A Riding Need was something else. 7 separate damn near eats up the chapter sex scenes in a 28K story. Unlike many smut scenes, actual pertinent to storyline things come out of those scenes, so it would be harder to write without them. But I do try to make sure that such scenes are unique, show a different aspect of intimacy instead of the same rutting pattern. Hopefully I did it well.

Explanations, which I will probably remove if I ever expand this thing: It's confessed early on that Lugh cannot leave his realm—basically is trapped. Maria moving in would just be jailing his lover with him. This means any move he makes to pull his weight against others in his pantheon? They can move through Otherworld and Earth, but he can't. They have an advantage. I didn't go in depth on it, but did make sure that was established early.

Lugh's Daughter Ethelyn can move through both realms. Lugh's daughter can inherit his power. Lugh poured everything into his child, so she holds his power from birth. It cost him his life to do this.

Lugh also is the one who restrained the hatching of other creatures like Mark.

And Mark has Lugh's book, is guardian of it.

The situation is set up for chaos (AKA MOAR STORY) an army growing up with their young goddess, while the pantheon has no way to bind them, and all she needs is within her, in a heart necklace, and an ancient book.

And as far as Mark sleeping in the Taxi, at the end? When you have cared for someone's needs all of your life, and they finally pass away, one of the most common reactions is to fall asleep because one part of your life is finished. I've watched and somewhat done this, several times. This is one of the few times that Mark would be able to sleep as he's the only guardian living until Maria learns her own abilities, or until the rest of his species grows up. He has a world of making up to do, but he's just not got the strength left, at this point.



Already finished for ONC:
Coins on a Battlefield (mild smut) and The King's Three Sons are both in 3rd round of ONC.

The next one's up:
Maysie's Galaxy (a children's story, have maybe 3 more chapters to write to "finish" it on the 30th, hopefully)
Djinn Trap (one of the 4 that made 1st round, just didn't get to finish it before 2nd round was announced)
After these 4, it's a crap shoot:
The Essence of U (2nd chapter uses lyrics, so no wonder it failed—I ain't rewriting it unless I finish the rest of it and think it's got potential for anything more than a "freebie")
Wolf & X Bunny (I'm a pantser, "stream-of-conscious", and this was just my brain going off like a tea kettle)
All of them have up to 8K posted, and should be pretty much done next month, I'm hoping.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and there are common ties between the books, which marks them as having been written the same year, not the same universe.

~~~

All artwork is AI generated, everything before 8K was edited enough to not have weird little quirks in the photos. Going back and looking closely, you'd probably see places where things need editing—which I can do...one day. Unfortunately, unless I work on this and expand it for another competition, I'm not sure I will come back to this one, although yes, there's still more things to tell.