Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether

by K. M. Frontain

“Exercise,” he said and shut off my moans with a kiss.

  Exercise?

  He pulled away, laughing. “Yes! Exercise. I’ll give you a toy to squeeze later.”

  Shit. Fuck. “Unh! I’m going to come!”

  “Damn it! Hold it in!”

  “I can’t, you fucking slut, whore, fucker, shit, fucking squeeze me more! Aaaaah!”

  I came, and he sat there giving me angry eyes again. Damn, he was adorable. “Something the matter?” I said.

  I shouldn’t have teased him. He slipped off my lap and left. I blinked and hit my forehead for being so stupid. Then I realized he’d retreated from the cabin naked. I shot to a stand and raced after him. He’d gone overboard. I was certain of it. The little fucker had gone to Vaal. He’d broken contract!

  I raced to the rail and found him not swimming into the depths for Vaal’s comfort, but hanging on the ship’s hull by a rope ladder, his body dunked in to the shoulders. “What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted down.

  “Washing off your impatience, you pathetic excuse for a lover!”

  “That wasn’t my fault! You made me wait all day!”

  To the rear of me, I heard Valerys snigger in amusement. I whirled toward her. Still laughing, she backed to the galley hatch and lowered out of sight. Damn it. I glared at the sailors still in view. They made themselves scarce at once, except for the first mate at the wheel. He astutely put his attention elsewhere.

  “I’m not pathetic!” I shouted at Haru.

  He laughed and looked away. I thought about eating him. I really did.

  “Contract!” he reminded.

  “Get your ass out of Vaal’s toilet!”

  He laughed again and rose up the ladder. “Vaal’s toilet?”

  “It’s true.”

  He clung from the ship’s rail and aimed a sloppy kiss on my mouth, but mocked me after. “That’s why it was so funny. I wash in his toilet often. I’m dripping wet from his toilet. I’ve kissed you while drenched in his divine piss.”

  “Shut up.”

  Grinning, he climbed over the rail. “I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”

  “After.”

  “After what? You’ve had your fun. I’m hungry.”

  “Later!”

  “Ship’s business!” he snapped. “Captain is hungry!”

  Fuck. Next time, I was going to hold it in no matter what.

  “That’s right,” he snarled and went below to dress. I followed him and, despite my irritation, I smiled.

  I’d made him want. Glorious Creation, I’d made him want.

  I received a sandal in my face the moment I entered the cabin, but I was too pleased to do anything but keep smiling.

  Chapter Seven

  That evening, I wasn’t to give him a turn at being pleased, despite that I’d had every intention of doing so. When we went down to the cabin after Haru had seen to more “ship’s business”, he set about placing the mattresses of the upper bunks on the floor again, and on went a fresh sheet to protect them.

  “What are you doing?” I said, thinking about last night, but hoping he placed those mattresses together so that mutual pleasuring would be cosier. This wasn’t the case however.

  “I’m making ready for another session with you,” he said, his tone distant.

  “Another session?” I repeated. “Is that how you think of it? A session?”

  “It’s just a general term,” he murmured. He rummaged about in a dresser for more of the oils he’d used on me last night.

  “I don’t want a session. I want you.”

  “Are you saying you can’t fly further, Omos?”

  I wanted to answer, but couldn’t think of a response that would refute his challenge without also admitting to less potential. Could I fly further?

  But I wanted him. I wanted him to fly with me.

  “You’re not ready to do that.”

  I’d been sitting on the stairs leading up the hatch. I shot off them now and stalked into the cabin. “How can you say I’m not ready? You don’t know anything about me. Let me please you before you make assumptions like that.”

  “All right. I’m not ready to fly with you,” he said, kneeling on the floor and placing towels and oil bottles to the side of the mattresses.

  The man didn’t make sense. I yanked him up by an arm. “I want you! And the contract gives me the right to have you!” I snarled.

  He looked at me without expression for a second, then shrugged. “Very well.”

  At once, I felt I had lost the battle. ‘Very well.’ Take what you want. I don’t care. That’s what he’d said to me in two simple words.

  “But I want you to need me,” I said, my temper chilled, my heart plummeting lower than Vaal’s ocean. “Why must you be difficult about this? You needed me earlier. I’ll last this time. I promise.” Ah, but I was pitiful, begging and whining to a mortal.

  Well…a half-mortal. That wasn’t so bad.

  “Give me this session, and I’ll give you my need,” he answered.

  Damn him. Bargains within bargains. Without another word, I took off my clothes and lay on our makeshift bed. And he gave me his need sooner than I’d expected. Only a kiss as I lay there passively, but it burned all the way to my root. “You expect me to relax when you kiss me like that?” I said.

  “It’s kisses tonight,” he answered. “All kisses and tongue. Don’t relax if you don’t feel like it, but don’t release until I say.”

  Damn. I was never arguing with him again. He loosed a small chortle and dove for my neck.

  “Then why did you bring out the oils?” I asked.

  “In case. Turn over, Omos of the Ether,” he whispered in my ear. With my skin prickling in reaction, I rolled to my stomach, and the session began.

  Kisses and tongue. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had a thorough working with kisses and tongue before. I’d had women go all over me, but it was better with Haru. None of the mortal tongues of before had possessed even a modicum of divinity. The warmth and then the coolness of evaporating moisture, this was the same as all the other times, but where women’s lips and pointed tongues had made my skin prickle with momentary pleasure, Haru’s touch stayed on my skin and then went deeper and deeper, until an almost unliveable burn started in my muscles.

  Tingling grew in every bone until I wanted to fly apart. The only thing that stopped an explosion was his warm body over mine, never quite fully pressing, a shield that held the energy in place. If he’d been unclothed, I’d have detonated and taken the ship down.

  There was a point, a terrible point, where I almost did in any case.

  “Shh, not yet,” he whispered, and I wanted to kill him, and yet I didn’t want him to stop.

  Along my shoulders, lips, warmth. Down my spine, a trail of sparks. Small licks along the flank that tortured because of the tickling, but then had an after effect of pure murder on every nerve. It felt so good. All of it, so good.

  His tongue lashed the upper side of my buttocks. I couldn’t help the motion; I humped into the mattress, slow grinding movement, a desperate attempt to grasp rapture and oblivion.

  “Shh, not yet.”

  “Ah, damn! Haru!” His palm settled on my lower back, and I went still, surprised at the unexpected coolness of this touch. It was as if he’d put ice on me.

  “Not yet,” he repeated, and not yet it was.

  His lips, his tongue, they worked lower to my calves and travelled back up, and I started humping again, until his palm pressed my movement still. His touch on my bottom, cold all the way through to my groin, just enough to stop the inevitable.

  “When?” I cried.

  “Shh. Soon.”

  Another hand on the other cheek, and I felt his face settle in my crease. I jerked into the mattress. Cold hands, hot tongue, my hole. Wet and heat all over my hole. My entire body clenched.

  “Relax,” he said.

  I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t lose the tension, and my shaft burned i
nto the mattress, oozing and wanting. My buttocks wouldn’t ease from a hard knot.

  “Turn on your side and bend your knees, then,” he said.

  His hand on my hips gave me incentive to move. A gentle nudge on the legs, and my muscles unlocked. His face settled in the crease again, more face, more tongue, the full width of it lapping my hole. My entire body began to clench again, but his hand came up and grabbed my shaft. The shock of his icy grip froze me in place.

  “Creation! Where did you steal this cold?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  Oh. Vaal’s boy. I remembered and I wanted to kill again, but his tongue was just so warm. So warm…

  “Put it in me! Put it in me!”

  It seemed that begging was permitted. The point of heat intruded past my anus and went in. I began to shake. Even with my shaft in a freezing grasp, the instant of detonation loomed closer.

  Suddenly, the grasp wasn’t freezing any longer. It was hot and tingling, and it pumped skin over tortured flesh. The tongue dipped out and in and moved inside me. Teeth pressed against my hole without biting, squeezing, squeezing just a little.

  I looked at the bunk, at its supporting timber, things stored underneath. Clarity. Sudden clarity. Clarity crumbled, became a wave of sensation up and down my body, became a turmoil in my shaft and where his tongue fucked me.

  The energy shot outward, but without tearing the ship apart.

  I flew. The ship, the sea, the shore. Clouds scudding over stars. The ether scenting just beyond the veil of atmosphere.

  No.

  I fell back, confused, drifted with the clouds, wanting the scent, the hint of home. Rising toward it again.

  No.

  No. I grasped a cloud and sailed with it. Over land, over water that wasn’t brackish. Over woodlands that were tended, over more that were not, back over sea.

  Scent of scorch, things too warm, sand and more sand and more heat. A sun that was just falling. Men that welcomed its descent, but dreaded the oncoming cold of night.

  A stench of power in the centre of the land mass.

  I faltered, became heavy, tumbled landward. Tower. Tower in a sea of dunes. Something potent lurking within. Malevolence. Despair. Scent of the familiar. Scent of kin.

  Malice reaching out to grasp me.

  Come back!

  I landed, but in my body, drenched in sweat and feeling dizzy. I felt stronger again, like yesterday night, but the coming back hadn’t been pleasant this time. It had been a panicked flight away from peril. It had been a summons home to my master, this thing that now lay at my back, this sorcerer cradling the talisman that was my body.

  “What have you done?” I whispered.

  It had never been about pleasuring me. Not any of it. It had been about finding my son.

  “Let go of me.”

  “This was part of our contract,” he murmured into my ear. “Finding your son. It was always about finding your son.”

  I jerked out of his grasp and launched to my feet. I couldn’t look at him, the man who had mastered me, tricked me, shown me I was only a thing to be used. Not a person. Not a lover. A monster. A god. A source of power.

  “A metaphysical link to the child you fathered,” he amended. “Whoever has your son could not hide Intana from the being that sired him.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Then I’m sorry, because I don’t hate you.” He lifted to a stand. “Do you still want my need, Omos?”

  “No! Get your stench out of my air!”

  He left, and I yearned to call him back because I did want his need, even now, but what had been left of my pride still lay incinerating at my feet. I could not move until the smouldering remains had crumbled into ash.

  * * *

  Up on deck, sailors worked the rigging in the black of the night, large fireflies with small glass-encased lamps swinging at their hips as they climbed, the red of sailcloth blooming and fainting with each movement. Haru stood at the wheel with his first mate, who shouted the directions for a course change.

  An armada of sharks swam with the ship. I saw them with my dragon eyes, and the humans could see them with their mortal ones. Little Brother had decked his mouth with the blood of luminescent sea creatures. He led the way in the dark of the night.

  Haru’s ship, Little Brother acting as his pilot fish, smiling for all to see. Haru intended to sail directly to Intana.

  I had dressed before coming on deck. First mate looked at me, then walked several cubits off and directed his gaze upon the men under his jurisdiction. Haru was a dim figure in the gloom, his smell a noose dragging me forward. I stepped to his side and breathed the aroma. This man. Not human. Not human for a century.

  “We go northwest. There’s a huge spur of continent to swing around,” he said, his eyes on the activities occurring the length of the deck and up in the rigging. “It takes us too far west, but we will make north and east once we round the spur. We’ll be up in hotter climes by then.”

  “If you’re so anxious to reach Intana, you have a faster means to get there,” I said.

  This was not an attempt to draw the contract to an early end. I was certain he was aware of this other method and I was curious why he did not employ it.

  “Look at them, Omos? Do you think they liked it when Vaal put them in his stomach for even that short span yesterday?”

  “You limit yourself, travelling with these mortals.” And I was glad of it, glad I hadn’t eaten them. There they were, weak creatures clinging to rope and yard, balancing with the roll of the ship. They were all that slowed the termination of this brief moment of eternity in which I could claim Haru as mine.

  “The malice that wanted to drag you into its grasp, it will be alert and ready for an attack this night, and perhaps for many nights to come,” Haru said. “But after a month or two, it will grow weary of watching and lapse into the boredom of before. The old ways, the mortal ways, will do fine for our purposes. Let my men sail this ship. Let the wind carry it along. We will ride water to the port of sand without any unfamiliar power sending waves ahead of us.”

  “This malice has my son, has had him for three years. You don’t seem anxious to rescue him from his suffering.”

  He was silent, and I understood that I was wrong. He was anxious, but he had the self-control to refrain from reckless action. This malice was in no hurry to consume Intana. Haru knew it. I knew it. Intana would have to suffer just a little longer, and I didn’t care that he did. I furthered the delay with solid logic.

  “What of the supplies you wanted? What of the cities further up this coast, where my disaster may not have occurred?”

  “We can make do. Vaal can send up the denizens of the deep should we need more food.”

  “You need more than food. You need a reason to make port. Turn the ship back to land and steer for the cities that weren’t a part of the peninsula. Trade for goods that would take you naturally to the port of sand. Make no waves, even the waves of an uncommon arrival. It will be bad enough that your ship will be so obviously foreign.”

  He thought on it, but I knew what he’d decide, and I was right. He locked the wheel in place and went to confer with his first mate, and the sailors danced their firefly lights over the rigging again, and I watched, satisfied I’d lengthened the journey by more than two months.

  “You’re a very unloving father,” Haru said, coming back toward me.

  “I know it.”

  He unlocked the wheel, and we stood together as the bow of the ship slanted toward the heavier darkness of land.

  ***

  For a time, I remained with Haru at the wheel, but we didn’t speak further. The quiet between us I think was natural on his part, but mine was strained, full of unspoken needs and smouldering anger. I could not put my emotions into words without injuring our relationship further, and so I left to watch the sea from the bow of the ship.

  There was cargo lashed down here, kegs stacked half as tall as me, resting on slats that were laid o
ut between the forecastle hatch and the necessary workspace near the bow rail. The cargo was netted together, roped tight, and the top half covered in sheets of waterproofed canvas.

  What the contents were, I was uncertain. The kegs had a strange scent. Sulphur. Sulphur and tree sap. Some sort of resin coated the outsides of the kegs. This I ascertained when I touched an exposed section. I pondered the stack for a bit, wondering about the contents, and then concentrated on the current of flashing colours, sea creatures sparking bright in the night. I ignored grinning Little Brother as best I could.

  Fluorescence. Fluorescence calmed my nerves, shifted my thoughts from need and hurt, settled them on wonder. Even I can be impressed at times, and the small lights these miniscule creatures produced did that for me. They existed. They made light. They bred. They died.

  I had been simple like that once. A thing, a creature, a being born of starlight. I had existed, made light, bred. I felt I had died, was still dying.

  “Are you done in the cabin?” Valerys said behind me.

  I’d heard her coming, but hadn’t bothered to look. I didn’t look now. There wasn’t much use. It was so dark, she would only be a solid blot in gloom. “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh. Good. I have a hammock in the galley. But I’d rather have my bunk.”

  “You’d rather have your great grandfather.”

  “My cousin!”

  “Come here,” I said. “Tell me about this cargo behind me.”

  I felt her warmth before her scent. When I breathed in and her female odour washed over me, I needed again. Simple need. Need to have, to hold. Uncomplicated, animal need.

  “It’s something Haru won’t put into the hold. Watertight kegs,” she said. “At least they’re supposed to be watertight, and hermetic. The outsides are coated in some sort of resin. He paid extra for them. Seller said to put the cargo in the hold where it’s dryer, but Haru doesn’t trust the powder. Says he won’t have it in the guts of his ship.”

  “Why not?”

  “He traded for it many months back, from an experimenter. Man was making these fat arrows fly into the air and explode.”

  Explode? Fat arrows?