Ishtar Rising Read online

  Ishtar Rising

  (book 4 of the Sinnis Series)

  by Natalie Gibson

  Copyright© 2012 by Natalie Gibson

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Published, May 2012

  Kindle Direct Publishing

  Cover Art and Design by Eric Gibson

  Chapter 1

  Tara Kay was running through the woods at night and she was naked. At least she wasn't in high heels like the idiot girl in a horror movie. She felt a laugh bubbling up but she stifled the sound. The trail mix of drugs she had taken was making it hard for her to think clearly or remember what she was running from but the noises coming from behind were reason enough to keep running. The men's heavy feet and taunting words pushed her forward. The last of the branches scratched at her bare skin as she broke free and tumbled into the clearing.

  Directions played on a loop in her hazy head. 'Just get to the tree. Your tree will save you. Reach your guardian and you will be safe. Just get to the tree. Your tree will save you. Reach your guardian and you will be safe.' The voice was female but it wasn't her own. She felt sure she had heard it before but it was never this clear. She tried to remember when it was; her high made it impossible to reason. She shook her head in an effort to clear her mind.

  The movement disoriented her and she fell. She panted, the cold of the earth soaking in. The ground cover where she'd landed was soft but that could be her mind playing tricks on her. It felt like a patch of clover but, as cognizant as she was, she could very well be laying on a bull nettle. The voice urged her forward again, ' Just get to the tree. Your tree will save you. Reach your guardian and you will be safe.'

  She could see her tree straight ahead, silhouetted against the night sky. The waxing gibbous moon, fat with light, watched it all from it's position a little to the right. With her dilated pupils, Kay could easily see her path. She'd made this same trek a thousand times but never under this level of duress.

  Hearing her three pursuers break through the edge of the forest, Kay knew she had to run, but her body wouldn't respond. Ashley Stout, her on again, off again boyfriend, spotted her ultra white skin in the near full moon's light and pointed her out. His half brother, Jackie, made an obscene comment about her being face down all sprawled out, waiting for them. Will still hadn't said anything, but when she looked back, their eyes met. He was silent but hungrier for hurting her than his friends. She and Will had a history neither of the other two knew about and it included her turning him down flat.

  'Hurry,' the woman said. Kay thought about just laying there and letting them catch up to her. She was rolling and tripping so hard that what they wanted to do with her might even feel good. She hadn't liked the WAY Ashley proposed it. He had given her to his half brother and friend to do with what they liked. He'd said that it was to prove that she was indeed his, for 'a man couldn't give away something that didn't belong to him, could he?'. She had bolted not then but later. She had been kissed and caressed and undressed by them, seemingly agreeing to the proposal. She ran because of something in Will's eyes. He was going to hurt her, not if, but when he got the chance.

  Then just as Will was close enough for her to hear him panting, she was up and running. She hadn't decided to get up. The ground under her had seemed to move, heaving her up. Behind her the three cursed and fell, claiming the ground had moved on them too. Only it had worked against them, when it's motion had helped her.

  Her bare feet found better traction than their booted ones. She had country feet, as she called them. They were used to the hot asphalt, sharp gravel, poking stickers, and rough sand and dirt. They were also ugly as sin, but she didn't let it bother her. She liked having contact with the earth.

  The path was clear. She ran. Just two steps before she would make her leap to the lowest branch, her toe caught on a vine that she would have sworn wasn't there before. Her momentum propelled her torso forward but her foot, trapped by the vine, took her down. She had just enough time to get her hands up, but not the strength to truly catch herself. Her face hit a root poking out of the ground at the base of the tree. She saw stars. Her lips, pinched between her teeth and the hard root, were pulverized. Her mouth filled up with blood and she was certain that she would loose a tooth or two.

  The blood, looking dark but without color in the night light, dripped onto the root, staining it. Thankfully Tara Kay didn't lose consciousness. She got up quickly and made the familiar journey from branch to branch until she was in her favorite place, a high fork in the massive trunk that had a dip where she fit perfectly. She straddled it and leaned her head back to rest on one side of the fork.

  She didn't close her eyes and as she sat staring at the bark, the drugs in her brain tricked her eyes into seeing a face there hidden in the tree's protective covering. She leaned forward and gave the hallucinogen-made mouth a bloody kiss in thanks. The three would be rapist had reached the tree but were finding it impossible to climb. Her blood colored the imaginary lips, making them more convincing than before. Kay leaned back, stretching her arms up over her head. Green leaves tickled and caressed her back, sides, neck and arms. She imagined a wooden tongue darted out to lick off the crimson and then the face disappeared.

  She stared up at the moon peeking down at her amid the branches and she enjoyed the caress of her tree. Her guardian was more alive now than ever. Drugs very rarely gave her the religious connection to nature and others that her friends reported, but something was obviously different about the cocktail she'd taken tonight. As she peaked, Tara Kay became certain that the tree, her tree, was not only alive but a thinking being. The voice she'd heard tonight and other key time in her life was the great mother earth and this tree was her son.

  The ruckus below crescendoed and then tapered off as if she were being removed from it. She heard a growl and shouting. Perhaps a wild animal had scared Ashley, Jackie and Will off, but she couldn't spare a thought for them now because the dose was taking over any and all thought. The bark beneath her and the branches above her changed.

  This was some hallucination and she gave herself over to it. The face was back and she was being carried by a giant man. Her thighs were on either side of him, resting on his hip bones instead of the scratchy hard plant. She crossed her ankles behind his back and eased herself down to the tip his waiting erection.

  The branches she nestled in became his arms wrapped around her and the leaves his fingers on her back. His grip tightened and pulled her torso close to his. She rested her elbows on his shoulders and brushed the hair away from his face. She traced his handsome features with her fingertips. “My beautiful guardian,” she said in a lover's whisper.

  He said something in a language she'd never heard and didn't understand but it ended in 'Sin-eese'. She was struck by the quality of his voice. It was pleasant but rough and unused. A rusty virtuoso of a voice he had, like Pavarotti after breaking a year long vow of silence. It was more than that, otherworldly even. It pleased her to no end. Sexy, masculine, soothing and musical: it was a proper voice for an oak tree and a magnified version of everything she preferred in a lovers voice.

  Then with hand at her waist and one palming the back of her neck, he pulled her down into a kiss even as he shafted her. The kiss was something unlike any before it. Soft b
ut firm, asking and taking, needy but confident all at the same time, he kissed like he'd been drowning and she was air. He devoured her mouth, removing any trace of blood from her collision with his root. His hungry mouth managed to distract her from the fact that she was now humping a tree in a drug induced vision. She laughed into his mouth and he swallowed that up too. She lifted herself and then lowered back down around his shaft. Sure, she'd have scratches and splinters where the sun don't shine but even that wasn't a deterrent. This was her tree come to life just as she'd always wished it would. The pull was too strong to resist; she had to be with him like this.

  She rode him slowly, trying to commit so many details to memory. She needed to retain this even after the delusion ended. Kay could feel every ridge and vein in his cock, the biggest she'd ever had inside her. It stretched her canal in the most satisfying way. Her skin tingled everywhere they touched: the backs of her arms on his shoulders, her thighs on his hips, the tips of her breasts on his chest. The tingle wasn't the only thing that seemed alien to her fuzzy brain. He was hot. Seriously hot. like a person burning up with fever. His hair was unbelievably rose petal soft and looked green in the moonlight. He was at least seven and a half feet tall and built like a linebacker. His facial features were perfect and his skin was without flaw. He was covered in a vine-like tattoo with conical flowers opened and reflected in the moonlight.

  But his eyes! His eyes overshadowed all the other pleasant oddities. They were practically glowing. They were like jewel cut crystals or opals, facets catching the light and reflecting it back. She could see herself in them and she studied her reflection too. She didn't see any of the imperfections that usually plagued her thoughts when she looked in a mirror. She was beautiful, leaned back rocking herself up and down. Her own hair was green and straight in a shoulder length bob. Her skin looked smooth and creamy white. She could see the blue veins and pink arteries just below the surface. She had tiny pink nipples set high on round full breasts, a narrow ribcage and hips.

  With one hand he held her up, aiding her rhythm. The other slowly explored her body. He slid it over her shoulder and then up over her throat, thumbing her pulse for a moment before sliding down over the swell of her breasts, flat stomach and hip bones before coming to rest at the place where their bodies joined. The sensations were too intense and Tara Kay stopped her movements to experience them.

  He put his forefinger and thumb between her outer and inner labia, slipping up and down her folds that were stretched to the max by his invading member. Each time he reached the top and his fingers met on her clit, he rolled and squeezed it. Kay let her head fall back and she closed her eyes, but she snapped to attention when his dick moved inside her.

  The man hadn't moved; his hips weren't thrusting, but it was moving inside her. It was rolling, almost fingering her most sensitive interior point deep inside even as his hand toyed with her most sensitive exterior spot. Then it began to move faster and faster she had no option but to climax. It was vibrating inside her, for goddess' sakes! Wave after wave of warm pleasure washed over her and her muscles clamped down on his pulsating penis.

  So quickly they barely seemed to move, he turned her and she found herself on all fours in the soft grass. He never stopped stimulating her clit but was now also pounding her pussy from behind with his magical, somehow mechanical, member. It felt so exquisitely delirious, she fisted the grass and tried to stay conscious. She felt his free hand on her shoulder, steading her for his hammering, then it slipped down to trace designs on her back.

  It took a second before she remembered her tattoo and realized he was tracing the picture of her tree there. It was a massive back piece that had taken four sittings, four hours each. It was done from a photograph her grandmother had taken of Kay on the day she was first able to climb to her favorite spot. In it Tara Kay was perched high, almost hidden by it's branches and leaves, but her face was visible as she grinned at the camera in triumph. Kay shared so many of her milestone moments with her tree and she wished it was of one of those when she was older but that had been the only photo of her in her tree ever taken.

  He hunched over her and his tongue replaced his fingers. His breath was warm on her back as his moist mouth painted the picture all over again. His pumping never stopped and she felt she'd been coming for hours. He wrapped his arm around her stomach and brought his kisses up to her shoulder. Kay heard the woman's voice again. It said, 'Give him permission to take what he asks'. He nipped at the place where shoulder met neck and she angled her head away, giving him access to her throat.

  Tara Kay felt a sharp pain as he bit her but it passed quickly into ecstasy. Her hallucination has taken an unexpected turn but she was willing to follow whatever path it took. It, so far, had only led to pleasure. She didn't need the woman's urging to accept what he offered her next. His arm slid up to fondle her breasts for a moment as he finished sucking at her neck. Then he wrapped his muscled arm around her shoulder and brought his own wrist back to his mouth. When he placed it in front of her face, she could see the bite mark. A few drops hit the ground before she latched on to the pricks.

  She didn't have time to wonder where the pillow below her came from. She took her first draw from his open vein and his cock jerked inside her. His heartbeat pumped blood into her mouth even as his orgasm spurted cum against her cervix. She lost all concept of time and space and all thoughts of reality vs dream. She swallowed his essence gulp by gulp and as the darkness took her, she heard the woman's voice again.

  The great mother earth spoke with two voices in two languages. 'Bring her through Me and We will make her as you are.'

  ***

  Tara Kay woke to the sunlight on her face. She was on her side and a man's arm was draped over hers. She stayed still. She could remember waking up several times throughout the night. Each time she'd reached out to him, he'd been there. Her guardian. They'd had sex more times than she could count, each one blurring with the one before and the one after until it was just one memory. It was one of total bliss and total abandonment.

  She was slightly embarrassed to look her new lover in the face. What if he wasn't what she'd imagined. What if he was some crazy homeless man who took advantage of her drug induced euphoria. Well, not all of it had been her imagination. The finger tracing her tattoo was real enough. She might have imagined his evolution from tree to man, but his existence was not in question. He was a real live man. When he spoke, her fears were laid to rest. That voice alone was enough to get him into her bed, even if he was a hobo.

  “Darisam baltu oren.”

  He wasn't speaking English. She was going to need to see him, if she was going to figure out what the hell he was trying to say. She gathered her courage and turned. She was not disappointed. He was gorgeous; a real heart throb. He rested on his bent elbow and she mirrored his position, to study him a bit. As she watched he, and the world around him, started to glow. Those were some drugs last night, she thought. She'd had the 'sparkle' after a trip before but never like this. Everything looked so alive, especially the man beside her. Several things about him jumped out at once. He wasn't as giant as she'd thought last night. Though he was clearly pro-football player sized, he was just a large man, not a colossus oak. His hair was green, though a shade darker than hers, and his tattoos, which covered every inch of his body, were of vines. The vines were covered in leaves, not morning glory's.

  He gestured to himself and said again, “Darisam baltu oren.”

  “Oren? Are you trying to tell me your name is Oren?”

  He propped himself up on an elbow to look down at her. She was at once distracted by the curve of his arm muscles. She watched helplessly as her hand reached out to trace the lines of his chest. Again he gestured to himself and then made a sign of 'tall'. “Darisam baltu oren.” She tore her gaze from his form and put her attention on his face. He gestured to her and said, “Ma darisam baltu”.

  “I get it. Hello, Oren.” She gestured to herself. “Darisam baltu Tara Kay.”<
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  He seemed very relieved. “Tara Kay, darisam baltu.” He said her name like all one word and it had a weird accent on the wrong syllable, 'teRAkae'. She liked it. She smiled at him and nodded her head. He leaned over and kissed her. It was a soft pressing of his lips to hers, no more. He pulled away only far enough to see her better. He traced her eyebrows, cheek bones, nose and mouth with his thumb. He started talking but Kay couldn't keep her mind on it for long enough to figure it out. She was hungry.

  Seriously hungry with a capital 'H'.

  “I'm starved. You?” She made the universal sign for eat. Then showed him her teeth, making a movement for biting and chewing.

  He smiled. Good gravy, he was adorable when he smiled. He had lines like parenthesis around his mouth and a dimple outside those. He bent and kissed her again but this one was all passion. Kay allowed it because he was so damn good at it, but when he moved on to her chin and neck, she pushed at him. He clearly didn't understand.

  Confused, he pulled from her and furrowed his brow in question. Was it possible for every face a person made to be more attractive than the last, she wondered. She sat up and then stood, holding her hand out to him. Her move had brought his face close to her privates. He stared at the junction between her legs. She thought she even saw him lick his lips before he put his hand in hers. He stood without any help from her, though he kept her hand. He brought it up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. Each touch sent a little shiver down her spine, into her stomach and a little further south. She couldn't help but notice his erection. He was hungry too but not for food.

  Tara Kay looked around and tried to get her bearings. They were west of the trailer and her tree, not far from the orchard and the old condemned house. She turned and started to run, pulling him along. She could not remember ever feeling so good. The wind on her face and naked body was stunning. Her hair, where it touched her shoulders, tingled in a most pleasant way. She could feel every strand. The grass where she ran, had never felt so soft. She laughed out loud.