Taking One for the Team Read online

  "Yessir," she said.

  He wasn't as big as some of them—nowhere near as big as Born, but there were horses who weren't as big as Born—but he worked her harder than any of them, slowing down when he got close, then speeding up again, and again, and again, until finally he came, pulling out as he finished, so the last spurts landed across her ass, and the back of her vest, and her thighs.

  "Good," he said when he was done. Then he unhooked the prickle catch, unwound the chain, and let her get dressed as he headed back to the stormer camp. There was a bedroll for her when she got there—Born had laid it out next to his tent, and put her helmet on it, and new gloves. Raven tucked herself in, and was out like a light.

  Next morning, she was up before just about everyone. Went out on the pitch, and started working on left-handed tries. Coach Langdon had wanted her to work on that too, but there was always something else that needed doing. Five balls. Grab, throw, grab, throw, and so on; dash to the nearest rebound, start it up again. She'd planned to limber up a bit, wait for Born to get up before bugging him to help, but he started setting himself up on the center stump almost as soon as Raven caught the first rebound.

  And he was a damn good tower. Better than he'd been during the match. Could be they'd been keeping things close on purpose. Tradition was tradition, but stormers were still strangers, and if they'd shut Longacre down the way it seemed like Born could've, could be they wouldn't have slept so easy.

  Made it hard to get the hundred goals Coach wanted, but it was worth it. Coach Langdon had said, "a loss is better than a lecture" maybe ten thousand times, and he was right. Raven learned a hell of a lot from the way Born anticipated her throws, the way the chains reached out and flicked the balls away. By the time she'd scored a hundred lefty, everyone else was up, and she was a better wing than she'd been the day before.

  She got herself some porridge and greens from the communal pot, and the rest of them took the field for practice. Raven was damn worn out; match one day, hundred goals against Born the next, so she sat and watched. No question, Born was the best tower. The lady tower—Katy—was pretty good too. Left side was strong, but committed too quickly. Could be he was hitting a little light because it was practice against his own runners, and fair enough.

  Then coach nodded Raven in for tackling work. And it was damned hard work. The runners weren't big, but they were all goddamn leaf-springs and concrete. She'd hit, and she'd be the one who'd fall. Before she'd gotten big enough to bowl over runners, Coach Langdon had worked on technique, so she had to fall back to that, trying to get leverage, hit the right place, pull them up and over.

  She was dead, by the time they packed up and headed out for Hold-Your-Cards, so naturally Coach made her jog behind the wagons. Not that the old guzzlers made great time, and there were still potholes and landslides to avoid in between the occasional stretch of well-maintained road. But they were still combustion engines, and she was still a tired wing.

  After a while, Born dropped out of the wagon he was on—Raven could hear the springs creak as he got off—and loped along beside her. He didn't have a runner's build, not by a long shot, but he could still cover ground, eating up the miles with those long, heavy legs. Even if Born could talk, Raven didn't have any wind for conversation. But it was less lonely that way, just having him there with her.

  They got into Hold-Your-Cards near dark, and the next day practice was more an exhibition than a practice. Raven's role was to help the runners look good, and that was easy as hell; just try tackling without good form, and they'd bounce her like a loose ball.

  And it Coach wanted her in as gold wing. Ralf, the one she was filling in for, had taken a bad hit early in the season, and it hadn't healed right. If they needed him, he was there, but he was going out in Drumlin—Katy'd got word from her cousins that they needed a coach, and she vouched for him.

  So it was helmet on, vest on, game on.

  Raven'd played against Hold-Your-Cards before. Their runners and gold wing were a pack of quadruplets, and the way the ball moved between them was impossible to predict or stop. When she told Coach about them, he'd nodded gravely, and set the bet so they had to win by forty because of that warning. Seemed that someone in Miracle had warned them about Raven, and they'd thought her more of a threat than the quads, which put a little flush in her cheek, and spring in her step.

  Till she got the first chain across her chest from the Hold-Your-Cards tower, which left her struggling for breath and playing a little safer.

  But not much safer. When she had an open chance, she took it. Scored nineteen times on forty-one tries by the half, which was damn good. Better than she'd ever done, mainly because of the team she was playing with. A pass to a runner was almost as good as a score, so the towers had to keep watching them, not just the ball, and if she shouldered one of the Hold-Your-Cards runners into Born's range, or Katy's, or even Train's on left-side, damn good chance they'd get the ball loose with a well-aimed chain. Which left Raven in a much better position to make a try than if she'd had to do a full tackle.

  Score was 53-29 at the half, and Raven got friendly smiles as the helmets came off, and the stormers took their water and salt biscuit.

  Coach didn't seem particularly impressed or disappointed. Just kept marking things down in a little book. Coach Langdon hadn't been one for speeches, and neither was the stormer coach—Coach Alvas. Just, "Keep it clean, let 'em stay close, but not too close; doing fine." And then, "Have to pick your tries if you want to make your target," to Raven, as she was getting her gear back on.

  She did her best. Passed a few times when she probably could've scored, positioned to take a loose ball on a miss, instead of setting herself up for the shot, only tried when she was sure she'd make it. Got three out of three, but that wasn't going to get her numbers up fast enough, and since it'd be years before the stormers happened back that way, she wanted Hold-Your-Cards to remember her right.

  She went seventeen for forty-three in the second half, for a personal best thirty-six. Final score was 109-55. Over 40% accuracy, twice as many assists as scores. And since that was less than her target, they tied her to the center tower's stump after the game, and then each and every member of her team fucked her, one after the other.

  Talked a little, too. After making Raven stick her tongue all the way up into her cunt for what felt like hours, Katy let her know she'd been telegraphing tries—support hand always went forward when she was going to try for it, but she kept it close if she was going to fake or pass. Raff, the wing who was quitting, had more to say.

  He'd pushed her down to her hands and knees, and then tightened up the chains so she couldn't move even if she wanted to. And then he fucked her ass, hard, thighs slapping against her with every thrust.

  When he finished, he sat up on the stump and watched her for a bit. It had been a hard game, and she'd been used by five of her teammates already. She bowed her head, breathing slowly, trying not to collapse.

  "It'd be easier," he said after a while, "if you were worse than me. Fifteen years in the game, and . . . hell, I've had better games than that one; the quadruplets have enough of an advantage that the rest of the team was lazy. I went twenty-two for forty against a coastal league team, Raven; beat that if you can. But there were tries you made that I never could've. Ever."

  He got up, walked behind her, and started massaging her bruised and sore cunt. Despite everything else, she started to move as he touched her. "And you're fitting in pretty well."

  Raff pulled his hand back, then slapped her pussy. Not that hard, but hard enough to make her jump.

  "Doesn't mean I have to like it, or you," he said. "But hell. You'll be fine. And don't tackle with your arms so much; arms'll hold them, but use your hips and your shoulders to pull them down once they're held."

  Then he pissed on her legs, the stream of urine hot and wet, playing across her thighs and her ass and her pussy, dripping down to the dirt. He buttoned up and walked away as Raven gasped, trie
d to figure out how to breathe again.

  Next was one of the runners, Rache, the team captain, who made Raven lick her out four times before she went back to the camp, then another runner, who didn't say anything, just pushed in to her ass, and fucked her like someone was holding up a stopwatch.

  And when he was done, it was Born.

  He'd brought her food again, and he sat next to her as she ate, one big hand on her shoulders, the other holding up the bowl of soup so she could drink it, keeping it perfectly steady.

  When she was done eating, Born knelt between her legs, sniffed, and left. He was huge—it had hurt so much the last time—but Raven was disappointed when he left, and at least a little happy when he came back, with a bucket of water and a rag.

  She was tired, and the chains hurt where they cut into her, and her skin was so sensitive after what she'd gone through that the wet rag hurt when used it to wash her down. But she moaned under his touches, and maybe it hurt a little less when he pushed in, slowly, carefully.

  Once she'd adjusted, it was a lot less slow and careful. He lifted her up, holding her easily in one hand, and moved her back and forth as he fucked her. But it was too much; he was so damn big, it felt like he was bruising her inside with every thrust, and forcing her further apart than she could go.

  One hand under her chest holding her up in the air, and the other moved to her pussy. Born's cock felt like it was splitting her in half, but his hand was surprisingly gentle on her, calluses from the chains and the soft skin between moving across her clit, in time with his thrusts.

  Raven came twice, once almost as soon as he touched her, and then second time just after he was done, the grip of his hand on her cunt pushing her over the edge as he convulsed.

  When he was done, he went back to the camp, and Coach came out to Raven.

  "36 for 84," he said. "Not bad. Target was 60%, though. Two ways you can get there. One is by playing defensively for a bit, choosing your tries more carefully. The other is by being as good as you think you are. In either case, if you want 60% on 84, that's 50; you're 14 short."

  He steadied himself, lifted his cane. "Count them."

  Mostly, coach could stand without support; it was just walking that he needed the cane. For the next little while, Raven wished he couldn't stand quite so strong without leaning on his cane. Because damn it hurt, every single one of the fourteen strokes she had to count out, all across her ass.

  Which he then fucked, the skin where she'd been hit burning as he pushed into her. When he was done, and he took a while to be done, he untied her. "Miss your target again," he said, "we're starting with the blindfold. Because if you're going to keep trying for it, you damn well need to know your teammates."

  Then he was gone, and it took Raven a little while before she was strong enough to stagger back to the camp, to the bedroll that Born had laid out for her, where she was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

  After that was three days on the road. They paced along the wagons, practicing as they ran. No goals, no stumps, nothing like that, but tackling drills and passing drills, and while the towers were too big to run for long, from time to time, they'd get out and do chain dodging drills.

  The rest of the team would get up and ride from time to time. But, damn it, like coach had said, there were two ways to make her target, and Raven wasn't going to pick the one which made her shuffle the ball off when she had a clear shot at the goal. So she worked. Every night, she slept exhausted, but every morning she rolled off the gas-wagon, and started running.

  By the time they got to Digger, Raven had her trick ready for the exhibition before the match. As they'd been traveling she worked it out with Born. She'd talk, he'd listen, and then he'd make little gestures and shrugs, and she'd listen to those. According to Pranah, at blue wing, it wasn't something wrong in Born's throat—it was something in his brain, so he couldn't use hand-signs to talk either. No language at all. But he could communicate, if you listened. Raven listened.

  So for the exhibition at Digger, Raven went close in with Born. Into chain range, and then over and under and past, each duck and dive timed just right, each wheel of the chain exactly where Born wanted it to go. Yeah, it was showbiz—if they were playing against each other, Raven wouldn't have closed in like that, not ever, and if she had, he'd have pinned her in five. But that didn't mean it was nothing but showbiz. Showed Raven's eyes and Born's control, and for all that she knew where the chains would be, she still had to make the goal.

  Got some cheers out of the Digger crowd, though they weren't too happy that coach had set the stormer bet at a win by sixty. Well, they were and they weren't happy. Nobody won by sixty, so that was rude. So maybe they'd take a win off a stormer team, and that'd give them bragging rights all down the basin, or maybe they'd see one hellaciously good stormer team playing well.

  Not a lot of entertainment out in a place like Digger, and those long summer afternoons stretched forever. Maybe one or two people in the whole town didn't show up for the match, excluding those who'd drawn watch duty.

  Maybe one or two people in Digger missed one hell of a carnival. Final score 134-67, stormers. Three runners, two wings, and it was Raven who'd scored 48, last eight all in a row, no missed tries in the set. Everyone else played like that, people in Digger would've chased 'em out with pitchforks, and then talked about that match for the rest of their lives. Those 48 came on 96 tries, which was a damn sight better than Raven had ever thought she'd do, but which still wasn't 60%, because 60% was impossible, and she'd be better off learning to play as a defensive wing, like Coach wanted.

  That night, he blindfolded her before the rest of the rest of the team came out to fuck her. Supposed to help her recognize her team-mates. She'd have to be dead or stoned not to recognize Katy or Born—and she'd have to be hellaciously stoned not to recognize Born—but the blindfold made it harder, not easier to recognize the rest of them.

  At least it did that night. There was Topknot (101-50), Drumlin (149-60) where Raff left to take over as coach, and everyone played as hard as they goddamn could, to show Drumlin how badly they needed a new coach, Raisor (88-60), and so on, all down the basin. And Raven started to recognize Pranah by the scar on his right thigh, and by the rhythm he chose, Cali by the power in his hips and his fondness for fucking Raven's ass, Rache by the lightness of her touch and the way she enjoyed making Raven come.

  They'd lost the bet in Raisor. Damn near lost the game—it was the best team they'd played, and they had a deceptively gawky tower who'd played like crap the first half, and then managed a pin on Cali just after the half. But while he'd taken a hell of a lot of ribbing for that, Cali wasn't the one who was tied to the stump and used by the team afterward; he used Raven with the rest of them, even though he'd been pinned and she'd scored 22 on 40 tries.

  Since they'd lost the bet, Raven wasn't allowed to come, and there wasn't any mistaking Rache, from the way she'd played with that. Light touches with her hands, with her lips, until Raven was panting with need, and then she'd ease off, and start it again when Raven had recovered.

  Which left her in no state for Born to fuck her, not without her coming loud enough to wake up everyone in Raisor.

  So she'd suggested trying it from a different angle. Which turned out to be like trying to swallow an arm. Raven was barely able to get the head of his cock into her mouth, and no question her jaw was going to be sore the next day from just that effort. So it was mostly hands and lips and tongue, and small soft noises amidst the crickets and katydids.

  It hurt as much as what he normally did, and it wasn't near as satisfying. And she was so damn tired that it hurt to do anything with her arms other than let them hang limply in her bonds, like usual. But there was a sort of satisfaction to controlling the speed and angle, and to feeling Born thrusting at a pace that she chose, his control slipping when she wanted it to slip.

  When it did, she was still tied down, and he was still as strong as a gasoline tractor. But even when he was
coming, great streams and ropes of come down her throat and across her face, his hand still cradled her head gently, like he was holding a butterfly and feared he would crush it.

  Truth was, Coach wasn't just right about learning to recognize them when she was blindfolded. The whole thing—trying to make her target, and the consequences for failure—made her know them all, better than she'd known anyone. She could tell from Pranah's breathing when he was at the edge of his capacities, could tell when Cali wasn't going to take the try by the angle of his hips.

  And they all learned what she needed, learned to tell when she needed it. Passes got smoother, she got support from the towers when she needed it for tackles, they'd distract for her tries, she'd distract for theirs.

  And then they got out to the coast, and it was time for their real season.

  Storming was a way for teams to keep sharp, earn a little extra food and booze when they were training, pick up a likely prospect here and there. Coast league was goddamn murder. Three, four thousand gallons of trade liquor riding on exhibition and out-of-league matches. Hired matches for towns who couldn't afford to risk letting their local talent play, and then there was the league. Standings there meant better contracts, and faces in newspapers and all that.

  Out in the sticks, they'd been just stormers; when the season opened for the coast league, they were the Bobcats, with matching uniforms and new cleats and everything. Only thing Raven wore onto the field that was properly hers was the curse-marker from Miracle, tucked into the back of her helmet. Everything else was new and matched.

  Losing that bet in Raisor was the nearest thing they'd come to losing a game in all the time she'd been with them. They dropped their first two games in the coast league, and nobody even blinked.

  Well, Raven damn well blinked at that, but everyone else was ready for it. And fair enough; the other teams were like nothing she'd ever played against. Went down 54-47 to Equinox, because Equinox's center tower would snap down any try that came from more than twenty yards back, or any that was moving even a little slow. And 109-90 to the Blackbirds because their runners went all out, and stayed all out, and the wings kept making openings for them to ride on through.