Chương 21: My warlock [18+]

Caspar turns over and creaks the four-poster bed he's awakened in. A breeze drifts across him from a window open to a scarlet sunset. It drifts across me, too, where I'm curled on an overstuffed loveseat. It casts eddies across the gauzy lilac fabric that drapes me, what little of it there is. I sit up. My anklets jingle.

"Hello, Mr. Cartwright." Caspar's eyes trace my neckline. They have to go much lower than he's used to. If I had a bellybutton, it would threaten an appearance.

"Hi, Miss Irene," he says.

"I'd like to have a conversation about last time we spoke. And about our future." He's wearing a set of silk pajamas. He fidgets with the bow-tied waistband.

"You decide about Adaire and Salome?"

"Adaire and Salome," I say, crossing my legs, "can wait their turn." Caspar's focus strays across the newly exposed curve of my thigh.

"Suppose they can." I indicate the wiry cafe table between us. Steam curls from the twinned teacups on its surface.

"Rooibos?"

"Thank you." Caspar sits on the edge of the bed and takes a fortifying drink.

"First thing is I'm sorry. I said a lot of things out of anger and out of turn. And I didn't mean to…" He clears his throat as he sets the cup back down.

"And I hope I didn't take liberties."

"Dude." I sigh.

"Don't be sorry, okay?" I pluck my own teacup from the table.

"You did nothing wrong. Not a thing. If anything, I should be apologizing. I couldn't handle how spontaneous we were. That's all. I'm a planner, and I'm used to mastery over myself. This —" I run a hand across my immodest outfit, shifting its complicated wrapping and widening the window it provides to my hip.

"This I've been planning for quite a long time. And you —" My finger snaps magnetically to his face.

"You make it difficult to control myself. That's what I'd like to discuss with you."

"Okay," he says.

"You like me, Caspar," I say.

"You like me so much. I see through your eyes when you look at my body. I hear what you want to do to me." He doesn't reply. Just runs his thumb along the rim of his teacup.

"You were taught to suppress sinful thought. And you were taught that I'm the embodiment of wickedness. You know what I am. But you want me anyway."

"Yes." It's barely above a whisper. But it lands like a gravity bomb.

"Say it. Say it aloud for me." I lean forward. He watches the crescent-moon curve my breasts form as they meet.

"I want you," he says.

"Good boy." I raise the tea to my lips and take my time to savor it. I successfully hide the anticipatory tremor of my hand as I lower it to the table.

"It just so happens that I want you, too."

"I see," he says. His throat is dry.

"All the feelings you're ashamed of. The things you're afraid to ask for." I fold my legs underneath me. His attention is drawn to the soft deformation of my thighs as they press together.

"I hear them and they don't scare me. I'd like to give them to you."" Can we?" he asks.

"Physically, I mean. Are you… uh…"

"Are you asking if I have a pussy, Mr. Cartwright?" I relish the cute little flinch the word causes. He nods.

"I do." I rise onto my knees, my hands folded in my lap.

"I designed this body for you. I've been waiting for you to decide you deserve it. And I'm sorry, but I can't wait anymore, Caspar." My delicate fingers nestle into the fabric between my legs.

"I need an answer."

"What would you do," Caspar says, "if I said no? If I couldn't let myself?"

"I'd recycle it," I say.

"I'd unstitch it top to toe, and reuse the biomass somewhere else, because I can't keep it. Not if it can't be yours. I'm driving myself crazy with it." My grip tightens on my dress.

"I look at you and it's like I'm burning and freezing at the same time. I could make it go away in an instant. I'd manifest something a little less… flirtatious. And we could stop torturing each other."

"You're not torturing me," Caspar says.

"Miss Irene, you're being kinder to me than anyone's ever been."

"You're torturing yourself, then, because of me. You've buttoned yourself so tight. I've been teasing and teasing, trying to open you up. And as soon as you let me in, I panicked and zapped you away. I'd be pissed if I were you."

"Gods test mortals," Caspar says.

"At seminary we'd say all sorts of things were the Father testing us."

"I'm tired of testing you." I crawl across the loveseat, leaning across the table until my face is inches from him.

"I'd like to skip to the final exam."

"I wouldn't mind that." I can hear Caspar's shallow inhale.

"Been studying."

"That's a yes, then," I say.

"You're saying yes." He closes his eyes and tries to get his breathing under control. He reopens them and I watch his irises dilate as his gaze fixes on mine.

"Yes," he says. I take the teacup from his hand and lower it to the floor.

"I'm going to fuck you until you can't walk," I say.

"Okay," he says. I vault the table and tackle Caspar into the bed. Beloved reader, stop here if you have delicate sensibilities. I give you permission. Skip the rest and check back in at chapter 22. I'm serious. I have worked too hard and waited too long to fade to black or use pretty, concealing metaphors. I don't want to consume the heat of my warlock's desire. I want my warlock's cock in my pussy. That's the level we're operating on here. Let me have this.

I land on top of Caspar, straddling him in a heap of silk bedsheets. I pick up our exploration of each other's throats from where we left it last night. That same ferocity. When he's red-faced and we're both struggling to draw breath, I detach with a pop of suction and sit across him. My claws have come out. I will them back into my fingers. I arch my spine, and the chiffon stretches taut across my stomach. A tied ribbon cinches it around my midsection.

"Go on, little human." I lay one of its long edges across my palm and hold it out.

"Claim your virtue's reward." His hand moves with reverent slowness. He takes hold of the ribbon and seeks to freeze this moment, this person he is, in his mind. To compare it with who he is about to become, after his first night with a goddess. He pulls. The bow comes undone. It takes my dress with it. The silk slips from my shoulders and gathers in a pooling violet cascade around my thighs. I wriggle free from it. A purple lace thong is the only scrap of fabric left on me.

I've made myself entirely comprehensible. My skin may be black as ink, my body may be hairless and slick, but in shape I am an elegant humanoid, callipygian and curvaceous. No alien geometries, strictly three dimensions. It pulls a giddy giggle from me when his brain shorts out anyway.

"I could make myself more human." My voice is breathy and thin as I undo his shirt, button by button. I spread it open and the sight of my brand on him makes my throat clench.

"I could be more like the women you've known. Would you like that?" His fingers drift along my spine, to my balletic waist.

"No, ma'am."

"Are you afraid?" I whisper. His palms rest on the flared hips I made to be his handholds.

"You know what I am."

"Yes." I bend down. My tongue darts out, and out. Thrice the length of a human's, before I stop myself. It drags across his collarbone.

"Mine." His hand flattens across my back and pulls me closer, pressing our stomachs together. His scratchy breath into my ear: "Yours."

"Show me." My hands ball the silk by his head, and I slide from his grasp, up his torso, aided by my smooth, hairless skin. I straddle his chest. His heart pounds between my legs.

"Worship your goddess." He kisses my belly, right below the cursive divot where my navel would be, if I had one. He kisses the soft crease where my thigh meets my hip. Then he keeps kissing, lower and lower, until he comes up against violet gossamer. He hooks a finger into this final barrier and pulls it aside. With his lips, with his tongue, he discovers me. I've never touched myself. Not like how Caspar touches me now. I haven't had the prerequisite equipment for long enough.

I've kept it clean and tidy and ready, but I've never sampled the goods. Not once. I don't want to find these things out on my own. I want it with Caspar. Of course, I've made a few modifications. His hum of surprise as he discovers the first makes me shiver and bite my lip. Caspar has just found out that my pussy tastes like a ripe peach. I peer between my thighs.

"Something the matter, Cas?"

"It's just, uh. It's sweeter than I'm used to."

"Is that okay?"

"More than okay." His tongue traces his lip.

"Peaches, that's my favorite."

"I know." My nails scratch along his scalp.

"Deep breath, my warlock." He obeys. I join him on a deep inhale. And then I sit on Caspar Cartwright's face. He receives me like the answer to a prayer. My mouth hangs open. My tongue protrudes. I've only felt this through the distant connection. To have it before me, to feel the ministrations of my first and only worshiper between my legs, this is new. This is overwhelming. I squirm. I make noises my vocal cords have never made. I lace my fingers into his short hair. This is just the appetizer, I remind myself.

I have no intention of my having first climax anywhere but on my warlock's cock. But oh, Caspar. Caspar is good at this. He's always enjoyed this, the pressure, the warmth, the moans he can summon with his thick, broad tongue. He enjoys this even when it doesn't taste like his favorite fruit. Tonight, he's ravenous. He devours every fold. Every inch. He sucks and kisses and nuzzles.

He shoves his tongue as far as it will go—and though he doesn't have my preternatural control of morphology, that's pretty fucking far. I'm so sweet. So cute. A big bad Old One and he's making her mewl like a kitten. With every sound I make, he grows bolder. It's a secret pride in him, his talent in bed. Not the sorta thing a Father-fearing fellow brags about. His goddess is powerful and immortal and so far beyond human as to drive him mad with the contemplation of it. But tonight, here and now, she's a woman.

And Caspar knows what to do with a beautiful woman and a nice big bed. His pajama pants are untying themselves. The silk sheets twist into tendrils that pull them off him and down his body. His rumbling grunt of surprise vibrates me. I grin even as I gasp. That's right, Caspar. I'm a woman. But I'm also the bed. And the walls. And the window and the sun. I am all around you. You're already inside me. It's time I make that true in more ways than one.

I straighten, and playfully slap away the hand that quests to keep my hips in place. I touch his chest as he begins to sit up, and push him back onto the bed.

"Relax." I nestle his head into the pillows.

"Let me make you feel good." I lay a kiss on him. Deep and loving and languid. I ease myself down his thick, strong body. When the hard length of his cock (that's right, reader. His COCK) brushes the cleft of my behind, I break from his panting lips. With a careless slice of my claw, I cut myself free of my sodden thong.

"You're about to pop an eldritch void beast's cherry, Caspar." I slide my pussy across his length, coating it in sweet arousal, trapping it against his stomach.

"Something to brag about at the taphouse." He coughs out a laugh.

"Think they can stay in the dark, actually." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. His cock nests between my thighs. Holy shit, it's hot. It's like an ember. I stare at it. I am not afraid. Of course I'm not. I'm a fucking Sister of the Void. Do I have a certain apprehension? Sure. I was ambitious with how petite I made myself. This is going to be a snug fit. His hand lands on my thigh, a light squeeze and a caress.

"You want me to—" I slap his hand away again.

"What I want," I say, "is this." I used to think cocks were hilarious, before I became Irene. Ridiculous, goofy little appendages. And okay—they are, kind of. I giggle nervously as I run a finger along it, making my warlock quaver and grit his teeth.

"It's so hard," I say.

"So different like this."

"Uh huh," he manages, voice pinched and rasping.

"Poor little warlock." I hitch my hips up." Saintly little warlock." He groans as my velvet skin caresses him.

"Do you seek your goddess's mercy?"

"Please."

"Then pray, and I'll grant it," I croon.

"Pray to me, Caspar."

"Miss Irene. Please." I sway back and forth like a predator, teasing him, feeling him.

"Tell me what you want."

"I want you."

"Is that all? Well, here I am." My touch is light as I position him at my dripping entrance.

"What now?"

"Fuck me." He gasps it like a doomed man's final orison.

"Please. Please fuck me."

"From your mouth." I execute a belly dancer swivel.

"To My ears." All talk of cherries aside, I built this body sturdy and I built it for this express purpose. This is not a blushing-virgin situation. I don't need to ease myself into this. I shift and his head slips between my labia. I inhale. I slam my hips down, engulfing him completely with one greedy motion and oh oh it's big. A hissing gasp from Caspar at the tight, wet suddenness of me, the twitching grip. He marvels again at how cool to the touch my insides are. But already, they're warming up.

His heat is suffusing me. It burns. It aches. It's perfect. I tilt and swivel. I huff a shocked breath out. I feel every bit of him, every vein and contour. There's no break to be found, no position where he isn't impaling me with this new, foreign pleasure.

"Are you okay?" His flushed face is full of concern. I realize that I'm shaking like a leaf.

"Yes. Yes. It's—it's good." I try to find the words this revelation deserves, but my brain is battling through a humid fog.

"It's really fucking good. I just—I'm exploring."

"Can I sit up?" I hold my arms out in invitation. My breasts smush together with the motion and draw his overheated attention. I pant out a giggle between my strained breaths.

"C'mere, Cas." His core hardens as he sits up, folding me into an embrace, and now I'm undulating in his lap, whining as I stir myself around him. He lets me explore this for a snug, stretching minute, these sensations, this stab of marvelous heat buried inside of me. I ease myself up, slow this time, and screw my hips back down his length, letting out little gasps with every new inch of him, until he's hilted in my quivering body. He rearranges my guts. That's not a turn of phrase. I mold myself around my warlock.

I told him this body is for him and only him, and I meant it. Caspar shudders at the sensation of my manifestation shifting and coiling. I become his perfect fit. I'm ready. I tip him onto his back.

"Stay." I pat his head.

"Good boy." Then I plant my feet on either side of his hips, stabilize myself with a grip on the bedframe, and screw his brains out. I know what he likes. This is his favorite. His lover on top of him, riding him like a colt. I've paid a lot of attention. I know how to make it feel good.

"Slower," he gasps.

"Irene. Wait wait wait." But I don't want to wait. He jerks. The build. His climax is coming. The heat. It's going to paint my insides. My third eye flares like a star. My claws jut out and perforate the bedspread. His hands close around my waist. He laughs a breathless laugh." Wait, dammit." My bouncing falters at his insistent grasp.

"You gonna come? That's okay." I swivel my hips into a grinding gyration instead. I make his nostrils flare.

"Come in me. I want you to come in me. We'll go again. All night."

"Just. Wait, Irene. Please. Not yet." I let out a frustrated whimper. I can't be still with his cock in me. It sends little shocks through my nervous system with every minuscule movement. I need friction.

"Come down here a second," he says.

"Let me hold you." I lean down and he groans as my pussy throbs and slides along him.

"Do I not feel good?"

"You feel incredible. You feel like God. I need a second. That's all." He cups my cheek.

"And I want to make love to you."

"What's the difference?" His smile makes my breath catch. His thumb traces the adductor line of my inner thigh.

"Can I show you?" I hesitate. I had a way this would go. But I am willing, I realize. If it's Caspar, I'm willing to let go of my control. Only for him. Only for his faith in me and mine in him. And the idea of making love has me curious.

"Okay."

"Okay." He taps my hip.

"Switch with me." I let out a whine as his cock slides the rest of the way out. My body squeezes down on the vacancy it's left. I'm so empty. I've been empty for thousands of years. I want to be full again.

"You've had your second, Mr. Cartwright," I say. Another smile, another twitching squeeze.

"Yes, ma'am." He lays me down. My thighs tremble below the caress of his coarse fingerpads as he draws my legs open. His body nestles against mine. Like a hearth. A warm, inviting fireplace. Like a home for me. My voice goes hoarse as his palm rests on my heart.

"This is different."

"We'll get back to the rough stuff. I like the rough stuff. I just..." His sandpaper touch glides down my body, across the gentle outward curve of my lower stomach.

"I just want a good look at you." My soft thighs squish against his firm quads as he shifts. He hovers over me, propped up on one of those beautiful, calloused hands. His hazel eyes shine so brightly in my sunset that they look entirely green. He's taking in every inch of me. And I'm proud of this body, of my perky breasts and my tapered waist and my thick, pillowy thighs, proud of what I spent so long getting just right in anticipation of this exact moment, but self-consciousness still slithers through me.

Like I'm passing him a story I wrote, or playing him a song. His focus slips down my curves and catches on the outward prow of my pelvis, where my leg joins my hip. On the mark there, the one my panties covered when I was riding his face. Two overlapping letters in cursive gold. C. C. His mouth drifts open. I squirm as his finger caresses it, stretches the skin where the mark lays. His voice scratchy and gentle: "What's this?"

"I. Um." I felt so sexy when I came up with this. Now, bare before him, my face burns. I follow a juvenile impulse to hide it in my hands.

"I just thought. I've marked you. To show you're mine. I thought… maybe it should go the other way, too. To show I'm yours." He gazes into the abyss. The abyss gazes back between its fingers, blinking and flushed. His solid, sturdy chest, the broad curves of powerful muscle beneath a thin layer of soft, squeezable flesh. The statuesque line of his smooth-shaven jaw. The look of rapt adoration etched deep into his emerald stare.

"You are so fucking beautiful," he says.

"I love you." My shaking hand raises and brushes the angular brand I laid over his heart.

"I'm in love with you, Caspar." The head of his cock slides up and past the sensitive bud of my sex. His face lowers. I whine and strain.

"Love me back. However you want. Your girlfriend. Your goddess. Your mistress. Your wife." The muscles in my abdomen flex. My body pleads for him.

"Love me and I'll be anything. I'll do anything."

"What I want," he says, as his big fever-hot palm cradles my neck, "is this." I let him draw me up and into the kiss. His teeth close with infinite gentleness around my lip and draw a sigh from me. Then his tongue presses against me, and simultaneously with its molten entrance into my mouth, I feel him below, shifting me, parting me, as slow and tender and relentless as the sunrise. And then he pushes it home, and his hips connect with mine, and my world is light. I squeak out a " Cas" as he splits me open.

My toes curl. He pushes deeper, crushing me to him. He draws back with such exaggerated care that I want to cling to him, to trap this vast new completeness in me, and I'm on the verge of pulling out of our kiss and pleading to that effect when he pushes it back in, all of it, all at once, and my head falls back onto the bed. The insensate moan I make is supposed to be "Caspar," but my mouth isn't obeying me enough to form it. Another push fills me, even faster, even deeper.

I spasm and clutch and with my warlock atop me, in control of me, there is nowhere to hide from the sensation. Not even with the closing of my eyes, because then my vision from him magnifies, his hypnotized gaze on the pebbled peaks of my onyx breasts as they jiggle lasciviously in time with another burning, stretching thrust. Faster again. Deeper again. His hand cups my neck and lifts my head up into another gasping kiss and all his weight is on me, he's folding me in half, my legs up and wide to open me for him.

Air breaks sharply through his nostrils as he takes me. Me, writhing in his vise grip. He's taking me. A damp, warm sheen of sweat and desire coats my thighs, trickles down the cleft of my ass. Someone is making this keening, desperate ah, ah, ah noise in time to Caspar's movement, louder and louder, and I realize with a jolt that it's me. Finally. Finally, it all makes sense. All this nervous energy, all this tension that has constricted me. Finally, I know what it's for.

Finally, it's melting under my lover's touch into liquid gold. The tight fist of anxiety around my throat finally loosening so I can whimper his name. The tight clench of my chest finally punctured by his kiss against my hammering heart. Bursting forth into—something. Something new is happening to me. Thousands of years of life and something new. The corners of the room are melting. The curtains drip like candle wax. The bed is softening. Its legs give out and bow the mattress to the floor.

Every thrust ripples me, every reassertion of that divine weight spreads me further open, my animal instinct bracing to receive him, and as his tongue laps mine there's this urgent pinch and then another, and I yelp and arch and impale myself further onto his throbbing warmth. The folds of my pussy quiver as his stubbled hilt kisses them again. I'm about to come for the first time.

I'm an Old One, an eldritch leviathan of the void, and I'm about to come with my anklets jangling by my head and a big gentle Templegoer's tongue in my mouth, in missionary. Like I'm being bred. No way. Nuh-uh. This is not how Irene, millennia-old daughter of the darkness beyond the stars, has her first climax. My claws extend. If Caspar wants it from an Old One, it's gonna get weird. My legs lock him in. A tendril curls below me and boosts my hips up into a bridge. The bed is dissolving.

The posts waver and curl, shedding their wooden camouflage. One of them descends and lays across Caspar's back. He gasps and falters. Another tentacle wraps around his waist and pulls him back against me, buries him in me.

"Little mortal." My talon traces his jaw.

"Now I show you how I love." The floor falls away, strip by hardwood strip. The bed is suspended in a sunless void. The melted and deformed window blinks and reopens, wide and glowing. A massive eye, casting its golden light upon us. My tendrils course and glide across him, tasting every inch of his sun-bronze skin. They tighten on his limbs and draw him down onto the bed. They prop my humanoid form up with him, so that I'm astride him again. He's taught me lovemaking. I want to fuck.

This time I take him with all the infatuated indulgence of our intimacy. I lean back to show him everything; my undulating body, my jangling anklets, the tendons standing out in my thighs as I figure-eight up and down him. I lean forward to envelop him in another serpent-tongue kiss. The supple feelers of my hair curl around his neck and give just a whisper of pressure. My tentacles multiply, until there's barely any bed left, and he's bound in a forest of sucking, seeking tendrils.

"My arms," he rasps, and his biceps harden under the oscillating coils.

"Let me touch you." I release the tentacles that keep his grip from me. They leave little red suction circles on his skin. Immediately his hands are on me, those beautiful rough hands, and I cry out with the joy of it. And I sense it, like a flare fired into twilight: I sense the exact moment he realizes he's in love with me. It's a little thing that does it. A breathy oh! from my open lips when his fingers knead my breast. The straw that breaks it.

The dam bursts and he knows, with the clarity of a witness to a miracle. I feel his euphoric relief as he gives himself away, completely, to my keeping. Caspar Cartwright falls in love with me. A hot tear drifts down my cheek. I will reward him. I'll find an equivalent gift for the priceless heart he's given me. I don't care if it takes me forever. Forever is what we have. His hands rake across my oil-slick back.

"Oh, God."

"God?" I flatten out atop him, my hips pumping and churning. My curling tongue telescopes forth and drags across his face, chin to forehead.

"Try again," I purr." Irene," he gasps. He finally finds purchase on my shoulders and pulls me to him. My face smushes into his broad chest and I fill my nostrils with his scent. Another sweet spark tweaks my hips, curls my back into an arch. There's that pinch again and this time I welcome it. I race towards it with jackhammer determination. The air pulls at our bodies where our sweat binds them together.

The movement of our hips and the nectar of our lovemaking fill the void with a symphony of wet, lecherous sound. His grip squishes into my behind, the night-sky flesh swelling between his fingers. A sharp slap and the air is driven from my lungs. My gentle, pious warlock has spanked his goddess's ass. I want to ask for another, but all that comes out between my moaning exhalations are dumb syllables, the wordless noises of a rutting animal. Somehow, he gets the message.

I yelp as the next palm lands, casting quakes across my torrid body. A pool of my drool is forming between his pectorals. Another sharp pinch and my cunt tightens and it's happening. It's here. My face glistens with sudor and saliva and joyful tears. The man I love is going to make me come.

"Cas. I'm cuh. I'm gonna. Caspar. Oh, fuck." I force my burning brain to a kind of clarity.

"Cas. Come inside me, lover." My whisper is urgent in his ear.

"Fill me full. Your heat. Every drop." I flex and buck. My rhythm is lost. I'm milking him, scraping his cock across every ridge and nerve inside me.

"Come with your goddess."

"I love you," he says, breath hot and humid on my face.

"Irene. I fucking love you." I'm too far gone now for my response to be anything but a throaty moan. He gets the message, I think. One of his hands latches to the back of my head and mashes my face to his. His tongue plunders my keening throat as he tilts over the edge.

His sharp, gritty gasp breaks into my name, howled into the surrounding void, as every muscle locks up, stands out against his burnished skin, and he seizes me, bear-hugs me tight, crushing and massive and primal and male, all gentleness all hesitation all gone, I'm trapped against him and I thrash in his grasp just to feel his strength holding me fast, and he's gonna come in me I'm making him come he's coming and and A thick throbbing pulse and a flowering explosion of heat and I scream, I scream I love you because I love him, he's mine forever, and Caspar Cartwright is filling my little body to the brim and I'm coming I'm coming I'M COMING and I scream again, no words this time, there are no words for this sacred holy thing, this thing I never never never dared to dream would be this perfect, never, his body his cum his breath, his prayer of Irene, Irene pouring into my skull, his calluses across my spine, and I've given him my first time, my first time is with Caspar, my Caspar, Caspar Cartwright my good boy my worthy handsome strong warlock his smile his voice his devotion his touch his cock his cock, tight hot convulsing emptying itself in me, and I hear his frenzied thoughts, hear he's never felt this with anyone, not any human, never before and never again, never another but Irene, and I'm so beautiful, I feel like Heaven like worship like love, eros, agape, mania, and there's no going back, I have changed him forever, I will love him forever, and I sob into his chest and I am still coming, another clenching exploding wave of it, and this is my eternity, this is my new existence, wrapped around Caspar, complete for the first time, his big arms, his big hands, he's in love with me, and another thrust of his hips and another pulse of heat, and an exhausted giggle tears from me, Caspar, Caspar, Caspar, my big himbo, my mortal, my warlock, my first time, all the empty millennia of my life without him are over, are done and now he is mine, mine and I will never let him go, never, never, mine, mine mine mine I love him I love him I love Caspar I love him I love himilovehimilovehim Deep in the autumn forest, the ground rumbles, felling trees and sending a flock of scout-forms into panicky flight.

In the taphouse, Degmar is telling everyone a story about his Platinum days while he pulls a hefeweizen. The tap flies off and the beer bursts into a geyser, overflowing the stein. In the gutted ruin of heaven, my prime form falters in its flight and lists to one side. Bina sends me a worried subvocal pulse and I have to reassure her I'm fine. Apologies, dear reader. I, uh— Tell you what.

I'll put one of those squiggly things right here and check back in with you when my humanoid perspective can form complete sentences. ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ I return to myself in bits and pieces. Caspar and I drift in a tender, unending dark. My tentacles wilt across us like a living blanket. My warlock is warm. My warlock is kind and strong. My warlock is in love with me.

"Can you." I heave a breath into my flagging lungs. My chest expands into the pool of sweat we've trapped between our bodies.

"Can you walk, do you think?" His toned quadriceps twitch.

"No, ma'am." I flop my face against his neck.

"Yesssss."