Welcome to Layman-upon-Waters. Elliot is the city’s new overseer for the Office of Municipal Integration, and his days are spent encouraging the region’s secretly inhuman denizens out of hiding and into cooperative citizenship.
This is a bonus entry in the Laymen story, taking place after the events of the main ten chapters. The cast are exclusively returning characters from earlier in the story, so you may want to read the rest of Laymen first!
High Sun
The air cooked Elliot’s skin. Blue skies above had been cleared of clouds by the sun’s unrelenting flame, so there was nothing to protect him save his own clothing. He tugged on the short sleeves of his pristine white tunic and tapped the toes of his sandals on the dry grass. He wiped a thin layer of sweat from his brow. Around him, clusters of city folk and Low Towners, dressed in their own matching whites, bustled through preparations for the day ahead. Elliot merely watched. He didn’t know how they were putting up with the heat.
Today was the High Sun festival, just as it had been this time last year and every year before it at the very height of summer. The eventful afternoon, evening and long night was an ancient holdover from Layman’s rustic roots, and Elliot was reliably informed that similar festivities took place all across the continent at around the same time. A celebration of summer’s peak, and an acknowledgement of the surpassing energy offered to the world by forces beyond her mortal residents’ understanding. As the day cooled, people would come out onto the grass to drink, dance, laugh and sing, or take their ease in one of the many tents set up across the field. There would be games, contests, art displays and considerable frivolity. A young couple would be crowned Summre Royaltie on a central stage as a symbol of what the people could achieve together. A busy day. A lovely day.
This year, in a shocking announcement to the city, Castellan Thaddeus had decreed that High Sun would not be taking place on the Equestrian Green, or anywhere else in the city proper. It would be held exclusively in the Low Town. Why split the fun, he had asked the bemused crowds. Why not make this day a shared celebration between all people of Layman, not just those fortunate enough to live inside the walls?
Thaddeus’ advisors had cautioned that this year would thus be a smaller affair than usual. Many citizens would surely baulk at the idea of dirtying their feet on the poorly-maintained Low Town roads. Thaddeus, and Elliot also, thought differently. Elliot suspected there were plenty in the city who’d been waiting for the excuse to give their lowborn neighbours, whose wild songs could be heard across the wall night after night, a bit of a visit.
The yellow-grass field hosting Layman’s grand High Sun was close enough to Elliot’s doorstep that, unbidden by anything save Elliot’s own sense of duty, he had come along while preparations were being made to make himself useful. He was a known quantity, after all. He couldn’t call himself Low Town’s ally without getting his hands dirty.
Still, the heat was savage, and he didn’t really know what was needed from him. Elliot’s customary white clothing was airy and thin, but it was already tinged with his sweat at the edges. He’d hate for it to turn see-through before the festival had even started. At least work would distract him from the heat, especially if it was in the shade of one of those tents. Maybe he could even earn enough favour to get a drink ahead of the crowds.
Plenty around the field were offering Elliot little waves and nods, but none called him over to take part. Their technical work wouldn’t benefit from the hands of an amateur. If Elliot was going to be of use, he’d have to search for a task more befitting his skillset. Sucking in a hot breath, Elliot picked a direction at random and marched off in search of a familiar face.
* * *
An explosion rang out in the air above the southern edge of the Low Town field. A cow mooed in fright, and chattering laughter across the green echoed the same surprise. Elliot picked his way between white tents and groups of labourers, intrigued to see the source of the commotion.
“See? We don’t even need that much thrust,” came a familiar voice from behind a tall line of cautionary white curtains, assembled like a fence around the farthest corner of the field. A parchment pinned to the closest fabric read ‘DANGER DO NOT CROSS’. “Let’s shrink the circumference and try again. Maybe a couple fewer loops?”
Undeterred, Elliot snuck his way past the barrier and into the open space beyond. As he did, he heard a second voice, equally familiar but too shyly quiet for him to pick up the words. He stuck his hands into his trouser pockets and slid a smirk onto his lips, striding boldly towards the two figures knelt in the grass.
“How’d I know it would be you?” he called in greeting. “Whenever there’s a commotion in a public space, it’s always you.”
The two women turned as one to regard him. If not for the matching white of their clothing, there was almost nothing alike about them. One had rich brown skin that suited the summer heat, curls of black hair down to her shoulders and a proud, impish grin. Cassia’s sleeveless tunic skirt was short enough to be indecent, but she had a pair of white tights beneath, cutting off at the calf to leave her feet free for her sandals.
Beside her, Cynthia was cream and blonde, decorated with red blush and brown freckles and with her usual ponytail laced in a fetching white ribbon. Her gloves were thin and white today, rather than the usual black. Her own white dress was long and flowing, but any chastity in the design was undermined by the garment’s stitchwork framing her incredible bust. The sun had begun to burn her chest red where it wasn’t covered by fabric, drawing the eye all the more to her decolletage. She slapped a hand over her mouth in surprise on seeing Elliot, and even this motion made her chest bounce.
“You gonna ask me if we have a license for these explosives, Elliot?” Cassia asked through a teasing laugh. “Well, you tyrant, we actually do. Permission from the castellan himself, don’t you know?”
“H-Hello, Elliot!” squeaked a red-faced Cynthia. “H-High Sun’s blessings upon you!”
Elliot came to a halt, smiling down at the pair. “And on you both. You’re telling me the cacophony I just heard was intentional? What exactly is all this?”
“Poor provincial serf,” said Cassia, shaking her head. “Never heard of fireworks? They’re all the rage up north.”
Elliot regarded their setup. Cassia and Cynthia were arranged before a set of stone slabs worked into the dry soil, freshly laid based on the displanted grass scattered to the side. The slab directly before Cassia was burnt black with char, and beside it sat a full pair of hefty inkwells and a bound stack of painter’s brushes. Further from the site was a tower of wooden boxes, and approaching this to peek inside, Elliot spotted row upon row of metal cylinder within, each as long as his arm and topped with a sharp point. They smelled strongly of fire, and his animal brain urged him to step away.
“It’s perfectly safe!” Cynthia insisted. The animated bob of her head caused her ponytail to dance. “The design of the tubes focusses the blast from the black powder downwards. Until we supply the charge, there’s no risk of an unintended explosion.”
“A charge?” asked Elliot, eyeing the black-stained stone. “You mean, an open flame?”
“Open flames are for peasants,” Cassia laughed. “A little spellcraft ensures a proper detonation, and it changes the colour of the resulting explosion too. It’s very impressive, mark my words, especially at night.”
“I-It’s also safer than using a mundane flame,” said Cynthia. “You should look forward to the display later tonight, Elliot.”
“I hadn’t imagined you could use magic like this,” said Elliot. “I also imagine that I won’t be of much help to you.”
“You want to help?” asked Cassia.
“The office isn’t doing anything special for High Sun, so I have the morning to myself. I suppose I could fetch you drinks? Working near fire like this, you must get thirsty.”
His eye moved unbidden across the sweaty brows of the two women, then followed the lines of sweat down their necks. When Cassia put a finger into the hem of her dress and tugged to give herself a little airflow, Elliot swallowed, noticing only belatedly that the witch was casting him a knowing grin.
“I see I’m not the only thirsty one,” she purred.
Cynthia, still awash in blush, giggled with resonant mirth. “Elliot, you never change, do you?”
“Wait, you know this horn-dog, Cynth?”
The blonde girl started. “O-Oh, yes. We have… c-collaborated in the past.” Cynthia put her full attention on the hem of her skirt around her ankles. “He did mention at the time that he had worked with a witch before. I did not guess that would be you, Cassia.”
Cassia chuckled. “Yeah, we’re very familiar. You could even call this boy my apprentice. He lacks our arcane background, but he’s… shall we say eager to learn about the magical arts.”
“Y-Yes,” Cynthia whispered. She was smiling. “That’s my experience also.”
Elliot felt naked beneath the pair’s conversation, one that left him no room to manoeuvre. Clearing his throat, he said, “So, a drink?”
“Actually, this is a good opportunity,” said Cassia, turning on her seat in the grass to include him. “Cynth, you know how we were comparing circle syntax earlier? Why don’t we use Elliot to test our approaches? Unify our methodology before the big display?”
Cynthia blinked. “Test? What do you mean?”
“I mean, we each draw up a practice sigil and launch a firework, and Elliot can tell us which is more impressive. Then we use that witch’s syntax as our shared basis for drawing all the others.”
“Oh,” said Cynthia, “that sounds like a competition. I wouldn’t want to compete with you.”
Cassia’s brown eyes narrowed, her feline smile growing. “Because you know your mum’s dusty library learning will lose to my superior hedge wisdom.”
“N-No! B-Because we work so well together already!”
“We’ll work together better when we know whose circles are more suited to launching fireworks. C’mon, Cynth! It’ll be fun!”
Cynthia was pouting. She twirled a strand of blonde around one finger and looked up at Elliot through her lashes. “Do you mind adjudicating, Elliot?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know much about magic.”
“You don’t have to rate the magic, dummy,” laughed Cassia, “just the bang at the end. You can evaluate a good bang, can’t you?”
“Yes,” agreed Cynthia, “tell us which is the better cast, please.”
Their fierce eyes upon him rivalled the heat of the high sun. Lightning sparked between the two spellcasters, enough to raise the hairs on Elliot’s neck. Licking his lips, he nodded, still uncertain but unwilling to simply leave them to it. He settled himself into the grass as the two witches wriggled over to adjoining launch-stones and prepared their ink and brushes.
“Good luck,” sang Cassia.
Cynthia nodded, but she said nothing. The intense light in her eyes suggested she was already in the zone.
For a time, Elliot could only watch in silence. Arcane sigils were precise tools, or so Cassia had told him. A single curl out of place could alter the meaning of the whole structure. Still, Cassia hummed a jaunty tune as she worked, and her lips were decorated with a lovely smile.
Beside her, Cynthia’s eyes were narrow. She held her brush in the tight grip of one hand, her wrist in the other. Time and again she would retrieve a black-stained handkerchief from her bodice and wipe away some of her work, then draw that segment again.
It was a mesmerising sight, the two women fully in their elements. For all Cassia had besmirched her rival’s opposing foundational methodology, or whatever, Elliot couldn’t tell much difference between the two circles. Cynthia’s was a touch sharper, perhaps, the lines longer and less likely to bend. Cassia’s had a poetic flow that bound the whole structure together into a… narrative, was the word he chose in the end. But that could have been a trick of his imagination, or an error born of the sweat that kept dripping into his eye. Sitting back on his hands, Elliot watched, content in idleness until the pair were finished.
Eventually, Cassia stopped humming. Her circle was almost complete, and she cast a curious glance over at her partner’s. A glance that tightened into a frown.
“Is that… Ruchman’s Hemispheric Interlay?” she asked.
“Hm?” Cynthia looked up with a blink, emerging from her reverie. “Ruchman’s, that’s right.”
“And you’ve focussed it with a triple helix?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that going to be too much charge?” Cassia tipped her head to one side, tapping her chin with one finger. “You’ll burn yourself out if you supply that much.”
“With… one of these?” Cynthia matched her partner’s perplexed frown. “Just one tri-helix interlay? I don’t think so.”
“You’ve done a circle like this before?”
“Yes, I do it all the time.” Cynthia shot a tiny glance at Elliot over her shoulder. “It… works well for me.”
“Gods above.” Cassia folded her arms. Her paintbrush cast a slender black mark along her upper arm, but she didn’t notice. “You have that much of an anima reserve? I couldn’t muster more than one helix myself without passing out. That’s why I’m sticking to what my master called a Seratorian Twister.”
Cynthia giggled. “I was taught that as the Aleman Non-linear Framework. It is a suitably rigid pattern; I am sure it will work well for you.”
“Uh-huh. We can’t all be lucky enough to have your big, fat… reserves of arcane energy.”
Cynthia’s cheeks lit up. She covered her chest with one arm, then turned back to her work. Cassia chuckled. But without her rival’s attention, the smile soon faltered. Her eyes moved back and forth between her circle and Cynthia’s. She chewed her lip. Doubt didn’t suit her, in Elliot’s opinion.
Cassia turned in the grass and met his eyes. She gazed thoughtfully at him.
“What?” he asked. “I can’t help with this. I don’t know much about circles.”
“Hmm, maybe not. But I wonder…” Cassia’s lips slowly turned upwards. “I wonder if you can’t help me with a little… thrust instead. To make up the difference with my well-endowed colleague.”
Giggling to herself, Cassia opened up her right palm and began to draw more of her circle’s swooping curls on her own skin. Then she made some matching marks on the circle itself. Cynthia looked up to give the witch a suspicious frown, then went back to work.
“There.” Cassia hopped up onto her feet and retrieved one of the metalwork rockets from their storage. She balanced it in the centre of her completed circle. Next, she walked towards him, hands folded behind her back and gait circular and playful.
“Elliot?” she said, coming to a kneel right in front of him. “Feel like lending me a hand?”
“A hand? With what?” he asked. He tasted Cassia’s breath on his lips.
“Making up the difference,” the witch repeated in a honeyed whisper. “Lending me some power.” She lay her non-inked hand on his shoulder and leaned slowly towards him. “I think you’ll enjoy it, just like last time. Here…”
Cassia pressed her lips to his. She tasted of sweat, and her skin was hot. It was very pleasant. Elliot received her kiss, eyelids fluttering. When she pushed herself more forcefully against him, he held her bare forearm to steady her. Cassia moaned into his mouth. And lower down, her ink-marked hand stroked teasingly against his crotch.
“Elliot…” Cassia murmured, squeezing and kneading his mounting erection. “Fuck…”
“E-Excuse me, what are you doing?” Cynthia was staring, her work forgotten. Her wide eyes drank up the pair of lovers.
“Never you mind,” Cassia said. She wriggled her hand into Elliot’s trousers and freed him.
Elliot hissed out a gasp. Her hand was a tight vice around the base of his cock. He relinquished the kiss for a moment to turn about and reexamine their surroundings. If someone saw them… But the safety barrier was tall enough to exclude the other festival workers, if not the muffled sounds of their chatter.
Cassia put a finger on Elliot’s chin and dragged his face back to hers. She devoured his lips with a new kiss, and Elliot couldn’t find the strength to fight. Her rub on his cock was… intoxicating.
“W-Wait a moment!” Cynthia’s blue eyes fixed onto Cassia’s circle, and she gasped. “That’s… That’s a ritual flourish! Did you draw one on you hand as well?”
“Mm-hmm,” said Cassia, deep in Elliot’s mouth.
“You’re going to use Elliot’s anima to fuel your circle!”
“Mmm.” The witch pulled her lips from his. “So?”
“So?” the blonde squeaked. “That’s…! That’s cheating! You can’t have him help you!”
“I don’t remember that rule.”
“But if you win, that means we have to use your flourish for the display! That means we’d have to… to use Elliot tonight as well!”
Cassia chuckled. She squeezed Elliot’s cock and affixed him with her shining eyes. Her smile was wet with his saliva.
“I’m sure he’ll help us then too,” she purred. “He’s a good boy. Aren’t you, Elliot? Aren’t you a good boy, helping me make a little magic?”
Cassia, hot and potent. She dominated his vision. Her touch on his rod took control of his mind.
“Yes,” he muttered. “I’m… a good boy.”
Cassia grinned in triumph. “Aren’t you just.” Then she bent herself fully into the grass and put her lips around his cock.
Elliot tipped his head back, assailed by a wave of pleasure. Cassia’s mouth was a slick nest for his throbbing cock. She milked the tension out of him. Her black locks tickled the exposed skin of his stomach. Unbidden, he rolled his hips against the rhythmic suck of Cassia’s lips.
“Oh… yes!” he moaned. “Yes…”
Opening his eyes, he caught sight of a flare of pink light around Cassia’s sigil on her stone slab. The little missile atop it wobbled. When he came, it would fly. It would explode, just as he would. What a fun way to make magic.
“R-Right!” Cynthia was pouting openly. Her cheeks were fat with air, and her blue eyes crackled with lightning. “Right, then! If that is the way we are going to play this…”
She ran her eyes over Cassia’s work, then bent forward to make some changes to her own. The care and precision of before was gone. This time, she attacked the stone with passionate swishes of ink. Her blonde locks flew. Then she turned about in the grass to face him.
“Elliot!” she said. “Behold! I know how much you like to see… these!”
Face red as a burning sunset, Cynthia took the shoulders of her white dress and peeled them down her arms. She tugged, and her breasts bounced free of her clothing. She sat up straight, pushing out her soft chest with forced pride.
“Do you remember how they feel?” the spirit medium crowed. “Do you r-remember how their touch made you feel so very good? Elliot, aren’t they just… s-so very appealing?”
He stared, jaw open and eyes wide. She wasn’t wrong. Cynthia’s breasts were a gift from the Almighty Herself. Her pert nipples, her brown areolas. Works of art. And Elliot had touched them, sampled them. He’d shot his load into Cynthia with his hands upon them. A precious memory, one he lived out again in his mind, even as a different girl pleasured him with her mouth. To Elliot, Cassia’s lips were Cynthia’s pussy. His thrusts penetrated her instead. And seeing his lopsided fascination, Cynthia beamed out a manic smile.
“Good!” she sighed. “See me, Elliot! Remember me!”
A pop of air and a chill on his cock preceded Cassia’s voice at his crotch. “Hold on, what’s happening?”
“Nothing,” giggled Cynthia. She bounced on her knees, making her chest jiggle. “Keep cheating, Cassia. Don’t mind me.”
Cassia huffed, casting hot air over Elliot’s wet cock. She rolled onto one shoulder, braced herself on Elliot’s lap and glowered at the semi-nude blonde. Then she snarled.
“You didn’t!”
“Didn’t what?”
“Incorporate a meta-flourish into your circle, you fat-chested minx!” Cassia growled. “You’re going to steal my boy’s anima when I make him blow!”
Cynthia shrugged, and even this made her breasts dance. Elliot let out a shiver of pleasure.
“Only if he is thinking of me when he achieves climax,” Cynthia said. “Only if my circle can steal his emission through his fascination. You can still have him if he’s thinking of you. Of course,” she continued, gifting Elliot a sharp smile, “by the looks of him, he is already quite enamoured with me.”
Cassia turned her burning eyes up on him. She squeezed his cock with her inky hand.
“Elliot,” she hissed, “don’t let this bounteous temptress affect you. I’m the one who’ll make you come.”
The witch hurriedly scrambled into a kneel, then advanced, mounting Elliot’s lap with her knees around his waist. His cockhead pushed against the white of her tights between her thighs. Cassia put one hand in his hair, brushing his cheek with her lips, while her other invaded her own skirt and began to rub him vigorously.
“I’m going to make you come,” she moaned against his skin. “Just like I’ve done so many times before. Mmm, Elliot! Don’t I feel so very good on top of you?”
She writhed in his lap. Elliot’s lips found their way to her shoulder, and he tasted the sweat on her rich skin. He braced the woman with his hands on her hips. He encouraged her to haste with tugs and thrusts, loving the pressure of her clothing against his erection. He fancied he could feel her wetness through the cotton.
“No, no!” sang Cynthia, wriggling forwards on her knees. “Elliot, look at me! Remember me!”
The medium grabbed her own breasts with both hands and squeezed them. She pinched her nipples and sighed out vulnerable sighs of pleasure.
“Look at me…!” she said.
“No, look at me!” said Cassia, putting her tongue in his ear.
“Elliot!” Cynthia pushed up alongside Cassia and tore one of Elliot’s hands from her waist. She planted his palm on her breast.
“Elliot!” Cassia rubbed his cock with wild abandon. She tugged his hair and bit his neck. “Mmph! Elliot!”
“Elliot!”
“Elliot, come for me!”
“No, come for me!”
“Elliot!”
It was all too much. Elliot gripped Cassia’s slender waist tight, squeezed Cynthia’s grand bust in his hand, and he came. His thick load soaked Cassia’s tights and dribbled between her fingers. Stars sparkled at the edges of his vision.
And then again, against a cloudless sky! Elliot toppled back into the grass with Cassia’s weight on his hips, Cynthia’s on his arm. He stared up at twin detonations making pink patterns against the blue, a perfectly identical pair of flame-wrought flowers. He felt the rumble of the explosion deep in his belly. In the distance, the delighted applause of the festival labourers. Unwarranted pride flared in his racing heart.
“Phew!” Cassia giggled. She rolled to one side and lay in the crook of Elliot’s arm, her head on his shoulder and her eyes on the sky. “Well done, my good boy.”
“Yes, well done,” sighed Cynthia, lying on his other side. Her bare chest pushed against his stomach. “A successful test, though I suppose this result means we have tied in your affections.”
“I… could never choose just one of you,” panted Elliot.
“That is what they say around town, isn’t it?”
“You horn-dog,” sighed Cassia, hugging him tight. “So, come back tonight and help us set off the others?”
He held the two witches in his arms. “I wouldn’t dream of missing it. Can I do anything else to help in the meantime?”
“You look dazed,” said Cynthia, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Go and refresh yourself, Elliot. We shall need your stamina in great reserves tonight.”
“Yeah, don’t plough any other girls until we get a chance to use you,” Cassia laughed. “Can you manage that?”
Elliot smirked. As if something like this could happen twice in one day.
* * *
“Elliot!” The cry was flimsy and discordant, decorated with a merry chuckle. “Oh, I want to see Elliot!”
He came to a halt in the centre of a cluster of tents near the north edge of the field. Could there be another Elliot in the Low Town today? Unlikely. And the voice was a familiar one. Wearing his curiosity as a smirk upon his lips, Elliot bent and pushed through the flap of the sizable tent hosting the voice, its entrance decorated with bright red streamers. Inside, the air was humid and scented powerfully with tangy fruit.
“Someone called?” he said.
“Oh, shit!” came a different voice. “I didn’t think that would work!”
Roan laughed. The centaur archer was knelt in the grass beside one of several round wooden tables, the kind employed by cafés out on the Castle Road. Her red braid was wrapped in white ribbon behind her long fuzzy ears, and her muscular torso sported a loose white camisole that blustered around her chest as she moved. She was fanning her hands over a second centaur, the black beauty Pippa, who was also on the grass with her arms resting on one of the stools set up around the table. Pippa’s mahogany skin was flushed red, her black eyes sparkling with dreamy humour. Her sleek black hair was loose around her ears, the waves interspersed with some of Roan’s ribbon, and she had wrapped a white cloth about her rounded body like a toga.
“Elliot!” the prone swordswoman sang. She reached for him with one hand and almost slipped from her seat in the grass. “You came for me! My hero!”
Standing over the pair, Elliot put his hands on his hips. “Are you alright?”
“I’m so very well, Elliot, my darling!”
“She’s drunk,” Roan amended.
“Drunk? This early in the day?” Elliot shook his head in mock disapproval. “High Sun hasn’t even started yet, you know?”
“Mmmm, but the drink was so tasty!” Pippa’s eyelids fluttered. “Pear cider, fresh from the vats! I’ve not tasted its like since I was a foal!”
Elliot cast his eye over the women’s table. Indeed, there was a cloyingly scented bottle lying empty on the wood. The homemade wax seal and lack of labelling suggested it was a homebrew. It would have to have been strong indeed to knock down a horse like Pippa.
“I’m sorry to say, there may have been a quality control issue at play,” came a third voice on the other side of the tent.
Melyssa looked radiant today. Her white dress was long and flowing like a wedding gown, tied with bows over her cream shoulders. Her blonde hair was loose, and her makeup was rosy on her cheeks and over her eyes. As was usual for the bartender, her breasts looked ready to fall out of her swooping neckline. She grinned bashfully.
“Lantern and I did test this batch before bringing it to the festival grounds,” she explained, stepping from around a makeshift bar, covered in sealed bottles of spirit ready for sale. “The one I offered to these two seems to have been mixed incorrectly. It was… much stronger than intended.”
“So yummy!” giggled Pippa.
“Is she going to be alright?” Elliot asked.
Roan stroked her partner’s hair, earning her an affectionate nuzzle. “She’ll probably sleep away half the fun of the fair, but sure. I’ve seen her hit harder by booze. If she’s still laughing, that’s a good sign.”
It had been half a year since Elliot had last spent time with the royal guard of the Grande Steppe, and it would have been easy to return to awkwardness. Instead, Elliot felt the mood encircle him like a warm breeze, pulling him into camaraderie with his old friends. The boozy scent probably helped, plus Roan and Pippa’s natural gregariousness.
“I didn’t expect you here today,” he said. “Is Her Grace Rhian also blessing High Sun with her presence?”
“She’ll be here,” said Roan. “After she’s done draining all the vigour out of your dad up in the Castle.”
He grimaced. “Thank you for that.”
“We have so much time on our hands,” Pippa picked up with a gay laugh. “So naturally we followed the scent of drinks! Now, come here!” sang the drunk horse with arms outstretched. “Come here to me, darling!”
Elliot’s uncertain frown earned him a nudge on the arm from Roan, who lifted herself off the grass so he could replace her.
“She’s been ranting about getting to see you again throughout the canter up from the south,” the archer said. “Do me a favour and keep her a little company, get her to shut up about you.”
“Mmm, yes! Shut me up!”
He approached with caution, taking one of Pippa’s hands in his. Elliot was yanked forward into a kneel by the centaur’s side. Pippa wasted no time pulling Elliot into a hug on the grass, cradling him against her mighty bosom and stroking his face. It was very hot in her embrace, but also soft.
“Y-You really missed me?” he croaked from between her tight arms.
“Mmm, so much!” Pippa said. This close, the taste of pear cider on her breath was overpowering. “You are without a doubt my favourite human in all the land! I was so looking forward to seeing you again!”
Over by the bar, Roan and Melyssa were standing together, watching the canoodling pair. Roan’s eyes held a proud gleam, and Melyssa was smirking.
“Elliot,” Pippa whispered directly into his ear, brushing his skin with her potent breath. “I’m so glad you came. I have a… a tickle.”
“A what?”
“A tickle!” She placed one finger over his lips, giggling manically. “Inside me! When last we met, you dealt with it so adeptly. None of Roan’s toys can reach it, so please? Please help me?”
Elliot had seen the arsenal of ‘toys’ the centaurs worked with, and he doubted he had a tool that wouldn’t do what one of Roan’s bulbous wooden shafts could. But another squeeze from Pippa brought his hopeful erection up against her furred flank, and her desirous moan into his ear made the organ throb.
“Please?” she whispered. “Elliot? Won’t you… help me with my problem?”
“Ah, now that’s drunk Pippa,” laughed Roan, watching her partner lick Elliot’s cheek. “She’s further gone than I realised. Elliot, you’d better get to it.”
“G-Get to what?” he grunted.
Roan pursed her lips. “Don’t be coy. Ah, hold up.” She put her eyes on Melyssa. “Is rutting against store policy, sweetheart? I can drag these two somewhere else if so.”
“I suppose since there’s nobody else here yet, I can allow it,” Melyssa said with a wry smile. “Just don’t tell my boss.”
“And you’d be alright with him getting down with my girl here?”
The bartender blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I just figured, since you two are friends,” said Roan with a shrug of her wide shoulders and a glance down Melyssa’s dress. “And knowing young Elliot, I assume you’ve fucked. You might be uncomfortable with him fucking other girls too. And right in front of you, no less.”
“O-Oh, Elliot and I have never…” Melyssa turned red, looking away and touching at her hair. Elliot was fascinated by the usually bold woman’s shyness, but Pippa dragged his face around and nibbled his neck, taking Melyssa out of sight.
“What, never?” Roan’s tone was genuine shock. “A girl like you, and he’s never tried it on?”
“I think… Elliot has been too busy elsewhere for, you know, a mundane girl like me.”
“That’s fucking tragic. Elliot, what are you playing at?”
“Playing with me,” sang Pippa, biting at his lips. She tried to roll her great weight on top of him. “Mmm, Elliot!”
“You need to be more community minded, boy!” Roan sighed. “Save some for sweet girls like this who need a little attention!”
“Attention! Sweet! Oh, yes!”
“P-Please!” he croaked. “Please, I can’t breathe!”
Sweaty and bruised, Elliot crawled out from Pippa’s suffocating embrace and sat back on the grass. He sucked hot air into his lungs and fought with his whirling mind.
“Please,” he repeated to the wide eyes of the three women. “I can only attend to one thing at a time. I’m just one man.”
“Don’t be so negative,” huffed Roan, hands on her hips. “Alright, look. You hurry up and put poor Pippa out of her misery with your dick. And while you do…”
The tall horse turned and brushed her fingertips through Melyssa’s hair. “If you’ll have me, I can apologise to you on selfish Elliot’s behalf. I’ve not attended to a human girl before, but I reckon I can give you a good ride.”
“Oh, goodness!” Melyssa laughed, stroking Roan’s muscular arms as the centaur nuzzled her hair. “What a charming offer! I couldn’t possibly say no.” A red-cheeked smile turned on Elliot. “Provided you don’t mind, since we’re apparently an item?”
“Who the fuck cares what he thinks? Come here.”
Roan bent at the waist and grabbed Melyssa under her bum, then lifted. Melyssa shrieked with laughter, gripping the big woman about the waist with her knees and looping her arms around her shoulders. She grinned down at Roan as she was placed on her own bar, then kissed. Roan kissed her with fierce confidence, and her hands stroked up Melyssa’s legs and into her skirt.
“Ahem, Elliot?”
He dragged his eyes off the couple and put them on Pippa. The dark horse was frowning. She nodded down at her own hind, and her brush-like tail swished aside the loose end of her toga. Beneath, wetness.
“Sorry,” he said, finally finding the boldness to smile. “Let me help you with that.”
Elliot scrambled up onto his knees and approached Pippa’s rear. He furiously tried to recall the logistics of centaur mating from the last time this had happened. It wasn’t so difficult, if he was remembering right. She had a thing, he had a thing… Elliot tugged down his trousers, then manoeuvred himself up against Pippa’s side-leaning rear. Her tail tickled his stomach, and her warm fur nuzzled his cockhead. He wriggled against her, sampling her wetness.
“M-Mmm!” Pippa ran a hand through her own hair. She shut her eyes. “Ahh! Yes!”
She was far gone indeed to respond so loudly to just a poke. Brimming with new confidence, Elliot slithered forward around her folded legs and pushed. He slipped right in.
“Yes!!”
“So loud!” Roan chuckled. She had one hand up Melyssa’s skirt, and the blonde human was rolling her hips against whatever was happening inside. “Pippa, love, have I been neglecting you?”
“A-A human feels d-different!” Pippa moaned. “And different is… goooood!”
“Good…!” came a breathy whisper from Melyssa. She pressed her lips against Roan’s strong shoulder, riding the horse’s fingers.
Elliot shivered out a sigh of his own from deep inside Pippa. Good was right. Very good. Pippa’s pussy was a wet vice, hot and possessive. She sucked on him, drawing him deep into her equine anatomy. So strange, yet so familiar.
“Elliot,” the horse croaked. “I’m… Th-The drink…! I need to feel you strongly so I remember it in the morning! So… please! Be aggressive!”
“As you wish.”
Elliot rose up on his knees and braced himself against Pippa’s back. He held tight to her body. Then he did as he was told. He reared back, then thrust into her, slapping his body against her larger, heavier frame.
“Ooh!” Pippa squeaked. “That’s it!”
He plunged into Pippa again, then again and again. The soft grass made a gentle cushion for his knees, and Pippa’s fine fur protected his hips from bruises. He beat himself vigorously inside her. He squeezed himself into her depths.
“Ooh-oh-oh!” Pippa sang. “Ah-ah… Yes!”
She held tight to her stool with both hands, pushing herself back against his pounding. Pippa’s brow creased with passion. Her full lips parted around her celebrant shouts. A line of drool escaped the corner of her mouth, and she idly wiped it away with the back of one hand. Beneath her toga, her breasts were bouncing.
“Y-Yes!” Elliot grunted as he worked. “Yes, yes!”
Soon enough, he found himself in a rhythm. The tension in his muscles was easily ignored under the enveloping pleasure of his rutting. If he applied just a little extra pressure, Elliot knew he would come right away. Instead, he took his time, massaging Pippa’s insides with thick shunts of his cock.
Elliot glanced over at the bar in a bid to keep from climaxing early. Roan was disengaging from another deep kiss with Melyssa. A line of saliva shone in the lamplight between them. Then the horse planted her hands on the human’s thighs, grinning all the while, and bent her forelegs into a kneel. Melyssa watched on, chewing her lip as Roan pulled up her skirt and entered it. Roan pushed her face between Melyssa’s thighs. The woman tipped back her head.
“O-Oh, Almighty preserve me!” she sighed. “That’s… very good!”
She rocked against Roan’s tonguing, one hand on the bar for balance and the other in her hair. Unlike Pippa, her moans of joy were restrained and delicate. But still entirely captivating, since Elliot had never seen her like this before. He’d seen Melyssa happy, silly, a little tipsy after her shift at the Lantern. She’d danced with him and flirted with him. But as she’d said, they had never leapt into bed together. Elliot didn’t like the implication that he’d neglected her for being human. Melyssa was gorgeous, as well as funny and clever. He would love to show her how he felt with his body. He made up for lost time now by staring openly at her as he rutted into his centaur lover.
“D-Don’t be… rude!” Melyssa wore a tight smile. She peeked at him through one open eye. “Focus on your lady, Elliot. Don’t let me… distract you!”
Even as she said that, Melyssa reached down to the neckline of her dress and popped one breast free, rubbing her nipple with a circle of her fingers. He’d never seen her chest before, or rather, not the whole of it. He’d seen plenty around it. The sight of her bare areola after nearly a full year of friendship sent a shiver of scandalous excitement up his spine. Melyssa stuck her tongue out at him, and he grinned right back.
But she was right. Pippa was the one he was tending to. Pushing up on his knees and looming over the centaur’s rear, Elliot redoubled his efforts. He pounded her with his stiff rod. He let loose, and climax rose to threaten him at once.
“Oh, Pippa!” he grunted. “Fuck! You feel… so good!”
Pippa fluttered one eye open to dazedly regard him down the length of her body. Her waves of onyx hair danced around the tufts of her adorable ears. “R-Really?” she gasped.
“You’re amazing!” said Elliot. “Amazing!”
“Amazing!” Melyssa agreed, gripping Roan’s hair. “So amazing!”
“Elliot!” moaned Pippa. “Y-You are amazing! My sweet, sweet h-human lover!”
“Fancy coming for me?” he asked.
Pippa shivered down her whole body. “O-Oohh! I will!”
“Good!”
“But only if you… c-come as well! Inside me!”
“Mmm!” said Melyssa with a sharp grin. “I’d like to see that too!”
There wasn’t much hope of holding it back now. Blinking sweat from his eye, Elliot nodded. “Ladies first,” he croaked.
He pummelled Pippa with his cock. She tightened around him, just as her voice was tightening in the hot air of the tent. His thrusts shook her all the way up to her soft chest, her red-brown shoulders, the dancing waves of her hair.
“Elliot! Elliot!” she cried. “E-E-Elliottt!”
Pippa bounced her weight back on his cock, hilting him inside her, and came. Fluid pooled around him and dripped into the parched grass. Her shriek shook his eardrums, even his very heart.
And just before he toppled over the edge himself, Elliot recalled that he’d agreed to save himself for Cassia and Cynthia. Oh well. It was much too late to stop now. Elliot heaved into Pippa one last time and unloaded himself into her equine womb. His shout of release was a croaking bellow that tugged at the muscles in his cheeks. He held tight to Pippa for balance.
On cue, Melyssa sang out her own climax from her seat on the bar. Her bared legs tightened around Roan’s fuzzy ears, and her hand clamped over her own exposed breast. She shut her eyes tight, shouting her joy up to the pointed ceiling of the tent. Then, with a great huff, she came down from her high. She laughed.
“What a ride!” she said, wiping her wet brow. “That was incredible.”
Roan emerged from her skirt. Her cheeks were red and damp. “Always a pleasure,” she said with a wink.
“Elliot…”
He turned from the pair and into the searching eyes of Pippa. The horse reached down her long body for him, and he took her hand.
“You have… grown,” Pippa gasped softly. “You have changed since the last time. You are bolder, truer in yourself. I love to see it.”
Elliot smiled, holding her fingers tight. “I’ve learned about who I am,” he said. “You helped me with that, you know. All of you.”
Pippa’s shining eyes mirrored the smile on her full lips. “Beautiful,” she said. Then, dropping her head onto her stool, she promptly fell asleep.
“So cute,” said Melyssa. She planted her hands on Roan’s shoulders. “Now, I’m not one to hold a debt. Miss Roan, what can I do to pay you back for that excellent service?”
Roan bumped her nose against Melyssa’s. “How about another drink? I need to catch up to my partner, don’t I?”
Melyssa laughed. “I can certainly provide that. Elliot? Joining us?”
Elliot slipped his wet cock out of the slumbering centaur. He rose, brushing down the new green stains on his knees and damp patches on his thighs. His thoughts were on Pippa, on what she’d said. He had come a long way since last year. He’d never have believed himself capable of any of this back in the Castle. And yes, that was thanks to Pippa, to Roan, to Melyssa. And many more besides.
“I need to find someone,” he said with a smile. “But I’ll come back later. How could I not?”
The two women waved to him as he left the tent. Melyssa’s fingers made a coy, inviting wiggle, and Roan’s warm eyes held him as he passed out of sight. But in Elliot’s wake, he was forgotten. The sound of giggling, and a horse’s gentle snoring.
* * *
Madam Lantern was humming a tune when Elliot made his way into the flower-adorned central tent, set up behind the grand stage that would host the High Sun ceremonies. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed back here, but nobody had told him he wasn’t, and he dearly wished to talk with the woman inside.
The tent was a wide circle, dwarfing Melyssa’s little bar and rivalling even the two witches’ firework ground. It was warm, stifling so, and Elliot put a finger into the collar of his tunic without meaning to. White pillows decorated the centre of the cloth-floored tent around a varnished support pole. More bedding was stacked around the outside, and a simple side-table with a pair of tall jugs of water sat at the far end. Elliot spied a bottle of wine hidden behind it. The tent was scented with fresh flowers, tied to string that lined the peaked ceiling like hemp vines.
And Madam Lantern, at the centre of it all. She was a buxom woman, another heavy-chested blonde in the way Elliot clearly liked, with her customary white lily tucked into a luxuriously braided ponytail. She wasn’t tall, but she was wide, a woman built for rustic frivolity and Low Town debauchery. Her ruddy skin was covered today in a strapless dress of High Sun white, which ended above her calves so she wouldn’t be prevented from dancing. When she half-turned to face him, Elliot spied red on her lips and purple on her cheeks, highlighting her round eyes and the softness of her smile.
But that wasn’t her true appearance. Lovely as it was, Elliot preferred her the other way.
“Hmm?” Lantern’s hands retracted from where they had been tying another flower to the decorative garlands. “What’s this? What are you doing here, young man?”
Her smile was rosy and coy, and it was very familiar to him. Elliot folded his arms with a smile of his own.
“I’ve always been curious what goes on in this tent, after the crowning of the Summre Royaltie,” he said. “Nobody ever voted for me, you know. I’ve never had the opportunity to find out what the Kinge and Queene get up to.”
Lantern pursed her lips. “What makes you think we all didn’t vote for you this year?”
“Did you?”
“No. So sorry.” She laughed and began tossing her spare petals about the pillows like a dusting of snow. “I was on the selection committee, and crowing you as Summre Kinge would have looked a little like favouritism. You’re also a tad too old.”
“Ouch.” Elliot put a hand to his chest, though the sting was theatrical. “Do I at least know the lucky kids you did pick?”
“You may do, as a matter of fact. The boy is from the Low Town, a charming scamp who busses tables on Oak Street. And his Queene is the second-youngest Pembroke from up in the heights.”
Low Town and the City. One of us, and one of them. It was rather poetic.
“And, if you believe the rumours,” Lantern continued with a sly wink, “they’re even an unofficial couple, thanks to a few unsanctioned trips across the wall one way or the other. We don’t require romance between our High Sun royals, just like in real life, but it is the ancient tradition that they at least pretend to consummate their status after the crowning. That usually means a little wine with a group of friends, some heated conversation but nothing further. These two might actually do it, they’re old enough. Hence all this preparation.”
She held out her hands and spun on her heels to indicate the cosy tent. The hem of her dress danced like flowers in the wind.
“It’s very impressive,” said Elliot, stepping towards her. “So, this is going to be a little nest of passion tonight?”
“It is,” she replied. When Elliot drew near, she didn’t back away. “You know how young love gets me going. I want to make this a special evening for them.”
“It sounds like fun.”
“It does. Elliot,” said Lantern, smirking up at him, “why exactly are you here?”
He could feel the heat emanating from her skin. Beneath the creamy façade, Lantern was smouldering. He ached to see it.
“I’ve been thinking about the past,” he said instead, putting his hands in his pockets. “Do you remember the day we first met?”
“Your first day as overseer, yes, I remember it well.” Lantern chuckled. She stroked one hot finger along his shoulder, following the touch with her eyes. “You were so young, so helpless. Look at you now, just a year later but a man grown. You’ve done yourself and our Low Town proud, Elliot.”
Even awash in amour as he was, Elliot’s heart shivered. He swallowed down a stray tear with effort.
“Do you remember what you said to me?” he asked.
Lantern tipped her head to one side with a playful frown. “I said a great many things, then and since. What specifically do you mean?”
“You said…”
Elliot stepped against her. He stroked his hand along her neck and tickled his nose with her curls of hair. He let her feel the might of his erection, pushing against her stomach.
“You said that if I kept up this municipal integration thing for a full year,” Elliot whispered, “you would let me have you however I wanted. All of you, I believe you promised.”
Lantern gasped against his chest. She offered herself to him with a push of her body. “Now that you mention it,” she whispered, “I do remember something like that.”
“Well, I’m here to collect.”
“Elliot…”
But whatever she wanted to say was silenced by Elliot tipping back her head and planting a kiss upon her lips. Lantern’s hot flesh tasted of spiced honey, and the squeak of surprise she sent down his throat was quite delicious. As was the moan, soft and desirous. Elliot held her fast. When she made to pull away, he pursued her, lapping her tongue with his.
“E-Elliot,” groaned Lantern, “wait. If we do this-…”
He kissed her again, squeezing her in his arms. Elliot trailed a hand up her side and cupped her breast.
“I-If we do this,” she moaned into his mouth, “it won’t be like… th-the other times. This won’t be a… a tight hand in my office after hours, or even… even my mouth on your… on your cock…”
The memory of her kneeling before him sent a new surge of passion up Elliot’s spine, and he invaded her mouth with his tongue. He slipped his hand down her chest and pulled the hem of her dress to her stomach. He grunted with desire at the touch of her bare nipple on his palm, and Lantern, even as she fought him, made a similar noise.
“A-Ah! I… I am serious, Elliot! I think you want to be inside me, is that right?”
“Yes,” he growled. “I want all of you.”
“And I want to give it to you,” she whispered against his lips. “Fuck, of course I do. That’s the problem. Elliot… Elliot!”
She shoved. Elliot stumbled over the pillows around his feet. He sucked hungry breaths into his lungs. Across from him, Lantern was doing the same. Elliot spotted peach flesh beneath her glamour, the firelight glow of her true eyes. Burnished red around her exposed breasts, a blackberry purple on her areolas. A leathery flapping at her back with no visible source. Lantern shook her head and returned to control with effort.
“If you put yourself in me,” she heaved, “it will be dangerous. You will become my prey. It’s why I’ve never asked you for more than a little touch here and there. I have to hold myself back from you, or I may take more from you than I intend.”
“Alright,” said Elliot.
“And I do like you,” she continued. Her cheeks were red, both on her mask and beneath it. “I like you more than is proper for a woman of my station, Elliot of Layman. I would very much hate to hurt you.”
Her creased eyes drew him back. Elliot stepped through the pillows and embraced Lantern, and she rested her head on his chest. Invisible horns pinched his skin through his tunic, but he didn’t mind.
“If I say we stop,” she said, “we stop. And if you wish to stop, we stop. If we end this without satisfaction, then so be it. I can find another way to make it up to you. Agreed?”
He ran his hand down her spine. Lantern shivered under his touch.
“I don’t want just some of you,” he said into her hair, “I want all of you. I want you to be wholly yourself. I can’t claim to love you without seeing you entirely for who you are.”
Lantern put a hand on his waist. “Did you mean to say… love?”
Elliot nodded. “You are my mentor, and you’ve shown great compassion to me. You are a dear compatriot.”
“Ah.” Lantern laughed into the cotton of his tunic. “You didn’t mean…?”
“I’m not sure yet. That’s why I’d like to find out with you.”
He could feel the shape of her smile on his chest. “What monster is this that I have raised, who can claim my heart with but a charming word? And not just mine, if talk around town is to be believed. Very well, Elliot, I can fight you no longer. Let us see one another. I don’t believe I need to ask which side of me you wish to have.”
Elliot laughed into her hair. “You know what I want.”
“Mmm. One moment, then.”
He leaned back and witnessed her transformation. Lantern’s skin reddened into rich crimson, and her eyes sparked a light to rival the orange of the sunset. Her hair, starting with the roots and flowing outwards, darkened to shining onyx as if set alight by a jewelled flame. Sharp horns, curved and dark like cut gemstone. A pair of webbed wings unfurled down her back, and from beneath her skirt, the slender snake of a pointed tail.
Elliot ran his hands down Lantern’s shoulders. He sampled her devilish skin with his fingertips, then took hold of her dress and pulled. Once past her waist, the dress fell to the ground among the pillows. Holding to his arms for balance, Lantern stepped out of her sandals.
“Here I am.” Naked Lantern’s new shyness was uncanny. Not unappealing, but far removed from the fiend who had taken him on that first day, pressed up against a writing desk with his cock between her mighty breasts.
“There you are,” said Elliot with a wide smile. “Incredible. Lantern, lie down for me.”
She did as he requested. Lantern giggled as she sat herself in the big pile of pillows and leaned back, letting her black hair spill around her horns, her little wings cushioning the small of her back. Her tail writhed around one thick thigh.
“I am going to have to clean up before the royals arrive,” she laughed. Her eyes never left him.
“I’ll try not to make too much of a mess.” Elliot pulled his tunic off over his head and tossed it to the side. Then he tugged off his sandals and yanked down his trousers. His cock was a weighty pole between his legs. Was that Lantern’s predatory aura at work, or just his own excitement? A combination of both was most likely. He loomed over her.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Lantern followed his eyes down to her pubis, where a purple mark like a faded tattoo stood out from the red. A stretched circle, filled with looping lines. A magical sigil.
“Ah, a little something my people do,” Lantern explained. She traced the shape of her circle fondly with her fingernail. “A sort of coming-of-age ritual. The circle-…”
“-…channels the anima from sex to make it easier to digest?”
Lantern’s eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
“A lucky guess,” grinned Elliot, dropping to a kneel between Lantern’s legs. “It’s beautiful.”
Leaning forward on his hands, Elliot kissed her arcane tattoo. Lantern’s fingers played with his hair, and her gentle sigh reverberated all the way down her body and into his lips through her skin.
“Young Elliot. So worldly. So wise… Why don’t you show me what else you’ve learned in your year?”
Elliot wriggled down Lantern’s body, then eased his mouth between her thighs. He kissed her again, this time on the nigh-scalding heat of her wet pussy.
Lantern’s hiss was like a gout of steam. Her legs tensed around his head, and her hand in his hair became a claw.
“E-Elliot!” she snarled. “Ooh! N-Not bad!”
He licked her deeply. Lantern’s taste matched that of her kiss, spicy and sweet in equal measure. Her thick viscosity clung to his tongue, a slippery layer that coaxed him deeper. Elliot flicked her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, then sucked on it, forcing the thighs around his head into a tighter vice with his hands.
“Elliot! F-Fuck! You should know,” she panted, “that I cannot climax from simple stimulation. Only the t-taste of come will bring me satisfaction.”
He grinned up at her from between her legs. “So I should stop?”
“Oh, you keep going as long you like!” Lantern laughed. “As long as you like…”
The more of her he drank, the more his cock throbbed. The ache of his own pumping blood was powerful. Elliot’s primal mind begged for him to hurry up and bury himself in her, claim her with his body, that he might expend the organ’s pressure. Instead, he lapped his partner over and over. He humped her slit with a roll of his face, dancing in time with her breathy sighs.
But before long, he grew dizzy. Lantern’s emissions had put a spell over his mind. He felt loopy and giddy. He wanted to laugh, even as he fucked her with his face. His hand had found its way into a grasp on his cock without him asking it to do so, and his touch made the potent rod shudder. He was at his limit.
“Alright,” he said, swallowing the last of her down his throat. “Here I come.”
“Come to me,” Lantern whispered, her arms outstretched for him.
Elliot crawled up the demon’s heavy body. He eased her legs apart with his hips. Lantern ran her hands up his arms and onto his shoulders. Her touch was hot, soft. Elliot paused his ascent just long enough to take her nipple into his mouth and kiss her. Just this touch between his lips, the resonant grunt of desire from deep in Lantern’s chest, almost pushed him to climax. He ran his lips up her cleavage and onto her chin, her cheek.
“Can I kiss you again?”
Lantern nodded. “As much as you like. I’m not offended by my own taste, though I’m not affected by its attributes.”
Elliot kissed her. Lantern held him against her and sucked his tongue into her mouth. Below, Elliot’s cock throbbed against her slit. So slick, so wet, like he was awash in sweet syrup. He chuckled against her lips.
“It doesn’t feel like you’d need the help.”
“Shush.” Lantern batted his head playfully with one hand, though the tap turned seamlessly into a kneading stroke through his hair. “Don’t tease me, Elliot. Fuck me.”
“Yes, Madam.”
Gripping his shaft with one hand, Elliot pushed and slid deep into her. Lantern squeaked out a shy cry of passion, then slapped a hand over her mouth. Her pussy clamped his cock like a wet, toothless mouth, and it sucked him. Elliot wondered if he’d be allowed to leave now that they were underway. Well, good thing he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Resting with his elbows on either side of her head, Elliot began to fuck Madam Lantern. Every inch of motion sent jolts of pleasure up his spine and into his brain.
“O-Ohh!” he found himself gurgling. “Oh… w-wow.”
“Elliot!” Lantern hissed, holding to his shoulders with both hands. “Oh, Elliot!”
Her eyes burned. The soft glow of a hearty campfire had been replaced with the savage smoulder of wildfire. Her sharp teeth glinted. Her grip on his frame was the possessive hold of a python.
“Elliot!” she snarled. Then she began to rut.
Elliot’s cock was devoured by Lantern’s syrupy pussy. The roll of her body took him into her over and over. The suck of her lips tugged an orgasm out of the depths and towards the surface. Elliot shivered as her slender tail suddenly whispered across his inner thigh and slid around the base of his cock. She gripped him with it, coaxing him to speed and depth. After each relenting up-stroke, Lantern tugged him back inside her with her alien appendage.
It was all Elliot could do to hold to his composure. Lantern’s sex filled his mind and made him simple. Her stimulation of his cock was the only sensation he was allowed to feel. Her burning eyes, all he could see.
He loved it. He loved her. Lantern was the heart of the Low Town. She took the wandering kin of humanity by the hand and invited them into her home. She lifted up, celebrated and advocated for the misbegotten and the downtrodden. Such radical compassion, such selfless charity!
It was easy to forget she was a creature with needs too, needs that she ignored over and over so she could spend her energy elsewhere. Well, now she was unleashed. Lantern was hungry. Selfish. Greedy. Elliot would gladly drown in her, if it would sate her but a little. After she had done so much for him. And, undoubtedly, because being fucked by her was transcendent.
“L-Lantern!” he gasped. “Oh! Ohh!”
“Mm, Elliot!” she growled up at him.
“Take it! Take all of me!”
Her eyes dimmed suddenly. Lantern’s bestial snarl faded into an anxious frown. “Sweetheart, no.”
“I want to give you-…!”
“No. Elliot, no. That’s just the sex talking. You would surely die, love. And you’re so very precious to me alive.”
What was he saying? Elliot blinked the dizzy patterns out of his eyes. He remembered the office, and the Castle. He remembered his father, and his friends. He remembered people he had promised to see again tonight. He remembered people he was dutybound to support throughout their time in the city of Layman. People he would let down if he died in Lantern’s arms. But still, so sweet a death it would be…
“I think we should draw this to a close,” Lantern whispered with a soft smile. “Elliot, my dear. Come.”
She squeezed the base of his cock with her tail and fed him again into her pussy. She embraced his whole length with her scalding body. Her eyes flashed to luminescence once more.
“Come,” she said again.
Elliot came. The shake of his body began at the base of his neck and dove down through his belly before erupting from his cock. Thick semen mixed with the viscous lining of Lantern’s sex, where it was quickly absorbed. Again, and then again, Elliot let out his load. All the while, Lantern’s tail milked him of his fluid. Her pussy drank him up. When Elliot thought the surge of pleasure was at its end, a tightening of her tail around his shaft inspired a new orgasm, a new shot of come. Then another. Then another.
Lantern’s pupils had become pinpricks in the flare of her eyes. She was silent, stiff as stone beneath him, lips parted in a noiseless scream between sharp teeth. Each wave of semen into her pussy made those beautiful eyes dance.
And then, with a snap, “S-Stop!”
Lantern released him with all of her many limbs, and Elliot slid out of her. He collapsed atop her. Her grand breasts were a soft pillow for his spinning head. She let out a great huff of air and deflated beneath him. She stroked his hair with shaking hands.
“Oh… yes,” she sighed. “Yes. That was… plenty.”
“Sure?” garbled Elliot around her chest.
Lantern giggled. “I am quite sure. I shan’t sleep tonight, thanks to you. Quite the nutrition to handle tonight’s festivities. Are you well, dear?”
“Mph,” he said.
“What a relief. Rest a while, Elliot. Recover yourself.”
His eyelids fluttered. Sleep would be welcome, especially with Lantern luxuriously stroking him. But he’d promised Cassia and Cynthia, and Pippa and Roan and Melyssa. And more besides, those he’d not seen yet today but who would expect him. Everyone needed to see him tonight. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and fixed Lantern with his eyes, using her to focus his attention.
“Thank you,” said Elliot.
“Thank you!” said Lantern with a wide smile. “That was wonderful. Did you decide whether you…?”
She didn’t finish her sentence. Lantern’s round cheeks reddened to scarlet, and her eyes flicked away from his. Curious, Elliot brushed her nose with his.
“Did I decide… what?”
“A-Ah, nothing. It’s nothing,” stammered the strangely shy Lantern. “Just a grown woman’s childish fascination.”
He kept his eyes on her, daring her to spill her little secret. He had a feeling he wanted this conversation to continue.
But beyond the limits of the royal tent, the sound of chattering. The thump of many feet on fresh grass. Somewhere near, a mandolin. And nearer, boots on wood, a male voice asking, “Where’s Lantern gotten to? We need to start!”
“The High Sun rises,” sighed Lantern. “The festival begins. Much as I would love to linger here with you, Elliot, I had better change.”
“One more kiss?”
Lantern beamed. “One more, with High Sun’s blessing.”
He kissed her. Such a familiar taste now. He would miss it.
“So,” said Elliot, “same time next year?”
“It’s a date,” said Lantern. “I’ll look forward it.”
Next year… After the adventure of this one, he wondered what could possibly happen in the next. Like Lantern, he was looking forward to it. He was looking forward to seeing what the world had in store for him.
But for now, he would have to help Lantern redress and clean up this tent. He would have to go and check on Melyssa’s bar, maybe help her with her customers. Help Roan get Pippa out of her stupor. And when the sun set, to attend to the witches and their fireworks.
It was going to be another busy year.
laymenstory
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