Page 14 of Cruel As A Tree (Chaos God Sugar and Spice Companion Shorts #4)

Chapter

Twelve

LILLIAN

I 'd forgotten how intoxicating it was to be in his presence.

He was back to looking like a satyr, with furred legs, cloven hooves, and antlers with a crown of flowers and bells.

The thick bulge between his legs was the place I was not looking, nor was I looking at his exposed abs that practically sparkled in the sunlight.

Instead, I was staring at the arm he held out to me, as if he expected me to take it.

I didn't know if I could touch him.

I wanted to touch him.

I wanted a whole lot more than just touching him.

I had thought about him all the time in the last month, especially at night when the headlamps from passing cars would cast a moving glow across the far wall of my bedroom.

I'd thought about him and touched myself, bringing myself to my own completion as I wondered what it would have been like if I had just given in.

If I touched him now while he was looking like the very definition of uncontrollable male grecian lust, I wouldn't stop touching him. I'd want to run my hands over his body, down between his legs, and feel what I had been missing. My cheeks burned with those thoughts, even as my breath quickened.

"How are you going to show me?" I asked him instead.

His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring a little, and a cheeky grin slid in from the side until he was smirking at me as he stepped a little closer to me. "There are options."

"What kind of options?" I asked.

"Talking is one of them," he said. "We can stroll around, like nobles in a garden, and I can describe to you using words what you will experience if you join with me. Or there is another option."

"What is it?" I said, taking the bait.

"You let me give you a taste," he said.

"Just a taste?" I asked.

"A little nibble," he said. He lifted his hand and brushed hair back from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. His fingers drifted down to my neck and he tapped a sensitive spot right there, sending the electricity of desire shooting through me. "Right... here."

I tilted my head to one side, exposing my neck a little more. "Okay," I said.

"Okay?" he replied, his voice sultry. I could see the tension in his body, feel it in the space between us, the space that our bodies were desperate to cross but were held back by the iron will of minds waiting to make sure.

"Give me a taste," I said.

"Hmmm," he made the sound with closed lips, letting it rumble in his chest. He leaned down, his body still so separate from mine, angling his horns away from me, and pressed his lips against my neck, parting them so his teeth barely grazed against my skin.

For a moment I could see it.

I could feel the forest, the expanse of it, and the shield that enclosed it all, protecting it in view.

I could feel how the trees themselves were the anchor for the magic, holding everything together and safe.

I could feel the strain of the distance grove, how sustaining it took power from the forest, stopping its outward growth in its tracks.

It was a sucker branch, taking away from the whole that needed to grow outwards.

I could feel the need to grow, the rage at the destroyed landscape, the intense desire to fill it with life and restore it.

I could feel how it needed something, something else, something that was powerful and fragrant and fertile.

Someone like me.

I could feel his desire for me, the intensity of a single-minded focus to claim me, heart, body, and mind.

He was obsessed with me.

I gasped and stepped backward, away from his gentle touch and brutal devotion. I looked up into his eyes and saw him, not as a man, but an entity, a creature that was looking for a mate to complete him, who had decided that the person was me.

"Why me?" I asked.

"You live for others," he said.

"You barely know me," I said.

"I know that you evaded patrols, climbed the wall, and even when you saw the barren lands on the other side with no hope of shelter, you still decided to try to escape," he said.

"I know that getting back to your mother and your child were so important to you that you would risk your own life rather than live in captivity, hoping you would be spared.

I know that when exposed to the beauty of my forest, you took the time to see it, to enjoy it, even though every moment in your most recent past must have been rough and difficult.

When presented with a life of comfort and safety, still all you wanted was to get back to your child. "

"She's my sister," I said, providing my practiced response without hesitation despite that old ache in my chest.

"You would have been young when you bore her," he said. "Too young to have agreed to become a mother."

I took a sharp breath in.

It was the tone of his words that undid me.

His voice held layers of warmth that are difficult to fake, and he looked at me with eyes that were softened with understanding.

I wasn't expecting it. When I first met him, he was a ravenous beast of a man, falling upon me without hesitation or thought about conversation.

Now he was a consummate gentleman in the truest definition of the word, refusing to let the conversation veer from the truth of the matter yet calling me on my habit-worn lie with the kind of compassion that unraveled the knot I'd tied around the truth.

He waited as the silence grew between us, a pressure of a flooded river churning behind the constraints of a dam built in my childhood interrupted.

I opened the floodgates.

"He... he was a lot older than me, and I believed him when he told me I was mature for my age.

He said he wanted to marry me, but then he also kept talking shit about my mom, being a single mom, but that wasn't her fault.

Then he slapped me when I told him off, and I went on the internet and asked for advice, and strangers told me to run.

By the time I told my mom it was too late to do anything but have Anne," I said, feeling the old ache of thoughts I didn't like to think about anymore.

"She gave up everything to get me away from him.

We moved before I gave birth, changed our names, cut ties with everyone so that the sperm donor wouldn't find us.

I have to finish high school somewhere else with a new baby sister. "

I took a shuddering breath as a sharp pain rose between what I wanted and what I refused to give up.

"That's why I can't just stay here with you," I said, letting the words come out.

"What my mom did for me... that isn't something everyone's parents would do.

I've heard so many stories of girls being yelled at and forced to make choices they didn't want, whether to keep or let go.

She gave up everything when the police said they wouldn't press charges, and I refused to give the baby up.

I didn't want to be with him anymore, but I couldn't bear to think of parting with the life growing in me.

So my mom made the choice to abandon her entire life and support me so that I could have my cake and eat it, so to speak.

I can't force any more of my choices on her.

She's already done so much to give me everything.

I can't just run off with the first Forest Lord I meet and become some sort of magical forest goddess. To hell with my family."

Lorthion tilted his head as he regarded me.

His fur faded away, replaced by a silk suit embroidered with flowers that matched the blossoms on the trees around us.

He held out his arm again. "I understand," he said, holding out his arm.

"And I would love to come to dinner. First, would you like to see how your familiar is doing and meet some of my friends? "

"You have friends?" I asked, startled by his statement. Immediately after I said it, I wished I had kept my mouth shut.

He laughed. "I like to think of them as friends. You can ask them what they think of me yourself."

I nodded, feeling emotionally worn out and embarrassed.

I had made so many assumptions about him because his behavior was so intense and magnetic.

If I hadn't had the ties holding onto my heart, I would have thrown myself into the fire with him right away, letting his predatory aggression sweep me away.

That same aggression was what made me see him as a monster.

Then he flipped back, showing me his thoughtfulness and his deep attention to me. So I opened myself to him.

I hadn't told anyone my story. I'd finished high school but never made any friends I considered real friends, because I always had to hide that entire part of my life from them.

How could I connect with people if all I did was lie to them about who I was?

I couldn't tell the truth. There was no way.

I couldn't risk someone who thought they had good intentions and just wanted to make sure the statutory donor knew where his offspring was.

Those were the kind of good intentions that led straight to hell.

I felt vulnerable, more than I had in a long time.

So instead of saying anything else, I slid my arm through his, feeling the touch of his soft silk garment under my hand, and let him lead me off through the woods.

I remained silent as we walked, and he didn't seek to fill the silence in words.

Instead, the stroll was carried with the background melody of birds, singing sweeter than I'd ever heard before, interlocking harmonies that didn't sound possible for random animals in a forest. When a high soprano, a sweet wordless singer, joined the backdrop of harmonies, I stopped in my tracks.

"What is that?" I whispered, hoping my quiet voice would disturb the beauty of the singer.

"It is a phoenix," Lorthion said, his voice low, matching mine. "I have many that have chosen to live within my woods recently. They are being drawn to something in the school."