Larkin laughed at my question of how his siblings annoyed him. "How many siblings do you have?" He asks me, looking down into my eyes. I blush, looking away. His gaze was so intense, even when it was perfectly friendly. It made me nervous.
"I'm an only child."
"Then you will never understand how annoying ten little brothers and sisters can be. They'd always steal my clothes from the drying line and hide them in the woods. When I was fishing, they'd come running up, screaming and jumping in the pond to scare away the fish. I can remember many mornings I'd get woken up by four or five of them jumping on my chest and demanding I get up to entertain them."
"You love them though." I poke him in the side, teasing him.
&nbs
How could a man this large treat me so delicately? Even as Larkin towered over me, totally covering my body with his own, he didn't lay on me. He didn't grind his hips into me, and his hands didn't grab at my thighs.He gently sampled the taste of my lips, so, so, softly."You taste like dewdrops." He whispers, and then backs away, returning to his spot beside me. I lay there for a second, staring at the sky, collecting myself."Why did you do that?" I finally sat up, moving my hair so it provided me with a security curtain between myself and his carefully watching eyes. Guilt was already flooding my body. I had been with Erik so recently, and now I was kissing another man. Who was I to preach about loyalty?"Becaus
Larkin nods. "Now my people do not want to mingle with Mann. We tend to live for a very long time, longer than even Alva, and we have third and fourth generation people left from when Mann originally turned on our goddess.""Wait, you know about that?" He nods again."We all have different history books. The Alva's is a bit more... polished. Cuts out the dirty truths. But we know how Sanju was betrayed by the Mann she loved, and how she brought them here as her slaves. How she forced them to breed so she could work their children to the grave as penance for what was done to her people. We have both hurt each other, and we see no good coming from returning to their world. It seems too risky. After all we've done to each other, there is no way there can be peace."I stayed sil
"Let me show you something." I nod and follow after Bacudal as he crawls up the stairs on all fours like a child. The stairs are wooden, and honestly seem a little sketchy with the way they creak and groan under my steps.Upstairs is even more still and quiet, so much so I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I can feel a tense energy when I step off the stairs and into the empty hallway. There's another staircase at the end, probably leading to the tower, and two doors on one side of the wall, one on the other.I jump as Bacudal is suddenly in my face, staring into my soul. His mood had shifted from carefree child to serious, scary mystery creature very fast."If you act out of line in this room, you will never leave it again. Do you understand?" I swallow, but nod. He gri
"Can I be honest with you?" Bacudal nods once, sharply at my question. "I have lived with Mann for a very long time... and I must agree with you. They are not good." I swallow again. I'm not just kissing his ass to get away, his story makes way too much sense. "I have always known that we are a parasite, we steal from the weak then sell their own goods back to them at a taxed price. We kill nature and animals and the world we live in. I know that.""Yet you reside with the Alva, and they do not acknowledge that. They treat Mann as the ideal." He tilts his head to the side, turning to crawl back on top of his eggs. He was kind of... twitchy? Ticked his head around a lot, and his eyes didn't stay still for long."I literally just learned that this was something you were fighting about." I slap my thighs with my hands.&nb
Thankfully, after a few minutes of running after the trail of a long gone Bacudal, I can hear the commotion. People yelling, a lot of people, it sounded like. I followed their voices to where I assume I was supposed to be going."Okaaay." I say as I slow down when people come into my sight.Here we go.I could hear Bacudal's childish taunting voice, even above all the loud man voices yelling."I only took her for a few hours, you're overreacting." Someone said in a teasing voice."She wasn't yours to take." Someone else threw back."She didn't seem too upset to be here. That sounds like Tiekn. "In fact, she seemed a little put out with your leader's man whore mentality." Oh geez. I push through the lower halves of people, muttering out excuse me here and there. They're all very big and tall, and I genuinely don't think they even notice me shoving my way through. They're also all shouting insults at what I assume to be a group of Alva. I can't actually see, because all these people are
"Okay." Is all I say to Larkin. I have so much more in me though. I wish we could've spent more time together. I wish I could've known you better. I wanted to know what he looked like in the morning, and what he was scared of, and what he loved. I wanted to meet his siblings and learn about his life here. But I guess we were skipping all of that. We were going from epic, star crossed lovers, to strangers.In just a second.I hope we're together, in another life.He doesn't say anything, just walks off back towards where we came. I stand there, my heart beating in my chest, my blood flowing in my ears, and tears burning at my throat.That hurt, I can't lie.I say once again, I've never had a boyfriend, or a whatever the hell Larkin was to me. So, I'd never had to deal with letting someone like that go.It fucking hurt.I let a sob escape my lips and fall back against a tree, sliding down it and burying my face in my knees, sobbing like a child. I hated that in the end, we just ended u
"Hm." Erik hums. He sighs, and looks away, then falls back and sits in front of me. He scoots as close as he can without sitting on the ring of flowers around me. They've stopped growing out, and are just getting thicker now, and starting to get a bit taller, I think. "Why does this make you a... "Dick." He puts air quotes around the word I'd used to describe myself. He probably had never used it like that before, and it sounded a little funny coming from him.I scoff and shake my head. "You don't care that I kissed him?" Why was I getting upset that he wasn't mad? I wasn't handling this well, but I couldn't stop for some reason. I think I was just irritated."I don't love it." He says gently. "But you also claim he left because you had made your choice already." I roll my eyes."Of course that's all you care about.""Would you like me to ask you how his lips taste?" I shoot him a glare, and he shakes his head. "I am sorry you're upset, my flower. But if you have truly made your choic
"We'll stop here for the night."We'd been walking for hours, past even when the sun went down. Erik had kept suggesting we stop while glancing over at me, and Reni kept insisting we could make it home in just a few hours if we kept going. They went back and forth like that for a while, until Erik saw me stumble over a tree branch and decided I was simply too tired to continue, and we would be making camp for the night. I wasn't not tired, but I didn't want to slow everyone else down even more than I already was. Erik had said they'd gotten here in six hours on their own, but with me, we were already touching the ten-hour mark.Appparently I was quite slow.We'd found a half-crumbled building, the roof was gone, but the remaining walls stood twenty feet high. It would protect us from wild animals while we slept, Reni said with a firm nod as she examined the area."I'll make you a bed up here." Erik tells me. There's a raised platform that looks like it was once a kitchen, with half of
The next couple of days we spent preparing for Larkin and his men’s arrival. When I say we, I don’t mean Erik and I. It started when we’d addressed the servants together and he’d told them rather flippantly to prepare five rooms for the incoming guests. I remember the moment I realized Erik was not in fact going to be a grown up about this whole thing, and it would in fact be nothing but one giant headache for me.“He told you ten, plus him.” I had said to Erik. I hadn’t thought for a second he had forgotten; I knew he was being snotty about this whole thing still. Which was fine. I get it. But still. I had taken charge, told them no, we weren’t doing that, but to prepare eleven rooms for them. I had told them if we didn’t have enough room, our people could bunk together for a few nights. These people were guests, and coming of their own accord to help protect me. Erik at least had the decency to look bashful when I’d reminded him and the group of that fact. I’d told Erik to run al
Erik and Larkin talked for another hour. I got bored halfway through and started organizing Erik’s desk. He had glanced at me curiously when I’d begun, but now I think I had mostly faded into the background of this conversation. Erik’s idea was we should go to where the remaining Gud species reside, confront them head on and get this over with. He said he didn’t want to wait around for him to attack, always looking over his shoulder. Maybe I was stereotyping here, but I found it interesting how Larkin argued against doing that. I guess from looking at them, you’d assume Larkin was the brute, the one who wanted to charge in head first, swords drawn, ready to die. Unfortunately for me, it seemed my new husband fit that role more accurately. Erik’s eyes were alight with passion and anger as he spoke of his plan to sneak onto their land. Then Larkin would point out the only idea Erik even has on what their territory looks like is based on a fifteen year old sketch of a map his father h
“All good?” Erik asks as we walk inside and join him again. He really had been waiting close by; just past the entry way, standing there like he was a guard himself. As soon as I turned the corner, he had gently grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back against his side, like me not being there had been physically paining him. More like letting me talk to the one man who amounted as my ex, but I was trying not to focus on all the awkward tension rolling between the three of us.“Yup.” I nod and smile up at him, standing on tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. He seemed to visibly relax, which was kind of cute. “He wants all of us to talk about the Gud now though.” I say, tilting my head to where Larkin was lingering behind us, awkwardly looking anywhere but at us.Erik nods. “Yes, yes we should. I would go as far to say it’s impossible to think he’s not hunting you.” His hand that had moved to wrap around my waist as he guided us all somewhere tightened a little at his words. I could te
“I came down here for a reason other than breaking up your cat fight.” Erik calls after me as I walk away from him and back towards the main estate. “Someone is here for you.” I stop then, my heart jumping. “Who?” I ask, not turning to look at him yet. He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Larkin. He wants to talk to you about Bacudal’s death.” I nod, and take a deep breath. “Okay, take me to him.” Erik walks beside me as we head towards the main estate together now. We don’t say anything at first, then I ask, “how did he… seem?” I glance at Erik.He sighs. “Tense. Angry, impatient. I worry another war with the Gud species over this.” I furrow my brow. Another? “Would you like me to remain with you while you talk?” He asks, looking down at me. I shake my head a little. “I feel like you being there won’t help his irritation any.” “Very well. I will remain close by, just in case he attempts to take you back with him again.” I can hear the edge in Erik’s voice when he talks about L
"Can you believe her?” I huff as soon as Reni is out of earshot, turning to look at Erik. “I’m not entirely sure what just happened.” Erik says, looking at me carefully, like he was trying not to piss me off more. Smart man. “Your favorite and most trusted guard wants me to make my dragons into slaves, like she does to everyone else around here.” I say, gesturing around at nothing in particular. “I see.” Erik nods a little, looking up to where the dragons are now flying in a circle above me. They had come over when the tension had started between me and Reni. I almost wondered if they would’ve done anything had she returned my attack. “She was insulting me, implying I couldn’t handle my dragons properly, and just being a plain bitch.” I finish, crossing my arms angrily at the memory.“Perhaps you misunderstood what she was trying to get at…” he says, and I narrow my eyes at him. I take back what I said before. He wasn’t a smart man, he was a very dumb one. “Seriously? You’re goin
“Your dragons are proving to be quite the challenge for everyone.” Reni says to me as she closes the distance between us. She has her arms crossed, making her forearms look more defined, and is staring down at me like a kid looking at an ant under a looking glass. I nod a little, looking back up to the three dragons, who are still bickering playfully in the air above us.“Do you have any plans for them?” She continues, still watching me. I have no idea why her words make me prickle a little, but they sure do. Maybe it’s the way she said it, the way she looked up at my dragons like they were some prize. Or maybe it was because I knew for a fact she was perfectly okay with branding people as slaves. Keeping in mind Bacudal’s warning about people wanting to use dragons for their own purposes, her words made me a bit defensive. “No.” Is all I say, meeting her gaze. Even though I had only said one word, she seemed to pick up on my hostility, because her brow raises and she looks a littl
“Lady Delilah, did you enjoy your time with your new husband?” I was back in Erik and I’s room now, getting changed into something more practical. I’d been wearing loose, mostly see through dresses during my time with Erik. I’m sure that was his choice, but it wasn’t exactly appropriate attire for everyday life.It was still early in the day when Erik and I made it back, maybe noon, so I planned on doing something today. At the very least, I wanted to see my dragons. Honestly I was a bit surprised when they didn’t crash into me on my walk up here. I’d been keeping an eye out, bracing myself almost constantly. I was weirdly disappointed when I made it to the main estate without any dragons attacking me. I turn to look at Chepi, and as soon as I see her, guilt floods me. Her hair was frazzled and unbrushed, she had lines under her eyes, and despite the smile on her face, I could tell she was overworked and tired. “Hey, babe.” I say in a concerned tone. “You look like you need a break
The days after Erik and I’s wedding were mostly filled with us glued to one another, touching, kissing, talking and laughing. I couldn’t keep my hands off him now that I’d had a taste, and he was no different. I wasn’t even embarrassed to say, we had learned every inch of each other’s bodies in the five days we spent locked up together. I’m not even sure we came up for air sometimes.I would’ve stayed locked up in that cabin with him forever, because I knew as soon as we stepped out, it would be back to work. He’d get super busy, especially since he’d been gone for a minute now, and I would get wrapped up with my dragons, trying to uncloak myself, and getting used to this new life I was about to start living.We may not get another minute alone like this for a while.Eventually though, our five days were up, and we left the little house Erik had built for us, and made our way back to the main estate. Erik was already ticking off the things he needed to do, and I was walking beside
Despite my inexpierence, something about the nervous way Erik is looking at me makes me feel more bold than I ever thought I could be. I sit up on the edge of the bed and grab the back of his hair, gently pulling him down so I can whisper in his ear, “are you going to make love to me now?” I ask him softly. He grunts, and I feel his hands moving to push my mouth against his own, my words forcing him into action. I feel him moving to pick me up by the ass and move me to the center of the bed so he could hover over me. “I can't believe you are my wife.” He mutters, running a finger along the metal plates on my breast. His finger moves up the hem of the see through part of my dress above my boobs, and I gasp when I feel him dig through the material and start tearing it down the middle. “What are-” His hand over my mouth forced me to stop talking. “I want to see all of you, my flower. I want to lick you, everywhere.” I shudder into his arms, white hot pleasure shooting all the way dow