by Tessa Cole
I could soothe those. And the thought of running my hands over his hard muscles to do so only added to my heat and urgency.
I turned my attention to the other man, who, like Delphon and Keph was also naked. I’d been delirious when I was introduced to him — what was his name? Aethan, yes — and hadn’t gotten a good look at him. Now I let my gaze slide appreciatively down his body.
He was the shortest of the four, stocky and broad-chested, with ruddy red-brown skin, and his hair was a wild, spiky dark-red mane like a mohawk that ran from his forehead, down the back of his neck to his shoulder blades. His soft brown eyes seemed to devour me as we both looked each other over, hungrily. He was crouching, which was easy, given his backward horse-like legs. And yep, he had hooves.
“Hello again,” he said, those brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “You’re a sex goddess, I hear? I’m ready when you are.” And he most certainly was. The expression ‘hung like a horse’ came to mind, but even so, he had nothing on Keph.
“Shut up, Aethan,” Rion said. His angel wings were gone, which was kind of disappointing, and he looked me over critically and not sexually like I would have wanted. “Are you feeling better? I think the heat got to you on the walk here.”
It certainly had. And with these four hunky guys surrounding me now, it was getting to me once again.
“She healed Del,” Keph said in that slow, deep rumbling way, which made my skin tingle.
“She did,” Del confirmed. “Definitely a goddess.” His gaze at me was a little wild and still full of awe.
Aethan’s grin grew. “A true goddess? A healing sex goddess?” His eyes went wide. There was something in that look, more than sexual desire — though judging by his erection he was more than ready — but there was also a yearning, a soul-deep need in his gaze that surprised me.
I smiled at him, and gave a wink.
Suddenly I had Marvin Gaye’s ‘sexual healing’ running through my head.
“Well let’s find our goddess a soft place to… rest, shall we?” Aethan said as he turned toward the door. “The Sailor’s Rest should have a room available.”
Del rose, though his gaze, still full of awe and now a burning desire, never left me. The look in those intense blue-green eyes sent a thrill down my spine and made my legs weak. No one had ever looked at me like that before.
“Goddess,” he said, holding out a hand, which I took.
“Before that,” Keph said, sending another thrill trembling through me. God, I loved his voice. “As much as we may want to please the goddess and receive her healing gift. There may be others who need it more.”
Others? How many more were going to join in pleasuring me?
“Remember that camp we saw coming into town?” Keph said to Aethan as he carefully stood… or rather, sort of stood, since he was too tall for the low ceiling.
“Camp?” Del asked.
“Yeah,” Aethan said, his expression turning grim. Whatever he’d seen, it hadn’t been good. “You’re right. They need her more than we do.”
Who were they?
“They?” Rion asked.
Keph gave a shrug of his massive boulder-shoulders. “Don’t really know. They’re sick or something. We asked one of the locals and he said recently people have been falling ill. And when they do, they go there. They probably have a wise woman to help them, but I’m guessing they don’t have a goddess.”
Oh, well yes, I could see how that might have elicited some pity from Aethan. Poor souls. Good thing I was a superhero-healing goddess. “Great, I’ll go heal these folks, then you four can give me my… reward.” I made sure to make eye contact with each of them.
Del’s gaze was eager and full of fire. Aethan nodded, his pity fading back to heated desire as his gaze swept over me again, and man, I liked the way his eyes seemed to devour me. Rion’s expression was stalwart and his smile seemed to say ‘you have a good heart.’ Then he winked, a signal that he’d be more than happy to oblige helping in my ‘reward,’ while, Keph’s gaze was filled with a heated curiosity.
“And a reward you shall have.” His soft, silver-lined eyes shimmered, and he trailed a finger down my arm, sending anticipation shivering through me.
“Let’s get this healing done!” I said.
Chapter 4
Annie
The camp was small, no more than a dozen tents, and only a few people wandered around, some dressed all in white.
I marched off the dirt road, heading for it, only to realize a moment later, I was alone. Turning back, I saw the four men standing at the edge of the road.
“Come on,” I called out to them, not sure why they’d stopped.
None of them moved. They were scared. It was clear on their expressions.
I sighed. My shoulders fell, head tilting. “Really, guys?” So much for brave and stalwart souls.
I marched back.
“Listen up, you sexy hunks of man-meat,” I said, shocking myself at that choice of words. I’d never have said that to a man’s face in real life. Though, to be fair, I hadn’t met many men who’d warranted it, either. But then, this was a dream, and I was feeling emboldened. I was a sexy-healing-superhero after all. “If you want any of this,” I motioned to myself, waving a hand down my form. “Then you’d better come with me.”
I smiled at my inadvertent pun. Here was hoping that once this healing gig was over they would come with me — after I’d had a few other orgasms of course. This was a fantasy after all, might as well make it a good one.
“But they’re sick. What if we catch it?” Aethan said. He actually seemed worried. Odd for my dream men to be so preoccupied with dream-sickness.
“I’m a healer, remember. I’ll heal you.” It was obvious.
That changed their expressions, well most of them. Del, Rion, and Keph all nodded and seemed to relax. Aethan wasn’t so easily swayed.
“I didn’t really see you heal Del the first time. Perhaps—”
Keph snapped his fist out and tapped Aethan in the face with a resounding crack, making the small man stumble and fall onto his butt.
I wasn’t sure who was more shocked. Aethan that Keph had hit him without warning, or me because it hadn’t looked like Keph had hit him that hard.
“Ow, Zeus’s balls!” Aethan exclaimed, blood running from his now-broken nose. “Why’d you do that?”
“Heal him,” Keph said to me. “Then he’ll believe.”
I suppressed a laugh. It had happened so fast. For all his bulk, Keph was quick. And certainly, Aethan had deserved it for doubting my awesomeness.
I sauntered — just a little slowly, letting him suffer for a moment — back to the men and laid a gentle hand on Aethan’s cheek, trying not to look at the blood gushing from his nose.
As much as I like this super-healing goddess thing. I wish it involved less blood.
Again, I felt the energy flow from me to him, and again, with startling speed, the man’s nose reformed, straightened, and the bleeding stopped.
Aethan blinked, reached up to his reformed nose, and spat out a mouthful of blood, his eyes wide with awe.
He stood and bowed deeply. “I’ll never doubt you again, Goddess Annie.”
“You’d better not.” Again, emboldened and feeling distant from my real-life self, I slapped him on his hairy ass, noticing only then he had a horse-like tail.
Hunh. Unable to help myself, I gave it a quick tug, half expecting it to come off. I didn’t know why I expected it might come off — this was a dream after all — but it didn’t.
“Come on, boys, let’s heal some folks!” I said, turning as Aethan’s eyes grew wider and his cock a little stiffer.
Then I marched back toward the camp with my men following.
A woman, looking similar to Aethan — except with hairy goat-like legs, cloven hooves, and tight-spiraling horns atop her head — came rushing out toward us.
Unlike most of the people I’d seen so far, this woman wore clothes, a white dress which came
to her ‘knees’ backward as they were. The dress covered just her front with a loop that hooked behind her neck to keep her loose covering in place. She had thick brown hair, falling in waves past her shoulders, and wide square-ish eyes, which made her look a bit startled.
“You shouldn’t come closer,” she warned. “Those here are very sick, quite contagious. Do not enter unless you’re already like them and seek aid.”
Nope. “I’m here to heal everyone,” I called out, perhaps a little too loudly. A few others from the small tent-village looked my way as well.
“She’s a true healer indeed,” Del said before the woman or anyone else could question us. “A goddess come to us from the heavens.”
I flashed a brilliant smile. It felt good to have a herald. I hadn’t realized I’d always wanted one, until I had one.
I strode forward, past the shocked goat-woman and pushed into the nearest tent, flagrantly throwing the flap to one side— and froze.
Before me were two woman, one much older than the other, perhaps a mother and daughter. They looked human — no fish tails or goat’s legs — but with colorful skin. The older woman had rose colored hair and skin beautifully patterned and mottled in bright reds, oranges, and yellows. The younger woman had bright pink hair, her skin darker, maroons, deep purple, and violet.
Except that was only part of what had stopped me. The other part was much less beautiful. Dark spots covered their skin, the younger one seemingly much further along than the elder, her patches were larger and at the center of a few of them the skin had burst, the wounds weeping blood.
The elder woman turned to me with shock — and possibly hope — in her eyes. She was kneeling at the top of a woven straw mat, the only thing between her and the hard ground, cradling the younger woman’s torso on her lap. The young one was less responsive, head lolling to one side, eyes searching, but not seeing me.
“Oh God,” I whispered.
This was horrible. In the matter of seconds my dream had gone from fun, sexy, and empowering, to dour, sad, and gruesome. It hadn’t fully turned into a dark and scary nightmare, but the scene before me was certainly far from pleasant and could easily go that way.
“Can you help us?” the woman asked.
The goat-woman-nurse rushed over and pushed me aside at that moment. “I don’t know what or who you are.” Her gaze was intense. “But don’t give these people false hope. Can you truly heal as you say?”
I hoped so.
Although now that I was there, I didn’t particularly want to get any closer to the women in the tent.
But I’d committed myself, and I had healed Aethan’s broken nose. Surely I could heal whatever this was.
I went to the mother first.
The men and the nurse crowded into the entranceway of the small tent, watching me but not coming any closer. I would have made some comment about them looking away for modesty’s sake — since the women in the tent were naked — but then half the people I’d seen so far, man or woman, had been naked, so modesty wasn’t much of a thing in this particular dream.
I stood beside the mother and laid a hand atop her head. Even there, I could feel the heat radiating from her, most likely from a fever.
“I really hope this works,” I whispered, only just barely breathing the words, and pushed energy into the woman. I felt it take, latching onto something inside her and forcing it out of her.
The woman gasped, her eyes going wide like my guys when they’d experienced my magic, and the spots vanished from her vibrant skin.
I stepped back, a bit lightheaded for a moment.
“Is that water?” Rion ask, drawing my attention to him as he pointed to a clay jug on the ground a few feet from the entranceway.
The nurse nodded and he grabbed it and rushed to my side, wrapping a strong arm around me, which felt ever-so-good, even if I was mostly certain I didn’t need it.
He lifted the jug to my lips and I took a long swig of the cool, refreshing water before pushing it away and turning my attention to the young woman.
Rion stepped back, but stayed close, and I knelt next to the girl.
The mother reached out a tentative hand to brush my shoulder. “You are indeed a goddess,” she said softly. “If unlike any I’ve ever seen before.”
Yep, frumpy and freckled. I’m sure most goddesses were much more beautiful than I was. Luckily this was a dream, so everyone here thought I was beautiful.
Laying hands upon one of the few unblemished spots on the young woman, I took a deep breath and focused on healing her. This took a lot longer. The young woman’s illness was much further along, and her body thirstily drank the healing energy from me.
This time I was the one who gasped when it was done, my head spinning, my vision blurring.
I sat back heavily on my butt, and Rion rushed back to me, kneeling beside me and offering me more water. But the young woman’s eyes fluttered open, and I couldn’t help but stare, the water forgotten for a second.
Her eyes were a deep, stunning scarlet, and while I’d have thought red eyes would have been scary — the embodiment of evil in horror and fantasy movies — there was nothing terrifying about them. They were gorgeous.
“How…?” she asked her mother, her voice weak.
“You were saved by the grace of a kind goddess,” her mother replied, then turned to me. “What is your name so we might worship you in thanks for this service?”
“Annie Chambers. Goddess Extraordinaire.” Then, lightheaded as I was, I giggled.
Worship?
Me?
Rion helped me drink from the jug again and that helped to strengthen me a little, though even after I’d had my fill, the room was still spinning ever so slightly.
“Help me up,” I said to Rion, and he did. Standing, the world whirled a little faster and I had to keep leaning to the right to try to correct it, while Rion held me close. I probably would have fallen if he hadn’t.
“You’re tired,” he said softly. “Perhaps you should rest before you tend to the others.”
I smiled, a bit of a sloppy grin. It occurred to me that the sensations I was feeling were very similar to being drunk.
“I’m fine,” I said with a weak wave of my hand. “Take me to the others so I can heal them all, then we can get on with the pleasuring of me.”
“As you wish,” he said, though he looked more concerned than happy at that prospect.
Except as I staggered out of the tent steadied by Rion’s strong arms and headed to the next tent, doubt began to creep into my mind. This dream was getting stranger and stranger and some distant part of my consciousness whispered, perhaps it’s not a dream after all.
But that… was still just a little too farfetched to believe.
Chapter 5
Hyperion
Truly this woman was a goddess unlike any I’d ever seen or known. The gods and goddesses of legend were powerful, yes, but often selfish and self-serving. I didn’t know why Aethan still insisted on cursing upon Zeus. Those gods hadn’t done anything for any of our peoples in hundreds of years. The few — alleged — gods or goddesses I’d seen in my lifetime, had probably all been fakes and frauds. They hadn’t done anything like what Annie was doing. As much as her name was odd, her deeds were pure and her power very clear.
Yet, she was growing weak.
She’d healed nearly two dozen poor souls in the camp and insisted she be taken to the next, but now I was fully carrying her while the others waited at the edge of the camp for us. She seemed to slip in and out of consciousness. And still, she wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t rest.
I set her down in the last tent where three people huddled together. Luckily none of them seemed as far gone as that young anthousae woman Annie had first healed. A few others along the way had been as bad or worse, but luckily not many.
Whatever the origins of this nasty disease, it was particularly horrible to see. I’d never seen anything like this in Nikandra, nor any of the Okanid islands around
it. And I thanked all the gods for that.
The gods…
I stepped back as Annie began to work, barely able to sit upright. Certainly no god had done so much good for any of the people here in recent memory. All the glorious tales of the gods were hundreds if not thousands of years old. And most of the glory was for the gods themselves, spiteful and petty as they were. They’d done some good for men and women, but they’d been more of an annoyance than a boon.
Annie finished with the last of the three epimelidai in the tent then slumped to her side. When I knelt next to her, her life-beat was still strong within her, at neck and wrist, but she’d passed out, probably exhausted. I slipped my arms under her shoulders and legs to lift her, but before I did, one of the epimelidai spoke up.
“Please, good erinai. Could you convey a message to the goddess? I’m gifted with the sight,” the young man said, keeping his voice low, and I could understand why. Such people — prophissi as they were known — were generally shunned. As much as seeing the future might have been a gift, it was often more of a curse, as what was seen was rarely good. “When she healed me, I had a vision.”
Bloody crows!
I clenched my jaw tight. As much as I wanted to leave this man, I knew what he had to say could be very important, so I nodded for him to go on.
“There is a darkness, an oozing filth. It’s behind what infected us. It’s aware of this healing goddess now and is furious with her for halting its work here. It will come for her and bring this terrible death to all around her when it does.”
Well that was just great.
“Is that all?” I asked
The young man nodded, and I picked Annie up and left.
Del, Aethan, and Keph waited in the shade of a nearby tree. The sun sat low on the horizon, turning the few wisps of clouds in an otherwise clear sky, a soft pink. Goddess Annie had spent almost all day healing everyone.
