speak

She is fresh and young—so ripe for the picking.

…She is also scrawny, but he looks past this for now, for the urgency of a thick, throbbing something in his blood snarls against the limitations of taste. She is a woman. She smells of a woman.

Good enough.

He watches her, her image plastered against the rays of a setting, dying sun; she is pale against the brilliance of golds and reds, wreathed in them even as fire ignites the pyre. Shadows lengthen even as she trots and gambols about, prancing along the boundaries of heaven and earth; she seems so happy, so thrilled and enticing in her energy, she does not even care that night will surely come to fall, and everything, everything will be dark soon.

An eagle cries in the distance.

(They know what happens when their master goes to hunt—)

He can catch her scent—laden with mud and salt water, but the sand of the desert is unmistakable on in the air about her. She is a herd member to him—one might even dare to call her family if Reginald had not found the idea so repugnant. He wonders, as he ever does, if a woman in the same herd is fair game to him; if womanflesh of the wilderness if forbidden now, and if there were any daring enough to stop him once he’s made his choice. He remembers that girl (Sia? Sica? He cannot remember her name—) and how she had fucked his brother under the covers of a grove’s sultry shadow. He wonders if those shadows had been a deliberate ploy.

…no matter. His thoughts grow sluggish as his blood begins to throb even harder. Her tail curls behind her as she moves, and he must recognize a smooth, well-formed gait when he sees it. Small she may be—but he sees how well formed she is.

He approaches. (They sense their master’s attack.)

Yes she breathes, and her smoky sigh raises as many questions as hairs along the back of his neck. He controls the shiver of anticipation; he controls himself. (The serpent is coiled.) “…Yes?” he repeats, his voice a masculine growl even as her’s is a purr, the question embedded in the lilt of his tone. Why are you so giddy, girl? Everything about him is granite and stone; powerful chest, muscled neck carrying a heavy, chiseled head held cocked in the guise of pleasant curiosity, those grey eyes sitting deeply in his skull, framed as they are by wild locks of his hair, glinting with something as he gazes at the sunset-clad filly.

Hmph. Filly. The term barely suits her—his nose tells him she is more than enough of a mare.