NOVEL NEXT Chapter 153: Once More, Together
"Whew." Jelena buttoned her tunic up, then pulled some nomad furs over her body. "Quite the workout."
Calaf grew distracted watching her get dressed. Once she was done, he finished dressing himself by strapping on the fur covering his left elbow.
"That was…" Jelena sighed. "Where were we?"
"Keep heading south." Calaf let out a chuckle at this performance review. "The sun is angling lower. Maybe we're getting closer to the church lands. Or maybe winter is coming."
It ought to still be just before pilgrimage season. Their internal calendars couldn't be off by that much. It was just a matter of getting back to the Capital Plateau before they ran out of supplies and starved or froze.
"Ah. At least we work well under pressure." Jelena hummed to herself, still distracted.
Jelena turned. Her eyes darted about, a pensive expression on her face, as if doing some math in her head.
"Everything okay?" Calaf asked.
"I'm sure it's nothing." Jelena's smile returned. "Keep looking at me like that and we're not leaving the tent, Mister."
Camp items would automatically fold themselves up after twelve hours. More than a few amorous adventurers over the years had been caught suddenly exposed. Here in the frigid north that carried a risk of leaving them both out in the freezing cold with no protection against the elements. Cooler heads prevailed, and they were dressed and out of the tent within a few minutes.
"Can't wait to get to the next camp," Jelena said airily.
"Easy, now. We still have to get there first," Calaf managed. "It'll be a long road ahead."
They'd be sitting on the sled for the journey. Good, as Jelena frequently made note of the soreness in her hips. She prepped the sled dogs while he helped get the sled in order as best he could.
With their team all hooked up and ready to go, the couple yelled 'much' and the dogs continued their long route through the snow fields.
Days passed, with the sun beginning to tilt ever so slightly down to a more standard, familiar angle. They were growing closer to the northern limit of the churchlands.
Stashed food supplies for the dogs were running low. Jelena unhooked them one night, and they took off running. After another bright 'night' spent in the tent, the team returned with bloody snouts. They were an awfully self-sufficient bunch, these sled dogs.
No other nomadic bands were seen for the duration of their trek, even as the icy plains and rocky landscape gave way to taiga carpeted in a bed of moss. After another week, the distinct smell of volcanic sulfur became apparent when the winds were right.
One last night in the tent before they were back within striking distance of the Pilgrim's Path. The dog continued to sleep around in the spare tents left over from the Camp items. For the first time in what felt like ages, the sun wandered down below the horizon, and a crescent moon hung low over the squat pine forests.
The pair spent another night in the camp's central tent. Soft moans and sighs escaped from between the tied-tight flaps, much to the chagrin of the sled dogs.
Jelena panted heavily on the thick fur bedrolls, as she had every night since they'd begun making love again. This time, though, Calaf was atop her, pressing her into furs.
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It was important to get back into a routine. Calaf's missing left arm reduced some of the positions they could try. Certainly, Jelena preferred a more hands-on treatment, but her knight was managing one-handed. It would be a while before they could work out a way for Calaf to pin her down quite as vigorously as before. For now, just feeling his weight atop her and the beading sweat on the Paladin's back as her arms draped over his shoulders was enough.
"Calaf~" Jelena said, her lips quivering.
They moved slowly but in sync beneath the fur coverings. When Calaf pressed deeper into her again, Jelena felt as if she'd been fused to her handsome former churchman at the thighs.
"It's so~ ah~" Jelena gasped as she was filled again.
The handsome weight pressing down upon her was panting, brow furrowed, utterly focused upon her pleasure. Calaf appeared to Jelena as a partial blur; her Scoured eye picking up only movement, while her right eye focused in on her beloved.
Lovemaking with three arms and three eyes between the couple was a challenge, admittedly. It was Calaf of Riverglen who'd given everything up: his position, good standing in the church, an entire worldview, just to have her in a hot springs long ago, now. He continued to be with her, despite the scarring on her face and her milky left eye. She wasn't about to be turned off by the missing stump of his arm, not even for a second. Why, if they could just get a slightly deeper angle…
Calaf exhaled sharply. She felt a pulsing in his nethers as it rippled through Jelena's core as well. The actual motions of the act were just as effective before Calaf's crippling injury. She'd trained him not to use the Interface during their intimate moments. If he'd been dependent on Menu actions to leave her doubled over and panting, certainly they'd have had a harder time of things now that the Menu was gone.
"So close," Jelena whispered as she saw sparks dance along the fabric of the tent.
"I'm…" Calaf managed, straining.
Acting on instinct, Jelena locked her legs around her knight. Her arms pulled him closer as the pair slowly, intimately cascaded over the edge. Jelena's vision blurred fully. When it returned, she felt a deep pulsing as Calaf's gift filled her.
"Oh, by the Cleric. Holy Mia, bless me. By your grace, I've--Y-yes. Yes~!" Jelena's voice quivered and her vision blurred again.
"Jelena. That's, ah." Calaf had evidently gotten a second wind from her feverish invocation, and he pressed into her anew. "That's really alluring. But… I didn't expect you to…"
"Did… did I?" Jelena felt the blood pool in her cheeks, warping them a dark brown from the blush. "D-did I really invoke the Cleric?"
Her cheeks grew warmer still. Calling upon Holy Mia to bless her climax was something she'd done as a church sister back in Japella—semi-blasphemous though fooling around in a habit was. The young men of the desert village got a kick out of it, admittedly, and former churchman Calaf certainly didn't seem to mind. Still…
"It… it doesn't mean anything." Jelena looked away despite their close proximity. "Old habit."
Certainly, invoking the Cleric wasn't indicative of any renewed faith in the Menu, not after the church-shattering revelations they'd uncovered over the past several months. Jelena wasn't sure where it had come from.
"I'll take it as a compliment for my continued vigor," Calaf said, attempting to pull away.
Wordless, Jelena leaned up and pulled his lips against hers with a nibbling kiss. The warm furs fell away as they squirmed together. Jelena shared a glance down, where the black skin of her thighs contrasted perfectly with the paler flesh of the Paladin's. She pulled the furs back over Calaf's shoulders, then rolled her hips to coax him onto his side. The pair cuddled closer, still locked at the lips and the thighs.
The pair unintentionally slept in a little late thanks to their impromptu marathon exertion. The Camp folded itself up shortly after they emerged to attend to the dogs.
Jelena boarded the sled, and Calaf settled in behind him.
"Ah." The relic thief sighed. "Easy to get distracted, out here."
She closed her eyes and leaned against Calaf's broad chest. She could still feel the warmth deep within her.
Back in the brothel, she and the other workers usually instructed the customers to finish up outside. That was… not a rule she'd ever enforced with Calaf, not even that first time in the hot springs. Jelena subtly double-checked a pouch with certain special herbs she kept on hand just in case. Saved her from complications more than once in her brothel days. She had just enough supply to last the month, though she would need to resupply the next time they were in a major settlement or when she could scrounge up a natural supply of the bush in the desert.
"Something the matter?" Calaf asked.
Jelena shook her head. "Nothing. Just… really relaxed."
She punctuated this by shooting him a sly glance.
"You're welcome," he said cockily. He was so far from the repressed church-boy who'd threatened to arrest her back in that Riverglen alleyway. Jelena looked upon his transformation into a rugged, virile, willing apostate with a great deal of pride.
"Huit!" Jelena said, and the well-trained sled dogs did as commanded.