by Lisa Daniels
Now in bed, Seon faced Artiz with a smirk.
He cradled her face in his palms and planted a kiss upon her lips. “Looks like you might turn out to be a regular world saver, huh?”
“I had no idea I could do that.” Seon smiled proudly. “But I bet you’re glad I did.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I am. But I still think you shouldn’t have risked it. What if that wyrm had chosen to kill you instantly? What if you froze to death wandering in the darkness? You took far too many risks, and there wasn’t that much of a chance you’d find us in the first place.”
Now that Artiz said these things, Seon wondered if somehow she had been guided. Maybe she sensed the souls all clustered together, somehow, and headed straight to them. Maybe she knew where they were all along.
I did feel somewhere like I knew where I was going. She decided not to mention that to him just yet. They only just grasped at the edges of the power she held in her soul.
“I’m sorry. I know. I am too reckless. I didn’t really think it through. I just… I didn’t want to sit around and do nothing. To wait like a coward in the school as wyrms converged around us, starving everyone out. You were gone too long. Someone had to do something.”
Artiz examined her expression for a moment, before finally nodding. “I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. And thank you for looking for me. Thank you.”
They went slow and sensuous this time, wanting to linger in one another’s embrace. Wanting to take the time to get to know one another’s bodies better, and enhance the experience. Relief emanated from being able to touch one another again. From both being alive, instead of dead.
She felt how much he cared in the way he kissed her lips, tender and warm. They brushed against her, as soft as a butterfly’s wings. Her heart swelled at the delicate, caring embrace.
Seon sought more of Artiz’s bare flesh, slipping her hands into the robes and brushing over his back. She marveled at the way his muscles bunched up there and shivered in anticipation of her touch. She enjoyed running her fingers and blunt nails along his spine. His breath shuddered by her ear. She let out a loud moan as Artiz nibbled at her lobe, scratching along her robes with clawed fingers until he slid them off.
They stayed standing and naked for a few moments, taking the time to caress one another’s bodies. Both feeling the way their muscles rippled, and listening to breaths quicken.
She wanted to give Artiz more satisfaction than just the easy caress of her body. She drew back from his lips with a salacious grin.
Seon then dropped to her knees. Artiz’s eyes widened when she stroked his thighs, before kissing along the length of his erection. She massaged his balls, giving him sultry, burning gazes, loving the way his gray eyes hazed over. Loving the connection that surged between their souls in a lick of energy, like lightning and fire at the same time.
He let out a grunt as she took him in her mouth, her tongue swirling around his manhood. She liked the power this position gave her, knowing his vulnerable part lay in her mouth, knowing that she could bring extreme pain to him, or extreme pleasure. It fired up the joy inside her, and she focused on moving her head back and forth.
He’s mine, she thought. And I’m his.
Just before he came close to climaxing, she felt him quivering. He attempted to stop her, but she relentlessly ploughed on until he erupted in her mouth. She swallowed with a grin, secretly glad that his semen happened to be tasteless, and he groaned.
“Skies!” Artiz continued to take huge, gasping breaths, staring at her with glazed eyes. He only took a moment to recover. With a growl, he picked her up and flung her on the bed, before kneeling on the floor, yanking her legs over his shoulders.
“How about I give you the same treatment?” His voice came out as a rumbling purr, sending jolts of energy into Seon’s lower body. All her senses focused on Artiz and what he intended to do to her down there.
He buried his face into her throbbing core. His tongue ran along her slit, and his lips closed on her nub. It took him a short while to get the correct motion upon her nub, but when he did, it sent her into shivering ecstasy. She whimpered, moaned, and writhed on the sheets, taking in the aroused scent of them both. Taking in his sweat and winter-snow aroma. Strong impulses of lust emitted from her core. It was so easy to drown herself in sensation. To forget everything else. To become the recipient of pleasure.
Artiz had that way of taking her mind to somewhere far away, of fulfilling the emptiness in her soul. Part of her still didn’t want to trust anyone and thought she was better off alone. The other part went fuck it and went to invite Artiz into her life.
Easy to forget all her principles with Artiz doing such expert work with his tongue. With his words sending blissful vibrations through her. The orgasm built up in her as if blocked behind a dam. When it released itself, it undulated through her blood, sending a drowning wave of warmth that sank her bones and muscles into the bed.
It pulled her body down and sent her mind high, drifting as if lost in the clouds. Her thighs continued to twitch as Artiz prolonged his work on her nub, not stopping yet. The sensations merged into one another and Seon let out a whimpering cry. The orgasm seemed to roll straight into another one, and her toes curled.
She wanted him to stop; it was too unbearable, and yet she never wanted him to stop. When he finally did, she had lost all control of her limbs. It took too much effort to even tilt her head to the side.
Wow. I feel like I’ve been hit by an avalanche.
Artiz chuckled near her core, giving her one last lick over the glistening wetness there. “If that’s how you react when I lick you, then I plan to be doing a lot more of that.”
The chuckle sent a weird vibration through Seon. She flinched, hypersensitive, finding the strength to move again. When he moved up her body, even the casual contact of his leg against her core was enough to make her twitch and recoil.
He nuzzled his nose into her neck, and she felt his eyelashes tickle the bottom of her chin as they closed. They lay together in bed like this for a few moments, with Seon wondering what kind of future awaited them. Hopefully one that would actually work, and pay no heed to the teacher-student distance. When he moved himself from her neck to gaze at her, she smiled and kissed him once more upon the lips.
“I’m glad you’re not afraid of me,” Seon said, now stroking his cheek.
“I’m not afraid of you. I am afraid, however,” Artiz replied, “of something happening to you. I don’t think you understand how important you are, do you?”
“I suppose if I can do something like that to all those wyrms, I’m probably useful.” She gave a nonchalant shrug.
“Not just to do with that,” Artiz said. “But to me. You’re important to me. I don’t want you going off and getting yourself killed. Even if you’re the one who has the advantage. I just want you safe.”
Seon’s heart soared at this, and she hugged him tighter in an attempt to release the energy. “Really? You really mean that?”
“Yes.”
She kissed him several times in quick succession. “Artiz. I don’t plan to stay locked up if I can do something like what you saw me do. But I will try to be a little more careful. Just for you. And… I think I’m starting to understand something else.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I think I’m starting to understand what it feels like to be loved.” Seon buried her face into his shoulder, suddenly embarrassed. That sentence had barely managed to squeeze itself out of her lips. It revealed a part of herself she never intended to let see the light of day.
“I hope so,” he whispered in her ear. He stroked her hair, taking away the embarrassment. “Otherwise I’d be doing a pretty awful job of caring for you, wouldn’t I? My little soul stealer.”
She hit him on the arm. “Don’t call me that!”
“My little soul mate,” he said then, with a teasing tone. The statement quickly became serious, and the phrase hung a little too long
in the air around them.
In a choked voice, Seon said, “I’m okay with being called that.”
As if embarrassed by his admission, Artiz then said, “Or maybe I should call you my soul love.”
She blinked. “Did you… did you just pun at me?”
“Maybe.”
“You’ve never done a pun before.”
“I do them. Sometimes.”
“Please never do one again.”
“I can’t promise that,” he said with a grin. “If I see the moment, I’m going for it. You could say I enjoy… punishing people.”
Seon groaned theatrically. “No. Please. Stop.”
He laughed and did as she asked, focusing once more on the cuddling.
A long road awaited her. One where she needed to find lost souls, return them home, and wrench corrupted ones from the wyrms. Slowly start changing the world for the better.
And she could do it. Because her power wasn’t as terrible as she thought it was.
It was hers, and people loved and hated her for it.
First things first, she planned to find out the owner of the locket. To help Isera come to better terms with her past. To improve on her powers and send more souls home. All with Artiz by her side.
Artiz, with his powerful drake form, his desire to care for her, and his freshly unveiled like of puns. This could end up being a rather interesting relationship. If she didn’t kill him first for his stupid humor.
Just wait until she told Isera, Anya and Kalgrin. They’d likely start throwing puns her way as well. It would be nice to have their laughter, instead of the grave stares of everyone around them, reminding Seon of the deadliness of her powers.
She fell asleep with a smile upon her face, fierce determination boiling her heart.
The End
Rescued by Ryland
Deep River Shifters – Book 1
By Lisa Daniels
Chapter 1
Settling in and an Unexpected Distraction
Placing her hand on the back of her neck, Serenity rolled her head back trying to pop her neck. As much as she loved programming apps, there were times when she wanted nothing more than to throw her computer against the wall and run outside. Granted, it was why she really needed to set up a timer for herself – being sedentary for long periods of time had always gotten to her, no matter how much she liked what she was doing. Her neck gave a satisfying pop and Serenity let out a loud sigh. Pushing her chestnut brown hair off of her shoulder, the young woman was beginning to feel entirely restless.
She should have gotten up and gone outside several hours ago. Looking at the clock, she realized that she hadn’t stood up in about three hours. She rubbed a hand over her face and decided it was time for a long stroll outside, even though it was getting close to sunset.
Placing her computer beside her on the couch, Serenity quickly saved her work and closed the computer. “Yeah, I think that is the sign I need. When I can’t debug something that simple, then it is obviously time to take a break,” she muttered as she pushed herself up from the couch. Her long legs easily cleared the ottoman she had purchased for her new place but was too lazy to move out of the way. Most of her furniture had come from her guardian and friends, so the living room of the apartment was a hodge-podge of various styles and looks – not that she really paid any attention. The bright red ottoman didn’t match anything in the room, and clashed fairly painfully against the orange sofa. Interior decorating had never been one of her strong suits. Anything that didn’t involve being physically active or coding was largely out of Serenity’s understanding. A few of her friends had offered to decorate her last apartment, but had been met with a simple shrug of her slender shoulders. When she left MIT for the Pacific Northwest, only a few of her closest friends had assisted. Most were too disappointed that she had chosen to leave the prestigious school for some unheard of town in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the country. They felt that as a cum laude graduate, she owed it to the school to stick around – they simply could not understand what would make her decide to move somewhere more open and dangerous than their old New England city. With several large cities nearby, her fellow students and graduates could not image anywhere that could possibly offer more entertainment and excitement than where they were. And that was exactly why she didn’t bother trying to explain it to them. The cities were nice, but Serenity was done living in large cities. Her friends had chided her for wanting to live near the heart of the tech industry, but that wasn’t it at all. She wanted to live somewhere that had fewer people and easier access to a wider range of outdoor activities. Silicon Valley had never been a place she considered; that was why she had chosen a small town in Washington State.
Serenity was actually pleased with the change in environment now that she was settled in. Deep River was like living in a completely different world, and it offered her everything that she had dreamed of. The first day that she had woken up to the cool air coming through the window and the sound of birds chirping, all doubt about her choice had disappeared. Not that she had ever had much doubt. Serenity had wondered if she had perhaps over-romanticized what life would be like, but the stark contrast to the way things had been was taking her life in the direction she had always wanted. As much as she loved coding and developing, the draw of the outdoors was impossible to ignore. Living on the east coast, there were a few things that she could do outside, but it usually meant having to spend a good portion of the day driving. Serenity hated driving. Her new home was just a few blocks from the campus, and some outstanding hiking was just a half-hour away. So far, she had explored three state parks and one federal park. And every morning the sound of nature gently woke her, instead of the sounds of cars passing nearby. Here she really felt like she could do anything that she wanted to do whenever she wanted to do it. Though she hadn’t been to either Seattle or Portland, she knew that it was just a matter of time before she would check them out. Not that she was interested in moving back to a city; rather, she was curious to see how accurate their reputations were.
If there was a problem it was the cultural shock. The people on the west coast were incredibly different from those on the east coast. Not in a bad way, but Serenity had never considered that the personalities would be so drastically different. Having traveled up and down the east coast, she thought that she knew what people would be like – but there was nothing to prepare her for just how different people on the west side thought.
It wasn’t something she noticed right away because there had been so many things to take in at first. When she had been staying in a hotel, the graduate student had figured that the attitudes of the few people that she interacted with were mostly a façade because she only talked to people whose primary job was taking care of people. Of course, she would have to admit that even the customer-oriented businesses on the east coast did not go quite as far in how astonishingly nice they could be. If she asked a question, the answer was about three times longer than she expected, and by the end, the person she had asked had provided her with answers to a lot of questions she had not asked. It left her somewhat baffled. It was only after a week or so that she realized that part of the problem were the questions she was asking. They were far too generic. Kind of like looking up the definition of the word “the” in the dictionary, if you didn’t provide context, you were going to get a lot more information than you wanted. Over time she learned to narrow down her questions, so that a little over a month later, she knew how to get a more direct answer, although there were times when she would have to remind herself to keep the questions more direct.
Another thing she noticed was that people were far friendlier when she was out in public. On the east coast, if someone said hi, she had learned to expect that they would be asking her for a phone number. The cool response she had developed to dissuade people from approaching her with an interest in dating did not have the same effect on the west coast. Instead of taking her somewhat cold response as a sign that sh
e wasn’t interested in talking, people of Deep River seemed to think that it meant that something was wrong. Strangers would start asking if she was alright or if she needed help with a problem. The first time it happened, she had been moving boxes off of the truck, and the guy hadn’t even asked if she was alright. When Serenity had given him a tepid response, he had immediately started helping her move things into her home. She was so flabbergasted that he was already on his second trip before she realized she should try to stop him. He had simply waved her off and struck up a conversation about where she was moving from as he worked. The other three movers hadn’t seemed at all offended for the help either. Serenity had expected to have to be mean when it was over to get him to leave since she had not asked the guy for help. Instead, as soon as the work was one, he had wiped his forehead, given her a smile, welcomed her to the neighborhood, and left. Serenity had watched him with a truly puzzled look because he hadn’t hit on her once. It was only the voice of one of the movers breaking into her thinking that had brought her back to the task at hand. She had largely forgotten about the encounter after that because as exhausting as the long move had been, there was still too much to do to think about things like strangers.
Later Serenity had found out that the guy who had helped her was married with three kids. She only found that out when she encountered him on one of her first walks through the neighborhood. The man’s wife had given him a playful slap on the arm and reprimanded her husband for not asking her to help with the move. Serenity had no idea how to respond to the open kindness because it was nothing like what she was accustomed to. The conversation had been short, but it had given her a lot to think about.
The next month and a half, she learned how to talk to the strangers who honestly had no other interest than being friendly. If she was troubled, there was always someone willing to help. The town was a lot smaller than anywhere she had lived on the east coast, but it was still over 17,000 people. That meant that there were plenty of people who didn’t know each other. Still, it was small enough that people tended to treat each other in a way that was associated with tiny communities, and she suspected that it was not just the town that was like that.