Augustine’s voice harder, his hips frantic as he chases his orgasm. His body moves with urgency. One of his hands disappears before reappearing in front of me. He presents his fingers to my lips, but they drip with something golden and thick. My heart skips at the sight. The sudden rush of hunger floods my mouth with saliva and turns needy, pleading sounds into the most desperate noises I’ve heard before.
“Drink my ichor,mon abeille, be with me forever, be my queen.”
His body rocks and shakes my vision as my tongue reaches for his fingers. I want to lick and suck at them until they are more a part of me than they are Augustine. My lips press against his skin, and it smears the fluid across my cheek. I am making a mess of it, but I don’t care. The sweet ambrosia hits my tongue and I am delirious with it.
“Augustine,” I cry out.
“So perfect,” he grunts. “Just need every hole stuffed full before you will behave?”
His fingers hook into my mouth. He presses them down onto my tongue. I slurp around them, tongue between them. I suck on the sweet ichor as he pounds me into the carpet. Heated kisses are pressed into my neck, into the spot that has been sore for a week and that every time I touched made my knees weak. Augustine slams into me one final time before his teeth sink into my neck. My scream is muffled by his fingers, but my throat aches from it. I cum so viciously, my pussy gushing and clenching around his swollen, twitching cock. Everything turns a deep golden hue and my muscles give out.
My eyes close as he pulls away, his teeth and fingers leaving my body. He doesn’t pull out, shifting his weight just enough to press his body onto all of me like a weighted blanket. Comfort envelopes my shivering form. The sands release my hands with a gentle squeeze before slithering back to Augustine. The collar on my neck stays in place and I am silently grateful for it. The subtle weight of it, of working to draw in each laboured breath, keeps my head above the syrupy nothingness.
“Wh-y me?” My voice cracks, parched and exhausted.Even in your dreams, you question your worthiness.“You could have anyone. Why me?”
“I can’t answer that,” he sighs like it’s a question he has asked himself before but has never found the answer. “Your soul calls to me in a way I have never felt before. I can’t let you go now that I have tasted you. Please wake up,mon abeille.”
“What if I don’t want this to end? This dream is all I’ve wanted.”
“Let me make it a reality, Joanna. Wake up for me.”
10
Joanna
Peeling my eyes open is a chore. Every part of my body, from the tip of my hair to my toenails, aches. I am covered in something sticky and wet that makes my stomach roll with just the thought of what it could be. As my brain connects with my vision, a choked sound tumbles from my lips as the night rushes back to me. Above me Augustine stares down at me, his lap cushioning my head and stroking tears away from my cheek.
“Shh,mon abeille, I have you,” he murmurs.
My gaze darts around me, the warm lights, the smell of books– this isn’t the site office any more. We made it out. I’m still here. I take a shuddering breath that cools against the mess covering my chest. The awareness of my nudity is slow to come to me, like my brain is saying one traumatic realisation at a time.
“Look, she’s awake,finally. Arlo has done his best to cover up the problem, and I have returned your shit.” A purple demon, like from the fucking bible, grunts and looks at Augustine. “Can we end this now?”
“Mon abeille.” Augustine sighs and speaks further to me in a language I don’t know, but his eyes never leave me. He drinks me in even though I’m covered in muck.
“For fucks sake,” the lavender-skinned beast groans. “You’re speaking French?”
The being with bejewelled tusks and heavily scarred skin throws a blanket over me. He looks familiar, the grey streaks in his shoulder-length hair reminding me of a bus ad about something. His eyes are murky, and a deep scar streaks across his face like lightning in the dark. I don’t know why, but I trust him more than the one with a crown of horns.
Both of them are terrifying, I should be frightened, but this is the most exciting thing to ever happen to me. Everything about this situation is surreal and a panic tries to lodge itself in my chest, but I can’t get past the euphoria of being alive. I look down at my body, covered in red sludge but seemingly as whole as it was this morning. My only thoughts are about cleaning up, getting some ibuprofen, and questioning the man,boogeyman, massaging the base of my neck.
“Thanks,” I croak, the fluff of the blanket sticking to my red-stained fingers.
Augustine’s sands slip beneath me as he helps ease me into a seating position. It’s comforting and disconcerting to feel their smooth warmth even when I am awake. Something new burns between the two of us, an openness I’ve never shared with another, a vulnerability and power that I am not sure it’s safe to have given up. I look at my skin again and see the red sludge covering all of me, with strange marks smeared into it. My stomach rolls when I smell the coppery tang of it and I gag.
“The blood ritual will leave you woozy for a few days. I recommend taking it easy.”
“Holy shit,” I mutter. “Mayor Hawthorn.”
He taps the side of his nose and stands. A large dog that I do recognize from bus ads waddles around the side of Augustine’s desk and noses at the mayor’s hand until he takes the thick leather leash from his mouth. “Nash is fine for the mate of a friend.”
“She isn’t his mate, yet.”
“But you can sense it, can’t you? Just like I can taste it in her blood,their ichor, it’s almost finished.” Mayor Hawthorn,Nash, smirks at him before standing up. “It’s about time he does something interesting.”
He slides a thick signet ring onto his pinky and his visage changes. I blink, my eyes burning like I’ve been staring at the sun and I need to clear my vision of spots. Before me stands good old Nash Hawthorn, Mayor of Gwenmore, who is almost certified to be re-elected. He still looks a bit alternative, compared to what I used to think politicians look like. His salt and pepper hair is slicked back and, even human-looking, he towers over me and Augustine. The man is built like a brick fucking house.
“Deg’Doriel,” Nash claps a hand on the lavender being’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s time to usher in a new age. Live a little.”
