Talla's Temple Ch. 21

He squeezed her then, both hands at once, distorting her flesh and making her breasts bulge toward him, stretching her areola and making her nipples ever more erect.

That was pleasure, his grip so tight that it bordered on painful.

I am of Abundance. Never forget from where my power comes. She felt it building up inside her, under his grip. It was a kind of energy that she gathered from every part of her body and pulled in to the masses that hung so delicately from her chest. The earth fed her energy from under her knees. The sky and the forest fed strength in to her arms.

Spirals worked the energy in to the centre of her torso, growing more and more powerful as the pressure from his hands increased.

She rocked her hips back and forth, stroking the rock hard pole that pushed at her insides.

So deep. So large. It swelled inside her.

His fingers tightened on her breasts. There would be marks; this she knew, even aside from the ones his teeth had left. But it was perfect. It was exactly what they had both wanted.

They'd had sex just once, out on the grass at the farm. They'd wanted to do it again, but time had run out. Time, in fact, had run out on them over and over again.

But not here. Not this time.

Here they were, finally. She was firmly impaled upon his manhood. He clutched her breasts as a drowning man would cling to anything within his reach. And in their minds, they were more deeply immersed in each other than any other mesh could provide. Memories and ideas flowed back and forth, gelling together in to a homogeneous, single experience of life. There was too much information passing between them for either to process. What had gone before was a mere taste of memory. This, then, was drowning.

Perfect.

So perfect and overwhelming, in fact, that it could not last.

Their eyes met, dizzyingly, as they could look through one another's eyes and see their own faces looking back. Then, even in the daylight, Zhair'lo could see that Talla's skin was beginning to glow. An iridescent blue light first started to shine from between his fingers where they dug in to her breasts. The glow spread from her chest up to her neck and down the tense muscles of her belly.

Talla saw it, first through his eyes, then through her own. She looked down at her body so she could watch it spread past her belly and down under her skirt. Her eyes twisted to look at her arms, seeing the glow spread to her outstretched fingertips. She felt more than saw it coming up her neck to irradiate her face and her hair.

What was happening to her?

Zhair'lo felt the worry build inside her, but there was nothing they could do.

Her body, glowing with its unnatural light, twitched, her vaginal muscles gripping the base of his penis and twisting it.

He convulsed with something like pain. She was pulling too hard, squeezing him too tightly. He couldn't take much of that.

She looked down at him, fire in her eyes, and issued a demand. It wasn't like with Shen. She would never do that again. But she could insist, and he could comply. It's what they'd both been killing themselves to achieve for the last week. Orgasms had been had many other ways, by the hands and bodies of many other people. But none could match what they shared here.

Give to me!

Take it!

And he released himself, letting the flood of semen fire up in to her body. Nothing, however, could have prepared him for what happened next. The last time they'd had sex, in the waning moonlight, he'd seen a faint blue glow around her body. This time, she was lit up like the moon itself. And when the first surge of their mutual orgasm shook their bodies, a band of blue light exploded from her body, spreading rapidly across the small clearing in which they lay.

Surprise echoed back and forth across the mental link. What had that been?

A second ejaculation fired in to her belly. It was accompanied by another explosion of blue light, shining out from her breasts. He yanked his hands away in panic – they had been too hot to touch! Those prodigious orbs hung now, in blinding glory, as orgasm continued to shake their bodies.

Pulse after pulse ran up his erection in to her body, filling her with fluid, each one eliciting a blast of sparks from her body. They both felt the heat in her chest, rising to unbearable levels. They needed to get away from each other! But the mesh wouldn't allow it. The orgasm, burning with pain and yet ecstatic with lust, continued unabated.

Talla clutched her breasts, hoping to cool them with her hands, but could touch them for no more than a few moments.

When Zhair'lo was emptied, the mesh finally released them.

"Hot," Talla cried, in full panic. This was so much like her upgrade now that she could barely think.

"Water," Zhair'lo told her. They might not be fully meshed any longer, but he could still feel her pain echoing down the link. He remembered what the women had done the night of Talla's first upgrade. Cold water. Cold water would have to do it.

She stood up as quickly as she could, cruelly yanking his erection from her vagina. That was painful, but insignificant compared to the pain in her chest. Together, they ran the short distance to the river where she jumped in, soaking her chest in to the cold water.

There should have been a hiss or some sizzling sound as water was burned off in to steam.

Talla heaved a sigh of relief as she lay there on her stomach, letting the heat bleed off in to the water that rushed around her.

Zhair'lo plopped down in the water next to her.

"What in the nine hells was that?"

Talla shook her head as she gasped for breath.

"Fucking hells," she muttered.

Zhair'lo had never heard a woman curse that way. Women usually shouted out the names of gods. Only men used crude words like that. No, wait. How did he know how women cursed? They never did it around him. It was Talla who knew that ... and so he knew it by her.

"You've never seen something like that?" he asked her.

"No," she breathed in confirmation, giving him the answer that was already in his head.

"You glowed a bit like that," he told her, "on our first night. And sometimes I see a glow when I do an upgrade."

"But not like this," she said, finishing his thought. "And not during sex. What was this?"

He shrugged.

Not supposed to shrug, Talla thought, numbly.

"It was a strong one," Zhair'lo said. "I've never come that hard before."

"Someone might have felt it," Talla warned.

Zhair'lo knew now that women could feel that final consummation of a mesh. He could remember her strongest memories almost as if they were his own. Specifically, he recalled the night that she'd felt someone else's orgasm on her way out to visit him.

"Can you run?" he asked.

"I think so," she said.

She planted her feet in the water and stood up. The hem of her skirt was just low enough that the current in the river licked at the edge of that wet and clinging fabric. Talla looked down at her breasts. Zhair'lo eyed them too.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Ice cold water drops dotted her flesh. Her nipples were erect from the cold, which was a relief compared to what had gone before. There was no glow. They appeared to be a perfectly normal pair of breasts.

"We can't dawdle," she pressed. "Something that strong ... it could have been felt a long way away."

He nodded unhappily and promptly offered her a hand so they could step back up on to the riverbank. Clothing was retrieved. On went his pants. On went her top. They embraced, kissing again.

"Is it dangerous?" he asked when he pulled away. "If we do it again?"

"I don't know," Talla answered, warily keeping an eye on the forest.

She didn't want to give him up, not now that they had found a way to be together. Was it worth the risk?

"Maybe no one felt it," she said, hopefully.

"But if we mesh again, it might get stronger," he said, sadness gripping his heart.

She nodded in agreement, pursing her lips.

"Then we won't mesh," she said firmly. "Maybe we can't mesh, but we can come here again. I'll suck on you if you want. I don't care. Anything. It doesn't matter."

They kissed again. There was an image in her mind of Shen and that orgasm he'd had in her mouth. If she'd done it for Shen, couldn't she do it for Zhair'lo? And he could do something for her, couldn't he? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be something.

"Two days," she said. "Don't come tomorrow, but come the first heat bell after that, okay?"

"Two days," he said with a bow of his head.

"And be careful," she said, at last remembering the warning she'd been wanting to give. "They're using you for double upgrades."

He blinked, seeing that harsh, anger-clouded image that consumed so much of Talla's mind. The chocolate skinned Sorceress, her massive breasts tenuously sprawled across her body, her nipples so perfectly wide and erect. And Talla ignored every part of the woman's gorgeous body to focus on those two dark fingers against the white marble altar.

Ren hana: words to haunt Talla's dreams and now Zhair'lo's.

"On purpose," Talla said firmly, punctuating her warning with a tense glare.

"I don't have a choice," he said. "Duty."

Talla nodded in rueful agreement.

"We have to go," she said.

"I know."

A last kiss, bittersweet kiss. Could they ever have sex again? Would it ever be safe, in any sense? Neither knew. They seized each other's bodies in a last desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable before they pushed away.

"Be careful," he told her. She had the more dangerous journey.

"I will," she promised.

She didn't look back, and neither did he, as they ran in opposite directions.

Talla hit the gate at a run and vaulted it over it, ignoring the thorns that scraped at her. She was sure that they'd used up far too much time. She couldn't even think about it now. There wasn't time to consider all the ramifications of what had happened. And what conclusions could she reach anyway? She didn't have any information.

Between thinking, running and panicking, she utterly failed to observe her surroundings as she burst out of the brush and back on to the forest path toward the Temple. If she had taken even the least bit of caution, she would have noticed the woman, in the brown leathers of a Form guard, lying prone in the leaves and yellow grass along the side of the path. As it was, Talla rushed passed the woman without taking any notice.

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Marissa regained consciousness very slowly. The first thing she was aware of was the pressure of leaves and grass against her face. She couldn't quite move yet. What had happened? She had been following that troublesome Neophyte, and then what? Dizziness had overcome her. Was she suffering from heat exhaustion? Even passed out, she'd felt wave after wave of nausea overwhelming her.

How embarrassing. Women of Form, and especially those of Iron, had hearts that beat strong and lungs that could keep them running for hours. Here she was, five upgrades to her name, and she'd passed out chasing a Neophyte of Endowment?

Footsteps.

Someone was running, crunching through some chunk of underbrush. Marissa, recognizing the pattern of those steps, wanted to rise but couldn't find the energy. She felt so groggy. She clawed her way up toward consciousness. Those footsteps had to belong to the girl she'd been chasing. Sheer force of will overcame the disoriented exhaustion that had overwhelmed her.

First she lifted her head, squinting her eyes against the brightness of the few patches of sky she could see through the trees. There! There was her quarry! Running away – soon to be out of sight.

Palms met dirt. Here was her Discipline. I am of Iron, she reminded herself. Arms, back, abdominal muscles. She called each muscle by name and forced it to act. She was still dizzy and, though her lungs still ached, she pushed her upper body off the ground and got a knee under herself.

Leathers. It was the leathers. Must be. They were making her overheat. But she could no more get rid of them than she could shirk her duty to follow this disobedient whelp that had eluded her thus far. Being ceremonial, the leathers only covered her from her shoulders down to just below her ass cheeks – and that was only when she was standing. On her hands and knees, as she was now, they allowed a cool breeze to pass between her burning thighs and drift under her armour to cool the core of her body. Fortunate that she wore the most minimal thong underwear beneath her uniform.

Get up, she urged herself. Lying here in a ditch so gods-damned ... unbecoming.

One booted foot found earth. She grabbed her spear in her right hand – it had fallen right next to her when she'd collapsed. She jabbed the butt of her weapon in to the ground and pulled her body upright.

Fresh air came in to her lungs. She felt her strength returning.

A determined and angry look came over her face.

Marissa, Adept of Iron, had a score to settle.

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Talla slipped back in to the dormitory through a side entrance. She was out of breath, but not out of time. The children were still napping, which was great, and her colleagues were just waking up and getting back to the nitty gritty details of their work.

"M'lis," Talla acknowledged her superior with a nod.

"Talla," the other answered back, twitching an eyebrow.

Talla hoped that she wasn't obviously out of breath. M'lis eyed her carefully while Talla pretended to be perfectly normal, thank you for asking.

M'lis shrugged.

"The carters will be by with the load of fruit soon," she told Talla. "You can handle the unloading."

Talla nodded.

"No problem."

There was a commotion near the main entrance. Talla strained her eyes to look over the rows of sleeping children in their little cots. A woman in the armour of one of the enforcers from Form was standing just inside the open doorway. Talla couldn't make much out – the woman was silhouetted against the brightness of the sandstone buildings across the way.

Whoever she was, her body language said that she wasn't happy. She stood with her legs spread while her fully extended arm held her spear planted on the floor.

A chill went through Talla. This was no idle visit. This woman clearly had a purpose and was also very obviously tired. It was a rare thing to see a woman of Form panting and leaning on her spear the way this one did. Talla was glad to be at the corner of the building farthest from this woman. She became keenly aware of the fact that, in all of her running around, she had never really checked to see if she was followed. Was it possible?

She gulped. She wished for the children to wake up now, to crowd this invader and hide Talla in their numbers.

Be calm, Talla, a voice came inside her head. It relaxed her, but only a little. Zhair'lo couldn't know what was happening, only that she was afraid of something. He didn't realize what kind of trouble she thought was coming.

An Acolyte of Sweetness, her rank as a Teacher marked by the sheer impracticality of her garb, casually approached the guard and waved her out. The guard must have been low ranking, for she acquiesced immediately and stepped outside. That made Talla feel better. The teachers would never let anything but the most dire emergency disturb the children sleeping in their places on their little cots. Scant protection, but she'd take it.

Talla pretended to be occupied replacing light bed sheets over the toddlers who had kicked them off in their sleep. It let her move around so she could see what was happening at the entrance.

The Acolyte, her flowing, translucent orange scarves hanging off her shoulders and elbows, stood firmly with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side while the guard appeared to be pleading a case with her.

What were they discussing?

The Acolyte's head bobbed side to side. She might have rolled her eyes. Talla couldn't tell at this distance. Finally, there was a reluctant nod and she dismissed the guard with a wave of her hand. Talla had never realized that the authority accorded to a Teacher actually let her treat the guards of Form in such a manner. Regardless, she was relieved to see the armoured woman depart.

She let a breath out and carefully tucked another child in before moving on. Whatever the guard had wanted – or seen – there was nothing to do about it now.