Not going to happen. Wyrms have poor eyesight, hunting by heat and movement. Rakos won’t give it the chance to notice Bell, or the horses Bell will need to escape.
“Don’t worry,” Rakos shouts as he rushes the wyrm. “I’ve got this!”
“You idiot,” Bell cries sharply, lunging in the opposite direction.
The divided movement distracts the wyrm, and Rakos takes advantage of the opportunity to dart towards it.
Maybe six feet in length, not counting the winding tail, the wyrm is a coiling, sinuous threat. When Rakos lunges forward wreathed in shadows, the wyrm lunges too.
But it trips halfway there.
Rakos is stunned when its jaws don’t clamp into him. No tearing claws. Poorly aimed fire flares in the wrong direction. But a rock-solid scaled shoulder collides with Rakos’s. Ignoring the bruising pain, Rakos seizes hold of the wyrm’s frontmost shoulder, attempting to hook a leg over its back.
“I’m serious,” Rakos shouts as he wrestles with the wyrm. “Get out of here!”
“Absolutely not,” Bell shouts back.
Then Rakos can’t think about anything else. All his concentration is taken up with staying on the wyrm’s back. He needs to get his knife under the scales to kill it before it throws him off.
The raging river of adrenaline washes away everything else. Rakos can’t hear anything beside the wyrm snarling beneath him. The wyrm bucks, scraping Rakos against a tree, and Rakos’s shoulders scream with the effort of clinging on. He jabs his knife upward alongside the wyrm’s neck, aiming for the cracks between smaller scales, where the skin has to be more flexible to allow the wyrm to move.
Rakos nearly falls from the wyrm’s next buck, sliding sideways around the wyrm’s barrel. He barely clings on when the wyrm jolts to a crashing halt. Its chest scrapes the ground, seeming stuck in place. Rakos doesn’t care how. He just takes advantage of the sudden halt to jab his knife into the muscular neck.
His knife twists and angles down beneath the scales. Hot blood gushes over Rakos’s hand and wrist. He yanks the knife out in a fresh burst of blood, then rolls away from the wyrm’s death throes.
Dirt and leaves spray everywhere. Rakos lands hard on his ass, knife fallen beside him. For a moment, it looks like a loop of tree root is wrapped around the wyrm’s hind leg. But the illusion vanishes as the wyrm thrashes—then falls still.
His body one giant bruise, Rakos staggers to his feet as Bell rushes to his side.
“Are you all right?” they both say in unison.
Holding his bloody right arm away, Rakos takes Bell in his other arm. He dodges Bell’s attempted kiss to inspect him for injuries. No visible scrapes or bruises, just rapid breath and flushed cheeks.
“Are you all right?” Rakos repeats.
Bell laughs dazedly. “You’re the one who just tackled a fucking wyrm.”
Rakos waves dismissively at the still-steaming corpse. “I’ve had bigger. How the fuck did you know it was coming? Your hearing is incredible.”
“It was pretty loud. Maybe you were just distracted. Hey, we should butcher it for parts to sell in Parsk.” Bell grabs Rakos by the collar. “But first, I need to inspect you thoroughly to make sure you’re unharmed.”
“I promise, I’m…” Rakos catches the lascivious gleam in Bell’s eyes and changes tune. “Actually, I’m terribly injured. So many injuries everywhere. I think my cock might be broken. Would you mind examining it to make sure it’s all right?”
“I’m no healer, but I can do my best.” Bell pushes Rakos backward against a broad, comfortable tree trunk, then drops to his knees.
Rakos leans against the tree, anticipation building beneath his bruises. “If all healers were like this, I would spend a lot more time in the infirmary.”
“You’d better not be seeing any other doctors,” Bell says in mock warning, then pauses at Rakos’s trouser laces. “Unless you’re actually injured, in which case maybe we should actually get you into town and see an actual—”
“No, no, no,” Rakos says quickly, in case Bell does something terrible like get up and stop touching him. “No real injuries. Just convenient, sexy injuries that need to be cured with sex.”
Reassured, Bell makes quick work of Rakos’s trousers. Rakos is already hard from the adrenaline of the fight, and he’s even harder at the sight of Bell on his knees. Rakos’s black wyrmskin coat fans out on the ground around him. There’s no trace of his earlier hesitance as he wraps his hand around Rakos’s cock. Bell’s fingers are so thin around Rakos, and he looks up with ravenous hunger in his hazel eyes.
Bell licks his lips “You have to tell me if I’m terrible at this.”
“You look so hot like that,” Rakos says. “You could just sit there looking up at me, and it would be the best blowjob of my life.”
“Oh, well, in that case…”
