“I’m honored, Elyse,” I said, “but not too surprised. I’ve seen the way you look at me.”
“I suppose there’s no point in denying it,” she said, smiling shyly. “As a girl, I always imagined that one day, I’d be swept off my feet by some paladin in golden armor. But the more paladins I met, the more I realized that I didn’t actually fancy men like them. I guess I’ve always had a secret thing for bad men. For rebels. And when I met you…”
“You realized that you’d met the ultimate bad guy, the ultimate rebel, huh?”
She chuckled. “You’re a bit full of yourself sometimes, Vance.”
“If a kiss will make you feel better about flying, then who am I to deny you that?”
I stepped up to her, and we stared into each other’s eyes. By the gods, she was beautiful. I’d been wanting to do this—and much more, of course—since the moment I’d first laid eyes on her. I kissed her gently, since it was her first time, but she responded by diving in like the world was about to end. For such a prim and proper girl, and a cleric no less, this woman was positively ravenous. She gasped and moaned into my mouth as we kissed, and she dug one set of fingertips into my back while she grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me in more forcefully.
I couldn’t resist reciprocating in kind, sliding the fingers of one hand through her silky blond hair while I slipped the other hand up onto a full, round breast. I squeezed gently through the flimsy white fabric of her dress and soon felt her nipple stiffen. She moaned slowly into my mouth as I fondled her tit, and she kissed me with an even more voracious hunger.
I wanted to tear that dress off her glorious body, and I was sure she wanted to rip my clothes off too. Unfortunately, now was not the time. I pulled away from her and gave her pert breast one final squeeze. For a few seconds, we simply stared at each other, panting and on fire with lust.
Talon cawed from above while she used her massive tongue to clean her feathers. Having a zombie harpy as an audience wasn’t how I had imagined my first intimate moment with Elyse, but a man had to take what he could get.
“Are you sure you’ve never done that before?” I asked Elyse, trying to avoid Talon’s yellow eyes. Gods, that monster was creepy. Useful, but creepy.
“That was the first time,” she insisted. “The first time of many more to come, I hope.”
“We’ll pick up where we left off once the battle is over.”
Elyse’s eyes were aflame with desire. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to not cut her out of the harness and finish what we had just started. There was a battle to fight, though, and we couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
“Good luck up there,” I said. “I’ll see you when it’s all over.”
She swallowed back her desire and nodded. “When the battle is over.”
I sent out a mental command to the harpy to take off. It took a running start before springing upward, crashing through the thick cover of tree boughs. Then, it was done: Elyse was flying.
Now, we had to get into position and prepare to make our attack. I headed over to the others.
“Did you two have an enjoyable little private chat?” Isu asked icily.
Rami quirked an eyebrow, and she seemed like she was as interested as Isu, but perhaps for other reasons. Would she be game for a threesome? It certainly seemed like it, but perhaps Isu wouldn’t want another woman involved for her first time.
“Your focus should be on the coming battle, not on what Elyse and I were doing,” I said before I turned to Rami and muttered, “Elyse is an excellent kisser.”
“Is that so?” Rami replied. “I wouldn’t have guessed. Perhaps we could have a competition? A duel of tongues?”
I laughed. “Why does everyone suggest such wonderful things to do before the battle?”
“Drok happy!” Drok exclaimed. “Drok like battles, Drok like fighting!” He had taken another battle-axe from one of the soldiers we had killed in the earlier battle and was now dual-wielding battle-axes.
“Well you’re in luck, buddy, because you’re about to get a chance to do a shitload of fighting and killing.”
“Drok become berserker in battle,” he said with a proud grin. “Those soldiers will taste Drok’s axes. Many of those soldiers will taste Drok’s axes.”
Ah, so he was one of the famed northern berserkers. They were fearsome warriors who could cut down swathes of men in seconds when they activated their berserker abilities. I was glad to have him on my side.
“They’ll shit their pants when you go into berserker mode, my friend,” I said.
“Not before they bring up everything that’s in their stomachs when they smell this brute,” Isu muttered.
Drok simply beamed out an idiot’s grin and swung his axes in his hands.
“Enough talk,” I said. “Let’s get mounted up and prepare to fight.”
Chapter Fifteen
I climbed onto Fang’s shoulders, while the women mounted their horses. My skeletal cavalrymen were already on their skeletal mounts. Drok chose not to mount a horse, but he had no trouble keeping up with us as we crept over to the trees on the perimeter of the camp and got into position.
I would head up the column on Fang, providing the force and momentum to barrel through the soldiers’ first line of defenses and thus punch a hole into their line. My troops would be arranged in a long line behind me, with two horses side by side, and they would pour through the hole. Once we broke through the gap, the camp would likely be in chaos from my corpse explosions, and the line would fan out, with each successive pair of riders veering left, then the pair after them right, then the third
