Bloom & Dark

by Regina Watts

  Desperate for her, desperate to be close to her, I gripped her around the thighs and increased their pressure around my face. Then, folding an arm around her spine, I rolled with her until I was upon my back and settled her lovely body down upon my face. She moaned, grinding against me, the wet velvet of her flesh marking my lips with her scent. I throbbed for the durrow who sat on my face, my nose buried in her luscious backside and my tongue working against her valley all provoking the envy of that far more desperate organ. It was this that she teased, leaning forward from her throne to resume her tender suckling.

  “I’d ought not to let you be satisfied before I loan you out to Indra and Odile,” said my mistress, her hand folding around me to slowly work me over, each pump a torturous journey of her delicate hand. “You’ll be gone all the longer if you’re not ready to go from the start…I think I’ll just make you nice and hard before I go back to sleep, and then when bloom is here and it’s time for you to go, you’ll be perfectly ready to satisfy whatever lucky durrow has earned your services.”

  “It’s a wadjiti woman, actually,” I informed her in a murmur against her labia, provoking a laugh while her keen ears picked up my muffled words.

  “A wadjita! Look at you, Burningsoul…not even a few days in the Nightlands and already availing yourself of its benefits. Wadjiti women are very sensual, indeed. I’m sure you’ll enjoy fucking her…how you twitch to hear me mention it! Well, you must tell me about your conquest later so I can make use of this nice, stiff condition.”

  “I’ve never known a person so foreign to jealousy…” Gasping at the way she strangled my very existence, I gripped at her flesh in response, nuzzled her and indulged my tongue for a few penetrations before murmuring against her, “How curious it feels to be told by a woman with her hand around me that she’d like to hear of me put to other use!”

  “It’s only natural…think of what a status symbol it is for a durrow with a popular stud. One becomes godmother to a bevy of promising young ladies, the next generation is secured, and it is all thanks to one’s good choices. I love the thought of you pumping my friends full in the name of breeding them… Oh, oh—speak of love potions, Burningsoul, I’ll give you a love potion that will keep that rod of yours eager all night so you can satisfy each one of us before the dark has ended.”

  “By Weltyr, your wickedness is so utterly captivating to me—yes, Madame, as you will, I am happy to serve you in any way you command…”

  “Then please me, slave, go on, oh—oh! Yes, that’s it, faster, faster—yes, yes, Burningsoul, oh!”

  There was nothing sweeter to me than Valeria’s bright, crying climaxes. She trembled around me, her body stiffening against mine, her feminine heart rubbing against my mouth and the stubble of my jaw. The elf woman groaned and worked my length for a few avid strokes before releasing me, her quivering body still grinding against my lips until the orgasm had completely passed her by. Then with a low, almost playful chuckle, she dismounted me and said, “You may hold me while I sleep, Paladin, but anything more you do will be at the risk of your own health.”

  I laughed and folded my arms around her, my head swimming with unsated desire but my honor bound to obey her commands. At any rate, there was a sweetness in that obedience. I could not understand it, but I meant what I said about the pleasures of a gorgeous woman’s commands. It was surely as baffling to me as the emotions she experienced were to her.

  To me, the love-feelings were less baffling but certainly ill-advised and far more powerful than anything I had experienced. We knew so little about one another—she, I suppose, knew some things about me, though only by virtue of her dream interpretation. Therefore we were relative strangers, yet our bodies communed with such natural passion that the answers to what questions we did ask one another occurred to us as a form of remembering, rather than learning. It seemed somehow to me that she was reminding me about herself; about things I had never and yet always known.

  Therefore, when it came time for her to depart for the bloom without me in her shadow as I’d been the day prior, I felt a pang of reluctance—an oddly genuine worry. There was no reason for it. She had been perfectly fine before my arrival, and was surrounded by other, longer-standing durrow guards all hours of the day. Yet I had to coach myself into believing that she would be fine and that I would clap eyes on her again soon enough. Ignorant to my strange strain of worried thoughts, she drew her cloak around her shoulders and adjusted the embrace of her snake.

  “Odile and Indra have been instructed to collect you from here,” said my mistress, looking me up and down with a languid smile of pleasure. “Serve them as readily as you would serve me.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “Oh, and leave that sword of yours behind.”

  I scoffed, looking from her to Strife at my hip. “I’m to move through El’ryh without a weapon?”

  “It’s not relevant to your duties, is it? The sword will be here when you return…rest assured, it is better you should be without it than risk it being confiscated by the city guards because you are out and about without your registered owner.”

  Grimly assessing the weapon and then, with a sigh, shaking my head, I removed it from my hip and told her, “I suppose I have no choice.”

  “Oh, come now, no need to pout…why, it isn’t as though you were going to try to escape or anything like that, right?” Valeria winked at me. I said nothing and upon seeing that she laughed, turning to exit and telling me, “I will see you this evening; a few slaves will be helping us at the party, and I’ll have that potion for you.”

  “That wasn’t just dirty talk?”

  “Worried?”

  “Excited, maybe,” I confessed to her. Her teeth glinted with her broader smile and she reached out, pawing at me through the fabric of my tunic before making good her exit from the chambers.

  How she ached me! My head swam and my body yearned to follow her. Never had I dreamed a woman would so obsess me, but oh, this priestess of the durrow was so different from anyone I had known! Her sensuality captivated me; I wished to please her, not just by making love to her but by exciting her friends, by following her every command to the letter, by earning her trust.

  And then?

  Then, would I still be able to escape?

  Barely two days had passed since my arrival to the Palace and my induction into this new life of slavery, however pleasurable it seemed it could be. The scar of my brand had not yet healed. I barely knew anything about Valeria as a woman…yet knowing her at all made me feel light and bright, as excited and hopeful as I once was when first being inducted into the Order. I buzzed with happy possibility and somehow feared spoiling what felt like an opportunity of some kind. An opportunity to what, I wondered?

  I did not long ponder before the door to my mistress’s chamber was thrown open by one of the guards outside. “You, slave—Mistresses Indra and Odile are here to collect you. The Materna has already discussed the matter with us.”

  While I thanked them and stepped out of the room, my ears were soon pierced with a shriek of delight. “There he is,” cried Indra with the excited tone of a girl recovering a lost dog. Odile watched with her arms folded while her companion hurried up to embrace and greet me as a friend. The more seasoned of the two adventurers looked pleased to see me despite her reserved expression.

  “Hail, Burningsoul,” said Odile, raising a gloved hand in greeting when Indra had released me. “How goes your new life as a slave to beauty?”

  “Thusfar it is a far sweeter slavery than any man deserves,” I assured them, laughing, reflexively smoothing my hair back upon my head before gesturing toward the lift. “I’m glad to see you both again, though. Good thing Valeria seems fairly reasonable; she didn’t put up much argument about loaning me out for a day. A bloom. You know.”

  “A good thing, too.” Sighing as we piled into the lift car together, Odile slumped against the back wall and said, “I was having terrible dreams about not being able to get my
money back from that wadjita…they’re ruthless creatures, even by Nightlands standards.”

  Given how ruthless I had heard durrow to be, I admit I had a new sense of over-confidence when it came to my way with women and my ability to find a kernel of feminine ego in any of them. Surely, no matter how ruthless this snake-woman was, she would melt in my arms the same as any female. My confidence was even such that I looked forward to my meeting with her, the journey back through the city with Indra and Odile seeming quite an overlong march between me and the exotic new experience to be had. All the while the durrow accompanying me discussed many things, making small explanations of this or that aspect of durrow culture when I thought to ask. As we neared the district where lay the smithy, I inquired, “My mistress—”

  The women looked at me in curious anticipation: I realized right away that I was the slave of the hottest source of gossip in all El’ryh. I therefore tempered carefully my choice of language and my tone, saying simply, “Valeria is quite a stupendous woman—I never expected that I would find myself in the service of such a lovely and intriguing mistress. How is it that she doesn’t have a guard already?”

  “Oh, I think she’s employed more than a handful of personal guards through the years…” Shrugging, Odile resumed leading the way and said, “She’s had a lot of problems lately, though. I think her last one was killed while trying to delay and assassin who managed to get in through her window—did his job long enough that she managed to do the deed of her own avenging, but obviously, his life was lost in the process.”

  Surprised to have learned this, I searched Odile’s face for some hint of humor before deciding she wasn’t kidding. I had been wondering about these vague murmurs of subterfuge, but had yet seen no evidence. For some reason the thought that I had a predecessor in my lady’s defense did not occur to me until this anecdote was shared. Had Valeria had loved him even half as much as she loved me? Based on her unbridled passion, she did not seem like a woman in mourning. Surely if she were grieving anything like a death, I would have been able to determine it.

  I pondered this warily while Indra and Odile led me to the façade of the shop I remembered only vaguely amid the blur of my arrival to El’ryh. Standing on the stoop, the women exchanged a look and Odile said, “You wait here.”

  Then, leaving Indra behind, Odile pushed me into the shop just as the wadjita emerged from the back room with a glance over her shoulder. Her slender neck snapped into position when she realized she was not alone. The burning golden snake eyes set within the pale mask of her face trailed over us, searching only briefly before finding recognition. “Well, there you are! As promised…how good it is to see you again, Odile.”

  “Yeah, and you. Do you have our gold?”

  “All ready to go, once I’ve had a chance to amuse myself with your man.”

  “Oh, he’s not ours anymore…Valeria laid claim to him.” The wadjita’s eyes widened and leapt back up to me, assessing me closely while Odile went on with a wave in my direction. “Sounds like he’s poised to be the next big thing around the Palace, so enjoy him while he’s new…he’s going to be too in-demand to be of use to anyone on our level.”

  “Is that so? Well…he must be quite talented to already be so well-regarded after a few days.”

  “Rest assured, he certainly is…we’ll leave you two alone for a couple of hours. When I come back, I want him and the gold, both.”

  “Of course, of course…see you soon, Odile, thank you for keeping your word.”

  “I hate it when people thank me for doing the decent thing, like they didn’t expect it of me!” Shaking her head, Odile slipped past me and back out into the street.

  Alone with the wadjita, I turned to appreciate her serpentine beauty and found her leaning forward to assess me more closely from the other side of the counter. The scales of her white bosom glittered in the low light of her shop from within the fabric of her bodce; I wondered about the rest of her anatomy and how it was related to the long tail that was her only means of movement.

  “Valeria’s stud, are you? Well, this should be interesting…come along, slave.” Throwing open the board at the side of her counter to gesture me through, the wadjita watched me every step of the way before drawing back the curtain to the second half of her shop. “You and I will have a very pleasing hour ahead of us, if only you will let it be.”

  I was about to banter back the assurance that there was no way an hour with a woman so intriguing could be anything but pleasant, but the words disappeared from my lips as I was ushered into the wadjita’s back rooms. Stepping over the threshold and into her private home, I faltered, reached instinctively for Strife’s handle, then remembered I had been obliged to leave it back in the Palace.

  A pity! It would have been useful against the spirit-thief towering before me.

  AL-LISTUX

  ONLY IN RETROSPECT did I consider I ought to have recognized the fishy rubber smell of the spirit-thief before I ever saw it. Then I may have been slightly more prepared to turn the corner and find myself face-to-face with that hideous tentacled visage, the demon’s blazing eyes sickly yellow within the slimy pink flesh of its face. I leapt back, my fists raised, my eyes scanning the walls for one of the wadjita’s many weapons even as the spirit-thief’s voice rattled through my head.

  Do not fear, Paladin. I have not met you here to punish you for your crimes against my people, as perhaps I had ought.

  “You might be able to try,” I advised it.

  Ignoring my furious glance, the wadjita who shut the curtain behind us and looked unconcerned at the spirit-thief in her house. “You didn’t tell me that this guy was Valeria’s slave…now I understand.”

  I have told you many times before, Kyrie, that you are better off not questioning my judgments. All things piece together as we will them.

  “As Weltyr wills them, heretic.” Far less patient for matters of theological discussion when it came to a being such as this, I remained at the ready and kept my eyes plastered upon the predatory features of the tentacled demon. “Tell me why I’m here, if I’m not meant to kill you during your attempt to avenge your brood?”

  Your swagger is very amusing, Paladin. It is one of the things that lured Valeria to you; it is one of the things that you can exploit on our behalf.

  “Exploit on your behalf? Help you, you mean? Why would I help one of your kind with anything?”

  Because I am willing to overlook your crimes against my people in exchange. Because I am willing to free you in exchange. At the slight relaxing of my tense arms, the tentacles on either edge of the writhing bunch at the spirit-thief’s mouth curled in the hideous approximation of a smile. That’s right, Paladin—freedom. Your liberation from slavery, accomplished with one very simple price before you even fully adjust to being a slave.

  “Go on,” I said. “What’s the trick here? I can’t believe I’m actually considering a bargain with a spirit-thief, but I’ll hear you out.”

  What I want is very simple—a task not even in conflict with your values. After all, it is your duty to kill heretics whose teachings run counter to the faith of Weltyr, correct?

  It waited for me to respond and, eventually determining no answer was forthcoming from my lips, it simple told me, All we ask is that you kill that mistress of yours. We will be able to ferry you away from danger and back up to the surface, if only you would accomplish this one little thing.

  “Little!” I balked, the thought of plunging a blade through Valeria’s heart or killing her with some insidious poison a worse crime to my soul than any I had heard proposed in my lifetime. “It’s no small thing to take an innocent life,” I warned the spirit-thief as well as the wadjita who seemed to be in league with it. The slithering tentacles of the spirit-thief twisted around one another with its scoff.

  Surely slaying this woman is no more important to you than ending the lives of my many family members back in our desecrated lair. You have only just met her. Is it really true that hum
ans attach themselves so quickly, even to those who would subjugate them?

  “It has nothing to do with being human—all I know is that Valeria has treated me with kindness, and so far as I have seen she has done nothing against me. Nothing immoral at all.”

  Aside from engaging in slavery, of course. The spirit-thief’s eyes focused on me for a long moment before its rectangular pupils trailed over to the wadjita. Surely, this slave is in enamored with his lovely mistress. Would you see if you can break this spell over him, Kyrie? I suspect all that will be required is reminding him that the embraces of other women do exist.

  “With pleasure,” answered the snake woman, her arms weaving around my neck in a sweetly scented jingle of bangles clattering upon one another.

  While her cool body slithered up against mine, I did my best to ignore her caresses and kisses. In fact, I did not look at her at all while telling the hateful demon before me, “It is not a matter of attachment or other women—not anything like that. I simply cannot accuse my mistress of being unjust toward me. Not within the context of durrow social structures, at any rate.”

  Listen to how readily he would justify his own bondage! ‘My mistress,’ he says…already, he has adapted to his role too much to leave it.

  “That simply isn’t the case. Rather, I’m sure if I serve her loyally—”

  That she’ll free you? What a foolish dream that is.

  As the wadjita’s long tongue lashed against my throat, her slim fingers trailing down my chest and under my tunic, I stared down the spirit-thief. It mocked me by going on. Perhaps, in forty years, she’ll tire of having you around. You’ll be a mere sixty-something by then, Paladin…still with a few good years left to savor on the surface.

  I gritted my teeth as the wadjita’s nimble hand fit down against the bulge in my breeches, inevitable with the lascivious performance of this female serpent. And serpent was indeed the word; I looked coldly upon her as she lowered toward the ground and put her mouth to work on me, an act that I suppose would have meant more to a slave who hadn’t already had such promising interactions with his mistress. Ignoring her, I demanded, “What cause have either one of you to wish Valeria’s life?”