The Threadbinders
Chapter 3
To say the dwarven mage was astonished was something of an understatement, but he knew as soon as he laid eyes upon her that one of Sophia’s threads would lead to him and Yasha. Humans had their appeal to some, but he’d never found them especially eye catching as a species, and yet, there was something about Sophia that he couldn’t look away from. He felt as smitten as he had the day Yasha had marched into his life.
Her skin was darker than his wife’s but not quite as dark as his own, and the spins and twirls she was doing while keeping three blades suspended in the air reflected an innate agility that Arkady certainly imagined came in quite handy. Her exposed toned belly also revealed a piercing through her navel that had a small gem attached to it, a deep lustrous ruby that helped the highlights in her black silky mane stand out even more.
The knives danced up and downwards, their flat metal sides catching the light to cast interesting shadows along the inside of the area. They were no cheap weapons either, as Arkady could recognize the handiwork of his people even at a good distance. A single one of those knives would fetch a month’s worth of rations to an experienced blademaster, although he suspected they were commissioned as a set long ago, as each of the three looked like similar handiwork. They weren’t steel, but adamantine, a denser metal alloy that only the better dwarven artisans knew how to work with. Usually weapons and armor of adamantine make were generally reserved for their own people, but the grips of the blades laid bare the fact that the weapons had been crafted for human hands, not dwarven. Arkady realized the weapons must have had quite the story behind them, but resolved not to let it be the first thing he asked about, because they had greater things to be concerned by.
Sophia paid no attention to the three mages as they slowly approached her, instead remaining extremely focused on the blades she kept suspended above her, each of them rising and falling like leaping frogs, the woman taking the time to whip them under her arm or leg every now and again, as if she was making sure some routine she knew stayed crisp in her mind.
The three of them didn’t want to startle her, so they moved quietly and carefully, even reducing their speed so that hopefully they would catch Sophia at some point when she had finished her performance to an audience of none. The knives sliced through the air and eventually she grabbed them one at a time by their hilt, flipping them over and stabbing them into a large melon she had resting at her feet, the sort of thing she seemingly did often enough.
“Well done, Sophia,” Weesha said. “Your skill with those is quite remarkable.”
“Thanks, Weesha, but at this point, it’s more a family skill than anything else, even if I am the only one left of my family,” she said, not looking back at them yet. She was withdrawing each of the blades one at a time from the melon, wiping them off with a strap of cloth she wore around her waist as a belt of sorts, cleaning them before sheathing them in scabbards hanging from that same strap. The woman’s voice had a confident way about it, someone who had been self-sufficient for some time, by needs more than choice. It was husky, reminding the dwarf of the smooth ales he’d enjoyed far too much of during his youth. “I haven’t gotten to the stables yet, but I can have a looksee first thing in the morning, unless you need it done sooner.”
“Actually, I have a couple of people I want you to meet,” the gnomish mage said, as the woman’s head turned to look at them.
As soon as Sophia laid eyes on them, she rushed over and grabbed Yasha, pulling her head down so that the human could lock lips with her, having had to leap up a little bit, forcing the taller elf to bend downward. Arkady grinned a little bit, seeing his wife slide her hand down Sophia’s back, clearly enjoying the contact before eventually pulling back, as Sophia kept her eyes tilted up adoringly. “You came! I thought you might, but... in my dreams, you weren’t alone? You were—”
Arkady cleared his throat, as if to draw attention to his form and suddenly Sophia’s head whipped over to spot him, her smile spreading even further as she rushed at him so quickly, he didn’t have time to react, as she slid down onto her knees in front of him so that he was, momentarily, taller than she was, as she reached up in a similar manner, pulling him down into a kiss that was positively exuberant. The dwarf was stunned by the experience, as it was uncannily like kissing his own wife, the perfect level of aggression and emotion, as if Sophia knew she needed to be the more active hand with the more typically reticent dwarf, and wanted to put him as much at ease as she could, sliding one hand across his hip, the other reaching up to stroke his beard in a remarkably insightful fashion. This was clearly a woman who had spent her fair share of time among dwarves, he thought.
“I’ve never kissed a dwarf before,” she whispered to him, having broken her kiss only by fractional space, her breath warm on his lips, the scent of a fire brandy lingering there. “You’re the couple I’ve dreamt of,” she purred to him. “Oh, the things I’m going to do to you, lover. I will make that head of yours spin.” Yasha and Weesha moved over to close the distance, so all of them stood in close proximity of one another. Sophia grinned and hopped up off her knees. “Pardon the forwardness, Master Threadbinder, but somehow I knew you preferred the more forward type of lady. Was I correct in that notion?”
“Now I—” Arkady started before his wife jumped in.
“Very much so, Sophia,” Yasha said with a wry smile. “You said you’d seen us in dreams?”
The human woman nodded. “For the past three seasons or so, I’ve been having dreams about once a week, featuring one of four sets of people. The two of you are clearly one of those sets. The highly refined elvish princess and her burly dwarven husband. I’m not sure how I know, but I think I love the two of you. At least, it’s certainly seemed that way in the dreams. We’ve, ah, gotten up to some rather risque things in those dreams,” she said, blushing just a little bit.
“How much would you say you know about us, Sophia?” Arkady asked her, trying to parse all this knowledge with what he already knew.
“Intimately, and yet not at all, Master dwarf,” she said with a slight shrug. “For example, I can tell you that your wife’s right nipple is far more sensitive than her left, but I could not even hazard a guess at her name. Or yours.”
Yasha was far too comfortable with her sexuality to be caught off guard by this, but nodded in confirmation, something Arkady knew all too well. “My name is Yasha Summervale,” she said to the human, “and this is my husband, Arkady Gormansson. He is a Threadbinder and I—”
“—am a Threatbinder,” Sophia finished for her. “Yes, m’lady, your professions I did know, as I have seen the Threatbinder colors several times before, and of course, your husband’s attire is akin to Weesha’s, whom I’m sure has informed you of my predicament. Sophia Burngrave, of the late Burngraves, at your service.” She pantomimed a curtsy, clinging to an imaginary skirt as she crossed one leg behind her and dipped low. “Acrobat, knife thrower and juggler extraordinaire, if it pleases you both.”
“You needn’t bow to mages,” Arkady said, although the slight undercurrent of his tone implied he found it amusing. “It isn’t as though we’re royalty.”
“You may not be, Master Arkady, but she is,” Sophia said, nodding in his wife’s direction. “I recognize her from a portrait that I saw hanging in Daywander Castle, when we performed for King Tobias. Pardon my asking, Mistress, but how is it that everyone else in that portrait has aged so much and yet you remain remarkably the same?”
“Binders are paid in vitae, my dear,” Yasha said, her voice kind and patient. Arkady had often regretted that children between their two kinds were so unlikely, as he’d often thought his wife would’ve made an excellent mother. Then again, perhaps it was for the best, as other binders struggled with the decision of whether to watch their children age and die, or to bring them into the business and retard their age in kind. “That means the more skilled or in demand of us can defy Mother Time’s inescapable march for what might seem like an eternity.”
“I imagine in comparison to our paltry little human lives, you must live eons,” she said, not sounding at all bothered by the comparison. “I can’t imagine wanting to live so long, to see everyone you know wither and die around you.”
“That’s typically why binders tend to live such nomadic lifestyles,” Arkady said to her. “So as to only build attachments to a few things and people, and to protect them with every fiber of our fabric. Threadbinders find physical satisfaction with every taken commission, and Threatbinders, well...”
“It’s alright, dear,” Yasha said, laughing a little at her husband’s hesitance to say it aloud, as if speaking the words would evoke the deed. “Threatbinders live a more intrinsically dangerous lifestyle, so nearly all of us die in the line of duty. I’ve never heard tale of a Threatbinder dying of old age unless they have chosen to retire from their profession. Accidents are almost as rare.”
“Yes, well, I intend to make sure my wife makes it with me to retirement, when we have seen everything we want to do the worlds have to offer us,” Arkady said, reaching up to give his wife’s toned ass a good squeeze. “Although when it gets right down to it, my soldiering days have never held a candle to her martial skills. But we work together and get by.”
“And I have more common sense than most Threatbinders when it comes to turning down prospective clients with death wishes,” she chuckled. “There’s challenging and then there’s just insanity, and I’m not oathbound to accept any job I might feel uneasy about.”
Arkady noted that the human woman never seemed to move more than an arm’s length away from either himself or Yasha, as if she was afraid they were carved of dreamstuff and would disappear if they were looked at funny.
“How did you know to bring them here, Mistress Weesha?” Sophia asked the gnome. “When you explained it to me earlier, you said there were complications with my thread, and that you were writing for guidance. Are they the guidance that you wrote for?”
“I’m afraid not, child,” Weesha sighed. “Word from the Academy is still forthcoming, but Arkady here might as well be a Grandmaster, so I decided to simply ask him to consult on your case, as he’s far more experienced than I am, especially when it comes to dealing with your kind. He was delivering his most recent client to pair with one of my students. Him being at the end of one of your threads is... just a stroke of fate.”
The dwarven mage grumbled. “I am not one who looks fondly upon coincidence, Weesha, but I can see no possible way that anyone would know that our paths would cross. The elven girl we brought with us was unremarkable, and her thread perfectly normal.”
He felt Sophia’s hand squeezing his, and despite how calloused and work worn her hands were, there was something astonishingly tender about her flesh on his. “Forgive me if this is a foolish question, Master Arkady, but couldn’t you just have Weesha read your thread to verify the link?”
The dwarf found his own stumpy fingers curling around hers. “Once we begin the process of becoming a Threadbinder, it becomes impossible for our threads to be read, although threads leading to us can still be seen, which is how my wife was able to find me after I’d already begun my training. Long term romance is... uncommon for those in my profession.”
Sophia clenched his hand a little more firmly. “But you could still read mine? That way you could see that I am connected to you and your wife.” The woman licked her lips a little bit. “Is the ritual the same? A bit of vitae given, an orgasm given and one received?”
“It would be, yes, although I would reduce the vitae down to the absolute minimum, since you yet to receive what you’d already paid for,” he said, stroking his beard with his other hand. “I would waive the vitae entirely, except it’s a component to the magic, and the ritual will fail without it.”
“And when you see that my thread connects to yours?” the woman said, her breath starting to quicken a little. “What then?”
“Let us not get ahead of ourselves, m’lady,” Yasha said, taking the woman’s other hand, and Arkady wondered if his wife felt the little jolt of electricity he did when they were all linked together. “We can retire to a private chamber, discuss all the details over a meal and then, if you still—”
“I want the ritual,” Sophia said quickly, cutting her off. “Sorry. I want the ritual, Mistress, assuming you will honor me with your services, Master Arkady. I am afraid I am no innocent maiden, even before my encounter with Mistress Weesha, and I hope that does not sully me in your eyes.”
The dwarf bristled at the very suggestion of impropriety. “Sully,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I have never understood how inexperience was something that men and women prized, rather than experience and learning. The more experienced, the better I say.”
Sophia clutched his hand a bit more. “There... there is one more thing I should tell you, Mas—”
“For the sake of the gods, woman,” Arkady said, momentarily losing his temper, “simply call me Arkady, otherwise we will be trapped within this conversation until the suns have fallen and risen all over again!” He laughed to himself, shaking his head, seeing her taken aback. “Apologies, Sophia, but honestly, we’re going to be bare to each other in the immediate future, so I think we’re well past honorifics and titles, don’t you think?”
The acrobat giggled and nodded, as if she felt silly for having to had it pointed out to her. “Yes, I guess that’s fair. But still, there is one more thing I do need to share.”
The dwarf rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “Then out with it!”
“I... I have traded on my body for coin now and again, since my parents past, when times were tough and I was in need of supplies. I take no shame in what I did, but I know there are those who feel differently about offering companionship to the lonely hearted.”
“You’re asking if I’m bothered that you’ve been a whore, Sophia?” he said, tilting his head in perplexion. “I, a mage who has sex for money in order to provide something to someone, am basically a whore myself, and I have never understood the implied disparagement that some people attach to that word. It is a proud word, and a fine profession. In dwarven culture, a whore is known as a joybringer, and it is considered a noble and challenging calling.”
“In elvish heritage, it is similar, but the elvish word translates loosely to lightgifter, and those are simply the ones who tend to everyone,” Yasha said. “It is a skilled trade, and quite competitive, with the most talented among them becoming courtesans to the rich and powerful, figures of great political and social influence.”
The two mages both looked at the gnome, who grinned from ear to ear. “My people just call them the Smile Service,” Weesha said. “You silly humans and your hangups.”
“Well, don’t I feel silly then,” Sophia said, looking down at her leather boots. “Then I ask th—”
“May your wish be granted,” Arkady said, cutting her off. “As eager as I am to see this unusual conflux of threads for myself, I truly must insist that we eat first. The journey here was made at breakneck pace and we chose not to take time for a proper meal along the way, so we are famished.”
“It can difficult to eat on horseback,” Sophia said.
“Mmm. It’s even moreso atop a griffon,” Yasha teased, knowing that Sophia had not seen them arrive, and had assumed they’d come in caravan. In a way, Arkady supposed, they had, but by sky instead of by land.
“I reckon we can rustle you up some grub and the three of you can make better acquaintance with each other in between the students peppering you with questions,” the gnomish mage said, turning to walk away, leading them away from the combat arena.
“We’re going to be eating with the students?” Arkady grumbled. “They’re going to demand stories from us, aren’t they?”
“Oh, you’ll be fine, stoneface. C’mon.”
Dinner actually turned out to be quite enjoyable, despite the students’ endless questions about the greater world at large. The biggest problem with the frontier academies was that they were often a good distance from more sizable cities, and so they weren’t up to date on all the gossip regarding conflicts and romances, with students asking about the great battles they’d seen and whether or not some of the princes and princesses had yet wed.
As much as he wasn’t a creature of high society, lifetimes with Yasha had trained him how to hold court when he wanted to, and he did his best to regale the students, mostly elves and gnomes but with a couple of dwarves and a lone minotaur, with big tales of the things they had witnesses over their last few months of travel.
When he wanted to be, Arkady could be quite the storyteller, and he tailored each tale to the person who had asked about it, lingering in fineries when discussing romance and blustering about with his hands in the air as he detailed a great battle between an orcish army and a nest of dragons that they’d witnessed from the sky in passing a month or so ago.
It wasn’t until they were on the dessert course when one of the students finally stomached up the courage to ask about Quiesh and how they had tamed her. He could see Yasha blanch at the way the student had phrased the question, but Arkady knew that griffons were so uncommon that the children didn’t even know that to suggest that they had “tamed” her would normally be considered an affront, so he let the unintentional insult slide.
“One does not ‘tame’ a griffon, students,” he said. “One befriends them. Around thirty years or so ago when Yasha and I were camping on a trip between the cities of Wendhurst and Ozro, we had set our wagon against a cliff face, as we were high up in the Enkhoal Mountains, and were just settling down to rest when we heard an animal cry of pain. Now you fledglings don’t know my wife, but I knew the moment we heard it that we were going to go and provide aide to whatever it was we would find there. Her kindness is one of the many things I love about her.”
“Were you frightened?” one of the elves, a boy of barely fifty, asked him.
“I fought in the Abari Wars, boy, and my wife has over a hundred confirmed kills in her tenure as a Threatbinder,” he said with all the confidence in the world. “Of course we were frightened. It could’ve been anything, but we decided we would either help the creature or we would end its suffering and eat well for some time, depending on what we found.”
“What did you find?”
“A mother gryphon had managed to get her hindleg caught between some fallen rocks, and was unable to escape. When we approached her, it seemed like she was starting to consider gnawing her own leg to escape, but off to one side, we could see a nest with four gryphon pups, a month old at best. She looked at us with anger and determination, a mother protecting her young, but gryphons are very smart creatures, and when my wife and I laid down our weapons and approached with our hands raised, she was still distrustful, but I suppose she decided she had no choice.”
“When you began to move the rocks to free her, at first I thought she might bite your head off,” Yasha said, “and I was terrified that we had made the wrong decision.”
“What happened?” a gnomish girl asked him.
“She bit my head off, obviously, and I died, the end,” he said, matter-of-factly, which made all the students burst into laughter. “Nay, it was a nerve-wracking project, but after a time, I had moved enough of the rocks away that the mother gryphon was able to pull her leg free and move away from the rocks.”
“I remember being just as nervous at that moment as I was when you first approached her, Arkady,” Yasha said, “because at that point, she no longer needed us, and could’ve have decided we would make an excellent meal for her pups. We had to hope that we had earned enough good will from her that she wouldn’t harm us.”
“She didn’t, obviously,” a dwarven boy said, eager to move the story along.
“No, she didn’t,” Arkady agreed. “What did do, however, was move over to her nest and look through her pups before grabbing one of them by the scruff of the neck. She brought the pup over towards me, and laid her down at my feet before settled down to rest, while my wife did her best to bandage the mother’s leg. To this day, I’m not entirely certain how the mother conveyed to her pup the obligation that she felt, but after a few minutes, the pup nuzzled against her mother, nodded, then crawled over into my lap and settled there. We named her Quiesh and she has been with us ever since. After she’d grown large enough to transport us around, we returned to that spot in the Enkhoul Mountains, perhaps just on the off chance of finding some of Quiesh’s family again, but alas, we found none. I don’t know for certain, but I like to think Quiesh thinks of us as her family now, as we’ve ensured she has a steady supply of food, and encourage her to hunt on her own when we know we will be at a location for a few days time.”
During the course of dinner, Sophia, Arkady and Yasha had all spent a bit of time talking with one another, and the dwarf had been surprised to find there was the same kind of nervous energy between him and the human girl as there had been between him and his wife so very long ago. She told them both about how her parents had perished within weeks of each other, her mother falling ill to some disease and after she passed, her father seemed to simply give up and died of a broken heart. Her mother had told tales of how she had used a Threadbinder to meet her father, and after they had both passed, she’d resolved to do that for herself.
She also them about her meeting with the female dwarven Threadbinder named Almas, and how she had declined to take her up on her offer of services, simply because Almas had been so unfocused and undisciplined, and instead waited until the caravan saw the flag flying over the frontier academy.
After dessert, Arkady started to feel just a tiny bit awkward, something he’d not felt since he’d first met Yasha, and had been completely taken aback by her beauty and her directness. He’d felt like he was barely a man when Yasha had come storming into his life, and he looked back upon their first night of lust and passion with an inescapable fondness.
In an attempt to prolong the wait even longer, Arkady made certain that Quiesh was being cared for, and found to his amusement that the students had fed the gryphon an entire wild creature they had killed on their hunt, and the mages’ friend seemed quite content, having curled up next to a fire they had built for the creature after gorging herself upon the carcass.
The three of them excused themselves and headed to the chamber that had been prepared for them to rest for the evening, and for them to partake in the ritual. For a human with such a short life span, Arkady had to admit that Sophia had lived a rather epic tale, visiting many different kingdoms across several continents, having been on the move her entire life.
“You’ve already been through the ritual before,” Arkady said, kicking off his boots, “so I suppose I need not go through my usual speech about what you’re going to be doing, the payment, and so on and so on...”
“Nope,” Sophia said, sliding out of her soft leather shoes. Arkady had never seen footwear as pliant as such, and he expected it was so she could use her feet to their utmost, something he’d been told acrobats needed. “We can get right down to the fucking,” she said with a soft laugh. “Foul language. Are we for it or against it? Because if it’s up to me, we’re for it.”
“Well, I—” Arkady started to say.
“He’s for it, as am I, although knowing my husband, he’ll sputter and deny it for at least a couple of moments before relenting,” Yasha said, “and we both know I speak only truth, especially since you’re going to be with us for the foreseeable future.”
His wife had begun undressing, and Sophia took that as her cue to strip down as well, unpinning the strip of crimson cloth over her breasts, unwinding it to reveal a very generous bosom, large tits capped with small nipples the color of deep earth, already stiff at their unveiling. She pushed off her trousers and stepped free of them, a well groomed but thick thatch of black curls over her pussy. It was a marked change from the nearly hairless elves, and he found the look both exotic and appealing.
“He’ll defer to his wife on the matter, since she’s decided for him,” Arkady teased in response, as he began to remove his own clothing, while shaking the vial of liquid with one hand, getting the fluids within to mix and meld. “But yes, we’re fine with foul language.”
“Good, because I have to say, Arkady, that is one fine cock you have there,” Sophia said to him as he removed his trousers. “Is that typical for dwarves or am I just an exceptionally lucky woman?”
“Can’t say I’ve gone around measuring,” he said, taking the last of his clothes off, putting them all into a small stack. “But I’ve done alright, I like to think.”
“I’m quite fond of it myself,” Yasha said, “and while I’m no great expert either, I can say I believe it to be somewhat larger than the average.” She moved over to slide a hand along one of Sophia’s arms, fine black hair along her skin. “I still find it so remarkable that humans are so much more like dwarves than elves when it comes to hair.”
Sophia’s hand reached up and cupped one of his wife’s breasts with her work worn fingers, seeing the elf shiver in anticipation of the touch. “And I also find it so unusual that elves are all so smooth, nary a hair below the neckline. Don’t you get cold?”
“That’s what they make clothes for, dear,” Yasha said kindly.
Arkady moves over and began to draw sigils upon their bodies, taking time to make sure to get each line and curve correct, even though Sophia was wiggling a little, as if impatient to get on to the ritual itself. “You keep wiggling,” he scolded, “and I’ll end up accidentally thinking you’re threadbound to a great sky drake or some such nonsense.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Sophia said, licking her lips. “I’m just eager to have my first encounter with a dwarf, especially one as handsome as you.”
“You’re just humoring an old man now,” he chuckled.
“Oh no, Arkady,” Sophia replied, her voice taking on a serious tone. “When I first laid eyes on you and Yasha, I wanted to rip your clothes off where you stood and fuck you both until one of us surrendered from exhaustion.” She traced her fingertip along Yasha’s jawline. “My money was on him, by the way. Not because he’s old, but simply because I find male virility to be the first to yield in a competition.”
Yasha grinned, shaking her head. “The things a Threadbinder will teach you, little girl. I once saw a succubus beg him to relent, for she couldn’t keep up with him.”
Sophia turned to look at Arkady, as he moved to applying the sigils to himself. Normally he applied them to his own flesh first, as a way of letting the applicant grow more comfortable in the surroundings, but Sophia had been so eager, he’d saved himself for last. “You fucked a succubus? Had she come in search of her threadbound?”
“She had,” he said, taking his thumb to draw a line in sharp formation across his chest, the gel matting down the dark red hair on his skin. “And I found him for her, a dwarf far in the south, deep below Mount Rigalad. But after the ritual, she bet me double or nothing on the aryou portion of her fee that she could make me yield in a battle of pleasure, and my dear wife would not let such slander stand, although I would’ve happily walked away without indulging in the challenge..”
Yasha giggled. “I mostly wanted to see what the succubus would look like when she was bested, which she most certainly was.”
“Somewhere in the fourth hour, she had enjoyed too many orgasms to count and her body was limp and drained as she begged me to stop, not to touch her again, and to never speak her name when telling the story to others,” he laughed.
“I’m surprised she didn’t insist you never tell the story again.”
“Oh no,” Yasha said, her hand brushing Sophia’s hair back, sliding against it affectionately. “She insisted he tell the story whenever appropriate, not as a boast, but as a cautionary tale for those who might seek similar combat.”
He drew the final symbol on his flesh, matching one he’d drawn on his wife earlier, setting the vitae price at a single day’s time, the smallest amount he could ask. They’d also asked no coin for this, as technically Arkady was simply continuing with Weesha’s unfulfilled contract. “There we go. In your own time,” he said to her. “And as you like.”
“You’re the perfect height for this, although you’ll need to help hold me up a bit,” Sophia said, as she placed her hands onto the floor and then lifted her legs up into the air, walking on her palms over to him until her lips moved to brush against the head of his cock, her cunt almost perfectly aligned with his face.
His strong hands grabbed onto her hips as his wide tongue pushed out and scooped along her slit, feeling her shiver and moan beneath him, as she moved to push her mouth upon his prick, forcing her face onto it before doing her best to lean her head backwards.
The odd angle was certainly something new to him, although he felt as though Sophia might have done something similar before, as she easily moved towards bobbing her face along his cock, her tongue on the topside of it instead of the underside, as his wife giggled. “Agile little minx, isn’t she?” Yasha said, stepping in close. “Let me have a taste, dearest husband,” she said, grabbing onto Sophia’s hips, lifting her up as she bent down, pushing her tongue inside of the human woman’s cunt, that elvish tongue reaching far and deep, which made Sophia groan carnally onto his shaft.
Sophia slipped her head off of his cock before growling. “Fuck, woman, you’re damn fucking good at that,” she said, moving to hook her legs over Yasha’s shoulders before bending her body upward, until she was high above them, her pussy ground against Yasha’s face, the elf holding onto the human’s hips. Sophia ran her fingers through his wife’s hair, almost clawing them against her skull. “Gods asunder, yes.”
For a moment, Arkady wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Sophia’s entire body was almost entirely out of reach for him, as she rested on his wife’s shoulders, and a moment or so later, Yasha seemed to realize adjustments needed to be made, and brought herself and the other woman over towards the bed. She bent forward and laid Sophia on top of the bed, the human writhing as Yasha pulled away, even momentarily.
“No,” Sophia whimpered. “I need more.”
“Oh you will get more, little human, until even you may need a moment’s pause,” Yasha said, as she moved to lay down on the bed as well, her feet towards Sophia’s head, as she positioned Sophia’s knees near the edge of the bed. His wife gestured for him to come back and join them, as she lifted her lips up to kiss at Sophia’s snatch once more, while the human woman buried her face against his wife’s elven pussy.
He could feel his wife’s hand on his hip as he moved in, the height just perfect for him to stand at the edge of the bed and thrust forward directly into Sophia’s drenched cunt, a fierce howl of pleasure erupting from her as he pushed inside of her, feeling just how snug and unstretched her channel was around his girthy dwarven shaft.
Sophia’s moans were muffled by the fact that she kept her face buried against his wife’s slit, and Yasha was doing her best to alternate between teasing her husband’s balls and the human woman’s clit.
Because of her pressuring tightness, he had intended to take it easy, but his wife’s hand on his hip yanked him into a forceful and hurried rhythm. It had felt cool in the room moments ago, but now the very air felt like that of a molten furnace, and Sophia’s squeals grew louder and more frantic.
His eyes widened as he glanced down at the runes upon the human’s skin which burned like streaks of lava, and he could feel her start to spasm, so he shouted suddenly “Eyes!” as he screwed his eyes shut just moments before the room was flooded with light.
He held still while Sophia’s orgasm washed over her, praying that she’d closed her eyes, or perhaps that his wife had clenched her thighs around her face to protect her. Normally there was more warning before the ritual resulted in the light bloom, but he hadn’t realized that apparently Sophia had brought his wife to orgasm early on in the encounter, so once Sophia was breaching hers, the supernova of light exploded.
The dwarf took the moment to solidify the link to her threads, completing the final stage of the ritual, as he felt Sophia’s cunt start to loosen its tight hold on his shaft. It was uncommon for him to be doing this with a full erection, but it had happened a few times over the centuries.
He was about to start looking through the threads when he felt a slap on the cheek of his ass as his wife spoke up to him. “You still haven’t been paid, husband.”
“Mmm, but apparently you have, my dearest wife,” he chuckled. “I’m lucky I happened to glance down or I might have been blinded for an hour or so.”
Yasha giggled intensely. “She is quite talented with her tongue, my love, but you must take your fill of her.”
“The price has been paid, love,” he said with a sigh.
“Then take your fill of me, Arkaday,” Sophia moaned. “Use my body and fuck me until you have left your mark inside my cunt.” She started to back her hips onto him, almost doing the movement for him, wantonly. “I want more, I want to feel the heat of your dwarven cum boiling inside of my human twat. I want to feel that sensation of your release, proving to me I am worthy of your seed. Fuck my snug snatch until it bears the name of the dwarf who showed me how to love again. We are threadbound, are we not? So bind me, claim me, fuck me. Fuck fuck fuck...” she said, repeating the word as she bounced her ass against his pelvis, her arms stretched forward in supplication and to give her better leverage with which to push herself into him.
As Sophia did this, his wife moved to wrap her lips around his balls, her long tongue washing them in parallel spirals. His wife knew him too well, and clearly, this human knew him better than he thought, because moments later, he could feel that familiar tightness in his groin, and his cock began to spew within the human woman’s womb, setting her off onto yet another orgasm, her body wobbling atop of his wife’s before slumping down. His hand on her hip which had once been setting the pace was now steadying his unsure legs.
When he pulled his cock from Sophia’s sullied snatch, he could see some of his thick goo dripping from her slit for only a moment, before his wife leaned her head up and licked up any cream that drizzled loose.
He wanted to sit, to lay down, to desperately fall asleep, but while the threads would wait as long as needed, his curiosity would not. He stepped back and curled his hands through the air to make those threads from her spring forth to his eyes.
“By Olach’s Hammer, Weesha was right,” he muttered to himself.
“Of course Sophia has a thread that leads to us, my dear,” Yasha said sleepily to him. “We both knew that the moment we laid eyes on her.”
“Aye, my dear, that thread is true, a braided pair of threads that lead to you and I, but the others are here too. A cord that looks more like a ribbon, flat and wide. A cord as thick as my arm, powerful and stern. And one final one so thin as to almost be overlooked. Each made of solid gold dreamstuff, as pure and true as the others.”
“Am... Am I damaged?” Sophia said, rolling off of his wife to lay down on the bed on her back.
“No, far from it,” Arkady said. “You are glorious, and unique, and mysterious. And none of the other threads seem to be wilting.
“So what does it mean, husband of mine?” Yasha asked him.
“Honestly, my dear?” he said, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m not sure I have any fucking idea...”