She did, although it wasn’t easy to fight open the thick, burnt husk of the root with one hand while gently rubbing a man’s dick with the other. Beneath the peel, the pulp of the root was grey and unappetizing, with a taste that was mostly that of the ashes it had been baked in. She ate it anyway, bolting it down in just a few half-chewed swallows, until she had nothing to do but work her fist and watch him slowly eat.

“You are good,” he remarked between lazy bites. “Your Sheulek trained you well, but this is Zhuqa’s House. Get up, Eshiqi. Put my cock inside you just how we are.”

He looked so sly and serious about it, like sex in a chair with the woman on top was the absolute limit of unthinkable depravity, that she laughed at him. Then she got up, still shaking her head (very much aware of how closely he was watching her now) and straddled him. “Such a dirty girl,” she said, milking at the base of his shaft until she’d worked the thick head of it inside her.

“Just so,” he murmured, reaching up to stroke his thumb along her throat.

She bore down, rocking a little to let his oils make the entry easier, and then sat, eye to eye, waiting for further instructions.

“Make me cum,” he said, not moving.

It took a few false starts; she didn’t want to put her arms around him for balance and she hated having his face right in front of her while she bounced on his cock, having to watch him study the juddering of her breasts and smirking. So she leaned back, bracing her hands behind her on his knees and raising herself up on her toes to pump her hips at him while she looked at the ceiling instead. It put a lot of strain on her aching shoulders, but it wouldn’t last long, she knew. It never did.

Or at least, it never had.

“It was a sick mind that taught you this,” said Zhuqa in a mildly marveling tone. Apart from a minute clenching of his thighs now and then, he managed not to move at all. His breath remained slow and even. His hands stayed at his sides. His cock, ticking hard inside of her with the urgent hammer of his pulse, gave neither of them release.

Her shoulders couldn’t take this much longer. “Hurry up and finish, motherfucker,” Amber muttered, bucking faster.

He only chuckled. “Fierce little thing. A Sheulek is a master of his flesh. Just because I choose so often to revel does not mean I do not know restraint.”

Which meant he was willing to go all night, for no other reason than to piss her off. Irritation became the spark of an idea. Amber caught his wrist, brought it to her mouth, and sucked at his finger, bobbing up and down its small length to the rhythm of her pumping hips.

“Fuck Gann!” he spat, yanking back his hand, but it was all over. His cock jerked; she felt the heat of his cum spitting over and over, like fireworks blooming in some internal sky, until he shuddered out the last of it.

He glared at her, close enough that she could feel the hot grunts of his breath puffing on her throat and stirring through her hair. His neck had lit up at some point during the sex, but the color wasn’t fading now that it was done. If anything, it was getting brighter.

All sense of victory slowly died, leaving her nothing but Zhuqa’s eyes burning into hers and the sting of the belt still crawling like coals over her back.

“That was stupid,” said Zhuqa, scarcely audible even with his face right in front of hers.

Should she agree? Apologize? Stay quiet? Amber hesitated and lost the choice.

“You want me to finish with you, is that it? You have somewhere else to be tonight? Eh?”

“No,” Amber said, tried to say.

“No! You don’t decide when I’m done!” Zhuqa picked her up only to thump her down with ass-bruising force on the table and shove her flat. Her head hit the bowl, upending it. He swiped burnt roots and greasy meat out of his way, hauled her hips to the table’s edge, and stabbed himself back inside her, snarling, “I’ll fuck you until you bleed if that’s my pleasure!” His empty hand splayed open and heavy across her chest, pinning her in place for his rapid, unfeeling thrusts. The table rubbing at her from behind might as well have been wrapped in razor wire. “I’ll fuck you until we both bleed and you…” His back arched, bucking almost in convulsions, every cord of his throat pushing out through vibrant shades of black and yellow. “…and you…fuck…” His eyes were glazing even as he glared at her. “You,” he said, but the rest was an animal hiss.

Amber didn’t move.

Zhuqa closed his eyes. He began to breathe. “One,” she heard him mutter. “One for the Prophet…”

Someone knocked at the door.

Zhuqa roared. Not like an angry man, or even an angry lizard. It was the roar of a dragon, wordless, tearing through the air and her bones together at decibels no mortal voice should even be capable of achieving. His hips pumped spastically, brutally, without seeming to be aware of her at all.

Amber did not fight him, did not cry out, did not even breathe.

Three more knocks, deliberate and loud.

Zhuqa stopped rock-rigid above her. His arms shook where he leaned on them, not (she was sure) from the strain and violence of his thrusts, as much as from the strain of not letting go to his killing rage. Amber, the only living thing in the room, held very still and watched him as he turned his head and looked at the door.

He breathed. Once. Twice.

“I,” he said in a rasping, hellish hiss, “do not care if the skies have split open and are shitting fire all over my camp! Move the fuck on!” he roared, once more in that dragon’s voice she felt even in her womb.

A moment’s stillness. Zhuqa’s heaving breath moved her minutely back and forth on the table. He didn’t look at her.

Tok. Tok. Tok.

He shoved himself back and out of her, snarling curses as he gripped his cock and wrenched it with difficulty and obvious pain back into his body, cinching his loin-plate on to keep it there. Metal flashed; knives flew to his hands as he crossed the room, flung the door open—

And stood there.

Meoraq’s name leapt like hope itself in her heart, but it died…because in that stillness, she heard what Zhuqa saw: the baby.

Amber sat up slowly, not daring yet to leave the table or even bring her legs together, but she had to at least look. Zhuqa’s friend Iziz stood on the other side of the door, Xzem huddled small at his side, and the baby thrust out as if in sacrifice before Zhuqa’s naked blades. She hadn’t been able to hear it crying through the door. She could barely hear it now. Its cries, little more than an endless, rusty “weh…weh…” breathed through a throat scraped raw by screams.

“It hasn’t eaten,” said Iziz.

Zhuqa sheathed his knives. “Since?”

After a moment, and a light cuff to the back of her head from Iziz, Xzem stammered, “Since third-hour last, my lord.”

“Since third-hour? You tell me this now?” Zhuqa looked at the baby, then at the woman who held it, incredulous. “Tell me why I should not go this instant and pull an arm off your shit-sired little poke!”

“Please, my lord! It is not my fault! It does not want me! I thought…it would suck when it became hungry enough, but…oh mercy, my lord!”

“Mercy?” Zhuqa snatched at the scruff of her filthy shift and yanked her off her knees. “I offered you mercy, woman! I offered you more than a used-up breed-pot like you deserves and you repay me by starving my child half the fucking day?!”

Xzem wailed.

“She says it quiets up in your creature’s arms,” Iziz put in. “She thought if the creature touched it…”

Zhuqa straightened up and glanced back at Amber. The yellow stripes at his throat throbbed, but they were fading. He released Xzem and stepped back.

Amber kicked down off the table and limped hurriedly over to take the baby from its weeping wetnurse. It hung against her breasts for perhaps half a minute more, and then suddenly brought both hands up to smack against her skin in a strong, pinching grip. It pulled in a deep, deep breath, and screamed it out—weak no longer, but full-lunged and furious. Fluid poured in an immediate, answering trickle from Xzem’s flaccid teat, but it was Amber’s breast it blindly gnawed, futile for them both.