The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(11)

My cock grew even harder, my calf muscles twitched, and every instinct within me wanted to chase.

She blinked, mouth parting just slightly. A light stain of blush touched her cheeks. “Petra?”

Her sweet voice finally broke the spell, and I rocked back as if smacked. What was I doing? This was Ty, not a nymph, not a female to slake my lusts upon. This was my friend, my companion.

“I’m... I’m so... bloody hell.” Holding up my hands and shaking my head, I backed up. The heat of a blush stained my cheeks, making them feel on fire. I needed to apologize, but the words simply wouldn’t come.

She blinked, looking at me with hesitance and shock, and I hated myself. I should never have stood gaping like a fool. I should have left the moment I realized she was alright.

“Petra?” She said my name again, husky voice caressing the vowels and causing me to fight a moan.

Shaking the grossly inappropriate thought from my head, I cleared my throat. Tymanon was not a nymph. She was a centaur. She would not welcome my advances.

“Dinner,” I said, voice deep and reverberating with a thread of a growl as my brain finally decided to help me out.

She looked down at herself, a frown tugging on her lovely lips, before looking back at me. I knew she knew. Her quick mind had worked it out. Nymphs lived only to serve and be served. Convivial, but without much else in their heads, they were simple, lovely creatures that satyrs valued above all things. And right now, my centaur friend resembled one so much I was fighting against instinct and nothing more.

I expected her to chastise me, to rush from the water and strike at me with her fists, to yell. Anything. I deserved it for disrupting her privacy as I had. I swallowed hard, turning my gaze to the left of her. I needed to stop seeing her, needed to stop imagining her coming out of the water with arms open and a smile of welcome greeting on her lips. My heart banged roughly in my chest.

“All right, Petra,” she said quietly. “I’m nearly through here. What you heard was the shock of the cold, but I am well. You have no need to worry.”

My nostrils flared. She had given me an easy out, a way to salve my pride. I would not look at her again, not like that, not with lust shining in my eyes. But I would always remember. Goddess, she was beautiful. I’d only ever seen the centauress and had admired her feminine human parts, but the horsey parts hadn’t done anything at all for me.

I didn’t know a centaur could shift. Inhaling deeply as a white-hot shudder ran all the way through me, I turned swiftly on my heels and ran for camp with the desperation of humiliation.

What was happening to me? I’d never reacted this viscerally before, not even to a nymph. I’d had hundreds of nymphs, and there’d always been appreciation and lust for their feminine wiles and beauty, but I’d never felt as though my soul had wept within me when I’d seen them nude.

With shaking hands, I took the soup off the hot stone and split it into the two bowls I’d learned to carry in my pouch always since the start of the games.

I had a magicked pouch, one Tymanon had given me after I’d casually said how much I’d admired hers. The pouch was able to carry anything and everything I wanted within. No matter the dimension or weight of it, anything could fit. It was a brilliant piece of magic and one I thought no self-respecting centaur would ever carry upon their person. Their abhorrence of all things magic was well known far and wide. But I’d learned quickly that Tymanon was far different than most of her kind.

Staring into the crackling flames, I told myself not to remember, not to think about the voluptuous curves of her hips and rear, the trimness of her waist. My cock grew harder, and I knew she’d see it when she returned, knew she’d know why I was so bloody hard.

It was because I was a satyr, and I’d just seen nude female flesh. It was biology, nothing more, just the reaction any satyr male would have when confronted with the nubile beauty of a nymph. I’d seen Ty’s breasts many times before when she had cleaned her leathers. But it had never created this kind of explosive reaction within me. My mind had not erupted with lusty images of her and I intertwined, of touching her in places I’d never touched before, of her touching me, of her screaming out my name as I worshipped her throughout the night.

Because Tymanon hadn’t been a nymph, I’d never viewed her as anything other than my temporary companion. I hadn’t known what to expect when we’d first met, certainly not the friendship that we developed, the trust, the easy relationship that’d been built between us. There’d been times in the games when I’d sought her out, not out of boredom, but because I’d genuinely wanted to be with her and only her. Through our long days and nights together, I’d grown close to my companion.

I enjoyed Tymanon’s mind more than I’d expected to, enjoyed her quick wit and the way she thought so deeply about the world around her. Conversations of the philosophical nature didn’t tend to happen much with my normal companions. Satyrs and nymphs tended to obsess over lust, sex, and desire.

It’d been a novel experience to be with Tymanon in the games and see her for something other than her beauty. In fact, I’d rarely seen that at all. It wasn’t that I was blind. Her upper half was lovely, slim of waist and full of breast. Her face was pleasing, not as striking as a nymph’s, but of course, whose was? Nymphs were created to be the feminine ideal of beauty. There was nothing in all of Kingdom as beautiful as they were. That they had vacuous, pretty heads never bothered me much, until a year ago, when my entire world had changed and I stopped being the frivolous, selfish satyr I’d always been.