by Ophelia Bell
He immediately withdrew his fingers from her and pulled her into his embrace. The hot water beat down on them both for several moments while her tension eased, and though the heavy ache between her thighs didn’t go away, it at least didn’t feel like it was on the verge of exploding.
She just stood there, grateful for his sturdy body supporting her. After a few moments she was conscious of his fingers massaging her scalp and the gentle combing of them through her long, tangled wet hair. The scent of shampoo filled the steamy enclosure. She looked up at him and was greeted by a half-smile.
“I got some in your hair, too … Figured we needed to take care of that before we got out, at least.”
She nodded, feeling shell-shocked and drunk, as though the build-up of desire was somehow toxic. Without thinking, she grabbed the shampoo bottle and tipped it over his head, squeezing a healthy measure on top of his scalp. Then she dropped it and lifted her hands to begin working it in.
They spent the next few minutes washing each other’s hair, and she had the urge to ask whether Aodh even really needed to bathe or if he just magicked himself clean. But then she wondered whether Neph needed it or if his watery magic kept him clean. But she didn’t say anything, because for some reason it seemed like drawing attention to Neph’s disguise would ruin the moment, and she really, really liked the way he was touching her now, even though it was the least sexual way he’d touched her all day.
“Rinse,” he commanded, turning her in his arms and reaching up to unhook the shower head from its bracket. She tilted backward, supported by his arm, and closed her eyes, letting him rinse the suds from her hair. Then she stood and took the shower head from him. She stood facing him, about to aim the spray of water at his head, but dropped it instead.
“Don’t I get rinsed?” he asked.
She stared back at his soapy body, suds trailing down the side of his face, over his thick chest, and slipping down his ridged belly.
“I think I missed a spot,” she said, reaching for the body wash again. She tilted the bottle over his erect cock and drizzled a generous amount on the head of his shaft as though she were adding chocolate sauce to ice cream. Then she dropped to her knees and gripped the magnificent column in both hands, instantly stroking at the tempo he’d showed her earlier.
“Sweet fuck …” he said, his head falling back against the tiled wall behind him. His belly quivered and he looked back down at her. “You don’t have to. I know how unfair it is.”
“Do you not want to come again? Does this at least feel good?”
He cursed again. “Vrishti, what I want is to bend you over and bury myself inside you until we both come ten more times. This is beyond amazing, but it’s a poor substitute for the real thing.”
He pressed his lips together, his stare fixed on her face. Within those familiar depths she was sure she saw the telltale hypnotic swirl that belonged to Neph. A slow smile tugged at her lips and she raised up a little higher so that her breasts pressed against the insides of his thighs.
“I want the real thing too,” she said, slipping his cock between her breasts and pressing them together. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the substitute.”
He grunted and licked his lips when she started sliding her flesh up and down his shaft, the soap lubricating the movements. “This substitute … can’t fucking argue your point, baby.” He reached down and toyed with her soapy nipples, sending a fresh flood of warmth between her thighs. God, she’d be happy when she could finally lose control of her body and let herself be taken to the edge by his touch, to have him do exactly what he said he wanted to do, but now he was the one she wanted to see fall apart as many times as she could make him.
The head of his cock pushed up between her breasts, pink and glistening and covered with soap. All it would take was a tilt of her head to take him between her lips, something she’d craved since her first taste of his seed. She paused just long enough to reach down for the forgotten shower head and aimed it at his tip. Remembering the intensity of the sensation when she’d used it on herself the night before, she adjusted the dial to the pulse setting and watched his expression as she ran the stream up and down his length.
“Feel good?” she asked.
“It’s nice, but not as amazing as having your gorgeous tits wrapped around me.”
She nodded. The majority of the soap was rinsed off. She leaned back in, careful to leave the tip of him clear of her soapy breasts. When his cock was solidly wrapped in her flesh again, she darted her tongue out and licked the shining underside, toying her tongue into the slit.
“Fuck yes, suck me,” he said and exhaled sharply when she wrapped her lips around his tip, stroking her breasts up and down his length in an even rhythm. She kept her mouth on him the entire time, taking him deeper on the downstrokes and licking around his velvet tip on the upstrokes. The brief taste she’d had of him earlier drove her need to bring him off again; this time she was greedy, though, and wanted every drop of his seed to wind up in her mouth.
“Baby, you’re about to get a mouthful. If you don’t want … oh, fuck …”
Before he could finish, she closed her mouth around his thick head and sucked harder, hungry for him to let go and give her what she wanted. It only took another few strokes and a flick of her tongue against the underside of his head and his cock bucked between her breasts. His hands shot out and gripped her shoulders, then one went to her head, holding her in place as his orgasm surged from his tip in hot, smooth streams.
She swallowed, her body thrumming with victory as much as all her pent-up arousal, then licked her lips and grabbed the shower head again. This time when she stood, she aimed the spray at the soapy tendrils of his hair, amused by the utterly dazed look on his face. It seemed she’d need to be his caretaker for a bit this time.
She got them both dried off and led him to the bedroom, deciding that a nap was in order. He didn’t object and seemed more than happy to climb under the covers with her with a soft rumble of sleepy contentment.
“You’re amazing, kitten,” he said as he curled himself around her from behind and pulled her into his naked chest. Within moments he was breathing deep and even, the hand that gripped her naked breast now limp. But Vrishti lay there in the waning winter light, tormented by indecision and conflicted over the promise she had made to a man she realized now that she barely even knew.
Chapter Twelve
Aodh
Chanting voices drew Aodh out of a sound sleep. He cracked one eyelid, peered down his white-scaled snout, and let out a soft puff of smoke in the direction of the worshipers. Over the past decade and a half of his incarceration, the locals had gradually determined they had a god in their midst and decided to start leaving him offerings. Today’s smelled delicious—three full-sized goats, freshly roasted, several fat water fowl, and a collection of baskets filled with fruit.
The abundance must mean it was the New Year, which would mean he’d been on this island for closer to twenty. Had it really been only twenty years?
He observed the collection of humans beside the large spring outside the entrance to his cave. Several years ago they’d built a small, rudimentary temple to him from the fallen jungle trees. Upon the columns that supported its roof, they carved what appeared to be his likeness—a serpentine creature with rocks in its claws and teeth.
He should have taken precautions to avoid being seen, but after a year of hiding, he grew frustrated at how slow the temple construction was progressing, and would continue to do so if he could only shift and work at night. Conserving his energy for shifting between forms was just slowing him down. As a dragon he could get more done, and he didn’t need to rely on the humans to refill his well of magic as frequently.
The New Year meant it was time, though, and the breath he’d expelled acted like a drug, inducing calm euphoria in the worshipers, who began playing soft drums while several
started the ritual dance to honor him.
This year there were six dancers, and he watched with lazy interest as they performed the now familiar steps to their dance. Each couple paired off, male and female acting out a courting ritual. He’d never actually communicated his specific needs to them … never spoken to them at all, for that matter. They’d somehow deduced what he needed after a pair of lovers attracted his attention one day in the forest.
The couple had been terrified of him at first, when he’d happened upon them in his true form, but they’d been emboldened after his first dose of magic breath to return to their lovemaking and allow him near enough to watch more closely. They’d returned a day later, bolder still, their auras glowing enticingly with the power of their arousal. They repeated their trysts nearly every day for a week, the woman’s gaze fixing on him while her lover pierced her from behind.
“You can have me too,” she’d said.
He hadn’t taken her up on her offer, but the potent swell of their energy just before they climaxed had drawn him close enough for a taste. On the verge of a descent into feral madness, they were lucky he hadn’t simply devoured them, but there was something about their reverence for the pleasure they shared that made him want to keep them around. He’d simply crept close enough to hover over them, then darted his long tongue out to tease down the woman’s back, then beneath her belly to the place where the pair were joined. His large tongue teased them both until they climaxed in an explosion of power that flooded his body and cleared his mind.
The offerings and rituals hadn’t begun until a little less than a year later when the couple returned one day to show him the bundled newborn in the woman’s arms. Somehow they’d connected her conception to his participation in their lovemaking, which was ridiculous. He had no way to influence fertility the way the ursa did. But the longer he observed the locals, the more he realized their overall health had improved since his arrival. His breath had healing properties, and good health certainly could affect fertility indirectly.
Whatever they chose to believe made little difference to him. He was simply pleased that they trusted him enough to feed him regularly so he didn’t have to bother shifting to forage for himself. Dragons weren’t exactly the stealthiest of hunters, after all.
Now that Aodh was a full-blown god in their eyes, he took to the role with aplomb, keeping a steady fog of smoke swirling around the spring and their altar, swaying in time with the beat of their drums. He marveled at how easily most humans would gravitate to intimate, sexual contact once he’d worked his calming magic on them. The seductive power of a Red’s smoke could draw that desire to the surface, but simple relaxation and peace could have the same effect of release from inhibitions, allowing them to surrender to their deeper desires.
The way they responded to his magic was certainly less frantic and desperate than they’d behave if they were affected by a Red’s smoke. Aodh’s white smoke caused contented smiles to spread across their faces, and as the dance progressed, they undulated in a swaying, erotic dance that had them fully naked and coupling in a languid tangle of limbs.
He always waited until their auras were fully merged, their energy a brightly glowing bubble that surrounded the entire orgiastic group. Only then did he rouse and venture closer, dipping his horned head to watch with his long tongue darting out to flick in quick tastes over their sweat-anointed skin.
Some of their flavors were familiar, his tongue delving in to aid their pleasure. One of the women let out a breathy moan, her aura shivering with a tinge of fear when he drew close, but her pleasure spiked when he found her core and tasted her. A new flavor washed over his tongue and the man whose cock had filled her moved away to give him space.
He peered closer, his big heart skipping a beat when he saw the woman’s lovely face, her ebony waves spread out against the dark-skinned torso of one of the men who was fully occupied with a different woman. The orgy went on around her as Aodh stared and she looked back up at him.
“Vrishti …” he murmured in his resonant voice. All movement halted, the entire small clearing grew utterly silent. It was the first time he’d spoken a word in the two decades since they’d begun to worship him. Shit. If they knew he could speak, they might want answers he wasn’t prepared to give.
He let out a harsh snort, blinked at the woman, then reared back and roared. She wasn’t his mate, wasn’t even close to the woman he was locked away from now, who he had lost hope of ever being with again.
Screams reached him from the clearing but he was beyond caring how he appeared to them. He launched himself into the air, crashing through the canopy of trees above and soaring as high as he could into the sky before the edge of his prison caught him like a net and held him tight. He kept flapping his wings, roaring all the while in frustration at this trap which ensnared him.
Finally he gave up his futile attempt to break free and flew in circles until his wings ached from exhaustion. Only then did he return in the pitch-black of night to the entrance to his cave. He’d missed out on this year’s offering of power, which would have lasted him the year, but the food remained. He devoured it, and was about to crawl back into his cave and down into the center of the mountain to continue his relentless digging and carving of the interior when the glimmer of a human aura caught his eye from the edge of the clearing.
He paused and focused on the faint shimmering glow that signaled apprehension and recognized the same reddish tinge of fear that he’d seen in the woman’s aura earlier. The woman who wasn’t Vrishti, though her resemblance was uncanny enough to remind him how he had failed.
A twig cracked as she took a hesitant step closer. He stilled and watched her approach until she reached the center of their small ritual altar and knelt, casting aside her sarong, then lowering her forehead to the ground.
“I have come as a sacrifice to you, Vishvakarman. Please don’t punish the village for whatever I did to displease you.”
Her voice was hoarse and thick with fear and remorse. The salty scent of her tears reached his nostrils and his heart sank. She didn’t deserve his wrath for simply not being the woman he wished for every night as he drifted off to sleep.
He turned and made his way back down the slope to the altar, then gently nudged at her shoulder with his snout.
She let out a yelp of fear and huddled tighter into herself.
“Do not fear me, please. I will never harm you or any of the others.” Softly, he expelled a small plume of smoke that encompassed her curled up form. She gradually relaxed as she breathed and ventured a glance at him from beneath the arms she’d draped protectively over her head.
“You won’t eat me?” she asked in a shaky voice.
He let out a soft chuckle. “Humans have far better uses to me than serving as food. If I ate all of you, who would bring me such delicious treats? But even that isn’t my favorite thing about you.”
“It’s true, then?” she asked, sitting up. “That you absorb our Nirvana when we achieve our bliss?”
“You have it right, little one,” he said, leaning down and gusting out a puff of warm breath that tossed her hair back in a tangle around her shoulders. “And I fear I interrupted you from achieving yours earlier.”
Now that he had time to look at her more closely, it was obvious she was nothing like his beloved Vrishti. She was leaner and darker-skinned, her breasts smaller, her hips narrower. But she was lovely and also much younger than Vrishti, the softness of youth still far from receding due to the harshness of her environment. She was every bit a woman, though, and the scent of sex still clung to her from the ritual he’d so thoughtlessly interrupted.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her nipples stiffening under a fresh gust of air from his nostrils. “You may take it from me now, if you wish,” she said, opening her eyes again and meeting his gaze directly. Her aura flared with hopeful anticipation, but that same thread of
fear still marred the alluring glow of the bubble that surrounded her.
“I will not take from a woman who fears me,” he said. “The others don’t react as you do. What’s wrong, little one? What frightens you?”
Staring up at him, she said, “You frighten me. Your size, your beauty. Your teeth and claws. The roar of your voice when you’re displeased. You are a god, and it is wise to fear a god.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” he asked.
She nodded, never once shifting her gaze from him. Her eyes widened when he summoned the last dregs of his remaining magic and shifted, his huge body shimmering and shrinking before her in the dim glow of moonlight. The girl gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.
“I am just a man if I choose to be,” he said. “Nothing to fear.” He lowered himself to the ground in front of her and sat cross-legged in the center of the altar. “Tell me your name.”
“I … I’m Priya. Priestess in training. My mother was the first to give her Nirvana to you, before I was born. I fear I’ve caused shame to my family by displeasing you.”
He let out a long sigh. “That was my mistake. You didn’t displease me, Priya. You only reminded me of someone … my mate … who I was forced to leave behind when I came here. I thought you were her, and when I realized you aren’t …”
She frowned, her aura finally losing its thread of fear. “Vrishti,” she said.
Aodh nodded, his heart clenching at the mere mention of her name again. “You see, I was the one who brought shame on my family. Being here is my punishment, and it would be unfair of me to transfer that punishment to the innocent. I deserve this sentence and all the discomfort it brings.”
“May I comfort you?” she asked. She leaned forward on one hand and rested her other on his knee, sliding it up his thigh to his slumbering cock and brushing her knuckles along the length of it. Arousal shot through his body, and welcome though it was, he grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips.