Feature Writer: Betty_Rage
Feature Title: SUMMONING THE INCUBUS 7
Published: 15.02.2020
Story Codes: Erotic Horror
Synopsis: A witch, an incubus… and a husband?
Author’s Note: Firstly, the CW: There are D/s dynamics in the second sex scene of this chapter that skirt on abusive territory (where ta female character is the perpetrator against a male character). Those that like that sort of thing will likely find it quite mild, but those that don’t may find it distasteful or upsetting. That’s ok, skip it if you want to, I’ve marked it with “//” at the start and end. I haven’t put a warning within the text for the ‘injury detail’ section, because it’s important to the plot (and because honestly I think I’ve written worse previously in this story). I might be overdoing the content warnings tbh, but there’s nothing I dislike more on Lit than wandering unprepared into some dubcon or taboo, so I think it’s only fair to try and be thoughtful. Right, feeling nice and warned? Cool, now go and enjoy some of that good sexy magical incubus romance trash that I know you came here for. 😉 … Please accept my usual apologies and heartfelt thanks for continuing to remind me that you like this story and wish to see it finished. I have had an especially fraught and difficult time in my life over the last couple of years, and while I don’t want to make anymore promises I can’t keep, I do want you to know that I’m doing better at the moment and have really enjoyed returning to writing recently. I will do my best to keep it up. Thank you again to every kind person who has sent me a note to let me know that they miss this story or have revisited it recently and enjoyed it. It’s really meaningful to hear that people like my characters or my writing style, or got a bit sexy while reading it. You are precious gems, sincerely, thank you. Love, Betty X
Summoning the Incubus 7
The monsoon lasted seven days at best. It made the land beautiful. Tall lilac grasses that leapt from the sands within the first morning. By the first evening, these were adorned with tiny white flowers. The lake that I’d only ever known as a dust bowl glimmered in the distance. Strange heavy butterflies, with orange wings like the petals of the blooms on my balcony, flew lopsidedly about my garden. Feverishly quick creatures like gold dragonflies darted about the puddles that formed in the castle courtyard.
At night it was darker than before. No blue flames trembled on the dunes. Purple cloud obscured the constellations. The night air was full of strangely soothing frog-song. Life – the thing that Azure has always seemed so devoid of – was everywhere.
I was equally rejuvenated. Giddy with the joy and wonderment of renewed romance. I danced more than I walked and flew more than I danced. I was blissful in every moment and helplessly in love.
(I imagine that I was utterly insufferable for others to be around.)
Indeed, when Lazuren and I returned to the castle at daybreak, Maya had already packed up all of my few belongings and set the basket on the other side of our curtain. It was kind of her. But presumptuous…
The castle politics that had led to the three of us sharing sleeping quarters were no less in play now, no matter the change that had taken place. I could not be persuaded to lovemaking with Maya on the other side of the curtain however, so our nights were more virtuous than either of us would have liked. (Though, of course, Lazuren could not resist a light-hearted attempt at a seduction, followed immediately by a winking refrain of “it would shame my ilk not to try”.)
I forgot my research. I read for entertainment and purpose to be alone with my lover in the library. For this was where we met, between summits and assemblies, to lash our bodies to one another and tremble in the glory of our love.
Queen Lusaka made no appearances. Her things remained in her room, but she herself was nowhere to be found. Lazuren seemed unworried. I could not have been gladder!
“Most likely she has been summoned. It is unusual for one to last so long, but certainly it is not unprecedented.” He told me. “Hopefully, my father will grow bored of the lack of progress and choose to leave rather than await her return. He likes the lands of Heliotrope. With luck he will journey to conclude their business there.”
I smiled, but had long since relinquished any hope that the King might leave soon.
Every second night a huge banquet was held, exhausting servants, soldiers and guests alike. The King’s demands for drink, company and entertainment were insatiable – right until the moment he would fall unconscious. Then he would be carried to his chambers by his bodyguards, to sleep off his deserved headache. Sometimes he would emerge the next day with sporadic orders for Lazuren to arrange diplomatic meetings or make payments, (which the Prince would obey diligently, gritting his teeth when he disagreed, but never outwardly challenging his father). Usually his only communications were for the arrangements of more feasts and musicians.
It mattered not. I thought myself otherwise entirely happy.
xxxxx
The odd thing about joy; is that it makes for feeble gossip and is very tiresome to hear reports of. So I will digress from tell of my love-struck self for the time being.
I have avoided speaking of my other four sisters; Heidi, Dawn and Marta. As much pain as I have begun to share with you, it is still so difficult to think upon them, even these many years later.
What do you say of the sisters who do not break your heart to your face? Who simply make no effort either to save or to damn you. I could only ever hope that they loved me still, and were unable, not unwilling to come to my aid. Dawn and Marta … who can say what they thought of me or if they did at all.
My sharpest sister Heidi was only a year my elder. Had anyone been taking bets on who among us five would disgrace our family and run away into the forest to become a sexual heretic and purveyor of witchcraft – the sensible money most certainly would have been on her. She was self-possessed and quick-tongued for her age. Grown from the kind of child who is always asking ‘why?’ – into the kind of adult who is always asking ‘why not?’
Heidi was unhappily married, but not nearly so as my other sisters. Her husband, Hamish, was somewhat handsome, kind, generous and sociable. Indeed, Heidi liked him a great deal and they got along splendidly. But for, she confided in me, one aspect. He never touched her. Never kissed her. Never held her. His interest in physical affection was entirely absent.
This did not seem like so terrible a thing to me at the time. After all, she was being spared the greatest burdens of a young wife; to fulfill the carnal desires of her husband whatever they may be, whenever they may strike him; and the pains and dangers of bearing any babes. But of course, I came to realize the hurt she felt in being undesirable to the only man she was allowed for, and the embarrassment and gossip that came with childlessness in a young marriage.
Not that Heidi paid particular attention to what others thought. She drank ale, played cards with the men in taverns, dressed above her station and was altogether an adventurous, contrary type.
I thought I might never see her again. Looking back, I really ought to have known better… But I’m getting ahead of myself.
xxxxx
As the last of the silver puddles evaporated in the returning heat, life in the castle began its next period of normalcy. And so instead of magic, it was to poetry books and written plays that I gave my study time.
“Greta, may I ask a favor of you?” Maya stopped me in the passageway on my route to the library.
“By all means, is something wrong?”
“I, well, I don’t wish to be dramatic, but I have found a book of stories from my homeland. And I would like to read it alone and in peace, as it will likely have me in streams of tears. So if you would be kind enough not to come to the library today – and keep Laz away too – I would be very grateful.”
“Oh, of course. If you are quite sure?” I asked. I was more than willing to sit with her and help her sift through her memories of home and weep for all that she missed. But I also felt the cloud of anxiety and wish for privacy that engulfed her and did not wish to press too much further.
“Quite sure, child,” she smiled ruefully.
“Then we will give you your space,” I promised.
I turned to walk back toward our chambers, and after a few sensible steps to get myself out of Maya’s sight, bound into the air and flew excitedly down the corridor.
At the entrance to our bedroom I dropped gracefully to my feet.
Lazuran was stretched out lazily upon his stomach on the bed. His great wings half-open, his chin propped in his hands while the beams of his eyes panned silently across a curling, yellowed scroll.
I clambered up onto the huge bed to nestle bedside him. He didn’t look up from his reading, but acknowledged my arrival warmly by curling a strong arm about my waist. Held close in the crook of his arm, I felt a profound sense of safety. I closed my eyes and placed a dry-lipped kiss against the sedentary muscle of his upper arm.
“Maya has asked me to leave her undisturbed in the library today…” I said.
“That’s unlike her,” he remarked, but still intent upon his reading, he did not fish for any further information.
I slid an idle finger back and fourth across the back of his arm. Tracing the braille of his scarred skin.
“Indeed, very unlike her to wish to leave us to ourselves like this,” I said, snuggling my body closer to his.
He let out a long low sigh. Rolled his parchment up, set it upon the side table; and pulled me over to lay beneath his body. There was a moment to grin and giggle, to feel a little ridiculous and light-hearted. It was my turn to sigh.
We stared adoringly into each other’s eyes. Then kissed a deep, warm kiss. The taste of him, and the heat of him were hypnotic. I slipped in an instant from romantic daydreamer to yearning whore.
“Please fuck me,” I whispered in his pointed ear.
“With pleasure,” he replied, his deep voice was as soft as silk and promised just the opposite.
He opened my dress without untying the sash, revealing my pale narrow form, bordered by sleeves in moonlight white and a thin band of silvery satin stretched tight across my abdomen.
Lazuren wasted no time in pushing his strong fingers against my entrance. I was still dry and tight, but hot and wanting. He flashed my favorite dangerous grin, and brought two fingers to my mouth. I sucked neatly on the big digits, my lips sealed around them.
When I judged them soft and wet enough, I allowed Lazuren to slide his fingers from my small mouth, across the plain of my exposed skin, to press between my labia. His rough-textured fingertips revolved lazily about my entrance, spreading the saliva across my aching heat. He dipped into me, a shallow exploration, stretching me just ever so slightly. His paired fingers pushed and tilted, twisting just barely inside me. Another kiss.
I moaned and grasped at his wrist, urging him deeper. Oh, it was almost a mistake. He sunk both thick fingers into me as deep as they could go and lent the heel of his hand solidly against my clit. I made a sound that delighted him and arched my back.
He worked his fingers inside me, stroking my textures, drawing the damp from me. Pushing back and fourth between my petals, still trapping my clit beneath his heavy hand. I grasped at his arm, delighting in the slab of muscle beneath his burnished skin.
“More…” I breathed.
He stopped, bought his face close to mine and asked,
“More what?”
“More everything,” I begged.
His grin. Heavens below!
Lazuren pulled me effortlessly down the bed by my ankles and I was giddy with laughter as the silk sheets rippled in disarray around me. He pulled his tunic off over his head revealing more of his gleaming blue skin and the shimmering ripples of his broad chest and patterned abdomen. He stood at the foot of the bed: a spectacle of power. His wings spread wide, eyes ever luminous, cock clad in gold and ready as the cobra about to strike.
I had scarcely a moment to tremble in awe of his form, before Lazuren grabbed my hips in his large hands and dragged my lower body up from the bed to meet his own hips. My shoulders still rested on the bed sheets, my blonde hair fanning out about me like a halo. He laid the length of himself out against me, his cock hot and smooth against my flat stomach, his sacs pressed up against the damp opening between my legs. He growled in anticipation and the tremor of this thrilled my whole being.
His eager fingers were folded securely around my rear, their tips inching into the crevice. As he slowly worked his fingers towards my ring, he rocked the base of his thick dick back and fourth teasingly against my opening; touching my clit with the heat of his silken skin, then the cool of his gold ornament in turn. His fingertip orbited the entrance to my passageway. Knowing that the reward for endurance would be worth it, I forced myself not to wriggle away from the intensity of the sensation.
With my head tipped back against the bed, my view was off my own slender form stretched out away from me, legs now wrapped firmly about my lover’s waist. His proud manhood glimmering with the first bubble of golden expectation. His face hungrier than I had seen it in a long time.
He penetrated me slowly, swirling his finger to open me up, to coax the desire for more daring exploration from my flesh. And with a mewling from my throat, that very desire sprang to life as I rocked my body wantonly to accept his infiltration. He spun a spell upon his fingers, something that was slippery and soothing. It became so easy. I bit my lip with the pleasure of it. Flame sprang from my skin.
His growl reverberated through me again. Now he slipped his heavy dick off my stomach, splashing a little of his seed on my skin as he did so, lining his tip up against the entrance he’d so expertly prepared. I moaned. I loved to feel the strange softness of his cock after the solidity of his fingers.
He pushed easily into me, filling up my passage completely. I sighed and panted as I received him. He held my legs wide apart, each hand grasping at the back of my thigh just above the knee. Then the fucking truly began. He sunk himself deep in me with each lustful thrust. Every stroke was powerful, filling me till I felt I might split, and yet that sense of danger never deterring me from my craving.
He moved faster. Cream dribbled from my cunt, snaking its way to place it was needed. The more pliable I became, the rougher with me he was. My backside blushed pink with the impact of his square hips. I was a mess of sounds and sweat. Now he simply fucked me fast and hard. His brow furrowed, his teeth gritted, and his eyes were narrowed so much by effort and indulgence that only the barest light escaped them.
My body crackled with white fire. Heat surged under my skin. I put my hand to my clit, where it pulsed beneath my strumming fingers. My other hand toyed with one rosebud nipple, pinching and twisting.
All the while, he ploughed into my body, his sacs smacking at my rear, his sweat dripping from his brow to meet my fire. Again and again he filled me. He snarled, tension building to its zenith.
At the moment I thought he might be satiated, he stopped to sweep me from the bed, one hand in the small of my back, the other supporting the back of my head. Still inside me, he brought me to lay against the expanse of his chest. I pressed my cheek against his warm body and held on tightly. He took a moment to stroke my hair and let his thumb linger upon my jaw.
Then Lazuren shifted his hands back to my thighs to take my weight and began to bounce me on his length. I clung tighter, panting and gasping as he picked up speed once more. My flames rippled and spat embers with each delicious movement. There would be no stopping this time. Only the deep intimate heat of sodomy.
My lover took his pleasure of me until he cried out. His cock erupted, coating my passageway in his thick gilt liquid. It still shot his seed as he withdrew, drenching my thighs, stomach and sheath.
And for my part, I trembled at the edge, my apex in sight.
With slow labored breaths he lowered me to the floor, where with giddy legs, I settled to kneel rather than stand shakily like a new faun. I put my hands immediately to my cunny, massaging my clit and dipping my fingers inside. Smearing gold into the cream as I worked.
“I’m not here just to watch,” Laz teased, as he scooped me up from the floor to lay me down once more upon the bed.
“Then don’t!” I laughed, lightly kicking my legs over his shoulders as he settled with his handsome face between my thighs. Without any trepidation he set his demon tongue against the swirling fire between my legs. My laughter was cut short as I could only moan and squeal as his tongue explored my cunny. Snaking between my flushed petals and stroking the strange velvet within. It was such luxurious pleasure. My body hummed with the brilliance of it as his tongue darted in and out of my entrance. I grew so hot. The fire on my body began to burn blue.
As my colors changed, I heard Laz give a muted growl of appreciation, before he opened his mouth and engulfed my vulva. His thick bottom lip rested in the space between two possible pathways to our gratification. His top lip settled upon my skipping clit, which ached with the desire for touch, yet shuddered, overwhelmed, whenever the call for pressure was answered. His slick tongue still lapped and reveled inside me.
The intensity of the experience brought the start of a tear to my eye. I reached for his hands, threading pairs of fingers into the spaces between his. He moved his whole mouth up to my swelled bud, his tongue circling the little nub, filling it with heat and magic until my head tipped back and my body shook with the lightning strike of orgasm.
My thighs hugged his face. My toes curled. My hands gripped his so tightly that the white of my bones showed under my skin. I sang the moan of the siren beckoning travelers to drown in the wet between her thighs. And the sound rang out until all my fires cooled and my body was spent.
We were laid side-by-side, exhausted and happy. Love made my chest buoyant. Love made me strong. Love made me vulnerable.
“I hope you’ve never regretted coming back for me,” I whispered.
“Oh, I regretted it every day until recently,” he said it lightly, but I felt the mist of faded pain in the air about him.
“I’m sorry-” I croaked.
“You’ve no need to be sorry now that you’ve chosen always to stay,”
And with that he closed the iron grip of his huge hand around my small one, and held it so tightly, that I felt a flicker of a fear I’d forgotten I could ever feel about him. I felt a shameful prickle of a tear as I chided myself for my stupidity. I pushed the thought away.
I put a kiss upon his cheek as he drifted into a satisfied sleep. You’ve no need to be sorry now that you’ve chosen always to stay…
Love made me stupid.
***
We were in attendance of one of the King’s numerous occasion-less celebrations when Lazuren nudged my arm.
“Queen Lasaka has returned,” he murmured.
My stomach hit the floor at his words, but then when I looked up and saw her, my heart couldn’t help but soar.
The Queen of Heliotrope descended the steps into the banquet hall looking as fiercely majestic and unquestionably sensual as she always did. Her lilac dress clung tight to her form, creating the perfect illusion of nudity from across the room. She carried herself like a goddess. But what quickly diverted my attention, was the creature at her heel at the end of a fine silver chain.
He was a young man, perhaps twenty-one, pale and skittish looking. He had a mess of jaw-length dark hair and shadows beneath his eyes. He crawled behind her on his hands and knees. He was a pitiful hollow lad, spooked out of his wits into submission. And worst of all I recognized him – and was utterly furious.
I beat my fists on the table and whole thing shook. The band stopped playing. The whole room turned to look at me, holding its collective breath. I growled at the Queen.
“What mockery is this? Why must you bring this, this, this -” I gestured wildly towards the boy, “Pathetic creature here?”
For a moment she seemed taken aback, but she replied with gleeful intrigue.
“I know nothing of this young gentleman’s history, but would be delighted to be informed.”
“You know nothing of it? Ridiculous! How else could he come to be here?” My voice touched every wall of the banquet hall.
The Queen dragged the poor wretch up from the floor.
“This man summoned me, and begged to be put into my service, which is where I have duly put him. I have no knowledge of his connection to you whatsoever,”
I turned on the unfortunate soul.
“So you’d put me on a pyre for my summoning ‘sin’ but gladly trade yourself to a succubus?”
It took him several attempts to make a communicative sound, and when he did it was a rapturous whisper, sentiment tumbling out all at once.
“I have come here to make amends to you for my crimes, they told me that you were a harlot and a devil – but when I saw you wreathed in flame – I knew that you were an angel of justice. I am come to pledge myself to you… once more.’
“He saw you wreathed in flame?” Lazuren asked in my ear with a raised brow and a sly grin. I shot him a warning look. He poured himself a drink.
“Why were you even there? I knew every man in that mob, but you were – and are – a stranger to me,”
The young man looked pained to hear that I did not know him.
“You are only unacquainted with me because you chose not to attend our wedding.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Heavenly bodies – what a drama!” Queen Lusaka squealed delightedly. Lazuren was silent. He put his goblet down.
“After we left the forest, I knew I wanted to marry only you,” the boy insisted, “I had never seen or known you before that day, but I felt I saw your soul, pure as fire. Divine and righteous! So I have hunted for spell books and shamans to find my way to a demon who can help me find my way to you. I know that there is no way back. But if you would permit me to make my vows to you here, I need never go back to be utterly happy forever more.” The boy’s eyes were wide and dewy.
I was taken aback. And then I was angry.
“This is such nonsense,’ I spat, “You know not a thing of me. Besides which, you had no reason to think I would accept your proposal, this is pure arrogance on your part.”
“Arrogance? Does not the size of my sacrifice convey the earnestness of my heart? I love you!”
I was baffled. We had never exchanged words, never held each other’s gaze, never brushed elbows in a crowded room. Yet he spoke of love that had already carried itself across realms and through deserts.
And he did almost love me. I felt it burning off him, his emotions swirling in the air like hot magic. It was not what he said it was – romantic and noble – but it was a kind of love. A feverish, religious adulation, part worship and part desire. And though I could end his breath with a vicious word – his strange devotion frightened me.
“No, it conveys your unthinking stupidity and not a thing more. Even if I did believe your fanciful talk, divinity is not to be shackled to you like a prize ox, it is to be worshiped. No adored woman should suffer the indignity of wife-hood.”
He threw his body upon the floor and sobbed like a sorry bairn.
“I -I – I- meant no offense, please, please. Hel-”
“Enough!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. A terrible truth was uncoiling itself in my stomach. He knew something that was not meant to be known. Something that belonged to me.
I flew across the room, grabbed the boy by his upper arm and dragged him to his feet.
I looked back to the Queen.
“Your Majesty, I will return your charge to you at my earliest convenience,”
“Don’t be ridiculous witch. You aren’t taking my prize anywhere,” she snorted.
We both looked at Lazuren. He stood up, positioning himself in the space between us.
“My most esteemed Ladies,” he cooed uneasily, “Pray do not fight,”
“Make her give me my pet back, Laz,” hissed the Queen.
He took one look at my enraged face and knew better than to test me.
“My sweet Queen,” he soothed, his hand slithering to rest in the small of Queen Lusaka’s back, “Perhaps we should let these small people see to their trivial grievances and take some time for ourselves?”
I was too relieved that the Queen was distracted to begin bemoaning his method. The bemused guards looked to the King for instruction, but he was snoring in his throne, untroubled by any portion of the outburst. They let me pass. With a thankful glance back at Lazuren I hauled the idiot boy away by his elbows.
xxxxx
“You’re so strong,” Nicklas whispered admiringly.
“Shut your mouth. Don’t say another word until I tell you that you can.”
He nodded, jaw tight.
I pulled the boy through the library and into a small adjacent room used to store writing supplies. A broken incubus-sized chair gathered dust there waiting hopelessly to be mended.
“Sit.” I commanded.
Clumsily pulling himself into the huge chair, he did as he was told. I locked the door behind us and began to scramble in a small chest for the totems and ingredients for my spell. To my great relief I found the needle and thread.
“H-”
“Hold you tongue.” I said. I was decanting bottles of jet-black ink into a washing bowl. Muttering spells. Soaking the thread in the ink. I spat into it. My hands were shaking. I was working on an explanation and struggling.
“I need to perform a spell upon you,’ I told him feverishly, “Because I, well, because… I cannot trust you to tell me the truth.” My hands and voice felt like they belonged to someone else I had so little steer over them.
“I would never lie to y-”
“Enough!”
I tried to thread the needle but I shook too hard. I clambered up onto the chair so that I could look down upon him.
“How did you even know I was here?” I despaired, “The forest was the last time you saw me,”
“We went back to find you – Heidi and I, I mean – but Katherine told us you’d left. That you’d come here…”
“Heidi? Katherine?” My panic was molten. “Who’s Katherine?”
“Heidi wanted to look for you, so did I, we went together. We met Kat-”
“Heidi wanted to see me?” I began to sob hoarsely; it was this strange blade of sunshine in the storm of my frenzy.
“Yes. We went into the forest… at night… that was a mistake,” he grimaced, “But we found the cottage and Katherine and…”
“Shut up, shut up. You spoke to Kas… after I was gone…” My whole body was ice cold and sick inside. I held the needle against his face. “Did you… and this is very, very important… did you tell Kasita my name?”
“Tell… Kasita? You mean Katherine? You two were friends were you not? She was there that day…”
“Did you tell her my name!?”
“Well… she would have known it already surely? I’m sure we would have used it… We were there for you after all…”
“Fuck!”
“I don’t understand, Hel-”
I slapped him across his jaw. He recoiled with a puppy’s howl. My palm tingled with a mild hot pain. His eyes were wet. He moved as if to leave the chair, but I sat across his lap and pinned him in place.
I was trying again to thread my needle. Angry with myself that I was enacting my plan so ineptly. I should have got the spell done before asking any questions.
“Open your mouth.” I said.
“Why?” he said gormlessly. I pushed a rag between his teeth and over his tongue like a horse’s bit.
“This spell,” I told him, “Is to make sure that you can only tell me the truth, do you understand?” He nodded, tears fell from his wide eyes.
I grasped at his bottom lip between my thumb and forefinger and turned it inside out. I began my embroidery into the soft wet flesh. With each dip of the needle, the surface flooded scarlet again. He groaned and sobbed. I kept myself straddled across him, holding him into the seat with my thighs. I felt the dull heat of him.
I ignored both his physical agony, and his hot shame for his arousal. Self-preservation was the only instinct I could follow. Even as I whispered the words of my dark spell into his ear, my hand clamped tight across his mouth, his cloth-constrained cock was hard against my thigh. But I was single minded in my goal.
The incantation completed, I pulled the rag out from between his swollen bleeding lips. I dragged the textile roughly over his mouth to soak up the worst of it. I held his jaw in my hand; I felt the lump where I had struck him. But I did not feel my remorse yet.
“Tell me my name,” I said.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Not a sound came out. His face was horrified. I almost relaxed.
“My true name is Greta,” I told him, “What is my name?”
“…Greta,” he responded eventually, his voice thick and morose.
“Very good,” I said, breathing normally for the first time since entering the store room, “Now I know I can trust you.”
“You could always trust me,” he whispered. He gasped at the sound of his own words, then almost smiled. I felt his relief flood him too. As if he hadn’t been certain that this was true until he heard himself say it under an honesty spell.
Not that this was the real purpose of my spell of course. I ignored him.
“How is my mother?’ I asked.
“She is well, she runs your father’s mill since his… injury… He is well also, aside from his, his, his blindness,”
“I did not ask after him!” I snapped. That my father had recovered but was blind was reassuring and harrowing together. It was certainly what he deserved, but I had put my mother in such hardship. She had already spent her life cooking and cleaning for him, and I had given her all the more care to do.
“My sister Mildred?”
“Her baby son was born healthy. She is widowed.”
“I did not ask after them,” I hissed again, though I knew that these things were part of the same question. “How does she fair?”
“She inherited a little of her husband’s money, but who can say how long it will last. She takes in mending and washing, but nobody needs it, it is only charity. The whole village gossips of who she ought to marry next, but many fear …witchcraft.”
“But she is safe? Happy?”
“Well… safe for now. I couldn’t truthfully say happy. All remark on how much more beautiful she is since Wilem’s passing, but it only adds to the accusations of black magic.”
“Humph. I expect she gets to sleep better at night now. Even with the baby.”
He nodded in understanding. I hated him. He had known. This stranger from another village had known. Everyone fucking knew. No one did anything to help her.
I peeled his bottom lip back down and stretched it toward his chin. I did it only to hurt him, but I inspected my spell. Stitched into the inside of his lip was my given name: a word he’d never be able to speak again. Eventually, the black threads would bind to his body and be lost to the eye.
His cock wriggled when I hurt him. I felt a strange thrill of both disgust and intrigue. I quelled it.
“What of Heidi? How did you come to know her?”
“She came in search of me – to scream curse words at me mainly – but once I explained to her that I intended to go back to the forest for you… she simply wouldn’t hear of not accompanying me…”
“And then what happened?” I sneered, “I lived in the forest for almost a year – I never saw you at all.”
“No,” he shook his head sadly, “We tried many times, but we were always waylaid. Weather, apparitions, beasts. When we travelled in the daylight it was as if tricks were being played upon us – we lost our path or were struck with dreadful headaches. When we travelled at night… well… I’m sure know something of the creatures in those woods…”
I nodded, though I could not quite understand why the lit journey should have been so difficult a task. I had managed it after all. As had he the very next day.
He continued, “When we did at last reach the cottage, you weren’t there any longer – only Katherine was there – or Kasita? The witch who was with you the day of the… the… pyre. She is who I mean. She told us you had left our world altogether.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said she didn’t know, but she suspected that after she had rejected your family that you had wished to return your powers to the creature that had given them to you…”
This was an interesting interpretation. Perhaps if this was what Kasita thought then this whole panicked ritual had been unnecessary. Still, better safe than too dead to be sorry. I did not intend to end up as Marianne had.
Nicklas was staring at me with the large bright eyes of a new calf.
I kissed his bleeding mouth. Barely. Like you would a baby or a pet. I cannot say why. I suppose I was grateful. But as I backed away he leant in to kiss me again. I stopped him with three fingers pressed against his lips. Then I thought of Lazuren, by now no doubt buried to the hilt in Queen Lusaka. And not for the first time in my life, jealously made a fool of me.
“The Queen – has she treated you well?” I asked him, lifting my fingers away to let him speak.
“She brought me to you in chains! How can you ask if she has treated me well?” Colour rose on his cheeks.
“Did she take anything from you that you did not want to give?” I asked seriously.
“No.” he said, small and defeated, “But it meant nothing. My love still belongs to you.”
“I have no use for your love.” I sneered. “And all I have felt burning off you while we’ve been here is excitement in any case.” I sighed. I couldn’t deny that I was curious. I had never been with an ordinary man.
“Do not chide me for desire that has led me to summon a demoness and leap a dimension in search of you,” he pleaded, “All I want is to please you.”
I looked into his dark eyes. Eyes that could reflect light, but never cast their own. I felt the haze of his emotions, fear and arousal, a willingness to suffer for a righteous cause, a taste for pain, the conviction of a convert.
I dug my fingernails into Nicklas’ shoulders.
“I don’t think that you could ever be enough for me.” I said quietly, “But I’d like to give you the opportunity to try.”
I set my kiss upon his lips, catching the faintest taste of his blood on my tongue. The iron in his blood scraped against the magic in mine. The friction was delicious, like sour gooseberries against sweet pears.
I kissed him with an effort, and felt the sparks of pain flash through him as I kissed his bloody mouth. He whimpered, but he made his efforts to return the kiss in spite of it. His hands fell to my hips, slipping under the decorative golden chain that symbolised my supposed slavery to an Incubus Prince.
I set my teeth against his pale neck. Not biting, just, taking note of his response, the way he relaxed to my will. I ran my fingers over his silver collar and chain. I could feel vibrating magic woven into the metal. This was a chain that only a succubus could break.
I ground my hips against his heat, working to summon my own. I liked the way that straddled across him, he fit so neatly between my thighs. He seemed smaller than me almost. And he was so much weaker. Delicate, like a fungus growing long and white in the moonlight.
I was gentler when I undressed Nicklas. Unthreading the laces of his tattered shirt and britches, peeling back the dull fabrics to reveal his lithe body and lily-skin. He didn’t blush to be seen, but I felt his craving for approval.
“You have beauty,” I said quietly, running my fingers up and down his chest, my fingertips slipping through sparse dark hairs there, unsure of what to make of them. His ribs did not show through his skin, but I felt them there as my hands passed over. I could snap them, I thought, but I didn’t linger on it.
His cock looked small to me, but I knew I’d no knowledge of human men by which to judge him. Against his white thigh it was ruddy and gleaming. When I wrapped my fist about him, I didn’t completely contain his length. I was surprised by how much I liked the way that he felt. The skin was like warm silk. He was fragile. A pearl of his seed was beading at his tip. How odd for it to be white… The likeness to my own body surprised me.
I stood up, still on the over-sized chair, with one foot either side of his hips. I lifted my dress, exposing my mound to him. There was no need to provide him with instructions. He parted my labia with his fingers and put his mouth to my opening. I took a breath. His tongue lapped diligently for a time before scooping deeper into my cunt.
I held the back of his head in my hands. I could crush his skull… I thought. A shiver went through me. He mistook it for my pleasure and worked harder at his task. I began to stroke his dark hair instead, busying my fingers. Smoothing the troubling aspects of my desire away.
I looked down at him. His eyes were closed. He was a pretty thing, with his snowdrop skin and black lashes. Pleasure slowly started to take hold of me as I relaxed into the sensations of his service; his tongue circling my opening, slipping within, sliding without, tracing the teardrop of my clit. My knees weakened a little, I leant myself more fully against him.
I felt a ripple in my body, soft and gently begging. The whisper from within that sighs that most inexplicable desire… the need to be filled.
I pushed his forehead away from between my thighs. He looked up, a little mournful.
“Am I disappointing you?” he said quietly.
I shook my head and smiled lightly, tucking a strand of his dark hair back behind his ear. I liked him better when he had the good sense to be doubtful.
I knelt with my knees on either side of his square hips. I kissed him again, noticing that now that I had begun to pay attention to it, I could feel the iron in him even where he was not bleeding. His whole body was subtly laced with that which poisoned me and I felt a quiet thrill in recognizing it. In the tangible sense of his rusted defenses, common sense that he’d abandoned to chase… what was it? ‘An angel’?
I laid my palms upon his chest, feeling the judder of his quickened heartbeat. He was unthinkingly lifting his hips from the chair and I liked that he had so little sense of himself as to know he was doing it. My body consumed him. He had no thought for his own even as it ached with need. His wide eyes drank my image in.
I’d had enough of contemplation. It was time to serve my body’s plea. I plucked the stout cock in my hand and tipped the brim of my chalice against it. He gasped at the slick warmth as if he had already forgotten the work he had done to make my body ready for him.
I fed his length slowly into my cunny, leaning back a little, slipping over him. His manhood felt neat and comfortable inside me. So much less intense than that which I had known; and yet undeniably likeable. I wiggled a little bit; movements upon him were so easy!
When he was neatly buried within, I wrapped my arms about his shoulders, breathing in the scent of sweat and iron from his skin.
Nicklas put his arms around my shoulders just as I held him. He clung tightly.
I bounced gently on his member, finding it so little labor for sweet enough reward. No flame upon my body, no sweat running down my back… but a different kind of indulgence. To know the natural after the supernatural is not to find the natural diminished. It is to know the subtleties and graces of it that could not be understood without the gift of contrasts. If one has only ever seen cut gems, then the river-smoothed pebble is cast with the allure of the sublime…
And he was sublime. In spite of everything, I could not help but enjoy his sinewy arms secure about me, and his solid manhood so easily enveloped.
I moved more quickly, the heat I craved awakening in the pit of my stomach.
His body shuddered. His cock spat. He made no sound, only put his face against my shoulder. His eyes were wet.
Waves of his feelings struck me. So much shame. So much desire to be loved. Disquieted, I stroked his hair. I did not know how to comfort him without a lie.
“I may not be worthy of you now,” he said without lifting his face, “But I meant every word I said to you. I love you ardently and earnestly and I have every desire to spend the rest of my only certain life with you.”
I paused before speaking. But I paused for so very long, that he was fast asleep against my shoulder before I had any notion of what I wanted to say.
With extreme care, I disentangled myself from him. I wondered faintly if he would have loved me so well had I married him.
I waited a time for him to awake. Feeling guilty and despicable. When he did awake, I said none of the words I had rehearsed in his slumber.
“I’m returning you to the Queen now.” I said. My word was final.
THE END OF CHAPTER SEVEN