The man's trousers were still around his ankles, and his thick penis was erect. "What are you doing, witch?" he squealed.

"Mister, she means it." Gabrielle's voice shook. "Look, don't move, and I'll try to keep her from hurting you -- "

"D'ye think she wants to watch you suck me off? Eh?" The man glanced uneasily at the warrior's back, but the prospect obviously appealed to him. "And if she tells you to do it, you'll do it, girlie, won't ye?"

Gabrielle's emerald eyes went still. "If she tells me to bite you in two I'll do it, you son of a bitch."

The bard stiffened as she heard footfalls coming toward them. She froze in place, a doe hearing the step of the hunter, shivering, her sea-green eyes staring sightlessly before her.

Xena looked down at Gabrielle and commanded her pulse to slow. She would need all her control now, fine-tuned and tireless. She stared at Gabrielle's trembling shoulders, the sleek, arched back, the huddling twin globes of her buttocks. Xena felt tears rise in her eyes, the same tears that threatened whenever she looked upon the most benevolent and beautiful of the gods' creations.

Gabrielle waited, afraid, but patient as moonlight. She heard Xena undressing above her, and her mind's eye pictured her lover perfectly. Peeling her leathers up over a cold and implacable face. Her shoulders and breasts sculpted ivory, her eyes the blue at the base of the most searing flame, her raven hair a wildness framing the austere beauty of her face.

"I told you to spread those knees."

Gabrielle's eyes closed as she shifted, parting her knees as widely as possible. The movement separated her buttocks, slightly, and she felt the warrior's gaze crawl up her dark cleft. Then an even more tangible touch; Gabrielle felt the dry tickle of a leather strip slither up her crack.

Xena's whip.

Gabrielle began to cry. She lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut, and the tears coursed silently down her cheeks. A mistress of language, she couldn't have explained the quality of her tears.

Fear, a healthy dose of it -- she had seen the damage Xena could inflict with that whip. If she meant to beat her, Gabrielle wasn't sure she could hold her position; but the prospect of disobedience at this point frightened her even more. And her tears fell, too, because it had been too easy to forget the full intensity of her love for this woman, in the day to day grind of their travels, and now she was weak with it again.

And Gabrielle wept with gratitude that her lover had brought her here, to a new richness of sensation even the bard's vivid imagination hadn't believed possible. She wasn't sure she could survive the pleasure the whip would bring, if Xena put it inside her. She wasn't sure if any woman could survive it.

Begods, the man thought, what's this crazy bitch doing! She knelt behind the young witch, but now she was stringing that bullwhip between her own damn legs! And bringing the thin end of it up over her shoulder, and around her own fist. And now fitting the end of the thick handle between the blond's -- ahh. He got it. When the banshee fucked the youngster, the leather could be scraped back and forth in her own gash, and she could yank on it whenever she wanted a harder rub. He licked his lips, aroused to the point of bursting.

"Are you crying, Gabrielle?" Xena asked softly. She eased the thick circular end of the whip handle into the opening of Gabrielle's slick vagina.

She couldn't see Gabrielle's face, so she let other images of the bard, weeping, fill her mind. The last time Xena had seen those tears was when Gabrielle stitched Xena's injured shoulder. Her partner's green eyes kept filling, to her annoyance, because she knew how badly her hands were hurting her. Xena had teased her, gently. Now she teased the leather bullwhip into her twitching sex. Xena eased the whiphandle's end through the tight ring of muscle at the opening of the girl's channel.

Gabrielle's sobs emerged as hitching groans, as tendrils of liquid fire began to lick through her groin.

"Listen well, farmer." Xena's voice was not quite sane, and the man oggled her. "It's a bitter truth, true, but you must never forget it. She won't. This sweet woman-cunt you wanted? This cunt, that you hoped to steal from me? It's mine. No one else can ever possess it. No one else can fill it with fire, like this."

Xena warned herself to take her time fucking Gabrielle -- the shaft was quite thick. Gabrielle's small vagina had to strain to accept it, even after the recent reaming by Xena's hand. She had to be stretched, gradually, to accept the leather rod. Xena was up to the challenge. The bard was so oozingly wet, she could probably accommodate the hilt of a sword, eventually. A pity the night was fleeting, Xena thought, as the whip finally sank fully into the girl's snatch.

From the moment she had leaped down into the campsite, Xena had not injured Gabrielle. She wouldn't, without the bard's permission. She had treated her with great roughness, but her skin, even her tenderest netherskin, was unbroken. Gabrielle would have bruises in the morning, but fewer than Xena herself. Gabrielle couldn't know it, but Xena had punished her own body far more, physically, that night. Suppressing climax called for an actual cramping of all the muscles in her back, and now Xena's broad shoulders felt like she'd tried to raise a wall with them.

The twinge in her lower back sounded again, as she began to rotate the whiphandle deep between Gabrielle's legs, forcing sloshing noises from her depths. She eased the whip out, drawing a low moan from the bard. Then she pushed it back in, slowly, slowly. A twist. Back out. In. Faster now.

"Ahh-hhh." Gabrielle began to lunge forward on her hands with the rocking force of the penetration. Her face contorted, flushing red. The tendril of flame within her was growing, swelling -- and then it held, simmering, as Xena's hand left the whip. Gabrielle gasped, in frustrated loss.

"And these are mine." Xena's cold fingers slid up Gabrielle's sides, then below her to cup her pendulous breasts. She squeezed them, viciously, and Gabrielle's head shot up, her hair snapping over her shoulders, before sinking down again. "These will always be mine, farmer."

Xena's fingers pinched the helpless Amazon's breasts, and raked her fingernails gently over her nipples. Then she resumed fucking her with the whip, plunging it in and out of the golden-furred twat. "You're going to write about this adventure, Gabrielle," Xena breathed. "And you'll read that scroll aloud to me, every night, while you pleasure yourself." Xena punched the whip faster.

Gabrielle sobbed harder, and flinched as heat surged deeply through her again. She could hear herself, hear the wet noises her pussy made as it convulsed around the whip handle, and the sound shot her arousal higher. She tried, very hard, to prevent it -- but felt her hips began to churn in small circles, a lewd display she was helpless to stop.

Xena closed her eyes quickly at the sight, and eased up on the strength in her left hand, that had been pulling the whip over her shoulder and grinding smooth leather over her clit. She intended to make this last, for both of them.

"I've wanted this for years, my bard," Xena whispered, eyes still closed, fucking Gabrielle steadily with the whip. "To drape you naked over altars. To fuck you senseless in your bedroll, every bloody n-night -- "

Xena's voice broke, and she began sawing her hips to and fro, digging the leather whip into her own cunt. She bit her lower lip so brutally a small pearl of blood emerged between her teeth. She pummelled the whip in and out of Gabrielle with growing fervor. "Don't you come, Gabrielle," she hissed. "Not until I allow it. Focus. You may not."

To Gabrielle's anguish, she heard herself grunt. She grunted each time Xena slammed the whiphandle deep into her, and she grunted when it was dragged slickly out. The gutteral sound was the antithesis of this graceful woman, wild with shame and heat. But she was powerless to stop the horrendous noise, because molten lava was swirling from the tip of the whip, through her juicing passages, spurting from her clit . . .

"Like this, baby?" Xena purred, her eyes on Gabrielle measuring and sure. "Is this what you want, being whipfucked from behind by my hand? Do I know you, beloved?"

There was a humility that lived in the deepest part of Xena that asked this question with loving deference. But the rest of her core knew the answer, knew the bard. And knew she was ready. Xena released them both.

"Come apart, Gabrielle."

Xena ground the whip into her own clit so hard that she didn't just climax once, she couldn't stop doing it, and then Gabrielle screamed so hideously with her own chain of orgasms that she started coming harder.

The desperately erect intruder finally succeeded in unlacing his own wrists, and clambered clumsily to his feet. He took one last look at the two furies, still convulsing against each other and emitting sounds that would haunt his dreams, and then he turned tail and ran, awkwardly, but as if Hades himself pursued him.

The aftermath was like the peace that follows a grueling battle.

They lay together, Xena slumped over Gabrielle's heaving back. Maybe one was unconscious for awhile, maybe both. Gabrielle didn't stir until she felt the engorging whip pulling slowly out of her. She shuddered, but didn't lift her head.

Xena had to use her free hand to pry open the fingers that were clenched around the whip's shaft before she could drop it. Wincing, Xena stretched and snagged a blanket from their pile of bedding. She shook it out and lay it flat over the grass, beside Gabrielle.

"Lie down, Bri."

Gabrielle simply fell over onto her right side. The warrior grabbed a second blanket to cover them, and stood over the bard for a moment, studying her face.

Gabrielle lay on her side, eyes closed, her face still streaked with tears. Xena eased herself down beside her. She lay a hand on the girl's bare shoulder, and pulled her gently over onto her back, sliding her left arm out to pillow Gabrielle's head. She spread the second woolskin over them both, warming their nakedness.

Xena hummed softly as she cleaned her lover's face, licking her fingers and smoothing them over the cooling cheeks. Finally Gabrielle's eyes opened, and she reached up and took Xena's hand from her face and held it, sleepily, in her own.

Xena's rich alto was quiet, and kind. "Did I hurt you, Gabrielle?"

Gabrielle frowned, and shifted experimentally, thinking about it. Then she cleared her throat, and looked up into the warrior's concerned eyes, with a faint sparkle in her own. "I'll have worse," she murmured.

A smile curved Xena's lips, and she nodded. "I can promise you that."

Gabrielle lay saturated in a delicious lassitude. She felt as if she'd slept, hard and well, for a week, and was just awakening now before another quick nap. She was sated, warm, relaxed. Safe.

The bard turned her head on the woolskin, and her bleary eyes focused on the dried tendril of blood over Xena's breast, and then the three deep scratches her fingernails had dug into the base of her throat. And now she noticed other scratches on her lover's wide shoulders, from the brush she exploded through trying to reach her. Gabrielle's lovely face filled with remorse, and she traced two fingertips lightly over the worst cut on Xena's chest.

"Did you have a good run?" Gabrielle asked sadly.

Xena snorted in startled laughter, and Gabrielle slipped her hand beneath her dark hair to cup the back of her neck and pull her down to meet her lips. The movement began gently, but Xena felt the hand on her neck clench, and press her head down hard. She ground her lips against the swollen ones of the bard, and this time it was Gabrielle's tongue that snaked into her own. It was the last, sparkling remnant of passion that remained in them, and they fed on each other for long moments of predatory pleasure.

The kiss grew tender, again, as it ended. Then Xena smiled down at Gabrielle, and kissed her, chastely, on the cheek, a sisterly note of thanks. Gabrielle smiled sleepily up at her, then yawned, her left arm curling on the blanket above her head.

Xena rested her arm protectively across Gabrielle's waist and nestled her head in the soft pillow of her golden hair. The warrior sighed, the long, quivering exhalation of the truly drained. She fell, within one heartbeat and the next, into the dark, swirling luxury of deep sleep.

Gabrielle lifted Xena's fingers to her lips and kissed them. She moved closer to her lover's bare breast, rested her forehead against it, and she slept, too.