Page 5

Four

S late opened his mouth to exasperatedly point out that, of course , she had never performed a mating ritual with a Skullstalker. He’d never heard of it happening before in all his long existence.

Then it struck him.

He frowned. “You have never had anything inside you before?”

Ruby sniffled and nodded. Her face was blotchy and wet, disappointed tears clinging to her spiderweb eyelashes. He fought down the urge to lick them off her cheeks. If he gave in, he would be all the more tempted to take a proper bite, and the binding forbade it.

He considered her small stature. She had been partly truthful about stretching; he had managed to force a small part of himself inside. But it was nowhere near enough to fit all of him, let alone his knot.

Which she had obviously known. She hadn’t sounded surprised when he was unable to fit, only desperate. It made sense if she had never had anything inside her before.

He stepped back, tail swishing in annoyance. “This isn’t going to work.”

Ruby’s tearful eyes went wide. She took a determined step toward him. “No! It has to! My town?—”

He cut her off with an irritated growl. “I am not saying it can never work. I am saying we need to prepare.”

She frowned, looking down at the smeared lines over her naked body. “You mean… more oil?”

“No.” Slate dropped to his knees in front of her. She was so small he barely had to look up to meet her eyes, even from his knees. “I mean, you need something inside you. Something smaller than my cock. Have you even bothered to use your tiny mortal fingers?”

Ruby’s cheeks flushed harder, and Slate’s gaze dragged down to the redness blotching over her chest.

His mouth watered. Slate swallowed the gush of saliva, surprised. He rarely had involuntary physical reactions these days. He thought the shiver that had run through his tail when she took his hand earlier had been a fluke. But now it was happening again.

“I have,” Ruby whispered.

It took Slate a moment to remember what she was replying to.

“Good,” he said gruffly. “That is better than nothing, I guess.”

Ruby dug her pointless mortal teeth into her lip. “What are you going to do to me?”

Slate considered. Then he picked her up and set her down on the stone slab, ignoring her startled yelp.

He pulled her legs open, another gush of saliva filling his mouth as he saw her puffy entrance. She smelled wet; he had caught this scent back in the room where he’d anointed her. Sweet and inviting, like it was calling him to bury his tongue inside.

Do not eat her, he reminded himself. No matter how much you wish to.

He pressed his nose to her thigh and inhaled, breathing in her musky scent. He didn’t even care that she was pulling these uninvited reactions from him anymore. Not when they felt so good. He had been sleeping for so long he had forgotten the delights wakefulness could offer.

Ruby squeaked. He looked up to see her staring at him, her chest heaving.

“What is it?” he asked. “Do you have some better idea to make me fit, tiny human?”

“No,” she said, very fast.

He turned back to her entrance. A pearl of liquid clung to her lips. He let his tongue unfurl, the long length sliding against her folds.

“Oh, gods !” Ruby’s legs closed around his head. “That’s so… ohhhh .”

There was a small nub peeking out at the top of her folds. He swiped his tongue over it curiously, gratified when Ruby yelled and stretched out over the stone, her spine a satisfying arch.

Slate trailed his tongue down and pressed inside. Unlike his cock, it went in with little fuss. She was still incredibly tight, but there was no pain in her voice as he thrust his tongue deeper.

She tasted divine. It was suddenly difficult to remind himself that he was not allowed to eat her.

Every instinct inside him told him to hold her down and dig his teeth in.

Then Ruby cried out with pleasure, and the urge to devour her was replaced by the urge to coax more noises out of her flushed throat.

Slate thrust his tongue deeper, basking in the sweet taste.

He couldn’t remember why he hadn’t participated in the pleasures of the flesh for so long.

He hadn’t partaken in anything except for slumber for a long, long time.

He hadn’t even noticed Paimon’s ward growing old and weak.

A thousand years ago, he would have noticed the very first chip in the stone.

Then again, a thousand years ago, Paimon would have been around to notice it for him, the annoying little goat god.

Ruby’s walls fluttered around him. There was a part inside her that was a different texture than the rest, and he rubbed the point of his tongue over it.

Ruby cried out, grabbing onto his horns. “ Gods !”

More sweet liquid rushed to meet his tongue.

Slate lapped it up, dimly aware that his cock had not gone down like he had told it to when he realized she was too small to fit him.

Instead, it was throbbing, even leaking.

Slate hummed in annoyance as he felt pearly liquid drip down his shaft and onto his swelling knot.

Ruby’s legs went rigid around him at the vibrations. Her hips bucked, her clit grazing the edge of his skull mask.

Ruby yelled. Another gush of liquid soaked Slate’s tongue, more copious than the last. Slate lapped at it, sucking it out of her hole with a narrow-minded determination he had not felt for an age.

It filled his head like a spell, huge and intoxicating.

For a moment, nothing mattered in any realm except making her tremble around his tongue.

Finally, Ruby sagged against the warding stone, a triumphant smile quivering on her face.

“Are you sure that didn’t work?” she panted. “It felt… effective.”

“I am sure,” he replied. “You must take my knot to renew the ward.”

He slipped a finger inside her. Ruby jerked, her heel bumping into his shoulder blades.

The first finger fit well. The second finger was a strain, and he could hear Ruby holding back a pained hiss.

So small, Slate thought. He wanted to be annoyed at her for offering herself up for a ritual she knew she couldn’t complete. But for some reason, he couldn’t muster the irritation. He watched her tight hole stretch around his fingers, her legs shaking with effort.

“I think…” Ruby swallowed. “How long will we do this? I don’t know if…”

She trailed off. He heard it anyway: mortals could not keep doing one thing for long. They needed rest and food and water all the time, like some baby Skullstalker whose skull mask was still soft and rubbery.

He sighed and stood, noticing with some surprise that his cock was still hard and leaking. He picked up his loincloth and knotted it over his erection.

“Come,” he said impatiently. “We can prepare more after you have rested. I assume you need rest?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding surprised. Her gaze darted down toward the bulge in his robes.

He willed his cock to go soft. It was a simple enough request. But it stayed stubbornly erect. It even spasmed, a tiny wet patch forming at the tip.

Ruby made a soft noise in her throat. “Are you sure you don’t want… anything else?”

Slate wanted little. He wanted to eat her. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to rest. He wanted to take care of his void, though that got less important over the millennia. If a lost soul appeared, he sensed it, woke up, took care of it, and returned to his slumber. Easy.

Slate considered what she was offering. It would be pleasurable, letting her service him.

And yet, there was something uncomfortable about being so driven by these desires.

He had so few. Not to mention these desires transcended the physical; beyond his throbbing cock was a deep craving he could not name, a need deeper than hunger.

He suspected that if he gave in to her, that nameless craving would only grow.

“No,” he told her.

“Oh.” Her legs came together, her brow wrinkling. “Alright.”

She rubbed her arms. Cold again, he realized, just like she had been when he anointed her. Were humans always cold? He could not fathom an existence of constant eating, drinking, sleeping, and warming oneself. How did they have time for anything else in their short existence?

“Come,” he said again, rolling his eyes. “I will take you somewhere warm.”

He took them to a bedroom. There were many in the castle, all of them covered in dust from centuries of disuse.

She ran her hand along a dusty coverlet and coughed, waving the puff of dust out of her face. “If you have this castle, why sleep in the forest?”

“It is more comfortable in the forest,” he replied, giving the bed a dismissive look. “No reasonable Skullstalker would bother sleeping on that .”

“Right,” Ruby said distractedly. She stroked the coverlet again. For a moment, he thought she was brushing off the dust. Then he noticed the wonder in her eyes and remembered how small these mortal lives were. She had probably never been outside of her little town before, let alone her realm.

It made him feel… something , watching her stoke the soft material. He didn’t quite know what, but it was flickering warmly in his chest.

Ruby shivered again.

“It is not that cold,” Slate argued. “Here, I will light a fire.”

He turned to the fireplace. But before he could summon any flames, the fireplace roared to life in a flash of familiar blue, so powerful Slate had to jump back to avoid being singed.

Slate turned. Ruby was staring, eyes wide and hands extended, at the flames she had just conjured.

Slate snorted. “Powerful little witch.”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “Did I get you?”

“You would have to work harder to harm me.” Slate brushed down his loincloth, subtly checking it for any signs of charring.

“My magic was getting weaker with Paimon gone. But… it’s so strong here.” Ruby gazed into the blue flames with a strange expression. Worry, to be sure. But also eagerness.

Maybe she does want power, after all , Slate thought. But her eagerness didn’t look like she was thinking about what havoc she could wreak with her newfound strength. It was… oddly wondrous.

No mortal had ever looked at this void with wonder. No mortal had been to his void unless they were dead or horrendously lost and in need of a quick exit.

Ruby straightened, her arms coming up to cover her bare chest. “Thank you for bringing me here. Do you, by any chance, have a bath?”

“I have a pond,” Slate said dryly.

“Oh. That will do.”

Slate sighed. The mortal looked so sad, standing there all naked and shivering.

“I also have a bath,” he admitted grudgingly.

He led her to a bathroom that was even more dusty than the bedroom.

Slate examined the silver faucets cautiously. It had been a long time since he had used them. He preferred to bathe in the pond unless there was ice on the ground. Then, he dragged himself into this wretched castle and took advantage of the magic that had been cast on it long before he was born.

He twisted a faucet. Water clattered into the claw-foot tub.

Ruby gasped as steam rose into the air. “It flows hot ?”

“It does.”

“That’s incredible.” Ruby reached over the large tub, a shocked laugh spilling out of her mouth as she touched the gushing faucet.

Slate watched her, oddly charmed. Her laugh was so bright he almost expected the shadows clinging to his skull mask to shy away.

Then he caught a flash of black out of the corner of his eye and noticed something even more shocking: they were stretching out toward her.

A tendril brushed her bare ankle, curling around the knob of bone.

Ruby yelped, jumping high. High for a mortal, anyway.

Get back. Slate tugged his shadows close, annoyed and confused. Since when did his shadows start reaching out to random mortals? Even on the rare occasion that he got to eat one, his shadows barely flickered in their direction.

“I will leave you to your rest,” he said, turning hastily for the door.

“Slate?”

He turned back. Ruby was sitting on the edge of the bath, curled over her bare body as if he had not seen it splayed out over the warding stone. As if he had not held her thighs open while he buried his tongue inside that tight, wet heat.

“Thank you,” Ruby said softly. “You are… not what I expected.”

Slate was annoyed, imagining the tales she must have heard from humans who had not heard his real name in generations. Everything the mortal realm heard from the voids was secondhand information at best, passed down through so many mouths it was close to worthless.

Then again… she was right to be scared. He was a Skullstalker, after all. He guided lost souls in his void, but if he encountered one in another void, they were as good as breakfast.

When he bothered to eat, anyhow. He hadn’t needed to in decades. He had not felt a pang of genuine hunger until Ruby stumbled into his void, flushed and slick with sweat.

“Neither are you, little witch,” he told her.

He turned to leave once more.

“Slate,” Ruby repeated, sounding much stiffer.

He turned back to find her looking embarrassed.

“Do you think you could find my clothes?” she asked quietly.

Slate considered her naked appearance and wanted to argue. She looked good like this, all smooth and soft, not hidden by all that thick fabric. But she also looked deeply uncomfortable. If she was going to be stuck in his void for a while, she would have to wear something.

Just not those clothes.

“I will find you something better,” he promised.