Page 10 of Mischief Maker

Chapter Eight

Faela

I t’s been nearly five days since Kireth left, and I feel his absence acutely. I had gotten so accustomed to his chatter, his energetic presence, that it feels lonely and rather quiet without him around. With the crops all withering, there is little to do but attend to the livestock.

Has this immortal really become so important to me that I miss his companionship? I cannot get attached to him. When his tasks are spent and his time is up, he will leave me.

At the end of the fifth day, though, I hear Kireth’s singsong voice carry across the farm to where I’m spreading hay in the pen.

“Sad girl!” he calls out, springing into view as he comes down the road. “Where are you?”

I run to the fence and climb over it, and when he sees me, Kireth grins widely. I’m tempted to throw my arms around him, but I restrain myself.

“I’ve done as you asked,” he says, holding up the bag I’d given him when he left, “and I return bearing the solution.”

My heart leaps. So there is an answer to all of this. In the time that he’s been gone, the plants have further wilted and died, and now many of the stalks are black with sickness. I only hope that some of them can be saved with this cure he’s found.

“Thank you, thank you!” I could just kiss his face. “I don’t know what you did, but thank you.”

He wags a finger at me. “Don’t thank me until it works. And even then, don’t thank me. I’m doing what you asked.” He gestures at the house. “When you’re finished out here, let’s go inside. I have to brew a potion.”

I quickly wrap up my chores and gallop in through the front door.

I don’t realize how much I’ve missed Kireth until he turns and smiles at me, that big, mischievous, enigmatic grin filling my heart with warm hope, and.

.. longing. The need I’d felt for him the night before he left comes roaring back.

“My sad girl,” he says, crossing the distance between us. He lifts a finger to my face and runs it along my cheekbone. “Did you miss me?”

My mouth opens and closes, but no sound escapes. Of course I missed him. I missed his laughter, his jokes, his smiles. But I can’t tell him the truth, can I? And reveal just how weak I’ve become for him?

But a knowing look crosses his face as he watches me.

“Ah, I see.” His finger trails down from my cheek to my lips, and I gasp in surprise as he traces the seam of them.

Then I remember the potion. If there’s a way to bring back my farm, we must act quickly.

“Wait.” I sound a little breathless as I plant both my feet firmly on the ground. “What did you bring back? What do we need to do?”

Kireth blinks, as if he had forgotten. “Oh, right.” It’s with some reluctance that his hand leaves my mouth.

He draws open the bag on the table, revealing an assortment of odd ingredients—plants, herbs, nuts, the corpse of a frog, a pinecone, a tiny bird’s egg, and a strange beetle I’ve never seen before. “Took me a while to find all of this.”

I peer down at everything he’s gathered. “What do we do with it?”

Kireth pulls a note out of his loincloth, and I wonder how that works. Does he have a pocket in there?

“I have a recipe.” He looks at me expectantly. “Should I make it?”

“Yes!” It comes out more forcefully than I’d intended. “I mean, yes. Please make it.”

“Forty,” he says, tallying in the air, and turns back to the table to begin.

There’s a lot of grinding with the mortar and pestle, and then Kireth asks me to retrieve some cold water from the river.

When I return, he’s gutted the frog and mixed the innards up with the beetle and egg, along with the other brown-green mess.

He adds some of the fresh water to the mixture and it’s an awful color as he swirls it around.

“Every day, you must put a few drops of this around the farm,” he tells me firmly, handing me the bowl. “Everywhere that’s been affected by this plague.” He takes out a drop with one finger and brings it to the creaky, splintering wooden floorboards.

“Even inside the house?” I ask.

He grins. “This place isn’t falling apart because of your caretaking. It’s falling apart because a curse is killing it, as it is killing everything on this land.”

“A curse?” What did he discover while he was gone? Where did he go that he found this solution?

When Kireth touches his finger to the floor, the droplet of potion sizzles. He draws his hand away quickly, and the spot emanates a soft glow. As soon as it began, the glow fades, and I wonder if it’s just my imagination that the floor now looks cleaner in that spot.

“There.” Kireth hands me the bowl. “Go spread some around. We will do this every day until the curse starts to loosen its hold on the farm. Once we have it on the run, we must capture it.”

That is all very curious. I didn’t know curses were the type of things to get up and run away.

“How did you find this out?” I ask. “What is the nature of this curse?”

The pleasure and mischief fades from his face. “You should go take care of it right away.”

I note his dodge of my question, and pledge to myself that I’ll bring it up again later. I wonder if Kireth knows what we did to earn this curse, what my parents might have done to bring this wrath down upon us.

I do as I’m told and sprinkle the potion around the field, then the livestock pens. Once I’m finished, I return to the house to find Kireth gone. Instead, laughter rolls up the hill from the nearby river, and I would know that sound anywhere.

When I reach the riverbank, he is in the water, loincloth lying on the ground just at the edge. He lets out a whoop when I appear and splashes water in my direction.

“Come in,” he purrs. “I thought I could use a bath after all that travel.”

“I don’t need one.” I can’t imagine taking my clothes off in front of a god. It would be uncouth.

Kireth arches an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you modest, dear human? As if I haven’t already seen many young maidens’ bodies before.”

I dislike the sound of that. Other maidens whose naked bodies he’s partaken in? My expression must show, because Kireth sighs and swims closer.

“But none of them were as fair as you,” he says with a wide grin.

“I bet you say that to everyone.”

He has surely pleasured many women in his innumerable years and probably made them all feel quite special.

Instead of answering, Kireth rises from the water. Now he’s naked in front of me, and my eyes are drawn against my will to the place between his legs. A long, gray penis hangs there, the rounded head covered by dark skin.

I gasp. Though I’ve never touched one, I have seen them before when I bathed with the village boys many, many years ago—and those were nothing in comparison to this.

A fiery inferno lights in my belly. I know where an object like that fits, and that place inside me is throbbing.

With one deft arm, Kireth reaches out and catches me. He draws me in closer, until I’m just inches away from his face, our chests almost touching. After inhaling a long breath of me, he lets out a sigh of relief.

“My sad girl,” he says quietly, and lifts his hand to run it through my hair.

His touch is so soft and inviting that I instinctively lean into it, and I feel his claws tighten around a thick lock.

His breathing shallows, and it’s not until he leans toward me, holding me up with one arm around my back, that I realize he’s going to kiss me.

“Kireth?” I ask, uncertain. What is the price of this touch? As much as I crave him, for his clever mouth and lithe, flawless body, I cannot—and will not—use my tasks to suit my own carnal needs.

He pauses, and I can feel his breath on my lips.

“What is it?” he asks. Those red eyes of his bore into me. “Don’t you desire this, too?”

Oh, I do. More than anything, I do.

“I can’t pay,” I say, drawing back. His arm doesn’t release me. “I won’t use you that way.”

Kireth’s curious expression doesn’t falter. Instead, it shifts into a kind of regretful smile.

“Then this time, I won’t ask you to.” He draws me closer.

“I will give myself quite freely, if that is what you want.” His clawed hand roves over my hip, saying all the same words as his mouth, and I want more of it—more, more.

I want to know what Kireth tastes like, what he would do with me if he could do anything he wanted.

His hand is just a taste, a sampling of what could come later.

I need the full meal.

“Faela.” Kireth’s voice startles me, and I realize I’ve been staring for some time.

“You are fairer than any woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.

And this is the truth.” His fingers twine with mine, and he brings them up to his lips.

In his eyes, I think I see a budding shyness, a quiet fear that I might reject him.

But I want him. If I were to give myself anything I dreamed of, it would be to feel my own naked body pressed flush against his.

“Will you join me?” he asks, tugging my hand gently toward the water. “Let me wash your hair. Please. It will cost nothing.”

My words fall back into my chest because it feels too scandalous to let them out.

Yes, I want to be naked with him. Most certainly.

But wouldn’t it be terribly lecherous of me to say it out loud?

Instead I nod and reach for the hem of my dress.

A wide smile spreads across Kireth’s face as I pull it upward, then bring it over my head and arms. Underneath is my slip, and the demon’s eyes rove over me hungrily as I rid myself of that, too.

Now I’m bared to him, and it’s cold, so my nipples are tight and hard. Kireth leads me down the bank as he backs up into the river, drawing me along until the water is up to my hips, and I’m relieved to at least have my most private parts hidden.

Kireth tugs me even closer to him, and I follow without resistance. I want him nearer, too. I long to feel that ash-gray skin with the twirling markings carved into it pressed against mine.

Then he wraps his other arm around me, and my wish is granted.

The gap between our bodies closes, and Kireth brings my head to nestle in the crook of his neck as he embraces me.

His nose nuzzles my hair, and his claws comb through it as if I am a precious and beloved thing.

Slowly he kneels, bringing me down with him into the river until we are both under the surface of the water, surrounded by each other’s bodies.

Then, at last, he kisses me.

Kireth

If this is all I get of her, that will be enough.

Faela’s lips are as soft as butter, as sweet as honey, and they sate a thirst in me I didn’t know I had. She’s tentative and shy, and I wonder if my sad girl has ever been kissed before.

There is so much I don’t yet know about her, but I will learn it.

I draw her further in, weaving her legs around my hips, showing her where to tangle her hands in my hair as I kiss her with every last ounce of my patience and restraint.

I will need to take it slow for her, leading her deeper like one would guide a foal across a stream, for as long as she wants to come with me.

After she’s settled in my lap, Faela relaxes against me.

I draw my tongue across her lips, and she lets out a surprised gasp.

With this opening, I sweep inside her mouth, showing her how this silky appendage could be used to pleasure her.

I suckle her, paying attention to every corner until her lips are open for me and her tongue is tangling with mine.

She shudders under my hands, letting out the tiniest of moans as I teach her mouth how to dance.

While I tease her in one place, I wander across her naked skin, brushing my thumbs past the plump curve of her breasts down to the swell of her behind.

I’ve been trying to keep my cock under control so as not to frighten her, but it has a will of its own.

It fills and fills the longer I kiss her until it’s fat and swollen, and I can’t help that it’s now pressed firmly against her soft rear end.

To my greatest surprise, my small Faela begins to rub herself against me.

The tight ropes of my control slip and fracture as she moans under my mouth, and her perfect ass drags along me.

My hands become even more eager, more bold, roaming down her thighs and up her belly, then under the sultry swell of her breasts.

She does not flee, as I had feared—she leans even deeper into me, her body warming under my hands as her arousal takes her.

So my sad girl does have another side, a lush side, a side that thirsts for pleasure. I didn’t expect her to be so sensual, but every movement I make, every press of my claws in her flesh, earns a whimper.

She is sensitive. Good.

I have not been a chaste god. That was never my purpose, never my intention.

I enjoy all of life’s bounties, delight in them, and find every opportunity to bask in the glow of desire.

I have found joy in monks, in fairies, in strapping young men.

Each carried their own flavor, their own unique aroma, and I appreciated all of them for what they were.

But none of them compare to what it feels like to twine myself around Faela.

Her nipples brush across my chest as she breathes, and her delicate pussy caresses my cock with each of her unconscious movements.

She simply radiates sex, as if it were baked into her blood, and the smell of it is roaring my name.

I want to eat her, absorb her into myself, and never release her again.

Most certainly, she is my chosen one. The one picked for me from the thousands of years that have passed since my making.

Forty .

I startle myself out of my own licentious haze with the thought. My time with her is limited. This may be one of only a few moments I can share with her, and I would rather it be on a soft bed in a warm room than in a dirty river.

We can do the river thing later, once I’ve unlocked the feral, lusty animal inside her.

With Faela still wrapped around my hips, I get to my feet. She gasps at the shock of cool air above the water and peels her lips away from mine.

“Kireth...?” she asks, clasping me tight as if I might drop her.

I chuckle into her hair. “Hold on to me. I’m taking you home.”

This earns a scandalized little gasp. “Like this?”

“Who will see us?” I ask, stepping out of the river, her butt resting pleasantly against my fully erect cock. “The sheep? I will remember that I’m being judged by sheep as we pass.”

Faela covers her eyes with one arm, as if not seeing it herself will somehow hide her from the world, but doesn’t ask to be put down as I carry her easily up the riverbank toward the collapsing farmhouse.

I kick open the door and take the stairs two at a time, eager to lay my sopping wet mortal on her soft bed.

There, I will show her everything. All of life’s mysteries will unravel before her eyes, including me.