Second Skin: Unified: A litRPG Adventure (Second Skin Book 3)

by M Damon Baker

  I let my eyes flare brightly as I finished speaking and stared at her openly while she retreated from my display of power. As much as she loved me, Tási did not want any part of the shadows inside me, and she could only shake her head slowly as she replied.

  “No,” she conceded reluctantly. “I can’t do that.”

  I pulled back my emotions and dimmed the light from my eyes before sitting down beside her once more. Tási was clearly disappointed in herself for failing her own test, and I consoled her as best I could.

  “None of them can do what you do for me, Tási,” I tried to explain. “Each of you are unique, and special to me in your own ways. But you come first Tási—you alone get to call me yours for all to see. You accepted the others before, without knowing why I needed them. The only difference now is that I’ve come to understand just why things are the way that they are. I’ve found peace with myself in that knowledge, and I only meant to share that comfort with you.”

  “I know I promised not to get upset about this anymore. I’m sorry,” Tási replied after we sat in silence for a few moments.

  “Just shut up and lay here with me, Tási,” I said as I wrapped her up in the blankets with me. “I miss Bane… lets sleep out here tonight.”

  After departing the day before with Gilfri’s body, Bane hadn’t returned. I assumed he had simply stayed out at the secret location he used to train with his fire breathing, so, although I felt his absence, I wasn’t overly concerned.

  We spent the rest of the evening, and the entire night together on Bane’s huge cushions. In the morning, I woke up early and snuck away to tend to the final task left for me before I could truly be complete.

  It was not yet dawn when I made my way down the Palace steps and back to Líann’s suite, retracing the path I’d taken only the morning before. When we reached Líann’s suite, I left my escort outside and walked in unannounced, but Thelmé tried to stop me before I entered her Queen’s bedroom.

  “Empress, please,” she begged. “The Queen is not awake. This is most unusual.”

  “I am here to wake her, Thelmé,” I replied as I made my way past her. “Don’t worry, she will not be upset with you. Just see that we’re not disturbed.”

  I closed the door behind me and locked it securely before I walked over to the bed where Líann was still sleeping soundly. She stirred only slightly while I undressed and slipped under the covers beside her. Once I crept up next to her, I slid my hand under the covers between us and rested it on the same smooth skin of her thigh that I’d started with the day before.

  She had on a thin nightdress similar to the one I’d already ruined, and as I let my fingers wander along the delicate skin of her inner thigh, I could feel it giving way with them. When my hand traveled nearly as far as it could possibly go, I let it rest there, and sent a soft tendril of desire into her sleeping form.

  Lost in the fog of sleep, Líann took a moment to react to my touch, but when she finally felt my subtle influence, I saw her lips part and she let out a soft moan as her hips slowly began to rock back and forth. Líann’s subdued response was far from the animated reactions I was used to seeing from her. Even when I restrained her, she seemed to always try to fight me—to assert herself—even though she knew that it was hopeless for her to do so. But the seductive nature of her more sensual response made me wonder if she was capable of more than I’d thought.

  Líann’s reaction intrigued me and threw off my initial plan, and instead of the harsh awakening I’d planned for her, I only slightly increased the flow of passion I was sending into her. Her response was immediate, and her entire body soon echoed the slow, enticing movement of her hips. The lure of her proved too much for me, and I slowly pulled the covers from her, desperate to see her languid motions for myself. Once I had them off, Líann lay in front of me, still sleeping, but fully enthralled by the tendrils of passion I was sending into her.

  The thin dress she’d slept in did little to hide her form, and I could make out every curve of her body as she writhed under my influence. I wanted to wake her, to jump on top of her and take the seductive beauty that was reacting so enticingly before my eyes, but the display she was putting on in front of me was simply too much, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her. I could have watched her for hours, but I was too captivated by Líann’s movements to realize what I’d done until it was too late.

  As I looked on in utter rapture, she suddenly shuddered and let out a low moan as the passion that had been building up inside her finally took its toll. Líann’s hips quivered, and I felt her release just as her eyes flew open in surprise, and when I saw her blue irises staring back at me, I smiled at her, and the corners of my mouth turned upwards in a slight smirk.

  “Good morning again, Líann,” I greeted her as her hips continued shuddering beneath my fingers.

  All I got in return was a soft grunt, as a final spasm of release ran through Líann’s body.

  “I admit that once again, things have not gone exactly as I intended today,” I said in amusement as Líann buried her face in her pillow.

  “What did you do to me?” Her muffled voice came from beneath the pillow.

  “You were awake for the end of it,” I replied as I pulled her concealment away. “You can’t tell me you don’t know what just happened.”

  “But that wasn’t what you need me for,” her cheeks flushed as she looked away from me.

  “Are you capable of more than just that one thing?” I asked her, as I became confused over what I thought I had discovered only the day before.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, still hiding from me. “I only know what I was meant to be for you.”

  I pulled her around gently so that she finally faced me, and her entire face lit up in surprise when she realized that I’d been laying next to her completely naked the entire time. Without waiting for her to recover, I kissed her passionately the moment I’d turned her around.

  I didn’t simply take her as she anticipated—I kissed her deeply and affectionately, letting her tongue wander over mine for a long moment before I pulled back and stared into her eyes.

  “Can you be both, Líann?” I asked her as I held her gaze. “Can you take my shadows and my passion as well?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she replied softly. “At least, not in equal measures. This was special, but as good as it feels, it doesn’t truly satisfy me. I need to sense your power, to know the danger you represent when you take me for it to do that.”

  Her words rang true in my ears and confirmed what I’d learned the day before. She might be capable of acting the part, but it wasn’t something that truly fulfilled her, and would likely leave me feeling less than satisfied as well.

  “Perhaps only on occasions then?” I offered her. “As a reward?”

  “For who?” She teased, as she finally regained a bit of herself.

  “Why, me of course,” I replied with a smile.

  “I might like that,” she confessed quite honestly.

  “Líann,” I tilted up her chin as I spoke so that I could look her in the eye again. “I came here to claim you, just as I promised. But when I saw you lying there, you were just too enticing for me to resist. If you want, I can take you now, the way you need to be taken, or we can wait to do that another time. But I’m not leaving here until you feel that I have claimed you properly. The way you need me to.”

  “You took me, Empress,” Líann didn’t even try to avoid my gaze as she replied. “The only thing that matters to me is that you did it the way you wanted to. I’m yours now, and I need nothing more from you to know that.”

  When she finished, Líann sat up and pulled off her nightdress to lay beside me, just as bare as I was. I held her next to me and we basked in each other’s warmth and the unique euphoria that comes from experiencing another’s body so intimately for the first time.

  “It won’t often be like this,” I spoke to her softly as we wrapped ourselves around each other. “I will tak
e you and you will test me, and I will make you pay for it every time you do. That’s what we truly need from each other. But in between, we will also have a few moments like this as well, and they will be very special to me.”

  “I know what I need, Empress,” Líann replied, matching herself to my mood perfectly. “I need you to rule over me, and I know that’s what you need from me, but I can be soft and gentle for you when you want me to be. I am yours, as you already know, and I will do whatever you need me to do.”

  She looked at me so intently that I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her. Líann didn’t just need me to dominate her, and her words were not hollow. She truly needed to be mine, in every sense that mattered. The depth of the devotion she was offering me was simply incredible, and it proved to be too much of a temptation for me to resist. In an instant, I rolled her on her back and took her right then.

  Líann was started by my sudden action, and before she could even react, I’d straddled her and pinned her arms to the mattress. She looked up at me in surprise, and I turned my eyes into shining pits of green fire for her in return.

  With her helpless beneath me, I funneled my desires into her, channeling my raw lust and hunger directly into the tendrils I sent pulsing through her body. Líann’s reaction to my second set of tendrils that morning was not as restrained as before, and she fought against me even as I felt her body reaching out to me for more.

  Her desperate struggles only urged me on, igniting something inside me that I’d never felt before; a keen desire to simply take—to own and to have what I wanted—regardless of any other considerations. I recognized it for the dark, shadowy thing that it was, and under different circumstances, I would have rejected those impulses completely, but venting those sorts of dark desires was exactly why the two of us had been drawn together, and I shoved my concerns aside, letting my shadowy side run wild with her.

  I held her down helplessly as Líann tried to buck herself out from under me, all while a series of low moans escaped from between her slightly parted lips. While she struggled, I leaned in and ran my lips and tongue over her breast before I took her nipple in my mouth, biting down on her slightly. The tendrils I sent to her with my mouth pushed her over the edge, and for the second time that morning, I watched her as she shuddered in release.

  The feeling of her hips slowly rocking beneath me simply wasn’t enough, and I lifted my head from her breast and kissed her almost violently. As I thrust my tongue into Líann’s mouth, I sent yet another tendril into her, flooding her with my urgent desires. The effect on her was more than I’d anticipated, and Líann’s gentle shudders turned into a series of uncontrolled spasms of ecstasy.

  I could have reflected some of her passions back to me and taken my own pleasure in the complete domination I had over her, but chose to simply watch while my desires ran their course through her. In the future, I knew that I would do exactly that, but this time, I wanted to not only appreciate what I’d done to her, but the truly exquisite way that Líann reacted to it as well.

  Her thin, graceful form writhed with such complete abandon that I felt compelled to watch as her back arched and her hips slowly pulsed beneath me. Líann’s eyes never opened to meet mine, but I watched her intently, nonetheless. She was simply captivating in the throes of her passion, and I remained straddled across her waist, staring down at her until her last lingering tremors slowly faded away.

  “Was that better?” I whispered in her ear when she settled down at last.

  Líann’s eyes opened slowly when I spoke to her, and in between her deep breathes, she struggled to reply.

  “Please, Empress, no more,” she pleaded as she tried to push me away.

  I looked down at the hand she pressed against my chest and a wry smile crossed my lips.

  “If you’re comfortable enough to put your hand there, perhaps you should call me Dreya.”

  Líann pulled back immediately when her mind finally registered just where her hand had been pushing against me. Despite what had just happened between us, she flushed red, and quickly turned away from me.

  “You have very interesting boundaries, Líann,” I observed in amusement.

  “I told you that I’d been waiting for you, Empress,” she replied without turning around to face me. “You are my first and will be my only love. I’m only now just learning what that means.”

  She’d mentioned that before, and I should have realized what it meant much sooner, but her enthusiastic response to me had caused me to forget her lack of experience. Obviously, when she was under my influence she’d lost her shyness and inhibitions, but they seemed to return quite rapidly once I no longer held her strings. The change in her was quite dramatic.

  “I love you already, Líann, and that will only grow stronger with time,” I assured her as I ran my fingers across the flawless skin of her back. “There are no limitations between us.”

  The tension vanished from her and as she relaxed, I alternately stroked her back softly and scratched her skin with my nails. Líann stretched out languidly with pleasure at the opposing sensations, and I stopped to wrap my arms around her, cupping her breast in my hand as I drew her into me.

  “I have to leave you now,” I whispered in her ear. “But I’ll see you again at our weekly meeting. Make sure that you’re ready for a more… intense discussion.”

  Líann shivered as my lips brushed against her, and I rolled away from her to get dressed and be on my way. I’d already spent a bit more time in her chambers than I’d intended, and still had my own morning duties to attend to.

  Líann turned to watch me get ready, and in an ironic twist on something I’d done long ago, I put on my garments slowly, letting her take me in as I dressed at a deliberately slow and provocative pace.

  Líann curled herself up in her covers and I heard a soft, contented purr escape her as I turned and walked away towards the door. She may have been the last to come to me, but I knew that she was in many ways the most important of my lovers. Her ability to help restrain my darkness was absolutely critical to me.

  I had thought that it was under my control—that I was the master of the shadows creeping around inside of me, but that was only partly true. While they were indeed under my control, that was only the case so long as I did not let them build up inside me for too long. I’d learned that my darkness was not just a product of the outside world. It did not just come from events that outraged me or caused me pain. My darkness also came from deep within me, generated by something inside me, something buried within my own core.

  Without the nearly constant outlet of combat and adventuring that I’d experienced early in my life, the shadows inside me had been building up while I’d been forced into the relatively conflict-free life of governing on a daily basis. During that time, my internal darkness had accumulated almost beyond my ability to control, and only the release afforded by Gilfri’s assassins and the attack by his troops had kept me from losing control. Still, I couldn’t count on such things to hold my darkness at bay—I needed Líann. I needed the outlet she offered for the shadows that threatened to overwhelm me, but I also knew that I needed Líann herself as well. She was more than just a means to control my demons, she’d already become far more than that to me in the short time that had passed since I’d accepted her.

  “Empress,” Thelmé’s hesitant call interrupted my musings. “Please, if I might have a word before you go?”

  “What is it Thelmé?” I asked. She’d usually only speak to me on matters of some importance, so I was intrigued to hear what she had to tell me.

  “It may not be my place to say such things, but I see the Queen not only as my liege, but almost as my own daughter in some ways,” she began. “I beg you not to toy with her heart. For all her worldliness, she is vulnerable in that way, and I do not want to see her hurt.”

  “Sit, Thelmé,” I told her as I tried to come up with a way to respond. She had obviously not been fooled by my thinly veiled attempts to conceal my liaiso
ns with her Queen, and I needed to come up with a way to convince her to not only accept what had developed between us, but to keep the secret for us as well. I decided to begin with buying myself a little more time to think.

  “Feel free to speak your mind with me, Thelmé. What makes you think I’m going to hurt her?”

  “You already have Tási,” Thelmé replied. “Your relationship with her is quite public. I don’t take you for the type to simply cast off someone you’re so obviously in love with, so it seems likely that your interest in my Queen is only a passing fancy.”

  “You’re quite correct about Tási,” I answered her. “But are very mistaken in your assessment of how I feel about Líann. Since you already know about us, I will explain things to you, but what I’m about to tell you must go no further than that.”

  Thelmé wasn’t just poking her nose in my affairs, so to speak. She was truly concerned for her Queen, not just as her advisor, but as someone who’d raised Líann from birth, she’d come to care for and even love her in an almost motherly way. I respected the bond she felt, and also looked on it as an opportunity to bring Thelmé into our conspiracy to keep things discreet. Having the Queen’s aide working with us would certainly make things quite a bit easier, so I let her in on as much as I felt comfortable sharing with her.

  “You know that I am Sintári,” I continued. “In your own ancient language, that word means ‘true feeling.’ That title is not one without meaning; due to our stronger connection with our emotions and the world around us, my people’s ability to love as well as our needs are much more powerful than that of any other race.”

  “I love Tási with all my heart,” I confessed to Thelmé. “But that takes nothing away from my feelings towards Líann. Although this is not usual among the people of this world today, it is typical among the Sintári. We feel more and can give more than you are capable of understanding, Thelmé. If things were different, I would not hide my love for your Queen, but I fear that I’m already asking too much of my people, and the time is not yet right to make such revelations.”