Crimson and Steel by Ric Bern Page B

meaty paws locked around her limbs as his hips drove his dick into her like a piston. She bobbed in the water as he pounded into her and stretched her pussy in a new and strange angle that delighted sensations deep within her core. Her clit was being assaulted in this new position and his fat, purple veins throbbing in her sheath were driving her to the brink. Asmin gasped for air, and little pinpoints of light assaulted her vision. His entire body tensed. Once more his seed sac bunched up tight to his shaft, and he loosed thick ropes of cum into Asmin’s clenching womb.
    The pair sat for a long while in the pool, the runaway slave curled in his lap. Asmin laid her head on Ulf’s broad chest and relaxed as he idly stroked her between her shoulder blades and held her hand beneath the swirling water. Moonlight bathed them in the steaming bath, and they were content.
    “How came you to live alone like this?” she asked as she turned to look up into his gemstone eyes.
    “You think me odd,” he replied in his mellow baritone, smirking down at her. “Am I a crazy hermit? Or a witch-man? A bit of both? Hmm?”
    “Well, I’ll bet that mad hermits don’t fuck like you do,” she said coquettishly, giving his cock a tug under the roiling water. “And if you are a witch-man, I am not afraid. Tell me: How is it you live alone? I can tell you missed women. What else are you missing?”
    “I do not miss that city,” he said. “That is a festering pot of stinking flesh. A man cannot breathe inside its walls. And do not trust a Roman. Liars and thieves, the lot of them.”
    Asmin felt her protector tense as she rested in his lap. His voice rose, and his ire stirred like the water. She soothed her hands over his chest and shushed him softly. “It’s all right,” she comforted. “Tell me what happened.”
    “I was hired on with other men of my tribe to travel far from the shores of Geatland, my home, and be warriors in the service of a Roman general. We donned the crimson and steel of the Empire and swore oaths to the praetor. I learned to march and to be a part of a unit and to accept the beating of a centurion when he felt it necessary. I suffered those indignities gladly, because I knew that I would make war on the German tribes if I stood with Rome. I would share in the plunder as well as take regular pay from the general.”
    Asmin touched his face, frightened and entranced by the smoldering fury in his visage as he shared his past.
    “War never came. The praetor marched us to field and positioned us, but we never engaged. All of our movements were but to force negotiations and the trading of hostages. What glory is in that? What honor is taken in that? I challenged the elders of my tribe who had traveled with me. I told them I wanted to go home, where I could live as a man and be free and have plunder with a war band. But they would not meet my gaze. They had changed. They had softened and become happy with a regular salary and a cot to sleep on.”
    She looped a strand of wild hair behind his ear and noted that his anger was quickly turning to sadness.
    “I called them cowards. I tried to shame them into returning home and being free. They fell in love with the city and all they could buy with their coin. I was the only one who wanted to leave. But I had taken an oath to the praetor. In the end I was the coward. I broke my oath. I left my gear behind and slipped out one night.”
    “But why did you not go home?” she asked.
    “And arrive alone? My people would know I abandoned my brothers. I have cut myself off from those I love. I cannot go home, and I will not return to the city. I hear I have been banished in my absence,” he finished, and then emitted a lamenting, scoffing laugh.
    Asmin snuggled more deeply into his chest and squeezed his neck. Neither one of them had a place to be, a home. They were both outcasts. She kissed his neck and felt his arms come around her in an enveloping embrace. The silent moon