Chapter 2

Collin struggled to put his stiff boots on.

He guessed he would be doing some walking and wondered how far and fast the slider would go. He was damn sure he was going to wish for his boat after seventy klicks of climbing up and down the mountain he had spied behind him, to the south.

He heard a crunch behind him and spun around with his dirk in hand. He had to blink several times as he took in the creature that stood before him. He had thought his ex-girlfriend Francine was beautiful, but this woman took his breath away.

Her short, bobbed at the shoulders, hair was golden with mahogany brown streaks. She stood about 20cm taller than he did. She had magnificent breasts that the jerkin didn’t hide well. She was curvier than Francine was but somehow on her, it just made her look a more delectable woman.

The tight-fitting pants didn’t hide her feminine hips or the solid thighs. As he looked more closely, he also determined that her shoulders and arms gave the hint of strong muscles. She was perhaps broader across the shoulders than most women but somehow that didn’t detract from her feminine charms.

The golden skin around her dark, penetrating eyes slanted up slightly in the corners, giving her an exotic look. Her lashes were long and the eyebrows dark and narrow. While the nose was small, the mouth was generous. He was surprised by the slight jutting of her chin that hinted that she had a determined personality.

She stood there casually, as if being in a forest seventy klicks from civilisation, with a strange man holding a dirk, was neither here nor there to her. He watched, as she gave him a sardonic expression and suddenly, he felt very foolish. She was the Slider.

He had seen a Slider once take on a man. His father said the man was a fool for fighting with a girl child. He had said the Slider, who had been about five metres in length at the time, was but a child and no older than himself. It was one of the few trips his father had actually taken him on. He had been fifteen at the time.

He had watched the Slider move and weave as she played with the man. She had him mesmerised and he had never even seen her tail when she swatted him up the back of the head and knocked him out. His father had slapped him on the back and laughed. When he looked again, she was gone.

Colin sheathed the dirk and collected his things. The boots were stiff but at least he had on thick clean socks. He’d not taken them from his pack while in the boat. The clothes he had quickly changed into were not the sweetest smelling, but they were dry. He hoped the salt that was encrusted in them, didn’t cause his skin to itch.

The heat of the morning hinted that summer was here. The high humidity and low rolling clouds coming in from the sea also suggested that more storms were coming. He was sure that he was going to sweat a lot more as the day grew older.

Still, he had survived so far.

Serpin had also taken the young man’s measure.

He certainly needed a good feed she decided. She also determined that he was going to slow her down. She had been interested to notice that while he was slim, he did have a man’s body. She had seen the points of his ears peeking out between his blonde curls and guessed he had a good dose of Pix in his heritage.

Not that it was a bad thing. If he had been able to see her ears, he would have picked out that she too had Pix in her heritage, but her ears were not as long as his were when she was in human form. She had no idea why she wasn’t as slim as other Pix and Genteli women were and cursed her wide hips and a big arse. In her human male form, she was even stockier up top but at least her arse was smaller.

She had not realised that a bulge had formed in Collin’s pants when his mind strayed to what he would like to do with those very hips that she was bemoaning. Watching the play of her arse cheeks in the tight pants as she walked in front of him, had him so mesmerised that if she walked off a cliff, he would have walked off right behind her.

He had no idea how long they walked for, when she halted them beside a fast-flowing stream. It ran down a small incline into a pool, not more than six meters across in any direction. It then dropped down to a second level and hurried down the mountain to join with the river he had been on.

Serpin’s voice finally distracted his gaze when she said, “The heavy rain last night has cleaned the pool. I shall hunt while you wash up. I gather you have not walked for many days and you need feeding. Don’t drink too much of the water, as you need the food too. I’ll stay away for at least an hour so you can wash your clothes. They will dry fast if you spread them out on the rocks.”

With that, she turned and disappeared between the trees.

Collin glanced around.

The trees shaded part of the pool but the large flat rocks she had pointed to were indeed in the hot sunlight. Collin didn’t hesitate. He stripped as fast as he could. He hauled every item of clothing out of his pack and found the bar of soap he had thrown in. He hadn’t bothered to try and use it when in the boat.

He picked a spot in the shade that an outcrop of rock caused the stronger current to move around it leaving a relatively quiet spot to do his washing in. He’d not had a lot of experience at washing clothes, but he decided he could manage to scrub the worst spots and even just getting the salt out of them would help.

In his emergency pack, he had placed two pairs of sturdy pants, three pairs of undershorts and three light-weight tunics with the longer but loose sleeves that the common folk wore. He had been wearing his better pants and his more decorative tunic when he ran. He had been wearing them when the Captain had informed him, they would be parting company.

He had ummed and ahed about the boots, but they were good walking boots that he had found were more comfortable when he had been at the University. His lighter slip-on boots that went with his nicer clothes, he had put in his pack as soon as he could change his shoes. Of all his items, they looked in better condition than the rest of his clothes.

He doubted he did a decent job at washing his clothes, but he did give it a reasonable effort. He hooked his clothes and walking boots under the edge of rocks, so the stream rinsed them as he washed himself. Washing the salt from his hairless crotch and from the blonde curly hair on his head had been sheer bliss.

Since it was only mid-morning, he washed his blanket too. It wasn’t very thick so he hoped it would dry fairly fast. By the time, he had moved a branch, pinned it between two of the taller rocks and stretched the blanket over it, his stomach was rumbling. He checked his washing and decided one of his pairs of silk undershorts were dry enough to put back on.

He felt exposed walking around with his cock hanging out. He had slipped his soft shoes on to protect his soft feet while his boots hung over two stumps, he found to put them on. Exhausted he found a shady spot and lent against the warm rock.

He didn’t remember nodding off.

The smell of food cooking woke him.

The shade had moved and if it wasn’t for his medallion protecting him, he would have been sunburnt. He had put a spell on it to protect his skin from sunburn on the third day and it seemed that it still worked. He had not enjoyed the next three days as his skin had healed but at least his friend the Blower had fed him by then and he had other things to worry about.

Collin stood and scratched his balls. His cock was hard, but he really needed to piss as he had drunk more water than he had thought he had. He noticed the Slider over near the fire she had made and picked a bush a little further down the stream to piss against. He squealed in fright when he felt hands pulling him backwards.

The hand he was holding his cock with jerked and he was pissing a huge stream like a fountain into the air as he tried to regain his footing. The girlish giggle cut off the stream and his cock went from placidly pissing to rock hard again. He spun around when she released him and was about to blast her when the look on her face halted him.

He looked down. He was still holding his cock, but it was no longer contained within his hand as over half of its length was stretched in front of it. He looked back up and he was surprised to see the woman lick her lips. He groaned as it was not helping him. He tried to tuck it back in his loose shorts but now it just looked like a cock trying to escape its confines and tented the material obscenely.

“What the hell are you playing at?” he groused at her as tried not to think of how she could fix his problem.

Serpin blinked several times and then focused on his face with effort. She had seen a couple of cocks in her time but not like that one. It had to be the longest she had seen, and it had been very thick in his hand. Finally, she got out, “You didn’t want to touch that bush with your skin.”

Collin turned at looked at the seeming harmless bush and then back at the girl. “Why not? And for that matter what do I call you?”

“I’m called Serpin Smith. That fine powder on the leaves is to stop grazers from eating it. If you had gotten that powder on your, hum, thingy, it would have itched for hours and swollen up even bigger,” she told him with a grin as she thought of what it would look like.

Collin couldn’t help it, he had to chuckle. “You seem to make it swell up for me without using itching powder.”

Serpin frowned. “You must need relief bad if you think I make it do that or are you just a perv that you will even fuck an ugly woman?”

Collin was struck dumb by her comment. While he knew many women perceived something about themselves as being ugly, he couldn’t for the life of him, see what her problem was. “Honey, I’ve screwed princesses who were not nearly as beautiful as you.”