Corresponding Marks

Many thanks for your continued support to: Psych. B. Mused, The Book, Ero Sennin, Kurokajin, Kimerad, Elena Pajaro and Kayla! That you take the time to not only read but also review keeps me so inspired, even when I’m forced to slow down given that the Spring Semester has started. Thank you nonetheless, and I’ll keep striving on! If you’d like to be notified when I do post new chapters, or if you just have questions or wanna talk, you can email me at dragonhorse18h@yahoo.com and I’ll be glad to keep you posted! Thank you so very much again!

Chapter 6
It’s a…

She’d wanted this, had spent a great deal of energy trying to convince Red that it was okay, that he wasn’t taking advantage of her, and most of all, that he wouldn’t hurt her. She’d never guessed that any man could want something as obviously as Red did and yet be so very tentative in taking it, even though it was being more than offered to him. Larena hadn’t understood why, until now. His big strong body felt magnificent above hers, so much muscle, there was nothing soft on Red, nothing; touching him was touching power. His weight pinned her down against his bed in a way that made her feel so very free in giving herself completely over to a lover.

She’d always imagined this scene in a room lit by candles and the crackle of a fireplace, just light enough to see and just dark enough to satisfy her shyness. She’d be laying back in a canopy bed, upon a snowy white Battenburg Lace coverlet, looking into the eyes of the man who would lean over her, and make them one in a thrust of Romance Novel famed pain and blood, making her his and taking her virginity. She hadn’t expected her first time to be the most pleasurable, she was ready to feel uncomfortable as something foreign entered her body, figured it would probably feel so much bigger than it actually was, but Larena never would have guessed that big would be so big!

“Stop me,” Red whispered gently against her forehead as he kissed her, nearly begging her to say it, the throbbing in his diffidently tense muscles beginning to be outmatched by the throbbing in his long, thick cock against her thigh. “If you don’t stop me…” he quivered above her with hunger for body and fear of just what menace he could be to her. “I’ll keep going.”

What she estimated to be eleven inches in length and easily as thick as her forearm drummed and pulsed against her smooth skin, the broad tip of it dribbling the liquid fire of his need. Larena realized her own body was shaking too, shaking with the doubt that this was even possible, but it had to be, it just had to be. She drew as deep a breath as she could, clamored to somehow center herself, looking up into Red’s dilated yellow eyes, hearing him moan his shameful pleasure when she shifted beneath him, trapping the hugeness of his erection in the bend of her thigh. She’d started out wanting this, but as the lost look in her and Red’s eyes deepened, Larena realized this went far beyond want, they needed this. “Red,” she could barely even whisper, “don’t stop!” Larena lifted her hips against his, encouraging and torturing him forward at the same time, finally feeling his broad back arch, and his left hand delve between their bodies, wrapping around his bulky organ and making her nearly shriek with the rapture of his cock parting her slick outer lips, gripped by the reality that something harder and larger than she ever imagined encountering was about to be shoved as deeply inside her as it would go. Only one thought settled her and kept her from begging Red to stop; babies, if a child could enter the world through such a channel, then this was not impossible…

…impossible? What did that word even mean anymore? It was now just passed 6:30 in the evening, she’d been labor for hours, far longer than anyone had expected, but finally there seemed to be an end to it. Babies, children, they most certainly did enter the world through a narrow channel, and it was redefining the word “impossible” in ways that Larena had never understood before.

“I’m so tired,” she couldn’t help crying out as she pushed, tears streaming down her face, trying her best to keep going…as if she could just call it quits.

Red bent over her more, tightening his hold on her. “You’re fine, babe,” he encouraged, brushing her sweaty, auburn bangs out of her eyes. “Just breathe, Lar.”

Red had been amazing through this, he’d carried her through it all, she swore that his stable and confident voice was in her head, setting the foundation she needed to draw strength from, but now with the pain and the fatigue reaching their peaks, the lack of panic in his voice was somewhat annoying. “I am breathing!” She half growled at him, gasping for air as her body entered an involuntary spasm that clamped every muscle of her lower body tightly.

“We’re close, Larena,” appeased Abe, seated between her feet in the stirrups, his eyes focused forward at a place he’d normally never allow himself to look. “The head’s nearly delivered, it’s almost over!” He couldn’t help the excitement in his voice, he’d never before been part of anything like this, and he made a note to later thank both Larena and Red for allowing him to be part of such an experience. “Push again, just like you did before!”

She was certain she couldn’t, she felt like a wet rag, wanted to lay limply back in Red’s arms and rest, but Red wouldn’t let her surrender to the weariness, lowering his mouth down to her ear. “You can do this,” he whispered. “I love you, Lar.”

At that Larena’s eyes sprang open and she turned her head towards him. “You’ve never said that to me before, Red!” There were tears in her eyes again, but it had nothing to do with the stress and the pain. “I mean, I always knew it, but you never said it!”

“Well,” Red smiled a bit shyly, looking around the room at the whole situation. “I kinda figured it was time.” He couldn’t help smirking a bit, then when Larena smiled, he laughed, so did she.

“I love you, too!” She lifted her head and tilted her chin upwards, Red leaning down, their lips met in closed mouth kiss.

“Um,” Abe’s eyes shifted from where he’d been watching intently for the last few minutes. “Excuse me, but this baby would very much like to be born.”

Another surge of pain actually broke Larena and Red apart, she ground out another cry and pushed with the pain, feeling like she was about to split in two, though she knew Abe would of course do something if she did. She felt the child move forward, heard Abe excitedly announce that the head was now clear as he suctioned the baby’s mouth, encouraging her to push again. Larena did, was near to blacking out when finally the extremeness of the pressure that had wracked her body for the last few hours ceased, and the cries of a child filled the white room.

“It’s another boy!” Abe happily announced, holding the red skinned newborn up for his parents to see, yellow eyes puckered into slits, tiny nubs of horns protruding from his forehead, tail almost coiled as he howled his emergence into the world. “Larena, Red,” he stood, carrying the baby over to the exam table and grabbing yet another piece of damp gauze to clean the little one up with, “Congratulations! You’re the parents of six very healthy sons!”

Red smiled, speechless, able only to press a kiss to Larena’s sweaty forehead as she struggled to sit up, reaching out her tired and shaky arms. “I wanna see him!” She called elatedly, for the sixth time that day. It seemed to take forever for Abe to swaddle the newborn in a blanket and gently place him in her arms, but once he was there, Larena pulled her son against her, that same feeling bursting inside her that she’d never felt before this day. “He looks like you,” she said delightedly to Red, who gazed down at his sixth born son over her shoulder. “They all look like you!” She laughed contentedly, unable to take her eyes from the baby she held.

“Yeah,” Red smiled, his stone arm around Larena’s shoulders, the finger of his other hand trying to gently nudge open the clamped fist of his son. “Sorry about that.” He chuckled.

Larena laughed. “Don’t be,” she looked up at Red. “I’ve always thought you were ruggedly handsome.”

Red felt himself blush and quickly sought to change the subject before Larena or Abe noticed his skin was becoming more red than usual. “Hey,” he said to her, unable to fight the smile still on his face. “You did great, babe! Really! I woulda given up somewhere around the third one!” Red laughed, and kissed Larena again. “I love ya!” One of the other five children already secured in makeshift cradles began to cry, prompting Red to look over his broad shoulder. “And you, too!” He smiled to his fidgety son, he and Larena laughing together, for the moment all worries of doom and destruction gone from his mind, until he looked up to see his father and Manning looking on from the other side of the glass window.

* * * * * *

“Well, I knew something like this was going to happen some day!” Manning crossed his arms over his chest and stood looking on tensely; obviously wishing his hands were around someone’s neck.

“Did you?” Asked Bruttenholm nonchalantly, also looking on at his son and six grandchildren, wishing that Manning hadn’t picked now to join him. Hellboy and Larena were so obviously in love, unafraid to reach out to one another and eager to be there for one another. The professor found himself pondering if Hellboy’s own witch mother and demon father had been so. He doubted it. The matter obliged much more serious thought, and it also would have been nice to have a moment or two to congratulate the new parents, and see the babies, before having to deal with Director Manning and jumping to negative conclusions. There would be plenty of time for that.

“Yes, I did!” Manning said indignantly, eyes bulging with his internalized rage. “The only thing I didn’t figure was that it wouldn’t be enough merely locking him up,” he pointed emphatically at Hellboy through the glass. “If he’s going to wander through neighborhoods at night like some…randy stray dog, then I should have had him neutered, too!”

“Director Manning,” The professor turned towards him again, as calmly as he could, but tapped his cane on the floor in frustration. “Am I to understand that ‘neutering’ is a precaution you find acceptable to take with guests in your home as well?”

“Of course, he’s a guest, not a prisoner! But look at this! Look!” Manning angrily fumbled for the rolled up reports tucked into the inner pocket of his blazer, finally finding them and unrolling them for Bruttenholm to see. “It looks like Project Ragna Rok the sequel on Tarmagant Island!” His index finger tapped rapidly at the satellite photos he held in front of the professor. “The gate appears to be open again, do you see it?”

“Yes,” Bruttenholm wanted to roll his eyes, or better yet, push past Manning and go in to congratulate his son and…well, the mother of his grandchildren, but of course he didn’t.

“Aha!” Manning crowed as if he’d won some sort of victory. “You can’t tell me that the gate being open, on Tarmagant, has nothing to do with the births of six little demons, all born six minutes apart, starting at six o’clock! That’s three sixes! Not usually a good sign, now is it?”

At that the professor lifted his head in defiance. “Director Manning, you know as well as I do that ‘666’ was meant to denote Emperor Nero, and there is no correlation between three sixes and anything genuinely demonic!”

“Then why has the number appeared here and now, given the prophecy that has been fulfilled?” Manning again held up his satellite photographs, searching out one which clearly showed a ring, standing vertically against the back drop of ruins, its center rippling like blue water. “Does it or does it not look to you as though those six…things have been sent forth through the gateway into the here and now, via the body of that girl in there?” His finger hit the glass several times a he pointed towards the young woman in the bed, but he failed to notice that something had changed on the other side of the glass. “Who is she, anyway?”

“Larena!” Red slammed the door behind him. He’d come bearing cigars for he and his father and was more than irritated to see that Manning was present. But when he’d heard him ask after Lar in such a crass manner…that the director would dare to even think anything negative or threatening towards Larena stoked a fury inside Red. “And if you have a problem with me, you come to me! But you leave her the hell alone!”

“Hellboy,” the professor was quickly between his son and Manning, Hellboy having unknowingly strode up to the director and looked down at him sinisterly. “Step back, this is no time to do anything—“

“Pop, I ain’t makin’ any promises! He starts in like that again, you’ll be cleanin’ pieces of him up with a Shop-Vac!” Red stood pounding his granite fist into his other hand and glaring at Manning.

“Oh, is that a threat?” Replied an annoyed Manning, “Because you know what ‘threatening a superior’ would look like in your many storied personnel file?”

Red growled. “Is that all you got, Manning? Bureaucracy and paper pushing?”

“Hellboy!” Professor Bruttenholm tried again, pushing at his son’s chest, but he was hardly noticed, and the director wasn’t helping things. His son had always been the overprotective type when it came to things he loved, but the way he was behaving was a bit alarming.

Manning laughed smugly. “It’s all about where those papers get pushed, now isn’t it?”

Red’s yellow eyes narrowed and he growled again, sounding so very beast-like, moving in on Manning so closely that the Professor was squeezed out from in between them. His gigantic right hand curled into a tight fist and began to rise. “Don’t talk about my family!” Red’s voice was dangerously low, his teeth gritted as he talked; his right hand slung forward with an angry grunt, glancing Manning across the chest and shoulder, knocking him back a good three feet before he fell and slid all the way against the opposite wall, laying there dizzily and Red and Professor Bruttenholm looked on.

“Well,” Sighed Bruttenholm, looking from Manning to his son.

“He’ll be alright, Pop,” Red shrugged, the vexation lightening as he watched the way Manning struggled to focus on one object at a time. “I just scattered his chickens a little, that’s all.”

“Hellboy,” Bruttenholm still sighed. “You’re a father now, you had best begin thinking of the kind of example you’ll be setting!”

“What?” Red answered in disbelief. Why was his father not on his side? Hadn’t he heard what Manning had said? “He deserved it! Didn’t he deserve it? Doesn’t he always deserve it?”

“It wasn’t necessary,” Replied Bruttenholm as he turned towards the door that lead to Larena and the babies. “Because we don’t even know if this fits all the parameters of that prophecy yet!”