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In some ways, she tried to ignore the hulking Duskwalker.

They’d barely spoken since the day they sat in the rain together. Linh had been introspective in their shared silence.My heart still hurts.Her ponderous mind wasn’t faring any better, whirling wildly until she gave herself a headache.

Gosh, she felt so damnpetty. She also felt insanely pathetic, weak, and... selfish.Use him? How the hell am I meant to do that when I now know what he wants?Her soul? She didn’t want to sell her soul to any devil, no matter how much his scales felt sublime rubbing against her.

And yet... she wanted to crawl on top of him so badly, her pussy literally dripped at the thought.

I know I don’t just desire him for the reasons he said.She hated that he thought so low of her.

There was something about his skull she found attractive, and she longed to lather it in kisses again in hopes he’d purr sweetly for her. She wanted to grab his horns, stroke them, see if he could feel through them since his skull was sensitive.

His humanoid torso... well, what femalewouldn’tbe attracted to that? It was muscled, hunky, and covered in pretty black scales that gleamed with rainbows in the light. Even his dark-grey nipples often grabbed her attention, and she wished she had a shirt she could throw at him. Not to mention a skirt to hide his seam because she was beginning to want to pet it longingly so she could make his dual cocks spring from it.

They’re purple,she thought, kicking a rock.Why do they have to be my favourite colour?

His tentacles were strange, but she wanted to explore them and know if they were firm or squishy, if they felt good to be touched or were just an external tool for something.

Then there was his waterlily-and-moonflower scent, both which could be found in her village.I think... he’d like my village.They had springs all around it and flowing through the mountain side. A waterfall literally flowed out to the beach a few kilometres away.

I like the way he looks.A lot. Enough to disregardwhathe was. He was a monster, something freaky – and sometimes freaky was too much of a hurdle to get over.

But Nathair was magnificent in all his Duskwalker glory.

He was a serpent in nature in so many ways. Even his mannerisms felt snake-like: lazy, territorial, calm until not, and always watchful.

His fins and gills just added to his beauty, and she’d learned the ones going down his sides really were soft. With a velvety texture, she thought they might feel nice rubbing against the softer parts of her, like her inner thighs. She liked that his entire tail would shiver all the way to his tip if she caressed them; the intense reaction stimulated her with tingles.

None of this was enough for Linh.

It was his patience, and his... mind. His deeply disturbed mind, constantly making him feel relatable. He was as messed up as she was, yet his problems were more physical than her own, more pressing and harder to break. To heal him of his voices? It felt impossible. All she could do was sing for him, and she did every day just to avoidtalkingto him.

Even when he didn’t slip into a trance straight away, I didn’t have a single thing to say.She’d had the chance to hear his deep,mesmerising, cocky voice again, and she’d missed it. All because she suddenly felt really nervous and unsure around him.

I wish he didn’t tell me.She’d rather not have known the depth of his desires, that apparently weren’t so two-dimensional like hers.

Nathair slithered off.

He brought her to a flowering shrub of melastoma affine – better known as blue tongue plant – and she lowered to inspect the ripeness of its berries.The soil must be loamy for these to grow so big here.Considering how little clay appeared to be in the moist, fluffy dirt, she wasn’t surprised. The northern cliffs were plenty fertile for these.

Her vision blurred as her painful thoughts rambled.

Although it’d only been two days since the rain, Linh hadn’t touched herself in front of him for days prior to that. She’d been so worried that all the intimacy was the reason he’d had an erotic trance, and had just been trying to gain the will to be okay with it if it happened again.

Waking up with a set of cocks pumping against her had set her back. She’d relapsed on her healing, and she wished it had a definitive end – that she could note down the time when she would befreefrom her inner turmoil. She’d been hoping to try again that night after the beach, but her stomach had been so sickly since then that she couldn’t.

It would be unfair of me to lead him on when I don’t know what I want.When a stick cracked under his tail, likely from him coming to see why she wasn’t checking the bush for berries properly, she hastily jumped to do so. His shadow blocked out the little sun shining through the forest canopy.

Her lips tightened as her sinuses grew tingly. She quickly blinked to disperse any possible tears.

I hate that I think he’s right. I like him because he’s not human, because he doesn’t feel human. It’s wrong of me, isn’t it? To be intimate with him to get over what happened to me?

But what had happened to her... what Bragg had done... how was she supposed to get over something like that?

Part of her wanted to tell Nathair. She wanted to let him know that what he sought from her was probably a losing battle. That Nathair wasn’t the problem, and she was; she thought she was...ruined. Not physically, but within the recesses of her mind and heart, where she didn’t know if she could be with anyone without constantly feeling afraid. Where doing anything intimate came with a stomach ache that was physical, despite her not eating anything unpleasant.

The only unpleasant thing she’d eaten were her own unspoken words that she swallowed as emotional lumps.

He said I was lucky I was pretty.Her ‘marriage’ to Bragg was entirely political, and was a way to force her father into being compliant. If her father didn’t do as he was told, the threat of her life constantly loomed over his head. She was a bargaining chip.