Courtship And Stones
By Robert Young

Saftra spat on the line of ants at his feet and then watched as they struggled to escape the sticky fluid. He smeared the spit under the toe of his shoe and winced in pain. Touching his temple, he felt wetness at his fingertips, and looked down to see more bodily fluid intercepting the caravan of ants. It was his blood. Nearby was the rock that had struck him in the head. A moment later another smallish pebble cracked down near his feet, obviously thrown from up above. Shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, Saftra looked up to the roof of the white stucco building across the street. He could just make out a figure like an ink spot against the mid-afternoon's blinding light. A black object flashed into his vision for a split second and his head again screamed with pain. Now he was sitting on the ground dazed and blinking his eyes furiously to regain focus. Before him was yet another rock, this one a polished ebony. He rose to his feet and scurried for cover under the overhang across the street. He could hear laughter raining down on him.

Saftra stumbled into a dark and musky tavern. Unwashed old men seemed to lurk in the shadows of every corner of the room. Leering at him. Watching, like hyena's crouched in high grass. Slavering jaws clicking with anxiety and hunger. Saftra stumbled out a door that spilled him into the sunny courtyard behind the tavern. Two bony dogs were humping madly by an olive tree. Startled by Saftra, the connected canines ambled off as an awkward six-legged, two-backed creature. Scanning the courtyard, Saftra spied a ladder that would take him to the roof. He climbed slowly, purposefully, yet despite this care still punctured his left hand on a thorny vine that snaked up the ladder. More blood. A green lizard raced just ahead of Saftra's bleeding hand each time he took a step up. The lizard stopped at each rung to flash the red pouch under its throat. Saftra caught the tip of its tail under his thumb. The tip, now brown, easily broke off and the tiny piece reflexively curled around Saftra's finger. Now he reached for the rooftop ledge and pulled himself over, half expecting to catch a rock in the face before he gathered his feet. No rocks. Nothing, but the sun on his back, the thorn prick on his hand and the gash at his temple.

He saw her clearly for the first time. She was unmoved, still bent over the ledge, eyeing the street below. He watched her for a very long minute. Admiring her shape and the way her thin dress, pressed against her by the faint, hot breeze, clung to her backside. He walked toward her, waiting for her to wheel about suddenly, angrily. Or for her to at least be startled like the mating dogs had been. She was motionless. Even as his shoes crunched across the gravelly rooftop, she didn't move. And now he was directly behind her. He paused again and savored her smell of orange blossoms and more faintly of something sexual.

Saftra said nothing as he grabbed her from behind and held her firm by her arms. Firm enough to bruise. The girl breathed in deeply but didn't cry out. A smooth gray pebble tumbled from her left hand to the ground. Slowly, tenderly, Saftra eased his grip and guided his hands up to her small breasts. Her breathing was heavy, forced, even before his fingers traced her nipples. Each nipple seemed to rise and fall with his every touch. He let his fingers flutter ever so lightly over them in a tease before finally pinching both nipples hard. The girl reeled forward, gasping. She was bent at the waist and Saftra could feel the soft roundness of her buttocks pressing against his penis. He could see her shape pushing through the boundaries of her thin dress. His penis twitched anxiously beneath his fly. The girl remained bent, limbs loosened like an unhinged marionette. But her flesh was tight and hot to the touch. Leaning her torso on the ledge wall, she seemed to be offering herself to Saftra. Demanding him before even he was willing to acquiesce. He pulled her by her hips into him, crushing his growing mass into the crevice of her buttocks. They were both still sheathed in clothing but her loud gasp struck an awkward harmony with his own aroused exhale.

Shaftra reached for the hem of her dress and began to lift it with the ease and pace of which one lifts a theater curtain. As he felt her tense in heated anticipation, he let the dress fall back in place at the nape of her knees. He had noticed the dried blood on his right hand -- his penetrating hand. It was blood that she had drawn. But he would not give her any more. He wouldn't mingle his blood with the girl's moisture. He would give her his saliva instead. He licked the flaking bloodstains from his fingers, recognizing the same metallic taste he had experienced between soft thighs in days past. He let another portion of his saliva drip into his palm as lubricant, and then reached for the hem of her dress once more. This time the curtain rose suddenly, almost violently. The girl cried out in joy and shock when his finger penetrated her. Deep. Probing. Hungry. He pulled out and smeared the saliva on his palm flush against her dripping lips. She arched and shoved herself hard into him, forcing his thumb to squarely kiss the pucker of her anus. He pushed his thumb into her, desperately trying to go beyond the connective webbing that bridged thumb and index finger. This straightened her up forcefully and their skulls nearly collided as her head whipped back. He retreated from her momentarily to firmly bend her back over.

Now Saftra freed his engorged organ from his clothing, and watched as it uncoiled, thumping against the back of her thigh. Saftra gripped the rigid penis and drew sticky circles with its tip around the slickened lips of the girl's vagina. He then relinquished control of his visceral organ long enough to let her reach between her legs and blindly grope at him. He let out a pleasured grunt as the girl pinched his penis tip between her fingers sharply. He clenched his teeth as she dabbed at the clear droplets that involuntarily apexed on the head, before finally aligning the two flaming organs and offering herself with an indiscrete arch of her buttocks. Saftra threw himself into her with such force that he almost sent them both over the roof ledge. Hanging over the ledge from their waists (he piggybacked upon her), they nearly laughed at one another looking down at the dusty street three stories below. Saftra saw the rocks she had thrown at him resting in a half circle around his footprints on the ground below.

The girl pushed them back from the ledge, careful not to dislodge Saftra from within her. She began a slow, cautious rhythm of back-thrusts, trying to take him in more deeply each time. He went along for a moment, and then set her nerve endings to screaming as he forced his last thick length upon her with a pelvic thrust like a pugilist's left hook. He felt her response as a jolt raced down the backs of his thighs from fingernails now embedded deep within the fat and muscle of his buttocks. Now the thrusting began in earnest and licked by the blazing sun they both sweated profusely.

Saftra grimaced and bit down hard as he tried to summon thoughts of dead friends. He would not give up the ghost before her, if he could help it. He strained to think of his best friend Leton, dead now two years, but the immediacy of his crying nerve endings overtook his mind. The juggernaut of hot fluids summoned forth from within him seemed to race from the base of his skull, down Saftra's spine, getting a spike of pleasure at each vertebra and overflowing into his aching sac. Suddenly the girl was writhing uncontrollably beneath him, and heralded by a piercing cry, Saftra felt his organ swimming in hot juices not his own. This would change. With a gulp Saftra felt the lids of his eyes fall shut as if weighted by lead, and the hair on his head felt like fire. Saftra's legs became like a newborn gazelle's and his hands felt swollen and numb around the girl's rolling hips. He shuddered and the flood poured forth spilling from his groin and from the girl as well. A few drops of semen merged with single drops of blood and saliva on the rooftop surface in the shadow of the girl's still quivering thighs. Black spots filled Saftra's eyes and then the inkwell was upended completely. He felt himself losing consciousness.

When he awoke, Saftra was once again lying in the dusty street amidst the three pebbles. He was naked from the waist down, and his shriveled penis was covered in dust, but still twitching. A small pebble thumped down hard just near his head. It was smooth and gray.