These two lounging in the trees made Lee Benoit think of characters from her recent release, Servant of the Seasons, and she’s provided us an excerpt. Mèco and Tywyll, one of his Novigi companions, have just returned from encountering a small pack of canid predators in the woods, an encounter that frightened Mèco but has quite a different effect on Tywyll and his bonded lover, Lys.
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We reached home to find Lys atop the turvy, hard at work on a chimney. I had helped him to design something to conduct smoke out of the house so that we could have a hearth inside but not admit the elements. He made and fired small bricks and set them with sticky mortar made from clay mixed with sand. I looked forward to a warmer winter than the one I had passed alone.
When he saw us, Lys scrambled along the berm and ran down the slope to greet us.
He gave me a quick kiss and a squeeze, and then turned to Tywyll.
“Vjellja?”
Tywyll lifted his chin to show his small wound. Like the navdi had done, Lys whimpered softly and tucked his face into Tywyll’s neck, licking.
I felt as supernumerary as I had when Tywyll had been with the navdi. I started to walk toward the kitchen, but Tywyll pulled away from Lys and grasped my shoulder.
He pulled Lys and me into the turvy, the rumbling sound in his throat thrilling me.
“Oh, vjellja, you smell--” Lys broke off to take a long, noisy sniff of Tywyll’s neck. “You smell good. Like pack. Were they kettu? Nyma?” He trailed off to sniff again, pressing his body close to Tywyll’s and rubbing.
My face heated and I turned away, but Tywyll still had hold of my shoulder, so I couldn’t leave without being rough about it.
“Navdi,” Tywyll said, and his voice was lower than usual.
“So good,” Lys said, and he pulled away.
Tywyll rumbled again, following as Lys crawled onto the sleeping platform. To do so, he had to release me, and, both relieved and reluctant, I made for the door.
“Stay, Mèco,” Tywyll growled.
“Yes,” Lys echoed, rolling onto his back, taking the same submissive posture Tywyll had taken with the big navdi.
I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to Tywyll, but the longer I watched, the more transfixed I became. Embarrassment gave way to excitement in an almost painful rush, and I sidled to my own platform and sat hard, my legs falling open to accommodate my arousal.
With none of the furtive gentleness I associated with their lovemaking, Tywyll braced his arms on either side of Lys’ face and, with a nudge of his nose, forced Lys’ chin upwards. Thus exposed, Lys arched back. He canted his hips, but there was nothing to press against; Tywyll was straddling his body too high up for that. As Tywyll licked and snuffled, Lys subsided onto the platform. When at last Tywyll set his teeth to Lys’ throat, as the large navdi had done to him, Lys was completely compliant, his eyes slitted, his mouth slack, his limbs splayed heavily on the blankets.
After long moments, the tableau shifted. Tywyll rocked back to kneel at the foot of the platform and Lys rolled onto his belly, stretching his arms before him and groaning deep in his chest. The languid pose was more familiar to me from my secret observations; this was how Lys looked at the end, when he was sated. Tywyll’s every muscle was still tensed, however, and he growled impatiently, running his hands up the backs of Lys’ thighs. Mewling, Lys raised his hips, pushing them up and back in a display that dried my mouth.
Tywyll dove, burying his nose and mouth between Lys’ buttocks. “Mine, mine.” His voice was low and raw.
Lys responded wildly, arching his back so deeply his belly touched the blankets and spreading his legs so wide I listened for his joints to crack. “Yours, vjellja. Your own.”
How can I describe what Tywyll’s domination and Lys’ submission awoke in me? Their ordinary lovemaking engendered longing, sharpened my lonely edge. But this? This mating was something else altogether. I projected myself into Tywyll’s position, mounting his lover, demanding his compliance, and my palms and armpits tingled and sweated. In my heated imaginings, I flipped myself over, offered myself as Lys did, to be covered like prey, and my teeth and belly clenched with need. Around and around I went, in my mind, but my body experienced it all as a steep incline at the top of which must lie a precipice, an inevitable tipping into oblivion. In my flickering moments of sensibility I was aware of my scrotum contracting, my cock stretching and firming, the heel of my hand coming down to protect, to encourage. I panted like an animal.
I almost missed the moment of penetration, it happened so quickly. With great force, Tywyll drew his hips back and thrust forward, sealing his groin to Lys’ bottom in one plunge. Lys yowled, his hands clawed in the blankets. His posture prevented him moving forward and back to meet Tywyll’s body, and he began instead to circle his hips, almost to wag them. It should have been obscene, but it was wild and wanton. Feral, yes, but beautiful with it. That was my last conscious thought. Tywyll shoved forward with a ferocious howl and Lys froze, his mouth open in a silent scream. I smelled seed and felt wetness spread under my palm. I sagged and shook, swallowing air and tears in great gulps.
I glanced across the room. The other platform had never seemed more distant. Reaching it had never felt so natural or necessary. I waited, poised, desperate.
Two sets of half-lidded eyes fixed on me, and that gulf narrowed to nothing. I crawled across the floor, my shoulders rolling, my head low, and climbed in among the arms that reached for me. Huffs of breath buffeted my face; rising and falling chests thudded against mine and retreated. I sucked in the sweat and fuck smells, sliding through sweat and seed and tears into sleep.
© 2011 Lee Benoit
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When architect Mèco is turfed, or ejected from his protected but autocratic Dome, he finds himself adrift in a dying and dangerous land. With no choice but to scrape his survival from an abandoned farm, he tries to improve his prospects by acquiring an animal to pull his plow.
What he ends up with instead are two slaves, a bonded pair of Novigi, a strange people Mèco's never heard of. As the land slowly awakens by their combined efforts, so does Mèco's sense of himself as a man and maybe as a lover. But when their fragile home is threatened by brutal gangs of Salters, Mèco and his friends discover being servants of the seasons may not be enough to protect their new way of living and loving. They must become warriors.
Originally published as the Chaser series Servant of the Seasons.
Find it here.
