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Not a match to the death unless one of them drops from blood loss, I thought woozily.
“There is Vrika’s blood ready and waiting,” Zaria said quietly to me, as if anticipating my question. “Once this round is complete, all the men who lost will be treated by the healers and the man who won will-”
Her words cut off in a gasp, and even if she’d kept on talking I wouldn’t have heard her anyway because I was too focused on what was happening ahead.
Warrek had toppled Dalk.
I nearly jumped out of my own seat, but restrained myself, instead just letting my heart leap up into my throat instead. Dalk fell heavily, and I found it hard to keep my eyes open, unable to watch his defeat.
Except...
Hold on.
Not defeated yet.
As Dalk fell, his tail whipped powerfully out beside him, sweeping beneath Warrek’s feet so fast the Deep Sky warrior didn’t have a hope in hell of dodging or jumping. Warrek fell backwards, catching himself on one hand, about to jump back up.
But Dalk was already there. He dove at Warrek like a rugby player executing a brutal tackle, the force of his leap and his weight driving Warrek back so hard that they both slid a solid two metres across the stone, the movement lubricated by their spilled blood. But Warrek wasn’t finished fighting yet. He gouged a ragged line down Dalk’s side and hip, severing the ties of Dalk’s leather loincloth until the garment fell entirely away.
Neither man seemed to notice, but holy hell, I did. And so did the other human ladies, based on the gasps I heard coming from the bench and the slightly embarrassed mutter of, “Oh, my...” from Valeria somewhere behind.
From this angle, with Dalk grappling on his knees above Warrek, trying to keep the other man down, I couldn’t see much besides hard thighs leading up to powerful glutes beneath his tail. Every once in a while, when one of his legs shifted, I thought I caught a glimpse of something long, thick, and dark exposed at his front, but it was hard to tell with all that movement and it wasn’t like I was straining my eyes to try to catch a peek or anything. No, siree. Not me.
As if he’d suddenly grown weary of fighting, Dalk landed a swift and decisive blow to Warrek’s temple, stunning the other man just long enough to flip him over and grab him hair-and-headlock style like he’d done in the first round of things. Even held like that, Warrek kept on fighting, his tail thumping up to smash against Dalk’s naked, bleeding back.
But it was no use. He was cooked. And the round was called with Dalk as the champion.
Gahn Thaleo made the announcement, and it seemed to take Dalk a moment to hear it and respond, as if Gahn Thaleo’s voice had to wade through a great wave of heady bloodlust before it could reach Dalk’s brain. But eventually, he got the memo, releasing Warrek and peeling himself off the other man. He stood, shook out his claws a little, then turned around to face the stands.
“Gott im Himmel...” Tilly breathed.
I would have probably uttered some proclamation of shock pertaining to God and Heaven too, had I not been rendered completely, utterly, breathlessly speechless by the sight of Dalk towering like some dark and bloodied demon, his sight stars on fire and his dick swinging in the fucking alien breeze for all to see.
I mean, it wasn’t actually swinging. He was standing still now, and an organ that hefty would require some serious bodily momentum to get it flopping back and forth, that was for fucking sure. It was so big it was like it was exerting its own force of gravity. Gravity that somehow seemed only to apply to my own damn eyeballs, because they were held and held fucking fast.
This was the first time I’d ever seen a Zaphrinax male in all his — ahem — glory. I’d heard about the cock spears but hadn’t been able to picture them fully until now. But there they were, two tapered appendages, one on each side of his dick. They hung long and low in their own right even though their tips didn’t even come halfway to the tip of Dalk’s main shaft. The sun was absolutely dousing Dalk, its light illuminating every curve and vein of him – the cock and the spears, the heavy dark globes of the balls beneath – and my mouth went suddenly dry at the thought of how smooth and velvety the hide there would be. There was no pubic hair, just that incredible Sea Sand hide, so velvety I could practically imagine just how easy it would be to run my tongue all the way up and down...
I hadn’t even noticed that Gahn Thaleo had left his spot beside Nasrin, so it startled me when he suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere at Dalk’s side. The Gahn said something I couldn’t hear, and whatever it was caused Dalk to jerk his chin down towards his chest. He looked mildly surprised by his lack of loincloth, but mostly unfazed as he turned around and grabbed the ruined garment from the ground. It was too torn to bother refastening, so he held it awkwardly in front of his crotch like some kind of ratty old tea towel in his right hand while Gahn Thaleo hoisted his left high in the air.
“We have our champion of combat,” Gahn Thaleo boomed. If it bugged him to see a male not from his tribe win, and not to mention win by beating half his guys to a freaking pulp, he did a good job not showing it.
“Now what?” I asked Zaria. Now that Dalk’s dick was somewhat put away and my dumbass hormones could take a backseat to my somewhat-useful brain, I was once again reminded of just how injured Dalk was. Nothing looked broken, but some of those gashes were deep. And... Oh my God, was that a bite mark on his shoulder?!
Gahn Thaleo spoke before Zaria could.
“Now we will break for the healing ceremonies. The mated healers will tend to these men,” Gahn Thaleo gestured his tail towards all the competitors except Dalk, “and the champion will be tended to by an unmated woman of his choosing.”
Dalk snatched his hand from the Gahn’s grip, sending Thaleo a slightly wild look, but wild with what emotion, I couldn’t quite tell. That gaze didn’t stay on the Deep Sky Gahn too long, though. Because it cut through the air like a blade, like an arrow, like a broken and messily bound bow and it landed right on me.
Before I even knew what I was doing, and before anyone (least of all my own damn self) could talk me out of it, I’d careened up and out of my seat. My next words left my mouth far too quickly for me to even have a hope of calling them back.
“I’ll do it!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dalk
Perhaps I’d taken a worse blow to the head during combat than I’d realized. Because I thought that I’d just hallucinated Fiona jumping up and saying that she would tend to my wounds. There she still stood, not-real-Fiona, up out of her seat and staring at me with very red cheeks.
