Page 18

Why did I agree to this? Lindi thought, with her face hot like someone had poured smelted ore onto it.

With her knees bent and pressed together, she lowered her hands from covering her eyes to peer down at her bare thighs.

She’d been hoping her pants would magically reappear over legs and wrap them once more in modesty.

Instead, they floated off into the void in her periphery, making her cheeks flare hotter.

Why did they have to float in the ether? Even a boot was rotating just behind and to the right of where she thought Weldir’s head might be.

As if she and Weldir were underwater, it was even more embarrassing to see them scattered around, rather than upon a solid surface!

She would have shuffled away from him when he glided closer to her... if it wouldn’t have exposed her pussy to him. No, instead, she tightened her thighs until she felt her muscles lock and ache.

When he told her he required that they enact the part of their agreement where she produced a child, she had agreed to do it. She even removed her boots, socks, pants, and underpants for him, but now she was just... unnerved. Half naked and afraid.

Why did she feel like she was about to do something wrong? Maybe it felt unholy because it was him? He’s my husband, damnit! She shouldn’t feel this way, yet she spooked further when he drifted ever closer.

I’m so glad he said I can keep my tunic on. And it was long enough to come down to the middle of her thighs, which gave her a sense of modesty despite the act they were about to perform.

She didn’t want her breasts and the rest of her body exposed to him. Honestly, she just wanted to close her eyes and get this over with. Then she’d pretend it never happened as she carried whatever child they’d produce.

As much as she wanted to blame Weldir, to hate him for pushing this onto her now, deep in her heart, she couldn’t.

She’d agreed to do this six years ago. It was the main requirement in her second life, and she’d promised it when she gave him her soul. This was the bargain they’d struck. She’d walked into this knowing what was required of her, and backing out now seemed entirely self-centred and unfair.

He could have found another human woman, one that may have said yes and then not denied him.

She didn’t know if she rejected him now, whether he would undo their bond, but... she wanted to continue her mission. Someone else may not have the heart or even the will to hunt occultists. Lindi did, oddly enough, considering her life’s path up until her first death.

I can do this, she thought as she lowered her knees from her chest. I-it’s only sex. Plenty of people did it. Mothers, wives, lovers. It didn’t have to be a terrible thing; the idea just felt odd doing it with a faceless spirit.

She also didn’t know what she’d give birth to, and that worried her.

I wanted my first time to be with someone I loved. Most of the time she felt nothing for Weldir, and if she did deign to have an emotion for him, it was irritation.

He hadn’t done anything to change her mind or heart in his cold indifference.

“You must spread your thighs if I am to–”

“I know!” she accidentally yelled, before slapping her hands over her mouth again and wincing apologetically. “I’m just... nervous. I’ve never done this before and I’m a little scared it’s going to hurt.”

Ugh, the rumours she’d heard about it had made her want to shut her legs forever! It was one of the reasons she was relieved to wait until marriage to lose her virginity. She hoped they were just overexaggerating, but the fear they weren’t was hard to shake.

One woman had even said she heard someone else gushed blood, and Lindi’s eyes had widened in disbelief. What had the man done, taken an axe to her?! How barbaric!

“I have never done this before either,” he said, and she wished his tone sounded sincere, like he was trying to comfort her. Instead, despite how nice and husky it was, he stated it matter-of-factly.

When Lindi felt just the tiniest pressure on her knee, she looked down to the chalky streak of his inner palm pressing against it.

He was trying to push his entire hand against it, but she only perceived that tiny streak.

There was strength behind it, strength he could probably wield if he wanted to, but he didn’t.

That relieved her, at least. It didn’t feel forceful, but more like a gentle coax.

She crossed her ankles in defiance when she looked up at the size of him. “C-can you make yourself smaller? You’ll rip me apart like that.”

Right now, he looked too big, too tall. She wanted him smaller, so it would be easier.

A streak lining his forehead moved as if he looked down upon himself. “I do not see why my size would matter.”

“Because your penis will be too big!” Lindi instantly wanted to die of mortification, but how could he be this... idiotic in this moment?

There was a slight pause from Weldir before a chuckle surrounded her. “We will not be fornicating, human. I only intend to insert a tendril inside you, and nothing more. Perhaps I should have explained that.”

The heat, thankfully, bled from her face as her expression dropped, including her mouth. “What? A-a tendril? You really should have told me.”

She’d been stressing for no reason then!

“I already told you I have no intention of ever hurting you.”

Yes, she faintly remembered him telling her that once, but this was different! It would have been an accident, like most first times.

She went to bash on his chest – or shoulder, she wasn’t quite sure – in indignation, but both her hands went through whatever part of his torso was in front of her.

Trying to hit a deity was a poor decision on her part, but her heart was so twisted in relief, nervousness, and confusion that she didn’t care right then.

Thankfully it didn’t matter since over ninety percent of him was intangible to her.

I would strangle him if I could. She doubted he’d forgotten to tell her, so he was probably toying with her. That, or he was an absent-minded idiot, and she didn’t think of Weldir that way.

He didn’t know much about their new bond, but he was a very intelligent being. Even if he didn’t intend to, he sometimes made her feel small and inferior. It didn’t help that he could look into the past of the souls he’d eaten. Earth wasn’t a mystery to him, and he knew more about it than she did.

Likely more than she ever would.

Worried his patience was growing thin, and unwilling to learn what the end of that tether looked like, Lindi began to open her legs. She cringed when her thighs peeled apart like they were sticky, and then she was finally revealing herself to him.

When she paused after parting them only an inch, he stated, “More. I will not be able to feel with my tendril, so I will need to properly see what I am doing.”

An embarrassed groan croaked from her, and she shoved her thighs apart to get it over with. She then held her breath like that would save her from whatever was about happen. She shut her eyes tightly, bundled her fists near her chest, and waited with her teeth stabbing into her plump bottom lip.

She jerked when something prodded against the lips of her pussy before it glided towards her entrance. The tendril didn’t feel cool, or warm, or like anything living. It felt like a foreign thing, almost wrong, and her toes curled in repulsion when it opened her and began to push inside.

Her chest heaved with uncertainty, and she didn’t know if this was actually better or worse than the sex she expected.

At least that would have been normal; this absolutely didn’t feel right.

There was no warmth or a body to hold. Instead, she gripped the bottom of her tunic to steady herself through this rather invasive act that felt more like a procedure than sex.

Her inner walls, tight from disuse and tension, stretched around the tip of the thin tendril. Most of Weldir had disappeared, as if he’d focused all his chalky bits into it to keep it solid and stop it from going through her.

Then she gasped at the lightest pinching sensation. She winced, only to immediately relax before her brows furrowed and her teeth released her bottom lip.

Was that it? she thought, wondering if the tiny, quick pain had been her hymen. Are you fucking kidding me?! That’s it?! Those women had totally been exaggerating! Gushing blood, my arse.

They’d just been trying to frighten each other. Gosh, she could imagine them playfully giggling about it behind her back.

Then Weldir’s tendril bottomed out inside her.

She didn’t know why she looked down, not that she could see past her pubic mound or through her very flesh.

Maybe she just wanted to truly see that her first time had been complete and that it actually wasn’t too bad.

She’d wound herself up about it so much that she now felt kind of silly.

That was until Lindi belted out a pained scream when he pushed impossibly deeper . Her back arched, her toes clenched in agony, and she reached her hands forward to claw at him – only to grasp nothing.

“Stop!” she yelled, kicking her legs and slapping her hands at thin air. “Get it out, get it out!”

The tendril yanked back. Lindi shoved her hand over her pussy and shut her thighs so fast her knees bashed together as she turned on her side. Tears instantly welled and spilled over as her eyes darted around in fear as she searched for him.

“Y-you said you wouldn’t hurt me!” she sobbed out, her shoulders turning inwards as her chest heaved through her shudders of radiating pain. Even though he’d taken the tendril away, her insides continued to ache. “What the fuck were you doing?”

“Inseminating you,” he stated plainly, but his tone was defensive, like he didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. Once more, it sounded like a damn procedure, and it sucked all the life out of it. “How else am I to do that if not inside you?”

“Not that deep!” Lindi snapped. “What did you do? Enter my cervix? That hurt!”

“That’s exactly what I did,” he answered.

Her bottom lip trembled because she’d actually been joking. Her expression twisted as she shook her head at him in disbelief. “That’s not how you do it, even I know that.”

An annoyed huff, with the strangest undertone of a growl, rumbled around her. “Well, how else am I meant to get my essence inside your womb?”

“Like normal! Inside my pussy, not by shoving yourself through my cervix like a fucking jerk. It goes in by itself... I think.”

That made the most sense to her. It shouldn’t have been that painful, even she knew that. It was like someone had called upon lightning from the sky to strike deep inside her and shoot down her legs and up her groin.

Now I wish we’d just had sex! At least then he couldn’t have gotten freaky with her insides in the wrong way.

“How was I supposed to know that? I’ve never seen what happens inside. I thought this was how it was done.” His tone finally held some real bite to it, and Lindi did not care one bit.

She didn’t care if he was embarrassed or annoyed. She was the one who was hurt!

“F-fine, I get it,” she muttered, and then held her breath that he’d at least apologise.

“I’ll be gentler,” he stated with a sigh in his voice. “I won’t do that again.”

Then he came forward, and that silly, wriggling tendril drifted near her knees, and she gasped. She tried to scramble away but stopped when she almost fell off the ledge of whatever thing he’d conjured for her to sit on.

“No!” She threw out the hand not covering her privates to ward him back. “Please. I don’t want to do this right now.”

“I did not finish–”

“I said no!” Then Lindi turned solid, putting herself out of his reach even when she was right before him.

He reached out to swipe through her solid body to test that he couldn’t touch her. “Turn intangible, female. I told you I prefer you as a Phantom in my realm.”

Her bottom lip pushed forward in annoyed defiance, as she dropped her head and gave him a glare through her lashes. “No,” she snapped firmly. “Why should I do anything you ask of me when you can’t even adhere to your own promise of not hurting me? That was the one thing I asked for.”

“You have asked for much. For power. For vengeance. To return to your home. For time. For the very life you now have.” His mist seemed to collect tighter against him, in reaction to the sharpness and curtness of his words.

“I have given you all of that. I told you having a mate was new for me, so I’m asking for grace if I make a mistake. ”

At least he admitted to that, but he had yet to still utter an apology! Perhaps because he was a god, he felt it was beneath him, but Lindi refused to let him get away with it. He needed her as much as she needed him, and she had no qualms holding that over him.

It was the only true power she had in their dynamic. He could take away his magic from her, but she didn’t actually have to produce offspring if she didn’t want to, and her ability to turn physical meant he couldn’t force it.

And she didn’t know his temperament at all to know if she was truly safe from him.

That sudden realisation made her right eye well with more liquid before another tear fell as her lips trembled. I’m such an idiot. I should have just let myself die. So what if she wouldn’t have gone to heaven? At least she didn’t have to put up with any of this.

Why did I try to hold onto life so much?

For her revenge, despite how fleetingly good that felt? To protect others, who would never know? For her mother, who never woke up to see Lindi safe?

She wasn’t actually happy with her choice.

“Just send me back to Earth,” Lindi demanded.

His tone was surprisingly dark as he rumbled, “You promised me.”

“And I will, but not today.” If he wouldn’t give her an apology or at least show he cared about her wellbeing, then she would withhold her oath to him until she felt better – emotionally and physically.

“Infuriating,” he growled. “If you won’t give me what you promised, then I will cease giving you anything you desire. Your soul is mine, and I will trap it if I so choose. It belongs in my afterworld.”

Then all the wispy, smoky mist disappeared in a flash – as if he... left.

Lindi waited for him to send her back to Earth, but in the lone nothingness, it didn’t take long for what he meant to become obvious. Her eyes widened as she peered around into the utter weightless, vast, and empty ether.

“No,” she rasped, her eyes widening and frantically darting around. “Don’t you dare leave me here!”

She reached for the rest of her clothing so she could at least put her pants back on, but they were out of reach of her fingertips.

She wanted them back on – to forget why they’d come off in the first place.

With her hair floating and her tunic lifting to the point she had to shove it down to cover her pubic mound, she wished she could swim through his darkness like he could.

“Enjoy your solitude, female,” the darkness coldly answered.