Shield Maiden – Part 3.
 
        Lady Maria de Santos – retired adventurer and legitimate businesswoman – rapped her knuckles against the firm wooden door and waited, one foot tapping impatiently against the ground. This wasn't the first time she had come knocking on this particular door today, and this time was proving just as fruitless as the rest. Troubling, she thought to herself, especially considering the rumours she had been hearing.
        She had been keeping a discrete eye on Cid – that strange, lonely orphan boy – for a long time, ever since he had discovered his peculiar magical talents. There was nobody else in the village with the worldly experience to know what they were dealing with, so she had taken the task on for herself. Over time, however, her diligent vigil had blossomed into something altogether more personal.
        It was true, she was old enough to be the boy's mother – in fact, Maria had known his mother for a great many years before the famine had taken her – but age had never mattered very much to the ex-adventurer. If anything, she had always taken a scandalous delight from teaching the young and inexperienced how to please a woman. Now, though, it was looking like that particular pleasure was going to have to wait.
        Ever since the morning, there had been a storm of rumours concerning the boy whirling about the village. The source of one such rumour – Cid's mad, naked dash through the marketplace – Maria had been able to witness in person, but the other was new to her. People were saying that the boy had been parading through the streets in the most peculiar of costumes, all the while sweating and murmuring to himself.
        Hearing voices, as Father Xanth claimed, was a clear sign that the boy's mind was gone, or at least clouded with malign influences. Maria wasn't quite so sure, but she was nevertheless worried about Cid. She had mocked him – albeit gently – when he had ran stark naked into her, but now she had a sneaking suspicion that there was something else at work.
        So, she had returned to the boy's house and knocked, waiting for a long time outside his door before giving up. Every time she returned, there was the same utter lack of a response. Now, finally, she was taking things into her own hands. Armed with a few old tools from her adventurer days, Maria was prepared to force her way in and see for herself what was going on.
        With her light dress discarded in favour of more practical clothing, Maria cut a dashing figure. Tight leather trousers hugged the curves of her slender legs and womanly hips, while her bust was cloaked behind a fitted blouse. A sword belt, weighed down with a matching blade and dagger, only further served to highlight the waspish line of her waist. Her ensemble would have raised eyebrows in a seedy tavern, let alone the conservative village, but the local gossips had better material to peddle. Today, at least, she would pass unnoticed.
 
        Finally, Maria decided that she had waited long enough and prepared to force the locked door. Out of habit, she cast a casual eye about the street to check for anyone nearby before pressing her lean, tanned body against the door. A good firm blow from her shoulder was enough to pop the lock and leave the door swinging slowly open, just like her thief of a father had taught her all those years ago.
        “Cid?” she called out, her husky voice kept low out of some furtive instinct. The room – the whole house, in fact – was dark, thick curtains blocking all traces of the blazing sun outside. That wasn't unusual, especially in the warmest months of the year, but the lack of any other light was worrying. Without even a single candle, the ajar door was the only source of light, and even that seemed powerless against the darkness.
        Stroking an old ring on one finger, Maria murmured the words to the enchantment sealed within. Soon, a warm glow began to emanate from the little token, filling up the room with its light. The first thing that the mature woman saw was the old portrait Cid had treasured, mounted on the far wall. It was a picture of Lucia, the boy's departed mother, in full armour. A stubborn woman, Lucia had refused to take off even a single piece of her armour whilst sitting for the portrait, no matter what the artist had said. Now, that armoured visage was the only thing Cid had to remind him of his mother.
        “Can I help you?” the sudden voice disturbed the silence in the room, calling out from what seemed like no particular direction. Irrational fear shot through Maria as her hands leapt to the matched blades at her hips. She had been alone in the room, she was sure of it. Her ears were sharp – even if they had been keeping silent, she should have heard breathing at the very least. Whirling around, Maria's eyes fell upon an old chair with what looked like a suit of armour piled atop it. As she watched, the suit of armour rose up, moving with the seamless grace of any living being.
        “What are you?” Maria asked, letting go of her dagger to brush an errant curl of hair out of her face. In the confusion, it had slipped free from the tight bun that kept the rest of her long hair at bay, “Where's Cid?”
        “Cid is fine. Better than ever, in fact,” the voice replied. With growing dismay, Maria realised that the echoing voice was coming from within her head. If the strangely animate armour hadn't been enough of a clue, the invasive voice settled it. There was magic at work here.
        “That wasn't what I asked,” Maria frowned deeply, a warning tone creeping into her voice as she took a step closer to the reclining figure, “Where is he, and what are you?”
        The armoured figure rose out of the chair as Maria approached, granting the woman a better glimpse of its shapely form. It was like no armour Maria had ever seen, sculpted into womanly curves and crafted from a lustrous golden metal. Its legs ended in heels, like those of a pair of riding boots, and the abdomen bulged with some unimaginable burden. When the voice rang out again, it was undeniably female.
        “I am Lucia, and I was brought here by Cid's heartfelt wish,” slowly, but with a fluid motion, the construct bowed down, fearlessly exposing its defenceless back in the face of Maria's blades, “He is safe. Close, but safe.”
        “You...” Maria's eyes narrowed as she took in the construct's bizarre form. It was a close match to the armour Cid had been seen wearing, yet it was taller up close. Far too tall for the boy himself to be wearing it. “He summoned you here?” the woman guessed. Certainly, it was possible for the boy to have brought some otherworldly ally into this world, but Maria couldn't bring herself to accept the theory.
        “That's correct,” Lucia replied, her armoured form held perfectly static as if she was waiting on Maria's next question.
        “You've taken his mother's name,” Maria accused her, looking around at the dimly lit portrait. There were only the faintest similarities between the two suits of armour, and yet those few similarities were undeniable. True, the fake Lucia looked like something ripped from an adolescent fantasy, but that seemed somehow appropriate. Cid was becoming a man, and he had always been prone to fantasising.
        “I was shaped by his desires,” Lucia accepted the accusation without offence, her warm voice as serene as ever, “Mind, body and soul. Would you like to see him? I could take you to him.”
        “Very well,” Maria nodded cautiously, resting one hand on the pommel of her sword, “Lead the way.”
 
        Maria looked up from the untamed ground she had been marching across to shoot a vicious glare into Lucia's armoured back. The construct – an Eidolon, she had called herself – showed no sign of noticing the dirty look, although it was impossible to tell her true feelings. With nothing but an impassive mask to pass for a face, Lucia was a perfect cipher.
        The Eidolon had led Maria outside – tutting disapprovingly at the broken lock – and behind the house, out into the rough grass. They had been walking without interruption for about an hour now, following a straight line away from the village. Maria's suspicions had only grown with every step until she had eventually drawn her blades. At first, she had held them surreptitiously by her side but later, as Lucia showed no reaction to the weapons, carried them openly.
        Even now, as Maria swatted at especially thick patches of long grass with her sword, Lucia was unconcerned. The Eidolon's continued silence wore on Maria's nerves, slowly building into a barely contained fury. Finally, the tanned woman spoke up sharply, breaking the unnerving silence.
        “Why would Cid be this far away from home?” she snapped, her eyes boring into Lucia's shining back, “I'm starting to think you're leading me on.” Of course, Maria didn't have any alternative. If she wanted to find Cid, his apparent companion was her only lead. The fact that Lucia must have known that, and the power she held over Maria, infuriated the woman.
        “He wanted a little privacy, that's all,” Lucia's voice was perfectly calm, untroubled by the slightest sign of agitation.
        “Wasn't his home private enough?” Compared with the Eidolon's voice, Maria couldn't help but notice the strained tremor in her own.
        “Of course not,” Lucia let out a little laugh, elegantly formed and perfectly controlled, “Anyone could just walk in. You proved that yourself!” Maria flushed, her caramel skin darkening as she realised that she had left herself open to the jibe. The Eidolon paused for a moment, savouring her moment of victory before continuing. “No, Cid deserves better than that. He should be safe with me.”
        “You're talking like you're his mother,” Maria snapped, “You can take her name, but you're not Lucia. Not really.”
        “But I am!” the Eidolon declared, turning around to face Maria, “I'm whatever he wants me to be. I'm his mother, his protector... and his lover.” As that last word echoed around her head, Maria felt her features harden, the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes tightening up as she glared at the construct.
        “Lover,” she repeated, the word dropping from her lips like a cold stone.
        “Oh yes,” Lucia took a step closer, the heels of her absurd boots kicking up little clouds of dust, “What bothers you more, knowing that I took his virtue, or that I took it before you?”
        “Enough!” Maria thrust her sword at the mocking Eidolon's face, the point wavering mere inches away from that maddeningly impassive mask, “Enough of this! What have you done with Cid?”
        “Well, I suppose this is as good a place as any,” Lucia said to herself, looking around at their surroundings. They were standing in a dead field, the soil too dry for any useful crops to grow,  with nobody else around. If they came to blows here, there would be no witnesses. “If you want to find him so badly, I'll happily take you to him!”
        Those last words echoed in Maria's head with an almost painful intensity, forcing the older woman to flinch and drop to her knees. It only took her a moment to muster her willpower and recover, but that moment was long enough. When she looked back up, Lucia had been overcome with a horrific transformation.
 
        The Eidolon's true form – if that was what she had revealed to Maria – was a vast monstrosity, the torso alone almost twice Maria's size. She was squat, kneeling as though unable to rise under the weight of her own body, and tremendously wide. Heavy breasts, amplified to a parody of femininity, hung over a bulging stomach. Lucia's face, finally, bore some semblance of an expression, although it was of little comfort to Maria. Wrought into a placid, serene smile, the construct's face was fearfully incongruous compared with her looming, lurching body.
        Crafted from the same golden metal as her humanoid form, Lucia resembled nothing less than a blasphemous idol devoted to some primitive fertility goddess. Maria froze, her mind alive with whirling confusion, as the vast Eidolon spread her arms and let out a booming laugh. Before the human could even lift her blades to defend herself, Lucia's arm swept down and knocked her to the ground. Maria's desperate attempt to crawl away ground to a futile halt as something – like wet rope, but with a deadly strength behind it – lashed around her leg and began to drag her closer to the looming idol.
        A tentacle, Maria realised with dismay as she rolled over and looked back. Lucia's hands had split open, the armour of her palms breaking apart to reveal a pulsating layer of flesh beneath that bristled with countless flexing tendrils. Throwing all her strength into one frantic blow, Maria brought her sword down on the tentacle, neatly severing it and forcing a throaty roar from Lucia. Maria had but a moment to grimace in distaste at the bloody slime smeared across her leg before the Eidolon's other hand came hammering down onto her, knocking her senseless.
        Unconscious for the briefest of moments, Maria woke to find herself borne aloft, caught in Lucia's tight grip. Her hair had come loose, spilling about her face in long black waves, and countless wandering feelers were crawling across her body in undulating waves. The touch of those probing tendrils awoke a deep revulsion within Maria, clouding her mind with the animalistic urge to escape. She clenched her teeth and focussed, looking past the mounting panic as she searched for her blades. Both sword and dagger were lying in the dirt, far beneath her. Not that the weapons would have even helped the woman, with the Eidolon's relentless grip pinning her arms to her sides.
        No matter how futile it might have been, Maria poured all her strength into a furious struggle that shook her body like a convulsion. It was a noble effort, but the Eidolon's metallic fingers – sickeningly warm, as though heated from within by an unnatural vitality – refused to budge. A tearing sound signalled the only result of her struggle, her thin blouse splitting open and slipping from her chest. One breast, tanned brown by the sun and crowned with a dark nipple, slid free from her shredded garment, only for one of Lucia's tentacles to grasp at the soft flesh.
        Maria shuddered again, almost crying out loud from the sudden violation. As if encouraged by this first touch of flesh, a pair of Lucia's tentacles reached up between the captured woman's legs and into the leather-clad hollow of her crotch, scrabbling in frustration at the clinging material. Pain shot through Maria's body as the tentacle at her breast tightened, squeezing her delicate flesh even as a second, thinner tendril snaked up to toy with her nipple. Hideously, Maria could do nothing but watch as her nipple stiffened up, growing more sensitive to the perverse pleasure that was entwined with the pain.
        “What are you?” she gasped, forcing the words out of her constricted lungs. Lucia simply laughed in reply, although her expression remained unchanged, smiling like a saint as she lifted Maria like a doll. There was a great and terrible grinding sound, like ancient machinery stirred into agonising life, as the serene mask slowly split open to reveal a pulsating maw. Muscles rippled in anticipation, surging and clenching as countless rings of tiny – almost delicate – fangs bristled. Tendrils surrounded the mouth, reaching out to grasp at the air. There was a deliberate pause – sadistically measured to ensure that Maria realised the fate awaiting her – before Lucia opened her grip and let the defeated woman drop, limbs flailing as she plummeted into the yawning opening beneath.
 
        Maria had the time to utter one single cry – not of fear, although she was afraid, but of defiance – before the gaping maw took her. Countless serrated teeth plucked at her clothes, tearing deep rips in the fine leather of her trousers and scoring burning scratches in the skin beneath. Darkness took her as the ring of muscle above closed shut, leaving her with nothing but the sensation of tentacles crawling across her skin.
        Choking out the familiar syllables, Maria awoke the magic in her ring to light up her surroundings, only to regret her decision as soon as the words had left her mouth. The walls of flesh around her were an ugly red colour, streaked with vile secretions and decorated with wavering tendrils that tugged at the few rags of clothing she had left. With the passage above her closing tighter with every moment, Maria's hopes of escape were quickly fading away.
        As if mimicking the sinking feeling rising up within Maria's breast, the walls of muscle around her began to undulate, slow waves of powerful motion gripping the woman in a sticky grip and pulling her downwards. No matter how much she struggled or fought against the relentless motion, Maria was gradually sinking deeper down into the unknowable depths. Even if she managed to scrabble a few inches higher up, there was always a tentacle ready to seize her and drag her back down.
        “Curse you!” the trapped woman gasped as a pair of feelers coiled around her legs, pulling them apart until her sex was bare and exposed. Her underwear had long since been stripped away, along with anything else that might have provided some semblance of protection to the increasingly frantic woman. Oblivious to her protests, the tendrils crept further up her long, slender legs until they were mere inches away from her crotch.
        Every fibre of Maria's being cried out in panicked revulsion as the first tentacle pressed its blunt, slime-slick tip against the entrance of her sex. She struggled, fighting against the Eidolon's crushing embrace, to lower her arms but no sooner had she brought them down that a number of tendrils – Maria was in no position to count them – lashed out to snare her arms. The pulsing feelers grew tighter around her wrists - one of them even forcing its way into her clenched fist - and pulled her arms up above her head, leaving her helpless in the face of Lucia's perverted intentions.
        With a deliberate lack of haste, the tendril resting against Maria's entrance began to push forwards, parting her lips as the blunt head, ribbed with muscle, pressed insistently into her. A low, choked groan slipped from the firm line of Maria's tightly sealed mouth as the sense of defilement rose within her. To her dismay, Maria could feel her body betraying her, yielding to the shameful pleasure that Lucia's tentacles awoke within her. Skilfully teasing her nipples, even as her thicker tendril pushed deeper into the folds of Maria's sex, Lucia seemed keenly aware of every sensitive spot on the defeated woman's body. Bound and helpless, Maria could do nothing but clench her eyes shut and wish for it all to be over quickly.
        The chances of Lucia offering her much a mercy, however, were scant. If anything, the Eidolon seemed intent on drawing her act of violation out for as long as possible. Beyond words, now, Maria's mind was assailed with wave after wave of Lucia's sadistic glee, mixed with a lust that threatened to infect her own thoughts. Those alien impulses, combined with the undeniable pleasure of being penetrated, tugged at Maria's thoughts until she ached to submit, to give in and become Lucia's plaything. It was a testament to the ex-adventurer's willpower that she had held out for so long already.
        Just as Maria had resigned herself to the slow penetration, Lucia's tendril slammed into her with sudden, punishing force. Taken by surprise, Maria was helpless to silence the loud cry that escaped her. The tendril was thick, far wider than the kind of members Maria had grown accustomed to taking, and stretched her out painfully as it pushed deeper into the warm depths of her sex. Maria's cries grow lower, dropping to throaty moans as she gave up her foolish attempts at restraint. It was painful, but there was immense pleasure to be found in taking such a thick member, not to mention one unbound by human lengths.
        The pain slowly died away as Maria's body loosened up, growing wetter and wetter to accommodate the tentacle's girth. Without any pain to steal her attentions away, Maria was assailed by the every last delirious sensation of being filled up and fucked. Soon she was panting, her skin burning with a lusty flush and the last remains of her shame – although that lingering guilt was barely noticeable beneath the overwhelming waves of delight Lucia coaxed out of the captive woman.
        A mounting slickness in Maria's clenched fist brought the woman back to reality. Willingly – eagerly, even – she had been stroking the tentacle that had wormed its way into her hand. Her strokes were brisk, matching the rhythm by which the tendril was plunging in and out of her sex. Disgusted, furious with herself, she opened her hand jerked it away from the invasive tendril, only for her grip to return to it as soon as her concentration wavered. Concentrating on anything – even something as simple as keeping her fist unclenched – was growing increasingly difficult through the fog of ecstasy filling her head.
        A great shudder rose up the tentacle in Maria's grip, muscles flexing and tightening as a powerful spasm grew. Realising what was coming, Maria made to turn her face away from the dripping tentacle, only for another appendage to lash out and seize her by the throat. Powerless to resist the potent rope of muscle, Maria's head was twisted back round to face the tendril. As her lungs burned with a lack of air - her throat closed until she was a hair's breadth away from suffocation – Maria's mouth stretched wide with a breathless gasp.
        It was at that moment that the pulsing tendril stiffened and spat, the pin-sized opening at the tip yawning wide as a thick jet of liquid sprayed out. The liquid splattered across Maria's face and chest, dripping down to paint the brown skin of her breasts with an oily sheen. It tasted foul, rank with salt, and clung to her skin with a cloying stickiness. Overcome with a fit of coughing and gagging, Maria barely noticed the tendril withdrawing from her neck or the sudden motion pulling her down into a fresh hell.
 
        The clenched muscles beneath her, previously sealed as tightly shut as any fortress gate, loosened suddenly and yawned open. Likewise, the walls of flesh above Maria contracted sharply, forcing her down through the newly opened entrance. The defeated woman gasped out loud as her body was seized in a brief - yet revoltingly intimate – embrace, coating her body in a film of oily fluids before releasing her.
        Darkness was the first thing Maria noticed, her ring having slipped from her finger at some point during her hellish descent. Normally, it would have been a tight fit, but the copious fluids – both spewed from the tentacle she had been holding and from any number of other sources – she had been drenched with had eased it away from her. Now, her only source of light was an unknown distance above her, its bright light reduced to a dull, red glow by the layers of flesh encasing it. Even robbed of most of its radiance, however, the ring still gave Maria enough light to see by.
        The chamber she had fallen into seemed wider that the tunnel above. If, perhaps, the tunnel above had been Lucia's monstrous throat than this pit Maria found herself in could be considered the stomach. If so, digestion was not the fate Lucia had planned for her captive – at least, not yet.
        Probing her body with tentative hands, Maria realised that the tentacle at her sex had come loose, slithering away during the final stage of her descent. It was a relief, being free of that invasive violation and the sickening pleasure it had offered, but the delirious sensations had merely been replaced with a fresh distraction. Her body had been dragged to the edge of ecstasy and left there, yearning for one last push to send her into a climax. It was hard to focus, with her mind constantly straying back to her body's needs, but she needed her wits about her. Something, some faint presence, told Maria that she wasn't alone.
        “Cid?” she murmured hopefully, straining her ears for any sign of a reply. It was quiet here, in the unearthly pit of Lucia's body, with only a faint rumbling sound as a background hum. Quiet enough that the slightest of shuffling noises was enough to draw Maria's full attention.
        “Is... is someone there?” a voice, hushed and ragged with fatigue, replied. Muffled as it was, Maria was still able to recognise Cid's voice. His words were robbed of all strength and conviction – not that the boy had ever been overburdened with those particular virtues – but a dim hope remained beneath the weight of despair.
        “Cid, it's me!” Maria cried, feeling around in the dark for any sign of her fellow captive. The pit was larger than she had first thought, with the walls possessing a strange pliability. They pulsed beneath her touch, while countless feelers – shorter than the ones that had molested her earlier – grasped at anything that came close. “It's Maria! Maria de Santos!” she called out again, hoping to encourage a response from the boy.
        “Lady de Santos?” Cid's replied eventually. There was a note of incredulity to his voice, as if he couldn't quite believe that the noblewoman would have followed him into Lucia's depths. “It can't be you,” he continued, quieter this time, as though he was talking to himself. Though muted, his words were loud enough to guide Maria to him.
        She felt him before she saw him, her blind explorations fumbling across the writhing tomb of tendrils that held the boy in a perverse embrace. Driven into a desperate frenzy, Maria threw all her strength into clawing at the fleshy barrier that separated them, tugging tentacles away and pulling Cid into her own embrace. Maria held Cid close, sharing her precious warmth with him in a moment of perfect relief.
        It was that embrace – their lingering moment of intimate warmth – that brought Maria's lust surging back to the surface of her mind. She became keenly aware of the boy's head cushioned against her bare breasts, and the firm, hot weight of his erect penis pressing against her legs. Whatever vile alchemy responsible for fuelling Maria's lust had, apparently, taken hold of the boy as well. Alone, Maria had been able to suppress her appetite but when confronted with the subject of her desires, she was powerless to resist.
        Like a prisoner in her own body, Maria watched herself reach down and cup Cid's chin in her hand, tilting his head up to meet her gaze. The boy offered no resistance as she dipped her head down and pressed her parted lips against his mouth. The kiss – a regular occurrence in Maria's increasingly lurid fantasies – seemed to light a fire within her body, spreading a slow, liquid warmth to the tips of her toes. For that moment, it didn't matter that they were trapped within the dank pit of Lucia's inhuman body, as long as they had each other. Yet, something was wrong.
 
        “No...” Maria gasped, pulling her mouth away from Cid's and forcing herself to take a step backwards. “This isn't right,” she murmured to herself, shaking off the lingering remains of whatever romantic delusion had swept over her. Growing more uneasy with each passing moment, she turned and cast a panicked eye around the darkened pit. The walls, she realised with visceral horror, were closing in on them. Had she lost herself completely, she would have been enveloped along with Cid.
        The chilling discovery offered little respite. If anything, the muscled walls seemed to hasten their contractions, tentacles lashing out to restrain the woman before she could muster any resistance. As if every one of her previously unhurried movements had been a massive ruse, Lucia's tentacles jumped out at Maria with frightful speed, winding tightly around her limbs. As her arms and legs were spread, pulled wide from her body, a fresh set of appendages coiled around her torso, pressing Cid's narrow frame against her back.
        A fresh gasp escaped Maria as Lucia began to tease her defenceless sex – her lips already reddened and sensitive from the earlier stimulation – with a single, thin tendril. Every caress caused the captive woman to strain against her bindings, involuntarily grinding against Cid's crotch. Maria felt the boy shift, his erection pressing insistently against the soft curve of her right buttock and felt an absurd urge to apologise. As if she was breaching some ancient rule of courtship etiquette, she thought to herself before a fresh wave of stimulation shattered her thoughts like glass.
        Lucia's tendrils were thorough, binding her breasts and teasing the dark, swollen nipples while a single, thicker appendage began to part her lower lips. The fleshy rope moved with deliberate, agonizing slowness – penetrating her by degrees – and Maria was shocked, disgusted even, to find herself wishing that it would hurry up. To get things over with, she tried to tell herself, although the lie was unconvincing. She very well knew the intense pleasures Lucia had to offer, and craved them on a level that, although base, was nigh impossible to resist.
        Maria felt her lips curl up into a filthy, disgraceful smile as the invading tentacle slid deeper into the warm, clenching passage of her sex. Her skin crawled with the feeling of violation, but every single motion and movement threatened to force a lustful cry from her. Inside her, Lucia's otherworldly appendage began to swell until it reached every corner of her sex, touching her in places that no man – or boy  - had ever reached. Then, having lifted her to heights of lust previously unknown to her, the tentacle grew still.
        Frustrated, cheated out of the pleasure she would not admit to enjoying, Maria let out a wordless moan of spoilt desire. Stranded on the threshold of her climax, Maria could do nothing but struggle vainly against her bindings and pant, each breath ripped from her constricted chest. The invasive tendril pulsed with the rhythm of some alien heartbeat, denying Maria even the chance for her lusts to abate.
        As she struggled, the hot bar of Cid's erection slipped across the tight ring of her backside, drawing a fresh gasp out of the woman. The fleeting contact, and the tantalising pleasure if suggested, brought new life to Maria's thoughts. She would have done anything to put an end to the agony of her denied orgasm, but the idea stung her pride. Always the one to take the lead in any of her relationships, Maria was loathe to beg for Cid's help, no matter how much she liked the boy – and yet, begging was exactly what she would have to do.
 
        “Cid?” she asked, hoping the boy was still responsive. At the very least, his stiffened shaft twitched in reply as she shook her hips against it, “Cid, can you hear me?”
        “Yes...” the boy murmured, before raising his voice, “It's really you? This isn't a dream?”
        “It's really me,” Maria reassured him, before closing her eyes and continuing, “Cid, I need you to do me a favour. Can you do that?”
        “I can't free us. Lucia doesn't listen to me any more,” Cid's voice was glum.
        “It's not that,” Maria began, feeling a new heat rushing to her cheeks, one that had nothing to do with her prolonged stimulation, “I need-” she hesitated, angry at her own foolish pride, “I need you. Your body, and mine.”
        “What?” Cid shifted, the tip of his penis sliding against Maria's buttocks again. She moaned softly at the delicate pressure, thrusting herself back up against him as much as possible. Slowly taking the hint, Cid moved his hips until his penis was pressed against Maria's clenched entrance. “You mean, like this?”
        “Yes, yes!” Maria pleaded, burning with shame. She was begging like a whore, like some beast in heat, and yet her body cried out for satisfaction.
        “But-” Cid's hesitant, confused tone stirred a burning anger within Maria, fuelled by her lingering shame.
        “Do it!” she snapped, her anger overflowing. Anger at Cid, for falling into Lucia's twisted clutches, and anger at Lucia herself, for the sadistic delight she got from tormenting the boy. Most of all, though, she was angry at herself for the depths she had sunk to. Her growing fury was diffused – slightly – by a growing pressure at her backside as Cid, startled out of his confusion, jumped to obey her snarled order.
        Slick with Lucia's oily secretions, Cid's immature member slipped easily – albeit slowly – inside Maria. As she took the second penetration Maria bared her teeth in a primal expression of satisfaction, a gesture torn from the darkest recesses of her mind without the slightest mediating influence of her more rational mind. If any of her fellow townspeople saw her now, Maria wondered if they would recognise her. It had been years – decades even – since she had shown such naked violence, and the sight of it would shake the genteel villagers to the core.
        There was a small pain as Cid's manhood speared into her, moving with a slow and uncertain pace that – quite unintentionally – drew a long moan of satisfaction from the woman. She could feel every inch of him pushing through the sensitive folds of her virgin entrance, intense waves of pleasure warming her from within. Cid's tentative thrusts seemed to mix with the lingering sensation of Lucia's teasing to fill Maria's body with warm, languid ecstasy.