Uneaten Prey (1991 words)
A human hunter observing a raiding party of the Enemy is confronted by one of their kind - but its intentions are not on raiding.
The 'Hallowed Hearts' story contest tickled the corpse of my muse and when the fetor of rot emerged, this is what resulted. It had to be short, almost impossibly so for my often long winded style, comprising forbidden romance, tragedy (failed), and maybe even a little horror (failed).
Maybe my next offering, if the rotting corpse puffs out more vapors of its decay.
1991 words total.
Odd creatures, the Eyxalos, and pretty damn dangerous. Naet sprawled on the stone outcrop a hundred or more feet above the war party passing below. Half man, if rather thin and frail looking men, and half deer they did not appear terribly dangerous to the unknowing. Those below had red war paint striped on their tawny furred torsos, head, and cervine lower bodies. Off on a raid, clearly. The three doe trailfinders were striped with blue and were, if anything, even more dangerous than the males.
Luckily they had not looked up, nor Naet's human scent on the wind. He just hoped that they were not raiding the scattered human settlements.
“Know, you, that see you they kill you, eh?" Naet flinched at the quiet, whispering admonition but did not move back from the rocky lip. He knew that voice; indeed, he had taught it human speech. Half turning his head he glanced over his shoulder with one green eye.
Brown eyes stared down at him from ten paces away, near enough to see over the lip of the rock but not so near that their owner would trod upon him with those four narrow, disturbingly sharp hooves. The owner of said eyes was like those below; half deer, half human though barely so. Adding a torso, arms, and hands, to a deer was about as human as that mix appeared. At least this representative of the sylvan species was not striped with paint like those below.
Had it, the color would've been deep green. Others of the crèche would bear white paint. Only the trailfinders, the does who scouted the forest and fought like any ten bucks, bore paint different than the warrior males.
Turning his head back to watch the last of the raiding party round the base of a distant rocky tor Naet rolled onto his back to look up at the bearer of the hard brown stare directed down upon him. In one hand the Eyxalos doe held a leather sling her kind favored. While they could use bows, they seldom chose them when they could put a slung stone as accurately over a similar distance. Those slim arms might look weak by human standards but they were far from it.
“As would hunters of my own kind if they found you beyond their borders." Naet whispered back, conscious of the acute hearing of his observer's species. “No different than grazers, to us." He hooked a thumb back over his shoulders, “They did not see or scent me."
Incongruously, the doe smiled at him. Like most deer her foreteeth were square and flat, only the upper teeth visible at all. Yet, behind those square teeth were very prominent canines and, beyond those, the sharp edged molars of any omnivorous species that chewed its meat. While they mostly looked like deer, their diet required just as much raw protein as humans.
“You no kill this – ahem – grazer, eh? Taught speak." One slender hand touched thin fingers to her thick throat below her very cervine head. “Taught much." Her smile widened to a very mischievous leer as the doe paced silently forward despite the forest loam and placed one bifurcated hoof directly over his crotch.
Naet flinched, knowing that the points of those hooves could slice as keenly as a knife. “Yes, honeysuckle." That was not her name, he could not even pronounce what passed for her crèche name. “How's a dear deer today?"
Tall, scalloped ears backed and her dark brown eyes rolled at being called 'deer' twice in five words. Eyaxalos did not care for the comparison. “Hunt." Her hoof put a bit more weight on the simple leather breechcloth covering Naet's crotch. “Find prey."
Naet reached down to catch the fetlock of that uncomfortably close leg and eased it aside, “Probably found your 'prey' within half a slung stone's reach into the forest." He opined blandly as he stood. “And followed it like a cat, making as much noise."
“Yah." The doe admitted with a bob of her head, her hooves making not a sound as she closed the last pace to press her ungarbed front firmly against his chest. Considering her physiology she was actually just slightly shorter than he, though her ears added almost a full three hands higher. Tawny golden fur covering the prominent curves of her breasts flattened against her chest and delicate seeming, though far from it, hands grasped his hips. Satin lips, expressive enough though thinner than human, pressed just as firmly to Naet's lips. “Hunted prey, to eat not."
Dropping his own hands to the union of her cervine shoulders to her slender human torso, what passed for her 'hips' Naet returned her fervent kiss with his own, tongues darting out to meet between. Breaking to catch a breath Naet smiled into those deep brown eyes, his own green ones always a fascination to her – Eyaxalos had no eye colors save hues of brown. “Eat not, but eaten by, eh?" He chuckled.
Square white teeth backed by lupine looking fangs flashed in another leering grin as those expressive ears flicked. “Mhh, eh, yah." Her head bobbed in a quick nod, breaths quickening at those, to one of her species, very taboo thoughts. As a young scout she had secretly witnessed human lovers away from their settlements doing things that she never would have imagined. Over the years she had witnessed several such secret assignations between humans, sometimes even of the same gender, who thought themselves safe in forests near their settlements.
Far away from the Eyax crèche lands and raiding parties, little knowing that the species was always scouting so far out. Always females, too, who were much more practiced at the task than their males. That was how she met Naet, after the brother of a woman he had been seducing showed up before she did. Naet had been ambushed, hog tied, and hauled deep into Eyaxalos lands watched and followed the entire time by the doe now grinding herself against him.
Once his captors had laughingly left she revealed herself and, much to the terrified human's surprise, showed that she was as female as the woman he had missed. Well, just as female, but not nearly as feminine nor built quite the same.
She did so by the simple expedient of grinding her cervine rump against his face while he sat tied to a tree.
That was, also, where he came up with her name; honeysuckle. That discovery had surprised him almost as much as having doe butt ground against his face.
“Yah. Man thirsty, yah?" She crooned in that bedroom soft voice all Eyax shared, her fur softened breasts flattening against her chest as she strove to grind the front of her lower body against his crotch. Like most hunters Naet eschewed as much clothing as the season allowed, wearing this day only the customary breech cloth, moccasin boots, and charm against biting insects. The warm fur covering strong muscles rubbing against him from navel to neck was delightfully distracting.
The hand that shifted down to reach under his breech cloth was even moreso, slender fingers cupping his balls and awakening cock.
“You know I'm always thirsty." He mumbled into another powerful kiss, one hand cupping the line of her strong cervine jaw and another the small of her back just above her lower shoulders. While their tongues danced the tarantella between their lips her fingers caressed the stiffening flesh of his cock and soft vulnerable skin of his balls.
Breaking her kiss, the doe's fingers left their play and she took a couple of quick strides back, ears up and deep brown eyes gleaming with ardor. Deftly she turned in place and presented him with the wonderful view of her snow white rump, wide tail flicked up vertically. Beneath, peeking from that nest of satin white, was a single dark pucker of naked flesh. Below that, defined solely by the lie of her fur, was the prize she wanted him to seek. Already he saw the gleam of her subtly musky, honey sweet arousal upon that fur.
Without hesitation he reached out one hand to capture the root of that short, broad tail and fell to his knees, pulling with that grasp even though she stepped readily back as he settled his rump on his heels. Placing slender but powerful rear legs to either side of his thighs she pushed back to meet his face as he leaned in.
The musk of her filled his nose as he inhaled that intoxicating scent, nuzzling through the damp fur pushing ever deeper until he felt the warm, smooth caress of flesh against his lips. A rippling shudder ran through the satin fur under his fingers and the doe's weight shifted back. It was only a slight adjustment, but it flattened human lips against the doe's rearmost lips in a warm, wet kiss accompanied by a rumbling croon.
For a moment he merely teased her with that kiss, brushing up and then down the narrow cleft and it's thin, hot labial folds but the doe was as insistent as she was heated. Her haunches shifted up, down, from side to side in small motions while he kept his head more or less still. The act of placing one's face beneath the tail was something no Eyaxalos did, male or female, that she had ever heard of or seen among her own people. That was something she had witnessed humans doing in their secret trysts in the forest.
The fact that it tended to be mutual between the mating pair, even if both were of the same gender, was even more arousing. The thought of being beneath a buck, with their tendency toward powerful, even violent, thrusting made her quail. She witnessed none of that observing humans, who went about it with a slow, sensual manner she had desired.
And, upon finding a hapless human tied to a tree in the forest of her own crèche, she had explored it; fully and, for the human, exhaustively.
Naet, after his initial terrified shock at being found helpless before a doe of the dangerous species, found nothing to complain about. Letting her insistent pressure mount until it seemed she would push him onto his back, he finally let his tongue quest forth. Immediately the subtly bitter, musky, but stunningly sweet flavor of the doe exploded through his senses and he gave up on memory.
The taste of her suffusing his mouth, the smooth heat of her clenching vaginal entry before his tongue, and the steady trickle of her arousal consumed thought as thoroughly as his tongue consumed her nectar. Shifting both hands to grasp the doe's haunches he grasped his fingers deep into satin smooth deer hair and leaned into her rearward pressure, delving his tongue deep between her folds, his face buried in the warmth of her fur.
With a slow, rumbling croon that built into a short series of hasty, sharp breaths he felt her body tense against his face and under his hands. When croon became groan and then growl he opened his mouth fully, taking the entirety of her sex into his hungry maw just as her body twitched. He felt the powerful muscles of her cervine belly clench and flutter as, within his mouth and under the eager probing of his tongue, her vaginal entry clenched tight in a rapid flutter.
Sweet pungency exploded across his tongue, filling his mouth in rapid pulses of thin, oily climax with the omnipresent, but thankfully subtle, undertaste of urine. He flattened his tongue against the twitching bud of her sensitive bud, drawing upward in a powerful stroke, eliciting a breathless, groaning croon, even as he gulped down the effluvia of her pleasure.
That pleasure, peaked, and faded – but, as ever, it did not fade for long. The sun would be down before her desire, and his appetite, were appeased.