his erection, Norn hummed her approval. “It is good,” she said. “Hope is… very good.”

Face red as beetroot, a charming contrast to the wheat-yellow of her hair and clothing, Hope rose from her chair and stepped towards the couple. She laughed nervously as she prepared herself, following Will’s instructions and ridding herself of her underwear. She held up the hem of her dress and knelt over his head on the rug. Her knees settled between Norn’s. She shuffled forward, and Will was engulfed beneath her.

“That’s it,” he breathed as the scent of her body overwhelmed him. “That’s it, my lady.”

She was pink and wet beneath her slip, her hair auburn and tangled. Will ran his eyes over the subtle mound of her clitoris, the swell of her lips and the glistening of her opening.

“Hope.”

Will paused with his tongue outstretched.

“Please, this ‘my lady’ nonsense does not suit our new intimacy,” she whispered over him.

“As you wish,” said Will with a foolish grin. “Hope. Now, come here.”

He raised both hands and gripped her slim waist, causing her to yelp. Then he tugged her down onto his mouth. His tongue ran the length of her and tasted her. Hope’s light body shivered around his face, and at the bottom of his vision, Will saw her hands holding tight to Norn’s hips for balance.

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “Oh, Will!”

“Good…!” With a heave of motion, Norn began again, pumping her vagina on his cock. Though mostly obscured by Hope’s sex and the fabric of her dress, Will felt the giant’s centre of gravity shift as she took Hope in an intimate embrace. He imagined the pair coming together, hugging like lovers, and it made him smile against Hope’s slick skin. Norn’s breasts would be bouncing in Hope’s face, and Hope’s arms would be struggling to hold to the fullness of Norn’s flesh.

It was a charming image, and Will’s cock shuddered with unspent tension as he gave himself away to the coupling women. He humped and lapped, kissed and thrust. He revelled in the rubbing of Hope on his lips, the pounding of Norn on his cock. His own pleasure was a bridge between them. He bound them together into a triangle of lewd motion. How sweet it would be if they sealed their strange, new alliance with a grand, orchestral shared climax!

That was unlikely, as orgasm was fast approaching him. Will could feel the pressure rising in his belly like a thundercloud. With Norn’s sensational pleasuring of his cock and Hope’s heart-wrenching cries of joy shaking his body from top to toe, he wouldn’t last a minute more.

“Mmm!” he grunted against Hope’s vagina. “Mm-mm-mm!”

Will rocked his pelvis against Norn and rubbed his tongue on Hope’s clitoris. His body ached with the effort and the friction, but he pushed it as hard as he could. Hope’s bare legs twitched and shivered around his ears, and Norn’s rhythmic pounding became disjointed. If he could just keep this up for a little longer…

An unearthly bellow filled the chamber. Norn squeezed Hope tight, then sat herself fully on Will’s cock. He could feel her throbbing around his flesh. He could hear the organic mumble of her cries as she kissed Hope on the mouth and roared down her throat. His bones shook with Norn’s shout of release, and his ears rang.

Eager to capitalise on the momentum, Will took Hope’s waist in both hands and sucked on her clitoris. His partner’s moans were muted by Norn’s lips on hers, but Will could taste her climax on his tongue, salty and organic. Will lathered Hope in his saliva with a deep, frantic kiss of his own, and he was rewarded by another shout of orgasm, light and musical like birdsong. Hope squashed his head beneath her body as she rode the waves of pleasure.

And at last, he could let go. Will gasped into Hope’s slit and unloaded his cock into Norn’s. A shot of semen, less than the one he had deposited in Norn’s mouth but still substantial, mixed with the thick fluid of the giant’s vagina. After the adventure of the day and the savage exercise of their ménage à trois, it was a relief.

“Yes!” he groaned as the poured himself into Norn. “Yes…! Yes…”

And then, above the ringing of his ears and the singing of his blood, a resonant demand. “Ask.”

“O-Oh, of course!” Hope was gasping for breath, chuckling and wiping her lips on her sleeve as she responded to the call of the cosmos. “Of course. In all the excitement, I had almost… Norn, here is my question.”

Will pricked his ears beneath his employer. What would she ask about? Her estate’s wealth? A profitable investment? Hope was silent above him, wriggling her slit back and forth along his lips as she considered.

Will spluttered as the young woman planted herself on his mouth again, then tightened her knees around his ears. Deafened and blinded, Will slapped his hands on her bare legs for attention, but she ignored him.

As Will struggled under Hope’s lascivious pin, he heard her voice. Not her words, muted by her body as they were. But the meaningless rumble of her request filled his ears. Coupled with the fluid in his mouth and nostrils, he felt like he was underwater.

Norn’s cosmic reply was equally distorted. Her flesh shivered around his cock as her voice was coopted by the universe, but no words reached him. Will writhed in vain to try and free himself. Her proclamation was miraculous, and he was missing it!

Back and forth the two women spoke, and Will saw stars. Hope connected with reality for what felt like an age. Until finally, with a wriggle of her slender body, she pulled free of him and let him breathe. Will gasped for air in the dark of the chamber as Hope stood up and dusted down her clothing.

“I am sorry, Will. Did I hurt you?”

Wiping his face clean, Will sat up. “N-Not to worry, my l-… Hope,” he croaked. “Wh-… What did you ask?”

Hope remained standing. She put a tight hold on Norn’s shoulder for balance, and she did not turn his way.

He tried again. “What did you ask about the future?”

She spun with a flutter of her skirt and a hand in her hair. Her cheeks were bright with blush. “You will see,” she said with a brilliant smile.

“Is that fair?” he asked, then turned to Norn, still sitting astride his naked crotch. “Won’t you tell me?”

Norn shook her head. She was also grinning, sharing Hope’s mischief. She nestled her head against her lady lover’s hand. “I don’t see it.”

“You had a prophesy without me,” argued Hope, “and now I’ve had one without you. It’s very fair.”

“Then can I assume that what you asked about doesn’t concern me? Even though it was supposedly my vision?”

Hope tapped her lips with one finger. “You will see.”

She laughed, and Will joined her. It wasn’t as if he could change her future anyway. And if her blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes were any indication, he was going to enjoy finding out her destiny for himself.

Norn’s heaving breasts hung just above his eye level, sat up as he was. Will reached up and cupped one. It was heavy indeed, but he liked the weight of it. Norn pressed her own hand over his to encourage his touch.

“I’ve thought of some more questions for myself,” he told the giant. “Would you indulge me again, my dear? Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Yes.” Norn ruffled his hair with her free hand. “You ask and I see, many times. Many times.”

Hope giggled. “You lech,” she said with a smile.

And for a moment, Will didn’t think on the future and destiny. The present was all he needed.

* * *

“There,” said Hope. “What do you think?”

It was a crisp Hertfordshire morning, and Will felt the chill despite the thickness of his coat. But Norn’s arm through his was warm, so he didn’t mind. Hope, holding to Norn’s other arm, would no doubt mind more. Her green riding frock was a saucy number that exposed quite a bit of collarbone to the open air.

Norn chuckled, and Will’s eye returned to his towering lover. She was lovely today. During the week of labour Will and Hope had spent fixing up the custodian’s house, she had been busy, and her new gown was an impressive accomplishment of tailoring skill. Norn had torn down the heavy curtains barring her from the outside world and fixed them about herself in graceful flows of thick fabric. The thread was her own hair, painstakingly bound into cord, and the resulting dress was heavy over her wide shoulders but left her thick arms bare. It tucked tight under her bust and was pleated around her hips. She had even embroidered the neckline with a black pattern of angular lines. Will hadn’t yet asked whether those were leafless winter trees or some sort of ancient Nordic writing.

She had braided her own hair too. Norn’s locks had been combed and washed into order, then plaited around her crown and intertwined at the back of her head like a coronet. She had pointed ears, he had learned, like a gnome from a children’s story.

With the sky her only ceiling, Norn was standing tall and proud in the copse of trees around the custodian’s abode. She looked magnificent.

Norn’s belly rumbled, and Will and Hope laughed even as the giant flushed red. They had arranged a feast to celebrate her first day outside the confines of the little house. Here in the glade that surrounded the abode, the servants of Skuld Hall had worked hard and filled a long table with meat and protein. A baked ham, a steak and kidney pie and a rack of fried sausage took centre stage, surrounded by eggs both devilled and Scotch, and a pitcher of fresh cream. There was also a spot of salad for Hope and Will.

Naturally, the staff believed this whole carnivorous cavalcade to be for the two colleagues, and what gossip that must have created! The trees around the custodian’s house would shelter them from prying eyes, and the roaring of the River Lea would mask any sounds, but Hope would have to work hard to dispel the stories of indecency and gluttony among the help. If she even wished to.

“Good,” whispered Norn as a passing breeze played with her hair and the hem of her dress.

The giant walked on bare feet to the table. She had one finger in her mouth, and her other hand gingerly touched at each of the dishes in turn. Hope stepped beside Will and put her arm around his waist. He hugged her back about her shoulder, not minding the way his wooden fingers rested upon her skin.

“I do wish we could have surprised you, Norn,” Hope said with a sigh. “After everything you have endured, you deserve a nice surprise.”

“But you already knew what we were planning, didn’t you?” Will said. “There’s no chance of us ever surprising you, is there?”

Norn nodded. “I see. I know, always.”

She turned. Will admired the graceful curve of her spine, the prominence of her musculature. He admired the tears underlining her triad eyes.

“Still, it is fair,” sniffed Norn. “It is a fair sight.”

The wind whistled in the trees, accompanied by the rush of the nearby River Lea. Time flowed inexorably across the grounds of Skuld Hall. But Will, holding fast in his heart to Hope and Norn, did not feel it.

shortstory