When the house came into view, we saw it mostly from the side. Skalla slowed the two-wheel, and I told myself to give the building a fair chance. I knew Skalla would support whatever I wanted to do, and if I said no, that would be the end of it. But I would be fair. I owed Skalla that.

It really was a beautiful building. All smooth wood posts and a high, angled roof. So many of the outer rooms were open to the elements, the rustling curtains damp but fresh from the rain, and the entire thing looked out over the river with the most glorious view I ever could have imagined. It reminded me more of a resort on a tropical island than a house. And there was so much land! Stretching and verdant, undisturbed for kilometres. The gardens I could plant here! It could be a whole farm if I wanted!

Skalla took my hand and led me with a gentle tug towards the back of the house. My stomach went sour, and I almost pulled away, because the back was where everything bad had happened.

But when we got there, there was no darkness or thunder. No blood, no bodies. It was just a house. A house that had been damaged, no doubt, as huge sections of the walls back here were entirely destroyed. But it was still just a house. I stared at the now-cracked fountain in the courtyard, the broken beams, but no matter what I did, with the sun shining down so sweetly and everything looking so cleansed by the rain, I just couldn’t drag up the ghosts of what had happened here.

In a way, the house was similar to Skalla and me. Like us, it had been through some awful shit. It had been beaten down and broken and witness to unspeakable things. But it was still standing. Emptied out of evil and waiting for something new. Something good.

We could give it something good.

I was aware of Skalla watching me intently from the side even though I didn’t look at him. I nodded once, firm and sure, more at the house than at him, and simply said, “I’ll want a sauna.” Then I walked into the house, our home, for what I considered to be the very first time.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Skalla

Suvi had always had a lush stomach, and it only grew more generously round as we settled into the house and I began to rebuild. She seemed to think that she was growing rather quickly in her mid-section for the beginnings of her pregnancy, but as it did not seem to be doing her any harm, I did not allow myself too much worry over that. If anything, her health seemed to improve daily. By the time the rainy season dissipated, so too did her exhaustion and stomach ailments.

Sun reigned, and Suvi became lively again. Her appetite returned, and not just for food. While I’d cursed the first part of her pregnancy for making her so unwell, I now prostrated myself before it in thanks because it was almost as if she were in heat again. Morning, noon, night – it did not matter. She’d hoist her swelling body atop me, or press her backside against me, drawing my cocks from their slits with nothing but an arch and a sigh against my scales.

It was a time of bliss unlike any I had ever known. There was peace in this house, joy in my heart, and my bride in my arms. No thing. Mortal or otherwise, could hurt me now.

When I told this to Suvi, she pulled back to look at me.

“Your bride. You’ve called me that before. But we never got married.”

“We are married in every way that counts,” I told her huskily, heat spreading through my loins as I flicked the tips of my tongues against her throat. She shivered and sagged, allowing me to spin her so that her back was pressed to my front. I hoisted her cotton tunic up, groaning at the fragrant wetness already soaking her upper thighs.

“Do you want my knot inside you, wife?”

She moaned, grinding her head in an up-and-down yes motion against my chest. Desire sluicing through my bloodstream, I lined my sensitive head up against her entrance. But I paused when she spoke again.

“And maybe... Maybe the other one...” She gave a wiggle of her hips until her puckered back entrance twitched against the tip of my smaller, upper cock.

I nearly spilled right there, and through gritted teeth I hissed, “Are you certain?” We’d never done that before, though the river knew I’d fantasized about it.

“Yes,” she breathed. “God, yes. I want to try. I feel like soon I’ll be too big to try anything too new or crazy.” She rocked back against me once more, and it was so dizzyingly erotic I, too, felt suddenly too big, like my cocks were more flush with blood and seed than they’d ever been.

“Bend over,” I whispered. She whimpered and did so, placing pillows under her on the bed for comfort, her little feet flat on the new floor. The pillows were also new, as was the bed. Besides the structure of the house itself, nothing from Joleb’s time remained here. Even the hoard had been cleared out, the metal donated to the Callabarra temple. The hot-edged weapons had been converted into various surgical and cauterizing tools, the other things melted down and repurposed. No, this was our bed. In our house.

And this was my mate bending down so sweetly over it, waiting for my cocks.

I fell to my knees in worship of what I saw before me. Sun spilled over Suvi so thick it was like milk or silk or some other liquid-like, luxurious thing that made her skin and hair shine. Her backside was gorgeous, her hips delicious in their pregnancy-thickened state.

Gripping her thighs, I eased them apart, forcing her feet to move outwards and away from each other in cute little bouncy movements. Then I dipped my snout between her legs and licked.

Pregnancy seemed to make Suvi far more sensitive. She was slick and delectably swollen, and it only took a few swirling flicks across her little pearl of pleasure to send her quaking in sun-soaked climax. I eased my forked tongue back and away from the places I knew would be throbbing hard now, but I didn’t pull back entirely, instead using my tongue to drag slippery wetness back up the crease to her other tight entrance. She lurched and bucked when I licked her there, then gave a deep, raw groan when I lubricated my finger with her juices and slowly nudged it inside.

Tight. Even tighter than her cunt. My body rocked, cocks jerking forward at the thought of that tightness taking me.

But she couldn’t be too tight. And she felt nowhere near ready for me yet. With painstaking slowness, I eased my finger in further, up to the thickened knuckle, and growled in satisfaction when she cried out with elation.

“Oh my God, Skalla,” she panted, fisting the bedding with her tiny, clawless hands. “I feel like I’m melting.”

With how wet she was, she almost looked like she was melting, too. I dragged my tongue greedily down to her cunt, sliding back up with more slickened moisture. I used both tips of my tongue to lick at the tight ring around my finger, and with a flare of arousal I watched it give a fluttering clench and then relax.

After a few more thrusts and licks, I added another finger.

And then, when she was grinding and sweating and shaking, a third.

Suvi became nearly incoherent with pleasure when I stood, keeping my fingers in her and then sliding my larger cock into her cunt, stopping just before the knot.

“More, fuck. Please, Skalla, I can’t!”

“Can’t take me?” I growled, driving my fingers and cock into her in a simultaneous, claiming thrust.

“Can’t wait!”

And who was I to make my perfect mate wait for anything she wanted?

I eased my slick fingers out of her, watching in lurid fascination as that dark pink ring stretched and clenched. Gathering more of her wetness, I stroked my upper cock, getting it good and soaked.