Chapter 7: Morim

I woke up the next morning spooned against Tekia's back, her breast filling my palm, my morning wood nestled comfortably in the crack of her ass. It was a position I had recently become happily accustomed to waking up in. But it was with a different girl.

Tekia and I had ended up going four times last night. It was like since this night was all she was going to get with me, Tekia wanted to get as much out of it as she could. So we tried it with her on top, we tried it from behind, both on our sides and on our knees, and then one more time with me on top again.

But that was last night. Now it was over. That was the deal.

As carefully as I could, I untangled myself from Tekia, managing to get away without waking her up. I got up and walked to the window, and looked out at the village that was slowly coming alive outside. I saw lots of smiling couples walking out of their houses hand-in-hand, basking in the afterglow of what they had done last night. I couldn't help wondering, would it be all right for Tekia and I to leave the house like that? Or would that be overstepping our bounds?

If I had been with Heleen last night, there would've been no need for concern. We could've been as lovey-dovey as we wanted and no one would've raised an eyebrow. But with Tekia ... I just didn't know.

I heard a soft groan behind me, followed by movement. Turning my head, I saw Tekia slowly rising up from the bed, blinking awake and seeing me standing there. "Morning," I said.

"Morning," she echoed, smiling brightly. Then she got up from the bed and strode over to me, pressing herself to my back and putting her arms around me. And even as I brought a hand up to place atop hers, some part of my conscience told me we shouldn't be doing that. Our one night together was supposed to be over. I was supposed to be returning to Heleen now.

But her body pressed against me just felt so good...

"Ji kasfan tu kik ," I finally said.

She nodded, and we stepped outside. We stopped to shower, where I offered to wash her hair. It wasn't until my fingers were already massaging her scalp and she was pushing her head back into my hands and moaning contentedly that I realized we were probably being a little more intimate than we should have been.

After that we headed out and joined the rest of the people sharing breakfast around the tables. The lovey-dovey atmosphere was still quite prevalent; everywhere we looked there was a couple or two making very obvious PDAs. In one direction there might be a couple leaning against each other, touching heads and stealing discrete smooches. In another would be a girl sitting in her guy's lap, feeding him little pieces of fruit and letting him lick her fingers in the process.

And in yet another direction was Heleen.

Somehow it hadn't dawned on me until then that I was holding Tekia's hand. I let go of it in a hurry. Heleen didn't seem to notice one way or another; she just made a beeline for me, taking me in a love embrace while Tekia stepped away. "Good morning," Heleen said.

"Morning," I replied, stroking her back. As I held her, my eyes ticked up to watch Tekia, going to join the other hunters at the table, having yet to take her eyes off me.

As Tekia went and sat down, I kept holding Heleen, waiting for her to start grilling me, asking me how it went, even half dreading the possible question "Was she better than me?" But those questions never came. She just gave me a kiss, took my hand, and said, "Come," leading me to the table where breakfast was waiting.

As we sat down, I saw Jazum giving a good hard look at Tekia, clearly noticing the way she was glowing this morning. He didn't say anything about it, nor did anyone else for that matter. Heck, a lot of the ladies were similarly glowing after last night.

Including one bright and smiley young girl who came traipsing along halfway through the meal. My face cracked into a smirk when I saw Rokina approaching with the face of a girl who had just had a very good night. "Morning, Rokina," I greeted her in my most oily voice.

"How do you feel?" Heleen asked her.

Rokina didn't answer verbally. Instead she just gave a bashful giggle, before Heleen gestured for her to have a seat next to her.

Nothing about the morning seemed to be out of the ordinary from there. Heleen and I sat together like usual, surrounded by our friends, mostly my fellow hunters, with Tekia sitting across from me, next to Jazum. Nobody was acting too differently than usual, apart from Tekia casting me some furtive glances, but nothing that was overstepping any bounds.

A lot of the people around us talked about the experiences they had last night. Some of them felt like they'd made solid love connections; others were less certain, looking to see where things went from here. Jazum admitted he liked Doriki, and she'd definitely been a passionate lover, possibly worth pursuing in the future, but he wasn't making any lasting decisions yet.

No mention was made of my and Tekia's night. I couldn't help thinking that people were afraid to touch that subject. I know I was.

Heleen had given her permission. She'd told me point blank to my face that it was okay. And with the way she kept smiling at me and kissing my face and talking to me no differently than she normally would, one would never imagine that anything out of the ordinary had happened last night at all.

So why did I feel like I was walking on pins and needles, waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Well, whatever might have happened last night, Syukirin was over. Shimara made that very clear when she came up to the table and called all the hunters to practice like she always did. And obediently we all got up to follow her.

Even Heleen.

"What are you doing?" I asked her.

"I am staying with you today," she said. "I did not have you last night."

"So, you're just going to hang around on the side while I'm practicing today?"

She gave me an enthusiastic nod.

Why, hello, was that the other shoe?

I had flashbacks to my first several weeks of training, back when Heleen would accompany me to the practice yard to act as my interpreter; you know, back when Shimara was regularly beating me into submission. But I hadn't needed her as an interpreter for a while now. So as we got started with practice, Heleen just stood off to the side and watched.

As in her eyes were always on me.

As in I was constantly checking how I acted around Tekia.

Seriously, any time Tekia and I moved within five feet of each other, I would check back over my shoulder to see if Heleen was reacting in any visible way. Most of the time she wasn't. I would ask her to hand me a weapon, she would, and in passing it to me our fingers would touch, and we'd look at each other for a second before we remembered what we were supposed to be doing. And then I would look back to Heleen, who appeared to have tensed a little, but remained otherwise unmoved.

At one point, Tekia came up to me and offered to spar. It was nothing out of the ordinary; Tekia and I sparred on the practice yard all the time. But today, with Heleen watching, it felt like we were treading into dangerous territory. I took the sparring staff from Tekia, looking back at Heleen, who I could just tell was watching me like a hawk.

I wondered if Tekia knew what she was doing by suggesting this—but as soon as I looked at her face again, I knew she did. This was being done deliberately, with full awareness that we had Heleen's complete attention. We had to show Heleen that we were capable of interacting with each other without crossing any lines.

That shouldn't be too hard, I thought. We had sparred together plenty of times, and we hadn't ended up tumbling into each other, or gotten dangerously close to kissing in the heat of things, or lingered too long when we helped one another off the ground after one of us knocked the other down.

But then, all the times we'd sparred in the past, we hadn't just slept together.

So we took our stances, no differently than we always did. We started lunging at each other, swinging and parrying—and no, I'm not going to rise to the bait and use the word "thrusting." Our staffs clacked together repeatedly as I blocked her blows and she blocked mine. Nothing about it was out of the ordinary.

At least not until I lunged forward with the broad side of my staff to block her swing, and found myself inches from her face. We were both breathing hard from the exertion, and her face was right in front of me. I could feel the breath coming from between those lips that I could still remember kissing. I was staring into her beautiful eyes, just like I had been last night when I was five inches deep inside her. And from the way she was staring back at me, I knew she was feeling the same thing.

But apparently she snapped out of it first, because while I was still transfixed by her, she swung her staff down below, sweeping my feet out from under me. I went down hard in the dirt, and was left looking up at Tekia with a smirk. "Cheap shot," I muttered with a smirk.

She grinned mischievously back at me. And then she was just smiling. Lovingly.

Tekia was starting to reach down to help me up, but before I could reach up to take her hand, Heleen was suddenly by my side. Heleen helped me up, saying, "You are all right?"

"Uh, yeah, peachy," I said. I remembered my training during the early days, when Shimara used to knock me on my ass all the time. Heleen had never rushed to help me up then. What was different about this?

I started to get a sense of the answer when I saw Tekia looking at us looking with what looked like part jealousy, part shame. And then Tekia turned and walked away in a hurry, trying to find some other way to occupy her time. But I only had a second or two to watch her before Heleen pulled my face back to her, making it seem as if she was checking on my well being. But I could see what was happening.

Heleen was defending her territory.

She may have been acting as normal and unperturbed as she could, but I was beginning to realize that she still felt a little threatened by Tekia.

I went through the rest of practice deliberately keeping a safe distance from Tekia, giving her only the occasional longing glance, which she usually returned, before I would turn my gaze back to Heleen, whom I could still feel watching me. I had to remain focused. Last night was a one-time deal. Over and done with. It was behind us. And yet we couldn't stop looking at each other. And Heleen knew it.

I kept coming back to what Tekia had said last night. "Kwed e koval." She had actually said she loved me. Did she really mean that? Or was it her orgasm talking? I've always heard that you can never trust a declaration of love that comes right after sex, and I could understand the wisdom in that philosophy. So in all likelihood, she hadn't really meant it.

Or had she?

That was the question I couldn't stop asking myself.

The practice session that day had to be one of the longest I'd ever endured in my time in the village. And after all the weeks I'd spent being abused by Shimara on that yard, that was saying something. Finally, morning practice was over and it was time to break for midday meal, which I made a point of sharing privately with Heleen, during which Tekia remained a taboo subject. We talked of other things, primary among them being our impending journey. I tried to keep my mind on that, on wondering what the rest of Azakos was like and how I was looking forward to seeing it.

Inevitably, though, it was time to gather for the day's hunt. Where Tekia would be. And where Heleen could not follow. As I parted company with Heleen and went to join the other hunters on the outskirts of the village, I couldn't help wondering how well Tekia and I would be able to focus today.

So imagine my befuddlement when I arrived at the rally point, and Tekia immediately approached me with the bowl of paint and asked me to be the one to apply it on her.

Asking for temptation much?

But hey, who was I to refuse?

So yeah, I took that bowl and dipped my fingers in the paint. And yeah, I ran my fingers all over her body. And yeah, I tried to pretend that touching her flesh all over wasn't calling up all the recent memories I had of touching her in the most intimate ways last night. And I tried to pretend it wasn't getting me excited.

Of course, since I'd long since stopped wearing pants, it wasn't possible to hide my response completely.

Nor was it completely possible for her to hide her reaction. The stiffening of her nipples I was seeing as I touched her definitely wasn't the result of being cold.

I probably looked at her eyes more than I should have, and not enough at what I was doing. So by a practiced hunter's standards, her paint job came out a little rough and uneven. But I don't think anyone was really going to criticize it too much. The point of the matter is, I somehow got through that and finished the paint job.

And then it was her turn to paint me.

With her hands running all over me, I tried to fight my burgeoning erection. I ran distractions through my mind. Baseball. Politicians. That episode of Buffy with the disgustingly fat demon. And it seemed be working; my dick remained more or less tumescent the whole time she worked on me. But if she hadn't finished and stepped away when she did, I doubt I would have been able to distract myself for much longer.

The hunt itself ended up being pretty uneventful that day. We brought down a couple of pravaks and a handful of lalits and brought them back to the village in the late afternoon. And as soon as we returned to the village, Heleen immediately swooped in to my side, pulling me away from the hunting party to have me all to herself.

It was becoming clear that after loaning me out last night, Heleen was now going to make up for it by spending as much time glued to my side as she possibly could, and no force on Heaven or Earth would stop her.

"Uuunnnnnnhhhhh... !" Heleen groaned as I thrust deep inside her.

It seemed like I'd barely gotten through my dinner before she had practically grabbed me and dragged me back to the house for some serious physical loving. Seriously, I had never seen Heleen so aggressively horny as she was that night. She'd started attacking my mouth the moment we got in the door of the house, long before we were even to her room, and I don't think there was a single moment between the time we entered the house and the moment we flopped onto her bed when her mouth was not attached to some part of my anatomy. And that includes the lower part, which she made quite a point of attaching her mouth to for a good several minutes before we got to the bed.

Now we'd been in her bed for about twenty minutes or so, and I was starting to speed up, building up to my release. I made sure she had a chance to climax, and then I let myself go, spurting into her womb.

Thus spent, I rolled off to the side and let her pillow her head on my chest. "I missed this last night," she said.

Under normal circumstances, that statement would have sounded like nothing but a expression of a lover's affection. And off hand to the ears, it didn't sound like it should have been anything more than that. So why could I not help feeling like that statement was bait for a trap?

So I said what I deemed to be the safest thing I could say: "I missed you too."

I hoped that would be the end of it, and we could just drift off to sleep with nothing more being said. But then Heleen had to ask the most loaded question she could have possibly asked right then: "But you enjoyed being with Tekia?"

Was there any safe way to answer that? I considered the possibility that she was just being genuinely friendly and had no jealous feelings about the whole thing, but I couldn't be sure of that. It would have been so easy to say the wrong thing and step on a landmine right then.

So rather than answer her directly, I instead said, "I did offer to spend the night with you, remember. You told me to go ahead."

"I know," she said. "Now I am asking, how was it?"

Ah, there it was. The question I'd been dreading from her all day. "Do you really want to know the answer to that?"

She didn't hesitate for a microsecond before saying, "Yes, I do."

I sagged my head back into the pillow. She was not going to let me out of this. So I took a couple breaths, and I went for broke. "All right. It was good. I loved it. So did she. Especially given it was her first time."

Heleen suddenly lifted her head. "Kan? You were her first?"

"You didn't know? I thought she would've told you that, at least when she asked your permission for last night."

She paused for a second. "Did you know?"

"Not until after the fact. Not until..."

Not until I was inside her. Something wouldn't let me say that out loud.

"And you were good for her first?"

Good enough for her to say she loved me. I didn't want to say that out loud either. Was she deliberately trying to make me?

Heleen rested her head on my chest again. For a moment she was silent again. And then she had to go and ask another loaded question. "Do you think she wants to do it again?"

Wow. She really was digging for something to get me to put my foot in my mouth. It was getting increasingly difficult to avoid answering her questions. "Heleen," I said, "you're here with me now. Tekia's not here. Let's not think about her now. Let's just enjoy each other."

To my relief, she finally stopped asking questions. But I could tell from the sound of her breathing that she wasn't satisfied. And despite my suggestion, I don't think either of us stopped thinking about Tekia.

So eventually she rolled away, onto her side of the bed, putting her back to me. And as if thinking aloud to herself, she quietly said, "We will leave soon. It will not matter then."

I blinked. I hadn't stopped to think about what would happen when Heleen and I left for our journey. But then, the last time I thought about our impending departure was before Tekia and I slept together.

Would I end up having to say goodbye to Tekia in a few weeks? The thought of that was sufficient to bring a tear to my eye. It had only been a few months since my arrival in Jivalika, but already I couldn't imagine my life without Tekia in it.

But then, it wouldn't be forever. Eventually Heleen and I would be returning here. And maybe time away from Tekia would be just what Heleen and I needed. Maybe it would be a chance for me to focus on my actual girlfriend without the distraction of Tekia tempting me away.

On the other hand, there would be some other hunters going with us as a security escort. Couldn't Tekia be one of them? Immediately the idea of that was way more appealing than the alternative. I definitely knew I wanted her with us on our trip ... but would that really be what was best for my relationship with Heleen? Should we be carrying our complications with us?

Well, at any rate, this wasn't a decision that I could make on my own. This would have to be discussed later. So I rolled over and went to sleep.

In the ensuing week, things seemed to settle back into a normal routine. Or at least some illusion of it. Heleen apparently decided to trust me, and didn't continue following me to practice every morning to watch my interactions with Tekia. Meanwhile Tekia and I continued training and hunting together like normal, trying to pretend like nothing had happened between us. And every evening, when we returned from a hunt, Heleen would appear by my side, and every night I would sleep in her bed.

I kept trying to broach the subject of whether or not Tekia would accompany us to Heleen, but I could never seem to find the courage to say it. Every time I tried to open my mouth and ask her, all I could picture was getting more accusatory questions, and that was a best-case scenario. How would she react to me wanting Tekia to come with us?

For that matter, how would Tekia react? I couldn't very well make any decisions for her. And yet I didn't feel much more comfortable asking her about it than Heleen. Hell, I could barely speak to Tekia without feeling like I was walking on the knife's edge of cheating.

At least I could still talk freely to Jazum. Sometimes a little male-to-male contact when you're dealing with girl trouble can go a long way.

One day I was sparring with him during our morning practice. We were matching each other blow-for-blow pretty well for a while—right up until Tekia happened to walk by, shooting me a little smile. And like an idiot, I turned to look at her.

Naturally, Jazum promptly took the wide opening I left him, knocking me right on my dumb ass.

I shook my head to clear the stars and looked up to see Jazum looking down at me with an amused look. "You no fighting Tekia," he said.

"You're right, I'm not," I said with a grunt as I accepted his hand to help me to my feet. "But I think someone else might be."

Jazum studied me for a moment, looking like he wasn't sure what I meant. But then his eyebrows went up in understanding. "Heleen."

I nodded. "I didn't ask for this," I said. "How did I end up falling for two girls at the same time?"

"You 'falling?'" Jazum said, confused.

"I mean ... well ... I just mean I've got two girls I want. I'm supposed to be with one, and I don't love her any less, but I can't stop thinking about the other one..."

Jazum shook his head in bewilderment. "I no think this to happen," he said. "I no think Tekia and Veseed to become... morim."

"Morim?"

Jazum paused, searching for a way to define the word. "They want thing ... only one can have..."

"Rivals," I clarified.

"'Rivals, '" Jazum repeated with a nod.

I sighed, and nodded with him. "Yeah, you're right, that probably didn't seem like a likely scenario."

"You think it get better when we leave?"

I shrugged at first—and then I heard what he said. "Wait, when we leave?"

Jazum nodded. "I go with you and Heleen on journey. Decide long time before."

Okay, I could deal with that. Having another friend along for the trip wasn't something I'd object to. But then I dared cast a glance to where Tekia was practicing her archery, and asked, "Do you know if Tekia's going?"

Jazum looked in her direction as well. "She no tell me. Maybe." He offered me a wary look. "Might become bad."

I grimaced. Like I needed him to remind me.

On our next day off, I expected Heleen to want to stick to me like glue for pretty much the whole day. But as it turned out, with her impending journey looming, Heleen was a very busy girl lately. She had lots to prepare and study; she had to brush up on the other villages and towns on our itinerary, and commit to memory the names of the leaders in all of them; she had to practice the proper greetings and memorize the customs for each of them. As the Veseed of Jivalika, she had to present the best impression she could in order to foster relations with the neighboring people.

So while she did take the opportunity to keep me in bed for some good morning sex after we woke up, once that was done and we had some breakfast in us, I was pretty much on my own to do as I pleased for most of the day.

I came upon Tekia, Jazum and Doriki playing a few rounds of Paliapa, along with Zeyla and a few of her adolescent friends. Paliapa was a game that involved throwing a ball through one of a cluster of progressively smaller rings mounted on a wooden pole several yards away. Basically the same rules as darts or skeeball applied; getting the ball through the smallest ring in the center earned the most points. Zeyla and the other kids were making valiant attempts, with Jazum trying to give them pointers, but most of them weren't doing so great. Some of them couldn't even throw the ball high enough to get through the large outer ring. But everyone was smiling and laughing; ultimately, that was all that was important.

When they saw me approaching, Zeyla immediately rushed up and pulled me by the hand to join them, eagerly giving me a ball. "Clay, you throw!" she beamed.

The other kids eagerly agreed, several of them echoing the English word someone had obviously taught them: "Throw!" "Throw!"

I looked around at the smiling faces surrounding me, belatedly realizing I was smiling myself. I shrugged and said, "Well, if that's what everyone wants." I held up the ball, took a few seconds to aim, and I threw. The ball arced through the air, whishing through the middle ring. I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips. Not too bad, I thought. At least way better than I would have done three months ago.

But then as I stepped back, Tekia stepped forward, shooting me a mischievous smirk as she tossed another ball up and down in her hand. With barely a second to aim, she drew her arm back and chucked the ball forward, scoring a perfect bullseye through the center ring.

She grinned back at me, turning and putting a hand on her hip, and wiggling her ass at me in a playful taunt, making the kids giggle. Jazum had a little laugh too.

Yeah, she was still a showoff.

So I picked up another ball and tossed it right at her wiggling ass.

The balls were pretty soft, so I knew it wouldn't hurt much. But it still smacked her right on the left cheek, making her jerk her lower body forward, putting both hands on her backside, her mouth opening in a big shocked O, and her eyes open wide, staring at me in scandalized disbelief.

I folded my arms, grinning and cocking an eyebrow. Oh yeah, I did that.

She only gaped at me for a moment more before charging at me. I ran, laughing back at her the whole time, while she snatched up as many more balls as she could pick up at once, and started tossing them at me one by one. I ran around, ducking and dodging the projectiles she tossed as she continued chasing me. All around us, everyone watching was laughing.

Finally a ball smacked me right in the side of the face, and I staggered and started to trip. Right then, Tekia finally caught up with me and tackled me to the ground, and we tumbled into a squirming pile while she started playfully hitting me and I tried to wrestle her off me.

But once I successfully got hold of her wrists, we realized our position. I was on my back on the ground, she was lying on top of me, and we were looking into each other's eyes as I held her arms apart. And when we realized that we were just about to kiss, we rolled apart, suddenly facing away from each other as we tried to collect ourselves.

Looking at Jazum, I saw he had stopped smiling as he realized the awkwardness of our situation as well as we did. But apparently the younger members of our audience remained blissfully oblivious.

Which was most blatantly demonstrated in the next minute when Zeyla came up to us and outright asked, "Clay, why you not ask Tekia to go with you and Heleen on journey?"

Out of the mouths of babes.

I blinked, and turned to Tekia. We looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. I looked to Jazum, who only shrugged. "Uh, well, I..."

"Yes, why no ask?"

That came from Tekia.

I looked straight at her, and saw her giving me a questioning look, waiting for an answer. So after a brief pause, I said the only thing I could think of: "You want to go with me and Heleen when we leave?"

Tekia grinned wide enough to show her back teeth, and nodded emphatically.

"Well," I shrugged, "I guess that settles that."

And then suddenly her arms were around my neck, her head pressed to my cheek. I gulped awkwardly, trying to will myself not to get a hard-on in front of the kids.

Lo and behold, it actually ended up being Tekia who was glued to me for most of the day. We wandered off together while Jazum and Doriki continued helping Zeyla and the other kids with their Paliapa throws, and for the first time in a long time, we really talked.

For the longest time, most of my relationship with Tekia had been built based on facial expressions and body language, so long as there was a verbal language barrier between us. Since we'd started learning to communicate verbally, I'd become involved with Heleen, and the complications from that had always seemed to hold us back from really sitting down and having a good talk.

But that day, we just kind of threw caution to the wind, and managed a longer conversation than I think we'd ever had before.