by Aja James
Sometimes, she said it’s because the visage is too “pretty” to ruin, and in case she succeeded in turning me, she didn’t want an ugly gargoyle in her ranks. Other times, she said it’s because she wanted to see every minute reaction on my face from the tortures she dealt, and that scarring it would prevent her from having a perfect view.
I suppose my face is something else I can offer Ishtar, though it’s far from what it used to be when we met, and even then, I doubt it was anything remarkable. She always assures me that everything I have, everything that I am, pleases her. But I…
I inhale deeply to suppress the doubts, to focus on facts.
Ishtar deserves the best. I cannot say that I would ever wear that qualifier. I do not give her everything she needs, physically, emotionally, spiritually. It has been better between us over the past few weeks, built on the physical connection we’ve rekindled with Jade and Rain’s help. But the effect of that initial surge is lessening. Or perhaps it is simply my natural tendency to pull away, to be alone, to flinch from another’s touch, even hers.
Most of all, hers.
She touches me to chase pleasure, both her own and to give me mine. But what she does not understand is that even when I find release, I seldom feel pleasure. Emotionally, I feel fulfilled that she is fulfilled. Physically, the pressure inside lessens, driven by the imperative to Nourish my Mate, to give her my strength. Spiritually, however, even though our Bond is stronger, I feel cold.
And mentally…I am not always in the moment with her. I am someplace else. I have to be, in order to detach myself from the memories that are engraved into my skin, my muscles, my very bones.
And deeper within.
The other Mated couples in the Shield are expressive with their love for each other, some more overtly than others. I am the only Mated male who remains physically removed from my female. Only when she is in her kitten form, cuddling in my arms, am I more natural at providing affection by touch.
Anything more intimate is… difficult.
Though Medusa has never managed to mount me because my body remained faithful to Ishtar’s original Claim, she’s done everything else to rape and defile me.
Everything.
I do not know if I can ever fully give Ishtar what she needs from a Mate. I will try. I will never stop trying. But it…
It fucking hurts.
Even when the pleasure is greatest, the pain is always present. I’ve been taught over four millennia that pleasure is pain, and pain is pleasure. Or if not pleasure, then something expected, a constant that has been carved into my psyche. Rain explains that I have been “conditioned” to live with pain, that if I do not have it, I do not feel alive.
This is also why testing and honing myself in mock battle with the Elite warriors and Chevaliers have helped feed my need for pain. The bruises, cuts and sometimes broken bones I receive daily from training invigorate rather than deplete me. Sometimes I catch myself running knowingly into a blade rather than deflect it, just to seek that drug-like pain. I try to control myself, but on the other hand, when I hesitate, I am wounded regardless from the indecision.
Goddess above! I am a mess.
I will overcome this. I will. For Ishtar. For Inanna.
For my son.
As I stand beneath the shower, I sense a shift in the air of another’s presence, then Ishtar’s unique scent, and finally, I hear her almost silent approach.
She stands just outside the edge of the open shower. In one stride, I can easily pull her into my arms.
I don’t.
“I had dinner with Benji and…Erebu just now,” she muses softly. “That’s the name he’s chosen for himself. Erebu. The most beautiful time of the day for a Dark One—the sunset that harkens the thrill of night.”
“I am glad,” I respond.
A long silence stretches between us.
I do not know whether she is lost in thought about the dinner or looking at my nakedness or something else. In moments like these, my other senses cannot help me discern what my Mate is thinking or feeling. And though we have a telepathic bond, unless we are both open to the communication and initiate the bridge, our thoughts remain our own.
“May I help you wash?” she asks finally.
Ah. So she was looking at my nakedness.
My heart clenches at the fact that she has to ask, and in such a tentative tone. Her nature has always been aggressive, bold, dominating, and forthright. She goes after and takes what she wants. It is in her animal spirit as well as her Dark One “genes.” I love this about her.
With any other male, with the long-ago version of me she used to know, she would never have to ask. And I would grin at her and open my arms, just as hungry for my Mate’s affections as she is for mine.
But I am not that male.
Warring within myself, wanting to fulfill her needs while dreading the pain of her touch, the agony of pleasure, I lock my jaw and incline my head in a slight nod.
I do my damnest to keep my expression neutral, even welcoming, when I hear the rustle of her clothes falling to the floor, but a muscle in my jaw ticks wildly, betraying my struggle.
I just hope she doesn’t see it.
“Are you sure it’s all right, my love?” she asks, not coming closer.
So, she noticed. Of course she did.
“Yes, ana Ishtar. Join me,” I invite and force a small smile. “Tell me about your dinner. What did you and the boys talk about?”
Distracted by the subject at hand, she approaches me without hesitation this time, and I hear her moving around to lather a sponge with soap. I note that she’s careful to avoid touching me, despite the close quarters and despite being two Mates naked in the shower together.
“Well, the fact that he did not scream and throw things and run madly out of the apartment when I revealed myself was a promising start,” she said.
I can hear the smile in her voice, and a real smile forms vicariously on my lips as well. I love hearing Ishtar’s smiles.
She begins to lather my chest and shoulders with the sponge, keeping up a stream of easy conversation.
“We sat down at dinner like civilized people, and ate almost everything Benji brought in his red wagon. I ate more than anyone else, of course. A growing boy is no match for the appetite of the Great White Beast.”
I hum low in my throat in agreement. This time, I can feel her grin as her cheek grazes my shoulder when she scrubs down my arm to my hand.
“Are you suggesting I overeat, Ninigiku of my heart?”
Lord Bright Eyes. I will never tire of hearing her call me that nickname, even though my eyes are no longer “bright.”
“Never,” I demur.
“Hmph,” she huffs, pretending affront.
She is working on my back now. I know that she will go to my feet next and work up my legs. And then…
Despite the ease of our conversation, my muscles involuntarily tense.
“Erebu seems to have an ‘eating disorder,’ Rain called it,” she continues, either not feeling my body’s instinctive bracing or choosing to ignore it, “and only partook of a small slice of ham and some fruit. He is getting better, though, I’ve noticed. He eats more than before, not nearly enough, but certainly better than insubstantial soup and water. And of course, I ate the most because I didn’t talk at all during dinner. I just listened to the banter between the boys. Both because I love the way they interact, and because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and spook Erebu on our first…date.”
I try to focus my mind, deepening my breathing in an effort to calm my body’s reflexive rejection of her touch.
“Is that what you’re calling it? A date with your son?” I quip.
She’s kneeling at my feet, rubbing the sponge over my calves now. She pauses in her labors to look up at me. I can tell from the projection of her voice the exact angle of her face.
“You know, it’s rather like a matchmaking appointment. The way villagers used to get two people to
gether through a third party. I suppose humans still do it today, though Sophia mentioned during one of our conversations that nowadays, for the most part, they’ve cut out the middleman. There are ‘apps’ now that can bring two strangers together, and you select what you want from a menu of characteristics. It’s all very bizarre to me. How would you know who your true love is until you’ve met them? How can you simply ‘order one online’ by choosing from a list?”
This sounds perplexing to me as well, causing enough confusion to relax my body again, until she says, “Although, Sophia also mentioned that humans don’t use the apps for Mating. They just want to fu—”
She breaks off in a fit of coughing, choking down the rest of her sentence.
I understand the gist of it.
Dark Ones are extremely sexual. Fucking is their forte. Lust for violence, blood, power, treasure, and simply lust drive their existence. Many would assume that Pure Ones are the opposite, that until we meet our Eternal Mate, we are asexual. This is far from the truth.
But what is true is that I know I am not meeting her physical needs.
I must overcome this. I must.
She finishes with my legs, not going much past my knees and puts the sponge away. I can hear her lathering her hands with the soap for my hair. The smell of the “shampoo” is different from the body soap.
“Why do you say it was like a matchmaking appointment for you and Erebu?” I ask, as I dip my head to give her better access. This part I do enjoy, even though there is not much hair to wash.
I can hear her smile again as she answers, “It’s like Benji is the matchmaker, and Erebu and I are being brought together for a first tentative meeting. I think I might be the awe-stuck swain in this scenario, courting the most beautiful girl in the whole village, perhaps across the whole continent.”
“Hence the speechlessness and food demolition?” I tease.
“Oh indeed,” she agrees. “But I haven’t told you the best part yet.”
She’s rubbing her hands through my hair to rinse the shampoo out. Now she’ll start on the “conditioner.”
Ishtar grasps these modern habits easier than I, though we are both rather technology challenged, in many ways by our own choosing. For example, I do not understand why I must put oily substances back into my hair right after I’ve washed it. She tells me it helps make the hair healthy and shiny. If that is true, I think it only works with hair that is healthy to begin with. “Conditioner” will not transform my short metallic tufts into silk.
We’ve both isolated ourselves from the world. I didn’t have a choice, and Ishtar chose to shut herself off. In fact, she spent many years over the millennia in her animal form, away from civilization. After the Great War and the Purge of the aftermath, she lost faith in humanity.
But since she found Inanna again, and now Sophia and other female members of the Dozen, she is no longer isolated, no longer alone. She enjoys the sisterhood. The radiance of her joy reminds me of the bright, engaging, passionate nature she used to exhibit as a young girl, and then a young woman. I love this about her too.
“Don’t leave me in suspense,” I urge her on.
Her fingers linger in my hair, scratching lightly across my scalp, her touch more caressing than task-oriented. I close my eyes in almost-pleasure, the simple, undemanding kind.
“Remember the comb I gave to our Binu when he visited Dark Dreams?”
Yes. I remember. It was one of the two gifts I gave her on her twenty-first name day. The night before I broke her heart.
“He brought it out after dinner and asked if I would b-brush his h-hair.”
She has been so brave thus far, making this all-important first interaction into something casual and commonplace. But the stuttering that ended on a breathless gasp bespoke of her wounded but healing heart.
I felt her sorrow, regret, joy and hope all at once, even before I heard these emotions in her voice.
On pure instinct, simply needing to comfort my Mate, a mother who has lost both of her children for thousands of years, who’s never held them in her arms, I enclose her within my own. Chest to chest, her face fitting perfectly in the hollow of my throat.
“He is so beautiful, my love,” she whispers, the salt from her hot tears blending with the light sprinkle of water from the showerhead as it all trickles down my skin, leaving me raw.
“Benji described him accurately—eyes like yours, hair like mine, tall and much too thin. But you wouldn’t believe how his beauty eclipses the gods of old unless you beheld it for yourself.”
I clench my fist against the small of her back and hug her tighter.
I cannot see my son. I do not know if I ever shall. At least I have the memory of Inanna to sustain me. At least I had my daughter for two decades before we were separated. But I have never seen Erebu. My blind eyes throb with visceral pain at the loss.
“I will tell you all about it,” Ishtar adds softly, as if sensing my torment. “Our son truly cannot be described as anything but beautiful. He is all male, but there is a feline, delicate grace about him. I do not think it’s because of his thinness. It’s his inherent gentleness and playfulness. He might display his prickly, irreverent wit to the world, but he’s terribly sensitive inside. And gravely hurt.”
She sniffs, and I take a deep breath, both of us gathering ourselves out of sorrow, focusing on joy.
And hope. Always hope.
“Often, he makes scornful, self-deprecating comments,” she continues in that soothing, low voice, “partly to fend off harsher words from others that he seems to expect as his due, and partly because he truly believes them himself. He has so much light within him that it shines through whenever he looks upon Benji. Yet, so much darkness as well, focused inward. And because of this, not in spite of it, he is exquisitely, painfully beautiful. Endlessly fascinating, multi-faceted like the kaleidoscopic fragments of light filtered through the most perfect diamond.”
Even though Ishtar has not described any specific features apart from reiterating the summary sketch Benji already made, I can picture our son more clearly in my mind’s eye. I can envision the colors of his soul. Those vibrant, ever-changing colors that I saw from our first encounter. Sometimes frozen, sometimes blazing hot. But always, I knew it was him.
When I look at him, I see so many colors, infinite shades and gradients of light, unlike anyone else.
“He is beautiful, and he is good. I know he is, my heart,” Ishtar murmurs, the soft petals of her lips brushing butterfly kisses against my neck.
“Just like you,” she whispers as she slowly tilts her face up, nuzzling her nose along my throat and jaw.
I feel it then, the conflagration of heat that bursts through her skin. I smell her arousal effervescing in the air, permeating the warm water that rains upon both of us.
But my body doesn’t tense and withdraw as it usually does, making me fight myself to give her what she needs. Because I also feel the desperate desires and vulnerability of her heart and soul. She needs the love of her Mate; I need her just as much. I feel close to dying if I’m not inside her, all around her. My blood, my sex. I need her inside me too. The soothing balm of her joyful soul.
Wordlessly, my mouth finds hers in an open kiss, my tongue plunging inside to devour her sweetness.
She tightens her arms around my back and squeezes her chest against mine, going up on tiptoe in an impatient attempt to align her slick, silky notch to my already weeping cockhead. Eagerly, she sucks on my tongue, letting me plunder without returning the aggression.
Take me, Tal. I need you so much. Please, please, please. Take me hard and deep. I love you I love you I love you…
I answer her mindless plea by lifting her up. Immediately, she wraps her strong legs around my hips, securing her position despite the slickness of my still soapy skin and the continuing flow of water.
But she doesn’t take me inside even though she’s right there, the lips of her pussy open and pulsing against my sex, trapped between
her groin and my stomach. She continues to suck on my tongue, kissing my mouth and face in desperate sips, her hands clawing down my lower back to knead into my buttocks, squeezing hard, urging me silently.
But she doesn’t take control. She’s waiting for me. She wants me to take her. She needs it.
Something primal and savage unleashes within me. In a move so sudden a breath huffs out of her in a startled gasp, I slam her back into the wall of the shower and bury myself balls-deep inside of her in one hard thrust.
Mindless. I’m mindless with desire, pain, anguish and hope. Most of all, with burning, all-consuming love.
Hard and deep and rough, I pin her against the wall and use the silken vise of her pussy to milk my cock. One hand holding her in place at her hip, hard enough to leave bruises that won’t fade for at least a day. One hand keeping her still and pliant around her throat, constricting her intake of air, letting her have just enough so that everything she feels is concentrated around the jolting, plunging, plowing thrusts of my cock.
I feel her body quiver and shake with the beginnings of her maelstrom, but I contain it by squeezing her neck tighter and shifting my hips so that I no longer need to hold her hip, my pistoning cock keeping her where I want her. My hand captures one breast, kneading hard, roughly rubbing my calloused thumb across her beaded nipple over and over, making her trapped moan vibrate against my palm at her neck.
Please, Tal! I need to come! I need to be filled with your cream! Please, I want it so bad. Let me have it. I need you more than I need to breathe!
I keep her on the edge, not letting her fall over the precipice, not letting her fly. Not yet. I don’t do it for her pleasure. I don’t do it for mine. It’s not anticipation I’m building. I’m a feral, growling animal in this moment.
It’s about domination. Control. Taking. Owning.
I’ve never felt this way. I’ve never done these things. Ishtar is the only female I’ve ever given my body to. The only female I’ve been inside. The only one I have ever, and will ever, love. Whereas the aggression and passion of our lovemaking over the past few weeks were “induced” by the powers Ishtar borrowed from Jade Cicada, this is all me.
