The Cherry Tree

Not that there were still five cities left to bet. Liorit groaned in despair, and thrust her hips forward. Her loincloth was drenched with the slippery fluids seeping from her slit. Craving friction, she tried to roll her hips, but was trapped too tightly against the tree.

"Amiel!" she begged.

He shifted beneath her, shoving one hip forward to hold her in place while he fumbled with a hand inside his robes. She ground against his jutting pelvic bone as he tugged the folds of soft wool apart and maneuvered to haul her skirts up around her waist and pull her undercloth out of the way.

His erection dragged along her inner thigh, trailing wetness. Liorit gasped, arched her neck, and stared at the delicate flowering canopy overhead.

There was a probing stiffness, a twitching, triumphant discovery, and an abrupt twinge as she was stretched open. Amiel's rigid length slid greedily inside.

Liorit clenched her muscles around the unyielding shaft and hissed. Amiel buried himself in her, crushing her against the tree with his chest. He grunted throatily and began to thrust.

He pounded her steadily into the tree. Each stroke glided deep, slamming in to fill Liorit over and over, teasing her insides with jolts of maddening pleasure. Rough bark chafed with exquisite pain as her back scraped up and down the trunk.

She pushed her hands inside Amiel's open robe and around his jerking torso. His skin was sweaty, hot, and soft as butter. She raked her nails down the smoothness of his back, urging him to go harder, faster.

"Oh!" A cry burst from Liorit as the pad of Amiel's thumb dove into the folds of skin above her opening. She was so wet that his finger slipped around uncontrollably, running over the tight, throbbing nub of nerves with no semblance of rhythm, or even conscious intent. The unpredictability propelled her higher.

And higher. Pleasure flooded in her lower abdomen, spreading a tingling numbness through her buttocks, thighs, and stomach. The sensations inflated rapidly. Her pleasure swelled larger and larger, seeking a breaking point but not finding one, despite the preoccupied dedication with which Amiel was sawing away at it.

She didn't notice when his hand left her clit, but she did notice when a slippery finger shoved into her other, tighter entrance. The surrounding muscles rippled. She moaned loudly as the new pressure intensified every sensation but still withheld release.

The pleasure hurt, the pain hurt, and a haze gathered around Liorit. She cried out for Amiel, but instead of the beautiful immortal, her mind's eye saw two little girls.

Shalhavit sat on the orchard wall and nibbled on sycamore figs, watching the guards with her quiet fearlessness.

Amith peered excitedly around a corner, her peaking eye bright with challenge, a cloud of golden curls compromising her hiding spot.

Shalhavit, riding double in front of Liat and swaying with the donkey's lazy pace, grinned and begged Liorit to teach her the words of a dirty song.

Amith curled up in her sleep and pressed her cheek against the slumbering Shalhavit's back, both girls lulled under by the sound of Liorit's lyre, candlelight flickering over their small faces.

The glimpses were simple and joyous and terrifying. They speared Liorit, impaling her as Amiel did. She was drowning, suffocating in their happiness.

"Amiel," she choked. "Harder."

Amiel complied, although the glazed look in his eyes made Liorit unsure whether he had actually heard her. He plunged into her with a desperate brutality.

As she writhed beneath him, she wondered what ghosts he saw.

Then the cherry blossoms began to float down around them in a surreal, gentle rain, and Liorit realized that Amiel fought not only with his past, but with the Wild Earth itself.

In that flash of intuition, she understood. Everything he could not claim from the Wild Earth—submission, relief, deliverance—his body demanded from her. Wild fury drove his thrusts, desolation his cruelty, fear his frantic haste.

His pain and sorrow tore into her own. Agony and pleasure battled one another for release, crying out for an escape.

She screamed in frustration.

As if her scream had been an unwittingly awaited signal, white hot pleasure streaked suddenly through her entire body. It converged in her core, flared, and burst. Powerful contractions rocked her insides.

And, finally, the tears came.

They stung her eyes and burned as they streamed down her cheeks. They wet her bruised lips and slid, salty, into her mouth. They mingled with the sweat on her neck to form wet rivulets that trickled across her collarbone and between her breasts.

Loud, throaty wails filled the air as she continued to spasm around Amiel's mighty thrusts. She cried wordlessly, letting go of the numbness and welcoming the cleansing release, the blistering sears in her heart, the waves of torture and bliss. She cried until her face was drenched and her vision sparkled.

Everywhere, cherry blossoms swirled.

She wept for the cities. For their erstwhile beauty, and for what they had become, in the end, nests of hate and avarice. For the proud monuments of splendor and majesty reduced to scorched graves.

She wept for the immortals. For their failed pleas for reason, for their eternal devotion to one another, for their despairing decision to take Liorit and Liat and escape the holocaust. For the horror on Iofiel's face as he spoke the Wild Tongue and, for the second time in two thousand years, ended an age in destruction.

She wept for the terrible beauty of the Wild. For the bright, radiant blaze of fire as it erupted around Iofiel. For the lissome grace of the wind as it scattered men like tumbleweed. For the awesome crack of rock, singing as it opened to swallow palaces, markets, and gardens.

She wept for the dead. For her sisters, whose sweet, precious lives had been cut much too short, and for her mother, who had gone back to the girls knowing she would die. Chay had warned her that if she didn't stay with the immortals, they couldn't save her. She had nodded grimly, and told him the little ones would need her.

"No!"

She howled at the unfairness of it all. How could souls so innocent and loving be condemned to suffer and die? How could she still feel anything, when they never would again?

Liorit keened her grief and beat her fists against Amiel's broad chest.

He didn't notice. His breathing was labored as his penetrations became shallow and urgent. He buried his eyes in Liorit's shoulder and moaned loudly. She felt his shaft swell hotter and harder as it thrust faster and faster, and knew he was there.

Amiel threw back his head, a name ripping from the bottom of his lungs as he exploded inside her.

"Yael!"

Dark eyes wide, he gasped through his orgasm.

Liorit cried quietly as the rolling waves eased and slowly subsided. She came down gradually, drained and unbound, and clung to Amiel. He pulled out of her but held her so she didn't fall.

That was just as well, since Liorit couldn't feel her legs. She let him lower her onto the surrounding carpet of petals. The air was still. The cherry blossoms smelled of spring, lush and fresh. Amiel leaned against his tree, and she lay in his arms, looking up at him.

He didn't kiss her again, but ran a gentle finger across her broken bottom lip. "The Earth," he told her after a long moment of silence, "says thank you. For your tears."

A breeze prickled along her damp cheeks, and Liorit shivered. "I'm glad I can't hear the Wild Tongue." She recalled the strange rain of blossoms. She had thought they were Amiel's doing, but suddenly wasn't so sure.

"The Earth. Did it cry, too?"

Amiel smiled sadly. "A small piece, yes. The Wild is everywhere. It cries, and laughs, and screams, and dances. All at once, always."

Liorit stared bitterly up at the shining sun and spreading, slender branches, still full of pale flowers.

Beauty hurt. Liorit wondered if it always would.

"I'm glad I can't hear the Wild Tongue." She reached for his hand, and gripped it tightly. "But I want it to share my pain."

"It does." Amiel hugged her closer.

She believed him, but it wasn't enough. "If I could hurt the Earth," she said fiercely, "I would."

Amiel shook his head, dark curls swinging.

"You cannot hurt the Wild, Liorit.

"You can only anger it."