“Not exactly worth getting the shit kicked outta me, but not bad.” Jordan chews the slice of cake. “Tastes a little beer-ish.”

  “Caspar said yeasty,” I say.

  “Well, he’d know. Mister house-husband.” She drops the fork on the plate and holds it out to me. “Thank Salome for me?”

  “Sure.” I take the cutlery from her. “Bina?”

  Bina blinks, and the plate melts into a puddle of keratin. The grass beneath our feet reabsorbs it.

  I still have a presence inside her sober mind as she remembers, with a microscopic shiver, that she is sitting on and inside of my sister, and eating off of her. She looks at the nervous wolf monster and performs a quick internal audit. Did the drink make her foolish, or did it unlock something? Does she still desire this unfathomable eldritch being, now that the booze isn’t clouding her mind?

  Her eyes trail down Bina’s generous contours. Her stomach drops. She does. She very much does.

  She wonders how many nippl—

  I make a hasty incognito exit from the inspector’s mind.

  Jordan clears her throat. “Bina.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “I might have… my memory ain’t perfect. But I might have, uh, overindulged down there. On Diamante. And I might have said some stuff that, uh…” Her sky-colored eyes slide my way. “Maybe we could get some privacy, Irene, if you please.”

  I raise my palms as I back toward the door. “Sure, sure. Have a nice plan.”

  Jordan twists into a frown. Turnabout is fair play, Madame Inspector.

  “Actually, Jordan.” Bina crosses her legs. “First, can I introduce you to someone?”

  Jordan’s brows knit. “Introduce me?”

  “It’s taking longer than I’d hoped,” Bina says. “But I’ve started making good on that promise I made you.”

  “Jordy?”

  The inspector turns to the source of the voice. A professorial-looking man of early middle age, his shock of natural hair streaked with gray, stands stock-still at the threshold of the room.

  In a moment, years of hardening and honing are sand-blown from Jordan Darius. The icy barrier over her gaze melts and wells into the corners of her eyes.

  Her voice is small and high like a kid’s: “Dad?”

  “I think you ought to go,” Bina whispers to me. “I don’t think Jordan would like you to see this.”

  “I think you’re understanding humanity better than you realize these days,” I whisper back.

  “Oh, no. I don’t know about humanity.” She gives my shoulder a squeeze as she shoos me out the other door. “Just Jordy.”

  ???????????

  Caspar finds Peat Moss laying asleep by the motel flower bed. He’s eaten half a row of bluebells. Not exactly the foraging my warlock had meant, but he’s grateful at least that the fawn still appreciates plant matter after being introduced to the world of pastries and ice cream.

  He picks the slumbering fawn up and carries him back into the hotel room. He lays Peat Moss at the foot of the bed. From her twin across the room, Jordan Darius murmurs dad.

  He goes to the van. The back door hangs open. A set of zipties sits cut and abandoned. A note sits tucked into the driver's seat ash tray.

  C + J,

  Wait 1 week and then let’s meet at Sparrowhawk Suites in Branchard, north side of Pastornos. By then I’ll have Tilliam cowed. We’ll blackmail him into introducing you as colleagues to the Bishopric. From there—the Suzerain.

  Looking forward to working with you more openly.

  Fondly,

  A

  Caspar pockets the note and retrieves his autogun from beneath the passenger seat. He goes around to the loading bay and pulls the tapestries aside to get at the handle.

  Seated atop a pile of folded tapestries, the Iron Butcher regards him with a gray-eyed stare.

  “You sleep yet?” Caspar keeps the gun couched in his armpit, pointed down, but loaded and live.

  The Iron Butcher shakes his head. “Tried.”

  “Try harder. We need you in touch with your mistress.” Caspar’s about to shut the bay door again when his prisoner speaks.

  “I failed her.” His expression is a mask. “I can’t face her.”

  There’s kind, and then there’s kind enough to be the armchair therapist to a man who almost ripped your head off with his bare hands. I have to doubt that Caspar, wonderful as he is, is quite that kind.

  “Look.” He scratches his nose with the hand not holding his auto. “You are the most terrifying son of a bitch I have ever seen. If I still dreamt normal, you’d be haunting my nightmares. You would have killed all of us, three-on-one, but your mistress was fighting ours in Heaven. That’s why your powers weren’t working. I bet she thinks she failed you, too.”

  I stand corrected.

  If this was before I’d fallen in love with him, the man’s absolute lack of a grudge would have made me roll my eyes. And okay, sure—eyes still rolling. But with a defined note of affection.

  The Butcher stares at his bound, bloody hands.

  “Do your best to sleep,” Caspar says. “You’re still up come morning, I’ll come out here and beat you unconscious. Deal?”

  “That’s fair.”

  Caspar leaves the crestfallen warrior and returns to his hotel room. He sits on the faded pasture-tapestry bedspread and drinks tap water from an amber glass as he gazes out into the primeval old country-night. The distant lights of inner Pastornos gleam.

  One week. He’s barely had a day of down time since all this began. Now he’s got a full week. What the hell should he do with himself? He’s given over his life on Diamante to fear and pain and hurt. He doesn’t like this world anymore. It’s only when he’s asleep that he feels alive. Maybe he could just sleep all day?

  The notion lands on him that if he told all this stuff to a therapist, they’d have the temple menders on the blower to drag him into a padded room for harm observation. It paints a rueful grin on his face.

  Come on now, Caspar. You dreamt all your life of going to Relic City, of doing the pilgrimage. Now you’re here. Sure, it’s all a lie, but the statues are still lovely. And you might miss me, but I’m right here behind your eyes. I’m going to make my warlock do all the tourist shit he doesn’t want to admit he’d love. That’s the perks of being inside your boyfriend’s brain.

  I’ve freed up enough power that he’s repaired the most severe damage to himself—the bleeding, the concussion, the broken bones—but the smaller scrapes and contusions he’s insisted on leaving where they are. He’ll treat these the old-fashioned way. Painkillers and bed-rest.

  He slides under the covers. His buzz is gone by now, replaced with an unpleasant blur. He wants to wake up in my demesne again. A strain of guilt with the hope—I’ve certainly expanded his formerly vanilla horizons, but there’s still only so far he’s willing to go with his affections when he’s at Bina’s, and he misses our lovemaking. How much will I have healed when he’s back with me? Will he be home again?

  My breath catches in my manifestation’s chest. Home again. I am his home.

  Come home, Caspar.

  ???????????

  Caspar’s head is propped up on something smooth and soft. He shifts and so does his pillow. His head is laying on my stomach, he realizes. He raises his lids and sees three upside down golden eyes looking back at him. We’re in my room. The same place as our first time.

  “Well, hi there, Mister Warlock.” I curl my calves across his chest.

  There’s a scratchy texture on his skin. He glances at my legs where they intersect over his bare abdomen. He’s naked; I’m not.

  I’m wearing the exact lingerie he drunkenly fantasized about. Garters and buckles squishing soft grooves into my butt. Sheer, silvery stockings. A frilled cage bra that leaves my stomach bare to serve as his pillow. A white choker with lacy little hearts. I’m his porny blushing bride.

  (It’s not entirely white, of course. I am me. It’s a very pale lavender.)

  “Hi, Miss Irene.” He breathes out long into my delicate hands as I cup his jaw, play with his lips and his nose.

  “Do you think I should have a nose?” I slip a pinky into his nostril. He snorts and lightly jerks his face away. “I’ve gone back and forth. Tried a few, and none of them said Irene to me.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “You know what I think.” His fingernails scrape along my stockings. I do. He thinks I’m the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen. He tilts his head to the side and nuzzles his cheek against my inner thigh. “How’re you doing with that bit of soul, Miss Irene? Is it helping?”

  “It’s a fucking godsend, Caspar. A mortal-send. I don’t know. I’m getting so much better, so much quicker. By the time the week is through, I think you’ll be able to evoke me again. Maybe a hiccup here and there, but we’ll be back in the groove. And all the pain is gone. And the taste…” I trail off.

  My traitorous stomach growls. We both laugh.

  “Went to the zoo one time in seminary and there was a guy who put his head in a crocodile’s mouth as a gag for the tourists. I thought, what kind of damn fool do you have to be.” He curls the joint of my inky pinky back and forth. “Now look at me.”

  “That’s right. Swallowed whole.” I nibble on the top of his head. “But I bet the crocodile and the zookeeper didn’t do the kinds of things that I wanna do tonight.”

  “Lord. Let’s hope not.” Caspar twists around so that his chin sits below my sternum. His gaze travels up between my caged breasts. “One would think they’d screen the interview for that kind of thing.”

  “Speaking of that kind of thing. What an interesting conversation you and the inspector had about my baby sister.”

  He sucks in air through his teeth. “Yeah. Never seen Jordy get that toasted. Is she okay? Her and Bina?”

  “I don’t know. But I have a pretty strong feeling they’re going to give this whole interspecies thing we’ve got going on a shot.” I slide down the head of the bed to get more of myself underneath my man. “I’ve been talking humanity up. Mostly inadvertently. But I guess I got Bina curious.”

  “I guess I got Jordan curious.”

  “Shit, Cas. What have we done?”

  “We have done all kinds of bullshit.” Caspar curls up with me. “We’ve done our best. Now we have a good long week to do nothing at all.”

  “My fault.” I sigh. “I let myself go on the battle-ready thing. Wanted to believe I wouldn’t have to do that anymore. Not with my own sisters.”

  “I wanted to believe I was done, too,” Caspar says. “Now, just about the only thing I’m willing to believe in is my goddess.”

  I scoff gently. “I can’t be your goddess tonight. I’m too torn up to be your goddess. Tonight I’m just your girlfriend.”

  He smiles. “I believe in her, too.”

  “I had all kinds of daydreams about what it would be like to be yours, you know? Watching you at work, craving some of that Caspar kindness.” I lay back and gyrate my hips against his waist. “Imagining what it would be like to be a weak little mortal girl getting fixed by you.”

  He shifts his weight so that more of his broad body lies on mine. His thumb kneads my wrist. “Reckon this is the one time I’m ever gonna get the opportunity. To be the one who takes care of you.”

  “Take care of me.” I wrap my arms around him. In the middle of the kiss that follows, I take his hand from my shoulder and lay it across my breast. “Take me.”

  “Are you—” His thumb brushes the complicated band of my bra. “I don’t want to get you hurt more.”

  I giggle. “Ooh. Mr. Human is worried about hurting me. The last person who did that was a warrior goddess alien who weighs five hundred thousand tons.”

  “All right, all right.” He chuckles. “Go easy.”

  “You’re a wonderful man. You’re kind and wonderful and gentle.” I trail kisses along his jaw. “You’re the reason I’m okay. You’re the reason I can manifest all this again. This bed, this body.” I pour a syrupy whisper into his ear. “That means you get to do anything you want to it.”

  His hands close around my waist and tug me the rest of the way beneath him. That beautiful heat, the motion of him, the blood rushing through him, the muscle and tendon and tissue working together under his skin to create his elegant body. This marvel of evolution resting itself between my thighs. Hooking its thumbs into my garters. Kissing me.

  “I think,” I say, when I get the chance. “I think that I’m just about helpless.”

  “Are you?”

  “Mmhmm. No tentacles. No reality shaping. I’d just fall apart if I tried.” I stretch my arms above my head. Caspar watches the petite curves of my breasts elongate. A raven black nipple peeks shyly from the cup of my bra. “A big strong human could probably do whatever they wanted with this little manifestation. If they wanted.”

  His lip twitches upward. Amused, aroused. Even if I wasn’t in his head, he’s so easy to read.

  My calf winds around his back and curls him closer. He takes my leg and lowers it to the bed. I pout at him. “Turn over,” he says.

  I quizzically obey, looking over my shoulder as he settles over me.

  He sits up and slides the straps and silk down my back. His fingers tease the clasps open and run along the grooves they made in my skin. “Could you manifest one more thing for me, Miss Irene?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “You ever see that bottle I had in the homeopathy cabinet? The yellow label that said jojoba oil?”

  “Jojoba oil.” I realize his intent. “I gave you the helpless do what you want thing and you’re going to massage me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He cracks his knuckles. “If you’re just my girlfriend tonight, then I’m just your boyfriend. And I’mma give you the boyfriend experience.”

  “They must have grown you in a fucking lab.” I reach into a drawer on the nightstand that wasn’t there before and hand him a little bottle (my label is, of course, violet). “A lab for golden retriever/human hybrids, and you escaped so you could be the best thing that ever fucking happened to me.”

  Caspar rubs his palms together to warm the oil on his hands. He sinks his coarse finger pads into my back. He gets to work. I never really got the big deal on this massage thing. I’ve seen him do this to clients before and they make these weird, almost horny noises, but we’re talking about old farmhand fellows. There’s only so good something can feel when it’s done in such a professional capa-aaah.

  Never mind. I need him to never stop doing this.

  Caspar has a clinician’s understanding of the tensions and pains of the body. He’s also madly in love with me. The mixture of expertise and eager handsiness is intoxicating. My musculature is similar, even if the flesh is different. Cooler, a little more pliant, a little bouncier. No hairs and pores like a mammal’s skin. He squeezes my ass, and it’s like squeezing a giggling stress ball. He sees the momentary mark of his thumb as I deform under his touch.

  His massage reduces me to a happy puddle. (Oh—not literally. I guess a spooky bitch like me should clarify that.)

  His fingers press the back of my neck. They stray to the edge of my tentacular mantle. “You want me to give these a shot?”

  I tilt my head back. “Mmmhmmm.” A half-dozen tendrils wrap around his hand and guide it toward the squirming thicket of my unbound hair.

  He scoots forward across my increasingly slippery body. Those rough, magical hands delve into my tendrils.

  I yelp. He jerks back. “Sorry?”

  My hair catches him and yanks his fingers back onto my scalp. The third eye on my forehead glows. “Do that again.”

  I bury my face in the pillows as he gets back to work. He chuckles at the effect he has on me. But the groans and sighs I make are having an effect right back on Mr. Cartwright. An effect I feel, warm and firm, poking up between the globes of my butt.

  As he returns to my shoulders, I prop my head up on my forearms. “Caspar?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “This is so incredibly lovely.” I fold my thigh beneath my body, angling my rear so it’s pressing his hard-on up into his stomach. “But what if I asked you to be a bit mean to me tonight?”

  His hands pause their ministrations momentarily. “Let me finish this up.” They continue, slipping down my rear to my legs. “And then I can be a bit mean.”

  My eyes drift close as my warlock’s bewitching touch continues down my legs. Hamstrings, calves. A musical sigh escapes me when his kneading thumbs reach the soles of my feet.

  By the time he’s finished, a cuddly glow suffuses me. He leans into me. “Know why I did all that?”

  “Mmmm?” I languidly look up at him.

  “I did all that,” he says, “so that you’ll know I still worship you—” he slides my ass up into the air “—when I do this.”

  His stingy slap on my ass wakes me right up. My body jerks. A groan escapes me. It’s cut off when his coarse hand closes around my neck. He wrenches me back. My spine curves an arching S.

  His pointer finger caresses my jaw. “Be a good girl for me, Miss Irene.” His grip tightens. “Okay?”

  I swallow hard against his palm and nod.

  I think it goes without saying, reader, that if you skipped the last little tryst I illustrated for you, it’s a good idea to repeat your prudence here. Shield your chaste eyes and meet me in the next chapter.

  His voice is as raspy and firm as his touch. “You make me so fucking hard.” It burns like a brand against my back. “You feel that?”

  I nod.

  “I’m not a dirty talk kind of guy, but you.” His hot breath on my neck. “You been changing me in all kinds of ways. Haven’t you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I breathe.

  “Sorry’s not gonna cut it. Up.” I obediently raise my knees, one after another, to let him slide my panties off. “You gonna take responsibility for making me like this?”

  The cool kiss of the air on my exposed sex is replaced by his thick fingers. My thighs drift apart. “Yes,” I squeak.

  “Then how about this. How about you come when I give you permission. And not before.”

  I take a deep, shaky breath. “Okay.”

  He kisses the cool sweat from my forehead. His fingers are slick with the massage oil. They slide inside with a wet, silky sound that makes my face burn.

  All the rubbing has wound me up. It only takes seconds for the first involuntary squeeze to clench against his touch. He tsks. “Poor little thing. You gotta try harder than that.”

  “Wait,” I groan. “Wait wait. I just need a second.”

  He slows down, but his fingers are still inside me. “How about when you say hyacinth, I actually stop,” he murmurs. “And when you say wait, I don’t.”

  I nod.

  “Okay.” His fingers tighten and slide along the ridges inside me.

  “Wait—” I gasp. Another sharp slap ripples me. I whine and bury my face in the bedspread.

  And I try. I try really hard. Honest, I do. My needle teeth slot out and bite into the pillow. But he doesn’t slow down. He doesn’t give me a break. I shift and writhe and plead and he’s merciless. When my hand clasps his wrist, he takes it and pins it above my head, leans forward to keep me beneath him.

  “I’m gonna—I can’t. I can’t, Cas.” A violent shake. My eyes squeeze shut. All I can see is what he sees, my body twitching and glistening, my ass deforming against the thick forearm pushed up against it, bent and pumping as he works me. My back is arching. My rear is rising off the bed. There’s one bare thread keeping me tethered. “Cas, please. Please. Let me come. Give me—“

  Right as my stomach drops out and the tide crests, he takes a fistful of my hair tendrils and yanks.

  I come, violently and immediately.

  I collapse onto the bed, hips bucking and grinding against the fabric, toes clenching.

  He tsks. There’s a wry grin on his face. “Now, did I say you could do that?”

  “You. Augh.” I’m trying to catch my breath. “You’re too fucking good at that for a temple boy.”

  “It’s not my usual flavor.” He strokes my spine. “But I live to serve.”

  I let out an overheated giggle. My brain is descending from the stratosphere Caspar sent it into. “And I reward my servants.” I roll onto my back. “You want some vanilla?” I hold my arms out.

  He chuckles and takes my hands. “Wouldn’t say no.”

  “How about this? No more funny business.” I fold my thighs up against my chest. “Missionary.” I thread my fingers through his. “Handholding.” I cross my calves over his butt. “No pulling out.”

  “We can’t have kids. And you’re the Adversary.”

  “Well, yeah.” I wiggle. “But the rest of this is soooo vanilla.”

  He chuffs out a laugh as he props himself up on his forearms and kisses me, deep and languid and sloppy. A silvery strand links us as he pulls back.

  “Miss Irene.”

  “Yes, Caspar Cartwright?”

  “Do you want to make it more vanilla?”

  My throat goes dry. “Yes, Caspar Cartwright.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  My chest shakes. I take a sharp inhale to steady myself. “Yes, Caspar Cartwright.”

  And he’s back inside me. Back home. His vision of me blurs—with tears, I realize, as the first one drops from him. I fold my arms around his head and squish it into my breasts.

  I’m crying too. My husband. I’m too overwhelmed and overstimulated to come again; but I want his, more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

  Caspar is close. I can feel him thickening, the tensing of his tendons and the sharp exhale through his nose, his pace faltering as the electricity coursing through his nervous system pushes him forward involuntarily. His thickening cock trembles, scrapes and shoves, and turns my heavy breaths into yelping gasps. I plant a foot on the bed and push back against him. I want it so badly. I want to feel him lose his mind. A lightbulb flashes in my mind. I know just what will push him off the ledge.

  “Come in me.” My ass grinds against him as I take him to the hilt. “Come in your wife.”

  My words throw a thunderous switch in him like a floodlight turning on. With a bestial grunt his arms crush me back to him, impaling me again, bouncing me like a gleeful little rag doll, and mission accomplished. I feel it happen, feel the rush of heat, feel him go limp and pliable in my arms as his energy vents from him into me.

  We breathe together. His stomach rises and falls against my back. His cum drips from the warm, close place we connect.

  A little clink sounds as he takes my hand back in his. There’s a ring, he realizes. That swirly engagement ring is back on his finger. On mine, too. He isn’t sure when that happened.

  “Should we invite your parents?” I ask. “To the wedding.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “You ate them.”

  In the surviving half of my impossible cosmic form, we laugh through our tears, loose and delirious.

  Discord

  Patreon