The Witch's Want Ch. 07

In the ruins, there was a chamber, such as it was. To the present day human eye -- to one who was not specifically entitled to be there, or one who perhaps had stumbled there by chance, but was not unwelcome, it was little more than a half fallen-in dusty hole, with a soft and somewhat strange glow in it. No one ever came here anyway who drew breath, and any who had over the millennia who weren't welcome had simply ceased to exist.

But if there had been one who was indeed welcome there, they'd find that it wasn't a dusty hole at all.

In the dark and richly adorned chamber in the keep, there was now a trio of individuals arrayed around the fuming little fire which allowed them to scry across space and time.

"So," one of the females said with a small nod, "the play is almost set to begin once more. This time, it is in our hands to guide if we wish. I only wonder how it was that you found these two, husband."

He shrugged with a smile from where he reclined on the pillows, lying spooned against the back of his second wife, who reached up and behind her to offer him a piece of fruit. He lifted his hand from where it had been a little busy caressing her cleft and reached to take the offering. Once it was in his mouth, he returned his hand to where it had been.

Anat shivered for a moment from the new coolness of his touch. It only lasted an instant and then she sighed with contentment once more.

"I have been searching for these two from before their births," he said, "knowing a little of how they would turn out. Once I'd found the bloodline, things grew easier, though with the number of descendants, it was busy for a time until I found a pair who were near to the same age and where the spirit showed itself in them. Working backward after that, I learned what had happened to the two."

"These will need help, as will the others," Anat said, as she got to her feet and kissed him on the way, before she stepped to the priestess' side and stood with her arm around her waist. "There is this unhappy fool, the first man of the witch who now carries half of the lock. He seeks to kill her. The lock will protect her to a degree, but his efforts will get in the road."

Nisi-ini-su nodded and stood a little closer to Anat. So many thousands of years and she still loved it when they stood side-by-side with their hips touching. It felt the same to her now as it had when they were young girls in the now featureless plain where the city of Ninab once stood, back when they were just young girls there, and long before they'd become lovers.

"There are others there in that place who hate our son's girl there out of their beliefs. It changes little, but she has property and it is too soon for her to dream of leaving it behind."

She smiled, "But these ones can help, if they can believe what lies before them on the road. I would ask Dimme to make another journey, but it is plain that this would hurt her heart even more, and I cannot ask this and feel good about it."

Lugalbanda stood up and stretched. "Then we will have to go ourselves," he said, "to send any others would only cause even more fright."

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"It feels good to be outside the walls," Nisi-ini-su said with a smile as she took the reins of her dead horse in one hand and tightened the leather bracer on her arm with the other one. Her companions nodded to her as the clatter of their horses' hooves rang along the causeway.

"It feels good only to have a reason to be." The warrior priest said as the last pair of sentries stood apart to give them room.

A little while later, three figures rode out of the last opening on the causeway before the mighty keep of the Jebel Bishri, leaving the Gated Bridge and the fortress behind on their way to the entrance of the road of the dead.

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"I wish we had some kind of idea what this is all about," Savannah said. "I mean, the sense of direction that I had in this was like something that I've never experienced before."

They walked across the hotel lobby headed for the elevator. "If it's alright with you," Hunter said as he pressed the button to call the elevator, "I've always found that when I'm facing something that's deep into weird to me, it helps if I just find a quiet place and write crap down to sort it out."

Savannah nodded as she looked at Hunter while they waited. There was something coming to her in all of this -- besides the insane way that she'd felt herself being dragged here. She knew what was about to happen between them. It didn't bother her a bit. She guessed that it was something that she must need on some level anyway.

But even as headstrong and driven as she could be -- and she knew full well what she was capable of -- this was out of the ordinary for her. She glanced at him again.

It seemed to be her new hobby, she smirked to herself.

He was gorgeous, though maybe not every woman's cup of red, juicy, 100% USFDA-approved-for-dietary-consumption, prime free-range beef, but she didn't care about every woman.

He was bright, really good-looking, and he was blonde with blue eyes, ones that you could lose yourself in. She almost grinned. That was almost enough right there. She knew that it would be for most girls like her. But she knew that she wasn't what every guy wanted herself.

These days, Savannah Smith was all about feeling alive -- and that had nothing whatsoever to do with surrounding herself with creature comforts. She'd left the last of that shit behind her when she'd walked away from her marriage. She'd never been all that much drawn in that direction anyway and she knew that about herself.

Her Daddy had wanted a boy. He hadn't been that fixated on it, he'd just thought that his firstborn ought to be a male, though he was prepared to love any child, really. The kind of love that he'd had with Savannah's mother had to be worth at least a Hollywood screenplay or five all by itself, since there was a lot of dreamy romance to it.

But though modern medicine had advanced and evolved and new miracles were being developed almost every day it seemed, there just hadn't been enough tricks up any of the surgeon's sleeves to stop the hemorrhaging, and her father had watched the love of his life slip away before his eyes.

Savannah had no way to know, of course, but she'd been told by her grandmother that he'd been changed by it. When it was over and he'd stood leaning in tears against the wall in the operating room that they'd wheeled his wife right into as soon as they'd seen what they were facing, he'd changed.

They'd tried to get him out of there, but he knew what was happening, and he calmly told the nurses that he'd kill anyone who tried to hustle him out of there before she was gone. He'd said that he'd face whatever consequences his threats would set into motion later. There was no way that he'd leave his rapidly weakening wife. It tore the heart out of him, but at least he'd gotten the chance to say goodbye.

Little Savannah went home with only one parent.

Her father had never sought anyone for himself ever again and raised her alone. Even for a man with a lot of money, it hadn't been all that easy, but he'd done it. Savannah could have had whatever sort of toys and playthings that her little heart had desired, but it had come naturally to her to try to emulate her father, since they were the very same in their temperament. To him, she was his willful little kitten from the time that she was a little thing, and that was fine.

As she got a little older, whatever tendencies that she might have naturally had to be a tomboy came to her, but like anything else about Savannah, she'd put her own stamp on it and owned it plain and simple. She turned 'tomboy' into 'tomcat' in a female sense for a time, but that had been only a transitional phase for her. Around the time that she'd turned nineteen, she'd come into her own and the word for that was wildcat.

Physical things came easily to her -- they always had, and there wasn't much that she'd ever shied away from, taking no crap from anyone along the way. She'd always loved martial arts and excelled at several styles. When it came time for a summer job, her friends all had the usual ones.

Savannah had been a smoke jumper, fighting forest fires under contract just for the feeling of the adrenaline and the work of it. When the season was over, she hadn't even taken any time to heal up her bruises; she'd just walked into a Marine Corps recruiting office and told the astonished recruiters that they needed her.

After trying to break her, her training platoon sergeant had just fallen in love with her, as though he was her father away from home, and she became like the daughter that he'd never had. When she'd shipped out for her first posting, he'd stood there with proud tears on his face, threatening to beat the first man to death who even so much as grinned at him with their own arm -- right after he'd ripped it off for the purpose.

Savannah spent one cruise in the Marine contingent of a Navy aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, fending off the advances of men from regular sailors to officers, including most of the jet jockeys. They seemed to like a challenge, so she gave it to them, telling them that they might have her if they could go three rounds with her in the ring in the gym, or as long as it took to get past a split decision. A lot of money changed hands, but Savannah's little toy remained the inviolate Holy Grail to the ship's company and they all loved her for it.

That wasn't to say that she'd exactly been a total non-player, but any woman on a ship with several thousand people on it has to be at least a little careful about her indiscretions.

She'd done her tour in Iraq then, coming home with the beginnings of a chestful of medals, not that they were all that important to her. She'd only done what was needed. After that, it was the American embassy. Most of that had been spent in readiness drills and working out new measures for being prepared.

All of that had left her a little jaded, though. She was more ripped than most men her age, and she knew of only a handful of females who had a body like hers. They were all body-builders and were more buffed than she was, but that had never held her interest, since she found that pursuit to be a lot of time in a gym with a bored brain, and a bored brain inside Savannah's head was never a good thing.

She liked her body and worked at keeping it, though she knew that there were a lot of guys that didn't like a woman's body quite as hard as hers. Savannah didn't care, though after a while, she'd fallen for Brendan.

Now she was standing beside a man who just might have the juice in him to be able to keep up, and it was a tantalizing prospect. She was careful not to get her hopes up, though. She knew the odds were against her. She'd never met a man who was anywhere near her equal sexually. She didn't think that there was such an animal. Until may be now, ... though she couldn't say how she knew that.

She did really want to give him a test drive, though.

She listened to him talk and responded appropriately in the right places. She knew what he was doing, too. Hunter was a little different himself, and he was trying for a little normalcy here. It wasn't what he really wanted, she knew that. It was as though he was trying not to let himself hope for too much. As different as he was to most of the men in her life to this point, she also knew that she wasn't his normal run of the mill either.

She also had a feeling that there hadn't been all that many Christmas presents in his life.

The slowest-moving elevator in the known world finally arrived and the doors crawled apart. They walked in, with Hunter still puzzling out loud about all of this strangeness. He pressed the top floor button and the doors began their snail-like progress in closing. Savannah wanted to scream over it, but she didn't.

"I dunno," he went on, "I mean --"

"There's just one thing here that you're overlooking, Hunter," she said quietly.

He raised his eyebrows as he turned, wondering what it might be.

And then she was on him, slamming him against the wall of the elevator with her hands on his head and her body pressing hard against him. She was kissing him hard, and though it might not be for all that she was worth for any of a couple of reasons, she was putting a lot into it.

Hunter responded instantly, though his mind had to send some conscious commands to his knees that They Shalt Not Buckle.

They made little soft sounds to each other, expressing both their need and their delight. Hunter wondered if he was going to get enough oxygen. He wondered how long this could last before he saw the darkness in the red vision of his closed eyelids that signaled his loss of consciousness. He felt as though he was up against the hard and almost unyielding torso of a store mannequin, though hers was warm, and he loved it. He wondered where she'd learned to kiss like this.

He wondered if they were going to even make it to the door to his room, and he realized that he likely wouldn't care all that much if they didn't.

What he got from this after most of a minute was that he could really feel her hunger for him, and there wasn't any way that he could doubt it at all. It was there just like gravity, and just as immutable as a force to his mind. But he also knew that there was more here, way more, and it came to him as a call.

He could even feel that his body was rising to that call in other ways than just the obvious. His skin felt flushed and his body tingled with readiness. He could feel it, even in his fingers and toes. Christ, his ears felt as though they might catch fire here.

The door opened and they were thankful that it was their floor, and that there hadn't been anyone waiting there to use the elevator. Hunter grabbed her hand and they almost ran in the direction that he pointed, but Savannah did giggle just a little bit when it looked as though he was going to snap the key off in the lock.

Inside the room, she set her knapsack down and Hunter put the key in his pocket. He thought that maybe she'd like something from the fridge on the nightstand for later and had been about to ask, but she threw him onto the bed as her answer before he could get that far. He was amazed when she actually ripped his T-shirt in her attempts to get it off him. She had him naked in less than a minute after that.

He hadn't even gotten over her ferocity when she'd stood up and began to take her own clothes off. The last thing was her T-shirt and he stared at that incredible body -- an almost exact female likeness to his own -- or maybe it was the other way around, he didn't care. Other than details such as eye and skin color, all that there was lay in the slight difference between their sizes and their weights due to his muscle mass.

He'd never seen anyone like Savannah. He took in the muscles and the ridges of her thighs brought out by the movement of her shifting her weight. His gaze lifted to her mound and though he'd seen enough to have an idea of what was possible, this, ... this one area of Savannah's wonder, he knew without a doubt that he was looking at it his idea of perfection right here.

The look on her face was anything but shyness. She could plainly see that he liked her, and oh, she most definitely liked what she was looking at. She reached for the hem of her shirt and began to pull it up to get it over her head. The motions caused her abdominal muscles to almost ripple. What had looked really nice and trim one second took on much the same washboard look as he knew that he had going on. All that it took was a little motion on her part.

With the shirt off, he admired her breasts as she reached up to untie her hair and let it fall.

There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other. It ended when he groaned very softly, and that sound caused Savannah to sigh, though he didn't hear it. She took the three steps and then she was on him again.

Hunter wasn't stupid. He knew that this was something that they both needed, and as long as she seemed to want to drive, he'd let her do anything that she wanted.

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"You're worried about meeting my mother," he said as the Harley thundered along the roadway.

"Any woman who falls in love with a man worries a little," Farah replied.

"I have more to worry about," he said, "She's not my mother. She is the mother of Bart, but that spirit is gone. I have only his memories to act by."

Farah was shocked. She hadn't thought of it at all, but she knew that he was right.

"I am an impostor inside the body of another," he said.

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Afterward, Hunter and Savannah both quite obviously remembered that afternoon, but for each of them, there were moments to it that they'd never forget - such as the way that it had felt to Savannah as she lay on her back with her fingers in Hunter's hair while he mouthed her throat gently. They couldn't stay still for a second -- neither one of them as their bodies sought for new and minute ways to get closer. At that time, she'd said the only thing that it was possible for her to say, but her gasping "Oh, Hunter," told him all that he'd needed to know.

She relaxed then, in a rare moment of complete submission to a male, her head hanging just off the edge of the bed as he moved to take her like this. A small cry of joy escaped her throat that turned this in Hunter's mind because to him, it carried a lot more than her simple acceptance, so he began to put a lot more into it because she was worth it to him. His mouth found the tendons of her neck, exposed to him as they were in this position and he began to bite her very carefully just to hear her gasp every time that he did.

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She'd looked down often while she'd ridden him hard, but there was once that caused her to wonder if she'd wrenched something loose in her own chest when she'd seen that look of adulation on him. He ran his hands over her breasts. They were a wonder to him, human female breasts, not all that large by themselves, but they were backed by the pectoral muscles that all humans have. Hers were just rock hard when they were in use -- the same as his, that was all.

He sighed, having found a new ideal to him. As she rode him, looking down, she saw the emotion in his eyes and then she felt him harden as he pushed upward. She threw her head backward, leaning back in the same direction to put her hands on his thighs. When he squeezed her nipples ....

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They'd been in a doggy position for a long while and it had made Hunter laugh a little to hear Savannah chuckle when she realized that she was hearing the sound that she'd wanted to hear so much as she threw her body back against him to match his thrusts. And at several times during their lovemaking, Savannah Smith decided that she really thought that Hunter Kurtz was amazing.

The thought led to another one which she knew that she ought not to be having, since she'd only gone into this not wanting to look very far into it at all. And that led her to think very far anyway, when she had the time for it. That likely wouldn't happen, she told herself, but it was becoming a very nice thought.

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"Hunter, you sweet thing," she said a little tiredly hours later, "help me to stand up. We've been here for hours and I still haven't gotten a chance at that bath that I wanted. I mean, I can even see the tub a little from here in the dark, but I'm still not anywhere near getting in it, am I?"

It was surprisingly difficult for such a small thing, but he managed it, ending up sitting on the edge of the bed and holding her up as she stood a little between his knees. Savannah had the thought to walk away from him to turn on the bathroom light so that she could run the bath for them, since from where she stood, the thing was big enough for the two of them to enjoy together and she liked the thought of it now.