Текст книги "Alien god"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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“Brekken wrong. Brekken see now. Big wing two-legs Torrance mate. Protect. Protect.”

Wylfrael held Brekken a moment longer, as if making sure he was going to behave, before finally letting go.

“Mate! Mate!” Brekken yipped, running back and forth in the snow. “Brekken see now. Brekken know. Still strange smell. No soft no warm. Protect hunter hunger anger want want want smell all same time. Strange smell. Strange big wing two-legs. Strange mate.”

“Wylfrael,” I reminded Brekken nervously of his name, still worried that Wylfrael would change his mind and hurt the gigantic dog I’d grown to love. Thank God I wasn’t scared of Wylfrael anymore. If Brekken had smelled fear on me, this would not have ended well. He would have attacked, and Wylfrael would have killed him with nothing more than a flick of his fingers. I could forgive Wylfrael for killing the horrible soldiers who’d kidnapped me. I’d never be able to forgive him for hurting Brekken, though. Hurting a dog was a line you just did not cross on any planet.

Then again, I didn’t think my future husband cared about my forgiveness. He’d certainly never asked for it, or tried to earn it.

“He was just trying to protect me,” I said softly, this time to Wylfrael.

“I know,” he answered. And then, with something that sounded shockingly like approval (something I hadn’t even known him capable of) he lifted his chin and said, “That’s one good dog.”

When Shoshen emerged from the barn a moment later and hurried over to greet his lord, Wylfrael immediately told him that Brekken would sleep inside the castle from now on, starting today. This caused no small amount of near-apoplectic excitement in the massive horned hound.

“Brekken sleep live stay play inside! Friends! Friends smoke warm food smell eat eat eat!”

“What made you decide that?” I asked as Shoshen led a frenetic Brekken towards his new home inside the castle instead of the barn. Wylfrael didn’t exactly seem like a dog-lover, despite his pathetic promise to get me a pet.

“The Sionnachans are too gentle,” Wylfrael said, watching the other two go. “It’s good to know there’s someone else who’d kill for you when I’m not here. Might as well make sure he’s actually in the building.”

Someone else who’d kill for me.

Wylfrael would kill for me?

But the question that came out of my mouth wasn’t about that.

“Does that mean you plan on spending even more time away?”

Away from me?

He cast me a sideways look down over his leather-clad shoulder.

“Would you prefer that I were here?”

“Well... I don’t know! We’re supposed to look like we’re together! How can we do that when you’re not here?”

“I come back every night,” he reminded me slowly, as if I were stupid. “For all the Sionnachans know, I spend all night, every night, rutting you the way a starburning stone sky god should.”

Rutting. Oh, my God.

Heat rushed to my cheeks, and other places, at that image. There was something savage in the thought. Something desperate and primal that made my pulse quicken between my legs. I knew, without even the tiniest shred of doubt, that if I hadn’t stopped Wylfrael that night, that’s exactly what would have happened. He wouldn’t have made love. He would have rutted. Furious and pounding and punishing. Hard. So fucking hard...

“Sometimes I think you watch me,” I blurted, anything to change the subject, get away from the all-too-alluring idea of him rutting me like a beast. “When I’m sleeping.”

Wylfrael turned to face me fully.

“I do.”

“You... you do?” What kind of crazy person just admitted a thing like that? “Why?”

His mouth quirked downward.

“You ask too many questions.”

“You avoid too many questions.”

“I can’t tell you the answer to a question when I don’t know it.”

“So, let me get this straight. You come home late at night, don’t try to get into bed with me, sleep in a chair, but then also sometimes just get up and watch me?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“No.”

I crossed my arms over the soft fur of my cloak, looking at him skeptically.

“I’m not sure I buy that, Wylf. You don’t strike me as the sort of stone sky god who doesn’t know his own mind.”

He cocked his head.

“Wylf?”

“Oh.” I hadn’t even realized I’d called him that. “I guess it’s a nickname.” An apt one, too. Sounded just like wolf. The predator prowling through the forest of my life.

“And why did you call me that?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Are you sure, Torrance?” he asked, a victorious sneer tugging at his mouth. “You don’t strike me as the sort of human who doesn’t know her own mind.”

God fucking damnit.

“I give up,” I said, shaking my head.

Everything in Wylfrael’s face tightened.

“You give up on what?”

I laughed at how quickly he asked the question. So demanding. Maybe I’d even made him anxious.

“All of this!” I said, “This isn’t working and you know it!” I slashed my hand back and forth in the air, gesturing to him then to me. “This... whatever this is. We’re failing. You more than me, I feel inclined to point out,” I added sourly. He was the one who’d been gone basically every day since we’d struck this bargain. Not me.

“I...” His wings flexed, pounding the air as if in exasperation. “I have business. That doesn’t go away just because I’ll marry soon. Though, I acknowledge that my business has taken longer than anticipated.”

“Hold on. You expect me to believe you’re not actively avoiding me?”

“I am not,” Wylfrael replied with instant certainty. “Being away from you is merely a convenient side effect.”

“Convenient side effect!” I sputtered, enraged.

Hoo, boy. This guy knew exactly how to get under my skin.

“You’re not supposed to be happy about the convenience of not being near me! You’re supposed to be my devoted husband, at my beck and call, feeding me fucking bonbons!”

“What in the snows of Sionnach are bonbons? There is no adequate translation,” he grumbled.

“They’re sweets! Delicious sweets! The kinds of sweets that the wives of rich, powerful men eat all day long!”

I didn’t actually know anything about the lives of rich housewives, but that was what I imagined they did.

“Ask Aiko to make them, then. She’s an accomplished cook.”

“That’s not her job!”

“It is precisely her job,” he countered.

“Do you expect her to feed them to me too, then, instead of you?”

This conversation had entered the realm of absurdity and I knew it. But I couldn’t stop myself now. I was on a roll, and I was going right for the throat.

“You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, do you? You have no idea how to be my husband!”

Wylfrael’s wings sliced through the air in a violent motion. He caught my shoulders in his huge hands and pinned me with a savage gaze.

“Don’t I?” he hissed, and there was a warning in it, just like he’d warned Brekken. “Because all I can think about when I am near you is how wet you were that night. How you sounded when you came for me, and how you clung to me while you did it. All I can think about is being inside you, and,” his voice lowered an entire dangerous octave, “correct me if I’m wrong, bride, but those are exactly the sorts of things a husband should think, are they not?”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re insane?” I breathed, unable to come up with a more coherent response to what he’d said. My mind was whirling, my blood pounding in my head, my breasts, my clit.

“No,” he said, releasing me, “though no one needs to tell me so for me to know it now.” He turned from me, so all I could see was muscled, leather-clad back, star-spun wings, and hair as bright as snow. “You were right when you said I’m a man who knows my own mind. And I know it well enough to know exactly when I lost it.”

“And when was that?” I asked, though I felt I already knew the answer.

“The moment that I found you.”

Neither of us spoke. Finally, I sighed.

“This isn’t working,” I said again, quietly this time.

Wylfrael’s wings twitched in tension, but he didn’t turn around.

“Tell me how to fix it.”

“I don’t think there is any fixing it,” I replied. “It’s going to just be a grin-and-bear-it situation until this is all over.”

“No,” Wylfrael said, turning around to face me once more. “Tell. Me. How. To. Fix. It.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Well, for one thing, you can’t just keep being gone all the time and only coming back when I’m sleeping. That should be obvious.”

“But that does not solve the other part.”

“The other...? Oh,” I trailed off weakly.

The other part where all he can think about is fucking me.

The problem was that he wasn’t the only one. I burned from my ears to my toes when I thought of that night. I’d masturbated thinking of that night. When I couldn’t sleep, before Wylfrael came home, I’d slid my fingers inside myself, trying to replicate the feeling of his hand and imagining what would have happened if I hadn’t told him to stop.

“Alright, I... I have a proposition.”

My heart jackhammered, and somewhere in the back of my head a part of my brain – the sane part – was screaming at me to shut up and shut up now.

“Oh?” said Wylfrael, raising a brow.

No. Don’t say it. Don’t say it!

“Maybe we could... have some sort of relations after all. All within the confines of an agreement, of course.”

Wylfrael’s nostrils flared. His eyes were like laser beams on me.

“What kind of agreement?” he said tensely.

“No penetration,” I said quickly, the sane part of myself coming back, just a little bit. “At least not with your... your...”

“My cock?” he provided in a flat voice.

“Right. Um, yes. Thank you. Very helpful.”

Wylfrael eyed me suspiciously.

“You’ve gone an alarming shade of red, little bride. Do I need to take you inside?”

“No, thank you!” I squeaked. I was actually enjoying the winter air on my hot face. It wasn’t too bitterly cold today. It felt like it was about negative ten degrees Celsius. In the fur cloak, I was downright cozy.

And now that I was making a goddamn sex deal with Wylfrael, I was more than cozy. I was incandescent with embarrassment and tremulous arousal.

“Alright. I will agree to that. Outline the rest of your terms,” Wylfrael snapped, as if eager to get this over with.

Or eager to get started. Dear lord.

My insides curled.

“Um...” I hadn’t thought this through, considering the insane idea had only just popped into my head. I frowned, trying to think of anything else important. You know, the typical things you want to watch out for when you’re coming up with a sexual arrangement in your fake marriage to an alien god. Jesus.

“When I say stop, we stop, no matter what,” I said.

“Of course, I accept that term. It’s a given,” Wylfrael replied. “As I have already demonstrated to you once.”

“I know. I’m just... reiterating.”

“Fine. What else?”

What else is there? No penetrative sex, no going further than I want to...

“No feelings,” I burst out. The last thing I needed was the confusion of my marriage blurring the lines between real and fake. Orgasms were one thing. Love, on the other hand...

“Is that everything?”

“Well, yes. I think so,” I said.

There was one brief flicker of a thought, there, then gone again, as Wylfrael crushed me to him. I struggled to hold on to it, feeling like it was something vitally important, as he breathed against my neck, lighting up every nerve in my body. His hands roamed beneath my cloak, sliding down my waist to grip my ass. When he groaned harshly against my ear, then said my name with something that almost sounded like pain, the thought came rushing back. It crystallized inside me until I could finally grasp it fully.

Wylfrael had very clearly verbally agreed to the first two terms of the new agreement I’d just laid out.

Only the first two. Not the third.

I almost said something, almost spoke up, but when his mouth found the sensitive place below my jaw and started to suck, I moaned instead, the sound turning to mist in the air. He dragged a heated line of hungry kisses up to my chin, my cheek. His breath was hot and quick against my skin, his fingers moulded tightly over my ass.

When his tongue tasted the place at the corner of my mouth, I parted my lips involuntarily, an instinctive reaction to let him in. Perhaps a foolish reaction – a betrayal of my body, a dangerous desire to let him further inside – but even as I acknowledged the foolishness, I didn’t close my mouth.

I was fully prepared for him to invade, for him to kiss me like he hated me, ravaging and brutal. In a way, I almost wanted it like that. But what he did instead knocked me more off balance than any bruising onslaught ever could.

He paused just above my mouth, his shuddering breath tantalizing me, making me squeeze inside. His hands slid slowly from my backside, up, up, up. Up, over my waist, over my aching nipples, until they came to rest on either side of my jaw.

The kiss started slowly. Tenderly. And that’s what shocked me so. He grazed his lips over mine, a barely-there prickle of agonizing sensation, before his tongue swiped inward, tasting.

The flare of arousal inside me was so sudden, so strong, I was sure that if Wylfrael hadn’t been holding me, I would have toppled right over into the snow. I opened my mouth further, eagerly meeting his tongue, burying my fingers in his thick hair.

Wylfrael went rigid as I kissed him back. Only for a second, though. Then, he groaned harshly into my mouth, and the kiss became what I’d expected from him all along. Possessive. Conquering. An invasion, but one that I’d invited.

I whimpered as he pinioned my tongue with his, taking over. His hands left my jaw, raking up and down my back, into my hair, then down to my ass again, as if he couldn’t decide where to touch me, couldn’t touch me enough.

When he started tugging at the laces at the front of my silk britches, grinding his erection greedily against me as he did so, I remembered that we were outside, in clear view of both the castle and the barn. I’d learned enough about Shoshen’s schedule to know that he’d be back out here soon.

I tore away from the kiss, and Wylfrael made a rough sound of annoyance.

“We’re outside! They’ll see us!” I panted.

“Good,” he shot back.

“Wylfrael!” I swatted at his chest, the cold air in my lungs starting to clear my head. “I have a new term to add to the agreement!”

A look of grim resignation passed over his face.

“What is it?”

“No getting me undressed and having... relations... in front of other people!”

“Fine,” he growled, “but I have my own amendment.”

“Alright, what?” I asked. Wylfrael released his hold on my britches’ laces. His hand came to my face, and he slipped his thumb along my swollen lower lip.

“I get to kiss you anytime, anywhere. No matter who may be watching.”

I breathed heavily, fighting the urge to open my mouth and let his thumb inside so I could suck it. Maybe even bite it, not that my flat human teeth would be able to do him any damage.

“Never figured you for the sort of guy who’d like kissing so much. Pinned you as more of a wham, bam, thank you ma’am sort.”

“Too much blood has gone to my groin for me to even attempt to understand what you just said,” Wylfrael grunted. “Do you agree or not?”

“Fine. I agree. As long as my second term overrides this one. The rule about you always stopping when I tell you to.”

His thumb continued its slow caress.

“Yes, Torrance,” he murmured. “In this, you will always be obeyed.” A wicked glint entered his gaze. “Though, when I kiss you, I do not think you will ask me to stop.”

“I just told you to stop right now!” I protested.

“Only when you realized someone may see us. It was because you were embarrassed, not because you wanted to.” He leaned down, his breath tantalizing against my neck. “You want things in the darkness you won’t acknowledge in the light.”

“Oh, you are impossible!” I said, pushing back from him, hating that he was right. I stomped a few paces away and glared at him. But just looking at him made me want to go right back into his arms. He was gorgeous, hair and muscles gleaming under the winter sun. My gaze snagged on the massive bulge beneath the dark leather of his trousers and stayed there.

“Am I impossible? Or merely observant?” he asked, smirking. “For example, I can clearly observe where your gaze has gone.”

This bastard!

I wrenched my eyes away from the thick outline of his engorged cock.

“I am going inside!” I huffed. “And don’t get any ideas, because I’m going to help Aiko make dinner in the kitchen!”

Wylfrael’s dark chuckle followed me, just as his feet did a moment later.

“After you, little bride.”

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CHAPTER FORTY Wylfrael

When we entered the kitchen, Aiko looked up from where she was crouched on the floor with a scowl on her face. It disappeared instantly, and she flattened her ears.

“Oh, it’s you two! Welcome back! Sorry, I thought you were Brekken and Shoshen. That dog has made an absolute mess of my kitchen!”

Crystal was shattered all around, obviously having been knocked down to the floor by an over-eager hound.

“It was the tail,” Aiko said, standing and sighing, regarding the mess. “He was so excited he wagged the dishes right off the counters!”

“Oh, let me help you!” Torrance hurried forward. I liked that my bride was kind to the Sionnachans. That she so clearly respected them, and that she’d offered to help Aiko without a moment’s hesitation. But I whipped out my hand and grasped the back of her cloak, stopping her. I thought of her slender fingers getting sliced on all that crystal and hauled her back.

“Don’t move, either of you,” I said, raising my other hand. Using my power, I lifted all the shards of crystal into the air, then swept it over their heads and into a stone bin at the far end of the kitchen.

“Oh, thank you, my lord! Though you should not concern yourself with such things!” Aiko said.

“We would have cleaned it up,” Torrance agreed as I released the back of her cloak. She took it off, and I in turn took it from her to hang near the fire. The ease of that little interaction – passing and hanging up the cloak – surprised me. It felt natural, nearly mundane. Like we’d done it a hundred times before.

“You would have cut yourself and bled all over the floors is what you would have done,” I admonished softly. I couldn’t stop staring at her face. Her eyes. The black parts in the middle changed often, and I’d determined it seemed to change based on the surrounding light. Outside, the black had been reduced to mere pinpricks, her eyes dominated by bright swirling gold and brown. In here, in the dimmer firestone light, the darkness expanded, swallowing the honey, deepening her gaze.

Torrance and Aiko began to work together, side by side. I could tell by the easy comfort between them that this was something they did often. Though, as I leaned against the counter on the opposite side of the room, Aiko tossed occasional worried glances back at me, as if nervous I’d be upset that Torrance was cooking or doing parts of her chores. But it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it made me strangely happy.

When Aiko slipped into the cellar to get something, Torrance continued working on her own. I sat myself upon a stool and watched her. Her back was to me, and I let my gaze drift over her form as she moved. She was dressed in creamy Sionnachan silk britches and a matching blouse. Aiko had tailored the clothing to fit her properly, accentuating the shape of her hips and the nip of her waist. Her hair tumbled down her back in a rich red-brown river, and I remembered what it was like to wind it, like shining rope, around my fist.

My gaze followed the line of her hair downward, until it settled on her backside and stayed there. The skies take me, that was a delicious curve. My erection, which had begun to subside, returned in full force, my shaft thick and throbbing just from the sight of my betrothed. I wanted to go to her, to bend her over the counter, pull down the silk and rut her from behind.

No penetration, she’d said.

Fine. Between her thighs, then. Where her wetness could drench the top side of my shaft. I palmed my bulge, trying to ease the pressure there, fighting the flaming desire to take out my cock and stroke it.

It was shocking, and pathetic, this need to touch myself in the middle of the kitchen just from watching Torrance walk around and cook, fully clothed. Maybe even dangerous. I wanted my own bride far too much and it could not lead to anything good.

But at least she wants me, too.

Of that much, I was certain. She never would have proposed this new agreement otherwise. And I could feel it in the way her sweet mouth had opened under mine, begging me inwards.

I bit back a groan when Torrance reached up for a stone ladle out of reach, her back arching in the most exhilarating way. She was far too short, but she tried anyway, making little huffing sounds of exertion that made my cock pound. It was undeniably erotic, watching her strain, her fingers trembling and tiny, her breath quickening, rising up on the balls of her slender feet in her thin little socks, her boots abandoned by the door.

I could have come right there, without a single stroke, just from watching her struggle.

Torrance swore loudly, adorable in her frustration.

No, I hissed internally. Not adorable.

My bride was not adorable. She was proud and irritating and strangely, startlingly, for some unknown reason, desirable. But not adorable.

Trying to put us both out of our misery, I raised a hand and levitated the ladle down to her. She took it out of the air and lowered onto flat feet with a relieved sigh. Then, as if it had taken a moment to fully register what had just happened, she jumped and spun around.

“Wylf! You’re still here!”

There it was again. Wylf. The nickname she’d come up with. I could not tell if the informality of it was insolence or intimacy. Either way, I found that, oddly, I did not mind it.

“Never left,” I said simply.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said, pressing the ladle to her chest and closing her eyes. They snapped open again a moment later. “What are you still doing here, anyway? Don’t you have stuff to do?”

Why, I was merely bringing myself to the edge of climax, completely untouched, by watching you flail about trying to grasp that ladle.

“I’m supervising,” I grunted.

Her brown brows rose.

“Supervising? Why’s that?” She smiled, her eyes glittering, and swung the ladle through the air like a sword. “Afraid I’m going to poison you?”

My wings rustled in warning.

“Should I be worried about my bride poisoning me?”

She moved her shoulders up and down in a movement I’d come to recognize as meaning very little. A vague non-answer.

“You may be immortal, but I know that you can be killed.”

“Not by poison,” I informed her. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

She did the shoulder thing again, then did something so strange and unexpected it nearly knocked me off the stool.

She laughed.

I froze, watching her in amazement.

I’d seen her laugh before, but never like this. It was always tinged with bitterness or defiance or, like when we’d been with the sontanna, undercut with shades of sorrow. This was the first time I’d seen her so open, so easy, the laughter as joyous and full-throated as a song.

She’s happy.

At least for the moment, anyway. It may have taken joking about my death to get her there, but by the stone sky, she was happy.

“Ah, well,” she said, still chuckling. “I still have that dull little butter knife you left me with. Consider yourself warned.”

“I will take that under advisement,” I said slowly, entranced by the glow of colour in her cheeks, the smile that still pulled so seductively at her lips. She was looking at me and smiling like that.

I was not entirely sure, but I was beginning to get the sense that my false bride was flirting with me.

But no, that could not be. Just like she could not be adorable, she could not be flirting. Because that would imply something more than simply wanting me while hating me. Something beyond raw attraction mixed with loathing. Something warmer, something deeper, something that made my brain feel like it was unspooling inside my skull.

Something I’d already begun to notice in myself even as I tried to bury it.

Aiko, who was unnaturally good at knowing exactly when she was needed, re-entered the kitchen at that moment, distracting Torrance and saving me. The two of them finished dinner preparations, and Torrance began ladling stew into bowls.

“Are you eating here?”

It took me a moment to realize my betrothed was addressing me.

“Are you?” I asked.

“I was planning on it,” she said. “I’ve gotten used to eating here with Aiko and the others when you’re away.”

Aiko watched the two of us, reminding me to take up the role of adoring husband. Adoring husband to my adorable bride, skies save me.

“That is fine, beloved.”

Torrance’s eyes got huge in her small face. I was almost as surprised as she looked. I hadn’t intended to say that. But, much the same as her calling me Wylf, it seemed to have just slipped out. Well, I suppose that’s the fake pet name I’ve chosen for her. I’ll just have to go with it. Can’t take it back now.

I cleared my throat and rose, turning away from both of them so Aiko wouldn’t notice the obvious bulge still pressing outward in my trousers.

“I have some small matters to attend to. I wish to fill Ashken in on news from the villages.” I glanced back at my bride over my shoulder and wing, finding her still wide-eyed, clearly struggling to recover. A dark satisfaction rose in me at that. That I’d thrown her and her flirtations so wildly off-kilter. “I will meet you in our room, beloved.”

I said it with relish that time, emphasizing every sound, watching crimson creep up her neck.

Then, I faced forward once more. I walked out of the room, leaving my bride, beloved and reeling, behind.

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