Sleeping Beast Ch. 04

His chest heaving, he stood motionless, putting facts in place, and his big body shuddered as he realized what he'd done.

"Trishta!" Nivid cried out, slumping into a crouch as he wrapped his arms around her.

Gasping, Troi released her desperate hold on his horns and ribs, landing on her feet between Nivid's great hooves, shaking from the rush of energy she'd expended.

He pressed his face against her body, nearly weeping. "I could killed you, Trishta."

Her heart racing and her lungs still struggling, Troi held him, stroking his hair and murmuring wordlessly to soothe him, though she knew her scent would tell him all he needed to know. She'd just gotten her wind when she lifted her eyes to see Talgut racing across the open field toward them. Her head snapped around to the left just as Argus poked his above the rim of the empty pool. His eyes were clouded with pain, but he was alive. Troi sighed in relief.

Talgut slowed as he approached, and Troi spoke so Nivid wouldn't be startled by his arrival. "Talgut, could you help Argus out of there, please? I think I hurt him."

With a hitch in his step and a disbelieving glance from her to Nivid to Argus, Talgut grunted and leapt onto the rock.

--o----O----o--

Nivid surged to his feet without a word, turning toward the castle with Troi cradled in his arms. Over his shoulder, Argus caught Troi's eye and smiled weakly before Talgut stepped between them.

Reassured, Troi slumped deeper into Nivid's embrace, resting her cheek against the wide, hard pad of muscle beneath it. She inhaled deeply, taking in his smell to calm herself. She didn't notice she'd done it, but Nivid did. He would have smiled, but he was too upset by what had almost happened.

She started as he kicked the remains of a shattered door from their path, but Troi was even more surprised when Nivid strode past the guardroom where they usually met and turned east from the entrance. She opened her eyes to see the door she'd been forbidden to open closing behind them. Nivid turned right and began to climb the winding stone staircase just inside the tower's rocky skin.

Troi lifted her head to look around, their altercation nearly forgotten in a swell of curiosity. Tall windows and arrow slits pierced the outer wall periodically. Every so often Troi caught a a narrow glimpse of the valley or the taiga beyond the meadow, and when they'd almost reached the top, she saw the white wolf Argus had told her she didn't have to fear.

They traversed one landing guarding a closed door and one with an open door framing a shadowy room. Her eyes skimmed the surface of a wall-hanging tapestry and several small statues wedged into book-lined walls, and Troi's mind volunteered a word: the circular room was a study.

Before being taken as a slave, Troi had lived in a yurt, which came down every so often and went up in a new location, and which didn't have a study, but her former owner's wife had pretensions of nobility and a spacious, unmoving home to fill.

The very next landing after that was the top of the staircase. When Nivid opened the rough-hewn door, Troi twisted in his arms, trying to see everything at once. The room was spacious and beautiful, if dimly lit with the shutters closed, as they were. In her own chamber almost all the furnishings were smooth and gilded, but Nivid's bed was sculpted of natural wood with only the high spots bearing paint or leaf. His bed was similar to her own, but bold swirls wound around the four massive corner posts, stopping just shy of the undraped canopy supports. His bed was at least twice the size of the Troi's, though.

A chifferobe and a huge, emphatically upholstered chair-- both covered in creamy, soft-looking doeskin-- were the only other pieces she saw before Nivid deposited her on the bed, and her curiosity was supplanted by a burning need to confess her sins and beg his forgiveness.

Troi scrambled to her knees at the edge of the giant feather mattress and launched herself at Nivid's chest, leaning as heavily as possible against his torso. If he moved away, she'd fall. Hopefully that would be enough to keep him here while she explained. She prayed the people-god would not desert her yet.

With her palms on his chest, Troi raised her eyes to plead. "Nivid, I'm so, so sorry. I cannot begin--"

Nivid bent to crush her against his body, shuddering. His fervent embrace temporarily halted Troi's speech.

She was close to crying. "Please, Nivid, please let me apologize," she beseeched him, her voice muffled in the cave his arms and chest had created around her.

He didn't let her go, but he eased up enough for Troi to get some air.

"For a moment, Argus felt like you...," she gushed. "I mean, my mind knew he wasn't you, but he kissed just like you and he felt like you. We were yelling at each other, and... and... I don't understand what happened...."

Her nose was still pressed against his chest when her hands crept up to Nivid's face. She stroked his jaw, the fine fur tickling her palms as it pointed her path toward his ears. Through the thick homespun tunic and leather vest he wore, she could hear his heart beating more quickly than normal.

She pushed her confusion aside. "It won't happen again, Nivid," she tried to reassure him. "I love Argus, but not the way I love you. He's family, too, but I never even considered making love with anyone but you."

Troi clung to him as desperately as she had held him on the cliff. She wasn't in danger of dying this time, but the risk felt just as real. She was afraid he wouldn't believe what she was telling him, though every word was the truth. She'd never looked at Argus as a potential lover, and she was baffled by her reaction to his kiss.

She needn't have worried.

Nivid was so grateful no harm had befallen her that he would have forgiven Troitsa anything. That didn't mean he wanted another man touching her, though, especially one who smelled so foreign to him. It might have been different if they were truly kin, and Argus' scent therefore resembled his own, but the body which had been pressed so closely against his woman didn't carry the blood of a Denova male.

With his neck sharply bent and his mouth resting on the top of Troi's head, he could still smell the other man. He huffed, expelling the offending aroma. The last thing he wanted was to become angry again. He didn't want Troitsa to fear him. Not ever. He huffed again, pushing the scent and its attendant imagery away.

At last, the actual words of Troi's apology penetrated Nivid's misery.

He pulled back to see her face. There were tears in her eyes, but the question in his didn't relate to her repentance.

"Trishta?"

Nivid's throat closed. His mouth opened and for a long minute, nothing emerged. A small choking noise cleared the way. "Trishta, you... luff me?"

In a heartbeat, Troi's face was transformed, the sorrow melting from her eyes and the wrinkles from her brow. As her expression softened, her lips curved and her hands slid from his blocky jaw to the sides of his thick, muscular neck.

The knowledge was new to her, too, Nivid saw.

"I love you," she repeated with a tiny nod.

Her heart fluttered wildly. "I've never told anyone that in my life."

Nivid climbed onto his bed, dragging her along. When he'd settled into the depths of the huge feather mattress, he pulled Troi over to rest full-length atop him, the way they'd fallen asleep for the past five nights. He stroked her hair, staring up between the beams of the high, raftered roof.

Troi couldn't have been half as surprised by her admission as Nivid was to hear it. He'd never expected to hear those words again after his mother died. In fact, if anyone had asked him, he'd have said it was written in stone: no one would ever say those words to him again. Because how could anyone love him? He was a beast, in every sense of the word. Aside from his terrifying, inhuman appearance, he'd done truly heinous things.

After his growing years were gone-- he didn't want to remember the ungovernable mayhem of the urges battering him then-- he'd tried to be kind to the women who were given to him. For ages, he'd tried to talk to them, to treat his trysts like social occasions, but none of the women had been able to listen. Fear and hysteria blocked their ears but didn't blind their eyes, and no one could abide the sight of Nivid, much less his touch.

He coupled with women to satisfy the burning needs of the curse, but until Troi came, he'd done so as quickly and rarely as possible. He'd ceased hoping for anything more. Not tolerance, not affection, and certainly not love.

True love. That was the key to breaking the curse, and it had been more than a decade since he or Argus had entertained even the ghost of a hope of finding it. The actual words of the curse were just another cruel taunt, because no one would ever love Nivid. He wasn't a creature capable of inspiring that emotion.

He'd never questioned what was happening between him and the dark-eyed slave girl those clods in the pass had given him. Half the time he couldn't think-- the scent of her arousal swept all intellect aside-- but Nivid would never have dared to dream that Troi might care for him.

If she truly loved him....

Nivid opened his mind to Argus.

The first thing he felt was pain. He closed his eyes and sent a large portion of will through their connection, lending Argus strength to cope with the injuries he'd sustained. His sibling's reflected response was immediately less tumultuous.

Nivid's thoughts returned to Troitsa, and he felt Argus absorbing what she'd said with the same disbelief he harbored.

Her head was tucked securely between his collarbone and jaw, and her aroma pervaded his consciousness. She was petting the parts of his body beneath her palms, as heedlessly as his hands caressed her spine. It was just what they always did.

Always. His heart smiled, though his face remained somber.

Atop him, Troi's mind wandered, too.

Nivid's presence supported her body the same way it provided a foundation for her thoughts. She wasn't concentrating on him, but the impact of his heartbeat against her ear and temple echoed through her mind.

She loved him.

It was absolutely astounding, and absolutely unexpected.

In the past month, she'd been taken from her home-- such as it was-- sold, bought, kidnapped, raped, and set free. No one had verbalized the last act, but it was true, in every sense of the word. Way down deep in the pit of her belly, Troi knew that if she wanted to leave, any one of the men she lived with would take her anywhere she wanted to go, just as well as she knew she had no intention of going anywhere.

It wasn't as if Troi had never considered what was going on between Nivid and herself, but her idle musings about their relationship had mostly boiled down to overwhelming happiness overlaid with a constant, humming sense of anticipation. She'd been smiling while she planted her seeds and singing in the kitchen. She hadn't felt the need to put it into words but, yes... she loved Nivid Denova, with every little fibre of her being.

When Troi's heart slowed to its normal rhythm, she noticed Nivid's broad, solid chest wasn't the only hard thing beneath her. His erection pressed so firmly against her lower belly that she could feel his pulse there, too, despite his sturdy suede loincloth and her multiple layers. After noticing, she thought of little else, but Nivid simply continued to stroke her hair, showing no sign of making love to her. After a few minutes, Troitsa began to worry that he didn't want to make love to her because she'd been unfaithful to him. Fretting herself into dread didn't help.

Finally, she tipped her head back.

Nivid was staring at the ceiling, his eyes blank until he felt her gaze, when they fell to her face with a question. Moving her hand to the middle of his chest, Troi propped her chin on the back of it. Trying to keep the plea from her voice, she asked, "Don't you want me?"

She moved her hips an inch to demonstrate.

"Want," Nivid said as he lifted his hips to prod her in return.

Then he crushed her body against his chest, and lifted his head to kiss the top of hers.

"Need," he finished gruffly.

Troi beamed up at him and lay her head over his heartbeat, where she fell asleep.

She woke when Nivid rolled her to her back in the middle of the enormous mattress. Oddly, her first thought was wondering how many chickens she'd have to kill to refill it, because if a family was without servants, restuffing worn mattresses became the wife's job and, no matter what Argus thought, Troi planned to be around when the mattresses in Zamok Denova wore out.

Those things were only a flash in her head, though, because a second after she landed, Nivid was bare-chested and kissing her witless.

"Clothes," he grumbled against her neck, whipping away his loincloth as he slithered down the bed.

Troi smiled as she complied, casting her layers away one by one. She only had one foot out of her trousers when Nivid pushed her thighs apart and lowered his head. She forgot about the trousers hanging from her ankle as soon as he sniffed.

There was something about it... Troi couldn't figure out what was different between her sniffing the back of her hand-- which felt like nothing at all-- and Nivid making that big snuffling sound, which so aroused whatever part of her body was beneath his nose. Air alone couldn't make her tingle this way, could it?

Nivid kissed Troi high on the inside of one thigh, then snuffled his way across the swelling lips of her pussy. By the time he reached her other thigh, her ass was off the mattress and following his nose, begging for more.

Troi tugged at the circular handles of his horns, trying to make him move, but Nivid merely nipped at her slim hip before beginning his leisurely trip back to the pink slit that was weeping for his attention.

Lifting himself to his elbows, Nivid used his big, broad, three-fingered hands to push Troi's thighs high and wide, spreading her open. With her heart pounding a feverish beat in every part of her body, Troi watched him intently until the first swipe of his wide, rough tongue made her eyes clench shut. She moaned her approval.

Nivid hummed against her, pleased. She was so wet that he relented, skipping his usual teasing to go straight for the swollen pearl at the top of her slit, making his tongue as pointy as possible to flutter over it.

Troi's back arched, or attempted to, but Nivid held her in a small C-shaped curve and only her hands were free.

They gripped his horns so tightly that her fingers would hurt later, while Nivid's hands on the back of her thighs kept her locked firmly in place. In minutes, Troi went from gasping to writhing to panting as though panicked.

The tingling sensation became thrumming, which built beneath his tongue into unbearable thunderclouds of expectation. She whimpered and tried again to move, while the dance of Nivid's tongue on her clit slowed, and her desperation grew. A high, needy sound swelled into a series of breathy moans, ending abruptly in complete silence. Then she froze, her whole body in stasis as the thrumming in her pussy burst into a wellspring of irrepressible spasms, hurtling Troitsa into the void.

Nivid continued to lick her as she came down, careful to avoid the center of her slit and the tempting proposition of holding her this way as he brought her pleasure again and again. He planned to do that later on tonight, but right now he needed to feel her around him, to seal the bond between their hearts by burying himself in her body. When the tension in Troi's body eased, Nivid climbed into the vee of her thighs, the head of his cock nudging against her slick opening.

He held himself above her until she looked up.

Troi stilled.

Nivid's expression was serious. The plump, diamond-shaped tip of him teased her, and she tilted her hips in invitation. He pushed a little, but didn't enter her yet. The fur on his thighs brushed against the inside of her own, the brown skin of his forearms pressed against her sides, and his wide chest sheltered her. Her arms lifting, Troi smoothed the wiry hair on the back of his head, her eyes meeting limpid pools of black which were usually boiling burgundy by now.

Troi was holding her breath when he spoke, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

"Trishta," he growled, his voice thick and huskier than usual, "I luff you."

He didn't drop any words that time, and Troi was nearly coming before the beast slid his cock inside her.

She screamed, and on the other side of the castle, far below, Argus shattered.

--o----O----o--

NOTE: I'll be back in a couple of weeks with chapter 5. In the meantime... one of my awesome Anons mentioned Beauty and the Beast, and since people always ask writers where our ideas come from, I thought I'd trace the genesis of this one for you.

I was bogged down in the arduous, not-always-pleasant task of revising a [non-erotic] book and trying desperately to avoid lighting it on fire. Ergo... Rebellious Brain says, "I think I'll write something low-pressure and fun, like maybe a non-human story." My mind went immediately to Beauty & the Beast, one second later to Sleeping Beauty, and one second after that to "I wonder why Beauty is the one sleeping?" Boom. Sleeping Beast.

Everything else cascaded from the need to house my poor cursed beast in a remote castle somewhere and the fact I used to like the baba yaga stories. With some vague idea of adapting one, I started to do "a little" research. Ten minutes later I was knee-deep in nomadic tribes and I'd forgotten all about baba yaga. Voila.

Of course, I'm a research addict, so it turned into something less off-the-cuff than I'd planned, but I'm still enjoying the process very much. I'm a little in love with the brothers AND I know what happens to Talgut a couple of years after this story ends.

SO.... thank you all for reading and commenting, as usual, and if you emailed me and I haven't written back, I'm trying to catch up now!!............ Love, Stefanie

--o----O----o--