The Village Shaman’s Lover
By Alastair Anders
Copyright 2012 Alastair Anders
Smashwords edition
For adults only.
No one is coming after me.
It’s been eight months since I deserted. Just couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t wake up on that cold ground year after year anymore. Drifting from place to place, stealing from old women, cutting off the hands of farmers. So I walked one night. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I just started making my way across the field, and then through the pass, and then down into the valley.
I have no name now.
And then there came the months of hiding in alleys, keeping my hood pulled far over my face, always looking over my shoulder. I drifted around the major towns and encampments, eating out of rubbish heaps, sleeping in trees. And then the days started to get shorter and the nights colder, and I started to worry about how I was going to survive. One of the other drifters told me that if you show up at some of these weird little villages and ask if there’s any work you can do, sometimes they’ll put you up for the winter. I figured that was fair. So I went around to a couple settlements until somebody told me a shaman needed a bodyguard.
I was picturing a grizzled old man with no teeth and a crazy laugh, or something, as I walked back to his house. But then I found that he was young, and beautiful, with his long dark hair and thin red lips and slender body. At first I couldn’t tell if he was a man or a woman, and I didn’t care. And then he asked me what I wanted, and his voice was low and deep and sweet, and I swallowed my lust and asked if he was still looking for protection. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he explained what he needed from a bodyguard, the way he moved - so graceful, so light. Been sleeping on his floor ever since.
So I happily do the dirty work – cooking, cleaning, fixing things, hauling around supply packs and provisions when we have to hit the road, and intimidating people when necessary. I figure this big muscle-bound body has to be good for something other than killing. And there’s a peace that comes over me, too, when I’m chopping wood or helping the old women slice up cabbages or sleeping on his floor, next to the fire. A meditative state. A quiet place.
People ask me what my name was before. I don’t ever tell them. It belongs to an old life.
As part of my duties, I follow him out to the western settlements. The old shaman who used to live out there died suddenly last year, and his apprentice wasn’t ready to handle it all by herself, so we go help her out. It’s a long road, and it takes us through the country where his rapist ex-husband lives, him and his vengeful family. He doesn’t talk about that.
I keep him company on these long treks. We walk side by side through the world, together, and it seems to me that nothing could ever be more perfect. We talk, and laugh, and sleep side by side at night, and I resist the urge to rest my head on his shoulder. I have never been in love like this before.
On this last visit, it became obvious to us both that she’s going to be able to manage her own communities. I walk home with him, in a silent frenzy. After this winter has passed, he won’t need a bodyguard anymore. No more duties for me. No more long sweet hours with each other at night. No more cuddling close to each other in the tent for warmth, no more waking up next to him.
Half a day’s walk from home, we break for the night and set up camp, building a fire and cooking up the last of our road food. The night is clear, and I know it’s going to be another of those sub-zero frozen nights, the ones where you’re never sure if you’ll wake up in the morning. We eat in silence, side by side under the felt blanket. I am so close to his body. It’s so hard to lift my spoon to my mouth, to eat. All my hands want to do is caress him, all my mouth wants to do is kiss him.
Gods, if I could only kiss him, just once. I would leave the village and go freeze to death if I could just spend one night in bed with him. One night to show him how I feel, to worship his body with mine.
I swallow. “What are you going to do when we get home?”
“Have a bath,” he says.
I chuckle, too. And I picture him sliding nude and oiled into a small tub of water, steam rising from his bare skin, and I fall into another erotic daydream. He always smells like smoke and herbs. I want to lick the sweat from him. I think of us both in the sauna, gloriously naked in the dark heat, and I’ll get on my hands and knees and start by kissing the tops of his feet, and then I’ll move up his slender calves…
I snap myself out of it before I get completely lost, and I add: “I mean, now that you don’t have to make these trips anymore.”
He thinks for a minute. “This spring, I want to train some more people in first aid. And get back to helping people who’ve been raped. And I want to practice music more.”
I nod. Nowhere in there do I exist. He’s already made plans for a future without me. My mouth is dry, and I’m starting to sweat.
“And after that…” He leans back against the rock and closes his eyes. The warm light from the fire makes his soft skin glow. “I want to have a man again. It’s been too long.”
“And what am I?” I tease him.
“You know what I mean.” He smiles. “I want a lover.”
There’s such a hunger in his voice, such a sensuality, that my breath catches in my throat and I almost swoon with desire. Say it, say it, say it, I tell myself. You will never have this chance again. I take a deep breath, and I say “I could be your man.”
“You?” He opens his eyes.
My heart starts to pound. The secret is out of my body now, floating in the air between us. I will never be able to take it back.
The centers of his beautiful eyes focus on me. They drift across my face, my shoulders, the shape of my body beneath the blanket. “I’ve never thought of you that way before,” he says, softly.
“Would you like to start?”
He licks his lips. Gods!
“I didn’t even know you liked men,” he says. “Sleeping next to all those big, beefy guys in the horde must have been torture, huh?”
“Ugh, no, never the other guys in the horde.” I wave away memories of foot rot and flatulence. “I like men like you. Soft men.”
“Really?” He’s genuinely surprised. Maybe no one has ever found him beautiful and sexy before, just as he is.
He moves closer to me, and takes my chin gently in one hand. Oh, fuck, is he going to kiss me?
I’m reminded of the time I woke up in the middle of the night, noticed a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked over to find him stroking himself. How I watched his body shiver, his muscles twitch, his sex throb. How he bit his lips and focused on some world far beyond this one. How lonely and sad he looked, too, and how I wished more than anything I could crawl across the floor and climb into his bed. I’d kiss him. I’d hold his body against mine and I’d whisper in his ear as I stroked that ache away.
“Are you sure,” he says, “that you want to be with me? Because what’s inside of me, that power, it’s dangerous.”
“I don’t care,” falls out of my mouth. “I mean, I know. I know who you are, what you are. But look at me. I’m a runaway from a horde. I broke the laws of my own people. What can you do to someone who’s already cursed?”
I lean into his hand. “I’m not afraid,” I whisper.
He lowers his eyelids and pulls my face close to his. I feel his lips touch my cheek, near my ear, then the hollow underneath my cheekbone, then the fleshy part of my mouth, near the edge of my lips. Our mouths meet. I melt. He straddles my lap and settles onto me, hips to hips, body to body. His tongue slips along the underside of my lip, and I open my mouth to let him inside. I suck on his tongue, greedily. I can feel a hard bulge forming against my own, beneath his heavy winter clothes.
When we break, we are both panting and little beads of sweat are forming along his forehead. “How I wish I could sneak you inside of my clothes,” he purrs.
“Please, take me,” I gasp. “Inside the tent. I don’t care. I want – “
He shushes me with another kiss.
“Not this way,” he says. “How about a promise? Tomorrow, when we get home, I’ll lock us inside the sauna. We’ll soap each other up, give each other massages.”
My head swims with the thought of so much bare skin, his hands on my body. A yellow cake of soap in my hand and the invitation to rub him everywhere.
“Maybe you can show me how you like to be touched,” he says, brushing a strand of hair out of my face.
“You’ll have to help me find out,” I pant. “I’ve never done this before.”
I’ve spent so much of my life fantasizing and dreaming that sometimes it feels like I have done this before, millions of times. With so many thousands of men.
His eyes pop open. He starts laughing. Suddenly I feel very small and clumsy and stupid.
“My dear,” he laughs, “what have I gotten myself into?”
“Teach me,” I whisper. I press my face into his long hair, inhale the scent of his skin. “I want you to teach me how to make love.” I kiss him along the ridge of his jaw. “How to give you pleasure.”
He moans, and as he kisses me again, he presses his hips into mine. I wrap my arms around his waist and pull him as tightly to me as I can. I can feel the outline of his hard cock, pressing into my stomach, and I try to move my body against his so that his clothes rub against it, stroking him with my movements.
“Let’s put out this fire and get under the covers,” he whispers.
*
He slides into the tent next to me, wriggling out of his boots, and in one smooth movement he lies down next to me. He pulls the blanket over himself. Through our heavy clothes I can feel the warmth of his body.
He smiles. He runs one hand across me cheek, and says “What a funny night this has been.”
I blush.
“How will I ever sleep?” he asks. “How will I ever make it to tomorrow? I’ll lie awake all night thinking about how it might feel to unbutton your trousers…”
“Oh…”
“My body against yours…”
“Oh…”
“Your cock in my hand…”
“Ah! You’re turning me on so much!” I cry out. It’s true. My cock is hard as an iron pole between my legs and my body is on fire.
“Stroke yourself with me,” he whispers. His arm disappears underneath the blankets. I watch his shoulder rise, stretch, and sink as he reaches inside his clothes. His eyes close, and he moans, gently, and I know that his hand is encircling his cock.
It drives me crazy. I wrestle my pants open and pull out my cock and start to rub, slowly, up and down.
“What would you do to me, if we were at home right now?” he whispers.
I run the pad of my thumb around the head of my cock. I’m already wet. I smear the thin line of wetness around my skin. “I’d stroke you, like this. I’d use both my hands and oil them up and hold you in my lap, with your back against my chest and your head on my shoulder, and I’d rub you between your legs everywhere. I’d make you gush.”
He moans, lifting his head back. I know he’s imagining my firm hands massaging his cock and his balls and his inner thighs.
“What would you to do me?” I ask.
“I’d suck you,” he purrs.
“You’d do what?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never – “ he gasps. “Here.” He takes my arm, raises my hand to his mouth, and slides my index and middle finger between his incredibly soft lips. His tongue tickles the pads of my fingers as he sucks and swallows. I am trembling, I’m so turned on.
He slides my wet fingers out of his mouth and kisses each tip. “It feels so good to be kissed there,” he whispers, “so intimate.” He kisses the palm of my hand. “And when your lover swallows, it feels – “
“Ah!” I cry out, and my whole body shudders.
“You like that?” he asks. His dark eyes are glittering, intense. He lets my hand go. “Are you dreaming about spreading your legs for me and letting me take your cock into my mouth?”
He licks his lips for me. I shudder again – I’m sure that my cock is going to start spurting at any second.
I return my hand to my cock, and I spread the traces of his saliva around my shaft. “Actually,” I gasp, “I’m dreaming about getting on my knees in front of you and swallowing every drop.”
“So is that what you like?” he asks, softly. “You dream about submitting, sexually? Surrendering to your lover?”