Page 17

Chapter 17

Erik

L illian’s words echo in my head, a glorious respite from the usual voice that dwells there.

“It’s you, Erik. Just you.”

Her eyes, as deep blue as the lake in the bitter heart of winter, bore into mine as I rub my aching cock at her hot, wet entrance. My heart is hammering harder in my chest than it ever has. I’m watching for any spark of fear or surprise, the smallest sign of recognition that might light in her face as I drive myself to the brink of insanity, teasing myself with the feel of her. Every now and then, her focus flits from my eyes, hungrily darting lower to the place where our bodies grind against each other.

“Do it, Erik,” she pants, contracting her stomach muscles to urge her hips upward in my hold, her legs trembling against my chest. “Please.”

I breathe in slowly, scouring my brain for the faintest hint of the monster’s voice. Even the slightest murmur of his alien instincts flaring like emotion in my gut.

But it’s silent. So mercifully, beautifully silent.

I’m afraid to trust it. I’ve wanted this woman since I first saw her bathing in the water. Wanted to fondle her sweet breasts, kiss her plump lips, delve into the fuzzy folds between her legs. But I’m afraid–terrified–knowing that if I give in, if I turn over control to my desires, it could all go wrong at any moment–

“Erik!”

Her pleading voice snaps my attention back to my beautiful Lillian, and there is something in her eyes now. A fire. The deep blue sparkles like sapphires as desire burns from her soul into mine. Aching. Desperate.

Human.

“Do not look away,” I grunt, truly on the edge of pain as my balls swell with days of unrequited lust. I have not touched myself since the day I first spoke to her on the beach, not on purpose, so fearful that any sensation against my shaft would summon Phorkys’s hunger, would put her in danger. I can hardly speak through the haze of longing. “I need you… ungh… to watch me. For any—any sign…”

Her blonde hair flies in staticy wisps against the bed of furs as she nods frantically. “I will. I promise. Erik, please.”

The plea falls from her lips like a prayer as her eyelids hood, turning her expression sultry.

I nod, not trusting my voice, hardly trusting my body. I maintain eye contact while I line up the head of my cock with her dripping entrance, wet from my earlier attentions, relying solely on the feel of her folds to guide me.

The bittersweet sensation stretches on for eternity until I suddenly feel my tip notch at her channel, tucking into its firm embrace, and the pressure on my sensitive head draws a keening sound from my throat.

“Please, Erik, please, ” she answers my cry, her brow scrunching as she struggles to keep her eyes on mine. “I need you.”

Need. If only she knew. How deep the need for her runs through my veins, terrifying and all-consuming.

He needs you too, I think, and it’s the only thing keeping me from thrusting myself inside her until my balls bury between her cheeks. My resolve is the only thing protecting her from him.

“I–I can’t–”

“It’s only you, Erik!” Her hands grasp onto my forearms, gripping so tight I can feel her nails carving crescents into my skin, her eyes blazing wildly. “It’s just you and me. Make me yours!”

“Augh!” I growl, the pain of her grip connecting me to her as our gaze sizzles, burning away my fear until the only thing that remains is the points where our bodies connect. Her fingers on my arms. Her thighs against my stomach. Her plump ass on my thighs.

And my shaft, at last, sinking into the tight, perfect embrace of her core.

“Fuck!” She moans, head thrown back into the scream, hips jerking up as her body attempts to straighten.

“Eyes!” I order, and her neck snaps up, locking back in. The pleasure of her squeezing around my cock is ecstacy, and it is unlocking a possessiveness inside me that I didn’t know existed. I dig my hands into her ass, gripping its supple flesh with claw-like fingers.

If it didn’t feel so good, so all-consumingly perfect , pulling out and sliding in to feel her tight flesh welcome me back, perhaps there would be room for fear. Perhaps I would worry that my hands were turning into claws, that my lust was unlocking something dangerous, something possessive and greedy.

Something monstrous.

But I can’t. In this moment, losing myself in this magnificent woman, I can only ask her to warn me before I give in completely. Can only trust that she will hold my gaze to hers, and with the power of her perfect eyes and voice and body, I will not fall apart. That she will not let me.

I thrust my hips forward and pull her hips in, burying myself inside her again and again. Her breathing quickens to match my relentless pace, her face flushing, lips parting, but her eyes hold steady.

“Yes, yes, yes,” spills like a mantra from her lips, and it draws my attention down to the plush, pink flesh of her mouth. I slow, allowing myself to take in the rest of her beautiful body: round red cheeks, pale full stomach, soft heavy breasts. “Erik,” she gasps. “Look at me.”

“I am.”

Everything inside me protests, but I manage to withdraw from her wet heat, not wanting to spend myself just yet. I open her hips to spread her legs on either side of me. My cock aches without her touch, but I suppress the urge to plunge back inside her or stroke myself. Instead, I lean forward, hovering over her, posting my weight on an elbow while I brush an errant, golden lock of hair from her lower lip.

“I have to kiss you,” I confess. “I need… I need to feel you everywhere, Lillian.”

A new emotion crosses her face as she reaches up to cup my cheek with one hand, wrapping around and tickling up my spine with the other. I shiver from her gentle touch, letting out a shuddering breath as her nails trace the definition of my shoulders.

My whole torso relaxes into her until our chests brush. I run my free hand from her scalp, down behind her ear, over her collarbone to the side of her breast, where I push the kneadable flesh in between us, plucking at her pink nipple with my thumb until it pebbles beneath me.

She gasps, a sweet intake of breath that inspires my cock to twitch against the soft skin of her belly. I groan, grinding slowly against her, as I squeeze and finger the lusty globe.

The entire time, I fight to keep my eyes on hers. She is relentless, holding my gaze like our lives depend on it— knowing that they do. She understands what is at stake here, understands what I need from her. The realization catches in my throat, and I cradle my arm behind her head so I can hold the base of her skull like a pillow to ease the strain on her neck.

And then, holding her gaze, I draw the firm, rosy peak of her breast into my mouth.

A tortured sound dribbles from her as I trace the pebbled skin of her areola with my tongue, drawing smaller and smaller circles until I flick the tip over her nipple again and again. I wrap my lips around the sensitive bud and suck, pulling it into my mouth and hollowing my cheeks like a babe in her embrace, rubbing the underside of my shaft against her to the tempo of her moans.

The hand that had been holding my face falls away, and I see her take up administrations of her own to her other breast in my peripheral vision. Her fingers clench and tease, her thumb plucking and rubbing, her hand even cradling the entire mass at one point to push it against the side of my face. I chuckle.

“You wish for me to lick the left?”

“Both,” she pants, and frees both hands to press her tits together. My mouth goes dry as I see the two mounds distort in her grasp, the line between them lengthening as she pushes her nipples closer together.

My cock twitches again; an image of my seed spraying across her neck and face while I fuck her jiggling tits springs to the forefront of my mind. I swallow, pleading with her with my eyes. “You want me to…”

“Suck them both. At once.”

I do not need to be told twice.

I replace her hands with my own, shifting my weight so my torso presses into her hips while I dive face-first into her perfect breasts, squeezing and licking and sucking, drawing both tips into my mouth and laving them with my tongue until I feel her squeeze her thighs around me.

“Oh, fuck, Erik—that’s so good!”

Losing myself, I close my eyes and waggle my head back and forth with my tongue out, flicking the pink peaks relentlessly while I push them together with my hands.

“Eyes!” She gasps, and I pop them open at the same moment I drop my hands to her hips.

“I cannot wait any longer, Lillian. I need to be inside you.”

“Thank god!” She says, the humor in her voice warming my chest.

I center myself between her legs and she locks her thighs around my hips, my arms supporting her at her lower back. I rub against her entrance again, feeling more human than I have in centuries.

“Am I still… myself?” I check, one last time, before I give myself over to her pleasure.

“Still Erik. Still you.” A look I have never seen before crosses Lillian’s face, open and kind and caring and…

Loving?

Could it be possible? Could Lillian love me?

Could any woman, as broken as I am?

The mystery emotion flickers between us for only a moment, before desire burns hot enough to consume everything else.

I notch myself at her entrance, and slide home.

She cries with pleasure, taking all of me in that first, slow thrust. Her channel is hot and wet and wanting as it welcomes me in, the sweet friction making me shudder from head to toe. We both gasp at the rightness of it, the pure perfection of our bodies locked together and becoming one.

I try to resist the pull deep in my lower belly, but my cock has been aching for this for too many days. I drag my length against her inner walls, back and forth, and the pressure builds too quickly.

“Lillian,” I breathe, “I will not last long–”

“You’ve got me on the fucking edge, Erik,” her voice is reedy and thin, and little noises sneak out between words as she struggles to keep her eyes open. “Harder, please, I want you to just fuck me!”

A primal urge bursts forth inside me at those words, and my hips snap forward greedily. Lillian cries out, and I do not need to confirm whether or not it is a good sound. Her eyes are wide as saucers as she wails beneath me, my stomach pulling tighter and tighter with every snap of my hips.

I pound into her, my own gaze growing frantic as I fight the urge to give into my most base desires. I see my pleasure mirrored in her face as her eyes roll back with every thrust, only to return to mine as I pull back: a crazed dance between bliss and duty as she struggles to obey my demands.

She feels so good. The pleasure, the pure ecstasy, is a feeling I have grown to associate only with the monster’s machinations. The way he would toy with and torture me at the slightest hint of lust, the unnatural swelling in my loins and the pictures he would plant inside my head. It is inseparable from the agony and guilt I feel at my cruel fate, and yet…

To feel this good in my human form, inside this human woman— Lillian— it is excruciating. It is euphoric. It?—

I feel my balls tighten, and it is as if something within me cracks open. A barbaric cry rends itself from my throat and tears burst from my eyes as I explode inside her, pleasure uncoiling from the base of my spine and pouring itself from the very depths of my soul.

Lillian is screaming too, a frantic chorus of, “Yes, yes, Erik—yes!” as I thrust forward once, twice, and three more times, feeling my release mix with her own as it surges inside her.

We freeze, joined together, her legs twitching around my waist and my final spurts of seed trailing down the curve of her ass. Panting. Shaking. Unblinking, as we hold each other’s gaze.

“Still human?” My voice is a hoarse whisper, hitching as the last tremors of my orgasm shudder through me.

“Still human,” she assures me. Then she lets out a contented sigh, finally resting her head back and allowing her eyelids to flutter closed.

After, we lay together, her body cradled against me and her soft hair fanned over the furs beneath my chin. I tickle my fingers over her spine and shoulders, tracing the subtle lines of her vertebrae through the smooth flesh, enjoying the sound of her contented hums as my nails move up and down.

“That was so good,” she purrs. My stomach flips happily. I squeeze her tightly.

“I am glad.”

“Was it good for you, too?” She tilts her head up and I can’t help but laugh at the concern wrinkling her forehead.

“Lillian, my treasure,” I sigh and press my lips to the furrowed skin, kissing her worry away. “It has been hundreds of years since I have felt the pleasure of a woman in my bed. And you— Odin’s beard! Your body holds within it more pleasure than one man could ever hope to enjoy.” Certainly a man like me.

She squirms in my hold, embarrassed by my compliment, and I lift my finger to her chin. She stills when I tilt her face to mine. “You are perfect, my treasure. I feel as if I have died a warrior’s death, and been rewarded Valhalla.”

“You don’t have to make it weird,” she murmurs, but snuggles closer to me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “You could just say my pussy game is on point and move on.”

I pause, attempting to translate the unfamiliar words in my head, but surrender the battle. “Your pussy game is on point.”

She snorts into my chest, and then I feel her lips press a kiss against my sternum. It isn’t long before her body sinks more deeply into my embrace, and her breathing slows into a steady, even rhythm.

And for the first time in centuries, I drift out of consciousness without the voice of a monster whispering me to sleep.