Blown Away

by L. J. Vickery

  “Enlil.” Candy poked him in the chest. “Were you ever able to enjoy yourself before this?”

  “Marginally.” His body relaxed under hers as he clearly made light of it for her benefit.

  “What a bunch of selfish bitches you’ve fucked.” Candy hadn’t asked how many lovers he’d experienced, but figured he’d been around for thousands of years. There had to have been a lot.

  “It sucked at the time,” he demurred. “But now I’m glad.” Enlil tugged her back down and nuzzled the top of her head. “It made what we just did that much more spectacular.”

  And how could she not preen under that revelation. She’d taken on some randy partial-bull ass. Mental high fives. But Enlil continued to speak.

  “I know you’ve got to be very sore now, so you’ll rest up for a few days.” He nuzzled her armpit. “Then I expect we’ll have a lot of repeat performances in the future.”

  Candy snorted. Yeah she was sore, but when did she ever let that stop her. She positioned Enlil’s hands on her breasts, which were peaking with interest again, and rolled her nipples between his willing fingers.

  “Who wants to wait? The chute’s open, and I want the bull back in the ring. Right, the fuck, now.” Yeehaw. Best damned metaphor ever.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “What’s the hurry?” Candy, who had been impatient to consummate with Enlil, was now at a loss as to why he fast tracked them to go get a marriage license. Enlil sat at the wheel of her car and seemed to know where he was going.

  “I want you as a goddess ASAP,” he let her know, “and your mother wants us married. Therefore,” he said in what should have been a reasonable voice, “I want the human ritual out of the way in order to move right on to the important ceremony.”

  Candy punched him. Hard. “I’m thirty-one, you know.” She gave him her fiercest scowl as he mock rubbed his shoulder. “This is my one and only wedding, and you may think it’s a chore to get out of the way, but I assure you, my mother is only going to get more and more vicious with you if you treat this ceremony lightly.”

  Since Enlil dropped the bomb that morning about getting human married on New Year’s Day―and had called Jovana with the happy news―Candy’s mother had been frantic. She’d told Candy earlier―between deep breaths―that she’d been on the phone nonstop procuring a friend who was a justice of the peace to perform the ceremony, hitting up the local bridal shops to find just the right dress, and tagging her cafeteria cooks to help with the food preparation. But still she gave Enlil a piece of her mind, via Candy. She was not happy. She lacked numbers for those in attendance. And how could she cook if she didn’t know how many mouths there would be to feed?

  Thank God Tiny had offered his youth center for the service and the reception. The small kitchen in the back seemed barely adequate to Candy, but her mother assured her they would cook the food off premise, cart it in, and use the kitchen just to keep things warm.

  Candy and the guys would be heading over to decorate the place on Wednesday morning. She hoped they could perk up the worn-down gym, or at least disguise the worst of it. Everything was going so fast, Candy’s head spun.

  “Who’s coming from the Blue Hills?” she asked Enlil for the hundredth time. “Mom’s still frantic for a head count.”

  “Visible and invisible?” Enlil smirked, earning himself another punch.

  “Cut the shit, Enlil. Just give me a number.”

  “I just talked to Marduk, and here’s the list.” He tallied the attendees out loud. “There’s Marduk, Tess, Anshar, Lenore, Dagon, Holly, Enten, Glory… How many is that?”

  “Eight. Keep going.” Candy used her fingers to count behind her back.

  “We have Huxley and Dani-Lee, then Lahar who is visible because of Glory, that’s eleven. Shamash will be visible because of you.” Enlil frowned. He still hadn’t quite forgiven Sham for pretending that Candy might have been his.

  “Then we have mortals, immortals, and witches who will be arriving by plane. They would be Kate, Greg, Angie, Addie-May, Dunsky, and Charlie, accompanied by the newly corporeal Ishkur and Absu, who won’t leave Dunsky’s sister alone for one minute. I understand he’s driving her crazy.”

  Candy snickered. “That’s twenty. But you forgot little Maity.” She hoped her fingers hadn’t failed her.

  “Okay. Twenty-one, and the invisible bridesmaids, Emesh, Dumuzi, Ninurta, and Kulla won’t be eating.”

  Candy punched Enlil again. She actually couldn’t wait to be a full-fledged goddess so she could see the noncorporeal as more than fleeting shadows.

  “Damn.” Candy smacked her hand on her head. “We forgot Nergal and Ereshkigal. And what about that war god guy you talk about who you like… What’s his name?”

  “Hmm. Erra and his lady love, Ish Din. I would like to invite them.” Enlil was glad the glowies were different and blue. The numbers would have increased significantly if that group had been invited.

  “My mother is sooo going to love this. The more the merrier.” Candy took her phone from her pocket and punched up Jovana.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Jovana answered right away.

  “Enlil’s got twenty-five coming in from the East Coast, but that includes Dunsky. When I add in the rest of my agents, we have six more, and a couple have asked if they can drag along dates. That makes eight.

  “Then there’s Tiny and… Oh, I want to invite Thug and his wife. Shit. Counting me and Enlil and you that’s thirty-nine. If you add your friends…” Candy was pretty overwhelmed by the numbers, but she hadn’t fazed her mother in the least.

  “Yeah, Mom. I know. Watch my language, but geez, it’s a lot more people than I anticipated. Shouldn’t we just get a caterer?” Candy held the phone away from her ear, so that Enlil could hear the tirade coming from the other end.

  “I guess she wants to take care of it,” he mouthed to Candy. Jovana threw around words like “inferior quality” and “little finger thingies.”

  Enlil laughed. “Tell her my friend Absu and his new girlfriend Charlie are both great chefs and will come a few days early to help out.”

  Candy was still blown away by the whole Dunsky’s sister being a Chosen thing. But Enlil had told her that’s how it worked. Finding their mates seemed like a crapshoot. They could search all they wanted without much success, and then the woman destined by the Fates to be theirs seemed to drop right into their laps.

  Candy couldn’t argue. Without the weird twist of Dunsky selling her out, going to Maine to locate Huxley, then following him back to the Blue Hills, she and Enlil might never have met.

  Candy relayed the message about the extra available cooking hands to her mother, who requested the chef pair stay with her at the house, then said her goodbyes.

  Enlil pulled the car up in front of the county clerk’s office. It was nearly empty and manned by a skeleton crew.

  “Holidays,” said the cheerful lady behind the desk who took copies of their IDs and filled out the license. “You’re lucky you came in when you did.” She looked over at the clock. “We’re closing at noon today.” Christmas and New Year’s had everything screwed up.

  “Well we’re glad you’re here.” Enlil took the cash out of his wallet to pay for the license, and received the woman’s well wishes as they left the office.

  “Where to now?”

  The guys in the office expected her. She’d get a ration of shit for not making it in the day before. Damn if Enlil’s hot body hadn’t gotten in the way and kept her home. Candy’s breathing pattern changed just thinking about him, naked and ready.

  “I can sense you want to go back to bed,” Enlil growled, focusing his god senses on what she knew was the rapid pulse visible in her neck. “But your boss is probably having an apoplectic fit he can’t turn his reports in without talking to us first.”

  “I know. And you’re right. The office it is,” she sighed. She shouldn’t begrudge Jake. She and Enlil had the entire night to play.

  They made i
t to the office and completed their debriefing after several minutes of ribbing. With paperwork filed, Cub looked slyly at Enlil. Candy dropped and cradled her head, wondering what was coming.

  “Can we see your bull guy now? We only got a partial on the ship, and we’re curious to see the whole thing.” Cub, the albino in the group, was well used to people asking him all kinds of personal questions, wanting to get a gander at his entire body. Not that he said he ever minded when women wanted to see his cock and pubic hair. Hell. He called that a perk. Cub had learned not to take such inquiries personally and clearly believed Enlil should feel the same way.

  She peeked up between fingers and couldn’t tell what Enlil thought.

  He cleared his throat. “Usually, I only let him loose when I’m angry or agitated,” Enlil told Cub seriously. “But I’m able to bring him out on command.”

  This was news to Candy, who assumed she had to use the collar or at least get him totally jazzed up to see his bull. Enlil continued speaking, “You guys good with this?”

  There was a chorus of “hell-yeahs,” and Enlil had to have been happy he’d worn some loose sweats today in anticipation of some late-in-the-day b-ball at Tiny’s. Candy rolled her eyes. If he’d ripped his way out of his new, tight jeans, the guys would get an eyeful of more than they bargained for.

  Enlil closed his eyes and sparked up the cells in his body. It wasn’t often that he morphed using free will, but it was a lot less scary than his angry transformation.

  His horns poked through his skull, and when his size increased and his incisors lengthened, the spectators got the show they wanted. The skin on his hands changed, toughening up into more of a hide, and his nose became more snout-like. Done. Bull form acquired.

  He observed with amusement as the guys walked slowly around him, taking him in from every angle.

  “Can you talk when you’re like this?” The seasoned Jake seemed as rapt as the rest of them.

  “I can,” Enlil emoted, and looked toward Candy’s chest. She’d told him her nipples got hard just hearing his rasp, and…yup. He drew his eyes away, not wanting to think about the charming little nubs too much. He got back to the boys.

  “Feel free to touch if you want. My skin is somewhere between human and bovine, without the hair covering of course.”

  His hair actually did become thicker on his abdomen and around his cock, but that was for Candy’s eyes only. Not that her teammates decided to go easy on their questions.

  “So you get a lot bigger?” JP asked.

  Enlil groaned and nodded. He could see where this was going.

  “Does that mean your cock does too?”

  At first, he was going to label it “none of their business,” but then a naughty sparkle lit deep in Enlil’s brain. “Why don’t you ask Candy,” he rumbled.

  They turned to her expectantly, and Enlil waited. It was mean of him, but he loved putting Candy on the spot.

  Not surprisingly, she didn’t mince words.

  “Probably bigger than all of your pencil dicks put together,” she bragged and taunted. “I like it when he starts out regular god size and then pumps things up when he turns toward the bull. It…”

  “Stop.” Z covered his ears and gave a shrill “la-la-la.”

  Flick, however, was not deterred. “What about a tail?” he asked.

  Funny, that was the question Candy had most pondered before she’d seen him naked and bullish from behind.

  Her mate snickered. “No hooves, no tail. Sorry. But when you get the chance, ask Shamash to morph for you. He’s a golden leopard and has an awesome tail.” Enlil didn’t mind throwing the sun god under the bus until he got a long overdue apology.

  Candy made a strangled noise. “So are we through here with the twenty questions?” She groused. “I’m itching to get physical, in a nonhorizontal way on the basketball court.”

  “Yeah. We’re done. Lose the horns Enlil and we’ll head to Tiny’s.” Jake touched one of the protrusions and stepped back abruptly at Enlil’s growl. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  “Erogenous zone,” Enlil’s eyes roamed toward Jake’s ass. “Don’t be touching them unless you want to experience some bull love.”

  “Whoa. Not on the agenda.” Jake looked horrified.

  “Gross.” Candy interjected. “You’d do him?” She dared him skeptically, then looked at Jake’s face, which had paled. Hooting laughter exploded from the rest of the guys.

  Enlil shrugged. “Animals don’t discriminate,” he said, moving slowly back to god form. “And I wanted Jake to know, just in case he got curious.”

  He winked at Candy when Jake couldn’t see him, and she let out a sigh of relief to realize he was joking. She didn’t have any problem with alternative sexual identities, but became equally aware she didn’t want to share Enlil with anyone, bull or not.

  In unspoken agreement―and still doing some good-natured ribbing on Jake―the crew locked up and headed to the rec center.

  The first thing Candy noticed was the new coat of paint on the outside of Tiny’s place. The building hadn’t had any attention since her younger days. It was a total blindside. Wow. What a job a new coat of whitewash did for bricks that had been peeling for as long as she’d been alive.

  Candy looked up. The sign was even new. It looked like it had been carved out of some kind of stone and had been mounted on a pair of high Doric columns―or were they Ionic―that surrounded a set of impressive new double doors. Okay. That had her instantly suspicious.

  The guys on her team buzzed in low murmurs. They seemed as surprised as Candy. She looked quickly at Enlil, who conjured a very impressive, passive expression. She pursed her lips at him and he grinned. It gave her a good idea of who might have given the center a Christmas bonus. This had “gods” written all over it. She should have figured it out instantly. What humans used Doric columns these days?

  “Shall we go in?” Candy wondered if she’d see additional transformation on the inside, but when she stepped through the door, she was not prepared for everything that hit her.

  The floors were what caught her eye first. The one they’d played on had long ago lost its surface. It had been pitted and warped, and it had always been a challenge to work around. The highly polished floor that now stretched before her had been made of the finest grade maple to be found. The surface still cured and was roped off. The group had to walk up and over a whole new set of bleachers that sat against the wall to have more of a look. That’s when she noticed that Tiny graced a spot at the top, sitting bemused. His chin resting on his hands.

  “Tiny,” Jake called up from behind Candy. “What happened here?”

  “Damned if I know,” the giant answered back. “I’ve been sitting here for hours just looking at it. When I opened up this morning, here it was.”

  The group climbed the seats and sat down around Tiny, absorbing the changes while he continued to speak. “And it’s not only what you see here.” He waved a hand around like magic had been performed. “The weight room has new equipment, too; every kind of machine you’ve ever seen.”

  Candy kept her lips locked. It never should have been called a weight room before. There had been incline benches, but no weights. Those had disappeared long before she’d come on the scene.

  Tiny continued. “The locker rooms have been retiled.” He held up fingers and counted off. “The showers, toilets, and urinals are brand new. And we now have stainless steel appliances in the kitchen.”

  Tiny rambled on. “Even the student room got a makeover. We have twelve brand new computers and printers. And in the rec room next to it? There’s new theater seating and a big screen television.” He shook his head as if it didn’t make sense.

  “The first thing I did was head into my office to call the county and see if they had anything to do with it, and what do you think? I have a new desk, a new chair, a state of the art computer, and goddamned important feeling carpeting on my floor. Not linoleum…carpeting.”

 
He turned to Jake. “Did you do this, man? The county said they’re not responsible, and you’re the only other guy I know that might come even close to having this kind of scratch.”

  “Not us, Tiny.” Jake dared a glance in Enlil’s direction. “I have a pretty good idea though that the elves responsible aren’t the little kind that Santa employs.”

  Enlil turned his head away from Jake’s speculation.

  “I want to see the kitchen.” Candy took a hold of Enlil’s sleeve and tugged him down the bleachers. “You do too. Right, Enlil?” He sighed under her touch, but complied. Smart boy.

  Candy didn’t last a second after the door had closed behind them. “Did you do this?”

  Enlil wore a big shit-eating smile on his face that didn’t look like it would go away any time soon.

  “Umm…let’s just say the elves in question might not have been big, but little and blue instead.”

  “The glowies. How…when…”

  “When I went home for Christmas. Nergal and Ereshkigal stopped in and we as a group discussed it with the king. He was more than happy to get it done over the holiday when the place was closed down. Slaggat and Craggar…have you met them? No? Well they’ve always been construction geniuses, and they relished the challenge of having to get everything done in one day. Of course, some of the gods had to help with the acquiring of equipment, but it was all paid for legally, even if the cash did show up in the box store’s coffers after hours.”

  “Enlil,” Candy threw herself at the big god, wrapping her arms around his neck. “You are the best.” She smooched him on the underside of his chin and rubbed her face into his massive chest. “Have I told you yet today that I love you?”

  “Let’s see.” Enlil pretended to think. “You’ve complimented my prowess, worshiped my cock. But, nope. I don’t think you’ve said anything about love today.”

  “Arrogant immortal.” Candy pinched his ass. “But in a good way.” She smirked. “Fine. I love you.” Candy couldn’t stop grinning. “And you did this before you knew if you’d light up for me?”

  “Sweetheart, I know what this place means to you. And to everybody else in the neighborhood. Then there’s Tiny. I’ve never met a more dedicated guy than him. How could we leave things the way they were?” Enlil shrugged as if it was nothing, but Candy could tell he was pleased. She tugged his hand again, and took a look at the new changes.