Poppins’ Return

Chapter 17 – Home is where…

The next few days were a complete blur to me. I remembered waking up on several occasions and being held down by a number of people. I was desperate to tell them something, but they didn’t seem to be listening. Worse, each time I attempted to get them to listen, they dumped some kind of spell on me and I was pushed back into a fitful slumber.

I woke up with a start. It was dark, and I had a sudden weird panic that I was back in my room and Bazerith was about to literally fuck my brains out. My terror stemmed from the fact that I was indeed in my own bedroom. I recognized the way the moon painted its cool patterns on my wall, and there was of course the familiar personal scents and odors. A well-worn sneaker has an olfactory signature as distinct as a fingerprint.

I laid there in bed (naked, I realized) and tried desperately to figure out what the hell had happened. I remembered the battle with the dryad X’carin, and her subsequent grizzly death. I also remembered being impaled on about a dozen long, spiky thorns. Not feeling any pain, I reached one hand slowly up to my shoulder. I wasn’t feeling any pain because there wasn’t any wound. Hell, there wasn’t even a scar! So what HAD happened?

No matter how long you wait for your brain to come up with answers, sometimes it just sputters and coughs and finally says, “sorry boss.” I needed more information. I couldn’t recall anything that had happened in the last… day? Week? How long had it been since the rescue? The rescue!

I was just about to whip off the covers and go dashing across the hall, when a soft, warm hand pressed against my chest. I gasped, then realized that I wasn’t alone in the bed.

“She’s alive and doing well,” said a female voice to my left. It took me only a moment to recognize Ananha’s earthy scent, and even the hushed whisper of her voice came as an old friend. “She needs to rest… undisturbed.” She added the last with a note of finality.

I reached out with my hand and found the smooth warmth of her body. She shuddered slightly at my touch. Then she was rolling on top of me. I had learned not to argue with magical beings.

“Ana, what happened!?” I asked in desperation. I knew that she was purposely trying to distract me, and damned if she wasn’t doing a bang-up job. My member was already like a hard pipe pressed between us.

“It worked, Mark. We saved her… You saved her. X’carin is no more.” She was gently moving her hips against mine.

“But the thorns… I know I was hurt. What…?”

“I healed your wounds. Not hard really. You lost some blood, but not too much.”

“You can heal that fast?” I knew that she must have used magic, and Marly had mentioned healing briefly, still, it was a different thing when it’s done to you. Ananha was idly kissing my neck and shoulders, working her way up to my lips. She stopped when I asked my question.

“You have been… out of it, for some time,” she replied, looking for the correct human word. I noticed that she was stroking the length of my arms in a peculiar way, almost as if she were contemplating something about them. I reached up and touched her own arms, but she shivered and flinched away.

“How long a time,” I asked, dreading the answer.

She was quiet for a moment. “We had to keep you as still as possible. You kept demanding to see her, Mark. And that simply couldn’t happen if you ever wanted her to survive. It is still very important that you not go to her just yet…”

“How long, Ananha?”

“Ten nights.” I felt her stiffen on top of me, ready to hold me down if I freaked. And she was right to do so. If she hadn’t been straddling me, I probably would have jumped out of bed and run straight to Marly’s room demanding to see her.

“Ten whole days!” I was shocked. Ananha was reaching between us. “Are you telling me that I have been napping quietly for a week and a half? And Marly too?”

“Yes, but you have not been quiet. Like I said, you where… demanding.” Her hands reached my crotch, and I jumped a bit at her touch.

“Demanding? I hope I wasn’t too difficult… Was I?… OH!” I felt the tip of my shaft start to ease into her slick warmth at an alarming angle. I wondered if faeries were always wet?

“Ughmmm… Yes… most of the time…ahhh…” she answered my unspoken thought as she slowly undulated her pelvis to draw me gently within her. I heard her hiss in pleasure until I was buried to the hilt, then she relaxed again and let her body snuggle mine like a perfectly fitting shoe. We stayed that way for a while, enjoying the sensations created just from breathing. Pretty soon, we were breathing in unison, and with only the slightest motion of her hips, Ananha was able to prolong our pleasure nearly indefinitely. She stretched out my arms and laid atop me, slow fucking for nearly an hour. I was rock hard the whole time. Near the end, the pleasure was so intense that I saw stars, and my faerie lover must have felt the same way, because she gasped, and then froze, only her hips trembling in orgasm for nearly two full minutes.

Afterwards, I drifted almost seamlessly back to sleep, which, upon reflection, must have been her intent all along.

When I next awakened, it was light outside. I blinked into the warm sunlight and sat up as I looked for Ananha.

“She had other pressing matters,” said a deep male voice off to my right. Startled, I looked over saw the black guy who had helped free Marly. I struggled with my mushy brain for a second before remembering his name.

“Mac,” I asked, frowning. “Am I a prisoner in my own room?”

He seemed a lot bigger than I remembered, but it could have just been a male territory thing. He was dressed in jeans and a bright red t-shirt, which was straining to contain the chiseled structure of his muscles. He looked like he could probably pound me right through the floor. Then he smiled and shook his head slightly.

“Damn, they said you were quick… As for bein’ a prisoner, well I guess that depends on how you look at it. My instructions are to keep you here until someone relieves me. Then again, it is your house, and I’d hate to have to try to keep you in here against your will. So whaddayasay we try real hard not to think about anything outside this room and jus’ relax. ‘K?”

“I just want to know if Marly is alright. Ananha didn’t explain much.”

Mac’s brow crinkled in a way that told me quite plainly that Marly was a topic he’d rather not engage in right then. “She’s been through a lot, Mark. She’s alive, but her wounds were different than yours. They will take some time to heal.”

“But why can’t I see her? Is it a shock thing? Is she maimed or something?” I knew this was a dangerous question for me to ask because I would know the answer in an instant by Mac’s reaction. But I had to know.

He sighed deeply. “When you had your first encounter with the Baz, how did you feel after?” He was referring to Bazerith. At the merest thought of her, I shivered and swallowed. I knew that my tale was known throughout the forest folk with reverent awe, but it was still a little surprising to hear Mac talk about it.

“I wanted to die. I felt like I totally betrayed Marly.”

“Yet you still think about how good Bazerith felt, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and I felt my face go hot with rage.

“It’s none of your…”

“You can’t pull that shit with me, man,” he interrupted gently but firmly. “I’m a guy, I know how it is. When a female that flamin’ hot does ya, you don’t forget for a very long time.”

He was right, and I shut up and stared at my bellybutton for a while.

“I couldn’t get her out of my head, Mac. I know she used some kind of magic, but I do still have images of her now and then. What am I going to do!?”

“Relax, man,” he said when he saw that I was about ready to hop out of bed. “Eventually, she will start to fade. It might take years, and you might never quite get over her, but you’ll get by. Marly’s wounds are a bit like that. She’s been through something that is going to take a lot of time to forget, and your running in there will only make things worse right now.”

I grabbed a robe and got out of bed, started for the bathroom and stopped. “But that’s just it, Mac. Why would seeing me make things worse?”

He looked directly at me. “If Bazerith were still alive, and you could fuck her without ending your life, would you?”

His question so shocked me that I had to sit down again. I wanted to yell, “Hell no!”, but that wasn’t the truth. It was soul searching time, and honesty, however brutal was critical here.

“Yes,” I answered simply.

“Why?”

I mulled it around in my head for a while.

“I guess because my brain is saturated with her. I can’t deny that it didn’t feel good. My body wanted her. Bad. It still does, even though I consciously hated her with every atom of my being.”

“Exactly,” replied Mac with a nod. “And Marly is going through something very much the same.”

Suddenly, the pieces fell together and I stood up in revelation. “It’s sexual pleasure, isn’t it?!”

“Yes.”

“That’s why I can’t see her. She’s still reeling from a pleasure overload…”

“Yes.”

“The faeries are keeping her from any sex, even though she wants it more than anything in the world, even life, because it will kill her. She’s addicted, just like I am to Bazerith! Only I don’t have to worry about Baz because she’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“And if I go running in there, the faeries know that they won’t be able to keep us apart. But the last thing in the world that Marly needs right now is more pleasure.”

“Bingo,” said Mac with a slight smile.

I shook my head.

“Shit, that sucks.”

“You know it,” was all he could say. Then the door opened and a very attractive redhead stepped in and my eyes grew wide. She had on a pair of very short shorts, a cut-off t-shirt that probably wouldn’t be legal in most states, and a pair of dark sun glasses. She also had a bandanna around her head, which she took off as soon as the door was closed again. She had pointed ears and I recognized her as Rachael, the nymph who was part of the extraction team. She smiled at me and then moved up next to Mac. I remembered that the two of them seemed to be a team. Lovers? Probably… No, certainly.

“He knows,” she said as a statement of fact, not a question.

Mac nodded, looking at me.

She stepped forward and stood in front of me. Suddenly, I found myself getting a hard on. Maybe it was because every other female of the Fae that I had met had wanted to have sex with me, and here now was a female that was practically pure sensuality. I knew a little about nymphs from Marly. They were purely magical beings, unlike the faeries, who had human origins, and I knew that resisting one was impossible for humans. I swallowed.

“You understand then that until she’s ready, you must not be with her?”

“Y-yes…”

She smiled and placed her hand on my cheek gently. It was warm and soft and smelled of earth. “This is hard for you, I know. Perhaps more than anyone, I understand what it is like to crave carnal pleasure and be unable to satisfy that craving. We nymphs go through that almost every day. Marly’s need is so great that she would do nothing but pleasure herself continuously until she died of exhaustion.”

“But it will fade, right?”

She clicked her tongue. “It’s more complicated than that. What she experienced while trapped in X’carin’s tree would have destroyed almost anyone else, Fae or not. The fact that she is alive at all is a credit to her clan and her training. She’s very special.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Marly was driven past the point of addiction, Mark,” she said, slipping down to sit on the bed next to me. She looked over to Mac and nodded. He sighed in relief, and without a word left my apartment, closing the door behind him. “The pleasure had already started to… change her.”

“Change? How?” I was slightly panicked at the nymph’s words.

“Her mind did not know how to handle what it was feeling, so in a sense, she started to go… insane.”

I stopped breathing.

“Ananha and others are doing everything possible for her, but the biggest step in her healing is one that only she can make, but it involves you.”

I sighed. “What must I do? I’ll do anything!”

“Be patient. You must be patient. For now, the faeries are letting Marly’s mind purge itself of the chemicals generated by extreme sex. It won’t diminish her need, but it will help her to return to sanity and stay there when the time comes. When she is ready, you will need to go to her. She will want you. She will want to make love to you more hungrily than ever before in her life. You must resist the urge to satisfy her. You MUST keep her under control and prolong your lovemaking as long as possible. It is critical that you make her want YOU to give her release. She can’t be allowed to do it herself or it will destroy everything that the faeries are doing now to help her. You have to bring her back to her humanity.”

“Kind of like she did with me after Bazerith nearly ripped my soul out.”

“Yes. But in that case, words of love and forgiveness were what you needed. Marly needs direction, Mark. She needs to be shown that she is a human female and not just a focus of pleasure. You are going to guide her.”

“Damn, I’m no expert on Tantric sex. Marly taught me a lot of things about making love, but moderation wasn’t one of them. How am I supposed to learn that?”

I knew the answer to my question, even as the words left my mouth. Rachael just smiled.

“Hey! Wait just a minute there,” I said springing up from the bed. “I hardly know you!”

She cocked her head to one side. “How well did you know Ananha when you two first made love?”

My mouth, which was open and ready to retort, snapped shut. She had me there. “Okay, so I don’t need to know you. But what about Mac?”

“What about Mac.”

“Don’t you think he would object to us…uh… I mean, aren’t you two..um…”

“I love Mac, and he loves me, Mark. But I’m still a nymph. He knows that even if he were to spend every ounce of his energy trying to satisfy me, he would still fall short.”

“Really?”

“Yup. That’s part of being a nymph. I can’t change that aspect of myself any more than you can stop eating. You’d last a while, but eventually you would starve to death. It’s the same thing for me and sex.”

“Wow… It must be tough at times,” I said seriously. The very idea that Rachael needed sex the same way I needed food was staggering.

“It is. But Mac understands and lets me be who I am. It doesn’t lessen my love for him personally. He will always be special to me. So… are you willing to be a student again for a while?”

Resigned, I shrugged. “If it will help Marly, yes. But first, I need to pee or I’m going to make a mess of my robe.”

“I’m next,” she replied as I headed for the bathroom.