SHEIK OF DESIRE, CHAPTER 5
THE NIGHT BEACON
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
Pavel found riding a horse to be nothing like the symphony of motion his friend had described so longingly. He was jostled and shifting constantly, and had to constantly hitch at his body to keep his balance. To complicate things, Jethro was clinging to his waist, and shifting in his own separate directions, and that added to the problem. Even the horse seemed unhappy with this uneven burden and snorted and fidgeted in a hundred small ways.
Yet their luck held. They made it over a rise in the land and put the fighting behind them. Nobody seemed to be following them. But this left them still in this uncomfortable mode of locomotion. Pavel let the horse slow, and they bounded along miserably.
Now that they were beyond the sounds of battle, Jethro apparently felt safe enough to talk. "What is going on here? Who are you?"
"My name is Pavel. Pavel Paskov." Pavel said. "My father is the man you and your friends kidnaped from my valley. That was a long time ago and things have changed a great deal."
"Where was I?"
"When you attacked Fortin...do you remember that?"
"Yeah." Jethro admitted. "I got my bonds loose and then got him to come close to me and I grabbed him. I was just going to tie him up and get away but he got hold of those damned pods. I got a whiff of that and...next thing I know, I was lying on my back and my dick was stuffed in your mouth."
"You were out of it for a long time. My family's been taking care of you. Fortin mostly, but I took over when he went on a vacation. A shame you can't meet and thank him, you owe him a lot. He took care of you night and day for many months."
"Months." Jethro said. "How many?"
"Seven or eight, I guess." Pavel said. "Anyway, Commander Sachsen came by with the cure developed in Connobar and gave it to you."
"Where the hell are we?" Jethro said. "This isn't Connobar or your valley, Facilitator."
"We're to the west of the mountain range. Our valleys lie beyond those mountains ahead of us." Pavel pointed. "My home's about there, and Connobar is about there."
"It's a long trip home." Jethro mused. "I need to know more, but I'll stop asking questions on that. Now who was Commander Sachsen fighting, and why?"
"It's a long story." Pavel said. "Maybe I'd better start by telling you the war with Connobar is over."
"Who won?"
"We both did, sort of." Pavel said. "Connobarans come to our valley and we help them have children. I've helped with eight so far, myself. See my chits?"
"Chits?" Jethro peered at the necklace Pavel wore, eight circular discs with a hole in the center that they were strung on. Knots in the string helped separate them.
"The agreement was that we each were required to help ten Connobarans, who would supply us in return with a chit. Once we earned ten chits, it became optional, though we still collect chits. Daddy Al has eighteen of them, now, and my Dad has twenty-two. Our home is right on the route the Connobarans take, and most of them don't want to travel much, so we're in high demand."
"A fair arrangement, assuming I believe you." Jethro said. "But if you were with Commander Sachsen, who was protecting you and told me to do the same, then I guess I do. So why did we come here? Especially if I was sick?"
"Commander Sachsen insisted on bringing you." Pavel said. "We had to make the trip and he didn't want you to wake up among strangers. We're here because the war destroyed the Tree of Children. No way to make more baby Facilitators. We can use your eggs, but the children turn out like you Connobarans. My younger brother is one of your kind. But these people have children themselves in their own way, and we came to find out how, to see if we can use it."
"Do we know yet?" Jethro asked. He seemed to be adjusting very well, Pavel felt.
"Only that it is at a sacred site of theirs. We're heading in that direction just this moment, but we have to go back."
"Back? Why?"
"Because those raiders were out to capture us. They've already got Jezreel and probably your Commander by now. We have to rescue them."
"Where is the rest of our force?"
"That's all of it, the four of us." Pavel said. "It was a peaceful mission, not an invasion."
"But there should have been a back-up plan." Jethro protested. "What if things go wrong, like they have?"
"The angels have instructions to come looking for us at the end of a week's time." Pavel said. "Six more days from now. We have to hold out for that long, and then figure out a way to signal them." Not as hard as it sounded, angels seemed to have an amazing knack for picking out details on the ground and in the sky.
"We are soldiers behind enemy lines, then." Jethro said. "I studied such things, but it was all theoretical. We had no enemies to practice on besides each other. I sort of wondered why our officers bothered with it. Mock battles and capturing flags and so on. A very entertaining game, but that was all it was to us."
"You're about to use that knowledge." Pavel said. "And I'm grateful you've got it. What do we do next?"
"I need to know more about the situation." Jethro said. "Do we have any allies here at all?"
The tribe where we were staying before the attack." Pavel agreed. "Though they were losing badly when we left. I don't know what happens to a tribe that loses a battle here. I don't know much about them at all. Jezreel was the expert on these people. They're Arabs, like he is."
"Then we'll hide out and try to regroup with our allies." Jethro said. "Let's find a place to hide. Also, we need to get off this animal."
"Sounds good to me." Pavel's rump was protesting the abuse it was getting. "But why? It moves faster than we could walk or even run." And they had now put at least two miles between them and the oasis and tent village.
"It also leaves very visible tracks." Jethro pointed out. "If we can get off and leave it traveling on, then we can hide and let any pursuers pass us by."
It was a good plan, Pavel had to admit. The flaw was that there was no place to hide here. The hills were long and smooth, while they would block the view of the horizon if you were far enough beyond one, they were far from forming barriers of any sort. Long, low rises in the land. He pointed this out to Jethro.
"Plenty of places to hide." Jethro pointed. "How about over there?"
"There" was a small cluster of bushes of some sort, their leaves a medium blue in color, in contrast to the light blue, short grasses through which they had been riding. Unlike Earth's longer blades, grass on Desire never grew longer than a few inches high, too high to look "mowed" but far from enough to hide fugitives in its embrace.
"Good enough." Pavel said. "We can at least hope they won't check it out, huh?"
"They won't if this horse keeps on going in the direction he's going." Jethro said. "We need to jump off while he's moving, so his tracks won't show he's stopped. That's a dead giveaway."
Jethro showed his intent by sliding off the back of the horse, and landing with a grunt and a thud, gracelessly. "Now you get off!" he called as Pavel, still on the moving horse, began to leave him behind.
Pavel steeled himself and fell sideways off the horse. As he fell clear, Jethro let out a loud racket, a sustained squeal. The horse whinnied, and raced off.
Pavel heard rather than saw all this in his horizontal position. He got a glimpse of the hooves as they sped away, but the horse was over the next hill before he got to his feet.
"Well, he's headed mostly in the same direction." Jethro said. "Good enough. Now you and I need to get moving."
While the grasses wouldn't hide them, it also left little trace of their movements, their footprints bent over blades which sprang back into place. No furrow marked their passing and Pavel found his footprints to be minimal to non-existent.
It was well into the afternoon as they made it to the bushes. It turned out to not be a group of bushes, but one large plant. The ring of "bushes" around it bore clusters of blackberry-looking fruits, but the central area was like a plush cushion, some two feet high and eight feet in diameter. There were gaps between the "bushes" part of this plant, they could not hide in its depths no matter what they tried.
Pavel didn't care, his body ached at the rough ride, the plant looked and was obligingly soft in its center, and while he watched it nervously, wondering if it was a cousin to the insidious "siren" plant and might wrap tendrils around to keep him in place while it drained nutrients from his body, it actually did nothing of the kind. Jethro stood back and watched him, ready to rescue him if need be, but when some ten minutes passed and nothing happened, he joined Pavel inside the plants. The bushes offered some cover, at least, from prying eyes.
"Nice." He admitted as the plant bulged under their weight, but held. "You recognize this plant?"
"No." Pavel admitted. "It seems safe and is nice and soft."
"That's what worries me." Jethro said. "Usually plants on this planet are out to siphon off your bodily fluids in some manner, whether it's a hole you can fuck into or a rootlet to tap into your bloodstream."
"Stepwith did design this world to heighten men's pleasure." Pavel agreed. "It's all part of his plan."
"Yes, blessed be his name." Jethro said, casually not fervently, but as if it was expected for him to say it. "I wonder if I dare eat any of these berries. I'm hungry."
"You've missed both breakfast and lunch today, thanks to the cure." Pavel agreed. "You ought to be hungry." He wouldn't have minded a snack himself right then, and their backpacks were all left behind with Rashid's people. "If you want to try one, I'll watch and help you if you need it."
Jethro looked and said with sudden determination. "We must hide for six days. Food is necessary within that time." And he reached up and plucked a cluster of the fruit. It came off in his hands in a tight ball of six or seven of the "berries", the stem whoosing a brief jet of pink mist at them, which the wind blew away from them. Jethro gingerly plucked one off, but nothing happened, then he tasted it. "Nice." he said. "Very good, in fact."
They waited for a time, Pavel watching and Jethro waiting, but nothing seemed to be happening. Jethro then ate the rest of the cluster of fruits, leaving only a round prickly-looking ball, which he discarded, and again they watched. "If nothing happens to me within the next half hour, we'll call them safe." Jethro said. "I'll eat more, and you can eat some tomorrow morning if I don't take sick during the night."
"Reasonable." Pavel agreed, though it left him without a supper. Still, Jethro had the greater need here.
At the end of that half hour, with the sun now beginning to set, Jethro ate his fill, eating nearly a third of the plant's bounty of fruit. And still he was fine, not even the rising lust of a typical meal on Desire. THAT was odd, Pavel felt and Jethro agreed. But it was a light day for the mist, neither of them had felt lust rising ever since the battle, and no pink fog was in sight in any direction.
They had spoken in desultory tones while they waited for adverse effects. Now, his stomach full, Jethro lounged back and was amiable. "I feel pretty good." He said. "Not at all weak, even if I was bedridden for so long."
"Bedridden?" Pavel asked.
"Wasn't I unconscious for six or seven months?" Jethro asked.
"No." Pavel said. "You were...quite active."
"Really?" Jethro asked. "How?"
"Well, you know how the pods affect a Connobaran." Pavel said.
"Ye-es." Jethro drew the word out, as if dreading the admission.
"Well, with three of the pods working on you, you were about three times as active."
"Yeah?"
"We came home with some representatives of our villages, and there you were, busily fucking Fortin's ass. Poor Fortin had been fucked non-stop by you for the last two or three hours. You'd shoot your wad into him, rest a moment without letting him go, and start fucking him again."
"So what did you do?"
"Only thing we could do. Send someone in to relieve Fortin."
"How long did this go on?"
"A very long time." Pavel smiled at Jethro's discomfort. "Oh, you'd get tired and rest and sleep for a time, and we could squeeze some food into you during one of your little breaks, but the rest of the time, you fucked anyone you could get your hands on. Their mouth, their ass, old, young, you didn't care, if they had a hole available, your stuck your dick into it."
Jethro was listening in sheer horror. "And I did this for six months?"
"Nearly seven." Pavel said. "Still, the effects were decreasing. I think even without the cure you got, you'd have come around sooner or later. When Commander Sachsen came by, your lusts were down to just about normal though your mind was still pretty child-like and simple. We didn't get any warning when you were about to go on a rampage, but at least you were able to eat and work on the farm and so on most of the time."
"How could you put up with that?" Jethro said.
"We owed you." Pavel said firmly. "Dad insisted and we all agreed. You came to our home with assurances as to your safety. Nobody blames Fortin for overdosing you, you were rushing him, but we did owe it to you to take care of you, and we did. We sort of took care of you in shifts, with Fortin doing most of the work. His choice, I think you're fucking him was what helped him most to get on and stay on his diet. He's not nearly as pudgy as he was when you first met him. Beginning to look pretty good, actually."
Jethro looked disgusted, and Pavel laughed. "You were sick, and nobody's blaming you in any way." he said, patting Jethro's arm. "In fact, you were nice to have around the house. Kind of fun to have this big, blond stud running around and grabbing you without warning. I'd be scrubbing the floors, bored and aggravated with the chore, and then your cock would plunge into me and suddenly the day wasn't so dull anymore." He laughed and Jethro joined in, reassured at last.
"Day's almost done." he said, and Pavel looked over at the sun. It was nearly touching the horizon.
And the sun went out! Not set, just extinguished. Suddenly, it was gone and stars shone clearly. Pavel had always noticed that dusk was a rapid thing, and his father had wondered at that, but it had been a fact of his world, and he had agreed with Daddy Al that it was because the mountains blocked the true sunset's light, causing the darkness to seem rapid.
But the sun was there, and then was gone, and they were in darkness. Another part of Stepwith's design.
And the plant moved beneath them, rapidly. The cushion on which they were seated became a concavity, and they fell together into its center, struggling against it. Between the gaps in the fruit bushes, the petals rose up like springing gazelles, to match together at the top. Pavel and Jethro found themselves inside an egg-shaped sphere within the plant.
"So the plant was a trap, after all." Jethro said calmly in the darkness.
"Yeah." Pavel said. After a time, the plant relaxed somewhat, and now the area within was more the shape of a round loaf of break, almost dome-shaped. They had a flat area of almost six feet in diameter. Not quite enough to stretch out at full length, but enough for comfort.
"Wonder what it'll do now." Pavel said, now able to make out Jethro's face. His eyes were adjusting and...
No, they weren't. The plant's petals were glowing. A soft, pink light now permeated their area. A very familiar pink color.
"Uh, Jethro." Pavel said. "I sure hope you like me, because I think we're going to be very close tonight."
"I see what you mean." Jethro replied.
The burst of mist was no surprise to either of them. Only the plant's specific tactic was different than many other plants of Desire. It wanted some of their bodily fluids, and sperm was the richest in concentrated nutrients. And the plentiful mist was easy enough for the plant to take in and collect for its own use. While smaller plants would put it into their fruit for use by their seedlings, the larger ones could appropriate the humans themselves for a time.
Pavel was glad that the mist wasn't enough to deprive him of his senses. He only felt a sudden and intense need, and Jethro was there, and needing, too. They would have time for lovemaking.
Pavel felt Jethro's arms enclose him, amorously but gently, and he sighed. Much, much better than being grabbed by this strong man, he was being embraced, not captured here.
He met Jethro's lips with a kiss that he had longed for from this man. Kissing the old Jethro had been an insipid undertaking, with no response. Here, the lips met his own with their own flames, and Jethro's mouth moved over his, matching and meshing with him, turning his head to push them together as their mouths opened, and Jethro's tongue entered his mouth.
The tongue, wielded by a race adept at muscular control in all its forms. This tongue was not a limp flap of tissue inserted into his mouth by brute force to lie there quiescent, it was not a fat spear with only the tip under any control, Jethro's tongue moved like a living thing, as if every minuscule bump on it was a miniature finger under separate and complete control. Jethro's tongue tasted Pavel's own maladept organ, caressed and loved on it, then gave his teeth attention, touching the spaces between, caressing him and loving his ivories, then stroking the roof of his mouth. Astonishingly long, Jethro's tongue made it all the way back to the epiglottis, that little flap of skin at the back of your mouth, and toyed with it until it came alive and screamed its joy.
Pavel's hands were fumbling with Jethro's uniform's buttons, taking open the heavy brass knobs and fighting his way inside. Underneath was supposed to be a white T-shirt, but Jethro had worn that garment out during his stay with Pavel's family, and so only skin was beneath, fair, wonderful skin that came alive under his touch, seeming to stroke back at Pavel's fingers as they moved over him, touching and outlining the long muscles of pectorals, rib-cage and abdomen. Jethro was doing the same to his body, and Pavel sighed, for only a Connobaran could touch like this, so totally, so completely touch you with their incredible muscle control.
That jacket came off reluctantly, the stiff threads forcing their form to hold, as if Pavel was removing not clothing but something of light gray metal. Pavel's own threadbare shirt came off easily. And now their chests could meet, Pavel's few hairs meshing with Jethro's own pale but abundant supply. Even the hairs seemed to reach out to touch Pavel's body, add their own small contributions to the love-making of Jethro.
The Connobaran trousers held a row of those heavy buttons, but they were easily undone, and Jethro's body was revealed almost as quickly as Pavel's own, which Jethro could unfasten with a simple yank at his fly.
They should have undone their boots and taken off their trousers, but the mist was too strong, and their bodies were now available. Oh, the joy of it as Pavel turned around to curl into the bulge of the plant, and now they moved, Jethro's thighs providing Pavel both a place to rest his head and a second to force his head into position. Pavel did the same, his upper thigh caught Jethro's head and pushed the lithe Connobaran mouth down onto his cock, held it there enraptured as Jethro's agile mouth worked its unique wonders on Pavel's prong, milking it yes, but more, more, touching and vibrating every part of his cock. Even the few Connobarans he had engaged in sex with hadn't given themselves this much, for they had all been paired, cooperating in love with Pavel for the seed he would give their egg, so this had kept them that slight degree of distracted, which burden Jethro didn't have. He was totally being made love to, every touch of Jethro's body upon his was meant to enflame him, and Pavel could only repay this generous gift with his own, clumsy fingers, his mouth that had to be moved by his neck muscles.
But Jethro didn't protest, holding tightly onto Pavel's cock while his mouth did all the work, unmoving but highly ecstatic pulses feeding Pavel's pleasure. Pavel was lost in these sensations, clinging only to his duty to provide as much pleasure in return to Jethro as he could manage, and he groaned, forced his mouth and head to further increase their work, and was repaid by Jethro's moans of lust, and the increasing rise in heat from Jethro's cock.
Pavel was losing it, his orgasm was climbing up his insides like a rock-climber in a chimney, rising horizontally but evenly, thrilling his heart as it passed through and over it, and his shoulders shuddered, his neck clenched, and his head braced for impact, and it was upon him.
He was lost, lost! His mind receded into a tiny, irrelevant point, his whole existence was pleasure, pleasure feeding to him through the vibrations of Jethro's mouth on his cock, and only his prior programming of his body kept his own mouth moving on Jethro's pud, and Pavel groaned, squirted his load into Jethro's mouth, felt Jethro siphoning it off adroitly.
And Jethro, as Pavel's climax released him and he despaired of being able to sustain his movements at all in the lassitude which was rising in him to replace the passion, Jethro chose then to blast a thick load of hot, salty jism into his mouth, and he drank deeply of the seed of life, savoring the rich flow, and they lapsed into satiated torpor
And the plant sprayed them again! As if enraged at their keeping the seed it had wanted, it pumped onto them again, demanding they perform once more, right now!
Pavel felt his cock, still dripping a small amount of residual sperm, grow rock-hard once again.
"Oh, God!" He groaned. "Not again, not so soon!"
"The plant wants our jizz." Jethro gasped. "We shouldn't have caught it ourselves."
"Oh, God!" Pavel groaned. "God, again, again!"
"Quick, fuck me." Jethro said. "I'll spurt for the plant."
Pavel was in no mood to dispute Jethro's plan, for the rising passion in him brooked no dispute; he was only too happy to let Jethro spin around for him, feel Jethro's tight, dimpled buttocks nestle into his groin, and Jethro's hand reaching between his legs to guide Pavel's cock into his ass. Jethro had left a good deal of saliva upon Pavel's cock, which was fortunate, for Pavel didn't think of lubrication, he simply pushed into Jethro's ass.
Jethro grunted, took it. Pavel was losing his sensibility as the mist increased, he fucked at Jethro, the two men on their sides, hunching into Jethro with an animal frenzy, and Jethro grunted, took all that Pavel was forcing upon him, while his own hand palped his cock in the Connobaran way.
Jethro's ass milked at Pavel's cock while Pavel fucked at him, and the increased mist and the talented Connobaran ass and Pavel's own need were enough, in a few moments of fervent thrusting, Pavel groaned and his body churned out yet more jism into Jethro's bowels.
Jethro moaned and Pavel heard the dim splats of Jethro's jetting wads. Jethro finished at the same time as Pavel, for when Pavel was still, Jethro scooted over.
Pavel looked at Jethro through dazed eyes, Jethro was squatting and Pavel saw his jism falling out of Jethro's fucked butt onto the plant.
"What are you doing?"
"Pushing out your jizz." Jethro grunted. "I can do it if I act quickly, before it has time to soak into my body. There, that's all of it." And he fell back, exhausted. "Maybe that'll keep the plant happy."
The plant's walls moved, a ripple passed along its flanks, and with a whoosh, it expelled the mist within itself, while a burst of light, bright as lightning, filled the interior. Then the plant inhaled, bringing in fresh air, and the light dimmed to the low pink glow of before.
"I think we get a break now." Jethro panted. "God, I hope so!"
"Yeah." Pavel said, gasping for breath himself. "But for how long?"
"I don't know." Jethro admitted. "Better enjoy it while we can. Whoof!"
"Are you all right?" Pavel asked. "I got a little rough there."
"Facilitators are always rough." Jethro said with a faint disdain in his voice. "At least by Connobaran standards. But no, I'm not hurt any. Didn't you fuck me during my...illness?"
"Sometimes we would, yeah." Pavel blushed. "You know, you really did run up a debt on that point. Sometimes, we'd get a little tired of being your fuck-toys and we'd, well, take back a little."
"I see what you mean." Jethro smirked. "Well, unless you can do what I just did, maybe we'd better stick to you fucking me tonight. Pay off some of that debt."
"I hope it leaves us alone now." Pavel grunted.
"No way." Jethro said. "If it were, it would have opened up again. No, we're just on break, so to speak."
And the pink mist sprayed them again.
The plant continued this rigor through the long night, giving them increasingly long rests between, but still forcing them to perform over and over again. Even with the endurance that Desire gives its inhabitants as a gift with the pink mist, Pavel found his cock getting sore and almost bruised-feeling. Jethro began to grimace and groan as Pavel stuck it yet again. Pavel began to hold still as he could, letting Jethro do the work, until Jethro asked him to take up some of the slack, tired by his constant working of his body. The Connobaran talent was not enough to meet the demands of this plant.
They were exhausted when morning came and the plant opened to the rays of the sun, releasing them at last.
And they were not alone. Men in white garments surrounded them. Pavel shifted his pants back up while they frankly watched his nearly-nude body with a fascinated admiration, and Pavel stood up with a sigh to fumble on his shirt. The way that plant had been flashing all night, their capture was no surprise. It must be like a beacon in the night, proclaiming to all who could see that it had a human within. Naturally any nearby tribe would come to the rescue the next morning. "And which tribe are you with?"
He knew the answer before they said it. "The tribe of Mahmoud bin-Hadid, Sultan of Medina Jadeed. Our master would like to speak with you, Sheik Al-Fajr."
"WHAT did he call you?" Jethro asked.
"I don't know!" Pavel protested.
"It is the name given you by our sultan." the man clarified. "You are to be known to us as the Prince of Dawn. If you will come with me, you are to be honored by our sultan, who has consented to marry you."
This was also no surprise to Pavel, however much it stupefied Jethro. "I suppose I'm not allowed to refuse this honor?" he said hopelessly.
"Why would you refuse?" the man said, genuinely bewildered, the same as Jassem had been. "It is the greatest honor, for our sultan is lord now of these lands, and will soon be ruler of all lands. Your children shall be great men, rulers of the world."
"Well, let's get going." Pavel grumbled. "I'm hungry. Do you have any food and water?"
"In an abundance, Sheik Al-Fajr."
"Then let's go." Pavel led the way. He would escape later, if he could.
Where the fuck were the angels when you needed them?
END OF CHAPTER FIVE