He arrived only moments after me, and I was disappointed that he was so obedient. I wanted to hit him. Looking at his quiet expression, I hit him anyway.
He uttered no protest or sound, just slowly faced me and waited for whatever I wished to deal out, and suddenly I understood. If I didn’t give him pleasure, I’d never have any real satisfaction. I had to make him want, want as much as he made me want. That was the only revenge left to me.
I knew the second he lifted his hand, that he’d caught a fallen thought again. I couldn’t seem to keep them tight around me. It was as if his gentle presence washed them loose. Chip after chip, eroded from the granite of my soul.
His fingers touched my hair and brought some strands forward. “Beautiful,” he murmured.
The strands were coal black with diamond salt at the moment, as the legends described. I hadn’t bothered to seem mortal since he’d admitted his understanding of my nature.
“I can see your divine shape,” he said, and his voice, just his voice, incited my skin to prickle with excitement.
“Can you?” That he could see me wasn’t surprising, but could his crew?
“They see your human form floating from out of the water with nothing sustaining you,” Haru said and he drew more of my hair over my shoulders. The sensation was pleasant, light, a tease. He used my own body against me. “I see the black dragon, his coils, his scales, the diamonds that are a million stars sparkling along his length, the shine of blue that flashes on and off like a pulse. ” He smiled faintly. “You have whiskers like a catfish.”
I put my arm around his waist and pulled him closer. “What else do you see?”
“Small legs, sharp claws. You are an impressive salamander.”
He mocked me, even now, but I couldn’t seem to mind. I kissed him gently, put my free hand on the loops of his vest, and began to work them off the buttons.
He was warm in my grasp, but tingly, all of him, tingly, his mouth the most. My scent and taste were there, and it made me hurt. He’d swallowed something of me, but I’d signed away my right to take it back. I couldn’t eat him, only seduce him.
“It doesn’t have to be about eating,” he murmured when I released his lips.
“It’s always about eating,” I murmured back, bringing my other arm around to help get his buttons undone. I was getting nowhere with one hand, and I couldn’t just tear his vest off. The contract included a condition against wanton damage of property. Damn it. “It’s the power, the loss of it, the taking it back. It’s the way it is.”
“It’s selfish.”
“Do you say this to Vaal?”
“Often, and he does as you. Shuts me up with kisses and fucking, and then goes off to eat anyway.”
“It’s necessary.”
“How many mortals must die for you to regain a meagre portion of your strength?” he asked, and I had managed only two buttons, because I’d been too busy kissing his face and neck.
There was something on his chest, something bright. What was that? “Even one would help. Are you willing to give me one of your crew after all, now that I cannot harm you?”
“No.”
I yanked a loop off a button, impatient to see this thing hinting on his left side. Raised scars forming a curved pattern, but with something else around it, something silver worked into brown skin. Unnatural. I managed the last button and thrust his vest aside, and stared, just stared, for seconds of utter stupefaction.
My son. My son had put a seal around Haru’s heart.
Chapter Five
The contract became, in my mind, a small fleck that an oncoming storm of fury lashed aside. This thing, this mortal, had lied, misled, been lover to my son. Had trapped my son to him for all eternity, or until they both ended.
And it would end. First with this mortal’s existence. I only required a few seconds to take in all that he was.
My dragon head partially coalesced in the cabin, the jaws wide. My human avatar had the abomination seized by his upper arms, but he didn’t struggle. He looked into a starry eye of my greater self and smiled a shark’s smile. I remembered fear.
The ship, him, me, in the belly of a shark. Vaal was so much larger than I recalled. I washed within his guts like a worm, an insignificant worm. The chill of places murky, places ancient. I wanted out, but dared not release my grip on the liar that existed through the manifestation with me. What I’d seen in the ocean before now had been nothing more than figments. This, this was the true Vaal, this monstrosity that could have swallowed an island.
“Have you remembered reason?” said my son’s slaver.
“Yes,” I answered. I was terrified, but let my dragon shape lapse, fade to where it wasn’t safe at all. Nothing of me was safe so long as I rode in Vaal’s belly.
“He doesn’t want you dead,” the thing said, the mortal that wasn’t mortal. “Your son has gone beyond his ken as well as mine. We need your help. Truly.”
“If I had seen that desecration on your chest beforehand…”
“You would have done your best to destroy me and flee before the contract had been negotiated and signed. I know. Forgive me, but I truly wanted your cooperation.”
“I’ll never forgive you.”
“As you will.” He jerked one arm free.
“I’ll consider forgiving you!” I cried. I’d begun to fade. I could feel my nature eroding. “Don’t!” I whispered. “Don’t let him end the contract.”
“And so you intend to keep it? In good faith?”
In good faith. He’d inserted that term in every clause. Not to the letter, but in good faith. Ah, but he was a monster in his own right. Canny and bold, but in the quietest manner I’d ever seen in a man.
My frustration came out as an insult. “There’s something very womanish about you, though you don’t act like one. It must be the way you think.”
He laughed and then insisted, “The contract? Keep it in good faith, or not?”
“I keep it, may you rot in here someday.”
“Things don’t rot in here, not the way you imply.”
He jerked his other arm loose. I almost shouted in terror. But it was gone, the manifestation, Vaal. Just gone.
“You are not nearly as wise as Vaal, Omos of the Ether,” Haru said to me. “All these centuries that you could have waxed in strength, and there you were, likening yourself to a worm in Vaal’s gut.”
“It was apt,” I said. I shoved away from him and escaped from the cabin. I went to the bow, where I leant on the rail, hung my head in the dark, let the sea spray my body, and tried to nurture a sense of courage, morale, self-worth. But it was hard. I hadn’t a seed of merit left in me, it seemed.
What had I been doing with my life the last millennium? Running from a woman and bad memories, only to be caught by a thing with more guile than a hundred females. And the bad memories were crowding back, coming in to smother me. Vaal’s touch. Vaal’s presence.
“Where did you find him, Vaal? What did you do to make him so potent?”
Vaal didn’t answer, and despondency flooded inward. The dregs of my pride plummeted from my soul, sank like stone to Vaal’s victory ground, the ocean floor, and settled onto the sediment of my destructive life. There, drowned in time, the history of an ether dragon, the monument to my folly, the symbols of Vaal’s supremacy. He’d won. He’d won.
I slumped onto my knees, looking at the black waves, wondering if Vaal had even listened to me. Then I set my forehead on the arm across the rail and stopped thinking for a bit.
He came to me some time later, the thing that Vaal had created. I wasn’t sure how long later. I felt his presence first, not a gloat of triumph, but a quiet concern that manifested as a grip on my arm and a gentle haul upward. Back to the cabin he took me, a god who had lost the last of his self-illusions.
He’d changed the cabin about. The top bunk mattresses lay on the floor in the centre space. Clean sheets covered both. Scents filled the cabin, essential oils, warmed, their odour
washing through my mind like summer.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Ease of spirit,” he said and manoeuvred me down on the grouped mattresses. “Don’t think. You don’t need to think.”
And I didn’t want to. He’d shown me already it was useless.
“Shh. Relax. Body and spirit. Just relax.”
I let it go, all of it, expectations, fears, ambitions. Memories. I let it all go. I wanted him. I wanted to say it, but I was too weary even for that.
“You don’t need to say it,” he murmured, and I shut my eyes and let him become the mind that controlled our all.
I can’t say why I trusted him, when with every lover before I had kept a small part of me back to watch, to survey, to be suspicious. But in that moment, at my lowest moment, perhaps I had come to where there wasn’t any point in worrying any longer. I knew Vaal didn’t want to eat me. I knew this half-mortal needed me, and that was enough. I was safe, as safe as I could ever be on the long continuum of my life. I just wanted him.
“Roll onto your stomach,” he instructed.
I did. The oils that brought summer to the cabin went onto my skin, and Creation, but his hands were good. He started with my shoulders, my neck, my arms. Down my spine and flank—even when it tickled, I couldn’t move to stop him, just flinched, then loosed small noises as the stiffness eased and the comfort went in. I thought I’d die when he worked the muscles of my buttocks and went lower, but even that tension left. My calves were the worst, provoking me to laugh and to twitch beneath his grip, but he laughed as well and kept at me, and it was glorious. I couldn’t believe calves could feel so good.
And then my feet. I really did almost die of ecstasy. Feet are sorely put upon, and he gave me an insight into them I will never forget. I would kill a man for touching Haru’s feet, knowing what I do now.
Oh, yes. I’ve had foot rubs before, but none as skilfully as this. One cannot compare the hands of a mere mortal to Haru’s, who knew where to press and when, who seemed to draw the hurt out of the soul at the same moment he relieved the tension of the body.
I was on my back when he started on my feet. Just a soft command, “roll over,” and I found the energy to be where he wanted me to be. One can’t understand the sensitivity of feet until one has had a foot massage, but I was more relaxed in body and spirit after he handled me there than when he touched any other part of me, yet I was all the more electrified because of it. The sensuality of the feet. It can be a very odd thing.
He worked up my shins, did quick labour on my thighs, though I wanted him to linger, and then I wanted him to linger all the worse when his hands slicked over my lower torso. My stomach has always been easy access to my sexual energy, and when he touched me there, I had the typical reaction. The looseness of body vanished. My muscles regained vigour, and I had an ambition again, if only to draw him to me, but he shoved me back down and ordered me to be still.
The pleasure of before convinced me to obey. I let him take his hands to my chest, to touch muscle and flesh, nipples that were almost too sensitive, my arms that had gone tense. I was certain he would work back down again, and he did. Even when he changed position and settled between my legs, I didn’t think. I just let him touch me where he willed.
Cool oil drizzled on my shaft, provoked a shock of enormous pleasure. He grasped me with an assurance only an experienced whore or a man can have, and I bucked on the mattresses. Gentle pushes shoved my knees up, and then he had my balls in his grip as well. I almost shot my load, but a harsh clamp on the base of my shaft stopped me. His voice was a gentle noose that stilled the urge.
“No. Don’t release. Not yet. Hold it in.”
And so I held it in. He worked me again after a short time, and I thought I’d rupture my heart before he let me release.
“Not yet,” he said again, only minutes later.
Creation! When?
“Not yet. Shh. Trust me.”
I didn’t feel I had a choice and lay there, panting and burning, wanting and yet not taking, and waited for the urge to subside. But the next time he lit into me, his fingers lowered below my sac and brushed at the hole between my legs.
I was definitely going to burst my heart.
“Shh. Shh. Relax.”
I was trying. I was.
“Don’t try. Relax. Breathe. Just breathe.”
I breathed, and his fingers kept circling the skin of my hole, and it felt good, but my shaft went limp all at once. I wanted my heart to burst from embarrassment, but it wasn’t cooperating. That had never happened before. Ever. What the fuck was the matter with me?
“Shh. Stop thinking,” he murmured.
I tossed expectations away, and it became a strange massage, a massage of one small point, and I discovered a slow pleasure building from it. Once the thinking had gone, it was good, all good. My erection returned, as hard as before, and his fingers did their magic, and I started shaking again, ready to spend on my stomach.
“No,” he said once more. I lay there gasping, holding it in while he almost murdered the base of my shaft stopping me.
“When?” I cried.
“Soon. Trust me.”
“Ah, Creation! You kill me with my trust!”
The massage ceased, and I released a noise of protest, but his body came up over me, his lips settled on mine, cut my breath off and made me dizzy. Ah! Ah, Creation! He tasted so good. His tongue! His tongue was paradise. Better than paradise.
“Shh,” he said after. “It gets better, but you have to trust me.”
“Do it! Whatever you are planning to do, do it!”
Mirth filled the atmosphere of the cabin, though he didn’t make a sound. It just bounced into my skin, tickled me, forced a smile, and I relaxed again in spite of everything.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
The rubbing began again. It was the most generous torture I had ever suffered, and it became exquisite torment when his finger at last shoved into my hole. I was loose enough by then that he followed immediately with a second. Once more, I almost lost it, but this time, when his grip squeezed my base, I held my breath and struggled with my oncoming orgasm without coaching. I mastered the urge, and his hands began moving again.
The hard grip up and down my shaft, the occasionally slow circle of his palm on the head, and his fingers deep in my hole, three of them now, rubbing where it began for a man: I knew this time, when I reached the pinnacle, he’d let me topple over to the other side.
Things were happening in my entire body. The limbs he’d massaged were no longer relaxed but shooting with energy, inside and out. A blue pulse of light raced from head to toe and back. My lips, my face, I made expressions with them that couldn’t have been pretty, but I couldn’t stop myself. I felt so fucked, and fucked, and I just wanted more of it, his fingers hard into me, harder, and that grip on my shaft going faster.
“Unh! Now! Fuck me now!” I cried, and his fingers pressed into my root just so.
“Fly,” he whispered.
Explosion. The waves that went through me. The orgasm took my entire body, shot up and down and back again. It wasn’t just my shaft and my seed this time. It was all of me. Then it was beyond me.
I flew. Not as my dragon self. Just me. I flew. The pleasure lofted me high, and despite the black of night, I knew the ship, the sea, the land I had destroyed. I felt coastline and settlements inland, plants and people and animals. I felt sky and atmosphere. And, heavens, oh, heavens, home. I felt home like I hadn’t in so long. The ages, I had forgotten the scent of it. The ether.
Shh, he whispered. Shh. Enough for now.
The settling back into me was as glorious as the launch, but it was different, softer, a coming together that felt more whole than when I had departed. I returned to my body, loose on the mattress, exhausted and yet stronger. He was still between my legs, his hands still where they had pleased me.
“Shh,” he said again and slipped his fingers free. I al
most wept. “Shh. It’s all right. You’re all right.”
A mortal encouraged me, a god who had lived an eternity compared to him, and yet I needed his support, more than I had needed anything, for I wept and could not stop. He lay beside me, clasped my body in his arms, and set his forehead to mine. He stayed with me like that until I’d ceased grieving. For what I grieved, I did not know, but I did grieve.
Eventually, when I was relaxed and feeling sleepy, he shifted away. I was too tired to ask him where he went, and the trust was too strong to let me worry.
I hadn’t a need to worry. He merely set about clearing away the oils and then washed me, helped me to a lower bunk that still possessed a mattress. He tucked me in, and afterward worked to get the other mattresses back in place and the bunks made up.
“Why four bunks?” I asked, softly, lazily, almost too sleepy to listen to the response.
“I chose this ship for speed, not comfort,” he said. “It’s a working ship, not fitted out for my rank.”
“Oh.” He must have acted quickly when he’d finally decided to stop waiting and instead search for my son.
I went to sleep directly after, and it was morning when I saw him again. And I was so in love with him I wanted to murder my son and Vaal to keep him.
Chapter Six
The voices. So many voices. Whispers surging against glass, whispers violent and needy. Heat traced on a surface gone too thin, too transparent. Glass melting, losing shape, losing reason.
A bubble coming up from the centre, a swelter of voices, so many voices, ready to burst through.
I jerked awake. My head struck wood at my crown. I winced, at the same moment trying to recall where I was. I remembered to a pounding at my temples, and then a pounding in my chest.
Haru. Beautiful Haru. I was on board his ship in his cabin. But he seemed absent.
Valerys slept in the bunk opposite me, face up, her legs turned to one side, an arm thrown wide. She slept like someone without a care in her life. No jerkin, no shirt. Only a thin camisole and matching panties that rode up her hips. The blankets hung half off the bunk and let me see most of her. She was beautiful, but I didn’t want her any longer.
Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether Page 5