by R. Lee Smith
But no. Proteus stirred from his fevered embraces, started to look around and see what had stolen his Master’s attention, and so Horuseps seized him before she could be seen. Seized him and pulled him deeper into the dark. She saw his pale face receding, and then he was gone.
‘Be careful,’ he thought at her (the thought came with the secondhand impressions of Proteus fumbling at his/her breast, his mouth crushing his/her lips with kisses, but Horuseps’s thoughts were cool).
Mara kept climbing, and saw no one else. Kazuul’s hall was dark and quiet. The doors that bore his image were shut and sealed. He did not appear when she opened them. He didn’t meet her on the stair, and he wasn’t there when she emerged into his cold bedchamber.
She had missed sunset by just a few minutes she thought, approaching the aerie. There were still a few pale streaks in the indigo skies, but that light was fading. Kazuul had lit several candles. They guttered in the heavy Romanian wind, protected by glass shields as cracked and neglected as the rest of this room.
He was here, she was sure of it. She couldn’t see him or sense him, not even in the Mindstorm, but there was a heaviness to the air, the itch of watching eyes upon her. This time, she waited him out.
Clouds rolled by, losing the last of their linings as the wind blew them into new shapes. There were no stars, and only a musty smudge to mark where the moon must be. The lake at the foot of the mountain lapped at its rocky shores. In the forest, something screamed once. Wolves answered. It was a beautiful night.
“Another audition?” Kazuul growled behind her.
Mara smiled. She turned around. He stood half-in and –out of shadows, all streaks of candlelight, sharp spikes, and scowling mouth.
“I came to be with you,” she said.
“Ha.” He had a cup in his hand. She didn’t see it until he threw it violently away, splashing wine in a wide streak across the floor as the silver goblet itself banged and rattled off into some dark corner. “And how many of my brothers didst thou sample before thee named me champion?”
“Just you.”
He grinned at her, a savage grin, and turned toward the aerie.
“And you didn’t have to break anyone’s bones, you know. I had no real intention of lining demons up and passing out numbers. The whole point of meeting with you is your discretion.”
He glanced back just enough to show her the glow of one green eye, the curl of his lip and one hooked fang. “Not the whole point, I assure thee.”
She waited, but he just stared out at the sky, and she couldn’t even feel the flow of his thoughts much less what they were. At last, she sighed. “I came at a bad time, I guess. I’ll come back later.”
“Hold where thou art, woman.”
“I know you said you weren’t up on modern courting practices, but in another minute, I’m going to be right out of the mood and right out of your door.”
His spikes shifted as he considered her, and then he walked away. She watched him pace restlessly around a long table where the bones of his evening meal still lay scattered over a silver tray, all the way to the aerie. He rested one hand on the lip of the wall and looked down, his every impressive line edged in moonlight, and Mara admired him, even offered up that admiration for him to taste if he wanted, but he did not respond. Eventually, he came back to her.
“To be with me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“In my bed.”
“If that’s where you want me.”
He reached out and put one arm around her, his claws sinking into her back as he pulled her hard against him. His suspicious stare never shifted. “And thou wilt give me every will of thee.”
“No.”
He released his breath in a curt snarl and shoved her away, then snatched her back just as fast and yanked her tight against his chest, enough that she could feel the steady beating of his heart against her ribs. “I am Master here,” he growled.
“Not tonight.” She put her hand on him and his hot stare faltered. He looked down, watching grimly as she traveled the rough plain of his body down to the many layers of his loincloth. “This is my game, remember? Tonight, you give yourself to me.”
“To thee,” he said with clear distrust.
“To use however I desire.”
His growl softened, became something that was almost a purr. The points of his claws sunk into her arms eased, but she didn’t try to escape his grip. When she rubbed her palm lightly over the bulge of him, he closed his eyes. When he brought his hand up to caress her cheek and comb down through her pale hair, she rose up on her toes and kissed him.
His breath was hot and stained by blood, but she kissed him anyway, pushing her tongue in to flick at his fangs, sucking at his lips, biting when he began to kiss her back and accepting his vengeful snap with a throaty laugh. He growled, his teeth still pressed against her jaw, and then he drew back and licked at her, rumbling low under his breath in increasing passion until he moved to kiss her again.
She pulled away, stroking him slowly through his loincloth and smiling. “So,” she said, “do I have your will to fuck you?”
He didn’t smile back. “How mean thee?”
“How much clearer do I have to be?”
“Swear that thou shalt lie beneath me and I am thine.”
“No,” she said, and before the furious roar that stabbed up into the Mindstorm could find a voice in him, she whispered, “I want you beneath me.”
He drew back, his eyes sparking green fire, and now, finally, he smiled. “Shall I disrobe?” he asked, catching the hand that moved on him and bringing it to his lips.
She raised her arms. “Ladies first.”
Chuckling, he took her by the sleeves and pulled the robe away in one dramatic whoosh, unveiling her like a work of art at the gallery openings she used to attend as a child. The robe he dropped indifferently, his gaze consuming her naked body, not so much with passion as with triumph. Only his eyes touched her, and every part knew that burning touch—not just her breasts and pussy and thighs, but all of her, a radiant entirety requiring only him to complete it.
“Now you,” she said, when he moved to embrace her.
“As thou wilt.” He unbuckled his belt and drew the whole thing off, watching her closely and growling victory when she smiled. “Aye,” he rumbled, reaching for her. “Even the look of me doth please thee. Behold the proof that thou art made for my possession.”
“I’ve admired a lot of men in my life.”
“Ere thee came to me.” He flicked his claws, then swept her suddenly up into his arms. He carried her like a bride to the bed, nuzzling at her naked throat. “And now wilt thou learn thou hast known no true man before me.”
“The audition is over,” she said, amused.
“Yet thy game goes on.” He smiled at her, his sharp teeth gleaming, his arms like iron around her. “And thou has sought me out for another turn upon thy board. Ha, I see thy scheming thoughts behind the darkened windows of thy mind. Thou desirest my shadow over thee far more than my cock within thee. Thou meanest to use my name as a torch when thou seekest thy Ka-nee. Didst thou think I could hold thee and never know the truth?”
“You’re still holding me,” she observed.
“I have mine own desires. I shall allow much to achieve them.”
“Even though you think you know I’m lying to you.”
He put his mouth very close to hers, enough that she could taste the blood on his lips when he growled, “Only fuck me, Mara, and lie freely. I care not where my shadow falls.”
He did not simply lay her on the bed, but arranged her, just as though she were another pillow. Mara watched with amusement as Kazuul caressed her. All his attention appeared to be on his hands and on what little flesh lay under them. His thoughts were swirls of erotic imagery—some of it so abstract, she couldn’t be sure of whether she were part of it at all—and his breath came only in soft, animal growls of lust.
“Thou art beautiful,” he murmured, s
troking her thigh. He used both hands, shaping her as a potter with clay. When he bent to taste what he was touching, his hands immediately dipped around to cup her buttocks and lift her into his waiting mouth. His tongue, long and muscular, lashed up and into her without preamble. For him, this was probably foreplay. His mouth pressed hard against her as his tongue worked. His growls intensified in volume even as it sank in pitch, vibrating not unpleasantly against her clitoris. He withdrew only after a thorough sampling and then only to say, “Beautiful,” again.
“You think so?”
Kazuul raised his head from the crux of her thighs and looked at her. His eyes were narrow, smiling slits through which his undisguised derision assailed her. “Do not pretend not to know it. Modesty does not impress me.”
“It may astonish you to hear this,” Mara said dryly. “But I don’t spend my days planning ways to impress you.”
His eyes didn’t change. ‘Dost thou not?’ he thought, the words so clear, so deliberate, that Mara knew at once he had shaped them just for her to overhear. He bent again to lick slowly, insolently, along the slit of her sex.
“I know how I look as far as humans go,” Mara continued, idly spreading her legs a little wider to accommodate the demon’s broad shoulders, particularly the unyielding spikes that made them even broader. “It just surprises me that your standards would be the same.”
“Indeed?” He had begun to make his way up her body, but his hands remained low at her thighs. He caressed her there in long, sweeping passes like figure-eights, up to her hips and down again, tender movements made abrasive by his unnaturally rough skin and the occasional scrape of a claw’s edge. His kisses came quite often with teeth, but the little flares of pain only made the pleasure that much greater.
“I can’t imagine you’d really consider me beautiful. Wouldn’t I look better with scales or something? Wings…claws…a tail?” She reached out and gave one of the bony spears jutting from his back a playful tap. “Spikes?”
“Such things are easily amended,” he told her. He slid one hand up and over her belly, and where that hand moved, she could see her skin moving, bubbling almost. Changing, or at least, wanting to change. She didn’t need to look to know he was watching her, ready to relish any squirming sign of unease.
“Is that what you teach?” she asked instead. She reached out and touched the high knot of his black hair and felt it pouring around her fingers like water. So fine. So strange to be so fine, against all those spikes and rock-rough skin. “What you used to teach, rather?”
His tongue dipped into her navel and trembled there suggestively as he moved his hand back to her thigh. “It is Master Ruk who instructeth the newcome students of the Scholomance in the art of manipulating fleshly form,” he said. “If thou wouldst know my specialties, why dost thou not ask?”
“It’s called small talk. I don’t actually care.”
“Nay?” Another of those too-smug smiles nettled at her.
She laughed at him. “Look, I give up. I didn’t come here for conversation anyway.” She gave him a shove and he rolled onto his back agreeably, shrugging in a huge, cat-like motion as he did so that the spines fanned out and lay flat. He was still smiling as she straddled him, still smiling when she took his cock in her hand and pulled it back against her belly, stroking. Her answering smile did not require much in the way of acting to make it hostile. “I think it’s cute when you act like this is a real relationship. I like just one thing about you and no offense, but I could get it from anyone.”
“Aye?” He laced his hands behind his head, his gaze tracking the motion of her arm in apparent unconcern.
“Yes. Well…anyone with a cock. I admit I prefer yours, but let’s be honest here. That could be just because I haven’t seen them all.”
He chuckled. His mind remained completely black to her; his body, completely relaxed. The only rise she was getting out of him was the one in her hand.
“At least I don’t blow smoke up your skirt telling you how beautiful you are. I just take what I want.” She rolled her thumb over the thick head of him and rocked up onto her knees, tilting her hips forward so that he could see how near, how far, he was to what he’d been so aggressively pursuing all this time. He didn’t seem to care now. He shut his eyes, baring his teeth and snarling pleasure. Mara thoughtfully settled back down and watched him. After a while, she reached with her free hand and gave the great spear on his shoulder another tap. “Does this hurt to lie like that?” she asked.
He grunted. “What matter to thee?”
“Nothing, I guess, but I could be persuaded to try another position if you asked nicely.”
“Pain is transitory, young one. As is pleasure. I shall suffer the one to savor the other. The years,” he mused, “have been long and empty.”
“You hopeless romantic, you.” She licked her fingers and moved them in light, tickling gestures all up and down the underside of his cock, riding the quick, hard thrusts of his hips with which he met this treatment. “Fortunately for you, I’m more interested in my pleasure than in your pain. Open your eyes.”
He did, smiling. “Why?”
“I want you to see me putting you inside me.”
She felt his cock twitch in her grip, saw his eyes spark with faint, green light. He raised his head, his gaze dipping to stare with hot intensity at her hand. She gave him a little squeeze, fit the head of him to her, and impaled herself slowly, writhing as she took him in. The sensation was as good as it ever was, good enough that it was easy to dial it up, to fill all her outside-thoughts with it, to let him hear her silent pleasure as she showed him this mask of self-control.
“Thou art home,” he said softly.
“Don’t talk,” she whispered, digging her fingernails at his chest as she bent over him. “I just want to fuck you.”
He touched her stomach as she began to move, just once, as if petting her. That was all. Then he merely watched her. The only sounds were those their bodies made in mating: his broken growls, her coarse breaths. It didn’t take long—a minute, two at most. She came, fucking harder as she dug her nails at his chest, and came again through pure force of will greatly influenced by friction. She bucked off him at once, taking his hot, slick cock in her hand and working him hard, wanting him to see his cum hit her, mark her, wanting him to think she was his.
Rage replaced the complacent lust that had suffused the Mindstorm until this moment, striking her with all the force of a slap. He seized her naked throat in his fist and roared as his semen arced, splashing hot against her breast and dripping down over her belly and thighs. “Thou bitch!” he bellowed.
“Someday, I want to taste that,” she said, very calmly, and he drew back with a frown, his grip easing. His cock, soft and spent in her hand, twitched. “But not today. I don’t like being yelled at and I’m done with you for now.”
“Art thou? And to what gameboard now, thou deceiver?” He showed her his fangs, then slowly lay back on the bed. The hand at her throat opened, but did not remove itself. He slipped his claw under the chain of her locket and pulled it out taut. He studied it, tracing the lacy pattern on its face with the very tip of his thumbclaw. He didn’t look at her, but only at it, and his expression was coldly speculative. “To whose welcome bed?”
Much as she tried, she could not contain the spark of alarm from flaring in her breast, but she didn’t grab for it. If she did that, it was lost. She waited, still straddling him, fighting for calm.
“I have seen this ‘round thy slender throat even at our first meeting,” he remarked, and shifted his eyes to her. “Thou knowest not such trinkets are forbidden within the Scholomance?”
“Horuseps let me keep it.”
“Did he indeed,” Kazuul growled, his eyes blazing, then just as suddenly smiled at her. “Yet how easily I amend his error.” His finger tightened, pulling the cheap chain tighter as he bent close. “Wilt thou beg me for its keeping?” he murmured, his sharp teeth inches from her face.
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
His brows lifted. He drew back slightly, his predatory smile broken.
“Please,” said Mara. “Please let me keep it. I beg you, Kazuul. I beg you, Master.”
His brows swept even higher, knotting as they did. The cold, green glint of his eyes shifted to the locket, ridiculous on the hook of his claw. “What is it?” he asked, sounding wary now.
“A gift.”
“Be it blessed?” He cut a sharp glance at her when she huffed out her startled laughter, and then frowned. “No relic then. Hm.” He turned it over, polished it with slow circles of his thumb, and turned it back to its face. “It looks a toy.”
“It is.”
“Yet precious.”
“Please.”
“Tell me how it came to thee and I shall allow thee to hold it.”
“It was a gift,” Mara said again.
“Or tell me not,” Kazuul continued with deceptive mildness, “and I’ll have it off and forever ruined.” He polished it some more, the tendons of his fist creaking like old leathers. “Truth, I suspect I would enjoy that better, yet I shall hold to my word. Whose gift, Mara? What occasion? Why so marked and so deeply remembered? For that, I confess, I understand least. I see a toy, one readily replaced. Sentiment passes well enough from one trinket to another. Better dost thou know than most how supple are mortal minds. Unless it is as the lenience of Horuseps that thou dost treasure it.”
“It was my birthday.”
“Eh?” He looked up sharply, his eyes incredulous slits. “Thou liar! I would know it if thou hadst borne a child!”
“My birthday. The anniversary of the day of my birth.”
He continued to stare and finally sat up, putting her roughly at arm’s reach before slapping his free hand ominously against his thigh. “Who art thou in human reckoning that thou art so honored?”
Mara laughed again, the same breathy, disbelieving laugh that had jumped out of her when he’d asked if the cheap locket were a holy relic. “Jesus Crazy-Horse Christ. Everyone gets to celebrate their birthday! It’s not like they closed the banks for me!”
