Azel
Azel
By Strega
Azel was bored. Two days back a band of bugbears had looked the caravan over from a ridge, but there'd only been a few, and with five mounted guards plus a dozen on foot, the humanoids had decided it wasn't worth the risk. That many guards in good armor told the bugbears it was a wealthy caravan and likely to be well-protected, with a mage or two hidden among the civilians.
Most of the guards were human, with a solitary elfish-looking man and what was probably a half-orc. The nonhumans were, as always, viewed with distrust, but the half-orc (or really ugly man, pick one) had come with good recommendations from two other caravan masters. So Azel had heard while shooting the breeze around the fire, anyway. Ironically Azel was the least human man in the caravan, with his lion face, mane, tan fur and tail, yet no one gave him a second look. Khardaki lion-men might be easily distracted by a pretty face, but they were well-known for their trustworthiness. Azel's gilded shield marked him as an aspiring sun-chaser, or Khardaki professional adventurer.
Azel scratched at his mane and grumbled. A persistent flea had made its way into his pelt sometime since his last visit to a bathhouse, and hadn't been able to winkle it out of its hiding place. The next town they hit he'd go on his off-shift and get a bath. After hitting the whorehouse, of course. Heaven knows most brothels had their share of fleas already, and a lion had his priorities. Getting a flagon or two of ale in his belly and a whore wrapped around his dick came first.
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Two kobolds, barely visible in the bushes, were looking the wagons over. The caravan was stopped to set up the encampment for the night and he wasn't on duty.
He swiveled an ear toward them slowly, picking up their chatter without alerting them. He'd learned a smattering of humanoid words in bars and caravans, including some Kobold.
"Many too many," one of them said.
"We already have the -something-- woman," the other replied. "--something something-- sell her..." They eased back into the undergrowth, and Azel sat and thought.
There couldn't be very many kobolds, or the little dog-dragonmen would try an attack, or failing that, to sneak in and steal supplies. If there were only a few, a brave man might sneak in and free their hopefully very grateful captive. He knew just the man...or just the lion-man.
Half an hour later Azel was peering into the mouth of a cave. It hadn't seemed to occur to the kobolds to look over their shoulders, and in his off-duty kit - leather armor being quieter than his plate - he'd followed them the whole way. His padded, sandaled feet made little noise.
It'd been almost too easy, and he'd kept an eye out for traps or ambushes. Nothing had developed, and here he was, watching the kobolds walk into the cave.
Azel waited a minute before following them in. In for a penny, in for a pound. They hadn't even left a guard at the entrance. When his eyes adjusted he padded deeper into the cave, veering away from openings that smelled most strongly of kobold. Voices in that language emerged from another natural door, and he made his way into the only cave-mouth that remained. There was a peculiar, musky smell--
Azel stopped. He had found the captive, but it wasn't who - or rather what - he expected. A solitary tallow lamp lit the little cave, where a wooden cage enclosed the woman. From the waist up she was humanoid, yet furry, with the fine details those of a skunk. Overall her pelt was sky-blue, with a white stripe from her pink nose to her white headfur, white chops and double white stripes down her back. From the waist down she was stranger, more like a snake, though still furred in the same manner. A skunk-snake? Though her slender, snakey lower body was larger than her human half, she was still a bit smaller than he.
She'd been curled up asleep, but an ear flicked as he approached, then her eyes flew open. With a startled chirp she drew away from the bars, squeezing herself into the corner as far from the cage door as she could.
He motioned for silence. "It's all right. I heard the kobolds had a captive, and I am here to get you out."
She blinked. Her eyes were yellow, slit-pupilled. Then his eyes wandered downward: she was naked save for the fur. Pink nipples on modest breasts stood out from the blue and white pelt, and below the narrow waist was a slit of sex in a white diamond of fur. Since she lacked legs it faced forward more than most, but there was no mistaking what it was. Azel wondered if she had another one down on her snakey half, and perhaps more nipples as well.
She snatched up a scrap of blanket and covered herself. "Sir!", she whispered. "Mind your manners!"
The leather cup he wore as a groin protector was uncomfortably tight now; it'd been too long since he last was with a woman. He muttered an apology as he worked on the lock. It was a simple thing, with a perfectly square keyhole. He opened it with the point of his dagger.
"Thank you," she said as she slithered out. With her human half vertical she might have been a normal, if furry woman; with his nearly seven feet of height, her nose was almost at the level of his groin. Azel put thoughts of the Hero's Reward - traditionally a kiss, but often more than that - out of his mind and led her out of the cave. As they left the prison room he stumbled over a wide-eyed kobold. Luckily it was slow to react and Azel took its head off with a short swing of his axe before it made a sound.
They made it outside with no more drama, and into the woods. There wasn't even an alarm sounded. Truly the kobolds were inept; he wondered how they'd managed to capture anyone, even a seemingly helpless skunk-snake.
They were a third of the way back to the caravan when she put a hand on his shoulder. She could, it turned out, lift herself higher on a column of furry snake body. When sitting still she could raise her head level with his own. Now she settled back down, her hands on his chest.
"Wait," she murmured. "I don't think they will follow. They are cowards, all of them. They only got me because they found me asleep and had me tied up before I was fully awake. That, and they had bows. They won't follow when they realized a real warrior freed me."
Azel stood silent, but a fangs-hidden smile grew as her hands slid lower. It took her a moment to find the buckles that attached his cup to the rest of his armor. She gave a slight push, and he sat down against a tree. The groin protector came free, and he sprang out into her hands. He'd been horny from the moment he saw her, and her two small hands together couldn't enclose the length of his cock.
"You don't have to do this," he murmered, but it was a formality and they both knew it. His hands slipped over her back to cup her breasts from each side, and he pushed his axe away lest one of them roll over onto it. He nuzzled her white hair as her head ducked, and growled as her tongue licked out over the spined tip of his shaft. Her hands pumped up once or twice, ensuring he was rock-hard - which he'd been from the start anyway - and then with a sudden duck of her head she swallowed his cock in a single motion. No one had ever done that before, and his eyes went wide. Before he could control himself he shivered, his tail thumping the ground, and the accumulated seed of too many days of celibacy spurted into her throat.
"Sorry!", he mumbled, but she didn't gag. Much of his cock was down her throat, so instead of fouling her fur, every drop went back past her tongue and down her gullet. As she lifted her head he felt her tongue bunch up and push back; she swallowed the mass of khardaki semen without complaint.
"Sorry," he repeated. "You surprised me. No one's ever done that before."
"It's all right," she said with a smile, and her narrow tongue made a circuit of her chops. "I've always wondered what lion men taste like. I still don't know, mind you, but I do know you have a scratchy dick."
"I have a scratchy tongue too, you know."
"You'll just have to show me," she said with a giggle. "You can't expect a girl to take your word for it." Her snakey lower half came slithering in, forcing itself beneath his back so he ended up on a soft, melted-feeling chair made of her coils. Her humanoid half ended up next to hers, and he turned his tongue to her soft breast before sliding it down her belly.
Azel didn't notice that there was a lot more of her lower body then there had been a few minutes before. The skunkette did, and her coils tensed for a moment, but then his tongue slid to what would have been the space between her thighs. He really did have a rough tongue; sandpaper-rough and applied with enthusiasm.
Azel grinned as each lick forced a yelp out of the skunkette. She was as needy as he'd been, and her sex was warm and ready around his tongue. As his hands found their way to her breasts, her own left hand found its way once more to his shaft. It had only partly returned to its sheath, and like any good lion-man he did not need long to recover. Already he was stiffening, helped along by the unique musky scent of his lover.
But as he rolled atop her, she twisted her lower body out of line. "No, I can't. It's a...problem my kind has, we bear young with every mating. Even with another species. It's how I was born, my mother and a skunk-man."
"Well," said Azel, who'd been seconds away from having her right where he wanted her - impaled on his cock - "I suppose we could go back to what we were doing." His hands were on her hips, if they were really hips on a skunk-snake, and he looked down to where her padded fingers were still wrapped around his shaft. He paused. It seemed like something had changed, but he was not sure what.
"Oh, we can do better than that," the skunkette cooed, and her tail slipped rapidly up over his legs. Her hand left his cock as the soft, serpentine length of her rubbed him until he almost came again. She had so many things she could do that he'd never felt before. This time, though, she was offering something he'd had before, if rarely. He had a look at the underside of her at last, and she didn't have a second sex down there. What she did have was a puckered pink spot in the fur just north of her skunktail.
"If you insist," he rumbled, and gripped her tail. She dipped her head and gave his cock a last extra-wet lick, and a moment later his barbed tip entered her. She curled around him, presenting her sex to him once more, even as a foot of lion-man slipped into the yielding flesh of her body. There was a whiff of harsh skunk-stink as his cock penetrated her anus.
She swayed as he thrust, pulling her tail down onto him then lifting it back up, and each time her sex moved within reach he gave it a lick. With each thrust, each lick she shivered, and her hands stroked his shoulders. More fur stroked his sides and back as her lower body coiled in, wrapping him in a warm embrace. Her narrow tongue lapped out across his ears, then his brow, and he closed his eyes. After a while he leaned back, needing very badly to focus on the sex. He'd lick her out again afterward. Now there was just the smell of the skunkette, the soft fur, and the slick tightness around his cock. That, and an occasional tickle against his whiskers as her face moved in close....
Bit by bit she crept up on the lion, gaping her maw so to slide it around his muzzle without touching him. Engrossed in the approaching orgasm, he didn't react as her fangs and palate brushed his whiskers. With a snarl he stiffened, his tail beating against her flank, and down inside her rectum she felt the hot lion seed spurt. She used the distraction to ease her jaws further over his head, until she had gone as far as she could without giving the game away. Only as the last semen oozed from his maleness did he open his eyes, to be confronted by a yawning pink vista.
Then he moved, but it was too late. Uvuzi had worked her open jaws almost entirely over his head, and as he jerked back the soft, fang-filled maw clamped down. Needle teeth dug into his pelt even as her gently grippling coils suddenly squeezed down tight. Only his legs were free, and the lion-man kicked desperately.
One of Azel's feet struck the fluffy skunktail, but there was nothing else to hit. The serpentine part of her tail was wrapping itself around his calves, not so much keeping them from moving as it was keeping itself away from his now unsheathed footclaws. At the same moment he growled and tried to free his arms, but her soft coils proved to be solid muscle when it came to holding a man still. He managed to wiggle, moving the skunk-snake as well, but she was coiled around him now from ankles to neck and there was no escape. There was so much more of her lower body now! Instead of ten feet of thigh-thick snake body, it was more like twenty now, and thick as his waist in the middle.
As she squeezed, her jaws began to move. The fangs latched into his snout relaxed one row at a time, were pushed forward by some muscular action, then dug in again. Her lower jaws repeated this action, and slowly her muzzle walked forward. Her jaws stretched as her maw took in more of his face, and the last light he saw was was pink-tinged as her lips crept over his eyes.
Azel's muzzle slipped easily into her throat, and soon his face and neck followed His mane, thick and magnificent, flattened against his skull as it was effortlessly swallowed. Snarling, struggling, he tried to pull away, pull his face out of her maw, but she simply followed along, her jaws gripping his head like a soft fang-filled hand. When he'd arched back as far as he could go, they began to walk forward again. With the skill of much practice she eased the coil around his shoulders out of the way and turned her head as she swallowed, so that her nose crept up over one of his shoulders and her chin slid over the other.
He had heard of monsters who swallowed adventurers whole. Giant worms, huge fish, dragon-like creatures, others. They snapped up and gulped down their victims in a flash, then went on to fight others. Never anything like this; he wasn't much smaller than she was, and the feeding was slow and laborious. Yet her gullet was taking in his shoulders and his head was deep inside her torso, bulging out beneath her breasts. It felt as though there was no stomach where there should be in that shapely skunkette body nor, for that matter, a heart or lungs.
All of those must be down in her larger snake body. As he squirmed futilely the lion-man knew that unless he somehow got her to stop, then very soon her skunkette half would be sleek and beautiful again. No, he would not show there; rather, there would be a series of bulges in her thickest coils, a lion-man stretched out in her guts awaiting digestion.
Her jaws were around his waist now, having made their way over his broad shoulders and muscular chest. She paused, panting, and there was movement in the coils that held his arms to his sides. The thickest coils eased their way down onto his thighs with a series of muscle-twitching movements, even as the smallest coils worked their way up from his ankles. Two or three complete coils wrapped around his knees now, leaving his groin and feet exposed.
Only her jaws held his arms to his sides, but as he tried to move them he realized that was not quite true. He was up to the elbows in slippery skunkette gullet, which was strong and muscular enough to make movement difficult, and though her jaws were loose and flexible their fangs were dug hard into his forearms. All he could do was try to claw her, and his finger-claws, like most Khardaki, were little more than finger_nails_. The claws on his feet were another matter, sharp retractile hooks sheathed in his padded toes.
Those toes turned out to be her target. One by one she squeezed them in one hand, forcing the claw to unsheathe, and then using some tool she snipped it off. She was careful not to cut into the quick, either from a misplaced sense of kindness or to avoid getting blood on her fur. When she finished with the last toe she pulled the dagger from his ankle-sheath. With that done she turned her attention to his exposed waist, unbuckling his belt and stripping it, along with his money- and other pouches away.
He had to admire her professionalism. With her meal half swallowed she took the time to make sure he wouldn't cut his way out. His armor she didn't touch, which probably meant she would either digest the leather or retch it back up along with whatever else of him survived her stomach acids.
The coils began to reposition themselves again, holding him tight. Azel guessed that meant she was ready to finish her meal, and sure enough her jaws began to walk their way forward once more. As his belly was ingested her hand drifted down; she gave his damp sheath one more rub. Her jaws continued their remorseless advance, and his sheath, balls, and the rest of his exposed abdomen were drawn into her gullet.
Azel lay there helpless, legs still wrapped in her coils, as the slippery tube of gullet took him in deeper and deeper. All things considered he felt remarkably calm: he'd always thought he would die in battle. Dying in the guts of a bizarre skunk-snake wasn't quite that, but he'd put up a fair fight, and at least he'd given her a good meal of lion seed and a good ass-reaming before he started his trip down her throat. He could imagine falling in a bar fight or a useless struggle over some woman, his body thrown into the gutter to rot; this was better than that, at least.
So far her jaws and occasional forward thrusts of her head had done all the work. Only now that his rump was in her jaws did she begin to gulp. With each powerful contraction of her throat muscles she turned her head - no, she was pulling her head back toward her shoulders with each gulp. Her throat muscles tugged him inward, held him still, and then she extended her head again with wide-open jaws, taking in several inches of his legs. Her fangs would dig in once again, then another gulp and she'd once more pull her head back toward her shoulders. The push and pull of her gullet and jaws sucked him down her throat far faster than before; it'd taken her ten minutes to swallow him to the waist, and only a couple to go from there to his knees. The more of him was gripped by her gullet the faster he slid in; the bumps and curves of his shoulders and hips gave her swallowing muscles something to push against.
Finally there was a last stretching-out of her nose, and his feet were taken into her jaws. He kicked, but declawed and to the ankles in her gullet, his padded toes just brushed her palate. She closed her mouth around his feet, gripped down, and swallowed; once again she pulled her head back toward her shoulders, helping push the last bits of him into her throat. For a few moments his tail hung outside, a last twitching trace of him, but soon enough it too was drawn into her mouth. His progress down her throat carried it into the gullet after the rest of him, another few pounds of meat to add to the ponderous bulge headed for her stomach.
As muscular contractions carried him deeper he noticed the last trick in her arsenal. Her human torso was nearly as flexible as her snake half, and she formed a bend in her upper body that moved downward as he slid down her throat. The bend in her torso pressed against his feet, pushing them, and ultimately the rest of him, toward her stomach. Slicked down with saliva he moved smoothly through the darkness, surrounded by wet flesh and her pulse.
As his hips slipped down into her snakey half and into the expanding ribcage there, Azel realized he'd felt much less of one in her upper body. Nor had he bumped over a set of hips. Oh, there was something of each structure, but only enough to give her body shape. Her seductive skunkette half was just a beautiful lure around an immensely expandable gullet. Even with her now-larger lower body, he must weigh half as much as she did, yet that bulky lion-man body had been taken into her jaws and swallowed down with little effort.
His muzzle passed through a constriction in her gullet and into a looser place that stank of bile; after minutes in her gullet he was arriving in her belly. There were a few last breaths of air to be had here. Unarmed, surrounded by muscular flesh too thick to tear through, and slipping inch by inch into the stomach of the skunkette, Azel shrugged and reached for his cock. The peristalsis of her swallowing muscles had stroked him erect a third time, and the mucus that'd slicked him down for swallowing made an equally good lubricant for masturbation.
It was dark and hot and wet, and he felt her shuddering. A belated orgasm? Did she take greater pleasure from sending her to his belly than she had from his tongue or cock? His hand pumped up and down, and he had a last thought about the afterlife. There he'd meet his relatives and clan-mates and regale them with tales of his life. "How did I die? In the stomach of a beautiful skunkette, with my hand around my dick."
Azel shuddered, ejaculating and losing consciousness at the same moment. Around him her guts gurgled as the process of digestion began.
*****
Uvuzi lay sated and shivering, midsection pleasantly swollen and fingers still damp from pleasuring herself. She had lied several times; for one, she probably wouldn't become pregnant had she mated with him. The "probably" was the issue; just such a one-night stand had left her mother with unwanted children. It was for this reason that only one male had ever mated with her in the conventional way, after using a "protective device" to ensure a lack of offspring. Had he told the truth? She could not say; she only had his word, and where that skunk had gone, no one could ask questions. Just as no one could ask the lion where he'd been, and who he had met.
All she could say for sure was that she'd never been made pregnant, not by the skunk or other lovers, and certainly not by the lion. It would take a miracle for his semen to find its way from where it rested now to her sex. Most of it would be digested with the male who had so eagerly released it.
She belched, releasing some of the air that'd gone down with him, and smiled. He had been a friendly and lustful, though not very wise lion-man. Just the way she liked them. It was not often she got to wrap her jaws around a Khardaki. Gnolls, goblins, and orcs were more common fare, and none of those aroused her interest as much as the lions. Not that she hadn't swallowed her share of gnoll semen, to name one flavor, but she'd done it with less enthusiasm.
The undergrowth rustled, and three of her kobolds appeared. Silently they bowed, and she began the laborious task of slithering back to the cave. One picked up the gear she'd stripped from her meal, along with the axe, then they followed in her wake, covering up both their tracks and the broad rut her travel left. Half her weight in lion-man weighed down her distended belly, and by the time they arrived her midsection had swollen even more. Great quantities of digestive fluid were filling the spaces around the lion, pushing out the air so she burped repeatedly. It would only take a few days before she was sleek again, but digesting him would add enough fat to her body to keep her sated for a week or more. A real snake could go far longer on such a meal, but unlike a snake she was warm-blooded. Being half skunk had its drawbacks, a fast metabolism being one.
Inside the cave once more, she gestured. She was not a very good spell-caster, but she had some talent with illusions. With great effort she had woven a permanent glamor on the entrance; when it was activated, as she activated it now, the cave mouth was simply not there. There were ways around it - tracks leading to a blank rock face would be a givaway, and anyone able to detect magic would spot it straight off. It was better than leaving an inviting entrance for some wandering monster or adventurer, though. Well, unless she wanted the adventurer to find it! More than one had, only to find his ultimate destination a slippery chute of skunkette-lamia gullet.
With a lengthy belch she rid herself of the last air that'd gone down with the lion. A dozen kobolds bowed and smiled, and the one with the feathered staff shook it happily.
"Did you enjoy your lion, Mistress?"
"Oh yes, Fwiffo. He was very entertaining. Thank you for finding him for me. And Spang and Rhein," two kobolds stood at attention, "You did wonderfully to lead him here, without letting anyone else follow. When next we have treasure to divide, you will get double shares." It was too bad about Berre; he'd been out on patrol when she got word of the lion-man, and must have walked back into the cave at exactly the wrong moment.
The three basked in her praise, then every kobold bowed at once as she turned away. Slithering heavily past the little cage room - used to hold captives, true enough, captives who would soon occupy her stomach for the most part - she made her way through the main hall to her real room. It was decorated with expensive tapestries and furniture from ill-guarded caravans, and a few things she had bought with her own money. It wasn't as fancy as her house in Greyston, but out here people could disappear without awkward questions being asked. Even out here, going after a caravan guard was risky, but she couldn't resist when the shaman reported an obviously novice guard in the shape of a delectable Khardaki. Ultimately only one thing had gone wrong; she had misjudged the duration of her disguise spell. If he'd reacted faster when she resumed her usual appearance, things might have gotten nasty.
Uvuzi retrieved her earrings and snake-shaped armband before curling up on her bed of looted cushions. She rubbed the great bulge in her middle, trailing her pink-padded fingers over the shape of the lion-man within. The digestive juices swelling her belly blunted his contours, but she still found his face and petted his muzzle.
"You didn't react, though. You just wanted to fuck, and you were a good lover, lion-man. Very considerate. If I do ever decide to settle down, perhaps it will be with someone like you. Lusty, but willing to listen. I almost regret..." Her belly gurgled, and slowly she curled up on her bed. Digesting a meal this large always made her sleepy. "...But not really. I do like my lions."
Uvuzi hiccuped, smiled, and settled down to sleep.