Chapter 50.4

“Whistling… gah! Why does this have to be so difficult?” Lynnria grumbled.  “Couldn’t you have set up the Runes yourself?  Why do I have to scratch them in?”

“Believe me, I would have—licked your asshole!  I’m a dirty slut!—if I’d had the room.  That was the entire point of the changes I made to your Core but, with a Capacity of 6, there is only so much I can do.”

I cracked an eye open groggily.

As was usual, post-torpor, I was feeling rather like a blank slate, so I had to spend a few minutes just lying there to reassemble the events of the last few hours.

Right… the storage thing.  I guess she and Mia decided to start playing with it while I was out.

My face crumpled while I tried to blink the rest of the sleep from my eyes.

Why does my shoulder feel wet?

The thought had scarcely finished passing through my mind that I became aware of a the gentle snoring just to my left… and then the pleasant weight pressed along my side.  You would think a naked woman using me as a body pillow would have been more readily apparent, but the sleeping mind can filter out a lot.

Even the hair draped across my face.

I blew at it a few times ineffectually before giving up and sweeping the red locks away with my free hand.  They were surprisingly soft, considering the lack of care she paid them.  Almost like they were freshly conditioned.  And they smelled rather nice… in a her sort of way.

“No, no.  You’ve drawn the fifth lattice backwards.  That Rune is supposed to be symmetric.”

Lynnria made a disgusted noise.  “It would help if I could actually see what I’m doing.  The Runes are there in my head, but the second I try to put them down, they get all blurry.  I can’t even remember where I am, half the time.”

“You didn’t expect magic to be easy, did you?  But don’t worry.  It will become more straightforward with practice.  And provided you distribute your attributes… intelligently.”

I craned my neck, trying to see, but I did not want to disturb Jax if I could help it.  She looked so peaceful there with that silly little grin curving her lips.  I wondered what she was dreaming about.  Something perverted, knowing her.

But I did manage to spot Arx.  She had curled up on my opposite side with my lap as her pillow.  Funnily enough, I had not noticed her weight either.

She’s probably still in torpor.

From my vantage, I could only see the back of her, so the only obvious difference I could see was in her tail.  It had grown much longer and thicker while we were out, particularly at the attachment to her spine.  It looked as wide around as the arms at her shoulders.

The whole of it was covered with a fine layer of white, downy fuzz, just barely visible over the gray of her skin.  All save the tip.  There, the stuff had grown so dense and long, it was almost as though she had a second head of hair draped over her ankles.

It was kind of sexy, actually.  In an… ineffable sort of way.  With her pearlescent crown and her white hair, she almost looked like some kind of unicorn given human form.

But with sharp bits.  And two horns, obviously.

Her ear flickered, as though from an itch, and a sharp breath expanded her ribcage.  For a moment, I worried that my scrutiny had disturbed her slumber, but there was no helping it.  When the people around you literally feed from your every passing mood—and are hotter than supermodels—it can be difficult to keep to an even keel.

“She enjoys it,” Jax whispered into my ear, reminding me there was more than one empath around.

When I looked, I found her gazing at me with a frank and unflinching stare.  As though she could not bear to miss even a single flutter of my eyelashes.  A single flare of my nose.  A twitch of my lip.  And she was smiling.  Beautifully.

“Found ye.”

I was not quite sure what that was supposed to mean.  It was not like I had gone anywhere.

“And I’m glad you did,” I allowed anyway, playing along.  “Hello, gorgeous.”

She dug her nose into my shoulder.

She’s being awfully cute this morning.

“Sorry about yesterday,” I said.  “I knew you were all excited, but I—“

“Ye ain’t got to apologize,” she interrupted quickly.  “Ye had to feed us up from starving.  Ain’t no shame in tucking in fer a kip after such.  Just… say so next time.  Don’t ye nay run.  Ne’er run.  Not from me.”

I nodded, feeling ashamed.  But also deeply grateful.

She was right.  They were my Dolilim.  I did not need to trick them or hide.  Their ardor for me was an infinite thing.  It would never wane just because I was feeling a little tired or wanted a day to myself.  They did not even need sex to feed.  Just being near me was enough.

The only way to hurt them was to distance myself.

I reached up to stroke her cheek, returning her stare for stare.    My heart seemed to swell just looking at her.  She made me feel… peaceful.  Content.  Secure in the knowledge that no matter what might happen, she was mine.  And I was hers.

She really did have such beautiful eyes.  They almost shone with their own inner light—even here, in the perpetual, dim glow of the storefront.

Speaking of…

“Lynnria, how much time do we have left?”

Jax grinned knowingly, but she waited for the answer.  I had little doubt that she would be willing to take me anytime, any place, and in front of anyone.  And glory in it.  However, I was not quite so far gone as that.

Lynnria had not reacted much on finding us awake, being too engrossed to look up from her wrist.  But that was fine.  If anything, it was good she had something else to occupy her attention.

Actually, she had been quite the trooper in keeping watch while we slept.  I would have to reward her later.

“Uh… we’re past four hours,” she reported, “but I heard him start moving around back there not too long ago.”

Jax drummed her claws on my sternum for a moment, her joyful mood rapidly souring.  We had made a deal with the man, and he was overdue.

“He better be at work on them… clothes,” she finished with a growl.  Despite the threat in her tone, she was clearly still feeling distasteful at the idea of actually wearing any.

Arx grunted sleepily from my knee, having awakened despite our feeble attempts at quiet.  “Oh, who cares?  We’re getting paid just to sit here.”

I quirked an eyebrow.  “Funny.  With the way you two went at him him earlier, it certainly sounded like you cared.  I was half afraid you were going to tear his throat out.”

She chuckled and rolled over to her back to stretch.  I could see her tail twitching between her legs down and even past her toes as her back arched.  Not that it held my attention long.

Fuck me…  How is it possible for a person to be that hot?

“Don’t be silly, Dearest.  You would have hated that.”

Regrettably, it took me longer than it should have to process her words, but when a person looks like that, it tends to make the blood flow to all the wrong places.

I would have hated it, she had said.

Not that she did not want to.  Nor any indication that she might be reluctant to take an innocent life.

No.  I would have hated it.  No other reason.  And Jax did not argue.

I sighed.  If pressed, I had to allow that it was at least a… viable moral outlook—from a broader societal perspective.  Even if it was massively fucked up.

They would not just go around eating babies, all of a sudden.  But not because of the grief and pain to their parents, the outrage of the town they happened to live in, or the angry guards coming for our hides.  They would not do it because I would be horrified.

Great.  Who wouldn’t want to be the moral linchpin of an entire species?

“Okay… I think that’s finished,” Lynnria announced, thankfully changing the subject.

“Looks good,” Mia agreed.  “Now, if we can get one of you Dolilim to provide a bit of Life…?”

Lynnria grimaced with distaste.  “Do we have to use theirs?  I’d much rather store Donum’s.”

“I’ve already told you—dick holster—the Runes are too unstable on creation to wait for that.  Now, stop quibbling.”

“I be close to full, Master,” Jax volunteered.

I bobbed my head once, and she quickly rolled away.  She did not bother to actually stand, so I was presented with a face-full of her—admittedly pleasant—backside.  But my eyes were not drawn to where they normally would have been.

No, they had drifted slightly higher.  Right to the base of her spine and the tiny nubbin just beginning to sprout there.

Huh.  And no torpor?

I had to suppose it made sense that she would continue to grow as her race demanded, magical influence or no.  It would just take longer.

A relieved smile began to steal over my features.  She would be thrilled.  But before I could say anything, Arx’s head appeared overhead.

Her features were becoming so symmetric, even an engineer with drafting tools would have been hard-pressed to find fault.  Her skin was clear and completely free from blemishes.  Her face was… perfect.  Or near enough, a mortal such as myself would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

That and with the pendulous sway of her breasts hanging just above my skin, I was finding it immensely difficult not to spring to attention.  If she had descended even a fingernail downward, I knew I would fail.  Immediately.

“‘Snails…” she breathed wondrously, distracting me just enough from her beauty to find her eyes.

And I was taken aback.

As challenging as I was finding it to be in such close proximity to someone so attractive, she was looking at me with something approaching awe.

She swallowed roughly.  “Are… are you hungry?”

She gasped slightly at her own suggestion and bit at her lower lip.

Oh, fuck.  That was it.  That was all it took.  My struggle was over.

It took less than a heartbeat for me to be inside her, though I had not moved.  My reaction was all the permission she had needed to mount me.

But that was all she did.  She made no effort to buck nor shake her hips.  She did not move, at all.

Not outwardly.

She seemed intent on letting her inner world do the work.  Though, the effort seemed to cost her.  Her breath came in short, hitching gasps, and her upper body twitched and jerked constantly.

“Is this w-working?” she asked, hopeful.  “Can you… can you f-feel it?  My Life?”

It was difficult to concentrate on anything beyond sensation.  Much like her, I had an instinctive need to move.  To thrust.  To complete the act.

However… after I had managed to rein myself in somewhat, I realized I could, if barely.  There was a flow down there, where we were joined.  I could feel the sweeping waves of her inner kingdom desperately attempting to massage the Life into me and the little sparks of heat gradually spreading outward and into my body.

I was not one to ever claim that sex was meant for anything.  Not in the way some people did.  But if it ever had, it had never been meant for this.

This was… perverse.  Too good.  Food and sex combined into one hole.

Maybe I was just trying to justify it to myself, but there was a certain beauty to it, as well.  Especially when the one feeding you was so happy in the act.

Slowly, we began to smile at one another.  Then laugh like a couple of idiots.

Why did I always have to be so dumb?  Why was it so difficult to just… let go and enjoy what I had?

Arx loved me.  Jax loved me.  And I them.  That was all that mattered.

Abruptly, our coupling was cut short by an mood-shattering yelp, and the both of us jerked around just in time see Lynnria slapping a hand over her wrist.

A stunned silence descended on the room.  I was not altogether certain what I had just seen.  But I knew what it had looked like.

Was that… a nipple?

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Hey guys.  How've you been?  Hope you all enjoyed the chapter.

I have fun with dream sequences, which I'm sure you can all tell.  I like having the ability to point at a thing without it being obvious what I'm pointing at.  It's fun.

Well, anyhow, here's to another fulfilling week!  And be sure to check out the merch store if you haven't already.  I already ordered a mug for myself.  And if you have anything besides coffee mugs you'd rather see there, let me know in the comments.  I'll see if I can make it happen.