Loving the Forest

I allowed my hands to explore, moving from the back of her thighs, along the sides of her buttocks, across her abdomen, and up to her breasts. She held them there, so I kneaded gently, squeezing the nipples lightly between the sides of my fingers.

Melia's breathing, meanwhile, told me I was doing something she was enjoying. I decided to move a little higher and, with little flicking movements, found her swollen clitoris. She gasped, then started letting out little moans and cries of pleasure as I ran my tongue over and around it. I was getting a massive sexual high from her, and struggled for control. She moved her hands to hold my head where it was and positioned her feet on my lower back, so I kept going. I moved one hand back down her body, leaving the other to fondle one of those wonderful just-ripe breasts.

Ever since I explored the wet cunny of my first lover I've liked to touch with my fingers, from the little rough patch just inside that can bring some women to a screaming, writhing climax and panting exhaustion, to the smoother skin of the main well, to the firm nodule of the cervix near the limit of a middle finger to penetrate. It was time to touch Melia the same way.

I kept working her hardened node with my lips and tongue, and parted one leg further to allow my right hand access under my chin, which was soaked with her juice. I felt her tense briefly as my fingers began to stroke her soft, wet inner lips, but she relaxed in to me again after no more than a couple of seconds, raising her buttocks slightly to make it easier for me. With slow, rotating strokes around her entrance, I began to make my way in, and was brought to a stop.

For some reason, a reason I had only the slightest inkling of, she had hunted down and selected me as her first sexual experience. I withdrew slightly, and my kissing slowed. Melia was having none of this. She was coming down a little.

She whispered, just loudly enough to hear over the burn, but her voice was firm. "At some point in the next little while, I want you to tear that. You can use your finger, or you can use something harder. The choice is yours."

This required no thought on my part. I went back to what I'd been doing, but with care with my finger. I explored the rim of her barrier, and resumed licking her pleasure centre. Melia was soon moaning again. Now I had an even greater reason to ensure she enjoyed what we were doing to the full.

I moved away from her clit briefly, kissing and sucking her parted, swollen lips, lapping deeply from her juice, but soon moved back to the nub. Breathing only through my nose, I sucked it into my mouth, and licked with quick flicks over the surface. It began to feel more like a skin-covered pebble, surrounded by softness. Melia began to writhe, and I moved both hands to her flanks to make sure she didn't move so far that I'd lose contact. My flicking speeded up as my chin found itself nearly dripping and she tensed, her body arching as she let out a loud moan that turned to a scream of pleasure as she climaxed. Involuntary muscle ripples shook her entire body, and then it was suddenly too much to take and she pushed my head away, gasping.

I love to bring a woman here. To bring a woman to the point where she's happy to lose that much control is a massive turn-on. To bring a woman there in her first experience is really something. I wanted her so much.

Melia lay back, totally exposed, legs still parted, catching her breath. I moved to cover her again, this time with my erection between her thighs, rubbing her lips, poised at her entrance and instantly wet with one part pre-come to about fifty of woman juice. I moved to kiss her, slipping my tongue into her mouth. She wrapped her arms and thighs around me, gripping firmly, then kissed me briefly a few times on the chin, tasting herself.

"I taste quite good, don't I?"

"Oh, you taste delicious. I could have licked you out for a long while." I cocked my head a few degrees to one side, then looked her in her deep green eyes. "Are you ready?"

She gave me a few happy jerks of the head, accompanied by a welcoming smile. "Be gentle, but I'm ready. I want you inside me."

I moved my hips slightly to a better position, rose off her a short way, and put my hands under her firm tight buttocks. My tip entered part way until it encountered her hymen. I looked into her eyes and saw slight nerves and a lot of desire. I thrust firmly, and she gasped again, part pain, part pleasure. I found myself halfway inside. I paused, then slid my full length inside her, feeling the end just tap against her cervix. She was very wet, and incredibly snug, but we fit comfortably. I paused, simply enjoying feeling myself comfortably engulfed by soft wetness. I'd have to be controlled in myself: too rough and I'd bruise her cervix, but my instinct was to be gentle with this little woman. She wriggled slightly, as if trying to settle me in. It felt fantastic.

I began a series of firm, slow, gentle thrusts, feeling the sensations of this previously unexplored well. I was having to keep careful control, as I was not that far from letting go the whole time. Melia began to move against me, her hands and thighs encircling my body, her breasts rocking in time to the motion of her body. I moved again to control my penetration, almost leaving her before plunging slowly back in again. Our lovemaking continued for some time, slow, almost languid in the warmth. I moved my hands further beneath her, finding damp skin where the cleft of her buttocks met her thighs, and stroked the wetness as I held her up so I could penetrate her deeply and carefully, filling her completely.

As my own breathing quickened she moved against me more firmly, encouraging my own climax. Eventually, I gave in, and my shaft pulsed, emptying my own thick juices to mingle with hers. She let out a broad smile to match mine and I collapsed on top of her.

"You can stay where you are," she told me. "It feels nice having you inside me, and you certainly fit me."

"I thought we fit rather well, actually." I was slowly starting to soften, and my relaxing cock eventually slid out of her to rest against her still wet and swollen lips.

I shifted my weight off and lay back. Melia responded by rolling over half on top of me, one leg cocked over the length of mine, her damp fur against my hip. I put my arms around her and stroked her spine. We basked together for a while, enjoying the company and the contact. I was wondering where things were supposed to be going. Melia obviously had a plan: a plan that others were at least aware of, if not part of helping her cook it up. The reasons behind that plan were not much clearer than a muddy bog. I've wound up in a few of those, but this was a long way from mucky boots and trousers destined for a good wash. I'd enjoyed what we'd done, but I was now, lust sated, wondering what was going on - and how and why I was being used.

"I think you were going to explain the reasons for you deciding to do what we just did?"

"Hmm." She moved to support herself on one elbow, those breasts hanging from her chest. "You sure you want to know?"

This didn't sound too good. I hesitated. I had been thoroughly seduced. I was in, like it or not. "Yes."

"You certainly have a right for me to try to explain. Where do you want me to start?"

Too much was unclear. "The beginning?"

"The beginning? I don't know the beginning, but I can start at the beginning I remember." Melia laid her head back on my chest. "Have you figured out what I am?"

I was pretty sure she wasn't human, even if she looked and felt like one, even down to the details, and I was brought up with Robert Graves as part of my literary diet. Allowing for a couple of thousand years of garbling and likely misunderstanding to begin with, I had a fair idea, but I didn't want to make an arse of myself. I wasn't too sure Melia was a name, for a start. It sounded too much like something else. "Spell it out for me, please."

"I'm one of a tribe of what you once called Dryads."

Score one point for having bits of a Classical education.

"You're a Meliad?"

"Quite correct. What you used to think were spirits of ash trees."

"So, from your name, do you have some sort of high status in the Meliad tribe?"

"No. We just don't use names the way you do. Melia will do as a placemarker."

"Okay. I'll accept that. I know some of what us modern humans think we know about Dryads. In the context of what's going on at the moment, what do I need to know?"

"Uhm. Some of my sisters think you don't need to know anything. I disagree, or at least think you ought to know whatever you want to know, since you're part of what we're doing. Anyway, if that's what you think you know, most of it is wrong. The ancient Hellenes didn't really understand us, and were good at making up stories about fickle dodgy characters who had what they saw as magical powers, coupled with a lot of male wishful thinking, and a few grains of truth. That would be about one measure of truth to ten or twenty of fabrication for campfires."

"That doesn't surprise me. People still make a lot of money out of telling stories."

"Yes. A lot of them go into politics and business." No argument from me. "You remember those worlds like fallen leaves I told you about?"

"Yes."

"On most of those leaves, something like humans evolved. Some were as capricious as the weather in the mountains. Some were more rational. Others were more like you. Here, something different happened, and all, or at least most, of the plants and animals you know are also found here, along with some you don't, but there were no creatures resembling us."

I could accept that. I dragged up some memories of stories I'd read. "Is this where Cronos comes in?"

"No. Well, yes, but we weren't formed out of his blood. Someone did chop his balls off, and he did have it coming to him. Some of the people he knew were fickle. He was just nasty, but he wasn't the only one. It was a nasty time. Some of the better ones I told you about made us. They, how would you put it, used the energy of the universe to make us. I don't know what we were made out of, but it wasn't some arsehole's blood." The profanity sounded wrong on her lips, as if she was making a strong point about someone she personally despised.

"We were made, I suppose, for several reasons. Part of it was to have a knock-on effect on other leaves, the way I mentioned earlier. Part of it was to protect what was necessary for the continuation of, um, ecosystems here and elsewhere. We're now a part of the natural processes of how all ecosystems function. A hidden part, at a level that's harmonises the natural energy and keeps all these things working. It's not about the physical processes. It's the energy that binds it all together."

I knew there were Dryads and similar peoples linked to many types of what we now call ecosystems: wood, forests, mountains, even the oceans, but this was new.

"It got all messed up. We were new, inexperienced, and scared. Others tried to fight back, and we got caught in the middle, and some of us were hurt. I suppose you'd call it a war, or an invasion. Hurting one of us makes more of a mess to everything else than simple injury. Without accident we live, even remain young, for a very long time."

"I was taught you're tied to the life of your tree."

"That's one of the nicer stories, but one made up to explain things humans where you come from couldn't understand. We are more tied to unspoiled land than you are, thankfully, but no, we just have a very extended youth. We mature to adulthood, then stop. We heal quickly. We have massive immunity to disease. When we reproduce, our genes are dominant over those we mate with. It's not parthenogenesis, but our heritage overrides yours." I shied away from the implications of part of that.

"So how old are you?"

Melia looked up, impishly. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

"Maybe not."

"I'm older than I look to you." She snuggled back down.

"So what about these satyrs? I thought they were like you, only male."

"Don't exist. Someone needed to find what they saw as a nice comfortable balance of male and female, so someone made up a story. Others copied it. I don't know if it was an oversight. Artemis and the others never explained."

"You knew Artemis?"

"Straight answer?"

I was already out of my depth. I might as well swim for it. "Straight answer."

"Yes, I did. Most of us are still of the first generation."

"All that time...."

She knew what I meant from that strange connection we seemed to have. "No men around and, I suppose, no real inclination until now. Worth the wait, though." She squeezed me closer.

"Let me stay with my analogy. A lot of those leaves are sort of rotting. We were made to stop that, and this time that's what we're going to do. It stops, if not now, then as soon as we can. We're up to other things as well, but we need someone who can use that energy I spoke of in the right way. To make that someone we needed a male who could provide the right qualities. Those don't exist here, and are in downright short supply elsewhere. I got picked. You got picked. Here we are."

I was working through implications. "You planned to get pregnant? From one session? It's possible, absolutely, but surely not certain?"

"We don't have menstrual cycles like humans." She propped herself back on her elbow. "That orgasm you gave me. One reason we picked you is that we were pretty sure you'd be sensitive enough to my needs to do that. We were right. That orgasm triggered ovulation. I'll be having a baby. More my baby than your baby, it's true, but still our baby. I'll need to look after her, teach her certain things. Visiting might be complicated, but we'll work something out. As soon as she grows up we can accelerate the changes everyone here, where you are, places you won't get to alone and will probably never see, everyone, needs before a lot more things suffer and a lot more things die. She'll be a sort of hybrid: mostly Dryad, partly human, but able to act more strongly on your level of reality." This all came out in a rush.

I squashed the thought of "sperm bandit". I could have said no, in theory anyway.

"Could you have asked me? Explained beforehand?"

"You'd have turned me down?"

I might have run screaming. "Probably not," I admitted. Assuming she was telling the truth, and she was doing a good imitation if she wasn't, the stakes were too high. Something has to change back where I come from. "Resisting you would be hard."

Melia smiled affectionately. I forgave any misjudgment. I'd been manipulated, assuming seduction is a form of manipulation, but the benefits were apparently just too important.

"You seem to be talking about some sort of magic here."

"That word is as good as any other, it's true. We were made by it, and we can use it, but it takes different individuals to use it in different ways."

"Like you watching me without me knowing about it, that kind of thing?"

"That's a simple one. You just don't notice us. So is the attraction you feel towards me, in spite of the fact that by all rights you should have freaked out and run. Well, I like to think that's only partially the case. Our baby might well be a good bit stronger. At least, I hope she will be." She paused, as if thinking. "I fancy a swim," she told me. "Actually, I fancy a bath. Would you like to help me get clean?"

That sounded like a suggestion that was also hard to resist. "I'm up for that."

Melia's head bobbed to kiss me once, quickly. "Come on then." She jumped up, breasts bobbing, turned, and took a few quick steps, allowing me a great view of her slender figure, before she jumped into the burn. I didn't hesitate. I followed. The pool was deeper and wider than I'd thought, and Melia was standing chest-deep in the middle, looking playful and inviting. I went straight for her, through sun-warmed water.

The water was too deep to do a particularly good lunge, but I did my best, and she let out a squeal before we both went under water, arms and legs thrashing against each other. We came up, steadied ourselves, water dripping, and kissed gently, her firm breasts pressing against my chest. I liked the way her long hair cascaded over her shoulders when dry, but plastered to her face it made her look incredibly sexy.

"Hey," she said, affectionately. "You do like my body, don't you?"

"Any heterosexual male with a pulse would like your body."

"But it's all yours! After what you did for me, I'll do whatever you like for you. Well, within reason." I considered, and decided being naughty was safe.

Well, you mentioned sisters...." I gave her a wicked grin to show I was teasing.

"Males! Never satisfied!" She grinned back. "I'll ask them!" Her tongue separated her lips suggestively. Then she jumped slightly, gripped my pelvis with her legs, her pussy pressed just above my own hair, and let her weight fall on me. I had time to take a breath before we both went over again. There was a brief mutual brushing of arms, legs and a lot of softness from her.

When we surfaced we caught our breath again. She held out her arms. I could see her legs were parted below the water. Breasts were held high, inviting inspection and handling. "You were going to wash me." Only water was available, of course, so I started rubbing down her wet body, starting at her delicate face and down across her well-defined shoulders. Her shoulder blades, I noticed, were very small, matching her delicacy. There was a hint of perspiration under her arms, but most had been washed away by our first immersion.

Her arms too, were delicately formed, but with underlying muscle, with hands that seemed made for fine work. I was looking forward to them exploring me in more detail. Washing her back was an excuse for close embrace, and that was an excuse to feel her bottom. She stood on tiptoe, trying not to overbalance, to allow me access to where it joined the tops of her thighs. I couldn't resist and, gripping one cheek in each hand, lifted and squeezed, feeling strong muscle tone. She held me tighter, then overbalanced, taking me with her again.

We regained our footing on the bottom of the pool and I returned to my ministrations, lingering on her breasts, with nipples hardened either from arousal or the slight chill in the water. There was no evidence from her abdominal muscles that she'd been working out, but plenty that she got her fair share of general exercise. I looked her in the eyes greedily as I moved to rub her delta of Venus. She demandingly pressed herself into the palm of my hand and parted her legs slightly. I rubbed between them gently, moving fingers in gentle massage but careful not to flood the inside of her body with water and lose what she'd taken from me. Douching is an ineffective means of birth control, but there was no point taking chances when her objective was quite the opposite. She moaned appreciatively at the contact.

I knelt slightly to work on her thighs, the perfect excuse to rub more toned muscle on a woman who evidently spent a lot of time walking or running. Her body really was exquisite. I took a deep breath and submerged, quickly moving from knees to firm calves, then surfaced, water streaming from my face and my own long hair. Putting my hands back on her body and sharing a warm, tonguing kiss just came naturally.

She then reciprocated, pushing strands of my own ripe-straw coloured hair back from my face and then exploring the contours with her fingertips, as if trying to memorise my features. She seemed to like my own pecs and abdomen, kept out of a gym but kept in trim by long walks with heavy rucksacks and nature survey kit. She rubbed under my arms firmly: carrying a rucksack for any length of time in the heat makes you sweat. I was learning that little gesture she had when she was considering something of gently nibbling her lower lip with her upper incisors. She used it again when examining my hands to the smallest detail as she turned them over and over in her own, almost as if looking for something.